Death and Transfiguration (Tod und Verklärung in the original German) is a tone poem by Richard Strauss that expresses the dying thoughts of an artist who at the end achieves transcendence.
That piece was completed in 1889. Many years later, in the closing months of the war, April 1945, he completed a somewhat similar work, unlike the previous one, with no overt program. This is his Metamorphosen for 23 strings which he started composing the day after the destruction of the Vienna Opera House.
Here is a clip of an interview with a neurophysiologist and psychiatrist who also studied meditation:
I put these three things together because they, oddly, relate to one another. The experience of listening to the Strauss pieces cannot really be "explained" or captured with musicology or music theory any more than consciousness can be captured by the study of the neurons in the brain, as Roger Walsh explains. As Wittgenstein famously said at the end of the Tractatus:
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
But I think Wittgenstein would agree that those things can be expressed in music. We should just not try and talk about them...
UPDATE: If you want a hard, analytic argument for why a pure physicalist explanation of the world is insufficient, here you go:
Despite over fifty years in the music biz, I discover new things nearly every day. Often they are in the world of opera as I developed an interest in opera relatively late in life and opera is a universe of its own. We are all aware that there are different types of voice--it was in high school choir that I realized I was a bass (or more likely baritone) when they stuck me in that section. As a classical guitarist I accompanied many singers and noticed that they came in different varieties as well, though in choir, they are only divided into sopranos and altos, tenors and basses.
But when you come to opera the basic division of lower and higher voices divides into a host of different types called "Fachs" (in German the plural is Fächer). These relate more to operatic roles and the qualities needed to realize them. From the Wikipedia article:
The German Fach system (German pronunciation:[fax]; literally "compartment" or "subject of study", here in the sense of "vocal specialization") is a method of classifying singers, primarily opera singers, according to the range, weight, and color of their voices. It is used worldwide, but primarily in Europe, especially in German-speaking countries and by repertory opera houses.[1]
The Fach system is a convenience for singers and opera houses. It prevents singers from being asked to sing roles which they are incapable of performing, or roles for which their vocal timbre is dramatically unsuited. Opera companies keep lists of available singers by Fach so that when they are casting roles for an upcoming production, they do not inadvertently contact performers who would be inappropriate for the part.[2]
Why is the German system used? Likely because Germany has 80 opera houses and Austria has another thirteen. Mind you, Italy has a similar number and the names of these different voice types are typically from Italian.
Believe it or no, I only heard of the "Fach" system when I stumbled across this very informative YouTube clip:
The future is made through relinquishing or sacrificing the past.
--Asger Jorn, once member of the Situationist International
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Every week I struggle to find interesting and entertaining musical items and try to avoid politics, obituaries and too much doom-saying. It's not easy! The New York Times helps this week with this piece about Gluck: The Composer Who Changed Opera With ‘a Beautiful Simplicity’
Today, Gluck suffers a little from a reputation for formality, even stodginess. But with the period instrument ensemble Le Concert d’Astrée conducted gracefully yet energetically by Emmanuelle Haïm, the Aix double bill was a reminder of the vibrancy of his vision, a majestic yet vigorous directness.
This rare juxtaposition offers an immersion in Gluck’s revolutionary innovations — what became known as his reform of opera, paving the way for Wagner and modernity. By the middle of the 18th century, bloated extravagance was the mainstream of Italian opera, dominated by singers burbling mindless coloratura in an endless parade of arias that barely held together as narrative.
Gluck wrote in 1769 that these abuses had “turned the most sumptuous and beautiful of all spectacles into the most ridiculous and tedious.” To counter this, his aim was “to restrict music to its true function of helping poetry to be expressive and to represent the situations of the plot” — to seek “a beautiful simplicity.”
One of the most exciting developments in French music for the last few decades has been the successful revival of French opera from the 18th century.
Changing the music in nuanced ways does not necessarily mean rappers with symphony orchestras. The Amsterdam Sinfonietta's excellent The Mahler Album also includes Mahler's arrangement of Beethoven's String Quartet no. 11 and an intensely moving arrangement for string orchestra of the Adagio from Mahler's Tenth Symphony. On other discs the Amsterdam Sinfonietta under artistic director Candida Thompson has recorded arrangements of two other Beethoven quartets, Shostakovich's Second and Fourth Quartets, Wagner's Tristan Prelude, and Berg's Sonata Opus 1.
Although not as dramatic as Stokowski's Bach transcriptions these interpretations, particularly the quartet transcriptions with their added bass lines, made even this jaded classical nerd hear these masterworks with fresh ears. And in an expression of diversity that goes beyond classical's current myopic and tired obsession with gender diversity, the Amsterdam Sinfonietta is presenting in concert Philip Glass in India pairing Glass' Violin Concerto no. 2 “The Four American Seasons” with Indian ragas. All these are worthwhile case studies in changing the music without throwing baby integrity out with the bath water. (Incidentally, no personal connection with or free CDs and concert tickets, or - heaven forbid - alone payola, from the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, I just happen to be inspired by their work and buy their CDs.)
Only one copy of “Anna” survives today, housed in the vast collection of the Naples Conservatory. It takes time to read an opera from a manuscript orchestral score. You have to decipher the calligraphy before you can start imagining the sounds, and this one is a particularly hasty job, full of errors and none too clear. But as I picked my way through it, appreciation gradually turned to admiration and eventually to outright amazement. This was the work of a born opera composer. This was the real thing.
Here is one way of putting it. Bel canto operas are structured in individual numbers — cavatina, duet, finale and so forth — and “Anna” is made of 12 such numbers. Not a single one is boring; not one sounds like padding, not one fails to embody and advance the story, not one falls in the wrong place. The 20-something beginner had a master’s grasp of opera as drama.
Since their closure in 2020 due to the coronavirus, American opera houses have been struggling to regain their financial footing—and their audiences. Most have reduced the number of performances they give and retreated to a repertoire of safe favorites. However, the Metropolitan Opera has taken a different tact by embracing untried contemporary works it hopes will appeal to younger, more diverse audiences. Recently released attendance data suggests that this Met initiative might not be working.
Bolstered by significant governmental support, European companies mostly appear to have returned to a pre-pandemic status quo. A recent visit to Germany found both the Hamburg and Berlin Staatsopers fearlessly mounting challenging operas of questionable popular appeal, but both Olivier Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise and Modest Mussorgsky’s Chowanschtschina (better known in the U.S. as Khovanshchina) proved to be singular artistic and reasonably popular successes.
I've long been saying that the so-called "crisis" in classical music is mostly a North American phenomenon--things are very different in Europe.
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I am planning on doing a post devoted to Leonard B. Meyer, but this was not the week for that! Coming soon, I hope. The theme this week seems to be opera, so let's listen to some. First up, a Venetian production of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice.
The strange situation in which a wealthy cultural nexus like San Francisco suddenly finds itself unable to afford the high culture of employing a creative genius like Esa-Pekka Salonen is a valuable indicator of an underlying problem.
When I was employed at McGill University, a high-quality English-language university in French-speaking Montreal, I had an interesting conversation with one of the administrators about who supported McGill. McGill was founded by a Scotsman, but a lot of its support came from Jewish donors. When a Quebec nationalist party was elected in the mid-70s, their aim was to starve English culture institutions like McGill in favor of French-speaking institutions like the Université de Montréal and the Université de Québec à Montréal. They also reshaped the composition of government departments and strove to remake the landscape of business in the province all with the aim of preserving French. One effect of this was a general exodus of English-speaking Jewish Quebeckers to Toronto, thus greatly diminishing the donor base of McGill.
A kind of inverted echo of this is what is currently going on in culture. Clement Greenberg described it as far back as 1939 in an essay titled "Avant-Garde and Kitsch." The relevant paragraph:
The avant-garde's specialization of itself, the fact that its best artists are artists' artists, its best poets poets' poets, has estranged a great many of those who were capable formerly of enjoying and appreciating ambitious art and literature, but who are now unwilling or unable to acquire an initiation into their craft secrets. The masses have always remained more or less indifferent to culture in the process of development. But today such culture is being abandoned by those to whom it actually belongs--our ruling class. For it is to the latter that the avant-garde belongs. No culture can develop without a social basis, without a source of stable income. And in the case of the avant-garde, this was provided by an elite among the ruling class of that society from which it assumed itself to be cut off, but to which it has always remained attached by an umbilical cord of gold. The paradox is real. And now this elite is rapidly shrinking. Since the avant-garde forms the only living culture we now have, the survival in the near future of culture in general is thus threatened.
Is this analysis still true? Is the avant-garde the only living culture we now have? Many would disagree, mentioning the popular arts in music, film and so on. Those are what Greenberg would call Kitsch: "popular, commercial art and literature ... pulp fiction, comics, Tin Pan Alley music ... Hollywood movies, etc." (skipping over forms that are no longer popular--for "Tim Pan Alley" substitute Taylor Swift).
Kitsch is a product of the Industrial Revolution which urbanized the masses of Western Europe and America and established what is called universal literacy. Prior to this the only market for formal culture, as distinguished from folk culture, had been among those who, in additions to being able to read and write, could command the leisure and comfort that always goes hand in hand with cultivation of some sort. This until then had been inextricably associated with literacy. But with the introduction of universal literacy, the ability to read and write became almost a minor skill like driving a car, and it no longer served to distinguish an individual's cultural inclinations, since it was no longer the exclusive concomitant of refined tastes ... To fill the demand of the new market, a new commodity was devised: ersatz culture, kitsch, destined for those who, insensible to the values of genuine culture, are hungry nevertheless for the diversion that only culture of some sort can provide ... Kitsch is mechanical and operates by formulas. Kitsch is vicarious experience and faked sensations. Kitsch changes according to style, but remains always the same. Kitsch is the epitome of all that is spurious in the life of our times.
There is a great deal more in Greenburg's essay which is found in Art in Theory: 1900 - 2000, p. 539.
...music as an art in itself began at this time [around 1900] to occupy a very important position in relation to the other arts. Because of its 'absolute' nature, its remoteness from imitation, its almost complete absorption in the very physical quality of its medium, as well as because of its resources of suggestion, music had come to replace poetry as the paragon art.
--Clement Greenberg, Art in Theory 1900 - 2000, p. 565.
Yes, you read that right. The renowned singer's holistic beauty and skin care brand, Keys Soulcare, has recently partnered with Amazon Alexa to make your manifesting goals even easier. The new custom Keys Soulcare Alexa theme is an exclusive offer for new and existing Echo customers that infuses a soulful twist to your everyday Alexa interactions.
“With our new Alexa experience, we’re bringing the philosophy of Keys Soulcare and infusing it into people’s daily lives, helping them to create empowering beauty rituals that nurture their whole selves,” says Alicia Keys. “There is so much power in a voice — I am filled with gratitude to connect with Alexa users in this special way.”
With Alicia Keys at the helm, this new endeavor invites the brand’s community to engage with Keys Soulcare’s core philosophy of nurturing the complete self — internally and externally, from skin and soul — by welcoming Keys (or, her voice at least) into their homes and daily lives.
Is this as bad as those numerous cryptocurrency scams? Or other commercial lies? Not in dollar terms, certainly. And no-one offering aesthetic scams has been put in jail (though there have been some hefty fines). But it is most certainly bad.
I went to nine performances during the season, between November and May, and heard 11 pieces by female composers. All the works were new to me, imbuing each concert with a sense of discovery unusual for an orchestra’s subscription series.
Many of those compositions — especially the ones written before the 20th century — are unlikely to find their way into the standard repertoire, which Brüggen acknowledges. But that isn’t her goal. “What we’re doing is a journey of discovery,” she said. “The selection process that happened with men throughout the centuries didn’t happen with women. It’s our social responsibility to make that happen now.”
And in so doing one places social responsibility above aesthetic responsibility, without actually saying so. But at the same time, the series seems to have turned up a number of interesting, neglected works by women composers so praise for that. Let's let a commentator on the article have the final word:
I am not very interested in long dead supposedly missed out women composers. If there is a gem or two out there (just as with dead men), then by all means bring them on. But most non-performed western classical music is in the dustbin of history for a reason.
However, much as I love the standard classical canon, I am also very interested in new composers of whatever gender or color or whatever. I don't want to see a bias against modern women composers, but not much interested in seeing a bias for them either.
Unlike a traditional PhD program, where a small number of candidates are selected to contribute to a field’s base of knowledge with original research and scholarship, this doctorate was sponsored by a whiskey distillery and sought to teach students “to think more creatively” through “intensive immersion in creative thinking,” according to the university’s official website. (It also deviates from many other PhD programs by charging tuition – more than $50,000 a year for at least three years – and fees, rather than being one of the fully funded programs that is the university norm.)
The sins of the American arts institutions – saddling students with tens, sometimes hundreds, of thousands of dollars in debt as they train them for jobs that don’t exist, the absence of real artistic instruction, their contribution to the vast divide that exists between the credentialed and the uncredentialed in income inequality and quality of life – have been well documented.
Two things to keep in mind. 1) no-one can teach you how to be creative and if they pretend they can, run in the opposite direction and 2) actually being creative is almost a guarantee that your life earnings will be paltry because real creativity is very hard to monetize. If you want to be rich, take someone else's idea and monetize it.
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We seem to be on the cusp of a shift in political alignments in Europe and North America. But we don't talk about politics here so I will just dig out a tiny musical story from San Francisco: SAN FRAN SYMPHONY THREATENS CONCERTGOER
An audience member who held up a rude sign in Finnish during an Esa-Pekka Salonen concert ten days ago has been threatened with disciplinary acction by the orchestra management.
Laura Leibowitz brandished the sign below. Loosely translated from the Finnish it means ‘F*ck the board’.
Impractical and unpleasant as this may be, Ms Leibowitz was contacted by senior director of operations Andrew Dubowski and warned about her ‘disruptive and offensive’ action.
‘Displaying of any signage inside Davies Symphony Hall is not permitted,’ the senior flak informed her, adding: ‘Should this conduct occur again, you will be subject to further disciplinary action, up to and including removal from Davies Symphony Hall and/or suspension of privileges to enter and attend activities of the San Francisco Symphony.’
This amounts to a new orchestra management strategy: don’t like the feedback? change the audience.
Doncha just love the and/or?
There's a PS:
UPDATE: The composer John Adams tweets: The SF Symphony is one of THE great orchestras. Alas, their board’s grim austerity plan & willingness to lose Esa-Pekka Salonen risks ruining both morale of the players and overall artistic quality. This in one of the wealthiest demographics in the world. What gives?
Yes, there is a point at which the average person is just going to say "screw you people!"
Every great DJ set needs to go out on a high, and as I’m not great, nor even actually a DJ, I was relying on a small bespectacled Russian to do that for me: Igor Stravinsky. My last track was the finale from his ballet The Firebird. It’s a masterclass in musical extremes, starting with a hopeful lone horn piercing the sonic landscape, orchestral layers gradually build like the best trance records do, and then the ultimate beat drop. Stravinsky puts a pause in which pulses with expectancy, and then the final bars come racing out, the luminous bird aloft. Stravinsky delivered, and there was a big response from the audience.
The symphony is indeed in a state of turmoil that feels existential. Four years ago, Salonen became music director with the mandate to foster innovation, following what he had accomplished in his 17 years at the helm of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Unfortunately, the city and its orchestra were hard hit by the pandemic. Rather than give Salonen the support to realize his bold vision, the San Francisco Symphony, which sits on a $345-million endowment (the second largest of any American orchestra), slashed, slashed and slashed some more. Management insists the institution will otherwise run out of cash. Dire financial projections have become self-fulfilling prophecy.
Salonen has refused to renew his contract (which runs for one more season) after the board scaled back a European tour, new commissions, innovative programming and staged productions with Peter Sellars, its much-heralded digital media, its “Concerts for Kids” series and the far-reaching creative partners from various walks of music and technology Salonen appointed. A black-box series, SoundBox, a hit with young audiences, has been downgraded as well. Frank Gehry’s proposals for inexpensive experimental new halls made by refashioning warehouses on Treasure Island should be a no-brainer, but for this board they are a nonstarter. A musicians strike looks likely in the fall.
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I've been watching more of Rick Beato's clips recently because he has something to say. This is one from yesterday:
Yep, old man, shouting at clouds! He does have a sense of humor. Watch the clip. Yes, people are less and less interested in things like art and music and more interested in ... social media, which just means that the main psychological affliction of our day is narcissism and self-absorption. Ok. I'm comfortable with that even though it is certainly not my path. I'm really interested in art and music. But I don't quite see how to solve the problem of most people being uninterested in art and music, so I won't worry about it too much. More power to Rick, though.
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Let's start with some John Adams played by the San Francisco Symphony during happier days:
