Bernard Gabriel; 38; Scriabin Faubion Bowers

This is Bernard Gabriel. For those who only know the name and music of Scriabin from an occasional orchestral performance of one of the symphonic poems. Or from a few of the piano works program here and there on piano recitals coming across an announcement of a new two volume biography of the composer isn't likely to send them fevers fully and breathlessly breathlessly into the nearest bookstore for a copy. But for those who are aware that there is right now a re-evaluation and a decidedly upward re-evaluation of scrapings music and if the composer was one of the most colorful original bizarre and imaginative figures in all music history with a real kinship to our own psychedelic generation for he was indeed their boy. For such people the appearance of the new biography is bound to place high on their must list. I have just now finished reading the 600 odd pages in these two volumes called simply scrubbing and once I got into the book after the first chapter or two there was plainly no putting it down

much other important urgent work on my desk just had to be put aside for later. The books are that fascinating. Well I have the author at the microphone with me and it's about time I told you his name. His name is BOWERS And I think I should also at this point mention the publisher which is a Kodansha International Limited. And as you can imagine from what I've already said I'm anxious to consider the book and the composer and the man screwed up and with Mr. Bowers personally. First congratulations on an exhaustive authoritative and fascinating job Mr. Bowers. Yes I was very careful not to thank you for those words I not write dazzled into like the book at that moment. I certainly did. Not only did your book rivet my attention almost from start to finish as I suggested but it made me eager to hear a great deal of the music of Scriabin that doesn't ever seem to come our way. It seems to me that we are familiar

with so very little of his music in this country. Well you know Mr. Gabriel if I mean to read him I think that is great I mean his really coming back with a vengeance. And one of its always plays in for instance he has a rishta always plays him. But there's so much. There is a good bit by bit and then we'll get to hear it. Promethea is the fifth symphony with Horace and colors and all of that is being done twice next year but the mistery him never had I will get into that later perhaps. As I say so little of it though does seem to come our way though hopefully it will. And I also feel that I shall never again listen to his music that the music that I do know quite the same way nor play it myself in this same way as I did before reading your book. That's the highest compliment that I think you could possibly pay an author who's written about I'll use all those. It's all very true. Your credits are impressive Mr. Bowers you speak

many languages Well Russian of course but Japanese too. And you've written several other books one I know on the Japanese theater or another on the dance in India. You made many translations. I believe you began your career as a concert pianist having studied with Korto and one of the group around scribe in the law who was I believe what was it uncle to Rachmaninoff or really either cousin or and I think you like to fancy him. Closer than the relation I originally was. Well tell me how and why did you get so mightily involved with scribing. Well when I was a very young boy about 16 I was issues mentioned the pianist and I you know the names like Daisy carriers don't say pull him to Lex Pulliam do foo Well let's say it about the title. Nothing at all and although there are many preludes and aged So yeah I'd rather I got into those later going to the fanciful and defiance of a Yaz and

then once I once I started looking at his music I realized that this was first rate stuff and then I became hooked on it. It's rather like an opiate or dope or so very true and then I understand you were in Russia for quite a while doing research on these two volumes. Yes well actually I went to Russia to do some letters for The New Yorker magazine but in the back of my mind of course was the knowledge that I would spend most of my time at the scrapping museum which I did. Well now scribing died in 1915 and I believe that almost immediately there was a considerable lessening of interest in his work at least in this country and then quite recently within the impasse a few years there seems to be a great resurgence of interest and a new appreciation of his importance and I want to ask you what do you think is responsible. Will let's go into his eclipse. Yeah his decline in fame during his lifetime he was worshiped fantastically. He was very much a hero on several continents. Pretty much the way Walt Whitman

was worshipped as a prophet as a mystic could not be very much here was he ever. Well he had an enormous following here. It was not it well America is a different is a different problem. Less would you say in America less in America than in Europe or in Russia. But it was for Theosophical reasons for mystical reasons people. You see this was before World War 1 and people were expecting the apocalypse it was a time of rest booting a time of tremendous belief in magic and scrapping was the first to put magic in music except for you know Wagner's magic music and that's what he didn't like that by the way Diddy. Not too much. Well he objected to it because you see having saw colors when he heard music and hear you know how much other thing he put in his music. Think of an even more colorful than Wagners Magic Fire music. I know where you get off on that now but with engineers having objected to it because it was in the wrong key and he's modulating and he says blame can only be these keys and here he goes through all the

wrong keys. And he objected to it being felt advisedly was a man of no lacking and color sensitivity. Yes well now you know the magic her music sounds just like new water to me does it. Yes it's like a beautiful waterfall trickling down. Not like back. You know you've got to get to feeling a fire not out of your hand right. Well now in your estimation Mr. Barr's just how great composer was describing in his mature works I think it's grabbing was one of the greatest composers who ever lived and I say that not because I because I love him and because I know him so well but it's a considered opinion it's opinion that I have questioned in my so a lot but over the course of some 35 years of knowing I mean he stands up tremendously well. But there are two things that militate against him. One is he's almost impossible to play but difficult right. I mean even for the orchestra.

You're nothing you're only the piano things are you know the orchestra orchestras can cope with him quite well I think well I can it's like Horowitz and researcher and others are you know rich too of course plays caring beautifully but I've heard her of its place grabbing very very badly. But it isn't that he can't cope with it you think because I know you will if you mention that there are too many because you see the thing about grabbing is there are two kinds of difficulty one is the technical difficulty. You have to be a virtuoso you have to be a Hoffman a Rahmani off the horror of it. But there are enough of us. Yes there are but you have to be a consumer virtuoso before you can even begin to play advance creating now but to cover the notes is only one thing. The second part is you have to understand and you have to place Korea being like scrapping for instance. He can't be played like a man he can't be played. He can't be played like a chest of drawers falling down the stairs has to be played with tremendous imagination vision or velvet and a certain kind of softness even in the loudness and a

certain kind of magic has to be invoked because a performer has a responsibility to to make the music within the music come out. You just can't play the notes and expect the music to do everything for you. Well that's true of many other composer of course you know one of the most ice for example of course you can play the Mozart notes and still completely miss but. Having enough to kill a difficult for reasons which I really don't understand. In other words you feel that the fact that it isn't generally considered one of the very greatest composers is largely because of the performances themselves right to alert to large extent and another reason is it's clear I mean did write a lot of bad music a lot of those predators are quite unnecessary he did them in order to make money first. Yeah because you know he had all of these mistresses that you had to support and all those children floating around. Needless to say then you think he was the greatest of Russian composers because I presume. I think what who what other Russian would you consider one of the greatest composers of all time I mean I think Tchaikovsky I mean in the in the same breath of Bach and Mozart and Beethoven there's no you know I do.

The tragedy is that he's too excessive and we've heard him too much but if you could imagine hearing Tchaikovsky for the first time in your life in your maturity with your present wisdom Mr. Gabriel what a thrill it would be well let me get on to the next question I've nothing against I guess but in my I mean I don't see him in the same class as Spock I must say. Well I was struck with the tremendous ego of both Wagner and scribing. And Scrivens surely must have thought of himself as one of the greatest of all composers certain he didn't think very much of many of the others I know that Beethoven was anathema to him. Chopin on the other hand was well passionate almost of his. But then you know I thought in Compare and contrast to the tremendous ego of both these imposed composers Wagner and the grabbing of Bach and his humble words in regard to such monuments as the Goldberg Variations and other of his masterpieces including even the B Minor Mass

and this contrast that struck me so because we're not for the modesty of some of the very great ones such as Bach. I think people might almost be led into the belief that supreme egotism and self-confidence are essential to create great art. But then there come along the big exceptions are what would you say to that to me. Do you think that Wagner is greater or less great than the above. Well I happen to feel that from a strictly musical point view this is just personal of course but Bach is the greatest musician that ever lived. But I am an admirer too of Wagner So I guess that he spread. Well I personally think that Wagner is certainly as great as yeah as any one of the one of the titans of all music no question about but if you have it you know that one should be supremely egotistical and the other one humble and genuinely humble from all that we know about him.

Don't you think. Yes but how much do we know about about what it's like to see one's 19th century in the other is 17th century. But you're comparing you're mentioning you're bracketing of Wagner inscribing is very interesting you know that both of them of the smallest musicians they would be a sickly in stature. It was about five feet two and you could put them in your pocket and walk out of the room. That's And no one would notice and Napoleon and the boy said he was rather fat but it tonight is going to have a nobody. Yeah. But to answer your question yes I I don't think that that self-esteem so abnegation has anything really to do with the creative process I'm sure it doesn't but I think one could almost get that impression if one weren't careful sometimes don't you think so I mean if you come across a few composers that that had a tremendous ego you could easily get the impression that this was an essential quality. You know also these things change with time for instance in books time. God was preeminent. Music was

in lower area in excelsis day or whatever the expression is you composed to honor God and the church was supremest but handler doesn't give you the impression of being that modest Betty. Well I I don't know but let me finish I was trying to do here and but by the time you get to the 19th century man the glorification of man has come in and man is usurping God's place the church is less important. Wagner inscribing never went to church either of them. And both of them felt that they had taken God's powers and put them within themselves and their music was an expression of the God within them. So it was a matter of fashion of time I think. But there's no doubt about its grouting was a megalomaniac but so a great many people in those days. True Well that's an interesting point that you just brought up. Well those who think scrubby in an important even a great composer I believe are thinking chiefly of his early works which are somewhat open ask and are largely small piano pieces but rather the works of his maturity when he

was a mystic in thrall by the ASA fee and when he composed within literally the white heat of inspiration with genuine originality and I might say enormous complexity. And in these later works he visioned what we now Michel are to call multimedia and that's all it is. Absolutely he he he believed in. In combining colors with music in writing melodies that vanished into an aroma he wanted his final where he wanted performed at the foot of the hymn oh years with sunsets and sunrises being part of the scenery. He wanted to incorporate the entire world process. He was in that he was somewhat close to Wagner but he carried it much further. Yes that leads me to ask you how interested actually are people in our current musical album guardians grabby and they should consider him as a father figure it seems. Well I think they do and Stravinsky who you know borrowed several pages from being in the

Firebird and elsewhere no recognizes his grabbing as the first serialist composer of the seven so not it's based on a set and therefore it was the very first set composition you can leave or surrender. Yes. And another thing that's grabbing did before Schoenberg was to build chords in fourths and so forth which are leads me to ask you this then you don't say a great deal about this court of mystery built on fourths that we I've heard about just about I think all my life. In your book you wanted too much about and I wondered if you'd go into that little bit with us now would you. Good. Yeah. Will the mystic cords so-called doesn't really exist. You can if you squeeze a certain number of grabbing with chordal combinations into it. Once in a while you can find it. But that wasn't the ways grabbing worked at all this was the result of a good field to hoe and it was picked up by Marion Bauer and several others who in their seminal books on screen having mentioned the mystic cords who everyone thinks in those terms but it's simply isn't so you had a thousand and

one combinations. Actually screw having works not quarterly but in melodies and if you look at his sketches of music you'll find a little scale that he chooses and that he fools around with and makes chordal combinations out of the mystical and as such does not exist except in English critical for you. I always had the impression it had to do with the ASA feed nothing not at all. Not at all. That's that's an eye opener. Well if you open there and your honor I see Robin was always a rather strange individual and as a child I believe he would sleep with his beloved Chopin's music under his pillow and he adored the piano as an instrument so much that he would kiss it I think whenever he could. And when it was a tune he went through agony sorrow when it was repaired as though a person were being tortured properly or not. But as I grew older he became even stranger and stranger and I'd like to if I may to read a paragraph or two of your own description of what it's grabbing like Mr virus please do. Well. You are right.

He washed his hands constantly often after merely shaking hands. He wore gloves into the house he feared bacteria contagious germs everything money fell on his letter hold a paper by the edge of the fourth page he just most infected and when served a soft boiled egg he said but it's uncooked What if the hand were tuberculosis he fidgeted Fred fussed fumed and drummed his fingers. He jiggled his knees pinched the bridge of his nose as if sinus pain him shuddered. If any food fell from the plate to the tablecloth and refused to eat it even if it was bread. If a doctor prescribe medicine he invariably took the dose I took beyond the dose in winter he put on an overcoat to open the window I love that slip into gloves or to receive or give money to a tradesmen. He was particularly restless sitting besides women. He was terrified of their gossip. In summer he was afraid to sit on the grass and he shared with Rahmani off the horror and hysteria at cock chafers. He pulled it claps of thunder and I looked up caught chafers word I got in

a car you are really saying is this something you sit all day with a like vegetables. It's a live picture there it said. Well there's a little picture of a white screen I mean. It was like I hope we're not painting too horrible of a perfectly gorgeous music came out of this very new dreadful scared man as well. There were many Mr. Powers who thought screaming quite mad but I must say that despite all these peculiarities visions obsession with Nirvana and all on his strange behavior such as sight. I just read and quoted you but you paint him nevertheless as a man of such penetrating intellect and clear thinking in so many ways as to be perhaps highly eccentric to be sure but not truly mad in the psychiatric sense now what do you think. Well I think that you have expressed it expressed it very well. He wasn't he wasn't psychiatrically and say not like Schumann.

No no Schumann really had to have it if you had to be confined but screen I mean was Oh always utterly charming terribly sweet and he did have this enormous capacity for friendship rather money and often he were very good friends. And Rachmaninoff had no friends as you know a difficult strange man and Hoffman was another friend he and Hoffman used to play the piano together and exchange piano ideas and pre-coffee of absolutely worshiped. So he has had this enormous capacity for friendship and this even in his later life when he was perhaps closest to madness just put it it wasn't madness it was that he simply lived on another plane he lived in another world. And after all he was turning out this lovely music solely so that he commanded the respect Stravinsky once took a very long trip in 911 in order to meet him to talk to him to spend the afternoon with him a game. Stravinsky came at noon and didn't leave until seven at night. And later Stravinsky wrote a letter

saying that he would been he had been quite shocked that screwed up and it didn't seem to know about him. Yes yes I remember that. But he got along with people terribly well but he was in in this mystical magical world inside his head he did feel that he worked on another plane he used to get sounds out of the piano that no human being could possibly do. No no one could could play as velvet to Louis as limpid Lee or get these flashing colors. Rather our piano rolls and his playing would you tell me that they're not too successful. They're not too successful after all a piano room really doesn't have that secret of peculiar tone quality of velvet it ought to be the last one could expect. There those piano rows sound rather mechanical they give you a good idea of the rhythm of the rhythm and clarity and eye rhythm his capriciousness of tempo. They do give you that very much I haven't heard which is something a piano shouldn't imitate. One shouldn't listen to these and then play as having played because it's too

too erratic. When I mentioned his excessive ego as somewhat similar to that of Bogner and it strikes me too that the now that both composers had something else in common and that was an ability to charm and captivate people into positively worshipping them and being willing to do almost anything for them and most who surrounded scree I mean it seems to me loved him. And surely the women in his life from his aunt who is a mother to him to his two wives and the others that you mentioned in your book there was in a dolla tree there there was enough military there to to Oh I don't know what effect other human being our beings far more than than most of us ever do. And of course this was absolutely true. Wagner to a. Fantastic extent people who want to commit suicide or did he did that. Well it's great I've been describing as John was so great that he could convince people of the most impossible ideas Koussevitzky for instance. After spending a day with scribing and hearing about the MI stereo and how this was the

last thing he had to say last unfinished work which was to incorporate all the sights and sounds and smells and dancing and music and poetry and piano and orchestras was to incorporate the whole range of life experience. At the end of which the climax was to be the dissolution of the world the world as we know it would absolutely fall apart so many vibrations would be set up that the cosmos would come loose and then a new race of men would be born. Well Koussevitzky believed this so implicitly that he said good I'll buy it I'll give you five thousand I don't want to take you to write it and you never could estimate times at all five years. So because if you said I'll give you five thousand roubles a year for five years and then I get full rights to the mistery and Koussevitzky was a hard headed business man. Yeah. Wow I wonder whether he bought the idea or butter beans to a musical talent. That's great to hear they're out of a boat I think. Now Mr. Barr's you begin your book with an extensive look at Russian

music before and during the 19th century and well before there was hardly anything before wasn't it seen and some amazing isn't it to realize that just about all the Russian music that we know about stems from 18:00 1836 has its little uproar there about I think this is achievement is in this short space of time is nothing short of phenomenal. Don't you I mean. Well I think no other country in the world has ever produced as many geniuses in the polls such and from composers and performers in such a short time. Fantastic the name of Russian musicians that are absolutely Household Words because a quote about like here because of you and all the great pianist Anton Rubinstein and today's violinists and yet most of our great violinists today a Russian. Born in Russia you better not say that morning. Yeah. Yes you know you spoke of a great amount of alcohol somehow consumed by so many

Russians including the musician and I just got to quote one sentence that you end the page with and I thought it was so quotable. You said that string quartets and their performers were launched in alcohol like ships christened champagne and I don't know I just love that. Thank you but it was the custom you know whenever a musician had a piece of music performed or a piece of music printed there would be a big party and everyone would get really drunk. You're going to love the idea of a string quartet somehow being launched that way Mussorgsky has a wonderful word for that he says guests transcode yakked themselves. Yes I do want to ask you about the position of being in Russia today. Well this is something Richard and I talked about it. He said it's so funny not hands free. No no no. Later That's just letters to the great disserve yet be honest. He said that it's great I mean it is a rarity and novelty something rather exciting

and exotic here in America. But in Russia he says he's simply proud of what we've grown up with he's part of the mainstream of music and he says some of my earliest memories are of a screen. And he also told me a very touching moment you know when Barry's Pasternak the poet Yes died Pasternak I remember that being as a child and his love of music lasted forever. And so the night that he died rishta sat next to the corpse playing nothing but being on a little upright piano all night on keeping vigil over the body you know in the Russian custom. And then at dawn he stopped and went away. I was wondering do you know what Shostakovich Shand. Well a couple of ski and sure how do they feel about Shostakovich and a touch of Julian despise. They do despise him. Shuster coverts once said but he wouldn't say it today but he once said in 1980s scribing is a bitter ist enemy why do you think. Well because I mean as a romantic scribe you know always creates beauty and

Shuster coverage wanted something harsh to fit in with the harshness of Soviet life and yet Prokofieff who with Prokofiev straddle the script because if Seoul is pre-revolutionary but his life was post-revolutionary very into you know want to cover you if I may have an interest where you graduated from a musical technical musical school which is called named after scrap in describing technical. Fascinating one of the fascinating things I think about you about biography is the way that one comes across in surprising ways and angles. A great many famous musical figures that we're all familiar with like Rahmani off who was so intimately associated with his life and Joseph Hoffman Joseph Levy Koussevitzky as you mentioned. So along with the Boston Symphony and so on if he's a little before he's going to out time but he held up the New York Philharmonic I know you live for five years as well and even Horowitz played for him I think you said you know this is a an 11 year old but

you know who's grabbing his favorite pupil at the Moscow Conservatory was horrid It's his uncle he was just he adored him and when he heard of it his uncle didn't get the gold medal for piano screen having resigned from the conservancy. He threw an enormous scene and cried and wept and stories had two personal memories of my own up in Maine on an upright piano. I recall hearing for the first time the famous poem thirty two and a sharp major and this was played by Joseph Hoffman. And just sitting there and a little upright piano a little shack. I don't think I'll ever forget it. Another memory to now is just of leaving to have this fantastic take me to performance of the Judean major thirds in the flat. I think Oprah said yes and that remains of all the you know of. Well one of the two or three performances of Joseph Levene which I think I'll never forget just from the Imagine speaking of magic the magical qualities he brought to it both technically and

interpretively. And to think that somehow you got that right that the master is nice so to speak and I really at the time had no idea that either Hoffman or Levene had ever known. Well they were all the same age they were classmates and they were very friendly. That's very true. But you see that what you just said is a compliment describing as well as to the greatness of these two great pianist. Everybody I know when I lecture over the country and so forth various people always come to me and say there's one moment I remember when school Yavin was played. When I first heard a scream in peace he always leaves that little nick in the mind. Right. Well arse both reading your extraordinary biography on screen published by Kodansha and talking with you on the air have been experiences I deeply cherish. Thank you. Thank you very much. This has been Bernard Gabriel with my ever fervent wish that all of you out there have a most musical week. This program was acquired with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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