BROOKLYN, N.Y.—Who would be crazy enough to conceive of a piece of music which is basically one theme repeated all of 840 times? No, not Philip Glass (at least he varies his repetitions). Actually, French composer Erik Satie came up with it in 1893 with Vexations. (For those who don't think they've heard anything by Satie: Remember the ethereal piano music playing during Philippe Petit's awe-inspiring walk in between two World Trade Center towers in Man on Wire? That's Satie's Gymnopédie No. 1.)
Now, then: Who would be crazy enough to actually perform such a work in its entirety? These folks—on Thursday, from 6 a.m. to midnight, on the corner of Wall Street and Broad Street, right outside the New York Stock Exchange in lower Manhattan:
These musicians—two of whom I know personally (one of them is in the video above, performing the first four repetitions)—are hardly the first to do it. Leave it to none other than that mild-mannered revolutionary John Cage himself to blaze the trail for marathon performances of Vexations, organizing the first of its kind back in 1963.
I decided to check out the last two hours of this feat of musical performance. Satie's original theme is one of the most harmonically complex things I've ever heard, yet played on the vibraphone at night outdoors in that particular milieu, it felt oddly soothing. Additionally, I also found it rather amusing to see the different kinds of reactions from people wandering past these musicians: some minded their own business; others briefly took note of it, stayed for one or two repetitions and then went on their merry ways; and still others stuck around for extended period of times, doing little more than just relaxing to the music.
A couple of random passersby wondered—jokingly, I assume—if this was yet another outgrowth of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Actually, it was part of two different events: a) "Make Music New York," a day-long, city-wide festival of music-making that has been staged for the past six years on the first day of summer; and b) "A Worldwide Day of Vexations," in which musicians from all over the world staged their own 18-hour performances of Satie's piece, all of them streamed online.
It was fun—and the sense of epic finality to the final chord of the 840th and final repetition (played by Amy Garapic, who was the main force behind this massive global musical event) was truly breathtaking to experience in person. Hopefully I was able to capture some of that feeling in the video I shot.
If any of you are interested in seeing some of the rest of the lengthy (to put it mildly!) performance, much of it has been archived at UStream here (but my video looks better, haha).
Showing posts with label musical matters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label musical matters. Show all posts
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
John Luther Adams's Inuksuit: The Playtime of Contemporary Classical Music?
BROOKLYN, N.Y.—On Sunday, I experienced what may well be the classical-music equivalent of Jacques Tati's Playtime, which I only recently decided was probably my favorite film ever.
A taste, to start things off:
This all-too-brief video represents three iPhone-captured video clips that I stitched together from a performance of contemporary classical music I attended on Sunday—a Sunday I had off thanks to President's Day the next day—at the Park Avenue Armory in New York's Upper East Side (it was part of a four-day festival of new music entitled the Tune-In Music Festival).
Wait a minute, some of you might be saying after watching this short video. This doesn't look like a classical-music performance. What are all those people doing lying on the floor? Why are a lot of audience members walking around? And maybe, most of all, What kind of music is this???
The name of the piece is Inuksuit, and it is the latest work by an American composer named John Luther Adams. (No, this isn't the same John Adams who composed the music for the 1987 opera Nixon in China—which I saw in the Metropolitan Opera's new production on Saturday night, and which I might discuss in a future post, if I can settle on how I actually feel about it—or, more recently, the music for the recent film I Am Love. This other John Adams is, despite similar minimalist leanings, quite a different artist musically, at least based on this one work of his I've heard.) "Inuksuit" is the plural form of "inukshuk," which are human-built stones located in the Arctic Circle that Inuit tribesmen used as navigation tools. In the same way that Inuit people wandered around these stones, so does John Luther Adams envision for Inuksuit that audience members freely wander around the nine-to-99 (Adams's specification) percussionists situated in varying locations in a given space. This isn't the usual concert work where an audience sits down to listen and watch performers perform that work. Instead, we are put in the position of being active spectators, choosing where to go and what to perceive within the space in which the work is performed.
Such an idea could perhaps only work in a certain kind of space...thus Inuksuit's arguably most interesting aspect, which is that this work was conceived to be played outdoors, as the composer himself explained in a pre-concert talk I attended. So in a sense, hearing it performed in a huge indoor space at the Park Avenue Armory was going against the composer's original intentions. (Apparently, there were microphones placed near windows in the Armory's big auditorium, in an attempt to capture some of the sounds outside of the building; I didn't really hear much outside noise, though, until the quiet fading-away of the piece's ending.)
No matter; the sounds of Adams's score still managed to ring forth in all its sonic splendor. And when I say "sounds," I do mean sounds. Musically, Inuksuit is essentially 70 minutes of noise: There are no melodies to speak of, only this imposing epic soundscape that encompasses the heights of quiet serenity and the depths of clangorous cacophony. But this isn't a random assemblage of noises, by any means. From its near-silent beginnings—with some of the performers, all situated in the middle of the auditorium, creating soothing wind noises through paper megaphones—to the way it increases in volume and intensity—cymbals and tam-tams eventually enter the scene, as do conch shells and sirens—until it slowly eases down to triangles and piccolo evoking something like distant bird calls, the work conveys a pretty explicit dawn-to-dusk arc underpinning it all. The work's total effect was intensified by, well, nature itself. The sun was already starting to set by the time 5:20 p.m. rolled around, which made the work's slow dying away seem perfectly in tune with the world outside; that was the first time, by the way, I was able to hear outside street noises intrude into Adams's sonic architecture. (Surely this perfect timing had to have been a deliberate strategy on Adams's part!) It also helped that many of the audience members had, by that point, decided to sit or lie down, echoing the relaxed quality of those final 10 minutes.
Again, my familiarity with Adams's work is, as of now, limited this one work only—I hadn't even heard of the man until I was invited to the event on Facebook by one of the 72 performers, who lives right in my apartment building (he's actually pictured in the New York Times's review of the event here)—but, according to the program notes as well as some quick online research I've done on the composer, he seems to find much of his inspiration not only in trying to evoke nature in his music, but also in finding ways for creative imagination and nature to interact. The environment seems important to him; apparently, in addition to his music, he focused on environmental protection right after graduating from California Institute of the Arts in the early 1970s (he currently lives in Alaska).
This deep devotion to the mingling of art and nature comes through in Inuksuit, whether indoors or outdoors. The work not only suggests the creation of a sonic environment; it itself is a sonic environment, one that Adams allows us to literally bask in, to wander around in, even to pick apart. That sounds like what most of us might do in an unfamiliar physical environment, especially in a natural one. For me, the glory of Inuksuit is not so much that it refreshes our awareness of worlds outside of our own—the one defining characteristic of most of the art I cherish—but that it allows us to simulate the ways we engage with the world in general. It's a kind of controlled experiment: How will we all react to being plunked down in this unfamiliar milieu? We, of course, all have our own ways; in Adams's conception, all of those ways are made valid, not just the traditional "sitting and absorbing" manner of most concert music.
Surely some of you will have an idea by now of how Inuksuit corresponds with Tati's cinematic masterpiece. Like Adams, Tati also demands active spectatorship in his de-emphasis on close-ups and central protagonists, basically throwing his viewers into his meticulously constructed world and asking them to figure out where to look and what to take in. Just as with a second performance of Inuksuit you may well pick up on sonic details you weren't able to hear the first time, Tati's images are vast enough that one can seize upon unnoticed details even on a third or fourth viewing. And, on a big-picture level, both artists take on nothing less than the whole wide world itself: how we live in it, interact in it, take stock of it.
Both works leave me reeling in sensory overload, in awe of the heights of the imagination in transforming ordinary human experience into something revelatory and sublime.
According to Adams in the pre-concert talk, there are plans afoot to stage an actual outdoor performance of Inuksuit in New York's Morningside Park sometime in June. If you have time for it, you ought to go hear it for yourself; it's truly a musical experience like few others.
In the meantime...well, someone more intrepid than I captured a 23-minute selection from Sunday's Park Avenue Armory performance. So you could start there, to perhaps get a better idea as to what this work is all about:
A taste, to start things off:
This all-too-brief video represents three iPhone-captured video clips that I stitched together from a performance of contemporary classical music I attended on Sunday—a Sunday I had off thanks to President's Day the next day—at the Park Avenue Armory in New York's Upper East Side (it was part of a four-day festival of new music entitled the Tune-In Music Festival).
Wait a minute, some of you might be saying after watching this short video. This doesn't look like a classical-music performance. What are all those people doing lying on the floor? Why are a lot of audience members walking around? And maybe, most of all, What kind of music is this???
The name of the piece is Inuksuit, and it is the latest work by an American composer named John Luther Adams. (No, this isn't the same John Adams who composed the music for the 1987 opera Nixon in China—which I saw in the Metropolitan Opera's new production on Saturday night, and which I might discuss in a future post, if I can settle on how I actually feel about it—or, more recently, the music for the recent film I Am Love. This other John Adams is, despite similar minimalist leanings, quite a different artist musically, at least based on this one work of his I've heard.) "Inuksuit" is the plural form of "inukshuk," which are human-built stones located in the Arctic Circle that Inuit tribesmen used as navigation tools. In the same way that Inuit people wandered around these stones, so does John Luther Adams envision for Inuksuit that audience members freely wander around the nine-to-99 (Adams's specification) percussionists situated in varying locations in a given space. This isn't the usual concert work where an audience sits down to listen and watch performers perform that work. Instead, we are put in the position of being active spectators, choosing where to go and what to perceive within the space in which the work is performed.
Such an idea could perhaps only work in a certain kind of space...thus Inuksuit's arguably most interesting aspect, which is that this work was conceived to be played outdoors, as the composer himself explained in a pre-concert talk I attended. So in a sense, hearing it performed in a huge indoor space at the Park Avenue Armory was going against the composer's original intentions. (Apparently, there were microphones placed near windows in the Armory's big auditorium, in an attempt to capture some of the sounds outside of the building; I didn't really hear much outside noise, though, until the quiet fading-away of the piece's ending.)
| Taken with my iPhone at the Park Avenue Armory on Sunday |
No matter; the sounds of Adams's score still managed to ring forth in all its sonic splendor. And when I say "sounds," I do mean sounds. Musically, Inuksuit is essentially 70 minutes of noise: There are no melodies to speak of, only this imposing epic soundscape that encompasses the heights of quiet serenity and the depths of clangorous cacophony. But this isn't a random assemblage of noises, by any means. From its near-silent beginnings—with some of the performers, all situated in the middle of the auditorium, creating soothing wind noises through paper megaphones—to the way it increases in volume and intensity—cymbals and tam-tams eventually enter the scene, as do conch shells and sirens—until it slowly eases down to triangles and piccolo evoking something like distant bird calls, the work conveys a pretty explicit dawn-to-dusk arc underpinning it all. The work's total effect was intensified by, well, nature itself. The sun was already starting to set by the time 5:20 p.m. rolled around, which made the work's slow dying away seem perfectly in tune with the world outside; that was the first time, by the way, I was able to hear outside street noises intrude into Adams's sonic architecture. (Surely this perfect timing had to have been a deliberate strategy on Adams's part!) It also helped that many of the audience members had, by that point, decided to sit or lie down, echoing the relaxed quality of those final 10 minutes.
Again, my familiarity with Adams's work is, as of now, limited this one work only—I hadn't even heard of the man until I was invited to the event on Facebook by one of the 72 performers, who lives right in my apartment building (he's actually pictured in the New York Times's review of the event here)—but, according to the program notes as well as some quick online research I've done on the composer, he seems to find much of his inspiration not only in trying to evoke nature in his music, but also in finding ways for creative imagination and nature to interact. The environment seems important to him; apparently, in addition to his music, he focused on environmental protection right after graduating from California Institute of the Arts in the early 1970s (he currently lives in Alaska).
| Taken with my iPhone at the Park Avenue Armory on Sunday |
This deep devotion to the mingling of art and nature comes through in Inuksuit, whether indoors or outdoors. The work not only suggests the creation of a sonic environment; it itself is a sonic environment, one that Adams allows us to literally bask in, to wander around in, even to pick apart. That sounds like what most of us might do in an unfamiliar physical environment, especially in a natural one. For me, the glory of Inuksuit is not so much that it refreshes our awareness of worlds outside of our own—the one defining characteristic of most of the art I cherish—but that it allows us to simulate the ways we engage with the world in general. It's a kind of controlled experiment: How will we all react to being plunked down in this unfamiliar milieu? We, of course, all have our own ways; in Adams's conception, all of those ways are made valid, not just the traditional "sitting and absorbing" manner of most concert music.
| Playtime (1967) |
Surely some of you will have an idea by now of how Inuksuit corresponds with Tati's cinematic masterpiece. Like Adams, Tati also demands active spectatorship in his de-emphasis on close-ups and central protagonists, basically throwing his viewers into his meticulously constructed world and asking them to figure out where to look and what to take in. Just as with a second performance of Inuksuit you may well pick up on sonic details you weren't able to hear the first time, Tati's images are vast enough that one can seize upon unnoticed details even on a third or fourth viewing. And, on a big-picture level, both artists take on nothing less than the whole wide world itself: how we live in it, interact in it, take stock of it.
Both works leave me reeling in sensory overload, in awe of the heights of the imagination in transforming ordinary human experience into something revelatory and sublime.
| Taken with my iPhone at the Park Avenue Armory on Sunday |
According to Adams in the pre-concert talk, there are plans afoot to stage an actual outdoor performance of Inuksuit in New York's Morningside Park sometime in June. If you have time for it, you ought to go hear it for yourself; it's truly a musical experience like few others.
In the meantime...well, someone more intrepid than I captured a 23-minute selection from Sunday's Park Avenue Armory performance. So you could start there, to perhaps get a better idea as to what this work is all about:
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Music You Realize You've Heard Only After You've Heard It
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Every once in a while, in my music-listening explorations, I'll come across a piece of music that I recall hearing in a film I saw somewhere but remained unknown to me until hearing it at that moment—and that recognition would trigger a feeling of exhilaration along the lines of, I didn't know that was the piece of music used in such-and-such film! Awesome!
I experienced a moment like that a week ago while listening to a 1963 recording of Robert Schumann's 1842 Piano Quintet, with pianist Rudolf Serkin playing with the Budapest Quartet. I was hearing the work for the first time...or so I thought.
The second movement of the work begins with a solemn C minor funeral march that stands in marked contrast to the whirlwind close of its first movement. But then...wait a minute...what's that I hear in the movement's ethereal second subject? Could it be? Yes, yes it is...
It's the chamber music that so delicately opens Ingmar Bergman's 1983 masterpiece Fanny and Alexander, as Bergman literally draws a curtain open into the life of the Ekdahl clan, especially through the eyes of the titular two children. For some reason, I had always believed this was simply "the music from Fanny and Alexander"...and then, upon hearing Serkin and the Budapest Quartet perform this Schumann work, bam! Shivers of recognition running up my spine.
It was a beautiful feeling—hearing music that I realized I had heard only after I had heard it.
(Oh, and even before I saw Fanny and Alexander, I heard this piece of music in the context of Michael Winterbottom's Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005)...though the less said about its sophomoric appropriation in that film, the better.)
Of course, this wasn't the first time I had such a musical encounter.
For example, the late Richard Stone—a composer who scored many of the 1990s Warner Bros. television cartoon series I loved growing up, including Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs—would every so often use a selection of Johannes Brahms's famous heroic big tune of the finale of his First Symphony in his various cartoon scores...and I didn't realize it until I finally heard Brahms's First Symphony in high school and had my eureka moment. (Not that that was a fresh stylistic trope; Carl Stalling, who famously scored a lot of Warner Bros. cartoons in the '40s and '50s, often incorporated music by Rossini, Chopin, Rimsky-Korsakov and others into his musical accompaniments for the adventures of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and the rest. The difference is, I was fully aware of Stalling's homages at the time.)
Jean-Luc Godard famously peppers his films with all sorts of allusions to popular and classical music. In Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967), for instance, Godard randomly uses snatches of Beethoven's string quartets...but only after listening to this complete box set of Beethoven string quartets was I able to put names to the seductive musical bits on the soundtrack. (I don't think it's absolutely necessary to know that it's Beethoven you're listening to on the soundtrack; the music's intimate grandeur speaks for itself. But it enriches your experience of the film quite a bit if you are aware.)
But it's not just classical music, of course.
Before my trip to Los Angeles, I gorged on the music of The Beach Boys, having not heard their complete albums, only their hits. Turns out, though, I hadn't even heard all of their hits...or, at least, I had heard all of their hits, but in some cases I didn't realize I had heard them until this recent diet of Beach Boys listening.
So when I heard their song "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)," from the group's 1965 album The Beach Boys Today!, I immediately recognized it from Look Who's Talking (1989), not having realized that director Amy Heckerling had used more than one Beach Boys song on the soundtrack (I had already known that "I Get Around" accompanied the film's opening-credit insemination).
And the song that plays over the million reconciliations at the end of Love Actually (2003)? "God Only Knows," from Pet Sounds, of course...though I didn't realize it 'til I finally sat down and listened to the complete album recently.
It's a familiar enough experience to watch a film or TV episode and get excited when you hear a piece of music you know and possibly love being used in a fresh context. But what about the tingles of excitement you might feel when you recognize a piece of music that you then realize you had already heard before without knowing back then what it was you were listening to? To me, such moments carry a kind of excavation-like thrill—as if you've happened upon a long-lost artifact in your own mental artistic landscape.
Does this feeling sound familiar to you, dear readers? (Or does this whole blog post merely expose how catching up I need to do in my knowledge of classical and popular art—a fact that was only emphasized yesterday with the passing of cartoonist Harvey Pekar (RIP), who I know only from the excellent 2003 film American Splendor?)
I experienced a moment like that a week ago while listening to a 1963 recording of Robert Schumann's 1842 Piano Quintet, with pianist Rudolf Serkin playing with the Budapest Quartet. I was hearing the work for the first time...or so I thought.
The second movement of the work begins with a solemn C minor funeral march that stands in marked contrast to the whirlwind close of its first movement. But then...wait a minute...what's that I hear in the movement's ethereal second subject? Could it be? Yes, yes it is...
It's the chamber music that so delicately opens Ingmar Bergman's 1983 masterpiece Fanny and Alexander, as Bergman literally draws a curtain open into the life of the Ekdahl clan, especially through the eyes of the titular two children. For some reason, I had always believed this was simply "the music from Fanny and Alexander"...and then, upon hearing Serkin and the Budapest Quartet perform this Schumann work, bam! Shivers of recognition running up my spine.
It was a beautiful feeling—hearing music that I realized I had heard only after I had heard it.
(Oh, and even before I saw Fanny and Alexander, I heard this piece of music in the context of Michael Winterbottom's Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005)...though the less said about its sophomoric appropriation in that film, the better.)
Of course, this wasn't the first time I had such a musical encounter.
For example, the late Richard Stone—a composer who scored many of the 1990s Warner Bros. television cartoon series I loved growing up, including Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs—would every so often use a selection of Johannes Brahms's famous heroic big tune of the finale of his First Symphony in his various cartoon scores...and I didn't realize it until I finally heard Brahms's First Symphony in high school and had my eureka moment. (Not that that was a fresh stylistic trope; Carl Stalling, who famously scored a lot of Warner Bros. cartoons in the '40s and '50s, often incorporated music by Rossini, Chopin, Rimsky-Korsakov and others into his musical accompaniments for the adventures of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and the rest. The difference is, I was fully aware of Stalling's homages at the time.)
Jean-Luc Godard famously peppers his films with all sorts of allusions to popular and classical music. In Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967), for instance, Godard randomly uses snatches of Beethoven's string quartets...but only after listening to this complete box set of Beethoven string quartets was I able to put names to the seductive musical bits on the soundtrack. (I don't think it's absolutely necessary to know that it's Beethoven you're listening to on the soundtrack; the music's intimate grandeur speaks for itself. But it enriches your experience of the film quite a bit if you are aware.)
But it's not just classical music, of course.
Before my trip to Los Angeles, I gorged on the music of The Beach Boys, having not heard their complete albums, only their hits. Turns out, though, I hadn't even heard all of their hits...or, at least, I had heard all of their hits, but in some cases I didn't realize I had heard them until this recent diet of Beach Boys listening.
So when I heard their song "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)," from the group's 1965 album The Beach Boys Today!, I immediately recognized it from Look Who's Talking (1989), not having realized that director Amy Heckerling had used more than one Beach Boys song on the soundtrack (I had already known that "I Get Around" accompanied the film's opening-credit insemination).
And the song that plays over the million reconciliations at the end of Love Actually (2003)? "God Only Knows," from Pet Sounds, of course...though I didn't realize it 'til I finally sat down and listened to the complete album recently.
It's a familiar enough experience to watch a film or TV episode and get excited when you hear a piece of music you know and possibly love being used in a fresh context. But what about the tingles of excitement you might feel when you recognize a piece of music that you then realize you had already heard before without knowing back then what it was you were listening to? To me, such moments carry a kind of excavation-like thrill—as if you've happened upon a long-lost artifact in your own mental artistic landscape.
Does this feeling sound familiar to you, dear readers? (Or does this whole blog post merely expose how catching up I need to do in my knowledge of classical and popular art—a fact that was only emphasized yesterday with the passing of cartoonist Harvey Pekar (RIP), who I know only from the excellent 2003 film American Splendor?)
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Happy 150th Birthday, Gustav Mahler!
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—On this day in 1860, the great Austrian composer Gustav Mahler was born.
Mahler's music holds a very special place in my heart, for reasons that are as much about nostalgia as about the extraordinarily rich, ambitious and influential music he gave the world. Throughout my high-school years, I pretty much couldn't stop listening to his symphonies, finding in these generally large-scale musical epics entire universes that spanned the entire range of human experience, from the heights of ecstasy to the depths of despair. In short, it was music that spoke directly to my neurotic self. It still does.
For my money, the most representative of Mahler's music lies in one of his less popular symphonies: the Sixth, which I actually wrote about at length at The House Next Door here. The piece is often dubbed "Tragic," and certainly the work's despairing conclusion bears out its unofficial subtitle—but the Sixth is far more than relentless doom and gloom. It encompasses extremes of sonority and emotion, touching on sometimes straight-up bizarre notes of bitter irony and pastoral spirituality in its march to a sonic scaffold. Stylistically, too, it represents a clash between the late Romanticism of his early music and the modernist bent of much of his later work. (Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and other Second Viennese School composers in the first half of the 20th century all publicly expressed admiration for the work, with Berg even going so far as to proclaim it "the only Sixth, despite [Beethoven's] Pastorale.")
If you want to experience Mahler at arguably his most unhinged, his Sixth Symphony fits the bill (though his even more forbidding Seventh runs it close). But really, all of his works are monuments of visionary imagination and passion for life in all of its splendor and gloom. They're truly something to behold and treasure—now more than ever.
For a taste, here is Leonard Bernstein—one of the most famous interpreters of Mahler's music, instrumental as he was in bringing them, especially lesser known works like the Sixth, wider exposure and popularity in the 1960s—conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in the first movement of the Sixth in this filmed performance, shot by director Humphrey Burton in 1976 (and available on DVD here):
P.S. Fans of Shutter Island—of which I am one—might be interested to know, if you don't already, that the piece of music Max von Sydow's Dr. Naehring is listening to upon his introduction in the story is from Mahler's Quartet for Piano and Strings in A minor—his only known chamber work, written while in his mid-teens in 1876. Oh that Martin Scorsese, always having a knack for digging up these pieces of music and using them immaculately in his films!
Mahler's music holds a very special place in my heart, for reasons that are as much about nostalgia as about the extraordinarily rich, ambitious and influential music he gave the world. Throughout my high-school years, I pretty much couldn't stop listening to his symphonies, finding in these generally large-scale musical epics entire universes that spanned the entire range of human experience, from the heights of ecstasy to the depths of despair. In short, it was music that spoke directly to my neurotic self. It still does.
For my money, the most representative of Mahler's music lies in one of his less popular symphonies: the Sixth, which I actually wrote about at length at The House Next Door here. The piece is often dubbed "Tragic," and certainly the work's despairing conclusion bears out its unofficial subtitle—but the Sixth is far more than relentless doom and gloom. It encompasses extremes of sonority and emotion, touching on sometimes straight-up bizarre notes of bitter irony and pastoral spirituality in its march to a sonic scaffold. Stylistically, too, it represents a clash between the late Romanticism of his early music and the modernist bent of much of his later work. (Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and other Second Viennese School composers in the first half of the 20th century all publicly expressed admiration for the work, with Berg even going so far as to proclaim it "the only Sixth, despite [Beethoven's] Pastorale.")
If you want to experience Mahler at arguably his most unhinged, his Sixth Symphony fits the bill (though his even more forbidding Seventh runs it close). But really, all of his works are monuments of visionary imagination and passion for life in all of its splendor and gloom. They're truly something to behold and treasure—now more than ever.
For a taste, here is Leonard Bernstein—one of the most famous interpreters of Mahler's music, instrumental as he was in bringing them, especially lesser known works like the Sixth, wider exposure and popularity in the 1960s—conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in the first movement of the Sixth in this filmed performance, shot by director Humphrey Burton in 1976 (and available on DVD here):
P.S. Fans of Shutter Island—of which I am one—might be interested to know, if you don't already, that the piece of music Max von Sydow's Dr. Naehring is listening to upon his introduction in the story is from Mahler's Quartet for Piano and Strings in A minor—his only known chamber work, written while in his mid-teens in 1876. Oh that Martin Scorsese, always having a knack for digging up these pieces of music and using them immaculately in his films!
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Video for the Day, For Your Job Frustrations
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Feeling stuck at a seemingly dead-end job, desiring to move on but being held back by pesky practical matters and such? Minutemen—the great 1980s punk band from California—can articulate that frustration for you...and did in "This Ain't No Picnic," arguably the finest cut from their 1984 magnum opus Double Nickels on the Dime.
There's even a video for it:
Have a nice day at work!
There's even a video for it:
Have a nice day at work!
Monday, June 21, 2010
Summer Tunes That Make Me Feel Fine
NEW YORK—Today is the summer solstice, and that means summer—prime time for hot weather, air conditioning, beaches, exposed flesh and turn-your-brain-off action-movie entertainment—is officially here (unofficially, it's been around, on-an-off, for a few weeks now).
You know what time it is? It's time to start humming those summer tunes!
I've got three favorites:
The eternally classy Frank Sinatra with his classic rendition of "Summer Wind." Really, that's all that needs to be said.
Thank you, John McTiernan, for introducing me to Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City" years ago by using it in the witty opening of Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995)! Also, bonus points for directly appealing to my love for New York City (warts, rank odors and all).
"Summer breeze makes me feel fine / Blowing through the jasmine in my mind." This wonderfully wistful Seals and Crofts tune sure makes me feel fine every time I hear it. Here's a great tune to play sitting out on a porch on a preferably breezy summer evening.
Honorable mention: The entirety of Vampire Weekend's 2008 self-titled debut album. Listen to it while driving on a warm summer day, with the top down and the wind blowing in your face. Even if it's not explicitly about summer, its driving rhythms and infectious sense of fun will get you in the proper summer mood, guaranteed. But hey, don't take my word for it. (The band's second album, Contra, released this year, isn't as conducive to this kind of thing, but still a fine record in its own right.)
Here's their song "A-Punk" from that album (briefly featured in the second half of my California video, by the way). Don't you think it has a surfer-music vibe to it?
Those are my choices for great summer music material. What are yours, my friends? I'd like to hear your choices. Maybe I'll discover a new favorite.
Comment away!
You know what time it is? It's time to start humming those summer tunes!
I've got three favorites:
The eternally classy Frank Sinatra with his classic rendition of "Summer Wind." Really, that's all that needs to be said.
Thank you, John McTiernan, for introducing me to Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City" years ago by using it in the witty opening of Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995)! Also, bonus points for directly appealing to my love for New York City (warts, rank odors and all).
"Summer breeze makes me feel fine / Blowing through the jasmine in my mind." This wonderfully wistful Seals and Crofts tune sure makes me feel fine every time I hear it. Here's a great tune to play sitting out on a porch on a preferably breezy summer evening.
Honorable mention: The entirety of Vampire Weekend's 2008 self-titled debut album. Listen to it while driving on a warm summer day, with the top down and the wind blowing in your face. Even if it's not explicitly about summer, its driving rhythms and infectious sense of fun will get you in the proper summer mood, guaranteed. But hey, don't take my word for it. (The band's second album, Contra, released this year, isn't as conducive to this kind of thing, but still a fine record in its own right.)
Here's their song "A-Punk" from that album (briefly featured in the second half of my California video, by the way). Don't you think it has a surfer-music vibe to it?
Those are my choices for great summer music material. What are yours, my friends? I'd like to hear your choices. Maybe I'll discover a new favorite.
Comment away!
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
A Placeholder, With Two Videos
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Someday—someday soon, I hope—I will get around to mounting a defense of Martin Scorsese's latest film, Shutter Island, which I genuinely think is a near-great film, quite possibly his best in over a decade. Certainly, it feels to me like his most deeply personal work in quite a while, with thematic and emotional depths—including links to his past films—that connect with its feverishly expressionistic visuals to move beyond its pulpy psychological-puzzle aspects into something more haunting and thought-provoking. In other words, it's more than just a brain teaser with a big twist; alas, that seems to be the only level at which a lot of the film's strongest detractors seem willing to engage. The dismissiveness of some of those dissenting opinions kinda frustrates me, to be honest...but, hey, if you don't feel it, you don't feel it. All I can do is just shrug my shoulders and try to set forth my reasons for liking it—which I aim to do...someday soon.
In the meantime, I'll direct you all (if you have not yet read these pieces) to Glenn Kenny's review of the film at his blog Some Came Running, Ryan Kelly's at Medfly Quarantine, and Richard Brody's series of posts on the film at his New Yorker blog The Front Row for critiques that strike me as the most perceptive on the matter of Shutter Island. And if any of you would like to try to engage me on the film, please feel free to do so in the comments page of this post, or on Twitter (@kenjfuj). I'll try my best to match up to the reviews above in depth and insight.
For now...how about a couple more YouTube videos? I got two for you today.
1. A while back, I finally got around to acquainting myself with late '70s/early '80s American new-wave band Devo's first album Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! For the most part, I was pretty bowled over by it, but there's one song on it in particular that I connected with: "Mongoloid," a metaphorical song about how even someone with a major disability can go through life seemingly unnoticed in American society. As someone who every so often feels like an intellectual lightweight masquerading as normally functioning adult (yeah, I'm sometimes deeply insecure; what of it?), the tune resonates, in its own geeky-freaky-totally awesome way.
Here's Mark Mothersbaugh & co. performing it on French television in 1978 (though at a tempo much quicker than the one on the album):
2. It must have been because today was such a nice spring-like day, but "翩翩飛起" (roughly, "Handsomely Flying," as implied by Babelfish), a lovely Taiwanese pop tune from 1985, popped into my head and stayed there. The singer of this tune is 王芷蕾 (Jeanette Wang), who quite possibly had the most sheerly beautiful voice in Taiwanese pop during the 1970s and '80s. If you want to know what an angel might sound like, just listen to her. Seriously.
Or watch this video:
Again: I know only I and a select few others really care about this Asian pop music...but I repeat: it's my blog. I do what I want in this joint, beeyotch! Take from it what you will.
In the meantime, I'll direct you all (if you have not yet read these pieces) to Glenn Kenny's review of the film at his blog Some Came Running, Ryan Kelly's at Medfly Quarantine, and Richard Brody's series of posts on the film at his New Yorker blog The Front Row for critiques that strike me as the most perceptive on the matter of Shutter Island. And if any of you would like to try to engage me on the film, please feel free to do so in the comments page of this post, or on Twitter (@kenjfuj). I'll try my best to match up to the reviews above in depth and insight.
***
For now...how about a couple more YouTube videos? I got two for you today.
1. A while back, I finally got around to acquainting myself with late '70s/early '80s American new-wave band Devo's first album Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! For the most part, I was pretty bowled over by it, but there's one song on it in particular that I connected with: "Mongoloid," a metaphorical song about how even someone with a major disability can go through life seemingly unnoticed in American society. As someone who every so often feels like an intellectual lightweight masquerading as normally functioning adult (yeah, I'm sometimes deeply insecure; what of it?), the tune resonates, in its own geeky-freaky-totally awesome way.
Here's Mark Mothersbaugh & co. performing it on French television in 1978 (though at a tempo much quicker than the one on the album):
2. It must have been because today was such a nice spring-like day, but "翩翩飛起" (roughly, "Handsomely Flying," as implied by Babelfish), a lovely Taiwanese pop tune from 1985, popped into my head and stayed there. The singer of this tune is 王芷蕾 (Jeanette Wang), who quite possibly had the most sheerly beautiful voice in Taiwanese pop during the 1970s and '80s. If you want to know what an angel might sound like, just listen to her. Seriously.
Or watch this video:
Again: I know only I and a select few others really care about this Asian pop music...but I repeat: it's my blog. I do what I want in this joint, beeyotch! Take from it what you will.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Odds & Ends for the Week Ended Feb. 20, 2010
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—
My main regret from last week is not being able to find time to post a blog entry for this film preservation blog-a-thon hosted by two elite film blogs, Self-Styled Siren and Ferdy on Films, etc.
I had been planning to craft a spiel about one silent-era masterpiece that, as far as I know, has yet to be properly, and rightfully, restored: King Vidor's 1928 film The Crowd. Turner Classic Movies, that television haven for cinephiles, showed the film during primetime on Thursday, Feb. 18; I was going to post an appreciation for the film in correspondence both with the blog-a-thon and with that TV screening.
But last week, I was called upon to once again lend my copy-editing eye to the upcoming March issue of WSJ. magazine. Knee-deep in proofs and obsessively editing and fact-checking articles about all sorts of high-end lifestyles, hobbies, clothing styles and merchandise, I found little free time both during and/or outside of work to be able to write a carefully considered post about the film.
And now the blog-a-thon is more or less drawing to a close. Well, for what it's worth, at least I contributed monetarily to the cause of film preservation, making a tax-deductible donation to the National Film Preservation Foundation. That's at least one of the raison d'êtres of the whole enterprise, anyway.
I'll let the following boilerplate—or, part of it, at least—give you all an idea what this blog-a-thon is about:
So that's my plug—a bit late in the game, perhaps, but there you go.
Oh, and as for The Crowd: I had the privilege of seeing Vidor's film twice during my Rutgers undergrad years—both times on laserdisc—and both times I found myself moved and gratified by its deeply sympathetic look at its ambitious working-class main character trying to make a name for himself while raising a family amidst the anonymity of big-city living. Its view of the falseness of the American Dream may be bleak in many ways, but the film is ultimately not without a certain measure of hope in the end...even if that hope comes more from accepting one's given situation rather than striving like hell to rise above it.
Vidor's film isn't exactly a long-lost classic: it was nominated for an Academy Award in 1928, and it was picked for the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1989. So it's pretty widely acknowledged as an important work. And yet, the film for some reason remains crucially absent on DVD, joining the company of such films as Greed (1924) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). If this blog-a-thon will somehow help even a film like The Crowd stay in the public eye, then yeah, I'm all for it.
(If you want to contribute to the cause of film preservation, DONATE NOW TO THE NATIONAL FILM PRESERVATION FOUNDATION.)
***
Though I've heard bits and pieces of Mozart's famous opera The Marriage of Figaro over the years, only last week did I finally listen to the whole thing, from start to finish, recitatives and all. It's pretty terrific, though my enjoyment of it doesn't stem so much from its undoubted human-comedy aspects. No, for me, it's basically all about the music, some of Mozart's wittiest, most lyrical and creative musical inventions.
For those who are interested: I listened to the 1955 Decca recording with Erich Kleiber leading the Vienna Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra, featuring Cesare Siepi as Figaro and Hilde Gueden as Susanna. It's a wonderful performance—and not bad-sounding recording at all, considering its age. At mid-price, it's worth picking up.
And finally, on a more personal note: congratulations to Mike and Ally, a couple of Rutgers friends, both of whom recently got engaged to each other. But the road to that engagement was, um, not a smooth one, to say the least. So convoluted it was, in fact, that a friend of theirs (and also a friend of mine) put together a four-part video series detailing the twists and turns leading up to the engagement. I found this so entertaining that I figured it'd be worth sharing with all of you.
Here, in all four parts, is the "Most Epic Proposal Ever." I think it'll be worth your while. But being that friends of mine are involved in this, maybe I'm biased:
My main regret from last week is not being able to find time to post a blog entry for this film preservation blog-a-thon hosted by two elite film blogs, Self-Styled Siren and Ferdy on Films, etc.
I had been planning to craft a spiel about one silent-era masterpiece that, as far as I know, has yet to be properly, and rightfully, restored: King Vidor's 1928 film The Crowd. Turner Classic Movies, that television haven for cinephiles, showed the film during primetime on Thursday, Feb. 18; I was going to post an appreciation for the film in correspondence both with the blog-a-thon and with that TV screening.
But last week, I was called upon to once again lend my copy-editing eye to the upcoming March issue of WSJ. magazine. Knee-deep in proofs and obsessively editing and fact-checking articles about all sorts of high-end lifestyles, hobbies, clothing styles and merchandise, I found little free time both during and/or outside of work to be able to write a carefully considered post about the film.
And now the blog-a-thon is more or less drawing to a close. Well, for what it's worth, at least I contributed monetarily to the cause of film preservation, making a tax-deductible donation to the National Film Preservation Foundation. That's at least one of the raison d'êtres of the whole enterprise, anyway.
I'll let the following boilerplate—or, part of it, at least—give you all an idea what this blog-a-thon is about:
The National Film Preservation Foundation is the independent, nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Congress to help save America’s film heritage. They work directly with archives to rescue endangered films that will not survive without public support.Well, I for one think this is a worthy cause...not just for geeky cinephile reasons, but for important historical reasons. The United States was perhaps the most instrumental in pushing the motion-picture medium in its infancy into the realm of popular art; and so much of 20th-century history has been documented through motion pictures—not only through documentaries and newsreels, but even through fiction. What is 1940s and '50s film noir, for instance, if not an implicit reaction to the national anxieties and horrors of World War II, refracted through a genre framework? Heck, even the most low-grade American International Pictures flicks from the '50s and '60s can be said to give us an idea of what turned on American youth during the decades of the Cold War and Vietnam. If nothing else, it's worth saving these kinds of films not just as catnip for film completists, but as potentially revealing barometers of our national history.
The NFPF will give away 4 DVD sets as thank-you gifts to blogathon donors chosen in a random drawing: Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900-1934 and Treasures IV: American Avant Garde Film, 1947-1986.
So that's my plug—a bit late in the game, perhaps, but there you go.
Oh, and as for The Crowd: I had the privilege of seeing Vidor's film twice during my Rutgers undergrad years—both times on laserdisc—and both times I found myself moved and gratified by its deeply sympathetic look at its ambitious working-class main character trying to make a name for himself while raising a family amidst the anonymity of big-city living. Its view of the falseness of the American Dream may be bleak in many ways, but the film is ultimately not without a certain measure of hope in the end...even if that hope comes more from accepting one's given situation rather than striving like hell to rise above it.
Vidor's film isn't exactly a long-lost classic: it was nominated for an Academy Award in 1928, and it was picked for the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1989. So it's pretty widely acknowledged as an important work. And yet, the film for some reason remains crucially absent on DVD, joining the company of such films as Greed (1924) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). If this blog-a-thon will somehow help even a film like The Crowd stay in the public eye, then yeah, I'm all for it.
(If you want to contribute to the cause of film preservation, DONATE NOW TO THE NATIONAL FILM PRESERVATION FOUNDATION.)
***
Yesterday, as part of its Film Comment Selects series, Film Society of Lincoln Center presented a program of rare Godard films and videos at Walter Reade Theater. Entitled "Godard Rarities," the approximately 90-minute program, conceived by BAMcinématek curator Jake Perlin, not only featured select short films/videos made by Godard and segments from other directors' films featuring the French New Wave legend, but also trailers for some of his features (including one for his upcoming film, Socialisme). It was a fascinating and provocative program, as Godard's work itself usually is. Another typical feature of Godard's work: it made me feel like I was endlessly playing catch-up to Godard's ceaselessly experimental and inquisitive aesthetic and philosophical sensibility. Godard is, for better and worse, a filmmaker for whom the phrase "ahead of his time" still feels startlingly true today.
There are two "rarities" from the program that I wanted to mention here:
1. Il Nuovo Mondo (1963): This was Godard's contribution to the omnibus film RoGoPaG (Roberto Rossellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Ugo Gregoretti contributed other segments), and it cheekily anticipates his 1965 "sci-fi" film Alphaville by conceiving a vision of the future simply by defamiliarizing the present. Paris is hit by fallout from a nuclear bomb 120,000 meters above ground, but the effects of this apocalypse are mental rather than physical; Paris still looks like Paris, not some bombed-out sub-Third Man-like ruin. Human emotion is the main casualty, as the nameless main character (Jean-Marc Bory) notices people acting more robotically and inexplicably ingesting more pills; this brief 20-minute film is thus appropriately arid and detached in style. Still, it's startling to see how eerie even the present can feel in a film that is ostensibly about some faraway future. Of course, Godard would run with that idea in Alphaville...and beyond. Because, I mean, what is a film like Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967) about if not the broad idea of deconstructing and examining the environments in which we all live?
2. Lettre à Freddy Buache (1982): Having been commissioned to make a documentary film commemorating the 500th anniversary of Lausanne, Switzerland, Godard then came up with this 11-minute short, one which amounts to a "videotaped refusal" to fulfill the assignment. To the hypnotic strains of Ravel's "Boléro," Godard lays out his reasons for not going through with the assignment with an intriguing marriage of sound and image. Allowing his camera to roam freely over various landscapes, both scenically splendid and dreary, Godard, providing running voiceover commentary, ruminates on what he perceives as the shortcomings of the documentary form to truly dig deep into what makes Lausanne and its inhabitants tick. Perhaps, he ultimately concludes, fiction provides a better entryway into the essence of this town...because, as he says towards the end of this incredibly dense short subject, "cities are fiction"—merely a state of mind. (You can view Lettre à Freddy Buache on YouTube here.)
And finally, here is a clip featuring Godard from Wim Wenders's 1982 TV film Room 666, in which Wenders, during the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, invited various directors to discuss their views on the future of cinema in front of a solitary camera set-up. This segment closed out yesterday's program, and it's startling how much of what he says is still pretty relevant today, especially his thoughts of film versus television. But I'll let Godard do the talking:
***
Here's a video clip of perhaps my favorite number of all: Figaro's teasing mockery of army life in the closing number of Act I, "Non più andrai," here with Ruggero Raimondi playing Figaro, Frederica von Stade as the increasingly flustered Cherubino and James Levine leading the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, from 1985:
For those who are interested: I listened to the 1955 Decca recording with Erich Kleiber leading the Vienna Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra, featuring Cesare Siepi as Figaro and Hilde Gueden as Susanna. It's a wonderful performance—and not bad-sounding recording at all, considering its age. At mid-price, it's worth picking up.
***
And finally, on a more personal note: congratulations to Mike and Ally, a couple of Rutgers friends, both of whom recently got engaged to each other. But the road to that engagement was, um, not a smooth one, to say the least. So convoluted it was, in fact, that a friend of theirs (and also a friend of mine) put together a four-part video series detailing the twists and turns leading up to the engagement. I found this so entertaining that I figured it'd be worth sharing with all of you.
Here, in all four parts, is the "Most Epic Proposal Ever." I think it'll be worth your while. But being that friends of mine are involved in this, maybe I'm biased:
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Period Perfection in Mozart
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—
I just wanted to chime in briefly to plug a wonderful set of Mozart's complete symphonies I've been listening to recently. They're performed on period instruments by The English Concert under the direction of Trevor Pinnock, and they are available on a budget-priced 11-disc box set on Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv Produktion label.
I'm admittedly far from a connoisseur of period-instrument classical performances, but neither am I staunchly against listening to classical-era works performed this way, with special attention paid to the performance practices and instruments of the day. Certainly, there are interpretive insights that could conceivably be gained regarding a particular composer's work if situated within a sound world more authentically of his time. One of the common knocks against this kind of historically informed performance, however, is that some conductors focus so much on period authenticity—on the right instrumentation and sound, on tuning, on note values and tempos—that they lose the heart and soul of the music. Instead, so the arguments go, the music is often performed in a way that feels less like a living, breathing entity, and more like a museum exhibit.
Happily, that is not the case with Pinnock's complete cycle of Mozart symphonies, in which warmth and energy are in full supply even in Mozart's later, more widely performed masterpieces. There is plenty of fire in the quick movements (witness, for instance, the whirlwind finale of Mozart's Symphony No. 39), but Pinnock allows plenty of space in slow movements for Mozart's lyricism to fully blossom forth (sample the second-movement Andante cantabile of Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony, his 41st and final utterance in the form). And the pleasures of the performances of the less familiar early symphonies—some of which already display moments of formal daring and youthful experimentation with matters of structure and sound—come mostly from listening to a crack authentic-instrument ensemble playing the music with the kind of utmost sensitivity and impeccable technical address that the best modern-instrument ensembles can provide.
Indeed, Pinnock's complete Mozart symphony cycle may well be as fine a choice for the first-time listener as any modern-instrument collection. Pinnock's performances may not necessarily be the last word in exploring the inexhaustible facets of these immortal scores—he's not what one would call an "interventionist" interpreter, generally preferring to let the music speak for itself—but never does historical performance practice take precedence over fine and often exhilarating music-making.
And, of course, if period instruments still turn you off...well, there's always Karl Böhm and the Berlin Philharmonic's pioneering vintage Deutsche Grammophon cycle from the '50s and '60s.
P.S. I've been exploring Mozart's music on-and-off for the past few months—his symphonies, his chamber music, his piano concertos, his serenades and divertimenti, etc.—and it still amazes me just how fresh and invigorating even his relatively trivial works remain after over 200 years. There's nothing at all dull or musty about these works, folks; the bright light of inspiration still shines. That said, I might as well also admit that there aren't very many Mozart works that I'd go out of my way to experience in a concert hall, especially since many of them have been so frequently played by various orchestras, amateur and professional, over the years. But then, I haven't yet gotten to his operas...or his Requiem...
I just wanted to chime in briefly to plug a wonderful set of Mozart's complete symphonies I've been listening to recently. They're performed on period instruments by The English Concert under the direction of Trevor Pinnock, and they are available on a budget-priced 11-disc box set on Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv Produktion label.
I'm admittedly far from a connoisseur of period-instrument classical performances, but neither am I staunchly against listening to classical-era works performed this way, with special attention paid to the performance practices and instruments of the day. Certainly, there are interpretive insights that could conceivably be gained regarding a particular composer's work if situated within a sound world more authentically of his time. One of the common knocks against this kind of historically informed performance, however, is that some conductors focus so much on period authenticity—on the right instrumentation and sound, on tuning, on note values and tempos—that they lose the heart and soul of the music. Instead, so the arguments go, the music is often performed in a way that feels less like a living, breathing entity, and more like a museum exhibit.
Happily, that is not the case with Pinnock's complete cycle of Mozart symphonies, in which warmth and energy are in full supply even in Mozart's later, more widely performed masterpieces. There is plenty of fire in the quick movements (witness, for instance, the whirlwind finale of Mozart's Symphony No. 39), but Pinnock allows plenty of space in slow movements for Mozart's lyricism to fully blossom forth (sample the second-movement Andante cantabile of Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony, his 41st and final utterance in the form). And the pleasures of the performances of the less familiar early symphonies—some of which already display moments of formal daring and youthful experimentation with matters of structure and sound—come mostly from listening to a crack authentic-instrument ensemble playing the music with the kind of utmost sensitivity and impeccable technical address that the best modern-instrument ensembles can provide.
Indeed, Pinnock's complete Mozart symphony cycle may well be as fine a choice for the first-time listener as any modern-instrument collection. Pinnock's performances may not necessarily be the last word in exploring the inexhaustible facets of these immortal scores—he's not what one would call an "interventionist" interpreter, generally preferring to let the music speak for itself—but never does historical performance practice take precedence over fine and often exhilarating music-making.
And, of course, if period instruments still turn you off...well, there's always Karl Böhm and the Berlin Philharmonic's pioneering vintage Deutsche Grammophon cycle from the '50s and '60s.
P.S. I've been exploring Mozart's music on-and-off for the past few months—his symphonies, his chamber music, his piano concertos, his serenades and divertimenti, etc.—and it still amazes me just how fresh and invigorating even his relatively trivial works remain after over 200 years. There's nothing at all dull or musty about these works, folks; the bright light of inspiration still shines. That said, I might as well also admit that there aren't very many Mozart works that I'd go out of my way to experience in a concert hall, especially since many of them have been so frequently played by various orchestras, amateur and professional, over the years. But then, I haven't yet gotten to his operas...or his Requiem...
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Going Gaga for Anita Mui
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—I didn't watch much of Sunday night's Grammy Awards telecast; sure, I've heard of a lot of the nominated artists, and I've even heard some of the nominated songs, but my interest in today's American pop music is passing at best. (These days, I'm plowing through a complete set of period-instrument Mozart performances—which, I think, gives you a bit of an idea where my musical interests lie.)
But I heard from some of my friends on Twitter that the opening performance, a typically no-holds-barred Lady Gaga medley that eventually segued into a duet with Elton John, was one of the highlights of the night. I was a big Elton John fan back in the day, and still enjoy hearing his stuff; as for Lady Gaga—well, I initially simply heard hit tunes like "Just Dance," "Poker Face" and "Paparazzi" as standard overproduced electronic pop fluff until I read this essay at The House Next Door about her music videos and realized that people were indeed taking her whole package seriously as some kind of Warholian work of art. An astoundingly successful popular artist somehow using her fame and fortune to stage a mass meta-commentary on said fame and fortune? Call me shallow, but that sounded rather interesting to me...and day by day, I find my curiosity about her rising.
Well, I finally checked out that Lady Gaga/Elton John duet (the video of which is above), and it may have provided the final push to finally wade deeper into her music. Why? Because, simply put, the performance gave me honest-to-God chills...the kind of goosebumps that greeted my initial exposure to this artist:
Under Mui's glorious voice, what could have come off as a bland love ballad felt instead like a searing emotional five-minute drama. As someone who barely knows Cantonese as it is, I didn't understand the words she was singing—but, on an intuitive level, I could grasp the deep, wistful emotions roiling underneath.
Here's Anita Mui tackling a more uptempo number (skip to 3:25 to hear the tune):
The song, by the way, is named "壞女孩," or "Bad Girl" in English. Looking at the way she moves onstage during that performance—yeah, bad indeed.
Why did Anita Mui cross my mind when watching Lady Gaga at the Grammys? Only one reason, really: Ah Mui could sing stunningly well live, even while doing all sorts of elaborate choreography and costume changes...and so, it seems, can Lady Gaga. I mean, I knew she had a fine voice based on hearing many of her hits, but that singing voice was often deliberately technologically manipulated for effect. Shorn of any technological safety nets, however? If anything, she sounded even better singing "Poker Face" live (it certainly didn't sound lip-synced to me). And—I didn't know this before seeing the Grammy video above—she can play the piano! And she did so with Elton John!
Anyone that can pull all of that off in six minutes of near-blissful stage pop spectacle automatically garners a certain level of respect from me. (Listen to Taylor Swift's off-key live Grammy performances by comparison—though, sure, being a mediocre live performer doesn't automatically make her an inferior artist or anything.) This new pop icon Lady Gaga, it seems, is also simply an immensely talented musician. Even if her current self-aware stage persona grows old—and inevitably it will—she at least has the technical chops to be able to do what Anita Mui (and, oh yeah, Madonna) did throughout her Hong Kong pop stardom in the '80s: become something of a chameleon, trying on different public images and stage personas, keeping her act fresh. Being a spectacular singer, like Anita Mui was, is certainly a good leg to stand.
Just for fun, here's a photo of a wax statue of Ah Mui that resides at Hong Kong's Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, which I took during my Hong Kong venture last year:
And, oh yeah...weren't Oscar nominations announced yesterday? Yes, they were...and again, I find myself at a loss to say anything of interest about them, feeling neither particularly enthusiastic about deserved nods nor outraged about perceived snubs. AMPAS's taste, at least based on their awards choices over 82 years, has almost always been generally safe and middlebrow, and I don't expect that to change anytime soon. No use getting all emotional over it; just enjoy the drinks that will inevitably flow come Oscar night!
Of course, that is not to say this will be my last word on the subject. Last year, during a brief stint with the general-interest Web site suite101.com, I came up with a list of alternate Best Picture Oscar nominees for that year. Maybe I'll do so again this year. Maybe not. We'll see.
Actually, since I'm here, I might as well offer one personal observation: Remember those days in the early stages of awards season when Carey Mulligan was the front-runner in the Best Actress category for her "star-making" (according to many critics) performance in An Education? Funny how things change in a matter of weeks...and no, I still haven't seen Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side. Didn't seem all that appealing to me when it came out. Guess I'll finally have to, now that it also scored a nomination in this year's pointlessly overstuffed Best Picture category. I may not take the Oscar seriously as an indicator of any sort of artistic quality...but I do like to keep up with the conversation. I suppose that's the journalist in me talking.
But I heard from some of my friends on Twitter that the opening performance, a typically no-holds-barred Lady Gaga medley that eventually segued into a duet with Elton John, was one of the highlights of the night. I was a big Elton John fan back in the day, and still enjoy hearing his stuff; as for Lady Gaga—well, I initially simply heard hit tunes like "Just Dance," "Poker Face" and "Paparazzi" as standard overproduced electronic pop fluff until I read this essay at The House Next Door about her music videos and realized that people were indeed taking her whole package seriously as some kind of Warholian work of art. An astoundingly successful popular artist somehow using her fame and fortune to stage a mass meta-commentary on said fame and fortune? Call me shallow, but that sounded rather interesting to me...and day by day, I find my curiosity about her rising.
Well, I finally checked out that Lady Gaga/Elton John duet (the video of which is above), and it may have provided the final push to finally wade deeper into her music. Why? Because, simply put, the performance gave me honest-to-God chills...the kind of goosebumps that greeted my initial exposure to this artist:
That, my friends, is Anita Mui (1963-2003), the late, great Hong Kong pop star from the 1980s and '90s who was quite the obsession for me a year or two ago. Cinephiles, of course, will recognize Mui from such films as Stanley Kwan's Rouge (1987), Tsui Hark's A Better Tomorrow III (1989), a handful of Jackie Chan flicks (Miracles, The Legend of the Drunken Master, Rumble in the Bronx), Johnnie To's The Heroic Trio (1993), and others. But she was also the Cantopop sensation of the '80s, earning comparisons with Madonna for her flamboyant style and ever-changing public image—much the same way Lady Gaga is garnering serious criticism with her music and public persona now.
For all the flaunting of her sexuality and her extravagant stage manner, though, Anita Mui was, first and foremost, a wondrous singer, with a deep alto tone that could startle you and an emotional range that could knock you down flat. I remember the first video I ever saw of her, a live performance of a 1989 hit of hers entitled "夕陽之歌" (roughly translating to "Sunset Song"):
Under Mui's glorious voice, what could have come off as a bland love ballad felt instead like a searing emotional five-minute drama. As someone who barely knows Cantonese as it is, I didn't understand the words she was singing—but, on an intuitive level, I could grasp the deep, wistful emotions roiling underneath.
Here's Anita Mui tackling a more uptempo number (skip to 3:25 to hear the tune):
The song, by the way, is named "壞女孩," or "Bad Girl" in English. Looking at the way she moves onstage during that performance—yeah, bad indeed.
Why did Anita Mui cross my mind when watching Lady Gaga at the Grammys? Only one reason, really: Ah Mui could sing stunningly well live, even while doing all sorts of elaborate choreography and costume changes...and so, it seems, can Lady Gaga. I mean, I knew she had a fine voice based on hearing many of her hits, but that singing voice was often deliberately technologically manipulated for effect. Shorn of any technological safety nets, however? If anything, she sounded even better singing "Poker Face" live (it certainly didn't sound lip-synced to me). And—I didn't know this before seeing the Grammy video above—she can play the piano! And she did so with Elton John!
Anyone that can pull all of that off in six minutes of near-blissful stage pop spectacle automatically garners a certain level of respect from me. (Listen to Taylor Swift's off-key live Grammy performances by comparison—though, sure, being a mediocre live performer doesn't automatically make her an inferior artist or anything.) This new pop icon Lady Gaga, it seems, is also simply an immensely talented musician. Even if her current self-aware stage persona grows old—and inevitably it will—she at least has the technical chops to be able to do what Anita Mui (and, oh yeah, Madonna) did throughout her Hong Kong pop stardom in the '80s: become something of a chameleon, trying on different public images and stage personas, keeping her act fresh. Being a spectacular singer, like Anita Mui was, is certainly a good leg to stand.
Just for fun, here's a photo of a wax statue of Ah Mui that resides at Hong Kong's Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, which I took during my Hong Kong venture last year:
***
And, oh yeah...weren't Oscar nominations announced yesterday? Yes, they were...and again, I find myself at a loss to say anything of interest about them, feeling neither particularly enthusiastic about deserved nods nor outraged about perceived snubs. AMPAS's taste, at least based on their awards choices over 82 years, has almost always been generally safe and middlebrow, and I don't expect that to change anytime soon. No use getting all emotional over it; just enjoy the drinks that will inevitably flow come Oscar night!
Of course, that is not to say this will be my last word on the subject. Last year, during a brief stint with the general-interest Web site suite101.com, I came up with a list of alternate Best Picture Oscar nominees for that year. Maybe I'll do so again this year. Maybe not. We'll see.
Actually, since I'm here, I might as well offer one personal observation: Remember those days in the early stages of awards season when Carey Mulligan was the front-runner in the Best Actress category for her "star-making" (according to many critics) performance in An Education? Funny how things change in a matter of weeks...and no, I still haven't seen Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side. Didn't seem all that appealing to me when it came out. Guess I'll finally have to, now that it also scored a nomination in this year's pointlessly overstuffed Best Picture category. I may not take the Oscar seriously as an indicator of any sort of artistic quality...but I do like to keep up with the conversation. I suppose that's the journalist in me talking.
Saturday, January 09, 2010
One From the Heart
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—To continue this brief musical detour here at My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second, here's my musical discovery of the week:
Never heard of Nancy LaMott or this album? Well then, get right on it, I say!
LaMott was a cabaret singer who, after years of professional and personal struggle—among them persistent health problems from an intestinal disease—finally made waves in the New York cabaret circuit in the 1990s, to the point where she was even invited to perform in front of the Clintons at the White House twice, in '93 and '94. Alas, because of a uterine cancer diagnosed too late, LaMott was taken from us at the way-too-early age of 43.
My introduction to Nancy LaMott came thanks to one of her most prominent supporters, the great WNYC radio personality Jonathan Schwartz. He customarily ends his weekend radio broadcasts with a Nancy LaMott recording—that's how passionately devoted he was, and still is, to her music-making—and a while back, he ended one of his radio shows with an interpretation of Van Morrison's "Moondance" that was recorded in Atlantic City in 1988. I didn't know it was LaMott I was hearing at the time; all I remember was marveling at how this singer made the song sound like something literally shimmering under moonlight. I had to wait a few months later before I finally discovered the identity of the singer behind that rapturous, transcendent interpretation; then I started taking notice of other LaMott recordings Schwartz played during his shows.
Never heard of Nancy LaMott or this album? Well then, get right on it, I say!
LaMott was a cabaret singer who, after years of professional and personal struggle—among them persistent health problems from an intestinal disease—finally made waves in the New York cabaret circuit in the 1990s, to the point where she was even invited to perform in front of the Clintons at the White House twice, in '93 and '94. Alas, because of a uterine cancer diagnosed too late, LaMott was taken from us at the way-too-early age of 43.
My introduction to Nancy LaMott came thanks to one of her most prominent supporters, the great WNYC radio personality Jonathan Schwartz. He customarily ends his weekend radio broadcasts with a Nancy LaMott recording—that's how passionately devoted he was, and still is, to her music-making—and a while back, he ended one of his radio shows with an interpretation of Van Morrison's "Moondance" that was recorded in Atlantic City in 1988. I didn't know it was LaMott I was hearing at the time; all I remember was marveling at how this singer made the song sound like something literally shimmering under moonlight. I had to wait a few months later before I finally discovered the identity of the singer behind that rapturous, transcendent interpretation; then I started taking notice of other LaMott recordings Schwartz played during his shows.
Surely "glorious" is the most apt word to describe her voice...but these days, what does having a "glorious" voice actually mean? To many people, it seems, being a great singer means being able to belt a lot and thrown in a lot of showy melisma—the fallacious Whitney Houston/Mariah Carey conception of musical artistry that television shows like "American Idol" present as the gold standard of vocal performance. LaMott can certainly belt along with the best of them, but she always married dazzling vocals with a wide-ranging emotional directness that brought fresh meaning to the words she sang. And it's that purity, finally, that leaves my hair standing on end even when she's at her quietest and most intimate. Every rendition of hers is an emotional drama, whether in the throes of wistful regret, deep yearning or plain joy.
I finally got around to listening to most of her handful of full-length albums recently, and while all of them—including Beautiful Baby (1991), Come Rain or Come Shine (1992) and My Foolish Heart (1993)—are chock full of wonderful performances, to my mind, it's her 1995 album Listen to My Heart that towers above the others. One of the reasons for this is extra-musical: This was the final album she completed before she died in late 1995, and, taking that into account, her rendition of songs like "The Secret o' Life" and "Ordinary Miracles" can't help but gain an added layer of tragic resonance. The other reason, though, is purely musical: For this album, she has a full orchestra backing her—as opposed to just a piano, flute and/or cello in her previous albums—and the beautifully rich orchestral arrangements fully match the passion and intensity of LaMott's singing. The cumulative effect is shattering. At one point she sings "We can be kind / We can take care of each other / We can remember that deep down inside / We all need the same thing," and, for an instant at least, she almost makes you believe that those words contain the secret to a better world. Listen to My Heart is, if I may be so bold, LaMott's Abbey Road—a career summation that finds an artist throwing caution to the wind and going out guns a-blazing. It's just that, in LaMott's case, "guns a-blazing" means ending with a delicate, soothing performance of "I'll Be Here With You."
Here's that song, as performed on "Good Morning America" in 1995 with piano accompaniment:
She and her sublime voice and artistry will certainly be here with us forever—certainly through this marvelous album.
P.S. That aforementioned "Moondance" recording was released on CD in 2008 in a two-disc collection of posthumous recordings entitled Ask Me Again. It's a bit of a rip-off, to be honest; the 20 tracks could easily have been squeezed onto one CD, with room to spare. But that rendition of "Moondance," at least, is worth the extra expense.
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Conductors/Musicians: The Musical Equivalent of Film Critics?
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Before I had aspirations to be a film writer, I wanted to be a musician. In my younger days, I studied both the piano and the violin; years later, as I was struggling to work up the courage to go against my mother's wishes and drop accounting from my undergraduate plate, I even flirted with the idea of becoming a full-fledged conductor. I dropped that idea fairly quickly, and I don't regret doing that; I don't think I'd have the ego required to stand in front of a large group of musicians and imposing my interpretive will on them all. Once in a while, however, I do regret not working harder at either the piano or the violin—never working hard at perfecting my technique; never developing the work ethic for intense practice; and, perhaps most damagingly, never truly grasping what true artistry and musicianship is. I think I always treated the performance of both instruments as mere casual sport; it was probably no coincidence that, even six years or so into playing the violin, my teacher (one among many, actually) was still complaining that I was "too stiff" on the instrument. And it's that stiffness—stiffness that can only be borne out of mediocre technical command—that can kill the kind of expressive spontaneity that distinguishes the playing of the greatest of instrumental artists. All of this I only realized until long after I had stopped playing either instrument.
But I still maintain a certain level of fascination with classical-music performance, which is why I was fascinated by "In Praise of Infidelity," an editorial written by acclaimed pianist Byron Janis that appeared in yesterday's Wall Street Journal Leisure & Arts page. In it, he passionately argues against the literalist school of classical-music interpretation, one that prizes absolute fidelity to the letter of a score. Sometimes not even composers themselves stuck to the letter of their own scores. From Janis's editorial, two examples:
I tend to be a man who values feeling in art over more literal elements, so, in theory, I'm wholly in sympathy with such an approach. Let the critics and scholars parse the fine details! Still, Janis's take on classical-music interpretation rather begs a lot of questions. Chief among them: If we allow that artists will take liberties with the letter of a score in order to get at its spirit, at what point does that latitude—especially if it's wide latitude—reveal more about the interpreter and his ego than about the composer and his intentions? At what point does a supposed pursuit of greater artistic truths simply cross the line into sheer arrogance—the belief, based on possibly sketchy historical evidence, that an interpreter knows better than the composer how a particular piece of music should go?
Take the example of the epic first movement of Gustav Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony (his second) as conducted by Otto Klemperer, in his celebrated 1963 EMI studio recording, and Leonard Bernstein, in his 1987 Deutsche Grammophon live recording. This wide-ranging, frankly episodic first movement is, at the beginning, marked "Allegro maestoso," which roughly translates to "majestically fast." Already, there is considerable room for interpretive license here; does "majestically fast" suggest a slightly slower Allegro than one might expect, or is the "maestoso" only meant to be an expressive marking? In the score, Mahler supplements the "Allegro maestoso" marking with another note: "Mit durchaus ernstem und feierlichem Ausdruck," or "With quite serious and solemn expression." He even obliges conductors with metronome markings at the beginning. All of that—and there's plenty more of this kind of detail in Mahler's score—suggests that Mahler (himself a renowned maestro) had a pretty precise idea about how he felt his piece should be performed.
Klemperer more or less takes Mahler at his word: his tempo is quite fast—indeed, it's within the metronome range Mahler specifies—and the mode of expression is indeed serious—though calling his interpretation "solemn" might be stretching it a bit. Solemnity, though, pretty much carries all before it with Bernstein's interpretation of the opening moments of this movement. He pretty much forgoes the forward movement implied by Mahler's "Allegro maestoso" marking and instead dares to take it at something more akin to an Adagio (slow). Clearly taking his cue from the fact that the movement is a reworked version of a symphonic poem Mahler wrote years earlier named "Totenfeier" ("Funeral Rites"), he interprets the music to sound exactly like what one might imagine a piece with such a nickname would sound. Where Klemperer moves Mahler's funeral march at a pretty fast clip, keeping the tragic expression relatively under wraps, Bernstein evokes a slow-coach funeral procession.
And yet, if Mahler really wanted a slow-moving dirge, wouldn't he have noted so? Considering that, does Bernstein's choice of tempo really illuminate Mahler's intentions, or is he merely imposing his own personality, drawing as much attention to himself as to the music at hand?
Of course, all of that is what my head tells me. And yet, put all preconceived notions aside, listen to the same exact notes played in such two wildly divergent ways, and I find that I always find myself pulled emotionally to Bernstein's tragically intense approach rather than Klemperer's comparatively straight-laced take. And it is ultimately Bernstein's performance, defiantly unscorebound, that moves me to feelings of spiritual transcendence cumulatively, while Klemperer's more faithful and buttoned-up response to the "Resurrection" elicits merely chilly admiration.
Heart over mind, Dionysus versus Apollo: This must be what Byron Janis means when he writes, "Thinking is creativity's worst enemy." And yet, as in all art, one cannot—indeed, must not—entirely negate the other. Could it be that a profoundly moving interpretation of a particular work is essentially a gross, elephantine distortion of Mahler's score? Is this really Mahler's "Resurrection" I've heard, or has Bernstein made it more his own?
And if it's the latter...is that inherently a negative thing? In popular music, no one seems to bat an eye when it comes to covers, especially when a singer/band covers a certain song in a way that is markedly different from more traditional interpretations. (Think of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" versus Jimi Hendrix's, as one of the more famous examples of this kind of thing.) Let me put it in a different way: What are conductors and musicians, really, other than the musical equivalents of film critics putting across their own interpretations of certain films with written words or in the form of a video essay? Each performance, to extend this line of thinking to its conclusion, is one man's interpretation, and an open-minded listener should take it as such. But, of course, what of the idea that perhaps projecting a score as clearly and faithfully as possible and allowing the music to speak for itself—in the composer's own voice, some might say—could be more insightful and revealing?
I don't have set answers to these questions, of course...but such questions fascinate me endlessly, touching in their own way on the neverending tension between one's head versus one's heart in the consideration of art. That's why I found Byron Janis's editorial a deeply compelling read, and why I wanted to share it and some of my (rough, not fully formed) thoughts with all of you.
What do you all think out there, readers? Strict musical interpretation versus a freer, more personal approach? Should a score be the be-all and end-all, or merely a starting point? And, just for fun, what are some of the most fascinating and daring interpretations of both classical and popular music you've heard?
But I still maintain a certain level of fascination with classical-music performance, which is why I was fascinated by "In Praise of Infidelity," an editorial written by acclaimed pianist Byron Janis that appeared in yesterday's Wall Street Journal Leisure & Arts page. In it, he passionately argues against the literalist school of classical-music interpretation, one that prizes absolute fidelity to the letter of a score. Sometimes not even composers themselves stuck to the letter of their own scores. From Janis's editorial, two examples:
In 1960, I opened the cultural exchange between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and brought Aaron Copland's Piano Sonata to play. Never having performed it before, I wanted to play it for the composer first. On arriving at his home, I found him tinkering with one of its passages and said, "Mr. Copland, I notice you are playing forte and you have marked it piano in the score." He turned to me grinning mischievously and said, "Ah, but that was 10 years ago!"Janis sums up his main point this accordingly:
Some 200 years earlier, Chopin would have made a similar remark. Only he would have said, "but that was 10 seconds ago!" Julius Seligmann, president of the Glasgow Society of Musicians, attended a recital where the composer played his new "Mazurka in B flat, Opus 7 no. 1" as an encore. According to Seligmann, it met with such great success that Chopin decided to play it again, this time with such a radically different interpretation—tempos, colors and phrasing had all been changed—that it sounded like an entirely different piece. The audience was amazed when it finally realized he was playing the very same mazurka, and it rewarded him with a prolonged, vociferous ovation. It seems he had facetiously decided to show why he had no need to republish a score—the magic of interpretation would do it for him. He would often say, "I never play the same way twice."
Thinking is creativity's worst enemy. When I first sight-read a score, everything seems so right, so natural. The notes seem to be playing themselves and the music flows. Why? Because I am not thinking. Inspiration has been my guide—the adventure of a first time. Then comes familiarization, the learning process where, until the piece is well in hand, thinking is allowed. After that, interpretation—choices must be made, but you are finally free to feel and use your creative instincts. And, at last, creation—how do I make the music sound as it did when I didn't know it?However closely an interpretation hews to a score's details or however far it departs, Janis seems to be saying, it's how the performance of that score feels to a listener that ultimately matters. The beauty of the music being heard is its own truth, regardless of matters of local detail (matters that perhaps only music critics and/or scholars would fixate on, anyway).
I tend to be a man who values feeling in art over more literal elements, so, in theory, I'm wholly in sympathy with such an approach. Let the critics and scholars parse the fine details! Still, Janis's take on classical-music interpretation rather begs a lot of questions. Chief among them: If we allow that artists will take liberties with the letter of a score in order to get at its spirit, at what point does that latitude—especially if it's wide latitude—reveal more about the interpreter and his ego than about the composer and his intentions? At what point does a supposed pursuit of greater artistic truths simply cross the line into sheer arrogance—the belief, based on possibly sketchy historical evidence, that an interpreter knows better than the composer how a particular piece of music should go?
Take the example of the epic first movement of Gustav Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony (his second) as conducted by Otto Klemperer, in his celebrated 1963 EMI studio recording, and Leonard Bernstein, in his 1987 Deutsche Grammophon live recording. This wide-ranging, frankly episodic first movement is, at the beginning, marked "Allegro maestoso," which roughly translates to "majestically fast." Already, there is considerable room for interpretive license here; does "majestically fast" suggest a slightly slower Allegro than one might expect, or is the "maestoso" only meant to be an expressive marking? In the score, Mahler supplements the "Allegro maestoso" marking with another note: "Mit durchaus ernstem und feierlichem Ausdruck," or "With quite serious and solemn expression." He even obliges conductors with metronome markings at the beginning. All of that—and there's plenty more of this kind of detail in Mahler's score—suggests that Mahler (himself a renowned maestro) had a pretty precise idea about how he felt his piece should be performed.
Klemperer more or less takes Mahler at his word: his tempo is quite fast—indeed, it's within the metronome range Mahler specifies—and the mode of expression is indeed serious—though calling his interpretation "solemn" might be stretching it a bit. Solemnity, though, pretty much carries all before it with Bernstein's interpretation of the opening moments of this movement. He pretty much forgoes the forward movement implied by Mahler's "Allegro maestoso" marking and instead dares to take it at something more akin to an Adagio (slow). Clearly taking his cue from the fact that the movement is a reworked version of a symphonic poem Mahler wrote years earlier named "Totenfeier" ("Funeral Rites"), he interprets the music to sound exactly like what one might imagine a piece with such a nickname would sound. Where Klemperer moves Mahler's funeral march at a pretty fast clip, keeping the tragic expression relatively under wraps, Bernstein evokes a slow-coach funeral procession.
And yet, if Mahler really wanted a slow-moving dirge, wouldn't he have noted so? Considering that, does Bernstein's choice of tempo really illuminate Mahler's intentions, or is he merely imposing his own personality, drawing as much attention to himself as to the music at hand?
Of course, all of that is what my head tells me. And yet, put all preconceived notions aside, listen to the same exact notes played in such two wildly divergent ways, and I find that I always find myself pulled emotionally to Bernstein's tragically intense approach rather than Klemperer's comparatively straight-laced take. And it is ultimately Bernstein's performance, defiantly unscorebound, that moves me to feelings of spiritual transcendence cumulatively, while Klemperer's more faithful and buttoned-up response to the "Resurrection" elicits merely chilly admiration.
Heart over mind, Dionysus versus Apollo: This must be what Byron Janis means when he writes, "Thinking is creativity's worst enemy." And yet, as in all art, one cannot—indeed, must not—entirely negate the other. Could it be that a profoundly moving interpretation of a particular work is essentially a gross, elephantine distortion of Mahler's score? Is this really Mahler's "Resurrection" I've heard, or has Bernstein made it more his own?
And if it's the latter...is that inherently a negative thing? In popular music, no one seems to bat an eye when it comes to covers, especially when a singer/band covers a certain song in a way that is markedly different from more traditional interpretations. (Think of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" versus Jimi Hendrix's, as one of the more famous examples of this kind of thing.) Let me put it in a different way: What are conductors and musicians, really, other than the musical equivalents of film critics putting across their own interpretations of certain films with written words or in the form of a video essay? Each performance, to extend this line of thinking to its conclusion, is one man's interpretation, and an open-minded listener should take it as such. But, of course, what of the idea that perhaps projecting a score as clearly and faithfully as possible and allowing the music to speak for itself—in the composer's own voice, some might say—could be more insightful and revealing?
I don't have set answers to these questions, of course...but such questions fascinate me endlessly, touching in their own way on the neverending tension between one's head versus one's heart in the consideration of art. That's why I found Byron Janis's editorial a deeply compelling read, and why I wanted to share it and some of my (rough, not fully formed) thoughts with all of you.
What do you all think out there, readers? Strict musical interpretation versus a freer, more personal approach? Should a score be the be-all and end-all, or merely a starting point? And, just for fun, what are some of the most fascinating and daring interpretations of both classical and popular music you've heard?
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