Symphony of Sirens music module

1. Preliminary note

The materials below are intended to supplement the texts we will be discussing in class. The selection and presentation are neither systematic, nor are they intended to satisfy the standards of musicology. I have made every effort not to assume any previous musical training, and chosen the musical excerpts with the thought of creating a series of linked impressions, rather than providing any systematic account of compositional developments. The selection also presupposes that you do not want to spend more than an hour with each section, which is why I have been so philistine about taking pieces of music outside the context of the total work. 

If you do not know how to read musical notes but are willing to devote a half hour or so to understanding music as a semiotic system, a very efficient way to get started would be at musictheory.net. See if you can get as far as generic and specific intervals under "Lessons." Those with some musical knowledge might spend a few minutes toying with the interval ear trainer under "Trainers."

2. Modernism and neo-classicism

One of the composers mentioned by Sabaneev as a member of the "moderate" school in the mid-1920s was Nikolai Miaskovskii (1881-1950). Though Sabaneev does not use the term, his choice of phrasing ("It was assumed that the art needed by the U.S.S.R. at the given moment must be fully equipped with the European technique, but at the same time must be ideologically compatible with the state of affairs in Russia") suggests that one could refer to this as the "Leninist" position on modern music. Miaskovskii had served in the Red Army from 1917 to 1921 before joining the Moscow Conservatory, where he wrote the Sixth Symphony between 1921 and 1923. Listen to the opening portion of the first movement: 

 

Ask yourself how much you agree with Sabaneev's claim that Miaskovskii and others became "more or less revolutionary" only in a completely anodyne sense that did not distinguish them from Western European composers. Then move to the final half of the fourth movement: 

  

It begins with a French revolutionary song that eventually gives way to a choir singing the Dies Irae of the Latin Requiem Mass, and then a traditional Russian chant on the parting of body and soul. What do you think of this juxtaposition of musical elements in historical terms? In this last movement you can also hear elements of the monumentality that later became central to Soviet musical style.

Sabaneev mentions the engineer Léon Theremin [Lev Sergeevich Termen], who invented the Thereminvox (now usually called simply the theremin) around 1919. It is one of the first fully electronic instruments, and makes use of an effect similar to the one you may have noticed with your television reception: a human body in the vicinity has a capacitance that interferes with the antenna, depending on relative position. The theremin uses the capacitance of the musician's hands to change a basic tone controlled by a radio antenna. Changes in tone are created through sheer movement, without any contact mechanism, and that is why it is so difficult to control the pitch. Theremin demonstrated the device to Lenin, who become an early fan. To understand the strange tuning properties of the theremin, listen to the brief clip. Now you know which instrument was being employed in all those old science fiction movies.

The only known recording of the Polyphonic Aetherphon (a later version of the Theremin) with an introduction, in Russian, by Lev Termen:  

  

Sample courtesy of Thereminvox.com.

3. Proletarian music

A symphony of factory sirens is also mentioned by Sabaneev. Here is a picture from just such a concert, from René Fülöp-Miller's The Mind and Face of Bolshevism (1927).

Arsenii Avraamov [Krasnokutskii] (1886-1944) was perhaps the most ambitious of the "proletarian" composers, staging a massive "Symphone of Sirens" in the Baku port on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution in 1922. He foresaw the rise of synthesizers and was a technophilic fan of Termen's inventions. The Baku event (repeated on a smaller scale the following year in Moscow) was intended to rely solely on the "instruments" of the working class--dynamos, factory sirens, airplane engines, foghorns from the Caspian fleet, clanging metal, even artillery batteries for good measure--as a pure music expression of revolutionary will. Careful coordination of the Caspian flotilla, various small vessels, troops, artillery, trains, hydroplanes, cannons, bells, automobiles, steam whistles, and yes, choirs and wind instruments, provided the loudest setting ever for performing the Internationale.

As Avraamov wrote, "Music has, among all the arts, the highest power of social organization.  The most ancient myths prove that mankind is fully aware of that power... Collective work, from farming to the military, is inconceivable without songs and music. One may even think that the high degree of organization in factory work under capitalism might have ended up creating a respectable form of music organization. However, we had to arrive at the October Revolution to achieve the concept of the Symphony of Sirens."  While this kind of musical mindset seems wrapped in ideological grandiosity, be sure to examine his working assumptions carefully before dismissing Avraamov out of hand. 

Arsenii Avraamov, Symphony of Sirens (1922):

  

Recreated by Leopoldo Amigo and Miguel Molina (2003). Since Avraamov's performance was virtually the antithesis of a classical studio recording and left no aural traces, the musicians for this recording worked carefully with his original score, and were guided in part by the detailed program notes which were published in Turkish in Baku's three local newspapers the day before the event.

The full recording is 28 minutes long. Keep in mind that it is fundamentally impossible for a recording to reproduce the dynamic range of the original event.

4. Symphony of machines

Now consider a somewhat younger avant-garde composer named Alexander Mossolov (1900-1973). Though not obsessed with public spectacle in the manner of Avraamov, he very much subscribed to the machinist tropes of constructivist art, and strove to apply them to concert-hall music in the 1920s. Listen to this movement from his ballet Steel (1927), composed for the tenth anniversary of the revolution. Entitled Factory, Symphony of Machines, it celebrated the rhythms of Soviet industrialization. 

  

(Remember that repetitive rhythm as a reference point for building a theme and variations is called "ostinato.") Mossolov called for a "metal sheet" as an instrument, in order to invoke the clangor of the factory and to create a "barbaric style." If you think he succeeded too well, try to take the longer view, and remember Stravinsky's own "primitivist" devices in The Rite of Spring. The Symphony of Machines enjoyed a worldwide audience in its day, probably due to its perceived "Soviet" distinctiveness in the modernist genre. Yet after 1927 Mossolov did not fare well at the hands of the Association of Proletarian Musicians, who called his music "naturalistic" and "decadent." After spending six years in the GULAG, he subsequently devoted himself largely to research on folk music.

In a similar vein, listen to the constructivist composition by Julius Meytuss (1903-1997) of the building of the Dnieprostroi dam (1930). Does his musical "language" invoke an appropriate mental image?

  

5. Experimental tonalities

Scriabin disciple Ivan Vyshnegradskii [Wyschnegradsky] (1893-1979), who emigrated to France in 1920, began composing microtonal works around the same time as Alois Hába in the 1910s. Consider the fifth of his 24 Preludes in Quarter-tones (1934), which features two pianos specially tuned a quarter tone apart. Dare I suggest you will find it slightly mind-altering?

For the curious, consider Hába (1893-1973) in Prague, who represents a more obscure but highly instructive case, because he took seriously the "exhaustion" of Mahlerian Viennese tonality, and pursued highly chromatic alternatives. If the distant between each key on the piano represents a half tone, Hába experimented with other microtones, especially quarter tones. Listen to the overture to scene 6 of his quarter-tone opera Mother (1929): 

  

Remember that it is not "out of tune," but quite intentionally expects the listener to embrace a broader set of tonal relationships. Without making a face, how would you explain in precise language why such music could probably never become popular? 

6. Jazzed-up classical

One of the reasons it becomes increasingly difficult to pinpoint "modernist" trends in the 1920s is that some avant-garde composers become enamored of other thriving genres: jazz and popular theater.  Consider two brief examples:  Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959), who composed his Jazz Suite while in Paris, where he spent most of his time from 1923 onward.  You will have no problem detecting the jazz motifs in the prelude:

  

But notice how cleverly he manages not to be "co-opted": the suite never feels like a mere "arrangement" of jazz tunes.

The young Dmitri Shostakovich made his living composing for theater, including a setting of Mayakovsky's The Bedbug (1929). Listen to the first movement:

  

Notice his penchant for masterfully encouraging generic expectations, and then taking you slighlty off balance before returning to a comfortable phrase again.  And then stretching you a little further the next time around.

Shostakovich also playfully subverted the foxtrot in the third movement of his Jazz Suite.

7. Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) nicely illustrates the possibility that modernism and neoclassicism were not necessarily mutually exclusive, and consequently we will dwell on him as an ambivalent figure who managed at times to thrive amid the vague dictates of Socialist Realism (never forgetting that he also suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as well). Shortly before Prokofiev left Petrograd in May 1918 (arriving in America in September), Vsevolod Meyerhold handed him a copy of the avant-garde journal Love for Three Oranges, named after an eighteenth-century commedia dell'arte play which he urged the young composer to adapt for the operatic stage. Prokofiev began sketching in 1919 and maintained his enthusiasm for Meyerhold's "opera of the future" even as he busied himself making a living through concertizing. After several misfires and disagreements with producers, the thirty-year-old composer finally premiered the work in Chicago late in 1921 (Berlin and Leningrad followed in 1926, Moscow in 1927, but Paris not until 1956!).

Echoing Mayakovsky, this was yet another slap in the face of tradition. Prokofiev dispensed with the usual chorus in favor of groups of onlookers (Comicals, Tragicals, Lyricals, Empty-heads, and Eccentrics) who provide a satirical commentary on the action. Although we have been deliberately avoiding the complications introduced by considering opera (and by extension, theater) in this course, it is worth considering a single scene from Love for Three Oranges, if only to illustrate the importance of irony as a device for retaining both tonality and a spirit of technical innovation simultaneously. Without elaborating on the deliberately ridiculous plot, let me quote from Noëlle Mann's program notes for Act Three, scene 3:

  

Here "even the ubiquitous love-duet falls prey to irony. As the Prince cuts open the third orange, he discovers Princess Ninetta, with whom he immediately falls in love. Their lyrical dialogue, with Debussy-like melodic lines and orchestration is brusquely interrupted by the Eccentrics noisily looking for a bucket of water to prevent the Princess dying of thirst. As the two lovers join in ecstatic happiness, the Lyricals and Eccentrics argue in the background; the heavenly chorus of the lyricals express their relief at having witnessed at last a truly romantic and moving drama, as one should expect on the stage; while the Eccentrics, in a mechanical ostinato [repeated rhythm], ask them to keep quiet for fear of disturbing the lovers. This scene vividly illustrates Prokofiev's visceral dislike of melodramatic situations which, to him, were synonymous with bad taste and tediousness. By treating theatrical effects with irony, he avoided sentimentality and boredom."