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themumblrrumblr · 5 years

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It’s almost heart-wrenching that I write about Jessye Norman for the second (and consecutive) time in this tiny blog for the reason that she has died, at 74, on September 30.

When I heard the news, I felt like I lost a great teacher, a parent. Come to think of it, I think of my cherished singers as parents. I don’t know why; I’m not a great singer. But to me, Jessye, Billie Holiday, Giuseppe di Stefano, Birgit Nilsson, David Gedge...they’ve guided me in some invisible yet palpable way.

I choose to honor Jessye with her 1985 rendition of Dich teure Halle from the Wagner opera Tannhauser. Alex Ross cites her recording of Strauss’ Im Abendrot (from Four Last Songs) as the definite Jessye recording, and I agree in many ways. But her Dich teure Halle at the ENO Concert stands out for me because of how Jessye moved in that performance. I’m only months into learning German so I had to rely on translations of the aria, but even before reading the translation, Jessye sang the aria into life, she enunciated and gesticulated, and her eyes, man. She is irreplaceable.

#jessye norman #billie holiday #giuseppe di stefano #birgit nilsson #david gedge #tannhauser #wagner #im abendrot #strauss #alex ross #music #classical music #opera

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themumblrrumblr · 5 years

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My father died more than a month ago. He suffered a stroke that caused a brain hemorrhage that caused brain herniation. I signed Do Not Resuscitate forms, arranged his wake and cremation. Beyond these facts, I find myself unable to write about what happened.

Just as well, I suppose. In the absence of descriptive language, I also find myself obsessed with operatic voices–voice, really. Jessye Norman’s. The only powerful, steadying force in my life at the moment.

#jessye norman #richard strauss #orchestral songs #orchestral works #classical music #opera #grief #personal

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themumblrrumblr · 5 years

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If I don’t keep myself in check, this music blog will be about music blogging rather than a blog about music. What I mean is that I constantly find nuggets of how-to’s and realizations about this form of writing. More often than not, they’re quite stressful to come upon as they mean changes in the way I write.

I was an avid Twitter user for about eight years. And by avid I mean obsessive, addicted, glued-to-my-phone. I have no studies to back up this claim, but I feel that the shortness of that medium gave me license not to think long thoughts. I deactivated my account a few months ago so I may not be tempted to engage in political tweeting (my job entails impartiality and discretion; and while my identity was not fully divulged in that site, I can’t be too careful). Cut to a month later after deactivating, I discover that Twitter deletes your account when you don’t reactivate after a month. Okay, then.

One of the immediate effects of not having Twitter in my life is that I came back to the sort of ruminating that I like to engage in. I think of it as similar to unspooling a neverending ball of yarn, where each foot of yarn is a thought, and the one next to it is another thought, and so on. I should say that this is not an entirely good thing. I realize now that ruminating--at least for me--often leads to negative thoughts, thoughts that were buried by my use of social media. Perhaps that’s why I have an unhealthy addiction to social media. I envy people who use these apps healthily, who can genuinely disengage from their accounts and come back to it. Not the case for me. I’ve gotten rid of Facebook and Twitter, and now I feel the same addiction to the only social media account I have, Instagram. Anyway. Getting off-track here.

Rumination and music writing. Right. I’m trying to write about Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 for the longest time now, but I find myself unable to. I’ve spent an entire month--I kid you not--listening only to that symphony, as interpreted by about six conductors. It accompanied my workouts, I have practiced ashtanga with it, it sat with me through traffic: it has infiltrated my life so deeply but it remains elusive to description and analysis. Each listen is different, each movement shifts. So far, I’ve done a lot of ruminating and not a lot of writing.

Here, take a stab at it, hopefully you’ll have better luck.

#music #writing #mahler #sir john barbirolli #classical music #social media addiction #twitter

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themumblrrumblr · 5 years

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Les Américains à Paris

I had a somewhat disturbing realization as I was writing this entry on George Gershwin’s classical/jazz/blues tone poem, An American in Paris: I don’t know how to write about music. Don’t laugh! What I mean is, I don’t have the words for how music moves, how sounds...well, sound. This is going to be great, trust me.

My last music lesson occurred nearly twenty years ago, at 15, junior year of high school: you know what it’s like, barely paying attention to the teacher and never really understanding much of anything except I know what I like I don’t need no teacher to tell me that.

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An American in Paris was commissioned in 1928 by the conductor Walter Damrosch. Gershwin took as inspiration, well, the sights and sounds of Paris when he visited the city. Here’s the instrumentation to be employed according to the score (from its wiki):

An American in Paris is scored for 3 flutes (3rd doubling on piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets in B-flat, bass clarinet in B-flat, 2 bassoons, 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in B-flat, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, triangle, wood block, cymbals, low and high tom-toms, xylophone, glockenspiel, celesta, 4 taxi horns labeled as A, B, C and D with circles around them, alto saxophone/soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone/soprano saxophone/alto saxophone, baritone saxophone/soprano saxophone/alto saxophone, and strings.

The piece has no distinct and separable movements--performances generally last from sixteen to twenty minutes (barely a quarter of a symphony), but taking the cue from Gershwin’s inspiration, I divide the “moods” of the piece into three: “Introduction to Paris,” “Homesickness,” and “An American in Paris.”

The first section is almost dizzying, starting off in a buzz of violins before being joined by languid episodes of saxophones and percussion (some performances use a xylophone, at least judging from what I hear). The mood is also seductive, as if the city is seducing the listener to journey deeper, move closer. The saxophones are employed for this seduction, which I think is a tradition carried over to today, where the saxophone plays an almost essential role in almost any scene in film and television involving preludes to (or attempts at having) sex.

This section climbs to a roar of the winds and drums before tapering off, leading to a silent pause that introduces the second section. A lone saxophone snakes its way to a melody that is melancholy, almost like a cry, and then joined by a chorus of violins that cry the same cry. My favorite part of this piece is in this section, when the violins carry this cry to its highest point and then falls in what can only be described as a sigh. This leads me to imagine the “American” feeling a touch of sadness at being away from his home country.

The third section joins the two themes into a, combination of the frenetic and almost liquid pace, starting off with an almost flirtatious chorus of saxophones. The piece then builds up on this flirtatious them but then mounts a thundering beat and ends rather abruptly. It’s...magical, that’s one word to describe it.

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It sounds almost blasphemous, but I introduce myself to a composer’s repertoire by listening to how they interpret An American in Paris. For me it makes some sense, though obviously I move to other pieces if a composer has not interpreted this one. I also think that the first interpretation of a piece determines how you judge the other versions, regardless of whether they came before or after the one you first heard. Unfortunate, but true in my experience.

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My first experience with the piece was through Stanley Black’s 1997 performance with the London Symphony Orchestra. It’s a lush interpretation, and at 19 minutes, it’s one of the longest. He takes care to elongate the “seductive” parts of the piece and highlight the dramatic moment with the violins, the sigh becoming almost the suggestion of a sigh.

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The first recorded performance of the piece was with Nathaniel Shilkret as conductor and the Victor Symphony Orchestra (1929). It’s said that George Gershwin even participated in the performance, so you know that this has his imprimatur at the very least. (I think.)

It’s quite jarring to hear this version, for me, and know that Gershwin participated in it, especially coming from the Stanley Black version. It clocks in at 16 minutes, the shortest. For this, some of the elements that I have come to love about the piece have been...compromised(?)--shorter pauses, the violins not sighing so much-- but it also tells you about what Gershwin was aiming for in the piece: something playful and light and sweet.

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Arturo Toscanini’s 1943 interpretation with the NBC Symphony Orchestra was almost disappointing for me when I heard it the first time, but after hearing the Shilkret version, I understood that he was being faithful to the older interpretations, and were also more likely in fashion in the 40′s. I may also be talking out of my own ass here. Dear lord.

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From Leonard Bernstein’s 1959 recording with the New York Philharmonic, I got a sense of the famous composer as the purveyor of muscular interpretations. His version is loud but taut, and almost lacking in subtlety, yet it possesses a compellingly strange quality that makes it an important addition to the canon of Gershwin performances.

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One of my favorite conductors is Seiji Ozawa, and his 1977 intepretation with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra shows his finely-tuned sensitivity and intuition. Nothing is sacrificed in this interpretation, from the highest violins to the deepest trombones.

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Fun fact: I have an Idagio playlist containing all their available interpretations of An American in Paris.

#George Gershwin #An American in Paris #classicial music #jazz #blues #stanley black #london symphony orchestra #nathaniel shilkret #victor symphony orchestra #arturo toscanini #nbc symphony orchestra #leonard bernstein #new york philharmonic #seiji ozawa #san francisco symphony orchestra

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themumblrrumblr · 5 years

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Hi! The only thing I’m sure of at this point is that this newfangled thing will try to be a collection of musings on music. I hear the collective groan of “Another one of those? Whyyyyy”

I was raised on and by music blogs. Alex Ross, Bob Shingleton, BIRP, I Care If You Listen--which isn’t technically a blog, but, okay. The point is, there’s something inexplicable about music, something that cannot travel smoothly into the written page, but these writers come really close. They’re dancing about architecture.

Back when I was on Twitter, I met (in that way in which people online meet, which is to say, not personally) a wonderful person from Brighton, Lee Burrows. He had(?) a music blog, Burrows Music/De Minimis Music. Daily, or oftener, he’d fire off songs selected not by an algorithm, but by his own personal taste. He was concise in his entries, providing little to no background on why he chose a particular song. I had no blog then, and I don’t really know how we found each other’s accounts, but we ended up following each other. Occasionally, we’d pick the other’s brains about bands, artists, even books. Even though I imagine him to be a lot wiser than me, I never felt patronized or looked down upon during our interactions. From him, I picked up musical obsessions (Courtney Barnett, Cigarettes After Sex). He recommended Amos Oz, I suggested Houellebecq (don’t ask).

The last entry in his blog is dated 02 April 2018. I haven’t the slightest idea what happened to him, and the cursory social media sweep yielded nothing. It left a kind of sadness in me and I realize now the writings we send out into the darkness of this virtual universe sometimes lands on a planet of another person’s life.

Where am I going with this? I suppose I want to be able to arrange words into sentences and paragraphs to convey my thoughts on music, but also, I want to venture into that dark universe and maybe land on a planet or two. I want to fire off the surest signs of life.

#music #classical music #jazz #blues #alex ross #bob shingleton #birp #ICIYL #lee burrows

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