Orchestra Bravely Stands up to Fascism

Happy Labor Day! What have we here?

Classical music review: In opener, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra shows why baroque festivals are rare
Lawson Taitte, Dallas Morning News, 10/27/2010

While the usual title-writing caveats apply, the titular assertion is just untrue. Utilizing the time-intensive, rigorous methodology known as Spending Five Fucking Seconds on A Google Search, I turned up this list.

Now, clearly, those are not all strictly baroque festivals, but the broader point made below about the Scary Jackbooted Demons of Historically Informed Performance Practice apply.

But I’m getting ahead of the argument.

Symphony orchestras are baffled by the baroque these days.

Are they now?

Specialists in historically informed performance have changed the rules about how to interpret music of the period.

Those academic fascists! Why would anyone even attempt to figure out how music three centuries old might have sounded back then? Why, they think they’re better than us [sic]!

Figure 1: What the hell is that thing? I don't care what instrument it was written for. Just play it on something I can recognize, you elitist!

Most regular orchestras have just given up.

Yes; you’re right. No one ever programs Bach or Vivaldi. Or Handel. Ever.

So give the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra credit for bravery in scheduling a three-night baroque festival this weekend – 20 works by 15 composers, two of them anonymous.

Sure, I guess. Credit for you, FWSO! Way to play music written by dead white men! No one could have seen that coming.

I don’t know about bravery, though; if they do it wrong will the HIP Secret Police show up and disappear the entire string section?

Friday's opening revealed some of the issues that make such programs rarities.

Except for the part where I Googled up a bunch of early music festivals.

The Overture to Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3 launched the festival with a performance that was accurate but lifeless.

Ah, actual music criticism! That tastes far better than speculation-slander.

In the three concertos followed, the orchestra seemed to have been coached merely to stay out of the soloists' way.

Memo

To: Dallas Morning News Editorial Department
From: Sator Arepo
Subject: Copy editing

Sirs and/or Ladies,

Your copy editor seems to have absconded. Please replace him at once. Thank you.

That's especially deadly in Vivaldi.

For reasons that are unclear, obvious enough to warrant an utter lack of elucidation, or shall remain arcane for mischievous reasons?

Kevin Hall played one of the Red Priest's 39 bassoon concertos with amazing suavity but little inflection.

Which would have been covered up if the orchestra had played better? Or so I infer.

Bach's Concerto for Two Violins fared better, though soloists Swang Lin and Alexandra Jennings Flanagan had different ideas about phrasing. (He favored greater articulation but a cloying vibrato; she dug in and got a darker, richer sound.)

That sounds like it might be cool, actually. It’s a fair critique, however, and merits mention in a music review, even if it does nothing to elaborate on the impending death sentences (presumably carried out by HIP Black Ops squads) that the orchestra and conductor have brought upon themselves.

Figure 2: Fetch...the hurdy-gurdy!

After intermission, Jennifer Corning Lucio played the famous Alessandro Marcello Oboe Concerto with passion and finesse – easily the highlight of the concert.

(This is merely editorial, but that is one boring-ass piece.)

In the highly decorated slow movement, Lucio proved once and for all that stylistic outlook isn't nearly as important as having something to say about the music.

Demonstrated? Made a case for? Expressed? No? “[P]roved once and for all…”?

Well, I guess we won’t ever be hearing about that issue again. I’ll be sure to email all of the other music critics, performers, and conductors and let them know.

The orchestra only came into its own when both conductors, Miguel Harth-Bedoya and Andres Franco (who had subbed in the Bach Double), left the stage. The violinists stood as the orchestra played the Pachelbel Canon and Gigue without a front man.

Well, that's certain...wait.

What?

Did you attend a fucking wedding? Cripes. If I ever go to a baroque-themed orchestra concert and they play that stale, tired-ass piece, I’ll have to be forcibly restrained from committing ritual seppuku.

Figure 3: Don't make me come in there.

Harth-Bedoya returned for movements from Handel's Water Music.

A special treat! Because one never, ever, ever hears that programmed. Kudos once more to the brave folks at the FWSO for reaching deep into the baroque catalog and finding a hidden gem!

Here, at last, he seemed to care about the piece as he let the orchestra rip, with superb French horns and woodwinds.

The implication is that he didn’t care about the other baroque pieces because his enjoyment of programming and performing them has been stolen by the Mean Old Musicologists.

The Overture didn't quite capture the true Handelian swagger, but by the end the entire band was off its leash and sprinting toward the finish line.

...aaand close with a mixed metaphor. Cut! Print!

In Which I Am Proven Wrong...by Science!

So I was saying that Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps is surely an excellent piece, but that given the 70 or so years since its inception, it isn't really astonishing anymore.

"Nuh uh," my interlocutor insisted. "It's still astonishing."

I mean, I guess. But not really astonishing. It's well known and widely performed and studied, so how astonishing can it really be? Perhaps this is a semantic or rhetorical squabble, but still...

"Nuh uh. I'll prove it."

Mimir Chamber proves 'Quartet for the End of Time' still has power to astonish
Scott Cantrell, Dallas Morning News, 7/14/2010

Aw, fiddlesticks.

But wait. What's a "Mimir Chamber"?

Figure 1: One imagines a secret meeting room where shadowy, powerful men negotiate the fate of the world. ("You can't fight in here! This is the war room!")

...Nearly 70 years on, the eight-movement, 45-minute work still astonishes. And so it did again Tuesday night at Texas Christian University's PepsiCo Recital Hall, thanks to the Mimir Chamber Music Festival.

Okay. Title-writing guy? Couple-a things.

"Mimir Festival" or even simply "Mimir" would have been perfectly clear shorthand for "Mimir Chamber Music Festival." Although one is thankful your preferred truncation was not some nouveau-cable station abbreviation like "MimFest," "Mimir Chamber" is bad and dumb and unclear to boot.

Second, and through fault of neither author nor inept title-writer:

...Texas Christian University's PepsiCo Recital Hall...

Fucking hell, people. Way to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.

Figure 2: A parable, of sorts, for those with eyes to see.

Angst (in (and/or despite) the Canon)

Yesterday I stumbled upon a very interesting review with lots to discuss.

Wayne Lee Gay, Dallas Morning News, Nouyuki Tsujii disappoints with too-familiar program at Bass Hall, September 23, 2009

Really, it's a pretty thoughtful and well-written piece, with particular musical criticisms of the sort that are the specific and special purview of piano critic geeks. I appreciate this, since discerning super-subtle coloristic nuances or finer points of pedal techniques in piano playing isn't really my focus.

Obviously bent on inducing mass depression among Fort Worth music lovers, 2009 Cliburn co-gold medalist Nouyuki Tsujii dragged out one overworked warhorse after another Tuesday in the opening concert of the 2009-10 Cliburn Concert series at Bass Performance Hall.

This is an imaginative and colorful opening, and I really liked it. The implication, though, is that boring old standard repertoire is depressing, which is misleading.

Figure 1: [Probably] Tsujii

That's not what this review is about. However, a cursory examination, I suppose, might lead some, er, temporally-challenged Feature Article Title Generator-Person to title this article Nouyuki Tsujii disappoints with too-familiar program, which is sort of like Ann Coulter banner ads on progressive websites owing to the derisive mention of said pundit's name on the page.

Presenting an evening devoted to extremely well-known works is a questionable strategy for any concert artist.

Agreed. What's unsaid, perhaps, is that this is also, or perhaps even more, a questionable strategy for any arts management concern, but that's for another time.

First, it invites comparison with great performers, past and present, who have interpreted the same pieces, and Tsujii is clearly not ready to play on the same field with some of them.

Figure 2: John Field, whose name is, curiously, uncapitalized, and, further, is not mentioned in the program. Huh.

A little harsh for a Van Cliburn medalist, but fair. What else?

Second, it causes an artist to neglect exploring and presenting less familiar but often equally great music, old or new.

Also a valid complaint, if somewhat understandable for a new talent cutting his teeth on a performance career. Not everyone's going to specialize in new music, of course, and learning new material for a recital is much harder and more time-consuming than performing music you already know.

Those aspects aside, performing Beethoven's Moonlight and Appassionata sonatas back to back is a bad idea for any pianist.

They're long? Difficult? Or (as the title of the article insinuates) too well-known?

They are two of the composer's darkest creations.

They're...depressing?

Played one after the other, they deliver almost unrelieved gloom.

Gloom, and also: arpeggios. But mostly gloom.

After the intermission, Tsjuii deepened the effect by following up with Chopin's equally pessimistic Ballade in G minor.

Man, that guy must hate music! Or...the audience! Maybe his home was forclosed upon, or his 401k's a shambles. Or his sympathies with the plight of economically suffering and war-weary Americans led to programming that reflects the overcast mood of the time. Or perhaps he's clinically depressed.

Or not.

In a second half devoted entirely to Chopin, Tsujii adhered to a bleakly monotonous tonal quality and an often overly heavy left hand.

See, normally this is the sort of piano-specific criticism that I appreciate, but now it sounds like his tonal palate reflected his overall dour mood, and also (cleverly and recursively!) the entire program.

A set of lively mazurkas from Opus 24 provided the unlikely high point of the evening,...

Unlikely? Why?

...largely because they lend themselves well to Tsujii's almost nonchalant approach.

The mazurkas are boring, which, I guess, when compared to Gloomy Old Man Beethoven, is downright cheerful?

In the two nocturnes from Opus 27, he continued to avoid any real variety of color.

Again, a fair enough assessment, insightful even. But in the context of the review, it sounds like his tone suffered from the same ennui as the program.

The final work on the recital, Chopin's Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise, emerged with workaday blandness.

More again still...

In response to an enthusiastic but far from unanimous ovation,

Translation: Our reviewer wasn't clapping.

Tsujii brought out Chopin's Berceuse, the almost invincible charm of which nearly succumbed to the pianist's unwillingness to explore any variety of tone, and the Revolutionary etude, presented with cold speed and bravura.

Nice.

Figure 3: Chopin. While sickly and boring, at least he wasn't all depressing like Beethoven.

Lastly, in retrospect, the title completely misses the point of the article. Woo! Go Dallas Morning News Feature Headline Writer Person!

It turns out that it's not tired old warhorses that are depressing and disappointing. It's Beethoven!

Good times.

Le bon mot et le mot juste

What is the function of the critic: Part MCMLXXIV; also, Sentence of the Week!

The critic's job in reviewing a concert depends on several factors. An important one, of course, is the program under consideration.

In reviewing new(er) music, the reviewer often describes the music for the reader, since the chances that the music has been encountered before are small. For more well-known works, the performance can be compared to other performances of the same piece, and so forth.

There is, though, a middle ground; less-familiar works by known composers, for instance. In this case, the reviewer will often critique the performance and the work itself somewhat independently.

Here today to illustrate is Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News. The Dallas SO recently held a Latino Festival Concert, the Latin-ness of which was somewhat suspect. It's a good article, with genuine concerns, and I encourage you to read it.

Some of the works on the program were construed (probably correctly) as being showpieces for the featured performers. This is well and good, but I suppose there are limits to Mr. Cantrell's tolerance of fluffy, virtuosic display pieces with little musical substance:

Guarnieri's Dansa brasileira was a cheerfully chugging overture, and Gismonti's two-guitars-and-orchestra Sete Aneis, performed with the Brasil Guitar Duo (João Luiz and Douglas Lora), suggested some influence from minimalism. Neither of these impressed as deathless art, but each was pleasant enough.

This seems to sum it up pretty nicely. But then:

Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Concerto for Two Guitars was pretty inane, with dippy themes elaborated with all the imagination of an undergraduate composition student.

Wow. That is an awesome sentence.

I have just invented a new, meaningless award; I think I shall call it the Sentence of the Week! award.

Today, the inaugural Sentence of the Week! award goes to Scott Cantrell. Not the least of the accomplishments of this sentence is evoking the banality of the music (inane; dippy) combined with an icily clever dismissal of its inventive quality.

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968)

Castelnuovo-Tedesco was an Italian composer who was not very good at writing faux-Spanish guitar concerto showpieces. Or, at least, that's what I think I learned this week.

Seriously, though:

These festival programs attract lots of people who don't ordinarily attend symphony concerts. But the absence of at least brief program notes, even movement markings on the program page, suggests the DSO considers these second-class concerts. That's tacky.

Yes, yes it is. Boo, Dallas Symphony. Boo to you.

Going to Concerts for Free Is An Outrage!

Oh, what the hell. Let's check in with Mr. Cantrell!

FORT WORTH – If I had paid for a ticket to the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra concert Friday evening, I would have been really annoyed.

Yeah, going to concerts for free sucks.

A number of paying customers certainly were grousing at the end of a program that, even counting The Star-Spangled Banner, had lasted all of 50 minutes.

God forbid.

Even allowing for the FWSO's shorter Friday format – an hour and a half, with no intermission – there was time for all three of the pieces promised for Saturday and Sunday repeats.

Um. 2 X 50 minutes is 1 hour and 40 minutes. Math, anyone?

But the Friday audience got only the Brahms Third Symphony and Wagner Tannhäuser Overture, in that quirky order, not the Mozart Prague Symphony.

I don't understand. What about the Prague?

Maybe if we'd been offered a 1/3 discount ...

But...you said...you didn't have to pay for a ticket? 1/3 of zero is zero. More or less. What gives?

Oh, Crap. They Killed All The Editors in Dallas, Too

Quickie post, y'all, but this:

When American think about 20th-century British music

Wow. Did Dallas abolish plural nouns? You bastards!

Christmas Eureka!

Sometimes, it’s the simplest mathematical statement that’s the most profound. So, without further ado, I give you Stephen Hawking’s most recent discovery:

Holiday concerts abound at this time of year.

Finally, Nobel, here you come!
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A Completely Compelling Double Dose, Briefly Bestowed

Two quick hits from Mr Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News, two days apart.

First, a word about expectations.

What's the very last piece you'd expect to hear on a Dallas Symphony Orchestra concert?

Hmm. The very last? That's a thinker, right there. Let's see...

Ionisation?

Music for 18 Musicians?

Synaphai?

Cobra?

A pretty good guess would be Sir Edward Elgar's The Music Makers, a 40-minute piece for mezzo-soprano, chorus and orchestra set to poetry by Arthur O'Shaughnessy.

(The Music Makers)

(For no reason, here is a picture of Elgar that is fun to look at.)


Aw, man. Curses, foiled again! You got me. But I would have guessed Zorn, Xenakis, Reich, or Varese before anything by Elgar. Silly me! Not that it's not an obscure work of overblown English neo-Romanticism, but...the very last piece?

Two days later, a review of Stephen Hough's concert memorializing David Grice:

We would all like to be so warmly remembered as to merit the memorial recital Stephen Hough played Sunday afternoon. Honoring the late David Grice, a beloved Plano piano teacher, Mr. Hough reminded us just how transcendent an experience music can be.

I was just sitting here thinking, "Damn! I wish I could remember how transcendent music can be!". Wait, what? Oh...hyperbole. Right. It is, after all...Chopin...

The slow movement of Chopin's B minor Sonata seemed to inhabit a parallel universe, where time stood still amid aching beauties.

Time stood still...in a parallel universe...surrounded by gorgeous women in pain. Is this...is this H.P. Lovecraft? (click to enlarge)

The cascading accompaniments almost turned to vapor.

Yes, yes, Chopin is ethereal. And cascading.

The whole Chopin sonata was wonderfully personalized, at times feeling – quite appropriately – made up on the spot. The composer's B major Nocturne (Op. 62, No. 1) seemed a dream caught as it drifted by.

And dreamy! Everyone loves Chopin. But wait! There's more!

A very different piece, Aaron Copland's Piano Variations, got a no less compelling performance.

Usually modernist music is not compelling. And, arguably, this is Copland's most modernist piece, as he experiments with (*gasp*) serialism!*

(Copland Piano Variations)

This is craggy but compelling music

Dude, you just typed "compelling" like six words ago. Just sayin'.

This is craggy but compelling music, proving that even tough modernism can have a beating human heart.

Um.

Inherent anti-modernism aside (it's craggy and tough, not usually compelling, and inhuman), I think you missed the point of modernism.

The "beating human heart" of "tough modernism" is its casting off traditional modes of expression with the desire to express one's inner...

Ah, crap, I stopped being funny.

And I would've got away with it if it hadn't been for you meddling kids!

*Blogger does not think "serialism" is a word.

Karlheinz Does Dallas

OMG! Stockhausen in Dallas? An interesting review:

See this review by Scott Cantrell.

It was the 1960s again for an hour Sunday night.

Missed that. Must've been watching baseball.

Six robe-clad figures sat on a circle of pillows in a dim crypt, swaying and chanting arcane sounds. Occasionally the name of a deity – Osiris, Artemis, Wotan – would surface from the oohs and aahs, wah-wahs and luh-luhs. Strands of erotic German poetry wafted on rising and falling slides of pitch.

It was...in a crypt? Oh, figuratively, like the way it was the 1960s again. I get it.

We lacked only fumes of patchouli and pot smoke.

Dude, you live in Dallas. Head on down to the Winedale Tavern on Greenville Avenue. (I know a guy.) It's not far from the theater...

Figure 1: Winedale Tavern, Dallas

This was, however, a legal affair: a concert presented by Dallas' modern-music group Voices of Change, at the Undermain Theatre in Deep Ellum. And the sound effects, all produced by amplified live singers, were artifacts of a work called Stimmung, by the late German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Figure 2: Voices of Change

Figure 3: Stockhausen

In a performance organized by University of North Texas composition professor Joseph Klein, the singers were sopranos Heidi Dietrich Klein and Tracey Deen, alto Katrina Burggraf-Kledas, tenors Kevin Sutton and Ryan Lungwitz, and bass Tim Johnson. Dr. Klein gave a fast-talking introduction to the work and managed the amplification.

Sounds awesome!

(Here is a link to an excerpt from Stimmung for you.)

Stockhausen, who died last December at age 79, was one of the agents provocateurs of post-World War II music. Stimmung, composed in 1968, was something of a signpost of the avant-garde.

All true.

The vocal sounds are, you might say, life imitating art, or at least the artifice of electronic music, in which Stockhausen was a pioneer. But the piece is also an example of aleatory music: the performers are given 51 musical gestures, plus the "magic names" (as Stockhausen called them) and poetry, to combine as the spirit moves.

"...as the spirit moves."? Is that a word-count filling way of saying "choice"?

Either hypnotic or maddening,

Why not both?

depending on your mindset, the piece lasted one hour. (Other performances have run closer to 70 minutes.) Although it's supposed to remain rooted in the note B-flat and its overtones, understandably it did drift here and there.

Understandably! Certainly.

Personally, I was glad to experience a work more often cited in music-history books than actually performed.

I am very, very happy to read that. Wait...what's that I hear? Is it...is it a "but" coming?

But

Yesssss.

for this listener, its hour-long duration occasioned every stage of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Sounds like ol' Karlheinz has got your number, to me.

As Voltaire reportedly said of a late-in-life trip to a house of ill-repute, "Once a philosopher, twice a pervert."

I...what?

The First Five Sentences

Uh...

No opera has music more gorgeous – more brilliantly colored, more lusciously textured, more passionately yearning – than Die tote Stadt.

No opera. Has music! More gorgeous.

So why is it so rarely performed?

Good question, being that it’s the most best opera ever, ever. In fact, if Die tote Stadt was a planet, it would be the only planet in its own solar system--that's how more good it is. Its inhabitants wouldn't need to evolve any further, because they already attained genetic perfection. This makes them herbivores, since predation is futile. Also, they laugh at aliens--especially illegal ones.

Well, the title, "The Dead City," may be a little off-putting.

Personally, the title “Salome” is a little more off-putting. There’s something about necrophilia that doesn’t sit well with me.

Anyway. To each his own.

And Erich Wolfgang Korngold's youthful masterpiece needs two lead singers, a soprano and a tenor, who can sing – and sing and sing...

Don’t all operas require singers who are trained to do this?

...and sing and sing – over high-cholesterol orchestrations that make Wagner sound like Mozart.

Uh...

The soprano also has to be visually plausible as a dancer.

...as opposed to olfactorally plausible.

Fin
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[Edit Empiricus] I almost forgot the "necrophilia" tag.
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Class Warfare

Well, music isn't music. It depends on class, apparently. Yes, this is a "classical" music blog, mostly, but I don't put up with condescension. It's my least favorite thing ever. Well, perhaps except for cancer, or something.

Olin Chism of the Dallas Morning News reviews the:

Voces Intimae opens season with salute to 1938

The season-opening program of Voces Intimae was so varied that you might be hard put to think of a theme linking all the works performed.

I've really, really never understood the urge to link works in a program. What's the point? You go to a concert, hear some music, and go home. Who cares if it's Webern and Machaut (although you could make an argument about math or something, but why?).

There was one, though: the year 1938. Each of the works was composed then, published then, or written by a composer born in that year.

Wow. That is a tenuous connection. Who cares? What's the point? Oh, crud, I just repeated myself. Does that make a connection between my last two paragraphs (for no discernible reason)?

Voces Intimae specializes in art song, but it is by no means exclusive in its definition of the form.

That is a very confusing sentence. I get the gist, but...really?

The composers in the Sunday-night concert at Grace United Methodist Church included Harold Arlen, Cole Porter and Duke Ellington, and the lyricists included Bob Dylan

Okay, so there was some non-traditional "classical" music mixed in. Go on.

Vocalists Angela Turner Wilson, Rebecca Winston, Virginia Dupuy and Brooke Clark Gibson; pianists Shields-Collins Bray and Mark Stamper; and clarinetist Brent Buemi performed.

I still don't understand the semicolons, but whatever.

Although the music of the program's first two segments was by classical composers with distinguished credentials, it was a clear demonstration that music from lower on the social scale can have an impact.

Wow. I mean, wow. Who knew that "lower" music could "have an impact"? Class warfare much? Jesus. If anyone reading this thinks Duke Ellington was "not a composer" because he wrote "Jazz" music, well, um, I don't like you. That was the nicest thing I could think of to say.

See this. (sorry, couldn't embed video.)

Badass.

This included three of William Bolcom's Cabaret Songs. "Over the Piano" is a bluesy song about closing time, and "Lady Luck" is about a shady lady who keeps her pride even when she's kicked out. "George" is a weird story-in-song about a cross-dresser who prefers to be called Georgia and entertains customers with operatic soprano arias. But then he's stabbed to death by an offended customer in the middle of an aria from Madame Butterfly. He has a nice funeral, though, and you don't know whether to laugh or cry.

You don't know whether to laugh or cry. (That was the cleverist thing I could think of.)

Dallas composer Simon Sargon's three Patterns in Blue explore a similar down-and-maybe-out world, but without the weirdness. I particularly liked the music of "Lonesome Boys Blues," though the text was a little obscure.

I have no idea who that is, so I'm taking your word on this one, Chism. However, what does "the text was a little obscure" mean? You were unable to make it out from the singing? Or you didn't get it?

The heaviest portion of the program was John Corigliano's Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan, especially the ferocity of "Blowin' in the Wind" and "Masters of War." Other composers represented were Henry Cowell, Samuel Barber and David del Tridici

I happen to know that Corigliano admitted he'd never heard any Dylan when he set the lyrics for his art songs. Also, I'd love to hear about the Cowell and del Tridici. No? Crap.

All of Sunday night's performers were impressive musical dramatists, though a pop fan might feel they were too well trained for the Arlen-Porter-Ellington part of the program.

Ah, there's the rub, as that one guy once wrote. Too well trained (well-trained?)? WTF? That is some bullshit right there. Goddammit. Go ask fucking Robert Fripp who's too "well trained".

Again, on this site we focus on "classical" music, but I can't bear condescension towards other genres. Music is music, people. This classist shit has got to stop.

"A Flower From The Garden Of Life"

Did you know that Thurland Chattaway wrote his song, “ Can’t You Take It Back And Change It For A Boy?” in 1911? Didn’t think so. That must mean you don't know anything about American music.

Intimidated by the likes of Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, [English-speaking] classical-music establishments and audiences seem to assume that all things good and great come from the European continent.

Seriously, mentioning Thurland Chattaway probably wouldn’t spark too many conversations.

Both Brits and Americans seem almost apologetic for their native musical heritages.

If, however, Thurland is all you think we think we have, then I think you think you’re still in 1911. Then again, I've never heard of Ives or Irving Berlin. Blecht. BLECHT. BLLEECCHTT.
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What Does It Mean?

All apologies, but indignation follows. I don't blame Mallary Jean Tenore, it's not her fault. The problem is the...I guess...symptoms of decline of music/arts in this country.

Although the Texas Ballet Theater received a long-term $500,000 pledge Thursday morning, it is still planning to use recorded music for the 2008-09 season.

Mohtherfucker, what?

I found this perusing the news. You got...half a million dollars and are firing all your...musicians?

The dance company's decision, which is part of its emergency efforts to conserve funds and raise at least $2 million by mid-September, came as a surprise to the Dallas Opera Orchestra and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. Both orchestras were scheduled to perform live music for dance performances.

I bet it came as a fucking surprise. All of those people who play instruments for a living were, I reckon, fucking surprised!

"We're going to have to work with them to see what this means," said Jennifer Schuder, director of marketing at the Dallas Opera Orchestra.

What does it mean!? Seriously? I can tell you what it means, dumbshit. It means hardworking, underpaid musicians are out of a gig.

Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra leaders did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Well, it's hardly their fault.

Using recorded music instead of paying both orchestras for live music is a necessary step toward helping the company raise $500,000 in cash and an additional $1.5 million in pledges within the next three weeks, said Margo McCann, the dance company's interim managing director.

The $500,000 pledge that the company received Thursday is to be paid over the next five years. Ms. McCann declined to name the donor.

Is this what we've come to? (Or: to what we've come?) Your ballet company gets a huge grant and you decide to go with recorded music?

Shit, people.

Wolf! Wolf!

As one might surmise, this is sort of a follow-up to my previous post, Goldilocks—I want to drive the point into the ground even further and, since I’m in the driver’s seat, you’ll just have to sit back and take it.

If you aren’t privy to the original Goldilocks, I suggest you take a gander. But if you’re lazy like me, here’s the synopsis: I try to equate bloated language with crying wolf. It sounds fantastic but loses its effectiveness over time. It’s hyperbole, exaggeration, not real. So, I wonder whether or not this disproportionate language might be the culprit behind the negative perception of classical music. I suggest that it’s really no one’s fault, it’s the language we inherited. And no one is immune: composers, critics, musicologists, theorists, laymen, performers, superheroes, etc. I also give you three kaleidoscopic images and ask you to imagine them joyfully weaving in and out of each other. Great fun.

So here we are a couple of days later and the first thing I randomly come across—just making the daily rounds—is this nice article by Scott Cantrell.

FWSO preps for Mahler symphonies

Sweet. Perfect for demonstrating my point. I think that anything Mahler is already so bloated that we might want to start spelling his name with a few extra letters (Mawhlerr?). Besides, y’all know that everything in Texas is bigger. And bigger is, incontrovertibly, better!

The instrumental forces required for the Second Symphony are truly heroic...

I read that Odysseus once employed seventy lyres just to take a shit. That’s one heroic shit, folks! But tales of truly heroic instrumentations don’t stop there. Achilles wasn’t actually killed by an arrow. Instead, he accidentally choked on four bone flutes. Neil Armstrong refused to leave Earth’s atmosphere without his sixteen euphoniums. The beaches at Normandy were stormed by 150,000 soldiers armed with nothing but oboes and bassoons. And Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold at Ticonderoga? They lulled the British to sleep by playing 21,000 autoharps. Mawhlerr? Pffft. He used some extra brass and winds for his symphonies.

And this is the first picture that comes up when I Google Image “truly heroic.”

Really?

Well, it has been a spell since we checked in with Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News. In a thoughtful article utilizing actual timings, he puts forth a sort of analysis of speeds of performances of the various movements of Mahler's Fifth Symphony. The following is only an excerpt, the rest is here.

For the most part, Mr. van Zweden's pacing is above reproach.

Well hedged. Let's go ahead and assume we're going to reproach it, then.

But I'm not entirely convinced by tempos in the first and forth movements.

Tempos? Tempi? Tempe? Stadiums? Stadia? Latin? English? Oh, who cares.

But two of the four movements, I guess, counts as "the most part". (Obviously the tempi change inter-movement in Mahler, and I am just...well, you know.)

The first is marked "Funeral March: With measured step. Strict. Like a cortege." Mr. van Zweeden, like Leonard Bernstein in his 1963 New York Philharmonic recording, interprets the opening section at between 58 and 60 beats per minute-- around the speed of a clock's second hand.

You...are telling me...that 60 bpm... is "around" the speed of a clock's second hand?

"Around"?

Really?

I...you...you don't have to be a conductor, or a musician, or a fifth grader, to know that...there are 60 seconds in a minute.

In other breaking news from Dallas: Rain falls from the sky!

Oh, sorry, one last thing.

But, interestingly, there's a 1905 piano-roll [sic?] recording of Mahler himself [redundant--Ed.] playing the movement--yes, on the piano--and he starts at a considerably brisker 72 beats per minute.

A piano-roll [sic?]...played on...the piano? No freaking way! Hey, did you know that a minute has 60 seconds?

Texas-Sized Decision

Y’all decide. Is Scott Cantrell calling Arthur Kampela’s Nosturnos a piece of shit, with all kinds of undigested thingies in it? Or is he calling Arthur Kampela’s Nosturnos a breakfast inside a dog that’s been eaten?

Now, here’s your context:

A 1993/2003 Nosturnos by the Brazilian-American composer Arthur Kampela made quite a show of virtuoso fireworks, including glissandos and two-arm clusters. But it was also an undigested dog's breakfast of Philip Glass, Barber, Scriabin, Messiaen and goodness knows what else.

And some research:

Well, no; no research. There’s not much to look at on the intertubes. A Google search for “undigested dog’s breakfast” (with quotation marks) yielded two results. The first was a link to Scott’s article. The second, to this, another music review (2005), which used the phrase in a very similar way. (And I suppose once this post is published, this will be the third.)

On the other hand, a Google search without quotation marks lead me to this picture on this site (disturbing; may not be kid safe):
















And this, from the Philippines:



















So I’ll ask again: which is it? A piece of shit with corn or a breakfast inside an eaten dog?

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And Scott, just a thought, but a euphemism for “shitty hodgepodge” might be more effective if it is a little...subtler and less awkwardly phrased. Besides, it would have been much more hip to use “brunch,” instead of “breakfast.” Oooo! How about, “It was also the late-evening dregs of an expired brunch comprised of Glass...?” I like that one—you can use it if you want.

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Also, you should check out Arthur Kampela’s music. It’s pretty cool! It’s not shit with undigested thingies in it.
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Help the Detritus, Save the Queen

Give this CD review a gander:

Paul Lewis’ Beethoven piano sonatas lovely, but a bit too British

Today’s question for the Detritusites: what is it exactly that Cantrell says about British comportment?

First, Lewis is described as able, thoughtful, eager, lovely and elegant. Then, somehow, his inner-Brit gets in the way. Cantrell wants more wit, more danger and more ecstasy, just like he received from Schiff’s recording.

And Mr. Lewis misses the songlike qualities of the variation themes in Op. 109 and 111; the former is too foursquare, the latter too slow.

Foursquare: unless Cantrell is referring to a church, waterproof jackets, rum, an American architectural style, an archaic definition or a video production company in San Diego, he’s saying that the performance of Op. 109 was childish or simplistic, like the game. Sure, he could’ve meant “square,” as in "conventional or boring." But "foursquare" is an archaic English definition of the geometric figure; it's not related to the informal shortened form.

Now, dear Detritusites, I'll ask again: what about the British demeanor that makes for an unsatisfactory Beethoven performance?
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Curiouser and Curiouser

From the Dallas morning news, a curious title for a review:

Houston Grand Opera’s ‘Billy Budd’ sails straight

Um. What? Because, you see, Benjamin Britten…not to be indelicate, but…

I understand that critics don’t always get to title their articles. So perhaps the editor, not the critic is culpable here. But I can’t decide if this is

-funny (intentional) or

-rude (some conservative Dallas editor throwing in his homophobic bias) or

-ironic (completely oblivious about Britten) or

-in poor taste (some combination of the above). Because:

…there's more than a hint of homoeroticism…

Yeah, yeah there is. And Britten was very famously gay. So: What’s the deal with:

Houston Grand Opera’s ‘Billy Budd’ sails straight

???

The Ned Flanders of Music Criticism

Otherwise known as Scott Cantrell, former president of MCANA, the Music Critics’ Association of North America. About Philip Glass, he says:

For four decades, his diddle-diddles and doodley-doodlies have transported some and maddened others.

That’s just F-ing fiddley-diddly dumb.

But here’s the kicker—one I didn’t expect. The article is not about a concert or a recording; it’s about a lecture where Glass was heard saying this:

"My musical mother was Nadia Boulanger, my musical father was Ravi Shankar. I was their child, by immaculate conception."

Jesus Christ!

By the late 1960s, the musical scene was ready for something radically different from abstract atonality. Composing a score for a Samuel Beckett play opened Mr. Glass' ears to the possibility of music based on hypnotic repetitions. "It was," [Glass] said, "the shell of the egg cracking."

Weird, I thought his first statement was hyperbole. But...

no. It wasn’t.

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Fact-Checking Is Hard

Quickie post!

From Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News:

Strings rule at University of Texas Performance

It wasn't much publicized, so there wasn't much of a crowd for the University of Texas Symphony Orchestra concert Wednesday evening at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.

Aw. I'm touched you attended!

UT's Butler School of Music must be one of the country's biggest.

It...must?

In just under five minutes, I uncovered the following facts:

The University of Texas' (newly re-named) Butler School of Music has about 700 students.

The famed Juilliard School has about 800 students.

The New England Conservatory of Music (alma mater!) has about 750 students.

The University of Michigan's School of Music has 1050 students.

Indiana University's Jacob's School of Music and The University of North Texas' School of Music compete yearly for the title of "largest music school", each enrolling about 1600 students yearly.

The University of Texas is not, in fact, one of the country's biggest. In fact, and I stress again the word fact, it is commensurate in size with the two top conservatories in the United States.

Just sayin'. Lazy journalists, sheesh.