Arthur Honegger
Symphonies
* Pacific 231, Mouvement symphonique No. 1
* Rugby, Mouvement symphonique No. 2
* Mouvement symphonique No. 3
* Pastorale d'ete
* Symphony No. 1
* Symphony No. 2 "pour cordes"
* Symphony No. 3 "Liturgique"
* Symphony No. 4 "Deliciae Basilienses"
* Symphony No. 5 "Di Tre Re"
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/Fabio Luisi
RSR 6132 {DDD} TT: 174:13
Summary for the Busy Executive: Stunning.
Between the two world wars, I think the smart money would have given the
title of Next Great French Composer after Debussy and Ravel to either
Honegger or Milhaud. It didn't work out that way. Somehow, Poulenc --
viewed by many of his contemporaries as frivolous and determinedly minor --
snuck in ahead. Since most people find extremely difficult holding in
their minds more than one artist in any category, many really fine interwar
French (or Francophone) composers, besides Honegger and Milhaud, have
fallen into neglect.
Honegger disappeared from concert programs (although not from recordings)
for several reasons, mainly cultural rather than musical. A rather bold
experimentalist, he didn't follow the One True Path of experiment, which
turned out to be post-Webernian serialism. Second, like Milhaud, he tied
his artistic fortune to the poet Paul Claudel, rather than Eluard or
Apollinaire. As Claudel's reputation fell, so did Honegger's, and indeed
he was seen in much the same light as Claudel: a Christian cultural
fossil, conservative to the point of reactionary.
Of course, this really has little to do with music, and Honegger knew
his stuff. I can't call readily to mind a bad piece, and at very little
prompting, my head gets filled with terrific ones, not all of them his
"hits," by any means. Someone once described his music as "Debussy Meets
Bach," and one can see the point. However, Honegger gets his Bach through
the lens of French proto-classicists like Dukas and Saint-Saens, and
Honegger is much more ruthlessly concise in his approach to the orchestra
than Debussy. His orchestra does push-ups to become as lean as he can get
it. Furthermore, like many other French (all right, Swiss) composers of
his generation, he comes under the heady spell of Stravinsky, particularly
the Stravinsky of the "barbaric" period. In the Twenties, Honegger works
very hard to discover his characteristic voice. Unlike many composers, he
does so with a series of masterpieces, including probably his most popular
work, Le Roi David. He wrote it under the gun of a quick deadline
(revising it two years later). The story of its composition is too good
not to tell.
Reporters learned that Honegger had produced more than an hour's worth
of music in less than two months, and asked him how he did it. Honegger
replied that he began to write the oratorio in a Bach-like style, but soon
realized that the style was too complex for him to finish in time. He then
tried Stravinsky, but again after a few numbers, he reached the same
conclusion. "What did you do?" asked the reporter. "Oh," replied
Honegger, "I just fell back on Massenet."
The story (and the oratorio) typifies for me Honegger's music of the
Twenties: a jauntily eclectic, optimistic hodgepodge. Add to this a mix
of cabaret-jazz, Debussian nostalgia, a bit of Schola Cantorum "modernism,"
and a drop of Satie, and you have most of his Twenties output. In the
Thirties, he focuses his music more to a characteristic profile: very
serious in tone and often monumental in aim. The Forties and Fifties see
a darkening of his music. It's almost unrelentingly pessimistic, even
in works and forms normally considered "abstract." Circumstances (the
Occupation of France, the neglect of his postwar output) and very bad
health contributed to his gloom. When you compare a joyfully bounding
score like Pacific 231 or Rugby or the serenity of Pastorale d'ete (1920)
to the last symphony, you may well wonder what happened to him. The
optimism and vigor transformed to some extent into defiance, typified by
the title of his autobiography, I Am a Com poser. For me, his finest work
is Jeanne d'Arc au bucher (1938) (Ormandy, of all people, led a terrific
performance on Columbia), which culminates his Christian period. It is
also, in many ways, a love song to France.
The symphony has never fared particularly well in France, which does better
in music for the theater, songs, and chamber work. Most French examples
seem sports, as if you actually met a duck with Groucho glasses and a
mustache. Honegger's great immediate predecessor was Saint-Saens--hardly
the foundation of a tradition. Indeed, one could reasonably argue that
Honegger *is* the Great French Symphonist. However, right now his five
symphonies seem to lie largely beneath critical (even popular critical)
radar. The Penguin survey on the symphony, for example, doesn't discuss
them; indeed, it mentions Honegger (his Horace Victorieux) only in the
context of Prokofiev.
Honegger's symphonies get recorded every now and then. As far as I'm
concerned, the best interpreters are Ansermet (Symphonies 2, 3, and 4),
Karajan (Symphonies 2 and 3), and Baudo (Symphonies 1-5). Dutoit's
readings on Erato strike me as seriously clueless. I recommend avoiding
them, even though they somehow garner Jim Svejda's enthusiasm. Luisi's is
a good set, and it does give you some reasonable, although hardly brilliant
in terms of choice, extras. In all, it provides the novice with a decent
introduction to Honegger's orchestral music. As for the fillers, you can
hear them more excitingly done by Bernstein and Baudo, among others.
The first symphony stands apart from the others--not only in time (about
12 years separate it from the second), but in approach. It is far more
abstract, more a working out of form than a conscious attempt to express
one's life. Very little distinguishes its character from the three
mouvements symphoniques. Indeed, none of the latter would find themselves
out of place in a symphony. However, Honegger conceived them separately,
and they don't really hang together as a group. Pacific 231 and Rugby
constitute two of his biggest hits, and one hears the exhilarating
influence of Stravinsky's Le Sacre in both, particularly in the big-muscle
rhythms and the acrid harmonies. The first symphony is a lot leaner, but
one hears those same Stravinskian echoes, as well as newer ones from
Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex. Honegger's Symphony No. 1 may even predate
(I'm not sure) Stravinsky's first mature instrumental symphony, and
its neo-classicism, while present, is in any case not Stravinsky's
neo-classicism. It had a fair success in its time. My mother's 1938
college textbook on the symphony deals with it--one of the few modern
symphonies included. Despite its status as a maiden voyage, as it were,
this symphony shows Honegger's mastery of the form from the get-go. The
first movement manages to weld together with stunning counterpoint a
bonanza of ideas into a fiercely propulsive design. The slow movement
comes off as a very dark Bachian aria, and it turns out that it foretells
much of Honegger's late output. The scherzo finale ranks as my favorite
of the symphony, with a bubbly, Gallic flavor to it--a less naive Satie,
if you will. The composer never again matches its cheer.
Honegger began the second symphony during the Nazi occupation. It's mainly
a cold, almost-dead introduction interrupted by a savage allegro. Written
almost entirely for strings (in the last movement, Honegger introduces a
chorale tune on a solo trumpet), it really doesn't need other instruments.
It's a "black-and-white" music; the contrasts of mood and idea are more
marked. Unlike certain string-orchestra works, however, you're never
invited to admire Honegger's string technique. It's there, of course, but
as such it stays in the background. Although in retrospect you may admire
Honegger's variety of texture, you remain aware mainly of the music, rather
than of its craft. The second movement is again dark, but not as
self-consciously contrapuntal as its counterpart in the first symphony.
It reminds me a bit of Borodin on downers. The finale has been described
as a "premonition of victory" (Honegger completed the symphony in 1942).
It's certainly heroic, but hardly optimistic, even with the concluding
chorale. It's an angry gigue, into which Honegger injects his considerable
contrapuntal skill. Long stretches move in fugato, and the overall effect
intensifies the rhythm.
For me, the third symphony (1945) is the most powerful of the five. The
liner notes (by Harry Halbreich, the writer who introduced me to Honegger's
music) assert that the subtitle, "liturgical," has little to do with
religion. Actually, very few symphonies serve an overtly liturgical
function. However, each movement subtitle--"Dies irae," "De profundis
clamavi," and "Dona nobis pacem," respectively--does indicate the general
character of its corresponding movement. It has as much to do with
religion as T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets. Halbreich also calls the
symphony "almost atonal," by which he really means "highly dissonant." I
know of no atonal Honegger work, in the sense of Schoenbergian atonality,
and the symphony is no more dissonant than Pacific 231, or any of the other
four symphonies, for that matter. One can point to passages in each with
this harmonic character. The first movement, a savage allegro, opens with
a passage that sounds as if the world has become unstuck. As in its
first-symphony equivalent, the movement bristles with themes, but the
counterpoint is less conventional, the various ideas working out on their
own planes of sound. The second movement, probably the single most
affecting in the entire cycle, succeeds mainly because it takes its time.
It doesn't give up everything all at once. Even though the subtitle
implies great agony, the movement begins calmly, even serenely. It moves
over a very long arch; indeed, it runs the longest by far of any Honegger
symphonic movement. Its structure is, in fact, that of two arches: a
long one and a mini. Gradually, elements of dissonance and distress get
introduced, and the composer screws up the tension to a great climax, which
breaks about half-way through into the consolation of the opening. The
tension rises again, though not as high, and falls back to serenity. The
movement cost Honegger much work, and it shows by implication. He seems
to be "just singing," and since that almost never happens from anybody over
a length of more than thirteen minutes, one can conclude that the art was
spent hiding art. The finale begins as a brutal march. Again, Honegger
turns up the tension gradually. The psychic suffering shows itself here
more fully than in the previous movement. Lamentations continually break
out over the march beat, and much of the drama of the music lies in
wondering which element--the brutality or the suffering--will win out.
The brutality builds to a climax, then dissipates in a puff of smoke
to a prayer for peace, a grand, noble idea introduced by solo cello and
commented on by solo violin and a hovering, bird-like flute (first heard at
the end of the previous movement). It breaks your heart. One of the great
musical documents of the war.
The Symphony No. 4 ("the delights of Basel") Honegger wrote for his friend
and patron, the remarkable Swiss conductor Paul Sacher. The composer
intended it as light and genial, a kind of "Pastorale" symphony, but
despite its obvious craft, it's the least successful in delivering that
kind of emotional payload. There's lots to admire about it, particularly
the chamber-like scoring. However, a dark undercurrent is never far away
and also never truly integrated into the work. For that reason, I consider
it the weakest of the symphonies. I miss the strong forward impulse of the
other symphonies. It wanders and natters far more than the composer can
get away with. The best movement for me is the last, a mordant little
scherzo-march, with a sad center and coda.
The subtitle of the fifth symphony, "Di Tre Re," turns out to be a pun.
It means either "the three kings" or "the three Ds," referring to the
low note that concludes each of its three movements. Most commentators,
including Halbreich, dismiss the first meaning, but I'm not so sure. I
find it hard to believe that a composer so self-aware as Honegger and so
driven to injecting his work with extra-musical ideas wanted us to attend
to only the surface, implied by the second meaning. Some years ago, I came
across a letter from the composer to a friend, in which he described the
last movement as a "march of human folly," which counters much of the view
of this symphony as pure abstraction. Halbreich sees it as touched by the
malign influence of Honegger's fatal heart condition. Certainly, the
music expresses great weariness, especially in its heavy opening bars--a
thickly-scored chorale. It never truly shakes off its funk. On the other
hand, it is so masterfully written, so beautiful in its singing, and so
mature in its affect, this provides an artistic consolation to its
spiritual pessimism. The first movement moves to a dead-march gait over
a huge span. The work progresses as much by musical iconography as
normal formal signposts. The dead march climaxes with the simultaneous
re-entrance of the chorale, and the movement winds down with woodwind
solos capering to the soft background of the chorale ("ghostly," writes
Halbreich). The second movement, a contrapuntal allegretto, juxtaposes
great delicacy with an ironic bumptiousness. In many ways, it reminds me
of a Mahler Laendler. By the movement's center, however, the blues come
again, almost out of nowhere, and this infects the opening music's return.
It turns into something more uneasy and sinister. For some reason, perhaps
polemical, Halbreich insists on calling these themes "dodecaphonic" and
points out the occurrence of retrogrades and inversions. But it's not
dodecaphonic in the currently-accepted sense, and, really, these
contrapuntal maneuvers have been around since the Renaissance. The finale
is another driving, angry allegro, into which variations on the opening
chorale muscle in and which suddenly drops to nothing at the end. It's the
world winking out with a whimper.
Luisi does very well indeed with the symphonies, most effective, I think,
in the second, although all five compete with the best out there. The
playing from the band is very fine. The adagio of the third never runs out
of gas, and the texture--which in Honegger can become quite busy--never
turns into mud. Luisi's fourth is the weakest account, but the fourth is
also the weakest symphony, or at least the hardest to penetrate. Not even
Ansermet got it, although I have no idea what "it" might be. The sound is
bright and in-your-face, just the thing for Honegger.
Steve Schwartz
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