Interview with a famous violinist: Wanda Wilkomirska

Wanda Wilkomirska is one of the most influential and internationally acclaimed violinists of modern times; even now at the age of 78 she is very active as a teacher, both at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and overseas. I was very privileged to be able to interview her.

What would you say have been the highlights of your career?

I would say there are many, so I can say it is not only “highlight”, it is also like the next step on the ladder; for example, the final concert in Wieniawski Competition which was 1952, when I first time played my Szymanowski First Concerto which later brought me lots of success. That was a highlight. Then, playing first concert in new rebuilt Warsaw, National Philharmonic in 1955. All this kinds of opening; like my first recital, the first recital ever given at the new [Sydney] Opera House.

My first recital in Wigmore Hall in London, when I was 21. My first concert with New York Philharmonic, for example. They are all highlights, and maybe only twice in my long life I had the kind of trance when playing that I only heard the first note – and then 25 minutes later, I heard my last notes, and I heard [cheering and applauding noises]. To open the new Barbican Hall in London with Sir Barbirolli conducting – those things, they are very important.

You studied in Poland, Hungary and Paris. How would you compare the three?

It’s difficult to compare, because in Poland I had several teachers…I graduated very early, when I was…seventeen…I noticed they really prepared soloists. But in Hungary, it was postgrads, and I had fantastic teacher, Ed Zathurecki, he was student of Hubay…and he opened me so many windows. But the last contact, in Paris, was not really like studies…I had a concert in Paris, with National Polish Orchestra, and Henryk Szeryng, he came behind the stage to the Green Room to us, and asked like this, “Why don’t you come and have lessons with me?” I told him, “First of all, I have no visa, and second I have no money.” So he told me, “Look, what you mean no visa, now you are here, you have two more concerts with the orchestra and then the orchestra goes back and you stay here.” And then afterwards, he did some hocus-pocus, I don’t know, abracadabra with the Consulate, that I really stayed for three months…and he arranged for me some little room in some friends’ apartment and I has as many lessons as he could manage.

That must have been wonderful. – You have played in some of the best concert halls in the world. Do you have a favourite among these?

Well, that’s difficult to say, because I tell you, they are all so wonderful, and I played in so many. Concertgebouw [Amsterdam] is, for example, wonderful hall, and I also adored Royal Festival Hall [London]…it was there that for the first time I heard my idol Vladimir Horowitz playing. I loved Carnegie Hall, it was a symbol. I have to confess that I love Sydney Concert Hall [Opera House]. And the halls which I opened, for example the Barbican [London].

What were your first impressions of the Sydney Opera House?

I was so, so ecstatic that I see this building. I remember when I first was here, they just started speaking about it, it was ’69. That was my first tour here, of 37 concerts, imagine. And then they asked me to come in this opening season. And when I saw it I was speechless.

How was it working with such great conductors as Paul Hindemith, Leonard Bernstein, Otto Klemperer, Zubin Mehta, and Sir John Barbirolli? Were they easy to cooperate with?

It was exhilarating…and how it started, sometimes it started with…I would say, with quarrel. I was young, and full of…respect and I felt so humble, when I start with a Klemperer, who says, “Very good, my child.” – In German of course. I was then…nineteen. But with Bernstein, we started, and it was only once. And it was because I already had some self-confidence, self-confidence that I want it so or not so. It was after my debut, and he wanted me for some television concert. We played the last movement of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, and they took a tempo which was faster than the police allowed. Of course, I managed to play it…but I wandered through this big hall to Maestro Bernstein. I said, “Excuse me, isn’t it too fast? Because it is a kopak, it is a Russian dance.” He looked at me and said, “What do you mean, ‘too fast’? Is it too fast for you?” I said, “No, no, no, Maestro! It is too fast for Tchaikovsky!” …I tell you one thing, it was the last time I ever played with Bernstein.

But Sir John Barbirolli, he wanted me to play with him in Edinburgh Festival, very famous festival, and he wanted me to learn Britten Concerto. I remember first rehearsal. He stopped me after two pages, maybe, and said, “No, no, don’t do this ritenuto, it’s not good.” I say, “Yes, sir.” Then we go on and he stops me again, and says, “I would not do it…leave it, leave it.” And I say, “Yes…yes, Sir John.” But the third time, when he told me again, “My child, no, we will do big ritenuto,” I said, “No, Sir John, I wouldn’t like it, there is not…composer didn’t write ritenuto.” And he said, “Don’t quarrel with me!” Then I said, “Sir John, I’m awfully sorry, of course you are a great musician, and I am a young violinist, and you probably have the right…picture…of this concerto. But I have a picture of this concerto, and I cannot just give everything up. Sir John, would you like to have a soloist who always says, ‘yes, yes, yes’?” He said, “My child, you have something here [indicates head]. We don’t do it [the ritenuto]…” And since then, there was not a season I had no concert with Sir John. And he invited me when the Barbican was opened, to be a soloist. So you understand. Two different reactions from two different people.

That’s very interesting. You used to judge many important violin competitions in Europe. What sort of qualities in a competitor made you choose them to go into the finals?

You mean when one is in juries? – I tell you something very important. It depends, I’m sorry to say, on who sits on the panel. There are always many people, with different priorities, and different preferences. There are some who cannot forget…some…little unhappy mistake…couple of wrong octave… For me, the most important is to show personality.

And what is your favourite repertoire?

Ah, it is so big, if I start telling you…I couldn’t, I only know one thing: that if the people would leave me on the island, lonely island, and tell me, “You can only have one composer,” I would live on Bach. Because then if I could play only Bach I could play both ways, so fake Baroque …and then Romantic. This is the timeless composer, absolutely timeless. So this kind of chromatic, and dissonances, he allowed himself…you understand…he should be burned like a witch, or something. But I don’t know how I survive without Brahms, how I survive without Bartok, Prokofiev…I love the most – even if Bach is this choice if I could only have one composer – I love the most the 20th century music.

Your recordings of Ravel, Bartok, Khachaturian and Szymanowski make that easy to believe! During your amazing career, have you ever felt nervous?

You should rather ask if I was ever not nervous. I was not nervous as a child. But now it is something totally different. The best times of my life when I really played very well and knew these pieces – I can play violin, and I know this piece – and still, I know nothing…it is…nerves. I remember that my students asked me, “Can you please teach me how not to be nervous?” I said, “No. I cannot teach you how not to be. I can teach you how to play with stage fright…just like you have to learn how to accept things, I accept that I am awfully nervous – I accept it, okay. So I have to play, being nervous. If you cannot play your best because you are nervous…nobody and nothing can disturb you so not to let you play beautiful. You can always play beautiful.”

Thank you very much for your words of wisdom. It’s been really wonderful talking to you.

Taoism and Buddhism in T’ang China

Taoism and Buddhism both had a profound influence on all aspects of Chinese life during the T’ang period (617-907). Both religions captured the imagination of all levels of society; they were seen as a way out of suffering, a liberation from the trials of everyday life. Moreover, they influenced the art, literature, and science of their times. Their corresponding philosophies were embraced by the elite as guides on the search for ultimate truth. It was during this period that Buddhism, a foreign religion, gained a distinctly Chinese flavour, as can be evidenced by the foundation of religious schools such as Ch’an and philosophical schools such as Hua-yen. This essay will examine Buddhism and Taoism during the T’ang period, particularly under the reigns of Kao-tsung and Empress Wu, who both saw religion as propaganda, and as a way to maintain stability throughout the empire.

 

    Taoism had its philosophy deeply rooted in the social consciousness by the time of the T’ang dynasty. Central to its teachings was the Tao, the transcendent “Way” of the universe – the ultimate, undefinable reality, inherent in everything from the stars to human beings; it was eternal, ineffable, spontaneous, and yet it dynamically encompassed all matter. Through wu-wei, meaning “non-action”, or “creative quietude”[1], people could “flow with the current of the Tao”[2] and be at one with the cosmos. Fundamental to the philosophy of the Tao is the classical Chinese concept of yin-yang – the harmony of opposites. Taoism prefers intuitive wisdom to rational knowledge; it emphasises spontaneity and naturalness. Taoism, like Buddhism, can be seen as a way of liberation from the material world.

 

    From its institutionalisation into a religion during the second century, the ancient philosophy of Taoism gained a new layer of meaning; out of its original simplicity grew an intricate mythology. Lao Tzu, the semi-legendary author of its central doctrine, the Tao Te Ching, was deified and made a member of a holy trinity that included the Heavenly King of the Primal Beginning and the Jade Emperor. The Taoism that now issued forth was a Taoism for the masses, a Taoism strongly influenced by the colourful Mahayana Buddhism that had come into China from India. Complex rituals were performed in monasteries, and “the Taoist priesthood made cosmic life power available for ordinary villagers.”[3] Taoism, in this way, extended itself to become an organised religion influential in the lives of the common people.

 

    There was a strong connection between the imperial family and the Taoist church during the T’ang dynasty. Taoism served to unite the increasingly far-reaching Chinese empire, spanning across different ethnic groups and maintaining universal peace and stability. T’ang Kao-tsu, the founder of the dynasty, sought to legitimise his rather precarious position on the throne by identifying Lao Tzu, who shared his surname of Li, as the royal ancestor. Taoism was named the first religion in the state, even above Confucianism, which had so long formed the core of Chinese society. Buddhism, an exotic religion, was ranked last. The Tao Te Ching was propagated throughout the empire, and each T’ang ruler sought to out-do the last in lavishing grand posthumous titles on its author.

 

    Taoism’s contributions to science, literature and the visual arts were remarkable. The Taoists’ pursuit of health and the prolongation of natural life placed the Taoists at the fore of the medicine of their day. They also created meticulously-illustrated catalogues for the identification of sacred minerals, plants, and fungi. In the world of words, the poetic imagery of Taoist literature was much admired and copied by secular writers; both the Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu spawned many replicates. Li Po, arguably the greatest of all Chinese poets, was an adherent of Taoism; its philosophy had a profound influence on his writings. His works are renowned for their great eloquence and beauty, for their depiction of wild nature, and their deep naturalness and spontaneity. Taoism also maintained a strong influence on the visual arts; Taoist artists were skilled calligraphers, figure painters, and talisman makers. The emperor T’ai-tsung was a zealous collector of the calligraphy of the Ch’in Taoist master, Wang Hsi-chih, who was considered to be among the greatest of all calligraphers. The Taoist philosophy also stimulated Chinese landscape painting.

 

    The reign of Kao-tsung (649-83) ushered an era of strong Taoist fervour. Though some scholars interpret the Emperor’s patronage of Taoism as a result of his clutch on power growing increasingly weak under the dominion of his consort, Empress Wu, it is also possible to see it as astute political propaganda.[4] A chain of Taoist monasteries spanning the empire was founded in circa 666; in 672, the T’ai-p’ing princess was ordained in a Taoist nunnery. In the next two centuries, twelve other princesses would follow her example. By 678 the Tao Te Ching had been placed in the imperial examination system; this was one of the many examples demonstrating the great importance allotted to Taoism. The religion continued to flourish as its bonds with the royal family and the state grew stronger than ever. It was a golden age for Taoism.

 

    During Kao-Tsung’s later years, he suffered from a series of paralytic strokes; though ostensibly he was still emperor, his power was actually in the hands of his consort, Wu Chao. The latter had spent some time as a nun in the Buddhist order, and from the beginning it was evident where her sympathies lay. Already in the years of 672-675 the empress ordered the carving out of the colossal statue of Buddha surrounded by bodhisattvas in the Lung-men caves.

 

    When Kao-tsung finally died in 683, Empress Wu, after deposing the rightful emperor, her son Chung-tsung, replaced him with his brother, Jui-tsung, who served purely as a nominal ruler while she took the empire into her own hands. Whereas Confucianism was solidly against the possibility of a woman ruling in her own right, and Taoism could similarly offer her no support[5], Buddhism provided her with exactly what she wanted: legitimisation of her power. A group of Buddhist followers presented her with the Ta-yün-ching (The Great Cloud Sutra), which outlined the prophecy that a female ruler would arise in south India 700 years after the Buddha’s death. They wrote commentaries on the sutra that drew an analogy between the empress’ life and that of the Indian princess. Armed with this, Empress Wu further claimed to be an earthly incarnation of Maitreya, the Future Buddha.

 

    In the ninth month of 690, she officially proclaimed herself the empress of a new dynasty, designated the “Chou”. She set up a network of Ta-yün Temples throughout the empire; these, along with the distribution of the Ta-yün-ching and her claim to be Maitreya, she used to obtain a popular following from the people. Under her patronage, Buddhism blossomed; in 691 she decreed that Buddhism should be ranked as the first religion in the empire, reversing the policies of the earlier T’ang rulers.[6] The sculptural activities at the Lung-men caves flourished and Buddhist temples rivalled even the imperial palaces in magnificence of architecture; numerous translations of Buddhist texts were sponsored by the state, with the Empress Wu personally partaking in the effort.[7]

 

    Enthusiastic imperial support was given to two new schools of Buddhism, Ch’an and Hua-yen. Empress Wu’s respect for Ch’an Buddhism is evidenced by her invitation of Shen-hsiu, the elderly founder of the Northern Ch’an school, to the imperial court; indeed, when he came, she showed her deference by kneeling down before him. Shen-hsiu, at the time already over ninety years of age and venerated for his meditational techniques, became exceedingly popular, with both the common people and high-ranking officials among his followers. He was named the Master of the Dharma in the Two Capitals and the Teacher of Three Emperors. When he died in 706, he was mourned by hundreds of thousands of people and given the posthumous title of Ta-t’ung Ch’an-shih (The Ch’an Master Ta-t’ung).

 

    Ch’an (literally, “meditation”) can be seen as a manifestation of the practical side of Chinese character. Ch’an  Buddhists practised awareness constantly, even during the execution of mundane tasks, such as washing the dishes and chopping wood. Ch’an was concerned with living entirely in the present moment. Like Taoism, Ch’an was deeply mistrustful of words and stressed the ineffability of reality. Reason was similarly condemned; logical thinking was seen as a barrier to enlightenment, the perception of ultimate truth and reality. Ch’an was popular among the common people as it was pragmatic and applicable to their everyday lives.

 

    The main typically Chinese philosophical school of Buddhism during the T’ang period was the Hua-yen, which claimed the Avatamsaka Sutra (Hua-yen ching) as the zenith of the Buddha’s teachings. The identifying theme of this sutra is its doctrine on the interrelatedness of all things. This interrelatedness is portrayed by the imagery of an interconnected web of pearls, each reflecting all the others, and of a tower that contains thousands of other towers, each with a separate existence of its own, each in harmony with all the others, each containing the others. This interconnectedness of all things can indeed be seen as the pinnacle of Buddhist philosophy.

 

     Popular Buddhism, meanwhile, blossomed. Buddhist temples and monasteries served as the venues of various grandiose festivals in which all classes of society participated with equal enthusiasm. The close connection between the Buddhist community and the imperial family was demonstrated by festivals celebrating the emperor’s birthday and commemorating past emperors and empresses. Other festivals of a more religious nature were the Lantern Festival; the Festival of the Buddha’s Birthday; the Festival Honouring the Relics of the Buddha; the All Souls’ Feast, or Ullambana. The lavishness and convivial spirit of these festivals exemplified Buddhism as a religion equally attractive to the masses as to the elite and the imperial family.

 

    Buddhism had an enormous influence on many faces of the prism of Chinese society.  The colourful writings of the Buddhists inspired Chinese authors to unleash their imaginations into a new world of fantasy, as can be seen from the Ming dynasty novel Hsi-yu-chi (Record of a Trip to the West), a fictitious account of the monk Hsüan-Tsang’s journey to India, in which he is accompanied by a monkey spirit, a pig spirit, and a water spirit. The Buddhist stories told to the general populace by monks by means of proselytization also made a contribution to the development of the novel in China. In language itself, the new words invented by Chinese Buddhists that were either translations or transliterations of Buddhist ideas found a permanent place in the Chinese vocabulary. The Buddhist influence on art was also profound. Ch’an landscape painters sought to portray the essence of their subjects, rather than their exterior forms. Great spontaneity and suddenness of brushstrokes and meditational attitudes were trademarks of the Ch’an masters, who often depicted the birds, flowers, rivers, and mountains that were their artistic insights into reality. Buddhist architecture featured monumental wooden temples and tall, many-storied pagodas usually constructed from bricks. Buddhist monks made great contributions to science, especially in the fields of astronomy, medicine, and mathematics.

 

    In conclusion, both Taoism and Buddhism played an integral part in  T’ang China, transforming the lives of a whole spectrum of people. Throughout the dynasty, the ruling house saw religion as a means to tie the nation together, to unify the people, and to solidify and conserve their power. Kao-tsung and his consort, Empress Wu, both utilized religion by way of propaganda, causing Taoism and Buddhism respectively to thrive. Both religions had a gargantuan influence on culture and made pioneering improvements in the science of their times. The philosophical schools of Taoism and Buddhism, although more recondite, also prospered; they provided answers to the metaphysical questions of those who sought ultimate truth, and continue to provide us with those answers today. Taoism and Buddhism are two jewels of Chinese history; though different – one jade and the other lapis lazuli – both can ultimately be seen as responses to the same need that is inherent in us all, the need for a higher, celestial truth.

 

---

 

[1] H. Smith, The World’s Religions, San Francisco, 1991, p. 207.

[2] Huai Nan Tzu, quoted in J. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, London, 1956, vol. 2, p. 88.

[3] D. Overmyer, Religions of China, New York, 1986, p. 39.

[4] S. Weinstein, Buddhism under the T’ang, Cambridge, 1987, p. 29.

[5] T. H. Barrett, Taoism under the T’ang, London, 1996, p. 40.

[6] S. Weinstein, Buddhism under the T’ang, Cambridge, 1987, p. 43.

[7] Ibid., p. 44.

 

 

 

Bibliography

 

Primary Sources

Tsu, L., tr. Feng, Gia-Fu and English, J., Tao Te Ching, New York, Vintage Books, 1972.

 

Secondary Sources

Ed. Abbate, F., tr. Phillips, P. L., Chinese Art, London, Octopus Books, 1972.

Barrett, T. H., Taoism under the T’ang, London, Wellsweep Press, 1996.

Ch’en, K. S., Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1974. 

Needham, J., Science and Civilisation in China, 7 vols., London, Cambridge University Press, 1954-76.

Overmyer, D., Religions of China, New York, Harper & Row, 1986.

Shih, H., “Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism in China: Its History and Method”, Philosophy East and West, April 1953, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 3-24.

Smith, H., The World’s Religions, San Francisco, HarperCollins, 1991.

Weinstein, S. Buddhism under the T’ang, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Dmitri Shostakovich: denouncement and rehabilitation

The life and works of Dmitri Shostakovich are inextricably linked to the politics of the Russian Communist regime. Although he was recognised as “perhaps Soviet Russia’s most loyal musical son, and certainly her most talented one”,[1] he found his creative freedom restricted by the Party. The first and most infamous example of such political mistreatment was the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, which after two years of success was denounced and banned. Shostakovich had become the “sacrificial lamb”[2] through which the Party displayed its power over the arts: his fate served as a warning to those who strayed from the dictated aesthetic path of “socialist realism”. His official rehabilitation came with the polysemous Fifth Symphony, which reaped “an orgy of public praise” and later “Stalin prizes and titles and honorary posts”[3] – for the Party had to show it could deck with roses as easily as it could revile and humiliate.[4]

 

     That Shostakovich was Russia’s most talented offspring there can be no doubt. His First Symphony, composed when he was still a teenager, skyrocketed him into international fame. His formative years corresponded to the era of artistic liberalism ushered by Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP) of 1921. It was widely accepted that a revolutionary society had to have revolutionary art; the period was marked by the enthusiastic espousal of modernism and an exchange of ideas with the progressive West. Leningrad and Moscow became dynamic centres of cultural life where works by Schreker, Křenek, Berg, Hindemith, and the expatriate Stravinsky were performed.[5] Many Soviet composers devoted themselves to the creation of modernistic music. Socialist ideology “emphatically” rejected “the separation of Art from Life”; accordingly, their music often portrayed the shifting and grinding of factories and the bustling sounds of the city.[6] The organisation behind the Western-inspired musical avant-garde was the Association for Contemporary Music, the ACM, which propelled Russian music into an age of modernism. But a rival group, the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM), called for a simplified musical language that could be comprehended by the masses. From the outset, the RAPM’s attitude was vehemently anti-modernistic.

 

     As soon as Shostakovich graduated from the Leningrad Conservatory in 1925 he embraced the cause of modernism. Perhaps most striking of the radical pieces he produced during this period are his Aphorisms for piano (influenced by Prokofiev’s Sarcasms) and his Gogolian opera The Nose. The latter work discarded convention to such an extent that it became a sort of anti-opera; in it we can find the naturalistic portrayal of snoring and other nasal sounds and a full exploitation of the satire of the story it is based on.[7]  Shostakovich also undertook a commission to create the Symphonic Dedication to October (later to become his Second Symphony) for the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution in 1927.[8] That the work is characterised by clamorous dissonances and includes a factory hooter in its instrumentation suggests close affinity to the ACM; its choral ending, on the other hand, is undeniably propagandist, leading to approval by the RAPM.[9] The fact that many of Shostakovich’s works are on similarly revolutionary topics supports the hypothesis that he was “perhaps the most loyal” of Soviet Russia’s composers. His many film scores were often so propagandist that “Stalin himself attached great value to Shostakovich the film composer.”[10] His patriotic songs, ballets, and theatre pieces were written in the same vein of radical socialist ideals. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether Shostakovich truly believed in the ideology he supported; many have argued that he was actually a clandestine dissident.

 

    In 1929, Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan brutally put an end to the artistic euphoria of the NEP. Russia underwent a Second Revolution, in which any potential opponents of Stalin were mercilessly liquidated. Land collectivisation and industrialisation put immense pressure on the country and caused a rapid decline in living standards.[11] In the arts, modernism was forcefully suppressed by the Party and became known under the black label of “formalism”, a slippery term that was plastic enough to mean anything the regime wanted it to.[12] Formalism, officially defined as the “separation of form from content”,[13] was seen as an esoteric expression of bourgeois-inspired corruption that had no place in the proletarian Soviet Russia. Accused of formalism, modernists such as Roslavets, Mosolov, and Lourié were ushered out of Russian musical life and had their names literally expunged from the history books.[14]  The Party further dissolved the ACM and put the RAPM in domination over the Soviet musical world: after three years in power, the latter was replaced by the party-run Union of Soviet Composers in the perestroyka[15] of 1932.[16] Although most composers were relieved to be free of the hegemony of the RAPM, the Union soon showed itself to be even more intimidating: it was the instrument of political control over Russian musical life.

 

     “Socialist realism”, introduced in 1934 at the First Congress of Soviet Writers, became the goal towards which all Soviet artists were to strive.[17] Officially defined as “the truthful and historically concrete representation of reality in its revolutionary development”, it meant almost exactly the opposite.[18] The irony was biting: socialist realism was supposed to present an undyingly optimistic vision of Soviet life, “the harsh every-day reality…seen through rose-coloured glasses.”[19] Everything was portrayed as evolving towards the revolutionary ideal, a cheerfully uniform society.[20] It was clear from the outset that all new socialist art would have to be positive, comprehensible to the masses, and suffused by a kind of heroism. Soviet music cemented into a style of vulgar cliches that effectively hedged it off from the outside world: “there was a curious sense of disillusionment at the discovery that Revolutionary Russia could produce such far from revolutionary music.”[21]

 

    
     In fact, “so little was socialist realism understood” at the beginning that Shostakovich’s second opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, “was accepted as the embodiment of it.”[22] When it was premiered in January 1934 it was a phenomenal success. The first Soviet opera to enter the repertoire, its fame soon spread abroad. It was soon being performed in Sweden, Czechoslovakia, England, Yugoslavia, Switzerland, Denmark, and America. At home, both the critics and the general public were ecstatic: Lady Macbeth was hailed as a work that “could have been written only by a Soviet composer brought up in the best traditions of Soviet culture.”[23] While the music met with disapproval from the conservative faction of the Union of Soviet Composers, they could do nothing to blight Shostakovich’s triumph.[24] At 27, he was the most famous composer in the Soviet Union. In the euphoria of success Shostakovich, who had initially planned a trilogy of operas on the theme of strong Russian heroines, announced that he would complete a tetralogy, à la Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Lady Macbeth was to be the Rheingold.[25]

 

     Lady Macbeth was based on a story of the same name by the 19^th-century writer Nikolai Leskov, which, according to Shostakovich, “expressively characterises the position of women in the old prerevolutionary time”.[26] Nevertheless, some significant alterations were made to the plot by the composer and his co-librettist Alexander Preis. Shostakovich sought to whiten the character of Katerina, the “Lady Macbeth” of the title; the murderess was interpreted as “a vigorous, talented, beautiful woman, who perishes in the dismal, cruel domestic environment of the Russia of merchants and serfs.”[27] The opera’s portrayal of the corruption of the old bourgeois society is relentless: Shostakovich was evidently attempting to apply the Marxist theory of progress to the story.[28]

 

     Lady Macbeth was innovative in many ways. The orchestral interludes, which ensure a sense of dramatic continuity, “serve the purpose of developing basic musical ideas and illustrating the action.”[29] The unflinching realism of the love scene between Katerina and Sergei shocked audiences worldwide. Nevertheless, Lady Macbeth is less stylistically arcane than The Nose; in fact, it is relatively conventional. The voice parts are “built on broad cantilena, making use of all available resources of the human voice”.[30] Shostakovich showed himself the equal of a Verdi or a Mussorgsky in his scope for powerful dramatic clarity. “I have tried to make the musical language of my opera as simple as possible,”[31] he said. It was in Lady Macbeth that he achieved a balance between the conventional and the modernistic, creating a “psychological drama with socio-critical overtones.”[32]

 

     In January 1936, Stalin announced the new criteria for Soviet opera: these were “a libretto with a Socialist topic, a realistic musical language with stress on a national idiom, and a positive hero typifying the new Socialist era.”[33] As has been demonstrated, Lady Macbeth’s portrayal of the bourgeoisie could be seen as socialist propaganda, and the “realism” of the musical language can hardly be questioned, although the national idiom is largely obscured by the parody of “the false and lying methods of the composers of bourgeois society”. Shostakovich’s Katerina could be perceived as a modern woman trapped in a stifling archaic society, acting as a revolutionary who topples her oppressors; thus she typifies “the new Socialist era”. But could she be perceived as a “positive hero”? Shostakovich indeed wrote that he wanted to “justify Katerina so she would impress the audience as a positive character”,[34] and it is possible to interpret her as a noble human being that has cracked under appalling outward circumstances. Thus it is arguable that, on one level at least, Lady Macbeth met Stalin’s criteria.

 

     Despite the fact that Shostakovich was perhaps the most ideologically committed of all the composers of his generation, he was fated to become the proverbial tall poppy of Soviet Russia. On the 26 January, 1936, Stalin and his close colleagues attended a Bolshoi production of Lady Macbeth; they left  before the end of the opera.[35] Two days later, an unsigned editorial titled “Muddle instead of Music” was published in the Party’s official newspaper, Pravda. The editorial attacked Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District as a formalistic, “leftist deformation instead of natural, human music”, and warned that if Shostakovich continued in the same vein things “might end very badly”.[36] As Taruskin notes, “the same merciless rhetoric of political denunciation was directed, for the first time anywhere, at an artist.”[37] As if to make things absolutely clear, another article appeared in Pravda on February 6, condemning Shostakovich’s ballet portraying life on a collective farm, The Limpid Stream, as “Balletic Falsehood”.

 

     The editorials had far-reaching consequences. For Shostakovich it meant a sharp fall from grace, a loss of income, and, if he did not correct his “mistakes”, a threat to his freedom and possibly his life. Pravda took pains to make it clear that all the arts, not just music, must follow the same rules, and that whoever continued in a formalistic vein would suffer the same fate as Shostakovich.[38] As far as Soviet music was concerned, everybody involved felt the impact of the editorials; composers and musicologists alike endorsed the Pravda articles, afraid of the consequences of not stepping in line with official opinion.[39] The Quiet Don, a song opera by Dzerzhinsky that Stalin and his companions had seen and approved a week before Lady Macbeth, was declared the prototype of Soviet opera. It was a work of little artistic merit, ironically dedicated to Shostakovich.[40] Its optimism and lack of complexity surely endeared it to Stalin; this was the kind of “socialist realism” he sought. The sphere of Soviet opera was subjected to numerous emulations of the work; meanwhile, Shostakovich withdrew his Fourth Symphony, deeming it risky to perform such a complex, pessimistic work in the circumstances.

 

 

     It took Shostakovich almost a year to work up enough courage to begin the composition of his Fifth Symphony; but when he did, the process was incredibly swift. The third movement, for example, was written over three days.[41] Infamously subtitled “a Soviet artist’s response to just criticism”,[42] it received its immensely successful premiere in November 1937 under the baton of the young, then almost unknown, Yevgeny Mravinsky. Shostakovich said that “the theme of my symphony is the formation of a personality. At the center of the work’s conception I envisioned just that: a man in all his suffering.”[43] That Shostakovich was talking about himself there can hardly be any doubt. The symphony was seen as a personal perestroyka, or restructuring, by the authorities, and as such was approved, abetted, praised. Here was the work in which Shostakovich “apologised” for his former mistakes and sought to rectify his “formalistic” impulses of the past, adopting a clear musical idiom. The symphony was written on a large, heroic scale, classically divided into four movements. Formally, it was a return to tradition.

 

    But, contrary to what the exultant regime believed, the Fifth Symphony did not present a radical change of style. The influence of the Pravda article over Shostakovich cannot be called into question: the composer certainly felt the threat over his head, fully comprehended the situation he was in and feared for his own life. Nevertheless, the style he exhibited in the Fifth Symphony was not an artificial break with his former ouvre; rather, it was the result of a natural evolution towards a more mature idiom.[44] For example, the strikingly conservative cello sonata that Shostakovich wrote in 1934 before the Pravda attack demonstrates a connection with the form, texture, tonality and rhythm of the Fifth Symphony.[45] Thus, it could be argued that the Fifth, officially celebrated as the composer’s perestroyka, would not be much different if the Pravda attack had never occurred.[46]

 

    Nevertheless, Shostakovich was painfully aware of what was expected of him. Sensing that the funereal slow movement might be criticised for its pessimism, Shostakovich endeavoured to justify it by writing that “Soviet tragedy, as a genre, has every right to exist; but its content must be suffused with a positive idea, comparable, for example, to the life-affirming ardor of Shakespeare’s tragedies.”[47] It was thus that the symphony was given the oxymoronic epithet of “optimistic tragedy”.[48] Yet the “triumphal” quality of the D major coda, which “resolves the tense and tragic moments of the preceding movements in a joyous, optimistic fashion”,[49] is an object of controversy: ever since the first performance listeners have detected an element of hollowness in the fanfares. The dry ostentations of the trumpets and timpani, combined with the sparse orchestration and the linear, almost sketchy quality of the music, give credibility to such a reading. To quote Solomon Volkov, “It’s as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, ‘Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,’ and you go marching off, muttering, ‘Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.’”[50] It seems appropriate to conclude, then, that the ending is a monument to socialist realism, as it leads the imagination to wonder what would be revealed were the brightly-coloured paint peeled off.

 

    The importance of the polysemy and latent content of Shostakovich’s music is enormous.[51] The Fifth Symphony’s mournful slow movement provoked open weeping during its first performance, which was, crucially, at the height of the Yezhovshchina period of political terror. By the end of the period in 1953, the number of innocent victims executed in Stalin’s purges amounted to millions. Others were sent to gulag prison camps and often did not return. The music offered an outlet for sorrow that was rare in a socialist society that was forced to put on a brave face in a time of catastrophe; it also unified its audience with what has been called geselleschaftbildende Kraft or community-binding power.[52]  The long-lasting ovations at the end of the symphony were a testimony to its greatness; it was a work that could be understood on many levels, pleasing both the officaldom and the general public. Ultimately, Shostakovich was awarded four Stalin Prizes and became Secretary of the Composer’s Union, Member of the Supreme Soviet, and Hero of Socialist Labour.

 

     The pattern established by the Party’s attack on Lady Macbeth and glorification of the Fifth Symphony would continue for the rest of Shostakovich’s life. And yet he remained productive throughout the whole of the oppressive dictatorship of Stalin, surviving personal persecution to become one of the greatest symphonists of all time. His masterworks, among which the Fifth Symphony must be numbered, speak with incredible depth to the human heart; their many levels of meaning and scope for different interpretations create an incredible psychological complexity. That complexity and elusiveness from objective definitions characterises the music of Shostakovich as it characterises that of no other composer; the imprint of the times he wrote in survives in his works and touches us all.

 

 

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[1] Richard Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermaneutical Essays (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997), 508.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid., 518.

[4] See ibid., Chapter 14.

[5] Gerald Abraham, Eight Soviet Composers (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1970), 14.

[6] Eric Roseberry, Ideology, Style, Content and Thematic Process in the Symphonies, Cello Concertos, and String Quartets of Shostakovich (New York: Garland Publishing, 1989), 2.

[7] When the opera was finally premiered in the form of a suite in 1930, it was ominously attacked by members of the RAPM as being “formalistic”. See Francis Maes, trans. Arnold Pomerans and Erica Pomerans, A History of Russian Music: From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 261-262.

[8] Boris Schwarz, “Shostakovich, Dmitry”, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: MacMillan, 2001), Vol. 23, 283.

[9] See Gerald Abraham, Eight Soviet Composers (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1970), 16.

[10] Solomon Volkov, quoted in Eric Roseberry, Shostakovich (London: Omnibus Press, 1981), 99.

[11] Boris Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia: 1917-1970 (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1976), 109.

[12] Scott Davie, Lecture (Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney: 2008).

[13] Boris Schwarz, Music and Musical Life, 129.

[14] Francis Maes, trans. Arnold Pomerans and Erica Pomerans, A History of Russian Music: From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 258.

[15] A term that meant “restructuring”.

[16] 1932 was also the year of Stalin’s second Five-Year Plan; “the atmosphere was one of crisis.” See Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 109.

[17] Francis Maes, A History of Russian Music, 253.

[18] Boris Schwarz, “Shostakovich, Dmitry”, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: MacMillan, 2001), Vol. 23, 284.

[19] Boris Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia: 1917-1970 (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1976), 139.

[20] Francis Maes, A History of Russian Music, 253.

[21] Gerald Abraham, quoted in Schwartz, Music and Musical Life, 135.

[22] Gerald Abraham, Eight Soviet Composers (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1970), 25.

[23] Quoted in ibid.

[24] Boris Schwarz, “Shostakovich, Dmitry”, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: MacMillan, 2001), Vol. 23, 287.

[25] Laurel Fay, Shostakovich: A Life, 78.

[26] Francis Maes, A History of Russian Music, 265.

[27] Boris Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 115.

[28] Francis Maes, A History of Russian Music, 264. The opera, described as a “satirical tragedy”,  possesses lashings of the composer’s trademark humour – in this case black humour. Every character except Katerina is painted in a caricatural light: the father-in-law, the husband, the lover, the workers, the priest, and the police all sing to music filled with parodies of such popular genres as waltzes, foxtrots and polkas. Only Katerina’s music is pure, serious, and lyrical. It was through the music that Shostakovich sought to justify Katerina by “dehumanising” her oppressors. See Richard Taruskin, 498-504.

[29] Shostakovich, quoted in Nicholas Slonimsky, Music Since 1900, 5^th ed. (New York: Shirmer Books, 1994), 366.

[30] Ibid.

[31] Ibid.

[32] Boris Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 120.

[33] Ibid., 123.

[34] Quoted in Francis Maes, A History of Russian Music, 265.

[35] Richard Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermaneutical Essays (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997), 507.

[36] Ibid., 508.

[37] Ibid., 507.

[38] Boris Schwarz, Music and Musical Life, 129.

[39] Ibid., 128-129.

[40] Laurel Fay, Shostakovich: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 78.

[41] Elizabeth Wilson, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), 150.

[42] This appellation was invented by a journalist, not the composer; see Wilson, 152.

[43] Richard Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermaneutical Essays (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997), 523.

[44] See J. D. Huband, “Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony:  A Soviet Artist’s Reply…?”, Tempo, New Series, No. 173 (June 1990), 11-16.

[45] J. D. Huband, “Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony:  A Soviet Artist’s Reply…?”, 13.

[46] See ibid., 11-16.

[47] Richard Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically, 523.

[48] Entelis, quoted in ibid., 524.

[49] Shostakovich. See ibid., 523-528.

[50] Quoted in Taruskin, 524.

[51] See ibid, 472; 477.

[52] “It is the power given only to the great symphonists – the power to weld an audience together, to uplift and to move masses of disparate people in one single emotion-controlled wave, sweeping aside all intellectual reservations.” Schwarz, Musical Life, 174.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

  

Abraham, G. Eight Soviet Composers. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1970.

Ardov, M., trans. Kelly, R. and Meylac, M. Memories of Shostakovich. London: Short Books, 2004.

Fanning, D., ed. Shostakovich Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Fay, L.E., Shostakovich: A Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Fay, L.E., ed., Shostakovich and His World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Huband, J.D., “Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony: A Soviet Artist’s Reply…?” in Tempo, New Series, No. 173, Soviet Issue, (Jun. 1990), Cambridge University Press, 11-16.

Martynov, I., trans. Guralsky, T. Dmitri Shostakovich: The Man and His Work. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1947.

Norris, C., ed. Shostakovich: the Man and his Music. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1982.

Roseberry, E. Ideology, Style, Content, and Thematic Process in the Symphonies, Cello Concertos, and String Quartets of Shostakovich. New York: Garland Publishing, 1989.

Roseberry, E. Shostakovich. London: Omnibus Press, 1981.

Schwarz, B. Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917-1970. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1976.

Schwarz, B. “Shostakovich, Dmitry”, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan Press, 2001. Vol. 23, pp. 279-311.

Sheinberg, E. Irony, Satire, Parody and the Grotesque in the Music of Shostakovich: A Theory of Musical Incongruities. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000.

Shostakovich, Dmitri, Symphony No. 5. London: Ernst Eulenburg, n.d. 

Taruskin, R. Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermaneutical Essays. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997.

  

 Discography

 

Haitink, Bernard, conductor. Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5; Symphony No. 9. Concertgebouw; London Philharmonic. Decca, 425 066-2.

Rostropovich, Mstislav, conductor. Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Galina Vishnevskaya, London Philharmonic Orchestra. EMI, 023500.

 

  

 

 © Copyright Sigrid Harris 2008.

  

The Soviet Revolution

 The Soviet Revolution was a unique event in the history of mankind; it made Russia the first country to establish a communist regime, an actualisation of Marxist ideals. The revolutions of 1905 and February[1] 1917 paved the way for socialist revolution: the year 1905 saw the creation of soviets, councils elected by workers,[2] which became all-important in the upheavals of 1917 and indeed changed the face of Russia. Between 1905 and 1917, Russian government was remoulded from autocracy to fragile democracy and finally socialism.

 

The 1905 Revolution was the first step away from undiluted autocracy. Russia’s defeat in the war against Japan saw an upsurge in the population’s discontent. After Bloody Sunday, the massacre of about 130 workers bearing a petition to the Tsar, the whole nation rose in revolt.[3] The St Petersburg Soviet was established by socialist leaders to direct revolutionary activities; these reached a peak in October 1905, and the Tsar was forced to allow a legislative parliament to be elected.[4] The Russian people enjoyed greater civil and political rights as a result.

 

But the socio-economic climate gradually worsened. The First World War was one of the foremost catalysts of the February Revolution of 1917. The war had a severe impact on Russia: the army suffered a number of defeats and the country underwent an economic and social crisis; serious food shortages followed. The revolution was a spontaneous reaction to the appalling living conditions that were imposed on the majority of the people. In Petrograd,[5] 90, 000 people demonstrated for bread on February 23.[6] This escalated into a general strike on February 26, and the city garrison, which at first fought against the crowds, soon joined the revolutionaries.[7] With no army to defend it, the three-hundred-year-old Romanov Dynasty collapsed on March 3 and Russia became a de facto republic.[8]

 

Dual power was established: that of the new Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet. Essentially bourgeois, the Provisional Government consisted largely of liberals; although it enacted much progressive legislation,[9] it could not achieve the peace the masses craved, and neither did it carry out land reform.[10] Demonstrations effectively brought down the Provisional Government in April and as a result in May it became a coalition government, with moderate socialists from the Soviet among its ranks.[11] Nevertheless, the government went through a number of internal crises throughout 1917, and the Russian people were increasingly dissatisfied with it.

 

The Petrograd Soviet of Soldiers’ and Workers’ Deputies[12] represented the voice of the masses. It was divided between three main revolutionary parties: the Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. The Socialist Revolutionaries, who promised agrarian reforms, were ever-popular with the peasant majority of the Russian population. The Mensheviks and Bolsheviks shared a strong grounding in Marxist principles; however, while the Mensheviks rejected socialist revolution as premature, the Bolsheviks insisted that Russia was ready to instigate what they believed would be the first of a chain of socialist revolutions worldwide. Vladimir Lenin, their brilliantly politically-minded leader, spearheaded this radical cause.

 

It is in fact arguable that without Lenin the October Revolution would never have happened; without his leadership the Bolsheviks might have never had the urge, or the courage, to seize power. When he returned to Russia from Swiss exile he shocked members of his party with his April Theses. His ideas of immediate revolutionary action leading to socialism were greeted with almost unanimous opposition.[13] The dissenters were proved justified when the Bolsheviks staged an unsuccessful coup in July.[14] Numerous leading Bolsheviks were arrested, and Lenin escaped into exile in Finland. The party trembled on the verge of non-existence.[15]

 

But in August another crisis in the Coalition Government, the “Kornilov affair”, let the Bolsheviks regain their strength.[16] Public opinion of the Coalition Government and the moderate socialists represented in it plummeted. In early September, the Bolsheviks began to win majorities in the Petrograd and Moscow soviets,[17] and Leon Trotsky, a prominent Bolshevik, was elected chair of the Petrograd Soviet.

 

While it is controversial whether the October Revolution was a shrewd coup d’etat or an authentic proletarian revolution, it is certain that its success was due to the “complete disintegration of governmental authority.”[18] The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin¸ sprang to the opportunity to seize power in the name of the Soviet. During the night of October 24-25, Bolshevik troops[19] occupied key positions in Petrograd. On October 25, the troops took the Winter Palace; the weakened Coalition Government had no armed forces to protect it and was dissolved without much trouble. On October 26, the Bolsheviks declared that power had passed to the soviets.[20]

 

What followed was not the socialist coalition government that the masses expected, but a dictatorship by the Bolshevik party.[21] However, the regime took a long time to consolidate: the Bolsheviks had to conclude a peace with the major European powers and go through a long period of civil war before their power was secure. Russia finally became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1922.[22] Lenin and his exclusively Bolshevik government[23] succeeded in transforming Marxist doctrine into a reality, boldly transforming Russia into the first communist country in the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] All dates in this essay are Old Style.

[2] See Peter Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 8.

[3] “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”, The New Encyclopædia Britannica (Macropedia), 15^th ed., vol. 28 (Chicago, 1991) 998.

[4] The revolution was effectively suppressed, as were the soviets.

[5] Raphael Abramovitch, The Soviet Revolution 1917-1939 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1962), 12.

[6] Ibid., 12.

[7] Martin McCauley, The Soviet Union 1917-1991, 2^nd ed. (London: Longman, 1981), 1.

[8] Raphael Abramovitch, The Soviet Revolution 1917-1939 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1962), 2. Also see McCauley, The Soviet Union, 2.

[9] The Provisional Government abolished capital punishment, declared amnesty to political prisoners, and granted the people the right to strike. See ibid.

[10] Peace and land reform were intrinsically connected. With millions of peasants fighting for Russia it was impracticable for the Government to do anything about land reform. The troops would be severely deflated by peasants returning home to claim their piece of land, and the Government did not have the means to compensate the landlords for their loss. But peace would have been hard, almost impossible, to achieve. See Peter Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 22.

[11] McCauley, The Soviet Union, 4; see also Geoffrey Hosking, A History of the Soviet Union (London: Fontana Press, 1985), 47. Alexander Kerensky, a prominent Socialist Revolutionary, became Prime Minister in July. See Martin McCauley, Russia since 1914 (London: Longman, 1998), 7.

[12] A successor of the earlier St Petersburg Soviet, which had been liquidated by the Tsar. The Petrograd Soviet was established on 27 February, 1917. See McCauley, 1.

[13] The Petrograd Committee of the Bolshevik party rejected the theses 13 votes to 2, with 1 abstention. One comment by a Bolshevik on the April Theses was, “Delirium, the delirium of a madman!” See Edward Hallett Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, vol 1. (London: Macmillan, 1950), 79-81.

[14] The “July Days”. See McCauley, The Soviet Union, 4.

[15] McCauley, The Soviet Union, 5.

[16] Although some aspects of the affair remain ambiguous, it seems that Kerensky saw General Kornilov as a threat from the right and ordered him to send troops to suppress an imaginary second Bolshevik coup. When Kornilov did this, Kerensky charged him of treason. Kornilov and his close colleagues were arrested. See Hosking, 47.

[17] McCauley, The Soviet Union, 6.

[18] Peter Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 28.

[19] The Bolsheviks utilised the Soviet’s Military Revolutionary Committee and the Red Guards, a group of armed revolutionary workers, and gathered a following of radical soldiers and sailors. The movements of the forces were planned by Trotsky. See “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”, 998.

[20] The October Revolution had been planned to coincide with the the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. When the Bolsheviks declared the Provisional Government had been overthrown and power had passed to the soviets the Mensheviks and Right Socialist Revolutionaries left the congress in protest, leaving Bolsheviks and left Socialist Revolutionaries in the majority. McCauley, The Soviet Union, 8.

[21] When the Constituent Assembly convened in November, Socialist Revolutionaries gained a majority of the votes, 40.4 %. The Bolsheviks, receiving no more than 24 %, promptly shut the assembly down. See “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”, 998.

[22] Wikipedia: Soviet Union, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union (accessed May 10, 2008).

[23] Some leading Bolsheviks resigned in protest against a one-party government. After about a month the party admitted some Left Socialist Revolutionaries into its folds, but they were forced to agree to Bolshevik policies. The Socialist Revolutionaries, however, left the government in protest against Lenin’s peace terms with Germany. Indeed, democracy was brutally quashed: in the next few months the Bolsheviks labelled all parties against the new regime as counterrevolutionaries and closed down non-Bolshevik newspapers and journals. See Kenez, 29-30.

 

Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis

Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis is a unique setting of the mass. Though Beethoven set out to write it for the celebration of the enthronisation of his favourite pupil and royal patron, the Archduke Rudolph, as the Archbishop of Olmütz,[1] this was merely a pretext to set upon a highly personal journey of self-questioning. For in the mass, Beethoven delved into the roots of his own faith, vigorously upturning the soil of his beliefs. The composition of the mass was inevitable: the ideas behind it must have been born in Beethoven’s mind much earlier than the year of 1818 when it became known that the Archduke Rudolph was to be enthronised. But the mass was never completed in time for the ceremony, and went through a gestation period of four years before it was finished. By the time it emerged full-fledged into the world, it had gained a wholly new dimension – not only was it enormous in sheer size, but it had become something of a personal testimony. Whilst retaining some points of contact with previous classical mass settings, the work is unconventional in its borrowing from older traditions. Essentially personal, it is more an individual assertion of faith than a public and institutional one and had considerable influence on the masses and requiems of 19^th-century composers. This essay will examine how the mass relates to, and diverges from, previous classical settings of the mass both in style and as a public and institutional assertion of faith; further, the work’s fundamentally personal nature will be expounded on, as well as its influence on the masses and requiems of Schubert, Brahms and Dvorak.

 

As the Missa Solemnis is a work dating from Beethoven’s late period, it is only to be expected that it is in many ways extraordinary. It is then no surprise that the relationship it bears to previous classical mass settings is a curious one. Beethoven owes many of his basic forms to the tradition of the Viennese classical mass;[2] he was influenced to the greatest degree by Haydn. Like other Viennese masses, the Missa Solemnis does not follow most of the directives of the Roman Missal as to how masses should be composed – for example, in the Credo, as in the Gloria, the Roman Missal directs that the first words, “Credo in unum Deum”, should be intoned by the priest; these words are never set in early masses, such as those of Palestrina. But composers of Viennese masses almost always set the opening words for choir, and Beethoven did likewise. Nevertheless, the masses of Viennese composers were mostly missa breves, masses so brief that they had to employ time-saving devices such as the overlapping of verbal phrases.[3] Beethoven, on the other hand, treated the set text with the deepest respect. The Missa Solemnis is most comparable to Haydn’s solemn masses, which show “an expansion of scale over previous masses in the Viennese tradition.”[4]

 

Haydn’s Missa in tempore belli includes fanfares in the trumpets and drums at the climaxes of both the Benedictus and Agnus Dei;[5] in the Agnus Dei of the Missa Solemnis, we hear similar fanfares. These fanfares did not serve merely decorative purposes – they reflected on the political and military situation of the time. In the 1820’s the military threat of both the Turks and Napoleon was still fresh in the memories of the Viennese, and thus the political climate came to be reflected in the music.

 

Nevertheless, whilst Haydn’s “war music” is almost genial in character, the interruptions of the trumpets and timpani in the “Dona nobis” of the Agnus Dei in the Missa Solemnis are severely disquieting. We are reminded that peace may be temporary and that the enemy may still be lurking in the distance. No composer except Beethoven would have dared to treat the Agnus Dei with such pessimism. Although the first section of the movement was traditionally treated in a minor key, in the Missa Solemnis it has a black subterranean resonance about it that is unparalleled. Beethoven set the section in B minor, “a dark tonality”[6] which he very rarely used. Considering the text,[7] his treatment of it might suggest that he felt deep anguish about the suffering of Christ for the redemption of humanity; the pained mourning of the solo voices is weighed down by the presence of sin which they beg to have absolved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As convention decrees, the “Dona nobis” is in the major and involves a suitably communal and joyful – although not exultant – choir. It even includes some pastoral music, which reflects the kind of peace Beethoven must have desired for himself as well as for Vienna. But more than once when the piece seems to be drawing to a close the music is interrupted by the persistent rumble of the timpani, which reminds us again that the prayer for peace must not necessarily be granted. The interpretation of the text is highly personal – and this may be said of the whole mass.

 

Although Beethoven’s greatest influence among the classical composers was Haydn, he was also influenced by Cherubini, whose mass writing was more contrapuntal than that of Haydn’s. Cherubini’s earliest masses “show his intensive practice in the stile antico”[8] and in his mass in F he included a fugue in the “Christe Eleison” section of the Kyrie as well as extensive fugues in the usual places.[9] This must have appealed to Beethoven, who by his late period had come by something of an obsession for fugal writing.

 

As has been demonstrated, the Missa Solemnis retains several points of contact with previous classical mass settings, and upon deeper analysis further technical similarities could be discovered. However, it diverges from its predecessors because it is essentially a personal assertion of faith, not a public and institutional one. The setting is greatly original in nature and hardly fits within the confines of the classical style. It is deeply unorthodox, including many deliberate archaisms – the mass is entrenched in musical traditions much older than those of Beethoven’s immediate predecessors. In the Gloria and Credo especially, “the traditions of the Viennese mass are made to accommodate older traditions deliberately resuscitated; Beethoven rubs shoulders with Haydn (the Haydn of the masses), Palestrina, Handel and Bach.”[10] That Beethoven studied the music of these composers it is certain: according to Thayer, when Beethoven died he possessed full scores of Handel’s Messiah and Alexander’s Feast, and Bach’s Art of Fugue, as well as the works of his classical contemporaries.[11]

 

Beethoven’s admiration for Handel was great. There was a blazing, radiant quality to much of Handel’s choral writing which Beethoven took and metamorphosed. Many of the choral passages in the Missa Solemnis have a glowingly joyous quality to them. In the Gloria, for example, the blaze of the voices is almost aggressively exultant, the upper female voices sounding out the beautiful wrath of avenging angels.[12] These angels were more than a congregation, but actual spirits glowing with a personal flame. That the Baroque master influenced Beethoven to a great extent there can be no doubt.[13]

 

The Missa Solemnis also touches on the realm of Palestrina and his contemporaries. The aura of early music can be felt in many places, such as “Et resurrexit” in the Credo, during which the choral tenors are joined in rhythmical unison by the the altos and basses in an a cappella declamation of the words that is reminiscent of 16^th-century masses. Another example of reference to early music is “Et in terra pax” in the Kyrie; it has a modal flavour and is strongly reminiscent, with its rhythmical unison, of the Gregorian chant. Beethoven’s study of early music is obvious; not only was he familiar with the masses of Palestrina but he had already envisioned the use of “the ancient modes” in another project.[14] Thus it could be said that Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis is something of a time machine: travelling from his classical Viennese present back through the centuries, and indeed even heralding the future in his innovative creation.

 

Another of the startlingly unconventional facets of the mass is the predominance of instrumental music within it; not only is there an extensive violin solo in the Sanctus and Benedictus that seems to transcend earthly dimensions, but the orchestra “sings” the rhythm of the words “Kyrie eleison” before the choir enters. The military kit of trumpet and drums is present from the very beginning, though its role is most dominant in the Agnus Dei. It may thus be concluded that within the mass, the orchestra is not confined to the role of accompaniment but actually plays an almost equal part to the singers.

 

In the Sanctus and Benedictus another artistic unorthodoxy comes to light. Conventionally, there are two sections to the movement, the first beginning with “Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus” and the second with “Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini”; according to the Roman Missal there should indeed be a small gap between the two to make time for the Elevation of the Host. During this gap there was sometimes a modest improvisation by the organist. In the Missa Solemnis, however, Beethoven linked the sections together, breaking with tradition and treading on completely new ground.[15]

 

From what has already been stated, the Missa Solemnis is a highly individual interpretation of the mass text and serves as a personal assertion of faith. Despite being intended for a public ceremony, it grew into a colossal statement of Beethoven’s beliefs and ideas. It contains the depths of Beethoven’s most private spiritual feeling, which is innovatively often communicated first by the group of soloists and is echoed and built on by the chorus and orchestra. Traditionally, in festive masses the solo singers expected to have extensive virtuosic passages in which they could exhibit their vocal technique to the full. Beethoven, however, followed Haydn by treating his soloists more as a concertante group interweaving with the choir, as was the Baroque practice. He went entirely against the grain by giving the solo voices, who usually had no narrative significance whatever, almost all the subjective utterance: the soloists became his spokespeople for the most personal statements of belief and the most troubling questionings, whilst the choir became the community, the congregation, repeating the soloists’ declarations in sheep-like awe.[16] The choir then serves to symbolise institutional belief and perhaps in a broader sense collective humanity, whereas the soloists are individuals.

 

Nevertheless, despite its personal nature, the mass does have communal aspects. The majestic vastness of the chorus and orchestra mandates that the strength of the universal feeling that is demonstrated by the performers creates a powerful binding force that is far beyond something private and personal in the manner of chamber music. But this very greatness of feeling stems from Beethoven’s mind and could only take shape in something truly monumental. Any less than the forces he employed would not be sufficient for the assertion of his personal beliefs. The presence of the soloists in the mass proves it to be a personal work in essence.

 

The individualised setting of the Missa Solemnis had considerable influence on masses of the 19^th century, particularly those of Schubert and Bruckner, as well as on the requiems of Brahms and Dvorak. Nineteenth century masses in general turned away from liturgical use and were most frequently found in the concert hall. Not being institutional any longer, the masses immediately gained a more personal flavour, and composers became freer to express their own individual religious feeling. This was very much in accord with the spirit of Romanticism. Beethoven’s retrieval of past traditions also influenced his successors – reaching back into earlier periods served to enrich their musical language, as well as to give their work an aura of timelessness. It must therefore be acknowledged that Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis set a unique example for subsequent mass settings and requiems, an example that could be labelled a pursuit for inner truth.

 

It is notable that the mature masses of Schubert were almost all based upon internal impulse rather on external events, and his whole work as a composer is saturated in personal religious devotion. The Mass in E flat is perhaps the most personal of all his masses. The inheritance of the symphonic style is clearly Beethovenian, and “the concluding Gloria and Credo fugues, with their sharply chiselled subjects, suggest a composer who had studied Beethoven’s Missa solemnis.”[17] The Agnus Dei is not only full of colourful chromaticisms but harks back to Bach, taking as its basis an adaptation of the C sharp minor fugue subject from the first book of Bach’s Das wohltemperirte Clavier.[18] Thus it is not only highly individual in its subjective idiom but also in the way it draws on past traditions.

 

Brahms’ German Requiem is, to say the least, unorthodox. Brahms entirely substitutes the Latin text of the Requiem with an independent collection of German texts that has no liturgical purpose. [19] Brahms’ comment on his own work, “I will admit that I could happily omit the ‘German’ and simply say ‘Human’…” describes the requiem astutely. Although taking from the Christian tradition, there is no direct mention of redemption through Christ throughout the whole work, making it universally religious rather than limited to a particular cult. In all of this inheritance from the Missa Solemnis can be found.

 

Dvorak’s Requiem is a haunting work very different to Brahms’ setting of a similar name, yet it likewise shows many traces of the influence of the Missa Solemnis. Dvorak was deeply religious, but his setting of the text is non-liturgical and closer to an oratorio than anything else. It is symphonic and almost shockingly personal in nature, and reaches far back into the traditions of the Gregorian chant as well as those of the Czech Gothic hymn. Further, the chromatic four-note motif that recurs consistently throughout the work seems to indirectly quote the fugue subject of the second Kyrie subsection in Bach’s B minor mass, one of the monuments of the choral settings of the Baroque period.

 

In conclusion, the Missa Solemnis is wonderfully astonishing in many ways. Although it obeys some conventions of Viennese mass writing, it could hardly be called a public and institutional assertion of faith in any normal sense, and is indeed so personal that had it been truly understood during its time it would have likely caused a scandal. It is perhaps not wholly comprehended even today – there are some things about such a work that must remain a mystery, veiled to all but the spirit of Beethoven incarnate in the music. Its individualistic and personal nature unsurprisingly had an impact on subsequent 19^th century settings, and indeed even on those of the 20^th century. Beethoven’s genius had an enormous impact on all music and musicians that came after him – and there is no greater example of that genius than the Missa Solemnis. So long as humanity lasts on this earth, the spirit of Beethoven will forever live on through it.

 

  

 

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

 

 

Score examined:

 

Beethoven, Ludwig van, ed. Willy Hess. Missa Solemnis., London: Ernst Eulenburg, n.d.

 

Sources consulted:

 

Bozarth, George S., and Frisch, Walter. “Brahms, Johannes.” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Ed. Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan Press, 2001. Vol. 4, pp. 180-227.

 

Cooper, Martin. Beethoven: The Last Decade 1817-1827. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.

 

Doge, Klaus. “Dvorak, Antonin.” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Ed. Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan Press, 2001. Vol. 7, pp. 777-814.

 

Drabkin, William. Beethoven: Missa Solemnis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

 

Fiske, Roger. Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. London: Paul Elek, 1979.

 

Hindley, Geoffrey, ed., The Larousse Encyclopedia of Music. N.p.: Hamlyn, 1994. 17^th impression.

 

Jones, David Wyn. The Life of Beethoven, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

 

Kerman, Joseph, et al. “Beethoven, Ludwig van.” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Ed. Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan Press, 2001. Vol. 3, pp. 73-140.

 

Kirkendale, Warren. “New roads to old ideas in Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis.” The Creative World of Beethoven. Ed. Paul Henry Lang. New York: Norton, 1970.

 

McKinnon, James W., et al. “Mass.” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Ed. Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan Press, 2001. Vol.16, pp. 58-85.

 

Solomon, Maynard. Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, Imagination. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

 

Sullivan, J.W.N. Beethoven: His Spiritual Development. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1979.

 

Tame, David. Beethoven and the Spiritual Path. Illinois: Theosophical Publishing House, 1994.

 

Thayer, Alexander Wheelock. Thayer’s Life of Beethoven. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967.

 

Winter, Robert. “Reconstructing Riddles: The Sources for Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis.” Eds. Lewis Lockwood and Phyllis Benjamin. Beethoven Essays: Studies in Honor of Elliot Forbes. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1984.

 

Winter, Robert, et al. “Schubert, Franz.” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Ed. Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan Press, 2001. Vol. 22, pp.655-729.

 

 

 

 

 

.

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[1] Joseph Kerman, et al, “Beethoven, Ludwig”, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (Macmillan Press, London, 2001), vol. 3, pp. 73-140.

[2] See Roger Fiske, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis (Paul Elek, London, 1979), Chapter 1.

[3] Composers such as Mozart and Michael Haydn were commissioned by the Archbishop of Salzburg to write masses that were limited to approximately 20 minutes in length, which made the repetition of words in the Gloria and the Credo impossible.

[4] James W. McKinnon, et al, “Mass”, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (Macmillan Press, London, 2001), vol.16, p. 81.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Beethoven once made a note calling it this. See Willy Hess’ Introduction to the Eulenburg score, p. xiii.

[7] Lamb of God, thou takest away the sins of the world.

[8] James W. McKinnon, et al, “Mass”, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Macmillan Press, 2001), vol. 16, p. 81.

[9] Ibid.

[10] J. Kerman, et al, “Beethoven”, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2001, vol. 3, p. 105.

[11] Alexander Wheelock Thayer, Thayer’s Life of Beethoven (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1967).

[12] Richard Toop, Lecture (Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Monday, 7^th of May, 2007).

[13] It is known that Beethoven actually copied out Handel’s Hallelujah chorus from the Messiah by hand in preparation for the writing of the Missa solemnis.

[14] Also for voices. Beethoven once said that “Pure church music should be performed only by voices…” That the Missa solemnis would not comply with Beethoven’s own notion of “pure” church music is suggestive: the mass is not in any way a conventional institutional setting. See Geoffrey Hindley, ed. The Larousse Encyclopedia of Music (n.p., Hamlyn, 1994), p. 268.

[15] Roger Fiske, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, (Paul Elek, London, 1979), p. 12.

 

[16] Although at other times, they were more like “the heavenly host” that Handel thought he saw before him whilst he composed. Richard Toop, Lecture (Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Monday, 7^th of May, 2007).

[17] Robert Winter, et al, “Schubert, Franz”, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (Macmillan Press, London, 2001), vol. 22, p. 680.

[18]Ibid., p. 681.

[19] Fifteen passages from Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible.

Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto: Program notes

Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Major, Opus 35 (Published 1888)

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893)  

1. Allegro moderato
2. Andante (Canzonetta)
3. Finale: Allegro vivacissimo

  

Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto is one of the best-loved works that exists in its genre. A standard of the violin repertoire, it is perhaps the violinistic equivalent of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in sheer virtuosity. The famous violin concerto was born in Clarens, Switzerland, a resort town on the shore of Lake Geneva, where Tchaikovsky had gone to calm his vulnerable nerves after fleeing from a disastrous marriage with one of his pupils, Antonina Milyukova. Work on the concerto seemed to give Tchaikovsky respite, and he threw himself into it with great enthusiasm. In a letter to his patroness Nadezhda von Meck dated March 19, 1878, he wrote: “For the first time in my life I have begun to work on a new piece before finishing the one on hand. I could not resist the pleasure of sketching out the concerto, and allowed myself to be so carried away that the sonata has been set aside.”[1] Carried away he indeed must have been, for on April 20 he wrote to Meck that the concerto was completed.

Despite its breathtaking and sometimes chilling beauty, several obstacles had to be overcome before the concerto became recognised. First of all, Leopold Auer, the celebrated concert violinist to whom Tchaikovsky had dedicated the work, deemed it “unplayable”.[2] This was enough to make Tchaikovsky dubious of the concerto’s future. In his diary he wrote: “This verdict, coming from such an authority, had the effect of casting this unfortunate child of my imagination for many years to come into the limbo of hopelessly forgotten things.”[3]

It would indeed be almost four years until the work would receive a public premiere: this took place in Vienna on December 4, 1881. The violinist was Adolf Brodsky, to whom Tchaikovsky promptly re-dedicated the score; the orchestra was the Vienna Philharmonic, under Hans Richter’s baton. Critical reception was mixed: although some reviews were positive, most were adverse. Eduard Hanslick lashed out his venoms on the piece: “The violin is no longer played…it is beaten black and blue,” he wrote. “We see wild and vulgar faces, we hear curses, we smell bad brandy…Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto brings us for the first time the horrid idea that there may be music that stinks to the ear.”[4]

Time would prove Hanslick’s opinions to be nothing but laughable pieces of ill-humour. The Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto has survived to become one of the most respected masterpieces in the violin repertoire, and it has been played by all the legendary violinists. It possesses a wide emotional vocabulary, ranging from the brilliant-triumphant to heartbreak and melancholy.

The first movement is full of grace and charm, permeated as it is by a dignified lyricism which could be seen as stemming from Tchaikovsky’s peaceful surrounds of Lake Geneva. But it also contains gaping chasms in which the enormity of life and death seems to be exposed to the listener. In some of the orchestral passages one is indeed reminded of the “Fate music” of the Symphony No. 4, which Tchaikovsky had composed the year before. Strong emotional turbulence is apparent in the orchestra just before the cadenza. At the climax of the orchestra’s tempest the violin re-enters with chordal exclamation marks, momentarily interrupting the storm: the orchestral strings reply with their fierce semiquaver-quaver theme. This is a good demonstration of that which lies at the heart of concertante music. The word concerto itself comes from Latin, meaning “to fight; to dispute”.[5] Though in more peaceful passages it can be more of a conversation between the solo instrument and orchestra, the competition for supremacy between the two is one of the defining aspects of the concerto genre. In this particular example, the polarity between solo violin and orchestra is intensified until the violin emerges victorious in the cadenza.

The cadenza is a characteristic of the concerto inherited by the Romantics from their Classical predecessors. However, while composers such as Mozart and Beethoven simply wrote the word “Cadenza” in the score and expected the soloist to improvise on the spot during the performance, the typical Romantic cadenza was written in by the composer so as to give him greater control over the work. In Tchaikovsky’s cadenza, the main themes of the movement are present in varied form, skilfully interlaced by arpeggios and descending chromatic scales to give the cadenza an improvisatory character. The cadenza eventually merges into the recapitulation: there is a special purity in the way the flutes reintroduce the first theme over the violin’s prolonged trill. The recapitulation is almost the same as the exposition of the work, though perhaps even more heavenly in its hovering around the tonic or “home” key. The movement comes to a triumphant close, saturated in technical virtuosity in the solo violin part and glorious harmonies in the orchestra.

The second movement, Andante Cantabile (“Canzonetta”)[6] is in complete contrast to the first: the mournful voices of the winds set the mood, and when the muted violin enters it is melancholy from the bottom of the heart. Tchaikovsky’s music voices unspeakable despair; the intimacy of the deep sadness of the second movement is unparallelled anywhere else in the concerto. But if the first section of the Canzonetta is permeated by heart-broken unhappiness, then the second has the joie de vivre of spring sunshine. The mute is taken off and the strings resound with natural openness. Nevertheless, towards the end of the section the musical skies darken considerably: we are eventually brought back to the music of the first section, slightly modified and still without mute. In contrast to the first time it was played, its character is that of active unhappiness, not passive dejection. The violin’s sound eventually dissolves, and the winds recollect their opening strain and take us to the end of the movement, which is immediately followed by the finale.

The last movement erupts into existence: after an excited orchestral introduction, the violin’s quasi-improvisatory statement leads to a vigorously energetic Russian dance played with joyous abandon. That is not to say the movement does not have quieter moments: the second theme, introduced by the winds, has a sweetly nostalgic feeling. It is a movement of contrasts: from light playfulness it jumps into roguish passages full of colour and then again sobers down to moments of deep feeling. But the movement ends as it starts: with a bang. The concerto, so full of change and different moods, could be said to be a philosophical statement about life.

   

Bibliography

Wiley, Roland John. “Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Il’yich.” Grove Music Online. Ed L. Macy. http://grovemusic.com (accessed August 11, 2007)

Ramey, Phillip. Liner notes to Tchaikovsky: Concertos. Emil Gilels and Pinchas Zukerman. Conducted by Zubin Mehta. MDK 44643.

Potter, Tully. Liner notes to Brahms/Tchaikovsky: Violin Concertos. David Oistrakh. Conducted by Sir Malcom Sargent and Norman Del Mar. BBCL 41022.

   

Discography

Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Il’yich. Tchaikovsky: Concertos. Emil Gilels and Pinchas Zukerman. Conducted by Zubin Mehta. MDK 44643.

Brahms, Johannes, and Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Il’yich. Brahms/Tchaikovsky: Violin Concertos. David Oistrakh. Conducted by Sir Malcom Sargent and Norman Del Mar. BBCL 41022.

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[1] Phillip Ramey, liner notes to Tchaikovsky: Concertos, Emil Gilels and Pinchas Zukerman, conducted by Zubin Mehta, MDK 44643.

[2] Tully Potter, liner notes to Brahms/Tchaikovsky: Violin Concertos, David Oistrakh, conducted by Sir Malcom Sargent and Norman Del Mar, BBCL 41022.

[3] Phillip Ramey, liner notes to Tchaikovsky: Concertos, Emil Gilels and Pinchas Zukerman, conducted by Zubin Mehta, MDK 44643.

[4] Ibid.

[5] D.A. Kidd and Mary Wade, Collins Latin Dictionary & Grammar, Latin-English, p. 43.

[6]Cantabile means “in a singing style” and a  canzonetta is a little song.

The Rise and Decline of Buddhism in India

When Buddhism arose in India in the 6^th century B.C.E. it quickly grew into a great religion, due to a multiplicity of reasons. Nevertheless, after several centuries it began to decline, and by the thirteenth century C.E. it had disappeared from its native land altogether.[1] A different set of environmental factors played a part in both the rise and the decline. At its inception, the spiritual climate of India was ideal for the founding of a new religion; Brahmanism had lost its appeal and the alternative ascetic practices that some resorted to were not suitable for the majority of people. Buddhism provided a path to Nirvana that everyone could take, and the innate compassion at the heart of the Buddha’s teachings drew many to it. But the gradual decay of its moral and intellectual standards and the emergence of a new Hinduism, combined with the anti-Buddhist campaigns of the Muslims, ushered the religion to its decline.

At the time Siddhartha Gautama[2] was born, India was a land of prevailing social unrest and political instability. There were sixteen major states and several smaller ones in northern India alone. Though there were many different forms of government, monarchies and oligarchical republics were predominant. A money economy had developed, giving rise to an immense accumulation of wealth in the mercantile class in particular. Merchants were frequently wealthier than kings, creating a dire struggle between political and economic power. As A.K. Warder observes, “In this society most people found their freedom seriously and increasingly restricted, their property and their lives insecure, the future uncertain and probably worse than the past.”[3]

The traditional religion of India, Brahmanism, could offer little comfort to the common people. The brahmins, the top social caste, had become extremely powerful due to their crucial role in the execution of sacrifices, which, if correctly performed, had immense mystical potency.[4] Nevertheless, few could afford to pay for these sacrifices. Brahmanism, with recondite teachings that were understood only by the uppermost elite, had little appeal for the masses.

Many were dissatisfied with Brahmanical society, and a number of unorthodox philosophical sects arose. The main schools were those of the Jains, Ajivikas, Lokayatas, and Agnostics. But the rigorous ascetic practices engendered by most of these were too exacting for the majority of householders.

The new school of unorthodoxy founded by the Buddha, on the other hand, demanded no intense physical austerities; his teachings were simple and empirical, accessible to all. Unlike Brahmanism, which was essentially ritualistic and mythological, the Buddha’s teachings were inherently psychological. He stated that each person could achieve Nirvana, the ultimate spiritual fulfilment and dissolution of the ego. He preached in the vernacular, Pali, so even the lower castes could hear his message. Buddhism effectively ignored caste – all castes could follow the Middle Way and eventually gain enlightenment, no matter how low they were in society. An order of nuns was established alongside an order of monks; in all of this there was a pervading notion of social equality that gave the religion strength. As well as the religion’s optimistic outlook on the potential of each individual to transcend suffering, its accessibility and democracy rendered it immensely appealing to the people.

The establishment of the Sangha[5] played an important role in the religion’s rise. The Sangha referred to the community of monks and nuns which linked all Buddhist monasteries together; it served as a spiritual example for the lay community. Buddhism was a proselytising religion; its monks and nuns were zealous about spreading the Buddha’s message, and some monks even risked their lives by travelling out of India to preach the way out of suffering. Thus, the Sangha played a crucial role to the early success of Buddhism.

Buddhism was also highly economical. The lavish expenditure required for Vedic sacrifices had taken its toll on many; monarchs had often taxed their subjects for the funds and those in poorer circumstances had no means of assuring their personal prosperity by sacrifice. Following the Eightfold Path of the Buddha, on the other hand, cost nothing.

The royal patronage Buddhism gained from its very inception further strengthened the religion.  The Buddha, a Kshatriya prince who had forsaken his former life to gain enlightenment, attracted the notice of many kings. Bimbisara and Ajatasatru of Magadha and Prasenajit of Kosala were only a few of the numerous rulers who converted to the new religion.[6] The support of the ruling class would become significant to the propagation of Buddhism, but it was only one of the many factors that surrounded the religion’s rise. It was the innate merit of the Buddha’s teachings that, sowed in the right historical environment, assured the religion a blossoming future.

But Buddhism’s glory in India would not last forever: in the 7^th century C.E., the Chinese Buddhist monk Hsüan Tsang noted that Theravada Buddhism was hovering on the verge of non-existence in most of the Indian subcontinent.[7] Buddhism as a whole had already embarked on a steady decline. It was becoming tainted in many ways: “From the end of the Gupta period onwards Indian religion became more and more permeated with primitive ideas of sympathetic magic and sexual mysticism, and Buddhism was much affected by these developments.”[8] The direct result of this permeation was the birth of a third vehicle,[9] “the Vehicle of the Thunderbolt”, Vajrayana. This new sect misinterpreted religious tenets and allowed the use of intoxicants; it was also lenient in the upholding of celibacy.[10]

The Sangha as a whole became corrupt. From the many donations it received, it became rich, and monks began to ignore the tenth rule of the Vinaya and accepted silver and gold. The Mahayana school introduced expensive rituals and ceremonies into the religion, causing it to cease to be economical.

Another Chinese traveller of the 7^th century, Yuan Chwang, wrote “The different schools are constantly at variance, and their utterances rise like angry waves of the sea…there are 18 schools, each claiming pre-eminence.”[11] The many rivalries between sects destroyed the image the masses held of Buddhism. The religious texts of the Mahayana and Vajrayana schools began to be written in Sanskrit, a literary language that most Indians did not understand; this further distanced Buddhism from the common people.

Much of the decline of Buddhism was caused by its own failings; it could not meet the popularity of the re-emerged Hinduism. As an essentially non-theistic religion, it could not achieve the same success with the masses as Hinduism, which possessed a pantheon of gods that could intervene in the affairs of men if appeased. The moral corruption of Buddhism also caused a degeneration in its intellectual standards; the Hindus, on the other hand, had a strong scholarly foundation.

After the renowned Buddhist king Ashoka, the majority of Indian rulers supported the new Hinduism. It had the patronage of the Gupta rulers and most of the Rajput rulers, ensuring it prosperity and success among the people. Hinduism also incorporated many Buddhistic elements, such as preaching monks and religious processions; it further claimed the Mahatma Buddha as one of the incarnations of the lord Vishnu. Therefore the common man did not make any great distinction between Hinduism and Buddhism; the new Hinduism embraced some of Buddhism, making it unnecessary for the masses to honour Buddhism alone.[12]

Persecution of Buddhists also played a part in the downfall of the religion. The Muslim invasions left India scarred; the invaders destroyed Buddhist monasteries and universities wherever they went. As Warder writes, “It is hardly necessary to emphasise the thoroughness with which the older religions have been obliterated in practically every country where Muslims have ruled for any length of time.”[13] Though Hinduism was able to sustain itself through these times, Buddhism had been increasingly weak and these raids dealt a final blow.

To conclude, Buddhism from its inception was a religion that captured the enthusiasm of the rich and poor alike. It was a religion that preached a way out of suffering, in a simple and direct fashion that could be understood by the common man. Unlike the Brahmanism that had become too recondite and scholarly for the masses, Buddhism fulfilled the spiritual needs of the people; every person could work their way towards enlightenment. Its notions of social equality earned it much success and the establishment of the Sangha gave it strength. As it was a proselytising religion it spread quickly. It flourished for centuries, but eventually, the corruption of the Sangha, the rivalries between sects, and the lack of protection from the ruling class weakened Buddhism and made it unable to compete with the reformed Hinduism. The anti-Buddhist campaigns led by the Muslims caused its final downfall, and Buddhism eventually entirely disappeared from India between 1000 and 1200 C.E.[14] It left India with a rich legacy that was partially incorporated into Hinduism, and owing to the zest of the Buddhist missionaries, numerous countries were converted to Buddhism; many of them remain Buddhist to this day. Buddhism is at present a world religion, and humankind is the better for it.

                                            

Bibliography

   

Bailey, G. and Mabbett, I., The Sociology of Early Buddhism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Basham, A. L., The Wonder That Was India: A Survey of the Culture of the Indian Subcontinent Before the Coming of the Muslims, London, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1954.

Conze, E., Buddhism: Its Essence and Development, Oxford, Bruno Cassirer, 1951.

De Bary, W. T., ed., Sources of Indian Tradition, vol. 1, New York, Columbia University Press, 1958.

Hirakawa, A., trans. & ed. Groner, P., A History of Indian Buddhism: From Sakyamuni to Early Mahayana, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1990.

Lamotte, E, trans. Webb-Boin, S., History of Indian Buddhism : from the origins to the Saka era, Louvain-la-Neuve, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut orientaliste, 1988.

Kitagawa, J.M. and Cummings, M.D., eds., Buddhism and Asian History, New York, Macmillan, 1989.

Ling, T., The Buddha: Buddhist Civilisation in India and Ceylon, London, Temple Smith, 1973.

Panikkar, K.M., A Survey of Indian History, London, Asia Publishing House, 1963.

Prebish, C.S., The A to Z of Buddhism, Lanham, Scarecrow Press, 2001.

Rice, E., Eastern Definitions, New York, Doubleday, 1980.

Robinson, R.H., et al., Buddhist Religions: A Historical Introduction, 5^th ed., California, Wadsworth and Thompson, 2005. 

Smith, H., The World’s Religions, San Francisco, Harper SanFrancisco, 1991.

Sharma, L.P., History of Ancient India, Delhi, Konark, 1987.

Thapar, R., A History of India, vol. 1, London, Penguin, 1990.

 Thapar, R., Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2000. 

Warder, A.K., Indian Buddhism, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1980.

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[1] E. Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development, Oxford, 1951, p.117.

[2] Called the Buddha (“Enlightened One”) by posterity; also known as Tathagata (“Thus-Come”) or Shakyamuni (“Sage of the Shakyas”). The accepted dates of his life are 567-487 B.C.E; see K.M. Panikar, A Survey of Indian History, London, 1963, p. 19.

[3] A.K. Warder, Indian Buddhism, Delhi, 1980, p. 30.

[4] Ibid, p. 67.

[5] Loosely translated as “Church”.

[6] L.P. Sharma, History of Ancient India, Delhi, 1987, p. 86.

[7] A.L. Basham, The Wonder That Was India, London, 1954, p.265.

[8] A.L. Basham, The Wonder That Was India: A Survey of the Culture of the Indian Sub-Continent Before the Coming of the Muslims, London, 1954, p. 265.

[9] The other two vehicles were Hinayana (“Lesser Vehicle”, also known as Theravada) and Mahayana (“Greater Vehicle”).

[10] A.L. Basham, The Wonder That Was India, London, 1954, p. 265.

[11] Quoted in L.P. Sharma, History of Ancient India, Delhi, 1987, p. 87.

[12] A.L. Basham, The Wonder That Was India, London, 1954, pp. 265-266.

[13] A.K. Warder, Indian Buddhism, Delhi, 1980, p. 508.

[14] E. Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development, Oxford, 1951, p.117.

Concert review archive 2007

Cocktail Hour Recital Series
Katie Zhukov, piano
6 July 2007
Recital Hall East
Sydney Conservatorium of Music

It was an evening in another dimension. The predominantly Romantic repertoire and the fluidity with which Zhukov’s fingers moved across the keys allowed a spell to be cast: a spell as much brought about by silence as by the dulcet tones of the Steinway piano.

Beethoven’s “Pathetique” Sonata had an overall smooth technical finish, and the contemplative beauty of the second movement was mesmerising. But in certain passages in the outer movements some clarity was lost, possibly due to overenthusiastic use of pedal. I also felt that Zhukov could have brought out more passion in places: although the sonata is still part of Beethoven’s early output and clearly belongs to Viennese Classicism, it contains depths so powerful that it harbingers the Romantic Era. That aside, the few brief moments of suspended silence were full of unspoken emotion.

The name Un Sospiro literally means “a sigh” in Italian: if Liszt’s concert etude were programme music depicting just that it could hardly have been more aptly named. Zhukov’s interpretation evoked images of the sea glinting in the sun, painted in a wide range of tone colours; the contrast between the pellucid calm and the more turbulent themes was well brought out.

Brahms wrote in a letter to a friend that his Three Intermezzi, Op. 117, were “lullabies of my sorrow”, a comment that explains the yearning quality of the music. The speculation that the intermezzi have something akin to Scottish balladry seems sound: they were by turns brooding, mysterious, dramatic, and even hypnotic, proving a hybrid feast for the ear. Rachmaninov was also honoured in Zhukov’s rendition of three of his preludes. Overall, it was a magical concert, triumphant in its choice of repertoire and performed with grace.

ACO2
20 August 2007
Verbrugghen Hall
Sydney Conservatorium of Music

It was a night of mixed delights. Members of the ACO were joined by younger performers from the ACO’s prestigious professional development programme to form the ACO2, a sparkling, swaying ensemble. The Baroque-encrusted, Classico-Romantic-centred repertoire was brought to life with the crisp, innovative sound so characteristic of the ACO. Many of the young performers showed themselves to be budding equals of their mentors, showing the ACO2’s aims to be justified.

Vivaldi’s Concerto for Four Violins in B Minor (Op. 3, No. 10) was magnificent. But the highlight of the night was formed by the Beethoven Op. 18 string quartets. Graceful, elegant, and sophisticated, the music shimmered through the hall. Although I felt that the meditative passages could generally be deeper and more emotional beneath the surface, Beethoven’s great passion was brought across whilst still retaining the refined touch of Classicism. Technique was generally fluid and clear, and the balance pleasing. Although there were several places where intonation between the instruments was not perfect and the music occasionally declined into something clinically precise but lacking colour, these were but specks of dust on otherwise polished performances.

Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 was pleasant, with the oh-so-familiar tune given a beautiful, fresh sound. The lower strings were sometimes a bit foggy, causing some of the counterpoint to be unclear, but as a general rule the ensemble was well-balanced.

All in all it was a concert of tall stature: each piece on the programme was impressive. Nevertheless, I found the way the violins and violas swayed to and fro whenever they were standing extremely distracting. The movement was so excessive that they reminded me of chaotic strands of seaweed being pushed and pulled by a strong underwater current. But to each his own. Given the overall superior quality of the concert, this aesthetic setback was negligible.

 Conductor’s Series
Early Music Ensemble
Neal Peres Da Costa, Director
September 1 2007
Verbrugghen Hall
Sydney Conservatorium of Music

This concert masterfully took its audience on a timetravelling expedition to Baroque times via the most beautiful and touching strains of early music ever to be heard. Da Costa’s directorship was sprightly and the use of period instruments added a kind of antique zest to the music. Stylistically it was a treat: one could really imagine oneself in Baroque Germany with the great musicians of the time.

We began in the 17th century with a visit to a predecessor of Bach, the renowned German composer Dietrich Buxtehude. His Adventskantate Ihr lieben Christen, freut euch nun was divinely moving; the instrumentalists were joined by five singers who could have been angels for how they sang. My only quibble was that the bass’s rich deep voice could have been projected more: his beautiful part was sometimes indistinguishable from the accompaniment behind him.

Telemann’s Concerto in D major for Four Violins evinced faultless ensemble skills from the performers, who worked as one mechanism as sparkling, canon-like motifs were passed from one part to the other. Pachelbel’s Canon and Gigue in D Major was overall good although not the strongest performance of the evening: I felt the Canon was a bit flat and didn’t hold the audience’s attention, although this was somewhat recompensed by the lively Gigue.

Bach’s Das Musikalisches Opfer was truly a testimony to the composer’s contrapuntal and harmonic genius; the wide range of canons and ricercars all on the same cantus firmus were stunningly brought out by the performers. The contrapuntal lines were clear and the delicate harmonic textures skilfully brought to life. Pachelbel’s Suite in G Major for Violin, Two Violas and Continuo was harmonically akin to a Lindt hot chocolate, the adagios rich and sonorous whilst the dance movements were merry and jovial. Overall the musicians displayed confidence and musicality; if another chance to timetravel with the Early Music Ensemble should present itself, I would not hesitate to step on board.

Grainger Quartet
September 6, 2007
Recital Hall West
Sydney Conservatorium of Music

On going to a Grainger Quartet concert one expects a polished performance, glinting with virtuosity, the four players creating a well-balanced whole; this concert was no exception to the rule. The Quartet’s playing was technically refined and sparkled with life, evincing the clear, energetic sound that wins over countless audiences.

The complete Haydn Op. 54 No. 2 String Quartet was full of contrast, and the manifold textures were brought out magnificently. The different musical characters of the piece were crystal clear: the spring voices of the first movement, the mournful poetry of the second, the strained, anguished emotion of the third, and the contemplative beauty of the fourth were all readily distinguishable. The glorious counterpoint between the first violin and cello in the fourth movement was clear and iridescent.

The Graingers also played the first movement of Beethoven’s “Harp” Quartet. Like the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1, it does not begin on the tonic: the tension created by this “false start” was brought out with clarity and focus. The melodic and rhythmic currents driving the work were apparent and tangible, and the moments of suspense left the audience breathless. The pizzicato motif that pervades each of the four parts was passed seamlessly between the players, so much so that it sounded as though it were played on one instrument. It was a marvellous performance: even when the music settled down in the coda, the Quartet still carried across momentum and flow.

The only thing I felt was not perfection itself was the first violin’s tendency to steal the show. This was perhaps due to the nature of her part, which more often than not carried the melody and was generally the most virtuosic. Nevertheless, the other quartet members were equally deserving of attention and indeed praise, each possessing their own wonderful musicality and personality.

Cocktail Hour Recital Series – “The Cello in Paris”
Georg Pedersen (cello) and Natalia Sheludiakova (piano)
10 September 2007
Recital Hall West
Sydney Conservatorium of Music

Georg Pedersen is a performer of unlimited scope and, more importantly, a man with a big heart. The ability to speak from heart to heart, to touch listeners’ souls, is one possessed by few: Pedersen is one of them. The concert, showcasing the best of the French cello repertoire, was an incredible experience not only thanks to Pedersen’s masterful technique, projective sound and amazing stage presence, but because of the core of human emotion that he conveyed to the audience.

The programme consisted of Chopin’s G minor Sonata for Cello and Piano, Debussy’s Cello Sonata, Tortelier’s Au Spiraile and Le Pitre, Faure’s famous Elegie in C Minor, and two encores, de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance and Faure’s After a Dream. Pedersen’s performance was convincing: the audience’s focus was maintained throughout. In Debussy’s Cello Sonata the music washed over the listener like languid waves on the seashore – Pedersen beautifully captured the spirit of Debussy’s dream-like soundscapes as well as the different sound characters in the piece. The contrasting modernity of the compositions of Pedersen’s teacher, Tortelier, balanced it well: the performance was intimidatingly precise and hypnotic, with the incisive humour of Le Pitre (“The Clown”) skilfully portrayed.

But it was Faure’s Elegie that was the highlight of the evening. No other piece was so completely beyond words. Something even beyond music was present: the essence of the human condition, of suffering, of life and death was in the hall when Pedersen played those heart-wrenching strains of music. The vibrantly showy de Falla encore following it seemed rude and aggressive after such heart-felt sorrow.

In conclusion, the concert was a deeply moving experience; Pedersen is a great artist as well as a dedicated pedagogue, and his warmth of personality could not be too highly praised.

Thema und Variationen

Theme

He is, he was, he will be.

 

Variation 1

The snow is crisp, pale blue in the light of the cratered star. A land of dim diamond crystals, flickering at the sound of the wolf’s howl, living and dying simultaneously. And here I, some sort of immortal clown, clumsy and out of place in this fairy garden of ice. And what I, which I, why – I? Who am I?

    A child of a dream, a sapling of the bark…they call me Gustav. Gustav Schwartz. But how, but for what reason is it thus?…I am. I seem to be, I appear to be. Am I? Perhaps.

    Oh Luna, your rays of sparkling shadow are welcome in this miserable world. Your smile shines through darkness and gently kisses the earth. The world is asleep, and yet I…I am. Sorrow is within me, leaking out slowly like tree’s blood through a hole in the bark. The wounds glow, bright hot coals that they are, glow and burn within me. For I am, and she is.

   

Variation 2

Clara was dying. He was sure of it, looking at her pallid face, her white witch’s fingers. Minute by minute the life sifted out of her into the grey, shapeless air. The doctors said, Hope, but he could not, something within him had collapsed. Under the pink-tinged sheets a spirit was in agony.

    There was faintness in her smile as she lay there, intent on his every move. But she, dying (he knew), was stronger than him: he could not smile. He felt the world giving way underneath them. Life was the semblance of a moonbeam: fleeting, iridescent. Her life was on the verge of nothingness. She was dying.

   

Variation 3

One day he will be ashes. One day he will return to dust. He will return to her; dualities will break down, all will be a conglomerate of stardust. Before he was, he wasn’t, and after he is, he won’t be. So they say. Yet all is a process of transformation. Everything is in a state of flux. He kneels besides the coffin, under the elder tree. Where is she? Where has she gone? One day he will follow her; one day he will crack the immortal mystery. But now he weeps.

   

Variation 4

I am, I was, I will be. Is it so? Is it not all one grand illusion? If it is an illusion, then who is – what is thinking? Cogito ergo sum…but what proof have we that our thoughts are real? What is true and what is false? Is anything true and anything false? We slaves of fate, we inmates of illusion…how and why? She was, and now she is not. “Now” – but Time is surely the greatest cosmic trick of them all…Time is the fourth dimension of space…surely the past does not just disappear…oh God, God, we miserable human beings! Why must we think?

    

Variation 5

While the birds sing, he sits on the moss-covered log. His eyes are closed – an almost undetectable smile is carved in his pale face. Geheimnisvoll[1], the birdsong…and he, ganzlich esterbend[2]…he entered, is entering, will be entering another world. A higher world. The same world, but ohne Hast, ohne Ausdruck.[3] He floats, he exists. He sits on the fallen tree listening to birdsong. Zeit – zeit lassen.[4] A world without pressure, without thought, without time. Illusions are dispelled. Spring green surrounds him; he surrounds spring green. He embraces it just as it embraces him, and finally he merges with it, and he becomes the universe. She is not dead…

   

Variation 6

They are, they were, they will be. The seeds take anchor deep in the earth. All is timeless.

    

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[1] mystical

[2] entirely dying away

[3] without haste, without pressure

[4] time – leave time

 

© Sigrid Harris 2008