{"id":749,"date":"2014-03-06T00:26:12","date_gmt":"2014-03-06T05:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=749"},"modified":"2018-08-24T16:02:24","modified_gmt":"2018-08-24T20:02:24","slug":"la-mer-and-the-garden-of-fand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=749","title":{"rendered":"La Mer and the Garden of Fand"},"content":{"rendered":"

Debussy\u2019s La Mer<\/em> is so famil\u00adiar that it\u2019s easy to for\u00adget how rev\u00ado\u00adlu\u00adtion\u00adary a piece it was when it was fin\u00adished in 1905. After a gazil\u00adlion per\u00adfor\u00admances, it still remains fresh. We are accus\u00adtomed to think of it as a pure exam\u00adple of \u201cexpres\u00adsion\u00adism\u201d, a kind of musi\u00adcal equiv\u00ada\u00adlent of Monet\u2019s fuzzy lily pads and flow\u00aders, and it is indeed that. But at the same time, it exhibits a strict clas\u00adsi\u00adcism in its struc\u00adture, and roman\u00adtic dynamism in that a \u201csto\u00adry\u201d unfolds as each sec\u00adtion devel\u00adops from hints in pre\u00advi\u00adous sec\u00adtions, and it trav\u00adels through the emo\u00adtions as much as any high roman\u00adtic sym\u00adphony. In fact, it is fair enough to call it a sym\u00adphony, if you think more in terms of the last Sibelius sym\u00adphony than of Beethoven or Schu\u00adbert. So it gives us the best of three worlds. Like most peo\u00adple who lis\u00adten to clas\u00adsi\u00adcal music, I some\u00adtimes neglect to lis\u00adten prop\u00aderly to \u201ccon\u00adcert chest\u00adnuts\u201d like this. In fact, it had been quite some time since I had giv\u00aden La Mer<\/em> any thought. What trig\u00adgered a return to it was lis\u00adten\u00ading to anoth\u00ader impres\u00adsion\u00adist work about the sea, much less well-known, Arnold Bax\u2019s The Gar\u00adden of Fand<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Fand leaves her lover Cu Chu\u00adlainn (Man\u00adan\u00adnan MacLir in the mid\u00addle casts a spell of obliv\u00adion upon his wife, Fand) \u2014 Illus\u00adtra\u00adtion by Yvonne Gilbert<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Arnold Bax (1870\u20131953) was an Eng\u00adlish com\u00adposer who became obsessed with Irish music, poet\u00adry and mythol\u00adogy. He is best known for a series of tone poems on celtic themes, of which Tin\u00adtagel<\/em> (1917) is the best known, and The Gar\u00adden of Fand<\/em> (1913\u201316) is the best. I\u2019ve loved this piece for most of my life, though for a long time could only find a sin\u00adgle record\u00ading of it. For\u00adtu\u00adnately, it was by Adri\u00adan Boult, the most sym\u00adpa\u00adthetic and able Bax inter\u00adpreter. Bax had lit\u00adtle fame or suc\u00adcess dur\u00ading his life\u00adtime. The ear\u00adly tone poems had a mod\u00adest suc\u00adcess, but his sev\u00aden sym\u00adphonies dropped into obliv\u00adion. How\u00adever, Sibelius felt his work was first-rate, and the two men formed a last\u00ading friend\u00adship. It was the advo\u00adcacy of Adri\u00adan Boult that slow\u00adly brought Bax back into view, though most of his works were not avail\u00adable on record until the 1980s. Sibelius\u2019s influ\u00adence is vis\u00adi\u00adble in his work, but not obvi\u00adously so. Debussy\u2019s influ\u00adence is more obvi\u00adous, with the French\u00adman\u2019s par\u00adal\u00adlel thirds shift\u00ading by whole tones, and sparkling wood\u00adwind orna\u00adments. But Debussy tends to evoke nature with dis\u00adpas\u00adsion, while Bax invokes a more super\u00adnat\u00adural, even creepy sen\u00adsi\u00adbil\u00adity. The Gar\u00adden of Fand<\/em> is based on an ancient Irish epic from the Ulster Cycle tale, Ser\u00adg\u00adlige Con Culainn<\/em> (The Sickbed of C\u00fachu\u00adlainn). Fand is a Celtic sea god\u00addess, asso\u00adci\u00adated with the tran\u00adsi\u00adtion to the oth\u00ader world, faerie. The peren\u00adnial Irish hero, C\u00fachu\u00adlainn, tan\u00adgles with her, to his per\u00adil. What has always appealed to me about the piece is it\u2019s sin\u00adu\u00adous, shape-shift\u00ading melody, which has stuck in my mind far more than most. Around it, Bax weaves no end of dra\u00admatic sur\u00adprises. It\u2019s a fab\u00adu\u00adlously inven\u00adtive piece, with sud\u00adden changes of tem\u00adpo and sur\u00adpris\u00ading effects. Lit\u00adtle twin\u00adkling fig\u00adures trans\u00adform into sin\u00adis\u00adter for\u00adtis\u00adsi\u00admos<\/em>. Like Celtic myth, the piece is decep\u00adtive, noth\u00ading ever remain\u00ading the same for long, and noth\u00ading being quite what if first appears to be\u2026 in short, it\u2019s like the sea.
 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Debussy\u2019s La Mer is so famil\u00adiar that it\u2019s easy to for\u00adget how rev\u00ado\u00adlu\u00adtion\u00adary a piece it was when it was fin\u00adished in 1905. After a gazil\u00adlion per\u00adfor\u00admances, it still remains fresh. We are accus\u00adtomed to think of it as a \u2026<\/p>\n

Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[947,22],"tags":[1373,1477,1475,1478,1476,1482,1481,1479,1480],"class_list":["post-749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c-listening","category-cs-listening-2008","tag-adrian-boult","tag-arnold-bax","tag-debussy","tag-garden-of-fand","tag-la-mer","tag-serglige-con-culainn","tag-sickbed-of-cuchulainn","tag-tintagel","tag-ulster-cycle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=749"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9850,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions\/9850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}