Not Every Composer Has Everything: Some Half Hearted Provocations

Amidst the plethora of plaudits for Dmitri Shostakovich over the last couple of decades, you sometimes encounter a dissenting voice, as these pages encountered a dissenting voice in connection to Shostakovich 11. This piece is indeed open to criticism in its melodic aspect. And if you persist in evaluating harmony on a purely vertical basis, as opposed to a long range linear conception, it can be criticized there, as well. And it is full of violence.

But not every viable or even great piece succeeds in all musical dimensions. I’ve noted the grasp of long range structure in Shosty 11, which allows the piece to succeed as a cumultive experience. Here are some very arguable points, not every one of which I personally subscribe to:

Potential weaknesses in the masters:

1. For Schubert’s purely instrumental works, a relative lack of counterpoint. (There are exceptions! I know all about the inner strings in the intro to the Ninth, for instance.)

2. For Schumann and Bruckner, changing persistent rythmic patterns elegantly, or sometimes even competently.

3. For Mahler: There is too much about the composer, himself, personally. Also, occasional formal arbitrariness. His greatest score, Das Lied von der Erde, is not coincidentally the one piece that entirely avoids these potential pitfalls.

4. For Haydn, if we really have to find something: Not all his minuets are equally charming.

5. For Vivaldi: an inability to develop themes rather than to simply sequence them.

6. For Berlioz, Ravel, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Schnittke: Too great a reliance on picquaint instrumental sonority. (I would include Respighi, Milhaud, and Villa-Lobos, but I’m trying to restrict myself to the obvious heavy hitters. Yes, R-Korsakov, Ravel and Schnittke are heavy hitters.

7. For Schoenberg: A tendency to hysteria.

8. For Liszt, Prokofiev, and Tchaikovsky: An unusually pronounced gap in inspiration between the successful pieces and the also-rans. Maybe this is unfair, however…even the greatest composers can’t command inspiration.

9. For Stravinsky: Spiritual coldness. This is a heavy charge, and one I’m not particularly desirous of maintaining, Stravinsky is so resourceful and intelligent, and yet… 

10. For Handel: A marked tendency for the too simply grandiose or schematic.

I can’t find anything I’d be willing to even suggest laying at the doorsteps of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Wagner, or Berg…Brahms? He wrote Ein Deutsches Requiem, so he gets a one-time only pass. Strauss? Which one? The one with the waltzes or the one with the Super-man Waltzes?

This is Better-A Postscript to "I Just Have To Comment"

Reading the Tribune’s review of Lyric Opera’s “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” is worthwhile. Not because I agree (in fact, I disagree with much of the assessment of the production) but because it is a relevant commentary on the piece itself. And it gives some sound advice: “Run, don’t walk (to this production)”. This production is a big deal.

I Just Have to Comment

You will find some comments by me in these pages on the Verbier Festival Orchestra performance with Martha Argerich as soloist. You may also read the reviews on the two Chicago newspapers, on their respective websites. (See the ChiTrib review and the Sun-Times review.) Both newspaper reviews make a big deal out of Argerich’s history of cancellations, and the fact that she had been married to the conductor, Chas. Dutoit. Neither says anything whatsoever about the music. Do Chicago newspaper readers know Prokofiev and Berlioz so well? And one of the reviews, incredibly, described the accompaniment of the Prokofiev as “less than impressive.” Not true, not true, not true. Look at the score. The orchestration is full of problems, and the Verbiers did as good a job as could possibly be expected. And both of the reviews essentially misunderstand the nature of the Berlioz performance, which was brilliant sounding but immature, without a great deal of nuance. This is frustrating. Deification of performers is gross (Argerich was great, however)- Worse, it is boring. I put stupid jokes and irrelevant personal commentary in my “review”, but that’s gotta be better than talk of “impeccable passagework”; or junk about Dutoit being in a position as the pianist’s former husband to ensure her compliance with her contract…readers deserve something more.

Do You Want Three Hours of Meditation on Meaninglessness? Mix Schnittke with the Coen Brothers

Maybe you have a favorite uncle who on taking leave of you, jauntily winks as he advises, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Well, after the way I spent Saturday, evening, I advise you to think twice about doing anything I would do. The day started reasonably well, teaching a fistful of piano lessons to some of my favorite students, several of whom I’ve had for years. A leisurely walk home, while listening to some Panufnik on the ipod, only to find several packages of books I had ordered waiting in the front vestibule. So far so good; I thumbed through a biography of Hindemith I’ve been wanting for some time, as a reasonably entertaining football game played out on the TV. And my wife was baking a ham. A real ham, not ham and water or whatever.

And then I ruined everything.

First mistake:  I listened to Schnittke’s First Symphony. Now, the antecedents for this wild chaos (composed in 1972, I think) include Mahler and Ives, and maybe even Berio’s “Sinfonia”, when was that written? And did Schnittke know it? Was it unavailable to a composer working in the Soviet system? I’ll look this stuff up, if nobody enlightens me before I get around to some fact-checking. In any case, the piece is closest to Ives’ collage pieces, but on steroids. I’m planning on discussing Schnittke next semester, so he’s become a project of mine. He is generally associated (rightly) with a Shostakovich type ethos, but the First Symphony owes little to Shosty, although I do think I found some quotes from Shostakovich amongst the bedlam. This is a formidable piece. The scoring requires more players than the entire population of Cameroon in the 15th century. It is confrontational, violent, despairing, cruelly humorous, and ultimately demoralizing. So, naturally, I followed it up with a second mistake, by going with my wife to see the Coen brothers’ new movie, “No Country for Old Men”- which is confrontational, violent, despairing, cruelly humorous, and ultimately demoralizing.

Both pieces are exemplars of what is sometimes called post-modernism. Both are informed by a savage intelligence and irony, and both create worlds of sheer meaninglessness. For an hour with Alfred, and 2 hrs. with the Coens, you’re plunged into a weird, intractable void. You’re much better off with what Ives called “sissy” music- maybe some Boccherini or something. And if you’re gonna see a movie, go into screen seven and see “The Bee Movie” instead of screen eight, where “No Country” is… 

More on Schnittke anon. I don’t anticipate discussing the Coens any further. (Yes, I recommend both symphony and movie, if you’re confused.) 

Shostakovich 4,7, and 11...Chicago, We Don't Have a Problem

Updated on Sun, Nov 18, 2007 at 09:59 by John Gibbons

The Fourth, Seventh, and Eleventh symphonies of Shostakovich are each the greatest symphonic achievement ever in at least one aspect.

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Prokofiev and Berlioz with the Verbier Festival Orchestra

There are an awful lot of good to excellent youth orchestras out there. Abbado has a great one in Europe. Here in Chicago the Civic generally pleases. The Verbiers, from Switzerland, played in Chicago tonight. I was lucky in this concert; as a music teacher and lecturer, I usually have to make my dinner with stale gruel and tepid tap water, but not tonight. A generous patron associated with Verbier’s sponsor, UBS, gave me tickets to the pre-concert reception. Crab legs, salad with walnuts and blue cheese, ravioli suffed with carmelized mushrooms, beef tenderloin with creamy horseradish sauce, and anything you could want to drink…I wanted to miss the Prokofiev and stay with the food. But alas, with polite regrets and best wishes the catering staff shooed me off to the concert. Still, I’m sure my loyal students will continue to come through for me with tickets, books, Cds, etc. You hear that? This means you.

The first half was Martha Argerich and Prokofiev’s Third Concerto. She is a phenomenal pianist, could hardly have done better, but I enjoyed the little Chopin mazurka she played as an encore more than the piece de resistance, although I assure you I liked the tenderloin better than the salad. You know the old maxim about children? They should be seen and not heard. Well, the visual aspect of the pianist attacking and dismembering the piano is better than the aural aspect in this piece. And the orchestration was full of all sorts of miscalculations, the string writing consistently delivering little bang for the buck. All three movements begin promisingly, with Slavic melodies that leave a hint of Rachmaninov in the air. But then you have this deplorable combination of primitivism and neoclassicism. Before anybody gets on my case, I hereby solemnly state that I love many things of Prokofiev; “War and Peace”, the Sixth Symphony, more than half the piano sonatas, and even his other concerti; particularly the magnificent Symphonie-Concertante for cello. Speaking of primitivism, Bartok’s First Concerto fits the bill, and speaking of neoclassism, you could do worse than Bartok’s Second Concerto. I honestly think Prokofiev copies Stravinsky, like he did with his “Scythian Suite”. But whether yea or nay to that, the Third Concerto is all too limited in the type of piano sonority it evokes. Evertything is either a motoric toccata or actual banging, which is exciting but limited. The second mvt., however, has an interesting conceit; alternating violence with Slavic pathos. The Verbiers were outstanding in a reasonably difficult accompanying capacity, and in fact I was especially impressed because accompanying sensitively is a skill that often eludes brash, hot-shot virtuosi. 

Berlioz “Fantastique”…here is a work that wholly deserves its canonical status, and is a perfect vehicle for brash, hotshot young virtuosi.  They overdid it, I guess, but then,that’s part of the message of the piece. Nothing succeeds like excess.  Every single time I hear this incredible piece, I’m struck by its essential modernity and its sense of humor. I’ve made an entry about it which you can access here: (Revenge article). Who else would depict his composition, theory, and I’m almost certain, at least one especially noted Russian music expert (from the Paris Consevatory, of course) as capering demons at a satanic orgy?  

I’d like to say something serious about the Berlioz: the slow movement, “Scene in the Country” is the fantastic heart of the work, also the fantastic heartbreak of the work. I don’t have words eloquent enough to describe the shattering sadness of the English Horn’s attempt to start up again the duet with the oboe that begins the movement, and the lack of reply. Duet becomes solo, and only nature answers, malevolently, with the menace of a thunderstorm. This is Berlioz’s great hymn to loneliness. The Shepherd’s pipe is a voice in the void.  Goosebumps, goosebumps, goosebumps. What could be more beautiful? 

The orchestra, led by Charles Dutoit, generously played encores of the rousing “Farandole” from “L’Arlesienne” of Bizet, and Chabrier’s Espana. The latter piece has a clever ryhthm, but I don’t know…I’m  tempted to resume my habitual snobbiness just now, so here I will stop. 

A brief Postscript to "A Bridge Across the Abyss"

If you want to understand the world of Richard Strauss, circa 1919,  the book to read is Stefan Zweig’s  “The World of Yesterday”, which is a combination of autobiography, social commentary, and cultural anaylsis. If you can find it, you might also try Lotte Lehman’s “Five Operas and Richard Strauss”.

A clarification: the leitmotiv I’m referring to comes initially when the Emperor is describing how he wounded his favorite falcon, out of some weird fear or jealousy, at the time he captures the gazelle, which turns into the Empress. It is a small phrase from the long, opulent melody associated with the Emperor as hunter. 

"A Bridge Across the Abyss" -Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten (at Chicago Lyric Opera, the dress rehearsal was this afternoon)

The most poetic line of Hofmannsthal’s libretto for Strauss’s opera (premiered 1919) is sung by a small  chorus of night watchmen at the end of act one; they adjure the town’s husbands and wifes to “love one another more than your life, and know this; not for your life’s sake alone is the seed of life given to you, but is solely for the sake of your love…you husbands and wives, who lie in one another’s loving arms, you are the bridge across the abyss over which the dead come back to life. Blessed is your work of love!”

Can art be “a bridge across the abyss”? And are we in fact poised above an abyss, en general? Or does an artist manufacture the concept of “an abyss” to make his work appear to be redemptive? I don’t know, but the piece worked for me, from beginning to end. The theme of the wounding of the falcon, which became a love motif throughout the course of the piece, uniting the Mozartian couples Pamina and Tamino and Papageno and ..I mean, Emperor and Empress, Dyer and wife, was especially memorable; it better have been, because Strauss repeated it a zillion times in a zillion ways, but he had the courage of his convictions, and it paid off; the leitmotivic organization was splendidly cogent. 

Strauss may have been a bourgeois, and this passage may appear to be the grossest of bourgeois sentiments, couched in Teutonic sonic gargantua, but I was there today, in the theatre, (albeit the dress rehearsal) and moving it was, and how. The opera started at one and ended at five; that’s four hours! Four great hours. The acts get progressively better, as well. And I’m an opera lover born, but I can lose the thread, time to time, opera is demanding.  Not today. And the plot is the most recondite imaginable. This is an encomium, if you like.

If you live in Chicago you ought to go.  In the past I’ve been rebuked (getting rebuked is a super fun habit of mine) for not being sufficiently positive about the Lyric Opera; it’s a pleasure to be able to wholeheartedly and absolutely without reservation recommend this splendid effort. Everyone knows how great Deborah Voigt (the Empress) is. And lots of guys know the fine talents of Jill Grove (nurse), Franz Hawlata (Barak the Dyer — WFMT listeners also heard his wonderful Hans Sachs last week) and Christine Brewer (Dyer’s wife); but the tenor who sang the Emperor, an unknown quantity to me, Robert Dean Smith, was equally splendid. And tenors have a tough time making their way in Strauss. Not Mr. Smith, whose scene with the falcon in act two was memorably beautiful. Memorably beautiful. I use words lightly all too often, but not here. Memorably beautiful. 

The production is a (reasonably conservative) winner, by Paul Curran, and Sir Andrew Davis and the orchestra were really, really wonderful… and I know I’ve had my criticisms of both orchestra and conductor in the past… this was first rate.  The Lyric made my day. Bravo.    

If you can’t make to Lyric:

Richard Strauss - Die Frau Ohne Schatten / Solti, Studer, Terfel
starring Cheryl Studer, Thomas Moser, Marjana Lipovsek, Bryn Terfel, Elizabeth Norberg-Schulz

R. Strauss - Die Frau Ohne Schatten
starring Wolfgang Sawallisch, Luana DeVol, Peter Seiffert, Janis Martin, Marjana Lipovsek

Some Clarifications and Amplifications: Barber, Taruskin, and Snobbery

Am I permitted to say that my comment on listeners “being free to luxuriate in the beautiful melodies” of the Barber concerto is an observation, not a condemnation?

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Barber's Violin Concerto

One of the comments in these pages expressed incredulity that I could even consisder the possibility of Barber’s popularity waning. Well, I can conceive this possibility because of what happened to me from my conservatory days to the present, which is the central musical irony of my life.

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