Leon Kirchner (b.1919): Chamber Works
New music in the United States since World War II has
been a spirited arena of diverse ideologies. Serialism,
minimalism, indeterminacy, “New Romanticism”, and
other musical pathways have attracted their passionate
constituencies of composers and audience. Of
composers who have chosen to go their own way,
working apart from the ever-changing mainstream, a
major figure is Leon Kirchner. Single-mindedly
following his own vision, he has developed a powerful
inimitable language.
Kirchner was born in Brooklyn in 1919, the son of
Russian Jews. At the age of nine his family moved to
Los Angeles, which was in the 1930s to become a
creative mecca with the influx of distinguished figures
fleeing Nazi Europe. Family hopes for a medical career
were dashed when Kirchner put his zoology major
behind him and entered Arnold Schoenberg’s class at
U.C.L.A. (University of California at Los Angeles). He
received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Music from the
University of California at Berkeley, where he had
classes with Ernest Bloch. Awarded the Prix de Paris in
1942, he intended to go abroad, but because of the war
settled in New York and studied with Roger Sessions.
After army service he returned to Berkeley for graduate
studies. He held professorships at the University of
Southern California, Mills College, and, from 1961 until
his retirement in 1989, at Harvard University.
Kirchner is a man of the broadest artistic and
intellectual horizons, and an immensely perceptive
teacher of both composers and performers. (This writer
was his student at Mills College.) At Harvard he created
a unique music analysis/performance class, which had
an enormous impact on such budding celebrities as
Yo-Yo Ma, Lynn Chang, and James Oliver Buswell. A
pianist and conductor of rare gifts, he has been guest
conductor with major orchestras, and in residence at
numerous festivals. He is especially proud of the
Harvard Chamber orchestra, which he founded to
perform traditional and contemporary repertoire.
Kirchner’s works include the opera Lily, two piano
concertos, two cello concertos, three string quartets,
Concerto for Violin, Cello, Ten Winds, and Percussion,
Music for Orchestra I and II, Music for Flute and
Orchestra, a song cycle The Twilight Stood, a
monumental cantata Of Things Exactly As They Are, and
other orchestral, chamber, and solo works. In recent
years he has written a second Trio for Violin, Cello and
Piano (1993), Duo for Violin and Piano (2002), and
Piano Sonata (2003). Kirchner has received numerous
major commissions and awards, including the 1967
Pulitzer Prize and the 1994 Friedheim Award of the
Kennedy Center.
The works on this recording span four decades.
Although the composer’s music has gone through a
subtle evolution, the basic features of Kirchner’s
musical language are apparent from the start. His music
tends to the rhapsodic, with impulsive movement from
lyric to dramatic, and asymmetrical rhythm and
phrasing. Works are conceived as organic wholes. (All
the multimovement works on this recording are “played
without pause”.) In the earlier music particularly,
sectional contrasts are sharp, marked by clear tempo
changes; in his later music, the textural continuity
becomes more homogeneous, the changes gradual and
seamless. The tonal language is chromatic but not
serially organized. The composer’s markings in the
scores are detailed and sometimes unusual: “Haltingly”,
“Wild”, “Coming from nowhere, almost out of control.”
Each movement evolves from a single idea, and
typically, these themes are of a probing, questioning
character. Like a protagonist in a drama, the idea goes on
an epic journey, experiencing a series of contrasting
psychological states in its quest for resolution or
fulfillment. The journey is turbulent; in stream-of-consciousness
mode, we are carried along with
propulsive energy until we reach a plateau of calm
reflectiveness, but then the energy erupts anew. Despite
the forceful linear thrust, the music exists on several
levels. Cross-connections are important; an extended
passage, or even a single sonority, recalled from an
earlier moment triggers the recesses of our memory and
builds up a multi-dimensional awareness analogous to
our conscious and unconscious mental processes. All
this makes a work feel like a large experience even
though it may not be particularly long in actual time.
Kirchner’s earliest compositions show the impact of
his teachers, as well as the influence of Bartók and Berg.
The language, however, is distinctly his own. His
earliest published composition, the Duo for Violin and
Piano (1947), has an airy, playful tone but, typically, the
seemingly lighthearted, scherzando discourse ultimately
enters mysterious, transcendent realms.
The Piano Sonata (1948) follows the historic
principles of sonata structure with great originality. The
first movement sets up a recurring sequence of two
qualities of motion: a declamatory theme in broad tempo
gradually gathers momentum and restlessly surges to a
fast, propulsive section. Each sequence is more
developmental and intense. The final section reaches no
resolution; a series of bell-like sonorities propels the
movement to a last gigantic chord from which emerges
new distant bells of the Adagio. Over an obsessive
repeated note ostinato (avowedly indebted to ‘Le gibet’
from Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit), melismatic
figurations reminiscent of Bartók’s “night music”
evolve into a dramatic chant. The third, rondo-like,
movement energetically and straightforwardly resolves
the work as a whole, pausing to reflect on portions of
preceding movements before the decisive ending.
By the time of the Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano
(1954), Kirchner had abandoned the traditional scheme
of distinctly characterized movements in favour of more
continuous structures. Here the two movements are
interdependent. The first movement evolves in a manner
similar to the Piano Sonata, but the fluctuations between
the slow, lyric theme, introduced by the cello, and
contrasting agitated sections are treated with greater
complexity and unpredictability. The movement ends as
with a question mark, the piano’s final bell-like chords
acting as a bridge between the two movements. The
second movement reestablishes the moments of
introspective calm from the first movement. The
ascending gestures of the restless first movement now
yield to a falling, consoling figure. Agitated elements
gradually take over, however, and aggressively drive the
work to its final powerful resolution.
‘Flutings’ (1973) is a short solo from the opera Lily,
based on Saul Bellow’s novel Henderson, The Rain
King, and produced by the New York City Opera in
1977. The flute solo begins the opera, evoking an exotic
jungle setting. It is also part of a short concert work,
Lily, derived from the opera, for soprano and eleven
instruments.
Triptych (1986/88) began life in another guise. The
first movement, for solo cello, is actually a version of
For Solo Violin. Kirchner added two duo movements
and the present work was first performed by Yo-Yo Ma
and Lynn Chang. The introspective first movement
develops from the initial sighing, falling motive and its
preceding grace note arpeggiation. The yearning
character of the motive and its restless tritone harmony
calls for a resolution, which is not yet to be fulfilled. The
next movements carry the search onward and ultimately
provide an answer: the violin’s brash entrance sets up a
dynamic response which, with occasional flashbacks to
the first movement, culminates in the driving Presto
finale, a joyous, dance-like affirmation of breathtaking
virtuosity.
Cheryl Seltzer
© 2005 Continuum