20th Century Eccentrics

I'm really stumped to put a tag on this one--not even my catch-all "aesthetics" one will fit! What I want to talk about are those rare unique individuals who set off on their own, exploring musical realms that no-one else has. These figures rarely make any kind of impression on the musical mainstream, or even classical music institutions and are often discovered only decades later, sometimes after they have died.

The one interesting exception to the usual profile is John Cage who was most certainly a musical eccentric following a unique path of his own, but also who managed to achieve a remarkable amount of career success despite this. He is one eccentric who everyone knows by name. I think the main reasons for this were that he always managed to move in closely-knit avant-garde circles and he also had a gift for promotion. He came up with a number of ideas that became so notorious that they were newsworthy. The most prominent of these is probably his silent piece, 4'33, but we should also include his pieces based on the I Ching and a few other ones. He was also a gifted writer and published a number of books, such as Silence, that effectively communicated his aesthetic vision. None of our other eccentrics had much success in self-promotion and most didn't even try. Before we move on, here is a sample of Cage's promotional skills, a 1960 appearance on the popular TV show "I've Got a Secret."

The next eccentric I want to discuss is the very reclusive Conlon Nancarrow who spent much of his life living in obscurity in Mexico. His path was to discover the potential of the manual excising of player piano rolls in order to explore possibilities that no living pianist could execute. You might say he discovered electronic music through mechanical means. Here is his Study No. 40:

Oddly enough, both Cage and Nancarrow were born in 1912.

Pauline Oliveros, born in 1932, is from one generation later and she was a very early explorer of the possibilities of electronic music. She spent most of her life teaching and working in California where she was associated with various colleges and universities. She is particularly known for the concept of "deep listening:" 

an aesthetic based upon principles of improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation. This aesthetic is designed to inspire both trained and untrained performers to practice the art of listening and responding to environmental conditions in solo and ensemble situations

Here is Bye bye butterfly, a 1967 piece by Oliveros:

 Our final eccentric is another Californian, Harry Partch, born in 1901, the oldest of the group. He focussed on the idea of microtuning and as a result had to invent all his own instruments, which he did with great ingenuity. I think my favorite is the Boo-Bam, a kind of sub-bass marimba which I had the great pleasure of playing when I was a graduate student. Here is a performance of Castor and Pollux, composed in 1952.

Update on Tár

The film Tár fascinates me because it seems to deal with a lot of important issues and questions. Unfortunately, because of where I am, I'm not sure I will be able to see the film anytime soon. There is a lengthy review in The New Yorker that is frustrating because after reading it (or most of it) I still have no idea of the truth of the film, whether it is moral crap or not, whether it captures any reality or not. The writer seems to go to great lengths to prevent any such evaluations.

Is the movie saying that if we cancel the greats, we’ll be left only with mass, technology-driven culture? That there is only a superficial difference between a cosplaying fan and a self-mythologizing artist? That Lydia is already in Hell, playing to an audience of demons? That she possesses true artistic purity, because she loves conducting enough to do it at such a debased level? That she has no financial choice? That in being forced to really sublimate her ego, she might find renewal in music, instead of in power? These questions came to me later. In the moment, I registered only an enormous gulf. Lydia is still engaging in the act of making art. But the artist—that is, the person who knows she is connected to others—has separated herself with great success. She’s never been so untouchable.

Uh-huh, well I imagine watching the film might answer a few of those questions! The New Yorker is so attuned to the cultural moment that their writers regard with horror the idea of any kind of plausible evaluation of artistic quality. Waaayy too many other considerations to interpolate. A long while back I commented that Alex Ross would probably rather stab himself in the ears with knitting needles than actually criticize a piece of contemporary music. That principle still seems operative at The New Yorker. Or, heck, in most media and popular culture.

Have any of my readers seen the film and would like to comment?

Public Service Announcements

In retrospect one of the most influential professors in my years at university was not even in the music department--he was a newly-hired philosophy professor teaching Philosophy 100, a first year introduction. I actually spoke to him a few months ago on the phone and thanked him for his inspiration. He was impressed that I am a composer (I didn't tell him how insignificant a composer!).

One of the things he liked to do from time to time was what he called "public service announcements" at the beginning of class before we got into the nitty-gritty. I had a theory professor who did something similar--what he called "ear training" that usually consisted of playing us a particularly unusual piece of music, like a player-piano study by Conlon Nancarrow. The only instance I can recall at this late date from my philosophy professor was when he warned us against hard contact lenses one day.

But I would like to take up the tradition and offer some thoughts on things that lie outside the usual boundaries of the Music Salon. Maybe they will even be useful to some readers.

There is a massive transfer of wealth going on right now from the Boomer generation to their children as many people in their 40s inherit fairly sizable sums of money. I experienced this myself quite a few years ago and can offer some advice. First of all, whatever your current level of understanding is, you will now have to enter the world of investment and finance. The alternative is to hand over your assets to financial advisors or flip-flam operators--and sometimes it is hard to tell the difference. Just look at FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried. The standard path for many is to walk into your bank and purchase whatever mutual funds they recommend. You could do worse, but you could certainly do better. The problem with mutual funds is that there are management expenses that over time can seriously reduce your gains. Another problem is that statistics show that over 90% of active managers do not beat the market. The obvious solution is simply to buy the market, an option offered by what are called "index funds" that simply track a stock index. I think an even better solution is to buy an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that tracks the index. The three biggest ones are SPY which tracks the S&P 500 list of the biggest and best US companies, DIA which tracks the Dow Jones Industrial Average and QQQ which tracks the NASDAQ. A conservative plan is to put 60% into equities (stocks) which make up these indices and 40% into bonds. But this should shift over time. When you are younger you should put more into stocks and less into bonds and vice-versa as you grow older. As no-one really knows where the markets are going over the short-term there is no point in paying experts for their financial advice.

Ethics: this should be a central concern for everyone, but it is surprising how little thought is put into it. There are three main ethical theories: deontology, which emphasizes duties or rules (such as do unto others as you would have them do unto you), consequentialism (which used to be referred to as utilitarianism) which strives to achieve the best result for the greatest number and virtue ethics, which actually goes back to Aristotle. From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

What distinguishes virtue ethics from consequentialism or deontology is the centrality of virtue within the theory. Whereas consequentialists will define virtues as traits that yield good consequences and deontologists will define them as traits possessed by those who reliably fulfil their duties, virtue ethicists will resist the attempt to define virtues in terms of some other concept that is taken to be more fundamental. Rather, virtues and vices will be foundational for virtue ethical theories and other normative notions will be grounded in them.

I'm a virtue ethicist as I have long been of the opinion that a lot of the other ethical theories tend to obscure our basic intuitions about virtue and vice. We tend to know virtue and vice when we see them! Interestingly, moral philosophy shares similar methods and problems with aesthetics.

I will make no comments on political issues as there is no surer way to create outrage and dissention! But I will say that I think a modicum of individual liberty is fairly important.

So let's end with one of those pieces for player-piano by Conlon Nancarrow.

UPDATE: If you want to do your own research on investing, I recommend Stocks for the Long Run by Jeremy J. Siegel.

Friday Miscellanea

 I'm always pretty much in favor of creative originality: BARBARA HANNIGAN AIMS TO CHANGE CONCERTGEBOUW VIBE

The concert on Thursday, 1 December is a compact, intimate Late Night programme without interval, in which the audience will be seated on cushions on the floor of the Concertgebouw’s Main Hall. The orchestra will perform Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen and Claude Vivier’s Lonely Child featuring Aphrodite Patoulidou. The Greek soprano will also be performing a Greek lullaby, accompanying herself on the nyckelharpa, a traditional Swedish string instrument.

On Friday 2 and Sunday 4 December Strauss and Vivier will be part of a more regular concert with interval, which will also feature Samuel Barber’s Mutations from Bach and Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto with soloist Vilde Frang. The programme is a musical voyage of ‘memory, loss, solitude, youthful innocence and coming of age’, in Hannigan’s words.

* * *

Here is a brief comment on a new book on James Bond and the Beatles: *Love and Let Die*. Remarkably, the Beatles first single, "Love Me Do" and the first Bond film, Dr. No were released on the same day in 1962. Personally, I think the early Beatles endure a lot better than the Bond films, but that's just me. This is a fascinating excerpt from the book:

In 1978, George married Olivia Arias and in the same year they had a son, Dhani.  Dhani only discovered his father’s past when he was at school.  ‘I came home one day from school after being chased by kids singing “Yellow Submarine”, and I didn’t understand why,’ he has said.  ‘It just seemed surreal: why are they singing that song to me?  I came home and freaked out to my dad: “Why didn’t you tell me you were in the Beatles?”  And he said: “Oh, sorry. Probably should have told you that.”  It’s impossible to imagine, John, Paul or Ringo neglecting to mention they were in the Beatles to their children.

* * *

From the annals of "who pays the piper calls the tune":  English National Opera will close before it accepts move to Manchester, says chair

It’s do or die time for the English National Opera. Earlier this month Arts Council England, a Government body, said it would stop funding the ENO unless it agreed to move from London to Manchester. Now ENO chairman Harry Brunjes says the company will close rather than move up north.

“There is no relocation,” he told MPs on Wednesday. “This is closing ENO down. This is losing 600 jobs from London.” The forced move is part of the levelling up agenda, but there are mixed signals.

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‘Well of Souls’ Review: The Banjo’s Backstory

The banjo gets a bum rap. A staple of American country music, its bright tone and rhythmic clangor threaten to overwhelm musical gatherings of other, milder string-band instruments, such as guitar, mandolin, bass and fiddle. This piercing, metallic quality has made it the butt of a host of musicians’ jokes (“What’s the difference between a banjo and a chainsaw?” “A chainsaw has a dynamic range”). In her compelling, thoroughly researched history, Kristina R. Gaddy reveals a different instrument entirely, one intimately rooted in the African diaspora and capable of expressing flights of sorrow and joy.

Popular culture has tended to obscure the banjo’s roots as a warm, wooden instrument built by enslaved Africans in the Americas for use in dancing and on holy days.

* * *

What Was the Music Critic?

In September 2022, a music critic named Anthony Fantano received a string of angry Instagram D.M.s from Drake. Fantano reviews new albums in short YouTube posts, in which he monologues directly at the camera, standing in front of stacked, cherry-red record shelves. In a recent post, he had likened Drake’s latest release, Honestly, Nevermind, to “a sad solo dance party.” “Your existence is a light 1,” the Canadian rapper clapped back, a reference to Fantano’s practice of rating records on a 1–10 scale. Uncharitable, perhaps. But the fact that Drake—a global superstar who is generally cagey toward journalists—bothered to inveigh against a critic at all spoke to Fantano’s status: He may be one of the few working music critics who can, in this day and age, be conceivably called a tastemaker. It was the sort of ego-first collision of artist and critic that’s in increasingly short supply.

* * *

On the history of ballet: Pirouette power

History books will inform you that ballet properly begins in the late sixteenth century, with the elaborate marriage and birthday celebrations at the French court, drawing their imagery from the cabalistic and astrological geometry of Neoplatonic humanism. This may be true in terms of aesthetic theory, but in executive practice ballet also reflected more immediately the discipline of the military parade ground, with its insistence on straight lines, regular steps, and peremptory commands emanating from a central figure. For Louis XIV, courtly ballet at Versailles was, in the words of the historian and critic Jennifer Homans, “a matter of state” and yet “more than a blunt instrument with which to display royal opulence and power, a symbol and requirement of aristocratic identity.” And even when courtiers weren’t dancing, every move and gesture, every bow and curtsey in the royal presence was choreographed according to a strictly elegant etiquette.

* * * 

In case you don't know the work of Barbara Hannigan, here she is performing a Ligeti excerpt with Simon Rattle and the London Symphony:

And, what the heck, here is the Prelude to the Cello Suite No. 1 by Bach on banjo:

 And, of course, "Love Me Do"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pGOFX1D_jg

The Death of the Key Change

I started noticing this a decade ago. 

https://tedium.co/2022/11/09/the-death-of-the-key-change

Here is the story in a single graphic:

I usually think it’s lazy songwriting when a song injects energy by shifting up a half step or a whole step right around the last chorus.

This used to be called a "truck-driver modulation." 

We could probably do some charts on the narrowing of tempi, dynamics, melody and so on as well.

Tarring Bach

 I guess we have to talk about this scene from the movie Tár:

https://twitter.com/JoelWBerry/status/1593279643045564416?s=20&t=YEJ_LFkAo5ZK8k1YdWtnRA

The line that really stands out is this:

“If Bach’s talent can be reduced to his gender, birth country, religion, sexuality and so on, then so can yours”

I haven't seen the film, but perhaps we can discuss just this scene? I have the idea that Cate Blanchett's character might be a villain, but again maybe we can just take this scene for itself.

Comments?

 

Friday Miscellanea

"Guitar on a Table" painted by Pablo Picasso in 1919, just sold for $37.1 million

 Oh how I wish actual classical guitarists could get well-paid too!

* * *

I’ve booed at the opera before. But what happened to a young soprano this week was plain cruel

There is nothing wrong in principle with protesting at the opera. I’ve very occasionally booed shows I hated, and I want to be free to do so again if I choose. Not everything on the opera, or any other stage, has always got to be cheered politely or given the reflexive standing ovations that seem ever more common. Booing and whistling at the opera or theatre can sometimes be healthy and necessary protest. It is actually a lot more common than you may think, especially on first nights, especially in continental Europe. I once even heard Luciano Pavarotti, no less, booed at La Scala in Milan.

What happened at Covent Garden on Tuesday evening, however, wasn’t booing but heckling. It was repeated and mean-spirited barracking during a touching and plaintive aria about the loss of a father. Most disturbingly of all, it was the heckling of a child. It took place during act one of Handel’s opera Alcina, to a boy character, Oberto. Covent Garden’s production gives Oberto a poignant prominence. The target was Malakai M Bayoh, a 12-year-old boy soprano who is alternating the role with another young singer during the six performances scheduled by the Royal Opera this month.

You really have to read the whole thing which is yet another example of the decline of civilized courtesy in society.

* * *

And speaking of concerts, the Washington Post discusses encores: Has the encore left the building?

“It’s kind of wild to me that [encores] lasted through the ’90s with bands who were sort of cynical of showbiz tactics, because it’s such an old showbiz idea. Of course there’s going to be smoke and mirrors no matter what, but the encore is a pretty overt lie to the audience,” says Max Collins, the frontman of Eve 6 and BuzzFeed’s newest advice columnist, though he added that in the right circumstances, an encore can be an exchange of generosity between artists and fans.

The article is all about encores in popular music performances. It's a bit different in the classical world.

* * *

On the acoustics of violins: Phantom notes played by violins turn out to be a real sound

Giovanni Cecchi at the University of Florence in Italy and his colleagues decided to investigate how different violins produce combination tones.

They analysed recordings of a professional violinist playing selected pairs of notes on five violins of different age and quality using a computer. Motivated by the ideas of 19th-century physicist Hermann von Helmholtz who showed that some musical instruments may be able to produce combination tones on their own, they decomposed the sound waves made by the violins into parts with different frequencies. The team found that all violins produced combination tones, but the oldest instruments produced the strongest ones. The magnitude of the most prominent combination tone for the oldest violin, made in Bologna in 1700, was about 75 per cent larger than the one from a modern mass-produced instrument.

* * * 

Music has influences in lots of interesting places: STILL HOT: Maurice Sendak’s ageless imagination

Music was an essential ingredient in Sendak’s creative process. “The work can’t happen without music,” he said in 1994. “I think everything I’ve done is a collaboration with a composer.” The catalogue contains a selection of Sendak’s “fantasy sketches,” each page a mini-drama with four to six rows of small black-pen line drawings moving from left to right—a wordless comic strip whose silent progression on the page has the feel of experimental musical notation. In fact, Sendak composed these pages while listening to music (such as Strauss’s “Death and Transfiguration” and Deems Taylor’s “Through the Looking Glass”)—the “catalyst,” he said, “that brought them to life [and] kept my pen moving across the paper.”

* * *

I've been a fan of the fortepiano for a long time so it is nice to see this article from Alex Ross: Kristian Bezuidenhout Unleashes the Subtle Power of the Fortepiano

“These older instruments, and even the modern copies, function so differently in rehearsal and in concert,” Bezuidenhout told me. “Sometimes you have this feeling in rehearsal: ‘Oh, yes, this is really making sense, the piano is really helping me.’ Then, in concert, they kind of turn on you. The five-octave pianos, especially, can betray you, leave you in the dust. You say to yourself, ‘Where is that sound I heard four hours ago?’ It may have to do with a change of humidity, or a way of reacting to the room. But it’s as if they can sense your level of stress, your preoccupation, and then they seize up—like some kind of really mean cat.”

Yes, fortepianos can smell your fear! Not to mention guitars.

Some didacts of the early-music world would maintain that certain composers must be performed on so-called original instruments. Bezuidenhout, in remarks from the stage at Hertz, distanced himself from the charged word “authentic,” describing his work as “historically inspired.” For me, the experience of hearing a broad range of repertory filtered through instruments of various eras had the effect of freeing the composers from the tyranny of norms. This recital captured, above all, a sense of music as an evolutionary art, reacting to technology in flux and history in motion.

* * *

Let's listen to some fortepiano. This is Kristian Bezuidenhout playing a Mozart sonata:

I don't think we have had much Richard Strauss lately, so here is his Death and Transfiguration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM0Y-Yly8jY

And let's have the earlier generation of fortepiano players: Malcolm Bilson playing a Mozart concerto:

Masterclasses

I ran into a rather clumsy interview on YouTube the other day that attempted to address the question "are masterclasses worth doing." I stopped watching after a couple of minutes, but I got the impression that the conclusion was going to be yes, they are. That would be my opinion as well, but with this proviso: it really depends on who is giving the class. Some guitarists are so taken with their own egos that they are not terribly helpful to students. Other guitarists are enormously helpful. I took masterclasses with José Tomás, Leo Brouwer, Dik Visser (Dutch guitarist), Manuel Barrueco, John Duarte, Oscar Ghiglia and Pepe Romero and I audited masterclasses by Abel Carlevaro and David Russell. Of all these, the most helpful were José Tomás and Pepe Romero. Everyone came out of those classes more relaxed and more confident.

Some maestros have the tendency to abuse their students which, in a public forum, is very unethical. John Williams hinted that Segovia had this propensity, but he was certainly not alone. One of the best things about masterclasses is what you can learn from other students and the wide variety of repertoire you would, one hopes, be exposed to. You also get to hear an interesting collection of guitars. In one masterclass we came up with a particularly challenging game. Sitting around in a dorm room with ten or so guitarists and one lonely guitar the rule was, whoever had the guitar had to play the first four bars of whatever piece anyone named, or give up the guitar. One fellow, from Cornell, was the champion. It was almost impossible to stump him: Ponce, Prelude 12? Santorsola, some obscure piece? Bach, Minuet 1 from the Cello Suite 1? He knew them all.

You should take masterclasses when you are a young guitarist and you should seek out different kinds of players. Some maestros are just going to try to impress their interpretive ideas on you, which might be interesting, but might not be! As you develop as an artist the really important interpretive ideas are yours and no-one else's. But a lot of the value in master classes comes from the learning of technical solutions. Pepe Romero and Abel Carlevaro were particularly good at this. After every student Carlevaro would say the same thing: "hay dos problems: la mano derecha y la mano izquierda!" And then he would explain the problems. It was quite fascinating. Abel Carlevaro was probably the best guitar pedagogue of the 20th century. Mind you, after a few days of this we were all thinking, his upcoming concert better be perfect! And, as a matter of fact, it was: technical perfection.

Here is an interesting clip: Abel Carlevaro playing three pieces on Spanish television in 1989.

"An art national in form and socialist in content"

We usually think of Russia and its predecessor the Soviet Union as being on the opposite side from the USA of not only international power politics but also economic and social questions, but that was not always the case. For a period in the 1930s and early 40s, there was considerable harmony of aesthetic ideology between the two nations--at least in some circles. The quote standing as title for this post comes from Joseph Stalin and it expressed the new approach in the Soviet Union in 1932 when the RAPM (Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians), the politically radical side, and the Association for Contemporary Music, the more professional association, were replaced by the Union of Soviet Composers. The idea was a compromise: "a professional contemporary art music that would remain accessible to workers and peasants because it would draw on familiar folk and popular idioms." [Taruskin, Oxford History of Western Music, volume 4, p. 656]

In the US, leftist politics were having a significant influence on compositional practice. One figure was Marc Blitzstein who studied in Europe and heard the Three Penny Opera of Kurt Weill and Bertholt Brecht.

Encouraged by the exiled Brecht, whom he met in New York in 1935, Blitzstein composed The Cradle Will Rock, a "play in music" (to his own libretto) in ten scenes embodying what the composer called "an allegory about people I hate" that would through a combination of entertainment and political harangue persuade its intended middle-class audience to join the class struggle on the side of the proletariat... [Taruskin, op. cit. p 649]

I think we have heard something like that before! After the premiere in New York in 1937, itself surrounded by scandal, the cast party was at the Downtown Music School administered by the Workers Music League, an adjunct of the American Communist Party, itself under the discipline of Third International of the Soviet Union. The League also sponsored the Composers Collective of New York, loosely based on the Russian Union of Soviet Composers. The membership included Charles Seeger and Elie Siegmeister as well as Blitzstein. One concert in March 1934 sponsored by the organization was devoted to the music of Aaron Copland and was reviewed by Seeger in the Daily Worker, the Communist Party newspaper. An excerpt:

For one of the finest definitions of revolutionary musical content yet made, we hail Aaron Copland's "Up Against!" And with vigor, too -- that is the essence of the Piano Variations. Their chief shortcomings seem to be that they are almost too much "against" -- against pretty nearly everything. So some day Aaron, write us something "for." You know what for! [quoted in Taruskin, op. cit. p.653]

Let's have a listen to those Piano Variations.

Of course that is more in the aggressively avant-garde mode, but through the 1930s in works like the ballet Hear Ye! Hear Ye! and the mass song "Into the Streets, May First" Copland began to move towards a style more appropriate to a proletarian art. One good example is Prairie Journal, originally commissioned in 1936 under the title Saga of the Prairie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEm6bVD2Wxw

Copland, like other composers of the day, including Virgil Thomson, was searching for a new musical style that would be comprehensible to ordinary people, the proletariat. In the words of Charles Seeger, a music that was "national in form, proletarian in content."

I was planning to look at how Dmitri Shostakovich responded to similar ideological requirements in the Soviet Union, but that will have to wait for a follow-up post.

Friday Miscellanea

 I guess one of the big stories in music this week is Bob Dylan's new book: ‘The Philosophy of Modern Song’ Review: Bob Dylan Plays DJ

“The Philosophy of Modern Song” is an annotated playlist of other people’s songs, an idiosyncratic jukebox of 66 A-sides. The imposing title is perhaps tongue-in-cheek, for the book doesn’t offer—as Bobcats worth their salt might have predicted—anything close to what its title promises. What it does offer is perhaps even more valuable: It’s a generous book—as forthright as anything Dylan has ever laid before his audience—that manages to stick its landing somewhere between the perfect bathroom read (short sections, handsomely illustrated, coincidentally just in time for Christmas) and “The Anatomy of Melancholy,” Robert Burton’s epic, eccentric and encyclopedic compendium of 1621.

* * *

Here is a piece on the nature and function of art: On Not Drinking the Kool-Aid

I recently spoke at a gathering of artists and arts administrators. During the discussion, one of the administrators said, “Art enables us to have difficult conversations with each other.” That struck me as perfectly capturing the going understanding of the role of art these days. Art is now viewed as a pretext for collective discourse, raising “issues” that provide the raw material for op-eds, Twitter threads, college seminars, and conference panels, not to mention (dreaded word) post-performance “talkbacks.”

  But not just any kind of collective discourse. For we all know what “difficult conversations” means: what they are about, and on what terms they are meant to proceed. A “difficult conversation” is not a conversation about the tragic nature of choice or the inevitability of death. Nor is it one in which participants debate whether trans women are women or affirmative action is a good idea. When I hear the phrase “difficult conversations,” I think of something David Mamet said: “When people say, ‘we need to have a conversation about race,’ what they really mean is, ‘shut the fuck up.’”

  In the age of wokeness, aka political correctness, art must be political and art must be correct. The point is familiar, but a few examples might revivify it...

* * *

This is interesting: What the Suzuki Method Really Taught

Apparently, the emotional content of Western concert or “classical” music—its ability to summon up feelings that literally surpass words, and give us that uniquely musical experience of being overwhelmed—could be as immediately manifest to non-Westerners as it was to those raised in the tradition. The Japanese appetite for the emotional intensity of much so-called classical music coincided with a Western appetite for Eastern art, the japonisme that, through the prints of Hiroshige in particular, swept European painting in the second half of the nineteenth century, wresting it from a blind faith in Renaissance one-point perspective. Van Gogh and Manet, Whistler and Degas—they were as much enthralled by Japanese art as Suzuki’s generation was by European music. And, generally speaking, both sides “got it” just about as well, in each case mastering and repurposing the beautiful surface of the form without necessarily grasping all the local purposes beneath. Suzuki knew Bach but not, it seems, his religious points or passions, in the same way that Whistler knew Hiroshige but not his religious points or passions.

* * *

State sponsorship of music, while seemingly essential, is also hazardous: Contemporary music sliced by Arts Council England’s knife

Delayed for over a week, the release of Arts Council England’s latest funding round landed with a thud on Friday – with the headline announcement of the total reduction in National Portfolio funding to English National Opera.

But a series of serious reductions were also visited on contemporary music organisations, with some losing all of their portfolio funding.

This included a total reduction in funding to the Cambridge-based Britten Sinfonia. The group, founded in 1992, is Associate Ensemble at the Barbican.

* * *

Odanak First Nation's Mali Obomsawin tells Indigenous stories through music

When Mali Obomsawin graduated from Dartmouth College in 2018, she quickly found success as one-third of the acclaimed folk rock band Lula Wiles. But Mali grew frustrated by the limitations of that success. She says fans in the Americana folk scene expected a white folk aesthetic. Mali is a citizen of the Odanak First Nation in Quebec, and she didn't fit that box, so she left. She's now released her first album as a solo artist, "Sweet Tooth." It represents a different kind of folk music. Wabanaki hand drums and jazz arrangements replace banjo twang. Mali calls it the first authentic statement in her creative journey.

* * *

Here are some insights into why the English National Opera was defunded: Defunding ENO is devastating – but the writing was on the wall

When the leadership of an arts organisation gives the impression that it has no faith in the importance of the work it produces, it is hardly surprising that people come to negative conclusions about its identity and value. Thousands of opera lovers had the foresight at the time to recognise the longer-term consequences of the changes and signed a petition to save ENO. Those who took that stand are unlikely to be surprised by the decisions that Arts Council England published last week that meant ENO will lose its £12.6m core annual funding.

The fact that this outcome was predicted doesn’t make the reality of it any less heartbreaking, nor less dangerous for the cultural landscape of the country.

Opera is squeezed by those on the left who think it is elitist and those on the right who do not believe it should be supported by government at all. The notion that it is a glamorous and frivolous entertainment for the social and cultural elite may be a convenient stereotype, but for those who have experienced it, nothing could be further from the truth.

* * *

I suppose this was inevitable: Extinction Rebellion activists halt Verdi Requiem at Concertgebouw, comparing to ‘sinking Titanic’

A performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem came to a halt on Wednesday evening at The Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam when a climate protester interrupted the performance.

In a video shared by the global environmental movement, ‘Extinction Rebellion’, a protester seated in the midst of the auditorium level of the concert hall stood up to shout across the venue, “We are in the middle of a climate crisis and we are like the orchestra on the Titanic that keeps playing quietly while the ship is already sinking.”

The protester, named by the protest group as Sebastian, was one of three who interrupted the performance at 8.30pm on 2 November and used their hijacked platform to call on the Dutch government to do everything they could to reach carbon-neutrality by 2025.

All three of the protesters were dragged out by booing audience members

* * * 

Let's listen to some music from the Mali Obomsawin album:

 I was listening to some music by American composer Roy Harris this week. Here is his Symphony No. 3 from 1941:

Friday Miscellanea

I have long been a fan of Monteverdi's opera Orfeo: Bold, self-assured reimagining of Monteverdi: Opera North’s Orpheus reviewed

The setting – the whole concept – of Opera North’s new Orpheus is strikingly original and brilliantly achieved. We’re in the back garden of a suburban semi in (let’s say) Leeds, where two families are gathering for a wedding. Orpheus and his friends are semi-posh white kids; Eurydice and her relatives are of Indian heritage. They’re all dressed in their finest, and they’re clearly relaxed with each other, exchanging hugs and smiles. A double orchestra is assembled on the patio: a little baroque band, with Laurence Cummings directing from the harpsichord, and alongside them, led by Jasdeep Singh Degun on sitar, the tablas, bansuris and esrajs of the Indian classical tradition. Anna Himali Howard’s direction makes it all look wholly natural; only the weird colours that occasionally flush the West Riding sky suggest that higher powers might be in play.

Very reimagined from the sound of it.

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Should admirers of The Beatles shell out $100 for the new five-CD Revolver set? You got me. And I think that Revolver and the White Album are the best albums.

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And speaking of The Beatles, can Jack White really identify any Beatles song from hearing just one second?

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Offered without comment: SINGERS PLAN LEGAL ACTION AGAINST SALZBURG FESTIVAL

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Here's at look at the people behind the Ballets Russes who were not named Stravinsky: How Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes Revolutionized Dance.

One defining characteristic of Sergei Diaghilev’s personality, complementary to his capacity to make things happen and get things done, was a low boredom threshold. It was this almost irritable restlessness that lay behind his much-quoted exhortation to the young poet Jean Cocteau, a tiresome opportunist hanging on to the Ballets Russes’s coat-­tails in Paris as he angled to be given his big chance. “Étonne-moi, Jean,” Diaghilev challenged him, perhaps with a note of impatience. Buzz off until you can show me something fascinatingly different. Cocteau would certainly try.

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And here I thought we were all living in a post-Christian culture: A New Setting for Christianity’s Most Important Story.

Every Good Friday, the story of Jesus Christ’s final hours gets told anew. Trial. Condemnation. Procession. Crucifixion. Burial. During that service, worshippers traditionally meditate on the 14 Stations of the Cross, the summary images of the son of God’s last moments — a stand-in for bona fide pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

In The Street, a new evening-length cycle for harp, narrator, and singer(s), composer Nico Muhly and librettist Alice Goodman treat the 14 stations with the immediacy of a witness — at one moment a passive, descriptive onlooker, at the next a malicious actor who intentionally trips Jesus under the weight of his own cross, close enough to smell the dripping blood.

“When you pray the stations, you’re not supposed to imagine you’re Jesus or Mary or anyone important,” said Goodman during an animated Zoom conversation that included Muhly and harpist Parker Ramsay, who conceived and premiered the work. “You’re supposed to imagine that you’re a little nobody at the edge of the crowd, receiving this event and taking it in and walking along.”

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 Here is a performance of Possente spirito from Monteverdi's Orfeo:

And here is the new 2022 mix of "Rain":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrEgtOeJGzQ

Since we haven't put up a performance for several months, here is Petrushka: