Sounds & Fury

Quotable: Floating Utterly Free

Gillian Moore, head of classical music at London's Southbank Centre, commenting on Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 2 in a Guardian article promoting the Centre's January opening of its year-long The Rest Is Noise festival the festival based on material drawn from New Yorker classical music critic Alex Ross's prize-winning book of the same name:

[Schoenberg's] String Quartet No. 2, written in 1908 in the middle of an extreme marital and psychological crisis, starts with a richly harmonised minor key melody which would not have frightened Brahms. But by the end of the piece, a soprano has — highly unconventionally — joined the quartet and she sings "I feel the air of other planets", to music which is fractured, atomised, ethereal and floating utterly free from the gravitational pull of 600 years of harmonic tradition.

On Musical Masterpieces

So you, a musically well-educated musician, hear a piece of music new to you, are gobsmacked by it and passionately declare it a masterpiece. Your companion, an equally musically well-educated musician, disagrees. He says it's merely a pleasing, well-made piece of music. Do you imagine you could successfully defend your assessment of the piece as a masterpiece?

If you answered Yes, we suggest you think again and reflect on what the legendary teacher of composition Nadia Boulanger (and we here use the word "legendary" most advisedly) had to say on the matter:

I can distinguish music that is well-made and music that isn't. Yet, what distinguishes well-made music and a masterpiece, that I cannot tell. I won't say that [an objective criterion to distinguish the two] doesn't exist, but I don't know what it is. It all comes down to faith. As I accept God, I accept beauty, I accept emotion. I also accept masterpieces. There are conditions without which masterpieces cannot be achieved, but what defines a masterpiece cannot be pinned down.

Just so.

(The above quote was transcribed from a lovely film on Mademoiselle Boulanger by Bruno Monsaingeon which can be viewed here.)

A Cure For Perfectionism

The work is the death mask of its conception.

—Walter Benjamin on works of literary art, from One-Way Street.

(Our thanks to Scott McLemee for the quote.)

Perfectionism

Nothing I write is finished. It is abandoned!

—Literary critic Parul Sehgal on her critical writings.

(Our thanks to Scott McLemee for the quote.)

Kinder!, macht Neues!

In an article by composer Annie Gosfield written for The New York Times's Opinionator's The Score column, we were struck particularly by this graf:

When I first moved to New York, a friend and colleague proudly announced to me that he no longer played experimental music. He was a great improviser who coaxed wild sounds out of his instrument, but he was content with where his work had led him, so he stopped exploring. I found it both funny and disturbing — here was a guy who was willing to get on stage and work his way through a strange vocabulary of very original sounds. Why would he give up experimenting? It convinced me to keep turning over rocks to see what kind of musical wildlife I could uncover in the dirt, and to avoid getting comfortable with any single approach or style. Sometimes it means experimenting with a new sound, technique, or combination of instruments, or investigating a way to express myself while writing for a more traditionally trained group of musicians. I’ve managed to strike a balance between having enough confidence in my own music to develop my own sound, but enough curiosity and restlessness to continue to change it. If there’s a formula to writing music, I haven’t found it, and I hope I never do.

What struck us was its almost verbatim echo of sentiment of these famous grafs by Richard Wagner in an 1852 letter to Franz Liszt the closing exhortation of which is invariably quoted out of context by Eurotrash Regies to justify their grotesque outrages in the staging of Wagner's music-dramas:

How about [composer, Joachim] Raff? I thought he was writing a new work, but no; he is remodeling an old one. Is there no LIFE in these people? Out of what can the artist create if he does not create out of life, and how can this life contain an artistically productive essence unless it impels the artist continually to creations which correspond to life? Is this artificial remodeling of old motives of life real artistic creativeness? How about the source of all art unless new things flow forth from it irresistibly, unless it is wholly absorbed in new creations? Oh, ye creatures of God, do not think that this making is artistic creating. It betrays no end of self-complacency, combined with poverty, if we try to prop up these earlier attempts.

[...]

Children!, do something new!, new!, and once again new! [Kinder!, macht Neues!, Neues!, und abermals Neues!]. If you stick to the old, the devil of barrenness holds you in thrall, and you are the most miserable of artists.

As true today — and will be tomorrow — as it was a century and a half ago and before.

Quote Of The Month

Who will say a good word for the cliché? Its sins are so numerous. Exhausted tropes, numb descriptors, zombie proverbs, hackneyed sentiments, rhetorical rip-offs, metaphorical flat tires, ideas purged of thought and symbols drained of power — the cliché traffics in them all. A lie can be inventive; an insult can be novel. Even plagiarism implies a kind of larcenous good taste. But a cliché is intellectual disgrace.

[...]

But what of the timeless cliché, the cliché you can steer your course by, the cliché that carries a small freight not just of meaning, but of wisdom?

I sometimes think that my entire psychological and ethical structure, such as it is, falls somewhere between “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” and “It takes two to tango.” Observations like these have been road-tested, times beyond number, and discovered to be sound. They are laden with experience, and yet somehow jaunty. Some witty individual must have coined them, somewhere, but they glow with the accumulated knowledge of the race. They are clichés, and they belong to you: as a speaker of English, they are your birthright. Use them proudly. And when life hands you a lemon, remember that it’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

–James Parker in, "Let Us Now Praise...The Cliché", The Boston Globe, 18 October 2009

And Here We Thought It Was Just Us

And here we thought it was just us, and, we freely confess, always felt a bit sheepish and guilty about harboring such ignoble feelings. But, no, we have company, it seems, and first-rate company at that.

Here's an extract from a piece for New English Review written by the razor sharp British writer/psychiatrist/philosopher Theodore Dalrymple, the extract taken from the lead-in to the piece which piece concerns a different matter altogether. Wrote Mr. Dalrymple:

Whenever I am in France, I read the French newspapers.... There is always plenty in them to infuriate me, and so they are well worth the reading; for it must be confessed that indignation is one of the most rewarding of all emotions, as well as one that automatically gives meaning to life. When one is indignant, one does not wonder what life is for or about, the immensity of the universe does not trouble one, and the profound and unanswerable questions of the metaphysics of morals are held temporarily in abeyance.

Yes indeed. We're intimately acquainted with the feeling.

(Our thanks to the always indispensable Arts & Letters Daily for the link.)

About That Deathless Gibe

Upon reading yet another retelling of the origin of what is one of the most — perhaps the most — famous and deathless gibes in the world of classical music, we thought it appropriate to here set the business straight as a matter of public record; something we thought we'd already done, but now discover we never managed to do.

And the deathless gibe? The neat and nifty one-liner by the great harpsichordist and Bach scholar Wanda Landowska — viz., "You play Bach your way, and I'll play him his way" — in the retellings of its origin, a gibe directed at any one of variously identified keyboardists (we've seen Rosalyn Tureck, Ralph Kirkpatrick, and Glenn Gould identified as the purported target), and almost invariably reported to have been delivered with less than congenial or collegial intent.

That justly famous Landowska gibe has all the earmarks of being the punch line of an urban legend — except that it really was delivered by L, but not to or about another keyboardist. The Real-Deal story — which we got decades ago, and at firsthand, from L's longtime companion and colleague Denise Restout who was present at the incident, and which Real-Deal story has been confirmed several times by the actual target of the gibe — is this:

The good-natured gibe was, in fact, directed in all good humor by L at her old friend the great cellist Pablo Casals who was visiting L in the early summer of 1941 at her temporary residence in Banyuls-sur-Mer in the Pyrenees. (L was on the run from the Nazis at the time. She would, at the end of that year, arrive in New York City, just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese had been announced.)

L and C had been having an animated discussion concerning the correct execution of a certain Bach ornament. C insisted it ought to go thus, and L insisted it ought not to go that thus but this thus, and plied C with manuscript example upon example, but could not secure from him his unconditional agreement. Finally, with an air of mock exasperation, L turned to C, and said, "Let us not fight anymore, my dear. You go on playing Bach your way, and I shall go on playing him his way."

Perfect, and perfectly delightful as Casals himself bore witness to.

And so, as Emperor Joseph II (in the film, Amadeus) was wont to say, "There it is."

Stuff White People Like: Classical Music

Though white people do not actually listen to classical music, they like to believe that they are the type of people who would enjoy it. You can witness this first hand by going to any classical performance at your local symphony where you will see literally dozens of white couples who have paid upwards of $80 for the right to dress up and sit in a chair for hours reading every word in the program.

After leaving the concert hall, white people will immediately begin telling everyone they know about how much they loved the performance and how they plan to “go more often.” This is because white people see little to no value enjoying classical music without recognition from other white people. This can be seen first hand by looking at the plaques and bricks around all opera houses: they are covered in white person names.

If a white person starts talking to you about classical music, it’s essential that you tread very lightly. This is because white people are all petrified that they will be exposed as someone who has only a moderate understanding of classical music.

[...]

Therefore it is essential that even if you possess a massive amount of knowledge about classical music, do not share it with a white person regardless of how much they profess to love it. It’s a recipe for disaster and shame.

—From the blog, Stuff White People Like

RTWT here.

(Our thanks to Life's a Pitch for the link.)

Off-Message But Quotable Nevertheless

In the process of fashioning a more female-friendly world, we have created a culture that is hostile towards males, contemptuous of masculinity and cynical about the delightful differences that make men irresistible, especially when something goes bump in the night.

[...]

The exemplar of the modern male is the hairless, metrosexualised man and decorator boys who turn heterosexual slobs into perfumed ponies. All of which is fine as long as we can dwell happily in the Kingdom of Starbucks, munching our biscotti and debating whether nature or nurture determines gender identity. But in the dangerous world in which we really live, it might be nice to have a few guys around who aren’t trying to juggle pedicures and highlights.

What's that? Who's the embittered male who wrote that Neanderthal screed? That would be columnist Kathleen Parker, and the above is an excerpt from her new book, Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care.

Read the full excerpt here.

(Our thanks to the always indispensable Arts & Letters Daily for the link.)

Quotable

This, from blogger Sarah Noble of Prima la musica, poi le parole:

Her [Diana Damrau] Arie di bravura is a programme of showpieces by Mozart, Salieri and Righini.

[...]

These lesser known contemporaries of Mozart are all very well, and it's nice to hear something different, but still, all they really do is point out once again why Mozart is Mozart and they are not.

Quotable

The following from an essay by Eric G. Wilson, professor of English at Wake Forest University and author of Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy.

Melancholia, far from error or defect, is an almost miraculous invitation to rise above the contented status quo and imagine untapped possibilities. We need sorrow, constant and robust, to make us human, alive, sensitive to the sweet rhythms of growth and decay, death and life.

(Our thanks to the always indispensable Arts & Letters Daily for the link to the essay.)

The Composer’s Dilemma

One of many, we’re certain, but this one seems primary.

[For a composer,] [t]he music in one’s head and the music on the page are examples of the two cerebral hemispheres, and they really are entirely different animals. The first is the True Inspiration and the latter is how the True Inspiration can be translated into something musicians can actually play and people can actually hear. Left brain, right brain. Maybe they’ll take a picnic together sometime.

— Composer and blogger Alex Shapiro of Notes From The Kelp

Great Pronouncements In Music History 1

On the threshold of what we now refer to as the Classical Style, celebrated music theoretician, and music dictionary and encyclopedia writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote:

With regard to counterfugues, double fugues, inverted fugues, ground basses, and other difficult sillinesses that the ear cannot abide and which reason cannot justify, these are obviously remnants of barbarism and bad taste that only persist, like the portals of our Gothic cathedrals, to the shame of those who had the endurance to build them.

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Lettre sur la musique française, 1753

On Requiems

Here's a gem from New York Times music critic Bernard Holland.

No other kind of music boasts such ignorance of its subject matter. Composers can only stand on their side of the grave and address the guessing games shared by those around them.

—Bernard Holland, speaking of composed Requiems in a piece for The New York Times

Birthday Wishes

Born 193 years ago today, Richard Wagner is not known for his sense of humor, much less a self-deprecatory sense of humor. As if to give lie to that impression, here's Herr Wagner himself late in life musing on that momentous event 193 years ago:

In der schönen Monat Mai
Kroch Richard Wagner aus dem Ei.
Es wünschten viele die ihn lieben
Er wäre besser d'rin geblieben.


(In the beautiful month of May
Crept Richard Wagner from the egg.
It's the [birthday] wishes of many who love him
That it were better had he remained within.)

Clearly, the man was a veritable Groucho Marx.

Speaking of Critics

I'm late to the party on this, but it's just too delicious to pass by without note.

Here's Financial Times music critic Martin Bernheimer on the Lohengrin in the Met's Robert Wilson production of the Wagner opera of the same name:

Philippe Auguin, who has inherited this assignment from the ailing James Levine, conducts with sweep and cohesion, accompanies even the frailest voice sensitively and ultimately slights grandeur. Klaus Florian Vogt, the odd Lohengrin, introduces the sort of resources one associates with a modest Tamino [in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte]. Lyrical literally to a fault, he looks boyish, sounds sweet and rides the climaxes with effort. Call him a Heldencrooner.

Devastating, but delicious, as I've already remarked, and wonderfully economical as, right or wrong in its conclusion, it says all that needed saying in order to constitute a perfectly complete and self-contained critical assessment of this singer in this role.

Musical Bon Mot Of The Year

We nominate the following, slightly truncated extract as Most Wittily Insightful Musical Bon Mot of The Year:

Beethoven — crafty, original and sometimes downright funny — creates tight formats, but not quite the ones he leads listeners to expect. [His] is the art of interruption and sudden spillover. Mahler [,on the other hand,] belongs to the "and furthermore" school of composition.

—Bernard Holland, from a review for The New York Times.

On Conducting

These thoughts on conducting by one of its greatest practitioners are as apposite today as the day they were written, and could be read with profit by armchair music-lovers and practicing professionals alike.

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 piece or not. With good players, again, the true tempo induces correct phrasing and expression, and conversely, with a conductor, the idea of appropriate phrasing and expression will induce the conception of the true tempo.

[...]

I am persistently returning to the question of tempo because, as I said above, this is the point at which it becomes evident whether a conductor understands his business 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 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 theatres? 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 kind of way. Whenever the former spirit, which practices upon our classical concert music, gets a chance — as in the instrumental introductions to my operas — I have invariably discovered the disastrous consequences of the bad habits already described at such length [on prior pages]. I need only speak of the tempo, which is either absurdly hurried (as, for instance, under Mendelssohn, who, once upon a time, at a Leipzig Gewandhaus concert, produced the overture to Tannhäuser as an example and a warning), or muddled (like the introduction to Lohengrin at Berlin, and almost everywhere else), or both dragged and muddled (like the introduction to Die Meistersinger, lately, at Dresden and at other places), yet never with those well-considered [unnotated] modifications of the [main] 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.

[...]

If any conductor wishes to prove to his audience or to his directors, etc., what an ambiguous risk they will run with Die Meistersinger, he need take no further trouble than to beat time to the overture after the fashion in which he is wont to beat it to the works of Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach (which fashion suits the works of R. Schumann fairly well); it will then be sufficiently obvious that he is dealing with a very unpleasant kind of music. Let anyone imagine so animated yet so sensitive a thing as the tempo which governs this overture, let this delicately constituted thing suddenly be forced into the Procrustus-bed of such a classical time-beater, what will become of it? The doom is: "Herein shalt thou lie! Whatsoever is too long with thee shall be chopped off, and whatsoever is too short shall be stretched!," whereupon the band strikes up and overpowers the cries of the victim. Safely bedded in this wise, not only the overture, but, as will appear in the sequel, the entire opera of Die Meistersinger — or as much of it as was left after the Capellmeister's cuts — was presented to the public of Dresden.

[...]

I know of no-one to whom I would confidently entrust a single tempo in one of my operas.

—Richard Wagner,* from, Über das Dirigieren (On Conducting), 1869, Translation: Edward Dannreuther

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* For those unaware of the fact, Wagner was considered as perhaps the greatest conductor of his time, and is in large measure responsible for the conductor's role as we know it today.

And Speaking Of Cool And Bitchin'

When it comes to physics, people seem to need to kid themselves. There is a presumption, Dr. [of philosophy and physics at Columbia University, David] Albert said, that if you look deeply enough you will find "some reaffirmation of your own centrality to the world, a reaffirmation of your ability to take control of your own destiny." We want to know that God loves us, that we are the pinnacle of evolution.

But one of the most valuable aspects of science, he said, is precisely the way it resists that temptation to find the answer we want. That is the test that quantum mysticism flunks, and on some level we all flunk.

I'd like to believe that like Galileo, I would have the courage to see the world clearly, in all its cruelty and beauty, "without hope or fear," as the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis put it. Take free will. Everything I know about physics and neuroscience tells me it's a myth. But I need that illusion to get out of bed in the morning. Of all the durable and necessary creations of atoms, the evolution of the illusion of the self and of free will are perhaps the most miraculous. That belief is necessary to my survival.

But I wouldn't call it good physics.

—Dennis Overbye, from the essay, Far Out, Man. But Is It Quantum Physics?