Rhetoric Effectively Used to Say Little

I've read reviews in the past, but never one quite like this. It was fitting, and poured across my eyes like words from a computer screen. The descriptions glowed effervescently with metaphors and similes sparkling with the delirium of cliche observations and orgasming in a "cool down" and a dubbing.

Chopin was there too.

Review: Rockford symphony starts season on high note
Tim Hughes, RRStar.com (Rockford Register Star), September 20, 2010

I’ve attended opening night at the symphony in the past, but never one quite like this.

Really? Never??

figure guess: This would be a bit different...what do you think?

So what was so unique about this concert?

It began with Czech composer Bedrich Smetana’s “Overture to the Bartered Bride,” a comic opera which, since its first performance 145 years ago, has become a staple of opera company repertories around the world.

So, the overture to a standard repertoire opera is uncommon for opening night symphony concerts?

I think I'm confused.

The brief, lively overture was a fitting opening number for the new season, reaching an incredible intensity.

Fitting? Why do you say that? It's a comic opera about arranged marriages...is that the fitting part?

Or just the "incredible intensity"?

Then came the evening’s guest artist, Jeffrey Biegel.

You're right. Why would we care about why you felt it necessary to single out this opening night concert as unique, or why the Smetana overture was especially apt? That kind of first-person elucidation is boring.

Let's move on.

In honor of the bicentennial of Frederic Chopin’s birth, Biegel performed two of the composer’s early opuses...

Seems logical, but rather stiff...how about a out-of-place metaphor or simile that tells us nothing?

...that at times fell on the audience’s ear like cascading brook water.

Beautiful. Plus it's rather cliche. Bravo, sir.

figure Monument to Chopin in the Singapore Botanical Gardens: Not funny, just thought it odd that Singapore has a monument to Chopin.

So, I'm a pretty big fan of overwrought prose and metaphorical descriptions. Do you have any more?

At other times, it was delivered with a fury that gemmed and jeweled each note as his fingers flew across the keyboard.

Impressive. I think you've succeed quite nicely in telling us pretty much nothing.

Next, Biegel performed Keith Emerson’s “Piano Concerto No. 1,”...

Which Chopin did he play again?

...which radiated with an onrushing cacophony of sound glittering with the frenzy of modern urban life and climaxing in a horizon wide crescendo of breathtaking tonal power.

Bravo. Your words are as florid as they are meaningless.

After taking several well deserved bows,...

I'm sure the ovations were well-deserved...the bows on the other hand...

...Biegel, in what might be deemed a “cool down” encore, moved the audience with a tender rendering of Chopin’s “Fantasy Impromptu.”

"Cool down"?

figure cool down: Good call. We definitely wouldn't want to do something we would feel sorry about later. Thanks, Chopin.

Anyway, why would one have doubted that deeming?

The evening was capped with a performance of Brahms’s sprawling “Symphony No. 1.,” dubbed “The Tenth” in recognition of it similarities to Beethoven’s ninth.

Why tell us the Brahms has similarities to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony? Is that relevant to this performance?

Nevermind, you're right, don't overwhelm us with details. Information only confuses the matter.

General impressions, melodramatic metaphors, and unexplained opinions are the tools of any great critic.

Another Possible Outcome of the Infinite Monkey Theorem

Emanuel Ax plays Chopin and Schumann in recital

Dependability isn't necessarily the greatest compliment in classical music, but in Emanuel Ax's case, it's dependability of the highest order.

Figure 1. Extinct volcano: High degree of dependability; they’re also often fun to look at.

Figure 2a. Dormant volcano: Not so dependable

Figure 2b. But deathly exciting!

Figure 3. Active volcano: Also a high degree of dependability, plus, “meh.”

Okay. I’m going to go out on I limb, here, and offer an interpretation, because, hey, we’ve got to start somewhere and this could be interpreted in any number of ways. So, here is how I read it: Emanuel Ax brings a dependable quality to his performances. That seems reasonable, I think. Sure. Why not?

Outbursts of musical temperament do indeed happen...

Implying: dependability really means flat, monotone, or tempered. But then again, what the hell is “flatness of the highest order” supposed to mean? Let’s see. Or more likely, let’s not and say we did.

Outbursts of musical temperament do indeed happen with this 60-year-old pianist, but you don't feel as if you've missed anything when the repertoire requires and receives a genteel veneer [...]

Weird. It’s as if scores impart information. And who knew that performers actually follow what’s on the printed page? Geesh! The more you know...

To continue, Ax’s flat (?) dependability is interrupted by outbursts, which tend (?) to obscure genteel “things” written in the score, which are subsequently played. Clear enough. [Ahem]

But that doesn't mean Ax was glossy.

Right! He had “outbursts of musical temperament,” remember? Or were those written in the score, too, implying that the outbursts were independent of the score?

The Schumann selections showed the composer at his most lyrical, though even amid the extravagant outpouring of the Fantasy in C, Ax revealed glimpses of the composer's darker side, as if to show how his musical love letter to Clara Wieck (his future wife) was just one side of a passionate personality that at its most benign retreated into the world of E.T.A. Hoffmann's scary fairies, and in future years would drive him to attempt suicide.

I think Lacan would have something to say about Schumann’s fulfilled desire for Clara.

Figure 4. No objet petit a for you!

As happens from time to time, or simply all the time, the issue, I think, is that composer and performer--more appropriately, interpreter—are being confused. Is Ax being temperamental? Or is Schumann being temperamental?

More on point, if Ax is being temperamental, then what the fuck is this dependability thing?

Those were only glimpses, however.

Well, maybe Ax is dependable in that regard. You know, making sure those glimpses (which are flat and/or glossy?) aren’t obscured by his own outbursts.

Ax doesn't impose retrospective anachronisms onto music.

Figure 5. Powerpoint slide from Advanced Criticism, Week 4: Knot Tying

Where were we, again? Oh right: Huh?

Because the first movement's burst of C-major exaltation is the sort that even geniuses...

Uh, hold on. Looking at the score, I’m hard-pressed to call any of it firmly in C major. (Here’s just the first page; I dare you to call it a burst.) But, then again, scores exist for performers to ignore.

That’s it! Maybe Ax is dependably ignoring the score, which he follows sometimes, but only during moments of genteel veneer.

Because the first movement's burst of C-major exaltation is the sort that even geniuses deliver only a few times in a creative lifetime, the Fantasy's subsequent movements were fated to be anticlimactic.

Fate, ruins, Clara, olives, Beethoven, Im Lengendenton, An die Ferne Geliebte: whatever. After all this, I demand to know about Ax’s dependability!

Wisely, Ax didn't try to sustain the music's emotional temperature in later movements, but let the piece go to different, also compelling places, often by tapping into the singular eloquence of simplicity.

Figure T-Shirt.

With Ax, the notes unfolded with the inner time clock of Vladimir Horowitz but with a tone that lacked a bit of Ax's usual sheen in favor of the more mellow coloring of Arthur Rubinstein.

Dependably imposing anachronisms without imposing anachronisms?

His own strong personality accommodates influences from elsewhere in ways that add to (rather than dilute) his musical identity.

Oh. Dependably imposing anachronisms without imposing retrospective anachronisms that dilute his musical identity, which sometimes comes in outbursts of musical temperament that don’t obscure glimpses of genteel veneer the score requires, which is then to be played. Got it.

In the second half, which included Chopin's Andante spianato and Schumann's early Fantasiestucke, his tone quality deteriorated...

Uh. In other words, Ax's tone quality wasn't dependable?

...perhaps in an attempt to climax the recital with fortissimos this particular instrument couldn't easily take.

The piano wasn’t dependable!

Better to end with a bang than a whimper.

Random, closing sentence shrouded in irony.
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Remember: Support Your Thesis with Evidence

At least that’s what my sixth-grade English teacher told me.

Piano music written by Frederick Chopin and Claude Debussy is more alike than some people may think, and Stephen Manes’ program Tuesday night did a lot to prove that.

And since I am taking several minutes out of my busy, music-hating life to write about this, you already know—being smart Detritusites—that our author will merely prove that there was a concert and it featured Chopin and Debussy, and that, by the end, we will be miles from where we started.

But it began so well. I had such high hopes.

The works heard seemed tailor-made to highlight the similarities between the two composers.

The obvious question (and logical continuation), then, is how?

Manes constructed seamless little suites from the first four of Chopin’s opus 28 Preludes, two excerpts from Debussy’s First Book of Preludes (“La Cathedral engloutie” and “Ce qu’a vu le vent d’Ouest”) and, in the second half of the concert, Debussy’s three “Estampes.”

Oh, right. The similarities highlighted the tailor-made suite-like constructions that the composers...

Wait. What?

The blending of both composers’ preludes was especially interesting in how they meshed together, perfectly logical in hindsight if not foresight.

This is an example of what counterpoint students refer to as oblique motion.

It would appear, however, that Manes has more of a kinship with the constantly shifting soundscape provided by Debussy.

In other news: the lead in was merely an object to be inverted, played backwards, then fragmented, never to return in its original form.

But still, it would be nice to have some specifics to back up what you say, even if it has nothing to do with the original thread.

While his Chopin interpretations in the first half were more than acceptable, they seemed to be harder-edged, an approach that lessened the vulnerabilities of the Preludes although the playing in Chopin’s “Berceuse” and “Barcarolle” later in the set were fine enough.

Well, folks, that explains it—a harder-edged approach proves that the pianist has more of a kinship with Debussy’s shifting soundscapes.

And without any sarcasm, that’s as specific as it gets. It even degenerates to this:

Manes’ take on “Clair de Lune” was magical [...]

Any evidence to support your claim?

Yeah. No.

But then again, magic is magical. So...

I'm lost.

As the final notes of “L’isle joyeuse” rolled out into the hall, the audience erupted into a well deserved standing ovation.

Oh no! Now a poor little hyphen seems to have been lost. Has anyone seen it?

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And finally, a joke:

Manes then took two encores...

I'll bite. Where did he take them?

...playing a pair of Chopin scores, an F minor mazurka and the “Revolutionary Etude” (op. 10, no. 12).

That was a lousy punchline.

But at least there was an opus number. Hooray! The author took a fact.
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Twitter is Destroying Classical Music...

Are critics really allowed to do this...attack the soloist? Don't they know that it's their job to heap excessive amounts of hyperbolic praise upon every soloist who ever plays with an orchestra? Guess not. Anyways, good, it's nice see critics turn that scornful ear towards something other than new music.

So I was a bit curious when I came across this article in the New York Times, by Michael Kimmelman, that seemed to be a pretty scathing review of renowned pianist Lang Lang after a performance in Lucerne, Switzerland.

However, hell if I know what Lang Lang did wrong.

figure 2: Lang Lang auditioning for remake of Thriller video.

Racing Chopin All the Way to the Wire

The other night Lang Lang twittered his way through Chopin’s F minor Piano Concerto.

Twittered? Tweeted? Anyways, Lang Lang posted 140 character messages online throughout his performance of Chopin? Really? That's pretty amazing.

How better to describe it?

Good question. Well, you chose the verb "twitter" which basically means (as our good friends at dictionary.com can attest): to utter a succession of small, tremulous sounds, as a bird; to talk lightly and rapidly.

You were there, does that sound about right to you? And if so, what kind of first line of a review is that?

The other night Lang Lang lightly and rapidly played his way through Chopin’s F minor Piano Concerto.

That may be true, but it's hardly a compelling first line. Are we preparing for a negative review...of a soloist?!? Wait, is "rapidly played" even an insult?

I'm not sure what to make of it. Although, my high school creative writing teacher would not have approved of that bland "the other night" introduction. That doesn't set much of a stage now does it -- I mean, you're in Lucerne, Switzerland. Not exactly just another night to most of us. Set the mood, use a little pizazz. May I suggest:
"The night was dry, yet it was raining", or
"The night was sultry"...no, too parochial...how about...

The sultry moonlight beamed stealthily down between the sprawling peaks of Mount Pilatus and Rigi upon the intertwined corpses of twin artisan dairymaids from Olten-Zofingen, and Lang Lang lightly and rapidly played his way through Chopin's F minor Piano Concerto.

Nailed it. Moving on...

He played with the Dresden Staatskapelle under Fabio Luisi at the KKL concert hall here. I can’t recall a more galling soloist. [italics mine]

Ouch.

Another interesting word choice, but I think we can forget any uncertainty over the meaning of "twittered" -- galling doesn't leave much room for interpretation. Offending, vexing, irritating, and grievous are all synonyms.

So, Lang Lang gave an offensive, irritating performance through his rapid, perhaps even frivolous playing. Nice introduction, how to you plan to support this thesis...

Lang Lang, the 27-year-old Chinese virtuoso, is by various measures the most popular pianist around, a kinetic superstar thanks to his outsize charm and gymnastic technique that earns him the nickname Bang Bang. He can play with grace too. He didn’t here.

Graceless. Check.

He splits opinion.

Others have criticized his playing as well. Got it. But do continue...

He splits opinion. Contemporary culture in general is polarized, but the poles keep shifting in ways that can help tell us where we are.

Huh? The poles of polarized contemporary culture (or is that opinions) move in ways that help us tell where we are?

I've read that sentence probably a dozen times now, and I'm still not sure what it says. How about an illustration...

By way of illustration, the night before Mr. Lang made mincemeat of the Chopin concerto, a sizeable, rapt crowd listened in the same hall to Pierre Boulez conducting works by Janacek, Varèse and Berg.

figure purple: Chopin's f-minor Piano Concerto after a Lang Lang performance.

There have been Lang Langs for as long as there have been keyboard players. Showmen in different eras touch different chords for different generations.

So true. Many a wonderful showman have graced the stage with a piano, like this guy...

figure 3: Entertainment at a fundraiser for the RNC

This is the age of instant messaging, sound bites, of atomized culture, with information packaged for our convenience in morsels, and Mr. Lang is embraced for more than his winning smile and playing very, very fast.

O-kay...? This is the age of instant messaging.... Um, good point?

Instant messaging = liking people for their smiles?

The way he took apart Chopin’s score made it into a jumble of hyped-up anecdotes.

So, inspired by modern culture, he jumbled up the score? Or "atomized" the music into "morsels"? Did he leave something out? Play only the major themes and the rest is just treacle?

I must say, Mr. Kimmelman, you have me very confused. Moving poles, twittered playing, atomized culture...I'm beginning to think that you didn't like his performance.

So what exactly didn't you like about it?

Here he played super quietly, there super slowly, there like Wile E. Coyote in his Acme rocket shoes.

figure ∞: Lang Lang playing Chopin's f minor Piano Concerto, just before he smashed into the side of a cliff.

Occasionally he came to a near standstill, forcing the orchestra to crawl with him, so he could ravish a rubato. He swooned and swayed as if possessed by the music (feeling the music “at you,” to borrow the New Yorker magazine critic Alex Ross’s phrase), as if the audience needed little parcels of exaggerated emotion and virtuosity to stay interested.

To recap, you don't like too much gerrymandering with the tempo. Yes, that can be distracting.

So, what about those moving polarized poles, and the reference to an atomized culture?

It brought to mind what Anne Applebaum, the Washington Post columnist, wrote about interpreting history these days.

Wait, what? You were listening to Lang Lang play Chopin, and Anne Applebaum and her comments about interpreting history came to mind?

Yes, non sequiturs are fun.

Writing for The New Republic, she reviewed a book by Nicholson Baker, “Human Smoke,” about the lead-up to World War II, which stitched together, without comment, hundreds of nuggets culled from newspapers, memoirs and other (often secondary) sources to suggest a case for pacifism.

Interesting. Okay, the connection is slowly becoming less incoherent. "Hundreds of nuggets" = "atomized culture...packaged for our convenience in morsels"? Am I close?

“A series of pretentious, Gawker-like vignettes,” Ms. Applebaum called these orchestrated tidbits. “Ripped from their respective contexts each item has the same weight as the next. There is no hierarchy, no sense that one enigmatic anecdote might be more important than the next equally enigmatic anecdote.” That’s not a bad description of what Mr. Lang did with the Chopin concerto.

No wonder Lang ruined Chopin, his out-of-context arguments gave false pretext to World War II. Wait a minute, is that true? You're going to have to bring this one all together for me, Mr. Kimmelman.

What Ms. Applebaum added is also true about music: “There are many legitimate ways to write history, even many avant-garde, nonlinear, novelistic ways to write history, as the historiography of World War II itself well illustrates.” But history persuasively told, like music interpreted, comes down to cogent arguments.

Is "history persuasively told" really the same thing as "music interpreted"? Okay, I think we made need an example.

The pianist Glenn Gould was an eccentric interpreter, but his interpretations, whether you liked them or not, had their own internal, neurotic logic. They made an elaborate case for themselves. The same could be said about playing by Vladimir Horowitz or Sviatoslav Richter.

How is one interpretation cogent, and another not? I suppose you're suggesting that Lang Lang's interpretation is not logical?

Flashy passages strung together don’t make an argument.

Right, an argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.

They make an assortment of fetishes.

figure 6: Figure 6 has been removed due to "legal advice".

Flashy passages are not an argument, but they are an interpretation? So, a performer should not interpret, but argue? Or is it that they should first interpret and then argue using their interpretation?

“Perhaps,” Ms. Applebaum wondered at one point about “Human Smoke,” “the whole book is a gigantic practical joke, a stunt intended to provoke.” I wondered the same thing during the concerto.

Perhaps you should have started this review off with, "You had to be there," because I don't get it.

You thought that this performance may have been a joke? Because it made a bad argument? Actually a non-argument because he interpreted the music in small Twitter-sized capsules?

I decided it was a stunt. But it wasn’t a joke. Whatever else he may be, Mr. Lang is sincere. He has peddled his sincerity all the way to the bank.

That doesn't sound sincere at all. In fact, that sounds like you're suggesting he's faking sincerity for financial gain.

That and his virtuosity, so his fans say, have made him classical music’s latest matinee idol.

The question is what does his playing say about us.

So many questions unanswered. I am loathe to try and summarize this mess, but here's the short short version:

Lang Lang plays too fast. And he writes bad history because he plays music in random, unconnected, yet enigmatic tidbits with no hierarchical structure.

----------------------------------

Seriously? I love a good evisceration, and I don't necessarily doubt the validity of the critique I think that Kimmelman is trying to make, but wow, could he have found a more convoluted analogy to make?

Phunny Philly Phrenetics?

...and this is how Philly celebrates its first world championship in 20 years?

But it was [Richard Goode's] incredibly clean and fast fluidity that moved the interpretation well beyond respectable into the rarer realms ruled by pure adrenaline.

Cough, cough. I think you mean dopamine, Pete, not adrenaline. A world run by pure adrenaline (AKA epinephrine) would be very unpleasant, because, you see, it is a hormone released from the adrenal glands when a person faces danger or an emergency. It makes you “hyper-aware” and ready to fight or flee. (On the other hand, seeing a bunch of frenetic septuagenarians ready to fight would be humorous, I think.)

More to the point, dopamine is a neurohormone secreted by the hypothalymus and is associated with rewarding pleasurable activities. It gets you high. I think that’s closer to what you mean, Pete.











Pie chart 1: "Where's our encore!"
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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.

Oh crap! My dealine is in ten minutes. Uh... "Less is more!" Sounds good.

Unlike the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Andrew Druckenbrod, I have nothing to do but sit in my basement all day, cheerlessly blogging about bad musical writing, which is why I can generously waste my time, for you, to dissect this whopping 600 word-long pile of steamy... musical clichés, written in just under ten minutes (I’ll bet my Star Wars cards on it, but not Chewbacca).

Great music is often defined by what isn't written as much as what is.

Cliché. Less is more.

An orchestra's near endless sonic possibilities can be a temptation to which composers often succumb.

Already, he’s riffing like Yngwie J. Malmsteen.

This allure often leads to "overwriting" their material, filling in the precious spaces in which the music breathes.

It just goes on and on...

Less is usually more.

...and the clichés keep piling up.

Yesterday's Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra concert at Heinz Hall brought the issue to the fore. Not only did it include Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2, a work whose heavy-handed orchestral writing is leagues away from the ultra-sophistication of his solo piano music, ...

Has anyone ever proven that Chopin sucks at orchestration? Or has it been around for so long that it’s become an old wives' tale? Either way, it’s as familiar as the old adage, “Brahms is dense and Carter is difficult,” from The Art of War.

As enjoyable as it was to hear both pieces under Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit and by Emanuel Ax, I could not help but think just how satisfying it is when composers have the guts to ask for a certain instrument but only use it when they want.

Yngwie J. Malmsteen.

There's no unnecessary extra writing for the trumpets, bass trumpets and tenor tubas (Wagner tubas in these concerts) in "Sinfonietta" just to please their players.

Janacek = not Ygnwie J. Malmsteen

It's about the music.

Ugh.

And what a fun piece "Sinfonietta" is.

Andrew Drukenbrod = not Yoda

The main reason composers selectively use instruments is for color.

Yoda is a fictional character. I breath air. The world is flat. Yngwie J. Malmsteen riffs. Orchestration is the selective use of instruments for color.

And none were better at that than Ravel and Debussy.

By the way, did you hear the one about Chopin? Turns out he couldn’t orchestrate well. That reminds me, did you hear the one about Debussy?

Debussy's "Jeux (Games)" was awash in color, often coming in waves, in a fleeting depiction of a tennis match leading to amorous activity (and to think Maria Sharapova and Anna Kournikova weren't even born then!).

1. Are the quotation marks correct?

2. Did you hear the one about Maria Sharopova and Anna Kornikova? They make appearances in a classical music review about a piece that references tennis and sex.



Dutoit's sensitive conducting alternated between continuous arm movements and abrupt stops, depending on if the work called for surface fluidity or rhythmic underpinning.

But that's the definition of conducting, only more convoluted! Drukenbrod = Stuffit Expander.

That Dutoit continues to be a master of the French repertoire was abundantly clear.

Drukenbrod = Yoda?

Ax's light attack not only fit Chopin's phrasing for the pianist, but lent the concerto an improvisatory spirit (I could swear he gave a few extemporaneous flourishes, too). The only downside was it further exposed Chopin's stilted writing for orchestra.

No. Drukenbrod = Yngwie J. Malmsteen

Clearly the best parts of this work occur when the pianist plays.

Clearly the best part of this review is when the reviewer reviews.

Ax substituted for Alfred Brendel three weeks ago. It would be a shame not to hear him again for a while.

Less is more.

Help Wanted: Only Schenker Students Need Apply

This is how “classical” music gets its reputation: through subtle sublimation couched in amusing puff pieces like this one.

Classical music helps soothe stressed dogs

Fantastic! Why don’t we put our kids in front of the TV so we can go out and catch some dinner at a nice $30 per person restaurant, where we’ll figure out how to anaesthetize the dog?

Subtitle:

Bay Area researcher-pianist team produces book, CD for dogs.

If only they had thumbs. And the dogs an ability to read. Drum kit: pah-dum, tss!

With dog treats spilling out of her black canvas bag, Maria Skorobogatov proceeded through one of the Peninsula Humane Society’s kennels as classical music played from overhead speakers.

The occupants barked their hellos and stood on their hind legs to be noticed.

Is it just me, or is the personification of animals tiring?

But the animal behaviorist walked passed the chatty ones Tuesday and rewarded those who remained quiet and still.

“Hello sweetheart,” Skorobogatov said softly to one well-behaved dog.

Throughout her brief visit, music played.

“We want to see if it’s having any type of effect,” Skorobogatov said of the music. “We use sounds and visual aids to keep them mentally and physically stimulated. It also helps them relax and that gets them adopted.”

I don’t have a problem with this. We’ve seen before that classical music dissuades panhandlers from panhandling, crack dealers from dealing crack, and prostitutes from Dirty Sanchez-ing. Whatever does the job, right?

(Also, whew. I don’t have to spell that name again!)

So why bring this up?

The music played that morning originated on the other side of San Mateo County with Half Moon Bay resident Lisa Spector. The Julliard School graduate

Because we all know the only legitimate musicians are cultivated at Julliard.

and concert pianist collaborated with Joshua Leeds, a sound researcher in Marin, to study the impact of classical music has on dogs.

Because dogs need classical gas, too.

Two years of research and clinical demonstrations

“Demonstrations,” in case you’re taking note, is the scientific equivalent of Brian, from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, asking, “Why don’t women go to stonings?” With a staunch reply, his mother answers, “Because it’s written that way.” I would prefer our scientists, even if they’re testing the effects of classical music on dogs, to perform experiments. Go control groups!

[the research] produced a book, “Though a Dog’s Ear: Using Sound to Improve the Health & Behavior of your Canine Companion,” written by Leeds and Susan Wagner, a board-certified veterinary neurologist.

Spector is the pianist on a 45-minute CD that Leeds produced to go with the book.

At this point, I’m thinking hippie bull, parental transference, guilt and gross puppy love—the wrong, wrong kind of puppy love. But what is your point, Empiricus? Be patient, my young apprentice.

It’s been Spector’s experience that when she tickled the ivories,

I hope we can all agree that clichés are fun, in the wrong, wrong kind of way.

dogs she took care of would move closer to her and fall asleep.

Take note that dogs fall asleep.

No more doggy angst—just peace and quiet.

Are we anaesthetizing or euthanizing Old Yeller?

“What calms people, calms dogs,” Spector said as her dog Sanchez slept at her feet.

This shit not only calms them down, it makes them fall asleep.

On the CD, she plays music of Bach, Chopin and Rachmaninoff, among other composers.

Rachmaninoff I get. But here we get to another point to be noted. She plays music. Sure, we could go in semantic circles all day and night if we tried to define music, but, BUT keep that in mind.

[...] she simplified the compositions and slowed the tempos to between 40 and 60 beats per minute to create simpler sounds.

Hear that Schenkerites? “Simplified.” Get your reduction goggles on. Be ready.

Still I would like to point out a couple more things.

Our sound researcher, Joshua Leeds asserts that

“There’s too much noise and too much input,” he said. “Our dogs are indicators of the stressed environment we live in.”

Emphasis mine.

Four different CDs were cut and tested on 150 dogs in homes and shelters. The one that had an overwhelming response was the simplified classical music performed on piano.

Seventy percent of dogs in kennels showed a reduction in stress, while 85 percent in households were calmed.

He goes on:

“We live in (a) world that is pretty over-the-top with all kinds of environmental stressors,” Leeds said. “We have to be conscious with what we are surrounding ourselves with.”

In other words, dogs are subjected to stressful environments, like us; dogs are calmed by classical music, like us.

Sweet. Now we’re primed for the $30 meat and potatoes.

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What we’ve seen above and here is that “classical” music can used as a tool to achieve certain tasks. Above, classical music is used to calm dogs. In the later, Beethoven et al were piped over loudspeakers at convenient stores to dissuade undesirables from loitering. What both “experiments” have in common is that music can be used as a depressant and deterrent, demonstrating that music, specifically “classical,” has extra-enjoyment properties, stuffs that reach beyond the Detritus’s normal range of analytic critique. That is, “classical” music is not just for enjoyment or to provoke serious and deep thought—it has other properties, too. Musical therapy is one that comes to mind.

I whole-heartedly accept this. What I find irritating, and more on point to the Detritus’s goal, however, is hidden between the lines.

First, this experiment, or as so aptly described above as a “demonstration,” plays with parallel narratives—one, of the problems concerning dogs, the other about us and our problems. Because Joshua Leeds closely connects environmental stress between dogs and humans, the implication is that “classical” music may have the same anaesthetizing properties between species, whereas rock and pop music does not. This made painfully clear by Sanchez falling asleep at the faintest hint of “classical” music. What can we conclude? That “classical” music can be a powerful depressant for us, too. As if “classical” music didn’t already suffer from the stigma of potentially boring people, here’s a pseudo-scientific “demonstration” informing Average Joe that it is, in fact, boring.

Do you want to know exactly how boring? Near the top of the page of the article, there’s a couple of mp3 links of excerpts from the CD. They’re on the right-hand side. Go ahead, give ‘em a listen.

WAKE UP! YOU STILL THERE? Good.

Now go listen to the originals. Here’s Beethoven Op. 13, Second Movement. And here is Bach’s Prelude in C Major, BWV 1096.

Even for those of you who haven’t had 30 grueling years of Kostka and Payne (blecht), you’ll be able to recognize that the pieces on the doggie CD are... well... very simplified, or reduced, compared to the originals. Rhythm has been eliminated for the most part. What’s left is merely the harmony, like a class exercise—not so much musical but technically proficient.

Granted, these class exercises are of the highest quality (I’d give ‘em an A+)—that’s why they’re Bach and Beethoven—but, nevertheless, they are reductions of the masterpieces, not the pieces themselves. This is where I find another problem. At what point of reduction (yeah I’m asking you, you Schenkerites) can we still attach the names Bach and Beethoven to these increasingly nondescript chorales? I know I’m inching very close to the question of intellectual property, but that’s not where I’m going.

What I am saying is that the doggie pianist still attaches Beethoven and Bach’s names to these rather non-musical reductions (insert discussion about what is or isn’t musical here). By doing so, and at the same time trying to anaesthetize dogs, which is given some measure of credibility by a scientist’s research (?), Beethoven and Bach, specifically, are taking one on the chin. They are boring. Two masters whose names are entrenched in the collective consciousness are boring!

On the brighter side, if you’ve kept your harmony exercises and Schenkerian reductions, I know a field ripe for exploitation.

For someone who read this article with little or no interest in classical music but loved dogs, what might he or she come away with? Beethoven and Bach are boring? Classical music is boring? So boring you can put dogs to sleep with it? So boring it can be researched and studied? If I listened to classical music, I can relieve my stress through boredom?

It comes as no surprise that the San Francisco/Bay Area classical music radio station 102.1 KDFC, every weekday at 2PM and 7PM, air a program titled the “Island of Sanity.” It’s their

signature midday getaway—three pieces of calm, comfortable, KDFC classical.

It’s designed to mitigate your stressful workday. Like I said above, I don’t have a problem with using classical music as a tool for something else, like stress relief. I take issue with our media outlets who refuse to engage their audiences with lively discussion or adventurous and stimulating programming.

What really kills me is that every day an article is written about how shitty modern music is—it’s academic, it’s elitist, it’s emotionless, etc.—and how “tonal” music is much better. In fact, I bet tonal composers receive four to five times the number of qualifying adjectives than those under Schoenberg’s evil, serialist, tonal-center-hating regime, even though they can, and have been, elitist and academic. But when poorly conceived doggie CDs are written about in a major newspaper, ones that equate classical music, in general, with stress-relief through boredom, I have an even greater bone to pick. It blindly condemns all classical music, tonal, modern, what have you, to an existence solely as a background for meditation. I ain’t cool with that.

Compound the crappy articles about music and dogs with rabid connoisseurship and hefty prices at the symphony, and I might as well quit this music thing altogether!

Is anyone out there who has a problem with all of this dreck? Is there anything to be done about it? Does the free market really have the final say? Am I insane? Is my dog insane?

(Tired of ranting. Commits suicide, again.)
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