Review Summary: Make Forgotten Composers Great Again. No. 4
During the centuries when music belonged wholly to the Church, music did not exist for its own sake. There was no reason for the existence of anything secular, for secularism, let alone personal expression, simply did not exist. Music lived to glorify He who bestowed it upon us; there by the grace of God goes Bach! Around the High Middle Ages, though, and probably underground long before that, did pop up the love song. What Knight wasn’t expected to sing to his maiden？But the reach of the cleric was long, and sacred music held an unequal parity over the secular for another five hundred years.
By the mid-18th century secular music had begun its ascent toward achieving equity with music of the sacred. Slowly but surely did music begin to slip from the domain of God unto the domain of the public. The enlightenment told us that music ought to serve humanity, and soon all over Europe did aristocrats find the performance of secular music a worthy cause. Woe to the aristocratic house that could not field a private orchestra.
It’s weird to think that during all this time there was no such thing as the public concert. To be sure, during the Medieval, Renaissance, and for most of the Baroque, the concept of a public concert would have been an anachronism. But even when music did exist for its own sake, even when all Europe rhapsodized over music’s beauty, even when Mozart was writing his Sturm und Drang symphonies, there were little to no concerts for public consumption. Weird, right？So, where did your average Joe, Josèp, Josepho or Yosef come into contact with something they grew to love so much？ The printing press for one. But of much more importance to the dissemination of music, in real time and in print, was the European system of clientele. The aristocrats were of the music and the music was of the aristocrats, and these privileged few did great things for the institution; they sponsored the building of music and opera houses, patronized young musicians in their community, which often meant fully subsidizing trips across Europe to learn from the old masters and securing jobs for them in the local court, and held weekly, if not daily, private concerts in their salons. Sadly, if you weren’t of nobility or somehow involved with either the church or the court, your life probably wasn’t very musical at all. Perhaps you could visit the local music club, if your town had one, and listen to nonprofessional musicians play out of tune and not in time. Haydn no!
I don’t want to give the impression that during this time, I’m speaking of the Galant era now, that there was no such thing as a musical event in which your average plebian was allowed to attend. But what I do want to stress is that it wasn’t really a “thing” yet. Lucky for us the invention of the piano near single handedly remedied this dreadful situation. It only took a couple of decades for the piano to completely obliterate the preeminence of the harpsichord. Europe was obsessed. Anyone who was anyone not only owned a piano, but also made sure their kids grew up with a proper musical education—the means through which were lessons on the instrument—and ideally had a spouse that could perform often for family and friends. Naturally, a generation of pianists was born, and with every generation comes the prodigies. Soon enough industrious fathers were lugging their bleary-eyed wunderkinds across Europe and back, having them perform for kings and queens, princes and princess, counts and dukes, and most importantly for our discussion, jam packed music halls. Europe has
never forgotten the Mozarts. The clamor for these ecstasy inducing experiences only grew. To fill the void, in stepped a generation of virtuosos that would relentlessly tour the continent, sowing the seeds for the eventual birth of the modern public concert.
The very first of these touring virtuosos was the Bohemian born Jan Ladislav Dussek. It is true that Dussek was not the first pianist ever to tour. Mozart and Clementi had done so before him. But Mozart did not tour after his youth, and Clementi made only two tours around Europe before settling into his piano manufacturing business. On the other hand, once Dussek started touring, he never stopped. The guy was constantly on the move, his travels taking him from France, to England, to Russia, his profile as stunning as his playing; Dussek was the first to sit with his side facing the audience, rather than his back. Whether he decided to sit in this fashion because he knew the piano would project better to an audience sitting in front of him, or because he wanted to show off his good looks, is anyone’s guess—they didn’t call him
le beau Dussek for nothing. (The problem was a new one. Beethoven, after all, had done most of his playing in salons, a venue that allowed the listener to sit or stand where they pleased, come or go, chit-chat, play cards, smoke, or basically do anything they wanted; music had not yet been emancipated from its role as the help, although Beethoven often refused to play for audiences that did not afford him their absolute full attention.)
But Dussek was a force to be reckoned with in person and at the piano. His singing style was universally admired and Felix Mendelssohn called him a prodigal. More than that Dussek was the first pianist to fully recognize the full scope of the pedals, and was the first to indicate pedal markings in his scores. Although his music is largely forgotten today, by now you should know why, some of his pieces contain “passages of sheer prophetic genius”, that anticipate Chopin, Schumann, and even Brahms in harmony, melody, and pianistic figuration. A wonderful example of these truths is Dussek’s Piano Sonata in F Minor Op. 77 “L’invocation”.
Considered perhaps the most weighty and ambitious piano sonata in Dussek’s canon, “L’invocation” is composed of four movements, runs for about a half hour, and was completed in the same year as his death, 1812. The breadth and depth of the first movement,
Allegro moderato ma energico, is remarkable. The first thing to note is its architecture. From the very first measure movement one swells into a cathedral of sound built brick by brick from motives of the smallest order to themes conceived on a grandiose scale. Particularly astonishing is the transition passage between the first two themes. I almost want to call it an expository transition, for the passage is one of the most complete sections of the movement. The harmonies are delightfully robust, and the figurations exquisitely modern. In fact, I’ve never heard a figuration quite like it, but it finds its nearest kin in Schubert.
Perhaps Schubert is our best point of reference. The two share much, especially in their handling of melodic material. There’s quite a tune smith approach to the lighter themes of the exposition. They float beautifully above the accompaniment, usually in stepwise motion, and the intervals are handled with a Beethovinian precision that only the learned could possess. There’s even a hint of the “magical key changes” one finds in late Schubert. These techniques lend a rhapsodic feel to the sonata. In fact, if there wasn’t such an obvious development section, I might not call this sonata-form at all; the themes float in and out of each other with such a capricious ease, often differing mightily in mood and tone, that they are closer in kin to the intermezzi of Brahms than the sonatas of Beethoven. Speaking of the development, Dussek’s ability to transform the thematic material into unpredictable keys, rhythms, and melodies is very, very impressive.
The tempo marking for movement two,
Tempo di minuetto con moto, describes the feel of the movement quite well. Formulaically, the movement is a standard minuet, but here there is a restless con moto energy that doesn’t let the dancer pause after the third beat. This isn’t to say that the music isn’t roomy. I am reminded of the middle movement of Beethoven’s Appassionata sonata. It takes a composer of considerable confidence to have such bare ink dry on the score. But the music speaks for itself. We also get a taste of Dussek’s contrapuntal abilities in this movement. There’s quite the feel of a Bachian prelude. No. 1 in C Major from the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier comes to mind. These two works share a monothematicism in their handling of a single rhythmic idea. The trio sees a delicate melody float above restless accompaniment before moving back into the minuet.
The A section of movement three,
Adagio non troppo ma solenne, flirts with the best that Beethoven’s late sonatas have to offer, although it’s not quite on that level. There’s that feeling that only a solemn mass can give you, the chords moving forward in a choral-esque fashion. There’s a purity in the intervals, and the “Ah-men” cadences remind you of the peace you feel in an empty church. Our spirits are exalted. Dussek exorcises whatever anguish the dark harmonies in movements one and two inflicted upon him. The B section, however, is not quite as peaceful. There’s subtle yet tangible anxiety. The minor mode has suddenly stolen the spotlight. The return of the A section combines the solemnity and some of the anxiety of previously heard material. But in the end light stamps out the dark, and the spirt is put to rest.
Movement four,
Rondo allegro moderato, sees the return of much of the energy of movement one. Here Dussek invokes what had made him tick, although as is custom in a fourth movement rondo, it’s in a much lighter fashion. The harmonies aren’t as dark, but they certainly aren’t light. Maybe we don’t feel as heavy, but our spirit has picked up a restless energy. We are traveling but we don’t know to where. As much as I hate to say it, there’s a bit too much traveling, a bit too much con moto. There’s really no respite in between sections until the very end, and you feel as if the music is a tad bit rambling. I see why he did it, to connect the movement to the first and give the sonata completion and finality. Nevertheless, Dussek doesn’t fail to hit the mark and composes a solid finish to an already superb sonata.
In the end, Dussek was here for a good time not a long time. By the last years of his life Dussek had grown so fat he seldom got out of bed. Perhaps his listlessness had something to do with the loss of his best friend Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia who died on the battlefield in 1806. Dussek’s supreme virtuosity had allowed him to walk in quite exalted circles. To overcome his lethargy Dussek experimented with drugs and ended up an alcoholic. A sad end to such a wonderful life. Nevertheless, as of late Dussek’s music has gained a wider audience in the scholarly community if not for his piano music, but for his large number of compositions for the harp, an instrument for which he has remained a very important composer.
