Returning to Tanglewood – A Sibelius weekend

It really was an event, a rehearsal for that evening's concert at Tanglewood. The Boston Symphony players are clearly happy people doing what few of us can imagine doing, and the music they are making is a tradition involving people from all over the world coming to Tanglewood, usually knowing the music ahead of time and having certain expectations about what they might hear. Again, as last year, the weather was warm and wonderful. The program was to consist of pieces entirely by the great Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) .

John Storgårds (a 48 year old Finnish conductor for the music of The Finnish composer) made his début at Tanglewood in fact with this particular open to the public rehearsal. One is never guaranteed a complete play-through of any of the pieces on the programme for the evening performance, though you usually get most of them.

Let's begin with Valse triste Op. 44 composed in 1903 (when the composer was 38 years old) as music for a play about Death. How fast do you usually hear this piece played? It's probably too fast. This is fantasy music about an old woman dancing with Death. It has to sound weary and tired at the beginning and Storgårds gets the phenomenal talent of the Boston Symphony Orchestra to transmit the inevitable gloom and darkness of this piece in a way seldom heard. But we didn't get to hear the whole thing. (Incidentally I have a piano transcription of this piece and I think I might actually try learning it.)

Storgårds was also not very interested in Finlandia Op. 26 composed in 1899 (when the composer was 34) but we did get to hear the terrifically rousing end of it with the powerful brass of the BSO. We loved hearing this from half the distance of our seating last year, it was really loud.

Sibelius was adept at using brass choirs to create landscapes in sound, as backdrops with the low registers in musical instruments preferred. This creates a weight and might to the sound, a coldness and density too, like snowcapped mountains seen along a horizon under a crisp clear sky. The BSO's brass are what I think of as a golden sound. Storgårds' rehearsal of Sibelius' Symphony #5 in E Flat Op. 82 composed between 1915 and 1919 (Sibelius was 54 years old in 1919) seemed to be about layers, the strings, the woodwind parts, always wonderfully written by Sibelius, and then of course the brass. This is music that has always seemed to me about forces of Nature more than anything to do with humanity specifically. There are here and there some folksy elements, but this is stunningly transcendent music. Is it really cold music or is that a mere useless canard associated with Sibelius' ethnic associations? We didn't think so. Dark? Yes, certainly some of it is quite dark, though of course there are exceptions, especially in his writing for solo woodwinds as they appear in many of his symphonies. Sibelius style remains unique and enigmatic. Things sort of swerve around in terms of tonal centres, they even overlap each other deliberately. No, the orchestra isn't playing wrong notes. Sibelius is asking us to hear things differently, almost visually, and in terms including the vantage points of jumping fish in magic pools or of birds flying through seamless air. I've no doubt that Storgårds more official début at Tanglewood featuring this same programme will be noteworthy due to his interpretation of this symphony.

Sibelius' Violin Concerto in d Op. 47, written when the composer was 38 or 40, during the same period as Valse triste, was played through. It turns out that a lot of the shmalz in this work is based on Sibelius failure to satisfy his own personal desire to become a great concert violinist, which was not fated to be because as he came to understand it, he lacked both the physical coordination and the psychological aptitude. "It was a very painful awakening when I had to admit that I had begun my training for the exacting career of a virtuoso too late," he said. There are a lot of tear jerking parts to this one, but is this really only the intensity borne of not being able to become a great violinist? We're asked to consider the depths of emotional pain due to an unfulfilled lifelong dream that remained unrealised. The music seems too intense for something like that, but many things are certainly possible.

The violinist Nikolaj Znaider who played this very soloistic violin concerto has a similar background to that of the conductor, but the conductor, Storgårds, seemed to present him to the orchestra, as well as the audience, as if to say, “listen to him do this one, he'll amaze you.” Znaider's style was closer to Jasha Heifitz or Zino Francescatti, a sort of hot spun gold sound. I appreciated being able to hear clearly the unusual angular phrasing in the violin lines without the usual scraping and scratching of the really heavy bowers that swash-buckle the violin concert stage these days. The violin Znaider played was one that had been Fritz Kreisler's, a Guernari del Jesu violin from the 1740's or 271 years or so ago. Can one imagine it? This violinist is hot stuff! Simply stunning! 

 

Some time later, returning to my place, I entertained my guest with recordings of Sibelius' symphonies 4 through 7, three my friend had never heard before. Later when discussing what we'd experienced all weekend, we began asking seriously whether Sibelius was putting us on, whether in fact he had indeed had the last laugh, dared to compose his really “out of the box” music and after all the joke was on us. As was the case with Bartók's music, weren't we being asked to follow the composer into some curious if not questionable territories? There are lurid outcries in Sibelius' 4^th, strange combinations in his 5^th with that priceless and frankly silly conclusion, there is mastery in his 6^th, probably my overall favourite among Sibelius symphonies, but there is everything the others had plus a deep inconsolable ache in the 7^th, his last symphony.  Sibelius was probably right to think it inadvisable to put out anything after that unless he could write something better. He has in fact been criticized for quitting before he was dead, which now seems a little idiotic, when in fact he wrote his last symphony at the age of 59 after at least three decades of hard work (and if you think musical composition isn't hard work for most who dare attempt it, think again!). Isn't 30 years of it long enough? Even if you or I are the only people still listening, fortunately not the case, would anything have justified saying more than this 7^th symphony does so well about the heroism and yet the tireless longing of the human race for something more, something better? 

Here's what Sibelius looked like in 1939, at the age of 74, making a rare appearance a year earlier conducting his Andante Festivo (written originally for string quartet in 1922), and he still had 17 more years to live, but he wouldn't be caring much about music by then and didn't like talking about it much after consigning many papers and who knows how many unfinished compositions to the flames in 1945 when he was 80 years old and still had 11 more years to live. 

We recall to general public awareness in this blog from time to time the many disparities between composers, for instance a Mozart who composes virtually his entire greatness within ten years, while a Sibelius is granted much more time. We get two different kinds of music as well. 

I could have put anything or nothing to listen to in this entry. The Boston Symphony Orchestra played or rehearsed great parts of the 5^th at Tanglewood, but have a serious listen to this, Sibelius' last symphony, written near the end of his career as a composer:

Karajan: Sibelius Symphony no. 7 (1/3)

Karajan: Sibelius Symphony no. 7 (2/3)

Karajan: Sibelius Symphony no. 7 (3/3)

Herbert von Karajan's performance still holds up reasonably well. This is a complete four movement romantic symphony deliberately smashed into one titanic movement comprising everything in the usual sequence one usually expects in the themes and moods in what I really think is one of the unsung gems of the entire symphonic repertoire, this final great symphony of Jean Sibelius, completed in 1924 is.in a way a cousin to Mahler's unfinished 10^th symphony written exactly 100 years ago this year, though it took longer for Deryck Cooke to finish and even longer to gain acceptance. I guess it makes a difference when the composer is granted time to live long enough to retire from music and see his works gain status in the world's orchestral repertoire independent of himself. But when I consider the music of the composers of 100 years ago I often ask myself just how much the audiences are getting out of what in most cases is more emotionally sophisticated than momentary plays on our quick responses to sound impressions, note sequences suggesting susceptible mood changes, plus all the technique involved in getting it to sound as intended which is itself always surprising, thrilling or simply astounding.

All in all, this weekend offered us a good chance to return to Tanglewood (a place we still regard as sacred ground) and to have another glimpse at the music of Jean Sibelius, one of our favourite composers of all time.

PS: For the interested, this brief interview concerning Sibelius' symphonies as a project of the Berlin Philharmonic under Simon Rattle, who is one of my favorite conductors at this point in time.  He seems to say that the orchestra had been unfamiliar with this music, but hadn't
Herbert von Karajan done the Sibelius cycle with this orchestra?  That would seem to have been ancient history.  Rattle reports an excellent response to his re-introduction to this music.  We earnestly look forward to the fruits of this collaboration.  Rattle said that the orchestra regarded Sibelius as one of the six greatest symphonists of all time (I can guess who some of the others might be).  I think it's a fair assessment to consider Sibelius' contributions to symphonic literature among the very greatest of all time.  

FINIS  

York Bowen – The English Rachmaninoff

There were a few loose ends to tie up from my last visit to New York. One concerned a composer, previously unknown to me; York Bowen (1884-1961), a composer of some 155 works, a pianist with vast talents, an accomplished musician on many fronts. The first time I had any opportunity to hear anything by Bowen was from an English pianist named Simon I met while upstairs at Beethoven's in New York. Simon was playing on a Hailun HG 198 grand  to good advantage, as it responded to everything he tried on it with apparent ease.

Of York Bowen's music, it would in some cases cause you to think it's perhaps something by Rachmaninoff you haven't heard yet, as Rachmaninoff wrote a great deal of music most people haven't heard yet, myself included. But it isn't; there's also some scent of Arnold Bax (1883-1953), or of an even a more obscure English or Irish composer, as there were some a hundred years ago or so, as the English and Irish woke up from their cultural delusion about the value of making music, having left it to foreigners for as long as 200 years.

For a first taste of it, a comparatively late work, written in 1957, Bowen's Toccata Op, 155, which is apparently quite popular among aspiring virtuoso pianists because it's obviously quite difficult to play. One realizes as a pianist that the most complex strings of notes in this piece are only a series of connected shorter movements of fingers, hands, wrists, arms, shoulders, waist and legs, with appropriate breathing. For the listener, there is much that can be gained from being able to listen to several versions of the same piece, which is how one gets to “know” or at least recognize a piece of music. For those who listen, but do not play a musical instrument, you can imagine just what is required for a pianist to “learn” a piece of music well enough to play it, whether pianists decide to read from the music as they play or do it completely from memory (as each one must decide how best to pull off the best performance they are comfortable with). As for musical style, there is much emulation of Ravel and Debussy, perhaps even of Prokofiev.

So here are examples of this piece:

SABRINA KOZAK plays Toccata Opus 155 by YORK BOWEN

An apparent piano virtuoso in the making (following a long tradition of promoting child prodigies, for the good or ill it does to music), this young lady certainly knocks out all this composition's contours very nicely. This superb performance should serve to challenge all of us. (By the way, her teacher, Kevin Fitz-Gerald, has a long association with the Newport Music Festival, where he has acquitted himself very nicely to many great masterpieces of the Classical and Romantic – still don't like the terms – piano repertoire, so I am not surprised this young lady played this well.)

York Bowen - Toccata, Op. 155 (1957) Hojoon

This seems a bit more of a studied performance, very clear definite phrasing. I do not know who Hojoon is, but he plays this very well indeed.

Bowen Toccata, Op. 155, Alison Chang

Yet another version, notice how smooth she has made all the phrases you might have thought of as pointed, while listening to the previous versions.

Obviously interest in this composer should be on the increase because those of us around the world who are interested in this art form with the passion accorded to a life's work, a religious understanding or something perhaps even deeper, and Bowen left a great many pieces of music, large scale works, which have not received the attention they deserve. But as Mahler said of his own works, “my time will come,” so does this apply to the largely undiscovered work of York Bowen, the English Rachmaninoff.

FINIS

Discovering Leif Ove Andsnes – A Pianist After My Own Heart!

 Leif Ove Andsnes - Grieg (Mountain Top)

A friend in France, a piano teacher at a conservatory there, posted a link to a documentary this pianist had done, of which there were supposed to be 8 parts. Well, actually I was only able to find the last 6 and the complete documentary he did. The entire thing doesn't appear on the internet yet so I will have to find it and view it in its entirety, since it is so good. Before this, I'd never heard of him, but then he was born in 1970.

Andsnes, or Leif Ove as he seems to prefer, is among other things a proponent and exponent of the music of Edvard Grieg (1843 – 1907). He has recorded the Lyric Pieces on Grieg's own Hamburg Steinway B, the kind that used to have raised lettering on the signature Steinway diagonal spur in the plate of the piano. It's Grieg's birthday on the 15^th of this month, so Grieg's music is now well over 100 years old and still holds up remarkably well.

And of course, wouldn't you just know it, he has played one of the truly underrated gems in the piano literature, Grieg's eternal and unforgettable Notturno:

Notturno - Edvard Grieg, lyric pieces op.54 no.4

Leif Ove's documentary was important in many respects, it was beautiful – using many scenes from Norway, it conveyed Leif Ove's view of pianism, as including the qualities of silence as much as sound, indeed Leif Ove says that we are overloaded with sound and cannot endure silence, that we need to listen for silence, for what it does to clear the mind and bring relaxation, inspiration, etc. He also spoke of the sound during the moments of a piece as being as significant as the whole piece, of the notes constructing an enclosure for the silence inside, all sorts of wonderful ideas which he could execute as he plays in what I must say is a deeply poetic style to my hearing as well as being technically precise. You can hear the way he has paid attention to this idea of musical moments as in this piece:

Watchman's song - Edvard Grieg lyric pieces op.12 no.3

This awareness of episodic sound qualities in the music he plays enables Andsnes to learn the most complex music as if he's breaking everything apart into moments and then stringing them together. The effects produced are in some instances unfamiliar, but always effective and often more satisfying to the ear and the mind. The documentary shows some of Leif Ove's preparation for his première in St. Petersburg, Russia in the same beautiful concert hall featured in a previous post about Gustav Mahler's Fifth Symphony played there. His ambitious choice, the Third Piano Concerto of Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873 - 1943) , which is my favourite of his concertos for among other reasons that it was written to be premièred in New York. 

Well, I couldn't find that performance anywhere either, but there is this one he played with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Lionel Bringuier, who I've never heard of either.

What you are going to hear is remarkable, as if all of the various sinews of Rachmaninoff's music are made distinct and have their unique and personal moment for you and everyone else to appreciate them. This includes the ways Leif Ove mingles the piano's line with those in the surrounding orchestra as Leif Ove says, and I agree, this work is splendidly orchestrated. Here is a frank reading, not overly gushing as some play it, completely on top of it technically, played in the same spirit as if this were Bach almost, so precise but more letting you have just that little extra time to hear everything. At times the sense of it is so thrilling that you are more sure than anything that you have heard a new and distinct way of interpreting not just this concerto but all the rest of Rachmaninoff as once Byron Janis' interpretation thrilled me. .Just listen to this man play the piano!  What he does is often breathtaking!

Rachmaninov's 3rd pianoconcert - Leif Ove Andsnes - 1:5

Rachmaninov's 3rd pianoconcert - Leif Ove Andsnes - 2:5

Rachmaninov's 3rd pianoconcert - Leif Ove Andsnes - 3:5

Rachmaninov's 3rd pianoconcert - Leif Ove Andsnes - 4:5

Rachmaninov's 3rd pianoconcert - Leif Ove Andsnes - 5:5

It should be duly noted that in most instances Leif Ove Andsnes is shown playing Steinway pianos, more than likely built in Hamburg. They are very difficult to beat at producing just what he wants. However the piano he used for the Mountain Top shots was a Bösendorfer as they have a distinct tail design no one else uses. CORRECTION: I took another look at the piano and got a good look at the fallboard and the name on it revealed it to be an old Ibach grand!  Alas, Ibach, once the oldest piano making business in family hands for six generations had to call it quits a few years back.  They are still great pianos! 

FINIS

ELIICA

ELIICA, an electric supercar, is quite a story. Of those whose passion was evident in the making of this story in the videos which appear on You Tube, I want it to be known that we are impressed with your achievements, that we share your great and obvious happiness in what you have accomplished, and we look forward to greater things from you in the years ahead. Congratulations from friends around the world who you will be helping!

Enjoy this incredible story.

Eliica - Super Electric Car - Part 1 of 5

Eliica - Super Electric Car - Part 2 of 5

Eliica - Super Electric Car - Part 3 of 5

Eliica - Super Electric Car - Part 4 of 5

Eliica - Super Electric Car - Part 5 of 5

FINIS

Walking Into Massachusetts from New York

“In memory of my wife Desiree Pardi

an amazing woman, loving wife, caring doctor, a true gift

'This moment shall never come again – embrace it.”

October 29, 1967 – September 6, 2009

This plaque is affixed to a bench on the trail in Taconic State Park, New York. It was I am sure placed there through some special bequest, signifying as it were to the rest of the passing world, that someone had found this place among the most blessed on earth. (I even wondered if perhaps the ashes of the dearly beloved young Dr. Pardi might not be scattered about?) A blessed place, where everyone along the path was friendly and the path would have been passable to all able bodied: at least it seemed that way to us, my friend from the city and I, as we walked the path leading to variously named Bash Bish falls, or Copake Falls, the tallest falls in Massachusetts accessible only by this trail from New York. That trail starts here:

This past winter had been cold and the first parts of spring cool and rainy. The canopy of foliage and the swift running stream in the comfortable air invigorated with plenty of oxygen as you walk the faily easy path which leads to the falls.

The water was very clear and the air filled with the sounds of falling water, the rush of the stream a continual gushing susurus.

And as we walk along, my friend and I spoke of the legend behind this place, a Mohican legend, concerning a woman named Bash-Bish who had been unfaithful to her husband and forced into a canoe to be thrown over the falls when she was supposedly rescued through the aegis of a cloud of white butterflies.  

Bish-Bash escaped for a while but eventually came back where she was married to a chief or strong man of the tribe.

But try as they might, Bish-Bash and her husband couldn't conceive. Meanwhile from the first marriage, Bish-Bash had given birth to a daughter called White Swan. This daughter eventually come of age but had been rebuffed by her first love.

Then, you come to the border and this sign welcoming you into Massachusetts.

Then it's not long and you see the falls through the trees. I've seen the biggest at Yosemite in California, so these are really small falls to me, but the last time I was here, it was the end of summer and the falls, the stream, everything seemed to be carrying less water. So this day, the 4^th of June of 2011, turned out to be one of the best times to come here, in spite of the mottled grey overcast sky and mild inconclusive temperatures. You never know here at any time whether you'll have rain or sunshine.

Finally, Bash-Bish Falls, aka Copake Falls, the highest natural falls in Massachusetts, where legend has it that a Mohican maiden and her daughter chose a mutual suicide pact to bring to ends their unhappy lives. The chief or strong man married to Bash-Bish supposedly dove in to the pool below the falls to try and save them, but he died in the process and neither woman's body was ever recovered. Again, the cloud of white butterflies seemed to be involved, de-materializing them.

Thus it was that I returned to this falls, maybe fifteen years since my last visit. We were struck by the kindness of the people on the trail, by the kindness of the benches here and there along the trail, which would be easy enough for most senior citizens in good health. Sometimes a musician needs a little immersion in nature. I was certainly thinking of phrases from the music I am attempting to add to my repertoire as I walked up and back (or in and out of the gorge in which the falls is situated in the low old Taconic mountains which are hills everywhere else). Every now and then, we need to get away to refresh ourselves.

FINIS

The Legend of 1900

A motion picture featuring pianism was brought to my attention recently. I have not seen this film in its entirety yet, but shall try to do so very soon. This is a pre-emptive review of sorts.

The film centres on a re-enactment of a fictional contest between the legendary American ragtime / jazz virtuoso, Jelly Roll Morton (Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe) (1885-1941) self-credited (and probably beyond much dispute, the “father” of or inventor of jazz) and a fictional legendary pianist called Novecento, the Italian for 1900, probably because the cruise ship was under Italian registration and the floating piano virtuoso was born either on board ship or shortly before in 1900. The film is inspired by a theatre monologue called, Novecento, by Alessandro Baricco and was directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. It was shot on location in Italy and the US and produced in English. It has become quite a cult film and probably deserves it. Those of us who love pianos, and anything to do with them, will find this an attractive film. BUT, there is some well chosen vulgarity used!  The interested will certainly find plenty on this film all over the web.

The contest between the two pianists, on which some men have wagered, happens on a cruise ship that plies its course between America and Europe and on which the fictional Novecento resides. The time is sometime during the 1920's. When the notoriously haughty Jelly Roll Morton enters the ship's ball room, a magnificent piano stands ready. Novecento is at the piano as Morton quietly tells 1900 that he's in his seat. This piano, as all pianos in films, tempts piano buffs (fools for piano, that's us) to try and determine what make it is, model too if possible and of course the vintage of the piano.

This one, a semi-concert grand, usually around 7' in length, in a beautiful burled wood case, I have determined cannot be a Steinway because of the Boston style close it uses for its fallboard and that it is missing a key dead give away brace in its plate, which only Steinway uses on its three largest grand piano models -you don't see too many shots that reveal the plate so maybe it's really there in which case it is a Steinway, but you never see the name of the piano. Another thing I tried seeing is whether the tail end of the grand piano had any breaks in it or whether it was curved all the way around. It looked to be the latter which would rule out the piano being by Bösendorfer, which also has some tell tale bracing designs in its plate, not seen here either. That means it is either likely a Chickering (American) or Bechstein (German) grand and by the style of the art case, certainly made before 1900. One more thing; it looks and presumably plays and sounds brand new. I suspect it was carefully restored by some of the wonderful craftsmen who do such great work restoring and rebuilding the great pianos of the “golden age” from 1880 through the 1920's.

In any case we're treated to some amazing piano music, not all of it possible in the case of 1900's Gershwinesque impromptu, but I really frankly doubt whether either actor in the film is really playing anything. That's what happens quite often in movies about pianists or pianism; they get someone else who really plays to record the soundtrack that's used. This piano contest is about what I have commented on in a previous post; playing fast and loud. Musical competitions certainly have its predecessors, going all the way back to Bach vs. Marchand, but the American variant is usually only concerned with amplitude and velocity to the exclusion of more subtle and delicate musical effects.

As I was taking in this fictional scene and the music employed certain things came to mind that are worth sharing here to raise appropriate musical consciousness:

First, Americans really do have a “classical” music of their own. All of it used to be popular music in its day but has been superseded by the pop idol hits of today and is so often rarely heard that few but a devoted coterie are even aware of it. It was invented by people like Jelly Roll Morton, who grew up playing piano in New Orleans whorehouses.

Secondly, and again in conformity with Andrew Violette's universal rule regarding the social class relationship between artist and audience as it has pretty much always existed, the artist, no matter how egocentric, was still ranked socially below the status of his audience. Obviously Jelly Roll Morton thought of himself otherwise. Well for that matter so had Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner and others. This has always been the real friction, not the often more obvious ones we sometimes read about and we will be discussing these issues more often and openly here in this forum.

And thirdly, and consider this folks, the traditional ragtime, or jazz pianist was probably close to being musically illiterate in the sense that they rarely wrote anything down (not always and they did use transcribers before the advent of recording too as Scott Joplin's rags were published before the First World War) but without the simultaneous inventions of sound recording and the various player piano technologies, we'd not have much of this music today. But we do have it in forms that any reasonably competent and diligent pianist can read and play. In fact we have it in transcribed form; people painstakingly heard the pieces performed and rendered them in some cases note for note..

But before you decide to rush out and get yourself a copy of some of the music you will hear in the scenes from this film, be advised that only really advanced players can even attempt most of it. It's physically quite rigorous. What the transcribers have given us is the means to attempt to re-create this really quite attractive piano music from a bygone era. Now it's up to us to pick it up and make it a part of our own standard repertoire.

This is also my lead up article to an important musical introduction to follow. Yes friends, America has made its contributions to serious music (all of which was once merely popular) and we will be dealing with that considerable subject in some successive posts.

In any case, enjoy the featured videos:

Part 1 

Part 2

UPDATE: 10 January 2013
 
The entire move is available for viewing on YouTube here.
A version of the script exists here.

There are two pianos, the performance piano in the ship's ballroom, perhaps a Blüthner or a Bechstein (it used blue felt inside) but you never really hear the real piano (it was probably a Steinway). Then there's the practice piano, the upright, which could have been anything, but it was on this piano that the simple song of unrequited love was composed by 1900 that ties the whole story together.

This is a very deep motion picture (if you have any heart left, be prepared at places to cry your eyes out), very well made, a great work of art actually. The very end, what 1900 has to say is quite moving and explains much concerning the universal human dilemma of what in such a vast world, even as small as it is in the scheme of the universe, one could possibly choose. 

To those who have stumbled upon this page, or perhaps have read more of this blog. I think it's only fair to tell you all that this single page gets more hits than any other post on my entire blog! For a long time I wondered why. Now, perhaps I know. 

FINIS

Why We Don't Have More Beethovens

"I dreamt that I was composing a symphony … I had gone to my table to begin writing it down when I suddenly reflected, “If I write this part, I shall let myself be carried on to write the rest. The natural tendency of my mind to expand the material is sure to make it very long. When the symphony is completed I shall be weak enough to allow my copyist to copy it out and thus incur a debt of 1,000 or 1,200 francs. Once the parts are copied I shall be harassed by the temptation to have the work performed; I shall give a concert in which, as is sure to be the case in these days, the receipts will cover barely half the expenses; I shall lose what I have not got; I shall want the necessaries of life for my poor invalid wife and shall have no money either for myself or my son's keep on board ship.” … I throw down my pen saying, “Bah! I shall have forgotten the symphony tomorrow.” But the following night the obstinate symphony again presented itself …"

Hector Berlioz Memoirs c. 1850's

It used to be more often said than was even kind, when confronting abortion, that we might be denied another Beethoven. I always found the comment in considerably less than good taste on many levels, chief among them that humanity had not fully realized who and what the original Beethoven was and what he had accomplished under really incredible circumstances.

People are always far too often interested only when there is some “overcoming tragedy” element in a story. Otherwise I guess, anything that gets accomplished must have been done easily because less effort or intelligence was required. Under all circumstances in the modern world, we probably wouldn't be able to recognize another Beethoven were one to fall into our laps.

It's appropriate to mention that Beethoven regarded some trees with more truly fond regard than he ever considered more than a few men. And why wouldn't he? The real Beethoven was an abused child who later suffered from it through profound deafness. No one explains it that way, but that's exactly what it was. Meanwhile, these days the culture destroyers have already made the name Beethoven synonymous with a dog in a motion picture comedy series that soon nobody will remember because that's what commercialization does; it produces a steady stream of worthless trash for a fickle public attention span that itself is manipulated. The real Beethoven wanted more for his listeners and players than that. Those who stood in his shadow and a few who came before him (in whose shadows he stood) certainly wanted more for their audiences, for humanity itself.

An interesting book, Quarter-notes and Banknotes by F. M. Scherer tries to answer the meaty questions concerning how composers managed to earn their livelihood and focuses on a statistical analysis of fewer than 1,000 composers who were born between 1650 and 1850. I bet you thought there must be millions of composers. Well there weren't and still aren't. The bulk of the standard “classical” music repertoire came from perhaps less than 50 people working over the last 300 years. This book is a real eye-opener. We can put the pieces together and get an idea of how small the real “classical” music scene was (and still is). We can see how conspicuous consumption among nobles and a few clergy kept a lot of this musical scene going through the 18^th century, how the industrial revolution and wars altered this music scene through the 19^th century. We can extrapolate from this work what happened to this same musical tradition through the mid 20^th century too. (Did it go underground after about the time I was born?  Or was it for the most point destroyed after two world wars?)

And now we're in the 21^st century and those who are impressed enough by this music and its traditions to take it up and care for it are coming from places largely outside Europe where it all began. We expect great things from these newcomers, not only as performers, but as composers. But what does it take to become a composer?

"No one can become a capable musician without arduous self-teaching, and most undergo on the job training."     Quarter-notes and Banknotes, page 82

It takes work that may not be rewarded in one's lifetime. To take up the craft of making music in this way, by writing it down so others can perform it long after you're gone, takes a considerable act of faith. Once again, I am reminding all those who read this of the parallels between serious music study and religious experience. There's nothing quite like it in this life.

Certainly composition was more than enough for Ludwig van Beethoven and the less than 1,000 others, many whose names are long forgotten or whose music many not have been played often or at all. It's astounding to me that for instance the six Brandenburg Concerti were written by J. S. Bach sometime before 1721 FOR NOTHING but the hope of a sponsorship from a local noble and that these incredible works were left on a dusty shelf in some palace library until they were discovered in 1849! We have a lot of great music that came about this way.

There's ample evidence in Scherer's book to support Andrew Violette's contention that musicians have always been regarded as of lower class than their audiences and the same was true of composers. Those who were employed to play music, or compose it, in private homes were on a par with the rest of the household servants and required to behave in a subservient manner with very little regard for who they were. The composers themselves more often than not came from the emerging middle class or trades backgrounds, a few from wealth too, very few from the ranks of the vast majority of agricultural workers or peasants. There has always been social friction between those who would be leaders of the world (nobles or aristocrats or those who would be those people) and those who worked hard to aspire to a place between the world leaders and the peasantry, long before anyone wrote about it (Karl Marx). 

These days a worship of celebrity, including those with vast riches and national or international power prestige positions, permeates everything that is broadcast over what's called the mainstream media. The magnetism of power and wealth has always attracted musicians and still does. As I said in a previous post, it is almost expected that one looks up to get rewards and the amount of grovelling and boot licking becomes more obscene the higher up one goes. Composers have always faced this problem in order to survive.

Meanwhile if one is a member of an audience, one is expecting to be “entertained” by those who might have tremendous musical talent (as if they were trained moneys or idiot savants) but are nevertheless of lower social rank than themselves. I can even remember when I was young that all everyone wanted to hear me play was something played as fast and as loud as possible. Why? Did they want the musical experience to be over more quickly? And why so loud?  They weren't really listening, but I didn't know that back then. What then happens when the social class to which the audience belongs is forced down in social rank through economic manipulation by those who are socially on top? It's simple; the musicians and the music must be of even lower social class and artistic content or it doesn't satisfy. Real music doesn't satisfy too many and it never did.  Idealistic attempts to make serious or "classical" music into a mass draw are doomed to fail.

What are most people interested in musically? Not very much actually. They never were either. Back in the Vienna of the 1780's, at the same time Mozart was trying to become on a social level with the nobles he was trying to entertain, the lot of common people were more inclined to hear the … even lower class than themselves, bawdy and ridiculous antics of wandering minstrels and acrobats, jugglers and … inevitable pickpockets. People's ears have never been that good. People's musical taste has often been low and continues to be so. These days we even have many with academic backgrounds who willingly spout such drivel as that the greatest art these days comes from prisons where the convicted felons are featured “folk” artists. This is merely another aspect of Andrew's argument concerning the relationship between audience and musician that has existed in one way or another for a long time.

What were the composers themselves interested in? In most cases, just earning a living through their genuine interest in music. A few of them, including the maybe 50 major luminaries, spoke of something else, of higher aspirations, daring to place themselves above the nobles of their day or of future days, they longed to bring the level of the average man's awareness up and to do it through music . But this was a dream carried by their acts of faith. When one seriously considers how much was delivered to the world, often without remuneration of any kind at all, by these very few people, one almost automatically feels something akin to … a great distaste for the vast numbers of people who just don't get it.

I don't recommend this book to everyone, but along with such master works as Arthur Loesser's Men Women and Pianos, this work should be read and referenced by many of the really interested. You should be able to get it through your local library as it is out of print and relatively rare.

FINIS