Recovering a Masterpiece
NEWLIN, DIKA
ON MUSIC By Dika Newlin Recovering a Masterpiece New York is particularly fortunate in having a number of opera groups which consistently perform important works that, for one reason or another,...
...in the Dover paperback of Rolland's selected essays...
...He shows how Rameau sensitively illustrates not only the "basic affect" of the text-passage but also the emotions suggested by the individual words...
...As Alan Rich wrote in his report of the concert, "It would have taken an extraordinary amount of work to conceal the beauties of Rameau's Castor et Pollux (Scherman) was not, happily, completely successful...
...Telemann: A Forgotten Master...
...He is to this repertoire what Fischer-Dieskau is to the German Lied...
...Castor, discontented, is discovered wandering among the happy shades of the Elysian Fields...
...were to be seen there...
...And last month at Philharmonic Hall, the Concert Opera Association under the direction of Thomas Scher-man staged an event of even greater importance: the American premiere of Castor et Pollux, a five-act tragedy in music by Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764...
...Rameau was born in Dijon in 1683, the son of a church organist, and followed that career himself...
...Pollux, Castor's twin brother, is prevailed upon by Telaire, Daughter of the Sun and Castor's beloved, to bring the dead Castor back to Earth from Hades...
...The dispute over French style is the topic of the TelemannGraun correspondence, which Romain Rolland revived for us in his perceptive essay, "Memoirs of a Forgotten Master...
...The inflection of the word "unfortunate" is tender...
...Pollux persuades him to return, but when Castor hears of his brother's sacrifice, he consents to revisit Earth but for a single day...
...The prolific Telemann was, in his day...
...Of particular interest is a correspondence concerning Rameau between his German contemporaries Telemann and Graun...
...Perhaps because he had married a singer, Rameau felt drawn to the lyric stage...
...Both as an orchestral conductor and as a maestro of the opera, Scher-man has shown an admirable zeal in ferreting out musical works that are interesting as wel1 as unfamiliar -though this zeal has usually stopped short of the contemporary musical scene...
...revive" is illustrated by an animated trill...
...The present-day college student slogging through Schoenberg's Harmonielehre is thus the direct musical descendant of Rameau...
...This meant that the orchestra and singers were jammed into three-quarters of the stage while, in the remaining quarter, a few ballet dancers gyrated from time to time without too much relation to the musical and dramatic events, The effect was rather as if the dancing troupe were simply using this opportunity to do a little practicing, owing perhaps to a shortage of rehearsal space, while a concert was in progress DD stage...
...No workable compromise exists...
...Graun, famous in his day as the composer of the Passion Oratorio The Death of Jesus, had written Telemann a long letter in which he ripped apart the recitatives of Castor et Pollux...
...Nor does Telemann forget to praise the harmonic boldness of Rameau, which can still-after two centuries!make us prick up our ears...
...His Traite de l'harmonie (published 1722} is the foundation stone in the study of functional harmony as we know it today, In this respect, his influence can be traced even to Schoenberg and beyond...
...The event, in this instance, was important despite the distinct liabilities of the performance...
...They were "unnatural," he complained...
...A Gluckian scene shows us the entrance to Hades, the flaming cave filled with monsters and demons who attempt to bar Pollux' passage...
...Laden with honors, he died at the age of BO...
...Permission is granted, but Pollux is told that he must himself replace Castor in Hades...
...One final reflection: On the evening that this masterpiece was presented in New York, another concert of "The Group" took place at Columbia University...
...One distinct virtue in the performance which compensated for a good deal that was dim was the presence of Gerard Souzay, who sang the leading role of Pol1ux...
...The result certainly did not enhance one's appreciation of Rameau, and only proved once again that an opera must be presented completely in concert form or else staged in the finest manner possible...
...Like Orfeo, Castor et Pollux opens with a scene of mourning...
...I suppose that the same 100 faces that appear with monotonous regularity at every avent-garde concert in New York (do these people like, or even know, any other music...
...In mounting the Rameau work, moreover, Scher-man imposed yet another handicap on the entire performance by adopting a method of "semi-staging...
...The protagonists are joined by the stars, the planets, the satellites, and lesser gods...
...In fact Rameau's work suggests, in its musical style as well as in its story, many Gluckian paralleIs...
...He was also a composer vitally interested in the theory of music...
...Were their minds open to such impressions, it would have been a salutary experience...
...Because of the nature of its plot, Castor et Pollux may seem a bit foreign to the Anglo-Saxon listener who is not well-versed in French classical tragedy...
...This exquisite stylist cannot be surpassed interpretetion of French vocal literature from the Baroque through Debussy...
...was this composer whose work, on this occasion, struck many in the audience with the force of a revelation...
...when one Herr Graupner was unable to secure a release from his Court position in order to take the Leipzig job, a City Councillor wrote in the minutes of a meeting discussing the matter: "Since we cannot get the best man, we must make do with someone mediocre...
...In true classic fashion, the impasse is resolved by the deus ex machina in Act V when Jupiter confers immortality upon Castor, Pollux and Telalre...
...As for the rest of the cast, they sang, it must be said, in varying degrees of French...
...the accentuations were false, the arioso passages were out of place in the recitative style, and the frequent senseless changes of meter made unnecessary difficulties for both singers and accompanists...
...the word "worthy" is given added importance by being prolonged over one-and-a-half beats, and so on...
...Still, with all the defect s of the performance duly noted, the work survived...
...The hero prevails, however...
...The composer thereupon came under violent attack by the adherents of that long-time dictator of the French musical stage, Lully- Many were the acrimonious battles between "Lullistes" and "Ramistes...
...French recitative sounded, in short, more like the howling of dogs than anything else...
...Pollux confronts Jupiter, King of the Gods, to ask permission for his venture...
...For it must be unequivocally stated that there is more true modernity, harmonic imagination, and skilled construction in one half hour of Rameau's music than in a whole evening of little Babbitts...
...and the whole affair closes in a magnificent apotheosis-a true "Festival of the Universe...
...preferred even to Bach...
...Graun himself was scarcely versed in such subjects, to say the least...
...This season Allen Sven Oxenburg's American Opera Society has already brought us Bu-soni's Doktor Faustus, with the incomparable Fischer-Dieskau...
...Telemann, apostle of Ie gout francais in Germany, did not always find agreement among his contemporaries...
...to triumph" is sung defiantly...
...But such a criticism has not kept Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice from holding the stage...
...It is unfortunate, however, that Scher-man also feels called upon to officiate at the podium-or, as in the case of Castor et Ff711ux, at the harpsichord bench-for his abilities as a conductor are hardly equal to his choices of repertoire...
...Rameau's theoretical and mathematical interests also came in for a sneer...
...ON MUSIC By Dika Newlin Recovering a Masterpiece New York is particularly fortunate in having a number of opera groups which consistently perform important works that, for one reason or another, never show up in the repertoires of our two great lyric stages, the Metropolitan and the City Center...
...But Rameau was ultimately vindicated, and received all the recognition that was his Que...
...It's a pity that these vanguard regulars did not take a night off and visit Philharmonic Hall...
...having survived most of his distinguished contemporaries (he outlived Bach by 14 years...
...See "On Music," NL, January 18...
...Who, then...
...he was seriously considered for the post of Thomas Cantor in Leipzig, which Bach later assumed...
...This was the immortal occasion on which...
...Carefully he analyzes a beautiful recitative from the second act of Castor et Pollux...
...It was not until he was 50, though, that his first serious opera, Hippolyte et Aricie, reached the stage...
...Unfortunately, this whole episode is ruthlessly cut from the English version of the essay...
...I confess,' says he in his quaint Baroque Frenchified German, "I have done little or nothing in mathematique but I have experienced that the mathematical compositeurs have added but little glory to practical music.' Telemann addresses a rebuttal to his "Hochedelgebohrener insonders Hoclizuehrender Herr und liebwehrtester Freund...
Vol. 48 • February 1965 • No. 4
