WHRB Program Guide, Nov./Dec. 1990.
In 1909, Anton Webern composed a self-contained piece of music that required only four string players and forty seconds to perform. Around that date concert music began to veer sharply from the gigantic dimensions in which Wagner and Mahler had cast the music of the future. In dark corners of twentieth century music, however, the new terseness did not prevail. The release of Havergal Brian’s Symphony No. 1 on Marco Polo CD’s (reviewed in these pages last issue) has allowed listeners to ascend what is widely considered to be the symphonic Everest—the two-hour breadth of that work has earned mention in the Guiness Book of World Records, no less. There are further curiosities. In the output of the famously obscure Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, we can (if we choose) find a Jami symphony apparently covers a thousand pages of manuscript, dwarfing the Brian in all dimensions; an even larger Messa Alta Sinfonica; and works for piano solo that would take up an afternoon and part of evening. The ninety-nine works of Sorabji, were they presented in the Orgy format pioneered by WHRB, would perhaps exceed in airtime the upcoming Mozart and Bach orgies. Listeners need not fear, however; at this date only two of Sorabji’s gargantua have been recorded—the Organ Symphony No. 1 and the Opus Clavicembalisticum for piano solo. Both were aired last year on WHRB; the four-hour Opus is now available in two recordings, by Geoffrey Douglas Madge and the late John Ogdon.
What is an Opus Clavicembalisticum, and why should we listen to it? Buyers of Ogdon’s new four-CD Altarus recording (Altarus AIR-CD 9075) will probably turn first to the sumptuous, outsized pamphlet thrown in for no extra charge (perhaps the largest program booklet in the history of compact discs). But here the enigma only deepens. The voluble Sorbaji (who finds in his own music “supreme power and massiveness,” and declares the whole work to be “for serious musicians and serious listeners, only”) is exceeded in pomposity by the cabal of obscurantists convened to proclaim his greatness. Pianist/composer Ronald Stevenson rejoices in an “all but total banishment of simplicity!” and Ogdon compares the work favorably to Melville’s Moby Dick. Smug footnotes allude to the remarkable achievements of Wladimir Vogel, Gino Tagliapietra, and Bernard van Dieren. In such company, Ferruccio Busoni seems postively overfamiliar—and Sorabji’s extended borrowings from Busoni’s works seem obvious homages. Stevenson takes us through the work blow by blow (“here is a sonal premonition of sidereal space,” he writes confidently at one point) and we are none the wiser. Sorabji’s real (English) name is of course not revealed; lexicographer Nicolas Slonimsky, who sabotaged the exotic pseudonym and received a death threat for his impudence, is attacked as an “insect.” (Sorabji is dead, Slonimsky lives.) The great Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid, pseudonym for Christopher Grieve, is implicated as the Opus’ dedicatee. There are strange references to Alban Berg. The air of mystery hanging over the whole affair is heightened by the absence of recording credits; the Altarus release is credited only to a certain “C. H. Rice.”
Greatness in music is, however, not a function of size and inscrutability. We learn this lesson from the Brian symphony, which, for all its impressive energy, simply does not support the attention span that it demands. In the Opus, Sorabji is not aiming for Gothic majesty; instead, the extraordinary length of the work seems to result, almost incidentally, from a sort of all-out trench warfare between improvisation and counterpoint. The lineage of Sorabji extends back to Bach, certainly—he is the most severe and long-winded contrapuntist of recent centuries‚but more centrally to the renegade, improvisatory pianist-composers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—Chopin, Alkan, Liszt, and Busoni. Busoni’s Fantasia Contrappunistica is the model for the Opus; Sorabji seems intent on bearing out Busoni’s dictum—”the final aim of the fugue, both practical and symbolic, is the exploitation of the fundemental idea up the point of its exhaustion.” The four fugues are not merely exhausting; at times, they are an unlistenable mess. Moreover, the basic materials which incite Sorabji’s contrapuntal food fights are mostly unremarkable. Busoni is able to entrance the listener through the complex counterpoint of his Fantasia; most often Sorabji is unable to do the same. He is emphatically ambiguous in his treatment of tonality; yet in their dim, thorny clusters of notes, the fugues are equal to the worst of post-Schoenbergian twelve-tone composition.
Only half of the Opus is fugal, however; the rest of the work comprises improvisatory episodes of astounding range and power. The opening fifty minutes of the work are dominated by two fugues; in the “Interludium Primum” that follows we are in a different world, as 48 variations are woven from a chorale-theme of impressive meditative grandeur. Variations 9, 12, and 17 pare down the texture to a magical simplicity—withdrawn, Bachian music that indeed anticipates (but really could not have influenced) Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, of the next decade. Elsewhere the floating impressionistic harmonies and jagged rhythms evoke Messiaen, whose first masterpieces date from the time of the Opus (1929-30). The clash of tonal meditation and atonal upheaval, pioneered by Berg in his Piano Sonata and developed fully in Wozzeck, reaches a pianistic fulfillment in these and other passages of the Opus. Within the thorny fugues themselves, the contemplative manner often intrudes to great effect. After the forty-five minute second fugue, a huge Toccata, Adagio, and Passacaglia section (“Interludium Alterum”) brings us more of the same. Those who survive the final fugue are rewarded with the tremendous Coda-Stretta, a musical firestorm that ends with triumphant bursts of consonance and a final blast of dissonance.
Does the Opus earn a right to its huge dimensions? Here the interpreter plays a crucial role. Listening to Geoffrey Douglas Madge’s live recording, I found that the cycle of episodes‚some bewitching, some revolting, a few truly staggering—did not function as a listenable whole. In the hands of John Ogdon, bewitchment and revulsion feed off one another, and the huge span accumulates an overwhelming visceral power. Some of the most formidably complex inventions ever put on paper are brought off here with terrifying natural force. At other times Ogdon is almost motionless, dwelling on innovative post-impressionistic textures: he lets certain cadences ring through the cavern of the Bösendorfer into silence, and listens with us. Ogdon’s intensity and conviction carries us through the contrapuntal crises, and elsewhere the improvisatory genius of the work burns strong. The Altarus recording, and whatever unnamed elves were responsible for it, also commands respect. The rare but magical moments of repose are heard with uncanny intimacy, yet passages of sonic uproar are well under control. This a monument in the history of piano recording, even if the work itself is of questionable significance. Should you pay the seventy or eighty dollars that most record stores request in exchange for this handsome yellow box of excess? We invite you to listen on the afternoon of November 25th and decide for yourself.
Ronald Stevenson, an eclectic Scottish composer of pronounced Socialist leanings, draws inspiration not only from Sorabji but also from Dmitri Shostakovich. Altarus’ two-CD release (AIR-CD 9091) is for the most part Shostakovich-inspired—the main selection an eighty-minute Passacaglia on D-S-C-H. Everything is anchored very ingeniously in the D-E-flat-C-B progression derived from the letters of Shostakovich’s own name (German notation). A remarkable triple fugue weaves that motif together with the Dies Irae chant and the B-A-C-H motif. (The program notes contain priceless photographs of Shostakovich receiving a copy of the work, with quiet panic in his eyes.) This work is infinitely more accommodating to the listener than Sorabji’s Opus C. This is not necessarily a step forward, however. Where Sorabji’s tempo indications are fanciful, Stevenson’s are ludicrous (con un senso di spazio quasi gagarinesco—”as if with Gagarin’s perception of space”!). Where Sorabji’s textural contrasts are startling, Stevenson’s are artificial. The composer wends his way through dozens of styles—dance rhythms (waltz, polaniase), Bachian inventions, a fandango, a Pibroch Urlar (no composer has ever made the piano sound more like a bagpipe). In the mind’s eye one can imagine Shostakovich imprisoned at a perverse, endless Sorabjian dinner-party, with Ronald Stevenson improvising as guests call out favorite styles. Elsewhere Stevenson’s hunger for contrast and innovation produces genuinely compelling results. The African tribal drum sequence (with percussive attacks on strings and pedals) is quite unearthly, as is the Reverie-Fantasy. The final several minutes, Gagarinesque or not, contain passages of cold beauty. The performance is convincing; but it happens that John Ogdon has recorded this work as well, for HMV many years ago, and I remember a more coherent and vehement reading from that great artist. The other major work on the set is a very improvisatory Prelude, Fugue, and Fantasy on themes from Busoni’s Doktor Faustus. The most disciplined work here is the Recitative and Air, a terse meditation on the same D-S-C-H material. Despite their weaknesses these works never fail to display a certain quirky genius and unSorabjian humor—the pleasant labor of a connoisseur, rather than a creator.