I very rarely perform these days as I prefer to put my energies into composition, but I am going to a gathering of musicians tonight and a violinist friend and I are going to play a couple of pieces, just for fun. She picked out a piece I transcribed decades ago, originally for lute duet. It has a nice Elizabethan bluegrass feel. This is The Queen's Dump, by John Johnson which I transcribed from a photo reproduction of the Mynshall Lute Book, c. 1597 - 99:
I note that they have fudged the title, just a tad. In the original it is titled "The Queene's Dump (A Dump)" and at the end of the solo part it says "A Treble". That's the melodic part. Then appears the eight measures of chords that the other lute plays and it is titled "the grounde to the treble before". And that, apart from the name of the composer, John Johnson, is it. That stuff about the Queen's Revels is an invention of the modern performers. I guess the word "dump" just made them nervous. At this point in time it is difficult to know the origin of the name, but the piece is a set of variations on the old bergamesca ground bass originating in Italy.
The other piece we are going to play is one I wrote a few years ago. It is one of a set of four pieces for violin and guitar published by The Avondale Press in Vancouver. This one is titled "Cloudscape". I have posted it before, but there are many new readers that have not heard it. I have chosen some photos taken during the recording session to accompany the audio.
I know that my titling is going to be idiosyncratic for this series on the composer Olivier Messiaen, but try and bear with me. Also, for the first time, we will have some guest posts from someone I will introduce later.
Today will be a bit of a miscellanea of thoughts about Messiaen that I hope will help to introduce him to you. One book that is proving useful is The Messiaen Companion, issued just a couple of years after he passed away, so the first to be able to give a perspective on Messiaen's whole life and career.
Much of the music of the 20th century is challenging in various ways. All too often it seems to smack of sterile experimentation, or descend into the expression of agony and despair (not too surprising, considering 20th century history), or simply bully the listener. It is very rare indeed to listen to 20th century music with the kind of unalloyed pleasure that we find in the music of Haydn or Mozart. Every time I put on a piece by Haydn I catch myself breaking into a smile! I was surprised to find myself doing the same listening to Messiaen. Peter Hill, in the book I linked above, referred to Messiaen as an optimist and so he seems to be. Despite his bold approach to composition, he possessed many very traditional virtues, which included his firm Catholic faith and his innate curiosity. The shelves of his study contained volumes of Shakespeare (translated by his father Pierre), works of theology, books on birds, and musical scores.
It might seem anomalous that someone whose life was essentially simple, with the lucidity of a medieval craftsman, would also be a hugely influential teacher in the post-World War II musical avant-garde--impervious to dogma in a particularly dogmatic era! At a time when abstraction in music reigned supreme, he believed in music's power to describe and symbolize as a moment's glance at almost any of his scores reveals.
I empathize with Messiaen's fascination with and love of birdsong: in my early youth we moved to a homestead in the Canadian north and I spent many hours wandering in the woods trying to imitate the calls of the birds. It was a kind of ear-training. For Messiaen it was much more, of course, as he regarded birdsong as a kind of music and incorporated symbolic birdsong in a host of compositions, most of all the very large collection of piano pieces I included in my post on Sunday, the Catalogue d'oiseaux.
He also found stained glass inspiring which might offer a clue as to his striking and bold orchestrations which dazzle the listener.
Messiaen was a brilliant analyst, able to sort out the, at the time, esoteric compositions of Stravinsky, Berg and Schoenberg and explain them to a new generation of young composers that included Pierre Boulez. This was a kind of bound or turning point for Messiaen for the sessions of ideological disputation he ultimately found unsatisfying and he turned away from musical abstraction and spent a decade in which he became intensely engaged with birdsong in his composition. The first of these was a piece written as a test piece for flutists at the Conservatoire titled Le merle noir ("The Blackbird") composed in 1952. This gives us a good envoi for today. Here are Kenneth Smith, flute and Matthew Schellhorn, piano:
I am ashamed to admit that, until recently, I had only the vaguest knowledge of the music of Olivier Messiaen (1908 - 1992). I have known about him for a long time as one of the first things I did when discovering classical music was read all the books I could find and the first library I went to, a tiny municipal one, had a couple of histories of music in the 20th century. Messiaen, of course, figured prominently. But for some reason, I never heard much of his music apart from a couple of the piano pieces and the Quartet for the End of Time, which has to be one of the greatest titles ever for a piece of music. But I am not alone, of course, performances of Messiaen are not thick on the ground here in North America. I was talking yesterday to a violinist friend of mine about perhaps Messiaen's greatest work, the Turangalîla-Symphonie and, though she has played in symphony orchestras for nearly fifty years, she has not only never been part of a performance, she has never even heard the piece!
So, as part of my own self-education project in Olivier Messiaen, I am going to do a few posts on him and his music as it is my feeling that Messiaen, along with Stravinsky, Bartók, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, is emerging as one of the great composers of the 20th century. Let's start with a photo. This is Messiaen reviewing a score alongside his erstwhile piano student, later second wife and long time interpreter, Yvonne Loriod:
My own encounter with Messiaen starts in the easternmost town of Germany, Görlitz, right on the border with Poland. By sheer accident one day while visiting with my ex-wife's family, who live near Dresden, I failed to get off the train when I should have and ended up in Görlitz, at that time a dreary industrial town--considerably prettier now. During the Second World War, just to the south of Görlitz (and not mentioned in the Wikipedia article on the town) was the site of Stalag VIII-A, a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp whose most famous prisoner was Olivier Messiaen, captured, along with many other Frenchmen, during the Battle of France in 1940. While there Messiaen composed his Quartet for the End of Time. It was written for the odd combination of clarinet, violin, cello and piano simply because these were the only instruments (and players) available. The piece was actually premiered in the camp on January 15, 1941. Outdoors, in the rain, to an audience of 400 prisoners and guards.
Messiaen, as we learn from the magisterial work by Richard Taruskin, the Oxford History of Western Music, was a remarkably unusual figure. He is almost the only composer in recent centuries to have been a full-time church musician. For more than forty years he was the regular Sunday organist at the Église de la Sainte-Trinité, one of the largest churches in Paris. Probably the last important composer previously to be a working church musician was J. S. Bach. Messiaen was also a brilliant theorist and teacher. Unlike many composers he wrote in great detail about exactly how he composed his music (as opposed to, for example, Stravinsky who tended to lie about how he worked and Shostakovich who never discussed it at all). Every artist chooses his predecessors and the ones that influenced Messiaen were first of all the Russians, particularly the maximalizing and spiritual influence of Scriabin. This also revealed itself in the use of the octatonic scale, a typical Russian mode. I will be devoting a separate post to the theoretical structure of Messiaen's music.
Two other important influences in terms not of aspiration but of technique were Indian music, specifically the rhythmic modes, and Medieval music. Messiaen seems to have re-invented the isorhythmic motet without realizing it. Taruskin calls Messiaen, not a mystic, despite the deep religious nature of his music, but a scholastic because, like Thomas Aquinas, Messiaen strove to demonstrate revealed truths in rational discourse. While achieving great ambiguity through complexity, Messiaen's music is precisely and intricately constructed as I think we will see later on.
One final influence or perhaps inspiration, was birdsong. The Wikipedia article refers to Messiaen as a "French composer, organist and ornithologist" and, like his teacher Dukas, he was fascinated with the song of birds who are often portrayed in European myths and legends as prophetic creatures. Many pieces by Messiaen contain stylized birdsong and he wrote one, the gargantuan Catalogue d'oiseaux, two and a half hours of music for solo piano in seven books, entirely devoted to birdsong. That gives you a bit of an introduction to Messiaen, not only a very important composer, but also one of the most significant teachers of composition in the 20th century. Let's end with the Catalogue d'oiseaux performed by Yvonne Loriod, probably the piece they are perusing in the above photo.
I've been listening, off and on, to the complete Mozart lately (170 CDs!) and keep running across interesting stuff. I finally got to the operas and was amazed to discover that, not only did Mozart write 22 operas, but he started when he was a mere lad of eleven years. Unlike eleven-year old slackers who might only write one opera, he actually wrote two. His first, in German, titled "Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots" is sometimes termed an oratorio, but as there are stage directions, it is best classified as a "sacred play with music." This was premiered in March of 1767. His second opera of the year, composed to a Latin text, was Apollo et Hyacinthus, in three acts, premiered in May of 1767. Then, of course, he went on to write two more operas when he was twelve. The first is a one act comic singspiel (meaning with spoken dialogue) in German, titled Bastien und Bastienne. There was an unconfirmed premiere in October of 1768. He followed this up with La finta semplice, an opera buffa to an Italian libretto. This is a full, three act opera in 558 pages of score. This was premiered in May 1769. UPDATE: I should have mentioned, Mozart was born in January, 1756. Now if you are thinking that these were some sort of stunt with the music actually being written by his father, an established composer and violinist, not at all. Even years before this, Mozart was already correcting his father, rather than the other way around. Yes, by age eleven probably and certainly by age twelve, Mozart was a fully accomplished opera composer who had already written operas in three different languages. These are not "student" works of dubious accomplishment, but quite acceptable operas. Certainly they are not at the level Mozart would achieve later in life, no Don Giovanni or Magic Flute, but perfectly decent operas. The opening theme of the overture to Bastien und Bastienne is very similar to the opening theme of the Eroica Symphony by Beethoven:
And here is La finta semplice, the whole opera, but with the recitatives omitted. Barbara Hendricks (Rosina), soprano; Siegfried Lorenz (Don Cassandro), bass; Douglas Johnson (Don Polidoro), tenor; Ann Murray (Giacinta), soprano; Eva Lind (Ninetta), soprano; Hans Peter Blochwitz (Fracasso), tenor; Andreas Schmidt (Simone), bass; Kammerorchester "CPE Bach", conducted by Peter Schreier.
The list of composers who were accomplished enough to write full-length operas at age eleven or twelve is a very short one indeed. There is only one name on that list:
A recurring theme recently, and especially in yesterday's miscellanea, is the dumbing down of culture, or, as I like to call it, "slouching towards idiocracy". But I don't think things are quite as bad as they are pictured. For one thing, my experience here at the Music Salon has been quite different. This blog has received around 3700 comments and the vast majority of them have been courteous, intelligent and informed. I have only had to remove 1 (one) for being insulting and obscene (to both myself and Richard Taruskin, of all people!). This is over a four year period. Based on this I would say that the culture doesn't seem to be declining. But if you look at the culture as it is portrayed in the mass media, you would get a completely different impression.
So perhaps we need to look at things from a slightly different angle. Democracy and egalitarianism have metastasized in recent years to the point where it is not only believed that everyone's opinion is as good as everyone else's, but to the astonishing claim that the only people with the right to an opinion, or to express an opinion publicly, are from Official Victim Groups. Let's treat that view with the respect it deserves and walk right on by.
I have been leery of democracy for a long time, since 399 BC to be precise, when a jury of 501 fine and upstanding Athenian citizens condemned Socrates to death for asking annoying questions though the actual charges were impiety and corrupting the youth. Aristotle left town saying he wanted to forestall Athens from committing a second crime against philosophy.
In a normal, healthy, civilized society those members who are ill-informed are discouraged from offering their half-baked thoughts in public fora. In our society they are constantly yammering on Facebook, Twitter, the blogosphere and email. Not only that, but pollsters even call them up and ask them their thoughts on political questions and candidates. Then these ill-conceived and misinformed opinions are actually published!! Hard to believe, I know, but that's what it's come to.
So when someone like Mario Vargas Llosa publishes a book moaning about the horrible state of the culture, perhaps the correct response is to say, Mario, I hear ya, but these people were always idiots. They aren't any more so now than they ever were. But now, through the wonders of the Internet, we allow their opinions to spread like crab grass and infect all of public life. If they had had the Internet in 1750 and encouraged all the peasants to blog, tweet and twiddle, things might have looked just as bad.
There are lots of brilliant, creative people hard at work every day and some of them comment regularly on this blog. Let's not mistake a frothy tsunami of silliness for reality.
Speaking of creative people hard at work, here's a little tune from this year's Proms concerts. Gustav Holst, The Planets, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Susanna Mälkki:
The urge to always "make it new" undeniably leads to some interesting innovation. But, at times, it also leads to stuff we could do without hearing. Imagine if you took the horsehair of a cello bow and wrapped it around the wood of the bow several times and then played with it. You will get a rather random alternation of clicky col legno sounds interspersed with brief bowed bits. Liza Lim's piece Invisibility (2009) uses this effect for the first half:
There have a been a lot of criticisms (some more appropriate than others) of the new music streaming services and how they present classical music. But this one is perhaps the most entertaining. Plus, lots of illustrations.
* * *
Prince criticizes the standard record contract as "slavery" in a talk for journalists given in his studio in Minneapolis.
His pitch to the group was simple: Typical record company contracts turn artists into indentured servants with little control over how their music is used, particularly when it comes to revenue from streaming services playing their music online — and he wants to change that.
* * *
There was a time when classical artists could mature gracefully without having to pander to the crossover crowd, or, as it is termed in this release, the "club" crowd.
* * *
I suspect that Bill Whittle's Afterburner series will not be to everyone's taste. I remember back in the early days of the blogosphere when he would post the occasional lengthy essay also titled "Afterburner". He makes a lot of good points in this one which dovetails with some of my observations about why classical music is losing its audience.
The allusion, by the way, is to The Great Learning, one of the "Four Books" in Confucianism.
* * *
Another item that might seem rather peripheral to music is this one from a philosopher professor. Quassim Cassam proposes that the reason some people believe things that are obviously false is not that they don't have enough information or the right information, it is that there is something wrong with the way they think. Read "Bad Thinkers" for the whole argument. Here is a core part:
Gullibility, carelessness and closed-mindedness are examples of what the US philosopher Linda Zagzebski, in her book Virtues of the Mind (1996), has called ‘intellectual vices’. Others include negligence, idleness, rigidity, obtuseness, prejudice, lack of thoroughness, and insensitivity to detail. Intellectual character traits are habits or styles of thinking. To describe Oliver as gullible or careless is to say something about his intellectual style or mind-set – for example, about how he goes about trying to find out things about events such as 9/11. Intellectual character traits that aid effective and responsible enquiry are intellectual virtues, whereas intellectual vices are intellectual character traits that impede effective and responsible inquiry. Humility, caution and carefulness are among the intellectual virtues Oliver plainly lacks, and that is why his attempts to get to the bottom of 9/11 are so flawed.
I think the relevance to us is that while the discussion in that essay focuses on intellectual virtues, much the same applies in the world of music with what we might call musical virtues. A lot of how we train to be musicians is by developing the right kind of work habits and listening habits. Not so surprising, the same virtues that apply in the intellectual realm also apply in our realm: humility, caution and carefulness are pretty important when you are learning a piece of music. But I'm sure that there are virtues particular to what we do as well. We don't usually think of things in this way, but aren't things like the ability or willingness to follow an idea to wherever it leads, to work out the implications of a certain form, to seek out the unity in diverse motifs or textures the kinds of virtues that a composer needs?
* * *
As the theme for the day seems to be "slouching towards idiocy", let me link to a review of a new book by Mario Vargas Llosa titled "Notes on the Death of Culture."
We may not be living in the worst of times, although a case might very well be made for it, but anyone with a thought in their head would be entitled to say that we’re living in the stupidest. Mario Vargas Llosa, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist, certainly believes we are. In this series of coruscating and passionate essays on the state of culture he argues that we have, en masse, capitulated to idiocy. And it is leading us to melancholy and despair.
Want some more?
On some aspects, such as the art business, Vargas Llosa practically foams at the mouth. The art world is “rotten to the core”, a world in which artists cynically contrive “cheap stunts”. Stars like Damien Hirst are purveyors of “con-tricks”, and their “boring, farcical and bleak” productions are aided by “half-witted critics”.
I will just pose this question: do they expect to be judged by objective aesthetic standards? Or should other factors come into play?
* * *
Hmm, what would be an appropriate envoi for today's oddly mixed-up miscellanea? Aha, I have it! How about a heavy metal "cover" of the last movement of the Symphony No. 5 of Dmitri Shostakovich? You got it:
Here's a really horrifying article from Wired about music that misuses two crucial words: "music" and "save". The title is "Relentless", which already seems unpromising. A sample:
Some music executives want to help talented artists reach their natural audience, no matter how small. Iovine is not among them. He’s after the kind of massive flash points that unite populations around the world and change not just what they listen to but how they dress and move and behave and think and live.
So he wants to repeat the 60s, it seems. The only "massive flash point" in music that I can think of was the entry of the Beatles on the scene in the early 60s that, due to several factors, of which the most important was simply the baby boom, caused an enormous upheaval in music. Before them, believe it or not, Van Cliburn could outsell Elvis Presley. After the Beatles, and all the bands that followed them like the Rolling Stones, the Doors, the Grateful Dead and a host of others, popular music was an economic heavyweight. But it all comes back to a huge demographic bulge in society of gazillions of young teens with money in their pocket.
Mind you, the article sets the bar a tad lower by crediting Iovine with four smaller flash points, or as I would prefer to call them, "trends in musical style":
By his count, Iovine has pulled this off four times over the past couple of decades by (1) introducing the world to Snoop Dogg, Tupac, and Chronic-era Dr. Dre, (2) shepherding the careers of Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson, (3) giving Eminem his start, and (4) creating Beats, the hardware company that turned headphones into a fashion accessory and today accounts for 34 percent of US stereo headphone sales.
So now we know who to blame! But never mind, the article points out that the environment is not as congenial to music as it was:
Teenagers used to fantasize about becoming the next Jimmy Page; now they dream of becoming the next Larry Page. They wax nostalgic about the first time they used Snapchat, not the first time they heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
“If you tell a kid, ‘You’ve got to pick music or Instagram,’ they’re not picking music,” Iovine says. “There was a time when, for anybody between the ages of 15 and 25, music was one, two, and three. It’s not anymore.”
Now this is a real puzzler: after a few decades of shameless manipulation of the market (as described in the article) and of the relentless industrialization of music (one hint is the fact that it is universally referred to these days as "the music industry") and of ignoring talented artists in favor of easily marketed showmen (and women) music just means less to the listeners. Instead of something that used to speak to their souls, now it is the background to a car commercial or brassiere advertisement. An earlier generation may have tried to speak from the heart, this generation just wants to shake a booty.
People like Jimmy Iovine are shaping the music business today. Regarding how he promoted his headphone company Beats before selling it to Apple for $3 billion:
What’s not debatable is Beats’ popularity. Like the iPod, its success owes as much to design and marketing as to tech specs. As with The Chronic, Iovine and his partners waged a scorched-earth campaign across the media landscape, methodically hacking Beats into the public consciousness and dropping culture-jamming hints at every opportunity. They signed up a network of high-profile endorsements—including LeBron James, Richard Sherman, and Nicki Minaj. Will.i.am, to whom Iovine granted an ownership stake, wore a nonworking prototype around his neck during an interview with Larry King and wormed a reference into the Black Eyed Peas’ “Boom Boom Pow.”
That has nothing to do with music but everything to do with promotion. This might sound like a good thing:
With Beats, Iovine doubled down on the idea of expert curation, assembling a team of music-industry veterans to custom-build playlists to guide listeners through the chaos of an unbridled music catalog.
But I profoundly doubt that this "curation" will actually promote aesthetic quality. Hey, it's all about design and marketing and flash points and moving the needle of popular culture and a dozen other empty buzz words.
Wow, does this ever have nothing to do with music!
So, after decades of this, is it any wonder that young people really couldn't care less about music?
