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Godowsky's Passacaglia

Godowsky's Passacaglia in B Minor on a Theme from Schubert's Unfinished Symphony is a sprawling masterpiece consisting of a passacaglia with 44-variations, a cadenza, and a fugue. Godowsky, true to his compositional style, does not scrimp on voices. The piece is thick with the most interesting polyphony that sets itself apart from Baroque-era polyphony in being predominantly dissonant and chromatic. I would nevertheless submit that the character of the piece is Late-Romantic. It's not just an intellectual exercise in polyphony. The listener gets the distinct impression that Godowsky truly enjoyed composing the piece, and the listener shares in his enjoyment. It's a pity Godowsky did not get more recognition as a composer during his lifetime. The Passacaglia alone is sufficient to put him in the same class as Rachmaninoff and the other titans from that age. One minor criticism I have of the composition is that it constantly hammers on the tonic, as if the listener might forget that the piece was in B minor. In that sense it certainly doesn't strike me as a composition in the category of "every note is indispensable". (What does that say about my earlier assessment of Godowsky as a composer vis-à-vis Rachmaninoff? No idea. Also, I have a profound dislike of French phrases in English writing. Latin gives me shivers of delight, but French only gives me shivers of what can only be described as croissants.) Nevertheless, the composition makes the listener remember anew all the emotions on the spectrum. From the eerie, haunting opening to the dizzying chromaticism to the heartbreaking appassionati and the exploding triumphal climaxes and the volcanic virtuosity. The composition was written in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Franz Schubert's death, and in that respect I can't think of a better or a more suitable tribute to that little man. It almost makes us forget about his syphilitic end. Godowsky brilliantly quotes the Erlkonig in one of the variations; and in the fugue, as I realized only after having listened to the piece an embarrassing number of times, the final thundering chord sequence on which the piece ends quotes the second theme of the Unfinished Symphony - right after the theme that forms the subject of Godowsky's composition. I was so thrilled when I learnt that. This is what music is about. Godowsky may have been regarded as a pianist's pianist in his time (and I am compelled to add composer's composer, given the very meta nature of the Passacaglia), but that does not mean that he wasn't one of the great composers of the twentieth century.

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