And “Composing,”

ON DEGENERESCENCE AND REALMS OF SUPPRESSION: PAUL BOWLES VIS-À-VIS EINOJUHANI RAUTAVAARA

ZBIGNIEW BIALAS

Both Paul Bowles and Einojuhani Rautavaara were Aaron Copland’s students: Bowles more impressionistically, Rautavaara more methodically, and both have had their views shaped by their teacher. Much has been said about how the overlapping elements of various cultures are reflected in the systems of music used by Bowles and Rautavaara, resulting in the organization of the works that are meant to be both architecturally and organically coherent. Is there a direct line from Copland, via Bowles to Rautavaara? The author, focusing on vocal and linguistic organization of works (with discourse-oriented and cultural implications), analyses to what extent the escape from the Western patterns – the need of which has been pronounced in Bowles’s insights on music – can be discerned in the operatic practice of Einojuhani Rautavaara.

The risks involved in undertaking such an endeavor are obvious. First: the distinctiveness of “writing” and “composing,” an issue that has been elaborated on by most twentieth century theoreticians and practitioners of both forms: writers, composers and critics (and most forcibly by those who dealt with “writing” and “composing” – Strauss’s Capriccio can serve as one example, although in the 19th century this distinction was not that sharp due to the legacy of Romanticism, the case of Wagner being the most obvious). Second: Paul Bowles himself believed in the “complete separateness of writing and composing music” (Mangan viii), even though he did a lot of writing about composing. Interestingly, as an aside, more writing is done on composing, than composing is done on writing – putting non- verbal impressions into verbal expression is more popular than putting verbal impressions into non-verbal expression. There are exceptions, but that is usually in the form of, say, an opera about a writer, e.g. Alexis Kivi. Bowles, notably, told one biographer that music and

226 Zbigniew Bialas literature dwelt in “different rooms” (ibid.) a view he reiterated in the last interview with Irene Herrmann, significantly the last words of the interview: IH: “Separate worlds?” PB: “Well, yes, of course” (272). In addition, Bowles’s attitude to the sense of hearing (music), as opposed to the sense of seeing (text), was, additionally, that auditory aesthetics are unevolved:

There is no doubt that hearing is considered a secondary sense, one which is less directly connected with the intellect than sight is – more visceral and infinitely less differentiated. (107)

It will perhaps be interesting to note that in a short review in a recent issue of The New Yorker, Aaron Copland – objective, affirmative and wide-ranging – is portrayed as the Updike of American music, as compared to melancholy and subjective Samuel Barber, who is American music’s Cheever (91). One thing, however, is certain: Paul Bowles is American music’s Paul Bowles and that makes a few things easier. I do not wish to talk on Bowles vs. Aaron Copland, i.e. autodidact vs. teacher, nor am I fascinated by the speculations on the relationship between Bowles and Copland. What interests me here is the fact that both Paul Bowles and Einojuhani Rautavaara were Copland’s students: Bowles more impressionistically, Rautavaara more methodically, and both have had their views shaped by their teacher. Is there a direct line from Copland, via Bowles to Einojuhani Rautavaara? Much has been said about how the overlapping elements of various cultures are reflected in the systems of music used in Bowles’s and Rautavaara’s works: diatonic, dodecaphonic, free-atonal and synthetic modal – resulting in the organization of the works which is meant to be both architecturally and organically coherent. To what extent can the escape from the Western patterns – the need of which has been voiced in Bowles’s insights on music – be discerned in the operatic practice of Rautavaara? What I wish to focus on is not musicological, but vocal and linguistic organization of musical works that has discourse-oriented and cultural implications. We get a hint of what might be at stake when we see in an early, frequently quoted fragment of The Sheltering Sky, that Western music becomes associated with auditory irritations (Mangan vii).