Common material between Vincent and Vincentiana

The dramatic aims of the opera influence the formal experience of the later symphony through the fundamental common perception of non-linear narrative. The essential effect is that a listener is presented with events out of order, but is relied upon to realign them retrospectively into a timeline. The libretto of Vincent opens in the asylum in Saint-Rémy, where van Gogh is resident and the story proceeds as a series of flashbacks. Erkki Arni describes the story of Vincent as a ‘long flashback’, which moves through events in the character’s life in retrospect;10

indeed, Rautavaara – who also wrote the libretto – states

9 _{Rautavaara, Preface to Symphony No. 6 – Vincentiana (Helsinki: Fazer Music, 1992), iv.} 10

Erkki Arni, ‘Vincent’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera Vol. 4, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan Press, 1992), 1013.

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that almost everything in the opera could be either a dream or a flashback.11 There is an emphasis in the opera on never being completely sure where one stands in the timeline, as Vincent’s memories and dreams merge into one constant flux. Anne Sivuoja-Gunaratnum concisely points out how this psychological, subjective dramatic perspective is a recurring one in Rautavaara’s operas from this period, including Thomas (1982-85), Vincent (1986- 87) and The House of the Sun (1989-90): ‘The heroes escape their brutal reality into an imaginary journey into the past, where real memories and unfilled illusions and hopes get fused into a kaleidoscopic pattern.’12

How do the paintings fit into this non-linear continuity? As Ex. 4.1 shows, these images are recreated exactly in the Sixth Symphony. In discussing the opera, Arni describes the paintings as ‘waymarks’.13

A better word here might be “signposts”. Whilst the musical pictures do not guide us through a chronological story-line, they do help orientate to and from certain musical states or atmospheres, highlighting the sensation that the story merges between past and present. This notion is supported by their ordering in the opera. According to Stępień, each of these paintings is representative of a significant moment in Vincent’s life,14

but it is worth adding that they are presented out of order. “Wheatfield with Crows” was painted in 1890, after van Gogh had been admitted to Saint Remy, and yet in Vincent, it is placed before his admission to the asylum. Such non- linearity reflects how Rautavaara presents Vincent’s life without recourse to a timeline. The ordering of these visual events, it seems, is less significant than arriving at a stage where they have all been heard. This makes the final movement of the symphony, “Apotheosis”, the aggregate of a non-linear narrative – a kaleidoscope of previous experiences.

In a similar way to the opera, the paintings in the symphony function as signposts that help in navigating the complex back-and-forth narrative. Residing in this more absolute symphonic context is the influence of memory – the means by which events can proceed non-linearly, with the past, present and future hopes all merging as one experience. Visual elements play a crucial role in this process, as they quickly establish a subjective atmosphere. They also contribute to a particular approach to symphonic form, as these images are re-contextualised.

11 _{Sivuoja-Gunaratnum, 'Rautavaara as Opera Composer': 42.} 12 _Ibid.

13

Arni, ‘Vincent’.

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These paintings do not literally depict any details of these paintings in a programmatic sense, but create a musical sense of depth, colour and atmosphere, highlighted by the fact that the first three movements are named after the three paintings. There is also no evidence to suggest any specific, synaesthetic associations of sound and individual colours. Rather, their construction is based on the commonality between composing and painting as processes, as Rautavaara saw it – the overall effect comes from assembling and combining sound qualities. Again, it must be remembered that that these images are directly lifted from the opera, where they manage to set the scene of the drama, specifically the unrest of the hero, Vincent. In the symphony, this psychological impetus is inextricably linked to the visual awareness in the compositional approach, so that the music reflects the close dialogue in the opera between van Gogh’s psyche and his highly colourful paintings.

The paintings establish an atmosphere that other sections of the symphony are in dialogue with, creating an on-going state of flux, as well as a particular kind of structure. Residing in some small way, though, is what Mikko Heiniö describes as the ‘madness and excess’ of Vincent’s character.15

The pictorial atmosphere therefore could also be seen as a metaphorical “present”, deriving from the dramatic plot, which the music then proceeds away from and returns to several times. This forms a metaphorical dialogue between a troubled present and a nostalgic past. The paintings provoke new musical excursions, but also highlight the formal significance of a recurring, troubled atmosphere.

The application of narrativity to music should of course be used cautiously. Anne Sivuoja-Gunaratnam uses a model of narrativity with Rautavaara’s earlier serial works as an ‘innate response to being in a world and a way of processing mental content, experience and the like’.16

Sivuoja-Gunaratnam’s premise is that narration is a natural and innate form of human cognition. Music can be “narrative” without explicit reference to a non-musical story, although a residing influence of the opera is present. Rautavaara also lays out the significance of musical narrative:

As with my fifth symphony, the musical character of the sixth is indeed “narrative”, musically epic, but the intention is not to tell a story which would be translatable into words or ideas. This is story-telling of a purely musical kind. The opera’s music – its

15

Mikko Heiniö, ‘Rautavaara, Einojuhani’.

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substance – proved rich enough as a source: it cried for a new treatment, an expression outside the confines of drama, a new fate. It found it here, in the sixth symphony.17

While this preface expresses a desire to move away from operatic story-telling in Vincentiana, larger resonances of the story are nevertheless present. Non-linear narrative – a technique that lends itself so readily to drama – offers a different, but complementary, perspective on the unfolding of musical ideas through architectural sections that is often featured in symphonic music. Such an approach reflects the Finnish belief in what Mikko Heiniö describes as the durability of ‘symphonic thinking’.18 Heiniö also alludes to the idea that the inherent contrasts in the symphony form part of a deep-rooted mode of expression that transcends history.19 The formal approaches in Vincentiana also illustrate the flexibility of symphonic thinking.

Paintings and the question of autonomy

An important part of the narrative experience in Vincentiana is the treatment of these pictures in relation to the movement in which they are contained. Much of the energy in the form derives from a dichotomy: these pictures are both self-contained but relate to and impact all other events in the symphony. When looking back on the symphony as a whole, these pictures stand out, but during the narrative itself, everything happens transitionally, a process of cause and effect. Fred Everett Maus’s notion that one definition of musical unity is the unity of the listening experience itself20 supports the idea that this dichotomy helps the playing-out of non-linear narrative. Maus acknowledges the influence of John Dewey’s thinking in Art as Experience.21

Dewey outlines a subtle distinction between ‘experience’ as an all-encompassing, continuous process and ‘an experience’, which paradoxically forms part of a larger continuity and yet is itself complete, having run its course.22

A number of techniques combine to convey the self-identity of the pictures. These include the use of graphic and time-space notations, aleatoric elements, chromaticism, and the particular sound-world of Messiaen’s Mode 6, which Rautavaara frequently uses to

17 _{Einojuhani Rautavaara, Preface to Symphony No. 6.}

18 _{Mikko Heiniö, ‘Sibelius, Finland and the Symphonic Idea’, Finnish Music Quarterly, 3/4 (1990), accessed}

15th August 2017, http://www.fmq.fi/1990/09/sibelius-finland-and-the-symphonic-idea/. 19 _Ibid.

20 _{Fred Everett Maus, ‘Concepts of Musical Unity’, in Rethinking Music, ed. Nicholas Cook and Mark} Everist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 178-179.

21

Ibid., 179.

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build dense, relatively static textures. Put together, these elements create a sound field that contrasts with the sense of dynamism in other parts of the symphony. Clearly defined, constructional cells build, overlap and combine to create a distinctive atmosphere. Ivan Moody observes how the abrasive, ‘glowing sound washes’ which create most of the intensity in Vincent depend on the orchestra’s ‘essentially 12-note material’.23 But in the symphony, and in the opera, modes of limited transposition help to establish these paintings through their distinctive properties and highly colourful use. Both Sivuoja- Gunaratnum and Moody highlight this modal element as a feature of the overture in Vincent.24

Such a contrast, projected through a complex non-linear process challenges Kimmo Korhonen’s statement that there is a lack of internal contrast within the Sixth Symphony.25 The energy produced from these painting “motives” as static points of departure, out of which the thread of narrative grows, draws the listener into a particular world. A process of journeying through different and unknown contexts then ensues, building intrigue. Contrary to Korhonen’s assessment that this symphony is akin to a suite,26 inner contrasts within movements and within individual pictures like “Starry Night”, “The Crows” and “Saint-Rémy” reveal a consistent conflict or inner drama between different musical states. The manipulation of form and musical timescales in the Sixth Symphony is an integral part of its character. Although the opening of the first movement, “Starry Night”, is relatively static and non-directional, it is still dealt with temporally, and therefore demands a different view of musical time.

To understand Rautavaara’s approach to form in these cases, it is useful to consider temporal processes in post-tonal music. Robert Adlington argues for the use of other metaphors for changing musical sound other than those of unidirectional motion. He finds metaphor theory useful in light of the notion that ‘time should be viewed as a set of social strategies for dealing with change, rather than an unchallengeable condition of existence’.27

He goes on to point out the ‘inadequacy of the motional framework for dealing with certain kinds of modern music.’28

Among other solutions, he proposes

23

Ivan Moody, ‘‘The Bird Sang in the Darkness’: 22.

24 _{See Sivuoja-Gunaratnum, ‘Vincent’: 9, and Moody, ‘The Bird Sang in the Darkness’: 22.} 25 _{Korhonen, Finnish Orchestral Music Vol. 2, 41.}

26 _{Ibid., 41.}

27 _{Robert Adlington, ‘Moving Beyond Motion: Metaphors for Changing Sound’, Journal of the Royal}

Musical Association (2003): 300.

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alternative metaphorical readings such as heat and rising pressure.29 Such metaphors, which still depend upon the fundamental view of music as a temporal art, are particularly useful when considering the opening section of “Starry Night”. Again, some sense of the psychological subjectivity of the operatic hero is retained in the symphony. Cells of material, including a gradually intensified use of a block of Messiaen’s Mode 6 in divisi violins brings a growing intensity, followed by a dissipation of that energy. Out of this chaos, the symphonic story can proceed. Rautavaara therefore draws together multiple and seemingly opposed techniques and perceptions of musical time to achieve one, non-linear process. This approach further demonstrates how he deviates from symphonic tradition, but utilises new and different techniques to build on what the symphonic process is capable of conveying. This is another subtle effect of the close relationship between the residing psychological drama of Vincent and imagery to reimagine symphonic form.

Another distinctive element that isolates the atmospheres of these paintings is a DX7 synthesizer – an instrumentation choice retained from the opera. The DX7 features similarly in The House of the Sun (1989-1990) with visual connotations of supernatural elements. It is significant therefore that this instrument reappears at the end of the final movement, “Apotheosis” as part of a larger sense of acceptance from the disparate, visual and symphonic strands that characterise the narrative. Although The House of the Sun was composed after Vincent, it predates both Vincentiana and Angel of Light, although the fact that all of these works were composed within a few years of each other further indicates the close relationship between opera and symphonies in Rautavaara’s hands, with opera being something of a testing ground for instrumental decisions. In “Starry Night”, the DX7 builds a spatial, vertical harmonic block making use of a pitch collection (G-A-G- D-C-E) – see Ex. 4.2.