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Welcome to the "Story" portion
of Program Four, "The Internationalists."
in this segment, Arnold and I
will be traversing the works of composers
from Eastern Europe. As interest in the string quartet medium among
Austro-Germanic composers waned at the end of the
19th century, new hope for its continued viability
arose in the East. Today,
we will be looking at the works of Czech and Russian composers
who successfully infused the string quartet medium
with their own ethnic voice. A central issue
in this discussion is the daunting task these European
composers faced of taking on such
an established medium. How would they go about doing this?
Well, there are several ways that a non-German
or Austrian composer could approach the challenge: to
imitate the Austro-Germanic tradition
without referencing their native culture, that's the first option;
two, to reject the western tradition
and invent something completely new,
or three, to adopt the traditional structure
of the string quartet while incorporating indigenous
folk references. Now, Arnold,
we can probably come up with examples
of composers who wrote and fell into one
of these three categories. What are your thoughts?
I sympathize with the composer who was born in that place in time,
becuse there must have been this
exquisite pull in two opposite directions.
One would be to follow in the footsteps of this great Central European tradition,
and the other would be to be drawn
into the powerful national culture
which one of these composers was born into.
So, I mean, composers like
Jean Sibelius and Edvard Grieg come to mind because
they could have gone either way.
Edvard Grieg studied in Leipzig, for example.
And so the whole Central European culture was available to him.
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Jean Sebelius had a similar story,
because he studied in Vienna. He could have become
a “Wagner-ite” for example, I think he was under the influence of Wagner
early on. And yet he came back to
Finland and became the Finnish composer.
You listen to this music and it evokes
the Finnish landscape. It's ironic, because his first language wasn’t even
Finnish, it was Swedish.
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that powerful western tradition. So what do you think about them? They’re quite remarkable, aren’t they?
Yes, it's almost as if they were afraid of the Central European draw,
that could suck them in and that they would never come out the other end, and
nobody would know that they were born
and raised in Russia. So, they set out,
the Mighty Five, or the Mighty Handful, to write music
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in a, a Russian style, whatever that meant.
And one hears that they were successful. You hear
the music of Glinka, of Borodin, of
Tchaikovsky, and you say, "Ah, Russia." On the other hand, Taneyev,
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Sergei Taneyev, was a Russian composer
and that's not evident in his music. So, he was
one of these composers who went
exactly the opposite way, and
it was in a much more studied Central European style.
That's fascinating. Now, can you think of composers who fall
in this last category, of simply
not wanting to draw upon their national resources,
and merely imitate or at least pursue
the western classical tradition as they were taught to do?
Well, I immediately think Hungary as a country and the three
great musical figures that stand out are Kodaly,
Bartok and Dohnanyi. And Kodaly and
Bartok went into the countryside as young people and
studied the folk music. They were influenced by it
ultimately, but early on they valued it so much that they were worried it
was going to disappear forever, and nobody would know about it. So,
they spent a good deal time recording it and then absorbed it into their own music.
Dohnanyi went the other way. He
was a marvelous composer, he composed three different string quartets,
all wonderful pieces of music. You wouldn't sense I think that they're
Hungarian in any way. They're wonderful
abstract music. So, he's one who went the other way.
I wouldn't say that this was--
I don't know if this is a philosophical choice. I think it's just
question of personality; what draws you
in your life, what draws you in your art?
It's true. Well, I think context is everything and
if you look at the Austro-Hungarian empire, and the fact that
Vienna was the cultural capital of that empire. But yet,
this is an enormous area, right?
That has margins that include other people groups like
the Czechs and the Hungarians. And these folks wanted
their own national identity to emerge alongside
independence. They really want to be independent of the Hapsburg empire.
So, this is a very personal battle,
if you will. Great tensions arose between their own identity and
that which was imposed upon them.
It's a fascinating controversy.
Thank you for engaging it, Arnold. You're welcome.
And now we'll take a look at our first work
for this segment. Bedrich Smetana's
"From My Life" Quartet.
Arnold SteinhardtPerformance Faculty
Dr. Mia ChungInstructor of Interpretive Analysis
