The house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book. The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book, Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom
The summer night was like a perfection of thought. The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind: The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world, In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself Is the reader leaning late and reading there.
— Wallace Stevens
For a long time, I wanted nothing more than to live in the world
described in this poem. After a while, you realize that it isn't
possible, or even desirable, but you still cherish the moments when
total quiet descends. The way the opening line is broken into pieces later in the poem reminds me of a moment in the first movement of Brahms's Fourth Symphony — when the first theme comes back in the recapitulation, the second half of the phrase materializing out of nowhere after a mysterious interruption.
Marvelous, haunting piece by Mark Swed about the Hungarian master. Mark was at the Kurtág duo recital that I wrote about recently in The New Yorker; he has an uncanny ability to show up at any out-of-the-way event that I think I'm covering exclusively. If I hear about, say, a hitherto unknown Malaysian composer, a ninety-year-old woman who has written a ten-hour-long piano sonata on toilet paper, and I trek for days to her premiere in a muddy fishing village, Mark will inevitably be there, saying, "Oh, you heard about Ayu too?" But it's always good to see him; it means I've made a smart choice.
Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism, the 2008 Guardian First Book Award, a 2010 Premio Napoli prize in foreign literature, the 2011 Grand Prix des Muses, and a Music Pen Club prize in Japan; finalistfor the Pulitzer Prize in general non-fiction and for the Samuel Johnson Prize; one of the New York Times's10 Best Books of 2007; also onbest-of-the-yearlists in the Washington Post, Amazon.com, the LA Times, New York, Time, The Economist, Slate, Newsweek, the Times of London, the Sunday Times, the Guardian, the Observer, the Financial Times, and the Independent.
"A benchmark book that should eventually become a classic history of the 20th century." — Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"The best book on what music is about — really about — that you or I will ever own." — Alan Rich, LA Weekly
"A work of immense scope and ambition.... a great achievement." — Geoff Dyer, New York Times Book Review (cover review)
"Just occasionally someone writes a book you've waited your life to read. Alex Ross's enthralling history of 20th-century music is, for me, one of those books." — Alan Rusbridger, The Guardian
"Ross is a supremely gifted writer who brings the political and technological richness of the world inside the magic circle of the concert hall, so that each illuminates the other." — Lev Grossman, Time
"The Rest is Noise grapples with the actual stuff of music as few other books have done." — Ian Bostridge, Times Literary Supplement
"By far the liveliest and smartest popular introduction yet written to a century of diverse music." — Michael Kimmelman, New York Review of Books
"Warm, joyful and unfailingly adroit.... Best of all are the moments when Ross really strikes you dumb with wonder, moments when the author’s passion for the supreme significance of music raises his erudition to a new level." — Bryan Appleyard, The Sunday Times (UK)
“There seems always to have been a ‘crisis of modern music,’ but by some insane miracle one person finds the way out. The impossibility of it gives me hope. Fast-forwarding through so many music-makers’ creative highs and lows in the company of Alex Ross’s incredibly nourishing book will rekindle anyone’s fire for music.” — Björk
"An entertaining, accessible and enthralling book about a subject often closed off as too difficult or obscure." — Colin Greenwood, Radiohead
"The line in which Elvis Costello likens writing about music to 'dancing about architecture' is well worn, but it was buried forever this year by Alex Ross's The Rest Is Noise. It's a book every music fan should own." — Metro UK
"Excellent." — Neil Tennant, Pet Shop Boys
"The best book in the world about the most boring subject ever." — Jessica Pressler, New York Daily Intel
"This is the best general study of a complex history too often claimed by academic specialists on the one hand and candid populists on the other.... an impressive, invigorating achievement." — Stephen Walsh, Washington Post
"What powers this amazingly ambitious book and endows it with authority are the author's expansive curiosity and refined openness of mind." — Jamie James, Los Angeles Times
"Music in the 20th century is littered with great tales — of scandal, revolution, intrigue, lust, greed, shattered dreams and vaunting ambition and they all give this book its extraordinary zest and fluency." — Stephen Pritchard, The Observer (UK)
"Insightful, compulsively readable." — Anthony Tommasini, chief music critic, New York Times
"Coolly magisterial.... [The Rest Is Noise] the story of 20th-century music in completely fresh and unblinkered ways." — Jeremy Eichler, Boston Globe
"Print is silent. Which is why the task of writing about music is so difficult. I should therefore probably explain that the noise you now ought to be hearing is the sound of my hands as they stop typing and start applauding this vital, engaging, happily polyphonic book." — Peter Conrad, The Observer (UK)
"In his stunning narrative ... the New Yorker’s visionary music critic Alex Ross comes closer than anyone to describing the spellbinding sensations music provokes.... The Rest is Noise spins out seamlessly and is a joy to read." — Blair Tindall,Financial Times
"A sprawling tour de force.... The book has the force and scope of a heroic symphony in its own right." — Fred Kaplan, Slate
"[Ross] has an almost uncanny gift for putting music into words. No other critic writing in English can so effectively explain why you like a piece, or beguile you to reconsider it, or prompt you to hurry online and buy a recording." — The Economist
"Modern music has lacked its The Shock of the New. Now, in The Rest is Noise, it has one." — Ivan Hewett, The Daily Telegraph
"Amply perceptive, eloquent, persuasive, and remarkably informative." — John Simon, The New Criterion
"In The Rest Is Noise, Alex Ross shows himself to be a surpassingly eloquent advocate for beauty, by any means necessary." — Terry Teachout, Commentary
"A highly enjoyable book of impressive scholarship and critical intelligence that every music lover should read." — Rupert Christiansen, The Spectator
"As absorbing as a novel, as researched and erudite as the most academic tome, argued with the force and strength of an incisive essayist and deep thinker." — Daniel Felsenfeld, Symphony
"A book that makes some sense of the most convoluted musical century of human history. Ross takes the extremes, the wild diversity and contradictions as manifest realities to be understood through their relationships, rather than antagonisms that must cancel each other out." — The Wire
"An utterly gripping account of the relationship between music and public life in the last century. The Rest Is Noise is a wonderful book, both as an account of 20th-century music and as something of a cautionary tale about the influence of politics on art." — Ian Burnside, The Scotsman
"The New Yorker’s supremely gifted critic tells the story of musical composition through the 20th century – and makes it sound brand new. Here is a writer who can link life and work without trivialising either. This history of modern sounds develops into an intimate history of modern souls as well." — Boyd Tonkin, The Independent
"...comprehensive, imaginatively wrought, insightfully informative and vastly entertaining..." — Jed Distler, The Gramophone
"Ross takes the extremes, the wild diversity and contradictions as manifest realities to be understood through their relationships, rather than antagonisms that must cancel each other out." — The Wire
"Alex Ross...carries on a great tradition of musical writers including Hector Berlioz, Claude Debussy, and George Bernard Shaw. Now, for the first time, Ross has turned his feuilletonist’s sensibility to a longer form, the book, and he’s made a terrific debut on the big stage... [The Rest Is Noise] tells a compelling, epic, and entirely human story." — Jan Swafford, The Wilson Quarterly
"Ross's achievement is all the more astounding because it makes music essential to the understanding of history beyond the history of the music itself. And what could matter more than that?" — Jonathan Rabb, Opera News
"A towering accomplishment — an essential book for anyone trying to understand and appreciate one of the most fertile and explosive centuries in the history of classical music." — Kyle MacMillan, Denver Post
"Ross brings his gift for authoritative enthusiasm to a whole century's worth of music.... The result is a massively erudite book that wears its learning lightly." — Adam Kirsch, New York Sun
"With perpetual grace and excitement, Ross reanimates music buried in history and super-obscure record stores, and allows us to feel just how contemporary it can be." — Kevin Berger, Salon
"Superb.... This elegant book imparts to the music itself — that airy and elusive vibration — what so many critics cannot: three dimensions." — James Marcus, Newsday
"...a narrative that embraces the contradictions that characterize so much about the century just past, both in life and in art." — Steve Hicken, The High Hat
"Perhaps the least combative and doctrinaire of American classical-music critics, The New Yorker's Alex Ross turns out to be a brilliant chronicler of the combative, often stiflingly doctrinaire 20th century."" — Gavin Borchert, Seattle Weekly
"In The Rest is Noise ... [Ross] does not simply catalog major figures and artistic highlights, but presents music as an exciting phenomenon vitally related to broader political and social developments.... [He] grasps music on a profound, composerlike level...." — Zachary Lewis, Cleveland Plain Dealer
"[Ross's] brave goal is nothing less than to bridge the gap between modern composers and listeners. In this task, he is almost phenomenally successful...." — Timothy Mangan, Orange County Register
"Early into The Rest Is Noise, I felt like I was reading a book I had been waiting for all my life." — Juliet Waters, C-Ville
"Sweeping yet compulsively readable...Lucid technical descriptions illuminate the densest of pieces without dulling their inherently thorny nature." — Hank Shteamer, Time Out New York
"Superb narrative history... magisterial... One could not hope for a better guide; [Ross's] knowledge of both music and the historical forces that shaped it is deep and nuanced...." — Sudip Bose, The American Scholar
"Insightfully original.... Dramatic, erudite, and culturally expansive." — Johanna Keller, Chamber Music
ADVANCE PRAISE
"The Rest Is Noise reads like a sprawling, intense novel, one of utopian dreams, doom, and consolation, with the most extraordinary cast of characters from music and history alike." — Osvaldo Golijov
“In words that are beautiful, passionate, witty, and utterly compelling, Alex Ross has written a true rarity — a book about music that makes you want to run and listen to every note he talks about. A masterpiece." — Emanuel Ax
"With every page you turn, the story departs further from the old fairy tale of giants bestriding the earth and looks more like the twentieth century we remember, with fallible human beings reacting to, reflecting, and affecting with symbolic sounds a flux of conditions and events created by other fallible human beings. And turn the pages you do. A remarkable achievement.” — Richard Taruskin, author of the Oxford History of Western Music
"Alex Ross has produced an introduction to twentieth-century music that is also an absorbing story of personalities and events that is also a history of modern cultural forms and styles that is also a study of social, political, and technological change. The Rest Is Noise is cultural history the way cultural history should be written: a single strong narrative operating on many levels at once. What more do you want from a book? That it be intelligently, artfully, and lucidly written? It’s those things, too." — Louis Menand, author of The Metaphysical Club
"You don't have to be an aficionado of modern music to love this book: Alex Ross's extraordinary gifts as a writer, his deep knowledge of music, and his fresh forays into cultural history make The Rest is Noise a complete delight." — Jean Strouse, author of Morgan: American Financier
“A rare and successful weaving together of musical and cultural history, at once sweeping and accessible, written felicitously by a seasoned music critic at home in the history of the last century. An enticing and bold invitation to learn something of the great themes of the past century.” — Fritz Stern, author of Five Germanys I Have Known
Last year I wrote in brief about Issue Project Room, the avant performance space on the Gowanus Canal. This month the Room is presenting an ambitious festival entitled The Independents, presenting artists in various disciplines (experimental composition, free jazz, noise rock, electronic, and beyond category). The lineup includes such famous names as Tony Conrad, Rhys Chatham, Phill Niblock, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Zeena Parkins, and Charles Gayle. Of particular interest is an event on Jan. 24 — a presentation of Leif Inge's 9 Beet Stretch, a twenty-four-hour-long hyper-extension (de-telescoping?) of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Mark Swed wrote eloquently about that installation when it played at Vienna's Wien Modern festival. In 2004 there was a rendition at Zeke's Gallery in Montreal. Make reservations early for all these events, Issue Project Room advises. The other big experimental event of the month is Robert Ashley's new opera Concrete at La MaMa, about which more later.
A very respectable member of the music business who has worked with the Vienna Philharmonic points out an error in the posting below. Werner Resel, whom I quoted, is the Orchestra Director of the Vienna State Opera, not the business manager of the orchestra itself (that would be the flutist Dieter Flury, who, it must be said, has also made obnoxious comments in past years). Further, readers are asked to consider that the Philharmonic is working hard to repair mistakes that it has made in the past, and that bringing women into its ranks is a high priority. To which it might be replied that, whatever the good intentions of more liberal-minded people in the organization, progress over the past ten years has been conspicuously slow.
Until today I had been cold to Ford nostalgia, but this story, about how the late president became friends with the gay couple who renovated his childhood home, made me melt.
Late one weekday afternoon, Dianne Berkun was
standing before a fidgety crowd of schoolchildren in a dusty chamber of
the downtown Brooklyn Y.W.C.A. She was trying to get them to sing
Vivaldi's "Laudamus Te," music from the Baroque era that has no
immediately apparent connection to their lives.
"Do you remember what the main quality of Baroque music is?" she patiently asked.
"Dancing," several children replied.
"Yes,
this music must be dancelike. I want it to be very lively, but I don't
want it to sound like it's getting away from you." In the end,
miraculously, the Vivaldi had the proper nimble lilt.
Ms.
Berkun, a 27-year-old music teacher at the Brooklyn Friends School, set
herself a fairly epic challenge two years ago. She made plans to form a
children's chorus not quite like any other in Brooklyn. Its members,
aged 8 to 16, would be drawn from schools all over the borough, yet it
would remain independent of any one institution. Its repertory would
address a wide array of traditions, yet it would concentrate on
essential skills of musicianship.
Starting only with a donation
of stationery supplies from Brooklyn Union Gas, Ms. Berkun's 50-voice
Brooklyn Youth Chorus is doing pretty well. Earlier this month, the
group traveled to Disney World in Orlando, Fla., as one of nine choirs
from around the country invited to participate in the first Children's
Holiday Choral Festival. Beginning on Tuesday, through Dec. 23, the
chorus will perform "The Waltz of the Snowflakes" in the Brooklyn
Academy of Music's production of "The Hard Nut," Mark Morris's
topsy-turvy version of "The Nutcracker." The chorus landed this last
engagement after appearing at the academy's commemoration of Martin
Luther King Jr. Day last January.
"We all just sat up and said,
'That's the children's chorus for next season,' " said Lynn Moffat,
associate general manager of the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
How
has Ms. Berkun done it? The story, oddly enough, begins in Hungary.
Studying music education at New York University and the University of
Calgary, Ms. Berkun specialized in a teaching method devised early this
century by the Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodaly that has proved
particularly successful among children. Vocal training at an early age
was the best way for children to learn music, Kodaly always insisted.
His paragon was the 600-year-old choral tradition in the British Isles,
to this day the foundation of Britain's exceptionally active musical
culture.
In this country, by contrast, musical training of any
sophistication is increasingly scarce. Classical music, one of many
kinds of music that Ms. Berkun teaches to the children, has to cross an
enormous cultural gap. There are also the social gaps among the
children themselves. White, black, Asian, Hispanic, rich and poor,
attending 40 different Brooklyn schools, they are a model of the
teeming diversity that has made musical education such a challenge.
Auditions
are not demanding; Ms. Berkun screens out only the hopelessly
tone-deaf. This is in accordance with Kodaly's stricture that a
children's chorus does not require abundant or innate musical ability.
At the same time, however, Kodaly insisted that musical standards be
maintained. And in a recent two-hour rehearsal at the Y.W.C.A., the
group's current home, Ms. Berkun gave a performance of which Kodaly
would undoubtedly have approved. She was patient, but also musically
demanding.
Most noticeably, she does not talk down to the
children. Rehearsing the Vivaldi piece, she makes free use of technical
terms: "How many times have I told you we need a long crescendo here?"
On the next try, a smooth crescendo magically appears. Detours on
matters like Baroque style are an important part of the program; Ms.
Berkun regularly throws in morsels of music history, along with
instruction on basic music theory and notation. Her equally patient
accompanist, Alfred Ayres, gives piano lessons to many of the students
on the side.
The program being rehearsed on this day balanced
classical pieces with multicultural selections, including spirituals
and gospel hymns, along with Christmas favorites. Even in "Have
Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," however, Ms. Berkun kept up musical
demands. Noticing a lack of enthusiasm, she asked, "Is Christmas a
depressing holiday for you?" Unexpectedly, there were a few subversive
murmurs of assent. From this she drew an important lesson of public
performance: "Well, even if you don't feel happy, you have to sound
happy in this song, because that's what the song is communicating."
Afterward,
as the children raced around having their permission forms completed
for the Disney World trip, Ms. Berkun talked not only about the musical
challenges of teaching the group but also the logistical challenges of
holding it together.
"It's a feat in itself to have these kids
together in one space," she said. "If there are problems, if one child
doesn't want to sit next to another, then I just have them talk it out.
For the most part, the issues they deal with out there are never issues
here. The children become friends, and so have some of the parents when
they car-pool together."
Elaine Unkeless of Park Slope, whose
12-year-old daughter, Vanessa, has been in the group since it started,
singles out Ms. Berkun's intense devotion as a teacher.
"She's
got a real desire to help the kids learn and perform in a professional
manner," she said. "My daughter sings all the time now; she sometimes
sings herself to sleep. It is a real commitment, that's the one
problem: it takes a lot of time and energy. It can be tough when they
come home tired and still have homework to do."
As Ms. Berkun sees it, the children have found in the choir "something new and challenging that they love."
"The
most important gift you can give a child is self-esteem," she said. "I
leave a lot of responsibility to them. They have to tell me if they
can't come to a rehearsal and give me a good excuse. No child is afraid
to come up to me. They're always calling me at home. I can't expect
maturity and self-discipline, but I love this job more than anything
else I've done in my life."
The job is not an easy one. Ms.
Berkun has yet to draw a salary for any of the work she has done over
the last year and a half, and resources are at a minimum. She charges
$80 to cover some expenses, although she has arranged scholarships with
Brooklyn sponsors like the Independence Savings Bank. She spends more
time than she would like raising money for such necessities as uniforms
and chorus risers.
But Ms. Berkun sees limitless possibilities
for her fledgling enterprise. She has been able to start a preparatory
division for younger children, and her hope is to eventually start an
independent choir school.
A comment from one student seems to
sum up the group's promise: "If I wasn't in this chorus, I could be
watching TV, but I'd rather be singing."
Richard Aldrich of the New York Times reviews Sergei Prokofiev's local debut, on Nov. 20, 1918: "It is for Prokofieff the mere breaking of a butterfly on a wheel to perform other men's music. But the gracious butterfly of Scriabine was metamorphosed into a gigantic prehistoric pterodactyl with horrid snout and crocodile wings which ominously whirred as they flew over the pianist. Ah! a Jabberwock, it was, not a butterfly!" How the art of criticism has declined.
Note: The first page number is for the hardback edition, the second number is for the paperback.
A quick parade of end-of-century sounds....
"Pues mi Dios ha nacido a penar," or "Because My Lord Was Born to Suffer," from El Niño, the music that John Adams was writing when I visited him in his composing shed in the summer of the year 2000 (see p. 513 / pp. 559-60 of The Rest is Noise):
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, mezzo-soprano, with Kent Nagano conducting the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and London Voices; Nonesuch 79634.
AFTER EUROPE
And Then I Knew 'Twas Wind by the Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu (pp. 516-17/ p. 563):
Robert Aitken, flute, with the Toronto New Music Ensemble, Naxos 8.555859.
The ballet Red Detachment of Women exemplifies the musical kitsch of the Cultural Revolution in China (pp. 518-19/ p. 565), the last great epoch of totalitarian control of the arts. Composers who came of age during the Revolution, such as Tan Dun, Guo Wenjing, Chen Qigang, Chen Yi, and Zhou Long, later discovered the Western avant-garde and rediscovered the traditional music of China. Here is a passage from Guo Wenjing's Chou Kong Shan, a concerto for bamboo flutes and traditional Chinese orchestra:
Dai Ya, flutes, with Peng Jiapeng conducting the China Broadcast Chinese Orchestra.
Osvaldo Golijov (p. 520 / pp. 566-67) has drawn on the voluptuous musical traditions of Latin America. The song "Tancas serradas a muru," from Golijov's Ayre, is a multicultural tour-de-force that weaves together the sounds of Moorish Spain:
Dawn Upshaw, soprano, with the Andalucian Dogs, DG B0004782-02. By kind permission of the composer and Universal Classics.
Representatives of "New Complexity" include Brian Ferneyhough, James Dillon, and Michael Finnissy, whose music branches out in many unexpected directions. Ned Rorem is a link to an older mid-century Franco-American style; some of his most recent works, notably the opera Our Town, are his strongest. Elliott Carter, the godfather of American modernism, celebrates his hundredth birthday in 2008, and he shows no signs of slowing down. Neither does Milton Babbitt, well past his ninetieth birthday. Four young New York composers worthy of note are Anna Clyne, Nico Muhly, Judd Greenstein, and the unclassifiable Corey Dargel.
AFTER MODERNISM
The rippling high-tech live-and-electronic effects of Section 1 of Pierre Boulez's Répons (p. 524/ p. 571).
Here is video footage of Stockhausen's Helicopter String Quartet, from the seven-part opera cycle Licht (pp. 524-25/ pp. 571-72):
An excerpt from De Stijl by the Dutch post-minimalist Louis Andriessen (p. 525 / pp. 572-73).
"Transitoires" from Gérard Grisey's Les Espaces acoustiques, an outstanding example of Spectralist techniques (p. 526 / pp. 573-74):
Sylvain Cambreling conducting the Frankfurter Museumsorchester, Accord 465 386-2.
Kaija Saariaho, a Finn long resident in Paris, has also been affected by Spectralist ideas. This is the opening of her 1990 orchestral piece ...à la fumée, with electronically modified alto flute and cello:
Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Ondine 804.
Schoenberg's "wind from another planet" blows through the music of the German modernist Helmut Lachenmann (p. 527 / p. 573). This is from his Schwankungen am Rand:
From the twilight of the Soviet Union, Sofia Gubaidulina's religiously tinged Offertorium (p. 530/ p. 577):
Gidon Kremer, violin, with Charles Dutoit conducting the Boston Symphony, DG 471 625.
Faust goes down to hell in Alfred Schnittke's Faust Cantata (see track 10).
The beginning of "Silentium," the second part of Arvo Pärt's Tabula Rasa, Estonian meditations from 1977 (pp. 530-31 / p. 578):
Gidon Kremer and Tatyana Grindenko, violins, Alfred Schnittke, prepared piano, Saulus Sondeckis conducting the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, ECM New Series 1275.
Two extracts from Witold Lutosławski's Third Symphony, with its rugged Beethovenian opening (p. 532/ pp. 579-80):
Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Sony 66280.
The beginning of the Lamento of Ligeti's Horn Trio, with a reminiscence of Beethoven's "Les Adieux" Sonata at the beginning (p. 532 / p. 580):
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano, Marie-Luise Neunecker, French horn, Saschko Gawriloff, violin; Sony 62309.
Simon Rattle, conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, has described György Kurtág's Stele (pp. 532-33 / p. 580-81) as "a gravestone on which the entire history of European music is written":
Claudio Abbado conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, DG 447 761-2 (available as a download through DG Web Shop)
AFTER BRITTEN
Mahlerian rumblings in the second movement of Thomas Adès's Asyla:
Simon Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, EMI 56818.
Earbox is the online home of the post-minimalist, quasi-Romantic, blazingly American composer John Adams. The BBC supplies an analysis and performance of Adams's The Wound Dresser. Here are the opening minutes of Adams's breakthrough symphonic work Harmonielehre (p. 536 /p. 584):
Edo de Waart conducting the San Francisco Symphony, Nonesuch 79115.
The beginning of the aria "News has a kind of mystery" from Nixon in China (pp. 536-39/ pp. 584-88):
The totalitarian joy of Madame Mao:
Chou En-lai asks "How much of what we did was good?" at the end of the opera:
James Maddalena as Nixon, Trudy Ellen Craney as Madame Mao, and Sanford Sylvan as Chou En-lai, with Edo de Waart conducting the Orchestra of St. Luke's; Nonesuch 79177. By kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes and Nonesuch Records.
Panamint Valley, California. Photograph by Alex Ross.
Note: The first page number is for the hardback edition, the second number is for the paperback.
In the nineteen-sixties, the avant-garde went pop. The Beatles, the biggest phenomenon in pop-music history, started out as a straight-ahead rock band, but, in their later years, they absorbed ideas from composers such as Cage, Xenakis, and Stockhausen (fifth from left in the top row on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's), not to mention Jean Sibelius (see pp. 473-74 / pp. 515-16 of The Rest is Noise):
From "A Day in the Life" (Sgt. Pepper's) and "Revolution 9" (The White Album).
Compare Xenakis's Metastasis:
Hans Rosbaud conducting the Southwest Radio Symphony at the Donaueschingen Musiktage, Oct. 16, 1955 (world premiere); col legno AU-031800.
Composers who came of age in the fifties and sixties grew up with American popular music, especially bebop, R&B, and early rock 'n' roll, and absorbed ideas in turn. The composers who later became minimalists were often attracted to music that became fixed on one or two chords or on a droning tone while voices and instruments traced patterns in the air. Here are some sounds that were ringing in the ears of the young Steve Reich:
Miles Davis, "So What"; John Coltrane, "Africa"; Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues."
WEST COAST MUSIC
American composers resident on the West Coast have long followed their own path. The story of that maverick anti-European tradition, which reaches its climax with the phenomenon of minimalism in the 1960s, properly begins with experimental pieces by Henry Cowell (pp. 478-79 / pp. 521-22) from the second and third decades of the century. You can hear excerpts from his early piano works at Smithsonian Folkways and also at Art of the States. Folkways also has various recordings of world music that Cowell produced or co-produced. Here are excerpts from The Tides of Manaunaun, with its dense "cluster" chords, andAeolian Harp and Sinister Resonance, where the player strums and plucks the strings of the piano:
Conlon Nancarrow's Study 40b for player piano (see pp. 479-80 / p. 522). For more sound samples, see Minnesota Public Radio's page about the composer. For even more, see Kyle Gann's Nancarrow page.
Harry Partch, the legendary "hobo composer," is richly documented online. Visit the Corporeal Meadows site, the Partch Information Center, and the American Mavericks Partch page. Kyle Gann does the math on just intonation, the tuning system that underlies Partch's music. Here is Partch singing By the Waters of Babylon and accompanying himself on Adapted Viola (p. 481 / pp. 523-24):
From Harry Partch: Enclosure 2, Historic Speech-Music Recordings, Innova 401 (via PromoNet).
Art of the States offers selections from the blissfully otherworldly music of Lou Harrison (pp. 482-83/ p. 525). Other Minds has a recording of Harrison's Chaconne. Much more about the same composer can be found at the Harrison Documentary site: clips of interviews with those who knew him, photos of the straw-bale studio that Harrison built on the edge of Joshua Tree National Park. The University of California, Santa Cruz holds the Harrison Archive; American Mavericks has an interview with him. Here is Concerto in Slendro, which adapts the five-note slendro scale of Indonesian gamelan music:
Barry Jekowsky conducting the California Symphony, with Maria Bachmann, violin; Decca 455590.
In this tape from the Other Minds Archive, Lou Harrison discusses his love of the gamelan.
Another side of John Cage, pointing toward the minimalism of the late twentieth century — the String Quartet in Four Parts:
Here's the retinue of performers for the first "complete" performance of Erik Satie's Vexations, as arranged by John Cage in 1963 (pp. 483-84 / pp. 526-27). Among the participants was John Cale, the future violist of the Velvet Underground. Cale later appeared on the quiz show I've Got a Secret with Karl Schenzer, the only person who sat through the entire eighteen-hour-forty-minute marathon:
In 1993 I reviewed a 1993 performance of Vexations.
The great New York composer Morton Feldman (pp. 484-88 / pp. 527-31) had almost nothing to do with the West Coast, but the spareness and softness of his work had something in common with the aesthetic often found among California composers. Chris Villars, author of the collection Morton Feldman Says, offers a huge collection of online Feldman material. The University of Buffalo's Feldman archive. Other Minds has a tape of Cage and Feldman in conversation. Here is Feldman's Madame Press Died Last Week at Ninety, among his gentlest and shortest creations:
John Adams conducting the Orchestra of St. Luke's, Nonesuch 79249. By kind permission of Nonesuch.
Feldman speaks to Heinz-Klaus Metzger about his relationship to Jewishness and the attitude of "mourning" in his music:
The final section of Feldman's Rothko Chapel (pp. 487-88/ p. 530):
Philip Brett conducting the UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus; with David Abel, viola, Karen Rosenak, celesta, and William Winant, percussion; New Albion NA039. By kind permission of New Albion.
A performance of Paik's conceptual piece One for Violin Solo:
These samples show the transformation of Alvin Lucier's speaking voice over the course of the remarkable speech-sound composition I am sitting in a room (p. 492/ p. 535):
Recordings of La Monte Young's music (pp. 492-95 / pp. 536-39) are hard to come by; unfortunately, no recording of his enormously influential Trio for Strings is currently available. Courtesy of Other Minds comes a 1965 live recording of Young's Forty-two for Henry Flynt, with Peter Winkler on gong.
From the same year comes this snippet of a recording of Young's Theatre of Eternal Music, with John Cale on viola, Tony Conrad on violin, Angus MacLise on percussion, and Young and Marian Zazeela on vocals. Cale and MacLise went on to play in the first incarnation of the Velvet Underground.
Inside the Dream Syndicate, Vol. 1: Day of Niagara; Table of the Elements 74.
In his music for the film The Gift (p. 496/ p. 540), Terry Riley processed the trumpet playing of Chet Baker through his "time lag accumulator," stringing tape between two tape recorders and creating instant loops from live sound. These rapid repeating patterns helped to shape the minimalist aesthetic:
From Music for the Gift / Bird of Paradise / Mescalin Mix, organ of Corti 1.
The opening of Riley's epochal In C (p. 496 / p. 540):
In C: Twenty-fifth Anniversary Concert, New Albion NA071. By kind permission of the composer and New Albion.
From Riley's Rainbow in Curved Air (p. 497 / p. 541):
Steve Reich discovered his "phasing effect" — two identical musical strands moving gradually out of sync with each other and creating ever-changing rhythmic energies — while manipulating tape of a preacher orating in San Francisco's Union Square. In the following three extracts from It's Gonna Rain (pp. 498-99/ p. 543), you hear first the raw material, then the phasing process at two different points in the unfolding of the piece:
The same principle is applied to instruments in Piano Phase (p. 501 / p. 545). Again, three excerpts from the beginning and from two later stages of the piece:
Edmund Niemann and Nurit Tilles, pianos; Nonesuch 79169.
The opening of Reich's Four Organs, with the four instruments slowing down at different rates (p. 502/ pp. 546-47):
James Preiss, Michael Gordon, Evan Ziporyn, Mark Stewart, Lisa Moore; Nonesuch 79481.
On another recording from the Other Minds archive, you can hear Reich at the KPFA radio station in Berkeley in 1970, introducing a tape of Four Organs with Philip Glass on organ (the music starts at 9:40). The broadcast also includes a fascinating tape (thirty-seven minutes in) that Reich made of drummers in Ghana — a sound to be echoed in his next big work, Drumming.
Follow this link for video of the group So Percussion performing the first part of Drumming in 2007.
Generous excerpts from the work of Philip Glass (pp. 503-6/ pp. 548-51), including the monumental Einstein on the Beach, appear under "listen/watch" at the composer's website. Here is the beginning of "Knee Play 5" from Einstein:
Echoes and traces of minimalism in pop music of the late twentieth century — The Velvet Undergound's "Heroin," David Bowie's "Heroes," Public Enemy's "Welcome to the Terrordome," Missy Elliott's "Wake Up":
Note: The first page number is for the hardback edition, the second number is for the paperback.
The first of the famous "Louanges" from Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, songs of praise that have the effect of stopping time in its tracks:
Live performance from the Banff Centre, May 24, 2007, with Matt Haimovitz, cello, and Frederic Chiu, piano. By kind permission of Banff. Recommended recording: Tashi.
For sixty years Messiaen played organ every Sunday at theÉglise de la Trinité in Paris. Here is a video describing Messiaen's relationship with the church and its organist, and below is amazing footage of Messiaen improvising at the instrument:
An excerpt from a recording of Messiaen playing his early work Apparition of the Eternal Church (see pp. 448-49 / p. 488 of The Rest is Noise):
Go here for an explanation of Messiaen's "modes of limited transpositions" (p. 448 / p. 487).
An ensemble of six ondes Martenot (video explanation here) playing the "Oraison" from Fêtes des belles eaux (p. 449/ p. 488), the music that Messiaen later adapted as the fifth movement of the Quartet for the End of Time:
From the collection OHM: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music, Ellipsis CD3690
A semblance of cocktail-lounge atmosphere in "Chant d'amour 2" from the Turangalîla-Symphonie (p. 450/ p. 490):
And the beginning of the joyously unrestrained finale:
Riccardo Chailly conducting the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Decca 436626.
Messiaen had always loved the songs of birds, but in the 1950s he began to incorporate birdsong into his music in a systematic way. At Malcolm Ball's site you can compare Messiaen's musical re-creations of birdsong with the real thing. Here is a passage from Réveil des oiseaux, or Awakening of the Birds (p. 452/ p. 492), heard in a recording of the world-premiere performance from 1953:
Hans Rosbaud conducting the Southwest Radio Symphony with Yvonne Loriod, piano, at the Donaueschingen Musiktage, Oct. 11, 1953; col legno AU-031800.
The opening of the "Zion Park," the final movement of From the Canyons to the Stars, Messiaen's 1974 instrumental cycle inspired by the canyons of Utah (pp. 454-56/ pp. 494-96):
Reinbert de Leeuw conducting the Asko Ensemble, the Schönberg Ensemble, and Slagwerkgroep den Haag; available as part of a six-CD Messiaen set, Naive 782179.
THE AVANT-GARDE OF THE SIXTIES
As the technocratic fifties blurred into the psychedelic sixties, Karlheinz Stockhausen served as a bellwether of changing trends, his aesthetic broadened by the influence of John Cage. Stockhausen's Klavierstück IX (p. 457/ p. 497), written for John Cage's associate David Tudor, begins with a blast of mesmerizing repetition:
The site UbuWeb, a remarkable resource for information on far-out music and art of every description, has some excellent material relating to the madcap, every-which-way sixties avant-garde. You can hear two works by the Argentinian-German experimentalist Mauricio Kagel (pp. 457-58 / p. 498) and also view his mind-bending film projects. Beethoven was never quite the same after Kagel's 1969 film Ludwig Van. Ubu also has MP3s for Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu and various works of Cornelius Cardew.
Samples of works of the mellifluous Italian modernist Luciano Berio (pp. 458, 462/ pp. 498-99, 503): O King, Sequenza III. In the Sinfonia, the Scherzo of Mahler's Second Symphony is blended into a psychedelic collage:
Pierre Boulez conducting the ORTF National Orchestra, Erato 45228.
The screaming cluster chord at the beginning of Krzysztof Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (pp. 459-60/ p. 500):
The composer conducting the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, EMI 65077.
In Paroles tissées, Witold Lutosławski (p. 460 / pp. 500-1) combines up-to-date techniques of texture composition with a vocal line that sometimes sounds as though it could have come out of the world of Benjamin Britten:
Louis Devos, tenor, with the composer conducting the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra; EMI 15318.
At this high-tech site you can listen to the complete electronic version of Stockhausen's Hymnen (p. 462/ p. 502), a fantasia on national anthems of the world.
A selection from Peter Maxwell Davies's convulsive and unsettling Eight Songs for a Mad King (p. 463 / p. 503). Boosey & Hawkes has many other samples of Maxwell Davies's music.
In the climactic collage of Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Requiem for a Young Poet (p. 464/ p. 505), a quotation from Beethoven's Ninth collides with the Beatles's "Hey Jude," the voices of Goebbels, Stalin, and Churchill, and a chorus sorrowfully pleading for peace:
Gary Bertini conducting the Köln Radio Symphony Orchestra, the North German Radio Chorus, the Köln Radio Chorus, and the Vienna Radio Chorus; Wergo 60180-50.
GYÖRGY LIGETI
The publisher Sikorski has a page devoted to the late, great Hungarian avant-gardist György Ligeti, including a list of upcoming performances around the world. Ligeti has attracted a peculiarly strong following on YouTube: you can see a visualization of the electronic piece Artikulation, a punkish interpretation of the Etude No. 13, video of the Poème Symphonique for 100 metronomes (p. 467 / p. 508), a feline Ligeti dance, and, of course, the Requiem in Stanley Kubrick's 2001 (above). UbuWeb has a 1993 documentary about the composer.
Ligeti lived through the worst of the century's horrors, first surviving the Holocaust and then confronting Stalinism in postwar Hungary. Of his 1951-53 piano cycle Musica Ricercata, he later commented that the second piece, with its jabbing figures, represented "a knife in Stalin's heart" (p. 466 / p. 507):
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Sony 62308.
After escaping Hungary in 1956, Ligeti exuberantly embraced the myriad possibilities of the European avant-garde. Soon enough, though, ghosts of harmony past crept back into his work, as in this richly harmonized passage from Atmosphères (p. 467/ p. 509):
The music is notable for the vastness of its sense of space, for the almost palpable contours of the sonic landscape as it unfolds before the ears. This is from Lontano (p. 468 / pp. 509-10):
Here are two starkly contrasting passages in the tremendous Requiem (p. 468/ p. 509). First, the Kyrie, which demontrates Ligeti's technique of micropolyphony — assembling large masses of sound from multiple layers of microcosmic contrapuntal activity, with many different instruments playing the same material at different speeds:
Then the Lacrimosa:
Jonathan Nott conducting the Berlin Philharmonic and London Voices, with Caroline Stein, soprano, and Margriet van Reisen, mezzo-soprano; Teldec 83953.
TWENTIETH-CENTURY SACRED MUSIC
At the end of the "Zion Park" chapter (pp. 469-70 / pp. 510-11) I comment on the generous output of religious or spiritual music in the allegedly godless twentieth century. Here is the beginning of Poulenc's buoyant Gloria:
Leonard Bernstein conducting the English Festival Chorus and London Symphony Orchestra, Sony (out of print).
The austerely contemplative ending of Frank Martin's Maria-Triptychon:
Mattias Bamert conducting the London Philharmonic, with Lynda Russell, soprano; Chandos 9411. Read more about Martin here.
Orchestral chants from Giacinto Scelsi's Konx-Om-Pax:
The beach at Aldeburgh, England. Photograph by Alex Ross.
Note: The first page number is for the hardback edition, the second number is for the paperback.
The eastern coast of the British Isles, conjured in sound by Benjamin Britten in his masterpiece Peter Grimes (see p. 413 / p. 449 of The Rest is Noise):
Colin Davis conducting the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Philips 289 462 847-2.
The website of the Britten Pears Foundation, based in the composer's former home in Aldeburgh, has a detailed chronology of Britten's career and background for many of his works. The BBC 4 archive has several interviews with the composer, including one in which he recalls his prodigious production of works before the age of thirteen (one tone poem was entitled Chaos and Cosmos).
The young Britten's astonishing musical ability — together with a hint of his future psychological obsessions — are evident in his Quatre Chansons francaises, written at the age of fourteen. Note in particular this setting of "L'Enfance," by Victor Hugo, in which a child's innocence is juxtaposed with a mother's suffering ("Sorrow is a fruit"):
Ian Bostridge, tenor, with Daniel Harding conducting the Britten Sinfonia; EMI 56534.
From the song cycle Winter Words, the tenor's cry of "How long, how long" (pp. 418-19/ p. 455):
Anthony Rolfe Johnson, tenor, and Graham Johnson, piano; Helios 55067.
During his American sojourn (pp. 419-21/ pp. 455-57), Britten collaborated with W. H. Auden on a musical-theater piece titled Paul Bunyan. Here is a passage from the finale, which wavers between the satirical and the slightly mystical:
Philip Brunelle conducting soloists, chorus, and orchestra of the Plymouth Music Series; Virgin 90710.
One of Britten's first masterpieces was the song cycle Serenade, setting poems on the theme of sleep. In the movement titled "Elegy," Britten sets William Blake's "The Sick Rose" (p. 421 / pp. 457-58):
Ian Bostridge, tenor, with Simon Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic; EMI 58049.
GRIMES AND ITS SUCCESSORS
Here are some brief excerpts from Colin Davis's recording of Peter Grimes, with Jon Vickers in the title role. First, the emergence of the "gossip" motive ("Why did you do this"):
"What harbour shelters peace?":
The full onset of the storm:
The "Sunday Morning" interlude:
The beginning of the Passacaglia interlude, with the theme heard in the pizzicato cellos and basses at the outset and successive variations representing Grimes's boy apprentice alone, his work with Grimes, a "mistake," and the despair that follows:
The crowd becomes bloodthirsty:
Grimes's madness:
Jon Vickers as Grimes, with Colin Davis conducting the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Philips 289 462 847-2.
Here is a video of Vickers performing the mad scene:
There are extensive notes on the opera at the Britten Pears site. In the BBC archives is a radio program on the Sea Interludes and Passacaglia from Grimes. (Requires RealAudio.)
The mysterious chords that accompany the "interview" between Captain Vere and Billy in Billy Budd (p. 432 / pp. 469-70):
Britten conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, with Peter Pears as Vere; Decca 417428.
The twelve-note theme on which The Turn of the Screw is based (pp. 432-33/ p. 470):
Quint and Miss Jessel intone "The ceremony of innocence is drowned," with the "screw theme" laced through their eerily beautiful arabesques:
Stuart Bedford conducting the Aldeburgh Festival Orchestra, with Philip Langridge and Nadine Secunde; Naxos 8660109-10.
Here is the ethereally beautiful chorus "On the ground, sleep sound" from A Midsummer Night's Dream (pp. 433-34 / pp. 471-72). The four chords that together spell out a twelve-note row are heard at 0:09, 0:14, 0:18, and 0:23.
Benjamin Britten conducting the London Symphony and the Choirs of Downside and Emanuel Schools; London 425 663-2. By kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes and Universal Classics.
The finale of the War Requiem (pp. 434-35 / pp. 472-73), in its 1963 American premiere:
Many other samples of Britten's music can be heard at the Boosey site.
BRITTEN AND SHOSTAKOVICH
The supremely gloomy beginning of Shostakovich's Eighth String Quartet (p. 437 / p. 475), with the "D-S-C-H" motto audible at the outset:
The "breaking down the door" music in the "Babi Yar" movement of Shostakovich's Thirteenth Symphony (p. 438 / p. 476):
Nikita Storojev, bass, with Okko Kamu conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, the City of Birmingham Choir, and the University of Warwick Chorus; Chandos 8540 (follow the link to more audio samples).
In the first movement of his Fourteenth Symphony, a setting of Lorca's poem "De profundis," Shostakovich nods to his friend Britten by borrowing an effect from A Midsummer Night's Dream — double basses sliding up a major seventh and then going back down (p. 439 / p. 477). The quotation follows the lines: "A hundred ardent lovers / fell into eternal sleep." Here is Britten:
And Shostakovich, in a 1970 performance from Aldeburgh with Britten conducting (quotation at 0:45):
Mark Reshetin, bass, with Britten conducting the English Chamber Orchestra; BBC Music 8013.
From Britten's deeply haunting final opera, Death in Venice, the music that immediately follows Aschenbach's death, with gamelan-like sounds representing the boy Tadzio:
Steuart Bedford conducting the English Chamber Orchestra, Decca 000410202.
Note: The first page number is for the hardback edition, the second number is for the paperback.
Postwar avant-garde music may be said to have begun with Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, first heard in January 1941 at the German prisoner-of-war camp Stalag VIII A. I wrote more about the Quartet in a New Yorker article. The opening movement, "Liturgie du cristal," is notable for its free and irregular movement through time:
Live performance from the Banff Centre, May 24, 2007, with Geoff Nuttall, violin; David Krakauer, clarinet; Matt Haimovitz, cello; and Frederic Chiu, piano. By kind permission of the Banff Centre. Allowed under ASCAP license.
BOULEZ AND CAGE
Messiaen was immensely influential as a teacher, and one of his most notable students was Pierre Boulez, who made his name both with violently expressive scores and with violently opinionated polemics. Boulez's earliest extant works show powerfully the influence of Anton Webern, who, for many young composers of the postwar era, embodied a strict, pure style shorn of Romantic nostalgia and the detritus of a defunct tradition. Compare this passage from the beginning of Boulez's First Piano Sonata (see p. 362/ p. 393-94 of The Rest is Noise) —
Boulez moved on to the rigorously organized technique of total serialism, which organized various aspects of sound — pitch, duration, volume, and attack — into series of twelve, in line with the twelve-tone system. Messiaen had made steps toward such a system in his Mode de valeurs et d'intensités, or Scale of Durations and Dynamics (p. 363/ p. 395):
In 1949, Boulez befriended a young American composer named John Cage, who was visiting Paris to do research on the music of Erik Satie. John Cage had been pushing music in even more startling directions during the war years, writing for prepared piano, junkyard percussion, and electronic gadgetry. Go here for a good collection of Cage links; also worth consulting are James Pritchett's writings on Cage. Here is an excerpt from Cage's pioneering 1939 piece Imaginary Landscape No. 1, for variable-speed turntables, cymbal, and piano (p. 365/ p. 397):
With Cage, Xenia Cage, Doris Dennison, and Margaret Jansen; from the 25-Year Retrospective Concert of the Music of John Cage, Town Hall, New York, May 15, 1948; Wergo 286 247.
And this is from Sonata V, in Cage's cycle of Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano:
In Paris, Cage encountered the pioneering electronic composer Pierre Schaeffer, who, after the war, began assembling collages made up pre-recorded pieces of tape. The first of Schaeffer's Cinq Études de bruits, or Five Noise Etudes, consists of locomotive sounds that the composer recorded at a train station (p. 369 / pp. 401-2):
Back in New York, Cage constructed his own tape collage, Williams Mix, made up of some six hundred tape fragments arranged according to the demands of I Ching. You can listen to it at the German site Medien Art Netz, along with Imaginary Landscape No. 1 in its entirety.
Greatly impressed by Boulez's recent music, Cage moved toward a more fractured, abrasive style in 1950 and 1951. In the third movement of his Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra (pp. 366-67/ pp. 398-99), he uses the I Ching to decide which element from an array of sixty-four sounds should come next. Some of the sounds are, in fact, silences:
Stephen Drury, prepared piano, with the Callithumpian Consort of New England Conservatory; Mode 57.
Joining Cage in the experimental arena were Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown. Feldman pioneered what came to be known as graphic notation — scores that presented new kinds of written instructions for the realization of music, often giving performers freedom of choice in the process (p. 368 / p. 400). At a Northwestern University site you can see examples of graphic scores. Here is a sample page of Brown's Available Forms I; the Brown site also offers an MP3 excerpt.
Cage's early radical phase reached its height in the summer of 1952, when he unveiled the first "happening," at Black Mountain College, and 4'33", the so-called "silent piece" (pp. 368-69/ p. 401). In many of his activities, he abdicated the traditional role of the composer — one who writes down music for others to perform — and instead assumed the role of what was later known as a "performance artist." In 1960, he showed up on the American TV show I've Got a Secret to perform his Water Walk, to the seeming delight of the studio audience:
COPLAND, STRAVINSKY, AND THE COLD WAR
A page from Aaron Copland's FBI file. Click to enlarge.
The Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States placed uncomfortable pressures on American composers who had been allied with international, Communist-leaning organizations in the 1930s. Aaron Copland was one of these. In the online archives of Life magazine you can see Copland (spelled "Copeland") appearing amid a gallery of "Dupes and Fellow Travelers." The complete transcript of Copland's 1953 appearance before Joe McCarthy's inquisatorial Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations can be downloaded at the Senate website (see vol. 2, p. 1267).
In the fifties and sixties, Copland drifted away from the populist style with which he had long been associated, investigating twelve-tone writing and unleashing potent dissonances. His orchestral piece Connotations reduced Jackie Kennedy into near-silence at its Lincoln Center premiere in 1962 (p. 381-82/ p. 415). Was Copland trying to shield himself from political harm? Some have suggested as much, although the strong resemblance between his postwar music and earlier scores such as the Piano Variations suggests that he was mainly following inner impulses. Compare the opening of Connotations —
with the opening of the Variations:
Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic, Sony 60177; Leo Smit, piano, Sony 66345.
Stravinsky made his first move toward twelve-tone writing in his setting of "To-Morrow Shall Be My Dancing Day," from the Cantata of 1952 (p. 385 / p. 419). The theme, which seems to be in C major, is heard first in original form, then in retrograde, then in inversion, then in retrograde inversion:
In the fourth of several canons, with the main subject unfolding both in the original C and in two transpositions, the sense of tonality momentarily disappears. Disturbingly, the medieval text here takes on an anti-Semitic flavor:
Stravinsky conducting the Columbia Chamber Ensemble, with Alexander Young, tenor; Sony 46301.
In the ballet Agon (pp. 389-90 / pp. 423-24), Stravinsky uses a twelve-note series for the first time, but the rhythms and the timbres remain obviously Stravinskyan. This is from the Coda of the First Pas-de-Trois:
The Fanfare that recurs through the ballet keeps one foot firmly planted in C major:
Stravinsky conducting the Los Angeles Festival Symphony Orchestra, Sony 46292.
From the Lacrimosa of Requiem Canticles, Stravinsky's farewell (p. 390 / p. 424-25):
Oliver Knussen conducting the London Sinfonietta, with Susan Bickley, contralto; DG 477068.
At the Boosey & Hawkes site you can hear longer samples from the Cantata, Agon, and Requiem Canticles (RealPlayer required for all).
DARMSTADT
A hunting castle outside the German city of Darmstadt became the unlikely headquarters of the musical avant-garde in Europe after the Second World War. The International Summer Courses for New Music, to give the full title of the Darmstadt gathering, are still going strong, as this website attests. Significant composers who assembled regularly at Darmstadt included Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Luigi Nono, György Ligeti, Bruno Maderna, and Luciano Berio; Iannis Xenakis did not come until later.
The officialStockhausen site contains more or less everything you need to know about the output of the leading postwar German avant-gardist. There are extensive sound samples from Stockhausen's works, including Klavierstück I, Zeitmasse, and Gruppen, for three orchestras (pp. 395-96/ pp. 430-31). In one remarkable passage of Gruppen, chords are passed from one group of brass players to another:
Shortly after comes an all-out pandemonium for the three orchestras together:
Stockhausen, Bruno Maderna, and Michael Gielen conducting the WDR Orchestra; Stockhausen Edition No. 5.
Compare the first example to a passage in the Scherzo of Mahler's Fifth Symphony, where the note F is passed around from one horn to another:
Leonard Bernstein conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, DG 459 080-2.
At Medien Art Netz you can hear Stockhausen's pioneering Etude I, the first sine-tone composition, and his Gesang der Jünglinge, probably the most formidable piece of the early electronic era (p. 395 / p. 430). These pages at the website of Columbia University's music department have much more about the genesis and structure of Stockhausen's electronic masterwork. UbuWeb has a rich trove of Stockhausen films; TRANS und so weiter, from 1974, shows him at the height of his messianic phase.
Luigi Nono combined serialist complexity with fervent left-wing messages (pp. 396-97/ pp. 431-32). In the "Demonstration" scene of Nono's music-theater piece Intolleranza 1960, the chorus shouts / sings the slogans of various political movements: "No pasaran!" (from the Spanish Civil War), "Morte al fascismo!" (from Communist partisans in Italy), "Nie wieder!" (from 1920s-era opposition to German rearmament), "Down with discrimination!" (from the American civil rights movement), and "La sale guerre!" (from protests against the French colonialism in Vietnam):
Bernhard Kontarsky conducting the chorus and orchestra of the Stuttgart Staatsoper; Teldec 4509-97302-2.
In Iannis Xenakis's gorgeously strange Metastasis, individual tones melt into fields of timbre (pp. 397-98/ pp. 432-33):
Hans Rosbaud conducting the Southwest Radio Symphony at the Donaueschingen Musiktage, Oct. 16, 1955 (world premiere); col legno AU-031800.
You can see a page of the score of Pithoprakta at the official Xenakis site, which also has an exceptionally large and generous selection of audio samples.
From the final movement of Boulez's Marteau sans maître (p. 398/ pp. 433-34):
Pierre Boulez conducting the Ensemble InterContemporain; DG 000404302.
AMERICAN MODERNISM
Milton Babbitt, Peter Mauzey, Vladimir Ussachevsky in front of the RCA Mark II Synthesizer at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, now the Computer Music Center.
In 1960, John F. Kennedy wrote a letter to Musical America calling for a "New Frontier in the Arts." At the height of the Cold War, even the most advanced precincts of the music world benefited from the widespread belief that America could not afford to fall behind in any field of endeavor.
The most intellectually formidable American composer of the Cold War era was Milton Babbitt (pp. 401-4/ pp. 437-39), whose esoteric theoretical disquisitions conceal a musical sensibility of wit, charm, and lyric grace. The Three Compositions (1947-48) have a distinctly jazzy thrust:
Robert Taub, piano; Harmonia Mundi 905160.
NewMusicBox has many more samples of Babbitt's music, and also a wide-ranging interview with the ever-ebullient composer (Q: "Now, do you try to steer [students] toward twelve-tone music?" A: "God no! I mean who am I to send these people to their death?"). Babbitt passed away on Jan. 29, 2011.
Elliott Carter (pp. 404-5 / pp. 439-41), another giant of postwar American modernist music, celebrated his hundredth birthday in 2008 and, amazingly, is still composing at a vigorous pace. Boosey & Hawkes, his publisher, set up a special site to mark the centenary. Here is a passage from the Variations movement of Carter's String Quartet No. 1, in which each player seems to pursue an independent path through austere terrain:
One of Carter's signature effects is an all-out frenzy, perhaps comparable to the "action painting" of Jackson Pollock. This is from the Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano:
Paul Jacobs, harpsichord, Gilbert Kalish, piano, with Arthur Weisberg conducting Contemporary Chamber Ensemble; Nonesuch 79183.
Here is a dramatic passage from Carter's Piano Concerto, in which the solo piano, seemingly representing a battered individual in a chaotic, mechanized age, is reduced to playing a single note while the orchestra rages and seethes around it:
Michael Gielen conducting the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra, with Ursula Oppens, piano; Arte Nova 277730.
Leonard Bernstein, during much of his lifetime the most famous classical musician in America, was something of a loner as a composer, resisting the widespread tendency toward atonal and twelve-tone writing. His work feeds voraciously on the great classical tradition from Mozart to Mahler, as well as on Stravinsky, Gershwin, and a host of other twentieth-century influences. Here are two examples of Bernstein's remarkable ability to transform a familiar tonal figure into a modern, American organism. First, his apparent redeployment (conscious or not) of the opening motive of Sibelius's Fifth Symphony in the song "New York, York," from On the Town (p. 407 / p. 443):
Osmo Vänskä conducting the Lahti Symphony, BIS 1286/88; 1961 recording of On the Town with Adolph Green et al, Columbia 60538.
And these samples show the derivation of "Somewhere," in West Side Story, from the second movement of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto (p. 408/ p. 443-44):
Bruno Walter conducting the New York Philharmonic with Rudolf Serkin, live performance, 1941; Bernstein and Marilyn Horne, DG 000019426.
There is a website celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of West Side Story, which, despite its Broadway origins, has every right to be placed in the American opera canon next to Gershwin's Porgy and Bess.
For a deeper examination of Bernstein's political dealings — his FBI file and his adversarial relationship with the Nixon administration — see my online New Yorker feature, The Bernstein Files.
A card signed by Richard Strauss for Private Russell Campitelli of the U.S. Army on June 23, 1945.
Note: The first page number is for the hardback edition, the second number is for the paperback.
The Information Control Division of the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS), oversaw German music in the American zone during the Allied occupation of Germany from 1945 to 1949. In music, as in other cultural areas, ICD instituted procedures of denazification and encouraged progressive, cosmopolitan personalities and trends. The division also promoted American composers and musicians; Leonard Bernstein made a notable visit in 1948, and wrote back home that the Germans' "'master-race' claim" in music had been "exploded" by his success. Music Control Instruction No. 1, from the files of OMGUS at the National Archives and Records Administration (see p. 348/ p. 378 of The Rest Is Noise), states that "German musical life should be influenced by positive rather than by negative means." (Click to enlarge.)
Col. Ralph Burns, of the Cultural Affairs Branch of OMGUS, notes differing reactions to the Yale Glee Club and the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music (pp. 351-52/ p. 382):
Benjamin Britten's setting of John Donne's sonnet "Death Be Not Proud," written in August 1945 in the wake of a visit to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (pp. 344-45 / p. 375):
Via Youtube, "Im Abendrot," from Strauss's Four Last Songs (p. 354 / p. 385), with Jessye Norman singing and Kurt Masur conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra:
Note: The first page number is for the hardback edition, the second number is for the paperback.
Adolf Hitler appropriated classical music for both personal and political reasons, doing immense harm to the art in the process. Here is footage of Hitler arriving at Richard Wagner's Festspielhaus in Bayreuth and being greeted warmly by Winifred Wagner, the composer's daughter-in-law (one minute in):
In the film below, Wilhelm Furtwängler conducts Beethoven's Ninth Symphony; the date is April 19, 1942, the eve of Hitler's fifty-third birthday. By that time, Hitler himself was no longer attending public performances, but, during the ovation, Goebbels approaches the stage to show his gratitude toward the man whom Hitler had long revered as his favorite conductor.
In this film, also from 1942, Furtwängler conducts the Prelude to Die Meistersinger for the benefit of factory workers on their lunch break:
If Stalin's regime displayed consistent hostility to more adventurous styles of composition, Hitler's attitude was more muddled. In 1939 Hitler went to see Werner Egk's opera Peer Gynt (see p. 319 / pp. 348-49 of The Rest is Noise) and praised it highly, despite the fact that the influence of Stravinsky and perhaps also of Kurt Weill was evident throughout the score:
Heinz Wallberg conducting the Munich Radio Orchestra, Orfeo 005 822.
Also somewhat surprising was Goebbels's enthusiasm for Carl Orff's Carmina burana (p. 320 / p. 349), whose bouncing, syncopated rhythms also took off from Stravinsky:
Donald Runnicles conducting the Atlanta Symphony and Chorus, Telarc 80575.
Compare Stravinsky's Oedipus, especially after the 0:30 mark:
Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Swedish Radio Symphony and Eric Ericson Chamber Choir, Sony 48057.
Hitler admired Richard Strauss up to a point, but the Nazi hierarchy was continually frustrated by Strauss's impertinent remarks and behavior. He attempted to bring himself back into favor by writing pseudo-Beethovenian triumphalist music in his opera Friedenstag (p. 326 / p. 356), which Hitler saw in Vienna in June 1939. The excerpt below is from a recording of that very performance:
Strauss conducting the Vienna State Opera Orchestra and Chorus, Koch 3-1465-2.
Far more convincing is the mythological Daphne (p. 331/ p. 361), in which Strauss almost audibly withdraws from the rancid atmosphere of Hitler's Germany:
Karl Böhm conducting the Vienna Symphony, with Hilde Gueden as Daphne; DG 445322.
Hitler is known to have prized Karl Muck's 1927 and 1928 recordings of Parsifal. Here is the passage from Act III in which Parsifal sings, "I saw them wither, those who once smiled on me" (p. 329).
Muck conducting the Berlin State Opera Orchestra, with Gotthelf Pistor as Parsifal and Ludwig Hoffmann as Gurnemanz; Opal 9843.
Perhaps the most woeful recorded document in twentieth-century music history is contained in the 1944-45 propaganda film Thereienstadt, also known as Hitler Gives the Jews a City, which was designed to deceive international observers as to the real situation of Jews in Nazi Germany. Presently two surviving fragments of the film can be found on YouTube. The performance of Pavel Haas's Study for Strings (p. 333/ p. 363) starts at 0:25 of this excerpt; the composer is seen sitting tensely in his seat just before the music begins. A detailed description of the surviving fragments of the film can be found on the online pages of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Most of those seen in the footage had only a few months to live; Haas and many other musicians of Theresienstadt were killed at Auschwitz in October 1944. Karel Ancerl, who conducts in the film, survived to become one of the leading conductors of the postwar era. There is plentiful information about the Thersienstadt composers at the site Music During the Holocaust, maintained by World ORT.
Metamorphosen (pp. 337-38 / pp. 367-69) is Richard Strauss's memorial to the Germany that Hitler destroyed. Below is the beginning of the funeral-march movement of Beethoven's Eroica, followed by Strauss's chilling quotation of it at the end of Metamorphosen:
Otto Klemperer conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra, EMI 67741; Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, DG 447422.
Note: The first page number is for the hardback edition, the second number is for the paperback.
In the nineteen-thirties and forties, classical music reached extraordinary levels of popularity in the United States, thanks in large measure to forceful support from major media entities such as NBC radio and Time magazine. Classical music lost its "elite" aura and became a mass phenomenon — most notably when millions of radio listeners tuned in to hear Arturo Toscanini conduct the NBC Symphony (see p. 264 / p. 288 of The Rest is Noise). The Pristine Classical site has streaming audio of many Toscanini performances. Here the Maestro leads an all-Wagner concert at the height of World War II, showing a determination not to let Hitler appropriate the German classics.
Aaron Copland was a young American composer determined to advance the cause of contemporary music in the new cultural climate. He began as something of a modernist, unloosing stark dissonances in his Piano Variations of 1930 (p. 268/ p. 293):
Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal brought about a brief but astonishing surge of federal support for the arts. Orchestras, opera companies, and other musical organizations affiliated with the Works Progress Administration sprang across the country; composers benefited from a program called Composers' Forum-Laboratory, in which they explained their work to audiences. The archives of the Federal Music Project are held at the National Archives, which has little online pertaining to this period, but the Library of Congress has digitized selections from the Federal Theater Project, to which such composers as Virgil Thomson and Marc Blitzstein contributed music. View here Hallie Flanagan's speech "Is This the Time and Place?" in which she set out the radical goals of the Theater Project (pp. 280-81/ pp. 306-7).
Charles Seeger and Ruth Crawford Seeger (pp. 271-72 / pp.296-97) were heavily involved in the New Deal Music culture and left-leaning musical organizations associated with the Popular Front. Samples of Ruth Crawford Seeger's early modernist music can be heard at Art of the States; more about this remarkable composer can be found at the website of her daughter Peggy Seeger. Here is the beginning of the remarkable slow movement of Seeger's String Quartet 1931:
Schoenberg Ensemble, DG 449925, available as a reissue from ArkivMusic.
One composer featured in the Composers' Forum-Laboratory was Johanna Beyer, whose music was neglected for decades and has only recently begun to see the light of day. She was greatly influenced by Ruth Crawford Seeger, yet pursued her own expressive ends. In 1936 she commemorated the idealistic spirit of the age with a piece for chorus entitled Federal Music Project, whose text says in part: "I know of an active bee-hive, / it buzzes and bubbles all day, / is full of creative ideas, / a nucleus of a future so gay!"
Copland's popular breakthrough in the New Deal era came in 1938 with El Salón México, a score inspired by several trips south of the border earlier in the decade:
Bernstein conducting the Columbia Symphony, Sony 60177.
Copland took a close interest in younger Mexican composers such as Carlos Chávez, who made disciplined use of native folk material, and Silvestre Revueltas, whose later masterpiece La noche de los Mayas has a neo-primitivist energy to equal the Rite of Spring:
Fernando Lozano conducting the Mexican Philharmonic Orchestra, Forlane 16614.
But there is also a straight line of development from Copland's earlier "modernist" scores, as you can hear by comparing the beginning of El Salón with this passage from the Piano Variations:
The beginning of the first section of Aaron Copland's ballet Billy the Kid, "The Open Prairie," one of the signature sounds of the populist 1930s (pp. 275-76/ pp. 300-1):
The final section, "The Open Prairie Again":
Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the San Francisco Symphony, RCA Victor 63511. By kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes and Sony BMG.
The Boosey site has more samples of Copland's music (RealPlayer required). The website of the Library of Congress has extensive selections from Copland's papers. You can read here a letter that Copland wrote to Citkowitz in September 1934, describing the experience of delivering a Communistic speech to farmers in Minnesota (p. 273 / p. 298).
The Library of Congress has similar pages for Leonard Bernstein; here is the telegram that Serge Koussevitzky sent to Bernstein when the young conductor made his career-making debut conducting the New York Philharmonic in 1943. See also Copland House, the official Bernstein site, the Marc Blitzstein site, and Andrea Olmstead's site for Copland's more modernistically inclined colleague Roger Sessions, with complete versions of her out-of-print Sessions books.
Roy Harris's Symphony No. 3 (p. 280/ pp. 305-6):
Blitzstein was a more politically pointed composer than Copland and Harris ever were; his pro-union, anti-capitalist musical The Cradle Will Rock was one of the great sensations of the leftist thirties. In "Art's for Art Sake," two unenlightened artists announce their credo of obliviousness to contemporary conditions, while Beethoven's Egmont Overture is ironically honked out on the car horn of their patron, Mrs. Mister:
From the 1938 original-cast recording, with Edward Fuller as Yasha the violinist and Jules Schmidt as Dauber the painter, with Blitzstein at the piano; Pearl GEMS 0009.
At this University of Virginia site you can view the complete 1938 Resettlement Administration film The River, with music by Virgil Thomson (pp. 283-84/ pp. 309-10). Here is a YouTube excerpt from the film:
LOS ANGELES AND HOLLYWOOD
In the 1930s and 40s, a huge array of Central and Eastern European artists and intellectuals, among them Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bertolt Brecht, and Thomas Mann, settled in Southern California, having sought refuge from fascism. The émigré scene is well documented at the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library at USC. On their site you can see pictures of Mann's house in Pacific Palisades, Franz Werfel and Alma Mahler-Werfel's house in Beverly Hills, and Brecht's house in Santa Monica. The picture above, from the image archive of the Mahler-Werfel Papers at the University of Pennsylvania, shows Stravinsky and Alma in Beverly Hills.
A YouTube video from the Arnold Schoenberg Center gives a sense of LA culture in the thirties and forties. Visible in this silent home-movie footage are, among others, Schoenberg, Thomas Mann, Ira Gershwin, Bertrand Russell, and Aldous Huxley:
Among exiled composers who worked in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s, the most successful was Erich Wolfgang Korngold (pp. 291-92/ p. 316), who had been a child prodigy in Vienna. Scores such as Kings Row (1942) established an orchestral Hollywood style that is still commonplace today:
Korngold conducting the Warner Bros. Studio Orchestra, Rhino 72243.
A different side of Korngold emerged in his postwar Symphony in F-sharp (p. 293/ p. 320), whose slow movement is a masterpiece of lyric despair. After the fashion of Mahler's later symphonies, it seems to have joy within its grasp before collapsing back into anguish:
Rudolf Kempe conducting the Munich Philharmonic, Varese Sarabande (out of print).
There is a comprehensive website for Bernard Herrmann, perhaps the greatest of Hollywood film composers. His first score was for Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (p. 292-93 / p. 319-20), whose motto theme is inscribed with the dark fate of the title character:
In flashbacks, the falling intervals of the theme are transposed into a merry, major-key ditty, denoting Kane's youthful exuberance:
Joel McNeely conducting the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Varese Sarabande 5806.
Arnold Schoenberg, formerly of Vienna and Berlin, lived on North Rockingham Avenue in Brentwood from 1936 until his death in 1951. The Schoenberg Center has a digital scan of a letter that Schoenberg wrote to Irving Thalberg, head of production at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio, following up on a meeting at which the composer discussed with Thalberg the possibility of writing music for the film The Good Earth. Nothing came of the plan. There's also a charming letter in which Schoenberg quizzes a car mechanic about problems with the cooling system in his brand-new Ford sedan. Schoenberg is seen playing tennis with a man who may or may not be Gershwin at around 5:50 in this video, placed on YouTube by the Schoenberg Center.
Stravinsky's major wartime work was the Symphony in Three Movements, finished just as the war was ending in 1945 (pp. 298-99/ p. 326):
Stravinsky conducting the Columbia Symphony, Sony 42434.
Bartók was one of many émigré composers irritated by the enormous popularity of Shostakovich. He parodied the Leningrad in the fourth movement of his Concerto for Orchestra (p. 300 / pp. 327-28):
Fritz Reiner conducting the Chicago Symphony, RCA 61504.
For comparison, here is Shostakovich's "invasion theme" again:
Leonard Bernstein conducting the Chicago Symphony, DG 427632.
COMMON MAN, APPALACHIAN SPRING
Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, inspired by Henry Wallace's 1942 speech "Century of the Common Man," has become a universally recognizable icon of the "American" sound in music (p. 301 / p. 329). The rock group Queen quoted it in their hit song "We Will Rock You":
Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic, Sony 63082.
Copland's sketches for Appalachian Spring (pp. 300-304/ pp. 328-32) can be seen at the Library of Congress site. On the page above (click to enlarge) you can see him beginning to work out the ballet's spacious opening; here is the passage in the coda marked "like a prayer." The corresponding music is below.
Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the San Francisco Symphony, RCA Victor 63511.
The beginning of Martha Graham's dance of Appalachian Spring:
Note: The first page number is for the hardback edition, the second number is for the paperback.
At the heart of The Rest Is Noise is a trio of chapters examining relationships between composers and the state in the 1930s and 1940s: "The Art of Fear" (music in Stalin's Russia), "Music for All" (music in FDR's America), and "Death Fugue" (music in Hitler's Germany).
In the years before Stalin consolidated his hold on power, Soviet artists enjoyed, or at least were allowed, a fair degree of freedom to experiment. Composers mimicked the sounds of machines or incorporated machine noises. the better to suggest the might of the new Communist state (see p. 219/ p. 239 of The Rest is Noise). Alexander Mosolov's The Iron Foundry was exemplary:
Yevgeny Svetanov conducting the USSR Symphony Orchestra, Melodiya 74321-56263-2.
The young Dmitri Shostakovich, enfant terrible of Soviet composition in the late 1920s and early 1930s, opened his Second Symphony, "To October" (p. 223/ p. 243) with music of extraordinary rhythmic complexity and harmonic density, suggesting the chaos of Russia before the Revolution:
Vladimir Ashkenazy conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Decca 436762.
When taking on Western bourgeois values, the young composer often fell into a deliciously sardonic mood, both mocking and mimicking the styles of the twenties. An excerpt from his film score New Babylon (p. 224 / p. 244), a socialist drama set against the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71:
Gennady Rozhdestvensky conducting the USSR Ministry of Culture Orchestra, Russian Disc 11064.
In film footage from the period 1934-35, Shostakovich plays his own First Piano Concerto:
SHOSTAKOVICH AND THE TERROR
The major work of Shostakovich's early years is the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (pp. 225-26/ pp. 246-47), which initially met with success and then drew forth an extraordinary denunciation in the pages of the Party organ Pravda in January 1936, shortly after Stalin went to see the opera. (The image above is of the Pravda article, "Muddle Instead of Music.") Among other things, it would seem that officialdom was offended by the salacious sounds, complete with glissandos of detumescence, that accompanied the lovemaking of Katerina and Sergei in Act I:
Far more serious in tone is the great Passacaglia interlude that plays in the orchestra in the wake of the death of the kulak Boris:
Myung Whun-Chung conducting the Bastille Opera Orchestra, DG 000677002.
The industrial-strength opening of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony, written shortly before the Pravda episode began:
Bernard Haitink conducting the London Philharmonic, London 421 348-2.
At the climax of the Fourth, Shostakovich significantly alludes to the "Gloria" from Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, in which the chorus hails Jocasta as the queen of "disease-ridden Thebes" (p. 233 / p. 254). Here is Stravinsky:
Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Swedish Radio Chorus, Eric Ericson Chamber Choir, and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sony SK 48057.
And here is Shostakovich:
Bernard Haitink conducting the London Philharmonic, London 421 348-2.
Voices crying in the Largo of the mighty Fifth Symphony (pp. 233-36/ p. 255-58):
The opening of the final merciless movement:
Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic, Sony 61841.
In the finale, Shostakovich quotes from his Pushkin setting "Regeneration" (p. 235 / p. 257). The final two lines are "And in their place visions arise / Of pure, original days":
Sergei Leiferkus, baritone, with Neeme Järvi conducting the Gothenburg Symphony, Decca 000677002.
Here is the corresponding passage in the Fifth, with the quiet, ominous return of the martial main theme:
Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic, Sony 61841.
Bernstein conducts the entire finale, live with the Philharmonic in 1979:
PROKOFIEV
Prokofiev in New York, 1918. From the Library of Congress.
The pages of the Prokofiev Society include back issues of the Three Oranges Journal. Princeton University has an informative site devoted to Simon Morrison's reconstruction of Prokofiev's ballet Pas d'acier. There is a parallel site for Morrison's reconstructions of the unrealized Meyerhold collaboration Boris Godunov.
The ferocious young Prokofiev, borrowing from Stravinsky's Rite in the Scythian Suite:
Valery Gergiev conducting the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Philips 473600.
Prokofiev's lyric side blossoms fragrantly in the Balcony Scene from Romeo and Juliet (p. 241/ p. 263):
Gergiev conducting the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Philips 464726.
After returning to the Soviet Union, Prokofiev struggled mightily to write propaganda music, with limited success. Zdravitsa, or Toast to Stalin (p. 242 / p. 264), romanticizes the icy leader of the state with much the same musical palette as the above scene in Romeo:
Valery Polyansky conducting the Russian State Symphony, Chandos 10056.
Perhaps the happiest experience of Prokofiev's ill-starred Soviet period was his collaboration with Sergei Eisenstein on the films Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible parts I and II (pp. 242-43, 249 / pp. 265, 272). The "Battle on the Ice" sequence from Nevsky, with chanting chorus and trudging orchestra, is imitated at least three times each summer in big-budget Hollywood action films:
Gergiev conducting the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra and Chorus, Philips 473600.
WORLD WAR II AND STALIN'S LAST YEARS
Nevsky Prospekt under fire during the siege of Leningrad.
Shostakovich responded to the German invasion of Russia and the siege of his home city of Leningrad with a huge four-movement symphony, his Seventh, entitled Leningrad (pp. 245-48/pp. 267-71). The Germans are represented by an endlessly repeated little ditty that Shostakovich seems to have taken from Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow, known to be Hitler's favorite operetta. Here is Lehár's "Da geh' ich zu Maxim":
John Eliot Gardiner conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, with Boje Skovhus as Danilo; DG 439911.
And here is Shostakovich, toward the beginning of the variation sequence (compare the descending figure at 0:17 with the Lehár above):
The march becomes ever more vehement as it goes along:
Leonard Bernstein conducting the Chicago Symphony, DG 427632.
Prokofiev set to work on an epic operatic setting of Tolstoy's War and Peace (pp. 248-49 / p. 271), lavishing particular care on the lavish ball scenes that precede the outbreak of Napoleon's invasion of Russia:
Valery Gergiev conducting the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Philips 434097.
He never saw War and Peace produced, but he did preside over a triumphant premiere of his Fifth Symphony, in which he matched Shostakovich in Beethovenian eloquence (p. 250 / p. 273). As with Shostakovich's Fifth, the ending seems ambiguous:
Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, DG 437253.
The final movement of Prokofiev's Sixth is unambiguously tragic in tone (p. 252 / p. 275).
All Soviet composers once again had to engage in an orgy of self-criticism in 1948, when the Zhdanov Decree was handed down and many significant works were banned. Shostakovich took to parodying the ending of his Fifth Symphony in works such as The Sun Shines Over the Motherland and Song of the Forests:
Alexander Yurlov conducting the USSR Symphony and the Yurlov Russian Choir, Russian Disc 11 048.
Compare the very end of the Fifth:
Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic, Sony 61841.
In his Tenth Symphony, written after Stalin's death, Shostakovich makes use of a musical motif based on the letters of his own name in German musical notation: D-S-C-H, or D-E-flat-C-B-natural. In the final measures these notes are blasted out with sardonic force, the underlying message radically ambiguous to the end:
Evgeny Mravinsky conducting the Leningrad Philharmonic, Erato 45753.
