Skip to content
Homage to Frank Martin

“That kind of fire!”

“That kind of fire!”
Undated portrait of the Swiss composer Frank Martin (1890-1974).
Photo: Keystone / Len Sirman-Archiv / Raymond Asseo
Text by guest author Markus Ganz
To mark the 50th anniversary of Frank Martin’s death, the Bern Chamber Orchestra has commissioned Katharina Weber to compose a tribute to the Geneva composer, who became a member of SUISA 100 years ago. Guest author Markus Ganz talked to the Bernese pianist and composer about Frank Martin and the creation of her homage.

Frank Martin (* 1890 in Geneva, † 1974 in the Netherlands) is clearly one of the best-known Swiss composers. In German-speaking Switzerland, however, his work seems to have been somewhat forgotten in recent decades – especially compared to that of contemporaries such as Arthur Honegger (1892-1955), Othmar Schoeck (1886-1957) or Willy Burkhard (1900-1955). The Bernese composer, pianist, improviser and teacher Katharina Weber (* 1958) openly admits that she knew little of Frank Martin’s work until a few months ago. When she was a student, this was hardly an issue.

Few touch points initially

“I studied with a newer generation of composers such as Jürg Wyttenbach, Erika Radermacher and Urs Peter Schneider, and soon got to know Heinz Holliger. I moved among avant-gardists and had no great interest in more conventional music.” At the time, there was a spirit of optimism in the air, people wanted to discover new worlds. However, this was to change over the years. Katharina Weber: “When composing, I increasingly realised that I also felt the need to use harmonies that are tonally related, even if not from a classical harmony point of view”. Commissioned by the Bern Chamber Orchestra to compose a tribute to Frank Martin, she became intensively involved with his work. And realised that her mostly spontaneous harmonies sometimes resemble those of Martin. “It was a very nice encounter with his music for me.”

While exploring the world of Frank Martin, Katharina Weber was also surprised to discover that there are many performances of his music, of course also because of the anniversary and especially in French-speaking Switzerland and Holland, where he lived from 1946. “I’ve also learnt that his choral compositions are very popular and are probably performed more than I have been aware of, as I’m more at home in the avant-garde scene.” She was particularly interested in the “Petite symphonie concertante”, a commissioned work by Paul Sacher from 1944-47, which will be played immediately afterwards at the premiere of her homage on 25 October 2024 in Bern. “This piece is really great, a combination of incredible rhythmic, forward force and very calm, almost static passages. I also really like ‘Golgotha’ and his piano pieces.”

Unconventional harmonies and rhythms

Is Frank Martin’s work perhaps less characteristic, less clearly recognisable than that of Burkhard or Honegger? Katharina Weber does not think so. “I got the impression that he has developed his very own harmony, even if it is very much connected to traditional harmony. But it’s like with the Beatles, where you sometimes marvel at the chord combinations they used. With Frank Martin, the traditional triads and seventh chords are always present. But the way he connected them never ceases to amaze.” Katharina Weber also suspects that Frank Martin was strongly guided by feeling and inner listening when composing. “I saw a video of him going through a score and conducting, just by himself. Then I realised that he was also a performing musician who didn’t make such a distinction between composing and making music.”

Is this based on the realisation that making music often leads to composition? Katharina Weber replies in the affirmative and adds: “I also had to think of the way jazz musicians play: this kind of fire and ‘getting into the flow’ in one piece. Frank Martin also used jazzy elements rhythmically, not in the sense of jazz quotations, but with elements such as syncopation. I don’t think he was trying to sound jazzy. This rhythmic power of movement probably simply flowed in from everything he heard around him, which I guess he must have found exciting.”

The Bernese composer, pianist, improviser and teacher Katharina Weber joined SUISA in 1989. (Photo: Rolf Mäder)

A homage with variations

The only conditions for this commissioned composition were that it should be a homage to Frank Martin and written for the same instrumentation as for the “Petite symphonie concertante”. Was creating a score for chamber string orchestra plus the three solo instruments harp, piano and harpsichord a compositional challenge? Katharina Weber: “I didn’t have to take a particularly different approach to previous commissioned compositions, where I couldn’t choose the instrumentation. Until recently, the harp was a new instrument for me when composing. But shortly before the commission for this homage, I arranged an old piece of mine for an ensemble with harp and composed a new one for it, so I got to know the harp well.”

Katharina Weber had also never composed for harpsichord before, but one imagines it to be relatively similar to the piano. “In terms of playing style, yes,” explains the pianist. “But not in terms of sound. I was fascinated by the fact that this instrumentation creates a contrast between the notes of the strings, which come out of nowhere and can be sustained at will, and the notes of the solo instruments, which begin with an accent and fade away immediately.” Katharina Weber even speaks of a polarity that she tries to incorporate in this composition. “At the beginning of the piece I asked the strings to play the notes like a bell tone, with an accent at the beginning and a subsequent fading out, just as the solo instruments naturally do when they are played conventionally. This is immediately followed by a passage where the violins appear out of nowhere and then disappear again.”

Connecting polarities

In her homage, Katharina Weber wants to create a reference to “Martin’s masterpiece”, the “Petite symphonie concertante”, and yet remain true to her own artistic background. “As my piece will open the concert evening, I wanted to create a ‘getting in the mood’, so to speak: I let the empty strings of all string instruments sound, together with micro-intervals, which then sounds like the tuning of the strings. And finally, with the retrograde twelve-tone row of Frank Martin, I will lead directly to his work.” The “Petite symphonie concertante” therefore follows directly after its homage, without a break, with its twelve-tone row. This results in a further polarity, that of diatonic and chromatic sound material.

The idea of using the twelve-tone row came to her right at the beginning, during a meditation at the piano, when she wrote down what came to her mind. “So I made a lot of sketches in connection with this twelve-tone row, which I also sang. I tried to get an ear for it, and as a musician I improvise a lot.” There is a further reference to the “Petite symphonie concertante” in her homage, which is similar to that of Martin. “After spreading out the empty tuning fifths g-d’-a’-e” in the violins, the b”’ appears early on as the highest note, as an over fifth, so to speak, an octave and a fifth higher than the highest empty string. The twelve-tone row at the beginning of the ‘Petite smphonie concertante’ begins more in the middle register and then repeats itself, but always a third higher, propelling itself up to this B.”

As a musician, Katharina Weber likes to improvise frequently, so the question arises as to whether she was able to bring something of this to the table. “Yes, even if it’s not directly improvisation, but free assignments. In the introduction, each instrument plays the concert pitch a’ individually so that all the colours of the different string instruments can be heard in succession on the same note, on the tuning pitch. Then comes the fifth d’-a’, where I tell the musicians to start with a micro-interval at a free point in time, where I have only given seconds as to how long this sound should last. They can then decide for themselves at which moment they want to use it and with which shifted tone.”

Katharina Weber’s “Hommage à Frank Martin” will be premiered on 25 October 2024 by the Bern Chamber Orchestra, expanded with harp, harpsichord and piano, at the Bern Conservatory, followed by Frank Martin’s “Petite symphonie concertante” and his “Ouverture en hommage à Mozart” as well as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 (“Jupiter”). Event information of the Bern Chamber Orchestra

www.katharinaweber.ch Katharina Weber’s website.
www.frankmartin.org Website of the Dutch Frank Martin Foundation (also in English and French), which also offers event listings for international concerts with works by Frank Martin.
www.odysseefrankmartin.ch Website of the association L’Odyssée Frank Martin, art and cultural heritage project with the aim of communicating the composer’s work, making it popular, stimulating interpretation and awakening the desire to carry it further.

Leave a Reply

All comments will be moderated. This may take some time and we reserve the right not to publish comments that contradict the conditions of use.

Your email address will not be published.