The rest are women

The people at Farrar, Straus and Giroux deserve a huge round of applause for promoting The Rest is Noise so effectively. Subsequent encouragement from the musical blog world led me to buy the book on Amazon, though I was planning to wait until it came out in paperback. It is very well written, and makes a lot of cultural connections. I believe that this book will increase the awareness of music's presence in the history of the 20th century.

I wish that Ross had given a little more than a paragraph to Nadia Boulanger. I wish he had mentioned Lili. There are a couple of paragraphs on Ruth Crawford Seeger, with a reference to her biographer Judith Tick, and there is a paragraph about the Princess de Polignac, but there is no mention of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. Important 20th century composers like Louise Talma, Joan Tower, Lucia Dlugoszewski, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich are also overlooked in Ross' 20th century. Germaine Tailleferre's name is mentioned as one of "les six," but Ross does not write anything about her or her music.

I know that there is not space in a book like this for everything, but it would be nice for intelligent people who are new to what I also don't like to call "classical music" to have a sense of the gender equity that started in music during the 20th century, and it would be nice to have the kind of public cultural recognition that will help it to continue.

Tags: women composers, The Rest is Noise, 20th century music, Alex Ross

Recordings: museums of music

While visiting the St. Louis Art Museum yesterday, I was struck by the thought that contemporary music has finally "made it," as far as the record (literally, I suppose) goes, into a realm where it is as accessible as visual art. Pieces of 20th century art that are a part of a museum's permanent collection can be visited again and again. For example, a 15 or 20-year-old sculpture in the St. Louis Museum that is made mostly of broken glass moved from an inner gallery to the museum's foyer, but it is still the same. Its material hasn't changed. Its "meaning" (according to the artist) hasn't changed. But I have changed and grown since the first time, and even the last time I saw it (along with all the other works in the permanent collection). Whether I like it or not, that sculpture is a part of my life.

It is the same with recordings, particularly recordings of music written in our own time. Now that we all have so much current music accessible to us on recordings, those recordings become the unchanging "sculptures" that measure who we are. Various styles of 20th-century music vie for position in what will eventually be called "posterity." As we hear more and more recordings of music by the many lesser-known composers of the 20th century who went about their business without trying to be radical, we realize that atonality, serialism, electronic, and chance music could be thought of simply as experiments in musical organization that composers used (and still use) as mediums for expression. Performers, just like performers of music from previous centuries, use contemporary compositions as vehicles for their own self expression.

Some music written using these techniques is genuine and engaging, and some of it, like what we sometimes see when one visual artist dabbles in a technique foreign to his or her customary style or medium, can sound out of place or downright phony. Also, people with little musical talent, like visual artists with little artistic talent, can have easy access to the materials necessary to create something that can pass for music (because it operates in an aural medium) and make a big sound (with amplification) or a big impact. This wasn't something "available" in the days before recording technology.

Still, like a visit to a museum, listening at various intervals of our lives to recordings of contemporary music helps us to measure our growth as listeners and recognize our limits, likes, and dislikes in a way that no other inhabitants of any previous century, who were not musicians themselves, have had the chance to do. Because of this always-accessible "aural museum," contemporary music is finally attaining an equal status to that of contemporary art.

Tags: contemporary music, contemporary art, classical music

Authenticity

I grew up during the age of awareness about early music, and as I started to learn more and more about "correct" baroque articulation in the 1970s and 1980s, and developed a reverence for the "urtext" as the best source and the best path to musical truth, I developed a kind of disdain for most of the editions of baroque music that were available during the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. It might have been because the flute editions were often filled with thoughtless articulations and dynamics, particularly when the editor was Jean-Pierre Rampal. I assumed that violin editions would have the same lack of insight, but last night I proved myself very wrong.

I am working on the Bach C minor Sonata for violin and harpsichord, BWV 1017, which I am performing with piano next month. Rather than try to pretend the piano is a harpsichord, and that I am playing a baroque violin, our approach is to play the piece as well as possible using modern equipment. I have been futzing with the bowings of the opening Siciliano, seeking out alternatives to the printed bowing, which I imagine is not Bach's since the edition we are using is not an urtext.

Last night I decided to tape record myself, and to my horror and shame I found that I was making all sorts of false accents, and I failed to sustain dotted rhythms properly when I applied bowings that I thought were "stylistically correct." I tried bowing the passages in question in several different ways, and my tape recorder revealed glaring errors with each bowing alteration. Then I tried the "inauthentic" printed version, and my false accents and rhythmic instability disappeared. My guess is that this part was edited by a very smart violinist who knew how to make the violin do what the music asked it to do.

Fugavergnügen

Fugavergnügen, or the love of counterpoint, is a term I thought up when I was writing a review of some chamber music by Roy Harris. Bach had it, and so did Mendelssohn, Glazunov, and Reger. Schubert had his Fugavergnügen cut off: he had unrealized plans near the end of his short life to study fugue writing.

Hugo Kauder, the composer I quoted below, had serious Fugavergnügen. People even referred to what he liked to write as "Kauderpoint." When Kauder moved to Vienna from Moravia in 1905 to study engineering, he spent most his time studying newly-published scores of Josquin and other Flemish composers of the Renaissance that were in the Imperial Court Library. He kept writing counterpoint while his Viennese contemporaries were becoming famous for abandoning tonality. Kauder kept writing counterpoint after he moved to America in 1940.

In 1960 he wrote a textbook on counterpoint that I am eagerly awaiting to arrive, along with a bunch of his music, by way interlibrary loan. For those of you who, like me, have Fugavergnügen (either as listeners, practicing musicians, composers, or all three) I'll let you know all about my Kauder experience.

Just for the record, the only professional recording of Kauder's music (so far) is by the Euclid Quartet on Chandos. If you look at the worldcat you will see music for all kinds of instrumental and vocal combinations.

Tags: Hugo Kauder, Fugue writing, counterpoint

Sobering thought for the day

"A wrong note is a lie."
Hugo Kauder (1888-1972)

Encore

Last night I played in the orchestra for a really satisfying performance of the Barber Violin Concerto with Tim Fain as the soloist. After the concerto Fain played a stunning encore by Kevin Puts: an excerpt from "Arches" for solo violin. During intermission many of the violinists in the orchestra asked Fain about the piece.

Playing a newly-written piece as an encore after a familiar concerto is really a great way to expose the audience to the newest part of the ever-expanding repertoire, but there is a hidden perk in the experience when the members of the orchestra get excited about the piece, and want to learn it themselves.

Tags: Tim Fain, Kevin Puts, Encore, new music

Paying Attention

Sometimes it seems that I need to jump backwards through hoops in order to get my community college students to pay attention to what they are listening to, but I have finally learned that getting someone to pay attention for the length of time that a movement of a piece might take is not the same as having that person (or those people, in this case) get into the habit of paying attention. It is the habit of playing attention that ultimately allows people to get the most out of life and to appreciate the wonders of the world around them.

One naive hope I have is that listening to music carefully as a group might make a kind of "light bulb" go on for my students; but I am resigned to admit that it is only through practice and freedom from distraction that people can learn to pay attention to what they are doing when it is necessary to do so. My other naive hope is that through listening to music with an ear pointed towards its emotional content, people who ordinarily would not let themselves be connected to deep and complicated emotions would find comfort and freedom in "feeling" through the emotional expressions of great composers and performers.

So many of my community college students seem distracted and removed, both intellectually and emotionally. I often wonder if they will ever think of the content of their music appreciation course as anything more than material to study the day before an exam. I guess the rewards from having taken a class like this might come later in their lives.

I know that I can always help my private students pay attention to what is required, even if they don't always do things correctly all the time. Paying attention to what is wrong (when they make mistakes) is just as valuable as paying attention to what is right. They are eager to close the window on the rest of the world and, when prompted and encouraged, listen to their intonation, listen to the quality of their sounds, observe the function of their hands, arms, and fingers, and count. I think that they actually like being asked to focus their attention on the tasks at hand, and they seem to be pleased that I care about their progress.

Then again, the are not being graded, and the only reward they get (besides an occasional sticker for the young ones) is the satisfaction of making music.

A Musical Feast

I'm not a music historian, but I tend to read a lot of books about musicians and composers, and I indulge in thinking (some would say obsessing) about particular composers and their relationships to the world around them, particularly the situations that have "produced" their best works.

The world of music-loving patrons asking people to write music, while it must be alive somewhere, seems to be reserved for a small segment of the composing and performing part of the musical population, and seems to be concentrated around major cities. Much of the financial part of the process is clothed in foundations and 501c3 organizations, and has moved from being a personal kind of interaction to being a public one.

Back in the 19th century, Franz Schubert had a circle of friends who read poetry together. He happened to be the composer of the group, so his friends were delighted to see and hear what he "did" with "their" poetry. He kept popping out piece after piece because he was in a circle of friends who appreciated what he did, and wanted more. His song writing was as much a service to the medium of poetry as it was to a gift to his friends. He also had a group of friends (men and women) who were students of Salieri who were particularly interested in each other's music, and they were all living under the shadows of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, who were only inaccessible because they were dead. Thankfully there were a few people in the business who recognized his gifts as a composer, but what really ran his musical motor was the knowledge that people wanted what he could produce, and producing it made him happy.

Alexander Glazunov was part of a circle of composers who were all students and friends of Rimsky-Korsakov. Every Friday Glazunov and his friends would go to the home of Mitrofan Belyayev, a businessman who made his fortune in lumber, and play string quartets (Belyayev usually played the viola) by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven until the wee hours of the night, and then they would eat. The composers who took part in Belyayev's Fridays were expected to bring pieces of their own, and they would be played. Glazunov wrote fantastic chamber music as a result of these Fridays. Belyayev started a publishing company to showcase this newly-composed Russian music. He did it because he loved music, especially Russian music, and he had the financial means to share this love for music with people outside of his circle of friends, outside of Russia, and into the future.

The Princess de Polignac was totally dedicated to music. She studied organ with Nadia Boulanger, and she had the financial means to support the composers she admired by asking them to write pieces of music to be performed for her in her home. I imagine that she felt like her "salon" could be sort of a like a court in the Renaissance, or the court of Louis XIV. She was equally devoted to what was then called "ancient music" (the first modern performance of Rameau's Dardanus was in her home, and she financed the first recordings of Monteverdi) as she was to contemporary music (she commissioned music from Stravinsky, Poulenc, Ravel, Satie, Tailleferre, Weill, and a slew of other composers), and helped the performing careers of people like Clara Haskil and the whole of the Ballet Russe. She had two quartets of Stradivarius instruments in her home, and invited young musicians to play them for her and her friends. She particularly liked Beethoven's late quartets. The musicians who came to her house were paid to play, and they got to play on fantastic instruments and eat great food.

Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge began her life as a patron by holding a contest to increase the viola repertoire so that her son would have more music to play. She was more of a "professional" patron than a social one. She didn't really seem to care about the social aspects of music making, though she enjoyed having personal working relationships with the composers and ensembles she worked with. A frustrated composer herself (being an upper-class woman in the United States during the early part of the 20th century, she was not encouraged to continue her composition studies) she put her energy into promoting the work of composers she admired. She paid Gian-Francesco Malipiero to make the first modern editions of Monteverdi's madrigals (the ones the Princess's friends used to make the first recordings), and she started the chamber music series at the Library of Congress, requesting string quartets to play entire cycles of Beethoven quartets.

Following the example of Coolidge, perhaps, we now have people and ensembles who are looking for new music to play--particularly ensembles made of unusual instruments. Commissioning music seems to now be ensemble-specific, but it tends to be, as far as I can tell, initiated by performing musicians who ask organizations for money, rather than by individual people who are devoted to music, but do not play professionally themselves. Finding performance venues for new music is also difficult unless an ensemble has personal connections with a school or concert series, or the composer is extremely well known.

We also have academia, which should be (and I imagine sometimes is) a haven for social-musical and artistic-intellectual interaction. People in some schools must get together and talk about poetry, and there are certainly composers in groups like these who would want to set contemporary poetry to music. Unfortunately for composers, poetry that is published is protected by copyright, and setting it to music would involve legal complications with public performances. Publication, because it would involve permission, which often translates into money, would be impossible for most composers. The musical possibilities for our current literary culture are seriously limited.

Academic situations also offer a huge range of music to hear: music from all over the world, music that celebrates tonality, serial and minimalist music, music that incorporates technology, "scholarly" music that embraces a bunch of popular styles, jazz, and, in some places, music written by students and members of the faculty. What is new, as we can see from new music blogs on line, is both varied and plentiful. The shadow of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven is something that many people involved in new music encounter only occasionally. There just doesn't seem to be time for everything we have on our musical plate.

Tags: Schubert, Glazunov, Beylayev, Polignac, Coolidge

Guest blogger, Franz Schubert

In 1816 Franz Schubert kept a diary, which he wrote in from time to time. He was very much in love with a woman named Therese Grob, but because he didn't make enough money as an assistant schoolteacher to get married (there was a law in Vienna that required a man to make a certain amount of money if he wanted to marry), they had to part ways.

Here are a few extracts from his diary, taken from Elizabeth Norman McKay's Franz Schubert biography:

"Man resembles a ball in play, subject to chance and passions. . . . He is like an actor on a stage who plays his part as best he can. If the part suits him, he plays it well; but his success in the eyes of others is of no matter, as their response is colored by their mood at the time rather than by the excellence of the performance."

"Happy is the man who finds a true man-friend; but happier still he who finds a true friend in his wife."

"These days matrimony is an alarming thought to an unmarried man; if he does not marry, he has to settle for misery or gross sensuality [one could read that to mean either being celibate or going to prostitutes]. Monarchs of today, you see what is happening an do nothing. Or are you blind to it? if so, O God, shroud our senses and feelings in numbness; but remove the shroud again one day without lasting harm."

"A light mind accompanies a light heart; yet too light a mind usually conceals too heavy a heart."

The drawing, by the way, was made on Schubert's 200th birthday in 1997 by our then eight-year-old son Ben.

Tags: Franz Schubert

Free Burma

[International Bloggers' Day for Burma, sponsored by free-burma.org.]

Tag
Free Burma

More Greek Myths

After playing "Four Greek Myths" for contrabassoon and piano, Susan Nigro commissioned me to write "More Greek Myths." She and Mark Lindeblad played them in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, and I thought I'd share their performance here.

This collection of musical mythological characters travels from the Apollonian to the Dionysian, with all the Greek gods and godesses "dressed" in tonal material. Heracles, the only mortal in the group, is written using 12-tone material, and he is flanked by Artemis (the virgin huntress) on one side and Aphrodite (the goddess of love) on the other.

Tags: More Greek Myths, contrabassoon, Apollo, Artemis, Heracles, Aphrodite, Dionysus

Harlequin Sonata

In addition to "More Greek Myths," Susan Nigro commissioned me to write "something Italian" for contrabassoon and piano so I wrote this Italianate sonata for her. Sue and Mark Lindeblad played it on the same program as "More Greek Myths" in Chicago a few weeks ago, and a recording of it is on my American Music Center page.



Here's a lovely description of Harlequin from Jean-François Marmontel (1723-1799) as quoted by Maurice Sand in The History of the Harlequinade that I think applies to the contrabassoon as well.

His character presents a mixture of ignorance, naïveté, stupidity and grace. He is like a mere sketch of a man, a great child visited by flashes of reason and intelligence, in all of whose capers and awkwardnesses there is something sharp and interesting. The model Harlequin is all suppleness and agility, with the grace of a young cat, yet equipped with a superficial coarseness that renders his performances more amusing; the role is that of a lackey, patient, faithful, credulous, gluttonous, always in love, always in difficulties either on his master's account or on his own, afflicting himself and consoling himself again with the readiness of a child, one whose sorrows are as amusing as his joys.

For future performances of these pieces this fall, visit Susan Nigro's performance page on her website.

UPDATE: Here's a performance from April 1, 2021 by Trent Jacobs and pianist Nicholas Phillips

More on Musical Memory

I think I have finally figured out something about musical memory, my nemesis. I just realized today that for me the process of playing from memory seems to involve getting from one note to the next note, or in the case of playing many voices at a time, one group of notes or one hand position to the next one. If this is true, memorizing a long piece of music should be pretty much the same as memorizing a short one: it simply involves physically, intellectually, and aurally knowing what comes next. It is kind of like knowing the way to get somewhere without having to refer to directions, but using visual cues along the road to remind you where to turn right or left. It doesn't "ask" you to remember where you've been, or even the contour of the "road." It only asks you to look ahead and proceed onward.

I was playing a movement of Bach today, one that I didn't think I knew from memory (I was simply too lazy to move the music from the pile sitting on my table to the music stand), and while I was playing it I paid attention only to the sounds of notes and the physical positions of my hands. I didn't think about the written music at all, and paid absolutely no attention to the names of the pitches I was playing. With the exception of one place where I "drove off the road," I was able to play the whole movement from memory, one note at a time, and sometimes even one group of notes at a time.

Tags: memory, musical memory, violin playing

Highbrow Humor

. . . and some words of wisdom from Peter Ustinov, taken from this page.

Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Critics search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find.

Her virtue was that she said what she thought, her vice that what she thought didn't amount to much.

I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me to be the most civilized music in the world.

In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.

It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.

People who reach the top of the tree are only those who haven't got the qualifications to detain them at the bottom.

The point of living and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.

Unfortunately, the balance of nature decrees that a super-abundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares.

Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.

Tags: Peter Ustinov

Schubert

I have always liked Schubert (who doesn't?), but for some reason I have found myself obsessed with Schubert lately, especially since I have been listening to this live concert recording made from performances in 1958 through 1969 of Sviatoslav Richter playing some of his piano sonatas and his "Huttenbrenner Variations." For me, listening to these performances, particularly the C minor (D. 958) and the B-flat major (D 960) Sonatas is like taking a vacation: it is highly-valued time spent away from normal reality and responsibility. Sometimes listening to them puts me into an altered state, where all that matters is the musical landscape, and every twist and turn of natural wonder comes as a kind of surprise. Sometimes listening to them is like a musical therapy session that allows emotional issues that may have been buried for a long time to come to the surface of my consciousness. At any rate, while they last, and as long and as satisfying as they may be, these pieces of Schubert that are brought to life by Richter always end too soon. Tags: Schubert, Richter, classical music, recordings