K. 310

Waking up this morning, and feeling dislocated from reality (OK, more dislocated than usual), I went through my usual routine - a homemade latte, some toast, and their quiet, if brief, consumption.

When I returned from walking my dog, I realised just how little I was feeling anything today. So I took out the only piece of music that affects me, that wakes my out of my waking slumber - Mozart's Piano Sonata no. 8 in A minor.

As I'm sure many of you know, Mozart wrote this piece in an around the death of his mother, and so we, desperate to read life into abstract music, have surmised that the minor key and the pathos of the work are connected to his loss.

Without delving too deeply and finding myself committing myself to the intentional fallacy, I will say that, for me, feeling something is central to this work, and I would very much like to think that Mozart intended this, not necessarily for the listener, but for the player.

I would like to imagine that he, or anyone else, can open this up, and play through the dark march of the exposition, only to find themselves in the development in a nice, bright C major. One almost feels relieved at this point, that the gleeful Mozart that we're all raised on, you know, the one that makes babies smarter, will carry us through and make this a minor a jovial, ironic work.

We all know how this winds up.

He doesn't just use dissonance, he hammers us. He does this for a while, very elegantly and sequentially, simultaneously unnerving, jarring. When Mozart lets us loose, releasing us from these semitones, instead of giving us a moment to breathe, and I believe that this is the key to the whole first movement, he unleashes what I can only imagine is fury. Sixteenth notes in the right hand, painting the harmony while the left hand plays these remarkable leaps and defiantly trill their way to resolution (this is not the best the much-maligned left hand gets in this work).


And then he winds us up chromatically into the recap in A minor. But we are not home free, on our way to a nice, if dark, martial recap of the 2nd theme in A minor. No, in a move that moves this work from the pathetic (old sense) to the sublime is when he drops the opening theme into the left hand, this dissonant right hand accompaniment reminding us of the development we just thought we'd safely resolved.


There is no resolution in this first movement, or if there is, it's a Phyrric one, reluctantly playing out the formal constraints of the day before Beethoven would come along and really throw them all aside.

There is no other piece of music I play that wakes me up to the world the way this one does. If it didn't, I certainly wouldn't have written about it today.

I wouldn't have written about anything today.

Important Insights About The Canadian Opera Company's New General Manager

Canada's Opera Company has a new Intendant.

I thought I had written this out on the blog, but after Richard Bradshaw died, I had hoped that the COC would come hire someone young, who would be willing to stick around for a while, as Bradshaw had done, and build on the late man's work.

Not only do they appeared to have followed my advice (did they intercept my e-mails? One wonders), but they've scored a guy who's really connected to some big names - his talk about more co-productions can only mean that we will be sharing with Neef's close colleague, Gerard Mortier, who's taking over at the New York City Opera.

As for those of you who will talk about the fact that they couldn't (or didn't) find a Canadian, here's the thing - that's a ridiculous question, actually, although I expect to see it asked by someone, somewhere, need some space to fill.

And yes, he's young. Although it's ludicrous to think that this will somehow translate into expanding the coveted younger audience (what is this, MTV?), his youth could mean that if he really likes it here he'll stick around. Or exactly the opposite.

Now if only we could deal with the matter of the Four Seasons Opera House and the number of performances it can handle...but that, my friends, is another, much more serious, and much more complicated story.

What I can say is that I wish Alexander Neef all the best!

Cinquecento: Phillippe De Monte: Miss Ultimi miei sospiri

Today I'm going to get around to doing something I had planned to do when I began to blog - review CDs! Here's to hoping, unlike all my other "regular" features on this blog, this one sticks!

***

It is a fact of musicological life here in North America that in music survey courses, the Renaissance is represented by a triumvirate of composers. For the Early Renaissance you get Dufay, in the middle finds Josquin, and one finishes the Renaissance with Palestrina, pace Monteverdi, who lived too long to stay a Renaissance composer.

Really though, in sheer popularity, Palestrina appears to have cornered the market on the whole Renaissance. People know of some of his late-Renaissance contemporaries, like Lassus, Byrd, and of course, everyone's favourite dissonance-loving wife-killing prince , but it's Palestrina who usually gets the most play.

Given the lock Palestrina has, it was a real pleasure to discover the work of his Vienna-based contemporary Philippe De Monte on a recent Hyperion CD by the Vienna-based Cinquecento.

Their third CD for Hyperion (my first encounter with them), Cinquecento is the house choir for St. Rochus in Vienna, which means you can listen to them singing live on a weekly basis, provided you don't mind sitting through a church service. (Not now though - it's summer break!)

I will refrain from giving you background on the CD, because the magic of the Internet and the kindness of Hyperion let me link to the CD's full liner notes.

The CD is a treat. Their vocal texture is wonderful, alternatively molten and granite, and it is hard not to think of the Hilliard Ensemble while listening to them. This is a blessing and a curse - they are wonderfully balanced and in tune, and although every opening unfolds sumptuously, I felt they often lacked drive towards the cadence that would have made some of this music thrilling to the end, something I have grown very accustomed to in listening to the Hilliard Ensemble over the years.

The Credo, for instance, just walks to its finish, despite the forward momentum right there in the music. However, you forget this quickly because the opening of the Sanctus which follows is so gossamery.

Indeed, this is a beautiful and delicate recording, one that bears repeated listening. I intend to pick up their earlier recordings, and I look forward to their exploration of more music from this era of the Hapsburg court- did those Viennese ever have to contend with mediocre music?

Ah Vienna...why must you be so far from Toronto?

Back In Your Cage, Classical Monkey!

So how is the media greeting the outrage of classical music lovers after the one-two combo of losing classical music programming on CBC Radio 2 as well as the CBC Radio Orchestra?

Mockery.

One shouldn't be surprised. The stuffy strawman that is the skinny white-haired man in his cardigan comparing his twelve recordings of Beethoven's Fifth is as entrenched as the dumb blonde in the pantheon of pop culture derision.

The tale of the tape? Let's take a look at three, count em', three separate columns, whose message can be distilled to the following:

CALM DOWN.

They are like parents calming an errant child, and their patronizing tone is ironic given that it is the classical music listener who is the premier patronizor in our civic space, merely by virtue of his tastes in music.

Ken Rockburn in the Calgary Herald:

It has long been known among CBC types that Radio 2, with its unrelenting focus on classical music, has been a dusty corner of the broadcast world with audience numbers that, even in the imaginary world of public broadcasting where such things are not supposed to matter, are laughably tiny. When the semi-annual ratings come out, Radio 2 suffers from what private broadcasters refer to as "dash disease." That means that for each quarter-hour average audience number there is no number, only a dash. In other words, no measurable audience.

CBC types, like him, I guess.

But what about the facts? Well, you, like Ken here, could have looked at the ratings over at BBM. But then you'd see that Radio 2 not only doesn't appear to suffer from "dash disease", it seems that there are a whole bunch of private broadcasters who lose to CBC Radio 2 on a regular basis. Here, look!

But let's not let data get in the way of setting that straw man ablaze, eh Ken?

And then there's our John Doyle, Canada's Flann O'Brien, writing in yesterday's Globe, cleverly entitled "Note to classical music fans: Get over yourselves":

To be perfectly honest with you, I'm not all that worried about CBC Radio 2 reducing the amount of classical music it airs.

No, he's really worried about TV. But John, why do you feel the need to dismiss the loss of an entire orchestra to make your point? A smart, funny man like you? Who cares if you don't care for classical music? If the classical music people are bothering you with e-mails, and you don't care, just ignore them.

Finally, John Terauds last week. It starts out by infantilizing classical music listeners (note, Terauds is the Classical Music critic of the Toronto Star):

Don't mess with what we know and love – especially if it's our music.

We treat our radio stations like an infant who has grown attached to her first teddy bear.

CBC Radio 2 has for years been the favourite plush toy for the country's classical music listeners.

Like many a teddy, our radio network has lost its eyes somewhere along the way. The fur is stained and matted. The ripped fabric around the neck has let some stuffing spill out.

It's not pretty. But no matter. Radio 2 is ours and we're not letting go.

Wow. According to John, classical music fans need a course in change management.

Yes, but I wonder when the Star decides it doesn't need a classical music reviewer Mr. Terauds will embrace "change" when they reassign him to the faith desk to cover the latest church bake sale.

So what do we make of all this? Is it just payback for that snooty Russell Smith for always being so snobby, with his cultivation of tastes in food, clothes and the arts, a veritable scourge?

As anyone who reads me knows, my feelings about the changes at CBC are ambivalent at best. I no longer consider the CBC a classical music station, and I haven't for a while.

My sense is that, pace Ken Rockburn, is that the best thing for classical music listeners to do would be let the CBC succumb to dash disease and let them reconsider their actions through of the humiliation of broadcasting Feist only to have no one listen to her, because no one goes to the CBC to listen to Feist!

What bothers me, however, isn't the content, it's their tone. What's the the source of that nastiness, that patronizing?

As many lovers of classical music know, telling someone you listen to Beethoven is a throw down to a lot of people. People get defensive, or angry, or feel a need to defend their music from my "elitist" tastes.

What's interesting is that this reaction often comes not from the utterance itself (I listen to Beethoven), but the context in which most people think about classical music lovers (pompous jerks who hate rock, also known as the music of the people).

Classical music listeners usually have to go to great lengths to reassure people that they do not in fact hate popular music, or that they are also just ordinary people, usually by talking about Radiohead or Sarah Harmer, or perhaps by drinking cheap domestic beer in front of people suspicious of their classical music listening tendencies.

So what do we have here? Could it be that when it comes to classical music, the ghost of the French Revolution hangs over our collective thoughts? Could it be simply that we still see classical music as an aristocratic pursuit, and that this offends our egalitarian sensibilities? Could it really be something as ridiculous as that?

Could this be the very source of all our problems as classical music listener? Any thoughts?

East Village Opera Company Redux

A.C. Douglas at Sounds and Fury posted recently on an interview he'd heard by the East Village Opera Company.

The comments of the Company, as well as A.C. Douglas' comments on their stance, reminded me of a post I had written on one of my old blogs, the name which shall remain forever forgotten...you'll note the striking similarities between my post and that of Mr. Douglas, although I would note that I go to great lengths to explain what he assumes needs not be said.

Enjoy:

On Studio Sparks, Eric Friesen asked listeners for their opinions on his guests, the East Village Opera Company, who came to the CBC studios in Ottawa to sell some records yesterday. Here goes…

They suck. No, that's not quite right, nor fair...

The East Village Opera Company was formed by a couple of Canadians who take opera arias and turn them into “rock” songs, to make them more accessible.

There is a long-standing tradition of popular artists pilfering classical music for tunes, all with varying degrees of success. I don’t mind this. If you can make it work, by all means, pilfer away. The East Village Opera Company does not, and I am afraid they do not even fail badly enough to put them in the category of Florence Foster Jenkins, and therefore worth listening to.

However, their tepid popera stylings (you can listen here) were not what really rankled me. Instead, it was their shameless use of common pop culture tropes about classical music to help sell their records.

The narrative goes something like this:

Mean, conservative classical musicians wouldn’t let them near the sacred bookcase containing the good opera music, so they had to go and find a way to bring this music to the masses, so it would reach out and touch more people, and get more people in the seats of the, for example, sold out Canadian Opera Company season. They're doing the classical world a favour, by making this music more accessible.

Not by singing it in English, of course. Nope, the Puccini arias are in Italian, the native language of rock. To boot, the lead singer’s voice is that of a young Aaron Neville, so you know he’s got that rock edge to his sound.

It got worse. There was their feigned surprise that classical musicians didn't despise them, or try to kick them out of the classical musicians club for raiding the sacred bookcase.

Check out their web site. Don't these guys look edgy, standing around, arms folded, on their East Village stage set, while accompanied by their edgy cremonese cellos?

Go watch the video. I think it sums up this project nicely.

The aria being performed is the very famous cabaletta from Verdi's Rigoletto, La donna è mobile. For those of you who don't speak Italian, what he's singing about is that women are fickle, unpredictable, like feathers in the wind. But you'd never know that watching the video.

The women should be slapping him for what he's singing, and at least that would have been a nod to what the song was about. Instead it's all E-infused 20-somethings clubbing to opera.

Now I know some of you re thinking, "But don't classical musicians do this all the time? Sing this stuff out of context?" Yes, but most classical musicians don't pretend to represent the intentions of dead composers if they were alive and composing today, as this pair did on CBC.

The frontmen for the group went on and on about how they felt that if Mozart were around today, he'd be using microphones and electric guitars. Sure, and he'd be writing his rock songs in Italian, just like everyone else.

Look, I don't doubt the skill or the sincerity of the musicians involved in this project. What I find frustrating is that their marketing sets them up as a bunch of rebels, who somehow got those stodgy old men at Decca, the giant classical music label, to let them record an album.

But here's the rub - I suspect that's exactly what happened. Some record exec took a look at this, and thought, "Hey, there's a whole segment of the population out there who want to look sophisticated but don't want to take the time to learn all the ins and outs of opera. Let's sell them this. They'll think they're getting "culture", and these nice boys are more than willing to be the front for us."

More power to them, because it appears to be working. Go check out the Amazon reviews for the CD.

Reading straight from the marketing copy, this light rock take on opera seems to be a hit for all those people who are frustrated with all the stuffy, boring, traditional approaches to classical music.

Make no mistake, the East Village Opera Company makes classical music fun!

All you have to do to believe this is to forget that the classical music recording industry pushes out these controversial, fun artists with an astonishing regularity that, surprise surprise, mirrors the popular music industry. Given that they're all owned by the same people, this shouldn't come as a surprise.

Or what about all this need to make classical music more accessible? Here we find some twisted logic, a logic many classical music lovers support enthusiastically - the need to "convert" people over to classical music.

Indeed, the East Village Opera Company, while trying to make classical music more "accessible", find their very footing in the proselytizing zeal which grounds the classical music industry.

They are part of an infrastructure which assumes that classical music is in dire need of help, and that if only people got to hear it they would become fanatics.

But how about the possibility that classical music doesn't need any help? Like all other musical genres, not everyone listens to it - do you see folk musicians going out there saying things like this?

And just take a look at the local classical music scene here in Toronto. You can go to a concert at lunch and attend one in the evening nearly every day this month.

In fact, you're spoiled for choice! Or how about, if you took the combined listening audience of CBC Radio 2 (even now) and classical 96.3 FM here in Toronto, classical music has one of the largest market shares in the city?

No one's listening to classical music? HA!

So please, East Village Opera Company, do your thing, just don't sell it as a kind of public service, and just let it be the capitalist music industry confection that it is.

O Soave Fanciulla

There is that time, when one is in their 20's, still drunk in the freshness of adulthood, when every thought seems hard like a diamond, and every passion seems inexhaustable and timeless...listen to this:

The first time I went to see La Boheme was in 1995. I was still a music student in Calgary, and utterly devoted to German opera. Wagner and Strauss and Mozart (I know) represented to me what opera was for, with most italian opera being high on style and low on substance.

So I walked out of the first act, and I ran into one of my music professors. He asked me what I thought, and I said something to the effect that Boheme was beautifully set but the story obvious and not terribly interesting.

My professor, a man whose walls in his home were covered in books and CDs and records, a man, to say the least, of great learning, a consumate scholar, a man with a reputation at the University for being too academic for those in music performance, you know, the real musicians, who just wanted to play, turns to me and says, "Some day you will watch that first act without the eyes of youth, and when you do, you will see what it is you cannot, a sentiment which only comes with age."

Nothing worse can be said to a 20 year old than that they are to young to understand something. To paraphrase Robert Lowell, this comment stuck like a fishbone in my consciouness. My age? How dare he? Me age? I was an adult for crying out loud! It said so on my driver's licence. I could buy beer.

But I forgot. Until 3 months ago, as I sat watching Bravo and the clip above came on. And I sat there, in my home, my kids upstairs, my wife sitting there next to me, and suddenly what he had said made sense. The question I then ask those of you who happen upon this is - do you?

Or if not that one, how about this one?



Perhaps it is that I had not loved like that before, or that I could not love like that yet, but I completely understand what my professor was telling me, and I now understand why Puccini, despite the dramatic flaccidity of his work, still beats out nearly everyone else. I understand why, to many, he is opera.

It is because no one before him ensnared so completely that first moment of true love.

Merry Christmas.

The Unbabbling Bach

The painting says so much about the man, doesn’t it? A character, perhaps a bit of a dandy, and prone to moments of humour taken a fraction too far? A clever twinkle in his eye - and yet…the way the shadow from the brim of his hat obscures his other eye…perhaps it’s just the painter’s story…no…is there more to him?

Of course there is – he’s the eldest son of Bach.

***

According to Eugene Helm in the New Grove Bach Family, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach “was a greatly gifted composer who did not fully set aside his background of contrapuntal training in favour of the new style of the mid-18th Century.”

But – “He led an unstable life and never quite developed his full creative potential.”

I do not know about the latter beyond the biographical details, however, the smattering of his work I have been able to get my hands on demonstrates his remarkable compositional skills. Indeed, of the four sons of J.S. Bach who composed music, I like him the best. If that isn’t a sure sign of genius, I’m not sure what is.

Seriously, his music is quite compelling. So why is there so little of it available? Why does every reference about him talk about him failing to live to his potential, or point to his lack of success?

He has a biography, a thin 31-page work by Martin Falck, a German musicologist who died at 28 years of age, and one of the few scholars to have had access to the recently rediscovered Notenarchiv of the Berlin Sing-Akademie. (This tidbit from the great modern Bach scholar Christoph Wolff in Notes, 58.2 pgs. 259-271)

This little tome by Falck also includes a catalogue of W.F. Bach’s work, securing Falck a sliver of immortality – when citing Bach’s work, his catalogue numbers are used, along with the first initial of his last name, a time-honoured convention in the annals of musicology, rather like naming an axiom or theorem after the mathematician who discovered (or for you constructivists, invented) it.

But why does this massive talent, and J.S. Bach’s son no less, have a short bio and only a handful of journal articles to show for, in a scholarly discipline known for the resurrection and championing of truly mediocre composers?

Put another way, has no one else seen this portrait of him? Can there not be more to the man who sat for this wonderful portrait?

(a sidebar - this was about the best photo I could get of it-

***

I have a pet theory as to why there is so little out there around his life and work.

Despite the quality of his compositions, the history of classical music, which supplies the narratives the thing we call "classical music" relies so heavily upon, disallow W.F. Bach a place in the canon because he didn’t look after his father’s manuscripts.

I recall a story where he supposedly sold sheets of oh say, that missing St. Mark passion, to fishmongers for wrapping the day’s catch! I'm not sure I need convey the anger with which this story was retold.

How can we, we musicians and historians bound to the cult of Bach, or, to the worship of this most Hegelian of histories, perhaps the most consistently Hegelian in all of the fine arts, where music progresses and tonality develops and not despise the man, the son who didn’t look after his father’s treasures?

That smile...is it really a bit of a smirk?

I imply no pettiness on the part of musicologists here, merely the possibility that he’s been overlooked not because of his music, but on account of his actions, actions we can neither explain nor justify.

Or….is there another reason? Something that has nothing to do with his father, and indeed resides in his work? Is it that he was outside the musical styles that emerged in his time? Perhaps, just perhaps, is his style a lost path, a curious synthesis of galant style and classical forms which nonetheless retains counterpoint as an central part of music making?

Was Wilhelm Bach the Beethoven born 60 years too early, at a point in history and the development of musical styles where W.F Bach’s works just don’t make any sense?

I hear some chime in – “Maybe he wasn’t good enough. Are you just trying to pawn some supposedly underrated composer off on us?”

Well, as someone who endures hour after hour of flaccid baroque concerti performed on period instruments on the local commercial classical radio station, the classical marketplace is rarely effective in determining artistic works on their merit. So why not have a listen to him?

Better yet, would it be possible to write a biography of the man? Should I?

***

Or perhaps I’m just really smitten with that painting, that lovely painting, by far the best painting in the Bach family, by the non-existent Wilhelm Weitch (see note for page 134).

Or maybe it’s that we share a name, Wilhelm Friedemann and I….

You see where all this psychologizing gets you? Maybe that’s why we leave these forays into the lives of interesting people up to the Cristoph Wolffs and Maynard Solomons of the world.

Or maybe not. Hell, why not?

Faust at the Canadian Opera Company

I attended last night’s COC production of Faust by Charles Gounod. The omnipresent JohnTerauds of the Toronto Star, who appears to be the last of the classical music review dinosaurs in a major Canadian newspaper, reviewed it unfavourably.

I too was disappointed by the production, although I disagree with him about the production getting in the way – if anything, Nicholas Muni’s production was the only bright spot in an otherwise mediocre effort by the COC. Moreover, I found the balance, both within the orchestra and between the orchestra and the singers, very poor.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin got some fire out of the orchestra, especially during the use of Gounod’s ballet music for Faust as entr'actes, but even then, much of the punch was lost because the lines were not always clear.

As I mentioned, the production itself was very good, with what I would call a kind of burlesque feel, taking burlesque in its historical sense and not its current incarnation. The singers and chorus were costumed firmly in the 19^th Century, but the set itself was spartan and effieciently deployed to support what is a dramatically weak opera.

Can it be that the COC still can’t do two really strong productions at the same time? Seems so, because the reviews for Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk appear to be very positive (I won’t see it until the 15^th).

Let's hope I'm wrong.

***

One of the odd things about seeing Faust is the fact that it was not too long ago when Faust dominated the operatic stage. Why did it fall from favour? Why does something as awful as Tosca or Il Trovatore seem to pack them in but many other fine works are never seen again? Why was Faust so popular to begin with?

These are some of the kinds of questions that preoccupy me, and hopefully you. That is, if I can make reading about them compelling enough. I know I'm not there yet, but I'm looking forward to the task!