Dmitri Hvorostovsky singing aria from The Queen of Spades during reopening gala of the Bolshoi Theatre, 28 October 2011 (Caption and photo credit: Wikipedia)
It is so difficult to accept the death of Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. He was a powerful male singer with a “silver mane” (this description is not mine). Hvorostosky had brown hair, but it turned white in his early thirties. He passed away on 22 November 2017, at the age of 55.
Hvorostovsky was born in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, on 16 October 1962, to what I would describe as an upper middle-class family. He came to the attention of music lovers everywhere when he won the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, in 1989.
In the summer of 2015, Hvorostovsky announced that he had a brain tumour. After a short leave, he resumed his career, at a slower pace and briefly. An inoperable malignant brain tumour is merciless.
Baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky was in good health when he sang Di Provenza, il mar, il suol, an aria from Giuseppi Verdi‘s La Traviata(1852), an opera derived from a novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils‘ (27 July 1824 – 27 November 1895) La Dame aux camélias (The Lady with/of the Camellias) (1848), or Camille, to an English-speaking audience. Dmitri Hvrostovsky is Giorgio Germont, trying to persuade his son, Alfredo, who loves Violetta, to return to Provence, the family home (Scene 2 of La Traviata).
The protagonist of Giuseppi Verdi‘s La Traviata (the fallen woman) is Violetta Valéry. Alexandre Dumas named his protagonist Marguerite Gautier. She had been Marie Duplessis (1824 – 1847) who wore a red camellia when she was menstruating, a message to her lovers. She was born Alphonsine Rose Plessis, in Normandy, to an abusive father who sold her when she was 15.
At the age of 16, the beautiful Marie Duplessis conquered Paris. She bore a child to Charles Morny, duc de Morny, but the baby died a month after birth. The duc de Morny, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand‘s illegitimate grandson and a half-brother to Napoleon III, looked after Marie Duplessis, providing her with an apartment and transforming her into a refined courtesan and salonnière, the most famous in her days. She was Alexandre Dumas, fils’ lover and a lover to various aristocrats as well as composer Franz Liszt. Alexandre Dumas, fils, born in 1824, could not afford to marry her.
The lovely Marie Duplessis died of tuberculosis on 3 February 1847, at the age of 23. At her bedside were her husband, a brief marriage, the comte de Perregaux, and her former lover, the Baltic-German count Gustav Ernst von Stackelberg.
Girl with Peacock by Peter Schlosser, 1896 (Photo credit: fleurdulys)
Peter Schlosser was an Austrian artist, in the days of Art Nouveau, Jugendstil and the Wiener Secession (the Vienna Secession). I found a post about him, but no entry. This above painting is dated 1896.
Gustav Klimt and other artists founded the Wiener Secession in April 1897. Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer is dear to me because I was a friend of relatives, members in fact, of the Bloch-Bauer family. My friends were Hélène and Francis Gutmann. Francis, whose mother was a Bloch-Bauer, finished a PhD in physics, at the University of British Columbia, where I also completed a PhD. However, we had met in Victoria. I also met Mr. Bloch-Bauer, an uncle (I believe). He was an older gentleman at the time, the very late 60s. If my memory serves me well, he spoke French. Francis met his wife, my friend Hélène, in Montreal. He enjoyed playing the piano. The Nazis pillaged the family home. His brother-in-law, a prince, taught me the Viennese Waltz. Francis was born in Vienna and died in Montreal, in 2014.
King Henry VIII, by Hans Holbein the Younger, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Casuistry
The Fragmentation of the Western Church
When Antonio Escobar y Mendoza (1589 – 4 July 1669) published his Summula casuum conscientiæ (1627), the handbook of casuistry, the Roman Church had been severely fragmented. Escobar y Mendoza and Francisco Suárez (5 January 1548 – 25 September 1617), Jesuits, were therefore addressing an alarmed and vulnerable Western Church, a Church ready to use remedies it may not have otherwise contemplated. Casuistry all but took sinfulness out of sin. Consequently, it was attacked by Blaise Pascal, in his Lettres provinciales (1658-1659), and ridiculed by Molière(Tartuffe) and La Fontaine. But it allowed the king to sin.
Let us assess the damage
Henry VIII of England (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547; king: 21 April 1509 until his death), who was not allowed to divorce, ended up making himself head of the Church of England.
John Calvin(French, Jean Calvin, born Jehan Cauvin: 10 July 1509 – 27 May 1564) and French Huguenots, Calvinist Protestants, could easily point a guilty finger not at Jesus of Nazareth,but at the Churchas a human institution. Calvin is the author ofThe Institutes of the Christian Religion, publishedin 1536.
To the above, we could add the Edict of Nantes, promulgated in 1598, by Henri IV who was both king of France and king of Navarre. The Edict of Nantes offered protection to the formerly persecuted Huguenots, which seemed the correct remedy, but Huguenots were not loyal to the Roman Church and were therefore a potential obstacle to absolutism in the eyes of cardinal-duc de Richelieu.
Richelieu may have been right when he suggested to Louis XIII that the Huguenots’ right to have “places fortes” (fortified communities), such as La Rochelle, could imperil absolutism, i.e. one king, one language, one religion. These “places fortes” could be turned into genuine fortified places. (See Siege of La Rochelle, Wikipedia.) However, did he have to let twenty-two thousand Huguenots starve to death?
Casuistry: origins
Casuistry, a recipe for ethical laissez-faire, does not find its origins in seventeenth-century Spain, or Escobar y Mendoza, Francisco Suárez and other casuists. In dates back to ancient Rome and ancient Greece.
Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens a fresco by Raphael.* Aristotle gestures to the earth, representing his belief in knowledge through empirical observation and experience, while holding a copy of his Nicomachean Ethicsin his hand, whilst Plato gestures to the heavens, representing his belief in The Form.
For example, casuistry has roots in ancient Rome and, especially, ancient Greece, and the Renaissance had given greater access to the knowledge of ancient Rome and Greece. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle (384 BCE – 322 BCE)[i]proposes an examination of certain actions, not all, before judgment is passed with respect to their moral acceptability.
Casuistry and Jurisprudence
I should mention thatcasuistry has often been defined as jurisprudence applied to morality. For instance, the Ten Commandments do not permit the killing of a human being, but during a war that restriction is lifted. It is also lifted in the case of self-defence. As well, many countries have retained what other countries look upon as profoundly unethical: the death-penalty. This would suggest that the sinfulness of an action depends to a smaller or larger extent on circumstances and location. Jurisprudence is the study of cases (casuistry).
In other words, moral relativism is not new.
—ooo—
However, with casuistry, a sin could be rendered innocent using “methods” that manipulated reality, which Blaise Pascal could not accept, nor Molière, nor La Fontaine.
Casuistry: a general definition
There were great advantages to casuistry in that allowed the “grands” among the faithful to sin without sinning, which constitutes an unacceptable form of moral relativism and, by and large, benefits only the “grands” or the rich and powerful. Casuistry proposed “methods” that could be used to make a wrong a right. The most important of these “methods” or doctrines were:
la direction d’intention, or the end [l’intention] justifies the means (Machiavellian);
mental restriction (saying part of the truth out loud, but saying the rest silently, within oneself);
the doctrine des équivoques: using ambiguous or equivocal terms, to transform a message;
probability (one theologian who said “no” could be overruled by a theologian who said “yes” as both were theologians.
I am leaving out: easy devotion (la dévotion aisée), and dispensation from loving God (la dispense d’aimer Dieu) and there may be other “methods” or doctrines, but for a detailed account of the methods put forth by casuistry, one needs to read Escobar y Mendoza, Francisco Suárez and other proponents of casuistique, a task best performed by theologians.
Among the four “methods” or doctrines I have listed, the most disputed was the fourth: probability, which pitted one authority against another.
Henry VIII & Henri IV
The Church of England separated from the Roman Church because Henry VIII (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547) was not allowed to divorce Catherine of Aragon and having separated from the Roman Church, Henry VIII went on to have wives decapitated.
But let us look a the life of Henri IV of France who was a good king, but a womanizer who did not honour his promise to marry Catherine Henriette de Balzac d’Entragues, should Gabrielle d’Estrées(1573 – 10 April 1599), his official mistress, pass away. Henri IV probably expected Gabrielle d’Estrées to live a long time, but she died of eclampsia on 10 April 1599, at the age of 26. A few months later, Henri married Marie de’ Medici, not Catherine Henriette de Balzac d’Entragues, whom he had promised to marry.
Moreover, where was the Church, when Henri IV, a Protestant married Marguerite de Valois (14 May 1553 – 27 March 1615), a Catholic who did not want to marry him?Henri IV, king of Navarre, stood outside Notre-Dame de Paris while his wedding took place.
Henri IV abjured Protestantism on 25 July 1593, following the advice of his mistress, Gabrielle d’Estrées, a Catholic, but he did so unconvincingly: “Paris vaut bien une messe.” (Paris [the crown] is well worth a mass.) He converted five years after his becoming king of France. I surmise he had to convert in order to be crowned, which meant he was seeking power.
Finally, in 1599, ten years after he became king of France (1589), Henri had his marriage to Marguerite de Valois annulled on the grounds that she could not bear him children, which may not have constituted valid grounds for an annulment had Henri IV not needed heirs and had he not been a “grand.” He had also had Gabrielle d’Estrées’ marriage annulled. So what happened to Henry VIII? Why was his marriage not annulled?
Henri IV, king of France and king of Navarre, was no choir boy. He loved women. But he may well have been the best king France ever had.
Adultery
In other words, what we see here is adultery which, according to Judaism’s Ten Commandments, is a sin. Unlike Henry VIII, Henri IV did not break with the Roman Church to marry another woman. Nor did he have wives decapitated. But he had an insatiable sexual appetite which he obviously felt free to indulge perhaps given his “divine rights of kings,” a notion he and Henry VIII had probably never heard of.
Moreover, it was not uncommon for monarchs whose marriages were arranged to keep an official mistress. Henri II of France, Marguerite de Valois’ father, was married to Catherine de’ Medici, but he had a mistress, the powerful Diane de Poitiers.
Opposition to Casuistry
In his Lettres provinciales(1656-1657), Blaise Pascal[ii] (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662), using a pseudonym, Louis de Montalte, condemned casuistry. Molière mocked it in Tartuffe (1664, 1666, 1669) a play he often revised to please “le parti des dévots” and escape the death penalty. As well, La Fontaine, bequeathed a long list of poems where the “grands” do with impunity what is not allowed of the “petits.”
—ooo—
In other words, the rapid breakdown of the Roman Church justified robust recourses, but did it justify taking sinfulness out of sin in aristocratic rather than plebeian circles. There can no doubt that circumstances play a role in determining whether some actions are ethically permissible. But can taking all sinfulness out of sinful actions be acceptable?
Pascal was not heard in his lifetime, but in 1679, “Pope Innocent XI publicly condemned sixty-five of the more radical propositions (stricti mentalis), taken chiefly from the writings of Escobar, Suárez (Catholic Encyclopedia) and other casuists as propositiones laxorum moralistarum and forbade anyone to teach them under penalty of excommunication.”[iii]
Ironically, if indeed casuistry was used to prevent further fragmentation of the Western Church, it was also an indictment of the Church, which can lead one to think that Pope Innocent XI perhaps saved the Western Church.
Dear Readers,
I am posting an article on casuistry. It would be difficult to understand Tartuffe without information on casuistry. Other posts, on Pascal and the Jesuits, also constitute background knowledge. But let us begin at the beginning.
My long absence is due to illness mainly, but also to difficulties with WordPress. I have yet to purchase my new computer. So the problem may be the computer. It is not very old, but it must be replaced.
Molière’sDom Juan does not seem a comedy. It lacks a young couple trying to marry despite a heavy father’s objections. However, it borrows elements from the Italian commedia dell’arte. Molière’s Dom Juan has in fact been labelled a dramma giocoso, a playful or comic drama, blending tragic and comical elements, which violates the rules of 17th-century French drama.
For instance, Sganarelle is a descendant of Brighella, a zanni in the Italian commedia dell’arte. He and Dom Juan are nearly always together, which makes for an incongruous relationship: Dom Juan is the master and Sganarelle, the valet. Molière’s play is aSaturnalia.
The Characters and other Elements
Our main characters are Dom Juan and his valet,Sganarelle(Mozart’s Leporello), played by Molière when the play premièred on 15 February 1665.
Dom Juan is Done Elvire’s husband. She has left a convent to marry him, but he no longer wishes to be her husband. He wants to be “free.” Done Elvire’s brothers, Dom Carlos and Dom Alonse, must avenge Done Elvire: (point d’honneur, point of honour), but fail to do so. When Dom Carlos speaks to Done Juan (V. iii), the latter has become a faux dévot, a man who feigns devotion to serve earthly needs. It appears Molière is meditating his Tartuffe (1664).
The play also features two peasant girls, Charlotte and Mathurine, whom Dom Juan tries to “seduce.” He’s told Charlotte that he will marry her, but her fiancé, Pierrot, puts up a fight. Dom Juan has also told Mathurine that he will marry her. However, there is no successful seduction in Molière’s play, not even a kiss, except on Charlotte’s hand, that she describes as black. This scene is the “La ci darem la mano,” of Mozart’s Don Giovanni (see video below).
Molière’s play on Don Juán is singularly devoid of eroticism. His Dom Juan is compiling conquests, as does Leporello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. However, the catalogo Dom Juan keeps is a metaphorical rather than literal catalogo. Yet, at the beginning of the play (I. i) Sganarelle tells Gusman, Done Elvire’s escort and servant, that Dom Juan is the very devil. He is a grand seigneur [lord] méchant homme, an aristocrat, but an evil man.
In fact, other than the above-mentioned events the plot of Molière’s Dom Juan consists in a series of fruitless attempts to save Dom Juan from eternal damnation. The individuals begging Dom Juan to convert are Sganarelle (1), Dom Juan’s valet, Done Elvire (2), Dom Juan’s abandoned wife, and Dom Louis (3), Dom Juan’s father.
When Sganarelle warns his master, whom he calls a pèlerin, a pilgrim, that he may be punished, he is silenced immediately, not by an angry, but verbose or quiet Dom Juan. Sganarelle falls short of words and when his master will not speak, he collapses (III. i).
Noblesse oblige
Similarly, when Dom Louis, Dom Juan’s father, bemoans the fact that aristocracy is no longer as it was, Dom Juan listens, but does not hear. When Dom Louis is finished, Dom Juan simply invites him to sit down so he can speak more comfortably (IV. iv). In 1665, the noblesse oblige of earlier years has been replaced by self-interest.
Later (IV. vi), Done Elvire implores Dom Juan to mend his ways as God is about to strike. He lets her speak, but as she is leaving, he invites her to stay overnight. It is late. Done Elvire leaves. It is as though she had not spoken a word.
Dom Juan as faux dévot
At the beginning of act V, Dom Louis returns and praises his son who now feigns devotion. Dom Louis does not notice that Dom Juan is putting on an act. Moreover, it is as a faux dévot that Dom Juan dismisses Dom Carlos. He will not live with Done Elvire as man and wife, because it is God’s will (V. iii).
Retribution
However, Dom Juan has killed a Commandeur. There is a statue of the Commandeur with whom Dom Juan is to have dinner. At the appointed hour, the statue of the Commandeur takes him by the hand which causes the earth to move and engulf Dom Juan.
Conclusion
The above is an incomplete introduction to Molière’s Dom Juan, not to say ledonjuanisme. I have left out the encounter with Francisque, a poor man, and uneven fight, &c. But this is a beginning.
Don Juan, trans. by Brett B. Dodemer, Digital Commons (pdf)
Don Juan, ou le Festin de pierre is Gutenberg’s [Ebook #5130] FR
Tartuffe; or, the Hypocrite is Gutenberg’s [Ebook #2027]
Baryton Dmitri Hvorostovsky has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour. He’s being treated in the best facilities, in London, England, but these are shattering news. He has a very rich voice. I hope he soon recovers.
I wish to thank bonjourberlin for nominating me for the Blogger Recognition award. It is a privilege to know that one’s contribution to blogosphere is appreciated.
In return I would like to thank all my readers for their wonderful posts. I keep learning and I love your art, your poems, your thoughts, all that you share with us.
The following is one of my favourite movements in music: the 2nd movement of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony. It is played by the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by the now legendary Herbert von Karajan.
Céline Dion (b. 1968) was twelve when her mother contacted René Angélil (1942 – 2016). She had recorded her daughter singing and sent the tape to René who realized that Céline’s voice could lead her to stardom.
When Pope John Paul II visited Montreal in 1984, Céline sang while doves were set free. It was a very touching performance.
Then came the years when René Angélil honed her. Céline needed training. She had to learn English. Exposure was of course essential. Céline therefore participated in various contests winning first prizes. When she emerged on the international scene, she was prepared, lovely and successful.
The unexpected was that she fell in love with the man who had guided her to stardom. She married him at Notre-Dame Basilica in 1994, and Notre-Dame Basilica is the Montreal church where a National Funeral was held on 22 January.
The age difference, 26 years, did not bode well for the couple. For the last year or so, rumours circulated that Céline and René were ending their marriage. The truth is that she took a sabbatical to be home looking after him and their three children, two of whom are very young, twins Nelson (from Nelson Mandela) and Eddy (from Eddy Marnay, a French songwriter). Their first son, René-Charles, is 15.
Céline, Nelson & Eddy
Céline & René-Charles
René-Charles Angélil
René-Charles, Céline, Céline’s mother
René Angélil
René Angélil was born in Montreal to a father of Syrian and Lebanese descent and a French-Canadian mother. He was a performer and manager. In fact, managing Céline’s career soon became full-time employment.
He was diagnosed with throat cancer in the late 1990s and, in September 2015, Céline announced that nothing more could be done to save his life. He died on 14 January 2016.
What prompts me to write is compassion. Céline was barely out of childhood, when René Angélil became her manager and she is now 47 years old. René had been her world for 35 years. She will be returning to her profession a few weeks from now, but imagine the grief she is experiencing.
She is the mother of an exceptionally mature and articulate 15-year-old son, René-Charles. He will be there for her as will the rest of her family and her public, but her loss is immense.
She is unlikely ever to replace so loving and admiring a husband. I hope she finds another companion, but one cannot duplicate as extraordinary a love story as that of René and Céline. He helped her rise to stardom, but she remained humble, kept close and loving ties with her family and was a responsible and good wife and mother.
I want her to know that I feel enormously sorry for her.
John Noel Dowland (1563 – buried 20 February 1626) was an English composer and lutenist. However, he was trained in France and, between 1580 and 1584, he worked in Paris as secretary, first, to English ambassador Sir Henry Cobham and, second, as secretary to Sir Edward Stafford. During that period, John Dowland converted to Catholicism.[i]
However, Dowland also studied under Luca Marenzio, a celebrated Italian composer of madrigals. Dowland was therefore acquainted with the Italian madrigal. Yet, he was mostly the composer of monophonic and melancholy lute songs.
He drew from sources such as the
pavane, a slow courtly dance. His PavanaLachrymæ and other works have inspired Fauré, Ravel, Debussy and Benjamin Britten;
the fifteenth-century French chanson; and
the Germanic Lied.
Yet, there is an intensity to his songs that suggests a more personal form of inspiration.
With respect to the Frenchchanson, he can be associated with Claudin de Sermisy (remember Tant que vivray), Clément Janequin, Pierre de la Rue, Roland de Lassus (or Orlando di Lasso). Although chanson composers and interpreters had been influenced by madrigals, the fifteenth-century French chanson was homophonic and has endured.
As for the Lied, Dowland may have been influenced by Heinrich Isaac (c.1445 – 1517), a Franco-Flemish composer, born in Bruges (where else?), the composer of the immensely popular Innsbruck,Ich muss dich lassen. Isaac’s student, Ludwig Senfl, (c.1486 – 1542/3) published posthumously Isaac’s three-volume Choralis constantinus.[ii]TheChoralis constantinus contains:
50 motets;
nearly 100 secular songs, including French chansons;
Italian frottole (plural for frottola);
and a large number of German Tenorlieder.
Motets are refined, polyphonic and, often, liturgical vocal works, brought to Venice by Adriaan Willaert. As for the frottola, it was a popular song and an ancestor to the Italian madrigal.
Dowland as Precursor
Personally I also look upon Dowland as a precursor,
to Henry Purcell (10 September 1659 – 21 November 1695) and
to Franz Schubert, who gave the Germanic Lied a beauty that has yet to be surpassed.
Here, the common denominator is expressiveness and the importance of the solo singer. In this regard, Dowland is a representative of Renaissance humanism in general. Dowland knew how to set a text to music in a manner that touched the listener profoundly and touched exceptional listeners: Fauré, Ravel, Debussy and Benjamin Britten.
His contemporaries
In England, his contemporaries were Thomas Morley (1557 or 1558 – October 1602) were Thomas Weelkes (baptised 25 October 1576 – 30 November 1623) and John Wilbye (baptised 7 March 1574 – September 1638), all of whom wrote madrigals, Wilbye in particular. In 1588 Nicholas Yonge published the very successful Musica transalpina, a collection of Italian madrigals by Francesco FerraboscoI and Marenzio.
From 1598 until 1606, Dowland worked for Christian IV of Denmark who paid a fortune to hear his music. He was dismissed because of frequent absences. Six years after his return to England, in early 1612, he became James I‘s lutenist, a position he held until his death.
Monophonic or Partsongs
Specifically, Dowland wrote through-composed[iii] monophonic songs to which he gave a relatively discreet lute accompaniment. He is also the composer of partsongs, but to a lesser extent. In the case of partsongs, singers were given their part and could sit around a small table and sight-read.
Dowland published his aptly-titled First Book of Songs in 1597. His Second Booke of Ayres was published in 1600. He also wrote consort songs. These were songs written for solo singers accompanied by a consort of viols.
His Legacy
John Dowland’s Flow my tears and his Pavana Lachrymae, have long survived him. As mentioned above, he has been a source of inspiration to Fauré, Ravel and Debussy, and his song Come Heavy Sleepe, the Image of True Death inspired Benjamin Britten‘s Nocturnal after John Dowland for guitar, 1964.
The West Wind by Tom Thomson (Photo credit: Wikiart.org)
The “West Wind” is a major character in The Song of Hiawatha. It is Mudjekeewis, Hiawatha’s father, presuming he has a father.
In April 2012, I published a post featuring Tom Thomson‘s “West Wind” (1917). The “West Wind” is also a major character in the art of Tom Thomson (5 August 1877 – 8 July 1977). I sense similarities.
Thomson died before the Group of Seven was formed. However, given the subject matter of his paintings, his style as an artist, not to mention his lifestyle, that of a woodsman, he is considered as a precursor to members of the Group of Seven, arguably Canada’s most renowned group of artists. However, his lifestyle and the very title of the painting featured above also suggest cultural kinship with the Amerindians of the Central Woodland, thus identified by Stith Thompson.[1]
Tom Thomson settled in Algonquin Park in 1914, where he worked as a firefighter and guide, but lived in a cabin, devoting most of his time to his art. Thomson died during a canoeing trip. He was only 39. His premature death has served to transform him into a legend. The legend, however, is his art.
Landscape by Tom Thomson 1915
Evening, Canoe Lake by Tom Thomson, 1916
Pine Island, Georgian Bay by Tom Thomson 1916
The Jack Pine by Tom Thomson, 1917
Testimonials to a virgin past about to be destroyed for profit are numerous. Climate protected the Central Woodland. It was cold and therefore uninviting to loggers. But ‘improved’ harvesting technologies won the day. The Arctic is melting down.
There’s land left, but too much was harvested in a way that could not allow regrowth. It was harvested in the name of profit, and the prospect of profit numbs reason.
Humans kill. They kill in the name of profit. They also kill in the name of God. They kill.
Manabozho created land and whatever land had been lost to a flood, he created again. Such was his godliness.
This post is a continuation of a discussion of “Marie,” a poem by Guillaume Apollinaireset to music byLéo Ferré.“Marie”is a love poem. Apollinaire was romantically involved with Marie Laurencin, a well-known French artist who was a frequent guest in many salons. In the first stanza, Apollinaire writes: “Toutes les cloches sonneront,” if Marie as a grandmother can dance as she did as a young girl.
Bells are a powerful symbol. For instance, the line “[t]outes les cloches sonneront” brings to mind “Les trois cloches,” (The Three Bells), a Swiss song written in French by Jean Villard Gillesthat won Édith Piaf and les Compagnons de lachanson a great deal of praise. It is the subject-matter of my nearly complete next post. In “Les trois cloches,” bells ring when Jean-François Nicot is baptized. They ring on his wedding day. And they ring at his funeral. These are the key events of his life, our life, and bells ring.
Bells, however, church bells, are particularly important in Russia and are one of the distinguishing elements of Russian music.
Bells in Russian Music
liturgical use
other uses (secular)
an institution
the carillon
It is not uncommon for Russian composers to imitate the sound of bells in their music or include bells among musical instruments. In Russia, bells, church bells, were/are used for both liturgical and secular purposes This is also the case in the Western Church, but to a much lesser extent.
In other words, bells in Russia are little short of an institution.
The language of bells
Not all bells produce an identical sound. For instance they differ in size. A large bell is a louder bell. When mixed and depending on the rhythmic pattern, bells may therefore be used to convey a rather wide spectrum of messages, liturgical and secular. Some bells can be heard from afar and transmit a message that other bells can retransmit: D’écho en écho(Les trois cloches).
The Carillon
There is an instrument made of bells: the carillon. It may use a large number of bells. Ottawa’s Peace Tower has a carillon of 52 bells (see carillon, Wikipedia), played by Dr Andrea McGrady, the Dominion carillonneur. The carillon is an instrument that reminds me of a church organ. There are carillons all over the world and in places such as university campuses and parliaments. In Germany, a carillon is called a Glockenspiel. Elsewhere a Glockenspiel resembles a zylophone.
Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris
In Victor Hugo‘s Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame), published in 1831, the cathedral’s bells are central to the novel. Quasimodo, the hunchback, is brought up to be the bell-ringer and swings from a rope to save Esméralda from the gallows.
The Canonical Hours
Bells are also linked to the eight Canonical Hours or Liturgy of the Hoursand the more secular, but devotional, Book of Hours. In “Frère Jacques,” a 17th-century song, the eponymous Frère Jacques rings the canonical hour called matins:
Frère Jacques, frère Jacques, Dormez-vous ? Dormez-vous ? Sonnez les matines! Sonnez les matines! Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.
—ooo—
But let us return to Russia.
Although church bells are used in many cultures, for both liturgical and secular purposes, in Russia, they play a more central role than they do in the Western Church. However, the phenomenon I wish to emphasize is, first, their being imitated in music and, second, their being used as a musical instrument.
Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky composed music which, unlike the compositions of the Group of Five, did not attempt to be a national idiom, which does not mean that their music is not Russian. It features bells.
A discussion of bells could lead to a very long post. For the time being, let us note that Russian composers use musical instruments to reproduce the sound of bells ringing and that they may used bells as instruments. As we have seen above, there is an instrument made of bells: the carillon. However, we will listen to two works for the piano composed by SergeiRachmaninov and imitating the sound of bells. We will also listen to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture: bells and cannons.
The very end of SergeiRachmaninov‘s Prelude in C-sharp minor (Op. 3/2) reproduces the sound of bells. One may not hear the bells immediately, but we are definitely listening to a reproduction of the sound of bells in a piece for the piano. I am including a performance by Russian-born pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy.
Prelude in C-sharp minor (Op. 3/2)
Piano Concerto Op. 18/2
One can also hear bells at the very beginning of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto Op 18/2. I am embedding Hélène Grimaud‘s performance of this concerto. According to Wikipedia:
“[t]he opening movement begins with a series of bell-like tollings on the piano that build tension, eventually climaxing in the introduction of the main theme.”
(See Piano Concerto Op 18/2, Wikipedia.)
The Royal Ballet of the Dowager of Bilbao’s Grand Ball by Daniel Rabel
