The National and the Confessional in Smetana and Dvorak

Is music universal? Maybe, but I have my doubts. Just as there are individual people who have no use for or response to music (consider the  famous cases of Sigmund Freud and Vladimir Nabokov, for instance), I rather suspect that there are probably nations or cultures that have no use for music. Nations of Ullyses Grants (“I know two tunes: one of ‘em’s “Yankee Doodle” and the other one ain’t.”). This mildly amusing Grant anecdote may be apocryphal for all I know, and it may be that a learned anthropologist would tell me that they’ve never encountered an amusical cuture. But this I know: if amusical cultures exist, the Czechs ain’t one of them.

How should we feel about avowedly “national” music? Remember, if you value “patriotism”, for instance, as all the presidential candidates are required to avow every hour, on the hour, you must respect patriotism in nations other than your own. Otherwise it’s not patriotism per se you value, but some kind of hegemony, cultural or political.

A few years ago I had an annoying incident at O’Hare airport, returning from Europe. I think it may have been from France or Germany, but let’s just say it was from Prague. I somehow got in the wrong line for passport control and an exasperated agent called me over to the appropriate line, the one for American citizens. (For better or worse, I’m always immediately recognizable as an American… hmm, maybe it’s due to the loud Hawaiian shirts, the loud voice, and the chic ensemble of plaid shorts with socks and sandals. On the other hand, if I tried to wear a leather jacket and an earring, I would be immediately perceived as an “ugly American” trying to be an “ugly European”)…

Anyway, the agent berated me thusly: “You shouldn’t have to wait in line, you belong here, not like those other people.” And his tone dripped contempt for “those other people”. Maybe he meant to show comraderie with me, or whatnot. But I didn’t like it, it stuck in my craw. Before the death of the dollar I went to Europe quite frequently, and I promise you, I sure wouldn’t want that jackass on the reception committee at the other end.

Which brings us to the case of Smetana, a composer who explicitly stated that he valued the “national” more than the “universal”; this view even caused a rift with a friend. Now, Smetana’s experience abroad, in Sweden primarily, but Germany as well, cemented his narrowly Czech outlook… he had a rough time getting his career going as well as he wanted it to go, he was homesick and estranged from his family. Also, the fate of the Czech lands for much of its history has been to be a victim of Austrian and German control, and of course this pattern continued in the generations after Smetana’s death, with the Soviet Union added to the list of offenders against Czech sovereignty most recently.

So Smetana’s view is understandable, to say the least. But does it limit his appeal? Does knowing that a composer isn’t writing for you cause you any qualms? Do you prefer Beethoven, who is writing for you? In his aspirations Smetana is more Czech than Schubert is Viennese, more Czech than Tchaikovsky is Russian, more Czech than Ives is American. Is this a problem?

No, because music is abstract, and a composer cannot control the intrinsic meaning of an abstraction, only its outward semblance. It’s out of his hands. Case in point, “From Bohemia’s Woods and Valleys” uses a polka as the symbol of nationhood, the people, which is then combined with music representing nature in a mystical epiphany. If Gershwin were to use a fox-trot in “From America’s Woods and Valleys” should polka dancers feel left out? Nietzsche had it right, it’s neither the best nor the worst that is lost in translation. And don’t ever let a Russian tell you that you can’t “really understand” Mussorgsky, or a Norwegian tell you that you can’t “really understand” Grieg. But when it comes to non-Western cultures, I’m mute. I just don’t know enough.

Dvorak was a staunch Catholic as well as a staunch nationalist. His frustration with the publisher Simrock ignoring his pleas to publish his name in the Czech manner, as well as providing Czech texts in his scores is well known. And I’d go so far to say that a fair minded person would be almost obliged to respect the nationalism of a Czech vis a vis. the dominant and foreign German influence and control, politically and culturally, in the Czech lands at the time.

Dvorak’s confessionalism might be more palateable than the nationalism of Smetana for non-Czechs, partly because Dvorak didn’t hesitate to include Hussite themes in for instance, his “The Hussites” overture, although the Hussites were completely opposed to Catholocism. Dvorak thought that the Hussites nevertheless represented important and admirable traits. And confessionalism is often trans-national; Catholocism certainly is. But is confessional exclusivity any better than national exclusivity, especially since typically in the former case those left out are thought to be denied salvation?

Once again, music itself provides an elegant rebuttal to the exclusiveness crowd. Consider the case of William Byrd, or Bach himself, who signed some document condemning the beliefs of the prince of Anhalt-Coethen, and then memorably eulogized him with movements from a (Catholic!) mass setting. Consider the poignant and instructive case of Shostakovich, who wrote thrilling and moving music for the Soviet ideology, that so many people insist on appropriating for very different ideologies! Consider the anti-ecclesiast Verdi in his “Four Sacred Pieces” and Requiem. 

Great composers have often expressed ugly jingoistic credos. But their own works as often as not belie their ideological intentions. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. This applies to Wagner as well, by the way, although you need several strong men to dump out the unusually deep tubs of bathwater.

Carelessness? Classical "Orthodoxy"? Manufactured Coherence? -Some Thoughts on Dvorak's D Minor Quartet

Johannes Brahms may have accepted the dedication of Dvorak’s String Quartet in d minor, op. 34 (1877), but (in rather gentle manner for Brahms, when in a critical mood) wrote to Dvorak that when filling in the sharps and flats in his music he should take another look at the notes themselves, and noted (with implicit criticism) how quickly Dvorak composed.

Is this criticism fair?

Yes. Brahms is presumably not talking about typos, nor about egregiously wrong notes, but instead about the fact that Dvorak (and this discussion will be limited to the quartet) is willing to accept the plausible, the obvious, in place of the truly organic.

Paul Griffiths writes in his “The String Quartet-A History”:

“There were…features of Dvorak’s style that made the quartet an appropriate medium, notably his liking for presenting a melody first in one instrument then in another with a counter-melody added. But in writing quartets he must have been helped too by his long years of experience as a viola player, experience to which all his mature quartets bear witness in making the viola-not the cello as in Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Schumann-the second soloist of the ensemble.”

Griffiths is literally correct about Dvorak’s relationship to the medium, but his comments betray too great a respect for facility and idiomatic style for my taste. But he is consistent. His criticism of Brahms’s quartets centers on the seeming textural inadequacy of the medium to realize Brahms’s (presumably orchestral) musical thought. I like Griffiths’s book, but I disagree somewhat with his assessment of the appositeness of the respective styles of Brahms and Dvorak for the quartet medium. I also think he terribly underestimates Schumann’s op. 41 quartets, for similar reasons, but that’s another story. In any case, Wienawski or Sarasate or even Vivaldi weren’t the greatest composers of violin music, although Liszt may have been the greatest composer of piano music, per se.  Perhaps we should have the greatest respect for works that transcend the perceived physical limitations of their medium, like Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, to stay with quartet literature. 

Dvorak’s d minor quartet is a good, not a great work, precisely and exactly and assuredly because Brahms was right both in his general enthusiasm for Dvorak as well as in his gentle reproach. This quartet suffers in its outer movements from what I might call “manufactured coherence”. Case in point, the second subject of the first movement, whose first phrase is literally the second half of the first subject’s opening phrase, reharmonized in F Major.  Now there are critics who would congratulate themselves on discovering this, and congratulate Dvorak on his “organicism”.  I don’t buy it. It’s obvious, and therefore dull. Repetition is as overrated in musical form as consensus is in committee meetings. Another obvious and therefore dull bit of pseudo-organicism is the use of the triplet obligato that accompanies the main theme in its big structural repetition in the exposition as the decisive element in the coda. Plausible, certainly. Effective? Sure. Organic? Not really, because real development and transformation (which would be organic) doesn’t occur.

Another thing: it is well known that Dvorak loved Schubert and enjoys using Schubertian mediant chords, whether as modulatory levers or even as subsidary theme areas. So the development of the first movement begins in B Major. That’s alright, as far as it goes, it was about time to get out of the d minor/F Major orbit, but why B? Why not D-flat, for instance? Once again, plausible, reasonably effective, but not terribly organic. Consider by contrast Beethoven’s us of f-sharp minor in his Eighth Symphony, or F-Sharp Major in his Second. Or Schubert’s use of E-Flat Major in his String Quintet. And these are works Dvorak knew, presumably, and there are many other examples in any case. One rhythmic aspect in which Dvorak really missed the boat in this opening movement is failing to grasp that the turn subject in eighth notes in the principal themes (a-b-flat-a) lends itself superbly to hemiola. Turn the turn from straight eighth notes into a triplet, phrase in two beats within the 3/4 meter, and I think you’ve really got something, something akin to what Brahms achieves in the first movement of his rhytmically magisterial Second Symphony.  Another annoying thing about Dvorak’s movement (which it would be patently unfair to leave at Dvorak’s doorstep alone, because so many Romantics made the same mistake) is that he is apparently trying to “play by the book”; to impress Brahms, as Griffiths suggests, by composing an “orthodox” Classical sonata form. Since when are Haydn and Beethoven othodox! The idea that sonata form can be, or was, codified into a recipe is a big problem for some movements in Dvorak, as well as Schumann and even, occasionally, the later works of Mendelssohn.

The second and third movements are much, much better.  The second movement, a charming polka, is exactly the right replacement for Classical minuet or scherzo in the context of Dvorak’s style, and the slow movement (a big binary form with coda) is a marvelous study in textural variation, from the multiple stopping with mutes on, through the almost a la Hongroise repetition that even anticipates slightly the magnificent central episode of the slow movement in Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet, to the wonderfully spacious octave oscillations that inform the coda.

The finale, alas, is again merely adequate. Apparently modelled on Schubert’s masterpiece, “Gretchen am Spinnrade”, this movement falls into a Schumann like rhythmic rut rather than achieving the halluncinatory intensity of Schubert’s terrifying tarantellas of death, in his d minor and G major quartets as well as in the c minor piano sonata.

“Natural” affinity for a medium is a gift that cuts both ways.

Two More Worthy Works of Smetana and Dvorak

I do not anticipate having time in class to discuss Smetana’s Trio in g minor or Dvorak’s late folk/fairy tale opera “The Devil and Kate” but I’d like to recommend these fine pieces to my class, and of course my general readership as well.

The Smetana trio is one of a distinguished number of works that is an instrumental requiem; the Berg violin concerto being perhaps the best known exemplar of this category of works. In the case of the Smetana trio, the requiem is for his daughter Bedriska. The work also appears to be intended as therapy for Smetana himself. G minor is a special key for Smetana; consider his early sonata for piano and the later “From Bohemia’s Woods and Valleys”.  Effective but not particularly uncommon is the yoking of scherzo and slow movement in the middle movement. Striking is the similarity of some of the music in the second subject area of the first movement to the beginning of Schumann’s “Frauenliebe und Leben“… but please let me point out the relevant words in the finale of that great cycle: “Now for the first time you have given me pain… [by dying]”…and in the Schumann the theme comes back as an epilogue. Am I saying this is not merely co-incidental?

I ain’t sayin’, I’m jus’ sayin’.

Piano Trios, Naxos. Buy CD at: ArkivMusic

Smetana knew and loved Schumann’s music, by the way. There is a great deal of Schumannesque rhetoric in the piece. Uncanny in Smetana generally is that when he writes in reasonably conventional instrumental forms, it sounds fresh and new, as if he just invented the forms. Also, the mastery of the idiom is striking. All three parts are given music of considerable weight, complexity, lyricism and drama. And it is delightful to see a piano part that doesn’t look like accompaniment textures, but like a fully realized soloistic role, and the strings aren’t compromised by this, they are enhanced. The turn to the major at the end is not convincing, and not intended to be. It is not an affirmation that life goes one, but a try-out to see if life can go on. The works ends in an emotionally speculative vein, if I can put it thus. The famous Kuebler-Ross stages of death are very apparent in this often desperately sad, sometimes violent work.

Special note to a certain somebody: What the heck is wrong with Chamisso’s poetry for Schumann’s Frauenliebe? I reread all eight poems and found them moving. In both English and German, just for you. I ain’t afraid to be a weepy sentimentalist. But then, I like the prose styles of Franz Liszt and George Sand! 

Dvorak’s “Devil and Kate” is just like Rimsky-Korsakov’s fairy tale operas, especially “May Night”, but with the exception that the characters come to life in Dvorak; they’re human. Especially human are the devils Marbuel, the gatekeeper and Lucifer. Rimsky struggled bringing his characters to life. A significant flaw in his operas, but I think the only flaw. Rimsky is one of my heroes. In fact, I only have three portraits of composers in my workroom, Liszt, Wagner, and Rimsky. I did have Franz Lehar, but the cat ate it.  Kate herself is a delight-a pretty plump chatterbox who gives the devils what for. The agreeable strains of various dance styles permeate this delightful score, the orchestration is sumptuous, the lyricism is fresh and eloquent, and it’s under 2 hours long. The Supraphon recording from 1993 is a winner. You should hear this piece, it’ll put a smile on your face.

Dvorak: Kate and the Devil (Cert a Kácal) - ArkivMusic

A Splendid CD

Smetana: Macbeth and the Witches; Dvorak: Prelude to Spectre’s Bride, The Water Goblin, and The Hussites, Prague Symp.With Smetacek, Czech Phil with Chalarala, on Urania.

I can’t promise that these magnificently virile performances are still available, of course Arkiv has so much, maybe they have it.  

If you don’t know the Smetana poem (1859), run don’t walk to hear it. It has a terrifying grandeur and a thrilling  visceral impact. It is also strangely “modern” sounding; It is easily on the level of Ma Vlast; in fact, a little more daring, so to speak.  The Dvorak “Water Goblin” is attractive and scintillatingly colorful, it is, however exceedingly repetitive. If you don’t hate the water goblin for being an infanticide, you may hate him for smearing his theme all over the score with such greediness for attention. “The Hussites” concert overture (1883) ought to please those who are aficionados of Smetana’s “Tabor” and “Blanik”. It is indeed similar: Dvorak wrote it for the rebuilding of the Czech National Theatre in Prague, after a disastrous fire. Compare what Smetana was doing half a generation before Dvorak’s overture. As I’ve said again and again, musical progress doesn’t follow a straight line from the less “modern” to the more “modern”…