Obama Inauguration Music & Symbolism, Part 2

This post was supposed to be a discussion of the John Williams Inauguration composition Air and Simple Gifts. But the piece itself just wasn’t that interesting! So how about some brief comments and links, and have some more Marian Anderson?

The piece (see video below) consisted of an air that felt primarily soothing, rather like a sunbeam that comes through the window warms part of your carpet on an otherwise chilly day. The “Simple Gifts” portion was an obvious nod to Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, which is perhaps the quintessential American classical composition. So quintessential, probably, that it’s unnecessary to point out that Anthony McGill’s gorgeously played clarinet entrance on the “Simple Gifts” melody is a verbatim quote from the Copland version. (Listen to that on YouTube, with some Ansel Adams photographs.)

Here’s the video from the Inauguration:

Alex Ross gathers some reviews, and offers some hopes for what an Obama administration might do for classical music and the arts. He also links to a brief video of Obama narrating Copland’s Lincoln Portait.

By now the “scandal” has broken that the musicians, due to the cold temperature, were marking along to a recording they’d made — the instrumental equivalent of lip-synching. There have been a few “Milli Vanilli” quips, but it’s not like they hired, well, better musicians to do the playing behind the scenes. My favorites were the attempts to tie this “scandal” to the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, where the “cuter” girl lip-synched for the girl with the better voice. Whether they could have found “cuter musicians” than Ma, Perlman, McGill and Gabriela Montero is pretty subjective, but believe me when I say the use of a prerecording was the right call. Musical instruments are made of wood, metal, fabric and glue. Know what happens to those materials in cold weather? They contract. Strings, inparticular, get brittle. The brass band hit several clunkers in those fanfares they played as people were walked in.

So, let’s get back to Marian Anderson and why she was such a big deal. Some of my favorite clips:

Handel’s “He Shall Feed His Flock” in a very slow performance that would certainly never be allowed in today’s era of “early music authenticity.”

Schubert’s “Erlkoenig” — listen to how successfuly Marian differentiates the voices.

“Sometimes I fee Like a Motherless Child”

For those reading this on a feed - this is Bonnie Gibbons talking, not John. It’s come to my attention that author names aren’t being included on the feed, which I’ll try to get fixed. Generally, if the post discusses a piece of music in detail it’s John, because that’s what he does for a living. With a day job in web site development, I’m generally the one with the digital music industry news, or the “around the web” stuff. Due to my respect for this day job, I rarely have an opportunity to discuss music in detail, and never did get the chops to, say, discuss the music of George Perle, who passed last week.

Obama Inauguration Music and Symbolism, Part 1

View at Britannica.comWhatever your political persuasion in the 2008 election, it’s beyond dispute that the inauguration of an American president of African descent is historic. Given that Obama has lived so long in, and represented, the Land of Lincoln, it was inevitable that he’d tap into the Lincoln mythology with gestures such as his train trip into DC and his taking of the oath of office using the same bible that Lincoln used in 1861.

A piece of symbolism missed by the TV commentators, not to mention me at the time, was the backstory of Aretha Franklin’s performance of “My Country Tis of Thee.” As a lover of true contralto voices and a history buff, I’m a little sheepish that it took a belated visit to The Rest is Noise to remind me that Marian Anderson sang the same song on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939. Anderson, an internationally successful opera singer, had been denied permission to perform to an integrated audience in venues owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution and a local white public school.

These YouTube video show Anderson’s performance along with Franklin’s. The Anderson performance includes an introductory speech by Harold Ickes, who had authorized the performance in his capacity as Secretary of the Interior.

Martin Luther King, Jr. may have been referencing Anderson’s performance in his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech:

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

At least one TV commentator quoted this excerpt as Aretha stepped up to the podium Tuesday, but in none of the network videos I’ve seen did they mention Marian Anderson at that moment.

Anderson was celebrated by by Queen Latifah (paying homage through words and a similar style of fur coat) at Sunday’s Lincoln Memorial concert. But not during the inauguration TV coverage in conjunction with Franklin’s performance of the same song, seven decades later, in such vastly different circumstances.

Part 2 of this post will discuss the John Williams chamber piece premiered at the ceremony.

My Desert Island Musical Passages

Greg Mitchell’s HuffPo piece on Beethoven’s legendary 1808 concert (written about by Bonnie yesterday) generated a lively discussion by a very engaged and informed Huffington Post audience.

Some are challenging Mitchell’s assertion of Beethoven as the greatest composer, including this eloquent Bach defense from Joe-the-Historian, who wishes he could follow Bach on his visit to C.P.E. at the court of Frederick the Great and hear him try out every keyboard and organ in town. While I’d like to follow Joe on this time-travel adventure, I do agree with Mitchell. Beethoven is the greatest composer for his sheer breadth, among other things.

Others are discussing their favorite works, movement by movement, and offering their favorite performances. I appreciate jl4141’s reminder of the effective use of the Pastoral symphony for Edward G. Robinson’s voluntary euthanasia scene in Soylent Green. (Unknown to everyone except acting partner Charlton Heston, Robinson was in the final weeks of his life at the time of filming.)

One participant, the excellent-named Magister Ludi, offered this intriguing desert island list, and it got me thinking not of desert island discs, but of specific desert island moments:

Magister Ludi’s 5 CDs for the deserted island:

1. Goldberg Variations -Glenn Gould ( both);
2.Stravinsky- Le Sacre- Boulez;
3. Adams-Nixon in China;
4. Mozart-Die Zauberflöte.
5: Shostakovitch-The Nose.

Stand bys:

1.Bach St John’s Passion
2.Berio- Sinfonia. w/Boulez- Swingle Singers

So, without further ado…

John Gibbons’s Desert Island Musical Passages

1. Beethoven: C Sharp Minor String Quartet, introduction to the Finale (6th movement)

   • Listen to a performance (YouTube, quartet unidentified)

   • See it used in the HBO series Band of Brothers.

2. Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro, Figaro’s denial in the Finale to Act II.

   • Watch on YouTube (Schrott, Petersen, etc.)

3. Stravinsky: The Rake’s Progress, the Bedlam scene at the conclusion of the opera, featuring Ann Truelove’s lullaby “Gently, Little Boat” with the words of W.H. Auden and/or Chester Kallman

   • Watch on YouTube (Upshaw, Hadley)

4. Beethoven: Fidelio, the divided low strings in “Mir is so wunderbar”

   • Watch on YouTube (Mattila, Pape, Polanzani, Welch-Babidge)

5. Wagner: Die Walkure, Act Two, “Siegmund, Sieh auf mich!” Siegmund telling Brunhilde where she can go with her invitation to Valhalla, Act Two. This is my greatest moment, preferably performed by Jon Vickers or Siegriend Jerusalem.

I hope the thread will continue a little while. Other than that, points for cleverness go to this exchange:

ARonHenry : Beethoven was the Bob Dylan of his times.

MagisterLudi : BOB Dylan is the Johann Nepomuk Hummel of our times.

Celebrating Beethoven's "Greatest Concert Ever"

I turn regularly to Huffington Post for liberal-leaning political blogging along with a small dash of pop culture. But occasionally the homepage features a special treat: somebody writing about classical music as if it belonged on a mainstream site like HuffPo!

Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher, and the author of a book on Iraq and the Media, celebrates the Vienna concert given by a 38-year-old Beethoven two hundred years ago today.

Fellow geezers: Forget the Beatles at Shea Stadium, Dylan in Manchester, the Stones at Altamont, Springsteen at the Bottom Line (I was even there) — and you youngsters pick your fave from the past three decades. On December 22, 1808, Beethoven himself rented a hall in Vienna and promoted the concert to end all concerts: the debut, over four hours, of three of the greatest works in the history of music: his Fifth Symphony, the Sixth (“Pastoral”) Symphony, and the astounding Piano Concerto No. 4, plus the wonderful Choral Fantasia (forerunner to his Ninth Symphony). And yes, it was a fiasco.

But imagine: It was as if Orson Welles premiered Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, and Touch of Evil on the same night — with The Lady from Shanghai thrown in for good measure.

This was mid-period Beethoven. He was 38 at the time and would live another 19 fitful years.

Why "The Little Drummer Boy" Is So Annoying

That’s the subtitle, amusingly similar to a complaint I recently made to an innocent conference worker at the Chicago Hilton, of a fun, light read by Daniel J. Levitin in The Wall Street Journal, which begins:

Do You Hear What I Hear?

December. Joy, goodwill toward men, long lines, the unwanted wet kiss from a drunk co-worker at the office party. Along with the candy canes and mistletoe, music will be there in the background wherever we go this month, as sonic wallpaper, to put us in the right festive mood. No holiday music is more annoying than the piped-in variety at shopping malls and department stores. Can science explain why the same song we enjoy singing with relatives or congregants drives us to visions of sugar-plum homicide when it blares across the public-address system Chez Target?

Our drive to surround ourselves with familiar music during life cycle events and annual celebrations is ancient in origin. Throughout most of our history as a species, music was a shared cultural experience. Early Homo sapiens coupled music with ritual to infuse special days with majesty and meaning. Before there was commerce, before there was anything to buy, our hunter-gatherer ancestors sat around campfire circles crafting pottery, jewelry and baskets, and they sang. Early humans didn’t sit and listen to music by themselves — music formed an inseparable part of community life. So much so, that when we sing together even today, our brains release oxytocin, a hormone that increases feelings of trust and social bonding.

Part of what makes this social bonding “stick” is the fact that music literally sticks in our ears. The Germans, Levitan happily tells us, have a name for the phenomenon of having a piece of music stuck in your head: Ohrwurms (ear worms). And, as Levitan also observes, it’s just a short sleigh ride over the river and through the woods to Madison Avenue, where decades have been spent perfecting the art and science of ear worm exploitation. Did you know that classical music makes people buy more wine, and order more food?

But as smart as those Mad Men are, many of us tire quickly of the wall-to-wall a-wassailing. Muzak in the mall is bad enough, and I imagine a special circle of Hell for those who make this stuff even catchier by turning it into a commercial. Levitan tells us it’s not just the ubiquity. It’s that holiday music is too simple to sustain constant repetition. Especially when the song itself features such relentless droning as “The Little Drummer Boy.” This is why classical music works so well — it’s complex. And well-known classical works, by their very familiarity, often provide exactly the balance of novelty and universality that marketers are looking for.

He also speculates on the effect of today’s de-socialization of music in the age of personal listening devices like the iPod. The communal aspect of music sharing is still there, but it takes place online, not face to face. For the iPod generation, I imagine the subtle, ritualistic pressure of holiday music might have a special annoyance — in its subliminal admonition to take of the ear buds and join the party.

YouTube Symphony: The Latest Thing to Do About Classical Music

You may have heard of something called the YouTube Symphony briefly discussed on TV news, but if you aren’t into online video, social media, etc. you may not know what exactly it is. Luckily, one of your crack Holde Kunst bloggers (hint: it’s not John) works in the website and search engine industry and keeps pretty good track of Google (YouTube’s parent company) and its plans for world domination and, now, online classical music hegemony.

First, a little about YouTube…

YouTube is a website that hosts and distributes videos. Individuals and companies upload videos they’ve created (or saved off the VCR, or whatever). Web users can watch these videos free on YouTube.com — a particularly buzz-worthy classical example is Renee Fleming’s Proms performance of Korngold’s aria “Ich ging zu Ihm.” Webmasters can also embed videos on their own websites, like I’ve done below — click the Play button to hear composer Tan Dun introduce the YouTube Symphony project.

YouTube videos may be used for entertainment, promotion, or collaboration — remember the YouTube debate during the primary elections, when anyone could submit a video asking the candidates a question?

What’s the YouTube Symphony?

Here’s a brief introduction from some young musicians and composer Tan Dan:

The YouTube Symphony will realize a work by Tan Dun, in two ways:

• An online video mashup — a complete performance spliced together from video auditions submitted by musicians. (Mashup is jargon for mixing various elements together into a single, new piece of content.)
• A live performance in Carnegie Hall with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the winners of the video audition.

To audition, a musician must choose an instrument, download the sheet music, practice, and make two videos and upload those videos to YouTube. A panel of judges will select the videos to be used in the mashup — and select the performers who will appear in the Carnegie Hall performance.

The most interesting component is the video-assisted audition preparation. After downloading the sheet music, auditioners can practice along with a video of Tan Dun conducting — with or without sound.

(That’s the audition excerpt for string players and harpists.)

Greg Sandow, the composer and commentator who’s become something of a “future of classical music” expert, had this to say:

Two guys at Google came up with the idea (Google owns YouTube), and pitched it to the rest of the company. The rest of the company liked it, so Google went ahead, and found classical music partners to join in the fun.

In other words, the sole reason for the project was that people at Google loved the idea. And that, if you ask me, is how change is coming to classical music. Not because anyone (least of all me) figures out what classical music needs, and then goes out and does exactly that. No, we’re making progress because people all over the map are getting ideas of their own, and putting them in action. That’s what’s transforming classical music world (slowly at first, but I’m sure we’ll see it pick up speed). It’s also how we find out what works.

So this YouTube thing, big as it is, is at bottom just another one of those ideas. And the ideas succeed because somebody loves them.

Greg doesn’t happen to mention this fact, but Google is famous in the tech world for encouraging its employees to devote 20% of their time to “pet projects” outside their official job responsibilities. Not that I’ve called anyone at Google to find out, but this is likely one of many such off-job-description ideas that’s hit the big time. Gmail and those ads you see on this page are two more Google products that began as 20% projects, but that’s not the entire point. Innovation requires an atmosphere as free as possible from self-censorship, free from tailoring your effort and passion down to conventional expectations. We don’t always know what will work until we work with it.

Greg Sandow has extensively discussed the isolation of classical music from contemporary society and it’s easy to see why YouTube Symphony does his heart good whether it turns out to be a gimicky mess or not. Conventional wisdom simply laments that classical music (especially the “new” kind) is doomed to die out with the YouTube generation’s grandparents, confident that nothing can be done about it. The YouTube Symphony gleefully ignores this received wisdom to make music instead.

Boston Symphony Offers Digital Music

Today the BSO became the latest musical institution to put historical performances online.

Starting with two pages of “broadcast archives” and other compilations, the initial digital library centers on a 12-album series dedicated BSO conductors from Koussevitsky to Ozawa, plus several prominent guest conductors.

Music is available in two quality levels (i.e. mp3 file sizes) and can be purchased by the album ($8.99 each), work, or track.

Browse the BSO Didital Music Catalog.

John Adams Interview In Salon - Video

Kevin Berger of Salon has an interesting interview with John Adams in conjunction with the release of the composer’s autobiography, “Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life.” Read the transcript or watch the video (about 10 minutes).

Some interesting moments concern the inspiration Adams took from Wagner:

I was driving through the Sierras and I was listening to a cassette of “Dawn and Siegfried’s Rhine Journey” from “Gotterdammerung.” This is sort of surprising because at that time I was deep into John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen and doing a lot of electronic music.

I’d always been interested in orchestra music, having grown up with it, and I was suddenly just seized by the emotional tone of the music, the emotional sincerity of the music. It suddenly illuminated me and made me realize how much of the avant-garde that I’d been involved in had become dead as far as feeling was concerned. The one thing Cage really forbade was expression of feelings. He was the world’s most lovely, gentle person in his human interactions. But when it came to art, things were absolutely cold. And so much of avant-garde music was.

Here we have this great tradition of jazz and pop music in America, where feeling is everything. If you think of late Coltrane, like “A Love Supreme,” it’s just this 40-minute exhalation of raw feeling. I thought to myself, “Why is it that contemporary classical music has to be devoid of feeling?” By hearing Wagner and realizing what had been lost, I think I suddenly very vaguely saw my future. (John Adams)

Other topics include the composer’s annoyance with the meme that he writes “CNN operas,” and a response to accusations of anti-Semitism in “The Death of Klinghoffer:”

I invite them to meditate on the libretto and the music. Because most people who’ve spent serious time with it, and not come with enormous prejudicial baggage, are moved by the human feeling in the work, and the feeling extends to both the Palestinians and the Jews. You can see why it’s so hard to solve these problems like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because people are so completely locked into their positions.

In full disclosure I must tell you that I’m only superficially familiar with the operas of Adams and not a huge fan of minimalism in general. I hope John and David will have a spare moment to comment.

Met Player - Enjoy Archival Performances Online

Last Wednesday, the Metropolitan Opera unveiled its latest new media strategy: the Met Player.

Over 150 operas from the past 71 years are available for listening or viewing on your computer. The oldest is a 1937 Carmen with Rosa Ponselle, the newest are from the 2007-2008 high definition move theater broadcasts, including definitive performances of La Fille du Regiment (Dessay, Flores) and Eugene Onegin (Fleming, Hvorostovsky), and the Tristan und Isolde featuring Deborah Voight and Robert Dean Smith — flown in from Europe less than two days earlier to replace three ailing or injured colleagues.

Most performances are audio — those that were filmed for broadcast include video.

View the Opera Catalog

One of the best features of Met Player is its flexible payment terms. In addition to a 7-day free trial, you may choose to rent operas one by one or subscribe to the service:

	Web Access Anywhere	Unlimited Plays	Price
Yearly Subscription A year for the price of 10 months	Yes	Yes	$149.99 *
Monthly Subscription	Yes	Yes	$14.99 *
Opera Rental	Yes	Once you rent, you have 30 days to start watching or listening †	$3.99
Free Trial	Yes	7-Day Free Trial More Details You have 7 days to enjoy Met Player for free! If you do not cancel your trial prior to the end of seven days, we will begin charging you $14.99 per month for a monthly subscription.	Free **

Terms and Conditions | Special Pricing for Met Members

Bach's Financial Crisis Soundtrack

I just had to share this little gem from The Guardian, in which Paul Lay reviews Bach’s Cantata No. 168 as a commentary on today’s financial crisis. This cantata chastises the unjust steward from Corinthians and the Gospel of Luke, with a nod to what Lay refers to as “the monied men of 1720s Weimar.” (Bach students will recall that the great prestige of Bach’s position at Leipzig’s Thomaskirche was due to that cities position as a trade power of the era, and that grumbling business correspondence is considered overrepresented in Bach’s surviving letters.)

Some text highlights include “Thine Accounting! Judgement Day!” (Tue Rechnung! Donnerwort!), and “”Capital and interest must one day be settled” (in which the tenor soloist worries about… accounting errors?)

Lay concludes:

Quite what the the economic situation was in Weimar at the time I cannot say, but after listening to Bach’s Cantata 168, we can conclude that the God-fearing Lutherans of the day shared Mervyn King’s concern with moral hazard, took a realistic view of the business cycle, and whether they liked it or not were unlikely to be fed escapist rubbish by the musical genius in their midst.

Enjoy this YouTube clip, or purchase a copy as a gift for that special financial whiz in your life.

Bach: Cantatas, BWV 94, 105, 168

Deutsche Grammophon

J.S. Bach: Cantatas, Vol. 15

by Ton Koopman, Deborah York, Sandrine Piau, Christoph Pregardien, Paul Agnew, Klaus Mertens, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir