Week 20: The Question of Music and Emotion

It's late Sunday night and I'm out of steam. So, instead of writing a long blog post, I will share an interesting article that I recently read about an old argument in classical music, that is, music's ability or lack of ability to have or create emotion. This article was written by the great Jazz Pianist, Brad Mehldau in response to a statement made by one of the 20th centuries greatest composers, Igor Stravinsky. I hope you enjoy it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/sep/15/brad-mehldau-music-expression-stravinsky

Week 19: A Week or Two With Neruda

Well, I have not been getting out much this week. It is the break between semesters and my teacher is out of town. This means that I have no school and no choir. So, I'm using the time to finish my new set of piano pieces which are to be delivered to the Barlow Endowment office at BYU on or before February 1st. I received a commission to compose 20-25 minute set of piano pieces and am basing them on some poems of the great Chilean Poet, Pablo Neruda. In the U.S., whenever a composer has the thought to use a text in Spanish, it is almost always Neruda.

For some reason, almost no one thinks of the other great Chilean poet, Gabriela Mistral. She was Neruda's teacher and life-long friend and correspondant. She was also the first Chilean, and first South American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1945); Neruda was the second Chilean laureate (1971).

I have set many of her poems; you can hear some of this music on my website: En Los Muros de Arles, and Rondas. I suppose that one of the reasons that people always think of Neruda first is the truth of this statement made by another South American Nobel Literature laureate, Gabriel García Márquez (1982), of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera fame, Neruda was "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language". Instead of using his poems for vocal pieces, I've decided to use them to inspire some piano sounds. Well, it's more than just the poems of Neruda--it's the whole atmosphere they create, the land they depict, the emotions they tap, the smell of Chile they bring back to my nostrils, the love for his wife in them, and the last testament he left before his death.

During the last 6-8 months of his life, he was working on 8 books of poetry simultaneously. The plan was to have these books published and available for sale on his 70th birthday, 12 July 1974. But, he died 23 September 1973 before finishing any of the books or becoming a septuagenarian. If you're familiar with Chilean history, you will recognize that his death date is only 12 days after the coup d'etat which took place on 11 September 1973, exactly 28 years before 9-11. A quick side note: I was in Chile on 9-11 when the Twin Towers were attacked; I was 3 weeks away from finishing my 2 year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was a very scary day to be an American in Chile because our government, under Richard Nixon, funded the efforts of Augosto Pinochet and the Chilean Armed Forces to overthrow the communist government under President Salvador Allende. Many Chileans were thrilled to see something bad happen to the U.S. on the anniversary of our involvement in the coup.

Pinochet

Pinochet

Allende

Allende and Neruda, who were good friends.

Presidential palace being bombed by Pinochet's forces on 11 September 1973. Allende killed himself during the attack, not willing to surrender.

Another side note: for the first year of my mission I heard only bad things about Pinochet. I heard horror stories about what a terrible dictator he was and how he extracted information from those who were though to be involved with the communist goings-on; torture, bamboo shoots under fingernails, water-boarding, etc. When I was transfered to Copiapo, where the Chilean miners were trapped, I was shocked to see a framed picture of Pinochet on my Mamitas wall right next to Jesus and our Prophet. I asked her why she put the dictator up as if he were to be honored like those other men. She sat me down and explained how terrible it was to live in Chile before the coup. She explained that Pinochet did many things that he should not have, but that because of what he did, their country had risen out of poverty. She talked of mile long lines to buy bread or medicine and how difficult it was to get help from the government with anything. So, to her, and to many others, Pinochet was a real hero. Pretty interesting point of view. There's an interesting film called The Battle of Chile that depicts all of this. There is another film about Pinochet and his trial in the UK, it is called Pinochet's Last Stand and he is played by no less a stalwart than Sir Derek Jacobi. 

So, back to Neruda, he died 12 days after the coup. Many communist sympathizers were being rounded up by the new regime and some were being eliminated. I just read the other day that there is new evidence to suggest that Neruda was murdered by the agents of the dictator rather than the coroner's report of prostate cancer. Neruda was a communist and had been exiled for it years earlier but had been re-instated as a Chilean citizen and returned to his home at Isla Negra. 

Commenting on Neruda's politics or the political happenings of the time are not my aim in these piano pieces, far from it. What I am doing is painting an aural portrait of the artist at the end of his life. In a way, I feel like it's a Requiem for Neruda the poet, the artist, the romantic. I have selected a series of 15 poems from his final book of the 8 unfinished volumes of poems, El Mar y Las Campanas (The Sea and the Bells), and creating a sort of narrative of the last days of his life. I attempt to take the listener through what I imagine to be Nerudas feelings about this things he loved most, the sea, bells, his homeland, and his wife. There is a great measure of my own life's current experiences and feelings mixed in all this. Image the following ingredients simmering together and you will get a sense for what is occurring in this work: Neruda, Matilde (his wife), E-flat (which sounds like the color blue to me), Chopin, silence, Schumann, multi-movement cycles, simplicity, the sea, death, the desire to be heard, salt, earth, passion. The work's title comes from a line in one of Neruda's poems, A La Orilla Azul del Silencio (On the Blue Shore of Silence). 

To get an even more detailed image of what I'm after, you need to watch the movie Il Postino which is about Neruda while he was in exile. At the very end, after learning the fate of his friend "the postman", Neruda goes to the beach for a swim. There is no dialogue and as far as I remember, no soundtrack. It's quite. He slips into the sea and begins to swim. Then, there is a shot from way out at see looking back at the shore where Neruda is swimming. That stunning image of the blue sea and the towering mountains on the shore and the feeling I had at the end of watching the film is exactly what I'm trying to portray. Interestingly enough, I'm not the only one who has tried to portray this. Daniel Catan, the late and great Mexican opera composer composed an opera a couple years ago to the idea of the film Il Postino. Neruda is played by the legendary tenor/bariton/conductor/impressario Placido Domingo. Luckily, my version of things is only being portraid in piano sounds. I wouldn't want to compete at all with this very well written opera.

Daniel Catan. I met him when he came to CCM 3 or 4 years ago and spoke to us in our composition seminar. 

Placido Domingo as Neruda.

Hopefully I'll finish in time, I'm burning the candle at both ends to make it.

More next week...

Week 18: Missa 'Musica Sacra'

This past week I finally had the opportunity to hear one of my newest pieces with real people singing the notes rather than the MIDI sounds that my computer produces. Hearing a new piece for the first time is always a little nerve racking. On the one hand, it is very exciting to finally give wings to the notes I've spent so much time starring at and moving around on 5 little lines. On the other hand, it is a very self-conscience and worrying experience like I'm revealing my insides. It can be kind of like one of those dreams where you're walking around at school in only your underwear. Luckily, this "first hearing" was very enjoyable. 

This new work, Missa 'Music Sacra', was written for our choir, the Musica Sacra Warsaw-Praga Cathedral Choir; hence the title. On the cover of the score is this picture of the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus. This is a very famous Polish painting of Mary called the "Black Madonna of Częstochowa". She, the Black Madonna, was crowned the Queen and protector of Poland in 1656 by the Polish King after a miracle where her picture was hung. She is said to be the source of multiple miracles that have occurred since that time. 

Since hearing and singing the piece this week in rehearsal, I've have come to view the title in a new way. In addition to the title being in honor of our choir, it is also a sort of manifesto--or I suppose credo is a better work in this context--on my feelings about "la musica sacra"; sacred music. Most of my musical creations that have something to do with the sacred, up to this point, have been LDS hymn arrangements. These are fine and I have enjoyed writing and performing them, but an arrangement of a pre-existing tune can be rather limiting, especially in the context of LDS worship services. I don't have anything wrong with these services or their musical requirements. But, I have been wanting to be more expressive that what is possible in that context with regard to my spiritual feelings and emotions. I decided that an original Mass setting would be a good place to try this out. An added bonus to writing a Mass is that if I do it the right way, it can be very useful to many different Christian denominations as their musical practices allow a little more freedom in worship services. If I'm going to write something about Jesus, why not share it with as many Christians as possible. 

The main reason that I decided to be a composer was because of the stirring emotions I experienced while listening and performing great pieces of music. You know that feeling when the music gets to fever pitch and then seems to explode with emotion? I'm thinking of the Hallelujah Chorus or the fuge-ing orchestral interlude in the last movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. I'm also thinking of the Saint-Saens organ symphony when the organ blasts open the 4th movement or the soaring string writing in Elgar's Nimrod variation from the Enigma Variations. There are many more such moments; the "Agnus Dei" in Bach's B-minor Mass, the whole St. Matthew Passion, the heart wrenching "Liebestod" at the end of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, the climax of Barber's Adagio for Strings, and on and on and on. I wanted to learn how to make those moments happen; I still do. On Tuesday night, when we were going through the opening movement, Kyrie, I had one of those moments of musical ecstasy. I had to stop singing for a few seconds to stop my voice from choking-up. I even got a little teary. Then, it happened again in two additional movements (there are 6 in total). Everyone in the choir was so nice about the piece and applauded me as we ended rehearsal (I hope they weren't applauding because rehearsal was finally over and they didn't have to sing that music any more). I was happy that they were pleased because I was thinking of them while I wrote the piece. I hope it can be useful to them in the future and that they can feel the deep spiritual feeling that I tried to put in it. 

If anyone's interested in this topic of musical ecstasy, there is an interesting book called "Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy"; it's a very interesting read. Well, I'm completely in love with music, especially music that reaches down into my heart and squeezes. That's why I have to be a musician, I'm addicted to that feeling, I can't live without it. 

It has also been a good week because Janae came home from the hospital and is doing much better. She is having her blood checked every week for a month or 2 until they are sure she has recovered. She is also on a steroid. We feel very blessed that she recovered so quickly from what seemed like a very scary situation. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's time for you to give in to the pressure and get a Facebook account.

More next week.