Elective Affinities : Johann Goethe and Thomas Browne

Today on the 270th anniversary of the birth of  Johann Goethe (August 28th 1749-1832) its exciting to reveal and elaborate upon the fascinating relationship between the brightest star of German literature to the English physician-philosopher Thomas Browne (1605-82). 

Goethe and Browne were  both polymaths who shared a lifelong interest in topics as diverse as botany, anatomy, optics and antiquity. They also held a shared interest in esoteric topics such as Neoplatonism, Pythagorean numerology and alchemy; subjects vital to their scientific thinking and which influenced their literary symbolism.

Goethe and Browne's affinity in anatomical and botanical studies is remarkably close; for example, whilst Browne acquired the skeletal leg-bone of an elephant for his anatomy studies, Goethe somehow acquired an elephant's skull for study; whilst Browne's botanical studies included sea-holly, a plant found on Norfolk’s coastal sand-dunes, Goethe made botanical observations on sea-holly found on the sand-dunes of the Venice lido.

In his botanical studies Goethe  developed the theory that the characteristics from which all plants grow are variations which are modelled upon a prototype plant or Urpflanze. His theory that Nature follows a pre-ordained pattern, or  'inner form' is in accordance with the popular early nineteenth century German school of Naturphilosophie.Writing in terms comparable to Goethe's Urpflanze or 'Prototype plant' of German Naturphilosophie Browne  in Religio Medici proposed that nature has an invisible, prototype 'inner form' thus-

'In the seed of a Plant to the eyes of God, and to the understanding of man, there exists, though in an invisible way, the perfect leaves, flowers, and fruit thereof'.  [1]

German Naturphilosophie adhered to the Renaissance belief that Creation consists of a hierarchical ladder, as described by Browne thus -

'First we are a rude mass,........next we live the life of plants, the life of animals, the life of men, and at last the life of spirits, running on in one mysterious nature those five kinds of existences, which comprehend the creatures not only of the world, but of the Universe' [2].

German Naturphilosophie based itself upon the rigid numerical system of five 'evolutionary' forms of life, from there being five senses, five planets and from the many references to the number five in the Bible.  A full century and half earlier Browne in The Garden of Cyrus (1658) celebrated  'fiveness' in  Art and Nature via the quincunx pattern. Browne's idea that Nature is permeated by the number of five may have originated either from his reading of Della Porta's Villa (1592) in which the quincunx is stated to be a universal archetype  or simply from his noticing that many flowers consist of five petals. The Garden of Cyrus includes numerous sharp-eyed observations, and names in total over 140 herbs, flowers, trees and plants. 

German Naturphilosophie held the pre-Darwinian belief that Nature possesses an 'inner form' , a belief which is central to both Goethe's and Browne's botanical studies. Goethe's theory that Nature has a fixed, pre-ordained 'Inner Form' was asserted a full century and half earlier by Browne in Religio Medici (1643).

'I hold moreover that there is a phytognomy, or physiognomy, not only of men, but of plants and vegetables; and in every one of them some outward figures which hang as signs of their inward forms. [3]

The two early scientists also shared an interest in Optics; Goethe, as is well-known, stubbornly refuted Newton's theory of Colour, and his motivation for challenging Newton's discoveries remains much discussed. His Fahrenlehre (Theory of Colours) was not received as favourably by the scientific community as its author had hoped. Browne's own study of optics resulted in strikingly original optical imagery in his literary works.

For Goethe science was a source of imaginative insight which had developed from poetry;  the hasty, breathless, fractured tone of an early draught and the published text of Browne's Garden of Cyrus strongly suggests the physician-philosopher's detection of an archetype in nature, the Quincunx pattern, may,  like Goethe's  scientific insights, have originated from a sudden, quasi-poetical, vision.

Browne's mystical insight that the Quincunx pattern embodies the mysteries of nature is not so dissimilar from Goethe's Fahrenlehre (Theory of Colours)  in which the German scientist wanders into contemplation on symbols, in particular the triangle and  the hexagon, thus-

'Colour may have a mystical allusion....The mathematician extols the value and applicability of the triangle; the triangle is revered by mystics;  much admits of being expressed in it by diagrams, and amongst other things, the law of the phenomena of colours: indeed we presently arrive at the ancient mysterious hexagon'.

But as the American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and historian of science Stephen Jay Gould (1941 - 2002) stated -

'The human mind delights in finding pattern - so much so that we often mistake coincidence or forced analogy for profound meaning'.

In the preface to his Origin of Species (1859) Charles Darwin included Goethe as one who in some way or other anticipated his own ideas. But it was also Darwin who destroyed the 'rule of five' theory of German Naturphilosophie. Before Darwin Creation theories were represented by Classical deities, notably Neptunism and Vulcanism to represent life's origins. Goethe subscribed to the view that life evolved from the element of water, as symbolised by the sea-god Neptune.  However, its the Roman god of fire Vulcan who held significance to Browne, utilizing highly-original proper-name symbolism he alludes to the Roman god in The Garden of Cyrus, in opening, second chapter and apotheosis closing chapter .

Recent scientific evidence suggests life's origins may in fact be a combination of fire and water. Fossil remains of microbes which colonised deep sea hydrothermal volcanic vents more than three billion years ago have been discovered in a region of Western Australia which was once covered by ocean.

Science for Goethe was, equally for Browne, a source of revelation which permitted the enquirer, 'to see how and where God reveals himself that is heaven on earth'. Goethe's scientific outlook has been described as peculiar for being neither inductive or deductive. As an 'intuitive' scientist, one who was suspicious of systems and mathematics in science, his scientific views, like Browne's, have been questioned.

Goethe has been described as - 'one of the last of the universal scientific minds still able to encompass the whole of nature'  and as 'a pantheistic poet wanting to create in science also'. His science has been defined as, 'Platonic ideas in the mind of a creative spirit', all of which is equally applicable to the pre-Newtonian, scientific enquiry of Thomas Browne. An accurate assessment of Goethe's science by John. R. Williams and also applicable to Browne's science, states -

'Goethe's science is an integral part of his life and work,  its flaws are those both of the man and of the age, of his personality and of the current state of knowledge'. [4]

* * * * *

However much  previously overlooked, misunderstood or denied,  both Goethe and Browne were extremely well-versed in esoteric topics such as Hermetic philosophy, Neoplatonism, the kabbalah and alchemy. This deep interest in esotericism influenced their scientific and philosophical thinking as well as their literary creativity.

Goethe first came into contact with esoteric literature while recuperating from a mystery illness during his adolescence when his doctor introduced the budding poet to the occultist circle of Fraulein von Klettenberg. Klettenberg encouraged the young poet to read the esoteric writings of Paracelsus, Boehme and Bruno. However, Goethe's interest in the occult waned once recovered, but in a letter to Klettenberg dated August 26 1770 he wrote, -'Alchemy is still my veiled love' and of her recommendation to read Agrippa the budding poet confessed - 'it set my young brains on fire for a considerable time'.

In 1786 Goethe read Christian Rosenkreutz's allegorical tale The Chymical Wedding which may well have been the inspiration for him to write his Marchen fairy-tale of 1795. Goethe's Tale of the Green Snake and the White Lily is crowded with references to various esoteric beliefs and veiled allusions to the Egyptian mysteries of Isis and Osiris, the cults of Typhon and Horus, the Vision of Zosimus, and the Gnostic Naassenes.  

Goethe found in alchemical terminology apt figures of speech which he utilized in his writings. He once stated, ‘If one deals with the poetic side of alchemy with an open mind it leads to very pleasant reflections’.

Elsewhere, in a statement allusive to the primary template of much esoteric thought, that of polarity or opposites, Goethe declared -

'To sever the conjoined, to unite the severed, that is the life of Nature; that  is the eternal drawing together and relaxing, the eternal syncrisis and diacris'. 

Goethe's allusion to Nature's forces drawing together and separating, strongly resembles the polarity of the alchemical maxim 'solve et coagula'  to dissolve and bind, a fact not unnoticed by a younger English contemporary, the poet and scholar Coleridge (1772-1834).  An enthusiastic admirer of Thomas Browne, Coleridge in 1818 speculated-

Sometimes, it seems as if the alchemists wrote like the Pythagoreans on music, imagining a metaphysical and inaudible music as the basis of the audible. It is clear that by sulphur they meant the solar rays or light, and by mercury the principle of ponderability, so that their theory was the same with that of the Heraclitic physics, or the modern German Naturphilosophie, which deduces all things from light and gravitation, each being bipolar; gravitation = north and south, or attraction and repulsion: light = east and west, or contraction and dilation; [5]

German 'Naturphilosophie' advocated the principle of polarity or opposition, one of the last attempts to reconcile the symbolism of the alchemists to modern chemistry. In Polarity, that is oppositions in nature, German 'Naturphilosophers' perceived the rhythm of the Universe.

As long ago as 1895 the critic R.M.Meyer in the Goethe Jahrbuch proposed that German Naturphilosophie resembled Browne's 'inner form' and that the Swiss theologian Johann Caspar Lavater (1741-1801) may have recommended Browne's Religio Medici to Goethe. [6] Browne spiritual testament was first translated into German in 1746. Lavater read it enthusiastically, primarily for its assertive physiognomic statements, such as-

'there are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he that cannot read A.B.C.may read our natures'. [7]

Physiognomy,  the questionable belief that the human face can be interpreted is mentioned in each of Browne's major literary works; as an unreliable, yet theoretical diagnostic tool for physicians, Browne's interest in physiognomy was kindled from his reading the Italian polymath Giambattista Della Porta's (1535-1615)  Celestial Physiognomy.

Lavater vigorously promoted physiognomy, became a famous author on the subject and was subsequently shunned by a skeptical Goethe. It remains unknown as to whether or not Goethe read Browne's Religio Medici.

Goethe's many esoteric interests included numerology which originated from his admittance, shortly before his residence in Weimar, to the Order of the Illuminati, whose teachings were based upon Pythagoras. In his novel Der Wahlverwandtscaften (Elective Affinities) of 1809. Goethe describes the number five as - 'a beautiful odd, sacred number'. Browne's own interest in numerology is admitted frankly in Religio Medici thus - ' I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret magic of  numbers.'  [8]

In essence, Goethe's personal philosophy was not unlike Browne's, home-spun, flexible and idiosyncratic. In his semi-autobiographical Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth) Goethe confessed -

'Neoplatonism lay at the foundation of my personal religion, the hermetical, the  mystical, the cabalistic, also contributed their share; and thus I built for myself a world that looked strange enough'.

The restless scholar Faust in Goethe's tragic drama shares some psychological traits to those exhibited by the newly qualified Doctor Browne.  After completing many years of study at Oxford and abroad at the Universities of Padua, Montpellier and Leiden, Browne utters as wearily as Faust -

'There is yet another conceit that hath sometimes made me shut my books; which tells me it is a vanity to waste our days in the blind pursuit of knowledge'. [9]

Not unlike Faust, Browne expresses occasional, intense spiritual angst in Religio Medici.

'I feel sometimes a hell within myself, Lucifer keeps his court in my breast'.  [10]

Faust, not unlike the enquiring Browne, yearns in his study of Nature for, 'a glance into the earth! To see below its dark foundations / Life's embryo seeds before their birth / And Nature's silent operations'. [11] 

In his quest for forbidden knowledge Faust 'ponders over spells and signs, symbolic letters, circles and signs'. Such hieroglyphs fascinated Browne who declared -

'surely the Heathens knew better how to join and read these mystical letters than we Christians, who cast a more careless eye on these common Hieroglyphics'. [12]

Although Browne's confessional shares traits exhibited by Goethe's Faust it departs abruptly from it once the pact is made between Faust and Mephistopheles. Browne located Mephistopheles as dwelling internally rather than externally, stating - 'The heart of man is the place the devil dwells in'. [13]

Browne's Christian faith lays at the heart of his medical practise, enquiries into nature and even his rare excursions into the literary world.  Goethe however held an ambiguous and luke-warm opinion of Christianity, objecting to the clanging sound of church-bells in particular.

Whilst Browne's Urn-Burial shares Goethe's antiquarian interests, The Garden of Cyrus shares a number of thematic and symbolic traits to Goethe's late masterpiece Faust II.  As digressive and disjointed in its construction as Goethe's drama and in its associative thought and imagery, with little concern of intelligibility to its reader, it too employs proper-names from Greek mythology to represent scientific and psychological speculations.

During their long, settled, and relatively undisturbed lives, Goethe and Browne became extremely well-read, not only in the scientific advances of their era, but also in Classics of Greek and Roman literature, as the catalogues of their respective libraries reveal. The Classical world, especially Ancient Greece, with its scientific discoveries was for both scholars of great interest and both display a thorough knowledge of Classical literature. The same symbolic names can be found in their respective yet neglected works of fantasy, Faust II and The Garden of Cyrus.

The Greek mythological god Proteus is a good example of a symbolic name shared by the two literary figures. In Cyrus Proteus is 'the symbol of the first mass' whilst  in Faust II   Proteus represents organic metamorphosis. The warrior Achilles, the wanderer Ulysses and the nature-god Pan are also mentioned in both works, as is Greek philosopher and botanist Theophrastus, the first to attempt to categorise plants. But  perhaps above others it may be the Greek god Apollo ruler of beauty of form, order, prophecy, medicine and music who represents symbolic significance and artistic importance to both literary polymaths.

Browne's survey of the artistic, natural, botanical and mystical precedents of the Quincunx  in The Garden of Cyrus may be described in Goethe's words as a delight in-

                         

'Formation, transformation, The eternal Mind's eternal delectation' [14] 

The learned doctor in a drowsy soliloquy concluding The Garden of Cyrus observes that, 'the phantasms of sleep which often continueth precogitations making cables of cobwebs', alerts one to Faust's meditation that -

'How logical and clear the daylight seems

Till the night weaves us in its web of dreams'.

This shared imagery of dreams and  the illusory web is evidence that, like the alchemists before them, Goethe and Browne utilized highly-charged poetic symbolism in their attempt to portray  the unconscious psyche.

Goethe's monumental drama Faust held great meaning to C.G.Jung. For the Swiss psychologist Faust is a work which from its beginning to end is full of alchemical themes and imagery. C.G.Jung even regarded his work on alchemy as a sign of his inner relationship to Goethe and never suppressed or denied the persistent rumour that his grandfather was an illegitimate offspring of Goethe's.

Jung often referred to Goethe's drama Faust in order to amplify a psychological observation.  Of Part II of Faust  he stated -

'The second part of  Faust, was more than a literary exercise. It is a link in the Aurea Catena (The Golden or Homeric Chain in alchemy is the series of great wise men, beginning with Hermes Trismegistus, which links earth with heaven) which has existed from the beginnings of philosophical alchemy and Gnosticism down to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Unpopular, ambiguous, and dangerous, it is a voyage of discovery to the other pole of the world. [15]  

Although Goethe's Faust Part I and Browne's Urn-Burial are firmly established works of world literature, their respective, other halves, Faust II and The Garden of Cyrus have baffled and perplexed most readers, resulting in neither work achieving the popularity of their counterparts.

However, 'though overlooked by all', Goethe's dramatic works, Faust parts 1 and II have a remarkable relationship to Browne's Urn-Burial  and The Garden of Cyrus.  For just as  Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus are structured upon the time-honoured schemata of Hermeticism, namely the polarity of Microcosm and Macrocosm, so too are Goethe's Faust I and II 

In conversation with Eckermann Goethe provided clues for employing the concept of polarity in the 'conjoining of Faust I with 'the second part of the tragedy' as he termed it.

'Not all our experiences can be expressed in the round and directly communicated. For this reason I have chosen the means of revealing the more secret meanings to attentive hearts by creative formations which face each other and mirror each other'.

Goethe's understanding of the alchemical quest for Unity necessitated that the 'small world' or Microcosm of Part 1 of Faust, with its subjective world of Faust's love for Gretchen, needed to be balanced with the larger objective world or Macrocosm of Part 2 which, as it wanders through time and space, concludes with Faust's redemption.

Browne's diptych discourses also adhere to the basic tenet of Hermeticism, that of the correspondence between Microcosm and Macrocosm.  Just as Urn-Burial's concern is the earth-bound 'little world' of Man, his suffering, mortality, unknowingness and death, in essence the Microcosm,  The Garden of Cyrus in complete symmetry and polarity features many examples of the Eternal forms and  astral imagery of the heavens, the Macrocosm no less. Equally, just as Faust I concerns itself with the small, little world of man so too the extraordinary settings ranging through time and space of Faust II represent the Macrocosm at large.   As with Goethe’s literary diptych so too with Browne’s diptych Discourses. Only when 'conjoining' the two respective halves of each literary work can  one fully understand and appreciate their total artistic vision.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

Goethe's many duties and social life in the Weimar Court, his travels and love-affairs, mark him  a much worldlier person than the devout physician. Ultimately Goethe was a humanist, his message being – He who strives on and lives to strive can earn redemption still. Thomas Browne was likewise affirmative of all that is good in man, asserting  - 

'Me thinkes there is no man bad, and the worst, best; that is, while they are kept within the circle of those qualities, wherein they are good:there is no mans mind of such discordant and jarring a temper to which a tuneable disposition may not strike a harmony.  [16] 

Julian Huxley in Religion without Revelation (1967) nominated Goethe, alongside Blake, Wordsworth, Thomas Browne and Dante as, 'one of the immortal spirits waiting to introduce the reader to his own unique and intense experience of reality'. Today Goethe and Thomas Browne are remembered not so much for their scientific endeavours but for the originality of their literary creativity.  Through their respective literary creations both writers have bequeathed their own special vision of Humanity and reality which distinguishes them as 'Universal Citizens', or 'World Sages'.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, like Browne before him, belongs to the category of men to whom the improvement of Mankind was a deep concern. Goethe's science and literary creativity has a close, if little recognised elective affinity to Thomas Browne’s.


Notes
[1] R.M.Part I:50
[2] R.M Part 1:34
[3] R.M. Part 2:2

[4] The Life of Goethe: A Critical Biography by John R. Williams pub. John Wiley  and Sons Ltd. Blackwell 2001
[5] Lecture notes of 1818 Lecture XII Miscellaneous criticism Collected works of Coleridge
[6] Richard Meyer 'Zur inner form?' Goethe Jahrbuch 1895 vol. 16 pp. 190 - 191
[7] R.M.Part 2:2
[8] R.M.Part I.12
[9] R.M.Part 2:8
[10] R.M.I:51
[11] Faust Part I Night
[12] R.M.Part 1:16
[13] R.M. Ibid
[14]  Faust Part 2  ed. David Luke Oxford University Press 2008  lines 6287-8
[15]  Memories, Dreams, Reflections C.G.Jung  chapter 6
[16] R.M. 2 :11

Kazuo lshiguro

A Happy Birthday to Kazuo Ishiguro (b. Nov. 8th 1954, Nagasaki) recent winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I'm not particularly well-qualified to share any observations upon Ishiguro’s novels, having only read his An Artist of the floating world (1986) some thirty years ago, and once again recently, his Never Let me Go a couple of years ago and The Remains of the day more recently.

Ishiguro completed his MA in Creative writing at the University of East Anglia in 1980, my Alma Mater, and I remember meeting the co-founders of UEA's prestigious creative writing course, the novelists Angus Wilson (1913-1991) and Malcolm Bradbury ( 1932 - 2000) way back in the 1970's. 

The jacket-notes for what is Ishiguro's only Japan-centred novel An artist of the floating world  describes the novel thus-

1948: Japan is rebuilding her cities after the calamity of World War II, her people putting defeat behind them and looking to the future. The celebrated painter Masuji Ono fills his days attending to his garden, his two grown daughters and his grandson, and his evenings drinking with old associates in quiet lantern-lit bars. His should be a tranquil retirement. But as his memories return to the past - to a life and a career deeply touched by the rise of Japanese militarism - a dark shadow begins to grow over his serenity. 

But of greater interest to myself is the postscript dated January 2016  to mark the occasion of his novel's 30th anniversary, in which Ishiguro states-

‘An Artist’ was written between 1981 and 1985, years of crucial, often fractious and bitter transition in Britain. The governments of Margaret Thatcher had brought an end to the post-war political consensus about the welfare state and the desirability of a ‘mixed’ economy (in which key assets and industries are owned publically as well as privately). there was an overt and strident programme to transform the country from one based on manufacturing and heavy industries, with large organised workforces, into a predominantly service-based economy with a fragmented, flexible, non-unionised labour pool. It was the era of the miners’ strike, the Wapping dispute, CND marches, the Falklands War, IRA terrorism, an economic theory - ‘monetarism’ - that characterised deep cuts to public services as the necessary medicine to heal a sick economy. .... This novel.....was shaped by the Britain in which I was then living: the pressures on people in every walk of life to take political sides; the rigid certainties, shading into self-righteousness and sinister aggression, of ardent, often youthful factions; the agonising about the ‘role of the artist’ in a time of political change. And for me personally: the nagging sense of how difficult it is to see clearly above the dogmatic fervours of one’s day; and the fear that time and history would show that for all one’s good intentions, one had backed a wrong, shameful, even evil cause, and wasted one’s best years and talents to it.  - London, January 2016

And in fact its often been commented upon that Britain and Japan share a number of cultural and socio-economic characteristics; both are heavily industrialised island nations which once pursued Imperial ambitions, both once possessed a formidable and large naval force, both are also nations which to the present-day have rigidly defined social hierarchies.

In his dystopian science-fiction novel Never Let Me Go (2005) the English county of Norfolk, where Ishiguro 'discovered' his vocation as a novelist, is described as a place where everything which is lost ends up -

“You see, because [Norfolk is] stuck out here on the east, on this hump jutting into the sea, it's not on the way to anywhere. People going north and south, they bypass it altogether. For that reason, it's a peaceful corner of England, rather nice. But it's also something of a lost corner.'

"Someone claimed after the lesson that Miss Emily had said Norfolk was England's 'lost corner' because that was where all the lost property found in the country ended up".

"Ruth said one evening, looking out at the sunset, that, 'when we lost something precious, and we'd looked and looked and still couldn't find it, then we didn't have to be completely heartbroken. We still had that last bit of comfort, thinking one day, when we were grown up, and we were free to travel the country, we could always go and find it again in Norfolk." - Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

In what is perhaps Ishiguro's most well-known novel, The Remains of the Day (1989)  which has been described as P.G.Wodehouse meets Kafka, Ishiguro explores psychological characteristics often associated with the English nation, the famous 'stiff upper lip' of emotional repression and inarticulateness; of individuals who are unable to express themselves adequately, a particularly English tragedy, often enhanced and facilitated through an inflexible and detrimental to equality, hierarchical class-system which refuses to die an honorable death. 

Written in a  fluid, intimate and masterful prose style, distinctive characteristics of Ishiguro's prose, The Remains of the Day depicts England in the 1930's in which the class system dominates people's lives. It also describes how through political naivete the British upper-class were blind to the dangers of fascism spreading throughout mainland Europe, a political awareness which remains unlearnt in sectors of British society to the present-day, as Ishiguro himself states in an article on the result of the ill-conceived British referendum on membership to the European Union [1] as well as in interview on BBC television.

In the excellent Merchant-Ivory film adaption of Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day (1993) the magical chemistry between the actors Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson makes no small contribution in  portraying the fatal psychological inadequacy of the English, an inability of emotional expressiveness, aided and abetted by their obsession with status and social class. These factors blight what ought to have been a healthy love affair between the two central characters of Ishiguro's brilliant novel.  

Mozart: The last three Symphonies

No-one really knows the full motivation or reason why Mozart composed what were to be his last three symphonies, or whether he heard any of them performed. What is certain is that in his last three symphonies, Mozart expanded the canvas of the relatively new genre of the symphony in both duration and emotional scope, establishing the composer's right to express personal feelings, thus paving the way for the Romantic symphony of the nineteenth century.

There’s a tendency which has developed over the centuries, to mythologise Mozart as a near Christ-like figure. His being misunderstood by society, the poverty of his last years, and early death at an age close to Christ's, along with music sounding as if from another-world, heavenly or trance-like, which is heard occasionally in his music, are factors also contributing towards a ‘deification’; Mozart however, was an all-too-human figure, he possessed what would  today be considered a coarse, and even scatological sense of humour; he enjoyed playing billiards, skittles, dancing and drinking, and at one time or another he kept as pets, a canary, a starling and a dog, along with a horse for recreational riding. It is now considered likely that Mozart's unique experience of travelling and touring extensively throughout Europe as a child and teenager, enduring the rigours and inconveniences of travel, along with exposure to various viruses and illnesses so prevalent throughout 18th century Europe, may have contributed to his early death.

Mozart’s surviving correspondence reveals an engaging personality. There is however, a huge difference in his view of life in the ten year period spanning the years from 1778 to 1788. In a letter to his cousin dated 1778 when aged 21 he humorously signs off  a letter to his cousin thus-

Adieu little coz. I am, I was, I should be, I have been, I had been, oh, if I only were, oh, that I were, would God I were; I could be, I shall be, if I were to be, oh, that I might be, I would have been, oh, that I had been, would God I had been - what? A dried cod ! Adieu ma chere Cousine, whither away ? I am your faithful cousin,
Wolfgang Amade Mozart
Mannheim, 28th February, 1778

In stark contrast, ten years later, aged 31, in one of a series of desperate begging letters to fellow Mason, Michael Puchberg, Mozart wrote-

I am obliged to tell you frankly that I cannot possibly pay back so soon the sum you lent me......My circumstances are such that I must absolutely get money... I am sorry enough to be in this situation, but that is the very reason why I want a fairly substantial sum for a fairly lengthy period, as I can then prevent its recurrence......I have done more work in ten days than in two months at any other lodgings, and were I not visited so frequently by black thoughts (which I must forcibly banish) .......  27th June, 1788

Mozart’s last three symphonies were written in a seven week period of white-heat creativity during the summer of 1788, after he and his family moved out of central Vienna to the suburb of Alsergrund. They've been described by musicologist Ralph Hill thus -

The first is, we may say, lyrical, the second dramatic, the third ceremonial. But they vary not only in character: they do so also in mood. The first has a kind of autumnal but not melancholy mellowness; the second is tragic and idyllic by turns, and somehow the latter atmosphere poignantly intensifies the former; the third utters festive sounds but at the same time gives evidence of an intense concentration of thought, the kind of foresight and hindsight that distinguishes a great mathematician or chess player.

Symphony no. 39 in E flat major (K.543) was added to Mozart’s personal catalogue, on June 26th 1788. Its solemn adagio opening movement has been likened to music accompanying a Masonic ceremony. According to Ralph Hill, ‘one secret of Mozart’s greatness... is his ability to accommodate a great many emotional or dramatic contrasts within a single tempo.’

The finale of the 39th symphony is rhythmically vigorous and startling in its sudden changes of key.

Mozart’s 40th symphony in g minor  (K. 550) was completed according to the composer’s personal catalogue on July 25th 1788. Its opening movement is probably the most well-known of all Mozart’s symphonies, partly from a kitsch pop arrangement made by Waldo de los Rios in 1971. But in fact, an uneasy calm pervades the  g minor symphony. An attentive hearing reveals there's scarcely a happy moment in any of its four movements. An under-current of quiet desperation, resignation, anxiety and even despair pervades it, making it fitting mood music for our own age.

Often named the Great g minor symphony in order to distinguish it from an earlier g minor symphony composed some fifteen years earlier in 1773 (K. 183) when Mozart was just 17 years old, the so-called, "little g minor" symphony, uniquely scored for four horns, is also full of tension and syncopated rhythms. It was influenced by the proto-Romantic German literary and music movement of Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) in which individual subjectivity and extremes of emotion are given free expression.

Mozart's 40th symphony in g minor, in contrast to his more conventional and cheerful music, packs a powerful emotional punch. Its minuet contains barely suppressed anger against the pomposity of the upper-classes to whom he was obliged to serve for much of his life. Here, the aristocracy appear full of self-importance as they approach the dance-floor when the invitation to the dance is announced.




Mozart’s 41st symphony (K 551) bears the nickname of The Jupiter, and is the most jovial and light-hearted of all three symphonies. An air of comic opera pervades its opening movement, while its technically brilliant final movement is described by Ralph Hill thus-

‘the ear catches everything going, so lucid and well-aired is the score, and it all flows by in a stream of beautiful music that will satisfy even those who have no notion of the incredible skill that went into its making...the attentive listener will come across..tunes combining in canon with themselves or fitting against their own inversions, entries overlapping closely in fourfold imitation..Mozart’s perfect sense of proportion and timing knows exactly when to cease showing off those dizzy contrapuntal feats, and not the least wonderful proportions of this movement are those where the music suddenly smooths itself out into a plain statement, as if nothing out of the way had happened at all.’

The Jupiter's gorgeous andante is a quintessential example of Mozartean serenity.





Discussion of key signatures in Mozart’s music, along with his artistic relationship to keys, has been a perennial debate amongst musicologists. According to Wolfgang Hildesheimer for example -

If we hear Mozart’s keys as conscious choices, not as the spontaneous expression of the composer’s momentary frame of mind, we by no means imply that we are not also experiencing the minor keys as “gloomy”, or “tragic,” or sometimes even “despairing.” Our feeling is not limited to the minor itself, but overflows and spreads, often intensified, into a major key within the minor, especially E-flat major within G minor.

Yet Hildesheimer also concedes, 'Mozart's musical thinking eludes us. He puzzles us most in those places where the music is serious, even when the material would not seem to warrant it.'

It was in 2009 while in Amsterdam that the Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1929 - March 6th 2016) announced - "I have just discovered that the last three Mozart symphonies are an instrumental oratorio." Harnoncourt reasoned that because the 39th Symphony is the only one with a slow introduction, the 40th opens gently, while the 41st symphony is the only one with a full-blown finale, and that because thematic connections can be detected across all three symphonies, Mozart’s last three symphonies are in fact an inter-related triptych. Although Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s proposal that all three symphonies are a related and inter-connected triptych is without precedent, there's nonetheless also a possibility that Mozart may have taken as a model for his triptych, an example from the symphonies of the so-called 'Father of the symphony’, Joseph Haydn (1732-1809).

It was Haydn's good fortune to be invited in 1761 as Vice-Kappelmeister and placed in charge of most of the Esterházy musical establishment at Schloss Esterházy in Eisenstadt, and later on at Esterháza, a grand new palace built in the Hungarian marshes. At the very beginning of his residency at Esterhaza Joseph Haydn wrote three symphonies, numbered as 6, 7 and 8, which soon acquired the nicknames of 'Le Matin’, ‘Le Midi’ and 'Le Soir’ because they were considered to depict the progression of a day.

There's a possibility that these three early Haydn symphonies were known to Mozart. We will never know for certain whether or not this is true: but given the fact that the two composers, who became close friends, had a mutual respect, influenced each other and studied each other's compositions carefully, its just possible that these three early Haydn symphonies may have known of, or at least heard of through Haydn himself recollecting the beginning of his long service to the Esterhazy court to Mozart.

One can only speculate as to what was the inspiration for Mozart's much larger in scope, emotionally contrasted, and enigmatic symphonic triptych of 1788.

Favourite Books

Mozart : His character, his work  Alfred Einstein 1946
The Grove Mozart : Stanley Sadie 1980
Mozart : Wolfgang Hildesheimer  1977
Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ed. Hans Mersmann 1972

Also consulted-

The Symphony Ralph Hill Pelican London 1949

Favourite Recordings

Jeffrey Tate - ENO
Carlo Maria Giulini - New Philharmonic Orchestra 1965
John Eliot Gardiner -  English Baroque Soloists

See also - Mozart in Paris

Symphonies of Joseph Haydn

In Memorium Francis Michael Faulkner (1936-1996)

Martinu Anniversary 2013

Celebrating the 123rd birthday of the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu (born December 8th 1890 -1959)  today.

The two words the seminal French music-teacher Nadia Boulanger used to describe Martinu's music were "brilliance" and "purity". Also in her letter to Michael Henderson, Boulanger said of Martinu’s music: "It can win the most sophisticated and the most simple listener". For myself the exciting rhythms, unique orchestral colouring, experimental harmonies, along with its optimism and sheer joie de vivre, are each attractive elements of Martinu's music.

Bohuslav Martinu was a prolific composer who wrote original music in every genre and who varied his style several times in his life-time. Its useful to divide Martinu's creativity into three eras; the first, his musical apprenticeship to early maturity from 1923 - 1940 while resident in Paris, saw the composer experiment with a number of styles to settle into what may be termed Neo-Classicism, with the music of Stravinsky as its exemplar.

The second phase of Martinu's life, from 1941-1952 while resident in America, coincides with his maturity, in which much of his finest chamber music as well as five of his six symphonies were composed. Martinu's symphonies are all impressive pieces which will surely be better known and loved in the near future for their expressive depth and beauty of invention, each of the last three has an important place in 20th century music.

In his last years, from 1953 until his death in 1959 while resident in Europe, Martinu wrote his fourth and fifth piano concertos and developed a style loosely termed Neo-Impressionist, exemplified by the large-scale orchestral triptychs The Frescoes of Piero Francesco (1955), The Parables and Estampes (1958).

New York 1941 -1953

In November 1941, Serge Koussevitsky conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Martinů’s Concerto Grosso (1937). Its success transformed Martinů into a star overnight and paved the way in January 1942 for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra  to perform a programme entitled, "The Czechoslovak Immortals of Symphonic Music", which included the masterpieces of Smetana, Dvořák, Janáček and Martinů. 

During his residence in America Martinů wrote some of his finest chamber music including Five Madrigal Stanzas for violin and piano (H. 297 New York 1943) which he dedicated to Albert Einstein, professor - and later Martinů’s colleague - at Princeton University. There’s the lovely anecdote which there is no way of now verifying, which tells how Martinů, when asking his amateur musician friend how the rehearsing of his composition had went, Einstein hesitated before replying, "Relatively well".

The two major personal events which coloured Martinu's artistic sensibility and which are strongly antithetical to each other, are firstly, his childhood in Policka, where, living in accommodation in the tower of the church of Saint Jacob's, he enjoyed hearing the sounds of the bells, choir and organ of the church, having a 'God's Eye' view of Nature in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands from the heights of the church tower. The second biographical event, of crucial significance in understanding Martinu's later creativity, is his headlong fall from a balcony, mistaking a poorly-lit mezzanine floor for a staircase. Martinu fractured his skull and suffered dizziness, headaches, tinnitus and hearing loss for many months after this accident in 1946. Its not improbable that symptoms from this accident which Martinu experienced included what is now known as 'Alice in Wonderland' syndrome, in which the sufferer experiences distorted perspective, odd sensations and even hallucinations. An 'Alice in Wonderland' perspective features strongly in Martinu's 6th symphony.

Martinů began composing his sixth symphony known as Fantasies symphonique in 1951 in New York but did not complete it until 1953 in Paris. Of his sixth symphony Martinu himself described it as a, "departure from symmetry in the direction of fantasy" music takes on its form freely and flows without restraint, following its own motion. An almost undetectable slowing or hastening suddenly gives life to the melody'. There's a strong allusion to Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique not only in its title, but in its fantastic element also.

The  music-critic Robert Layton stated of the sixth symphony -

'the detail in the musical landscape (of) this work unfolds is richer in colouring and immediate in impact. At times the Fantasies symphoniques has the visionary quality, the enhanced awareness of colour, the vivid contrasts and more brilliant hues that are said to come from taking mescaline : certainly there is a proliferation of textures, exotic foliage and vibrant pulsating sounds that have no parallel in the earlier symphonies. ...the opening of the second movement unleashes an extraordinarily imaginative, insect-like teeming activity'.[2]

Europe 1953 - 1959

From leaving America in 1953 and settling in Europe, Martinu developed a rich, detailed orchestral palette which may be described as Neo-Impressionist in style. In his correspondence Martinu stated of his large-scale orchestral triptych The Frescoes of Piero della Francesca H.376 (1955) - "It is far from descriptive, naturally, but it expresses impressions  Les Fresques had arisen in me in the Arezzo church. The first movement depicts this well known group of women with the Queen of Sheba; the second is Constantine's Dream; while the third is the overall impression Les Fresques gave me. The composition is rather impressionistic in its character".

Sadly, due to International politics Martinu was unable to return home and wrote to his patron Paul Sacher -  "But I don't see my future in rosy colours; I'm beginning to fear that I will never find peace and will not be able to return to Prague, which would be the best solution for me." [3]  In another letter to his friend Frank Rybka, he wrote - "Explain to them at home that if I appeared there, great propaganda would be made from it--that I approve of the regime and so forth."  [4]

Martinu wrote several concertante works with different combinations of instruments. His sharp ear for instrumental timbre resulted in some fine chamber music, notably his late work of 1959 for nine instruments originally entitled Le Fetes Nocturnes.

Michael Beckermann defined the characteristics of Martinu's musical language well when stating -  'There is no single Martinu sound, but a collection of sub-dialects. Martinu’s key sound is the presence of lyrical moments syncopated in a rather special way, usually surrounded by passages meant to suggest an opposing state. He employs several “fake” twentieth-century styles (Neo-Poulenc, Neo-Stravinsky, Neo-Ravel) and some all-purpose dissonance, but his core style is the syncopated folk stylization. That’s what he believes in, if you will. He doesn't believe in most of the dissonance - its there to set off the jewels......His “uniqueness” lies in two areas: first, a sonic one. Martinu created a particular sound world which is his alone. It itself seems bipartite. There is a Martinu “sound” of the syncopated folk stylization, and a “process” whereby this sound is contrasted with other, usually dissonant, sound worlds. The second area of Martinu’s uniqueness involves his creation of a pastoral world, which is the protected space of nation, memory, childhood. This appears in almost every work of his'. [1]

In Michael Beckermann's view, ' Martinu is one of the great cartographers, mapping a certain aspect of the human imagination. In my view, the experience in question is that place in the imagination that causes time to stand still and allows us to imagine paradise. This is, of course, elusive, and in Martinu’s compositions it is always being lost and found. ......He’s quite simply plugged into one of the great tendencies of human consciousness: the search for an unattainable point of rest in our travails, our suffering, our journey. In order to do this, he first had to cultivate and master the process of forward motion in music, and he is  almost unique in the many ways he can create a sense of flow. Then he had to figure out how to get from one state to another, and I think that alone is worth serious study. The symphony no. 6 is filled with such moments. No composer, not even Beethoven, explored this world of idyllic space more fully.........He is exploring a realm of the human spirit which most composers are afraid to look at....Martinu rarely stays in these idyllic spaces he creates. Much of the real drama of a piece consists of approaches to a “state of grace” and then departing from it, often suddenly. Sometimes there is only a fragment of it, other times it is almost the entire piece, but its never alone.

The Czech conductor Jiří Bělohlávek assessed Martinu's music thus -  "I think the richness of styles in Martinů's work is due to his inextinguishable thirst for novelty and inspiration, and his ability to extract from many sources the right amount of elements into his own musical language. Martinů is also probably the most prolific Czech composer and, of course, you can find different levels of genius among them. But at his best, he is irresistibly original, cosmopolitan and Czech in one stroke."

*   *   *
Notes

[1] Martinu's Mysterious Accident - 14 Essays in honour of Michael Henderson
[2] The Symphony 2: Elgar to the Present Day editor Robert Simpson pub. Penguin 1967 chapter 30 - Martinů  and the Czech tradition by Robert Layton.
[3] Correspondence dated 4th July 1957
[4] Correspondence dated 27th July 1957

Essay in memory of Paul Grenville (1956 - 2013)

Asked for his opinion of Martinu's music Paul simply said, "it's too busy". When questioned, "Did you say, dizzy ?" he swiftly replied, "that as well !"  He continued to say that he liked Bruckner, so I offered to lend him a recording of Bruckner's 8th symphony, the last ever conducted by Karajan, but tragic events intervened. 

Horacio Vaggione

Today’s the 70th birthday of the composer Horacio Vaggione (b. Cordoba, Argentinia 21st  Jan 1943). Vaggione is a composer of  electro-acoustic music who uses the very latest technology to explore the many shapes and forms of sound itself. Vaggione studied composition at the National University in Córdoba and the University of Illinois USA and has been Professor of Music, University of Paris since 1994. Using compositional techniques such as granular synthesis, microsounds and micromontage, Vaggione creates sound-sculpture of intricate beauty and startling originality.

Like Rock music, electro-acoustic music’s embryonic beginnings can be traced to the 1950’s. In Paris, pioneer Musique Concrete composer Pierre Henry (b.1927) experimented with natural sounds such as a door creaking, then editing the recording through a variety of means, including tape-splicing, loops, backwards and filtering. Pierre Henry’s Voile D'Orphee  (Veil of Orpheus) of 1953 remains a work of staggeringly early originality and inventive process given the equipment available at the time. Henry's approach to electronic music-making seems to be have been advanced in Vaggione’s own unique sound sculpture. Both composers have for many years been resident in Paris.

I’ve had an interest in electronic music ever since acquiring Deutsche Grammophon vinyl recordings of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Telemusik (1966) and Hymnen (1967-68) in the early 1970’s. Stockhausen (1928 - 2007) was one of the most influential figure’s in the development of electronic music and was at times notoriously uncompromising in his artistic agenda to the point of gross insensitivity on occasions. His Gesang Der Junglinge (1955-6) uses both electronically-generated sounds along with recordings of a boy singing text from the Biblical Book of Daniel chapter 3 where Nebuchadnezzar throws Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into a fiery furnace. Miraculously they are unharmed and begin to sing praises to God. Such thinly-veiled subject-matter suggests Stockhausen,  throughout his creative career was willing to use his music as a means to open the door for his audience to approach unpleasant aspects of the psyche. Stockhausen's Kontakte (1960) remains a landmark in electronic music. His large-scale work Hymnen (1966-67) lasts some 112 minutes and includes samples of National Anthems to illustrate world-scale historical events and their consequences. It’s a work which though dated, can be hard-hitting and revelatory; its also music which is very much of its time, being a psychedelic and apocalyptic vision.

Far more approachable is Stockhausen’s Telemusik (1966). Composed during a visit to Japan and using sounds recorded from temple rituals and ceremonies, the soft-focus tonality of this short work (17 mins.) reveals it as delicate and gentle work. Stockhausen interested the songwriter John Lennon (1940-1980) enough to ensure that the German composer appears on the background of the Pantheon of credited influences and admired people of the Beatles album-cover Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band (1967). Much to the rest of the band’s alleged protestations, Lennon subsequently went ahead and insisted that his own electronic montage Revolution no. 9 was included on the subsequent White album (1968).

It was also during the late 60’s that the Moog synthesizer was invented. It’s previously unheard-of, seemingly magical abilities were showcased in the phenomenally popular album Switched-on Bach (1969) in which the music of J.S. Bach and it's contrapuntal nature can be heard with each voice/line sharply delineated. Carlos’s music received even greater exposure when featured in the controversial Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange (1971).

During the 1970's Horacio Vaggione visited all the major studio's with electro-acoustic composing facilities  in Europe. In many ways the 1970’s decade was the Golden era of electronic music and quite distinct from avant-garde acoustic-electronic music of the era, numerous rock and pop musicians developed electronically-generated music. The seminal albums by Kraftwerk, thematically shaped by the experience of motion via cars, trains and rockets (Autobahn (1974) Trans-Europe Express (1977) Man Machine (1978) and Computer World (1981) along with the less rhythmically-orientated and stronger in melodic content electronic music of Parisian Jean Michel Jarre (b.1948) Oxygene (1976) Equinox (1978) and Magnetic Fields (1981) demonstrated the new protean abilities of the electronic medium through advances in technology in the hands of the creative musician. 

Vaggione’s La Maquina de Cantar (The Singing Machine 1978) in step with the latest trends in music of the decade, uses loops of sound, not unlike Terry Riley’s ground-breaking A Rainbow in Curved Air (1969) or even Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells (1973). However, the heavily phased hypnotic, repetitious pure electronics such as by the German band Tangerine Dream in Phaedra (1973) and Rubycon (1976) which use large-time scale canvases became unfashionable for its excesses in the 80's. Such music-making soon tires the listener. In comparison Steve Reich’s Music for 18 musicians (1976) which lasts an hour, holds the listener in thrall,  its short phrases are skilfully juggled among members of an ensemble, Nor can one overlook the influence of early, so-called ambient music such as Brian Eno's Music for Airports (1978) while the aquatic soundscape of Jean Michel Jarre’s Waiting for Cousteau (1990) now seems to have become a classic of large-scale ambient minimalism. 

Vaggione’s latest release Points Critiques (2012) includes compositions dating from the 1990’s and the first decade of the 21st century including Nodal from 1997. There's a free download of Vaggione's 24 variations (2011) available at itunes. (Youtube clips of both titles below).

I remember a stunning performance of  well-amplified electro-acoustic music at Norwich cathedral in the 1970’s. Most listeners were amazed at how the combination of the acoustics in historical buildings with the extraordinary sound palette available to the modern composer using electronic equipment and transformed recordings sounded in such a setting. I also remember here at Norwich, the University of East Anglia once had, not only a school of music with studio recording facilities, but also visiting electronic music composers and a series of concerts devoted to the performance of electro-acoustic music. All now extinct, sacrificed upon the altar of pecuniary expediency.

Whether the appreciation of such sound-structures as Vaggione’s is an acquired taste from training the ear or simply the product of being able to listen without prejudice or preconceptions remains debatable. I quite like this statement made on Youtube about Vaggione’s music

The more art is abstract, the more it challenges the consumer. Consumers who are empty inside cry for forms and shapes. They have to, otherwise they are lost. Nothing is more telling about a person than the way he/she reacts to abstract art.

What is certain is that a rich variety of tonal texture and engaging demonstrations to the listener of how sound can be transformed in exquisite detail can be heard on Vaggione’s Points Critiques (2012). Each electro-acoustic composition is exemplary of granular synthesis and a fantastic listening experience. 

Happy birthday to Horacio Vaggione, grandmaster composer of electro-acoustic music.

Benjamin Britten

Today is the feast day of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music, and also the birthday of the English composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976).

Throughout next year there will be a multitude of performances and analysis of Britten’s music, including a nation-wide project involving over 75,000 school-children who will be coordinated to sing simultaneously on his birthday. There's even to be a 50 pence coin issued in 2013 with a portrait of Britten on its reverse, such will be the high-profile centenary celebrations of arguably, the greatest British composer since Henry Purcell (1659-1695).

With its close geographical proximity to Lowestoft, the east coast town where Britten was born, Norwich and its rich musical heritage played no small part in Benjamin Britten’s musical development. The city is home to England's oldest music festival and several early musical compositions by Britten were premièred there.  

Benjamin Britten exhibited all the traits associated with a child prodigy. He had his first piano lessons aged four and began writing music aged five, nurtured by his mother’s amateur talent. Such was young Britten’s musical precocity that he was soon acquiring and studying orchestral scores of major works of classical music. His viola teacher, Audrey Alston who played in the Norwich Quartet, obtained tickets for him to hear the Ravel string quartet in Norwich as well as the Beethoven E minor (opus 59 no. 2) which the ten-year old school-boy described as ‘absolutely ripping’. More importantly, Audrey Alston also chaperoned the budding composer to a concert in October 1924, at the Norfolk and Norwich Triennial Festival, to hear Frank Bridge conducting his orchestral suite The Sea (1911). Britten, aged ten, latter described himself as being ‘knocked sideways’ upon hearing the music of his future teacher and mentor. Audrey Alston subsequently introduced her pupil to Frank Bridge (1879-1941) and the young composer later took lessons from him. Britten's first published work, Sinfonietta (1932) is dedicated to his mentor, Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge (1937) written for string orchestra and the Four Sea Interludes which intersperse the action of the opera Peter Grimes (1945) are compositions which pays homage to his influential music-teacher. 

Like his mentor, Britten rejected the 'Little Englander' perspective of Elgar and Vaughan Williams in favour of mainstream continental influences. Much of Britten's music is a fine equilibrium between the influence of more progressive European composers such as Mahler, Berg, Bartok, and Stravinsky, counter-balanced with the best of the tradition of English music-making, an aesthetic choice which has reaped dividends for his musical legacy. 

Britten’s musical genius developed in 1930 with his A Hymn to the Virgin a choral work composed when convalescing from an illness at Gresham’s Public School in North Norfolk. During his boarding at Gresham's there must also have been occasions when the young school-boy passed through Norwich when returning home to Lowestoft during the school holidays, or visited the city to purchase one of the many 78 r.p.m. shellac discs or orchestral scores which he avidly collected throughout his life. A Hymn to the Virgin was first performed in January 1931 at the church of Saint John's, Lowestoft. Many years later, Britten wrote Hymn to Saint Peter (op.55) for the quincentenary anniversary of the church of Saint Peter Mancroft at Norwich.  C.J.R.Coleman, who had been organist at St. John’s Lowestoft in the 1930's, was by 1955, organist at Saint Peter Mancroft at Norwich. Coleman and his son, with young Benjamin and his father, had made music together during Britten's childhood. Britten held a deep attachment to memories of his youth, and the composition for St.Peter's was, like several others, written in gratitude for early encouragement from his mentors.

With the opportunity to enlist at the Royal School of Music in 1931, Britten’s knowledge of music, through study and attendance at concerts in London developed considerably. Upon completion of his studies at the R.C.M. he was however dissuaded from travelling to Vienna in order to study composition further under the tuition of Alan Berg. However, sometime in 1932 Britten met another composer he also admired, Arnold Schoenberg.  

Britten returned to Norwich to conduct the first performance of his Simple Symphony for string orchestra in 1934. Recycling and re-arranging various juvenile compositions, nearly all of which were written between the young age of nine to twelve, Simple Symphony indulges in youthful humour, heavily hinted in each movement's titles- Boisterous Bouree, Playful Pizzicato, Sentimental Serenade and Frolicsome Finale. It was dedicated to his viola teacher, Audrey Alston. Britten's first fully professional engagement however was in 1936 at the Norwich Festival, where he conducted the première of his song-cycle for soloist and orchestra Our Hunting Fathers. It features a dominant theme in Britten's music, mankind's inhumanity. In the first of Britten's many song-cycles, it is cruelty towards animals and the barbaric blood sport of hunting, as its title suggests, which is strongly condemned. The libretto of Our Hunting Fathers was supplied by the poet W. H. Auden. The work is startling modern, influenced by the lieder of Mahler. 

Britten travelled to America in 1939, however his sojourn in America was short-lived, he soon became home-sick and returned to England in 1942. The sea is a big theme in Britten's music , its featured prominently in Peter Grimes, Billy Budd and Death in Venice, but it was while actually at  at sea, in the cramped conditions of a cabin, avoiding ice-bergs and U-Boats on the way, that  Britten composed A Ceremony of Carols. Written for boy's choir and harp, each of the nine poignant medieval carols besides being technically demanding, has a magical innocence and a winter-like atmosphere rarely  evoked in English music. A Ceremony of Carols was first performed in Norwich during the darkest days of World War II, December 1942. Since its first performance A Ceremony of Carols has become one of the most recorded of all Britten's works and dozens of recordings are currently available of one of his most popular works and continues to be performed at Advent at Saint Peter's, Mancroft, Norwich. 

Britten’s great international success came in 1945 with the opera Peter Grimes, a work which brought the composer world-wide fame and which single-handedly re-invented English opera. Peter Grimes is the first of several operas by Britten which explore the theme of the individual who suffers from social prejudice. With his life-long pacifism (he registered as a conscientious objector upon returning to England  from America in 1942) Britten could easily relate to the plight of the outsider who is castigated by society. The central character of Albert Herring, Billy Budd, Owen Wingrave and Death in Venice explores the relationship and conflict between the outsider and society, each in quite different ways.

In addition to his anti-war beliefs, Britten’s open relationship with the tenor Peter Pears (1910-1986) his partner for almost forty years, also caused him to be the subject of prejudice (homosexuality was illegal in Britain until 1967). In reality however, Britten and Pears relationship is a love story which is testimony to love enduring in the face of, at times, intense social prejudice. Britten wrote some of his finest music with the voice of Peter Pears in mind and the musical sensibilities of both Pears and Britten were considerably enhanced in their mutual artistic support to each other. Together they established the world-renowned Aldeburgh music festival, settling permanently in the Suffolk coastal town from 1947 until Britten's death in 1976.

Britten’s association with Norwich continued when he included the ancient, medieval city as a setting of one of the acts of his opera Gloriana. Written as part of the celebrations for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, Britten's opera features a visit made by Queen Elizabeth I to the city in 1578. Act Two of Gloriana is set against the back-drop of the the flint-knapped Guildhall at Norwich. Elizabeth I is welcomed by the City Recorder, a masque is performed which she and the Royal court watch. In total six dances, including a Morris dance are performed. Personifications of Time and Concord are among the principle characters in a masque which, accompanied by a chorus of rustic country maids and fishermen, concludes the entertainment with a homage to the Queen.

Biographical details of Britten’s life reveal the fact that there was hardly a single year of his life in which he was not ill, often quite seriously, and towards the end of life, fatally, nor is there hardly a single year in his life in which he did not travel extensively abroad. He often combined a holiday with performing, accompanying his life-time partner Peter Pears in song-recitals on the piano. He visited what was the Soviet Union no less than seven times, becoming a close friend of the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, his wife, the mezzo-soprano Galina Vishnevskaya and the composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who once said to him in broken English, ‘You great composer, I little composer’. Rostropovich and Britten's music-making is now legendary and Britten wrote more music for the Russian cellist than any other musician other than Pears. His friendship with Shostakovich was also rather special by all accounts. Shostakovich gave Britten gifts of recordings of his symphonies, while towards the end of his life Britten granted Shostakovich a private view of his work-in-progress score of his last opera Death in Venice, a rare and intimate gesture which he granted to few.

One of Britten’s most distinguished musical admirers wrote in her diary for 1970 -

‘The record of Les Illuminations has arrived and Ruth & I have played it several times, & listened with the greatest joy. There is no sound here except the shushing of the sea & the crying of the seabirds, & this music is exactly right for the atmosphere here of sea & sky & silence. I find it extraordinary moving’. 

Britten’s admirer was Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (1900-2002). Although in the 1930's Britten held communist sympathies, in common with many artists in the 1930's, his relationship with the Royal family, in particular with  the Queen Mother developed throughout the decades of 60's and early 70's into a respectful relationship. Britten and Pears not only performed at the Royal Estate of Sandringham in Norfolk, but Britten became the first composer to ever be awarded the honour of Life-Peer. 

Britten was no musical elitist and much of his music is arranged for the ease of amateur performance. While he admitted to no personal liking for pop music he nevertheless kept abreast of the latest developments in English music, stating in 1968 - 

Everything I read about the Beatles gives me pleasure. They have a wit and they have a directness – a freshness of approach which gives me a great pleasure, and I also think they are frightfully funny. 

and a copy of the Beatles long-playing vinyl disc A Hard Day's Night (1964) is listed as once in Britten's vast record collection.

Britten had an innate ear for literary texts to set to music and was one of the 20th century’s most well-read composers. His first opera was based upon the poetry of fellow Suffolk artist, George Crabbe. Other notable literary figures Britten set to music include Rimbaud, Keats, Blake, Shakespeare, Henry James, Herman Melville and W.H.Auden with whom he collaborated on a number of occasions.

Like many school-children I was disinclined from listening to Benjamin Britten’s music after over-exposure to his pedagogic Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. His music struck me as traditional and conservative in nature and there seemed to be more interesting music to discover and explore; my favourite British contemporary music L.P recording as a teenager Michael Tippett's Concerto for Double-string Orchestra (1936) and Symphony no.2 (1953); however in 1973, during what was one of the last rehearsals for a performance of  Britten's Church parable Noyes Fludde as part of what was the Norfolk and Norwich Triennial Festival (now the N&N Festival) a sudden hush fell upon the rehearsal at Saint Andrew's Hall, a surprise visitor had arrived, the composer himself had called to thank all the boys and girls for their hard work rehearsing. The photo at the top of this post is how I remember him. The photo below is of Britten wearing his school cricket blazer and cap, aged circa 13.

I've only covered a brief review of Britten's music up to the international success of his opera Peter Grimes in this post. Rather than waste any more of the reader's time, and far more informative on Britten than words, is my exhortation to seek out and hear Britten's music. A large percentage of it is vocal, choral or operatic, while the themes of the Sea, the social outcast, innocence betrayed and Man's inhumanity to man are often encountered, especially in his operas. The Britten 100 web-page allows the  new listener to the composer's music to select samples by  genre, mood, instrument and tempo. Here's a brief list of Britten's music which I've found rewarding and recommend hearing.

Peter Grimes
Four Sea Interludes
Pasacaglia op.33b
Simple Symphony
Violin Concerto
Piano Concerto
Serenade for horn, strings and tenor
String Quartets 2 and 3
Prince of the Pagodas
A Ceremony of Carols

Books consulted

The Faber Pocket Guide to Britten - John Bridcut pub. Faber & Faber 2010
An accessible book, full of facts, insights and trivia about Britten.
Highly recommended

Benjamin Britten by Michael Oliver pub. Phaidon Press 1996

Bad As Me

The album of  2011? It just has to be Tom Waits Bad as Me (released October 21st). As the Rolling Stone review says, the timing of the release of Waits' new album is impeccable. 

TomWaits (born Los Angeles, U.S.A. December 7th 1949) Happy Birthday Tom ! has for decades enacted persona from the underbelly of the American Dream, the dispossessed, down-and-outs, hard drinkers, lonesome drifters and out-of-luck gamblers in the era of the Great Depression, such characters surviving  in dire straits come sharply alive now in the New Depression.

Waits and his extraordinary voice has become a true American phenomenon and a world-wide star; utterly archetypal in his persona, his voice croons, bellows, growls, barks and snarls with characters walking straight out of the pages of a Damon Runyan short story with more than a nod to American literary giants such as William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac. The present state of Waits' voice is show-cased in  Glitter and Doom (2009) recorded live at various venues on tour. A showman in the true sense of the word, Waits has also developed his acting career in several film roles, most recently as the sinister Mr. Nick in Terry Gilliam's metaphysical fantasy, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009).

Bad as Me is Tom Waits' 17th  album no less, since his debut recording in 1973. Although essentially rooted in R ‘n’B music, Waits shifts from genre to genre with ease  – from Cuban Salsa to Metal, from Beat poet Jazz monologues to Weimar Republic-style Cabaret, from Vaudeville to Gospel and Blues. His song-writing is a compendium of American music.  I can't think of any other singer/song-writer who has recorded in such a wide spectrum of genres or another singer capable of comparable vocal gymnastics (his vocal range encompasses 7 octaves) with perhaps the exception of the East German opera-trained, one time Punk rocker, Nina Hagen. And indeed Waits performs a Nina Hagen-style number in German on Alice (2002) entitled Kommienienzuspadt.

Joseph Stannard

Today is the birth-date of Joseph Stannard, the Norwich artist who died tragically young of tuberculosis aged just 33. Joseph Stannard ( Sept. 13th 1797- Dec. 5th 1830) was one of the most gifted artists who exhibited collectively under the banner of  Norwich School from 1803 to 1833, the city being the home of the first regional art movement in British art. Such was the precocious development of the young Joseph  that he began exhibiting his paintings aged 14 in 1811. He looks confident and aware of his talents in his teacher Robert Ladbrooke's portrait of him.

Joseph Stannard's life is exemplary of  the romantic notion of a struggling  artist. Living in the turbulent era of  the early nineteenth century, he was often in financial difficulties and in poor health. In addition to his artistic skills he was, like his younger brother Alfred, a strong rower. He was also an  accomplished ice-skater who entertained the locals with his skill during cold winters. Stannard's era was also that of the Napoleonic wars which were prohibitive to travel  in mainland Europe. When stability returned to Europe, Stannard took the opportunity to visit Holland. In Amsterdam in 1821 he viewed paintings by seventeenth century Dutch landscape masters Ruisdael, Berchem and Hobbema which deepened his interest in marine and seascape subjects. He married in 1822 and in 1824 his fortune changed when the Norwich manufacturer John Harvey commissioned him to paint what is his master-work, Thorpe Water Frolic, Afternoon. Harvey's agenda was to establish Norwich as a sea-port for the export of his merchandise. After visiting Venice and witnessing festivities held on the water there he organised a similar event for Norwich society which promoted his idea of Norwich returning to its sea-port status.

In many ways Stannard's  Thorpe Water Frolic is an important social document of a rare day off work for Norwich's textile workers who are depicted upon the right bank of the river Yare. The growing middle-class, civic dignitaries and aristocracy of Georgian England are located on the opposite river-bank.

Joseph Stannard has used a fair amount of poetic licence in his capturing the mood of the event, complete with musicians playing Schubert, courting couples, naval officers, rugged seamen and city loom workers  all enjoying a work-free day on the river. Particular attention to weather conditions and a vigorous cloudscape frames the lively water-event.

Stannard's own boat the Cytherea is on the extreme right of the canvas. Joseph can be seen shielding his brow with his hand looking toward his patron Harvey standing in a gondola. He certainly entered into the spirit of the event which attracted 20,000 people in 1824, his boat is described thus-

'its colour is purple; the inside is adorned with an elegant gilt scroll, which completely encircles it; on the back-board where the coxswain sits, is a beautiful and spirited sea-piece, representing a stiff breeze at sea, with vessels sailing in various directions, painted in oils, and the spoons of the oars are neatly covered with gilt dolphins'.

There's an interesting inter-play between Stannard the sailor who depicted the rigging and canvas sails of boats with every rope in its correct place and the medium of canvas on which he painted. Thorpe Water Frolic, Afternoon is dominated by a canvas sail catching the breeze. The large-scale oil on canvas painting itself measures 108 x 172 cms and  is a jewel in the crown of the Crome and Cotman  galleries in Norwich Castle Museum.

Although the artists of the Norwich School  had the inspiration and natural beauty of the Norfolk landscape and its waterways upon their door-step, the tragedy many artists suffered from was a distinct lack of local patronage, obliging many talented members to engage in much drudging, teaching work in order to make a living, such was J.J.Cotman's frequent fate; worse still,  it also suffered from an  intense rivalry between leading families.

Ever since the young Joseph Stannard had enquired about lessons from the founding father of the Norwich School 'Old Crome'  John Crome (1768-1821) a bitter hostility existed between the two families. Crome quoted an extortionate sum which was in effect a snub to the Stannard family. The hostility between the Crome and Stannard families seems to have persisted throughout the nineteenth century, even to the grandchildren of the two masters of  'Old Crome' and Stannard, both families producing several generations of artists.

In some respects Joseph Stannard's biography comes across as the consumptive poet of romanticism not unlike Keats. In his finest paintings, Stannard's paintings burst beyond the confines of restrained Classicism into a lyrical, early Romanticism.There's also an equal balance between landscape and realistic portraiture of people who are active and integral to the landscape in Stannard's painting, unlike Crome's landscapes in which people are often incidental, or present only for emphasis of scale and perspective.

Throughout the 1820's Stannard  had intermittent bouts of poor health and resided at various Norfolk coastal resorts in order to recuperate. His later works include several highly original beach scenes which include activities of working fishermen. However in December of 1830 he died of tuberculosis aged 33. A memorial stone commemorating Joseph Stannard can be seen in the church of Saint John Maddermarket, Norwich.

Wikipedia has a page on Joseph  Stannard which links to a number of his paintings.