This week’s theme is…Mountains! The stoic, majestic guardians of Earth’s geography, mountains have long inspired musicians with their monumental presence. This week we examine some examples of this.
Mountains, Day 3 – Symphony No. 2, “Mysterious Mountain” by Alan Hovhannes
I once had a composition teacher who told me, and his other students, to write a lot of music and to write it fast. The philosophy behind that instruction is that you will make your mistakes quickly, learn from them, and move on to the next thing, where you will make more mistakes. And so, your technique will be refined continually and you can expect to grow rapidly and perpetually. This teacher tended to notice that many composers today do not write that quickly and so do not grow as much as they could since they don’t make mistakes fast enough. I think that’s probably true, in some approaches at least, although certain commercial approaches necessitate writing quickly, particularly producing music for film and television scores. The rate at which John Williams, for example, is able to turn out a new score is astounding, particularly given the quality of the music.
Because of the advice of this teacher it is perhaps true that I wrote more and faster than I would have otherwise, but I don’t think I really ever hit my stride, and I think many of the pieces I completed were too badly flawed to operate within the spirit of that advice. I think he meant that, whatever you produce, you should do it often, quickly, and to a high level of perfection. And it is true that it is easy for composers today to produce less than they are really capable of. It seems to be a lost art to produce music at the rate and quality of the common practice masters. But maybe not entirely. Although it is surprising, it is still possible to find an extraordinarily prolific modern composer from time to time. One such composer lived until 15 years ago, and his name was Alan Hovhaness.
I wish I could have met Alan Hovhannes, had coffee and cake with him at one of the little cafes where he liked to write. He died just as I was starting my professional music career, beginning my undergraduate degree, and I doubt I would have known his name at the time. But he left 434 opus numbers (for more about the opus system see this post) – I’ve never heard of a composer with that many numbered opuses – and 67 symphonies – I’ve never heard of anyone besides Haydn who even came close to that (for more about Haydn’s rate of symphonic production, see this post). And the gentle, whimsical character that emanates from the films of him belies a ruthless self-criticism; whenever a formative teacher or mentor would criticize his craft he would destroy reams of previous scores. So his actual production is speculated to be much closer to the 1,000 mark, much like Johann Sebastian Bach. Like the masters of old, we must be content to live with the partial story of Alan Hovhaness’ working history, surrendering much of it to the fog of history.
Gustav Mahler once described Anton Bruckner as “half simpleton, half god”. That description has always made me smile; given Bruckner’s music, and what I’ve read about him, it seems incredibly apt. Bruckner, as I understand, came across personally as pious, timid and humble; but his music speaks with an awe-inspiring power at all levels, from the macro to the micro. Hovahness, I think, cries for his own summary a la Mahler. What what his halves be? I would submit “half everyman, half mystic”.
Everyman for his soft-spoken, unassuming kindness, which often found him composing in diners sitting next to bemused truckers. Everyman for his supreme approachability. Everyman for his slight, tender meekness. And mystic for his attraction to psychics and the spirit world. Mystic for his odd, off putting comments about past lives and fantastic, surreal images. Mystic for the connection to the angels he claimed to sense when he composed.
Hovhaness described his state while composing, which he did easily and fluidly while sitting at desks or tables with symphony after symphony gracefully issuing from his pen, almost as a form of communion with the spirit world, a delicate place of balance which could neither be forced nor left unattended. And as long as he was there the music came. It was a mystical music, warm and magical, radiating with the mysterious murmur of dreamscapes and myths. Hovhannes’ music is so often soaked in blurred, hazy colors, animated by slow, circular melodies. His ouevre seems to drift to listeners from beyond a foggy veil, creating a still, tranquil and ecstatic space.
And Hovhannes felt a deep connection to nature, particularly mountains. They were his main inspiration and he moved from Boston to Seattle to be in their presence daily. He described mountains as “pyramids, between two worlds, that of the earth and that of the gods”. Images of mountains abound in Hovannes’ extensive catalog, dotting it like the peaks of a range, including his best-known work, the Second Symphony, Opus 132, subtitled Mysterious Mountain.
Although this was early in his output of symphonies, it remains Hovannes’ best-known and most often-performed work, still the best known of his more than sixty symphonies. The title was almost an afterthought, encouraged by Leopold Stokowski to make it more marketable, but it fits the three-movement odyssey, which feels like a spiritual voyage upon the titular mountain. The outer movement of the symphony glow with enchanting, placid colors. The middle movement is a vigorous, busy fugue which starts out very much like a familiar hymn:
Hovhaness was American-born, but early in his life found himself drawn to the Armenian heritage of his father. He used this influence with its exotic, modal melodies to craft music unlike any other American composer. It is true that Copland and Gershwin have won the American music title, but Hovhannes has his devoted followers, and they know they beauty of his mystical atmosphere. I suspect that one such Hovhannes fan was the prolific and masterful film composer Jerry Goldsmith. If you listen to the final movement of Mysterious Mountain with its oddly-modulating chorales here…
…and then listen to this stunning excerpt from Goldsmith’s score for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier here…
…I bet you will note a resemblance. Hovhannes is still with us, even if other American composers are more readily named before him. This half-everyman, half-mystic left a bewitching legacy which still resonates deeply within the American subconscious.
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