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Mao, Khruschev, Kennedy and Napoleon Who is the odd man out? |
The 50th anniversary of the assassination of
President Kennedy, marked by TV and radio documentaries complete with grainy
footage and crackly tape recordings, has vividly brought back to me memories
of that day. It has become something of
a cliché to say that everyone can remember where they were and what they were
doing the day President Kennedy was shot, but, certainly in my case, it’s
true. And why, I have often wondered, do
I recall it so vividly? I was a nine
year old boy living in London, my horizons bounded by my bicycle, the big red
buses which thundered past our front window, the 78 rpm records my father let
me play on his old wind-up gramophone and, most importantly, the piano and my
imminent grade 3 piano exam. Like so
many post-war English families (and the wartime damage wreaked on London was
still very much with us – a huge bomb crater in the woods behind our house down
which we all raced our bikes to see whether we could gain enough momentum to
get up the other side without pedalling was our favourite playground), we
regarded Americans with a certain dislike; many of my parents’ generation
voiced their feelings with the statement that the “Yanks came into the war
late, and then claimed they had won it”.
Despite the fact that my father worked in the Civil Service and that,
during the War, my mother had been on Winston Churchill’s staff, we were a
family without particularly strong political feelings; certainly nothing which
percolated down to a nine-year-old boy obsessed with bikes, buses and Bach (I
put that in for alliteration, but in truth Purcell was my favourite at the
time).
Indeed, it was Purcell I was playing in the front room of
our house at 655 Rochester Way, Eltham, when my father came in to tell me that
President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.
This did not excite me at all, and my indifference clearly angered my
father, as did my retort to his anger; “But you and Mum hate Americans”. At that point he told me to stop playing the
piano straight away and come into the back room where the tiny black-and-white
television was replaying those unforgettable images of a slumped JFK cradled in
Jackie’s arms in the back of a huge open-top car as it hurtled off to the
hospital in panic. I remember vividly
that I was playing Purcell’s Prelude in C, a work which, while I was to play it
a few years later for my Grade 5 (and, by a curious coincidence, it appears in
this year’s Trinity grade 5 list), was not one I was learning for my Grade 3. (I
do recall that the grade 3 pieces I had to play were pretty dire, and I
responded with such disinterest that the examiner awarded me 104 for my
efforts.)
That, though, is the only musical association I have with
those events of November 1963. One thing
that has struck me vividly this weekend has been the marked lack of musical
response to the assassination; you would have thought that an event regarded by
the world at the time as something verging on the catastrophic would have prompted
at least a few composers to try to get to grips with it through music, but
hardly any did. Even two months after the event, by which time someone could
surely have penned something significant (even if it was just adding words to,
say, Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings -
that, however, was not to come until 1967), Kennedy’s requiem mass included
music by Mozart, Bizet and Schubert; nothing, it would seem, from those very
Americans who professed themselves so utterly devastated by their loss. I have to confess that my information about
Kennedy’s requiem mass is drawn from Wikipedia,
so I cannot be at all sure of its reliability, but the fact remains, if
anything did get written specifically for that occasion, it has been pretty
much forgotten today.
A year after the assassination, a few pieces did
emerge. Stravinsky wrote his Elegy for J.F.K. in 1964, but performances
of it have been only marginally more numerous than assassinations of US
presidents. Rather more enduring, and
certainly a lot more emotionally-charged, is Herbert Howell’s Take him, earth, for cherishing which he
wrote, also, in 1964. But what else was
there? I am sure that as soon as I have
posted this a host of pieces will spring to mind (I’m sure there is an organ
piece with the date of Kennedy’s death in its title, but I can find no mention
of it anywhere). Musical responses to the 50th anniversary have been
hardly more numerous. While Hong Kong-born
Conrad Tao wrote a work for the Dallas Symphony to perform (The World is Very Different Now - an odd
title considering Tao was not even born when Kennedy was assassinated), the
only other notable music event was what the Boston
Globe advertised as; “Online-only
livestream of a musical tribute in Kennedy’s honor, featuring James Taylor,
saxophonist Paul Winter, and the US Naval Academy Women’s Glee Club”. I find it amazing that an event which had
repercussions which swept across the globe like a vast tsunami has created not
even a ripple on the great lake of music written over the past 50 years.
In fact, when I come to think of it, the deaths of great
world leaders have rarely triggered a musical response. Even the death of that
other iconic world figure of our time, for whom so few people had a bad word to say, Princess Diana, only inspired a
reworking of a pre-existing piece by the late John Tavener. Far more profound have been the musical
responses to the deaths of “unknown” figures. There’s Ravel’s
matchless memorial to friends lost during the First World War, Le Tombeau de Couperin (I well remember
a lengthy discussion with David Robinson over the obligatory bottles of wine at
Chinoz in KL as to whether the Dreyfus immortalised by Ravel had any connection with
the notorious Dreyfus Affair – I think we decided it could not), and profoundly
moving works inspired by deaths of brothers, sons, fathers, mothers and
friends. Perhaps the great and good of
the world don’t inspire passion from composers.
There is one notable exception; Napoleon. There is Beethoven’s homage to him in his
Third Symphony - but then he excised that dedication, so it doesn’t really count. But there have been numerous Napoleonic
memorials in music since then. Louis Vierne wrote a memorable Marche Triomphale du centenaire de Napoléon
I a pretty spectacular romp for brass and organ, Schoenberg wrote an Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte, and even Johann
Strauss II got in on the act with a waltz named Napoleon.
But that’s about it.
World leaders, political figures, kings, queens, emperors and soldiers,
all of them seem to get the bums rush when it comes to music. Perhaps, I have got it wrong and somewhere out there are
great works dedicated to Kennedy, Khrushchev, Mao, Regan, Thatcher and the like
which, somehow or other, have passed me by.
Do let me know if I’ve missed them.
And certainly please offer me any suggestions you might have as to why
great figures in world affairs have not inspired great music. For my part, I can offer no coherent explanation.
Very interesting question you pose....
ReplyDeleteJohn Adam's Opera "Nixon in China" jumps to mind.
And his "the Chairman dances" refers I think to Mao rather than some anonymous CEO.
Does "Thatcher !" the musical count ?
John Taverner was not the only one to rework an existing piece for Princess Diana, of course Elton John did the same.
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