One of the virtues of the Naxos American
Classics series is that it has not
stuck to American "Classics",
but has introduced a wider audience
to composers otherwise difficult to
encounter. This survey of works by
Marion Bauer surely fits into that
category. She occupies a distinguished
place in American music history for
her indefatigable championing of new
music. She also holds that place because
of her role as a pioneer of woman’s
rights in co-founding such institutions
as American Music Center and the American
Music Guild – but especially for her
music criticism and her seminal book,
Twentieth Century Music (1933,
revised in 1947). She taught at New
York University and at the Juilliard.
Her own music was
quite widely known in her lifetime
– Stokowski premiered her Sun Splendor
for orchestra in 1947 – but after
her death seems to have been largely
eclipsed from the collective American
musical consciousness. Albany Records
have recorded works by her on three
CDs: a disk of piano and solo works
(Albany TROY 465), a compilation of
piano and chamber works by Bauer and
Ruth Crawford Seeger (Albany TROY
297), and the inclusion of her Up
the Ocklawaha, Op. 6 in a disk
of American music for violin and piano
(Albany TROY 297). CRI’s reissue of
historic recordings by the Vienna
Orchestra, mentioned in Grove,
seems to have disappeared from the
catalogue. But for most people all
those CDs have to be specially ordered,
and to have a sample of her music
at a bargain price is welcome.
There is one very
good historical reason to listen to
her music. She was the very first
American to study with Nadia Boulanger,
thus starting that line of American
Boulanger pupils who almost single-handedly
created a genuinely American classical
music. Bauer had gone to Paris in
1906 with the French pianist Raoul
Pugno and his family, and she swapped
music lessons with Boulanger for teaching
Boulanger English.
So what, on the evidence
of this CD, is her music like? For
me, the most arresting works are the
two for strings, A Lament on an
African Theme (1927) and the Symphonic
Suite for Strings, written thirteen
years later. The composer who immediately
comes to mind is her contemporary,
the Welsh composer Grace Williams
– there is a similar careful and lithe
craftsmanship, the same post-Impressionist
hue combined with neo-classical procedures,
and a comparable rugged and angular
melodic feel. The short Lament
started out as the movement of a string
quartet, while the three-movement
Symphonic Suite, Diana Ambache
suggests, reflects the loss of Jewish
relations in Alsace, killed by the
Nazis. There is an undercurrent of
strong determination in this Suite,
made all the more forceful by the
rich string sonorities and lyrical
flow. The work culminates in a vigorous
fugue. The little Concertino for
Oboe, Clarinet and Strings of
1943 is in a similar vein, but more
harmonically unsettled, and augmented
by a slightly grotesque dance to end
a curious but affecting work.
The two chamber works
have a much more Gallic feel. The
little Trio for Flute, Cello and
Piano, written in 1944 (the date
is omitted in the Naxos documentation),
is gently pleasant, and gently forgettable,
lilting in the first movement, dolorous
in the second, the third chatteringly
bouncy. It is ideal, perhaps, for
background music to a summer’s picnic.
The more arresting Duo for Oboe
and Clarinet opens happily tongue-in-cheek,
waxes lyrical in two extended solos,
and ends on a jaunty Gallic stroll.
It must be fun to play, and with its
unusual instrumental combination I
could well see it becoming popular
with university student wind players.
The longest work
on this CD, the American Youth
Concerto of 1943 belongs to that
genre of American music I personally
rather dread: works written for High
Schools (here the High School of Music
and Art in New York). They always
seem to be bouncingly populist, and
without any sense that children or
young adults might have the capacity
to both enjoy and play well music
that is much more challenging. To
be fair to Bauer, this is less writing-down
than most. It might be described as
Rachmaninov and Copland meeting the
Warsaw Concerto hand-in-hand,
with a half-lifting from the Russian
composer fairly obvious, and a dreamy-Copland
movement suitably followed by a cakewalk,
a blues, and a hoe-down. This is fairly
pedestrian if pleasant stuff, and
I wish that Ambache and Naxos had
given us something more substantial
– perhaps some of her later ventures
into twelve-tone music, or even better
her Symphony - to round off
this survey.
It must have been
no mean feat to record all these works
in two days flat, but there certainly
isn’t any sign of haste; all the performances
sound both committed and played with
genuine affection. The recording location
is perhaps a little too reverberant
for the chamber pieces, but the recording
itself is crisp and detailed.
Is there a strong
individual voice in all this music?
The answer must be no – it is hard
to gain a sense of why a Marion Bauer
work is particularly a Bauer work.
But the impression of a strong and
determined character does come across,
and for those with an interest in
the history of music in the USA, not
to mention those interested in the
history of women composers, this CD
is well worth investigating. It has
grown on me (apart from that Concerto)
as I have re-listened to it, and I
shall return to those string pieces.
Mark Morris