Friday Miscellanea

The Plácido Domingo affair continues to unfold: Domingo withdraws from Met Opera after harassment reports.

The Metropolitan Opera announced Tuesday that Plácido Domingo had agreed to withdraw from his slate of scheduled performances at the opera house following allegations of sexual harassment made by multiple women in two Associated Press stories. The opera legend indicated that he would never again perform at the Met.

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We have obtained a pre-publication look at an upcoming Babylon Bee article titled: Opera companies in the US, unable to confirm that no tenors, basses or baritones have committed sexual harassment against their co-stars, promise that all future productions will feature women-only casts. Directors of Russian opera productions most affected.

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Warning: exposure to this next clip may make you feel that life is no longer worth living, at least if you happen to love the middle movement of the Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo:

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I don't know if music is in such dire straits that this is the most creative and interesting musician practicing today, but it certainly seems as if the MacArthur people think so: SMALL PICKINGS: JUST ONE MUSICIAN AMONG 26 MACARTHUR GENIUS GRANTS.

Among the 26 creators and thinkers who will each receive $625,000 MacArthur Fellowships over the next five years, there is one musician.

Here’s the citation

Mary Halvorson, 38, guitarist and composer

“Experimenting at the intersection of jazz and rock with a signature sound on her instrument and an aesthetic that evolves and surprises with each new album and configuration of bandmates.”

And the clip:

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Another in the seeming never-ending series of stories about long hidden sexual harassment in the world of classical music: Music's Perpetually Open Secret. The discussion there is very hard to excerpt, so go read the whole thing.

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Anne Midgette, one of my favourite music critics, is resigning from her post at the Washington Post.

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I am developing this theory about the social presence of music: all discussion of music in mainstream society must now revolve around politics and specifically identity politics because the general public no longer has the knowledge or interest in the aesthetic aspects of music. Case in point, this initiative: Hearing injustice a concert based on a group of pieces responding to the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

As Portland composer Kenji Bunch watched last year’s confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh, which included accusations of sexual assault, he “had this weird idea of a concert” based on the hearings.

“It was such a fraught moment, a watershed event,” Bunch recalled. “Something about the theatricality of that hearing just seemed to me that it could work for this kind of artistic exploration.”

Another piece I saw today was about the role of black composers in American music. What is common to both of these stories and, frankly, to just about all the other stories in the mainstream media, is that the subject matter is immediately comprehensible to any reader, even if they have absolutely no knowledge of nor interest in music as such. Everyone understands the ideas of sexual harassment and racism. No need to explain anything. On the surface at least. And if there are explanations they are political or social ones, nothing to do with the music as music.

I have just been reading some of the journalism that was written about Stravinsky's Rite of Spring around the time of its premiere and it is remarkable how it focussed on the music itself and the choreography of the ballet. Magazines even published pages from the score as musical examples. The whole focus was on the aesthetic innovations of the music. Not a trace of that in the above article! This is as close as they get to actual mention of the music:

She and Bunch both believe classical music brings unique authority to bear on today’s issues. “We have a richer harmonic palette that lets you explore complex emotional things without words, so people can bring their own meaning to them,” she says.

And, of course, that comment about a "richer harmonic palette" is mere hand-waving likely based on no actual musical facts. I seriously doubt that their "harmonic palette" is any richer than that of Stravinsky or Schoenberg.

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 That brings us to our envois for today, of which we will have two. First, a piece for piano trio and percussion by Kenji Bunch. (I have heard the Ahn Trio play music by Kenji Bunch in a couple of concerts in our summer chamber music festival.)

Good stuff, but the harmonic palette is not hugely rich. Next, the Piano Concerto, op. 42 by Arnold Schoenberg: