My English heart gave a quite unjustified leap of pride when I read that Haydn got the idea of writing The Creation (Die Schopfung) after hearing Handel’s Messiah in London’s Westminster Abbey. And the English connections don’t stop here. In the first published edition, the text is given in both English and German, though the English is so incompetent most conductors routinely opt for the German. And one of the sources of the text is Milton’s Paradise Lost, though this it’s wrongly implied as being the only source on the new and otherwise excellent DVD from Deutsche Grammophon.
It’s of a celebrated performance conducted by Leonard Bernstein in 1986 in the rococo splendor of the Benedictine Abbey of Ottobeuren in southern Germany, with Lucia Popp and Kurt Moll among others as soloists. But it’s neither the famous names, nor the gorgeous setting, that makes this DVD remarkable. It’s the intensity and commitment of everyone concerned. It was originally issued on video, and now appears on DVD in glorious 5.1 surround sound, thanks to a technique known as Ambient Surround Imaging.
Bernstein, by this date a deeply sun-tanned 68, gives a somber 10-minute lecture in a bonus track (repeated with Bernstein speaking German). The Chernobyl disaster had happened two months before this was recorded, he says, and Haydn’s masterpiece reminds us like nothing else of the beauty and wonder of a world we’re on the brink of destroying. The DVD ends with the mournful tolling of bells, presumably in memory of Chernobyl’s victims, past and to come.
The Catholic hierarchy in Vienna found The Creation insufficiently doctrinal when it was first unveiled so it was performed in a theater instead of a church. (Comparable objections had been made to Messiah, when English divines protested at singers trained in the frivolous traditions of opera singing words taken from the Bible). But what need had Haydn of doctrine? The beauty of the freshly created world, which most of the text is dedicated to describing, didn’t need doctrines to underwrite it. Haydn was a very devout Catholic, but the impression given in this work is that he was so overwhelmed by his subject matter that, doctrine or no doctrine, he was simply carried away.
As much of the text is taken from the opening chapter of Genesis, where there is no named narrator, the various acts of creation are described by three angelic beings — Gabriel (a soprano), Uriel (a tenor), and Raphael (a bass). Adam and Eve appear towards the end, and many conductors simply double up their roles using two of the earlier soloists. Bernstein, however, chooses to employ two new singers.
It’s actually hard to say quite why the resulting performance is so marvelous. The men are dressed in suits and ties, a token attempt to escape the formality of the more usual white tie and tails, and the result looks a bit silly. But nothing so superficial was going to hold back the upward surge of this performance. The Creation is not as wonderful as Messiah, but then nothing in its field is. It’s well worth getting to know nonetheless.
I’m an enemy of modernism in all its forms because it’s a kind of music that ordinary men and women will never like. I see it, therefore, as constituting a dyspeptic historical interlude rather than pointing to any likely future. Tunes are taboo, of course, plus anything people might want to sing or dance to. It can be effective as accompaniment to films or TV documentaries. But musical creativity seems to have largely moved into pop music, leaving many classical composers bleating dissonantly in the wilderness.
Contemporary music more or less comes under the same heading, and the CD Wild Grass from the Beijing New Music Ensemble (北京新樂團) doesn’t contain any great surprises. It features pieces, most of them for a small group of instruments, by two composers, Zhou Long (周龍) and Chen Yi (陳怡). Both are in their mid-50s and teaching in the US.
This ensemble should be given its due, however. It’s apparently the only independent group dedicated to performing this sort of music anywhere in China, and this is its first CD. Even so, though most of the items on it might go well with film of strange deep-sea life-forms emerging from the oceanic gloom, it’s hard to imagine any widespread enthusiasm for this abstruse style in its own right. The most energetic item, I found, was the last of Zhou’s Taigu Rhyme set.
Finally, DGM has issued a CD of various items by John Tavener, either written or adapted for violin. The soloist is the young Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti. Many of Tavener’s pieces offered here owe their inspiration to Indian ragas, but on the whole I prefer their Indian originals. The publishers clearly anticipate a less-than-gigantic following for this music, so placed first on the CD is Vaughan Williams’ well-worn piece for violin and orchestra, The Lark Ascending.
It should be noted that both these CDs seek to meld Eastern traditions with Western ones. In neither case is the result overwhelmingly convincing, leaving you with the conclusion that musical traditions have their own characteristic strengths, but don’t necessarily travel all that well.
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