Paul Creston (1906 - 1985)
Toccata • Symphony No. 5 • Out of the Cradle • Partita •
Invocation and Dance
The distinguished American composer Paul Creston was born in
New York City to Italian immigrant parents in 1906. Though as a child he
studied piano and organ with Gaston Dethier and Pietro Yon respectively, he
enjoyed no such mentoring in composition. The itch to compose, however, came
early, and by the age of eight he was already trying his hand at creating
music. As an essentially self-taught composer he maintained that his greatest
teachers were Bach, Scarlatti, Chopin, Debussy and Ravel. The breadth of his
knowledge in history, literature and philosophy derived as well from his own
focused self-education. By the age of fifteen, forced by his family’s economic
hardship, he left school in order to earn a living. Though this turn of events
might have been daunting to a less-disciplined mind, it further prompted the
young man to take responsibility for his own education. While still in school,
he decided to take a more mainstream American name than that of his birth,
Giuseppe Guttoveggio. The name “Creston” came from a play in which he was
performing; “Paul” was simply a random choice.
Like Robert Schumann a century before him, Creston was drawn
as much to a career in literature as he was to one in music. In 1932, when he
was 26, he committed himself to musical composition, and because composers do
not typically have an easy time making a living from so arcane a profession,
the young man supported himself by playing the organ to accompany silent films.
(Though the famous talkie The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson dates from 1927, it
took almost a decade for movie houses throughout the country to update to the
new genre, thereby ensuring work for theatre organists.)
Despite having no connection with an established musical
institution, as did Walter Piston, for example, with Harvard and the Boston
Symphony Orchestra, Creston managed to attract audiences during the Great
Depression, quite rapidly, in fact. In 1938 he was awarded a Guggenheim
Fellowship, and in 1941 he won the New York Music Critics’ Circle Award. The
following year, Arturo Toscanini conducted his Choric Dance No. 2 with the NBC
Symphony. Over the next several years, other major conductors and orchestras
performed his music, including his first and second symphonies. Creston’s music
was clearly being heard during an era when classical music was, if not
mainstream, at least disseminated on mainstream radio and in concert halls far
and wide. His tonally centered harmonic vocabulary found a cordial reception
among musicians and concert-goers alike during the period extending from the
1930s through the years following World War II, the same era in which Aaron
Copland captivated the American concert audience with his popular/populist
ballets. During the 1960s, as the pendulum in American composition swung heavily
toward post-Webernian serialism and other modern approaches, Creston’s music
fell into neglect, if not disfavor, along with that of other American composers
who had not embraced non-tonal techniques. In the past two decades or so, the
world seems to have rediscovered the great legacy of American symphonists, and
Creston’s star has been on the ascendant once again.
Creston composed Toccata for the fortieth anniversary of The
Cleveland Orchestra in 1957. George Szell, the ensemble’s famed music director,
conducted the première on 17th October of that year. From the Italian for
“touch”, the centuries-old toccata suggests a work of seemingly improvisatory
character demanding (and rewarding) the highest levels of virtuosity. Szell had
fashioned the Cleveland musicians into one of the finest orchestras in the
world, and Creston had virtually free rein to compose a work reflecting their
well-earned reputation. The resultant score bristles with unstoppable energy
and provides ample opportunities for individual musicians to take a place in
the spotlight. The piece’s primary theme, fashioned from widely spaced
intervals somewhat redolent of Copland, sounds unmistakably American. A
sequence of solos for clarinet, flute, oboe, bassoon dot the musical landscape
like a series of awe-inspiring sonic vistas. Occasional Latin-esque riffs
extend the American connection southward. Textures are lean and neo-classic à
la Stravinsky but without his customary acerbity. A serene central section with
richer textures includes a lovely oboe solo above caressing strings. A return
to the virtuosic mien of the opening section brings the work to a strenuous
close.
Creston’s Symphony No. 5 was commissioned to celebrate the
25th anniversary of the National Symphony Orchestra, which gave the première on
4th April, 1956, under Howard Mitchell. The first movement, marked Con moto,
begins softly with a long unison string theme that evolves into a faster fugal
episode. There follows an increase in urgency and dynamic levels achieved
through layering of more strings, brass and percussion. A brief sinuous and
anxious oboe theme weaves through the aggressive orchestral texture. Low brass
instruments seek to calm things with a noble theme, but it too has its element
of unrest. The tenor of the entire movement, in fact, is ceaselessly active and
thrusting.
The Largo opens with strings rising dramatically to an emphatic
chordal eruption from the orchestra. A sense of passion and unrest continues,
though less aggressively than in the first movement. An attractive, yet
nervously inquisitive oboe theme enters. Counterpoint in low strings maintains
this feeling of urgency, which is mildly offset by a solo flute theme that adds
poignancy. As in the Toccata, the wind principals in particular each have
something to say in the manner of short solos. The entire movement has a double
nature: Intense, long-breathed lyrical melodies float over or meander through a
strongly inflected orchestral background. After a final peroration, the English
horn intones a haunting theme against subdued strings to end the movement
quietly.
The finale, Maestoso - Allegro, begins dramatically with
barking brasses and surging rhythms punctuated by aggressive percussion and
timpani. A sudden quieting of the orchestra leads to a new theme in the upper
strings against quietly insistent rhythmic prodding from the rest of the
ensemble. Brass instruments introduce a new theme, assertive but far more
positive in mood than anything heard previously in the symphony. This highly
rhythmic music conveys a sense of near-manic jubilation, and the work comes to
an abrupt and emphatic close.
Creston composed Out of the Cradle in 1934. The inspiration
for this moving work came from Walt Whitman’s “Out of the Cradle Endlessly
Rocking” from Leaves of Grass, a reflective and by turns elegiac and anxious
poem originally titled A Child’s Reminiscence. Conveying the poem’s theme of
love and loss, expressed through recollections of a pair of mockingbirds, of
which one is lost while flying over the ocean, the music captures the surging
power of the sea and the feeling of flight through undulating rhythms and
scurrying wind lines. Overall, the piece has a strong forward rhythm and clean,
neo-classic scoring with a distinct American timbre. Occasional moments recall
the quieter moments in Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps and add to a sense of
nature’s mystery. The music ends quietly, as the departed soul of the mocking
bird and its human counterpart return to the comforting maternal arms of the
sea.
Creston’s 1937 Partita evokes the spirit and sound of Bach’s
Brandenburg Concertos. The opening movement, aptly titled Preamble, has the
motoric energy of a Baroque fast movement. The flute and violin soloists trade
off long-spun melodies in conversational style. A lovely Sarabande follows in
which the low strings establish the slow but forward rhythmic impetus over
which the two soloists present and comment upon a sad and tender flowing
melody. Here, too, the sentiment and melodic shape suggest a Bach slow
movement. In well-gauged contrast, a quick, quirky and energetic Burlesk
ensues, animated by close imitations between the violin and flute. The Air is a
relaxed, sweetly melancholic duet over a gentle pizzicato accompaniment. The
finale, a sprightly Tarantella, brings the work to a swirling close, its
unstoppable demeanor suggestive of a perpetuum mobile.
The 1953 Invocation and Dance begins quietly and
mysteriously. Soft but dissonant chords in the lower frequencies provide the
backdrop for serpentine and chromatic melodies uttered by the winds. As the
dynamic levels rise, so does the tension implicit in the beginning chords.
Strong propulsive ostinatos and barking brass add a potent dose of primitive
energy in the manner of Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps. Janus-faced, the
music pays homage to Stravinsky’s landmark ballet of 1913 while celebrating a
distinctly American sound and kind of syncopation that suggests the music of
his younger contemporary, Leonard Bernstein, though without any hint of
Broadway grease paint.
Steven Lowe
g 2003 Seattle Symphony