A Composer Praises God as One Who Lives in Darkness (original) (raw)
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- Feb. 27, 1977
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Eugene Cook
Krzysztof Penderecki: “My music has been obsessed with death and the tragic.”
“I'm conducting too much,” Krzysztof Penderecki wearily declares, and indeed one senses that things, for the moment, are getting out of hand for the bearded, grave‐mannered, 43‐year‐old Polish composer. A few weeks ago he had just returned to New York from Caracas and was shortly scheduled to depart for Frankfurt. We were just getting acquainted inside the coffee shop of a mid‐Manhattan hotel when his business manager suddenly appeared summoning him away to attend to a pressing matter.
Jack Hiemenz frequently writes on musical subjects.
Ten minutes later Penderecki returned, apologized, and began to talk about his upcoming New York conducting debut. Wednesday evening at Carnegie Hall—a program devoted entirely to his music. He had not been talking long, though, before we were cut off again, this time by his wife, Elizabeth, who came to announce an earlier‐than‐anticipated departure. “We must leave,” she said simply. The interview— or fragment thereof—is over.
Whirligig global jetting and problems in portioning out one's time and energy are all part of the composer/conductor's lot, and Krzysztof Penderecki (pronounced Kristoff Penderetsky) is no stranger to them. Although in Europe his conducting assignments range from local radio orchestras to top‐ranking bands like the Berlin Philharmonic and the London Symphony Orchestra, his profile as a conductor in this country looms nowhere near so large. Some Big Five orchestras—he won't say which—have tried to engage him. Penderecki has turned them down. For performances of his own music, he demands a minimum of five rehearsals—as opposed to the maximum of three generally observed by our major ensembles. Since college orchestras are more liberal in that regard, Wednesday's concert will find Penderecki, currently on the faculty of the Yale School Of Music, leading the Yale Philharmonic Orchestra, itself organized by an earlier distinguished faculty member, Paul Hindemith (it was called the Yale CoIlegium in Hindemith's day; when OttoWerner Mueller took command in 1973, it became the Philharmonic).
Dominating the program will be the United States premiere of Penderecki's “Magnificat,” a grandioso 47‐minute choral/orchestral tapestry. Reviewing the Angel recording of “Magnificat” for High Fidelity, Robert C. Marsh deemed it “important religious music, rising from the matrix of our own times ... something we must hear to understand our world and ourselves.... He praises God in the manner of one who lives in darkness; it is a glorification that rises de pro fundis, from the depths.”
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“Magnificat” may have a joyful text, but the texts and titles of other Penderecki works tell a different story entirely. Probably more than any other living composer, Penderecki has relentlessly surveyed the spiritual—and even physical—anguish of modern man. His first work to become widely known outside of Poland was a piece written in 1961 for string orchestra called “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima” His oratoio “Dies Irae” was first performed at the dedication of a monument to people who had undergone the horrors of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The “St. Luke Passion” (the work which brought him to prominence in this country), in his own words, “is not only the passion of Christ, but also the passion of my generation, maybe even the generation before the war; it expresses everything that happened to
Other composers have used religious contexts to graphically portray humanity's suffering—only consider Poulenc's “Dialogues of the Carmelites,” with its 14 offstage thudding sounds to signify the decapitation of the nuns. ‘But in his own opera about nuns, “The Devils of Loudun” (based on the same gruesome historical incidents as Ken Russell's film “The Devils”), Penderecki's panorama of pain ineludes musical renderings of exorcism via enema, burning at the stake and fingernails being slowly removed. Penderecki likens “The Devils of Loudun,” which he considers more oratorio than opera, to the “St. Luke Passion”: “They are close in subject. Both are about a trial, in the broadest sense of the word—a via crucis. Father Grandier's trial is
To his admirers, Penderecki has been a revitalizing force in grand‐scale religious music. Critic Bernard Jacobson praised the “St. Luke Passion” for its “shattering dramatic impact and powerfully individual inspiration,” and declared that it “will sustain comparison to Schoenberg's ‘Moses und Aron’ for its close‐knit welding of philosophical idea with musical medium.” On the other hand, Penderecki has come in for a goodly share of critical hard knocks. Of his “Utrenja,” a two‐part sequel to the “St. Luke Passion” concerning the entombment and resurrection of Christ, Robert P. Morgan wrote: “Its effects begin to diminish as one becomes familiar with the score. ... There is only so much one can do with the kind of massive, undifferentiated cluster textures that are so prevalent in the work.” And David Hamilton heaped fire and brimstone on “The Devils of Loudun”: “The means he employs, while occasionally spectacular in their novelty, show little more than the most
He is often compared, by his detractors, to that earlier purveyor of musical primitivism, Carl Orff, Vehemently, Penderecki rejects the comparison: “Absolutely not. With Orff it is text, text, text—the music always subordinate. Not so with me. In ‘Magnificat,’ the text is important, but in some places I'm writing just music and not caring about text. Sometimes I'm using extremely complicated polyphony where the text is completely buried. So no, I am not another Orff, and I'm not primitive. Listen to the triple fugue in ‘Magnificat'—the first subject is seven voices, the second one has 52 different voices, the third uses five; then I combine all together. Such textures you cannot call primitive.”
Although he does not do much conducting in this country, and although American critics don't always chime in unison over his music, he has made decided inroads in our musical life. His “Threnody” has joined that handful of modern pieces that receive frequent performance. The “St. Luke Passion” caused considerable stir at its New York premiere in 1969, and the Santa Fe Opera produced “The Devils of Loudun” that same year. The Yale faculty has opened its doors to him, and he has spent a semester in residence at Florida State University in Tallahassee. For a while the Polish composer and the United States seemed to be entering upon a state of perennial honeymoon. Then, one day, intruded.
It happened in 1973—a Bicentennial snafu. The Chicago Lyric Opera announced that it would be commissioning a new work for its 1976 season. Lyric Opera being one of this country's three major‐league international houses the obvious choice would have been an opera on an American subject by an American composer. Instead, the commission went to Krzysztof Penderecki. Equally surprising was the choice of subject matter for this salute to America's 200th brithday—“Paradise Lost.” It seemed almost a joke.
A lot of people weren't laughing, though. Musical America published an indictment by Ezra Laderman, president of the American Music Center. As spokesman for the Center's membership of composers, Laderman lambasted Lyric Opera for this “all‐tootypical example of reverse chauvinism,” and its “apparent belief that 200 years of independence are insufficient for America to have produced a native composer equal to the occasion.” In another letter composer Elie Siegmeister bemoaned that “our opera companies are still in the dark ages,” and “hypnotized by the ‘American music inferiority complex’ that Ives wrote about more than 50 ago.”
Penderecki, for his part, couldn't disagree more. “I was a little disappointed,” he says of the episode, “because I don't imagine, I cannot imagine, a Polish composer would protest against an American composer who might have been commissioned to write for a celebration in Poland. You’ know, I'm not doing this for the money; was simply interested to write a piece fo: America, because I like this country. Also, so many American composers got to write for the Bicentennial‐50 maybe—so it wasn't as though only one piece had been commissioned.”
He disclaims, of course, any ironic inference in his choice of “Paradise Lost” (which has been adapted by poet/playwright Christopher Fry). “You must bear in mind the subjects I've been dealing with since the beginning of my career. Passions. The entombment of Christ. And I hope, someday, Dante's ‘Divine Comedy.’ In other words, big important subjects. When I read ‘Paradise Lost,’ I discovered so many incredible things—his description of the creation, Adam seeing a vision of the last judgement. And Milton's language. What greater thing do we have in the English language than Milton? So I decided, this important piece of English literature I will
Paradise wasn't lost in a day, though. Composers who felt jilted by Carol Fox and Lyric Opera must feel vindictive satisfaction over the fact that the company's Bicentennial season came and went—and “Paradise Lost” never happened. What did happen, very simply, was that Penderecki did not get the work finished in time. “Originally,” he explains, “I thought the piece ‘should run to about an hour and a half. But once I started, it kept growing. There's more than I'd anticipated. So I need some more time.” Did Carol Fox yell at him? “Yes,” he laughs. “The opera people are disappointed, of course. But just to meet a deadline, I should not rush to finish it. It's too important for that. I'm not writing only for one performance or one season.”
Doubtless part of Penderecki's fascination for Americans is a political one —he being a Catholic from a Communist country, forging a musical outlook utterly contrary to the dogma of socialist realism. But Penderecki cautions against making too much of the political side. “Poland is 70 percent Catholic, so the Communists couldn't do much about it. And the power of socialist realism—well, it made difficulties, but Poland was never as orthodox as other Communist countries.”
Penderecki was born in the small town of Debica, in East Poland, in 1933. His father, a lawyer, gave him a violin when he was 13—“I started music late” —and by 14 he was playing in the local orchestra. As a teenager he wanted to be a virtuoso, and composed violin pieces in the manner of Paganini and Wieniawski, At age 20, foregoing his violin ambitions and deciding to be a more serious species of composer, he entered Krakow's Conservatory of Music, studying under a teacher who was so conservative that he disdained even the prevailing neo‐classic style espoused by the socialist realists. “Middle Stravinsky—the Stravinsky of ‘Jeu de cartes’ and ‘Pulcinella’ — was our norm,” Penderecki recalls. “But not the early Stravinsky — no ‘Sacre,’ no ‘Petrouchka.’ And, of course, no Schoenberg or Webern. For me, I feel, this was good. Not having to study all the modern styles, I was free to work on creating my own musical language, devising new possibilities of string
Gomulka's rise to power in 1956 signalled a relaxation in ideological pressures on the arts. That year saw the opening of the Warsaw Autumn Festival, which has grown, in Penderecki's estimation, to be “the biggest new music festival in the world.” That same year, Penderecki began working at the Warsaw Studio of Electronic Music, where he wrote scores for experimental theater and films, and developed notions of sound textures that he would later apply to conventional instruments. National recognition came in 1959 when three of his compositions, entered anonymously, won the first three prizes in a Warsaw competition for young composers. With the prize money he went to Italy for six weeks—“my first contact with the outer world.”
International recognition came two years later, when his “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima” won the UNESCO prize from the Tribune Internationale des Compositeurs. “Threnody,” with its “controlled aleatoricism” and novel string effects, had a decidedly difficult time making friends among orchestras. “At its premiere by the Krakow Philharmonic,” Penderecki recalls, “the orchestra played, but only after much trouble. The Stockholm Radio Orchestra didn't want to play it either, and it took their conductor Michael Gielen two days to persuade them. Rome refused totally. I came to Rome for the performance, by the RAT Orchestra I believe, and then they refused. Cologne also positively refused.” Another work from that period, “Polymorphia,” likewise ran into obstacles. “It was being used as a ballet score at the Munich Opera House, but the orchestra rebelled. They agreed only to make a tape—and the tape was the ballet
None of those past traumatic encounters with orchestras seems to have deterred him from his own conducting career, though. These notwithstanding, and despite all the perplexities of reconciling conducting to composing, he expresses great zest for the occupation. He even enjoys conducting music by other composers, “but only music I like.” Shostakovich rates high. Bruckner. And Stravinsky's “Symphony of Psalms” is a predictable favorite.
Asked which of today's composers he admires, he draws a long breath. “Hard to say, because I don't like too many. Messiaen very much. Luigi Nono's early music, but not his later political works. Lutoslawski. I like Boulez's last piece ‘Rituel,’ because it's like Messiaen; Boulez seems to have changed his style.” And Stockhausen? “Oh, I hate!” Any Americans? “Crumb. and Drucicman. We are doing a lot of Americans in Poland. Crumb is very popular there, and Druckman's ‘Lamia’ will be played at the Warsaw Festival. Two or three years ago we also had a rennaisance of Charles Ives!
‘In my own works I am an obsessionist. Though I write humorous music too, much of it has been obsessed by death and the tragic. I think this has passed away, however. Paradise Lost,’ which I'm still writing, is a very lyric piece. As I compose it, I seem to be discovering a new style. Something very beautiful.” ■
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