The Curious Case of the St. Petersburg Symphony

Whenever I travel, my mind often takes a faint recollection of a place I’ve been and turns it into a vivid memory of a place or event only tenuously linked to reality. Various memories I have of the city of Boston, in particular, I now understand to be heavily fictionalized and built-upon subconsciously until a scene far grander than reality replaces the vague imprint of the initial memory.

The Shostakovich Grand Hall.

But this is not the case, I believe, with what I call the “St. Petersburg Symphony.” During the 3-week exchange program to St. Petersburg, Russia, that I took part in, my host family took me to the Shostakovich Grand Hall to see (what I believe to have been) the St. Petersburg Philharmonic perform. I’m forever indebted to my hosts' generosity. We nearly showed up late—I remember it definitely being my fault, but I forget how exactly. I did not find a program to that night’s performance for that reason. I had no idea what was being played, or by whom. These conditions created a very interesting experience.

I remember indistinctly enjoying the first two pieces played, not finding much particularly noteworthy about them. But that third (or um, fourth, maybe) piece—no music I have ever heard has stuck with me like that. I remember turning to my host student in awe afterwards, as if to say, “Did you just hear what I heard?” She seemed largely unmoved, though less bored than at the first two pieces. However, “stuck with me” is perhaps not the best phrase to use, because what’s stuck with me is sparsely detailed to say the least.

The dominant theme in this symphony or movement of a symphony (or maybe symphonic poem, I wouldn’t have known back then) was carried mainly by the brass, and said something to me that night very specific and affirmative about the trials of spirit that occur during times of extensive travel, and the spirit’s vital, brave response to the reluctance to begin a new journey. A theme to adventure, but not light and boastful (like, say, the "Raider’s March" from Indiana Jones) nor yet so wrought with struggle and home-yearning that it turns to melancholy (think of Vaughan William's "Fantasia on a Theme"). This theme (which sadly is now the faintest sort of memory to me) found the ever-shifting middle ground between struggle and hope, a portrait of a person, a country, or a band of friends that has found a way to dance on the line between the fear of loss and the potential of the unknown.

And there was an absolutely thrilling drumbeat that accompanied the theme—dogged, persistent, reminding one of the unrelenting beat of Ravel’s "Bolero", but with more energy. And unlike "Bolero," the drumbeat vanished and returned several times, though it was sustained for such incredible lengths of time that the percussionist responsible took his own very deserved bow and received eager applause at the end of the piece.

And the symphony was, you know, pretty long. Much longer than your typical "Maroon 5" song, I'd say. And that’s all I remember. There you have it: the "St. Petersburg Symphony." I have no idea who could have composed it, other than that now after a classical music history course at Truman I am fairly sure it’s post-Beethoven and probably even post-Romantic.

As we left the concert hall I looked to the posters on the walls for a name to attach to the night’s performance but couldn’t find anything. Hopping into my host family’s car, I had a sense that I should not bother trying to hunt down the symphony: rather that trap it forever in an iPod, better to let it be mysterious and free, better to allow it to return when I need it most, unexpected, calling me to adventure again.

Could it be Mahler?

If it did return in this way, needless to say, I would welcome it as triumphantly as the heir of Elendil was welcomed to the empty throne of Gondor. But now I’m not just passively waiting for it to return: I’m hunting. There's a part of me that wishes to wait for an unasked-for return, but I also think that now is the time it is needed. I haven’t hired a PI yet, but I have been searching near and far. I’ve burned through many of Mahler’s symphonies, mainly because one of his more famous portraits is somehow concordant with the sense I have of the mysterious symphony. (His expression: somewhere between an ironic grimace and a quietly proud smile. Or is that just me capitalizing on the vagueness of early photography?) I’ve seized on the archives of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic’s programs and have been checking every item they performed for June 2010. Nothing like what I remember yet. Maybe it wasn’t the Philharmonic. Maybe I’m looking up works with similar names but vastly different content. (If someone thinks they have a lead on this, let me know!)

Maybe I’ll never find it. Maybe it’s not even as beautiful as I remember. Maybe it was a dream. One thing’s for certain, though: I’ll probably never let that memory rest, and eventually, it may become a nucleus for something very different from what actually happened. Does that make it less important?

Losing Your Voice (And Not Wanting to Find It Again)

In my creative writing class last semester, we often talked about developing one's voice. The mission was to find a unique style, a single patented window on the world that would be identifiable in everything one wrote.  Looking at an artist's aesthetic as something that is meant to be narrowed and refined and distilled until nothing else is like it seems to be the prevailing view in our culture; we think of Monet holed up at Giverny (while his country was engulfed in World War I) or Thoreau scribbling in his cabin (a brisk walk from Concord), honing their talents, divining inspirations like biblical prophets.

 I think there is much to be said for this approach, but of course nothing happens in a vacuum. In addition, there is also something to be said to trying to let go of an accepted, comfortable notion of what one's voice is. Speaking with his first cousin once-removed Ira Glass, composer Phillip Glass (whose 75th birthday was this past Tuesday) said that he seeks to lose the voice he has made for himself—having developed an identifiable, trademark Phillip Glass style, he now tries to sound less and less like Phillip Glass. “It's not how do you find your voice but how to get rid of it,” he said. “Getting the voice isn't hard, it's getting rid of the damn thing.”

Glass described his movement from a style he was initially drawn to—minimalism, a style that was partly a rebellion against the modernist tradition dominating at the time—to something new, pulled by his desire to expand, not define, his voice.

I learned that the only hope of shaking free of your own description of music was to place yourself in such an untenable position that you had to figure out something new ... Had I started perhaps with the romantic music I would've ended up writing minimal music. But I started writing minimal music, so I end up writing romantic music. Basically, whatever point I started was, I left that point.

And perhaps, it is really even appropriate to speak of one's voice as something that is identifiable in one's entire body of work? Voice, perhaps, is a term better suited for describing the character of the author that comes through in a single piece. Compare Beethoven's First Symphony to the bizarre, dissonant scherzos of his later career and try to locate the voice that was the same in both periods. You might find something to link them, but maybe it is more helpful to talk about what changed.