Michael Monroe offers a great way to offer concise program notes for student recitals. There is just enough information to keep the audience up to speed. I don't think that program annotations like these really do the trick of replacing the information-rich prose kind, but I do think that they do a great deal to supplement the program.
Make sure to notice the "celebrity" sample program that has Dick Cheney accompanying Katie Couric in a performance of "Gretchen am Spinnrade." It is funny and telling on many levels. Perhaps what the nation has had to endure (and still has trust in its face by television reporters) with this man is all part of a Faustian bargain he made one night, long before he entered the political world.
Consider the text of the song (by the all-knowing Goethe), and read a synopsis of the play (if you are not familiar with it).
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Thanks, Elaine. I was trying to be pretty random with the celebrity names, but as I've said often before, it's amazing how often random connections inspire unexpectedly insightful meanings. Now if I can just figure out what Chomsky has to do with Wieniawski...
Skiing? (groan)
Never had an urge to kiss Cheney, Couric, nor Goethe. Gretchen is another kettle of fish; she's cute. Funny but all the politicians of most every stripe are generally gone when we think of Bach, Mozart, Schuman or Britten. Maybe mixing politics and music is mixing pigs with the stars? As to program notes, I prefer more words and information to clever and curt. Or Curly and Moe....
Hi Anonymous,
Nice to hear from one of history's most famous and important composers! I think longer program notes definitely have their place - I was particularly interested in solving the problem of a widely varied program for which full program notes would be impractical and even overwhelming. In 99% of recitals such as this, I'd bet there are no program notes.
Anyone who reads "Le ton beau de Marot" is okay with me. Now there's the proper length for program notes! And one notes that a crab canon is nothing like a crab canon, and Gödel never Escher'd Bach, either.
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