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Past Futurists
“…although the astrological aspects at a given time might be excellent for the inspiring and composing of a particular kind of music, it by no means follows that they must also be good for its getting a hearing…the first thing is to get the work written; the rest if needs be can wait—sometimes even as long as till after the composer's death.”
Cyril Scott
“…I've asked myself many times how could a perfectly sane, good American citizen think of those crazy pieces. I write what I hear and why I should hear such diverse things I can't explain myself. The secret is one I wish I knew.”
Leo Ornstein
We are now such a long way from the optimism, excitement, intellectual ferment and urge to experiment prevalent at the outset of this century that it is difficult to believe all this really existed. The various movements that flourished during this era—impressionism, expressionism, futurism, cubism and neo-classicism, to name just a few—brought about a flood tide of music for the piano, this as diverse as the “movements” which inspired it. Perhaps at this point, we can listen with fresh ears to two of the earliest trend-setters who were each a law unto himself.
Music: Its Secret Influence through the Ages was my first contact with its author, the English composer and mystic, Cyril Meir Scott. The title of this slim volume charmed me and the chapter on Skryabin's Karma completely baffled me. Scott lived to a ripe old age (1879-1970), but I met his music after he had left this particular life-span. His legacy includes not only reams of piano, vocal and symphonic music rarely heard, but books with such titles as Doctors, Disease and Health, Victory over Cancer, Health, Diet and Common Sense, An Outline of Modern Occultism, The Initiate Trilogy, books of poetry and translations, in addition to two very entertaining autobiographies: My Years of Indiscretion (1924) and Bone of Contention (1969).
At the beginning of the 20th century, Scott was one of five young composers who had recently returned to England from their studies in Germany; the others were Percy Grainger, Balfour Gardiner, Norman O'Neill and Roger Quilter. They were called by the musical establishment “The Frankfurt Group.” Scott had popular success with his salon pieces, but, as he wrote in his 1969 autobiography, “these small pieces did me both good and harm in that on the one hand they made my reputation and on the other they killed my reputation as a composer of larger and more serious works…for if I may venture to say so, rather have I been misrepresented than neglected. After all, might not this be said of any composer whose very minor items were often broadcast, yet some major work only every five years to mark his birthday?”
Lotusland, originally written for the piano in 1905, was transcribed for the violin by Fritz Kreisler who earlier had brought prestige to the premiere of Scott's Piano Quartet by consenting to play the violin part. Kreisler's arrangement of Lotusland proved such a hit that he often had to repeat it three times in performance. Scott later noted that had his principal publisher (Elkin) not discouraged him from writing violin pieces, he probably would have conceived it for that instrument in the first place.
Danse Negre from 1908, another bon-bon to keep his publishers happy, is one of those tricky little pieces that sounds easier than it is. This and other works written about the same time prompted the fashion-makers to dub Scott “The English Debussy.” Indeed, for a decade or so near the end of the great French composer's life, Scott had a standing invitation to dine with Debussy and his wife whenever he was in Paris. Their friendship is recounted interestingly by Scott in his memoirs.
It was in his larger works that Scott defied the British academicism of the time. In praising Scott's harmonic and rhythmic daring, George Bernard Shaw called him “the only British composer in whom I can detect a real style.” Later, when Shaw praised Edward Elgar, the composer of the Enigma Variations said, “don't forget it was Scott who started it all.”
Percy Grainger, one of the great piano virtuosos, was Scott's lifelong friend and proponent of his music. He was particularly fond of the first Piano Sonata (1909). Unfortunately, there is no recording of his performance of this work, but his programme notes for a U.S. tour as late as the 1950s included this panegyric:
“In our own times the outstanding vehicle of musical progress has been the Cyril Scott Piano Sonata, Op. 66, with its irregular rhythms (originally an Australian invention), its `non-architectural' flowing form, its exquisitely discordant harmonies. The Scott Sonata is as significant artistically, emotionally and pianistically as it is historically.”
Despite Grainger's praise, the sonata was not `taken up' by many pianists and to my knowledge, this is the only recording of it.
Scott's so-called “irregular rhythms” occur in almost every measure of this sonata. He later revised this work replacing the changing meters with triplets or other rapid rhythmic figures. I prefer the original irregular barring which gives his long lines an individuality that is compromised in the second version. The work is cast in four uninterrupted movements signaled only by tempo changes and transformations of the primary motive. The last movement is a virtuosic fugue which I feel could be performed separately as a solo.
Scott was both ahead of his time and behind it, a condition with which he, having had past incarnations, felt right at home. In the last year of this life, at age ninety, he offered an occult explanation for the cacophony which he felt had become fashionable:
“According to the Initiates, there have existed for a long time certain evil thought-forms which could alone be dissolved by means of discord and in no other way. Hence was the ultra-discordant phase of music put through to effect that purpose, though it was never intended it should be more than a transient phase.”
The American composer LEO ORNSTEIN does not claim past incarnations, but during his present lifetime he has had several. Born in Kremenchug, Russia December 4, 1892, he emigrated to the USA with his family in 1907, and a few years later gained international recognition as both a virtuoso pianist and a “futurist” composer. He performed many works of Debussy, Ravel, Skryabin, Franck and Bartok for the first time in the U.S. and created a furor with his own radical compositions. In the mid-1920s, however, at the height of a successful concert career, he abruptly ceased performing. A few years later he established a music school in Philadelphia and taught until his retirement in the mid-1950s. He has been composing steadily ever since, living in rural New Hampshire and later in Brownsville, Texas with Mrs. Ornstein until her death in 1986. He now resides near Green Bay, Wisconsin.
His son, Severo, writes:
“The reasons for his departure from the concert stage certainly included the desire to devote more time to composing and to his family, as well as weariness with concertizing (he had a small hand yet was a perfectionist and thus spent untold hours practicing). But perhaps the more fundamental cause was a deep disillusionment with the world of music. His own compositions sprang straight from the heart, and as a youth he believed that his audiences shared his excitement with the new music. As he matured, however, he came to realize that few of his listeners really understood the music and that it was the novelty and sensationalism that were attracting attention, rather than the substance. This impression was reinforced when some of his more romantic compositions produced accusations of “backsliding.” He began to feel increasingly remote from the direction modern music was taking, in particular the search for novelty for its own sake. Ironically, having been irrevocably labeled a radical, he was now unwilling to bend to the demands of his own public image. Instead he insisted on writing in whatever style seemed demanded by the music he was working on at the time—and indeed this is reflected in the diversity of his music.
“In any case, although he continued composing, he thereafter refused to put any effort into promoting his own work, arguing that it was his business to produce music whose merit would likely be recognized, if at all, only after he was dead and musical tastes had regained a better balance. With such an attitude it is hardly surprising that the music world ignored him, and as time passed people forgot about him. Then in the 1970s, along with a revival of interest in American music of the early part of the century, he was “rediscovered” and a number of his works were recorded and published.”
The Sonata No. 4 was actually the first to be written down. The preceding three were memorized and performed often in public but never notated because of Ornstein's busy concert schedule. The only way this one reached paper, according to Mrs. Ornstein,was at the insistence of publisher Gustave Schirmer, who had to lock the composer in a room until the task was completed.
The four movements of the fourth sonata are traditional in design and firmly rooted in musical techniques to be found in Liszt, Debussy, Skryabin and Bartok—composers who figured prominently on Ornstein's touring programs before 1920. This was a piece which “Ornstein the Keyboard Terror” could perform for even the most conservative audience while satisfying the “pianimals” among his following: its first movement quotes Debussy, the second has a bit of Borodin, the third movement recalls Schumann's Prophet Bird fleetingly, and the fourth challenges the virtuosity of Skryabin's Fifth Sonata.
The set of nine short pieces entitled Arabesques was composed at the end of Ornstein's “futurist” phase and is filled with the tone clusters and ear-splitting sounds that both thrilled and enraged listeners from 1913-18. For one critic, it was “amazing that Mr. Ornstein should have decided to play a little joke on the public and transfer it from the concert hall to the dental parlor.” Others thought he was “temporarily insane.” In some of the pieces all ranges of the keyboard are battered by large chords of six notes in each hand. The titles in French and English further the impression of a gallery of expressionist tone-pictures. The composer notes in the score that the natural sign has been omitted and the accidentals affect only the individual notes before which they appear, an instruction Ornstein was to use increasingly in later works to facilitate reading such ink-black music.
While the two Ornstein works on this disc provide a good idea of his compositional activity in his early years, they only hint at the diversity of his music. Composing sporadically but continuously over such a long span of time has produced a large body of work, much of it for solo piano but with some chamber, vocal and orchestral works as well. In the past five years he has finished two ferociously difficult piano sonatas (the 7th and 8th). There have been concerts and awards celebrating his 80th, 90th and 95th birthdays and it seems entirely possible that he will still be working when he reaches 100.
Marthanne Verbit
Marthanne Verbit
Born in Atlanta and raised in the small town of Fitzgerald, Georgia, Marthanne Verbit spent her childhood either at a piano or in toe shoes, with frequent appearances on television, music festivals and in theatrical productions in Florida, North Carolina and Georgia. She left the deep South to attend Hollins College and Boston University School for the Arts, receiving music degrees from each. Further studies at the Eastman and Juilliard Schools and Columbia University kept her in the North.
Widely acclaimed for her flair, poetic fantasy, insightful musicianship and unforgettable stage presence, Marthanne Verbit's piano recitals throughout the United States and Europe have established her as a favorite among piano connoisseurs. Her versatility as both a musician and actress in the one-woman musical plays Piano Theatre and Keeping Time, written by Joseph Fennimore, have brought her to the attention of a broader audience.
Editions:
Cyril Scott: Elkin, G. Schirmer
Ornstein: Poon Hill Press, 2200 Bear Gulch Road, Woodside, CA 94062. Original manuscripts reside in Yale University's American Composer Archives.
Engineer: Robert Commagère
Remastered for compact disc from the original analog tapes by Tom Lazarus
Cover Design: Kathleen McMillan
Ms. Verbit has recorded other short works of Scott and Ornstein on VALENTINES (TROY071).
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