The Road to Emmaus

The highest purpose of art is to make the transcendent perceptible. Long after the artistic detritus of the twentieth-century has been swept away, people still will be listening to the music of English composer Edmund Rubbra (1901-1986), and wondering why we were complaining about the spiritual aridity of our times.

By then, it will have been forgotten that Rubbra’s music was buried under this detritus for most of his lifetime and that he never lived to witness its growing popularity. However, Rubbra’s contemporary, the great English conductor Sir Adrian Boult, once wrote that while Rubbra conceded nothing to the fashions of the day, “he goes on creating masterpieces, which I am convinced will survive their composer and most of those who are his contemporaries.” Boult’s prophecy is now coming true, as surely it had to, for this composer who strove for and reached that highest aim of art.

When last addressing the topic of Rubbra’s music (July/August, 1995), I welcomed the premiere recording of Rubbra’s tender and beautifully lyrical Viola Concerto on Conifer Classics. At the same time, I bitterly complained of the neglect of much of his work. Someone must have been listening. Chandos Records, which has played such a significant role in earlier recordings of Rubbra’s works, has embarked upon the first integral traversal of the cornplete symphonies with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under the direction of Richard Hickox. The first three releases contain six of the eleven symphonies. The performances and recordings are triumphs. Also, after a long drought that left us with only one recording of a single string quartet, Rubbra’s superb chamber music is now receiving attention. Conifer Records has released the four string quartets with the Sterling String Quartet (on two CDs for the price of one), and Marco Polo has given us the rapturous Cello Sonata. In addition, CBC Records in Canada has issued, in a collection of piano trios, Rubbra’s twenty-minute Trio in One Movement, Op. 68. All of these releases are indispensable.

I always have been puzzled at the critical verdict that Rubbra’s music has little surface appeal. On the contrary, it captivated me at first hearing and has enthralled me ever since. Rubbra may be compared to Anton Bruckner in terms of religious impulse and a sense of spaciousness, but the sound world is more akin to a combination of Sibelius and twentieth century English composers like Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Bruckner was accused of writing the same symphony nine times, and the same kind of criticism could be leveled at Rubbra. Each work searches for the same thing. Each seems to be an effort to get something vitally important absolutely right. Rubbra describes how the search commences: “I never know where a piece is going to go next…. When I begin, my only concern is with finding a starting point that I can be sure of.” The tentative beginnings slowly yield to a sense of purpose that gradually possesses the music and lifts it up. Rubbra is at first meditative, ruminative; then rhapsodic, achingly lyrical; and, finally, exultant, ecstatic, entering heaven in a vision, being lifted into it rather than having to take it by storm. This is sublime, radiant music. As few composers have, Rubbra achieves a raptness of utterance that is utterly compelling and completely captivating. He employs vast melodic lines of great beauty and interweaves them, preferring a polyphonic elaboration of thematic material rather than the perhaps more dramatic procedures of sonata-allegro form. Ideas evolve rather than contrast. Rubbra’s works are characterized by rigorous organic development and complete cohesion.

Rubbra considered Symphony No. 9 his best work and his dying wish was that it be recorded. Now it has been, with Chandos’s latest release . Symphony No. 9 is really a deeply moving Easter oratorio with roots going back to Bach and a text drawn from the Gospels, Catholic Latin hymns, and the poetry of Bernard de Nevers. Rubbra starts his Sinfonia Sacra at the end of the Passion. The first sung words are “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani,” followed by “It is fin¬ished.” It is not only a supreme musical challenge to portray such a dramatic moment, but, if placed at the start, it leaves one with the problem of where to go from there. The answer, of course, is to “The Resurrection,” which happens to be the subtitle of the symphony. But musically this is not so easy. Either the death of Christ cannot be depicted with full force, or, if it is, everything that follows will seem anti-climatic. Rubbra did not escape this dilemma, but it does not diminish his achievement. The Symphony No. 9 contains choral passages of the utmost beauty and nobility, especially the tenor chorus of angels at the empty tomb and the climactic hymn, “Regina caeli.” The extensive narration is exquisitely set for contralto.

As Rubbra’s avowedly most personal utterance, the Symphony No. 9 is ironically least like him. While one would easily recognize the hand of a twentieth century English master, the defining individual traits that so immediately identify Rubbra’s music are in the background much of the time. Perhaps one can partially account for this by the episodic nature of the text, which would work against Rubbra’s usual organic sense. Yet another reason may be that this work is not about Rubbra in a way that his other works are. Rather it is Rubbra’s love for Christ set in music, a musical caress for his Savior, and he therefore keeps himself veiled.

This thought is borne out by Rubbra’s depiction of the journey on the road to Emmaus, during which several Apostles walked with the risen Christ but did not recognize him. To portray this, Rubbra reverts to an orchestral “Conversation Piece” without text. The music is typical Rubbra. This is the one part of the work that could have been lifted out of one of his symphonies, and I think it is the key to them all. Why does this one movement sound so quintessentially like Rubbra, while so much of the rest does not? British composer Robert Saxton says of Rubbra that his “music is, in the deepest sense, a spiritual journey.” I knew this, but not in so specific a way as is revealed by this “Conversation Piece.”

Ruhbra traveled a long road through Eastern religions and other beliefs before reaching Catholicism, to which he converted in 1947. In a very real way, he was on his own road to Emmaus and, like the Apostles, his “heart burned within him” at the dawning realization that finally brought him to recognize the Lord. Each of Rubbra’s works is a step on his road to Emmaus. They are spiritually autobiographical. Each searches, questions, mediates, ruminates, reaches and, finally, discovers; each contains in it an ecstatic moment of divine recognition.

The next Chandos release pairs Symphonies nos. 6 and 2. Symphony No. 6 presents Rubbra at the height of his powers. The Lento opening is hypnotizing. The second movement, Canto, is thought by some to be the single most beautiful movement of Rubhbra; it must be the most tender. If the Poco andante section of the last movement isn’t prayer in music, I don’t know what is; likewise, the concluding Allegro is the musical answer to that prayer.

The Symphony No. 2 is a lean and very taughtly argued work that eschews any accompaniment figures to its main melodic lines. In its spareness, it achieves a Sibelian grandeur. It opens with a magnificent, faintly liturgical theme that is developed, as Rubbra puts it, in such a way as “to discover how far the interplay of melodic lines could be made to realize the dramatic tension necessary in such a work.” The answer is: fully and with great power. (Sir Adrian Boult included a recording of this stunning work in his Desert Island Discs.)

The third Chandos release contains Symphonies nos. 4, 10, and 11. The Symphony No. 4 is looser-limbed than Symphony No. 2 and more overtly lyrical, with a mesmerizing ostinato pulsation in long stretches of the first movement. A beguiling Intermezzo follows with a lilting waltz figure. This work ranks with Symphony No. 6 as a masterpiece. It is accompanied by Rubbra’s last two symphonies, nos. 10 and 11. They show no diminution of Rubbra’s powers or passion, only greater concentration of thought in their fifteen-minute durations. They display the kind of concision familiar from Sibelius’s last symphonies. In fact, Rubbra said of No. 11 that it is “a culmination of all my symphonies compressed into one movement.” These final symphonies prove the total consistency of Rubbra’s vision.

As nearly as any single interpretation can, Hickox’s fully captures Rubbra’s ecstatic vision. He is totally convincing. Hickox brought credentials to this project, having recorded some of Rubbra’s choral music back in the 1970s. He was also personally acquainted with the composer. In a recent interview, Hickox said, “He’s someone I knew quite well and whose music I love. I met him as a child. Then, when I recorded for RCA the Masses that he wrote, he actually came to the sessions. He was always so grateful that anyone did his music, and I will remember the tears pouring down his face. He was a very sweet man.” It is now we who should be grateful that we can hear these exalted works in such extraordinary performances and recordings.

Author

  • Robert R. Reilly

    Robert R. Reilly is the author of America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding, forthcoming from Ignatius Press.

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