And so nine orchestras and festivals co-commissioned a new, post-Pulitzer work from Jennifer Higdon.
Jennifer Higdon premieres concerto “On a Wire”
Philadelphia Inquirer
David Patrick Stearns
Though her Pulitzer Prize-winning Violin Concerto limited the soloist role to a single instrument...
Hasn’t she heard that bigger is better? She must not love America very much.
...Higdon got out from under the long history of concertos by writing the new work for six soloists, specifically the contemporary- music [sic] group eighth blackbird.
I presume the question confronting her was “how do I outdo my last big hit?” Her answer, via Stearns: less history; more soloists; hot new music group.
Got it?
(An aside: is there a limit to the number of soloists one can have in order that they retain their status as soloist? Anyway.)
Members of that group think nothing of playing multiple instruments in a given piece, often switching between piccolo and flute or violin and viola.
That’s cool. However, it’s pretty standard fare for flute players to also play piccolo and violinists to play viola. That’s not the best way to support the point that they, and the piece, are out of the ordinary.
In addition, Higdon’s concerto asks its players to practice “extended techniques” - plucking and bowing the innards of the piano...
Not that I find this passage terribly worded—close, though—instead, I take issue with the interplay of description with the premise, that the piece is new and innovative.
You and I know that extended techniques have been practiced for some time (or depending on the argument, since the very beginnings of music). Yet, to place “extended techniques” in scare/air quotes, today, puts them in a position of being exoticisms (outside of a norm), which we know not to be the case. So, I can only assume that othering “extended techniques” is an intentionally misleading puffery strategy.
Please feel free to take issue with that; but I hope it will become somewhat evident, below.
In addition, Higdon’s concerto asks its players to practice “extended techniques” - plucking and bowing the innards of the piano, much like the techniques pioneered by...[?]
1. Erik Satie – Piège de Méduse (1913); inserted sheets of paper into the piano
2. Heitor Villa-Lobos – Chôros no.8 (1925); again, paper inserts
3. Maurice Delage – Ragamalika (1912-22); cardboard inserts
4. Henry Cowell – Aeolian Harp (1923); manipulation of piano strings directly
5. John Cage – Sonatas and Interludes (1946-48); nuts, bolts, doodads, etc.
...much like the techniques pioneered by one of Higdon’s teacher’s, George Crumb.
I also left out all the other, lesser-known experiments with prepared piano and/or playing inside the piano. (The above was mostly found via Wikipedia)
So, circa 1970 George Crumb, you say?
Call me paranoid, but scare quotes around “extended techniques” are patronizing, as well as ignorant, false, and archaic; plus, I sense a bloated case of name-dropping.
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A few awkward, unrelated moments:
Always a seeker of extra-symphonic sounds, in the past she's trawled the aisles of Home Depot for trinkets that would give her orchestration an ethereal jingle.
Can I assume, then, that junk from True Value would have given her music a transcendental glow?
Higdon has perhaps never cast her net so wide.
[snip]
So many kinds of musical incidents are contained within the 25-minute concerto that you'd think Higdon was inspired by the far-flung literary imagery of the Leonard Cohen song "Bird on a Wire."
Were there program notes?
However, Higdon, 48, swears she has never heard (or heard of) of the song.
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Back to the meat of the issue.
The Atlanta premiere with a longtime collaborator like Spano turned out to be exactly what she needed in the wake of winning the Pulitzer in April.
I wonder why.
“I think you explored a whole new room in your musical mansion," Atlanta music director Robert Spano told Higdon on Sunday after a post-concert toast.
“I'm hearing things that sound exactly like you, but I haven't heard them before."
So, it’s new, but not too new? Like you just know Toy Story 3 is going to be good, because the others were?
That's one reason he scheduled a recording session the day after Thursday's premiere.
The other reason?
His plan is to rush-release the concerto as a classical-music single.
...to capitalize on her success. I love the free market co-mingled with the arts!
...[it is] yet another triumph in a series of Higdon works that have made her one of the most immediately embraced living American composers.
6/14/10
Hey, why not ask for more?
12/2/09
Titles for Sale
And without further ado, here’s the title in question found atop a recent piece by David Patrick Stearns:
Itzhak Perlman a winner at Resorts
There are several things we should keep in mind as we go along which will be helpful in order to assess the efficacy of today’s title:
1) The Resorts is a casino-hotel in Atlantic City (A classical casino concert?)
2) Itzhak Perlman wins something (What did he win?)
3) He wins it at Resorts (Presumably, as opposed to somewhere else)
Fantastic! Now we can look at the review, which is pretty okay, not that there aren’t issues.
Musically, he played a medium-weight program - Leclair, Beethoven, Stravinsky - little different from what you'd hear at the Kimmel Center.
No kidding! I took it upon myself to check out the program for the next Philadelphia Orchestra concert and, well, there’s certainly some similarity: Brahms D minor Piano Concerto; Franck D minor Symphony; and Claude Vivier Orion. I don’t know what this says about the integrity of the orchestra’s programming, since casinos are essentially scams. But, hell, someone is doing it right.
Preconcert Muzak was Brahms' Symphony No. 1.
Muzaked Brahms? Wonderful beyond description. Ugh.
The big leap for Atlantic City, however, wasn't pop vs. classical, but singer vs. instrumentalist. Headliners are almost always singers (even if the voice happens to belong to Joan Jett). Nobody could recall a purely instrumental artist headlining recently in Atlantic City.
Why bring Joan Jett into question? This seems more like an unnecessary value judgment, to me. Is she less of a singer somehow?
More pressing, however, what is the Resorts up to? Why bring in someone who doesn’t fit the previous model for success?
So who was there? As I learned from chatting up those around me, many were from the immediate area: a local music teacher who has loved Perlman for years...
Also known as: someone who has never stepped inside a casino before. (Just a guess, but local music teachers probably don’t have a large amount of disposable income).
...a small-business owner who had caught [Perlman] on PBS...
PBS watchers aren’t generally attracted to bright lights and shiny things, or are they?
...and people who applauded between movements, suggesting a crossover/fringe crowd, but one that was ultimately more attentive than your typical concert audience.
Newbies, diversity, and attention: Hooray! It’s a veritable melting pot of fresh money!
The idea, according to casino officials, was to attract a different clientele, and what arrived was people who probably would have been just as happy to hear Perlman at, say, the Glassboro Center for the Performing Arts.
How’d the Resorts lure them in, then?
The difference is that this fringe audience probably wouldn't have known about the Atlantic City event without Resorts' marketing - and all its billboards.
Okay. It’s not like our symphonies don’t spend a bigillion on advertising, right? This is the norm. However, the catch was:
The net had to be cast wide to fill a theater with listeners willing to pay up to $125 for any violinist, and indeed, I talked to those who had driven in from Montgomery County.
That’s an expensive meatball.
And rather than traveling through suburban byways, you simply had to navigate the dense thickets of King Kong Cash slot machines between the parking garage and the theater.
What David forgets to mention is that on byways you aren’t tempted to risk your kid’s college fund. He also doesn’t mention that the distance from the garage to the theater is roughly one-quarter of a mile—and the dense thickets of slot machines, which are designed to funnel you past places the casino wants you to pass, is akin to McDonald’s saying, “Yeah, the hamburgers are bad for you, but that’s why we have salads.”
So with the right marketing, most any fine classical artist,
Whoa there, partner: “most any fine classical artist”? Not terrible, just yuck.
So with the right marketing, most any fine classical artist, in theory, could work here. But I wonder if anyone else (perhaps cellist Yo-Yo Ma?) could truly fill the place.
I think that’s a good question, delving into issues about the relationship between marketing and the perceived quality of the product. But I thought this was a review?
Perlman's public identification level is unique among non-operatic classical figures. Though his visibility is nothing close to what it was, the name still has marketing power.
The violinist has long had a particular magnetism that makes audiences meet him more than halfway. Whether he's having a good night or a bad one - he's 64, an age when violinists are well into the winding-down phase - audiences listen to him more closely than they do other violinists, and thus take in more of the music at hand.
He’s still a moneymaker: check. He’s past his prime: check. He played a concert and I wrote a review about it: blank.
And Perlman had a very good night.
He...
He won a good night?! Though past his prime, he had a good night?! No senior moments? No medical scares? Please clear this up, David.
His playing has been through some bad patches in recent years, but technically speaking, he was secure and fluent.
Technically speaking, sure. But interpretive?
The first half pleasantly consisted of Leclair's Violin Sonata in D major and Beethoven's Violin Sonata No. 7 (Op. 30 No. 2), and though Perlman's cultivated musical responses didn't feel so fresh, the ever-engaged pianist Rohan De Silva kept your ears constantly pricked.
...but the pianist played well.
Later, Perlman recalled his own glory days in Stravinsky's Suite Italienne (from the composer's quasi-baroque ballet Pulcinella); his gleaming tone with the light sandpaper-ish tang was back in full during Stravinsky's most lyrical sections. His most inspired moments involved expressive fingerslides, usually the province of violinists from the old, old days. Good for him! Fine with me.
Meh. I don’t have any problems with the concert assessment, even though it received a disproportionate amount of space. But it’s the disproportionate amount of space that raises questions.
To me, this reads like a plain-faced plug (see Comedy of Errata), but worse. Recall the title: “Perlman a winner at Resorts.” Really? Was he a winner? Did the past-his-prime, old, old school violinist really emerge as triumphant winner from this endeavor?
Perlman left with his integrity intact.
He also left with a nice paycheck. But it’s not exactly glowing, is it? If anything, he won the right to leave with his integrity. That’s all. It’s printed right there in the review.
The audience left the near-full 1,300-seat Superstar Theater seemingly thrilled [...]
So, maybe the audience won, then?
Or did the Resorts come out the victor? They filled a large venue, probably made a nice little profit. But more than that, they got 1,300 local people into the casino, people who otherwise might not have been tempted to go, filtered them through the slots and other entertainments, and said, “Go!”.
10/29/09
A (Modest) Swordfish Proposal
Oftentimes, while watching, say, some playoff baseball broadcast featuring the sadly non-self-parody that is Tim McCarver, or listening to Troy Aikman's often insightful but linguistically nightmarish analysis of a football game, it occurs to me (incredulously) that:
These people get paid to talk for a living.
Figure 1: McCarver (R) with Broadcast Partner and Serial Enabler Joe Buck. "Pitching is such a vital part of the game, as far as winning is concerned." --Tim McCarver, 2006
Now, I'm a reasonable guy. I don't expect every ex-jock that goes into color commentary to have the rhetorical skills of Churchill, or even William F. Buckley, Jr.
Figure 2: Not William F. Buckley, Jr.
But is it too much to ask that people who (again) are paid to talk for a living have some modicum of facility stringing together words that form comprehensible sentences?
...
On an unrelated note, I was reading a concert review the other day.
Felix Mendelssohn didn't leave the world a lot to discover this 200th birthday year, at least in terms of hard notes.
He what what what?I don't know what that sentence means.
Felix Mendelssohn didn't leave the world a lot to discover this 200th birthday year, at least in terms of hard notes.
"...hard notes?" His music is...easy? Too easy? Man.
"...a lot to discover..." He didn't write much music? Yeah, I guess. I mean, only about 300 works survive today. Fuck you, Webern!
"...in terms of hard notes."
I have no clue what's being suggested here.
Fastidious in his composing habits, refined in the extreme, he created a series of masterworks or close to it whose single-dimension emotionalism assures that new meaning probably won't be uncovered - particularly when the music is confined to a concert's first half and not expected to leave audiences sated.
What the hell? How many sentences died to make that "paragraph"?
Fastidious in his composing habits, refined in the extreme, he..
Just a little background, I guess? Okay...
...he created a series of masterworks or close to it...
I don't know what that means. I don't know if that means anything.
For what is the pronoun "it" standing in? "Masterworks"? No, "it" would have to be plural. "A series of masterworks..."? I...I guess so? I mean, that doesn't really make much sense.
I've been thinking.
It seems like there should be a position filled by an ancillary person who oversees and re-reads articles for content. You know, it's easy to get too close to your prose to see what you wrote sometimes; perhaps a person whose job is to "edit" (if you will) your work so that it's clean and fit for publication.
I'm going to name this imaginary person--the one who does the "editing" (to coin a word)--the "swordfish."
...he created a series of masterworks or close to it whose single-dimension emotionalism...
Um. Aren't nouns usually modified by adjectives? Maybe we should ask a swordfish. Even if the implication is that Mendelssohn--even in his "close to it" masterworks [sic]--is emotionally flat, wouldn't it be better to use "single-dimensional"?
Yes. Yes, it would. But hey: I'm not the swordfish, here.
...masterworks or close to it whose single-dimension emotionalism assures that new meaning probably won't be uncovered...
The research of musicologists into the cultural context of music is stupid; once it's determined that music is "single-dimension emotional...", new meaning is assured to probably not be uncovered.
It's wonderful, too, how the determinism of "assured" is totally hedged and qualified by "probably." This inconsistency both a) sets up the reader for the big payoff [sic] coming up, and b) should have probably been corrected by a swordfish.
"...new meaning probably won't be uncovered - particularly when the music is confined to a concert's first half and not expected to leave audiences sated."
Because nobody ever found anything new about a work programmed in the first half of a concert. I mean, how fucking gauche would that be?
Figure 3: Le main gauche
Yet in an unusual role reversal, the Emerson String Quartet ended its Kimmel Center concert Monday with Mendelssohn's String Quartet Op. 80, written when some scholars say the composer was in creative decline.
How is that a "role reversal"? Is it statistically evident that Mendelssohn is so seldom programmed at the end of a concert that it constitutes an anomaly?
The performance was so good...that it might have some meaning?!
Often, 21st century Americans seem cramped by Mendelssohn's tidy, Biedermeier world.
Figure 4: A Tidy Biedermeier World (or: The Fictional, Nostalgic, Lost America That Never Existed but Is Somehow Being Thwarted by Barack Obama)
Figure 5: The Cramps (somewhat circuitously Biedermeier-induced)This quartet, however, was written following the death of the composer's sister, Fanny. Thus, even the most typical Mendelssohnisms can be credibly charged with greater-than-usual meaning.
Ah. I think I understand now.
So:
Mendelssohn's music, although "single-dimensional emotional" [sic] and despite being "masterworks or close to it" [wtf] actually can have some (heretofore undiscovered) meaning if we do the tiniest, most obvious bit of musicological research?
Projecting that can often be a matter of surface inflection, though on Monday the Emersons created a sound better blended than usual - unusually warm under the surface but pulsating with something hotter underneath.
Warm, hotter. Surface...surface. Ususal--unusually?
Okay, I give up. Talk to the swordfish.
3/28/09
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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9/2/08
My Breadcrumb Trail Has Been Eaten!
The Cliffs Notes to this column will be offered for only $4.95 at any of our participating cheesesteak stands and only $1.95 with the purchase of a side of Cheese Whiz.
Contradictory as it sounds, minimalist music is arriving in an avalanche this fall.
That’s gotta be one big avalanche, a big, contradictory avalanche; Philadelphia’s nowhere near the mountains.
But since minimalism is, by definition, minimal, one envisions...
a) a Buckminster Fuller building.
b) a Samuel Beckett play.
c) a Franz Kline painting.
d) a “less is more” attitude.
e) creatures from some musical Lilliput engulfing Beethoven and Brahms.
If you guessed a-d, you’re getting warmer. However, if you guessed the Jonathan Swift reference...
Yet minimalism has evolved to a point where John Adams' newest opera, The Flowering Tree, commands attention musically and dramatically as handily as Verdi.
Um. From its sheer numbers, minimalism is overshadowing (?) Beethoven and Brahms, yet (?) it commands attention, like Verdi? Okay. And all of this despite the fact that John Adams doesn’t consider himself a minimalist. (Sorry folks. This is for my sake. I just want to leave myself a trail of breadcrumbs, if you know what I mean.)
A musical language based on the idea of small cells of sound repeated to hypnotic lengths has found a range of expression undreamed-of 30 years ago, when some of this music sounded like an LP record stuck in a groove.
Thirty years ago, in 1978, which would make musical minimalism roughly twenty years old, John Adams was beginning to move away from eight-tracks to cassettes and from minimalism to this neo-romantic-minimalist hybrid of which you speak. So, John Adams, at least, was dreaming, way back then.
Is this the culmination of a long-germinating movement?
Cassettes? Probably not. Minimalism? Is fifty years long enough? A hybridized form of minimalism with expressive flexibility? As sure as the seasons change, which is, by the way, what will happen to this “movement,” too.
Certainly, there's a critical mass.
(brain twitches) Critical mass is the SMALLEST amount of fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction. In the vernacular, it’s the same, except it refers to people, ideas, or fads. So...
Tons of expressively flexible minimalism, an avalanche if you will, is ready to explode? Or has it already exploded? I’m confused. Very confused.
Either way, a bevy of CDs, DVDs and performances will be rolling down the hill this fall. This includes some John Adams (not a self-described minimalist) and Philip Glass.
Only Steve Reich, minimalism's J.S. Bach, is missing.
This avalanche of minimalism, as one might want to color it, consists of two, count them, two composers—a whole two composers (2). Too.
I also wonder who is minimalism’s Baldassare Galupi.
If there's a consolation, it's a strange but imposing one: British composer Michael Nyman, who coined the term "minimalism" and enjoyed overnight popularity with his distinctive score for the 1993 Jane Campion film The Piano, is getting a burst of U.S. visibility.
“Hear me my diminutive dominions. Instead of Steve Reich, let them eat Nyman.” Yeah (whimper).
Stand back from it all, and conclusions are unexpected.
Conclusions about what? Oh yeah, I almost forgot, the conclusions about this being the culmination of a long-germinating movement.
Why are conclusions unexpected, Dave?
Compare Adams' The Flowering Tree, about a woman who can transform herself into a tree, and Richard Strauss' Daphne, whose title character has similar talents.
Since comparisons are not conclusions (sigh), I’ll play along. What, then, separates the two? Though, I’m not sure where this could be going. Can a comparison of two similar stories utilizing different aesthetics inherently reveal whether or not this avalanche is, indeed a long-germinating movement? Paint me skeptical.
Adams defines the unimaginable, using hypnotic minimalist arpeggios in ways that convey the rhythm of the Earth while melodies wander into unknown regions, governed only by the winds of fate.
Sorry, I need to stand back from it all for a second, too, because it’s breadcrumb time (my head hurts)!
To recap: From its sheer numbers (three), minimalism is overshadowing (?) Beethoven and Brahms, yet (?) it commands attention, like Verdi. It has grown into something more expressive. Both of these facts leads to the question whether or not this is the culmination of a long-germinating movement. To investigate this further, we need to stand back, look at the bigger picture by closely examining two similar, yes dissimilar, works up close. (Am I being fair up to this point?) And conclusions are unexpected. But we're going through the motions anyway.
Where’d I leave off? Ah!
Adams defines the unimaginable, using hypnotic minimalist arpeggios in ways that convey the rhythm of the Earth while melodies wander into unknown regions, governed only by the winds of fate.
First, “hypnotic minimalist arpeggios” is, well, quirky. Unless “hypnotic” is modifying “minimalist,” which is okay, then...no. I take that back. It’s just wrong. Minimalism is, by and large, hypnotic. So, “hypnotic minimalism” is redundant. On the other hand, if “hypnotic” is modifying “arpeggios,” fine. But, then, in this case, the “minimalist” is redundant. You see? Both “hypnotic arpeggios” and “minimalist arpeggios” are the same thing. If you want to contend that they are not the same thing, then whoops, too! You need a comma separating “hypnotic” and “minimalist.”
Despite that nitpicky mess, the contention is that “Adams defines the unimaginable,” which, by its implicit impossibility, is impossible, given that he can’t imagine the unimaginable. Right? Moving on.
The woman-to-tree transformation arises from a bedrock of radiant string tremolos; celebratory percussion sounds like pealing bells in a meadow of glistening string harmonics and soft percussion.
I just threw up in my mouth.
The assemblage of sounds is one thing, but could traditional composers create such trancelike stasis?
Excellent. We’re back on track, sort of. We’re back on track to compare apples and oranges. But we’re still nowhere close to finding out why conclusions pertaining to whether or not today’s minimalism is the culmination of a long-germinating movement are, in fact, unexpected.
And to answer the question about traditional composers, yes.
In contrast, Strauss is about the emotional impact the characters experience at the hands of magic, so the transformation musically is such an afterthought - expressed with Daphne's wispy, wordless vocalization - that you could almost miss it. In effect, Strauss ducks the dramatic problem.
I’ll give Dave one thing: the conclusions, if you can call them that--and are apparently back on the table--are, indeed, unexpected. By comparing Adams to Strauss, we found that they composed with different means and intents. Adams defines the unimaginable; Strauss ducks the dramatic problem. In “conclusion,” romanticism is not minimalism. And to think, I’m up to my ears in student loans, when I could have just waited a few years in order to read this.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch...
Like Renaissance vocal polyphony, which gives a spiritual radiance to anything composed with its precepts, minimalism seems to be the language of the heavens.
Hmmm. Either something is terribly wrong with this or I’m beginning to nod off. I know! I need some coffee. Just continue reading; I’ll be back in a moment.
Revisiting Glass' Mohandas K. Gandhi meditation, Satyagraha, one noticed anew how the piece elegantly bypassed the mundane particulars of a linear plot - the sort that took Tan Dun down hackneyed blind alleys in The First Emperor - and went straight to more important matters of the soul.
It's not the most dramatic way to go - you'd never want a sequel to Tosca done in this way. And yet Adams' Doctor Atomic gets dramatically muddy without leaving its lofty perch. Its landscape - Los Alamos, where the first atomic bomb was tested in 1945 - is built from peripheral details. A hard-bitten military officer goes on at length about counting calories. Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer closes Act I by singing the John Donne sonnet "Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God."
Soon, you realize the opera is directing its energies toward the moral dilemma of those who made the bomb: Civilization was in the hands not of gods but of real, calorie-counting individuals. The minimalist element - with high-stakes drama juxtaposed with almost passive washes of sound and repetition - gives space to the moral problems at hand, not just for the characters, but for the audience.
Okay, I’m back and caffeinated.
What would you have done?
What?! Who, me? Shit! What did I miss? A lot, apparently.
Into this comes Nyman - with all the grace of an atheist at a Christmas pageant.
I’m no stranger to insults, but man, this is like shooting an Indian for trying to dress all civilized and such but failing to cinch the bolo tie tighter.
What the hell did I miss!?
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(reads previous thread)
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Oh. Weird.
His new, determinedly secular pieces prove that minimalism can be earthy, jazzy and sexy, which would be admirable if the music weren't so suffocating in its inflexible, intractable manner.
So, is it fair to say that his pieces are characterized by suffocating earthiness, suffocating jazziness, and suffocating sexiness? Is it also fair to say that those things don’t mean anything?
Jesus. “An atheist at a Christmas pageant.” Jesus. What's with this "sacred vs. secular" thing, anyway?
Among American minimalists, repeated ostinatos are like the broken white stripe down the middle of the highway, each one taking you farther along the piece's musical path.
By most accounts (Well, one really. I did some research a while back, which was funded by the Michael Nyman Institute of Stupid Things People Say About Him)—by most accounts those white dashes in the middle of a road or highway are there solely to inform a motorist which side of the road he/she may occupy, while, circumstances allowing, indicating a safe place to pass a slower vehicle. They are not, repeat not, there to take you anywhere. You may pass by them, but never will they take you anywhere. In fact, they are not living creatures. Some living creatures can, indeed, take you places, like horses, elephants, seeing-eye dogs, and most importantly, asses.
Similarly, ostinati are simply there. You, you, pass by them.
Nyman's repetition is more like a rock-and-roll riff with abrasively robust sonorities and little contour, and with the composer's considerable sense of invention relentlessly tethered to the central idea. Never does his music kick into that minimalist overdrive when the music mushrooms into something greater than its parts. Nyman takes a straight, unveering, almost robotic route to its conclusion.
Really. When did this become a Michael Nyman bashing party? I thought we were here to find out whether or not this “expressive” (subjective opinion) minimalism (misnomer) is the culmination of a long-germinating movement. Or at least why conclusions are unexpected.
While I don’t particularly like Nyman’s music, does he deserve this? Maybe. But, still...
All the plasticity cultivated by American minimalists of late - which we may have taken too much for granted - is rejected by Nyman.
That is, if you can call what they’re doing “minimalist.”
In its place is novelty: His suite, Mozart 252, sets to music letters from the composer's father, poems by the composer, plus his list of debits and credits, all with clinical detachment and vocal lines behaving like just another instrumental voice within the larger musical machinery. Same thing, oddly enough, with settings of sexually graphic Italian poetry titled Lust Songs.
Setting odd texts to music is not novel.
Put to the service of a strictly secular cause, minimalism hardly seems like music.
Where did this come from? Where the fuck are we? I’m caffeinated and alert. Would someone like to fill me in?
However, that theory is shot down by, of all people, the devoutly Buddhist Glass.
? “Of all people?” ? ?????????? ??? ??? Glass shot down theories? Really? Your theory, maybe. Or maybe, you just didn't think your theory through before writing it down for all of Philadelphia and beyond (I'm in San Francisco) to read?
He achieves Nyman's in-your-face aggressiveness without the rigidity in Waiting for the Barbarians, a 2005 operatic adaptation of J.M. Coetzee's novel about military-dominated regimes and merciless torture.
Torture? What does this “story” have anything to do with Nyman’s music not really sounding like music?
Here, Glass exercises every compositional muscle he's ever had: In place of his usual musical expanse, he constructs scenes from penetrating modules that lack the pin-point specificity of nonminimalist composition but are dramatically masterful.
Oh yes. The “penetrating modules that lack the pin-point specificity of nonminimalist composition but are dramatically masterful” scene-construction muscles. I just worked those out the other day. Boy do they hurt.
In one, the humanitarian hero confronts a dictatorial colonel, who is heard against a choral backdrop telegraphing how much he's in the majority.
The story...though secular...what? Seems like music? Despite your theory?
The key difference is that Glass' compositional ego is subordinated to telling the story, while Nyman subordinates his stories (whether abstract or literal) to his personality.
Help. Anyone?
For Glass, minimalism is the key to a world of poetic expression.
Did you ask him? Christ.
Just fucking shoot me already. Any semblance of coherence is gone. Every sentence, phrase and word is problematic. I’m plain lost. And I still have no idea whether or not minimalism is the culmination of a long-germinating movement, nor are we even trying to conclude anything--that's why conclusions are unexpected--not to mention we still only have three composers that constitute an avalanche. And what's with this whole "sacred vs. secular" bullshit?
Nyman's key is just that,
What?! A world of poetic expression? I. Don’t. Know. What. Is. Going. On. Anymore.
...which means that no matter how technically impressive he is, the music remains cold and strangely irrelevant.
A note to everybody ever: Please stop talking about “stories” in music as if they were concrete, irrevocable determinants of a piece’s worth and importance. Thanks. It helps no one.
Usually, compositional methods are only as good as those using them. But minimalism is one that penalizes practitioners who use it perversely.
Those sentences say exactly the same thing!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !! !!!!!!!!(?)
Except now you’re calling Nyman perverse. For what? What's perverse? And where’s my goddamned long-germinating movement? (insert poop joke here about how we've been reading it, all along)
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8/8/08
We Know You. You Love Music. You also Love to Buy Shit
You’ll probably never see my comments on a newspaper’s website, attached to an article. Primarily, it’s because I like cussing. But also, if you can make your way here, we can discuss the topic ad nauseam. Ah, the virtues of blogging! So I’d like to take this opportunity to comment on, rather than destroy, an article by Philadelphia Inquirer’s Peter Dorbin.
I stumbled on this a few days ago:
Orchestra marketing membership flexibility
In it, Peter outlines a new marketing plan offered by the Philadelphia Orchestra to increase ticket sales. Go figure. Here’s the problem:
In the 1987-88 season, 83 percent of the Philadelphia Orchestra's listeners were subscribers.
Last season the number dropped to 62 percent.
Single-ticket sales have increased at the same time, somewhat. But the reason this trend spells trouble is that having buyers who commit to six, nine or 12 concerts at a time is extremely cost-efficient.
To sell $300 in seats to a single-ticket buyer, the orchestra spends about $75 in marketing, advertising, postage, printing and other expenses.
Netting a new subscriber who spends $300 for tickets costs the orchestra $90.
But getting a current subscriber to renew shows why the orchestra clings to the subscriber model. Renewals are really cheap, costing the orchestra about $18 to $27.
Fuck. The question is, then, what do they do about it?
The new program is called eZseat. Once you're a member, you can buy a ticket at a 25 percent discount at almost any time - from an hour before a concert to nine months before curtain.
Okay. So its like all those little candies and razors strategically placed at the checkout register of your grocery store: you know, impulse buys. Only, you have to pay a little in advance for the opportunity to buy them at a discount.
Different membership levels carry different benefits. A $50 annual membership allows access to orchestra-level seats in Verizon Hall; $75 for both first-tier box and orchestra-level seats.
Now it’s time for an arithmetic lesson! Yeah!
Okay, it’s nearly impossible to find the prices for single tickets on the Philadelphia Orchestra’s website, so, after some rummaging around, I found their subscription brochure (PDF). There I was told that 1) They Know I Love Music and 2) for premium seats—1st tier and orchestra level tickets—a subscription would save me $77.75 per ticket. Then I picked out a nice subscription package, the six-concert Masterworks series, which would cost $466.50. Add $77.75 per concert and that's the price of all six concerts if I wanted to buy them individually: $933! Yuck. Divide by six and viola! Single concert tickets without a subscription discount would cost me $155.50 each. So, by buying the subscription I’d save 50% = $77.75 per subscription ticket after a $77.75 discount!
Back over at eZseat, I’d spend $75 for the opportunity to buy premium seats at any time at a discount of 25% off the price of individual ticket prices. So, if individual ticket prices are $155.50, I’d save $38.88 (roughly) per ticket. Thus, each ticket under the eZseat discount would cost me $116.62.
Hmmm.
This means that I’d have to buy tickets to two concerts (roughly) to pay for my eZseat subscription: $38.88 x 2 = $77.76.
=> 2 x $116.62 (the discounted eZseat ticket price) + $75 (eZseat subscription price) = $308.24 for two concerts, which is nearly equal to two tickets ($155.50 x 2 = $311) at full, non-subscription price. So, my savings by purchasing eZseat privileges take effect only after I attend two concerts at regular price.
Thus, if I were to purchase tickets to the additional four concerts at the eZseat price, I’d save 25% off those tickets. This comes to $116.62 x 4, which equals $466. 50, the same price as I would have payed for a regular subscription package. Only, instead of six concerts at at half-off, I’m getting two, plus four regular priced tickets; or if you prefer, that's one free ticket for the price of five regular priced tickets!
That means an eZseat "subscription" plus six concerts costs me $308.24 + $466.50 = roughly $755, or an extra $308 over the price of a regular subscription and only $178 cheaper than if I bought the tickets individually.
Not such a hot deal is it?
The eZseat program was crafted in large part by orchestra marketing chief J. Edward Cambron as a response to increasing resistance to the old subscription model.
"We were looking for how to find a new way to get people to go regularly, as if they were subscribers, but not have the problems subscriptions have, because subscriptions are not the future," Cambron said.
This is batshit crazy people. Subscriptions are the better deal. The only cool thing about eZseat is that there is flexibility—you get to chose which concerts you go to.
But between you and me, every concert is the same. And a Tchaik-Tchaik here and a Rach-Rach there. Here a Tchaik. There a Rach. Everywhere an oink-oink. Old MacDonald had a farm...
It seems strange, perhaps, that in a town known for its sports-loserdom, that more people wouldn’t want to go to the symphony, where it’s a win-win every time.
"They want to go when they want to go, and you risk people not going because they either don't feel like they belong or can't get the kind of access to concerts they want. This program gives them a guarantee in a way."
"Surprise, Honey!"
"Wow, thanks. I always wanted diarrhea." (cover by: Ninja Freaks)
But having it your way comes at a higher price. Buyer beware!
Perhaps, the old-school subscription-phobia is not the problem. Commenter Constant Reader adds her/his two cents:
I think that the orchestra is obliquely noting the major problem: the concerts are now just over-supplied commodies [sic]. When the supply of a commodity--whether SUVs, last-season's clothes, or unsold bread--outstrips supply, the easy solution is to cut price to a point where purchase becomes desirable. A more difficult solution would be to remove the stigma of commodity. That comes from either dramatic improvement in the product's perceived value: from scarcity, exceptional quality or both. Put simply, the Philadelphia Orchestra performs far more often than demand in 2008 dictates. The supply far outstrips demand. The concerts are rarely special events, and the customer realizes this. The real response should be to consider reducing the number of concerts, and perhaps the length of orchestra's season. As for the canard about a 52-week season being essential to quality, consider that in the glory days of Stokowski the orchestra performed for a half-year or less.
Mmmmm. Saturated fats. You can have it your way, right away!
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4/11/08
What Does That Meme?
“You talkin’ to me?”
Well, technically, I’m talking to whoever navigates to this neck of the woods. But, if you like, yes, I’m talkin’ to you, David Patrick Stearns of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
That famous line from the film Taxi Driver came to mind repeatedly during Juliane Banse’s cultivated recital...
Oh sorry, you weren’t addressing me. You were just quoting a line from a movie without providing a context. Fine. Well sir, nevertheless, I am still addressing you.
Wow, though. Really? You had enough time on your hands during the concert to repeatedly think of that line? Must have been as boring as a civilized, indoor version of Berg—the punch line, my dear Detritus folk, will make itself evident later. David knows what I mean.
For our star fetish, here’s the cleverly referenced clip.
I hope you didn’t pull a gun on her, David. Did you? I hope not. But, I digress.
That famous line from the film Taxi Driver came to mind repeatedly during Juliane Banse's cultivated recital of German song presented by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society Tuesday at the Kimmel Center - once she got going, that is.
So your crafty movie reference was a compliment. Her, assumedly, beautiful singing struck a match in your head that said, “You talkin’ to me?” Did you actually get to pay attention, what with all the repetitions of “You talkin’ to me?” Odd. Very odd.
Though she trafficks in one of the most refined vocal arts a singer can attempt, her manner was so direct, natural and without any barriers between singer and audience, you felt as if you were being specifically addressed.
So it’s fair to say, you thought, “oh, she’s singing to me,” at which point you were reminded of Robert DeNiro, over and over again? Cultural symptoms: short attention-spans...
Periodical proclamations that the song recital is dead...
It is? In our short three months of bringing you the best music criticism has to offer, I have yet to encounter this statement. For now, I’ll take your word on it. (How many vocal recitals have I attended in the past year? A lot.)
Periodical proclamations that the song recital is dead are seriously contradicted by Banse, a German-born, Swiss-raised soprano who sings Mozart, Schumann, Mendelssohn and Berg like a first language...
Just in case you didn’t know, David, Switzerland has four official languages. 64% claim German to be their first language. And, I’m going out on a limb, here, but I think that Juliane Banse’s first language is German (see her official website).
Now, if you’re talking about the German songs as her first language, that’s not all that different, see. Sie spielen zu mir?
But go on.
... and exhibits particular bravery with contemporary music (her fine recording of Kurtág's Kafka-Fragmente, for one).
Oh boy, here we go again. Why is bravery a necessity to perform contemporary music? Please someone, let me in on the joke. Why? Why can’t we all live in harmony (pun: not intended)?
Sure, it’s only a slight knock on contemporary music—I’m not even sure if this is what David intended—but, these things build up over time with repeated exposure. Like “You talkin’ to me?” as a cultural meme. Similar to: contemporary music requires bravery; Carter is difficult; Brahms is dense; song recitals are dead.
Berg's songs can feel amorphous and indecisive,
You got it!
but not on Tuesday, when they emerged as a civilized, indoor version of Debussy.
Oh. Berg can be tamed to sound good, i.e., civilized with an indoor voice.
Sie sprechen zu mir? Sie SPRECHEN zu mir?
3/28/08
Wait, is this something I've heard before?
Wait, is that a melody?
No, I’m mistaken.
No, just a fleeting fragment.
Hey, I heard that before, right?
Didn’t we hear that figure before?
Yes.
Maybe.
Well, not that exact phraseology.
But not in that exact form.
I remember now. Didn’t everyone who ever reviewed Elliott Carter say as much? That’s consistent, at least.
The sound world of Elliott Carter is not the most obvious one to navigate, but his aesthetic at least is consistent.
If you’re going for consistency, where’s the dissonance? The anger? The intellectual rigor? The violence? The punchiness? The lack of tonality? The necessity of repeated listening? The legendary inscrutability? The 100 years? The worn-out clichés and lazy interpretation?
It’s right here.
All provided for you by Peter Dorbin of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Addendum: Here's a really, really cool link to a video interview with the 99-year old Elliott Carter in celebration of his centenary. What a sweety.