Behind the Great Firewall

I did something rare and difficult: I got my blog read in China (at least by one person). (See the proof here.) My friend Rena helped me gather some of the photos of some of the ugly Chinese sculptures, so I wanted her to see those entries. She's very intellegent and very open-minded (which is a rare quality in the people I met over there, so I feel like I actually can discuss things with her.

She pointed out two sculptures in Tiananmen Square, which have very famous within China. Of the first, Rena writes, "but that soldier sculptures are considered as one of the greatest sculptures after 1949 P.R. China set up in the text book." (Forgive her English, which, all things being equal, is actually very strong, though far from perfect.) As an outsider, it's hard to be enthusiastic about what is actually a pretty straightforward piece of propaganda, all content and no form. Yes, we get it, the communists were heroic and saved China. I don't really take anything from this sculpture, though, as art. There is a more interesting sculpture, across the street in front of Tiananmen proper. It is a marble pillar [华表], traditionally placed in front of palaces and tombs. When I reacted positively to the pillar, Rena had an interesting reaction:

I know foreigners always think these traditional things are much chinese. China is supposed to be like Xi'an
China should be full of old buildings with wing roofs

She raises an interesting question: to what extent is it possible to retain a Chinese identity without just repeating the past again and again? Is it possible to incorporate Western ideas while still being Chinese?

This is actually a much greater issue, which has played out repeatedly throughout the history of music. American composers faced the same struggles with the influences of European music. Conventional wisdom has it that it wasn't until the turn of the 20th century that Charles Ives solved that problem (though I think people don't give William Billings full credit). Russia had its own conflict in the second half of the nineteenth century. (For that matter, look at the wave of nationalistic composers who felt compelled to assert their own countries' musical autonomies throughout the century.)

The problem is particularly strong in China, however, because of its history. From the end of the nineteenth through the first half of the twentieth century, there was a strong foreign presence in certain areas. Suddenly, after the revolution, that ended. The next twenty five years featured strict isolation, until foreign influences were gradually allowed again. The result is a country that today is still struggling to find a voice. (I'm glossing over a lot of issues for the sake of length, although those may come up in future posts.)

It's encouraging to talk to Rena and know that she struggles with these questions, as a young citizen of the country. It's not just up to the artists to find an identity.

WCRB

I was listening to WCRB in the car this evening. Something pretty strange happened. After the first movement of the fifth Brandenburg Concerto, they played a very unexpected piece -- the second movement of the concerto. Maybe the third movement followed, but by then I had arrived at my destination.

Yes, the demise of WCRB will be a little sad, as Boston should have a full-time classical music station, but the peope lamenting its impending format change as part of the death of classical music are missing part the point. In its current format, WCRB is hardly friendly to classical music. It's not just that the station only plays a very small selection of music, pretty much excluding anything written before 1700 or after 1900. It isn't even their terrible habit of playing just one movement from a piece.

WCRB's real problem is that it has a very negative attitude about the music it plays. Again and again and again, they talk about "relaxing" classical music. (Even to bizarre effect -- I remember one time several years ago when the relaxing piece the host was plugging turned out to be Beethoven's 5th.) In CRB's world, classical musc isn't something that is supposed to engage the mind; it is supposed to turn the mind off.

I think if WCRB respected its listeners a little more, maybe it would be doing a little better. Instead, it tries to cultivate brain-dead listeners by making classical music into a brain-dead product.

Addendum:

Today, WGBH pulled a CRB-style move, and played just the Adagietto from Mahler's 5th. (I didn't believe my ears until their website confirmed it.) But I'm much more willing to cut them some slack -- they have an interesting and eclectic playlist, and don't treat their audience like idiots.

-12/30/05, 22:11

The Art of the Public Square

My first day in Jinan, as my roommate took me on a tour of the city, he pointed out the large blue sculpture in the center of Quancheng Square. "All Chinese cities have them," he told me. The sculpture is a little bizarre, to say the least: two blue posts, seemingly made of fiberglass, which twist around a metallic globe in the center. In some ways, it's an exemplary giant Chinese public square sculpture. Based on just this picture, it isn't entirely clear what it is, or what it is meant to represent (other than Jinan's greatness that the city could build such a monument to itself). Although some of these sculptures are truly abstract, they tend to be abstractions of the square they sit in. But how do you represent a public square? In Jinan's case, it's pretty easy. 泉城广场 means "City of Springs Square," after one of Jinan's old names. Accordingly, you color the sculpture blue and show its components gushing from the ground to represent a spring. (Just try to ignore the fact that all but twelve of Jinan's 200 springs were paved over to build this square and its surrounding areas. Who needs a natural heritage when you have sculptures?)

Most public squares in China, though, don't have names as evocative as "City of Springs." How do you depict Civilization Square, for example? The solution used in this sculpture in Jiangyin, a small city in Jiangsu Province on the southern banks of the Yangtzi River, is to depict the word civilization itself. The Chinese word -- 文明 -- has two components. The 文 is unmistakable. （I'm not certain of this, but I believe that the version shown in the picture is in Chinese seal script.) 明 itself consists of two different characters: 日, meaning sun, and 月, meaning moon. Furthermore, texts in Chinese are traditionally can be written top to bottom. This sculpture is just the name of the square written large. (It is also a fitting sentiment for the front of the city government building. Google images has some other photos that give a good sense of its placement.)

Not all the sculptures are able to make such a connection, however. Dalian's Zhongshan Square, named after Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the founder of modern China, chooses a glowing orb as its centerpiece. The round sculpture is fitting for the center of Dalian's giant rotary at the center of the city. As you can see, at night, it lights up the square around it. (Or, at least the center of the square -- the edges of the square are lit up by the adjacent billboards and buildings.) However, it's hard to get excited about a sculpture whose chief influence is Epcot Center.

Strange as it may sound, these are some of the normal ones. Consider the People's Square in Qinhuangdao. Legend has it, the great emporer Qin Shihuang went there seeking immortality. It is also the the point where the Great Wall reaches the sea. (More recently, it is the largest port in Hebei province since Tianjin left to become an independent municipality.) The square doesn't choose to explore the city's history, though, and the result is a very forgettable sculpture. There is little to distinguish it from its counterpart in People's Square in Linyi, a small city in southeastern Shandong Province. The Mayor of Linyi boasts of the city's heritage as the home of ancient manuscripts of Sun Tsu's Art of War and great figures from China's history. (Notice how the sculpture is used as the web sites icon -- they are choosing it to be the symbol for the city.)

What's the difference between these sculptures, though? They share the same Chinese red color, the same tripod structure, and the same jagged edges. An argument could be made that Qinhuangdao's version focuses itself inward, whereas Linyi's pushes outward, but that's a bit of a stretch. There is nothing to connect one to Qinhuangdao and the other to Linyi -- they could easily be swapped, and the cities would be no better or worse for it.

These sculptures are a uniqely Chinese phenomenon. I'd like to conclude with a picture of the mother of them all: the earliest such sculpture. This one is made of iron, in the far western city of Bali [巴黎, not to be confused with Bali in Indonesia]:


(See also photo supplement)

Public Square Sculptures Supplement

Suzhou

Shantou

Location unkown

Lihu

Qingyuan

Changchun

Qingdao

Tianjin

Maestro Levine

Scott Simon has a nice story on James Levine.

It's a matter of pride that in this Mozart year, the BSO is choosing to focus on Beethoven and Schoenberg. Also, anyone who can get Schoenberg, Carter, Varese, Wourinen, and the like on WCRB is truly a hero in the field.

Gift-giving Dilemma

My grandmother's birthday is on Boxing Day. My family gave me a mandate for her birthday present: find $50 worth of Mahler CD's. My initial reaction was to get her 1, 2, 5, and 9. 2 is my favorite at the moment, 9 is so profound, and 1 and 5 are so famous, how could I go wrong with those? Looking through the 9's, I came across this recording, paired with two pieces by Pierre Boulez. I think Notations is a real knock-out piece (I found the old Erato recording at For the Record used some years back), but can I really get it for my grandmother?

Yes, I'm an unashamed evangelist of great music. I would love it if everyone would give Boulez the chance his music deserves (and think that a lot more people would find they actually like it if they just listened to it with their ears open).

But can I really get some Boulez for my grandmother? I'm already getting her Mahler, so she does listen outside of the tightly confined 1700-1900 WCRB box. Am I such a partisan that I will get my grandmother Notations for her 85th birthday?

The answer is no. I ended up picking out some nice recordings conducted by Bernstein, because she probably fell in love with his recordings forty years ago. I guess there are some lines even I won't cross.

Poieticism and Gnarlyism

Over at Sequenza 21, they're having very interesting debates on the poietic fallacy fallacy and gnarlyism.

The basic idea is that no composers write music thinking that won't touch their audience. This raises all sorts of questions, many of which have to do with so-called "gnarly" composers, i.e., the high modernists.

It made me think of a juicy quotation from a composer who actually didn't write music to touch his audience. Why not? Because to him, music wasn't capable of doing so:

I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc.

Which gnarlyist said that? Was that from the grandfather of them all, Schoenberg? Or did the most partisan serialist, Pierre Boulez say that? Babbit? Wournien? Rochberg?

None of them. In fact, it was said by the opposite camp: Igor Stravinsky.

It puts the whole debate in a very different perspective, doesn't it?

The saddest thing is that this same Stravinsky who isn't out to move his audience has somehow remained popular, while the "gnarlyists" are only now making inroads with the public. We always love those who hate us.

Christmas Music at Tower Records

I wonder how sales of El Niño would be impacted if it were re-packaged as "A Minimalist Christmas."

Beethoven as Traditionalist?

Jeremy Denk has a thoughtful (as usual) post on whether Beethoven and Bach actually wrote against their historic type (of Beethoven as revolutionary, Bach as reactionary). I recommend reading it for yourself.

It made me think of something I've been meaning to write about: One of my uneasy secrets is that I can't stand Op. 111. I always feel extremely uncomfortable after listening to it, precisely because it wanders so far afield, without any real resolution. It's not that I need music to resolve neatly in order to like it. But Op. 111 just disintegrates, until nothing is left. Making things even more uncomfortable is the fact that this is the last of Beethoven's 32 sonatas, so there is an expectation that it somehow is a completion or summation of what comes before it. Not only does it not complete anything; it even undoes the previous sonatas.

Ultimately, there is a happy ending, however. It just takes some liberal classification. The Diabelli Variations, in all their massive glory, is the perfect medicine -- an epilogue for anyone who wants to take the sonatas as some sort of massive life-long cycle.

Miracle of the Modern Age

I have to admit: I was much happier before I found out I could acquire a theremin so easily.

(Though why blow hundreds when you could blow thousands?)

NAMOC

One of the most interesting museums I visited in China was the National Art Museum of China (or NAMOC for short) [中国美术馆]. It offers a look at the last century of Chinese art. Needless to say, the twentieth century in China was one of great upheaval. That is reflected in the art.

Yi Ming's [佚名] painting from 1928, is a good example of early Republican era art. In some ways it is two things at once -- it both fits in the tradition Chinese landscape painting and betrays European influences. Instead of the sparse Chinese textures, it is a full-scale oil painting. (The museum labels it as 仕 女肖像, which means "Portrait of Female Official." That is obviously not correct. You can see the actual female official here.)

As the civil war between the KMT and the CCP heated up, political themes became more common. The struggles got worse with the invasion of Japan in 1937. "The Call of July 7" [“七七”的号角], painted by Tang Yihe [唐一禾] in 1940, depicts Chinese citizens marching to rebuff the Japanese. (This painting is very tame, actually. Take a look at the other paintings from the 1940's, which depict fighting, evacuations, and hunger.) The war, which didn't end until Japan surrendered to the US in 1945, is still a very current issue in Sino-Japanese relations. (It even has currency in the arts -- Bright Sheng, a Chinese composer now living in Michigan, wrote Nanking! Nanking!, a concerto about the Japanese occupation of Nanjing, in 1999.)

After Mao declared the People's Republic in 1949, the tone of the paintings changed decidedly.
There was a resurgence of traditional style painting, consistent with the communist ideology's cultural isolation. Naturally, there was also a surge in propaganda painting. The bucolic scene seems harmless enough, until you examine the iconography. Those peasant women, smiling as they plow the fields, are in traditional Tibetan dress. They are pleased because the enlightened Chinese occupying army has freed them from their own self rule. The painting's title? The First Step on the Golden Road [初踏黄金路]. Li Huanmin [ 李焕民] painted it in 1963, eleven years after Tibet was "liberated."

Not all Chinese propoganda art is this cruel, however. Portraits of Mao were naturally quite popular, depicting him as a friend, a sage, an older brother, and, of course, as a wise leader. (These paintings still have currency in China today. Somehow, Mao has avoided the re-examination that brought Hitler and Stalin out of favor after they died.) My favorite of these is Sun Zixi's [孙滋溪] In Front of Tiananmen [前天安门], depicting a cross-section of Chinese citizens posing in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, China's national symbol. (The gate is across the street from Tiananmen Square, which has become infamous outside of China after the 1989 incident.) The scene is one that is repeated hundreds (if not thousands) of times every day, as people from all over the country flock to see the monument that has been at the center of Chinese life for 500 years. In this painting, soldiers, officials, and peasants all stand together, along with people representing several of China's ethnic minorities. This is classical propoganda, showing the ideal society that communism (and Mao) have brought.

The repressive Cultural Revolution years are conspicuously absent from the museum. The revolution sought to eliminate old customs, old habits, old thinking, and old culture. (That was communism at its worst.) Things started to open up then, however. Nixon visited and Deng Xiaoping instituted reforms, and Western influences returned to Chinese painting. There is little to suggest that this nude figure is a Chinese painting, or was painted in 1980. Jin Shangyi [靳尚谊] seems influenced by a classical Western sense of beauty. Likewise, Wei Qimei's [韦启美] New Wires [新 线 ] seems almost abstract (even though it depicts something very concrete -- large spools of electircal wire demonstrating China's modernization). The texture of the paint almost takes over from the images on the canvas.

I'm going to artificially stop this brief survey at 1983. At some point, I'll pick things back up and include a look at Shanghai's gallery, which has a better collection of contemporary art. Also planned is a look at contemporary Chinese classical music, which shares a similar trajectory as painting. Finally, I'll be doing the first assessment of an important genre of modern Chinese sculpture: the art of the Chinese public square.

For more on painting, check out the on-line collections of the National Art Museum of China and the Shanghai Art Museum. Don't be intimidated by the Chinese writing; just click around on things and have fun.

Good Composer Gone Bad

In college, I studied Liszt's tone poem Mazeppa. I'm not talking about the Transcendental Etude, which is find. When he tried to extend it by ten minutes, however, and orchestrated it, it fell flat. I have never been able to listen to it without laughing -- at the clunkiness of the form, the poor over-worked horse galloping through the strings, the pathetic sighs when the winds take the melody over from the brass (for that matter, the melody itself, with that high e that gets me every time), and the dead stop before the sudden, inexplicably happy ending.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love Liszt. His sonata is a masterpiece, I listen to his transcription of the Tannhauser overture more often than I listen to Wagner's original, and I'm a fan of the Faust Symphony.

But Mazeppa is just a dreadful piece. Yet, it's recorded again and again. (Tower Records online has 14 recordings of the orchestral version.)

There's so much great music out there that hasn't been recorded, or not enough. Why anyone wastes their time on Mazeppa is beyond me.

A Dam Strange Symphony

When the Chinese government displaces millions of people and submerges one of its great natural wonders to build a giant dam, what's a composer to do?

Glorify it through a symphony.

Liu Yuan's [刘湲] Echo from the Three Gorges depicts the massive construction project now going on up the Yangtze River from Chongqing. It is the latest result of his collaboration with the Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra (read in English or Chinese). Don't get me wrong; I think the orchestra's heavy emphasis on contemporary Chinese composers is a good thing (as it should be). Very few composers in China have achieved international fame of any level (Tan Dun being the most famous by far). However, it's hard to make much sense of this piece.

I searched around a bit for Liu's music, and was able to drum up a piece called Shadier's Legend [沙迪尔传奇], played by the Traditional Music Orchestra at Renmin University, conducted by Yang Chunlin. Shadier is a Uighur peasant who inspired people to struggle through his song. He was killed by his enemies. Can you believe that the same composer who chronicles the life and death of a hero who struggled against an oppresive government is writing about the miracle of a terrible construction project?










(When is the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority to announce the BSO is premiering the Big Dig symphony next season?)

Loud and Ruffled

It's coming. Next month, the new movie "Tristan and Isold(e)" opens in the US. (Watch the trailer at here.)

It's never too early to starting raising these questions:

Where is Morholt? Even though he isn't around for long, he is vital to the story. If Tristan doesn't kill Isold(e)'s kin, and she doesn't accordingly hate him, then why do you need the potion? Does that mean we don't get to meet Tantris? Where is Isold(e) of the White Hands?

The movie's music was composed by Anne Dudley. What's next for her? A movie about Don Juan? An adaptation of Henri Murger's Scenes from the Bohemian Life? ETA Hoffman?

Why spell Isolde the German way if you're going to pronounce it the English way? (Though, in this day and age, maybe I should just be relieved she isn't iSolde.)


The movie's tagline gives reason to reflect. "Before there were Romeo and Juliet," it tells us. For people interested in opera or medieval literature, it's sometimes hard to remember how little currency the story actually has these days. Look at Dante's description in Canto V (in Allen Mandelbaum's translation):

"She is Semiramis, of whom we read
that she was Ninus' wife and his successor:
she held the land the Sultan now commands.
That other spirit [i.e., Dido] killed herself for love,
and she betrayed the ashes of Sychaeus;
the wanton Cleopatra follows next.
See Helen, for whose sake so many years
of evil had to pass; see the great Achilles,
who finally met love--in his battle.
See Paris, Tristan..."
V.58-67

This who's-who of classical lovers has just one person whose legend is remotely Dante's contemporary: of course, it's our boy Tristan. Would a modern-day Dante, when thinking of famous lovers, put Tristan high on the list? Probably not. On the other hand, it's impossible not to know about Romeo and Juliet. (Look up both Tristan and Romeo in the dictionary. Once Tristan held the same general meaning that Romeo now occupies.)

I suppose that's the one good thing this movie can do: it can put Tristan back on the map, so to speak. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but perhaps a few people out there will decide to pick up a copy of Gottfried von Strassburg or a record of Wagner's opera.



By way of epilogue: I wonder how I would have reacted had I been in Munich in the summer of 1865. Would I be asking questions about where Isolde of the White Hands was still? I'd like to think that I would have been enchanted by the Tristan chord and all its delights and ambiguities, but I suppose it's impossible to say.

Eu.phono.us

Cacaphonous, after a proposal by Jeff at beepSNORT.

Open your Mind, but Close your Ears

It's difficult to live any time in China without amassing a giant DVD collection, which necessarily inlcudes some less than, shall we say, mediocre movies. Somewhere along the line, I acquired a copy of "Mona Lisa Smile." (I had my reasons.)

The year was 1953. A visionary teacher opened new worlds to her students. In one scene, she opens a crate to unveil something truly special -- a brand new painting by Jackson Pollock. "Look beyond the paint," she says. "Let us try to open our minds to a new idea."

The late 40's and early 50's was a very productive time in American classical music. Elliott Carter, John Cage, Milton Babbitt, Paul Hindemith, Roger Sessions, and Conlon Nancarrow were all active then, to name a few.

So, what new ideas (albeit from the 50's) do they embrace on the soundtrack of this scene? None. Standard issue neo-romantic movie soundtrack drivel by Rachel Portman (the composer behind that Little Prince opera).

So, we should open our minds to new ideas in visual art, but should keep our minds closed to music?

I watched the scene again, with the sound muted and "Music of Changes," which dates from 1951, playing on the stereo. Suddenly, the conceit was much less cheesy, and the sequence was in synch with its theme. Maybe some eyes would have been opened, instead of rolled.

However, I'm holding a movie that seeks to expose sexism in the 1950's to far too high a standard.

Concerning Classification Tags

I've made the classification tags as broad as possible to avoid making them part of any taxonomic statement. While my catalogue runs from Antiquity to Post-War, I don't think that level of detail is useful in this context. Thus, I'm using a division of music history into three parts.

The Box is defined by commercial radio and other for-profit classical organizations. It runs roughly from 1700-1900, and covers the top 40 popular classics of the high baroque, classical, and romantic periods. Everything before that is Early Music; everything after is New Music. I just hope I never write anything about "Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini," which is firmly in the box despite its date of 1934.

I detest the term "World Music," so I use it grudgingly, for the sake of concision, to refer to classical and folk music traditions outside the European/American Western Classical Music tradition.

Incipit vita nova

Dal mio Pernesso amato a voi ne vengo,
Incliti eroi, sangue gentil de regi,
Di cui narra la Fama eccelsi pregi,
Ne giunge al ver perch'e alto il segno.

Senior year of high school, my music theory special topics teacher gave me a long list of music to listen to. I listened to the two excerpts featured in the Norton Antholog of Western Music: La Musica's prologue and Orfeo's aria "Tu se morte." I was unimpressed; the only note I wrote was "Same ritornello every time." (Funny that a ritornello should be repeated.) At that point, I was more interested in dense Wagner scores than baroque opera.

Freshman year of college, I studied Monteverdi again, in the context of a class on Baroque music. Still hated him. Mostly. However, he was starting to infect me. By the next year, it was too late. I couldn't deny it any more. I loved Monteverdi.

Years later, I moved to China for a year, and had a chance to learn about Chinese classical music. I discovered one of the interesting qurks of history: L'Orfeo, the first great European opera, was written 9 years after the greatest Chinese opera, 牡丹亭 (The Dream of the Peony Pavillion). The stories are remarkably similar. Both involve a man who brings his lover back to life. Orpheus uses his legendary songs to win over Pluto, only to lose her when he thinks she has left him for one moment. Tang Xianzu tells a classic Chinese tale, of lovers who meet in a dream. She dies of grief, realizing that she will never meet him. Three years later, he sees a portrait of her, and cries out; his cries bring her back from the dead.

Across the world from each other, Tang and Monteverdi couldn't have conceived that they were writing their own cultures' versions of the same story in the same decade.

These are the connections I want to explore. All classical music is fair game, from a Sumerian hymn written four thousand years ago to the music still being written. It has become conventional wisdom of late that classical music is somehow dying. I'm not interested in classical music's death. Instead, I'm looking for the song of Orpheus, or cry of Liu, that will give classical music new life.