To me, the works of prodigy composers are infinitely mysterious. It almost seems that prodigies are born with a sheaf of compositions already imprinted on their brains, or at least, a set of musical components that they snap together like Lego pieces in different combinations.
The problem is that many composers of extreme facility fall into a predictable routine. Camille Saint-Saens is a perfect example of this phenomenon. In contrast, I believe Mozart, perhaps the most famous musical prodigy, consciously resisted that urge and pushed himself to break his own mold. To me, the reason there’s nothing else in Mozart’s catalogue that resembles the “Sinfonia Concertante,” K364 for violin and viola, is obvious. Mozart deliberately moved away from the diction of that work and sought a different type of musical expression.
His D minor piano concerto, K466 exists in a different dimension from the “Sinfonia Concertante.” The same goes for the disparate themes, textures, colors and moods on display in each of his four last symphonies, starting with the “Prague,” K.504. One of many instances of this, is the stormy outburst in the Andante con moto of the E-flat Symphony, K.543. This is not a matter of style-evolution; the differences are the result of a conscious push against the cage of facile sameness.
Yes, these works are unmistakably by the same composer, and there’s no denying Mozart’s many mannerisms. But all four of these symphonies are also the work of a composer whose creativity extends not just to the medium he’s working in, but to the process of composition itself.
In the case of Anna Clyne, there’s no mistaking her own origins as a musical prodigy. Like Mozart, her earliest compositions date from her childhood. The ease and grace with which she shapes and controls sound masses is impressive. Like a magician, she conjures swirling sonority after swirling sonority out of a blank sheet of staff paper. It’s an impressive feat of imagination.
In “Night Ferry” from 2012 (at nearly age 32), her talent is on full display. It’s no wonder she is sought after, is a Grammy winner and has served as a composer-in-residence for Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, L’Orchestre national d’Île-de-France, and Berkeley Symphony.
A further hallmark of Clyne’s unusual gift is the visual underpinning of “Night Ferry.” Apparently given to synesthesia, Clyne says she made storyboards for the work. That is, she mapped out the music by painting, a little at a time and, in some way, mirroring the visuals in the music. At some point, we’re told, she began going back and forth between the two media, allowing the music to influence the painting as well as vice versa. An overview of the process, as well as a bit of hagiography, is available online.
As if that weren’t enough of an origin story for “Night Ferry,” it is, in the composer’s words, an attempt to evoke the low-level bipolar disorder that forensic psychologists have attributed to Franz Schubert. But I have to wonder. Considering that Robert Schumann also had his own severe mood swings, would the piece have been different if Clyne had been thinking about Schumann, instead? Regardless, if a type of mental disorder is meant to be the “program” of the work, it doesn’t come across. Lots of orchestral music is riven by the evocation of contrasting emotions, and it’s hardly credible to consider this a distinctive feature of the work.
Methodology aside, “Night Ferry” is nothing if not colorful. It exemplifies the composer’s signature sonic swirls, wisps and less frequent thumps, as well as offering, toward the end, a coda of quiet reflection. But here’s where my question rears up again. More or less in the same vein is “Fractured Time” (2020). If the swirls in “Night Ferry” were inspired by visual cues, or the misery of Franz Shubert, I have to wonder why so many of them reappear in “Fractured Time” in one form or another.
Like “Night Ferry,” “Fractured Time” also evokes the poetry of sound masses of varying density. Is this the further exploration of a mode of musical progression, or merely a series of well-executed musical tics? That is, despite the fact that the two pieces don’t sound *exactly* the same.
“Dance” (2019) for Cello and Orchestra, however, shows a different side of Clyne’s talent, though it also bears the burden of the composer’s obsessive compositional process. Maybe I’m being too harsh. After all, the work is as clean-edged, well-scored, idiomatic and rhythmically vital as anyone could wish for, in a technical sense. I just can’t help wondering how much of it could be compressed into about half its size with not much loss in musical substance. Figures repeated again and again and again, simply add bulk. And yet, there’s no denying the dramatic impact of the music.
In this sense, especially against the backdrop of “Night Ferry’s” unusual genesis, Clyne calls to mind a sort of “Berlioz Without Words.” That is, an esthetic in which Berlioz’ literary models are replaced by visual cues. Both composers are wildly visionary and primarily concerned with sound and texture, as opposed to the musical rhetoric first introduced in the 17th century.
With that in mind, I wonder if Clyne’s output, like a large percentage of the compositions created in the past seventy years, is not music in the usual sense. Does it belong to a different category of creative output altogether? Personally, I find it much more productive to think of Clyne’s compositions as “sound sculptures.” That frame of reference obviates the futility of placing her work, or Steve Reich’s “Drumming,” on the same historical continuum as Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” or even Bartók’s “Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion.”
Another reason I prefer to hear Clyne’s works as something other than music, is that, for all of their allusions to the physical world, they reside more comfortably in a zone of pure sound and texture.
Given her evident talent, facility and award-winning appeal, I am curious to see how her work will evolve.
Will it continue to consist primarily of bursts of color, layered on without let up, or will it gain a bit more range and variety? At the moment, at age 44, her pieces still sound to me like the work of a brilliant student rather than of a mature artist. Though I can find fault with practically nothing, in a purely technical sense, what’s missing is a connection to human experience. For now, she produces intricate works with undeniable surface appeal. My hope is that her later works will attain the emotional depth we find in the greatest compositions.
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Mark Laporta is a musician, composer and novelist. His science fiction series, Against the Glare of Darkness, is published by Chickadee Prince Books, and is available in paperback or ebook on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or at a bookstore near you.
Image design by Kalyee Srithnam.