Opera •
Peter Maxwell Davies
Bruce Cole
Peter Maxwell Davies, now in his early forties, is at an age when the musicologists have begun to talk of' 'periods' in his music. Often these games are too academic or too silly to be of any use, but here they provide a clear pointer to his new chamber opera The Martyrdom of Saint Magnus performed during this year's Proms. In more than one sense it is a musical landmark.
The early works, of which 0 Magnum Mysterium — a cycle of carols and instrumental pieces — is possibly the best known, revealed a strong affinity for mediaeval music. In this work it is a fairly obvious one — the music sounds mediaeval — yet anyone familiar with this style can recognise, even in Davies's recent work, the characteristic shrill tunes and quirky rhythms. More .significant, though, is a feature of which Davies has made particular use and which has affected almost everything he has written: the technique of parody. Today this tends to suggest something rather disreputable, along the lines of a send-up, and although Davies has gone to this extreme on occasion, I am really referring to the strict fifteenth-century use of the word; where an entire work is based on a borrowed idea (and not necessarily evident in the finished product).
One tune, which proved very popular with composers was the In Nomine from the Mass, The Western Wynde by John Taverner (1495-1545). In fact, Davies collected and arranged several of these In Nomines, adding a few' of his own and eventually this led to the mammoth Second Fantasia for orchestra. There is a breadth and violence to the Second Fantasia that invites comparisons with the symphonies of Mahler. Certainly it marks the point at which another of Davies's preoccupations, the late German Romantics, became apparent.
Revelation and Fall for soprano and chamber orchestra is a staged setting of a prose poem by Trakl. The staging is simple — the singer in costume, the orchestra on stage and the lights dimmed— but it contains some of the most hysterically savage music ever composed by an Englishman. The truth is that it is scarcely English at all, but pui.e German expressionism. Here, Davies introduces the type of musical shock-tactics that were to become the hallmark of his next few works. Curiously, the one which attracted the most attention — the bizarre use of musical styles (especially foxtrots) quoted in odd contexts — was the least new (Mozart did the historical equivalent in Don Giovanni). It is also very easy to overlook that he was at this time working on his two perhaps most important works to date (Worldes Blis and the opera Taverner) which, because they were not to be performed for a couple of years, tend to stand divorced from the more sensational ballyhoo. All the same, Eight Songs for a Mad King, much publicised and depicting the last (insane) years of George ill is a harrowing spectacle that brings the house down every time it is performed. In 1970 Davies was thus wearing some very popular hats when his opera Taverner was premiered at Covent Garden and, to my mind, overshadowed practically everything else: As a shadow, it was a particularly black one. It brings to the stage the same John Taverner whose music so obsessed Davies in his earlier works. Taverner was a Catholic composer tried for heresy but later pardoned by Cardinal Wolsey. When the sacking of the monasteries began underCromwell (Thomas, not Oliver), Taverner smartly renounced whatever faith he had, abandoned his music and opted for the safer, Protestant, side of the fence. Davies takes this betrayal of art and faith as the starting point for the opera. Most sinister of all, he points to our ability to confuse Christ with the Antichrist (or good with evil), sometimes unwittingly — because we are persuaded to do so — or worse, deliberately, because it is politically expedient. A favourite source for Davies's parody works is, significantly, Ecce Manus Tradentis (`Behold the Hand of Treason'). TreasOn, of course, can mean anything we, our churches or our government can want it to mean, and therein lies the danger. Shortly after the performance of Taverner Davies took a holiday in Orkney. He now lives there and in a sense one could say that the austerity of the early works and the violence of the later ones have both found a home in the Viking cultures that pervade these islands. But in contrast to the Germanic passion that had come before, his music, quite suddenly, became icy and harder. This was in 1971, and a major work has appeared yearly since, sometimes conjuring the landscapes of Orkney (as in Stone Litany) and sometimes its folklore (as in The Blind Fiddler). There is more to this than mere picture-painting. In his own words, Davies has 'over the last few years tried to evolve a language simple and strong enough to make complex structures meaningful and audible'. In this he has drawn not only on the folk styles of Orkney but has returned to the techniques he used during the 'sixties; bell-ringing, magic squares, plainsong. A Mirror of Whitening Light shows how a work can be meaningful without these technical matters getting in the way. Its title refers to the 'whitening' process of the alchemists, through which base metals were turned into gold, and by implication,the human spirit purified. There are hints here of a return to the moral issue S of Taverner. There is also a key to The Martyrdom of Saint Magnus.
It is inevitable that Davies should have chosen this as the subject of his first opera since Taverner —not only because Magnus is Orkney's patron saint but because he embodies an ethic of central concern to Davies. Magnus, a Viking pacifist, was slaughtered by the Earl Hakon with whom he shared Orkney rule during the twelfth century. Though capable of taking up arms, he chose not to — 'perhaps all history might be touched with healing by a right action in the present'. As in Taverner, it really boils down to political semantics: The 'right action' was construed as cowardice by those with an axe to grind.
The term 'opera' should be considered with care, as the very ritual presentation is quite unlike the screamy dramas of the Romantics. There are five singers, each taking several roles, and the action — based on the novel Magnus by Orkney poet George Mackay Brown — is condensed into nine scenes giving it an episodic quality rather than a continuous flow.
The climax is, of course, the Sacrifice. In the novel this takes place in the twentieth century, in a Nazi concentration camp, and Davies accomplishes, the time-travelling process with a ingenious musical kaleidoscope beginning with early plainchant and gradually working its way through history to the modern honky-tonk piano. At the same time there is a bombardment of flashing lights and the effect proved so disorientating I was sufficiently brainwashed to have accepted anything.
The local butcher is brought in, very much against his will, to carry out the execution. He wrings his hands, appealing to the audience for help. We laugh. Davies thus lulls us into the trap of feeling sorry for him and at the end, when the tinker Blind Mary receives her sight, we are suddenly the focus of her attention — 'blind mouths still crying for sacrifice'. Would we, asks Davies, have felt similarly sorry for Eichmann? Moreover, it' we are as gullible as he has shown us to be, how far might we sYrnpathise with the Eichmanns of the future?
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