Friday Miscellanea

Under the spell of a great tradition full achievement is possible

even to a minor artist, because the living art brings him

in touch with his task and the task with him.

--Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West

I guess this was inevitable. Alex Ross weighs in: The Fashionista Modernism of Yuja Wang

Given this gaudy lineage, it is curious that any controversy should attend the thirty-seven-year-old pianist Yuja Wang, who seldom speaks during performances, presents programs of wide-ranging seriousness, and plays with flawless technique. The debate, such as it is, is confined to her taste in clothes. She favors spangly, skintight ensembles from high-end designers, such as Hervé Leger and Akris, and clomps across the stage in Christian Louboutin stilettos. The late Janet Malcolm, in a 2016 Profile of Wang for this magazine, devoted considerable space to the pianist’s couture, arguing that it is less a contradiction than an accentuation of her athletic performance style: “The sense of a body set in urgent motion by musical imperatives requires that the body not be distractingly clothed.”

All the same, a number of people find themselves distracted. “She’d fit much better in a night club” is one of the politer complaints to be found on Wang’s Facebook page. Ironically, such concern trolling is symptomatic of the very superficiality that it purports to condemn. If you hold music to be a pure, transcendent, anti-physical medium, your attention shouldn’t be meandering to a player’s physique.

Still, one does have the feeling that part of the intense competition between Yuja Wang and, say, Khatia Buniatishvili might come down to who has the sexier presentation. I'm just saying.

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For tragic/comic relief we have this item: DISASTER: CONDUCTOR’S BATON KNOCKS VIOLIN OUT OF SOLOIST’S HANDS

The Czech violinist Pavel Šporcl was playing the Mendelssohn concerto with the Mlada Boleslav Chamber Orchestra when a sideswipe from the conductor’s baton knocked his precious blue violin out of his hands.

Only a swift leg movement by the soloist stopped the instrument smashing onto the floor. Pavel picked up the violin and carried on playing, to the conductor’s evident relief.

Some conductors are more dangerous than others! 

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I don't read On An Overgrown Path nearly as often as I should. Here are two recent, interesting posts: A tale of two new audiences

According to his PR spin, Norman Lebrecht’s blog Slipped Disc is the world’s #1 cultural news site, drawing 2 million readers every month. Central to Norman's strategy for building an audience is the use of  controversial techniques alien to the predominantly conservative classical music world. These include salacious headlines, innuendo, gossip, and deliberate provocation. 

Meanwhile the new CEO of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Emma Stenning has embarked on a strategy for building an audience using controversial techniques alien to the predominantly conservative classical music world. These include multi-media concerts, photography during concerts, and drinks in the auditorium.

Slipped Disc's use of  alien audience-building techniques draws not a whisper of disapproval. But Ms Stenning's use of  alien audience-building techniques prompts howls of disapproval from the same predominantly conservative classical music world. Moreover the howls of disapproval are gleefully expressed on Slipped Disc, thereby reaching the impressively large readership created by alien audience building techniques.

And the other: For young classical audiences the sound is the message

In David Hepworth's recommended history of EMI's Abbey Road studios he makes an observation that may just hold the key to unlocking the new younger audience that classical music has sought for so long in vain. Writing about the increasing importance of pop music in late 1950s Hepworth explains that "whereas the people working in classical music wanted to record music, the people in pop increasingly wanted to record sounds". The ultimate example of studio-created sound taking priority over music culminated in the seminal “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band" which took five-and-a-half months of sound-shaping at Abbey Road for the album's13 tracks to be completed. 

Classical dogma dictates that the music takes priority - note perfect interpretations, historically informed performances, pedigree of the musician, concert hall etiquette etc. In the classical world sound is the servant of music, as in the never-ending search for the acoustically perfect concert hall. By contrast popular non-classical music is improvised, has no original score for the performance to be judged against, and the character of the performance is heavily influenced by electronic sound-shaping. Recent scientific research has started to identify the important role played by infrasound vibrations in the 35 to 75 Hz range - gamma rhythms - in human consciousness and perception. The preponderance of these frequencies in popular music compared with classical may well explain why the classical genre struggles to engage with younger audiences.

 Read the whole thing for some very cogent observations.

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On the occasion of an important premiere, the New York Times reviews the growth of interest in Native American composers: Amid Orchestral Waves, the Sound of Cultures Conversing

Native American composers and performers are slowly gaining more visibility after having long been largely ignored by institutions associated with the Western classical tradition. Raven Chacon, a Diné composer and visual artist, won the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2022. In March, the New York Philharmonic premiered an orchestral version of the Chickasaw composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate’s “Pisachi.”

And yet Native music, kaleidoscopically varied across the country and its many tribes and heritages, remains only rarely heard, and so only vaguely understood and appreciated, by non-Natives. This is hardly surprising, given the country’s more general neglect of a full, sustained reckoning with its history with — and its often stunningly cruel treatment of — Native Americans.

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Getting any reviews at all these days is difficult. But assuming you do, this offers some good advice: Handling Bad Reviews

Can you identify the composers who were the subject of the following reviews:

“His second symphony is a crass monster, a hideously written wounded dragon, that refuses to expire and thoroughly bleeding in the Finale, furiously beats about with its tail erect.”

“The Finale [of his fifth symphony] is riotous beyond endurance. Instead of applying local color with a brush, [the composer] emptied the paint pot with a jerk.”

“His music which professes to dismiss all elements of melody, appears strangely futile, vacuous, and non-existent.”

The whole piece is worth reading. And at the end it names the composers who were the subject of the above reviews.

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Let's have pieces by the composers criticized above. The first was Beethoven and here is his hideously written Symphony no. 2:

Here is Tchaikovsky's riotous Symphony no. 5:

Because of the missing audience and the socially-distanced orchestra we know this was recorded during the pandemic madness.

Finally, the pieces reviewed in the last quote are not named, but the composer is Debussy. Here are the vacuous Nocturnes for orchestra:

One of the pieces mentioned in the New York Times article is Pisachi by Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate.

Today's Listening: Scarlatti

D'Addario Pro Arte must have the best marketing department because they seem to be endorsed by most of the classical guitarists on YouTube. And they are darn good strings. I've used them for years and years. But I think that Hannabach makes the best classical guitar strings.

What I really love about that package is that it says "AIR-SEALED IN BAVARIA." Not just in Germany, but in Bavaria, because you know that Bavarian air, coming right off the Alps, is the best.

Here is the young Italian guitarist Cristina Galietto playing Scarlatti and yes, she uses Pro Arte strings.

Today's Listening: Feldman

If music is a window on the mystical, then one of those windows has to be Morton Feldman. His later works tend to be very leisurely:

Avant-garde goes Retro

I recently came back to reading some serious literature after a hiatus. I just re-read Serotonin by Michel Houellebecq. I think this qualifies as a serious contemporary novel, i.e. it features spiritual malaise and social fracture. Though with moments of dark humour, it is rather depressing as most recent serious fiction is. So when I ran across this newish genre of ergodic writing, I was surprised and delighted to find quite a different mood. Picking up the novel "S" by J. J. Abrams and Doug Dorst, once you get it out of its outer sleeve, you are astonished to find what seems to be an old-fashioned hardcover novel that looks as if it were stolen from a college library. It even smells like an old book. Everything about it, the design, typefaces, layout, everything is a perfect reproduction of a book published in 1949--there is even an old library catalogue sticker on the spine. It is also heavily marked up with multi-colored pen and pencil scribblings on nearly every page--a dialogue between two students exchanging comments. There are also random insertions, scraps of paper in English and other languages, post cards, photos and even a napkin. This is a post-modern production that is actually retro. There is nothing to reveal that this was actually published in 2013. There is a dual narrative: one the surrealistic adventure story of the novel, which is titled Ship of Theseus by V. M. Straka and the story of the margin scribblings between Jen and Eric, the two students who are trying to deal with academic politics, their own personal relationship and the mystery of who is V. M. Straka. It is really a great read and kind of fits with my recent project to de-digitize as much of my life as possible. There is no possible way to publish this as a Kindle book.

Some samples:

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The pleasures that come from reading this are those of trying to sort out what is going on in the various narratives, plus the sensual pleasure of holding a substantial old-style book, plus the smell of old paper (don't know how they did that), plus the colors and textures of the inserted scraps--rather like a collage now that I think of it. This is a fun serious read.

The closest musical equivalent I can think of is the Sinfonia by Luciano Berio that incorporates all sorts of quotations include an entire movement from a Mahler symphony. But really that is a very different idea. I can't quite imagine what a musical equivalent would really look like...

Friday Miscellanea

I've said a few times that pop music these days is an industrial product, coming out of music factories so here is some evidence for that. First the New York Times: How Big Is Taylor Swift? It's a very long article, impossible to summarize, but it looks as if the Beatles still hold the record for no 1 hits and top 10 hits--and they did it in an amazingly short time. Rick Beato has an interesting take on this:

What we learn from that is that behind Taylor Swift is a whole musical production line with a dozen writers, a host of musicians and god only knows how many producers and engineers. Taylor Swift is more of a corporate brand than a solo artist. The Beatles, in comparison, were a cottage industry. Three people wrote all the songs, four people with a few guests did all the playing and there was one producer and one engineer. I'll leave you to speculate on the possible effects of this on the aesthetics of the final product, the songs.

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Why is Slipped Disc the only place I saw this news? RATTLE, MUTTER, ARGERICH AND BYCHKOV SHOUT OUT AGAINST CULTURAL BULLYING

We, the undersigned, wish to express our strongest indignation at the decision to cancel the Jerusalem String Quartet’s two performances at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.  The Hall’s management has yielded to the threats of the demonstrators for fear that the performances might be disrupted and potentially endanger the public, staff, and artists.  The rationale behind this is fundamentally flawed.  The responsibility for public safety lies with the police and security services and is not then remit of a cultural venue. 

We are fortunate to live in a world where freedom of speech and expression exist; where plurality of views are not only tolerated but encouraged.  These freedoms are not selective and, must be applied to all and respected by everyone in totality.

It is not the Jerusalem String Quartet’s performances that put our freedom in danger, but those who threaten public order unless their demands are met.  Surrendering to those threats is not only an act of weakness, but a clear signal that we are not willing or prepared to defend our democratic values and our way of life. This is not acceptable and is highly dangerous for it undermines the very foundations of our society.

Is this how our security and protection will be achieved? By appeasing the bullies? By not wanting to be disturbed? By hoping that this will blow over and we can get on with building bridges to a better world?

The freedoms that so many lost their lives for are not guaranteed forever unless we protect them and continue to fight for them.

SEMYON BYCHKOV, SIMON RATTLE, MARTHA ARGERICH, ANNE-SOPHIE MUTTER, MISCHA MAISKY, LAHAV SHANI

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 The music biz: How copyright is killing creativity — except Taylor Swift’s

After peaking in 1999, record sales revenue had fallen to only $8.6 billion in the United States by 2015 a level not seen since the 1960s and less than a third of its peak. Pundits proclaimed the death of the music industry. 

Yet, precisely the opposite happened. Less money meant more and better music. From the late 1990s, when music revenue peaked, to the early 2010s, when music revenue was at its lowest in decades, the number of albums released in the United States annually more than doubled. And if we measure music quality by how often people choose to listen to a song, quality increased significantly as well.  

It is easy to mistake copyright for a system designed to support musical artists. From that perspective, more copyright means more money, and if more money is the whole point of the system, then more copyright is always the right answer. 

But now, with streaming revenue creating another peak in industry profits, many musicians are — quite rationally — making less music. Since Taylor Swift released her first of 11 entirely new albums in 2006, Justin Timberlake has managed a measly four. Lorde has produced only three albums since 2013 to Swift’s seven new albums.

To get the whole argument you should probably follow the link and read the whole thing.

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Why Corruption Plagues Chinese Conservatories

In April, Xue Wei, a former professor of violin at the Central Conservatory of Music (CCOM) in Beijing, posted on Weibo, a popular Chinese social media channel, to accuse Tong Weidong, the current dean of the orchestral instrument department at the same conservatory, of sexual abuse toward students and corruption in the entrance examination process. Xue, who wrote that he learned how to use Weibo “in order to collect allegations from others supporting his accusation,” offered 500,000 yuan—approximately $70,000—for victims of the alleged abuses to come forward. Tong denies the allegations.

The CCOM is China’s flagship conservatory: Lang Lang and Yuja Wang both graduated from its affiliate Middle School, while Tan Dun graduated from its composition department.

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Wow, times really have changed: ROYAL COLLEGE REPLACES HEAD OF STRINGS WITH GUITARIST

The Royal College of Music this morning named Gary Ryan as Head of Strings.

He has been acting head of department since Mark Messenger was suspended seven months ago.

Gary Ryan joined the RCM in 1996 as a guitar and academic professor.

There was a time, decades ago, when the Royal College refused to allow Julian Bream to bring his guitar into the building. (Or was it the Royal Academy?)

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Finally, Apple has come out with a list of the 100 best albums of all time (popular music albums, of course, though it includes jazz, so maybe everything non-classical?): Apple Says These Are the 100 Best Albums. Even If You Think Different. I'm linking to the Wall Street Journal article because they do an interesting comparison to the Rolling Stone list a few years back. Here are the top ten:

APPLE  MUSIC RANK	ROLLING STONE RANK	ALBUM	ARTIST
1	10	The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill	Lauryn Hill
2	12	Thriller	Michael Jackson
3	5	Abbey Road	The Beatles
4	8	Purple Rain	Prince and The Revolution
5	79	Blonde	Frank Ocean
6	4	Songs in the Key of Life	Stevie Wonder
7	–	good kid, m.A.A.d city	Kendrick Lamar
8	33	Back to Black	Amy Winehouse
9	6	Nevermind	Nirvana
10	32	Lemonade	Beyoncé

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Well, I'm really stumped to find envois that reflect the items today--because I'm not going to put up Taylor Swift, or Billie Eilish or even the Beatles. Hmm, ok, free choice then. First up a famous passacaglia by Biber played on Baroque lute by Nigel North:

We just heard the Jerusalem Quartet play the String Quartet no. 13 by Shostakovich a little while back. Let's hear them play no. 9 in E flat:

The Quintet op. 16 by Beethoven for piano and wind instruments is not heard a lot. But it is quite nice:

Today's Listening: Balinese Gamelan

The New York Times has a piece on a US-based Balinese Gamelan group: Gamelan Dharma Swara Finds Its Authentic Self

There are more than 100 gamelan groups in the United States. Some perform the music and dance styles that developed on the Indonesian island on Bali; others take up those from the nearby islands of Java or Sunda. Some hew closely to the traditions rooted in gamelan’s 1,300-year history; others mix in, either subtly or liberally, Western and modern influences.

Dharma Swara is firmly situated in the Balinese branch of the music, which has a generally faster tempo — think wind chimes more often caught up in a glorious gale than riding a contemplative breeze — and uses fewer gongs and more gangsa, a type of ornate bamboo-and-brass metallophone with keys that are suspended above the instrument’s body. But as much as the members embrace gamelan and its origins, they are also mindful of their own.

Have a listen:

 

Ergodic Music

After all the excesses of the last seventy years, many are suspicious of experiment in the arts. Honestly, there are artists who are not out to bamboozle anyone, but just interested in exploring and going beyond the boundaries of the medium. One interesting example is what is known as "ergodic literature." The term dates from 1997, but it is much older than that. One example familiar to musicians is the Chinese I Ching, a text used for divination and by John Cage to compose music. I read a really interesting text published in in English in 1988 by Milodan Pavić called Dictionary of the Kazars which purports to be an historical account of the conversion of the Kazars to Judaism in the 8th century CE. The thing is that it is in the form of three, sometimes contradictory, books, each written from the point of view of a different Abrahamic religion: Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Very interesting book!

As you can see from the Wikipedia article, the idea has really taken off in recent years. I've just discovered some recent examples I am going to have a look at. What characterizes ergodic literature is that the reader has to make a non-trivial effort to read the work as it may be fragmented, displayed on different levels or made convolute in various creative ways. A very cool idea! My guitar technique book, which never caught on commercially, is actually an example, which may be why it didn't catch on. In order to get a large number of technical exercises into a few pages, I presented them as a kind of technique kit. Abel Carlevaro, in his right hand exercises writes out dozens and dozens of possibilities all using the same diminished seventh chord up and down the neck. This seemed ludicrous to me so my right hand exercises are all on one single page, where I show all the right hand fingerings followed by three or four pages of left hand possibilities. Probably 100,000 exercises in three or four pages. No redundancies.

In my compositions I have "aleatory" sections where short musical moments are shown that may be combined in different ways. It is the same as the idea of ergodic literature: the player has to put together certain aspects of the music themselves. Of course John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and others were doing this fifty or sixty years ago.

Anyway, as John Cage might have said, this is one sure way of ensuring that you will not have to worry about falling into the slough of despond of commercial success!

Here is a John Cage piece written using the I Ching: Music of Changes for piano. The interesting thing is that it still sounds like John Cage.

Art and the Market

Billie Eilish, or as I think of her, the "Slough of Despond," has a new album out. Here is the first track:

For some odd reason, I started to wonder if the free marketplace is really the ideal location for the fine arts. Should we be buying and selling fine art as if it were frozen fish sticks? I throw that question out for my commentators. But let's take a brief trip through history for some clues. Also, since I don't know a heck of a lot about the other art forms I am going to focus on music.

The classical music traditions of Western Europe had some distant roots in the music theory of Ancient Greece and the chant traditions of the Eastern Roman Empire, but the proximate origins were in the monasteries of the Church. Have a look at the first volume of Taruskin's Oxford History for the fascinating tale of how notation actually grew out of an administrative theological problem of unifying the chant traditions. The relevant point is, while secular music (about which we know almost nothing at this point in time) was part of the ordinary marketplace, liturgical music was not. And that was the stuff that was written down. All the important advances, the staff line of Guido of Arezzo (a monk), the counterpoint of the Notre Dame composers and so on, were associated with church musicians. Ted Gioia makes a big deal out of the development of the love song, primarily in secular contexts, which is fine, but that was a minor niche. Opera, while it started as a noble diversion, did become an entertainment driven by market forces, just as pop music is today. But alongside that were the chamber music and orchestral traditions that were supported exclusively (at first) by the aristocracy, only becoming middle class entertainments in the 19th century.

Looking at the situation today, government cultural programs have taken over from a vanished aristocratic class in their support of music that could not be viable in a free marketplace. This includes contemporary composition, of course, but also orchestral, chamber and opera performances, all of which are too expensive to be supported by box office receipts.

Alongside that we have a hugely profitable pop music sector that earns billions of dollars in the free market. Unfortunately, the quality is poor. Let's see what Rick Beato has to say:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUe0o9VRgMM

Actually, the headline oversells the clip. But he sees a lot of poor quality stuff. I think that a hard look at motivations might be illuminating. Isn't it pretty clear that while today's pop musicians pretend to be expressing their inner profundities, the truth is that they are just chasing numbers. Which is why most pop music today is a feeble mirror of all the neuroses of their listeners. There is a really good quote from Frank Zappa that I can't seem to find. It is something about the standards of pop music are based on the musical tastes of a 14 year old girl in Cucamonga. Here is one that I did find:

"The whole music business in the United States is based on numbers, based on unit sales and not on quality. It's not based on beauty, it's based on hype and it's based on cocaine. It's based on giving presents of large packages of dollars to play records on the air."  --Frank Zappa

Sure, there is lots of great pop music, but that sure doesn't seem the direction it is headed today.

Here is a piano piece, Darknesse Visible (1992), by Thomas Adès based on a lute song by John Dowland:

 

 

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

 Here is a pretty good piece by Castelnuovo-Tedesco, very well played:

What Do Elliott Carter and Morton Feldman Chat About?

 

Today's Listening: Frescobaldi

This is a fun clip: a very young Oscar Ghiglia playing the "La Frescobalda" variations by Frescobaldi for Segovia in 1965. And everyone is wearing a jacket and tie!

 

Some Famous Guitarists

In most professions it is unethical to comment directly on the competence of one's colleagues. In some it is prohibited by law. Since it has been decades since I retired as a performer, I think it might be safe to offer some thoughts. Plus, I have the qualifications. So here are some personal reflections on a number of famous guitarists.

Andrés Segovia is the grandfather and godfather of the classical guitar in the 20th century. His career spanned nearly the whole century, from his first concert in 1909 to his last in 1987. I don't think anyone, even long-lived performers like Arthur Rubinstein, has had a longer career. When I was a young student he was often poo-pooed for his "romantic" approach to composers like Bach. Well, why not, when Segovia was born Johannes Brahms was still alive. But Segovia's strength was the powerful musical character of his interpretations which won over audiences world-wide. He could fill any hall. I only saw him once, in Montreal in 1977 when he sold out the biggest concert hall in town, over 2,000 seats. They even put another two hundred chairs onstage, just leaving him a slim avenue to enter and exit. And he played eight encores! We don't need to discuss the details as they are easily listenable on CD and streaming. The next generation, fine technicians though they were, simply did not have the gift of distinctive interpretive character. Segovia had a small circle of disciples that passed on his influence to following generations.

Julian Bream was not one of those disciples, but hewed his own path. Like myself, he started on a more popular instrument before switching to classical guitar. He was a spectacular performer with a gift for brilliance and inspired many composers to write for guitar. Bream did almost as much for the lute as for the guitar and was also a world-wide artist, though he tended to fill the middle-sized halls, not the biggest ones. I saw Bream several times in concert and met him once. His strength was his ability to inspire and interpret newer works, especially by British composers, and older works for lute. He was not an outstanding concerto performer as I never sensed that he was comfortable interacting with the orchestra.

John Williams is a bit younger than Julian Bream, but certainly the other pillar of that generation. He had the great advantage of having a guitarist father who got him into Segovia's master classes when he was barely into his teens. Williams owes this to his solid technical skills which were superior to any other guitarists of the time. He had a particular gift for the rhythms and timbres of Spanish music and was the greatest concerto player--possibly ever as few guitarists get much chance to perform with orchestras these days. Williams was also the first to do a really capable integral recording of the Bach lute suites. Yes, you can put scare quotes around "lute" if you want, but while we know that they were mostly not written for lute, they are a solid item in the guitar repertoire, so let's just accept that. I only saw him in concert once, the premiere of Leo Brouwer's Toronto Concerto, but was able to chat with him at the after-party.

Narciso Yepes was a great artist of the guitar and a kind of nemesis to Segovia. He broke away from that stream of tradition by playing a ten-string guitar and by being a truly original artist. He excelled in classical repertoire by Sor, in Scarlatti, in concertos and in Spanish music. He had a clarity of execution that few other artists matched. I had the good fortune to hear him a couple of times in concert and to meet him backstage.

Leo Brouwer might not make it onto most people's lists of the great guitarists of the 20th century, but in my view he most certainly was. These days he is more well-known as a composer, but in the 60s and 70s he was a formidable concert artist. I had the opportunity to hear him once as well as to study with him on a couple of occasions. Most unfortunately, his career was cut short by an injury to his right hand index finger. Before then, he was the finest interpreter of Baroque music on guitar. He recorded an album of Scarlatti that is simply unequalled, certainly on guitar. He studied composition with Karlheinz Stockhausen in the 60s but what is less well-known is that he also studied performance practice with Gustav Leonhardt.

Manuel Barrueco came on the scene as a virtuoso hurricane in the late 1970s with an album of etudes by Villa-Lobos that was simply at an extraordinary technical level. The story is that John Williams picked up a copy of the vinyl disc and was so impressed that he took it out to Bream's place in the country to play it for him. I heard Barrueco in concert a couple of times and hung out with him a bit when we had him come to town to give a master class. Like most virtuosos at that level, he wasn't the greatest teacher because I honestly believe he had difficulty understanding why someone might have difficulty with some passages. Fantastic guitarist, he later did an extraordinary album of Albéniz transcriptions. He recorded a lot of Bach and Scarlatti, but I never warmed to it, because what I heard was steely, cold technique and not much else.

Pepe Romero is another great technician, but he also has deep roots in the folk music of Spain. His family emigrated to the US in the 1950s, but they originated in Malaga. Pepe is an outstanding interpreter of any music from Spain and Latin America and recorded an absolutely lovely album of Bach. He has an unrivaled warmth of tone and an extraordinary virtuosity, exhibited in his recordings of the concertos of Joaquin Rodrigo. His only serious rival for best Rodrigo interpreter is John Williams. I had the good fortune to take Pepe's month-long master class in Salzburg and I have heard him play on many occasions.

Oscar Ghiglia, who just passed away this past March, had only a modest career as a performer, but was probably the most influential teacher other than Segovia himself. He was one of that inner circle of guitarists that also included José Tomás and Alirio Diaz. I spent two summers studying with him in Banff and he was the only guitar maestro I met of whom it could be said he really had a deep understanding of the music. On the other hand, he rarely mentioned technique. Oscar said to me once that being a famous guitarist is like being one of the steers in the front of a stampede--at any moment you can be run over and disappear into anonymity. 

There are many other guitarists worth mentioning like Vladimir Mikulka, Ida Presti and so on, but while fine players they did not achieve the same level of recognition. I might do another post on them and on the younger generation.

Just one piece to listen to: Segovia's 1959 recording of the Chaconne by Bach.

Friday Miscellanea

Music is good for one who is melancholy, bad for one who is mourning,

and neither good nor bad to one who is deaf.

--Spinoza, Ethics II/208

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The top story: Chechnya bans all music deemed too fast or too slow

Minister of Culture Musa Dadayev announced the decision to limit all musical, vocal and choreographic compositions to a tempo ranging from 80 to 116 beats per minute (BPM) at a meeting Friday, the Russian state new agency TASS reported.

Wow, I think that eliminates everything other than Andantino through Allegretto. So, no more Bruckner. Or tarantellas.

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Ok, now here is an important question: Music vs. Lyrics. I have to admit, most of the time, unless it's Schubert or Schumann, I don't pay a lot of attention to the lyrics. Especially if it's hip-hop.

...the way I see it, you’re either a music person or a lyrics person. I am a music person. I have artists that I think of as my favorites, but probably couldn’t sing a song of theirs all the way through confidently at karaoke. However, I will know each note of that sax solo. My sister, born only a couple of years after me, is a lyrics person; she can listen to a song literally once and know all the words.

There are a bunch of quotes from various people you have never heard of.

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BBC unveils 2024 Proms lineup: Daniel Barenboim, Daleks and disco. Uh, I think that's a hard pass. I would rather have Schoenberg, Weinstein and Lea Desandre.

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This is, uh, cool: BARBARA HANNIGAN BECOMES CHIEF CONDUCTOR. Of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, that is.

The Canadian soprano and conductor has just been appointed Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra from August 2026.

She says: ‘Always curious, courageous and creative, the players of the ISO are dedicated to working at the highest level. Their technical excellence co-exists alongside their wonderful imagination. In working with the ISO, I have felt the desire and possibility, for the first time, to consider a position as Chief Conductor. It is a matter of creative chemistry and collective timing that drives us to embark on this new path, together.’

I'm a fan.

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‘People are forfeiting meals’: musicians on the struggle to financially survive

“Brexit had a massive impact. We used to do festivals in places like Italy and Spain. They pay musicians better there. In England, venues won’t provide food. But over there, it’s just expected: you give them a place to stay and you pay them properly because they’re doing a job. But it’s not the culture here.”

Manchester-based producer Dean Glover has been recording music for 10 years. “When I started,” he says, “musicians could live comfortably and have the spare money to put into their music. One thing that’s changed is that there are some artists I work with who work a 9-to-5 minimum wage job, and they will literally forfeit meals or necessities for that week if it means they can continue putting money behind their music.”

Glover, 35, is concerned that these musicians are being priced out of career success. “I’ve seen it myself many times – a band with all the flash equipment, with the van, with the crew, with all these opportunities, and that’s just because their financial background has enabled them to pursue it.”

Hey, not just career success, but priced out of the grocery store. It's not just musicians--a lot of folks are suffering, but musicians are always closer to the edge.

* * *

AI can now generate entire songs on demand. What does this mean for music as we know it?

I’ve been working with various creative computational tools for the past 15 years, both as a researcher and a producer, and the recent pace of change has floored me. As I’ve argued elsewhere, the view that AI systems will never make “real” music like humans do should be understood more as a claim about social context than technical capability.

The argument “sure, it can make expressive, complex-structured, natural-sounding, virtuosic, original music which can stir human emotions, but AI can’t make proper music” can easily begin to sound like something from a Monty Python sketch.

Forgive me for being massively uninterested in any music not produced by and for human beings. So what if it "sounds just like" music a human being would make? That's like receiving a phone call that sounds "just like" one from your family or lover but was synthesized by a computer.

* * *

How did we turn this into a scientific question: Why Do People Make Music?

Music baffled Charles Darwin. Mankind’s ability to produce and enjoy melodies, he wrote in 1874, “must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed.”

All human societies made music, and yet, for Darwin, it seemed to offer no advantage to our survival. He speculated that music evolved as a way to win over potential mates. Our “half-human ancestors,” as he called them, “aroused each other’s ardent passions during their courtship and rivalry.”

Other Victorian scientists were skeptical. William James brushed off Darwin’s idea, arguing that music is simply a byproduct of how our minds work — a “mere incidental peculiarity of the nervous system.”

That debate continues to this day. Some researchers are developing new evolutionary explanations for music. Others maintain that music is a cultural invention, like writing, that did not need natural selection to come into existence.

Ah, right, by ignoring that it is an art form created to give expression to aesthetic ideas and pleasures. Instead it is an anthropological quirk of evolution. Read on to see how music is all about multicultural diversity, but somehow at the same time, illustrating universal truths of evolution. Isn't it funny how "science" always seems to turn up conclusions that match up with the narrative demanded by the mainstream culture?

* * *

On doing all of something: THE VIRTUOUS CYCLE

Playing all six Bartók string quartets in an extended performance in one thing, but what about Mozart's piano sonatas or Haydn's symphonies? Canadian pianist Stewart Goodyear sometimes performs all 32 Beethoven sonatas in one day, breaking only for meals. Paul Lewis does a similar thing with the composer's piano concertos, generally playing the five works over multiple concerts running over several days, as he did at the Proms in 2010. (He's about to perform this series with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in Christchurch Town Hall from 19 May.) The Proms is partial to a composer cycle – in 2015 Yo-Yo Ma played all of Bach's Suites for solo cello, while, in the same year, Osmo Vänskä conducted a series of all seven Sibelius symphonies. (Perhaps, in this Bruckner bicentenary, we might see a symphony cycle this year?)

When a performer tells us something about what they are playing we tend to just believe them. However:

Shostakovich's string quartets are autobiographical; they reflect a part of his musical self that perhaps could not be shared in other work. We're playing a diverse, contrasting programme, but everything comes back to Shostakovich's twelve quartets.'

I question the "autobiographical" claim, plus, Shostakovich wrote fifteen string quartets.  

I did a post on the composer version of this: doing a whole bunch of iterations in a single form or genre, like Scarlatti's 555 keyboard sonatas, or Haydn's over one hundred symphonies, or Bach's three hundred or so cantatas. The Salzburg Festival was doing things like this when I first attended as a student way back when. Alfred Brendel did all the Schubert piano sonatas in a series of concerts and the Alban Berg Quartet did all the Beethoven string quartets in another series. They don't seem to do that any more, though they did do the massive project of producing all twenty-two Mozart operas in 2006.

 * * *

Let's kick off our envois with a Schumann lied: "Ich grolle nicht."

Here is Barbara Hannigan singing and conducting Stravinsky:

The Jerusalem Quartet just got cancelled out of a couple of concerts in Amsterdam, so let's have them playing the Quartet No. 13 by Shostakovich:

Today's Listening: Rodrigo

 Joaquin Rodrigo's Three Spanish Pieces is one of the most challenging sets of works for guitar. Until Julian Bream recorded them, everyone avoided them like the plague, except for the Fandango, which Segovia had recorded. The middle movement, the Passacaglia just looked weird and technically impossible so no-one played it. Then Bream found the right tempo, fairly slow, and did a terrific recording so everyone knew what to do. The last movement, the Zapateado, is just technically fearsome. But the biggest musical challenge has always been the Passacaglia.

Here is a fine new recording by Italian guitarist Cristina Galietto:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OUUrxCWtf0

Quid est ergo tempus?

That's the beginning of the famous Augustine quote about time:

Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio.

Which translates as: 

What, then, is time? I know well enough what it is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled.

This is to introduce short reviews of two books on time: the phenomenology of Husserl and  Chanas on Dilla Time.

These two discussions of time are about as utterly different as imaginable. So I will give a brief account of each followed by what we might learn setting them side by side. First of all, what is phenomenology? It is a school of philosophy, started by Edmund Husserl and others that Wikipedia introduces as follows:

Phenomenology is the philosophical study of objectivity and reality (more generally) as subjectively lived and experienced. It seeks to investigate the universal features of consciousness while avoiding assumptions about the external world, aiming to describe phenomena as they appear to the subject, and to explore the meaning and significance of the lived experiences.

The two main divisions in philosophy are Anglo-American analytic philosophy and Continental (i.e. European) philosophy and phenomenology falls into the latter camp. Husserl is focussed on how we experience time and, in a certain sense, this is also interesting to J Dilla.

Husserl's discussion of time-consciousness is in the book shown above, dating from 1928. Here is how the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy summarizes it:

Finally, we should note that on Husserl’s view there is a further important dimension to perceptual experience, in that it displays a phenomenological deep- or micro-structure constituted by time-consciousness (Husserliana, vol. X, XXXIII; also see Miller 1984). This merely seemingly unconscious structure is essentially indexical in character and consists, at a given time, of both retentions, i.e., acts of immediate memory of what has been perceived “just a moment ago”, original impressions, i.e., acts of awareness of what is perceived “right now”, and protentions, i.e., immediate anticipations of what will be perceived “in a moment”. It is by such momentary structures of retentions, original impressions and protentions that moments of time are continuously constituted (and reconstituted) as past, present and future, respectively, so that it looks to the experiencing subject as if time were permanently flowing off.

I'm offering that because, frankly, I found it so difficult to make sense of Husserl's book I doubt I could summarize it. Here are some sample quotes from early in the text:

The evidence that consciousness of a tonal process, a melody, exhibits a succession even as I hear it is such as to make every doubt or denial appear senseless. [p. 23]

One cannot discover the least trace of Objective time through phenomenological analysis. The "primordial temporal field" is by no means a part of Objective time; the lived and experienced now, taken in itself, is not a point of Objective time, and so on. Objective space, Objective time, and with them the Objective world of real things and events--these are all transcendencies. In truth, space and reality are not transcendent in a mystical sense. They are not "things in themselves" but just phenomenal space, phenomenal spatio-temporal reality, the appearing spatial form, the appearing temporal form. [p. 24]

I read all 126 pages of the main text and it doesn't get any clearer. Husserl was very influential, one of the most important founders of phenomenology and a big influence on Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. I may have a look at them at some point. But the main problem I have with this approach is that I find it almost impossible to connect the ideas proposed with either music as I perceive it or as it is practiced in the "Objective world of real things and events" and therefore, really, of little interest. Your mileage may vary.

Dilla Time is a far more fun read and it is an excellent introduction to the whole culture of black music, rap and hip-hop. It delves into the technical tools used by contemporary musicians in these fields and gives insights into the culture of sampling, beats and the collective nature of these kinds of creativity. So in that sense it is a terrific book and I was very pleased to have read it. I don't have any quibbles except that the concepts of rhythm dealt with aren't inspiring to me in any way. What I am most interested in, rhythmically, are things like the suspension of beat, unmeasured flow, also meter and the interesting effects of hemiola on several levels. Also, long term rhythmic direction and so on. But these are just personal preferences.

What would be the most contrarian envoi I could post? That's easy, an unmeasured prelude by Louis Couperin:

What's an unmeasured prelude? That's when you just play what you see, but without beats or measuring durations. No beat in other words.

Tribute to Alexander Dunn 1956 - 2024

Alexander Dunn

I don't do obituaries here as a rule, leaving that to Slipped Disc, but I want to honor a fine guitarist and friend. Alex Dunn was an outstanding student of Pepe Romero and we met in Pepe's master class in Salzburg in 1988. He, along with Randy Pile (editor of the guitar music of Joaquin Rodrigo), were private students with Pepe in San Diego. Alex was an excellent guitarist with superior technical and musical skills. He was also an authority on the French guitarist and lutenist Robert de Visée on whom he did his doctoral dissertation.

In 1990, when I decided to take leave of Victoria, British Columbia, I recommended Alex for both my teaching jobs, at the University of Victoria and the Victoria Conservatory of Music where I was head of the guitar department. I was back there last May to attend premieres of my String Quartet No. 2 and had lunch with Alex whom I hadn't seen for years. He showed his generous nature when afterwards he published this on his FaceBook page:

What a pleasure to see Bryan Townsend, the founder of the University of Victoria guitar program. With typical determination and hard work, Bryan built up an exceptional program from scratch that has been an honor to carry forward.

Over lunch I asked Alex if he had any idea that he would still be here, over thirty years later. He said, "god, no!" Sadly, over the years the environment has steadily worsened for the classical guitar. I had eight students at the university and the conservatory had several guitar teachers and dozens of students. Now, the conservatory features less and less classical music as it moves to a pop music focus. And the university just has a couple of students.

Alex kept up an active performing career. Just in December he asked me to look into possible venues for some concerts in Mexico with his guitar quartet. In fact, he asked me to sit in as the fourth guitarist for their concerts in Mexico. Sadly, I was unable to help him out and the Mexican leg of the tour, projected for this coming Fall, is not happening.

I'm happy to have known Alex, a fine, dedicated musician who brought a lot of good into the world, but sadly received little reward or recognition.

 I think this is a better representation: Dark Angels by Peter Maxwell Davies with soprano Susan Young.

Crushing Culture and Creativity

I've had an iPad for years and I find it enormously useful. But I don't know what horrifies me more: the new Apple ad for the iPad, or that there are people who are not horrified by it.

https://twitter.com/tim_cook/status/1787864325258162239?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1787864325258162239%7Ctwgr%5Eca49a6766bc3f625e21a2ca05e57221e5e71b436%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Finstapundit.com%2F646716%2F

It is so smug, disdainful and contemptuous of not only the materials that creative people typically work with, but creative people themselves. Trying sketching on an iPad was one of the things that drove me away from digital technology. iPads may be useful for the usual internet diversions and for promoting, recording and videoing creative activities. But that's it. If you want to actually create something, you need to get your hands dirty with some of those things crushed in the commercial.

That poor guitar...

Friday Miscellanea

Consciousness is the source of all things and of all conceptions. It is a sea ringed about with visions.

--Oskar Kokoschka in 1912

The instruments out on the extremes, really high or really low, are always fun:

* * *

Some statisticians weigh in: Who wrote the music for In My Life? Three Bayesian analyses

Over the years, Lennon and McCartney have revealed who really wrote what, but some songs are still up for debate. The two even debate between themselves — their memories seem to differ when it comes to who wrote the music for 1965’s “In My Life.” . . .

Mathematics professor Jason Brown spent 10 years working with statistics to solve the magical mystery. Brown’s the findings were presented on Aug. 1 at the Joint Statistical Meeting in a presentation called “Assessing Authorship of Beatles Songs from Musical Content: Bayesian Classification Modeling from Bags-Of-Words Representations.” . . .

The three co-authors of this paper — there was someone called Mark Glickman who was a statistician at Harvard. He’s also a classical pianist. Another person, another Harvard professor of engineering, called Ryan Song. And the third person was a Dalhousie University mathematician called Jason Brown. . . .

[Regarding In My Life,] it turns out Lennon wrote the whole thing. When you do the math by counting the little bits that are unique to the people, the probability that McCartney wrote it was .018 — that’s essentially zero. In other words, this is pretty well definitive. Lennon wrote the music. And in situations like this, you’d better believe the math because it’s much more reliable than people’s recollections.

But read the whole thing because it's complicated...

* * *

Yet another reconstruction of Ancient Greek Music. Imagine what a reconstruction of Michael Jackson might sound like if a scholar tried to recreate it two thousand years from now if all the recordings and scores were lost. Yep.

* * *

Ted Gioia has another of his really catchy essays: All Bad Music Will Eventually Disappear. What he means is just that, over time, the winnowing process of musicians and listeners choosing over and over what to hear, filters out the poor quality music in favor of the good quality music. Which we already, knew, of course. Unfortunately, what he doesn't mention is that the corollary is that, at any given moment in time, most music is crap. But we knew that too.

* * *

I've been aware of this musician for some time and saw her perform in Salzburg a couple of years ago: ‘I’m not humble. I expect miracles’: why violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja wants to blow you out of your seat

Something should happen in a concert,” says Patricia Kopatchinskaja. “I don’t know what. But every time, I’m expecting a miracle. I’m not very humble about this!” If audiences have learned to expect inspiring and surprising things from this restless and unpredictable violinist, that’s nothing compared to the standards she sets for herself. On stage, Kopatchinskaja is an impish presence, a coiled spring that could unwind in any direction. In conversation, she talks seriously and softly, yet every so often an idea forms that especially pleases her and her eyes get a mischievous glint – a look that, in performance, means she and her fellow musicians are indeed about to make something happen.

Oh yes, she is a violinist, but when I saw her she was conducting and performing the voice part in Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire!

* * *

Well, there's one great title I can't use because John Zorn grabbed it:

* * *

This seems a very sensible approach: STEPHEN HOUGH: NO PHONES, PLEASE, BETWEEN BARS 123-176; 185-199…

I'm really excited to be playing Brahms 1 next season with one of my favourite orchestras: 

@TheCBSO

 I'm happy to be filmed on phones by the audience except for the following bars when I really need to concentrate and could be distracted:

1st movement: 91-118; 123-176; 185-199; 226-341; 352 to end;

2nd movement: 14-19; 21-27; 29-30; 33-58; 71 to end;

3rd movement: 1-36; 46-98; 122-167; 188-238; 275-333; 337-368; 376-410; 418-426; 434-442; 448 to end.

Or, all the measures in which he is actually playing.

* * *

Notice of an important anniversary: Barenboim: What Beethoven’s Ninth Teaches Us

Music, if you study it properly, is a lesson for life. There is much we can learn from Beethoven, who was, of course, one of the strongest personalities in the history of music. He is the master of bringing emotion and intellect together. With Beethoven, you must be able to structure your feelings and feel the structure emotionally — a fantastic lesson for life! When we are in love, we lose all sense of discipline. Music doesn’t allow for that.

But music means different things to different people and sometimes even different things to the same person at different moments. It might be poetic, philosophical, sensual or mathematical, but it must have something to do with the soul.

* * * 

For those of you who have been waiting, here is a different performance of John Cage's 4'33 for orchestra.

* * *

I tried to read this from the New York Times as it seemed an interesting ontological or aesthetic question, but it got all down into legal issues so I got bored: What Is a Song?

In many music copyright disputes, one of the main issues is originality, or how the law sets a boundary between creative expression that is the property of a single artist versus material in the public domain. Last year, a federal jury in New York heard hours of expert testimony about whether a syncopated four-chord sequence in Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” was distinctive enough that Sheeran’s song “Thinking Out Loud” infringed on it — or whether, as Sheeran’s lawyers contended, those parts are generic “building blocks” that no musician can own. The jury ruled in Sheeran’s favor, finding that he and a co-writer had created their song independently and not copied from Gaye’s 1973 classic.

But a key question running through that trial was about something even more fundamental: whether the core of “Let’s Get It On” — and what is protected by its copyright — is determined by the sounds we hear on its original recording, or the notes written on yellowing sheet music stored at the Library of Congress.

What we need is a forensic musicologist!

* * *

After all that we need some good music. First a Vivaldi concerto for an unusual pairing of soloists:

 Claudio Monteverdi: Magnificat

And Kazuhito Yamashita with the Caprichos de Goya by Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Yes, all Italian music today.

Here's an interesting question

This is, apparently, the kind of question you might have to answer if you are a philosophy student at the Sorbonne:

Is Beauty limited to perception?

This is exactly the kind of question that philosophers in the Austro-Anglo-American analytical tradition really hate. Oh, by the way, the name of that philosophical stream would be simply "Anglo-American" if it were not for one single figure: Wittgenstein. He started out influenced by Frege, but then went to Cambridge and studied with Bertrand Russell so now he is a huge part of the analytical stream. But back to the question: This is looking at the old saw "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" from a different angle. Yes, of course, Beauty is in perception, but is it limited to perception? I think not because when I am composing or playing I am certainly seeking to express Beauty in some way. And we have to define Beauty pretty widely as it has to include all the contrasts that occur in order to create moments of Beauty. Beauty is not simply sappy prettiness. So when I am attempting to create Beauty is it simply perception? Well, no, it is imagination and recollection and experimentation and serendipity and all sorts of things that we would not normally categorize as perception.

Your thoughts? And to listen to while you are mulling it over, here is a sarabande by Jacques de Saint-Luc: