Well, my active period didn’t last that long. 5 weeks, I think! I’ll be going dormant again until I can build up some lead time.
In the mean time you could look at a conference paper I recently presented in Rochester and Santa Barbara.
Minimalism began as a reaction to what I call “High Modernism,” music by composers like Pierre Boulez, Milton Babbitt, and Elliott Carter. In the 50s and 60s, when these guys were at the peak of their influence, there was a vague sense that music was almost a scientific pursuit, and the more information you could cram into a score, the better. For example, here’s a Babbitt piece that is actually relatively short and digestible…
Minimalism emerged in the 60s, and it asserted a different agenda – instead of looking to put as much as possible into a piece, composers like Terry Riley, LaMonte Young, Phillip Glass and Steve Reich wanted to see how simple music could possibly be. There was also a parallel movement in the visual arts – painters and sculptors reacted against messy expressionism by creating works that were defiantly plain. Here’s a piece by Donald Judd, an array of blue boxes attached to the wall.
So, in the beginning, minimalist music was similarly severe. It sought to be challengingly minimal, and as a result achieved a somewhat bad reputation as a kind of anti-music, an emperor’s-new-clothes kind of deal.
Here’s an early Steve Reich piece called Piano Phase, from 1967, which, while cool, is certainly somewhat severe. This clip features lovely and very appropriate choreography by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker.
In the early 70s Reich and Glass both loosened up, attacking large-scale works with a lot more warmth and generosity. (Critics sometimes split hairs and call this later work “Post-Minimal.”) For Reich, the great breakthrough was Music for 18 Musicians in 1974.
I think that, right away, you hear a great difference in the overall sonority. Here’s a performance from a music festival in Cincinnati:
The pulse continues for 70 minutes, and very slowly evolves into a variety of textures. Here’s a much later section, now in Tokyo:
I find that, listening on recording, it is easy to drift off and lose track of how we get from one section to another – it appears to evolve seamlessly. What’s cool about a live performance is that specific musicians cue changes, so you actually see someone step up to a marimba and start a new detail.
The classic debut recording with Reich’s own group remains beloved, and I really can’t see why you wouldn’t go with it.
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However, this recent recording by the Grand Valley New Music Ensemble has also garnered raves.
Opera was invented at the beginning of the Baroque period, around 1600, but the first flowering of indisputably great works came with Mozart. He composed about a dozen, but there are four that are absolutely crucial: The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte, and The Magic Flute.
Don Giovanni is another name for Don Juan, the legendary figure who sought to seduce as many women as possible, often through trickery. This telling of the story has many resonances with the present, with the intersection of class, power, and sex playing out in an often gleefully ironic manner. Don Giovanni, is, of course, a great villain, but he is also, in a way, the hero of the work.
His foil throughout is his somewhat unfaithful servant Leporello, who enables much of the shenanigans but also complains and cracks wise about both his employer and his female conquests. The “Catalogue Aria” is a famous scene in which he explains his boss’s modus operandi:
Here is a scene in which Don Giovanni attempts to woo a woman by performing a serenade outside her window.
Early in the first act he kills someone, and this is eventually his undoing, as the ghost of his victim appears and drags him down to hell. Giovanni redeems himself somewhat by going out with dignity.
The best introduction to this work would certainly be total immersion in a live performance with supertitles. Barring that, your next best option is probably to watch it on video. This Met Opera performance from 2000 with Bryn Terfel is probably a solid bet (and it is the source of the second clip, above.) You could rent it on netflix. Perhaps after viewing a fairly straightforward production, Peter Sellers’ wacked-out version might be a stimulating contrast. (Do NOT choose this one first, though. It would be confusing.)
For a recording, I have a 1961 recording led by Carlo Maria Giulini that is considered classic. While lacking the opulent digital clarity of a more contemporary recording, it still sounds excellent, and it is quite educational to hear the stars of a different generation perform this with verve.
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(Important note: These links all lead to the 1987 remastering. Amazon reviewers complain bitterly about later editions that allegedly ruined the sound quality of this recording.)
There are, of course, many other recorded versions out there and I’m sure some are great. The Wikipedia page has a good synopsis of the action, so you could follow along even without the libretto.
Let us now go back towards the beginnings of Western music history. Here’s a quick thumbnail sketch — the music of Ancient Greece and Rome was much written about (Plato famously had some very specific opinions about it) but was generally not recorded with any kind of notation system. Thus, it is pretty much impossible to reconstruct what it sounded like.
Gregorian chant emerged around the 4th century AD as the first notated music. The Church was very interested in standardizing a cycle of daily rituals which included both recited texts and music. Writing melodies down allowed them to achieve this goal and facilitated coordinated group performance. It was, of course, stuff that sounded (and looked) like this:
In chant, single lines of melody flow in a somewhat relaxed, loose rhythm.
The “Notre Dame School” was a community of musicians in and around the Cathedral of Paris, Notre Dame, who began to create music in which one or more parts is added to a chant melody. In general, the chant melody tends to slow down to a crawl, and the added parts swirl around it in a more active rhythm. (This is the first polyphonic music in the Western tradition.)
Pérotin (ca. 1170-1236) was one of these composers.
What’s interesting about these very early works is that musicians did not yet have the same concept of consonance, (i.e. rules about what sounds went well with each other) that would govern music for centuries. Thus, they make sonorities that sound very Modern to our ears.
The Hilliard Ensemble’s recording is featured in the above youtube, and I think it is your best opportunity to hear this music in an impeccably crisp and clear rendition. Ariama Archivmusik Amazon MP3 Amazon CD eMusic
Schumann (1810-1856) is probably the most interesting figure of the Romantic generation of composers. Plagued by physical and psychiatric maladies for most of his adult life, his work is consistently idiosyncratic, inspired by the world of ideas and particularly intense emotions.
The move from Classical to Romantic music, generally speaking, was a move from an abstract ideal of elegantly structured but somewhat impersonal music (composed by Haydn, Mozart, and sometimes Beethoven) to music that was actually about external ideas. Classical period works tended to be organized according to somewhat elaborate forms, but in the Romantic period the story was often allowed to govern the shape of the music entirely.
The Romantic period also saw two different trends in terms of scale – on one hand, music for the concert hall became more grandiose and elaborate — the modern orchestra (with its strong brass, woodwind, and percussion sections) was assembled and pieces became more and more elaborate.
However, there was also a trend towards miniatures — brief, bite-size works that could be played and enjoyed at home. Schumann’s Carnaval is a collection of minatures for piano that follow a fanciful theme, the annual European holiday during which masked characters frolic in the streets.
I’m anxious to get to the movements that depict specific characters, but I can’t overlook the grandiose opening that sets the scene. I love these thunderous opening chords (played here by a Croatian pianist named Vladimir Babin…)
In the second movement we get our first stock character for Carnival, the sad clown Pierrot. (This one is played by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, who really emphasizes its languid nature. The youtube poster thinks this befits a wild boar, for some reason.)
(direct link.)
And here’s one more portrait of stock characters – Columbine and Pantalone. Columbine is wedded to Pierrot, but she traditionally must fend off the advances of Pantolone. This movement alternates frantic activitity with more tender, possibly flirtatious interludes. (More Michelangeli, this time with ferrets or something.)
Now, the characters in Carnaval aren’t limited to stock Comedia dell’Arte figures. Schumann was a fairly influential music critic, and he liked to write in the voice of two different pseudonyms, Eusebius and Florestan. One was supposed to represent his more dreamy, introspective side, and the other was his passionate side. See if you can tell which is which.
The final movement (“The March of the Davidsbundler against the Philistines”) was also supposed to represent his musical circle of friends challenging the forces of musical conservatism.
So, obviously this is fun music. The twenty-one brief movements of Carnaval present an entertaining grab bag of moods, with pianistic brilliance that never overstays its welcome. When carefully played it is an utterly charming little world.
One of the most critically acclaimed interpreters of this work is Claudio Arrau’s. His 1966 recording combines a soft touch with an impressive quickness that really brings this material to life. Seems to only be available on CD. Archivmusik Amazon CD
Here’s a Wikipedia article on the piece. And the score can be had for free via IMSLP.
In our previous installment I highlighted The Rite of Spring as a watershed moment in the birth of musical Modernism. And, to be sure, it was. However, someone (or, rather, three someones) got there first – Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils Anton Webern and Alban Berg.
Schoenberg began as self-taught practitioner of the Late Romantic style, which is often characterized by a constant sense of “yearning.” (In technical terms, it wanders from key to key using complex and unfamiliar progressions, and phrasing is also broken down into a constant, ambiguous “flow.”) Schoenberg recognized that he could take this aesthetic to a higher level by avoiding keys altogether, entering a completely abstract world of sound that is usually called “atonal.”
Now, this is difficult stuff. I can’t say I recommend much of it to a casual listener. But, if you were to choose one piece that exemplifies the style AND is fun to listen to, I would select Anton Webern’s Six Bagatelles for String Quartet. They were composed in 1911, and they explore this new sound world in a brief, restrained, and intriguingly mysterious format.
Here’s a clip, which presents all six movements in a brief 4:23.
If you wanted a recording of this, I would recommend the Juilliard String Quartet’s rendition from the Sony Complete Webern set. You could easily excise these six tracks from the larger collection in the online MP3 format. iTunes Archivmusik Amazon CD Amazon MP3 Ariama eMusic
I also have an old recording by the Artis Quartet, also on Sony, which was outstanding. Sadly, it is out of print. Archivmusic will custom-make a copy for you, and here is its Amazon page for possibly scoring it second-hand.
Artis re-recorded another version on the Nimbus label, but you know what? It’s not as good. The Sony version was much better recorded. Here are links for the new version for reference – iTunes Archivmusik Ariama eMusic Amazon CD Amazon MP3 Amazon CD
Well, that didn’t last long. Happily, I had a good reason to discontinue posting – I had a proposal accepted for the West Coast Conference of Music Theory and Analysis (in Santa Barbara, CA) and had to suddenly put all available energy into getting ready.
I think I’ve come up with a viable strategy for continuing the blog, though. I like the weekly format – I think the idea of listening to a single piece per week (and possibly adding it to one’s collection) is a good regimen for a typical music fan. However, dutifully putting out post after post feels an awful lot like work, and I certainly have a lot of other demands on my time that are more pressing.
So, I’m going to continue doing this in spurts. I’ve got four new posts scheduled for the next four Mondays, and we’ll see how long I can continue the series. When I run out of lead time, I’ll take another break and regroup.
Also, I thought it would be funny to dedicate a post to the ridiculous comment spam I’ve been getting. I find this trend supremely annoying — people pretend to be readers of your blog and post generic comments with links to sites they are trying to promote. So, if you are a worthless parasite who isn’t really reading, attach your comment to this post and I will let it through! (I’ll make a few crucial edits to foil your google ranking, though.)
Of all music history, I probably find the Modern period (which I would date from around 1912-1950) to be the most exciting. And, I’m particularly fascinated with its origins – what was it that suddenly caused everything to change so radically? Or was the transition really so sudden?
Obviously, Modernism didn’t happen instantaneously. You can find little bits and pieces of it throughout the past, details that seem very direct and original and yet conscious of their own artifice. The Rite of Spring has precedent within Stravinsky’s own works – there were several excellent precursors (namely, The Firebird and Petrushka) that suggested the way forward but also remained married to the Romantic aesthetic, with an overall commitment to orchestral lushness, exoticism, and “special effects.”
The Rite is so over the top, though, that it really does seem like the birth of something new. Stravinsky and Dhiagilev (his entreprenurial collaborator) had already been playing with the folk mythology of Russia when they decided to go deeper into the primodial past of pagan ritual. Stravinsky was apparently so inspired by this idea that he produced something completely raw, almost entirely stripped of conventional musical signposts and reveling in dissonance and pure rhythmic energy.
This is not to say that The Rite is unpleasant. It is violent, sure, and occasionally overwhelming, but it is still full of tunes. It has an intuitive tonal logic of its own, and contemporary orchestras are careful to shape Stravinsky’s new chords into something that sounds good. It’s like an R-rated movie for your ears, with carefully constructed thrills that will leave you exhilarated and happy.
You’ve probably heard that the premier actually incited a riot between patrons who were booing the piece and those that wanted to hear it. You can read the wikipedia article for a little more on that. But first and foremost we need to listen!
Here’s a YouTube clip with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting.
and here’s one where Esa-Pekka Salonen picks it up, a little later in the piece.
There are many options on recording, of course. Stravinsky conducted it himself in 1960, and his protege Robert Craft did it in the 90s. These are rhythmically taut and impeccably accurate versions. But I think you need something massive, a version that will really hit you like a ton of bricks (without getting sloppy.) That version is Valery Gergiev conducting the Kirov Orchestra.
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One caveat – I bought this via Amazon MP3 download, and I’m a bit frustrated that I can’t get true gapless playback. This is a flaw in Mp3′s themselves – with the way they were originally designed, one gets a tiny bit of space at the beginning and end. Modern files usually include a bit of data that helps your computer compensate for that — but these tracks lack it, so I’m getting a little hesitation as we transition from section to section. I’ve reluctantly plunked more money down for a CD version, and I’m very irritated with Philips and Amazon.
This is going to sound a little silly, but I think Mozart’s piano concertos are actually underrated. Obviously, in the grand scheme of things nothing that the man ever touched lacks recognition. But in the popular, mainstream imagination the concertos don’t seem to rate as high as, say, the “Jupiter” Symphony, the Requiem, or Le Nozze di Figaro.
That’s a shame, because the piano concerto was a major vehicle for Mozart’s career as a public performer – he played many of them himself, showing off his technical proficiency and ability to improvise. The typical work dives deeply into several essential Mozartean moods – either the sunny side of wit, joy, and tenderness, or his darker conception of drama and tragedy. But it is also a conversation between soloist and orchestra – this give-and-take keeps it grounded at a very pragmatic, human level.
I am picking the C minor concerto, number 24, as our introduction to this world. It seems to have the right balance of light and dark to represent the whole, and each movement is really quite memorable.
The first movement begins with a curiously twisty theme in bare, unharmonized octaves. Sure, it’s in C minor, which seems automatically “dark” and dire, but there is also something very elegant and witty about this. Mozart has selected the dance-like meter of 3/4, and the chaotically sprawling chromaticism seems to say “where do you think this is going?”
Throughout the movement you hear the basic idea set in a variety of ways. Sometimes it explodes in a furious blast of winds and strings, and other times it is quiet and pensive.
Here’s a YouTube of the first movment, performed by Daniel Gortler and the Israel Camerata.
The second movement presents a comforting, tender melody for contrast. I’ll switch over to Malcolm Bilson’s recording on the historically accurate fortepiano. I’m not sure his approach would be my first choice for this grandiose work, but for some of the more sprightly concertos it hits the spot.
Finally, we end with a march-like tune that is repeated over and over as the basis of a Theme and Variations movement. I switch performances once again, with Andre Previn leading a small orchestra from the piano (just as the composer would have done.)
I have this somewhat hoary old recording on Sony.
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It’s not usually what I would go for, since it doesn’t quite have the vivid sound of a more contemporary recording, but I enjoy it quite a bit and I love the pairing with No. 21, which would be my next pick for a perfectly representative Mozart concerto.
For a more recent version, some sources recommend Alfred Brendel and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. I am not liking the samples, though – the orchestra sounds too loud and brassy!
Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas is your perfect starter opera. It is in English, it’s not very long, and it is drop-dead gorgeous. What more could you want?
Composed for performance at a girls’ school at the end of the 17th Century, Dido is a miracle of simplicity and intensity. The plot is, of course, fairly nonsensical to modern sensibilities: Dido, Queen of Carthage opens her heart to the visiting hero Aeneas. However, a band of witches is plotting against her and they cause Aeneas to be called away prematurely. In despair she commits suicide. The end.
Most of the numbers are composed in a simple, repetitive style that is easy to understand. I particularly like the call of the First Sailor to disembark — there is a nice concert version of that on YouTube (but embedding is disabled.)
The climax is Dido’s famous Lament, which is unsurpassed in its morose expressivity. I’ll embed Mark Morris’s choreography for this – the audio isn’t perfect but it’s worth it for the cleverness of the dance. (Morris himself is playing Dido, here.)
It seems like this somewhat old video is still in print, or recently lapsed? There are still copies out there, anyway. Amazon NetFlix
For a recording, I am quite attached to my old version with Les Arts Florissants, conducted by William Christie. That one’s out of print, though. Amazon
Sampling the more contemporary renditions, I like this one with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, co-directed by Elizabeth Kenny and Stephen Devine. The instrumental passages sound great (with appropriate “period” sound) and the singing is not too heavily operatic.
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If you end up with a download version of the opera you can always use a free online libretto to keep track of the action.
