Maciejewski's Requiem

Me and the Pope have had our disagreements – on condoms in Africa, gay rights and his frankly appalling Christmas album. He’s keener on the Tridentine Mass than me. But I had some sympathy with him about Maciejewski’s Requiem, which received its British premiere last night as part of the Polska! year of Polish culture. When he was merely Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he wrote to the composer’s brother Wojciech in 2001, “It speaks directly to the heart, without demanding, as contemporary music often does, any learned intermediary”.

Such intermediaries have usually not been kind to the Requiem. “The thinking man’s television, as someone called masturbation. That this is the metaphor which spring to mind is not mere critical malice,” said Martin Anderson of the Requiem in Tempo. “It is all rather boring and (like masturbation) not very productive,” (and here I have to hold my hand up – only one, mind you - against both Anderson and the Pope and their discrimination against onanists).

The CD by the Warsaw Philharmonic and Choir has ghosts of Verdi and Szymanowski (who was Maciejewski’s teacher) floating about, and echoes of Stravinsky’s Les Noces. Some of it gushes like romantic film music (and I wasn’t surprised to hear that Maciejewski had been offered and turned down Hollywood film-writing gigs for MGM and others).

Not so original then, but isn’t originality a rather an overrated virtue? (in the 18th century they used to talk of “mere originality”.) There are some gorgeous tunes in the piece – notably a seductively serpentine melody at the beginning of the Kyrie section. There is a compelling, almost mythic narrative about the Requiem. Written in response to the millions of deaths of World War 2, the composer is reported to have spent 15 years labouring it, for the last several years being a lowly church organist in exile in Redondo Beach, California.

Maciejewski had lots of offers that would have boosted his global career – Rubinstein (who championed him and played his Mazurkas) and Segovia both wanted him to write concertos, not to mention Hollywood’s open doors, but he turned down all such offers to work on what he felt was his masterpiece, his gift to the world. As he wrote: “Deeply depressed by the horrors, destruction and atrocities of the Second World War, I felt the urge to make a contribution to the efforts of peace-loving people to arouse a general awareness of the tragic absurdity of war”.

Earlier in his life (he was born in Berlin in 1910, brought up in Poland (he is pictured far right with fellow composer Grazyna Bacewicz), and he also lived in Sweden and Britain) plenty of others had great faith in him – including Ingmar Bergman, who he worked with on several theatre pieces in Sweden, and Nadia Boulanger, whom he studied with (did anyone not study with Boulanger?). A generally poor reception greeted the Requiem when it was premiered in Warsaw in 1960. But then the “Polish musical revolution” was in full swing with Gorecki, Lutoslawski and Penderecki to the fore, and the work for many seemed hopelessly old-fashioned. His view of the avant-garde at the time was that it was “hermetic, nervous and lacking a sense of form”.

He did have some champions though. Polish writer Aleksandra Adamska-Osada said, "There were also many other voices who hailed the Requiem as an outstanding composition of lasting, timeless value, superior to both the contemporary avant-garde and the work of Neo-classicists." And some praise came from unexpected quarters: the American conductor Roger Wagner said, "In my view, this masterpiece can compare in scale and originality to any other great choral composition of the 20th century." Wagner went on to perform the Requiem to more success than its premiere in its American debut in the 70s.

I did hope, indeed expect, that with 200 singers and a full BBC Symphony Orchestra in the grand setting of Westminster Cathedral – its full glory might be revealed.  Unfortunately, despite sterling performances from the hundreds of participants, with the orchestra as well-oiled as a Rolls Royce and some fine soloists including the enjoyable fruity mezzo of Agnieska Rehlis and the ethereal tones of Iwona Hossa, it failed to convince. It wasn’t just the muddy acoustics occluding the tone-colours, one of the highlights of the CD.

The sense was rather like being in the company of an obsessive, such as one of those slightly bonkers people who build cathedrals out of matchsticks. The piece was cut down from 180 to 120 minutes and should if anything be cut down more.  Rather than being impressed that he had spent 15 years on it, I left thinking he should have spent six months and done the Segovia and Rubinstein concertos, and could have been, I suspect, a first-rate film composer. Whereas this piece is supposed to be his towering masterpiece, I’d actually prefer to - and am curious to hear - some of the smaller pieces.

But sometimes composers, who despite protestations of spirituality are usually massive egotists, don’t know what is best for them. I recall a conversation I had with Ennio Morricone, where he was dismissing his film music and urging me to hear his (dull) “serious” compositions. With Morricone, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and other works for film are vital and original. That seems to be his métier, to need the imposed discipline of a film. Maciejewski’s doesn’t seem to be the monumental after all. While I sympathise with His Holiness and am sure there must be some great pieces overlooked by those arid over-intellectual critics, tonal masterpieces with real emotional and spiritual uplift – this, sadly, wasn’t it.