Einojuhani Rautavaara

Not a household name, his. Einojuhani Rautavaara is still living, rare for composers discussed here on this blog, and he is 80 years old.

In 1972, Rautavaara composed Cantus Arcticus, a concerto for birds and orchestra. The work features tape recordings of birdsong. When I first listened to Cantus Arcticus, I was almost convinced I would not like it very much based on the first couple of minutes. I kept listening, however, and I was rewarded with what turned out to be a beautiful tribute to birds and to nature.

Exploring contemporary classical music can be challenging for many reasons. For one, there is less of a consensus as to what the important works or composers are, so the field to consider is large. This is partly due to the fact that newer works are borne of vastly differing artistic philosophies, leading critics to employ different sets of criteria for determining notable works. Still, now and then you will find a gem, and that gem is likely to be very distinct from what you previously enjoyed listening to and might even give you a fresh perspective on music.

Germany

This graph shows the number of composers from the list of 51 (see Composers) for each country represented. Composers ranked 1-10 are separated from composers ranked 11-51.

Edit: There are errors in the graph due to the fact that (1) Richard Strauss (ranked #34) was German and not Austrian and (2) Handel (ranked #9) is by consensus an English composer, even though he was born in Germany. The corrected totals are as follows:

Country Total (Top 10)
Germany 10 (4)
France 9 (0)
Russia 8 (1)
Austria 6 (3)
Italy 5 (1)
England 4 (1)
Hungary 2 (0)
etc.

Experts

"It just came to me out of thin air," or "It was dictated to me by God." We all have heard quotes like these, spoken by writers, music composers, and others.

Experts thrive by transcribing the complex creations of their subconscious minds, a phenomenon dealing with the brain and about which we presently have little understanding.

An expert chess player rapidly chooses great chess moves in tough board situations due to this phenomenon (only the chess player is less likely to attribute this skill to God). How this comes about is that the chess player, over the course of a lifetime, sees so many chess moves that the player is literally trained only to consider good moves, ones that satisfy the demands of the current situation.

For a composer, the task is not to choose the best sequence of moves but rather to compose a melody that acheives a certain emotion, or to create a variation of a theme to serve as a bridge to the next musical idea, to name a couple of examples. Of course, the shadings of the composer's own inner self, which is a product of much more that just music, find their way into the composer's creations, too.

And so it is that Mozart, who is the archetypal child prodigy, achieved what he did. Surely, he lived and breathed music from the time he was born.

Said Mozart, "Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, I hear them all at once. What a delight this is! All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing, lively dream."

Meaningful Opera

In Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin, which is based on the novel in verse of the same name by Aleksandr Pushkin, the title character is bored with life. With no real goals or desires to serve, Onegin is not, in reality, the romantic hero Tatyana presumes him to be based on appearances. He lives his life whimsically, free from all of the careful consideration that accompanies a moral life that is dedicated to some purpose. While living in this manner, Onegin gets swept up with the leaves and ends up doing two things he will later regret: (1) He rejects Tatyana, and (2) He kills his friend Lensky in a duel (Proof once again that idle hands are the devil's tools).

Only when it is too late does Onegin learn what all learn eventually - that there is meaning to life. The meaning that he once did not seek was later measured by his guilt. In the end, Tatyana is genuinely moved by the changed Onegin, but she is now married and remains faithful to her husband.

In opera, the focus is on the story, which is told with both words and music. We care about the characters just as we do in novels and movies. An opera's story is typically very melodramatic, but the music justifies this. That is, the music provides the back story. For example, we do not need any more details of Onegin's life to appreciate the opera Eugene Onegin's story, because the way Onegin sings when he sees the married Tatyana tells us all we need to know about Onegin. Such is the power of music, as composed by a master composer such as Tchaikovsky and as performed by a master performer (such as Dmitri Hvorostovsky).

Opera is a unique way of being told a story.

Danse Macabre

In 1874, Camille Saint-Saens arranged a tone poem version of his composition Danse Macabre, which had debuted two years earlier as an art song for voice and piano. It is the orchestral tone poem version that is the most popular today.

Death plays this Dance of Death on his fiddle and conjures the dead from their graves to perform a grotesque waltz. Death takes delight in the fact that people from all classes and walks of life arrive ultimately at a common end.

It is hard to imagine a more downcast theme. Still, while perfectly capturing the gruesome spirit of the poem on which it is based, Danse Macabre manages to be beautiful music. It seems there are competing philosophies for translating ugliness into music. On the one hand, we convey ugliness with ugly sounds. On the other hand, we turn to Mozart, who said, "Music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music."

In the case of Danse Macabre, I would think it is precisely the music's beauty that allows it to portray the poem so accurately.