Autumnal Classics - Preludi Autunnali by Gian Francesco Malipiero

Popular culture has an unfortunate pattern of trying to filter whole artistic scenes into single, attractive figures, such as how Jackson Pollack is the only abstract expressionist and Ang Lee is the only Chinese filmmaker.  In that vein you can count on the bulk the Classical audience to assume that Ottorino Respighi was the only Italian composer of his time to write instrumental music, but that couldn't be less true if they also claimed he composed underwater.  It's certainly true that opera was the dominant medium in Italian Classical music during the whole of the 19th century, the era in which many people believe the whole Classical tradition parked its trailer and cracked a brew, but once the 20th century rolled into view there was a thriving scene of Italian composers trying to revive instrumental music to the prominence it held in their homeland in the days of Vivaldi and Pergolesi.  Once again we can thank the "Everything Old Is New Again" attitudes of performers and record producers in the 80's onward for renewing the public's interest in figures such as Alfredo Casella, Ildebrando Pizzetti, Giuseppe Martucci, Franco Alfano, Leone Sinigalia, Amilcare Zanella, Marinetti and all his wacky Futurist buddies, and today's composer, Gian Francesco Malipiero. Highly regarded in the first half of the century and possessing such creativity and work ethic to extend his career from the mid-1900's to the early '70's, not to mention his invaluable work in editing the works of Renaissance and Baroque Italian composers, Malipiero was an unmatched creative figure that would have left much more of an impression had his works seen the light of concert halls outside of his native country and had tastes not shifted away from his style near the end of his life.  Malipiero is both refreshing and vexing to musicologists, as his music didn't conform to one voice that lasted the bulk of his career, rather mutating and sharpening as he grew older and wiser; trying to categorize his work reveals how tricky it can be to embrace a "change is good" outlook on art, especially when you've got theses to finish.  That isn't to say that his style is untrackable, though, as its easy to see the impression that the introduction of the music of Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky left on his work in the 1910's and '20's.  Case in point: Preludi Autunnali (1914), one of his most wholly successful piano works.

Impressionist composers had a real knack for depicting autumn as they delighted in its metamorphosis, complex moods and lack of bombast.  They also loved to depict wind, as broadened compositional technique and improved musicianship among performers opened the door for great wind pieces like Debussy's Preludes "...Le vent dans la plaine." and "...Ce qua vu le vent d'ouest." as well as Ibert's Le vent dans le ruins.  Luckily for them Autumn is just lousy with winds that poetically whip fallen leaves around and cause traffic accidents, and Malipiero's first Prelude finds a novel way to depict continuous rustling as well as nature's shifting state of decay:

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Impressionist trickery allows for cells of music to be placed as is on top of conflicting harmonic material to create unity within dissonance, and in this case Malipiero was able to use the old "pedal bass" trick and switch the unchanging element from the bottom to the middle.  It's a low boil uneasiness, quiet enough to attempt to ignore but still able to insinuate itself into everything you hear, like a cello imitating a mosquito.  The "B" section features one of his loveliest melodic turns (as well as some good ol' planing):

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The second Prelude is more impish and nostalgic, highly reminiscent of Debussy's "Le fille aux cheveux de lin" and offers much room for yearning, rubato phrasing:

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It's the most simply pretty one in the set, though there's still dramatic interruptions:

The third Prelude is much more profound, both in its register and mood, kneading a lydian chord with added 7 and 9 notes deep into the listener's psyche.  Its melody is concerned and elliptical, as if failing to untie a metaphorical knot.  It also gets plenty of mileage out of letting the listener settle into one block chord and then sliding into an ingenious contrast:

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Not to mention a much-earned fortissimo:

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The final Prelude is even more impish than the second and twice as sarcastic, taking a xylophonic glance at the changing seasons, as if the leaf part of the leaves fell off leaving the veins by themselves:

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It's an oddly caustic way to end the set, though most audiences will be relieved that there's at least one up-tempo piece.  The Preludi has suffered a similar fate to the rest of Malipiero's piano works - recorded every ten years or so and then seeing its own record go out of print.  This article was an exception for me in that I was able to pick my favorite performance from multiple candidates, though I'd be hard pressed as to where to find cheap CD's of any of them, though I guess this is a better fate than the bulk of Malipiero's other works.  Pretty much all of his symphonies have been recorded if you're in an orchestrally adventurous mood and have a few hours to kill - and in the deep freeze coming at the end of every year killing time might be the only thing we've got.

~PNK

Autumnal Classics - The Fall of the Leaf by Gerald Finzi

Last time I inaugurated this month's theme of Autumnal Classics with a gorgeous Elizabethan number by Martin Peerson called The Fall of the Leafe.  I mentioned that the piece served as inspiration for a much later work by a better-known British composer, and today we're looking at that piece, a much revised elegy by the singular Gerald Finzi, one of the most distinguished of England's Pastoralist composers.  A shy, careful and deeply earnest composer, Finzi is second only to the much-lamented George Butterworth as the candidate for England's chief Autumnal composer.  Certain composers' works fit certain seasons (such as Milhaud's music capturing all the byzantine vitality and contrast of summer) and even when Finzi is writing about spring one can feel the weight of the forest's lost youth on his shoulders.  

Untroubled by financial worries and perpetually drawn away from hectic urban life, Finzi never let a wrong note leave his grasp and often revised, repurposed and discarded works until they were either perfect or buried, and the most extensive example of the former two acts can be seen in the evolution of a never-completed triptych.  In 1920 Finzi wrote a Prelude that he intended to be part of a chamber symphony, but as that project fell away he revised it with the hopes of it becoming the first part of a triptych on the seasons called The Bud, the Blossom and the Berry.  He completed and performed a two-piano version of the "Bud" movement, and when the triptych didn't come through as planned he rewrote it in the Prelude version for string orchestra with the intention of adding a contrasting movement.  He never wrote the other part, and the Prelude languished until receiving its premiere the year after Finzi's death, conducted by his son Christopher.  While I'm not reviewing the Prelude I can't help but include it as reference for what is to come, as well as by its own virtue of being a lushly wrought pang of melancholy.

While I can't speak for the "Blossom" movement of the triptych, the "Berry" movement did get some substantial work done on it before transforming into a separate work, The Fall of the Leaf, op. 20, drawing its title from the Peerson piece.  The piece doesn't directly reference Peerson's work or Renaissance music, but I feel that Finzi simply felt a kinship with a man who embellished a standard form of his day with unexpected poetic depth on an eternally haunting theme.  Much like the Peerson piece Finzi's Leaf is bound to a preexisting form, subtitled "Elegy", here foregoing real formal structure in favor of a soliloquy on death.  As graceful as the title may sound The Fall of the Leaf contains some of Finzi's most dramatic, volatile music, shifting keys without warning and plunging into dissonant outbursts, though not without Nature's beating heart at the center of it all.  Finzi is the rare composer where every piece of his in unmistakably his own, especially with his signature melodic writing that pulls the heartstrings along perfectly crafted stepwise motion.  The piece underwent more revisions than almost any other work in Finzi's oeuvre, and his desire to perfect it kept him from completing the orchestration of the final version of the piece before his death.  His longtime friend and colleague Howard Ferguson finished the orchestration and the piece received its premiere the same way the Prelude did, dutifully conducted by Finzi's son as a memorial to his father's gifted soul, and like many of Finzi's most beautiful works it serves well as a memorial.  Sometimes people write their own epitaphs in an instant, other times across decades, and it can be assuredly said that The Fall of the Leaf was well worth the wait.

~PNK