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WUORINEN
The Haroun Songbook (Albany Records)
Reviewed by Chris Forbes
This year seems to be the "year of Wuorinen." The composer is everywhere, with performances of some of his major works scheduled all over New York and the East Coast and a major new piano concerto to be premiered with Peter Serkin. And most impressively, his opera, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, will receive its premiere at the New York City Opera this fall. A more incongruous match is hard to imagine than opera, the Salman Rushdie novel, and the hard nosed archly intellectual composer Wuorinen. Wuorinen is the best known of a much-vilified group of composers called "the East Coast Academic Serialists." The name seems to stick though Wuorinen and many others of his "school" have long ago left strict serialism behind. But Wuorinen is still the most outspoken and passionate defender of music that is complex and intellectually rigorous. The idea of such a composer writing a "children's opera" as Haroun is being described is strange, to say the least.
Though the opera is not yet recorded, this new release from Albany allows those of us who can't wait till November a taste of Wuorinen, the opera composer. The Haroun Songbook is based on the libretto to the opera by James Fenton. The work tells more or less completely the marvelously childlike story by Rushdie of Haroun, the only son of a famous story teller from a land that seems like a mythologized modern Hindustan. Haroun is devoted to his father, but when his mother leaves the family because she is tired of living in the shadow of the flamboyant storyteller, Haroun attacks his father and his profession. As a result, the storyteller loses his ability to tell stories and Haroun must embark on a mythical journey to restore his father's abilities. The novel is a pure delight, full of typical Rushdie gestures: moments of "magic realism," flashes of the modern world, and a pointed political satire, all wrapped up in the genre of the children's story.
Wuorinen was taken with the novel when he read it with his young son, and started the opera as a gift to his child. The Haroun Songbook takes many of the "numbers" from the opera and refashions them into a freestanding piece. Much of the material is reshaped to the demands of the song cycle, and the piano part is extensively refashioned. The work may have its origins in the opera, but it is its own piece and a refreshing one at that. Many of the hallmarks of Wuorinen's mature style are in evidence. The music is highly dissonant, though not without tonality. It shows a rhythmic vitality that has much to do with the music of late Stravinsky. And it doesn't let its innate tunefulness out easily. The music intrigues the ear on first hearing, but doesn't beguile it.
However, there are many passages in the work that introduce a new aspect of the composer's work. Perhaps because the libretto by Fenton is witty, with strong rhyme and meter, this is the most song-like work of Wuorinen's I've ever heard. Even his least tonal melodies "sing." There is something that is memorable about much of the work, almost, dare I say it, popular. Also, though for years Wuorinen has been a strong voice against post-modernism in music, this work has more elements of the post-modern than any earlier piece by the composer. Specifically, the cycle is opened and closed by the singing of Haroun's mother, in a full out Middle Eastern style melody. The effect is much like Szymanowski's experiments with "oriental" atmosphere in the Third Symphony...and in this work sounds almost arch, yet strangely captivating. Other movements in the cycle introduce music that is almost childlike or even jazzy. One number is a post-modern blues. That Wuorinen is able to extend his technique to these incongruous elements and make them sound of a piece with his more rigorous writing is a testament to his powers as a composer and proof that Wuorinen can beat the post-modern composers at their own game with greater skill and greater effect.
So here we have a work which seems to cry out to children...and yet is still abstract and difficult. Time will tell whether or not the opera is embraced by young people. My guess is that adults in the audience will bemoan the fact that there aren't many hummable tunes in the work (though I must admit that several songs have gotten in my head with almost as much force as a Broadway show!) and that the dissonances are too "ugly" for a children's work. But that's an adult problem. I must admit that even my first response was that this was a work more "child-like" than actually for children. But then I thought a little more seriously about it and realized that I would have loved this piece at 8 years old. And if I would have loved it, you can bet that at least some other children would have loved it. Kids' ears are much more open than we think, and can handle complex sounds with a little intelligent guidance. And there's charm in this work, real charm. Wuorinen reveals that underneath his rather forbidding exterior, there lies a bit of Ravel.
I will be attending the opera when it runs in November and will report back to Cosmik readers. But till then, the Haroun Songbook is a highly recommended modern vocal work. It is unexpected for Wuorinen...but highly welcome.
© 2004 - Chris Forbes