Harry Wenig

Is it possible to be both extraordinary and ordinary? Very few great composers have been noteworthy people.Franz Schubert is an example of someone who might have been happier  had he been just one of the crowd, ordinary and unremarked.Fortunately for us he was a genius,but maybe that was unlucky for him.

He lived a lonely  life amongst his fun loving bohemian friends but his own prospects for happiness were severely limited. Shy,introverted,physically awkward and unprepossessing,impractical and feckless,desperate for love . It was highly unlikely that such a man would make his way in society,get married,have children and lead a conventional and satisfying life.

In much of his music there is a melancholic undercurrent. In his last great song cycle Winterreise ( Winter Journey) all that unhappiness morphs into resignation at best and despair at worst.The last song in the cycle is “The Organ Grinder”.It is probably the most desolate song ever written and in it Schubert bares his soul- he has reached the limits of despair.It is devastating.

I have added a link which contains all the lyrics plus translations,also an extra performance of that last song which has English subtitles. The performance is by Dietrich Fischer Dieskau and Alfred Brendel- both preeminent Schubert interpreters .

MY FAIR LADY is a famous musical based on G.B. Shaw’s play PYGMALION which itself is  based on an ancient Greek myth in which a sculptor falls in love with one of his creations.The figure of a beautiful woman in cold marble comes to life,transformed into a warm living human being thru the power of love.

In the play and the musical , Professor Henry Higgins accepts as a dare the task of “educating” a cockney flower girl from Covent Garden , ELiza Doolittle,so that she can be presented to SOCIETY.Eliza has ambitions of her own and is willing to go along with the “experiment”. The professor has much to teach her.There will be the imposition of many rules and regulations- of speech,dress,manners, comportment etc.In the ancient myth , inanimate marble became a living breathing woman.Will Higgins be doing the opposite? In order to “educate” Eliza will he have to ignore her true nature ? Will introduction into SOCIETY be at the expense  of her true nature?

Henry Higgins lives in a bubble of self assessed superiority. Now that he has “improved” Eliza will he give her the same respect he automatically accords someone of his own class ?

What has this to do with the subject of this program which is” When is a folk song not a folk song”.

Folk music has always been a part of musical life but it is only in the 19th.Century that composers began talking a serious interest into the music of the streets and fields.

Culture is a bit like Pygmalion’s statue.Once it has been taken out of it’s “habitat”,it becomes subject to a natural cycle of birth,growth,maturity,decline and death.As society changes,music also changes.Towards the middle of the 19th century some composers felt a certain lassitude developing in the world of the concert hall.Maybe a change of scenery was needed.They didn’t have far to go to find the remedy . It was on the other side of the railway tracks ,in the fields and villages of an uneducated agrarian society.In this society music was not a commodity,a profession dependent on the generosity of Church,State,Royalty or the rich but an art alive and throbbing in the homes of peasants and workers.And because it had never been regulated or “improved” it had freshness ,freedom and vitality .For  composers looking for inspiration it was a shot in the arm.But how were you going to deal with this ,rough,raw ,

and unrefined material .Would you have to “educate” the folk song to make it acceptable in the concert hall ? Would you feel a  moral obligation to “rescue “ it from it’s environment ?Would you have to do a Henry Higgins and kill the flower girl in order to create a society statue ?

When Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto was premiered in Vienna the leading music critic of the day ,Edward Hanslick wrote the following. “It gives us for the first time the hideous notion that there can be music which stinks to the ear”.Tchaikovsky’s use of folk song in the concerto’s finale confronted Hanslick ,with the music of a world he didn’t know and would have hated,the Russian  village,a place of  emotion and raw energy, but not a “nice” place to be.This was the complete opposite of the polite,refined,cultivated,stultified society which to him represented civilisation, a mode of living full of rules ,regulations,and unacknowledged

hypocrisy. It was in such a society that Henry Higgins wanted to show off his artificial creation- the modified Eliza Doolittle. Such an attitude has become infamous in our time.    “In order to save it you have to kill it “. 

It is a common presumption that those who have an outstanding musical talent must also be exceptional human beings and we must therefore forgive them their foibles and faults. We presume that they have superior insight into the human condition , an insight and understanding not given to ordinary mortals.

The question to be addressed is how much of the personality of a gifted composer shapes a composer’s works and how much is shaped by the society and times in which he/she lives.We are going to delve a little into Mahler’s mind,into some aspects of his personal and cultural life.

Mahler’s symphonies have acquired a huge following in which the audience response is almost the “culture vulture” equivalent of being a Beatles groupie. I myself have cooled to the symphonies. My reaction to recently hearing his 3rd Symphony was that the musical discourse reminded me of someone unburdening  himself of all his troubles,pains,thoughts and aspirations, at vast length ,many repetitions,and speaking in a sophisticated language full of rhetoric,in an overly emotional tone. Such a voice becomes wearying .

My mother in law was a feisty and witty woman who had overcome many hardships in her life but didn’t carry an emotional chip on her shoulder. On the contrary she was always full of fun and ready for a laugh. I can imagine her confronting Mahler and saying to him” Get a hold of yourself Gustav, there are many people much worse off than you.” But we all,at some time or other have negative feelings , and Mahler is very good at expressing those feelings. What disturbs some listeners is the emphasis on pain and sorrow,the self pity which pervades so many of his songs.The choice of texts which he has set to music speaks for itself but not everyone likes this indiscriminate baring of the soul .

Here are some of Mahler’s statements which  we must treat with caution because they are the utterances of a highly emotional man and might not reflect reality.He does what the law warns against , in that through his own mouth he incriminates himself.Of course  he has not committed any crime but his words – one could almost call them  confessions -help us understand and enter into the complexities of his personality. You  are not obliged to like his music out of pity, although one gets the feeling that Mahler craves acceptance .Although highly regarded by some , there are many who  do not approve of composition being a substitute for the psychoanalyst’s couch. But now let  Mahler have his say. Here are some of his statements.

1. I have to write large works if I want to go down to posterity.

2.   In 100 years there will be great folk festivals devoted to my symphonies , in 

       gigantic halls  seating twenty to thirty thousand people.

3.    The motto for this movement is “ Father,see these wounds of mine. Let not be 

        lost one creature of thine.”

The following quote is from the memoirs of Mahler’s wife Alma.

4.      Mahler and I were badly shaken by the terrible San Fransisco earthquake, but 

         on the same day Professor Curie,the great discoverer of radium was run over

          and killed by a carriage in Paris . Mahler and I knew of his hermit like 

          existence and his life which was wholly dedicated to science. We

          unanimously agreed that this misfortune was the greater one. The

          discoverer and great benefactor of mankind, who sought and found

          this substance – versus the nameless mass of people swallowed up

          like a large  question mark.

 I have saved the most revealing quote for the last.  Mahler had this to say about his parents and their marriage.

My father married my mother – who did not love him,and hardly knew him before the wedding. He was all obstinacy,she gentleness itself.Yet but for this union neither I nor my 3rd Symphony would exist.I find that quite remarkable.

Your typical Aussie would have some choice words to say about that last quote.

It’s interesting to note that in all of Beethoven’s many writings or Mozart’s numerous letters there is never any thought of the reception which future audiences might give to

either composer’s compositions. Mahler was self obsessed and worried about future fame and acceptance. Unfortunately for him he was a mixture of his father’s forceful personality and his mother’s sensitivity.

The violent contrasts in his symphonies attest to a continual fight going on in his personality. Yet the father encouraged Mahler’s ambitions so we must take Mahler’s almost vitriolic words about his father with caution. The vehemence of his emotional musical outbursts are not  the utterances of a tenderly sensitive nature. 

This program includes two of Mahler’s song cycles and three excerpts from his 

THE SONG OF THE EARTH.  You are welcome to listen to the whole of this enormous work but my comments will focus on three shorter sections which give us a picture  of pre-war Viennese society transferred into a Tang Dynasty Chinese setting. There is the same upper class decadence,gilded youth with lots of leisure time on their hands,living a life of luxury,self indulgent navel gazing,obsessed with beauty and love . But it is a life without purpose, going nowhere , without a thought for the future.Those who do stop to reflect and question seem not to have the will and energy to change direction and so the only course left open to them is to escape  into drink or,  as in the last section of the work”The Farewell”, into a sort of spiritual oblivion , the oblivion of a society which doesn’t know or care where it is going. Some say that Mahler was predicting the 1st World War- Europe tearing itself to pieces , Mahler in the guise of a turn of the century Jeremiah. He was a troubled and difficult man , the product of a racist and dying society.

 The three sections in question are- TO YOUTH- TO BEAUTY- THE DRUNKARD IN SPRING.  You should read the poetic text , which will give you a good idea of the hothouse atmosphere of two decadent societies so marvellously depicted by Mahler.

Orientalism is a product of the imagination fed by traveller’s tales, a place for the fulfilment of unconscious desires,of the exotic and the forbidden,of adventure and danger.It will be found across the seas,on the other side of the mountains or the desert,and it lives in the sleepy recesses of the mind. It offers an escape from the inhibitions of the familiar to an unknown world of freedom and license.

Of course the Orient was not just the source of pleasant daydreams but the place where you went searching for trade,wealth and Empire. So what did you do upon arrival in this place of wonder where everything was different ? One thing you DIDN’T do was to change YOUR way of life,YOUR dress,diet or habits because in so doing YOU would begin to lose YOUR own national identity,in danger of becoming an Oriental heaven forbid.

In order to reach the Orient from Europe you had to sail around Africa ,a long  way indeed.

The reason why Columbus sailed WEST is because the Ottomans had conquered Constantinople ,cutting off the Silk Road overland route to the Orient.Another route had to be found. Columbus didn’t know he was to discover America.

But in Russia the fabled  East was not on the other side of the ocean but almost on the geographical doorstep. All you had to do was to cross the URAL mountains or if you headed South you reached the Caucasus, home to fierce mountain tribes and Ancient Kingdoms.During the Middle Ages Russia itself had been part of the vast Mongol Empire.This had a lasting effect on Russia’s search for a national identity. The basic question being asked in the 19th century was whether Russia was to be regarded as Western or Eastern.Was it a gigantic buffer zone between Europe and the Orient or did it have a distinctive character of it’s own, neither truly Western nor Eastern.Russia had been a backward Tsarist despotism with an overlay of Peter the Great’s forced Westernization resting on another layer of mystical Christianity which itself conflicted with an enduring pagan past still evident in the life of the peasantry.One  could say the country had a mixture of tendencies, not knowing where it belonged , not wanting to conform ,in search of it’s distinctive identity

Napoleon once said”Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar”.He was not being complimentary. The Asian influences had lingered and when Russia itself became an Imperialist power, expanding into Central Asia and into the Caucasus, it’s Asian identity was accentuated. Many Russian families claimed descent from the Tatars and no less a luminary than the great composer Rimsky Korsakov had Tatar ancestry.

It is simplistic and unrealistic to attribute an artist’s personality to ancestry,race,genes etc. but the persistence of Tatar customs and vocabulary in Russia’s multi ethnic culture,especially in the peasantry is more likely to explain why Russian composers are so at ease with Orientalism . It is as if it comes naturally to them ,seemingly built into the culture. In the musical items I have chosen for you to hear there are examples of the various factors or influences which give Russian art music it’s distinctive flavour, call it Eastern or Western or better still a wonderful “ itself”.

One of the concerns  of contemporary radical activists is “ Cultural Appropriation”: the  using stealing of

elements in a culture not your own and featuring them in one’s own culture, in music,dance,dress,food,decoration,architecture etc. An example of this is the appropriation of the Aboriginal flag by a non Aboriginal company which has then made it into a  product protected by intellectual property law . Hollywood has done something similar.It has produced an attractive fake Hispanic  “product” which it hopes will appeal to the sizeable 

Latino minority in the USA and to the Anglos hankering for a bit of “ castanet clicking and foot stamping” entertainment. Hollywood has never claimed that the “product” it offers is more than just that-a product. It is neither art nor really Spanish but 

if the customers want to buy it and be entertained they,and the Latino entertainers  can go to bed untroubled and dream of the money they’ll be making.There are no intellectual property laws stopping Hollywood  from doing whatever it desires and it has no interest in giving the public anything genuinely Hispanic if it can make lots of money by offering the public a cheap and vulgar imitation .

Before we continue it would be advisable to know some Spanish history and to see

how this is reflected in Spanish music. Spain was part of the Islamic Empire for a long time-800 years.No other European country has had such a long exposure to Oriental culture.In addition there were sizeable Christian and Sephardic Jewish minorities . In the 15th century

many Gypsies arrived in Spain adding yet another strong  flavour to the bubbling musical stew.

There is a Spanish word which refers to a sort of spiritually intense quasi religious experience felt whilst listening to music.The word is DUENDE and it is often associated with that quintessentially Spanish musical genre ,of Gypsy origin, namely FLAMENCO. Maybe the nearest English equivalent to the concept of DUENDE is SOUL. Such a moment of exaltation cannot be programmed,

it either happens or it doesn’t and is therefore a rare occurrence in the concert hall. However,the great French composer Maurice Ravel,in his RHAPSODY ESPAGNOLE comes very close to giving us 

a “DUENDE MOMENT”. Here is what the  Spanish composer Manuel de Falla had 

to say about it. “ The Rhapsody surprises me by it’s Spanish character. But how could I explain the subtly Hispanic quality of our musician knowing ,by his own admission,that

he had but neighbouring relations with our country , being born near it’s frontier?I rapidly solved the problem. Ravel’s Spain was a Spain ideally presented by his mother, whose refined conversation, always in an excellent Spanish,delighted me ,particularly when she 

would recall her youthful years spent in Madrid.”Ravel himself recalled his mother singing

Spanish and Basque songs to him and Spanish was spoken in the family home.  Ravel’s father was French and his son Maurice was the epitome of French elegance and sophistication.So he was not a “full blood” Spaniard ,   but a HALF CASTE in racist parlance.

 To someone as racist as Richard Wagner this mattered.Had Ravel been born and bred in Germany Wagner would have had misgivings as to his qualifications for writing German music. This is what Wagner had to say about Felix Mendelssohn,the darling of European concert audiences and Queen Victoria’s favourite composer.Unfortunately Mendelssohn had been born a Jew and in Wagner’s mind this was the greatest of crimes for which there was no expiation. “ The Jew can make a clever imitation of Western classical music but since the Jew lacks a real soul he can never feel it.” So Mendelssohn’s music was never performed in Germany during the Nazi era because he lacked the proper genes.According to Wagner’s way of thinking Ravel,being only half Spanish, should not have been capable of providing more than an IMITATION of authentic Spanish music.Let us see if there are any other ways to disqualify a gifted composer from composing Spanish music. Let us look at the other three composers in our program and see what we can come up with. The first composer to be considered is Edouard Lalo, French from way back. You will hear his SYMPHONIE ESPAGNOLE which is really a violin concerto.As far as I know Lalo  never spent any time in Spain but he obviously was well acquainted with Spanish music idioms and would surely have known some of the many Spanish musicians who came to Paris. There are Spanish folk songs also in his cello concerto.Spain is the geographical neighbour of France and Lalo was not the only French composer of note who was attracted to the vibrant musical life happening on the other side of the geographical fence – the Pyrenee mountain range. Of course Spain is not a geographical neighbour of Russia, the homeland of the two other composers in our program, Nicolai Rimsky Korsakov and Mikhail Glinka. So Ravel had a Spanish mother and Lalo lived reasonably close to Spain but how can one connect the two Russians to things Hispanic?

Russia had it’s own Oriental experience and it’s own deep connections with countries seen as sensual, exciting,alluring.Russia’s other side of the geographical cultural fence was Central Asia and to the South ,the Caucasus . It had itself been under Mongol control for 200 years during the Middle Ages .For the Russians the Orient represented both a real and an imaginary world , a place where the inhibitions and taboos of the Western “civilised” world didn’t apply. Of course those “taboos” were replaced by indigenous taboos of which they were not aware.The adventurous Russian could dream of harems,exotic customs and wild warriors whilst

the Russian composer found it easy to

respond to the  exotic and the unusual . The two composers featured in our program did that in unexpected ways. Nicolai Rimsky Korsakov had been travelling around the world as an officer in the Russian navy. He came from a family of naval officers and was following in their footsteps before he took the plunge and decided to devote his life to music.During this world tour the ship happened to stop at a Spanish port for three days and this was the only direct contact Rimsky Korsakov had with Spain.This did not stop him later on from composing a brilliant “Capriccio Espagnol” full of local colour,the product of a sensitive imagination and a superb orchestrator .He could have just as easily done it without spending  only three days in a Spanish port.

Mikhail Glinka’s connection with Spain was much more substantial.As a rich footloose amateur he had plenty of time to indulge his interests and Spanish music interested him very much. During the two years he lived in Spain he not only imbibed the local colour but also studied the “indigenous” music in depth. The result of this , later on, upon his return to Russia, was the “Jota Aragonese” which you will hear.

Non Spanish composers writing Spanish music cannot be expected to provide us with DUENDE moments- such moments are rare even with Spanish composers,maybe because commercialism and the concert hall aren’t the right venue for what is an intimate and fleeting sensation. But whether you are half Spanish like Ravel or not at all Spanish like Lalo and the Russians , there is nothing to stop you composing wonderful “imitations” which like a fake Gucci handbag made in Thailand is almost indistinguishable from the real thing.So yes, you don’t have to be Spanish to compose Spanish music.

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A pastiche is basically an imitation , like a fake Gucci handbag, which looks like the real thing, is expertly made , could fool the uninitiated, but is far less expensive and  not as highly valued. There are quite a few  compositions which are the musical equivalents of a fake Gucci handbag.But there are significant differences.The composer does not aim to “fool” the concert  public. The producer of a real Gucci handbag is not at the same time producing fake Gucci handbags whereas when a composer like Maurice Ravel writes “Tsigane”, a brilliant virtuoso violin showpiece in the style of Hungarian Gypsy fiddling , he has no pretensions to be offering you something deep and meaningful but merely wants to present an upmarket entertainment. Classing it as upmarket infers that the composer has given this composition as much care and thought as he would have given a symphony or a concerto. Unfortunately an imaginary fine line has often been drawn between art and craft . This distinction enables some critics and aesthetes to create a bar to the appreciation and enjoyment of items such as the “pastiches” you will hear in this program.For a great artist such as Ravel 

the distinction between art and craft was a snobbish illusion as was the need  to differentiate between the “high”( meaning spiritually uplifting ) and the “low”( meaning for entertainment purposes only ).

The other factor influencing our understanding is that we forget that TSIGANE was written for a concert audience where the listener sits still and silent whereas the Hungarian Gypsy fiddler would perform in a completely different ambience . Such music could be heard at a cafe or a party where the listeners were  not expected to sit still and silent but if  so inclined could sing along to the music or dance with wife or girlfriend between the tables.The air would be heavy with food, wine, sentimentality, emotion ,and the violinist’s playing would just be part of  the party atmosphere.It is therefore wrong to criticise Tsigane for not being “authentic”.When Marie Antoinette dressed up as a shepherdess she  also was not being authentic. There were  no sheep for her to tend and when Leonid Kogan performed Tsigane at a concert he did  not expect his audience to be eating, drinking, singing, dancing,chatting or kissing each other. So Ravel writes unauthentic

Gypsy violin music,Marie Antoinette dresses up as an unauthentic shepherdess and Leonid Kogan performs Ravel’s “fake” Gypsy rhapsody with genuinely brilliant flair and virtuosity. Three facets of the pastiche.

The 2nd pastiche you will hear is another version of the Gypsy fiddler genre written by the great Spanish violinist Pablo Sarasate. It is called Gypsy Airs or in German “Zigeunerweisen”, and this is more like traditional Gypsy fiddling , full of  acrobatics, all stops out sentimentality, written for  listeners for whom the uninhibited display of feeling and emotion is part of the culture . The rigid strictures of polite society, the rules of what is permitted or not permitted no longer apply.  Protocol has been thrown out of the window in the interest of having a good time.

Havanaise by Camille Saint Saens

The Havanaise is a languorous sultry dance of Cuban origin. The listener must not get  up from his/her seat and go dancing in the aisles of the concert hall. But the listener is required to show appreciation at the end of the performance in the usual manner.

The four violinists featured in this program are Leonid Kogan playing Tzigane,Jascha Heifetz playing Gypsy Airs,David Nadien playing the Havanaise and Itzhak Perlman playing the last item on the program, the “Scottish Fantasy” by Max Bruch. All four violinists are outstanding and you can be sure that their performances are also outstanding. The  knowledge that the items they are playing are meant to  entertain has in no way affected the quality of their “fiddling”, the care and musicianship each one has brought to the task.

As to the Scottish Fantasy it’s indicative of the composer’s intention that he has called his composition a Fantasy. In other words he doesn’t pretend that this composition is authentically Scottish. He has merely used traditional Scottish tunes and dances as a starting point for what is really a romantic violin concerto.

Should all these items be called pastiches? Well yes, because they  ARE pastiches. Unfortunately the word has negative connotations and does not reflect the compositional brilliance of the composers nor their intentions.An entertainment is not meant to be a sermon or a eulogy and the concert hall is no place for a  boozy party. One would have to be perverse to prefer a dirge to a ditty. It’s unfortunate that the concert world follows world trends and has become more and more polarised and compartmentalised.

The cross fertilisation which is necessary to create a pastiche smacks too much of cultural appropriation- a definite no-no in today’s world. What a pity!

G.B.Shaw, famous intellectual gadfly once  wrote the following. “Those who can – do. Those who can’t – criticise”. Like many throwaway off the cuff statements this is a generalisation open to question but one could change it to “ Those who can- create. Those who can’t- criticise.”

It has been the curse of some great composers to be faulted

not so much for what they are but for what they are not. In other words it’s the lion’s fault for not being a mouse. And so it is for Dvorak. He had the dubious distinction ,together with Felix Mendelssohn , of being  accused of not having enough spirituality and/or intellect.The self proclaimed intellectuals of the music world ,our music critics, have inherited the peculiar 19th century attitude which rates a composition by the extent of it’s expression of existential pain ,suffering  and  pessimism.Woe betide the composer who sets out to entertain the listener with pleasantries.

Dvorak’s “From the New World symphony” is a perennial favourite of concert audiences. It is a masterpiece full of melody, infectious rhythms ,charm, mild nostalgia , but is basically optimistic and heart warming.Audiences love to listen to music that makes them “feel good”. (This is regrettable but luckily we have critics who are working hard to counter this tendency) .Only ignoramuses without taste would question their opinion.The well known French conductor and avant- garde composer Pierre Boulez stated that the only composers he respects are the revolutionaries, the ones who ADVANCED the art of music, which of course puts Dvorak out of the picture.Why revolution is  commended and desirable is a question which is not addressed. It is somewhat like the tyranny of a politIcal movement. You are either with us or against us and if you are not then it shows how ignorant you are. However the great composer Maurice Ravel has this to say about the difference between evolution and revolution.( Ravel was both clever and wise.For him ,evolution didn’t  mean that Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring was a greater artistic achievement than Mozart’s G minor symphony.)

SUPPOSE YOU ARE IN A ROOM STUDYING. AFTER A FEW HOURS YOU FEEL THAT THE ATMOSPHERE IS A LITTLE STUFFY AND YOU NEED A CHANGE OF AIR SO YOU OPEN THE WINDOW. THE FRESH AIR ENTERS THE ROOM AND IN  A WHILE YOU CLOSE THE WINDOW ,THAT IS ALL.   THAT IS EVOLUTION.

YOU ARE IN A ROOM, YOU FEEL THAT YOU NEED A CHANGE OF AIR, YOU TAKE A STONE,HEAVE IT AT THE WINDOW AND BREAK THE WiNDOW. OF COURSE THE FRESH AIR ENTERS BUT THEN YOU HAVE TO REPAIR THE WINDOW.     THAT’S REVOLUTION

I DON’T NEED TO BREAK A WINDOW. I KNOW HOW TO OPEN IT.

On another occasion Ravel castigated one of his students who had disparaged the operas of Puccini. Ravel opened a Puccini score , and pointed out to the student examples of Puccini’s skill as a composer. Puccini didn’t need to present his revolutionary credentials to merit  Ravel’s praise.

Dvorak’s music is like the man himself. He  called himself an honest Czech musician, without airs and graces.It was all  too easy for the sophisticates to look upon him as a sort of naive and amiable country bumpkin, admittedly talented, but who wrote a lot of pleasing music with too much facility, without strain or judgement.

The same could have been said about Mozart. But we have it on record that it didn’t come without effort for either of these supremely gifted composers. Mozart has written about inspiration, about how ,or rather when he gets an idea. He cannot explain how it happens but the idea itself is but a small part of the process.It is what a composer does with an idea which is important and where the effort lies.

It’s the old story of “ 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration”.The facile criticism of Dvorak as lacking “intellectuality”, whatever that means is   without foundation. His compositions are full of examples of great skill, ingenious ways of using his “inspiration”.But the trick is to not show how hard you have worked to achieve such apparent ease. Dvorak is not a show off, nor does he use music as a substitute for the psychoanalyst’s couch, as a way of offloading his   traumas and emotional problems.

The great poet Alexander Pope wrote in his Essay on Criticism, A LITTLE BIT OF LEARNING IS A DANGEROUS THING. Perhaps one could assert the opposite.

Some critics have shown that a lot of learning is equally dangerous. It depends on WHAT you have learnt and how well you have digested that learning. In the case of Dvorak it is the audiences who have shown that you don’t always need to be taught what is good to accord to a great composer the esteem and love which are his due.

                  TWO PATHS IN THE SEARCH FOR LOVE

Richard Wagner and Hector Berlioz, two giants of 19th century romanticism have each composed a superb tribute to LOVE, Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde and Berlioz’s Dramatic Symphony Romeo and Juliette. Wagner’s opus is based on a myth from the pagan past whilst Berlioz’s symphony has it’s inspiration in Shakespeare’s famous drama. The choice of text indicate differences of attitude and understanding which had been filtered through the personal experiences of each man’s private life.

But before commenting on the respective compositions it would help to define the meaning of this generic word which to a certain extent defies an exact definition.

In English and in many other languages LOVE is synonymous with other words which indicate shades or  degrees of intense feeling , or are substitutes for the generic word. So we have LOVE referring to desire, feeling,affection,sympathy,liking, LOVE directed to members of the opposite sex, babies, children,mother, father, maternity, paternity,country,art, craft, occupation,nature,food, sport etc.etc.We MAKE LOVE, we FEEL LOVE, we do something WITH LOVE.And then there is TOUGH LOVE or TENDER LOVE .It is easy to get confused as to the exact meaning of the word which is probably just as well seeing that our  emotional responses can vary ,according to age,situation,culture,disposition and gender.

The concept of romantic love, free choice as opposed to regulation by family or society, has been around for a very long time. It is on a par with the issue of free will and determinism, one of those chicken or egg questions which tend to be two sides of the one coin, connected but different. As the Nobel Prize winner for literature , Isaac Bachevis Singer said,” Of course I believe in free will,I have no choice.”

In the Bible ( incorrectly known as the OLD Testament ) there is a description of the marriage of Isaac to Rebecca. Here is the quote.” He married her, she became his wife, he loved her.” Note the sequence. He married her- the legal union , she became his wife- the physical union, he loved her- the emotional union. The exercise of free choice had  not been an issue . That was the  conservative ideal but of course the sequence has often been turned on it’s head or parts of it ignored.

In the Broadway hit musical “ Fiddler on the Roof” there is an exchange between TEVYE- the quintessentially traditional Jewish husband and father, and his wife GOLDA.

He asks her “Do you love me?”To a modern audience this sounds banal. ( The  musical was served up with dollops of sentimentality .In the book on which the musical is based this exchange does not take place .) The situation which makes TEVYE ask the question is as follows. One of his daughters wants to marry a young man of her own choosing- not the man her parents have chosen for her.The father confronts the daughter and when questioned by him she says “I love him”. He neither understands nor approves but before putting his foot down and asserting his authority( which he sees also as his parental obligation) and not wanting to alienate the daughter he loves , he asks his wife”Do YOU love ME ?” She looks at him as if he has gone mad.What is this foolish talk of love ?Theirs had been an arranged marriage at an early age. Here they were in middle age, have had several children,  leading a hardscrabble life. They had lived together , caring for each other without complaint . Wasn’t  that sufficient proof of the solidity of their marriage , much more durable than a relationship based on the amorphous and airy fairy concept of romantic love? She concedes that maybe there was love involved but was that SO important ?

But together with these two examples of the traditional we have this Biblical era quote from “The Song of Songs”.

“ Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm, for love is as strong as death, as unyielding as the grave. “

So strongly romantic , in words a Shelley or a Byron would have been proud to have been written . Notice the reference to death which is  not to be understood in the same  way Wagner thought about it in the “Liebestodt” from  Tristan and Isolde.

Here are some lines from “To his coy mistress” a superb poem by Andrew Marvell, 17th century English poet.

“ The grave is a fine and private place but I think none do there embrace.”

Sort of naughtily witty but  realistically down to Earth. I doubt that Wagner ever read it and even if he had done so he would have dismissed it as totally incompatible with his ideology. His  big idea – on which the plot of  Tristan and Isolde is based,  is that the World’s ills can be cured through Great Love- universal and unconditional. However, Wagner reserved this love for select groups and people and as there was only so much of it to distribute , Jews, the French , and the many competitors he hated had  to be excluded  .    It is generally accepted that money and love make the World go round but according to Wagner there was too much emphasis on the money and not enough on the love. It was Wagner’s self appointed mission to be a cultural and societal revolutionary , and to support his  efforts in this direction he needed lots of- you guessed it-  MONEY. He had expensive tastes and often had to flee a city  leaving behind him some  furious creditors .Wagner  respected other people’s money  as long as it was understood that the money donated was a gift and  he had no intention of ever paying it back .He would also on occasion “borrow”his beneficiary’s wife .He  believed all this was

within his rights.Art and the artist were above politics or morality- an attitude which is still with us today.

In the 16th,17th and 18th centuries competent musicians could expect to be on the payroll of the Church, Court or  Aristocracy. They had security , a place in society , but little freedom. In  the 19th century that all changed. The creative artist had freedom but at the cost of having to scrape a living as best as he/she could. No  longer being a valued  member of society, the creative artist felt that his/her efforts were not appreciated. What was the point of having something to say if no-one was listening .Could this have been the root 

cause, psychologically speaking, of a highly gifted composer such as Wagner thumbing his nose at society and living by his own rules in an as  outrageous a manner as possible, seeing himself as a prophet coming to tell the world  a truth so great , that like the totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century, nothing was to be allowed to stand in the way of it’s realisation. Indeed he saw himself as writing the “ music of the future”, the artistic path to be followed as if were a new religion or a totalitarian creed.

The “Liebestodt” from the opera Tristan and Isolde is a masterpiece, an overwhelming depiction of  sexual desire, almost x rated. But it is also a piece of  propaganda for a totally unrealistic and dangerous view of love- of a love complete,  a love which excludes society, children, age,change,a love which cannot exist in this world. And what is perhaps even more unrealistic: this extraordinary love is NOT the product of the attraction of two personalities but the result of them having drunk a LOVE POTION. Is Wagner saying that love is  a drug ?Is this story more a meeting of mindless bodies than the union of heart and personality?

In the Andrew Marvell poem previously quoted  there is another verse which totally contradicts the mentality which is part of Wagner’s obsession. Here it is.

“ But at my back I always hear time’s chariot hurrying near

   And yonder all before us lie deserts of vast eternity.”

What then have been the results of Wagner’s “ music of the future.” This volcanic maelstrom of sensuality has given birth to- not another Liebestodt- a Lovedeath , but it’s opposite- the death of love. His musical language ,  brilliant in it’s depiction of the  subject has given birth – 50 years later , to ATONALITY- a system ideally suited to the tortured romanticism of the 2nd Viennese school, beloved of the Avantgarde – hated by everyone else.

There is no doubt that the Liebestodt is  musically intoxicating but is it nourishing? This  adulterous sex obsessed pair of druggies had no children but had engendered some degenerate artistic “children”. Death becomes the solution to an impossible situation. Wagner’s glorious music has seduced us into believing an irrational and somewhat decadent story of a hopeless, sterile love which could only exist in his imagination.

Let  us now see how Berlioz treats the love of two  adolescents in his Dramatic Symphony Romeo and Juliette. The story of Shakespeare’s play represented for him an  ideal of love  which had escaped him in life . Arturo Toscanini said that the Love Scene from this Symphony was the loveliest music in the World.

Hyperbole- perhaps! But I myself remember being ravished and enchanted when I heard this music for the first time . It is not as well known as Tristan and in the 30 years that I was in the MSO I can’t recall it having been performed more than once. It is a world away from Wagner’s frenzied eroticism . In “Romeo” what we hear is the idealistic ardour of young love . In Tristan we can’t be sure of what exactly attracted the two lovers.  Was it simply that they had been drugged and didn’t know what they were doing ? In “Romeo” it is quite clear that these two youngsters like each other as much as they love each other. Their personalities are clearly defined whereas in Tristan all we know about the lovers  as people is that Tristan is a knight and Isolde is betrothed to King Mark. That the Romeo story ends tragically is not the fault of the young  lovers. They have not chosen death as the sublimation of an insatiable desire but are trapped in the murderous feud of their families. Had it not been for that they could have lived out their lives in love and happiness, have had children etc.etc. A life without trauma or emotional baggage , unremarkable but satisfying.

Wagner had heard Berlioz’s Symphony 20 years before he composed Tristan and had been impressed . He  sent Berlioz a congratulatory letter in which he expressed his admiration and even paid him the compliment of copying ( stealing ) some phrases from the “Romeo alone” scene of the Symphony for use in the “Liebestodt” of his opera.

 Berlioz had responded to seeing the Shakespearean play by marrying the actress playing Juliette. Such a mad irrational

 reaction ,imagination and idealism overriding reality, so typical of Romanticism in general. After two unhappy marriages and the death of his son , Berlioz seeks out “Estelle” ,who had been the object of his infatuation when he was a youth  living with his parents.  He goes to see her. She is by now an elderly widow , a grandmother, and she politely tells her ardent suitor that they can be no more than friends. He continues to write to her and even leaves her some money in his will. All his life he had looked for the great tender love which lived in his imagination . Berlioz considered the “ Love Scene” from Romeo his finest creation. I think it corresponded to what he felt in his soul and it exquisitely depicts his identification with what he imagined the young lovers must have been feeling . He had kept that feeling in his heart and it inspired one of his  greatest creations.

And perhaps it is here that we can surmise why the Berlioz is not as well known as the Wagner. Middle aged audiences are confronted with a memory of their youth- from a time when they were young and when the blood, the brain and the heart ran hot. Hearing  the Wagner they perhaps react with a spasm of wishful thinking- after all Tristan and Isolde are closer to them in age than are Romeo and Juliette . How can one relive  those young feelings and emotions which inevitably weaken with age. It is also a problem for the performers.Having listened to many performances  of the Berlioz  I have rarely heard it performed with the delicacy and ardour it needs.

Wagner and Berlioz have given us the two sides of the emotional coin- heart and brain- body and soul- the dream and the reality.We don’t have to choose but maybe the choice is made for us whether we like it or not.

The Australian aborigine and many other “First Nations “see themselves as part of nature .The land can exist without them but they cannot exist without the land ,

But  for the European , nature is  sort of the   decor , the stage upon which man plays his games.Nature is a commodity which can be exploited, traded , bought or sold..

That of course is putting it simplistically but with the growth of cities and the expansion 

of urban life it was all too easy for  city dwellers to become divorced from nature.

The food they ate was grown somewhere over the horizon and nature became a distant reality to be visited when they went  on vacation .

The great French composer Claude Debussy had hanging on the wall of his study a copy

of a famous Japanese print,”The Great Wave off Kanazawa” by Hokusai . Looking at this 

print you could easily miss seeing that riding those huge waves are two fishing boats.

RIDING is probably the wrong word to use in this instance . Those fishing boats don’t look

too secure.Fishing in these stormy seas would be a risky business , but those fishermen are there by necessity, not by choice .

What has all this to do with Debussy’s composition ?

Debussy often vacationed at the seashore. Being a somewhat difficult man, self centred,

opinionated and morose , he was happier contemplating nature that  being with people. He 

was an aesthete , uninterested in the ordinary life of ordinary people . It was the unusual and  nature which stirred his musical imagination. The dangers of a Japanese fisherman’s life did not concern him and in his superb recreation ,  an “ aural image “ of the sea , LA MER ,humans have no place.

LA MER begins with the quiet lapping of the tide against the shore. The titles of the work’s three separate sections are self explanatory and the listener is presented with  a tonal depiction of the sea in all it’s moods.Debussy finishes the work with an all stops out fortissimo apotheosis , a climax of 

shattering force. It’s as if Debussy is playing to the crowd, a thunderous finale being sure to elicit 

applause.       Does nature play to the crowd?   I think that in this instance Debussy made an aesthetic mistake.

If one thinks of nature being eternal then it would have been better for Debussy to have ended LA MER the same way as he began it, with the soft lapping of the tide against the shore, the sea no longer a menace  and returning to it’s former peaceful state. The  listener would then have come away with a sense of the eternity of nature as opposed to man’s mortality .

Nature does not have moods and acts according to it’s own rules which have nothing to do with man’s needs or reactions to it .Nature is eternal, humans are not.Debussy was not religious  and  his adoration of nature is the attitude of an aesthete whose primary concern is pleasure, a sensual pleasure unrelated to spirituality although for  Debussy his attachment to nature is somewhat spiritual in it’s fervour.

Debussy is Nature’s brilliant observer. He can do that because he is basically a visitor to Nature. His life and

livelihood are not affected by the sea’s “moods”.He reacts to it without physical involvement or fear whereas for the Japanese fishermen in Hokusai’s  print it is different. Their

association with the sea is basic, it can feed them or kill them but it is a danger they must face.

 Whether Debussy was visiting the sea shore ,or looking at the Hokusai print hanging on his studio wall his life was never in danger . He could look at it with admiration and it stirred his imagination  and genius to create a masterpiece.

Jan Sibelius.    A new wind from the cold North. Blank. 7

One of the best exponents of Sibelius’s music to visit Australia was the Finnish conductor PAAVO BERGLUND .The name is as interesting as was the man’s face.The given name PAAVO is Finnish ,  whilst the family name BERGLUND is Swedish.As to the face , he had the high cheekbones and the slanted eyes which indicated a Central Asian genetic ancestry.Such a combination of names seems to point to a split in national identity . Indeed in the northern part of Finland live the SAMI , the inhabitants of Lapland who have a Middle Asian provenance and whose way of life is centred on reindeer herding .Finland had for many years been a Swedish protectorate and in the 19th century became a Russian protectorate.Sibelius was born in 1865 .at a time when the smaller nations of Europe were beginning to agitate for political independence and to assert their distinctive cultural identities. Jan Sibelius’s full name was JOHAN JULIUS CHRISTIAN SIBELIUS. Nothing FInnish about those names .Indeed ,with his family and friends he spoke Swedish and it was only later in life that he learnt to speak Finnish.Most of the over 100 songs he wrote were set to Swedish language texts. Yet this man became known as the great FINNISH composer.Finland is a country of lakes and forests,heir to a pagan ethos where there is no clear division between the man ,nature ,and the Divine. Culturally Sibelius was European,but as a composer he allied himself to a distant past when nature spoke to man ,or rather when man thought he could understand what nature was saying. Finnish is a language unrelated to any of the other major European language groups,Germanic,Latin,Slavic or even Celtic .Sibelius is the great Nordic nature lover and his music blew a cold ,invigorating breath of fresh air into the musty concert halls of Vienna and Berlin.Listen to “En Saga “ and “The Swan of Tuonela” and you will hear these long,drawn out melodies which seem to meander endlessly,seemingly without direction .  It is as if we are tuned into    Sibelius’s thoughts and feelings as he walks in the woods, alone but not lonely .He belongs to this bleak cold landscape which  speaks to him in a language he understands, a language he has translated  into superb and evocative music .

Here are two Sibelius quotes  which tell us much about the composer.

Upon moving to his country home.   “ All the song had died in me in Helsinki”.

A reply to his critics. “ Whereas other composers are engaged in manufacturing cocktails of every hue and description I offer the public pure cold water.”

And then ,when a statue was erected in his honour “A statue has never been erected in honour of a critic”.

One can understand how he felt. Audiences loved his music and there is nothing the critics hate more than the success of  a popular LIVING composer. He had been called the world’s WORST composer by certain critics . Let the music speak for itself.It cannot explain theory or mathematics,it cannot predict the future  or make electoral promises , but it is above all that .Sibelius evokes a mysterious past and at times it  seems that one is listening to the soul of nature ,and you feel insignificant but part of something much bigger than you could ever be. It’s a sort of enchantment from a time when religion was magic and  nature was  religion’s book.