István Anhalt: Pathways and Memory

Desmond Maley is the music librarian at the J.W. Tate Library,
Huntington College, Laurentian University, and editor of the CAML
Review.

I must confess to a degree of frustration while reading this collection
of essays on the life and art of Canadian composer Istvбn Anhalt. It
was like going to a posh restaurant that had menus but no food. I am
referring to the dearth of recordings of Anhalt’s oeuvre.
Significantly, no discography accompanies this otherwise very complete
presentation. I was able to discover only two Anhalt pieces that are
currently available: his Fantasia for Piano (written in 1954 and
recorded by Glenn Gould in 1967) and his orchestral piece SparkskrapS
(written in 1987 and recorded by conductor Alex Pauk and the Esprit
Orchestra in 1994). As Charles Rosen has noted, recordings have
displaced scores as the lingua franca of classical music. Without them,
reception and appreciation of the works of any composer, including
Anhalt, is moot.

Thus, William Benjamin, whose very detailed analysis of Anhalt’s
orchestral music is almost a book-length study in itself, concludes that
Anhalt is on a par with other leading composers of our time, such as
Gyцrgy Ligeti and Peter Maxwell Davies. But the recording of Anhalt’s
Symphony, composed in 1958, to which Benjamin devotes considerable
attention, has long since disappeared from the catalogue. Similarly,
John Beckwith’s discussion of Anhalt’s Symphony of Modules, written
in the 1960s, whets one’s appetite to hear this work. Yet not only is
it unrecorded, it remains unperformed.

Other essays examine Anhalt’s contributions to solo, chamber, and
electroacoustic music as well as his use of words for music and his
scholarly writings. Anhalt is also represented in his own words, with
commentaries on his later works as well as the libretto of his latest
opera, Millennial Mall (Lady Diotima’s Walk), which premiered in
Winnipeg in 2000. The biographical detail about Anhalt’s formative
years in Budapest is interesting, especially his harrowing experience of
World War II. Subsequently he became a music professor, teaching first
at McGill and then at Queen’s University. His remarkable “Indian
summer” as a composer since his retirement in 1984 has resulted in a
series of vocal, theatrical, and orchestral pieces. The power of memory,
the search for meaning (notably in the Jewish mystical tradition), and
wide-ranging literary interests are among the leitmotifs of Anhalt’s
lifetime in music.

For now, Anhalt continues to be a composer that people like myself have
“heard of” rather than heard. If this book persuades performers and
producers to issue recordings that allow us to listen, then it will have
served its purpose exceedingly well.