THE MUSIC SALON: classical music, popular culture, philosophy and anything else that catches my fancy...
I started noticing this a decade ago.
https://tedium.co/2022/11/09/the-death-of-the-key-change
Here is the story in a single graphic:
I usually think it’s lazy songwriting when a song injects energy by shifting up a half step or a whole step right around the last chorus.
This used to be called a "truck-driver modulation."
We could probably do some charts on the narrowing of tempi, dynamics, melody and so on as well.
I guess we have to talk about this scene from the movie Tár:
https://twitter.com/JoelWBerry/status/1593279643045564416?s=20&t=YEJ_LFkAo5ZK8k1YdWtnRA
The line that really stands out is this:
“If Bach’s talent can be reduced to his gender, birth country, religion, sexuality and so on, then so can yours”
I haven't seen the film, but perhaps we can discuss just this scene? I have the idea that Cate Blanchett's character might be a villain, but again maybe we can just take this scene for itself.
Comments?
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| "Guitar on a Table" painted by Pablo Picasso in 1919, just sold for $37.1 million |
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I’ve booed at the opera before. But what happened to a young soprano this week was plain cruel
There is nothing wrong in principle with protesting at the opera. I’ve very occasionally booed shows I hated, and I want to be free to do so again if I choose. Not everything on the opera, or any other stage, has always got to be cheered politely or given the reflexive standing ovations that seem ever more common. Booing and whistling at the opera or theatre can sometimes be healthy and necessary protest. It is actually a lot more common than you may think, especially on first nights, especially in continental Europe. I once even heard Luciano Pavarotti, no less, booed at La Scala in Milan.
What happened at Covent Garden on Tuesday evening, however, wasn’t booing but heckling. It was repeated and mean-spirited barracking during a touching and plaintive aria about the loss of a father. Most disturbingly of all, it was the heckling of a child. It took place during act one of Handel’s opera Alcina, to a boy character, Oberto. Covent Garden’s production gives Oberto a poignant prominence. The target was Malakai M Bayoh, a 12-year-old boy soprano who is alternating the role with another young singer during the six performances scheduled by the Royal Opera this month.
You really have to read the whole thing which is yet another example of the decline of civilized courtesy in society.
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And speaking of concerts, the Washington Post discusses encores: Has the encore left the building?
“It’s kind of wild to me that [encores] lasted through the ’90s with bands who were sort of cynical of showbiz tactics, because it’s such an old showbiz idea. Of course there’s going to be smoke and mirrors no matter what, but the encore is a pretty overt lie to the audience,” says Max Collins, the frontman of Eve 6 and BuzzFeed’s newest advice columnist, though he added that in the right circumstances, an encore can be an exchange of generosity between artists and fans.
The article is all about encores in popular music performances. It's a bit different in the classical world.
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On the acoustics of violins: Phantom notes played by violins turn out to be a real sound
Giovanni Cecchi at the University of Florence in Italy and his colleagues decided to investigate how different violins produce combination tones.
They analysed recordings of a professional violinist playing selected pairs of notes on five violins of different age and quality using a computer. Motivated by the ideas of 19th-century physicist Hermann von Helmholtz who showed that some musical instruments may be able to produce combination tones on their own, they decomposed the sound waves made by the violins into parts with different frequencies. The team found that all violins produced combination tones, but the oldest instruments produced the strongest ones. The magnitude of the most prominent combination tone for the oldest violin, made in Bologna in 1700, was about 75 per cent larger than the one from a modern mass-produced instrument.
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Music has influences in lots of interesting places: STILL HOT: Maurice Sendak’s ageless imagination
Music was an essential ingredient in Sendak’s creative process. “The work can’t happen without music,” he said in 1994. “I think everything I’ve done is a collaboration with a composer.” The catalogue contains a selection of Sendak’s “fantasy sketches,” each page a mini-drama with four to six rows of small black-pen line drawings moving from left to right—a wordless comic strip whose silent progression on the page has the feel of experimental musical notation. In fact, Sendak composed these pages while listening to music (such as Strauss’s “Death and Transfiguration” and Deems Taylor’s “Through the Looking Glass”)—the “catalyst,” he said, “that brought them to life [and] kept my pen moving across the paper.”
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I've been a fan of the fortepiano for a long time so it is nice to see this article from Alex Ross: Kristian Bezuidenhout Unleashes the Subtle Power of the Fortepiano
“These older instruments, and even the modern copies, function so differently in rehearsal and in concert,” Bezuidenhout told me. “Sometimes you have this feeling in rehearsal: ‘Oh, yes, this is really making sense, the piano is really helping me.’ Then, in concert, they kind of turn on you. The five-octave pianos, especially, can betray you, leave you in the dust. You say to yourself, ‘Where is that sound I heard four hours ago?’ It may have to do with a change of humidity, or a way of reacting to the room. But it’s as if they can sense your level of stress, your preoccupation, and then they seize up—like some kind of really mean cat.”
Yes, fortepianos can smell your fear! Not to mention guitars.
Some didacts of the early-music world would maintain that certain composers must be performed on so-called original instruments. Bezuidenhout, in remarks from the stage at Hertz, distanced himself from the charged word “authentic,” describing his work as “historically inspired.” For me, the experience of hearing a broad range of repertory filtered through instruments of various eras had the effect of freeing the composers from the tyranny of norms. This recital captured, above all, a sense of music as an evolutionary art, reacting to technology in flux and history in motion.
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Let's listen to some fortepiano. This is Kristian Bezuidenhout playing a Mozart sonata:
I don't think we have had much Richard Strauss lately, so here is his Death and Transfiguration:
I ran into a rather clumsy interview on YouTube the other day that attempted to address the question "are masterclasses worth doing." I stopped watching after a couple of minutes, but I got the impression that the conclusion was going to be yes, they are. That would be my opinion as well, but with this proviso: it really depends on who is giving the class. Some guitarists are so taken with their own egos that they are not terribly helpful to students. Other guitarists are enormously helpful. I took masterclasses with José Tomás, Leo Brouwer, Dik Visser (Dutch guitarist), Manuel Barrueco, John Duarte, Oscar Ghiglia and Pepe Romero and I audited masterclasses by Abel Carlevaro and David Russell. Of all these, the most helpful were José Tomás and Pepe Romero. Everyone came out of those classes more relaxed and more confident.
Some maestros have the tendency to abuse their students which, in a public forum, is very unethical. John Williams hinted that Segovia had this propensity, but he was certainly not alone. One of the best things about masterclasses is what you can learn from other students and the wide variety of repertoire you would, one hopes, be exposed to. You also get to hear an interesting collection of guitars. In one masterclass we came up with a particularly challenging game. Sitting around in a dorm room with ten or so guitarists and one lonely guitar the rule was, whoever had the guitar had to play the first four bars of whatever piece anyone named, or give up the guitar. One fellow, from Cornell, was the champion. It was almost impossible to stump him: Ponce, Prelude 12? Santorsola, some obscure piece? Bach, Minuet 1 from the Cello Suite 1? He knew them all.
You should take masterclasses when you are a young guitarist and you should seek out different kinds of players. Some maestros are just going to try to impress their interpretive ideas on you, which might be interesting, but might not be! As you develop as an artist the really important interpretive ideas are yours and no-one else's. But a lot of the value in master classes comes from the learning of technical solutions. Pepe Romero and Abel Carlevaro were particularly good at this. After every student Carlevaro would say the same thing: "hay dos problems: la mano derecha y la mano izquierda!" And then he would explain the problems. It was quite fascinating. Abel Carlevaro was probably the best guitar pedagogue of the 20th century. Mind you, after a few days of this we were all thinking, his upcoming concert better be perfect! And, as a matter of fact, it was: technical perfection.
Here is an interesting clip: Abel Carlevaro playing three pieces on Spanish television in 1989.
Encouraged by the exiled Brecht, whom he met in New York in 1935, Blitzstein composed The Cradle Will Rock, a "play in music" (to his own libretto) in ten scenes embodying what the composer called "an allegory about people I hate" that would through a combination of entertainment and political harangue persuade its intended middle-class audience to join the class struggle on the side of the proletariat... [Taruskin, op. cit. p 649]
I think we have heard something like that before! After the premiere in New York in 1937, itself surrounded by scandal, the cast party was at the Downtown Music School administered by the Workers Music League, an adjunct of the American Communist Party, itself under the discipline of Third International of the Soviet Union. The League also sponsored the Composers Collective of New York, loosely based on the Russian Union of Soviet Composers. The membership included Charles Seeger and Elie Siegmeister as well as Blitzstein. One concert in March 1934 sponsored by the organization was devoted to the music of Aaron Copland and was reviewed by Seeger in the Daily Worker, the Communist Party newspaper. An excerpt:
For one of the finest definitions of revolutionary musical content yet made, we hail Aaron Copland's "Up Against!" And with vigor, too -- that is the essence of the Piano Variations. Their chief shortcomings seem to be that they are almost too much "against" -- against pretty nearly everything. So some day Aaron, write us something "for." You know what for! [quoted in Taruskin, op. cit. p.653]
Let's have a listen to those Piano Variations.
I guess one of the big stories in music this week is Bob Dylan's new book: ‘The Philosophy of Modern Song’ Review: Bob Dylan Plays DJ
“The Philosophy of Modern Song” is an annotated playlist of other people’s songs, an idiosyncratic jukebox of 66 A-sides. The imposing title is perhaps tongue-in-cheek, for the book doesn’t offer—as Bobcats worth their salt might have predicted—anything close to what its title promises. What it does offer is perhaps even more valuable: It’s a generous book—as forthright as anything Dylan has ever laid before his audience—that manages to stick its landing somewhere between the perfect bathroom read (short sections, handsomely illustrated, coincidentally just in time for Christmas) and “The Anatomy of Melancholy,” Robert Burton’s epic, eccentric and encyclopedic compendium of 1621.
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Here is a piece on the nature and function of art: On Not Drinking the Kool-Aid
I recently spoke at a gathering of artists and arts administrators. During the discussion, one of the administrators said, “Art enables us to have difficult conversations with each other.” That struck me as perfectly capturing the going understanding of the role of art these days. Art is now viewed as a pretext for collective discourse, raising “issues” that provide the raw material for op-eds, Twitter threads, college seminars, and conference panels, not to mention (dreaded word) post-performance “talkbacks.”
But not just any kind of collective discourse. For we all know what “difficult conversations” means: what they are about, and on what terms they are meant to proceed. A “difficult conversation” is not a conversation about the tragic nature of choice or the inevitability of death. Nor is it one in which participants debate whether trans women are women or affirmative action is a good idea. When I hear the phrase “difficult conversations,” I think of something David Mamet said: “When people say, ‘we need to have a conversation about race,’ what they really mean is, ‘shut the fuck up.’”
In the age of wokeness, aka political correctness, art must be political and art must be correct. The point is familiar, but a few examples might revivify it...
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This is interesting: What the Suzuki Method Really Taught
Apparently, the emotional content of Western concert or “classical” music—its ability to summon up feelings that literally surpass words, and give us that uniquely musical experience of being overwhelmed—could be as immediately manifest to non-Westerners as it was to those raised in the tradition. The Japanese appetite for the emotional intensity of much so-called classical music coincided with a Western appetite for Eastern art, the japonisme that, through the prints of Hiroshige in particular, swept European painting in the second half of the nineteenth century, wresting it from a blind faith in Renaissance one-point perspective. Van Gogh and Manet, Whistler and Degas—they were as much enthralled by Japanese art as Suzuki’s generation was by European music. And, generally speaking, both sides “got it” just about as well, in each case mastering and repurposing the beautiful surface of the form without necessarily grasping all the local purposes beneath. Suzuki knew Bach but not, it seems, his religious points or passions, in the same way that Whistler knew Hiroshige but not his religious points or passions.
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State sponsorship of music, while seemingly essential, is also hazardous: Contemporary music sliced by Arts Council England’s knife
Delayed for over a week, the release of Arts Council England’s latest funding round landed with a thud on Friday – with the headline announcement of the total reduction in National Portfolio funding to English National Opera.
But a series of serious reductions were also visited on contemporary music organisations, with some losing all of their portfolio funding.
This included a total reduction in funding to the Cambridge-based Britten Sinfonia. The group, founded in 1992, is Associate Ensemble at the Barbican.
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Odanak First Nation's Mali Obomsawin tells Indigenous stories through music
When Mali Obomsawin graduated from Dartmouth College in 2018, she quickly found success as one-third of the acclaimed folk rock band Lula Wiles. But Mali grew frustrated by the limitations of that success. She says fans in the Americana folk scene expected a white folk aesthetic. Mali is a citizen of the Odanak First Nation in Quebec, and she didn't fit that box, so she left. She's now released her first album as a solo artist, "Sweet Tooth." It represents a different kind of folk music. Wabanaki hand drums and jazz arrangements replace banjo twang. Mali calls it the first authentic statement in her creative journey.
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Here are some insights into why the English National Opera was defunded: Defunding ENO is devastating – but the writing was on the wall
When the leadership of an arts organisation gives the impression that it has no faith in the importance of the work it produces, it is hardly surprising that people come to negative conclusions about its identity and value. Thousands of opera lovers had the foresight at the time to recognise the longer-term consequences of the changes and signed a petition to save ENO. Those who took that stand are unlikely to be surprised by the decisions that Arts Council England published last week that meant ENO will lose its £12.6m core annual funding.
The fact that this outcome was predicted doesn’t make the reality of it any less heartbreaking, nor less dangerous for the cultural landscape of the country.
Opera is squeezed by those on the left who think it is elitist and those on the right who do not believe it should be supported by government at all. The notion that it is a glamorous and frivolous entertainment for the social and cultural elite may be a convenient stereotype, but for those who have experienced it, nothing could be further from the truth.
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I suppose this was inevitable: Extinction Rebellion activists halt Verdi Requiem at Concertgebouw, comparing to ‘sinking Titanic’
A performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem came to a halt on Wednesday evening at The Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam when a climate protester interrupted the performance.
In a video shared by the global environmental movement, ‘Extinction Rebellion’, a protester seated in the midst of the auditorium level of the concert hall stood up to shout across the venue, “We are in the middle of a climate crisis and we are like the orchestra on the Titanic that keeps playing quietly while the ship is already sinking.”
The protester, named by the protest group as Sebastian, was one of three who interrupted the performance at 8.30pm on 2 November and used their hijacked platform to call on the Dutch government to do everything they could to reach carbon-neutrality by 2025.
All three of the protesters were dragged out by booing audience members
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Let's listen to some music from the Mali Obomsawin album:
I have long been a fan of Monteverdi's opera Orfeo: Bold, self-assured reimagining of Monteverdi: Opera North’s Orpheus reviewed
The setting – the whole concept – of Opera North’s new Orpheus is strikingly original and brilliantly achieved. We’re in the back garden of a suburban semi in (let’s say) Leeds, where two families are gathering for a wedding. Orpheus and his friends are semi-posh white kids; Eurydice and her relatives are of Indian heritage. They’re all dressed in their finest, and they’re clearly relaxed with each other, exchanging hugs and smiles. A double orchestra is assembled on the patio: a little baroque band, with Laurence Cummings directing from the harpsichord, and alongside them, led by Jasdeep Singh Degun on sitar, the tablas, bansuris and esrajs of the Indian classical tradition. Anna Himali Howard’s direction makes it all look wholly natural; only the weird colours that occasionally flush the West Riding sky suggest that higher powers might be in play.
Very reimagined from the sound of it.
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Should admirers of The Beatles shell out $100 for the new five-CD Revolver set? You got me. And I think that Revolver and the White Album are the best albums.
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And speaking of The Beatles, can Jack White really identify any Beatles song from hearing just one second?
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Offered without comment: SINGERS PLAN LEGAL ACTION AGAINST SALZBURG FESTIVAL
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Here's at look at the people behind the Ballets Russes who were not named Stravinsky: How Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes Revolutionized Dance.
One defining characteristic of Sergei Diaghilev’s personality, complementary to his capacity to make things happen and get things done, was a low boredom threshold. It was this almost irritable restlessness that lay behind his much-quoted exhortation to the young poet Jean Cocteau, a tiresome opportunist hanging on to the Ballets Russes’s coat-tails in Paris as he angled to be given his big chance. “Étonne-moi, Jean,” Diaghilev challenged him, perhaps with a note of impatience. Buzz off until you can show me something fascinatingly different. Cocteau would certainly try.
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And here I thought we were all living in a post-Christian culture: A New Setting for Christianity’s Most Important Story.
Every Good Friday, the story of Jesus Christ’s final hours gets told anew. Trial. Condemnation. Procession. Crucifixion. Burial. During that service, worshippers traditionally meditate on the 14 Stations of the Cross, the summary images of the son of God’s last moments — a stand-in for bona fide pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
In The Street, a new evening-length cycle for harp, narrator, and singer(s), composer Nico Muhly and librettist Alice Goodman treat the 14 stations with the immediacy of a witness — at one moment a passive, descriptive onlooker, at the next a malicious actor who intentionally trips Jesus under the weight of his own cross, close enough to smell the dripping blood.
“When you pray the stations, you’re not supposed to imagine you’re Jesus or Mary or anyone important,” said Goodman during an animated Zoom conversation that included Muhly and harpist Parker Ramsay, who conceived and premiered the work. “You’re supposed to imagine that you’re a little nobody at the edge of the crowd, receiving this event and taking it in and walking along.”
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Here is a performance of Possente spirito from Monteverdi's Orfeo:
And here is the new 2022 mix of "Rain":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrEgtOeJGzQ
Since we haven't put up a performance for several months, here is Petrushka:
