Read the whole thing.Erika Fox’s coffee mug is emblazoned with the title of HG Wells’s The Invisible Man. One can’t help noticing, because this extraordinary composer has for too long been an almost invisible woman. Today, her first-ever commercial CD is released, featuring a selection of her chamber music. She is 82.Musical cognoscenti reacted with horrified astonishment to the realisation that Fox’s music has not previously been recorded. Its style is tough yet mesmerising, highly individual, with a strong undertow of unsettling emotion. “Some people have said it’s challenging, but because it’s mine, I don’t think of it that way,” Fox remarks. “To me it’s ordinary. It’s what I do.”
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There is a debate going on in Australia these days about the depiction of women in opera: 'Difficult to renovate': Opera's struggle to move with the times.
This points out one strategy to push back at the people advocating "equity." You need to point out the hypocrisy in just calling for equity in the glamorous, sought-after areas and ignoring the equity in all the other areas.The "call to action" co-authored by Sally Blackwood, Liza Lim, Peggy Polias and Bree van Reyk urged "respect" for "creators who are female, non-binary and from diverse cultural backgrounds" and ask for "safe inclusive spaces for people with diverse voices and abilities to set the agenda".Operas written in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries are products of their time with the portrayal of women sometimes limited to that of a tragic heroine.Mr Terracini rejected the assertion that bias and sexism was only an "opera problem", arguing the discussion should involve all art forms."If we want to seriously examine the cultural history of Western art, let’s examine everything that constitutes the making of a civilisation based on the history of art," he said."If people are serious about doing something like this, it would need to involve an examination of painting, sculpture, ballet, everything.
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There is a post at Slipped Disc on this same initiative: LET’S BAN VIOLENCE FROM OPERA, RIGHT?
That’s the cry from 190 ‘leading Australian composers, directors, musicians, and vocalists’, who have signed a petition ‘to remove gender bias, sexism, and dramatised acts of violence against women in opera’.What is most entertaining over there are the extensive comments. Such as:
Oh, I see. Then we’ll have to make some changes. First, Otello and Desdemona seek marriage counselling; then, Fasolt and Fafner draw straws over who gets most of the gold; Don Giovanni gets kneed in the groin by Zerlina; bad news for the Duke of Mantua for yes, it IS he who ends up getting knifed by Sparafucile, thus providing Rigoletto with that rarest of opera house phenomena: a happy ending; Brunnhilde gets done for animal cruelty in Gotterdammerung and Butterfly slaps a paternity suit on Pinkerton and wins a million bucks a year in child maintenance. Trust the politically correct maniacs Down Under to try and alter an entire art form to suit their loony notions….
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The New York Times takes a look at the problems of classical music in the Age of Streaming: In Streaming Age, Classical Music Gets Lost in the Metadata.
One reason I have not been tempted to give up CDs for a streaming service. It's also personal: most streaming services just don't have a metadata field for "composer." As a composer, I rather resent that!When Roopa Kalyanaraman Marcello, a classical music aficionado in Brooklyn, asked her Amazon Echo for some music recently, she had a specific request: the third movement of Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto.“It kind of energizes me, motivates me to get things done,” she said.But the Echo, a voice-activated speaker, could not find what she wanted. First it gave her the concerto’s opening movement; then, on another try, came the second movement. But not the third.Exasperated, Ms. Kalyanaraman Marcello gave up.“Just play something else!” she recalled saying.Her frustration may be familiar to fans of classical music in the streaming age. The algorithms of Spotify, Apple and Amazon are carefully engineered to steer listeners to pop hits, and Schubert and Puccini can get lost in the metadata.
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Woody Allen is directing Gianni Schicchi at La Scala.
The film director, hounded out of Manhattan by his former wife and stepchildren, is staging Gianni Schicchi at the home of Italian opera, courtesy of Alexander Pereira.As always with Slipped Disc, the comments are worth a look.
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Composer David Bruce has a number of videos over at YouTube. This one, about the uses of silence, is quite interesting:
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Yuja Wang has a unique approach to practicing:
That's how to get a really fortissimo chord!
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For our envoi today, let's listen to a track from the new CD of the chamber music of Erika Fox. This is On Visiting Stravinsky's Grave at San Michele played by Richard Uttley. Blogger will not embed, so follow the link.
(When I accessed this clip on YouTube it had only nine views!)
9 comments:
I entered composer Erika Fox's name into the search engine at Spotify and lo! her album Paths is there, and then I did the same thing at Primephonic (supposed to be 'lossless' sound quality but I don't hear it, alas) and lo! her album Paths is there, and I'm listening to 'Paths Where the Mourners Tread', 23 minutes of angsty percussive introspection, written almost 40 years ago. (But it's at YouTube, too.) The title's from Philip Larkin, which I didn't recognize. "Each instrument takes the part of 'Reciter' [is that Larkin? or 'a thing' recognizable to adepts of one of the modern forms?] sometimes singly, sometimes in pairs or even trios. Thus there is often more than one melodic strain present at a given time. These are punctuated and unifi ed by various repetitive devices such as simple percussive rhythms, ostinati and humming, giving the piece a ritualistic quality." (Fox's note.) After this morning's 18 minutes of Nebal Maysaud, I'm relieved to be listening to a piece I can like. There's a review of the CD by Robert Hugill here.
Ha, I guess I should read the entire Friday Miscellanea before I post. 15 listens now of the Fox 'On Visiting Stravinsky's Grave at San Michele'. Would really like to know how many of the CDs are sold.
Oh, the comments on the Australians are great, aren't they, some of them. The ridiculous Carmelite bigot revanchists of Compiègne ought to have proactively sought out their local commissars and begged for re-education, then the messy guillotining wouldn't have been necessary.
I loved the idea of sending Othello and Desdemona to marriage counseling. Now that would make a great comic film. I can see Bill Murray as the counselor. Samuel L. Jackson as Othello and Rosario Dawson as Desdemona?
People sometimes lament the journalistic standards at the NYT and Guardians of the world but when one's local daily publishes nonsense like this (in anticipation of last Friday's OBF 'Bach in Motion' concert), I find myself thanking Heaven for the Times:
"Coming from 18th century Europe, Bach’s baroque leanings incorporate a good deal of Judeo-Christian ideas into his ornate musical compositions. The mythical religious journey often begins with a dark time leading through struggle in order to find the light at the end. DanceAbility’s collaboration with the University of Oregon and the Oregon Bach Festival chooses not to mirror this trope, but rather to reveal that this darkness will lead to light. But what is important is the personal transformation along what can be a joyous and a perilous pilgrimage to salvation."
The poor author, perhaps an intern, wanted to write (I think) that there are joyful moments too on the road to wherever, that it's not all dark demeaning struggle (as the mythical Judaeo-Christians would have it), but couldn't quite get there [the concert featured people with a variety of disabilities being in motion/moving/dancing whilst the orchestra played this and that piece of Bach], or else thought that the professionals at the newspaper would edit his copy. Bach's baroque leanings probably wouldn't have led him to anticipate this concert, nor did mine take me to it (although that was more a decision about the practicalities than about anything else).
I used to count the limes of civilization as that boundary within which you could get the Sunday New York Times the same day. Alas, those days are gone, plus now we have the Internet. But yes, the NYT does still employ people with education and some knowledge of history even though I may think their ideology is a bit out of whack.
People with a level of ignorance high enough to write prose such as you quote used to at least be aware and perhaps ashamed of their deficiency. No longer. "Bach's baroque leanings..." Oh, dear Lord...
Re the NYT article on classical music streaming
This issue can be seen on Amazon and it is only getting worse. I assume what Amazon does is the model for the rest of the world now. Their music section (streaming, CDs and Vinyl) is organized by bots not people. The few people left just handle complaints. Searches are including increasingly bizarre results. I saw Cosi fan tutte with Bob Marley as the artist, I saw a Das Lied von der Erde with the image of mens shirts. The list could go on and on. Part of the problem is that the bots don't handle foreign words well so they will try to find some other word they like better and substitute it. Amazon also throws all kinds of user reviews together regardless of whether they apply to that item. Their theory I guess is that items sell better with reviews and stars regardless of whether they earned it.
Streaming itself is negative for classical music IMO because people don't tend to stream Albums even pop Albums except for the very biggest artists. So extended works are broken up into short tracks as Amazon also does. Streaming tends to be by genre or a customized set or a particular artist, rather than a particular perfromance. Of course most people are streaming music over the mobile or the computer rather than a dedicated audio system.
Grim times for all the reasons you mention. But for the few of us still clinging to our CD players and audio systems it is a kind of golden age. I have the complete editions of Haydn and Mozart sitting on my shelf, big boxes of Schubert, Bach, Debussy, etc--and all at a bargain price.
Yes really for the last 20 years I have picked up all kinds of things both vinyl and CD that would have been difficult to find through the usual record store. I am a member of a Music Forum and the consensus is that the classical divisions of the brontosaurus labels are getting ready to pull the plug on the CD in the next couple of years. Hence they are issuing their back catalog in all these large boxes. So I wouldn't wait if there are boxes you want. As an opera fan I am just glad at all the more obscure operas that were released on CD that never appeared on vinyl. I am pretty much set at this point. The issue is going to be maintaining the CD players over the years as they are also disappearing. I have a particular problem as an audiophile as I am very fussy about their sonics so I have less to choose from.
I think I got my Harmon/Kardon CD player just in time as they aren't making it any more.
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