Primordial Sorrow. The New Yorker, Dec. 9, 2024.
Wagnerism
The night Puccini found Schoenberg too conservative
Yesterday was the hundredth anniversary of the tragically early death of Giacomo Puccini. The Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna, in honor of the superficially surprising sympathies that existed between Schoenberg and Puccini, marked the occasion with a memorial concert combining Puccini melodies as arranged by Till Alexander Körber with Pierrot Lunaire. I'm reminded of a story that Alma Mahler-Werfel told in her unpublished later diaries. She described meeting Puccini at the intermission of a 1920 performance of Gurrelieder in Vienna, with Schoenberg conducting. Puccini was, alas, disappointed. Mahler-Werfel wrote: "He said he had wanted to hear something radical, but he's hearing Wagnerian music, it doesn't interest him. He had come to be convinced, but this doesn't require anything new of him, one already knows it. Unfortunately, he left before the second part, which surely would have made a greater impression on him." Puccini found more satisfaction when he heard Pierrot Lunaire at the ISCM in Florence, on April 1, 1924. He followed along in a score that Schoenberg had provided for him and chatted at length with the composer afterward. The news of Puccini's death eight months later came to Schoenberg as a great shock, as it did to all.
On the coda of the Shostakovich Fifth
From Leonard Bernstein's parts for the Shostakovich Fifth.
A Cultural Comment at the New Yorker website.
Footnote: Shostakovich's 1973 visit to the Met is documented in a richly detailed 1994 Opera News article by David J. Baker, titled "It Vas Premiere: The Night Shostakovich Came to the Met." Baker's primary source was Schuyler Chapin, then the Met's general manager, who recalled how the company went into a complete tizzy when they realized that the great Shostakovich was going to attend a routine mid-run performance of Aida. When I was researching The Rest Is Noise, I spoke with Alexander Dunkel, who served as Shostakovich's translator during the 1973 trip. Dunkel felt that a few details in Chapin's account were exaggerated — the auditorium was mostly empty at the time of the trumpet salute, not full, as Chapin said — but corroborated the essentials. Shostakovich was, indeed, deeply touched by the gesture.
For Quincy Jones
I had the honor of meeting the remarkable Dr. Jones at the New England Conservatory in 2010. I spoke at the NEC's graduation ceremony, where Quincy was receiving an honorary degree. Of course I mentioned in my remarks that he had studied with Nadia Boulanger. My parents came up for the occasion, and at one point Quincy struck up a conversation with my mother, asking about her background. When my mother told him she was of Greek descent, Quincy began conversing with her in Greek. I have no idea how he knew Greek. My mother was as completely disarmed as I ever saw her.
