Is Bruckner a Niche Composer?
Here are a couple examples of a certain personality type:
1. The person who (thinks he) aspires to be a writer, and sets out his pens, paper, erasers, etc. in meticulous array, but somehow never gets around to writing anything. He might rearrange his materials, however, and thus have reason to think he’s begun work.
2. A manager at a company who believes in the efficacy of meetings, and actually schedules and conducts meetings. Nothing was ever accomplished at a meeting. But the willingness to be bored is at least a gesture of good will.
My third example is all too personal:
3. The husband who is told he better darn well participate in the house work if he wants a clean house, and who responds by ostentatiously dragging the vacuum cleaner into the middle of the living room, abandones it there to brood forlornly over the dust, and then drinks a beer while complaining of how unfairly he is over-taxed with the housework.
This sounds like me, but does it sound like Bruckner?
Attempts at humor aside, I think that many critics of Bruckner consider that Bruckner got out his Wagnerian harmonies and Beethoven Ninth themes and arranged them on his worktable, then busily fussed with them, neither adding nor subtracting to the material’s intrinsic worth, and then abandoned the chaotic shambles in the middle of the concert hall, and went to drink some (probably sacramental) wine, all the while congratulating himself on having undergone the rigors imposed on a symphonist. An example from such critics? consider the following, by Aldous Huxley concerning a performance by Albert Coates of the 4th symphony, but which passage could be levelled at Bruckner generally:
“One of these minor works of art, which forty years ago appeared to possess a considerable significance, [Huxley was writing in 1922] was dragged, some few nights ago, out of a reposeful obscurity that should have been eternal, and galvanized by Mr. Coates’ exuberant vitality into a semblance of life. There must have been many who, like myself, went to the London Symphony Orchestra’s concert last Monday for the sole purpose of hearing what Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony would sound like on revival. Most of them, I venture to believe, must have agreed with me that the poor thing was better dead, must even have budgeted it its allotted hour of re-existence; have wished long before the end, to see it safely under the tombstone once again.
At a time when it was complimentary in the highest possible degree to be compared with Wagner, Bruckner was called “the Wagner of the Symphony.” People listened to his music with all the seriousness and good-will which he himself brought to the making of it. We who listen with forty years more experience in our ears than they, perceive that the Wagner of the Symphony was a man who wrote for the Wagnerian orchestra pieces of music which he believed to be in the form of Beethoven’s symphonies. We perceive that his thematic invention was of a vulgar and commonplace character. (All his learning and ingenuity are lavished on themes that would not do any very great credit to a Gilbert and Sullivan opera.) We see that he has fallen heavily between his Wagnerian and classical stools; that he takes noise and climaxes from Wagner and cramping limitations from the classics, and that he makes of the two something that is at once curiously childish and pretentious.
Listening to this work, I found myself wondering which of our own esteemed composers will be regarded, a generation hence, as we regard Bruckner. Will they wonder why on earth we made all this fuss about Stravinsky, or how we were not disgusted by the emotionalism of Scriabin…”
This is unfair, as became evident in yesterday’s class, which was devoted to a consideration of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony, edition Haas. The 8th does indeed feature a principal theme which is derived from the rhythm employed by Beethoven for the definitive statement of the first subject of the first movement of the Ninth symphony (and the harmonies, particularly in the slow movement, would be right at home in the love duet from Tristan und Isolde, the “magic fire” music from Die Walkurere, and the redemption business at the conclusion of Parsifal). But it is patent nonsense to suggest that Bruckner thought he was writing in Beethoven’s forms. Bruckner had an absolutely unique way with sonata form, which famously involves three differentiated thematic groups as opposed to Beethoven’s customary two, more or less completely eschews transitions, of which Beethoven was the greatest master, and keeps intentionally arresting tonal and rhythmic momentum, which is just about the opposite of Beethovenian method.
My question is: Was Bruckner a niche composer? i.e., is it necessary to have a specific personal sympathy for his style in order to appreciate his work? Now please don’t get on my case and say that you need a special personal sympathy to appreciate Bach, or Mozart, or Beethoven, or anybody at all. Let’s be sane, if you please. Any educated music lover had better like them guys. One of the few ground rules I attempt to enforce for this forum is the inadmissability of questioning the greatness and primacy of the aforementioned composers-otherwise, nothing would ever get done, and we would be spinning around in a never-never land of relativistic lunacy, as for instance exhibited last year by Norman Lebrecht’s idiotic column in some Australian periodical decrying what he believes to be the childish fetishisation of that childish mediocrity called Mozart. Grown-ups shouldn’t have conversations that would be perfectly apropos to a late night bull session in a college dorm room.
But Bruckner is different; he has a capacity to bore or annoy perfectly intelligent people in a way that other composers are unable to do. Maybe it has to do with his rather too pronounced Catholicism; I’m not saying Catholicism is worse than any other faith, but when anybody expresses “personal” beliefs in too fervent a fashion, it tends to alienate those who don’t harbor like convictions. By the way, the French composer Olivier Messiaen is a much greater offender in this regard than Bruckner could ever be. For my money, Bruckner succeeds in achieving, if not universality, at least a type of expression that may be comfortably taken metaphorically. And here’s another thing, which I anticipate will bring the wrath of the Dementors down on my luckless person: Bruckner’s symphonies wear better than Mahler’s symphonies, just as Wagner wears better than Strauss, or Debussy wears better than Stravinsky. Mahler used to be my favorite composer, but nowadays I tend to take his symphonies one movement at a time, except for that most magnificent and perfect work, Das Lied von der Erde, which, given my expressed preference for sanity, must be accepted as the masterpiece with no superiors and precious few peers. Mahler is always writing about himself, and while it’s a good thing that he is indeed so interesting and worthy of being written about, sometimes enough is enough. A wag might say that Bruckner is always writing about God, which would indeed be problematical. But it’s not so, thank God. Bruckner is writing about the formal potential of the symphony, unlike Mahler, whose symphonies are sometimes a collection of fascinating, and ideed moving, tone poems. Some guy, not me, even suggested that Mahler’s 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 7th are “potpourris”. Let’s send the dementors to that guy.
The Levine 1997 Gotterdammerung -A "Holde-Review" -With a Few Comments Pertaining to Same
Many readers got a chuckle out of the Holde-Quiz and the Holde-Interview, so I plan on having those types of essays as occasionally recurring features. Sober and prudent readers should just skip ‘em, as they cause the risk of a specific birth defect. Also, those with certain types of kidney disease should probably give ‘em a pass as well, just to be on the safe side. Below is the first Holde-Review.
Wagner’s Gotterdammerung, conducted by James Levine at the 1997 Bayreuth Festival, with Deborah Polaski as Brunnhilde, Wolfgang Schmidt as Siegfried, Eric Halfarson as Hagen, and Hanna Schwartz as Waltraute. Staged by Alfred Kirchner, with sets and costume design by Rosalie. (what the heck is this one name pretentiousness all about? Perhaps it’s an incognito, as the sets were not a factor and the costumes were laughable). On DVD.
(The YouTube video above shows most of the Immolation Scene, and provides a taste of the “Costumes by Rosalie. The subtitles are in Spanish.)
Almost every review I read, in “Opera News”, “BBC Music Magazine”, NY Times, etc. is functionally at least somewhat useful, but deadly boring as literature. Some critics (Alex Ross, Charles Rosen, Michael Steinberg, the crew at Opera News) know music, and know how to write. Many do not. With occasional exceptions, you will learn nothing from customer reviews on Amazon, or from most newspapers, whose reviewers were apparently assigned to the Classical Music beat when they were deemed inadequate to cover seventh grade soccer scrimmages. Here in Chicago, we have a reasonably intelligent and affable critic who just guesses at what the performance was like. He has absolutely no clue, so he guesses, and is right every now and then, purely by accident. Still, he constitutes an improvement on the totally ignorant and vilely venomous Claudia Cassidy, who besmirched the reputation of critics everywhere, and who flaunted a total lack of integrity, and indeed, decency. You can’t put a trained musician with a professional point of view on the review page nowadays; he might be tempted to tell the truth. (which, actually, much of the time would mean that he is more laudatory then condemnatory; he would sympathise with the special difficulties horn players face, he would understand why singers can’t sing properly when the tempo is too slow, etc.)
My Solemn Vow: Never will you hear about “silky legato” or “pearly tones” here; I will attempt to write in English, not Newsparperese.
8 Comments on the disc:
1. The modestly “Regietheatre” orientation of the production neither adds nor detracts from the totality of the experience. There are no egregious violations of decency standards, but there are no original thoughts about the piece, either. Apparently Kirchner saw the effectiveness of lighting effects in Wieland Wagner’s productions and the (disputable) effectiveness of totemic symbolic props in Wolfgang Wagner’s productions, and designed a production in which the rich Bavarian beer of the Wagner brothers has been magically transformed into a can of O’Douls. Close your eyes, keep em’ open, dealer’s choice.
2. Levine’s conducting turns one of the richest, most complex and dramatic orchestrations in history into a work of absorbing tragedy, and beyond tragedy, of unnerving sadness. The sounds coming from the pit are acutely poignant. Levine’s knowledge of the score is stupendous; stuff like accent marks in a second clarinet are treated with the respect they deserve. There is absolutely no playing to the galleries, as some might accuse Solti of doing, so to speak, on his uncommonly dramatic recording, or of disengagement and superficiality, as some might accuse Boulez of purveying. And the orchestra plays at an inestimably higher level then on the great recordings of Furtwangler, Knappertsbusch, Krauss or Bohm.
3. Technically the DVD is great, both visually and aurally. And it’s a steal, retailing for 40 bucks, and easy to find even cheaper. Opera DVDs are incredible values; for less than the price of a single ticket, you can have the piece forever, in a reasonably reliable format.
4. Deborah Polaski underplays (but doesn’t undersing) Brunnhilde. A real woman, a grown up with her eyes open, caught in the inexorability of a tragedy she cannot control, this portrayal projects an inward awareness that is hugely moving.
5. Wolfgang Schmidt’s Siegfried is merely adequate. He certainly doesn’t mar the work like John Treleaven or Reiner Goldberg do, for instance. But he has neither the power of a Windgassen nor the eloquence of a Siegfried Jerusalem, and he doesn’t have the tonal beauty of a Rene Kollo, either. He is overhadowed by Brunnhilde, which actually makes considerable plot sense.
6. The Bayreuth Chorus? Do you have to even ask?
7. The star of the show is Eric Halferson. Dietrich Fisher-Dieskau famously called Gotterdammerung a “family tragedy”; whose family tragedy? Sieg. and Brunn’s, and by extension, Wotan’s, of course. Gunther and Gutrune’s? Yes, of course. But how about Alberich and Hagen? It is about time that “Schwarz-Alberich”, the anti-Wotan, and Hagen, the anti-Siegfried get their just due not as the villains of the piece, but as complementary heroes to Siegfried et al. Hagen’s watch is known to be dark, depressing, and frightening music, as well as beautiful music. But what kind of beautiful is it? Maybe its beauty has a noble, despairing, piquaint sadness. Halfvarson and Levine seem to think so. This passage was uncanny.
8. The greatest single feature of this performance is that while nothing was minimized or attenuated, The work’s tragic grandiosity was complemented by a desperately sad inwardness.
A brief comment on an unrelated topic: Many people have asked me why, as a pianist, none of these essays (so far) has been about piano music, and why there are so many essays on opera. Firstly, I anticipate that there will be many essays on the piano repertory, but for the most part I write about things that are new discoveries of mine, or about things which are topical for my classes. So for instance, despite learning and performing the large opus Davidsbundlertanze for my Romanticism course, I didn’t write about this magnificent score on these pages. The reason being that I have little to add to Charles Rosen’s magisterial comments in his The Romantic Generation, except technically. Rosen adequately discusses the structure, rhetoric, and rhythmical profiles of the work. Of course, I could recapitulate his ideas for these pages, or look in depth at the individual pieces, or compare the work to others. All of which would have been useful, but I didn’t feel like it. As for opera? Opera is like golf; those who like it at all are obsessed by it. Oh my, there will be more essays on opera.
Repetition or Redundancy: Introductions by Mendelssohn and Mussorgsky
The beginning of Mendelssohn’s “Lobgesang” symphony is completely inert, and therefore alarmingly dull, if I am permitted the oxymoron. As I’ve been studying this score recently for classroom presentation, I started from the assumption that the piece’s dullness was due to my own limited perception, probably related to the generic problems connected with this “symphony-cantata” as well as the stupefyingly poor text that Medelssohn employed in the work. Salvatore Cammarano’s book for Verdi’s Il Trovatore is a literary masterpiece compared to the shambles that Mendelssohn set in the cantata portion of his piece.
I adore Mendelssohn, and confess to being intimidated as well by the advocacy for this score by R. Larry Todd in his book on Mendelssohn that I’m using in the class. Todd is really careful to avoid personal enthusiasms and censures in his book, but the fact that he draws a structural diagram for “Lobgesang” and has several music examples constitutes advocacy. I also hope that I’m man enough to admit my limitations. But I think I’ve discovered something that lends credence to my negative assessment of the piece.
The first phrase of “Lobgesang” and the first phrase of Modest Mussorgsky’s (admittedly totally different and unrelated work conceptually and stylistically) Pictures at an Exhibition are similar. It’s not an uncanny similarity, but similar they are, and not because they share the same key signature and roughly the same thematic shape, which they do, but which is certainly coincidental, but similar in their rhetoric. Both are statement and response formulations, rather like a mass celebrant chanting something and being answered by a congregation. This is common in classical music. Brahms’ first piano sonata, Beethoven’s last symphony, Bach’s great mass, Rimsky’s Russian Easter Overture and most likely thousands of other works use this device. It is common, to say the very least. But Mendelssohn’s passage flops and Mussorgsky’s is immortal. Why?
It is because in Mendelssohn the responsorial harmonization of the original single note phrase merely confirms the harmonies that are obviously implied in the former. And then he adds new strophes to his passage, and each time the subsequent harmonization confirms the totally obvious. In Mussorsgsky, the harmonization, or at least the spacing is different each time, and even presents certain modal ambiguities; his opening promenade is definitely in B-flat, yes indeedy, but it is tinged by a lurking modal g minor, and sports as well the feeling of a premature move to the dominant, F major. If this seems technical, well, it is-but remember, music is a craft with its own procedural protocols. I can put it this way, non-technically: each time the listener hears the “celebrant” intone a phrase in Pictures, the listener is curious as to how the “responsorial” is formulated, and by the way, this interest does not diminish over repeated hearings. The “Promenade” is a unique thing. In Mendelssohn’s opening, you get exactly what is stongly implied each time. It’s boring the first time, and it approaches unendurable on subsequent listenings.
This should not sound immodest, because it is only basic musicianship, but I think I proved my contention in class yesterday. I improvised Mendessohnian sounding harmonizations of the responsorials at the piano , but used different spacings each time and employed proxy chords which were rational but less obvious then the chords in the actual piece. The passage was somewhat improved, but because I didn’t have an overarching conception of where I was going, it was still pretty bad. In other words, I improved the passage tactically but not strategically. If this seems like lese majestie, let me suggest that the alternative is that we all shut up, stop thinking and experimenting, and eat everything that is put on our plate. We shouldn’t eat everything that even a great master puts on our plate; we’ll get fat and complacent, and lose our powers of crititical discrimination. The Italian and Scottish symphonies are masterpieces, “Lobgesang is an also-ran, that’s the way it is, whether I am personally impertinent or not. I return to my profound rejection of the phrase, “You like it, I don’t, end of discussion” which an exceptionally intelligent friend of mine formulated during our conservatory days. We need standards and discrimination.
Finally, you may ask: “Isn’t repetition an often important unifying device, and therefore okey-dokey?” Oh my, yes. But repetition and redundancy are different things. If you don’t believe me, consult a reliable dictionary.
In Defense of "Cavalleria Rusticana"
Recently, after receiving distressing news delivered by the bathroom scale, I determined to increase the exercise I take. For a 90-minute bicycle ride, I chose to divert myself to the strains of Pietro Mascagni’s 1890 opera, Cavalleria Rusticana; my choice being dictated by the perceived energy and inanity of this opus, which in my all too carefully considered opinion (if one dithers sufficiently on the music one directs the ipod to play, with any luck it might be too late to afford the time to take the exercise at all) would provide the right sort of distraction to accompany a boring, but regrettably necessary task.
Maybe I thought that exercise accompaniment was all this work is good for; who knows? To my chagrin, some Mascagni lunatics got wind of my less than flattering perception of this hoary score, and requested the “right of rebuttal”; I quote this odious phrase, as an example of their impenetrable legalese.
Consequently, as the most refreshingly impartial referee in blogdom, I invited the Mascagni clique’s foremost consigliere (the opera takes place in a Sicilian village), who must hide under the incognito, “per Mascagni Sempre” (PMS) for an interview.
Mr. Gibbons: How many times is the word, “bada” (I warn you) used in this piece? More than fifty?
PMS: I believe just once. When Turridu sings, “Bada, Santuzza” in their duet; warning her that he’s not her slave (schiavo).
Mr. Gibbons: O.K. Tell me then, how many times does one character wish another an unhappy Easter?- (mala Pasqua)-fifty times? Or more?
PMS: Shut up.
Mr. Gibbons: Thanks for the elegantly delivered rebuke, I certainly was out of line.
PMS: Thank you for acknowledging your unconscionable flippancy. To my certain knowledge, you yourself have recordings featuring Jussi Bjoerling (your favorite, just as with everyone else, you lackey), Franco Corelli, Victoria De Los Angeles, Pavarotti, and even that mediocre record with Domingo and Scotto, conducted by Muti. If you can’t make a case for this opera, maybe I can make a case for your being a fool, acquiring record after record of an opera for which you (snobbishly) feel only distaste.
Mr. Gibbons: (evasively) Somebody gave me those records.
PMS: Yeah right, I just buy the magazine for the articles, genius.
Mr. Gibbons: Is the wine from Francofonte any good?
PMS: Ask that fancy retired publisher in your classes, he knows wine.
Mr. Gibbons: Doesn’t this “Madonna” and “Whore” thing bother you in Italian opera? I am neither a post-modernist nor a deconstructionist, but I’m bothered by this pervasive dismissal of women as human beings in certain Italian operas, including the verismo classics, such as Pagliacci and Tosca in addition to Cavalleria. How come Mozart and Wagner have real women in their operas, and, excepting the works of Verdi’s maturity, Italian opera has so few?
PMS: (mumbles inaudibly)
Mr. Gibbons: And is it true that a transcription of Cavalleria for solo banjo would do eminent justice to the work from at least the harmonic, rhythmic, and structural standpoints?
PMS: This interview is terminated
Mr. Gibbons: Will I find a horse’s head in my bed?
PMS: Bada!
Berlioz and his "Fantastique"; Revenge May Be Best Served Cold, But Hector Ordered a Side Dish of Panache With His Meal
Holde-Quiz
Here’s a quiz:
What is the best way to exact revenge on a woman whose very existence torments you with pangs of jealous obsession?
a) Be a creep and put compromising pictures of her on the internet.
b) Pull an “O.J.”
c) Keep a stiff upper lip and show that you can handle yourself with dignity; show her who’s the adult.
d) Compose one of the greatest and most original symphonies in history.
Made your choice?
If you happen to be Hector Berlioz, the answer you choose is “d”. By the way, the option least likely to be chosen if you’re Berlioz is “C”, not withstanding that internet access was quite rare in 1830.
Here is a second quiz:
What is the best way to exact revenge on your professors, those pompous nincompoops who are so blind as to not recognize your genius, and instead choose to bore you with dull admonitions about your faulty counterpoint?
a) Slash the tires of their cars in the teacher’s lot.
b) Scrawl scatological insults on their blackboards.
c) Vow to work harder to improve your counterpoint, and subsequently become recognized as a greater contrapuntal expert than they are.
d) Write one of the greatest and most original symphonies in history, and portray your profs as slobbering demons in Hell dancing orgasmically to the notes of their beloved counterpoint.
Don’t give up — you can do it! Take a deep breath…
If you happen to be “You Know Who”, the answer again is “d”. And by the way, the least likely option to be exercised if you are in the habit of putting “H.B.” monograms on your pistol cases is “c”, not withstanding the fact that very few professors of music at the Paris Conservatory in the 1820s drove their cars to work.
Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique;
Excerpts from Lélio
“The Tilson Thomas
Symphonie fantastique is the
cream of a very, very good crop
of recordings.” (John Gibbons)
It is also a potentially tenable notion that Berlioz was turning Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony upside down in a similar vein to that in which he turned Beethoven’s Ninth upside down in Harold en Italie; like the Big Man’s 5th, the Fantastique travels from c minor to C major, ends in cathartic triumph (albeit for the ghouls, just as it was the brigand’s triumph in “Harold”), has a scherzo that is yoked to the finale, even to the point of representing a transitional state emerging into the finale, as in Beethoven’s 5th, and has passages (a descending minor passage in the low strings in the “March to the Scaffold”, and an optimistic C major scaler horn call figure in the Witch’s Sabbath) that are suspiciously similar to passages in the Beethoven work, at equivalent structural junctures.
Extra Credit!
Here’s a third little quiz. Which photo below is of Hector Berlioz — and which one is of Jefferson Davis?
Hope you earned your motarboard!
By Bach Or Not By Bach: That's (Not) The Question
The first session of my fall Bach class will feature three works whose authorship has been disputed. The “Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother”, the Toccata and Fugue in d minor, BWV 565, and Cantata Nr. 150, “For You, O Lord, I Long” have all provoked questions of authenticity. I personally think all three are by Bach, and it appears there is now a consensus in the case of the capriccio.
All three are excellent pieces-the capriccio is full of playful charm, the toccata is superbly dramatic (although the fugue is relatively mediocre), and the cantata was good enough to inspire the passacaglia bass of Brahms’ Fourth Symphony.
Lovers of classical music anecdotes want all the pieces to be by Bach, because of the fun of speculating on the “stranger maiden”; a soprano who may have sung the soprano solo and subsequently became Bach’s first wife, Maria Barbara, as well as the presence of the “nanny-goat bassoonist”; the cantata features a downright virtuoso bassoon part. And how about Bach’s weepy sadness at his brother’s departure (the piece is part of a sonata-story telling tradition that includes Kuhnau’s “Biblical” sonatas as well as Beethoven’s “Les Adieux” sonata). And how about the Phantom of the Opera? His scary music can’t be by some unknown predecessor or colleague of the great Bach!
I don’t think internal musical evidence will resolve these pieces’s authorship. Bach wrote, performed, and transcribed so much music that proprietory authorship wasn’t considered in the same way back then as it is today. Some scholars doubt Bach’s BWV 565 and 150, because there are some apparent technical lapses. But there are technical lapses in works we are sure are by Bach, as well. And Bach was a great assimilator of diverse styles in his youth. He was insatiably interested in just about all serious styles.
Scholars know relatively little for sure about Bach’s life. But the interesting thing about the many pieces of disputed authorship in Bach’s oeuvre is the light it sheds on how personal authorship was perceived in Bach’s time. How different from the Romantic and Modern eras, where there is a veritable cult of the “individual genius”. It is refreshing to read of the collegial relationships that existed between musicians in Bach’s time; Buxtehude, Reinken, Handel, Telemann all played roles in Bach’s development, and Bach’s own extended family provides a musical culture of its own.
A New (Old) Approach to Bach
The last time I taught a Bach class there were raised eyebrows when I used recordings of the major choral works conducted by Furtwangler (Matthew Passion), Klemperer (Matthew Passion as well) and Karajan (b minor mass). There may even have been a few smirks. Why did I use these recordings? Am I so out of touch?
I used them because they are better than the recordings by Harnoncourt and Gardiner.
I’m not saying that the original instruments and an informed scholarly attitude toward this repertory hasn’t done a great deal for Bach, if it has done less for Berlioz or Brahms. I keep a library of both old and new Bach recordings, and I carefully read the books and essays written by Harnoncourt and Norrington, for instance, and have profitted a great deal from their ideas. And although there is some truth to the notion that the period instrument boom was a gimmick to sell new cds of old works for commercial purposes, on the whole it was a sincere and possibly necessary attempt at a corrective of old performance modes. But the romantic and subjective interpretations mentioned above do greater justice to Bach’s intent, which was to make spiritually sublime music.
Like an obedient little boy I used recordings of these works by Harnoncourt and Jon Eliot Gardiner in all my previous Bach classes. This fall I’ll probably use a mixture of different recordings (both big romantic approaches as well as period instrument versions) for the orchestral and choral works (the keyboard works I’ll attempt to play myself, for the most part).
I refuse to be intimidated by the early music crowd. Harnoncourt, et al. reveal more about the late twentieth century than they do about the eighteenth century. And old instruments don’t need to be used…they are simply not as good as modern instruments. And play Bach’s keyboard music on the piano, for heaven’s sake, where the player can control articulation and dynamics, and by all means use the pedal!
Cruel and Sad News-Our Greatest Tenor is Dead
These pages are not intended to be a general news source for what is going on in classical music, but the desperately cruel death of Luciano Pavarotti from a most implacable illness requires a comment from here. Pavarotti was our greatest tenor, the closest thing to Bjoerling or Caruso in our time, with a similarly beautiful ache in his voice as well as staggering, sensational talent and musicality.
Forget stuff like “King of the High C’s” and “He Brought Opera to the Masses” and “Three Tenors Star is Dead”. He means much, much more to opera, and even music, generally.
Contrary to myth, he was a splendid actor (just look at his late-in-life Canio on the Met’s DVD) who profoundly understood the nature of the operatic roles he assumed. In playing the Duke of Mantua, Manrico, and Riccardo from Verdi, Rodolfo, Cavaradossi and Calaf from Puccini, he had few peers (from any era) and no superiors.
I advise you to listen to classical radio today. You’ll hear something beautiful, I promise you that.
Pilgrim's Music By Berlioz and Wagner
There are at least two moments of indisputable greatness in Wagner’s Tannhauser: The act 2 intervention by Elizabeth to save Tannhauser’s life from the likes of Biterolf and his cruel and cowardly cohorts, and Tannhauser’s act 1 epiphany in the valley of the Wartburg, with the unforgettable, immortal counterpoint of the shepherd boy’s lovely melody, fresh as May: “Der Mai! Der Mai!”- (Wagner pretended that he was quoting an authentic tune but this is not so. He made his own melody. Can you even conceive of some folk ditty being anywhere near as beautiful as what Wagner could contrive?) and the dolorous, guilt-laden strains of the pilgrims.
Only Henry Tannhauser doesn’t know who he is. The pilgrims know who they are, the shepherd boy knows who he is, but Tannhauser is lost. This stunning passage is the existential heart of this profound opera (a much deeper work, by the way, than Lohengrin, which aside from its incredible prelude is merely the greatest German Romantic opera).
Wagner created some of history’s greatest music for his pilgrims. This music’s chromaticism is a perfectly calculated expedient for representing the pressures of guilt, the opening rising octave is the very epitome of yearning, and the orchestration, essentially restricted to a “walking bass” in pizzicato violas and cellos proves that less can be more. Wagner, one of the most disciplined artists in history, frequently finds simple and elegant devices like this splendid pizzicato.
I had to retrieve the score of Berlioz’s Harold en Italie to recall his pilgrim tune, for the purpose of humming it while writing this essay. I couldn’t forget Wagner’s tune if I tried. And I sure ain’t gonna try.
Some points about Berlioz’s score:
1. Rey Longyear, in his mediocre survey, “Nineteenth Century Romanticism in Music” says that Harold is neither a symphony nor a concerto, but a little bit of both. He further claims that Berlioz has only one symphony really deserving the title. He’s wrong, I think. My immediately previous entry deals, albeit superficially, with this issue. David Cairns has it right. Harold is not a concerto. No way. It’s not even close to being a concerto, especially when you consider what a concerto was in 1834 (consider works by Mendelssohn, Paganini, Liszt, and Chopin). Want a viola concerto? Hindemith wrote a great one (I mean the Schwanendreher), and Bartok and Walton wrote good ones. Berlioz composed a work that is obviously a symphony, with a viola obbligato that simply represents the voice of Byron’s Harold in propria persona.
2. Berlioz copies the scheme of recollections of previous movements coined in the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. But Beethoven’s finale leads to an affirmation of universal brotherhood, and Berlioz introduces a riotous orgy. Both Harold and the Fantastique end with orgies, by the way. My feeling is that if you’re gonna ironically turn Beethoven on his head, you better have better music up your sleeve than Berlioz had for his noisy finale.
3. The middle movements are salon pieces for orchestra, if there can be said to be such a thing. The pilgrim’s march and the Abbruzian serenade are every bit as relevant and necessary as the flute and harp serenade to the Christ child in L’Enfance Du Christ or the Rakoczi march in Damnation of Faust, if you take my meaning.
4. The idee fixe is a remarkable and expressive melody, the best part of this flawed score; melancholy, haunting, lyrical…but it only superficially unifies the piece, it doesn’t function in a symphonically developmental manner. In other words, Berlioz just throws it the heck in there when he wants Harold to comment on the action.
5. Just about every page of the Fantastique has some creative, surprising, or emotionally stimulating passage or at least detail; Harold frequently offers tired cliches, even in the orchestration.
I’m surprised at the critical and public sympathy for this piece. I revere the Requiem and Les Troyens and really want to like this piece as well, but perhaps just don’t get it. Oh, well, vive le differance!
Ernest Newman said that this piece is “Perhaps the best orchestral work through which to approach the study of Berlioz, for it reveals everywhere the individual nature of his musical mind…Harold himself is not a character undergoing psychological or circumstantial mutations like the Don Quixote of Strauss or the Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles of Liszt and Wagner, but simply a mood, a melancholy mood and nothing more.” Maybe so. Not every piece can be “fantastique”!
Mea Culpa: Berlioz and His Four Symphonies
Berlioz has four symphonies.
1. Symphonie Fantastique (1830)
2. Harold in Italy (with obbligato viola) (1834)
3. “Dramatic Symphony” Romeo et Juliette (with chorus) (1839)
4. Symphonie Funebre et Triumphale (giant wind band) (1840)
The Romeo et Juliette has moments of searching profundity that makes Tchaikovsky’s, Gounod’s, and Prokofiev’s settings of the story seem trivial. (Maybe not Leonard Bernstein’s, however: West Side Story is justifiably iconic. The greatest “musical”. Bernstein discusses the Berlioz opus with great sensitivity, by the way, in his Norton lectures, The Unanswered Question).
So why in the world would I be preparing a session in my upcoming symphony class on Berlioz’s three symphonies?
I’ll let David Cairns, the grand pooh-bah of Berlioz scholars (along with Hugh McDonald) explain:
“In Berlioz’s third symphony, Romeo and Juliet (1839), the drama has become more explicit and more openly reflected in the form, but the form remains symphonic, for all its bold extension of the genre. It can be argued that the recent failure of his opera Benvenuto Cellini (which ended the hopes of an entree to the Paris Opera by which he had set so much store) forced him against his will to cast the next dramatic work in concert form, from which confusion a hybrid resulted, fascinating and beautiful in its parts, incoherent and unsatisfactory as a whole. This is a possible argument; but it is rather the argument of one who looks at the work from without, from a somewhat nice (my italics-JG) notion of symphonic proprieties and, seeing the unusual attempt to absorb techniques properly belonging to opera or oratorio into the symphony, expects it to fail. Berlioz did, much later, contemplate writing an opera-a totally new work-on the play, and it was age and ill health that stopped him, not the existence of a “dramatic symphony” on the same subject.” This is taken from “The Symphony: 1. Haydn to Dvorak” publ. by Penguin, 1966.
Mea maxima culpa. The last thing I want to do is to be nice, believe me. (for those who know me this will not stretch their credulity). This great work will be included in the lesson plan, of course…when I hear of music teachers excluding it, I can only snort with derision…those benighted reactionaries with their prim-and-proper symphonic proprieties!