4′ 33″
April 26, 2012
Maverick Concert Hall, Woodstock, New York
As long as I can remember, I’ve heard lots of sniggering over John Cage’s composition of that name. People often assume that it’s, at best, a joke or, at worst, an imposture. Not everyone is convinced by the composer’s explanation that, even in the most silent public space, there is going to be noise and that the truly sensitive listener should learn to be aware of all of it. If that noise is only the sounds of respiration or seat-creaking or the subway going by, it may take an exceptional person to find them rewarding.
But look at the photograph above. That‘s where the premiere of 4’33″ took place in a summer night surrounded by the sounds of nature. Now can we agree that Cage may have had a point?
My Favorite Easter Organ Work
April 10, 2012
Luca Signorelli, RESURRECTION OF THE BODY, Chapel of San Brizio, Duomo, Orvieto, 1499-1502
Oliver Messiaen’s “Joie et clarté des corps glorieux” (Joy and Light of the Glorious Bodies) is from his Les Corps glorieux: Sept Visions brèves de la vie des ressuscités (The Glorious Bodies: Seven Brief Visions of the Life of the Resurrected). He explained what the music portrays with a verse of scripture: “Then shall the righteous shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”
The entire suite was completed in August of 1939 and was his last composition before his imprisonment by the Nazis, which suffices to explain its delayed premiere. While Messiaen always spoke of the organ at La Trinité as his “laboratoire,” he gave the first public performance of this movement in a recital at Paris’s Palais de Chaillot at the end of December 1941, and the premiere of the complete suite did not take place until November of 1943, in the same hall.
Messiaen was ready with an answer to those who often bitterly criticized him for the apparently profane nature of his music. It was felt to be over-dramatic, too sensuous, impure. In a conversation with Antoine Goléa the composer defended himself vehemently:
Those people who reproach me do not know the dogma and know even less about the sacred books… They expect from me a charming, sweet music, vaguely mystical and above all soporific. As an organist I have been able to note the set texts for the liturgy… Do you think that psalms, for example, speak of sweet and sugary things? A psalm groans, howls, bellows, beseeches, exults, and rejoices in turn.
This performance, though on an instrument that is not at all of the same character as that of Messiaen, is a successful one:
Triduum Sacrum
April 7, 2012
Like many others, I’ve been completely consumed with doing music for the great liturgies of the Three Days. Pictured above, from this morning, is the third Tenebrae liturgy, at the Church of Notre Dame here in the city. Tonight comes the climax, with the Easter Vigil in the Holy Night.
Passionate Group Improvisation
April 4, 2012
The main takeaway I get from this performance is that this quite effective presentation of the Passion is musically as good as the compositions of quite a few highly popular or award-winning “classical” composers. If a choir of good professional singers can improvise this kind of music, what does it say about the guys who are lauded for putting on long faces and composing it?
Bad but Great?
March 22, 2012
Was the most influential writer in 19th-century America a bad writer? Or was he a great writer? Or was he, against all odds, both? An extraordinary article puts forward the claim that he was. Whether or not you agree with the writer’s conclusion, his way of getting there is thought-provoking. And it certainly provoked a lot of interesting correspondence, much of it quite vehement. I kept thinking about how this kind of discussion could apply to music criticism in an enlightening way.
That article and the response to it illustrate some of the assertions in an article that appeared yesterday in The Guardian. In it an art critic says the time for pronouncements from people of his profession has come and gone. “Criticism today is not about delivering truths from on high, but about striking a spark that lights a debate,” he says. Certainly the first article above (about Edgar Allan Poe, if you didn’t guess) fulfils the latter part of that decription.
Crowdsourcing music criticism? It ought to happen; it’s bound to happen; it’s happening. So far, we have to sift through a lot of silt to find the gold nuggets, but that will sort itself out over time. And, in 75 years or so, if that hasn’t happened, remind me that I owe you a dinner.
Organized
March 21, 2012
Some of the technology inside the Newberry Memorial Organ as I’d never seen it before:
Ira Glass on Developing Technique for Creativity
March 19, 2012
Just Got the First Copy!
March 16, 2012
From the back of the book:
At the age of 24, already a rising star of Barcelona’s musical life, Xavier Montsalvatge’s composing was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War. When the war ended he quickly achieved critical and popular success in works that merged an attractive polytonality with rhythms and melodies derived from the Catalan experience in Cuba. But the spread of his music was seriously impeded by the policies of Francisco Franco’s decades-long dictatorship, which privileged a uniform cultural viewpoint throughout Spain. The regime persecuted representatives of Montsalvatge’s Catalan culture, forbidding many of its millennium-old manifestations and endeavoring to stamp out its very language. Despite this, Montsalvatge became one of Barcelona’s most influential cultural forces through his music and his music journalism. Now, a century after his birth and a decade after his death, as increasing worldwide attention is being focused on the large and attractive Montsalvatge catalogue, this first biography from outside Montsalvatge’s home circle introduces the man, his culture, and the breadth of his compositions to an international audience. It is a compelling story from one of the least-illuminated corners of 20th-century history.
If you should want a copy of your very own, they can be had here.
