Mendelssohn and "The Anxiety of Influence"

David’s reply to a previous post on Mendelssohn’s relationship to Beethoven brings up an important point. How and to what extent did Beethoven’s (especially symphonic) successors respond to his overwhelming prestige, to his inescapable influence?

Mendelssohn’s three great Beethoven glosses (Piano Sonata in E Major, op. 6, String Quartets Opp. 12 and 13) are early works.  Mendelssohn appears to be more concerned with Bach, Handel and Mozart in most of his latter works, maybe because Beethoven seemed like too big an elephant in the room to the mature Mendelssohn, but then, of course, you have the “Lobegesang”, as a (problematical) exception.   A kid’ll try anything, and if you’re a kid like Mendelssohn, you just might succeed.  But the only kid like Mendelssohn in musical history had a father named Leopold.  Mendelssohn’s latter works are not nearly as experimental or progressively minded as the earlier works.  Beethoven, of course, is the most experimental and progressive composer in history. 

Is it coincidence that Mendelssohn’s two indisputably great symphonies are placed outside of the Germanic (Beethovenian) orbit, in Scotland and Italy? Is the “Lobegesang” weakened because Mendelssohn is Handelian grandiose, perhaps, but not Beethovenian grandiose?  

Mendelssohn: A Life in Music

R. Larry Todd

A work that takes up the Beethovenian gauntlet and works well is the Brahms First.  The 5th and 9th symphonies meet and reconcile in an incredibly classisizing synthesis.  Brahms was progressive by reinventing the past.  Bruckner’s Beethoven glosses in the Third, Ninth, and parts of the Eighth work well because, unlike Mendelssohn, Bruckner was attuned to the Beethovenian grandiose.  David mentitions a book by Bond that tosses Schumann 4th into the ring.  If Schumann’s 4th wasn’t in d minor, and didn’t accentuate submediant relationships, and wasn’t cyclical, would we associate it with Beethoven’s Ninth, and Fifth? And do all cyclical works owe their existence to Beethoven’s Fifth, with its famous motto? Maybe, but we can’t say for sure. The question is, is Beethoven so fundamental in himself, or was he accepted as fundamental because the zeitgeist of the 19th century was in accord with his nature? Some of both, but if I had to choose, I’d take the first alternative, when we’re talking symphony.

Tchaikovsky appropriated the model of the Fifth in his own Fifth, but I think he might have thought he was getting it from Liszt, a composer much closer to his heart than Beethoven.  And How about Liszt? Is the “Faust” symphony another Beethoven gloss? As for Berlioz, in “Fantastique” and “Harold in Italy”, how about that?  Berlioz was too much his own man to be sure about.  His big musical gods included Cherubini and Gluck.   And he was weird.

Caught Between the Hammer and the Anvil: Mendelssohn's Reputation

Felix Mendelssohn is the most underrated master in classical music history.  Not as transcendant as Mozart, not as powerful as Beethoven, not as intimate as Schumann, not as poignant as Schubert, not as idiosyncratic as Chopin, not as quirky as Berlioz, Mendelssohn seems to fall between two stools…at least for many listeners.  His technique alone qualifies him for the pantheon.  And technique matters, and not just to musicians.  It’s pretty facile to say, “oh, well, you know, I don’t care about all that fancy technical stuff, I want music that moves me.”  Counterpoint, instrumentation, formal subtlety are rewarding in themselves.  Plus, Mendelssohn is transcendant, powerful, intimate, poignant, idiosyncratic, etc.  He was just too intelligent, too urbane, too refined to allow his music to be dominated by any single characteristic. He doesn’t “wear his heart on his sleeve”.  Mendelssohn requires a listener who doesn’t need to be blown away all the time, a listener who cares about the craft of musical composition.

It is well known that Mendelssohn’s reputation has been deeply harmed by anti-semitism, most famously in Richard Wagner’s screed, “Judaism in Music”.  And everbody knows that his statue in Leipzig was pulled down by the Nazis and his music banned.   But I don’t really think that antisemitism is the principal reason for the relative undervaluing of his work.  I think many listeners impose the wrong (Beethoven or Wagner) context on him.  The right context (Bach and Mozart) may lead listeners to a greater appreciation of his gifts.

Now, one might say, “What are you talking about, Mendelssohn is a staple of the repertory, in concert and on recording.”  My riposte? Mendelssohn is underrated until such time as he achieves the status of Schumann, Liszt, and Brahms, and perhaps he is deserving of the status accorded to Schubert and Chopin as well.  These rankings are a parlor game, I know.  Individual tastes differ, naturally, but it probably should be acknowleged that Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner are the untouchable four, comprising the benchmarks against which other greats may be measured.  And why have I neglected to mention Haydn? For shame.

A note on Mendelssohn's Symphonic Chronology

This is a headache because of revisions, publishing dates, numbering, and opus numbers which are tangled.  Larry Todd (the most eminent Mendelssohn scholar) assigns these dates as being most chronologically relevant:

Symphony Nr. 1, 1824
Symphony Nr. 2, “Lobegesang”, 1840
Symphony Nr. 3, “Scottish”, 1842
Symphony Nr. 4, “Italian” 1833
Symphony Nr. 5, “Reformation”, 1830

You Don't Have to Start at the Beginning: Mendelssohn and Beethoven

Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 13, written at the age of 18, and his String Quartet in E-flat, Op. 12, written at the age of 20, are at once the most knowlegeable glosses on Beethoven in existence and yet at the same time deeply original works.  Beethoven’s late style was not exactly terra incognita for the early romantics, but middle period  works, especially the Fifth Symphony, exerted much more influence, generally.  Mendelssohn is the exception.  As he comments himself, “You don’t have to start at the beginning…”.  Early Mendelssohn bends back only a year or two to embrace late Beethoven.  These quartets are from 1827 and 1829, and therefore can properly be regarded as a sort of continuation of late Beethoven rather than works with a retrospective orientation.  Consider a wildly different repertory that looks back to late Beethoven, the Rochberg quartets, especially the “Beethoven”  movement in the Third, and you will understand the difference between the creator and the curator.  

Mendelssohn was amused, and possibly flattered, when an auditeur of his a-minor quartet mistook the piece as having been written by Beethoven.  Mendelssohn took all sorts of Beethoven works as models for these quartets:  The “Harp” Quartet, the Quartet Serioso, the a-minor quartet, Op. 132, the “Tempest” piano sonata, the “Les Adieu” piano sonata, the F-Major quartet, op. 135, especially the “Muss es sein” idea, which Mendelssohn balances with his own “Ist es wahr” quotation from his own song, “Frage” which is actually printed in its entirety in my score.  But Mendelssohn doesn’t quote! He absorbs and sublimates.  Those who know and love the late Beethoven quartets can only marvel at the profundity and originality of Mendelssohn’s ability in extending this most personal of styles. 

Mendelssohn’s counterpoint is breath-taking.  Effortlessly elegant, flexible, natural and eloquent, contrapuntal textures have rarely been such a joy, as opposed to a sort of chore to listen to. 

Mendelssohn doesn’t need to take his scherzi from Beethoven, because Mendelssohn was himself a very great scherzo writer.  Both Scherzo movements in these quartets are actually archaic sounding intermezzi with scherzo music taking the middle panel of A-B-A structures.   These intermezzi are the most obvious delights in these great works.  I think they deeply influenced Brahms, as well, who has several archaic sounding movements with scherzando central panels. 

And Mendelssohn is tonally progressive.  How innovative the E-flat quartet is! movements in E-flat, g minor, B-flat, and c-minor, with a coda derived from the E-flat end of the first movement.  This is not “progressive” tonality in the sense we associate with Carl Nielsen, because the different tonalities do not directly engage each other, but it sort of points in the same direction.

Mendelssohn is always a master of the string quartet texture.  These vibrant works jump off the page.  And melodies? Take a look at the Mozartian elegance of both slow movements.  Sometimes one hears the absurd defamation that Mendelssohn is superficial.  If a composer has the right to be judged by his best work (definitely not the “Songs Without Words”!) Mendelssohn is deep.  He’s just so very, very, competent that his works never betray anything like the struggle of genesis.  M had it all, from a very young age.  A prodigy to rival Mozart, but who wrote true repertory works at an age younger than Mozart.  These quartets are winners.

Definitely not a winner, however, is Mendelssohn’s symphony, “Lobegesang”; It’s actually a 23 minute symphony yoked with a 40 minute cantata, and is a pathetic and futile attempt to be a work in the manner of Beethoven’s Ninth.  I followed the score with amazement as I heard the excellent recording by Kurt Masur with the splendid Leipzig Gewandhaus.  Amazement, because, as a thoroughly trained musician, someone who is really comfortable with reading scores accurately, and hopefully insightfully, I could find nothing wrong, and yet the work was excruciating, interminable! All the competency was there; the great, light on its feet orchestration,  the effortless counterpoint, the relative pithiness of individual sections, the mastery of choral writing, yet the work was almost unlistenable.  Maybe it’s my fault, that I wasn’t in the mood.  Maybe it’s the flat out awfulness of the text, with lines such as “Now all praise the Lord, ye who have breath…” I don’t know. 

The first symphony, in c minor, written when M was 15, is a delight.  It combines a sort of “sturm und drang” as practiced by Mozart in his g minor symphonies with a cheerful appropriation of Beethoven’s Fifth.  No where near the quality of the quartets, this is nevertheless a very charming and listenable work.

Mendelssohn: A Life in Music
by R. Larry Todd

Elitism and the Marketplace in Opera

One of the ironies implicit in the Mac Donald essay, discussed in this forum yesterday, is that traditional and respectful performances of the standard repertory may soon be presented by, and enjoyed by, a sort of elite; an elite distinguished by sane cultural values as opposed to a common denominator of hubristic trash which will come to “abduct” operatic culture.  Well, this is unlikely, except just possibly in Germany, but it could happen, I guess. It seems like it is happening, actually, by some barometers.

Mac Donald doesn’t address the underlying cause of why opera administrators, and in some cases the public as well, are duped by the excesses of Eurotrash.  I can suggest at least one reason; the narrowing of the repertory.  I know “opera lovers” who only like a half dozen or so operas, and aren’t even interested in anything else.  And in America, you could probably retain most of your audience with Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Die Zauberfloete, Rigoletto, La Traviata, La Boheme, Salome, and an occasional Ring cycle.  Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating.  But the situation with the repertory is unhealthy, and it may be that in order to attract new audiences mangers feel like Eurotrash is a “Hail Mary” option. And this despite booming ticket sales, because ticket sales are necessary, but not enough.

This is why elites are important. Elites, or even pejoratively, snobs, perform a useful function.  Whether they are sincere or not, they provide a kind of bulwark against unrestrained lowest common-denominatorship.  Consider talk radio or network TV to get an idea of what lowest common denominatorship can come to mean.  It’s unfortunate to have the Lyric Opera put on Pirates of Penzance, charming as it is, as they did a few years ago, because lesser houses can handle this! ( I think that there were significant budgetary issues here, which of course one needs to take into account).

I understand that what I am about to say may appear arrogant and insufferably elitist, which it is not my intention, and in my considered judgement the idea I’m espousing will create a better operatic climate:

Opera is special, and needs to be handled specially, because of its intrinsic cultural worth, and because of its dauntingly high price tag, which means that you simply can’t charge enough for tickets to sustain it by traditional marketplace mechanisms. Like most marketplaces in the entertainment sphere, an operatic marketplace will eventually create a lowest common denominator, a custodial culture rather than a creative one, when left without special handling by cultural and funding institutions. 

Opera houses, when desiring to put on new works, will choose anodyne pap which 10,000 people don’t mind hearing, and won’t withdraw their subscriptions because of, rather then some challenging work which a tiny minority really loves, but some irate customers might write letters to the editor about. This is to some extent true of productions, as well, which is why I worry about the Eurotrash lunatics.  They may spoil it for truly gifted directors, like Robert Carsen, for instance.  A case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, or even the tub itself.

Works like Moses und Aron, for instance, need to be put on occasionally (not as often as Carmen, O.K.!) even if there isn’t a big public for them, in Chicago or New York, at least, if not in Des Moines or Detroit.  Why? Why provide a product without a big enough market? Because opera is special, and the work is great, and needs to be kept alive.  Why is it great? Because elite professors write books about it? Well, la-di-dah! …yes, partly because recognized experts value it.  Products in science and industry, intended to improve our lives, are supported all the time by various underwriters, products of which the public is unaware, but need.  Maybe we need some culture, as well.  I guess I am an elitist, because I don’t think of opera as entertainment, but as something much more, which deserves promotion as well as protection from the ravages of an undiluted marketplace model.

In America, the word elite,  when applied to a snooty opera lover, is a dirty word.  But I’d like to point out that we Americans worship elites all the time;  athletes (who at least exist in a meritocracy), the super-rich who are notorious for being super-inane, amateur TV singers who couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, etc., etc. These elites get many advantages, and media saturation almost forces us to participate, at least passively, in their elevation.  Popular culture is all too pervasive, and authentic culture has to keep apologizing for itself. Recently, in the Chicago Tribune, the, I think, head of National Endowment for the Arts, a poet, lamented precisely this.  That the average American can’t name living poets, conductors, scientists, etc. constitutes a cultural crisis was the point she made, and a good one it is.

Regietheatre: It's a Fad

I recently recommended the Heather Mac Donald article, “The Abduction of Opera” which appeared in City Journal.  I continue to recommend this unusually astute evaluation of some of the directorial excesses afflicting the operatic world today, but would like to comment more specifically, and include a few reservations.

My commentaries on some of the productions I’ve seen appear to concentrate on much milder fare than the productions perpetrated in Europe today.  I haven’t been to the continent in over a year and have apparently missed all the fun.  Things are exponentially ratcheting up, it seems, and the goofy irrelevancies I’ve blogged about appear to be giving way, at least in some quarters, to the truly offensive.  Calixto Bieito, for instance, is singled out as a particularly egrigious offender in the Mac Donald article.  

Among the best points Mac Donald makes involve at least two essential theses:  

1. The style and rhetoric of the standard operatic repertory reflects its time without compromising this repertory’s potential timelessness, and the imposition of a so-called contemporary frame of reference creates an unintended, illegitimate, irrevelant, and solipsistic adolescent vandalism of some of the greatest works in Western culture.

2.  (We can assume opera to be an extravagant medium) But it is also a subtle medium, deeply concerned with beauty; beauty in the standard, non-deconstructionist meaning of the word.  The best line in Mac Donald’s article?

“Regietheatre directors undoubtedly think of themselves as sophisticated when they unmask courtly decorum as just a cover for fornication. The demystifiers’ awareness of desire is so crude that they cannot hear that the barely perceptible darkening of a voice or the constricted suffusion of breath into a note can be a thousand times more erotic than a frenzy of pelvic thrusting.” 

That passage could only have been written by somebody who loves and understands opera.

I’m personally less interested in the angle of the article speculating on the Metropolitan Opera’s future direction.  Time will tell.  Now for my reservations:

Mac Donald comments: 

“But while subsidies may be a necessary condition for Regietheater, they are not a sufficient one.  European opera has been subsidized to varying degrees throughout its centuries-long history without generating the musical abuse that is now so common.  And Regietheater productions are creeping into the U.S., where opera relies overwhelmingly on private support.” and a little later in the same paragraph, (concerning the departure of a Regie oriented manager) “…The Market provided the necessary corrective in San Francisco,…”

I am definitely not trying to promote my own political philosophies, and I respect those whose views are not consonant with mine, please understand that I am attempting to apply some logic here.  Also, I am reading a “subtext” into Mac Donald’s article which I freely admit may be misplaced.

1.  I believe subsidies, public or private, are an absolute good.  Only people who don’t care about high culture want to submit opera to the unfettered selfishness and superficiality of the marketplace.  And artists, including directors, need to have artistic freedom.  Opera cannot pay for itself; it’s too expensive.  It needs help.  We all pay for a heck of a lot of things the government does that we don’t agree with. Hey taxpayer! Do I want to take your money and give it to the opera establishment? You bet I do.  And I understand that you have the right to take my money and use it for something I don’t care about.  That’s the way it goes, and anyone who thinks the government is going to retreat, in any event, from its bloated role in our lives is deceiving himself.  So let’s do some good with the dough that we are gonna have to cough up anyway.  What’s different about public arts funding, which will in even the best possible case be a pittance?  Ultimately, the Libertarian ideal or the (unrestrained) free market model will reduce us all to a state of nature, each man for himself.  Oops! I misspoke.  Each corporation for itself. But, especially in America, corporations and foundations are essential arbiters of our cultural life.  But I’m definitely not going against a somewhat constrained free market.  We ought to have some nuance in our cultural politics. We need to be responsible public custodians, and promote an environment that creates the necessary preconditions for great things.  And this means taking the bad with the good, up to a point.  Only children expect things to be all one way, or all the other; Good versus evil, like Harry Potter and Voldemort.

I worry about the potential, in both Europe and America, for corporate and (mostly in Europe) governmental mandarins to exploit the situation created by these nauseating productions for purposes contrary to the long-term health of culture.  A civilized society has a collective responsibility toward its culture, which is most obviously expressed financially.  The production decisions should be in the hands of opera professionals, and if these professionals are inadequate, one wants them replaced, for sure, but in a manner consonant with the retention of professional and interpretive freedom.  The audience suffers, the way it is, but things could get worse in a hurry if reactionaries and bottom-liners hold the reins.  By the way, Germany continues to have the most vibrant operatic culture in the world.  How many really new works do we have in America? I don’t believe Menotti, Heggie, Bolcom, or Tan Dun are really giving us, or have given us, something really new and substantial. Where is the American Lulu? And who is the Met really serving by giving us La Boheme every year, in attractive but conventional settings?  The situation is more complex than can be solved  by eliminating the badness of idiots like Bieito, that’s for sure.

2.  Remember the Robert Mapplethorpe shenanigans? The politicians who despise and fear art and artists seized on a publicly funded exhibit they didn’t like, in order to attempt (with at least some success) to conjure up rage against culture in the artistically ignorant population  (which means almost the entirety of the population).  This is dangerous, and as bad as the productions Mac Donald refers to undoubtedly are, I’d rather have that shambles than the meddling of the moneybags.  This is hard for an American to hear, perhaps, but underwriters (in some limited cases, especially including the arts) should not have carte blanche to dictate the contents of the art they fund. Art cannot work that way.

3.  This stuff is a fad.  It’ll reach its acme, and then recede. 

By the way, I just remembered that I have read a book by Heather Mac Donald, called “The Burden of Bad Ideas”.  Like her article, it’s excellent.  That doesn’t mean I don’t harbor a few similar reservations, however! 

Update on 2007-08-11 17:10 by Bonnie Gibbons

Related Posts:

• “Favorite” examples of Regietheatre or Eurotrash opera productions
  
  

• Original post on Mac Donald article
  
  

• Reviews of Katharina Wagner’s “Meistersinger” at Bayreuth

What Would He Say Now?

In the preface to George Perle’s definitive study of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, Perle takes vitriolic aim at the French director Patrice Chereau’s inaugural production at the Paris Opera of the three act version of Berg’s magnum opus, Lulu.  Perle is offended by Chereau’s disregard of, and subversion of, Berg’s text. He even enlists that hothead of all hotheads, Hector Berlioz, on his behalf, quoting a passage from Berlioz decrying directors who similarly abused Mozart and Weber.  As always with Berlioz, his comments are highly entertaining and incredibly hyperbolic.  Berlioz’s advice to his director nemesi? “Despair and Die!”

Like street drugs and cheap handguns, operatic directorial license is designed to be abused.  From a director’s standpoint, if you do something reasonable, audiences and musicians will leave the opera house thinking about Mozart or Wagner.  If you do something insane, audiences and musicians will leave the theatre thinking about you.  It’s a no-brainer.  But it doesn’t impair or kill the listener.  It’s only a narcissistic exercise in inane infantilism.  Epater le Bourgeoisie!

I have my doubts about the future of literalistic stagings, however.  Viking helmets, cool as they undoubtedly are, improperly narrow the context of Wagner’s Ring, at least for the twenty-first century.

But utterly inadmissable is the scene in the Stuttgart Opera’s Siegfried, where instead of beating his famous Nibelungen tatoo with a hammer on an anvil, in a futile attempt at forging Nothung, Mime beats a potato peeler against the side of a bowl.  I know what the director was thinking, I think…later in the act, Mime makes a potion to murder Siegfried, saying that since he failed as a smith, he may as well be a cook.  The director anticipates this with his potato peeler.  Well, it shouldn’t be anticipated, number one, because it makes a mockery of the plot and the structure of the act, and, number two, it is so inherently stupid that it draws attention to itself in a disruptive manner.    Acceptable, however, is another director’s Tristan und Isolde, act three, where the dying Tristan nostalgically looks at viewfinder style snapshots of his childhood.  Why is this admissable? It’s not in the score anymore than the stupid potato peeler.  It’s admissable because it’s touching.  And why is it touching?  Because it’s wholly consonant with Tristan’s fatalistic psychology, it underlines  Tristan’s  morbidly  self-referential character.  I cannot explain, however, the idea behind Tristan carrying his own couch around in the same director’s act two.

Reviews of Katharina Wagner's "Meistersinger" at Bayreuth

Since John has brought up the latest directorial excesses from Bayreuth I thought I’d provide some links for those who want to read more. See John’s take on the situation, and his list of operas that shouldn’t be messed with.

Jeers, Cheers as Bayreuth `Meistersinger’ Mixes Hitler, Nudity
By Shirley Apthorp
July 26 (Bloomberg)

Hitler is briefly back in Bayreuth as Katharina’s confused staging reaches its apotheosis. Her Hans Sachs sets out as the bare-footed, chain-smoking rebel of the singers’ guild, yet he becomes increasingly conservative as the evening proceeds. He warms his hands on the flames as conductor and stage-director doubles are burned. By the end, in time for his speech on “holy German art,” he is Adolf himself, flanked by statues in the style of Nazi sculptor Arno Breker.

At Beyreuth, ‘Die Meistersinger,’ unsettles a Wagner legacy
George Loomis
July 31 (International Herald Tribune)

Picking up on an idea advanced by scholars that the gibberish of Beckmesser’s contest song anticipates Dadaism and hence is actually forward-looking, she has him undergo an epiphany after the street riot. A strong minority of the populace applauds Beckmesser’s song, and he departs, disgusted, only when Sachs starts talking about German art.

Fascinating though the ideas of Wagner and her collaborator Robert Sollich may be, the result is more a critique of “Meistersinger” - and a negative one - than a production. Nor did she achieve the kind of absorbing interaction between characters typical of the best concept-oriented directors. Of the opera’s warmly expansive spirit there was little trace. You left thinking you hadn’t really seen the opera.

Tradition, revolution and reaction in Bayreuth
Marianne Zelger-Vogt
July 30 (sightandsound)

This article originally appeared in German.

Stolzing has become part of the mainstream, and is led around by an historically dressed opera singer. He receives a golden stag as a prize and poses, surrounded by the “leading team,” with the check of an imaginary sponsor bank. But between these two applause scenes there is also the appearance of Beckmesser: the turbulent happening of a reactionary who has discovered his creative potential in the fight scene and now outs himself as a performance artist.

Sachs resigns, Stolzing conforms, Beckmesser becomes an action artist giving a new twist to the art scene - a commentary on today’s opera in general and the Bayreuth Festival in particular? Perhaps. Yet it all remains too intellectual, on the one hand filled to overflowing with ideas and props, on the other hand a void - the entire history of the ideological reception of the “Mastersingers” as “Nazi opera” is blended out, for example, while Katharina Wagner remains focussed on the performance aesthetic.

Ms Wagner jeered as great-grandad’s opera flops at Bayreuth
Kate Connolly
July 27, 2007 (The Guardian)

It was the most eagerly anticipated event in this year’s German cultural calendar, set to make or break a young woman’s career.But following a cascade of boos and the comparison of her production of Die Meistersinger to a “top-heavy pizza with a thick topping on a thin base”, things were not looking too rosy yesterday for Katharina Wagner.

Her interpretation, which turned the original plot on its head - Richard Wagner danced in his underpants and topless dancers took to the stage - proved too much for the traditionalists, who made up the bulk of the audience, at the same time as irritating the iconoclasts.

This is Insane

According to the NY Times for Tuesday, July 31,  Katharina Wagner’s new production of Die Meistersinger for the Bayreuth Festival featured topless dancers, complete male nudity, plastic phalluses, and “a bizzare auto da-fe” In the third act.   My wife related to me a production (this one?) that had Hans Sachs made up as Hitler.  One doesn’t have to have seen the particular production to comment.  We’ve all seen eurotrash productions. 

For years I’ve vacillated back and forth about the validity of such productions.  I’ve been reluctant to condemn this sort of thing outright out of cowardice (just like many, many critics), a reluctance to appear to be a close-minded reactionary.  But enough is enough.  Opera (unless you specifically set out to make a film, such as H.J. Syberberg’s Parsifal) is not a director’s medium.  There is a huge dissonance between  1860s music and 2007 post deconstructionist neurotic infantilism.  You don’t have to bring the bearskins, metal brassieres and horned helmets back, but Hans Sachs needs to be a grounded, humane figure, Wotan better be missing an eye (this has deep plot relevance) and Sigmund better pull a weapon from the tree, even if it needs must be a submachine gun rather than a sword.

Some operas may potentially benefit from deconstructionst treatment, and some you should leave strictly alone.  Here’s a partial list.  Feel free to add to it.

Works that may potentially benefit from radical directors:

1.  Die Zauberflote

2.  Cosi fan Tutte

3. Tristan und Isolde

4. Parsifal

5. Lulu

6.  Any of the Orfeo operas; any opera seria (this stuff is so dramatically inert that any dramatic reconsideration is an improvement) 

Works to be left strictly alone:

1. La Traviata

2. Die Meistersinger

3. Tosca 

4.  Peter Grimes

5. Der Rosenkavalier

6-7 Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades 

 When in doubt, leave it alone.  Mozart, Verdi and Wagner knew more than you do.  And think long and hard about putting sex and violence in…We’ve had too much of that already.  In “City Journal” Heather McDonald has an excellent article on the topic.  I know nothing of Ms. McDonald, except that my wife finds her politics unsavory, but the article is indeed an excellent one.

The Abduction of Opera

by Heather Mac Donald at City Journal

Can the Met stand firm against the trashy productions of trendy nihilists?

Update on 2008-03-06 23:58 by John Gibbons

Palate-Cleansing Meistersinger DVDs

Composers' Personal Tempos

One of the pleasures in Robert Bernhardt’s performance of the Haydn 104th yesterday was his adoption of correct tempi.  Correct for Haydn, that is.  For instance, the slow introduction should not be that slow, it should be only about twice as slow as the allegro.  How do we know? Most obviously, the metrical relationship becomes clear, nothing is forced, and there are even audible motivic connections between the intro and the allegro with a tempo that moves along.  Less obviously, but equally important, there needs to be a cognizance of the very simple harmonies, which do not invite solemn contemplation.  Harmonic rhythm is the rate at which chords change. Haydn’s harmonic rhythm in the intro is reasonably slow, hence a none too dragging alla breve is indicated.  There is a similar situation in the Brahms First Symphony, by the way.  When Brahms writes “Un poco sostenuto” what does he mean? Is “A little bit sustained” a tempo indication? No.  It is in fact a direction for articulation.  Then what’s the tempo? You find the tempo by leafing a few pages ahead to the allegro, which is absolutely unproblematical.  The allegro is an easy tempo to find.  It’s comfortably in an non-subdivided two.  Subdivide each beat, and, voila! You have the tempo for the introduction.  The harmonic rhythm is faster in Brahms, therefore the whole complex of tempi should be slower than in the Haydn case. 

One of the real, honest to goodness difficulties with Schoenberg’s style is the combination of complex chords with fast harmonic rhythm.  Works like the First String Quartet and the First Chamber Symphony exemplify this.  I advise the sort of person who reflexively associates the difficulties with Schoenberg’s style exclusively with atonality to consider the harmonic rhythm.  The first quartet is a tougher nut to crack than the atonal but neoclassic third quartet.  Schoenberg’s tempos are often counterintuitive.

Which brings me to today’s topic.  Leaving aside technical stuff as discussed above, do composers have their own allegros, moderatos, adagios, etc.? Yes.  Consider Schubert’s “moderatos”.  These are slow.  I think often slower than Schubert’s andantes.  If this seems crazy, just look at the scores, especially of the piano sonatas.  Piano sonatas allow for quite a bit of leeway, because you don’t have to accommodate the co-ordination of an ensemble.  That’s why there is so much radical divergence in Beethoven’s piano sonatas as opposed to his symphonies.  By the way, I honestly believe that some very well known conductors adopt inappropriate tempi in Beethoven’s symphonies just to “make their mark.”  I don’t care much about the metronome debate in Beethoven, because an experienced musician can look at these scores and feel the naturalness of the correct tempi.  Where one doesn’t feel the natural tempo, you absolutely must consult Beethoven’s metronome marks.  He put them in there for a reason.

Medelssohn’s allegros are faster, in general, than the Classical masters.  Mozart’s prestos have to move, and fast! Shostakovich’s allegrettos are sometimes exponentially faster than Schubert’s allegrettos.  Well written music generally has a natural tempo, and the words allegro, andante, adagio, etc. are mood indicators, rather than firm indicators of so many beats per minute.  

Any conductor who has “fast” or “slow” tempos is a bad conductor.  A conductor needs tempi appropriate to this or that  composer and piece, not according to his own personal marketing angle.  Toscanini was a great conductor, not unthinkingly fast.  Otto Klemperer was a great conductor, and the slowness of his last recordings is probably due to his health issues, rather than some stylistic agenda. 

There is an incredible amount of distortion in the authentic performance movement, in regard to tempi.  Consider the crucifixus in Bach’s B-minor Mass in the Jon Eliot Gardiner recording.  It’s a joke.  You can wave tome after tome of scholarly exegesis in my face, but I prefer to rely on my own essential sanity, which tells me that the crucifixtion should not be a jolly dance.