A friend lent me Anthony Newcomb’s 1984 article, “Once More ‘Between Absolute and Program Music’: Schumann’s Second Symphony”. The best part of the article is the exhaustive summary of critical reception to the work in the 19th and 20th centuries, and commentaries on the radically different critical climate for Schumann’s work in those centuries.
This may come as a shock to the uninitiated, but conductors alter orchestration all the time, and not just in Schumann. Yes, in Beethoven and Schubert as well, if not usually in Mozart and Mendelssohn. Just go to a rehearsal. In no time you’ll see a conductor ask a clarinet to double a passage for bassoons and horns, or divide the double basses so only half play a scampering figure, or tell the flute to play something an octave lower…
I’ve pawed through my extensive collection of books about Schumann, and I’ve found that nobody but nobody seems to care about the Requiem, op. 148. Schumann’s work is an elegant and gentle acceptance of death, and is about death, while Brahms’ incalculably great work is about the living, the mourners, and is the world’s most sublime work of consolation in any artistic field. Schumann’s Requiem is a masterpiece.
Can you imagine a textbook saying that Beethoven, or even Brahms, for heaven’s sake, was “extraordinarily gifted”? Of course not. That would be like saying water is wet. But when that phrase is applied to Mendelssohn, it either means 1)Mendelssohn really wasn’t that bad. His music is sort of good after all!” or, 2) Mendelssohn wasn’t really a great composer. He was just ‘exceptionally talented.’
In my last entry I discussed the futility of drawing on a composer’s personal life in analyzing his music. Fittingly, since then I’ve come across a pair of reviews of the new book Robert Schumann: Life and Death of a Musician by John Worthen.
Obviously, any artist is de facto “expressing himself personally”. But to reduce the purpose of an artist to a need for self expression is so simple minded that the phrase “personal expression” becomes meaningless.
Updated on Thu, Aug 23, 2007 at 08:30 by
John Gibbons
A delightful development in the world of opera dvds has occurred. Two (!) versions of Paul Hindemith’s 1926 opus, Cardillac have recently appeared. I make the assumption that even serious opera fans may not be acquainted with this fascinating piece, except in Germany. Maybe there are old records of Hans Rosbaud or Otto Klemperer conducting it, I haven’t looked. I assume there are cds of the work… Arkiv probably has some.
The various plights of Bizet’s Micaela, Puccini’s Liu, any of Verdi’s Leonoras or Gildas (but emphatically not his greatest heroine, Violetta), and (for those unintimidated by the awesomeness of Wagner’s Parsifal), Kundry, inspire something less than intense emotional engagement. Now take a look at the baddies. Carmen, Turandot, Princess Eboli, Azucena, Amneris…each and everyone of these characters (give or take an aria or two, allowing for listener’s differing musical taste) has better music and is more human than the heroines.
Puccini is relatively immune to the phenomenon of Regietheatre because his scene settings are irresistable. Roman dawns, Seine twilights, and miner’s cabins in the mountains (complete with sterotypical indians) are good enough for anybody, it appears.
Updated on Sat, Aug 18, 2007 at 09:47 by
John Gibbons
What do Balzac, et al. have to do with “McTeague”? Not too much, but readers of novels and listeners of classical music feel obligated to compare works as a means to achieve critical understanding; often as the principal means to achieve critical understanding, and in fact numerous “afterwords” published in Signet or Penguin editions, for instance, consist of little more than a string of comparisons, in place of a real analysis of the text.
