Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

Mahler in Montana

© 2008 Allen S. Lefohn. Click to enlarge.

The above photo appears in the latest issue of Symphony, accompanying an article by Jennifer Melick. I found it a striking image, and asked the photographer, Allen Lefohn, for permission to reproduce it. It shows an outdoor concert last summer by the Helena Symphony, in Montana. The population of Helena is 30,000; it would appear that about half that number were in attendance. This orchestra, which is led by Allan Scott, has an annual budget of under $600,000, but they don't lack for adventure; they recently played Nielsen's Inextinguishable, and they're in the middle of a Mahler cycle.

The latest music of the future

Peter Neubäcker, pioneer of the widely used Melodyne pitch-correction software, has a new program, Direct Note Access, which allows you to enter into a recorded track, separate out notes within chords, and change them at will. Watch his rather amazing demonstration at Musikmesse Frankfurt, as he casually rewrites Mozart at the touch of a button. Like most technological advances, this one could be either grossly abused or put to thrilling creative ends. One thing's for certain: Neubäcker is a brilliant man. (Via Larry Hardesty.)

"Stuffy" art form fuels outlaw sexuality

The New York Post says that Gov. Spitzer asked his staff to bring a "classical music CD" to Room 871 on that fatal night of destructive passion. Let's hope it was Tristan und Isolde.... Now playing on YouTube are Scott Bradley's 1940s-era cartoon scores Puttin' on the Dog and The Cat That Hated People, both containing instances of 12-tone writing. (Via Bob DuCharme.) ... Phil Lesh talks to Elliott Carter on Counterstream Radio, March 14.... Sheng player Wu Wei in action.... Two interesting shows this weekend at The Tank: on Saturday night, the Jack Quartet plays Xenakis, Lachenmann, and Rihm, and on Sunday Jacob Cooper introduces his opera Timberbrit, about the Tristan-esque tragedy of Justin and Britney.... And the winner is — Lang Lang.

Salsa cookies

Last year I mentioned the curious televised aftermath of John Cage's 1963 Satie marathon — a joint appearance on the quiz show I've Got a Secret by John Cale, one of the participating pianists, and Karl Schenzer, the only audience member who sat through the entire performance. Now, inevitably, you can see the clip auf YouTube. "I just wanted to give myself to the composer's work," Schenzer says on the show. He is definitely Schenzer, not Schanzer. (Via Jeremy Schlosberg.) Bonus track: a toweringly brilliant English-language version of Carmina burana. (Via Daniel Felsenfeld, via John Corigliano. Hit reload when you reach the page to ensure proper synchronization.)

The Wire

The final episode didn't cause me to change my mind.

Grimes 2008

Gale Force. The New Yorker, March 17, 2008.

Revisiting Stockhausen

The magazine Artforum has put together a remarkable tribute to Stockhausen, consisting of extended articles by Robin Maconie, Stockhausen's chief chronicler, and La Monte Young, giant of American experimental music, along with shorter tributes by Irvine Arditti, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Morton Subotnick, Maryanne Amacher, and Björk. There's much worth noting: Maconie's passionate defense of Stockhausen's post-9/11 commentary ("The opinion of a musician both of whose parents were victims of war — the mother by lethal injection, the father on the Eastern front — a survivor who worked the final six months of resistance as an orderly in a field hospital caring for and comforting American war victims of Allied phosphor bombs, speaking English to them and playing music to ease their suffering, deserves respect as the view of one who knows what war is about...."); Young's story of how he was afraid to show Stockhausen his long-tone Trio for Strings when he went to Darmstadt in 1959 ("Why didn't you show me this at the beginning?" Stockhausen said, after studying it for a long time); and Björk's rhapsodic account of how listening to Stockhausen opened her young musical mind ("...while classical teachers in my school kept moaning about the good old days of music ... [thinking] that with our sportsmanship, will and self-denial we could masturbate the old dead beast and perhaps it would groan for another few years"). I attempted to convince Björk to become Stockhausen Guest Blogger here after the composer's death; evidently, Artforum practiced stronger persuasion. Joseph Drew has been writing about Stockhausen in depth at ANABlog.

Update: Note an upcoming Alarm Will Sound show at The Kitchen (March 21 and 22) that will evoke an imaginary meeting between Stockhausen and John Lennon.

Ernest Newman, move over

Gustav Mahler: A New Life Cut Short (1907-1911), the fourth and final volume of Henry-Louis de La Grange's epic biography, arrived in the mail today, to much excitement in this household. At 1758 pages, it's a touch long — the ratio of pages to days of Mahler's life is about 1.4:1 — but Penelope (pictured) is one of those for whom there is no such thing as too much Mahler. A quick survey suggests that in this expansion of his original French edition La Grange is pressing home the point that Mahler had a rather happier time in America than the standard mythology makes out (e.g., Gottfried Rosenbaum's immortal line in Pictures from an Institution: "Mahler diedt from America"). The introduction reveals that La Grange is not quite done: he is working on a revision of the first volume, which appeared in English back in 1973.

New opera at the Met

La Cieca reports on the Met 2008-09 season announcement, which I was unable to attend. She notes significant news in the realm of contemporary opera: John Adams's Nixon in China is scheduled for the 2010-11 season, in the classic Peter Sellars production; the Osvaldo Golijov opera, provisionally titled Daedalus, arrives in 2011-12; and Thomas Adès's The Tempest is slated for 2012-13. Adams's Doctor Atomic will, as was previously known, have its Met premiere next October, in a production by Penny Woolcock, who made the brilliant film of The Death of Klinghoffer. Some may be confused by the fact that Sellars is directing Nixon but not Atomic. As I understand it, Peter Gelb had fundamental disagreements with Sellars over the original Atomic production, but lines of communication remained open, so that Sellars came on board for Nixon's long-delayed Met debut. Some may also wonder why Nixon is showing up at the Met when Gerard Mortier had previously mentioned it for City Opera. I haven't done hard reporting on that issue, but it would appear that Gelb outmaneuvered Mortier on the Adams front. Round 2 to come.

Award

I'm deeply honored and delighted to report that The Rest Is Noise has won a National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. I'm seen here in the company of other winners: Tim Jeal, Mary Jo Bang, Edwidge Danticat, Emilie Buchwald, Sam Anderson, and Harriet A. Washington. Accepting the award, I talked about what book and music critics around the country have done to advance the cause of Noise, which was an unlikely mass-market proposition to say the least. I sometimes wonder whether my calling accomplishes anything in the bigger scheme of things, and, having now been on the receiving end of some critical enthusiasm, I certainly know that it can. So, huge thanks to the NBCC, which, in the last year or two, has done a brilliant job of organizing its members and promoting books in the face of savage cutbacks in newspaper coverage. They've presented readings and panel discussions in bookstores across the country, run a lively blog, and generally adopted an attitude of not going gentle into that icky night. Critics in other genres might emulate their example. To follow related issues, read ARTicles, the blog of the National Arts Journalism Program.

I've read two of the other finalists in the criticism category, and strongly recommend them: Ben Ratliff's Coltrane: The Story of a Sound, a remarkably incisive portrait of a supreme creative musician in action, and Joan Acocella's Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints, the rare essay collection that is greater than the sum of its (already splendid) parts.