David Johnson (1942-2009)
12 Preludes & Fugues for solo piano
Christopher Guild (piano)
rec. 2023, The Old Granary, Suffolk, UK
Divine Art DDX21124 [64]
“Fugues are seen as dusty and academic, only to be written by people with fanatical and desiccated minds. I hope my mind is not like that.”
Thus, David Johnson whose mind, on the evidence of this remarkable musical offering, was anything but desiccated. Contrapuntal skill, found particularly in the form of the fugue, used to be driven into music students as though the machinery of fugue existed solely for its own ends. The consequences were a move by composers away from counterpoint, perhaps because it was associated with examinations, failure, and an almost total lack of human feeling or engagement. So, when a later twentieth-century composer sets out to write 12 Preludes and Fugues, a statement is being made, for that is to invite the listener to remember Bach, Shostakovich and Hindemith – the greatest of contrapuntal company. The word “fearless” comes to mind.
Johnson himself made those connections in the liner notes for a previous, very fine but now unobtainable recording of his 12 Preludes & Fugues by Ian Hobson (Zephyr Z113-98, 1998), and these liner notes, reproducing the notes in the score, have also informed Christopher Guild’s much more extensive notes for the recording under review. This calls for a warning. Johnson commonly subverted his own work with silly commentary and forced literalism. There is a sense in which the composer used the programme notes to keep a distance between himself and his listener, as though frightened that the true depth of his feelings would not be appreciated, even trivializing his own musical wit in describing Fugue 8 in terms as distracting as the worst of Tovey’s witticisms of yesteryear. Listen to these pieces before you read the notes.
Christopher Guild’s performances are outstanding. His variety of touch responds impressively to the wide-ranging demands of the music, and the clarity of his finger work means that the complexities of the counterpoint are all readily followed without his having to force recognition by heavily highlighting entries. For all the humour and satire in many of these pieces, there is an over-all quality of refinement which Guild has understood. The performances are bold but never overstated, and the very real emotions which are not hard to seek are handled with great sensitivity.
Gratitude should be extended to Dr. James Reid-Baxter for his generous sponsorship of the recording. The sound quality is excellent, the clarity and incisiveness of the Steinway model D (Hamburg 1986), is matched by the resonance called for by some of the more dramatic textures and by the presence of occasional pedal notes. However, it is Guild’s assurance that brings the wildly diverse sound-world of Johnson’s piano writing to full realisation. Johnson’s musical handwriting may be clear, but it is inelegant, scattered across the widely-spaced staves, and requires the pianist to possess the musical equivalent of the visionary – which Guild has indeed brought to bear.
So how do these works from a relatively obscure Scottish composer stand up to scrutiny? Wonderfully. Taken as a whole – and they are melodically conceived as a whole – they cover a wide emotional range with many contrapuntal tricks and with the clear musical evidence that Johnson is at home with his material and so technically assured that he is ready to break any rules one might suppose to be adhering to the forms.
The work is held together by a four-note sequence based on the letters BHEA. It is short for the aspirated form of Scottish Gaelic Beatha, meaning life. Using the German note name equivalents, this translates into B flat, B natural, E, A. This sequence transposed twice down a third produces a complete twelve-note row and this row provides the key sequence for the whole, as well as much of the melodic material.
The first Prelude is therefore in B flat. Its simple single line theme leads to a set of variations: but when the melody is annunciated with rich harmonic clusters, it achieves a grandeur which Johnson describes as “a climax of anger”. If so, it is righteous anger and it resolves properly into one of the many deeply satisfying cadences spread throughout the work. Guild plays this subtle piece with perfect awareness of its quiet strength. A three-part fugue follows, featuring triplets, inversions and a final stretto. Johnson composed this as an “hommage à J. S. Bach”. It is contrapuntally worthy of the maestro, but its spiky character is closer to the world of Shostakovich.
The second prelude determinedly enunciates the full tone row but is contrasted with an impassioned recitative which seems to question the whole raison d’être right from the outset. The fugue subject is framed by the BHEA motif and is distinguished by its quirky rhythms 8/8 being divided into 3+3+2. The performance matches the fleet-footed writing.
Many of Johnson’s textures are open and sparse, so their delicacies are totally exposed and their acidic harmonies heard with complete clarity – notably in Fugue 3 which has a particularly neo-classical flavour. Occasional references to jazz rhythms and blue notes are matched by references to Johnson’s own Scottish musical traditions, notably in Prelude 8 in F – a homage to the great Millar 1635 Scottish Psalter. The tune is Johnson’s and the treatment, with enriched harmonies and octave transpositions, makes for a dignified and moving dialogue. It is followed by as cheeky a fugue as you will ever hear, playing with inversions and sequences, and briefly allowing whimsy to be overtaken by reflection.
At all times the musical intent is clear. The counterpoint in the fugues is crystalline and the subjects are characterful. Only in Prelude 10 is the sustaining pedal to the fore, resonating like church bells, with a central passage in which the left hand provides a beautiful counterpoint to the higher pitched bells. The ensuing fugue continues the theme of bells – this time associated with Southwark Cathedral and London Bridge railway station. It verges on the silly and just occasionally one wonders were scraps of these pieces intended to entertain a child. But the knowing innocence of such music is no more simply childish than the following Prelude 11 with its menacing march and the anything but desiccated Fugue 11 in G sharp based on “Hey, Johnnie Cope, are ye Waukin’ yet?” This is a clever musical satire referring to Sir John Cope’s ignominious defeat by the Jacobites at the Battle of Prestonpans.
With the final Prelude, largely in a single line, but formed as a dialogue between two contrasting musical voices, we return to a more quietly thoughtful, almost recondite world, and the four-part concluding triple fugue is in D flat. This is a concise a profoundly thoughtful composition of calm beauty – an unspoken homage to Bach and a final assertion of fulfilment.
The whole is a quite remarkable achievement, unique in character, technically highly skilled and in places very moving.
John Purser
Previous review: John France (May 2024)
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Contents
Prelude and Fugue 1 in Bflat
Prelude and Fugue 2 in B
Prelude and Fugue 3in E
Prelude and Fugue 4 in A
Prelude and Fugue 5 in F sharp
Prelude and Fugue 6 in G
Prelude and Fugue 7 in C
Prelude and Fugue 8 in F
Prelude and Fugue 9 in D
Prelude and Fugue 10 in E flat
Prelude and Fugue 11 in A flat/G sharp
Prelude and Fugue 12 in D flat/C sharp
