Sounds & Fury

A Sad If Sobering Bit Of Reading For The New Year

Bryan Appleyard of The Sunday Times provides us a sad if sobering bit of reading to launch the new year:

Something happened in 2007, something ended. Old gods stumbled and fell. New ones sprang up. But they sprang up in their thousands. That’s the point these days.

Technology, hype and the sheer profligacy of the arts when confronted with a large, hungry and wealthy audience have created a climate of excess — just too many artists, too much money, too many works and too much noise. Who knows who, now, is great? Even if greatness existed, how would we find it? Do we want greatness, or would we simply prefer choice?

RTWT here.

Happy New Year!, everyone.

On The Verbiage Of Composers

Well, so much for blogging hiatuses. We interrupt ours once again to call your attention to a post by blogger and composer Roger Bourland who has something to say about composers who insist going on in prose about their music:

And then there are composers who talk about music — other composer’s music as well as their own. My own advice is to ALWAYS take whatever composers say about their music, with a grain of salt. You can usually trust their comments to be true if they tell you it was written over a certain period of time, commissioned or not by someone, orchestrated for some ensemble, and premiered by someone somewhere on a certain date. Beyond that, turn up the purple prose filter and just nod politely. Granted, much music can and is described with minimal purple prose. But we composers love to go on — being the artists and gasbags that we are.

Mr. Bourland concludes by offering this thought:

I fear that “where music comes from” will always be a mystery. I’m not ready to ape Stravinsky and tell you that I am but the vessel through which it passes to be given to the world. I’m not going to tell you that I channel music. I’m not going to tell you that God composes my music. I just don’t know, and that’s fine.

With all of which we most heartily agree.

Worthwhile Reading For Your Holiday Weekend

We interrupt our unannounced seasonal blogging hiatus to call your attention to two splendid posts. The first is a glowing review of the new La Scala Chéreau/Barenboim production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde by compulsive operagoer Mostly Opera:

In brief: It a was a truly magical evening of the kind I´ll probably only experience a handful of times during my entire lifetime, if I´m lucky. The combination of Chéreau, Barenboim and Waltraud Meier was profoundly moving and even exceeding my wildest expectations.

And the second is this insightful, on-the-money examination of the structure and performance of the wild fugue from Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” piano sonata (No. 29 in B-flat major, opus 106) by concert pianist and blogger Jeremy Denk of Think Denk:

I must admit this constant putting-Beethoven-in-order gets on my nerves. It makes me want to yell at the guy in Starbucks when there’s no blueberry crumbcake. Probably no other composer has been so obsessively mapped (Google-mapped, Google-streeted, even); his schemes have all been “found out;” he has been explored down to the last nanometer of contrapuntal unfolding in the deepest inner voice of the world. What should by rights be remote, a breathtaking Timbuktu of tones, is instead littered, when you arrive, with the droppings of musicologists, theorists, selling Schenkerian souvenirs and helpful pamphlets comparing legions of past performances. They tell you with one voice: we have already been here. (Oh, but, by the way, why are you modern performers playing so boringly, so predictably?)

[...]

[Listeners] have the right to be thrilled by this fugue, for example, and I could list others: the right to be dazzled, confused, whirled around, amused, stunned, bewildered, frenzied, the right to join in, to be caught up, to laugh wickedly with Beethoven and to feel out of breath, winded by stretti, by the endless chain of interruptive entrances, by dizzy leaping trills, and then to welcome the D major section, to bask in the one breath of the fugal dragon, its transcendent inhale before the fire resumes.

Both the above, worthwhile reading for your holiday weekend.

On One-Sentence Dismissals

Composer and blogger Matthew Whittall of The Short Road to Nirvana doesn’t much like concert pianist, musicologist, and critic Charles Rosen’s summary, one-sentence dismissal of an unnamed contemporary work by an unnamed composer contained in a piece for The New York Times about composer Elliott Carter (the accompanying photo of which is mislabeled; Carter is on the right, not the left) (Update 12/11/07: Photo caption now corrected.):

[I]t's not so much Rosen's tributes to Carter's music that caught my attention as his mild slam of an unnamed piece in a contrasting aesthetic. [...] [Writes Rosen,] "On this occasion, if I remember correctly, one work was a single note on a solo violin to be sustained for 1 hour 20 minutes (but the performance was abbreviated to 40 minutes)."

Ack! Shock!! Horror!!! A piece that only employs a single pitch! For a very long time! What a laughable, ridiculous idea! Seriously, though, how does one write a credible criticism of a piece, even a pithy one, by citing a work's very means of articulation as a pejorative? Rosen's comment proceeds from the offhand, a priori assumption that the very concept of this piece is unworthy of consideration. Nothing else is revealed about it, no other factors taken into account. What was the nameless composer trying to achieve with the piece, and was he/she successful? Was it performed by a sympathetic musician, or did the violinist treat the piece with contempt and play it badly? Was the piece well programmed, or did the other works on the concert not leave it enough space to be received in a favorable light? These and many other questions could be asked before dismissing a piece, but its use a single pitch (a trick that, I might add, is deployed to great effect by Carter himself in Four Études and a Fantasy) and long duration seem to be grounds enough to treat it as inconsequential. If it's not even worth asking these questions, why comment about said piece at all, except to score cheap points for your side of a largely no-longer-relevant aesthetic debate?

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Perhaps the piece Rosen is so dismissive of was indeed a failure. But the way he comments about it implies that such an idea is destined to be a failure from its very inception, and should be given no further consideration. Good criticism — of one's own work and that of others — needs to be based on more than knee-jerk positions, taking into account myriad factors that go into the creation and presentation of an artwork. Simply pushing it aside in this way diminishes the discourse and the critic both.

I suggest than any composition that consists entirely of “a single note on a solo violin to be sustained for 1 hour 20 minutes” is, prima facie, “an idea...destined to be a failure from its very inception, and should be given no further consideration,” and suggest further that the only possible informed and honest comment on such a work is a one-sentence dismissal “citing [the] work's very means of articulation as a pejorative.” The “myriad factors that [went] into the creation and presentation of [the] artwork” are totally irrelevant and beside the point, that point — the ONLY point — being the fact of the finished artwork itself.

What difference that, say, an entire philosophic system lies behind that composer’s creation of a work that consists entirely of a one-hour-and-twenty-minutes-sounding of a single note on a solo violin? What difference that, say, it took the composer 15 years to come up with the work, or, say, 15 minutes? And what difference that the composer created the work while, say, racked with the pain of a years-long terminal illness or, say, in the throes of an ecstasy so intense that it would make Tristan’s and Isolde’s second-act Liebesnacht (in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde) seem but a protracted episode of adolescent groping?

Answer: no difference whatsoever. All of that is the composer’s business exclusively and none of ours. Our business is to listen and respond to the finished artwork on its own terms. And if that finished artwork is but “a single note on a solo violin to be sustained for 1 hour 20 minutes,” then the only possible informed and honest comment is a one-sentence dismissal “citing [the] work's very means of articulation as a pejorative.” Anything else, or anything more, can be nothing other than an attempt to justify the composer’s clear charlatanism and contemptible hubris.

Again With The Trench Coats

Blogger Opera Chic has up a few TV screenshots from the Patrice Chéreau staging for La Scala’s new production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. And there they are again. Those ubiquitous, bloody stupid trench coats so beloved of Eurotrash directors.

If anyone can provide me informed explanation as to why that singularly inappropriate bit of costuming has taken such unshakeable hold of Eurotrash directors’ and designers’, um, imagination seemingly in every new production of any opera whatsoever sans any dramatic or time-and-place call for such a garment, I would be eternally grateful.

Not Only In America

If any of us Americans ever consoled ourselves with the thought that our culture’s ignorance of and/or indifference to classical music was strictly a philistine American affair, and that at least the culture of our European cousins was, thankfully, not so benighted, this should set us straight and disabuse us of our delusional thinking on the matter:

[Filmmaker] Tony Palmer, who has won more than 40 awards including Baftas, Emmys and, uniquely, the Prix Italia twice, criticised the director-general [of the BBC] after the BBC turned down a documentary of his. The film, about English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, has been produced by Five instead.

[...]

Bizarrely, Palmer said, the letter concluded: “But good luck with the project, and do let me know if Mr. V. Williams has an important premiere in the future as this findability might allow us to reconsider.”

Vaughan Williams — one of Britain’s greatest composers — died, of course, in 1958.

RTWT here.

From The Inbox

What’s the matter with you people? Why would you expect any kind of notice from us about the 5 December event? It means nothing to us as should be obvious to any regular reader of Sounds & Fury. Although we from time to time call attention to news stories or mark events of special importance here, Sounds & Fury is neither a public service blog nor a news blog but a blog recording our thoughts having to do with our personal interests and concerns. We’re delighted and gratified that others find what we have to say worth reading, but that’s not what we’re about. So, please. Knock off the eMail about our lack of notice of this event.

That is all. As you were. And we thank you in advance for your attention to the above.

(NOTE: If you’ve no idea what the above concerns, then just move on by. This post was not addressed to you.)

Featured Past Post #52 (Administrative Note)

A new Featured Past Post ("New Recording of Messiah") (N.B., “new” in 2005, but still a Messiah worth considering today) is now up on the right sidebar.

Off-Message Rant: Yeah, That Annapolis Powwow Will Work

When pigs (you should pardon the expression) fly, maybe. Witnesseth this charming little item from Commentary:

It is a cliché to say that Adolf Hitler has become a cliché, and even camp to say that he was a bad man. Perhaps no one in the history of the planet has ever been more universally reviled, or with greater justice, than he. The word “Hitler” is an epithet every place on earth.

Or is it? In the Palestinian territories, Hitler is making a comeback. According to a report issued by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook of Palestinian Media Watch, the Teutonic tyrant’s popularity is on the rise. Parents name their children after him (”Hitler Abu-Alrab,” for example), the Voice of Palestine radio station recently gave out cash prizes in his honor, and in 1999, Mein Kampf was a best-seller. Whereas in Europe, Holocaust denial is a crime punishable by jail time, in the Palestinian authority it is considered one of a number of reasonable views. Even the doctoral dissertation of Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas presents a range of opinions on the matter, concluding that “it is possible that the number of Jewish victims reached six million, but at the same time it is possible that the figure is much smaller—below one million.”

The Annapolis dog-and-pony show can never overcome this sort of thing. And it’s but the tip of a very large iceberg made of the same Jew-hating stuff that's drilled into every young Palestinian's head by family, neighbors, mosque, and mass media almost from the day he/she is born.

A Bit Of Noise On, The Rest Is Noise: The Book — Part Deux

[Note: This post has been edited as of 5:56 PM Eastern on 6 Dec to correct some minor errors and infelicities of expression, and for clarity.]

We’ve now finished reading The Rest Is Noise, and what we had to say in this post about Part I holds true for Parts II and III. By book’s end we in fact found ourselves even more awed by Mr. Ross’s depth and breadth of learning, and our admiration for and pleasure in his lapidary prose only increased the more familiar and intimate we became with it. We’ve also come to admire his music-historian evenhandedness and open-mindedness, most especially in the chapters covering the avant-garde of the fifties and beyond for much of the “music” of which we’ve little, if any, good to say. (Yes, we felt constrained to insert those nasty scare-quotes as we’ve no compelling reason to be music-historian evenhanded or open-minded in our assessment, such as it is.)

Although we can’t imagine anyone with an interest in classical music not buying a copy of The Rest Is Noise, if you’ve no intention of buying the book, we urge you to at least hie yourself to your local public library and read the chapter titled, “’Grimes! Grimes!’: The Passion of Benjamin Britten” which is perhaps the most beautifully written and deeply felt chapter in the entire book. Britten’s Peter Grimes is one of our most cherished works in the entire literature, and Ross does it full justice in this chapter even though we found ourselves at odds with parts of his reading of this everywhere ambiguous work. It’s testimony to the persuasive power of Ross’s prose and to his insightful and learned analysis that we’ve determined to give the work a fresh, new hearing with Ross’s ears, so to speak. Who knows? After we’re done, we might find ourselves in perfect agreement with what he had to say — or not. Either way, makes no difference. The point is, what he had to say all but compels us to revisit the work with new ears, and that, after all, is the most important thing, isn’t it. The same could be said for all the music Ross discusses in this book no matter whether that music is known to the reader or not. Which brings us to our final comment on The Rest Is Noise.

If ever a book cried out for companion CDs, The Rest Is Noise is it. Why no such CDs (or high-bit-rate MP3 downloads) were prepared for or offered with the hardcover edition of this book is a mystery too impenetrable for our meager mind to unravel. At best, it seems an egregious oversight; at worst, a monumental marketing stupidity. That Mr. Ross has up on his blog, The Rest Is Noise, brief, standard-bit-rate MP3 samples (or links to same) of some of the music discussed in each chapter is no fully satisfactory answer and no fully satisfactory solution although it certainly beats having nothing. Farrar, Straus and Giroux needs to hop on the stick PDQ to correct this oversight or this stupidity as the case may be.

Better late than never, as the old saw goes.

iPodheads Take Notice

Here’s a new article on an old theme (old at least for Sounds & Fury) by Fred Kaplan for Slate concerning what’s missing from the MP3 classical music listening experience, most especially for users of the ubiquitous iPod and its low-bit-rate MP3 files. Mr. Kaplan makes his excellent argument contra articles by Terry Teachout for The Wall Street Journal and Anthony Tommasini for The New York Times in which articles the contention is made that MP3’s low-fi format really makes no meaningful difference in the experiencing of the music itself.

Quite apart from the fact that such a contention is prima facie imbecile when classical music is at issue (for pop music of any genre the contention is reasonable and largely correct) — a point Mr. Kaplan makes more temperately than we, and minus our above parenthetical — Mr. Kaplan in his argument contra Mr. Teachout fails to point out an uninformed bit of reasoning in Mr. Teachout’s argument which states that since he (Teachout) can no longer at his age hear many of the upper frequencies anyway, their absence in low-bit-rate MP3s makes no-nevermind difference to his listening.

The fault in that uninformed bit of reasoning is that it doesn't take into account that the absence of the upper frequencies in low-bit-rate MP3s is very much audible as a distortion of the middle frequencies as their waveforms are subtly altered by that absence due a phenomenon called “fold-down.” When those higher frequencies are present in their original proportions, they “fold down” to partially shape the waveforms of the middle frequencies. If they’re absent, there’s nothing to fold down, and so those middle frequency waveforms lose their original shape — i.e., are distorted — and it’s those middle frequencies that contain the largest part of the musical “information,” both live and in a reproduction.

Just one more thing for you classical music iPodheads to mull over in your iPod-besotted minds.

How To Opera Germanly

We were able to trace the origin of this delicious bit back to a 2002 Opera-L posting, but its original author — “an American singer-director who prefers to remain anonymous for the sake of possible future employment” — still remains a mystery. We’ve added to the original list several contributions made by various members of the Google Groups Wagner newsgroup (items 27 and 28 as well as elaborations of items 17, 18, and 22) that seemed appropriate.

Following (with some minor editing by us), the delicious bit sans further comment.

1) The director is the most important personality involved in the production. His vision must supersede the requirements of the composer and librettist, the needs of singers, and especially the desire of the audience, those overfed fools who want to be entertained and moved.

2) The second most important personality is the set designer.

3) Comedy is verboten except when unintentional. Wit is for TV-watching idiots.

4) Great acting is hyperintensity with much rolling about on the ground, groping of walls, and sitting on a bare floor.

5) The audience's attention must be directed to anything except the person who is singing. A solo aria, outmoded even in the last century, must be accompanied by extraneous characters expressing their angst in trivial ways near, on, or about the person singing the aria.

6) Storytelling is always anathema to the modern director just as realistic, "photographic" painting is to the abstract painter. Don't tell the story. COMMENT on it! Even better, UNDERMINE it!

A Bit Of Noise On, The Rest Is Noise: The Book

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 6:10 AM Eastern on 6 Dec. See below.]

At this late date there’s little of critical value to be said about Alex Ross’s splendid book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, that hasn’t already been said by those better qualified than we to pass critical judgment. We received our copy of the book only two days ago and started reading almost as soon as we unpacked it from its Amazon carton, and, with interruptions, have so far managed to read only to page 212, the end of Part I of this three-part, 624-page volume. Even so, we feel compelled to express our awe of Mr. Ross’s depth and breadth of learning, and our enormous pleasure in his trademark lapidary prose — prose that’s image-rich and richly suggestive while simultaneously remaining perfectly lucid even when dealing with matters technical — before anything we have to say becomes so passé that one could with justice conclude that, like Rip Van Winkle, we’ve been asleep for twenty years. And what we have to say so far is that any objections one might feel constrained to lodge against Mr. Ross’s maiden book-writing effort (as opposed to honest disagreement with some of what he has to say, or remonstrations concerning what he failed to say) can be but mere quibbles and perhaps not even worth the mentioning.*

The Rest Is Noise was chosen by The New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2007 — one of the ten best books, period; not merely one of the ten best in category.

Based on our impressions so far, we’re not in the least surprised.

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* Worth the mentioning or not, herewith our quibbles (so far).

QUIBBLE 1: The book’s opening chapter, "The Golden Age", opens with the premiere of Strauss’s Salome; a right and proper fanfare to usher in the tale of the music of the 20th century. But with the book’s detailed description of the opera itself and the audience’s reaction at the premiere performance, it goes on far too long before setting forth the Wagnerian prelude to that tale (recounted in the chapter's following subsection, “Richard I and III”); a prelude absent which Salome would not have been possible. Better it would have been had the book’s opening fanfare ended with the page-six sentence, “Then silence descended, the clarinet played a softly slithering scale, and the curtain went up,” followed by “Richard I and III”, and then a transition back to the detailed description of the opera itself and the audience’s reaction at the premiere performance.

QUIBBLE 2: A clear lapsus calami, certainly, but jarring nevertheless, is the page-seven sentence, “First, the notes C-sharp and G are separated by the interval known as the tritone, one step [sic] narrower than the perfect fifth.” The tritone interval is, of course, a half-step narrower than a perfect fifth.

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Update (6:10 AM Eastern on 6 Dec): Part Deux of this review can be read here.