Grigory Sokolov, Ready for His Close-up?

I find that these days, with politics and popular music beyond any possibility of satire, that you have to look in some unexpected places to find something really suitable for the satiric treatment. I have an item going in tomorrow's Friday Miscellanea, but it really deserves a stand-alone post. The inspiration is one of those big, beefy New Yorker articles, this one on pianist Yuja Wang. She is a fine pianist, of course, but the 21st century being what it is, the article takes some bizarre twists and turns. For one thing, it is headed by this spectacular photo:

Wow, now that's some photo! Here is how they describe how it was shot:

We were on a below-street-level floor, filled with pianos. The photographer, Pari Dukovic, and his three assistants were placing lights and screens around one of them. They had been there since eight-thirty in the morning (catering and hair and makeup had followed at eleven-thirty). Several of Yuja’s concert dresses were strewn around an alcove serving as a dressing room, among them the blue-green dominatrix gown she had worn to play the “Hammerklavier.” This was the dress finally chosen for the portrait. The hair-and-makeup man, with whom Yuja had established laughing rapport, revised something in her hairdo at her request. “My cheeks are too fat,” she said as she looked in the mirror. She ate a few forkfuls from a plate of salad that her friend Carlos Avila, a pianist who teaches at Juilliard, brought her from the catering table. Then she slipped into the blue-green dress and stepped into stiletto heels, and the photo shoot began. Yuja went to the designated piano, and Dukovic—a handsome young man, with a warm and charming manner—began circling around it, snapping pictures with a handheld camera, as she played bits and pieces of repertoire. At first, she played tentatively and quietly, starting a piece and trailing off—and then she worked her way into a horrible and wonderful pastiche of Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart, Gershwin, Horowitz, Tchaikovsky, all mushed together, playing louder and louder and faster and faster, banging with mischievous demonic force, as Dukovic continued his circling and snapping, like the photographer in the famous orgasmic scene in “Blowup.” Yuja ended with a parodic crescendo as Dukovic shouted, “I love you!” and she burst into laughter.

The arresting photograph that was chosen out of the hundreds, possibly thousands, of pictures Dukovic took of Yuja at the piano and, later, in the first-floor showroom, posed full figure in front of a piano with its lid up, represents her as no concertgoer has ever seen her. The wild disorder of the hair has never been seen in a concert hall. (Yuja’s hair tends to stay in place throughout the most rousing of her performances.) And the foreshortened, oversized hand is an obvious deviation from the consensus we call reality. Will Yuja cringe when she looks at the photograph? Or will she see it as expressive of her impudent, defiant nature and find in it, almost hear in it, an echo of her incomparable musicality? 

Heh, heh, heh!

The New Yorker has this gift, when encountering someone they consider to be Really Important, of both sycophantically abasing themselves but at the same time sneaking in little things that tell their readers that This Person is Just Like You, obsessed with little material things like clothes and boyfriends and eating. About one third of the very lengthy article is, I kid you not, about Yuja's dresses. The caption to the photo reads: Yuja is keenly aware—as many soloists affect not to be—that she is being looked at as well as listened to. Oh yes, "as many soloists affect not to be!"

One piece that they do manage to talk briefly about is Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata that was featured in some of Ms Wang's recent concerts. That reminded me that there is a recent release of that same sonata on a CD by Grigory Sokolov. I immediately started imagining how a photo session with him might have gone.

"Grigory, Grigory! What are you going to wear for the photo session?"
"What do you mean, what am I going to wear? What I always wear in my professional life, white tie and tails."
"Oh no, not again! Grigory, don't you realize, it is the 21st century. We have to be aware of how the audience sees you, relates to you physically."
"Look, I'm a pianist, not a movie star or a body-builder!"
"That is so not the point. We need to up your sales figures and it is just a fact of life nowadays that your sexual persona is extremely important in how you project your image."
"My image?!? Who cares about my image? I'm a somewhat elderly, overweight Russian with weird hair! Once I sit down at the piano, who even notices what I am wearing?"
"The general public, my dear Grigory, the general public!"
"The general public doesn't come to my concerts or buy my CDs--it is the passionate music-lovers who do and I really don't think they want to see me in a slinky dress!"
"You might be right about that, but what about something casual and fashionable? How about something like this from Dolce and Gabbana? Very spiffy!"

"I think not. I think I will stick with exactly what I have been wearing ever since I became a concert pianist. And no, I will not "pose" for the cameras! Just take the damn picture!"

If You Have a Tiger by the Tail...

In my last post on Schegel and Romanticism I ended by saying "we seem to be fast returning to the situation where the tastes of the middle class are once again irrelevant as they are becoming dictated to us from above, with all the correct progressive sentiments. Just how this came to pass I will leave as an exercise for the reader." Let me try and fill in the blanks a bit. And also let me try and link it all to the situation in the music world--because that's why we are all here, right?

OK, very roughly, I think what has happened is that as the repercussions of the French Revolution spread across Europe the old upper class, the ancien régime, gradually lost power to the middle class and those rising up out of the middle class: leaders in business, the arts, the professions and so on. True, after Napoleon was defeated there was an international effort to turn the clock back at the Congress of Vienna, but it was finally unsuccessful. It is my belief that, in most cases, revolutions do away with the old upper class and set the stage for a new upper class. In Russia the tsar and his administration were replaced by the commissars and rulers like Stalin were even more violent and authoritarian than the old tsars. In Western Europe a much more benign state of affairs came to pass where the old aristocracy was replaced by a ruling class, many of whom came to power through democratic elections.

In music what we see (or, rather, hear) is that the crisp classical genres are expanded and transformed into vehicles for the new Romanticism which was really about the exploration and exaltation of ordinary people--the middle class--who were encouraged to delve inside and experience the Romantic trance (that I talked about in this post). At first it was just experienced by small groups in salon concerts, but music became a vehicle for expressing the emotions and aspirations of large groups of people, who listened in the public concert halls built all over Europe. Here is a post where I talk about that.

This is all very well and resulted in a lot of great music that is still quite central to the classical repertoire. But this situation was not entirely satisfactory to the new ruling class. They have a need to shape and monitor the tastes and values of the people they rule, for their own convenience. For one thing it helps to get re-elected and for another, it makes the populace more predictable. Therefore, towards the end of the 19th century we see the development of a host of different kinds of social controls. These include the State Socialism began by Bismarck in Germany in 1883 to appease the working class so they would stop agitating for outright socialism and the philosophy of education of John Dewey that appeared to make education simply better and more effective but that in reality in arguing that school is a social institution through which social reform can and should take place, handed the ruling class the perfect instrument to control public opinion by controlling how students are taught (and what they are taught, of course).

These two channels, the welfare state and the public school system allow the ruling class to control the populace as a whole in two fundamental ways: first of all, if a significant proportion of the public is receiving regular payments from the government, they will be far more compliant than if they were truly independent of the state. Second, the kinds of ideas and values held by most people will be instilled in them through the school system. Mind you, at the level of higher education, the older enlightenment values of truth and independent thought were, for a long time, still the norm.

But as the 20th century progressed, things seem to have gotten out of hand: governments came more and more to rely on methods that were essentially derived from the political ideas of Karl Marx. But we have to be careful here, because Marx's theories are far-reaching and complex. The important aspect for this argument is that they provide ideal tools by which political leaders can manipulate the public for their own benefit. Perhaps the most evident is the practice of singling out a particular group who are then blamed for the ills of the rest. This group might be rich people or others seen as "oppressors". We see this phenomenon again and again in social protests. It is not enough to point out a social failing, someone must be found to blame for it as that is far more effective politically.

Unfortunately all this seems to have metastasized. Progressivism, instead of just being a political convenience, has become like a tiger, preying on the fabric of civilization itself. Higher education, that used to be free of the crude manipulations found in the public schools, has fallen prey to them in an even more virulent form and now there is scarcely a single social or political progressive idea that is not enforced with brutal strictness in colleges and universities. Forget about the independent scholar, pursuing his researches free of political influence. Last week he was fired.

In music some odd things happened as well. There has always been a bifurcation in music between song and dance and the styles associated with them. I talked about how this was present early in the history of Western music in this post. But in the 20th century this division between popular music and concert or classical music became a vast gulf. At this point, it seems as if the classical side is in danger of disappearing entirely! From the point of view of this blog, and aesthetic quality, that would be a Bad Thing.

The apotheosis of popular music came about because of a number of factors. As societies became more democratic and distinct classes in society (apart from the ruling elite) became more and more ambiguous, the tastes of not only the middle class, but the working class, became the norm in society. The rough energy of rock and roll is perhaps the most striking example. The Beatles, working class boys from Manchester, influenced by American popular music, became the most famous people in the world due to their skill at writing and performing energetic and appealing music--appealing to lower and middle class tastes, that is!

At the other end of the spectrum, the intellectual side of music developed to an extreme in the avant-garde complexities of Milton Babbitt and Pierre Boulez, but this music did not appeal to the large audiences that pop music did.

What seems to be happening now is that composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich have, more or less, succeeded in reuniting the two streams of music. And in pop music, the trend is towards it becoming, not a vehicle of protest, but a vehicle for the progressive nostrums that are constantly drummed into the students at public schools and universities alike. Pop music now, when it is not simply a vehicle for narcissism or materialism, is all about reinforcing the progressive agenda: feminism, climate change, Occupy Wall Street, and so on. George Harrison wrote a song about excessively high taxes--I expect some pop star now to write one about raising the minimum wage!

So there is my, extremely simplified, view on the social and musical history of the last two hundred years. Please correct me where necessary!

And let's have an envoi. This is The Desert Music by Steve Reich on poetry by William Carlos Williams:

Schlegel and Romanticism

One of the things that makes me slightly better than a hack at philosophy is that I have a genuine curiosity about the origins of intellectual ideas and trends. For example, the social and artistic movement called "Romanticism" has always puzzled me because I have been unclear as to its origins and nature. It is of considerable interest because, as I have noted quite a few times on the blog, the shift from the Classical style to Romanticism in music was profound and far-reaching. Also, some of the fundamental ideas of Romanticism tend to leach into how many artists think of their nature and function even today. I sense some of this in myself. So a look at the foundations of Romanticism would be a good idea.

Romanticism is an awkward term for a complex idea. Two great music historians, Carl Dahlhaus and Richard Taruskin both avoid the term entirely in the titles of their books on 19th century music:

• Nineteenth-Century Music, Carl Dahlhaus
• Music in the Nineteenth Century (vol. 3 in the Oxford History of Western Music), Richard Taruskin

But Charles Rosen takes the bull by the horns and titles his book on the first generation of Romantic composers The Romantic Generation. Please feel free to go right ahead and read those three books, they are worth the effort.

But Romanticism did not begin with music but rather with literature and specifically with one philosopher's discussion of art: August Wilhelm von Schlegel. The link goes to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which is an excellent resource. Let me just summarize a bit:

the Romantic notion of art goes hand in hand with a reevaluation of the concept of nature. Schlegel argues that, from a philosophical point of view, everything participates in an ongoing process of creation, whereas, from an empirical point of view, natural things are conceived as if they were dead, fixed and independent from the whole. This means that, in its purest and philosophical sense, nature is not perceptible in the same way the worldly objects are.

the comprehension of nature's true essence is more like a presentiment (ahnen) or an aesthetic contemplation, than like scientific knowledge. In order to realize this Romantic notion of nature, one needs to comprehend or rather feel oneself as an organic whole. One needs to achieve self-awareness and to recognize oneself as forming part of a larger unity.

the philosophical or Romantic notion of nature as an unfathomable unity and creative force which cannot be seen nor touched, and which is obviously a direct response to some of the many questions raised by Kant's three Critiques, is not to be understood as a mere intellection, an empty chimera: Nature is the productive force pulsing in all living beings. For Schlegel, Nature is organic in the sense that it is an organized and organizing principle, granting intelligence to the totality of existing beings. It is a creative force that produces independent living things, the life of which does not need any external mechanism to keep its autonomy, for it only depends on its inner, natural power to live. In this point Schlegel mentions the astrological doctrines that claim that even the tiniest atom is a mirror of the universe. The idea of Nature mirroring itself in each and every living organism is characteristic both of German Idealism and German Romanticism. The difference between human beings and other animals, plants or mineral structures is that, (1) human beings are able to understand the fact that they, as an organism, mirror Nature's organic structure; and furthermore, (2) they are capable of reproducing nature's creativity through art, as well as reflecting upon this fact. This reasoning induced Schlegel to define human genius and his/her poetical creativity as a whole (i.e. art and language) as the capability of producing a world within a world (Müller-Vollmer, 317); a definition which is most tangible in dramatic literature.

My emphases. Schlegel's discussion of art begins as early as 1795 and continues until his collected writings of 1828. I mention these dates to co-ordinate them with the beginnings of Romanticism in music which are often associated with Beethoven and Schubert. Taruskin even (on p. 14 of the op. cit.) mentions that as early as the Trios, op. 1, published in 1795, "Beethoven was strongly inclined to 'push the envelope' with respect to genre, transgressing generic and stylistic boundaries in a way that made his teacher Haydn uneasy." Hey, if you feel yourself as an organic whole, part of a larger unity, then what does transgressing a few boundaries matter?

What I want to point out is something that is not talked about so much in any of the books I mention. I'm not sure if it is an insight unique to myself--that would be rather doubtful!--but I have not run into  it anywhere else. The insight is this: there is a relationship between the Romantic concepts in art and the unshackling of the middle class in Europe as a result of the French Revolution. Under the ancien régime, art was commissioned by the aristocracy and the church and it was made to suit their tastes. Genre boundaries were a convenience that made it easier for the nobility to request what they specifically wanted and to avoid paying for something they did not want. "My dear Joseph, let's have a nice symphony for Friday, I'm having guests over." I don't mean to diminish in any way the quality of the result, by the way. I doubt if there has ever been a finer symphonist than Haydn. But he did work within a social and economic context. Recall that Renaissance nobles who commissioned paintings often specified the exact weight of gold leaf that was to be used.

So if we go back and read the comments on Schlegel in this light we might see that their import is to validate and valorize the middle class who no longer had to accept the aesthetic commands and taste of their aristocratic betters, but now could just feel that productive and creative force of Nature pulsing in their very beings--or in the beings of the new generations of Romantic artists that were pulsing on their behalf. Artists like Schubert, who is really the first composer in whom the Romantic impulse begins to be strongly felt. Here is a sample, the song Der Erlkönig written in 1815 when he was only seventeen:

Romanticism is a very complex network of trends and ideas comprising the supernatural, myth, folk tales and musics, the Romantic trance in music created by new uses of harmony and melody, the huge expansion of the orchestra, public concerts and on and on. But all of these trends and influences have the function of taking away aesthetic authority from the upper classes and placing it firmly in the hands of the middle class and the artists that speak to them. The artist, not the nobleman commissioning the work, has the ultimate authority to create taste and produce art and it is because he is "reproducing nature's creativity through art." I see this even in myself where I have this kind of fundamental belief that inspiration often comes through the contemplation of nature. So there is a streak of Romanticism that often is found in artists even now in the 21st century.

However, this may be changing, and again, it is due to social and economic changes. There is always an upper class, by the way, whether we think we have overthrown them or not! We might call them the "creative minority" or the "commissars" or the "1%" or "graduates of Harvard", but except for those times of great disruption such as occur during revolutions, they are always in charge. But for quite a while, they found managing the thoughts and tastes of the populace to be rather a chore as their authority was greatly diminished during the 19th century. But they are a clever bunch and it seems as if they are back in charge again, but with a plausible veneer of respectability coming from the view that they hold their position through merit.

And we seem to be fast returning to the situation where the tastes of the middle class are once again irrelevant as they are becoming dictated to us from above, with all the correct progressive sentiments. Just how this came to pass I will leave as an exercise for the reader. Didn't you use to hate it when the teacher did that! Sorry, but I think this post is long enough. Now let's listen to something that is synthesized by the new upper class and delivered to us for the purpose of forming our taste and understanding:

(That's just the audio, I guess we can't embed the complete version.)

Villa-Lobos: A Performer's Perspective

I first encountered the music of Heitor Villa-Lobos as a guitar student around 1972. It was the Prelude No. 4 and I found it both atmospherically lovely and technically challenging. It has a simple ABA structure, with the outer sections a simple triadic melody accompanied by harmonic chords. Then there is a fast middle section with rushing arpeggios that guitar students always struggle to get even. The magic comes when the return of the A section is preceded by a statement of the triadic melody in harmonics. It ends with a tonic chord in first inversion. Nice piece. Here is a recording I made many years later:

I later learned all five of the preludes and performed them as a group many times in concert, but this is the only one I have a recording of. After I began studying with Teo Bagchus in Vancouver, the first teacher I had who really knew the repertoire, I started to learn the Etude No. 8. I was still working on it when I traveled to Alicante, Spain to study with Teo's teacher, José Tomás. In fact, when I first knocked on his door and he asked me what I was working on, I'm pretty sure that it was mention of the Villa-Lobos Etude No. 8 that got me in the door. Later on I worked on the Etude No. 1, which is one of the trickiest arpeggio studies. Audiences like it because it sounds pretty, but guitarists can spend a few years mastering the complex arpeggio pattern. Here is my recording of it:

There are twelve etudes for guitar in all by Villa-Lobos but a lot of guitarists never get past the first one, which is actually one of the easiest. A particularly challenging one is the Etude No. 7 with its quick scales and melody that goes far up the neck. Here is my recording of that one:

So that gives you a pretty good sample of the solo guitar music by Villa-Lobos. I was bragging to a commentator that I have played almost all the music for guitar by Villa-Lobos in concert and that is almost true. I have played all of the preludes and most of the etudes (seven or eight of them, at least), the Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra as well as the Sexteto místico, a chamber work for the fascinating ensemble of flute, oboe, alto saxophone, guitar, celesta and harp. The only piece ever written for that ensemble, I am sure. That performance was for a chamber music series in Vancouver, recorded for broadcast by the CBC, in which I also played El Decameron negro by Leo Brouwer for solo guitar. Alas, I don't have a copy of that recording, so let's listen to this performance. The players are Bent Larsen (Flute), Sverre Larsen (Celesta), Björne Carl Nielsen (Oboe), Christian Hougaard (Saxophone), Jan Sommer (Guitar), Tine Rehling (Harp):

I haven't played the Suite popular brasileño, nor the Chôro No. 1, nor a couple of the etudes, but everything else...

Apart from the performance of the Concerto at the beautiful Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver, I think the performance I am most proud of was in Montreal when I devoted the whole first half to Villa-Lobos. I played the Etude 1, Prelude 1, Etude 2, Prelude 2, Etude 5, Prelude 3, Etude 7, Prelude 4, Etude 8, Prelude 5 and ended with the Etude 10, a real tour-de-force of slurs! I really wish I had a tape of that concert.

Being Canadian

In the header to this blog I do give myself some latitude when I say it is about

classical music, popular culture, philosophy and anything else that catches my fancy...

But for the most part the close focus is on classical music with occasionally a look at popular music. Aesthetics, which is a very important part of the approach, is the channel between music and philosophy. Of course, in discussing music in its context a lot of other things creep in, like politics and economics.

Today's post might seem a bit off-topic, but I am going to talk about my perspective on being Canadian almost exclusively in terms of music, specifically my musical identity. I often write things quite critical of Canada and music in Canada and this post (which was inspired by a little discussion of the Tragically Hip in the comment section) might explain why.

I was born in northern Canada and I should explain what that involves. From different sources we find that about 90% of the population of Canada live within 100 miles (160 kilometres) of the US border. I was born in northern Alberta, over a thousand kilometres (655 miles) north of the US border. The music I encountered when young was almost entirely the folk music of the Canadian prairies: jigs, reels, schottisches with the occasional polka. This music derives from the largely English, Scots and Irish settlers (the polka from the Ukrainian immigrants to the Canadian prairies). My mother was a Canadian folk musician, a fiddler who played by ear and did not read music. The first time I saw someone read music (a schoolteacher and pianist) it fascinated me. When I was fourteen we moved to Vancouver Island (Courtenay, still 260 kilometres from the US) which brought me in contact with a lot more music. This included not only the latest pop and rock via Vancouver radio stations, but also classical music due to a local festival. I vaguely recall hearing a performance of the Penderecki Threnody one summer.

When I was fifteen I began playing the electric bass and acoustic six string. Soon after I took up the six-string electric. I owned a lovely old Gibson from 1953. But it wasn't long before I discovered classical in a really serious way. A friend played me a recording of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and I was hooked. From then I listened intently and passionately to Bach, Beethoven, Dvorak, Debussy, Schubert and others. This set me on my path. I enrolled in the School of Music at the University of Victoria for two years of an undergraduate degree. By this time I was a committed classical guitarist and I realized that this school could not offer me what I needed: a real master to take private lessons with. I was taking lessons privately at this point with the best teacher I could find which meant commuting to Vancouver every week. He told me to study with his teacher in Spain, which I did, Maestro José Tomás in Alicante. I did that for a year and when I came back I was a real, honest to goodness classical guitarist. I'm going to stop the autobiography right here.

So, can you see the problem? What is my musical identity? It says on my passport that I am a Canadian (and a subject of Queen Elizabeth II, but that's a whole 'nother topic), but in what sense am I a Canadian musician?

I rejected, in succession, the folk music of Canada as transmitted to me through my mother, the rock and pop music of Canada, the US and Great Britain, and the avant-garde and contemporary music I encountered composed by professors and students at the University of Victoria and McGill University. What did I seek out instead? The music of the great European masters: Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Debussy. In practical terms I sought out a Spanish guitar master and became a concert guitarist playing largely Bach and the music of Spain and Latin America. Sure, I performed and taught in Canada, but it is hard to see how I am a specifically Canadian musician.

Perhaps as a composer? When I was a young pop musician I wrote a lot of songs. These were not rock songs and the inspiration was probably Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen with a touch of B. B. King. Somewhere there is a reel-to-reel tape of a few of these songs that I multi-tracked around 1970 just as I was about to leave the pop world. Are those Canadian songs? If I can run down a copy, I will listen and see what they tell me.

After I became a classical musician, I would write the occasional piece, usually because of musicians I was working with. There were pieces for solo guitar, two guitars and harpsichord, large guitar ensemble, flute and guitar and so on. Now here we might be getting into some actual Canadian music. The inspiration for a lot of these pieces was Canadian landscapes, mostly Vancouver Island. Some titles include "Unbounded Vision in Blue and Purple" for flute and guitar or "Long Lines of Winter Light" for large guitar ensemble. But wait, the way I saw that Canadian landscape tended to be influenced by ukiyo-e, the Japanese woodcut landscapes that I was very into at the time:

And those pieces I wrote to play with other musicians I was working with? One was for a flute player who was from Long Island, NY and another was for a guitarist from Manchester and a harpsichordist from New Jersey. Another was for a guitarist I played duos with from Santiago, Chile. Living in Canada, of course, but still...

So you see, apart from a few Canadian influences such as Leonard Cohen and Glenn Gould, it is hard to find much Canadian music that I didn't actually reject! What I sought out was the great music of the Western European traditions.

Sure, I'm Canadian. But like many Canadians, I find the musical culture of Canada to be a bit undeveloped and narrow.

I think the best envoi for this post is the first of my own performances I put up on the blog. This is Carora, vals venezolano, a lovely piece by the Venezuelan guitarist Antonio Lauro. I can't embed it as I am not at my home computer, so you have to follow the link:

http://themusicsalon.blogspot.mx/2012/10/bryan-townsend-guitar.html

Under-appreciated Repertoires

There are some really outstanding and remarkable repertoires of music out there that, for whatever reason, are under-appreciated. I don't think that I'm the only one who thinks so.

The string quartets of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Bartók and Shostakovich are quite often performed and recorded so we can't call them neglected, but the string quartets of Haydn, who not only originated the form, but left us eighty-eight wonderful examples, are not performed quite as much as one would like. Haydn is always the slightly overlooked composer. This is the String Quartet op. 20 no. 2 in C major played by the Quatuor Mosaïques on original instruments:

The music of Bach is widely appreciated, of course, but there are some areas that are neglected and the main one, I think, is the huge repertoire of cantatas for small orchestral group with choir and vocal soloists. These are absolutely unsurpassed examples of religious chamber music that are probably not heard very often due to the fact that they are no longer a part of the religious service they were originally written for. Plus, they require very good musicians and sometimes require some unusual instruments. In addition, we don't seem to have too many appropriate venues for them these days. This is certainly an under-appreciated repertoire for most listeners. This is the Cantata BWV 113 "Herr Jesu Christ, du höchstes Gut" performed by John Eliot Gardiner conducting the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists (further credits at YouTube):

One of the largest under-appreciated repertoires is the five hundred and fifty-five sonatas for harpsichord composed by Domenico Scarlatti and barely known before the 20th century. The only complete recording is by Scott Ross and it is well worth becoming familiar with. Here are fourteen sonatas from the middle: K. 204a to K. 216:

An older repertoire and one that has yet to be really discovered is the music for vihuela by Luis Milan some of which is played by guitarists. Here are some samples. The first is the Fantasia XI de consonancias y redobles with Ernesto Quezada, vihuela (doing some very nice ornaments).

Next Robert Barto playing Fantasías XIII and X:

Finally, Fantasías X and XII played by Ralph Maier:

I'm sure my readers have their own favorite neglected repertoires, so why don't you tell us about them in the comments?

Friday Miscellanea

Once an artist has passed away, the critical evaluations really begin to roll out and this week saw a well-written one on the legacy of David Bowie in acculturated: David Bowie: Last of the Literate Rock Stars.

Bowie’s music will last not because it was groundbreaking, iconic, or any of the other lazy clichés the media are using to describe it. It will last because David Bowie built his music on a canon of modern Western art and literature. The music’s richness can’t be separated from Bowie’s hard (and joyful) work of absorbing and mastering these sources.

Gee, that sounds like something I might have written.

* * *

There are few things more satisfying than reading a really good criticism--even moreso these days when criticism of any kind is deemed inappropriate. I have been perplexed lately reading fulsome reviews of The Tragically Hip's final tour. Who, you ask? Yes, exactly. Tragically Hip appear to be Canada's Official and Much-Loved Rock Band, the Essence of Who We Are! The Globe and Mail lately has had almost nothing but articles about how really, horribly, terribly awful Donald Trump is and how wonderfully, magically, tragically awesome Tragically Hip are. The one time I tried to listen to them they sounded like U2 only duller if that is even possible. So it was with anticipation that I read David Solway's magnum force takedown of them: Canada: A Tragically Hip Nation.

In order to understand Canada—its tepid mores and self-important culture, its assumption of election and ingrained narcissism—one could do worse than listen to the music of The Tragically Hip and observe the adulation that greets its lackluster songs and mannered performances. My American readers may have never heard of the group; Canadians have scarcely heard anything but—especially of late. The group, which has a street named after them in their native Kingston, Ontario (Tragically Hip Way that runs beside the Rogers K-Rock Centre), is symptomatic of a self-inflated country, the sort of country where one of its major newspapers, The National Post, can proudly devote an entire page to congratulating an Olympic athlete who brought home—a bronze.

The rest of the article is hard to summarize, so I recommend you follow the link and read the whole thing.

* * *

There is always something fascinating about unusual musical instruments and this has got to be one of the most unusual.

"The American Fotoplayer is a type of instrument that was specially designed to make music and sound effects for silent films. Here, Joe Rinaudo shows off all the (literal) bells and whistles that make this such an impressive piece of machinery."

This is kind of the apotheosis of the One-Man Band. Isn't watching this a tad more entertaining than the latest Nicki Minaj video?

* * *

While we are in the realms of the weird, here is a North Korean guitar ensemble:

You can tell it is a Stalinist totalitarian dictatorship because they are not allowed to play on half-size guitars, which would suit their anatomy better.

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After that last item and purely by chance I ran across a little essay that I think everyone should read. Oddly enough it is in the New York Times. The author is Dierdre N. McCloskey, professor emerita of economics, history, English and communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I put this up to balance out some remarks I have made recently about the French Revolution and its consequences for the arts. The article is titled The Formula for a Richer World? Equality, Liberty, Justice.

The Great Enrichment began in 17th-century Holland. By the 18th century, it had moved to England, Scotland and the American colonies, and now it has spread to much of the rest of the world.

Economists and historians agree on its startling magnitude: By 2010, the average daily income in a wide range of countries, including Japan, the United States, Botswana and Brazil, had soared 1,000 to 3,000 percent over the levels of 1800. People moved from tents and mud huts to split-levels and city condominiums, from waterborne diseases to 80-year life spans, from ignorance to literacy.

The root cause of enrichment was and is the liberal idea, spawning the university, the railway, the high-rise, the internet and, most important, our liberties. What original accumulation of capital inflamed the minds of William Lloyd Garrison and Sojourner Truth? What institutions, except the recent liberal ones of university education and uncensored book publishing, caused feminism or the antiwar movement? Since Karl Marx, we have made a habit of seeking material causes for human progress. But the modern world came from treating more and more people with respect.

Read the whole thing!

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Oops, Wells Fargo ran some ads suggesting that arts types really should give up on that stuff and start doing something useful like become engineers:

The arts community was not amused.

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From the looks of this article in The Violin Channel, bias was a big factor in the recent Shanghai Violin Competition. Is the violin world so small that it is necessary to accept judges that have students competing?

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Here is a real blast from the past! My past, that is. Way back in 1968 I was playing in a rock band and at this point I'm not sure what name were were going by at the time. In any case, we competed in a Battle of the Bands! Here is a photo one of the other members just sent me. I'm the guy on the far left, playing the f-hole bass guitar. Ron Boffy is in the middle and on the right is the lead guitarist and singer, Dave Keld. The name of the dancer in front is unknown. The location of this musical event was Courtenay, British Columbia, Canada.

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Here is an interesting problem with a musical theme. The Globe and Mail publishes a commentary titled No, your kids shouldn't be exempted from music class on religious grounds. The dispute is an awkward one:

A Toronto father crossed the line when he demanded that his kids be exempted from music class because, under his interpretation of Islam, all music is haram – forbidden.

When The Globe and Mail investigated what happened at Donwood Park elementary school, it found that education authorities had been grappling with the issue since 2013. In the name of reasonable accommodation, they bent over backward to placate parents who wanted their kids let out of music. They even suggested that students could clap their hands instead of playing instruments, or just listen to O Canada being sung. It wasn’t enough. Even listening to music being played was out. The father, who said his views are representative of other parents at the school, wanted his kids to be allowed to stay away from music class altogether.

Authorities said no. Though they were willing to compromise, they could not exempt students from a mandatory part of the curriculum.

The commentary begins by lauding Canada's multicultural policies to the skies and then ends by saying that the educational authorities were correct:

Music rooms have echoed to the singing of scales and bowing of violins for generations. Music is taught in Canadian schools. Everyone learns it. That is something fathers such as this one must simply come to accept.

These two things are not reconcilable. As recounted in another story, the father did not accept the ruling, but will come to school each time there is a scheduled music class and take his children home. The problem with feel-good multiculturalism is that not all cultures nor all aspects of some cultures are compatible. If one culture says we respect your religious teachings and the other culture says that we need to cut the heads off of unbelievers, then I don't see how there is any room for compromise. Plus, how could any culture not see how great music is?

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Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (1948 - 1997), a Muslim Pakistani musician, is considered by some to be one of the greatest voices ever recorded. He is primarily a singer of Qawwali, the devotional music of the Sufis. I first heard his work on the double LP released after the 1982 World of Music, Art and Dance festival. This is a performance filmed in 1993: