Instead of Penelope or Fevroniya

I had been planning (for some time) to write on either Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria (one of my favorite favorite operas -- and Wolftrap is putting it on this summer!) or Сказание о невидимом граде Китеже и деве Февронии, Skazaniye o nevidimom grade Kitezhe i deve Fevronii (hee hee! how's that for a long title?), an opera that has long held a deep fascination for me. I am ultimately planning to work on this and other Rimsky operas.

But all of that has been shoved aside. By what, you ask? Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno by Handel. Some time ago, I attended a musicology colloquium with Ellen Harris as guest speaker. She extended the observations and arguments she made in her book Handel as Orpheus and spoke about this early Handel oratorio. I thought the clips she played were absolutely stunning (organ concerto, final scene) but after sniffing around a bit thereafter, forgot about it.

Now (well, to me!), Emmanuelle Haim has recorded it with a stunning quartet of soloists. And there are some videos of recording released that are an enormous amount of fun -- some of them are below. In the quartet voglio tempo, I was struck by all of the singers -- how appropriate Natalie Dessay, Sonia Prina, Pavol Breslik, and Ann Hallenberg are to their roles and to this kind of approach to early music.

Says Haim:

Twenty years ago, everything was concentrated on the reaction against the romantic tradition of interpreting the baroque. Bill is part of that generation: people like him and Reinhard Goebel and Sigiswald Kuijken fought to establish authentic practices of ornamentation and bowing techniques. For them, it was a battle for purity. Now it is over, they have won and students learn in conservatoire both romantic and baroque methods. You can choose whether you hold a violin against your chest or your neck.

This double practice is what interests me, and that's how the players in Le Concert d'Astrée are trained. Most of them are very young and all of them are flexible. My leader also works for the 'normal' orchestra in the opera house in Toulouse, my cellist is a great jazz player, my percussionist is involved in Indian music.

This is what I like -- she still has a historical perspective on performance practice (for instance, instrumentation in baroque operas -- what might work for Handel would not work for Monteverdi, say) but feels free to adapt and adopt without a concern for purity. Musical practice miscegenation perhaps. Anyhow, her recordings both feature so-called baroque specialists and others that are anything but: Susan Graham as Dido, Ian Bostridge as (Monteverdi's) Orfeo and Aeneas, Natalie Dessay as...well as a whole crapton of things. It leads to incredibly vital music-making which is still recognizably historically informed.

--In any case, it got me to thinking about 2 things: (1) what sort of qualities in a voice suit this style of music (keeping in mind that "this style" is perhaps one of the richest and most varied period of classical composition lumped all the hell together)? and (2) holy shit, Ann Hallenberg rocks!

Let's go with #2. The evidence, your honor:

Ann Hallenberg steps in at Zurich for Bartoli:

Stepping into a difficult, untested role as a substitute for perhaps the most famous singer in Europe on a few hours notice, Ann Hallenberg was greeted with polite applause as she walked with Minkowski to their podiums in the pit. And then, somehow, a magical evening commenced.

Hallenberg singing the same role, Piacere:


AH sings Bradamante in the Spinosi recording of Vivaldi's Orlando furioso:

1) Asconderò il mio sdegno


2) Taci, non ti lagnar


3) Se cresce un torrente


4) Io son ne' lacci tuoi

creepy

I just saw two performances of Britten's The Turn of the Screw. The two casts are directed in two different readings of the famously open-ended story by Henry James.

Now very intrigued and will probably do some digging into both opera and story (which I had read, but in hiiigh schooool so long ago).

In preliminary stumblings, I found this, a video version featuring, among others, Helen Donath as the singing voice of the Governess:



Of course, I also have to share more upbeat Donath!

his voice is a little higher than i expected

But I'm excited to see him in person when he comes on his book tour nearby!

Courtesy of Lisa Hirsch both for alerting us about this specific appearance at the big G and the general authors series. Here's Alex Ross's talk:



I also have a couple thoughts based on the observations that others have made regarding the paucity of material dedicated to women composers that Hirsch brought up and made reference to.

Not having purchased the book yet (mi dispiace!), my thoughts are simply preliminary. There are a couple things that strike me as curious. So far as I can tell, the book cover



on its face, makes no distinction about a focus on *western* ("classical") music, despite the book seeming (judging from the Table of Contents) to focus pretty much on this topic exclusively. It's just sort of assumed that it'll be about western music. I understand that the provocative title of "the rest is noise" is meant to segue into Ross's observations that there are many linkages and fewer boundaries between so-called classical music and other "forms" of music in the 20th century than one normally thinks (so his book is about music and not just classical), but in a sense it also seems dismissive of non-western music -- the implication being that "if it's not covered here, it's just noise!"

In a sense, it's this title that makes it sit a little uneasily for me, now that I think about it. Obviously, no tome could possibly cover everything of interest in western music of the 20th century, but I think there is an element of, well, not irresponsibility, exactly -- perhaps insensitivity -- to attaching such a provocative (all-encompassing) title to a book that cannot possibly (even in theory, much less in practice, given length limitations that Ross implicitly alludes to) talk about everything that *isn't* "noise."

On the other hand, the title is pretty damned sexy. "The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century in the West" or "The Rest is Not Western: Listening to the Twentieth Century" just sound castrated. And, I must confess that it didn't really dawn upon me how exclusionary such a title could be until fairly recently (i.e., now).

[To my mind, there are at least two ways to read it. One is to say, all's well and good if the target audience and the author can refrain from repeating what is understood by both parties. (The response being twofold: {abstractly} excluding, or at least de-prioritizing, those who do not understand runs counter to the purported objective of such a book in the first place; and that there is a fine though important distinction between what is implicitly or explicitly understood in a conversation and what is invisible in a conversation -- I would argue that in this case, it seems the latter is more explanatory.) Another (not mutually exclusive) way to read what missing titular implications might mean could be to say that it was not purposeful (and very likely covered in the text quite close to the beginning). [Response being that even just discovered something that just popped up doesn't mean it shouldn't be considered and commensurate action take. Reductive example - just because I didn't know I had a pimple before I looked in the mirror doesn't mean it's invited to stay.]

I mean, it's a small data point because, as I mention, I'm quite sure that the "Western" qualification comes within the first 10 pages, and it's really quite premature to form anything resembling an opinion without considering the entirety of book itself. But a work's title isn't exactly the least important or meaningful of its assets, and underlying implications of "The Rest is Noise" are really quite more impactful than first appears. For instance, I don't think anybody would dream of titling a book "The Rest is Not Fit to Eat: Award-Winning Recipes" and then have the book be about western food. Nor would I dream of buying a book called "The Rest is Superstition: Twentieth Century Chemistry" and have it just be about organic synthesis. What makes it seem less jarring to speak of Music (with a capital M) when we really mean "western music"? It's been interesting to think about it. I have a couple inchoate ideas but no answers.

As far as the women composers point that has been brought up, it does seem a little strange that it would be a deliberate oversight, particularly as juxtaposed against "invisible [male] composers" (and with the pieces that Alex has written about Björk, Gubaidulina {pssst, do they make appearances in his book?}, and his concern with the Vienna Philharmonic's stance on gender).

I don't really have any sort of real opinion on this subject since I have yet to peruse the book and have no real way of knowing (short of reading it myself!) how I would think such a subject is treated. My only observation would that a really classy way of speaking about them would be simply acknowledging the difficulty that women composers have and do experience. Invisibility is an issue, and it seems clear that Alex Ross also has very clear ideas on women composers who are not "justly" neglected.

Hmm. Rainy thoughts on a rainy day. More later, mebbe :)

geeeeekalert!

Do your inner musicologist a favor and visit Alex Ross's, New Yorker's music critic, blog for book-related media and links. Sweeeet.

Voigt in Translation

Capsule review: Hearing Salome in live performance is so different from watching it on video or listening to recordings; this was my first live Salome (which is so weird, because I've seen many videos, my brain remembers these as Salome events even though they're not the same at all). The NSO played with a lugubrious sound, playing with nonchalance and with a curious emphasis on juxtaposing the breathtaking (a gossamer viola tremelo) with the vulgar (a flatulant rising bassoon figure) with unique effects. Also really "heard" for the first time are the beautiful contributions of the harp and celeste -- neither of which I ever noticed in any recording. Must revisit.

DV took a while to warm up to my ears (it took until after the Dance). The sound mixture is still something that I think I'll have to acquire a taste for (listening to her is like the world suddenly cranked up the treble and obliterated the bass equalizer settings), but I can definitely see what the hoopla is about. Everyone was fine, though they put the less principal singers way back in the choir rows, which is weird, since the distance from those singers to the podium is one half the distance from the podium to the first row of the lower balcony in the center. Hence not so audible.

Alan Held was pretty amazing. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a good look at him in action since I was sitting side balcony on the side he was assigned. Why they assigned virtually all of the soloists on this side I will never know, but I got uninterrupted view of DB (who wore a gorgeous, clingy red dress with very flattering ruching and a plunging neckline showing off a sparkly diamond (I'm guessing) necklace).

Leonard Slatkin was amazingly genial and humorous in the Q&A afterwards. The suspicion I had of DV's charm and wonderful personality was given further evidence. However she did mention one thing that got me thinking.

Someone had asked the singers to comment on any famous predecessors in their respective roles that had influenced him. Jane Henschel, the Herodias, related a story about sharing the role with Leonie Rysanek at La Scala (hearty agreement from the other singers). DV then mentioned that she tried to stay away from listening to recordings of other sopranos singing her repertoire, and she mentioned a lot about how human beings are mimics, etc.

This reminded me of a book I was reading a couple weeks ago, Animals in Translation.

The book covers a fair bit of general information about cognition, including certain quirks of the how the human brain works (and interestingly, the author talks about humans having a three-tiered brain, one encompassing the other; at base, we have a reptilian brain which controls very basic functions like breathing, body regulation, etc.; then a mammalian brain, which would include other functions specific to mammals, such as temperature regulation; and finally, the primate brain -- incidentally, it would then follow that we would most likely share more things in common with reptiles than with birds or fish). One of the bigger quirks is something called inattentional blindness. So far as I understand it, the human brain is primed to "expect" certain things as part of a process. Anything not related to this is screened out from consciousness. It's like our conscious thought is acting like CEO of a company (I know, really tired analogy) and any information that reaches the CEO has to be pre-screened by a bunch of different underlings before finally making it there. The classic study involved a bunch of people asked to watch a basketball game. They were told they were going to have to answer questions about scoring or some such, hence putting their focus on the game. Afterwards, all of them were asked if they saw anything unusual -- the unusual incident being a woman dressed in a full gorilla suit walking into the foreground, batting her chest, and then walking out. Very few people mentioned anything. There are further studies that the author of Animals in Translation (Temple Grandin) mentions that suggest that although the consciousness might not have "seen" things, the body certainly did.

This, then, begs the question of just how much of human perceptual limitations are because of this inattentional blindness and how much of it is because we actually can't hear/smell/taste/feel something? Grandin's main theme is comparing brain functions of so-called normal humans (who exhibit a certain level of frontal lobe activity) with austistic humans (who exhibit lower levels and/or different kinds of frontal lobe activity) and then with mammals (who, having smaller frontal lobes, have much lower frontal lobe activity), drawing on her own experience as an autistic woman to tie it all together. It's not a clear-cut theme, and she doesn't pretend it is (it's a really subtle and interesting read -- recommended), but it does make one wonder about certain things about human brains placing limits that the body itself doesn't have.

How does this relate to DV's comment? Well, assuming that the brain is sticky and we are mimics -- unless we isolate ourselves into crazy iron lungs and never encounter anybody, there's no such thing as a "pure" me or a "pure" you. It's the same question of trying to hear a piece with "ears of the 18th century." It just can't be done. Things that you have heard cannot be unheard. One of my favorite analogies for irreversible thermodynamic processes applies here: "It's like baking bread. You can't exactly undo it." Speaking of, I just baked a transcendent-smelling loaf of whole wheat. mmmmm can't wait for tomorrow to taste it!

Wait, where was I? Oh yeah -- so then if it is impossible to keep oneself "pure?" What does trying to avoid listening to recordings or other singers of your repertoire really accomplish? Note, this is only partly rhetorical.

Obviously, from a mechanistic standpoint, one must find how one's own voice works and develop that. I would think that such stylistic self-knowledge would be somewhat self-evident. I think that once there is an established sense of being, one can "safely" listen to many different interpretations -- the more the better. I could never imagine a chef saying he would never again eat anything he didn't cook for fear it would screw up his cooking. Or that mathematicians/scientists would not bother learning about anything someone else was studying.

I mean, I get the Foucaldian implications of ascribing to a certain thought-pattern and thereby accepting its limitations as well as its benefits. But since that's going to be the case regardless of what you decide to do, the least one should do is expand the choices? I dunno. Perhaps an understanding of this listening-phobia will come to me later.

But for now, have some kawaii! Renji sez: Relax!

MIT rules

It all started when I was living in NYC and was having coffee in the library (aka, any of the bookstores that grace the city's streets). I had sat down to flip through the book Handel as Orpheus, by one Ellen T. Harris, former Associate Provost for the Arts at MIT. Eventually that led to google searches which brought up a talk given by Harris on her book, which is certainly a good taste of what is contained in her book (see the below realplayer window). I mean, MIT isn't exactly a place that I think of when classical music (or really, music at all), certainly not from an academic standpoint, but after consideration, it didn't seem all that strange. At school, the chemistry teachers that I had were all extremely vital people with pretty diverse interests -- it just so happened that the one interest that all the other ones seemed to connect to, either obliquely or more directly, happened to be a science.

As an aside, one of the most stunning classes I took in college was an organic chemistry course that traced the development of organic chemistry as a discipline, including the multiple revisions of chemical bonds, etc. This approach definitely required close attention and note-taking (it wasn't rare that 90% of the class was covering and learning in detail the ramifications and conclusions resulting from erroneous hypotheses/understandings, so if you missed the reversal into current accepted theory, you could have committed to memory something terribly terribly wrong), but it emphasized several things:

1. that each step that seems so rote in the classroom is actually the work of many people for many years folded into what theorist Bruno Latour calls "a black box" (in his great book Science in Action, also a link to mit, hee!); and


2. that even though these scientists made erroneous conclusions, the process by which they arrived at these conclusions based on the evidence they had at hand was sound, and this process of logic, experimentation, and thought was the scientific method at work and would stand us in good stead

However, it wasn't until following a link from Joyce DiDonato's website that I discovered some even more awesome happenings at MIT with respect to music. I don't even know what to call Tod Machover but the links following from his webpage link to some really interesting musical project, only some of which will be laid out here.

Jeux Deux I first mis-read as Jeau d'Eaux, perhaps a play on Ravel's scintillating piano piece.

The actual Jeux Deux is pretty cool, though the premise sounds rather odd at first. The piece is for hyperpiano (so far as I can tell, a Yamaha Disklavier) and orchestra. What's different about this is what happens to the Disklavier in performance; software has been written to cause the Disklavier to respond to the player in realtime. According to the website:

Jeux Deux utilizes a number of novel approaches to live interaction using a Yamaha Disklavier. All MIDI data generated by the player is transformed with custom software written in MAX/MSP to accompany and augment the live piano playing. Among the various processes are:

* real-time transposition varying by range
* real-time aleatoric improvisation based on live piano parameterization
* pre-composed sequence triggering
* "pebble in a bucket": single notes cause waves to 'splash' out from the center
* textural "blobs" of notes generated using gaussian distributions
* "knob blob": a textural blob of notes generated from knobs which are turned on a MIDI controller to alter range, distribution, speed, and velocity of notes


MIDI data and mode changes are transmitted separately via local area network using Open Sound Control to the graphics computer which generates live visualization of the music being played. This produces images that can accurately "notate" in real-time the interaction between the pianist and the notes being played by the Disklavier (hence the title Jeux Deux, a "game of two").

Here's a very short video clip of a performance of Jeux Deux:


so, ya...MIT rules!