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RECITAL 1986--PROGRAM NOTES
French Program
Claude Debussy: Syrinx
Edgard Varèse: Density 21.5
Olivier Messian: Le merle noir
Charles Koechlin: L'Album de Lilian, Book Two, op.149
Pierre Boulez: Sonatine
- Intermission -
Jean-Marie Leclair: Sonata for flute and continuo in E minor, op. 1 no. 6
François Couperin: Sonade l'Impériale
The French have always had a particular flair for writing for wind instruments--the flute in particular. The first half of this program consists of works by five 20th-century French composers whose associations and influences on one another were many and varied.
Though the first two pieces are brief and unaccompanied, a greater contrast in style could hardly be imagined. Debussy's Syrinx is a sinuous, atmospheric sketch that draws on the style of flute writing which must have sounded so strangely and beautifully new when, in 1894, his Afternoon of a Faun was first heard. Density 21.5 refers to the specific gravity of platinum--Varèse composed this piece for the French flutist Georges Barrère as a vehicle for his new platinum Powell flute. While Syrinx stands with one foot in the nineteenth century and one in the twentieth, Density 21.5 looks resolutely ahead to the future. With the percussive key clicks, used here for the first time; with its dramatic exploitation of the flute's extreme upper range, and with its impassioned, even violent declamation, Density 21.5 has been grand-daddy to a whole genre of modern flute pieces.
Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez have both visited Boston within the year to conduct or supervise important performances of their works. Each happens to have written one work for flute and piano, and both Le merle noir and the Sonatine have become landmarks of the flute repertoire. In Le merle noir (The Blackbird) Messiaen's lifelong fascination with birdsong is made clearly and effectively audible. A low rumble in the piano, like a distant peal of thunder, introduces the first of two cadenzas in which Messiaen skillfully exploits the flute's aptitude for the imitation of birdsong. In the closing episode the flute is joined by the piano in a joyful din that calls to mind sunrise in an aviary.
The neglect of Charles Koechlin, who was held in high esteem by Debussy, Satie, and Ravel, was described as "one of the great injustices of our time" by his student Darius Milhaud. This performance--the American premiere, and probably the first complete performance ever of a work written in 1935--is part of our continuing series of performances of Koechlin's chamber works with flute. The breadth of Koechlin's musical culture was all-encompassing--his sources range from Gregorian chant through Debussy to Schoenberg and the new Viennese school. The sources of his extra-musical inspiration were similarly varied. They range from classical mythology to Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book to the "insolent beauty" of the great female stars of the early sound film.
L'Album de Lilian is the second of two series of vignettes inspired by the London-born film idol Lilian Harvey (1907-1968). According to information kindly provided by the composer's son Yves Koechlin, the Habañera créole is probably the "song of the sailors for the little fruit merchant" portrayed by Miss Harvey in one of her films from the early 30s; and the Barcarolle monégasque depicts "Kay (Lilian) alone at night, on board Nicky's yacht in the bay of Monaco." In La prière de l'homme (The Man's Prayer) the serene introspection of Koechlin's harmonic sequences, and the melody that eventually evolves from them, creates a voice distinctly and magically his own.
Sérénade à l'étoile errante --Serenade for the Wandering [Film] Star--appears at first to be another solo piano piece, but the flute soon steals in, imperceptibly at first, and then joins the piano in a leisurely exploration of Koechlin's unique sound-world. Lilian Harvey was an accomplished athlete; scenes in several of her movies display her prowess as a swimmer. If the length of the lines Koechlin entrusts to the flute in Swimming are any indication, she also had remarkable breath control. The angular but lucid music depicting Les jeux du clown (The Clown's Tricks) owes more to Schoenberg than anyone French. The flute offers a few mild interjections which ultimately fail to divert the clown from his mischief.
Le voyage chimérique (The Fantastic Voyage) sketches an imaginary trip to every aspiring movie star's dream destination, Hollywood. The score is dotted with indications of our progress: the train emerges from obscurity, flies over rooftops, and plunges into the ocean (the Atlantic, presumably) which it traverses underwater. The rather condensed itinerary next indicates that we are crossing Arizona; excitement mounts and the tempo presses ahead as we approach California. The triumphant arrival in Hollywood is marked by the quotation of a tune, recognizable to any American even if the harmonization doesn't sound quite right, which would doubtless have Charles Ives sitting up in his grave, saluting. With a sudden deep tolling in the piano the dream is past, and in the lucid calm of wakefulness we hear once again the melody from La prière de l'homme.
The final piece, Sicilienne de rève (Dream Sicilienne), uses the unprecedented combination of ondes martenot and harpsichord. One of the most successful electronic instruments before the synthesizer, the ondes martenot has been championed principally by Messiaen; Boulez briefly became known as a performer on it. Koechlin uses the ondes' uniquely vocal sound production and large compass to carry an unusually wide-ranging melody, which ends the second Album de Lilian in the same tranquillity with which it began.
Despite the unassuming title, one senses the young Pierre Boulez seeking to stuff into his Sonatine all that he had absorbed during his studies with Varèse and René Liebowitz. One of the ingredients of the piece that is often lost among its formidable technical demands is wit--one of the many kinds of music of which the piece is made is marked Tempo scherzando--Avec humeur. Other episodes range from quiet introspection to shocking violence--the pianist is required to aggress upon his instrument as never before in the flute repertoire, and Boulez carries Varèse's exploitation of the flute's brilliant high register to new extremes. The Sonatine, Boulez' first published work, combines the uncompromising modernity of Varèse and the contrapuntal mastery of Schoenberg and Webern to create a tour de force of compositional and instrumental brilliance.
In earlier times the flute spoke with a more modest voice. The instruments in use during the Baroque era, having not yet evolved into their louder modern counterparts, lent themselves to a more intimate knid of musical discourse. The music of the French Baroque is not as widely known and played as that of the Germans and Italians. This is perhaps due in part to the very specific stylistic demands placed on the performers, yet there is a wealth of fine music to be enjoyed. It is also a repertoire that benefits particularly from the lighter, more characterful voices of the earlier instruments, as heard in these performances.
Jean-Marie Leclair is better known as the founder of the French violin school than as a composer of music for the flute. However, his four books of sonatas for violin and continuo include nine he specified as playable also on the flute. In the preface to the fourth book he encourages the performers toward a pure and simple style, specifically insisting that the additional ornamentation which so often "disfigures" slow movements be avoided, and denouncing the practice of changing the tempo within a movement. From a distance of 250 years it is easy to overlook the fact that Leclair was something of an innovator--it is interesting to note that, to a certain contemporary of Leclair's, his music "appeared at first a kind of algebra capable of rebuffing the most courageous musicians."
Each of the four suites published by François Couperin under the title Les nations opens with a large triosonata in the Italian style, called by Couperin a sonade. The sonades were originally conceived as independent works; only later did Couperin append the series of dance movements, expanding them into suites. The sonade from the suite L'impériale, the last and most mature of the four, is an example of the highest flowering of French Baroque instrumental writing. Phrase lengths are seldom symmetrical, passagework never formulaic; melody and counterpoint, exposition and development merge inextricably, yet the music evolves organically into a lucid, expressive, and balanced whole.
--Fenwick Smith
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