On Beethoven's birthday (he would be 238 years old), I'm going to link a piece I wrote last January called "Starting with nothing," in which I discussed the second movement of the Op. 59, No. 1 string quartet. In that movement, Beethoven used "very basic materials to create an incredibly complex work of genius." This piece gave me the opportunity to tell a couple of stories, including my favorite concert story ever.
Showing posts with label classical music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label classical music. Show all posts
December 16, 2008
August 17, 2008
Splat!
If you've attended a concert of orchestral music, what's the thing you remember most? Let me guess. It was the mistakes in the horn section.
I'm a former hornist, though I was never close to becoming a professional. I was pretty good in high school -- selected for the All-State Band in New York (yes, there is such a thing) -- and played briefly with my college symphony orchestra. So I say this lovingly: Horn splats are a fact of life, even at the professional level.
Now, someone who doesn't say this with any particular love is Allan Kozinn, who's written "The French Horn, That Wild Card of the Orchestra" in the New York Times. This article is essentially a defense of his criticism of horn players, and he's pretty unsympathetic. I don't blame him; I just report.
Now, I know what's going on here. When you attend a professional orchestra concert, you don't want your evening to be marred by some professional hornist who doesn't hit the right notes. Personally, as a hornist, I always loved to hear splattery from the horn section, because it made the musicians seem more human and made me feel somewhat less imperfect than I was. But I'm in the minority.
Consider a comparison to baseball. You go to a game played by your favorite team, which is losing by a run in the bottom of the ninth. The bases are loaded with one out, putting the tying and winning runs in scoring position, and the team's leading hitter comes to bat. He's hitting .333 on the season, which is fantastic, in the top 10 of the league. (Remember, in baseball you're a hero if you make an out only 2 out of every 3 at bats.) The batter hits a hard grounder directly to the shortstop, who turns an easy double play, and the game is over. Naturally, you boo the hitter.
Why should you be upset with the hitter? He's done a great job all season, and you know that he's going to fail two-thirds of the time he comes to bat. But still, you expect more.
The difference between a baseball team a professional orchestra is that with an orchestra you expect perfection. There's a brilliant Peter Schickele spoof in which he announces the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as if it were a sporting event. It's been described this way:
On Peter Schickele's album P.D.Q. Bach On the Air (Vanguard CD-79268 LP-79268) two broadcasters provide a running commentary on a performance of the first movement, as if it were a sports event. In this recording the commentary is simply dubbed over a recording of the music. When Schickele performs the Beethoven's Fifth Sportscast on tour the music is played by a live orchestra. The act includes a referee as well as commentators and the music stops for instant replays, player substitutions and penalties.For me, the highlight of the routine is a loud mistake from one of the horn players, which Schickele and his colleague discuss as if it were the shortshop booting a ground ball.
This routine illustrates my point. With an orchestra, you don't tolerate mistakes the way you might on the ball field. As Kozinn says:
Composers write, and have always written, music that pushes the limits of technique. And if you’re onstage in a professional capacity, you’re expected to be able to negotiate it. That’s the least audiences expect, and it’s a precondition for what they buy tickets for: to be moved by an interpretation; to savor its nuances and to hear something revelatory, whether the work is new or familiar.In other words, that damned hornist splattered the note again and ruined my experience. And it isn't just with "period" instruments -- horns without valves -- which Kozinn spends a good deal of time discussing.
So what's the excuse for this? Kozinn says he's heard from hornists with all sorts of excuses, all the way down to conspiracy theories. But the only technical reason he gives is this: "a bit of condensation from a player's breath adhering to the inside of a coil can lead to cracked notes, or 'clams.'"
Let me offer another perspective -- another excuse, if you will -- and any serious horn players who should happen to stumble on this post can weigh in.
All brass instruments depend on the harmonic series. The technical explanation is here, but as a generalization, all of these notes can be played with the same fingering (or for a trombone, the same position). If you click the link I gave you and look at the notes, you'll notice that the first interval is an octave, followed by a fifth, getting progressively smaller as you get higher in the series. If you play a brass instrument other than a French horn, your normal range is at the lower end of the harmonic series. So when you try to hit a note, you're probably going to hit that note. Different notes with the same fingering are hit by changing your embouchure, your muscle contraction and lip placement. At the low end of the harmonic series, the nearest note with the same fingering is far enough away that you won't miss it through an embouchure that's slightly off.
With the French horn, it's different. The normal range of the horn is at the mid- and upper-ranges of the harmonic series. (A good hornist can reach two full octaves below that normal range.) And when you're higher up in the harmonic series for your usual range, the notes that are played with the same fingerings are quite close together. If your embouchure is only slightly off, you can easily hit the wrong note.
I realize this is only one portion of the explanation. It doesn't explain why a hornist would splat a note toward the bottom of the normal range. But I think it may explain as well as anything why the horn section in a professional orchestra will give you lots of runs and hits but also more than a few errors.
UPDATE (8/24): Hornist Bruce Hembd, who writes at Horndogblog, agrees that the harmonic series is a bigger issue than condensation.
June 11, 2008
May 21, 2008
Visitor of the day -- 5/21
I thought the man wrote only nine symphonies. As my grandmother used to say, "This I never heard of."
February 10, 2008
Shut up and play the piano
I'm sorry to report that Leon Fleisher, the pianist, is an ignorant fool.
Techically, I'm not reporting that; he reported it himself in an op-ed in the Washington Post yesterday.
The story he told is that he was honored by the Kennedy Center but didn't want to have to attend the White House ceremony, because, when it comes to the current occupant of that building, he's completely deranged.
Come on, man! You're an artist! Don't just use the same tired language about "shredding the Constitution," etc.!
Anyway, the "powers that be" told him not to rock the boat. Go and be silent. So he went and presented a daisy to the military thugs who were pointing rifles at him.
OK, I'm kidding about that. But it was close; he went and wore "a peace symbol around my neck and a purple ribbon on my lapel."
And then wrote about it in the Post.
Totally true fact: During a significant part of his musical career, Fleisher was unable to use his right hand and performed works written entirely for the left hand.
January 20, 2008
Starting with nothing
It's hard to believe it, but I've never told you this story before. It's my favorite story about going to a concert. When I was in college, my roommate and I bought tickets to a recital series with Claude Frank playing the complete Beethoven piano sonatas. This was a big deal. Frank was a well known pianist, and it wasn't that often that anyone performed the complete Beethoven sonatas -- all 32 of them, in 8 concerts.
After most of the concerts, Frank would play an encore. At one concert, Frank returned to the stage and stood there, looking very elegant in his tuxedo, left hand resting on the top of the piano. The hall fell completely silent. Frank grandly announced the encore: "Schumann's Arabesque." At that, the old woman sitting right in front of my roommate and me broke the silence in the hall with the loud remark, "THAT old thing??"
My roommate and I couldn't stop laughing, and as soon as the encore was over, we darted out of the concert hall, where we could laugh without embarrassment.
I told you that story to tell you this one.
One of Frank's endearing little practices was to start the second half of the concert with a discussion of an aspect of the music. It's all too rare these days for performers to speak to the audience, and I've never really understood why the performers don't offer the audience some insights about the composer or the specific piece or the performer's own approach to the music. But they rarely do.
In any event, during one of the concerts, Frank raised the question of what makes Beethoven great. He did it as a dialogue with himself and used the slow movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 to illustrate. (If you don't know the Seventh Symphony, you can get a video of the complete symphony here, conducted by von Karajan. A video of the second movement alone is here, conducted by Charles Latshaw. Listen closely to the theme, played softly in the low strings after the initial orchestral chord.)
What makes Beethoven great? Frank asked. Well, he said, it's his melodies, right? And he sang the opening of the theme of the slow movement of the Seventh Symphony: C, C-C, B, B, B, B-B, C, C.
Well, it's his rhythms, right? And he sang the theme: Long, short-short, long, long, long, short-short, long, long.
All right, well, maybe it's his harmonies. And he sang: Tonic, tonic-tonic, dominant, dominant, dominant, dominant-dominant, tonic, tonic.
And he had made his point -- that Beethoven was able to create the most sublime music out of the most rudimentary materials.
While I was looking around for a link to a performance of the Seventh, I stumbled on this composer's description of Beethoven's genius:
Before Beethoven, composers vied for beauty. They wrote great counterpoint. They wrote beautiful melodies.And again, I told you that story to tell you this.
Beethoven changed all that. He rarely relied simply on good material to write great music. His work was architectural. He was the first one to show that great music could be written with common materials. His vision went far beyond the nuts and bolts.
I've been listening to the complete set of Beethoven string quartets on CD (Alban Berg Quartett). As any Beethoven aficionado will tell you, there's nothing that can top the late quartets. That said, the quartet that really blows me away whenever I listen to it after a long absence is the first of the middle quartets, the Op. 59, No. 1, especially the second movement.
I've linked the sample of that movement from Amazon so you can hear the opening. [UPDATE: The Amazon link seems dead, so here's the movement on YouTube.] As in the Seventh Symphony, Beethoven starts with the most rudimentary materials imaginable. The opening phrase, for cello unaccompanied, is a rhythmic repetition of a single note, B-flat, sort of like this: Da da dum dum, da da dum dum, da da da da da da, dah. Listen to it; that's all there is. The second violin follows, unaccompanied, with a short melodic phrase. Then, the viola enters, unaccompanied, repeating the cello's rhythmic phrase, this time on an A-flat. Last, the first violin, unaccompanied, answers the melodic phrase of the second violin.
It's hard to describe. Listen to it.
(I seem to recall reading many years ago that the cellist who was to play the premiere of the piece was so infuriated by the da da dum dum opening of the movement that he threw down his music and stormed out of rehearsal. But you never know how many of these stories are apocryphal.)
Immediately, the rhythmic, repeated notes begin to build up and, in no time, are being played fortissimo. Beethoven takes these rhythmic notes and the bits of melody offered at the beginning and creates an amazingly powerful movement out of them.
Last month, I made fun of Haydn's "Surprise" Symphony for the insipid theme in its famous slow movement and for Haydn's failure to do anything with an interesting harmonic move. If you listen to the slow movement of the Seventh Symphony or the second movement of the Op. 59, No. 1 string quartet, you'll hear how a brilliant composer makes use of very basic materials to create an incredibly complex work of genius.
January 08, 2008
Selling electronics and classical music
Instapundit writes: "WHEN PUSHING HD CAMERAS, it's apparently important to have women playing classical music."
And if you think his joke is only about the tenuous connection between electronics and traditional classical music, you need to click on the link above and check the photos.
But it's not just electronics shows that feature "glossies" of the women playing classical music; it's the labels themselves. The cover on virtually any CD featuring a young female classical musician will look like an ad for . . . oh, I don't know what. Here's one of my favorites. It's a great recording, too, by the way.
The moral is that sex sells, even in classical music.
December 18, 2007
Dissin' Papa Haydn
One of Pillage Idiot's major contributions to the arts is my think piece "This art really sucks (eggs)!" In it I discuss a puzzling phenomenon: that one can say that certain works by the masters really suck (in music or literature, say) but for some reason one doesn't say that paintings by the great visual artists suck.
I thought about this puzzle again tonight. I was driving home from the Metro with the radio on, and they were playing Haydn's Symphony no. 94 ("Surprise"). The nickname "Surprise" apparently stems from an incident in which Haydn's wife unexpectedly returned home one afternoon while Haydn was in the middle of banging some fortissimo chords in the dominant.
You may be familiar with at least the theme of the slow movement of the symphony, which is so well known that even your kid sister, who thinks the Beach Boys are classical music, would recognize it. It goes like this: Ba ba ba ba ba ba baaa, ba ba ba ba ba ba baaa, ba ba ba ba ba ba baaa, ba ba ba ba baaa baaa.
So, anyway, I was listening to this symphony and thinking the same thing I think whenever I hear Haydn, namely, that he's an excellent technician -- he knows how to put chords and phrases together well -- but that his music simply isn't very interesting. I made this observation to Mrs. Attila, who's a Mozart partisan, and she enthusiastically agreed with me. She thinks that his themes hold together, but that they're not "transcendent," like Mozart's. I'm a Beethoven partisan, myself, and while the Great Man studied with Haydn, he was doing cartwheels around his teacher from the very beginning.
To get back to my point about Haydn: There's a variation in the slow movement of the Surprise Symphony in which Haydn makes an interesting and unexpected chord progression, but he doesn't go anywhere with it, and three or four measures later, he's back hammering home the tonic again. (For the benefit of my less sophisticated readers, the "tonic" is the principal chord in a particular key, the so-called "one" chord. It has little, if anything, to do with alcoholic beverages.)
I'm not trying to say that Haydn's music sucks eggs, although some of it comes pretty close. And besides, he wrote so much of it that one can't possibly make generalizations.
What I'd like to ask from my classically inclined readers is this: Are there any really great works of Haydn that distinctly do not suck eggs? I'm willing to listen. Just don't tell me the Surprise Symphony.
December 09, 2007
Stockhausen's death was a great work of art
Call me a boor, but in my entire life, I've listened to exactly one composition of Karlheinz Stockhausen, the avant-garde composer who died the other day. It was about 35 years ago, and I have no recollection which composition it was, as if it makes any difference.
Stockhausen made some waves in the days following 9/11:
Not all of his "theories" deserved respect. Immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, Stockhausen outraged much of the world when he called the attacks "the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos." "Minds achieving something in an act that we couldn't even dream of in music, people rehearsing like mad for 10 years, preparing fanatically for a concert, and then dying, just imagine what happened there," he elaborated. "You have people who are that focused on a performance and then 5,000 [sic] people are dispatched to the afterlife, in a single moment."Of course, he said it in German, not in English, but you can read the original here.
I don't exactly care whether it was taken out of context, as Stockhausen claimed. I'm not sure how you could say such a thing, out of context or not.
What's fitting, now, is that Stockhausen has finally performed a limited test of his theory of art. And he's proved that his death is a great work of art, greater by far than the rest of his opus.
October 29, 2007
How NOT to increase interest in classical music
I didn't see it on Saturday, when it appeared in the Times, but there were letters about it today. The "it" is an op-ed piece by Daniel Levitin, arguing that since music and dance typically go together, we should let people dance during classical music concerts.
That's more or less the argument. If you think it's more subtle than that, sue me.
I'm perfectly willing to alter the custom at classical music concerts of not applauding until the final movement. The argument for keeping it is that one movement often flows musically, if not absolutely immediately, into the next -- a flow that would be interrupted by applause. But how often do you hear the musicians themselves stop between movements to re-tune their instruments, fumble with pages, adjust their chairs, etc.? Applause seems perfectly appropriate -- and often well deserved -- at that point.
But Levitin's argument is silly. He's suggesting we encourage audible responses during the music. If you've ever listened to classical music at a concert hall or on a CD, you'll know what a huge range of dynamics a lot of classical music has. At one moment, you're struggling to hear a single bassoon. A few minutes later, the whole large orchestra is playing fortissimo. To allow listeners to experience this aspect of the music, there needs to be silence.
Go dance in your own room, bud.
October 07, 2007
Sunday linkfest
Man, I've got a whole bunch of links burning a hole in my pocket, and I just don't feel like writing an entire post about any of 'em. So here's my linkfest. Hope you enjoy these.
1. A "Mom Job"? Oy. You'll be pleased to know that even mothers of college-aged children are having this plastic surgery. "'I had been thin all my life until I had my son and then I got this pooch of overhanging fat on my abdomen that you can’t get rid of,' Ms. Birkland, 39, said. 'And your breasts become deflated sacks.'" Mind you, this is a woman with a 20-year-old son. She was about 19 when he was born, and now she's concerned with her looks -- and blaming him? I shouldn't be surprised about her. Get this line: "There is more pressure on mothers today to look young and sexy than on previous generations, she added. 'I don’t think it was an issue for my mother; your husband loved you no matter what,' said Ms. Birkland, who recently remarried." Personal to Ms. Birkland's new husband: If that's what she thinks, ditch her now; she'll only get "worse" looking.
2. An observatory on the roof of your house? Cool. "'The reason why people don’t use their telescopes is they are such a pain to haul out and set up,' said John Spack, 50, a certified public accountant who had a domed observatory built on top of an addition to his house in Chicago last year. 'Now, if I want to get up at 3 a.m. and look at something, I just open the shutter.'"
3. "Pro-semites" on JDate? When, some years ago, Irving Kristol said, "the danger facing American Jews today is not that Christians want to persecute them but that Christians want to marry them," he was right on the money. It turns out that something like 11% of members of JDate aren't Jewish but are interested in meeting Jews. Pollster Mark Penn writes in a new book "that 'the number one reason they [people he calls "pro-Semites"] gave for desiring a Jewish spouse was a sense of strong values, with nearly a third also admitting they were drawn to money, looks or a sense that Jews "treat their spouses better."'"
4. Vegans dating regular vegetarians. As a former "vegetarian" who actually ate dairy, eggs, and even fish, and the father of a former vegan who was actually serious about it until he had a revelation (that vegans are morons, or something like that) and is now a proud carnivore, I have to admit this line tickled me: "'I'm in a relationship with a murderer,' bemoans Carl, one of many vegans who wrote in to the 'Vegan Freak' podcast for romantic advice." My son was never like that when he was a vegan.
5. Speaking of vegetarians, if you work for Countrywide and you didn't get the memo, W.C. Varones got it for you. Heh!
6. Stupid pickup lines. I did like the final one, which is charmingly cheesy: "Well, here I am. What are your other two wishes?"
7. "There are signs that the global Islamic jihad movement is splitting apart." Discuss. (via protein wisdom)
8. WTF? I saw this bumper sticker on a car on the highway in Maryland: "God Bless The Whole World / No Exceptions." Yeah, I understand it now: God bless Johnny, and God bless Billy, and God bless Osama. Because, heck, we're no better than any of those guys who are trying to murder us.
9. Here's a concert I'm glad I missed: Beethoven's 9th, redone according to the "aural graffiti" that Gustav Mahler wrote on the score. Tim Page lays the smackdown on Leonard Slatkin: "Somebody should sit Leonard Slatkin down and explain to him, firmly but not without compassion, that Ludwig van Beethoven actually knew what he was doing when he composed his Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, and that the work he created needs no enhancement from Gustav Mahler or any of the other musicians who followed in his shadow."
10. Andrew Ferguson in the Weekly Standard has an amusing review of Alan Greenspan's new book: "Alan Shrugged." ("Ayn," Alan would say, overcome by some Randian insight, "upon reading this, one tends to feel exhilarated!")
11. Columbia's newest friend, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has another insight: Move the damn Jews to Alaska. Seriously. (Via HotAir) He must have been reading the latest dreck from a Jewish writer suffering from Weltschmerz. Can you imagine the Jews in Alaska? All the Jewish geezers would sit around all afternoon saying things like this: "Oy, it's so cold here." "Moses got the desert, but we're stuck in this icebox."
12. And you just can't miss this last one, but don't listen to it at work, unless you can close a door behind you: Don't try that satire s--- in f---in' New Yawk. (Bad language alert.)
August 28, 2007
Beethoven's doctor
I wonder what the statute of limitations is on med-mal actions in Austria.
Because the latest theory is that Beethoven's death from lead poisoning was the result of actions taken by his doctor.
The article in the Beethoven Journal, published by San Jose State University's Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies, lays the composer's crash at the feet of Dr. Andreas Wawruch and his bedside remedies. His demise at 56 put an end to years of depression and mysterious physical ailments, but, according to the article, it didn't have to happen when it did.Here is a little elaboration of the findings:
Charting the composer's final four months through the hairs, Reiter established day-by-day correlations between Beethoven's bedside medical treatments at the hands of Wawruch and lead concentrations in the composer's body: A dramatic spike in the concentrations follows each of the doctor's five treatments between Dec. 5, 1826 and Feb. 27, 1827, according to Reiter.I have to say I was amused by the responses to this research, though I guess it's not too surprising:
He theorizes that Wawruch, treating Beethoven for pneumonia that December, administered a medicine containing lead, as many medicines did at the time. Within days, Beethoven's stomach became terribly bloated, leading Wawruch to puncture his patient's abdomen four times in the next two months. Gallons of fluid drained out, some of it spilling into the bedding; Beethoven complained about the bugs and the odor.
Reiter's suspicion is that the sticky poultices applied to the puncture wounds contained soapy lead salts, as they often did early in the 19th century; the salts would have been absorbed into the bloodstream, spiking lead levels.
For musicologists, the very idea that Beethoven's death was an accident, and that his life might possibly have been extended, is shocking: "What else could he have composed?" asked William Meredith, director of San Jose State's Beethoven center, the only research center in North America devoted to Beethoven. "Because if you can extend Beethoven's life by a year, you could have had two more string quartets. He was working on a string quintet when he got sick. And then there are the famous sketches for his Tenth Symphony."It's a little like saying, "You know, if Lou Gehrig hadn't suffered from, uh, Lou Gehrig's disease, can you imagine what the Yankees would have been like?"
I mean, medical science was a little like witchcraft in those days. (I'm speaking of Beethoven again.) The life expectancy was short. All things considered, I'd say that the man had a pretty good run.
(via BOTWT)
May 10, 2007
Prodigy composers
I have a homework question for you classical music mavens to do over the weekend. But before I tell you what it is, let me give you a little background.
When I was a senior math major in college, I was busy trying to find other fields to go into, because I knew I didn't have the talent for a career in math. What I used to say was: "When Galois was my age, he was dead." Galois was a young French mathematician in the early 19th century, who "died from wounds suffered in a duel under murky circumstances at the age of twenty." Before he went to that fateful duel, however, he wrote down some of his mathematical ideas, which later became highly significant in advanced algebra.
Like many mathematicians, classical composers often were prodigies. If you haven't heard of a fellow named Mozart, perhaps you should scroll down to the next post.
Mozart, of course, was not the only prodigy composer. I've been listening to Felix Mendelssohn's Octet for Strings lately, which he wrote at age 16. This is a stunningly brilliant work, and although I really am not the greatest Mendelssohn fan in the world, it's almost impossible to offer too much praise for the Octet.
All of this led me to say that if Mendelssohn had died right after writing the Octet, that work alone would have demanded that history treat him as a great composer.
So, finally, here is my question:
Can you name other works by other composers, written at the age of 20 or younger (easier version: 30 or younger), that alone would have made them a great composer?
I'm not going to grade your answers. I don't have any answers, myself. I was just wondering what you can come up with.
March 21, 2007
A Night NOT at the Opera
You just have to love a story that elicits this headline: "Opera star wins 'underwear throwing' case." I'm not making that headline up. Here's the first paragraph of the story:
SYDNEY (Reuters) - New Zealand opera star Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, who refused to perform with an Australian singer because his female fans threw underwear at him, on Wednesday won a lawsuit against her for pulling out of the concert.As an Associated Press article explains:
The trial made headlines when the 63-year-old soprano testified she watched a Farnham concert DVD and was disturbed by what she saw.For the answer to that last question, watch this movie.
“I was concerned about the knickers or underpants ... being thrown at him and him collecting it and ... holding it in his hands as some sort of trophy,” said the singer, whose international performances included the 1981 wedding of Britain's Prince Charles and Diana Spencer.
“How could I, in my classical form, perform in this way?” she told the court in February.
The decision was not a total victory for the defendants, however. According to the BBC, the judge held that there was no contract but that the company that employed the opera singer had failed to inform the concert promoter that the singer was wavering. The judge awarded damages for the costs incurred by the promoter.
Bonus: I never thought I'd write something that would call for the two labels below.
February 26, 2007
"A prodigy of old age"
My wife is an excellent amateur pianist, and I've told her that whenever I retire, I'd like her to teach me piano. I mean it seriously, but there's sort of a built-in joke, because there are some skills, like language and instrumental music, that are hard to pick up when you're an adult, let alone a retired adult.
An op-ed in the New York Times today concerns Joyce Hatto, who "became something unheard of in the annals of classical music: a prodigy of old age — the very latest of late bloomers," when she retired to a small town later in life and then recorded over 120 CDs on a label run by her husband.
It's a wonderful story. Wonderful, because it turns out Ms. Hatto simply stole the recordings of other pianists, mostly younger pianists who were not widely known. As Denis Dutton, author of the op-ed, drolly notes, "Intriguingly, she gave to the music a developed although oddly malleable personality. She could do Schubert in one style, and then Prokofiev almost as though she was a new person playing a different piano — an astonishing, chameleon-like artistic ability."
The title of Dutton's piece is "Shoot the Piano Player."
UPDATE (2/27): Hatto's widower has confessed. And it turns out there's a Hatto fraud website.
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