Sounds & Fury

By George, I Think He's Got It!

Music journalist and blogger Greg Sandow writes:

And then at the same time [promoters of classical music] say we have to attract a younger audience. So how can we do that? Hey, I have an idea! Let’s attack the people we’re trying to attract! Let’s tell them that they have no culture, that their music sucks, that they can’t pay attention to anything for more than 15 minutes, that classical music is far superior to anything they currently understand, and that we'll have to educate them before they can enter our ... lofty world.

By George, I think he's finally got it! Certainly took him long enough.

Oh. Wait. He meant all that sarcastically, didn't he.

Never mind.

Ethos Of An Era

This from New Music composer, music critic, and blogger, Kyle Gann:

The Mozart myth, I’ve always felt, was 1. a condescending image created by his father, and 2. a distant, divine image intended to make all future composers feel inferior, and to reinforce a public feeling that musical genius is something distant and fated, not something we should ever expect to meet up with on a daily basis.

[...]

Does this sound right to you [that there's no sign Mozart has lost his relevance among composers]? Does Mozart still have some overwhelming relevance to our time? Does Don Giovanni contain a cautionary message that young men of the 21st century need to hear? Does The Magic Flute reflect the needs of our social life? Does Mozart’s music contain anything that we, today, would understand as emotional certainty, or the fleeting quality of serenity? Or do our classical mavens just feel an overwhelming need to reinforce the status quo, by recentering our musical life on a distant figure with whose music we have pretty much lost any capacity for real intellectual and emotional engagement? Doesn’t the real purpose of Mozart worship remain to retard any progress into a musical future?

See? Genius — even transcendent genius — is but a Romantic myth; a myth that must be jettisoned along with our wonder and awe at, and devotion to, these proven deathless masterpieces of the past so that we may "progress" unhindered by their example and by the myth of the genius of their creators. One rubs elbows with such so-called geniuses frequently; on a daily basis, even. Why, they're all around us. It's just a matter of recognizing and accepting the unimpeachable truth of that assertion.

Would that what's expressed in the above two quotes reflected merely the curious notions of an eccentric, overlooked, bitter, and envious individual (and I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine that for himself from the context of Mr. Gann's own answers to his interrogatories). Sadly — tragically — that's not at all the case. They reflect, rather, a particularized instance of the prevailing and overarching ethos of an era.

Our present era.

O tempora! O mores!

Proms Walküre

(Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 1:14 PM Eastern on 22 Jul. See below.)

Just got around to listening to the Proms Walküre (via BBC3 Listen Again).

A thoroughly engaging performance all round. Pappano made a generally fine if not remarkable job of it. His "frame" tempi seemed spot-on, generally speaking, but he had a tendency to rather rush internal phrasing. Orchestra sounded pretty damn good. Not up to the Met band by any stretch, but not chopped liver either. Terfel turned in a splendid Wotan on all counts (his German diction was particularly first-rate, and the best of the lot by far). The timbre of his voice lacks to some degree the heft and weight necessary for this role, but that may correct itself with age. Domingo — his execrable German, and his lapses into Italianate declamation notwithstanding (he did lots better with both in his last Met broadcast in this role) — made a fairly amazing job of Siegmund, in Act II particularly, especially considering his age. Meier was a convincing if not superlative Sieglinde, Gasteen turned in a competent Brünnhilde, Plowright ditto as Fricka, and Halfvarson as Hunding.

What really got to me, however, was the response of the full-house audience which sounded wildly — and genuinely — appreciative. I've not had any prior experience of the Proms in any connection, and so don't know whether that response was typical of Proms audiences, or whether it was truly as genuine and exceptional as it sounded. In the event, warmed the cockles of my Wagnerian heart, it did.

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Update (1:14 PM Eastern on 22 Jul): For an in-depth look at this event, along with a pertinent and fascinating examination of the Wagnermania seemingly afoot today, in Britain especially, this first-rate piece for The Independent by music journalist and blogger Jessica Duchen of Jessica Duchen's Classical Music Blog is a must-read. A Brava! for Ms. Duchen for this.

Monumental Stupidity

(Note: This post, originally posted 19 July, has been updated (2) as of 2:54 PM Eastern on 21 Jul. See below.)

In an era where the most promiscuous sort of equalitarianism is everywhere rampant as a matter of course, it's beyond my capacities of comprehension that in one of the few decision-making processes where it makes eminent sense to give the final say and veto power to the proletariat, so to speak, that power is instead invested in an elite body with little or no professional competence or qualification to make that decision.

In the matter of the choice of conductor of a symphony orchestra, who better placed or more competent and qualified to select who will lead that orchestra than the orchestra musicians themselves. That the final say on such a critical selection should be left to a board of non-musician suits is not only an outrage, but a monumental stupidity.

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Update (2:41 PM Eastern on 20 Jul): As per usual, chief New York Times classical music critic, Anthony Tommasini, misses the point — the only salient point — of this contentious business entirely: Who is best qualified and competent to have the final say on the hiring of a symphony orchestra conductor? The orchestra musicians themselves, or a board of non-musician suits? The point of contention in this present business is concerned almost totally with that question. A music critic reciting a litany of the strengths and weaknesses of an already suit-appointed candidate (who, if she has any common sense at all, will decline to accept the appointment in these circumstances) is entirely beside the question; in fact begs the question.

Typical Tommasini.

Update (2:54 PM Eastern on 21 Jul):

Alsop, the first woman to be named music director of a major American orchestra, began the day at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, where she addressed the BSO privately, just before a rehearsal.

"It was my idea," Alsop said in an interview later. "I didn't meet them so I could tell the press. I did it for myself. I wasn't comfortable signing a contract until I could look them in the eye and see if we can make it work."

BSO associate conductor Andrew Constantine described Alsop's speech as "very compelling."

"She acknowledged the tension that existed. And she spoke about being an advocate for the orchestra, nationally and internationally," Constantine said. "She said she needed their support."

Jane Marvine, head of the BSO players committee, replied to Alsop's remarks on behalf of the orchestra. "Jane told Marin that the musicians would always give 110 percent," Constantine said.

Marvine, asked to comment yesterday, said, "She reached out, and we reached out."

After her appearance before the players, Alsop signed the contract, which calls for her to conduct 14 weeks each season in Baltimore. [emphasis mine]

RTWT here.

Lack Of Critical Mass

(NOTE: The following is an article posted by me on 8 July 2003 on an earlier incarnation of this blog. I repost it here as being particularly apropos to a week-long online symposium now taking place on ArtsJournal titled, Classical Music Critics on The Future of Music. I repost it here without further additional comment.)

This Newsweek article by Douglas McLennan on the reasons for the present sad state of classical music in this country declares a simple but fundamental truth. In the classical music world, no media buzz, no legitimacy and no audience. While it's true that it's possible for meaningful buzz to be generated sans media participation, it's a very rare occurrence indeed. The media is what generates buzz, and in the world of classical music, at the center of that media buzz generator is first, foremost, and always, the classical music critic. What McLennan is bemoaning — and he's spot-on correct about it — is the lack of a healthy and vital mass of informed critical ferment in the classical music world today. Or as McLennan puts it:

[T]he main reason classical music is no longer on the menu of cultural literacy is that somehow it lost the critical mass of a critical community that listens / talks / writes about music as though it matters and where there are frequent debates, multiple judgments and competing ideas to keep things energized. How can you build artistic consensus that keeps renewing itself if you lack critical voices? Without that consensus, it's difficult to argue that classical music deserves a place at the table.

Just so.

Today what we have in the mainstream media for the most part are either critical incompetents, or critics who think as does this culture commentator who, speaking of capital-A art generally, opines that

...the old freshman-in-college quarrels of "Is it art?" "Is it great art?" [are] to my mind, at least these days, Who cares? Or rather: I prefer to see [discussions] about art not get hung up on such questions. [...] [There are] people who, bizarrely enough, like these discussions, and there are also people who like to come out gunning for a fight. Snooze-ola. Spare me. Puh-leeze. I'm outta here. [...] [What's of interest are] such topics as, How did you respond? What moved or touched you? What did you notice about the work, about how it's put together, how it works, and what it reflects?

How very progressive. How very postmodern. How very today.

Such attitudes, by and large, seem to be typical of much of our current crop of mainstream classical music critics as well, and are reflective of the degree of effeteness to which they've largely degenerated. When genuine performing artists and composers argue among themselves about classical music (as opposed to the poseurs, who are legion and no better than the present-day mainstream critical crowd), they argue about things such as music and non-music, great music and trash, and meticulously detail their cases and state their claims in terms as hard-nosed and absolute as if they were so many propositions of Euclid. And, if it comes to it, as it on rare occasion does, they're ready to defend those cases and claims with fisticuffs if need be.

The generally debased, PC-contaminated, ultra-"civilized" crowd which today constitutes much of the mainstream classical music critical fraternity relishes nothing so much as engaging in discussion of classical music in ways more appropriate to genteel luncheon and dinner parties where it's considered the height of gauche to argue in any manner that might upset the digestion of those seated at table. Arguing in that "civilized," genteel way makes members of this critical crowd feel they've been winning, intellectually probing, stimulating, and "with it," when all they've managed to be is glib; nattering on about nothing of real substance or pertinence while at the same time keeping hands clean, hair un-mussed, and digestion undisturbed — theirs and their readers'.

Well, I've a bit of news for this critically "civilized" bunch: Your brother mainstream classical music critics of prior eras would have none of such "civilized," genteel pap, even in proper and oh-so-civilized Victorian England. When they discussed or wrote on matters musical they were not in the least afraid of dirtying hands, mussing hair, and disturbing digestion. They carried on their dialogues red in tooth and claw if need be as in those culturally more concerned eras we had in the mainstream media that healthy and vital mass of informed classical music critical ferment the lack of which today McLennan so rightly bemoans, and at the heart of which was a critical fraternity made up of courageous and erudite classical music critics who felt that anything in music or music related worth arguing about was worth getting bloodied for.

Will we in future ever again regularly see their like in the mainstream media?

Only The Shadow knows, but I have my doubts.

Bach And The Transcending Of The Immediately Audible

[T]he existence of musical significance which transcends the immediate audible experience is essential to Bach's style. I do not imply anything mystical, or anything that is beyond our ordinary experience of music; only that some of the most important forces in the development — the actual movement through time — of a work of Bach are latent in its material without becoming audible until the moment that he chooses to make them so. The forces shaping the movement of a work by Beethoven or Mozart are far more immediately audible. The dissonance in the seventh bar of the Eroica audibly implies the modulation to F major that Beethoven only makes when he repeats the passage hundreds of bars later; the movement to G-flat major in the slow movement of Mozart's G minor Symphony begins in the second bar. The material of the great classical [period] composers is directional — we can hear the opening of the Eroica moving towards something, even if we cannot name it, and its arrival, presented as a surprise, is also a logical satisfying of a dynamic tonal impulse, the resolution of a tension. But if what is to happen in a work of Mozart and Beethoven is already to some extent audible in its opening, there is absolutely nothing about the theme of the Fugue in B-flat minor from the Well Tempered [Klavier], Book II that allows us to hear that it can be played in stretto at the ninth at the distance of one beat. Yet this quality of the theme, together with the even more complicated possibility of playing it in stretto with its own inversion in double counterpoint at the tenth, is essential to the shape of this fugue. All this is latent in the theme, but not audibly active when we hear it. [...] In [his] comprehension of these latent musical relationships, in his ability to draw from them all their power and significance, Bach was without equal in the history of music.

—Charles Rosen, from, Keyboard Music of Bach and Handel

Grrrr!

Grrrr!

Now where did I put that Uzi.

Giovanni And The Stone Guest

(Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 3:22 PM Eastern on 15 Jul. See below.)

(Note: This post has been edited extensively to correct for certain omissions, and for clarity as of 1:43 PM Eastern on 11 Jul.)

So, what happens to Don Giovanni near the close of Mozart's great two-act opera of the same name, and what's the deal with that final sextet that closes the opera?

Ask almost any opera-goer and the typical answers would be: 1) demons drag Giovanni down to hell with the assistance of the heaven- or God-sent, judgment-dealing spirit of the dead Commendatore (who Giovanni knocked off in a sword fight in the opera's first act) for Giovanni's refusal to repent his manifold sins and way of life, and 2) that closing sextet is actually a superfluous, dramatically lame if pretty bit of operatic nonsense the opera would have done better without.

While it's a certainty that Mozart's audiences, as do almost all audiences today, understood the Don's fate as above described, there's clear, if not certain, evidence that neither Mozart nor his librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, intended it that way even though they were pretty much obligated to present it that way in all its outer trappings as the legend of the prodigious seducer who ends by being dragged down to hell was an old and well-known one even in Mozart's and Da Ponte's time, and the subject of many plays, books, and even a couple operas. And there's also clear if not certain evidence that Mozart, knowing his audiences would largely understand Giovanni's fate as above described, actually commented on that bourgeois understanding by way of the extended, sardonic, slightly malicious Mozartian joke that is the opera's closing sextet.

The first thing that strikes one as curious is that in the two Act II Commendatore-Giovanni encounters — the first in a graveyard, and the second when the Commendatore shows up as the invited guest of Giovanni at a banquet given in Giovanni's villa where the final catastrophe takes place (and when we speak of the Commendatore here it's always to be understood as the dead Commendatore's ghost or incarnated spirit; or the "Stone Guest", as he's been called because first met with in Act II as a graveyard memorial statue) — nowhere is any direct reference made to heaven, hell, God, or the Devil. It's curious — more than curious, actually — because the Commendatore's repeated command to Giovanni (at the banquet) to repent or face certain doom has about it the seemingly clear aura of divine sanction (i.e., a command given on the authority of God or heaven), and after Giovanni repeatedly refuses to do so, flames shoot up from below and lick round him; a chorus of voices, also from below, declare the fate awaiting him; the flames rise to engulf him; the ground opens beneath him; and down he drops.

Sure sounds and looks like a precipitous decent to hell for Giovanni, accompanied appropriately by a chorus of the damned, or of demons, intoning their dire tidings. But not even that chorus (marked in the score simply as Coro (Chorus) with no further identifying description beyond Da Ponte's stage directions that the voices are to come from below, and have a heavy or sullen quality) makes direct reference to hell or the Devil, saying to Giovanni merely that, "No doom is too great for your offenses. Worse torments await you below!"

I think it no accident, nor a felicitous omission, that Mozart and Da Ponte refrained from any direct reference to theology, realms, and entities specifically Christian in those two encounters, such as divine retribution, heaven and hell, and God and the Devil. The closest they come to inserting such direct reference is in the words of the Commendatore who declares, on being asked by Giovanni to sit at table and partake of the banquet, that those who've partaken of celestial food have no need of mortal food.

But the term used by the Commendatore is cibo celeste, celestial food, not cibo di cièlo, the food of heaven, and celeste is here used clearly as a metonym for the unearthly (I mean, the guy is, after all, stone-cold dead), not as a specific, per se reference to heaven. And if we insist on reading heaven itself into this, we then have to ask ourselves, What about the Commendatore after his death would make him a resident of heaven in the first place, much less one of God's or heaven's elect, and a dispenser of God's or heaven's judgment? And, perhaps more to the point, What about Giovanni in specific (as opposed to myriad other similar individuals) would provoke God's or heaven's special interest in securing his repentance, or in passing judgment on him?

The answer to both questions is, of course, nothing.

Unless, that is, one's a prisoner of an 18th-century bourgeois sensibility.

But more on that, anon.

I think it fairly clear that the intent of both Mozart and Da Ponte — arrived at either intuitively or by conscious decision — was to evoke the ageless and decidedly pre-Christian idea of the unquiet avenging spirit of a man (or, less commonly, woman) forced to roam the earth until retribution for his wrongful killing is secured (the inscription on the base of the Commendatore's graveyard memorial statue states that he awaits vengeance on he who killed him). Invoking the Commendatore as the avatar of this idea makes the two Commendatore-Giovanni encounters that much more terrifying and powerful because more strange and more universal, and that much more shocking dramatically, all of which is precisely what Mozart and Da Ponte were after in those Commendatore-Giovanni encounters, a dramma giocoso though Don Giovanni essentially is. It's not for nothing Mozart introduced three trombones into the orchestra for those encounters — in Mozart's time, an instrument heard only rarely in opera except to represent things terrific and unearthly, and an instrument not utilized at all in Don Giovanni outside those encounters.

But to question further, Why does the Commendatore repeatedly command Giovanni to repent? It's simply too much to imagine that the Commendatore has any interest whatsoever in saving Giovanni's soul (or whatever), or that the Commendatore is, for reasons hidden, an instrument or agent of God or heaven sent to accomplish that task. The idea is just too absurd and effectively given lie to directly by the inscription on the Commendatore's graveyard statue.

No, the Commendatore is no-one's instrument or agent, and acting entirely in his own behalf and interests in the matter of Giovanni. And for the Commendatore, it's a win-win proposition. If he secures Giovanni's repentance for his crimes and way of life, he will have secured a confession from Giovanni that he wrongfully killed the Commendatore, which in turn will secure for the Commendatore's unquiet spirit the release it requires, thereby permitting it to go to its eternal rest. If he fails to secure Giovanni's repentance, then the Commendatore's vengeance will be satisfied by Giovanni's descent into everlasting torment (which is also tacit confirmation of his guilt), which descent will also release the Commendatore's unquiet spirit from its earthly roaming, and permit it to go to its eternal rest. For the Commendatore it's a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose deal, and he doesn't care a whit how the coin lands.

And Giovanni? Why, the man is condemned out of his own mouth to a fall from grace, no association with his fellowmen, and therefore a life of everlasting torment; a fate made theatrically explicit and vivid by the drama's closing pyrotechnics. A kind of hell indeed, but not the hell of Christian theology to enter which, please remember, one must already be dead.

Now, about that closing sextet...

First, let's instantly deep-six the wrongheaded but not uncommon notion that the sextet is a mere formal add-on and really doesn't belong as the close of the great drama that preceded it, and most especially doesn't belong immediately after the jaw-dropping shock and terror of the final Commendatore-Giovanni encounter. That Mozart never intended to end the opera with Giovanni's descent is made perfectly clear by him by the imperfect cadence he used to bring that episode to a close. It's certain that something more was always intended to follow that imperfect cadence, and that something more is, and has always been, the closing sextet.

My take on that sextet is that, as I've above remarked, it's an extended, sardonic, and slightly malicious Mozartian joke; one targeted at the bourgeois sensibilities of the audiences of the time, and perpetrated at their expense by Mozart whether those audiences were made up of aristocrats, the middle-class, or the proles, all of which classes Mozart held pretty much in equal contempt (although for different reasons). Mozart knew precisely how those audiences would understand Giovanni's fate: as just recompense and divine retribution for his profligate, sinful, and even criminal life, and would understand it in that way not least because those audiences needed the comfort of knowing that Giovanni had met his end in such a morally decisive manner because of the threat such a one poses to the moral, social, and cultural status quo of the prevailing order. In that closing sextet, Mozart, with a sly and slightly malicious off-stage grin undetectable by most of his audiences, assures those audiences that now that Giovanni has been dealt with fittingly, everything is once more restored to proper bourgeois order with nothing of consequence left to threaten or disturb their good and just bourgeois sleep.

When this sextet is well-staged in the theater it always takes place after a significant pause subsequent to Giovanni's descent thereby distancing it from the apparent dramatic finality that preceded it. And if the stage director really knows his stuff (and I've never seen it staged this way, but would pay double the admission price for the entire opera just to see that closing sextet so staged), the sextet would be performed in front of a dropped curtain (i.e., dropped immediately after Giovanni's descent), with all six singers first walking onstage one at a time and lining themselves up across the full width of the stage, then, when all six are lined up, begin their singing, facing and addressing not each other, but the audience directly. Then would that sly and slightly malicious off-stage Mozartian grin be apparent to all.

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Update (3:22 PM Eastern on 15 Jul): Blogger Sarah Noble of Prima la musica, poi le parole has some nice things to say about the above post, and then puts forward a possible unintended consequence of my proposed staging of the closing sextet:

If this [the closing sextet] is - and it could well be - "a sly and slightly malicious off-stage grin undetectable by most of his [Mozart's] audience", mightn't we keep it that way [r]ather than making it evident to all by having the six assemble in front of the curtain and sing to the audience[?] Because I'd say there are still today plenty in the audience happy to accept the epilogue at face value and to go home with all the moral issues so nicely sorted out for them. If we oblige everyone to 'get the joke', then where's the fun in that?

An excellent point, and one to which I gave due and careful consideration before proposing my staging of this sextet. I came to the conclusion — one in which I've a fair measure of confidence — that those in the audience who "still today [are] happy to accept the epilogue at face value and ... go home with all the moral issues ... nicely sorted out for them," will do just that despite the staging (which they'll certainly think a bit odd or eccentric), and miss Mozart's "slightly malicious off-stage grin" entirely, that staging notwithstanding.

Why? Because such people (assuming such still exist who would be part of an audience for Don Giovanni today) simply need to. For them, there's no other choice.

And Yet Another Mind Reader Weighs In

(Note: This post has been edited for clarity as of 10:52 AM Eastern on 5 Jul.)

On the 90-minute Zauberflöte, that is. This time it's The New York Times's resident classical music genius, Anthony Tommasini, who puts forward essentially the same curious argument as La Cieca before him as justification for the Met's newly proposed cut-rate version of this transcendent masterpiece; viz., reading Mozart's mind, he's certain Mozart would have no objections. (For our comments on Mr. Tommasini's take on the present Julie Taymor production of Zauberflöte, see here. For our take on the Met's new proposal, see here.)

Well, perhaps Mozart wouldn't have any objections, and neither would I, provided someone manages to resurrect him, and secures his agreement to make the requisite cuts, and write any necessary bridging patchwork himself (or in conference with a duly resurrected and equally agreeable Schikaneder). The idea that Mozart would have no objections to others putting a hand to his work is, of course, patently absurd.

So, short of the aforementioned resurrection(s), there's no adequate justification for the proposed mauling of this sublime masterpiece by the Met. None whatsoever.

Blog Pages All Screwed-up (Administrative Note)

(Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 6:21 PM Eastern on 4 Jul. See below.)

TypePad's system-wide upgrade this past weekend has totally screwed-up all the pages on this blog. We're presently awaiting a resolution to the problem from TypePad.

Stay tuned.

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Update (6:21 PM Eastern on 4 Jul): Problems all resolved.

As you were.