Sounds & Fury

Response To A Response

(Note: This post has been updated (2) as of 9:58 PM Eastern on 3 Feb. See below.)

Writer on music and weblogger Lisa Hirsch of Iron Tongue Of Midnight, in an update to her post, responds to this post of mine.

Ms. Hirsch voices her opinion that there's "much genius in the massing [in Wagner's music], and yet there's also genius in the counterpoint," with which opinion I agree wholeheartedly. Wagner, in both harmonic invention and contrapuntal construction, is the logical successor to the great Bach himself. But the contrapuntal genius of that greatest of contrapuntists is also revealed in the massing; i.e., in the gestalt effect of the interlacing of the music's multiple contrapuntal lines. Hearing the individual lines as individual lines may be instructive and a source of wonder, and the individual lines in themselves beautiful, but it's in the summed product of their interlacing that their — and Bach's — genius is made manifest.

Just so with the music of his logical successor who better than anyone knew that the genius of his own counterpoint was revealed in the massing, and so took extraordinary care in his orchestrations to force it to be so heard. Any interpreter who attempts to defeat Wagner on that point is doing him, and, more importantly, the music a gross disservice, not to mention the gross disservice done to audiences for that music.

Ms. Hirsch then writes:

I have not yet been to Bayreuth, and it sounds as though ACD has been, so I am interested in hearing more about the "circle-squaring" aspects of achieving transparency in that theater. My experience is strictly with performances recorded there, in which, of course, transparency may be achieved by the clever placement of the microphones.

As Ms. Hirsch correctly conjectures, I have heard Wagner in the Festspielhaus, and, briefly, the combined effect of the sunken orchestra pit and the auditorium's "non-analytic" acoustic is to blend the orchestral sound in such a way as to almost force a hearing of it in the massing; precisely Wagner's intent, as I've already stated. Any imagined transparency heard in the house is a direct result of Wagner's purposeful orchestration to achieve that effect. Criminals such as Norrington and Boulez may mess with the orchestral textures in ways Wagner never intended or even imagined in order to force transparency where none was written, but in the Festspielhaus their efforts will go largely for naught except to make the orchestra sound anemic in comparison with what one expects to hear from it in that auditorium.

Finally, as to singers, I agree with Ms. Hirsch that Nilsson's voice is quite "steely," and lacks the plush, lyrical quality of, say, a Flagstad or Varnay. But Nilsson's voice has its own kind of beauty, perfect for the Ring's Brünnhildes though less perfect for, say, Tristan's Isolde. Judging Nilsson's voice in Wagner by how it executes trills and written-out ornament, however, is a bit silly given that the trills and written-out ornament in Wagner's mature works are, as I've said, just this side of nonexistent they're so rare. If one want to hear trills and ornament in the vocal line, I suggest he try Baroque opera, or the operas of the Italian bel canto masters rather than those of Wagner who had little use for such peacock embellishment.

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Update (5:49 AM Eastern on 1 Feb): Lisa Hirsch responds.

Update (9:58 PM Eastern on 3 Feb): For the ongoing, um, conversation on this, see here.

Authenticity Lunacy

(Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 9:35 PM Eastern on 31 Jan. See below.)

(Note: This post has been edited to add a footnote as of 6:26 AM Eastern on 31 Jan. See below.)

Writer on music and weblogger Lisa Hirsch of Iron Tongue Of Midnight has some thoughts on "authenticity" zealot Roger Norrington, with all of which I largely agree.

Almost.

Writes Ms. Hirsch:

There's one Norrington set that is still a revelation to hear, though, and that's the Wagner disc. I suspect his very fast tempos aren't any more correct than the Beethoven tempos, but the transparency of the orchestra and the bright, individual sounds of the mid-19th century instruments are a far cry from the homogenous, dense sound that so many consider the right sound for Wagner. That's a sound that is only produced by a modern orchestra.

Between that orchestral sound and the size and design of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, his ideal theater, you have to wonder what kind of voice Wagner really wanted. We know from the trills and decorations to be found in the Ring operas that he wanted flexible voices. Yes, Wagner singers have to have stamina, but less-than-immense voices wouldn't present any problems of audibility at Bayreuth with a period orchestra.

The most interesting moral of the Norrington story is very likely that you don't have to be a trumpeter like Flagstad or Nilsson to sing Wagner.

Ms. Hirsch is quite correct in suspecting just how wrong Norrington's breakneck tempi are in his Wagner readings. They are, in fact, perfectly idiot.* Ms. Hirsch is also correct in her assertion that "the transparency of the orchestra and the bright, individual sounds of the mid-19th century instruments [employed by Norrington in his Wagner readings] are a far cry from the homogenous, dense sound that so many consider the right sound for Wagner." They are indeed that. Ms. Hirsch's assertion, however, that those readings are a "revelation to hear," with the implied suggestion that the orchestral transparency achieved by Norrington in those readings is the right way to realize a Wagner score, is quite wrong; perverse, even.

As I wrote in this post speaking of the Wagner readings of the great Mozart interpreter, Karl Böhm:

Wagner's musico-dramatic and symphonic contrapuntal genius is almost always realized in the massing, rarely in details of inner line, and Böhm's transparent readings of Wagner wherein the revealing of inner line is prominent are therefore just plain wrong (i.e., un-Wagnerian). They're wrong because while the revealing of inner line in the music of, say, Mozart or Beethoven is to reveal the very soul of the music, the revealing of inner line in Wagner serves only to reveal how the sorcerer accomplished his magic. Not a good thing, not a good thing at all, as any self-respecting sorcerer will confirm.

Ms. Hirsch is certainly correct in stating that the Bayreuth Festspielhaus is Wagner's ideal theater, but quite wrong in her conjectures concerning it vis-à-vis the sound of the orchestra in the proper realization of a Wagner score. Period instruments or modern orchestra, the effect of the Festspielhaus's sunken orchestra pit is to make any attempt at orchestral transparency largely a circle-squaring exercise except in those clear cases where Wagner purposely built such transparency into the orchestration itself; precisely the effect Wagner intended. As I remarked in my above extracted quote, orchestral transparency is proper for the music of Mozart and Beethoven. With Wagner's music, however, such transparency is nothing short of a willful perversion of the score, and of Wagner's intent.

On the associated matter of "what kind of voice Wagner really wanted," we don't have to depend on the evidence of Wagner's "trills and decorations to be found in the Ring operas" (just this side of nonexistent, not so by the way) to make that determination. Wagner tells us in his own words what kind of voice he really wanted: big, beautiful, and dramatically expressive.

You know. Voices like Flagstad's and Nilsson's, to name just two.

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*It's sometimes not difficult to see how "authenticity" zealots like Norrington come up with their loony ideas. On the question of his breakneck tempi in his Wagner readings, Norrington apparently thought it more appropriate to follow the 19th-century practice of Mendelssohn, who conducted just about everything at breakneck tempi, rather than follow Wagner's practice outlined by Wagner himself who was perhaps the greatest conductor of his time (generally, not merely of his own music).

Here's Wagner writing in 1869 on the subject of tempo; a matter which he held to be the most important consideration of all for conductors:

But "dragging" is not a characteristic of the elegant conductors of these latter days. On the contrary, they have a fatal tendency to hurry and to run away with the tempi. This tendency to hurry is so characteristic a mark of our entire musical life latterly that I propose to enter into some details with regard to it.

And so he did. Almost 100 pages worth of details, as a matter of fact. And some key statements of those pages are:

• The whole duty of a conductor is comprised in his ability always to indicate the right tempo. His choice of tempi will show whether he understands the music or not.

• If I try to sum up my experiences regarding performances of my own operas, I am at a loss to distinguish with which of the qualities of our conductors I am most concerned. Is it the spirit in which they treat German music in the concert rooms, or the spirit in which they deal with the opera at the theaters? I believe it to be my particular and personal misfortune that the two spirits meet in my operas, and mutually encourage one another in a rather dubious sort of way. [...] I need only speak of [conductors' handling] of the tempo which is either absurdly hurried ... or muddled ... or both dragged and muddled, yet never with those well-considered [internal] modifications of the tempo upon which I must count as much as upon the correct intonation of the notes themselves if an intelligible rendering is to be obtained.

• Heaven knows how such quadrupeds [i.e., foursquare time-beaters] find their way from the village church to our opera theaters.

• I am sorry to say I know of no one to whom I would confidently entrust a single tempo in one of my operas.

Wagner would, I'm sure, not have found much different today, and would have been delighted to hear to what gross indignities his music has been subjected by the Norringtons of this world, all in the name of historically informed "authenticity."

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Update (9:35 PM Eastern on 31 Jan): For Lisa Hirsch's response, and my response to that response, see here.

Turf Wars

(Note: This post has been edited for clarity as of 9:55 PM Eastern on 30 Jan.)

And speaking of wars, here's a war of a different sort.

And some of us wonder why it is that so little genuine classical ("art", "serious") music of worth is being written today.

With the field crowded by such petty, ideology- and method-obsessed poseurs, it's no wonder, no wonder at all.

Thoughtful Attempt

Theater director and weblogger Isaac Butler of Parabasis makes a thoughtful attempt at complying with my request made in this post on the Star Wars series of movies, for which I thank him. What Mr. Butler writes seems reasonable to me, but I wonder whether it suffices to explain the huge numbers involved, and the series' continuing appeal, also measured in mega numbers, in a far more sophisticated era.

I suspect not.

On a cognate matter, I would take exception to Mr. Butler's,

Say what you will about the cheesiness of the special effects, but my parents remember the packed theater applauding the first time they saw hyperspace. Sure, it's a screen saver now, but back then?

My answer to that rhetorical question is: Back then — almost a decade before back then, as a matter of fact — audiences and filmmakers alike had as guide to show them how it's done the breathtaking and still never equaled paradigmatic example of what science fiction special effects could and ought to be. I'm, of course, referring to the special effects in Stanley Kubrick's great film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. So brilliantly were they conceived and executed that had they not pictured things never before seen in real life at the time they would have been totally transparent as special effects, the foremost hallmark of success of cinematic special effects. If you doubt my word on that last, just ask yourself how many special effects are visible as special effects in that peerless real-life film, Citizen Kane.

What's that I hear you say? There were no special effects in Citizen Kane?

Q.E.D. There were well over 100.

From The Top

I actually hope this is old news to most of you, but for those of you who have not yet been clued into the existence of Public Radio International's From The Top, this is your wakeup call. This weekly radio series is a showcase for phenomenally gifted classical music musicians, all of whom are under college age, and the age of some of whom can be expressed in single digits. The show is based at the New England Conservatory of Music, and delightfully hosted by concert pianist Christopher O'Riley whose informed, informative, and humorous banter with the show's featured musicians of the week sets the non-solemn, with-it, often wisecracking, we're-just-having-fun tone of each of the series' hour-long shows.

Check your local NPR station for time of broadcast, and start tuning in. It'll do nothing but good for your head, heart, and soul.

New Addition (Administrative Note)

The elegant weblog Vilaine Fille (whose proprietress appears to be anything but vilaine) has now been added to our exclusive listing of Culture Weblogs.

Stop by, and give a read.

A Mystery

(Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 5:29 PM Eastern on 30 Jan. See below.)

The Star Wars phenomenon, I mean. I freely confess I simply don't get it. I never did. From the first Star Wars movie through the following three installments (or four or five or whatever), which installments were just more of the same, the enthusiastic response, both popularly and in the mainstream critical media (using critical here in the loosest way possible), has been and remains for me a mystery defying solution.

Consider, please, what we have in this series of movies: Dialogue so mindless it makes the networks' Movie Of The Week seem almost literate. Scripts the veritable Saturday 'toons or Cliffs Notes versions of ancient mythology's great hero-cum-dragon-slayer sagas, George Lucas's pretentious and risible pronouncements about what the series is about, and the late — and before he became a New Age icon and pop culture hero — serious-minded Joseph Campbell's largely fulsome praise for the original Star Wars movie notwithstanding. Acting so execrable it makes the acting on the daytime TV soaps seem worthy of mention alongside that of The Royal Shakespeare Company. And special effects so tacky and thoroughly video-game cartoonish they're laughable.

All of which is to say, there's no there there — or rather, nothing there that would not at minimum be an insult to anyone with an IQ larger than his belt size. Yet clearly intelligent people wax eloquent over these works of rank, and at times rankly pretentious, dumbness.

In truth, it would be surprising were these movies otherwise than dumb. George Lucas is, at best, little more than a technically imaginative moviemaker, unlike, for instance, his buddy and sometime-partner-in-crime Steven Spielberg, a Hollywood-style moviemaker of the very first water, and a man who developed and raised the aesthetic and form of the Hollywood narrative movie to its utmost limits, which limits if pushed beyond would produce a different sort of work altogether. If Lucas is to be credited for being gifted, one would have to say that his gift lies in the domain of marketing, not moviemaking, which gift, I hasten to add, is not a gift to be sniffed at, especially given the mind-boggling economics of moviemaking and movie promotion, and the sophistication and hyper-competitiveness in today's marketing arena.

But marketing, no matter how slick and consummately expert, does not a great movie make, although great movie box office it most certainly does. I could understand this whole business if the enormous popularity of the Star Wars series were in the nature of a cult phenomenon à la, say, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, or some such. But the numbers involved are far too large to be considered the result of mere cult devotion or great marketing. Accordingly, I would be most grateful to any weblogger reading this who's a fan of the Star Wars series who would provide on his weblog a cogent and non-fan explanation as to why these supremely dumb movies are as widely popular as they are and have been for the better part of the last quarter-century.

Inquiring minds want to know.

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Update (5:29 PM Eastern on 30 Jan): For responses to this post and my request therein, see here.

Well, That Didn't Take Too Long

The CRT phosphor display of my newly added footnote to this post concerning audience etiquette at the classical music concert had hardly faded when the first of four (so far) pieces of crayon-inscribed hate mail appeared in my Inbox. Apparently, my quasi-academic musings on the subject were too dry, or too neutral, or too boring, to inspire any sort of response, but that footnote, and its closing graf in particular, which closing graf read:

A gifted composer's creative life, then as now, is not an easy one, fraught as it often is with unwelcome compromise. One imagines just how much Haydn and Mozart would have welcomed and been pleased by the more enlightened understanding and properly attentive reception of their works by today's better informed public concert audiences.

seem to have roused at least a few of the pop-culture-contaminated, all-musics-are-equal crowd to eloquent rejoinder. Choice is this charming expression of appreciation:

You snot nosed [sic] elitists make me puke. You need to attend some rock concerts [don't you just love it how the audiences for, participants in, and promoters of, these circus acts have co-opted the designation "concert" to take the place of the more appropriate but less prestigious and lower-status term, "show"?] to see how audience involvement should work. Mozart would not have "welcomed and been pleased by" todays [sic] rigid and snooty audience etiquette at classical music concerts enforced by snobs like you. Mozart hated the elite, and loved the common man, and would have written for them instead of the aristocrats if he could have, and would have loved their common man noisy response to his music.

Oh dear. How to tell this gentleman — who's clearly attended far too many rock "concerts" — that Mozart's contempt for the common man was at least the equal of his contempt for the aristocracy, and that at one early point in his career Mozart absolutely refused to perform for any audience not made up exclusively of music connoisseurs, and actually had to be lied to on that point just to get him to sit down at the clavier and conduct and / or perform his latest composition.

Well, better not to tell my correspondent, actually. It'll only make him more, um, distressed. So keep the above information just between you and me, and don't let on that you ever even read it.

He Does It Again (Administrative Note)

Another first-rate post by weblogger Mr. Outer Life of Outer Life. And even though his weblog is not, strictly speaking, a culture weblog, he now goes up on Sounds & Fury's exclusive Culture Weblogs listing.

More On Classical Music Concert Audience Etiquette

(Note: This post has been newly edited to add a footnote as of 1:58 PM Eastern on 25 Jan. See below.)

(Note: This post has been edited for clarity, and to correct an omission, as of 8:01 AM Eastern on 24 Jan.)

As I finished writing a post which was to be an expansion of my prior quips concerning the call for a more relaxed code of audience etiquette at the classical music concert, I realized that fully ninety percent of it dealt with that call as a destructively wrongheaded if well intentioned natural outgrowth and consequence of a pernicious, leveling, popular-culture contaminated Zeitgeist that can with straight face, for instance, characterize classical music as being merely "one of the [many] streams" which flow into the "very broad river [of music]," as at least one currently practicing classical music critic so mindlessly put it.

I next realized that what I'd written concerning that Zeitgeist all sounded way too familiar as it was all ground I'd gone over in some detail numerous times before on this weblog; principally here, here, here, and here.

Well, no point going over it all again. So let me here just add a few supplemental thoughts dealing specifically with that call for a more relaxed code of audience etiquette at the classical music concert.

Champions and promoters of that more relaxed code are forever citing the more free, even rowdy, concert audience etiquette of the 18th and 19th centuries as justification for, and proof of the validity of, a call for a return to that earlier practice. A more relaxed code is not some new, postmodern idea, they say, but was the norm and expected (with the tendentious implication that it was also sanctioned) by the very composers who wrote most of the classical music that today constitutes the by far largest proportion of the repertoire of classical music concerts. Like most such justifications and "proofs," however, those justifications and proofs are made up of many half-truths and carefully selected facts, typically put forward out of context. Following is a small but critical portion of that context.

The mid-18th century marked a willful break from the Baroque style in music, and the beginnings of a new, so-called galant style, at the heart of which is what is called "sonata form" or "sonata style" — an essentially dramatic musical style opposed to the "academic" or "learned" style of the Baroque — and the beginnings as well of the public classical music concert as we know it today.

The early multi-part works in this new style were made up of a connected series of essentially separate, self-contained "pieces," so to speak (the individual movements of the early symphonies of Haydn and Mozart, for instance), all belonging to a single work but connected more by their designated association rather than by their internal musical structure and logic (and I here specifically exclude, of course, the variation form whose individual "pieces" were clearly connected by more than merely their designated association).

Around the third quarter of the 18th century, with the way shown by the surpassing musical genius of both Haydn and Mozart — and undoubtedly additionally provoked by the emergence of the public classical music concert; an entity largely unknown outside of church and theater before the middle of the century — the powerful, inherent dramatic potential of sonata style began to be fully realized, and what had priorly been merely a connected series of essentially separate, associated-by-designation pieces of a single work became instead a unified series of essentially dramatic "episodes" connected and associated structurally by their internal dramatic, thematic, motivic, and harmonic musical logic.

Well, Haydn certainly understood that; Mozart certainly understood that; and a small group of musicians and musical connoisseurs understood that as well.* That understanding, however, was largely opaque to the general audiences of the rapidly burgeoning public classical music concert. For them, that unified series of essentially dramatic episodes of a single work was nothing more than a more complex series of separate, self-contained pieces formally connected and associated only by designation, and so they responded accordingly. Which is to say, they thought nothing of responding by clapping or otherwise showing their approval or disapproval after each of those separate pieces; like after each movement of a symphony, for instance (perhaps not so curiously, it wasn't at all that unusual at the time for the individual movements of a symphony to be programmed in a concert separated by other pieces).

Partly by inertia, that sort of egregious ignorance persisted for general audiences of the public classical music concert well into the first half of the 19th century even as Beethoven and the early- and mid-period Romantics continued to develop and make more interlacingly coherent the unified dramatic musical structure and logic of sonata style, and didn't start to become a seriously frowned upon practice until the last quarter or so of that century thanks to the help of enlightened musical connoisseurs and musicians, amateur as well as professional, and thanks also to the emergence of Wagner and the late-period Romantics whose large-scale, organic, dramatic musical structures succeeded sonata style, and outdid it in interlacingly unified dramatic coherence which presented fewer invitations to ignorant audience behavior.

The coup de grace for that ignorance was delivered ultimately in the early 20th century courtesy of the 78 rpm phonograph record which for the first time allowed non-musicians, in the quiet comfort of their own homes, to become intimately familiar with, and begin to understand if only intuitively the true nature of, those great works that today still constitute the core repertoire of the public classical music concert.

And with the growth of that development — again assisted, no doubt, by the repeated and relentless encouragement of enlightened musical connoisseurs and amateur and professional musicians — finally ended the egregiously ignorant and contemptible practice of rudely and disruptively impeding the flow of works whose unified dramatic musical structure and logic demanded a seamless hearing interrupted only by such pauses or breaks as their creators saw fit to themselves introduce.

I therefore suggest to those calling for a return to the permitted audience etiquette of those earlier, egregiously ignorant times, that they think longer and harder about just what it is they're so loudly and persistently calling for a return to.

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* That composers such as Haydn and Mozart, whose very day-to-day livelihood depended on their pleasing audiences with their compositions, understood that their dramatically coherent multipart works constituted a unified musical whole that ought not to be interrupted midstream did not blunt their concurrent understanding that audiences — and most particularly the general audiences for the ever-growing new development of the public concert — were mightily impressed by circus-stunt virtuoso and bravura displays of compositional skill, and so they accommodated those audiences on that score whenever they could without compromising too greatly the integrity of their compositions, and quite understandably reveled in confirmation of their successes in that endeavor by the expected immediate audience response (see this subsequent post for more on this).

As a composer of opera, Mozart was most especially cognizant of the necessity of these crowd-pleasing effects as he had not only to consider the circus-stunt-hungry audience, but the demands of singers that he write for them arias that would show off to best effect their virtuoso vocal skills and so bring a maximum of immediate bravos from the audience for their performance. Typical on this matter are these comments from the 25-year-old Mozart in a letter to his Papa concerning the composition of Die Entführung, his debut operatic effort in Vienna: "The Janissary Chorus has everything you can desire from a Janissary chorus; it's short and lively — written entirely for the Viennese. I sacrificed Konstanze's aria a bit to the agile throat of Mademoiselle Cavalieri [Caterina Cavalieri, the foremost prima donna of the time] ... [in which aria] I tried to be as expressive as an Italian Bravura aria will permit."

A gifted composer's creative life, then as now, is not an easy one, fraught as it often is with unwelcome compromise. One imagines just how much Haydn and Mozart would have welcomed and been pleased by the more enlightened understanding and properly attentive reception of their works by today's better informed public concert audiences.

It Appears To Be An Out-Of-Control Pandemic

(Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 11:05 PM Eastern on 23 Jan. See below.)

It seems the corrupting forces of "eclecticism" and popular culture prole-pandering are now being encouraged and championed in the world of dance (about which I know next to nothing) as they have been in the world of classical music by yet another "enlightened" critic with a bully pulpit: newly installed chief dance critic of The New York Times , John Rockwell. Dance critic and weblogger Rachel Howard of Footnotes comments, and links to further commentary by other dance aficionados.

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Update (11:05 PM Eastern on 23 Jan): Rachel Howard comments further.

Good To Hear

(Note: This post has been updated (3) as of 3:56 PM Eastern on 24 Jan. See below.)

Alex Ross writes:

Sorry to keep harping on this theme [of championing less constrained audience behavior at classical music concerts], but I believe classical music will have a healthier future if performers and expert listeners relax a little and stop demanding icy silence during performances. Think about someone venturing to a concert for the first time. Would he or she want to come back after witnessing this kind of red-faced, bulging-vein, fussbudget behavior? I have officially become tiresome on this topic and will now retire from it.

And not a moment too soon, either, as I was just about to dash off some poison-pen jottings aimed at the let's-be-like-18th-and-19th-century-audiences-and-not-treat-classical-music-with-such-deference crowd. I'd remind those champions of such egregious prole behavior that we're a 21st-century audience, and know and understand hugely more about what we're listening to than did 18th- and 19th-century audiences, if for no reason other than that we've had a century or two more experience with the music they received so boisterously, crudely, and cavalierly.

Count me among the "shushers" — when I'm in a generous mood, that is. Trust me, you don't want to know what replaces that shushing when I'm not.

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Update (3:01 PM Eastern on 21 Jan): Alex Ross responds in an addendum to his above linked post, and responds by misquoting me from my above which gave him the opportunity to respond with a non sequitur, and a barb.

I wrote, in part: "...we're a 21st-century audience, and know and understand hugely more about what we're listening to than did 18th- and 19th-century audiences, if for no reason other than that we've had a century or two more experience with the music they received so boisterously, crudely, and cavalierly."

Alex takes only the first part of that partial sentence, and misquotes it by beginning it with a capital letter, and ending it with a period after "audiences" as if that were my complete sentence, and my total thought.

I decline to respond to Alex's non sequitur.

Update (6:18 PM Eastern on 21 Jan): Alex Ross responds further in a second addendum to his above linked post in which addendum he apologizes for misquoting me and misunderstanding what I wrote. He also asks me two questions:

Now I ask ACD this. In the 18th and 19th centuries, we had 1) boisterous, crude, cavalier audiences; 2) a cavalcade of masterpieces. In the early 21st century, we have: 1) polite, restrained, undemonstrative audiences; 2) by AC Douglas' own account, an almost total lack of masterpieces. Are these things unrelated? If audiences were to show more emotion, more involvement, might composers respond with more powerful, moving music?

My answers to Alex's questions are: Yes, I think those things are unrelated, and, No, I don't think greater permitted freedom of response on the part of classical music audiences will affect the sort of music classical music composers write — except maybe tend to cheapen it.

Update (3:56 PM Eastern on 24 Jan): More on the subject of audience etiquette at the classical music concert.

TV Alert — Auschwitz: Inside The Nazi State

(Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 5:54 PM Eastern on 22 Jan. See below.)

For reasons beyond my meager capacity to understand, PBS saturated the media — cyber, broadcast, and print — with promos for their airing of a Ken-Burns-predictable documentary concerning some obscure black boxer, and made nary a mention of their airing, two episodes at a time, of a monumental, six-episode documentary titled, Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State, the first two episodes of which aired this past Wednesday (the remaining two-episode airings will follow on the Wednesday of each of the next two weeks).

I almost missed this film because of PBS's lack of promotion, and the film is not something that ought to be missed by anyone. No ordinary Never-again! Holocaust documentary this six-part series. It uses first-rate dramatizations, interviews with perpetrators and survivors, and computer technology to narrate and examine not only the history of Auschwitz itself, but the even today almost unimaginable Zeitgeist and mentality that made an Auschwitz possible.

As writer/producer Laurence Rees put it:

[This documentary film] is not really just a series about Auschwitz. We're using Auschwitz as the way to tell a larger story. The series uses Auschwitz as a prism to try and understand the whole of the extermination process and something of the mentality of the people who committed the crime.

We're looking at the killings on the eastern front. We're looking at the deportations across Europe. We're looking at the course of the war as it affected this place. It's a much bigger canvas. Auschwitz has a physical beginning in May 1940 and a physical end in January 1945. What happens in Auschwitz and the decisions made by people running Auschwitz actually mirror the bigger decisions which are being taken elsewhere.

[...]

What has not been done to my knowledge on television before [in such documentaries] is to explore in this detail the decision-making process of the Nazis — to try and make people understand how it was possible that people actually sat down in various stages and made key decisions which ended up with the killing of six million men, women, and children. This did not happen by accident. It didn't happen because people were insane. These were, to a large extent, rational human beings who made a series of decisions which ended up with this crime.

And that — that it was "rational human beings who made a series of decisions which ended up with this crime" — is what makes this film and the events it depicts and chronicles so utterly dismaying and chilling; so utterly dismaying, and so utterly chilling, that I, no easily dismayed or chilled sensitive soul, had to several times stop watching my tape of the first two episodes for an hour or two each time in order to gain some "breathing space" for myself, and regain some semblance of rational perspective — or, rather, regain some semblance of rational perspective to the extent that rational perspective is possible when confronted, even in the safety and comfort of one's own armchair, with horrors such as Auschwitz and the Nazi state that made an Auschwitz possible even in imagination.

This harrowing, six-part documentary is a brilliant accomplishment, notwithstanding its superfluous and annoying "intermission feature" shown after each episode with Linda Ellerbee (whom I ordinarily love) interviewing some academics on the "meaning and importance" of the episode just seen.

Ink this series into your TV schedule. It's a not-to-be-missed documentary film.

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Update (5:54 PM Eastern on 22 Jan): I just had a chance to view that Ken Burns PBS documentary of the "obscure black boxer" sneeringly referred to above. Turns out the obscure black boxer was none other than the alternately celebrated and reviled first black world heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson, and the documentary itself, chronicling Johnson's amazing but troubled career and its place in America's shameful racial history, was first-rate.

I don't feel too stupid.

Classical Music Enemy No. 1

For this post, as well as sundry others just as postmodern mindless and wrongheaded no matter how well intentioned. Ditto vis-à-vis postmodern mindlessness and wrongheadedness the perpetrators of the idiot idea and its realization praised by Mr. Sandow. (You won't understand the foregoing comments unless you click on this link taken from the above linked post, and wait for all the images to load.)

Jesus!

Pay Proper Attention To That Body Of Yours

Professional harpist and weblogger Helen Radice of Twang Twang Twang has some thoughts on the physical in maintaining one's instrumental technique that should be read by all instrumentalists (and conductors, as well).

It is a curious paradox that, for a profession that involves the physical so heavily, musicians often p[u]rsue highly unhealthy lifestyles and keep quiet about their injuries. The obvious reasons for drinking too much, eating junk and not exercising are the stress and irregular routines; a[n]d if it gets out that you aren't in good shape, you will lose work, because like a racehorse you are little use off-form.

[...]

Learning technical exercises is dull and so usually sold to us, thus: the right technique will allow to you express whatever it is you want to do artistically, and it will also stop you getting injured. To have good technique, then, is fundamentally essential, and full of emotional investment, pride and personal dignity. If you have no technique, you are a bad musician. If you get injured, by implication, you must have had bad technique; and, by extension, likewise be a poor musician.

I take this occasion to note that I read several weblogs written by Brits, but absent the occasional Brit spelling of certain English words, all their posts could have been written by a Canadian or even an American. Not so Ms. Radice's posts. They're so essentially Brit in language and texture their author could never be mistaken for anything other than a deep-in-the-marrow Brit. Those posts are thoroughly delightful to "hear," especially for Americans who, as Dear Oscar remarked (or was it G. B. Shaw?; there seems to be some question concerning that), are separated from the Brits only by a common language.

RTWT here.

Champion Of New Music Fights Back

(Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 2:23 PM Eastern on 20 Jan. See below.)

Music critic, New Music composer, and weblogger Steve Hicken of Listen comments on two posts of mine (here, and here) wherein I wrote in the first:

Why is it, I wonder, that the dissing of Ms. Houlihan and her criticism, and the defense of "post-avant" poetry (represented here by the above quoted two "nonorganic" poems) and poets by their champions sound eerily the same as the dissing of the critics and criticism of so-called "New Music," and the defense of such music and its composers by their champions? Could the answer be that New Music and nonorganic, post-avant poetry are eerily the same; near-perfect analogues, each of the other?

And in the second:

That's my sense of the matter [of the difference between the mature instrumental music of Haydn and Mozart], at any rate, and I refuse to entertain any techie, 21st-century rationalist, or post-modern quibbling or carping on the business. Save that sort of thing for the New Music crowd and its products where it more appropriately belongs.

Writes Mr. Hicken in response to the first of these:

The lack of specifics in this rant is typical—no composers, pieces, or champions are named, so no response is possible. Mr. Douglas posts like this often enough that I wonder if he has a macro for it.

At any rate, both sides [tonal classic music and atonal New Music] in the style wars would do well to listen to a call for a cease fire.

And in response to the second:

Mr. Douglas fires up his macro again, as I was writing this. Who's going to tell the Bloggers?

As to my lack of specifics, none are needed in remarks on New Music such as both my above, for which remarks a macro serves most admirably. If specific composers, pieces, or champions are wanted by Mr. Hicken, let him paste a list of each on a wall, blindfold himself, throw three darts, and let them select the specifics he requires. Any will do for the purpose of comments such as my above.

And as to "style wars," my above quoted remarks have nothing to do with commenting on differences in style. They have exclusively to do with commenting on the difference between our great 600-year legacy of genuine music and the willfully concocted, quasi-mathematical modern systems of composition specifically devised to turn out a simulacrum of genuine music that owes little or nothing to that great 600-year musical legacy, and for the mere appreciation of which simulacrum one needs either written or spoken technical explanation and justification at tedious length, or a master's degree in contemporary music theory.

Style wars my ass.

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Update (2:23 PM Eastern on 20 Jan): Composer and weblogger Marcus Karl Maroney of Sounds Like New vents some spleen.

I should note that on the occasion of this contretemps I took some time to download from Mr. Maroney's website an MP3 of The Ever-fixed Mark, a short essay for orchestra by Mr. Maroney, and confess I liked it lots. It was most impressive indeed, and its subtle echoes, conscious or unconscious, of Bartok's Concerto For Orchestra delightful, and in no way merely derivative. I would have downloaded more examples of Mr. Maroney's work, but as I come in on a dialup connection the download time for MP3 files is for me quite onerous, and so I didn't. For those of you with a broadband connection those further examples of Mr. Maroney's work may be downloaded from his handsome website here (click on Audio Files).

A Brief Rumination On Haydn And Mozart

(Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 6:51 PM Eastern on 19 Jan. See below.)

Yesterday, on a classical music forum in which I sometimes participate, there erupted a (mostly) friendly rumble between partisan enthusiasts of the instrumental music of Haydn and Mozart, the exchanges consisting of each side making the case for its hero by way of pointed quips unencumbered by substantive considerations musicological, theoretical, or technical.

In other words, your typical online classical music Friendly Forum Food Fight; an entertaining and harmless way to pass an online half-hour or so.

I, of course, got in my quip or ten in behalf of my hero, Mozart, but in the process began thinking more seriously about the two great composers. Why is it, I asked myself, that I think Mozart's mature instrumental music so superior to Haydn's, and could I, if I took the time to do so, back up that judgment on musicological or music theory grounds?

Well, the question is partially moot in my case, for as I noted elsewhere on this weblog, I'm so far removed from my music theory days that any facility I once possessed in that domain has from long disuse become so arthritic as to be all but useless. I think, however, I can express the nub of that judgment without resort to the musicological or theoretical.

In tuning into an unfamiliar work on the radio, for instance, having missed the announced title but knowing instantly that it's a mature instrumental work by one or the other composer, there invariably at some fairly early point emerges from the fabric of the ground a particularly beautiful or provocative phrase, theme, or sequence, hintingly pregnant with expressive melodic and harmonic possibility. If that phrase, theme, or sequence is then developed and rounded off formally in a most satisfying and superbly crafted Classical-period manner, occasional and typically witty surprise departures notwithstanding, one recognizes immediately the hand of Haydn at work, and not Mozart. Had it been Mozart's hand at work, that phrase, theme, or sequence would, more often than not, have entered regions unexpected of its Classical-period provenance, its expressive possibility, priorly only hintingly perceived, there developed and spun out in ways suggesting the intervention of some not-of-this-world musical intelligence, and only then being permitted to reach its superbly crafted, Classical-period, formal rounding off.

And there, in a non-technical, non-theoretical nutshell, is, I think, the principal difference between the mature instrumental music of these two composers, master Classical-period craftsmen both. Unlike the instrumental music of the mature Mozart, Haydn's mature instrumental music neither risks soaring the heights nor plumbing the depths, but remains, in all its superbly crafted formal beauty, sensibly and resolutely earthbound while Mozart's aspires to, reaches for, and often caresses the cosmos.

That's my sense of the matter, at any rate, and I refuse to entertain any techie, 21st-century rationalist, or post-modern quibbling or carping on the business. Save that sort of thing for the New Music crowd and its products where it more appropriately belongs.

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Update (6:51 PM Eastern on 19 Jan): Steve Hicken of Listen comments on my closing graf. For details, and my response, see this post.

No Classic Opera Today Is Safe

Not even this one.

Idiots.

(Thanks to ArtsJournal for the link.)

Apropos Of Nothing In Particular

Mozart's mature instrumental music represents our civilization's sign for the beautiful. We cannot think of him without thinking of beauty; we cannot refer to beauty without recalling his music. I believe this is so, not necessarily because his works are more beautiful than those of other composers, though this may well be true, but because he created — or, at least, brought into the forefront of aesthetic consciousness — a special kind of musical beauty; one that thenceforth came to exemplify the idea of superlative beauty itself. There are many beauties in Mozart's earlier works as well, but with a few exceptions they are missing the excruciating, surplus quality that transforms loveliness into ecstasy, grace into sublimity, pleasure into rapture.

There are rare beauties especially in those Salzburg compositions deriving from Mozart's serenade style. In those works, which inhabit a world of plenitude, beauty is everywhere for the mere taking. Thus, in Mozart's last three violin concertos, the beauties succeed each other with a breathtaking rapidity, their outpouring of episodic interpolations suggesting that we need not linger over any single moment of beauty, for beauty is abundant; it is to be found "here, too," and "there, as well." Such beauties convey a sense of discovery, revealing that which we have not previously seen, and the element of surprise is accompanied by a leap in understanding, and expansion of sensibility: The "oh" in our reaction to this kind of beauty is the "oh" of wonder, the discovery of something beyond what we thought existed. The intake of breath says that we have taken into ourselves something extraordinary, which we are loath to let go until silence has restored us to the ordinary world.

—Maynard Solomon, from, Mozart: A Life

Opening Night

Playwright and weblogger George Hunka of Superfluities reports on the opening night of his new play, Sustaining.