Friday Miscellanea

 Tempers are starting to fray among musicians after months of being unable to perform: Van Morrison blasts Covid gig limits as 'pseudoscience'

Van Morrison has denounced the supposed “pseudoscience” around coronavirus and is attempting to rally musicians in a campaign to restore live music concerts with full capacity audiences.

The 74-year-old Northern Irish singer launched a campaign to “save live music” on his website, saying socially distanced gigs were not economically viable. “I call on my fellow singers, musicians, writers, producers, promoters and others in the industry to fight with me on this. Come forward, stand up, fight the pseudo-science and speak up,” he said.

There is no doubt that the current situation is impossible for musicians.

* * *

Now, adapted for Music Salon readers:

Top 7 Warning Signs on a CD shelf:

1. Luciano Pavarotti Sings The Beatles
2. A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector
3. Kris Kristofferson Does Mozart
4. Grindcore: 85 Minutes of Brutal Heavy Metal
5. Complete Collection of Brahms Polkas
6. 20 Great Accordion Hits: Dermot O'Brien
7. Guillaume de Machault: Non-Stop Dancing 1350!

Ok, only some of those are real albums.

* * *

A really remarkable cultural burglary: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE $8 MILLION HEIST FROM THE CARNEGIE LIBRARY.

The person who worked over the Oliver Room stole nearly everything of significant monetary value, sparing no country or century or subject. He took the oldest book in the collection, a collection of sermons printed in 1473, and also the most recognizable book, a first edition of Isaac Newton’s 98. He stole a first edition of The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, a letter written by William Jennings Bryan and a rare copy of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s 1898 memoir, Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences 1815-1897. He stole a first edition of a book written by the nation’s second president, John Adams, as well as a book signed by the third, Thomas Jefferson. He stole the first English edition of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, printed in London in 1620, and the first edition of George Eliot’s Silas Marner, printed in the same city 241 years later. From John James Audubon’s 1851-54 Quadrupeds of North America, he stole 108 of the 155 hand-colored lithographs.

In short, he took nearly everything he could get his hands on. And he did it with impunity for close to 25 years.

Read the whole thing for the solution to the mystery.

* * *

The controversial Dave Brubeck? Strange times.

Dave Brubeck, in his lifetime, was the litmus paper of jazz, and most listeners turned red at the sight of him – either from rage at what they called his swingless, thumping pianistics, or out of embarrassment at having to admit that they rather liked what he did. Before Miles Davis went electric and Ornette Coleman bloomed, Brubeck was the surest name to start an argument. A cynical section of the jazz audience perceived his experimental nature as a search for a catchy idiom that might eventually bring him the triumph of a hit. And of course, this line of argument claimed a win when “Take Five” propelled the world onto the dance floor in 5/4 time.

* * *

Signs of life: LIVERPOOL PHIL IS FIRST UK ORCHESTRA TO RESTART

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra is to resume live performances with audience from October 1.

Each concert will be one hour with no interval. Seating is limited to 240 people, with two-metre social distancing. The orchestra, also be socially distanced on stage, will be limited to 30 players.

Or sort of restart.

* * *

On the other hand: 64% musicians considering leaving the music profession.

On average musicians have lost £11,300 in cancelled bookings as a result of the pandemic

50% have no bookings in the diary for the remainder of 2020 (average for same period last year was 27 bookings)

64% say they are thinking about leaving the music profession

40% have applied for a non-music job since March

This is in the UK, but it is likely even worse in North America. And if musicians are looking for work outside music, just where are they going to find it?

* * *

Is this just another example of the New York Times pushing a narrative? Orchestras Looking to Broaden Horizons? Start Improvising.

Why won’t big American orchestras improvise? The answer might have something to do with a tough night for Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic back in 1964.

The great conductor wanted his audience to give serious consideration to John Cage’s chance-based music. But Bernstein couldn’t even get his musicians to put on straight faces. Some played scales instead of the material in Cage’s notated (yet flexible) “Atlas Eclipticalis.” To Cage’s chagrin, Bernstein also led the orchestra in improvisations — which Cage considered a different tradition altogether.

Most of the crowd audibly hated the results. Ever since, American orchestral life has pretty much insisted on fully fixed scores. Improvisation has largely been left to the very occasional special guest, like the pianist Aaron Diehl — who, after studying both classical and jazz traditions, sometimes improvises during a Gershwin concerto.

Why yes!

The improvising composer-performers Henry Threadgill and Anthony Davis have been among the winners of the Pulitzer Prize for music in the last five years. The trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith was a finalist for the Pulitzer in 2013. All three have collaborated with Mr. Braxton — as have Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Lewis. And all six of these composers have written large-ensemble or orchestral music, most of which has rarely if ever been played by major American orchestras. (Some of these orchestral works are fully notated.)

And all of these musicians are Black. Beginning to program their orchestral music — including works that stretch the orchestral sound into improvisation — would be one way to address larger patterns of racial exclusion in classical music.

Lots of composers use various forms of indeterminate notation to give freedom to the performers, myself included. Moment form is one example, where the motifs are written, but can be played in various orders. Lutosławski has passages in many orchestral works where the players have freedom to improvise within certain limits. John Cage is an example of many different kinds of performer freedom as are Morton Feldman and Karlheinz Stockhausen. And all of these musicians are white. So what?

* * *

Over at The New Yorker Alex Ross continues his never-ending quest to let us know that this is Wagner's world, we just live in it: How Wagner Shaped Hollywood.

“The Birth of a Nation” set the pace for a century of Wagnerian aggression on film. More than a thousand movies and TV shows feature the composer on their soundtracks, yoking him to all manner of rampaging hordes, marching armies, swashbuckling heroes, and scheming evildoers. The “Ride” turns up in a particularly dizzying variety of scenarios. In “What’s Opera, Doc?,” Elmer Fudd chants “Kill da wabbit” while pursuing Bugs Bunny. In John Landis’s “The Blues Brothers” (1980), the “Ride” plays while buffoonish neo-Nazis chase the heroes down a highway and fly off an overpass. Most indelibly, Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” (1979) upends Griffith’s racial duality, making white Americans the heralds of destruction: a helicopter squadron blares the “Ride” as it lays waste to a Vietnamese village.

* * *

Also at the New York Times, Anthony Tommasini muses on the silence of the virus: For a Music Critic, a Vacation That’s All Too Quiet.

Typically, the end of August through Labor Day is an ideal time for me to take a two-week vacation. Classical music tends to take that time off, too. After a jam-packed concert season and a slew of summer festivals, everything seems to stop for a bit before the ramp-up to fall.

The shutdowns have been devastating for American classical music, given its dependence on patronage — which has been eroding of late — and the lack of meaningful government support, which still props up institutions in Europe. It’s depressing to read all the social media posts by accomplished freelance artists who have been without work for months and can have a bleak view of the future.

Were it not for the virus, I would be posting this from Salzburg.

* * *

We need a nice couple of envois today, do we not? We haven't had any John Cage in a long time, so here is a clip of the actual 1964 performance of John Cage's Atlas Eclipticalis by Leonard Bernstein. There is a long introduction by Bernstein and the Cage piece actually starts at the 11:34 mark:

You know, it might have gone better without the lengthy and pompous introduction. "Standard 12-tone technique"? Let's have something quite different. Here is the Ride of the Valkyries by Wagner from the opera Die Walkure with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Daniel Barenboim.