WASHINGTON, March 10, 2011 – Our story begins not today, but back nearly one hundred years ago. Russian engineer Léon Theremin was tinkering around with vacuum tubes and early radio devices, circa 1915-1918, when he discovered something interesting. Whatever sounds or programming a radio receiver was broadcasting could be bent, distorted, or altered by waving one’s hand around the receiver’s antenna device.
To cut to the scientific chase, Theremin had discovered what we today call “feedback.” An inveterate tinkerer as well as a lover of music, Theremin eventually invented what was arguably the first electronic instrument, which, logically, he named after himself. The original “theremin” was a radio-like device with two antennae—one horizontal, one vertical.
Modern theremin kit. (All images public
domain, via Wikipedia Commons.)
A weird, wavering, electronic sound could be coaxed from the device by waving and repositioning both hands. A skillful set of hands could create, via the machine’s internal oscillators, a smooth, infinitely variable electronic tone that could be shaped by pitch, quality, and volume.
Theremin patented his device, and worked with the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) to market and produce the instrument. He publicized it in demonstrations and concerts, becoming a minor New York City celebrity in the process. The theremin found favor in science fiction and horror film scores of the 1950s, notably in the weird score for the original film “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” The Beach Boys revived the instrument again in the instrumental portions of their hit song, “Good Vibrations.”
Naturally, the early theremin attracted some competition, and Frenchman Maurice Martenot was Theremin’s chief competitor. NMartenot's electronic instrument, usually known as the “ondes Martenot” (roughly, “Martenot waves”) and was significantly more sophisticated than Theremin’s simple box.
Ondes Martenot, showing three of four
output devices/speakers.
The ondes Martenot is played primarily by means of a sophisticated, sensitive keyboard, as well as a metal ring placed on a finger, and waved to and fro in front of the keyboard to create an effect similar to the theremin’s infinitely variable tones.
The ondes’ tones are output through one or more of four output devices: two kinds of speakers, a third speaker that substitutes a kind of gong for a speaker diaphragm, and a fourth speaker that generates its sound by sympathetically vibrating the strings of what looks to be an upside-down, amplified guitar.
The ondes Martenot soon attracted its musical partisans as well. Classical music composer-fans ranged from Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Pierre Boulez, and Frank Zappa (yes, that Frank Zappa), to film composers who featured the instrument in the scores of “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Ghostbusters,” and, more recently, “There Will Be Blood.” Music for the latter was contributed by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, who often uses the instrument in his own compositions.
But perhaps the most sophisticated and extensive use of the ondes Martenot occurs in the massive Turangalîla Symphony, by contemporary French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992). Better known to Americans as a brilliant organ composer-virtuoso, Messiaen was arguably the last in a line of phenomenal Frenchmen who regarded themselves as successors to the great César Franck.
The quirkiest, most individualistic, and most modernistic of them all, Messiaen was a passionate, lifelong, mystical Catholic whose personal beliefs seemed to mix traditional Church orthodoxy with French philosophy, the mystic theology of French Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin, and the cosmic theology of the Asian religions, specifically Buddhism and Hinduism.
Which brings us to our tie-in with the National Symphony Orchestra. As part of the Kennedy Center’s ongoing “Maximum India” festival, the NSO is presenting, in its entirety, Messiaen’s gigantic Turangalîla Symphony during this weekend’s concert series. Consisting of ten movements, Messiaen’s musical edifice is a unique monument not only to religious philosophy and faith. It also embodies the composer’s belief that every available musical resource must be brought to bear to communicate a spiritual realm that can’t be achieved by a single approach.
Ultimately, this means that the Turangalîla Symphony, composed between 1946-1948, defies musical categorization. While Messiaen is regarded as a late Romantic, his symphony is often anything but. It launches with a chunky, massive wall of atonality, varying its approach throughout with unabashedly Romantic, tonal interludes, chattery, percussive, shimmering sounds and birdcalls, and wild, almost pagan celebratory dancing.
The whole idea of the symphony derives from the two Sanskrit words that form its title: turanga (roughly, “love song/hymn of joy”) and lîla (a bit like the cycle of birth, death, and infinity). The symphony, in essence is a long, complex, spiritual and psychological journey of the soul through trial and tribulation, to the transformative powers of human and divine love—perhaps akin to St. John of the Cross’ “Dark Night of the Soul.”
In addition to requiring a massive orchestra and up to eleven percussion players, Messiaen’s tempestuous masterwork requires the full time services of both piano and ondes Martenot soloists. While the symphony is not really a piano concerto, the immense piano part is supremely difficult, requiring a first-rate virtuoso to tackle it.
In this weekend’s performances, beginning this evening, the piano part will be performed by pianist Cédric Tiberghien. He’s joined by ondes Martenot soloist Tristan Murail, who will weave that instrument’s unearthly and surprisingly expressive sounds into the orchestral fabric.
These NSO performances promise to add yet another element to the experience of the symphony, with an original lighting scheme designed by Paul Bartlett, perhaps inspired by Alexander Scriabin’s earlier notions of adding a color organ to the instrumentation of his theoretical “Universe Symphony.” In any event, it should be interesting to see what Mr. Bartlett had in mind as Messiaen, too, felt that certain tones and interludes embodied colors as well as sounds.
The Turangalîla Symphony may not be everyone’s cup of musical tea. It’s long, boisterous, sometimes ravishingly beautiful, sometimes intensely and horrendously ugly. Some impatient audience members have been known to discretely head for the exits during its performance.
That attitude, however, is unfair. The 20th century abounds with examples of music that abandons its audience while favoring a kind of inbred academic experimentation that ignores the audience's need for meaning and human emotion in its music. Messiaen doesn’t ignore this at all. But he also refuses to limit his musical palette. His symphony is ultimately an extraordinarily visceral journey through heaven and hell, and the composer seems to be saying, “if the horrors of hell sound like they do in my symphony, so be it.”
Yet on the other hand, after a long, 80-minute journey, the symphony erupts into a celebratory dance of pure joy, love on a human, divine, and epic scale. It’s a 20th century masterpiece that’s sometimes a difficult listen, but a challenge that’s also worth embracing.
It’s also an early and intriguing intersection of ancient, traditional, and modern musical ideas, blending acoustical instruments with one of the electronic instruments that arguably led to the Moog synthesizer and today’s ubiquitous electronic effects. It’s the novel experience of listening to a genuinely classical composer who’s not afraid to insert modern inventions into his own musical experience.
Such a symphony does need an introduction. Wisely, during this weekend’s concert programs, Maestro Christoph Eschenbach and his soloists will be joined onstage by musicologist Joseph Horowitz at the beginning of the evening. They’ll host a lecture/discussion on various aspects of the symphony before breaking for intermission. The audience will then return to listen to the symphony in its entirety, fully able to discern the twists, surprises, and intellectual challenge that this most cerebral of works has always posed. It should be an interesting weekend.
Read more of Terry's work at “Curtain Up!” in the Communities at the Washington Times.
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