ALEXANDER ZEMLINSKY: LYRIC SYMPHONY

While Alexander Zemlinsky was strongly linked to the Second Viennese School as a teacher of Berg and strong supporter of modern music, his own compositions’ style seems to neatly combine Romantic compositional styles with a spattering of modern tendencies. Despite Zemlinsky’s strong support of modern music, it seems that he had a fondness for composing his own pieces with mainly techniques that had been popular in the late Romantic. Zemlinsky wrote his Lyric Symphony during his time in Prague, and it is considered one of his “finest works” (Grove Music Online s.v. “Zemlinsky”). The symphony is composed of seven sections with operatic lyrics for two soloists based on the poems of Rabindranath Tagore, an Indian author. Characteristics of Romantic compositions, such as exoticism, large ensemble, and use of literature as a basis for music may be clearly traced in this symphony. However, Zemlinsky also uses more modern techniques, such as lack of strong pulse along with altered scales that contribute to a vague tonal center. In addition, his expression of intense and sometimes frightening human emotion through music reflects a modern trend to show humanity as it truly functions. This piece depicts the transition between Romantic and modern, as Zemlinsky himself was transitioning.[1] It is an enjoyable piece for both listening and analyzing, and there is no reason for its exclusion from the Canon other than it was looking back to the Romantic. Most of the modern works in the Canon are there because they exemplify a particular technique developed in the period, and this piece simply is a beautiful continuation of techniques that were been used before.

The first movement begins with a slow but intense instrumental introduction featuring the full ensemble with timpani playing sustained, forte chords in dotted rhythms. This introduction sounds much like Mahler, who expanded the size of the orchestra in the Romantic and wrote intense, brooding themes such as these. The movement calms beginning with a second section that sounds more like a chamber group, during which the baritone begins to sing. His stanzas are interrupted by large orchestral sections, but despite the interjecting nature of the orchestral parts, the instruments often reflect the lyrics. The baritone’s words, “Oh the keen call of thy flute,” are accompanied by a flute struggling to be heard over the heavy brass texture. This flute theme reappears in the second movement as a plaintive flute melody enters the orchestration as the soprano realizes that her love will leave her, so she sings that “only the vanishing strain of the flute will come sobbing to me from afar.” This mirroring of the text also calls the listener to remember techniques of text painting from works of earlier periods.

Color plays a central role in this symphony, as the texts of Tagore are reflected in the music. The lyrics are full of references to red and blue linked to exotic themes like chariots, face veils, and rubies. Movements that contain reds (II., III., V.) tend to be louder and full of rhythmic themes in the brasses or full string sections. In the second movement, exoticism is emphasized through the use of a harmonic minor melody in the brass counter to the soprano as she sings of a ruby she tosses to the ground. Tagore’s lyrics in conjunction with the melodic content of this section clearly bring to mind the Indian ethnicity. The “blue” movement (IV.) has a sparser orchestral part, often featuring winds or solo strings on a flowing melody. The violin executes a particularly haunting solo in this section. Movements I. and VII. deal mainly with light, but since daylight is closely associated with a blue sky (which is actually mentioned in I.), these may also be grouped as blue movements, thus closing the piece with a serene aesthetic. The first movement begins with a prelude that seems musically more “red” than “blue” because of the strong brass sections. However, the lyrical melodies that take over the rhythmic introduction firmly establish the symphony in this milder “blue” style. These two movements thus frame a passionate symphony of reds with quieter moments for reflection.

Movement VI. deserves its own discussion in reference to color since it has no colorful mention in its lyrics. Color’s conspicuous absence along with scant instrumentation again reflects the feelings and words of the soloist: “My eager hands press emptiness to my heart and it bruises my breast.” The soprano’s lyrics are framed by a solo clarinet, erupting from the still orchestra in an upward run in the beginning and falling back down in a more lyrical phrase to set up the final movement. This contrast between limited orchestration and bursts of intense yearning perfectly emulates the emptiness the soprano is trying to possess and the intensity of feeling that bruises her. While no color is specifically mentioned, this juxtaposition seems to combine aspects of the other movements, perhaps making the section about “emptiness” the fullest moment of the piece.

Thus far, it seems that Zemlinsky was simply living in the past, neglecting more modern techniques. However, this is not the case. It is through the discussion of dreams[2] that his modernity begins to become evident. The baritone soloist first mentions the topic of dreams in the third movement: “You are my own, my own, Dweller in my deathless dreams” (emphasis added). This line, tenderly wrapped within the orchestral texture, leads to the fourth movement, in which a dream-like aesthetic is evoked through the free rhythm of the violin soloist. The steady pulse that had pervaded the symphony suddenly disappears into a Debussian atmosphere. The colorless sixth movement again mentions dreams which “can never be made captive.” All of these dream statements culminate in the final movement, in which the baritone asserts, “Let it not be death, but completeness.”[3] Here the instrumentation is again limited with a distant horn call sounding before the symphony concludes with a whole-tone melody. This use of the whole-tone scale is used to represent the dream state of the soloists, as they have no beginning or end, just like the deathless dream. While these may be stretched to fit the definition of modern, it is really the passion of the “red” movements that reflects the psychological trends of modern composers; raw human emotion is shown bluntly within love scenes without fear of showing the darker side of human nature.

While it is clear that Zemlinsky drew perhaps more heavily from composers of the past than from techniques of his own time, this influence does not diminish the beauty of his Lyric Symphony. His lyricism paired with powerful climaxes yields a beautiful piece of music that is perhaps best described as a transition between Romanticism and Modernism (though much more influence is to be found on the Romantic side). In addition, the interweaving of Tagore’s text and Zemlinsky’s music is breathtaking. This work has certainly been overlooked and deserves some Canonic attention despite its strong attachment to ideas of Romanticism during the Modern era. Its forthright passion is enough to link it to modern psychology, and Zemlinsky’s understanding of Romantic forms and techniques combined with this created an outstanding symphony.

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[1]Zemlinsky’s early works, such as Trio for Clarinet, Cello, and Piano, op. 3 are heavily reminiscent of Brahms, using few, if any, “Modern” techniques.

[2]Sigmund Freud published many fascinating papers concerning dreams in the years prior to the composition of this piece. The essay “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming” (1908) is strikingly similar to the use of dreams in this work.

[3]This statement seems to reflect Strauss and Wagner’s theme of death and transfiguration.

WILLIAM WALTON: FAÇADE

William Walton was a well-known English composer in the 19^th century. In his early career, he gained many of his musical contacts through the patronage and support of the Sitwell family, and it was a collaboration with Edith Sitwell that created Façade. Walton was only nineteen when he wrote this piece, a chamber work to accompany the poetry of Sitwell. However, the work has undergone several decades of revision to reach the form in which it is currently recorded, and perhaps it is this evolving time that has kept it from being noticed in the Canon. While the music is intriguing, it is really the amalgamation of several art forms in the creation of Façade that makes it a captivating study.

Façade was first performed in the Sitwell home in order to enhance the poetry that was rhythmically entwined in the piece. Sitwell’s short poems are know for word-rhythms and onomatopoeia and are sometimes defined as “nonsense verse.” Most times it seems that Sitwell cared more for the sound and rhythm of the words that she strang together than for the meaning of the poems. Perhaps this placement of priorities reflects the musical trend for using harmonies as color rather than in traditionally functional ways. Regardless, her poems are quite modern in this respect, making it fitting that they were performed along with modern music and artwork. She convinced Walton to write the accompaniment and is said to have spent hours reading them to him so that he could understand the exact rhythm and nuance she intended. Each poem is no longer than three minutes in length, the songs’ used as well as their order varied from performance to performance. When Façade premiered in Sitwell’s home, she hid the musicians and herself behind an enormous curtain on which a grotesque head was painted (the original by Gino Severini). In addition to all this, in place of the mouth, a Sengerphone[1] (through which she recited her poems) was affixed to the curtain. The result of this was a satirical chamber piece featuring the nonsense poetry of a disembodied voice behind a Cubist painting.

Reception of Façade has been mixed since its premiere. At the actual premiere in Sitwell’s parlor, Michael Kennedy, author of Portrait of Walton, found that the audience was “naturally enthusiastic in their reception of Façade, for it was essentially an entertainment for artists and people of imagination” (28). Despite this enthusiasm, Walton would later point out that the audience talked through the entire performance and thought that he and Edith were crazy. The short pieces that make up Façade would seem very characteristic of the period, including lively and individualistic parts for the instrumentalists and several catchy tunes amidst increasing chromaticism along with some ambiguity of meter and tonal center. However, the intoned recitation of the speaker (in addition to the spectacle of the curtain and Sengerphone) pushed the limits of many audiences of the time. This poetry was not the beautiful verse of the German Romantics that composers had set to music in the past; it was “drivel they paid to hear” (headline of newspapers after the Aeolian Hall performance in 1923). Façade certainly is not a piece that most people would listen to for its catchy tunes—it can be most appreciated for its innovation in integrating poetic and musical rhythm.

By the time Façade evolved to its current published form, the instrumentation was for flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, alto saxophone, trumpet, percussion (side drum, cymbal, triangle, Chinese block castanets, tambourine, jingles), and cello (two cellos if the part for single cello was “too arduous”). This evolution, while fascinating to study, makes it difficult for the listener to realize what the original melodic intent of the pieces was. As Walton revised and added more pieces to Façade, they became increasingly satirical and were based on dances, while his original works more closely resembled “atonal” works. In fact, only six of the original eighteen works in Façade made it to the current publication. By listening to the works in Façade 2 (which were re-added to the work as part of 75^th birthday celebration for Walton), one notices that the parts were more frugal and do not have nearly so defined a rhythm as pieces like “Old Sir Faulk” (a fox trot), “Scotch Rhapsody” (a Highland reel), and more obviously, “Valse,” “Tango,” and “Polka.” This makes one think that perhaps Walton had originally been going for a more atonal aesthetic to accompany the poetry and later conformed more to what the listening public wanted to hear—music with catchy pulses.

A large number of Walton’s songs from Façade include traditional forms that he contorts to fulfill his own purposes. For example, his “Valse” clearly was influenced by the waltz form dating back to the 18^th century. Walton certainly takes the waltz in a new direction. One would expect the first beat of each measure to be accented, but instead, the movement begins with a rest followed a trumpet playing a syncopated rhythm with grace notes followed by falls in the cello. The waltz thus begins with an uncertain meter but settles definitively into triple meter by the time the reciter enters. Walton also used a traditional compositional form, ABA, though he used a jazz accompaniment along with the standard waltz, including broken figures in the bass and misplaced accents. As if these references to both the old and the new were not enough, he added in the leaping octaves and trills of Strauss (though now heavily articulated for his own purposes).

Perhaps the most “catchy” of the songs in Façade is one aptly named “Popular Song.” An educated listener can pick up references to Sousa march form again with a heavy jazz influence (diminished intervals on strong beats, side drum and cymbals filling gaps, diminished thirds abounding, etc.). Walton still manages to contort the standard four bar phrases, adding “hiccups” on occasion.” In addition, this is one of the many songs in which he uses an odd tempo marking (quarter=138).[2] Nevertheless, it actually became “popular” like the forms it is satirizing and was actually used as the theme song for the British television show Face the Music.[3]

Façade is certainly an extremely creative project about which dozens of people have found worth studying and writing books.[4] Walton composed for a long period of time in several genres, and his impact on music has been well-chronicled. However, I do not think that I can give a strong endorsement for the inclusion of Façade in the Canon simply for its musical merit. It cannot be separated for the poetry and artwork of which it was comprised. This considered, Façade cannot be truly appreciated through CD—its value as a composition seems very reliant on its public performance aspects. It was created to be performed in a parlor, among friends, and this aesthetic cannot be recreated well in the concert halls (as evidenced by its poor reception in the concert hall) or through a simple sound recording. It is because the music does not stand alone (with the possible exception of “Popular Song”) that I believe it has not made the Canon. When listening to the pieces as a cycle, the novelty of the compositional ideas wears off quickly, leaving one bored by the time one reaches the half-way mark on the CD. That said, Façade is certainly worth a listen to consider the integration of the arts as well as the progression of poems set to music from the Romantic Goethe to the modern Sitwell.

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[1]The Sengerphone was invented to magnify the voice of Fafner the dragon in Richard Wagner’s Siegfried.

[2]Perhaps the oddest of Walton’s tempo markings is the quarter=63 for “A Man from a Far Contree”

[3] Face the Music was a popular quiz show, running from 1966 to 1979, about classical music. Oddly enough, it did not award points for correct answers and had no winner. Walton appeared on the show as a guest twice (Humphrey Burton, William Walton: The Romantic Loner, 162).

[4]These are startlingly similar books at that, most of them referencing each other to a great extent.