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A Gauche Undertaking
(First, the factual tale. Around 1929, the refined French composer Maurice Ravel (1874-1937) received a request from the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein (1887-1961), the brother of the famed philosopher Ludwig, to write him a concerto for the left-hand alone (the pianist had lost his right arm in World War I (1914-1918).) The composer studied virtuoso pieces for the left-hand alone by such eminent predecessors as Saint-Saëns, Czerny, Alkan and Scriabin. As he later wrote: "In a work of this sort it is essential to give the impression of a texture no thinner than that of a part written for both hands." The completed work, 'Concerto pour la main gauche', is described by Ravel's biographer as follows: “This is Ravel's most dramatic work, combining expansive lyricism, tormented jazz effects, a playful scherzo, and driving march rhythms, all of which are scaffolded into one movement of modest dimensions.” (Ravel was familiar with jazz, having taught George Gershwin orchestration in 1927.) Wittgenstein played the world premiere with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1932. Ravel wrote another piano Concerto -- a normal one for two hands -- in tandem with the one for Wittgenstein. These were the last two pieces in any form that he wrote.)
(Second, the fictional tale. The following is an extrapolation of four connected entities: "Ravel", "Wittgenstein", "Concerto for the left-hand alone", and "1916". It is all intended to be logical; however, as no research was ever done, most of what is written below may be at least inaccurate, if not downright wrong. The author apologizes in advance for any accuracies. As for his use of the arch-politically-incorrect c-word [he lives in an institution wherein every single resident is a "c" and yet the word dares not speak its name there], his natural [and probably only] defense is that he is a "c" himself.)
One day in 1916 out of the blue, the distinguished French composer Maurice Ravel received the following curt note postmarked from Vienna (a total surprise to him, since that city was part of a country which was at war with France at the time [but you know the post office: "Neither snow nor rain..."]):
"I am in need of a piano concerto for one hand alone. Do you know anyone who might like to write me such a piece? -- Paul Wittgenstein"
Ravel recognized the name as that of a young hotshot Austrian pianist. The last thing Ravel had heard was that Wittgenstein had gone into The Great War as cannon fodder for the enemy. Now here he was, asking for a piece for one hand. But why? And why the oblique request? "He's acting just like his brother!" exclaimed the composer not without irritation. He was referring to the philosopher whose writings were so abstruse that only a handful of people could understand them.
Of course the composer was not fooled for a second: he knew that Wittgenstein could not ask him directly to write him a piece since their countries were at war; so the pianist had to play it coy and pretend as if the French composer was the furthest thing from his mind.
As a matter of fact, Ravel was greatly intrigued by the challenge of writing a concerto for one hand alone. The problem was, he didn't yet know which hand he would be writing for; and he didn't know what the exact situation was concerning the other hand: was it missing, or was there something else going on here?
Ravel reread the letter and noted that it did not specify that anything was missing. So in the beginning the composer had to puzzle out as to why a pianist would want a piece for just one hand alone. What could this mean? He finally assumed that on the piano Wittgenstein was technically deficient in one hand, and that he wanted to cover up that fact by playing only music with that hand eliminated -- a sort of stunted cop-out piano music. So Ravel began to ask critics and other knowledgeable experts about the pianist: did they ever suspect him of having a "lazy", "sloppy" or even downright "slovenly" hand, quite apart from the fact that he was "a dirty Austro-Hungarian against whom we in France are fighting trench warfare at this very moment?" But the critics all told Ravel that Wittgenstein had a "superb technique in both hands -- quite apart from the fact that he has used those hands in an attempt to decimate the flower of French youth."
So Ravel was led to conclude that Wittgenstein was missing something. But what? He looked at the letter yet again: it had said "... for one hand alone." So he was missing a hand; and it must have been the left hand since the handwriting in the letter was so beautiful. Well, that wasn't so bad! The fact that the pianist still possessed [what the composer assumed to be] a viable stump of a left arm as well as a fully functioning right hand left plenty of room for creative music making. The stump could be used for boogie-woogie-type 'vamping' at the very least (Ravel was open to new trends from America) while the right hand could fill in with all sorts of elaborate filigree. Yes, not bad at all!
Ravel had no way of knowing that Wittgenstein was left-handed and so wrote fluently with that hand -- and therefore was missing the right-hand, not the left. "Aha," you cry, "But Ravel should've been able to tell from the slant of the handwriting that it was written by a lefty!" Indeed, it is well known that left-handed writers have handwriting that slopes backwards, as if it is reluctant to proceed across the page.
What only Wittgenstein's closest friends knew was that the pianist, by dint of hard work and perseverance, had managed to train his handwriting to slope to the right, thereby appearing eager to march across the page. (Unfortunately, this change induced in him a tendency to stutter.)
So Ravel proceeded to write the piece he thought Wittgenstein wanted. One afternoon he was in a café and there met another composer named Claude Debussy. Ravel bragged to his older colleague that he was hard at work on a piano concerto "for right-hand and left stump". When he told him whom the piece was for, Debussy exploded in his most elegant French: "Tu imbécile! Wittgenstein lost his right hand, not the left one; in fact, he lost his whole bloody (pun intended) arm!"
Ravel was understandably devastated by this news. Now he was going to have to throw all his hard work away. Worse, he was going to have to rethink the whole piece.
The prospect filled him with dread. For one thing, the left-hand was in general the weaker of the two hands: this was particularly true of pianists, for the reason that the demands on the right-hand in the repertoire were greater. So his piece would be doubly stunted: because it would be for only one hand; and because it was the weaker hand.
Then too, in general almost all the playing that the left-hand does in the traditional repertoire is on the bottom half of the piano keyboard. In this regard, middle C. has functioned since Beethoven as sort of a "Maginot Line" which is very seldom crossed by the left-hand except to make brief "forays" into "enemy" territory for quick "skirmishes" with the right hand.
The prospect seemed horrible: he was going to be mired in the bottom half of the keyboard ("like trench warfare!" he noted to himself grimly), forced to write a turgid, lugubrious, muddy sort of music. The Bolsheviks were poised to take over the Russian government; now people would assume that they had taken over his piano concerto as well!
Fortunately, Ravel was not merely a good composer, he was a great one. So he did what any truly great composer would do -- namely, ask another first rate composer what he would do. So he contrived to meet Debussy at a café. (This wasn't difficult: they both always went to the same café every day -- partly to pick up any stray ideas floating about. As Ravel was attempting to do here.)
Debussy was his usual restrained, refined French self:
"Crétin -- and I mean that in the kindest possible way -- you can have the left-hand enter the upper register any time you want!"
"But the right-hand -- it will get in the way..."
?
"Dégénéré!" [Debussy had a fondness for this particular epithet because it allowed him to use so many accents agues in one word.] "There won't be a right-hand to get in the way! So you can give the left-hand carte blanche!" Except that Debussy did not actually say those last two words; rather, he translated the words into English as "free rein", as any well-educated Frenchman at the time would do to idiomatic expressions which were spoken in French in foreign tongues.
Debussy did give Ravel more advice: "The piece should be fairly short, the reason being that people begin to get tired of music for the left hand alone once the novelty wears off. I'd say fifteen minutes tops."
And then Debussy gave Ravel this final cryptic advice: "In a work of this sort it is essential to give the impression of a texture no thinner than that of a part written for both hands."
Ravel came away puzzled by this pronouncement: what did it mean? He had said, "... a texture no thinner than that of a part written for both hands"; but which part of which piece? It seemed like an awfully general statement to make! It could be made to apply to the vast majority of music, from the most anemic pieces by Eric Satie to the most cluttered by Beethoven -- and none of those pieces could be played by the left-hand alone. And then too, Debussy had used the word "impression": what did that mean -- a slight [or slide?] of hand?
For the first time in his creative life as a composer, Maurice Ravel was paralyzed to write a piece. Finally he decided to drop it and write other music, which he was able to do successfully. Did he write back an answer to Wittgenstein? No. After all, the pianist hadn't had the courtesy to ask him for a piece directly. Besides, he was a dirty little -- well, you get the idea.
Time passed. Debussy died. The War ended (Europe lost.) Ravel became even more famous as a composer and teacher. He taught the young (of course there was never a time when he wasn't young) George Gershwin orchestration; and in gratitude the younger composer wrote "An American in Paris."
And then in that same year 1927 -- that is, 11 years after he received the last one -- Ravel received the following note:
"I had sent you a previous letter on this subject, but it must have gotten lost in the War. So I will repeat here what I said there: will you write me a piano concerto for the left-hand alone? -- Paul Wittgenstein."
Ravel was a little miffed at Wittgenstein for bending the truth here about having asked him outright for a piece before; and he was a little bit suspicious that so much time had passed since the last request: had the pianist been trying to drum up other commissions before his? And so he was sorely tempted not to reply to this note either. On the other hand, the pianist was asking him for a piece now, and such a thing was always flattering for Ravel. Finally the composer decided to write an affirmative response, and even hubristically suggested a first performance date in Paris two years hence.
But immediately Ravel began experiencing the same psychological blockages that he had had before: he could not find a way to write the piece. Unfortunately, Debussy had died, so he was not there to give Ravel the kind of sage (and mysterious) advice he had dished up in the past. He even tried writing a second 'normal' piano Concerto in tandem with it: this he did with great success. But the one for the left-hand alone eluded him. Finally, he wrote what he could and hoped for the best.
The first performance in Paris was plagued by scandals. The very printed program for the concert contained an embarrassing 'error': the name of the piece was listed as a "Concerto pour une pianiste gauche". No doubt the work of some hack in a printing office still embittered by the War, it implied not only that the pianist was rude, but that he was effeminate to boot.
Then, when Wittgenstein came out on stage, he was roundly booed and hissed. As he sat at the piano, his empty jacket sleeve was clearly visible to the audience. They began to yell out epithets too horrible to write here, such as "cripple!" and "freak!" as well as the usual "German Pig-Dog!" and the like. It seemed clear that, for this audience at least, the War had still not ended. Finally stagehands had to turn the piano around so that Wittgenstein's intact arm was facing the audience. Of course then they couldn't open the piano lid, and so the whole performance had a muffled sound to it.
But those weren't the worst things. Tragically, as we said, for the only time in his creative career Ravel had gotten composers block while he was trying to write the piece against the deadline. And so, of the three sections (Introduction, Improvisation, Jazz), only the first was truly Ravel's work (and that sounded a bit like a boilermaker factory in the fledgling Soviet republic.) As for the second section, Ravel was hoping -- perhaps even praying -- that Wittgenstein could turn in a credible performance as an improviser, much as Gershwin had improvised a large amount of "Rhapsody in Blue" with such brilliance in the first performance of that work.
Unfortunately, Wittgenstein could not improvise his way out of a paper bag. What he turned out in the performance sounded like a fairly-talented nine-year old fooling around on the piano. This pathetic performance only landed more catcalls and boos upon the hapless pianist as well as the do-nothing composer.
But the worst was saved for last. The third section began, and some truly wonderful jazz -- perhaps the most wonderful most people in the audience had ever heard -- emerged. All the jeering stopped in the fascination of the moment. It looked as though Ravel's reputation would emerge intact after all. The bubble was only punctured by someone suddenly yelling out: "Hey -- that's Gershwin's 'An American in Paris'!" Unfortunately for Ravel, someone in the audience had just returned from America where they had heard the first performance of that new work.
(Did you hear the one about the composition student who had to have a movement for a symphony written and turned in by Friday? In desperation he wrote out backwards one of the movements from his teacher's Symphony, and handed it in. He received an 'F' -- on the grounds that he had plagiarized Beethoven's Fifth.)
Well! Ravel and Wittgenstein were driven out of the concert hall by a barrage of tomatoes. They ran to a café to lick their wounds. Ravel was in despair, and he poured out to Wittgenstein the tale of his compositional blockage. The pianist thought for a moment; then he said: "There is a psychologist in my hometown who might be able to help you -- I think he gave Gustav Mahler a hand when he was having trouble writing back around the turn of the century. His name is Dr. Sigmund Freud."
Ravel said that he had heard of Dr. Freud as the famous inventor of psychoanalysis. So he traveled to Vienna by train and Freud agreed to meet with him. He began by telling the psychologist that he had heard about him having helped Mahler with his music. Freud scoffed:
"Mahler never needed help writing music -- he could do it in his sleep! No, goodness knows, that was the least of his worries! Of course I would never betray a professional confidence -- though, just between you and me, the poor man was married to a young nymphomaniac; and, believe me, that is no bed of marital roses!"
So Ravel went into psychoanalysis with Dr. Freud, and in short order a sordid little tale from Ravel's childhood emerged. It seems that his father and brother were left-handed, while he and his mother were right-handed. From this seemingly trivial little dichotomy his mother built an absolute one: that the right-handers were "good", while the left-handers were "bad". [You doubt that this could constitute a viable family situation? I used my own family that I grew up in as a model!] Ravel had always wondered why, for example, he had never married: was it a coincidence that all the girls he met were left-handed, automatically rendering them ineligible? Did he ever suspect that people were whispering behind his back that he was a 'mama's boy'?
As a therapy, Freud introduced Ravel to one of his 'stable' of 'available' 'society' 'women' (I used quotations because with Dr. Freud, you were never quite sure what you were getting!): this was a big blonde softig left-handed Fräulein. Soon Ravel was able to begin working on his piece from scratch again. And, as he worked, his 'new friend' would sit next to him and, in sultry tones, repeatedly mouth the words "Right-hand good, left-hand better!" into his susceptible ear. In this way was he able to finish the whole Concerto, including the scoring, in one effortless month.
This time the première of 'Concerto pour la main gauche' (the correct title) was in Vienna in 1932. Wittgenstein was given a hero's ovation, and the audience demanded that the dangling right sleeve deliberately show on their side. The pianist played flawlessly. As for the music (for the usual large orchestra, including percussion and harp), here is how a critic put it the next day:
“This is Ravel's most dramatic work, combining expansive lyricism, tormented jazz effects, a playful scherzo, and driving march rhythms, all of which are scaffolded into one movement of modest dimensions.”
I don't know about you (or, for that matter, the critic), but I find the above to be the clearest and most concise description of sexual awakening in music that I have ever read.
(25 December 2008)
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