Dinosaur Annex's Super Sunday

The good thing about the Patriots' stunning loss last week:

It removed the major obstacle to attending Dinosaur Annex's Young Composer's Festival. The concert will feature music by Mason Bates, Richard Whalley, Derek Jacoby (not to be confused with Sir Derek Jacoby), MissyMazzoli, Sergei Tcherepnin, and Sarah Kirkland Snider. As far as I can tell from the biographies, these young composers seem to be in the under 35 age bracket, rather than the under 50 that passes for young in the field today. The 7:00 concert at First Church on Marlborough St caps a full weekend of events.

This won't be the first Super Sunday Dinosaur Annex show I've attended. I had the good fortune to be at the long overdue permier of [Act II of] Lewis Spratlan's Life is a Dream, opposite what turned out to be a pretty good game. It was a pretty good opera too, though, earning that year's Pulitzer.


[edit: the rest of this post has been adapted into a stand-alone discussion of Life is a Dream here.]

BMOP's Angels

I'm not sure how much there is to say about Peter Eötvös's Angels in America. The music was excellent, even if in a slightly out-of-date style. There performances were strong. Dramatically, it was a huge stretch to cut 6 hours of play into two and a half hours of opera; if you try to think of it as a play, it will be very disappointing.

The tickets have sold well; the first three performances sold out, and Saturday's tickets are running out. Before the show last night, I remarked that I was impressed so many people in Boston had heard of Peter Eötvös, let alone were willing to go see an opera he wrote. My initial inclination was right, though. There were a number of disappointed people complaining during intermission. (They were at an opera by Peter Eötvös. What did they expect? It's not like Eötvös's music used to be easy listening, and then he had a sudden stylistic shift.) Still, I hope that the dramatic story opened some ears to a kind of music perhaps they hadn't heard previously.

Brundibar, Standing on its Own?

Why let historical fact get in the way of a nice story?

Any discussion of Han Krása's Brundibár immediately becomes a discussion of its 55 performances in the Terezin concentration camp, the role it had in the lives of the children who lived there. It becomes an uplifting story, about how these children used this satiric anti-Hitler opera to defy their terrible surroundings, and how special the final victory song is. Brundibár becomes the Holocaust Opera. It's a nice little story, but it doesn't check out.

For starters, Kans Krása and Adolf Hoffmeister collaborated on the opera before the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. It wasn't written in response to the experience in the concentration camp. It's just a sad quirk of history that it happened to end up with so many performances in the camp. It's no more a Holocaust work of art the way Beethoven's 9th is Nazi music. After all, Hitler attended performances in Berlin of that great symphony. Perhaps more to the point, Brundibár relates to the Holocaust the same was Mendelssohn's Elijah does. Both were written before the war and performed by inmates at Terezin.

If we consider Brundibár on its own, it fits into the tradition of the Children's opera that had currency in Europe at that time. Kurt Weill was writing his didactic operas like Der Jasager, and Orff was working on fairy-tale operas like Der Mond. This is the context in which musical historians need to view Brundibár. (When Krása and Hoffmeister got together in 1938 to discuss the work, I somehow doubt they discussed writing a Holocaust opera and were influenced by other earlier Holocaust operas.)

So, then, how does Brundibár stand up if you remove the weight of history from its shoulders? It has some very nice moments, including the lullabye that proves to be its musical heart. Ultimately, however, it's hard to distinguish it from the rest. In a bizarre sense, it seems that its unfortunate place in history has actually given it a second life, as it continues to be performed to this day.

But more than that, I'm not sure how it holds up as the Holocaust Opera. There's a notion that somehow, by singing the final victory chorus, the children who performed it were defeating the Nazis. It's a very nice sentiment, to be sure. I certainly want to believe that music has that power. But somehow, I doubt it helped the 90% of the children in Terezin who were moved on to Auschwitz to be singing a victory song as they walked into the gas chambers.

The Passions According the Sons, Good and Wicked

When I think about the passion story, it's hard for me not to think about it the way Bach taught me to. The correct version is from the Gospel of Matthew; more than that, it's in Martin Luther's German. In some ways, it seems strange for me to hear certain phrases in any language other than German, such as Peter's denial "Ich kenne des Mensche nicht" or Jesus's cry "Mein Gott, mein Gott! warum hast du mich verlassen?" A large part of this is because I'm not Christian, so I didn't grow up with religious connection to the story. To the extent that I have any involvement in the story, it's as the villain (at least in the versions according to Matthew and John). Yet, I find it had not to be moved by the story as Bach tells it. For added measure, it's interesting to compare so compelling a version of the story to a particularly poor telling (in this case the snuff film directed by Mel Gibson).

If you've ever been to a Passover seder, you've heard about the four sons. The story goes, four times the Torah instructs us to tell our children the Passover story. The rabbis devised the four different sons who ask about the story in different ways. The good son asks what is all this that we do. The wicked son asks what is all this that you do. The wicked son is wicked, the story goes, because he excludes himself from the story. The good son, on the other hand, chooses to participate.

I was thinking about this on Sunday, as I was listening to the Handel and Haydn society perform Bach's Matthew's Passion. There's a lot of theology in the music. One famous moment comes when Jesus says to the disciples, "I say to you that one of you will betray me." They respond, "Lord, is it I?" Eleven times, once for each of the disciples, excluding Judas. In a couple of verses, Judas will ask the same question, and Jesus will respond, "Du sagest" -- "You say so."

However, that isn't how Bach plays it. Bach and Picander insert a chorale. These chorales (think of a hymn) are the voice of the congregation. What do they sing at this moment?

It is I that must atone,
Hand and foot
Bound in hell.
The scourges and bonds,
And your suffering
Has redemmed my soul.

Another type of commentary that is interspersed with the gospel text are meditative arias. The most beautiful of these is "Erbarme dich, mein Gott!" -- Have mercy, my God! (It's not just me saying that. The Grout-Palisca History of Western Music mentions it among the five beautiful passages that may be singled out for special mention.) This aria that is so powerful is immediately after the story of Peter's three-fold denial. It's one thing for Judas to betray Jesus; however, Peter, the rock on which the church is founded, turns his back on his lord as well. Bach chooses to emphasize this moment, just as highlighted the individual's role in that chorale.

Not that Bach lets the Jews off the hook. The choruses that represent the Jews -- "Barabbas!," "Let him be crucified!" and and "Let his blood be on us and our children" -- are plenty zealous and blood-thirsty.

Fundamentally, however, the stance of Bach's passion is that ultimately, Jesus died for all people and all people have individual involvement. The penultimate chorus sums it up well:

Now is the Lord brought to rest
My Jesus, good night.
His toil is over,
Caused by our sins.
My Jesus, good night.
O blessed limbs,
See, how I mourn with penitence
and sorrow,
That my fall should bring you
To such need!
My Jesus, good night.
While life lasts,
For your sufferings a thousand thanks,
Since you have brought me to salvation.
My Jesus, good night.

So Bach and Picander encourage you to be the good child, and ask, "What happened when I betrayed Jesus by sinning, making his death and resurrection necessary?" Mel Gibson's snuff film pushes you to be the wickied child and ask, "What happened when the Jews and the Romans tortured and killed Jesus?" It puts all the blame on others, and in doing so, manages to remove the spirituality from one of the central moments of Christian history. It has no point or purpose; it's just violence.

Of course, he isn't my Jesus. After all, I'm Jewish. So what does it matter what I think?

But shouldn't my thoughts matter most of all? After all, as a neutral observer, I don't bring anything into the experience. If I can be moved, it's absolutely clear who is responsible. Gibson doesn't even try to go after the neutral crowd. He gives barely any hint of who Jesus was and why his death matters to anyone, let alone me. If you want to be moved, you need to do all the work yourself. That's great if you're already Christian, and can get excited about two hours of excruciating violence (and if you don't like Jews, all the better!), but it doesn't actually try to move anyone.

Music of the Other Place

Of the many things I'm taking away from my current Bach orgy is that I'm very happy I didn't live in the Baroque era. I obviously like Baroque music and that of Bach enough to even attempt the exercise. However, it makes me appreciate the time we live in, where we can listen to music written 2700 years ago or this year. More than that, we're not just restricted to what is happening locally; we can explore music from all over the world.

An excellent example of this smaller world was on display at Jordan Hall on Friday night, as the Boston Modern Orchestra Project performed "Concertos for Indigenous Instruments." The instruments in question covered different parts of Asia, including Korean barrel drums, a Japanese zither, a Persian flute, and Chinese percussion.

The program included two premiers. Jin Hi Kim's "Eternal Rock II," for Korean Barrel Drum Set and Orchestra was the better of the two. The stage had a novel set-up for a concerto, as Gerry Hemingway stood on a platform in the back of the stage. The instrument traditionally belongs in temples rather than the concert hall, giving the piece a ceremonial quality. Two percussionists standing in the front corners of the stage acted like priests, telling the orchestra when to begin and end.

For the most part, the concerto alternated between orchestral passages and solos on the barrel drums, with a little overlap. Kim used a variety of rhythmic technique, as each section had a different meter than the previous. (To great effect, an early cadenza in 5 was resolved to a tutti in 4, the way cadenzas would typically hover on the dominant.) Kim also utilizes polyrhythms and hemiolas to develop the unpitched instrument.

Korean music doesn't have the same sense of pitch that Western music's equal tempered scale uses. To fulfill a Buddhist ideal known as "living tones," Kim uses vibrato, slides, glassandi, and special articulation. Reza Vali had a similar challenge for his concerto, a wooden flute. In the Persian scale, notes can have slightly different pitches depending on their function. Vali used these almost unisons to great effect, including a long melody for what sound like out of tune woodwinds.

Vali's concerto for the ney, a Persian flute, was titled "Toward that Endless Plain." It was strongest during the movements that allowed the ney to show off its breathy tone. The long lines, modeled on improvisation, were expertly played by Khosro Soltani. The orchestra created an intricate sound carpet for the soloist. Most of the piece came across like an oversized chamber work. The notable exceptions were the prelude and interlude, known as "The Abyss." These two sections were the weakest part of the concerto. (I didn't like it when Stravinsky called it "The Rite of Spring.")

Two older works were also on the program. The concert concluded with Yi°, the first movement of a cycle of concerti based on the I Ching (易经). The most famous piece based on that work, of course, is John Cage's Music of Changes. Tan's work features similarly fragmented melodies. It wasn't much of a concerto, though. It's a shame they weren't able to present "The Map," with its rich use of Miao folk music, though it's very understandable.

The other piece on the program stood out. Even though it was written for the koto, a Japanese zither with movable bridges, it was written by American Henry Cowell. This was a far cry from his earlier avant garde music. It featured a short conjunct melody harmonized in very different ways, starting with very simple, consonant harmonizations. As the piece continued, dissonance appeared and disappeared (including some very crunchy parallel half-steps). Masayo Ishigure played the solos.

Overall, it was a very strong performance by the BMOP, with a great program. Their final Jordan Hall performance, "Big Band," features music of Gershwin, Babbitt, and Bernstein, along with a commission by William Thomas McKinley.