An email from a colleague asking for money is nothing out of
the ordinary; not, I hasten to add, that musicians are in the habit of sending
begging emails to each other. Such emails
are generally the consequence of our spending so much of our lives travelling
to far-flung corners of the globe. We
are obliged to make use of open Wi-Fi channels in hotels and, when we baulk at
the exorbitant charges so many hotels levy on Wi-Fi connections, even less
secure internet cafés, so are particularly prone to having our email accounts
hacked. Thus it is that I frequently
receive fake emails using colleagues’ accounts asking for urgent financial
assistance. The first of these I
received came from my good friend and examiner colleague James Griffiths, and it
offered a most plausible – and pitiable - story about how he had lost all his
money in the Philippines and needed immediate cash aid to help him out of a
tricky situation. As it was, I knew full
well that no exams were being held in the Philippines at the time and that it
was the last place on earth James would have visited for any other reason,
utterly content, as he always is, to luxuriate in the soaring summits of
Snowdonia and the murmuring mysticism of Ynys Môn. When a whole host of identical
emails started arriving from different colleagues in different parts of the
world, the cat was properly out of the bag, and now they merely bring on a
welcome bout of risibility. However,
this latest email appeal for me to dig into my empty pockets is a genuine
request for me (and the many other recipients of the same email) to give our
support to a musical organisation of which my colleague has recently been
appointed Chairman; the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe.
I heartily approve of societies which devote their energies to
promoting the music of a particular composer.
When I was the piano playing part of a duo alongside a fine bass singer
by the name of Ian Dollins, we explored the riches of Peter Warlock’s songs to
the extent that we began to think he was one of the true wonders of British
music, and for my part I took an active, if ultimately short-lived, interest in
the work of the Peter Warlock Society.
An unforgettable encounter with the gargantuan “Gothic” Symphony fired
me with the enthusiasm to support the Havergal Brian Society, while after I
made a commercial recording of York Bowen’s organ Fantasia someone from the York Bowen Society suggested I might to
join that. At various times I have been
a member of societies (now mostly defunct) devoted to the music, among others,
E J Moeran and Sigfrid Karg-Elert. The
thing they all have in common is devotion to the music of a composer they feel
has been unjustly neglected by the musical world at large.
But Beethoven? And, more particularly, Beethoven’s piano music? This is hardly neglected territory.
But Beethoven? And, more particularly, Beethoven’s piano music? This is hardly neglected territory.
With the possible exception of Mozart, is any other composer
in the history of music so well known even by those who never listen to
music? Ask anyone in any street if they
know who Beethoven was and, apart from those sad souls whose horizons are
limited by movie channels on TV (who will associated Beethoven with a dog) you
will find nearly everyone has heard of him and most will even be able to quote
a piece of his music; I would think that the opening four notes of the Fifth
Symphony are more universally known than any other non-visual, man-made object. And as for his piano music, while modern
scholarship may have adjusted our ideas now to talk of his six piano concertos
and 35 piano sonatas, few bits of piano music are better known than the
“Moonlight” Sonata or “Für Elise”, and comparing the exhaustive list of his piano
works in Grove with recordings easily
available free-of-charge online, you will find that there is no significant
area of Beethoven’s piano output which needs any further promotion; let alone
by a society specifically created for such a purpose.
Of course composer-centric societies often do more than
promote overlooked composers. Some years
ago I had a highly entertaining coffee morning with two devoted ladies who ran a
Chopin Society. They agreed that
Chopin’s music needed no promotion amongst today’s generation of pianists;
rather they saw the function of that society was more to encourage pianists to
play Chopin better. With a whole
generation of hammerers and crashers (as they saw it) taking on Chopin in some
kind of gladiatorial contest, promoting subtle, delicate and sensitive
performances of their hero’s music was, as they saw it, the prime purpose of
their society. I’m not, sure, however,
that with the likes of Alfred Brendel, Paul Lewis and Richard Goode out there striding
through Beethoven’s oeuvre with
magisterial authority, we need a Society to do more.
Perhaps there is a place for a society which encourages its
members to look behind the usual perceptions of well-known composers and try
and assess their place in musical history without the bias of accepted
fact. Why is it that we all seem to accept
as an unquestionable truth the so-called Classical Canon; that list of
composers (all, of course, German) drawn up by a coterie of 19th
century German critics who proclaimed them the “great” figures in music? It irks me that so many people blandly describe
Bach as a “great” composer, but when asked to justify this claim, resort to
mentioning the St. Matthew Passion and,
at a stretch, the “Brandenburg” Concertos.
In many ways these are a-typical of Bach’s output; which would seem to
imply that in the bulk of his “typical” music Bach did not achieve greatness. As an organist I am intimately acquainted
with Bach’s manifest weaknesses; that
grotesque glutinous glob of Grave G
major which forms the turgid core of the Pièce
d’Orgue (BWV572), that pointless
note-spinning in F major of the BWV540 Toccata (which Bach then compounds by regurgitating
in C), and, most obviously, that tiresome and silly Prelude and Fugue in D
(BWV532), which would never have got a second glance if it was by anyone other
than a composer some 19th century Herr Doktor decided in a fit of nationalist
fervour to tell the world was “great”. But
what shortcomings there are in the piano music of Beethoven have been amply
explained and justified by a whole host of compellingly articulate scholars
(not least among them being Barry Cooper) and we do not need to form a society
to put it to the world that Beethoven was a flawed genius.
So, with apologies to my colleague, I do not feel moved to
hand over my hard-won shilling (or euro) to the Beethoven Piano Society of
Europe. But there will be many who
disagree with me - not all of them current members of the Beethoven Piano
Society of Europe – and for them I would be failing in my duty if I did not
point them in the direction of the Society’s website (http://bpse.org)
where they will find, among a lot of other things, details of their exceedingly
modest subscription rates.