The Vihuelistas

The who? Yes, the vihuela, an important musical instrument historically, is not well known. I do have a "vihuela" tag, though as I have mentioned the instrument in several posts. The vihuela is largely a Spanish instrument though there is a Mexican vihuela, obviously descended from the days when Mexico was a Spanish colony, that plays a role in mariachi music. You should read the whole article on the vihuela in Wikipedia that I linked to, but here is an excerpt:

Plucked vihuelas, being essentially flat-backed lutes, evolved in the mid-15th century, in the Kingdom of Aragón, located in north-eastern Iberia (Spain). In Spain, Portugal, and Italy the vihuela was in common use by the late 15th through to the late 16th centuries. In the second half of the 15th century some vihuela players began using a bow, leading to the development of the viol.

Here are a couple of pictures of vihuelas. The first is of one of the three surviving vihuelas and the second of a modern reproduction:

Click to enlarge

The vihuela looks rather like a guitar, but its double-courses are tuned the same as the lute, which was the primary harmonic instrument in the rest of Europe. I don't think I can cite any sources for this, but a fairly widespread view is that the lute was not played in Spain because it derives from the oud, an instrument of ancient origins, but primarily used in the music of the Islamic cultures from Persia through North Africa. It was undoubtedly brought to the Iberian peninsula when it was conquered by the Moors in the 8th century. Towards the end of the 9th century, the idea of a "reconquista" began to take root amongst the Christian kingdoms remaining in the northwest. This took a very long time and was not complete until 1492, just before the discovery of the New World by Columbus.

Getting back to the music, one can see, I think, the appeal to the Spanish of an instrument that was not associated with the culture of the Moors, but had a similar musical function. In a remarkable flourishing, starting in 1536, a group of Spanish composers, all of whom played the vihuela, published a series of books of music of considerable importance. The first one was by Luis de Milán titled El Maestro. Here is the frontispiece to that book showing Orpheus playing the vihuela:

This book was followed by many others. This was very early in the history of printed music and luckily, copies of several books by different composers have survived. Here is the list from Wikipedia:

• El Maestro by Luis de Milán (1536)
• Los seys libros del Delphin by Luis de Narváez (1538)
• Tres Libros de Música by Alonso Mudarra (1546)
• Silva de Sirenas by Enríquez de Valderrábano (1547)
• Libro de Música de Vihuela by Diego Pisador (1552)
• Orphénica Lyra by Miguel de Fuenllana (1554)
• El Parnasso by Estevan Daça (1576)

These formed an important part of my own musical education as my own maestro in Spain, José Tomás, assigned me a lot of pieces from these books in the first few months of my time with him.

The importance of this repertoire is that it contains a lot of firsts: among the first instrumental music (though there are lot of pieces for voice and vihuela as well) to be printed, the first sets of variations, some of the first instrumental arrangements of vocal music, the very first tempo indications to be printed and so on. But more important than those historical features is the aesthetic quality of the music. All these composers were employed by high-ranking members of the nobility, Milán by the duke of Valencia, Narváez in the royal chapel of Charles V, Mudarra by members of the court of Charles V and the cathedral of Seville and so on. Apart from Valencia, residence of Milán, most of these composers were resident in Valladolid, an important center before the institution of Madrid as the royal capital.

Along with the spectacular vocal music by Tomás Luis de Victoria and others, this was the music of Imperial Spain at its most powerful which is itself interesting. When I visit Spain next month, I am going to spend time in both Valencia and Valladolid and hope to get a tiny sense of the vihuelistas from that. But I am also mulling over the idea of purchasing a vihuela and wondering why I didn't do so decades ago. I suppose it was because vihuela music fits on the guitar quite well, requiring just a small tuning change, but also because my commitment was to the classical guitar and the vihuela repertoire is just a small portion of that repertoire.

But I find myself more and more interested in the music, and the times, of the vihuelistas and playing that music on the original instrument (or a modern copy) is a worthwhile project. 

Let's end with some clips of that music. Here is Pedro Alcacer in a 2007 performance of the first six fantasias by Milán for the Vihuela Society of Valencia:

Here is a long clip of music by Luys de Narváez played by the very fine Hopkinson Smith. Alas, no details on the tracks is available and the original recording cannot be found on Amazon.

Here is one of Narváez' most famous pieces, his variations on the romanesca "Guardame las vacas" (if you want to hear Hopkinson Smith's performance of "Guardame" in the previous clip, it starts around the 17:10 mark):

And his "Cancion del Emperador" so-called because it was the favorite of Charles V. It is actually a transcription for vihuela of the famous "Mille Regretz" by Josquin des Prez. The performer is not indicated, but it is quite a nice version.

I hope you find some of this music pleasing!

Train to Valencia

Now that I have access to my iPhone photos, I can go back and fill in the gaps. Let me say right up front that my preferred mode of travel is definitely the Spanish AVE trains--mind you, I haven't tried all the others though I did take a short trip in a French TGV quite a few years ago. Access and security are efficient and easy, the trains are lovely and comfortable, much quieter than an airplane, they serve a snack and beverages and you get to see the countryside. What's not to like? Here is a slightly blurry photo of the interior and yes, those seats are comfortable:

This is the streamlined front of the train:

Streamlined because, did I mention this?--the top speed is 300 kilometers per hour.

The train to Valencia takes around an hour and three quarters (which includes two brief stops), a distance of around 400 kilometers. By the way, Spain has the second largest number of high-speed train routes by kilometers in the world. China is first and Japan is third.

The history of civilization in Spain goes back to the founding of Cadiz by the Phoenicians around 1100 BC, which makes it over three thousand years old. Travelling through the countryside you see that just about every square inch of land is in use. For the first half of the trip, there were mostly olive groves:

But for the second half, grapevines. Sorry for the photo!

And that's about it for the train to Valencia. I didn't take any photos on the return because my iPhone was out of juice.

I'm going to divide up the posts so the next one will be on the opera at the Palau Reina Sofía.

In Valencia

I was hoping to put up a bunch of photos of my trip here yesterday, but I foolishly forgot my iPhone cable, so I can neither connect to my laptop to transfer photos, nor recharge the phone. So when it runs out, that's it. But I got a lot of photos yesterday on the train which I will share when I get back to Madrid tomorrow. I do have my good camera with me, and I am just about to get out and start taking photos!

Last night was Werther by Massenet in the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía and I will do a review of it in a day or so as well when I have access to my iPhone photos. It was my first late 19th century French opera and I quite enjoyed it.

Just a note about the hotel: this hotel, the Ilunion Aqua 4, is about as complete a contrast to the one in Bologna as could be imagined. Weird name, I know. It is one of a complex of, I think, three Ilunion hotels, 3, 4 and 5, so called because they are in something called the "Aqua multispacio." It seems to be three hotel towers sitting on top of a five story shopping mall. The reception desk for my hotel is on the 4th floor. It is a very nice, very modern hotel. I have some photos on my phone I will share, but here are a couple from my other camera. The room:

The bathroom:

Let me just say that European bathrooms, the toilets at least, tend to make ours in North America look primitive and inefficient.

Here is the view from my window, not particularly high in the hotel, but you can glimpse in the distance the Mediterranean:

This the neighbouring hotel:

And this is the top of the five story shopping mall:

There is just about everything there from a Häagen-Dasz counter to Taco Bell to a Mexican cantina, to a Japanese noodle restaurant to a cinema, to a Nespresso store, clothing stores without measure, and on and on. A person with a shopping addiction would never leave.

The Palau where I will be attending another concert tonight, is right next door, which means that it is a twenty-five minute walk. It looms so large that, like mountains in the desert, you think you are just about there, but no. Strictly speaking it is three blocks away, but two of those blocks include giant traffic circles and the other one is about a mile long, extending alongside the City of Arts and Sciences of which the Palau forms a part. Here is an aerial view to give you an idea:

Click to enlarge

The Palau, containing the opera house, symphony hall, chamber hall, theatre and so on, is on the left.

So, without further ado, I am off to wander around with my camera. I was thinking of being ambitious and visiting the historic centre, then popping out to the beach (I even brought shorts!) and then a few photos of the Palau. But it is all so enormous that I think I will be doing well if I just take some photos of the City of Arts and Sciences.

Hasta luego!

Suitable music from Valencia could be music by the great 16th century vihuelista, Luys Milan, who spent his whole life in Valencia. This is Narciso Yepes playing the six Pavanas by Milan:

Minor Post about Food

Valencia is particularly known for two food items: paella valenciana and horchata. I've had a couple of paellas in Madrid, so I didn't make a point of looking for some in Valencia where I sought out some nearby Asian restaurants. But I did have some horchata there. Horchata is a favorite summer beverage and I remembered it fondly from when I lived in Spain many years ago. It is also available in Mexico, but it just doesn't seem the same there. And now I know the reason why. In Spain, horchata is made from chufas, in English, earth almonds, which are an edible tuber. In Mexico, it is made from rice with vanilla and cinnamon and usually comes out too sweet and rather tasteless. But when made from chufas, it has an earthy tang and is wonderfully refreshing. This is one of the elements in Spanish culture traceable to the Muslim rule. Here is a picture of horchata with the main ingredient, chufas:

I popped into a supermarket in Valencia where they had a refrigerator showing the wide variety of crustaceans available:

Shown are six or seven different kinds of what we would lump into the general category of "prawns." Here there are gambas, langostinos and others for which I don't know the Spanish name.

Another excellent dish is broiled scallops on the half shell:

And finally, a little ice cream stand with a lot of very yummy looking ice creams:

Xostakóvitx en Valencia

I mentioned that the orchestra concert, the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic, was in an entirely different hall, the Palau de la Música, as opposed to the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía:

This is more of a conservatory with several smaller halls downstairs and it is the home of the Orchestra of Valencia. It is quite a lovely place with a huge glassed-in conservatory with restaurant/bars at each end:

The hall itself is a good size:

I'm amazed I got a ticket (purchased online a couple of months ago) as every single seat was sold:

I mentioned that the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic only takes on a new musical director on rare occasions. From 1938 to 1988 they were directed by Yevgeny Mravinsky, famous for his sober and restrained conducting style. Regarding the orchestra, David Fanning remarked:

The Leningrad Philharmonic play like a wild stallion, only just held in check by the willpower of its master. Every smallest movement is placed with fierce pride; at any moment it may break into such a frenzied gallop that you hardly know whether to feel exhilarated or terrified.

So, rather than furiously provoking them into playing as so many modern conductors do (*cough* Dudamel *cough*), Mravinsky had to hold them back. Their current conductor, Yuri Temirkanov, who took over from Mravinsky in 1988 and is still at the helm, has a bit of the same style. No baton, conducts with sober movements, occasionally looks as if he is about to dig a trench, and then a moment later is beckoning gently for more lyricism. The orchestra are really excellent. The opening overture by Glinka, from his opera Ruslan and Ludmilla, opened at a furious tempo and was impressive with its sheer orchestral virtuosity. They do not play with any feeling of antiseptic precision, but with gusto.

Next was the Violin Concerto No. 1 by Dmitri Shostakovich. The title of this post uses the Valencian spelling of Shostakovich, which I find extremely entertaining! It reminds me a bit of some Nahuatl place names in Mexico. The soloist was the young Spanish violinist Leticia Moreno who studied at that same Escuela Superior de la Música Reina Sofía in Madrid that I took a photo of the other day. She has recorded the Shostakovich concerto with the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic for Deutsche Grammophon. She played it very well, with precision, passion, delicacy, ferocity--all of which it demands.

Shostakovich was working on the Violin Concerto No. 1 at the time of his second condemnation in 1948 and the work was not able to be premiered until 1955, by David Oistrakh, the dedicatee. The structure is very unusual: the first movement is a nocturne that Oistrakh described as a "suppression of feelings"; the second movement, a scherzo, he described as "demonic"; this is followed by a passacaglia of profound feeling and the last movement is a devil-may-care burlesque. I don't think I have ever heard of a concerto with nocturne and burlesque movements. In any case, it is a remarkable piece of music, dark and complex, and it was very well played. Ms Moreno had to return and bow several times. She was playing an instrument by Nicolò Gagliano from 1762 and it seemed to me to be perhaps too smooth a sound. It was often like the smoothest velvet, but I think I would have liked a bit more crunch.

The second half of the concert was the Symphony No. 5 by Tchaikovsky and I don't have a lot to say. I'm not sure you can say that this orchestra actually owns this music, but they certainly have an extended lease. Wonderful stuff and I was very happy to have heard the concert.

Here is a YouTube clip of Ms Moreno playing the last two movements, Passacaglia and Burlesque, with the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic conducted by Yuri Temirkanov:

Friday Miscellanea

New edition of Tárrega

Yuri Temirkanov:

As head of two of Russia’s leading musical institutions, the Kirov (later, Mariinsky) Opera and Ballet Theatre (1976-88) and the Leningrad (later, St Petersburg) Philharmonic Orchestra, of which he was principal conductor for more than three decades from 1988, Yuri Temirkanov, who has died aged 84, was at the forefront of music in the Soviet Union for nearly half a century.

I saw Temirkanov conduct the St Petersburg Philharmonic in a concert in Valencia a few years ago. In that post I said:

I mentioned that the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic only takes on a new musical director on rare occasions. From 1938 to 1988 they were directed by Yevgeny Mravinsky, famous for his sober and restrained conducting style. Regarding the orchestra, David Fanning remarked:

The Leningrad Philharmonic play like a wild stallion, only just held in check by the willpower of its master. Every smallest movement is placed with fierce pride; at any moment it may break into such a frenzied gallop that you hardly know whether to feel exhilarated or terrified.

So, rather than furiously provoking them into playing as so many modern conductors do (*cough* Dudamel *cough*), Mravinsky had to hold them back. Their current conductor, Yuri Temirkanov, who took over from Mravinsky in 1988 and is still at the helm, has a bit of the same style. No baton, conducts with sober movements, occasionally looks as if he is about to dig a trench, and then a moment later is beckoning gently for more lyricism.

So, Mravinsky was music director for fifty years but Temirkanov only lasted for thirty-five years. One thing you can say, no conductor ever retires from the St Petersburg Philharmonic. in the last eighty-five years they have only had two conductors!

* * *

The dire state of music education: Don’t stop the music

Music degrees are expensive to provide. They often require performance spaces, practice rooms, studios, equipment and technicians, instruments, and extra staff for instrumental and vocal teaching and ensemble direction. Of course, science degrees also require costly labs, facilities and technicians, but there is a wider range of government grants available for STEM subjects. Music is considerably more resource-intensive than non-performing arts and humanities subjects, many of which require little more than individual lecturers and spaces for lectures and seminars. Cutting a music programme can represent a significant saving for universities facing financial difficulties. 

At the same time, the sector itself cannot be wholly absolved of responsibility. In the name of “decolonisation”, the study of classical music is regularly impugned, associated with imperial domination, white supremacy, elitist hegemony and more; a glance at a range of leading conferences or journals makes clear how well-established such perspectives are.

It is impossible to summarize that article, so read the whole thing.

* * *

We seem to have a remarkable number of neglected black female composers. Her Music Fell Into Obscurity. Now It’s Back at the Philharmonic.

For Perry, a Black composer who died in 1979 at age 55, the 1950s and ’60s were replete with success, the summit of a career that fell into obscurity despite musicians’ admiration of her work. The mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges, who will make her Philharmonic debut on Wednesday performing in the “Stabat Mater” solo part, said of the piece: “I love the vocal writing. It’s intense, it’s very introspective, it’s very intimate and also very extreme.” Dima Slobodeniouk, who will conduct the program, described it as “logically and beautifully written.”

* * *

My last trip to Europe was so challenging that I decided to hold off on long flights for a while. I'm going to spend a few days in Mexico City in a couple of weeks. And then I ran across this article: The world’s best cities for culture. Number one is Mexico City.

Mexico’s charismatic, cosmopolitan capital nabbed the top spot, with locals scoring their city exceptionally high for both the quality and affordability of its culture scene. And while architecture, theatres and street parades like Dia de Muertos all got the nod in our survey, it was the city’s mighty museum scene that got the biggest shout-out. CDMX’s museums showcase everything from Aztec artifacts and folk art to surrealist paintings, and many of them are housed in showstopping buildings – just check out the grand, neo-baroque Palacio de Bellas Artes or the twisty, shiny and ultra-modern Museo Soumaya. Best of all? Many are either permanently free or offer free entry on Sundays for those with Mexican residency.

Yes, all that is true, but I have yet to find much in the way of classical music concerts--or maybe I just don't know where to look. 

* * *

Sparse content this week so let's curate some envois. First up the very fine Chinese guitarist Xuefei Yang with Ian Bostridge in a fine performance of the Songs from the Chinese by Benjamin Britten. You can watch the whole thing, which includes an interview with Xuefei Yang, but the Britten starts at the 38:48 mark:

Here is the Stabat Mater by Julia Perry, written in 1951.

Francisco Tárrega seems to be enjoying renewed popularity these days. There is a lovely new complete edition by Les Productions d'Oz and lots of performances. When I was a student I played the shorter pieces and got into the habit of thinking of him as a composer of little bon-bons. And Recuerdos de la Alhambra was too difficult! But of course he wrote lots of great concert pieces among which Capricho Arabe is one of the best. Here is a recording by Segovia:

We have to end with Temirkanov and the St Petersburg Philharmonic. I can't find the Glinka overture they began with in Valencia, which was truly terrifying, but here is the Symphony No. 4 of Tchaikovsky:

Today's Listening

The Suite Compostelana by Federico Mompou is one of the most interesting pieces in the Segovia repertoire, because it has a different character than most of the Spanish compositions. Unlike Federico Moreno Torroba, a Madrileño, Joaquin Rodrigo, born in Valencia, or Joaquin Turina, born in Seville, Mompou was Catalan, born in Barcelona, and his music has more of a French influence--elegance rather than rustic vigor.

Friday Miscellanea

I find most organs thick and lugubrious sounding, but old Spanish organs have a wonderful crisp and "crunchy" sound that is quite surprising. Here is Tiento de batalla, 5e tono ''Punt baix'' by Juan Cabanilles played on a 1695 organ in the Cathedral of Valencia:

* * *

One of the most interesting pieces in 20th century music also has one of the most interesting "origin" stories. The piece is Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time and the Wall Street Journal chose it recently for its Masterpiece series: Finding Grace in a Grim Setting.

At the first performance on Jan. 15, 1941, in Stalag VIII-A, the prisoners sat mesmerized, shivering in the cold for an hour. “Never before,” wrote the composer, “have I been listened to with such attention and understanding.” Many were actually bewildered by what they heard, yet they grasped that something truly special had occurred. Several had donated money to purchase a used cello from a nearby town for the occasion, a transaction made possible with the aid of the armed guards, who transported the cellist to pick up the instrument. That in itself seemed a minor miracle.

I encourage you to read the whole piece as it offers some information about the composition of the piece that I was unaware of. I have actually been to Görlitz, the site of Stalag VIII-A, though not to the actual camp, the site of which which does not exist any more.

The Masterpiece series, incidentally, is one of the few places in the mass media where you can find reliably interesting discussions of, yes, masterpieces. In a lot of the progressive cultural world any mention of art created by Dead White Europeans has to be accompanied by flagellation and apologies as the writer sets out to deconstruct the very idea of a masterpiece. That's all quite wrong, of course. Every person on earth who has any interest in or regard for the fine arts knows perfectly well that there are masterpieces.

* * *

Ran across this in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, p. 295:

Hearing something new is embarrassing and difficult for the ear; foreign music we do not hear well.

* * *

Via CTV news comes the intriguing statistic that the average person stops seeking out new music by age 28:

A survey by streaming service Deezer found that the average person reaches "musical paralysis" -- when she or he primarily listens to familiar tracks and does not seek out new genres -- at the age of 27 years and 11 months.

Musical discovery peaks nearly three years earlier, with 25-year-olds on average listening to at least 10 new songs per week.

Deezer surveyed 5,000 adults online across Brazil, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Brazilians reached musical paralysis the earliest, at 23 years and two months, while Germans stayed curious the longest, hitting paralysis at 31 years old.

On the other hand, some of us are not all that average.

* * *

Via Slipped Disc comes this list of free access scholarly music journals. There has to be a lot of interesting stuff there.

* * *

Another article about the crisis in music education in the UK: Music education ‘crisis’ laid bare in parliamentary report.

It says: “To date, the target of 75% (90% by 2025) for EBacc take-up has failed to be met by a very long way. Currently the number of students studying the EBacc has plateaued at 38% in state-funded schools. Indeed the number of students passing the EBacc was 16.7% in 2017/2018. And yet this failing policy is causing untold damage to music and many other creative subjects in our schools. And for what?”

The report goes on to argue that the government and Ofsted should take on board a number of recommendations around music education, “in particular as a matter of urgency the EBacc must be reviewed and reformed, and creative subjects, including music, must regain their central role in a broad and balanced curriculum for all of our children”.

The recommendations also include calls that music should be taught by a specialist teacher as part of the curriculum in all state schools for at least one hour every week and that schools have at least one full-time staff member teaching only music.

* * *

I am very much of two minds regarding articles like these: Daniel Barenboim is a great musician and humanist. So why are so many people afraid of him?

In musical circles, Barenboim’s temper is legendary. He has thrown fits because a violist rolled his eyes, because a singer bowed in the wrong place, because a favored principal player was on vacation. He once berated a musician who lacked concentration because someone in their immediate family had died. He has insulted a doctor who said that a performer with a stomach flu was too sick to play. On at least two occasions, he has allegedly grabbed and shaken members of his staff in anger.

Yes, sounds rather dire. But I have a considerable degree of mistrust for all muckraking articles like these that often are nothing more than journalistic malpractice. Are these a few isolated incidents out of a decades-long career of great creativity and good behaviour? Do we forgive great artists for their human flaws? Well, not really. Bad behaviour is bad behaviour and being creative in another part of your life does not get you off the hook. On the other hand, journalism thrives on nasty stories about famous people. But a more insidious issue is why should anyone fear a mere conductor and pianist? Is he going to stab us with his baton? No, the reason people might fear someone like Daniel Barenboim is because of the power he wields. If you need to curry favor with someone because they can make or break your career then they can get away with the arrogant misuse of power. So let's look at how power is wielded in arts institutions.

* * *

Sorry, due to the pressure of other duties today, this will have to be an abbreviated miscellanea. So let's have a nice big envoi. This is Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time in a performance by four excellent players: Richard Stoltzman(cl)　Peter Serkin(p)　Yo-Yo Ma(vc)　Pamela Frank(vn).

Friday Miscellanea

The Early Music Movement, or what we like to think of as "HIP" these days (Historically Informed Performance) has wended its way into live theatre. At the new Globe theatre in London, they are beginning to do Shakespeare in the original pronunciation. Here, let's let them tell us about it:

When they do the side by side readings, doesn't it sound just a wee bit like "Talk Like a Pirate Day"? In any case, what I wonder is, with the entire absence of recording technology in Shakespeare's day, how can we have such detailed knowledge of how they pronounced stuff? They give a nice accounting of the three kinds of evidence. The best part is that there are all sorts of puns and rhymes that are recovered in the original pronunciation.

* * *

Hunter S. Thompson's favorite LPs of the sixties? Sure, why not:

1. Herbie Mann’s 1969 Memphis Underground (“which may be the best album ever cut by anybody”)
2. Bob Dylan’s 1965 Bringing It All Back Home
3. Dylan’s 1965 Highway 61 Revisited
4. The Grateful Dead’s 1970 Workingman’s Dead (“the heaviest thing since Highway 61 and ‘Mr. Tambourine Man'”)
5. The Rolling Stones’ 1969 Let it Bleed
6. Buffalo Springfield’s 1967 Buffalo Springfield
7. Jefferson Airplane’s 1967 Surrealistic Pillow
8. Roland Kirk’s “various albums”
9. Miles Davis’s 1959 Sketches of Spain
10. Sandy Bull’s 1965 Inventions

I think I can agree on one or two of those...

* * *

Now I have to buy Sgt. Pepper's again... On May 26, a 50th anniversary edition of the iconic Beatles album is going to be released with all sorts of goodies. Allan Kozinn reviews at the Wall Street Journal:

they are celebrating its half century by releasing a new stereo mix in multiple formats: as a single CD; as part of a “Deluxe Edition” double CD or LP, with the second disc devoted to an alternative “Sgt. Pepper” built of previously unissued outtakes; and in a six-disc “Super Deluxe Edition” that also includes DVD and Blu-ray discs with a documentary and an immersive 5.1 surround-sound mix, two CDs of outtakes and a third devoted to the original mono mix, and a hardback book packed with recording details and essays about the music, its cultural context, and reception. The reissues are being released by Apple/UMG on May 26.

* * *

Tomorrow I pop over to Valencia, in a 300kph train, to see a performance of Massenet's Werther in the amazing Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía (there she is again!) to be followed the next night by a concert by the Saint Petersburg Symphony in the symphony hall in the same complex:

Werther is loosely based on the book by Goethe that I think I may have read decades ago. It is a story of impossible love and the suicide of a young poet. The original novel spurred a rash of suicides sometimes called the "Werther effect." I don't think I have heard a French opera live before--remember I am mostly new to the genre--so I'm looking forward to it.

* * *

The abuse of cellphones in concert halls continues, to no-one's surprise: Baritone orders three phone users to leave Concertbegouw recital:

I attended a recital tonight (at the Kleine Zaal of the Concertgebouw) with baritone Christopher Maltman and accompanist Julius Drake singing Eisler’s Hollywood Songbook. It was a very fine concert – but Mr. Maltman stopped mid-concert in the second half to address three young ladies in the back of the hall.

‘You are directly in my sightline, and it’s clear that you do not want to be here. I can see you chatting and using your phone. If you do not want to be here, leave.’ The audience applauded warmly.

* * *

This is a odd story: things have gotten so bad between the musicians and the management at the Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, that the music director was kicked out of the building for carrying his daughter's violin case:

Since the Fort Worth Symphony went on strike last year, relations between musicians and the Bass Performance Hall have iced over. A colleague writes: ‘Musicians aren’t allowed to take their cases into the hall. Any of them…even FWSO whose home this is supposedly is. On top of that, the FWSO musicians aren’t allowed to use their own locks on the lockers any more. They have to get one from BPH, which many won’t do because you can’t trust a super-expensive instrument not to be stolen when someone else gave you the lock. So now when many musicians would previously go into the lobby to talk to the audience post-show, they’re just leaving instead. Loss of good will. Loss of connection.

* * *

Alex Ross has dug up a fascinating passage from 1936 Nazi arts policy:

“Because this year has not brought an improvement in art criticism, I forbid once and for all the continuance of art criticism in its past form, effective as of today. From now on, the reporting of art will take the place of an art criticism which has set itself up as a judge of art – a complete perversion of the concept of 'criticism' which dates from the time of the Jewish domination of art. The critic is to be superseded by the art editor. The reporting of art should not be concerned with values, but should confine itself to description. Such reporting should give the public a chance to make its own judgments, should stimulate it to form an opinion about artistic achievements through its own attitudes and feelings.”

So there you go, more encouragement for my project to return values-based criticism to the art world.

* * * 

Also from Mr. Ross is his review of the new palace-like concert hall in Hamburg:

The conventional wisdom in America is that concert halls have too often seemed like fortresses, and must become more down to earth. Such is not the philosophy guiding the Elbphilharmonie, which was designed by the Swiss firm of Herzog & de Meuron. It towers three hundred and thirty-five feet above the ground, the concert-hall portion of the complex resting atop a massive brick warehouse that formerly was used to store cacao beans. The glass-covered upper structure lunges vertically from the foundation in a way that somehow reminds me of Neuschwanstein, King Ludwig II’s hilltop castle in Bavaria. Yet there are no gemütlich touches. The glass exterior is cool, undulating, shimmering; the brick walls below have an industrial, almost military look. Far from welcoming you in, the Elbphilharmonie glowers imperiously, as if prepared to repel a sneak attack on the Hanseatic League.

It cost 866 million euros! But every single concert since it opened in January has been sold out.

* * *

This explains so many things! Pop music is now written by committees:

A new study by Music Week magazine shows it now takes an average of 4.53 writers to create a hit single.

The publication analysed the 100 biggest singles of 2016, and found that only four were credited to a single artist - Mike Posner's I Took A Pill In Ibiza, Calvin Harris's My Way; and twohits by rock band Twenty One Pilots.

Ten years ago, the average number of writers on a hit single was 3.52, and 14 of the year's top 100 songs were credited to one person 

The best-selling song of 2016, Drake's One Dance, needed eight writers - but even that pales into insignificance compared to Mark Ronson's Uptown Funk, which took 13 people to create, leading Paul Gambaccini to brand it "the most written song in history".

Heh!

* * *

Let's have something from Massenet's opera Werther for our envoi today--written entirely by M. Massenet himself. This is Werther's aria "Elle m'aime" sung by Ludovic Tézier:

Friday Miscellanea

I guess we could file this in the category of "things you don't need to see or hear:" Lang Lang and Lindsey Stirling play the Spiderman theme.

Mind you, it does combine a pointless arrangement of a lackluster movie theme with a pseudo-film-noir video in a crossover illustrating the descent of Lang Lang's career into irrelevance, so there's that. (Was that too catty?)

* * *

DownBeat magazine (which was the first music magazine I read on a regular basis, in the late 60s) has a piece on the Monterey Jazz Festival. There is a photo of Clint Eastwood introducing Quincy Jones:

* * *

Norman Lebrecht is often good for a chuckle. Take for instance his feigned shock at finding out that much of the repertoire played by US orchestras consists of music by just four dead, white males:

A survey by New York singers’ agent Doug Schwalbe reveals that the leading North American orchestras are still desperately dependent on a tiny handful of dead white males.

Doug looks at performances by seven orchestras – NY Phil, LA Phil, Boston, San Fran, Toronto, Philadelphia and Dallas – since 2011.

He reports that Beethoven and Mozart accounted for over 15% of  the 9,676 pieces performed.

That proportion rises to 24% when he adds Tchaikovsky and Brahms.

And you wonder why people have stopped going.

Actually, people are still going to concerts and they particularly like Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Brahms. That's why their music is put in the program. There, that wasn't so hard to understand, was it?

* * *

Here is the very first example of computer-generated music from the University of Manchester in 1951, courtesy of Slipped Disc:

http://blogs.bl.uk/files/first-recorded-computer-music---copeland-long-restoration.mp3

What puzzles me is how you get a computer to play that badly out of tune?

* * *

No week would be complete without a performance of the theme from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain:

* * *

Yes, I know that I tend to lean to the sardonic, but here is a nice, sweet essay about a mother and daughter sharing the sweet magic of the Beatles. And what's wrong with that?

On a road trip together this summer, I played her some Beatle beauties: Norwegian Wood, A Day in the Life, Across the Universe. For me it was like those defining days of teaching her to ride a bike or swim. As we plunged through the monstrous Toronto rush hour, she played Yesterday 17 times in a row. There was a perfect connection between us. Yesterday is her first true experience of the melancholy arts.

 * * *

I see a theme developing here. This is a mandolin orchestra from Vishnyeva in what is now Belarus. That young fellow sitting in the middle of the front row is Shimon Peres who didn't continue in his career as a mandolinist but instead became Prime Minister and President of some Middle-Eastern country.

* * *

I didn't know that Donizetti's opera L'elisir d'amore had a shower scene, but it does in this new production by the Valencia opera:

And, wait, is that Kim Kardashian?

* * *

Here is quite a good article on a new book about Venezuela's El Sistema music education program by Anne Midgette in the Washington Post:

“Playing for Their Lives” is so besotted with El Sistema that it verges on cult literature. This is not to deny the achievements of the many people devoting time and energy to helping kids in programs around the world. But the authors, though they traveled to many of these programs, barely even try to give their efforts an objective framework. The outside sourcing is slender and seems not to have extended to corroborative interviews to back up what the subjects say. Over and over again, the book reports on people’s aspirations and the programs’ potential to do good, as if these results had already been realized. “El Sistema is a significant and genuine worldwide movement,” they write. “By the time you read that sentence, it will be true.” And their adulation of the El Sistema founder Abreu approaches hagiography. “Like Mahatma Gandhi, like Martin Luther King, Jr.,” they write, “he has shown the world new ways to think about social transformation.”

* * *

For our envoi today, what better piece than that excellent song by Paul McCartney, "Got to Get You Into My Life" which is the last cut on Revolver. Apparently I can't post the original, so get out your Revolver CD and turn it up! The best I can find on YouTube is this live performance:

Friday Miscellanea

A few years ago I had the chance to spend a few days in Valencia attending some concerts. They have an absolutely magnificent opera house, the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, part of an enormous complex of contemporary museums and attractions. You can see an aerial shot of the opera house at the end of this clip, announcing their 22/23 season:

* * *

At The New Yorker, Alex Ross offers us A Grand Tour of Germany’s Opera Paradise:

Germany is, on statistical grounds, the most operatic country on earth. The Bundesrepublik has more than eighty permanent opera houses, which in a typical season present seven or eight thousand performances—about a third of the global total, according to the Web site Operabase. By contrast, Italy, the birthplace of the art, manages fewer than two thousand. As opportunities elsewhere dwindle, the German system has become a crucial mechanism by which opera careers are made. Countless younger singers from around the world have undergone the ritual of a Festvertrag—a fixed-term contract to sing a variety of roles at a single German house. With so many productions, directors feel free to try out new ideas, some outlandish and some revelatory. New works surface regularly; forgotten scores are given a second chance. Public funding makes this quasi-utopia possible: before the pandemic, federal, state, and local entities were spending 2.7 billion euros each year on theatre.

Yes, that's where you want to be to make a living as an opera singer. I remember a conversation I had with an agent many years ago. She was saying that she would tell people looking for a career as an opera singer that they would have to invest at least $50,000 just to prepare: lessons, travel, master-classes, competitions and so on. And how long would it take to recoup this investment? One year. Read the rest of Ross' article for a fascinating glimpse at the riches available in the smaller centers in Germany.

* * *

Rhinestones & Nashville Twang, a look at the early music scene in Nashville!

Nashville’s period-instrument musicians can play Bach’s B-minor Mass with the best of them. But these musicians are influenced just as much by their close association with Music City as they are by their familiarity with valveless horns and viola da gambas. Nashville has a music infrastructure that is second to none, with over 180 recording studios, 130 music publishers, 100 live music clubs, and 80 record labels.

The urbanologist Richard Florida once famously described the concentration of musical talent and resources in a city as the “Nashville Effect.” This phenomenon has contributed to a remarkably versatile commercial- and classical-music culture.

It’s not uncommon for Nashville classical musicians to perform Mahler with the Nashville Symphony, record a pop song with Miley Cyrus, premiere a 21st-century piece with one of Nashville’s several contemporary-music ensembles, and give a period-instrument performance of a Bach Brandenburg Concerto—all in a few weeks.

* * *

Fading traditions don't have to be lost forever as we learn from this BBC article: Flamenco and the 1922 Woodstock of Spain

Falla had organised the contest with an express purpose: to elevate cante jondo (deep song) – the raw and expressive strand of flamenco practised by the Roma people – into a serious art form. The classical composer and his assembled friends were concerned that the music was in danger of losing its essence, being contaminated by popular "flamenco" which, by the 1920s had, in their opinion, morphed into a frivolous public spectacle staged in rowdy urban drinking establishments known as cafés cantantes.

Falla's group wanted to reset the clock, opening a dialogue about what flamenco was and how it was perceived. To them, the music in its purist form was a noble art whose structure had been framed by Andalucia's Roma people as far back as the 15th Century.

* * *

A $56 Million Donation Will Help MPR Greatly Expand Its Classical Service.

MPR says it will establish a separate permanent endowment to steward the massive contribution so it can best serve the donor’s designated purpose. It plans to use some of the money to increase national appreciation of classical music and expand audience reach with new programming and technologies. It said it will divvy up the funds between classical programming and new media technologies to fit the organization’s strategic priorities. And how MPR invests in new media technology will serve as a model for digital transformation across APMG, it said.

When I was young the classical programming on the CBC in Canada made a big difference in my exposure to classical music.

* * *

 I couldn't find a really good clip of early music in Nashville (maybe I didn't look hard enough!) but here is an example of cante jondo with some interesting harmonies:

Here are some excerpts from a performance of Aida in Chemnitz:

And while we are on opera, here is the spooky Wolf's Glen scene from Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber:

A Walk Around the Ciutat

Valencia is an autonomous region of Spain and speaks a language virtually identical to Catalan, which is closely related to Spanish and a bit less related to the Occitan dialects of French. For example, the City of Arts and Sciences, that I walked around this morning is in Valencian: Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències and in Spanish: Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias. Last night, until I discovered that the little individual sous-titres screen in front of me could be switched to any of about ten different languages, I listened to Werther sung in French with sub-titles in Valencian.

So let me take you on a walk with me. This is the lobby of my hotel:

for all of these, click to enlarge

which is actually on the 4th floor of the building with a five story (why five and not four?--one level is underground) shopping mall underneath. This is the entrance to the hotel, on the roof of the mall:

As soon as you leave the hotel and get out on the street, you can see the City complex with the Palau Reina Sofía in the distance:

Looking back at the hotel/shopping mall complex Aqua:

The first buildings in the Ciutat that you come to are the L'Oceanogràphic on the left and the L'Àgora on the right. The former is an open-air oceanographic park, the largest aquarium in Europe, and consists of several buildings of which you can only see one in this photo:

Here is another one:

The Agora is an event centre and right now seems to be being renovated. Right next to it is a very unusual asymmetrical suspension bridge for cars that crosses over the Ciutat (which is built on the old riverbed of the Turia, which was diverted in the 1950s).

I didn't get a really good shot of it, but the next building is the Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe, which is a very, very large science museum with a capacity of 10,000 people.

The Ciutat is large enough to have its own mileposts, though this one gives walking times to various buildings:

Here is a poster outside the science museum with a quote from my favorite philosopher, in Valencian:

I think that says that "Doubt is the beginning of knowledge." We are getting a bit closer to the Palau:

But the next building is actually L'Hemisphèric which is a planetarium and IMAX theatre in the shape of a giant eye:

The "eye" actually opens for showings, though I'm not sure how that works. There is a kind of amusement "ride" on one side of the Hemisphèric that consists of getting into a transparent plastic sphere, then floating around on the water. You fall down a lot:

Looking back, from here you can see the science museum on the left, the suspension bridge, the Agora and on the right another very large building, L'Umbracle, a really huge botanical garden that actually is the roof terrace to a parking garage.

I did not get a good photo of it as I couldn't get back enough, but here is one from the web:

That is only about halfway through my walk, but I think that is enough for one post!

Great Photo

A couple of years ago I was in Valencia for a pair of concerts and I wandered around their incredible City of Arts and Sciences. Here is a photo from a BBC competition:

Click to enlarge

The City spans a large portion of a dry river bed and the buildings are mostly surrounded by shallow lagoons. This photo at night has the IMAX theatre in the foreground (in the shape of a giant eye) with the Science Museum and a bridge in the background. If you ever get a chance, you should visit. Here is one of my posts from that visit.

Here is another post with lots of photos of the opera house.