Dear Friends,
Get out your scores, find a comfortable chair, and get ready to learn something. For those of you who are active on the Pettersson groups on Facebook, you surely have read the many highly informative and enlightening contributions by Jorge López. I am pleased to say that Jorge has agreed to share his very eloquent and comprehensive thoughts on both the Symphony No. 6 and 11, based on a Pettersson seminar which he moderated in Vienna earlier this year. There is a lot of material here, so dig in and enjoy!
IMPRESSIONISTIC NOTES ON PRESENTING
PETTERSSON’S SIXTH AND ELEVENTH AT THE VIENNA CONSERVATORY
17. January 2013:
About 20 people showed up, including a lady from the Swedish Embassy in Vienna,
whose financial support had made my work possible. The conservatory’s Professor Susana Zapke,
who had organized the seminar, provided an introduction, while Dr. Peter
Kislinger of the Vienna University, who has done some excellent radio programs
for the Austrian Radio ORF on composers such as Pettersson, Eliasson, and Aho, kindly
served on short notice as moderator.
I kept the Pettersson
biography short and simple. The
arthritis was certainly crippling and real, but that Gudrun had money so that
Allan could compose also seems to be real.
Just reeling off the same highly emotional AP quotes about this and that
is in my opinion, 33 years after Allan’s death, essentially counterproductive. What we have and what we should deal with is
HIS MUSIC.
He had studied not
only in Stockholm with renowned Swedish composers but also in Paris with René
Leibowitz, and through Leibowitz thoroughly absorbed the music of the Second
Viennese School. And this often comes
through—when I hear the beginning of AP’s FIFTH I sense in the four-pitch
groups something subliminally reminiscent of Webern’s (weak and cramped) String
Quartet—here set free by Pettersson into experiential time and space.
Ah yes, time and
space. There is a concept or model or
field or archetype for Scandinavian symphonic writing that I find to be fundamentally
different from that of Central European thinking: one grounded not on
consciously worked-out contrast and dialectic but rather on the intuitive experience
of the symphony as JOURNEY through time and space. So I called the score of Pettersson’s SIXTH a
MAP, and holding up a topographic map of the mountainous Sarek National Park in
the far north of Sweden, referring to my personal experience, called that map a
SCORE. If we hike a rugged circle around
the multi-peaked massif Akka, its continuous presence and changing form yield a
rondo-like Gestalt. If we camp to the
northwest of the mesa-like mountain Kisuris and then ascend to the icy lake at
1254 meters to the east of its summit, we are totally enclosed by somber talus
slopes. Scrambling to the top of one of
these slopes yields a view, an open panorama, and a complete transformation of
the experiential musical tissue. A
journey of several days from north to south or from east to west will involve
lots of uneventful monotonous marching between gradually transforming shapes,
whereby memories recur and fantasies develop: a symphony in time and
space. More prosaically, I remember
reading how Kalevi Aho drew on mountain shapes in northern Finland for the
melodic lines of his Tuba Concerto.
Back to Allan
Pettersson and to the beginning of his SIXTH.
A bass creature appears, apparently self-sufficient, “soft but
sonorous”: G#-B-F-E-F#. Here I have to
think of Pettersson’s study with Leibowitz: is this part of a Webern row? NO: it remains self-sufficient, circles irregularly
around itself, its slow dragon breathing slightly pulsating: longer, shorter.
I call this first
field Das Vorhandene, that which Exists. The upper strings trace soft lines over the
sleepy dragon; the shapely sequence G-C#-C-A-G#, sluggishly but repeatedly
intoned by the second violins and violas, though not the highest voice,
achieves a profile within this primal ooze.
At Figure 6 this
sequence, transposed a fifth higher, in a faster tempo, tonally supported by
wobbling F minor pillars, acquires the status of a theme. I call it Das
Ich, the
Self. In the course of the work it
will prove persistent: sometimes
inhibiting, sometimes initiating.
Characteristic for “the Self” is also that it has by Figure 8 already
begun to disintegrate into four-note groups (which suggest the workings of the
ELEVENTH … but I’m getting ahead of myself).
In the voice played by oboes and high cellos in the third and fourth
measures after Fig. 8 one actually finds key four-note cells from the ELEVENTH
(B—C—D—E) and TENTH (F—E—D—C#) symphonies, micro-premonition within this brief
disintegrating field which is then stiffened at Fig. 9 through an E—G—B—D#--F#
sequence repeated three times by low woodwind and low strings. I call it Riegel,
Bolt. Its harmonic compression E—G—F#--D# is then
after Fig. 10 also repeated three times by low winds, brass, and
percussion. I call it Fluch, Curse. These repetitions do not convey
reassurance. They suggest rather a
morbid fairy tale: things I tell you
three times are TRUE! The interval
molecules, capable of building up into melodic compounds, also suggest to me
the influence of twelve-tone thinking, transmitted through Leibowitz.
Five measures after
Fig. 11, over an ascending snake
drawn out from the last three tones of that
which Exists, violas and then
timpani hurriedly tap uneasy triplets on F.
These triplets will often return.
One measure after Fig.
13, over the snake and the triplets, a new aggressively descending idea is hammered
out by the violins. I call it Knote, Knot. Its sequential extension leads only to empty
space and then, one measure before Fig. 16, to a more extensively worked-out
return of the Self (the theme-like
structure of Fig. 6), which is then connected back to the Knot in the third and fourth measures after Fig. 18.
From here up to three
measures before Fig. 29, the music, with its extensions and intervallic
expansions of already existing cells, has aspects of classical Durchführung, development.
Then a new acoustic space appears: that of suspended empty waiting,
where violins sustain B natural in three octaves while high woodwinds and other
strings twine around (or struggle to untie?) the Knot. Different event
densities, that of concentrated development and that of empty almost eventless
suspension, are here juxtaposed, in a manner different from but parallel to
that of juxtaposing different thematic or harmonic structures. This variation in event density will turn out
to be the ultimate forming principle for the macrostructure of the whole
symphony.
This brief seminar is
not the place to get into an exact blow-by-blow description of every motivic
happening and detail. The point is that
Pettersson works up his music here through differing combinations and
extensions of several more or less related molecules, not through the
presentation of contrasting groups.
Phases interpenetrate one another.
Starting three measures before Fig. 41, the cell we named that which Exists (the idea of the
Introduction) returns in the bass register, underpinning figures of the Knot and the Self.
Four measures after
Fig. 43, the descending tritone of that which Exists underpins a new cell: high
woodwind playing the ascending tones F—A flat—G. I call this Raubvogel, bird of prey. Starting one measure after Fig 44, it provokes
a transposed spinoff of the F—E—F# segment of that which exists: violins repeatedly
playing G flat—F—G, in rapidly dashed-off dactylic rhythm.
And the figures
further interact. Reaching Fig. 49 I
note that the cells have no clearly laid-down primary or secondary roles, but seem
rather to be the acoustic equivalent of figures in a landscape: what one sees
(hears) depends on where one turns one’s head, or on where the composer’s
composing consciousness turns. I recall Pettersson’s
statement: “the work of art lives deep in the subconscious. I’m
just a kind of gate-keeper, helping it to get out.”
We don’t have time
here to detail every development, but I do want to point out one remarkable new
shape: that played by piccolo and xylophone starting at Fig. 89. I call it Kakerlaken, cockroach. At first it crawls with wriggling antennas
through a moronically insistent rhythmic ostinato of flutes and tenor drum,
laid over molecular instabilities of the
Self in the low register. Starting
two measures before Fig. 92, other woodwinds, some brass, and the second
violins provide a slimy chromatic background enabling more rapid and effective
crawling. A more coherent version of the Self played by first violins and trumpets starting two before 95
leads, not unexpectedly, to cockroach-like behavior of the entire orchestral
apparatus, which finally (one measure after 104) has knocked, shaken and
wriggled its way through to an intensive statement of lines derived from the Self, a statement which shows how
this self has developed: the parts are marked “desperate”. I also note the ascending lines played by the
low instruments from two before 105 to three before 106. I hear these as being a premonition of a much
later phase of the work.
The hypertrophic tutti
starting two before 114 and going up to two after 115 astounded many of those
who were at the seminar hearing the piece for the first time: Richard Wagner meets Edgar Varèse: several cells contrapuntally
combined over the thunder of timpani and SIX percussionists.
But of course it
dissolves. And when the intensive
triplet movement returns, at Fig. 118, it does not just carry out an empty expectant
or threatening pulse but presents rather an (how
could Pettersson be so academic? This must mean something!) AUTHENTIC FUGATO!
The density and velocity of this fugato quickly transform it into a
noise-like background for a dense counterpoint of more coherent albeit
distressed figures related to the Self
and the Knot.
This field breaks off,
one measure after Fig. 123, as high woodwind and first violins sustain the
third B—E flat. The second violins—and
ONLY the second violins—play the first five notes of the Self. Here the topos of
suspension has been welded to what seems to be the most thematic essence of the
piece. And the second violins repeat
this cell, with the last two notes drawn out.
I’ve asked myself if this might perhaps be a miscalculation in the
matter of orchestration. After years of
thinking it over (and also relating it to my own compositional experience), I
think Pettersson was right on target here.
It is sometimes dramaturgically appropriate or even essential that
essential ideas be delivered “from the side” or “from behind”. They MUST struggle and strain to be heard. A spotlighted orchestration of this repeated
utterly important cell would be banal.
What follows at Fig.
125 is regarded by virtually every listener as the turning point (peripetia) of
the symphony, and has for me the character of an epiphany: a deep sudden awareness
that will never be repeated. I call it Todesbewußtsein, awareness of mortality. The
C minor tonality is completely unambiguous.
The line played by the trumpets has the character of a chorale, but also
anticipates—while only suggestively and inexactly-- another important long-drawn-out
line that we will later hear. The
counterpoint of the horns and second violins draws upon developed elements of
the Self and the Knot.
That the minor ninths
so quickly turn into octaves C—C is not rationally justifiable. It has rather the character of a miracle, or
a very sudden change in the weather or of a fluid camera pan over the figure of
an androgynous Shiva. And, two measures
before Fig. 130, C major is there. The
epiphany was tough but at least briefly sweet.
At this point, I stopped the CD player.
I asked the
participants for their reflections on what they had just heard and on their
thoughts about how the piece might continue.
I must mention here that I had in almost the last minute decided to use
the 1976 live recording with Okko Kamu conducting the Norrköping
orchestra. While the recently released
BIS CD studio recording with Christian Lindberg conducting the same orchestra
is in almost every aspect the best and most accurate realization of this work
available on CD, I finally felt that the earlier recording still makes the best
introduction to the piece.
I asked if the
chorale-like passage just heard might perhaps turn out to be the heart and
eventual culmination of the piece, an idea now to be subjected to development
and evolution, but didn’t get much in the way of answers. Reservation and puzzlement seemed
ubiquitous. One young Austrian lady
studying horn at the conservatory was very impressed by the heroic horn playing
she’d heard in these 25 minutes and asked me if six or eight horns were
used. I could only reply that there are
four parts in the score, whereby it’s conceivable that the orchestra might have
staggered these among six players.
So: we continued. The tones F and A flat soon color the C major
triad. Emphatic clockwork pushing and
shoving on the part of trumpets and horns intensifies and at two before 134 the
triplet pulsation on the insistent F returns.
Starting at two before 136, we experience the extension and expansion of
the three-note group that we first heard at Fig. 44. Pettersson’s way of gnawing and expanding
upon a little intervallic cell sometimes subliminally reminds me of some
aspects of Indian classical music. One
can at least fantasize the microtones in the Raga AP 6.
Once again: this
seminar is not the place to get into every magnificent little detail of this
score. But as I remarked on the “ticking
clock” character of the Pettersson viola F triplets starting at Fig. 145, Dr.
Kislinger made the interesting observation that digital technology will (or
already has) made this association virtually obsolete. I don’t want to get too off-topic, but would
like to mention that the Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer has suggested
“museums of extinct or endangered sounds”.
Starting at four after
157, oboes and clarinets play a line that indirectly suggests the trumpets’
statement heard at the epiphanic Fig. 125.
At Fig 159 this line is fragmented into smaller interval groups. Three before 161, the upper strings, “Con accento doloroso”, draw us definitively
into the sorrowful hollow of E flat minor.
When the strings (and only the strings) reactivate at Fig. 166, with
moving bass lines and some interconnecting dialogue between the voices, this
has for me the character of a vestibule:
a space that one most briefly go through to again reach the main hall of the
piece. Two after 166 and two after 167,
first violins and the upper cellos emphasize the cell D flat—C—F. This looks back to the epiphany and forward
to a coming open acknowledgement. Some
figures in this vestibule,
particularly the ascending cello line starting three after 171, also look
forward to the TENTH and ELEVENTH symphonies.
At Fig. 172 we see
that this tangent has only served to draw us back down into the E flat minor
hollow, even deeper. But at Fig. 176,
the bass note changes to F.
Three measures after Fig. 177, I
stopped the CD player, and we cut directly without interruption to another
(small portable) CD player with rather tinny sound, positioned BEHIND the
listeners, playing Han ska släcka min lykta, #24 of Pettersson’s Barefoot Songs. At the end of the song: a direct cut back to
the SIXTH. This montage had an effect
not unlike some passages in the music of Charles Ives, for example from his Fourth Symphony or Second Orchestral Set.
I find it significant
that Pettersson presents his long-drawn-out song line through mixed timbre,
that of cellos and English horn. Might
it be conceivable to also have an alto voice sing along, not to the fore but
blended in, so that the words of the text could be just half-perceived, with
dreamlike or hallucinatory effect? This
section also has a generally soft but insistent almost-martial tenor drum
accompaniment, marked “sempre solo” in five-measure phrases that cross against
the phrasing of the song. Presenting
this appropriately in the sense of orchestral balance is certainly not
easy. I have the feeling that the brain
splits here: hypothalamus and frontal lobes are occupied with the song and its
accompaniment, whereby the ticking of the tenor drum happens in the cerebellum,
a mechanical process manifesting the eroding progress of time. If I could conduct and were to conduct this
piece, I would at least experiment with having this passage played by a distant
(offstage) tenor drum, playing ff, heard
in the hall as piano. This radical opening-out of the acoustic
space might perhaps correspond to Pettersson’s (half?) conscious thoughts. Such things in this section also remind me
of Birtwistle’s orchestral piece The
Triumph of Time, composed in 1971.
I find it quite good
that the line of Han ska släcka min
lykta corresponds only elliptically to the line played by the trumpets in
the above-mentioned epiphany at Fig. 125.
But if the trumpets had in the second measure after 125 played as their
second tone not D but D flat …
another world … such small details have the capacity to decisively change the
effect of a long work.
The oscillating minor
third E flat—C hangs on insistently two measures after 193 and then even more
emphatically at Fig. 213. These are two
of the moments in what we perceive as the second half of this symphony where I
recall Stockhausen’s vocal sextet Stimmung,
composed in 1968. Pettersson lets a black Aeolian harp hang in the breeze, like
a background drone instrument in Indian classical music, a harp that yields the
tones B flat—C—D flat—E flat—F—G flat.
Stockhausen’s B flat overtone structures and the E flat prelude to
Wagner’s Das Rheingold are, for my
way of hearing, not far away. Christian
Lindberg’s recording does in my opinion the best job of expressively animating
the contours of these drone-filled Petterssonian fields of sorrow.
Ah yes, songs and
drones. I take it that the title of
Pettersson’s Barefoot Songs was
suggested by the text of Schubert’s Der
Leiermann (The Hurdy-gurdy Player), the 24th and last song of
the Winterreise: “Barfuß auf dem Eise wankt er hin und
her” (barefoot on the ice, he
staggers here and there). Han ska släcka min lykta is also #24 of its cycle and has clear
harmonic connections to Schubert’s model.
Insistent fast
triplets on F, probably the “little light” of the song’s title, are played by
the piccolo starting at two after 215, then joined by the first violins
(playing in harmonics) at two after 221.
The line played by the
first trumpet, flutes, and clarinets starting at Fig. 212 incorporates the
little three-note chromatic figure we first heard at one after Fig. 44. I love this aspect of Pettersson’s
large-scale forms. Relatively small
details can be presented 30 or 40 minutes apart in time and experiential space,
and have for me the effect of the same mountain seen from different angles in
the course of a long trek. Two after 218
flutes, oboes, and clarinets (a distinctly Mahler-like sound here) begin to
play and to draw out a diatonic version of the same contour. Its repetitions lead me to microtonal
fantasies.
After this figure has
been expanded with octave leaps (Fig. 226-227, in a faster tempo) we can feel
the hush two before 228 as a new element of mostly offbeat stabbing chords infiltrates
and then takes over. These are of course
the pitches of the previously mentioned ubiquitous black Aeolian harp. I described the passage from three before 229
to three after 234 as a “Blanketparty für den Protagonist”. I didn’t know how to express this in German
but most people understood after I referred to a scene in Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket and after Dr.
Kislinger noted that the idiom “ihm die Decke geben” was current in Austrian usage up into the
1960’s. But one could also think of
Allan’s blacksmith father hammering away.
Two contrapuntally
intertwined melodic lines struggle to be heard through the stifling stabs of
brass and percussion, second violins and violas. Both have motivic connections to the song. The higher line, marked “espr. molto”, played
by the first violins doubled by the flutes and later also by the piccolo, gets
through. The lower line, “con passione”,
played by the cellos on their (highest) A string, has a harder time. I find this to be perhaps an error of
Pettersson’s orchestration. The two
clarinets, which rest in the first part of this passage and then join the oboes
in unison two after 231, adding little to the sound, should in my opinion play
together with the cellos throughout this entire passage. Actually, two BASS clarinets might work well
here, playing in their clarino register parallel to that of the high cellos.
The ascending line in
the bass instruments starting three after 232 suggests Parsifal, and has, as I previously pointed out, been fleetingly
anticipated at two before Fig. 105. It
clearly serves the processes of dissolution and reconciliation, processes
furthered by the descending line of the first violins starting at two after
241, a line that we had first heard from the woodwind at four after 157.
The eighth note
triplets on F which we first heard at three before Fig. 12 show up for the last
time two after 248, quite strangely: played by the first desk of basses, interspersed
between glissandi where they moan a minor ninth down from their high G flat.
After Fig. 250 B flat
minor is total and we hear the last long line of the piece, drawn from the
song, played by the first trumpet and first violins. Four after 257 F major, pp; and then B flat minor to the end. Pettersson will reverse this at the end of
his NINTH. The last sound of the piece:
a soft bass drum roll and the contra B flat of basses and contrabassoon,
whereby I would have the contrabassoon play an octave lower, sub contra B flat.
After a couple of
minutes of near-silence it gradually became possible for Prof. Zapke, Dr.
Kislinger and I to draw out reactions from the twenty or so listeners. Connections were felt to Bruckner and
Sibelius, and at first also to USA minimalists like Glass and Riley. But we
soon agreed that Pettersson’s use of repetition is fundamentally different from
that of the more-or-less-mellow minimalists, in that his repetitions tend and
intend to convey psychic disturbance and oppression. Dirk d’Ase, who teaches composition at the
conservatory, referred to Pettersson’s repetitions as “verbohrt”, a word that means something between
“pigheaded”, “stubborn”, and “cranky”.
He also pointed out the tendency to use the orchestra as more or less a
mass, with relatively little use of solo instruments, including a quasi-choric use
of the percussion, with the persistent triangle in unusual contexts getting a
particularly thorough workout. The young
lady hornist felt that “die Musik vermittelt Leid, und JA, man kann mitleiden” (the music conveys sorrow, and yes, one can
feel along).
I tried to provoke
thoughts as to whether a dramaturgically different unfolding of the symphony
after the epiphany at Fig. 125 might
have been possible. Could this
chorale-like idea have entered into conflict with what we had previously heard,
and then either lost out, or perhaps come to dominate the work? Or could the opening cells of that which Exists, or the theme-like
structure of the Self, perhaps have
played a crucial role in the work’s later phases, either linearly or as
compressed harmonic structures? And was
the ultimately hymnic presentation of Han
ska släcka min lykta consciously planned from the beginning of the
composition, which stretched out from 1963 to 1966, and is said to have been
interrupted for reasons of poor health?
My intuitive feeling is NO. I
suspect Pettersson decided on the so prominent presentation of the song at some
point around or somewhat before the middle of the composition. The fact that the motivic cells of the song
begin to clearly emerge only after
the epiphany speaks for my theory. But
we would need to see his sketches (in the Uppsala University archives?) to know
for sure.
Then we got into what
is in Vienna certainly a relevant theme: comparing Allan Pettersson’s way of
integrating his songs into his symphonies with that of Gustav Mahler. Just considering Mahler’s first four
symphonies, we find on the one hand songs which are actual symphonic movements
(Urlicht in the 2nd, then
the fourth and fifth movements of the 3rd, and the last movement of
the fourth), and on the other hand movements where the original song is
expanded and serves as a source of “material”: the first and third movements of
the 1st, the third movement of the 2nd, and the third
movement of the 3rd. There is
no movement in any symphony by Pettersson that just consists of a song. In our SIXTH the song is gradually arrived at
and then presented whole like a faded picture from an old family album. In the FOURTEENTH the song basically
functions as a passacaglia theme. In the
Second Violin Concerto the long culminating presentation of the song is something
that is striven for. In other symphonies (such as the unfinished
FIRST) the song appears as a brief image or quote.
And then we talked
about the global form, the Gestalt of
Pettersson’s SIXTH. In almost everything
written about this work one reads that the second half of the symphony is some
kind of “coda”. I disagree. In the terms of the Viennese classics a coda
carries on a further phase of what happened in the course of the development, drawing
further conclusions, and fundamentally using similar principles of formation,
albeit perhaps in a concentrated or diluted way. What happens in Pettersson’s piece is for me
quite different. The epiphany situation
of Fig. 125 acts to dissolve the music’s ability to form complex syntax and is
(despite several polyphonic protest rallies along the way) the inciter not only
of time extension but also of musical tissue degeneration, meant here not
pejoratively but existentially. In the
terms of dream logic the symphony’s shape is not that of ONE or of TWO, but
that of ONE WHICH IS BROKEN, quite original and unusual in the symphonic
literature.
Yes, dream logic. Sigmund Freud spoke of “Verdichtung, Verschiebung, und Verdrängung” as being the fundamental processes of dream (or
art) formation. Condensation,
displacement, and repression (or: supersession) are concepts that can help with
the understanding of Pettersson’s music.
What about the stature
and value of Pettersson’s SIXTH? I agree
with Christian Lindberg’s opinion that AP’s SIXTH is on the level of Mahler’s SIXTH,
and could (should) several decades after Pettersson’s death become as well
known and highly regarded as Mahler’s SIXTH did in the course of the 1960’s and
70’s. The reactions of the participants
to this statement were generally thoughtful and reserved, but not negative.
We took a break. An Iranian student who had been deeply
impressed and was fascinated by the idea of “Scandinavian symphonic thinking”
showed me the information on Pettersson recordings that he had collected
through spotify on his smartphone.
