Critic's Pick
Jeremy Eichler, Boston Globe, 10/10/2010
-Boston Symphony Orchestra
Mm-hm.
In other news, if you want to see a football game in Pittsburgh, try the Steelers!
Also recommended: a great way to cure hunger is eating!
Ah, Eichler. We kid because we love.
Figure 1: I mean: Come. On.After a beautifully written piece on Elliott Carter at Tanglewood, Jeremy Eichler of the Boston Globe takes the usual low road by painting Elliott as a difficult, senile centenarian.
When Carter took his bows from the stage, aided only by a cane, he was beaming.
"These pieces of music," he said in a public interview, "if they spoke English instead of notes, they would be very grateful."
I mean, he could have omitted it. Instead, there it is in plain view for everyone to see. Because, as we all know, pieces can’t speak—they’re just black dots, after all. Sheesh.
You should read the article.
And a happy three-hundredth post to us!
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[Edit 8/8/8]
I neglected to mention Soho the Dog's awesome eight-part series, Magna Carter, on the same very subject. In fact, it came first. And it's better. Well, it's more in depth and not all "I wrote this for the Globe and I have glasses so it must be good and there are a lot of big words in it. So there." You should check out Magna Carter. Good job Matthew.
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Stuff like this turns me off:
...[Native Hungarian András] Schiff has made a further contribution to Beethoven's legacy.
It turns me off not because I don’t agree, but because I find it hardly necessary—Beethoven doesn’t need any more help climbing over others on his way up the stairway to heaven (two points: Led Zeppelin reference). I think Gary Oldman did enough (one point: Immortal Beloved reference). Sorry if that’s a little harsh. But, then again, everyone’s heard me go off on the ineptitude of Beethoven’s fugues (and that’s not even my idea!). So deal with it.
However, I’m not here to poke fun at David Weininger of the Boston Globe for thinking highly of Schiff’s Beethoven lecture. It really does sound interesting. In fact, David paints Schiff as very articulate, thoughtful and insightful.
Schiff's descriptive language is fresh; his turns of phrase, delivered in a broad Hungarian accent, succinctly capture the contours of the music.
Fine. He’s a regular Miklós Zrínyi. (five points) Whatever.
It's just that this master of rhetoric is not immune to circuitous logic.
"I think all human beings need a sense of coming home," he says.
Bernard Holland? Is that you? (one point)
"This is something I very sadly miss in today's music. . . . Because there is no tonal system, to me it's like a foreign language.”
For an Hungarian who rarely had the opportunity to use vowels in your native tongue, you seem to speak English very well.
“And this [the tonal system] is a language I understand."
There are multiple ways of reading this, of course. Instead of listing the different possible interpretations, I’ll just ask some questions.
Is it because you understand, or are familiar with, the tonal system that the less familiar non-functional harmony* leaves you cold? Doesn’t a familiarity with another language help your appreciation of it? How well did you understand English before you learned to speak it? Is it really because we desire a sense of return (coming home) that precludes non-functional harmony’s effectiveness? Isn’t “coming home” an admission of departure?
Just saying, which came first, the chicken or the egg? The need for coming home or home? The appreciation of English or the learning of English? Non-functional harmony or the tonal system? Dialectic failure for the chicken and the egg...
Communication breakdown, it’s always the same! (Two points)
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*Here, I use “non-functional harmony” instead of “atonality,” because non-functional harmony can be used to describe triadic harmony, non-triadic harmony and atonality, all of which stand in contrast to a “tonal system,” here taken to mean functional harmony.
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I wasn’t familiar with Elgar’s Piano Quintet, Op. 84, until I spent a few minutes (only about fifteen) on the widetubenets, digging up all kinds of information. For instance, his Opus 84 was completed in 1919, but begun before his String Quartet, Opus 83. The piece that followed both of those was his beaten-dead, but famous, “warhorse,” the Cello Concerto, made famouser by preeminent recordings with Pablo Casals, Paul Tortelier, Jaqueline du Pré and Yo-Yo Ma. The quintet in A minor is the longest of Elgar’s chamber pieces, coming in at about 35 minutes long, and was composed at his home in Brinkwells, Sussex. Lady Alice Elgar suggested that the piece may be programmatic; she noted in her diary that the first movement may represent a group of trees in Flexham Park, near Brinkwells.
According to legend, these trees comprised the remains of Spanish monks who had engaged in sacrilegious ceremonies in the park. In correspondence, Elgar too had described the first movement as "ghostly stuff". Doubt has been cast on the legend, focusing on the lack of record of any Spanish religious settlement in the area. But this obscures the point that, whatever the factual basis for the legend (and what legend contains more than a grain of truth), Elgar appears again to have drawn his inspiration from the natural beauty of the area surrounding the cottage at Brinkwells.
Interestingly, Op. 84 was dedicated to music critic Ernest Newman, who wrote for many publications including the, then, Manchester Guardian, which is now, simply, the Guardian. He was also the author of the gargantuan, four-volume “The Life of Richard Wagner.” Unfortunately, the only writing sample I found is a paraphrase taken from a 1911 New York Times review:
The old argument averred that the writer of poetic or pictorial music is like the child who adds to his rude drawing of an animal the words: “This is a dog,” writes Ernest Newman in the London Nation.
(Ernest Herman)
Fun stuff. I wonder if this viewpoint had anything to do with Elgar’s supposed “tree legend” program. A joke, perhaps?
I found nearly twenty recordings of the Quintet made within the past fifteen, or so, years, over at Amazon. I also found a number of recent performances, though not as many as, say, his Enigma Variations or the Cello Concerto.
Lastly, there is only one video of Op. 84 on YouTube, only about four minutes of the 13-minute first movement, Moderato-Allegro. It’s a really cool-sounding clip. I wish there was more, because the piece seemed cool as well. But, if you’re interested, there are many available recordings to download at iTunes, or Naxos.
Pow! Only fifteen minutes of research. One quarter of an hour. The piece is...how long again? 35 minutes? My research took half, half the time that it would have taken to listen to the piece.
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Now consider this:
The evening ended with a big-boned, big-hearted performance of Elgar's Piano Quintet, with Judith Gordon as the sensitive guest pianist. This unusually textured three-movement work is somewhat of a rarity on concert programs, but these players were equal to its demands, both in its surging stormy passages and its many moments of swelling, sighing lyricism.
1) “Unusually textured?” How was it unusual? Did you listen to it? I only heard four minutes, but couldn’t find one unusual texture. Maybe the problem is in our contradictory definitions of what constitutes an unusual texture. Mind you, by 1919, I am also used to this, and this and this and this and this and this. To what unusual textures were you referring?
2) I would like to rephrase your “but” phrase: “...but these players were equal to its demanding surging stormy passages and its demanding moments of swelling, sighing lyricism.” I just wanted to highlight that you’re emphasizing that the piece was demanding and that the performers handled themselves well. But here’s my problem: Did “stormy passages” and “swelling, sighing lyricism” describe the piece adequately? Hmmm. Sounds like you phoned it in on that one. I mean, your descriptors could apply to practically any piece ever (see above and below “this and this and this and this and this and this”).
The work was completed just after World War I, yet there is something poignant in the way the music seems to cling to an older tradition of 19th-century Romantic chamber music, as if the world that tradition described could live forever, as if it had not already disappeared.
I know that this was your impression, but...the tradition had already disappeared? In 1919? To the contrary: this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this. That’s why it was sad? Come on. You’re better than this.
Sorry, but you phoned it in! No question about it. I found a ton of pertinent, fun information about Op. 84 in only fifteen minutes. How long did you spend with it? The time it takes to pop some microwave popcorn? Since it was the last piece on the long program, did you just...leave? Were you tired? Long drive home? Were you fed up with the “Beat L.A.” chants during intermission? Was your nose bleeding? Did you simply not like the piece and didn’t want to investigate it further? That’s something you usually do well. What happened, man?
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Apparently Jeremy Eichler and Matthew Guerrieri are on assignment, covering the intrigues of Julian Tavarez’s conspicuous iPod playlists, because the Boston Globe instead instructed David Perkins, correspondent, to cover Dubravka Tomsic’s piano concert at Jordan Hall.
This turned out to be an epic failure. Not because of awkward grammar, like this:
She played generously, long and beautifully.
but because of... how do I say this? Romantic arching? No. Sweeping arcs? No, but closer.
I know! Sweeping assumptions. Yes, that’s it. This is an epic failure, because of Perkins’s sweeping assumptions.
Here’s what I mean:
Often one wished for more imagination and searching.
Taken by itself, this is a perfectly fine thing to say—a criticism, or, if you prefer, an opinion. Unfortunately, it goes downhill from here, to put it lightly.
The Adagio in B minor, K. 540, of Mozart, for example, had everything one loves in great Mozart playing - a singing line, graceful phrasing, and the ability to weigh chords beautifully –
How can David wish for more imagination and searching—by the way, I find “searching” to be terribly ambiguous; on the other hand, I can define imagination with some accuracy—how can he wish for more imagination and searching when Tomsic’s playing “had everything one loves in great Mozart playing?” It is not possible. But...
...but it is a strangely repetitive work, and she did not vary the color or emphasis with each return of the main subject.
So. Because Tomsic “did not vary the color or emphasis with each return of the main subject,” David finds himself wishing for more imagination and searching.
The problem, here, is that... well here’s a definition of imagination:
The faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts (OAD)
She didn’t vary Mozart’s material, right? Right. That doesn’t sound imaginative at all.
But! But, David, by assuming what could have made her performance better, i.e., variation, he renders himself blind to other possibilities, such as no variation. Thus, his viewpoint is unimaginative, not Tomsic’s. In other words, by idealizing a performance of Mozart, he denies the existence, or possibility, of new interpretations, like little or no variation, which could be considered imaginative. See?
This is probably the most boring subject, I know. But we’re not entirely done with the sweeping. So wake up!
[In the Scarlatti] she did not underline, with artful rubato, the suspense of the wonderful harmonic shifts.
Similarly, David expects rubato in Scarlatti as if he formed himself an image of an idealized performance. Thus, again, he closed himself to the possibility of other, imaginative, interpretations.
Just saying, no one should make sweeping assumptions then immediately negate them.
And “wonderful harmonic shifts?” How about “imaginative harmonic shifts?”
Anyway, levity!
She fudged only a few notes, and there were a lot of notes.
Beethoven's "Appassionata" sonata is a favorite work she played on her first Boston recital 17 years ago.
It's a half-crazy piece, and Tomsic, while a great pianist, is not good at suffering.
Please come back soon, Jeremy and Matthew! We miss you.
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I don’t know why I’m posting this, because, all in all, this is one of the best articles I’ve read in a long while. Good work Jeremy Eichler. But, damn it, there’s one obviously dictionary-mined adjective that doesn’t make sense, and I can’t help to report it, if only to supplement the previous post.
It’s about German composer Helmut Lachenmann’s s unusual sounds.
He shaped them into a masterfully strange, crepuscular music: tense, hyper-aware, quietly disquieting, at times maddeningly opaque but also with moments of improbable beauty.
(my italics) You know what? Here’s crepuscular. It kinda works, in retrospect. Not terribly well, though—you have to stretch it around a bit. But still, if I had a dictionary of unusually neglected biological terms, crepuscular wouldn’t be my first choice.
For fun: try to use crepuscular in a sentence today. You’ll either be heralded as a master linguist or you’ll receive a blank, crepuscularly crepuscular stare--both fun.
Jeremy Eichler of the Boston Globe has never been directly in the Detritus spotlight, until today! Congratulations, Jeremy! We knew you could do it.
What exactly did he do? He swiped his Charley Ticket on the Green Line, got off at Copley Square, skipped up the magnificent steps of the Boston Public Library, and found the biggest, oldest and dustiest dictionary known to mankind, closed his eyes, opened to a random page and (eyes closed) pointed to a random word. He then triumphantly skittered home and ferociously typed this lovely adjective-noun pairing.
...interstitial tenderness...
It was something the encores had,
making it clear that [Alfred] Brendel was in no particular hurry to leave the stage.
Goodbye Alfred and HEL-LOOOOOOOO Jeremy!
Seriously, take it easy Alfred.
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Mad libs from
darkly magnificent
searing
spellbinding
strange
surreally
violent
Mark Elder is in town this week to conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra in this _______ and _______ work. Last night in Symphony Hall he led a _______ performance that was true to the music's _______ extremes, at times _______ in its intensity and at times _______ calm.
Arrange the extracted adjectives in their appropriate places; then, guess the piece and composer.
graceful
unusual
elegant
chaste
smooth
taut
open
distinctive
The writing is impeccably clear, the harmonies ___________ and ___________, the surfaces ___________, yet beneath this music’s ____________ façade darker currents linger. Drama is intuited more than seen or heard. [weird] Much of the piece’s ____________ sound world comes from its ___________ combination of soloists. Last night’s fine players [...] brought out this music’s ____________ flow and _____________ sense of gesture.
Good Luck!
Hints:
[This piece] calls for a virtual family reunion of strings...
Even as his best-known work, it is still a rarity on concert programs.
Answer.
would you promise to stop using semicolons? One of the Detritus’ new favorites, Matthew Guerrieri, apparently has little or no idea how to use a semicolon, or write coherently about music. Again, this is a favorable review; but, as usual, Guerrieri muddles his good-natured intent with poor punctuation and ambiguous narrative.
This one is about Collage New Music, who presented a program featuring the music of Luciano Berio. If you don’t know Berio’s music, check this out (fantastic performance, but I especially love the comments).
Without further ado, take it away Guerrieri!
In the fourth of the “Folk Songs” Luciano Berio arranged in 1964, a lover petitions a nightingale. “Apprends-moi ton langage,” he implores, “teach me your language.” On Monday, one could hear Berio asking the same of music itself.
Um, well... I thought Berio was dead. I’m not quite sure that anyone in the concert hall could hear Berio ask anything, especially, if he’s the one doing the asking, as opposed to the music. The music could, perhaps, pose questions. I guess. So, I’ll go on that presumption. New translation: Berio’s music asked, “teach me your language.” Hmmm. That still doesn’t sound right. Maybe, Berio, in 1964, asked of music, “teach me your language.” Still doesn’t sound correct. Either way, I’m sure Guerrieri will clear this up. Right?
...[the concert] focused on works of the ‘50s and ‘60s, when the late Italian composer both honed his avant-garde expertise and began to stake his claim to the unexpected directions where his music subsequently would go.
This has nothing to do with him asking things; it would seem the opposite. Berio was refining his musical language. Which people heard on Monday. That makes sense, Guerrieri. Why didn’t you just say so? Why this round-about poeticizing? This doesn’t make you a learned writer. This makes you a failed poet. One who gets paid. Yuck.
One would assume, then, that, from the first two sentences, the point of the article, aside from critiquing the performance, is to show how Berio’s music changed over two decades.
Show away my fine poet friend.
[Sequenza I, for flute] is designed to dazzle, and Christopher Krueger certainly did, with playing of confident proficiency; but a deeper emotional thread to the piece never emerged.
Beautiful! Seriously. The first piece was dazzling, but that’s all there was. Guerrieri described the piece (because that’s what we’re going to do—see how Berio changed) and the performance (because this is a review). On point, so far.
Also, notice his crafty punctuation. He skillfully, and correctly, joins two independent but related clauses with, my friend, the semicolon.
“Sequenza II,” for harp, triumphed both as etude and narrative; in Franziska Huhn’s technically accomplished, superbly paced performance, the production of exotic sounds...was adjunct to the drama of their interaction.
Kshhht. Columbia, this is Houston. We’re gonna have to contextualize the mission. Over. Kshhht.
While Guerrieri continues to tell us about how Berio’s music changed, I find it difficult to swallow this loosely relevant linearity—“dazzling” to “etude” and “narrative.” Yes, etudes are purportedly dazzling. However, narratives are, at best, metaphoric associations. Is Guerrieri saying that the flute Sequenza (the first piece on the program) is devoid of any possible narrative-like interpretation, while the second Sequenza is rife with imagery? I’m not sure one can say that. Besides, I’m listening to them right now and, in my opinion, they’re both pretty evocative pieces, capable of engendering narrative.
What really gets my goat, though, is the semicolon. His first was exemplary. Here it’s suspect; the two clauses are nebulous, in their relationship. If “their interaction” refers to the piece’s etude-ness and narrative, then maybe one could defend semicolon use. It’s not clear, though, if “their interaction” refers to the performer’s technical accomplishments and superbly paced performance. I just don’t know. For this, he gets a B-.
Either way, how can exotic sounds be adjunct to the interaction of etude-ness and narrative-ness? On the other hand, how can exotic sounds be adjunct to the interaction between technical accomplishment and superb pacing? Awkward, to say the least.
The fact remains: Berio’s music was dazzling. Now it’s dazzling and narrative-ing.
In 1959s “Differences,” tape-recorded versions of five instruments morph into alien electronics as their live counterparts attempt communication with bristling urgency; in the end, Berio restores the music’s initial common-tongue. Collage’s vibrant reading made for an intense conversation.
Berio’s music: morphing, communicating with electronics and recapitulating.
Unfortunately, the semicolon, again, is thorny.
For your pleasure, here’s quick lesson in grammar from the Chicago Manual of Style:
Semicolon
Use of the semicolon. The semicolon, stronger than a comma but weaker than a period, can assume either role, though its function is usually closer to that of a period. Its most common use is between two independent clauses not joined by a conjunction.
e.g. The controversial portrait had been removed from the entrance hall; in its place had been hung a realistic landscape.
Before an adverb. The following adverbs, among others, should be preceded by a semicolon when used transitionally between independent clauses: then, however, thus, hence, indeed, accordingly, besides, and therefore.
e.g. The controversial portrait had been removed from the entrance hall; indeed, it had disappeared entirely from the building.
Before a conjunction. An independent clause introduced by a conjunction may be proceeded by a semicolon, especially when the independent clause has internal punctuation. For more common use of a comma with conjunctions, see conjunction between clauses.
e.g. Maria had determined to question the ambassador; but bodyguards surrounding him, as well as the presence of dancing girls, prevented him from noticing her.
Here, Guerrieri should have begun the second clause with a conjunction, like “but” or “yet.” Instead, he begins with a preposition, in which case the semicolon should really be a period. Or, maybe, he should have dropped the preposition entirely, which could have then warranted the use of a semicolon. Just saying, the writing is immature. Normally, one or two trespasses wouldn’t bother me. But, in a 600 word article, I expect a better effort.
Score so far: Berio’s music was dazzling, then dazzling and narrative-ing, and now it’s morphing, communicating with electronics and recapitulating; Collage New Music performed well.
“Circles,” from 1960, also seems designed to loop around..,
You didn’t mention that before.
Addendum: Berio’s music was dazzling, then dazzling and narrative-ing, and now it’s morphing, communicating with electronics, recapitulating and looping.
...settings of three E.E. Cummings poems, the texts repeated to form a five-movement arch—but the effect is of a new language coming into existence.
So now it’s looping and arch-ing. And this leads Guerrieri to conclude that Berio achieved a new musical language. You hear that, composers? Looping and arch-ing. New musical language.
Soprano Janna Baty, expertly delighting in the deconstruction of each word into its constituent parts, began by trading phonemes with Huhn’s harp; her sounds and choreographed gestures soon brought two percussionists... to vociferous life.
I’d make the argument for two sentences. How ‘bout you? Or I’d omit “her sounds and choreographed gestures soon.”
Read this way:
Soprano Janna Baty, expertly delighting in the deconstruction of each word into its constituent parts, began by trading phonemes with Huhn’s harp, bringing two percussionists to vociferous life.
I think it’s more clear this way.
With the “Folk Songs”... Berio began to apply his newfound vocabulary to the whole of human activity; Baty’s traditional singing and the group’s untraditional playing were united with seamless ingenuity.
Wait a goddamned minute! What on earth is this? How did Berio apply his new musical language to the whole of human activity other than music making? Did he send some starving, third-world family a copy of his score? Did he resolve the Vietnam conflict with incessant looping? Arch-ing? Did he make a withdrawal from his bank by recapitulating? This is quite possibly the weirdest thing I have ever read.
And he follows that up with another hopelessly unnecessary semicolon! How is Berio’s super-musical looping at all related to the group’s seamless ingenuity? Two. Sentences. Guerrieri.
Berio never exhausted his curiosity.
Yes. He was very curious. I thought you were going to tell us how Berio changed over the period of a couple decades. No? Okay. I wasn’t really expecting it anyway. But, thanks for telling us how he didn’t change.
Collage opened with the 90-second-long “Autre Fois,” a 1971 memorial to Stavinsky (performed twice). An unstable rocking interval in the harp that traditionally would resolve instead proves the music’s unchanging core.
So Berio’s music didn’t change at all? Across two decades.
And, by the way, I doubt that an interval, defined more or less as two periodic sound waves presented simultaneously, forming one periodic sound complex, can prove anything, ever.
The journey is the point; the goal is possibility.
Nice semicolon. (grumbles to self, looks at watch)
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