Month: April 2005

Jerry Bowles at Sequenza 21 poses an interesting question: who is the most underrated composer of the twentieth century? Kyle Gann and I agree on the same name: Carl Nielsen. For years, I’ve been waiting to write a Nielsen column for the New Yorker, but the occasion has refused to arrive. There are plenty of recordings, but live performances of the great Dane are rare, at least in this neck of the woods. Every couple of years, someone does the Fourth Symphony, the Inextinguishable, and that’s it. (Danish for "Inextinguishable" is "Det uudslukkelige." When I was recently in Copenhagen, I had a strange urge to walk up to people and say, "Det uudslukkelige!" I did not.) The rhythmic power of the music is enormous. The Fourth is dynamic in the way that only Beethoven is dynamic. The Fifth, with its snarling snare-drum improvisation, is a half-hour explosion. The Sixth, the Sinfonia semplice, is a kind of meta-symphony, trumping Stravinsky at his own game. Try Herbert Blomstedt’s two-disc set of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth. Although the really revelatory performances are live recordings by the likes of Thomas Jensen, Launy Grøndahl, and Erik Tuxen. This composer needs the drama of live performance.

Investigators have finally found a chink in Tom DeLay’s armor: he was seen at a Three Tenors concert.

À la Sieglinde, suggested lines for the Majority Leader as he makes his way in the world of grand opera:

1. "Who does Alagna think he is, César Vezzani? Did Villazón have a dental appointment or something?"
2. "American opera houses have hardly begun to do justice to Zemlinsky, never mind Schreker."
3. "Girl, I know drunken go-go boys who can sing ‘Vissi d’arte’ better than Guleghina."
4. "Gergiev’s tempos in Parsifal — talk about pest control!"  etc.

What can we expect from the German Pope in terms of musical policy? New Yorker editor Leo Carey writes: "Have you noticed that the world is being gradually taken over by unlikeable conservative hardliners who are good pianists? Seems that Ratzi, like Condi, favors the core Austro-German repertoire. Hardly surprising — one wouldn't have figured him for a Poulenc man. [I should hope not!] He has said that rock music styles are incompatible with church liturgy. In 1986 he described rock music as 'the secularized variation' of an age-old type of religion in which man uses music — and drugs and alcohol — to lower 'the barriers of individuality and personality,' to liberate 'himself from the burden of consciousness. Music becomes ecstasy … amalgamation with the universe.' This 'is the complete antithesis of the Christian faith in the redemption.' More recently, he wrote The Spirit of the Liturgy, which portrays music as a language which transcends rational speech." Evidently, there's good irrationality and bad irrationality. Sacred music, the Pope says, should aim for "sober inebriation."

Brian Wise of WNYC's Soundcheck writes to point out the contrast between the new Pope and the Bob Dylan-loving old one. This AP photo illustrates the sort of scene that we will evidently not be witnessing at the court of Benedict XVI. Nor is it likely that we will be hearing much twelve-tone music in the Vatican. According to a paraphrase by a commentator, Benedict disapproves not only of "pop (a manufactured commodity)" but also of "rationally constructed high-brow music (an elite, degenerate form of 'classical' music)." Holy cow — Theodor W. Adorno has been elected Pope.

Classical Notes. The New Yorker, April 25, 2005.

Carl Z. Wilson smartly reports an extended discussion of musical "authenticity" at Experience Music Project’s Pop Conference, stemming from a presentation by Love and Theft author Eric Lott. He writes: "Lott said, and I think this is right on, that the idea of authenticity is only ideological, only used to police boundaries, and that truth or honesty is more an affect than any isolatable quality."

In the early days of the Weimar Republic, Richard Strauss tried
to persuade the theater critic Alfred Kerr to write a
libretto for a theatrical-political operetta entitled Revolution,
which was to have featured, in the composer’s words, “workers’ and
industrial councils, prima-donna intrigues, tenor ambitions, resigning
directors of the old regime … a National Assembly, soldier societies, party
politicking while the people starve, a pimp as Culture Minister, a
criminal as War Minister, a murderer as Justice Minister," and,
somewhere in the middle, an echt-Romantic, Hans Pfitzner-like composer
who fleeces wealthy Jews while spouting anti-Semitic remarks. To the anguish of posterity, nothing came of the project.

The best way to describe is alfredschnittke.com is … well, you really have to look for yourself. To me, it’s an oblique but poetic tribute to the late Russian master. Others disagree, to judge from the site’s bizarrely overheated guestbook commentary: "This site is very bad. But i can understand this because you’ re american… Thanks for everything!" I think the man who created this design for his gravesite would have understood the humor.

As the competing orthodoxies of Uptown and Downtown music fight their endless war of attrition, composers are increasingly finding their way outside, to the freer climes of Lower Midtown Music. The Look & Listen Festival, which takes place this weekend at the Robert Miller Gallery on West 26th Street, exemplifies the Lower Midtown sound at its best: accessible and uncompromising, populist and antisocial, fiendishly complex and instantly hummable, ethereally sublime and grindingly hot. OK, I’m making all that up, but the programs for Look & Listen do seem to offer a fine cross-section of freethinking New Yorkish music. Durable classics like Meredith Monk’s Book of Days, Steve Reich’s Four Organs, and Feldman’s Structures (for string quartet) share space with fresh thoughts by such promising youths as Judd Greenstein (not Judy) and Mark Dancigers. eighth blackbird, SO Percussion, the Lark and Daedalus Quartets, and the NOW Ensemble participate. Monk delivers a keynote speech on Thursday, and various composers will speak on panels. You can read all this for yourself.

The St. Louis Symphony, having apparently recovered from its recent attempt at public hari-kari, has announced its first season under David Robertson,
and it’s a pleasure to behold. Everything from Josquin to Adams, in elegant groupings. Without trying to force thematic connections, the
orchestra* has come up with neat titles for each
event. I like "Radiance" as a catch-all for the Magic
Flute Overture, Feldman’s Coptic Light, and Das Lied von der Erde.
Notice also that the orchestra now has its own blog. It’ll be interesting to hear
how the St. Louis plays for Robertson at Carnegie on Saturday. An all-American program: Ives’ Unanswered Question and Second Symphony, Adams’ Century Rolls, and Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, with none other than Paul Newman as narrator. Will he wear the beard?

*Greg Sandow’s handiwork, it turns out.

The Turkish magazine Andante, which is publishing some of my pieces under the rubric "Gerisi Gürültü," or The Rest Is Noise, looks to be an excellent all-around classical-music journal, commenting on opera, orchestras, new music, local festivals, and some jazz and rock as well (Mingus, the Tiger Lillies). I’ve never understood why the vast American classical audience can’t sustain a magazine of this type. I assume the advertising business, with its rich-old-queen habit of spending money only on young males, has something to do with it.