aworks :: "new" american classical music

Prayer of St. Gregory (1946). Alan Hovhaness

Image via Wikipedia

I caught the last few minutes on the radio of the television program NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. There was apparently a feature on the new SF opera, The Bonesetter's Daughter. But the program ended with an (unfortunately regular) feature of showing photos of US soldiers who have died in service. Alan Hovhaness' Prayer of St. Gregory, from the opera Etchmiadzin, played in the background.

Wikipedia on St. Gregory:

St. Gregory's pontificate saw the development of the notion of private penance as parallel to the institution of public penance. He explicitly taught a doctrine of Purgatory where a soul destined to undergo purification after death because of certain sins, could begin its purification in this earthly life, through good works, obedience and Christian conduct, making the travails to come lighter and shorter.

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• pbs: bonesetter podcast.
• lala: wynton marsalis version of prayer of st. gregory. gerard schwarz symphonic version.

Lousadzak "The Coming of Light" (1944). Alan Hovhaness

Before I return to the Carter concertos, I'm grinding through my relatively small collection of concerto MP3s. Vivaldi good, the Brandenburgs of course good, Mozart played by Isabelle Van Keulen surprisingly good, Hovhaness and Glass prolific but maybe good...

Classical Net on Hovhaness' Lousadzak: ...individual sections of the orchestra are instructed to continuously repeat a cycle of melody without temporal reference to other members of the ensemble. Most obviously, this technique (one of the most common components of the "Hovhaness style"), creates a gorgeous sense of rhythmic mystery from which (in "Lousadzak") the solo piano slowly emerges... at other times, the technique clearly foreshadows the work not just of modern minimalists such as Terry Riley and John Adams but also the entire Ambient/New Age school of composition...

Riley good, Adams good, ambient good, new age not so good...

lousadzak: armenian premiere
hovhaness quote: i wish to create for the unconscious mind, not for the conscious mind.

Alleluia and Fugue (1940). Alan Hovhaness /prolificacy/

Mark at Occam's Razor (not to be confused with another blogger I read -- Marc at Occam's Razor) says to not "snub" the music of the prolific Alan Hovhaness. As he describes his introduction to the music, Mark particularly enthuses about Alleluia and Fugue for string orchestra:

Godly music worthy of Bach himself.

Dunno, haven't heard it. But at its peak, I agree Hovhaness' music is superb.

I happen to be listening to a library CD lecture set by Robert Greenberg about the life and sic /sic?/ music of Franz Joseph Haydn. (It's ok but hasn't inspired me to seek out new music by the man. I suppose I need to care more about the music to care about the life and vice versa). Still, Greenberg points out that while only experts can recognize all of Haydn's vast output, it nonetheless represents a transcendence of the style of the time, and thus to be treasured, even if not easily distinguished.

Well, it occurred to me to ask if the same will eventually be said for Hovhaness and Glass, two of the most prolific composers of our time?

For Glass, I think so and for Hovhaness, I think not. Off the top of my head, Glass' greatest achievements (Music in Twelve Parts? the operas, Mad Rush?) are not significiantly better than much of the rest of his output while I think Hovhaness' peaks do outshine the rest of his output (or at least what I've heard, maybe 15 or so works). Although, It's possible that Hovhaness will be seen as someone with a unique and authentic expression of American assimilation. Of course, only time will tell if either composer ultimately transcends his times (or proves to be folly -- Barbara Tuchman historical criteria via Digby here).

Let's see some examples of what critics think about Hovhaness so far:

Paul Griffiths in the Penguin Companion to Classical Music:

...an enormous body of music (434 Op. numbers) in which Western Renaissance-Baroque counterpoint is fused with the entranced harmonic stasis and representation of Asian traditions and given colourful scoring.

Norman Lebrecht in the 20th Century Music Companion:

...he indulged the melismas of his paternal ancestry in a wearisome profusion of 65 symphonies and 23 concertos.

So far, I side on the music being colorful rather than wearisome although I find the "Mount St. Helens" symphony both colorful and wearisome. The last time I played it was in the car and it startled me...

haydn: 104 symphonies, 68 (or so) string quartets, 13 masses,... glass: 32 orchestral/concerto works, 30 soundtracks, 21 operas, 17 theatre pieces, 8 ballets,...

String Quartet No. 4 (1970). Alan Hovhaness /*****/

Creeping starism...

1. Paint the Silence. South.
2. String Quartet No. 4. Adagio Ma No Troppo. Alan Hovhaness. Shanghai Quartet.
3. El Salon Mexico. Aaron Copland (arranged for piano by Leonard Bernstein). Eugenie Russo.
4. The Cat. Jimmy Smith. Kudos to my recently deceased Oklahoma grandmother-in-law. Who knew she had such jazz tastes?
5. Yellow. Petra Haden and Bill Frisell. A Coldplay song by real musicians.
6. Sonntag. Alexander Hacke. From a recent The Wire CD.
7. The Duel. Dexter Gordon. Boldface or italicize?
8. Piano Sonata Op. 26: Adagio mesto. Samuel Barber. Emanuele Arciuli. 1999 CD of the Year?
9. Piano Sonata Op. 26: Fuga-Allegro con spirito. Samuel Barber. Emanuele Arciuli. Did I mention how good the CD is?
10. Salvese Quien Pueda: Juana's Epic Re-Version (Edit). Juana Molina. From the same The Wire CD.
11. I Loves You, Porgy. Sun Ra.
12. Concerto in D minor: Andante. Vivaldi. Guillou. For organ. What's up with his "new" work?
13. Arias, Interludes And Inventions (5). Robert Moran. Jayne West, Soprano / Piano Circus Band. Not enough attention on Robert Moran.
14. M'bifé (Balafon). Amadou & Miriam Mariam. New album.
15. Artistiya. Amadou & Miriam Mariam. Did I mention they have a new album out?
16. Arias, Interludes And Inventions (2). Robert Moran. Jayne West, Soprano / Piano Circus Band. Did I mention Moran deserves more attention?

The most American aworks post is here, inspired by the music of Alan Hovhaness. Since then, I don't really have any major new thoughts on religion, the Amish, Alan Hovhaness, Hoosier mores, or American Muslims. I can say I'm much more aware of China (Hi Norman. Hi Wayne) and I do sometimes wonder if after A Love Supreme, John Coltrane practiced nihlism.

In 1970 according to Wikipedia, Charles Wuorinen, at age 32, won the Pulitzer Prize, Davy Jones left the Monkees, Randy Bachman started Bachman Turner Overdive Overdrive and Black Sabbath released Black Sabbath. I was probably listening to Chicago's 25 or 6 to 4, If You Could Read My Mind by Gordon Lightfoot and/or Santana's Black Magic Woman. By this time, I knew who Ferde Grofe was (Hi Mrs. Merrill). I remember buying the singles Venus by Shocking Blue and Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin. I also vaguely remember Bobby Sherman. George Crumb wrote Ancient Voices of Children and Ligeti wrote Continuum but it took me another twenty years before I "grokked" contemporary classical music. Mariah Carey, Jennifer Lopez and Beck were all born in 1970 and Slim Harpo, Earl Hooker, Janice Joplin, George Szell, and Jimi Hendrix all died. That year, I saw Scrooge at a matinee with my mom, but didn't like it because of all the singing (Hi Mom). I've since seen The Aristocats, released in 1970.  For geeks, the Unix epoch began January 1, 1970 (Hi Shawn and ...). I do remember being in a bookstore hearing about the problem with Apollo 13 (Hi Tom Hanks). I also remember the Ford Pinto although I never saw one explode...

Update: Reading this 1970s nostalgia trip one day later, it amazes me how ephemeral popular culture really is.

Quartet No. 4 "The Ancient Tree" (1970). Alan Hovhaness

I was in rural eastern Indiana for Thanksgiving. This area being, of course, quite conservative politically and socially. One of my family members said that 16% of the county voted for the Libertarian presidential candidate; this may have just been a Farmlander teasing his Upper Coaster relatives (political geography here). Still, the last thing I wanted to do on a day of gratitude was discuss politics. So, I took the dog and my iPod and went outdoors.

Twice in fifteen minutes, an Amish horse and buggy passed by. This was a bit of a shock, even though the high school I attended (elsewhere in Indiana) had several Mennonite girls; I also remember a horse and buggy hitched at a grocery store. Anyway, there I was listening on my iPod to some Alan Hovhaness music played by the Shanghai String Quartet, and thinking I live a rather different life than the Amish. For starters, I presume they don't have iPods, and even though this music is quite conservative, they don't listen to Alan Hovhaness.

My next thought was how important religious freedom is. But do those who benefit care about other, different religions? The extreme example that came to mind is that church in San Francisco where they worship Saint John Coltrane, which presumably has little in common with Amish practices. In any case, the Amish are very community oriented but on a local basis.  We had a family member in the hospital last week, and one of the Amish women had called to ask if things were better (they were).  Interestingly, she telephoned at night from  their barn, where they do have electricity for milking machines (although probably not for recharging iPods).

On the flight home, Esquire magazine had a column by Noah Feldman where he talks about how the relationship between American church and state evolved as religion has diversified. The American founders decided to not have an official state religion, which was a novel idea at the time. During the early 1800s as new denominations proliferated, the nation became nonsectarian, with a morality sufficiently compatible to all. As Catholics immigrated, we became a Christian nation and with Jewish immigration, a Judeo-Christian one, albeit one with a firmer separation of church and state. Feldman speculates we are headed toward a religious crisis as America expands to include large numbers of Muslims, Hindus, and others, and maybe the US ending up as a monotheistic nation.

The other thought that occurred to me is that if there is a catastrophe and we lose the "grid," the Amish will be better prepared. Me, I'll be staring at my iPod trying to decide what last work I'll listen to for inspiration--maybe Coltrane's A Love Supreme or Adams' Shaker Loops.

From an Amazon.com review of the Shanghai Quartet CD:

`The Ancient Tree' (Under the Ancient Maple Tree) is the title of his 4th quartet. It is a touching requiem to a beautiful tree on Hovhaness's uncle's farm in New Hampshire which was destroyed by lightning. As a boy, he remembers the glorious views he commanded from this point. It begins with a beautiful adagio, again modal in feel, which reflects the bitter-sweet memories of things past and gone forever. The inevitable fugue follows but the main theme has the character of a rustic dance. The final movement begins adagio with some music of heart-breaking beauty. A brighter mood gradually appears and the piece ends with a fast, celebratory passage.