Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

Voof

Two fellow bloggers, Badthings and Byzantium's Shores, noted with understandable alarm the pictures I posted of Wagner's dog Russ, statues of whom can be found all around Bayreuth. Mr. Byzantium proposed an amusing secondary installation to go along with them. Badthings averred that the dogs were "menacing." In person, the effect is more like goofy, even cute. I didn't realize it at the time, but, as this Andante story reveals, the Wagner doggies are part of a project by the German sculptor Ottmar Höhrl, entitled, naturally, "Wagner's Dog." His aim is to make Wagner a less forbidding, more sympathetic figure. There are 800 statues in all. Russ himself is buried next to his master in the garden at Wahnfried. Höhrl is also responsible for an installation entitled "Opera in the 21st Century," which consists of eight Daimler Smart cars parked around the city. I took a picture of this project, too, not knowing what it meant:

It turns out that I could have climbed into the car and listened to Wagner on the stereo. Oh those wacky Germans!

Now I'll clean my room

An attentive reader who has been following my work since Day 1 (Jan. 12, 1968) points out that I have been misspelling "pilgrimage" as "pilgrimmage." I'm not quite sure where the extra "m" came from, but it's gone.

Morton Kondracke! Wrong!

Over at ArtsJournal, eleven distinguished American music critics, plus yours truly, are debating the future of classical composition. Have a look if you dare.

Bayreuth Pilgrimage, Day 3

Go here for Day 1

Last snapshots from my expedition to the Richard Wagner Festspiel. The tale of Parsifal continues to generate heat in the German press: director Christoph Schlingensief responded to lead tenor Endrik Wottrich's denunciation of the production by calling Wottrich a racist and a Nazi, whereupon Wottrich responded by calling Schlingensief a worse racist and a worse Nazi. I enjoyed ionarts' wrapup of contradictory reports of the premiere, variously suggesting that 1) there was a huge amount of booing, with smatterings of applause; 2) there was loud booing, balanced by loud applause; 3) there was some booing, quickly drowned out by applause; and 4) there was no booing at all. Take it from me: 1) is correct. I looked around the hall and saw no more than one-third of the audience applauding, probably more like one-fourth. How it was that this apparently disastrous evening became a "success" in the German press is something I will discuss in the New Yorker next week.

Here is one more shot of the red carpet spectacle on Sunday, and it seems to sum up modern Germany in a single frame:

In the city, statues of Wagner's dog Russ are ubiquitous:

Pierre Boulez at lunch (I am not a good paparazzo):

Dark trombones at the Tannhäuser intermission:

Choristers take a cigarette break:

Storms passed, the Festspielhaus is again at peace:

The end:

Bayreuth Pilgrimage, Day 2

More scenes from the Wagner festival in Bayreuth. Opening day is not only a major event in German music but a minor media sensation: celebrities from entertainment and politics enter along an Oscar-style red carpet. I didn't recognize most of these people, but there were appreciative murmurs from the crowd when each appeared ("Beckstein! Beckstein!").

According to this sign, Poles love Wagner:

Well-dressed Wagnerphiles aren't above gawking:

Camera crews corner operagoers for on-the-spot reviews of Act I:

The traditional brass fanfare, consisting of a short phrase from the evening's opera, summons the crowd back to their hard-backed wooden seats:

At a press conference the following morning, Christoph Schlingensief defends his production while Wolfgang Wagner, the festival director, looks on in a bemused state.

Wagner responds to a question about Endrik Wottrich, singer of the title role, who publicly disavowed Schlingensief's conception three days before the premiere. The Wagner Grandson, as he is called in the media, defends the right of artistic expression.

A drunken German is ranting anti-American slogans at me in the cafe where I am typing, so I will beat a tactical retreat and finish the travelogue tomorrow.

Day 3

Bayreuth Pilgrimage, Day 1

Coming to you live from the Wagner festival in Bayreuth, courtesy of the wireless-ready Café Mondial. My review of Christoph Schlingensief's production of Parsifal will appear in the New Yorker next week. I'll withhold comment until then, except to say that the production is probably fated to be known as the "dead rabbit Parsifal." Instead, a photo-essay on the ever-crescendoing scandal and hysteria, with another installment to follow tomorrow.

Delay at JFK. Music: Mogwai, "Stanley Kubrick."

Train to Bayreuth. Music: Parsifal.

Saturday night in town. A man is auctioning off teddy bears while another man (not pictured) plays bad blues guitar.

This young man is preparing for his first Parsifal by bicycling for six hours upside down.

All-Wagner window display at the Markgrafen bookstore.

Wahnfried, Wagner's home, with his patron Ludwig II. The name means "free of madness," ironic in context.

Every year on the morning of the festival opening, the chorus gives a brief concert at Wagner's grave in the Wahnfried garden. The conductor is Eberhard Friedrich.

The genius conductor Christian Thielemann, wearing a nice pink Lacoste shirt, gives a talk at the Markgrafen bookstore.

A phalanx of protesters marches on the Festspielhaus.

The great barn itself, with paparazzi already gathering.

A camera crew goes looking for scandal, finding only an American in search of a last-minute ticket. The couple in white behind them are visiting from the year 1898.

Wolfgang Wagner, the composer's grandson. The getaway car is ready, in case tonight's performance turns into a riot.

Day 2

Jerry Goldsmith 1929-2004

Jerry Goldsmith, one of the finest Hollywood composers, has passed away. The tone-deaf Motion Picture Academy made sure that this brilliant craftsman won only one Oscar in his forty-year career. Goldsmith's score for Chinatown went a long toward making that movie the masterpiece that it is. The stroke of genius was in juxtaposing the unforgettably moody title theme with various avant-garde devices, notably a lot of strumming and plucking on the strings of four grand pianos. Adventurous as it is, the music is perfectly in keeping with the movie's period setting, Henry Cowell having pioneered inside-the-piano techniques in Northern California in the second decade of the century. There's much else to remember Goldsmith for: his sure hand will be missed.

Read this book (2)

"He did not know what to say in the face of such sorrow. He sat in silence by his sister's side in the spring verdure, which was too young; and the hidden strings of his breast began to quiver, and to sound. This was the first time that he had ever looked into the labyrinth of the human soul. He was very far from understanding what he saw. But what was of more value, he felt and suffered with her. In years that were yet to come he relived this memory in song, in the most beautiful song the world has ever known. For the understanding of the soul's defenselessness, of the conflict between the two poles, is not the source of the greatest song. The source of the greatest song is sympathy. Sympathy with Asta Sollilja on earth."

— Halldór Laxness, Independent People

A ciGar is just a ciGar

Via the unimpeachable TMFTML, a critique of the iPod: "I’ve read that white headphone wearers on the streets of Manhattan nod at each other in solidarity, like members of a tribe or a secret society." I don't know about other people, but I usually move to the other end of the subway platform when I see someone else wearing the white headphones. The thesis seems to be that the iPod has become a hipster status symbol, which it may well have, in certain lower Manhattan and upper Brooklyn neighborhoods where the boys wear plaid shorts and polo shirts with upturned collars like refugees from the evil frat in the John Hughes movies, but I would suggest a more arcane explanation, which is that the iPod is popular because it's a really good product. Reminds me of one of Steven Johnson's favorite stories — he was reading an article about the marketing of the Gillette Mach razors, and he came across an exchange in which some ultra-savvy advertising guru was asked how the company had achieved such a grip on the market, and the guy replied, "Have you tried this thing? It's awesome!"

All that said, I've become a little disenchanted with the Shuffle feature, which I praised a few months back, causing myself to be widely quoted in ways that made me sound like a nincompoop (always a good lesson for a journalist). The trouble is that my iPod is now loaded up with all kinds of book-related high-modernist material, which I seldom want to hear when I'm trying to make it over that last big hill on the cross-trainer. The machine has a mocking fondness for Stravinsky's Agon in this respect, and, if it's feeling really vicious, Stockhausen's Gruppen. I'm going to land in the hospital if that happens again. All I really want is "Champagne Supernova." Yes, Sasha, this is basically the same post I put up two months ago and then took down, not wanting to become "one of those blogs." You know, the kind that has cute kitty pictures.

Forest murmurs

Hard at work on my top-secret summer project, I’ll rely on other Kulturbloggers for inspiration. Jens F. Laurson at ionarts writes a lovely appreciation of the late Carlos Kleiber, then reviews the new Deborah Voigt / Christian Thielemann Tristan recording in a way that relieves me of the duty, as I agree straight down the line. (I like the way Thielemann and Voigt handle the “false starts” to the Liebestod at the end of Act III — those scattered teasing bars in which Isolde seems ready to begin her final monologue, then comes to a halt when other action intrudes. She’s so lost in her private world that she keeps missing her metaphysical cue. The effect is heightened by the fact that the first phrase of the Liebestod is such an instantly recognizable musical object. What’s really dizzying is that Wagner knew his music would acquire this iconic status — otherwise the false starts would make no sense.) Also on ionarts, Charles T. Downey praises the Renée Fleming / Robert Carsen Capriccio in Paris, which I wish I could have seen. Elsewhere in the musosphere, I’m enjoying Carl Wilson’s site Zoilus, particularly his heroic and principled stand against writing about Wilco.

I hit the road for Bayreuth tomorrow. If the right Verbindung can be found, I’ll post some candid shots of Wagnerland. Let the blogging of Bayreuth commence.

20 not by Brahms

The stats page reveals that most of my visitors aren’t dyed-in- the-wool classical fans. Pavement gets clicked on ten times more often than Brahms, even though Brahms has sold a hell of a lot more records. That’s OK — he's in no rush. To introduce myself to those nose-in-the-air, high-falutin' classicalphobes out there, I thought I’d put up another list, matching the “Top 10 Classical” I posted earlier. I’m not going to give a name to this one, though. I’m well aware of the yawning gaps, gulches, canyons, mid-oceanic trenches, interstellar voids, and metaphysical abysses as regards pop history, so don't get on my case with your sock-hop music and whatnot. Sasha will take care of you. This is just an irrational series of powerful attractions.

Duke Ellington, The Blanton-Webster Band
Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks*
Velvet Underground, Live 1969**
Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain
Louis Armstrong, The Hot Fives and Hot Sevens
Hank Williams, Ultimate Collection
Radiohead, Kid A***
Billie Holiday, Greatest Hits
Skip James, Complete 1931 Recordings
Bo Diddley, “Bo Diddley”
Led Zeppelin, III
James Brown, Live at the Apollo
Mahalia Jackson, Gospels, Spirituals, and Hymns
Beatles, The White Album
Frank Sinatra, Only the Lonely
Cecil Taylor, Alms/Tiergarten (Spree)
Björk, Vespertine
Public Enemy, Fear of a Black Planet****
Brian Eno, Here Come the Warm Jets
My Bloody Valentine, Loveless
_____________________________________
*The traumatic original version, not the official party mix. Bob, the world’s ready.
**Until the end of time it will be 42-7 at the half.
***Re: the raging debate on Will Carroll’s baseball blog about which Radiohead album is the awesomest, I honestly never really liked The Bends.
****In my iTunes library, “Fight the Power” gives way to Purcell’s “When I am laid in earth.” Hot. Is that a sample of Jon Hassell's Before and After Charm in there? or is it more "Funky Drummer"?

More classical hilarity

Archived in the categories to the right are two stabs in the direction of humor: “Stanley Kubrick Was My Friend, Too” and “The Gazebo of Ecstasy.” Here is another. Back in 1996, during my fidgety last months as a critic at the New York Times, I sent my editor Jim Oestreich a parody of classical music news, which he unwisely put into print. To judge from reader response, the satire was too deadpan for its own good: I received one inquiry about how to contact teenage oboe sensation Sarah Qin, one pained complaint about the alleged homoeroticism of the motets of Ockeghem. Also, the jokes had a way of becoming fact. Michael Daugherty went ahead and wrote a Jackie O opera, and at least two composers dramatized the tragedy of O. J. Simpson. (Believe it or not, someone took the Kubrick piece seriously, too.) Explanatory footnotes: 1) Kaisersaschern was the birthplace of Adrian Leverkühn in Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus. 2) Dylan McKay was Luke Perry's character on Beverly Hills 90210.

None greater

The great Carlos Kleiber is no more. No one will ever touch his recording of the Brahms Fourth.

Still, better than McCartney

For me, Elvis Costello’s Il Sogno, which the Brooklyn Phil- harmonic played at Lincoln Center last night, was a scary blank. After half an hour, I did something I’ve never done in twelve years of reviewing concerts in New York: I got out a book and started to read. My brain needed something else to grasp on to — I felt like I was clawing the air and plummeting. It’s not that Costello is inept; the score actually showed a fair amount of skill, especially in the orchestration, which is usually the aspect of the art that newcomers master last (see Gershwin). It made a clean, lucid sound, whether in the faintly Stravinskyish neoclassical passages or in the jazzy vamps. But the content was bafflingly trite. On the radar screen of compositional authority, where Gershwin registers as a dominating blob, Costello would be lucky to show up as a blip. Portions of melodies wandered in constricted circles; sequences began unpromisingly and went nowhere. At its best, and this is not as big a compliment as it sounds, Il Sogno ranked with mediocre Sibelius — those purring interludes that the old man tossed off when he was trying to replicate the freak popularity of “Valse Triste.”

I’m all for flinging open the doors of "classical music" to pop sympathizers. Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, the BBC's new composer-in-residence, is probably the most promising boundary-smasher right now; his Bodysong has wonderful Bartokian passages for string quartet. Björk could make the same transition if she wanted to. Back in the day, Ellington and Gershwin made nonsense of the distinction between "composer" and "pop musician": they weren't beyond categories so much as categories melted down. Costello, too, has an all-devouring mind, as he showed in a virtuoso Vanity Fair article about what to listen to at different hours of the day. But he has nothing urgent to say with instruments alone. He’s simply demonstrating another facet of his cleverness. More power to him, I guess, although if I were a young composer struggling to get my music heard I’d be angry at Lincoln Center for fawning over him. Now, if it were a symphony by Prince, that might be another matter…

Just a first impression. See Terry Teachout for another view.

A book sells in Chelsea

I was going down Eighth Avenue in Chelsea when I saw this title for sale on the sidewalk. Needless to say, I came screeching to a halt. First I should explain that books are a rarity in this part of Manhattan. You can walk down Eighth from 23rd to 14th and find nary a book or CD, unless you count Gay Love Signs and the music of Junior Vazquez. It goes to disprove the hurtful stereotype that the gay demographic is arty and sophisticated. Yet here in front of the Rite Aid was a fine, eccentric assortment of used books — Lenin at Iskra, The Collected Tales of Pierre Louÿs, stray volumes of Trollope and Thackeray and Irving, prewar travel guides, and the like. I hope these sellers come back regularly with their van and chihuahua. I went away with The Strange Death of President Harding ("from the diaries of Gaston B. Means") and Maxim Gorky's Mother. There was nothing strange scribbled in them, admittedly, but the opening paragraph of Harding is odd enough in itself: "'If Gaston Means should talk!' I almost spoke the words aloud as I stepped my six foot, two hundred pound avoirdupois through the iron-grilled outer door of the Altanta Penitentiary on the forenoon of the 10th day of July 1928, and breathed once again for the first time in three years the sweet clean pure air of God's outside world." I'll delve deeper into the mystery when I have the time. The scholar/critic Caleb Crain, who, I'm delighted to find, has a blog with the brilliant title Steamboats Are Ruining Everything, has posted his own book-collecting curiosities.

Grail Derby

By this time next week I'll be in Bayreuth, home of the Richard Wagner Festival, to review a new production of Parsifal. Christoph Schlingensief, long-reigning chief provocateur of the German theater, is directing the show, which, well in advance of its opening, has already provoked nervous chatter in the press. I haven't been able to find any preview of the staging, but I did find a site devoted to Schlingensief's "Wagner Rally" in the Ruhr region, which sent into the streets ten Wagnermobiles blasting passages from the operas. Each car was tricked out in Wagner regalia and had an assigned part in the orchestral score (trombones, for example). There was a gala finale in Recklinghausen, with dancing cheerleaders and cars busting through paper walls. "Richie says only music survives" was the banner over the stage. If this mise en scène anticipates what we'll be seeing atop the Green Hill in Bayreuth, one of the great "boo concerts" of modern German opera history may be in the offing. I feel a strange mix of excitement and dread.

Ye Art-Tech Tour (Arty Cue Hotter)

The notorious Terry Teachout party float in Carnaval.

Happy birthday to About Last Night, the Café Griensteidl of the internet. I started reading Terry Teachout’s blog at a time when signing on in the morning was tantamount to being kicked in the gut, world-historically speaking. He and Our Girl provide a daily blast of intelligence and enthusiasm and taste — you wish the world were like this. Terry has made me think that every active critic should have a blog. It's a riskier but also more honest medium for writing on culture. While classical music and other types of elitist-seeming art are basically shut out of the mainstream media — I am lucky to be working for a great exception — the internet is wide open.

Douglas Wolk, meanwhile, has posted the Ex / Dog Faced Hermans single I pined for the other day. Vet. One of these days, I will figure out how to digitize vinyl: my iPod needs such LP-only treasures as the complete Ruggles, Mussorgsky’s Sorochintsy Fair, Death of Samantha’s “Rosenberg Summer,” and Ligeti’s Poème Symphonique for 100 Metronomes. Douglas also provides a link to Ex MP3s on the band’s site, including an orchestral version of “State of Shock.” I’ve been trying to write an “Epiphany” on the subject of hearing “State of Shock” at Epicenter Zone in SF in 1991, so far without success. There are some experiences that can't be put in words. Right now, the download doesn’t work for me, but I’ll keep trying.

Because of intense work on a top-secret summer project, posting will be unambitious for the next few days, but I'll try to keep the chuckles coming.

Thor vs. Harmonielehre

No cancellation announcement yet for Philharmonic in the Park, despite ominous blobs on Doppler 4000. The forty E-minor chords might be more dramatic than usual.... In the end, it was not to be.

Out of my depth

We got hold of the Prince tickets by way of a few connections — namely, eBay and PayPal. (As a classical critic who ventures on occasion into the pop realm, I can usually obtain tickets to any show in town, but only if it features Caetano Veloso or Radiohead.) I will leave analysis to the professionals and confine myself to a few nerdy non sequiturs: 1) if you are a classical specialist who ends up being seated twenty feet behind the drums, bring earplugs; 2) the advantage of being deafened by the stage speakers is that you are unable to hear the cathedral-style three-minute reverb that makes most shows at Madison Square Garden sound like the latter half of Alvin Lucier's I Am Sitting In A Room; 3) Prince liked our section the best because he saw no “cool people” sitting down (blessedly, I had just stood up); 4) collegiate codependency — i. e., calling one’s buds ten rows back to say, “It’s Purple Rain, bro!” — is annoying; 5) can't wait to hear the American Musicological Society panel on "Musicology"; 6) Prince is pfunkatronic.

The same hypocrisy, Senator

Popular counterpart Jessica Hopper relates an ugly tale on her blog, then asks: “Does Alex Ross ever get this kind of hate? Like did Esa-Pekka Salonen ever beef with him over some back stage shit from '93?” I’m a little unnerved that she should bring up the Esa-Pekka thing. Yes, as everyone knows, back in ’93 I made the mistake of writing that one of Esa-Pekka’s early chamber works exhibited “remnants of doctrinaire post-serialist chromaticism.” Some of Esa-Pekka’s people came round and gave me a whole series of chromaticisms to think about. I now walk with a slight limp and have a really bad reaction whenever I hear the sound of a pencil sharpener. But Esa-Pekka’s a great guy, a real mensch in my book, and I have nothing bad to say about him.

The preceding is a satirical anecdote. I have no beef with Esa-Pekka.