Some things are ubiquitous. I don't think anyone can remember the first time they heard Bach or Beethoven. There music has just always been there.
Other types of music may require introduction. I never listened to opera until I heard Die Walküre. I'd been devouring Strauss's tone poems for six months, at that point. I had read about Wagner's influence, so I decided to see for myself. There was no looking back. Die Walküre was my first love of opera. The first love is that piece that opens a new world for you; it ends up not just standing alone, but standing for a whole genre.
Before Berg's Violin Concerto, I never listened to 12-tone music. I found Mozart boring until I heard K491. I didn't listen to lieder before Dichterliebe.
And that huge gap between chant and Palestrina? My first love of medieval polyphony was the rondeau "Rose, liz, printemps, verdure," by Guillaume de Machaut, featured in the Norton Anthology of Music. Before long, the rest of the pieces of late Medieval and early Renaissance music fell into place.
This was on my mind as I listened to the finale of Reece Dano's piece C#DG#BEC#G#F#D#ECD# (Pierre Boulez is Dead) on cacaphonous. It is, in effect, a transcription of the Rondeau for string quartet. I don't mind transcriptions and arrangments. (One of these days, I'm going to take a look at four very different Bach orchestrations from the 20th century.) However, taking a transcription of a Medieval rondeau and calling it Pierre Boulez is dead just made me angry. I'd like to give the piece the benefit of the doubt, as I haven't heard the first three movements (described an the ensemble's web page), but it's hard to get excited about this finale.
5 comments:
Not fair! Don't judge a piece of music by its title, Danny. I'm sure you wouldn't be so mad if you got to hear "Pierre Boulez is Dead" live, narrated, and in its entirety.
--And it ain't no transcription, either. Did you check out those inner cadences? Crazy! :)
I'd love to hear the rest of my piece. As I said, based on what I heard, I just have a hard time getting excited. (Based on the recording, the changes to the harmonies didn't seem all that significant. You obviously know a lot better than I do.) If you have a recording of the whole thing, please send it along. My e-mail address is djliss at gmail.
The title isn't what got me riled up. (Though I do worry that maybe some poor soul might stumble across your piece and be saddened, or perhaps overjoyed at the Maestro's hypothetical passing.) If you'd called it "Quartet No. 6," I would have had exactly the same reaction.
I suppose if I were a huge Bach chorale/cantata junkie, I may have had the same reaction to Berg's violin concerto. You're going to have a very hard time selling me on a piece based on this particular Machaut rondeau.
Incidentally, I forgot to include this in the post (which really was more focused on the idea of the first love), but I did enjoy the Paganini piece.
Danny
When I was a very small child, the Scherzo from Beethoven's Ninth was the theme music for the Huntley Brinckley Report news program. Hearing that piece then is literally the earliest memory I have. Needless to say, I loved it and was mezmorized by it. So...
Well, thanks for the Paganini comment. I should also mention that I'm obsessed with the Mauchaut rondeau. I troped the lyrics out in a choral arrangement, too.
Even though we have no idea how the rondeau sounded in actual performance practice in Mauchaut's era, it's interesting to realize how an arrangement of melodies can affect us so well in our own era. I'm a person who tends to believe that the success of a piece of music is dependent upon the social context surrounding the person who is experiencing it, and not the inherent qualities supposedly divined in the music itself. But sometimes this rondeau makes me wonder otherwise.
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