The Pathétique of Peter
A symphony is a society
Image: Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893).
A physics teacher at my school once said, correctly as I recall, that, by nothing more than the strangest of quirks of coincidence, humans are the only species that can hear ‘music’. Of course, anything with ears or a sense of hearing can ‘hear’ music, but the question is: what do they understand by it?
Most of the sounds and noises made by species other than humans are intended as love calls, warnings of ‘get off my territory’ or, say, in the case of bats, as hypersonic direction finders. But, as far as we know, none intends the sound emitted by the species to be a means of stirring the emotions. Although the other uses of sound, bar, possibly, direction finding, are also known to man, it is as a stirrer of emotions that music is enjoyed by human beings alone.
The symphony is a particular sub-species of the species ‘music’: musica sinfonica. What marks it out is its sometimes extraordinary length, in some cases well over an hour. The purpose sought by the composer is frequently only achieved to completion when the entire work is listened to at one stretch. Piecemeal selection of favourite movements is deprecated by purists and, if one includes the composers themselves among music’s purists, then it also falls foul of the whole purpose of the exercise. They would say, leave the individual shorties for your music excursions; the symphony, on the other hand, is a journey, a trek, a saga.
Jean Sibelius, of Finland, was famed for his ‘tone poems’, symphonies in all but name, by which the listener is transported through an ancient Nordic saga without breaks between the movements. Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony, likewise, has no breaks and can almost be followed with a picturesque imagination: mountaineers awaken one morning with the sun cracking over the tips of distant hills and a day of ascent, thunder storm, descent and thanks to God is embarked upon. Josef Haydn, who visited England, lost two symphonies on his channel crossing, shrugged off the loss and promptly wrote a dozen more. Haydn is regarded by musicologists as the ‘father of the symphony’ and he certainly made his mark in terms of quantity: no fewer than 108 rolled off his pen, not including the two lost to the English Channel, though four are not entitled “Symphony no.” and so his last numbered one was no. 104. Musicologists credit him with 106 and cannot, therefore, count. Even as the father of the symphony, the untrained ear would have difficulty in appreciating the influence Haydn had on symphonies of the later classical and romantic periods, but he tutored Ludwig van Beethoven, who basically kicked the classical period off and, when you listen to what Beethoven was writing in 1800 (his first symphony) and what Johannes Nepomuck Hummel was writing at the same time, you can hear how one era was winding to its end and the other was raring to go.
Peter Tchaikovsky, who hailed from Votkinsk, in what is now the Republic of Udmurtia, in the Russian Federation, died in Saint Petersburg in 1893, age 53. He was without question a master of the symphony. One of his symphonies, which is unnumbered, was written as a commission, his Manfred. It was poorly received by its commissioners, but I think he had every reason to be proud of it, it being one of my favourites.
This evening, I was honoured to be invited, along with many supporters and students, to a concert of one of his works, his last in fact, at the Conservatory of Brussels, played by the Orkest Etesiane, specially constituted for the occasion under the baton of Gabriel Hollander.
I attended three of four workshops last summer which Hollander dubbed his Scratch Opera project, in which he assembled miscellaneous musicians and singers to develop well-known operas from the bottom up – from scratch, as it were. They were given in an old garage – a true workshop – and the balmy weather contributed to a most relaxing experience among friends and acquaintances. Previously I’d seen him direct Mozart’s La finta giardiniera as part of a festival in Brussels, also last summer. Mozart operas are a different genre to the Berlioz or Verdi forming part of the Scratch project.
Hollander is adept at pedagogical projects, whether he’s teaching others or himself, and tonight’s concert was also in this genre, the players all hailing from higher establishments of musical education around Belgium. When you know that ahead of time, you brace yourself for the worst.
The concert began with a piece written by one of the Conservatory’s composition students, José Lebreuilly, and its title was neither in the documentation kindly distributed before the performance or in the e-mail inviting me to attend. But it proved from the outset that a bunch of amateurs from divers colleges across the nation is no reason whatsoever to brace oneself for the worst.
It is one of those pieces that emerges from nowhere and, for a concert opener, that is a challenging way to begin – players need to be spot on. Imperceptibly the sound arose from the orchestra, starting at 0 decibels and gradually mounting to a wonderful excursion into harmony, disharmony and pleasing platitude. I thought I caught a hint of Tchaikovsky himself, and soundtrack from The Remains of the Day, that soulful continuo that plays with its never-ending half-arpeggios, but a wistful retro-feeling of better times, long since past. Insofar, the piece was redolent of film music, as much modern classical music in fact is. That’s a prime influence for young composers. I wish I could tell you its title, but it would avail nothing: this was its world premiere.
And so to Tchaikovsky. His sixth, the Pathétique. My heart was already heavy as I entered the rather beautiful, if dusty, concert hall: Tchaikovsky, the Russian. It’s well seen that we were not in Kyiv, where Russian art in general has been expunged from the repertories of orchestras, ballet companies, galleries and every other outlet for artistic expression. That, I can understand. I still receive the intimations from the Russian House, Russia’s cultural outreach in foreign countries, and some of their events tempt me greatly. But I somehow feel that I’d be breaking faith with Ukraine to attend, and so, for now, eschew them. Tonight, it was Belgians, under a Belgian musical director, who were playing this Russian music, and that seemed less concerning. That it should cross my mind that it could be concerning, is perhaps the most concerning thing of all.
Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky was a romantic, of the romantic tradition. That means, because he was so great, that what you hear in his music are not simply well played notes and chords, sweeping melodies and inspiring climaxes, but his soul. His innermost soul. It was in the consummate skill with which he bore it to the public that he excelled more than anything else. But he had a great deal to expose to the listener, and a journey with him into his innermost can be fraught with sorrow. So it was this evening.
As tradition demands (it’s not always followed), the sixth consists of five movements. I believe it’s unknown why the last of these is out of its traditional place. In most symphonies this style of movement would be second, or fourth, after an ebullient start, interspersed with a scherzo in the middle and a triumphant finish as fifth. But, in the Pathétique, the triumph comes fourth, and the fifth movement is a heart-rending, soulful battle of the senses. It is as if Tchaikovsky was fighting with his self and unable to reach a satisfactory conclusion. If baring himself was all he could bear to do, he certainly surprised his audiences with this odd juxtaposition of movements. We may never know what impelled him to this decision, but what we do know is that the feeling he leaves us with as the final chords fade away is one of fulfilment, tinged with sorrow. Hollander was so insistent as to keep his arms aloft after the sound had become naught, so that the audience had those few seconds in which to contemplate what it was that Tchaikovsky had wanted to convey in that last movement of his last symphony, before they would erupt into well-deserved applause.
We cannot know what this Russian master would have thought of the Russian masters of today. It is almost unthinkable that his contribution to music should be baulked at at this time because of the sins of those who came a century and quarter after him. When we clap at his works, we applaud his genius, we applaud his tradition; but whether we applaud today’s Russian Federation is moot; for all they too take their pride in this son of Russia.
What is a symphony? How does it differ from all other music? Aside from its length and the number of movements, one needs to attend a live performance of a symphony in order to appreciate what in fact the symphony is. There are times during a symphony when different instruments will play the same notes but, for the most part, each section of the orchestra is playing different notes. Together they form chords and harmonies that sound like a single entity. It is this entity that the listener hears, punctuated occasionally by solos, duets, backed by undercurrent, which drives the listener to concentrate on a particular part of the score but nevertheless to appreciate the support and contribution being supplied by the often unsung instruments of the orchestra: the timpani, the double bass, the bassoon and the tuba.
As my eye scanned the orchestra, my thoughts turned to this aspect of symphonic music: everyone playing something different but, together, they are able to enter me and every last one of the individuals constituting this audience, and move us, to move our emotions, with our spines enraptured in tingles, and tears falling from our eyes. When an orchestra performs and achieves this result in the bodies of its audience, it is like a society playing in harmony, inducing harmony, propelling harmony. There are moments in Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony that are discordant and, yet, the orchestra that rises to a pinnacle of beauty in its harmonies is also able to communicate discord with understanding.
In many ways the symphony orchestra, therefore, is like our society. Each individual member must play their part: no one may be too slow or too fast; the percussionist strikes his timpani at precisely the right moment, with precisely the right force (percussionists know: it is not the note that is struck that is heard; it is the note that is lifted from the drumskin). All must start together; all must end together; they must be together; they must follow the conductor, but they must all be different.
You cannot build a symphony orchestra from musicians who all play the same instrument. Each of them must be consummate in his or her abilities on their chosen instrument, but none of them alone can play a symphony; it is the symphony, as a symphony, that moves the audience; and it is the members of the orchestra, individually, as individuals, playing their individual instruments, that contribute to that emotional surge: the surge is impossible without the symphony; the symphony cannot be played without the players; the players cannot play the symphony without the conductor. Mr Hollander coaches, encourages and leads his players to change the entire corporeal state of those who listen to his work. It is clever, it is masterful, but it is achieved using an innocuous stick of wood, which he waves in the air. And not with a Kalashnikov rifle pointed at each member of the orchestra. Were that so, then the audience’s spines would still tingle, but for very different reasons.
By all accounts, Tchaikovsky was homosexual. And, even at that time, Russia was no place to be homosexual. He was crushed by the shame of who he was, and we applaud him today: for who he was, for what he was and what he is giving to us still, 130 years after he went to his grave. The story, apocryphal or otherwise, is that he purposely drank contaminated water at a time of cholera epidemic, and soon passed away: six days after the premiere of his sixth symphony.
Maybe shame at his homosexuality drove him to that drastic decision. Maybe that decision impelled him to write the sixth’s movements in such enquiry-evoking order. But, even with those thoughts so present, it is the tragedy of Russia’s war in Ukraine, which raged as we listened, and rages as I write, that made me weep.