Selling

Slate magazine has an article by Seth Stevenson on a TV commercial that features Paul McCartney (Did you guys know he was in a band before Wings?). I have no opinion one way or the other about pop stars selling their images and/or music to commercial interests for use in advertising campaigns. But this sentence from the article seems to me to directly address those of us in the concert music world who are concerned about the future of our art:

[C]an we really consider it selling out when what you crave above all else is to put your new art in front of your audience?

What should we be doing in this regard? What would be too much?

Review

Here's my review of the opening concert of the Tallahassee (FL) Symphony Orchestra season.

Also, I've added Michael Kaulkin's composer's 'blog to the blogroll. As of this writing, his top post is about composing and sketching on computer.

Workshop (III)

I mentioned before that I was revising my brass quintet piece. It's a fairly substantial rewrite. I had already put the score into Finale, so I'm working from that "copy". It's interesting--this is the first time I've revised a piece (this much) that was already in Finale, and I've found myself actually composing directly into Finale. I know that many (most?) do that, but it's new for me. I don't know if I'll do that from scratch or for a piece for a larger ensemble (one where all the instruments don't fit on the screen at once), but I like doing it this way so far.

Search

The 2005-2006 season of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra opens this weekend with a concert of music by North and South American composers. This season will be an “audition season”: The Orchestra is seeking a new Music Director and the six concerts of the season will serve as auditions for the finalists.

I’ve been told by Board members that my reviews will be read as part of the process. This is a new responsibility, one that I don’t take lightly. Anybody have any suggestions on how to approach the season?

Because the Stakes Are So Small

In a couple of provocative posts, Kyle Gann discusses the state of composition teaching in present day America. I can't speak to the accuracy of his description, as I have no institutional affiliation, but I am reminded of the central point of art critic Dave Hickey's essay "The Heresy of the Zone Defense", in which he describes the inevitable process through which freedom becomes obligation. In other words, in the likely-pretty-near-future, young composers will seek out mentors and complain to them of being unable to write the kind of music they wish to write--and that music will be not be tonal. This kind of hegemony is, it would seem, unescapabale.

But what I really find interesting and valuable is this:

I’ll allow any kind of music I know how to criticize, and if I can’t criticize it, I’ll send them to someone else.

That strikes me as both artistically and educationally sound.

NOTE: I wish that this post had a included a page number from Silence. My memory is that the answer "To thicken the plot" is given to the question "Given that God is good, why did he put evil in the world?"

The List

My list of 101 essential pieces of 20th centruy concert music has undergone some changes since the last time I posted it. Here it is, in its current final state, subject, as always, to change:

Adams, John: Violin Concerto
Barber, Samuel: Knoxville: Summer of 1915
Barber, Samuel: Piano Sonata
Bartok, Bela: Concerto for Orchestra
Bartok, Bela: String Quartet 4
Berg, Alban: Violin Concerto
Berg, Alban: Wozzeck
Berio, Luciano: Sinfonia
Bernstein, Leonard: Suite from On the Waterfront
Bolcom, William: Songs of Innocence and Experience
Boulez, Pierre: Repons
Bridge, Frank: Piano Trio 2
Britten, Benjamin: Peter Grimes
Britten, Benjamin: War Requiem
Busoni, Ferrucio: Piano Concerto
Cage, John: 4'33"
Cage, John: Sonatas and Interludes
Carter, Elliott: String Quartet 5
Carter, Elliott: Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretium Spei
Copland, Aaron: Billy the Kid
Copland, Aaron: Piano Variations
Corigliano, John: Violin Sonata
Crawford, Ruth: Quartet
Crumb, George: Black Angels
Daugherty, Michael: Metropolis Symphony
Debussy, Claude: La Mer
Debussy, Claude: Sonata for flute, viola, and harp
Durufle, Maurice: Requiem
Elgar, Edward: Cello Concerto
de Falla, Manuel: Nights in the Gardens of Spain
Feldman, Morton: Rothko Chapel
Gershwin, George: Porgy and Bess
Gershwin, George: Rhapsody in Blue
Glass, Philip: Einstein on the Beach
Granados, Ernesto: Goyescas
Gubaidulina, Sofia: Offertorium
Harris, Roy: Symphony 3
Henze, Hans Werner: The Bassarids
Hindemith, Paul: Six Chansons
Hindemith, Paul: Symphonic Metamophoses on a Theme by Weber
Holst, Gustav: The Planets
Honneger, Arthur: Pacific 231
Hyla, Lee: We Speak Etruscan
Ives, Charles: The Unanswered Question
Janacek, Leos: The Makropulos Case
Janacek, Leos: Quartet 2
Korngold, Erich von: Violin Concerto
Ligeti, Gyorgy: Etudes
Ligeti, Gyorgy: Le Grand Macabre
Lutoslawski, Witold: Symphony 3
Mahler, Gustav: Das Lied von Der Erde
Mahler, Gustav: Symphony 6
Martin, Frank: Concerto for Seven Wind Instruments
Martinu, Bohuslav: Symphony 2
Menotti, Gian Carlo: The Medium
Messiaen, Olivier: Quatour pour la fin du temps
Messiaen, Olivier: Turangalilia-Symphonie
Milhaud, Darius: La Creation du Monde
Nielsen, Carl: Symphony 4
Orff, Carl: Carmina Burana
Part, Arvo: Passio Domini nostri Jesu Christi secundum Johannem
Penderecki, Krzysztof: Threnody
Poulenc, Francois: Dialogues du Carmelites
Prokofiev, Sergei: Sonata 7
Prokofiev, Sergei: Violin Concerto 2
Puccini, Giacomo: Madama Butterfly
Rachmaninoff, Sergei: Piano Concerto 2
Rautavaara, Einojuhani: Symphony 7
Ravel, Maurice: Bolero
Ravel, Maurice: Piano Concerto in G
Reich, Steve: Come Out
Respighi, Ottorino: Pines of Rome
Riley, Terry: In C
Rochberg, George: Quartet 3
Rodrigo, Joaquin: Concierto de Aranjuez
Rzewski, Frederic: The People United Will Never Be Defeated!
Saariaho, Kaija: Nymphea (Jardin secret III)
Satie, Erik: Parade
Schnittke, Alfred: Concerto Grosso 1
Schoenberg, Arnold: Pierrot Lunaire
Scriabin, Alexander: Poeme d'Ecstases
Scriabin, Alexander: Sonata 9
Shostakovich, Dmitri: String Quartet 8
Shostakovich, Dmitri: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Sibelius, Jean: Symphony 4
Sibelius, Jean: Violin Concerto
Stockhausen, Karlheinz: Gesang der Junglinde
Strauss, Richard: Salome
Strauss, Richard: Four Last Songs
Stravinsky, Igor: Le Sacre du Printemps
Stravinsky, Igor: Symphony of Psalms
Szymanowski, Karol: King Roger
Thomson, Virgil: Four Saints in Three Acts
Tippett, Michael: King Priam
Varese, Edgard: Ionisation
Vaughan Williams, Ralph: Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis
Walton, William: Viola Concerto
Webern, Anton: Six Bagatelles, op. 9
Weill, Kurt: Seven Deadly Sins
Weir, Judith: A Night at the Chinese Opera
Xenakis, Iannis: Pithoprakta

Workshop (II)

I've been pondering several comments about A Certain Light, the piece for brass quintet I thought I had finished a few weeks ago. I'm doing extensive revisions, using the same material as before, only from a very different perspective. It will be recognizable as the same piece, only a few feet off the ground.

For what it's worth, I think Pervasive Zeppelins would make a fine title for a piece.

Changes

I've added Cathey Fuller's Fullermusic to the 'blogroll and deleted Mark Dancigers' and Martin Suckling's 'blog, which has fallen into desuetude. I'll replace it if they star posting again.

I've replaced Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos with his Salome on the 101 list.

This and That

A reader sent me a copy of this CD, by Duo 46. The duo consists of violinist Beth Ilana Schneider and guitarist Matt Gould. All of the music on this album (by Anthony Joseph Lanman, Daniel Adams, Paul Richards, Kristi McGarity, Richard P. Schaefer, Pierre Jalbert, Joshua Penman, Neil Flory, Russell Sarre, and Stacy Garrop) was commissioned by the Duo. The program explores a great deal of the textural possibility (but hardly all of it) presented by this challenging medium. The pieces are exceptionally well-played and recorded. Buy it, and the Duo can commission more music!

I've added Rob Witts' Musicircus to the blogroll. For two reasons: He has the good taste to post about Richard Powers, one of my favorite writers, and the bad judgement to list me as one of his "Daily Readings".

Kyle Gann rhapsodizes about finally getting to hear a performance of Roy Harris' Third Symphony (scroll about 5/8 of the way down). In a later post, about the need for different kinds of singers for different kinds of operas (a point I heartily agree with), Mr. Gann perorates thusly:

Maybe they'll appear when classical music finally dies, which classical musicians keep promising me is about to happen, so I keep waiting for the final announcement. It's been dying longer than friggin' Generalissimo Franco.

It would have been bitterly ironic had the hoped-for demise (accent on the first syllable, ala Ward Bond) occured before Mr. Gann got to hear the Harris.

New Directions in Lounge Music

I went to lunch last Friday with some new colleaques. The restaurant had a grand piano that was outfitted with a device (several generations [technologically speaking] old) that sent MIDI signals to the piano, causing it to play standards and pop songs. For minutes at a time, however, the device would malfunction and send out MIDI signals that would play isolated chords (triads up through 9th chords) and brief (two- or three-notes) melodic fragments with long, pregnant pauses between them. I dropped a chip into the tip jar and wondered how much it got per Gig.

The Times Are Never So Bad

Two recent posts highlight some issues that are central to artistic experience in today's world.

Greg Sandow rebuts the canard that young people have a shorter attention span than earlier generations. Greg mentions activity after activity associated with young people that require intense concentration for long periods of time. He goes on to attribute the aesthetic trends that some point to when leveling the short-attention-span charge--quick cutting in film and video, especially--to a desire for complexity, due to the ability to process more information, faster. I tend to agree with Greg, in part, but I would point out that more information doesn't necessarily lead to more complexity. And both of these desires may be in play here. (Alex Ross gently bemoaned the desire of some younger composers for more complexity not too long ago in a post that pre-echoes some of Greg's points.)

I think the kind of complexity that Greg notes may have more to do with an aesthetic that I have felt in the air for a few years than with a desire for complexity, per se. I call it the aesthetic of co-incidence, and I've seen and felt in the films of Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love), the television series Boomtown, and in the novels of Richard Powers (especially Gain and Plowing the Dark). All of these treat coincidence as thematic material, and have coincidences that would be eye-roll inducing in other contexts. The techniques used in these works--radical tone shifts, changes of cinematography, multiple points-view, and changes of voice and tone--all provide the layering necessary for this aesthetic of co-incidence to work. And they can be very complex.

The other post is an excellent one by George Hunka on his struggles with one of Schoenberg's piano pieces. Read the whole thing, of course, but the part most relevant to our discussion is this:

As I mentioned in an earlier post (and with the nagging feeling I'm beating a dead horse), the piece I'm working on is scarcely a minute long, but so far I've heard it (in both my own dreadful rendition and those of other pianists) a hundred times, at least. As Beethoven and Wagner reshaped the course of music, their more daring compositions waited for years to be recognized; now the Choral Symphony and the Tristan love-death motif are as familiar and listenable to many of us as old show tunes, even if only as an element of a movie score. As we heard them over and over again, as their innovations trickled down to more popular and less rarefied forms of music, they became a part of the culture–not offensive or challenging to the ears any more, even boring to some. Considering the disapprobation that still attaches to the work of Schönberg and the Second Viennese School generally nearly a century or so following its composition, I wonder how much of this is attributable to the fragmentation of our leisure time.

I think he's right about the fragmentation of leisure time, though that doesn't square with certain points Greg made about the willingness of people to spend hours learning the complexities of video games or to spend hours getting a sound just right on a recording. Still.

There's something to this, and it may be, as George suggests, related to the strangeness of Schoenberg's idiom, despite the fact that it is nearly a century old. It is interesting to note that in an age when people will gladly sit through multiple viewings/hearings of Tolkien and/or Wagner, the blazing intensity of these short pieces by Schoenberg (and others like them) remains problematic.

Workshop (I)

Everything is Green is simmering on the back burner for the moment, while I take care of some other projects that keep insisting on attention. I just finished a short piece for brass quintet called A Certain Light. The title comes from the remarkable Chapter VI of Kate Chopin's The Awakening.

Let the trumpets sound! But not too loudly.

Miscellany

I've been asked to post a link to the allClassicHall classical music forum. If it proves to be substantive, I'll link it in the "Links and Resources" on the main page here.

Tim Rutherford-Johnson provides an introduction to Frederic Rzewski's The People United Will Never Be Defeated here. There's a link for just about every section of the piece.

I'm cleaning up the blogroll a bit by removing the links to individual Sequenza21 composer/bloggers. The growing list of composers blogging at S21 can be found on the magazine's homepage, or at the S21 Composer's Forum, which will remain in the blogroll.

Cornicello

I've added Anthony Cornicello's 'blog to the 'blogroll. I knew Anthony back when he was an undergraduate. Kids!

Search and Celebration

I was looking through William W. Austin's Music in the 20th Century: From Debussy through Stravinsky (New York: W. W. Norton, 1966) and I came across this passage regarding Bela Bartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion and Music for String Instruments, Percussion and Celesta (p.323):

The differences between the two great works with percussion are as remarkable as the similarities. The Music for Strings is like a search, poignant and thorough; the Sonata for Two Pianos is like a celebration, festive, mysterious at times, playful often, and gloriously affirmative.

It seems as if we must categorize works of art, since there are two types of people, those who divide the world into two types of people and those who--well, you know the rest. As readers of this and other blogs know, the concert music world is full of conversations and controversies centered on divisions of musical repertoires based on such characteristics as style, compositional techniques, and even whether pieces are "simple" or "complex".

None of these categorizations really gets at the reasons we write, play, or listen to music and truth be told, they are often as not used to deny intellectual and artistic space to the music of the "other side" of the categorization and its supporters.

Of course, few pieces will fit simpy or wholly into either the "search" or "celebration" category. Even so, it seems to me that the ideas behind these categories could, with some expansion and explication, prove useful in probing the connections between pieces that seem on the surface to be unrelated. This would be far more beneficial to our art than spending our energy on pointing out differences that are more superficial than they are substantive.

Teaching/Learning

Corey Dargel posts about trying to find new ways to teach theory, if teach it we must. And we must, otherwise we're limited by habit.

Kyle Gann responds with an excellent idea--teach acoustics first. More specifically, the acoustics of interval. All pitched music, whatever tuning system or style, is based, at least in part, on interval (the "distance" between two notes). So, if you teach interval first, you can go in most any direction you want or need.

Happy Fourth!

Some music for the day:

John Cage: Apartment House 1776
Charles Ives: The Fourth of July
John Adams: Short Ride on a Fast Machine
Duke Ellington: "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue"
George & Ira Gershwin: "They All Laughed"
Elliott Carter: A Celebration of Some 150x150 Notes
Terry Riley: In C
Steve Reich: Clapping Music
Milton Babbitt: Whirled Series

Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city

Kyle Gann directs us to an article by Jennifer Higdon on her early experiences with the music and ideas of John Cage. He describes it as "the frankest admission and most thoughtful self-analysis I've ever seen of why an Uptown composer doesn't like (some) Downtown music".

Hmmm. The thing is, I don't consider Cage to be a downtown composer. Mr. Gann's own definition of downtown music is helpful, but it's more indicative of what downtown isn't rather than what it is, as he himself suggests. I don't consider Morton Feldman downtown, either. Much of Stockhausen fits Mr. Gann's definition better than Feldman or as well as Cage, for that matter.

Everything's waiting for you.

Denk

A. C. Douglas points to this exquisite post by pianist and latest Blogroll inductee Jeremy Denk.

Mr. Denk's post includes some telling analytical comments about the ending of Elliott Carter's Piano Sonata (1945-46). I've commented in the past about the value of analysis for performers and listeners alike, and I wonder what Mr. Douglas, who is less amenable to analytical commentary, thinks of Mr. Denk's analysis.

One more thing. I wonder how the piece of the score included (via photograph) in the post got that way. We're left with a mystery: Does the pedal ever get released?

Traditional Musician

The Boston Globe has an interesting article on pianist/composer Frederic Rzewski.

Note the tension between Mr. Rzewski's institutional acceptance (he's being feted by the New England Conservatory) and his wry attitude towards the state of such institutions. It's a good, if uncomfortable, position for an artist to be in. I think the way the artist handles it will go a long way towards determining the quality of the work after the acceptance. That is, does the artist get comfortable (or worse) or does s/he take it in stride and continue making the art they would have made without the institutional imprimatur?

Changes and Stuff

I've added Frederic Rzewski's The People United Will Never Be Defeated! to the 101 list. It replaces Rachmaninoff's Paganini Rhapsody.

I've added Alan Thiesen to the Blogroll. His post on Elliott Carter is a winner. Speaking of the Blogroll, has anybody heard anything from Mark Dancigers and/or Martin Suckling lately?

Alex Ross on film music in general and Philip Glass in particular.

Interesting article from the Chronicle of Higher Education on giving up an academic career not because you can't get a job, but because the students you train won't be able to get one.

Kyle Gann waxes eloquent on composers' politics and personality. The last sentence is very fine:

When we love the music and are disappointed in the musician, we can only tolerantly shake our heads and wonder at what fallible vessels the Spirit of Music embraces to express itself through.

Have you read Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men? You should.

Ludwig van Narcissus

Dylan Evans, writing in the Guardian, tells us that Beethoven was a "narcissistic hooligan", concerned only about himself when he wrote his music of "morbid self-obsession ", that by the late quartets and the Ninth became "simply a vehicle for a self-indulgent display of bizarre mood swings and personal difficulties". Mr. Evans would have preferred the composer to recognize what his predecessors had, that "musical beauty was based on a mysterious connection between sound and mathematics, and that this provided music with an objective goal, something that transcended the individual composer's idiosyncrasies and aspired to the universal", and eschew the explorations that led to music that embodied an "inward-directed, narcissistic focus on the composer himself and his own tortured soul".

It was simply beyond the pale for Beethoven to believe that as a composer he should have written what he imagined, felt, and heard. Selfish bastard. He should have written for the sensibilities of Dylan Evans.

Screed

I was going to post a sarcastic response to Miles Hoffman's article here, but the piece doesn't deserve even that. It is full of inaccuracies, as the comments after the article indicate. The inaccuracies are so extensive that it is clear that Mr. Hoffman is either spectacularly unqualified to write on the subject or he is engaged in culture war propaganda. In either case, shame on him, and shame on the Wilson Quarterly for publishing it.

Opera Review

The following is reprinted from the Tallahassee Democrat, 29 May 2005, with permission.

Summer, in the world of concert music and opera, is usually a time of lighter, "pops"-oriented fare and a relaxed atmosphere. At institutions with large and prominent opera programs, such as Florida State University, the summer is also the time for directing students to stage productions of one-act operas as part of their academic programs. Because these projects are often the first time these students are in charge of a full production, the operas mounted and the productions themselves frequently are at least a little outside the mainstream.

This was the case at FSU's double bill of Leonard Bernstein's domestic dramedy Trouble in Tahiti and Luigi Dallapiccola's totalitarian nightmare The Prisoner on Friday and Saturday evenings at Opperman Music Hall. The operas were chosen by the directors, Tracie Pope (Tahiti) and Tal Shahar (Prisoner), independently, but the evening as a whole provided an unsettling view of two very different, and very modern, ways of being trapped.

Sam (Evan Jones) and Dinah (Melissa Vitrella) are no longer communicating. In an attempt to avoid their problems, they decide at the end of the opera to go see the new film, Trouble in Tahiti, which Dinah already saw that afternoon. A trio (Christopher Diaz, Lisa Kotara, and David Margulis) comments on their life like a chorus in a Greek tragedy.

Ms. Pope's staging was inventive and engaging, though I found the mugging of the stagehands as they moved the scenery superfluous and distracting. An instrumental trio (Music Director Elizabeth Blood, piano, Sergio Acerb, bass, and Dave Cochran, percussion) provided lively accompaniment. Krista A. Franco's scenery rendered the '50s suburban milieu subtly and directly. All of the singers were in fine voice, and they handled Ms. Pope's blocking and Marko Westwood's choreography with style.

While Sam and Dinah's marriage leaves them feeling trapped, the incarceration of the unnamed protagonist of Dallapiccola's Prisoner is quite literal. His predicament is rendered concrete and personal in the composer's searing Modern, lyrical score. Ms. Shahar's production eschews specifics as to time and place, so the Prisoner's plight is universal. Ian Zywica's abstract scenic and lighting design was uncomfortably claustrophobic and transgressive. At times the light's shone at the audience, and felt as if you were under the gaze of the Inquisitor yourself.

Ms. Shahar's staging was lean and minimal, letting the music and the singers speak for themselves, for the most part. A Dancer (Terence Duncan) was a distraction, though he danced well. Lara Billings delivered a heartbreaking performance as the Prisoner's Mother and Aaron Beck was all false hope and bureaucratic emptiness as the Jailer/Inquisitor. Music Director Eric Schnobrick conducted a taut, well-paced performance, with FSU Professor Douglas Fisher and Ms. Blood on piano and a fine chorus in the pit.

Scott MacLeod dominated the proceedings as the Prisoner. He communicated anguish, fear, and exhaustion in his voice and in the demanding physicality of the role. It was a challenging role in a challenging opera. The Prisoner is not easy in any sense of the word, and the prolonged ovation by the audience was gratifying on many levels.

Addition

I've added the fine On An Overgrown Path to the blogroll. Dig especially the list of concert music web resources down the right side of the home page.

Goings On

Charles Downey, of the always interesting ionarts, has posted lots of valuable information on Leos Janacek's Makropoulos Affair (a 101 piece)and the composer's other operas. This quote, from an interview with soprano Anja Silja, is particularly telling with regard to shaping a character and a performance:

When I began singing it 35 years ago, I thought that Emilia Marty was a capricious, heartless diva. With time, I realized that she was instead a hypersensitive artist, a wounded woman, who has lived too long fearing death. The events of my own life obliged me to see things as they are. When you get older, you lose your friends, your loves. I know of what I speak: in 1966 and 1967, I lived through the loss of two men I loved, the director Wieland Wagner and the conductor André Cluytens. Emilia Marty became the identifying role of my life.

I hope you have been following the excellent series of posts by Drew McManus and his collaborators on the Take a Friend to Orchestra month project. There are no orchestra concerts in Tallahassee this month, but I do intend to take some friends to the FSU Opera production of Dallapiccola's Prisoner and Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti next weekend.

Critical Convictions

Terry Teachout and George Hunka have posts up about their own critical biases and prejudices. Readers of this 'blog and of my High Hat articles will not be surprised to learn that I would tend to find more of Mr. Hunka's views generally more amenable than those of Mr. Teachout.

In addition, Mr. Teachout's tend to lean quite a bit more to the prescriptive than do Mr. Hunka's. I wonder if that is at least in part due to Mr. Hunka's status as an artist/critic, while Mr. Teachout lacks the "/" and the different slant* it confers.


*As it were.

Everything is Green (IV)

I'm well into the second (of three) scenes of Everything is Green. The action is simple--a couple, in their kitchen in the morning, argue about something the man believes the woman has done, and which she denies. This scene plays out three times, each time at greater length and in greater detail than before, but with no greater communication between the characters.

The music forms the background for this domestic inaction, rather than amplifying or "commenting" on it. Each scene has a different textural basis and rhythmic profile, but is based on similar harmonic material. The two singers share some melodic materials (but not at the same time or even in the same scene) and rhythmic characteristics, but generally speaking, their music remains as separate as they seem to be.

I also have three other pieces going, at various early stages, and I'll probably write about them as they progress.

Review: Tallahassee 101

The following was published in the Tallahassee Democrat, 2 May 2005. It is reprinted here by permission.

Two things were abundantly clear at the final concert of the 2004-2005 season of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra, which was also David Hoose's final appearance as the orchestra's music director.

The first of these was that one of the motivating factors in the music of the early 20th century was a desire among composers to free themselves of what they saw as the strictures of Germanic Romanticism and to establish musical identities for themselves and their countries.

The concert opened with a delightful performance of French composer Erik Satie's buoyantly absurdist ballet, Parade (1917). The score of Parade anticipates many of the innovations of the century, including minimalism, "moment form" (pieces made up of musical moments that could come in any order without changing the substance of the piece), the use of popular idioms in concert music and the use of extra-musical sound effects (a gun and a typewriter, among others).

Hoose and the orchestra reveled in the piece's eccentricities without resorting to exaggeration or slapstick.

Mark Rohr's program note quotes another Frenchman, Maurice Ravel: "The music of a concerto should, in my opinion, be lighthearted and brilliant, and not aim for profundity or dramatic effects." Ravel's Piano Concerto In G Major (1931) avoids Germanic "profundity" but does not avoid drama. Florida State University faculty member James Nalley joined the orchestra for a lively reading of the concerto. Hoose and the orchestra provided nimble and colorful accompaniment. Nalley's playing was stylish and clean, if a little heavy at times in the lyrical slow movement.

Continuing discussion in the concert-music world centers on ways to increase audiences, especially among younger people. Many people, and not just the young, find the atmosphere at concerts artificial and stuffy. The first movement of the Ravel concerto ends with a flourish that seems designed to elicit applause from the audience. The silence with which we now treat such moments seemed extremely artificial to this audience member.

Late in life, Claude Debussy followed his signature with the phrase "Musician of France." His Prelude a 'L'Apres-midi d'un Faune' ("Prelude to 'The Afternoon of a Faun'," 1894) went a long way toward establishing a French sound in concert music that echoes in today's music.

I've commented before that because of the presence of FSU faculty members in the principal chairs in the TSO, repertoire can be played here that generally can't be heard from the local orchestra in most cities the size of Tallahassee. Prelude, with its lush solos from several instruments, is one of those pieces. Eva Amsler gave a warm and expressive reading of the iconic opening flute solo, and clarinetist Frank Kowalsky, bassoonist Jeffrey Keesecker, oboist Eric Ohlsson, harpist Mary Brigid Roman, hornist David Cripps and concertmistress Karen Clarke acquitted themselves admirably in solos and exposed passages.

Italian composer Ottorino Respighi was very conscious of expressing his national identity in his music, especially in the Roman trilogy, of which Pini di Roma ("The Pines of Rome," 1924) is the most popular. Saturday evening's performance was bright and exciting.

Respighi's particular genius was in his orchestration, and the gripping finale of this work, "The Pines of the Appian Way," gets its power from the way the composer layers the motives so the volume grows through the addition of instruments. Hoose and the orchestra exhibited great control throughout, saving the biggest sound for the end. The large closing-night audience responded with a lengthy and boisterous ovation.

The other thing alluded to above is that Hoose leaves the TSO and its audience in very good shape for whoever takes up the baton after next season's year of audition concerts. And you can't ask much more of a music director's leave-taking than that.

Tallahassee 101

The 2004-2005 season of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra concludes tomorrow evening with a program replete with rich 101 goodness. Eric Satie's Parade, Ottorino Respighi's Pini di Roma, and the G Major Piano Concerto of Maurice Ravel constitute the 101 portion of the program, which is filled out with Claude Debussy's Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune. Would it have killed them to play La Mer?

The concert also marks the end of David Hoose's tenure as TSO Music Director. Mr. Hoose leaves the Orchestra in good musical shape, as I hope is clear from the reviews of this season's concerts.

Next season will be an audition season, as the Orchestra searches for Mr. Hoose's replacement. Six concerts, six different conductors. What's a critic to do?

Piano Tech

I had the pleasure to attend an open house at the new Piano Technology Lab at the College of Music at Florida State University. The Lab is home to FSU's recently implemented Master of Arts in Piano Technology program. This program is the only one of its kind in the United States. There are trade programs leading to a certificate in Boston and at the University of Western Ontario. Through a partnership agreement, Western Ontario students are able to complete their training in the FSU program. Program director Anne Garee said they have received inquiries from several institutions regarding hiring the program's graduates, of which there are two so far.

Most of the clinical work in the program will be on the College's dozens of practice, classroom, and concert insturments. The first graduating class got to work on a 1927 Mason & Hamlin instrument that was part of a significant donation that helped to get the program off the ground. It will be returned to the donor and used in a Tallahassee performance venue. Ms. Garee said that the instrument represented a unique opportunity for the students because of its high quality. The piano had a warm and rich tone when I heard it played at the open house. Debussy and Feldman (for example) would sound wonderful on this instrument.

The Lab itself was fascinating--parts and tools everywhere and in order. There were various kinds of actions out on workbenches so visitors (and students, of course) could see how the many parts worked together. I asked Ms. Garee what role (if any) electronic technology plays in the process. She said they use computers mostly to generate charts and graphs for use in the diagnosis and measurement of problems with the action. These meaurements represent the biggest step in piano technology in over 100 years. But the real work remains in the hands and in the ear.

Review: Hamelin

Review of Marc-Andre Hamelin's Tallahassee recital, from the Tallahassee Democrat, 25 April 2005. Reprinted with permission.

Pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin is world-renowned for his thoughtful and sometimes unusual programming as much as for his prodigious technique and deeply musical playing.

All of these attributes and many more were in evidence throughout Hamelin's season-ending Artist Series recital Sunday afternoon at Florida State University's Ruby Diamond Auditorium.

The program consisted of music by the Spanish composer Isaac Albeniz. After a virtuosic performance of Navarra (left by the composer in fragment form and completed by the eclectic American composer William Bolcom), Hamelin launched into a performance of the composer's masterpiece, Iberia (composed between 1906 and 1909).

Iberia consists of four books of three character pieces (compositions of medium length that usually maintain one or two moods, tempos, or textures throughout) each. Albeniz structured each book of pieces to make it a complete musical statement. Hamelin's performance order, the first and fourth books followed by an intermission, then books two and three, was designed to convey a larger sense of a whole musical statement, and he was largely successful, hindered only by the consistency in Albeniz' materials and style.

Hamelin's playing was ideally suited to the mercurial changes in these pieces. His technique truly is amazing. He seemed to glide over the difficulties served up in these pieces, which are rightly considered among the most difficult in the literature.

What struck me about the performance, though, was the incredible beauty and sensitivity Hamelin drew from the piano in the soft and lyrical passages in the piece. This sensitivity to nuance undoubtedly led Hamelin to underline the many unusual syntactical, melodic, and harmonic features of Iberia, but not so much that the larger picture was lost.

The pianist was brought back to the stage for an encore of Claude Debussy's Reflets dans l'eau (Reflections in the water), which Hamelin described as a "change of pace." Indeed, the languid splashes of color in the French master's piece were a contrast to the energetic drive of most of Iberia, but they were as well suited to Hamelin's playing.

Confectionary Potentate

With all of the discussion of the new pope and his views on everything under the sun, including music, I just thought I'd put in a good word for my favorite ruler:

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Wallace Stevens

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Style and Performance

I wanted to write a post on style and performance, and then I remembered the following review from the November/December 2000 American Record Guide. In re-reading it, I can see the beginnings of some of the ideas I explored in the unpublished piece on criticism I wrote for ARG as well as the genesis of the 101 project. Here it is, with some changes.

DAVIDOVSKY: Selections
New York New Music Ensemble; Speculum Musicae; Susan Narucki, s; Peggy Pearson, ob; Bayla Keyes, v; Mary Ruth Ray, va; Rhonda Rider, vc; David Starobin, gt
Bridge 9097 (Koch) 67 minutes

If musical modernism (I mean “modernism” with a capital “M”, but I’m not going to capitalize it) was a failure, as many would have us believe, who is to blame? Is it composers for writing music “people” can’t understand (though many people can and do understand it, whatever that means, if anything), or for getting too far “out in front” of audiences, performers, and (especially?) critics, or for merely not being Beethoven or Tchaikovsky?

Before assigning blame if blame must be assigned, the “failure” of modernism should be defined, rather than merely asserted. Many writers and others point to the small audience for modernist music as a sign of its artistic failure: If it was any good, people would want to hear it, so the familiar argument goes. This kind of market theory of artistic value puts our music on a slippery slope, as classical music as a whole is not terribly popular with a large, general public. And besides that, I remain unconvinced that audiences for modernist music are necessarily small when compared with other art music audiences.

Proponents of modernism often claimed that once their music was heard enough, the public would follow, even to the point of Webern’s famous declaration that one day his music would be “sung in the streets”. This has not come to pass, as readers of ARG well know. There are now regular performances of the central composers and works of the modernist movement, so it would seem that if mere exposure to the music was to convert the public, it would have been converted by now.

What if those who claimed that composers were too far ahead of performers were right, but that as the gap between composers’ conceptions and performers’ ability to realize them shrank, the public would begin to find connections with the music?

Happily, there is anecdotal evidence that this phenomenon may be taking hold. Recent concerts featuring the music of Elliott Carter have drawn large crowds and the attention of the world press, and England’s Proms series continue to include major modernist pieces and play to big crowds.

The new disc of chamber music by Argentina-born Mario Davidovsky represents another aspect of this nascent trend. Here we have difficult, uncompromising music played with care, understanding, and most importantly, expression.

Modernism, it is clear at this late date, was not as absorbed with “obliterating” the past as it often seemed, or even as many of its practitioners declared. The kinds of performances on this disc show that there is a clear connection with the past in this music. The performers, including members of Speculum Musicae and the New York New Music Ensemble, as well as soloists and members of other ensembles, shape his sometimes lyrical, sometimes angular phrases as though they were as easy and direct as phrases by Mozart, Wagner, or Chopin.

Each piece on the program has its moments, at least. Flashbacks (1995) is a colorful and evocative work scored for Pierrot* ensemble plus percussion. Lyrical lines stand beside dramatic, angular gestures in this piece, as they do in Festino (1994), for guitar, viola , cello, and percussion. The 1983 song cycle Romancero (if the poet is credited in the notes, I missed it) too combines long lines with sharply-etched instrumental gestures. The Quartetto 2 (1996) for oboe and string trio is reminiscent of the Carter Oboe Concerto in the playfulness and serious lightness of the oboe line against a sterner accompaniment. Peggy Pearson captures the spirit wonderfully.

Davidovsky is probably best known for the Synchronisms series in which instrumentalists, usually soloists, though some of the pieces have ensembles, play with and against pre-recorded electronic tapes. David Starobin, one of the foremost interpreters of contemporary guitar music, gives a powerful performance of Synchronisms No. 10 (1992). Part of the tension and drama in this piece lies in the fact that the guitar has a full four and a half minutes of virtuoso music before the tape ever enters. As in all of the pieces in the series, the implacability of the tape set against the expressively flexibility of the instrumental music provides contrast and drama.

Much of Davidovsky’s music has the surface volatility associated with modernism, to be sure. This volatility comes to the fore through much of the course of the String Trio (1982). Longer lines and delicate harmonics mediate the volatility, making the piece an expressive study in contrast.

What this disc embodies, then, is a new approach to the performance of modernist music. In the past, the “strangeness” or “otherness” of the music was emphasized in performance, to the detriment of the traditional musical values given equal status here. The dialogue between the past and the present was/is an integral part of the modernist movement.

These performers make a strong case for Davidovsky’s music, as does Bridge, with its excellent sound. That is all any composer can ask for, and the least they should be able to expect.



*Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (1912) is scored for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, in addition to voice. This combination became semi-standard (often including percussion) in the 20th century, because of the wide range of timbres available with a small number of players.

Sax, but no violins

I've added saxophonist Brian Sacawa's new 'blog to the 'blogroll. Give him a read. Or a reed.

Influences

A number of composers around the 'blogosphere are responding to Lawrence Dillon's question: What pieces from the 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s have changed the way composers think about composing?

I don't know what pieces may or may not have changed the way composers composed, but I do have some idea for myself of the pieces that changed how I heard/studied/experienced/composed/performed music. The pieces came to mind based on when I heard/performed/studied them, rather than when they were written. Here then are lists from the '60s and '70s (as Rodney Lister suggests, it is somewhat harder to think of these kinds of pieces from the '80s and '90s).

'60s:

Ligeti: Atmospheres, Lux Aeterna

'70s:

Stockhausen: Hymnen, Stimmung
Feldman: False Relationships and the Extended Ending, The viola in my life, Rothko Chapel
Ligeti: Volumina
Carter: Concerto for Orchestra, String Quartet 3
Lutoslawski: Livre pour orchestre, String Quartet
Cage: 4'33"
Satie: Pages mystique
Ives: Symphony 4
Beethoven: Quartet in B-flat, Op. 130
Webern: Sechs Stucke, Op.6
Berg: Wozzeck
Riley: In C
Reich: Clapping Music, Drumming, Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices, and Organ
Berio: Sinfonia, Sequenza V

O Brother

I wrote my Six Landscapes for solo clarinet after Wallace Stevens as a belated NNth birthday present for my brother, Les Hicken, Director of Bands at Furman University. Les premiered the pieces last week at a faculty chamber music concert. He did a wonderful job, giving a sensitive and expressive performance of pieces that were “kicking [his] butt” earlier in the week.

This kind of music isn’t really his thing: He’s a late romantic early modernist kind of musician. But the pieces were inspired in part by a very good performance he gave of the Stravinsky Three Pieces back in the mid 70s. What stayed with me from that performance was his control of dynamics and ability to shade timbre.

We view quite a few musical issues differently, though our taste overlaps a lot. Whenever we are able to get together we have wonderful listening/discussion sessions. At any rate, I wanted to take this opportunity to say how proud I am to be his younger brother.

Florida State Opera: Werther

The following is reprinted with permission from the Tallahassee (FL) Democrat, 27 March 2005.

Sumptuous music, colorful costumes, striking scenery, outsized emotions, and some really fine singing. All of these and more are on tap in the Florida State Opera’s production of Jules Massenet’s Werther running this weekend and next at Florida State University’s Opperman Music Hall.

Massenet’s 1892 drama is an adaptation of Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther, one of the founding documents of Romanticism. The production team (stage director Matthew Lata, scenic and lighting designer Peter Dean Buck, costume designer Colleen Muscha, and wig and makeup designer Kathy Waszkelewisz) made the telling decision to set the action in the 1840’s, when the ideas in Goethe’s story (written during the Enlightenment and in part in reaction to it) had reached their full flower in the culture.

Mr. Buck’s sets and lighting were evocative, and his use of the vertical space over the small Opperman stage created a sense of openness that would not have been possible otherwise. Ms. Muscha’s striking costumes and Ms. Waszkelewisz’ wigs and makeup lent an air of authenticity to the proceedings.

As usual, Mr. Lata (of the FSU opera faculty) moves his characters around the stage with a balance of natural action and theatricality. There is always something to look at in this production.

And then there is the music. Director of Opera Activities Douglas Fisher led a very good student orchestra in a performance that gave voice to the full-throated late Romanticism of the score while maintaining a pace that kept the action moving along. Orchestral intonation and ensemble quality were solid.

Tenor Daniel Gerdes was a compelling Werther. His big, clear voice and expressive phrasing communicated the anguish of the doomed young man.

Melissa Garvey was a sweet-voiced and sympathetic Charlotte, and Lianne Coble was touching as a bystander to the tragedy.

Evan Jones brought a considerable amount of sympathy to the dramatically thankless but musically rewarding role of Charlotte’s husband, Albert. Michael Peters (The Bailiff), Michael Hix (Johann), Oliver Mercer (Schmidt), Amanda Matson (Katchen), and Brent Arnold (Bruhlmann) contributed to the production’s quality in small roles. A well rehearsed and dramatically mischievous children’s chorus added a light touch and poignancy at the drama’s end.

The Florida State Opera will undoubtedly continue, with this production, to add to its growing reputation as one of the finest college opera programs in the country.

101: TACET

The new High Hat is up. In this article, I discuss some meanings of John Cage's 4'33".

St. Lawrence String Quartet

The following is reprinted with permission from the Tallahassee (FL) Democrat, 24 March 2005. Additions in brackets.

The 2004-2005 season of the Artist Series continued on Tuesday evening [22 March] with a riveting performance by the St. Lawrence String Quartet at Florida State University’s Rudy Diamond Auditorium.

Franz Joseph Haydn may not have invented the String Quartet as both genre and medium, but he was present at the creation. The Quartet (Geoff Nuttall and Barry Shiffman, violins, Lesley Roberstson, viola, and Christopher Costanza, cello) opened with an inspired performance of the Viennese master’s Quartet in E-flat, Op. 33, No. 2, “The Joke”.

The first movement was given with just the right balance of lilt and drive, aided by the group’s flexible tempos. This movement gave early indication of what would become clear was the Quartet’s modus operandi: performance as listening. They played every movement of every piece on the program as if deeply listening to the music, as a process of discovery. A good example of this was how they would linger over certain dissonances in this first movement before moving on to their resolution.

The E-flat Quartet has the nickname “Joke” because of the haltingly humorous way the piece ends. The St. Lawrence had set up the joke throughout their performance by emphasizing the silences that dot the piece’s surface. They were rewarded for their efforts by appreciative laughter and sustained applause.

Dmitri Shostakovich’s 15 string quartets stand as one of the great quartet cycles in history. The composer explores every aspect of his musical language and expressive terrain in these focused and intense works. The Seventh Quartet (f#-minor, Op. 108), is an essay in irony and quiet despair. The reading by the St. Lawrence was marked by great ensemble playing, and a strong sense of style, astringent and close to the vest necessary and expansive and open when called for.

The program proper closed with a taut and gripping performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Quartet in E-flat, Op. 127. This Quartet is the first of a group of five quartets Beethoven composed near the end of life, and they stand as among the most personal musical documents we have. In these works, which are both concentrated in their expression and expansive in how this expression is played out, the composer grapples with ideas and issues that are truly beyond words.

Of special note in this reading were the timbral intensity maintained virtually throughout, the excellent ensemble dynamics, and the beautifully lyrical transitions of the second, theme and variations, movement.

The Quartet returned to the stage after an enthusiastic ovation. Calling it “sherbet after that heavy meal”, Mr. Nuttall announced the Scherzo of Maurice Ravel’s Quartet as an encore. The St. Lawrence played it with flair and joy, in a ravishingly sensual reading.

[The St. Lawrence String Quartet is the Quartet-in-Residence at Stanford University. FSU, can we get one?]

Zwolf at the Door

(Blame him for the title. He started it.)

Alex picks up on Kyle Gann's questionable use of the word "infertile" and gives examples of the special kind of fertility in 12-tone technique. Here's another, a very pregnant and powerful row that my teacher, William Hibbard, used a lot (starting on C in this rendering):

C F G A# D D# G# A C# E F# B

One particularly interesting feature of this row (among many) is how it can be used to change the level of dissonance (melodically and harmonically) over the course of a phrase or even on higher structural levels.

1x2x2x3

Kyle Gann has posted an excellent and thoughtful piece about 12-tone technique, 12-tone music, serialism, teaching, and history. So has Tim Rutherford-Johnson.

It's hard for me to imagine someone designing a compostition curriculum without teaching the basics of 12-tone technique. The more tools you have in your box, the more likely you are to be able to make what you want to make.

And for me, 12-tonery is a constellation of techniques that can be used in combination with others. The music I am writing now doesn't directly use any of those techniques, but the influence is there in many indirect ways. I can't think of any great music that has been written since the propagation of the ideas that isn't influenced by them in some way.

Music of Laughter and Forgetting

I find the current production of Style Wars!, now playing at Composer's Forum and in its permanent run in Kyle Gann's blog (We are at war with serialism. We have always been at war with serialism.) desultory, tired, and sad.

But the worst of it is Mr. Gann's approving posting of this note from composer Art Jarvinen (whose music I like quite a bit):

I used to cover 12 tone basics in my Introduction To Composition class until a couple years ago. I realized that most of the students hate the music, don't like the technique for its own sake, didn't seem to get much out of the homework assignment, and generally find it all completely irrelevant to their own musical lives. Since I can say almost the same things for myself (with certain notable exceptions) and realized years ago that that stuff is basically dead in the water, I replaced it with another, much more amusing, topic: Plunderphonics.

Besides the inmates-running-the-asylum aspect of this move, 12-tone technique is kind of important, and 12-tonery is a precursor of minimalism in some substantive and important ways. But mainly I just want to let Mr. Jarvinen and others of like mind to know that, when they decide to remove 12-tone scores from the library, they can send them to me rather than go to the trouble of burning them.

First name o' Word. Last name o' Smith.

Call him Smitty. Alex Ross shows once again how it is done in this fine review from the New Yorker. His disappointment in one work and pleasure in another are palpable. But I come not to praise Alex, but to quote him. Among the felicitous turns of phrase, delicious puns, and just plain old damn good sentences are:

sonic thunder

hypnotically wayward narratives that reel from antic joy to frozen despair

. . . his 1998 maiden effort, “Little Women,”

The orchestral writing is often little more—or nothing less—than a play of light around the voices.

Rule Britannia

The following is reprinted with permission from the Tallahassee (FL) Democrat, 21 March 2005. Additions and corrections are in brackets.

It is a musical mystery: England produced no [concert music] composers of international renown between the death of Henry Purcell in 1695 and the emergence of Edward Elgar in the 1890s. There are undoubtedly many good reasons for this dearth, but the resurgence that began with Elgar has continued to this day.

The third concert of the Masterworks series of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra consisted of pieces by three of England's greatest 20th-century composers: William Walton, Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

[Music] Director David Hoose and the orchestra began Saturday evening's concert with a spirited performance of Walton's coronation march, Crown Imperial. The orchestra's playing was crisp and lively, and Hoose's reading was well-paced and regal, with clearly etched phrases.

Britten's Peter Grimes is one of the towers of the operatic repertoire and the Four Sea Interludes the composer extracted from it are among his most popular and characteristic orchestral pieces.

The orchestra dove into the difficult work and delivered a taut and expressive performance. It was well-received by the audience, a testament to how far the orchestra has come under Hoose's leadership.

The orchestra is playing at, perhaps, its highest level ever, and the exciting programming of recent seasons is providing musical experiences that are rare in cities the size of Tallahassee.

The second half of the program was given over to a gripping reading of Vaughan Williams' strange and wonderful Sinfonia Antarctica, his seventh symphony. The Sinfonia was put together by the composer from music he had written for a film about the doomed Antarctic voyage of Robert Scott.

The Sinfonia is cast in five movements, each of which was accompanied by one or more quotations, either from Scott's journals or from literature. These quotations were provided to the audience or read by a narrator, Michael Richey in this performance.

I think the use of a narrator is essential to a good performance of this work because the descriptive texts act as a bridge from the music to the narrative. And this was a very fine performance, indeed.

The orchestra, with the help of wordless vocalises by soprano Cicily Nall and the FSU Women's Glee Club, brought out the awe and terror in this powerful piece.

[The dying away of the last chord was augmented by our old friend, the cell phone. Unless it was a reference to the famous last entry in Scott’s journal, "Can you hear me now?"]

Poetry

"I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry." So said John Cage, and I'm using that as my official reason for not posting anything of late.

I've added In the Wings, a blog from an Oakland pianist with the improbable name "Heather", to the blogroll. Give it a read.

Everything is Green (III)

I've finished a short prelude and am now into Scene I. I've changed the way I work a bit in response to how it has gone so far. In the past I've worked over passages to death before moving on, but what I'm doing with this piece is noting problems and planning to revise the passages in question in light of the piece as a whole after a first draft is finished.

I'm not sure how interesting it is to readers to see this stuff, or how much good it does me to post it, but I can rest easy in the knowledge that when A. C. Douglas writes that Everything is Green, if it is to be produced at all, could only be fully realized as an underwater pornographic Noh puppet show, he will have source material to refer to.

Review: David Guerrier/Steven Beck

The following is reprinted, with permission, from the Tallahassee Democrat (25 February 2005). The portions in brackets did not appear in the original.

The Artist Series continued Sunday with a recital by trumpeter David Guerrier and pianist Steven Beck at Florida A&M University's Lee Hall.

The performance began with a stately reading of Arthur Honnegar's Intrada. Clarity of sound in all registers, ease of technique and a fine grasp of style marked Guerrier's playing in this piece - and throughout the concert. [I can’t say for certain if Intrada was originally written for trumpet or if it was an arrangement, because the "program notes" included no information about any of the music, only exhaustive listing of the credentials of the performers, as if the recital was an interview for a position. I’d rather be given an indication of why a composer wrote a certain piece, what to listen for in the piece, or why the performers were moved to perform it than to read a mind-numbing list of orchestras performed with, etc. ]

Paul Hindemith wrote sonatas for virtually every instrument and the sonatas for winds, in particular, are at the center of the repertoire. The piano is an equal partner in these works, and the Trumpet Sonata is no exception. Beck's performance of the difficult piano part was as effortless, clean and musical as was Guerrier's trumpet playing. Their phrasing and sense of ensemble - an essential element in a performance of this piece - were excellent.

This sense of musical partnership was taken a step further when Beck took the stage alone for a rhythmically charged performance of J.S. Bach's Italian Concerto (BWV 971). The individual contrapuntal lines were clearly articulated, as were the important structural points of the piece.

Guerrier returned for an exciting traversal of Kent Kennan's Sonata for Trumpet and Piano. The influence of Hindemith was clear and seemed, appropriately, to guide the performers' interpretation of the piece. The last movement expands the style with rhythms and melodic gestures that carry a distinctively American feeling, and the performers went where the music took them.

The second half of the concert began with performances by the winners of the Artist Series Trumpet Competition - Jessica Striano, Ashton Kimbrough and Danielle Aiken - accompanied by Beck.

Beck delivered fluid and idiomatic readings of the Berceuse (op. 57) and the first Scherzo (in B minor, op. 20) of Frederic Chopin. The Berceuse gave him his only real opportunity of the afternoon to show his lyrical side, and he responded with musicality. The virtuoso demands of the Scherzo were well in his reach, as well.

The dry, sardonic wit and rhythmic edge of the Gavotte de concert of Heinrich Sutermeister provided the musical highlight of the afternoon. Gurrier and Beck played the piece with a coolness that was wholly appropriate and expressive.

The recital closed with a strong performance of the Concerto in B-flat, by Alexander Arutiunian. It was a work of conventional virtuosity, with occasional lyrical pretensions.

[An unnamed encore was similar in style, and similarly well played.]

Transparency

I started this post a while back, during the last "simplicity/complexity" blogotempest. I put it on hold because it became clear that the simplicity/complexity axis is really beside the point. More to the point, then, is comprehensibility, which I think is different from that old bugaboo "accessibility". For my purposes here then, "comprehensibility" results when a composer's language is the right one to say whatever it is that is being said in the music. That is, when the means go with the ends, or at the very least when the difference in means and ends results in frisson rather than friction.

Steve Reich, in his 1968 essay "Music as a Gradual Process" declared:

I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music.

Mr. Reich's great early works, like Clapping Music, Come Out, and It's Gonna Rain exemplify this desire in telling and expressive ways. The means (slowly phase shifting phrases) and the poetic ends are inseparable.

What results is, I think, a kind of transparency wherein the expressive intent of the composer comes through regardless of the means employed, be they complex and/or simple. One is tempted to think of this as a matter of texture--the thinner the texture, the more transparent the music. There's a relationship there, but counter-examples spring immediately to mind, like Feldman's For Samuel Beckett, Reich's Come Out (especially near the end), and the micro-polyphony of Ligeti's Atmospheres.

Complex works can be transparent, as well. Carter's Fifth Quartet, for instance, Boulez' Repons, and the late Beethoven quartets, to name a few examples.

Just as complexity for its own sake can easily lose its transparency and become mere complication, so too can simplicity become simple-mindedness and the transparency turn into nothingness.

Operatic

Here's another fine opera blog: Leon Dominguez.

Obomobo

I've added oboist Patricia Mitchell to the blogroll. Appropriately for today, her top post (as of this typing) is about applause. So, give her a big listen. welcome!

Review: Beethoven, Schwantner, Elgar

The following is reprinted from the Tallahassee Democrat (14 February 2005), with permission.

The Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra continued its 2004-2005 Masterworks season with a program of music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Joseph Schwantner, and Edward Elgar Saturday evening (12 February) at Florida State University’s Ruby Diamond Auditorium.

TSO Music Director David Hoose led the Orchestra in a strong performance of Beethoven’s "Pastorale" Symphony (No. 6 in F, Op. 68, 1808) to open the concert. The Sixth is a generally more relaxed piece than most of the composer’s other symphonies, as is indicated by the subtitle. This more "relaxed" nature is reflected in the form—there are five movements instead of the usual four, for example.

The Orchestra’s principal woodwinds (flutist Eve Amsler, oboist Eric Ohlsson, clarinetist Frank Kowalsky, and bassoonist Jeff Keesecker) and principal horn player David Cripps played their many prominent solos with skill and style. The Orchestra’s string sections were in fine form throughout the evening, playing with a warm and at times luxurious sound, and a strong sense of ensemble. Mr. Hoose was in fine form as well, shaping phrases with a light hand that allowed the players room for expression.

The best concertos provide a showcase for a virtuoso performer through a substantive musical argument. The worst ones provide neither. Schwantner’s Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra (1994) falls somewhere in between these two extremes.

Two of the biggest trends in mainstream American composition in the past twenty-five years are minimalism (wherein pieces are made from the repetition of clearly etched musical lines; cf. Philip Glass) and eclecticism (wherein pieces are made by drawing from a variety of musical styles and, in the most successful examples, integrated by the personality of the composer; cf. Leonard Bernstein). Schwantner partakes of both of these approaches and combines them in a way that leaves the listener with nothing to chew on. The patterns that are repeated (ala minimalism) don’t move against each other in the telling way they do in the best examples of the style. His eclecticism is twice removed: that is, he borrows from borrowers, so that any personality disappears.

On the other hand, the writing for the percussion solo is spectacular, and FSU professor John Parks was more than up to the task. He played a large array of pitched and unpitched instruments with flair and virtuosity. Schwantner’s writing for the unpitched instruments (drums, etc.) was far better than for the mallets and Mr. Parks brought out everything there was in the part, and more. In addition to his extraordinary playing he has a commanding stage presence that won over the audience as well as the Orchestra. He deserved the raucous and prolonged ovation he received from the large audience.

The concert closed with a sprightly reading of Elgar’s quirky and jovial Cockaigne (In London Town) Overture (Op. 40, 1901). Mr. Hoose and the Orchestra emphasized the modern urbanity of this short work, with its dense counterpoint and wealth of melodic materials.

4'33"

Today brings us two fine posts on John Cage's 4'33". Greg Sandow reports on a performance and Robert Gable offers a compendium of quotes on the work. The next issue of The High Hat will include my own article on this piece and its central position in musical life.

Odds/Ends

I've added composer Judith Lang Zaimont's new blog to the blogroll. By sheer coincidence, I heard the performance of her Growler she refers to in her first post. It was one of the better pieces on the program. I share her concern about the the programming of the FSU Festival, but it's always been that way--safe and regional.

* * * * *

Alex Ross has linked to the text of his keynote speech at the Chamber Music America National Conference. As always, he has a lot of interesting and thought-provoking things to say. This sentence struck me as shedding a particular kind of light on one important difference between concert-notational music and other kinds:

I can’t honestly say that Beethoven’s C-sharp minor Quartet is by any meaningful measure “better” than, say, Duke Ellington’s Come Sunday as sung by Mahalia Jackson.

I'm not saying that the difference here is a quantitative "better-or-worse" kind of difference, but rather a qualitative "nature of the beast" difference.

Simplicity Seniors

Alex Ross responds to my post about the trend amongst younger composers to embrace complexity in ther music. Alex has "issues" about some of my post, but there don't seem to me to be enough for a subscription.

His point that today's audiences have no more need for instant gratification than those in Mozart's day is well-taken, though I think that the plethora of styles available today may tax an audience's patience in a different way. Also, I certainly didn't mean to imply that I consider popular culture "simple-minded", but I do think there is a danger of simple-mindedness when the desire for accessibility trumps all other concerns. There reverse is true as well--complexity can and often does devolve into the merely "complicated" when the desire for complexity overwelms other artistic concerns.

Finally, don't you think Jack Bauer would make a great operatic hero?

Welcome

I'd like to welcome composer Elodie Lauten to our small but insane corner of the blogorama.

Youth

Kyle Gann and Alex Ross both noted this past weekend that younger composers (I'm thinking they mean student age composers) may be turning to complexity in their music. I think it's safe to say that neither Mr. Gann nor Mr. Ross is entirely happy about the nascent trend. It is interesting to me to note that their misgivings seem to revolve around the simplicity/complexity axis than around the more tired and in reality moot tonality/pantonality axis of the style wars.

Mr. Gann:

Maybe I had gotten into musical complexity too early. If I hadn’t discovered the Concord [Sonata of Charles Ives] and Variations IV [John Cage] until college, like most music students, maybe incomprehensibility wouldn’t have lost its freshness so easily. But at 19, minimalism suddenly made all that complexity seem old hat. Having used so many dozens of chromatic tone clusters by my freshman year of college, it had already become painfully apparent that there is a ceiling to meaningful dissonance. I had piled up as many minor 9ths as human hands and lips could play. The idea that I could go back to the major scale as a starting point - and still seem avant-garde and special - came as a relief.

Mr. Ross:

Composers who came of age in the sixties and seventies rebelled against their elders by rejecting dissonant modernism in favor of minimalism, neo-romanticism, and other reaffirmations of simplicity. Now the world has turned upside down. The composers of the sixties and seventies generations have become the establishment; they are, to their own distress, figures of authority. Perhaps it's not surprising that some of the youngsters are headed in a different direction. As Kyle suggests, the raucous underside of the pop world — noise punk, hardcore metal, and so on — is pushing them along. And if middle-aged composers of a tonal persuasion tell them they're on the wrong path, they will surely keep on going.

Critics like Mr. Ross and composer/critics like Mr. Gann have written for some time about what they hear as the "dead-end" of highly complex music. I note for the record that both writers have repeatedly praised works that are undeniably pantonal, so that's not the issue. (Mr. Gann's love for the music of, for example, Morton Feldman, gainsays that notion.) Serious listeners naturally (and rightly) have a desire to have a feeling that they are comprehending what is going on in a piece of music, and there are unquestionably a number of pieces where it is damn hard to ever hear everything that is going on. Is it possible, though, that 1) there are pieces where the musical/poetic strategy is such that trying to hear everything that's going on is counterproductive or really just beside the point, and/or 2) that full comprehension may come with multiple hearings?

We live in a musical culture ("pop" and concert-notational) where audiences expect the music to appeal to them immediately and in a personal way that is new in the postmodern era--they want the music to be part of the "soundtrack" of their lives. That is, the music should derive what meaning it has from life and musical experience of the audience, and for this to happen, simplicity or transparency are key.

Another reason, which Mr. Gann cites in his post, for younger composers (and listeners?) being drawn to complexity, is that in such a user-friendly, soundtrackofmylife musical environment, hearing music with a high degree of complexity and, to use a decidedly non-postmodern idea, authorial presence (from living authors even) is a new and bracing experience for many young people, and it is powerfully attractive. Having to delve into complex works with repeated listening and study to find the meaning can be as new and as liberating an experience as simplicity was for many when it was embodied in the minimalism of the sixties.

Here's an optimistic prediction for the near future of our music--composers now beginning to come of age will find a balance between the simplicity of much of today's music and the complexity of Modernism and create a music that is rich in challenge as well as accessibility.

Everything is Green (II)

Do most of you write in order? That is, when you are making a piece, be it music or words, do you tend to do the detailed compositional work more or less in order? I do, after a good bit of sketching and "planning" of every stage of the piece so I have a very good idea of what's going to happen at the important structural points, at least.

For the opera (the libretto of which is in the fourth draft and counting) I've been working on the vocal lines for the two characters and their relation to each other. And the relationship of the musical shape to the dramatic shape. At any rate, last night I started at measure one of the Prelude, which will be rather brief and include hints of the music of each of the three scenes.

More later.

Tightrope

There's a fairly extensive chorale for brass in the last movement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2 in c minor ("Resurrection") (1894). This chorale (beginning at rehearsal 10 in the Dover edition) starts softly, in the trombones, tuba, and contrabassoon. After three soft four-measure phrases, the trumpets and horns join in for the last, seven-measure phrase. A gradual but inexorable crescendo pushes through the first five measures, culminating in a fortissimo (ff, very loud) accent followed by an immediate reduction in volume to piano (p, soft). The final two measures combine another crescendo (with bass drum and timpani rolls) with movement towards a harmonic resolution and the beginning of a new section.

It's a very challenging passage because of the control needed to maintain the soft dynamics and intonation at the beginning of the passage, the control needed to pace the increasing dynamics and not peak too soon, and finally the control needed to keep the tone from "spreading" at the high volume levels. Though Mahler marks both of the loudest points "ff" it is normal to leave a little room at the top of the first crescendo for the second, climactic one, to be louder still. Naturally, the addition of the percussion will help with that, but the brass should be louder, too.

I heard a performance of this work by the North Carolina Symphony in the early 70s. I believe Gerhardt Zimmermann was the conductor, but I could be mistaken. At any rate, it had been a well-played, well-paced performance. When the height of the first crescendo was reached the sound was full, rich, and centered, and as loud as I'd ever heard anything. I thought they hadn't left any room.

Not so. They passed the height of the first crescendo with a full two or three beats left, and kept going. As they continued to get louder there was no loss of tone quality. In fact, the sound got ever richer. The climax was electrifying and set the stage for an extraordinary finale.

The players walked a tightrope throughout that passage. The risks they took (had the sound or intonation gone off, the spell would have been broken, probably irretrievably) took the entire performance to a new level. Not only because they succeeded--the attempt itself added tension and excitement to the sense of expectation the chorale embodies. This atmosphere of risk, of chances taken, can't be captured in a recording, no matter how expert and expressive the performance. The reason is simple--you know they are going to "make it". If there was a take where the brass had lost it, it wouldn't have been included. Besides that, once you've heard the recording you know how it's going to come out. This tightrope effect is an important part of any live performance, in any art.

I'll go a step farther. It seems to me that this tightrope effect is actually part of the expressive content of music. Not all of it, of course, but in passages like this one and much of the virtuoso repertoire the difficulty itself is expressive, especially when the limits are pushed, as in the Mahler performance I described.

PS: It's also why using microphones is always wrong in opera. The projecting of character through the unaided voice is integral to opera performance. The struggles of the character are mirrored in the achievement of the singer, or in some cases, his or her pride and/or arrogance.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

Philip Anson, in La Scena Musicale:

Unfortunately, Elliott Carter’s Variations for Orchestra (1953-55) was scheduled as penance. The octogenarian Carter (who was present and took bows) is the highly respected dean of American composers. All honor to his white hairs. The Variations was 23 minutes of clever but pointless academic exercise that I (and most of the audience, to judge by their restlessness), could have done without. The MET Orchestra played it perfectly.

Allan Kozinn, in the New York Times:

Mr. Carter's 25-minute work tests the orchestra more vigorously, but in this ensemble's performance, there was never a sense that hurdles were being jumped. That isn't to say that the score no longer poses them. Unlike conventional variation sets, Mr. Carter's proceeds not only from a principal theme, but from two ritornellos - a fast one that decelerates, and a slow one that picks up speed - and each variation juggles a handful of ideas. Rhythm, tempo, timbre, texture and placement (in the antiphonal Variation No. 7) are all explored. Few musical parameters are left unvisited.

Mr. Levine's reading presented the work as an organic, arching construction. The structural details were presented clearly, but there was also a more direct, emotional punch as well as an extraordinary level of ensemble polish that must have made the work accessible to even the most casual listener. The most innovative touches, though, were the connections Mr. Levine made with earlier music, mostly by way of unusual phrasing decisions. In the second variation, for example, a flexibly rendered woodwind passage briefly evoked the jazz of the 1940's.

Other passages sounded as if they would not be out of place in Debussy (although those gave way to rhythmically sharp, muscular stretches that Debussy would not have countenanced). There was even a touch of pure Romantic portamento in some of the string passages, certainly an odd but not unwelcome touch. Time was when the Variations for Orchestra would have received dutiful applause. This performance drew a standing ovation. Mr. Carter, who at 96 attends most of his New York performances, was on hand to acknowledge it.

Suggestion

A great idea for people unsure of what to do with their tax refunds.

Additions

I've added Jason Hibbard's blog on music in Houston, I Am Sitting In A Room, and the blog of composers Mark Dancigers and Martin Suckling, Musica Transatlantica, to the blogroll.

Who's Going to Tell the Germans?

Today I abandon my traditional one-word post titles to respond to Alex Ross' fine post on "style wars" type criticism. Mr. Ross examines reactions to some recent British music in the German press and (rightfully) finds fault in the style-based criticism, which tells the reader nothing about what the music sounds like. (Writing that a piece is "tonal" or "atonal" doesn't qualify as helping the reader know what it was like to hear the piece, as far as I'm concerned.)

After a well-argued and link-rich discussion of the state of German composition and theory, Mr. Ross makes reference to my oft-stated desire that "we have to get beyond a politicized new-music scene and celebrate the best of all traditions, 'conservative' and 'radical.' A fine idea, but how do you arrange a cease-fire? Who's going to tell the Germans?"

Given Alex Ross' prominence in music criticism, I think it is fair to say that the Germans have now been told. They will undoubtedly have to be told again--more than once, to be sure.

As will others. Jens F. Laurson of ionarts ends a post on analogies about tonality with this slap:

P.S. I made someone (innocent) listen to all of Pierrot Lunaire last week. Somebody stop me before mere bystanders get hurt.

Well, OK. What. Ever. Substitute Beethoven 9 for Pierrot and it still "works".

A. C. Douglas posted the other day on some lame poetry, a critical response to it, and a response to the response. Mr. Douglas adds:

Why is it, I wonder, that the dissing of Ms. Houlihan and her criticism, and the defense of "post-avant" poetry (represented here by the above quoted two "nonorganic" poems) and poets by their champions sound eerily the same as the dissing of the critics and criticism of so-called "New Music," and the defense of such music and its composers by their champions? Could the answer be that New Music and nonorganic, post-avant poetry are eerily the same; near-perfect analogues, each of the other?

The lack of specifics in this rant is typical--no composers, pieces, or champions are named, so no response is possible. Mr. Douglas posts like this often enough that I wonder if he has a macro for it.

At any rate, both sides in the style wars would do well to listen to a call for a cease fire.

PS: Mr. Douglas fires up his macro again, as I was writing this. Who's going to tell the Bloggers?

Tonight

Barring a Machina ex Deus I am going to miss the Moscow Philharmonic concert tonight. Car trouble.

Also tonight, the premiere of George Hunka's new play, Sustaining, in New York. Break a leg, George, and keep us posted.

All-_________

The Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra comes to town for a concert Sunday evening, and your humble correspondent will be reviewing the performance. The program is an all-Tchaikovsky evening: Capriccio Italien, the Violin Concerto, and the Fifth Symphony. This concert is being seen as the biggest musical event to hit town since Jim Morrison's arrest.

I'm not a big fan of Tchaikovsky, but I like him more than I used to (Bill Hibbard said to me "If you don't like Tchaikovsky, you are a snob"). I'm also not a big fan of one composer/one medium concerts, though there are exceptions--I heard the Guarneri Quartet traverse the Bartok Quartets over two evenings in Iowa City in 1981, for one glorious example.

At any rate, I have a few questions: Should I mention these reservations in my review? How do you all feel about Tchaikovsky? About one composer/one medium concerts?

Feldman

Alex Ross reminds us that today is Morton Feldman's birthday. Mr. Ross writes that Feldman is "the greatest American composer of modern memory". I would only add to and expand on that and say that I rate him along with Elliott Carter as perhaps the two greatest composers of the second half of the 20th century.

Feldman's music deals directly with many of the central issues of Modern and postModern concert (or notational, as Mr. Ross puts it) music. For example, it is extremely dissonant by most standards, in that the intervals used are those that traditional rules of harmony would require to "resolve". Feldman overcomes these requirements through the repetition of intervals (this is akin to what theorists call "tonality by assertion", wherein a given sound begins to feel like home simply by will) and through the sheer beauty of his instrumental writing, as well as his famously low dynamic levels.

Among his works:

Rothko Chapel (a 101 piece)
the viola in my life
Why Patterns?
for Samuel Beckett
Cello and Orchestra

Everything is Green (I)

George Hunka has been writing about the production of his new play, Sustaining. I am finding the process fascinating, as there are a good deal of similarities between the process Mr. Hunka describes and the process of getting a new musical composition performed.

Mr. Hunka's intrepidity has inspired me to write about the composition of my newest piece, which, as he reveals in this post, happens to be an opera.

I became fascinated with opera when I served as the stage manager for a production of Kurt Weill's Seven Deadly Sins. The excitement of performance and the intricacy of the production itself (as well as the great music) were and are intoxicating. I have a couple of ideas for full-length operas, but I wanted to do something small first, as a way of finding out if I can do it and without investing X number of years in a full-scale piece.

To that end, I recently acquired the operatic rights to David Foster Wallace's "Everything is Green", a short short story from his collection Girl With Curious Hair. It is a two character domestic drama that I have massaged into three short scenes. Right now I'm working on the end of a prelude, which will seque into the first scene.

I'll keep you posted on my progress periodically. I don't think I'll get too much into technical details, unless, of course, a particularly juicy spelling problem comes up.

Additions

To the blogroll:

Composers Forum

and to "Links and Resources":

Sequenza21, a contemporary concert music webzine, and The High Hat, a cultural webzine.

Please mingle with them, offer them a drink, and generally make them feel at home.

Revision

After some holiday listening, reading, and cogitating I have revised my list of 101 essential pieces of 20th century concert music. The list is not intended to be comprehensive, a "best of" list, or even to comprise the most essential pieces. It is, rather, intended to be a list of pieces that, taken as a whole, convey the essence of 20th century concert music in its richness and variety.

Pieces deleted:

Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
Carter: String Quartet 1
Copland: Appalachian Spring
Hindemith: Mathis der Maler
Maw: Odyssey
Part: Tabula Rasa
Puccini: Turandot
Schoenberg: Five Pieces, Op. 23
Shostakovich: Symphony 5
Tavener: Thunder Entered Her
Vaughan Williams: London Symphony

Pieces added:

Bernstein: Suite from On the Waterfront
Bolcom: Songs of Innocence and Experience
Carter: String Quartet 5
Copland: Piano Variations
Daugherty: Metropolis Symphony
Hindemith: Six Chansons
Hyla: We Speak Etruscan
Part: Passio Domini nostri Jesu Christi secundum Johannem
Rautavaara: Symphony 7
Saariaho: Nymphea (Jardin secret III)
Shostakovich: Lady MacBeth of Mtsensk

The complete list is at the bottom of the page.

Blogroll

Happy New Year to everyone. I hope your holidays were filled with good cheer.

I'd like to point out two additions to the blogroll: Drew McManus' blog on issues relating to cultural administration and the blog of composer Lawrence Dillon.