Читать книгу The Music of the Netherlands Antilles - Jan Brokken - Страница 12

Five of the six pianists were also composers, as I immediately discovered that evening in November, since they each played some of their own works. They merely turned out to be the pearls among the grab bag of brooches, earrings, chains, and glitzy watches. Between them Edgar Palm, Padú del Caribe, Dominico Herrera, and Wim Statius Muller have more than four hundred works to their name, joined now in the long line of tradition by Johnny Kleinmoedig, who on a murderously hot Christmas Eve in 1982 had composed his first waltz.

Since the latter half of the nineteenth century, the working method of Dutch Antillean composers has remained the same. Like their European predecessors, they first write out the entire composition, complete with dedication, notations for dynamics, time signature, and finger positioning. On the basis of the score, performers are then free to improvise. They first play what is written on paper, and then add their own inventions—just like Chopin and Liszt had done in their day and age.

There were stacks of sheet music on Hortence Brouwn’s piano. I found quite a few Curaçaoan waltzes, dances, and mazurkas among them. I started studying several of them, inspired as I was by that scintillating concert in the Fortkerk. The pieces were not as easy as I thought. Possessed of a natural lilting quality, the melody sticks easily in the memory; at the same time they are melancholic in tone, and that mood perfectly matches languid tropical nights. But you need nimble fingers to be able to play them with panache.

While plodding away at the mazurka Giselle by Edgar Palm and at one of the countless runs in the intensely wistful waltz Despedida (Departure) by Wim Statius Muller, I was reminded of a statement by the pianist Arthur Schnabel, which was often cited with pleasure and approbation by Glenn Gould: “Chopin, the genius of the right hand . . .” To Schnabel and Gould, Chopin’s left hand merely prances along, while the scores by Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms are blueprints for cathedrals, of monumental constructions buttressed equally by both hands.

Dutch Antillean composers followed Chopin’s example. When I started studying the pieces, I understood why: they never forgot that the left hand must always keep the dance rhythm. Without that prancing left hand the character of the music would be lost.

A few months later I heard Wim Statius Muller again, at someone’s home. In the meantime I had grown used to the custom of a pianist sitting down to play a series of requests for waltzes and various dances during receptions, celebratory occasions, or ordinary birthday parties. It could be Statius Muller, Kleinmoedig, Livio Hermans, Robert Rojer, or any amateur pianist. For lack of being able to find anyone better I was occasionally called upon to play; and even though I was fresh from Europe and not in the same league as the islanders, I overcame my timidity with the thought that a Curaçaoan would rather hear an imperfect rendition of Despedida than nothing at all.

Statius Muller played one of his own mazurkas and this time I paid more attention to the rhythm he followed.

A memorable quarrel had taken place in Paris in 1842. Chopin was giving a lesson to a student in the house of the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer when the latter suddenly burst into the room. The student, Wilhelm von Lenz, had been practicing the mazurka opus 33 no. 3; Meyerbeer sat down and Chopin asked Von Lenz to begin again. “He is playing in two-four time,” said Meyerbeer, “and it’s a mazurka, so he should be playing in three-four time.” Chopin became angry and asked Von Lenz to start over again, this time keeping time furiously with a pencil in his hand. A purple blush spread over his pale cheeks. As a rule, Chopin never lost his temper; he was the embodiment of amiability itself and always whispered to his students, when all of a sudden he started shouting like some querulous person indulging in his pet peeve: “It’s in three-four time; it’s in three-four time.” His eyes blazed with anger. Meyerbeer watched the storm pass with the look of satisfaction on the face of someone who knows he is right. Indeed, Chopin had the tendency of slipping into two-four time when playing mazurkas, even though they are clearly written in three-four. That was because he often held the second beat quite a bit longer. He made the mazurkas sound more rhythmic than they were on paper.

Statius Muller did exactly the same.