Four Play

Four jobs you've had in your life: Ladies' wear stock clerk; library technical assistant; grantswriter; teacher

Four movies you could watch over and over: The Searchers, Nashville, Godfather II, Chinatown

Four places you've lived: Poughkeepsie, Ithaca, Durham, Iowa Citry

Four TV shows you love to watch: Scrubs, Law & Order (mothership), Boomtown, 24

Four places you've been on vacation: Atlanta, Tampa, Chicago, New York

Four websites you visit daily: All of the sites on the blogroll plus dailykos, bopnews, Salon, Slate

Four of your favorite foods: fresh pasta with marinara sauce and cheese, various Indian dishes, black beans and rice, salad

Four places you'd rather be: Atlanta, New York, Italy, France

Holiday Concert

Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra review.

Storms

[Up front disclaimer: I've known Stirling Newberry for nearly ten years of internet discussion and arguement. It's impossible for me to hear his music without my experience of him affecting my perceptions, and I wouldn't want to hear it that way.]

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Political activism and music are among the passions/obsessions of Stirling Newberry's life. These obsessions come together in the two string quartets recorded on In The Year of Storms.

The two quartets on this disc, (No. 7 in Eb, Op. 35, and No. 8 in B, Op. 36) were written in response to the storm season of 2005 and its aftermath, both political and human. A combination of grief, anger, and longing suffuse the music of both quartets.

Mr. Newberry's music is tonal/modal in both forward and backwards senses. The works are governed by large-scale harmonic and melodic ideas while at the same time there is often a hint (or more) of the minimalist project underlying the surface. And it's a compelling surface. Mr. Newberry's melodies are memorable enough to carry the musical weight they are given in these pieces, though they aren't tunes you'll whistle afterwards (for the most part). His admiration (obsession, really) for Beethoven is reflected in his melodies, which are almost always ripe for contrapuntal treatment.

The composer's brand of post-modernism comes out in his stylistic references. The opening of the first movement of Quartet 7, for example, recalls the opening of Beethoven’s Ninth and a later movement includes the Dies Irae as a theme. Mr. Newberry is also fluent in many popular styles of the past and present and deploys them with ease.

I can recommend this disc without serious reservation. It brings up important issues about the nature of performance (and what constitutes a musical work) and the distribution of concert music, which I will discuss later.

Happy Birthday, Chronometros

My work was submitted under the pseudonym of Chronometros . . .

--Elliott Carter in his entry in the 25th Anniversary Report of the Harvard Class of 1930, referring to his First Quartet and its entry in a composition competition.

Carter goes on, quoting a letter he received after the Quartet won the competition:

I don't know if Feldbusch, the 'cellist of the Liege Quartet, has written you, but if not, here's his story, which may please you. He and Koch, the leader, detested the quartet all through rehearsals and the first performance. The eve of the final desicion, the judges listened to tape recordings and for the first time F and K were able to listen, not play. They were overwelmed, and F, a big hulk of an extrovert, not at all given to romanticism, I assure you, said he found himself on the verge of tears, and K also was moved. Meeting an old friend the day of the final concert, F insisted he come, deliberately telling him he must hear Chronometros, a terrible work, nonsensical, no rhyme or reason. Now the old friend was a coal miner, a guy who went down in the pits at the age of fourteen and has done nothing else in his life, is now forty-five, and goes once a year or so to the opera for Manon or Carmen. He came to the concert and the next day looked up F, threatened to bash his nose in, called him every dirty name in the Walloon vocabulary, said F knew nothing about music and deserved to hear nothing better than Manon or Carmen if he couldn't understand Chronometros. Says he: "This is the first time I have felt in music that a man was talking to me like a man; the guy who wrote that understands the fear I experience when I get down into a new mine not sure whether or not it is going to cave in on me; he's got guts and muscle, and he digs in his music like I dig in hard rock; he sweats like I do, he's a worker like I am; and you, Feldbusch, you're nothing but a goddamned fool of a musician if you can't understand that."

Other Carter posts at listen.:

Carter in Atlanta

More on Carter in Atlanta

Birthday

A Different Perspective

This column by Chadwick Jenkins, from the PopMatters 'zine, is the first in a series of pieces on why "classical" music should matter to consumers of popular culture. I look forward to the rest of the series. It has the makings of an important contribution to the ongoing discussion of the place of concert music in postcontemporary life.

Counter Culture

I quite agree with Alex Ross when he says:

I'll repeat my outré contention that classical music, for all its elite trappings, is actually a radical, disruptive force in American culture, whereas most popular culture, for all its rebellious trappings, is intensely conservative.

I'll only add that it's been true for a very long time.

Elsewhere

Around the 'sphere:

Terry Teachout has some thoughful observations about the nature of criticism and its relation to art. Of particluar interest to me, as both critic and composer, are his musings on what it means and whether or not it's important for critics to be "right" about the work they criticize.

The Blogger Known as Pliable posts a fascinating, informative, and link-rich piece about the development and testing of the atomic bomb. Plenty to hold us until the recording of Doctor Atomic comes out.

Daniel Felsenfeld responds to an article in the Wall Street Journal about audiences and orchestras embracing new music that throws off the yoke of serialist oppression. Mr. Felsenfeld points out that this "might have been something worth noting were this, say, 1952". He also quotes composer Daniel Kellogg as saying he writes music that "he wants to hear," and that the article frames this as "novel". Mr. Felsenfeld sighs:

I do not come down on either side of this argument because frankly I think it is an old and dead struggle. These are no longer the sides any more than the Yankees and the Confederates. We hear daily of the "problems" in classical music, and if we are ever to take a step to solving them we have to address the issues of our own time (even if we do not like our own time) rather than a more simplistic contrempts of a vanished world. The implication--that serial music and its descendants rules the roost while there is a new generation trying to upturn it by returning to the old ways--is a quaint and lovely notion that might have been riveting half a century ago but in 2005 it is laughably far from true...though I, like Mr. Russell, [the author of the Journal article] wish these were the only problems we faced. Our world would be a better place were this true.

Finally, Heather Heise asks questions of composers. My answers, for the record: No; no; no; yes, I have two; sure, why not; no; yes and no; no; no; not for me; yes, though it's more an "ooze" than a "spill"; yes.

Thanksgiving

I want to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving Day. I hope it is going well.

Frontier

Stirling Newberry's article on Jeff Harrington is important for several reasons. First, it's good to see a composer get some pub in a non-traditional place.

More importantly, the piece is among the first, to my knowledge, to take as a subject the relationship betweens a composer's work and his relationship to the internet. The internet (and digitality as a whole) will be, for a while at least, the best way for a composer (and other artists, too) to get their work before the public. It's good to see someone attempt a beginning of an analysis.

Books

As should be clear, I like lists. Lists of essential pieces, lists of music for holidays, whatever. Here’s another one: my thirty favorite books on concert music (as of today). The criteria could neither be simpler nor as unassailable: they have to be on concert music and I have to like them. No more meaning should be ascribed to the order of the list than to the list itself.

The Classical Style; Charles Rosen
Silence; John Cage
Instrumentation; Andrew Stiller
Essays Before a Sonata; Charles Ives
The Time of Music; Jonathan Kramer
Arnold Schoenberg; Charles Rosen
Flawed Words and Stubborn Sounds; Alan Edwards and Elliott Carter
The Music of John Cage; James Pritchett
The Music of Elliott Carter (Second Edition); David Schiff
Simple Composition; Charles Wuorinen
Give My Regards to Eighth Street; Morton Feldman
A Generative Theory of Tonal Music; Fred Lehrdahl and Ray Jackendoff
Music in Theory and Practice; Bruce Benward and Marilyn Saker
Computer Music; Charles Dodge
Emotion and Meaning in Music; Leonard B. Meyer
Compendium of Modern Instrumental Techniques; Gardner Read
The Musical Experience of Performer, Composer, Listener; Roger Sessions
The Beethoven Quartets; Joseph Kerman
Writings About Music; Steve Reich
Harmony; Walter Piston
The Technique of Orchestration; Kent Kennan
Counterpoint; Kent Kennan
Harmony Book; Elliott Carter
A Practical Approach to Sixteenth-Century Counterpoint; Robert Gauldin
Music Notation; Gardner Read
The Acoustical Foundations of Music; John Backus
Poetics of Music; Igor Stravinsky
Form in Tonal Music; Douglass Green
For the End of Time: The Story of the Messiaen Quartet; Rebecca Rischin
Gustav Mahler; Bruno Walter

Blogroll

The blogroll at right has two new listings: Deceptively Simple, the blog of Chicago music journalist Marc Geelhoed, and Felsenmusic, the blog of composer Daniel Felsenfeld.

EDITED 15 Nov to reflect the correct spelling of Mr. Felsenfeld's name.

Da-Da-dadada.

Start spreading the news! listen. is listed in this week's Big Apple Blog Festival. Should I tell them?

Critics and Critics

Ken Nielsen, commenting at Jessica Duchen's blog, observes:

Tis very useful to get such from someone whose taste I understand, even if I don't always share it.

This is the best reason to read criticism (in the "review" or "notice" sense) that I can think of. The more you read a given critic, the more you understand where she or he is coming from, in terms of aesthetics, tastes, and standards. It makes the expenditure of your cultural currency less of a crap shoot.

Example: I've read enough of Alex Ross' criticism to factor his views into the equation, even when I don't agree with them, which is true at least occasionally. His writing about John Adams hasn't convinced me, but it reminds me that Mr. Adams is there and that serious people take him seriously. His new review of music by Giacinto Scelsi, when taken along side other readings, seals the deal.

You can learn as much or more by reading critics you rarely agree with, too. The point is, that if the critic has a staked out, complex, and nuanced aethetic positon, it is easier to locate yourself in relation to that position and use the criticism to inform your own experience.

Holiday Listening

I want to give warmest wishes and thanks to veterans on this day. Here's a brief list of music appropriate to the day. My criteria were: 1) some relation to the first World War, 2) something about a soldier's life, and/or 3) music about peace (in light of the original intent of the holiday).

Benjamin Britten, War Requiem
John Adams, The Wound Dresser
Vincent Persichetti, A Lincoln Address
Terry Riley, Salome Dances for Peace
Elliott Carter, Adagio tenebroso, from Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretium Spei
Charles Ives, Three Songs of the War
Igor Stravinsky, l'Histoire du soldat

Please remember the sacrifice of soldiers and their families, and work for peace so that sacrifice can be more rare.

Tables Turned

Lisa Hirsch has written an article about how concert music critics prepare for concerts. It's very well done and the information in it tracks with my experience. The short answer to how a critic prepares for a concert is this: It depends. It depends on the program, the performers, the occasion--the variables are numerous. I'm finding my preparations for the current Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra season of music director auditions unique, in that the music is, for the most part, the Warhorses of the Apocalypse. I know most of the music fairly to very well, so I am able to concentrate on the various parts of the conductors' work.

I enjoy reviewing new music the most, though that has its own pitfalls. The greatest of which, in my experience, is not knowing for certain whether the performance of a new work has been a good one. And what does good mean in that situation? Accurate? Putting "more" into the piece than the composer meant so as to make it a better piece than the score? You might be surprised how often this happens when the composer is present at some rehearsals, especially if the composer is young and/or inexperienced.

At any rate, thanks to Ms. Hirsch for an interesting discussion.

Susannah and George

Review.

Also, this interview with playwright and blogger George Hunka offers a fascinating glimpse inside the world of theater. George's comments on the relationship between playwright, director, and actors illustrate a creative collaboration that is very similar to preparing the first performance of a new piece.

Here and There

Alex Ross points us to the New York music scene blog of Steve Smith. I have added it to the blogroll. It is a style wars-free zone, so far.

Greg Sandow posted the first installment of his book on the future of concert musc today. The issues he brings up will be familiar to his readers, as well as to readers of this and other music blogs and publications. I find these questions particularly interesting and in need of answers:

Are performances of classical music very interesting, these days? Are they creative? Surprising? Individual? Why all the emphasis—in program notes, for instance, or music education—on scholarship, history, and technical analysis? If all this is changing (which it is), is it changing fast enough? And what’s our relation—all of us in the classical music world—to contemporary culture? Theater companies do plays by living playwrights; classical musicians, in striking contrast, play music from the past. And, sure, there’s more new classical music played now than there was 10 years ago, but how much of it sounds new? How much of it sounds like the world outside the concert hall, the world we really live in?

I look forward to Greg's exploration of these and other questions.

Workshop (V)

I finished a short piece for oboe solo, called Night Music, this weekend. As usual, a score is available in Finale format (*.mus) for those interested. A PDF version may be available later this week.

The opera is trying to get attention, but there are a couple of other pieces in front of it. More on those later.

This coming weekend in reviewing: 50th anniversary production of Tallahassee resident Carlisle Floyd's Susannah at the Florida State Opera. More about that as the week progresses.

Claudia Waite (soprano) and Timothy Hoekman (piano)

Review.

Stop the Madness

From Slate magazine, a call for the end of style wars in fiction