Conceived in 1917 as a pantomime to be acted out against an orchestral score — but not fully orchestrated until 1924 — “Mandarin” easily clocks in as one of Modernism’s least PC creations. The historian László Vikárius has produced a blow-by-blow account of its tortured path to the stage, as well as its reception.
Essentially, Mandarin is the story of a “Chinese Wizard,” whose magical powers confound the violence of evil doers. These thugs use a seductive woman to lure unsuspecting victims into their “den” for a little routine robbery and murder. You can hear the complete version, as opposed to the suite, here.
I’m not sure the storyline can be enacted onstage effectively in today’s video-oriented visual vocabulary. “Mandarin” is better suited for “the theatre of the mind,” perhaps, although computer animation might subvert the inevitable hokeyness of the scenario as played out in live action.
There are three wild dance scenes and finally, the Mandarin, who has otherwise proven invulnerable to the robbers’ violent assaults, dies in the arms of the woman. This is the Early 20th Century’s idea of making a plea for social justice. Everybody, including, I’m sure, the curtains in the criminal den, are symbols of societal corruption. No solution is offered, mind you, just a titillating metaphor to describe the problem.
Well, at least they had good intentions. Was it Bartók’s fault if the shady violence in the pantomime script kind of overwhelmed his high-minded thoughts? I mean, cuss the luck, there just had to be a seductive female dancer, right?
These were different times. Much the same skewed impetus informs both of Berg’s operas, especially “Lulu,” as well as the typically garish opera librettos of Zemlinsky and Schreker. Are we lamenting the social degradation, or drooling over the sordid storyline? So on that score, today’s more sensitive souls might ban “Mandarin” as vociferously as did the shocked “bourgeoisie” of a century ago, if for different reasons.
At the same time, it’s important to remember that the pantomime’s anti-Chinese bigotry wasn’t confined to Europe. We see the echoes of the same sentiments in the Buck Rogers comic strip of 1934, in which one of the astronaut’s main antagonists is “Ming the Merciless,” the emperor of planet Mongo who, you guessed it, is a walking, talking ethnic slur. And, of course, today, we’re still knee-deep in the same kind of nonsense.
And yet, in Bartók’s pantomime, there’s the music, written by one of the last century’s leading composers. Like its not-quite companion piece, “The Wooden Prince” (1914-17) Mandarin’s influences include early Stravinsky. But whereas Wooden Prince also reflects many other concurrent musical trends, Mandarin sounds to me as if Bartók had pored over “Petrushka” and “The Rite of Spring” for several days. At least, I know of no other work by Bartók that makes such insistent use of orchestral piano, as in Petrushka. The use of the piano in ”Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste” has a completely different character, more on the order of a bass celesta.
Other traces of Stravinsky’s early masterworks turn up in Mandarin, in the form of propulsive rhythms and crunchy, unresolved dissonance. And, whereas Wooden Prince has Wagner’s sweaty fingerprints all over it, Mandarin walks away from most of that Liebestod perfume. The distance the composer traveled from 1914 when he began Wooden Prince and 1918, when he completed the piano score of Mandarin is remarkable. That is, not only for differences in style, but to the extent to which Bartók assimilated a new set of influences.
Though Stravinsky was known as the composer who rather nonchalantly changed musical style, Bartók has a unique, chameleon-esque ability to completely change his stripes. From underlying harmony, to chord-spacing, to rhythmic accent, he seemed to dissolve himself in each new aesthetic he swore allegiance to. His powers of observation were unusually acute, even as he stamped every work with his own personality. It’s kind of perplexing and has often led me to wonder what music Bartók might have written if he had simply trusted his own instincts. In later works Bartók moves on again, this time to play the part of a confirmed Scientist of Art. That is, before switching gears again to become a die-hard Humanist/Nature Lover.
All the same, the corner he turned to write Mandarin was the most epochal. From then on, despite many detours into misguided folkloristic pastiche work, he became a card-carrying Modernist. In 1918, of course, the mantle of Modernism in music was heavily weighted with themes of social change and even revolution. In musical terms, the afterglow of WWI was a yearning for an esthetic free of “overripe,” romanticism and its association with the Emperor’s opera box. Many composers sought a new musical diction to reflect the new world they hoped would emerge. As we now know, the new world that did emerge was nothing like the one they anticipated.
In any case, it’s clear that the top of Bartók’s agenda as a new Modernist was to smash stuff, starting with our eardrums in the opening measures of Mandarin. In what I assume is meant to depict the dehumanizing hustle-bustle of a Machine-Age city, the work starts with a parody of boisterous honking horns, accompanied by swirling sirens. Some of this effect is hinted at in the finale of Wooden Prince, but it’s either mediated by folklore-inspired “dancing” or it morphs into Mussorgsky-on-Steroids.
The opening of Mandarin, however, is mediated by nothing. It’s a relentless, forward rush that only appears to die down. What the subsequent measures lack in sound volume, they make up for in unrelenting tension. It’s a transition that leads to the first of three seductive dances by “the woman.” Throughout, the spirit of Stravinsky hovers over the extensive use of ostinati and the occasional hot flare up of rhythmic jabs.
Also pronounced in Bartók’s Modernist manifesto is the elevation of sonority to the same rank as note shapes. Sound-for-sound’s sake drives much of the continuity, especially in the first third of the piece.
But as Mandarin rolls out past its compelling opening, Bartók reverts a bit to the diction of his earlier stage works, including Wooden Prince and Bluebeard’s Castle.
This, I have to think, is due to the inanities of the pantomime scenario he saddled himself with. Getting the next victim in, seducing him, beating him up — it starts to sound like a bad Three Stooges movie. Fortunately, once the Mandarin himself shows up, as the final victim of the robbers’ dirty scheme, Bartók unsheathes the sword of Modernism again with passages that once more illustrate his uncanny ability to assimilate. It’s impossible to listen to the concluding section of the piece without thinking of Stravinsky’s Dance of Death — though I can’t help noticing that the Bartók of “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta” will later pilfer Mandarin for its thumpily-ominous piano octaves, moving in thirds.
That, in a nutshell, is the downside of early Modernist revolutions: Their vocabulary is limited to negation. They are necessarily more about the absence of things than the creation of a new idiom. Hence, no themes, no harmony, no meter, no recognizable patterns except as snide parody. Regardless, to Bartók’s credit, he keeps composing to the end with his unerring facility. Everything falls into place. He wanted a Lisztian ending and he conjured one effortlessly. And before the final dying chords he gives us a “magical” wordless chorus, as the spirit of the “magical” mandarin fades away.
Despite my reservations, “The Miraculous Mandarin” has an ineffable, innocent quality. Bartók is striving here, trying to break musical conventions and smash through to a new era. Yet the harder he tries, the more he continues to evoke the past. Liszt, Wagner, and “folklore” block his route to salvation. Why? Because underneath his wildest hoopla is a calm sense of order. This is no convert to new trends, rather a forlorn traditionalist all gussied up for a fancy-dress ball. From the first measure, you can hear him say, “This year, I’m going as a Modern Composer.”
Paradoxically, however, like a demonic curse in a folk story, the costume stuck to his skin and could never be removed. Bartók’s newly acquired Modernist agenda stayed with him throughout the rest of his evolution. Even when, as in the Violin Concerto or the Concerto for Orchestra, he attempted to slap on a new outfit, the magic costume continued to show through, ripping gashes in the smoother, more “scientific” neo-classical surface he dressed himself up in as the century wore on. Though the Early Modernist vision for a perfect society, rid of its many ills, has certainly not materialized, the yearning for perfection lives on in works like Mandarin. And that, for the most part, is a good thing.
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Mark Laporta, who wrote this column, 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. His latest space opera saga is being serialized in Oblivioni Magazine, which you can read from the beginning. Or listen to his musical compositions here.
Image design: Kalyee Srithnam.