No, boys. There's two "O"s in Goose.

Now, I am as forgiving of typos as the next guy -- I guess it's just my liberal leanings. Plus, spelling words correctly (or even spelling them out at all) is apparently quite last century. With all the problems newspapers are currently facing, who has time to get bothered over a their/there incident.

However...

Fear No Music opens season provocatively

...

Nancy Ives, great-granddaughter of a cousin of the composer,...

...also his father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate...

...then performed Elliot Carter's...

Um, Mr. McQuillen -- I believe that Mr. Carter spells his first name with two "t"s. It's okay...a common mistake I'm sure. Really, that extra "t" is silent anyways. Let's not let that ruin a perfectly good review.

Just don't let it happen again. Okay?

...short homage to Charles for solo cello, "Figment No. 2: Remembering Mr. Ives." The famously abstruse Carter generally makes Ives sound as experimental as Stephen Foster by comparison, and the "Figment" was no exception, with bits of "Hallowe'en" and Ives' "Concord Sonata" deconstructed, their fragments heading in uncertain directions. But as the title suggests, Carter's piece was imaginative, as sparkling in its cerebral way as the Ives.

"The famously abstruse Carter generally makes Ives sound as experimental as Stephen Foster by comparison."

Ugh. See, my problem is that the only thing this person judges as "experimental" is a piece's relative atonality, and that's just stupid. Carter does indeed write atonal, very complex music, BUT, that doesn't make his music experimental.

And while Ives wrote plenty of music that was quite tonal, borrowing from popular music and commonplace classical forms of the 19th century, his music was rarely not experimental. It has everything to do with knowing what the words atonal, experimental and avant-garde actually mean with regards to the classical music tradition.

Moving on...

Things turned toward the wild side in the final works. Voglar and Griffin ripped through Stephen Hartke's "Oh Them Rats is Mean in My Kitchen,"...

Now, time for Detrital editorial advocacy, because this is just an awesome piece. Absolutely kick-ass.

You can listen to it here. I insist.

...a crackling, note-bending tribute to early blues inspired by Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Maltese Cat Blues," and the quartet closed with Michael Dougherty's "Paul Robeson Told Me," in which the quartet accompanies...

Wait, a minute. Back that up for second. Michael Who-erty? Mr. McQuillen, I mean, come on.

Misspelling two composer's names is really pretty unacceptable. Seriously.

Consume Your Symptom!

“Never mind my fruit comes from Chile, as long as it’s cheap and tastes good” is but one particular kind of consumer glut: the “out of sight, out of mind” theory, adopted for its vividness last year by the International Counsel for Responsible Spending (Icarus).* In their most recent publication, Icarus named several other kinds of similar negligent spending attitudes (most dealing with transportation, i.e., oil), which, according to their research, accounts for a great deal of international animosity towards America. The “blind” and voracious nature of American consumerism has led to many international conflicts involving resources, territory and military action.

Countries have thus compared America to the Roman Empire, whose glut was best exemplified by gross exhibitions of wealth, like the gladiatorial contests of the Coliseum (also Colosseum). The Colosseum played host to many spectacles, most notably Emperor Trajan’s lavish celebration of his victories in Dacia (107 A.D.), which involved “11,000 animals and 10,000 gladiators over the course of 123 days.”

Yeah. But what does this have to do with critiquing critics?

[John Corigliano’s Third Symhpony], "Circus Maximus", promises to be fun: Corigliano compares the decadent ancient Roman entertainment district to our modern glut of cable television channels and reality TV.

I’ll let David Hurwitz explain:

My only wish is that Corigliano didn't take himself quite so seriously: to equate the slaughter and mayhem of Roman entertainment to, say, the Real Housewives of New Jersey surely is pushing the comparison too far.

I dunno. Parading wealthy women bumbling through life on television for all to laugh at is pretty ghastly.

Figure 1. Training kids to buy oil (and it’s fun!)

Anyway, political/allegorical/satirical pieces are nothing new. So what’s the problem? That Corigliano’s too serious? Or is it that music is ultimately supposed to be pleasurable and not challenging?

Moreover, it runs the risk of sounding snobbish (not the music, the [program] notes).

I think it’s safe to say that “classical” music connoisseurs are already kinda snobbish. So I’m sure no one will mind.

Remember, when Ives did this sort of thing it was the popular tunes and other found objects that he was celebrating, and the classical tradition that he was thumbing his nose at (with good reason).

Not to be ignored, he also had a very healthy streak of political derision and sarcasm. Goddamned thieves?

Anyway, that's not really important: what matters is that this is good music whatever its inspiration...

And if Corigliano is being a bit provocative, it's never at the expense of your basic enjoyment.

Without pulling out the whole Zizek-jouissance thing, we’ve come to another, yet equally problematical paradox.

It seems that the guy pitching (critiquing) “serious” music is also the guy who doesn’t want it to be too serious—“above all it must be enjoyable.” So, those very program notes, which are gravely imperative to understanding the piece, are cast aside by the author in favor of “blind” enjoyment. This, in turn, results in positive advocacy—the music critic’s equivalent of buying fruit from Chile.

*Icarus is wholly fictional.
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