Alan Hovhaness on Universal Brother/Sisterhood

By looking at the titles of such musical works as Symphony No. 8 (Arjuna),   Symphony No. 11 (All Men are Brothers) , Bardo Piano Sonata , Fanfare of the New Atlantis,  Concerto Shambala, for violin, sitar and orchestra   one can sense that there is a Theosophical sensibility. The composer is Alan Hovhaness  (March 8, 1911 – June 21, 2000), an American-Armenian composer who was one of the most prolific 20th-century composers, with his official catalog comprising 67 numbered symphonies (surviving manuscripts indicate over 70) and 434 opus numbers.

'Among the many composers influenced by Theosophy we find Henry Cowell, ArthurFarwell, William Grant Still, Dane Rudhyar, Katherine Ruth Heyman, AlanHovhaness, Cyril Scott, Luigi Russolo, Ruth Crawford-Seeger, Edgard Varèse, and others. Theosophy went hand in hand with and helped to define the “ultra-modernist” music of the 20s and 30s. First performed at a Theosophical community in San Luis Obispo, The Tides of Manaunaun(1917) was a solo piano work of Henry Cowell’s in which he had developed his radical use of the “tone cluster” to express the mystical and mythical significance of the Irish god, Manaunaun. In his Lousadzak (1944), Alan Hovhaness, who had attended the same Theosophical community as Cowell, developed an early ‘aleatoric’ technique to express a vision that his spiritual teacher had described; Hovhaness called this technique “spirit murmur.” ' (Matt Marble, Disembodied Sound & The Musical Séances Of Francis Grierson, The Illusioned Ear, Issue One Spring 2014, pp 13-14)

Beginning in the mid-1940s, Hovhaness and two artist friends, Hyman Bloom and Hermon diGiovanno, met frequently to discuss spiritual and musical matters. All three had a strong interest in Indian classical music, and brought many well known Indian musicians to Boston to perform.

In one of several applications for a Guggenheim fellowship (1940), Hovhaness presented his credo at the time of application:

'I propose to create a heroic, monumental style of composition simple enough to inspire all people, completely free from fads, artificial mannerisms and false sophistications, direct, forceful, sincere, always original but never unnatural. Music must be freed from decadence and stagnation. There has been too much emphasis on small things while the great truths have been overlooked. The superficial must be dispensed with. Music must become virile to express big things. It is not my purpose to supply a few pseudo-intellectual musicians and critics with more food for brilliant argumentation, but rather to inspire all mankind with new heroism and spiritual nobility. This may appear to be sentimental and impossible to some, but it must be remembered that Palestrina, Handel and Beethoven would not consider it either sentimental or impossible. In fact, the worthiest creative art has been motivated consciously or unconsciously by the desire for the regeneration of mankind'

Elsewhere he states:

'My purpose is to create music not for snobs, but for all people, music which is beautiful and healing. To attempt what old Chinese painters called ‘spirit resonance’ in melody and sound.'

From 1959 through 1963 Hovhaness conducted a series of research trips to India, Hawaii, Japan and South Korea, investigating the ancient traditional musics of these nations and eventually integrating elements of these into his own compositions. His study of Carnatic music in Madras, India (1959–60), during which he collected over 300 ragas, was sponsored by a Fulbright fellowship. While in Madras, he learned to play the veena and composed a work for Carnatic orchestra entitled Nagooran, inspired by a visit to the dargah at Nagore, which was performed by the South Indian Orchestra of All India Radio Madras and broadcast on All-India Radio on February 3, 1960. He compiled a large amount of material on Carnatic ragas in preparation for a book on the subject, but never completed it.

He then studied Japanese gagaku music (learning the wind instruments hichiriki, shō, and ryūteki) in the spring of 1962 with Masatoshi Shamoto in Hawaii, and a Rockefeller Foundation grant allowed him further gagaku studies with Masataro Togi in Japan (1962–63). Also while in Japan, he studied and played the nagauta (kabuki) shamisen and the jōruri (bunraku) shamisen. In recognition of the musical styles he studied in Japan, he wrote Fantasy on Japanese Woodprints, Op. 211 (1965), a concerto for xylophone and orchestra.

Hovhaness' Symphony No.11 was composed in 1960 (with some elements used going back as 1930), as part of a commission on behalf of the New Orleans Philharmonic. It was premiered in March 21 of 1961, under the direction of Frederick Fennell. In the summer of 1969, the composer wrote a "completely new" version of the work, also premiered by the New Orleans Philharmonic, this time under the direction of Werner Torkanowsky in March 31 of 1970. The subtitle of the work refers to the composer's utopian attempt to "express a positive faith in universal cosmic love as the only possible ultimate goal for man and nature. Let all unite on our tiny planet, our floating village, our little space ship as we journey across mysterious endlessness". 

 

He inserted the following in the end: "And the voice of the Lord Buddha was heard like the sound of a great gong hung in the skies, saying that though one met a thousand men on his way they would all be one's brothers." (Walter Simmons)

In a 1970s’s interview, he gave a more realistic expression of this need for brotherhood:

'Yes, yes,, I know. We are in a very dangerous period. We are in danger of destroying ourselves, and I have a great fear about this. There is a great deal of rebellion among the young and I agree with them because I have known this same rebellion all my life. I sympathize with them very much. We have to do something constructive about it. It's not enough to just fly off the handle. Violence won't help. I believe we have to really find the answer by going within, not just being external about it. But it's a very serious problem. The older generation is ruling ruthlessly. I feel that this is a terrible threat to our civilization. It's the greed of huge companies and huge organizations which control life in a kind of a brutal way, and therefore all of my sympathies are with the young people. I hope something can be done about it. It's gotten worse and worse, somehow, because physical science has given us more and more terrible deadly weapons, and the human spirit has been destroyed in so many cases, so what's the use of having the most powerful country in the world if we have killed the soul. It's of no use.' (An Interview with Alan Hovhaness, Ararat: A Quarterly 45, v.12, no. 1 (Winter 1971), pp. 19-31)

Recent book:

Richard O. Burdick, Attunement: An interview with Alan Hovhaness

The book delves into the spirituality and beliefs and composer Alan Hovhaness. San Francisco radio personality Will Noffke interviewed American composer Alan Hovhaness which was aired on Will's program: New Horizons. This interview discusses the music of Hovhaness and delves into the spirituality of Alan, which is a subject not covered by any other known interview or writings of or by Hovhaness. The interview took place February 26, 1978. The day after Hovhaness presented a recital of his music at St. John’s Church in Berkeley, California.