classicmusic

[classicmusic]

BLO’s Threepenny Opera

Despite its obvious connections to a specific time and place, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera extends well beyond its Victorian London setting, with its strongest themes revolving around economic, societal and political imbalance(s). The play with music is ripe for adaptation and a push for present day relevance, or at least a sideways glance at stylized commentary.

Boston Lyric Opera produced Threepenny Opera, with direction by the up-and-coming James Darrah, as its mid-season fare this past month, an anticipated production that generated a not-insignificant amount of buzz in the lead up to the opening, eventuating sold out audiences for each performance.

The experience began with an announcement by Michelle Trainor, playing Mrs. Peachem in character, excoriating the audience for its impropriety with technology and awareness of exits. Clever to some extent, and certainly a wink and nod to the overtheatricizing effect of the play and theatre culture writ large, the gimmick seemed somewhat out of place and off-putting, the type of fourth-wall breaking that seems good in theory but rarely comes off.

The opening scene of Threepenny (the home of the famed “Mack the Knife”) is by nature the most theatrically self-conscious in the play, though Darrah opted to treat this with a bit more subtlety than many productions. Raising the curtain to an organized scattering of the play’s actors across the stage, backs all to the audience, the police chief Tiger Brown (excellently sung by Daniel Belcher) delivers the song-as-prologue, in this instance while each of the other characters are felled in turn. The image was striking and a beautiful telegraph of what was to come, an auspicious beginning to this production.

From there, we were introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Peachem, played by James Maddalena and Trainor—the former revealing himself to be a perfect casting for the dark role and a highlight of the entire production—as well as Polly Peachem, played confidently by Kelly Kaduce. In in-house media previews for the production, Kaduce revealed the inspiration for the portrayal to be something like Lydia Deetz from Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, an interesting and compelling choice, but one that often seemed out of place in the production, too heterogenous a flavor when juxtaposed to the choices of the rest of the cast.

Christopher Burchett’s Macheath (Mack the Knife) was, by and large, an even portrayal, including enough bravura and bravado to get the point across, with a lofty stage presence that effectively drew the other characters to him. The actors portraying his band of thugs seemed to feed well on this energy in bringing out the seedier nooks and crannies of the text.

Though her role is relatively diminutive in the play, Jenny, leader of the troupe of prostitutes who interleave the other sectors of society in this world, is historically an outsized role, it being the breakout for Lotte Lenya, the famed Austrian chanteuse (and Kurt Weill’s spouse and muse). For BLO’s production, Renée Tatum’s performance was, along with Maddalena’s, the best in the show, her acting matched by her vocal performance.

Though the production included some strong choices and excellent work (the set by Julia Noulin-Mérat, though sparse, was effective, and included two large work lights that loomed over the story; the costuming by Charles Neumann was, without hyperbole, splendid; the orchestra was reliable and present), it lacked a strong sense of identity and direction. Often, singers wavered between a more Broadway vocal style and one more typical of opera—one might read this as a communication of the play’s ambivalence in this respect, but this was unclear, suggesting this was more likely indecision and not the result of nuanced reading. If it was intentional, bravo, but it would have been less distracting to hear some consistency one way or the other.

Perhaps more curious was an inserted note in the program explaining certain choices for the production, particularly the choice to do the work in English rather than the original German. Boston is significant in the history of Threepenny, with Marc Blitzstein’s masterful English translation premiering at the Brandeis Festival of the Creative Arts in 1952. 

To that legacy, it is unfortunate that Blitzstein’s translation was not used (rather, Michael Feingold’s unmusical and sometimes needlessly crude translation was), especially given that the 1952 production was conducted by Leonard Bernstein, and this being his centenary, it may have been wise to play up that connection. In addition to this, BLO’s justification to use English in the first place (”the play was intended to be of its time”) lost meaning when the remainder of the production had little relevance to anything outside of the written text; a lost opportunity to politicize, or at least make relevant connections to the present day if English was to be the game (surely, one would not read that justification as meaning the production was playing up the play’s origins in Weimar Germany—English would hardly fit that goal). It may have been better to leave the choice of English a mystery in light of its contrast to the otherwise consistent staging and costumes.

Taken as a whole, inconsistency let the production down; as described in the Boston Globe and WBUR’s The Artery, the overall ambivalence of the production left it somewhat flat and toothless.

Well worth the price of attendance and an evening or afternoon spent in the Huntington Theater with several fine performers, audiences enjoyed BLO’s production and seemed by and large to have a thirst for this type of theater, which will hopefully inspire more of of its kind in the area.

[classicmusic]

On Programming Diversity for an Amateur Ensemble

Last year I was appointed the music director of an amateur ensemble in Boston made up of a choir and orchestra. It was an exciting, tremendous honor and privilege to take on, and I can’t believe I have this opportunity. One of the great excitements is being able to develop concert programming according to my own vision for the group. 

I conducted a concert a couple of years ago and programmed Bruckner’s lesser-known but stunning Te deum, two large Brahms choral works that are gorgeous, Vaughan Williams’s charming and forceful Five Mystical Songs, and a small Beethoven work that doesn’t see the stage very often. It was a really enjoyable concert for me personally, and I think it came off well. But obviously, it has a big flaw. The music is/was good, but there’s not a shred of diversity in it, beyond one composer not being German. Now I think about this program, and, while musically I still love it, I’m a little put off by its homogeneity.

When I was appointed music director, I saw this as an opportunity to do better. As I looked around at the end of last year for programming ideas for our September concert, I tried to branch out a little bit and came across Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. He has a number of works that I can’t easily find scores for, as it seems that people are content sticking with Hiawatha or excerpts from it. It’s a shame, I think. His music is gorgeous–he’s been called the “Black Mahler,” which is obviously problematic, but it does say something about his compositional style and, I think, its quality. So, being that our group has a very small budget, I went to IMSLP and discovered some octavos, but no full scores. After playing through some of these vocal scores, I settled on his cantata(-ish), Endymion’s Dream, to be our “big piece” for September. In February, if all goes as I’m thinking now, we’ll do (some of, if not all of) Bon-Bon Suite.

But I had to fill out the rest of the program around Endymion. So I looked around to see what I could come up with that might complement this piece, hoping to include some gender diversity, as well. I looked hard for published scores in libraries, in online retailers, on IMSLP and CPDL, and in the University of Michigan Women Composers Collection, and it turns out that it’s really hard to find scores for large choral-orchestral, or even just orchestral, pieces by women. They’ve been written by a number of important female composers, but they’re really difficult to track down in full score. And if they are available in published score, they’re often very expensive, likely because of limited printing runs, etc. Dover doesn’t offer much in this way. 

For last February's concert, I took a couple of small orchestral scores from the Michigan Collection by Cécile Chaminade and Clémence de Grandval and created performing editions, because that was a feasible option. That was really rewarding and exciting, as these were pieces likely not heard for quite a while, making all the hours transcribing worth the effort. But that was the type of work that was needed to be able to program women composers for an amateur group with a very small budget.

For the Endymion concert, I did some work to put together a sensible program, and it will include works by: 

Lili Boulanger, Ethel Smyth, Augusta Read Thomas (for two works), Amy Beach, Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Henry F. Gilbert (a Boston area ragtime composer), Billy Joel, Brahms, Coleridge-Taylor, Haydn and Borodin 

The breakdown for that is, then: five women and six men; six pieces by women, six pieces by men. There might be some shifting still, but I’m hoping the ratio won’t change.

Let me say this: programming that kind of ratio was more difficult than just programming better known and more frequently performed composers. And for a group that has a small budget (I can’t stress this aspect enough), casting the net widely is difficult. We can’t support trips to archives (even though I’m taking one to the Library of Congress next week to get the full Endymion score fair copy), so going to a place like the University of Colorado, which houses a number of scores by black women composers, is not much of an option. Buying obscure editions by small publishers that are forced by economics to charge high prices for scores and parts is possible, but not as a regular practice. And then, of course, there’s the concern of drawing an audience which typically prefers to hear war horses. And you want to maintain your identity, which for us means having some stylistic range, while also programming works that aren’t frequently performed (an important and advantageous foundation for more diversity in other aspects, which I am tremendously grateful for).

All of this contributed to the programming choices for our September concert this fall. The biggest hurdle in this program will be the added effort needed to make the rep work for our group, and it’s not going to be incredibly easy. But that’s the biggest thing: work.

Brian Lauritzen has been tracking the programming diversity of orchestras, at least by gender. When I started programming last year, his counts weren’t going quite yet (since ‘17-’18 seasons weren’t announced), but I wasn’t done when he started. That type of statistical evidence really confirmed my aspiration for my group’s programming. We have some warhorse pieces and composers on the program, of course, in part because they are reliable and a draw, but largely because they fit and are still good music. But even more, I believe that part of creating more diversity in classical programming is proving that less frequently performed composers can stand with the canonical composers. They belong on programs with Haydn. I know this is a stance that has problems with it (that I’m aware of or not), but it makes some sense to me.

That brings me to my overall thought with all of this: orchestras and opera companies can program more diversity. It takes a little more work, of course, and the hurdles of programming, in my experience (which this entire post is only a reflection on my experience), are evidence of some systemic failure. But the most talked about operas at the Met last year were by Saariaho and Berg. That should say something. My group, as a small, tiny budget, amateur choir and orchestra, will perform a program in September with (at least close to) an even split of pieces by men and women. I’m hoping we’ll find the support and audience that this music deserves so that we can continue in this pursuit and to prove that this type of programming is viable. But even if it’s less of a draw, I believe it’s absolutely worth it.

[classicmusic]

New Yorker, issue 1: Henry Cowell’s “Ensemble” received an unkind New York welcome

I always find it interesting to look back at the first issue of various publications to see what was what at the beginning of the run. Perhaps unsurprisingly, writers can be very optimistic and see the publication in an auspicious light, whether or not the crystal ball was true on the course. (I say unsurprisingly because, well, think about the likelihood of a journal publishing doom and gloom in its first issue...)

Being a semi-regular reader of the The New Yorker, some time ago I took advantage of the access to their online archive that comes with a subscription to see what the magazine was like in its early days. It doesn’t exactly go without saying that the tone and general spirit has remained more or less the same (though compartmentalized) since issue no. 1, from February 21, 1925. The cover features Rey Irvin’s famous dandy, Eustace Tilley:

The image evokes an unambiguous sense of specific culture and highbrow-ism (the magazine eventually taking its place as middlebrow, par excellence), even a slight air of effeteness. The editors surely were not seriously unaware of that perception, and on the first page of prose (opposite the first printed page, an ad for Caron perfumes, similar to this) is the tongue-in-cheek proclamation:

On general principles, this magazine expects to take a firm stand against murder. But we don’t want to be bigoted. If, for instance, someone should ask you to advertise in The New Yorker, and throw out the hint that your refusal might lead to some unwelcome publicity, you wouldn’t shock us much if you poured him into the nearest drain.

Even today, New Yorker humor is notorious for this sort of *snort*-worthy pithiness, its “Tiny Shouts” section maintaining that too-clever voice to this day.

[Apparently the legal mailing status of the magazine had yet to be settled on the first press.]

This in mind, I looked for the first pages on music, and I can’t say I was terribly disappointed. The page is broken down into a series of “comings and goings” of New York musical life, none longer than a few paragraphs (again, not unlike sections of the magazine today, with its lists of events, reviews, and general commentaries on cultural life in the City). The first note is a short, somewhat critical review of Stravinsky’s Piano Concerto--played by the NYPhil and conducted by Willem Mengelberg--that heralds the “last of Stravinsky, propria persona” in New York before the composer left for the west. The third is an in-the-know recounting of the box office frenzy for tickets to a series of April concerts at Carnegie Hall by Fritz Kreisler, whose popularity seems to have reached a fever-pitch in the inter-war period, the New Yorker writer claiming that “Kreisler, by the way, is probably the only artist in the world who can sell out concert after concert without announcing in advance his program” in light of the immediate sell out to some 3,000 patrons who bought tickets by inquiring directly to the Heck Brothers, who managed the space.

[The New Yorker’s caricature of Kreisler from the first issue.]

The other three blurbs are slightly more amusing, if not interesting. A brief report on the British pianist Ethel Leginska discusses her failure to appear for a concert, the NYer writer speculating the cause to be a previous performance’s bad review written by a critic who likely would have attended this New York show. The highlight of the blurb here is the first sentence: 

Mme. Leginska, the evanescent pianist, has described her disappearance as a lapse of memory, and perhaps she who lapse last lapse best, for Leginska is as noted now as Mr. and Mrs. Jack Dempsey.

This might be the first--and certainly the punniest--time I’ve heard of a direct comparison between a pianist and a boxer!

A brief look at the tenor Edward Johnson extolls the virtues of his ability to sing in multiple languages, the singer being particularly famous in Italy for his performances of Wagner in Italian(!). But evidently such a performance choice was taboo in New York at the time: 

Johnson has sung Wagnerian roles in Italian only and polyglot performances are taboo at the Metropolitan, although unintentionally polyglot versions occasionally are heard. Probably the task of restudying the roles in German appalls the gifted tenor. And well it might!

Not exactly scathing, the review is at least tongue-in-cheek about the demands of a professional singer and the concessions made to them. This is sort of an interesting reverberation of the tradition of performing vocal works in the audience’s native language--rather than the language of composition--which had been in practice at least since the baroque era, something that is almost looked down upon anymore.

The last of these three more interesting reviews (it appears as the second item on the page) is a brief look at an International Composers’ Guild February 8 concert and is the one that piqued my interest most, not just for its sheer absurdity. The review focuses narrowly on only Henry Cowell’s 1924 work, Ensemble (performed at this concert in a revised and expanded version for ”a small [string] orchestra”), which was, suffice it to say, not terribly well-received by the author. They do note that aside from the unconventional thunder stick instruments the music is “conventional matter,” presumably a good thing. 

The highlight of the performance was a mishap:

The end of Mr. Cowell’s stick declined to be party to the affair, and flew off the handle, seeking refuge in the general direction of Lawrence Gilman. Now, if Mr. Cowell were to begin twirling pianos he probably could be certain of a sold-out house. Suggestion to live insurance company: Why not sell accident insurance with concert tickets?

I have to appreciate the pervasive sardonic tone of the whole of this page of music criticism, especially this bit of it that today stands as a rebuff to the (sometimes) over-seriousness and score-fetishism of much music criticism and its audience (you can practically hear the clutching of pearls if this had happened in Carnegie Hall today). 

Cowell was treading a line with critics of the day, as Olin Downes had a similar reaction to the event for the New York Times on February 9, 1925:

Mr. Cowell, it appears, has temporarily abandoned composing for the piano and fists and forearms and has written his “Ensemble,” heard last night, for three Indian thunder sticks and chamber orchestra. The thunder stick is a flat piece of wood attached to a string and whirled in the air by the performer. The effect is of whirring wind, mounting to a thunderous sonority, according to the rapidity of the movement. Three men whirled thunder sticks through the first movement of Mr. Cowell’s “Ensemble,” and it was hard work. One of them, after trying with first one hand and then two, gave it up and rested. Another whirled too vigorously and lost his grip. The thunder stick shot away from him, but it did not hit either the composer of the piece or a critic who listened, so that both lived to the end of the composition.

I’m not sure which critic didn’t recognize Cowell, but both seemed to find the situation humorous, regardless of who dropped the stick. Together, the two reviews offer a composite picture of the persons involved--it seems Cowell may have lost his stick and Lawrence Gilman was nearly hit by it. If it was Gilman who was almost hit, perhaps there is some poetic justice here, with this concert taking place at Aeolian Hall where, a year earlier, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue premiered with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, a work that Gilman panned as trite and feeble.

A well-covered event (Gilman was writing for the New York Herald Tribune by this time), what the New Yorker article fails and Downes succeeds to provide is an accurate picture of the power-house program that included Cowell’s piece. From Downes, we know that works by the following composers were performed: Acaria Cotapos, Bela Bartok, Massimo Zanotti-Bianco, Henry Cowell, Anton Webern, Richard Grant Still, Carlos Salzedo and Carlos Chavez. Of these, Downes had little positive to say about the actual music, complimenting mostly the performances, even going so far as to say:

One expects from what may be called certain exhausted European musical stocks, such as that represented by certain of the disciples of Arnold Schonberg [sic]--among them von Webern--music which shall be ultra-sophisticated, self-conscious, refined and re-refined until nothing vital or expressive of anything in the least important is left. But one regrets to see young North Americans turning out stuff which has little or none of the youth, the clear vision, the instinct for direct and honest self-expression which should be characteristic of rising composers of this country.

For his reputation and legacy, Downes didn’t mince words when it came to modernist music, preferring instead a more conservative ilk (”One of the best compositions was Bela Bartok’s sonatina for piano...”).

There is a lot more that could be drawn out of these reviews as instances in a fuller picture of the reception of modernist music at that time, Cowell and others inclusive, but I’ve rambled a bit further than intended already. The tone of The New Yorker’s writing has dialed back a bit since its first issue, though the image it laid out in its early days lingers between the covers. Nevertheless, there is a significant contrast between this and what you read from people like Alex Ross or (previously) Sasha Frere-Jones, which is, I think, interesting. (...which is not to imply that this is unique to the New Yorker...)

[classicmusic]

Bold Respite in Anderson’s “America”

I’m fortunate to have as my advisor Allan Keiler, a man, who beyond his work in music theory/musicology, also happens to be a biographer of the late once-in-a-generation singer, Marian Anderson, whose story is well known by now and was recently revisited by many with news that she will appear on the redesigned US $5 bill. From time to time, Dr. Keiler lends me recordings from his extensive collection, a sort of education through listening, if you will, and most recently, he lent me a CD of Anderson’s recordings of Schubert and Schumann (the latter the subject of my dissertation)--”You have to know her Frauenliebe und -leben!” Naturally, I couldn’t help but dig in a little bit and find other of her recordings, and this morning, for the umpteenth time, I came across a youtube upload of her 1939 Lincoln Memorial performance of “America” (”My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”).

Maybe I was subconsciously looking for it in light of this week’s events, but as I was listening to her sing this morning, I noticed a small detail that hadn’t struck me much before: at around the 1:03 mark of the above video, the end of the first verse, she alters the original melody slightly. Or at least I assume it’s part of the original melody--at least as far back as a Musical Times issue from 1917 (read: before Anderson’s performance in front of the Lincoln Memorial, making the likelihood of her familiarity high), the melody reaches up to its highest note yet on the beginning of the phrase “Let freedom ring.”

Anderson--who that day sang the song in Bb major, relevant here only in consideration of her vocal range as a contralto--instead of continuing the line from “mountain side” up another step to reach for “Let freedom...” reversed the direction of the line, thus prematurely beginning its final descent toward the final pitch on “...ring.” It’s small, but for tunes as well known as this, those sorts of non-rhythmic, non-ornamental changes to the tune feel monumental (...pun only half-intended). Perhaps Anderson didn’t feel she could attain the higher note, maybe her voice was not in its best shape that day, or maybe it was a spontaneous decision based on the atmosphere and gravity of the moment? Who can know*, but I think the answers to those questions are a bit less important than thinking about what her small change does to the quite visceral experience of listening to her sing the song.

In very general terms, the climax of a piece of music is often (not always) centered on a melody or single line climbing to its highest of heights--something with a bit of impact beyond a very local peak. In “America,” this moment is reserved for the end of a rather long “B” section (that begins at “Land where my fathers died...”), of which the text shifts slightly, from the “A” section’s paean of admiration to a list of descriptions of what is here. The “B” section becomes increasingly grander than the first as it builds, but still maintains its sense for the personal (I’m inserting a line break after line 3 only to reflect the song’s musical structure):

My country, ‘tis of thee,

Sweet land of liberty,

Of thee I sing;

Land where my father died,

Land of the pilgrim’s pride,

From ev’ry mountain side

Let freedom ring.

To my ear, Anderson’s alteration significantly changes the personality of the final line. Where in its normal configuration the climax emphatically and triumphantly proclaims “Let freedom ring!”, hers recalls a much more personal affirmation, of repose rather than herald, an affirmation of the very intimate connection to the country expressed by the author of the text, Samuel Francis Smith. Rather than the heroism of dactylic dimeter in Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade,” Anderson showed a different, human side that might be unexpected at such a public event as this.

Naturally, such an alteration might not be just slightly unexpected, but also unwelcome. In 1905, a certain H. F. A. wrote to the Journal of Education to state that such an alteration was not simply an artistic choice, but a veritable act of heresy! (This letter is a bit enigmatic; there must be something to the title of the letter, “Go slow.” and the bit of nationalism at the end “--a foreigner.”)

But certainly, the very personal nature of the song’s text was not lost on at least one correspondent to the Boston Herald (reprinted in, curiously enough, the Journal of Education, which was evidently a battleground for discussions of the song).

A bit of public musicology by historian and pacifist Edwin Mead, whose point stresses the intimate nature of the song.

That in mind, Anderson made another alteration that carries significant weight in the performance: she not only slightly changed the melody, but also modified the text. Rather than “Of thee I sing,” she sang, “To thee we sing.” The implications are fairly clear. Subtly or not, Anderson broke the song open to a wider message, an exhortation rather than only a paean. The song that at one time prompted letters regarding its sanctity is even today still deeply ingrained in our national consciousness and the change of its text would hardly go unnoticed. We are used to alterations of popular patriotic songs, but alterations in text raise furor (see: alterations to “The Star-Spangled Banner”). An argument that Anderson’s modification of the text in such a radical way could have been accidental seems nearly absurd, and, given the context in which this performance took place, would rob weight to the form of the performance. An artist as sensitive to the text as Anderson would not make such an error. She would make a point.

With Anderson, the boldness in her performance at the Lincoln Memorial may have extended slightly beyond the extraordinary circumstances of her concert, an event that took place at the height of World War II, around a year and half before the United States entered the war. Even if small, her alteration to the melody in such a well- and widely-known song was not meaningless.

I began here with a bit of a personal anecdote on why I came to think about this today. Call it felicity or Seeing What You Want to See, but when the thought occurred to me this morning and I mulled it over at mid-day, Anderson’s performance gained a bit of recalled relevance. Something so public and important on a grand scale became even a little more nuanced and personal.

*I have to admit my research for this was surface depth, so factual corrections or clarifications are welcome.

[classicmusic]

Phoenix Orchestra, season 2

Phoenix Orchestra’s second season comes on the heels of a well-received and acclaimed first, in which the orchestra worked to further its goals of reshaping the classical music concert experience. Thursday’s concert at the South End’s Villa Victoria Center for the Arts gave a mixed audience a chance to experience a slightly different take on the mid-week evening, underpinned by a more casual and open attitude where the bar remained open and audience members were urged by the concert program to applaud what they liked as it happened, to talk with neighbors about what they were heard, and to actively respond to performers rather than observe from the aisles. 

The first half of the concert was the more off-beat of the two, including an unusually orchestrated suite, the Suite française, by the prolific French composer, Francis Poulenc, for two oboes, two bassoons, two trumpets, three trombones, percussion and harpsichord (Phoenix modified the trombone cohort to a French horn, euphonium and one trombone). Jaunty at times, staid at others, the piece was a late concert addition meant to give some more balance to an otherwise string-heavy evening. Despite Poulenc’s mid-level renown and swollen oeuvre, the audience received the work well, if not somewhat timidly, as a warm up for the proceeding works. Following a quick set changeover from a wind ensemble to a concerto grosso set-up, the atmosphere shifted somewhat. Whether it was the spoken introduction by conductor Matt Szymanski or the prospect of the more familiar Vivaldi Four Seasons, the audience finally came into its own, feeling at ease enough to actively participate in the evening. That, or it could simply have been emotion overtaking restraint as Zenas Hsu jarred the audience with his virtuosic performance of Vivaldi as well as Astor Piazzola’s own take, The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. Interleaved together in alternating movements from the two annual bouquets, this cosmopolitan mashup of Baroque and 20th century Latin gave Hsu the chance to show off an almost unbelievable versatility and mastery, extended techniques pulled of as effectively as silvery, pristine control. Simply put, it was just exciting to be there to see. 

The second half of the concert’s Thomas Adès’s arrangement of Couperin’s Les barricades mystérieuses—following on a performance of the original harpsichord (Dylan Sauerwald’s beautiful interpretation)—eased things into Ravel’s colorful and exciting Tombeau de Couperin. The orchestra, finally at full number in the latter piece, showed no signs of intimidation, perhaps unsurprising for as talented a group as this, though simultaneously impressive given the relatively young age of the entire organization. If there was one criticism to make of the whole evening, it was that Tombeau felt a bit safe. The canonic performances of the work that audiences might be familiar with have an inherent roughness about them for movements like the Forlane and especially the Rigaudon, where things might not always be so pretty and even, and quick shifts in tempo keep the audience’s expectations slightly off-kilter. Nevertheless, the piece was a clear reminder of the astounding quantity and quality of young, high-level talent in Boston.

The conversations surrounding the death of classical music and orchestras often have something of a condescending air about them, as though the ivory tower might be only lowered and not altogether abandoned. But Phoenix’s approach to changing the experience has a distinctly different feeling to it, where there aren’t contrived attempts at attracting younger audiences with technology or “permission” to dress casually. Phoenix harkens, rather, to earlier practices where concerts were a chance for people to attend and enjoy without being asked to shift identity to some behaving set of ears. It was perhaps a subtle touch to have jazz playing as the audience filed in before this concert, subliminally encouraging attendees to follow smoky nightclub denizens’ lead and applaud a good solo or raucous tutti on the spot instead of after the piece is over. If it seems on the surface as though a program note that encourages someone to converse with neighbors might detract and distract from the experience, in practice, the opposite happened. When you are told to respond, you pay attention and respond, and thus you engage in an active and interested way. So, instead of getting less out of an evening like this, you leave having gotten significantly more. 

Phoenix has two more “big” concerts on the docket for this season, as well as smaller engagements around the Boston area. Go to them.

[classicmusic]

As a last item for Gesualdo before moving on to Saariaho for a bit, I thought it might be interesting to share a transcription of a madrigal by Pomponio Nenna, a composer who lived and worked in the court of Gesualdo. The scholarship on Nenna (primarily Watkins and entries in Grove, though Gustave Reese mentions him, as well) says that Nenna was a skilled composer who may have exercised some influence on Gesualdo, perhaps even teaching the prince at some point. The conclusion, however, is that whether Nenna influenced Gesualdo or vice versa, Gesualdo is inevitably the much more adventurous, and thus interesting, composer.

In any case, here is the original score for Nenna’s “Piccioletta farfalla” from the eighth book of madrigals for five voices. (This is a file put together of just this madrigal from IMSLP.) The sound file in this post is a midi version exported from Finale, but it gives you an idea of what’s going on in the score (this is a transcription I did some time ago). Follow along with the sound!

[classicmusic]

Slightly long and not slightly wandering, Huxley’s essay on Gesualdo, and more broadly on early music and the Italian madrigal, is a fascinating read. Huxley falls into some of the expected pitfalls of a man writing on early music in 1956, a time when early music had less popular currency than today and Gesualdo’s music was just gaining some. The author repeats some of the stories that have since been reviewed and dissected about Gesualdo’s whereabouts and biography, and Huxley also misses on some facts (e.g. omitting Vicentino’s name in a tangent on the archicembalo at Ferrara). But those things aside, it’s really quite interesting to read an educated lay perspective on early music at the time of its 20th century popularizing.

[classicmusic]

Schnittke’s Gesualdo

Among the small bevy of composers whose story and legend (true or not) is interesting enough to inspire an opera is Gesualdo. Here is Schnittke’s take on the composer-subject.

[classicmusic]

A bucket-list piece to experience in person, Georg Friedrich Haas’s String Quartet No. 3, which is performed in complete darkness. The piece ends with a string quartet version of a Gesualdo response for Holy Week.

Here are some words by Alex Ross in reference to this piece.

[classicmusic]

Brett Dean’s Carlo, which stretches Gesualdo quite far, introducing electronics into the mix. 

(via https://soundcloud.com/julius-bluthner/brett-dean-carlo-live?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=tumblr)

[classicmusic]

Peter Maxwell Davies takes Gesualdo’s very dark Tenebrae as his starting point with his own Tenebrae sopra Gesualdo from 1972. A very interesting work for small chamber ensemble and mezzo-soprano. This performance is by Fires of London (a group Davies conducted, including in this recording). Not as off-the-wall as the composers Mad King, but equally as intriguing. 

[classicmusic]

As a way of closing off our extended time with Gesualdo, I’ll take a (few) page(s) out of Glenn Watkins’s book, The Gesualdo Hex. Watkins includes a useful appendix that he calls “A Gesualdo Breviary,” essentially a list of pieces and musicians indebted to Gesualdo in some way. I’ll take only a few of these entries and post them here as a way of extending somewhat the conversation around Gesualdo we’re having here.

To begin, one of the pieces that is a focus of Watkins’s book: Stravinsky’s Monumentum pro Gesualdo, an orchestration of three of Gesualdo’s madrigals for chamber orchestra. The three madrigals are:

“Asciugate i begli occhi”

“Ma tu, cagion di quella”

“Beltà poi che t’assenti”

The last of these is particularly interesting to hear! There’s certainly some reminiscence of Webern’s Klangfarbenmelodie here, too.

This is a recording of the Columbia Symphony Orchestra with Stravinsky himself conducting.

[classicmusic]

Had a chance to see Pelléas et Mélisande in Florence today at the Opera di Firenze, conducted by the future Concertgebouw maestro, Daniele Gatti. Really a wonderful experience seeing this piece live, especially under such a capable baton. The direction by Daniele Abbado was equally fantastic, and a tribute to his late father stood in the lobby, perhaps somewhat serendipitous--at least for me--given Berlin's announcement this week. (Don't tell them I snuck a picture of the set at the beginning of a scene; the sets were really something to see, including one in which the tunnel-like stage had a tree suspended upstage!)

[classicmusic]

Happy birthday, Schumann!

Before the end of the day, to commemorate Schumann’s 205th birthday, give a listen to one of his greatest, but unfortunately less-known, works, the Geistervariationen. 

[classicmusic]

I wonder how a baseball stadium would respond to Stravinsky's version of the Star Spangled Banner?

[classicmusic]

Heinrich Biber’s “Battalia”

This piece is so wild.

[classicmusic]

Invoking Boulez

As part of our look at Gesualdo, I’ve been reading through Glenn Watkins’s The Gesualdo Hex (would recommend), part of which takes a look at parallels between the times and artistic goals of Gesualdo and Schoenberg as composers who pushed chromaticism to its farthest reaches. In considering the atmospheres surrounding Schoenberg’s various stylistic tendencies, Watkins touches on Pierre Boulez’s series of explorations with the Domaine Musical. A slightly long (but I think necessary in this length) excerpt from the chapter:

The necessity of review as escort to unfolding developments amongst the avant-garde was made clear on numerous fronts in the years immediately following Schoenberg’s death. Boulez, for example, overtly advertised an extraordinary historical awareness as early as January, February, and April 1954 with the opening series of programs by his newly formed Domain Musical. There he detailed a new perspective by specifying his wish “to establish three levels of activity.” His description of the first level must have stunned readers at the time and underscores the perceived role of early music as cohort of the avant-garde. It was to include works that had a perceived relevance for the present, specifically the isorhythmic motets of Guillaume de Machaut and Guillaume Dufay, the chromatic works of Gesualdo, and A Musical Offering by Johann Sebastian Bach for its formal qualities. The second educational level was to include contemporary works considered to be essential to the evolution of music, though still little known, such as the compositions of Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Edgard Varèse, Claude Debussy, and the New Viennese School. The third level was to be one “of research, or even, of discovery. This aims to place within the clearest possible historical perspective recent works by composers who are at least artistically honest.

The four concerts presented by Boulez between January and April 1954 followed the mixture prescribed above: the first opened with Bach’s A Musical Offering and continued with Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Webern and Stravinsky; the second began with Dufay followed by Schoenberg, Webern, Bartók, Messiaen, Monteverdi and Gesualdo. Boulez’s designation of the first category of composers as having “a particular relevance to our time” was especially revealing in that the categories of relevance were clearly spelled out: isorhythm (Machaut, Dufay), chromaticism (Gesualdo), and canon (Bach).

Good timing to have just read this right around the time that The Boston Globe’s David Weininger wrote about a new orchestra project in Boston called Phoenix Orchestra, which, according to its website, has and will continue to program a wide variety of music (”We play amazing music written for orchestra, it's really as simple as that. Beethoven, Gershwin, and Queen all wrote great music. Don’t be surprised to find a Radiohead transcription next to a Brahms symphony. There’s a lot of great music out there and we play it all.”), part of a goal to revitalize the classical music experience. Not too distant from Boulez’s intention to draw comparisons between older music that has a perceived relevance today. Phoenix’s most recent concert juxtaposed the Baroque master Heinrich Biber’s “Battalia à 10″ with Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony, No. 41 and Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella” Suite, and finally Judd Greenstein’s “Clearing, Dawn, Dance.” Whether Boulez’s intentions were slightly more academic than Phoenix’s is less significant than that, in efforts to program interesting and enlivening concerts, the products of the search have come back to manifest similarly to fifty-ish years ago. And Phoenix is not the only group programming along these lines; New Haven-based Cantata Profana recently played a concert that included more contemporary music alongside earlier music, Gesualdo acting as an impetus for at least some of the musical choices.

It’s exciting to see programming like this, and the less cynical part of me believes that putting Schoenberg on the program with Mozart or Bach makes more sense than an economic decision by organizations to fill seats. Let’s keep having this conversation; it’s interesting!