If You Don't Eat Your Meat, How Can You Have Any Pudding?

The concert program as a hermeneutic object has been, until pretty recently, not all that interesting to me. Usually, it seems, the organizing idea behind a concert program is about as interesting as "all the pieces are sort of about planets!" or "all the composers probably liked flowers".

Figure 1: An astonishingly original idea for your next Obligatory Jocular Costume party.

However, I'm coming around a bit. So, when thinking about a concert as a text to be interpreted, consideration is given not only to the pieces programmed, but the order in which they're presented. This can lead to more interesting issues, such as those raised recently in this review:

Visitors from Vienna Bring Both the Pastoral and the Not-So-Pastoral
(James R. Oestreich, New York Times, 1/27/2010)

However, as with all things hermeneutic, the license to interpret is easily carried too far. I'm not sure that's the case here, but it's something of which to be wary.

Programming symphonic concerts is too often done to formula, the lamest, nowadays, being overture, concerto, intermission, symphony.

Agreed, and point taken.

I'll also take this opportunity to note that Messiaen's "Intermission with Bird Songs, Traffic Noise, and Cigarettes" is my favorite work in that underrated genre.

If anything more challenging can be slipped by the marketing department, it is tucked somewhere inside to avoid encouraging patrons to arrive late or leave early.

Why would the marketing department care when you come or go if they sell you a ticket?

Hmm.

Oh, wait: I forgot to put on my hermeneutic hat!

Figure 2a: Apparently, literally every fucking thing in the world is available on a hat at CafePress.*

Figure 2b: Seriously?! What the hell?

That's better. Let's try this again.

If anything more challenging can be slipped by the marketing department, it is tucked somewhere inside to avoid encouraging patrons to arrive late or leave early.

Besides privileging the Romantic-transcendent cultural paradigm by placing the hierarchical, canonic works at the marked positions of the beginning and end of the concert, this programming strategy further others the "challenging" work by "tucking" it away (or "slipping" it in) between the metaphorical legs of the event-body, resulting in a gendered construction that patriarchally confines the transgressive or dangerous pieces out-of-sight.

Wait. What?

Oh, hell. That was my New Musicology hat.

Figure 3: Apologies to Dr. Susan McClary, Distinguished Professor of Musicology at UCLA.**

Where is that blasted hat?

[rifles through the hat closet at Detritus Towers]

Maybe this is it?

If anything more challenging can be slipped by the marketing department, it is tucked somewhere inside to avoid encouraging patrons to arrive late or leave early.

It sounds like the marketing department is trying to prevent the protrusion into reality of the real by sublimating the object-cause of its desire.

Gah. That's not it, either.

Figure 4: Objet petit a

Ah, screw it. No hat, then. I'll have to proceed with only my meager, Cthulhu-given interpretive skills.

The Vienna Philharmonic, in its three programs conducted by Daniel Barenboim and Pierre Boulez at Carnegie Hall over the weekend, managed to present a lot of challenging material: substantial works by Arnold Schoenberg in each concert, a piece by Anton Webern, another by Mr. Boulez.

I am, I think, firmly on the record as being in favor of this programming.

And at least at the first concert, on Friday evening, the order of the program represented a small triumph of musical values over marketing wimpiness.

Ah, now we're talking. Let's do some goddamn interpretation! Who's with me?

Mr. Barenboim offered a quick historical jaunt, from the bedrock harmonies of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony through the unmoored and disintegrating tonalities of the Prelude and “Liebestod” from Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” to the 12-tone machinations of Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra (Op. 31), and it made for a rich and illuminating experience.

I would totally go to that concert. So, Mr. Oestreich, why the preamble about the programming?

But as much sense as that ordering made, it was by no means inevitable.

So the chronological order of the program made sense, as the structure of the concert mirrored the linear, unidirectional flow of time. But, crucially, it was not inevitable.

It's the cutting edge: considering performing pieces not in the order in which they were composed.

The program book, in fact, listed an earlier version,

Ah. Now that's interesting!

...with the mildly intractable Schoenberg work coming before the lush payoff of the Wagner.

Bucking the positivist, rational, linear logic of chronology in favor of the aforementioned "marketer's choice" arrangement.

So, to be clear: The program listed the Schoenberg as the middle work, but it was actually the last on the concert.

An insert sheet gave the revised order, evidently arrived at late,

A fair interpretation.

...and you could almost see the always provocative hand of the headstrong Mr. Barenboim at work in it.

Only a Maestro could have conceived of (provocatively) re-ordering the program at the last minute? To chronologically?

He virtually confirmed as much at the end of the evening when he conspiratorially announced the encore,

Wait wait wait.

There was an encore? This absolutely and drastically affects any close reading of the program. What was it, for Azathoth's sake?

Figure 5: Azathoth, the Insane Outer God at the Center of the Universe. We are all naught but his dreams of dancing. (Duh.)

...Johann Strauss’s “Thunder and Lightning” Polka, “for you and for those who left before the Schoenberg.”

Ha. That's great.

If and only if you stayed for the Schoenberg, which was strategically moved to the end of the program, you got a lollipop.

I take it all back. That's out-fucking-standing.***

*Gratuitous profanity indicates here that I am in no way advertising--or even advocating--for or against this company.

**The music school at UCLA is called the Herb Alpert School of Music, which is almost unbearably awesome. It's a fact; you can look it up.

Figure Anhang: A supplement implies a structural lack.

***This profanity is emphatic, and more elaborative than structural.

Merdle and Haggard Do Science

Merdle: Hey honey! I heard the Cleveland Orchestra won't be wearing tuxedos, but solid-colored shirts instead. No ties!

Haggard: Ooh! That makes them more appealing. Maybe we should go.

-

Then, there’s this:

It’s hard to pinpoint what about the Cleveland Orchestra’s concert Friday caused it to sell out, given that almost everything about it was different.

I suppose I should have italicized “almost everything,” but why italicize when you can give a picture in its place?

Figure 1. Product placement (free of charge)

For one experiment, there were a lot of variables.

Which means: there was another experiment without any variables. In other words, there was a control, i.e., a solid base of knowledge with which to compare and contrast the effect of the variables. Though, you’d want to limit them to, oh I don’t know, one variable, in order to isolate the results. But, hey, that’s good science and we don’t want that in our music, do we?

Anyway, let’s follow this hypothetical experiment.

-

Variable 1:

Was it the earlier start?

Nope. You disproved that one, remember?

Many [...] lingered, purchasing drinks and mingling at club-like tables and lounges around the dimly-lit foyer.

Sounds like they had plenty of time on their hands. That couldn’t be it.

-

Variable 2:

The informal dress of the players?

Hmmm. See above Merdle and Haggard sarcasm.

-

Variable 3:

[Was] it the prospect of a post-concert reception and appearance by world percussion ensemble Beat the Donkey?

Figure 2. Hard to imagine a better reason to go to the symphony than Beat the Donkey

But, as our author later showed, this was indeed a legitimate possibility.

At first, the post-concert party looked ready to backfire. Most of Severance Hall came flooding into the Grand Foyer, forcing patrons to jockey for limited space.

I’ll definitely keep that one in mind when trying to decipher our experimental data. I should have italicized “experimental.”

Figure 3. Suggesting where this is all going

Variable 4:

The short [...] program?

People clamoring for the donkey beaters, drinking themselves into stupors, uncomfortably standing in a dimly-lit foyer...

Yeah. A short program could attract patrons. Though, their priorities don’t seem to be in line with the act of attending an orchestra concert—listening to music. How ‘bout that, then? What about the music?

-

The control group:

The [...] all-Beethoven program?

So, to ask the question again: what packed the house that evening? Oh yeah, the one thing that symphonies resort to when they need to pack a house.

-

Haggard: I also heard they were going to play nothing but Beethoven.

Merdle: I heard that too. Last week, in fact. And the week before that. And the week before that.

Haggard: These things sound like a broken Glass record.
-

Guilty on One Charge of Puffery and One Charge of Lying under Oath

Let it be said that when you write something like this:

Never let it be said that S.F. Classical Music Examiner goes in for puff pieces.

...I’ll assume the opposite.

Now, to be clear, the Wictionary dictionary, as do all of the other dictionaries, defines “puff piece” as...

A journalistic form of puffery; an article or story of exaggerated praise that often ignores or downplays opposing viewpoints of evidence to the contrary.

The San Francisco Classical Music Examiner? Never going in for puff pieces? Yeah right!

Modern critics typically speak of traditional programming as focusing on those "basic 50 pieces", to paraphrase Virgil Thomson.

That is, if Virgil Thompson is a modern critic: he died in 1989, but stopped writing critiques for the New York Herald Tribune in 1954 [1951?]).

Nobody denies that those works continue to deserve an honored place on concert programs; they're classics for a reason. But what, exactly, constitutes "innovation"?

You see where he’s going with this? He’s going to define “innovation,” then he’s going to “insert ensemble here.” But first, a misstep.

More often than not, "innovative" is little more than a code word for "programming contemporary music." As such, ensembles boasting of their "innovative" programs have little to brag about, really...

But, no. That’s wrong. They brag about being innovative, because most ensembles don’t regularly play new music. The opposite used to be the case, as our author pointed out earlier. However, it’s no longer true. So bragging about being innovative is only comparative to their contemporaries, dummy.

So what can we identify as real innovation in the early 21st century?

Those gigantic, meaty italics are all Scott Fogelsong’s, not mine.

I propose San Francisco's New Century Chamber Orchestra as an exemplar of the modern ensemble that avoids both dry rot and cliché, while at the same time recognizes that innovation cannot thrive without a solid foundation.

Wikipedia offers this definition of puffery:

Puffery as a legal term refers to promotional statements and claims that express subjective rather than objective views, such that no reasonable person would take literally.

But I digress, Scott. How are they innovative, again?

[...] the New Century [Chamber Orchestra] enjoys a perspective that recognizes the worth of the traditional canon, yet enriches that repertory by reaching out and over those arbitrary boundaries between contemporary, traditional, classical, world, and popular music.

So, schlocky eclecticism equals innovative?

So, for example, Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (standard rep if ever there were) will be paired with Bernard Herrmann's famed score for Psycho for the May 2009 program of night music, called "Shadows and Light", while a December program partners Bach with holiday music from around the globe.

But that sounds like my high school orchestra and chorus—challenge the kids to expand their horizons and give the parents something to enjoy.

As Monroe [the NCCO executive director] puts it: "they are coming to be challenged, and they are also coming to be pleased."

Just in case you forgot, dear reader, we’re talking about unsubstantiated praise. The NNCO is being praised for being “real” innovators, while my high school music program was just as daring. Italics mine.

All of this marvelous creative thinking doesn't guarantee the NCCO a slam-dunk, alas.

And they’re not all that creative, either.

For one thing, our economy is running a bit shakily at present. For another, the New Century isn't the only imaginative ensemble in this Bay Area of ours, a place with a long-standing tradition of subverting tradition.

So they are not, by any stretch of the imagination, innovative. Go figure.

But I, for one, will be astonished if this forthcoming season turns out to be anything less than a grand success.

I wouldn’t be surprised if someday Wikipedia has an entry for “puffer,” one who engages in puffery, with a picture of Scott Fogelsong in the upper right-hand corner.
-