the kind of infectious it's good to spread around

The NY Times recently invited some of their classical music critics to "confess" their "secret musical passions" - to reveal some works/recordings they enjoy in spite of what one might expect of such highbrow types. Obviously, there's no right answer to such a question, but what I found most revealing is what some of the answers said about the moralistic tendencies of the classical music world - specifically, that there should such an obvious "right" and "wrong" way to perform various works. It's nothing new for me to suggest that ideas about "performance practice" are too prescriptive and idealistic - Richard Taruskin started beating that drum decades ago. And yet, here's Allan Kozinn saying, "I would probably cringe to hear a young pianist play Scarlatti the way Horowitz did, but Horowitz’s eccentric twisting and rebalancing of Scarlatti’s ecosystem sounds just right when he’s the one doing it."

What better indication is there that the academic side of the music business has gotten too much of an upper hand in how we listen, that one should be embarrassed to like something so likeable, and only willing to accept it because of the performer's fame? Is it any wonder that young performers are often criticized as being less original and spontaneous in their musicmaking than the giants of previous generations? Of course, the question of tastefulness in performance is one of infinitely recursive complexity; while I would argue for a much less moralistic tone about performance decisions and much more freedom than "the establishment" tends to allow, I also really value all the work that has gone into looking at performance practice in a scholarly way, and my own musical instincts are very strongly colored by "the establishment" way of thinking. In other words, I might want to say that performers should rely on intuition, but I might be horrified by what 1910 or 1810 intuition sounded like.

So, I haven't come to bury the "performance practice" movement, but rather to say that it's ridiculous that someone need apologize for enjoying politically incorrect musicmaking. (I understand, by the way, that Kozinn's remarks are somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but they reflect a predominant way of thinking.) Here's a more practical way in which I experience this tension. Not infrequently, while listening to a student, I'll find myself thinking, "I should really tell him/her not to articulate/phrase/pedal/ritard, etc a certain way," not because it offends my musical sensibilities or makes the music unmusical, but because I know it's not the way one is "supposed" to play. Naturally, it's important when learning anything to have to work within a set of rules, but the further I get from being a student myself, the more I find myself wondering why we're so rigid about so much.

MM's Law, which I don't think I've ever revealed on MMmusing, states: "There's always a tradeoff." The tradeoff in our academically-grounded method of training musicians is that concerns about authenticity (doing what we think the composer wants) have tilted us too much towards this moralistic attitude about music-making, and away from a more intuitive sense of what sounds right. It's a very tricky balance; not every one has Horowitz's instincts, and a good musical training requires some rigidity in the early stages about what's musical, acceptable, etc. Still, I'm convinced the importance we put on "doing it right" by academic standards can be a significant impediment to communication with audiences, because it can distract us from the business of communication.

I'm not interested in going further down that thorny path today, but I was also a little disappointed that the focus of the "guilty pleasures" was still on classical music. First of all, that seems like a great way to reinforce just how insulated we tend to be, to suggest, as Vivien Schweitzer did, that enjoying Klemperer's romanticized St. Matthew Passion is a kind of low-brow slumming. (How may potential classical fans have been turned off by hearing that a performance they thought they loved wasn't really any good at all because it violated some critic's sensibilities?) Secondly, I'd be much more interested to hear about the non-classical music that excites these critics.

Since my Lenten discipline demands that I forgo my normal sports radio on the daily commutes, I've been working the iPod more and, to be honest, sometimes struggling with what to listen to. I'm just not a pop/rock guy, but I'm often not in the right frame of mind to listen to typical classical fare either. With great joy, though, I did recently stumble back onto my favorite soundtrack of all time, the music for A Mighty Wind. Christopher's Guest's masterpiece is one of my three all-time favorite movies, along with The Purple Rose of Cairo and Magnolia. A very personal list, to be sure, and not intended to suggest these are the best movies ever made, just the most important to me. With Magnolia, it's the symphonic scope of the film, the way in which three hours go soaring by and feel connected, despite a wide range of content. The Purple Rose of Cairo is just perfectly executed from start to finish, both hilarious and heart-rending.

A Mighty Wind is the oddest choice here (a guilty pleasure, I suppose), but it's what went into making that extraordinarily delightful soundtrack that makes the movie special. These actors actually managed to create three convincing musical groups (The Folksmen, The New Main Street Singers, and Mitch & Mickey) that are equal parts hilariously satirical and legitimately entertaining, and the authenticity that comes from that gives the characters and situations unusual dimension for such a lighthearted film. I just watched the "concert" part of the movie again last night and I'm just amazed at what was accomplished. From the spot-on absurdity of the Main Street Singers' covering the Folksmen's "Never Did No Wand'rin" to the exuberant final ensemble (in which the title song proves to be both a huge joke and completely genuine), it's the most realistic incorporation of musical performance into any movie I've ever seen.

By the way, it's pretty cool how that scene was put together. Not only did the three groups perform for a live audience, but the concert was both filmed and videotaped, so that the scenes in the production truck show true TV-like video on the monitors. (Ed Begley, Jr. kills me in those production truck scenes.) All the drama going on during the concert is believably coordinated with the concert in real-time; fortunately, the fantastic DVD extras let you watch the performances in their entirety, but getting to know the CD soundtrack (which includes yet more songs) is essential to really appreciating what went into this movie.

It's surely a sign of my own snobbery that I seem to need the satirical layer to let myself have so much fun to listening to folk music, but so be it. The point is that when I'm listening to "Never Did No Wand'rin" (either version), "When You're Next to Me," or even "Potato's in the Paddy Wagon," it's hard to tell when I'm having fun because the parody is so good and when I'm just enjoying the very thing that's being parodied. That's a really difficult line for an artwork to straddle, but I feel no guilt in declaring this soundtrack one of my favorite guilty pleasures.



[The subject heading is taken from Jonathan Steinbloom's introduction of The New Main Street Singers, but it could just as easily apply to Horowitz's Scarlatti.]

Found Music, Part 2

Sitting in my drafts folder are five unfinished posts started within the last week. The fifth was intended to explain succinctly why these posts haven't been getting posted - but now it has expanded into something that's not ready to be finished, and I only have ten free minutes left today. So, just to get me back in the game, let's go with another example of found music, if only to give me an excuse to link back to my first foray into this field. Last time I only combined two works (and that, arguably, is a better bet for getting something interesting), but last night, as I was posting the ten listening excerpts I'd played for a recent music history quiz, I couldn't resist setting all the clips going at once.

Hear here.

A lovely wall of sound from the Early Baroque. Enjoy!

[NOTE: It reminds me a little bit of some moments in Albert Herring, when Britten has all the characters singing at once, not necessarily in synch with each other. If I have time and the inclination, perhaps I'll post a DIY version of these 10 Baroque excerpts, so you can "find" your own music.]

. . . also see the Vertical Christmas Medley.

Well, that could have gone better . . .

There's not much to say about the sad events of last night, but there must be some useful lesson of mortality . . . flying too close to the sun? . . . Anyway, the TV set was switched off from the second Brady's last pass fell incomplete, and I'll be officially sports-free until Easter. I don't need to hear any analysis to tell me what happened or to try to re-live it. I will say that the moment Eli Manning completed that impossible play in which he got away from two or three enormous guys, threw a crazy pass downfield and had it caught miraculously off a helmet - well, the Giants seemed destined to win from then on. It may well go down as the greatest Super Bowl ever, but that's little consolation. Avoiding sports radio and the like for these last two days before Lent will actually make me happier, so in order to counteract that potential enjoyment of abstinence, I also resolved to give up donuts starting today instead of Wednesday. Now that's a sacrifice.

I tried to break free of despair immediately last night by popping in an episode of the great Dick Van Dyke Show - about as escapist as possible, and always entertaining. Usually I'd be half asleep at the end of a half-hour, but in this case it took much longer to get to sleep, reliving the five or six moments when the Patriots almost put the game away. Still, the truth is I'm not that heartbroken. The Patriots have won three Super Bowls in the past decade and the Red Sox have won two World Series. This game doesn't even remotely compare to the horror of 2003 when Aaron Boone's homerun . . . Oh, why linger on such things?

So, this morning, it was nothing but music on the ride up (including the amazingly sexy duet between Nerone and Poppea in L'incoronazione di Poppea (prep for a class)) - and then an early morning swim. I've tended to be horrible about exercise in the non-summer months, so I'm going to try to get to school early a few days a week to see if this works. Hitting the indoor pool on a freezing morning was remarkably refreshing, and it cleared my mind of football better than Rob and Laura Petrie.

If nothing else, I may be one of the few bloggers to have gotten football, Lent, the Dick Van Dyke Show, and Monteverdi into one post . . .

Dimanche Gras

Well, here we are, less than 60 minutes from kickoff. Some years, the Super Bowl is just a game, but not only is the home team participating this year, they have a chance to . . . no, let's not talk about that.

Anyway, I was assuming that it's a rarity for Super Bowl Sunday to fall just before Ash Wednesday, but it turns out it's happened as recently as 2005. I believe that's the only other time it's ever happened, since all pre-2004 games were in January, but it seems appropriate; I don't anticipate any big Mardi Gras blowout this Tuesday (unless not bothering to vote in the primaries counts as wild), so the game makes a good excuse for indulging in excess. (Wings? check. Whole Foods guacamole? Check. Chips? Check. Beer? Czech.) It's doubly appropriate for me because I'm intending to give up sports for Lent again this year . . . I think. Actually, giving up sports radio, ESPN.com, and other such temptations won't be as difficult this year because the early Easter means the March Madness tournament will only have just gotten started when I resurface. So, I'm also thinking of giving up donuts. Now that will be tough.

Win or lose tonight, I'm also planning to embark on a semi-regular exercise plan starting tomorrow, so there's a chance I'll be a much healthier person come March 23 - and that I'll rebuild the kind of good music listening habits (absent sports radio) I built last Winter and slowly allowed to erode afterwards. Hey, it was a tough year to stay away from sports with the Sox winning the Series and the Patriots flirting with . . . Whoops, no more about that.

Game time! (And of course, by the time most read this, you'll know whether or not I'm euphoric or miserable. You can check here, if you're somehow not sure.)

[UPDATE: I think I'll be starting my Lenten discipline early this year. No sports until Easter. Congrats to Giants' fans.]

More Synthpathetic Vibrations

Following the discovery of my last post, the logical next step was to let one of the Virtual Singers try out Beirut's "Scenic World." Again, here's Mr. Zach Condon. Here's the new Virtual Version. I realize there's a chance I'm offending all sorts of Beirut fans, but if this is what people want to hear, I don't think it will be that long before a virtual voice is conquering the pop world. It may take a little longer to conquer opera, but maybe that will happen too. No more sick sopranos (unless the software crashes!). Hey, we accompanists have been facing this future for some time; it's only fair that singers would be next.

Meanwhile, my oh-so clever post title demanded that this be done.

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[Amusing Addendum: My 2-yr-old daughter is now walking around humming the "Scenic World" tune. However, her voice is so sweet and perfect, no computer could ever copy it.]