Friday Miscellanea

First up, Leonard Bernstein gives a lesson in how to play "digiddy-dum" on triangle:

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This explains a lot:

Funny, I don't see Blogger anywhere there...

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Sometimes we just need a little reminder that art is one of the most precious elements of our lives and our souls. And sometimes it is artists, who are often neglected, who feel that no-one understands or appreciates what they are doing, who above all need a bit of reassuring. This is one of the most touching scenes from the British tv series Doctor Who. They have gone a bit back in time in the TARDIS and end up visiting Vincent van Gogh in Provence. He, you might recall, did not sell a single painting in his lifetime and died as unknown and neglected as a painter can be. The Doctor and his lovely companion, take Vincent on a trip in the TARDIS to the Musée d'Orsay in 2010 to see a little exhibit of his work. While there he learns that his life was not wasted after all...

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Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the playing of Khatia Buniatishvili, but this combination of a particularly high-octane virtuoso piece by Liszt, souped up by Horowitz to even higher levels of fireworks, performed by Khatia in a red sparkly dress that through some miracle of design managed to stay on throughout the whole performance renders me more or less speechless. It took real courage to wear that dress on stage. Especially given the sforzato accents...

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The Guardian has a new educational series on classical music. Debussy: where to start with his music. There are others on Shostakovich and Schubert.

It was a description he always rejected, but Claude Debussy (1862-1918) is often thought of as an impressionist, a musical equivalent to Monet or Renoir. But he was much more than a composer of ravishingly delicate piano pieces and luminously coloured orchestral tapestries. Together with Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg, Debussy was one of the great pioneers of modernism. Without him, the course of 20th-century music might have been very different, and his influence is still felt today.

True, that! A friend of mine did a doctorate in composition with Morton Feldman at SUNY Stony Brook and one of the questions on his final exam was "How did Debussy influence music in the 20th century?" One of those succinct questions that needs an eight-thousand word answer.

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The big question here in North America is when and how can we get back to live concerts again. In Bavaria they seem to have this figured out and Slipped Disc has the rules and procedures.

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And also from Slipped Disc is the answer, to be found in the comments: CANADA LOSES REST OF ITS OPERA SEASON.

in Europe it is Governments order and social mission to keep the arts accessible to the people. So to each seat and ticket the government pays a subvention. Because the costs of the chorus, singers, production costs, technicians, orchestra are much higher than the ticket income.

In the USA and Canada – without these subventions – the cost of one seat for an opera show would exceed several thousands of dollars, if you play only for 300-500 spectators… And then the house would stay completely empty.

In Europe the governments are willing to support the performing arts to the extent that it is possible to put on symphony and opera performances with every other seat empty. In North America, this would bankrupt every organization in a couple of weeks. So what will happen to musicians in North America? It is anybody's guess, but we know two things: they won't be receiving a paycheck anytime soon, and, they won't be getting jobs in restaurants either.

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There is an amazing number of articles this week that are not actually worth reading because they either rehash what we have heard before many times, and that would include this article: (Ethno)Music(ology): 12 Scholars Respond to a Field Undergoing a Key Change. Sample quote:

In discussing the fraught history of scholarly (and non-scholarly) music study, Roe-Min Kok of McGill’s Schulich School of Music explains: “Classical music is a very, very old profession, where the training and professional practices have feudal roots.” Typically, a music student progresses from instructor to instructor under an informal system of patronage, whereby connections are shared and rewards bestowed. “The ones who do best in this system tend to be white, male, and from privileged backgrounds.”

Or they manage to say nothing at all and do so in a very chaotic fashion: Is Pandemic Brain Changing Your Taste in Music? You're Not Alone.

After that we need to listen to some music!

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Here is an absolutely lovely envoi, L'Art de Toucher le Clavecin of François Couperin played by Blandine Rannou.

And for something completely different, here is a piece by Takemitsu for guitar with the 6th tuned to E-flat and the 2nd tuned to B-flat. Very interesting sonority.