Symphony No.1

One of the great individualists of contemporary music, unswayed by fashionable trends and allied to no particular group, Henri Dutilleux wasn’t always as independent of outside influence as he so famously became. Indeed, it is partly because his early works (many of which he has destroyed) so clearly betray his admiration for the leading French composers of the 1930s, Roussel and Ravel most prominent among them, that he has so firmly gone his own way since then. It has obviously not been easy. He has published remarkably little during the forty or fifty years of his maturity and, while echoes of Roussel and Ravel have resurfaced from time to time, other significant composers have had an influence too, most noticeably Bartok, Stravinsky, and Messiaen.

The difficulty Dutilleux must have experienced in rethinking a major form on his own terms is illustrated by the relationship between his two powerfully eloquent symphonies, both of which are featured in BBC Philharmonic concerts in Manchester this season. Symphony No.2 (Le Double), written to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1959, is not just a development of what Dutilleux had achieved in Symphony No.1 nine years before: it amounts almost to a reworking of the earlier score by a more experienced, more confident, more radical composer still liberating himself from conventional procedures. Although there is little trace of sonata form in the First Symphony, the first movement is a passacaglia and the last is a series of variations. Much the same could be said of the Second Symphony, but in the later work the forms are far freer, more spontaneous, and the scoring far more complex.

It was no doubt his adoption of a (much modified) kind of serial technique that drew Dutilleux to passacaglia and variation forms, both of which are based on a similar concept of varied repetition. The passacaglia theme introduced by double-basses at the start of the First Symphony is virtually a nine-note series, with tonal implications in its triadic beginning and a chromatic twist to its tail. It is repeated more than thirty times, usually in the bass but sometimes, and particularly towards the end of the movement, in the upper parts. With every two repetitions of the passacaglia theme a new variation is set above or against it - the buzz of two clarinets in seconds, sustained string harmonies, a witty little canon, bell-like brass chords, rapid staccato figures on woodwind, soaring string lines raised on an upward flourish, giant strides on trombones and tuba.

The cycle is interrupted by a contrapuntal development on six-part strings and, when it is resumed, there is a change of atmosphere. The passacaglia theme, returning first on a solo trumpet, tends to conceal its chromatic tail and, eventually, in a climax carried by horns and trumpets through a driving rhythmic ostinato, succeeds in losing it. The climax melts into a magical kind of a modulation which for the first time lifts the theme into a different tonal area, in bright specks of colour on flutes and xylophone, before it is finally restored to its original key, high on celesta and violin harmonics.

When the passacaglia theme was transposed its melodic shape was changed too, though very slightly. It is from this version of the serial theme that the tritone which introduces and sustains the Scherzo is derived. It is a brilliantly scored moto perpetuo basically in 6/16 but incorporating a section in 2/8 which, with Dutilleux’s characteristic rhythmic ingenuity, is gradually converted back to 6/16 as more and more instruments re-enter in the original metre. The melodic curves so effectively drawn by horns or strings over continuing rhythmic activity in the other parts is another characteristic Dutilleux feature (Walton was good at it too).

There might be an allusion to the passacaglia at the beginning of the slow movement, below the three solo cellos voluptuously scored in parallel thirds, but that theme is far less important to the future of the work than the one now quietly introduced by horn and taken up by first and second violins in octaves. In fact, the symphony changes direction at this point, the Intermezzo presenting and freely and melodiously developing the material which is to become the basis of the many-sided activity of the lat movement.

The theme of the Finale con variazioni, though present in several forms in the rhetorical largamente introduction, is clearly identifiable in its basic shape when trumpets and horns take it up after the tempo has changed to allegro. Most characteristically, it is a lyrical inspiration, as when it floats high on violins and includes a trill and decorative upward flourish. But it also supplies a central scherzo section in a vigorous Roussel-like triple time which later, in an episode of contrasting delicacy, is combined with the lyrical version of the theme on muted solo strings and eerily quiet woodwind and brass. In a still very quiet lento epilogue the theme finally comes to rest on a reassuring major triad.