Beyond the avant-garde

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, December 26th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a master flutist opens the archives.

Gian-Luca Petrucci is professor emeritus of flute at Santa Cecilia Conservatory of Music in Rome. His latest album is a recording of a concert that he performed 15 years ago.

WORLD’s music critic Arsenio Orteza asked him about the program and why he waited so long to release it.

ARSENIO ORTEZA: The cover of the latest album by the Italian flutist Gian-Luca Petrucci is a striking reproduction of Kandinsky’s painting The Blue Rider. Also striking is the album’s title, The Other 20th Century 1903-1986. In classical music, album titles are often merely descriptive. To encounter a title with a thesis is rare.

When I reached out to Petrucci, he was grateful for my interest but insisted on communicating via email. “I can’t have a conversation on Zoom,” he wrote, “because I don’t speak fluent English.” I said O.K. because half a loaf is better than none and because Petrucci’s thesis and his music deserve to be discussed.

MUSIC: [“Rhené-Baton: Passacaille” by Gian-Luca Petrucci, Paola Pisa]

This is “Passacaille,” the album’s opening piece. It’s a composition by the French conductor and composer Rhené-Baton. Passacaille is the French version of the Italian word passacaglia, which means something like “to walk down the street.” Musically, the piece has clear ties to the lyricism of the Romantic era although it was composed in 1924. Petrucci contends that although the musical avant-garde got most of the attention in the 20th century and therefore dominated the narrative, there were strong crosscurrents that never got their due and deserve a fresh assessment.

In The Other 20th Century’s liner notes, Petrucci writes “Today, critics, musicologists and instrumentalists have finally realized that, working alongside the New Music and the avant-garde, composers of great stature had upheld a tradition that was capable of being more than just self-referential.” When I asked him who these “just self-referential” composers were, Petrucci wouldn’t name names. But it’s likely that the music he was referring to was the 12-tone compositions that were all the rage near the beginning of the 20th century…

MUSIC: [“Schoenberg: String Quartet No. 3, Op. 30: IV. Rondo” by Quatuor Diotima]

…the minimalism that was all the rage near the end of the 20th century…

MUSIC: [“Reich: Piano Phase for Two Pianos” by Mahan Esfahani]

…and the indeterminacy of John Cage and his followers who were all the rage in between.

MUSIC: [“Cage: Five” by Kim Kashkashian, Sarah Rothenberg, Steven Schick, Houston Chamber Choir, Robert Simpson]

The dozen pieces on The Other 20th Century are organized more or less chronologically. And, with the possible exception of Ernst Krenek’s 1954 composition “Suite for Flute and Piano, Op. 147,” they provide stark contrast to 12-tone, indeterminate, and minimalistic sounds. Several, like this pastoral 1934 piece by Francis Poulenc, are by well-known composers.

MUSIC: [“Poulenc: Villanelle: Mélodies pour Pipeau” by Gian-Luca Petrucci, Paola Pisa]

Many, however, like this diatonic 1970 piece by the Hungarian composer Farenc Farkas, are by composers who, in the U.S. at least, are not exactly household names.

MUSIC: [“Farkas: Sonatina: I. allegro” by Gian-Luca Petrucci, Paola Pisa]

Petrucci and Pisa also perform a composition by Samuel Barber. But whether the pieces are by famous or obscure composers, and whether they were composed near the beginning or the end of the 20th century, they share a lyrical quality that connects them to the music of earlier centuries. And, because of that connection, they challenge the simplistic idea that the real musical heroes of the 20th century were the rebels.

I asked Petrucci why it’s important to be aware of this counter narrative. He said, “The real problem is the lack of sharing of learnings. Performers have emerged who specialize only in a certain type of avant-garde music, while others reject some of the technical achievements developed during the heyday of what was called ‘New Music.’ […]

“Paradoxically,” he continued, “just as the composers of New Music set aside composers associated with other historical idioms, many of the achievements of New Music are now being forgotten. Ultimately, no one should ever set aside anything without understanding, experimenting, and evaluating. Every choice is valid to the extent that it is based on full knowledge of the facts.”

MUSIC: [“Krenek: Suite for Flute and Piano, Op. 147: I. andante” by Gian-Luca Petrucci, Paola Pisa]

Perhaps no piece on The Other 20th Century illustrates what Petrucci means better than Krenek’s aforementioned “Suite for Flute and Piano.” Krenek himself was known for atonality, the 12-tone technique, serialism, and even aleatoric—or chance-based—music. But his “full knowledge of the facts” enabled him also to write music with detectable roots in what came before.

As for why Petrucci waited so long to release The Other 20th Century, he said, “I felt the time was finally ripe for a reinterpretation of a certain 20th-century musical era. The achievements of avant-garde music…failed to produce a stable structure. The pursuit of ‘novelty’ essentially replaced the pursuit of…a message comprehensible to the public, not just to ‘insiders.’”

There’s certainly nothing incomprehensible about Jean-Michel Damase’s “Quatre divertissements.”

MUSIC: [“Damase: Quatre divertissements: I. allegretto” by Gian-Luca Petrucci, Paola Pisa]

It was composed in 1986, but it sounds as if it could’ve been composed one or even two hundred years before. And it will no doubt sound as delightful another 100 years from now. Perhaps that’s what Petrucci’s The Other 20th Century does best. It reminds us that the 20th century produced lots of timeless music. And it’s never too late to discover the timeless.

MUSIC: [“Damase: Quatre divertissements: II. allegro deciso” by Gian-Luca Petrucci, Paola Pisa]

I’m Arsenio Orteza.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.