A composer friend and occasional collaborator, Barend Schipper in The Netherlands, once explained to me how the modern ear, with its reverential and oh-so-serious attitude toward Mozart, often missed the humour in his essence. Tragedy and humour are not separate entities, he maintained, but crucial elements of a whole. His remarks reminded me of Shakespeaean scholar G. Wilson Knight who, in The Wheel of Fire, I believe, maintained that King Lear illustrates a kind of cosmic humour that plays out through human lives.
At the outset of Tafelmusik’s recent performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony under conductor Bruno Weil I certainly expected cosmos and metaphysics to permeate this esteemed orchestra’s take on the most influential symphony ever. I expected some sense of daring innovation that defied tradition, as the composer’s personal turmoil shaped itself into a breathtaking masterpiece that one still discusses in hushed tones. I did not, however, expect so much earthy humour, so much surprising detail, such variety of audacious individual sounds and, in turn, a striking revelation about both Beethoven’s creative mind and his humanity. It was a performance I’ll never forget.
The program notes suggested that we “listen with ears more comfortable with the symphonies of Mozart and early Beethoven and the operas of Salieri and Rossini” and awareness of this late 18th/early 19th century musical context made good sense of Weil’s unforced and perhaps mischievous interpretation. Beethoven, born in 1770, was creatively a creature of his musical past but also driven to new musical form and language, and here one could experience idioms of past and present working out a new relationship. One could hear each note, each passage, the individuality of each instrument’s sound, all in distinct contribution to the musical whole. One could sense the daring of Beethoven’s writing because one was made repeatedly aware of each part of it.
A composer writes notes, not necessarily meaning, and Weil gave us a thoroughly involving musical experience as we felt Beethoven pushing at boundaries of music and, thus, social decorum. One could wonder, in the second movement for instance, how an impish piccolo could fit in with its lithe audacity as the strings amassed their collective sound to the reassuring yet ominous punctuation of the tympani. Though deaf, Beethoven certainly knew the sounds that instruments, individually and collectively, could make and if there was compositional tension here, there was also humour and boldness through flippancy. What’s this? A collective clucking like gossping chickens in farmyard hyperactivity? In the holiest of holies, the 9th Symphony? No doubt, Beethoven could chuckle to himself even as he explored his despair.
It made sense that the Adagio didn’t seem a sublime ethereal stratum beyond our planet and human reach, but more the song of a body worn down by life on earth yet singing its connection to the universe. Again, Weil challenged us to hear the variety and richness of Beethoven’s method, to resolve the myriad sounds not meant to soothe but to be heard and felt in whole experience. If, in the Finale, one might smile at flippant pizzicati, the most touching moment came with the celli taking up the main theme as one vulnerable and gently assertive voice, as if hope could emerge from human chaos that, say, Brueghel would paint. When all strings joined in, we could sense brotherhood not as an abstraction but something born of flesh. And if we didn’t get the humanness of humanity, and got too scrubbed clean and abstract with idealism, Beethoven provided a flatulent bassoon to bring us back to reality.
Weil’s achievement was to bring the 9th Symphony down to earth and make it, with its variety of occasionally rude sounds, a very complex and human place to be. Appropriately, the soloists each brought an ease to their individual exuberance and each sang with assertive poise and clarity, with inherent and unforced dignity, with warm and positive vibration. The marvelous Tafelmusik Chamber Choir, in the Beethoven and in the selections from Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Part that opened the program, consistently offered an almost rugged finesse and a meaty blend of longing and spiritual achievement that is always the human condition. The always compelling interaction of distinct solo voices and small groupings within the choir created pulsations of vocal texture throughout each composition. There were riches everywhere indeed!