Music

John Carewe

Neil Mackie, Andrew Gallacher (standing), and Christopher Kyte in Peter Maxwell Davies's The Lighthouse (left); Johnny James as Le Jongleur de Notre Dame.

Damped Fires

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by Ivan Martinson Le Jongleur de Notre Dame Eight Songs for a Mad King The Lighthouse Miss Donnithorne's Maggot Vesalii Icones

by Peter Maxwell Davies The Fires of London

Alice Tully Hall November 30, December 1

eter Maxwell Davies scored rather a

triumph here in 1983 when the Fires

of London, which performs only his semi-mystical, semi-staged, semi-stageworthy pieces, was the musical hit of the Britain Salutes New York festival. A hit is addictive, and so, under the aegis of Lincoln Center's Great Performers series, the Fires returned, this time with three programs, five works, and much higher prices, suitable to the grander milieu of Alice Tully Hall. I missed them at Symphony Space in '83, and so cannot attest to any change in quality, but attendance at Tully was sparse. New Yorkers are easily jaded, Thanksgiving weekend is often lousy box office, and lovers of new music tend to be both hard up and wary of Lincoln Center. Also, there seemed to be little effort to round up the audience who might have responded; few children, for instance, were lured by the low prices or parties to the merry Jongleur de Notre Dame.

All this said and the unusual nature of the event granted, I must further damp the Fires with faint praise on those very theatrical grounds where they have won some of their proudest laurels. Davies is a composer heartily involved in every branch of avant-garde technique, from the serest dissonances to the most shameless eclecticism. "Pointilist" is the word usually used to describe his work, meaning that his instrumentation is spare and every note counts-characteristics sure to endear him to both virtuoso performers and bill-paying impresarios. But Davies makes more of an effort than many composers to bridge the gap between his work and his audience. His scores are boldly theatrical in concept, in the athleticism demanded of performers (his musicians tend to perform as actors as well), and in the nature of his music (wild leaps and solo turns in the modern idiom, with abrupt intrusions of jazz, blues, Victorian references, and an awesome array of percussion). To an audience used to the more staid forms of modern music, Davies can be exhilarating. For a younger audience, his diversity may be a key to a whole new aesthetic.

Unfortunately, the exhilaration I and the small audience sought was not to be had this

year. If the playing and singing were expert, the staging and organization of instrumentalists (supposedly chosen for a stagey presence) were often amateurish. Some viewers made invidious comparisons to the creative, extraordinary ways Martha Clarke used musicians in her dance theater piece The Garden of Eartly Delights last year.

In Le Jongleur de Notre Dame, the juggler seemed endearingly small-time to me, just the sort whose naive faith, rather than technique, might appeal to the Mother of God. And Davies's conclusion, in which the Virgin, a violinist, sends him forth to please the world with his art, would have been unsuitable for so spiritual a juggler as, say, Michael Moschen. (I contrasted this with Massenet's sugary opera on the same legend, in which the juggler who has pleased Our Lady drops dead in ecstasy. For that a Moschen would be appropriate.)

In Eight Songs for a Mad King, Andrew Gallacher's George III seemed a trifle complacent (I last heard the thing done by a man who screeched and howled and trampled on his voice), but George was, they say, a very jolly, popular lunatic, quoting Shakespeare

and Handel just like Davies's George does. In basing each of the songs on something from the king's own music box, on 18thcentury reality, however, isn't Davies cheating a bit in the inspiration line?

Miss Donnithorne's Maggot, based on the woman who inspired Dickens's Miss Havisham, is the most accessible of Davies's vocal monodramas; or so I felt when I heard Anna Haenen do it some years ago, with instrumentalists as somnambulistic wedding guests. Mary Thomas is an older and less vividly bridal figure, but the work still passes time entertainingly. On the other hand, does it explore the lady's madness or is it a mere scena-Donizetti updated with less dramatic movement or purpose? And why does Miss D. confuse herself with Ophelia, quoting Shakespeare and singing (off many keys) bits of Ambrose Thomas, except to josh those of us with memories of stage madness? Is Davies wandering with or without purpose? Anyway, it's fun.

So is Vesalii Icones, a solo ballet to a wild and brilliant orchestration, on the Stations of the Cross (the cellist becomes Veronica and mops the dancer's brow; the conductor hands him the cup that must be drunk, not passed). Mark Wraith, an artistically scrawny blond, was a sight to see, stripping to die and then returning as the Antichrist to

D

The Fires of London (l-r): David Campbell, Mark Glentworth, and Jonathan Williams (back row); Madeleine Mitchell, Stephen Pruslin, and Helen Keen.

Chris Davies

a snappy whorehouse blues, if whorehouses went in for odd tonalities; in 1983, they tell me, that last bit was danced nude. Not this time, drat. Is the jazz meant to wake us up in contrast to the writhing disharmony of the crucifixion? Is tonal music the Deposition of Christ? Could Davies complete a work in either style without reference to the other and remain interesting? Does he want to? Or would be rather josh us and the tradition of separate styles?

The Lighthouse, a one-act opera, had its New York premiere with this engagement. Three men from the Admiralty investigate the disappearance, in 1900, of three keepers from a lighthouse off the barren northern tip of Britain. Abruptly they become the three keepers, arguing plaintively and menacingly in their exile. Again abruptly, each bursts into characteristic song, a trick so old hat Davies is obviously making fun of it even as he makes use of it. But his parodies of a bloodthirsty music-hall turn, a sexually repressed Victorian ballad (which arouses lusts all three men have repressed), and of a solemn hymn, certainly enliven the expert but dreary score. The madness that then descends on all three, in at least two cases is also unforeshadowed, and the concluding disaster purposely mysterious. (I enjoyed Neil Mackie's villain and Christopher Keyte's romantic balladeer. Davies can write very graciously for the voice when the fit is on him, and that's rare in any modern composer.) Granted the awkward nature of Alice Tully Hall as a theater, the dramaturgy could have been more effective. Still, the very cramped quality of the space tellingly implied a claustrophobia that might have become mania.

I have said little of the importance of Christianity or the homoerotic in Davies's work because I do not know his work as well as, say, Britten's, and cannot be so sure of my inferences. Both elements seem very strong and yet, purposely, excessively, obscure, just as his musical and dramatic intentions often are. (Britten is far less coy about any of these matters.) Does Davies intend to satirize Christianity, or to satyrize it? Or to hymn its praises? Is Miss D.'s Ophelia-like obsession with unspeakable Victorian sexuality basic or peripheral to her dilemma? Is religious fanaticism a villainous facet of The Lighthouse or is it sexual repression that does 'em in? Or the two in combination? Or are both red herrings, with, in Brenda McLean's staging, blinking red herring lights? I am intrigued with Davies's music, with its charm and intelligence and wit, but I begin to find his obfuscations as tedious, inconclusive, and Victorian as the subject.

Davies has so much ability whenever any subject, in any manner, comes up. But his group needs stricter training if it is a theatrical thrill they hope to impart.

This time around, the Fires of London earned a cool reception in New York. NEW YORK NATIVE/DECEMBER 23-29, 1985 45