The words of Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), the leader of the Second Viennese School, evoke the way of thinking of the late Maltese composer and artist, Maestro Pawlu Grech (1938-2021): “The serious artist should stop flailing his arms in a bid for attention, and instead withdraw into a principled solitude.”
I first met Grech in the mid-1990s after attending a lecture on art history held at a venue in Valletta. He was waiting for someone in the corridor of that same venue.
Knowing that he knew my eldest brother, as Grech had been tutoring him for 20th-century musical composition, I rather nervously asked the reserved-looking man if he was Mro Grech. His face broke into a friendly smile and said that he was indeed. After talking for a few minutes he invited me to one of the evenings he organised at his house in Attard, which was to be attended by his students in musical composition and performance as well as those that he tutored in the visual arts.
Bones (1968)Rather shyly, I informed him that I was neither an aspiring musician nor an up-and-coming artist, but he charmingly replied that his invitation nevertheless still stood.
It was the start of a friendship that lasted years. I regularly attended his cultural evenings which enriched me in numerous ways. There was a solemn quiet during these evenings, most of which involved performances on piano by some of his students and exhibits on the walls by his art students. One could afterwards interact socially and nibble on the goodies specially prepared by Grech’s partner, Amanda.
There was, quoting again Schoenberg, a withdrawal by Grech into a ‘principled solitude’; he wasn’t one to draw attention to himself. Soft-spoken and never a word out of place, he eventually invited me to his house for a coffee which he brewed himself.
Fossilised Plants (1964)On these occasions, which were numerous, he used to talk about his time as a student in Rome, where he had also met Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) himself, who praised his musical compositions. He even showed me a message that the great composer dedicated to him.
The years in Rome and London
From an early age, Grech showed proficiency both for music and for the visual arts. It was a twinned passion that was to persist throughout his life. At 16 years of age, he was awarded a scholarship to study at the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome. His association with the great 20th-century Italian composers Luciano Berio (1925-2003) and Luigi Dallapiccola (1904-1975), as well as the aforementioned memorable meeting with Stravinsky, were key in his formation as a young composer.
Inside a Rock III (1964)Concurrent with his studies in 20th-century musical composition, he pursued his artistic studies privately at the Scuola Galli. In 1964, he left the Italian capital for London, which was more conducive to the progress of his musical career. Here, he nurtured a long friendship with Austrian musicologist Hans Keller, who was also his tutor. This helped the Maltese composer to mature, and he was eventually invited to conduct the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
I believe that he once told me, rather furtively, that for a while, he was appointed artistic director of the Purcell Room, a very intimate space within the Southbank Centre cultural complex in the British capital city. His artistic career followed closely his musical one and he had the opportunity to exhibit at various London galleries.
Shell 3 (1964)The much-lamented Maltese sculptor, Edward Pirotta, who had made London his home in the 1960s, befriended Grech, who used to sadly reminisce about his friend and his tragic death through a motorcycle accident in 1968.
The serious artist should stop flailing his arms in a bid for attention, and instead withdraw into a principled solitude- Arnold Schoenberg
In 1986, Grech returned to Malta to teach 20th-century composition at the Johann Strauss School of Music in Valletta, while concurrently tutoring students in art at his family home in Ħamrun. He resigned from the Valletta-based musical institution in the early 1990s, while moving to his new house in Attard from where he tutored his numerous students in both art and musical composition. It was during this time that I got to know him.
Resonances, celebrating Grech’s art while remembering his music
There is always a thread that brings together the Maltese artist’s two sides. Mikrokosmos, by Bela Bartok (1881-1945), was held in very high esteem by Grech for its pedagogical value, besides for its beauty when its pieces were performed individually or in chosen groups. Many an evening was devoted to his students in music performing a number of the 153 pieces constituting this famous body of work by the Hungarian composer.
Composition 30 (1964)In my opinion, these pianistic microcosms, these short bursts of vitality and creativity, had their equivalent in Grech’s own pictorial microcosmic creations, sometimes evoking imaginary landscapes, at other times eliciting microorganisms like protozoa, blood corpuscles and cellular organelles like mitochondria, cell walls and ribosomes.
Schoenberg, Čiurlionis and Grech
This multi-genre approach to artistic expression has many examples in the global art scene – one can mention Schoenberg himself who, besides being one of the major exponents of musical Serialism, to which his notorious 12-tone system of musical composition contributed, was also an expressionist artist and poet. His paintings, reflecting his music, are angst-ridden, capturing the much-troubled musings of an agitated soul.
Shell 4 (1964)Another example of a musician/artist is the Lithuanian Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911), who, like Bartok, was interested in his own country’s folk music repertoire and explored the harmonic possibilities of music in a proto-serialist manner, anticipating the way that Schoenberg was to follow. His art, embracing Symbolism and Art Nouveau and even nodding towards and anticipating abstraction, is thematically linked to fantasy and nature, in amazing chromatic compositions.
Grech’s own music draws on Schoenberg’s revolutionary technique but reflects a more grounded mindset, which is also evident in the Maltese artist’s paintings. The oeuvre of German artist Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze (1913-1951), also known as Wols, speaks a similar language to Grech’s. Belonging to the Tachisme movement of artists, Wols engaged in a lyrical abstraction that portrayed what seems like organic elements in search of balance.
Genesis II (1965)The Maltese artist’s type of abstraction drew on these musical lyrical elements – the adoption of this style maybe offered Grech pictorial possibilities that were similar to those in musical composition. He was inspired by the infinitesimally biomorphic, a beauty that is all about nature and not about humanity and its emotions. Grech’s inherent inner peace comes across in these works of very contained dimensions.
He admired the work of French composer Erik Satie (1866-1925), especially his Gnossiennes (loosely translated as ‘nothings’). These are late 19th-century compositions for piano. They are mostly in free time and are highly experimental in form, rhythm and structure of their chords.
Grech was enchanted by the concept of these works, ‘little nothings’, as if composed out of thin air; yet so consequential. This attitude towards what seemingly was non-consequential defined what he was all about. It was a heightened attention to the most subtle, hushed and concealed of details.
Inside a Rock XI (1969)This exhibition celebrates both sides of Grech, its title Resonances evoking the characteristics of both his music and visual art. Grech, the man himself, quiet and discrete, seemed to communicate through a resonance, a vibration, of sorts; the timbre of his voice velvety and hardly ever rose above a certain low volume. However, he was passionate about his artistic expression, and his opinions, which he sometimes shared, showed a resolute man, both in his concepts and in his views towards the paths that contemporary art was following.
A smile used to alight on his face, and one was at times hard-pressed if that was a sign of approval or dismissal.
Grech died on February 10, 2021, leaving behind him an abundant legacy of paintings and musical scores.
Resonances, organised by Amanda Tabone, curated by Joseph Agius and hosted by The Volunteer Centre, St Bartholomew Street, Rabat, runs until October 22. Consult the event’s Facebook page for opening hours. For more information, log on to www.pawlugrech.com. Amanda Tabone may be contacted on 7933 3380 or at amandatabone56@gmail.com.