Monday 19 September 2016

Composer or Conductor?

In North America he is mainly remembered as a conductor, thanks to his considerable achievements as music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra from 1952 to 1963.  But Paul Paray was very much more.  He was a prolific and not inconsiderable composer.  A "selected works" list on Wikipedia contains nearly 100 entries, covering chamber music, piano, orchestral, vocal, and choral works.  Much of his composition output dates from the years before 1930 -- in other words, from the first five decades of his very long lifespan of 93 years. 

(It's interesting to note in passing just how many conductors -- and musicians generally -- have managed to stay alive and professionally active into their nineties.  Maybe there's some hope for those of us who like to write about music!)

In 1931, Paray composed and conducted his Messe du cinquieme centenaire de la mort de Jeanne d'Arc ("Mass for the fifth centenary of the death of Joan of Arc").  It was given in Rouen Cathedral during the anniversary celebrations (eleven years after she was canonized a saint).

In the 1950s and early 1960s Paray made a remarkable series of recordings with his Detroit orchestra for the Mercury Living Presence record label, a company whose technology is still regarded as a landmark in lifelike musical sound reproduction.  Among the greatest was the truly extraordinary 1957 recording of the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony, in which the sound of the huge organ was captured with almost unbelievable richness and fidelity.  These recording sessions also yielded a taping of the Messe.  When the Mercury recordings were reissued on CD in 1991, the Messe was coupled with that justly-famous performance of the Saint-SaensAnd that's how I picked it up.

Paray's Messe is a captivating piece of music.  His idiom is half late Romantic, half Debussy.  There's no sign in this music of the currents of revolution sweeping through the musical world during Paray's lifetime.  Plainly he was "conservative" as a composer, but equally plainly he knew what effect he wanted to achieve.

Not the least unusual feature of the work is Paray's choice of text.  After the mid-nineteenth century, one finds relatively few concert-scaled settings of the mass text.  The old Austrian tradition of the mass for voices and orchestra (think of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven) had all but vanished after Schubert's time.  Major composers turned more and more to secular poetry and prose for textual material.

Paray's Messe may have been composed for an anniversary, but it carries no programmatic intention towards Joan of Arc whatsoever.  Nor is it even usable as a liturgical mass, as the Credo is omitted -- leaving only four of the five main sections of the Ordinary of the mass to be set to music.  It is purely a concert work, a work of considerable beauty, power, and some solemnity, but also very lush and colourful.

Much of the music's almost operatic character derives from the extensive parts for the four soloists, in many cases rising and falling in a manner that wouldn't be out of place in an operatic aria.  It's in the solo parts that some of the most Debussy-like progressions and turns of phrase are heard.

Conversely, the music for choir is often in more chordal style, often accompanied by grand orchestral effects such as the massed brasses and winds -- particularly notable in the Sanctus.  Rich textures and sound combinations are a trademark of Paray's orchestral style in this piece.

For me, the most intriguing aspect of this piece is that Paray has managed to compose a substantial work in a traditional musical idiom that is still completely original and unique.  That in itself is enough to give the lie to the old canard that melody and harmony are passe because nothing remains to be said in that musical language.