News Flash: Great Music is Hard to Write

This Anna Magdalena Bach “controversy” is nothing new. What is a little unusual is the confusion in at least some minds regarding pieces that are seemingly incontrovertible masterpieces. If some minuet or contredanse turns out to be not by Mozart, but by Michael Haydn or Salieri, I’m unmoved. The pieces are gonna be par for the course professionalism, anyway, and M. Haydn and Salieri are at least capable of that. It is a mistake, I think, to postulate that this or that piece is “greater than the sum of its parts”; when such assertions are made, I tend to assume that the “parts” are not properly appreciated. Certain blunter pieces by Beethoven or even large pieces by a composer like Shostakovich seem to achieve more than their immediately perceptible technical merits seem to augur. This has to do primarily with composition in the original meaning of the word, the selection and arrangement of materials.

A composition such as the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony or the whole of, let’s say, Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony rely on composition in the original sense of the word described above. In isolation, there is little to admire in the intrinsic materials, but the materials are co-ordinated in a larger whole that creates profound musical meaning. If this were not the case, wouldn’t we be tempted to consider Florent Schmitt’s piano music the equivalent of Chopin’s, or Ravel’s music among the very greatest achievements? But those latter works are typically satisfying. But the satisfaction derived from much of Schmitt or Ravel can indeed be attributed to their “immediately perceptible technical merits”. I’m not persuaded that such a standard is particularly applicable to the greater achievements of Bach, or Beethoven, or Shostakovich.

I wonder if the whole thing doesn’t reveal a “sees the trees but not the forest” sort of outlook fostered by the inculcation of a limited academic perspective in analysis, fostered by the problemmatical absorption of music into limited and doctrinaire academic frameworks.

Blogs Are Abuzz for Anna Magdalena Bach - Did She Compose the Cello Suites?

Close-up of title page to the first volume of Singende Müse an der Pleisse, a collection of strophic songs published in Leipzig in 1736, by “Sperontes”, Johann Sigismund Scholze. JS and Anna Magdalena Bach may be the couple pictured.Martin Jarvis decided, as a 19-year-old violist, that the famed cello suites didn’t sound like J.S. Bach.

“Certainly in the first suite, the movements are short and very simple, in comparison with the first movement of the violin works. And I couldn’t understand why,” he said. 

After years of forensic study, the conductor and professor at Darwin University finally discovered this alleged slam-dunk: a manuscript with the notation “Ecrite par Madame Bachen Son Epouse” which says “written by the wife of Bach” rather than “copied.”

We already knew of Anna Magdalena’s role as a copyist. Obviously neither that word, nor the recognizable handwriting of Anna Magdalena would cut it as proof given her known role as a copyist — but in news reports Dr. Jarvis mentions “18 reasons why they weren’t written by Bach.” (Specifics would be great.)

There are several mentions on blogs, but none provides additional detail or (yet) a good discussion beyond what’s in the most detailed

Reuters article

. Over at the

Museum of Hoaxes

, there’s a little more detail, with a mention of “a musicologist from Sweden who has used statistics to conclude the cello suites did not fit into Bach’s other works.”

The Telegraph

did find a Belfast Bach Scholar who described the findings as “highly important.” Unfortunately they also have some skeptical quotes from academic Stephen Rose and cellists Julian Lloyd Webber and Steven Isserlis:

Stephen Rose, a lecturer in music at Royal Holloway, University of London, said: “It is plausible that she corrected, refined and revised many of his compositions, although there is not enough evidence to show that she single-handedly composed the Cello Suites.”

Cellists who have performed the Suites extensively remained skeptical. Julian Lloyd Webber insisted that the compositions were “stylistically totally Bach” and that “many composers had appalling handwriting, which meant better copies would naturally have been made, with the originals then discarded”.

Steven Isserlis, the cellist, who is working on a recording of the Suites, said: “We can’t say that it is definitely not true, in the same way that we can’t prove that Anne Hathaway did not write some of Shakespeare’s work, but I don’t believe this to be a serious theory.”

Given that Anna Magdalena did serve as a copyist, it’s hard to imagine how a physical analysis of the manuscripts could prove her authorship — unless you could somehow place an original manuscript in a time and place where it literally couldn’t have been the work of Johann Sebastian. What’s really needed is a consensus among at least some Bach experts who are in a position to address whether the compositional technique and style of the suites might indicate Anna Magdalena’s role. Dr. Jarvis will be speaking at the New Zealand Forensic Science Society — not a peer-reviewed musical conference. (I could be misinterpreting the term

forensic study

here. Given that the details aren’t obviously accessible on the web, it could be what historians call manuscript studies — or it could branch out into some kind of scientific analysis of the musical choices reflected in the scores. The point is that no specific finding reported in the media comes close to justifying Dr. Jarvis’s thesis.)

According to his faculty profile, Dr. Jarvis presented on this topic at the 2002 Musicological Society Conference - Newcastle. His publications include:

• “Did J S Bach Write the Cello Suites? Part 2 The Musical Analysis” Stringendo Australia 2003

• “Did Johann Sebastian Write the Cello Suites?” Musical Opinion, UK, 2002

• “Did J S Bach Write the Cello Suites? Part 1” Stringendo, Australia, 2002

• “The Significance of Anna Magdalena Bach”, Musical Opinion July/Aug 2005

I haven’t been involved in musical academe for many years and am not in a position to determine how peer-reviewed these publications are, so my apologies in advance if I’m wrong. But Musical Opinion, at least, is a classical music magazine. Stringendo seems to be the newsletter of the Australian Strings Association.  Sadly, it’s not online so we can’t assess the 2003 musical analysis.

Perhaps the last doubt-casting word comes from Jarvis himself:

“It doesn’t sound musically mature. It sounds like an exercise, and you have to work incredibly hard to make it sound like a piece of music,” he said.

Yes, the suites are hard. I never really mastered the last three as an advanced (but not performing-career-bound) college-level cellist.  And while the first three lie beautifully under the fingers in the congenial keys of G major, D minor and C major, it’s challenging to do them justice.

But the reasons have nothing to do with musical flaws. The cellist plays alone and must manage the pacing and large-scale momentum independently. Pianists are accustomed to this, but the unaccompanied cello repertoire is quite small — and many student cellists face this challenge in these pieces alone. An even bigger challenge is bringing out the contrapuntal underpinnings of the music while playing a single line. My teachers spent countless hours explaining how and why to “bring out the base line” etc. and only after learning music theory did I truly understand.

Enjoy these free YouTube performances and decide for yourself. And a hat-tip to Dan Perry for bringing this story to my attention.

• Pablo Casals - Suite #1, Sarabande

• Mischa Maisky - Suite #2, Prelude

• Mstlav Rostropovich - Suite #3, Prelude

• Sifei Wen - Suite #4, Prelude

• Diemerson Sena - Suite #5, Prelude

• Mstislav Rostropovich - Suite 6, Gavotte & Gigue

Twenty Comments on Prokofiev's Piano Sonatas, Part 2

Read Part 1

11.  The electrifying nature of the principal subject of the first movement of the Sixth Sonata is not founded on its dissonance but on its consonance. In fact, the primary dissonant elements, the alteration between A major and a minor and the leading tone to the dominant, d#, serve to enhance the stability of A as the tonic, they create a stasis, a stability, not chromatic flux, which gives the music its massive bulldozer effect. Paradoxically, it is typical of Prokofieven dissonance that his “wrong notes” and mercurial modulatory schemes achieve centrality rather than tonal diffusion. Consider also Peter’s principal theme in “Peter and the Wolf”…what could be more C-majorish, despite the theme’s flattened mediant excursions? 

12. The finale of the Sixth finds its analogy in the tarantella of death from Schubert’s c minor sonata. Prokofiev even includes the haunting seductions of the Erl-king, marked “dolcissimo”, naturally. Especially ominous is the casual integration of the first movement’s dissonant d#.

13. The Seventh sonata’s sequence of invention, waltz, and toccata gives the work a strikingly heteregenous, dislocated character, enhanced by the bizarre tonal juxtapositon of B-flat with its tritone, E, for the central panel. The evocation of Bach and then Tchaikovsky in the first two movements bring Prokofiev’s use of antecedents close to Stravinsky, and except for the blunt bombast of the sonatas’s conclusion, the piece really feels close to neoclassical Stravinsky in its alteration of the dry and the saccharine. 

14. Prokofiev’s formal strategies are exceedingly traditional, as Richard Taruskin points out, but they also show tremendous erudition. The first movement of the Eighth finds its analogy in Beethoven’s alternating bagatelle sequence in his “sonata quasi una fantasia” op. 27, nr. 1. The scheme in the Eighth’s first movement may also call to mind Shostakovich (7th and 8th symphonies) in its yoking of reasonably placid lyricism with disruptive violence. Bugle calls animate the movement with a kindred irony to Shostakovich. Sonatas 6-8 are Proko’s so-called “war” sonatas, which invites an interesting comparison with Shosty’s “war” symphonies. Prokofiev was the greater melodist, but he lacked Shostakovich’s mastery in calibrating long continuous structures.

15. The Eighth is the greatest of the sonatas, not least because it requires everything from the player. Virtuosity, stamina, lyricism, and especially, a gift for almost endless dynamic nuance.  The dynamic athleticism of Bartok and the subtle intricacy of Chopin are equally necessary.  In fact, the slow movement of the Eighth is marked “dreamily” and is in Chopin’s preferred key of D-flat major, inviting an approach to the piece as a nocturne. And as for use of both pedals? Few works require the imagination required in the Eighth.

16. The Ninth is a throwback to the domestic sonata. After the “war” sonatas, I’m reminded of the biblical line, “Lord, in thy wrath, remember mercy.”

17.  Is it weird that he dedicated the Ninth, easily his easiest sonata since the First to Sviataslav Richter, the great virtuoso? Richter loved it. As mentioned in part 1 of this essay, the C major is iconic, in a Beethovenian sort of way.  Prokofiev was obsessed with C major; is this an atavism?

18. The Ninth sums up elements from the earlier sonatas, such as a return to the bagatelle conception learned from Beethoven and exploited in the Eighth, which is revisited in the slow movement of the Ninth. It also lovingly invokes one of Prokofiev’s most effective tropes, the evocation of childhood, as well as the evocation of the sort of limited technical means in music for children. Like Mussorgsky, there is both dignity and affection in Proko’s music for children. 

19. As a whole, the greatest achievement in these sonatas is the inventiveness of the textures. Prokofiev becomes a sort of latter day Liszt in his constant re-invention of piano sonority.

20. Unlike Scriabin or Medtner, whose mature sonatas, while excellent, are too harmonically and texturally similar, one from the other, or the piano sonatas of Rachmaninov, whose two excursions into the genre are too conditioned by the Romantic school,  Prokofiev’s sonatas provide a special comprehensiveness of his style, and are thereby especially rewarding when presented as a cycle. 

Read Part 1

Twenty Comments on Prokofiev's Piano Sonatas, Part 1

Read Part 2

1. The cycle begins and ends with Beethoven: The cycle begins in stormy f minor and and concludes in luminous C major. Even the look on the respective pages is similar; compare the chords and arpeggios at the beginning of Prokofiev’s First with the chords and arpeggios at the beginning of the finale of Beethoven’s op. 2, Nr. 1, and compare the ethereal doodlings at the end of Prokofiev’s Ninth and Beethoven’s op. 111.  I don’t believe this to be co-incidental; recall that Prokofiev pitches his op. 131 in c-# minor, he modeled his first string quartet after Beethoven, and I also suspect that Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony lies behind the stylistic posture of Prokofiev’s “Classical” symphony in specific ways. Further, Prokofiev’s sonata oeuvre resembles Beethoven’s in that both cycles provide a comprehensive overview of each composer’s stylistic evolution.

2.  The First and Third sonatas are not formally similar. It doesn’t matter that they both are orthodox sonata forms with lyrical counter-themes in the relative majors and share a tempestuous quality. The First doesn’t stand on its own, it needs other movements, which, in fact, it originally had, but which were subsequently excised. The Third is perfectly proportioned, with sufficient contrast and a satisfying design. By the way, the First Sonata is easy and fun to play, totally comfortable under the fingers, and is delightful in that is sounds harder than it is. Unfortunately, it is not distinguished music. But it is a great piece for precocious young persons to play at studio recitals. That’s worth something.

3. The second sonata is incredibly uneven. On the down side, the thematic material is totally mediocre, the transitions are amateurishly abrupt, and the piece is a hodgepodge of diverse and sometimes irreconcilable styles ranging from Haydn to Schumann to Tchaikovsky and even Rachmaninov. On the plus side, it’s pithy, and has one of Proko’s characteristic scherzos, and a texturally characteristic slow movement. We’re all formalists and “completists” in the classical music world, alas, otherwise, the middle movements could be profitably programmed as separable pieces, like opp. 2, 3, 4 and 12.

4. The Third Sonata is quite viable, but it too has at least two disfiguring blunders. The absurdly amateurish simple chromatic scale introducing the lovely second subject and the tacky tattoo on the neopolitan right before the final a minor chord. That’s a pathetic, tasteless and utterly formulaic cadence. In general, Prokofiev has way too many cadences. Look at the “Classical” symphony; look at “The Prodigal Son” (both ballet and symphony).  And another thing: if nothing interesting in this piece happens harmonically, and nothing does, why write in a sonata form predicated on harmonic tension? But the piece succeeds admirably despite these flaws, and that’s because Prokofiev, like Liszt, was an absolute genius when it comes to keyboard texture. He always can find a new kind of exhilarating toccata or splendid two-part invention texture. Also, he knows how to gauge a climax, like Rachmaninov. And he knows how to be lyrical without being sentimental. And he knows the meaning of the phrase, “Do the cooking or keep out of the kitchen”… Prokofiev, as hard a worker on his own terms as even Haydn or Bach, provides good, great, mediocre and bad pieces, but he doesn’t provide boring ones.  

5.  It’s ten for one and one for ten. But not two for two. Passage after passage in Prokofiev requires individual and imaginative manual choreography. Unlike Mozart, for example, there is a relative paucity of obvious melody/accompaniment patterns. You can think of your ten fingers as ten individuals, and you can think of your fingers as one mega-unit, but if you think about roles of right and left hands in conventional terms, you’re gonna find Prokofiev endlessly frustrating. There’s tons of cross-hand - that’s where my self-ballyhooed new diet comes in handy. There’s less of an impediment to the thoroughfare!

p.s. I’m not joking. Virtuoso music requires you to be in tolerably good shape.

6.  With the Fourth Sonata, we come to the first masterpiece of the series. It’s not popular, I understand. Because it’s predominantly slow, and frequently gloomy.  Well boo-hoo-hoo, I’m crying. That mean old Russky won’t accommodate my video game attention span. Wake up, pianists. This intelligent, superbly crafted and eloquent work deserves your attention. Richter knew this, at least. 

7.  If the sonatas were political candidates, the third sells its candidacy with charisma, the fifth with its character, but the fourth deals with the issues. It doesn’t pander, and employs something suspiciously close to logic in its rhetoric and thematic manipulation. Go ahead and make my day by pointing out that the first movement sounds like a Medtner piece as imagined by Miaskovsky, or that the third movement might as well have been written by Kabalevsky. Everything sounds like something else. I mean, doesn’t Olivia Newton-John sound like late Beethoven?

8.  Critics howl all the time that Prokofiev writes piano music for the orchestra. This is only occasionally true, and it’s also true that Prokofiev sometimes mishandles the orchestra in ways that have nothing whatsoever to do with his being a pianist. And it’s also true that he sometimes orchestrates magnificently.  But the sonatas show that Prokofiev frequently adapts orchestral sounds and techniques to the piano. Listen to the beginning of the Fourth, do you hear a bass clarinet? And how about the bassoons at the beginning of the second movement, or the shimmering flutes and string harmonics in the c major portion of the recapitulation? Except for the First Sonata, which resolutely offers traditional piano style, all the sonatas offer orchestral imagination, especially the Fourth and the Seventh. My goodness, Prok marks “quasi timpani” in the latter work.

9. Forget the irrelevant revision of the Fifth sonata and go for the real McCoy, the original version. Like Hindemith and Schumann, Prokofiev’s revisions tend to be bad because they tamp and inhibit the wild imagination of the original. Vital works become boring. This is true of “The Gambler” and the Fourth Symphony as well. Rachmaninov is the opposite, by the way. His revisions help the team, especially the First Piano Concerto. The cool thing about the original Fifth sonata is that it is a collision between Stravinskyite neo-classicism and Scythian violence. The Soviet revision is la-di-da Soviet pap with a wholly incongruent climax.

10.  The revision of the Fifth is rendered irrelevant by the majesty of the Ninth Sonata, which is the apogee of Prokofiev’s so-called “white-note” style.

Read Part 2

Friday Links: Let the Conductors Do the Talking

In the links below, two conductors, David Robertson, offer their thoughts on music and audiences.

David Robertson on Live Performance

David Robertson talks about some interesting, unintended consequences of recording technology: a mental shut-off valve. For all but the last several decades, music only existed in the moment unless you had the skill to “hear it in your head.” Having the stimulus of music around us constantly, when we don’t want it, has dulled people to the magic of what music can be:

When radio came in, someone said to Arnold Schoenberg, “This is wonderful, people can listen to music any time they want to.” Schoenberg said: “I’m not so sure it’s a good thing. They can also listen to music any time they don’t want to.”

This exchange gets to the heart of why the concert experience is so important.

Something happens in the concert hall that doesn’t happen anywhere else. You are let off the leash in a neutral, unscripted environment. That’s essential for the health of the human spirit. You can choose to listen and become absorbed in that communication of meaning through sound in any way you like. You can even choose to not pay attention.

The things that you can get from that experience cannot be obtained in any other manner and that, in the end, is the final response to whether a classical music concert is relevant to us. (Robertson)

Robertson veers close to the issues of classical music accessibility and the alleged elitism in the classical market — but the aspect of popular music he highlights as a deal-breaker for membership “western classical tradition” is that more and more of it is being produced in such a way that it cannot be experienced as a live performance by human beings. He notes that, of course, much “popular” music meets the standard and may be assimilated into the tradition. And I might add that the reverse is obviously true: there is certainly music accepted as “serious art music” (especially on the academic front) that isn’t compatible with concert performance. This would include any exclusively electronic/digital music, of course — not to mention acoustic (but unperformable) music along the lines of Nancarrow’s player piano explorations. These are taken very seriously but are virtually unknown outside or hard-core or academic circles.

Benjamin Zander on Imagination and Possibility

Next, the TED website recently uploaded a 20-minute video of a speech by Benjamin Zander, a conductor who is well-known in business circles as a motivational speaker.

This excerpt from “Classical Music with Shining Eyes” is about becoming an inspiration in your own life. The title refers to Zander’s definition of success: not money, etc. but how many eyes you see shining around you. (As a conductor, Zander notes, if his musicians’ eyes aren’t shining, he’s not getting it done.)

One nice tidbit is when Zander walks around, drooping and downcast, in imitation of the classical music pessimists who whine that only 3% of the public actually likes classical music. With an attitude like that, you’re certain to aim no higher than bringing that number up to 4%.  Then, with considerably more spring in his step, he changes his tune to imagine what you could do if you believed that “almost everyone loves classical music, they just don’t realize it yet!”

David Robertson puts the idea a different way:

People are good at being able to hear very complex things when they are given a little bit of direction. It’s like getting a guide to an archeological site: that little bit of extra information helps your critical faculties become awakened to new things. The job of presenting any type of art — in my case, concert music — is about understanding the responsibility of the presenter; that is, to open pathways to greater appreciation and enjoyment.

This Summer's Debate: Boring New Music

Last October the classical blogosphere was rather indignant about Richard Taruskin’s nasty review of three books on the current state of classical music. John discussed it at length and you can read his posts, and the original Taruskin review, right here.

This summer we’re being challenged by The Guardian’s Joe Queenan to fess up to the unlistenability of modern classical music. Since the article has been out for more than week, there’s been time for modern music advocates in the blogosphere to leap to the defense of those young composers in Queenan’s sights, the conductors who program them, and the audience that is indeed willing to give these works a sincere hearing, no matter how small that group might be.

Queenan’s writing is excellent when he reigns in the snark — and he does, sadly, find examples that resonate — not that this makes him right.

In New York, Philadelphia and Boston, concert-goers have learned to stay awake and applaud politely at compositions by Christopher Rouse and Tan Dun. But they do this only because these works tend to be short and not terribly atonal; because they know this is the last time in their lives they’ll have to listen to them; and because the orchestra has signed a contract in blood guaranteeing that if everyone holds their nose and eats their vegetables, they’ll be rewarded with a great dollop of Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn.

So, it’s the audience’s fault? Maybe:

I no longer believe that fans of classical music are especially knowledgeable - certainly not in the way jazz fans are. American audiences, even those that fancy themselves quite in the know, roll over and drool like trained seals in the presence of charismatic hacks phoning in yet another performance of the Emperor Concerto.

Or not. After more insults to the audience, Queenan reaches his verdict. He, you see, isn’t one of those inattentive boobs. He is also bored, so it must be the music.

I have tried to come to terms with the demands of modern music. I am no lover of Renaissance Muzak, and own tons of records by Berg, Varèse, Webern, Rihm, Schnittke, Adès, Wuorinen, Crumb, Carter, and Babbitt: I consider myself to be the kind of listener contemporary composers would need to reach if they had any hope of achieving a breakthrough. So far, this has not happened, and I doubt that it will.

In response, Tom Service argues that it’s Queenan who’s being smug and picks apart Queenan’s “unvoiced assumptions” — such as his insistence on lumping together every “difficult” 20th-century composer from Berg to Babbitt. Another assumption: that “everyone” finds this music — all of it — as boring (at best) as Queenan does — but some of us refuse to admit it because we want to appear superior.

Let’s pause for a personal anecdote, albeit on a different place along the “listenable music” spectrum. Stopping in the powder room on the way into what I thought of as a  performance of the Schoenberg piano concerto, with some Bach and Beethoven added, I was both amused and saddened to hear several of the ladies whining about “having to sit throught that awful SHOWN-berg” just to get to Beethoven’s Fifth. This was, regrettably, a common theme in Chicago Tribune letters to the editor especially during this time, in which the CSO’s wonderful Beethoven/Schoenberg retrospective happened to coincide with the announcement of Daniel Barenboim’s planned departure from the orchestra. There was some unseemly jubilation, justified by certain letter writers’ conviction that Barenboim and other unnamed co-conspiritors were amusing themselves by trying to come up with the ugliest possible music to make their audiences sit through. In common with Joe “Admit It” Queenan, the idea that someone like me, with advanced musical training but not killer technical chops (this is Bonnie talking, not John), could actually enjoy this stuff, is not part of their worldview. They remind me of the “Intelligent Design” movement - because they personally cannot conceive of something it must not be so.

Remember, though, that my example was Schoenberg’s piano concerto. A 60-year-old piece. I find it disheartening that a piece can stand the test of time for some of us, and still sound like “godawful modern stuff” to so many people. And while Joe Queenan does lump the Second Viennese School into his Canon of Music We Pretend To Like, I personally start having difficulty appreciating music from the 60s and later. I’ve always assumed that this was a combination of genuine problems with modern music and my own insufficient exposure and training. In some cases it’s a genuine taste issue — much of modern music is either too technically simple (minimalism, neoromanticism) or too complex (academicism).

The point, with reference to Queenan, is that it wouldn’t occur to me to assume that those who genuinely love, say, minimalism are just trying to impress their friends. If you know David Ellis, who often comments here, he’s not trying to impress anyone. His passion for that genre is obvious, as is his detailed command of the subject. Tom Service puts it better:

At the Barbican and the South Bank for the last 20 years, Stockhausen concerts have packed the place out. And not just with “brash young urbanites”, either, but with people whose interest in contemporary art, in electronics, in pop, in sound-art, in architecture, makes them want to experience Stockhausen’s soundworld in the flesh.

And you know what? It’s not just Karlheinz: Luigi (Nono), Iannis (Xenakis), Steve (Reich), György (Ligeti), Luciano (Berio), and Pierre (Boulez), to name just a few of the giants of 20th-century music, have all had the same galvanizing effect on getting people into concert halls in London in the last few years. This isn’t because people want to eat their greens and roughage before they go back to Mahler and Brahms, but because of the unique, elemental, and often joyful power of their music: these composers have opened up areas of imagination that no other music, and no other art, has ever done in the past - and in ways that people want to hear.

In fact, the bolder the programming has been, the more people have come. Yes, if you apologetically sandwich a piece of Carter between Mozart and Tchaikovsky, you’re unlikely to give the impression that this is the music that ought to replace the classics in years to come, but that’s also, partly, to bark up the wrong tree. There are people who love Brian Ferneyhough but hate Mozart, who go to concerts of hardcore electronica and John Cage, but don’t give a monkey’s for Haydn or Ravel. Conversely, as the Aldeburgh Festival has proved, especially over the last decade, if you put new music imaginatively in the context of the past, you create connections that audiences understand, appreciate, and you start a love affair with contemporary music. Aldeburgh has, incidentally, probably the oldest audience for new music anywhere in the country.

I DO wonder how much genuine love there can be for academic music among those without doctoral-level chops. But it would be absurd to give academic composers the credit or blame for some grand anti-audience conspiracy.

ENO artistic director John Berry responds by acknowledging the (at least perceived) inaccessibility of modern music and the challenge it presents for audience-building. At ENO they’re doing at least one positive thing — foregoing the supposed cachet of world premieres by giving second hearings to existing modern works. Berry, too, believes the audience is much larger than is apparent and disbelieves the idea that intellectual pressure drives attendence.

Mainly because I’m running out of allotted blog time, I’ll just cite one more response here. Other responses are found on the Related Link below.

The blogger at Le Flaneur de Tacoma (whose name I didn’t rummage around for) places Queenan in a critical subgenre nicely dubbed “X is not as great as it’s supposed to be if you listened to a bunch of snobs.”

Queenan’s piece falls into what I call the ” X is not as great as it’s supposed to be if you listened to a bunch of snobs” genre. The “X” could be “Finnegans Wake”, the paintings of Mark Rothko, modern poetry, or whatever the author deems pretentious. The gist of these pieces is to make the reader feel comfortable with disliking, or even better, totally ignoring, certain works of art.

What I especially dislike in these “the emperor has no clothes” type columns is that they might keep people from encountering art because someone has said that it’s difficult. In that sense, it’s just another form of the “Finnegans Wake Syndrome”. Some art is just too difficult to appreciate, or, as Queenan has it, just too boring.

Classical Music Beach Reading

It has been a shamefully long interval since our last post. I can only claim, in my case, various forms of distraction — including the new Holde Kunst layout. (Ahem… how do you like it?)

Of course, our lack of posting fervor can in no way be attributed to any form of summer laziness. But for those in the audience who find themselves in a “beach reading” mood, here are some of my favorite light books on classical music. None of which, I promise, will get you any better at musical analysis.

One of the best reads ever — and just becoming seasonal — is Bayreuth: A History of the Festival by Frederick Spotts. It may be hard to buy the words “Bayreuth” and “light reading” in the same paragraph, but so it it. This is a gossipy romp through a century or so of performances, productions, backstage machinations, and family squabbles. If you’ve ever wondered how exactly the Festspielhaus’s hidden orchestra and unique sonic properties came about, or what it’s actually like to perform there, you’ll get a pretty detailed rundown of that, too.

The next book is almost as old as I am, but I recommend Gentlemen, More Dolce Please! (original and “second movement” volumes) by Harry Ellis Dickson. In this orchestral player’s memoir you’ll be treated to a hilariously apt rundown of the various personality types found in each section of the orchestra. (Oboists have a turbulent love-hate relationship with their reeds, but Bassoonists seem to take their reed issues in stride.) This is where the phrase “so young and already viola” was immortalized, along with “so beautiful it was like a lousy cello” (said of Koussevitsky’s double bass virtuosity).

Want to know who deemed Wagner’s music “better than it sounds”? The answer (George Bernard Shaw) can be found in, well, Better Than It Sounds: A Dictionary of Humorous Music Quotations by David W. Barber. We’re off to an excellent start with the definition of Accordion as an instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.” (Ambrose Bierce) Shaw’s wit is also found in the Lexicon of Musical Invective by Nicholas Slonimsky and Peter Schickele.

"Mozart's" First Four Piano Concerti: Why the Heck Not?

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Leopold, Wolfgang and Nannerl on stage by Delafosse, 1764Listen up: If you have limited time to listen to Mozart, or don’t have to teach a class on Mozart’s piano concerti or something, like I do, you don’t have time for these works. Go listen to Cosi fan Tutte or something. Go on, git! I don’t have all day.

Alright, everybody else-are those bozos gone? Good. Today we’re talking about the four concertos Mozart wrote at the age of eleven, based on pre-existing pieces, primarily by the Parisian Roccoco school, guys like Schobert and Eckard. These pieces aren’t even included in Cuthbert Girdlestone’s (what a name! Sounds like a character from Arthur Conan Doyle…I think I’ll change my name to his!) classic study of the Mozart piano concerti. He calls the 5th concerto the first. Which is fine. But either I’m entering my second childhood (not a likely possibility, you!) or the pieces are surprisingly viable. It helps to have a record of them played and conducted by Daniel Barenboim, who, make no bones about it, plays the pieces in a wonderfully warm, playful, and wholly romantic manner. I don’t understand critics of Barenboim’s Mozart, and I’ve met a lot of them. But on the other hand, I’ve met a lot of guys who prefer Artur Rubinstein’s piano playing to that of Vladimir Horowitz. To me this is incomprehensible, I’ll just never get it.

Anyway, here’s the Gibbons Maxim: All Music Should Be Played Romantically.

No, I am not appending a caveat. And if you squeal, “What about Bach?” I’ll majestically intone, “Especially Bach!”

Alright, I concede it’s largely a matter of taste and temperament. If Thomas Beecham puts cymbals and harp in Messiah, I’ll laugh along with the rest of you. And de Pachman’s Chopin (I’ve heard it) is gross and tasteless, not charming. And Huneker’s “analysis” of Chopin is an embarrassment. Let him go get drunk with Dvorak. Was that him? Here are some points about the four Mozart concerti which have been conspicuous by their absence in this essay:

1. Formally, they are totally conventional fast-slow-fast affairs with rudimentary binary and song forms with episodes instead of developments, with the exception of the first mvt. of the D major, which is actually interesting, and it is further interesting that Wolfy only provided a cadenza for this piece, clearly the best of the four.

2. The orchestration is too classy to be labeled, or libeled, “perfunctory”. But don’t get in a tizzy about it, we’re not gonna “alert the media”. If you don’t appreciate Mozart’s orchestration, just listen to some of his contemporaries. (excepting Haydn).

3. The left hand of the pianist is constantly playing orchestral style music, not piano style music, except where it is playing ubiquitous alberti basses…which is most of the time, come to think of it. When the piano doubles the bass, it’s actually kind of a fun texture on the piano, but on a harpsichord or fortepiano it’d be a dull and conventional texture. And is it lese majestie to criticize some of the left hand writing in Mozart’s “real” concerti?

4. The right hand plays an awful lot of arpeggios and scales. But if you inflect this prefabricated material like Barenboim does, it is indeed beautiful. 

5. Cheerful and elegant, the melodic writing delights.

6. The most ambitious slow movement, the F-major movement of the 2nd concerto (the B-flat) fails. It tries to have beautiful suspensions and real gravity but is just boring. The piano plays too many triplets, and doesn’t even have a chance for rubato or nuance much.

7. These pieces aren’t particularly worse than Mozart’s concerti 6-8. 5 is much better than these, but 6-8? These (1-4) concerti are pithier and no more superficial than 6-8. The 7th is a disappointment: with 3 keyboards one might think Mozart would get more, not less, but less he gets.

8. The slow movement of No. 4 is in g minor. Relax! Geezus, I can’t take you anywhere! It’s not real Mozart g minor.

9. The fine scholar William Kinderman says in his book, “Mozart’s Piano Music” that Mozart merely adapted pre-existing sonatas and added orchestral ritornelli. But can this be totally true? There are definitely passages in the piano part that sure don’t feel sonata-like; that seem to depend on the interaction of piano and orchestra. I at least can’t imagine simply playing the piano parts as sonatas. I’m way too lazy to look up the original sources, so I hereby commission you, reader, to spend hours in the library doing so. Let me know what you find out.

Mozart: The Complete Piano Concertos

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Albert Roussel and the Temple of Doom-Oops! I Mean Roussel's "Padmavati"-Is a Beautiful and Savage Dream

Lovers of French opera in “the west” don’t have to study learned tomes to find out about distant or exotic locales and ancient history. We take our ease, sure in the knowledge that we’ve got it all covered simply by listening to Meyerbeer’s Le Prophete, Les Hugenots, and L’Africaine, Massanet’s Esclarmonde, Herodiade, and Thais, Lalo’s Le Roi D’Ys, Dukas’s Ariane et Barbe Bleu, and today’s subject, Albert Roussel’s Padmavati, (completed shortly after WW1).

If you’ve been wasting your time hitting the books for the straight dope on the Anabaptists, Vasco de Gama, religious massacres, Medieval chivalry, the Bible, early christian Alexandria, and 14th century India, I’ve got three words of advice for you: Wise up, Toots! 

By the way, I also consider myself a Mayan expert because I saw Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto”. (/S!)

Roussel’s opera simultaneously belongs to several traditions; firstly, being almost half ballet, it recalls Lully, but also, and more pertinently if less Frenchly, Rimsky-Korsakov’s underrated Mlada and Puccini’s Le Villi.  This opera is also squarely in the “Orientalism” traditon, and really, there are enough generations and enough works to justify the word “tradition:” R.-Korsakov’s Scheherazade and Tsar Saltan, Strauss’s Salome and Stravinsky’s Nightengale come to mind. Debussy comes to mind, just in general. I mean come on, “Pagodas”, “Sounds and Perfumes Mingle in the Night Air” (that could be a description of Padmavati) and “The Moon Shines on a Ruined Temple”, for instance, et al. And the piece has all sorts of anticipations of Puccini’s Turandot, although I don’t imagine the illustrious Luccan knew the piece, which is a sort of missing link between Strauss’s Salome and Puccini’s Turandot, less hysterical and subtler than the Strauss, and also less hysterical and subtler than the Puccini. And probably less hysterical and subtler than lots of other things. The end of act 1 recalls King Dodon and R-Korsakov’s Golden Cockerel.

“A beautiful and savage dream” is not intended as bloggin’ boilerplate: the piece inhabits a dreamlike trance from beginning to end, and oh, is it beautiful. As beautiful as any of Ravel’s exoticisms, and less fussy, to boot, and it’s as violent as, well, “Apocalyto”, or at least “Temple of Doom” — it doesn’t have High Priest of Thugee Muhleram tearing out victim’s hearts while invoking the power of Siva , but darn close.

[Mulleram - note the spelling— invokes the power of Kali, you pompous ignoramus. —Editor’s note.]

Is the piece moving? Yes, in two spots.  Padmavati’s despair and resignation at the end of act 1, lamenting that the Gods no longer hear her, and what did she do to deserve this? And, the duet in act 2 where Padmavati (and she decides for her Maharaja,as well)  determines to die with honor rather than to live with dishonor (by giving Padmavati to the Mogol chieftain). This isn’t Respighi’s Belkis, Queen of Sheba, it’s much better. It’s not Goldmark’s Queen of Sheba, either. In fact, it had nothing to do with Sheba, why did I bring this up? Maybe confused Siva with Sheba.

To those who find faux-Oriental pieces like this insensitive, colonialistic, or patronizing, I assure you, that although it looks like I’m delightedly lapping it up and asking for seconds, I’m cognizant of these concerns, which are much-studied and discussed beyond the scope of this post.

Beethoven's "Missa"-Perched Between the Baroque and the Romantic Neo-Baroque

I can affirm most wholeheartedly that Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis absolutely succeeds outdoors on a balmy June evening, as proved last night by the Chicago Grant Park festival and its capable conductor, Carlos Kalmar. I’m too lazy to look it up, but was it not so long ago that outdoors summer festivals avoided pieces like the Missa? In any case, any and all times and places are right for this engrossing and highly accessible work; if you actually listen, this piece, dense and profound as it obviously is, can connect like nothing else. It is Beethoven’s greatest single achievement, even if sacred music isn’t Beethoven’s greatest or most characteristic genre (which are piano sonata and string quartet).

This work is indebted to the Baroque, and not just Bach, but nevertheless is fundamentally High Classical in conception; it forms a continuous narrative, as the Bach B minor Mass, which is a collection of sympathetic but heterogeneous pieces, does not. You couldn’t omit or transpose anything from Beethoven’s Mass and retain structural integrity, which is both dramatic and tonal. But one could excerpt a chorus or aria from the sacred works of Bach or Mozart with profit. In fact, I sometimes wonder if it is a coincidence, or due primarily to biographical factors, that Mozart’s two greatest sacred works, the C minor Mass and Requiem, were left incomplete-there appears to be, in these awesomely beautiful works, an ultimate lack of total identity between style and content. Neither are the Baroque and earlier styles (Gregorian chant for instance) employed in the Missa felt as stylistic anachronisms except where intended to be felt as such by Beethoven. This seems to me to be an absolutely vital point, and one that cannot be made for Mozart or Schubert, or even Haydn.

Dramatically the Mass’s structure feels as if it were in two mammoth and complementary parts separated and articulated by the Credo, which looks both backward and forward. The Kyrie and Gloria easily are the sections most obviously reconcilable with Baroque antecedents, but nevertheless have an intrinsic momentum which is undoubtedly Classical, and contain some disconcerting touches, like the very first intonation of the word “kyrie” on a weak beat, or the simultaneous unfolding of the two parts of the fugal subject at the beginning of the “Christe eleison”, which one could take to be a reference to the dual nature of Christ, but which requires intense focus on the part of the listener to perceive adequately. This mass of fugal entries at this place is one of the great glories of the piece.

It is well known that the opening E-flat salvo in the overall B-flat tonality of the “Credo” inaugurates a massive plagal cadence over the course of the movement. I’d like to speculate further that the idea of a piece in D with subsidiary regions in two flats connects this piece to the Ninth Symphony, written at essentially the same time. Elegantly, the Mass has D major giving way to G minor in the achingly moving “Agnus Dei”, and the symphony has D minor giving way to B flat, as a major structural conceit. Consider it speculated!

I noticed that the “et incarnatus est” was sung by the tenor section rather than the soloist. Maybe I hadn’t paid sufficient attention to this detail in the past, because I was confused, since my score indicated solo. I had an opportunity to ask Maestro Kalmar about it afterwards, and he said that there is absolutely no doubt it should be chorus, that he called the Grand Poohbas at Henle edition in Munich who indicated that they always get that question, and that an errant copyist was responsible for the mistaken indication of “solo”. Mr. Kalmar further commented that the context made the sectional rendition clear. My wife chimed in that it ought to be sung by the chorus, because tenor soloist James Taylor’s clarion entrance on the concluding phrase “et homo factus est” (and was made man) was exceptionally dramatic. To this the Maestro enthusiastically agreed. It is true that the other soloists enter subsequent to the “incarnatus”, and that Christ was, corporally speaking, one man and not many, but whether or not it is politic to agree with Munich editors and fine conductors, it is always politic to agree with one’s wife. Actually, I have no idea what Beethoven wrote, so it was good to learn the truth of the matter from a pro who does know, who has done the necessary research. This is not a trivial point, it is one of the most important places in the score. In fact, one could say that the “Incarnatus” is the foundation of all Christianity. Maestro said my score must be old, not reflecting current research. I wonder how many other mistakes I accept as true…I have a lot of old scores!

I am indebted to Mr. Ray Frick, generous underwriter of the concert, for introducing me to the very fine soloists and Mr. Kalmar. I’m certainly appreciative of the opportunity. It’s amazing what one can learn.

And the very fine soloists? Erin Wall (soprano), Anita Krause (mezzo), James Taylor (tenor) and Nathan Berg (bass). The solo parts in Missa Solemnis are uncommonly challenging without being overtly virtuosic, and require exceptional musicality and sensitivity to ensemble concerns. All these soloists delivered. I should mention here that the Grant Park chorus, singing some exceptionally difficult music themselves, was flat-out great. Chorus director Christopher Bell took a well-deserved bow with his ensemble.

An interesting feature of the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei is how few words there are and how much music. Beethoven has deflected the emotional weight of the mass to the final third of the text. This is consonant with Beethoven’s fundamentally humane and humanistic conception. “Lamb of God, forgive us our sins” and “Grant us Peace” are given the greatest attention of all lines in the mass. It is moving to think of Beethoven writing, “Grant us inner and outer peace” at the allegretto. Or is my score in error! It is too well known to mention here the ominous military music Beethoven places in the “dona nobis pacem” very near the end; will Beethoven’s not-so-subtle reminder, or warning, never cease to be relevant?

There are a great many fine sacred pieces from the Romantic era, this is conceded. But the absorption of Baroque methods anachronistically by such composers as Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Liszt are in a sense disappointing when one considers that Beethoven’s achievement was to remake sacred style wholly in his most advanced, personal, and au courant manner. Greatest Romantic composer of sacred music? Let’s call a spade a spade and nominate Hector Berlioz. There are moments in his Requiem and L’Enfance du Christ that recall with fierce immediacy the sincerity and personal committment on display in Beethoven’s finest work.