Click here if you are using Microsoft's
defective Windows Explorer browser. Why?
Posted November 14, 2003
Martinu's symphonies are not as well known as they should be. Bohuslav Martinu* (1890–1959) developed one of the last century's most distinct sounds, or voices, displaying a vigorous rhythmic sense, brilliant motivic development, transporting melodies, and a signature reliance on the piano in his orchestral scores as well as in much of his best chamber music. A composer of Czech nationality, he based his technique partly on Baroque and classical models, becoming one of the most productive of neoclassical composers, thus harking back to the classical era in more than a stylistic sense: he is credited with over 400 works. (This is productivity of Haydnesque proportions!) With such a large oeuvre, it is understandable that his work is often regarded as uneven. But his best work, undoubtedly, is of major stature. At least three of his six symphonies reach quite high, to the pinnacle of artistic achievement.
They are also at the pinnacle of American artistic achievement, for Martinu composed all six in his adopted country of the United States. But he is no neo-Dvorak. The 19th century's greatest Czech composer offered his greatest symphony, From the New World, in homage to the country where he taught for several years. Martinu, on the other hand, seemed never to have acclimated himself to this new world, often yearning to be Goin' Home,
heartsick for the homeland to which he could not return** because of the inconveniences of a tragic war. Several of his symphonies were inspired by news coming from Europe.
But nationality is certainly the least interesting aspect of his music. To start with, I'll consider the most noticeable aspect of Martinu's orchestral works: the piano.
It is tempting to say that Martinu treated the piano as a Baroque composer treated the harpsichord, that is, as a continuo instrument. But that may understate the instrument's importance. Indeed, the piano almost becomes, in Martinu's large ensemble music, a separate section of the orchestra, taking a prominent place right alongside — and often above
— the strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion. In combination with the woodwinds or strings, Martinu's piano writing often produces a shimmering
effect that is unmistakably Martinu's own. He also directs the piano to burst in with brief melodic or chordal material, sometimes in hocket with other instruments. This percussive effect is certainly not unknown in the music of the 20th century, but combined with Martinu's distinctive use of rhythm and harmony, it cannot be mistaken for Ives or Stravinsky or Copland or Messiaen (to name but four composers who also used the piano prominently in the orchestra).
The piano features prominently in five of Martinu's symphonies, and in his wondrous and joyful lighter essays in symphonic form, the Sinfonietta La Jolla and the Sinfonietta Giocosa. In these works the composer's obsession with the piano shows its most brilliant and impressive effects.
Interestingly, in his piano concerti his fixation on the piano doesn't prove as successful; these concerti are probably his most forgettable of his orchestral production. But in his oboe concerto and even in his harpsichord concerto — a truly bizarre effort (think about it: a harpsichord concerto with a piano continuo
!) — the piano's prominence makes for memorable music. But none of the concerti impresses to the degree his symphonies do.
Martinu's first two symphonies demonstrate his genius (the opening of his first, for instance, shows just how much one can do with a rising scale), but are not perfect works. I have never managed to concentrate on them all the way through, though I've listened to them many a time.
His first great symphony is his Third. It is a three-movement work that has a two-movement feel. Beginning with a dramatic three-note motif, it quickly develops into a dark, arresting, almost violent (if lean) stream of sound, marked Allegro poco moderato. The music builds into a dramatic climax, and then proceeds attacca to a Largo that manages to keep a shimmering sense of urgency to it, though it ends in lovely, serene quiet. The final movement begins Allegro, vigorous but with less of a restless feel than the first movement, and less dissonance, sometimes sounding almost joyful. This music transforms from a martial spirit into a hopeful, song-like meditation, in a wondrous Andante. This section shows off one of the most inventive woodwind accompaniment passages in the symphonic literature, and the effect is breathtaking, an epiphany. Martinu then moves towards a more standard, triumphal music, which in turns concludes with a hesitant sense of peace: as the strings conclude the melodic and motivic play, with long held notes, the piano bursts in, three times, with a slightly unsettling chord. And it is over.
A number of composers in the 20th century tried similar effects in their symphonies. Honnegger essayed it in several of his symphonies, starting with his under-played First. Prokofieff's Seventh Symphony concludes with bittersweet irony, in slower tempo than your usual climax. And Vaughan Williams came near to making the slow-movement ending his signature. But Martinu's Third is at least as successful as any of these efforts. The work is of sheer genius, and this listener, at least, regards it as one of the most powerful emotional statements in the symphonic literature.
Martinu's Fourth Symphony is far happier, less dramatic, and I won't say anything against it other than to state that it doesn't hold a candle to the great windstorm that is the Fifth.
Now, this latter symphony begins hauntingly, holding off the piano obbligato for over a minute. But when the piano arrives in concert with the full orchestra, the composer builds the music from the evocative to the, well, confident. This is music of constantly shifting mood but guided by a steady hand, with head and heart in a resilient union. Syncopated melodies, arresting motifs, shimmering passages following and chasing both brittle gestures and lofty pronouncements. One of the most striking techniques he uses, here, is that of legato melody with staccato accompaniment. This appears to be characteristic of Martinu, as it is with many another of his contemporaries. In Stravinsky's music, its origin in folk and popular traditions and instrumentations seems clear. In Martinu's penultimate symphony, however, his early interest in jazz seems far behind, and the music does not hark back to the dance hall, not at all. The legato singing against quasi-percussive accompaniment is a symphonic achievement, not in any heard sense an homage to — or pastiche of — the age's popular dance bands.
The first movement ends with a rousing conclusion. And it stops, to start up again in a truly separate movement, a Larghetto. So-called. It actually begins in a very similar fashion to much of the music in the first movement; the two seem of a piece (as they are), almost indistinguishably so. It is as if Martinu decided that the music needed a different take
in this movement, so he starts up the first movement again for a variant. But yes, the music quickly becomes more lyrical, with a wondrous flute passage playing over an insistent, beckoning wave of strings. The piano adds to the strings beckonings, and then the whole orchestra comes in, with the music of the opening returning, echoing again the first movement. Though ostensibly slow (Larghetto is the dimunitive of Largo, which is very slow
), it playfully keeps the rhythms going and the speed at a pace that ensures no tranquillity. A trumpet signals, with a stately pronouncement, that yes, it's supposed to be a slow movement. But you can't keep this music quiet or meditative for long. The movement alternates lyrical with scherzando passages: the slow never lasts. Indeed, as slow movements go, this one almost sprints.
With the third and final movement we finally get to a true slow section in the symphony. The opening Lento is lovely, serious, a little sad, featuring the string section in noble bearing. The horns usher in the full orchestra for a brief moment, and then the strings continue the slow, poignant lament. But this is prelude: soon the whole ensemble quickens to an Allegro, and to a sophisticated reprise of elements of the first movement, but this time with a theme that turns the boisterous, dramatic effort (not without passages both violent and meditative) into a joyful, triumphant finale.
The three movements of the Third Symphony elicited a strong two-movement feel, with a four-section structure: fast-slow, fast-slow.
The three movements of the Fifth Symphony suggest a four-movement structure more clearly: fast, mostly fast, slow, mostly fast. But since the first and second movements contain so much similar material, a two-movement feel suggests itself, too.
I mention these structural elements not because I expect most listeners to be as interested as I am in the study of symphonic structure (after all, I've not discussed tonality, thematic variation, sonata form, etc.), but because there are enough ambiguities and surprises that, unwarned, the listener might lose his way and, say, clap in the wrong place!
Martinu's final symphony moves beyond his previous level of structural ingenuity and dramatic emotional presto-chango gymnastics, achieving probably his greatest music; the symphony is a landmark effort, on the level with the best symphonies of Sibelius in terms of astounding mastery and mysterious sound. Subtitled (or is that, simply titled
— with the number of the symphony left as a subtitle?) Fantaisies symphoniques,
the symphony shimmers, leaps, whirls, attacks, retrenches, proclaims, essays, coils, reels, unwinds, builds, and lurches into and out of massive assaults, swirling tempests, haunting lamentations, life-giving affirmations, and world-weary epiphanies. It is nonpareil.
And it is all done without the piano. In fact, the king of the instruments is absent from the work, the only one of Martinu's major orchestral scores from which it is excluded.
And yet the shimmerings and the dramatic bursts are there, and unmistakably Martinu.
There is no point in either waxing eloquent on the emotional impact of the music, or analyzing in depth the structure, which for the life of me I don't understand. How does it work
? I don't know. I just know that it does work.
It is often said that in this symphony, and in the works that directly follow, Martinu abandoned neobaroque and neoclassical technique for a masterful, personal and truly modern synthesis. This is likely true, or at least arguable. I hesitate in making too much of it, though, in no small part because some of the most startling effects of this symphony bear close resemblance, almost in strict echo, to many portions of the third and fifth symphonies. And I hesitate to say it because that would imply that the neoclassical is somehow a derivative classification. (The existence of true neoclassical symphonic masterpieces, from Copland's Short Symphony through Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms to Piston's great efforts, not least of which is his Second Symphony, belie this. As do Martinu's successes prior to the Sixth.) But I readily admit: Martinu's Sixth Symphony is a breed apart, in several relevant senses.
It is also so wholly other
in terms of emotional impact that I hesitate to recommend it to beginners. Start, I say, with the Third and the Fifth. Work yourself up to the Sixth.
There are hardly better paths to the presence of greatness than by way of greatness.
Two days before my mother died I realized that she was dying. I fled the hospital and wandered through a park, ostensibly to read, or to take pictures of flighty waterfowl. But I abandoned these distractions: my emotions were at the tether, and I was repeatedly on the verge of tears. My mother was dying. She would not live long. I would outlast her, but how? The indecencies of the basic structure of life, the terrible dissolution of death, this marred everything. I turned to music.
Not as background.
Not as salve.
Not as mere distraction, or play, or time-killer.
No, I turned to music for another purpose: as a focus for emotion and thought.
I had ready at hand only a few pieces of music to play on a portable CD player. But I was glad that one of them was Martinu's Third Symphony.
This music did not let me wallow in fear or grief. Neither did it distract me with emotions far removed from my predicament. It instead allowed me to concentrate my energies and passions in an ordered, brilliant work of art. While listening to Martinu's Third I experienced something like a ritual resolution of emotions. The first movement let me channel any feelings of anger I might have (dormant, surely), as well as fear and grief, and work through them. In the last movement, the epiphany with the strings singing and the woodwinds providing odd counterpoint — this struck me as a recollection of love, as a source of blessing amidst sorrow. And the final motion towards calm: its ambiguities echoed my own thoughts on death. I could not finish my grieving before my mother had died, but I knew there would some day be an end to grieving, and that end would not be heroic, decisive, or even wholly settling. We all get our first taste of death in the experience of loved ones dying, and it leaves an aftertaste that may never go away. But what remains can be a calmness, perhaps one that we recapture on the approach to our own final moments.
I think Martinu evoked that, without sentimentality, without mourning, without the self-absorption that I find distasteful in, say, Mahler's many death songs. I don't really know what Martinu was trying to do — though he himself referenced slaughter and tragedy in his Czech homeland and in Europe when describing the plan of his symphony — but I know what was there, in his music, for me. And I don't think it was a case of unwarranted imputation. The symphony resonated with me, at that time, because something in the symphony existed there to resonate with.
But I'll leave the justice of these remarks to be decided by others. They may not have occasion to listen to this particular symphony while coming to terms with death, but they can listen to the symphony, and most people know something of death. I suspect that they will find something in that symphony to resonate with; perhaps it will be just the music. Which is enough, no?
* Martinu's name should have a small circle above the final u
as a diacritic. This does not seem to be available on the World Wide Web's english-language HTML scripting, so I have to leave Martinu's name unmarked.
(Back to text.)
** Martinu did return home after the war ended. But soon the Soviets took over his country, and he was back in the U.S.A., where he composed some of his best work, including the exquisite Sinfonietta La Jolla and his last symphony.
(Back to text.)
 |
Click here for this site's general fair-use permissions statement. |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|