In Angustii

Well, Jack was bugging me, so I had to do it.

I had written about that sociopathic piece of music, the Grosse Fuge. And thrown in “And this, from a student of Haydn?”

That wasn’t right.

And Jack didn’t approve. So I struggled with him for a while. I mean, hey—how many people read this blog? How big is Haydn’s reputation, next to mine? And if we were gonna worry about anybody, shouldn’t it be Beethoven?

Not right.

Damn it. Look, Jack—and by the way, aren’t you dead?—it’s not that big a deal. And Haydn himself was famously a nice guy. Gracious. Good. One of his contemporaries called him the embodiment of Enlightenment's ideal of the honest man. (OK—give in to temptation, haul out the French. L’homme honnête! Now that’s class….) So he probably wouldn’t mind.

Marc.

Shit, am I ever gonna be free of you! I’m 56 years old, and you’re still able to say my name—Marc, and note the lack of exclamation mark! You had the quietest voice and, somehow, when you spoke, the heavens moved. Dammit—go putter in the garage. Build something. Stop bugging me—I haven’t defamed Franz Joseph Haydn.

Guess the response!

So I dug it out, the Lord Nelson Mass. Oh, hell, we’ll do the Latin (also classy): Missa in Angustii. Haven’t heard it in years, though I once played it for Raf, and argued it was a more sincere, more—well—honest work than Mozart’s Great Mass. Why not hear it again?

It’s amazing.

Also proof that the old can pull a surprise or two. It’s certainly traditional in content—the text follows the traditional Latin Mass. But wow—what the guy does, from the very first notes!

It’s pure terror.

OK, I enjoyed it enormously. Perfect music for a morning trot. Came home and looked it up. And discovered that, as usual, I’m not particularly original.

Everybody else thinks so too.

Well, that damn father of mine wouldn’t let me rest. He put me to read the whole article: here’s the skinny. The mass was written in that period when Napoleon was very near to conquering Europe. Austria was on edge, nerves were frayed. Haydn composed the work not knowing—no one did—that Napoleon had been defeated, and called it Missa in Angustii. A mass for troubled times, is sometimes the translation. But why not do the simpler thing?

A Mass in Anguished Times.

And was that enough for the old man?

NO! Then I had to download The Creation from Amazon—and pay 18 bucks as well—AND I had to read the biography of Haydn in Wikipedia.

OK—and are you listening, Jack?—here it is. Father is a barrel maker—or something, can’t remember. Mother was a servant. Musical family. Haydn at age six is sent to a relative to live and to develop himself as a musician. This the relative enables him to do, though he also doesn’t feed the child very well. Haydn serves as a choirboy until his voice changes. Actually, after. The empress complained that he sounded like a cow.

Thirty years in the employ of the Esterhazy family. Isolation for much of that time. And yes, he wore livery and did chores. Also composed like a fiend.

Had a completely unhappy marriage, which of course at the time he could not dissolve. So both he and his wife took lovers.

Several trips to London. Return  to Vienna. Teaches Beethoven, who predictably (and metaphorically) bit the hand that was trying to feed him. Composes the Creation over three years at the very end of the 18^th century.

Well, I listened to the first and part of the second sections.

And—you can guess this, right?—it’s friggin’ A.

And here again, he starts out with an amazing section of the chaos—the void before God filled the world. Full of dissonance, completely surprising.

Well the old man was right, as old men often are. The old Haydn reveals himself as something completely new. And my dead Jack is true to life—a fair guy who wants his kids to do the right thing.

Now will you go away?

Grosse Fuge

When Beethoven Goes Bad

It’s not music you choose to listen to. It’s also music you can’t stop listening to.

At least I couldn’t. I woke groggy and hung-over, after being awakened by a craving for potato chips at 11 PM. It’s the effect of a drug—Remeron—that's meant to jolt even catatonically-depressed people into paroxysms of hilarity and gaiety.

Works, too. But it does have this little side-effect—fierce cravings for certain foods.

Most of the time, it’s coffee ice cream. Last night it was potato chips. Followed—not wisely—by rum.

OK—the world of the hangover. Know that territory. It stays for a couple of hours, makes you miserable, goes away. Fluids and sweat help. Also getting out of the house. So I took my walk, and listened to the final quartet of Beethoven.

Or so I thought. It turns out that the Emerson String Quartet, for no reason that I can figure out, plays Quartet number 13 after Quartet number 16.

OK, whatever….

What I should have anticipated was that the Emerson would finish the quartets with…

…the GrosseFuge.

Let’s get this out of the way. It’s not music. It is Beethoven applying every last bit of reason against every last ounce of anguish. The effect—especially when listening with headphones—is of being locked in a cell with four howling and violent jackals.

“Repellent” is the word most people used about it in the 19^th century. Beethoven himself wrote—if the blogger can be trusted—“when the instruments have to struggle with monstrous difficulties…when each has different figures to cut across each other…amid a host of dissonances…when the Babylonian confusion is complete, the result is a concert only the Moroccans can enjoy.” (talkclassical.com) It was so disagreeable that Beethoven’s publisher begged him not to use it—as he wanted—as the last movement of the Quartet number 13. And Beethoven—not famous for tractability—actually acceded. And then published the Gosse Fuge as a stand-alone piece.

Well, I’ve heard it, of course. Turning on the radio, it will crop up from time to time. String quartet concerts…obviously. And there are arrangements for string orchestra and double piano as well.

It’s as ruthlessly logical as a psychopath. It’s also as fiendishly desperate as a junkie seeking his fix. It’s wildly unpleasant music.

Which is what Beethoven wanted. Or so I think, at least. Because I have been locked into the last quartets for the last month now, and, my take? Well, I just listened to it again. It’s aural rape. Beethoven replaces the string instruments with razors. And it’s structurally a hurricane—starting with gentle winds, then picking up in ferocity, raging, howling, battering. The eye descends, and a stupidly classical theme is produced. Then the virazón— the eye wall cracks and you’re into the fiercest part of the storm.

And Beethoven doesn’t spare anyone. He takes this snuff film of music through every last gash, every scream, every jolt of terror. The look of terror in the victim’s eyes? He shrieks with laughter.

And he wills it on himself. He puts himself on the rack and begs himself—torturer and victim both—to flail harder, remorselessly, unrelentingly. He glories in the blood spewing from his wounds; he kisses the whip that lashes his exposed viscera—all skin and muscle shredded now.

And this from a student of Haydn?

“This work is drenched with sex,” said a conductor years ago, referring to Debussy. The Grosse Fuge? Make no mistake—nothing de Sade wrote is as violent as this music.

That said…

…why is it healthy?

There’s nowhere he won’t go. He never backs down. He willingly dons the executioner’s hood and wills him to work. He faces every fear.

“Do you like the Grosse Fuge?” asks the blog talkclassical.com.

The question is stupid. Do you like brutality, ferocity, pummeling rage?

No.

But it’s there. And when, like the hurricane, it descends on you, you can only batten down, listen in terror as the winds shriek, the door rattles, the flower pots sail through the air and hurtle against your windows. It’s not music to be liked. It’s music to be experienced.