Friday Miscellanea

I find most organs thick and lugubrious sounding, but old Spanish organs have a wonderful crisp and "crunchy" sound that is quite surprising. Here is Tiento de batalla, 5e tono ''Punt baix'' by Juan Cabanilles played on a 1695 organ in the Cathedral of Valencia:

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One of the most interesting pieces in 20th century music also has one of the most interesting "origin" stories. The piece is Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time and the Wall Street Journal chose it recently for its Masterpiece series: Finding Grace in a Grim Setting.

At the first performance on Jan. 15, 1941, in Stalag VIII-A, the prisoners sat mesmerized, shivering in the cold for an hour. “Never before,” wrote the composer, “have I been listened to with such attention and understanding.” Many were actually bewildered by what they heard, yet they grasped that something truly special had occurred. Several had donated money to purchase a used cello from a nearby town for the occasion, a transaction made possible with the aid of the armed guards, who transported the cellist to pick up the instrument. That in itself seemed a minor miracle.

I encourage you to read the whole piece as it offers some information about the composition of the piece that I was unaware of. I have actually been to Görlitz, the site of Stalag VIII-A, though not to the actual camp, the site of which which does not exist any more.

The Masterpiece series, incidentally, is one of the few places in the mass media where you can find reliably interesting discussions of, yes, masterpieces. In a lot of the progressive cultural world any mention of art created by Dead White Europeans has to be accompanied by flagellation and apologies as the writer sets out to deconstruct the very idea of a masterpiece. That's all quite wrong, of course. Every person on earth who has any interest in or regard for the fine arts knows perfectly well that there are masterpieces.

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Ran across this in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, p. 295:

Hearing something new is embarrassing and difficult for the ear; foreign music we do not hear well.

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Via CTV news comes the intriguing statistic that the average person stops seeking out new music by age 28:

A survey by streaming service Deezer found that the average person reaches "musical paralysis" -- when she or he primarily listens to familiar tracks and does not seek out new genres -- at the age of 27 years and 11 months.

Musical discovery peaks nearly three years earlier, with 25-year-olds on average listening to at least 10 new songs per week.

Deezer surveyed 5,000 adults online across Brazil, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Brazilians reached musical paralysis the earliest, at 23 years and two months, while Germans stayed curious the longest, hitting paralysis at 31 years old.

On the other hand, some of us are not all that average.

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Via Slipped Disc comes this list of free access scholarly music journals. There has to be a lot of interesting stuff there.

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Another article about the crisis in music education in the UK: Music education ‘crisis’ laid bare in parliamentary report.

It says: “To date, the target of 75% (90% by 2025) for EBacc take-up has failed to be met by a very long way. Currently the number of students studying the EBacc has plateaued at 38% in state-funded schools. Indeed the number of students passing the EBacc was 16.7% in 2017/2018. And yet this failing policy is causing untold damage to music and many other creative subjects in our schools. And for what?”

The report goes on to argue that the government and Ofsted should take on board a number of recommendations around music education, “in particular as a matter of urgency the EBacc must be reviewed and reformed, and creative subjects, including music, must regain their central role in a broad and balanced curriculum for all of our children”.

The recommendations also include calls that music should be taught by a specialist teacher as part of the curriculum in all state schools for at least one hour every week and that schools have at least one full-time staff member teaching only music.

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I am very much of two minds regarding articles like these: Daniel Barenboim is a great musician and humanist. So why are so many people afraid of him?

In musical circles, Barenboim’s temper is legendary. He has thrown fits because a violist rolled his eyes, because a singer bowed in the wrong place, because a favored principal player was on vacation. He once berated a musician who lacked concentration because someone in their immediate family had died. He has insulted a doctor who said that a performer with a stomach flu was too sick to play. On at least two occasions, he has allegedly grabbed and shaken members of his staff in anger.

Yes, sounds rather dire. But I have a considerable degree of mistrust for all muckraking articles like these that often are nothing more than journalistic malpractice. Are these a few isolated incidents out of a decades-long career of great creativity and good behaviour? Do we forgive great artists for their human flaws? Well, not really. Bad behaviour is bad behaviour and being creative in another part of your life does not get you off the hook. On the other hand, journalism thrives on nasty stories about famous people. But a more insidious issue is why should anyone fear a mere conductor and pianist? Is he going to stab us with his baton? No, the reason people might fear someone like Daniel Barenboim is because of the power he wields. If you need to curry favor with someone because they can make or break your career then they can get away with the arrogant misuse of power. So let's look at how power is wielded in arts institutions.

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Sorry, due to the pressure of other duties today, this will have to be an abbreviated miscellanea. So let's have a nice big envoi. This is Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time in a performance by four excellent players: Richard Stoltzman(cl)　Peter Serkin(p)　Yo-Yo Ma(vc)　Pamela Frank(vn).