Stefan Meets Anton & Morty Meets John A Tale of Two Concertos and Two Quartets Austin Clarkson When one approaches and looks at and observes great works of art, one must approach them… in the same way one has to approach works of nature, with the necessary awe at the secrets they are based on, at the mystery they contain. — Anton Webern(1933) The natural flow of sounds which music is reassures us of order, just as the sequence of the seasons and the regular alternation of night and day do. — John Cage(1947) Yes, double-content of nature, to be core and inwardly held, to be form and mould, extended into and outwardly grasped. — Stefan Wolpe(1960) When you are involved with sound as a sound, as a limited yet infinite thought, to borrow Einstein’s phrase, new ideas suggest themselves, need defining, exploring, need a mind that knows it is entering a living world not a dead one. — Morton Feldman(1967) “Stefan Meets Anton and Morty Meets John” brings together musical ideas from Berlin after “The War to End all Wars,” from Leningrad before Stalin imposed his brand of Socialist Realism, from Vienna under the shadow of National Socialism, and from New York during the McCarthy era. Composers in America were as engaged with these ideas as were their European colleagues, but the influx of refugees from Europe in the 1930s contributed to the upheaval in the arts that happened in the aftermath of World War II. Stefan Wolpe was one of the agents in that tectonic shift. Stefan Wolpe (1902-1972) studied piano, harmony and counterpoint, and composed much music as a teenager. He rebelled against conservatory training and quit the Berlin Musikhochschule. He joined the circle of the visionary composer –4– and pianist Ferruccio Busoni, hung out with the Melos Circle around Hermann Scherchen, and participated in Dada happenings. His schooling continued informally at the Bauhaus, the progressive art school founded at Weimar by Walter Gropius. He listened to Vassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer and other masters, and participated in workshops of Johannes Itten and Gertrude Grunow, who cultivated the creative imagination and the integration of body, mind and spirit. As a member of the Novembergruppe of revolutionary artists and writers, Wolpe was active as pianist and composer in programs that brought modern art to poor neighbourhoods. In 1928 he joined the Workers’ Music Movement under Hanns Eisler, and for four years wrote march songs for agitprop troupes, anthems for labor unions, and music for Communist dance and theatre companies. He was music director of Truppe 31, a company of actors and musicians led by the actor, director and playwright Gustav von Wangenheim. Their first show, The Mousetrap (Die Mausefalle), played on Shakespeare and Goethe while demonstrating Marxism with the latest techniques of theatrical montage. The show was a hit, and after a run in Berlin went on tour through Germany, where it was attacked as “cultural Bolshevism.” When Hitler seized power in February of 1933, the police banned Truppe 31. Wolpe escaped from Germany with the help of the Romanian pianist and Dalcroze teacher Irma Schoenberg and found refuge in Switzerland. In May and June of 1933 he rejoined Truppe 31 on a tour to Russia, where he was inspired by Soviet society and greatly impressed by the composers of Leningrad, especially Dmitri Shostakovich, who were creating modern music under socialism. Before joining the Workers’ Music Movement, Wolpe had written song cycles on the poetry of Hölderlin, Kleist, Rilke and Tagore, works for the musical theatre, but no larger forms. The expertise of the Leningrad composers impressed Wolpe with the need to deepen and broaden his technical abilities. Aged 31, he went to Vienna to study with Anton Webern and compose a piano concerto and a symphony. The Path to the New Music, the series of lectures that Webern delivered in 1932 and 1933, encompassed the world of ideas into which Wolpe stepped when he entered the master’s studio. Webern founded his philosophy on Goethe’s idea of the unity of –5– art and nature: “art is a product of nature in general, taking the particular form of human nature.” On summer hikes in the Austrian Alps, Webern meditated on Goethe’s idea of the “primeval plant” (Urpflanze), that every part of the plant—root, stalk, blossom— comes from the same source. Schoenberg’s idea of the twelve-note row made it possible to achieve in a piece of music the awesome and mysterious variety in unity of an Edelweiss, or a mountain landscape. For Webern: “Unity is completely ensured by the underlying series. It’s always the same; only its manifestations are different.” Webern’s music arose not from a desire for hermetic obscurity, but to make the relationships between the unity of a piece of music as clear as possible to the lay listener, “to show how one thing leads to another.” Similarly, his lectures were to explain the foundations of the new music so that the general public can better appreciate its depths: “to see chasms in truisms, … to be spiritually involved.” On showing Webern his new piece, March and Variations for Two Pianos, a heated discussion ensued over the relative merits of absolute music and music for use (Gebrauchsmusik). Wolpe argued that music’s function was to spur people to action, while Webern defended music’s autonomy. After his second lesson Wolpe ran into the pianist Edward Steuermann, who joked that Wolpe’s meeting with Webern must have been like Stalin visiting the Pope. Nevertheless, a warm collaboration developed. Although Webern taught Wolpe without fee, lessons lasted at least two hours and were often followed by long conversations over coffee. Webern helped Wolpe to be more self-aware and to compose more freely. For Wolpe it was a time of self-discovery, during which he envisioned “a grander, musikantish music appropriate for this epoch.” Wolpe saw himself as a ‘Musikant,’ that is, a ‘journeyman or itinerant musician, a minstrel,’ rather than a bourgeois composer. Two Concertos Wolpe began to compose a Concerto for Piano and Wind Band – three saxophones, three trumpets and three trombones. The “musikantish” instrumentation was similar to the poster music Wolpe had produced for political rallies in Berlin. He wrote to Irma that Webern did not approve of the music’s “more stirring, naked outrageous qualities,” complaining that Webern was “stuck in his –6– molehill” and failed to understand “the dialectic of a worker’s song or music with a revolutionary gesture.” Webern must have thought carefully how to help this gifted but headstrong revolutionary. Documentation is lacking, so we can only speculate that while looking through Wolpe’s Concerto Webern thought of the piano concerto that he had begun two years earlier and then set aside. On October 9, 1933, the day of Wolpe’s third lesson, Webern picked up the sketches of his Konzert, Op. 24and reduced the scoring from full orchestra to eleven instruments: three woodwinds (flute, oboe, clarinet), three brass (trumpet, French Horn, trombone) and five strings (string quartet and piano). He then showed Wolpe the score and discussed the problems he was addressing. There can scarcely be another explanation for the fact that Wolpe changed the instrumentation from brass band to virtually the same scoring as Webern’s Konzert: three woodwinds (flute, clarinet, bassoon), three brass (trumpet, French horn, trombone), and three strings (violin, cello and piano). Whatever Webern did wrought an immediate transformation. Within a couple of weeks Wolpe wrote that Webern was a great treasure: “Only here have I come to learn for the first time of the extraordinary possibilities of which I am capable, and I am gaining the courage (Webern’s help) for a more comprehensive musical self-awareness, and I am addressing the problem of my self-realization.” By revealing the workings of his own creative process, Webern succeeded in reflecting back to Wolpe his authentic creative potential. Webern and Wolpe both completed their concertos in the following year. Wolpe likely composed the last three movements of his Concerto by May of 1934, while Webern finished Konzert, Op. 24in time to dedicate it to Arnold Schoenberg on his 60thbirthday, September 13. In completing the Konzert, Webern reduced the string complement to violin and viola, thus ending up with three times three woodwinds, brass and strings, as in Wolpe’s Concerto, though Webern preferred the more luminous oboe and viola to Wolpe’s more earthy bassoon and cello. The kinship between Webern’s lapidary Konzertand Wolpe’s epicConcertowould seem to end there. Webern’s three movements last seven minutes, while Wolpe’s four go on for twenty-five. Yet Webern’s hand is evident: after three tonal, musikantish movements, the fourth is a set of twelve variations on a twelve-note theme. –7– Anton Webern,Konzert, Op. 24(1934) To affirm the historical continuity of twelve-note music, the early dodecaphonists modeled their compositions on traditional forms. The first movement of Webern’s Konzert is loosely modeled on Sonata Form, the second on ABA Song Form, and the third on Theme and Variations. In the plan that Webern sketched for the concerto, he associated the first movement with one of his favorite places in the country, and the second and third movements with the villages where his parents were buried and with his wife and their son. The piece would thus embody the spirit of a beloved landscape and of three generations of his family. The 12-note row of the Konzert is famous for its symmetry: four permutations of a single three-note unit. Each trichord contains a minor second, a minor third and a major third, and thus has the semitone formula 014. The trichord appears in four permutations: Prime, Retrograde Inversion, Retrograde and Inversion. The row is thus a microcosm, providing the “stem cells” from which the manifold parts of the composition were generated. Example 1a. Anton Webern, Konzert, Op. 24. Tone row. The structure of Konzert, Op. 24 has given rise to many theories, among them, Karlheinz Stockhausen’s claim that the first movement is a forerunner of integral serialism. However, Webern did not seek to break with tradition, but rather “to say what has been said before in a new way.” By adapting twelve-note music to traditional forms, he believed that he had achieved complete freedom, but literal repetition is avoided. Each moment is unique, and rich in expressive detail. Instruments exchange two- and three- note gestures in a mosaic of call and response, interruption and delay, question and exclamation, excitement and calm. The pulse fluctuates as in a living, breathing organism. It is a piano concerto, hence the piano plays a leading role, but each instrument has a distinctive character. As in a mobile sculpture, the stronger sounds appear closer and the quieter sounds more distant. –8– The dramatic First Movement has two contrasting themes. The first is bright, extraverted and witty (Example 1b), while the second, led by the piano, is quiet and pensive. Three-note shapes dominate the successive moods of exposition, development, recapitulation and coda. The Second Movement is slow and meditative, the shapes consisting of two pulses rather than three (Example 1c). The piano is a constant presence, while the other instruments offer fragments of a melody. The first section lacks the French Horn, the second lacks the Viola, and the ensemble unites for the third section, which dissipates the material into thin air. The theme of the Third Movement is a canon based on two motives given in the first four bars (Example 1d). The four variations emphasize, respectively, three-note chords, two-pulse shapes, and three-note chords. Example 1b. Anton Webern, Konzert, Op. 24, I, mm. 1-5. The premiere took place at Prague in September of 1935, with Heinrich Jalowetz conducting and Edward Steuermann at the piano. The young Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola was amazed by the Konzert: “It seems to represent an entire world.” –9– Example 1c. Anton Webern, Konzert, Op. 24, II, mm. 1-8. Example 1d. Anton Webern, Konzert, Op. 24, III, mm. 1-6. –10– Stefan Wolpe, Concerto for Nine Instruments(1934) The prospect of a performance arose in Jerusalem in 1937, when William Steinberg, then conductor of the Palestine Symphony, expressed interest in performing the Concerto on a program with Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Stefan and Irma copied out the instrumental parts, but the performance did not take place. The full score and violin part then disappeared. The circumstances of the loss remain a mystery, and efforts to locate the missing materials have failed. Harry Vogt of the West German Radio, Cologne, commissioned Johannes Schöllhorn to reconstruct the score from the eight surviving parts. Cues for the violin in the other parts provided about forty bars for the violin, and Schöllhorn considered reconstructing the violin part. He decided that Wolpe’s music is so dense and unpredictable that it would be impossible, concluding that the Concerto is nevertheless “a thoroughly coherent work, with the added color of brief violin passages.” Ensemble recherche, conducted by Emilio Pomárico, gave the premiere of the Concerto at Cologne in 2002, on the occasion of Wolpe’s centenary. Werner Herbers, who conducted the same group for the recording in 2003, made further revisions. While writing an account of Wolpe’s first year in exile, I took a closer look at the Concerto and was able to restore another eighty bars for the violin with some confidence that I wasn’t departing too far from Wolpe’s intentions. That led to the preparation of a new edition of the Concertoand the idea for this concert. Wolpe’s visit to Leningrad in the spring of 1933 may have sparked the idea for the clarinet solo that begins the second movement of the Concerto. The gentle rocking motion of the clarinet melody is very similar in timbre and feeling to the clarinet solo that begins Shostakovich’s Third Symphony. Shostakovich modeled his Second and Third Symphonies on the pageants that were performed during the annual festivals of post-revolutionary Russia. The so-called “Revolutionary Scenario” comprised such scenes as: (1) Dark Chaos of the Unenlightened Past, (2) Pastoral Idyll, (3) Awakening of Protest and Revolutionary Consciousness, (4) Struggle Between Forces of Revolution and Reaction, (5) Funeral March for Fallen Comrades, and (6) Victory Celebration. It seems that Wolpe selected scenes from the Revolutionary Scenario for the Concerto and the Studies for Orchestrathat he composed in Vienna, though he did not give them –11– explicit titles in order to spare Webern from yet more Gebrauchsmusik. The four movements of the Concerto appear to correspond with: (1) Revolutionary Consciousness, (2) Pastoral Idyll, (3) Funeral March and Lament, and (4) The New Dispensation. Part 1: Fast, irrepressible, with great vitality. The Violin and Piano set off with a foursquare theme of the irrepressible, irreverent, energetic revolutionary (Example 2a). It is fortunate that the Violin melody was written out in the Piano part, for otherwise we would not know the protagonist of the movement. The theme combines four gestures: A“vigorous stride” (leaps in quarters and eighths), B “urgent action”(arpeggiated sixteenths), C“firm resolve” (reiterated sixteenths with minor third cadence), and D“unruly motion” (Piano chording, with irregular triple- and duple-beat groupings). The episodes unfold with brief solos while the ensemble plays with motifs derived from the theme. As in a commune, instruments contribute equally to the proceedings, resting for no more than two or three bars at a time. The passages of repeated Piano chords that conclude each episode in a kind of refrain invite the addition of versions of the main theme for the Violin. Example 2a. Stefan Wolpe, Concerto for 9 Instruments, I, mm. 1-9, © 2003, Peermusic. –12– Part 2: Adagio.The Clarinet solo that begins Shostakovich’s Third Symphony with a kind of lullaby is in the Dorian mode, whereas Wolpe’s melody draws on modes of Klezmer music – Altered Mixolydian and Altered Dorian (Example 2b). Wolpe’s paternal family originated in the Kovno district of Lithuania, and in 1925 Wolpe made arrangements of a collection of Yiddish folksongs. At a time of dislocation and distress Wolpe may have sought comfort from recalling his Jewish heritage in this Pastorale. The ensemble elaborates each phrase of the melody in successive episodes, weaving intricate arabesques into a rich mosaic, reflecting the ornate improvisations of Yiddish folk singing. The concluding episode winds down with a guttural passage for Horn, Trombone and Cello that casts a shadow on the idyll. The movement ends with a reprise of the Clarinet melody. Example 2b. Stefan Wolpe, Concerto for 9 Instruments, II, mm. 1-6. © 2003, Peermusic. Part 3: Song Without Words. Rather slow, radiant and solemn. Over a grinding slow march, the Brass Trio plays a strident, obsessive melody in the Altered Dorian mode (Example 2c). If the Song had Words, it would be an angry, bitter lament. A lyrical strain –13–