Serving the Public Good Indeed

Apparently, those of you in Wisconsin are being subjected to Rachel Portman's Little Prince opera tomorrow.

Once upon a time, they showed full performances of real operas and orchestral concerts routinely on PBS stations. Now they show this drivel, Andre Rieu, and the Vienna New Years Concert, and say, "Look at us, we broadcast culture!"

While last year's slate of broadcasts from the Met looked promising, in execution, they were scheduled at odd hours, and didn't live up to the press releases.

At least the radio portion of WGBH holds up its side of the bargain. I was astonished, on a recent visit to LA, to hear what KUSC deems radio-worthy. If I'd been there longer than 6 days, I have no doubt I would have heard every Mozart piano concerto, but nothing from outside "the box."

How Pathethique!

This is the second post in my series of CD's selected through arbitrary-number generation. I'd like to add a note about my method of cataloguing CD's before diving into the Furtwängler. I arrange everything chronologically by composer. Ideally, I'd prefer a way to have them in strict chronological order of when the piece was composed, but that would prove overwhelming. While composers with very long careers like Liszt (I have pieces from 1833 through 1881) or Bach (1705 through 1750) cause trouble, I think this is the best compromise. When I list the previous recording of Carmina Burana as 571 and the CD discussed below as 452, I'm simply referring to the line on the speadsheet that the disc currently occupies.

Last time around, I attacked Carmina Burana for its poor form and minimal counterpoint. Naturally, when faced with Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony, I'm going to criticize Tchaikovsky as an overrated, all-melody composer, right?

What I like about Furtwängler's 1938 recording is the way he emphasizes the form. The individual movements may not be groundbreaking in its use of sonata form, but he really brings out the dramatic development with his tempi. I'll admit I'm a sucker for Furtwängler's erratic tempo changes, but they are very effective in this piece. In the first and second movements, for example, he suddenly slows the tempo at a formally important moment, and then gradually accelerates back to the original speed. In addition to providing the piece with a very clear trajectory, it also draws attention to the sections that repeat and the sections that don't.

The third movement will always be a thorn in the sides of people opposed to inter-movement clapping. It's also a really dramatic example of why it matters: the fourth movement is the dramatic heart and soul of the symphony. It should follow the thrilling conlusion of the third movement as quickly as humanly possible. The tension is supposed to be built up and not released; the applause releases it and really hurts the finale.

The fourth movement seems like a piece written just for Furtwängler's talents. What impresses me most about this recording is the way he relaxes the tempo after the climax, bringing out the pathos that gives the piece its nickname. It fades away into imperceptable silence, until a note suddenly grows -- and like that, we're into the Prelude of Tristan und Isolde.

I don't have much to say about this particular recording of the Prelude and so-called Liebestod. (If you count full recordings of the opera, I have more recordings of the pair than any other piece. Furthermore, 4 of my 6 recordings were conducted by Furtwängler.) Instead, I want to raise a question:

Why isn't the concert ending of the prelude ever performed? I realize that the opera's finale makes a nice companion piece, but the concert ending serves to wrap it up nicely in one continuous movement. As far as I know, it hasn't been performed in well over a hundred years and never recorded (although if you know of a recording, please let me know). It's good in its own right and deserves a little exposure.


Next on the docket: #232, Clavier-book for Anna Magdalena Bach on Hännsler

Fortune plango vulnera...

I've decided to start a series of posts discussing music in my collection based on an arbitrary-number generator. (If random-number generation is truly possible, the fact that I don't have exactly 1000 CD's blunts the randomness.) It's either quite ironic or quite fitting that the first disc selected via this method is number 571 -- Carmina Burana, a piece that I have very little desire to write about.

The Hickox/LSO recording (in a previous release on Fidelio) was among my first classical CD's, purchased at the Berkshire Record Outlet in my early teens. I loved it for some common, if immature reasons. It was loud and dissonant. The texts were funny, and treated sex and drunkenness. But mainly, it was loud and dissonant. (Boy did the final three movements pack a wallop -- you go from the insane Soprano range of "Dulcissime" to the loud brass/chorus of "Blanziflor et Helena" to the recapitulation of "O Fortuna.")

As I grew older, though, I started having second thoughts. As I studied music theory and became infatuated with Beethoven and Bach, form and counterpoint became more and more important to me. You can spend a lot of time buried in the score and fail to find much in the way of either. The form is predominantly strophic songs. The most common texture is unison or parallel blocks of intervals or chords. There's plenty of novel orchestration, but relatively little else of interest.

In time, I grew to view it as a piece in which nothing happens, for all its noise. (In the interest of fairness, I should note that I never tired of the "Olim lacus colueram" movement, concerning the swan roasting on the spit. I'd rate this among the funniest moments in musical history. That means that I enjoy under four of the piece's sixty or so minutes.) To me, it was another top-40 hit with little of value or harm. Then I discovered something troubling.

In many ways, the simple textures are meant to suggest a return to the ideals of Medieval music. However, in 1930's Germany, such an idea can actually be quite troubling. If Carmina Burana is to represent a more pure, earlier ideal of Germanic music, then it can be seen as a musical representation of Aryan ideals. It's a music that is without influence from inferior kinds of music, freed from the Italian foundation of German Baroque music. It's one thing to flag Wagner's music as representing proto-Nazi ideals; this was written the year of Germany occupied the Rhineland. This implication, that Carmina Burana is essentially Nazi propaganda, certainly can temper one's enjoyment. (It doesn't disqualify it outright; however, it should be in the canon of "problem works" of art that represent a view that is now seen as unacceptable due to bigotry. Just as productions of The Merchant of Venice invariably involve discussion of anti-Semitism or screenings of Triumph des Willens acknowledge the techniques Reifenstahl used to make the Nuremberg Rally so impressive, I feel that performances of Carmina Burana should highlight this less palatable aspect.)

A couple of weeks ago, in this space, I offered a reassessment of one of those other much-maligned top-4o hits: Pachelbel's canon. Can I offer any sort of positive reassessment Carmina Burana?

First a digression: the medieval poems that Orff selected are brilliant. The rhetorical delights of In taberna quando sumus, for example doesn't really translate to English, but is clear enough in the Latin.

But the subject at hand is really the music. The natural question arises: how can I enjoy Glass's Two Pages or Reich's Piano Phase, yet argue that nothing happens in Carmina Burana? While I could argue that a lot more happens in those austerely minimalist pieces (albeit very slowly) than in Carmina, I won't. The point stands, though, that we can't compare Orff's music to Bach's and Beethoven's, as he was consciously trying to use a neo-medieval style. As much as I'm trying, however, I can't defend this piece of music (which greatly pales in comparison to contemporary pieces like Schoenberg's 4th string quartet or Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta).

Next up: #452, Tchaikovsky's Pathetique Symphony, conducted by Furtwangler on Naxos Historical

Opera, Take 1 - Ironic conducting

Lately, through my chronological survey of the 19th century, I've been listening to Tannhauser and La Traviata. When I studied conducting in college, La Traviata was one of my great frustrations. One of our early assignments was the prelude to Tristan, a piece that I own 6 recordings of; that I'd owned in score and reduction for several years; that I'd learned on the piano; and that I'd studied every measure of in theory class. I've even studied the never heard and largely unknown concert ending. And yet, I struggled mightily with it when I took up the baton. I know it's a maddeningly difficult score, but after weeks of practicing, I felt like I was getting nowhere.

So when I was assigned Violetta's first act arias from La Traviata, which I'd never encountered before, and which I don't really care for, I was a bit disappointed to discover that, in the words of my teacher, I had an aptitude for it. Funny how that works -- of all the different pieces I'd studied over my semesters of conducting, I was best at the piece I cared about least. I put effort into trying to like early and middle Verdi, but I never get anywhere. If anything, I resent Verdi after my experience in conducting class.





I also just watched Boris Goudonov on DVD. Somehow, I never noticed how much Gershwin owes Mossourgsky before.

Schubert hurts his own cause

Schubert wrote too much music for his own good.

As I work, I'm cycling through all my music from the 19th century in chronological order. I hit the year 1822 this week, and with it Schubert's b minor symphony D 759. I've just been listening to Beethoven's late piano sonatas and Die Freischütz. The Diabelli Variations and Dichterliebe are in deck.

As I listened, I couldn't help myself. I started laughing. Measures 36-44 are the culprit. The first theme ends with a forceful cadence -- a syncopated, tutti dominant 7th chord returning to the b-minor sforzando chord. But the third hangs on -- the d is sustained by the horns and bassoons. The d quickly turns into a cadence in G(?), and like that, we're on into the melodic theme (nevermind that it's in the wrong key). That's a grand total of four measures of transition between themes, three of which are a unison pedal d.

That's a pretty typical Schubert move in his instrumental music. (With a few direct substitutions, we could be talking about the "Great" C-major symphony, for example.) It's astounding when you compare it to what Beethoven was writing at the same time in the same place.

If Schubert had only written his 700 lieder, his reputation would be secure. Individual songs like Erlkönig and Gretchen am Spinnrade are in the discussion of the greatest songs ever written, Winterreise and Schwannengesang are masterpieces, and there are so many great songs in between. There's no doubt of his mastery as a composer of short forms; however, he treated long forms the same. Just take one idea, through two or four measures of modulation in there, do another idea, and call it a symphony or a quartet.

Perhaps Schubert's spot in history is this -- no other one composer ever wrote so much great music and so much terrible music.

The Deep of Night and the Sunrise

Greg Sandow, in his post on Art and Entertainment, threw in this little cookie:

In Götterdämmerung, the scene for Hagen and Alberich is a comparative low ebb, given Wagner’s standard, for both art and entertainment, but Hagen’s call to the vassals rates high on both counts.

I was really taken aback by that. My immediate reaction was that this scene has one of my favorite moments in the entire ring cycle, how can he dismiss it so? (In fact, the binding of my score of Götterdämmerung is cracked at that scene.) After all, this scene is the one moment of sympathy that Hagen gets. If Alberich were your father, and he pestered you for your entire life about the ring, you'd be evil too. (Alberich really pounds it away, using the phrase "mein Sohn" seven times in a relatively short scene.) Not only that, but Alberich insists to his son "Sei treu!" repeatedly as he fades away. (That isn't entertaining?)

The real high-point, though, for me is at the end of the scene -- the Morgendämmerung music in the transition to scene two. It opens with a bass clarinet solo (against a cello pedal), followed by a horn choir. When I first learned about imitative counterpoint in high school, I nominated this canon for closer study. What makes it so interesting is that Wagner is able to use some tricks to make it seem much longer than it really is. He uses fake entrances to create the illusion of a 7-part canon, even though the strictly canonic part had already ended by the final entrance. Even though the true canon is very brief, what follows is still a great example of tight-knight counterpoint.

Overall, the piece is very short -- just 50 measures -- and comes across as chamber music because of the severly reduced texture (at least until the end, when the low strings get into the game). This moment of stillness really is one of the hidden gems of the ring.








As a side note, I never noticed the (incidental) pun on the Well-Sung pair's name until I saw "Wälsung" in print in the score. I feel quite a bit behind the curve on that one, as everybody else has been talking about their name since before I even read their blog. (Evidently, they mentioned it as far back as November 5.)

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.

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.

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.