PART I
The "minorness" of Rachmaninoff's
aesthetics and where (not) to
look for its origins
1. Structural principle and gesture
2. Old and New in Rachmaninoff's
Manuscript
3. Hypertrophy-but not in interpretation
4. Appassionato vs sostenuto
5. Feel-and what to do with it
6. How the “very old composer”
Rachmaninov teaches new things
PART II
Approaching the second
half of the motto
look at the old as the
new and the new as the old
In our Slovak performance practice for decades, the widespread opinion among pianists was that new music is dedicated to those who fail to play the established music and would not stand up in its performance competition. I believe that the reason for this phenomenon is the relative youth of professional Slovak performance art, which has been and still is searching for its identity, and this is most easily done by comparing it to a proven space. There is a gulf between old and new music - often in terms of performance demands, which creates a vicious circle. As if dissonance means it doesn't have to sound beautiful. As if unfamiliar music means that the most important thing is just to play it- even then, there is nothing to compare the
interpretation to. Unlike the one click that separates us from the most accomplished historical interpretative creations of a Beethoven sonata or a Chopin etude, new music has no interpretive models. To study it - and to perform it - is respectable in itself. I have faced being categorised as a promoter of new or unknown music, and often this assessment has implied a diminished interest in such productions, followed by the question of when I will play something “normal”. I consider it one of my most important professional roles in life to contribute to building bridges between centuries and to levelling the playing field in terms of views and expectations of the level of performance of music known and unknown, old and new.
In this part of my text, I will try to approach the second half of the motto look at the old as the new and the new as the old my experiences as a performer with a very aesthetically distinct and peculiar contemporary composer.
25 years ago, I met an important Slovak composer Ilja Zeljenka, who at that time opened the next chapter of his specific compositional - aesthetic transformation. I was lucky enough to be his court performer and to see up close what this transformation meant for interpretative approaches of his works, his demands and formulations towards us performers. It was very interesting to see how easily his imperatives led the performers to a dead end. It was a very complex set of procedures, and in the course of which - as well as in watching better and worse interpretive attempts - I was strongly aware of how important it is, alongside an open mind to aesthetic innovation, to be aware of the full range of interpretive means, and thus to be able to help the author formulate his not-quite-traditional ideas.
Ilja Zeljenka was an author who became a persona non grata, a banned author during
the socialist normalization for his attitudes and work. Living with himself and his music in seclusion had already in the seventies triggered in him a process of enormous deepening of his own technique and an outright obsession with material selection, which reached its peak in the well-known Zeljenka's “cell”. We speak of the compositional method as the maximum reduction of the compositional material to a four-tone model forming the basis of all compositional operations. These are a peculiar mix of Renaissance counterpoint, Baroque polyphony, Haydnian motive work and Webernian serialism. Already then, his lifelong simplification, abbreviation, and concentration was underway.
Zeljenka explained the cell by the example of a living organism organized from the smallest elements, which have different functions but one unifying principle. The smallest model is the four tones, internally differentiated by minor and major seconds, and only by means of transpositions and the manifold stacking of cells against each other, above each other, below each other, can a whole functional organism be created, and functional not only structurally, but also with great expressive potential. All these techniques do not end in themselves, they should be subordinate to the expressionist gesture.
In some ways it's a variation of serial technique, but with a huge scope for imagination.
Fantasy versus determination - this dual tension winds through Zeljenka's work like a thread and forms a clue to the vivid and fitting interpretation of his compositions.
See example no. 8: Zeljenka – Sonata per pianoforte no. 2
See example no. 9: Zeljenka – Sonata per pianoforte no. 2
However, the structural principle was so novel and striking that it often drowned out
the performers' ability to perceive the expressive potential of the piece, which thus became a parade of the principles of cell use. The result was tragic - a novel, highly original composition of high intellectual value, but utterly dead and ugly in expression. As if it amplified the ugliest of the piano's potential. Yet the interval of the second and, conversely, of the seventh contains within itself a great potential for expressive gestures and provides a wide manoeuvring area for choices of proportions of tone creation, rubato or other means of expression. When studying new music, therefore, a mental connection with the music of the past tends to be extremely important, indeed crucial, for me. Not for the sake of imitating situations or “stealing” performance practices. But for feeling the whole range of possibilities that the composers of new music themselves are often unaware of. They often are not pianists, or good
pianists, and they don't have to know the whole spectrum of pianistic richness. Whatever the distilled principle of a piece - when the notes sound, the essence of the composer's inspiration is always an emotion that the performer must rediscover, understand and revive, and this is equally true of the music of Bach, Chopin - and Zeljenka.
From around 1997, after a massive rehabilitation of banned authors, Zeljenka opened
a new chapter of his peculiar creative aesthetics, with his work being very much present on the stages. An extreme diligence has resulted in a huge number of opuses mostly dedicated to specific performers. There was probably no performer active in Slovakia at the time who did not have a composition dedicated to him by Zeljenka. (... "What would a composer do without good performers? Would he play his music in his own ears?" 7)
After the initial enthusiasm and pride, this fact, together with the easily recognizable
new compositional language with its understandable signs of repetition, resulted in despair from several composers and performers. However, what it really came down to was Zeljenka's obsession with constantly validating himself through work, constantly purging himself of the dross of life. After all, every work or piece from this fertility-laden period is professionally unquestionable. His language moved away from its previous expressive pathos and toward clarity, Apollonian beauty, and simplicity. He was very fond of talking about it, everywhere and to everyone ... he rejoiced in his own abbreviation. He knew that performers were marked by their performance practice to the point of routine, by tradition and by the type of repertoire, and therefore approached his compositions “by custom”, from a side that did not conform to
his new aesthetic ideas. The expression of Ilja's works from earlier periods had to be rendered interpretively in accordance with the means used for music of the first half of the 20th century, and in this sense, it was not easy for us performers to understand what the next change he envisioned lays in.
What bothered him most about the interpretation of his recent works was the lump
expressive emotion, its overuse, misplaced rubato, use of sustain pedal in inappropriate places, and in general the practice of routine treatment of the musical material of previous decades. Requirements like senza rubato or senza pedale are capturable by authorial instructions, but the essence of this new poetics of his, is dependent on the understanding and perception of the performer, who himself must find a way of dealing with such musical material.
Ilja tirelessly explained: "Less pedal, less expression, no rubato here...", his favourite was "don't preach!" These simplistic imperatives made it very easy to reach a dead end. A new tradition quickly emerged of correctly interpreting Zeljenka's recent works as music to be devoid of expression, with precise to the point of mathematical rhythmic assignment always and everywhere, and with a minimum of personal interpretive zeal - essentially the opposite of artistic beauty. Another excruciating new music! I have gone through a crystallization of the interpretive approach to his compositions.
Although I understood him, it was and is very difficult to teeter on the edge of order and feeling, in strange, restrained expressions interspersed with a concentrate of sometimes almost barbaric energy. He couldn't explain it himself. He just said: "Yes, yes! - play it like that, it's nice!
Although the value of the contact between performer and composer is considered by
us performers to be priceless, even essential, it is important to be aware of its limits and not to rely on it to the full extent, or - as is often the case - to adore the contact between performer and composer as the principal source of performing know-how. Ilja's simplifications - ”play it like this, it's nice” and “don't play it like this, it's not nice” – used to drive me to despair. He didn't say much more. He hated talking about music, it annoyed him and made him bored. He just liked music as a sonic entity, which is why he was so happy that I didn't need him to explain anything about his music. Just a few fresh and funny words helping us to enjoy the music itself was enough: "this is where the Ostinates walk (...) here is the music box and here is Peckering-do"
But for me, as a performer and teacher with a strong relationship to the analytical component of performance, and ultimately for future generations of performers, it was
important to figure out and try to name what it is that disturbs him (and why) and what doesn't, and how this can be seen directly in the way the musical matter is composed. It is my deep conviction that the performer should not be dependent on the consultation with composer, even for unfamiliar or new works, but must try his or her best to read directly from the musical notation all that is necessary to decipher the adjacent poetics. And I don't just mean the performance instructions.
At a certain point I needed to detach myself from the multitude of Zeljenka's piano
works premiered over the years, to clarify or revise the burning questions of the aesthetics of his music, and especially - to confront it with other, especially old, musical material. I had the nagging feeling that, despite our creative understanding, there was something I hadn't yet grasped. It was precisely that neuralgic point of Zeljenka's new music, the imperative of withdrawal, the amputation of sensuality. That the order he constantly emphasized is only a way; but that even more important than the order itself is the preservation of its nature, including its disruption and the way it is illuminated. The challenging point is that the compositions of the last decade are often so lucid that they can easily fall into an instructional or infantile mode, and it is important that their adult and mature musical ideas remain evident. That this simplification represents a shortcut as a result of wisdom, not a loss of criterion.
In the first years of our collaboration, it seemed to me that the relationship between
the rigor of the structure and the asceticism of its execution was both the beginning and the end. Delighted by how much he liked my creations, I thought the achievement was complete, although deep down I clearly felt the nagging question of what to do with the order next, because my interpretations are ... rigid.
Zeljenka's compositions were dominated by a dictate of his own combinatorics, but at
the same time my interpretation was also dominated by this Apollo's deception - this deceptive eternity of beautiful form: This is how I am to be and forever ... In a way, these works are an expression of homage to the musical past, admittedly in a sophisticated form of Zeljenkavian musical esprit. Tangible is his spiritual affinity with the greats of Europe's musical past, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. He was also very fond of Schoenberg and Bartók and sometimes wanted me to play their Suites for him. This was quite extraordinary, because he had only a minimal amount of ability to listen to other composers' works, and most of the time it disturbed him.
"I believe that titles in musical works are redundant. They commit the listener to an
interpretation that confuses him." 8
With such and similar statements, spiced with the imperative “Don't preach!” Ilja was
directly signing the verdict of the reputation of a ”heartless” composer who had gone mad in his old age. The titles of his compositions of the last period are mostly just basic character references: energico, dolce, capriccioso, barbaro, scherzando, robusto... while the character ofthe compositions is closely related to the texture itself - most strikingly in miniatures such as Tales of Music.
So how is it with the amputation of feeling in favour of structure in a work where the
instructions dolce - triste - grazioso - robusto - barbaro - teneramente - giocoso meet? How can a miniature in which the positions sweetly - sadly - gracefully - robustly - barbarically, tenderly and jokingly occur in various proportions and combinations be deprived of feeling? It is not and never was about the removal of emotionality or expression, but about their special leanness and a kind of different emotional class.
“The order itself, preserved naturally, can add enormous tension to the music, turning it into an emotional experience. (...)” 9
But what does it mean order preserved naturally? Lines, cells, contours, models, shapes
placed and flowing in the uncompromising dictate of time above or beside each other, in this realm of time... How much structure and how much feeling? And what feeling? When does order cause rigidity and emotion clumsy spontaneity? And isn't structure itself already an emotion here...? Does it even exist independently? But how to illuminate it, to make it stand out, to make it come alive? If this or that illumination is then determinative of its energy, its content?
“(...) I have not consciously tried to be philosophical in my music. If anyone found it there, it was part of myself and my work. (...) I think music is authentic, as the world is authentic. It expresses itself by its own means in time, sounding sounds in certain rhythms, in certain rules of the game. If something in my music seems sad, cheerful or melancholic, nostalgic, one way or another, it was never the intention, the first plan, the attempt to subordinate other things to it. Of course, when one does something, one doesn't avoid this dimension that people like to take out of music as the first information, but it's not the intention. (...) I don't need to put other meanings into music. If someone finds them there, I'm not against it, because they are there, even if I don't want them. (...)” 10
How simple the distortion is that he doesn't actually care if his music comes across as sad or happy, either way, and doesn't want the meaning. How simple it is to say: Zeljenka's compositional asceticism. But how important it is to make it "authentic as the world is authentic," and natural ...
And here we come to the immense need for a connection with the old - figuratively
speaking, the best of the performing arts of the past and of the poetics of, for example,
Couperin or Bach's sons. And it was my duty as a performer - not as the author of Zeljenka.
Above all, complete mastery of the matter - down to the last note - was necessary. Rhythmic drawings, the smallest intervals even in the fastest passages and, last but not least, the utmost devotion to the last fingertip on the keyboard. A phrase whose aim should be to create a teneramente - a feeling of tenderness, for example - is not free to be solved “as it comes, as I will feel”. It often happens then that the feeling takes place in other parts of our physicality and is inaudible in the phrase. However, it is not at all desirable even to resort to a cold sounding of mutually disconnected tones, as happened to me in the early periods. But it’s desirable to constantly control mixing of dynamic nuances, and above all the way of pouring tone into tone - unencumbered by our own and often vicarious (!) physical feelings - this is what Ilja meant by the simplistic imperative “Don't preach!”.
See example no. 10: Zeljenka – Tales of Music, no. 5
See example no. 11: Zeljenka – Tales of Music, no. 3
See example no. 12: Zeljenka – Tales of Music, no. 3
This unique asceticism, which demands clarity, purity, absolute control over the matter
is necessary to combine in unity with the attributes of sensibility: a special slender sound, an impressive and “true” melos without the hypertrophy of colour, which must be modelled by the interrelationships of the tones to resemble a living speech. Very often the choice of the climactic tone of a phrase is decisive - if we use the most imposing one at first sight or enrich it further legatissimo by linking it with the preceding tone(s) - just then! the result is a traditional, inappropriately overwrought, “fat” (as Ilja and I called it) line. Since it lacks the necessary surrounding texture filling for this kind of expression, the result is strangely banal, at odds with the essentialism of the matter.
A very good example is Zeljenka's favourite model of the triola in cantabile music - he
was extremely disturbed by its rhythmic distortion, he was allergic to it. Whereas, for
example, in the 50-year-old Sonata No. 2 in conjunction with tragic intervals of second it is possible, indeed necessary, to use rubato in the modelling of the triola, in the music of Zeljenka's last period the rhythmic simplicity of the triola even in cantabile music is part of a certain pastoral restraint. Therefore, it is inappropriate to place the intonation peaks of phrases on a broad triola, however much we may wish to do so, and even though the graphic notation tells us to do so on a superficial glance. It is much more convenient to his new aesthetic to make the triola restrained and to place the climax of a phrase before it or, conversely, after it, in combination with the saturation of the phrasing. In a text of this kind, and especially divorced from the piano, it is difficult to explain such detailed procedures, but it is in them that the necessary arrows and clues fundamentally decisive of the result are hidden. Of particular importance was his idea of sound: even in leggiero or delicato, which he liked and used often, he demanded a certain tip, a pervasiveness of each note. This does not mean, however, that using this more penetrating timbre would not be desirable to model the relationships of the tones - that would be a big mistake! Anyway, it is important not to slip into a different tone colour and to keep even legato relationships pure, without conspicuous lattery and superficial emotional appeal. Paradoxically ... in the result they are both flattering
and appealing... but somehow different... quieter, more inner, more real.
In the same way, the much-repeated and well-known requirement of rhythmic
precision is not enough - his rhythmic games need to be understood more deeply, enjoyed together with him, and placed on the edge, as if they wanted to escape from precision, but must not be allowed to do so. Through my own trial and error, I have found that this music is at its most magical when rhythmic precision, graphic purity of contour, crystalline purity of line become not the goal but the starting point upon which the performer plays further games with articulation, voicing, diction or nuance, intonation and multi-layering. There the performer is given scope for creativity, taste and ideas. In this interpretive approach, the dry relationships of tones and rhythms are transformed into a brilliant firework of shapes, and the music acquires the desired expressiveness.
See example no. 13: Zeljenka – Tales of Music, no. 4
“Fortunately, all art begins to feel a certain self-hatred in the very embryo of its existence. Good art contains a strong self-reflection. It always seeks to find where the fault lies.” 11
And with that, I return in a great arc to the introduction and the motto of this text. This powerful idea of Zeljenka encompasses in three sentences what I discuss in many pages. To look at the old as new, to be able to push aside habits, routine, and the comfort zone of one's own professionalism, and, conversely, to allow the new work to draw on the full spectrum of the best that has already been created by human endeavour. This is the search for “fault”. The sap feeding the organism of mutually opposing forces - finding freedom in determination and law in arbitrariness. Whether that means tradition, habit or - us.
7 ZELJENKA, Ilja: Interviews and Texts, Music Centre Slovakia, Bratislava 2018
8 ZELJENKA, Ilja: Interviews and Texts, Music Centre Slovakia, Bratislava 2018
9 ZELJENKA, Ilja: Interviews and Texts, Music Centre Slovakia, Bratislava 2018
10 ZELJENKA, Ilja: Interviews and Texts, Music Centre Slovakia, Bratislava 2018
11 ZELJENKA, Ilja: Interviews and Texts, Music Centre Slovakia, Bratislava 2018
