Bach, Bacchini, Bellini, Benjamin, Handel, Hovhaness, Krol, Palazzani: Passato | Presente

Composer(s)

Alan Hovhaness (b Somerville, MA, 8 March 1911; d Seattle, 21 June 2000). American composer of Armenian and Scottish descent. He began composing in early childhood and took a youthful interest in meditation and mysticism. In the early 1930s he studied with Converse at the New England Conservatory and was exposed to the music of India, then little known in the West, through musicians in the Boston area. His early, ‘first-period’ works show little of this influence but reflect that of Renaissance music, and, especially in works composed before 1936, employ a harmonic language reminiscent of late Romanticism. In 1943 Hovhaness rethought his style, influenced by his meditative activities and the disappointments he had experienced that summer at the Berkshire Music Center, where his music was criticized by Bernstein and Copland. He destroyed or suppressed many works and studied Armenian music – especially the works of the priest-composer Komitas Vardapet – which he had until then neglected. The music of this second period is more active rhythmically and contrapuntally, but it is significant that the stylistic attitude and the harmonic and melodic vocabulary remain more or less the same. Hovhaness attained a considerable reputation in the 1950s, a decade during which he travelled widely and embarked on a third stylistic period. This combined elements of the first two periods as well as various experimental and non-Western procedures. These international tendencies continued into a fourth period, beginning about 1960, in which East Asian elements, particularly Japanese and Korean, predominate. The fifth period, beginning about 1971, was marked by a return to Western influences; the works are particularly rich in scoring and chordal sonority, longer in duration than their predecessors, and generally more spacious and less active.

Although most of Hovhaness’s major compositions are instrumental, almost every work is religious in nature. This does not, however, inhibit stylistic and psychological variety; tranquility, fear, ecstasy, mystery and epic chaos find expression by means of divergent and ever-changing techniques. Hovhaness’s melodies are clear, often largely conjunct, and generally confined to the notes of a particular mode. The modes range from diatonic scales to exotic rāgas; the use of the rāga increased in the later periods. Wind Drum (1962), for voices and small orchestra, uses one six-note mode for the entire 35-minute work. His harmonies are often quite consonant, but progress modally or chromatically rather than tonally. In the works of his second and fourth periods long sections may be completely static chordally. Hovhaness also uses strong dissonances formed by adding semitone-removed pitches to a consonant chord. This collapses the functions of nonharmonic tones and of resolutions into one chord. A surprising harmonic fingerprint, found in the very early and very late works, but entirely absent from 1940 to 1970, is the traditional half-diminished chord (a diminished triad with an added minor 7th) elevated in some fifth-period works to a predominant role. In this Hovhaness acknowledged the influences of Wagner’s operas and the idiom of music for the shō, a Japanese mouth organ.

Hovhaness rarely used standard formal and motivic procedures, but he made frequent and rigorous use of counterpoint throughout his life. For example, the first period has many richly beautiful modal fugues (as in the Missa brevis), the second abounds in vigorous polymodal canons (‘St Vartan’ Symphony), and the fourth features slow dissonant canons at the unison (The Holy City). Rhythmic organization is equally strict, often including complex repeated metric patterns related to both Indian tāla and Western isorhythm. A variant of this procedure, which Hovhaness devised in 1944, assigns different short patterns, with pitches and rhythm specified, to several parts, with instructions that players perform the passages repeatedly at their own speed without coordination with the rest of the ensemble. The resultant blur is hardly aleatory, since exact pitches are carefully controlled and any two performances will be substantially the same. Hovhaness uses these sections, which he calls ‘rhythmless’, in many ways, ranging from gentle murmuring accompaniments (in such works of the second period as Lousadzak, 1944) to cataclysmic orchestral crescendos (as in Fra Angelico, 1967, of the fourth).

Despite his high mystical intentions, Hovhaness wrote quickly and produced many works of Gebrauchsmusik (Symphony for Metal Orchestra, for flutes, trombones, and percussion, 1963, was written for a metallurgical society’s convention). He sometimes reworked material for new works, a practice consistent with that of his favourite Western composers, those of the Baroque, especially Handel and Bach, and Renaissance. He was also concerned to make his works easily playable. Just as Hovhaness tended to avoid Classical and Romantic forms, he normally rejected traditional Western orchestration. Many works, particularly of the second period, use small orchestras, and keep instruments and instrumental groups clearly distinct. In later works requiring larger forces he tended to cultivate polyrhythmic or polymodal techniques so that tuttis, when they do occur, are accumulations of differentiated colours rather than homogeneous aggregates. There are exceptions in the third period, particularly in the symphonies of the 1950s, where Romantic tuttis can be found.

Among the most prolific composers of the 20th century, his surviving corpus of works numbers well over 400, despite his destruction of dozens of works. Age did not impede his productivity; in fact the years after his 60th birthday were the most productive of all, yielding over 30 symphonies. In 1977 he became a member of the Institute of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Hovhaness composed extensively for full orchestra, chamber orchestra and band. A capable pianist, he wrote many piano works and songs with piano accompaniment. His chamber works often use instruments of diverse types, occasionally including oriental instruments. The short chamber operas are suggestive of mystery plays and nō drama. Of his many choral works, the psalm settings have gained a permanent place in the repertory of many church choirs.

Arthur Benjamin (b Sydney, 18 Sept 1893; d London, 10 April 1960). Australian-English composer and pianist. After general education at Brisbane Grammar School he entered the RCM at 18, studying composition there with Stanford; a common admiration for Brahms eased his path with that teacher. Benjamin remained at the RCM until the outbreak of war in 1914, when he joined the infantry, later transferring to the air force. After the war he was for a short time a piano teacher at the Sydney Conservatorium, but his need for European musical life brought him back to London in 1921. His first published work, a string quartet, appeared in 1924 and won a Carnegie Award, and in 1926 Benjamin joined the staff of the RCM. An early enthusiasm for the music of Gershwin stimulated his Piano Concertino (1926), which he declared to have been influenced by the Rhapsody in Blue, although it is difficult to find this influence in the innocent sounds of Benjamin's Concertino, which bears a greater resemblance to salon music or to the music of the French music halls before the introduction of jazz. The composer himself played the solo part at the first performance in England, conducted by Wood. Benjamin was a very good pianist, although not perhaps a virtuoso, and his playing affected both his style of composition and his musical career. He also gave the first performances of Howells's Piano Concerto no.1 (1913) and Lambert's Piano Concerto (1931).

More long-lasting and fruitful than the influence of Gershwin was that of Latin American music, which Benjamin heard during his travels as an adjudicator and examiner for the Associated Board. He wrote works in Latin-American dance rhythms throughout his life, and indeed one of his best known pieces is the Jamaican Rumba (1938), originally for two pianos and later orchestrated. It made his name known throughout the world, and many would have been astonished to learn that he was a ‘serious’ composer and a professor at the RCM. The ‘light’ element remained an important feature in his music until his last years. With the exception of several works his music is jovial in mood and uncomplicated in technique; a touch of neo-classicism in the Violin Concerto (1932) merely reflects the compatibility of the manner with Benjamin's essential cheerfulness. His first opera, The Devil Take Her, displays his light touch and sense of humour. The longest and most serious of his completed operas is The Tale of Two Cities. This was revived (1995) in excerpts for a BBC radio broadcast. None of his dramatic pieces has held the stage. Benjamin's orchestral music has fared better: the two concertante piano works have a certain life, and the second (1949) ends with a rugged and dramatic Passacaglia, an indication of the more profound direction that his music was taking in his last years. The Romantic Fantasy for violin, viola and orchestra is an ardent and wholly successful work, indebted to both Delius and Bax. His only symphony (1944–5) was performed at the 1948 Cheltenham Festival. It is dark and powerful, tragic in expression, and its mood seems in keeping with the time at which it was written. Much the same mood is shared by the Viola Sonata and the Ballade for strings. There were two further operas: Mañana, the first opera commissioned for BBC television, and Tartuffe, of which Benjamin completed the short score but orchestrated only a few pages.

His piano pupils included Britten. As a teacher, pianist and composer Benjamin was an accomplished professional, as was recognized by the Worshipful Company of Musicians which awarded him the Cobbett Medal in 1956. Film music was eminently fitted to his talents, and he contributed some successful examples, including scores for An Ideal Husband and for a documentary about the ascent of Everest.

George Frideric Handel (b Halle, 23 Feb 1685; d London, 14 April 1759). English composer of German birth. Though consistently acknowledged as one of the greatest composers of his age, his reputation from his death to the early 20th century rested largely on the knowledge of a small number of orchestral works and oratorios, Messiah in particular. In fact, he contributed to every musical genre current in his time, both vocal and instrumental. The composition of operas, mainly on Italian librettos, dominated the earlier part of his career, and are the finest (though not the most typical) of their kind. In his later years his commitment to large-scale vocal works, usually with a strong dramatic element, found a more individual outlet in English oratorio, a genre that he invented and established.

Johann Sebastian Bach: (b Eisenach, 21 March 1685, d Leipzig; 28 July 1750). Composer and organist. The most important member of the family, his genius combined outstanding performing musicianship with supreme creative powers in which forceful and original inventiveness, technical mastery and intellectual control are perfectly balanced. While it was in the former capacity, as a keyboard virtuoso, that in his lifetime he acquired an almost legendary fame, it is the latter virtues and accomplishments, as a composer, that by the end of the 18th century earned him a unique historical position. His musical language was distinctive and extraordinarily varied, drawing together and surmounting the techniques, the styles and the general achievements of his own and earlier generations and leading on to new perspectives which later ages have received and understood in a great variety of ways.
The first authentic posthumous account of his life, with a summary catalogue of his works, was put together by his son Carl Philipp Emanuel and his pupil J.F. Agricola soon after his death and certainly before March 1751 (published as Nekrolog, 1754). J.N. Forkel planned a detailed Bach biography in the early 1770s and carefully collected first-hand information on Bach, chiefly from his two eldest sons; the book appeared in 1802, by when the Bach Revival had begun and various projected collected editions of Bach’s works were underway; it continues to serve, together with the 1754 obituary and the other 18th-century documents, as the foundation of Bach biography.

Roberto Bacchini graduated with honours at the Pontificio Istituto Ambrosiano di Musica Sacra in Milan with a major in Gregorian chant. At the same institute, he also studied organ with Franco Castelli and Emanuele Vianelli. In June 2014, he graduated at Cremona University majoring in Secondary and High School Music Education. Composer of vocal, instrumental, and choral music, Bacchini published several scores in different genres (sacred, orchestral, chamber, organ, and art songs) with Rugginenti, Sonitus, and Armelin, and a collection of poems entitled “Riflessi” with Nuovi Autori. His music has been performed all over the world by artists such as Giuseppe Ettorre, Piermario Murelli, Barbara Frittoli, Carlo Romano, Ula Ulijona, and Massimo Macrì. Bacchini is the principal organist at St. Provino’s Collegiate Church in Agno (Switzerland) where he plays a Mascioni organ (Op. 682). Since 2006 he has taught Music Education at the Secondary School and Conducting at the Civico Liceo Musicale in Varese. In 2010, he attended a masterclass with Marco Aceti in Varese: “Training, management and organization of music schools”. In September 2013, he completed a one-year training course at the Accademia Giuditta Pasta in Como. Roberto Bacchini performs concert activity with various chamber ensembles and orchestras such as Ensemble Giglio Armonico and Ensemble Cameristi Cromatici.

Vincenzo Bellini (b Catania, 3 Nov 1801; d Puteaux, nr Paris, 23 Sept 1835). Italian composer. He was a leading figure in early 19th-century opera, noted for his expressive melodies and sensitive approach to text-setting.