Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

Thought of the day

“Your silence will be considered your consent.”

                        — Laurie Anderson, "Another Day in America"

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch at 100

A supremely eloquent witness to the Holocaust; an implacable rebuke to resurgent fascism in America, Germany, and around the world; a born musician, a piercing wit, a great soul, an altogether glorious personage — Lasker-Wallfisch begins her second century tomorrow. I wrote about her for the New Yorker website last year. I won't say anything as banal as "Happy birthday," but some such sentiment is apt.

Upheaval at NYT Arts

The arts section of the New York Times, which in the past week has published eight articles about the latest Superman movie, announced yesterday that four of its staff critics — Jon Pareles, Jesse Green, Margaret Lyons, and Zachary Woolfe — would be taken off their assigned beats and moved to other, unnamed posts. An editorial memo gestures toward a perceived need for "new story forms, videos, and experimentation with other platforms." All four writers deserve praise, but the loss of Pareles and Woolfe hits close to home. Jon is not only one of America's foremost pop critics but helped to invent the discipline of writing about rock. Nat Chinen pays apt tribute to him. Zack is my cherished colleague and good friend; his abrupt removal after three brilliant years as lead critic makes no sense to me at all. Will Robin has written a discerning overview of what Zack accomplished at the paper. Lisa Hirsch writes: "It is extremely difficult to imagine who might replace Woolfe and what skills they might bring to the table that he doesn't have."

Revisiting John Cage's European trip, 1930-31

Passenger list for the paquebot Cuba, June 24, 1930.

A pivotal event in John Cage's development was his trip to Europe in 1930 and 1931. This took place after he dropped out of Pomona College, where he had studied for two years. The journey is said to have lasted for up to eighteen months, from the summer of 1930 to the end of 1931, and included stops in France, Italy, Germany, North Africa, and Spain. Mark Katz, in his revelatory 2004 book Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music, notes that Cage had apparently attended a concert of "gramophone music" at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik's Neue Musik Berlin 1930 festival, on June 18 of that year. [1] This program included Hindemith's Trickaufnahmen and Ernst Toch's suite Gesprochene Musik, for sped-up pre-recorded voices, which yielded the famous Geographical Fugue. The idea of a teen-aged Cage receiving inspiration from the ferment of interwar Berlin is irresistible, and I included it in my 2007 book The Rest Is Noise. 

Alas, it didn't happen. In the course of researching Cage's early years in Los Angeles, I've uncovered a host of errors and omissions in the extant biographical record. In this post, I'll concentrate on the European trip, leaving other discoveries for a later, longer piece. I had become suspicious of the claim that Cage was in Berlin in June 1930 because of a comment that appears in his Pomona school record: "June 1930. Does not plan to return. Going to travel in Europe." This suggests that Cage did not depart until that month, and all indications are that his first stop was Paris. Having read Thomas Hines's revelatory 1992 interview with Cage [2], in which the composer recalled embarking at Houston on a boat bound for Le Havre, I went in search of passenger lists, and obtained via eBay the Liste des Passagers scanned at the top of this post. Monsieur John Milton Cage is listed among tourist passengers aboard the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique steamer Cuba, which sailed from Houston on June 24, 1930. Given the long sailing times, Cage would not have arrived in France until late July. [3]

A Peter Maxwell Davies moment

Peter Maxwell Davies's 1973 work Stone Litany is a setting of Norse runic inscriptions that are found on the walls of the great Neolithic tomb of Maes Howe, in the Orkney Islands. Davies's grouping ends with "MAKUS MATTR RÆISTRUNAR ThÆSAR," or "Max the Mighty carved these runes." Most commentators seem to take it as a happy coincidence that the composer found a version of his own nickname among the inscriptions. Having read through several transliterations of the complete graffiti, though, I have to conclude that Davies was having a bit of fun with his listeners. The name "Makus" does not appear. But in Barnes 15 / Farrer XXII, to use two competing numbering systems, the name before "carved these runes" is indecipherable, and Davies can be excused for making a convenient substitution.

Operas about composers

An incomplete list, including several operettas. There is no need for any more operas about Gesualdo, unless, as Will Robin once suggested, someone wants to write an opera about a composer who goes insane while trying to write an opera about Gesualdo. To date, only one person has written an opera about a composer and then gone on to become the subject of an opera. But maybe we will one day see a work entitled Pfitzner.

Ignaz von Seyfried, Die Ochsenmenuett, 1823 (Haydn)

Friedrich von Flotow, Alessandro Stradella, 1837/44

Louis Niedermeyer, Stradella, 1837

Charles Luce-Varlet, L'élève de Presbourg, 1840 (Haydn)

César Franck, Stradella, 1841

Franz von Suppé, Franz Schubert, 1864

Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, 1868 (Hans Sachs)

Flotow, Die Musikanten (La jeunesse de Mozart), 1870

Suppé, Joseph Haydn, 1887

Rimsky-Korsakov, Mozart and Salieri, 1897

Stanislao Falchi, Il trillo del diavolo, 1899 (Tartini)

Chopin arr. Giacomo Orefice, Chopin, 1901

Schubert arr. Heinrich Berté, Das Dreimäderlhaus, 1916 (Schubert)

Hans Pfitzner, Palestrina, 1917

Franz Lehár, Paganini, 1925

Paul Graener, Friedemann Bach, 1931

Bernhard Paumgartner, Rossini in Neapel, 1936

Peter Maxwell Davies, Taverner, 1972

Francesco d'Avalos, Maria di Venosa, 1992 (Gesualdo)

Alfred Schnittke, Gesualdo, 1993

Franz Hummel, Gesualdo, 1996

Salvatore Sciarrino, Luci mie traditrici, 1998 (Gesualdo)

Scott Glasgow, The Prince of Venosa, 1998 (Gesualdo)

Franz Hummel, Styx, 2001 (Handel)

Bo Holten, Gesualdo—Shadows, 2003

Luca Francesconi, Gesualdo Considered as a Murderer, 2004

Jonathan Harvey, Wagner Dream, 2007

Marc-André Dalbavie, Gesualdo, 2010

Gabriel Kahane, February House, 2012 (features Benjamin Britten)

Dante De Silva, Gesualdo, Prince of Madness, 2013

Michael Dellaira, The Death of Webern, 2016

Avner Dorman, Wahnfried, 2017 (features Siegfried Wagner)

Todd Machover, Schoenberg in Hollywood, 2018

Johannes Boer, La Tragedia di Claudio M., 2018 (Monteverdi)

Tarik O’Regan, The Phoenix, 2019 (about da Ponte, features Mozart)

Victoria Bond, Clara, 2019 (Clara Schumann)

Elliott Sharp, Die Grösste Fuge, 2024 (Beethoven)

Ella Milch-Sheriff, Alma, 2024 (Alma Mahler-Werfel)

Sarah Kirkland Snider, Hildegard, 2025

Nightafternight playlist

New and recent releases of interest.

Schoenberg, String Quartets Nos. 1–4; Webern Quartet, with Yui Futaeda (Etcetera)

Corelli, Concerto Grossi Op. 6; Georg Kallweit and Mayumi Hirasaki leading the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin (Pentatone)

Tania León, Horizons, Raíces (Origins), Stride, Pasajes; Karina Canellakis, Edward Gardner, and Dmitri Slobodeniouk conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO)

Ginastera, String Quartets; Miro Quartet (Pentatone)

Liza Lim, A Sutured World, Annunciation Triptych II: Mary / Transcendence After Trauma, The Compass; Edward Gardner, Franck Ollu, and Christoph Poppen conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony, with Nicholas Altstaedt, Carin Levine, William Barton (BR Klassik, out July 25)

Jürg Frey, Out of Chorales, Polyphonie der Wörter, Shadow and Echo and Jade, Landscape of Echoes, Blue Bird’s Tune, Because I could not stop for Death; EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble (Neu)

Hannah Kendall, Tuxedo: Diving Bell 2, shouting forever into the receiver, Where is the chariot of fire?, Tuxedo: Crown; Sun King, when flesh is pressed against the dark, Tuxedo: Hot Summer No Water, Even sweetness can catch the throat; Vimbayi Kaziboni conducting the Ensemble Modern, Wavefield Ensemble, loadbang, Jonathan Bloxham conducting the Hallé Orchestra, Anne Denholm-Blair, Jonathan Morton, Louise McMonagle (NMC)

Koechlin, Symphony No. 1, Au loin, 3 Mélodies; Patricia Petibon, Ariane Matiakh conducting the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen (Capriccio)

Pygmalion's Bach, Timothy McCormack

Bach's Colossus. The New Yorker, June 30, 2025.

Speaking for many

Emily Witt on the resistance to fascistic thuggery in LA: "The public reaction to the presence of the ICE agents is often hostile. One morning, I followed a Unión del Barrio alert to an Army Reserve center in the city of Bell, which, that morning, immigration agents were using as a staging area. A veritable hive of officials with covered faces was loading into a fleet of American-made vehicles with temporary license plates and dark windows, and rolling out into the city for their day of work. Outside, helpless to stop them, someone pulled up and simply leaned on his horn. Others tried to block the driveway with their cars, but the agents had another exit. One person shouted profanities. In the video of Nancy Urizar’s father, the anger of the strangers observing what was happening in the parking lot is also palpable. 'Fuck every single one of you motherfuckers,' one person says. 'Fuck every single one of you.'"

Salonen's farewell in San Francisco

Joshua Kosman, in his On a Pacific Aisle newsletter, celebrates Esa-Pekka Salonen's final concerts with the San Francisco Symphony but cannot ignore the stench of incompetence that emanates from the orchestra's administrative offices: "Even after Salonen is gone, the Symphony will still be in the hands of those who drove him out. The choice of the next music director will be left to the very people who thought Salonen was dispensable; how much faith do you have in their judgment? Patrons will be asked to step up their support for an organization that will now offer them less reason to feel excited about or committed to what is happening in Davies Symphony Hall. And keep your eye on the orchestral personnel — on the vacancies that go unfilled and the high-profile departures that occur because San Francisco is no longer perceived as a good career investment. Angry? You’re goddam right I’m angry." 

Salonen himself said from the stage, with typical pith: "You’ve heard what you have in this city. This amazing orchestra, this amazing chorus. So take good care of them.”

For Alfred Brendel

This was the encore the last time I heard Brendel play, in 2008. Also lingering in my mind is his Beethoven cycle at Carnegie Hall in the nineteen-nineties. "Listening to him, the mind dances," I wrote then. A remarkable musician and man.