Filed under: Commentary | Tags: Christina Jennings, Matthew Dane, Peak Performances Chamber Series, Saint Andrews Epsicopal Church
I was very excited when I received a press release from the Peak Performances Chamber Series announcing their second concert which will be Saturday, January 14, 2012, at 4 PM. It will be held at Saint Andrews Episcopal Church at 2015 Glenarm Place, just north of downtown Denver. I heard their opening concert in November of 2011, and, as I said in my review, it was world-class. Matthew Dane, viola, and Christina Jennings, flute, are the founders of this group. Each performance will involve different musicians except for Dane and Jennings, because the ensemble does works that require different musicians at each performance. I would also add that at this performance they are going to perform a work by Frank Bridge. He is an English composer (1879 – 1941) who is seldom heard, and his music is very different from the other English composers who were his contemporaries.
Please read the press release below. If you miss this performance, I can guarantee you that you will be missing a great deal. I might add that the atmosphere at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church is absolutely perfect for a chamber recital. The acoustics are great, and it is a remarkably intimate venue.
“It is with great pleasure that I tell you about the inaugural season of Peak Performances Chamber Series! Christina Jennings and I are serving as co-directors- we will present three programs this year at the intimate St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in downtown Denver. Each concert will feature different combinations of exceptional musicians to allow for wide variety in repertoire. We will begin our performances at 4pm, to give audience members the chance to come meet the players at a reception, go out for dinner, and/or go hear another downtown performance afterwards.
“The concert on January 14th will showcase outstanding, nationally recognized, and passionate chamber musicians living in the region: violinists Lina Bahn and Margaret Soper Gutierrez, violists Matthew Dane and Erika Eckert, and cellists Silver Ainomäe and Thomas Heinrich. The program includes pieces by Mozart (an early 19th-century arrangement of his famous Sinfonia Concertante) and Frank Bridge (a late Romantic masterpiece). Attached you will find a flyer, which you should feel free to forward to anyone you think might be interested.”
The essentials are:
What: Peak Performances Chamber Series Concert
Where: St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, 2015 Glenarm Place, Denver
When: 4pm Saturday, January 14
Admission: $20 general/$5 students (or free with paying adult)
Filed under: Commentary
A few days ago I received a press release for the January 14 concert given by the Boulder Philharmonic orchestra’s first 2012 performance. The concert will be at 7:30 PM and Mackey Auditorium on the CU campus, which is their regular venue. The press release was so very well written, that I think I will quote the entire piece on this webpage.
However, I would like to make a few comments first, and that is that all of you readers should attend this concert. Not only is the guest pianist, Benjamin Hochman, a truly fine pianist, but this is a chance to hear works by George Gershwin and Maurice Ravel on the same program. For me, that is always an interesting and fascinating proposition, because I studied with the teacher who knew both composers quite well. As a matter of fact, I wrote an article about it on April 6, 2011, and I encourage you to read it, because it sheds new light on the lives of these two composers that is not well-known. Trust me, it is not that hard to find the article that I wrote. Just go over to the left-hand column of this page, and click on April 2011 and you can find it from there. These two composers influenced each other a great deal, but I will let you read about that in the April article.
The other piece that will certainly be worth hearing is Howard Hanson’s Symphony Nr. 2. Over the years, it has not been performed very much, and it is a good work.
Below you will find the press release from the Boulder Philharmonic:
“The Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra continues its 54th season, The Spirit of Boulder, on Saturday, January 14, 2012, at 7:30 p.m., with “French Impressions,” at CU-Boulder’s Macky Auditorium. Michael Butterman, music director with the Boulder Phil, conducts, with guest pianist Benjamin Hochman, winner of 2011′s prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. This program repeats on Sunday, January 15, at 6:30 p.m. by invitation at the Vilar Performing Arts Center in Beaver Creek.
“French music, like its visual art, is all about color: blending timbres, contrasting tones,” says Maestro Butterman. “Many of the greatest orchestrators in history have been French, including Maurice Ravel, whose ‘Piano Concerto in G’ is the featured work on the program.”
“Having emphasized the French penchant for colorful orchestration, Butterman points out that the concert also includes music written by American composers George Gershwin and Howard Hanson. “Gershwin’s ‘An American in Paris’ reflects his impression of Paris after a visit there, and the Hanson ‘Romantic’ symphony is colorful, cinematic, and evokes vivid images in the imagination, not unlike those created by the other works on the program,” says Butterman.
“The concert opens with two ‘Gymnopedies’ by French composer Erik Satie, written in 1888. “I have always thought of Satie as an early minimalist,” says Butterman. “In these pieces, he sets up pleasant harmonic progressions in which chords are valued for their pure sound and do not ‘function as normal chords.’ In traditional tonal harmony, dominant chords resolve to tonic chords and so on—not necessarily so in the case of Satie, and this approach was to have a profound influence on composers such as Ravel and Debussy, whose orchestration of the ‘Gymnopedies’ we hear.”
“The quasi-jazzy Ravel “Piano Concerto in G” closes out the first half of the concert. Ravel completed this concerto in 1931, incorporating parts of pieces he had written in the past and reflecting the sounds of jazz he heard during a tour of the U.S. Performing this concerto and making his Boulder Phil debut is pianist Benjamin Hochman, recipient of a 2011 Avery Fisher Career Grant, awarded to talented instrumentalists believed to have great potential for solo careers. Previous recipients of the Avery Fisher Career Grant for piano have included Yuja Wang, Jonathan Biss, and Orion Weiss.
“Although I have not worked with Benjamin before, I have heard wonderful things about his playing,” says Butterman. “From listening to his recording samples, I have the sense that his blend of youthful vigor and colorful approach to touch will match beautifully with the challenges of the Ravel concerto.”
“After the intermission, we hear Howard Hanson’s “Symphony No. 2,” commissioned by Serge Koussevitsky for the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1930. “Hanson’s ‘Romantic’ symphony was written at about the same time as the Ravel and Gershwin, and would seem to be a score in search of a film,” says Butterman. “It builds drama palpably and revels in lush themes and heroic use of the French horns from which I’m sure John Williams learned a thing or two.”
“George Gershwin’s classic, “An American in Paris,” written in 1928, brings the evening to a lighthearted conclusion. “Gershwin’s ability to bring together the worlds of jazz, popular song and ‘classical’ music was groundbreaking and found many imitators on the continent,” says Butterman. “Ravel himself, in his piano concerto, writes passages that make use of what could be called jazzy harmonies and rhythms. So, while Gershwin was inspired by Paris, it would also appear that he did a little inspiring of the French himself,” says Butterman.”
SATIE (arr. DEBUSSY): Two Gymnopédies
RAVEL: Piano Concerto in G Major
HANSON: Symphony No. 2, “Romantic”
GERSHWIN: An American in Paris
Filed under: Commentary | Tags: Berg, Cage, Expressionsim, Henry A. Lea, Oswald M. Ungers, Schoenberg, Ulrich Weisstein, Webern
Beginning in February, I will be teaching a ten week course on chamber music at the Academy for Lifelong Learning (http://www.academyll.org), so I am in the process of gathering together all the music that I plan to present to the class. It will, of course, include avant-garde music, and when I include new music (please do not confuse the term “new music” as it is used on Colorado Public Radio as being solely indicative of pop music) in any course that I am teaching, even if it is expressly on the avant-garde, I enjoy starting at the present and going backwards. Since the class that I will be teaching is only 10 weeks, and since it is not limited only to music of the 20th and 21st centuries, I must pick important composers and highlight their impact on music. As in any subject, music has its own set of labels to apply to compositional styles. Three composers who had a profound impact on music of the 20th century are Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern (I recently wrote an article on these three composers which will be published on the website of the 555 Collective in the next couple of weeks. The 555 Collective is a group dedicated to arts and music in Waco, Texas. http://www.555c.org/index.php).
For those of you readers who may not have in mind a clear idea of the music that Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg wrote, it is called 12 tone or serial music, and I will quote briefly from my upcoming article:
“12 tone music is usually referred to as serial music because it uses a series of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale. Those 12 notes do not have to appear in consecutive order, and it is also incorrect to refer to it as a ‘scale’ because a scale has a leading tone that gives the scale a sense of finality and rest. Keep in mind that serial music was designed to replace all of the traditional conventions of harmony and rhythm that composers had been familiar with since, roughly, 1580, when Gioseffo Zarlino published his four movement treatise on harmony Istitutioni Harmoniche. In that huge work, he codified major and minor and the sense of tonality.
“One of the rules that Schoenberg developed in using serial music was that the 12 notes could be divided into four three-note series; three four-note series; or, two six-note series. Each of those series can be performed as originally codified, or they can be inverted, or they can be performed in reverse order, or, as it is known, in retrograde.
Another label that has often been given to these three composers, in addition to accurately calling them “serial composers”, and composers of the Second Viennese School, is Expressionist. The term expressionism originally applied to painters and poets in Germany, just as Impressionism applied to painters, composers, and symbolist poets in France. It manifested itself shortly before World War I, and after that, the meaning was expanded to include painting, literature, theater, dance, music, and architecture. Wikipedia dangerously includes architecture, but other than that is correct when it says that, “Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas.” I use the word dangerously, because by its very nature, architecture must be exempt from expressionism. Oswald M. Ungers was a highly influential architect from Cologne, Germany, and he came to the United States briefly to become the Chairman of the Architecture Department at Cornell University. His career as an architect has been typified as post modernism, and I think largely that was due to his objection to classifying his work as Expressionism. During his career, he gave an address in Florence, Italy, to an international consortium of architects, and I will quote from that address:
“Transferred to architecture, the idea underlying Expressionism, which culminates in the total detachment from reality by means of a purely visionary experience, cannot be directly realized. This is due to the unique quality of architecture, which, much more so than all the other arts, is tied to its materials, its purpose, its function and the principles of construction.
“The call for a purer vision can hardly be heeded by architecture, unless one restricts oneself to the realm of designs, i.e., ideas… Architecture is incapable of expressing all psychological phenomenon. It can achieve purely spiritual expression only if, in itself, it is not reality but reproduction, i.e., illusion.”
There is a very interesting series of books that was produced by the International Comparative Literature Association. The name of the entire five-book series is A Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages. Volume 1 is entitled Expressionism As An International Literary Phenomenon, and is edited by Ulrich Weisstein, who is Professor Emeritus of Germanic Studies and Comparative Literature at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. (In past articles, I have mentioned the second book of the series which is extremely useful to musicians, and its title is The Symbolist Movement in the Literature of European Languages, and it was edited by Anna Balakian, former Chairman of the Department of Comparative Literature at New York University. It contains some excellent articles on Impressionism, Debussy, and the Symbolist poets).
In Volume 1 on Expressionism, there is an article on Expressionist Literature and Music written by Henry A. Lea, who was on the UMass Amherst faculty in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literature. On the University of Massachusetts website he is also listed as a talented musician, and at this juncture I would like to point out that no matter how talented he may have been, he had no degrees in music that I have been able to find.
He makes some very good points in this article in connection with labeling serial music as Expressionism, but says there is an odd underlying quality that it is not attractive to the ear. In the very first paragraph, he outlines Kierkegaard’s discussion of Mozart’s Don Giovanni and his remarks about the relationship between music and language. I have not read Kierkegaard’s article, but Lea summarizes some of the points that, “language is a more specific medium than music, which communicates its content without requiring reflection on the part of the listener.” He continues his summary by saying, “Being conceptual, language uses more concrete, but also more limited, symbols than music, which is less denotative and more abstract because the notes are not reducible to precise meanings.” To me, and I think to most trained musicians, that statement is very facile and glib. Doctor Lea goes on to say that there are more people who can read James Joyce than people who can listen to Schoenberg with genuine understanding, and I would point out that many individuals who are not trained musicians but who hear Schoenberg are puzzled by its content because it is unfamiliar when compared to romantic works.
I would also state that I firmly believe that, in many cases, there is a lack of curiosity concerning what makes the music sound the way it does. I am not saying that people must like what they hear, but they must understand it so that their opinions a valid. I would also like to point out to Doctor Lea that as a trained musician, I can understand Schoenberg more easily than some of the metaphors used by James Joyce. Dr. Lea also states that, “… Until fairly recently, competent performers of modern music were harder to find than actors of avant-garde drama or interpreters of experimental novels [Where does that come from?]. Even today, modern music has a limited audience, partly because much of it is not written for the orchestra or a solo instrument.” Even taking into consideration that this book was first printed in 1973, that is an absolutely absurd remark. For someone who is so blindingly intelligent as Dr. Lea, I wonder what he thinks of Webern’s Variations, Opus 27, for piano, his quartets, or his symphony. Likewise, what does he think of Berg’s magnificent Violin Concerto and Schoenberg’s orchestral pieces.
He does admit that these three composers were quite knowledgeable of literature and poetry, and that their interest was not centered around German poetry alone, though he does criticize them for representing primarily Neo-Romantic literature.
He compares Expressionism to Naturalism, and states that in Naturalism ugliness was used to present “a slice of life”, whereas the Expressionists went beyond the social aspect to challenge the traditional meaning of the word. Continuing, he is quite accurate when he says that Schoenberg believed that the development of harmony was making consonance and dissonance obsolete. As a matter of fact, that is one of the main reasons that Schoenberg developed the 12 tone series. He continues saying that Schoenberg proclaimed the equality of all 12 tones “of the scale.” You may accuse me of nitpicking, but I have read a lot of Schoenberg, and I don’t recall Schoenberg ever calling the 12 tone series a scale. The scale implies an order of notes, usually eight, where the distance between the seventh and the eighth note is a half-step, which forms a leading tone to the eighth note, thus giving the scale a sense of rest or finality or tonal center.
He also states that when Schoenberg said, “I believe that art does not stem from ability but from necessity”, he is making a distinction between art and craft, and a craftsman develops a skill without having anything vital to say, but the artist has an inner compulsion to express himself without conscious application. He attributes that idea to the painter Kandinsky. I found myself wishing he would explain the point he was trying to make.
Dr. Lea closes his discussion on Expressionism and music by saying:
“As we have seen, modern music developed more suddenly and more radically than modern literature, perhaps because music, having developed more slowly before, is capable of more far-reaching technical innovations. Because their theory and practice are harder to reconcile in music than they are in literature – theory is verbal, music is nonverbal – the Expressionist theory is not confirmed in practice; for while the theory is loftily idealistic, the music sounds doom-haunted – more evocative of a crumbling old world than of a dawning new one. Expressionist literature shares this despair, but has a more aspiring and dynamic ring and looks more to the future than to the past. Both, however, undertake a radically new examination of the bases of human existence.”
This strikes me as a very negative point of view, and I am quite surprised by it, because I have never seen anything in Berg, Webern, or Schoenberg, to make me think that their music was “doom-haunted.” I certainly agree that the atonality of the Second Viennese School startles many listeners with its sound, but those listeners, who are curious enough, usually have an epiphany, and whether or not they listen to Berg, Webern, and Schoenberg, every day, they at least have an understanding of what these composers tried to do. And, after reading Doctor Lea’s article, even when it contains some good points, I wonder if his understanding of Expressionism in music is as incomplete as my understanding is of Paul Zech or Alfred Wolfenstein, or Ludwig Scharf.
I wonder what Dr. Lea’s thoughts would be concerning the American composer John Cage, who I think was the ultimate Expressionist composer, and who had composition studies with Arnold Schoenberg. I wonder if he would have been in agreement with Cage when he abandoned serial technique and adopted the music of chance. That switch to indeterminism cost Cage many friends, and it is most ironic that those who abandoned him quickly, Boulez, Xenakis, and Stockhausen, to name but three (and they were serial composers), were eventually strongly influenced by the indeterminate music of John Cage.
In Doctor Lea’s article, he comes very close to stating out right that Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern wrote without implying any social commitment, except to say that they were concerned with the reform in the arts and in the quality of life. My question would be of Henry A. Lea: Why is it so startling that Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern considered traditional harmonies exhausted? Art to be art must always progress. And how does a new art affect the quality of life?
Filed under: Commentary
I am often taken to task about the articles that I write, either as commentary, or reviews of performances that I hear. There are those who think that my review articles are too harsh, and, believe it or not, there are those who think that I am not critical enough in my articles. There are also individuals who believe that if I write a critical article, that I will do them, or their organization, irreparable harm. I have often been asked to change my review because people think that I have been too harsh. But these individuals do not seem to understand that if I change my review upon their request, then my reviews would have no meaning whatsoever. And obviously, my integrity would suffer.
I do try to write my reviews so that they are abundantly clear to everybody who reads them. Serious music is a language, and trained musicians, individuals and orchestras, are the interpreters of the language created by the composers. Because of its complex structure and the required skill, jazz is a very serious language as well. Music that is not so serious, rock, rap, hip-hop, etc., has a more simple language, even though there are those musicians who approach it in a very serious way. Sometimes, the language, not only of the text, but of the harmonic structure (which is usually extremely restricted) is simply obscured by the volume.
As I said above, it is up to individuals and orchestras to be the interpreters of the language. If one is going to be an interpreter, then one needs to be careful and dedicated to that particular skill. In serious music (and by that term I am carefully avoiding the use of the word “classical” music because that delineates a certain time period in the history of music) every composer has his own language. Therefore, it behooves the musicians to not only study that language, but also to perfect the vehicle for translating it: piano, violin, flute, etc. As each word in any language requires the correct pronunciation and inflection for complete understanding, so does the language of music require dynamics, pitch, and phrasing, for complete understanding. Therefore, both language and music can have a sense of architecture; otherwise it leaves the composer’s (or speaker’s) world in fragments. If I am required by circumstances to ask for someone’s support in a task, and I say this: “Dude! Will you help me out with this!” that will certainly not be very eloquent, and will imply and communicate a great deal about my vocabulary and ability with language, or lack thereof. But, if I am more eloquent, as Iphigenia (Goethe) is, and I say, “I shall not escape great reproach nor serious harm, if I do not succeed; however, I’ll lay it on your knees! If you truly are as you are extolled for being, demonstrate it by your support [of me] and exalt truth through me.” This one sentence implies a substantial narrative that Iphigenia is circumscribed by, and it is easy to understand that Iphigenia is transforming language into action. There is a world of difference between these two examples.
Of course, we do not speak like that on a day to day basis, but that kind of language is why many of us go to plays or to concerts. We want to luxuriate in the art, and we want to luxuriate in the drama of the language. The sentence above, “Dude! Will you help me out with this!” reflects very little eloquence, and frankly, it does not take much thought to understand.
When I write review articles on concerts and performances that I have heard, I do not use made-up formulaic sayings, nor do I intend to deliver judgments ex cathedra. However, I do write my reviews based on a lifetime of being a musician, having a sound musical background based on training, on performance experience, and on teaching performance practices. I try to communicate to the readers of my articles what the orchestra was trying to “say,” and what they should have been “saying” based on my knowledge of the composer. I cannot base my review on my like or dislike of any individual symphony orchestra or chamber group, or personality. I have often been taken to task for not being “nice,” but if I shaded my opinion of the performance in order to please the orchestra, or whatever ensemble I was reviewing, then my integrity as a musician would suffer.
When it comes to dealing with community orchestras, which are largely made up of volunteers, then things become more difficult. Volunteer orchestras have precious few members that have degrees in music, and are therefore not accustomed to practicing long hours that professional musicians must fulfill.
But many orchestras need to realize that one does not have the right to volunteer if the organization deems the individual to be ineffective by demonstrating his or her inability with the language. And no one should argue in favor of their limitations. I am certainly not saying that every community orchestra should sound like the Colorado Symphony or the Cleveland Symphony, but there are certain basics which must be manifest in every performance. How else can the composer’s language be translated? Would we give a standing ovation at a play if half of the words were garbled and unintelligible?
Filed under: Commentary
Every now and then, if I think about it too much, I can get very upset about the fragility of our cultural inheritance.
The other day I was listening to NPR, which I basically like very much, when I heard a review being given by Ken Tucker of a new piece of pop music. I do not remember the name of the piece nor do I remember the person who was singing, but Tucker was describing it as one of the most profound and moving pieces of music he had heard for quite awhile. As I listened, I noticed a few things about this piece which were absolutely inescapable: 1) I could not understand the words, except very randomly; 2) There seemed to be a four line stanza of text, which seemed to describe the singer’s despair over his unrequited love, and his frustration at being treated in a poor way by the object of his affections; 3) Each sentence, and each word of the text, were all sung on the very same note. It was quite similar to an aria because the notes only appeared when the rhythm of the text changed. If there was a long syllable, the note was held longer, and, if the syllables were fairly short, then the notes occurred more rapidly. It was simply one note repeated in the rhythm of the syllables until the end of the fourth sentence, when the notes changed and usually ascended by one or two steps. Subsequently, this wonderful song that Ken Tucker found thrilling was, in actuality, almost monotone; 4) The instrumentation of this song was fairly sparse, but a relatively driving rhythm, provided by a drum set, forced the piece along and gave it some direction; and, 5) The harmonies which were used only changed at the end of every fourth sentence of text. The singer stayed on the same note for all four lines, and the same chord all four lines until the last couple of words of the fourth sentence, and then the harmony changed. One group of four lines was based on the tonic chord, one group of four lines was based on the sub dominant, and one group of four was based on the dominant chord. Then the harmony started all over again using the same pattern. I’m sorry if many of you readers aren’t aware of what a tonic chord is, or dominant or sub-dominant, but there isn’t room right now to explain, except to say that the tonic chord is a triad based on the first note of the scale, the sub dominant on the fourth degree of the scale, and the dominant on the fifth degree of the scale.
What upset me about this review was that Mr. Tucker was describing it in the most glowing terms, and, as I said above, the word profound was used more than once. In addition, there was nothing in it that to me, at least, indicated any kind of sadness or frustration. In fact, I wanted to shout to the singer, if that’s the most emotion you can muster, then get on with your life and stop wasting time. Quite often the person who was singing this was so inarticulate – or so loud – that the words simply could not be understood, except for an occasional “sorry, sorry, sorry.”
I have no idea what musical qualifications Ken Tucker possesses, because when I looked him up, I could find no bio statement, except that he had received some ASCAP Awards for his music reviews, and that he appeared on NPR’s program, “Fresh Air.”
I freely admit to the possibility that when Ken Tucker goes home, he may listen to Mozart quartets or Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony, but I really don’t think he does. His enthusiasm for the piece that I heard him review was boundless, and the lack of art in this piece was as startling as the abundance of art in the Mozart quartets. Perhaps I need to listen to Fresh Air on a more regular basis, but I don’t think I have ever heard any of the Fresh Air hosts talk about serious music. My lament is that it seemed that Mr. Tucker may be close to my generation, and yet he seemed unconcerned about proselytizing music that had such minimal content. The problem with that is that we are passing on a piece of music that requires no thought and no imagination. Since it requires no thought and no imagination, it automatically advances the idea that any music can be listened to without any thought and that means understanding as well. I have heard many students explain to me that they listen to pop music because they don’t need to think about it; and, conversely, they do not listen to serious music, because every time they do, they have to think about it. The dangerous impact this is having on our cultural heritage is that the understanding of serious music, and its accompanying appreciation of the art, is beginning to dwindle. I have met adult students who don’t know how to listen to music or think that it is necessary, and indeed, seem to be almost fearful of listening to it, because they have not been accustomed to it throughout their lives.
I also become worried when someone outside the discipline of music writes reviews about it, and at the same time, demonstrates a total lack of knowledge about serious music. It seems to me, that if one is going to make a career writing about music, some evidence about musical knowledge must be in place.
There are times when I hear reviewers extol the art and profundity of Ziggy Pop, and when I am told that a concert in a “sterile concert hall is filled with well-heeled old fogeys in tuxedos,” and when I hear that Mozart and Beethoven and Mendelssohn and Schumann and Cage are just some “old dead guys,” I wonder who will keep the candle burning.