Schumann's Second Symphony: What Did Twentieth Century Critics Allow Schumann to Learn From Beethoven?

Mendelssohn, Schumann

A friend lent me Anthony Newcomb’s 1984 article, “Once More ‘Between Absolute and Program Music’: Schumann’s Second Symphony”.  The best part of the article is the exhaustive summary of critical reception to the work in the 19th and 20th centuries, and commentaries on the radically different critical climate for Schumann’s work in those centuries.

Although the article is full of very useful information, it is written in academic-eeze, and therefore is not a literary pleasure. I confess that I prefer style as much as content even in academic papers.  I can’t help it. That’s why I like Charles Rosen so much…in fact, it is quite amusing to me to hear occasionally exasperated or condescending remarks about Rosen from jealous critics and musicologists.  It reminds me forcefully of a passage in William Shirer’s (3-volume, I’m referring to vol. 3) autobiography where he comments on the hostility of the official academic historian lobby to his best-selling “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”, which they decry as the irresponsible work of an amateur.  What they are really objecting to is the fact that it was chosen for Book-of-the-Month Club.  Jealous, Jealous, Jealous.

This post does not attempt to analyze the Schumann 2nd.  Maybe I’ll do that in a subsequent post.  For now, suffice it to say that the work clearly follows the paradigm of Beethoven’s 5th, with the famous “knocking at the door” unifying device replaced by a motive taken from Haydn’s 104th symphony, and the function of the scherzo in Beethoven is usurped by the (third movement) slow movement in the Schumann, and Schumann establishes C Major at the outset, and changes the nature of C Major between the troubled first movement and triumphant finale, reserving c minor for the slow movement, where, like Beethoven’s scherzo, it goes from minor to major as a device of transition to the finale; this is opposed to Beethoven’s plan of going from c minor to C Major over the course of four movements.  Whew! That passage wasn’t very literary!

I should mention that the scherzo in this work is a tour-de-force.  Its vitality and technical prowess rivals Mendelssohn. How did Schumann manage to rise above his orchestral limitations for this impressive movement?   

The question that concerns me currently is this: What use does the twentieth century allow Schumann to make of Beethoven? Newcomb points out that the Second Symphony enjoyed wide esteem in the nineteenth century, presumably because the 19th century exalted Beethoven’s 5th, as opposed to the twentieth, which decried it as bombastic pretension (at least among hoity-toity critics).  Consider the case of a Beethoven inspired piano work, the Fantasy, op. 17.  This is allowed, because here Schumann is appropriating one of the most personal, even sentimental and autobiographical themes in Beethoven: An die ferne Geliebte, which may be understood as a typically Schumannian pun, referring both to Beethoven (the work was composed partly to raise funds for the Beethoven monument in Bonn) and to Schumann’s own distant beloved, Clara, whom he was attempting to marry at the time against the strenuous and exceptionally cruel opposition of that villain of the Schumann biography, Clara’s father, Friedrich Wieck.  Maybe we should just call Old Man Wieck “Leopold”. 

I’m neither kidding nor exaggerating. Wieck was indeed a cruel man. Maybe Leopold was only selfish and insecure, but terrific damage was done by both flawed men; but you do need to credit Leopold (unlike Wieck) for creating the right environment for Mozart to develop artistically.  What if Leopold was an unambitious clerk, let’s say…would we still have Mozart? And are we missing potential Mozarts?

Many critics in the twentieth century wanted to put Schumann in a box. It’s easier, that way.  Schumann is personal, poetic, neurotic, secretive… but not the symphonic heir to Beethoven! We’ve already decided that only Brahms, and, for some, Bruckner can be that! Not Schumann, he’s our miniaturist, our fabulist, our aphorism maker.  If we admit the 2nd Symphony, we have to throw out our hasty generalizations! Much better to ignore or deride the work.  Remember: Schumann could only create aphorisms.

Schumann's "Spring" Symphony: A Great Symphony that Could Have Been Greater

Mendelssohn, Schumann

This is a fairly technical post. 

Schumann’s symphonies have traditionally been criticized for their amateurish orchestration.  This criticism is valid.  Schumann attempted to transfer the mechanics, techniques, and acoustical character of the piano to the orchestra, which works poorly.  Transferring orchestral style sonority to the piano, on the other hand, paradoxically works reasonably well; consider Brahms’ First Sonata or Shostakovich’s op. 34 preludes, or Stravinsky’s “Serenade in A” for example.  

The “Spring” symphony, composed in 1841 and published as Schumann’s op. 38, has many virtues.  It is a lengthy work but one absolutely without “longeurs”, it abounds in contrast, it is by turns exuberant and lyrical, the melodic writing is consistently superior without compromising the sense of symphonic narrative  and drive, and its organization and structure is flat out brilliant; consider the beautiful masterstrokes that frame the piece, the evocation of Schubert’s “Great” C Major symphony (whose manuscript was discovered by Schumann in Vienna) in the horns and trumpets fanfare at the beginning, which summons  spring, and then is reiterated with perfect calculation at the beginning of the recapitulation in the first movement, and the lovely and unexpected birdsong cadenza that elegantly and touchingly launches the recapitulation in the finale. This warm, youthful, and luminous work is a treasure.

But the orchestration is problematical.

This may come as a shock to the uninitiated, but conductors alter orchestration all the time, and not just in Schumann. Yes, in Beethoven and Schubert as well, if not usually in Mozart and Mendelssohn. Just go to a rehearsal.  In no time you’ll see a conductor ask a clarinet to double a passage for bassoons and horns, or divide the double basses so only half play a scampering figure, or tell the flute to play something an octave lower, or tell the disengaged last member of the second violins to take his finger out of his nose, pack up his fiddle, and go home.  Just kidding about that last one! But seriously, this stuff happens all the time, and needs to happen. Only idiots and children think you can serve the music by slavish devotion to the printed text.  And composers who are also conductors probably make the most changes.  Look at Mahler, for example, who changed so much in the Schumann symphonies that he has his own version of the works.  Mahler also made changes again and again in his own works.  

Here is an example of Schumann’s bad orchestration.  The beginning of the second movement features a lovely melody in octaves for the first violins, a sustained, syncopated accompanimental texture for the second violins and violas, and a bass line in contrary motion to the melody in the cellos and basses.  Here are the problems:

1. Octave doubling of melodies is great on the piano, but ineffective in the violins, especially in the relatively less expressive middle of the violin register, where this melody lies. The octave doubling adds little weight and makes the melody a tiny bit out of tune, which is sometimes welcome, as it warms up the sound, but not here, where it is essential that the first violins, who are all on their divisi lonesome, hold their own against all of the second violins, violas, cellos, and basses.  

2. The second violins and violas are trying to duplicate the effect created by a pianist’s right foot on the sustain pedal.  Maybe Schumann congratulated himself on finding such a subtle rythmic expedient to represent the piano’s pedal, but he shouldn’t have been trying to represent the piano’s pedal at all, the orchestra has plenty of ways of its own to create sympathetic vibrations.  Also, and most damaging, the ensemble is gonna be a huge problem.  Even the finest players in the best orchestras are going to be tentative here, they are not going to be as comfortable finding the beat and coming in properly, with well co-ordinated ensemble as they could be.  And all for nothing. Plus, this passage is likely to consume valuable rehearsal time.

3. All the cellos and basses playing a kind of mirror image of the first violins (who are not in a brilliant register, or in a great violin key [the key here is E-flat Major]) are more than a match for the first violin section; there is a danger of a bottom heavy sound, and in any case, the melody should predominate, as this is a homophonic texture.  

Okay, Tough Guy, your solution?

1. Have all the first violins play the top octave of the melody, and half of the second violins and half of the violas play the bottom octave of the melody.

2. Have the syncopated accompaniment played by the left over second violins and violas, and re-notate their parts so you don’t have two sixteenth notes tied together commencing on off-beats. Use overlaps rather than rythmic unisons, so you get the sustain, but don’t have ensemble problems.  You might consider putting mutes on the players executing this passage.  That depends, it’s hard to know if it’s necessary or desirable before trying it out in the hall.

3.  Keep the cellos as is, but make the basses (who double the cellos an octave lower) punctuate rather than double the cello line.  In the first measure they could play an eighth note E-flat, in the second an eighth note A-flat, in the third they could take the whole value of the D, as the melody is now in a more exposed register, etc.

Conductors have to mess with stuff like this all the time, it’s a tough job, I promise you.  When done right.  Some conductors might skate past the whole problem.  I have not heard Mahler’s solution to this passage, but I understand that his versions have been recorded.  Perhaps someone who has heard what he does can enlighten me…I’m sure his solution to the passage discussed is better than mine.       

The Schumann Requiem, op.148: Some Works are Ignored for Convenience

One of the greatest benefits of being a music teacher is that the teacher (if he cares about his classes) is compelled to explore obscure repertory in the interests of “due diligence”. You can’t just put on the best known works and point out how great they are, although there are occasionally inexperienced or unimaginative students who prefer such an approach, albeit very few in my classes after 13 years of steady attention to neglected repertory. I freely admit to sometimes eccentric choices; It’s probably more useful to go out on a limb than play it safe…so in studying the symphonies of Carl Nielsen recently, we concentrated on the Third and the Sixth at the expense of the better known Fourth and Fifth.  My reasoning was that the later two works didn’t need the help, they are very clear conceptions, whereas the other two are wonderfully enigmatic.

In attempting to at least listen to as much of the oeuvreof Mendelssohn and Schumann as possible, I realize that it is naturally not possible to analyze the scores of such a vast amount of work. For deeper analysis I need to pick and choose a suitable cross-section. And for the most part, the truly obscure works are unknown for pretty good reasons; they either are purely practical works, designed to provide for a need or generate income, or they’re unsuccessful in some way.  Some “unsucessful” pieces are fascinating, and deserve attention, such as Schumann’s Genoveva or Mendelssohn’s “Lobgesang” symphony.

I’ve pawed through my extensive collection of books about Schumann, and I’ve found that nobody but nobody seems to care about the Requiem, op. 148.  Not much, anyway. Schauffler simply says “… these (the late choral) works need not detain us.” Jensen merely notes the elegiac character of the Requiem, and comments that it has more contrast than the Mass. Carl Dahlhaus, in his arrogant and controversial book, Nineteenth Century Music interestingly comments that the Requiem reflects an era in which the Catholic Requiem text could be seen merely as an elegiac poem, and compares the Schumann work to the Brahms Requiem, which misses an important point.  Schumann’s work is an elegant and gentle acceptance of death, and is about death, while Brahms’ incalculably great work is about the living, the mourners, and is the world’s most sublime work of consolation in any artistic field.

Schumann’s late works may show a slackening of originality (but whether they are lesser than the early works is debatable!) and it’s tough to be a sheep among goats, so to speak, and to appropriate an image from the text concerning the Last Judgement.  Probably some Vivaldi concertos are better than others, and some Kirnberger fugues are better than others, for instance. I sort of hope I don’t have to find out, however, any time soon!

Schumann’s Requiem is a masterpiece. Just listen to it. Just listen to it with an open mind (don’t expect to hear traces of Carnaval or Dichterliebe). Schumann said, “one writes a requiem for oneself”, and those who want to can surely find premonitions of madness and death in the resignation of the piece.  That’s not the approach I’d take, however….there are more interesting and less obvious approaches.  The piece is in D-flat major, which in Schumann’s time is almost exclusively a piano key, not an orchestral key, which indicates something about its dreamy otherworldliness.  If a reader of this blog listens to the piece and finds it a waste of time, he can dangle me upside down out of a window and I’ll apologise “unreservedly” ala John Cleese in “A Fish Called Wanda”.

The cd conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch for Eurodisc is excellent, although I can’t promise its availability.

Schumann: Requiem Op.148,

Requiem For Mignon

Rca/Bmg (Imports):74321405072

Do All Styles Become Historical? Or Just Those of the Nineteenth Century?

Mendelssohn, Schumann

In Leon Plantinga’s survey of musical romanticism, “Romantic Music: A History of Musical Style In Nineteenth-Century Europe” he gives vastly greater weight to Schumann than to Mendelssohn.  In fact, he essentially promotes the time-worn and insupportable dismissal of Mendelssohn from the ranks of the truly great, for the time-worn and insupportable reasons of Mendelssohn’s supposedly “conservative” style, considered to have been fueled by the aesthetics of the past, his fortunate social and financial position, and the flawless perfection of his compositional technique, which is almost seen (implicitly, I grant you) as a liability.

But at the very end of his inadequate and even somewhat condescending passage on Mendelssohn, which focusses mainly on the overture to “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and the scherzo from the d minor Piano Trio, he makes a really provocative and interesting comment: “In the later twentieth century, when all the styles of the nineteenth seem historical, there are clear signs of a reawakening interest in the work of this extraordinarily gifted composer.”

Can you imagine a textbook (and that is what this book is, being part of the Norton “Introduction to Music” series) saying that Beethoven, or even Brahms, for heaven’s sake, was “extraordinarily gifted”? Of course not. That would be like saying that water is wet. But when that phrase is applied to Mendelssohn, it either means:

1. Actually, you know, Mendelssohn really wasn’t that bad. His music is sort of good afterall! or,

2. Mendelssohn wasn’t really a great composer.  He was just exceptionally talented.

In fact, Plantinga’s book is excellent on the whole; lucid, informed, and remarkably wide-ranging for an introductory text.  But the only interesting part of Plantinga’s Mendelssohn commentary is the suggestion that styles can “become historical”, which implies that we hear things differently over time, which does seem obvious, and platitudinous to boot, but really isn’t, because by specifying styles of the nineteeth century, he leaves open the notion that styles from other eras are capable of achieving a sort of timeless relevance denied to the romantic era. But it’s also possible that Plantinga is obliquely referring to a general reaction against Romanticism in the first two thirds of the twentieth century, at least among academics, among whom Plantinga is counted, obviously.  I remember being really annoyed in my conservatory days when more than one of my fellow students would make a silly pronouncement to the effect that they didn’t like anything between Beethoven (or even Bach!) and the moderns.  And they would say it with pride. This isn’t personal taste.  It is either ignorance or immaturity.  Or more probably, pretentiousness, which is in fact a sort of immaturity at all times, and at least some of the time it bespeaks ignorance as well.

Schumann’s greatest music is undeniably eccentric.  Mendelssohn’s music is not, because when we apply the standards of the nineteenth century to (for us) strange conceptions such as the yoking of religious sentiment and virtuosity, or pseudo-baroque oratoria, we make allowance for the zeitgeist of the times. Charles Rosen discusses this in his Mendelssohn chapter in The Romantic Generation. For most of the twentieth century, critics (almost unanimously) and many listeners made a cult of “personal style”, which almost by defininiton implies something like eccentricity, or at least, uniqueness.  So perhaps Plantinga is trying to say something along these lines:

“When Schumann’s music was composed, it appeared that its intrinsic eccentricity distinguished it in a way that would allow for the suspension of a historical context, because the music was so inextricably bound up with the unique personality of its creator, as opposed to Mendelssohn, whose aesthetics were, so to speak, more general. But with the passage of time we can see that this was not so, at least for the Romantics.  This means that Mendelssohn’s style is capable of posthumous “rehabilitation”, because the avant-garde quickly becomes the “derriere-garde”, and therefore composers who were formerly considered reactionaries are now in the same boat with the erstwhile ‘experimentalists’.” 

In our own time, it is impossible to tell what is reactionary and what is progressive.  One may scoff, and say “It’s just music. It’s either good or bad, and the application of such categories is meaningless.” I totally and vehemently disagree with that.  The history of style and the relationships between styles, and evaluation of these relationships is a vital part of understanding art.  Brahms, Puccini, and Rachmaninov are no longer old fashioned.  Vivaldi, Scriabin, Cage and Babbitt are newly old fashioned.  And a generation from now? Who knows.  Mendelssohn’s friend, Goethe, said: “The surest sign of sincerity is craftsmanship.” Pretty applicable to the “extraordinarily gifted” Mendelssohn, eh?

An Egregious Example of Critical Dilettantism

In my last entry I discussed the futility of drawing on a composer’s personal life in analyzing his music. Fittingly, since then I’ve come across a pair of reviews of the new book Robert Schumann: Life and Death of a Musician by John Worthen. I haven’t read this book, and based on the reviews (below) I don’t plan to — anyone who has read it is welcome to set me straight if the book is being misrepresented.

Reviewing in the Telegraph, Damian Thompson mentions Worthen’s selective attention to Schumann’s output, suggesting that Worthen only discusses the works that support his thesis: that Schumann’s miseries resulted from syphilis and drinking rather than mental illness:

Worthern’s attempt to prove that Schumann was suffering from syphilis rather than schizophrenia goes on too long. It reminded me of a biography of King George III which argued that he was suffering from porphyria and therefore not insane. Really? I would have thought that if you end up shaking hands with trees (as the King) or arguing with angels (as Schumann) then you are bonkers, whatever the cause.

Thompson’s choicest words are reserved for Worthen’s dwelling on Schuman’s gastro-intestinal issues:

“Schumann had had haemorrhoids in Dorpat, back in February [1844] and constipation and haemorrhoids go very badly together,” he notes. Thank you, professor. Could that explain the slightly strained quality of Schumann’s writing at the time?

Maybe that last bit was gratuitously nasty, but Thompson was rightly dismissing one of the, um, crappier pieces of “musical scholarship” that has been drawn to my attention. There’s plenty to discuss in the music without desperately resorting to this kind of pedestrian non-analysis. (Thompson himself can’t entirely resist the temptation of extra-musical music analysis. “I defy anyone with an open mind to listen to [the violin concerto] and not realise that something is about to go horribly wrong.”)

In another review published in the same paper on the same day, John Adamson sees value in Worthen’s agenda to debunk the mythologization of the Schumann as the mad, tortured genius:

The tragedy of Schumann’s final years has fitted so perfectly with a certain Romantic stereotype - the demented and troubled genius - that it has exercised a captivating influence over his biographers ever since. Each time, for instance, Schumann recorded in his diary a moment of depression, melancholy or nervous exhaustion, it has tended to be identified as a warning of the storm to come.

It’s Adamson who notes that Worthen is a professor of English, not music. That, in itself, doesn’t mean he can’t analyze music (Charles Rosen’s doctorate, after all, is in French literature rather than music). But according to Adamson, the bulk of Worthen’s approach is a textual criticism of Schumann’s letters and other sources.

Quite frankly, great music is quite challenging to understand. Irrelevant associations with the composer’s life rarely makes it any easier.

And something else that disturbs me even more: the attempt to discredit or marginalize mental illness, to attempt to explain mental illness as if the term is a catch-all for subsidary causes, as if mental illness were the equivalent of the helpless generality, “nervous disorder” which attempted to provide the cause of death in cases where the doctor was baffled…Schumann’s father, August, had his death “diagnosed” in this way.  Unfortunately, mental illness is real and cruel, and Schumann suffered from it, poor man.  And why is there a mania to diagnose composers with  syphilis all the time, from a distance of centuries? Schumann drank quite a bit in his youth, and he always liked pretty girls.  Maybe these two facts are enough to set irresponsible critics and biographers in motion, but this sort of ex post facto tabloid junk is, at least for me, disgusting.  Even if it is sometimes true, which I’m not conceding in any specific case, although the evidence is stronger for Schubert than for Schumann. 

Please let us do criticism the correct, and difficult way.  Learn the darn music and go from there. 

Do Composers Compose Out of a Need for "Personal Expression"? The Strange Case of Dr. Mendelssohn and Mr. Schumann

Mendelssohn, Schuman

Obviously, any artist is de facto “expressing himself personally”. But to reduce the purpose of an artist to a need for self expression is so simple minded that the phrase “personal expression” becomes meaningless.  It puts me in mind of amateur poets (a class with whom I am intensely sympathetic, by the way) who take one class, write a few incoherent and narcissistic poems, and proudly proclaim that they have a need for “self expression”.  Meaningless, meaningless, meaningless.  This is for amateurs, not professionals. 

Which brings me to Mendelssohn’s String Quartet, op. 80, in f minor (Beethoven’s most hopeless key; vide the “Appassionata” sonata).  If those who think Mendelssohn is wimpy were to listen to this piece, they’d “have another think coming,” as the expression has it. Those who say that Mendelssohn is wimpy either don’t know Mendelssohn, are mean spirited, or have a deficiency in their aesthetics. But they are not even potentially correct.  No way. In the best scenario, some music lovers who have innocently labored under this regrettable delusion, promulgated by irresponsible critics and even musicians, some of whom are indeed motivated by antisemitism, like Wagner, for instance,  may cure themselves in a most pleasurable and fulfilling manner by listening to a broad spectrum of his works.

Mendelssohn composed this agonizing and despairing quartet in 1847, supposedly as a response to the tragedy of his sister Fanny’s (1805-47) death.  Felix had been very close to his sister, and suffered deeply when she died. The quartet is full of “deep suffering” as well.  Must be a connection, right? I don’t buy it.  I don’t buy it, even if it could be shown that Mendelssohn consciously thought he was expressing his grief by the quartet’s composition.  Composition doesn’t work that way.  The professional obligation to create meaningful work isn’t at the beck and call of personal circumstances.

There are other works that fall into this category: Mozart’s a minor piano sonata (a response to the death of his mother); Brahms’s Requiem (death of his mother plus the death of Robert Schumann); Stravinsky’s Symphonie en Ut (wife and daughter).  In all fairness, I should point out that Stravinsky commented that it was the composition of the work that “kept him going”, and that the work has a reasonably sunny disposition.

The cases of Berg’s Violin Concerto and Schoenberg’s String Trio are completely different.  These are programmatic pieces that specifically introduce personally definable elements as part of their structure and meaning.  Deaths and love affairs, for Berg, a near fatal heart attack, for Schoenberg.  Incidentally, personal allusions represented in musically concrete ways was a pervasive stylistic feature of Berg’s music. 

Most interesting is the case of Robert Schumann, the professional who pretended to be an amateur.  He didn’t fool me!  His case is similar to Berg’s.  Papillons, Carneval, Frauenliebe und Leben, etc. are “programmatic pieces that specifically introduce personally definable elements as part of their structure and meaning”.  Schumann’s commitment to his craft is as discernably professional as any other great composer.  That doesn’t mean he was as technically gifted as Mendelssohn; of course he wasn’t.  Genius and technique are not the same thing.  I look forward to discussing the “cult of the amateur” in connection with Schumann in my upcoming class. 

I’ll give the last word to Stravinsky, but I have to paraphrase, I don’t feel like pawing through Robert Craft’s zillion books about Stravinsky to find the exact passage.  When Stravinsky was asked when and where he got his musical inspirations, he responded:  “At my desk, when I’m trying to compose.”  The words of a professional.

"Cardillac" Arrest: Hindemith's Work is the Operatic "Caligari"

And speaking of bad guys…

A delightful development in the world of opera dvds has occurred.  Two (!) versions of Paul Hindemith’s 1926 opus, Cardillac have recently appeared.  I make the assumption that even serious opera fans may not be acquainted with this fascinating piece, except in Germany.  Maybe there are old records of Hans Rosbaud or Otto Klemperer conducting it, I haven’t looked. I assume there are cds of the work… Arkiv probably has some.

As in the cartoons, only a puff of dust was in the air to indicate where I’d been been just prior to rushing off to order the DG Munich production, featuring one of the great Wotans and my favorite Sachs, Donald McIntyre, New Zealand’s claim to operatic greatness as Cardillac, the murderous goldsmith, and the redoubtable  Wolfgang Sawallisch conducting a  production directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, from the Munich  Staatsoper (1985).

Robert Wiene’s cinematic masterpiece, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) is commonly supposed to be the definitive expressionistic statement in film; Cardillac is a sort of musical equivalent. Nightmarish obsession is coupled with grotesque humor and unexpected pathos in the opera, as in the film.  Like Fritz Lang’s “M”, one is dealing with a vicious psychopath who not only cannot help himself, but is perversely proud of his crimes; they are a part of himself, the most intimate part of himself.  Hindemith, in his “bad boy” period, is a greater exponent of Berlin asphalt grittiness than Kurt Weill, who was a theatrical master and a creator of memorable, even immortal tunes, but whose greatest works (Dreigroschenoper and Mahagonny) are simple to a fault compared with Hindemith’s comprehensive musical technique.

Weirdly, I also perceived Cardillac to be a cruelly ironic gloss on Wagner’s Die Meistersinger;  the story of a craftsman in love with his craft, who takes that love a little too far; way, way too far in Cardillac.  The versatile McIntyre is as perfect for the Mr. Hyde side, Cardillac, as he is for the Dr. Jeckyll side, Hans Sachs.  A monster in the one case and a noble human being in the other (Hans Sachs, not Stevenson’s mediocre Dr. Jeckyll) these two opposites are crazily similiar in at least some of their conceits.  In fact, Hindemith ought to have altered the E.T.A. Hoffman story by setting it in Nuremburg rather than Paris.  But if he did that, Regiedirectors would inevitably bring in the Nazis. Yuck.

I recommend this opera, and the dvd mentioned, with great conviction. 

What Do Some Operas Have in Common with Professional Wrestling?

Sometimes you have to root for the bad guy.

Was it Oscar Wilde who commented on a pathetic death scene in Dicken’s “Old Curiosity Shop”:  “You have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at (little Nell’s death scene)”?…If I find the origin of this bon mot I’ll add it later, but as is, this paraphrase expresses pretty well the alert listener’s appropriate response to certain characters in opera.   The various plights of Bizet’s Micaela, Puccini’s Liu, any of Verdi’s Leonoras or Gildas (but emphatically not his greatest heroine, Violetta), and (for those unintimidated by the awesomeness of Wagner’s Parsifal), Kundry, inspire something less than intense emotional engagement. 

It is no coincidence that all these characters are (mostly defenseless) women; but that’s to be expected in the operatic 19th century, although the greatest composer of all, Mozart, treats his 18th century female characters rather more seriously, and doesn’t gratuitously manipulate listener’s emotions…but even here, consider the Queen of the Night versus Pamina.  Who makes the bigger impression?  Maybe I ought to cite a magnificent exception from the 19th century: Berlioz’ Les Troyens, which features in Cassandra and Dido two of the best drawn operatic heroines in history. 

Now take a look at the baddies.  Carmen, Turandot, Princess Eboli, Azucena, Amneris…each and everyone of these characters (give or take an aria or two, allowing for listener’s differing musical taste) has better music and is more human than the heroines.  As for Parsifal,  I think Nietzsche somewhere comments that Klingsor is the only human being in the whole thing.  But he heard only the prelude; perhaps if he heard the act 2 “hate duet” (my joke) he would have changed his mind. 

Things are different in the 20th century.  Shostakovich devotes a whole opera to a noble murderess, Kurt Weill extolls a criminal, and as for Richard Strauss? His two greatest works…but allow me to forego stating the obvious.  For some of us, Baron Ochs is the hero of Der Rosenkavalier, but nobody can even pretend he has the work’s best music; that belongs to the “Italian Tenor”.  Just kidding.

Does this mean that the best opera composers from the 18th and 20th century were more emotionally and psychologically mature than the best opera composers of the 19th century?  No, I don’t think so.  My guess is that it has to do with longstanding cultural traditions and taboos that composers often accepted in their work.  But where the composers violated some of these cultural traditions and taboos, watch out!  You might be in for a masterpiece, as proven by La Traviata or Die Walkuere, for instance.

I'll Offer Him a Setting He Can't Refuse: Puccini and Regietheatre

Paris.  Rome.  Nagasaki.  The Gold Rush.  Florence.  Legendary China.  How many directors want to relocate Michele’s barge from the Seine to, let’s say, the Ohio River?  Who wants to forego the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, in favor of, oh, any other bridge.  Who wants to replace the Emperor Altoum’s stairway to heaven with, let’s say, the head of the table in a corporate boardroom?

Nobody, that’s who.

Puccini is relatively immune to the phenomenon of Regietheatre because his scene settings are irresistable.  Roman dawns, Seine twilights, and  miner’s cabins in the mountains (complete with sterotypical indians) are good enough for anybody, it appears.  Yes, there are occasional exceptions, such as Vienna’s recent Turandot.   But even Jonathan Miller, in his admirable 1991 Faniciulla, retains the gold rush setting. 

What does this say about Puccini? Does it mean he doesn’t have “universal scope”? Does it mean that he “doesn’t transcend his time”? Or is it simply that he was possessed of uncommon theatrical shrewdness?

Berlioz and the Listener: Frames of Reference

The first thing I thought of after recently finishing Frank Norris’s 1899 novel, McTeague, was that the book was seemingly derived from Balzac, especially Pere Goriot, and the plot was a sort of cross between Hardy’s “The Mayor of Casterbridge” and Prevost’s Manon Lescaut; actually, I was thinking of the operas by Massanet and Puccini, not having read the novel.  I also mentally compared the dialogue style to that of Sinclair Lewis and Ernest Hemingway.  And I wasn’t even hired by the publisher to write the afterword.

What do Balzac, et al. have to do with “McTeague”? Not too much, but readers of novels and listeners of classical music feel obligated to compare works as a means to achieve critical understanding; often as the principal means to achieve critical understanding, and in fact numerous “afterwords” published in Signet or Penguin editions, for instance, consist of little more than a string of comparisons, in place of a real analysis of the text.

In his truly great book, “The Romantic Generation”, Charles Rosen throws out this bon mot in reference to Berlioz: “It’s not his genius that is in question, it’s his competence.”  Rosen goes on to discuss the “absurd” notion of “an incompetent genius” which is in the last analysis, oxymoronic.  Many listeners and critics (who should know better) are uncomfortable with Berlioz because they don’t know his antecedants or are otherwise unable to fit Berlioz into a context.  To some extent, those puzzled by or dismissive of Berlioz have my sympathies, he doesn’t make it easy to reconcile his work with the best known composers, and his formal innovations are sui generis. Works like L’enfance du Christ and Romeo et Juliette are absolutely unique.  In Berlioz’ screamingly entertaining memoirs he discusses contemptuously the lack of critical understanding of L’enfance.

I was surprised and pleased recently, when teaching a class on the choral repertory, that the class was palpably moved by the magnificent music at the end of this piece.  The combination of tenderness and austerity in the final chorus is particularly moving (it seems that the union of tenderness and austerity is uniquely Berliozan; consider Les Nuits d’Etes, for instance, or some of the quieter passages in the Requiem, or even the majestic music for Cassandra in the first scene of Les Troyens).  I had put the piece in the curriculum with some trepidation, because its quirkiness, its gentleness, its weird formal attributes might not seem relevant to the students, and in any case, we had already devoted a session to Berlioz’ Requiem (Grand Messe des Morts) which could be considered sufficient coverage of Berlioz within the time limits of the class.  I didn’t expect the piece to be a hit, hence my surprise.  Discussing Gluck and Renaissance polyphony, on one side, and Medelssohn’s Elijah on the other, and quoting extensively from Berlioz himself, did the trick.  But I needed to say relatively little about the Brahms or Verdi Requiems, those pieces were more or less immediately understood in their essence.  Everyone recognized that the Brahms is music’s greatest song of consolation, and the anti-ecclesiastical mode of the Verdi was obvious to everybody.

I’m looking forward to discussing three of Berlioz’ symphonies in my upcoming symphony class.  Symphonie Funebre et Triumphale (which is really bathetic, I must say), Harold in Italy, and of course, the Fantastique. 

Berlioz is in the weird position of being especially popular with relatively less experienced listeners, or else popular with exceptionally knowlegable listeners, rather than with the more typical sort of listener who is somewhere in between.  Berlioz will not be understood by comparing him with his peers, or attempting to accommodate him within the mainstream central European tradition.  The “Afterword” writers for Signet and Penguin will have a hard time with Berlioz.  They may actually have to look at the work innocently, or else do some homework, God forbid.

Update on 2007-08-18 15:09 by John Gibbons

Related Class:
The Symphony Since
Beethoven
Begins September 18
Gleacher Center
Downtown Chicago