My Desert Island Musical Passages

Greg Mitchell’s HuffPo piece on Beethoven’s legendary 1808 concert (written about by Bonnie yesterday) generated a lively discussion by a very engaged and informed Huffington Post audience.

Some are challenging Mitchell’s assertion of Beethoven as the greatest composer, including this eloquent Bach defense from Joe-the-Historian, who wishes he could follow Bach on his visit to C.P.E. at the court of Frederick the Great and hear him try out every keyboard and organ in town. While I’d like to follow Joe on this time-travel adventure, I do agree with Mitchell. Beethoven is the greatest composer for his sheer breadth, among other things.

Others are discussing their favorite works, movement by movement, and offering their favorite performances. I appreciate jl4141’s reminder of the effective use of the Pastoral symphony for Edward G. Robinson’s voluntary euthanasia scene in Soylent Green. (Unknown to everyone except acting partner Charlton Heston, Robinson was in the final weeks of his life at the time of filming.)

One participant, the excellent-named Magister Ludi, offered this intriguing desert island list, and it got me thinking not of desert island discs, but of specific desert island moments:

Magister Ludi’s 5 CDs for the deserted island:

1. Goldberg Variations -Glenn Gould ( both);
2.Stravinsky- Le Sacre- Boulez;
3. Adams-Nixon in China;
4. Mozart-Die Zauberflöte.
5: Shostakovitch-The Nose.

Stand bys:

1.Bach St John’s Passion
2.Berio- Sinfonia. w/Boulez- Swingle Singers

So, without further ado…

John Gibbons’s Desert Island Musical Passages

1. Beethoven: C Sharp Minor String Quartet, introduction to the Finale (6th movement)

   • Listen to a performance (YouTube, quartet unidentified)

   • See it used in the HBO series Band of Brothers.

2. Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro, Figaro’s denial in the Finale to Act II.

   • Watch on YouTube (Schrott, Petersen, etc.)

3. Stravinsky: The Rake’s Progress, the Bedlam scene at the conclusion of the opera, featuring Ann Truelove’s lullaby “Gently, Little Boat” with the words of W.H. Auden and/or Chester Kallman

   • Watch on YouTube (Upshaw, Hadley)

4. Beethoven: Fidelio, the divided low strings in “Mir is so wunderbar”

   • Watch on YouTube (Mattila, Pape, Polanzani, Welch-Babidge)

5. Wagner: Die Walkure, Act Two, “Siegmund, Sieh auf mich!” Siegmund telling Brunhilde where she can go with her invitation to Valhalla, Act Two. This is my greatest moment, preferably performed by Jon Vickers or Siegriend Jerusalem.

I hope the thread will continue a little while. Other than that, points for cleverness go to this exchange:

ARonHenry : Beethoven was the Bob Dylan of his times.

MagisterLudi : BOB Dylan is the Johann Nepomuk Hummel of our times.

Celebrating Beethoven's "Greatest Concert Ever"

I turn regularly to Huffington Post for liberal-leaning political blogging along with a small dash of pop culture. But occasionally the homepage features a special treat: somebody writing about classical music as if it belonged on a mainstream site like HuffPo!

Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher, and the author of a book on Iraq and the Media, celebrates the Vienna concert given by a 38-year-old Beethoven two hundred years ago today.

Fellow geezers: Forget the Beatles at Shea Stadium, Dylan in Manchester, the Stones at Altamont, Springsteen at the Bottom Line (I was even there) — and you youngsters pick your fave from the past three decades. On December 22, 1808, Beethoven himself rented a hall in Vienna and promoted the concert to end all concerts: the debut, over four hours, of three of the greatest works in the history of music: his Fifth Symphony, the Sixth (“Pastoral”) Symphony, and the astounding Piano Concerto No. 4, plus the wonderful Choral Fantasia (forerunner to his Ninth Symphony). And yes, it was a fiasco.

But imagine: It was as if Orson Welles premiered Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, and Touch of Evil on the same night — with The Lady from Shanghai thrown in for good measure.

This was mid-period Beethoven. He was 38 at the time and would live another 19 fitful years.

Why "The Little Drummer Boy" Is So Annoying

That’s the subtitle, amusingly similar to a complaint I recently made to an innocent conference worker at the Chicago Hilton, of a fun, light read by Daniel J. Levitin in The Wall Street Journal, which begins:

Do You Hear What I Hear?

December. Joy, goodwill toward men, long lines, the unwanted wet kiss from a drunk co-worker at the office party. Along with the candy canes and mistletoe, music will be there in the background wherever we go this month, as sonic wallpaper, to put us in the right festive mood. No holiday music is more annoying than the piped-in variety at shopping malls and department stores. Can science explain why the same song we enjoy singing with relatives or congregants drives us to visions of sugar-plum homicide when it blares across the public-address system Chez Target?

Our drive to surround ourselves with familiar music during life cycle events and annual celebrations is ancient in origin. Throughout most of our history as a species, music was a shared cultural experience. Early Homo sapiens coupled music with ritual to infuse special days with majesty and meaning. Before there was commerce, before there was anything to buy, our hunter-gatherer ancestors sat around campfire circles crafting pottery, jewelry and baskets, and they sang. Early humans didn’t sit and listen to music by themselves — music formed an inseparable part of community life. So much so, that when we sing together even today, our brains release oxytocin, a hormone that increases feelings of trust and social bonding.

Part of what makes this social bonding “stick” is the fact that music literally sticks in our ears. The Germans, Levitan happily tells us, have a name for the phenomenon of having a piece of music stuck in your head: Ohrwurms (ear worms). And, as Levitan also observes, it’s just a short sleigh ride over the river and through the woods to Madison Avenue, where decades have been spent perfecting the art and science of ear worm exploitation. Did you know that classical music makes people buy more wine, and order more food?

But as smart as those Mad Men are, many of us tire quickly of the wall-to-wall a-wassailing. Muzak in the mall is bad enough, and I imagine a special circle of Hell for those who make this stuff even catchier by turning it into a commercial. Levitan tells us it’s not just the ubiquity. It’s that holiday music is too simple to sustain constant repetition. Especially when the song itself features such relentless droning as “The Little Drummer Boy.” This is why classical music works so well — it’s complex. And well-known classical works, by their very familiarity, often provide exactly the balance of novelty and universality that marketers are looking for.

He also speculates on the effect of today’s de-socialization of music in the age of personal listening devices like the iPod. The communal aspect of music sharing is still there, but it takes place online, not face to face. For the iPod generation, I imagine the subtle, ritualistic pressure of holiday music might have a special annoyance — in its subliminal admonition to take of the ear buds and join the party.

YouTube Symphony: The Latest Thing to Do About Classical Music

You may have heard of something called the YouTube Symphony briefly discussed on TV news, but if you aren’t into online video, social media, etc. you may not know what exactly it is. Luckily, one of your crack Holde Kunst bloggers (hint: it’s not John) works in the website and search engine industry and keeps pretty good track of Google (YouTube’s parent company) and its plans for world domination and, now, online classical music hegemony.

First, a little about YouTube…

YouTube is a website that hosts and distributes videos. Individuals and companies upload videos they’ve created (or saved off the VCR, or whatever). Web users can watch these videos free on YouTube.com — a particularly buzz-worthy classical example is Renee Fleming’s Proms performance of Korngold’s aria “Ich ging zu Ihm.” Webmasters can also embed videos on their own websites, like I’ve done below — click the Play button to hear composer Tan Dun introduce the YouTube Symphony project.

YouTube videos may be used for entertainment, promotion, or collaboration — remember the YouTube debate during the primary elections, when anyone could submit a video asking the candidates a question?

What’s the YouTube Symphony?

Here’s a brief introduction from some young musicians and composer Tan Dan:

The YouTube Symphony will realize a work by Tan Dun, in two ways:

• An online video mashup — a complete performance spliced together from video auditions submitted by musicians. (Mashup is jargon for mixing various elements together into a single, new piece of content.)
• A live performance in Carnegie Hall with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the winners of the video audition.

To audition, a musician must choose an instrument, download the sheet music, practice, and make two videos and upload those videos to YouTube. A panel of judges will select the videos to be used in the mashup — and select the performers who will appear in the Carnegie Hall performance.

The most interesting component is the video-assisted audition preparation. After downloading the sheet music, auditioners can practice along with a video of Tan Dun conducting — with or without sound.

(That’s the audition excerpt for string players and harpists.)

Greg Sandow, the composer and commentator who’s become something of a “future of classical music” expert, had this to say:

Two guys at Google came up with the idea (Google owns YouTube), and pitched it to the rest of the company. The rest of the company liked it, so Google went ahead, and found classical music partners to join in the fun.

In other words, the sole reason for the project was that people at Google loved the idea. And that, if you ask me, is how change is coming to classical music. Not because anyone (least of all me) figures out what classical music needs, and then goes out and does exactly that. No, we’re making progress because people all over the map are getting ideas of their own, and putting them in action. That’s what’s transforming classical music world (slowly at first, but I’m sure we’ll see it pick up speed). It’s also how we find out what works.

So this YouTube thing, big as it is, is at bottom just another one of those ideas. And the ideas succeed because somebody loves them.

Greg doesn’t happen to mention this fact, but Google is famous in the tech world for encouraging its employees to devote 20% of their time to “pet projects” outside their official job responsibilities. Not that I’ve called anyone at Google to find out, but this is likely one of many such off-job-description ideas that’s hit the big time. Gmail and those ads you see on this page are two more Google products that began as 20% projects, but that’s not the entire point. Innovation requires an atmosphere as free as possible from self-censorship, free from tailoring your effort and passion down to conventional expectations. We don’t always know what will work until we work with it.

Greg Sandow has extensively discussed the isolation of classical music from contemporary society and it’s easy to see why YouTube Symphony does his heart good whether it turns out to be a gimicky mess or not. Conventional wisdom simply laments that classical music (especially the “new” kind) is doomed to die out with the YouTube generation’s grandparents, confident that nothing can be done about it. The YouTube Symphony gleefully ignores this received wisdom to make music instead.

Boston Symphony Offers Digital Music

Today the BSO became the latest musical institution to put historical performances online.

Starting with two pages of “broadcast archives” and other compilations, the initial digital library centers on a 12-album series dedicated BSO conductors from Koussevitsky to Ozawa, plus several prominent guest conductors.

Music is available in two quality levels (i.e. mp3 file sizes) and can be purchased by the album ($8.99 each), work, or track.

Browse the BSO Didital Music Catalog.

John Adams Interview In Salon - Video

Kevin Berger of Salon has an interesting interview with John Adams in conjunction with the release of the composer’s autobiography, “Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life.” Read the transcript or watch the video (about 10 minutes).

Some interesting moments concern the inspiration Adams took from Wagner:

I was driving through the Sierras and I was listening to a cassette of “Dawn and Siegfried’s Rhine Journey” from “Gotterdammerung.” This is sort of surprising because at that time I was deep into John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen and doing a lot of electronic music.

I’d always been interested in orchestra music, having grown up with it, and I was suddenly just seized by the emotional tone of the music, the emotional sincerity of the music. It suddenly illuminated me and made me realize how much of the avant-garde that I’d been involved in had become dead as far as feeling was concerned. The one thing Cage really forbade was expression of feelings. He was the world’s most lovely, gentle person in his human interactions. But when it came to art, things were absolutely cold. And so much of avant-garde music was.

Here we have this great tradition of jazz and pop music in America, where feeling is everything. If you think of late Coltrane, like “A Love Supreme,” it’s just this 40-minute exhalation of raw feeling. I thought to myself, “Why is it that contemporary classical music has to be devoid of feeling?” By hearing Wagner and realizing what had been lost, I think I suddenly very vaguely saw my future. (John Adams)

Other topics include the composer’s annoyance with the meme that he writes “CNN operas,” and a response to accusations of anti-Semitism in “The Death of Klinghoffer:”

I invite them to meditate on the libretto and the music. Because most people who’ve spent serious time with it, and not come with enormous prejudicial baggage, are moved by the human feeling in the work, and the feeling extends to both the Palestinians and the Jews. You can see why it’s so hard to solve these problems like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because people are so completely locked into their positions.

In full disclosure I must tell you that I’m only superficially familiar with the operas of Adams and not a huge fan of minimalism in general. I hope John and David will have a spare moment to comment.

Met Player - Enjoy Archival Performances Online

Last Wednesday, the Metropolitan Opera unveiled its latest new media strategy: the Met Player.

Over 150 operas from the past 71 years are available for listening or viewing on your computer. The oldest is a 1937 Carmen with Rosa Ponselle, the newest are from the 2007-2008 high definition move theater broadcasts, including definitive performances of La Fille du Regiment (Dessay, Flores) and Eugene Onegin (Fleming, Hvorostovsky), and the Tristan und Isolde featuring Deborah Voight and Robert Dean Smith — flown in from Europe less than two days earlier to replace three ailing or injured colleagues.

Most performances are audio — those that were filmed for broadcast include video.

View the Opera Catalog

One of the best features of Met Player is its flexible payment terms. In addition to a 7-day free trial, you may choose to rent operas one by one or subscribe to the service:

	Web Access Anywhere	Unlimited Plays	Price
Yearly Subscription A year for the price of 10 months	Yes	Yes	$149.99 *
Monthly Subscription	Yes	Yes	$14.99 *
Opera Rental	Yes	Once you rent, you have 30 days to start watching or listening †	$3.99
Free Trial	Yes	7-Day Free Trial More Details You have 7 days to enjoy Met Player for free! If you do not cancel your trial prior to the end of seven days, we will begin charging you $14.99 per month for a monthly subscription.	Free **

Terms and Conditions | Special Pricing for Met Members

Bach's Financial Crisis Soundtrack

I just had to share this little gem from The Guardian, in which Paul Lay reviews Bach’s Cantata No. 168 as a commentary on today’s financial crisis. This cantata chastises the unjust steward from Corinthians and the Gospel of Luke, with a nod to what Lay refers to as “the monied men of 1720s Weimar.” (Bach students will recall that the great prestige of Bach’s position at Leipzig’s Thomaskirche was due to that cities position as a trade power of the era, and that grumbling business correspondence is considered overrepresented in Bach’s surviving letters.)

Some text highlights include “Thine Accounting! Judgement Day!” (Tue Rechnung! Donnerwort!), and “”Capital and interest must one day be settled” (in which the tenor soloist worries about… accounting errors?)

Lay concludes:

Quite what the the economic situation was in Weimar at the time I cannot say, but after listening to Bach’s Cantata 168, we can conclude that the God-fearing Lutherans of the day shared Mervyn King’s concern with moral hazard, took a realistic view of the business cycle, and whether they liked it or not were unlikely to be fed escapist rubbish by the musical genius in their midst.

Enjoy this YouTube clip, or purchase a copy as a gift for that special financial whiz in your life.

Bach: Cantatas, BWV 94, 105, 168

Deutsche Grammophon

J.S. Bach: Cantatas, Vol. 15

by Ton Koopman, Deborah York, Sandrine Piau, Christoph Pregardien, Paul Agnew, Klaus Mertens, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir

News Flash: Great Music is Hard to Write

This Anna Magdalena Bach “controversy” is nothing new. What is a little unusual is the confusion in at least some minds regarding pieces that are seemingly incontrovertible masterpieces. If some minuet or contredanse turns out to be not by Mozart, but by Michael Haydn or Salieri, I’m unmoved. The pieces are gonna be par for the course professionalism, anyway, and M. Haydn and Salieri are at least capable of that. It is a mistake, I think, to postulate that this or that piece is “greater than the sum of its parts”; when such assertions are made, I tend to assume that the “parts” are not properly appreciated. Certain blunter pieces by Beethoven or even large pieces by a composer like Shostakovich seem to achieve more than their immediately perceptible technical merits seem to augur. This has to do primarily with composition in the original meaning of the word, the selection and arrangement of materials.

A composition such as the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony or the whole of, let’s say, Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony rely on composition in the original sense of the word described above. In isolation, there is little to admire in the intrinsic materials, but the materials are co-ordinated in a larger whole that creates profound musical meaning. If this were not the case, wouldn’t we be tempted to consider Florent Schmitt’s piano music the equivalent of Chopin’s, or Ravel’s music among the very greatest achievements? But those latter works are typically satisfying. But the satisfaction derived from much of Schmitt or Ravel can indeed be attributed to their “immediately perceptible technical merits”. I’m not persuaded that such a standard is particularly applicable to the greater achievements of Bach, or Beethoven, or Shostakovich.

I wonder if the whole thing doesn’t reveal a “sees the trees but not the forest” sort of outlook fostered by the inculcation of a limited academic perspective in analysis, fostered by the problemmatical absorption of music into limited and doctrinaire academic frameworks.

Blogs Are Abuzz for Anna Magdalena Bach - Did She Compose the Cello Suites?

Close-up of title page to the first volume of Singende Müse an der Pleisse, a collection of strophic songs published in Leipzig in 1736, by “Sperontes”, Johann Sigismund Scholze. JS and Anna Magdalena Bach may be the couple pictured.Martin Jarvis decided, as a 19-year-old violist, that the famed cello suites didn’t sound like J.S. Bach.

“Certainly in the first suite, the movements are short and very simple, in comparison with the first movement of the violin works. And I couldn’t understand why,” he said. 

After years of forensic study, the conductor and professor at Darwin University finally discovered this alleged slam-dunk: a manuscript with the notation “Ecrite par Madame Bachen Son Epouse” which says “written by the wife of Bach” rather than “copied.”

We already knew of Anna Magdalena’s role as a copyist. Obviously neither that word, nor the recognizable handwriting of Anna Magdalena would cut it as proof given her known role as a copyist — but in news reports Dr. Jarvis mentions “18 reasons why they weren’t written by Bach.” (Specifics would be great.)

There are several mentions on blogs, but none provides additional detail or (yet) a good discussion beyond what’s in the most detailed

Reuters article

. Over at the

Museum of Hoaxes

, there’s a little more detail, with a mention of “a musicologist from Sweden who has used statistics to conclude the cello suites did not fit into Bach’s other works.”

The Telegraph

did find a Belfast Bach Scholar who described the findings as “highly important.” Unfortunately they also have some skeptical quotes from academic Stephen Rose and cellists Julian Lloyd Webber and Steven Isserlis:

Stephen Rose, a lecturer in music at Royal Holloway, University of London, said: “It is plausible that she corrected, refined and revised many of his compositions, although there is not enough evidence to show that she single-handedly composed the Cello Suites.”

Cellists who have performed the Suites extensively remained skeptical. Julian Lloyd Webber insisted that the compositions were “stylistically totally Bach” and that “many composers had appalling handwriting, which meant better copies would naturally have been made, with the originals then discarded”.

Steven Isserlis, the cellist, who is working on a recording of the Suites, said: “We can’t say that it is definitely not true, in the same way that we can’t prove that Anne Hathaway did not write some of Shakespeare’s work, but I don’t believe this to be a serious theory.”

Given that Anna Magdalena did serve as a copyist, it’s hard to imagine how a physical analysis of the manuscripts could prove her authorship — unless you could somehow place an original manuscript in a time and place where it literally couldn’t have been the work of Johann Sebastian. What’s really needed is a consensus among at least some Bach experts who are in a position to address whether the compositional technique and style of the suites might indicate Anna Magdalena’s role. Dr. Jarvis will be speaking at the New Zealand Forensic Science Society — not a peer-reviewed musical conference. (I could be misinterpreting the term

forensic study

here. Given that the details aren’t obviously accessible on the web, it could be what historians call manuscript studies — or it could branch out into some kind of scientific analysis of the musical choices reflected in the scores. The point is that no specific finding reported in the media comes close to justifying Dr. Jarvis’s thesis.)

According to his faculty profile, Dr. Jarvis presented on this topic at the 2002 Musicological Society Conference - Newcastle. His publications include:

• “Did J S Bach Write the Cello Suites? Part 2 The Musical Analysis” Stringendo Australia 2003

• “Did Johann Sebastian Write the Cello Suites?” Musical Opinion, UK, 2002

• “Did J S Bach Write the Cello Suites? Part 1” Stringendo, Australia, 2002

• “The Significance of Anna Magdalena Bach”, Musical Opinion July/Aug 2005

I haven’t been involved in musical academe for many years and am not in a position to determine how peer-reviewed these publications are, so my apologies in advance if I’m wrong. But Musical Opinion, at least, is a classical music magazine. Stringendo seems to be the newsletter of the Australian Strings Association.  Sadly, it’s not online so we can’t assess the 2003 musical analysis.

Perhaps the last doubt-casting word comes from Jarvis himself:

“It doesn’t sound musically mature. It sounds like an exercise, and you have to work incredibly hard to make it sound like a piece of music,” he said.

Yes, the suites are hard. I never really mastered the last three as an advanced (but not performing-career-bound) college-level cellist.  And while the first three lie beautifully under the fingers in the congenial keys of G major, D minor and C major, it’s challenging to do them justice.

But the reasons have nothing to do with musical flaws. The cellist plays alone and must manage the pacing and large-scale momentum independently. Pianists are accustomed to this, but the unaccompanied cello repertoire is quite small — and many student cellists face this challenge in these pieces alone. An even bigger challenge is bringing out the contrapuntal underpinnings of the music while playing a single line. My teachers spent countless hours explaining how and why to “bring out the base line” etc. and only after learning music theory did I truly understand.

Enjoy these free YouTube performances and decide for yourself. And a hat-tip to Dan Perry for bringing this story to my attention.

• Pablo Casals - Suite #1, Sarabande

• Mischa Maisky - Suite #2, Prelude

• Mstlav Rostropovich - Suite #3, Prelude

• Sifei Wen - Suite #4, Prelude

• Diemerson Sena - Suite #5, Prelude

• Mstislav Rostropovich - Suite 6, Gavotte & Gigue