In addition to their traditional duties within established institutions, an increasing number of conductors run independent organizations, launch musical and civic initiatives, serve as catalysts for the development of new work, and use their positions to cross disciplinary boundaries. In bypassing institutional gatekeepers, these conductors have brought relevance, vitality, and an expanding number of previously unrepresented voices into the field. Indeed, the dynamic new “catalyst-conductor” could help bring the revitalization that the classical music industry so desperately seeks.Well, yeah, but that sounds rather a lot like corporate happy-talk.
At the small-budget organizations I led, I was involved not only in the musical and programming activities but also oversaw marketing, fundraising, production, and other areas. I learned about all aspects of administration, moved percussion instruments, built opera sets, recruited board members, folded solicitation letters, and created budgetary spreadsheets. It was an insanely packed life that was only possible to sustain for a limited period. Throughout most of my 20s, my peak score study hours were 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., after the rehearsals and meetings were complete, emails were answered, and I could have a solid chunk of time without interruption.That sounds more like today's "gig economy." The whole article is worth reading for its examination of the changing role of conductors.
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The New Statesman has a piece on the perennial (and extremely tiresome) topic of Beethoven's political dimension. Beethoven’s political resonance: Beethoven was a musical revolutionary – but was he a political one, too? Let's see if the author brings anything new to the table:
On 2 July 2019, the 29 Brexit Party MEPs attending the European Parliament in Strasbourg turned their backs as a saxophone quartet and an opera singer performed the European anthem. Their protest caused discord. The European Parliament’s then president, Antonio Tajani, said it was “a question of respect”. Richard Corbett, the Labour Party’s leader in Europe, described the gesture as “pathetic”. The tune of the anthem in question is “Ode to Joy”, an extract from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.Argh! I think anyone with a shred of musical decency would not only turn their backs on a rendition of the theme from the last movement of the Symphony No. 9 by Beethoven performed on saxophone quartet and singer, but would flee from the scene post-haste. After mentioning some of the ways that Beethoven's music has been seen to have a political aspect she goes on to say:
The significance of this political undercurrent has not been overlooked – in 2012 Nicholas Mathew published a biography entitled Political Beethoven – and it is also the chief motivation behind John Clubbe’s new study of the composer, Beethoven: The Relentless Revolutionary. In it he argues that Beethoven’s “complex greatness” can be attributed largely to his engagement with the political turmoil of the time; that his revolutionary spirit, inspired by Napoleon, gave way to revolutionary music.The writer, Emily Bootle, does quite a good job of walking us through Beethoven's personal history as well as the way he has been mythologized over the years. In reviewing the new book by John Clubbe, she makes this very good point:
Without musical analysis, the argument for political influence becomes one of correlation rather than causation: to believe the music is politically charged, surely we need to know what exactly makes it so.
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Alex Ross has a piece up at the New Yorker: Erich Wolfgang Korngold, the Opera Composer Who Went Hollywood.
“That sounds like film music” is a put-down that deserves to be retired. The usual intention is to dismiss a work as splashy kitsch. Over the past century, though, enough first-rate music has been written for the movies that the charge rings false. Hollywood composers have employed so many different styles that the term “film music” has little descriptive value. Worst is when the pejorative is used to discount figures who brought distinctive personalities to the scoring business, thereby elevating it. Such was the fate of the composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who began his career, in Vienna, as one of the most astonishing child prodigies in musical history and who reached maximum fame writing film scores, in Los Angeles, in the nineteen-thirties and forties. A master of late-Romantic opulence, Korngold shaped the sonic texture of Golden Age Hollywood. To say that his work sounds like movie music is an elementary fallacy, a confusion of cause and effect.Ok, that's a pretty good opening argument. Ross goes on to give us some detail about Korngold and to talk about the music performed at the Bard Music Festival. Well worth reading. But let's take a look at that opening argument. What does it mean to say that something "sounds like film music"? Could there be any actual musical qualities that are being referred to? Perhaps some might be splashy kitsch, but that is rather a straw man. Film music might indeed use some striking orchestrations and textures, but what really distinguishes it is that it is an accompaniment to a visual and dramatic narrative. In other words, the story is on the screen, the soundtrack merely supports it (often by giving an ominous atmosphere to a mundane visual). For this reason, film scores tend to be weak in overall structure and have an episodic feel because it is not their job to drive the narrative, but to support it. A free-standing symphonic score, in contrast, carries the entire dramatic weight. And yes, it is pretty much that simple. The other reason Korngold was not given his due was that he was, like others in his generation, an apostate from the church of modernism and it was the modernists that controlled the historic narrative until fairly recently.
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Some surprising and depressing allegations against Plácido Domingo this week. Read the account in the LA Times for what seems a balanced treatment.
I happen to be listening, as I write, to a broadcast from this summer’s Proms in London of a glorious performance of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto featuring Martha Argerich as soloist. This is one the most popular concertos ever written (and turned into a pop song as well), and Argerich is an incomparable pianist.Well, Tchaikovsky happened to be a vile anti-Semite. And, Argerich happens to be an unrelenting defender of her ex-husband, the conductor Charles Dutoit, who has been accused of not only unwanted sexual advances but actual rape, which he denies. Argerich refuses to perform in the U.S. as long as Dutoit remains persona non grata here. He still gets gigs in Europe, Russia and Asia, where response to #MeToo charges generally is less reactive without a day in court. That is to say that norms are still not universal and may explain why Domingo remains welcome in Salzburg.
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Ludwig Van in Toronto has a really interesting discussion of how classical music is booming in China: The Piano Market Is Booming, And It's All Because Of China.
From 2013 to 2017, the number of orchestras in China leaped from 32 to 82. In 2019, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra celebrated its 140th season, and the orchestra, along with its conductor, was recently signed to the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label for a multi-year deal.It’s an unprecedented explosion of appreciation for Western classical music, and for one instrument in particular. There are many internationally prominent Asian violinists like Korean Kyung-wha Chung, but for the Chinese public, the influence of superstars Lang Lang, Yundi Li, and other pianists has created a tremendous momentum for the piano in particular. It is estimated that over 40 million Chinese kids are studying the piano today, with some sources going as high as 50 million.
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Can we have a Friday Miscellanea without a single item from Slipped Disc? Why yes, yes, we can!
For our envoi, the absolutely lovely Lucia's cavatina from Lucia di Lammermoor by Donizetti sung by Anna Netrebko with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic conducted by Yuri Temirkanov:
And another spectacular soprano, Regula Mülemann with two movements from Exsultate Jubilate by Mozart.
Why this focus on sopranos? Do I have to have a reason?
Saw yesterday that whoever does the Future Symphony Institute Twitter account is hoping that Alex Ross's essay provokes performances of Korngold's Symphony in F sharp. I've never heard it but after your post this morning will make an appointment for later today-- "an Adagio of almost shocking tragic power-- a funeral rite for the destroyed world of the composer’s youth". Hmm. Nor do I know any of his operas, although have seen references to the upcoming Der Tote Stadt at the Staatsoper in Munich.
ReplyDeleteThe Spanish, in particular, are defending Placido Domingo-- I've seen articles and posts every day since this all began. This is one of those situations wherein my imagination doesn't serve me very well: I cannot imagine repeatedly approaching someone, an object of my, ahem, affections, after repeated rebuffs. The fraught relationship of spouses, I get that, back and forth and forth and back-- but the sort of nonsense Don Placido is accused of, eh. Tsk.
Yes, I will have to look into Korngold. I listened to some of his stuff years ago, but don't remember what I thought.
ReplyDeleteRight now I am listening to Plácido Domingo sing the Mahler Das Lied von der Erde and he really sounds great. About the scandal I really don't know what to think. Is this based on real events or cobbled up over decades of ambiguous incidents? These days it is hard to tell.
I have mentioned elsewhere that I developed a strong interest in the group of composers I called the pronto Hollywoods as an alternative to the serialists. Korngold had an unfortunate situation in that his father was the leading music critic of Vienna and thus of central Europe. He was an excellent critic but vitriolic in his disdain for modernism (but he liked Mahler and Zemlinsky so he wasn't reactionary). He made it impossible for Erich to pursue a normal serious music career with his constant interventionism. So Erich turned to operetta and did much to restore Johann Strauss with his rearrangements and revisions and conducting.
ReplyDeleteWhat is forgotten now is that Erich was apparently one of the most astonishing conductors of that era. However his father made it impossible for him to get normal conducting positions. But such figures as Richard Strauss and Toscanini marveled at his conducting abilities. The only example I have with decent sonics is his suite Much Ado About Nothing on a Varese Sarabande LP. It is jaw dropping.
Well, been a while since I've commented but I've been busy doing some writing. I've finally gotten around to discussing how Roger Scruton's criticism of serialism and aleatory turns out to more or less recapitulate arguments made by Adorno. Adorno's argument against serialism and aleatory (i.e. Boulez and John Cage) was that these techniques for making music ultimately obliterate the role of the decision-making subject, i.e. relieve the composer of having to make any decisions. Trouble is ... Adorno's rejection of tonality as "used up" meant that Adorno's position amounted to a more or less inescapable double bind.
ReplyDeletehttps://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2019/08/between-forms-of-non-choice-adornos.html
So ... if I may contribute a piece for consideration this weekend ... that's my piece.
Thanks to both Maury and Wentachee for their comments. Wenatchee, I am reading your long and detailed post and may have a few brief things to say about it. These are precisely the kinds of problems I have wrestled with as a composer. In the meantime, I encourage everyone to follow the link and read the post!
ReplyDeleteI appreciate Wenatchee's clear and cogent analysis. But I fear the introspection of the classical world has gone on too long. The issue for composers or anyone in the current world is clicks and views. Depending on bureaucratic organizations or a few sugar daddies and mommies for substantial funding of composition and even performance is likely to have diminishing returns now in the absence of the former. Depressingly, even superstars are no longer making money from recordings, only from concertizing, derivatives and endorsements. So the clicks and views would not in and of themselves support classical artists and orchestras, but would indirectly help with concerts and third party funding.
ReplyDeleteMaury, where are you based?
ReplyDeleteThere are no bears in San Miguel, I hope? (Slipped Disc, of course.) I wonder which composer's is the most outré cause of death? Requiescat in pace.
ReplyDeleteNo, Marc, no bears here! So I guess I should have checked out Slipped Disc on Friday. I had the idea that composer Matyas Seiber was eaten by lions in Africa, but that might not be true.
ReplyDeleteThere is a piece for solo flute at YouTube, one on France Musique from last year, and a few other items at his website; I pasted links together here.
ReplyDeleteHis body may have been eaten by lions but Wikipedia says a car crash was the cause of death.