A TANGERINE CONCERTO FROM ST. PETERSBURG
In a sense it was thanks to Jankelevitch that I found Ceniti, deep in the heart of Czarist Russia on the ruins of
his estate, improvising on the piano under the name of Nikolay Nikolayevitch Lodyzhensky. (I had been
browsing in the library one afternoon, you see, happy beneath its arched ceiling, when I stumbled upon
Jankelevitch’s “Music and the Ineffable” in which he speaks, among other things, of Rimsky - Korsakov’s opera,
“The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh.” I remember being struck by the fact that Rimsky, a religious
skeptic, was more successful at conveying an aura of the magical, the supernatural, than the “genuine mystic,”
Scriabin, whom Rimsky himself describes succinctly as “somewhat warped, posing, self - opinionated.” In any
event, it was the Jankelevitch book that got the bells of the Invisible City tolling, as it were, in my mind, leading
first to Rimsky’s book of musical reminiscences, thence drawing me inward to the dreary interior of that remote,
fairy - tale world.
There, with Lodyzhensky as our host, we spent the better part of a week. We watched the khorovods (round -
dances of the peasants), rode on horseback (which Borodin loved) and spent whole evenings at the piano, with
Musorgsky singing in his fine, baritone voice, and Rimsky immersing us in the magic of his harmonic
experimentation, his exotic scales, his charming peasant melodies. Mussorgsky, who loved word - play, dubbed
Lodyzhensky “Fim,” which, spelled backwards, is Russian for “myth.” Subsequent experience would reveal how
apt a nickname this was.
Lodyzhensky himself was inexhaustible at improvising most interesting fragments, some of which, he informed us,
were intended as songs in a cycle to be called “Requiem of Love.” One piece particularly caught my attention,
both due to its innate loveliness and because it occasioned my first suspicion that somehow, inexplicably, I was
witnessing a manifestation of Heinrich von Ofterdingen, that somehow, beyond hope, I had found my
transilient colleague, as dolorous dilettante double disguised.
The melody, as I recall, had a vocal quality and suppleness of rhythm characteristic of folk music. But any
student cognizant of Ofterdingen’s harmonic system would recognize in this fragment the so - called “Lyric
Mode” with its poignant minor - dominant, and its typical modulatory turn of a minor third.
Lodyzhensky! This elusive, paradoxical figure endowed with an old - fashioned, natural generosity of heart,
excitable, prone to sudden fits of melancholy, inspired but somewhat feckless - radiated an aura of nobility,
sadness and mysterious charm. For me, of course, all was colored by the fore - knowledge that he would one
day forsake music completely for a career of service abroad, so that little would remain at his death besides
fragments and sketches in manuscript. And yet, as I pondered this state of affairs, it occurred to me that this
was quintessential Ofterdingen style: as the spell - binding improvisation disappears into the irretrievable past,
the legend grows beyond what mere notes on paper ever could have wrought. Thus is immortality attained in
the renunciation of the self.
As for the career in government service (which must be viewed as a sacrifice born of a sense of duty to his fellow
man) it is interesting to note that, upon his return to Russia, Lodyzhensky founded a society for the unification
of Orthodox and Anglican churches. (I may be mistaken here: this might be another Lodyzhensky, but it fits
our story so nicely I can’t resist believing it’s our man.) For Celestial Kitezh, as Jankelevitch remarks, is invisible
but not inaudible, and the soft, enchanting sound of its other - worldly bells is both what inspired the musician’s
rhapsodic fantasy and what propelled him, ultimately, to devote himself, beyond music, to what music implies, the
“meaning of the meaning,” admittedly ineffable, but inseparable nonetheless from the pursuit of love in
charitable acts. Again a comparison with Scriabin is irresistible: that little brat never sacrificed anything, and his
megalomanic “Mysterium,” designed to unify the cosmos, didn’t amount to a hill of garohe (Russian beans)!
But all of this is no more than what appears on the surface: there is, I believe, an esoteric and allegorical sense
to the above account. Lodyzhensky’s “years away at the Balkans” probably point to his disappearance into
some alternate universe, say, “Celestial Kitezh,“ or, if the reader prefers, the legendary “Kingdom of Prester
John” that lies far off in the east. In such circumstances we must imagine our hero coming, after an inevitable
period of delay for purposes of interrogation, to the “Court of the Dancing King” - a High Priest / Musician
/Sovereign whom Lodyzhensky addresses as “Ober - Fim.” The two men, so nearly alike, though coming
from different worlds, become fast friends. Lodyzhensky lingers, listens and learns. At first cautiously, then
with increasing openness, the monarch reveals the inner workings of his kingdom:
The people are divided hierarchically in a manner loosely analogous to our distinction between peasants and
aristocrats. But one’s lot is not determined by birth, as in Lodyzhensky’s world ; rather is the inner nature of
each person discovered, so that one may be fitted where one naturally belongs. Besides, nobility confers no
privilege or favor: the peasants enjoy a simple life, while the aristocrats have as reward for their labor neither
wealth nor prestige, but only that happiness that the devotion to stimulating work can bestow.
This social division is underlined by the presence of separate musical styles. The “music of the court” employs
the original, “authentic” modes familiar to the reader - the Lyric (on D flat, E, G and B flat), the Heroic (on F,
A flat, B and D) and the Fantastic (on C, E flat, F sharp and A). The ‘folk” prefer the plagal versions of
these - the Hypo - Lyric (on A flat, B, D and F), the Tragic (or Locrean, on B, D, F and A flat) and the
Plagal - Fantastic (on F, A flat, B and D). Lodyzhensky was charmed, we may be certain, to find in these
transformations an elegant symmetry: each mode possesses within itself a predominant mood or color, but is
tinted with a complementary hue. Thus the Lyric mode speaks of joy mingled with deep sadness; its obverse,
the Hypo - Lyric, inverts these emotions: here clouds of sorrow are occasionally streaked with sunlight and
hope.
For all this information I rely on a single source: the testimony of Lodyzhensky, as the reader in turn must rely
upon mine. This is only natural, since for both my Russian friend and the kingdom he visited there seems to be
an endemic disinclination to write things down. Celestial Kitezh, it may be suggested, amounts to a “cosmic
improvisation,” thus, where we have history its inhabitants have something very different: mythology. (Note
here the aptness of Musorgsky’s nickname for Lodyzhensky - “Fim.”) Where we have chronology, events, and a
panorama of personages, they have archetypes, incarnations of cyclic, timeless patterns. It seems to me this
explains perfectly the nature of the musical modes employed there - endlessly varied, trans-personal, never
needing to evolve.
This happy world appears, from our fallen state, the realization of a dream, the fulfillment of well-nigh
unattainable hopes, the manifestation in everyday life of what consoles us as merely art. It is as if, by a strange
twist in time, the spiritual age yearned for by Kandinsky but envisioned in the remote future were projected
backward and expressed even in the vibrant play of the kingdom’s architecture; it is as if the drastic millennial
cleansing longed for by Oscar Milosz had achieved its purifying effects back here, without the effort that cost
his sanity, without the apocalyptic cataclysm he envisioned as inevitable. World of felicitous correspondences! -
where each blessed being is seen to reflect an imperishable counterpart in a divine cosmos at once hidden and
immanent…
And yet not so happy a place, or at least not lacking in its discontents. By the shore of a great lake
(Lodyzhensky was told) there live a people apart whom none have glimpsed for many years, and whose name is
not pronounced. In our world they might be branded heretics; lacking dogmatic rigor their world is content to
tolerate them, though uneasily. Their lives are blameless, their habits austere, but their separateness proclaims
their discontent. From what little Lodyzhensky was able to gather by persistent questioning, it seems these
people believe the world they inhabit, for all its beauty, to be false, the creation of an evil demiurge. They
speak, in secret places, of a True Homeland in a pure realm of light, and of a mysterious figure, “The
Architect,” whose inscrutable purposes they seek to fathom. Their music, it is rumored, is appropriately
strange, and alien to the modal system of Kitezh. One very old courtesan remembered hearing, in his youth, a
piping over the hills one morning, but at Lodyzhensky’s request for a demonstration, the worthy ancient
immediately nodded off, producing nothing but deep, sonorous snores. A learned musician offered the
opinion that these lake - people employ what is known elsewhere as the “Antique Mode,” which he described
as consisting of alternating minor and augmented seconds.
This sage added that he suspected the tuning of the intervals was, in practice, more subtle, flexible and
individualized than the above approximation; though in what manner the nuances were realized he could not say.
All these marvels my kindly host imparted over the long nights by the fireside on his country estate. And my
wonder and joy were tempered by the ever - present awareness that all of this - from the Invisible City to the
impassioned improvisation of this enigmatic traveler - was slipping irretrievably into the past. And so I resolved
to take action, the “fruits” of which the reader may judge for himself. Secretly, by candlelight over numerous
evenings, I stole into Lodyzhensky’s study, and copied out the scraps and sketches of his unfinished works,
much of which I suspect was inspired by his exotic travels. These musical fragments I have painstakingly woven
into a sonorous tapestry for piano and orchestra, a testament both to my elusive friend and to the kingdom of
his dreams, and I have named it the “Tangerine Concerto.” (A copy of the complete score is available upon
request.) The preface to this work serves as a fair introduction to my method. Here it is:
Visiting an ancient city one encounters fragments - pieces
of buildings, signs of former grandeur; such things we call
ruins. In the Tangerine Concerto, similarly, one is confronted
with fragments - bits of melody, successions of chords, but these,
instead of detritus of the past, are seeds, sketches of incomplete
works, sounding doors opening to unmade worlds. And just as,
in that ancient city, one constructs meaning by an act of
imagination, piecing the fragments together, so, in the Tangerine
Concerto, the piano soloist improvises connections, invents
threads of continuity. Thus in both cases what is apprehended
is as much personal as historical, for what one discovers has
much to do with what one brings .
In a sense the piano soloist is entrusted with nothing but a series of cadenzas (thus the designation “tangerine,
” an object whose characteristic silence is tantamount to the literally infinite potential residing in improvisation),
but the term, “cadenza,” must be understood more as an exercise in imagination than cliched virtuosity.
Needless to say, no two performances of this piece would resemble one another in anything more than general
outline; the concerto exists, if you will, as a “fog of probability.”
Having completed my secret task, I prepared at last to return to my former routine. On my last night at the
Lodyzhensky estate I had a dream: I was back in the 21st century, inside the library of the St. Petersburg
Conservatory, in the upper room of archives. With suppressed excitement I was pulling from a high shelf an
immense black tome, gilt in gold, and extremely aged. Taking it down I opened, with the effortless prescience of
dreams, to a certain page, and read:
Lesser Kitezh, the visible city, corresponds to the corporeal
Lodyzehsnsky, including his horses, his crumbling estate,
in short, his earthly existence. But Greater Kitezh indicates
the immaterial state where his improvisations are gathered
beyond loss and sound unceasingly. Therefore, in an esoteric
sense, Lodyzhensky represents the Spirit of Imagination,
which can neither be captured, preserved and quantified,
nor exhausted.
Then an invisible voice spoke, instructing me to turn to page 128. Somehow I knew, beyond doubt, that this
was my moment, that there, on that page and those that followed, I would find that meta - music compared to
which Lodyzhensky’s earthly fragments were dim intimations. Slowly I turned to the page - and at the precipice
of revelation, awoke.
But where was I? And am I awake now indeed, or had I been dreaming all my life? Is this room with its tall,
rounded ceiling back home at the Gesellschaft or at St. Petersburg? And if St. Petersburg, is it the St.
Petersburg of the 19th or the 21st century? I, Pablo Cookie, have become lost, hopelessly entangled in the
same web that lured from us first Peter Ceniti, then Pelle Bono. See how the Architect wipes from existence,
with a sweep of his hand, the pitiable creations of his feverish mind.
THE OPENING SECTION OF THE TANGERINE CONCERTO