Here’s my way of making up for posting the Jack Black video yesterday. The Concertgebouw has a wonderful collection of concert footage and documentaries available on-demand for free at their website. Haitink, Chailly, Jansons, van Beinum and Megelberg.
From a violinist friend- a professor at a medium-sized music school in Canada who organized a beginning-of-year chamber concert to open the season at her university (for which she received no extra pay whatsoever).
“Ken–I did get your message today, I have been thinking all this time to call you. I have had 5 guests here to attend to, one of which didn’t get his cello until after the concert —the airline had lost it. The two other guests had to leave their instruments in England and we had to find instruments here…. I feel just too burned out -if I want to do a good job on Shostakovich and the gypsies–Ken, I can’t even describe my state of mental condition right now!!!!!
I just had lunch last week with the director of one of the top chamber orchestras in the country, and he revealed to me that he was, himself, having to rent and drive a truck with all the instruments in it for their tour to Ireland, as there was absolutely no money in the tour budget to hire a professional driver, and all the other staff had to travel with the musicians to handle hotels and travel.
Then this, as quoted in the Guardian-
“A Department for Transport spokesman said: “We keep security under review. Musicians are still subject to the same restrictions as other passengers. We would advise musicians to contact specialist handling companies.””
Specialist handling companies? Does he know what that costs? Does he know that, even packed in custom made flight cases, an instrument dropped from the hold will be destroyed forever? Has he ever seen a 375 year-old instrument that has been mangled in shipment? Does he know that for most string players, their violin is the only really valuable thing they own?
This is not about whether top soloists have to make other travel arrangements- their employers have resources to help them do that, although it is a colossal waste of money that could be better spent on music and education. This is about whether meat-and-potatoes, local chamber music projects survive, it is about whether chamber orchestras survive, it is about whether young musicians can study abroad, it is about whether up-and-coming chamber ensembles can enter international competitions, it is about whether young professionals can take auditions, and it is about whether folk musicians, classical freelancers and session players can keep their kids in school.
This just in- I’ve just heard that one of the UK’s full time orchestras has been warned that they may have to leave all their instruments in quarantine for five days when they return from their US tour this year.
I am not making this up……
I wonder- how many tourists and business travelers have to quarantine their suitcases?
Remember, however—-
“Musicians are still subject to the same restrictions as other passengers”
And none of it makes anyone, anywhere any safer. Surely a laptop is a bigger risk than a violin- there are things on it and in it that can blow up. How does the size or shape of an object make it a security risk? Surely it is the nature of the object and the mind-set of the passenger that makes it a risk.
What next: no passengers who can’t fit in a “size-wise” box? Too tall? Too Fat? Long Legs?
“Sorry: for security reasons, we are only accepting passengers on flights out of the UK who are no more than 5’8” tall and 32” wide- and tall or fat passengers are still subject to the same restrictions as everyone else. We advise the un-averagely shapen to contact specialist handling companies.”
We’re hearing a lot of reports that there might be some changes in UK transport policy, but “might be” and “have been” are not the same thing.
KW
More at-
Jessica Duchen
Oboeinsight
Norman Lebrecht (writing on Sep 13, 2006)
Remember this-
“Business people had already succeeded in easing restrictions on carrying laptops and duty-free items had been exempted because of the potential financial losses involved, he said. But the monetary clout of musicians may not have been enough to have had an impact.”
Louise Jury in the Independent, Sep 11, 2006”
UPDATE- Promising news in the Guardian, but let’s wait to see the new regulations before we plan a parade. Fingers crossed.
UPDATE- Excellent piece from Salon
c. 2006 Kenneth Woods
I’m actually not a fan of commercials that make classical music out to be a joke, but this is for a very good cause….
Every time I go to Portland, Oregon I learn something about music.
One of my oldest friends, who I stay with when I’m there, is a recording engineer and producer. Since I walked away from rock n’ roll in 1991 when my last band broke up, I’ve largely stopped listening to it. Visiting Sean gives me a chance to hear new bands as they work in his studio, or to go catch live shows around Portland.
What absolutely amazes me every time I am there is the mind-blowing, heart-stopping, thrilling array of great music that is being made in Portland. You can’t even begin to imagine the range of styles, sounds and attitudes. There is a fine songwriter working in every coffee shop in Portland, and there are a LOT of coffee shops in Portland. There are contemporary rockabilly groups, goth acts, space metal bands, punks, funksters.
There is a psychedelic marching band in Portland that has to be one of the great live acts on the planet.
All of these groups are out there: making CDs, doing shows, working hard. They’ve got websites, they’re on MySpace and probably on YouTube by now. However, you, dear reader, will almost certainly never hear them (unless you hear about them from me). They will not be coming to Des Moines or Swindon on tour. They will not be on MTV or Top of the Pops (RIP). There will not be documentaries on them on VH1. They won’t be recommended on Itunes or Yahoo. I will never hear the great bands in Milwaukee or Cleveland or Glasgow unless I make some hip friends in those towns.
The reason for this is simple, (and forgive me sounding like an old grouch):
The very qualities that make them great to listen to and watch are the same qualities that absolutely guarantee that no corporate radio station will ever play them, no record company will ever sign them, and no mass media market will ever recognize them.
They are too creative, too quirky, too bold, too interesting to make them appeal to the huge corporate oligarchies that decide every day what Joe Public will get to see and hear.
I say all this because I just finished reading the latest chapter of Greg Sandow’s book, which is a must read for everyone who cares about music. The synopsis of Part II of the book is-
“Classical music and popular culture: why we have to embrace popular culture, and not pretend that classical music can be a refuge from it.”
What is popular culture? Is it 3 Leg Torso, Morgan Grace and Gabiel Kahane (Jeremy Denk, you changed my life today), or is it Britney Spears, X Factor and American Idol?
Mr. Sandow makes a number of references to Bob Dylan, but, let’s face it, if Dylan * was the same genius now but 24 years old an unknown, he’d be looking for a gig at Stumptown Coffee.
Most of the iconic musical genius’s of rock n’ roll that we know about come from at least 30 years ago. “Pop music” is now a music-free zone. There’s no more music in a modern pop song than their is cheese on a McDonalds “cheese”burger. Jimi Hendrix wouldn’t make it now- we like our black guys “smacking bitches” over samples of 40 year-old drumbeats in popular music, not composing, singing and playing like no one else who’s ever lived. Remember, even Prince (wo’s been around about 28 years now) had to walk away from his record company to make the music he wanted. All well and good when you’ve millions in the bank to start your own studio and record company, otherwise, I hear they’re hiring at the Minneapolis Starbucks, Mr. Prince- how’s your foaming??? Could Sgt. Pepper’s be made today? Would Velvet Underground get signed? The Stones were always too ugly to make it today- they definitely wouldn’t get no satisfaction out of Polymer Records. Even the Sex Pistols were 30 years ago, and their’s was primarily a cultural, not a musical, revolution.
The good news, is that we can learn a lot from our brothers and sisters who are out there making good music in the rock and roll world. At least until the big phone companies start to cut off access to the internet to all but the big spenders, the web is a powerful tool, and independent artists have made great use of it. Blogs, MySpace and YouTube all offer the private artist a variety of tools to get their work seen and heard who don’t have the cash to bribe their way onto mainstream radio playlists (trust me, payola is alive and well like never before). People are using those tools to spread the word about bands they like every day, and we should be doing the same. You may not get onto big-time FM Radio, but you can get famous- Pink Martini did (disclosure- their trombonist is a regular conducting student at the Rose City International Conductor’s Workshop, everyone has the bug now!).*
Greg is right- we cannot continue to think that classical music can be a refuge from pop culture, but it can, and should, be an alternative to the wrong kind of pop culture. Right now, classical organizations are so terribly ham-fisted and completely un-hip that they’re embracing all the very worst characteristics of McDonaldized, mass-marketed, pre-fab, focus-group-tested, corporate garbage culture. Classical promoters and record companies are out there looking for singers and violinists who look like Paris Hilton. We’re ditching anyone with gray hair. The fat lady has sung when it comes to fat ladies singing. Classical music is in danger of becoming easy listening music with sexy album covers.
I’m all for sex, but does anyone really think Paris Hilton is sexy? Does anyone really think that boy bands are cool? Why are we looking to the unsexy and the uncool for ideas about how to be sexy and cool? Let’s face it, most of our classical sex symbols wouldn’t cut it as such in any other field (surely there is more to sexy in the real world than: f”emale, dresses like a drunk, slutty debutante and is under 45″), but that’s changing as classical record companies start paying for artist’s breast enhancements as a condition of their record deals (yes, it has been done).
The thing is, people who listen to Top 40 radio WILL NEVER, EVER LISTEN to classical music, or anything else without a beat, a video, tits and lyrics about summer vacation.
There is a generation of hip, intelligent, curious listeners out there who we’re not getting, but if we start looking as fake and empty as most pop culture, they’ll go elsewhere. They want things that are thorny, weird, challenging. They like wrinkly old dudes and funny looking chicks. What they want is a connection, what they want is immediacy, what they want is something that the performer really believes in. There are audiences out there looking for honesty- we abandon them and it at our peril.
I happen to believe that a well played Beethoven sonata can be just as edgy, exciting, fresh and relevant as a Bad Brains concert or a Xenakis piece. We shouldn’t be giving in to the worst of corportate pop culture, but charging it head on. The mass media reports the financial problems of major record companies as if that were a sign that music was no longer popular. When record companies stopped selling music, and started selling image, lifestyle and dance, people went elsewhere for music. Let the majors die (I’m not talking about classical labels, but the conglomerates that buy them up)- surely no sane person wants three companies deciding the musical taste of the whole world. When classical radio became “music to fall asleep at the wheel by”, people who like classical music stopped listening.
People like music. Give them music.
We ought to be hurling verbal hand grenades into boyband stadium concerts, just as Boulez once told us to blow up the opera houses. ***
c. 2006 Kenneth Woods
* I think one is actually hard pressed to make the case that Bob Dylan is a musical genius. He’s a singing poet, and the word is the thing with him- his musical vocabulary and his literary one can’t really be compared
** Bad news, though, is that, if you are an independent rock n roll artists, you can spread the word and get your music known, and have an impact, but you can’t make a living, you can’t get health care, you can’t put your kids through school and you can’t buy a house. Unless you are with a major label, you’d better have a day job. Coming tomorrow- “Classical music- the art form, will survive, but will classical music- the profession, survive? Ask a jazz musician.”
*** Just a note. This is my 123rd entry, and marks the first ever usage of the asterisk on A View from the Podium. Forgive me if I got carried away with it. Chill the champagne, Martha.
Not sure why I like this so much, but I do. Big file, allow time to download
From Alex Ross of the New Yorker on conductor salaries past and present-
“Eyebrows have been raised over recent reports that James Levine receives a salary of $1.6 from the Boston Symphony and $1.9 million from the Met, and that Lorin Maazel gets $2.6 million from the New York Philharmonic. Excessive or no, salaries on this scale are nothing new. Not long ago Cornell University Press published Gustav Mahler: Letters to His Wife, in Antony Beaumont’s meticulous translation, and I found there a detail that I hadn’t noticed in previous Mahler tomes: in March 1911, even as his health went in fatal decline, GM signed a new contract at the New York Philharmonic for ninety concerts at a fee of $90,000. I ran that through the inflation calculator and came up with the figure of $1.8 million in today’s money. Not bad for a man who thought his time had not yet come”
The interesting comparisons would be to see what the Philharmonic salary would have been back then, and to see what other conductors at the time were making.
Better yet- can we find out what the head of Standard Oil or one of the big railway companies was making then?
Even better- What was the Philharmonic’s Executive Director making in 1911?????
I’ve written before about the fact that, compared to the top people in other fields, elite classical musicians seem terribly underpaid. Has this always been the case, even when classical music was a more central part of the culture? By the way, 90 concerts is a lot of concerts. Just at a guess, if Lorin Maazel does 15 weeks a year at the Philharmonic, and does triples every time, that’s still two years, which means Maazel would be making 5.2 million to Mahler’s $1.8 million, or $20k per concert for Mahler compared to $58k/concert for Maazel. Remember, that’s assuming that Maazel does 90 performances with the Philharmonic over 2 years. Note that those are fees per concert, not per week, and that these are only complete and total guesses, and that I still think Mr. Maazel deserves everything he makes and more. (As a matter of personal policy, I don’t believe there are any underpaid decent musicians out there)
What does Peyton Manning make per game? (Answer- about a million dollars per game in 2003) Per touchdown?($551,724 per touchdown in 2003) How about per completed pass? ($42,215 per completion in 2003). And he is one of the most prolific and durable players at his positions- consider other top players who miss 4-8 games a year for similar money… I think announcers should have to announce what a player made every time he threw a pass or fumbled or made a tackle. “Nice tackle from Junior Seau coming across the middle. Last year, Junior made $80k per tackle, so he’s feeling great about that.”
Did you know the Washington Redskins paid 7.4 million dollars per game in salary in 2004 and went only 6 wins 10 losses on the year. That’s 19.7 million dollars per win, by the way, not counting the coaches or administration.
I doubt many, if any, music directors of top 10 American orchestras would do a concert at the Philharmonic for $20k.
UPDATE- Alex Ross has followed up on my comparison, pointing out-
“Indeed, classical music is very small potatoes compared to the remainder of the American military-industrial-cultural complex. By the way, the person in charge of the Philharmonic in 1911 was Mary R. Sheldon, the wife of the treasurer of the Republican National Committee.”
I’m guessing (hoping) Ms Sheldon was a volunteer. Alex?
Copyrighted material is reproduced here without profit for educational purposes only and will be removed on request.
c. 2006 Kenneth Woods
“Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put in to it.”
Tom Lehrer, 1963
From the Well-Tempered Blog-
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Performance Today Gets A New Home This really sad in way. I’m glad Minn. Public Radio will take on “Performance Today”, the large context is pretty depressing.”National Public Radio said it will end production and distribution of “Performance Today,” the most popular classical music program on the air, and eliminate 11 jobs in its Washington headquarters as a result.”and “The move is another sign of classical music’s diminished role at NPR and its affiliated stations.
Many public stations, including WETA-FM (90.9) locally, have dropped daily classical programming, including “Performance Today,” in favor of news and talk programs.” Read the rest here.
And more here:
“In recent years many US public radio stations have been reducing airtime for classical music or eliminating it from their schedules altogether in favor of news, features and talk programs. This trend has alarmed classical music lovers, but the stations generally report that their listenership increases in the wake of such changes.”
Posted by Bart Collins at 9:06 AM Labels: classical music, NPR, radio
So depressing. So depressing. So depressing. So depressing.
It was such an unpopular show that NPR made this claim on their website–
“Performance Today is America’s most-listened-to classical music radio program, reaching 1 million listeners on 230 stations around the country.”
Yes, it had to go. Wasn’t worth the investment.
Perhaps, just perhaps, if some of those public radio stations had actually been playing GOOD music that was classical (I’m speaking of local, morning-concert-type shows, not P.T.), instead of god-awful five minute extracts of baroque oboe concerti, and if their on-air hosts had spoken like sane people, and been able to pronounce the names of the pieces, their classical programs would have been more popular, instead of the tedious laughing stock they became over the last 20 years. When the type of person who least wants to listen to your classical programming is anyone who likes or knows anything about classical music, you have a problem.
Why have public radio stations spent 20 years trying to attract people who like elevator music instead of trying to attract PEOPLE WHO LIKE MUSIC!!!!!!!!?????????
Performance today used to be a great, great show. Fred Child’s team had worked hard to bring it back to those heights, but the content hasn’t ever returned to what it once was. Now our national public broadcaster has washed their hands of it completely. All this so we can have more inane travel and cooking shows. Great… How do the trustees of public broadcasting live with themselves?
When the organizations who are supposed to be agents of enlightenment instead become servants of the greater stupidity, we know times are bad.
What do we do when Minnesota joins Canada?
So depressing. So depressing. So depressing. So depressing. So depressing…….
Update- Question: Do you think the folks at the BBC are paying attention to all this?
c. 2006 Kenneth Woods
I was please to see that Patrick Smith at the Penitent Wagnerite picked up on my thread about Mahler scores as conducting lessons with this pseudo-rebuttal.
I’m not sure, however, that he and I are really talking about the same thing, as I’m not at all concerned with how benign his state of mind was towards other conductors when he wrote his works. Mahler understood full well that the craft of conducting as it existed in his day was not sufficiently sophisticated to allow conductors to realize his musical intentions. He’s not alone in this, as composers before and since have often written for the next generation of musicians (Beethoven’s remark to the effect “I don’t give a damn about your violin” when told a passage he’d written was unplayable on the instrument comes to mind. He knew full well that it was playable). Mahler himself said that it would take conductors a generation to figure out how to conduct some of his mixed meter passages, such as the in the Scherzo of the Sixth Symphony, and the second movement of the Tenth, and he was right. For Mahler, the “instruction manual” approach to notation was the only way forward.
All credit to him then that he had the expertise to pull it off. His experience as a performing musician shines through on every page. Though his music makes tremendous demands on players and conductors, it is always playable, and that which he suggests always works unless the acoustics of the performing space get in the way. In fact, Mahler himself has prepared us for even this eventuality- we can look at his various stages of revision and retouching and match them up to the performing space that he was working in when he made them. A study of the different versions of the Fourth, for instance, is a fantastic primer in how do deal with wetter or drier or muddier spaces.
Not every composer who set out to do this has been able to. Schoenberg’s Pelleas and Melisande, a piece I adore, looks very much like a Mahler symphony on the page, and his scores are just as carefully notated as Mahler’s. However, although the music is wonderful, the orchestration, though colourful, dramatic and original, is not nearly as professional as Mahler’s. I’ve conducted and covered the P&M, and there are few works I’ve done where one listens to the piece being rehearsed in the hall by a good orchestra and ends up with pages and pages of balance notes. His scores must be read as Sibelius’- that is, as how he wants it to sound rather than as what you are really supposed to do at every moment.
A similar comparison can be made between the two great French composers, Ravel and Debussy. Both had unparalleled creativity in their writing for orchestra, but Ravel had more skill. By and large, Ravel’s orchestral works sound as written when they are played as written, but Debussy’s often don’t.
It is a fact that the instruction manual approach to orchestration has become the norm in the 20th Century, but though composers like Schoenberg aspire to it, we must sometimes recognize that, acoustics and physics being what they are, it won’t always sound in a room like it sounds in your head when you look at the page without help.
Certainly, studying scores is what makes conductors better at what we do, but studying the scores of one of the great conductors is doubly illuminating. Established conductors will often loan their own copy of a given work to a younger colleague-studying another conductor’s analysis and markings is very helpful. Studying Mahler’s music not only can make a conductor a better musician, it makes you a better conductor, because you’re not just learning the symphony by Mahler the composer, you’re looking at the performing notes of Mahler the conductor. I’m not assigning papal infalibility to Mahler or Ravel, there’s always a harmonic or a bowing in any score that doesn’t work as notated. It’s not that they knew everything that could be known about the orchestra, just that they knew more than anyone else.
The one thing in Patrick’s piece I completely disagree with is the following-
“Mahler might have written conducting masterclasses into his scores, but don’t confuse general conducting advice for “here’s how to conduct my works so they sound like I wanted.””
I would actually suggest the hypothetical quote from Mahler should read, and would read if we could ask him, “here’s how to perform my works so they sound like the way I conceived them.” That includes conducting, and that’s a promise that many other composers of genius couldn’t make.
UPDATE- More from Patrick Smith here
c. 2006 Kenneth Woods
Thoughts on Shostakovich and interpretation from his collaborator and compatriot, Kyrill Kondrashin-
The Interior Shostakovich
Statement by Kyrill Kondrashin
read at a symposium held
at Bucknell University, New York
9th September 1980
Translated by Antonina W. Bouis
There are two types of symphonic music. In one type, programme music, the content lies “on the surface.” In order to convey the content to the audience, the conductor must somehow add the music to a known plot. As a rule, the performer and the audience have less trouble orienting themselves in such music. Music written by the rules of “pure” symphonic composition is another matter. It is felt that such music cannot be “deciphered” verbally, and it elicits individual associations in each listener. Does that mean that in this case the interpreter must refuse to search for a biographical subtext and merely follow the metamorphoses of pure musical forms?I am an adherent of connecting musical images with events from life. Not every work can be “decoded” in detail, of course, but I feel that a conductor can better sense the form and significance of a work if he feels, behind the movements of musical thought, emotions and feelings that can be put into words. Sometimes he even finds a programmed logic that is close to a plot. This also helps him to read more quickly the appropriate emotional state for the concert he is about to conduct.
Naturally, the performer can only speak for himself and cannot pretend to have a literal solution of the composer’s intention. But without question, the richer the interpreter’s creative intuition, the closer his reading will be to the thoughts and feelings of the composer; similarly, the stronger the interpreter’s hypnotic suggestion, the closer the associations of the orchestra and audience will be to his vision – and thereby the emotional effect, born of the spiritual collaboration between performer and audience, will be more powerful.
The work of D. D. Shostakovich is inseparable from the events of his life. That is why, until now, it spoke more to the hearts of audiences in his homeland than outside it. But we may now speak of a renaissance of Shostakovich in the West, since the facts of his life have become known here as well and have forced people to look at his music with new eyes.
I have had the opportunity to conduct all fifteen of Shostakovich’s symphonies. Some of them can be called programme music. This includes, first of all, the works that incorporate a chorus or solo singers. In these, Shostakovich’s music strives to convey the meaning of the poetry, even though it often conceals poetry that is not very good (or poorly translated) and says much more to the listener than the sung text. Two symphonies, the Eleventh and Twelfth, have titles given by the composer: “The 1905″ and “The 1917.” (The “Leningrad” subtitle of the Seventh was not the composer’s.) Here, the music describes events well-known to the listener – yet even these symphonies are associative as well as illustrative; that is, they throw out a bridge between historical events and the present.
The majority of Shostakovich’s symphonies do not have titles and at first glance appear to be plotless. Nevertheless, contemporaries associate each of his symphonies with a specific period in the life of the composer. And this allows the listener to transform the development of musical thought into emotions close to the human heart and into direct plot situations.
I had the good fortune to conduct the première of the Fourth and Thirteenth symphonies, The Execution of Stepan Razin, and the Second Violin Concerto (with David Oistrakh). I met Shostakovich many times and we spoke of music and various problems. He was seven years my senior – an enormous gap when you are young, and inconsequential when you are over fifty. I worked in Leningrad when Shostakovich lived there, and then in Moscow, where the composer moved after the war. The historical cataclysms that gave life to Shostakovich’s music passed before my eyes as well, and they were part of my life, too.
Several of his symphonies elicited such vivid associations with our reality that I developed them to full programme detail. Dmitri Dmitryevich knew about my “decodings”. He himself did not like to discuss the subtext of his music and usually said nothing, although he did not contradict me either. Since he was usually pleased with my performances, I believe he had no objection to such an approach to his music.
It was with the greatest agitation that I read Shostakovich’s memoirs, prepared by Solomon Volkov. Much of what comes as a surprise to the Western reader was not a surprise for me. I knew many things and guessed many others; but there were new things in it even for me, things that made me look at some of his works differently.
This will probably lead to a re-evaluation of some of my interpretive concepts, since there is a definite connection between a performing interpretation of music and what we know about the composer’s inner motives and reasons. A striking confirmation of this position is the music of the great symphonic composer of the twentieth century, Dmitri Dmitryevich Shostakovich.
Kyrill Kondrashin
1914 – 1981copyrighted material is reproduced here without profit for educational purposes, and will be withdrawn on request
I’m afraid I was otherwise occupied with KCYO when Tim Magnan wrote this piece on the art of conducting. Highly recommended.
He’s quite right about the importance of the DVD revolution in helping us to better understand the working habits of many historically important conductors. Interestingly, both Karajan and Bernstein were absolutely convinced that classical music on film was going to be a hugely important part of their legacy. They both put an enormous amount of time and effort, not to mention resources, into making sure that their musical legacy was captured on film. It’s taken a long time, but DVD has finally made these archives accessible and attractive.
A conductor is, by absolute definition, a student. We study for a living- that is our work. As a result, if we have any sense at all and any time whatsoever, we all try to go to concerts whenever possible. Of course, my favorite venue for music is the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, primarily because the listening atmosphere at its best is so intense. There really is nothing like the sound of 7,000 people making no sound at all, especially if over 1000 of them are standing the entire time.
There were moments of rapt silence at both the proms I went to this week, but also some moments of total chaos. It’s been a good season for chaos at the proms- the Minnesota Orchestra’s fantastic performance was nearly overshadowed by some lunatic cheering (screaming at, really) piano soloist Llyr Williams in Welsh just seconds before Osmo Vanska started the introduction to the Beethoven 3rd Piano Concerto. He’s lucky he got out alive. Later that evening, in the third movement of an otherwise stunning Mahler 5, Osmo Vanska’s entier “apparatus just exploded!” to use the description of one of the members of the orchestra. Sure enough, his suspenders, cummerbund and all that came completely unglued at the end of the scherzo, and he had to employ the principal second to get everything reattaced on national TV. What a tribute to his professionalism and artistry that he turned around and did the most sublime Adagietto imaginable after that. That’s the proms- chaos and artistry side-by-side.
This Tuesday I went (promming) to see the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Tadaaki Otaka perform the Shostakovich First Cello Concerto (with Ha Na Chang) and the Rachmaninov Second Symphony. Given that it was the Rachmaninov on the program, it was no surprise to see a large contingent from the Kent County Youth Orchestra coming out just three days after we’d done it together. There was plenty of chaos in the arena that night- a woman immediately behind me had such a bad coughing fit in the slow movement of the Shostakovich that there was a near riot of prommers shoving cough drops at her. For some reason, however, she refused the first seven or eight, and it was only when a very nurturing-looking woman offered a second time that the woman accepted, and immediately stopped coughing. The second half was also chaotic- in the slow movement of the Rachmaninov (mayhem always breaks out in slow movements) two women within about 9 feet of me fainted within 45 seconds of one another. It’s quite a thing when someone faints in a crowd of 1000 people crammed in together, standing nose-to-neckbone. You can see their eyes glaze over and their legs go soft, but they don’t fall down because their packed in so tight. People quickly realize someone has fainted, but they’re not sure who it is, so they all just shift their weight a bit to see who starts falling. Anyway, between the coughing and the fainting, we were all concerned there might be some kind of super-B.O, at work, and everyone kept sneaking little sniffs of their pits to be sure they weren’t the cause. Hope the TV cameras caught some of that.
The other concert I made it to was the following evening, with Bernard Haitink conducting Mahler 2 with the BBC Symphony, BBC Symphony Chorus and London Symphony Chorus. Given that this whole entry began with the discussion of legendary conductors on film, it’s worth mentioning that Haitink is a legend, and there are plenty of great films of him out there, and rightly so. Fortunately for him, he is not yet a “Great Conductor of the Past,” but not for lack of ability, only mortality. I think if I had to show a conducting student a film of one conductor who I thought had the most perfect and complete technique, I would show them Haitink. I’d marked this date in my calendar many months before as the one concert all summer I was determined to go to, and I wasn’t the only one. It had been sold out for months and months, and when I arrived in the promming line at 3 PM, the line was already well around the block. It’s quite a thing for me to give up a day at home to stand in line 4 ½ hours to see a concert, but I had good reason. For all the DVDs and broadcasts I’ve seen, this was, believe it or not, the first time I had gotten to see the great man in person. Stop laughing all you Bostonians and Londoners. It’s not my fault he never came to Cincinnati.
All in all, it was quite a two nights. As regular readers will notice, the repertoire was very much up my alley, and those two great 2nd symphonies have been a big part of my life this year. It’s a funny thing watching someone conduct a work you’ve just done, especially one you’ve invested a great deal of yourself in. It does sound like a complete cliché, but studying, preparing, rehearsing and performing a huge piece like Mahler 2 or Rach 2 is a bit like having a wildly passionate love affair- it is that consuming. There are, of course, those transformative moments that are blindingly obvious- I think everyone who’s heard Mahler 2 would guess that conducting the final “Auferstehen” is outrageously fun- but there are other pleasures that are more personal, such as tiny discoveries in the notation. One realizes that the composer has actually placed the crescendo on the second note of the slur, not the first as you’ve always heard it. Suddenly, heard as really written, the passage in question has an immediacy and a pathos you’d never recognized. Just as in human relationships, it is the intimate discoveries that mean the most.
How funny it feels then when, only three nights later, you see another conductor making those same discoveries. “That bastard! He stole my little crescendo-y bit! This music is easy, and I don’t mean technically easy,” one might exclaim, as it yields its innermost secrets to another conductor. Yes, if you are lucky, and you study hard, you find a connection to the work that is all your own, and that will reflect your unique relationship with the piece, but that is a human relationship, not a musical relationship. Even if you were the first performer to notice this or that, someone else will either find it themselves, or steal it from you later. When you are, to continue the silly metaphor, in the throws of passion with the work, you may begin to feel that every cue, every balance, every nuance is part of this unique connection. In fact, music is a prolific mistress, and almost all those moments are there to be shared by others, and that’s a good thing, too. Knowing a work like the Rachmaninov well can only make you love listening to it more, especially in Tadaaki’s hands, and what better way to listen to it than played by your wife and your friends and surrounded by your student colleagues who are all remembering the same “other” performance you are.
The next night I was back in Cardiff, watching the Royal Philharmonic play Shostakovich 10 on TV. I had a very kind email this morning from a musician in KCYO that somehow hit perfectly on this friction inherent in listening to music you’ve performed. She wrote “I went to the proms last night with about 10 other KCYO friends, to watch the Bruch Violin concerto and the Shostakovich symphony no.10, which were stunning to watch and listen too, the Shostakovich of course was what you conducted the last time you were at KCYO. So it was funny to see all of us bobbing our heads and running through our own parts as the orchestra played it.”
So we study for years, practicing thousands of hours and making countless sacrifices to play these pieces, and, for all our trouble, we end up forever unable to sit still in public.
c. 2006 Kenneth Woods
Hear the BBC National Orchestra of Wales perform Rakmaninov 2nd Symph
Hear the BBC Symphony Orchestra perform Mahler 2
Links only available for one week from original concert!!!!!!
Busy day here at View From the Podium international headquarters.
First, I must thank A.C. Douglas at Sounds and Fury for picking up my Mahler and Sibelius thread. Much appreciated!
Second, I was delighted to see that the great Terry Teachout, arts critic of the Wall Street Journal, has added this page to his blogroll at About Last Night. His stuff is always wonderfully readable, but you must work your way through his incredible catalogue of YouTube clips. They’re absolutely amazing. Thanks Terry Teachout.
Finally, the podium sex craze continues to build. Since “A View From the Podium” vaulted to first place in the Google rankings for “podium sex,” the only other music related link on the first page of results has been bumped back. As it happened, this is an article by none other than the legendary Norman Lebrecht. Please, Mr. Lebrecht, we never intended to unseat you from the throne of podium sex fame. The article in question is titled “Why Do Conductors Have Great Sex?”
This morning, via email, reader Miles Bachman wrote to ask me if Mr. Lebrecht’s premise is correct. “Do conductors really have better sex?” asks Mr. Bachman.
For the record, Mr. Bachman:
Yes, we do have better sex.
Thanks for reading.
KW
It is well known that Sibelius’ approach to symphonic composition was intensely organic- in his mature music everything in a given piece grows from the same little bit of musical DNA. Perhaps only Brahms is equally rigorous in his constant development of motivic cells. However, where Brahms’ motivic development is always carefully embraced in classical forms, Sibelius takes Brahms’ approach one step farther, and makes the very form itself a manifestation of the development of the material.
In a work like the Fifth Symphony, Sibelius had moved away forever from the Brahmsian, or better yet Beethovenian, idea of formal closure- i.e. creating a pivotal structural crisis (moving away from the tonic for the second theme of a sonata allegro movement), exploring the ramifications of that crisis (the development) then solving it (by staying in the tonic in the recapitulation). Sibelius’ constant evolution of thematic ideas forces him to abandon the very idea of recapitulation in the Fifth Symphony, trading closure for culmination. He said of the Fifth that it was “in a new form… the whole, if I may say so, a spirited intensification to the end.”
There is a big, simple question in the Fifth Symphony, and that question is- “how many movements in this symphony?” Is it four? Three? Two? Hmmm. Just trying to answer that question can get you a long way towards understanding how he is working in this piece.
The opening is deceptively simple- a tonic chord in six-four position (as Michael Steinberg says, it just screams out “Sibelius Five!”), and a simple melody made up of alternating long and short notes and large and small intervals (fourths and seconds). In the third bar, he already begins to develop his ideas, giving repeated fragments of the initial melody to the flutes, oboes and clarinets while introducing two new ideas- a countermelody in the bassoons and horns mostly made of parallel thirds moving stepwise and a repeated chord progression: F- 4/2 to Eb Major, or ii7 to I. That’s all he’s going to need, and that’s all Brahms would have needed to write a symphonic first movement, but Sibelius approach to form is much more radical.
As Sibelius repeats his primary progression over the next several bars, the woodwind fragment of the horn theme begins to evolve gradually, as it grows a little “tail” on the end. Gradually the tail becomes a new theme, but a new theme made of parallel thirds moving stepwise. The “tail” theme grows longer and longer until it becomes a full bar in length, then the music makes a notable shift to G major (a slightly weird move- C minor would have been better, or Bb major) and what seems like a new theme.
However, the new theme is basically an inversion of the original horn theme, instead of going up a fourth then a second as the horn did with a long-short rhythm, he goes down a fourth and then a second with a short-long rhythm. This theme, which constantly swarms around the current tonic chord by half-steps like wasps (this impression of a swarming quality is reinforced by the accompaniment in the strings) quickly grows in intensity until it abruptly shifts gears at figure D to a passage which is essentially a chorale with a melody moving stepwise in thirds, but with the strings playing slightly ahead of everyone else. Nevertheless, the key area and the contrast with the first section tells us this is probably the second thematic area of a sonata allegro form. Finally, we arrive at our first real fortissimo on a D7 chord- all well and good if you’ve started to think the symphony is in G major, but not so good for Eb major. Over a long D pedal, Sibelius unfolds a passionate melody, all in stepwise motion in thirds, made up of a short-long-short rhythmic pattern taken from the main theme and the wasp theme. Perhaps this is his closing theme? “Aha!” you might think, “it is a sonata allegro, and we’ve just had the exposition! Lucky us, we know where this is going!” So you might well think indeed, but, having created a whole set of expectations, Sibelius now keeps us completely off balance for a long time to come.
At letter E we sense that a new section has begun- though the cellos and basses carry on the vamp they’ve been playing since the big D7 arrival, the trumpet now enters with the main theme much as the horn played it in the first bar. Now, however, we’re in G major instead of Eb major, and the trumpet adds a little pick-up note an octave above the original first note. Aha- we must be in the development! Within a few bars, Sibelius begins a now familiar process- he takes the main motto theme and starts to add a little tail in thirds at the end. Gradually the tail gets longer and longer. Then he brings back the wasp theme (now the swarming bugs in the strings are flying faster, 12 notes per beat instead of 9), and this time the strings’ accompaniment is even more furious than before, then the chorale theme in thirds again. Everything is in different keys, and at different levels of intensity, but everything unfolds just as it did in the exposition. Some development! Even more confusing is that this second large section ends up in E flat major, the home key. Have we skipped straight to the recap? What’s going on here?!?!?!?!
Having arrived prematurely back in the tonic, Sibelius does what we now least expect him to do, and that is move to what seems like it must be the proper development (after all, it is the departure from the tonic that takes us to the development in sonata form). He begins this section (at letter J, for those of you following along at home), not by mixing or elaborating the themes we’ve encountered so far, but by introducing what sounds like a whole new idea, all in half-steps, staggered about in little cannons in the strings. Of course, what this really is is a further evolution of the wasp theme, which in turn, was an evolution of the main theme (rhythm is the same as main theme, contour is same as the wasp theme, but the fourths are all gone, only half-steps remain). Quickly, the string theme melts into a curious accompanimental texture, with the cellos and violins moving chromatically in octaves, and the seconds and violas moving diatonically in thirds (sounds familiar!). Then, bit by bit, the clarinet and bassoon, then just the bassoon, rebuild the new theme element by element, until the solo bassoon finally states a long, complex theme from beginning to end (accompanied by the swarming music in the strings, frenetic as ever). This passage is so abstract and intricate, it is a conductor’s nightmare- if you haven’t analyzed it, you are sure to get completely lost.
The bassoon theme does a curious thing- it leads to a big harmonic arrival in Eb. Where Beethoven or Brahms use the tonic key to signal to the listener that all is well, Sibelius seems to use it to tell us that something completely unexpected is about to happen. Normally the arrival on the tonic would tell us we’re at the recap, but it’s clear we’re nowhere near the recap, especially when the strings, playing in octaves, take up a long variation on bassoon theme, which now looks like a long variation on the canonic string theme. This long, very intense, even anguished, melody builds and builds until we arrive at our next major fortissimo (the third so far). The first two were in G major and Eb, now we arrive somewhere completely unexpected- B major (four bars before N). Even more confusingly, he brings back not only the main theme (again in the trumpets), but that primary chord progression from bar 3, ii7 to I, only now in B major. It feels like a recapitulation, only in completely the wrong key.
Look again at the section just concluded, that we were calling the development. Note that he starts with a theme that is clearly derived from the main theme. Could not the string noodles that follow be related to the tail theme in the wind in the opening section? It seems especially likely when you consider the fact that the violas and seconds do end up moving stepwise in thirds. Look at the later part of the section, where the strings expand the long bassoon theme. Note that each phrase is answered in the horns and winds with a theme that looks very similar to the so-called closing theme, only in augmentation, and in sixths instead of thirds. Seen from a distance, it looks like instead of exposition, repeat and development, he’s simply repeated the same sequence of events three times, each time in greater complexity.
Now, as we arrive the B major fortissimo, that impression is strengthened. He’s brought back the primary progression, he’s brought back the condensed motto heard originally in the woodwind at bar 3. At letter N he brings back the descending counter-melody in thirds, heard originally in the bassoons and horns in bar 3, and at the same time starts rebuilding his “tail theme” in the woodwinds, and then, just as the tail takes shape, and we’re sure we’re at the recap (albeit in the wrong key), he does something completely bizarre…
He changes meter! Right in the middle of a phrase.
So- have we moved into a second movement? Is this a scherzo now? What has happened???
Accept for a moment that we are in a second movement, a scherzo. Certainly, as the tempo picks up over the next several hundred bars, the impression of a scherzo just gets stronger and stronger. However, all the thematic material (lots of thirds in stepwise motion, for instance) is clearly lifted from the first movement. At letter O, the horns, violas and cellos play a direct quote of the chorale theme in the first section, which is fully stated by all the brass at letter P.
This is followed by a statement in the trombones (three f’s now, the first time in the symphony!) or nothing less than the first four melodic notes of the piece, in the home key of E flat, no less. As the movement whirls towards culmination, the trumpets play those same four notes over and over again, like a tornado, full of wild, uncontainable energy.
The genius of this opening span of music is that you never know the form of the movement until it is over. Although it fulfils the function of two symphonic movements, a sonata and a scherzo, the fact remains that it is all one unit, all derived from the same ideas, and all in E flat major.
It is quite possible to hear the whole opening section in 12/8 as something like-
Exposition- Modified Exposition Repeat- Development- Shortened Recapitulation
However, the key scheme makes clear that this is not what is at work!
Exposition (Eb)- Modified Exposition Repeat (G)- Development (Eb)- Shortened Recapitulation (B Major)
Sorry folks, you can’t have the development in the tonic and the recap in the super-dominant. It doesn’t work. Moreover, the development cannot have the same structure as the exposition and the exposition repeat. Finally, you can’t finish your recapitulation in a separate movement.
On the other hand, you could look at the whole thing as a Theme and Variations, with the whole first section as your theme, with each variation made more abstract and elaborate until you end up with the last variation being essentially an entire movement. Each variation is like a great wave, which develops and grows, but ultimately it is only the last one which crashes full-speed onto the beach, back in Eb to stay, full of vigour.
Once you’ve found this skeleton, and once you understand the processes by which the ideas are evolving, you can, as a conductor, begin to get it into your head. It’s a hugely tricky thing to conduct- tons of activity within slow pulses, cross rhythms, syncopations, entrances off of beats, arrivals in the middle of bars. Your only hope is to know where you are, and where you’re going in the vast form. The only way to do this is to understand what Sibelius is doing, which, unless you’re a complete genius to begin with, means you’re going to end up understanding more about composition at the end than you did to begin with.
This great opening span looks like a sonata allegro movement and a scherzo, it looks like one enormous sonata allegro movement, it looks like a theme and variations movement. What it really is is the first movement of Sibelius Five. He has created a form that is unique, and uniquely suited, to his musical materials, a form that grows directly out of the way in which he manipulates his ideas.
c. 2006 Kenneth Woods
I’ve tried to simplify the system for commenting on this blog. Previously, readers have had to register as users to comment, now anyone can comment as long as they provide a name and email address. However, your first comment is still held in a queue for approval. Please be patient- I’ll almost always get your comments up within 24 hours (right away where possible) unless I’m stuck on an airplane or lost in the forests of wherever.
Thanks!KW
Being a one himself, Mahler knew better than to trust conductors to know his intentions. Sibelius, on the other hand, famously said that if a performer needed to ask too many questions, they probably shouldn’t play his music.
Think for a moment of Mahler’s “versions” or “orchestrations” of the Beethoven and Schumann symphonies. Mahler did not make these because he thought that Beethoven or Schumann couldn’t orchestrate, far from it. He made these versions to make explicit what he thought any conductor should see as implicit in the originals. As he made them for his own usage, one can see them as conducting lessons or projects for himself- i.e., given the concert hall, players, instruments and so on of his time, how does one realize this music as lucidly as possible? Where do you ask players to release, and when do you ask them to sustain? When everyone is marked forte, how loud do the accompanying voices really play relative to the melody? Where might you reduce or eliminate doublings for the sake of clarity? Being a radical by nature, his solutions are often daring, but they are always aimed at making clear the intent of the composer by making musical textures more transparent and lucid, and isn’t that the true job of any conductor?
In his own music, it sometimes seems as if Mahler has tried to make his scores conductor-proof. He doesn’t trust a conductor to ask players to release a chord to a softer sustaining dynamic to allow the melody to come through, so he marks fp. He doesn’t trust the conductor even with understanding the basic form and shape of the piece- every transition and arrival is somehow clarified, underlined and pointed out, through tempo changes, instrumental changes, modulations and so on. He knows what you shouldn’t do- “nicht schleppen!” and what you should do- “drängend!”
Read by a sympathetic conductor, however, Mahler’s myriad instructions cease to be seen as marching orders, and instead, come across as the most lovingly thought out conducting lesson imaginable. In fact, in spite of his complexity and scope, I find his scores the easiest to study. It is as if he’s given you his score to look at, full of little notes- “please Ken, could you be sure not to drag here,” “be careful with the balance- though the violins are forte, the cellos and basses should only be piano so we can here the solo bassoon entrance,” “let this chord die away in the brass,” or “this is the climax, Ken. That is why I’ve brought 8 extra brass players on stage.”
If you just show half of what he puts in his scores with your hands, you’re already on your way to being a much better conductor, and if you take that approach back to Beethoven, you’ll be much better there as well. Forget Mahler’s re-orchestrations of Beethoven- study a Mahler symphony for a month, then go through any work of Beethoven’s and ask yourself what Mahler, your old conducting teacher, would have asked you to show here, or here or here.
If analysis is not your strong point, he walks you through his works- “Look, Ken, second theme. Take your time in the transition, but then not to slowly, and in two, not four, please.” He shows you the foundation and the outline of the piece as a whole, and at the same time reveals the minute details as clearly as possible. His scores are not simply the piece; they are an instruction manual for how to perform the piece. If you have bad habits or limitations (rushing, dragging, over-conducting), he’s already thought of those, and included a little primer on how to correct them right there on the page.
Sibelius, on the other hand, writes only the piece, no instruction manual provided, and in doing so, forces you to analyze his music. He writes the music as he wants it to sound, while Mahler writes it as you should perform it- two radically different approaches to notation. As a result, I would say that it is virtually impossible to conduct a convincing performance of a Sibelius symphony unless you have carefully analyzed every bar (not that I would ever condone conducting a Mahler symphony you hadn’t analyzed. It just seems that Mahler understood that people would perform his music who didn’t fully understand it). Where Mahler holds up a sign post saying “new theme here!” Sibelius simply keeps moving. There is no new theme, only a further evolution of the old one; there are no formal landmarks, because his material is in a constant state of evolution and development. As a result, the only way to learn his music is to understand it, and to understand it is to understand the amazing ways in which he develops his ideas over time. He forces you to think about the art of composition, about form, about key, about expectation, because he is so clearly rethinking the very notion of symphonic form.
Next time, an analysis of Sibelius 5 in hopes of better understanding how a composer like Sibelius works with musical ideas, and how he extracts possibilities from simple ideas that no other composer could.
c. 2006 Kenneth Woods
Studying a Mahler score is great conducting lesson. Studying a Sibelius score is a great composition lesson.
