Neglected composers (#2)

 Eduard Tubin (1905-1982)

I'm often surprised by the regularity of which people casually engaged in conversation about music have come across Tubin, and the mutual delight which issues forth when his name is uttered.  'Tubin is funktastic!' was the reply to my advocacy of his music on a certain Facebook group, named (perhaps with a hint of tongue-in-cheek) 'Pretentious Classical Music Elitists'. By pure chance, I came across his Third Symphony on a free magazine CD from about ten years ago and was hooked.  This was brilliant music, clever, assured, colourful melodic and contrapuntal.  The rest of his orchestral output similarly avoided disappointment.

Tubin falls into the third of my categories regarding neglected composers; the 'wrong place at wrong time' reason.  (I realise that at no point have I actually set out the various reasons for neglect, so you will just have to accept that this is Reason number Three).  Having learned the piano (which his father bought for the price of one cow), flute and violin as a child, Tubin was creating quite a promising career for himself in independent Estonia between the wars, doing a bit of folk-song-collecting (a career must for any non-serialist composer in the early twentieth century) and writing appealing early symphonies and chamber music for his less-than-a-million fellow countrymen.  (Just think about that number for a moment - equivalent to your national audience being the same as the population of Merseyside).  The first few symphonies sound a little like a mixture of Sibelius, Nielsen, Vaughan Williams and Glazunov with just a hint of Ravel, although they're actually a lot better than that.  The Second 'Legendare' opens with the strikingly original sound of heavily divided strings, and with further sections making imaginative use of timpani and piano shows what a superb orchestrator Tubin was.  The patriotic Third Symphony ('Heroic') is a tour de force for the brass and contains some terrific counterpoint, as well as an unexpected and beautiful violin solo in the hybrid scherzo-cantalina of the second movement. The Fourth ('Lyrical') 'is probably his first real masterpiece, combining a deft sense of pacing with wonderfully expressive lyricism and masterful orchestration.  The slow movement is one of the most gorgeous nocturnes in the symphonic repertoire.  And it's a cut above mere cow-pat pastoralism, too.

Other works from this period are similarly attractive, if a little more slight.  The First Violin Concerto is a pleasingly pastoral work, whilst it's difficult to understand why the Estonian Dance Suite is more popular, or at least included on ABRSM exam syllabuses from time to time, for its melodic virtues are many.  Both the violin and piano and violin and orchestra versions are easily as good as the Holberg Suite or Britten's Simple Symphony, and in several places provides inventive harmonic twists that many more notable composers wouldn't have thought of.

Sadly it all went to pot in 1944 with the German, then Soviet invasions of Estonia. Tubin fled to Sweden not long after the première of the Fourth Symphony (although not before the Luftwaffe had bombed the theatre in Tallinn in which score was kept in a safe.  The safe was pulled from the rubble the next morning with the score - singed but intact - still inside it.  Many pages were fragile and Tubin had to copy out a new score of the entire symphony to conduct from in future).  In Sweden he was an unknown and worked several menial jobs before he was eventually allowed to join the Royal Society of Musicians and earn royalties and teach.  He returned to Estonia infrequently, and from the Sixth Symphony onwards his music is considerably darker and more dissonant, although still essentially lyrical and melodic - think Berg, Henze, late Britten or Shostakovich.  His masterpiece of this period is the Eighth Symphony (1966), which although a four-movement sonata is still an extraordinarily powerful and pertinent modernist work.  Tubin heard a recording of the symphony not long before he died and noted how 'the final dissonant chorale rises up and disappears into the distance'. It is not hard to imagine the composer staring out into the bleakness of the Baltic Sea trying and failing to glimpse his homeland across the waves. Indeed, several quiet endings in my own works have been inspired by the closing bars of this symphony (as well as the very loud tam-tam crash that precedes it!).

To me, Tubin always sounds like he's aware of his obscurity and is trying extra hard to give his music lasting value.  And, as is so often the case, upheaval actually enhanced his creative powers and forged a great advancement in his style.  Tubin would certainly have been a lesser figure had he not had to move to Sweden and adopt a grittier musical language.  If nothing else, how many other composers (apart from Hindemith) wrote a double bass concerto?  And how many have written a concerto for balalaika?

Essential listening: Symphonies 3,4 and 8; Violin concerto No.1; Estonian Dance Suite; Toccata
Also interesting: Symphonies 2, 5, 6 and 9; Piano Sonata No.2 'Northern Lights'; String Quartet; Double Bass concerto; Music for Strings; Kratt (ballet)

As if often the case, the brilliant Swedish label Bis have covered much of his output, including all the symphonies and concerti, pretty much all the chamber music and some other good bits. Even better, there are now two competing Tubin symphony cycles, so you can choose either Neeme Jarvi on Bis or Arvo Volmer on Alba (I would reccomend the Swedish Radio SO and Bergen SO on the former over the Volmer's Estonian National SO, but the Alba sound quality is generally better).  A great amount of the aforementioned recordings are also on Spotify.

Linkage

I almost certainly should have posted this sooner, but better late then never.  St Andrew's University have created an entire section on their 600th Anniversary Composition Competition, so when an idle moment presents itself you can have a gander at what they have to say about my piece and the two I'm up against.  Both my competitors seem to be considerably more experienced, not to mention a few years older, than myself, having had various works performed on Radio 3 and both having studied composition at music college.  Also, my biography has been made rather short, not exactly bigging-up my comparatively modest achievements.  Still, we are on an equal footing as far as the contest goes from now on. 

I shall be travelling up to the concert forming the competition's final on 21st April.  The orchestra have a month left to rehearse and, other than needing additional percussion parts, appear to have had no difficulties, which is a relief.  The oft-told story of the disastrous première of Rachmaninov's First Symphony had entered my thoughts once or twice but I'm sure the orchestra and conductor will do a highly professional job.  I am also determined not to interfere too much with the musicians' input into the performance - no last-minute alterations to the notes or outbursts of 'no, no NO, not like THAT!' during the final rehearsal.  I do (generally) trust conductors, 'yer know...

Here's the main site for the competition: 600th Anniversary Competition
The concert programme
My piece: The Sun Rising

Why violists rule the world

This, plainly, is a controversial opening gambit.

Violas and their owners are loathed by some with a zeal which I can only relate to my own irrational hatred of Audi-owning sales reps.  For another significant segment of musos and the interested public, they are objects of smirking derision, for despite history's best efforts in providing evidence to the contrary, it has been convenient to retain the altos as the butt of orchestral jokes. Of course, this is not completely without reason, for in antiquity violists were either poor violinists or else wind players who had learned the instrument as something to fall back on (whether in a literal sense or not) when their teeth fell out. In a self-fulfilling-circular-mixed-metaphor scheme, many composers usually wrote for the players they expected to get and thus violists had little to live for, perpetuating the neglect of the instrument.

Oddly, at the other end of the scale, there seemed to be plenty of really quite gifted musicians who took the instrument seriously. Viola concerti have never been particularly inferior works to the violin or cello repertoire either in terms or quality or performance technique required, although often written by less-remembered individuals.  But there was not a complete absence of capable composers interested in the viola either.  Out of the so-called 'great' composers; Bach, Beethoven, Dvorak, Haydn, Hindemith, Mendelssohn, Mozart and Schubert all played, some of them quite well, not to mention Bridge, Eric Coates, Lalo, Paganini, Harry Partch, Respighi and Torelli.  What is noticeable about all the diverse figures listed above is that their ensemble music is very good to actually play.  And having played music by all but two, I can assuredly say that every instrumental part is not only well-written but the player feels well-used within the ensemble.  More, the ensemble itself is often highly innovative - Bach's Brandenburgs, several Haydn symphonies and Hindemith's Kammermusik series all feature little-used combinations of instruments for at least part of their length.  Tenuous as the link seems, I'm sure all this has quite a lot to do with the composer having played an instrument on an inner part.  Whilst being a violinist or pianist does not preclude one from becoming a skilled orchestrator, actually being 'the middle' provides a thorough understanding of how an ensemble works and how to get the most from it. Of course, long periods of time spent playing uninspiring parts probably does much for this outlook as well.

The flip side of this is that 'interesting orchestration' can also mean 'harder parts'.  (At this point I quietly brush through the scores of The Sun Rising, my orchestration of a Bach WTC fugue and some pieces for quartet I wrote in third year, cruelly smirking at the technical delights residing within).  Yet violists simply rose to the challenge and shouldered the responsibility of enlightened folk realising that 'those lot' had the same technical potential as the violins (Berlioz here receives kudos for being an early convert).  The fact that, solo-repertoire-wise, the cello was nearly as neglected as the viola in roughly the same periods of music history is rather mysterious, as this instrument has seldom been considered anything less than highly attractive and capable as a solo instrument.  Orchestral viola parts from the mid-nineteenth-century also contain few concessions to technique, indicating that most composers had cottoned on to what they could ask of the entire string section. In any case, no matter how good your folks playing the tune or the bass are, the music falls flat without an effective 'middle' - ie the violas (with assistance from horns/bassoons and such like).

To reiterate, being a violist or playing any other 'inner' instrument will, in all probability, make you a better composer.  I am not at all suggesting that violinists or pianists necessarily write dull orchestral parts (that morbid role is often filled by concert band composers and the army of arrangers who are all too eager to copy and paste saxophones as string parts) but a lot of less rewarding parts do come from composers who either spent too much time at the piano or who set excessive store by melody and thus 'conventional' melodic instruments.  Being literally inside the ensemble teaches one how it works with great effect.  If you want to be a great orchestrator, play the viola. QED.

Anyway, here's William Primrose to play us out with some expertly cultivated alto one-upmanship:            

Notes from a fellow

Periodically, I search for composition competitions I would consider entering, primarily those of an instrumental leaning. One of the major ones is the Toru Takemitsu Award, since 1997 an annual prize of several million Yen awarded to a young composer for an orchestral work composed in the spirit of the Japanese composer.  The judges befit the profile of the contest - Ligeti, Dutilleux, Berio, Andriessen, Lindberg, Benjamin, Reich and Lachenmann have all headed the panel during its history.  This year's is a figure I'm less familiar with - Salvatore Sciarrino, an IRCAM alumnus from Italy.  As a shortlist for the 2011 prize has already been drawn up, the website quotes Sig. Sciarrino's comments on the four pieces.  What I find more interesting, however, are his words on the submitted entries overall:

"The bulk of scores presented to the Composition Award offers a panorama of the present cultural situation in its complexity with all the problems that life involves (as it happens in all ages).

In my work of selection, I have been obliged to exclude some scores that were very distinct in their conception but too theoretical as to the use of instruments which made them unsuitable to be presented in a concert.

Many scores insist excessively on a hyperactivity of the orchestra, mainly rhetorical which on the contrary obtains a misleading movement, a feeling of emptiness. We deal with a diffuse aesthetical naivety which may be amazing but in reality is counterproductive.

In general, I have the impression of an improvement in musical competence and widening of information : today the technological means available to composers are much larger. This may also produce a big disadvantage, that puts(sets) combining systems against creative and inventive thinking. So the impulse to fill the page mechanically is present even in manually written works.

Even though as an optimist, I consider creativity inseparable from the human being (and therefore its development unforeseeable), I have to refuse the lack of personal effort. If the compilation is done for itself, if individual answers are silent, then the more important experiences of the modern tradition weaken and disappear. We risk, as Musil wrote, being a laboratory where no experiments are concluded. Continuity is one of the basic assumptions of the survival of culture. 

We have to further engage ourselves in music because the artist's task is to build and discover the new, the dreams, the utopia, the future.

Of course my considerations refer to social topics of such a level that cannot be analyzed on this occasion but that I cannot pretend to ignore."

I find a lot to agree with here. Although his music is unfamiliar to me, philosophically Sciarrino seems very close to my own compositional outlook.  He firstly endorses a point of common sense, although I can't be sure if by 'theoretical as to the use of instruments' he means that the instrumentation of the works was merely too flexible or whether the composer had actually asked for things not technically possible from the players.  The subsequent points are rather more insightful. In discouraging 'hyperactivity', Sciarrino is essentially warning against needless complexity which diminishes musical effectiveness, and more, that such action constitutes a technical error because it weakens the emotive argument of the work.  The undiscerning use of mechanical process, be that in the form of technology or any contrived systems, may also turn out to be detrimental to works because we become too reliant on such schemes and not on creative impulse.  Best of all, he considers a future devoid of 'personal effort' (the original phrase 'mancanza di sforzo personale' - a 'lack of personal force' is perhaps more compelling) antithetical to the deserved progression of culture.  Indeed, the entire thrust of Sciarrino's comments point towards a caveat I hold to be of the highest importance: that the personality and subjective input of the composer, the individual, is vital to the success, survival and value of their work.  I find the penultimate statement to be a pleasingly elegant way of expressing this.