If you’ve never heard of Claude-Dénis Autobüsse
don’t despair, I doubt more than an handful of people ever have.
Even during his lifetime he was a shady figure at best. He was
born in 1908 in the Fifteenth Arrondissement in Paris, and spent
his whole life living in the Avenue Lowendal, near the École
Militaire. An exact contemporary of Olivier Messiaen, he never
received recognition for his work and achieved few performances,
most of which he paid for himself. His one true moment in the
limelight was when Radio France gave two hours to him and his
work in 1954, playing the works which are on this disk. He called
himself Un vrais carte sauvage de la musique français
because he saw himself as something special in French music
and boasted to his non musical friends that he was a born Symphonist,
who was getting commissions left, right and centre when the
truth was that he wrote in his spare time and simply invented
stories for self-aggrandisement. He sounds like quite a sad
and lonely figure; a man with ideas above his position.
Harry Halbreich knew Autobüsse well and his note
in the booklet – derived from his own 1954 radio script – is
very detailed. Also included, is a section from Halbreich’s
diaries which include his assessment of Autobüsse that he was
a fantasist who had delusions of genius, but was really only
a part time composer who had a small amount of ability but no
real talent. He wrote six or seven Symphonies, three Concertos,
several orchestral works and a handful of chamber and vocal
pieces. He would create stories about himself and invent his
own history. One of his most unusual, and inept, stories was
that he studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Maurice Koechlin,
seemingly oblivious to the fact that Maurice Koechlin was a
famous structural engineer and the Koechlin who was a composer
and teacher was actually named Charles!
À
propos Charles Koechlin, together with the CD I was sent photocopies
of the pages, taken from a complete edition of a new translation,
which deal with his correspondence with Autobüsse. This translation
has been undertaken by Roger Nichols as a labour of love for
there is, as yet, no hope of a publisher. Another of Autobüsse’s
weird flights of fancy is detailed in Koechlin’s letters. In
a letter dated 24 August 1949, and addressed to Darius Milhaud,
who was never a pupil but became a good friend, Koechlin outlines
two Autobüsse experiences.
”…and then I had the misfortune to bump into that poltroon Autobüsse.
Full of his own genius as usual. He told me that his new Symphony
was progressing well and many people were truly excited at the
prospect of it. I am sure they are! Then he told me that it
was obvious that he knew so much more about music than I ever
will, and, in fact, I really knew nothing at all about music.
I smiled at him. Ten days later he telephoned me and told me
that he’d been appointed artistic director of a chamber orchestra
and what repertoire would I advise them to play? What a [expletive
deleted]. I have only thing to say: Beware the Fifteenth Arrondissement!”
So
now we have some idea of Autobüsse the man, what about Autobüsse’s
music?
I can say without fear of contradiction that
Halbreich’s version of the finale of the 1st Symphony
is the winner here – it’s short and pithy and Halbreich has
removed an academic, poorly written, fugue and tidied up the
orchestration. The original version, also included, leaves a
lot to be desired. I should point out that this version was
not played in the radio broadcast; it was recorded after the
live broadcast, and after Autobüsse had left the studio.
The five short pieces go nowhere and achieve
nothing; the best bit about these works is their titles. During
the war Autobüsse collaborated with the Nazis and he went to
Hilversum for the premiere of his Hymn to Germany, a
paean of praise to Adolf Hitler, with words by, it is claimed,
Leni Riefenstahl. This performance has a new text by Johannes
R. Becher which extols the glories of the new, post war, Germany.
Following the BBC’s broadcasting of the famous V for Victory
motif on the radio Nazi-controlled Hilversum Radio started broadcasting
a morse V. After this, on the streets of Holland pro–British
groups started wearing a white V and pro–German groups an orange
V (see Nicholas Rankin Churchill’s Wizards – The British
Genius for Deception 1914 – 1945 Faber and Faber (2008)
p 299 ISBN 978–0–571–22195–0). Autobüsse was seen wearing an
orange V and, indeed, in the photo which adorns the cover of
the booklet, the composer can be seen wearing a shirt with,
what we must assume to be, an orange V on it. This photo was
taken by his friend Chauve-Gagner. Incidentally, all the issues
in this new series have a photograph, on the booklet cover,
of the artist featured with their autograph, as seen here.
The biggest work on this disk is a piece intriguingly
titled The Antonia: de Grasse, which is a large scale
Guitar Concerto. This is in the usual three movements and the
middle one is an homage á la jazz and includes
a drum kit. This is exactly the kind of movement which Malcolm
Arnold achieved so well in his own guitar concerto. The genesis
of the piece needs some explanation. Autobüsse, and his friend,
the photographer, dance band drummer and transvestite, Jean
Chauve-Gagner were accused of stealing a sum of money from people
who trusted Autobüsse. Chauve-Gagner, who had lived in Berlin
during the 20s playing in various bands – including the Weintraub
Syncopaters (whose arranger was a man later to become known
as Franz Waxman) – and enjoying the tranvestite bars took to
cross dressing and continued in this vein on his return to Paris.
On the accusation of theft he left the country for Australia
and Autobüsse visited him there, travelling on the Antonia,
the largest ship in the de Grasse line. He was so impressed
that he wrote this work as a depiction of that trip. In later
life, when he was suffering with testicular cancer, he was heard
to speak of a woman named Antonia de Grasse who was a good friend
who was suffering from the same cancer – obviously
a very ballsy lady! Chauve-Gagner plays the drums in this performance,
he returned to Paris some five years after the scandal, and
it’s pretty tepid drumming. Mind you, it’s pretty tepid music
as well. The broadcast was heard in Germany and an unnamed reviewer
in the Berliner Zeitung, 23 March 1954, wrote:
“(his work is) not thought through according
to the objective standards of the contemporary composer, but
flirts embarrassingly with elements of modernism. Despite modernist
touches, it has a monumentality that suits the style of the
memorial to the war of liberation and of the Bismarck on the
Rhine monument. This composer in Paris is a gigantic poseur.
His work is an advertisement less for the future of French music
than for the supposed originality of the writer. If he had more
of a composer’s skills, his compositional style would have more
structural consistency, and at the same time it would have fewer
distracting flourishes, through which he directs attention to
himself. He has the grandiose self-consciousness that unites
supposed genius and dilettantism. He is unskilled, which prevents
him from being a master composer in the true sense, and it enables
him to manage his material in the kind of naïve fashion from
which the skilled composer, thinking about the practical and
purposive design, would inevitably shy away.”
That review cannot be bettered by me and it sums
up Autobüsse and his work perfectly. It was this review, contained
in Das Gute und das schlechteste im deutschen Musikjournalismus
(Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1955), which sparked my
interest in Autobüsse.
This music really is poor stuff so why am I bothering
to write about and why is MusicWeb interested in carrying a
review about it? The answer is simple. Why do we enjoy listening
to Florence Foster Jenkins? It is a case of Schadenfreude
– the pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others or,
as defined by Theodor Adorno, the largely unanticipated delight
in the suffering of another which is cognized as trivial and/or
appropriate (see John Portmann When bad things happen to
other people Routledge, New York (2000) p 186 ISBN 0–415–92335–2).
There is certainly an element of there but for the grace of
God go I. I threw away all my compositions when I realised that
they were not the towering masterpieces I thought they were
and my youthful folly was happily eradicated. Some people
don’t do that, and thus never move on from their self-delusion,
and it’s obvious that Autobüsse was one of those. Why is Radio
France issuing this disk as part of its new series of Légendes
par Radio de la France (Radio France Legends)? As the notes
tell us, basically, you’ve got to take the rough with the smooth
and this re–issue is an example of the rough. It’s cheap enough
at €2.50 or it’s free if you buy any of the other four issues
in this series,
STALL 1 Ravel Fanfare to L'Éventail de Jeanne,
Einojuhani Rautavaara A Requiem in our Time (French premiere),
Hindemith Das Marienleben (1922), Vaughan Williams Sinfonia
Antartica (French premiere) – Elisabeth Söderström (soprano),
Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française, Manuel Rosenthal
(a live 1956 concert)
STALL 2 Britten Suite on English Tunes op. 90
"A time there was...", Delius Double Concerto for
violin and cello, Saint-Saëns "La Muse et la poète"
for violin, cello and orchestra – Christian Ferras (violin),
Pierre Fournier (cello), orchestre philharmonique de Radio France,
Sergiu Celibidache (a live 1980 concert) (€5.00)
STALL 4 Honegger The Five Symphonies (recorded
in the presense of the composer), Phillippe Gaubert: Les Chants
de la Mer, Frank Martin William Tell Festival Music (recorded
in the presense of the composer) – Orchestre de la Société des
Concerts du Conservatoire, Georges Tzipine (studio recordings,
made in 1953, for radio broadcast only) (3 CDs - €12.50)
STALL 5 Sibelius The Dryad, op.45/1 (1909), Yrjo
Kilpinen Lieder um den Tod, op.62 (1928), Leevi Madetoja: Symphony
No.3 in A (1925) – Gérard Souzay (baritone), Orchestre national
de france, Jorma Panula (a live 1981 concert) (€5.00)
For some reason MusicWeb has not been sent any
of the above for review purposes.
Looking back on what I have written I do find
myself feeling glaukenstucken, a word less well known,
or used, than Schadenfreude, which literally means guilt
over having felt schadenfreude – yes, the Germans even
have a word for that. However, I am afraid that my cynicism
is greater than any feelings I may have of glaukenstucken
so I would urge everybody to get this disk and have a really
good laugh at someone who should have known better.
Bob Briggs
Ida Presti (guitar)
