Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

Opera in another planet

An editorial in the New York Times of Aug. 20, 1876, commenting on the paper's overnight reports from Bayreuth.

The Louisville Experiment

The Louisville Orchestra and Yo-Yo Ma in Mammoth Cave.

Cave Art. The New Yorker, May 15, 2023.

Like many new-music enthusiasts of a certain age, I once spent long hours with the Louisville Orchestra's epic series of First Edition recordings, which ran from 1955 to 1992 and generated well over 150 albums. WHRB, my college radio station, had a complete collection of them, and they gave me a sense of the scope of compositional language in the postwar era. In preparing to write about the modern-day Louisville Orchestra, I revisited many of those discs and enjoyed immersing myself in the mid-century moderate-modern styles that the series tended to favor. A few works that stood out: Henk Badings's Seventh Symphony, Chávez's Fourth Symphony, Villa-Lobos's Erosion, Peggy Glanville-Hicks's The Transposed Heads (the first Thomas Mann opera), Jacques Ibert's "Louisville" Concerto for Orchestra, Darius Milhaud's Kentuckiana, and Luigi Dallapiccola's Variations for Orchestra, which, in my estimation, holds up better than Elliott Carter's congested work of the same title. There's also a fair amount of professional note-spinning, but the aim never was, as it never should be, to search out masterworks and nothing but. In retrospect, it's astonishing how much music both the orchestra and its conductor, Robert Whitney, were able to absorb.

For the fascinating history of the ensemble, I turned to three dissertations: Carole Birkhead's The History of the Orchestra in Louisville (University of Louisville, 1977), Jeanne M. Belfy's The Commissioning Project of the Louisville Orchestra, 1948-1958: A Study of the History and Music (University of Louisville, 1986), and Sandra Lee Fralin's The Role of the Louisville Orchestra in the Fostering of New Music, 1947-1977 (Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2000). Belfy's The Louisville Orchestra New Music Project: An American Experiment in the Patronage of International Contemporary Music (University of Louisville Publications in Musicology, 1990) gives a selection of letters from commissioned composers; Belfy felt compelled, naturally, to include a reproduction of Lou Harrison's contribution, executed in his marvelous calligraphy. I also learned much from Owsley Brown's heartfelt documentary Music Makes a City, which I mentioned on this blog when it came out, in 2010. Deborah Ishlon's article "More Music Than Anywhere," which appeared in the July/August 1953 issue of High Fidelity, gives precious glimpses of the amazing, Varèse-loving Mayor Charles Farnsley in action. Later, when Farnsley served a term in the U.S. House of Representatives, he read obituaries for Varèse into the Congressional Record.

Dame Ethel and the boys

This notable photograph is featured on the cover of Achtung International: Salzburg and 100 Years of the International Society for Contemporary Music, a forthcoming volume edited by Matthew Werley.

Only two kinds of music: good and bad

The famous aphorism is most commonly associated with Duke Ellington, who wrote in 1962, "There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind." The saying has also been attributed to Louis Armstrong. In the nineteenth century, the remark was ascribed to Rossini. Edward Wilberforce's 1863 book Social Life in Munich quotes Rossini as follows: "My dear sir, there is no such distinction as you suppose between Italian, French, and German music; there are only two kinds of music, good and bad." But the real source is likely to be the poet and playwright Franz Grillparzer, who wrote in 1856:

Die Kritiker, will sagen: die neuen,
Vergleich ich den Papageien,
Sie haben drei oder vier Worte,
Die wiederholen sie an jedem Orte.
Romantisch, klassisch und modern
Scheint schon ein Urteil diesen Herrn,
Und sie übersehen in stolzem Mut
Die wahren Gattungen: schlecht und gut.

The critics, meaning the new ones,
I compare to parrots,
Who have three or four words
That they repeat in every place.
Romantic, classical, and modern
Seems a judgment to these gentlemen,
And with proud courage they overlook
The real genres: bad and good.

Pop elitism, continued

$795 to $9289: figures to keep in mind whenever someone calls classical music elitist.

A Rubbra moment

Rubbra's Improvisation belongs to the vast library of works commissioned by the Louisville Orchestra from 1948 onward. The fantastic soloist is Sidney Harth, who was concertmaster in Louisville before moving on to Chicago and Los Angeles. Invariably I think also of Sidney's son Robert, who, until his tragically early death in 2004, presided over the greatest period in the modern history of Carnegie Hall. Also worth a listen: Wallingford Riegger's Variations.

A Roy Harris moment

This flute-and-quartet piece by Roy Harris, from 1942, is indeed titled 4 Minutes 20 Seconds.

For Minnie

Minnie, one of the sweetest, happiest, most innately purr-prone cats ever to roam the planet's living rooms and linen closets, died on Sunday, at age fourteen. Having spent almost her entire life in the company of the remarkable Bea, she seemed heartbroken by Bea's departure last month, and her health declined. But she kept her bright, loving, perpetually kittenish spirit to the end. She joins Bea, Maulina, and Penelope (whom she never met but whose spirit she inherited) in the land of immense, immobile sunbeams.

Previously: Requiem for a great cat.

A Rhené-Baton moment

Bookshelf

New and recent publications of interest.

Kerry O'Brien and William Robin, On Minimalism: Documenting a Musical Movement (University of California Press)

Richard Taruskin, Musical Lives and Times Examined: Keynotes and Clippings, 2006–2019 (University of California Press)

Fanny Gribenski, Tuning the World: The Rise of 440 Hertz in Music, Science, and Politics, 1859–1955 (University of Chicago Press)

Henry Threadgill and Brent Hayes Edwards, Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music (Knopf)

Tore Størvold, Dissonant Landscapes: Music, Nature, and the Performance of Iceland (University of Wesleyan Press)

Tina Davidson, Let Your Heart Be Broken: Life and Music from a Classical Composer (Boyle & Dalton)

Howard Pollack, Samuel Barber: His Life and Legacy (University of Illinois Press)

Stephen Hough, Enough: Scenes from Childhood (Faber)

William C. Banfield, Musical Landscapes in Color: Conversations with Black American Composers (University of Illinois Press)

Philip Ewell, On Music Theory, and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone (University of Michigan Press)

Patrick Nickleson, The Names of Minimalism: Authorship, Art Music, and Historiography in Dispute (University of Michigan Press)

A Liszt / de Leeuw moment

Against Twitter

I left Twitter a year ago, when the right-wing billionaire Elon Musk announced he was buying the company. A few months ago, I rejoined, a decision I now regret. There was never any question that Musk's erratic, pernicious world-view would drag the service deeper in the mire — and it was a politically poisonous apparatus from the start. What caused me to quit again was Twitter's treatment of NPR. A vaunted news organization that receives about one percent of its funding from the government was labeled "state-affiliated media" on Twitter, alongside the likes of Russia Today. The designation was later changed to "government-funded," which is still wrong. In response, John Lansing, NPR's president, has announced that the institution will no longer be posting on Twitter. Lansing writes: "We are not putting our journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining our credibility and the public’s understanding of our editorial independence ... Actions by Twitter or other social media companies to tarnish the independence of any public media institution are exceptionally harmful and set a dangerous precedent."

Max Richter, Cassandra Miller

De Minimis. The New Yorker, April 17, 2023.

The world-première performance of Cassandra Miller's I cannot love without trembling can be found at about the one-hour-one-minute mark on this stream from the Klarafestival, in Belgium, via VRT. Alexis Zoumbas's recordings are available here.

In memoriam P-22

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) eulogizing P-22.

Requiem for a Great Cat, on the New Yorker website.

Hamelin plays Hanon

Hamelin is so compelling a pianist that he makes the prospect of an all-Hanon recital seem almost palatable.

The final word on artificial intelligence

Whenever people start talking about the wonderful and terrifying possibilities of AI, I think of the above comment from the composer Ben Phelps, in 2017. To paraphrase for the current moment: if AI is capable of writing journalism, then surely AI is also capable of reading journalism. Let the chatbots write for one another, and leave us out of it.

Another Cassandra Miller moment

Wise words from Muti

Riccardo Muti, speaking to VAN, identifies a major problem in modern musical life: "Today, a music director is a principal guest conductor, he just conducts more concerts, that’s all. But a real music director has to take care, and not only musically. The musicians must feel free to knock on your door and say, 'Maestro, we have this problem.' It’s not only musical. That is a music director. If not, what is your profession? Just to say, 'It’s sharp. It’s flat. It’s sharp. Obbligato'? That’s nothing. Today, it’s changing. The world is changing. And now conductors have two orchestras and a theater? Three theaters and an orchestra? That is… Well, let’s not say that it’s immoral. But certainly, it is not artistic. In this way, I am of the old school."

Nightafternight playlist

New and recent releases of interest.

Liza Lim, Annunciation Triptych; Cristian Măcelaru conducting the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, with Emily Hindrichs (Kairos)

Mozart, String Quintets K. 515 and 516; Ebène Quartet with Antoine Tamestit (Warner)

Ligeti, Choral Works; Yuval Weinberg conducting the SWR Vokalensemble (SWR)

Caplet, Le Miroir de Jésus; Howard Arman conducting the Choir of Bavarian Radio and the Munich Radio Orchestra, with Anke Vondung (BR Klassik)

Messiaen, Des Canyons aux étoiles; Thierry Fischer conducting the Utah Symphony, with Jason Hardink, piano, and Stefan Dohr, horn (Hyperion)

Adès, Dante; Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic (Nonesuch, out April 21)

Schreker, Chamber Symphony, Nachtstück from Der ferne Klang, Lyrische Gesänge, Fünf Gesänge, Kleine Suite, Romantische Suite; Christoph Eschenbach conducting the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, with Chen Reiss and Matthias Goerne (DG)

Stenhammar, Complete String Quartets; Stenhammar Quartet (BIS)

Mahler, Symphony No. 9; Osmo Vänskä conducting the Minnesota Orchestra (BIS)

Mäkelä's soporific Stravinsky

Back in December, I had some skeptical words about Klaus Mäkelä, whose rise to the top of the conducting profession has been bewilderingly rapid. He is leading the Oslo Philharmonic and the Orchestre de Paris; is slated to take over the Concertgebouw; and is being closely scrutinized by at least two major American orchestras. After making his recorded début with a fairly dismal cycle of the Sibelius symphonies, Mäkelä has now turned to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Firebird. David Hurwitz has a strongly worded video review, and while I might not have chosen all the same turns of phrase — to call Mäkelä the "Ken doll of classical music" is perhaps premature — I can't disagree with the fundamental sentiment. These performances are unforgivably dull. It is a scandal to make the Rite sound so mechnical and lifeless. The Firebird comes across as minor Glazunov. With so much talent coming forward, why him?