Tuesday 19 March 2019

Celtic Legend in Music

With St. Patrick's day but recently passed, I'm choosing today to introduce to you a composer who was not Irish himself, but was in his early years intensely fascinated by the legends, folklore, music, and art of the Celtic peoples -- and of the Emerald Isle in particular.

Arnold Bax (1883-1953) was born in suburban London, and lived and worked for most of his life in England.  The years which he passed in Dublin, as a young man, were deeply influential in the development of his orchestral style -- a style developed and honed through a series of symphonic poems.  Today I'm discussing two of the finest of these "Celtic" works.

First, let's take up the earlier of these two symphonic poems, The Garden of Fand, composed between 1913 and 1916.  Like many of Bax's major works, it is written for a larger than usual orchestra with multiple woodwind and brass.  

In Celtic mythology, Fand is the daughter of Manannan, lord of the oceans, and lives in a magical garden on an island which appears and disappears at her will.  The mysterious vanishing "island beyond the West" is one of the great recurring themes of Celtic mythology, and the garden of Fand is just one of its many manifestations.

Bax's music might perhaps be better described as a musical impression, since it does not narrate the detailed legend of Fand and her encounter with the hero, Cuchulain.  Instead, the work presents a simpler narrative in a tripartite structure: a ship floating on the enchanted surface of the Atlantic is cast up on the shores of the island, the sailors are drawn into Fand's magical world of eternal dance and song, and the sea rises to overwhelm and drown them as the island vanishes with its immortal inhabitants.

The quiet opening pages of this music achieve a near-miraculous sound which paints the image of the ocean rising and falling while the sunlight sparkles on the surface.  As we listen to these gently heaving waves of sound, we realize that each one is a rising and falling arpeggio with its various segments passing quickly from one woodwind instrument to another.  These woodwind arpeggios float on a sea of iridescent pianissimo harps and first violins divided into no fewer than eight parts. Deeper tones are heard below the surface, moving more slowly in their own good time.  After a few minutes of this sea music, the sound builds up into a series of ever-larger, surging waves, which swell up to a peak and then break off.  There couldn't be a clearer sound picture of the ship being tossed up onto the island's shore.

Instantly we are surrounded, not by the sounds of the sea, but by lively, piping dances which lead us into the heart of the magical garden.  After the dancing dies away, the slower, lyrical theme which next appears is uniquely scored for a unison of flute and cor anglais over divided strings; it represents the enchanting, enticing song of Fand herself, the Lady of this enchanted land.  The song is repeated, more powerfully scored, but then dies away.  The dance then resumes, and eventually rises to a brief recall of Fand's song, and then towards what is plainly the climax of the piece.

And it is right there, when the dance reaches its absolute peak, that it suddenly transforms into the opening sea music -- but played fortississimo, thundered out by the full orchestral forces in a series of what have now become mighty surging waves of sound.  As this immense catastrophe dies away, the music resumes its original aspect of sunlight sparkling on the gentle swells, with Fand's magical island nowhere to be seen as twilight falls.

The second, and equally intense work of Bax to be discussed here is Tintagel.  Again, the legends came forward to inspire Bax, when he visited the famous ruined castle on the northern coast of Cornwall.  Tintagel has for years been linked with the mythical world of King Arthur.  But more than this: the castle stands in a wild and dramatic setting atop high cliffs, almost cut off from the land by two deeply cut bays, and open to winds and storms from half or more of the compass.

Bax's music here lacks the firm structural basis of The Garden of Fand.  Although a tripartite shape can be discerned, it's much looser in form, relying mainly on the contrast between two main themes to evoke different aspects of the setting and the legends associated with it.  The work begins with bird-song trills and a surging figure evoking the sea again, but in a very different way from Fand.  This surging wave pattern underlies a rising fanfare-like theme in the horns whose dotted figures gradually develop into a memorable climax.

As it fades away, the second main theme arises in the strings, an extended melodic song evoking the nobility of the Round Table.  This theme is developed at some length, with different portions of it selected out for repetition and transformation.  A restless energy begins to invade the music, and fanfares announce a musical battle.  This battle music begins as a free fugato on what sounds like an inversion of the second theme.  Soon, militant tramping rhythms seize control and the orderly nature of the music disintegrates into fragments, with rapid descending figures dominating the texture.

As the battle music dies away in darkness, the opening theme appears again on the horns, but with less certainty than before.  Eventually the power of the opening grows into the music again.  And now the noble second theme arises in the full power of the orchestra, in partnership with the opening fanfares and sea music, to tie all the threads together in the main climax of the work.  This dies away into a quieter passage of reminiscence, before a final return of the majestic opening fanfare brings Tintagel to a grand fortissimo conclusion.

Bax's music is rare to the point of being non-existent on North American concert programmes, but I did have the good fortune to hear a rare live performance of The Garden of Fand some years ago, with the Toronto Symphony conducted by Sir Andrew Davis.  The stage at Roy Thomson Hall was as packed with players as for a Mahler symphony.  And, like the major climaxes of Mahler's epic works, the catastrophic wave pouring over Fand's island landed on the ears with the force of a physical blow -- a force which is all but impossible to reproduce in a recording.