a thousand flowers

Is this one flower or two? Beats me. At any rate, we need at least 998 more.

Thanks to the good offices of Will Robin, 21st century orchestra music has taken over Facebook and Twitter, under the hashtag #21cOrch. I've listened to a good bit of this music over the last few weeks, and I have to say that I've been impressed with both the wide stylistic diversity of the music and with its quality. Whether I like a given piece or not (which is one of the least important aspects of writing about music), it's great to take note of the vitality in the field.

When I was in school the last thing anyone would do is write an orchestra piece on spec--American orchestras didn't play new music, at least not if you weren't a big name. (I wrote a piece in the 80s and one in the 90s, both for specific occasions and they both got performed once.)

The recent increase in performance of new music by American orchestras is a good thing. I look forward to hearing more.

Veteran's Day 2008

We celebrate Veteran's Day in the United States on 11 November because that is when the Armistice that ends the First World War was signed.

There are lots of reasons World War II is studied more than World War I--most of them are legitimate and some (more footage, for example) are because the Second World War is easier to study.

I've never been able to shake the idea, however, that one very big reason World War I is not talked about is that it is an utterly pointless war--nothing was won, nothing was decided, millions were killed, and the stage was set for greater carnage and unspeakable horror.

And being utterly pointless, it's a typical war. The Civil War and the Second World War decided great issues and produced substantive victories. That's not the norm for war--most of them are exercises in murderous nihilism, the result of mistakes and tragic errors.

So, we study the "good" wars so that when somebody looks at us the wrong way, the image the populace has of war is that of a great endeavor, of national purpose played out on the world stage. That way, it is easier to convince the people that war is necessary.

And it is, obviously, the men and women of the service that pay the biggest, sometimes the ultimate price for this. The committment it takes to sign up for the military is beyond most of us, and those that can serve deserve our respect, and they deserve our effort in understanding the reasons they are called to combat, not passive acceptance of the call. It's really the least we can do.

Reading for the day:

Richard Powers, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance.

Listening:

Benjamon Britten, War Requiem.

The Fourth

Here's a link to last year's Fourth of July post.

And in a change of pace, here's a poem by Elizabeth Bishop, "View of the Capitol from the Library of Congress", which was set by Elliott Carter in A Mirror on Which to Dwell.

View of the Capitol from the Library of Congress

Moving from left to left, the light
is heavy on the Dome, and coarse.
One small lunette turns it aside
and blankly stares off to the side
like a big white old wall-eyed horse.

On the east steps the Air Force Band
in uniforms of Air Force blue
is playing hard and loud, but - queer -
the music doesn't quite come through.

It comes in snatches, dim then keen,
then mute, and yet there is no breeze.
The giant trees stand in between.
I think the trees must intervene,

catching the music in their leaves
like gold-dust, till each big leaf sags.
Unceasingly the little flags
feed their limp stripes into the air,
and the band's efforts vanish there.

Great shades, edge over,
give the music room.
The gathered brasses want to go
boom - boom.

Elsewhere

Kyle Gann posts a fine talk on Morton Feldman he delivered last week in Seattle. I might quibble with Kyle on a few details about the atmosphere in the seventies and the meaning of Feldman's achievement for composers, but it's a compelling and well-thought-out read. Among the gems:

One of my favorite stories Feldman liked to tell was of Marcel Duchamp visiting an art class in San Francisco, where he saw a young man wildly painting away. Duchamp went over and asked, "What are you doing?" The young man said, "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing!" And Duchamp patted him on the back and said, "Keep up the good work." In music, it was Feldman, more than anyone else, who gave us permission not to know what the fuck we were doing.

Jen Carlson, of The Gothamist, interviewing Alex Ross, asks what he would recommend to a new classical music listener. Alex responds, in part:

First, go to a live concert. Recordings capture only a fraction of what makes classical music compelling—the social experience of listening with a crowd in real time, the physical and psychological effect of hearing natural sound reverberate in a room.

This advice can't be repeated enough. Alex notes that there are cheap concert tickets to be had, even in New York City. In a college town like Tallahassee, Greensboro, Iowa City, or Ithaca, there are literally hundreds of free concerts and (especially) recitals to attend.

Matthew Guerrieri meditates on the idea of composers having a "late style":

Elliott Carter, who continues to cheat the actuarial tables at the age of 99, has become a fount of energetic, bracing, quirky works that defiantly insist on being encountered on their own terms, rather than through the prism of their composer's age. It's those of us who think we have a fair amount of time left that are concerned with stage-managing our exit; closer to the deadline, it seems that the best revenge is often just to keep on keeping on.

Matthew is quite right when he argues that when he hear autumn in music, it's more us than the music itself. I'll add that that's a good general rule--when we leave the "text" of the music, usually what we say about it reveals more about us as listeners than it does about the music under discussion.

Listening:

Beethoven--Quartet in a minor, Op. 132; Guarneri Quartet.

Michael Hersch--The Vanishing Pavilions; Michael Hersch, piano.

Feldman--Rothko Chapel; UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus; David Abel, viola; Karen Rosenak, celeste; William Winant, percussion.

Carter at 99

I'm a big fan of the music of Elliott Carter, as regular readers of this blog surely know. Today is his 99th birthday, and in honor of this remarkable occasion, here's a list of 18 pieces (18 is the number of distinct attacks in a 7:6:5:4 cross-rhythm) that exemplify different qualities of the composer's art.

Sonata for Cello and Piano
Piano Sonata
String Quartet 1
String Quartet 5
Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano, with 2 Chamber Orchestras
Three Occasions for Orchestra
Concerto for Orchestra
A Mirror on Which to Dwell
Boston Concerto
Symphonia: sum fluxae pretium spei
What Next?
Duo for Violin and Piano
Clarinet Concerto
Au Quai
Enchanted Preludes
Oboe Quartet
Piano Quintet
In Sleep, In Thunder

Radio

Lamentations and rending of garments have accompanied observations about how concert music radio stations have taken to playing movements from pieces rather than the entire composition. This morning on my drive to work, I heard part of the Scherzo from Anton Bruckner's Fifth Symphony. Not the whole thing, just part of it.

I look forward to the day when they play the second theme from the first movement of Beethoven's Second Symphony.

Here and There

Alex Ross has a good overview of concert music's web presence here. And speaking of Mr. Ross, today is publication day for his first book, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. I'll have a review of the book and an interview with the author, at a time and place to be announced.

And speaking of people named "Alex", I've been listening to Alex Shapiro's new CD, Notes from the Kelp, also released today. I like this CD very much. Ms. Shapiro handles a wide variety of instruments and idioms with style and expression. My favorite piece so far is Current Events, for string quintet (adding a viola to the traditional quartet). The piece is well-written for the instruments, expressive, and compelling. Ms. Shapiro's music stakes out so much musical territory that I am sure just about everyone will find somethng to like on the program.

I don't usually do politics here, but this post by Phil Nugent, who contributes to The High Hat and elsewhere, is as cogent a staement about where we are as anything I've read recently.

John Adams: Doctor Atomic Symphony (2007)

I listened to the streaming audio of Tuesday evening's premiere of John Adams's Doctor Atomic Symphony, part of a Proms concert by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Mr. Adams. The program began with a flabby and indifferent account of Aaron Copland's Billy the Kid, and continued with a performance of Mr. Adams's Century Rolls, for piano and orchestra, with Olli Mustonen as soloist. Mr. Mustonen was an able soloist and the accompaniment was crisp and precise.

The main event of the concert was, of course, the premiere. I have to say again, for the record, that I don't get John Adams's music. It doesn't speak to me. There are moments in almost every piece of his that I've heard (and I've probably given him more chances than any other composer) that resonate, but they are far and few between (as Stevie Wonder put it), and not big enough to make a whole movement or composition work for me. This was true of the new Symphony--there's an extended passage in the first movement that is reminiscent of the last movement of the Stravinsky Symphony in Three Movements, but not as telling, and the trumpet solo near the end is very fine.

Many people whose ears I respect continue to sing the praises of John Adams, and I'll still listen to him. As always, my reaction to him says more about me than it does the music.

[Edited on 8 Mar 14 for spelling and usage.]

Bang the Drum Slowly

Inside the mind of a working musician:

I gave John Parks (for whom I am writing a concerto) a copy of the recent Pierre Boulez recording of the Mahler 2 the other evening. Here are some of his comments (from e-mail, published with his permission):

. . . listening to the Mahler right now. It's a shame that the percussion section really didn't think out their sounds. The cymbal playing makes me angry.

After I asked for specifics about the cymbals comment:

European orchestras typically use very old cymbals; usually what we call "Old K" Zildjian cymbals (pre-WWII), and there aren't tons of these instruments left because of the war and the collateral damage of bombing the opera and concert halls. Very dark sounds, which I really like and are totally appropriate for Mahler. In this recording, there's no blossom or body to any of the cymbal sounds, so the cadences don't really have the color, shimmer, and "arrival" that I think appropriate. When I hear cymbals, I want to hear Michael Bookspan with Philly. Anything else is just noise.

Zildjian has, in the past years, rededicated themselves to making new instruments that sound like these old ones-I have several pairs and love them.

Europeans are known for great timpani sounds, but some "schools" over there do not concentrate on the other instruments with the same degree of seriousness. [T]he way the cymbals are being played [in this recording] never allows them to blossom or open up.

"The cymbal playing makes me angry" is my new all-purpose rallying cry.

Here and There

Additions to the blogroll:

Intermezzo, a blog about music in London.

flyover, a group blog about arts journalism in the provinces.

Elsewhere:

ACD clarifies his view of recordings, and in no uncertain terms.

Matthew Guerrieri has an excellent post on the recurring discussion of the "death" of concert music.

Open Question

To ACD--

Since you don't have comments, I'll here. Are you saying that listening to concert music on iPods or via mp3s on computer is worse than not listening to it at all?

Signed,

Perplexed in the Provinces

Four

String quartets (both the genre and the medium) are an obsession of mine, yet I never fail to be surprised and struck by the power of a really good performance of a really good quartet, given the right piece at the right time. So it was this morning when, in the normal course of my work day as I play discs mostly on a whim, I listened to the Juilliar Quartet's recording of the two Quartets of Leoš Janáček and the Lyric Suite of Alban Berg. The raw intimacy of all of three of these works is given full-throated expression by the Juilliards, with their often edgy sound especially appropriate in Janáček's sometimes rusticated soundworld.

Other listening:

Lee Hyla: Trans, Bass Clarinet Concerto, Violin Concerto. Tim Smith, bass clarinet; Laura Frautschi, violin; Boston Modern Orchestra Project/Gil Rose.

Bohuslav Martinů: Symphonies 2 and 4; Ukraine National Symphony Orchestra/Arthur Fagen.

MySpace, Listening

I've set up a page at myspace.com. There's not much there yet (Episodes in Anticipation cranks up as the page comes up), but check it out via the link on the right hand side of this page.

Recent Listening:

Luciano Berio, Sinfonia; both the Boulez and Eotvos recordings.

Elliott Carter, Concerto for Orchestra; Leonard Bernstein/NYPO.

Jean Sibelius, Symphony 4; Osmo Vanska/Lahti Symphony.

Carl Nielsen, Symphony 4; Osmo Vanska/BBC Scottish Symphony.

Johannes Brahms, Symphony 4 (nothing intentional about all these Fourths, that I'm aware of); Karajan/Berlin.

Igor Stravinsky, Symphonies of Wind Instruments; Salonen/London Sinfonietta.

Gyorgy Ligeti, Piano Music; Pierre-Laurent Aimard.

Maurice Ravel, Boléro, Ma Mère L'Oye (complete ballet), Rapsodie espagnole, Une Barque sur l'océan, Alborada del Gracioso; Boulez/BerlinPO.

Beatles, Rubber Soul and Revolver.

Steely Dan, Gaucho.

Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life.

Happy Fourth!

Last year's holiday listening.

listen's first July 4th listening list, from 2005.

Here's this year's July 4th list, focusing on America as place:

Aaron Copland, Music for a Great City
Elliott Carter, A Symphony of Three Orchestras
Charles Ives, Three Places in New England
John Adams, El Dorado
Leonard Bernstein, On the Town
Alex Shapiro, Desert Waves
Steve Reich, Vermont Counterpoint

Bonus Tracks (long distance dedication to "GWB in Washington"):

Peter Maxwell Davies, Eight Songs for a Mad King
Stevie Wonder, "You Haven't Done Nothing"

Memorial Day

Here's last year's listening.

Also:

Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Die Soldaten
Aaron Jay Kernis, Symphony 2

Workshop (VIII)

At the risk of giving A. C. Douglas the vapors, I want to talk a little bit about my working methods on the percussion concerto I'm writing for John Parks.

The piece is cast in three movements, with the second movement constituting an interruption of the first and third. I find myself approaching II very differently from I/III. II is a slow movement in which I'm "building" the percussion part as I write the band part--the solo part is growing as the piece grows. On the other hand, in I/III, which is mostly fast music of one kind or another, I find myself writing the percussion part first, and following 20 measures or so with the band, so the percussion line is like a spinal cord, holding up the whole thing.

The three movements share a common harmonic basis, which I'm not inclined to discuss at this time.

Listening:

Walkin', Miles Davis All Stars
"Someone to Love", Fountains of Wayne

Misc

Tallahassee Symphony review, Tallahassee (FL) Democrat, 12 Feb 2007.

Kyle Gann has posted a thought-provoking keynote address he delivered to a new music group in Canada.

Galen Brown reviews a new release of music by Lee Hyla.

Listening:

Beethoven, String Quartet in F, Op. 135; Guarneri Quartet.
Stravinsky: Symphonies of Wind Instruments; London Sinfonietta/Salonen.
Hyla: Orchestral Music; BMOP.
Gershwins: Songs; Ella Fitzgerald.

Links and Listening

Scott Spiegelberg links to an online music dictionary maintained by Virginia Tech.

Matthew Guerrieri on the value of whimsy, magic, and serious lightness in literature and music.

Listening:

Max Levinson, piano. Music by Brahms, Schumann, Schoenberg, and Kirchner.

The Lanier Trio. Music by Stephen Paulus.

Michael Boriskin, piano. Music by Lou Harrison.

Andrzej Wasowski, piano. Chopin, Mazurkas.

Dallas Symphony/Andrew Litton. Ives, Symphonies 1 and 4, Central Park in the Dark.

Bonus Tracks:

A compilation of seventies soul and R&B, featuring, among others, The Spinners, Earth, Wind, & Fire, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, and Al Green.

Thanksgiving

I hope everyone is enjoying the day, whether it's a holiday where you are or not.

Here's a post from two years ago about Thanksgiving Day listening.

Veteran's Day

Last year.

Addition:

Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Die Soldaten
Franz Joseph Haydn: Mass in Time of War
Charles Ives: From Hanover Square North, at the End of a Tragic Day, the Voice of the People Again Arose