Many of the world's greatest masterpieces of art in all its forms have been created out of the impulse of personal sorrow or loss. In music, there are innumerable examples, and many are well known. A few, such as the Dvorak Stabat Mater which I mentioned in my Holy Week series, hover at the edge of the well-known repertory. Others, like today's work, are all but unknown.
Correction: "all but unknown" in North America. In Austria, the homeland of composer Franz Schmidt, his Fourth Symphony is an admitted and admired masterpiece, and frequently played. Yet it remains a rarity elsewhere. It's our loss. Fortunately, there are several good recordings.
The symphony was composed in 1933 and is subtitled "requiem for my daughter". There's no mistaking the tone of sorrow in the music, yet in the end the composer wins through to an acceptance of that sorrow as a part of life. Schmidt writes in a tonal musical language that appears to take no account of revolutionary developments in music. But the structure is unique and indeed revolutionary in its own right. The symphony consists of 4 linked sections that together form a gigantic single-movement work, and across its 45-minute span the piece is held together by its 3 main themes. Two are heard in the opening section, effectively the "first and second groups" of the traditional sonata form, and the third comes in the slow second section. But the third theme sounds familiar, and no wonder, since it makes use of a similar sequence of intervals as the first.
The symphony opens with a meandering theme for solo trumpet, which is gradually joined by other instruments. It's important as much for the use of the interval of a fourth (a key musical image throughout the symphony) as for its actual shape. It builds to a climactic statement with the timpani beating out a funereal march tempo underneath. This dies away, and the wide-ranging second theme appears in the strings. The two weave together, until eventually the second theme too dies away to prepare for the radiant opening, on cellos, of the second section.
This "slow movement" is the heart of the sorrow in this work, but it is filled all the same with an unmistakable air of consolation that is most uplifting. The theme here opens with a dropping fourth followed by a rising scale. Before long, Schmidt inverts it into a wistful rising fourth followed by a descending scale. The drumbeats return and the music builds to an anguished climax before slowly dying away in resignation. A few more quiet grumbles from the timpani, and the third section begins.
This part, the symphony's "scherzo", is a quicker version of the slow third theme, on violins this time, and treated in part as a fugue. Again, the intervals of the theme are inverted to add spice to the mix. The first theme in slower time is superimposed on it, and the resourceful composer again builds up to a huge climax in which the rhythmic impulse of the scherzo utterly disintegrates in a massive discordant wave of sound topped by a loud scream of anguish from the trumpets.
Out of that gigantic and terrifying climax the trumpet emerges with the opening theme again, and we realize that the last section is to be a recapitulation of the opening, thus bringing the symphony full circle as surely as any traditional sonata form. In a similar process to that followed before, the music rises to a richly-harmonized climax which carries on longer than it did before, and weaves the first two main themes together as one. This gradually dies away and once more the drumbeats are heard as the initial trumpet melody reappears. The other instruments drop away one by one until the last few notes of that long winding song of sadness are sung by the trumpet, alone again as at the beginning -- a full circle indeed.
I've been fortunate to hear this piece played live twice, once in Toronto and once in Philadelphia, and both times I was shocked to realize it was coming to its close. It's a full and rich 45 minutes, and yet passes by very quickly indeed, so involving is Schmidt's musical vision. I think that's a good test for recognizing a masterpiece!
I also have two recordings. One dating from the early 1970s from Decca Records was made in Vienna (where the musicians have this music in their blood) by the young Zubin Mehta, and was reissued in harness with his recordings from the same time period of Mahler's Second Symphony. The other, more recent, from Chandos Records is from the Detroit Symphony under Neeme Jarvi, part of a complete box set of the 4 symphonies of Franz Schmidt. There's not a lot to choose between them, as both are excellent.
No comments:
Post a Comment