Quotable

"This primary election on Tuesday is a game changer. This is going to make a huge difference in what happens going forward. The entire country -- probably even a lot of the world -- is looking to see what North Carolina decides." -- Hilary Clinton

Honest Pride

As a decidedly amateur blogger, especially in comparison to my weighty colleagues who write about music full time, and especially as someone whose blogging can be flagging from time to time, I am genuinely honored to be ranked 37 out of ACD's Top 50 Classical Music Blogs. Next year, I aim for at least 32. Watch out Alex! And remember, 37 is better than 38.

Les Adieux

Once again, the world is somewhat lighter with the death of superstar composer Henry Brant at the age of 94. Many excellent obituaries have been posted (see Frank Oteri's extended video chat with the man for a vivid account) but I offer a personal story.

As an undergraduate at the bucolic University of California, Santa Barbara, I sat one day eating a sandwich on the grass (in the middle of January--ahh, Santa Barbara) awaiting the start of my composer's forum. That day we were to be favored with a visit from local hero (or eccentric lunatic, depending on whom you asked) Henry Brant. As a fan of his music, I was very much looking forward to the seminar. As I wait and eat, up bounces a spry old guy in a baseball cap and a hooded sweat-suit, sees me gazing to the door in the music department, and asks me, in a way that can only be described as gravelly: "HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF SURROUND SOUND?"

"Of course," I mutter, youthfully sheepish (and a bit frightened to boot)

"I INVENTED SURROUND SOUND. I. INVENTED. SURROUND. SOUND." He was off, leaving me wishing I'd given him a quarter or half of my sandwich or something, as it seemed he needed it more than I.

But you know the end of this story--I had been confronted by our guest of Honor.

Lately, I've been loving his orchestration of Ives' Concord Sonata; back then, I loved Michael Ingham's record of songs by that same composer, with Henry Brant at the piano. But what I've always loved about his music, aside from the obvious spacial considerations that make it so singular and special, is the gruff sense of humor it reveals. Maybe I am biased after my confrontation--this was a gruff sense of humor writ large, in living (mostly) color--but I always thought I could see the smile through the crags, and hear the deep and unabashed romantic through the rigorous modernism. Maverick is an overused word like genius, but t this one-off collision represents my only in-the-flesh encounter with someone deserving of the name.

So Henry, thanks for it all, and I know wherever you are, the sound is as exquisite as can be imagined.

Immigant Trubble

And the wheels on the bus go round and round....

Shameless Self Promotion: Opera After Hours

I'd love anyone and everyone to come to Opera After Hours this Thursday at the Zipper Room. Details below...or you can read about it in on the New Yorker web site.

OPERA AFTER HOURS:
A subversive evening of opera and song
April 17th, 2008, 8:00 PM, The Zipper Factory


By Daniel Felsenfeld and Jennifer Griffith


Directed by Christopher Alden


featuring
THE DRESSING ROOM and DREAM PRESIDENT by Jennifer Griffith
THE BLOODY CHAMBER by Daniel Felsenfeld, libretto by Elizabeth Isadora Gold


with
Michael Zegarski, Constance Hauman, Jessica Miller-Rauch, and Amy Van Roekel


Charity Wicks, Musical Director
Terese Wadden, Production Designer
Susan Whelan, Stage Manager
Jana Llynn, Production Supervisor


Based on the Angela Carter novella of the same name, THE BLOODY CHAMBER re-envisions
the Bluebeard myth at the cusp of the Modern age. THE DRESSING ROOM explores how a
mezzo-soprano sick of playing boys, and her cross-dressing dresser both long for a more
glamorous wardrobe. In DREAM PRESIDENT, the former Commander in Chief reflects on his
past, as ex-flames critique him on matters political and sexual.


The Zipper Factory is at 336 W. 37th St. (between 8th & 9th Aves.)
For tickets, please go to www.zippertheater.com or call 212.352.3101
For dinner reservations at The Zipper Factory Tavern, please call 212.695.4600

To Criticize the Critic

I am deeply, deeply impressed with a post on the fascinating Detritus Reivew which has as its sole aim a crusade to right the wrongs in music criticism. From where I sit, a lofty and under-funded ambition. Found during a "vanity Google," this made me smile from ear to ear because it did what I think the blogs are good to do: it called me out, gave lengthy and intelligent digression to a fine point, and goaded me into a response.

Case under assessment: my brutal attack on a disc of piano music by Salvatore Sciarrino on ClassicsToday. Allow me to add a bit to this dialogue (as they chose not to consult me--their absolute right, might I add--indulge me a retort). When this review was writteny (and I am unsure of the year, but I am going to say it was 2002 or 2003) I had been subjected to a lot of Sciarrino, and for my part was likely dishonoring this particular disc based on the sheer amount of this music I'd heard--in other words, I did do something rather outside the ken of the vauntedly fair and moral mission of my outlet by over-pummeling a composer's work rather than the specific recording. I was, in retrospect, a little unfair, so thank you Empiricus, whomever you are. I deserve what you said--you did, in fact, "get me good." Even composer-critics have their off days--well, I suppose, especially composer critics.

Your comments to me were kind enough, and I am not usually one to participate in such a "hatchet job" as this. Were I in your position, working with your stated mission, I might offer Felsenfeld-in-abstract the same vivisection. Not that my opinions on the composer have changed--I cannot say I've seen the proverbial light on this, or that Empericus has showed me the error of my wicked, wicked Sciarrino ways--but I think today I'd be less inclined to be too-clever-by-half while saying it. I like to think I've grown a little, and have mostly prided myself on being fair.

And while I don't think my little review on a niche Web site written several years ago deserves comparison with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I admit points for sheer brio, for bloggish moxie in doing so. If we are to save classical music, we have to think big, and metaphors need plumping as much as budgets or newspaper column space. (Though now that I think about it, it makes my registering of Sciarrino's rather limited palate into the onomatopoetic "plink" and "thump" seem rather tame. But who am I to say? I just work here.)

What makes me so happy about this whole posting--aside from the comments of some readers who were generally kind to my music and my writing--is that I've always felt that these kind of "police actions" were the exact purpose of this weird volunteer army of bloggers. Would any other outlet allow for this exact dialogue to take place? It means that the blogs are alive and well, and are even going to the back of the files to find things otherwise long-since buried. Can you imagine the same thing happening with spools of microfiche in a previous era?

So Empiricus, I do have one small bone to pick with you--you hide your light under the bushel of a nome de blog, while I choose to attach my name. And from the comments portion, you seem to know me--or someone on your team does--and even be a little familiar with my work. I'd love you to come out from the shadows, because as a fellow blogger you are no doubt aware that it is impossible to have a meaningful conversation with a shadow-colleague because the terms are uneven. We are clearly on the same side, even if my work is the work in question.

But please, all reading, follow the example of these bloggers and do point out the injustices when you see them. One of the things many critics lack is accountability, and in the blogosphere, everyone has to own it.

And by the way, whomever goes by the name of AnthonyS in the comments portion, please do get in touch.

More Reasons for the State to Fund Classical Music

This from an article about the Spitzer debacle:

"Shortly before his pre-Valentine Day's Washington, DC, hotel tryst with the call girl now publicly known as "Kristen," Spitzer asked his aides in the Mayflower Hotel if they had a classical-music CD he could bring to his room, a witness said.

Between 9 and 9:15 p.m. on Feb. 13, Spitzer came down to the hotel bar and asked his contingent of about eight for a CD, which no one had, the witness told The Post.

The governor - normally a rock fan who last year attended a Bruce Springsteen concert in Albany - was said to be wearing a blue sweatshirt and jeans.

"At the time, he claimed it was to help him focus and concentrate," the source said of Spitzer. "He said he was going to work late into the night."

The governor was seeking the mood music just minutes before the prostitute arrived at the hotel."

I wonder, was it Berg's Lyric Suite with it's coded messages of love and betrayal, or even Lulu (Traviata being too obvious save for the Pretty Woman set?). Threepenny Opera? Tristan? I would love answers--if he liked, say, the Eroica symphony, which recording? Was he a fan of the clipped, relentless school favored by Toscanini, or did he prefer Furtwangler's Wagner-like barline-free mellifluousness? Did he go in for the brooding angst of Shostakovich--particularly since tax dollars were involved--or the carefree fripperies of Vivaldi violin concertos (how dissapointing). Was it the elegant machismo of Copland's Third that made him able to "concentrate" so vividly, or was it the second movement from Ravel's Piano Concerto in G? Maybe he went in for the hard dissonances of a Boulez, or the quiet murmers of a Webern?

I wish I knew. But with the state of music education in New York, it is easy to see why even the highest price call-girl or Secret Service agent can't help but be vague.

What's sadder: the term "mood music," or the fact that nobody in the retinue had any?

Carmina

Thanks John for this new video translation of the Carmina Burana. I will never wonder again what the hell this piece means.

Classical Music Blogs, To Be or Not to Be

At the exact moment when I was pondering the whole notion of blogging--I wonder, I thought to myself (in my most po-faced and baleful mode), is this worth it, is anyone actually reading anything here (aside from Alex)--lo a self-Googling (1) reveals something fascinating: I am listed in the Wikipedia entry under "Classical Music Blogs." An honor to be listed with such luminaries as Noise, the Concert, Post-Classical, ThinkDenk, etc. So this was what I needed, the spur to keep going. After all, according to Anne Midgette (herself blogless...for the moment), apparently people read them. (2)

I'll spare you my comments on yesterday's primary to say that I deftly avoided watching returns with my usual fanatical obsession by attending a quite-good concert by the Oratorio Society of New York. The evening's fare: two pieces by Faure, plus Paul Moravec's haunting and deftly made Songs of Love and War.

Mostly, I am excited to see two pieces which are favorites of mine only in the abstract (never have I seen them live). Michael Nyman's chamber opera The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and the collaboration between Tom Stoppard (an absolute hero) and Andre Previn Every Good Boy Does Fine, both part of the InCite Arts Festival rolling into town from Boston next week.

But other than that, my news on the personal front is that I've finally finished a huge piece I wrote in collaboration with the great string arranger Larry Gold (who doubles as my father-in-law), a Soul Symphony. More details on this to come soon, no doubt.

Nice to be back, to be appropriately Wiki-d, and to once again loll about in the soft courage of my bloggish convictions. Or, as they say in the film Juno, "honest to blog."

--

1. Admit it, you all do this, late at night, when you can't sleep.
2. Handily, I am also mentioned in the entry for poet Ernest Hilbert, who is a friend and once-and-future collaborator, and quoted in two other entries: an entry on Barber's Knoxville (which makes sense as I wrote about this piece in my book, and, oddly enough, an essay on the movie Closer, the author of which somehow managed to track down an article I wrote about Cosi for the New York City Opera.