Archive | Music

Pseudonymous blogger and political theorist “Miss Self-Important” has an interesting and entertaining post in defense of country music that I thought I’d share. My two favorite passages:

Country music’s virtue is its adherence to the view that music has real emotional power, and that lyrics are part of that power. If a song bothers with lyrics, the lyrics must be coherent. They don’t have to be sophisticated or edgy (in fact, they should probably never be so), but they should assume a language-enabled audience that connects words to music and can be moved … by the combination.

and

The “closedness” argument that country music is about fearing change and clinging to the good ol’ way of living assumes that it’s completely sincere (as angsty pop music is) — it’s really by and for naive rubes who’ve never left Festus, Missourah and are terrified by all the cosmopolitan modernity swirling around them. But country music is much more like Benjamin Franklin at Paris in his fur cap posing as the simple colonial that the French imagined all Americans must be, while securing war loans from them and bagging their wives for good measure. … Country music has in fact heard of and experienced Manhattan and corporate finance and divorce and the importance of whole grains in a healthy diet, and it is not impressed or convinced that these things supersede its own narratives.

British conductor Colin Davis died this past Sunday, age 85.  Davis was an extraordinarily gifted musician – to my ears, the greatest conductor of the last 30 years* (the one possible exception: James Levine).  He holds a special place in my affections because he “taught” me what conductors do, and how important they are.  In ’79 or ’80, my wife and I saw him conduct the Boston Symphony in a performance of Berlioz’ Symphony Fantastique at Tanglewood.  Just coincidentally, 2 weeks earlier, in NYC, I had heard a performance of the same piece by a conductor whose name I won’t reveal — turgid, plodding, and a real snore.  As that was the first time I had ever heard the piece, I (naturally, and stupidly) thought it meant that the piece was turgid, plodding, and a real snore.  Then we heard what Davis and the BSO could do with it.  To this day, it remains the most electrifying orchestral performance I’ve ever heard.  It hit me – that was his instrument! The whole orchestra was his instrument!  He was like a great pianist making a piece come alive, but with an instrument that was 1000 times more complex, with 1000 times more variations in color, and texture, and sound.  He built up a tension over the course of the 40 minutes or so that was damn near unbearable.  I distinctly remember the feeling at the very end – our seats were up towards the front, but somehow you just knew that there were four or five thousand people sitting behind you who were going to erupt the moment the piece was over.  And so it was – it was as though the entire audience had hot pokers applied to their asses at the last chord, every single person in the hall [...]

So over at the New York Times, music critic Anthony Tomassini has completed his excursion through Western “classical” music to come up with his Top Ten composers all time. It’s as silly, and as interesting, as these sorts of exercises usually are — maybe a bit less silly, and more interesting, given that Tomassini gives a good, spirited defense of his choices (while not over-stating the case or denigrating the views of those who disagree with him).

Here’s his final list:

JS Bach
Beethoven
Mozart
Schubert
Debussy

Stravinsky
Brahms
Verdi
Wagner
Bartok

It’s a defensible selection — but it’s not the top ten. No way. Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart in the top three are probably inevitable — a world without any one of them is simply inconceivably dull and lifeless. Filling the next two slots with Schubert and Debussy, though, is mystifying and misguided, to my ears. Schubert probably deserves a place on the list — but not there at the top. Sure, as Tommasini writes, “You have to love the guy, who died at 31, ill, impoverished and neglected except by a circle of friends who were in awe of his genius. For his hundreds of songs alone — including the haunting cycle “Winterreise,” which will never release its tenacious hold on singers and audiences — Schubert is central to our concert life.” Hey, I’m as sorry as the next guy that Schubert died at 31 — as with Mozart, had Schubert lived out his full biblical fourscore and ten we would undoubtedly have been treated to one masterpiece after another, as his later works (the last two symphonies, the late piano sonatas) prefigure breakthroughs to come (that of course never actually came). But it seems wrong to me to give composers credit for the works they didn’t [...]

Well, with all the nonsense and downright crap that somehow catches the wave and makes the 5 million hit mark, surely there’s room for something that’s actually quite magnificent and inspired, like the Bach Goldberg Variations. Go forth and multiply!

[And if you’re interested, the entire performance is available for free download at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/samuelpost ] [...]

In case any of you is looking for something interesting to do tomorrow (Saturday), my son Sam is giving his Master’s Recital up at Northwestern (Lutkin Hall, 330 PM) performing the complete Bach Goldberg Variations. It should be terrific — Sam’s really a wonderful pianist, he’s always had a tremendous affinity for the music of JS Bach, and the Goldberg . . . well, there’s certainly an argument to be made that it is the single greatest work of art in the entire Western canon. You won’t be sorry if you come, I think I can promise you that — [...]

To quote Roger North from the time of the English Civil War, when musicians, facing Puritan disapproval of music in the church and theatre, “chose to fidle at home, than to goe out and be knockt on the head abroad” …

Follow-up to Orin’s post a few days ago asking about our readers’ music rotations …  like reader AT Gavin, I am also highly partial to early bowed music.  I listen to a lot of early viol music and music from the early Baroque.  As I’ve mentioned here, I’m a very bad amateur cellist with a particular love for Baroque.  Anyway, I wanted to thank reader AT Gavin for the recommendation of John Mark Rozendaal’s Breaking the Ground – division music for viol, and a very lovely album.  I myself have been listening intensively to the first couple of volumes of Sainte-Colombe, Concerts a deux violes esgales.   [...]