I used to look for funny items for the Friday Miscellanea, but they have been hard to find lately. However, this qualifies:
That's from Carmina Burana by Carl Orff. When I was young I thought the first day from the Twelve Days of Christmas lyrics was "A part of a juniper tree." I was even more puzzled when I found out that the actual words are "A partridge in a pear tree." How does that make more sense?
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You know, I think I will do a whole miscellanea of clips. Here is an excerpt from a new album of Lea Desandre and Thomas Dunford and his Jupiter Ensemble joined by Iestyn Davies. The album is Eternal Heaven and contains arias and duets by Handel:
One commentator said "I would listen to Lea Desandre read the ingredients on a packet of breakfast cereal." Yep, and the other musicians are pretty fine as well. Next is Mstislav Rostropovich and Benjamin Britten playing the Cello Sonata by Debussy in a studio recording from 1961:
This is Alvaro Pierri playing Albéniz:
Someone I haven't put up in a long, long time: this is Stockhausen, Klavierstück XI:
Ivo Pogorelich in his prime playing the English Suite No. 2 of J. S. Bach:
A string quintet by Boccherini:
Sorry no details on the artists of that last one, but it is from a European music festival. Here is one with a very catchy title: Lamentio sanctae matris ecclesia constantinopolitanae by Guillaume Dufay:
For contrast let's have a little ska by the English Beat:
That will get your blood flowing. For a final clip, here is Jordan Peterson talking about the role and nature of art and creative people:
I often enjoy poking fun at Ted Gioia, but I'm also quick to recognize when he makes some good points. In his latest, AI Is Defeated in Hollywood—But What About Music?, he sets the scene with this quote from Bill Cantos:
And he analyzes this as follows:
AI tracks are showing up everywhere, but not because they’re good. There are no devoted fans of this genre. It’s only happening because AI music is cheap, and somebody can make a buck by getting rid of the musicians—provided listeners aren’t paying attention.
If you think this over, you immediately grasp that:
AI music is more profitable for streaming platforms, because they can buy it as cheap work-for-hire (or even make their own tracks at almost no cost).
But these AI tracks are markedly inferior. Listeners won’t prefer them or seek them out.
So they need to make users as passive and indifferent as possible in order to reap the cost savings.
Putting it in historical context, we can see a trend towards the simplification of some genres of music since the 1950s with rock n roll, or since the 1980s with punk and hip-hop. Or if you are more hard-core, from the 1830s with romanticism. Or if you are really hard-core, from 1733, the death of François Couperin and the development of classical style through the use of textures and rhythms from opera buffa. But the development of AI tracks seems to have reached a new level of aesthetic triviality. This might be an example of the genre:
I might be just a weird sort of person, but the feeling of this music reminds me of a time I was in the hospital for a few days when I was a teenager and they gave me tranquilizers. I started to feel anxious and I realized it was because I had been staring at the wall for half an hour with no thoughts. That this was even possible troubled me deeply! But yeah, I realize that this is not the usual effect of tranquilizers. Just as, for me, the usual effect of listening to music is not to be put into a kind of aesthetic refrigerator where nothing is happening and you are going nowhere. This makes me uneasy and unhappy because I need to get out and experience something real. This is not real. Ok, it serves a purpose, but is becoming passive and indifferent a good way to respond to the pressures and stresses of everyday life? I guess we all react differently.
Way back in the summer of 2020 Heinrich Schenker was in the news as a result of a dispute between Professor Timothy Jackson, the founder of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies, and his employer, the University of North Texas. The origin of the issue was criticism by Professor Philip Ewell of the "white racial frame" of music theory and specifically racist statements by Heinrich Schenker. The controversy resulted in the closure of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies by the University of North Texas. Prof. Jackson sued the University and the Board of Regents.
But we haven't heard any news for a while and it seemed as if he had lost the case. The latest news is that this is not so. Here is a news release from his lawyers that outlines the legal situation:
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has handed down another defeat to the University of North Texas and a victory to Allen Harris in a lawsuit defending the First Amendment rights of Professor Timothy Jackson, after UNT shut down his journal, The Journal of Schenkerian Studies. The decision can be located here.
In January of last year, Allen Harris had already prevailed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. The District Court Judge Amos Mazzant rejected UNT’s motion to dismiss the complaint of Professor Timothy Jackson in a strong decision available here.
So, the final decision in this case is still far down the road, it seems.
As dean of an honors college explicitly dedicated to liberal learning through the study of classic texts, I find myself mostly in agreement with the vision of higher education put forward here. I agree with David Henreckson that the liberal arts are not mere skills or techniques but a way of life that allows human beings to flourish. I find myself nodding along when Zena Hitz argues that liberal learning has fundamentally to do with leisure, the cultivation of habits of contemplation and reflection that allow us to pursue the highest human activities. And I could not be more thrilled to read Brandon McCoy’s argument that “the goal of education should be to create liberated persons who seek to examine life in its fullness, to enjoy friendships with others, and to foster the health of their communities.”
Reading this, one name comes inevitably to mind: Aristotle. He argued that human flourishing (eudaemonia) depends on the exercise of virtue. This is the basic argument of his Nichomachean Ethics, a book that was core reading for educated people in the West for, oh, a couple of millennia. I tend to see our current crises as often related to the failure to exercise virtue and other human capacities like curiosity and kindness--as moral failure in other words.
Here is something unusual: economist Tyler Cowan is prepping for an interview with the outstanding Japanese Bach specialist Masaaki Suzuki: What should I ask Masaaki Suzuki? In a previous post he categorizes Suzuki as: Masaaki Suzuki, a great achiever of our time. This comment caused a lot of pushback in the comments:
He has recorded the complete cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach, in pretty much perfect recordings. They are widely acknowledged to be the best Bach cantata recordings ever. That amounts to 70 CDs of work.
For example:
Doubtful and I don't think a majority of experts claims his cantatas are the best even sans blind trials. Some of Suzuki's soloists are dubious; a common view about his Bach cantatas is that they're technically perfect but soulless and superficial at times; other that they're too fast.
This is a very strange post. I've seen MS live (during the East Frisian "Organ Spring"), and he was OK but did not blow me away as some others have. I listed to his complete Bach cantatas all the way through while working out (great workout music!), and I thought they were well done, but not more than that. Incidentally, the quality of a Bach cantata depends crucially on the solo vocalist(s), around whom the instrumental music is written.
Overall, I'd say that being a Bach completist is as much about focus and financing as it is achievement as such. MS, with very occasional forays into Beethoven and Stravinsky, is a Baroque guy. He is highly regarded, but I doubt many, if any, professional musicians would place him in a separate category. Indeed, there is so much fabulous music-making around that even the most exceptional performers are seen as distinctive individuals within a somewhat larger group. And to be honest, what separates a superstar on an average day from a lesser-known but highly skilled musician on an inspired day is nothing or even less.
Chosen from a wide range of views. But this raises an interesting question: it has never occurred to me to try and do a comparative evaluation of different recordings of the Bach Cantatas. Just getting to know them to any degree is a significant challenge. What would you think if I chose a couple of cantatas and did some comparative criticism? Without an assistant I can't do "blind" evaluations, but I have fairly objective ears. In any case, it might be interesting. And I'm not at all familiar with the Suzuki recordings...
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When someone asks me for the name of an important Canadian composer I usually mention Claude Vivier. But I may have a new candidate. Cassandra Miller, who was born in Victoria, British Columbia, my old stamping grounds, in 1976, has been doing some interesting stuff. Alex Ross is a fan which is where I found this piece.
Denied boarding by Ryanair after having booked musical instrument as cabin baggage , being told that the violin is too big to take onboard and I should have checked it in.
I explained that violins are never checked in and offered to buy 1 more ticket but the moron of the moron airline said that violins are never taken onboard.I asked him if he knows what a violin is , he said yes, and that they are never allowed in the cabin and that he’ll be sacked if he doesn’t go by the book .
So one more night in Bucharest where luckily they kept my room at the hotel .
Now I have to search internet for a flight tomorrow.
Never ever again the stupid Ryanair with their stupid employees.
Yes, it is a constant struggle. In the old days I actually used to smuggle my guitar onboard and figure out a way to stow it. But they were far more relaxed in those days. I have to say that the one time I flew Ryanair--without an instrument--I found it an unpleasant experience. I flew Aeromexico to Toronto to do a recording and they are happy to welcome guitars on board without buying an extra ticket. They do fit in the overhead. Mind you, just to be sure, I flew business class which, just before Covid, was quite reasonable. Not any more, alas.
Shorter concerts (27%), more matinee performances (24%), conductors speaking to the audience (20%) and being encouraged to keep phones on during a performance (11%) – these were just some of the things people would like to see at orchestral concerts, according to a new study commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
The players at these events were chosen from among the most gifted young musicians available, and each work was rehearsed intensively, either under Schoenberg himself or by a Vortragsmeister (performance director) specifically appointed by him. (The list of Vortragsmeister included Berg, Webern, Benno Sachs, Rudolf Kolisch, Erwin Stein and Eduard Steuermann). Clarity and comprehensibility of the musical presentation was the over-riding aim, with audiences sometimes being permitted to hear open rehearsals, and complex works sometimes being played more than once in the same concert (and as many as five or six times in total).[5]
Only those who had joined the organisation were admitted to the events: the intention was to prevent casual attendance by "sensation-seeking" members of the Viennese public (who would often attend concerts with the express intention of causing disruption, whistling derisively at modern works by whistling on their house-keys) as well as exclude hostile critics who would attack such music in their newspaper columns: a sign displayed on the door – in the manner of a police notice – would state that Kritikern ist der Eintritt verboten (Critics are forbidden entry). Such was the didactic seriousness of the Society that an event's programme was not revealed in advance; nor was applause (or any demonstration of disapproval) permitted after the performance of a work.[6]
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Sometimes I feel like a participant in a contest where you have to try and stand on two chairs while drinking vodka. Is this an actual contest? Anyway, a news article like this one makes me think of it: Heading Upstairs With Roy Lichtenstein.
the mural is owned by Michael Ovitz, the co-founder and former chairman of CAA and a leading collector of contemporary art. “A new tenant came in and they didn’t want it,” Ovitz said when we talked by phone, referring to the work that Lichtenstein painted in situ over a period of five weeks. The tenant, which arrived in 2021, is Alo Yoga, a company specializing in leggings, cropped tops and other clothing designed for what it calls “mindful movement.”
Why would a company choose to reject a work of art commissioned specifically for its building?
When I posed the question to Alo, a spokesperson declined to comment. By what calculus would a company choose to furnish their quarters with a poster of a guy modeling a windbreaker rather than a museum-quality painting by Lichtenstein? Granted, companies need to promote their brands. But a generation ago, corporations turned to art to burnish their reputations and acquire a patina of class. Art sponsorship was seen as good business, a mark of prestige, a win-win, not something that took up too much space in the lobby or was too elitist to appeal to customers.
It is proof, not that we need any, that art is the opposite of branding. Branding seeks to deliver a product to the widest possible audience, while art is about one person alone in a room
Yep, and now young artists are told that they must "brand" themselves. Those two chairs? On the one hand I think that free markets are the best way to deliver pretty much any desired good or service. But on the other hand, I believe that art and artists pretty much have to not be commercialized. Alas, it seems that those two principles cannot be reconciled.
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I think I will stop there as most of the other news items seem to be about orchestral financing. So right to the envois. Let's start with a Suzuki Bach cantata. Here is BWV 29 with its lovely sinfonia that Bach reused in the E major Violin Partita and 4th Lute Suite. The second movement is a re-working of the Dona nobis pace from the B minor Mass.
Schoenberg did not allow programming any of his own music in the first two years of the Society (which only lasted three years), so let's have something from him here. This is Pelleas und Melisande, an early symphonic poem composed in 1905 before his 12-tone period.
Over the last few decades, popular songs have switched from major to minor keys: In the 1960s, 85 percent of the songs were written in a major key, compared with only about 40 percent of them now. Broadly speaking, the sound has shifted from bright and happy to something more complicated. It’s important to note, though, that although older songs were frequently in a major key, this didn’t necessarily mean the lyrics were cheerful (e.g., The Fifth Dimension’s 1969 “Wedding Bell Blues” tells the tale of a woman longing for her wedding day, despite being in major key). Similarly, Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie” hit from 2006 is in minor key, but it relates the tension and fiery lust between two potential lovers.
In 1988, Mark Ludwig, a tenured violist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, was between events at New York City’s Carnegie Hall when he wandered into his favorite used bookshop. He picked up a biography of Leo Baeck, the 20th-century German rabbi and scholar. Baeck had been imprisoned during World War II at the Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. He’d survived, settled in London and become one of the foremost theologians of his day. Something in the book caught Ludwig’s attention—Baeck’s observation that despite the hardship and cruelty of the camp, inmates produced an impressive output of high-quality classical music.
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Something I have often puzzled over is why certain places at certain times produce an astonishing amount of intellectural creativity: Athens in the 4th century BC, Florence in the early Renaissance, London in the 16th century and so on. Apparently in philosophy in the 20th century, it was the University of Oxford (and Cambridge as well): Chariots of Philosophical Fire.
In 1963, the philosophers Gilbert Ryle and Isaiah Berlin had lunch with the composer Igor Stravinsky. Ryle, the least famous of the bunch, was the most scathing in his survey of the philosophical landscape. He dubbed the celebrated American pragmatists William James and John Dewey the “Great American Bores.” He condemned the work of French Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin, with its speculation about an emerging world consciousness, as “old teleological pancake.” Then he summed it up in a sweeping crossfire that could serve as the most Oxonian of putdowns: “Every generation or so philosophical progress is set back by the appearance of a ‘genius.’”
What did Ryle have against such geniuses? And is progress in philosophy even possible?
We should have started in the morning at 9.30 am at the Cologne main station. After three failed ICE and no information on how, when and if we would move on at all, we finally started three hours late. Thanks to further delays we arrived in Berlin 4.5 hours late and completely exhausted after 10 hours on the go. The concert was 25 minutes late, a radio broadcast from the Berlin Philharmonic had to be cancelled – the Berlin audience responded wonderfully, we gave everything, they thanked us.
Dear Deutsche Bahn Personenverkehr: we absolutely want to protect our climate! We were happy to rely on you, trusting you. Despite repeated negative experiences, we have defended and protected you, time and again. Yet you stab us in the back, you fail us. We can’t count on you. We can’t take it any more.
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Canada has several different musical cultures, but a lot of them cross paths in Montreal. One nexus of contemporary music for several decades as been the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec. Here is an upcoming concert: SMCQ présents : Amitiés et étrangeté.
On September 24, 2023, the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ) will present the fourth concert in their Hommage 2023-2024 series, dedicated to composer Sandeep Bhagwati. Organized in collaboration with the Vietnamese Cultural Centre of Canada, the multimedia event will involve music, text and images, centered around such themes as proximity, distance, estrangement and familiarity.
Titled Amitiés et étrangeté, the program focuses on a single work by Bhagwati, Exercices d’étrangeté 1, inspired by a verse by Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Duy, about Vietnamese diasporic communities. The idea of encountering the unknown is embodied by the musical collaboration that will bring this music to life: the meeting of seven musicians from a variety of musical traditions and geographical regions. Bhagwati’s imaginative musical world will invite each participating musician to rediscover their instrument, in dialogue with the artistic traditions of others.
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I'm on vacation in Mexico City for a few days so I haven't had a lot of time to prepare the Friday Miscellanea. Here is the view from my hotel window:
No, I didn't find any musical events to attend but here are a few envoi to enjoy. Weinberg's Symphony No. 12 was written in memory of Shostakovich:
Viktor Ullmann was one of the Jewish composers interned at the Therezin camp where he composed his String Quartet No. 3:
And finally, to cheer everyone up, a performance of a Vivaldi Gloria from Japan:
Years ago Taruskin published one of his large, economy sized essays on several new books on classical music. The basic message was, with friends like these, who needs enemies? And now Ted Gioia joins their ranks with a splendid piece of yellow journalism purporting to turn us on to, of all things, the modern piano concerto: 10 Underrated Modern Piano Concertos. Here's how it begins:
You rarely see the words fun and classical music in the same sentence.
That must be intentional. Just take a look at those musicians squeezed into their uncomfortable formal attire, all with pinched, somber expressions on their faces. And then you look at the audience, and see the exact same thing.
I must have missed the memo. Aren’t we allowed to enjoy this stuff?
No, of course not, the memo reads "enjoyment of classical music is possible, but not likely." But kidding aside, I'm envisioning a Miles Davis concert with all the musicians with somber expressions and, yes, the audience with the same pinched somber expressions. Hey, you want fun, go to a Weird Al Yankovic concert.
So this is just sneering, scurrilous journalism with the sole purpose of setting up a straw man that he is about to disembowel. But first he takes it up a notch by doing a nasty hit and run on contemporary piano concertos--hey, they are even worse!
Finally he gets to the point and gives examples of several "underrated modern piano concertos." I can only see the first three since I am not a subscriber. The first is by Nikolai Kapustin a jazzy Ukrainian who sounds like Rachmaninoff if he were mugged in an alley by Dave Brubeck. Honestly, with different harmonies it is not terribly different from a Bartók concerto. Next is a very serene piece by Takashi Yoshimatsu and finally one by the Australian Peggy Glanville-Hicks. Ted asks why we don't hear more of her music. I suspect her not being American has a lot to do with that. So, ok, some mildly interesting pieces.
The problem for me is the way Ted always oversells his take on everything and the seeming obligatory sneer at classical music as an opening gesture. Would it not be better to just start by telling us a little bit about each composer, leaving out the cheap editorial?
Yep.
Here's one of those hateful modern piano concertos that Ted is probably thinking of, the one by Arnold Schoenberg.
Now, I'm not chuckling, but I am smiling with delight because, come on, this is delightful music. And it doesn't sound much like anything else, something you can't necessarily say about a lot of those more "fun" concertos.
UPDATE: Not long after writing this I ran into a very fine piece of writing about music: Shostakovich in South Dakota which I encourage you to hasten over to read. Yes, it's a bit long, but well-worth the time.
So unnoticed are the American arts that a major American historian, Jill Lepore, can produce a wonderfully readable 900-page historical overview—These Truths: A History of the United States (2018)—without devoting so much as a sentence to the arts. No one could possibly dispute her emphasis on present-day issues and needs—the urgency of pondering American race relations and inequality. But it does not follow that there should be no consideration of Walt Whitman or Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson or William Faulkner, Charles Ives or George Gershwin, Duke Ellington or Billie Holiday. Classical music, opera, theater, jazz, and Hollywood are all absent. Could any history of Russia omit Tolstoy? Could a British historian overlook Shakespeare? Is there a Germany without Goethe?
That's just a tiny sample from a long discussion of how music is received in America and some really successful efforts to improve that reception.
As David Mamet told Tablet last year, “I’ve started a couple theaters. Had the time of my life. And at some point if a theater is successful the bean counters come in and … in any business there’s a situation where the bean counter drives the other guy [the artist] out and that’s what happened in the regional theater.”
That's from The Toxic Gentleness of the American Theater over at Tablet magazine. So many things in the music world signal that yes, the bean counters are in charge, and have been in charge for a very long time. There used to be some interesting hold-outs: Frank Zappa, the Talking Heads, even David Bowie and in the classical world, most ensembles just clinging to a few donors and government subsidies. The truth is that the money is always in appealing to the greatest number. In restaurants that means McDonald's and Starbucks over your local joint or your gourmet palace. In music that always means the easily consumable over the challenging and complex or, hell, it doesn't even have to be complex. But it does have to not be easily consumable. That way lies Zamfir and Kenny G. Oh, and Taylor Swift of course.
The regional theatre world seems really different from the classical music world and one wonders why. Here is the take from the above article:
Things have been changing for a long time now, but the changes were accelerated by the pandemic, with the power shifting heavily in favor of ambitious, angry, younger members of the community. The pandemic shut America’s theater doors. Then, while everyone was on Zoom trying to figure out how the show would go on, the principles of the Black Lives Matter movement—including the idea that “show must go on” culture is “driven by fear” and disproportionately harms nonwhite artists—became the new religion. If theaters couldn’t put on shows, they could certainly change their mission statements, promise to cull white staff and creatives to achieve diversity quotas, and scare off any wrong thinkers who might still be lingering in the wings, including unvaccinated artists.
Much of the revolution has been led by youthful millennial Bolsheviks with little to no experience starting a theater, producing a play, or fundraising at scale. (Forget about focusing a light, sewing a dress, or building a backdrop.) What they do have are extremely strict ideas about how to enact “justice” in their industry, a desire to maintain a bourgeois lifestyle in a profession that requires some degree of lack, and a mission to fundamentally change the purpose of theater, from being dedicated to the goal of sharing some transcendence with their audience to making everyone involved in the production feel “seen.” They are proponents of what I call “toxic gentleness.” The reality now, as one perceptive theater-maker pointed out to Tablet, is that most of the younger generation coming up in the industry are far more interested in activism than art. The elders, meanwhile, have been under such unrelenting pressure to prove their loyalty to the cause of progressive goodness that they would rather retire than attempt to guide the kinderlach on their mission. And many have.
The forces of progressivism seem far weaker in the classical music world. Perhaps it is the highly demanding technical requirements that screen out the activists. Perhaps it is the more or less conservative audiences or perhaps it is still the tenuous influence of the European and historical background. But whatever the cause, it seems as if the classical environment is pretty far from the situation described above. But maybe it is just down the road. Or maybe we are just not worth the trouble of killing off.
I've always noticed or been drawn to the music and artists that are not the most popular. Well, with the exception of the Beatles who somehow managed to be both hugely successful and hugely good. But usually it is the more obscure that draws my interest: The English Beat and the Incredible String Band over The Rolling Stones and U2. The entire world of classical music is just a financial rounding error these days so preferring it puts you into the weirdo category, something I am entirely comfortable with.
As long as I can listen to, stream, purchase or attend concerts by those artists and repertoire that interest me, I don't care what the hell the rest of you are listening to. I just hope there are enough weirdos like me to support a few artists who are, you know, still artists and not just crowd-pleasers beloved by bean counters.
Here is a fun concert I just stumbled across. I have actually played two of those lute pieces.
Here is a nice performance of one of my favourite Schubert lieder, Der Leiermann. Schubert played guitar and some of his lieder were published in guitar arrangements during his lifetime.
A few interesting items rolled in too late to make the Friday Miscellanea but still worth talking about. First up, Apple's acquisition of BIS records, a small Swedish label. Now to us in the classical music field, this seems interesting, but Ted puts it in perspective:
Apple has previously invested in music technology, but not the music itself. Previous buyouts have focused on sexy technologies like Beats headphones and Shazam music recognition software.
And now BIS Records?
If they were going to buy a label, why did they pick such a tiny one? Apple has enough cash to acquire all of the major labels. It could devour Universal Music for breakfast, and swallow Warner Music Group for dinner.
But instead it buys out BIS Records—with estimated revenues of $7.6 million. Just one Apple Store can make that much money in a single week.
I’ve read a number of offered explanations, but none of them are convincing. The notion that Apple is buying an obscure Swedish label to get credibility is a joke. If anything, the opposite is true—Apple gives luster to BIS by making this investment.
Even more amusing is the suggestion that Apple is making this deal to show its commitment to innovation. Does Apple really need a toehold in Akersbaga, Sweden to do that? I don’t think so.
So what’s really happening?
Right, to us classical types, BIS is just as big a name as Apple, but to the wide world, at $7.6 million annual revenue, it is vanishingly trivial compared to Apple's $384 billion revenue (for the 12 months ending in June 2023). Ted's conclusion?
Spotify has already learned that there’s no money to be made with exclusive rights to superstar offerings. “After pouring billions into podcasts and audiobooks to little effect,” explains tech journalist David Pierce, “it seems to have largely given up on the idea that exclusive content is the path to riches.”
The more profitable move is to manipulate listeners—prodding them to choose music the platform can use without royalty payments. As far as I can tell, this is the single biggest advantage to AI music. It’s a cheap alternative.
Apple surely must have learned the same lesson. Apple Music is now eight years old, but there’s no indication that the business is profitable. They need strategies to reduce costs, and substituting cheap music for expensive music is the most obvious way of doing this.
And buying up BIS gives them a comprehensive catalogue of a lot of classical music in attractive performances at a bargain price. It is a bit like the Naxos strategy: hire capable but obscure Eastern European orchestras to record standard repertoire for a bargain price as you don't have to pay musician union rates. I'm not sure this is evil as there seem to be benefits, especially for those Eastern European musicians. And sometimes they give performances just as good as the more famous international superstars. Anyway, Ted is going to offer us his solution to the problems of streaming revenues and the blandness of popular culture in an upcoming post.
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The New York Times has an informative piece: The Teacher Behind the World’s Great Conductors. Jorma Panula is 93 and has taught an astonishing number of the world's conductors. I have remarked before on how Finland is a musical superpower despite its small population.
Think of major Finnish conductors working around the world today — there are a disproportionate number of them — and chances are they studied with Panula. If this country is the world’s top exporter of conducting talents, then he is something like a farmer, cultivating generations of artists: those leading the field, like Susanna Mälkki and Esa-Pekka Salonen, and those emerging in a blaze, like Klaus Mäkelä.
Of course, being the New York Times, it has to find a speck of misogyny:
His sense of humor is quite dark, in a way that can be misread; Peltokoski once saw Panula walk out of a master class, then come back after rounding the block, a move that he described as “purely for theatrical effect.”
“It’s not the sort of humor all people might like, but it’s very specific to him,” Peltokoski added. “And it’s also essential in understanding him — the sarcasm, the deliberate misleading of people, the wordplay, these sort of ridiculous overexaggerations.”
Occasionally, though, Panula’s way of expressing himself has slid into the territory of offensive generalizations. In 2014, he gave an interview in which he glibly said that women were more suited to “feminine” music and were poor interpreters of repertoire like Bruckner symphonies. He was quickly criticized, including by former students.
Alongside that we might notice that he has taught quite a few very fine women conductors.
“I’ve met people in various parts of the world who have been Jorma’s students: architects and pedagogues, people from different walks of life,” Oramo said. “The work he’s done has just been a huge piece of Finnish orchestral life and culture. And the fact that the profession of the conductor is so highly appreciated in Finland is largely the result of his work. He’s irreplaceable.”
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And to remind us that it is not really about the Benjamins, or not entirely, here is Hopkinson Smith playing Sylvius Leopold Weiss on a lute from 1755:
After yesterday's post you may be thinking of me as an insipid softy, so let's start with a contrasting quotation:
Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous.
That's H. P. Lovecraft, not actually one of my favourite authors, but that's certainly a striking opening sentence. Now on with our regularly scheduled programming.
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The downside of the shunning of John Eliot Gardiner is certainly the impact it has had on his musicians, the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists. Some concerts will go forward with a substitute conductor, but not all: GARDINER MUSICIANS LOSE CANADA TOUR
The Canada leg of a late-October performance by the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists has been cancelled due to the conductor’s withdrawal.
It remains to be seen if their subsequent Carnegie Hall date will go ahead under a different conductor.
Sir John Eliot Gardiner is unavailable for any further dates in 2023.
The other day, I was looking for a quote in Proust, so I thought I would ask ChatGPT. Here’s how it went.
EB: Is there a passage in In Search of Lost Time when Proust talks about how love affairs repeat themselves, and says that when you’re writing about a love affair in the past, you’re often drawing inspiration from a different love affair in the present?
CHATGPT: Yes, there is a passage in Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” (also known as “Remembrance of Things Past”) where he discusses the repetition of love affairs and the influence of present experiences on writing about past love affairs. The passage can be found in the first volume of the novel, “Swann’s Way” (Du côté de chez Swann)...
Please note that the specific wording and context of the passage may vary depending on the translation and edition of the novel. If you’re interested in exploring this theme further, I recommend reading “Swann’s Way” to experience Proust’s beautiful prose and intricate exploration of love, memory, and the passage of time.
Instead of, you know, actually giving you the quote, the AI recommends reading Swann's Way which is 464 pages long. Well, that saved a lot of time! I should also mention that the place where I found this link seriously oversold it by implying that the AI recommended reading all of Proust's novel, some 1,800 pages. How clickbaity of them.
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I would link to Alex Ross' latest at The New Yorker, a piece on Liszt, but they keep telling me "You've Run Out!" I used to read The New Yorker every week, but I'm not tempted to, these days. I suspect in a few weeks they will allow me to link and read stories again...
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And then I was going to link to a piece in the Boston Globe about why Brandeis cut its Music PhD program, but I can't get past that paywall either. I guess that times are tough in digital news so they really can't allow us to read anything for free any more. That is more and more the case in Canada as well. I guess we will all survive even without knowing what excuse Brandeis offered for axing its Music PhD programs.
While it’s possible that Spotify will bring lyrics back in front of the Premium paywall, it’s certainly true that the company is on the hunt for anything it can do to get users to pay up. After pouring billions into podcasts and audiobooks to little effect, it seems to have largely given up on the idea that exclusive content is the path to riches. Instead, the company appears to be looking to build other kinds of features users might pay for. That’s especially important as the price of Premium, like so many other streaming services, continues to rise.
More than 80% of the music we listen to today is delivered over streaming, according to figures from last year. But when you look at classical music, it’s been a stubborn hold-out, accounting for just a tiny fraction of that, with just 0.8% of streams (and that’s in the stream-friendly market of the U.S.). Apple’s bet is that this percentage will grow, though, and it wants a piece of that action. After launching its new classical music app earlier this year, Apple has taken its latest step into the space: BIS, a revered classical music label out of Sweden, announced today that it is joining the company.
Ever since Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring burst into life on a balmy Parisian evening in May 1913, it has delighted, shocked and thrilled audiences like few other works of art, rightly earning its title as the watershed moment in 20th-century orchestral music. Over the decades it has inspired brilliant choreographers, received many thousands of performances in concert halls around the world and been recorded nearly 200 times. The Rite made its household name in Disney’s Fantasia, and opened a door for the rest of 20th-century orchestral music, from Olivier Messiaen to John Williams. So it gives us a small thrill to think that this week Aurora Orchestra will achieve a new first: performing the work entirely from memory.
Well sure, why not? After all, the dancers have to do it all from memory. The difference really is that no symphony orchestra with a regular concert schedule has enough rehearsal time to play from memory.
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG (1874–1951) was a pivotal figure in the development of 20th-century music. Of the thousands of composers who came before and after him, he stood alone both as the embodiment of the high Romanticism of the 19th and early 20th centuries led by Gustav Mahler, Richard Wagner, and Richard Strauss, and as a rebel who broke down the gates of traditions that had ruled music composition for three centuries. After he spent his childhood in pre–World War I Vienna in a Jewish ghetto, Nazi antisemitism drove him from Europe, eventually to land in Los Angeles, where he stayed to the end of his life, teaching first at USC and then UCLA.
A generational original, Schoenberg forged an entirely new path and language for musical expression. He called it the 12-tone or dodecaphonic system, built on all 12 pitches in the Western scale, rather than the traditional hierarchical seven. Ironically, his impact even on his most ardent disciples, Anton Webern and Alban Berg, was so provocative that they built on his techniques in divergent directions.
A paradox is operating here: why would such an influential visionary and radical creator as Schoenberg receive minimal attention and performances of his masterworks today?
It's not all that complicated, really. Schoenberg wrote a great deal about music and wrote some important textbooks as well as being an influential teacher. For this reason, even though his music tends to appeal to only a very limited but sophisticated audience, he still has a significant historical profile. Oh, and places that never program any Schoenberg are hard to take seriously. 8>)
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We haven't had any Liszt in a while, so let's start with him. This is Horowitz playing the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2:
And here is what I presume is one of the BIS recordings, the Lahti Symphony Orchestra with the Symphony No. 6 of Sibelius.
And, of course, some Schoenberg. This is Glenn Gould with the Three Piano Pieces, op. 11. We often forget that Gould played a lot of music other than Bach.
I've spent a lot of time both practicing technique on the guitar and thinking about it. The reason for this is that I have had to wrestle with technique my whole life as a guitarist. This started when I was sixteen and my mother came home with a rented bass guitar from the music store. I actually wanted to learn drums, but as my mother explained, drums cost $12 a month to rent, but a bass guitar was only $8 and we simply couldn't afford the extra cost. This was 1966 and money was scarce. As my mother explained "they're both in the rhythm section!"
There was some real benefit in starting on bass guitar: that is pretty much going to guarantee a strong left hand. But the real problem was that I was fifteen years old and, in terms of mastering the classical guitar, I was about eight years too late. Yep, if you don't start young it is an uphill battle. But at this point, I just wanted to play in a band and that was pretty easy. In a few weeks I was rehearsing with my first band and we played our first gig a few months later. I don't recall what songs we played, but I do remember that we cleared a modest $6.70 (Canadian) each.
I didn't actually start to transition to a classical guitarist for a few years. I wasn't even aware of classical music until my late teens and never heard a classical guitar until I was nineteen or so. Then, of course, there was a distinct lack of teachers. I have told the story a few times of going to Spain in 1974 to study with José Tomás, one of the great maestros of the instrument. I went from being a hack guitarist to being quite good in the course of one year as I discovered when I auditioned to enter the McGill School of Music a few months after returning from Spain. Tomás was a great teacher, but like many great guitarists (musicians in general), not very articulate. I don't remember too many things he said about technique, but I do remember him demonstrating many things on his guitar.
He was a calm and relaxed player, but I didn't fully appreciate the benefits of this until years later. As I struggled to become a better guitarist I strained and wrestled with myself, sometimes losing my temper in frustration at not being able to do what I wanted to. Well into my career I saw a really relaxed player, Alvaro Pierri, student of Abel Carlevaro, the great Uruguayan pedagogue. The first time I heard him play I wasn't impressed. What he did seemed too low calorie, not very heroic. He played without much effort. Later I realized that this was his great strength: he played with little effort!
How many players are like this? Not many, to be honest. Abel Carlevaro himself, of course, whom I saw in concert in Toronto many years ago. It was really technically perfect and without struggle and strain. We might contrast this with Julian Bream, a very great guitarist and great musician who nonetheless, plays with great strain--his concerts were like an heroic struggle with the guitar. For even more extreme examples we could look at Eliot Fisk, who plays the guitar as if he hates it and wants to beat it to death. Sharon Isbin is almost as bad.
There is another category of guitarist: those who achieve technical perfection but at perhaps too great a cost. Both John Williams and Manuel Barrueco tend, in my view, to be robotic. Clean, even, precise playing but with perhaps a bit less warmth and charm than the music deserves. I'm sure I will get a great deal of pushback on that!
Now let me get to my title: I have mentioned before the benefit of practicing with "soft" hands. Shaping everything for a perfect result, but without straining and struggling. I employ this more and more in my practice. Another element is to practice slowly. You don't have to go to extremes: one hears of famous guitarists practicing the Aranjuez before a performance at one-quarter tempo with a metronome. But you do have to practice at a super comfortable speed so that everything is easy and pleasant and comfortable.
These are things that are so obvious to great musicians that they never even mention them. I recall a clip of Isaac Stern talking about practicing: he said that it can take two hours of good practice, to make up for an hour of bad practice. What is bad practice? More and more it is obvious to me that it is practicing with strain, tension, awkwardness. Instead you have to practice with ease and grace. I sometimes find myself still trying to remove an awkwardness in a passage months later because I failed to make it smooth and comfortable when I first learned it.
The Italian concept of sprezzatura comes in here: this is the art of making something look easy. Well, it is not just that. You make something look easy by actually making it easy. Everything can be easy if approached in the right way--mind you, it might take a long time!
I’ve been reading and rereading biographies of Bach lately (for some podcast prep), and it strikes me he might count as the greatest achiever of all time. That is distinct from say regarding him as your favorite composer or artist of all time. I would include the following metrics as relevant for that designation:
1. Quality of work.
2. How much better he was than his contemporaries.
3. How much he stayed the very best in subsequent centuries.
4. Quantity of work.
5. Peaks.
6. Consistency of work and achievement.
And a few other parameters. He concludes:
I see Bach as ranking very, very high in all these categories. Who else might even be a contender for greatest achiever of all time? Shakespeare? Maybe, but Bach seems to beat him for relentlessness and quantity (at a very high quality level). Beethoven would be high on the list, but he doesn’t seem to quite match up to Bach in all of these categories. Homer seems relevant, but we are not even sure who or what he was. Archimedes? Plato or Aristotle? Who else?
Well in music, two possibilities would be Mozart and Schubert. Generally the obvious candidate, I would say, is Aristotle who dominated virtually every category of intellectual thought, from aesthetics, to ethics to politics to physics to logic, for roughly two thousand years. But in the arts? No, I suspect Bach has no real rival.
I'm about 400 pages into the Ezra Pound anthology and in the middle of the section on Ernest Fenollosa and the Noh plays of Japan. One thing that is so enjoyable about this book is that almost none of our current cultural obsessions are ever mentioned. Pound and Fenollosa between them are actually responsible for the rediscovery--outside Japan at least--of this ancient drama uniting dance, music and poetry as it tells stories uniting religion, nature and the occult. Two books by them are still high on the list on Amazon if you search for "Noh plays of Japan."
I was fascinated by one translation of the play Tsunemasa as a lute (biwa, actually) has such a prominent role as to be almost a character in itself. The lute is named "Seizan."
I am Sodzu Giokei, keeper of the temple of Ninnaji. Tajima no Kami Tsunemasa, of the house of Taira, was loved by the Emperor when he was a boy, but he was killed in the old days at the battle of the West Seas. And this is the Seizan lute that the Emperor gave him before that fighting. I offer this lute to his spirit in place of libation.
Later:
SPIRIT: When I was young I went into the court. I had a look at life then. I had high favour. I was given the Emperor's biwa (lute). That is the very lute you have there. It is the lute called "Seizan." I had it when I walked through the world. CHORUS: It is the lute that he had in this world, but now he will play Buddha's music.
Later:
CHORUS: A moon hangs clear on the pine-bough. The wind rustles as if flurried with rain. It is an hour of magic. The bass strings are something like rain; the small strings talk like a whisper. The deep string is a wind voice of autumn; the third and the fourth strings are like the crying stork in her cage, when she thinks of her young birds toward nightfall. Let the cocks leave off their crowing. Let no one announce the dawn.
Noh drama, while it may sound rather like Western opera, uniting the art forms of music, dance and poetry, is utterly different. For one thing, the actors often wear masks and there is no stage setting. The orchestra is seated onstage behind the main actors and the dance is very unlike what we think of as dance. Noh has been revived and the traditions are still preserved in Japan. Here is a sample.
Benjamin Britten's Curlew River was inspired by the Japanese noh play Sumidagawa (Sumida River) by Kanze Jūrō (1395–1431), which Britten saw during a visit to Japan and the Far East in early 1956.
The list of really great pieces for the classical guitar is surprisingly short. Mind you, not everyone would agree with this assessment. But it seems clear to me that there are only a few really substantial pieces. We could try to list them: the Concierto de Aranjuez would qualify and for solo guitar, the Nocturnal of Britten, the Invocation and Dance also by Rodrigo, the Variations and Fugue on Folias de España by Ponce and then we are likely into the transcriptions: the Chaconne of Bach, a few works by Albéniz and Granados, some by Scarlatti and that's about it. Of course arguments could be made for a few others, perhaps something by Sor or Giuliani, but that's about it. A shockingly brief list for such an important instrument.
Perhaps the most brilliant thing Andrés Segovia did for the guitar repertoire was transcribe the Chaconne of Bach. Instantly we had a piece that not only worked surprisingly well on the instrument, but it was also an addition of tremendous stature. One could argue that it is the greatest piece written in the whole Baroque era (though of course that would start a whole host of arguments!).
Perhaps the stupidest thing I did in my career was to put off learning the Chaconne. It was really a mixture of poor judgement and sheer laziness. I could never quite bring myself to learn the Segovia transcription as it didn't quite conform to my taste as far as interpretive choices. And I was too lazy to do my own version from scratch--there are a lot of notes in the Chaconne! I was also unsure that I was going to bring something worthwhile to the piece. That was pretty stupid as I could not NOT do otherwise than play it my own way. Anyway, I let decades go by without learning the piece, instead performing cello suites and lute suites by Bach.
But now I am rectifying all this and I'm well into doing my own transcription (which is mostly just lightening up Segovia's and rethinking the slurs and ornaments) and working on memorizing it. Some of the thirty-second note passages are surprisingly hard to keep straight!
Working on this piece every morning has the lovely benefit of putting Bach in your head all morning, something I heartily recommend.
There were three pieces that convinced me to convert from steel string and electric guitar to classical guitar: the Chaconne, the Concierto de Aranjuez and Asturias by Albéniz. The latter two I often played in my career, the Chaconne was the only one missing. So now I am finally getting around to it. I think I have just enough technique left to be able to play it, so it will make a nice envoi to my performing career. About a year from now I should have it all memorized.
Here is some healthy criticism of the ending of a New York tradition: Mostly Not Mozart.
“The Mostly Mozart Festival,” intoned Louis Langrée, as the maestro prepared to conduct his final symphony at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall August 12, after 21 years at the helm of the annual summer event, “is no more.” Langrée was being dramatic, but not overly so. Lincoln Center’s dissolution of Mostly Mozart, and its stripping of the festival’s musicians of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra name, is a big deal—or it should be. That it’s received so little attention is yet another sign of how post-pandemic New York has lost its will to fight for its civic and public culture.
Mostly Mozart is, or was, synonymous with Lincoln Center. The July and August weeks-long festival of, yes, mostly Mozart and other classical composers dated to 1966, almost to Lincoln Center’s founding (give or take a pandemic, and a few first-decade hiccups).
So why get rid of it? And why do so in such a harsh fashion, turning the first summer since 2019 that concertgoers have been able to enjoy a normal season into a depressing and confusing time, rather than a joyful one?
Although the traditional performing arts have abiding issues with élitism and exclusivity, a swerve toward pop hardly compensates for the profound societal inequalities that are embedded in our celebrity-driven culture. Symptomatic attitudes can be found in a 2018 book titled “New Power,” which Timms wrote with Jeremy Heimans. The authors reject top-down leadership and embrace a model that they call “open, participatory, and peer-driven.” Facebook and Twitter are among the lead cases. Anyone who has paid attention to the decimation of the public sphere in recent years will be aware that power tends to stay in the hands of a few, no matter what hazy rhetoric accompanies each changing of the guard.
At Lincoln Center, New Power also takes the form of sonic force: according to an app on my phone, the sound level at an outdoor dance contest approached a hundred and ten decibels. I saw elderly people wincing as they made their way, sometimes with walkers or canes, into Geffen. Lincoln Center now radiates disdain for those who wish simply to listen to music they love in a comfortable hall. I can only hope that classical programming doesn’t continue its downward spiral next summer, when the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra will return under a new name. It’s worth noting that the festival provides employment for dozens of musicians whose financial situation is considerably more precarious than that of Timms, who, according to a tax filing, received a salary of $1,469,816 in the fiscal year 2022.
In this major new biography, Lorraine Byrne Bodley takes a detailed look into Schubert’s life, from his early years at the Stadtkonvikt to the harrowing battle with syphilis that led to his death at the age of thirty-one. Drawing on extensive archival research in Vienna and the Czech Republic and reconsidering the meaning of some of his best-known works, Bodley provides a fuller account than ever before of Schubert’s extraordinary achievement and incredible courage. This is a compelling new portrait of one of the most beloved composers of the nineteenth century.
Dear Colleagues, I write on behalf of musicology at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Currently, the university has a proposal to remove Musicology as an area of research and teaching.
Musicology is integral to research and teaching at Victoria University of Wellington, both within the New Zealand School of Music and within the broader Humanities. The area is known for research in New Zealand music, women and music, historical performance practice, early modern and nineteenth-century music. As part of the Music Studies Programme, Musicology sits alongside Ethnomusicology, Theory and Analysis, and Jazz Studies.
The university’s current plan of widespread cost savings across the university would cut a third of music staff and eliminate musicology completely by disestablishing the roles of Professor of Musicology and Associate Professor of Musicology. This will result in the closing of teaching and research in Musicology in Wellington and would greatly diminish the future of music research and teaching in New Zealand.
In the Times, Richard Morrison notes that ‘young conductors today tend to be well-schooled, well-mannered technocrats.’ Imagine thinking that was progress? There were already too many ‘well-mannered technocrats’ when I started concert-going in the noughties. Routine concerts by jobbing conductors who had their careers solely because they were good at ingratiating themselves with the players – often by letting them slack off – made me wonder whether I enjoyed classical music at all. Luckily we all had the incredible Technicolor recordings by the infamous mid-century monsters to retreat to (recordings that rather undermine the facile idea doing the rounds on Twitter that ‘being a good conductor means being good with people, and in order to get the best from musicians, you must treat them right’. Tell that to Fritz Reiner.)
The question is who on earth would shell out 200-plus quid to see a ‘well-mannered technocrat’ conduct Elektra or The Rite? I want a beast on the podium conducting this rep. Not a musical version of Rishi Sunak.
Worth reading the whole thing as this is just the conclusion. But I have to say that I think that the "mystique" of the maestro is pretty much bullshit. The truly outstanding musicians I have met in my career were also very decent people.
The least surprising feature of the withdrawal of Sir John Eliot Gardiner from all engagements for the rest of 2023 is the lack of reaction one way or the other, from those who have worked with the condcutor for up to half a century.
JEG, 80, has always been a controversial figure. Stories about him abound wherever singers and musicians congregate. They were still being whispered in social media corners this past week, but never in public media.
Why is that? A number of reasons.
1 Many well-known performers owe him their start in life. Whatever he may have said or done to them since, the sense of gratitude persists.
2 Many musicians nurture hopes that he will engage them in future. As a self-starter, he casts by his own rules, not the formbook maintained by the music industry.
3 Quite a few musicioans are fond of one or other of his ex-wives and children and wish to spare them distress.
4 JEG is reputed to have friends in high places.
5 Most important of all, no conductor has created more work for more musicians at his own personal risk over a longer period in music history. JEG may have stepped back for the rest of 2023, but the music biz expect he will be back before very long, and there will be no want of bookings.
It is not uncommon for very creative people to have difficult personalities, but I don't see why they always have to be indulged. A conductor was once nasty to me and I simply withdrew from the concert. Sure, this is not always an option, but when conductors misbehave they can be reined in as this incident with John Eliot Gardiner demonstrates.
Classical music is set to be played at some Tyne and Wear Metro stations to create a more "soothing" environment.
The sounds of Mozart and Bach were heard about 20 years ago along parts of the system in a bid to tackle anti-social behaviour.
Operator Nexus said the plan was not directly linked to trouble but anything that made passengers "feel more comfortable" could only help.
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And now, with a sense of relief, leaping into the envoi section. Let's start with an illustration of why we listen to a lot of Mozart. Here is the Symphony No. 38, "Prague" with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony conducted by Philippe Herreweghe:
Here is the second movement of the Trio No. 2, op. 100 by Schubert. This always seemed to me to be the archetypal European art movie soundtrack.
I suppose we do need to have some John Eliot Gardiner. Here he is conducting the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in the Cantata BWV 113 by Bach.
