In the Italian Renaissance, painter and author Giorgio Vasari authored a book which was destined to an enormous success. It was titled Lives of famous painters, sculptors and architects, and recounted, with a passionate and well-documented tone (though also in a fashion rather different from today’s historiography) the stories of the greatest artists of the era. Of course, this was a very praiseworthy undertaking, and we owe to Vasari a wealthy mine of information about the artists of his time. But we owe him also something which, at least in the opinion of many, is not equally commendable, i.e. a ranking of the arts. Vasari suggested that there are nobler, higher arts (such as, in fact, painting, sculpting, and architecture) which are directly based on drawing, and lower arts, such as embroidery, tapestry, or marquetry, which refer to drawing only indirectly. (It may be noted that most of the “lower” arts were forms of creativity practised by female artists). Vasari’s ranking influenced the perception of art in the following centuries; indeed, of what counts as art, and what can be classified as mere craftmanship. And this attitude, regarded by many as unfair, has conditioned the practice and the social worth of many artistic genres.
Something akin to Vasari’s attitude can also be found in music. Until Classicism, music was essentially functional, though, of course, this did not prevent some of this “functional” music to reach the level of an absolute masterpiece: Bach’s Passions are “functional” music inasmuch they were written with a precise purpose and function in mind, but few works in the Western repertoire reach the heights they conquer. It was perfectly normal for composers to be employed by a Church establishment or a court, or else to be entrepreneurs who ventured in the field of opera. In all cases, composers had to compose pieces as they were commissioned by their employers, or to create operas at such a pace, and with such a style, that they could be immediately appreciated by the audience and enjoy success – in terms of both glory and financial remuneration.
Starting with Mozart’s generation, independence was sought as a value and as a goal. And, particularly with Beethoven, we assist to a role reversal: it was no more the employer or the audience who had the right of dictating the aesthetic parameters of the musical composition, but rather the composer who could establish his or her own aesthetic values, and impose them to the audience. Given the immense authoritativeness of Beethoven’s figure, whose human drama (deafness) increased his “social weight”, and whose role became increasingly that of a musical guru, an embodiment of Goethe’s “genius”, his works became the paradigm of what ought to be done in music. Thus, works such as symphonies, sonatas, Masses, quartets etc. acquired the status of models, and the aesthetics beyond them became normative.
A double standard was thus established: on the one hand, “l’art pour l’art”, art in itself, art for its own sake: take it or leave it. On the other hand, “entertaining” music, with a plethora of piano dances, Feuillets d’album, fantasies and potpourris on operatic themes and so on, designed for the amateur pianists’ pleasure or for the virtuoso’s display of his or her technique. The chasm between these two worlds increased in size with time.
Thus, it came to be that works such as those recorded in this Da Vinci Classics album, rarely found the attention owed to true “artworks”. They could excite the enthusiasm of amateurs, particularly female amateurs, but only seldom found the way for the concert hall, or were studied in theses or other such works.
The Spaniard Antón García Abril (1933-2021) was in fact tempted by both “absolute music” and by program or “consumption” music (for instance, he wrote the music for countless movies, or, in a different field, for the national hymn of Aragon). His source of inspiration came frequently from the Spanish tradition, which he revered and knew deeply; however, to non-Spanish ears, this may sound as exotic or nationalistic, and thus fall back, once more, within the realm of “occasional” or “functional” music, rather than of “absolute” music. His six Preludios de Mirambel, written between 1984 and 1996, draw their name from a village from the Aragon region of Maestrazgo. The year before the musician’s beginning of the compositional process, Mirambel was awarded the Prize “Europa Nostra”; this prompted the musician’s wish to depict in sounds the landscapes of his youth. He wrote: “When writing this collection of preludes, my wish was to root my work within Spanish pianism, which accomplished very important levels in terms of artistic expression and technical evolution within the framework of universal music”. In spite of the long timeframe needed for completing the collection, its original planning was clear at the very beginning, and lends uniformity and unity to the cycle. Prelude no. 1, recorded here, is dedicated to the composer’s son, Antón, who at the time was a student at the Real Conservatorio Superior of Madrid. The musical material is handled with competence and skill, building up a dialogue of tensions and distensions, particularly thanks to harmonic solutions which are both daring and compelling, grounded, as they are, on modes and tonal centres.
A similar attention for the musical language characterizes the works and style of Cécile Chaminade, a French composer belonging in a different generation with respect to García Abril (1857-1944). A very gifted child prodigy, Chaminade could not attend the courses of composition at the Paris Conservatoire, which admitted only men, and therefore studied privately both composition and performance (at the piano and violin) achieving a very high level of musical proficiency.
As a young woman, Chaminade tried and asserted her worth, writing ambitious works in the wake of the great tradition of Western music. Her Piano Sonata, op. 21, recorded here, is a prime example of her successful handling of large-scale forms and genres. By way of contrast, her lasting fame is bound to small-scale miniatures, many of which do not require transcendental technique, and therefore were considered as particularly appealing by amateur pianists, who worshipped her. Unfortunately, the reverse of the coin is that a Vasari-like attitude depreciates her worth in comparison with musicians who were more indifferent to the musical needs of amateur musicians. Still, works such as her Arabesque demonstrate the variety of her inspiration, and also the demanding nature of some of the passages she wrote (one has just to listen to its brilliant and virtuosic ending to question the stereotype of Chaminade as a composer of “easy” works).
Her Sonata, written in an early stage of her musical career (probably in the late 1880s), is a powerful and well-structured composition, dedicated to one of the greatest virtuosos of the era, Moritz Moszkowski, who had married Chaminade’s sister. Its main key, C minor, qualifies the piece from the outset as a homage to the father of the Piano Sonata, i.e. Ludwig van Beethoven, even though the piece is a refreshing creation, by no means plagiarizing the music of older composers. For instance, Chaminade surprises the listener by her brilliant use of contrapuntal language and polyphony, which is reminiscent of Baroque stylistic influences.
The second movement, an Andante, is the expressive heart of the Sonata, with its touching and intense melodies and its interesting tonal itinerary. The enchantment it builds is brusquely dispelled by the energetic drive of the Finale, whose overall concept alludes to the Baroque toccata, but seen through the lens of more recent composers (such as Schumann and his own Toccata). While the entire Sonata saw the light in 1895, this last movement was published first, in 1886, as an Etude (the fourth of Chaminade’s Six Etudes de Concert).
No question has ever been raised about the artistry of Frédéric Chopin’s Nocturnes, even though they clearly belong in the same genre as, for instance, Chaminade’s Arabesque: short, self-standing works, which have an immediate appeal on the listener. This is clearly the case with Chopin’s Nocturne op. 27 no. 2, which constitutes a pair with no. 1 (also from the tonal viewpoint), but which can also clearly be played in isolation. The piece is quintessential Chopin, with the fluid arpeggiations of the left hand, above which the singing melody of the right hand stands out; the right hand also offers a number of embellishing decorations and figurations, displaying Chopin’s inventiveness in the adornment of simple melodic lines.
A lyrical vein, but punctuated with the composer’s characteristic irony and humour, is found also in Francis Poulenc’s Intermezzo in A-flat major (1943). If Chopin’s Nocturne seemed to suggest the dialogue of two souls, here the inspiration is clearly a monologue, with references to Classicism (in a Neo-classical fashion) and to “characteristic” situations, such as rural settings, Arcadian music, and Baroque/Classical ornamentation styles.
This Da Vinci Classics album is crowned by a set of pieces, again authored by Francis Poulenc, and referring to a particular occasion. Les Soirées de Nazelles alludes to the evenings spent by the composer, by his relatives and friends, in Nazelles, the place in the country where he used to spend some time. The evenings were animated by the composer’s improvisations, which sought to portray the people who had come, their characteristic traits, features, gifts and limits. Under this viewpoint, they resemble Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations. The work was dedicated to “aunt Liénard” (who actually was not a relative, but just a friend), who had passed away. The people portrayed in the pieces are not identified on the score, but their identities can be guessed, with some precision, when considering the tempo and character markings offered by the composer.
Together, these works demonstrate the futility of “rankings” in the musical and artistic field. There are no better or worse musical genres, no higher and lower undertakings; as a matter of principles, there is only good or bad music, and these works doubtlessly qualify in the former category.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2023
Garcia-Abril, Chaminade, Chopin, Poulenc: Chansons et Mélodies
