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Posted June 2, 2004
For most people, the natural competition against which Einojuhani Rautavaara's Sixth Symphony will be judged is not that same composer's gloriously reconstructed First or his almost-perfect Fifth. Instead it will be Don McLean's charming and hyper-sentimental pop song Starry, Starry Night.
The reason is simple: the symphony is a programmatic one, titled Vincentiana, after the subject of McLean's hit, post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh. Rautavaara's music conjures up four paintings of the tortured post-impressionist, translating them into the four movements of a symphony.
The first movement is titled Starry Night.
It has none of the sentiment or simple, strophic structure of the McLean hit. It will never play on America's Top 40 Radio, or be considered a Golden Oldie. And instead of a few brief minutes worth of harmonic simplicity and melodic familiarity, it is nearly 20 minutes of mysterious complexity. The melodies presented will likely be whistled by no one. No tears will come to the eye at the sad story of the painting's creator. Instead, one hears evocations — evocations of the mystery of the painting itself.
In the second movement we are even further away from Don McLean. The synthesizer, which timbrally accented the first movement, now dominates the aural landscape. The electronic instrument does not imitate the cawing of The Crow's crows — Rautavaara had used actual, recorded birdsong in a previous piece, his concerto for birds and orchestra,
the wondrous Cantus Arcticus, and had apparently gone down that road once and enough — but its avant-gardish gestures (one must always use this word when talking of avant-garde music: it's the law) do somehow evoke a field of crows, perhaps a murder of crows. (Many, alas, will say the music itself is a kind of murder.) But the music changes, does not stay put. The basoon begins a very simple melody, slowly, with the synthesizer providing background; then the strings join in, and other instruments aid the synthesizer with a quiet, faster accompaniment. The listener startles: this is as lovely as anything in Cantus Arcticus.
As the third movement begins, the listener startles again: the music of a sudden sounds almost normal, a meandering sort of scherzo, melodic and memorable. And yet, it is of a piece with what has gone before. Rautavaara's style does unify a diversity of elements. The movement evolves to a much more vigorous and dissonant dance, and then, with the return of the synthesizer it turns slower and stranger. View Van Gogh's painting Saint-Rémy to see if this turn doesn't make sense. (The movement celebrates that painting.)
The inner two movements mirror each other in form. The Crows
begins with a dominant and weird synethiser concert, but turns more orchestral and normal.
Saint-Rémy
begins in sound and effect pretty much what a concert-goer has come to expect in a third movement, but then the synthesizer bursts in and takes the soundscape into alien territory again.
The final movement, Apotheosis,
begins in dreamy Romanticism. The harmonic language is not, to start, perceptibly dissonant, merely Brucknerian. This is music that would work better in a concert hall than on stereo, and be greatly aided by a drink of wine prior to the performance — the listener's drink of wine, I mean (let's leave drunk musicians for jazz and pop).
After a climax towards the end, the synthesizer returns, with the flute, and the work ends as morning bird song ends: the gaps in the conversation become longer, until you get silence. The movement is longer than either of the previous two movements, but less than half the length of the first. The ending seems to have come neither a moment too late or a moment too early. The work, as a whole, has that symphony
feel; as Herbert Spencer preached, let's not say all things unto moderation
; let's say all things unto proportion.
There is balance here, proportion; not Haydnesque, but formally coherent nevertheless.
I don't know what this all means, however. Programmatic music sometimes is aided by the program; most times, not. Perhaps, here, it simply justifies the prominent place given to the electronics: Vincent Van Gogh was a strange, conflicted man; Rautavaara's Sixth Symphony is a strange, conflicted music.
Frankly, synthesizer and orchestra rarely strike me as commodious. The organ in the Saint-Sa&eml;ns and Copland efforts, or the piano in the famous D'Indy and Martinu examples, work well with the orchestra in the symphonic form. But the synthesizer? In other forms, John Adams uses the synthesizer occasionally in orchestral compositions, and without letting its timbres dominate. These are successes, I think. In Vincentiana, Rautavaara takes the opposite approach. Though he does not make it quite as dominant in the work as it was in Leon Kirchner's mis-named Third String Quartet (really a quintet for synthesizer and strings), there are stretches when the synthesizer does make its characteristic blats and burps so prominently that one thinks Sore Thumbs Sticking Out Everywhere. On first hearing, the first part of the second movement does not seem like a triumph of symphonism. And yet, when the music changed character, and the synthesizer sinks into the soundscape, its use is redeemed.
The instrument is at its best in this symphony in the opening movement, at the beginning. The music is strange, but the orchestra and the synthesizer are concerted, not at odds in any way; the composer does not strain for effect, or relying too much on previous avant-garde archetypes.
The symphony's musical material was adapted by the composer from his opera Vincent, about Vincent Van Gogh. I have not heard this opera, and I can say nothing about what material the composer took, and what he did not. I don't know if any of the tunes were sung; I don't know which are heard here first.
I can't say that I feel this lack of knowledge as any great deficit to judge the symphony itself, however. Label something a symphony and it must stand or fall on its own. And this work, though not as astounding as composer's First, Third, or Fifth symphonies, is by no means a complete failure. I don't think it is for everyone's tastes, but then, everyone
would probably rather listen to Don McLean's folky sad pop hit, damned to listen to only the simplest things. They treat music as Don McLean said the world treated poor old Vincent while he was alive: uncomprehending of greatness. Though I'm sure they'd agree with me that the music of the second movement improves as it goes along, as it becomes quieter and sadder and less raucous and strange, yet most people won't listen to it repeatedly, as I have.
Now, that raucous and strange avant-gardish not-quite-crowing
of the synthesizer and orchestra seems less out-of place with each hearing, and the transformation of the music from alien soundscape to sad song more impressive each time. The bassoon is key. It plays the melody first, to the synthesizer accompaniment. And when the strings and clarinet come in: well, here we have the kind of exquisite music-making that only a master can provide. It could be that this movement is the best of the four; I may have erred at first.
Perhaps I'm learning to hear greatness where it exists, just as the world (as McLean sagely tells us) caught on to Vincent himself, if too late for any benefit to the painter.
But note: Rautavaara still lives; it is not too late to honor a great artist.
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