When former Beatle Paul McCartney offered the world premiere of his symphonic tone poem “Standing Stone” earlier this month in London, with Lawrence Foster conducting the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, the classical music critics practically seethed.
“While Sir Paul McCartney’s talents as a songsmith guarantee him a unique place in pop history,” sniffed John Allison in The Times of London, “his efforts as a symphonist are likely to be quickly forgotten. . . . `Standing Stone’ is neither fish nor fowl, but rather the musical equivalent of a veggie burger.”
“The scale of McCartney’s past musical achievements is undeniable,” conceded Adam Sweeting in The Guardian, while winding up for the punch line. “However, it is foolish to pretend that there isn’t a vertiginous learning curve between writing pop songs and creating symphonies.”
“This week our greatest pop songwriter revealed his own manic ambition: to be Beethoven,” observed Richard Morrison, also in The Times. “His `Standing Stone,’ a 75-minute symphony composed with the aid of just two computers and five human assistants, was premiered in the Albert Hall — and promptly garlanded with the most scornful reviews since Peter O’Toole played Macbeth.”
Why all the vitriol? What evil deed did McCartney do to deserve this onslaught?
He dared to bring to the Royal Albert Hall a sprawling work he had been writing for four years, his first major orchestral composition since his “Liverpool Oratorio” of 1991. In both pieces, it was the way that McCartney composed his epic works, as well as the man’s resume as a pop tunesmith, that drew fire.
McCartney, after all, has never been shy about acknowledging that he can neither read nor write musical notation. He dictated his “Liverpool Oratorio” to composer Carl Davis, who wrote it in manuscript form. In “Standing Stone,” McCartney used a piano keyboard hooked to a computer program, which notated his musings; later, various editors cleaned up the notation and orchestrated the piece (under McCartney’s supervision).
If “the aid of just two computers and five human assistants” diminishes McCartney’s achievement, as The Times critic implies, then perhaps the work of Frederick Delius, one of England’s most revered composers, also must be tossed aside. Delius was blind and paralyzed when he dictated to Eric Fenby such sublime symphonic pieces as “A Song of Summer” and “Songs of Farewell.” Ever since, these and other Delius works have been considered essential to the British symphonic tradition, despite Fenby’s inestimable aid to the composer.
Nor was Delius the only composer to get a little help from his friends. Mozart’s students routinely fleshed out the jottings of the composer, who, alas, didn’t live long enough to write every note of his 27 piano concertos, 41 symphonies and several operas, instrumental sonatas, chamber works and the like.
And then there’s the issue of McCartney’s career as pop star. The writer of such ditties as “Yesterday,” “And I Love Her” and “The Long and Winding Road” surely could not hope to succeed at symphonic music, carped the critics.
Yet several pop songwriters have done just that, most notably the American tunesmith George Gershwin, who penned several brilliant works in concerto form (including “Rhapsody in Blue” and the Concerto in F), the pre-eminent American opera (“Porgy and Bess”) and one of the most evocative tone poems of this century (“An American in Paris”). Along the same lines, Leonard Bernstein managed to write the stunning “Age of Anxiety” Symphony No. 2 and “Kaddish” Symphony No. 3, as well as the glorious, and revolutionary, show tunes of “West Side Story.”
Despite the cultural biases McCartney endured in Britain and perhaps will face again next month, when “Standing Stone” receives its American premiere in Carnegie Hall, all that matters, ultimately, is the quality of the music itself. And judging by the new recording on EMI (which is perched at the No. 1 spot on classical music charts across the United States), McCartney has produced an exceptionally appealing piece that has some minor flaws.
In choosing to tell the story of man’s emergence on earth (a narrative McCartney explains in an accompanying “Standing Stone” poem included in the liner notes), the composer draws on a long and noble tradition in classical music. From Franz Joseph Haydn’s oratorio “The Creation” in the 18th Century to Darius Milhaud’s jazz-tinged instrumental work “Le Creation du Monde” in the 20th, uncounted composers have sought to describe — and comment upon — the dawning of humankind.
McCartney does so by opening his “Standing Stone” (the title refers to a monument that the work’s protagonist builds) with comparatively primitive murmurings in the orchestra, from which emerge discernible themes and counterthemes. Before long, “Standing Stone” has swelled to a vast orchestral statement, its soaring melodies and propulsive rhythms evoking the wonder and miracle of life itself.
The piece takes on various moods and directions as it progresses, but its romantic ardor, lush instrumental colors and prevailing harmonic sweetness bear close relation to McCartney’s “Liverpool Oratorio” and, in a way, to the vocabulary that has defined his pop music, as well. That McCartney also has brought Celtic rhythms and folklike motifs to “Standing Stone” gives the work give an autobiographical flavor, suggesting one man’s view of the world in which he lives.
That’s not to say, however, that “Standing Stone” is a masterpiece. Like a Victorian novel that goes on for a couple hundred pages too many, “Standing Stone” may be too expansive for its own good, though perhaps it coheres better in live performance. Furthermore, the orchestration, while aptly reminiscent of music by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gerald Finzi, occasionally becomes so lush as to suggest a French Impressionism that does not really belong.
But like the best film music, “Standing Stone” tells a story in vibrant, picturesque terms. McCartney’s fame may be selling the record, but many listeners will be seduced by the work’s haunting melodies and straightforward message. In an era in which the numbing repetitiveness of Philip Glass and Steve Reich are considered profound, McCartney may yet loom as an important figure.
At the very least, “Standing Stone” augurs well for McCartney’s evolution as a composer of extended works. Its most convincing passages, in which McCartney’s warm harmonies and nearly unbridled lyricism border on spiritual expression, suggest that the former Beatle truly has found a new means of self-expression.
Considering the redemptive and celebratory message of “Liverpool Oratorio” and “Standing Stone,” McCartney appears to be headed toward writing a bona fide religious work. As in Duke Ellington’s “Sacred Concerts,” Dave Brubeck’s “Gates of Justice” and Bernstein’s “Kaddish,” that setting may yield McCartney’s most imposing long-form music of all.
