Wagnerism
Stay, little Alban Berg Valentine, stay
PAINTER: You are mine, I have nothing more since I have you. I am entirely lost to you.
LULU: Don't get so excited.
— Lulu, Act I
Previously: An Alban Berg Valentine, Another Alban Berg Valentine, Yet Another Alban Berg Valentine, Return of Alban Berg Valentine, Nothing says forever like an Alban Berg Valentine, Alban Berg Valentine (10th anniversary edition), Alban Berg Valentine (2017 edition), Will you be my Alban Berg Valentine?, Eternity, by Alban Berg Valentine, My Bloody Alban Berg Valentine, Saint Alban Berg Valentine's Day Massacre, It wouldn't be Valentine's Day without Alban Berg Valentine.
Editor's note: Everyone here at Alban Berg Valentine was tremendously pleased by our recent mention in the New York Times. Much thanks to Melissa Clark of the Cooking section.
Friedrich Cerha in memoriam.
Nightafternight playlist
New and recent releases of interest.
Mazzoli, Dark with Excessive Bright and other works; James Gaffigan conducting the Bergen Philharmonic and Tim Weiss conducting the Arctic Philharmonic, with Peter Herresthal, violin (BIS, out March 3)
Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 (trans. Liszt), Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 20 (trans. Alkan); Paul Wee (BIS)
Aperghis, 14 Récitations; Stéphanie Lamprea (New Focus)
Eric Richards, The Consent of Sound and Meaning and other works; Andy Kozar, loadbang, Ekmeles, Laura Cocks, Olivia de Prato, Curtis Stewart, Hannah Levinson, Chris Gross, Robert Black, Caitlin Cawley, Jude Traxler, and Steve Beck, with Jeffrey Gavett conducting (New Focus)
Mozart, Symphonies Nos. 1 and 41, Piano Concerto No. 23; Maxim Emelyanychev and Il Pomo d'Oro (Aparté)
Kotoka Suzuki, Shimmer, Tree and other works; Spektral Quartet, Javier Hagen, Cristina Valdes (Starkland)
Mompou, Música Callada; Stephen Hough (Hyperion)
Vicente Lusitano, Motets; Marian Consort (Linn)
Handel, Suites, Brahms, Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel; Seong-Jin Cho (DG)
All Quiet on the Western Front
A Cultural Comment on the New Yorker website.
For this article I consulted on Wilhelm von Sternburg's Als wäre alles das letzte Mal: Erich Maria Remarque: Eine Biographie as well as Brian Murdoch's The Novels of Erich Maria Remarque: Sparks of Life, Thomas F. Schneider's Erich Maria Remarque: Leben, Werk und weltweite Wirkung, Gavin Schmitt's Karl Freund: The Life and Films, Lesley L. Coffin and Marya E. Gates's Lew Ayres: Hollywood's Conscientious Objector, Harlow Robinson's Lewis Milestone: Life and Films, and Joseph Persico's Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918. Much thanks to Michael Agger for editing, Daniel Ajootian for fact-checking, and Carlos Colomer for copy-editing.
Hildegard of Bingen
The First Composer. The New Yorker, Feb. 6, 2023.
Fauré en vacances
From Gallica: "Gabriel Fauré et un groupe, chez les Baugnies, à Cuy-St-Fiacre 1888." The Maître is in the center, in profile. Via longtime Noise friend Patrick Swanson.
Stravinsky as teenage-rebel music
While exploring the early American films of William Dieterle, I came across a curious Stravinskyan artifact in the form of the 1934 murder mystery The Firebird. It is set, very approximately, in an upper-bourgeois milieu in Vienna. The actor Ricardo Cortez, an exotically renamed son of Austrian Jewish immigrants, plays Hermann Brandt, a popular matinée idol who moves into a building occupied by, among others, the well-to-do, conservative Pointers (Lionel Atwill and Verree Teasdale). The Pointers' eighteen-year-old daughter Marietta (Anita Louise) is rebelling against the behavioral strictures imposed upon her, and one of her ways of acting out is to listen to a recording of The Firebird. As the "Danse Infernale" plays, the following dialogue ensues:
MARIETTA: Mother, come listen to this! Isn't it beautiful?
MRS. POINTER: What is it?
MARIETTE: The Firebird, by Stravinsky!
MRS. POINTER: Where did you get it?
MARIETTE: Alice gave it to me for my birthday.
MRS. POINTER: It's a good thing your father didn't hear it. [Lifts needle from record.]
MARIETTE: But, mother...
MRS. POINTER: Darling, we don't like you to play music of that kind.
MARIETTE: Very well, mother.
MRS. POINTER: If Alice's mother doesn't object to her playing it, well, people have different ideas nowadays. Maybe your father and I have remained old-fashioned. We feel that classical music is quite sufficient for a young girl. As for The Firebird, it's fit only for savages.
MARIETTE: But I don't understand, mother...
MRS. POINTER: You will when you're older, darling. And don't bother your head about it any longer.
MARIETTE: Very well, mother.
In a later scene, Mrs. Pointer hears strains of Stravinsky again and storms into Mariette's room.
MRS. POINTER: Mariette, I thought I told you not to play The Firebird.
MARIETTE: No, I'm — mother, I'm not!
MRS. POINTER: Oh, I'm so sorry.
MARIETTE: It must be from downstairs somewhere.
MRS. POINTER: Will you forgive me, darling?
MARIETTE: Of course, mother.
It turns out that Brandt is also fond of The Firebird and is using it as a signal to attract a lover to his apartment. No points for guessing who this lover is. When Brandt is murdered, the local inspector must unravel the mystery, to which Stravinsky provides an important clue. The Firebird serves as the main-title theme and is heard in several other scenes. Since the music was at that time out of copyright in the United States, Warner Brothers paid no fee. I haven't found any immediate evidence that Stravinsky was aware of the film, but perhaps it played a role in his eventual decision to prepare a new suite and thereby bring his score back under copyright protection.
