Sounds & Fury

On Sales Spiels

Julia Keller, cultural critic for the Chicago Tribune, in a piece on the function and effect of the use of place names in fiction, opens with the following lede graf:

Salesmen have a trick. It's a well-known trick, but even though you know it's coming, it really works: They use your name over and over again in their spiel. Hearing your name operates as a sort of verbal aphrodisiac.

Oh yeah? Well, it may work that way for Ms. Keller, but for us it has a rather different effect. Whenever we're assaulted by that sales technique no matter what's being sold, a commodity or an idea, our first response is to say to the perpetrator, quietly and absent any trace of anger, (actually say, not just think of saying), "If you repeat my name just once more, I'm going to rip your tongue out of your face — through your nose!"

This has the effect of instantly throwing the pimp off his game, and the spiel — and the pimp — are gone within a matter of seconds.

Works like magic.

A New Find (For Us)

We were introduced recently to the work of a now deceased artist whose name was previously unknown to us: pianist Friedrich Gulda who died in 2000. The introduction was by way of a Deutsche Grammophon CD entitled, "Gulda Plays Bach", and for us it was a startling find as Gulda proved to be that rarest of 20th-century pianists: a pianist who uses the piano to perform Bach exactly as that instrument ought to be used, which is to say absent all trace of anachronistic and inappropriate largely Romantic pianistic devices which for more than a century now have defined first-rate, expressive piano playing. (For more detail on what we mean here, see this S&F post starting with the graf that begins, "So, beyond the business of the repeats and the self-invented embellishment, what was it I found so ultimately disappointing about Schepkin's reading [of the Goldberg Variations]?".)

We may be biased on this point, but we can't help but think that Gulda's Bach performance as heard on this CD as it relates to pianistic technique was influenced largely by the Bach readings of Glenn Gould even though their interpretations of the works in question are by no means the same or even similar. To state in the proverbial nutshell the principal common difference between the two would be to say that Gulda's interpretations are pitch-perfect true to both the letter and spirit of the scores, while Gould's go one transcendent order of magnitude beyond, the for the most part almost uncanny "rightness" of his readings so compelling that one is forced ultimately to abandon all ordinary critical criteria and say helplessly (and somewhat lamely) that Gould seems to have had some sort of mystical direct connection to the innermost musical mind of Bach himself, divining there what's impossible for any composer to notate on the cold, hard pages of a score.

That having been said, we cannot recommend too highly this CD of Gulda's Bach performances which includes the English Suites Nos. 2 and 3, the Italian Concerto, the C-minor Toccata (BWV 911), and an early Bach work, the Capriccio "On the departure of a beloved brother" (BWV 992). As an added bonus, there's also included a Prelude and Fugue written by Gulda himself which is modeled on Bach but is strictly a 20th-century work that's quite jazzy from beginning to end; a fun piece that displays a not inconsiderable gift for composing on Gulda's part.

For The Benefit Of Those Who Track S&F Via Feed Readers

An interesting update has been made to this S&F post.

Asagohan (Breakfast)

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 8:54 AM Eastern on 19 Jun. See below.]

Perhaps it's not entirely out of place on this Bloomsday to direct your attention to this video and remark that, good-fun stunt though it may be, there's something curiously right about this performance of the (abbreviated) first movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5.

(One of the YouTube commenters explains, "My Japanese friend Ami has said that they are arguing about what to eat for breakfast: 'asa gohan' is Japanese for 'breakfast'. Apparently some want pure rice, others? rice with vegetables and mushrooms etc.")

(Our thanks to Chris Foley of The Collaborative Piano Blog for the link to the above YouTube video.)

---

Update (8:54 AM Eastern on 19 Jun): Here's a video of the classic 1950s Your Show of Shows sketch done by Sid Caesar and Nanette Fabray that embodies the very same idea as Asagohan. We wonder, Did the creator(s) of Asagohan know this classic TV sketch, or was it the music itself that suggested the very same idea to him (them) as it almost certainly did for the creator(s) of the original Your Show of Shows sketch?

Inquiring minds want to know.

16 June 1904

 

Weird (Administrative Note)

Apropos this from a post of ours from August 2007:

[T]here's not a single entry on this blog — be it 100 words or 1000 in length — that has not been edited, typically several times, subsequent to its posting. Such edits are never noted unless they change matters of substance or correct factual errors, but they've been done nevertheless.

And so, if you read a newly posted entry on Sounds & Fury and discover questionable syntax, lame or infelicitous language or phrasing or clear typos, read the entry again some 48 hours later. Chances are that the clear typos will all have been corrected, and what you found questionable or lame or infelicitous first time round is questionable or lame or infelicitous no longer.

Just as a point of interest (and for the record), according to our MS Word statistics, this measly 180-word entry has had more changes in wording made to it (but not substance which has remained unchanged) after first publication (including changes made just today) than any other entry on S&F since S&F's inception. We're certain there must be a reasonable explanation for that, but we'll be damned if we can suss out what that explanation might be.

Weird.

Brief Comment On Jürgen Flimm's Production Of Strauss's Salome

[Note: This post has been edited extensively as of 1:53 PM Eastern on 12 Jun to add missing detail, and to make more temperate our initial too-extreme expression of contempt in calling the production "imbecile".]

We for the first time saw via PBS the Met's HD film of this Met production, and, Konzept-wise, everything about it was pointless, predictable, and lame. Salome is a work about private and perverse obsessions pervaded by a mystic, brooding miasma of spiritual decadence and evil, but the stage was so cluttered by a pointless, modern-day, detailed set (apparently an outdoor, man-made oasis adjacent to or part of the desert mansion of a decadent, 20th-century super-rich) — a set that seemed designed expressly to cause maiming bodily injury to any singer who made the slightest misstep — and peopled by an equally pointless drinks-in-hand gaggle of decadent, modern-day tuxedoed and gowned supernumeraries milling about seemingly in search of something to do, that the pervasive, brooding, mystic context that informs and conditions the work was all but lost entirely right from the get-go.

Something needs to be done about this sort of ham-fistedly metaphorical Eurotrash. It really, truly does. It needs doing away with — permanently and forever.

(Oh, in case you were wondering, Mattila was superb as always, the pointless Konzept notwithstanding.)

From A Performer's Standpoint

We've previously skewered the perfectly idiot rock-"concert"-inspired notion of "audience participation" that would make it an OK thing for members of classical concert audiences to feel free to text to others, either directly or via Twitter, about a concert performance while the actual performance is ongoing. But violinist Hillary Hahn makes the case against such pop-culture inspired behavior much more eloquently:

I'm all for Tweeting and spreading the word, but not during performances. Between pieces, maybe, if you can stop when the music starts up again; while standing in line for the restroom, definitely; at intermission or on the train afterwards, definitely. The problem is that acoustic performers rely on the audience's attention and focus and can tell when the audience isn't mentally present. Your listening is part of our interpretive process. If you're not really listening, we're not getting the feedback of energy from the hall, and then we might as well be practicing for a bunch of people peering in the window. It's just not as interesting when the cycle of interpretation is broken.

RTW eloquent T here (scroll down a bit).

Featured Past Post #80 (Administrative Note)

As this old and tired subject has yet once again raised its tiresome head elsewhere in the blogosphere (but, to be fair, with an important demur), we once again put up on our right sidebar as our Featured Past Post the link to our post on the matter ("An Audience For Classical Music") which post was among S&F's inaugural posts way back in 2004 (see as well our comment in the comments section of the above linked post).

A Magic Of Sorts

It's a depressingly chill and dreary day outside today, the weather more appropriate to late fall than early summer, and it echoes perfectly my internal state of mind. The music closest to my soul — that of Bach, Mozart, and Wagner — is of little help as its profundity serves not to transcend my present mental state, but only to focus it on the metaphysics of existence and of last and ultimate things which is no help at all. And then a sharp gleam of sunlight strikes through the pervasive, oppressive gloom. A Rossini overture emerges trippingly from the radio and the bright, joyful sense of here-and-now life it imposes on my winedark mood is simply impossible to resist, and I find myself despite myself restored at least for the nonce to a passable semblance of good psychic health.

Why this should be so is a mystery to me, but so it is, and it never fails. It's pure magic. And this from a composer of bel canto opera, a genre forever maligned by me.

There lurks a lesson there somewhere the nature of which, however, manages perpetually to elude me.