I was just rereading an old Norman Lebrecht post entitled Why We’re Still Afraid of Schoenberg. It contains much useful info, but also the following statement:
His role models were Moses and Napoleon; he wrote an opera on one, an ode to the other.
Leaving Moses aside, Lebrecht must never have heard Schoenberg’s Ode To Napoleon. It is a setting of a poem by Byron which satirically attacks the Corsican.
On Friday evening, I was sad to hear of the death of Karlheinz Stockhausen.
I was led to Stockhausen’s music by following back through the influence of bands I was listening to at the time. The Fall led me back to Can, a couple of members of which had studied with the great man.
Stockhausen not only fundamentally challenged my idea of music, but in seeking to understand him I was led back in turn to Webern, Schoenberg and their classical predecessors.
I consider myself very fortunate to have attended a weekend of concerts in Belfast, back in April 2004. Stockhausen visited the city to oversee and introduce these. (He was also honoured by Queen’s University.)
I was able to sit quite near the mixing desk where Stockhausen operated the controls each evening. I don’t expect ever to be in such close proximity to a major composer again.
I acknowledge that there was something of the showman about Stockhausen and that he was eccentric to say the least. But for me his work Kontakte has a quality of total reinvention which music hasn’t had since JS Bach.
Ivan Hewett catches this in his obituary when he writes:
What he has in abundance is the ability to focus a long and apparently rambling argument in a sudden, blazingly dramatic gesture. Stockhausen’s music contains some of the great, defining aural images of 20th-century music, on a par with the flute that opens Debussy’s L’après-midi d’un Faune or the upward swoop that ends Schoenberg’s Erwartung. Take for example the closing pages of Gruppen, where apocalyptic brass chords are teased from one orchestra to another over the listener’s head; or the moment in Kontakte where an electronic wail descends into the depths and turns magically into a series of pulses.
Stockhausen explained such effects. He said he had discovered that according to the laws of physics, pitch and rhythm were not separate aspects of music as we had once thought, but part of the same phenomenon. Slow a pitch down and it becomes a rhythm. Grappling with the laws of sound in such a fundamental way to create a new form of beauty: this can only remind us of Bach’s mastery of equal temperament.
I would like to repost links to notes on these concerts I attended in 2004, which I made on a blog I had at the time:
I was doing a play in Chicago a few years ago and a friend said, “I’m sorry I haven’t seen the play, I just can’t go to the theater because I find my mind wanders.” And I said, “What does that have to do with it? My mind wanders the whole time.” And not just when I’m sitting there. When I’m acting, my mind wanders.
I don’t go to see plays, but when I go to a concert, my mind wanders.
If it’s music I don’t know, I can’t tell why my mind wandered. It could be:
I hate not being able to tell. I suppose a professional critic would have to bluff it.
In the Malkovich interview above, he goes on to say that if his acting makes your mind wander, then that’s OK.
That’s what theater’s for. To reflect. To contemplate.
But most mind wandering is nothing of the sort.
I have a CD of Rigoletto
Both of these pieces of work have strong plots. I didn’t have to ponder either of them to reach this conclusion. In both cases it was just an obvious fact. It was so blindingly obvious in both cases, I realised that most other fiction must be weakly plotted. Most fiction of any kind, including even quite good fiction, gets along on plots which in comparison are low on drama and scarcely believable, but for some reason, no-one notices and it doesn’t matter.
(The Chekhov story was in this book
A few weeks ago the FT asked how good orchestras can become great. Can a great conductor turn a decent orchestra around in a matter of a few years, or is there more to it? After throwing out the paper, I was pleased to find the article online. Their critic ends with a list of his 10 favourites.
A kind American gentleman has listed Gramophone’s 100 Greatest Recordings. They’re broken up into four batches. Here are the first 25.
At the weekend, I read it was Ornette Coleman’s 77th birthday, so I thought I’d buy his most recent release. It’s a live recording. He’s in good form. Someone once called him a composer of short melody of genius. There is still some truth to that. He’s still coming up with great melodies to start each piece with. Whether the humble listener can follow where each leads is another question.
The opening track, Jordan, has plenty of pace. The next track, Sleep Talking, hangs together well and everything runs along nicely after that. Call To Duty is pretty fierce. Then Once Only has a noodle-y intro and the album loses focus a bit. A violin turns up and outstays its welcome. The album finishes on an intense note with Song X, which goes back to Ornette’s fiery Pat Metheny collaboration in the 80s.
Maybe this CD is not the best intro to Ornette Coleman, but it captures his sound as well as anything else of his I’ve heard and he’s still blasting away.
Rachmaninov wrote his second symphony in 1907. This classic recording of it was made in the 50s. It’s in mono. The sound quality is acceptable although a little strained at certain moments, such as during loud brass playing. The playing from the Leningrad PO is very committed and convincing. The conductor Kurt Sanderling is an interesting figure. A Jew who fled the Nazis, but oddly, to the Soviet East.
Rachmaninov’s music is late-Romantic, but not in the more tonally challenging manner of Richard Strauss. It’s easy on the ear without being predictable or dull. The whole piece is about 55 minutes long, so a hefty symphony. Nothing else on the CD, though. Apparently Rachmaninov was not always taken that seriously as a symphonist but this is a good listen, if a little meandering to my ears, with some lovely tunes scattered through it. Recommended.
DG 449 767-2
I lurk on the ClassicalNet list and got a snippet from there today *, from the contributor Deryk Barker, about the folk-song Star of the County Down. The John McCormack version is the best I know of. If I now understand this, the tune comes from a lot earlier and can be known as Dives and Lazarus. Vaughan Williams used it in a set of variations under this title - I will have to get hold of this piece.
* CLASSICAL Digest - 1 Feb 2007 to 2 Feb 2007 (#2007-19)
I managed to catch most of the science fiction writer Brian Aldiss’s appearance this morning on the revitalised Desert Island Discs. I am not familiar with his work. (I think I read one of his novels years ago, but all that sticks in my mind was that in this particular future, men had full conscious control of their erectile tissues. This novel was written before the discovery of Viagra.)
Anyway, he chose a couple of good records.
No Listen Again for this programme, but at least they archive the choices.
He also gave a writing tip given to him from Agatha Christie. Write your crime novel without knowing the name of the murderer yourself. Before writing the final chapter, decide which character is the least likely to have dunnit. Just go back through the book and make any necessary small changes to train timetables, etc, before you finally reveal them at the end.
My link blog
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