Charles
Tournemire (1870-1939)
Symphonies
Nos. 1 & 5
Charles
Tournemire was born in Bordeaux in 1870 and died at Arcachon in 1939. For some
he may seem to have been a slightly mysterious organist with a reputation for
improvisation, yet this master of modern organ music was at the same time a
powerful symphonist. Between 1900 and 1924 Tournemire wrote no less than eight
symphonies differing in dimension and form, without counting the Poème pour
orgue of 1910 and various compositions for chorus and orchestra. As he
himself made clear, these eight symphonies were only the preparation for an
enterprise of greater scope still, conceived for that other orchestra, the
organ. The reference was to L'Orgue mystique, written between 1927 and
1932, a great cycle that covers the liturgical year and consists of fifteen
hours of music. After the completion of this, Tournemire only returned to the
symphony with the organ in his Symphonie-Choral of 1935 and his Symphonie
sacrée the following year.
Tournemire
became a pupil of César Franck when that composer was working on his own Symphony
in D minor of 1887. The future of this work is well known. It was taken as
a model or at least served as an example for Chausson, Magnard, Ropartz,
d'Indy, Vierne, Lazzari and others, but none of these composers, not even
d'Indy, raised the symphony to the level of importance achieved by Tournemire.
It was easy for Debussy to comment ironically on the beaverish activity that
dominated these scores constructed on the system of the cyclic transformation
of themes. It is true that in France at the turn of the century, parallel to
this symphonic fashion, its formalism reinforced by the teaching of the Schola
cantorum, orchestral music spread more freely through the ballet, the rhapsody
and the symphonic poem.
A
pianist and organist by training, organist at the basilica of Sainte-Clotilde
with its great Cavaillé-Coll instrument from 1898 until his death, professor of
ensemble music at the Paris Conservatoire from 1921, Charles Tournemire, who
also left a certain number of chamber music works, nourished his creative flair
with a strong religious faith, finding himself in the exalted catholicism that
inspired the prose of Ernest Hello and Léon Bloy. Furthermore, he was, through
his first marriage, brother-in-law of the Sâr Joséphin Péladan, who re-
established the Rosicrucian movement. Tournemire's musical testament is based
on a text by Péladan, a lyric drama with the title II poverello di Assisi, written
some weeks before his death. The Franciscan ideal marked above all the last ten
years of his creative life, just as the aesthetic mysticism of César Franck
dominated the period of his symphonies. This mysticism remained attached to the
image of the redemptive process of the Man, who, in the obscurity of his
condition, aspires to the accomplishment of his destiny through the revelation
of the divine light. In the symphonies of Tournemire the evocation of the
presence of nature plays a religious rôle in the etymological sense of the
word, binding man to the divine, when it does not represent the divine itself,
as in the Fifth Symphony. This appears in the music in a carefully
elaborated structure that brings a tonal progression and an antithesis
symbolical, as it were, of the progress from darkness to clarity, a progression
for which the cyclical process is particularly well suited. From the point of
view of expression, properly speaking, the eloquence of the very lyrical
symphonic dialogue oscillates between the epic and the tranquilly contemplative.
Tournemire was a self-confessed romantic. The hostility that he showed towards
the modernising tendencies in the music of his time arose from ethical
considerations: for this champion of the Ideal, the only valid work was that
which tended to the glory of God. For this reason it is easier to understand
how, opposed to Ravel, to the school of Vienna and to Les Six, he encouraged
the young Olivier Messiaen. He was led, through his rejection of modern trends,
to form a personal musical language, above all in his harmonic writing. This
language, imbued with the chromaticism of César Franck, absorbed only very
gradually certain elements of the twentieth century, such as atonality,
polytonality, Indian modes and so on, while proving more immediately receptive to
the art of Debussy. As an orchestrator he was the heir of Berlioz and Wagner,
but his attention to detail even with a sonority rich in its bass and its
doublings, preserves the transparency that characterizes French music of the
period. Tournemire's orchestral palette was based on a wide scale of timbres,
grouped or divided according to the musical ideas in relation to the
philosophical argument or the programme that underpins the carefully planned
structure of a work. His scoring, therefore, includes instruments seldom used
in the orchestra, such as the lute, the oboe d'amore or the saxophone. Although
he does not orchestrate like an organist, he still remembers his own
instrument, making remarkable use of it in the third, fourth and sixth of his
symphonies.
The
literary connection, size and particular technical qualities of Tournemire's
symphonies have induced the few that have seen the scores to recall the work of
Gustav Mahler. Such a comparison needs justification, but there are certainly
points in common, apart from any consideration of the works as a whole. Mahler,
after all, found it necessary to support his musical discourse with
philosophical argument. We know from his letters that Tournemire knew some of
Mahler's symphonies and that he acknowledged that composer's lofty aspirations,
but the aesthetic and cultural tradition to which he belonged prevented him
recognising any personal affinity with this music, although he may have been
influenced by it sometimes, principally in orchestration.
Contrary
to w hat might be supposed, Charles Tournemire was not completely unknown as a
symphonist in his life-time, although he himself never heard all of his
symphonies. In Holland in particular, before 1930, they enjoyed some real if
ephemeral success, supported by his reputation as an organist and master of
improvisation. The relative social isolation in which Tournemire spent the last
years of his life, the fact that he died at the beginning of the war in 1939
and musical tendencies after 1945 tended to disregard the Wagner-Franck
tradition, brought Tournemire, as it were, a second death.
Like
the Fourth Symphony of Anton Bruckner, Tournemire's First
Symphony in A major, Opus 18, has been given the subtitle romantic. Written
in 1900, it is dedicated to the violinist and conductor Paul Viardot and was
performed at the Concerts classiques in Marseilles on 10th March 1901,
before its first performance in Paris on 6th May 1902 at the Société nationale
de musique, on both occasions under the direction of the composer.
The
formal conception of the work is directly influenced by Franck and it is
traditional by comparison with the symphonies that follow. The orchestration,
which finds an important place for the solo violin, already marks the tendency
of Tournemire to distinguish individual timbres in the whole orchestra. The
first of the four movements is an Andante, marked avec mystère (with
mystery), bringing out at once in the bass the cyclic theme of the work,
characterized by two leaps of a rising fifth. This introduction leads to an
energetic Allegro moderato, its development prepared by a return to the
material of the introduction. The playful sonority of the scherzo Allegro
spiritoso is coloured by the introduction of the harps. The slow movement
is a Largo, in the speed of a funeral march, transfiguring the cyclic
theme. As in the first movement, the solo violin adds brilliance to the final Allegro
energico, with its syncopated rhythm, associating the cyclic theme with
various episodes, spirited or relaxed in mood.
The
composition of the Fifth Symphony in F minor, Opus 47, took place in two
stages, the first in August 1913 in Switzerland, at the foot of the
Saint-Gothard, and the second during the following summer at Thônes in
Haute-Savoie, where the final double bar-line was written on 31st July, three
days before the declaration of war. The work, which Tournemire dedicated to his
wife, draws its inspiration from the mountains and combines this with the
objective element of one of the favourite forms of the composer, the chorale, a
subjective argument based on the idea of ascent towards the light. By
coincidence Richard Strauss was working at the same time on his Alpine
Symphony, in which the idea of ascent takes very much more concrete form.
The first movement of the Fifth Symphony is in the form of chorale
variations, the theme of which, announced by the woodwind, appears throughout
the work. A commentary on the score indicates that this chorale with variations
is inspired by the Alpine landscape, in which human anguish finds a powerful
echo. The re-appearances of the chorale theme are separated by variations that
alternate, slow-fast-slow-fast.
The
second movement has two parts. First a pastorale that allows a delicate
exploitation of the woodwind. Musically, the composer tells us, it is a Lied
that is developed and is of a mystical character, exalting all the poetry of
the mountain in its most intimate manifestations, where the smallest flower is
a whole world, singing of the glory of the Eternal: all is peaceful and the
heart is moved by the sounds of nature. The second part has the title Vers
la lumière (Towards the light). There is a joyful round-dance where the
theme of the chorale and of the pastorale join together, rising towards the
heights in a great burst of sound, precursor of the celebrations of Heaven.
The
Fifth Symphony was most often played in Tournemire's life-time. The
first complete performance was at the Hague with the orchestra of the Concerts
Diligentia under the direction of the composer on 10th March 1920. In France
Gabriel Pierné, who had heard the first movement in 1918, directed a first
performance with the orchestra of the Concerts Colonne at the Châtelet on 7th
January 1923.
Joël-Marie Fauquet
(English version by Keith Anderson)
Moscow
Symphony Orchestra
The
Moscow symphony Orchestra was established in 1989 and is under the direction of
the distinguished French musician Antonio de Almeida. The members of the
orchestra include prize-winners and laureates of International and Russian
music competitions, graduates of the conservatories of Moscow, Leningrad and
Kiev, who have played under conductors such as Svetlanov, Rozhdestvensky,
Mravinsky and Ozawa, in Russia and throughout the world. The orchestra toured
in 1991 to Finland and to England, where collaboration with a well known rock
band demonstrated readiness for experiment. A British and Japanese commission
has brought a series of twelve television programmes for international
distribution and in 1993 there was a highly successful tour of Spain. The
Moscow symphony Orchestra has a wide repertoire, with particular expertise in
the performance of contemporary works.
Antonio
de Almeida
Antonio
de Almeida enjoys a distinguished career as a conductor, having appeared with
the Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco orchestras in America, and the
Berlin Philharmonic, and the London and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras. He has
to his credit a number of award-winning recordings, including a recent release
of the major orchestral works of Joaquín Turina and an earlier recording of
original unedited overtures and ballet music by Offenbach, a composer on whom
he is acknowledged to be the leading authority today. His work on behalf of
French music has brought him, among other distinctions, the award of the Légion
d'honneur. Born in France, Antonio de Almeida studied with Paul Hindemith at
Yale University and started his career as a conductor with the Oporto Symphony
Orchestra in Portugal, later making his London début at the invitation of Sir
Thomas Beecham with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. For Marco Polo he has
recorded works by Glazunov, Malipiero, Sauguet and Tournemire.