Friday Miscellanea

One of my favorite non-classical performers is Leonard Cohen and it's not because he is Canadian or a Montrealer. The Atlantic takes a stab at it: THE ANTI–ROCK STAR

Leonard Cohen never liked touring. “It’s like being dropped off in a desert,” he once said. “You don’t know where you live anymore.” By the time he hit his late 50s, he hated it so much that, after supporting his 1992 record, The Future, he moved into a Zen monastery and all but retired from the music business. Even after he returned with More Best of Leonard Cohen (1997), a wonderful celebration of his mid-career prime, he refused to cash in with a fresh calendar of live shows. Then, in 2005, he discovered that his bank account had been nearly emptied by his business manager. 

Cohen spent months in rehearsal with a band, fine-tuning his songs as he now wanted to play them—more quietly, more elegantly than ever. In 2008, at 73, he went back out on the road. Other than at a book signing, he hadn’t performed live in more than a decade. But something had happened in the interim.

His audience was larger—lines curving around blocks, scalpers demanding hundreds above face value. More striking, though, was the depth of feeling. Leonard Cohen, master of a cool, ironic, deadpan remove, had come to signify something new that mystified the performers themselves. “I saw people in front of the stage shaking and crying,” a backup singer noted after opening night. “You don’t often see adults cry, and with such violence.”

I remember, before he started touring again, he published a new book of poetry--he was a poet long before he was a musician--and when he did a book-signing in Toronto several thousand showed up, snarling traffic for blocks around.

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Oops, I just missed the 150th birthday of Arnold Schoenberg which was on September 13. Here is a site celebrating it and listing all the concerts of his music going on worldwide: https://www.schoenberg150.at/index.php/en/music-events. There are a great many! Maybe he is finally winning the appreciation he deserves.

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Here is a stream of Gurre-Lieder: https://www.elbphilharmonie.de/en/mediatheque/opening-night-gurre-lieder/994

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Decline comes in many forms: THE STRIPPED-BACK STATE OF THE ARTS IN THE UK.

Today, Northern Ballet is performing Romeo and Juliet at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon without its orchestra.

Two of the nation’s core arts institutions have been stripped bare by Arts Council England.

This is not what Maynard Keynes envisaged.

ACE must be reformed from top to bottom.

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I'm sorry to say this article has personal relevance: Pauses in Production: A Curious Case of Classical Composers. The author kindly lays out the main points:

• Classical music specifically may be more susceptible to longer dry spells due to the genre's larger scale.
• Creativity in composing requires both inspiration and "perspiration" (hard work).
• Composers are susceptible to writer's block when they try to simultaneously brainstorm and self-evaluate.

I'm in a lengthy dry spell myself caused by a multitude of things: lack of other musicians to play with, which has been a perennial source of inspiration for me; lack of venues to stage premieres in; and possibly the most serious, a profound doubt about the value and utility (two different things) of new music--at least as composed by me.

Mozart was said to receive musical ideas from vivid dreams and Brahms credited the Spirit of God. Such supernatural accounts are well received because they add to the “magical” and captivating nature of music. Alternatively, though, cognitive psychology explains great creativity as the result of an expert-level knowledge base (i.e., “genius”), acquired through experience, study, and practice, and from exceptional mental openness and flexibility by which composers connect and combine what they know to create new versions of knowledge. As human beings, composers need subjective reasons—“inspiration,” if you will—to motivate them to use their acquired musical knowledge and motivate them to think openly and flexibly. Ultimately I think great creativity in composing always requires both “inspiration” and effort. In my 2022 book Psychology for Musicians, I quoted Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award winning contemporary classical composer Jennifer Higdon, who talked about teaching composition to others: “Students often ask me, ‘Should I wait until I am inspired?’ No, you should be sitting there writing every day to get the inspiration in the first place”

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This turned out to be very clickbaity: Welcome to Shorworld

A hedge fund multimillionaire turned composer. A businessman with apparent links to the Russian state. A cohort of superstar performers all too happy to look the other way. Inside classical music’s large, lucrative parallel world.

Lots of interesting looking articles, but all behind a paywall. And perhaps just a tad dubious...

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They Said Her Music Was Too Exotic. Now She’s a Classical Star

Ortiz, 59, who will be Carnegie Hall’s composer in residence this season, has spent her life channeling the sounds and sensibilities of Latin America into classical music. For most of the past 40 years, this has been a lonely pursuit. Teachers said her works were too exotic. Critics bristled at her sprawling sonorities. Top orchestras passed her over in doling out commissions.

But now, after a series of big breaks, Ortiz is thriving.

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First a song by Leonard Cohen:

I sometimes think they should have given that Pulitzer Prize in Literature to Leonard Cohen. Do we need some more Schoenberg? Well, of course. Here is an excerpt from Pierrot Lunaire with Patricia Kopatchinskaja.

Next, a piece by Gabriela Ortiz. I can only find excerpts from her piece Téenek:

That's a pretty diverse set of envois.