John Alden Carpenter: Complete Ballets. Boston Modern Orchestra Project; Gil Rose, conductor. BMOP/sound 1100. Total time: 71:40.
DIGITAL REVIEW — Conductor Gil Rose founded the Boston Modern Orchestra Project in 1996, dedicating it to the performance and commissioning of new music. Twelve years later, he founded the independent record label BMOP/sound to highlight his ensemble and new and neglected music. Rose’s vision has certainly borne fruit: With the release of John Alden Carpenter: Complete Ballets, the label marks its 100th recording. This is also the first recording of the full versions of all three of Carpenter’s ballet scores.
Carpenter (1876-1951), a Chicagoan of Mayflower stock, made his living in his family’s shipping-supply company. Yet his musical education was hardly typical for a well-heeled businessman. At Harvard College, he took piano lessons from former students of Liszt and Brahms. After graduating, he spent a few months in England studying composition with Edward Elgar. That high-end training left him with solid classical-music chops to pursue his beloved avocation as a composer.
But what made him exceptional was his willingness to continue learning throughout his life by listening to the changing musical world around him. First Tin Pan Alley and ragtime, and later jazz, flavored his works. He stayed abreast of the important “serious music” trends growing out of Chicago: Florence Price was a personal friend.
Carpenter wrote the ballet scores Krazy Kat, The Birthday of the Infanta, and Skyscrapers between 1917 and 1926 (the earlier two undergoing revisions by the composer in 1940). BMOP’s album opens with the 1922 Krazy Kat, subtitled A Jazz Pantomime. It premiered at Town Hall in New York. As the title implies, the work was inspired by the long-running comic strip by George Herriman. It featured a laconic cat and a mean mouse named Ignatz, living in disharmony in a house whose human owners are never seen. Unlike in the subsequent Tom and Jerry cartoons, Krazy adores Ignatz, although the mouse is forever torturing him.
Carpenter captures this goofy, manic relationship in a suite of nine tiny movements (the longest is about three minutes). The introduction uses a whole-tone scale and violin tremolos to establish a kind of dreamscape. “Krazy Kat Asleep” jumps unpredictably between English symphonic lushness and the mild syncopation of Tin Pan Alley, while the third movement, “Bill Postem,” has a loping, lonesome sound that seems like a precursor to Copland’s Billy the Kid. A movement called “The Spanish Dance” starts with barroom piano chords, then takes on a tango-ish rhythm — but only for a moment. In this ballet, Carpenter is consistent in his wild inconsistency. Far from being a criticism of the composer, however, that’s a testament to how well he captured the essence of his source material.
Composed in 1917, The Birthday of the Infanta: A Ballet Pantomime was premiered two years later by the Chicago Grand Opera Company. Although its 11 movements are longer than those of Krazy Kat, the biggest chunk is still under five minutes. This story could not be more of a contrast with the feline comedy. Infanta follows the simple but tragic tale of a dwarf who foolishly thinks a princess loves him, only to realize the truth and die of a broken heart.
In this piece, Carpenter weaves longer lines, demonstrating his nuanced ear for orchestration and comfort with both tonal and modal harmonies. Although the musical ingredients are different, the ballet has a lot in common with Petrouchka: The setting is a royal birthday party, so much of the music illustrates a parade of guests, entertainments, and celebration. Yet there isn’t the constant shadow of tragedy that one finds in the Stravinsky (which is one reason why Carpenter’s piece, while highly skilled, is perhaps not quite the masterpiece that Petrouchka is).
Rose leads the BMOP through the full range of Carpenter’s miniature musical paintings, moving dexterously from the power of “The Bull Fight” to the sorrowful, birdlike “The Infanta and the Fallen Dwarf.” The orchestra’s playing is especially fine in “The Dwarf,” the movement introducing the ill-fated character, a sophisticated combination of romantic sweeps and halting moments of sadness, hinting that the Dwarf is supposed to look happy as he performs, even if his interior life is bleak.
Skyscrapers: A Ballet of Modern American Life is not so much a story as a series of reflections of everyday living and its underlying rhythms. Scored for full orchestra with extended percussion, it was first performed in 1926 at the Metropolitan Opera under the direction of conductor Louis Hasselmans. Half of the movements have no titles, while others have vague programmatic labels. Carpenter wrote that the piece “reduces itself essentially to violent alternations of WORK and PLAY.”
Dissonant clangs open Scenes I and II, pierced through by syncopated brass blats — the city in all its daily mayhem. “The Strutter” uses ragtime rhythms, evoking well-dressed cats in high-waist pants and spats. “The Sandwich Men” is surprisingly dark, with low strings and woodwinds; the movement brightens into a blue-note-infused conversation, perhaps as the first customer approaches the counter.
Rose deserves gratitude for bringing this well-crafted music back into the public eye. Now, who’s going to do a choreographed evening of these three one-act ballets so that we can get the full experience?
