Sounds & Fury

Typical TOF Take

Parterre Box's La Cieca (James Jorden) writes:

Now, about the Met's plans for a tab version of Magic Flute in the Julie Taymor production. La Cieca says, "Oh, why the hell not?" Somehow La Cieca feels that a 90-minute, fast-moving entertainment is a lot closer to Mozart's original intention than the three-hour plus behemoth the Met delivers when they do the Gesamt version.

I suggest that if Mozart's original intention for Zauberflöte was to write a "90-minute, fast-moving entertainment," he would have written a 90-minute, fast-moving entertainment rather than what he did write: a transcendent, two-act, three-hour, Singspiel that's among the most sublime works of art in all of music. (See our take on the Met's plans for a "tab version" of Zauberflöte here.)

But when it comes to the operas of Mozart (as opposed to those of the Italians, and Don Giovanni perhaps excepted), considerations such as these are typically lost on most opera queens, almost all of whom are the very incarnation of the TOF* — one might even say they're almost the very definition of a TOF — and La Cieca (whose general knowledge of opera is encyclopedic, and justifiably provokes industrial-strength admiration) is certainly no exception. One can imagine (if one dares) La Cieca's response to a proposal by the Met (or any other opera company, for that matter) to mount a "tab version" of that perennial piece of quintessential operatic trash (or, in Joseph Kerman's infamous but felicitous phrase, that "Shabby little shocker"), Tosca. I daresay the ensuing breast-beating and howls of wounded sensibility and indignant outrage would be heard clearly as far distant as the outer reaches of Siberia or Mongolia, the topmost heights of Everest, and the utmost depths of the Mariana Trench.

What else is new.

*True Opera Fan. Like a teenage movie fan, only worse — much worse.

Yes, And More's The Sorrow

What he said.

An Outrageous Act Of Cowardice, A Dangerous Precedent, And How It All Could Have Been Stopped Stone-cold Dead, But Wasn't

(Note: This post has been updated (3) as of 3:14 PM Eastern on 24 Oct. See below.)

First, read this. Next, read this typical commentary on the matter.

Outrageous cowardice on the part of German publisher Knaus Verlag, was it not, and the setting of an intolerable and dangerous publishing precedent into the bargain.

But who's the entity who alone could have stopped the outrage stone-cold dead in its tracks, but didn't; the sole entity with the power to do so? Why, the author, Deirdre Bair, of course, who could simply have refused Knaus Verlag publication rights to her book after the publisher, fearful of lawsuits and perhaps government prosecution, caved to the outrageous demands of C. G. Jung's heirs. Instead, she permitted the book's publication to go forward, but with her above linked whining protest and demur to be incorporated into the edition.

Ms. Bair has much to answer for for abrogating her responsibilities to herself as conscientious biographer, her book, and to conscientious biographers everywhere.

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Update (11:42 AM Eastern on 30 Jun): Playwright and blogger George Hunka of Superfluities responds in an update to his post (the second linked above) by characterizing my comments as an "odd argument." What's odd is that Mr. Hunka imagines that if German publisher Knaus Verlag were denied publication rights by Ms. Bair, no other German publisher would then consider publishing her book, thereby giving C. G. Jung's heirs the very victory they sought. The idea is, of course, quite wrongheaded. With but a minimal effort on Ms. Bair's part to publish, or cause to be published, periodical and / or newspaper articles by herself or others on the business, she would instantly make the issue an international publishing cause célèbre, which would, in turn, bring instantly to her doorstep an avalanche of German-language publishers, within or outside Germany, clamoring to be permitted to publish the book in German using her original, unadulterated text — not necessarily because they're more courageous than Knaus Verlag, but because, like all publishers, they're just as greedy where it concerns their bottom line — thereby not only denying the Jung heirs a victory, but, by virtue of the articles, casting them publicly and prominently into view as the dishonest crew they most assuredly are.

Update (6:20 PM Eastern on 5 Aug): We received by eMail today from Deirdre Bair a response to the above post which, by her permission, we are pleased to post, verbatim, below. We are especially pleased to learn from that response — contrary to the distinct impression given by Terry Teachout in his above linked post to which our above post was a response — that, as of this date, the German publication of this book has not gone forward, and will not without the express permission of both Ms. Bair and her primary publisher, Little, Brown. We extend to Ms. Bair and Little, Brown our best wishes for a successful outcome in ongoing negotiations concerning this most important matter. Without further comment from us, Ms. Bair's verbatim response to our above post follows.

Little, Brown & Co. owns the foreign rights to the biography of Jung and they sold the rights to Knaus Verlag. Claudia Vidoni, the publisher at Knaus Verlag, arrived at the decision to include the Jung heirs' comments in my book without ever having consulted me. I knew nothing of this decision until she announced it. I have not given permission for Knaus Verlag to publish this book with the Jung heirs' text inside it. Knaus Verlag cannot publish without the written permission of both Little, Brown and me. The matter is under advisement at the present time. I ask you to please note the following:

1. I do not own the rights to foreign publications, therefore I cannot withdraw permission from any of them for this book. Only Little, Brown can do that.

2. The book is not yet published.

3. I have not given permission for this book to be published with the insertion of the Jung heirs' comments.

4. The matter is currently under advisement.

5. A final outcome has not yet been reached.

D[eirdre] B[air]

Update (3:14 PM Eastern on 24 Oct): For the final resolution of this business see this post.

Harbinger Of Things To Come?

This bit of prole-pandering idiocy has Peter Gelb's sweaty fingerprints all over it, and positively reeks of being a harbinger of things to come.

Makes one go weak at the knees, it does.

And not from ecstasy.

Provocative And Disturbing

Alex Ross has up some provocative and disturbing quotes from Evan Eisenberg's book, The Recording Angel, which book is an examination of the history and impact of recording as it concerns music and us.

Not for the squeamish.

Take The Tour

A nifty tour via words and photos through Rem Koolhass' Seattle Public Library, Central Branch, courtesy of blogger James Tata of the eponymous blog.

Neato.

Mozart's Miracle (One Of Them)

New Zealand blogger Sarah Noble of the opera blog, Prima la musica, poi le parole, has up a passionate and thoughtful post on Don Giovanni, her enthusiasm for, and appreciation of which opera I wholeheartedly share:

I've been listening to the 1961 Giulini recording [of Don Giovanni] a lot and loving it to pieces. Can't believe I ever had the nerve to say a word against Joan's Donna Anna. My low opinion of Graziella Sciutti (and her Amazing Disappearing Voice) hasn't changed, but she's bearable given the fabulousness around her. Not just the fabulousness of the other singers or Maestro Giulini (may he rest in peace) but of the music itself which transcends individual performances. It's not just incredible for the time in which it was written, it's an incredible creation, full stop. There is nothing like this. And it doesn't matter how many times I listen to it, I still can't believe that it exists, that somebody actually managed to produce this miracle, that we're lucky enough to be able to hear it. In fact I feel a similar way about opera in general, but with Don Giovanni it all intensifies.

[...]

I'm sure one could very easily write a tongue in cheek feminist or Marxist or whateverist analysis of this opera and pass it off as the real deal. It's all so unnecessary. You don't need to dig impossibly deep and over-over-analyse because everything is there already. I listen to Don Giovanni and somehow I feel the whole world is in there.

RTWT here.

Mystery Book

Here's a New York Times book review of a new book on the history of classical music in this country by Joseph Horowitz, the review written by professional music critic, composer, teacher, and blogger, Greg Sandow.

Mr. Horowitz, a former music critic for The New York Times, puts his preaching into action. He works with orchestras (though not the largest ones) to put on music festivals in which he tries to bring back the colloquial ease that classical music had in Dvorak's time, along with its cultural relevance and intellectual heft. All this makes him formidable; he's a thinker and a doer. So now he offers a thick new book (his seventh), a volume clearly meant to be his magnum opus, tying together everything he's ever done.

What's that I hear you asking? What's the book's title?

Not a clue. In the almost 850-word review, the title of the book isn't mentioned. Not so much as once. And so if, like me, you always read the "Printer-Friendly" version of the Times's online articles, you'll have to scrounge around elsewhere to attempt to discover the title of this "thick new book ... clearly meant to be [Horowitz's] magnum opus."

Considering the author of this particular review, Why am I not surprised.

(I checked five other book reviews at random in the same edition of the Times, and all of them, of course, included at least once in the text the title of the book being reviewed. In this context, I note that it's both interesting and ironic that Mr. Sandow is a writer given to raking over the coals writers of classical music promos for omitting in their copy the most telling information.)

Pleased To Comply

(Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 5:06 AM Eastern on 25 Jun. See below.)

Alex Ross asks us to Fill In The Blanks in the following statement:

Karl Rove is a _____ __ ____.

I'm pleased to comply.

Karl Rove is a good ol' boy — and spot on target, too, I might add.

Also from Alex, but on another front, we have this.

From the attribution, I can't be quite certain whose quote it is, Stendhal's or Rossini's, but either way it's today still true, all too true. And that goes for composers as well — and in spades.

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Update (5:06 AM Eastern on 25 Jun): Alex has rewritten his above linked post on Karl Rove, and is no longer asking us to "fill in the blanks."

Lovely

(Note: This post has been edited to correct an omission, and updated (1) as of 6:45 AM Eastern on 23 Jun. See below for update.)

I've never heard the Elliott Carter Piano Sonata that's discussed at some length in this lovely post by concert pianist and blogger Jeremy Denk of Think Denk (which blog has now been added to our exclusive Culture Blogs listing on the sidebar), but I think I'd like to. Mr. Denk makes it sound so ... worth hearing.

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Update (6:45 AM Eastern on 23 Jun): Composer, music critic, and blogger Steve Hicken of Listen poses a question to me, re, the above. Writes Mr. Hicken:

A. C. Douglas points to [an] exquisite post by pianist and latest Blogroll inductee Jeremy Denk. Mr. Denk's post includes some telling analytical comments about the ending of Elliott Carter's Piano Sonata (1945-46). I've commented in the past about the value of analysis for performers and listeners alike, and I wonder what Mr. Douglas, who is less amenable to analytical commentary, thinks of Mr. Denk's analysis.

Well, as is clear from my above post, I thought it rather lovely. But I take it Mr. Hicken wants a bit more detail from me, and I'm pleased to provide it.

In brief, Mr. Denk's approach would, I think, have been an exemplar of how one ought to write about music — complex and / or new music most especially — for all except trained musicians and other music specialists had he omitted the images of the score completely, and, using non-specialist language, made adjustments to his text to take into account any dependence on them. Not difficult to do, actually, even if using some (very) few specialist terms proves to be unavoidable as such terms can easily be explained parenthetically for the lay reader in but few words without the explanation being annoying for the more musically knowledgeable.

And what about Mr. Denk's approach makes it an exemplar of how one ought to write about music? Because the imagery of the evocative prose tantalizes as it explains, making the reader, even a lay reader, imagine he's experienced a genuine if ephemeral taste of how the music goes or ought to go, and whets his appetite to hear that music for real — again or for the first time — and in full.

And that, in short, is one of the very best ways to build new and / or informed audiences for serious music, old or new, but new music most especially.

ACD Goes To The Movies

In 1977, after two decades of ardent and involved devotion to the cinema, I attended a screening of the original Star Wars movie, drawn there against all my best instincts by the phenomenon of the huge adult crowds lining up at the box office to see this putative kiddie flick, and by the largely positive reviews from certain film reviewers who ordinarily would dismiss such a movie almost out of hand. An hour after it began, I left the movie theater mid-show, dismayed and angered, and with but two exceptions (Schindler's List, and the showing of a print of the newly restored Lawrence of Arabia), haven't entered a movie theater since.

Until yesterday afternoon, that is.

And what drew me there? Another putative kiddie flick, Batman Begins, and for almost the very same reasons that drew me to that other movie theater in 1977. The difference this time was that I was partly drawn there because Batman (rather than the more typical for my time, Superman) had been my favorite childhood comic-book hero, and because of my pleasure in the two excellent Tim Burton Batman movies — the second, most particularly — that I screened on the tube via TV broadcast, and, later, via VHS and DVD, that seemed to almost, if not quite, capture my warmly pleasing internalized memories of the Caped Crusader, and make them come to vivid life on the screen. Those two Burton movies were stylish, beautifully crafted, imaginative, and intelligent, and great nostalgic fun to watch.

But yesterday, I was in for some rude shocks.

The first came from the movie theater itself. An almost brand-new (or so it appeared to be), ten-theater multiplex, its maroon-carpeted ten theaters each equipped with a full-sized screen and surround-sound Dolby audio, and each seating some 150 persons in plush, semi-reclinable seats with provisions for securely storing one's refreshments. It was all lovely in a quiet sort of way, and well laid out, too, especially the common areas (refreshment concessions and rest rooms, which latter were huge and immaculate).

It was all quite inviting.

The second shock came as, stunned, I was asked to hand over $8 for a ticket — for a matinee! — and, equally stunned, $5 for a tub of popcorn, size Small.

Say what? Y'all must be puttin' me on.

They assured me they weren't.

Those initial shocks, however, were as nothing compared with what awaited me even before the main feature began.

First came almost twenty minutes worth of non-movie commercials and a few coming attractions. That, however, wasn't the shock. In our present culture, the pimps and the pimping are so pervasive and omnipresent that nothing about their turning up in any context whatsoever would be cause for shock. The shock came from the decibel level of the audio in all its Dolby, surround-sound glory. It was, I swear, at the threshold-of-pain level for a person with normal hearing, and seemed specifically calculated to meet the needs of an audience constituted exclusively of the partially deaf although I was assured by the management that the audio level in the theater was the theater's norm.

I thought to myself hopefully, and with fingers planted squarely in ears (literally!), Maybe the audio is at that level only for the pimping just like it is on TV where the pimps do their pimping at an audio level pegged some 3-4 dB above the audio level of the actual show.

No such luck. That decibel level prevailed for the entire show, and whenever I removed my fingers from my ears it was near unbearable.

Then Batman Begins began. Within ten minutes I suspect I'm screwed, but am determined to persevere. I mean, I'd forked over $13 bloody bucks for this, not to speak of travel expenses (another $11 — each way!). After thirty minutes or so, I know I'm screwed. What an unmitigated piece of mindless, action-movie trash, with a vapid script complete with banal, pretentiously platitudinous, tone-deaf dialogue suitable only for those with IQs smaller than their belt size; lots of TV-ersatz-ninja-and-wisdom-of-the-East crap; an absurdly techno-costumed-and-equipped Batman; and, of course, the absolutely de rigueur plethora of spectacular special effects, including all the usual suspects: car chases, elaborately staged fisticuffs and swordplay / shootouts, and a myriad of things blowing up.

For whom, these days, is trash like this made?, I asked myself. It used to be made for the airheaded MTV crowd (a tautology, I know). But, no, that wasn't the crowd targeted. Things, it seems, have gotten worse. Much worse. Today, it seems, it's the iPod-plugged-in-and-video-game-addicted who are the prime audience for such mindless dreck. Almost makes one nostalgic for the Good Ol' Days. You know. Those good ol' days of ten or fifteen years ago.

O tempora! O mores!

Déjà Vu?

Have you seen Koyaanisqatsi, a 1983 (release date) film by filmmaker Godfrey Reggio, with film score by the (in)famous "minimalist" composer, Philip Glass?

No? Me neither, but this New Yorker piece by Alex Ross made me feel 1) I have, and 2) I need desperately to see (and hear) it again:

The opening is famous and majestic: a deep bass voice chants the title phrase in monotone while an electric organ turns slow pinwheels above it. As the camera of Ron Fricke, the cinematographer, floats across immense Western landscapes, a flute plays a lonely figure in open intervals, perhaps in tribute to the prairie music of Copland; then the bass chant returns, sounding very much like a sad, angry god. A later sequence, devoted to various forms of transportation, dwells for a long time on slow-motion footage of a jumbo jet taxiing on a tarmac. Glass responds to this grungy image with music of exhilarating quickness and lightness, high female voices predominating. In later sections, Glass abandons his attitude of cosmic detachment and picks up the racing rhythms of Fricke’s cinematography. To depict the decay and destruction of the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex, in St. Louis, the composer writes a monstrous neo-Baroque moto perpetuo, which, as the buildings fall, devolves into nothing more than descending scales. (This footage has become more haunting with time; Minoru Yamasaki, who designed Pruitt-Igoe, was also the architect of the World Trade Center.) During the twenty-minute frenzy titled “The Grid”—crowds swirling, traffic churning, televisions flickering, hot dogs and Hostess Twinkies being exgurgitated from production lines—Glass and his musicians become manic machines, firing off notes like so many 0s and 1s. The distance between sound and image disappears, and the viewer is left with little space in which to think or breathe.

Now, what were all those mutterings and auguries of doom I read recently in Big Media about the death of the professional arts critic in our new technology-created, democratic journalistic era in which anyone with access to the Internet can be an arts critic?

Oh, yes. I remember now.

Crap.

This Man Needs A Long, Long Rest

There's so much wrong and invidious in this latest piece by Norman Lebrecht that one hardly knows where to begin to rip into it. But these few snippets pretty much give the flavor of his appalling ignorance cum bias:

By 1921, with no resumption [of the Bayreuth Festival] in sight, Fidi [Siegfried Wagner, Wagner's son] toned down his virulent anti-Semitism to court funds from Jewish Wagnerians in Europe and the US.

And,

To please Hitler, Winnie [Winifred Wagner, Siegfried's English-born wife, and a devoted follower of Hitler] booked his favourite conductor, the obstreperous Wilhelm Furtwangler.

And this colossal bit of stupidity:

While Wieland [Wagner — Siegfried's son, and Richard's grandson] was a competent stage director....

To take each in turn: Siegfried Wagner was perhaps the only Wagner at that time who was not a "virulent anti-Semit[e]; Winifred booked Furtwängler because he was one of the two most famous conductors in the world (the other was Toscanini, whom she also booked, and at the same time — a near-catastrophic mistake!), as he was sure to be a major draw for the financially strapped Festival; and, finally, if Wieland was merely "a competent stage director," then Norman Lebrecht is the most knowledgeable, perceptive, and eloquent music critic ever to set pen to paper, and Berlioz, Shaw, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and even Wagner himself were musically ignorant hacks by comparison.

Mr. Lebrecht needs to stop indulging whatever it is he's presently smoking or snorting, and take a long and clearly needed rest.

Musica In Lutto, È Morto Il Maestro Giulini

(Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 1:24 AM Eastern on 16 Jun. See below.)

Huge loss even though he was relatively inactive over the past couple decades.

Read the announcement (in Italian) here.

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Update (1:24 AM Eastern on 16 Jun): As of this date and time, The New York Times, our national "Newspaper of Record", still has no notice of the death of this 20th-century conductorial great anywhere in its online edition. Had some typically mindless pop-culture celebrity died, the obit would have hit the front page of the online edition within minutes after the event was confirmed.

What's wrong with this picture?

To The God Of The Seasons

It's going to reach 90° F today. It reached 90° F yesterday. And the day before, and the day before that. And tomorrow and the next day it will also reach 90° F. Summer, that season of unspeakable travail when we Hyperboreans are made to suffer here on earth all the horrors of hell, doesn't begin until 21 June.

Pay attention!

Another Exchange From The Wagner Newsgroup

This time on Götterdämmerung, and on the character of Siegfried as he appears in that opera.

As before, below is a transcript of the most interesting bits of that exchange, formatted and edited for easier reading.

Readying The Uzi (A Rant)

[Begin rant]

In ordinary (i.e., non-combat) circumstances, I'm not a physically violent man no matter how impassioned I may feel or express myself in words on any number of issues. There are, however, several, if rare, issues that do tend to send me slightly over the line, if only momentarily (Eurotrash productions and directors, for instance). And then there are those very rare issues that transform me, eyes-red-with-blood raging, into the absolutely, Rambo-like murderous.

Two, as a matter of fact.

One is anti-smoking zealots (yes, I'm a smoker, make no apologies whatsoever for it, and refuse on principle to patronize any establishment, or enter any home, where smoking is prohibited except where common-sense or special circumstances dictate restraint).

The other is anti-drug zealots, (no, I've never so much as even experimented with dope of any sort), even those acting indirectly, and / or operating under cover of law. Like these six, for most recent instance.

Idiots!

Time to clean and oil the ol' Uzi.

[End rant]

Let Us Now Praise Alex Ross

Following a link posted on The New York Times Opera Forum, I just read for the first time Alex Ross's piece published in The New Yorker, 24 Sept 2001, entitled, "Verdi's Grip".

It's no secret to regular readers of this blog in how high esteem I hold Alex's critical writings on classical music and opera generally, but the above linked piece is a clear masterpiece even in his remarkable oeuvre. There's been some noisy chatter of late about the death of the professional arts critic, and while the bulk of such critics and reviewers perhaps deserve relegation to the dustbin of history as fundamentally superfluous and useless thumbs-up-thumbs-down entities, the all-too-rare Alex Ross's of this country (and, today, in the domains of classical music and opera, I suspect they could probably be counted on the fingers of one hand) are necessary and vital elements in promoting and maintaining a vigorous and vital mainstream presence for the products of high culture in our cultural life.

So let us now praise publicly Alex Ross, and The New Yorker as well for making available to him the column inches necessary for him to do his job properly. Without such in all domains of the high arts, high culture in this country is doomed forever to a marginal existence with no hope of ever becoming the essential part of our mainstream cultural life it ought and deserves to be.

A Discussion On Recordings Of Tristan und Isolde

We don't do discussions of CDs here as a general rule, but an interesting extended exchange of recordings of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, and of the Solti / Decca recording in particular, recently took place on the Usenet Wagner newsgroup, humanities.music.composers.wagner, in which we participated, and we thought it might be of some interest to our readers to read that extended exchange, but in a form simpler to follow than on the newsgroup itself.

Accordingly, below is a transcript of the most interesting bits of that exchange, formatted and edited for easier reading.

It's A Little Thing, But...

...somehow, in today's world, hugely encouraging.

Two years ago, I ordered from Amazon.com the Dover edition of the full score of Tristan und Isolde (a republication of the original Peters, Leipzig edition) for my reference library. When it arrived, I simply gave it a quick check-over for any physical damage, and finding none, placed it on my library shelves along with my other scores.

I referred to that score several times over the past two years, and found it accurate and easy to read. Yesterday, I had occasion to refer to it again, and turned to what happened to be page 406, and to my horror discovered it was printed upside-down. Further examination revealed that it was not merely a problem with that single page, but an entire signature of the score, encompassing pages 405-436, had been bound into the score upside-down and page-reversed (i.e., the pages ran in number order from page 436 to page 405).

Well, I'm a longtime customer of Amazon, and know their return policy is good for 30 days only, but considering the nature of the defect, I sent an eMail to their customer service department explaining the unique problem, and requesting a replacement even though the purchase was made two years ago. Six hours later, I received this reply:

As you know, the return policy on our web site states that within 30 days of receipt of your order, you may return any merchandise in new condition, with the original packaging and accessories, for a full refund of your original costs or for a replacement.

However, due to the circumstances surrounding your order, I have made a one-time exception to our standard policy.

Now, I have placed a new order for the item "Tristan Und Isolde: In Full Score." There is no charge for this replacement.

Here are the details of the new order:

[I've here omitted the details, but delivery is promised within 48 hours.]

[W]e are very sorry for this inconvenience. We appreciate your business and hope that we will see you again soon at Amazon.com.

Best regards,

Amazon.com Customer Service

As I've said, a little thing, but hugely encouraging nevertheless.