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This process departs from and returns to the colourful worlds of the paintings. In the opera, the orchestral preludes offer stimuli for Vincent’s memories. In the symphony, it works much the same way: the painting exists in space and is fixed, but a musical reaction unfolding from it is more fluid. This process becomes the focal point of contrasts of colour and mood that go beyond Vincent’s story, taking on a new formal potential. Such strategies balance an architectural layout, where there are clearly defined sections, and temporal transformation. This particular balance is one that Rautavaara took care to realise without force, and occurs in most of his large-scale works. As he states:

the final result depends on the maintenance of the delicate balance between these two fundamental principles and the energy of the work is generated by the polemic between them. They must be brought together into a single entity without recourse to violence.40 As the closing movement, “Apotheosis” forms a stage of liberation which derives from Vincent’s psychological journey: disjointed recollections turn towards a celebration of life and colour. The alignment of this finale with the end of Vincent sees a return to the musical “present” once again. Much of the narrative in this symphony is based on the relationship between differing musical states, the musical signs for which have been discussed. “Apotheosis” is the culmination of this dialogue, uniting the otherwise distinct parts of this work.

A criticism by Moody of the opera is that it does not end completely with the impression of it being the sum of all of its parts.41 Vincentiana, however, closes with the

40

Quoted in Aho, Rautavaara as Symphonist, 78. 41 _{Moody, ‘The Bird Sang in the Darkness’: 22.}

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impression of having achieved more than the sum of its parts through its synthesis of elements and culminates in a visual image of bright colour. New melodic patterns, which nevertheless have a deep motivic connection with earlier material, also contribute to its revelatory atmosphere. The DX7 synthesizer (returning in bar 84) now supports the freer diatonic language, having previously been a somewhat ominous inclusion. A subtler influence of narrative is found in the melody in “Apotheosis”, quoted directly from the opera, which Vincent sings to the following words written from van Gogh to his brother Theo, according to Aho:

Death walks in light like a reaper in a surging wheat field; it walks in full sunshine, and light floods over the earth. Look, it is summer and the day of the sun! And whoever dies today is never lost, but joins those who once dared to walk and live! Walk…42

In its new symphonic context, this melody continues the impression of acceptance, reflecting more positively on issues previously associated with anguish. The conflation of musical atmospheres ends the psychological conflict. Rautavaara therefore avoids a sense of hard-won, dramatic closure. The reintroduction of Messiaen’s Sixth Mode in the strings in bar 73 (see Ex. 4.4.2) recalls the pictorial opening of “Starry Night” (shown in Ex. 4.4.1) but is combined with a trombone melody – a continuation of earlier melodic episodes. By bar 83 (see Ex. 4.4.3) this combination reaches a new level of intensity when Mode 6 is chromatically superimposed. “Apotheosis” therefore draws together elements that previously were separated.

Ex. 4.4.1: Vincentiana, “Starry Night”, 1st Violin, b. 10

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Ex. 4.4.2: Vincentiana, “Apotheosis”, Upper-1st Violin and Trombone, bb. 73-76

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Memory and flux

In its use of visual and spatial techniques the Sixth Symphony challenges the symphonic form in a particular way. Vincentiana brings together many complex and diverse strands, including musical material, types of notation, contrasting treatments of musical time, imagery and opera. Such a combination provides a considerable challenge from the perspective of music analysis, which cannot consider the music in isolation.

In discussing the changing nature of time and space in the twentieth-century symphony in the context of radio technology, Daniel M. Grimley outlines the relevance of Henri Bergson’s writing on the ‘permeability of memory and perception’.43

As Grimley states, Bergson argued that ‘the experience of time was properly a process of active (but unconscious) recollection that collapsed past, present and future into a single, multi- layered flux.’44

Grimley further points out Bergson’s influence on writers such as Marcel Proust and James Joyce, who sought to abandon linear narrative for ‘a more fractured, fragmentary and self-reflective commentary.’45 The analysis above has shown that Vincentiana does not seek fragmentation or collage, but has a coherence that connects and transforms various visual states. The piece nevertheless conveys a sense of flux and non- linear narrative, albeit one that takes on a different form. The late twentieth-century or twenty-first-century ease with non-linear temporality in other media, notably film and television, also makes Vincentiana a product of its time. These alternative temporal strategies chime with the residing emphasis on self-reflection and flashback in Vincentiana.

Contrasting light

As with Vincentiana, Rautavaara’s Angel of Light (1994) also draws heavily on visual stimuli, which here manifest as contrasting atmospheres. As a piece from his “Angel” series, Angel of Light draws some inspiration from the recurring childhood image. He described this image of the “terrible angel” as follows:

The image of “angels” presented by the classical kitsch art, as blondes in their nightdresses with the wings of a swan, is so engrained that the world of fantasy behind the “angel series” has tended to be misunderstood. For the angels I had in mind were akin to the

43

Daniel M. Grimley, ‘Symphony/ antiphony: formal strategies in the twentieth-century symphony’, in The

Cambridge Companion to the Symphony, ed. Julian Horton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013),

286. 44

Ibid. 45 _Ibid.

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terrifying, masculine figures bursting with saintly fury of Rainer Maria Rilke, for whom “…ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich – every angel is terrible…”46

As stated at the beginning of this chapter, these angel images do not form any programme for Rautavaara, but a kind of visual impetus. Encapsulated in his description are notions of contrast, light and dark, and disturbance. Contrasts in atmosphere and “light” provide a sense of drama that is an important aspect of the purpose behind the symphony. More broadly, this approach invites spatial connotations of symmetry, opposition and balance – yin-and-yang. Discussing the arts more broadly, Rautavaara states that ‘synthesis, yin and yang, polarities, dialectics have always been the most interesting phenomena in the arts.’47 This perspective applies to his view of musical form in the Seventh Symphony, creating a proportional experience that nevertheless unfolds through time.

Musically, the drama in this symphony centres on a melodic figure that Rautavaara terms the “Hymn Motif” (Ex. 4.5).48

This motif appears in changing contexts, and the symphony has its own balance between the spatial – distinct sections that provide new colour – and the temporal, shown through the continuity in following the progress of the Hymn Motif through these different realms.