Der Humor in der Nacht
Herbert Schuch speaks with Florian Olters about the works on the CD "NACHTSTÜCKE"
"The night awakens peculiar feelings and lends everything a sentimental tone in that the
exterior world, whether hidden by the darkness or illuminated by
the twilight, does not immediately claim the attention of the imagination but lets the mind prevail, with the result that all of the soul's activities turn inward." Mr. Schuch, to what extent does this quote from Aesthetik der Tonkunst by Ferdinand Hand (1841) fit this CD?
The reference to Robert Schumann is especially evident. It is known that Schumann was occupied with Hand's work. Nevertheless, I have one objection: his Night pieces are not all "hidden by the darkness or illuminated by the twilight". They contain everything, including eeriness, the bizarre
and subtle humor. It is still unknown how the title Night pieces came to be. There is some speculation that it was connected with the death of his brother.
What do you think?
My opinion is that the Night pieces are related to E.T.A. Hoffmann's narrative work. Schumann's
Night pieces were originally intended to be called "Funereal fantasies". In addition, Schumann
originally gave the four pieces titles that he then rejected before publication. The first piece was
called "Funeral march", the next "Curious company", the third "Nocturnal feast" and the last
"Canon with solo voices". This all calls to mind Hoffmann's Night pieces and Fantasy Pieces in
Callot's Manner. But it also reminds me about Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit.
Particularly because the individual movements from Ravel's work, which was inspired
by Aloysius Bertrand's 1842 eponymous poem: Ondine (the mermaid Undine), Le gibet
(the hanged man on the gallows at twilight) and Scarbo (a bogeyman or demon that
disturbs people as they sleep).
There are in fact amazing connections between Callot, Hoffmann, Schumann, Bertrand and Ravel.
On the one hand, there are Schumann's Night pieces and Hoffmann's Fantasy Pieces in Callot's Manner (based on the French illustrator Jacques Callot). On the other hand, in the third piece of Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit (Scarbo) in the poem by Bertrand, there is a quote from Hoffmann's
Night pieces. Before the verses begin, Bertrand had cited Hoffmann, who in turn refers to Callot.
But there's more. Bertrand's verses, which inspired Ravel, are Fantasy Pieces in Rembrandt's
and Callot's Manner – according to Bertrand's subtitle. The allusions are quite apparent – whether conscious or unconscious. Ultimately, this affects Schumann's and Ravel's works, whether directly
or indirectly.
Gustav Mahler also conceived the slow movement from his First Symphony "in Callot's manner". Were these connections clear to you when you began developing the program?
The program for the CD evolved intuitively. First of all, I definitely wanted to play Ravel's Gaspard
de la nuit, which is an immense challenge for every pianist. While looking for adequate pieces to
couple the Ravel with, I came across Schumann's Night pieces. It was not a major step from Schumann to Heinz Holliger, because Holliger's works are closely related to Schumann's.
As I played these three different works in concerts, I noticed that they are basically tone paintings that follow a certain musical poetry. I thus wanted to integrate a dramatic core and thus added Alexander Scriabin's Piano Sonata No. 9 ("Black Mass") and Mozart's Adagio.
Can't one also hear a certain romantic tone poetry in Mozart's Adagio that to some extent anticipates Schumann's sense of romanticism?
Of course. Take the G.P.s at the end of the development: they are like white spots – they leave
one at a loss. The Adagio is by Mozart – but is highly atypical for him. For his time, this is really a noteworthy composition – I truly think of it as a romantic confession. Even when one considers that
he wrote two highly upsetting and tragic sonatas in minor, I find this Adagio to be worlds away from
the closed 'macrocosms' of both the minor-key sonatas. It affects me a little like Schubert's "Unfinished" – only that with Mozart, we have only one movement that permits no continuation whatsoever. Every measure of this work expresses Mozart's deepest "requirement to compose".In regard to its romantic lack of unity, the Fantasie in C Minor also certainly has something even more Schumann-like about it. But if Schumann had known the Adagio, he certainly would have revised his opinion of Mozart.
What connections do you hear between Mozart's Adagio and Scriabin's Black Mass?
First of all, both pieces complement each other formally: they are both written in sonata form.
Apropos formal compositional procedures: there are also parallels between Schumann and Ravel.
It may be that Schumann's tone poetry describes emotional states while Ravel's music conveys
a depth of emotion through a sensual, colorful and brilliant surface of sound. But similar to Schumann, Ravel develops a melody in Ondine that is constantly revealed in a new light.
Just recall the first Night piece by Schumann.
Although in Schumann, the transformation takes place primarily at the semantic level:
a proud march progressively becomes a shadowy hustling.
That's true. Schumann strings together semantics and various ideas to produce contrast. But – and
this decisive: a great synthesis does develop. The contrasts in his music are not moody and abrupt
but flow into each other. In Schumann's first Night piece, one can observe slightly how the composer struggles to imbue the piece with formal structure and that he tends to avoid the abrupt, sudden "craziness" of his pieces from previous years. In the second Night piece, however, we experience Schumann's humorous vein in the sudden contrasts but also in the fact that the piece is likewise a rondo. We see the composer using two different procedures in the same formal structure, namely,
the smooth transition and the sudden cut.
To what degree can one speak of humor?
I think that at the time, humor had much to do with contrast. Ludwig van Beethoven, for example,
was often rebuked for his bizarre attitude, which primarily meant the angular, contrasting and brusk manner of his music. Conservative circles considered his late works to be bizarre. In the 1830s, these characteristics were classified under the term "romantic humor". According to this view,
humor was the principle of contrast or the combination of things that didn't actually belong together.
Humor did not necessarily have to do with funniness, but was a certain philosophy of life.
This is very marked in Schumann. Schumann's humor has a very distinct melancholic component.
He said about his "Humoreske", after all, that it is "not very funny, and perhaps my most melancholy". Humor is, so to speak, the admission that the world can no longer be comprehended in its entirety.
After Beethoven, Schumann must have strongly felt this in music – but found in literature and in his enthusiasm for the "humoristic" Jean Paul quasi the legitimation of his wild trains of thought and
mood swings.
And Holliger's music? One frequently reads that Holliger is a "modern Schumann" because
he bases his music on melodiousness as the expression of a spiritual impulse.
Well, the styles and means of expression may have changed but it is well known that Holliger is a
fan of Schumann. What one hears in Holliger's music in any case is humor in the romantic sense –
i.e. contrast. In Elis, 3 Night pieces (1961/66), events throughout the pieces are organized according
to measures. These are short figures and gestures. I sense a strong gestural element in Holliger's music. And I feel parallels to Ravel as well.
How so?
First of all, he explores many sound possibilities – there is a sensual sound to his works. In contrast, Schumann's Night pieces almost never stray from the middle range of the piano – this is a music that strongly illuminates its center. In Holliger's music, the distribution of sound in space is an essential characteristic and points to Ravel.
How does Ravel express humor?
Except for Schumann, practically no other romantic composer really dealt with the subject of humor as far as I know. From this point of view, humor was only relevant during a relatively narrow period
of time around circa 1830. Jean Paul's fame – he was the author of an academic theory on humor – rapidly faded in the course of the 19th century. But in its relationship to language, the humor in
Jean Paul's novels has something that definitely relates to Ravel's Gaspard: like almost no other poet, the sound of words in Jean Paul's works is a major element that contributes to the meaning of
his texts. If one reduces his works only to their semantic meaning, they are very hard to read.
And I find that this is just as true of Aloysius Bertrand's poetry. The German translation of his poems,
as meaningful and illuminating as it may be, does not convey the essence of these poems, namely,
their French speech melody. This is precisely what inspired Ravel. Ravel doesn't simply "translate"
the content of the poems; his "impressionism" brilliantly transforms the language of the French poets into music. And by the way, I once had a very humorous experience in a concert.
What happened?
I once performed parts of this Night Pieces program in a concert recital. As an encore, I played two
of Holliger's pieces, first explaining their connection to Trakl's poem. In the course of this, I recited
the text of this very serious, perhaps excessively overstrung text. There were actually people in the audience who had to laugh when I got to the line "In the night, blue doves drink the icy sweat that
runs from Elis' crystalline brow". That brings me to Sàndor Végh. Végh once said that humor is a
form of "being super-serious". In this sense, Le gibet is also a "super-serious" piece. Dead people hanging from the gallows, observed in the twilight:
Callot has drawings which depict dozens hanging at the gallows. One can find this horrible,
but one can also laugh in horror. Le gibet is a pitch-black night painting; this is where one can
make a connection to Scriabin's Black Mass.
In this work, Scriabin cites Franz Liszt's Faust Symphony (among other works) and reinterprets the bell motive from Modest Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov as well.
How does Ravel work?
There is a monstrous inevitability to Le gibet. Similar to Scriabin's bell motive, Ravel insistently
uses tone repetitions, although Scriabin makes such repetitions even more dramatic through tempo increases. Apropos Black Mass: Beethoven called the B Minor of Mozart's Adagio the "black key".