THE MAGIC OF LIFE
Jānis Petraškevičs, composer
When I speak with the musicologist and composer Georgs Pelēcis, I am always fascinated by the immense enthusiasm he exudes when talking about his research of the history and theory of polyphony (counterpoint) as well as when defending his aesthetic of consonant music. One must admire the fervour in his narrative, because otherwise he leaves the impression of being a lone wolf, deep in his own thoughts.
Pelēcis is the author of more than thirty academic studies, including two dissertations: about the polyphony of the Renaissance composers Johannes Ockeghem and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. His study of Palestrina gained international recognition and was awarded a medal by the International Palestrina Centre in 1993. As a composer, Pelēcis has for more than twenty years regularly written commissions for musicians in Latvia and abroad. His music has been performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Alternativa festival in Moscow, the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival in Austria and elsewhere.
PETRAŠKEVIČS: As both a composer and researcher, how would you describe the interaction between these two fields in your work?
PELĒCIS: From a purely practical point of view, I have to say that one job always intrudes upon the other. I feel like I’m sitting on two chairs. But I’m not the first to experience this. I now understand, for example, the Russian composer Sergei Taneyev, who was also a notable theoretician of polyphony – he was not able to complete his theory of polyphony nor do I think he demonstrated his full potential in the field of composition. For me, at least, his music leaves a feeling of incompleteness...although not all of his pieces. In Taneyev’s case, these two poles of his personality, these two dimensions, intruded on each other. And I think the same can be said in my case.
There were, however, times when I was almost able to combine and balance both composition and research. But more often I had to choose one over the other. When I was intensely researching, in the 1970s and 1980s, I even believed that I would never compose again. Of course, I wrote a few things, but they weren’t performed in concerts, and I believed that composition was not my life’s path. However, strangely enough – it was a surprise to me as well – as my volume of research decreased, I began composing more. And since then I’ve felt that writing music is definitely my priority.
PETRAŠKEVIČS: Has your research interest in polyphony influenced your creative work?
PELĒCIS: Perhaps polyphony truly is the common denominator in my life. It began in a very unforced and insignificant way, because, having graduated from the Moscow Conservatory – from Aram Khachaturian’s composition class – I did not think that I would work in Riga. But when in 1970 Professor Ludvigs Kārkliņš invited me to teach polyphony at the Conservatory (nowadays the Music Academy), he asked me how good my command of polyphony was. I said it was good, I had finished the course, but that I didn’t have any particular interest in it. On the contrary, I had passed the exam and was happy it was over.
But I knew it would be a great honour and responsibility to teach at the Conservatory here. And, as I took a closer look, I realised that there was no serious methodology for teaching polyphony. Meaning, various strict rules had been described and classified, but the composers who stood behind those rules – Palestrina, the Flemish composers – were an absolute terra incognita. There were no materials, and I even felt quite ashamed in front of the students. They would ask me where did these rules come from, who used them, why did they need to learn them, who writes like that nowadays? And I didn’t know how to answer. But the topic interested me very much, and I began accumulating information about the masters of the strict style, about the various personalities, I acquired scores.
I was lucky, because almost no one in the Soviet Union had scores of Ockeghem’s music. His music had just been published in three volumes, and a friend of mine in Moscow had two volumes of masses. I was lucky to get my hands on that music, and I realised that it was like Mars – something completely different from what everyone was accustomed to. And, seeing as I was a university lecturer in Riga and needed to write a dissertation, I thought why not try to do something in this field.
And so, I worked in Riga for four years – from 1970 until 1974 – realised I didn’t know anything at all, and I was allowed – thank God! – to go to Moscow as a musicologist and begin graduate studies under Prof. Vladimir Protopopov, the notable researcher of polyphony. And then I narrowed down my task: the polyphony of Johannes Ockeghem. That wasn’t so easy, either... To put it differently, the situation had matured enough that one could work with this topic. If I had begun just a couple of years earlier, no one would have allowed me to select a topic like that because it wouldn’t have been deemed current, topical.
PETRAŠKEVIČS: Why?
PELĒCIS: Well, it’s sacred music, written a long time ago...
PETRAŠKEVIČS: Having also a good “inside” knowledge of Johann Sebastian Bach’s polyphonic music, have you understood what the secret to this music is? Why is it so grand, so great?
PELĒCIS: Bach will never be understood fully, and that’s very good. Real music – and not just music but also a number of other serious phenomena in life – will always be a mystery. But only quite recently have I understood how Bach differs from the other great polyphonists and also what he shares, strangely enough, with Palestrina.
Of course, they are very different, because Palestrina is a master of choral music while Bach is the master of vocal instrumental music; he’s a representative of a completely different aesthetic. And yet, they have something in common in terms of polyphonic technique and a colossal polyphonic freedom. In other words, I believe that for both of them – and unlike anyone else – their polyphony and harmony resides at the highest level of tension and synthesis. They were both maximalists.
Let’s say, Bach’s colossal genius allowed him to connect these two factors – harmony and polyphony – at the highest level. Although it sounds naïve, but that’s the way it is: I would say that Bach raised polyphony to its most harmonic level and harmony to its most polyphonic level. And the same can be said of Palestrina. In the sense that the polyphonic opportunities that Bach demonstrates in such supreme expressions as The Art of Fugue, The Musical Offering, The Well-Tempered Clavier and The Goldberg Variations never overstep the rules of the harmony. With other composers, it’s not quite like that. They might produce very beautiful harmony, but it lacks that polyphonic maximum. And vice versa, they might have rich, refined polyphonic technique, but the harmonic aspect isn’t as convincing.
PETRAŠKEVIČS: Which are your own favourite pieces by Bach?
PELĒCIS: As a teacher of polyphony, of course, the most important are those that I already mentioned. In fact, it’s very interesting that both parts of The Well-Tempered Clavier are an exception not only in the general world of polyphony but also in Bach’s own creative output. Such lavishness, such variety and nuance of fugue is found nowhere else in his music. But that’s only the one side of it. Bach’s cantatas and arias are very dear to me. At the time, I was shocked when I listened to his 200 sacred cantatas... Each cantata contains one, two or three arias. All of them are beautiful, but some are simply fantastic. And I thought to myself: I must skim off all of that cream – some fifty arias or so. And now I have them all at home.
PETRAŠKEVIČS: One of the best-known and most beautiful Bach arias is “Erbarme dich” from the St. Matthew Passion.
PELĒCIS: Yes, of course. And what is a Bach aria? It’s not a melody with accompaniment. It’s polyphonic music. That is, in addition to the vocal line and the accompaniment, there’s also a secondary instrumental line, and the composer’s melodic thought is expressed in the dialogue between these two lines. Polymelody!
PETRAŠKEVIČS: But to what extent does an understanding of Bach’ s technique help one to comprehend the metaphysical side of this music?
PELĒCIS: Yes, metaphysics. That’s a good word, I like this word very much. You see, it’s metaphysically permanent, metaphysically eternal. I believe modern composers usually feel like they’re on some sort of military front line. And that’s a dialectic, it has its meaning, and that’s the way things must be. A dialectic perception of life, a dialectic perception of cultural and musical evolution. The front line is moving; we forget what was behind us yesterday and the day before that. Because the catchword of the avant-garde is innovation.
But there’s also the metaphysical dimension: it turns out that Bach’s arias, The Well-Tempered Clavier and other achievements of the human spirit can last eternally. Just like there are lasting categories in a person’s life – everything is always changing, but the family remains, the church remains. And there are also lasting values in music, ones that belong to all generations; while humanity exists, the achievements of these geniuses will remain.
And as a composer I’d like to join them – I’d like for my responsibility to be perceiving and working with these eternal themes... Of course, it’s impossible to reach such supreme technique and giftedness as Bach had. But to at least work with these themes, with these dimensions, in the way that they did...that always excites me greatly.
PETRAŠKEVIČS: Is it important for you to be original in your music?
PELĒCIS: I think that tradition and originality meld together and that these two aspects exist alongside each other. In what proportion, though, that’s a different question. And it’s even no real use to think about it much, because it’s clear that each person is by definition original and unrepeatable. So there’s no need to be afraid that you won’t be original. You will be! You just have to trust your essence and your calling to do what you want to do. Let the researchers think about the rest. Your job is to express yourself as a creative personality. And if you do that honestly, it will be original and unrepeatable.
PETRAŠKEVIČS: How would you describe your musical style?
PELĒCIS: That’s a fairly difficult question. It’d probably be easier for someone on the outside to do. I know that euphony, or pleasing sound, is very important to me – incomplete consonances... That would be the aesthetic factor. But I like the Greek word kalokagathia for the aesthetic factor. It’s a word with many meanings, and it’s applied to classicism and romanticism: an ethically moral, positive character standing behind the author.
But in general, beauty is important to me. Because life is beautiful. And the Absolute is beautiful: God, the Creator, the Spirit. He is not only all-powerful but also the most beautiful thing there is. He cannot create anything that is not beautiful. Everything that the Absolute creates – life, man – is beautiful. And we must learn from Him. We are called to maintain beauty. God has created paradise, has created man – now please, go into Paradise and take care of it! That’s the original idea, as I understand it. Isn’t it? And it has remained metaphysically until the present day – as long as there are new people, they are created with this same goal. Like Adam and Eve, so also us. I’d like to feel like a gardener in music. Actually, I’ve recently written a number of compositions named after flowers: Flowering Jasmine, Field of Dandelions, Lilac Gardens...
PETRAŠKEVIČS: Do you believe that beauty in music is specifically a euphonic sound?
PELĒCIS: Euphonic, yes. I once read about Anton Bruckner. He taught music at the University of Vienna for a time. He was a peculiar person. One time before a lecture, when the audience had already arrived, he ran up to the piano, played a C major triad and said, “Listen how beautiful.” And then he began his lecture. There’s the thing – for the longest time, the acoustic elements of music were very beautiful. Then later [composers] somehow renounced that. But that’s a whole different story, about why that happened in the 20th century.
PETRAŠKEVIČS: I somehow find it hard to agree with the idea that beauty in music should equate with euphony. Now and then, as I listen to contemporary music, I catch myself realising that what I’m hearing seems very beautiful to me even though it’s full of complicated harmonic structures that differ from traditional harmony. Noises can be very beautiful, too.
PELĒCIS: I agree that beauty can be ambiguous, that it can have more than one definition. Just like in life – there’s a northern beauty, and here’s a southern beauty... For example, what is Anton Webern’s beauty? It’s definitely beauty, but I believe it’s the beauty of a snow queen’s castle. It’s a geometric, crystalline beauty. Also interesting, by the way: can you hear a double canon in his Symphony Op. 21? It was very important to Webern that it be worked into the symphony, but he knew very well that the listener cannot perceive it consciously. We can see it only with the mind, by looking at the score.
As a composer, I was very much influenced by minimalism: Steve Reich, Simeon ten Holt from the Netherlands. They make euphony a colossal source of joy. All of those rhythm patterns they play around with, it’s a creative and perceptive joy! I try to somehow refer to it as much as I can and am able to. I like repetitive technique very much.
I just don’t like the word ‘minimalism’. It’s not minimalism – it’s maximalism, if you’re trying to squeeze the maximum out of a pattern. Like Philip Glass does, but he does it to the point that you completely hate it. That’s why I don’t like him. Because I think there’s something schizophrenic in him. He doesn’t control the repetitions, and he doesn’t always control the quality of the patterns. They don’t need to be repeated for so long! But he doesn’t care.
PETRAŠKEVIČS: Who are your favourite composers?
PELĒCIS: Already long ago, about forty or fifty years ago, I understood that my favourite composers are the three Italian masters: Claudio Monteverdi, Antonio Vivaldi and Domenico Scarlatti. And I’m still loyal to them. They are my best examples. If you asked me what music I’d put on to listen to at home when I’m tired, I’d choose something from them.
Scarlatti has 555 sonatas, and that’s what I’m working with right now. I found all of his sonatas on the internet, recorded by the harpsichordist Scott Ross. And, just like I once did with Bach’s cantatas, skimming off the cream – the arias – and organising them, I decided I needed to single out the most beautiful and compelling Scarlatti sonatas. I listened to all 555 of them and selected 25. Monteverdi, for his part, is the father of new music, the father of us all.
PETRAŠKEVIČS: And he was also a researcher.
PELĒCIS: Yes, and he held theoretical arguments with his adversary Giovanni Maria Artusi about the new practice, about euphony, and, among other things, against the old concept of dissonance. And he’s so paradoxical! At the end of the 16th century he was still writing in the style of Palestrina. And after that, beginning with his fourth book of madrigals, he moved into a new direction. It was just as unusual as if Webern had begun writing operettas during the Second World War. It was just as surprising, such a drastic turn... In addition, Monteverdi thereby laid the foundation for a new style, the stile concitato. Extraordinary!
PETRAŠKEVIČS: Other than music, what has influenced your creative style?
PELĒCIS: There are, for example, literary impulses. The Latvian poet Antons Austriņš (1884–1934) is like a handbook for me. I’m very fascinated by his poetry. I just finished the cycle Magic of Life – Austriņš has a book by that name. He is very close to me in his perception of life. In his poetry, a genre-like concreteness merges very strangely with impressionism. He observes from the side, but he also participates at the same time... An interesting literary chiaroscuro from the perspective of an author. And his language – totally fantastic! “The magic of life” – I just love these words. I think that music is magic, too. And whether music is bad or good depends on whether this feeling of magic has been achieved. The composer must create magic! He is a magician, a maker of miracles. The composer is a goldsmith, and the composition must be a jewel!
Excerpts from the interview “The master’s secret things”, published in the March 2017 issue of Rīgas laiks, republished here by kind permission of Jānis Petraškevičs and "Rīgas laiks".