Alexander Glazunov – Saxophone Quartet, Op. 109 (1923)

Not only hadn’t I heard a note of Glazunov’s music before I listened to this piece, but I didn’t even know anything about him, so I checked out the Wikipedia article. Pretty juicy stuff, assuming it’s accurate: apparently he was an arch-conservative who described Debussy, Prokofiev and Shostakovich as “contemporary degenerates” and “recherché cacophonists” and said that Pétrouchka (which seems to be the absent center of this blog) was “not music.” The article also describes him (probably violating the Neutral Point of View policy) as “academic” — a word I find interesting because its meaning in music seems to be so specific. Large chunks of this quartet, a sketch of mine that a teacher described as “pendantic,” the music that inspired another teacher of mine to emphasize the “suck” in “ASUC” (the American Society of University Composers, now rebranded as the Society of Composers, Inc.) — all of that music is very focused on eighth and sixteenth notes and four-bar phrases. In other words, academicism is, above all else, rhythm that doesn’t flow naturally. (Although “academic” has a different meaning when you put “modernism” after it; in that case it mostly seems to mean giving your pieces titles like “Configurations” or “Paradigm Exchanges.”)

But the odd thing about this piece as a work by the Grand Old Pedant of Early 20th Century Russia is that the first movement doesn’t fit that narrative at all. It is, in a word, weird, and if there’s one thing that academic music isn’t, it’s weird. Specifically, it’s ultra-chromatic, to the point that it can barely be considered functionally tonal. It’s full of chromatic wedges, pivot chords and triadic transformations; I could probably count the number of V-I cadences on one hand. And it’s not like, say, Hugo Wolf, whose unexpected key-shifts are usually textually motivated and move in a clear direction — this just wanders around in a daze, alighting briefly in all sorts of keys but never staying long, always packing up and moving on after a measure or two. And this guy considered Debussy a degenerate? I mean, look at this opening progression, stated in block chords: Eb – Db – GerAug6 in Eb minor – Gb || B – A – GerAug6 in B minor – D || G – F – GerAug6 in G Minor… and finally a clear arrival in Bb major. You can stick Roman numerals on that, but you won’t come up with anything meaningful. Glazunov has just come up with a way to modulate a minor third through stepwise voice-leading and done it three times in a row in keys that are themselves a major third apart. Later in the movement, he expands his harmonic vocabulary to include half-diminished sevenths, and suddenly the piece sounds more like Wagner. But despite the movement’s avoidance of clear tonal centers, it comes across as very orderly thanks to a few easily recognizable recurring melodies and Glazunov’s penchant for spinning out sequences seemingly forever. It works on a gut level too: the mood is not just desultory but also mysterious and tender. It’s baffling to me that this composer would have such contempt for the younger generation, even if the piece does sound considerably more Romantic than what most people were writing in the 20s.

The other movements have their moments, particularly an imitative passage in the finale that manages to achieve a Bach-like contrapuntal joy and also shake off the “academic” label with some well-timed cross-rhythms, and the second movement’s final variation, in a very fast 3/4 that reminds me of the scherzo from one of the late Beethoven quartets, I forget which — maybe Op. 127? For the most part, though, they’re considerably more staid and less distinctive than the first movement. The finale even gets wind-quintet cutesy at times, with the help of some “whimsical” grace-notes. I don’t think I’ve ever liked any work of art that has ever been described as “whimsical,” unless someone has applied that unfortunate word to Guy Maddin.