Music in the Shadow of War

The very fine cellist Steven Isserlis is curating a series of four concerts called "Music in the Shadow of War" at Wigmore Hall in London of which the first is tonight. The Guardian has an excellent article about the series. I first heard Steven in a concert of the Vancouver Chamber Music Festival a long, long time ago. It was probably in the 1980s sometime. In any case, apart from some Boccherini, I recall him playing in the Shostakovich Trio in E minor, op. 67. The current series also includes a performance of this extraordinary trio. Here is a performance of the first movement recorded in 1945 with Shostakovich himself at the piano:

I want to use this post to introduce a series of posts about the trio. It is one of the most powerful pieces of chamber music ever written, but not known nearly as well as its aesthetic stature would suggest. I propose to get into the piece in some detail, talking about the historic context as well as how the piece actually works.

Here is the entire piece played by members of the Borodin String Quartet & Elisabeth Leonskaja on piano.

For the 0.01%

I just stumbled across this available from Harrods. A nice set of what are twelve presumably very fine Scotch whiskys for £987,500 or $1.57 million.

Comes with a nice case. Still, it's just twelve bottles of Scotch. I remember buying a little sample case of Laphroaig whisky once at Heathrow for just £30. Three small bottles of ten-year-old, fifteen-year-old and cask-strength seemed a pretty good deal. How could The Dalmore be thirty-three thousand times better?

But what really astounds is the sheer excessiveness of it. I'm writing a string quartet right now. Yes, I'm a rather unknown composer, but suppose I was a well-known Canadian composer. According to the League of Canadian Composers standard rates I would only get paid something like $10,000 commission for the piece. Let's see, if each of those bottles of The Dalmore is a litre, that means that $10,000 buys you about an eighth of a bottle or a little over four ounces. So my string quartet, even if it were commissioned at the standard rates would only be worth about four ounces of a really over-priced Scotch. I think Schubert used to sell his songs for, well, a song.

My friends, we are in the wrong business!

HIgh and Low

I think that the main reason that aesthetics is held in such low esteem these days is that it is fundamentally evaluative--it is about good and bad. I can't find the post right now, but quite a while ago I believe I linked to a Wikipedia article on music aesthetics that was so brief it was an insult. Whatever the case was then, it seems to be improving slightly because now Wikipedia has a bigger article on the aesthetics of music that actually tries to cover a bit of ground. There is even a page of aesthetic principles of music, though it is confusingly also called "culturally linked qualities of music." I put up a post long ago in which I attempted to distinguish good and bad aesthetic principles calling it "Aesthetic Virtues and Sins".

Not to blow my own horn (pluck my own string?), but I think my post does have to do with aesthetic principles, whereas the one on Wikipedia does not even seem to understand what an aesthetic principle is! Instead, it is a disorganized list of the supposed qualities of various musical genres like blues or doina that fails to mention what musical elements might give rise to these qualities. Here is one of my favorites:

 Duende is a quality of Spanish music, especially flamenco, and is a complex emotional quality

Wow, that really gets down to the details! I don't think I have ever seen a less-informative statement about music. Is this from a high-school essay? I think that the correct way to describe this list is "various unexplained terms referring to supposed musical qualities."

I think it is safe to say that the aesthetics of music is a largely misunderstood area these days.

What is aesthetics? The way I use the word it is a field of philosophy that attempts to discuss the basic problems of the perception and evaluation of artworks. My particular interest is the aesthetics of music which I try to pursue in a concrete and pragmatic way. In other words, I am not interested in the confused abstractions of post-modernism--except as an aesthetic error!

One of the problems with recent approaches to the aesthetics of popular music is that it has gotten so bound up with ideology (as in the criticism of Theodor Adorno) and with mapping high and low against classical versus popular, that the actual aesthetics are pushed to one side. I talk about that in this post.

If you actually want to do the proper work of aesthetics, then I think you have to be able to talk about individual artworks. Otherwise you are just doing ideology. Different genres of music do have their strengths and limitations, of course, but within that there can be major aesthetic differences in quality. When you are talking about post-WWII popular song, certain artists tend to transcend the genre. Is there any real argument that what Bob Dylan and the Beatles did was not of high aesthetic quality? But having said that, good criticism goes on to try and explain how and why this is the case. One almost taboo topic in aesthetics is the variation in quality between different works of the avant-garde. From reading in the mainstream media, one would think that every composer who managed to get mentioned did wonderful things. This is certainly the impression given by one of the best series of essays on contemporary composers, that found in the Guardian last year.

I don't mean to say that we should be always engaging in a kind of crude listing of quality: so-and-so is the best avant-garde composer of the 1950s, and Joe Blow is number two! Not at all. But if all you do is cheerlead then you are practicing journalism (and not very good journalism!) not criticism. If you are able to talk about what the composer was trying to do, then you should also go on to talk about how well he succeeded.

When we are talking about high and low art or culture, we do need to recognize functional success. The Twinkie is a successful example of a commercial confection. A waltz by Johann Strauss is a successful example of a Viennese waltz. We can contrast them with failed examples of each, though you have to dig around a bit!

To my mind aesthetics is a practical endeavor and one that can be quite entertaining. My "catty micro-reviews" posts are an example. But when I try and figure out how a Shostakovich string quartet is put together, that is also an example of musical aesthetics.

The thing is that I just don't see too much other writing on music aesthetics that is even trying to do anything similar. Or even that understands that it is possible.

That was a Viennese waltz by Johann Strauss. Here is something aesthetic to ponder: it is part of the style to slightly anticipate the second beat of the measure. Why is that?

Julian Bream: Guitar Master

English guitarist Julian Bream is about to receive a lifetime achievement award from Gramophone magazine. The Guardian has a big article up devoted to the retired guitarist. I normally like to criticize articles about music in the popular press, but the Guardian is really a step above: their classical music section is quite good. But I do think I can contribute a few insights that the article misses.

Julian Bream has been retired for quite some time now. I believe I saw him in his last international tour when he played in Montréal in the winter season of 1997/98. The first time I saw him play was in New York in 1975 and I saw other concerts in the 1980s on the West Coast and the 1990s in Montréal. I grew up, as a guitarist, listening to his recordings. He was a stunning interpreter of a great deal of 20th century music for guitar by Reginald Smith-Brindle, Benjamin Britten, Hans Werner Henze, Leo Brouwer, Lennox Berkeley and others. He inspired the composition of much of this music. His great rival, the other English (Australian) guitarist, John Williams, was also a close friend. They performed quite a lot of guitar duets together.

Bream was a spectacular performer who explored realms of timbre and dynamics that were largely untouched by the Spanish school of guitar playing. The Spanish players, led by the great maestro Andrés Segovia, generally cultivated a warmer sound. Bream used darker sounds alongside brilliant, crystalline ones for a wider palette. He wasn't afraid to use a bright, naily sound with a very dry staccato attack.

Apart from his performances of 20th century repertoire, he was also renowned for being a brilliant interpreter of Renaissance lute music. We are a lot more familiar with John Dowland as a result of his advocacy. He uncovered some virtuosic repertoire by Mauro Giuliani, the opera potpourris known as the Rossianiana, and recorded some outstanding sonatas by Fernando Sor. There really wasn't any guitar repertoire that he wasn't in command of, though it took him quite a while to start playing the music of Leo Brouwer. When he did, though, he inspired a wonderful concerto and sonata. Bream was a formidable concerto player, with significant recordings of Rodrigo, Berkeley, Villa-Lobos, Malcolm Arnold and Brouwer.

All that being said, I think it is also appropriate, in the context of this blog, to make some critical observations as well. Bream's status as one of the very greatest 20th century guitarists is not to be doubted, but he did have a few flaws as an artist. While I have always admired his powerful and expressive interpretations, I have found him to be a problematic model as a technician. There is no Julian Bream "school" of guitar-playing, even though he did have a few students. I spent a couple of years studying with one of his most accomplished students. He was an excellent guitarist, but like his teacher, not one to be emulated. Why is this?

I think the problem with the way Bream approaches the guitar is that playing is always a kind of heroic struggle. There is no sprezzatura (that I talk about here), no elegant lightness. Everything is done with excessive effort and tension. This leads to drama, yes, but at extreme cost. In Bream's playing this cost was evident in so many of his concerts. About half the concerts I saw him play were nearly technically perfect. The other half had all too many disasters! Sometimes he won the battle, sometimes he lost. Another indicator was his work as a concerto player. To be a really great concerto performer you need a technical confidence and ease, enough so that you can really interact with the orchestra. On the guitar, the artists who seem to have this the most are John Williams and Pepe Romero. Bream never seemed entirely relaxed when playing with orchestra--probably because he was never that relaxed ever with the guitar!

Sometimes this tension can lead to a mannered performance. His recording of the Choro No. 1 by Heitor Villa-Lobos is an example. It is so choppy, naily and overblown that it permanently turned me off the piece. Here is the performance:

Villa-Lobos seems to be the one composer that Bream does not play well. No, wait, there is another: J. S. Bach. Bream did not record a great deal of Bach, but when he did that same tension and excess tends to mar the performance:

Flat-footed, rhythmically stiff, skittish tempo, clumsy phrases--there is not a lot to like in that performance.

But all that being said, we should admire the lifetime achievement of Julian Bream for the great one it was. When he started out there was no English classical guitar tradition. After a few decades of his influence as a concert artist and inspiration to composers, Great Britain is now a center of outstanding guitar playing. Artists like John Williams, David Russell and a host of others would likely never have achieved the heights they did were it not for the pioneering career of Julian Bream.

Let's end with a performance of the Fandango by Joaquin Rodrigo, an example of Bream at his incisive best:

Unfortunately it is not available on YouTube, but Bream's recording of the rest of those Tres Piezas Españoles by Rodrigo, especially of the Passacaglia, showed we guitarists how they should be played!

Thank you very much, Julian!

Music en voyage

A couple of days ago NASA announced that the space probe Voyager 1 has left the solar system and is now in interstellar space: the first man-made object to do so. That provoked this odd little story in the LA Times:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-voyager-1-music-in-space-20130912,0,1206907.story

A quote:

The music selection on Voyager skews noticeably classical, with the inclusion of seven classical selections out of a total of 27 tracks.

I'm not quite sure if the writer is bragging or complaining about the classical "skew", but if I had been running the committee making the selections it might have been seven popular selections out of a total of 27 tracks, with the majority being classical.

Voyager 1 was launched in September 1977. Was the choice of music skewed by that? In other words, did the committee pick a bunch of then-current popular music and throw in a few token classical pieces just for show? Will we see a lot of Rod Stewart, ABBA and K.C. and the Sunshine Band (big hits in 1977)?

Here, from the NASA site is the whole list of music selections:

»	Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F. First Movement, Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, conductor. 4:40
»	Java, court gamelan, "Kinds of Flowers," recorded by Robert Brown. 4:43
»	Senegal, percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle. 2:08
»	Zaire, Pygmy girls' initiation song, recorded by Colin Turnbull. 0:56
»	Australia, Aborigine songs, "Morning Star" and "Devil Bird," recorded by Sandra LeBrun Holmes. 1:26
»	Mexico, "El Cascabel," performed by Lorenzo Barcelata and the Mariachi México. 3:14
»	"Johnny B. Goode," written and performed by Chuck Berry. 2:38
»	New Guinea, men's house song, recorded by Robert MacLennan. 1:20
»	Japan, shakuhachi, "Tsuru No Sugomori" ("Crane's Nest,") performed by Goro Yamaguchi. 4:51
»	Bach, "Gavotte en rondeaux" from the Partita No. 3 in E major for Violin, performed by Arthur Grumiaux. 2:55
»	Mozart, The Magic Flute, Queen of the Night aria, no. 14. Edda Moser, soprano. Bavarian State Opera, Munich, Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor. 2:55
»	Georgian S.S.R., chorus, "Tchakrulo," collected by Radio Moscow. 2:18
»	Peru, panpipes and drum, collected by Casa de la Cultura, Lima. 0:52
»	"Melancholy Blues," performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven. 3:05
»	Azerbaijan S.S.R., bagpipes, recorded by Radio Moscow. 2:30
»	Stravinsky, Rite of Spring, Sacrificial Dance, Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Igor Stravinsky, conductor. 4:35
»	Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Prelude and Fugue in C, No.1. Glenn Gould, piano. 4:48
»	Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, conductor. 7:20
»	Bulgaria, "Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin," sung by Valya Balkanska. 4:59
»	Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes. 0:57
»	Holborne, Paueans, Galliards, Almains and Other Short Aeirs, "The Fairie Round," performed by David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London. 1:17
»	Solomon Islands, panpipes, collected by the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Service. 1:12
»	Peru, wedding song, recorded by John Cohen. 0:38
»	China, ch'in, "Flowing Streams," performed by Kuan P'ing-hu. 7:37
»	India, raga, "Jaat Kahan Ho," sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar. 3:30
»	"Dark Was the Night," written and performed by Blind Willie Johnson. 3:15
»	Beethoven, String Quartet No. 13 in B flat, Opus 130, Cavatina, performed by Budapest String Quartet. 6:37

Aha, interesting choices. In the 1970s one of the most interesting recording projects was that of Folkways Records who specialized in recording everything non-commercial such as "folk, world, and children's music". It was acquired by the Smithsonian in 1987. The non-classical selections on the NASA list seem to be very like a Folkways Records repertoire list: Javanese gamelan, Zaire pygmy girls' song, panpipes from Peru and so on. Some 'classic' examples of American music such as Louis Armstrong, Blind Willie Johnson and Chuck Berry are included. The classical selection includes not only those you would expect, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Stravinsky, but also some early music by Hans Holborne. All in all, a pretty impressive selection.

Imagine this same project being taken up today. Would a similar aesthetic be followed? I am extrapolating that the basic principle of selection was something like: choose the most fundamental pieces from the classical repertoire allowing also for a wide range of genres from solo violin to opera; from world music, choose distinctive examples from a wide range of cultures and instrumentation, childrens' song to panpipes; then choose a sample of distinctive American popular music, jazz, blues and rock and roll.

I would almost be willing to bet that if the selection was made today, it would be heavily skewed towards current pop music. Sure, a few classical tunes, some world music, but I would bet that there would be some Beatles, some Jimi Hendrix and either Lady Gaga or Beyoncé, maybe some Michael Jackson. After all, that is what is 'relevant', right?

What has happened in the last thirty-six years to dilute the aesthetic that was probably used to make the original selection? I would argue that a real historical perspective has faded even from academia. The other thing that has diminished is a sense of objective aesthetic criteria. Why do you have to have Bach when he is a "minority taste"? Isn't Beyoncé more important? Well, sure, if you no longer have an aesthetic but just rely on popular appeal.

Here is the haunting blues by Blind Willie Johnson included on Voyager. "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" recorded sometime between 1927 and 1930:

It is sure in a cold, dark place now!

An Expanded Guitar

As I try to post every day, I am always on the lookout for material for a post. Last night, I didn't have to go looking for it as it came to me!

Today my violinist and I are going to be recording four new pieces for violin and guitar that I have recently composed. Here is the title page:

As preparation for the recording, we arranged for what I call a "guitar night". My violinist and I got together with two friends who are a guitar duo, Jack and Francis. They also both compose so these evenings give everyone a chance to try out some new compositions. We played my violin and guitar pieces, then Francis played her arrangement of a song, "Camino de Guanajuato" by the Mexican songwriter José Alfredo Jiménez, who was born in the nearby town of Dolores Hidalgo. Then Jack had a couple of interesting guitars to show us. The first was a late-19th century guitar that he had had restored to something like its original condition. This was a short string-length instrument that was similar to what Fernando Sor would have played. Jack played a couple of his original walzes and then a  Sor etude. Lovely sound! But then he brought out quite a different guitar:

Click to enlarge

Whoah! Wait a minute, how many strings? NINE? And what the heck is going on with that bridge? Here is another photo:

Click to enlarge

So, the bridge is set at an incredible angle--and notice the frets! They are also angled. How is this beast tuned? Well, in the middle are the six normal strings of the guitar from low E to high E. Above that high E is an added string, a high A, extending the range of the guitar much higher than usual. Then, below the low E is a low B and below that a very low F#. Here are the open strings on a grand staff. Note that these notes are at pitch. Normally music for guitar is written on a treble clef, sounding an octave lower:

Click to enlarge

Jack designed this instrument from scratch and the prototype you see here was built by the fine guitar builder Salvador Castillo from the "guitar town" of Paracho in the neighboring state of Michoacan. Here is his card:

and back:

As you can see, he usually builds normal instruments.

So what was Jack's motivation in designing this guitar? Jack is, like many of us, a very loyal guitarist in that whatever music he plays, he wants to play it on guitar. He is also a lover of the music of Bach and for quite a while now has been attempting to play the inventions (and some pieces from the Well-Tempered Clavier) on guitar. Alas, that is pretty hard to do. This instrument makes it more possible. It is also possible to play all the Renaissance and Baroque lute music on this guitar as the range goes down to the lowest strings of the theorbo. Jack says it is also a treat to play, though I think those angled frets would take some getting used to!

At first glance this looks like a guitar from a Salvador Dali painting, he of the melting watches, but listening to Jack play his way through the C-major invention (slowly and with a few stumbles, because he is still getting used to the instrument) makes one think that he has something here!

Of course I had to make a couple of critical comments like: "haven't you just reinvented the harpsichord?" and "won't we need a mutated guitarist with extra fingers to play it?" But that's just sour grapes!

Just as a little historical note: the modern design of the guitar, the basic dimensions and strings, were set in the late 19th century by the Spanish guitar builder Antonio Torres. There have been a few attempts to change this layout, the most famous being the ten-string guitar of Narciso Yepes:

The maestro with whom I studied in Spain, José Tomás, had a less-radical version of the idea: he played on an eight-string guitar and the main reason was so that he could play, not only the lute works of Bach, but his own specialty, the Baroque lute music of Sylvius Leopold Weiss. The Swedish guitarist Göran Söllscher plays on an eleven string guitar, specially designed to play the lute music of J. S. Bach:

Let's end with a little Bach played by Mr. Söllscher. This is the Sarabande from the Partita, BWV 997:

UPDATE: I replaced the notation showing the tuning to correct an error.

"Da Da Da *cough* Dum!"

The Guardian has a pretty decent essay up about concert etiquette, which, as seems to be typical, is all about coughing, cellphone rings and applause between movements. It is worth reading, including the comments. As one commentor notes:

I feel it is just basic social ettiquette and not 'audience ettiquette' that stops me from opening a packet of boiled sweets in the quiet moments of the 'Ave Maria' in Verdi's Otello

 I think one way to steer a middle course between excessive condemnation of audience noise and allowing any and all distractions is to notice that some audience noise indicates enthusiastic enjoyment of the music: this includes things like clapping between movements and shouting "bravo". I really think we should be very careful about suppressing any audience demonstrativeness. On the other hand, there are some kinds of sounds, coughing for example, or the unwrapping of candies, that indicate obliviousness to the music and I think we should speak out about that sort of thing. I have attended hundreds and hundreds of concerts and I have never coughed audibly in a single one--even if it was a bit of a struggle a couple of times. Sometimes audiences seem to forget that they are listening to real human beings and are not in front of their television sets. They just need to be reminded, perhaps.

There are other kinds of concert etiquette that govern the performers and not the audience and these seem to be less talked about. Take the protocols about entering and leaving the stage and bowing. In an orchestral concert most of the musicians come on stage informally and take their places without ceremony. But when the concert is about to begin the concertmaster enters, to applause, and in collaboration with the principal oboist, supervises the tuning of the orchestra. Then the conductor enters, to applause, and usually shakes hands with the concertmaster and principal cellist. If there is a soloist, in the case of a concerto, for example, the soloist and conductor enter together, with the soloist in the lead. The soloist then shakes hands with the concertmaster and perhaps principal cellist. The soloist bows to the audience and after getting settled, indicates to the conductor that he or she is ready to begin.

These protocols signal important facts about who has the musical priority. After the performance, the soloist again leads the bowing and may go ahead and shake hands with the concertmaster and any instrumentalists who had important solo parts. The soloist or the conductor may signal to important soloists to stand and receive applause. All this is done quite naturally and even though it is a pretty strict protocol, it is also quite natural as it corresponds to the musical importance of the parts and roles.

The sequence of bowing by the soloists in an opera is governed by very similar conventions. The minor roles enter and bow first and the last to enter and bow are the major soloists and then the whole cast bows together.

Personally I like the formality of a classical concert as I believe it has the effect of designating the concert hall space as a special place with its own rules and procedures. I think that the traditional protocols tend to protect and enhance the listening experience.

This clip just catches the entrance of soloist Mstislav Rostropovich in a performance of the Shostakovich Cello Concerto no. 1: