Synthetic Nostalgia for Sunday

Much like the hullabaloo created by the revival of Entartete Musik - music suppressed by the Third Reich - there was similar hubbub when, around the same time, there was a big revival of Russian Classical composers who were suppressed by the Soviet Empire.  Most of this music, though much of it was written before the revolution, was created in that wonderful window of the first decade of the U.S.S.R.'s existence, ending around 1928 or '29 when hearings were held decrying Avant-Garde music as "formalist" and not fitting the Social Realism that was gaining traction in the government's eye.  This first decade, what I call the Lunacharsky* era, was presided over by Anatoly Lunacharsky, the first Soviet People's Commissar of Education, who was ousted by Stalin during his rise to power.  Lunacharsky was an interesting figure, one that was able to run the state censorship board while allowing many fascinating artistic movements, such as Futurism and Constructivism, to work with the freedom they'd had in the previous decade, as well as saving many historic buildings from destruction by the Bolsheviks by arguing for their architectural value.  The Classical music being written at this time was some of the most invigoratingly original music to ever come out of Russia, taking the baton from Scriabin's late mystical music and running in all sorts of incredible directions, creating what I think of as the Scriabinist school.  While there were a ton of great composers working during this period and the years leading up to it three in particular were singled out as the most important composers of the time.  Two of them, Alexander Mosolov and Arthur Lourié, excelled brilliantly in Futurism, "machine music", such as Mosolov's The Foundry, and striking experiments in engraving.  The third, Nikolai Roslavets, was dubbed the "Russian Schoenberg" for his experiments in "synthetic chords".  Roslavets flew right out of the gate with his first compositions in the 1910's, crafting passionate, dark rhapsodies in strikingly exotic harmonies, using them so naturally that the pieces surge with depth and meaning.  His emotional range was so great that he wrote his blackly iridescent Three Etudes for piano (1914) -

- relatively hot on the heels of the lush impressionism of his Nocturne for oboe, two violas, cello and harp (1913), one of the most ingenious unused chamber groupings I've ever seen, so unique that it is literally the only piece in its genre:

It's easy to see that Roslavets never had to sacrifice the heart of his music in order to push boundaries, and his craftsmanship and sincerity weren't stunted even when he became a victim of political maneuvering and purges like so many of the best and brightest of his generation and he was forced to simplify and "tonalize" his language.  After his death his apartment was ransacked by a Soviet goon squad and many of his scores were confiscated; a lot of them are lost to this day.  Luckily we still have most of his work and many previously lost scores have been reconstructed, making everything in print one way or another.  I was lucky to find a collection of his piano pieces at a used bookstore of all places, and among them were some of my favorite Roslavets pieces, the Five Preludes (1919-22), which ends with a disarmingly wistful ditty.

While the Preludes are all written in Roslavets's highly individual Scriabinist language, the fifth prelude is a fond look back at tonality.  The extended tonal chord progressions are almost too traditional even for the more conservative composers of his time, banking heavily on the great sensitivity that seasoned performers of Scriabinist music get so good at.  This idea is actually more Schoenbergian than you'd think, as he ended his 1913 free atonal song cycle Pierrot Lunaire with a song that makes meaningful reference to the key of E major called "O Alter Duft", or "O Scent of Old".  While Schoenberg's use of major chords was more ironic than sentimental, very much fitting the pessimism and horror of the cycle, it seems that Roslavets needed the solace and warmth of the circle of fifths.  The older I get the more I realize that the only thing that really helps a piece of art become timeless is sincerity and hopefully the world will be able to see Roslavets's music as being more timeless than most - the fact that you can get many of his scores for free here is a good start.

~PNK

Mozart's Walk through the Crystal Garden

Those of you who a.) saw the Golden Globes last Sunday and b.) are awesome might have noticed that the excellent Mr. Holmes was completely shut out, a doubly heinous crime considering that it featured one of the great stunt instruments of musical history, the glass harmonica.  It's part of a major turn of one of the film's main plots and is one of the only times it has appeared in a film, and considering the time period when the plot takes place (the turn of the 20th century) it's surprising that anybody would be playing it, much less teaching lessons on it.  The instrument is the most famous member of the crystallophone family, instruments that produce sound with glass, and is part of a larger family of friction idiophones, operating by the same mechanism of someone creating a tone by rubbing a wet finger on the rim of a wine glass.  The latter device became something of a vogue technique for composers writing for percussion in the late 20th century, specifically inspired by the use of crystal glasses in pieces by George Crumb and Joseph Schwantner, but that hasn't inspired a revival of the full glass harmonica, or armonica.  The most common form of the instrument is one designed by America's favorite renaissance man and horndog Benjamin Franklin - a set of concentrically-arranged glass bowls, each one a half-step apart in Western equal temperament, are partially submerged in a tub of water and turned with a foot pedal, allowing the player to simply touch their fingers to the bowls' rims to produce the notes.  Oddly enough, one of the biggest proponents of crystallophones in our time is Linda Rondstadt, and she produced an all-crystallophone album in the early Oughts performed by Dennis James.  The heyday of the instrument was in the late 18th century and use of hit virtually disappeared by the 1820's, as it was seen as an impractical novelty instrument and hardly any music was written specifically for it.  One of those pieces, however, was written by none other than Mozart himself, and it's actually quite lovely.

As producing sounds via glass friction is somewhat difficult Mozart's piece here is mercifully slow, though there are a few 16th-note passages to keep the performer on edge.  The mood is reverent and nostalgic, rife with suspensions and a handful of surprising harmonic twists, all made all the more enchanting coming from the glass harmonica's unearthly sound.  Both metallic and intangible, one can imagine that its tone quality is what one would hear walking through a greenhouse on a distant planet.  The performance here is a little incomplete, as the performer Martin Hilmer doesn't bother with the recap of the B section, but the technique is excellent as there are only a few notes that don't sound (and understandably so; I've never been able to make a note on a crystal glass).  Now, if there was only a leaf written for the cristal baschet...

~PNK