Commentators on music commonly refer to this or that piece as being
'nostalgic' expecting their readers immediately to understand what they are
talking about.  Of course what they mean by a piece BEING nostalgic is that
it is presumed to make a majority of listeners FEEL nostalgic or empathize
with nostalgic elements in the music.  But what really IS 'nostalgia' in
music?

Dictionary.com defines nostalgia as 'a bittersweet longing for things,
persons, or situations of the past.' Paul Griffiths in last Sunday's New
York Times ('Romantic Ghosts in a Rueful Present') characterizes nostalgic
elements of the music of Valentin Silvestrov as the 'persistent topic' of
'farewell.' But I really believe Griffiths is talking about nostalgia, a
surpising subject from a man I've always considered a Modernist where the
new is always better than the old.  But of course Griffiths doesn't really
LIKE Silvestrov's neo-Romanticism or Post-Modernism.  Instead, Griffiths
has his prose exude poison-pill compliments like the following:

   'Still, overt poignancy in this music is likely to be precious, and
   it is rather through the holes in his outworn ideas that Mr. Silvestrov
   discovers magic.  The old signs have rust on them ... and the rust
   is beautiful.'

Whatever Mr. Griffiths has to say about it, I think nostalgia is a worthy
topic of discussion in music.  Perhaps readers have additional thoughts
that may prove enlightening on the subject.  And I need some help on Mr.
Griffiths' concept of 'farewell' nostalgia (see below).  But for what its
worth, here are my two bits on the subject:

A cursory search of the internet on the key words 'composer, nostalgia,
symphony' cranks out a pile of references, forty percent of which belong
to Strauss, Rachmaninoff, Elgar and Mahler.  In the case of the Strauss
references, it's easy to detect the nostalgia because of the texts in 'Der
Rosenkavalier' and 'Four Last Songs,' where the extramusical elements can
direct one's thoughts.  For Mahler, there are the kiddie quotes and the
longing for youth in the 'Death in Venice' Adagietto.  For Rachmaninoff,
there's the standard bio-byte of his longing for the good old pre-
revolutionary days.  For Elgar, we get a quotes like the following:

   'The celebrated nobility of his music has been seen as evocative of
   British imperial glory, but its deeper qualities are of aspiration
   and nostalgia: they are qualities of an intimately personal expression,
   but also of a style created at the end of a tradition.  For though
   the Straussian tone poem "Falstaff" is one of his subtlest creations,
   most usually his symphonic forms looked back to Schumann and, in
   point of thematic transformation, Franck.

For me 'nostalgia' in music has something to do with not just looking back
to the past, but doing it with longing.  George Rochberg has been accused
of being nostalgic, but he treats past styles as if they were present and
alive today.  He lives them rather than longs for them.  Not so with Elgar.
For me the longing in his music is probably related to past loves that he
couldn't have.

Griffiths mentions one way to establish his 'farewell' nostalgia, 'a four-
note' scalewise descent in the minor mode.' Other standard means of evoking
nostalgia by purely musical means includes the Romantic gestures of leapy
melodies, swell-and-ebb dynamics, rubato, suspended harmonies.  Semi-
extramusical means include references or near references to bygone styles,
instrumentations and tunes, not to mention actual texts.

But when I get to Mr. Griffiths' views on the subject, I am somewhat at a
loss:

   'Many of the world's great songs are addressed to the departing:
   the recently dead, lost lovers, missed opportunities.  Music speaks
   of these things as memory speaks, makes us aware both of distance
   and of remaining closeness.  Nothing is lost, music says: it is
   here.  But also: it is here only because it cannot come back.'

It is here only because it cannot come back??

   'In other words, music offers the consolation that what has gone is
   always available, while at the same time insisting, rudely or gently,
   that it has, indeed, gone.  Like memory, music can store.'

Hmm, music can store.  And pigs can fly.  Or is Griffiths saying 'people
can remember'?

   'But like time in the everyday world, it passes.  It is memory to
   which its audience has only temporary access, and it can thereby
   waver between these two spheres, of the remembered and of immediate
   experience.  From this duality comes its capacity to be realistic in
   its solace and also in its sternness.'

I don't see how the music can waver.  Certainly the listener's thoughts can
waver.  Yes music can provide solace.  But is it at the same time a stern
schoolmarm shaking the listener like some movie character saying 'Snap out
of it!'?

   'A final cadence, particularly in slow music, can also sound
   like a valediction, because this is the point at which music not
   only expresses passing but itself recedes.  This vanishing and this
   eternal presence have been the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov's
   persistent topics through the last three decades ...'

Yes, when music ends, it says goodbye.  It can do it with a door slam like
the W.M.B.  Enigma variation of Elgar, or it can go on interminably like
Kilar's 'Exodus.' But Griffiths gets mystic here with his 'vanishing' and
'eternal presence.'

Does what he have to say make sense to any of you out there? Perhaps I'm
missing something profound.  But if I were missing something profound,
wouldn't I be nostalgic about it?

Jeff Dunn
[log in to unmask]
Alameda, CA