Among the generation of composers that began to emerge after the
Second World War, there was considerable attention given to structure
with visions of intricate details that would join together in service of
larger-scale architectural plans. Arnold Schoenberg's work with
twelve-tone rows provided new ways of thinking about structure on both
small and large scales; but for this new generation the paragon of
structuralism was Schoenberg's student, Anton Webern. Many of the early
essays of Karlheinz Stockhausen involved detailed structural analysis
of Webern's scores, particularly in the period after Webern began to
work with Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. This made for an
interesting parallel with Webern's own doctoral research into the
structural intricacies of the sixteenth-century composer Heinrich
Isaac. As a result, the third quarter of the twentieth century became
dominated by a highly academic (and often mathematical) approach to the syntax of musical scores, much to the disadvantage of matters of "logic" and "rhetoric" (if we are to use the medieval trivium as a baseline). It took another quarter century of dry and tedious (not to mention tendentious) performances and recordings before another generation would emerge and recognize that Webern had composed music, rather than mere syntactic structures; and we as serious listeners are now in a position to appreciate that awakening.
The
merits of Webern's musical intuitions for such previously disregarded
factors as rhetoric were clearly evident last night at Davies Symphony
Hall in the San Francisco Symphony performance of his Opus 21 symphony
under Michael Tilson Thomas. This is a work of extraordinary detail in
which every note signifies less through any sense of melodic line or
harmonic accompaniment but rather through relations of temporal
proximity that disregard boundaries between instruments. Under a
microscope this is musical pointillism (whose reductio ad absurdum emerged in Webern's 1935 orchestration of the six-voice fugue from the Musikalisches Opfer
of Johann Sebastian Bach, BWV 1079, Number 5). However, Thomas pulled
back from the individual moments of those "points" themselves,
delivering the symphony with the same sense of musical flow we would
expect of any other symphony.
I would not be surprised if it took
considerable effort to achieve that sense of flow. Among other things,
it involves a heightened awareness by each musician of all other
musicians, since that flow is not confined to traditional sectional
boundaries. Nevertheless, the results of that effort were clearly to
the benefit of those still trying to find their way through the
experiences of listening to Webern. The one disadvantage is that such
effort may have detracted from the preparation of the rest of the
program.
That even included the other Webern offering of the
evening, the first San Francisco Symphony performance of his 1931
orchestration of the six German dances by Franz Schubert, D. 820. Here
there was still a sense that Thomas was working through a microscope,
wanting to make sure that even the smallest instrumentation decision
behind every moment was not lost on us. Unfortunately, what was
lost was the underlying spirit of these short pieces as dance music. It
was as if we had been transported from the ballroom to the classroom,
and I find it hard to believe that such a classroom was the venue Webern
had envisioned for these earthy little pieces. They required a little
less reverence and a lot more Gemütlichkeit, and it is
unfortunate that this staid performance provided our introduction to
Webern for the evening and San Francisco's first taste of this side of
Webern's orchestration skills.
The decision to couple Webern with
Ludwig van Beethoven also proved problematic. The two works on the
program from the first decade of the nineteenth century, the Opus 58
piano concerto in G major from 1806 and the Opus 67 C minor symphony
(the fifth) from 1808, are clearly products of Beethoven at the top of
his game; but the mindset established by Weber's symphony did not
provide a complimentary light for either of these works. This may have
just been an unfortunate consequence of time management, giving far more
attention to Webern under the assumption that the basic technical
skills were already in place for Beethoven. Such an assumption may have
been valid enough, but neither the concerto nor the symphony emerged
with sufficient identity to establish its own sense of performance.
In
the case of the concerto, it also seemed as if soloist Emanuel Ax
wanted to explore new approaches by going down paths that Thomas was
reluctant to follow. Ax certainly commanded attention by arpeggiating
the opening chord, which would have made for a startling new perspective
had Thomas worked with him to settle on a suitable orchestral
response; but, instead, Thomas just held to Beethoven's original
playbook. The result was a perfectly satisfactory reading but one in
which the promise of new ways to listen to the familiar offered by that
first arpeggio was never really fulfilled.
More disappointing was
the C minor symphony, where an excess of rhetoric tended to diminish
attention to the logic and syntax (to go back to the trivium).
As the old joke (first told to me by a trumpet player) goes, if you can
hear the brass, they are playing too loud; and there were certainly
more than a few occasions when the brass was covering up some of
Beethoven's more interesting writing, particularly when it involved the
lower strings. Then there were the timpani, which seemed to be struck
entirely with mallets with particularly stiff heads. This made every
note a highly striking (pun intended) one; but it left me wondering
whether a visitor from Mars (who had not heard this music from
childhood) might mistake this symphony for a concerto for timpani and
orchestra.
If these performances were, indeed, a result of
putting more time into Webern at the expense of less time for Beethoven,
was that decision worth it? As far as I am concerned, the answer is
emphatically, "Yes!" To warp the old line from Casablanca,
"We'll always have Beethoven." There is no danger that we face a future
of concerts in which Beethoven will not get the attention he deserves.
Opportunities to hear Webern, on the other hand, are far fewer; and
every one of them should count towards strengthening the pleasure we can
take in listening to his music. Last night's performance of the
symphony counted about as high as anyone could have anticipated.
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