Music That Makes Me Happy (Part 2 of Part 2)

So, as I mentioned last post, hearing Mahler 6 at the BSO was the first highlight of a wonderful musical weekend. I spent the rest of that post suggesting that the atmosphere little resembled the dire descriptions of decaying patrons and disinterested performers that we keep hearing about from the doomsaying prophets. But what made it so satisfying?

First of all, let me back up to say that I think all music reviews are personal (though many reviewers like to pretend otherwise), so I'm intentionally focusing on my own response more than trying to make some objective evaluation of Mahler, the BSO, James Levine, etc. Thus, I have to begin by saying how great it was just to be out at such an event. As I've confessed here before, over the last 20 years of being a busy student, performer, teacher, husband, and father, I haven't made enough effort to get out to live concerts. When commenting on the contemporary musical scene, I often feel like Tom Townsend in this priceless exchange from Metropolitan.

Audrey: What Jane Austen novels have you read?
Tom: None. I don't read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists' ideas as well as the critics' thinking. With fiction I can never forget that none of it really happened, that it's all just made up by the author.

I don't have the same clever rationale as Tom, but I know I haven't really kept myself in the game enough to be an educated observer - or, more importantly, to enjoy what I love about music! So, just being at the BSO was reward in itself.

Now as to the music, I made an unusual decision that I slightly regret. It happens that I don't know Mahler #6 well at all. I've played #1 and #7 from the cello section and I've been choir rehearsal pianist for #8 - I also know my way around #4 and #5 more or less, but I haven't really crossed paths with #6. My first instinct was to devote the weeks before the concert to getting to know it by the standard methods of listening, reading, etc. Stephen Ledbetter's program notes make the excellent point that "no composer has benefited so much from the development of the recording as Mahler, simply because listeners were then able to live with his demanding works until their secrets could be revealed." And, as I've mentioned before, growing up in south Arkansas meant that I grew up on recordings much more than on live performances. It's my natural way into the world of a new piece.

However, several years of teaching about music to non-music majors have exposed me to the phenomenon of listeners who say they'd rather not be prepared for what to listen for or told what to expect. No, I don't just mean those who make excuses for not studying. I've realized for a long time that one thing I love about listening to music I love is that I know what's coming; listening within that sort of anticipatory framework is part of the joy. This is one reason the "classical music world" tends to get stuck in the past. We tend to be populated by listeners who like rehearing the familiar. I think I'll always be that kind of listener, but there are clearly those who don't want to know what's coming - who want a more literally spontaneous experience. (An interesting little side note: I've always felt that program notes should list approximate timings for the works on a program [maybe because I grew up listening to recordings that always list timings], but when I suggested this possibility to one of my classes, many students said they'd find that distracting. They like to be kept guessing about where the music is going. My biggest concern is for an audience hearing, say, the Brahms Violin Concerto for the first time, and having absolutely no idea that the first movement alone will go on for almost twenty minutes, but maybe I should save this topic for another day.)

At any rate, Mahler surely couldn't have expected his audiences (especially for the premieres!) to know his symphonies the way Mahlerites do today, so I thought it would be an interesting experiment to come let a world-class orchestra unfurl this symphony right before my eyes and ears. I figured I'd still have a lot of advantages over the novice listener since I know a lot of other Mahler, I know about symphonic forms, orchestration, etc. So, except for glancing through the program notes ahead of time, I stuck to my plan, not having cued up even a second of the recording I own.

Maybe because I'm not used to approaching music this way, I think it took me a while to settle in and just allow myself to listen "in the moment" to all the extraordinary things that Mahler and James Levine can do with an orchestra. In this regard, many of my favorite moments were the quieter, reflective passages that always seem to arrive as if by magic. Jamie Somerville's gorgeous horn solo in the middle of the 1st movement, the kooky, mystical cowbells that would appear out of nowhere. (If I had infinite time and resources, I'd definitely find a way to make a Bruce Dickinson meets Mahler sketch. In fact, this discussion group snippet suggests that Ben Zander wins the "more cowbell" prize for Mahler 6. The idea of having Christopher Walken channelling Ben Zander is just too funny, but I've probably lost all my readers with this digression...)

I enjoyed much of the first movement, although subsequent listenings haven't changed my feeling that the grim march theme is trying a little too hard to be serious. For some reason, I didn't fully find my way into the Scherzo, but the last two movements were consistently compelling. Although it's a silly thing, I'll admit that anticipation of the famous hammer-blows helped keep me focused in the last movement - unfortunately, our side balcony seats made it impossible to see most of what was going on back in that percussion corner (one reason the cowbells came across so mystically), but you could see audience members craning in that direction quite often, especially when the hammers were due. Interesting to think how just being aware that those three climactic events were on the schedule (they left out the third hammer blow, per Mahler's revision, but there's still a big arrival there) was enough to frame a 30-minute long movement.

But again, you see my bias towards listening within a framework. Maybe it would have been better not to know there'd be any hammer blows - or not to know if the last movement would take 5 minutes or 30 minutes. And speaking of frameworks, I was reminded how having a good experiential knowledge of sonata form also made the first movement (almost as long as the last) easier to process, even though it's almost comical to think that the formal design could really have anything in common with a 3-minute Clementi sonatina movement. (Comical, but quite important in understanding the evolution of musical semantics.)

So, I mostly wish I'd spent more time getting to know Mahler 6 ahead of time. As I wrote way back in one of my first blog posts, I rarely find myself completely taken in by a piece on first hearing. I say "mostly wish" because I do think the experiment was a useful one. Actually, I just spent ten writer's-block minutes trying to decide how to articulate that usefulness. Here's what makes it difficult. When you really know a piece well, when you experience it in performance, it's much easier to make a clear memory of that experience. Thus, I think it's safe to say there were many moments I loved that I simply don't remember clearly, for the simple reason that I didn't have the music already mapped out in my memory banks.

A couple of minor points about the BSO experience: In a world in which information can be moved and managed so easily, it's frustrating that the program doesn't list all the actual performers on the stage. In a big work like this, especially, many extras are called for, but just about any concert by a BSO-like band includes some subs. I don't understand why we can't see those names - if not in the printed program, then online. It's like going to a Red Sox game and having an unnamed pinch-runner step in for David Ortiz. It was fun to see several players on stage who I'd accompanied back in grad school days. A few of them are full-timers, so their names were printed, but many players on stage went anonymous, including at least one whose name I was trying to recall. No help from the BSO there.

Also, because Mahler had two different ideas about the ordering of the middle two movements, the program booklet specified that Friday's audience would get the Andante-Scherzo order, Saturday (we) would get the Scherzo-Andante order, and then Tuesday night's order would be decided based on what had worked best. That's cool, and a good way to get an audience thinking about why such decisions make a difference, which gets them thinking about how much functions, etc. All great. So, since they must have known most audience members would only be there for one night, why not post the final Tuesday decision on the website? I couldn't find mention of the final decision on the website or in the Globe. Why make this a point of interest if you're not going to provide some followup?

It's not like I can't find out the answer. It's just that it shows a lack of imagination about how a web presence can really enhance a concert experience. Maybe I'll talk more about that when I get around to describing our paperless programs for The Doctor in Spite of Himself. For now, I still haven't even gotten to my other happy musical experience of the weekend, but that story will definitely have to wait until tomorrow. I may be on Quad Break, but I still have a stack of projects I need to start grading - or, at minimum, I need to start procrastinating about them.

Music That Makes Me Happy (Part 1 of Part 2)

It was certainly a musically satisfying weekend, so let's continue on with the theme of happy musical experiences (note that happy doesn't always means happy). Two major musical events, one expected, one not so much. Here we go:

1) Saturday night, my wife and I enjoyed our first night out at the BSO as subscribers. It was quite an auspicious start, given that the entire program was Mahler's monumental 6th symphony. And true, it's a decidely not happy piece, but the evening was wonderful. A few observations. First, although I know that an "event" piece like this isn't exactly a typical symphony experience, the whole evening could not have been less like the strawman depictions of classical concerts that Greg Sandow and many of his commenters tend to emphasize. The orchestra and audience struck me as energized and engaged; the audience did not look particularly formal or elite (I felt almost overdressed in my jacket and tie), the way Sandow characterizes a standard symphony crowd here:

"In the audience, the men are mostly wearing suits and ties. They look as if they might be going to a meeting in the board room of a bank, while Jed went to his concert wearing his hair, as he always does, in a ponytail. That alone, at most classical events, would mark him as different. Classical concerts don’t attract many men in ponytails. Nor do they attract many artists, rumpled intellectuals, rock musicians (even if more than a few rock musicians have tried to write classical music), or anyone, really, who looks (and you can choose your own word here) hip, or casual, or relaxed, or countercultural."

It may just be that Boston's not such a glamorous town, but I saw a wide range of comfortable, relaxed looking people -and they weren't all old. Some were even younger than me! Actually, now that I think about it, lately Sandow has been concerned about audiences and performers not looking hip enough. Read here how horrifed he was by the picture below. It's an admittedly unglamorous photo of orchestra musicians dressed like orchestra musicians and looking like they're really concentrating. Sandow writes, "People in the outside world would never guess that these people are performing for the public." Really? I can't imagine what he means by that. As far as I can tell, his point is that the musicians don't have fashionably styled hair or, what's really inferred, they're not attractive enough to attract people to this music.

But, this is really an argument where either side can easily provide compelling evidence, and I'm sure there will be BSO evenings that we'll find less electric. I'm just gonna say that the audience, by and large, did not seem bored, and the orchestra members looked like they were having a great time - not by flashing André Rieu-like smiles out to the audience (although Levine was beaming often enough), or even by smiling frequently, but rather by playing with such intensity. I think even an unitiated audience member could have picked up on this commitment and passion, even if the length and unfamiliarity of the music had been too problematic for happy listening.

Whoops, time's up. I have much more to say about this concert, and I haven't even gotten yet to the second "happy" musical experience of the weekend, but I'm going to go ahead and post this much. Stay tuned...

Open Book Test

After resisting for awhile, I took the Facebook leap this summer. In a way, it fits my techy side, although I suppose the success of Facebook is really more predicated on how un-techy it is. For example, I've been sharing pictures with family and friends for years, setting up my own custom-designed albums, etc. all without the use of Facebook - but it's becoming clear that a big part of Facebook's appeal is that just about all the content comes straight to you; not only do you not have to work very hard to upload content - more importantly, you don't have to work hard to seek it out.

I've realized that one reason my Doctor in Spite of Himself website wasn't a huge success is that it still required getting someone to the site in the first place. My experience tells me that asking people to go visit a website or even emailing them about it doesn't yield much, even from college students, who I once assumed were as avid about searching the net as I am. For me, the dawn of the Internet was most importantly about the thrill of the search - the fact that I could actively go out and find just about anything. But, the student generation that has driven the Facebook phenomenon seem to be much more passive about all that information. I'm amazed at how often I have to tell students how to seek out recordings and scores - I'm supposed to be the old geezer here.

Facebook's biggest strengths are its newness (it's not even 5 years old!), its omnipresence in the life of its users, and the way it pushes information out to those users (which is what keeps them present). Social networking has been possible for years on the net. My far-flung family used to have such a wonderfully busy email circle that I was able to turn 7 years of group correspondence into a telephone-book-sized Christmas present a few years back. (I need to blog more about this book at some point: it's 500+ pages of incredibly small text - and all my reading-mad family members read it cover to cover!) However, it takes work to keep that sort of thing going. The genius of Facebook is that it builds community (i.e. atracts committed users) from the virtual equivalent of small talk - which isn't so strange, since small talk is an important part of any community. Yes, there's something Samuel Beckett-like about the Facebook world.

All of this is hard to appreciate until you've actually tried Facebook for yourself - I finally joined, in part, because I could never grasp just exactly what made it work until I jumped in. I still don't know for sure what I think, but I've been surprised to connect not only with past and current students but with high school classmates I hadn't seen in more than twenty years! In fact, that's probably what I've enjoyed the most, although I suspect that the ongoing intrusion of forty-somethings into the world may be what spells its doom. How long can the college students be content to share their cool world of endless party photos and idle chitchat with distinctly less cool older people - who also post (old) party photos and idle chitcat? (Please understand that I hold idle chitchat in the highest regard.) Or, Facebook may move beyond its college-level core identity and become something more - well, who knows?

I went to a faculty lecture about Facebook this week, and was startled to be reminded how new Facebook is, how young its leader is, and how many missteps the company has already made deciding how to handle all this personal information that people have casually tossed out into the unknown. One thing that's clear is that the Facebook powers-that-be understand that the medium has to keep changing to seem fresh - which means there's no telling what's next.

Music That Makes Me Happy (Part 1?)

I mentioned in my last post how incredibly satisfying it was to read through the two Mozart piano quartets earlier this week. I sometimes find myself so consumed with postmodern angst about the role/purpose/relevance of classical music, it's nice just to forget all that and remember why I love music. So, I'm thinking of starting a "music that makes me happy" series to remind myself of how I got myself into this life.

Today's installment: listening to my daughter's Saturday morning orchestra rehearse the Contrapunctus #1 from Bach's Art of Fugue. It is music that could fairly be described as severely austere - like watching mathematical equations come to life, as I suggested to one of my classes the other day. And yet, beautiful in the most elemental, honest, unmanipulative way. (Not that I have anything against manipulative beauty, Messrs. Tchaikovsky, Puccini, etc.) It's not easy music to count, so I had Daughter of MMmusing playing along with the Emerson String Quartet the last few days - that seems to be paying off as she's holding her own quite well on the stage down below me, while I sit and type. Of course, the Emerson guys sound terrific - you can see a bit of their take on that fugue here - but there's something extra remarkable about seeing thirty-something 9-14 year olds putting it together. Or, to suggest something more extreme, I found it really beautiful listening to DoMM playing along with the Emersons.

Speaking of youth and Bach and extramusical reasons for loving the purest of musical creations, here's my favorite online video of the Bach Double, my favorite-ever piece of music. There are more musicologically authentic online versions, but the one below reminds me of all those formative experiences I had hearing my sisters play the Bach Double with massed violins at Suzuki workshops here and there. This is as good as it gets.




UPDATE: This, also, isn't so bad:

The Doctor is Out - and I'm back (?)

So, now that The Doctor is behind me, it's time to see about reviving this poor blog. I recently read the following advice to bloggers from ArtsJournal's Douglas McLennan: "Mostly, though, I tell them that the way to get the biggest audience is to post as often as possible and to be consistent about it. If you post every day and then suddenly skip a week, you lose most of your readership. But you can post once a month and if you're consistent, you'll capture a set of readers. The big numbers though, go to bloggers who post often." Eeeek! It feels like he's pointing straight at me - except that, of course, he will never have heard of my blog and I tend to substitute "two weeks" for "skip a week." But, I really shouldn't get started back by blogging about blogging.

On the other hand, life is still too busy to put together something long and organized. How about long and disorganized?

For anyone who may be wondering, the shows went well and seemed to be successful in all the important ways. My arms didn't fall off, in spite of my 'once-every-three-years' conducting schedule. The students did well. We had good crowds. I'd like to attribute the good crowds to my innovative little production website, but it never got as much attention as I'd hoped it would. I still believe it's a pretty cool site, and that it suggests a potentially unintimidating way to introduce a work to an audience, but maybe the karaoke idea is too kooky, or maybe just not enough people ever saw it. (Or maybe it was just badly done.)

There is a danger with such a site of making people feel like they need to do "homework" before going out to be entertained. It's really a Catch-22: on the one hand, I want to acknowledge that opera is enough outside of the common experience that some pre-show preparatory experiences could be useful; on the other hand, this idea might suggest to people that enjoying an opera is work, and who wants to work at being entertained? At any rate, I think our good-sized audiences had more to do with the social-networking wonders of Facebook than they did with my animated singalongs, but I'm far from having set my last axe dancing.

It is, of course, a letdown to find myself in post-show mode. The last few weeks were round-the-clock experiences, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Besides, a big upcoming event always provides a good way to avoid doing more mundane things like cleaning my office, grading, mowing the lawn, practicing the piano, eating. The good news is, I can always find a way to keep putting most of those things off.

Tuesday night I had the pleasure of going out with the wife for an evening of chamber music - piano quartets specifically. We read both Mozart piano quartets and the Brahms C Minor piano quartet, which is one of my favorite-ever pieces. However, the Brahms really felt like a bit of a grind since we were all sightreading and it's quite dense. On the other hand, the Mozart quartets were sheer delight, and a good reminder of why I became a musician in the first place. They are such merry little pieces, with surprises and deft touches around every corner - and they also reminded me of how much such music (unlike the Brahms) is probably at its best in this sort of social, low-pressure, sight-reading situation. I'm sure I'd prefer an evening of sightreading these pieces to hearing some slick group of professionals perform them. So, part of me wants to go into more detail about what makes the music so great, but the wiser and lazier part of me is satisfied for now to think happily about the experience without too much actual thinking about it.

The other enjoyable diversion of the week came about quite unexpectedly. I was asked to help out creating a quick-fix interim soundtrack for a little documentary video. I'd rather not give any more precise details, but it has been a fascinating experience. In this case, I'm not composing anything, but rather looking for available music that suits the video well. (Copyright isn't really an issue, because the version I'm helping with won't be sold and will probably just be shown once or twice in non-commercial settings.) So many interesting questions arise about how music functions - aside from the whole music-as-background issue, which doesn't really bother me at all, there's the sleight-of-hand ways in which music can create a context through a viewer's built-in associations about that music, regardless of what the music may have been intended to do. It also makes me challenge my own ideas about taste, etc. when considering what will work best for an intended audience. It's a kind of experience that I think every music student should have - maybe even more important than memorizing the K. numbers for all the Mozart piano concerti. (Which is good, because all those K numbers are starting to run together for me.)

Setting up that last little hyperlink reminds me that it's time to do some MMhousekeeping. There are many multimedia creations that haven't made it into the Multimedia Musing Machine yet, for example. So, that should give me something to get back into the blogging game, not to mention a thousand posts that I've written quite eloquently - in my imagination. Let's see, I still want to tackle the music appreciation question that came up here. I had all the answers a few weeks ago - I wonder if I still do. I also will likely have some more post-Doctoral musing to do, including some thoughts about our paperless programs and the laptop that almost let me down. But for now, back to grading . . . or whatever else I can come up with.