Liberated Dissonance

Random thoughts while not watching the Super Bowl

2012-02-05T21:10:00.004-05:00

Finally, after two library renewals, I finished Knut Hamsun’s 435-page Growth of the Soil this afternoon. It was the fifth of Hamsun’s novels I’ve read since last fall, and even though it was the book that won him the Nobel Prize (in 1920), some of his most perceptive critics, including Isaac Bashevis Singer, regard it as a step down from his earlier work. Yeah, I’d go along with that. It has a direct prose style that reminded me of an Icelandic saga, and it contains some terrific set pieces, such as the early infanticide and the episode in which Axel is pinned beneath a tree. But the nostalgia for the peasant way of life wore me down, and all the ayes and ’twases drove me to distraction. (H.G. Wells thought the book “saturated with wisdom,” which any sensible person should take as a warning) Hamsun’s tragedy, according to Singer, was that he lived too long. His powers declined after the turn of the 20th century, and then, there’s his Nazi problem. He regarded Hitler as the savior of civilization, and he supported the German occupation of Norway. Had he died gracefully at 70, instead of at 93, his name might not be anathema in his native land.

Best of the Hamsun novels I’ve read — or at least my favorites — were Pan and Mysteries. If you read any, read those. Then you can feel free to blame me if you don’t like them.

On Wednesday, January 25, I visited Doug Heller and his wife, Nancy Parsons, at their home in Flourtown. Doug, a former Springfield Township commissioner, has stage IV pancreatic cancer. Unlike some patients, who refuse visitors when they realize how serious their condition is, Nancy has issued an open invitation to Doug’s friends and acquaintances. I took her up on it. I stayed for perhaps two hours. Doug is in very good spirits, and indeed, if it weren’t for the weight loss, the bathrobe and slippers, and the blanket on the living room sofa, you wouldn’t suspect he was ill. I stayed for about two hours. We watched Jeopardy, played a round of categories, and ate a little, but mostly, we listened to CDs. I brought a few of my own. Doug and Nancy especially liked the Quartet for Trumpet, Tenor Saxophone, Piano, and Percussion by Stefan Wolpe, and they introduced me to the transcendently awful music of Jonathan and Darlene and of Mrs. Miller. The former achieved badness intentionally (Darlene was the party name of Jo Stafford), and the latter was born bad. It's been a long while since I laughed to hard.

Went biking today through Pennypack Park, and then out Torresdale Avenue to Glen Foerd and Northeast Philadelphia Airport. The air was clear and deliciously cold. The real reward a ride like that is drinking something hot afterward.

A good news - bad news kind of thing

2012-01-28T21:04:00.002-05:00

The Detroit Symphony is scheudled to perfrom the four symphonies of Charles Ives at Carnegie Hall in May 2013.

I find myself on the horns of a dilemma. To go or not? On the one hand, this is an opportunity to hear some of my favorite music all in one sitting at what is, acoustically, my favorite concert hall. On the other hand, the conductor will be Leonnard Slatkin.

Ewwwww.

And I see this blog now has six followers. How did that happen?

Whoa-oh-oh-oh on the radio

2012-01-09T17:59:00.005-05:00

Thanks to WPRB Princeton for broadcasting Nielsen's great Clarinet Concerto this morning. The beautiful, round-toned reading by the soloist, Hakan Rosengren (with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra) brightened up my commute and put me in a wonderful mood that lasted until the moment I walked into the office.

Once I sat down, nothing could save me.

The Nielsen was so good it almost made me forgive the station for the godawful prep school recording of HMS Pinafore that Teri Noel Towe subjected the region to last Friday, complete with updates on where all his fellow preppie cast members are now. (News flash, TNT: Nobody cares.) He made me want to shoot myself, or him. I can usually put up with the pedantry and the shameless namedropping because he does play some extraordinary historic recordings, but if the music sucks, too, controlling one's temper is a wasted effort.

Kinagree Smith at Flying Fish at Roller's

2012-01-08T10:59:00.003-05:00

The folk trio with two names — Kinagree Smith — played two sets last night at Flying Fish in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. The venue is the second floor of Roller’s restaurant on Germantown Avenue. (The official name is Flying Fish at Roller’s, which can make for some awkward prose. The link to my preview article is at left.) Personnel were Jack Kinagree and Lexi Smith on guitar and vocals, and my old friend Ira Segall, whom I’ve known since I delivered the Philadelphia Bulletin to his parents’ home, on Third World finger percussion.

Ira’s a latecomer to the band, and, as Jack explains in the article, the reason the name hasn’t been expanded to Kinagree Smith and Segall is that it sounds too much like a law firm.

I don’t follow the world-folk scene, but a band this good could convince me to start. The love lyrics could be banal — of the you-complete-my-soul-and-your-kisses-give-me-life variety — but the two, four-song “suites” from the band’s forthcoming CD were genuinely touching. And boy, can Jack and Lexi sing.

My favorite number, as I think everybody knows at this point, was Jack’s “My Folk Music (Wants to Kick Your Ass),” Jack’s anti-ode to the clichéd notion that folk music is warm, fuzzy, politically committed, environmentally aware, spiritually comforting, and so … Joni. He turned it into a sing-along, which was perhaps unfortunate, because I didn’t know the lyrics well enough to join in, and the song works well enough on its own. But that’s a niggling complaint. It’s a great song.

Ira was the Harpo of the group: he didn’t join in the vocals (a good thing too, buddy), and he seemed rather aloof, sitting off to the side and keeping his body still, moving nothing but his fingers as he played. The exotic instruments — mostly chimes, Arab and Nigerian drums, Tibetan singing bowls, and those little Indian cymbals — provided an unobtrusive underpinning of thumps, clicks and pings. In the small space, they didn’t overwhelm the guitars or the vocalists, as a standard set of jazz drums would have. Lexi referred to the effect as “texturing.”

At the start of the second set, Ira also performed a short percussion solo, expanding his arsenal to include gongs, drums and a Pakistani frame drum known as the tar, which resembles an embroidery loop 30 inches in diameter. For a little while, I was back in my comfort zone — the familiar sound world of Crumb and Cage — which suited me just fine.

Attendance was small, unfortunately. Lexi says live turnout is always a problem when your fans have come to know you primarily through the Internet and they’re scattered all over the world. Then again, the little dining room wouldn’t have held too many more people.

Colleen Roult Barron

2012-01-04T14:19:00.000-05:00

Friday, December 30, was my daughter's 25th birthday.

Got $123.14?

2011-12-31T21:52:00.003-05:00

This just in from the Charles Ives Society Newsletter:

The Ives Society Critical Edition of Ives｡ｯs Symphony No. 4 was published today by Associated Music Publishers (subsidiary of G. Schirmer). This is a landmark publication, among the most important accomplishments of the Ives Society, and made possible by the support of the Maxwell Foundation.

Mvts. 1&2 were premiered in 1927, mvt. 3 in 1933. The whole work was heard for the first time in April 1965. Since then the symphony has been performed hundreds of times, and recorded by at least nine conductors (Stokowski, Farberman, Serebrier, Ozawa, Dohnanyi, Thomas, Karabtchevsky, Adams, Litton, all using problematic performance materials. Under the guidance of Ives Society executive editor James Sinclair, four editors contributed to the new edition. A new performing edition, based on the Critical Edition, is now available for performances. This monumental work will now seem rather easier to rehearse!

You may now pre-order the cloth-bound score (with its attendant CD-ROM) from various locations including Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Symphony-No-Charles-Critical-Clothbound/dp/1458418480 where the publication shows a list price of $195.00 and a selling price of $123.14 (shipping starting January 8th).

The hell with that holiday contribution to the SPCA. This is much, much more important.

Musicale for Three

2011-12-31T20:09:00.001-05:00

I had a nice afternoon, and it had nothing to do with New Year’s Eve. The young pianist William McNally, a student of Jacob Lateiner and Ursula Oppens, is in Philadelphia this week to audition for Astral Artists. He needed a place to practice, and Renee Goldman lent him her living room and her piano. She also invited me over to listen to him, because one of his audition pieces is Elliott Carter’s rapid-fire “Caténaires.” He played it for us from memory, while I leaned against the far end of the piano and followed the score — or, rather, I tried to follow it. Bill faltered a few times and said he was unhappy with the effort, although he was confident he could work the piece back up before the audition. I on the other hand, was quite happy. It’s a rare day you hear a Carter piece up close in a small room, with the notes thrumming through the instrument and into your hands.

I paid for the treat by going to the market with Renee and carrying the groceries in from her car. It was a small price. As we were leaving through the basement, Bill started up the “Caténaires” again, this time with the metronome on. Speed is 96 to the quarter note, and it doesn’t change throughout the piece, which is unusual for Carter.

Best of luck to you, Bill. And thanks again.

More on Carter's 103rd

2011-12-29T19:51:00.007-05:00

The pianist Charles Rosen has posted his impressions of Elliott Carter's 103rd birthday concert on the New York Review of Book website. The post includes some nifty audio clips recorded at the concert, so you can hear what all the fuss was about. A clip from another new work, Three Explorations, appears at the bottom. The piece, on poems of T.S. Eliot, were premiered at Alice Tully Hall the week after the concert at the 92nd Street Y.

I was happy to see Mr. Rosen expressed reservations about Retracings III for solo trumpet, much as I did. I'm not a critic or a very well-trained musician, but the convergence of our opinions almost makes me think I heard the music as well as he did.

I must say, however, that I found his opening paragraph puzzling. The principal attraction of Mr. Carter's music, for me, has never really been the time issue, and when Mr. Rosen states that it captures perfectly our experience of time in the modern world, I have no idea what he means.

"We do not measure time regularly, like clocks do, but with many differing rates of speed," Mr. Rosen says. "In the complexity of today’s experience, it often seems as if simultaneous events were unfolding with different measures."

It does? I honestly cannot remember ever experiencing time in this way. None of my friends has ever mentioned it, either. The theory of relativity does describe time as elastic, depending on speed and mass, but it's unlikely you will ever witness the effects of relativity firsthand unless you have access to a particle accelerator. If, today, our experience of time differs from that of medieval peasants, it's because we are ruled by it more rigorously and more minutely. Our employers break the workday into fifteen-minute intervals, and we are expected to account for every second. It's the pressure and the tedium that get me, not the complexity.

"These different measures coexist and often blend but are not always rationalized in experience under one central system," Mr. Rosen continues. "We might call this a system of irreconcilable regularities."

We might, but I doubt it.

I had a similar problem with the theorizing in James Wierzbicki's little study of Carter, which reminded me that while the composer's music is often extraordinarily exciting, his musings on the nature of time are much, much less so.

And oh — thanks to my good friend (an occasional commenter here on the blog) EH, who sent me the Nonesuch Carter anthology as a Christmas present. He must have found it on my wish list at Amazon. I was holding off on buying it, since I already have most of the music on individual CDs, but now that it's here, I'll give it up when you pry my cold,dead fingers.

Elliott Carter's vocal music

2011-12-22T17:34:00.003-05:00

Soprano Tony Arnold has written an informative blog post on the challenges inherent in singing the vocal music of Elliott Carter. Brief as it is, it has implications beyond the ostensible topic and says a lot about Carter's aesthetic in general.

On a side note, I have difficulty reading musicological articles. They can be so technical as to be either confusing or soporific, and frequently they are more about other musicology than about the music itself. Tony's post, written from the standpoint of a teacher and working musician, avoids both pitfalls.

Sleigh Ride watch - IV

2011-12-21T13:58:00.001-05:00

This from a friend this morning, via email:

Heard on KYW this morning that the most popular Christmas song this year is "Sleighride," the Leroy Anderson classic. They even credited Anderson by name.

The Kinks' "Father Christmas" wasn't even in the top 5.

Sleigh Ride watch - III

2011-12-20T11:51:00.003-05:00

Thanks to John Baron (no relation) for recommending this version:

This doesn't really count, since I didn't come across it accidentally on radio or int the stores.

Sleigh Ride Watch II

2011-12-19T16:12:00.005-05:00

Heard the ding-a-ling-a-ling-a-ding-dong-ding version of Sleigh Ride again last week, this time on WRDV, Hatboro — which, incidentally, plays terrific big-band music during the day — and I did hear the announcer name the group. It was the Ronettes, which I think was lurking somewhere in my subconscious. The number appears on an album called "A Christmas Gift for You," released in 1963 and produced by Phil Spector, about whom the less said the better.

Barron centenary

2011-12-18T08:55:00.004-05:00

My father, Adam T. Baranowski, was born 100 years ago today, on Dec. 18, 1911. That same year, Stravinsky finished Petrushka and began work on The Rite of Spring, Schoenberg composed Herzgewächse, Nielsen his Third Symphony and Violin Concerto, and Charles Ives had a number of projects in various stages of completion, including the Second String Quartet and the Robert Browning Overture.

Dad would never be aware of any of this. His own musical tastes ran to the Lawrence Welk Show, which to this day I regard as a form of child abuse. Of course, he felt assaulted by my preferences, too, and so the most meaningful way I can remember him today, I think, is to put on a Beatles album, or a Mahler Symphony, and imagine him yelling at me to turn it down.

What is a journalist?

2011-12-17T15:04:00.005-05:00

From the great Harry Shearer, who once performed it on his radio program Le Show and emailed it to me on request. It's been sitting in my inbox for six years, and I thought I'd post it because (a) I want to get it out of my inbox and (b) it sums up my chosen profession better than anything I've ever read. For maximum impact, imagine the words are being spoken by Casey Kasem over some sappy inspirational background music. (That's the way Harry did it.)

what is a journalist?

he’s a hard drinking, soft spoken, burn up some shoe leather, sit on
his hiney sort of son of a gun who’s seen it all before, and can’t wait
to see it all again.

a journalist is someone who gets shot at in a war zone so he report
back material that can’t be broadcast because it might be too
disturbing.

a journalist is someone who reads teleprompter better than anybody, and
writes better than the guy who just won the pulitzer.

Journalists like:
deadlines.
bylines.
a bigger news hole.
free food.

journalists don’t like:
deadlines.
editors.
cramped press facilities at major news events.
media whores.

journalists like to know how does it feel, and what’s the mood here
now. journalists don’t like to know how
the social security system really works.

a journalist is often found at news conferences,
presidential visits, crime scenes, hospice vigils, and the sites of
major
snowfalls. a journalist is seldom found advertising his
services on a website for gay escorts.

journalists sometimes make too much money getting out of the studio too
seldom so they can mingle with other journalists who are resentful
because they never get into the studio at all.

journalists can be anchors, but never
sails. they can be reporters, or just repeaters. a journalist looks
down on celebrities until the day he
becomes one.

a journalist spends too much time covering a story that gets too little
space so it can be skimmed by a reader who has too little time.

journalists can’t resist: miracle puppies. children trapped in wells.
killer bees.
journalists almost always resist: stories with three
or more sides , computer terminals without a nexus
account, angles that might make their colleagues
think they were flaky.
a journalist will fly halfway around the world to
stand where a tsunami took place, and he’ll stand
in freezing rain for two hours to point out that it’s
wintertime.

journalists are more curious than anybody, attacked
by everybody, and lent money by nobody.

a journalist will share a quote, but won’t reveal a source. a
journalist thinks the first amendment is the
only one the founders really meant.

what is a journalist? a journalist is someone who earned pretty good
money telling us what was really going on in the world, until he
realizes he could earn better money by telling us about the social
lives of the people who earn really great money telling us fairy tales
about the world.

a journalist knows: who’s got the best rolodex.
who’s got the best satellite phone circuits.
how much backlight he needs.
a journalist doesn’t know: where to find krygystan in
on a map. where to find the smart people in a small
town. how you’re supposed to fit a five minute story into a 90 second hole.

a journalist is just like the rest of us...except he’s
more tenacious, lazier, sloppier, got better hair,
and does his best work in the comfort of the herd.

what is a journalist? next time you see one, just ask him: how does it
feel?

(c) 2005, Century of Progress Productions. All rights reserved

By golly, that's me!

2011-12-15T16:37:00.009-05:00

"Elliott Carter and guests."

Pete Matthews has posted a review and several photos of the Dec. 8 concert at the blog Feast of Music. His camera caught me just at the moment I describe in my own blog post when I bent over and said hello to Mr. Carter.

Thanks for the memento, Pete.

So sue me

2011-12-12T12:09:00.001-05:00

From this week's New Yorker:

Overlooked concerts

2011-12-11T14:22:00.006-05:00

Performers in the Oct. 29 program of Russian music and poetry, from left: Katarzyna, Tatyana, Inna, and Rollin.

I let my blogging lapse for a while, and I’ve neglected to mention two memorable performances I attended earlier in the fall, both in Philadelphia.

The first was a Russian salon at the Institute for International Culture out on Lancaster Avenue. It took place Oct. 29, on the evening of the first snowfall we’ve had this season, which was appropriate, I think. Tatyana Rashkovsky sang, and Katarzyna Marzec-Salwinski and Rollin Wilber played piano. The music was by a bunch of Russians, including Rimsky, Rachmaninoff, Borodin, Scriabin and a young Boris Pasternak. My friend Inna Lobova-Heasley read Russian poetry from the early 20th century. The room was intimate, the performances committed, but Russian music is Russian music, and there’s only so much of it I can take. Intermission lasted almost an hour as guests consumed potatoes, blini with chives sour cream, caviar (which I avoided), and vodka punch (which I also avoided). I asked Inna how long these Russian soirees were supposed to last.

“Until the vodka runs out,” she said.

The other program was held Nov. 12 at Ravenhill Chapel on the campus of Philadelphia University - another concert Inna did the publicity for. It was a beautiful autumn afternoon. Lyric Fest presented premieres by Maurice Wright, Curt Cacioppo and Allen Krantz. Performers were soprano Elizabeth Weigle, baritone William Sotne, and the Ravenhill String Quartet, which consists of young musicias from the Philadelphia orchestra. The centerpiece of the program was Wright’s “To Kiss the Earth” for baritone and string quartet. The words were taken from the diaries of the Bauhaus potter Marguerite Wildenhain, translated into English by Stone, who was a student of Wildenhain and the motivating force behind setting the diaries to music. All three pieces on the program were well-crafted and attractive, though I can’t say much more about them so long after first hearing.

Wright remembered my earlier blog post criticizing his percussion piece “Movement in Time,” and he graciously gave me a recording of it.

After the concert, Inna, Krantz and I walked over to Suzanne DuPlantis’ home for a reception and buffet dinner. (The spread was as memorable as the concert.) Suzanne, accompanied by Laura Ward at the piano, sang La Vie en Rose and a song by Michael Tilson Thomas about the simple joys of life. The first stanza offered thanks for a wonderful plate of herring, and it made me uncomfortable. I know we should be grateful for our sustenance, but do we really need to rub in our status at the top of the food chain? I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the poor fish.

So we sat, we talked, we had a nice schmeer.

It’s a clear, cold afternoon, and I’m inside. My bicycle chain broke last Sunday afternoon while I was out riding, forcing me two walk several miles home, and I haven’t bothered to have take it to the shop for repair.

One dead spot

2011-12-11T12:27:00.002-05:00

I don't want the enthusastic review I posed yesterday to create the impression I'm completely, imbecilically uncritical when it comes to Elliott Carter's music. There was one piece on Thurday's program that puzzled me: Retracing III, for trumpet. This little fantasy is a transcription of the opening solo from "A Symphony of Three Orchestras" of 1976, with a few pauses added to make it less taxing on the lungs and lips. The original music was written for Gerard Schwartz, who was principal trumpet player of the New York Philharmonic at the time, and on the recording of the Symphony (with Boulez conducting), Schwartz plays with a stunning definition: every note, every phrase is crystal clear. I don't know if the problem Thursday night was with the original piece, the transcription, or Peter Evans's preformance, but the piece seemed, well, blurred. In any event, I was excited before it started, but somewhat deflated when it was over. It was a rare letdown in an exciting evening. (When he was through, Evans sat down to join the ensemble for the Double Trio, and from what I could hear, he was flawless.)

By contrast, Peter Kolkay's performance of Retracing, for bassoon, was a delight. Something about the acoustics of the Kaufmann Hall enhanced the instrument's inherent warmth. And it's a funny, intimate little piece that doesn't try for soaring grandeur.

I can Carter's brief solos becoming favorites of music students everywhere.

Elliott Carter at the 92d Street Y

2011-12-10T12:56:00.009-05:00

Elliott Carter with Carol Archer at the Dec. 8 concert. (Richard Termine for the New York Times.)

I met Elliott Carter for the first time thirty-five years ago after a concert of his music at a YMHA in Philadelphia. The musicians onstage included Fred Sherry and Rolfe Schulte.

My most recent meeting with Mr. Carter place Thursday evening after a concert of his music at a YMHA in New York. The musicians onstage included Fred Sherry and Rolfe Schulte.

I’m afraid I’ve fallen into a rut.

But I can’t say Mr. Carter has. Thursday evening’s concert at 92ndStreet Y, presented in celebration of the composer’s 103rd birthday on December 11, was far from a rehash of the his greatest hits. None of the 13 pieces on the bill existed back in 1976, and eight of them have appeared since 2008, when Mr. Carter turned 100. Two world premieres were listed in the printed program, and two more were announced from the stage: “Mnemosyne” for solo violin (named for the mother of the Muses) and “Rigmarole,” a witty little argument for the unlikely combination of cello and bass clarinet, were both completed just last month.

The oldest work on Thursday’s program was the beautiful harp solo “Bariolage,” from 1992, a favorite of mine, played with ravishing intensity by the young Bridget Kibbey.

OK, so he’s told. So what? Longevity is a statistical glitch, a spot on the actuarial bell curve. Mr. Carter’s age and productivity wouldn’t be so remarkable if his recent music wasn’t so good. Now, the sense of celebration and the warm acoustics of the Kaufmann Concert Hall are probably influencing my reaction, but some of the short works at played Thursday’s concert — none was longer than 12 minutes — felt like major statements. “Mnemosyne” sounded to me like a hyperdistillation of the Bach Chaconne, and all during the last piece — “A Sunbeam’s Architecture,” for tenor and chamber orchestra, on poems by E.E. Cummings — I kept thinking of Mahler.

After the performance, audience members and musicians crowded into the little art gallery beside the hall. Mr. Carter sat in a wheelchair, and while a young man in a suit and tie tried to arrange the players around him for a picture, I bent over him and an took his hand.

“I just wanted to say congratulations, and thank you so much,” I said.

“Well, thank you!” he replied with that big smile of his and empahasis on the "you."

And that was all.

Anthony Tomassini has a nice review in today’s New York Times. He calls Mnemosyne “sometimes agitated, sometimes mercurial,” which is odd, because I remember it as meditative. The difference in impression just shows you how we’re all just coming to terms with Mr. Carter’s music.

A shout out and thank you to Karen Yager, who sat next to me in the hall. I had never met her, but she was a knowledgeable and warm-hearted concert companion.

And, in the New York Is Not for Sissies Department: Due to construction, the E train, which I had planned to ride back to Penn Station, was not running after the performance. I didn’t know that until I tried to transfer from the 6 train at 51st Street, and no one I asked had any idea of an alternative route. After peering at the map (which had been scraped white just over the 51st Street interchange), I took the 6 back to 59th Street, transferred to the N, which took me to Times Square, where I caught the 3 back to Penn. My Jersey Transit train was scheduled to leave at 11:06. I got to the station at 11:01. My legs and back were stiff all day Friday from running up and down the steps in Gotham’s underground caverns.

Finally, to the woman I met on the E train platform: if you see this, email me.

"Sleigh Ride" watch - I

2011-11-28T17:49:00.007-05:00

As I've said in the past, it isn't Christmastime until I've heard Leroy Anderson's "Sleigh Ride," preferably over the loudspeakers at a mall.This year, I am happy to report that I found it even before the season officially began, on the night before Thanksgiving. While driving home from work the night before Thanksgiving, I came across it on an oldies station that switches to Xmas music every year. It put me in a good mood after a long, grueling and pointless day, and it probably saved from Black Friday shoppers from being pepper-sprayed.

I've since heard it a second time, on the same station, with lyrics, sung in the familiar rock version by a girl group I can't name. You know the one, with the girls singing "ding-a-ling-a-ling-a-ding-dong-ding" in the background. Not my favorite arrangement, but it counts.

Here is a nice performance with John Williams conducting the Boston Pops:

I am also happy to announce that WGBH Boston will broadcast "A Leroy Anderson Christmas" at 6 p.m. Dec. 3 and noon Dec. 4. Leonard Slatkin will conduct, but you can't have everything.

Bil Keane dies

2011-11-14T18:02:00.009-05:00

Bil Keane, creator of the daily comic "The Family Circus," died Nov. 8 at age 89. I was not a fan of his work, but his passing has a nostalgic significance for me, because he provided the occasion for my first appearance in print. In the 1960s, when "The Family Circus" was still new, the Sunday panel included a feature called "Sideshow." The idea was that readers (mostly kids)would send in ideas for puns, and Keane would draw a small picture to illustrate them. Three of them appeared each week. Dreaming of immortality, I sent in a suggestion, and the drawing Keane based on it (it was nothing like the one I sent) appeared in the Philadelphia Bulletin on July 23, 1967.

I still have the letter Keane sent me, which included his autograph and a printer's proof of the comic:

Well, come on. I was only nine.

I haven't followed the strip in many years. I came to dislike "The Family Circus" for all same the reasons most urban sophisticates do: it was insipid, obvious and not very funny. But there was more to it than that. As a former child, I also believe it failed as a depiction of childhood, or at least of any sort of childhood I was familiar with. For me, the best comics about kids — "Calvin and Hobbes," "Peanuts" in its early years, Gahan Wilson's "Nuts," and a handful of episodes of "The Simpsons" and "South Park" — depict their experience from the inside, with all the fear, cruelty, mishchief, disappointment and humiliation intact. Keane's view was resolutely external. He saw children as a particularly dense parent or grandparent would — as adorable ignoramuses whose feelings can't be taken seriously. For anyone who remembers what it was like to be a child, "The Family Circus" rang consistently false.

It was also ripe for parody, and to his credit, Keane was tolerant of the attempts to make his ridiculous little comic look even more ridiculous. I confess I was one of the culprits, for a brief. In another life, some of the people in my office would cut out the daily comic and changed the captions, usually to something involving sex, drugs, or child abuse. I saved a complete file of the desecrations. Here are a few the less offensive. As you can see, my sense of humor has darkened over the years:

For a more inspired use of Keane's art, visit The Nietzsche Family Circus, which pairs random cartoons with random quotations from the philosopher. The weird thing is, it works. I mean, let's face it. Nietzsche was a lot funnier than Bil Keane ever was.

The Third Symphony of Charles Ives

2011-10-21T20:37:00.003-04:00

My experience in Danbury back weekend sent me back to my CDs of Charles Ives’s Third Symphony this week. It turns out I have accumulated more recordings of the work in the past few years than I realized — six in all, to wit:

Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbruecken, Michael Stern, cond. (Col legno 20225)
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, no conductor (DGG 439 869-2)
Northern Sinfonia, James Sinclair (Naxos 8.5559087)
Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner (Decca 289 466 745-2)
Concertgebouw Orch., Michael Tilson Thomas (CBS Masterworks MK37823)
New Philharmonia Orch., Harold Farberman (Everyman 08 6154 71)

I’ve listened to them all in the past few days, and the winner is — well, I must confess I prefer the larger ensembles. Tilson Thomas has the greatest sensitivity to line, Marriner gets a beautiful tone out of the Academy musicians, and Farberman draws the most organlike feeling from the New Philharmonia, which to me is a plus, since the symphony is derived from earlier organ pieces. Farberman’s recording is also the only one that does not use the so-called shadow lines or the optional chimes at the close. I don’t miss either. I also like his slower tempos, esp. in the central “Children’s Day” movement. These three were my favorites, this time around.

The others are fine, too, in their ways, but the smaller groups — the Orpheus and the Northern Sinfonia — sound somewhat shrill at the climaxes, and perhaps Stern’s pacing isn’t as smooth as it could be.

Ives scholarship seems to be perpetually in flux, and, the dates of the symphony change, depending on which liner notes you read. The older CDs say the piece was “assembled” in 1904 and revised in 1909. The later recordings say it was written between 1908 and 1911. Take your choice.

Regardless of the forces used, it’s a beautiful piece. It’s not necessary to identify all of the borrowed hymn tunes to appreciate the music, and, indeed, I’ve been listening to the piece for decades without making the effort, but thanks to Nancy Sudik’s tutelage, I can now name them all.

On to Three Places in New England.

Ives Day 2011 ("There Is a Happy Land")

2011-10-19T16:47:00.003-04:00

I don’t often use the phrase “perfect day," but Sunday nearly qualified — sunny fall weather, congenial company, and the music of Charles Ives. It doesn’t get much better than that. I was in Danbury, Conn., for Ives Day 2011. This year’s observance was devoted to the Third Symphony, subtitled “The Camp Meeting,” a jewel of a piece that may be thought of as Ives’s pastoral.

The day adhered to the standard template: a hike up Pine Mountain, where Ives spent a great deal of time as a boy and a young man, followed by visits to the Ives birthplace and gravesite, and wrapping up with music — this time, the Third Symphony, as rendered by the Danbury Symphony Orchestra. Albert Montecalvo conducted a chamber-sized complement of 23 musicians, which is really all the piece needs.

What made the concert unique was the venue. The performance took place on the upper level of a parking garage in downtown Danbury. (It has a name, too: the Charles Bardo Parking Garage behind the Danbury Music Center. Just what does a man have to accomplish in life to have a parking garage named after him — other than, say, owning a parking garage?) Chairs were set up on the sloping concrete, giving us in the audience a view, over the heads of the musicians, of St. James Episcopal Church a block or so away. At the end of the third movement, Ives calls for bells to be played softly, as if heard in the distance. Tubular chimes are generally in concert halls, but in Danbury, the part was given to the St. James carillon, cued by cell phone. It might have been the first performance anywhere in which the church bells used in the Ives Third were real, and perhaps the first to accurately convey the sense of space Ives had in mind when he wrote the piece.

I have heard better performances of the work as a whole, but no studio recording or concert-hall performance will ever recapture, for me, the moment when the St. James chimes began to ring. I know this music like my own home, and I still wasn’t prepared for the effect, which was stunning. I expect to remember it for the rest of my life.

My thanks to Nancy Sudik, the indefatigable director of the Danbury Music Center — and first horn of the Danbury Symphony — for conceiving the performance and making it happen. Nancy also leads the Ives Day tours every year.

In much of his music Ives famously “borrowed” existing tunes, reworking them into contrapuntal fantasies. He based the Third Symphony on a half dozen hymns he’d heard as a boy and played professionally as a church organist, and Nancy, bless her heart, made sure we knew what we were hearing when the orchestra began to play. She had us sing the hymns at the top of Pine Mountain. She had us sing them at the birth house. She had us sing them on the roof of the garage. It got to be too much for me — I’d strained my throat on the first go-round, trying to hit the high E’s in “There Is a Fountain” — but the crowd kept growing throughout the day, and there were always fresh voices for the chorus.

A group of young composition students from the Hartt School of Music, Hartford, joined us at the birth house and stayed with us the rest of the day. Johnny “Guitar” Provo, who is just discovering Ives’s music, drove in from Rhode Island with a couple of friends. He took the hike up the mountain, and later left a pick on the composer’s gravestone. And there was a man I know only as Allan, who drives up from New Jersey every year and who might be the one person in America who can rival me for the title of No. 1 Ivesian. These are my people. It was good to spend a day with them.

The Bawdy Bard

2011-09-16T12:39:00.002-04:00

Just posted a link to my article on Lyric Fest's upcoming program of medieval and renaissance music. The title "The Bawdy Bard" is unfortunate, because it suggests the program is built around off-color passages from Shakespeare, which it isn't. It also suggests a more tongue-in-cheek approach than is probably the case. I'm looking forward to this one, however, since a few years ago I spent a great deal of time playing medieval and Renaissance tunes on the recorder. The program will include a song by Bernhart de Ventadorn (fl. 12th century), titled "Can vei la lauzeta mover," that I've tried to play several times — I even went back to it last weekend while I was contemplating the article — but that I have never been able to make sound like a real melody. I can't figure the tempo, and the flow indicated by the 3/4 meter, as written on the page, doesn't seem to fit the notes. Actually hearing is going to be an education.

Tranquility Comics

2011-09-01T11:01:00.003-04:00

Today I have added Tranquility Comics to my blogs list. The drawings are the work of Thomas Hinterberg, son of friend and fellow abstracting survivor Eric Henderson. For years he was developing this talent while growing up under my nose, and I had no idea.

Indian Classical music

2011-08-24T12:17:00.004-04:00

At left, you'll find a link to an article I just wrote on an upcoming pair of Indian classical concerts. Every so often, journalist has to write an article in which he has no idea what he's talking about, and this one is mine. I felt completely at sea. I had to look up most of the information, and the research sticks out, I think. If anyone out there can explain to me clearly just what a raga is, I would be most grateful. I tried reading the section on ragas in the Grove dictionary, but it was so detailed and technical it only confused me further, and it contained nothing I could translate clearly into a brief paragraph for the general reader.

Sorry, too, that I have been neglecting this blog. Things do seem to grind to a halt over the summer. I attended a couple of enjoyable events in July that I keep neglecting to mention. But there have only one week of August left, which is a relief, and I hope to be back on track soon.

Marvin Rosen dedicated two hours of his radio show to Frank Zappa this morning, and I, stuck in my office, missed it. The computer at my desk doesn't support the webstream from WPRB, either.

Late night thoughts on listening to Charles Ives

2011-08-04T20:05:00.003-04:00

I thought, "Ives Lives."

But then I thought,

Wow.

"Ives Lives" should rhyme.

But it doesn't.

That's so freaky.

Chaplin with organ

2011-07-17T11:41:00.007-04:00

Went down to St. Thomas' Church, Whitemarsh, after work July 12 for one of the summer carillon concerts. (St. Thomas' has one of only nine carillons in Philadelphia and the surrounding counties.) Amy Johansen, from Australia, played a vaeried, hourlong program that included some Gershwin songs; the horpipe from Handel's Water Music, minuets by Bach, Mozart and Beethoven; and even "Bridge Over Troubled Water," which I liked in her arrangement, despite feeling that I outgrew Paul Simon years ago. It was hot, but not overly so, and it was pleasant to sit out on the church grounds, read a book, watch the sun set over the suburban trees, and listen to the bells.

After the recital, everyone moved into the church for a showing of two silent Charlie Chaplin shorts — "Twenty Minutes of Love" and "The Immigrant" — accompanied by Kevin O'Malia on the organ. He brought out a wondeful sound from teh instrumetn that had me wishing he would perform there in recital. (We talked about it afterwards, and he seemed open to the idea. I suggested Nielsen's "Commotio.") I was tickled when he interjected snippets of Charles Ives' "Variations on America" into "The Immigrant," especially at the moment when the ship enters New York Harbor.

I was also happy to see Brother Gerry Molyneaux in attendance. I had took his film course whan I was a spohomore at La Salle, and I hadn't seen him in thirty-five years. Brother Gerry is a Chaplin expert — he wrote his doctoral dissertaion on City Lights — and when I learned about the films, I imformed him by email. He's a little plumper than I remembered, but he looked wonderful for a man who must be approaching eighty. (I was never sure of his age, but he was already celebrating his twenty-fifth anniversary in the brotherhood when I was in school. He's still teaching, too, and has no plans to retire.) He seemed delighted by the entire evening, including the carillon recital and the church setting. He called the organ platying seamless, and he liked O'Malia's get-up — Chaplin-like bowler hat, dark coat, bowtie, and Bermuda shorts. He said it captured Chaplin's comedy dynamic — dignity above the belt, strange things going on below — that I remmeber him talking about years ago. Now that I think about it, I realize he must have been a great teacher, because I remember much of what he said.

Good to see you again, Brother.

New column, at last

2011-07-12T18:05:00.000-04:00

Today I posted my first column for the paper since April - a gap of nearly three months. (The link is at left.) The dry spell began after the previous reporter for The Springfield Sun resigned, and I spent close to two months writing news and features. After our new writer came on board about a month ago, I just didn't feel like it, which is always a viable excuse. I wish it had been an option in grade school.

Patriotic pap

2011-07-10T11:34:00.006-04:00

Classical music stations go in for playing American music on the Fourth of July, just as they can't resist playing Messiah at Christmas or the Easter Oratorio at Easter. Unfortunately, much of the American music they play is not of the first rank, since most American music that would appeal to the classical radio demographic is not of the first rank. They subject us to a lot of stuff they wouldn't be caught dead broadcasting the rest of the year, such as the overblown symphonies of John Knowles Paine or William Henry Fry. Or they go in for the better, lighter fare from Gershwin and Copland, which is all very well, except there isn't very much of it, at least not enough to fill a whole day of programing.

Or they play a lot of Sousa. Now, I like Sousa, but while he's classic, he's not exactly classical, and the militarism bothers me. As I've noted elewhere, Sousa wrote great tunes that make up the soundtrack of American imperialism. I remember a few years ago, Bernard Holland, writing about Elliott Carter's Double Concerto for Harspichord and Piano, referred to what he called the "gray militancy" of the percussion parts. When I read that, I thought, you've got it all wrong: militancy is never gray. It's always cheerful, upbeat, happy. It's important that the boys are humming while they march to their deaths. Otherwise their heads would be too clear, and they might start thinking about why they don't want to go.

We do have one great piece of American classical music that pertains specifically to the Fourth of July holiday — Charles Ives's Fourth of July. It's so good you don't need the holiday as an excuse to listen to it, and yet I can't remember the last time I heard it on the radio. Brief as it is, it's much too raucous to show up on a wussy station like WRTI. And you'll never, ever hear it on the TV special from the lawn of the U.S. Capitol. So I took it upon myself to play it at home — my own sonic fireworks display, the louder the better. The only other American piece I listened to last Monday day was Elliott Carter's snappy little ASKO Concerto. Not really Americana, I grant you, but then, a lot of great American music isn't. It doesn't feel the need to be.

What did Bruckner want?

2011-07-10T10:43:00.005-04:00

Oh, what to any of us want?

Benjamin Korstvedt has a clear and interesting article in The New York Times regarding the various editions of Bruckner's symphonies. It was helpful to me, since I've long found talk about Bruckner editions only slightly less confusing than the hubbub surrounding the chronology of the music of Charles Ives. The liner notes of every Bruckner album you buy have something to say the version used in the performance, and they all say the same thing: that the first published editions of the symphonies contain revisions and cuts that the naive, insecure Bruckner accepted on the advice of well-meaning but misguided friends, and only the editions based on his original manuscripts give us an clear idea of his real intentions.

Korstvedt says this is all hooey. Simply put, his contention is that Bruckner wanted and approved of the revisions that appear in the first published editions, and that the idea that he was somehow pressured into them against his better judgment is based on unprovable cliches about his character. This makes sense to me. I have the same problem, even at my lowly level. Whenever I go back over something I've written, I always find things that could be shortened, more felicitously phrased, or cut entirely. It's possible Bruckner felt the same way.

As a music consumer, though, I'm almost hoping Korstvedt is wrong, because my set of the complete Bruckner symphonies, with Eugen Jochum conducting the Dresden Staatskapelle, proudly avails itself of the Urtext versions edited by Richard Haas and Leopold Nowak — the very editions Krostvedt calls into question. So now, I ask myself, where do I go for my authentic Bruckner fix? And given the rage for the Urtexte that has ruled Bruckner performance since at least the 1960s, are there any recordings of the earlier published editions left in the catolog? Just how much more shopping and expense will Korstvedt's new scholarly fashion require?

Still More Carter

2011-06-30T19:31:00.008-04:00

Last week, I recounted my impressions of Elliott Carter's new Concertino for bass clarinet and chamber orchestra, which received its US premiere June 18 in New York City. It seems, however, I'm still not quite up to date. An even newer work by Mr. Carter, a double concerto for piano, percussion, and chamber orchestra, titled "Conversations" and written when the composer was a spry 101, has just been performed for the the first time in the UK, and if reviews from the Telegraph, The Financial Times, The Guardian, and the Arts Desk can be believed, its an exiting, major new piece.They're using words like witty, dazzling, pungent and beautifully engineered, zip, and zest to describe it.(But, seriously, who trusts the judgment of mere Brits when it comes to modern American music? We must wait until our neo-con populist American critics weigh in before we may express an informed opinion.)

So when is it coming to the States? The Boosey website gives no indication.

The title, Conversations, by the way, is in keeping with Mr. Carter's penchant, more pronounced in recent years, for describing his music in ways that evoke people talking — what Andrew Clark calls his "succinct musical metaphors for social interchange." In a sense, he is continuing a pattern established by Charles Ives, who called the first two movements of his Second String Quartet "Discussions" and "Arguments." That example appears to have stuck with Mr. Carter. But if he wants to continue, I'd like to suggest a few less cerebral, more intimate forms of discourse: How about "Flirtations," for clarinet and percussion?

"Seductions," for piano and strings?

"Phone Sex," for trombone and orchestra?

Dreary Sunday

2011-06-26T16:23:00.003-04:00

I had intended to hear the The Crossing in Chestnut Hill this afternoon, but I'm home nursing what feels like a sprained foot. I have no idea how this happened. I woke up fine yesterday, but by mid-afternoon it hurt like the the dickens, and it was even worse this morning. I don't remember hitting it or twisting it. I've been chomping acetominophen like M&Ms, and that's helped somewhat, but I think the best strategy would be to stay off it for a day.

So, I read some more the The Plague while listening to Eugen Jochum's recording of Bruckner's Eighth and Haitink's recording of Images and Jeux by Debussy. Fortunately, it's not very hot this afternoon, or I'd really be laid out. It's clouding up now, and there's a cool breeze coming in the bedroom window. It's beginning to feel like rain.

Totally worth the trip

2011-06-19T15:32:00.005-04:00

Last night I took the train to New York, where I attended the US premiere of Elliott Carter’s Concertino for Bass Clarinet and Chamber Orchestra. I almost didn’t go. It’s only a nine-minute piece, and I figured with the cost of the ticket, train fare from and parking in Trenton, and subway fare from Penn Station to the Miller Theater, it worked out to about $7.50 per minute. Plus I had been invited to a good concert in Philadelphia I could have attended for free.

But I made the right choice. The Concertino, though brief, was substantial and memorable. (And let’s face it, nine minutes is about as long as Carter writes anymore. If any new piece of his is going to be substantial, it’s going to be substantial in under ten.)

Carter wrote it as a surprise for the clarinetist Virgil Blackwell, who is also his personal assistant. According John Schaefer, the evening’s emcee, the first inkling Blackwell had that the piece was in the works was when he received a fax with a few measures of music scribbled on it and from Carter that said, “Is this possible?”
The piece was receiving its US premiere. It’s very much in Carter’s recent lyrical vein, a la the Flute Concerto. It appeared to be in three sections — fast – slow – fast. The slow section was especially lovely, with the soloist playing against soft, sustained chords provided by a trio of flutes — more like a sextet, really, since each of the flutists was required to double on alto, bass or piccolo. The rest of the ensemble consisted of strings, contrabassoon (!), piano, and the usual (for Carter) array of percussion, all of which seemed to be used largely as punctuation. Louis Karchin conducted the Orchestra of the League of Composers.

Mr. Carter was in attendance, looking somewhat thinner than he did when I last saw him, a few days after his hundredth birthday. He received a warm and extended ovation after the performance. Blackwell seemed exhilarated during the intermission, when I overheard him telling friends what a great piece he thought it was. It goes without saying we need a recording.

The rest of the program was also very strong, which brought the evening's cost per minute down a bit. Fred Sherry showed up to reprise Babbitt’s More Melismata, which I heard him play in Princeton two weeks ago. I especially liked Shulamit Ran’s Silent Voices, a short chamber symphony receiving its US premiere. The work was inspired by a Holocaust poem, which was read as a preface by baritone Peter Van Derick.

The second half consisted entirely of world premieres: Sound Merger by Arthur Kreiger; Talking Points (Right Wing Echo Chamber) by David Rakowski; and Violent, Violent Sea by the young hottie Missy Mazzoli. They all had much grander, fatter sonorities than the Carter or the Ran, which made them attractive to listen to, though they didn’t seem as rich in ideas. The Kreiger included an electronic soundtrack. The Rakowski was a small concerto for cello soloist (Fred Sherry again) and string orchestra that the composer described as “apolitical music with apolitical title.”

Rakowski is something of a clown, and the classical music world can certainly use a few of those. He joked around a lot during his interview with Schaefer, and, after receiving his ovation when the piece was over, returned to his seat by jumping off the front of the stage. The voice and the delivery reminded me somewhat of Garry Shandling.

Mazzoli’s piece seemed to be built around glissandi in the marimba and vibraphone, and there were a lot of wavy figures in the string writing, as befits a piece about the sea. It was all very solid and professional, but as I remarked to another listener after the performance, I liked La Mer better the first time.

“Let’s not go there,” he said.

New book on modern music

2011-06-17T14:10:00.003-04:00

One of the things I didn’t expect would happen when I started this blog — but which I certainly should have expected — is that I occasionally receive requests from publishers and recording companies to help their advertising by mentioning them on this site. Usually, I ignore them, but this week an announcement for a new book from the University of Rochester Press showed up in my inbox, and I thought I’d pass it along. It looks interesting enough that I’d like to pick up a copy for myself, if it ever shows up on sale anywhere for much less that the $49.95 list:

Three Questions for Sixty-five Composers
Bálint András Varga

Do today's composers draw inspiration from life experiences or from, say, the natural world?

What influences, past and present, have influenced recent composers?
How essential is it for a composer to develop a personal style, and when does this degenerate into self-repetition?

These are questions about which some of the most important composers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century often have quite strong feelings — but have seldom been asked.

In this pathbreaking book, Bálint András Varga puts these three questions to such renowned composers as Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Alberto Ginastera, Sofia Gubaidulina, Hans Werner Henze, Helmut Lachenmann, György Ligeti, Witold Lutoslawski, Luigi Nono, Krzysztof Penderecki, Wolfgang Rihm, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Toru Takemitsu, and Iannis Xenakis. Varga's sensitive English renderings capture the subtleties of their sometimes confident, sometimes hesitant, answers.

All statements from English-speaking composers — such as Milton Babbitt, John Cage, Elliott Carter, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Morton Feldman, Lukas Foss, Steve Reich, Gunther Schuller, and Sir Michael Tippett — consist of the composers' own carefully chosen words.

Three Questions for Sixty-Five Composers is vital reading for anybody interested in the current state of music and the arts.

So there. See it at www.urpress.com.

Loose ends

2011-06-17T14:03:00.001-04:00

As in, “I am at …”

If there’s a Montgomery newspaper on your doorstep this weekend, thank the guys at tech support. Our computers crashed at least five times yesterday while we in the newsroom were trying to lay out our Friday editions. We had a lot of downtime, but the tech people worked tirelessly all day and night to bring us back online. Unfortunately, they could keep us running for only about an hour at a time before the system would crash again. I didn’t get out of there until about twelve-thirty a.m., which is about five hours later than normal. I worked the equivalent of two full shifts. Woke up this morning — this afternoon, actually — with a headache, but I’m home today until the time comes to go out and cover a meeting of the Delaware Valley Amateur Astronomers.

Enough about my measly little life. I learned last week from WPRB DJ Teri Noel Towe that Friday, June 10, was the 100th birthday of the harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick. Towe devoted most of his June 9 show to Kirkpatrick’s recordings, but, of course, being Teri Noel Towe, he wouldn’t play any repertory later than 1760. We heard a lot of Bach and Scarlatti, which was all very fine, but Kirkpatrick was also a great champion of 20th century music. He commissioned Elliott Carter’s wonderful Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano with Two Chamber Orchestras (1961), and played on the premiere recording with the young Charles Rosen on piano and an unidentified orchestra conducted by Gustav Meier. The performance has never made it to CD (though two good alternatives are available), but I found the LP on eBay awhile ago, and I listened to it last weekend, in homage.

More Babbittry — with free beer

2011-06-06T20:23:00.005-04:00

Drove to Princeton University yesterday, an 80-mile round trip, for the music department’s tribute to Milton Babbitt, who died in January. Babbitt taught at Princeton for God knows how many years, and Steven Mackey, the department’s current chairman, said that for a long time after his retirement in 1984, candidates for the composition program would write on their applications that the reason they wanted to come to Princeton is that they wanted to study with him.

First things first: the program was brief — only about an hour — but it was choice. The great Fred Sherry opened with More Melismata for solo cello. Soprano Judith Bettina followed with a charming performance of the Phonemona, accompanied by pianist James Goldsworthy. The title is an example of the kind of wordplay Babbitt enjoyed (I still have trouble pronouncing it) and it refers to the fact that the text of the song consists entirely of discrete English-language phonemes — in short, nonsense syllables. The piece has the feeling of atonal scat, and Bettina sold it with hand gestures that would make you think she was actually telling a story. (I was reminded of Charlie Chaplin singing French-sounding gibberish in Modern Times.) John Link, the Carter expert, told me afterward he would like to see Bettina perform the piece at the Café Carlysle, which did not strike me as a very far-fetched suggestion.

The only piece on the program not by Babbitt was the Brahms Intermezzo Op. 116 No. 4, a piece Babbitt is said to have loved, and which Robert Taub paired with the second of Babbitt’s early Three Compositions for Piano. (At least I think that’s what the Brahms was. I have lost my program. Correct me if I’m wrong.) The two pieces had similar moods and fit together well, and the pairing served to illustrate Babbitt’s frequent assertion, repeated to me later by one of his former students, that his music was in many ways very traditional.

Bettina and Galsworthy then returned for “Penelope’s Night Song,” one of the Three Theatrical Songs Babbitt wrote back in the 1940s for a projected Broadway musical based on the Odyssey. It was an unexpected treat, and indeed, it would not sound out of place at the Café Carlyle, or an early Streisand album. I called for an encore, but either they didn’t hear me, or they decided to ignore me.

Last, and most substantial, was the String Quartet No. 6 from 1993 performed beautifully by the Zukofsky String Quartet. It’s hard to describe exactly what goes on in this piece, but it has a rich, warm, consonant sound that I would not hesitate to call Mozartean, or maybe Handelian. Babbitt does have this quality. There is a warmth and humor in his music you don't find in a major influence like Schoenberg.

The recital was followed by a reception downstairs at Alexander Hall in a room that was much too small to accommodate the crowd comfortably — and there was a crowd. The Richardson Auditorium had been quite full. To commemorate Babbitt’s love of beer, there were free samples of some of his favorite brews, primarily Belgian brands like Chimay and Duvay, as I recall, and, to commemorate his love of food, there were hors d’oeuvres-sized won tons and ginger pancakes, in addition to the usual buffet of fruit, cheese, crackers and cookies. (Reports are he also loved baseball and horse racing. It’s surprising no one thought to get up a pepper game.)

Fans and students traveled long distances for the tribute. I chatted with the composers Stanley Jordan, who flew in from Los Angeles, and Jane O’Leary, who came over from Ireland. Both had studied with Babbitt at Princeton. Lance Morrisson, another composer, did not, but he described himself as a fan, and he flew out from Missouri just for the event.

I also met Betty Ann Babbitt, the composer’s daughter, and a woman introduced to me only as Paula, Betty Ann’s partner of 27 years. I never spoke to Milton — and everyone there called him Milton, not Babbitt — but Paula was able to give me a little insight into his work habits. She didn’t remember any sketch books, she said. It seemed Milton worked note by note, and if the way a piece was turning out didn’t satisfy, he would throw it out and start over. She also told me that after about 2006, he was unable to complete any new music. The kind of work he produced required more concentration than he was able to give it.

I hung out a long time, almost until the reception room had cleared out completely. Finding myself in Princeton on a sunny spring afternoon, I browsed through Labyrinth Books and the Princeton Record Exchange. In an astounding feat of self-discipline, I limited myself to one purchase at each place. By coincidence, each one had something to do with Charles Ives. The book was Stuart Feder’s biography of Ives, My Father’s Song. The CD was Stokowski’s classic recording of the Orchestral Set No. 2.

My only regret is that I didn’t get to speak with “Bob,” my favorite DJ at WPRB Princeton, who told me he was going to be there. He e-mailed me a picture to make it easier for me to spot him, but spotting one middle-aged, balding white guy at a Babbitt concert is a little like playing Where’s Waldo?

Die Walkure

2011-05-25T14:29:00.005-04:00

I've been backed up with work and some other projects, but I don't want to let too much time to pass without mentioning the Metropolitan Opera's HD broadcast of Die Walkure, which I saw May 14 at the Neshaminy Mall. The cast was top-notch, the orchestra sounded great, and when the ensemble got going, I was rarely aware of the time passing, although, as in all Wagner’s music dramas, an enormous amount of it did. I guess by now everyone knows the performance started 45 minutes late because of a computer glitch with the complex, automated set, which, unfortunately, has become the unwanted focus of much of attention paid to this production. When it works, the results can be dazzling, but when it doesn't, well, singers lose their balance and audiences sit on their hands in the theater.

You can read detailed reviews of the production elsewhere, so I’d like to take a few moments and talk about stage business. As a piece of theater, The Ring of the Nibelung consists of long conversations punctuated by demands for stage effects that are impossible to achieve with any degree of literalness. The rainbow bridge, the Ride of the Valkyries, the Magic Fire, the Dragon and Brunnhilde's immolation often inspire stage directors to great feats of imagination, but no one seems to what to do when the characters are just standing around singing to one another. That problem demands real imagination, and no one seems to have come up with a satisfactory solution. The blocking for much of the Met's Walkure was static, as it probably had to be, and as all blocking for every Wagnerian production, ever, probably has been. Since Wagner’s dialogue is sung much more slowly than people actually talk, the stage movement is much slower than people actually move. (I noticed the same tendency a few years ago in the Met's production of Tristan and Isolde.) In Act III, when Wotan explains to Brunnhilde just why he's going to strip her of her immortality and put her to sleep on a hot rock, Bryn Terfel strutted back and forth aimlessly across the stage. Leading with his stomach, he reminded me of an armor-plated Ralph Kramden. It might not be too noticeable in the Met’s cavernous hall, where performers onstage can look no bigger than mice, but on the big screen, with all the close-ups, every gesture and expression are exaggerated, noticeable, and ultimately, distracting.

And what’s with Brunnhilde’s get up? She looked like a cross between Wonder Woman and a trout.

Fortunately, there was all that great music to hold our attention.

I still note his passing

2011-05-19T12:45:00.003-04:00

Charles Ives died on this date in 1954. It was only three and a half years before I was born, so I'm guessing that was too soon for him to be reincarnated as me. I have some random thoughts about this unique composer that I've been meaning to jot down for some time, but for now, it will suffice to note the anniversary.

My favorite rap song

2011-05-04T15:34:00.000-04:00

And what did you expect?

Follow up to my post on The Rite of Spring

2011-04-30T13:21:00.003-04:00

I get to do this, because it's my blog

Sonnet — May 29, 1913

In times like these, without a certain measure
(Grow up; a clock slows down as mass increases),
One’s self divides, as in a fractured mirror.
Repetition (only) signifies.
Silence. Breath. Deceptive bits of leisure.
Then blocks of seconds pound the earth to pieces.
Rivers break like cannon coming near
As Russia springs to life. The virgin dies.
Volcanoes! — Nah, who needs another Strauss?
“It expresses nothing but itself.”
Numbers from the pit are all you hear while
Smoking in the wings. They riot in the house,
Knowing no way back across the gulf.
You expected nothing less. Admit it. Smile.

Joe Barron
1997

Whose 'Rite' is your favorite?

2011-04-29T15:45:00.005-04:00

A performance can make or break one's attitude toward a piece of music. I have to confess, as much as I like Stravinsky, it took me years to warm up to The Rite of Spring. I was always excited by Par I, but I would begin to squirm and check my watch during Part I. The reason was plain enough; the only recording I knew (and I'm talking high school and college here), was Stravinsky's own, with the Columbia Symphony, which is something less than definitive. Later, I bought a cassette (so that pins us down to the early 80s) of Michael Tilson Thomas and the BSO, and when I heard that, I said to myself, "OK, I'm starting to get this." Then, on radio, I heard the version by Solti and the Chicago Symphony, and I said, "OK, I'm really starting to get this." I went right out and bought the London LP.

In the years since, I've collected and tried several versions on CD — by Gergiev, Abbado, Maazel, Boulez, Tilson Thomas again (with the San Francisco) — but none of them quite got into my blood the way Solti's did, and still does. I'm happy to report I've just supplemented the LP with an out-of-print, used CD from Amazon, and the performance is everything I remembered from the record: precise, controlled, clear, large-scale and dynamic, and it maintains its momentum right to the end. For me, it justifies the Rite's reputation as the breakthrough to the 20th century.

Anyone else in the blogosphere have any particular favorite recordings?

Christopher Hitchens on the royal wedding

2011-04-29T15:36:00.004-04:00

Whatever your attitude toward the royal family (and it probably isn't worth the time to even have an attitude), or toward Christopher Hitchens, this piece is brilliantly written. I especially like "the morose, balding, New Age crank and licensed busybody that we flinch from today." There is nothing like a little bile to elevate the old word count.

I thought the whole point of the g.d. revolution was to free ourselves from these people. Why all the interest in watching them mate?

Selig sind die Toten

2011-04-19T20:15:00.004-04:00

I don't intend to give a detailed review here, but I would like to acknowledge the two excellent choral concerts I attended in the past week. My compliments to John Sall and the Abington Symphony and Choir for A German Requiem April 10 and David Spitko and the Choristers for Dvorak's Stabat Mater in Upper Dublin April 16. Soloists in each were outstanding, and the choruses were glorious. I think the German Requiem is a more impressive piece of music than the Dvorak, which doesn't take longer by the clock, but seems longer. Perhaps that's only because I'm not as familiar with it. (The concert included three other pieces, too, which, though short, might have been overkill.)

My only complaint, besides some wavering tones in the strings of both orchestras, is that the Requiem was done in English. It didn't really detract from the experience for me, but as the bass soloist told me afterward, it just sounds better in German.

The Choristers are planning an evening of Americana next season to include Porgy and Bess and Copland's Old American Songs. I told David that if he programmed Ives's Harvest Home Chorales, I'd give him a thousand words in Ticket. He never got back to me.

No further concerts planned at present. All listening will be done at home, over speakers.

Sing along with death

2011-04-06T11:25:00.002-04:00

Spring is the season of passion and death. If you don't believe me, look to the concert calendar. Funerals have long been an inspiration for composers, of course, and if you sing in a choir, you're going to appear in your share of Requiems, but with Good Friday coming up, demise is uppermost on the minds of our choral directors. Two groups in suburban Philadelphia will present memorial concerts over the next two weekends. On April 10, the choir at Abington Presbyterian Church will perform Brahms' German Requiem, and on the 16th, the Choristers (formerly the more provincial Choristers of Upper Dublin) will sing Dvorak's "Stabat Mater." Both concerts are dedicated to the memory of those who have died in the past year, or earlier, if one’s grief is great enough. Names submitted by the performers, congregants or audience members will be printed in the programs. (See my previews at left.)

Of the two pieces, I guess I will find the German Requiem the more congenial. Brahms was the sort of agnostic that was becoming increasingly common in the 19th century, though he knew his Lutheran Bible well, and the verses he chose for the Requiem don't fit the standard Christian model of redemption through pain. (I have to question the thought-process of a God who cannot redeem sinners without staging an act of torture for their benefit.) Every program booklet ever published on the work points out that Jesus is never mentioned, and, despite the promise of resurrection near the end, the emphasis is squarely on comforting the living who are left behind. Before the first performance of the work — appropriately enough, on Good Friday, 1868 — K.M. Rheintaler, the rehearsal director, tried to persuade the composer to add a movement that would be more in keeping with the spirit of the day. According to the Grove Dictionary, “Brahms politely but firmly refused.” And for that we may thank him. Tacking on a conventional expression of piety would have ruined the emotional and intellectual integrity of the piece. The music is more genuine, more sincere and more effective without it. I am looking forward to the concert, even if the performance will likely be uneven, as performances by community groups usually are.

Dvorak, a devout Catholic, never understood Brahms’ decision, either, and his “Stabat Mater” does end with just such an expression of piety. To be fair, though, so does the poem he set. “When my body shall die,” it says, “grant that my soul be given the glory of paradise.” David Spitko, the Chorister’s director, described Dvorak’s music to me as progressing from darkness to triumph. Dvorak had lost three children in the years before he wrote the piece, and he was entitled to his feelings, but I have lost a child, too, and my own feelings are somewhat different. Nevertheless, I want to hear the music. Much of Dvorak’s vast output is rarely performed. Think about it. Beyond the handful of “name” pieces like the “New World” Symphony or the “American” String Quartet, how much of it do we really know well? I’ve never heard any of the operas, and I don’t know how many of them I can even name. I’m grateful, then, that David and company have chosen to revive a major but underexposed work.

Oh, by the way, the performance of the Requiem performance. You have no excuse not to go, if you are anywhere in the area.

Barron's paradox

2011-03-23T18:58:00.006-04:00

In response to Anthony Tommasini's list of the ten greatest composers of all time, Michael Zwiebach of San Francisco Classical Voice has posted a list of the ten most underrated composers of all time. I think it's an excellent idea, and I applaud the willingness to present an alternative history, but I sense a paradox at work here: it seems to me that to be excluded from such a list gives anyone greater claim to inclusion. By definition, an unjustly neglected composer who isn't mentioned would be more unjustly neglected than a composer who is.

A corollary to the paradox states that a definitive list of the most obscure x can never be compiled.

That said, my nomination for most underrated composer of the last century would have to be Carl Nielsen, who didn't make Zwiebach's list (and hence is therefore even more deserving). CN is the equal of Sibelius, imho, but he doesn't get played nearly as often, and when he is, the critics are generally no more than respectful, and often not even that. They seem to feel that one Nordic composer should be enough for anyone. Pity: his symphonies are truly extraordinary.

I was happy to see that Lisa Hirsch agrees he should have been included.

Mea Maxima Culpa

2011-03-23T10:29:00.005-04:00

A reader wrote to one of the editors at Montgomery Newspapers pointing out that in my Ticket article on the Old York Road Symphony, I misspelled the Leonore Overture as Leonora. I looked back at my original Word document, and yes, indeed, the name is misspelled. I regret the error. I repudiate the error. I abhor the error. And I cannot account for it. If you walked up to me on the street and asked me to spell Leonore, the odds are six in eight I would get it right. Of course, I'll never make the mistake again.

Another editor also pointed out that there appears to be someone else out there as stuffy on these matters as I am.

In any event, the concert, previewed in the article, was enjoyable, even if the orchestra did sound rather distant in the cavernous auditorium at Abington Senior High School. The three young soloists were outstanding, particularly Philip Carter, who got to set fire to his fingerboard in the last movement of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. Gabriel Gordon called his Albuquerque Youth Symphony one of the best youth orchestras in the country, and the kids lived up to his opinion of them. Their precision was almost military. It was intimidating. The group was also bigger than the Old York Road Symphony. With 84 musicians, it took up more of the stage and put out a bigger, brighter sound. But I really could live without hearing the Barber Adagio again. A great piece, surely, but overplayed, and it isn't sturdy enough to bear up under all the weight that's been placed on it as our unofficial, national music of mourning.

Sunday I was back in Abington, helping out at a cabaret concert and luncheon buffet she organized at Abington Presbyterian Church. I helped carry things in from the car (my back and legs still hurt) and stood behind the food tables directing traffic. Katie Eagleson was the vocalist, and the backup band included the great Al Harrison on trumpet. Katie sang from the great American songbook, as well as a novelty song about ducks and La Vie en Rose, which was a treat. Crowd was mostly older: a gentleman who purchased one of Katie's CDs walked with a cane and told me the songs reminded him of his youth. That made me rather sad: no great music should be limited to single generation.

Elliott Carter's new double concerto

2011-03-21T18:30:00.005-04:00

To follow up on a previous post: It appears my lament for the end of Elliott Carter's career was premature. His latest piece, a 10-minute double concerto for piano and percussion titled Conversations, is now listed at the Boosey and Hawkes website. Completion date is given as 2010, and the first performance is scheduled for June 26 of this year. Soloist will be Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Colin Currie. Oliver Knussen will conduct the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.

So that's good news: A new piece, from a 102-year-old man. Or maybe he was 101 when he finished it.

He'll put someone's eye out with that stick

2011-03-18T17:24:00.002-04:00

I don't care what anyone says. This is what music is for:

More Carter in the pipeline

2011-03-18T11:35:00.005-04:00

Decca Records announced yesterday it has signed the young cellist Alisa Weilerstein to a recording contract. Her first release will consist of a warhorse (Elgar's Cello Concerto) designed to mover product, coupled with a contemporary work (Elliott Carter's concerto) designed to show off her range. Not a bad way to debut, from a marketing standpoint. The orchestra will be conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

Personally, I'm looking forward to it. Anyone who knows me knows I operate in a manner opposite from that of most listeners. The producers expect us to buy Weilerstein's CD for the Elgar, then explore the Carter when we're feeling adventurous. But I don't think I've ever heard the Elgar, and a new Carter CD will furnish me with the perfect excuse to acquaint myself with it.

This will make the third commercial recording of Carter's Cello Concerto, an unusually high number for an atonalist orchestral work that is only about 10 years old. (It was completed in 2000.) The usual pattern for contemporary music a premiere recording followed by dead silence. Chamber works and solo pieces have a better chance, of course, since they rely on only few dedicated performers. The record for recordings of a modernist piece must be held by Carter's own Night Fantasies for solo piano, which has been recorded commerically by:

Ursula Opppens (twice)
Paul Jacobs
Charles Rosen
Winston Choi
Stephen Drury
Aleck Karis
Pierre-Laurent Aimard
Florence Millet
and
Louise Bessette

On the subject of Elliott Carter: I am afraid the run of masterpieces may be coming to an end at last. Mr. Carter is 102, and he seems to have stopped composing. Boosey and Hawkes, Mr. Carter's publisher, lists no pieces completed in 2010 on its website, although a Boosey press release from last October said he was working on a double concerto for piano and percussion. I have not heard that the piece has been completed. I think A Sunbeam's Architecture, on poetry of E.E. Cummings, may have been completed last year as well, although performance has been delayed pending the resolution of copyright problems. This may truly be it: no matter how old Mr. Carter gets, the end of his long creative life may be in sight. It is a sad prospect.

Why it's always a violinist

2011-03-09T10:40:00.003-05:00

I spoke the other day with Yoon Jae Lee, the music director of the Old York Road Symphony, about the winners of the orchestra's annual youth soloist contest. (Link to the article is at left.) I made the point that winners usually seem to be either violinists or pianists, and to my surprise, he had an explanation ready. The competition is open to any instrumentalist, he said, but wind and brass players take longer to become real virtuosi, because young children lack the physical strength to produce a grownup sound from a trombone or a bassoon. They just don't have the lung power. Even smaller woodwinds like flute and clarinet require more breath and lip control than most children can muster.

This is not something I ever considered, so I can honestly say I learned something last week.

BTW, Old York Road is in Abington, Montgomery County, Pa. Look it up on Google maps.

For the Record

2011-03-04T12:01:00.005-05:00

In this morning's New York Times, critic Anthony Tommasini — he of the top ten greatest composers of all time — expatiates on the departure of James Levine from the Boston Symphony Orchestra. On the topic of Maestro Levine's championship of modern music, Mr. Tommasini has this to say:

He was criticized in many quarters for his intense devotion to complex modernist composers like Elliott Carter, Charles Wuorinen and Milton Babbitt. Not that these giants were not deserving of advocacy. But there were so many other composers and styles of contemporary music that Boston audiences were not hearing. Still, patrons and critics were willing to indulge Mr. Levine in his intellectual passions, as long as he would be there to make his case for this music and carry out his plans.

But he was not. In 2008, as part of the orchestra’s celebration of Mr. Carter’s 100th birthday, the Tanglewood Music Center’s annual festival of contemporary music was devoted entirely to Mr. Carter, an extreme programming concept. Mr. Levine was determined to immerse the young fellowship musicians at the center and Tanglewood audiences in Mr. Carter’s compositions. But illness forced him to withdraw from the entire festival and to miss most of the Tanglewood program that summer.

The second paragraph here presents an incomplete picture of what went on at Tanglewood that summer, and I was there. First, I question whether devoting a single week to our greatest living composer on the occasion of his hundredth birthday is in any way "extreme." More to the point, Mr. Tommasini neglects to mention that Oliver Knussen and other skilled and dedicated conductors stepped in for Mr. Levine and brought the festival off without a hitch. The young performers got their immersion without his presence. Mr. Carter was delighted with the performances, and the reviews of Mr. Tommasini's colleague Allan Kozinn were quite positive. Mr. Levine was surely missed, but in some ways, he wasn't. He set the machine in motion, and it ran of itself. The BSO gave only one performance, on the final night of the festival, an all-Carter program conducted by Oliver Knussen and Shi-Yeong Sung — "to superb effect," in Mr. Kozinn's phrase.

And I'd still rather hear Carter and Babbitt than all those other kinds of contemporary music that Mr. Tommasini says Mr. Levine overlooked. A lot of them are godawful.

It's astounding to me that a critic would be so harsh and unfeeling toward a man with such serious health problems. Since when do we blame people for kidney failure? Mr. Levine should be thanked, and we should wish him well. He tried his best given his condition, and if he stayed in denial a little too long, it was the kind of failure that comes only with great ambition and accomplishment. The world hasn't come to an end.

Project/Object

2011-02-16T16:30:00.002-05:00

Project/Object, the band dedicated to the music of Frank Zappa (I don't like the term "tribute band"), will play the Sellersville Theater this Sunday. It's a little late for a 70th birthday celebration, but in my mind, it will honor the occasion. Lead vocalists this time around are Ray White and Ike Willis, from Frank's '70s and '80's bands, just as they were last time around. I wanted to re-interview Ray (first time I spoke with him was in 2009), but the scheduling didn't work out. I settled for Andre Cholmondeley, Project/Object's founder, who never knew Frank, although "settle" doesn't do justice to our conversation. The link to the article appears at left.

Steven Stull, Milton Babbitt

2011-02-09T19:13:00.006-05:00

Baritone Steven Stull will sing Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer Sunday with the Bryn Athyn, Pa., Orchestra. My interview with him is linked at left. I take no responsibility for the headline.

And, before too much time goes by and it is no longer news, I note with sadness the passing of composer Milton Babbitt, who died Saturday, January 29, at 94. I've been honoring his memory the way one should honor any composer's memory — by listening to his music. Over the past week I've played my CD recording the Second String Quartet, Correspondences for orchestra and tape, None but the Lonely Flute, Around the Horn, Occasional Variations, and perhaps one or two other things. The music is, I have decided, attractive and engaging, and through repeated exposure, I am learning to pick out the incidents, if not follow the story. More listening will follow.

Other bloggers have paid more personal tributes to Babbitt, and I recommend you seek them out online. I heard him speak only once, back in the 1990s, when Orchestra 2001 performed his Transfigured Notes for string orchestra at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. (This was the score that, a couple of years earlier, the Philadelphia Orchestra had commissioned and then rejected as unplayable. It has been played, and recorded, quite well since by other ensembles that actually seem to care about it.) I remember only one thing from the composer’s pre-concert talk: Babbitt said he did not use folk material in his music and he drew his inspiration instead from the likes of Schoenberg and Webern because, he said, "These are my folks."

Like everyone else in the modern world, composers are living much longer than they used to. I find it a disorienting trend. In Beethoven's day, no one was even guaranteed a "late period," and if he got one, it would last at most ten years. Now it can last up to sixty. Careers are now heavily end-loaded, and the late period is the career.

Jennifer Koh

2011-01-25T20:38:00.004-05:00

Last week I interviewed the violinist Jennifer Koh, who will give a recital Feb. 3 in Elkins park, Pa. The link to the article appears at left. I was quite excited to speak with her, since she has recorded the Four Lauds of Elliott Carter. We spoke about twenty minutes. Nothing profound came out of it, but I enjoyed the chat.

I think she's a very beautiful woman, but this same week my managing editor interviewed the singer Rachael Platten. His article also appears in this week's Ticket, and all the buzz from our layout artist and pressmen was about the Platten photos, especially the large one used in the article (as opposed to the cover), which everyone was calling the centerfold. Sorry, Jennifer, I tried to get you noticed.

Ah, and this week, I received my recordings of Andras Schiff playing the Bach English suites, and Andrew Rangel, on Bridge, performing the Ives Sonata No. 1 and the Nielsen Suite Op. 45. An unusual pairing of two of my favorite composers — to my knowledge, the first ever on CD, even though Rnagell, in the booklet, points to some interesting similarities between them. So far I've listened to the Suite. It's a strong, almost stark reading. Very effective. Also very fond of Schiff's rather romantic performance of the Bach. I didn't think I would be (see the romantic reference in teh previous sentence), but at five bucks I couldn't pass it up.

Another day, another list

2011-01-21T12:34:00.007-05:00

Critic Anthony Tommasini publishes his list of the ten greatest classical composers of all time in today's edition of the New York Times. My friend and fellow blogger Lisa Hirsch has called this a fool's errand, and I'm afraid I must agree, although, as the long list of comments following the article shows, the process does serve a purpose in generating intelligent discussion.

My own comment is No. 338. I repost it here (slightly edited) in case you overlooked it:

Nice, safe list. Nothing to disagree with, but nothing to get excited over, either. It's the names that didn't make it - but that "get me through my days," as Mr. Tommasini says - that call the whole list-making enterprise into question. If you love something that isn't demonstrably great, or not demonstrably as great as something else, then, it seems to me, the so-called objective criteria for greatness must lack some important element. Subjectivity must be served, and it is precisely such subjective reactions I find more interesting than discussions of range or influence or historical importance.

My favorite dead composers include Charles Ives and Carl Nielsen, who have taken me places no one else ever has, but I can see why a NYT critic would not include them in a list of "the greatest." On the other hand, I dislike Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, and I doubt any list or any amount of argument is going to convert me, however much the may deserve a seat at the table.

Maybe ten slots just isn't enough. A hundred probably wouldn't be, either.

Another commenter — one after my own heart — noted that Elliott Carter wasn't included. He wasn't even included in the list of composers the Times allowed readers to vote for as their favorites, whereas Samuel Barber and Leonard Bernstein were, and they are much lesser figures, in my humble estimation. But Mr. Tommasini's express criteria include mortality. In his view, one must be dead to be placed among the immortals. So Mr. Carter, at 102, is being penalized for his robust good health.

May he never be included in any list, ever, if it means he goes on living.

How memory works

2011-01-20T19:43:00.003-05:00

Today is my Aunt Ella's birthday. Were she still alive, she'd be 107 years old. (She died in 2001 at age 98). I had forgotten the occasion was pending, and I remembered it only because Keith Olberman said on his broadcast last night, in one of those this-day-in-history" comments, that on Jan. 19, 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt and King Edward VII exchanged history's first transatlantic wireless telegrams.

How did that piece of trivia remind me of Aunt Ella's ? In 1993, when my aunt turned 90, I gave her a newspaper from the day she was born, and the telegrams were the subject of a brief story on Page 1. The other news of the day was unexceptional. The big headline of the day was a fire. It was a New York paper that has long since gone out of business (I forget the title), but I do recall a large fire in one of the outer boroughs.

Now it strikes me that I don't know what happened to the paper when Aunt Ella died.

Ah, now that's more like it

2011-01-14T17:10:00.006-05:00

Received my copy of Donna Coleman's performance of the Concord Sonata in the mail today and have been listening to it for the last hour. I won't compare it favorably to other recordings — we are all involved in the common Ives project, and therefore all on the same side — but I will say I like very much the clarity of Coleman's playing, which keeps the themes in the forefront no matter how thick the textures get. I also like the way she distinguishes between passages of differing mood, sometimes simply with a long pause. There's a song-like quality to the playing, particularly in the Alcotts movement, when in a few spots Coleman seems to take on the role of Bronson Alcott's daughter Beth, idly picking out tunes for her own amusement on the "little old spinet-piano Sophia Thoreau gave to the Alcott children," as Ives describes the scene in his Essays Before a Sonata.

This is an insightful performance that tells a story, as opposed to making a big noise, and it made me remember why I care about this music. If you're in the mood to acquire yet another recording of the Concord, I would recommend it.

The CD also includes fine readings of the Three Page Sonata and the rarely heard Emerson Transcriptions, brief, muscular distillations of material from the Concord Sonatas first movement. As Coleman says in the booklet, Ives couldn't leave this music alone.

No, I don't really like Denk's Ives

2011-01-07T11:33:00.007-05:00

Jeremeny Denk's CD of Charles Ives's two piano sonatas has shown up on several end-of-the-year top-classical lists, and, being a big Ives aficionado, I am grateful to Denk for all his work on behalf of this composer, who seems to be rediscovered every few years, only to fall back into obscurity. The following is my review of the CD, which I have also posted at Amazon:

Jeremy Denk has become perhaps our most visible and articulate champion of the music of Charles Ives, which is all to the good. I very much enjoyed his performance, with Soovin Kim, of the composer's four violin sonatas in Philadelphia a few years ago, and so, when I heard he had recorded the two piano sonatas, I was excited. I asked for and received the CD for Christmas, and having listened to it, I have to say it's a disappointment. A big one. I have almost a dozen recordings of the Concord, fewer of the First Sonata, and Denk had not replaced any of them in my affections. He seems to think Ives is an American Liszt (as if we needed one), and he goes in for romantic bombast, banging away in the forte sections while smoothing over the mood shifts and jokes with lots of pedal. The result is aggressive in a way that is often mistaken for Ivesian, but it's also homogenized. The Emerson movement suffers in particular, losing much of its grandeur. The Thoreau movement, by contrast, is overly misty, like a parody of Debussy. (The flute at the end is so distant and washed out that its entrance makes hardly any impression at all.) Ives's famous wit has been suppressed, too, and his homespun elements lack flavor: the hymns aren't very hymnlike, the rags aren't very raggy, and you can't march to the marches. And for the very first time in my life, the First Sonata left me with a headache. This is Ives for people who would rather be listening to something else. (One blogger wrote of this CD, "You don't get many reminders that Ives was a contemporary of Rachmaninoff and Busoni." And this is a good thing?)
Give Denk credit, though. He managed to do something no other performer has ever done: he made me question whether I have been wrong about the value of Ives's music for so many years. Needing reassurance, I went back to Alan Mandel, Nina Deutsch and William Masselos, and gratefully, I found it in them. I don't dislike this recording, exactly — I could never really dislike any committed performance of Ives — but I disagree with it, and I disagree also with one of the other reviewers here. Definitive, as Ives himself might say, "it ain't."

To wash the taste out of my mouth, as it were, I've pushed by CD acquisition scheduled forward and ordered Donna Coleman's CD of the Concord. I listened to a couple excerpts at Amazon, and it sounds promising.

Donna Coleman

2010-12-31T11:15:00.002-05:00

Spent a half hour yesterday interviewing Donna Coleman, a pianist from Ambler, Pa., who now lives in Australia. She is back for the holidays (it's summer vacation down under), and she'll be giving a couple of recitals in the area this month, one of them Jan. 18 in Flourtown. Program will consist of Bach, Chopin, some classic and modern rags, and the Cuban dances of Ignacio Cervantes, and Donna will be speaking on the similarities between them and the development of one to the other.

I was excited for the chance to speak with her because she has recorded the two piano sonatas of Charles Ives, as well as several of the shorter pieces. She sounded impressed on the phone when I told her I had about dozen recordings of the Concord, though not hers. (It's now on my wish list.) Unfortunately, she had so much to say in our time together, we never mentioned Ives at all.

The article will be out in about a week.

A Happy New Year to all seven or eight of you.

Happy birthday, Elliott Carter

2010-12-11T21:08:00.011-05:00

Elliott Carter as he would appear on South Park.

Elliott Carter turned 102 today, and I just can't let the occasion pass. He's my favorite living composer, as anyone who has ever met me is aware, and he stands high among my favorite dead ones as well.

I'm guessing Mr. Carter celebrated his birthday the way he celebrates every new day of his life — by getting out of bed and writing music. He is still sharp, still vital, and while it is likely his greatest work is behind him, each new piece is still a welcome adventure. Every so often, one of them, such as the excellent Nine by Five for wind quintet, premiered just last February, will recapture the power of the music from Carter's peak years, the 1960s and '70s. One never knows, does one?

If I live to his age, I'll be happy if I can feed myself.

I celebrated the way I always do — with an in-home concert. Given the richness of Carter's output, selecting the program is always a challenge. I settled on a few favorites: the Oboe Concerto and the Second String Quartet, in performances recorded for me from BBC broadcasts by e-pal and fellow Carterphile Colin Green, and for the finale, the great Concerto for Orchestra (1969) in the rip-snorting reading by Pierre Boulez and the NY Philharmonic. (The recording is available only through the orchestra, in a six-CD box set of American music. The full set cost $90 and was worth every penny for those 21 minutes alone.)

For the past couple of months, I've been listening to Bach almost exclusively, and so I returned to Carter's music "with quite fresh ears for an old man," as Stravinsky wrote in a similar context. It was an invigorating experience. And the night is still young. I might return to the stereo before it's over.

Finally, I'd like to send Carter-Day greetings to the other bloggers and chatroom lurkers around the net who have wished the composer many happy returns of the day (and how many more of those can there be?): Doundou Tchil, Mark Berry, Steve Hicken, Bruce Hodges, Karl Henning, and Paul Yin, to name a few. You are all my friends in spirit.

Addendum: Here is a photo of Mr. Carter with Pierre Boulez (I'll leave it to you to guess which is which) taken Dec. 6 at an 85th-birthday concert for Boulez in NYC. Thanks to Bruce Hodges. When this was taken, Mr. Carter was five days shy of his 102d birthday.

Just hear those sleigh bells ring-a-ling ...

2010-12-05T14:42:00.003-05:00

Say what you want about Messiah or the Christmas Oratorio. For me, the season doesn’t start until I hear LeRoy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride.” And it has to be the original orchestral version, with the clip-clopping and the whip snapping and the neighing at the end — none this Johnny-Mathis-coffee-and-pumpkin-pie-by-the-fire bullshit. This year I was fortunate to hear it early — the day after Thanksgiving over a car radio. So now I’m in the holiday mood. It won’t last, so I’ll take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy (insert your holiday here).

Anderson (1908-75) was my favorite composer for a little while when I was a teenager. (Am I square or what?) I don’t listen to him much anymore, but I’ve always been grateful to him for teaching me how to listen to an orchestra at a time when no one I know was listening to orchestras. His music still occupies a little soft spot in my heart. It’s wonderful, light stuff, very catchy and tuneful — the equal, in its bouncy American way, of Johann Strauss the younger, imho.

I once had the pleasure of speaking to Anderson’s widow. I had to double check a title or something for an article, and I went to the LeRoy Anderson website and found a phone number to call for information. I called the number and left a message, and within an hour or so Mrs. Anderson herself called me back. I was stunned. We spoke for a long while, as I recall. She seemed genuinely happy anyone would take an interest in her husband’s music, and I was surprised to learn that the Andersons knew the Elliott Carters. Carter and Anderson were born the same year, both attended Harvard at the same time, and for a while they lived “right down the road” from one another, as Mrs. Anderson put it — the Carters in Waccabuc, New York, the Andersons just over the line in Connecticut.

Besides being classmates and composers, Carter and Anderson shared a talent for languages. Carter speaks French and Italian and reads German and Greek and Latin and heaven knows what else. Anderson, the son of Swedish immigrants, mastered all of the Scandinavian tongues.

Steve Martin is right

2010-12-01T13:27:00.003-05:00

Not much to say about this, except that I appreciate the thought.

A local treasure dies

2010-11-18T18:26:00.002-05:00

Yvonne Patterson, who had a long career as a dancer, died last week at the age of 100. She lived in Flourtown, the heart of Springfield Sun country, and I had the privilege of interviewing her on the occasion of what turned out to be her final birthday, when her friends at the Springfield Township High School swimming pool threw her a modest party.

Yvonne was a very big deal, a breathing bit of cultural history in a small suburb that has little use for culture. She danced for Balanchine beginning in the 1930s, and — most exciting as far as I was concerned — she took part in the 1937 premiere of Stravinsky's ballet Jeu de Cartes, which the composer conducted. (The program, presented at the Metropolitan Opera House, also included Fairy's Kiss and Apollo.) I was eager to hear her recollections of Stravinsky, but after seventy years, she had none to give. She remembered being introduced to him briefly at a rehearsal, and that he was short and not very impressive. Then she suddenly stopped herself.

"Oh, don't write that," she said. "If you write that I won't talk to you."

So I didn't write it.

Never visit a sausage factory

2010-11-10T12:06:00.002-05:00

The link to my piece on David Hobbs is at right. The only thing I have to add is that I did interview David Spitko about the program as a whole, and none of it got into the article. After a couple of false starts about Haydn and Mozart and the problems that, historically, have faced composers of religious music, I decided Mr. Hobbs was the only real story here — a young, local composer with a brand new work going up against a pair of heavyweights.

Then again, the problems that, historically, have faced composers of religious music are interesting in themselves. The church wants the music to do no more or less than enforce a feeling of reverence, and a setting of the words that is too elaborate, or too dramatic, or even too beautiful, gets in the way. The conflict goes back to Palestrina and continues to this day. (For a full discussion, I refer you to the chapter "Church Music," in Charles Rosen's Classical Style.)

"It’s very typical for an organist or choir director to have to struggle with the congregation," David Spitko told me in the interview I didn't use.

I remember in 1999, when my mother died, I wanted the soprano we hired to sing Charles Ives's setting of the spiritual "In the Mornin'" at her funeral Mass. I thought it was appropriate, since it was all about Jesus, in addition to being lovely, but the pastor would not allow it. To this day, I don't know why. Maybe it was too black, or too Protestant. It's hard to figure out, though I'm sure there was a theological explanation that satisfied the pastor.

I am not religious at all, and except for the occasional organ recital, wedding, or funeral (and at my age, the funerals are more frequent than the weddings), I haven't set foot in a church for more than thirty years. So, for me, the music always matters more than the message.

Bach in Wyndmoor

2010-11-06T22:54:00.002-04:00

Happy to report that Dennis Schmidt's recital October 31 at Grace Lutheran Church was well-attended. I got a thank-you in the program for the publicity I provided in the Springfield Sun and Ticket, but in truth, I doubt it helped. I think the people who filled the pews would have been there regardless. (I've been questioning the reach of my articles for a while and am thinking of giving them up. I have no way of measuring readership, of course, but to judge from the faces I see at the events I preview, it seems few people see them, and even fewer are swayed by them.)

The music was beautiful, on the whole. There were times when the rhythms seemed off, as though Dennis's hands were not quite in sync, but at other times, such as in the memorable G Minor Fugue, BWV 542, when the music roilled on with a seamless momentum. I had requested Wachet Auf, BWV 645, which was the second piece on the program, and there were tears in my eyes when it was over. (Dennis not only thanked me again when he introduced the piece, but he also wished me a happy birthday.)

After the recital, the audience was invited into the church gathering room for refreshment and "fellowship," which is apparently the Lutheran word for schmoozing. Someone contributed a pan of delightful pumpkin-walnut bars, and Renee hinted that at some point she might want to me call the church and track down the recipe.

Bach in Wyndmoor

2010-10-26T17:54:00.003-04:00

How often do you get to hear an afternoon of Bach in a small suburban church, and for free? See my preview article at left. I was one of the sponsors: I contributed $10 and asked Dr. Schmidt to play "Wachet Auf," BWV 645, or whatever the number is. I'm excited about this one. It's going to be my birthday present to myself.

Yes, my birthday falls on Halloween, which was the best possible day for a kid. You got the presents, the cake, ice cream, the candy, and the dress-up, and, if you went to Catholic school, Nov. 1 was a holiday — All Saints Day — which gave you time to nurse the chocolate hangover.

Barber in Philadelphia

2010-10-20T12:53:00.004-04:00

Lyric Fest and The Crossing will present an all-Barber program in Philadelphia this weekend. The program will be given twice, once in Chestnut Hill and again in Center City, and it will consist entirely of songs and choral music. I'll be going to the Chestnut Hill concert Saturday evening. This is exciting. Good choral concerts are rare, particularly when they're devoted to a single composer who I always felt has been somewhat underrated. Barber is known primarily for his Adagio for Strings, of course, and his piano and violin concertos are very fine, but his vocal music, some of his best work, seems to get overlooked. Or maybe I just haven't been looking in the right places.

See my preview article, linked over to the left.

Leonard Bernstein, 1917-1989

2010-10-14T13:54:00.007-04:00

Leonard Bernstein and Michael Tilson Thomas in Danbury, Conn., 1974. I was there, too, though you can't see me in this picture.

Leonard Bernstein died twenty years ago today, Oct. 14. Bernstein's son Alexander wrote this tribute to commemorate the anniversary. The link was sent to me by Elliot Tomaeno of dot429.com, a website designed, in Elliot's words, "specifically designed to help lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender professionals connect with other LGBT professionals." Thanks, Elliot. Always glad to help.

I appreciated Bernstein more as a conductor than as a composer. (West Side Story is a great score, but oh, it's a bad movie.) I particularly value his recordings of Nielsen, which I still have on vinyl. For all of his public exposure, however, I saw his conduct only once, at the Danbury, Conn., State Fair Grounds in 1974, at a concert celebrating the Ives centenary. I was sixteen years old. Bernstein led the American Symphony Orchestra (I think), in Ives's Second Symphony. Unfortunately, he was not at his best that night. It was a pretty ragged performance, as I recall, and I don’t think it was the musicians' fault, since Michael Tilson Thomas conducted the second half of the program, and for him, they were spot on. Lenny seemed more interested in dancing round the podium than in actually leading the orchestra. At one point, he actually jumped into the air. The motion seemed particularly inappropriate, since nothing much seemed to be happening in the score at the moment. The spectacle left rather a sour taste in my mouth.

But everyone is entitled to an off night, I suppose, and Bernstein's recordings of Ives's music are quite fine. Elliott Carter also has expressed approval of Bernstein's recording of his (Carter's) Concerto for Orchestra, a score he (Bernstein) did not particularly like, or so I understand. A pity, since it's a great piece of music. Perhaps if he had gone back to it, rather than leaving it to Boulez, he might have developed a greater appreciation for it.

Today, the Danbury Fair Grounds are a shopping mall, like every other piece of open land in America.

But what is 'English' about them?

2010-10-08T13:20:00.004-04:00

I've been listening to Peter Watchorn's beautiful recordings of Bach's English Suites (Ti-254) for the past few days. The suites are early Bach, dating from the Weimar period (like dates of composition 1709-1717, according to the booklet), but they're not nearly as flashy as some of the organ music he was writing around the same time. As collections of dances — sarabandes, gavottes, bourees, etc. — they prefigure the suites for solo cello cello and the partitias for solo violin. Some like their Bach "white hot," to use a favorite expression of one DJ who has made a specialty of Bach, but what I like about these performances is how intimate and, well, comforting they are. Watchorn's harpsichord sounds like rain pattering against the window on a gray afternoon.

Postscript to my remarks about Marja Kaisla's performance of the Emperor Concerto last Sunday: It struck me sometime this week that the best word to describe her playing is "creamy."

Some people don't know what they're missing

2010-10-04T13:52:00.003-04:00

I know, I know, it's a losing game to lament the small attendance and classical concerts, but I'm going to do it anyway. Last night I attended an unexpectedly wonderful concert: I say unexpectedly because it was a fundraiser, held in a church hall in Abington, Pa., with a volunteer pickup orchestra and two local pianists. The program consisted of a short Schubert overture and two, count 'em, of Beethoven's piano concertos -- the Third and the Fifth. Claire Belkovsky, the soloist in the the Third was fine, but Marja Kaisla, the soloist in the Fifth, was astonishing, and while the orchestra was small and had only one short rehearsal, it played beautifully and crisply, especially in the Emperor, and the sound was more than big enough to fill the modest performance space. (Winds and brass were up on the stage, strings and soloists down on the floor.) It was a night to remember, a night to write home about, if you were away from home, a night to blog about, but the attendance was only about 75, and I recognized most of the people there. They were the same ones who always come to these fundraisers, which are held to benefit the Sheldon Harris Ginsberg Memorial Scholarship Fund at Philadelphia's Settlement Music School.

I understand it was a Sunday night, and the Eagles were playing the Redskins, but I'm going to be up from this concert for the next couple of days. I just wish other music lovers in the area could understand what they missed. My thanks and congratulations to Claire, Marja, conductor Blair Bollinger, all the folks in the orchestra, and as always, to Renee Goldman (that's pronounced REE-nee), friend and former piano teacher, who organizes these things every year, in the face of public indifference, to keep her brother's memory alive.

So the next time I write an article telling you you to come to a concert, for heaven's sake, come. I feel sorry for everyone in the world who wasn't there. And I especially feel sorry for the people in Abington who could have walked over.

Full disclosure

2010-09-30T19:18:00.002-04:00

In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that my other favorite Bible verse is Deut. 23:1: No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.

I try to apply it to some aspect of my life every day.

Atheists rule

2010-09-30T18:54:00.001-04:00

In a recent Pew survey, self-identified atheists scores better than any subgroup on a quiz of religious knowledge. Jewish people scores almost as well, and Catholics ranked near the bottom. (Ah, my people!) At first, I thought this might be function of education — that skeptics and and Jews would tend to be better educated than the general population — but according to the times article, the difference obtains even after that factor is controlled for.
So the question is, Why? I've always been interested in religion, largely, I think, because I was devout as a child and became anti-devout later on. (And I aced the quiz.) I can't speak for all nonbelievers, but I think our relatively elevated religious awareness may be due to the fact that we are constantly called upon to defend ourselves. Being an atheist is like being a vegetarian: The first thing anyone does when you declare yourself is to try to talk you out of it. Keeping up with the competition becomes a good survival strategy. We also take the position that no one religion can claim a monopoly on truth — as opposed to the Catholic hierarchy, which does claim such a monopoly — and learning about other religions helps one make the case.
Catholics not only new less about other religions, they knew less about their own than other groups. And in all fairness, though, I should point out that there’s a lot to know about Catholicism. Dogmas have been collecting for thousands of years, and Catholics aren’t sending their kids to parochial schools in the same numbers that they used to. That’s where we had all that stuff drilled into us. Who would suspect, for example, that Cosmas and Damian are the patron saints of doctors, pharmacists and hairdressers? Transubstantiation, anyone? Pop quiz: Explain the distinction between the Immaculate Conception and the Virgin Birth.
On a side note, I have to say I rather resented the reporter asking the head of American Atheists (O’Hare’s group) for a quote. I suppose they have to go to the most obvious organization, much as they automatically go to Catholic bishops for anything having to do with religion, but for the record, these people do not speak for me. They always struck me as a too angry, and true to form, the guy said something predictably snarky. I’ve read the Bible. There are parts I like. Here, to close, is my favorite verse, Isaiah 1:13-17 (NRSV):

Trample my courts no more;
bringing offerings is futile;
incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation—
I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.
Your new moons and your appointed festivals
my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me,
I am weary of bearing them.
When you stretch out your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen;
your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings
from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
plead for the widow.

I have hitched my wagon to the Titanic

2010-09-25T13:00:00.001-04:00

True story from a coworker (or at least she says it's true): She was having her gas pumped (that's not a euphemism for anything) and somehow got into a conversation with the young station attendent. She asked him what kind of music he liked and he said he liked everything, from C&W to hip hop. She asked him, "What about classical?" and he furrowed his brow and said, "You mean like Lynyrd Skynyrd?"

More on Cal

2010-09-21T22:24:00.002-04:00

The link to my interview with Cal Schenkel, the artist who designed many of Frank Zappa's best-known album covers, appears at left. As always, I had more material than I could put in the article.

Schenkel included R. Crumb in his list of influences, which brought up the subject of drugs as a source of inspiration. Zappa famously did not use drugs himself, through Schenkel said that, as a believer in personal freedom, he did not object to anyone else ingesting recreational chemicals. Still, Schenkel told me he never dropped acid, as Crumb did, and he doesn't regard his own art as psychedelic, surreal though it might be. His work is hard-edged and rough-textures, he said, where true psychedelia is "smooth and swirly."

One other thing he told me that I didn't mention was that he became acquainted with Zappa while was bumming around out in California the year after he graduated from high school. He got to sit in on the recording sessions for "Freak Out," which is sort of like being present at the signing of the Constitution.

Schenkel lives in Willow Grove, Pa., which Forbes magazine has named one of the 10 most unhip places in the country. He has occupied the house in which he grew up since around 2000, when his dad died. Now he wants to sell the house and move to Florida.

Asked which of his album covers are his favorites, he named Cruising with Reuben and the Jets and One Size Fits All, although, he said, they are all his children.

By the way, there is a Philadelphia reference in the one Size Fits All star chart. Three of the stars are names Wyoming, Olney and Hunting Park, which are stops on the Broad Street subway. (Ben Watson, in his analysis of the album cover, mentions New York, London and Los Angeles, but like everyone else on the planet, he overlooks Philly.)

Hoping to meet Schenkel Sunday at the art show in Chestnut Hill. He promises there will be affordable art for sale.

I like this one

2010-09-20T12:35:00.001-04:00

How many Julliard students does it take to change a light bulb?
Two. One to change the bulb, and the other one to kick over the ladder.

Thanks to secondwind at good-music-guide.com.

Exciting season forthcoming from PCMS

2010-09-08T12:57:00.003-04:00

I've been looking over the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society's prospectus for next season, and I'm finding a lot of can't-miss and shouldn't-miss programs. It's an inviting mix of the modern and the traditional: Martino beside Beethoven, Webern and Kurtag sandwiched between two Mozart quartets, Ligeti beside Britten, Bach next to Crumb. I won't have the time or the money to hear everything, but the temptations are great. Three of Bartok's string quartets are planned, and even some Stravinsky, and you don't hear much of Stravinsky's chamber music anymore.

I was especially happy to that see Elliott Carter's two wind quintets, written sixty years apart, are scheduled for performance next April by the New York Wind Quintet. (The second, titled Nine by Five, was premiered in New York last February. I dug my car out of the snow in Philadelphia just to be able to attend.)

Also listed are premieres of works by David Finko, Richard Wernick, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Bernard Rands and others. There's plenty of Schubert and Brahms, too, but I still wonder how Philadelphia audiences will react. They are inclined to grumble at any inclusion of new music, even if they're offered some chestnuts at the same time as a sweetener. (And by new, I mean a lot of stuff written after 1900.) Listening to modern music live in Philadelphia is rather like seducing a woman in front of her parents. You get what you want, and you might even have a good time, but only if you can endure the withering, accusatory stares.

Huh?

2010-09-06T11:26:00.005-04:00

I don't want to be one of those overbearing scolds who correct other people's grammar in public, but I was startled the other day by this sentence on page 68 of James Shapiro's informative book, Contested Will, which discusses a lawsuit filed in 1600 by one William Shakespeare: "Scholars still can't agree whether this was our Shakespeare or another who sued Clayton; whomever it was, it fit the pattern of a tight-fisted Shylock all too well."

Whomever? I realize that there are times when the who/whom distinction can be tricky, but this isn't one of those times. "Whom" should appear only as the object of a verb or preposition, and this sentence contains no verb or preposition of which whom could possibly be the object. The only verb is the vicinity is "was," which is a linking verb and doesn't take the objective case anyway. No matter how you parse it, "whomever" is out of place. And if you want to make the case for "fit," then whomever is being used incorrectly as the subject — drop the comma and the second it, and you get, "Whomever it was fit the pattern ... all too well," and the incorrect use of "whomever" stands naked before the world.

I do hope this was a copy-editing mistake and was not done at Shapiro's insistence. The guy is an English professor at Columbia, for heaven's sake. A slip like that makes me wonder about the value of higher education. (And so the grammar scold in me, so long suppressed, rises to the surface once more.)

Rereading Gatsby

2010-09-05T21:25:00.002-04:00

Summer heat interferes badly with my ability to concentrate. It’s hard to pick up a new book and absorb new information, so last month I re-read Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, which I first read at age thirteen. (I was my first grown-up piece of literature.) Enjoyed it so much that I went through it twice. Hadn’t intended to do that when I started out, but the book is like a great string quartet, something I can listen to again and again with pleasure. You can open to any page at random and find a memorable phrase or sentence, often more than one. It strikes me very much as a writer’s book — that is, a book everyone who cares about words wishes he or she could write. I know the rap on FSF is that he left behind only a small body of enduring work, but damn, if I had written Gatsby, I would have been comfortable taking the next decade off, too.

The only other news is that I am enjoying this new computer keyboard I purchased this afternoon at Radio Shack. My old one (which was actually the second one I’ve used on this computer) was gradually losing its key functions. First the directions keys went, though I was able to compensate for that by using the redundant keys on the number pad. Then a couple of days ago I couldn’t get the w’s to print without hitting the key hard. Then, this morning, the w was gone completely, and so was the k. It’s one of those petty annoyances that, for me, at least, require immediate rectification, especially since I wanted to do some writing and blogging over the holiday — and what would this very clause look like without w’s or k’s? (I tell you what: and hat ould this very clause loo lie ithout ‘s or ‘s?) So I drove right out to Roosevelt Mall in NE Philadelphia and got a new one before doing anything else. So I learned something about myself today: I learned there is one thing I cannot force myself to live without. (And look at this W. Just look at it.)

Roosevelt Mall is a sad place these days, by the way. The best old stores are gone, and are a lot of vacancies.

Download a new clarinet sextet

2010-08-27T11:59:00.004-04:00

Sheridan Seyfried has sent me a link to a performance of his new Sextet for clarinet, string quartet and piano. It's an attractive, extroverted piece with a lovely middle movement and a jazzy, Latin-tinged finale that reminds me of the sort of stuff Copland and Bernstein were doing back in the 40s. Sheridan is still in his 20s — I'm guessing he'd be 26 now — and still has a long career ahead of him, but it's evident in this music that he is finding his voice.

His bio says he's from Philadelphia, but he grew up in a suburb called Upper Dublin, or, more minutely, a neighborhood known as East Oreland. I interviewed him several years ago for the Springfield Sun after he was accepted to Curtis at age 19. (He lived in our coverage area, and making it to Curtis is sort of a big deal.) I'm friendly with his mom, Elyse, who is the director of spiritual conformation at Christ's Lutheran Church, also in East Oreland. I see her once a year on Martin Luther King Day, when she organizes the activities for the area children.

Like every composer in the world except Elliott Carter, Sheridan also has his own website.

Dennis Schmidt performs

2010-08-22T12:19:00.003-04:00

My interview with Dennis Schmidt has been posted. The link is at right, titled "Bach by Popular demand." (Clever, eh? Remember, you're dealing with a small-town newspaper here.) The online article includes a video of Dr. Schmidt performing the first 38, self-contained, measures of Bach's E-Flat Prelude, "St. Anne," BWV 552. The organ is located at Grace Lutheran Church, Wyndmoor, PA, where Dr. Schmidt will perform an all-Bach program Oct. 31, which is both Halloween and Reformation Day. (Take your choice of celebrations. I generally go with Halloween, which is also my birthday.) As I said in an earlier post, Dr. Schmidt is offering to play and of the organ works of JS Bach for a fee. Prices are predetermined, from the chorale prelude at $10 each to trio sonata and other more elaborate works priced at $75.

The only drawback I see to this approach is that Bach wrote so much music for the organ — 243 individual pieces — that potential patrons like me with an extra ten dollars to spend might not know what to ask for other than a few favorite works. I know little of Bach's organ music well, and if everyone else is at or above my level of ignorance, there's a good chance we'll end up with a program of greatest hits, rather than hearing anything new, though "new" may be an odd word to apply to music nearly 300 years old. So far, two works hae been purchased, Dr. Schmidt said: The Trio Sonata in E flat, BWV 525 (a favorite of mine), and the Concerto in G BWV 592, an arrangement of a concerto by Duke Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimer, which I don't know at all. So there's at least one thing new to me. (And I hear that in his day, the duke was considered a real mf.)

If anyone reading this is within driving distance of Wyndmoor, I hope to see you there. Grace is lucky to have Dr. Schmidt as its "music minister," his is official title. He is, after all, the former director of the Philadelphia Bach festival, and the church is the only place where he perfroms at all anymore. He does not concertize. He does not arrange performances. During the week, he fulfills orders at JW Pepper in Paoli, and on Sundays he plays a two-manual organ in a Philadelphia suburb.

Current listening: Mozart Rondo in a, K., 511, Rubinstein; Elliott Carter, Four Lauds for violin, Jennifer Koh.

Lenape chamber season ends

2010-07-29T16:43:00.004-04:00

Wow: I just realized how long it's been since I lasted posted. Life does get in the way, and I haven't been too energetic with the summer heat. Last Saturday, when I stepped into the night following the Lenape Chamber Ensemble's final concert of the summer, I felt as though I had entered a furnace room.

The concert was half a success. The first half was only so-so. The performance of the Mozart Clarinet Quintet, which should be a highlight of any evening, seemed lethargic. Maybe it was only the sound of the hall (which is actually a college cafeteria with a stage up front), but it wasn't as bubbly as I imagine a clarinet piece should be. The second piece on the first half, the Three Nocturnes by Bloch, was pleasant but forgettable.

The playing caught fire only in the second half with a performance of the Brahms Piano Quintet Op. 35 by Marcantonio Barone and the Wister Quartet. I wasn't too optimistic during the intermission, given what had come before, but piece was everything I could have wanted, which was a relief, since Brahms is one of my favorite composers, and his Piano Quintet is one of my favorite works.

One thing I noticed Saturday was that the Lenape caters to a largely geriatric audience, though that may be true of most classical ensembles these days. I was drowning in a sea of gray hair, and it made me wonder about the future of classical music. Since I’m also entering that demographic (my barber mentioned the gray during my last haircut), I can hardly think of myself as the future of classical music.

Then again, you’d probably see a lot of the same faces at a performance by the surviving members of the Grateful Dead. There were many parents and some grandparents at the Sellersville Theater a couple of months ago when I saw Object/Project, Andre Cholmondeley’s Frank Zappa tribute band, but at least they brought their offspring.

Mere Coincidence?

2010-07-22T16:42:00.002-04:00

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed the Grateful Dead's Ripple is essentially the same tune as the Horst Wessel Song?

Bach for Bucks

2010-07-20T13:29:00.002-04:00

Here's a creative fundraising idea. Just received this press release in my inbox:

In the year which commemorates the 325th birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach, and in a campaign to raise money for new choir chairs at Grace Lutheran Church, 801 E Willow Grove Ave. in Wyndmoor, PA 19038. Dr. Dennis Schmidt is offering to play any of the organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach in what will be a "Live Ipod of the Complete Organ Works of Bach Concert."

To help you choose, Dr. Scmhidt provides a detailed price menu:

Chorale preludes- $10

BWV 000-000b, 599-644, 646-691, 694-705, 706a-706b, 709-715, 717-720, 722-722a, 724-739, 741-762, 766-769, 957, 1090-1120

Individual free pieces - $25

BWV 562-564, 566, 568-570, 574-575, 578-579, 583, 586--588, 598, 802-805,
1027

Preludes and Fugues - $50

BWV 531. 533-541, 543-552, 565, 582,

Sonatas, Concertos, Pastorale, Chorale Partitas - $75

BWV 525-530, 590, 592-597

Anybody interested in attending or donating can write to Dr. Schmidt at dschmidtofbach@yahoo.com. Dr. Schmidt, btw, was Dr. Schmidt was executive director of the Bach Festival of Philadelphia from 1993 to 2000, so I'm thinking he's be pretty good. Oct. 31 is my b-day, btw. This recital might be my present to myself.

Now I have to go through my record and CD collection and figure out just what I'd want to pay to hear.

NYP performs Ionisation

2010-07-18T14:00:00.004-04:00

I don't generally like to use the blog just to link to other sites, but Steve Smith has an eye-opening article on Edgard Varese's percussion piece Ionisation in today's Times. I don't know Slonimsky's recording. I have Craft's and Chailly's. Sorry I can't make the performance, either.

Back when I was studying acting in college, we were given an assignment to improvise a monologue over a piece of music. The piece I chose was Ionisation, which was a little different from the pop stuff the rest of the kids selected.

Crossing season ends

2010-07-18T12:22:00.008-04:00

Attended the third and final concert in the Crossing's Month of Moderns series at Chestnut Hill Presbyterian. The choir sang works by Lansing McLoskey, Frank Havroy, Paul Fowler, Thomas Jennefelt, David Shapiro and Kile Smith. Nice stuff, all of it, but it all kind of ran together for me. Maybe the heat has been making me stupid, but I couldn't tell much differnce between one piece and the next, with the exception of Jennefelt's Villarosa Sarialdi, an exercise in Reichian minimalism for voices written in 1997. There wasn't much to it, but it stood out from the pack by virtue of a few jaunty rhythms that at least got me nodding my head.

Throughout the evening, I found myself longing for a bitonal dissonance, a clash of meters, anything to pierce the reverent, sleepy-time atmosphere. I kept thinking what a great job these singers could do with something gritty, like Ives's psalm settings or the Harvest Home Chorales. The Crossing specializes in brand-new music, and Ives would be too old for its program director, I guess, but compared to some of the young composers I've heard on Crossing programs, he's a Turk. Too much new music seems to me timid and backward-looking compared to what was being written a century go - or even two centuries ago. I got more of a charge from a performance of the B Minor Mass a couple of months ago.

As I was typiing this, I was inpired to put on the SWR Vokalensemble's CD of Ives' psalm settings. Hair-raising, fiendishly stuff that and at the same time so wonderfully alive. I do believe I'm waking up.

Two days, two concerts

2010-07-11T13:28:00.008-04:00

I’m getting out more these days, hearing more live music than even just a year ago. Two very different but satisfying concerts back to back this weekend. I previewed both for Ticket. (See the links to your left.) Friday night, The Crossing performed contemporary choral works at Chestnut Hill Presbyterian. Last night, at Delaware Valley College, the Lenape Chamber ensemble presented more standard fare ― Prokofiev's Sonata for Two Violins, Chopin's G minor Cello Sonata, and Beethoven's first Razumovsky Quartet. The Beethoven was a fortuitous, since I've been listening to the string quartets on recordings quite a bit recently. It was wonderful to hear it live.

The concerts at Delaware Valley College take place in the school cafeteria, an unpromising location. Listeners sit in rows of plastic, molded seats set up for the occasion, and the noise of the air conditioning gets in the way during the quiet moments, but once you get over it, the acoustics are actually very good. The Beethoven, especially, was clear as a bell, and beautifully played. I was most impressed with the precision and the clean intonations in the feather-light second movement.

The Crossing concert included the world premiere of Lansing McCloskey’s “Memory of Rain,” on a Philip Levine. I was fortunate enough to sit next to the composer during the performance. He drew into himself as he listened — eyes closed, head bowed, arms folded, legs crossed. His only criticism of the performance was that the chorus was about a quartertone off from the organ, making the piece “microtonal” where it wasn’t intended to be. It didn’t matter. I liked it either way. I also liked it, I guess, because it was the one secular piece on a program swimming in Christian sadomasochism. (“I am worthless, Lord. Love me.”) Another composer, who I know is devout and whose music will be performed by the Crossing next week, told me during the reception, jocularly, that if religious isn’t annoying and offensive, then it isn’t doing its job. Well, it did its job Friday.

The other highlight of the evening, Francis Pott’s “My Song is Love Unknown” (on another religious text), stood out for its refreshing return to counterpoint. The same composer I spoke to at the reception tells me it’s a lost art among contemporary composers. Too much modern music, even the most aggressively "accessible," walks in lockstep, content to make one, single pretty sound after another. Interweaving contrapuntal lines re-introduce the element of story. They're like an argument, he said.

Good Night, Vienna

2010-07-07T11:48:00.007-04:00

Today, July 7, is both the 150th anniversary of the birth of Gustav Mahler and the 70th birthday of Ringo Starr. Hard to say what they have in common, other than the day and the fact that both are quite important to me. Ringo was my favorite Beatle when I was a kid, though largely by default: I have a brother and two sisters, and they got to the other three Beatles first. The group's appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 is one of my earliest memories, and for the next couple of years, they were everywhere ― on the radio, on TV, in magazines and in all the souvenir shops on the Atlantic City boardwalk, where you could buy buttons and beach towels with their likenesses. (I want to say T-shirts, too, but I can't recall at just what point in my life the T-shirt craze took off.) It is difficult to recreate the total mental saturation we experienced to anyone who hasn't gone through it, but it makes the Michael Jackson phenomenon look like an afterthought.

The Beatles broke up when I was 12. I lost interest in them, moving on to classical music in high school. I rediscovered them through a friend in college, however, interestingly around the time I discovered Mahler, through other friends. In the long run, Mahler has been more important, though I must confess at first he left me rather cold: the extreme length, the heavy introspection and the constant shifts in tone bored me, until one night, as a college freshman, I forced myself to listen to Bernstein's recording of the Resurrection Symphony twice in one night ― and I mean really listen. I've been a convert ever since.

Haven't been listening to much music at home since this last big heat wave struck, but when I have a moment I'll have to go back to Songs of a Wayfarer, with "Matchbox" as an appetizer. (Ringo on vocals, which was rare, but always a treat.) You’d think they couldn’t be more different, but they draw from the same bottomless well of inspiration; men, women, unfulfilled love, pain. Two twenty-three year olds, born 80 years apart, were singing the blues.

Reaction to July 1 column

2010-07-06T13:06:00.003-04:00

Has been somewhat negative. People seem to think either it was sad or I was too hard on myself. No self-pity was intended, though perhaps one has to work in this business to realize what a dead end it can be. I just thought it was funny that the implied question whenever I run into an old schoolmate is, "Why aren't you doing better?" And in truth, I'm not doing too badly. I least I get to write for a living, and I get to interview some excellent musicians, which is something I couldn't say when I was working as a project manager for a mom and pop publishing subcontractor-type operation --- I don't even know what to call the place. (Sometime I'll explain statistical abstracting, another job that would make people's eyes glaze over when I tried to talk about it.)

The following is the e-mail I received from the police chief in Montgomery County, Pa., whom I mentioned in the column. The names have been deleted to protect the innocent:

Hey Joe,

I read your article in the Sun last night. I honestly don't remember making the MIT comment to Randy, but if he said it, it must be true. Either way, it was not meant as a slight, and if it was taken that way, I apologize. I actually have very fond memories of grade school, and even a few from [our old high school]. I'm pretty sure that you and I did a NASA presentation at [our grammar school] as a group project [this was the year after the first moon landing], but I know how you hate these trips down memory lane.

ps Some years ago, I crossed paths with D-----, another guy [from our high school]. Turns out he was an Abington police officer for many years and we never knew we were in the same profession.

Take care, Joe, and be sure to look for me at the Wawa.

T ------

Mr. Wagner sees the light

2010-07-03T12:23:00.016-04:00

Most people don’t want atonal, vocal, or challenging music on the radio. . . . Why should a commercial or public radio programmer ignore extensive research and devote sizable air time to something that most listeners don’t want to hear?
***

Today’s owners and programmers get more sophisticated feedback about listeners: Arbitron ratings report how many are listening; Scarborough, MRI and Simmons studies offer profiles on audience income, education, occupation and behavior. And many stations have local listener panels to test new programming concepts. All this feedback gives programmers a much better idea of what works and what doesn’t.

—Two letters to the Times

The following excerpts from the diary of Cosima Wagner, wife of the composer Richard Wagner, have been made public by the couple’s descendants after more than 130 years of suppression. The entries shed new light on Wagner’s decision to abandon work on an ambitious four-opera cycle, whose working title was "The Ring of the Nibelung."

Tribschen, Feb. 27, 1872—Luncheon today with R[ichard]. and Herr Prof. [Friedrich] Nietzsche, our gloomy young philologist. R. in a rancid mood over progress of "Götterdämmerung." Prelim. surveys show Brünnhilde character a washout with women aged 18–27. Killing of Siegfried got positive feedback, but self-immolation was a definite negative. 68% of respondents said Brünnhilde is not sufficiently empowered. R. says he will need to revise the ending, having Brünnhilde live and, possibly, raise Siegfried’s child alone while pursuing a career as a lawyer.

Prof. Nietzsche skeptical. He sat thoughtfully a long while, warming his hands around his teacup, then said, “Even the most personal conscience is vanquished by the leveling of great numbers.” That boy is developing a disturbing independence of mind. R. says he will need to be watched.

March 14, 1872 — R. spoke feelingly today of the personal tragedies of Beethoven — his rage, his deafness, his incomprehension of niche marketing. “What is the message of the Ode to Joy?” he asked. “All men are brothers. Fine. But only a small percentage of them will ever earn between 75 and 100 thousand a year. The goal of art — all art — is to help us see the good without requiring we actually do anything about it. The upper classes understand this better than anyone.”

I implore him to publish his ideas, but he brushes the suggestion aside, preferring to work on his mail-order catalog.

April 2, 1872 — More trouble with Prof. Nietzsche. R. had research data naming Bayreuth as the perfect place to build our festival theater, given its large population of white German males, our key demographic. Prof. Nietzsche argued the numbers were meaningless, since Germany is, as he says, “chock-full” of white German males. The only excuse for having a Germany in the first place, he said, is to give white German males a watering hole.

While conceding the point, R. defended the study, which was prepared by the biggest anti-Semitic think-tank in Vienna. Even if the conclusions were doctored, so to speak, it was done in an effort to be helpful.

“An anti-Semite is not admirable simply because he lies as a matter of principle,” Prof. Nietzsche said.

Whereupon R. ordered him out of the house.

Oct. 31, 1872 — Tragically, the names Wagner and Wagnerism evoke no feelings of brand loyalty. This according to focus groups in Bonn and Stuttgart. On average, consumers were “only somewhat” inclined to sit through a four-part, twenty-hour music-drama on incest and deicide. Most identified “leitmotif” as a kind of low-tar cigarette.

Meanwhile, Verdi’s Q-rating is through the roof, though R. attributes this less to his music than to the fact that he’s licensed his photograph for use on packages of frozen tapioca.

“Oh, sure,” he said, “we could get those kind of numbers, too, if we wanted to sell out.”

I cringed when Prof. Nietzsche cleared his throat. Our quarrel last spring took a month to smooth over, and lately he’s been going on about something he calls “eternal recurrence,” which, as near as I can make out, has nothing to do with consumption patterns. I braced for yet another moralistic aphorism, but to my surprise, the prof. spoke quietly, in an offhand, almost distracted manner.

“Your problem,” he said, “is a simple residual-to-cost ratio. If you switched the festival to an all-polka format, you’d cut your rehearsal costs in half and gross three times as much. Add a few Irish step-dancers, and you’ll have a program you can drag out anytime for fundraisers.”

R. smiled — for the first time in weeks. He rose from his chair, lifted the score of "The Valkyrie" from the mantelpiece, and dropped it into the fire.

“All right,” he said as he reached for the poker, “let’s give them what they want.”

The diaries end here. Within a month, Cosima returned home to live with her father, the composer Franz Liszt. Friedrich Nietzsche followed his own path into philosophy. He suffered a mental collapse in 1889. Wagner himself spent the rest of his life touring North America, where he enjoyed popular acclaim as The Accordion King.

© 2000 by Joseph Richard Barron

Why we blog

2010-06-29T16:14:00.006-04:00

David Patrick Stearns reviews Sunday's Crossing concert in today's Philadelphia Inquirer. His impressions are diametrically opposed to mine. He liked what I didn't like and didn't like what I did. Without this blog page to lend my own opinions a veneer of legitimacy, I'd be stuck fuming in impotent rage, smacking the page of the paper, or pointing to the computer screen and grumbling, "Did you see this? Did you see this? Where does he get off?"

Actually, I generally like David's reviews, and my feelings about Sunday's music aren't so strong that I'd get upset one way or another. But the potential is there: someday this little safety valve might just prevent me from egging some poor critic's car.

The Crossing

2010-06-28T18:00:00.006-04:00

Attended the first of three scheduled concerts in the Crossing's Month of Moderns series yesterday. The Crossing is a 20-odd person contemporary music chorus, founded and conducted by Donald Nally. Programs usually take place at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, whose air conditioned sanctuary was a great draw for me yesterday. usually, the choir sings a capella or with the church organ. Yesterday, however, they were accompanied by a 12-piece string orchestra.

Program as follows:

Arvo Part: Wahlfahrtslied, 1984/2001
Benjamin CS Boyle, Cantata: To One in Paradise, 2005
Bo Holton: Tallis Variations, 1976
David Lang, Statement to the Court, 2010 (World premiere, Crossing commission)
John Tavener, The Bridegroom, 1999

Won't give a detailed review (see June 25 post about my deficiencies in that area), but I will say that I have never heard the chorus sound richer or more full. I counted 23 singers, but I thought was more than I have seen before, though I was assured afterward it was about the usual number.

Still, the concert was something a letdown. Despite my best efforts, my mind wanders during anything by Tavener or Part, which deletes two-fifths of the program from my memory right off the bat. The minimalist vocal writing in Statement to the Court line sounded like a rehash of Lang’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Little Match Girl, which the Crossing performed last year (and which I liked), but with an insistent, regular, one-thump beat of a bass drum that raised it nearly to the level of torture. I was afraid I would be hearing that drum in my sleep. Fortunately, I haven’t. (At the post-concert reception, one of the performers suggested that perhaps the Crossing should forego singing any more of Lang’s music until he works through his current obsessions.)

Boyle's cantata, on one of Poe's lesser poems, and the Holton were more successful. I particularly liked the contrast in the Tallis Variations between the Renaissance-inspired vocalizing and the angular, modernist-sounding business in the strings. It might sound like pastiche, but the parts came together well. The string writing reminded me at different times of Ives's Tone Roads No. 1, or the climax of Carter's Variations, or William Schuman’s Third Symphony. I'd welcome hearing the piece again.

Next performances are July 9 and 17, and I plan to attend both. The programs sound more promising. There will be premieres of settings of the poetry of Philip Levine by Lansing McLoskey and Paul Fowler, and a reprise of Kile Smith’s Where Flames a Word, on poems of Paul Celan.

Babbittry

2010-06-25T21:14:00.005-04:00

Recent blog post at Monotonous Forest by my good buddy Bruce Hodges:

Last night at Miller Theatre, the Orchestra of the League of Composers gave the long-delayed New York premiere of Milton Babbitt's Transfigured Notes (1986), originally commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra. The piece received widespread press when it emerged, after a parade of conductors studied the score and later begged off. Erich Leinsdorf was to conduct the premiere, an honor then passed to Dennis Russell Davies, who left after a single rehearsal. The final attempt was made by Hans Vonk (with the support of Richard Wernick and Bernard Rands), who eventually threw in the towel as well.

My take, after the single hearing last night (and I have not heard the single recording), is that the difficulty lies in the need for absolute, razor-sharp precision in the playing to bring Babbitt's spare tapestry to life. Buzzing with movement, the score uses a thicket of motifs to create a wash of sound, with the ensemble (especially the violins) often playing high above the stave. In his notes, the composer encourages listeners to immerse themselves in the whole, without focusing too much on the details. Last night's musicians were some of the best in the city, yet the performance, led by the intrepid Louis Karchin, seemed hesitant and under-rehearsed. In the best of all possible worlds, they'd work on it another week or two, and bring it back.

And my response:

Transfigured Notes has some significance for me, since I live in Philadelphia, where the ruckus occurred. The orchestra's rep suffered among contemporary music fans when it dropped the piece, though in fairness, I should say it probably was unplayable, given the limits on rehearsal time. (And, under Davies, the players did a creditable job with Carter's Symphony of 3 Orchs. a couple years earlier.) Not long after, Orchestra 2001, Philly's contemporary music band, took up the score and gave a masterful performance, under the direction of James Freeman, with the composer in attendance. As with most of Babbitt's music, there's not a lot of drama or differentiation in color, tempo, or dynamics. Ex-wife said it best: If it were a color, it would be taupe.

I like Babbitt. I really do. His music is elegant, and he's a terrific speaker. But the elegance comes at a price. He sets the musical parameters up at the beginning of each piece, and from then on it's largely a question of watching (or hearing) the various possible permutations play themselves out. There are few surprises, as there are in Carter. I also notice a lack of what could be called (and is called) "directionality." You can start at any point in any piece and work your way around again, and the experience is essentially the same. Beginning, middle and end have no meaning, as they do, again, in Carter. This is not a criticism, merely an observation, since I am told this aspect of Mr. Babbitt's music is intentional, as it is in Boulez.

I do have the recording of Transfigured Notes and will have to get back to it soon.

Maurice Wright's Movement in Time

2010-06-25T18:31:00.004-04:00

One of the reasons I want the Philadelphia Orchestra to go on living is that it keeps about a hundred stellar musicians in town. Several times a year, a few of the players break off from the herd and present chamber concerts at the Perelman Theater. Last Sunday (June 20, the last day of spring), I was treated to one of these programs when a friend e-mailed me about a spare ticket. The bill included Glazunov's String Quintet Op. 39 (scored for two cellos, according to the program notes, but with one of the parts given to a bass player this time out for some reason), and Brahms’s Second Piano Quartet, both very well played. The Brahms was particularly memorable.

The afternoon began with Movement in Time, for two percussionists and tape, by Maurice Wright, a professor at Temple University. Kind of an uninspired title (all music is movement in time), but it was a lively, almost spritely piece that gave Don Liuzzi and Anthony Orlando an excuse to run around the stage and wallop a large number of very loud instruments. I don't ordinarily think of music for multiple percussion instruments as "light" — the one piece that comes to mind immediately, Varese's Ionisation, is a violent, dark-cloud case in point — but that is what Movement in Time was. It was playful music, with an occasional burst of wit, as when, for example, the performers are required to beat a single snare drum simultaneously, and they suddenly cut the music short by raising their sticks and crossing them with a click. Cute, and it got a laugh.

Wright isn't one of those heart-on-his-sleeve, look-at-how-brave-I-am-for-writing-commercial-pap composers I despise, at least not in this piece, but he seems to be after the fun kind of modernism that Alexander Calder achieved in sculpture. Unfortunately, the music was so slight that most of it, except for that click, evaporated in the memory almost at once.

The tape accompaniment was a distraction, too. The sounds generated weren't so much electronic music as recordings or synthesized imitations of a chorus and orchestra. A friend of mine who attended with me wondered why, if Wright was going to take that route, he didn't just put a few more musicians on the stage.

A perfectly pleasant, digestible piece, but it hardly opens up new vistas the way Ionisation did.

Why I can't be a music critic

2010-06-25T14:04:00.009-04:00

Excellent review by Matthew Guerrieri of the Charles Ives Trio, an underappreciated work, IMHO. Not fully mature Ives, but a great transitional piece, full of promise for the music to come. I don't think I could ever do what Matt does, or Steve Smith of the Times, or the great Andrew Porter, or any of the other big-time music critics. I can't generally tell a good performance from a bad one unless there are glaring mistakes. Everything goes by much too fast for me. My ear isn't sensitive enough to pick apart a live performance while it's happening, and I could never describe what I'm hearing with a phrase like "steering the debate toward sonorous verities." Sonorous verities? How do they come up with this stuff?

Anyway, I wish I had been there. I saw the America's Dream chamber group perform the work at Montgomery County (Pa.) Community College last April, with similarly impressive results, though we didn't have the ocean and the sky and the blue-gray wash.

Ives often gets ripped for his use of quotation, as though it somehow calls his originality into question. (The composer of Hanover Square North takes a backseat to no one in terms of originality.) I remember years ago a reviewer whose name I forget snarkily described the Trio as the "name-that-tune Trio." It was an ignorant thing to say, since the quotation in this work is concentrated almost entirely in the second movement, which may be thought of as a quodlibet — a form so respectable it has a name - and is mighty funny. The first movement uses no quotation at all, and there is none in the third until Toplady (aka Rock of Ages) shows up in the last minute or so.

Matthew has also posted an classic exchange with Elliott Carter on his blog, Soho the Dog. The bit about Reagan is priceless.

Speaking of ignorance, I also remember back in the '80s a reviewer for the Washington Post writing that Carter's Cello Sonata still sounds, after 40 years or so, like a sterile exercise in serialism, which struck me as weird, since the piece is not at all serial, and the second movement is the last thing he ever wrote with a key signature. It hardly sounds sterile to my ear, either, but that's a matter of taste.

Then there was the reviewer in the Philadelphia Inquirer who wrote about the time Robert Mann got lost during a performance Elliott Carter's Fourth String Quartet. He said something to the effect that restarting such a complex piece the middle raised questions fundamental to the continuity and perception of the music. Fair enough, I suppose, though it would have been helpful if he had articulated just what those questions were. More to the point, he seemed wholly unaware that the players had started the quartet over from the beginning.

Maybe I could be a reviewer, after all. I couldn't do worse than some people.

Kim, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven

2010-06-23T14:07:00.003-04:00

The link to my interview with David Kim appears at left. One of the quotations I edited out of the article (it was slightly off topic), concerned his opinion of the Beethoven Violin Concerto Op. 61, which for him occupies, by itself, the top tier of great violin concertos, with maybe some room left over for the Brahms op. 77. He ranks the Tchaikovsky at a lower level, even though, as he said, it is the concerto he loves best, and the one that most suits his personality and performance style.

Kim had this to say about the Beethoven: “For us [i.e., violinists in his league] it’s the greatest thing ever written - so pure and so full of wisdom and integrity. It’s so hard. I play it very infrequently. Working it up is such a huge thing for me."

I keep missing birthdays

2010-06-19T22:18:00.005-04:00

Thursday, June 17, was the birthday - 128th, I believe - of Igor Stravinsky, another of my favorites. Unfortunately, I have not had time to listen to any of his music, though WPRB Princeton, my classical station of choice, played his second suite for small orchestra that morning, which is what reminded me. Over the next couple of years, we'll celebrate the centenaries of the three big ballets, so there will be plenty of time for listening.

The Philadelphia Orchestra, my hometown band, announced this week it has selected Yannick Nézet-Séguin as its new music director. This makes only eight, I believe,in the past 110 years. But the tenures are getting shorter. The days are gone when a Stowkowski would stay for twenty years or an Ormandy for forty. Jet aircraft simply make it too easy to fly off to other gigs, and anyway, who really wants to live in Philadelphia if he doesn't have to? I suppose this kid will be a bright young presence, but don't expect him to stick around very long. He doesn't even start full-time until 2012.

Gone, too, are the days when the orchestra was a source of civic pride supported by private fortunes. Industry in this city has declined, educated listeners have fled to the suburbs, and subscribers are dying off. The orchestra's very days may be numbered.

In any event, I must confess I'm one of those indifferent listeners who have given up their subscriptions. Some have stopped coming because they say there's too much modern music. I stopped because there's too little. After 40 years of waiting for them to toss me a bone and program some Ives or Elliott Carter, I have gone elsewhere for my fixes.

In fairness, I should say that Ingo Metzmacher conducted the orchestra in a terrific performance of Ives' Second Orchestral Set a few years ago, before Verizon Hall opened. I mentioned to him then that the Philadelphians have never pplayed Ives' Fourth Symphony, and he could be the first to conduct it here. Nothing has come of the suggestion.

And I never sent him a card

2010-06-11T17:14:00.009-04:00

Wednesday, June 9, was the 145th birthday of the Danish composer Carl Nielsen (1865-1931), who has been a favorite of mine ever since heard his Fourth Symphony on radio as a teenager. Nielsen is something of a cult figure - and by that I mean he has deeply devoted fans who constantly complain that he isn't more widely appreciated. As far as we're concerned, his six symphonies are the equal to those of his friend (and exact contemporary) Sibelius,* but they don't command the same amount of airtime on the dwindling number of classical radio stations in this country, and they don't appear as frequently on orchestral programs, at least outside of Scandinavia.

No big deal, I suppose. We still have our recordings, and to hell with everyone else. But music is like religion: We can't just be happy in our beliefs. We feel compelled to convert the world.

Nielsen is one of the few composers whose birthdays I actually observe by going back and listening to their music again. His most famous and frequently performed symphonies are the Third, Fourth and Fifth, but I've devoted the past couple of days to the other three, particularly the Sixth, which I've listened to twice. It's less organic, if that's the proper word, than the big middle symphonies, but it is altogether extraordinary. The second movement, the Humoresque - scored only for piccolo, two clarinets, two bassoons and percussion - comments on the modernist trends of the 1920s. I have read that it anticipates the grotesqueries of Shostakovich, though to me it has always sounded like a parody of Varese. But the passage I keep returning to is the end of the third movement, the Proposta seria, with its repeated, two-note falling exhalation in the winds and horns.

Then there’s also the chamber music to go back to, the two operas, and the songs, with their evocations of Danish folk melodies, which, I understand, are what made him a household presence in his native country.

*Driving to work the other morning, I heard Sibelius' Pohjola's Daughter on the radio, and the difference between these two hyperborean composers suddenly became clear: Nielsen is Brahms. Sibelius is Wagner. - Not in any derivative way, but rather in their handling of the orchestra and their musical materials.

An interview with David Kim

2010-06-07T20:16:00.003-04:00

I just got off the phone with David Kim, concert master of the Philadelphia Orchestra, who will be the soloist in Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto with the Kennett Symphony, Mary Woodmansee conducting. The article isn’t due until June 18, but I've started early because I have another one due at the same time.

Mr. Kim is one of the friendliest, most personable musicians I have interviewed. He said the Tchaikovsky Concerto is his favorite to play, in part because of the many good memories he has of it. One of those memories was his sixth-place finish in the 1986 Tchaikovsky Competition. The concerto is required all the contestants, of course, but each of the finalists has to perform another concerto of his or her own choice, their own choice. Kim’s optional concerto was Stravinsky’s. I said it was a brave choice, since it is so different from the Tchaikovsky, but Kim put it down to sheer stupidity on his part. He put the Stravinsky on his application almost as a joke, he said, because he never expected to make the finals. It’s a hard piece on the orchestra and conductor, and the orchestra at the Tchaikovsky competition gets only one rehearsal with each soloist. It is so tough, in fact, that when Kim defied his own expectations and advanced to the finals, the conductor arranged a second, surreptitious rehearsal in a warehouse outside Moscow to give him — and the orchestra — a fighting chance.

I wasn’t sure if the extra constituted cheating, but since his job in Philadelphia is secure, he wasn't afraid to let the ghost out of the closet. It’s doubtful anyone in the Russian intelligence service will see his confession and overturn his victory.
On the topic of Mary Woodmansee: she also conducts the Hilton Head Orchestra in South Carolina. A couple of years ago she led that group in a performance of Charles Ives’ Three Place in New England — another brave programing decision, as far as I'm concerned. Mary told me later that she actually received hate mail because of it. Hate mail. Because of Charles Ives.

Ives v. Pythagoras II

2010-05-30T15:27:00.003-04:00

I asked for more detailed information regarding the tuning of Charles Ives’ Second Sting Quartet, and I got it: last Friday, Johnny Reinhard, the man behind the Flux Quartet’s recording, send me an e-mail with a link to his essay on the validity of Extended Pythagorean tuning in Ives’ music. You can read it here.

It’s a long argument, rather dense and technical. It might even be right, as far as any extrapolations from a man’s Nachlass can be, but I caught myself wondering just what it’s all for. Some of the discrepancies in pitch between equal temperament and Pythagorean tuning amount to no more than two one hundredths of a half step, a difference no listener could possibly pick up on. In a letter to a copyist, which Johnny quotes, Ives offers an observation we would do well to heed: “Either way won't 'make or break' the listener's ear.”

In any event, I stand by my assessment of the Flux Quartet’s performance. It is not my go-to recording. Johnny does address my criticisms in his e-mail, a little defensively. “One thing further to consider,” he says, “is that Flux was playing a live concert performance, while I suspect the other performances were studio. It is a testament to their playing that they could achieve this ‘experiment’ in their initial performance of the piece, and may also account somewhat to the length of the performance.”

I don’t want to sound harsh, because I am grateful than Johnny took the trouble to write, but I don’t see why the conditions of a live performance should make much of a difference. There are many wonderful live recordings. If the performers weren’t on top of the music, they could have spent more time in rehearsal. The mere fact they were able to make it through the piece is hardly a five-star recommendation.

And what’s with the name “Flux”? It sounds like some kind of discharge.