A Rare Symphony and a Bit of Banality

Often in the name of political correctness we end up wronging a culture through patronizing and trivializing it. We neutralize it by making it palatable.

Mrs. H.H.A. Beach understood that at the end of the 19th century when she realized what nonsense Dvorak was promoting when he suggested that American composers follow his example and make their essentially European-modeled symphonies sound indigenous by using Native American tunes. Instead she wrote a “Gaelic” Symphony, based upon Irish folk songs that were not only her real heritage, but also more suitable for Western art music.

Thanks to the Long Beach Symphony on Saturday night, Beach’s symphony got a rare performance, and it was welcome. JoAnn Falletta conducted a snappy, streamlined performance in the Terrace Theater, more centered and more convincing than the thick, heavy-handed one available on records (by the Detroit Symphony under Neemi Jarvi).

As the first American symphony by a woman, the “Gaelic” holds a certain historical curiosity, but it is of more interest as a product of its time and place. Mostly it is typical of the symphonic fare in New England at the time of its premiere, 1896 by the Boston Symphony, in its close adherence to the late-Romantic European symphonic procedures, but its sound is less Dvorak and Brahms, the more common models, than Tchaikovsky.

Both with Irish tunes (which were not all that far removed stylistically from American songs at the time) and a model of an outsider composer, Beach manages something slightly more American seeming, in fact, than many of her colleagues (though nothing quite so rebellious as Ives was beginning, at the time, to unleash). It is a strong symphony, and the second movement, in which Irish music ripples to the rhythm of a siliciana, is a gem.

Performing the “Gaelic,” and performing it well, is praiseworthy missionary work. But the Long Beach Symphony limited its impact by utterly ignoring its message, in ways small and large. The small one was by following the normal modern procedure of naming the composer Amy Beach on the program. It may make us uncomfortable today, but she signed her scores Mrs. H.H.A. Beach for a purpose. This was tribute to her husband, who had encouraged her to avoid studying composition, lest the rule-laden instruction of the day hinder her creativity.

Far worse, though, was the spectacle of James Westwater’s so-called photochoreography, which overtook the second half of the program. Flashing slides on three screens above the orchestra almost in time to the music, he accompanied Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings with glossy images from Native American life and surroundings in the Four Corners region.

Simply put, a slide-show travelogue to very sentimental, and very irrelevant, music is a pure neutralization of a culture through triteness. It is even more offensive now that there are both Native American composers of interest as well as others who honor traditional Native American music in arresting ways. Sadly, Little Crow went along with Westwater’s cultural imperialism by offering a traditional invocation.

Westwater also trivialized Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” with travel magazine shots of farmland, tractors, country school rooms and county fairs. The pull toward banality, here, was more than this wondrously American music can survive, and the slides, when the synchronization was not perfect, also made the performance sound sloppier than it was. The only antidote is a quick trip to the cineplex for Spike Lee’s “He Got Game,” with its brilliantly original application of Copland.