This summer we’re being challenged by The Guardian’s Joe Queenan to fess up to the unlistenability of modern classical music. Queenan’s writing is excellent when he reigns in the snark — and he does, sadly, find examples that resonate — not that this makes him right.
t has been a shamefully long interval since our last post. Of course, our lack of posting fervor can in no way be attributed to any form of summer laziness. But for those in the audience who find themselves in a “beach reading” mood, here are some of my favorite light books on classical music. None of which, I promise, will get you any better at musical analysis.
Leopold, Wolfgang and Nannerl on stage by Delafosse, 1764Listen up: If you have limited time to listen to Mozart, or don’t have to teach a class on Mozart’s piano concerti or something, like I do, you don’t have time for these works. Go listen to Cosi fan Tutte or something. Go on, git! I don’t have all day.
Alright, everybody else-are those bozos gone? Good. Today we’re talking about the four concertos Mozart wrote at the age of eleven, based on pre-existing pieces, primarily by the Parisian Roccoco school, guys like Schobert and Eckard. These pieces aren’t even included in Cuthbert Girdlestone’s (what a name! Sounds like a character from Arthur Conan Doyle…I think I’ll change my name to his!) classic study of the Mozart piano concerti. He calls the 5th concerto the first. Which is fine. But either I’m entering my second childhood (not a likely possibility, you!) or the pieces are surprisingly viable. It helps to have a record of them played and conducted by Daniel Barenboim, who, make no bones about it, plays the pieces in a wonderfully warm, playful, and wholly romantic manner. I don’t understand critics of Barenboim’s Mozart, and I’ve met a lot of them. But on the other hand, I’ve met a lot of guys who prefer Artur Rubinstein’s piano playing to that of Vladimir Horowitz. To me this is incomprehensible, I’ll just never get it.
Anyway, here’s the Gibbons Maxim: All Music Should Be Played Romantically.
No, I am not appending a caveat. And if you squeal, “What about Bach?” I’ll majestically intone, “Especially Bach!”
Alright, I concede it’s largely a matter of taste and temperament. If Thomas Beecham puts cymbals and harp in Messiah, I’ll laugh along with the rest of you. And de Pachman’s Chopin (I’ve heard it) is gross and tasteless, not charming. And Huneker’s “analysis” of Chopin is an embarrassment. Let him go get drunk with Dvorak. Was that him? Here are some points about the four Mozart concerti which have been conspicuous by their absence in this essay:
1. Formally, they are totally conventional fast-slow-fast affairs with rudimentary binary and song forms with episodes instead of developments, with the exception of the first mvt. of the D major, which is actually interesting, and it is further interesting that Wolfy only provided a cadenza for this piece, clearly the best of the four.
2. The orchestration is too classy to be labeled, or libeled, “perfunctory”. But don’t get in a tizzy about it, we’re not gonna “alert the media”. If you don’t appreciate Mozart’s orchestration, just listen to some of his contemporaries. (excepting Haydn).
3. The left hand of the pianist is constantly playing orchestral style music, not piano style music, except where it is playing ubiquitous alberti basses…which is most of the time, come to think of it. When the piano doubles the bass, it’s actually kind of a fun texture on the piano, but on a harpsichord or fortepiano it’d be a dull and conventional texture. And is it lese majestie to criticize some of the left hand writing in Mozart’s “real” concerti?
4. The right hand plays an awful lot of arpeggios and scales. But if you inflect this prefabricated material like Barenboim does, it is indeed beautiful.
5. Cheerful and elegant, the melodic writing delights.
6. The most ambitious slow movement, the F-major movement of the 2nd concerto (the B-flat) fails. It tries to have beautiful suspensions and real gravity but is just boring. The piano plays too many triplets, and doesn’t even have a chance for rubato or nuance much.
7. These pieces aren’t particularly worse than Mozart’s concerti 6-8. 5 is much better than these, but 6-8? These (1-4) concerti are pithier and no more superficial than 6-8. The 7th is a disappointment: with 3 keyboards one might think Mozart would get more, not less, but less he gets.
8. The slow movement of No. 4 is in g minor. Relax! Geezus, I can’t take you anywhere! It’s not real Mozart g minor.
9. The fine scholar William Kinderman says in his book, “Mozart’s Piano Music” that Mozart merely adapted pre-existing sonatas and added orchestral ritornelli. But can this be totally true? There are definitely passages in the piano part that sure don’t feel sonata-like; that seem to depend on the interaction of piano and orchestra. I at least can’t imagine simply playing the piano parts as sonatas. I’m way too lazy to look up the original sources, so I hereby commission you, reader, to spend hours in the library doing so. Let me know what you find out.
Lovers of French opera don’t have to study learned tomes to find out about distant or exotic locales and ancient history. We take our ease sure in the knowledge that we got it all covered simply by listening to Meyerbeer’s Le Prophete, Les Hugenots, and L’Africaine, Massanet’s Esclarmonde, Herodiade, and Thais, Lalo’s Le Roi D’Ys, Dukas’s Ariane et Barbe Bleu, and today’s subject, Albert Roussel’s Padmavati, (completed shortly after WW1).
If you’ve been wasting your time hitting the books for the straight dope on the Anabaptists, Vasco de Gama, religious massacres, Medieval chivalry, the Bible, early christian Alexandria, and 14th century India, I’ve got three words of advice for you: Wise up, Toots!
By the way, I also consider myself a Mayan expert because I saw Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto”.
Roussel’s opera simultaneously belongs to several traditions; firstly, being almost half ballet, it recalls Lully, but also, and more pertinently if less Frenchly, Rimsky-Korsakov’s underrated Mlada and Puccini’s Le Villi. This opera is also squarely in the Orientalism traditon, and really, there are enough generations and enough works to justify the word “tradition”-R.-Korsakov’s Scheherazade and Tsar Saltan, Strauss’s Salome and Stravinsky’s Nightengale come to mind. Debussy comes to mind, just in general. I mean come on, “Pagodas”, “Sounds and Perfumes Mingle in the Night Air” (that could be a description of Padmavati) and “The Moon Shines on a Ruined Temple”, for instance, et al. And the piece has all sorts of anticipations of Puccini’s Turandot, although I don’t imagine the illustrious Luccan knew the piece, which is a sort of missing link between Strauss’s Salome and Puccini’s Turandot, less hysterical and subtler than the Strauss, and also less hysterical and subtler than the Puccini. And probably less hysterical and subtler than lots of other things. The end of act 1 recalls King Dodon and R-Korsakov’s Golden Cockerel.
“A beautiful and savage dream” is not intended as bloggin’ boilerplate: the piece inhabits a dreamlike trance from beginning to end, and oh, is it beautiful. As beautiful as any of Ravel’s exoticisms, and less fussy, to boot, and it’s as violent as, well, “Apocalyto”, or at least “Temple of Doom”-it doesn’t have High Priest of Thugee Muhleram tearing out victim’s hearts while invoking the power of Siva , but darn close.
[Mulleram - note the spelling— invokes the power of Kali, you pompous ignoramus. —Editor’s note.]
Is the piece moving? Yes, in two spots. Padmavati’s despair and resignation at the end of act 1, lamenting that the Gods no longer hear her, and what did she do to deserve this? And, the duet in act 2 where Padmavati (and she decides for her Maharaja,as well) determines to die with honor rather than to live with dishonor (by giving Padmavati to the Mogol chieftain). This isn’t Respighi’s Belkis, Queen of Sheba, it’s much better. It’s not Goldmark’s Queen of Sheba, either. In fact, it had nothing to do with Sheba, why did I bring this up? Maybe confused Siva with Sheba.
To those who find faux-Oriental pieces like this insensitive, or jingoistic, or patronizing, I assure you, that although it looks like I’m delightedly lapping it up and asking for seconds on the outside, I’m remorsefully cryin’ on the inside, where it counts. Really.
I can affirm most wholeheartedly that Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis absolutely succeeds outdoors on a balmy June evening, as proved last night by the Chicago Grant Park festival and its capable conductor, Carlos Kalmar. I’m too lazy to look it up, but was it not so long ago that outdoors summer festivals avoided pieces like the Missa? In any case, any and all times and places are right for this engrossing and highly accessible work; if you actually listen, this piece, dense and profound as it obviously is, can connect like nothing else. It is Beethoven’s greatest single achievement, even if sacred music isn’t Beethoven’s greatest or most characteristic genre (which are piano sonata and string quartet).
This work is indebted to the Baroque, and not just Bach, but nevertheless is fundamentally High Classical in conception; it forms a continuous narrative, as the Bach B minor Mass, which is a collection of sympathetic but heterogeneous pieces, does not. You couldn’t omit or transpose anything from Beethoven’s Mass and retain structural integrity, which is both dramatic and tonal. But one could excerpt a chorus or aria from the sacred works of Bach or Mozart with profit. In fact, I sometimes wonder if it is a coincidence, or due primarily to biographical factors, that Mozart’s two greatest sacred works, the C minor Mass and Requiem, were left incomplete-there appears to be, in these awesomely beautiful works, an ultimate lack of total identity between style and content. Neither are the Baroque and earlier styles (Gregorian chant for instance) employed in the Missa felt as stylistic anachronisms except where intended to be felt as such by Beethoven. This seems to me to be an absolutely vital point, and one that cannot be made for Mozart or Schubert, or even Haydn.
Dramatically the Mass’s structure feels as if it were in two mammoth and complementary parts separated and articulated by the Credo, which looks both backward and forward. The Kyrie and Gloria easily are the sections most obviously reconcilable with Baroque antecedents, but nevertheless have an intrinsic momentum which is undoubtedly Classical, and contain some disconcerting touches, like the very first intonation of the word “kyrie” on a weak beat, or the simultaneous unfolding of the two parts of the fugal subject at the beginning of the “Christe eleison”, which one could take to be a reference to the dual nature of Christ, but which requires intense focus on the part of the listener to perceive adequately. This mass of fugal entries at this place is one of the great glories of the piece.
It is well known that the opening E-flat salvo in the overall B-flat tonality of the “Credo” inaugurates a massive plagal cadence over the course of the movement. I’d like to speculate further that the idea of a piece in D with subsidiary regions in two flats connects this piece to the Ninth Symphony, written at essentially the same time. Elegantly, the Mass has D major giving way to G minor in the achingly moving “Agnus Dei”, and the symphony has D minor giving way to B flat, as a major structural conceit. Consider it speculated!
I noticed that the “et incarnatus est” was sung by the tenor section rather than the soloist. Maybe I hadn’t paid sufficient attention to this detail in the past, because I was confused, since my score indicated solo. I had an opportunity to ask Maestro Kalmar about it afterwards, and he said that there is absolutely no doubt it should be chorus, that he called the Grand Poohbas at Henle edition in Munich who indicated that they always get that question, and that an errant copyist was responsible for the mistaken indication of “solo”. Mr. Kalmar further commented that the context made the sectional rendition clear. My wife chimed in that it ought to be sung by the chorus, because tenor soloist James Taylor’s clarion entrance on the concluding phrase “et homo factus est” (and was made man) was exceptionally dramatic. To this the Maestro enthusiastically agreed. It is true that the other soloists enter subsequent to the “incarnatus”, and that Christ was, corporally speaking, one man and not many, but whether or not it is politic to agree with Munich editors and fine conductors, it is always politic to agree with one’s wife. Actually, I have no idea what Beethoven wrote, so it was good to learn the truth of the matter from a pro who does know, who has done the necessary research. This is not a trivial point, it is one of the most important places in the score. In fact, one could say that the “Incarnatus” is the foundation of all Christianity. Maestro said my score must be old, not reflecting current research. I wonder how many other mistakes I accept as true…I have a lot of old scores!
I am indebted to Mr. Ray Frick, generous underwriter of the concert, for introducing me to the very fine soloists and Mr. Kalmar. I’m certainly appreciative of the opportunity. It’s amazing what one can learn.
And the very fine soloists? Erin Wall (soprano), Anita Krause (mezzo), James Taylor (tenor) and Nathan Berg (bass). The solo parts in Missa Solemnis are uncommonly challenging without being overtly virtuosic, and require exceptional musicality and sensitivity to ensemble concerns. All these soloists delivered. I should mention here that the Grant Park chorus, singing some exceptionally difficult music themselves, was flat-out great. Chorus director Christopher Bell took a well-deserved bow with his ensemble.
An interesting feature of the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei is how few words there are and how much music. Beethoven has deflected the emotional weight of the mass to the final third of the text. This is consonant with Beethoven’s fundamentally humane and humanistic conception. “Lamb of God, forgive us our sins” and “Grant us Peace” are given the greatest attention of all lines in the mass. It is moving to think of Beethoven writing, “Grant us inner and outer peace” at the allegretto. Or is my score in error! It is too well known to mention here the ominous military music Beethoven places in the “dona nobis pacem” very near the end; will Beethoven’s not-so-subtle reminder, or warning, never cease to be relevant?
There are a great many fine sacred pieces from the Romantic era, this is conceded. But the absorption of Baroque methods anachronistically by such composers as Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Liszt are in a sense disappointing when one considers that Beethoven’s achievement was to remake sacred style wholly in his most advanced, personal, and au courant manner. Greatest Romantic composer of sacred music? Let’s call a spade a spade and nominate Hector Berlioz. There are moments in his Requiem and L’Enfance du Christ that recall with fierce immediacy the sincerity and personal committment on display in Beethoven’s finest work.
For further listening:
Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
Leonard Bernstein
Concertgebouw Amsterdam
Some comments on the Chicago Symphony’s concert of Hindemith and Berlioz last night…I’m not even saying that the premiere piece, by some Julliard phenom, “explosion” whatever is bad, but it combines shallow and egregious noisemaking a la Joseph Schwantner in the 80’s with the new tonal “accessibility” of composers like Del Tredici and Corigliano. Actually, I choose these three references carefully; with its toy piano and syrupy harps it sounds like the latter two composers, and with its 57 percussionists banging on hubcaps and shaking coin jars it sounds like the former. For me it was torture.
Definitely not torture was Paul Hindemith’s charming, if dated, overture to Neues vom Tage, which probably reminded most seasoned listeners of Weill, and the genuinely moving Trauermusik for viola and strings, played with exceptional dignity and elegance by Pinchas Zuckerman. Apparently Hindy wrote it in one day, as a quickie memorial for whichever king died in 1939. See what craft can do for you! I must say, combining salty early Hindemith with the craftsmanlike style of his maturity was good programming. Leonard Slatkin was the very able conductor; Guess his ill conceived and ill received comment about female violinists and “turkey wattles” is forgiven and forgotten. Except not by me. I aspire to emulate the shrewish wife in a cartoon I once saw who is berating her beer-bellied hubby, glumly hunched over his Old Style in a working class tavern, thusly: “Do you think I forget 1957 and that crack you made about my knees!”
I’d like to retract those cracks I made in 2008 concerning Berlioz’s Harold in Italy: while the violist may as well join the section, and while the work is disconcertingly not a concerto, it is a strangely sympathetic symphony. Cynicism vies with sincerity, the satanic vies with the sublime, the self-absorbed vies with the universal, the bucolic vies with the refined, this is a work divided against itself. It amazes and moves me, how the wildly egotistical Hector Berlioz gives us music of such searing honesty and integrity. I’m struck again and again by how fresh and relevant his pieces sound.
By the way, Wagner requires a triangle in the hour long Act 2 of his opera, Siegfried. For one stroke. Richard Strauss called this “A wise use of percussion.” And ask yourself why you’ll never forget that Brahms uses the triangle in the scherzo of his 4th symphony. And what wrecks the scoring of Tchaikovsky’s 4th symphony? Now that’s a work in which all the soft passages are good and all the loud passages are bad. Yes, I’m exaggerating! But the best thing in the score is the spooky viola arpeggio tremolandos obbigato-ing the second subject of the first movement.
Features music by Jefferson Friedman, whose “Sacred Heart: Explosion” was visited on CSO attendees as the requisite modern piece on the Hindemith/Berlioz viola concert reviewed here.
Remember: If you don’t disagree with these, I’ll have to reconsider my positions!
1. Harp music should be ugly. Pretty harp music is taken for granted.
2. Greatest passage for bassoon? The obbligato in the exposition of Beethoven’s Ninth, 4th mvt. The bassoon can be noble?
3. Who is the founder of Post-Romantic French musical identity, Debussy? Nah. It’s Richard Wagner, pro (Chausson et al.) and contra (Satie et al.).
4. Why do so many musicians disparage the flute? Even Ol’ Man Brahms gave it the loveliest passage in his 4th Symphony!
5. Greatest Spanish composer? Only smart-alecs say Debussy. Sober adults say De Falla.
6. Greatest Brazilian composer? Only smart-alecs say Villa-Lobos. Sober adults say Milhaud.
7. Smetana is greater than Dvorak. And Dvorak is, if anything, underrated.
8. Is Stravinsky losing ground? When was the last time you heard Oedipus Rex and liked it? (and I spent 50 bucks on the full score, which is almost as bad as spending 30 bucks on, if you’ll excuse the expression, Carmina Burana)
9. How ‘bout Janacek? Will his ascendancy never plateau? Not unless Mr. Broucek takes all copies of his his scores away with him to the moon. And then, like as not, the astronauts will start a Janacek cult.
10. I keep waiting to get tired of Korngold. Hasn’t happened yet, and it’s been two semesters since I taught about him. But the English reviewers are right to call his stuff “codswallop”; Not because it is, but because a word that cool should be used every chance you get.
Steinway acquires ArkivMusic for $4.5 million.
ArkivMusic is certainly the “little” store that could… coming fairly close to offering everything classical that’s buyable on CD. With opera DVDs galore and every classical CD in print (and many out of print through their on-demand ArkivCD program), they are the “Amazon killer” for the classical market. According to Steinway’s release, they will continue as a wholly owned subsidiary.
As a web producer I hope the cash brings improvements to their site search capability (why can’t I combine the various search parameters?). On the other hand, I hope they do nothing to compromise Arkiv’s ease of use compared to Amazon (littered as it is with business development opportunities).
Arts & Letters Daily has been on our blogroll for awhile now and is always worth a visit for any elitist looking for a good read in the arts, humanities or social sciences. Several Holde Kunst posts and discussions have been kicked off by articles found there. (Yep, it’s so elitist that it’s a service of the Chronicle of Higher Ed.) I thought I’d spend a few minutes taking note of the classical music items currently gracing AL Daily. Among them are some topics I’d love to write about but don’t know when I’ll get the time.
Jan Swafford in Slate discusses the new solo piano recording by Pierre-Laurent Aimard of Bach’s Art of the Fugue (Read Wikipedia):
“It’s as if you told a physicist that Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity was topping the best-seller list. It’s not supposed to happen. This is because the 14 fugues and four canons that make up The Art of Fugue constitute one of the most esoteric musical works ever written.”
Bonnie Gibbons