THE
PIANO MUSIC OF BERNARD VAN DIEREN:
A
DICHOTOMY EXAMINED - BY GORDON RUMSON
Reputations
are strange things. A sour word and
all hope of respectability is gone.
Composers can be relegated to the dust-heap
by the words, informed or not, of a
journalistic pundit or semi-scholar.
It has taken a hundred years for Liszt’s
reputation to rise to a tolerable degree
and the situation is similar for Charles
Alkan. Bernard van Dieren’s reputation
was simultaneously damaged by early
criticism and overzealous praise. His
reputation has not yet recovered.
What
is one to make of someone about whom
this was said:
It is
not easy to put on record convincingly
in written words one's memories, vivid
though they be, of one of the most remarkable
artistic personalities of this or of
any other age, without seeming fulsome,
or to exaggerate in the eyes of those
who know nothing of him. For I have
no hesitation in saying that such was
Bernard van Dieren's intellectual and
artistic greatness, so vast the scope
and grasp of his prodigious intellect,
so profound his knowledge in the most
widely diversified and disparate fields,
that to find others of his order one
has to go to such superhuman men of
the Renaissance as Leonardo da Vinci
or Michelangelo Buonarroti. (K.S. Sorabji,
³Bernard van Dieren,² in Mi Contra
Fa, p. 149).
Actually,
nothing can be made of it, unless we
know the music and can have something
solid upon which to base our estimations.
Listeners
are also informed of the difficulty
of hearing van Dieren’s voice:
Be warned,
van Dieren's music is not of that 'conventional'
lyric mainstream - no pastoral singer
he. His works, especially the earlier
ones, are often marked out by polyphonic
complexity...The music is difficult
and there is little or nothing of the
populist circus about it....his music
is of an extraordinary quality in its
self confidence and its sense of address
only to those who have the steely will
to listen over the top of the total
absence of any evidence that the composer
will curry favour with the listener.
(Rob Barnett, Review of ³Bernard van
Dieren COLLECTION,² Classical Music
on the Web, http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2001/May01/dieren.htm)
What
is the difficulty? Perhaps this suggestion
will enlighten:
He was
an esoteric composer, embracing many
different styles, accomplishing extraordinary
feats of technical virtuosity, extremely,
complex, highly sophisticated and artistic.
In fact, one might almost say that there
was too much of the artist in him. He
was one of those rare examples of a
composer where the artist almost stifles
the musician. His idealism was such
that no sort of practical issue ever
seemed to affect the size or scope of
his works, with the result that many
of them are so complex that they can
never hope to receive more than an occasional
hearing. (Edward Lockspeiser, ³Mixed
Gallery,²British Music of Our Time,
ed. A.L. Bacharach, p. 197. Published
1946.)
Can
it be so hard for a composer to be understood?
I don’t think so. Generally having a
framework of approach assists in solving
such issues.
There
is a dichotomy in Bernard van Dieren’s
creative output. I believe that this
has a large influence upon the placement
of Van Dieren and also that this dichotomy
has a serious impact upon his compositional
results. Both of these issues present
problems for the listener. Either side
of the dichotomy has also resulted in
negative criticism. But once examined
the dichotomy is seen to be false, the
listener is likely to be relieved and
a great deal of negative criticism is
answered.
The
Great War is the dividing line and prior
to it Van Dieren’s music was expressionistic,
emotionally charged and evidently strongly
Germanic. Thereafter, there was a change
and his music took an utterly different
direction; a direction that is however
somewhat difficult to describe and is
without a distinctive catch phrase.
This contrast can be discerned in two
of his most significant works for piano:
The Six Sketches and the Variations.
A comparison of these two works will
be fruitful for our understanding of
Van Dieren’s purportedly enigmatic qualities.
Bernard
van Dieren did not write a large body
of solo piano music, but the Six
Sketches must be considered the
summit of his achievement. Further,
they are one of the most striking contributions
to the repertoire of expressionistic
manner. Written in 1910 and 1911, though
published in 1921, these compositions
are as advanced as any works of the
time, comparing well with the works
of Schoenberg and Busoni. Indeed, the
writer Leslie East suggests that the
Sketches had an impact on Busoni’s
compositional manner. (1)
Because
of the integration of thematic material
between the pieces, they are surely
intended to be performed as a set. The
first striking feature is a notational
one. Van Dieren uses a device associated
with Busoni (the Second Sonatina) and
later Leo Ornstein and Larry Sitsky,
where notes are deemed natural on the
page unless they are modified by an
accidental. This means that no natural
signs are used and the tradition of
accidentals applying though a bar is
not maintained. Simple though it sounds,
it is actually difficult to read at
first. But the effect is of a less cluttered
score.
The
second is the very obvious systematic
and thoroughgoing use of cells of musical
intervals as the basis of the composition.
(2) Busoni’s Second Sonatina is designed
in this fashion. It is likely that such
notions were in the air at the turn
of the century, for they have their
source too in the works of Brahms, where
his use of cells in the violin sonatas,
for example, is very extensive. Motivic
cells provide a sense of integration
as the harmonic palette widened and
tonality eventually disintegrated.
The
third striking feature is the great
virtuosity of the piano writing without
recourse to mere superficial brilliance.
The difficulties (of hand crossing,
density of texture, interweaving of
voices, subtitles of voicings) are all
motivated by very pure conceptions of
musical form and melodic direction.
Van Dieren was also a great believer
in counterpoint.
But
it should be noted that WHAT van Dieren
believed to be contrapuntal is not quite
the norm. Not merely simultaneous melodies
going on for extended periods of time,
but gestures rather. Now a movement
this way, now a flourish that, all surrounded
by some other event. Bernard van Dieren
may have espoused a doctrine of long
term melodies in contrapuntal array,
but for these works under consideration
this is simply not the case.
Van
Dieren gives a clue to his conception
in his book Down Among the Dead Men:
Few
things demand more concentrated attention
than accurate listening to a complex
contrapuntal phrase. No one can follow
several melodic lines simultaneously
with anything like the completeness
that ear and brain permit for a single
melody...In any effort to listen contrapuntally,
one has to expend most of one's energies
in an admittedly exhausting process
of rapid elimination and substitution.
The total of one's impressions, in fact,
depends on the alertness with which
one can sustain this constantly changing
accommodation and ceaseless readjustment
of focus. Bernard van Dieren, Down
Among the Dead Men, p. 189.
Finally,
in these works there is a very peculiar
mood and inner spirituality that is
quite different from the expressionism
of Schoenberg, the theosophical occultism
of Scriabin, or even the mysticism of
Busoni. Keeping in mind that the turn
of the century through to the 1920s
was rife with esoteric activities (The
Golden Dawn, Anthroposophy, Theosophy,
Ouspensky and Gurdjieff, etc, etc) it
is still difficult to place Van Dieren’s
nature. He is not a mere magical aficionado
nor a fringe occultist. It is not unusual
for people to have commented upon Van
Dieren’s remarkable personality, often
in terms of the Magus.
After
the Great War, as so many creators jettisoned
the apparatus and ideals of the previous
generation (perhaps out of horror at
what that generation’s ideas had wrought)
Van Dieren’s work shifted from the Germanic
expressionist to something else. Neither
an English pastoralist, nor a folksong
aficionado, Van Dieren is sometimes
cited as an Italianate composer, seeking
the sun-drenched wisdom of the Mediterranean
culture. In this he would follow Goethe,
Liszt (who lived long in Rome), Nietzsche
and Busoni. The thick fogs of the Wagnerian
north had become unbearable. Those metaphors
are supposed to have musical significations.
Now
this may be true and there is much to
suggest its rightness. Yet Van Dieren’s
music hardly seems Italianate in any
meaningful fashion. Clearly, the Mediterranean
was a vague ideal and not a series of
compositional prescriptions. How did
those ideals manifest themselves?
The
Variations are a further example
of Van Dieren’s compositional greatness.
Yet, on the surface the atmosphere seems
cool and the effect calming; this in
spite of variations of fantastic vehemence
and virtuosity.
What
are these cameos variations upon? A
brief listening to the theme will not
provide a distinct and striking melody,
nor obvious harmonic substructure. The
music seems rather to wander within
a tiny gamut of chromaticism. The sliding
and shifting seems almost aimless and
if performed slackly might remind us
a little too much of the cocktail pianist’s
limp chromaticisms.
The
subsequent variations are hardly more
likely to clarify the situation. What
is Van Dieren varying and how is he
doing it? Without some framework the
listener might be lost.
But
consider the Sketches: They are
based on small cells of ideas, freely
manipulated, cross-referenced and contrasted.
The cells are actually obvious because
of their intervallic pungency and rigour
of use. They are intended to help organize
the structure, therefore they are clearly
audible.
In the
Variations, I suggest, Van Dieren
is making use of the exact same devices
but within a sliding, though tonal,
framework and for a completely different
purpose. The cells here are manipulated
in different ways, not to clarify, but
to obscure their genesis. They are operating
as hints, suggestions and references
to tonality, either to support it, or
more usually to undercut it; to ‘contradict
it’ as Hans Keller would have said.
The cells are never the same, indeed
might be hardly recognizable as the
same.
The
cells are also designed to have the
same effect melodically. Not to clarify
melody, but to diffuse it, to shatter
it; spread it across the piano and to
make the combined events a hocket: like
the medieval method. These cells combine
to form the whole web of sound, which
is itself the ’over-melody’.
The
listener must step back from the music
and hear not the separate events, but
rather the entire combination of ideas
and processes. Eventually, these will
coalesce into the melodic harmonic sweep
that seems to have been Van Dieren’s
ultimate goal.
This
is not music for the background, nor
for listening while in the car. It is
music to investigate, contemplate and
ponder. I fear this alone makes the
music unusual...
Why
did Van Dieren make the shift from expressionist
to this rather ill-defined something
else (and I have purposefully left it
ill defined)?
There
are many cases of advanced composers
in the pre-Great War years who later
turned away from their excesses. Leo
Ornstein felt he had reached the uttermost
limits beyond which lay madness, Schoenberg
turned towards the 12 tone system to
give order to his ravings, Stravinsky
never returned to the Rite of Spring’s
potent violence. The composers of the
Russian avant-garde turned towards folksong,
neoclassicism or educational music.
In America many composers, like Ruth
Crawford Seeger and George Antheil,
retreated to folksong or film style
music. Thus the withdrawal from creative
extremism was not merely a political
or even cultural phenomena since it
is found in such divergent political
and cultural situations, but must represent
some profound spiritual meaning. Perhaps
Ornstein’s comment is the most germane.
There
is a very peculiar feature of Van Dieren’s
music which must be noted: the harmonic
structure is almost uneven and requires
careful shaping rhythmically and sonically
to work effectively. To merely play
‘in time’ is to do do damage to the
movement only implied by the notation.
The pianist is required to use subtle
changes of tempo to prepare and depart
from chords and even within chords balance
the pitches for careful voicings. At
all times certain notes must be emphasized
in order to bring out upper harmonics
and clarify voice leading, though never
with a hard touch or an accent. Van
Dieren’s sense of the piano was decidedly
old-fashioned: not a percussion instrument,
but a singing instrument. It is also
likely that his sense of time was not
of the modern metronomic variety, but
of the older, flexible and to our ears,
extreme old-fashioned, style.
Further,
as Denis ApIvor has pointed out Van
Dieren was not a composer for the piano,
but much more significantly a composer
for the quartet. Yet, in the Sketches
and Variations, Bernard Van Dieren
has created impressive keyboard music
that deserves recognition.
March 2004 © Gordon Rumson
Acknowledgments
I would
like to thank Kenneth Derus and Adrian
Corleonis for their assistance in obtaining
rare scores. Also, special thanks to
Denis ApIvor for his insights into the
music provided to me in tape recorded
letters. I am also grateful to Ronald
Stevenson for his advice given in a
telephone conversation.
End Notes
(1)Leslie East, ‘Busoni
and van Dieren’, Soundings, Vol.
V (1975).
(2) East discusses the
use of cells extensively and compares
it with Busoni’s Sonatina.
