In preceding days I must have heard fragments of the Mozart Requiem and the Barber Adagio more times than I can count. As Polish media outlets struggled to find music to frame the astounding events unfolding on their screens and a nation came to grips with their tragedy, a predictable thing happened:
They reached for the greatest music possible.
Inasmuch as terrible tragedies have a way of revealing truth for a short period of time, so too do they lead us to the greatest artistic expressions available to our society. I couldn't help but feel, as I mourned along with my kin and country, that it was truly sad that this tenderness, mutual understanding, and outpourings of faith would soon be gone from the public square. With nothing to sustain them in everyday life, such noble passions fade away in the onslaught of our modern relativistic culture.
It is also deeply unfortunate that a nation's collective good taste -- and mutual seeking after the infinite -- lingers only so long as the tragedy is present. Can it be that the very music which we use to help us cope during difficult times can be -- by virtue of its unparalleled depth and expressive power -- capable of helping us retain the best sentiments brought about by tragedy? I firmly believe that God calls artists to create works to help us penetrate more deeply into the fiber of reality, in the process seeking greater meaning and depth to each and every day.
Rather than write further on this impossible loss, I offer two more pieces to help us cope not only with an international tragedy, but to take with us into everyday life, to use as tools of deeper spiritual communion with the ultimate reality.
The first work, by Wojciech Kilar, is one of the most moving renditions of Agnus Dei I have ever heard. It is written in the new contemplative spiritual style of other composers like Henryk Gorecki and Arvo Part.
The second work -- Memento Mori -- is from the progressive klezmer band the Bester Quartet. Beginning in a modernistic noise sculpture meant to evoke a physical crash, a heartbreaking melody emerges from the wreckage to bring sense to the difficulty encountered.
As to the Poles lost, I can only say: "Hail the Victorious Dead -- may Christ bring them to their eternal rest."
Showing posts with label poland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poland. Show all posts
Monday, April 19, 2010
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Was Modern Music a Slavic Age?
(Warning: potentially contentious statement later in this article...)
Last month's issue of Classical FM magazine dealt beautifully with the subject of modern Russian music. Reading over the roster of names -- many of whom did their work in the 20th century -- got me to thinking:
Which nation or geographic region had the greatest effect on the course of 20th century music?
While this may seem like a loaded question, music history texts have no problem pointing to various eras where styles and trends were dominated by Italy, France, or Germany. Indeed, the Germans seem to take the crown historically, providing us with more geniuses from the Classical era than any other nation.
It was a supremacy they fought hard to keep. Arnold Schoenberg predicted -- with the typical Tuetonic flair of that unfortunate era -- that he had "discovered something that will guarantee the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years." (Thankfully both him and that other Aryan supremacist war-mongering occultist intellectual dictator were both wrong in their grand predictions. You could call me bitter, but I'm not exxagerating.)
I will celebrate this 11/11 -- the 90th anniversary of Polish independence from her less-friendly neighbors -- by making a potentially contentious statement:
Where music is concerned, the 20th century was a Slavic Century. While I know this is a personally biased statement, it nevertheless has great historical weight. I firmly believe that when leveled in the perspective of (non-Boulezian) history (assuming certain racial stereotypes in music are perhaps dulled or forgotten), students will one day learn about the powerful Slavic turn of 20th century music.
I also believe that it is the Slavic composers who saved modern composition, at least as far as audiences are concerned. The 19th century folk-tinged rumblings of Chopin, Dvorak, and the Russian Five led to a veritable musical explosion in Central and Eastern Europe. A brief survey of names includes: Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Lutoslawski, Glazunov, Gorecki, Scriabin, Penderecki, Schnittke, Janacek, Ligeti, Gubaidulina, Part, Kurtag, Rachmaninov, Szymanowski, and of course Bartok. (This was a list off the top of my head -- feel free to add your favorites.) Then there was the mighty teacher, Nadia Boulanger -- Catholic, half-Russian, and deeply aware of both.
While western Europe blazed a trail of largely soulless music, Stravinsky (bolstered by his mentor Boulanger) brought another version of musical modernity into being. The echoes of the rite still reverberate through our concert halls and conservatories.
Where Schoenberg & Co. codified atonality and paved the way to musical modernism, it seems that it is the composers of Eastern and Central Europe -- always placing the demands of expressionism over the demands of craft -- that gave modernism a soul.
Then there are the quasi-folk musings of Janacek and Bartok, who stooped classical high-browery back to the earth, unleashing tremendous expressive possibilities which are still being explored across numerous cultures today.
A glimpse back to the Russian five may give us the roots of this cultural success. These men were concerned with music for its spiritual and expressive properties, rather than any numerical interest it might engender. They were certainly under-trained as musicians and composers (or, perhaps, unhampered by over-training?) They were humanists first, seeking an expressive nationalistic vision for their resurgent nation. They also recognized the inherent power of folk music. This began a trend which would carry through most of the following century.
I am particularly proud of Poland, where modernism both found a soul -- and a way out. Long before his neo-romantic musings, Penderecki was at the head of the avante-gard in composition. Most of us are too young to remember the extreme cultural impacts of his Threnody and St. Matthew Passion. In all fairness, we can thank the Germans for embracing -- and funding -- most of Penderecki's international successes.
In Estonia, Arvo Part began his career by writing some of the most expressive serial music ever penned, before realizing the limitations of such a musical language and withdrawing to reconsider his craft.
1976 will likely be considered a magical year in future music history texts. It was in this year that Gorecki penned his magnanimous Third Symphony. After the premiere, one member of the modernist hegemony was said to decry that "Gorecki has abandoned 200 years of musical progress with a single piece." Yet it has become the best-selling recording of modern music in history, inspiring countless composers to return to a new simplicity. (It is also the piece that saved my young compositional life.)
In that very same year, Arvo Part emerged from his long self-imposed silence with a new musical language, blending ancient religiosity with a stark modern simplicity. In the end, the very nations that either resisted abstract modernism -- or gave it a soul -- also provided composers that -- along with the American minimalists -- showed a way out of the cultural morass of modern music.
In short, it was these men who maximized the modern, while later giving us permission to dream a different musical dream. Faced with the bleakness of a secular, mathematical century, the "Kyries" and "Agnus Dei's" poured forth once more. The end of the Slavic century presented a fitting musical gift, turning our hard-headed art back to more basic human needs.
It is curious, then, and perhaps even a bit xenophobic, when music schools require German or Italian from their musicology students. Should not Polish and Russian be added to the list?
Often impossible to analyze, often too simple for academic prose, the music of the Slavic century may have more than cultural biases to overcome in order to assume a proper historical prominence.
It's still too early to say where the new century will lead us. Will it, by virtue of our continued melting-pot status, become the American century? Will the Chinese seize cultural dominance? Or will the rise of communications technology make it the first truly international era of music?
Contrary to popular belief, classical music has never been stronger or more widespread then it is now, despite the lack of (generally pessimistic) major-media coverage. Out of the political darkness of the 20th century, we've been handed a battered baton of hard-earned progress from the Slavic greats. It is a baton covered with the sweat of the politically-hounded and the blood of freedom fighters, emerging from a modern history stranger (and more brutal) than fiction. Where will we run with it?
Last month's issue of Classical FM magazine dealt beautifully with the subject of modern Russian music. Reading over the roster of names -- many of whom did their work in the 20th century -- got me to thinking:
Which nation or geographic region had the greatest effect on the course of 20th century music?
While this may seem like a loaded question, music history texts have no problem pointing to various eras where styles and trends were dominated by Italy, France, or Germany. Indeed, the Germans seem to take the crown historically, providing us with more geniuses from the Classical era than any other nation.
It was a supremacy they fought hard to keep. Arnold Schoenberg predicted -- with the typical Tuetonic flair of that unfortunate era -- that he had "discovered something that will guarantee the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years." (Thankfully both him and that other Aryan supremacist war-mongering occultist intellectual dictator were both wrong in their grand predictions. You could call me bitter, but I'm not exxagerating.)
I will celebrate this 11/11 -- the 90th anniversary of Polish independence from her less-friendly neighbors -- by making a potentially contentious statement:
Where music is concerned, the 20th century was a Slavic Century. While I know this is a personally biased statement, it nevertheless has great historical weight. I firmly believe that when leveled in the perspective of (non-Boulezian) history (assuming certain racial stereotypes in music are perhaps dulled or forgotten), students will one day learn about the powerful Slavic turn of 20th century music.
I also believe that it is the Slavic composers who saved modern composition, at least as far as audiences are concerned. The 19th century folk-tinged rumblings of Chopin, Dvorak, and the Russian Five led to a veritable musical explosion in Central and Eastern Europe. A brief survey of names includes: Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Lutoslawski, Glazunov, Gorecki, Scriabin, Penderecki, Schnittke, Janacek, Ligeti, Gubaidulina, Part, Kurtag, Rachmaninov, Szymanowski, and of course Bartok. (This was a list off the top of my head -- feel free to add your favorites.) Then there was the mighty teacher, Nadia Boulanger -- Catholic, half-Russian, and deeply aware of both.
While western Europe blazed a trail of largely soulless music, Stravinsky (bolstered by his mentor Boulanger) brought another version of musical modernity into being. The echoes of the rite still reverberate through our concert halls and conservatories.
Where Schoenberg & Co. codified atonality and paved the way to musical modernism, it seems that it is the composers of Eastern and Central Europe -- always placing the demands of expressionism over the demands of craft -- that gave modernism a soul.
Then there are the quasi-folk musings of Janacek and Bartok, who stooped classical high-browery back to the earth, unleashing tremendous expressive possibilities which are still being explored across numerous cultures today.
A glimpse back to the Russian five may give us the roots of this cultural success. These men were concerned with music for its spiritual and expressive properties, rather than any numerical interest it might engender. They were certainly under-trained as musicians and composers (or, perhaps, unhampered by over-training?) They were humanists first, seeking an expressive nationalistic vision for their resurgent nation. They also recognized the inherent power of folk music. This began a trend which would carry through most of the following century.
I am particularly proud of Poland, where modernism both found a soul -- and a way out. Long before his neo-romantic musings, Penderecki was at the head of the avante-gard in composition. Most of us are too young to remember the extreme cultural impacts of his Threnody and St. Matthew Passion. In all fairness, we can thank the Germans for embracing -- and funding -- most of Penderecki's international successes.
In Estonia, Arvo Part began his career by writing some of the most expressive serial music ever penned, before realizing the limitations of such a musical language and withdrawing to reconsider his craft.
1976 will likely be considered a magical year in future music history texts. It was in this year that Gorecki penned his magnanimous Third Symphony. After the premiere, one member of the modernist hegemony was said to decry that "Gorecki has abandoned 200 years of musical progress with a single piece." Yet it has become the best-selling recording of modern music in history, inspiring countless composers to return to a new simplicity. (It is also the piece that saved my young compositional life.)
In that very same year, Arvo Part emerged from his long self-imposed silence with a new musical language, blending ancient religiosity with a stark modern simplicity. In the end, the very nations that either resisted abstract modernism -- or gave it a soul -- also provided composers that -- along with the American minimalists -- showed a way out of the cultural morass of modern music.
In short, it was these men who maximized the modern, while later giving us permission to dream a different musical dream. Faced with the bleakness of a secular, mathematical century, the "Kyries" and "Agnus Dei's" poured forth once more. The end of the Slavic century presented a fitting musical gift, turning our hard-headed art back to more basic human needs.
It is curious, then, and perhaps even a bit xenophobic, when music schools require German or Italian from their musicology students. Should not Polish and Russian be added to the list?
Often impossible to analyze, often too simple for academic prose, the music of the Slavic century may have more than cultural biases to overcome in order to assume a proper historical prominence.
It's still too early to say where the new century will lead us. Will it, by virtue of our continued melting-pot status, become the American century? Will the Chinese seize cultural dominance? Or will the rise of communications technology make it the first truly international era of music?
Contrary to popular belief, classical music has never been stronger or more widespread then it is now, despite the lack of (generally pessimistic) major-media coverage. Out of the political darkness of the 20th century, we've been handed a battered baton of hard-earned progress from the Slavic greats. It is a baton covered with the sweat of the politically-hounded and the blood of freedom fighters, emerging from a modern history stranger (and more brutal) than fiction. Where will we run with it?
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