Di vaghe annugola / Nebbie il pensier

More videos? Yeah, it's that kind of week. But this one is pretty fun—an Italian newsreel covering opening night of the Metropolitan Opera's 1938 production of Verdi's Otello. Backstage footage of Lawrence Tibbett (Iago), Giovanni Martinelli (Otello) and Maria Caniglia (Desdemona), along with glimpses of the thoroughly old-school costumes and staging.


The Met's 1938 Otello was recorded for broadcast.* You can hear Tibbett sing the "Brindisi" here, with Nicolas Massue as Cassio and Giovanni Paltrinieri as Roderigo. Ettore Panizza conducts.

Correction: should read "recorded from a broadcast" (see comments).

Cane dance

Reviewing Gonzalo Xavier Ruiz and the Boston Museum Trio.
Boston Globe, September 19, 2007.

Here, There, and Everywhere

Reviewing Soundscape 2007.
Boston Globe, September 19, 2007.

The craziest girl on the block

Here's the most pleasantly warped version of West Side Story's "Tonight" that you'll see all day:


The 1985 short, directed by Terry Miller, was nominated for a Student Academy Award, and for a while, was an appropriate prelude to midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at Chicago's Music Box Theater. (Miller, who's made lots of comedy shorts with the likes of Andy Richter and David Koechner without ever quite hitting the big time himself, never got any royalties from those showings—the Bernstein family, as he relates in this 2000 profile, denied him the rights to use the song.) As a bonus, if you look closely, you can spot some long-gone minor Chicago landmarks—the Nortown Theater, George Diamond's Steak House, and the North Side Magikist sign.

I am sitting in a room

Reviewing Intermezzo Opera's The Inman Diaries.
Boston Globe, September 17, 2007.

Ramblin' Guy

Having made my notes and outlined my scenario, all I had to do was set to work. At the time, I was in Cairo, the guest of His Highness Mohammed Ali, Pasha of Egypt, the Khedive's brother. I was in the enjoyment of complete liberty and of a calm undisturbed by visitors. These had probably been scared away by the guard of the palace gate, huge fellows in gorgeous costumes and formidably armed.

I cannot possibly say how I found the first musical phrase to which I subsequently adapted the line:

Des astres de la nuit tes yeux ont la clarté!

I had reached this point when the director of the Khedive's theatre conceived the idea of giving a grand concert on behalf of the sailors of Brittany and of composing it entirely from my works.

Suddenly I found myself plunged into a round of rehearsals, compelled to take my own part in this solemnity. All this was incompatible with work that was in its initial critical stage. Regretfully I gave up "Hélène," and when, later on, I wished to take it up again, it was quite impossible. I was bewildered, out of tune so to speak. I had to quit my delightful abode in Cairo and proceed to the middle of the desert into the Thiebaid of Ismailia—a refuge of light and silence—for what one is pleased to call "inspiration."

Ismailia, the favorite sojourn of the Prince of Arenberg, is a heavenly spot. It is a beata solitudo inhabited by a number of highly civilised people of both sexes employed by the Suez Canal administration, a small though choice colony which included poets of no mean talent! And as these kindly folk are very busy, they people the solitude without disturbing it.

In twelve days I had written my poem. Then I set sail at Port Said for Paris, where preparations were in progress for a revival of "Henry VIII" at the Opéra. Once this was over, I was quite tired out; my "composing machine" would not work any longer and I needed a week at Biarritz and another at Cannes to recover. Then I remembered that Aix-en-Savoie was close to a flower-decked mountain, surrounded by a wonderful panorama and easy of access. Soon I found myself installed on Mount Revard where I sketched out almost the whole of the music of "Hélène" to be completed subsequently in Paris.

It is thus that one should always work, in calm and silence, far from importunate visitors and distractions of various kinds, soothed by the glorious sights of nature and the odours of flowers.

—Camille Saint-Saëns, Outspoken Essays on Music
(trans. Fred Rothwell)

Nice work if you can get it.

It's House

If you're a really honest composer, then you know that the question isn't so much whether or not you'd give up a body part to write an earworm as indelible as the theme from Chariots of Fire, but rather, how many, and which ones. So, if worse comes to worse, do the right thing, and offer Vangelis a place to crash. The composer of that iconic beach-jogging soundtrack (not to mention Blade Runner, Missing, and a bunch of stuff that was recycled for the Carl Sagan series Cosmos) is in danger of having his house torn down by the Greek government.

Greece's Culture Minister signed a decree allowing the demolition of a historical landmark in central Athens to improve the view for a new museum a stone's throw from the Parthenon, the ministry said on Wednesday.

Despite protests from conservationists, minister George Voulgarakis signed a decree allowing the demolition of an art deco building and a neo-classical property owned by the Oscar-award winning composer Vangelis.

The Bernard Tschumi-designed New Acropolis Museum is now scheduled to open early next year. You might ask why the house needs to be razed at this late date, given that it could have been easily accounted for in the museum's design. (And, apparently, was: the second photo down on Tschumi's page, those buildings in the model? One of those is Vangelis's house.) Then again, keep in mind that there's a gallery devoted specifically to the Parthenon marbles, and, um, those are all still in Britain. Anyway, the government's claim that the houses are blocking the view from the museum seems to be hogwash—you can see photos of the actual site here, and scroll down for interior construction views that show the Acropolis in plain view.

The government might have a better case if Vangelis had used his Hollywood millions to build a new, ostentatious monstrosity. But here's the kicker—the house is itself a designated landmark. It's actually two houses—one dating from 1908, and one from 1930—and both were listed as works of art by the same Culture Ministry that's now trying to get rid of them. The whole thing seems rather shady—news of the minister's decision didn't make it to the papers for almost two weeks, and just ahead of Greek elections, scheduled for Sunday. Culture Minister Georgios Voulgarakis, of the currently ruling center-right New Democratic party, is relatively new in the post, having been more-or-less demoted from the job of Public Order Minister in February on the heels of a phone-tapping scandal (apparently, they get more worked up about that sort of thing in Greece than over here).

Vangelis would probably land on his feet—his latest project is scoring a new biopic of El Greco—but, just in case, Evanghelos, there's a spare bedroom for you here at Soho the Dog HQ. Framingham, Massachusetts, isn't exactly the center of the universe, but on the other hand, you'd probably never have to pay for your drinks over at The Aegean.

Rant

I've long since given up on arguing with anything Greg Sandow says—classical music isn't dying, pop music is no longer the singular cultural behemoth he thinks it is, and why does he still bother writing about classical music when it's clear that, in spite of his frequent "some of my best friends are classical works" protestations, he doesn't seem to like classical music that much, anyway? If what you really love is pop music, that's great—enjoy it. But then don't try and... oh, wait—that's right, I gave up arguing.

Nevertheless, start picking on Don Carlos, and you have to answer to me.

Verdi might have been a great composer, but through no fault of his own he lived in the 19th century, and in Don Carlo he shows us the Spanish royal court as the 19th century might have imagined it, formal, a little stilted, and full of aristocrats who (apart from the leading characters) sing anonymously as members of a chorus. You really can't do that any more.

Well, of course Verdi's aristocrats are formal and stilted, because that's the whole bloody point of the opera. It's a tragedy because the characters who survive only do so because, seduced by power, they've sacrificed their humanity and replaced it with the stilted, artificial rules of the court. The characters who perish are crushed by the machinery of the state, the formality of which stifles moral conscience and sympathy. (If you think that Verdi couldn't create an aristocrat that wasn't formal and stilted, you have not made the acquaintance of the Duke of Mantua.) And you can't do what any more—invite the audience to put themselves in the place of characters from a completely different time and place and let them see how the drama might resonate in the contemporary world, let them experience the universality of the human condition? If you can't see how even the most resolutely period-costumed production of Don Carlos maybe just might have some pertinence to current political realities, then you're just plain obtuse.

Sandow frames this with an observation that the Errol Flynn picture Captain Blood has a pretty operatic vibe, but that movies aren't very operatic anymore, so opera is doomed.

[I]n 1935 you could go to the opera, and go to the movies, and see practically the same thing. So opera was close to everyday life, in a way that it just can't be now.

Now, either he's saying that Captain Blood was close to everyday life (everybody carried swords during the Great Depression?), or he's tacitly assuming that people in 1935 somehow found costume dramas less anachronistic than people do today. On the other hand, Hollywood cranks out just as many period pieces as it ever did, and people still go see them—and most of them aren't modern-reference mash-ups like Marie Antoinette, which Sandow holds up as pop-culture Exhibit A in his argument. Over the summer there was 300, Amazing Grace, and Becoming Jane. This week's box office champ is a period western, 3:10 to Yuma. There was a well-received Edith Piaf biopic and a poorly-received Molière biopic.

Culture is always going to reference any point along the historical continuum it can get its hands on. Captain Blood was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar in 1935. The other nominees included film versions of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Les Miserables; the Astaire-Rogers musical Top Hat, as well as Broadway Melody of 1936; the Charles Laughton Wild West comedy Ruggles of Red Gap and John Ford's searing drama of the 1922 Irish rebellion, The Informer. In other words, old, new, and everything in between. Sandow is pointing to 1935 as some lost era of confluence, but, living in 1935, cherry-picking my cinematic experiences, I could make the exact same argument he makes today. It would have been specious then, and it's specious now.

Full measures of devotion

I caught snippets of New York City's 9/11 commemoration on the radio yesterday. As part of the ceremonies, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus sang the National Anthem. Interestingly, they sang it with four beats to the bar.

"The Star-Spangled Banner" is more or less officially in three-quarter time. Printed sources of "The Anacreontic Song," the drinking song that supplied the tune, are in triple meter, as are other, pre-"Banner" songs that use the tune (such as "Adams and Liberty"). Here's the traditional version:


The Brooklyn kids sang something more like this:


Basically, each downbeat is doubled in length. What it does is make the anthem sound like a gospel song.

Spreading a dactylic rhythm over four beats like this shifts the rhythmic activity to the second half of the bar, which is common in gospel music. Here's the opening Richard Smallwood's contemporary gospel standard "Total Praise," which has the same three-stretched-into-four (or even eight) pattern:


It's prevalent enough that it's an easy way to give a piece a gospel feel, as in Billy Taylor's "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free," made famous by Nina Simone:


Long-short-short and related patterns are pretty venerable, so how did the pattern become associated with gospel? One might think it's through comparison with white gospel, which has always kept a healthy repertoire of waltz-time numbers—shifting to 4/4 doubles the backbeat quotient and makes for a more jazz-like rhythm. But I think it has more to do with the call-and-response pattern typical of African-American churches: the long downbeat opens up space in the bar for the choir/congregation to interject. Here's a good example from John W. Work's American Negro Songs:


I'd be willing to bet that the common-time, gospel-tinged variant of "The Star-Spangled Banner" has its origin in the African-American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, but the first such public performance I know of was José Feliciano's soulful prelude to the fifth game of the 1968 World Series. (The famous Jimi Hendrix Woodstock anthem was in a solid slow three.) At the time, Feliciano's version was widely regarded as disrespectful; within two decades, Marvin Gaye's 1983 NBA All-Star Game rendition was an instant classic. Nowadays, at one of the most solemnity-fraught public observances on the calendar, a 4/4 "Star-Spangled Banner" doesn't even raise an eyebrow.

There's a lot of reasons why. Part of it is the prevalence of pop styles in the current American musical landscape—those hippie teenagers from '68 are now running the place, after all. You could argue that genres, by now, have criss-crossed so many boundaries that the mere use or implication of a style doesn't say much of anything vis-à-vis the song at hand (Gaye was singing soul, which was secularized gospel, which in turn was churchified jazz, which evolved from ragtime and blues, which grew out of spirituals, etc., etc.). I think there's two particular things going on here, though.

The first is that our expectations for patriotic feelings have changed. In a way, the National Anthem has shifted in performance to a sort of national hymn. (Francis Scott Key's original poem does reference the Deity, but not in the only verse that anyone knows.) Of course, there already is a national hymn: "God of Our Fathers," composed in 1888, and as stolid a piece of white Anglo-Saxon imperial Gilded-Age triumphalism as you'd expect, just the thing for reinforcing traditional American values of rectitutde and propriety. But such dignified piety paled in comparison with the heady energies of the African-American church, an experience that was firmly installed in the mainstream by the civil rights movement. Once we saw the view from that mountaintop, it became the ideal inspirational touchstone. We didn't just want the comfort of tradition and heritage. We wanted to be transported.

A fundamentalist straw man might argue that we're looking for a replacement for those religious facets of governmental ceremony that have allegedly been leeched out of public discourse by civil libertarians. (I don't think so.) A cynical straw man might say that we want the spiritual uplift of religion without the corresponding responsibility, so we've shifted those tropes to a non-religious context. (Maybe.) I would say that there's a more fundamental change at work here, a change in the way we perceive what "country" means. Stephen Decatur's infamous 1816 toast—"Our country, right or wrong!"—comes across as less jingoistic if you consider that Decatur's idea of his country was his camaraderie with his fellow countrymen: we may disagree, he was saying, but our collective bond as citizens should never be dissolved. We don't think of it that way today; our "country" is an ideal, a set of beliefs about government and freedom, a goal to be reached through collective conscientious citizenship.

Why do we think this way? It gets us into all kinds of trouble. If we clearly viewed our country as simply an assemblage of people living on a certain parcel of land surrounded by a border, I doubt we would be stuck in Iraq, for one thing—we wouldn't have seen the need to go there in the first place. But since we also see the country as this dream of liberty, this beacon of democracy for the entire world, we're less likely to notice such cognitive dissonance until it's too late. What's more, as time goes on, we're more and more likely to concentrate on that idealized country. Decatur and his fellow Americans thought that the perfect society envisioned by the founding fathers was imminent, just a few constitutional and economic adjustments away. We know better, which makes that goal all the more seductive in its permanent elusiveness. The great joy and tragedy of the American experience is that perfection always seems so close that you can almost, but not quite, reach out and grasp it.

The bulk of the Negro spiritual repertoire is focused in some way on the transition from this world to the next. Flipping through Work's collection, there's "After 'While":

After 'while, after 'while
Some sweet day after 'while
I'm goin' up to see my Jesus,
O some sweet day after 'while.

"You May Bury Me in the East":

You may bury me in the East,
You may bury me in the West,
But I'll hear that trumpet sound
In-a that morning.

"Lead Me to the Rock":

As I go down the stream of time
(Lead me to the Rock that is higher than I)
I leave this sinful world behind
(Lead me to the Rock that is higher than I.)

"Steal Away":

My Lord calls me,
He calls me by the thunder;
The trumpet sounds within-a my soul,
I ain't got long to stay here.

...and so on. Heaven, in other words, is within sight, just over Jordan, which makes the consummation even more devoutly wished. No wonder our paens to our just-out-of-reach ideal country seem to evolve towards millenial religious utterance.

Perhaps that's reading too much into things, but I think that the transformation of "The Star-Spangled Banner" into a gospel song, at the very least, signals another wish: the wish for a country worth singing a hymn to, the wish that the nation will finally cross over into the promised land that each of us carries in our mind. The longer the trip takes, the more we try and bolster our spirits. We sing to encourage ourselves, and our country, that we and she will get there someday. In the words of another spiritual: we cheer the weary traveler.

The Great Round

The enemy was at the gates, guns thundered all around, and grenades sizzled through the air amid showers of sparks. The townsfolk, their faces white with fear, ran into their houses; the deserted streets rang with the sound of horses' hooves, as mounted patrols galloped past and with curses drove the remaining soldiers into their redoubts. But Ludwig sat in his little back room, completely absorbed and lost in the wonderful, brightly coloured world of fantasy that unfolded before him at the piano. He had just completed a symphony, in which he had striven to capture in written notation all the resonances of his innermost soul; the work sought, like Beethoven's compositions of that type, to speak in heavenly language of the glorious wonders of that far, romantic realm in which we swoon away in inexpressible yearning; indeed it sought, like one of those wonders, itself to penetrate our narrow, paltry lives, and with sublime siren voices tempt forth its willing victims. Then his landlady came into the room, upbraiding him and asking how he could simply play the piano through all that anguish and distress, and whether he wanted to get himself shot dead in his garrett. Ludwig did not quite follow the woman's drift, until with a sudden crash a shell carried away part of the roof and shattered the window panes. Screaming and wailing the landlady ran down the stairs, while Ludwig seized the dearest thing he now possessed, the score of his symphony, and hurried after her down to the cellar.

Here the entire household was gathered. In a quite untypical fit of largesse the wine-seller who lived downstairs had made available a few dozen bottles of his best wine, and the women, fretting and fussing but as always anxiously concerned with physical sustenance and comfort, filled their sewing-baskets with tasty morsels from the pantry. They ate, they drank, and their agitation and distress were soon transformed into that agreeable state in which we seek and fancy we find security in neighbourly companionship; that state in which all the petty airs and graces which propriety teaches are subsumed, as it were, into the great round danced to the irresistable beat of fate's iron fist.

—E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Poet and the Composer (1813),
trans. Martyn Clarke, ed. David Charlton

Class struggle—the musical

Over the weekend, my lovely wife and I, always ready to extend a welcome to new arrivals in the neighborhood, dropped by a big addition just added to the Natick Mall—sorry, The Natick Collection—apparently, the word "mall" now carries too much of a whiff of the lumpenproletariat for luxe-minded shoppers. Anyway, as Veblenesque theme parks go, it's not bad: bright and airy, shiny continental techno music emanating from the high-end designer boutiques and hovering just at the threshhold of audibility, etc., etc. Can I afford anything in the new places? Nope. But if you're the type who's been worried that a dearth of opportunities to spend four figures on a handbag has somehow made Metrowest Boston incurably provincial, worry no more.

Right in the middle of the place, M. Steinert & Sons, who, as they never fail to remind you, are New England's exclusive representative for Steinway & Sons pianos, had plunked down a big new nine-foot Steinway "D."


Apparently, there was a professional serenading the patrons at the grand opening, but when we were there, the only players heard were passing children, availing themselves of the opportunity to tickle the polymer-based fake ivories until their parents became sufficiently incensed at their dilatoriness. Some of them weren't bad, actually, sending forth the burnished tones of their beginning repertoire with anti-establishment glee. A closer look at the instrument revealed that the kids were in good company:


That frame's been autographed by Peter Serkin! Which probably means that, at some point, he played this instrument—or else one of his stage door fans is Mr. Universe. As a tribute, I added a few half-remembered bars of Schoenberg to the fray before once again leaving the proceedings in the hands of the younger generation. Now, if this open-keyboard thing is a permanent fixture, and the ambience is always going to be graced by kids randomly plinking away, that would actually be a big draw for me. If that's the case, though, maybe they should find an instrument signed by David Tudor.

The Boys in the Band

From a recent interview with William Friedkin:

With forty years in filmmaking—and thirty since the powerhouse duo of The French Connection and The Exorcist—how does Friedkin, whose prolific career has been characterized by huge ups and downs, classic hits and costly flops, keep his passion? "I just love doing it," he says flatly. "It's like [composer Gustav] Mahler, who wrote ten symphonies and none of them were successful, but he just kept writing them. Now there's not an orchestra in the world that doesn't have to program Mahler."

I confess that I've always liked Friedkin for doing his best to actually be the rampaging egomaniac that people imagine all Hollywood directors are. The comparison does raise an interesting question, though: is there a correspondence between Mahler's symphonic output and Friedkin's cinematic oeuvre? Does the First Symphony reveal new facets placed side-by-side with Sonny & Cher in Good Times? Are the hammer blows in the Sixth the nitro-laden truck in Sorcerer or the reviews of Cruising? And what of the long-lost link between the Eighth Symphony and The Exorcist? Susan McClary could have a field day with this.

Friedkin's career has alternated between brilliant and awful (sometimes in the same movie), but he's never dull, and really, anyone whose CV includes The French Connection—one of the all-time great, brainy thrill rides in any medium—is entitled to a certain amount of cockiness. Friedkin's recent forays into opera direction have gotten mixed reviews, but you know there's a doozy of a production in that brain somewhere. If I were in Peter Gelb's chair, I'd be lining up Friedkin, Coppola, Scorsese, and Ken Russell for a mini-season at the Met.

Una furtiva lagrima

In memoriam.



Pavarotti was (is, thanks to the recorded legacy) my favorite tenor, and I've been trying to remember how and why that came about. I only saw him live once, in a Chicago Symphony concert performance of Otello of which all I remember is he was rather under the weather—by the time I started going to the opera, Ardis Krainik had issued her famous ukase in Chicago, so I missed out on any stage performances. (My parents did get to see his Duca di Montova on one of the occasions he didn't cancel.) In my undergrad days, I was a big Jon Vickers fan, as his style was a better fit for undergrad intellectual iconoclasm. But at some point in the past ten years, Pavarotti took the crown. I think it was because he had some God-given immunity to my opera-fan nitpicking—even a mediocre performance still had that glorious sound and that generous presence, which, for some reason, made me just not care so much about the other stuff, and reminded me just what it is about opera that I love, anyway.

The clip above, from 1988, has it all—the full-out sound, the dictation-worthy diction (see, guys? When I talk about fast, crisp consonants and pure vowels, that's what I'm talking about), the rhythmic swagger. Opera Chic has more great clips, and La Cieca posts a marvelous 1969 Nemorino that gives you a sense of what had everybody buzzing when he first appeared. (And I can't resist linking to his final performance, opening the 2006 Torino Olympics with—what else?—"Nessun dorma." Still damn impressive for a septugenarian, and I just love that the crowd knows to fill in the chorus part.)

Just the other night, my lovely wife and I were talking about Pavarotti (the Rigoletto with Sutherland was on the stereo) and we were saying that a voice like that only comes along every fifty years, and trying to figure out who would have been the Pavarotti of the previous generation, and who was around today who might step into that role. But really, has there ever been another voice like Pavarotti's? I wonder.

I watch the ripples change their size, but never leave the stream

David Bowie in particular had associations with almost all of these people at various points, through either producing their records or otherwise collaborating. He was the connector, rock's greatest dilettante, forever chasing the next edge, always moving on. More than anyone else, it was Bowie who was the touchstone inspiration for postpunk's ethos of perpetual change.

—Simon Reynolds,
Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984

Until I read that, I had never thought of Bowie as a sort of pop/rock Erik Satie, but it's not a bad comparison. Bowie/Satie was the inspiration for a generation of younger musicians looking to move past what they saw as the dead end of Romanticism/Wagnerianism/punk nihilism/American rockism. A nice historical analogy to fill out your collection.

Except for that word dilettante, that is. I've heard Satie called both an opportunist and a purposefully willful eccentric, but never a dilettante—to use the conventional terminology, Satie found his voice and stuck to it, no matter what musical or literary movement he was associating with. He avoided the D-word on account of his stylistic consistency.

Bowie, on the other hand—I don't think Reynolds is using the term in a perjorative way here, but it certainly was a criticism against Bowie throughout his career. When I first became a fan (the early 80s, around the time of Let's Dance), it was the fourth or fifth new Bowie of the past ten years, a tally that would easily double if you went all the way back to "Space Oddity." For me, his ability to sense each shift in the pop-culture wind—stadium rock, blue-eyed soul, electronica, pop nostalgia—and come up with a record that both encapsulated and commented on it was uncanny, intriguing, and not a little bit witty. For a lot of people, though, it felt like a con, that if you stripped away all the adopted stylistic layers, there was nothing at the core.

Etymology-as-argument has its pitfalls, but in the case of dilettante, it makes an interesting point. The word entered the language from Italian ("delighting in") in the early 18th century, largely as a compliment (much like the original use of the word amateur). The negative use doesn't come about until the 19th century—in other words, on the heels of Romanticism. The Romantic idea that artistic expression that broke with established traditions or models was still valid if it was an honest reflection of the creator's soul was, perhaps inevitably, flipped around—art that played around with traditions or imitative models was perceived as somehow less honest and valid.

I studied composition with possibly the most Bowie-esque of modern composers, Lukas Foss (who just turned 85, by the way—happy birthday!). Foss could also adopt each new vocabulary—open-prairie Americana, serialism, aleatoricism, minimalism—with deceptive ease, but I always felt that the bandwagoneer potshots rather missed the point. Each new style was, for Foss, an opportunity to demonstrate that the novelty was only on the surface, to show how each innovation fit into the great tradition of Western music, the universal artistic goals shared over the centuries. It's something that reaches back to his heroes, Bach and Mozart, the paragons of pre-Romantic composition, both of whom saw part of their job as being attuned to every next big thing.

We like to think that the era of stylistic battles is over, but the idea of different styles as a compositional resource in and of itself, rather than the end result of an artistic concept, still strikes a lot of people as too shallow, too meta-whatever, too clever by half. (Not just in music, either—take, for example, James Wood, the New Yorker's new book reviewer, whose career has been in large part marked by the conviction that stylistic promiscuity almost inevitably interferes with artistic expression.) Even I have my limits on post-modern hijinks, but the Bernstein Mass or the funhouse of Sondheim's Assassins or, more recently, Steven Mackey's Dreamhouse, to name but three examples, are all works whose power and depth are because of their stylistic variety, not in spite of it. Part of it is the paradoxical nature of the mask, how wearing one can free you up to display more of yourself. But I think part of it is also the implicit recognition of the audience, that adopting a stylistic pose carries with it the expectation of a listener who will recognize it, making the energy flow outward rather than inward. Bowie himself put it this way in "Who Can I Be Now?", a 1974 rarity:

If it's all a vast creation
Putting on a face that's new
Someone has to see, a role for him and me
Someone might as well be you.

Four-in-hand

Four Preludes (2007) (PDF, 261 KB)

A handful of amuses-doigts for the new month. The last one originally had a literary-referential title that I thought was pretty clever, but I found myself getting annoyed that I couldn't come up with names for the other three, so I just dropped the appellation. (Why not just leave only one piece titled, you ask? I dunno.) Anybody who can guess what it was wins a free beer the next time they're in Boston.

L'eminence grise

Jeremy Eichler has a terrific piece in today's Boston Globe on the late Soviet composer-bureaucrat Tikhon Khrennikov that goes beyond his common (and not undeserved) reputation as a party enforcer to show the fascinating, infuriating, tricky personality of a formidable political survivor. Essential reading on the intersection of power, expression, and human nature.

Mirrors in which to dwell

Merger mania. Previewing Theatre de la Jeune Lune's "Don Juan Giovanni" and "Figaro."
Boston Globe, August 31, 2007.

Out for a walk

Programming note: Soho the Dog is on summer hiatus this week. We're packing a picnic, unplugging the computer, and taking the phone off the hook.

Which nicely introduces a fun souvenir of 1980s downtown New York, courtesy of the endlessly diverting MP3 blog Office Naps. Scroll down this post and you can hear No Wave cult heroines Y Pants—artists Barbara Ess, Virginia Piersol, and Gail Vachon—performing their version of the Rolling Stones' "Off the Hook," produced by guitar symphonist Glenn Branca. Obsessively sparse, incongruously cheery, vaguely disquieting, it's just the thing to cut through that late-summer haze.

The music goes round and round

For pure sound, a clear choice. The making of a glass harmonica.
Boston Globe, August 26, 2007.

I wanted badly to include this clip with the online version of the article, but for various reasons, it was not to be. So I'll post it here:

W. A. Mozart: Adagio in C major for glass harmonica, K. 357 (617a) (MP3, 3.7 MB)
Dean Shostak, glass harmonica

Other links:

G. Finkenbeiner, Inc.
Cecilia Brauer

Salvati dunque e scolpati

That academic year is just around the corner, so it's time to sharpen those no. 2 pencils for another quiz! (If you missed it: some choice answers from the last one.) Once again, all hail Dennis Cozzalio at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, from whence I shamelessly plagiarized this idea.

As before, either leave your answers or a link to where we can find your answers in the comments. Do include the questions in your response, if only for my sake—I can't keep two queries in my brain simultaneously, let alone ten. You may begin the test... now.

1. What's the best quotation of a piece of music within another piece of music?

2. Name the best classical crossover album ever made.

3. Great piece with a terrible title.

4. If you had to choose: Benjamin Britten or Michael Tippett?

5. Who's your favorite spouse of a composer/performer? (Besides your own.)

6. Terrible piece with a great title.

7. What's the best use of a classical warhorse in a Hollywood movie?

8. Name the worst classical crossover album ever made.

9. If you had to choose: Sam Cooke or Marvin Gaye?

10. Name a creative type in a non-musical medium who would have been a great composer.

EXTRA CREDIT:

For opera nerds: If you had to choose:
a) Lawrence Tibbett or Robert Merrill?
b) Amelita Galli-Curci or Lily Pons?

For early-music nerds: Name a completely and hopelessly historically uninformed recording that you nevertheless love.

Gold stars and red pen

It's almost time for a new quiz (update: the new quiz is here), but before that, I wanted to revisit the last assessment. In general, I thought the level of work for this particular class was very high, although—sorry, just trying to gear up for September. The big surprise for me was #3, Ives or Ruggles: apart from one late vote from Bart Collins, Carl got no love at all. I wasn't expecting an upset, but back in my undergrad days, I would have guessed at least a 70-30 split—the pantheon is a harsh mistress. On the other hand, I think we could all move to Europe and have thriving careers as opera directors. Anyway, here's some of the responses I liked, along with my own:

1. Name an opera you love for the libretto, even though you don't particularly like the music.

Dennis Mangan: The Ring.

Alex Freeman: Haydn's "Il mondo della luna". It may be the silliest libretto ever. That's an accomplishment. But I do like the music.

Rodney Lister: Nixon in China (love might be a little strong)

viola power: We premiered this extraordinarily bizarre version of "Nosferatu" which contained the amusing notion of Dracula being gay. Idaho audiences went wild! The libretto qualified as entertaining, if not loveable. The music was like Andrew Lloyd Webber meets John Adams, except they were both really wasted.

andy h-d: The Consul is pretty brutal, but you really start to feel those three hours.

Lisa Hirsch: The Barber of Seville. (So shoot me, but I am not a Rossini fan.)

Stirling Newberry: While I like Auden's Libretto better than Stravinski's music, the final four for me would be
The Queen of Spades, A Streetcar Named Desire, Gawain, Nixon in China. And in a year with no upsets? Gawain.

Jeremy Denk: General Hospital. (The Young and the Restless has much better music.)

MG: Evita.

2. Name a piece you wish Glenn Gould had played.

Alex Freeman: My Piano Sonata.

Scott: Piano Canons by Conlon Nancarrow. Oooh, or the Stravinsky "Piano Rag Music." Or anything I've written.

sfmike: A piano reduction of Strauss' Elektra.

Opera Chic: Chopsticks. That'd be fun, and gawd knows Glenn needed to unclench.

Seth Gordon: Waltz for Debby.

charles: "Maple Leaf Rag."

Margaret: Anything by Fats Waller.

Liz: Prokofiev's Third Concerto. (You know he's Canadian so I'm biased. I was very sad when he died and I was eleven years old).

M. Keiser: HA, if i liked Gould this might work. Uh, i dunno, John Cage's Sonatas and interludes. He probably could have done those fairly well.

andy h-d: Rzewski's "The People United Will Never Be Defeated!". Can you imagine what that cadenza would've ended up being?

Charles T. Downey: Ives, Concord Sonata.

Lisa Hirsch: Something by Sorabji.

Jeremy Denk: The Goldberg Variations [zing!].

Stirling Newberry: Something I had a publishing interest in. Money is money. I can't stand Glenn Gould's playing any more.

MG: Rhapsody in Blue. And ragtime.

3. If you had to choose: Charles Ives or Carl Ruggles?

charles: I would choose death instead.

Seth Gordon: Anyone choosing Ruggles is a jealous hater.

Jessica Duchen: Would compromise and go to The Ivy for lunch instead.

viola power: Ives, because I need to have a serious discussion with an insurance agent!

Charles T. Downey: See above. Bite me, Ruggles, you racist bastard.

Jeremy Denk: If I’m listening to the music, Ives I think; ditto if contemplating insurance; but if I’m looking for a composer with a rugged, manly, but still somewhat snuggly name, DEFINITELY Carl Ruggles.

MG: Ives, for the songs, although I do like the Invocations a lot.

4. Name a piece you're glad Glenn Gould never played.

heinuren: What the hell, is everybody supposed to know what Gould did or didn't play?

andy h-d: I don't know, "Bananaphone"? That's not a real answer. Would "Vexations" be a more real answer? I suppose there's that new kid who writes really awful sappy music, Greenberg or something?

jason: Billy Joel's whatever...

robert f. jones: Glenn accompanies Barbra Streisand in Saint-Saens’ "Mon coeur ouvre à ta voix."

Liz: None....wish he played much more. (You know he's Canadian?)

Lisa Hirsch: Piano part in one of the Schubert song cycles.

MG: the Chopin preludes.

5. What's your favorite unlikely solo passage in the repertoire?

Rodney Lister: not a solo, but the duet for piccolo and tuba in Symphony on a Hymn Tune.

Alex Ross: Celesta in the final scene of Schreker's Der Ferne Klang.

benjamin: That gross FFF Clarinet note in the middle of the Scherzo of Mahler 5th.

andy h-d: I don't know unlikely it is, but I keep thinking of the part in Symphonie fantastique right before his head gets chopped off. Who needs absolute form when the program tells you where you are in the score?

robert f. jones: The bass trombone sfp low C#s in the death scene of Boris Godunov (Musorgsky’s orchestration).

M. Keiser: hm. these questions are getting harder. Define solo and repertoire. haha. does the flute in the begining of the orchestral version of Ravel's Barque sur l'ocean count? i think thats several flutes anyway. The opening to the Rite of Spring but i don't know how thats unlikely.

Joe Barron: Ives, "Washington's birthday," jaw harp.

Tim Mangan: The ocarinas in Ligeti's Violin Concerto.

Joshua Kosman: Haydn, Symphony No. 93, slow movement, m. 80: the original bassoon fart joke.

Jessica Duchen: The tweetybird unaccompanied violin passage in Enescu's Impressions d'enfance. The cuckoo ain't bad either.

Barnet Bound: This isn't really an answer to the question, but I just want to state that despite the fact that Schubert apparently hated the instrument, the viola lines in everything he wrote are truly beautiful.

Liz: For me it's the *tiny* viola solo in Gershwin's "American in Paris". It is *eight* notes (after the English horn solo) but I love it. Although my violin-centric husband never seems to notice.....

Peter: The Carmen intermezzo STILL bewilders me. Ladies and gentlemen, here's your emotional journey: death, betrayal, death, death, lilting pastoral flute solo, death. Wha?

Charles T. Downey: The siren in George Antheil's Ballet mécanique.

Jeremy Denk: Well I’d say I have a 12% record of playing the ending of the 2nd movement of the Schumann Fantasy with all the right notes, so … that seems pretty unlikely.

MG: The pizza delivery in Steven Mackey's Eating Greens.

6. What's a Euro-trash high-concept opera production you'd love to see? (No Mortier-haters get to duck this one, either—be creative.)

Alex Freeman: I guess it would have to be Neuenfels does Susannah. Not because I would REALLY want to see it, but I think the horrific taste would make me feel more alive...like drinking a cup of hot fat or sticking my face in a fan. Which I don't do. Much. Any thoughts on how he might do it?

Elaine Fine: Turnadot with Ping, Pang, and Pong dressed as members of the Blue Man Group.

Alex Ross: An all-male Dialogues of the Carmelites, set in the Mine Shaft in 1980.

heinuren: Salome, where they actually cut off heads.

Opera Chic: I'll quote myself here.

Opera Chic herself has a weakness for 1970s p9rn star 'stache, and she hopes Juan Diego decides to one day do a 1970s style Elisir d'Amore, where Nemorino is decked out with big fat mustachioes all Starsky & Hutch-like, in bell bottoms and bushy sheep hair and nylon shirts like the Beastie Boys in the Sabotage video and Adina is all Daisy Dukes and platform shoes and dirty, frizztastic hair.

andy h-d: A tie between Poppea in the Clinton White House and Peter Jackson's Ring Cycle.

Tim Mangan: "Ariadne auf Naxos" as an episode of the original "Star Trek."

robert f. jones: Parsifal set in post-nuclear-apocalypse Australia. Parsifal as Mad Max, Klingsor as Lord Humungus, Kundry as a feral hermaphrodite, the Flower Maidens as topless biker baybz. No dead rabbit.

indiana loiterer iii: The Peter Konwitschny production of Lohengrin set in a German schoolroom...oh, you mean a Euro-trash high-concept production that doesn't yet exist? How about a Trovatore set in post-Civil War Kansas/Missouri a la The Outlaw Josey Wales?

Seth Gordon: Marie Stuarda, only make it about girl gangs and set in high school, starring PJ Harvey as Marie and Diamanda Galas as Liz, head of the Cheerleading Squad.

Joe Barron: Either a Star-Wars Ring, or Rigoletto with everybody but the title character played by dwarf.

Lisa Hirsch: The reverse of Alex's nomination: an all-woman Billy Budd, with the sailors all dressed as Catholic schoolgirls, and let's see if we can work some sex into it.

M. Keiser: again with the opera. ok, Puccini's Manon, sung and acted while suspended from bungee chords. Imagine the chorus. heheh.

MG: Two—L'elisir d'amore as a John Hughes high school comedy, or an Albert Herring that takes full advantage of the lovers' names being Sid and Nancy.

7. Name an instance of non-standard concert dress you wish you hadn't seen.

charles: Anything Josh Bell wears.

Alex Freeman: John Marcellus in a pink jumpsuit. Ok, I admit I don't really wish I hadn't seen it, but I do wish I could get the image out of my head.

Opera Chic: Anything worn by Nikolaus Harnoncourt.

Scott: Let's just say that nobody wants to see an elderly woman's cleavage over and over while trying to focus on her piano playing. Well, maybe some people do, but not me.

Elaine Fine: Actually it was kind of quaint, but ultimately a little disturbing: a string quartet of four teenage girls wearing white summer dresses and not wearing any shoes.

benjamin: The tux I currently own has been embarrassing me on stage for years.

jason: Concertmistress of my undergrad orchestra: Topknot, black tutu, white sneakers. Or, same university, new music ensemble conductor in bolo tie and hendrix tee.

Barnet Bound: When I was undergraduate, my university had a very strong world music performance program, and there was lots of great concerts by the resident gamelan ensemble. However, invariably, there would be a smattering of (always white men of a certain age) audience members who would show up wearing traditional Javanese tunics, and would sit cross-legged during the performance with beatific smiles on their faces. That was very unfortunate.

Tim Mangan: Igor Kipnis's dentist's smock.

Seth Gordon: I'm far less fond of standard dress, to tell the truth.

Joe Barron: Me, in a suit and tie.

Rebecca: Flourescent pink dress with fru-fru bow for a performance of a Haydn mass at a little Pfarrkirche in Burgenland. I might mention it was part of a Mass service. Nothing says solemnity like day-glo.

Lisa Hirsch: Either the orange paisley Anne-Sofie von Otter turned up in a couple of years back or that monstrous quilt Jane Eaglen wore at the Levine Gala in 1996.

Stirling Newberry: Sorry, the individual's wife is still alive.

MG: Barbara Bonney dressed as a Dairy Queen parfait for a Mozart Exsultate at Tanglewood. I spent the whole piece thinking about ice cream.

8. What aging rock-and-roll star do you wish had tried composing large-scale chorus and orchestra works instead of Paul McCartney?

David Svoboda: Hey, what's wrong with Paul's compositions?!? Put up your dukes!

Rodney Lister: Captain Beefheart.

heinuren: Freddie Mercury. If he wasn't dead and all.

robert f. jones: Bob Dylan, “Desolation Row: The oratorio.”

Tim Mangan: Joe Strummer.

Rebecca: Eddie Van Halen. Does he qualify as "aging?"

Opera Chic: Ringo Starr. He's sadly underrated.

Elaine Fine: Carole King.

Barnet Bound: Patti Smith!

Liz: I prefer none. However, Mick Jagger could prove interesting. For chorus works.

benjamin: After seeing "Trapped in the Closet," I must say R. Kelly.

andy h-d: Yeah, not Paul McCartney. How about Zappa? Whoops. Did you know that Roger Waters also makes mediocre neo-classical music? Also Stewart Copeland! There was actually a Times article about how when rock stars approach traditional forces they always end up sounding like Haydn (Zappa excluded). I wonder what Robert Fripp would come up with, except he's busy still being a rock star.

Stirling Newberry: Danny Elfman does pretty good film score work. Brian Wilson could be interesting.

Charles T. Downey: Brian May (and Queen).

Lisa Hirsch: Yes. Or maybe Al Kooper.

Steve Hicken: Ugh. Jeez. Hell, I don't know. Crap. The guy that sang for the Ides of March, I guess.

Jeremy Denk: I do not comprehend this “rock-and-roll” word; is this some sort of genre or style designation? Me dinosaur of dead music. No, really.

MG: Yeah, gotta go with Brian Wilson—but Sly Stone is a close second.

9. If you had to choose: Carl Nielsen or Jean Sibelius?

Alex Freeman: Dude. I live in Finland.

viola power: Nielsen, because my musical partner would kill me if I said otherwise.

Joshua Kosman: Per Nørgård. Don't push me, man.

Tim Mangan: Sibelius, by a nose. It might be different tomorrow.

Rebecca: How about throwing myself in the River Guden or Torne (respectively) instead?

Opera Chic: Come on, it's not even a question, Sibelius 4evar.

Charles T. Downey: Sibelius, as Opera Chic would say in that trendy slang of hers, is teh kicka$$ bomb, fer real.

MG: Sibelius, although that Nielsen snare drum narrows the lead every time I hear it.

10. If it was scientifically proven that Beethoven's 9th Symphony caused irreversible brain damage, would you still listen to it?

Alex Freeman: Wihout a doubt. In my case, that is a smaller price to pay than it might be for many.

Alex Ross: Too late — Lorin Maazel's 2002 season-opening performance of the Ninth partially lobotomized me.

robert f. jones: Probably. Could it cause worse irreversible brain damage than vodka?

Joshua Kosman: Never again, not even once. The Schubert C-Major Quintet stays on my playlist even if it brings a slow gruesome death.

Jessica Duchen: Yesdht3icbeutnaoehfgbnauedw278r&!*

Charles T. Downey: Yes, I would ignore the warning labels and then sue the recording company that sold me the CD.

Jeremy Denk: What, this hasn’t been proven already?

MG: I'm just afraid the cure would involve the Ludovico technique.

Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap

The scholar of the week here at Soho the Dog HQ is economist Dr. Robert Oxoby of the University of Calgary, for his paper "On the Efficiency of AC/DC: Bon Scott versus Brian Johnson." (Via.) Dr. Oxoby sought a measurement of whether Scott or Johnson, who took over after Scott's 1980 death, was the better lead singer of the famed heavy metal pioneers, so he played examples of each vocalist's work while student volunteers played an ultimatum game, a common test of efficient economic behavior—and Johnson won out. Oxoby's conclusions are appropriately cautious but provocative:

The question as to who was a better singer, Bon Scott or Brian Johnson, may never truly be resolved. However, our analysis suggests that in terms of affecting efficient decision making among listeners, Brian Johnson was a better singer. Our analysis has direct implications for policy and organizational design: when policymakers or employers are engaging in negotiations (or setting up environments in which other parties will negotiate) and are interested in playing the music of AC/DC, they should choose from the band’s Brian Johnson era discography.

I can see this method being used equally well to determine the relative anti-establishment credentials of punk rock groups—which album most interfered with capitalist processes?—or even to determine just how much Shostakovich's alleged bourgeois cosmopolitanism would have undermined a socialist economy.

Update (8/22): How does such research come about? Dr. Oxoby explains.

Quote of the Day

For all its diversity, the culture of an age hangs together more coherently than does the mind of a psychotic.

—Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918

This is a seriously good book.

At the Grave of William Billings

(In the tradition of Alex Ross.) I can't believe I've never done a post on Billings, one of my favorite composers. Here's excerpts from some program notes I wrote on him a few years back:

The publication of The New-England Psalm-Singer in 1770 was the making of William Billings’ reputation. Its 120 or so hymns, psalm-tunes, and anthems represent the first substantial corpus of music by an American composer, a fact that Billings provocatively used as a selling point for the book—the title trumpets its regionalism, the pieces are named primarily for local towns and landmarks, and the frontispiece (“Wake Ev’ry Breath,” illustrated with a scene of domestic singing) was engraved by colonial celebrity Paul Revere. It was the first wholly American music book in existence.

Billings was born in Boston in 1746 and lived there for his entire life. He attended Boston public schools until around 1760, when his father died; he then took up the tanner’s trade to help support the family. He had no formal music training, but sang in churches from an early age, and before long supplemented his income as a singing-master and teacher.

The New-England Psalm-Singer establishes, from the beginning, the Billings style: rhythmically vigorous, harmonically sturdy yet often texturally florid, and exhibiting a seemingly artless declamatory style. “Sudbury” is a good example—Billings emphasizes the eight-plus-six syllable asymmetry of the text, an imbalance that other composers might seek to smooth over. At the same time, the almost constant decoration of the otherwise stately harmonic rhythm produces a continually dancing surface that upholsters a solid frame.

Billings continued to advance in these directions, as shown in two selections from his fifth book, The Suffolk Harmony. “Baptism” sets a text by the Relly brothers, noted Christian poets of the time, of almost forbidding metrical complexity. Billings utilizes a host of methods in negotiating this thicket. He contrasts the location within the rhythm of accented syllables, he changes meter and tempo to point up the structure of the poem, and he slowly increases both the range and the activity of each voice part to bring about the dramatic climax. Similar techniques abound in “The Dying Christian To His Soul,” which also includes an almost operatic section in which the individual voice parts, unaccompanied, query each other as to the possible mortal nature of their symptoms.

1786, the year Billings published The Suffolk Harmony, was a depression year, and its effects caught Billings at a bad time; an accomplished man of letters as well, Billings had nevertheless been fired as editor of a new “Boston Magazine” after only one issue. The Suffolk Harmony sold poorly and Billings was forced to turn back to his previous trades to support his own and growing family. He became the Sealer of Leather for the City of Boston (judging and approving the quality of leather) as well as the city’s hogreeve, responsible for enforcing that hogs were “yoked and ringed” according to law, and assessing the damage caused by stray pigs. A concert for his benefit and the publication of his last book, The Continental Harmony, failed to revive his fortunes, and he died a pauper in 1800, a few months after completing his last piece (an elegy for George Washington, now lost). He was buried in an unmarked grave in Boston Common.

Billings was, in his time, a well-known figure, something of an American Beethoven in projecting an appearance of unkempt genius. Upon hearing of his death, the Reverend William Bentley, a Salem minister and casual acquaintance of Billings, remarked to his diary:

He was a singular man, of moderate size, short of one leg, with one eye, without any address, & with an uncommon negligence of person. Still he spake & sung & thought as a man above the common abilities.

You can find a fair number of his works at the slowly recovering Choral Public Domain Library. He was born on October 7, which gives any choral directors out there six weeks to get a birthday concert together.

Wet your roller, then you roll it

I haven't done a post today because I've been painting, and my bloodstream has no doubt been enriched with plenty of nutritious latex. (I should probably put on some Mozart.) If only that paint had been lead-based, I might have been inspired to Beethovenian flights of fancy.

Here's a fun fact: Handel most likely also suffered from lead poisoning—but not because of paint, but rather port and madiera wines: at the time, the brandy they were fortified with was distilled through lead-lined pipes. Which means that, had I lived in the 18th-century, I, too, would have been afflicted with one of the best-named illnesses ever, saturnine gout.

She's ported and relieved and she's stroked and bored

The current official transport here at Soho the Dog HQ is a 1999 Honda Civic, dented on all four fenders, scraped and scratched on all four hubcaps, and the repository of countless CDs, empty coffee cups, and muddy pawprints. I love this car.

But if it ever gives up the ghost, the leading candidate for its replacement has got to be Herbert von Karajan's 1988 Porsche 959, currently being offered by the Swiss classic-car dealer Kidston. The conductor was a notorious fast-car addict, and he had a long-standing predilection for Porsches, to the point where, in 1975, he could have the company custom-make a unique 911 RS Turbo for his personal use. When the 959s were about to go into long-delayed production, Porsche sent one over to the 80-year-old Karajan for a test-drive, which was filmed for television. (Karajan's wife can be heard on the reports telling her husband, "You'd better sell more records.") Fewer than 300 of the 959s were made, all largely hand-built.


Zero-to-sixty in 3.6 seconds, a top speed of 198 MPH—yeah, that would be fun on the Pike. Kidston is coy on price, but this site pegs it at £153,000, or just over $300K. That Met commission can come in anytime.

Deeds, Not Words

Drummer Max Roach has passed away. Jazz fans don't need an introduction, but even if your jazz record collection is limited to a few choice highlights, chances are that Roach is playing on some of them—the number and variety of landmark sessions he was a part of boggles the mind. Charlie Parker, Clifford Brown, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton—Roach played with them all. It's probably not an exaggeration to say that Roach changed drumming the way Liszt changed piano playing.

Darcy James Argue has many more links.

Thirty years on

Flattery, the sincerest form of

Another transfer from 78 RPM: Raymond Scott and his New Orchestra, circa 1941, with "When Cootie Left the Duke."

Raymond Scott and his New Orchestra: "When Cootie Left the Duke" (MP3, 3.1 MB)

The title refers to trumpeter Cootie Williams, who left Duke Ellington's band (amicably) in 1940 to join Benny Goodman, and then to form his own band. (Williams rejoined the Ellington orchestra in 1962.) The music is a bluesy lament that riffs on both Williams' plunger-mute style and Ellington's lush instrumentation. This is a perfect example of a piece of music that owes its existence to the advent of recording. In referring to a specific performer, Scott is not only utilizing that perfromer's recorded repertoire to nail down his particular style, he's counting on the listener being familiar enough with Williams and Ellington to appreciate the tribute.

These types of pieces predate recording, of course—think of those Ravel "...á la maniére de" miniatures—but the older versions mostly reference compositional, not interpretive styles. The only pre-20th-century example I can think of off the top of my head (there must be a few others) that specifically riffs on an individual's performance style is in the "Chopin" movement from Robert Schumann's op. 9 Carnaval.



That "4-5-5-4-5" fingering on the ornament is a typical, recognizable Chopinism. (As Charles Rosen has pointed out, it's by far the most Chopinesque thing in the piece.) But that's a rare example of a personal, idiosyncratic performance habit that's easily translated into notation.

In the post-recording era, composers have sought to portray particular performers' styles—Christopher Rouse's Bonham (channeling the Led Zeppelin drummer), for example, or William Bolcom's Violin Concerto (which contains a tribute to jazz violinist Joe Venuti)—but the need for absolute precision in translating the style into notation is obviated by the availability of recordings of the original performers; the notation only needs to meet the players' knowledge halfway.

(I'm trying to think of an instance of a classical performer making the choice to refer to another classical performer without specific prompting from the composer, and again, I've only come up with one, but it's a favorite—the 1960 world premiere of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, when Peter Pears, playing Flute playing Thisbe in the final act's opera-within-an-opera, seized on Britten's bel canto-parody music and brought the house down with an over-the-top Joan Sutherland impression.)

Unlikely music critic of the day

We arrived in Rome at night to a reception ceremony held for security reasons in the courtyard of the Quirinale Palace. Colorful lancers on horseback were lined up in neat rows as the national anthems were played. The charming Italian anthem is probably the least martial-sounding one in the world; it is not easy to go forth to battle to the strains of what sounds almost like a waltz.

—Henry Kissinger, White House Years (1979), p. 921

Dr. Kissinger apparently doesn't appreciate the considerably rousing power of the traditional cantilena-cabaletta sequence of Italian opera. The Inno de Mameli ("Fratelli d'Italia")—tune by Goffredo Mameli's friend Michele Novaro—dates from 1847. Sing along with the MP3! (1.3 MB)

Fratelli d'Italia, L'Italia s'è desta Dell'elmo di Scipio S'è cinta la testa. Dove'è la Vittoria? Le porga la chioma; Chè schiava di Roma Iddio la creò. (ripeti) Stringiamoci a coorte, Siam pronti alla morte; Siam pronti alla morte: Italia chiamò! (ripeti)

Italian brothers, Italy has risen With Scipio's helmet Upon her head. Where is Victory? Let her bow down; The slave of Rome God has made her. (repeat) Let us gather into corps, We are ready to die; We are ready to die: Italy is calling! (repeat)

And here's Gli Azzurri, the Italian national football team, approaching the task with enthusiasm at their 2006 World Cup victory celebration.



Previously: 1, 2.

Surfin' Sephardi

I'm working in a coffee shop this morning, and they're piping in some odd smooth-jazz/Muzak version of "Good Vibrations," and a clarinet has the melody, and darned if it doesn't make the song into a convincing klezmer hora/freilach pairing. Brian Wilson is G—d!

Get on board

It seems like a good time to check in on that alleged Death of Classical Music. But first, let’s talk a little bit about non-functional demand curves.

The what now? Hey, you’re smarter than you think—even if you’ve never cracked an economics textbook, you probably have an intuitive sense for the traditional, functional demand curve: all other things remaining equal, as the price of a good goes down, demand goes up, and vice versa. But there are also non-functional demand curves, when the relationship between price and demand isn’t so well-behaved.

The classic paper on non-functional demand is economist Harvey Liebenstein’s “Bandwagon, Snob, and Veblen Effects in the Theory of Consumer Demand” (JSTOR link), published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in May, 1950. As Liebenstein puts it:

[T]he proposed analysis is designed to take account the desire of people to wear, buy, do, consume, and behave like their fellows; the desire to join the crowd, be “one of the boys,” etc.—phenomena of mob motivations and mass psychology either in their grosser or more delicate aspects. This is the type of behaviour involved in what we shall call the “bandwagon effect.” On the other hand, we shall also attempt to take account of the search for exclusiveness by individuals through the purchase of distinctive clothing, foods, automobiles, houses, or anything else that individuals may believe will in some way set them off from the mass of mankind—or add to their prestige, dignity, and social status.

The bandwagon effect is the most familiar: makers of trendy goods can charge more for them, even if there’s no danger of a supply shortage—demand goes up even though the price doesn’t go down. Liebenstein, as he hints in the above passage, divides the second category in two: a “snob effect,” where a good becomes desirable simply because most people don’t have it; and a “Veblen effect” (named for the originator of the concept of conspicuous consumption), where a decrease in the price of a high-status good decreases its perceived status, and thus its demand.

I’m not trying to argue that classical music falls into one or the other of these categories—one of the great misguided assumptions in most reports of classical music’s “death” is that classical music itself is a single product, rather than an umbrella categorization of a host of varying (and sometimes competing) goods. But I do propose that where one’s opinion falls on the health of classical music has a lot to do with how one imagines its demand curve, and what kind of a curve one would like it to be.

Basically: people who say classical music is dying are doing so, in large part, because they don’t think that classical music generates enough of a bandwagon effect. (Some will often go further, charging classical-music organizations with actively promoting a snob effect in their marketing.) A lot of this arises from a comparison with pop, and is usually follwed by a prescription to present and market classical music more like pop culture. Pop culture dominates the market because it generates lots of bandwagon effect—it’s designed to. (Think of the way Hollywood blockbusters are marketed, and the way they open in thousands of theaters to maximize the return on their short-lived bandwagons.) Unless it can follow suit, it’s claimed, classical music will be left hopelessly in the dust. Not that classical music doesn’t have its own bandwagon effects—Peter Gelb, for example, has shown a fair talent for generating buzz at the Met—but it’s never enough in this kind of analysis.

There’s almost always an accompanying argument that classical music must be dying because it’s lost the competition for mindshare/media attention/cultural relevance. The concept is similar to another economic idea, a close relative of bandwagons. It’s called a network effect. The best example of this is a telephone: the value of a telephone to a potential buyer has a lot to do with how many other people are within the same telephone network. The fanciest phone in the world doesn’t do you a whole lot of good if it’ll only connect you to two or three other numbers. In the same vein, critics will say that classical music doesn’t really matter anymore, because only a small portion of the potential audience listens to it.

So when people ask if classical music is dying, in economic language, what they’re really asking is some combination of these two questions:

1. Are current benefits from non-functional demand sufficient for classical music organizations to remain economically viable?

2. Is the ultimate value of an artistic pursuit necessarily dependent on its ability to generate network effects?

I would answer those questions “yes” and “no”; thus, I do not think that classical music is dying.

I admit that my answer to the first question is based on anecdotal evidence; enough organizations, ensembles, and recording companies seem to be making enough money to be hanging in there, still doing what they’re doing. And enough musicians seem to come along, generation after generation, finding a way to make a living. It might actually be possible to collect enough relevant data to settle this question one way or another. I think that both the non-utilitarian and fragmented natures of the product would make such data pretty slippery; still, at least in theory, it’s a testable hypothesis.

But the second question, in reality, isn’t economic at all. It’s philosophical. And this is why this argument has gone on, and will go on, for so, so long. There’s no way to prove that question one way or another—either you believe that art has an intrinsic value regardless of the size of its audience, or you don’t.

Rudolf Serkin, infamously, once played the entirety of Bach’s Goldberg Variations as an encore. “When I finished,” he remembered, “there were only four people left in the hall—Adolph Busch, Artur Schnabel, Alfred Einstein and myself.” Did the value of Serkin’s recital dwindle along with the number listening? Hardly. My sanguine view of the survival of classical music is reflected in that illustrious trio staying in their seats. There will always be an audience whose demand for the music will remain purely functional, immune to fads, buzz, trends, what have you. Will it be smaller than the audience for this month’s pop sensation? Probably. Does that matter? Nope.

Canis major

In honor of Leo Fender's birthday, Buddy Guy and his Stratocaster accompanying Big Mama Thornton in a 1965 rendition of her biggest hit, "Hound Dog"—a 180 from Elvis's cover.

Ni les peintres ni Maupassant ne se promènent

I'm guessing this is the week when it hit everybody that summer is almost over. Here's a little creation to soothe your melancholy. I realized that I had never named a drink in honor of Francis Poulenc, so I'll borrow the title of one of my favorite of his songs, a bittersweet Apollinaire recollection of the perfect summer hang-out, now closed, never again to be graced by frivolity, abandon, or pretty girls dumb as cabbages.

La Grenouillère

Equal parts:
Dry gin
Apple eau de vie
Rose's Sweetened Lime Juice

Shake with cracked ice and strain into a martini glass.

While you imbibe: here's Poulenc himself, along with Jacques Février, performing the second movement of his 1932 Concerto for two pianos.

Haarlem Shuffle

Reviewing the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Boston Globe, August 8, 2007.

Soothe Me

Here's a pending patent application with the World Intellectual Property Organization. The inventor is Michinobu Suzuki, working for a company called the Faith 21 Corporation. What, exactly, is this new product?

A musical instrument having a substance, which obtained by blending microparticles of a natural mineral such as graphite-silica emitting far-infrared radiation or minus ions with various coatings, applied and/or deposited in a definite part of the instrument body. Since this instrument can emit the far-infrared radiation or minus ions by itself or in the tone range thereof during musical performance, it can soothe the heart of the musician or listeners around her/him. At the same time, attempts are made to improve the physiological effects of the far-infrared radiation or minus ions on the human body to thereby enhance natural healing ability and preventive effects against diseases.

I should find a Japanese speaker to translate the full description, although I doubt it would make a whole lot more sense. In the meantime, somewhere out there, Scriabin is updating his Christmas list.

Letter Aria

When I was in grade school, there was a brief period of time when one of the nuns decided that I and another girl should learn how to read and transcribe braille. Why? I can only think of two reasons, both valid: 1) it would use up time I would have otherwise spent disrupting the classroom, or 2) they figured it was likelier than not that I would foolishly blind myself someday, and I might as well get a head start. Anyway, I was never very good at it—both my stylus work and my reading were painfully slow—but just for fun, I looked it up today, and it turns out that I still remembered most of the alphabet. (Puzzle for the day: figure out which English letter breaks the otherwise consistent pattern.)

Now here's a little diversion. Braille can also be used in a rather intricate way to notate music—and most of the symbols overlap. Using the letter names of notes to translate words and names into music is an old trick, the most famous being the BACH motive (Bb-A-C-B-natural). But using braille as an intermediary, you get a whole new set of text-to-music translations. Here's one:


(Notice that "the" gets its own symbol, one of the many contractions that make braille a challenge to learn—and a breeze to use once you get good at it.) You can already see a lot of the characteristics that would be common using text-to-braille-to-music. Accidentals don't overlap with any letters, so everything's diatonic. And since each symbol is both a pitch and a duration, you end up with these odd-meter, non-symmetric rhythms.

Not everything works. BACH actually fails because both B and A are fingering indications, which make no sense without a note to attach them to. The C symbol translates into a slur, though, so as long as it's between two notes, it fits. Shostakovich's DSCH adaptation is ironically hopeful:


Arnold Schoenberg becomes a jaunty little alphorn tune (complete with a suggested fingering, brought to you by the letter B):


This is just an idle game, but one that would have been appreciated by the inventor. Louis Braille, son of a saddlemaker, accidentally stabbed himself in the eye with one of his father's awls at the age of three; the resulting infection spread to both eyes and he was permanently blind within the year. As a teenager, expanding on the work of Charles Barbier, who intended his raised dots as a military code, Braille codified the six-dot system for embossing wet paper with, yes, an awl—the tool that cost him his sight would also, in a symmetry too unlikely for fiction, land him in the Pantheon (literally: he was reinterred there in 1952). But Braille was also well-known as an organist and cellist, gaining compliments from the likes of Felix Mendelssohn. The transcription of music evolved side-by-side with that for text—Braille's 1829 handbook, which introduced the new method, covered both. In a way, braille music is a lovely closed circle: touch to mind to ear and back to touch.

Transcribing music into braille by hand is a time-consuming process, but the computer can make it easier, for a price: programs such as GoodFeel and Toccata can translate from MIDI files, or piggyback on the music scanning software SharpEye—GoodFeel also works with Finale and Sibelius. Frustratingly, my attempts to render the graphics for this post in a useful way for visually-impaired computer users came to naught—apologies.

Partie Parisienne

Reviewing Boston Midsummer Opera.
Boston Globe, August 3, 2007.

Hey, Chicago, whaddya say

Off-topic: two months is still plenty of time for the Sophoclean inevitability to play out, but in the meantime, my brother Danny gets a worthy birthday present—by a single percentage point.

Sail On Sailor

Reviewing the Boston Landmarks Orchestra. Boston Globe, August 2, 2007.

Personal space

It is notoriously easier to write about things and people one does not really know very well. One has fewer doubts. But to write about one's own country was a tortured enterprise. I knew too much. I saw too many trees. I sometimes could prove one thing or its contrary, with equal ease. I was embarrassed by the exceptions. I questioned every idea and watched every word. In my younger days sentimental patriotism was the fashion. In my anxiety to correct such prejudices, was I too eager to demolish sound and durable notions? I was afraid to be too conservative and, at almost the same time, too ready to follow new intellectual fashions, the rage among contemporary intelligentsia, to embrace seductive new theories which might be obsolete before the book appeared in print.

—Luigi Barzini, The Italians, 1964