In this issue: The Crystalline Perfection of J.S. Bach's Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord
Well, I got a lot more feedback for my review of Haydn's "Nelson Mass" than I did for my reviews of Hedningarna or Elvis' antecedents. What are you guys, a bunch of museum-going classical snobs? :-) Anyway, I encourage listmembers to check out reviews even of things they don't think they'll like. Not only might you find some new music, but I am trying to include background on the history of music, the state of music today, how certain styles relate to Rand's aesthetics, and even little bits of geography and anthropology. You'll see what I mean if you read through this issue.
I am happy to see other music being discussed on the Reviews list, including some by one of my favorite bands, Cowboy Junkies. (I strongly recommend the album "The Trinity Sessions" and almost as strongly, "The Caution Horses.") Interestingly, I first heard Cowboy Junkies on a trip up to Ford Hall Forum, being driven by a Yale Objectivist of my acquaintance.
Space did not permit, so we'll save our look at the Iranian Kurdish musical family, the Kamkars, for next time.
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH, VIOLIN SONATAS BMV 1014-1023. Arthur Grumiaux, violin. Christiane Jacottet, harpsichord. Philippe Mermoud, cello (on BMV 1021 & 1023). Philips. 2-CD set, bargain price.
There was an question that music reviewers asked each a lot in the 60s and 70s: "If you were stranded on a desert island with only ten records, which would you choose?" I don't have my whole list put together, but one CD I know would be on it is the first CD from this recording.
The first sonata of this set opens with a contemplative harpsichord serenely playing. Then a soaring, perhaps slightly melancholy violin enters, spiritualizing the proceedings. It conjures the feeling of being in a cathedral. The next movement is a sprightly dance, with the violin playing a lilting tune and the harpsichord providing complex, yet rhythmic support.
This is the pattern of these sonatas which are in the form _sonata da chiesa_ (church sonatas) rather than the usual _sonata da camera_ (chamber sonatas) form. This nomenclature does not imply anything religious. Church sonatas are four-movements, slow-fast-slow-fast; chamber sonatas have three movements, fast-slow-fast. The extra slow movements simply give Bach additional opportunities to reach for the divine.
The sonatas are extremely intricate, despite being written for only violin and harpsichord. (Two of the sonatas follow the usual baroque practice of including a cello as well.) There are dance movements, quasi-fugues, and moments of deep clarity. They almost give the illusion of being written for more instruments. This impression is supported by the frequent double-stopping of the violin (a difficult maneuver whereby two strings are played at the same time) and by the fact that the harpsichord plays melody in addition to harmony.
This last point bears elaboration. Usually in sonatas of the time, the harpsichord and/or other basso continuo instruments (the basso continuo or "throughbass" is sort of the "rhythm section" of a baroque ensemble) only offered harmonic support. In fact, their role was so simple that their parts were not even fully written out by the composers. Only numbers indicating what chords needed to be filled in were given. This is called "figured bass."
In these sonatas Bach went farther than anyone had before. He wrote out a complete harpsichord part. It included not only the left-hand part that mostly provides harmony, but a right-hand part that plays melody in counterpoint to the violin, like a trio sonata. Thus Bach took music that might be played on three or even four instruments and collapsed it down to two, creating a complex texture.
And he did so with an exquisite sense of melody and rhythm. The slow movements are achingly profound and beautiful, sweet without being at all cloying. A lot of the fast movements employ a kind of "hornpipe" rhythm, like a sailor's dance. They are solemn and joyous at the same time - communicating, at least to me, the truth that happiness is not frivolous but crucially important.
There are other stylistic experiments as well. In one movement the violin provides the harmonic support for the harpsichord, reversing the usual roles, building slowly to a climax of unbearable piquancy. In a sonata on the second disc, Bach inserts a fifth movement in the middle that is written for the harpsichord alone.
The performances, especially Grumiaux's, is nonpareil. Grumiaux has the ability to make his violin sing. His tone is never thin at the upper end of the range, and he is able to reach down for a firm, round sound at the lower end. His phrasing, with its swells and judicious vibratos, make you feel you are in the hands of a master. Jacottet's harpsichord does not stand out so much, but she is absolutely on the ball rhythmically, utterly avoiding the ponderousness of so many harpsichordists. The recordings were made in 1978 and 1980, so they're not immaculate, but they work very well on either headphones or speakers. This is intimate music, made to be listened to alone or with someone you love.
For RealAudio sound samples of the Bach from CDNow, click here.
After I heard and fell in love with the Bach sonatas, I wanted more. So for a time, I collected violin sonatas of the baroque and classical eras, some trio sonatas, a few for even more instruments. I had pieces by Biber, Corelli, Vivaldi, Tartini, Haendel, Telemann, D. Scarlatti, C.P.E. Bach, Rameau, Mozart and Haydn. And I'm sure I'm forgetting a few! I think it is a good idea, if you are a serious collector, to find some genre and follow through on it, to learn as much about it as you can. It gives you depth and breadth of understanding.
I did find a few other violin sonatas that pleased me, but to my immense disappointment, I realized that I had already climbed the pinnacle, and there was nowhere to go but down. The only composer who could even come close to Bach in this form was Rameau, whose "Pieces de clavecin en concerts" are marvels of Gallic personality and almost percussive rhythm. (Try the performance with Christophe Rousset on Harmonia Mundi.) Interestingly, on the Rameau, the harpsichord and not the violin is the lead instrument. We will return to the Rameau - and to the issue of why so few entries in this genre really succeed - another time.
For RealAudio sound samples of the Rameau from Amazon.com, click here.
At this time I would like to raise a question: Why is it that Rand did not care for 18th century music or for chamber music generally? Rand's tastes seemed to run to the "big" romantics, like Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, to light operetta, and, I think I heard once, to Chopin. Allegedly she dismissed Mozart as "pre-music" and had nary a word for Bach. Her neglect of Bach is especially strange because, as someone once pointed out, if reason is your highest value, then Bach is your man. Despite the man's personal religiosity, there is not a composer who is more intricate, thoughtful, and explicit. He in no way relies upon sentimentality or preciousness or good faith or bombast.
So why didn't Rand like him? Many answers are possible: Perhaps she never became acquainted with his works, which were not as popular in her day as ours and which, when performed at all, were performed in a distorted manner because the performance practices of Bach's time had yet to be rediscovered. Perhaps she did not like the sound of the harpsichord - many people do not, and this dislike was probably exacerbated by the very powerful, very clangy modern harpsichords that were in vogue during most of Rand's life. Perhaps their senses of life clashed. It's hard to be sure without more direct evidence.
Just for the sake of argument, however, I'm going to speculate on why Rand didn't get into the music of the Enlightenment. I'm going to assume for the purpose of this discussion that there was a non-trivial, aesthetically significant reason.
To understand this reason, we need to refer to an analysis made by the philosopher Karl Popper. Popper, whom some of you might remember Leonard Peikoff quoting approvingly in _The Ominous Parallels_, was a philosopher of science and of mind and an intellectual historian. He came up with a startling classification of art which, though flawed, is very illuminating.
Popper talked about two types of art, which he labeled "objective" and "subjective." Now, Popper in this context, was not using these terms as an Objectivist would use them, so don't be thrown. "Objective art" is art that is appreciated "from the outside." One contemplates its beauty and is moved in reaction to it. "Subjective art" is art that is appreciated "from the inside." One identifies with it as it expresses emotions and lets those emotions wash over one.
Sticking with music, examples of objective art would include Bach and the baroque composers generally. Examples of subjective art would include Beethoven and the romantics generally. Rock 'n' roll is overwhelmingly a subjective form. Jazz is largely objective. (I do not mean contemporary jazz, which to my mind does not deserve the name.) Although there are musicians of both types in all periods, the balance in the last 200 years has very much tipped toward the subjective.
In a paradoxical side note, the composer most responsible for the turn to the subjective, the composer who may have most influenced the two generations of composers who came after him was the composer the eighteenth century called "the Great Bach" - that is, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-88). C.P.E. Bach, one of J.S. Bach's four musical sons, championed the theory that the sentiments should be captured in music. One of his keyboard works is called - I'm not making this up - "The Feelings of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach"! (His father, Johann Sebastian, was considered something of a holdover from an earlier time and after his death in 1750 was not widely known until his works were revived by Felix Mendelssohn in the nineteenth century.)
I'm not sure what Popper believed on the subject, but I don't think the two categories are mutually exclusive. Composers like Mozart, Haydn and Schubert seem to embody both principles, although in different proportions at different times. Popper does seem to have believed that people gravitated toward one or the other extreme of art according to their personality. This may be true, although I myself enjoy both very much.
Rand, however, if I am reading her properly at this distance, seems to have been a fairly pure "subjectivist" when it came to music. (I'll leave the other arts aside.) She wanted music that would sweep her away in its emotion, even if that emotion was the sentimental gaiety of operetta. Her ideal of an aesthetic experience, in this regard, was not the contemplation of complex beauty, but the ecstasy of passionate, primal mimesis. Paradoxically for one who championed the Apollonian over the Dionysian, Rand was in her artistic soul, a hard-core Dionysian.
And this would explain why she would not like eighteenth-century music, especially Bach. Bach does not generally knock the listener down. And it explains why she thought Mozart was pre-music: Mozart was still too "objective," too precious - which means his music wasn't fulfilling what she regarded as the proper function of music. And it explains why she did regard Beethoven as "real" if malevolent music: he definitely aims to sweep listeners off their feet.
I do have some evidence for my speculation. Note Rand's description of the mental process that accompanies listening to music in _The Romantic Manifesto_. She fantasizes about ecstatic triumph, overcoming barricades and the like. This placing of oneself in narrative fantasies seems to me to be a symptom of a subjective approach to music. I do it too when I listen to some subjective music. But I almost never do it when I listen to objective music: then the beauty of the music holds my attention, not the acted out emotion, and the emotions I feel are in response to what I behold, not in sympathetic alignment with it.
Another item, less direct, supports my hypothesis. At the end of _Judgement Day_ Nathaniel Branden tries to explain the behavior of Rand and her circle in terms of a powerful desire to transcend the bounds of everyday reality and burst through to a new level of living. In short, Rand and Co. were "ecstasy junkies."
I believe there are enormous ramifications for our understanding of Objectivism, Ayn Rand and her aesthetics in this material. I know in some sense I am letting the tail wag the dog by bringing this topic up in this manner. But maybe it's not letting the tail wag the dog to ask why it is that our age's greatest philosopher did not like the greatest composer of any age.