New year, new things

1) Can we all just agree that these are really good examples of percussion writing?

This, because it builds up patterns in the percussion section, which is such a good way to use those guys back there.  Who doesn’t like a good percussion pattern?  Ravel’s great at it – so is Stravinsky.  And then of course, there’s all that Popular Music.

This because it’s just raucous.

Both excerpts come from a piece that’s altogether new to me: Alberto Ginastera‘s 1934 ballet Panambi, his Opus 1.  Heard it on the radio the other day, loved it.  I think it has an awful lot to do with Stravinsky, Revueltas (I’m thinking specifically of “Sensemayá“) and more than a little to do with Varèse, and Who wouldn’t like that??

2) I’ve been thinking a lot more about Gordon Jenkins.  Jenkins is the gentleman who composed the final installment of Frank Sinatra’s ill-fated “Trilogy: Past, Present, Future” album from about 1980, if I’m recollecting correctly.  I presented an in-depth analysis of this particular work here.

Let there be no mistake: I love Jenkins’ “The Future”.  It’s wacky, wild, and wet all over.  It’s easy to laugh at and laugh with (ok, at), but I’ve started to look at it more analytically.  What is it about this piece that makes it so very strange and not “successful” in the way we might normally associate that word with great pieces of music?

A composer faces many little compartmentalized tasks that we tend to take as a bundle: concept (which the composer rarely chooses in collaborative projects), narrative (be it a ‘programmatic’ or theatrical work or the emotional narrative of an instrumental work), lyrics (sometimes), style, texture, orchestration, harmony, counterpoint, melody, rhythm.  Form covers many tasks: phrase structure, song structure, movement structure, key relationships.  And how about pacing which is sort of a formal issue, but also it’s own thing.

Then there’s other things: choosing which gestures to include and when, deciding who should play what and when someone should sing something (separate from the technique of orchestrating these decisions) and deciding how the various textures should be edited together.  I suppose what I’m getting at is that composing isn’t just as simple a thing as Concept and Execution – there’s tons of mini-concepts to be conceived and executed along the way.

Because we study the great composers to the exclusion of almost all others, we sort of expect a master composer to have mastery of all these categories, but it’s really not the case.  Take Gordon Jenkins: he’s extremely good at texture, harmony, melody, rhythm, and certainly orchestration.  Form, sometimes.  Some big misfires in the style department (that is to say, in choosing the appropriate style to suit his needs, not in executing his chosen style, so maybe those are really two different departments?).  I’m guessing he was commissioned to take on the concept of “future”, but even taking that as a given, his sense of narrative is pretty Loony.  And let’s just be honest, the man shouldn’t have been allowed within a 2,000 mile radius of a lyric.  But then again, the distinctively bizarre lyrics of “The Future” contribute greatly to the charms of the piece, so don’t listen to me.

Berlioz is kind of an oddball in all of the categories, and it’s always fascinating to see where his experiments worked and where they didn’t (see: Symphonie Fantastique, mvmt. 5, m. 11 – that’s figure 61 – for a major Berlioz fail.  I’ve always contended that this is the single poorliest-composed bar in the standard repertoire.)  I’d say the same for Janáček.  Even when Shostakovitch does really well in all the categories, he often paces his large scale forms very poorly.  Tchaikovsky, astoundingly brilliant in so many categories, frequently lets the seems show between his textures and sometimes had a really weird sense of narrative and concept.  But sometimes not.

I’d be very interested in knowing if people agree with me/have other examples of composers with blatantly compartmentalized skills.

3) I just finished reading Freedom by Jonathan Franzen.  Here’s another example of compartmentalization – Mr. Franzen has profound strengths: inner narrative, complex psychological motivations, weird family stuff.  And his prose flies right off the page.  But the guy’s got a tin ear for dialogue.  The narrative is propulsive – the book has a wonderful ratio of plot events to pages invested – but the concept is kind of zany (but then again, the narrative is so good, you don’t care).

The book’s ending is a real paradox: when you reach it in context, it’s very satisfying – it’s hopeful and conclusive, and your soul ravaged from the journey, so it’s much appreciated.  But give it a little distance and it appears way, way neater and tidier and than it ever needed to be.  It’s not only cloying, but it becomes the most unlikely event after a series of extraordinarily unlikely events.

But you know what, I still loved reading the book.  And he’s got some fantastic rules for writing fiction.

Civic Addenda 12/12

Béla Bartók, The Miraculous Mandarin

The CSO’s own Beyond the Score series is an astounding resource on The Miraculous Mandarin.  Here’s the first part:

The rest of the parts can be found here: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.  And if you’ve watched all of that, and you still just can’t get enough information about this piece:

Recommended Reading

  • Amanda Bayley (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Bartok – google books – amazon – Get any book in the Cambridge Companion series and you will be richly rewarded.
  • Peter Laki (ed.): Bartok and His World – google books – amazon – Includes an excellent and thorough chapter on “The Miraculous Mandarin”.

Recommended Recordings

Beethoven, Symphony No. 2 in D

Heiligenstadt (map) was once a remote country village and spa – now now it’s a cozy Viennese neighborhood.  Here is the cottage where Beethoven did the better part of his work on the Second Symphony in 1802:

It’s also where he wrote the Heiligenstadt Testament – a heartfelt document that Beethoven hid away in a secret drawer in his desk for the rest of his life and intended to be read upon his death.  I’ve copied the famous opening lines below; the full text is here.

Oh you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn, or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you. From childhood on, my heart and soul have been full of the tender feeling of goodwill, and I was even inclined to accomplish great things. But, think that for six years now I have been hopelessly afflicted, made worse by senseless physicians, from year to year deceived with hopes of improvement, finally compelled to face the prospect of a lasting malady (whose cure will take years or, perhaps, be impossible).

As classical music enthusiasts in the 21st century, we are (perhaps unfortunately) accustomed to thinking of a composer’s music as a soundtrack to his life.  Sometimes, that is what he has intended (Mahler and Shostakovitch are prime examples).  However, with most composers, the relationship is much more complicated than that – an artist can often try to escape into his work and avoid the torments of everyday life.  Perhaps that’s what Beethoven was trying to accomplish in his cheery second symphony:

Recommended Reading

  • Edmund Morris: Beethoven: The Universal Composer – google books – amazon – If you’re shopping for a classical music lover this season, look no further – this little book is wonderfully written, thorough, and keenly perceptive.  It’s great reading for the casual listener and a useful resource for the connoisseur.

Recommended Recordings
When it comes to the Beethoven Symphonies, I find Abbado hard to beat.  He’s recorded them all with the Berlin Phil and the Vienna Phil.  Take your pick:

However, for only $8, you can get a very respectable set of recordings of all 9 Beethoven symphonies by the London Symphony with Joseph Krips – that’s less than $1/symphony!! –Amazon MP3–

Songs of the Season

Her name is Christine Pedi, and she is spectacular.  The pianist’s name is Matthew Ward, and he’s pretty fantastic himself.  The conclusion of the actual “Twelve Divas of Christmas” doesn’t happen till about halfway through the second video, but just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Here’s as many as I can get:

Marlene Dietrich (thx 2 Tammy) – Joan Rivers – Patti Lupone – Bernadette Peters – Carol Channing – Angela Lansbury – “Edith Bunker” – Julie Andrews

Rudolf/Liza Minelli – Carol of the Bells/? – Dreidl/Judy Garland – Elaine Stritch – Barbra Streisand – Bette Davis – Katherine Hepburn

Rose’s Turn

Charlie Rose plays an inordinately large role in my life*.  He is quasi avuncular – sometimes a chum, sometimes a father-confessor.  In the space of a single interview – a single question, really – he can be simultaneously awkward and brilliant, bored and engaged.  To gaze upon him is to know that he is a man of intense contrasts: how can one man look so boyishly handsome and so ruthlessly haggard at the same time?

*[in my head]

Charlie is my particular subject today because he’s been giving a lot of love to the classical music world lately, but we’ll get to that in just a second.  I want to pause here to state publicly that even though I will fight valiantly to make sure cuff links remain a vital part of the male wardrobe, I love that Charlie just doesn’t wear them.  In fact, sometimes he won’t even bother to button his ordinary cuffs:

And in that picture, he was in London for goodness’ sake!  Ok though, enough about Charlie’s clothes. [And trust me, I could go on.]  Charlie has always been a great friend to the classical music community, but there’s been a recent spate of interviews that I’d like to talk about.  Let’s begin with the most interesting:

Valery Gergiev, in his 2nd or 3rd appearance on Rose, gave a blisteringly efficient and wide-ranging interview.  This was the Charlie Rose broadcast at it’s best: engaging, insightful, convivial, mutually respectful.  Plus, if anybody has ever embodied the phrase “rakishly handsome”, it would Valery Gergiev – which is astonishing in a world where we have Charlie Rose! [see above]  Let’s just say, this was a meeting of equals.

Bar none, the most interesting part of this interview was the last five minutes, in which Charlie posed Gergiev one of the most surprising questions I’ve ever heard him ask: Who are the 5 (or 6) most important living composers in your eyes?

The reason for my surprise is that there are so few people in this world who are in any way interested living composers (the concert/art/academic kind, that is).  Charlie Rose could not possibly have expected to recognize any of the names on Gergiev’s list (unless happened to fall under the elusive “unknown known” category), and yet he asked the question.  I have never loved him more.

Let’s take a look and listen to Gergiev’s list of composers, shall we?

Rodion Shchedrin

Shchedrin is an interesting choice, I’d say.  Most Westerners, if they’ve ever heard of this composer at all, have only heard of one piece: the “Carmen Suite”, a sort of cartoonish, barbaric Russian ballet-fantasia on themes from Bizet’s Opera:

Shchedrin is often compared to Schnittke, and it’s not an unwarranted (though don’t get me wrong, I know Alfred Schnittke, and Rodion Shchedrin is no Alfred Schnittke).  At his poppier moments, Shchedrin sort of comes off as Schnittke-meets-John-Williams.  Gergiev makes a compelling case for the composer on his new album:

Henri Dutilleux

Dutilleux came as a surprise a) because I honestly did not know that he was still alive, and b) it’s not that he’s necessarily a bad composer, but I’ve never known anyone to be a major fan or champion of his music, and I certainly had no inkling that Gergiev might be that person (say in the way that Kent Nagano and Olivier Messiaen are associated w/ each other).

I’ve always thought of Dutilleux as a sort of solid but not terribly interesting mid-2oth century modernist.  I don’t know much [his] of music, so perhaps that’s not fair.  Give a listen and see what you think – this is the opening movement of his “Metaboles” and is the piece I’m most familiar with by him:

Alexander Raskatov

Raskatov is Gergiev’s near exact contemporary (they were born like 2 months apart).  Raskatov has actually figured prominently on this blog before.  Allow me to job your memory: he is the very person who painstakingly reconstructed Alfred Schnittke’s 9th Symphony.  This was no easy job, and by all accounts, he did very, very thorough work.  I mean, the piece that we can hear today sounds like Schnittke, and it’s all because of him.  Respect.

The Schnittke symphony was released on CD and that’s how Raskatov first came to my attention.  You see, he included a new piece, a Nunc Dimittis in Memoriam Alfred Schnittke (or Alfredom Schnittkom, I think, if we’re being correct about our Russian grammar.)  And it’s like, honestly, can you hardly blame the guy if he wants to put his own piece on this album after doing all that work?  I can’t – I’m sure I would have done the same thing.  And it’s not that it’s a bad piece.  It’s very Schnittkey, but you know, it’s just not going to come off so amazing in comparison when you pit it against this amazing transcendent work by an artist who was already halfway to the grave.  Here’s maybe my favorite section:

Thomas Adès

With all due respect to Gergiev’s Ruskii compatriots, I would have started my list with Thomas Adès.  Adès is arguably the most important, greatest, most tubular -whatever adjective you want to use- composer of concert music we have around these days.  And it’s not a hard argument to make.  Whether we all choose to realize or admit it, we composers today are living in the shadow of Ligeti.  (In Russia, Schnittke is the looming presence.  Give it time, and he will creep westward.)

Despite this pervasiveness, Adès is really the only major figure who is seriously grappling with the specter of Ligeti.  And he’s none the worse for wear.  Here is the first movement of Ligeti’s Violin Concerto, about a minute in:

and here is the opening of Thomas Adès’:

It’s not that the two pieces sound all that similar – my point is that they seem to inhabit a similar universe but they are worlds unto themselves.  The act of homage is subtle: both composers build rhythmically complex textures that are nonetheless extremely quiet; the effect is a luminescent haze of sound.

I think it’s significant that not only that Adès handles himself adeptly in a dialogue with Ligeti but that he’s chosen late Ligeti as his conversant [I might mention that Adès’ concerto also shares aspects with Ligeti’s Hamburg Concerto.]  Again, he’s not an imitator or a provocateur or anything like that – he’s got a very strong singular talent, perhaps one of the few strong enough to really grapple with Ligeti’s writing.

As for Charlie’s interviews with Vittorio Grigolo and Antonio Pappano, I’ll just point out a few things:

1) Grigolo might be the most Italian Italian person I’ve ever heard.  No offense to my Italian friends, but they tend to say in about 100 words what they could manage in 10.

2) You just know that right before the cameras started rolling, Charlie made Vittorio coach him on the correct Italian pronunciation of his name. Charlie really tried to retain this knowledge as he introduced his guest, and though this was definitely his most valiant effort yet at a foreign pronunciation, it still comes out gloriously mangled.

2) Plus, if you skip ahead to 16:42, you’ll see that Vittorio loves Charlie, and so do I.

3) Watch Antonio Pappano at the beginning of the show as Charlie is introducing him.  Do you see him subtly lip syncing the whole speech?  That’s kind of really weird, right?