According to the New York Times music critics, some music is not always appropriate for the current political climate. Presumably, the overplayed compositions of the core repertoire are always appropriate.
Maybe Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture would be ironically appropriate for this year’s Independence Day festivities. After all, the Russians triumphed over the French in 1812 and over the Americans in 2016.
Here is an idea for American orchestras’ Fourth of July concerts: an all-Russian program. Start with Balakirev’s Overture on Three Russian Songs, then Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, intermission, Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony.
And the orchestral version of Balakirev’s Islamey… oops, no, scratch that one. Pad out the time to the fireworks and the 1812 Overture with assorted Russian marches. But I digress.
Too many music critics fall for the notion that the best music just naturally rises to the top, but the truth is that luck has a lot to do with it. How else can you explain that Johann Sebastian Bach was essentially forgotten for a century and a half, and that Michael Haydn is only now being brought out of obscurity?
Nor do I have any faith in composition contests to name worthy winners, even though there is in the history books one example of just such a thing happening: in Denmark, almost a century ago.
As so often happens, the contest committee had advanced a lot of bland, boring choices to the second round. Fortunately for Vagn Holmboe, and for us, the conductor Egisto Tango, chairman of the committee, had been absent for the first round.
When Tango returned, he rescued the committee from their shortsightedness and stupidity. Unsatisfied by the second round picks, he asked to see the scores eliminated in the first round. When he came upon the score of Holmboe’s Second Symphony, he knew he had a winner.
Maybe it was just an accident of timing that I really started to get to know the Symphonies of Vagn Holmboe during President Obama’s two terms. I had been aware of Holmboe, world famous in Denmark like Nielsen, since President Bill Clinton’s first term.
I had a subscription to CD Review, a magazine that went out of print at some point prior to 1996. I don’t remember where I left those magazines, nor do I remember which Holmboe recordings they reviewed, but I do remember getting the impression that Holmboe's music is consistently grim, fierce and bleak. Which is a lot better than many 20th Century composers, whose music is bleak and dull.
It wasn’t until some time after 2006 that I realized I had access to the Naxos Music Library, and not until 2009 that it occurred to me to look Holmboe up in there. I think it was the Eighth Symphony that I heard first. The ferocious intensity of the first movement had me hooked, even though the rest of the Symphony did not make much of an impression on me at the time.
Overview of the Holmboe Symphonies
Symphony No. 1, Opus 4. Holmboe's shortest Symphony, and it is such a delight that it feels like it's way too short. If there is any hesitation to try it out, one criticism of it, "sounds more like a dance suite," should overcome that hesitance.
Symphony No. 2, Opus 15. An important step on Holmboe's way to his mature style and his concept of "metamorphosis." Much more serious than the First, longer, not as tuneful, the Second is an absorbing narrative from start to finish.
Symphony No. 3, Opus 25, "Sinfonia Rustica." Here we hear the more cheerful side of Holmboe. Would you have guessed that it was written during the Nazi occupation of Denmark?
The cheerful opening Allegro non troppo could be seen as a gesture of defiance towards the Nazi occupiers. The lengthy, slow middle movement recalls Nielsen's take on the melancholy temperament, but without that same sense of resigned passiveness, and there is central episode with an almost combative mood that is more what is expected from Holmboe. The closing Vivace gradually builds back up to the exultation that began the Symphony.
Symphony No. 4, Opus 29, "Sinfonia Sacra." God exists but He doesn't care about people. This is a good explanation not only for the suffering of so many innocent people but also the comfortable lives of evil, wealthy people. Holmboe believed in God, but not a God who cares all that much about us.
Vagn Holmboe's brother died in a concentration camp, and he wrote this Symphony to his memory, his only choral Symphony. The Gloria (fifth of six movements) seems to me to have no trace of irony, though it does remind me of the Rustic Symphony which Holmboe wrote during the war.
Idea for a concert: video game composer Nobuo Uematsu in the first half, making sure to include “One-Winged Angel” from one of the Final Fantasy games.
Symphony No. 5, Opus 35. Aside from its col legno beginning, the first movement might on first hearing seem like more of the same old Holmboe: gritty, serious, driven. But this is music that repays repeated hearings; the pentatonic leanings of the first movement are likely to be more apparent the second or third time one listens.
The Andante affetuoso shows Holmboe's typical objective lyricism, here more or less dominated by the oboes. It is the concluding Vivace that really sets this Symphony apart from Holmboe's later works, with an upbeat mood that is almost as cheerful as in the Third Symphony.
I recommend starting a concert with John Williams’s Cowboys Overture (I have musical reasons for this suggestion), then Mozart’s Piano Concerto in B-flat major, K. 595 (more for historical than musical reasons), intermission, then this Holmboe Symphony.
However, if you’re afraid of people leaving at intermission, put Holmboe in the first half, and then Williams and Mozart in the second half. Though maybe Mozart might come across kind of boring and anti-climactic after Williams and Holmboe.
Symphony No. 6, Opus 43. This one is just in two movements. Not much seems to happen in the first movement, but it really held my interest throughout. In the second movement, Holmboe uses what he could not have known would become a stereotypical rap rhythm (as in rap prior to hip-hop).
Symphony No. 7, Opus 50. Not as combative as the Eighth, but very intense. The structure is significantly less traditional than that of the Eighth: we could say that the Seventh consists of the traditional four movements but with three interludes inserted between them, each called "Intermedio" and marked Andantino, each lasting a tiny bit more than a minute.
Perhaps Holmboe felt the unusual structure was necessary to highlight his now overt aesthetic principle of continuous thematic metamorphosis (a principle wholly compatible with a more traditional structure, as the Eighth shows us).
Chamber Symphony No. 1, Opus 53. There are timpani right off the bat. I guess “chamber” means no unpitched percussion, and probably no trombones or tuba either. Though about the same length as the “full orchestra” First Symphony, the First Chamber Symphony is definitely middle period Holmboe, driven and serious.
The idea of Holmboe writing a Sinfonietta seems ludicrous. If you shop online, be sure to hear a 30-second sample from the energetic finale.
Symphony No. 8, Opus 56. This Symphony is the perfect expression of our modern lives: constant struggle, with the relaxing moments being only brief respites before the next crisis. There is practically no lyricism, but the intense narrative is so well crafted that the attention doesn't wander even in the quieter moments.
The "molto intensivo" marking for the opening Allegro is more for the benefit of the performers than the listeners. Although the rest of the Symphony doesn't exhibit quite the same level of intensity, the unflinching quality persists to the bitter end. This is one of the top ten Symphonies of the 20th Century.
Consciously or subconsciously, John Williams continued the thematic metamorphosis of Holmboe’s Eighth Symphony in his Catch Me If You Can soundtrack.
Sinfonia in Memoriam, Opus 65. Originally billed as the Ninth Symphony despite the composer’s objection, the Sinfonia in Memoriam should technically not be included in this list. However, it is included in the boxed set of Holmboe’s Symphonies on the Bis label.
The middle Allegro vivace shows Holmboe really knew how to write for the strings col legno. It is music that crackles with great energy. The rest of it has not yet made much of an impression on me, but eventually will.
Symphony No. 9, Opus 95. Many years passed with Danes waiting for their greatest living composer to write his Ninth Symphony. Seems neither they nor he believed in the curse of the Ninth, it’s just that he had inspiration for other things.
I still think Holmboe’s Ninth is just plain weird. Very interesting, but weird, and somehow much less accessible than either the earlier or later Symphonies.
Superficially, it’s like the Seventh, but there’s just three “full” movements, though the two Intermezzos are longer than the Intermedios of the Seventh, and you have to turn up the volume much higher to be able to hear them. But the content of the Ninth is full of specters and shadows.
Chamber Symphony No. 2, Opus 100, “Elegy.” I’m not quite sure what to make of that “Elegy” subtitle. My first impression is that it is a weightier follow-up to the First Chamber Symphony.
Chamber Symphony No. 3, Opus 103a, “Frise.” Though in six movements rather than four, the Third Chamber Symphony seems to be much in the same spirit of the first two. It hasn’t yet grown on me like the other two.
A discographical note: as far as I’m aware, the only available recording of the Chamber Symphonies is by the Lapland Chamber Orchestra conducted by John Storgårds.
Symphony No. 10, Opus 105. Would you believe that the Detroit Symphony Orchestra premiered something by Vagn Holmboe? That was back in 1972 when the Detroit Symphony was a world-class orchestra, not a “community-supported orchestra” in which the musicians make a sacrifice in their paycheck but management doesn’t.
The Detroit Symphony will continue to perform world premieres, but revisit past premieres like Holmboe’s Tenth? No way. This coming season, they’re playing Beethoven’s Ninth, Rachmaninoff’s Second and Tchaikovsky’s Fifth all over again, three works that they have probably played in several consecutive seasons.
Though maybe Holmboe’s Tenth might not be the best choice for the orchestra to play Holmboe again. It’s music that holds the interest, it has something to do with Walt Whitman’s eidolons, and it is cited in Robert Layton’s A Guide to the Symphony.
For now, none of it really stands out, but I’m sure that with repeated listenings that will change. After all, it took a while for Martinů’s Third Symphony to stand out in my mind from his first two.
Symphony No. 11, Opus 144. There is something Olympic, as in competitive, about the first movement, that suggests to me athletic striving. But there is also this specific percussion sound (at 3:59 in the Aarhus recording) that suggests the sea to me for some reason.
Symphony No. 12, Opus 175. How to connect movements of a Symphony so that each seems to start from where the previous one ended? The Twelfth has one answer: notice how the middle Andante sereno echoes the end of the preceding Allegro con forza; you might need headphones to notice this, though.
Not that I have much of a basis for this, but if I had to give a nickname to this Symphony, it would be “Prospero’s Island.” Antony Hodgson did once say that Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 81 in G major could benefit from a colorful if irrelevant nickname.
Symphony No. 13, Opus 192. When Owain Arwel Hughes was planning a complete set of Holmboe’s Symphonies (excluding the Chamber Symphonies), he noticed the last CD of the set would be barely a little more than 40 minutes with just the Eleventh and Twelfth Symphonies. So Holmboe wrote one more, a 20-minute work that brings the CD up to the more satisfying duration of 63:31.
Don’t think of it being in any way valedictory, despite it being his last, and certainly don’t expect a triumphant peroration at the end. Had Holmboe lived longer, he might have written a Fourteenth Symphony along similar lines.
Conclusion, for now
It takes time to really get to know a composer, and Holmboe is certainly worth knowing. Some of what I’ve written above comes from my eBook 104 Great Symphonies You Haven’t Heard Yet (Daily Kos readers get it for 75% off with coupon code QV73B, valid only on Smashwords until March 23). And some of what I’ve written above will find its way into a later version of that book.
Although I strongly recommend Holmboe’s music, his objectivity does not quite seem the ticket in these troubled times in which the world might fall apart completely, in my opinion.
With President Obama and the possibility that we were on our way to a fairer society in which the economy benefits everyone, not just the top tenth of one percent, a healthy dose of realism was appropriate.
But now, I find myself wanting music of great optimism, and perhaps reassurance. Rued Langgaard, that other composer world-famous in Denmark, is just too syrupy, however. Anton Rubinstein maybe? Or another Anton…
Consider this post ended not with a I chord, but a V7 chord, with the seventh of the chord trilled.
This was originally posted on Daily Kos yesterday.
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