WOSU Public Media - Classical

My WOSU colleagues Boyce Lancaster and Beverley Ervine told me not long ago about a gigantic emporium of imported and artisinal foods. So, an incurable foodie, I went. Twelve hundred imported cheese labels, a dozen tanks of live (read: fresh) fish and four aisle-browsing hours later, I’m still reeling. What does this have to do with classical music, you ask. Well, what could be better than savoring a sweet Gorgonzola to a background of Bach, or sipping a Belgian abbey ale (if 21 or over) to strains of Beethoven?

Since returning from my alimentary adventure, I’ve been thinking about how composers and other musicians have paid musical homage to food. Here’s a little list of food-related compositions, an emporium of tasty musical tidbits that I hope will satisfy the cravings of your inner epicure.

Let’s start - where else? - with breakfast. Few musical works offer as compelling a picture of one’s culinary daybreak as Cats in the Kitchen by the American “alternative” classical composer Phillip Bimstein. In the first movement, “Eggs and Toast,” percussion instruments become cracking egg shells and a wire whisk scrambling yolks and whites in a glass bowl. The whisk strokes take on the character of a ticking clock, the sound that haunts all late risers. Bimstein originally included flute and oboe in his score, but rescored the work for tuba and euphonium at the request of the Symbiosisduo, whom you hear on this recording:

Eggs underway, the toast appears later in the same movement. We sharpen a knife, we slice a thick loaf of crusty bread right down to the wooden cutting board and, once our bread is toasted, we scrape on some butter:

Speaking of butter, Rossini wrote a piece about it. The fourth movement of his Four hors d’œuvres is a delightful theme and variations devoid of trans fat and full of zero-calorie fun:

But getting back to Bimstein’s whisks, bowls, knives and cutting boards, a foodie is only as good as his tools. Vaughan Williams gave us a “March Past of the Kitchen Utensils” in the incidental music he composed for a Cambridge University production of Aristophanes’ comedy The Wasps.  The movement is classic Vaughan Williams, reminiscent of British royal marches and tinted with the hues of the composer’s beloved English folk songs. In the hands of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor James Judd the work is extra “snappy,” like a crumbly Cheshire cheese that bites you back:

How about vegetarian  fare for lunch? A fruit and nut salad, perhaps? We return to Rossini, whose piano work Four Foods (Quatre Mendiants) has all the fixings - dried figs:

. . . antioxidant-packed almonds:

. . . iron-rich raisins:

. . . and hazelnuts. Mmm, Nutella:

But let’s not forget our veggies. The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra might well be the only orchestra in the world who make, play, then eat their instruments. Here they are, with pumpkin drums, carrot flutes and zucchini oboes. Be sure to catch the carrot-and-yellow-bell-pepper trumpet (of sorts) near the end of the clip:

Whoever invented life in Italy was a food genius. Long lunches, laid-back afternoons that metamorphose into dinner time - these folks understand that one eats not just for sustenance, but for sensory gratification. Dinner in Italy can last all night, the main dish arriving on the table only after the antipasti and the pasta course - each often accompanied by a matching wine selection - have been consumed amidst leisurely (though often heated!) conversation. So what about that wine? Pinot griggio comes to mind. ”A Light Dry Table Wine,” the second movement of Rami Vamos and Randall Avers‘ Three Songs for Twelve Strings, hits the spot:

(the Newman & Oltmann Guitar Duo performs on this recording.)

Now that we’ve taken care of the essentials (food, schmood - it’s the wine that matters most at dinner), let’s dig in. The seventeenth-century composer Heinrich Biber left us a great dinner soundtrack in the suites of his Mensa Sonora, literally “Sounding Table,” a half-dozen instrumental suites Biber composed for his Salzburg employer, the Prince-Archbishop Maximilian Gandolph von Khüenburg, allegedly for him to use as dining music. Your mother would probably tell you not to dance to this lovely little balletta from Mensa Sonora’s Suite in F major for at least half an hour after dinner. Chicago’s Baroque Band performs on this recording:

. . . and I guarantee you’ll chew each bite twenty times to this beautiful ciacona, from the Suite in A minor:

Hungry yet? Bon appétit . . . and happy listening!

- Jennifer Hambrick

Remember Claus von Bulow? If you came of age in the early 80s like me you may remember this European born socialite accused of poisoning his wife. It invaded the front pages in the pre -O.J. days. Claus made a big point several times of claiming a family relationship with a nineteenth century figure,  Hans von Bulow.

Claus has a footnote in the history books for all the wrong reasons. Hans
von Bulow, on the other hand, was a giant in 19th century music and his career and legacy deserve to be better known. Alan Walker’s new book, Hans von Bulow, A Life and Times goes a long way toward restoring its subject to prominence.

Hans von Bulow (1830-1894) was a German born pianist and conductor.

Hans von Bulow, A Life and Times by Alan Walker

His gifts at the keyboard were considered for a time second only to Franz Liszt’s and he soon surpassed the older man who was a time his father in law. Hans was the first pianist to play the complete keyboard works of Beethoven in multi evening marathon concerts, throughout Europe and the New World (they loved him in Boston and New York). It was to Bulow that Wagner entrusted the premiere of Tristan und Isolde, and Bulow used his influence to promote Wagner’s music in good times and bad. Bad times? Here’s where it gets complicated. Bulow married Cosima Falvigny Liszt, Franz’s daughter by his mistress,  the Countess Marie d’Agoult.  Cosima and Hans were happy-for a time and two daughters, Daniela and Blandine were born of this marriage. Before very long Cosima herself met Richard Wagner-and she had two more children, Isolde and Siegfried-by Wagner while married to Bulow. Got it? The prime mover of Wagner’s music-which was not universally admired in the 1860s-lost his wife and children to the composer of Tristan and  Die Meistersinger. For that alone was Bulow discussed in the history books. His astonishing gifts in music were ignored in favor of his messy private life.

Bulow had a photographic memory and was afraid of no score ever set before him on the keyboard or conductor’s podium. He admired Liszt and Berlioz-and Wagner-each of whom needed his influence.  He held important conducting posts in Meiningen, Vienna and Berlin and made regular appearances with the New York Philharmonic in that orchestra’s earliest days. Bulow was known for the diamond like perfection of his music making. Liszt was considered more emotional, where even his mistakes were art. Bulow seldom made mistakes. His piano recital programs included Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Liszt, Scarlatti and Mozart. He did a lot to further the popularity of the Brahms symphonies (that composer was not always grateful) and thought little of conducting the Beethoven Ninth twice in one day. Tantalizingly, some of Bulow’s piano recitals in the States were recorded by Thomas Edison on wax cylinders in 1890, as was a New York performance of the Eroica. Bulow writes of these recordings as ‘miracles’ but they’ve never been found.

Alan Walker includes notes from a series of masterclasses given by Bulow

Hans von Bulow (1830-1894)

for young pianists and conductors:

**In the beginning was rhythm

**There are no easy pieces, they are all difficult

**The bar line is only for the eye, not the ear.  In playing, as in reading a poem, scanning must be subordinated to the declamation

**The Well -tempered Clavier is the Old Testament, the Beethoven sonatas are the New Testament. We must believe in both

**With Beethoven one must place one’s technique in the shadows, not bring it into the light

Bulow made a speech from the podium admiring of Bismarck that got him into hot water, but this was a public figure who always spoke his mind. He had a lofty level of perfection and it can’t have been easy to have made music with him–but if you succeeded, oh my, it must have been wonderful. Alan Walker writes with complete authority on matters musical and has an unflinching eye toward a fickle public, personal peccadilloes and a wayward press.  Not only is this book important to ’square the picture’ of the life and career of an astonishingly gifted artist, it is an entertaining and enjoyable read.  Walker’s accounts of Bulow’s performances of music by Beethoven and Brahms had me reaching for CDs I hadn’t touched in a while.  Bulow did re-marry, but this was an early two-career marriage, and the couple often lived apart-she was an acts at the court theater at Meiningen.  Hans von Bulow’s death was no less dramatic than his life.   He traveled to Egypt in 1894 in search of a cure for the neuralgia and aches and pains plaguing him and he died not far from the banks of the Nile.  The young Mahler conducted Bulow’s Memorial Concert, in Hamburg-Bulow’s home for many years and the scene of plenty of his triumphs. Mahler and Richard Strauss were both encouraged by Bulow, though of Mahler’s Second Symphony, the old conductor reportedly shook his head and said, “If this this is music, then I have never understood music.”

Cosima, God love her, outlived her own son and practically everybody

Cosima Liszt von Bulow Wagner, (1833-1930)

else, dying in her 90s in 1930. But that’s another story….

–Christopher Purdy

First things first. Here is the Ohio State University Men’s Glee Club in the sublime Prisoner’s Chorus from Beethoven’s only opera Fidelio, from a concert performance of the complete opera given at Mershon Auditorium on March 10, 2010, and broadcast live over WOSU:

Marhsall Haddock conducted the performance. The Men’s Glee Club is prepared and conducted by Robert Ward

O welche Lust! In freir Luft, dem Atem leicht zu heben!

O what joy, to breathe with ease in the open air!

For me, the singing of the Men’s Glee Club in some of the most moving pages in all opera was worth the price of admission. Okay, I was working the show and got in for free, but you know what I mean. Fidelio is a musical and emotional gut punch anyway, but the days preceding this performance were not for the feint of heart. The performance was heavily promoted around the participation of a world class tenor who was busy in Australia and Italy in the weeks leading up to March 10. No problem. The guy is in demand and his presence on campus would be worth waiting for. And in every breath, uttered by me and others, it was “Fidelio at Ohio State with Joe Blow”.  Comes two days before the performance when the word is out that Joe Blow ain’t coming.  So the opera has to go on without Blow, or more to the point without a tenor to sing Florestan which is a role very few tenors have the cojones to sing well (literally-its a killer). I grew up hearing Jon Vickers do the role, so my standards are impossibly high, and Jon Vickers in his 80s is living a happy retirement in Bermuda. But bing-o, tenor Michael Hendrick is en route to save the show. He gets off a plane at 9 pm on March 8 while the first dress rehearsal is going on, comes in to Mershon auditorium  with his coat on and luggage in hand, gets on stage and sings…and sings…WOW!

Mind you, the guy barely had time to take off his coat. Thank you,

Michael Hendrick

Michael Hendrick!

Okay, so now we have a terrific new tenor in place, the OSU Symphony and Glee Clubs sound wonderful, conductor Marshall Haddock is in command and its all good. Isn’t it? Well, second dress rehearsal Tuesday night March 9 goes okay.

And then. And then.  AND THEN my phone rings at 4 pm,  four hours before show time letting me know that our beloved soprano who is to

Jennifer Whitehead with daughter, Olivia

sing the title role, a distinguished OSU alumna with a great voice and a sweetheart to boot is ill and has CANCELLED. So on four hours notice we have no Fidelio. And the opera is called Fidelio in case you forgot. Luckily, Jennifer Whitehead is pursuing doctoral study at OSU, she’s a gifted, lovely experienced soprano and she is ready to go on. Is she a Fidelio?  She is a gifted, lovely  and experienced soprano and she is ready to go on.  (Talk about “first things first”.  She is reported to have said, “I gotta go buy a dress”. Which she did and looked glorious).  So Jennifer Whitehead, who to my knowledge has had no rehearsal with orchestra, who has never sung this role before, who had a few hours notice, comes out in the snappy new dress, score in hand and the girl delivers.  Here’s the Act I quartet, Mir ist so wunderbar (and it bloody well was)

Helen Allen (Marzelline) Jennifer Whitehead (Fidelio)  C.Andrew Blosser (Jaquino) and Calvin Griffin (Rocco)

nnifer Whitehead with Olivia

Some very gifted singers here. I’m told Calvin Girfin is an undergrad. Write his name down. Andy Blosser is a jewel and I’m in love with Helen Allen’s voice. Jenifer Whitehead saved the show and brought honor to herself and Beethoven. OSU should have at least paid for the dress.

At the end,  it was a great evening for the School of Music at The Ohio State University. It was a joy for us to be involved and to have a live broadcast for OSU listeners. Don’t believe me about the joy part?  Here’s the finale, with our soloists and the OSU Women’s and Men’s Glee Clubs, Richard Schnipke and Robert Ward, conductors, all led by the man who

Marshall Haddock-who made it happen

made it happen, Marshall Haddock:

Jennifer sings like a dream and gets a new dress and thanks to our broadcast locally and over the web, the world knows about the fine School of Music at the Ohio State University. Bravo School of Music, Bravo Beethoven and Bravo WOSU!

–Christopher Purdy

Pianist John O'Conor

Pianist John O’Conor has a ready laugh and a lilt in his voice that has nothing to do with his Irish accent.  He loves what he does.  A recently re-released recording combines his love of music, playing the piano, and the melodies he grew up hearing in his native Ireland.  Melodies like The Banks of My Own Lovely Lee, The Last Rose of Summer, and Danny Boy, are near and dear to John O’Conor.  In these arrangements, which he recorded with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, these classic Irish tunes take on a sophisticated air, while retaining their original charm.

Mr. O’Conor invested several years of his life into recording the piano sonatas of Beethoven.  His love of Beethoven came through special studies with renowned German pianist Wilhelm Kempff at his villa in Positano, Italy.  His studies with Kempff would eventually lead to the student becoming the teacher as O’Conor now conducts masterclasses in that same villa.

In a recent Columbus recital (thanks to Chamber Music Columbus), the audience was treated to selections by pianist John Field, an Irish-born composer about whom many of us know little.  O’Conor says Field is someone we owe a great deal when it comes to the development of the piano repertoire as we know it today.

While John O’Conor still makes his home in Ireland, he finds himself spending more and more time in the mountains of  Virginia.  University of Virginia?  Virginia Tech?  No…at what is now Shenandoah University in the sleepy little town of Winchester.

What advice does he offer for that next generation?

I leave you with a look at Wilhelm Kempff’s villa in Positano, Italy. — Boyce Lancaster

It’s that time of year…everybody has a year-end list of “best ofs.”  Like my colleagues, I am no exception.

My favorites list has much that is homegrown, or at least has some roots in Ohio.  Some is challenging.  All, in my opinion, is worthy of a listen.

10.  Martha Argerich has been in the public eye since she was four years old.  She played her first Mozart Concerto when she was eight.  Now in her mid sixties, she still brings audiences to their feet.  She has actually gone against type this year with a recording of Beethoven’s 1st Piano Concerto and Mozart’s 18th Concerto.  There is also a reissue of past recordings a recital recording she made with Gidon Kremer, but Argerich playing Beethoven and Mozart?  Heavenly!

9.  For those wanting to simultaneously relive their childhood AND hear some great music by a living composer, Metropolis Symphony by Michael Daugherty is worth your time.  It’s edgy, exciting, and based on some of the main characters in the Superman comics…Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, and Mr. Mxyzptlk, along with a movement called Krypton, and the Red Cape Tango for the finale.

8.  For those of you who only know Edvard Grieg by his Piano Concerto and Peer Gynt, I recommend you look a little further.  I was introduced to his beautiful songs at a competition in January 2009 and to a Norwegian baritone by the name of Nyal Sparbo.  His recording of Norwegian Songs by Edvard Grieg shows that there is more to Grieg than meets the eye.  At the same time, I also recommend someone a little closer to home.  Pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi, who is a piano professor at the Cleveland Institute of Music, has recorded the entire works for piano by Grieg.  After you hear a few of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces, you’ll fall in love with them, too.

7.  With this being the 50th anniversary year of Van Cliburn’s amazing triumph at the International Tchaikovsky Competition, we have our first opportunity to hear the competition finals in Moscow.  The Rachmaninoff 3rd Piano Concerto, a short Rondo by Kabalevsky, and, of course, the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 have been remastered.  Now you can hear what all of the excitement was about!

6.  While we’re on the subject of Tchaikovsky, I must recommend a recording of his 1812 Overture and March Slav, performed by the Mariinsky Orchestra, Soloists, and Chorus.  Valery Gergiev conducts, which is what makes this recording so compelling.  The history of the theatre is extraordinary.  A plus is the seldom heard Moscow Cantata which Gergiev included on this recording.  There are some stunning moments, especially in the choral sections.

5.  Beethoven needs little introduction, but if you think you know his music for cello and piano, a recording by two incredible American musicians may shine some new light on them for you. Cellist  Zuill (pronounced Zool) Bailey and Pianist Simone Dinnerstein have been playing together for 10 years, which shows in their recording.

4. Richard Mudge.  Who, you say?  Well, some of his music was recently uncovered, which led to interest in this set of Six Concertos in Seven Parts.  His years spanned the later portion of Bach’s life and the early part of Mozart’s.  He’s not Bach, he’s not Mozart, but his music has been said to be “of outstanding beauty and dignity” by those who know much more than I, and is well worth adding to your collection.

3.  The Jarvi family is a conducting dynasty.  First Neeme, then Kristjan and Paavo.  Though he conducts around the world and handles Artistic Directing duties for the German Chamber Philharmonic, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Paris Orchestra, Paavo Jarvi is firmly settled in Cincinnati.  Now in his ninth season in Cincinnati, Jarvi and the Cincinnati Symphony released two great recodings in 2009…One features the  Shostakovitch 1oth Symphony and the Overture No. 2 by Veljo Tormis.  Tormis is an Estonian composer whose stirring music fits the Shostakovich quite well.  The second recording features Holst’s The Planets and The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra by Benjamin Britten.

2.  The “other orchestra” in Cincinnati has an amazing recording history.  Though officially formed in 1977, the Cincinnati Pops was guided by the late Erich Kunzel to a world-class reputation and has a discography of well over 100 recordings.  The last recording they made under Kunzel’s direction spoke to two of his passions…making great music and championing young musicians.  From the Top at the Pops lets you hear a great orchestra at their best AND take a peek at some of tomorrow’s musicians.

1.  When you see this next selection, you might notice a theme…the top three recordings on my list come out of Ohio.  Carpe Diem StringQuartet is an exciting, progressive ensemble which does more than just put on concerts.  Their most recent recording of the music of Jonathan Leshnoff is a prime example.  Leshnoff is “a young composer whose star is rapidly rising.”  Violinist Charles Weatherbee recorded Leshnoff’s Violin Concerto with the Baltimore Symphony, where Leshnoff is Composer-in-Residence.  The concerto tells a stunning story of the human spirit and survival in the face of almost impossible odds.  Weatherbee then teams with the other members of Carpe Diem for Leshnoff’s String Quartet No. 1, commissioned by Jeremiah German, “a retired college professor with an abiding love for music,” on the occasion of his wife Pearl German’s 80th birthday.  Carpe Diem is a versatile, exciting group, especially in concert, and not above having a little fun. The clip below is just one example!

Rather than “best of”,  I offer the 10 CD releases of 2009 that gave me the most pleasure. Read through this and then send in your own choices. I learn so much music that’s new to me by paying attention to what others listen to and enjoy. I hope you enjoy these:

In no particular order:

1. Sacrificium: Cecilia Bartoli-the luminous Italian mezzo performs music written for the castrati, the stars of 17th and 18th century opera. Music by Broschi, Caldara, Graun, Porpora.  With Il giardino armonico conducted by Giovanni Antonini. LONDON/DECCA 001341202

Here’s an aria from Porpora’s Semiramide riconosciuta

2. Schubert: Winterreise with Mark Padmore, tenor and Paul Lewis, piano. See Jennifer Hambrick’s compelling review elsewhere on this blog. Finally, a young protagonist for Schubert’s final, haunting work. HARMONIA MUNDI USA BOO2DMIIU2

Schubert: Die Post

3. Arthur Foote: Francesca da Rimini, Suite in E major; Air and Gavotte; Four Character Pieces after the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Gerard Schwarz conducts the Seattle Symphony. Arthur Foote (1853-1937) was part of a Boston -based group of composers active from the late 19th into the early 20th centuries that came to be known as “The Second New England School.” They are played little and studied less, but Gerard Schwarz makes a good case for the power and beauty of Foote’s music, if not always its originality. NAXOS 8. 559365

4. Villa-Lobos: The Complete Choros and Bachianas Brasileiras. Sao Paolo Symphony conducted by Roberto Minczuk and John Neschling. All of these works by South America’s best known composer in one box, from  fire to passion and more fire. Villa-Lobs is a composer worth knowing better.  BIS CD 1830/32

Bachianas Brasileiras 1: Fuga

5. Mozart: Idomeneo. Mozart’s opera seria from 1781 is about a king who must sacrifice his own son. Rene Jacobs conducts a perfectly balanced performance, neither ranting nor precious. With Richard Croft, Bernarda Fink, Luca Tittoto and Alexandrina Pendatchanska.  Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and the RIAS Chamber Choir.  HARMONIA MUNDI  902036.38

Act II chorus: Placido e il mar (The Sea is Tranquil)

6. Handel: Harpsichord Suites, 1720. The eight “great” suites played by Chicago born Jory Vinikour. DELOS DE 3394

Handel: Suite in e , Gigue

7. Thomas Ades: The Tempest. My operatic discovery for 2009, this beautiful opera is based on Shakespeare’s play.  The Tempest cries out to be a live HD presentation when the Metropolitan Opera performs this opera in 2012. The recording comes from the Royal Opera, Covent Garden conducted by the composer, with Simon Keenlyside, Cyndia Sieden, Ian Bostridge and Toby Spence. You’ll laugh and cry, sometimes on the same page.  EMI 50999 6 95234 2

8. Beethoven: Fidelio. With performances by Furtwaengler, Bernstein, Flagstad, Nilsson, Karajan and Vickers (to name a few) does the world really need another recording of Beethoven’s only opera? It needs this one. A tightly performed,  highly dramatic account from England’s Glyndebourne Festival. Its a performance that will end just as you think its getting started, and you’ll want to play it right over again. London Philharmonic conducted by Mark Elder, with Anja Kampe as Leonore and Torsten Kerl as Florestan. Glyndebourne GFOCD 004-06

9. Stile Antico, Song of Songs: music by Palestrina, Gombert, Lassus, Victoria. Choral chamber music from the High Renaissance sung with joy and passion-and precision, but not precious-by the British based ensemble Stile Antico. HARMONIA MUNDI USA HMU 807489

Palestrina: Osculetur me

10. Berlioz: The Trojans. I’ll never forget James Levine’s 2004 performances of Berlioz’s Les troyens at the Met with the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Ben Heppner and Deborah Voigt. But they got it from somewhere and here’s the source: the famous 1957 staging at London’s Royal Opera, Covent Garden,  conducted by Raphael Kubelik (staged by John Gielgud).  It was said that Kubleik knew more about Les troyens than Berlioz himself. It was this series of performances that brought the grandest of all French operas firmly into the 20th century. Now, the performance is published for the first time, sung in English as The Trojans. Never mind. Lucky the audience in 1957 hearing this opera for the first time! With Jon Vickers at the beginning of his career, and the under estimated American mezzo Blanche Thebom at the crest of hers. Raphael Kubelik conducts the Orchestra and chorus of the Royal Opera, Covent Garden. TESTAMENT BOO27REDRA

Berlioz: The Trojans, chorus  Act III “Hail, all hail to the Queen”

HONORABLE MENTION:

Roberto Sierra: Missa Latina ‘Pro Pace’ and other works. Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Andreas Delfs. NAXOS 8.559624

Brahms: Ein deutsches Requiem; James Levine conducting the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the Boston Symphony. BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA BOO1VPJZOA

JAZZ NOCTURNE: The Collected Piano Music of Dana Suesse, Sara Davis Buechner, piano. E1 MUSIC. KIC-CD-7770

Beethoven: Complete Works for Cello and Piano, with Heinrich Schiff, cello and Till Fellner, piano. BRILLIANT CLASSICS  93895

Deems Taylor: Peter Ibbetson, with Anthony Dean Griffey and Lauren Flanigan. Seattle Symphony conducted by Gerard Schwarz.  Composer Deems Taylor invented classical music broadcsting. Peter Ibbetson was a hit in the 1930s. This is the first revival of this worthy score.  NAXOS 8.669016-17

OKAY,  LET’S HAVE YOUR VOTE NOW!

–Christopher Purdy

Everyone loves a prodigy. 

Mozart’s music is sublime, but would we find it quite so sublime if it were not accompanied by Mozart’s mythology: that the musical genius who could never land an actual job as a court musician, the brilliant playboy who burned the candles at both ends and died tragically young, began life as a continent-crossing musical child wonder?

Despite our fascination with the workings of minds at once so tender and so well formed, the musical works of child composers we know best today are generally those that come from their later years, not their youth.  Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony is one of his last works, as is Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony.  So maybe I must revise my opening: even though everyone does love the story  of a prodigy, our ears have been trained to prefer the music of a prodigy’s adult years - music deemed by some standard of values ”mature” - over that of a prodigy’s youth.  Really, everyone loves a prodigy as long as that prodigy eventually grows up.

Barry Brooks, professor of music at the University of Manchester and author of several books on Beethoven, aims to refurbish the image of musical works by child composers in his most recent book, Child Composers and Their Works: A Historical Survey (Scarecrow Press, 2009).  Brooks’ rationale for his study is intriguing: that musical research has in recent years explored the effects of many other types of “difference” (be it racial or gender difference, or that of sexual orientation) on the crafting and reception of musical works, but difference in “age” has not been seriously considered.  Instead, Brooks notes, we tend simply to brand a composer’s childhood works as “juvenilia” and relegate them to the aesthetic rubbish heap.  In just this way has the canon of Western art music been formed, by prejudices that fairly often throw the baby (no pun intended here) out with the bath.

I’m sure Brooks himself also intended no pun by deeming research on music by child composers a “virgin field” of inquiry.  Indeed it is.  The field is so untrodden that when I picked up the book, I had to ask myself why we cared what it may say.  Then I asked myself why shouldn’t we care, and read on.  Brooks states one of his more subtle objectives also in intriguing terms: “The issue to be addressed is not the childhood works of major composers, but the major works of child composers.  What concerns us here is music composed by children of the past . . . regardless of how they developed in later life.  One cannot assume that the most successful child composers became the most successful adult composers, or even continued composing at all.”  Brooks also asks: ”Who are the most important child composers of the past, and did they generally become the leading adult composers?  Is Mozart particularly exceptional in this respect? . . .  How far back in childhood can distinguishing hallmarks of a composer’s adult style be found? How often is the neglect of children’s works due to prejudice rather than inherently poor musical quality or some other reason?”  And in Child Composers and Their Works he sets out to answer at least some of these questions.

One question Brooks doesn’t include in his list (which is much longer than what I’ve quoted above) but does seek to answer as the book unfolds is, When did the age of child prodigy adoration begin?  For various reasons, few child composers have been able to be identified before the sixteenth century, Brooks claims, and only a few (Claudio Monteverdi being one better known to us today than most others) are recorded between then and 1760s.

And we all know what happened in the 1760s: Mozart (1756-91) appeared.  It was he, Brooks says, who “changed the image of the child composer irrevocably . . . with a series of remarkable compositions.  Had there been other young child composers shortly before [Mozart], even if a little older and less skillful than he was when he first made his mark, he would not have created such a stir; but there were no immediate predecessors remotely comparable.”

Well there it is.  Our understanding of child composer’s today begins and, until Brooks’ book arrived, at least, ends with Mozart.  And once Leopold Mozart began trotting young Wolfgang around the courts of Europe and his son’s reputation grew legs on took off on its own, child composers started coming out of the woodwork.  Child composers continued to arrive in a more or less steady stream, given the esoteric nature of what we’re talking about, into the nineteenth century, with the likes of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schubert, and Chopin; through that century and into the twentieth, with Richard Strauss and Erich Korngold; and right down to Jay Greenberg (b. 1991) and Alexander Prior (b. 1992) working today.

In later chapters, Brooks discusses the ways children’s compositions have been marginalized (loss of various kinds,  destruction of the manuscripts by the composers as adults) and the two litmus tests (competence and originality) to which they are typically subjected.  Whenever we evaluate artworks for their aesthetic merit, it is difficult not to lapse into the very same thinking that constructed child composers (and composers in other non-normative groups) out of the canon.  Even as Brooks calls our attention to the cultural devaluation of musical works by children, and even as he warns against using of the term “prodigy” to describe them - writing that it “implies something freakish and unnatural, and coule be regarded as little short of an insult” - his judgments of the music of some child composers are based on the same underlying set of values that regard musical evidence of mature thought as superior to that of the thought processes of a child.  Brooks notes that Monteverdi’s Sacrae Cantiunculae, a collection of motets Monteverdi composed before the tender age of 15, has been dismissed by scholars as the immature work of a composer whose mature works are today known for their sensitive text setting.  But in assailing this reception of Monteverdi’s work, Brooks doesn’t so much tell us why the youthful aspects of Monteverdi’s writing have been unjustly maligned as attempt to show how the motets of his Sacrae Cantiunculae are more mature in style than earlier writers have recognized them to be.  “Most of the words in the Sacrae Cantiunculae,” Brooks writes, “are set syllabically, with the careful attention to verbal rhythm that also characterizes his later music.” [My emphasis]  Brooks takes a similar approach, though emphasizing different specific musical aspects, in his brief discussions of early works by Beethoven and Liszt. 

Is there a way to evaluate the music of children for its unique contributions to human culture, rather than against the yardstick of “maturity” that prevails as the measure of successful music composed by adults?  I’m not sure Brooks answers this question, but he certainly raises it.  Brooks writes, “. . . even where they (works by children) are praised, authors often seem obliged to add or imply that the works are admirable only if the age of the composer is taken into account.”  But the problem Brooks butts up against is that because music by child composers has been patronized, maligned, and dismissed throughout the ages, there exists today no language and no critical vocabulary unique to music by children with which to discuss it without inadvertently comparing it to music by (white, male) adults.  The same is true for music composed by women and composers of non-Western ethnic backgrounds who wrote (or write) in western European idioms.  And if we view artistic production as artifacts of human experience, we must decode the Rosetta stone of each group’s unique way of communicating that experience through art. 

A lofty undertaking?  Certainly.  But one that must happen if we are to move beyond the barriers that Brooks has so ably shown exist in understanding the value of music by one such undersung group - children.  And by hearing - and patiently working to understand - the voices of the voiceless we will experience the true richness of the human life cycle, from beginning to end.

- Jennifer Hambrick

Well, you knew it would happen.  The Web has made Beethoven a music video star. 

As we at WOSU Public Media gear up for a special day of Beethoven’s music on the man’s birthday, Dec. 16, I wanted to see just how big a star the master really is.

The answer: big.  One of the world’s most famous composers, Beethoven is an easy target for the exploits of videographers, animators, Web designers and other tech-savvy creative types who like to mix the old with the new.  In the category of “old” are: Beethoven, his music, and the music video genre, which since the days I ran home from school (I won’t say from what grade in school) with a friend to watch the release of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video has virtually redefined music as something for the eyes as well as the ears.  In the category of “new” are: the Web 2.0 (still kind of new), YouTube (getting less new by the minute), and using today’s tech gizmos (each one never as new as the next) to do stuff with old things like music Beethoven and the genre of music videos.

So easy a target is Beethoven and so easy this tinkering with technology that a whole new subgenre of Beethoven music videos has emerged online.  I bring some of these videos to your attention here because I thought you might get a kick out of seeing them.

Quite possibly the newest Beethoven music video out there is Tom Lloyd’s aptly named “Beethoven Music Video,” uploaded on YouTube just two days ago.  Against the backdrop of the famous beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the minute-long stop-animation video pits a lone violinist (who produces the sound of a full orchestra!) against a thick-haired conductor.  The one saws away on his little claymation violin; the other waves his little arms in wide-eyed detachment.  And there’s a surprise ending that, when you consider how much work it is for the violinist to sound also like a section of cellos, basses, bassoons, oboes, etc., isn’t really a surprise after all.  Here’s the video:

There are several videos out there set to the Scherzo from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and I bring your attention to a few of them.  One video, created by Michael Luckman of Luckman Media, is a stream-of-consciousness extravaganza of colorful jumping boxes, dancing trousers (free of bodies), and can-can lines of sheep (are they sheep?).  Watch this video when you need a postmodern whimsy fix:

Another Beethoven’s Ninth Scherzo video takes an altogether darker approach.  This video, actually a promo for the XBox 360 game Gears of War, has all the makings of a total-devastation film (all the makings, that is, except Bruce Willis, Jean-Claude Van Damme, or Will Smith): the smoke and embers of a destroyed city, a lone armor-clad warrior hurtling himself through the streets to battle a fierce arachnid. (Speaking of Bruce Willis, you may remember that the Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony ran like a leitmotif through the whole Die Hard series.)  My video game-playing days went away with Michael Jackson’s Thriller video, so I can’t comment on the game.  But these images and Beethoven’s grim Scherzo (dark humor if ever there were any) make disturbingly evocative bedfellows:

Contrast these apocalyptic images with those of a video dubbed “Beautiful Music and Nature.”  The maker had a sample of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony Scherzo on his (her?) hard drive and put it together with images of nature scenes.  Trees in full fall colors, mountains, placid lakes reflecting sunset-hued skies, baby penguins - nature in all its awesome splendor.  As unnerving as are the juxtaposition of Beethoven’s music with images of war, the nature scenes with this music are, to me, at least equally destabilizing.

Finally, for fantasy fans, the first movement of Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata is the soundtrack for a  seven-minute Waterworld-meets-Lord of the Rings saga.  The theme of total devastation runs through this flick, too, as a tsunami washes out an entire village.  The themes of love and isolation are also constantly present, played out in hypnotic images by elusive characters who (not to give away the ending) leave us stranded in the No Man’s Land between dreams and reality.

So is classical music dead?  Hardly.  Roll over (in your grave) Beethoven?  I don’t think so.  Beethoven was, if nothing else, a man at once of his times and brilliantly, if also painfully, ahead of his time.  I think he’d like the idea that his music continues to inspire and accompany creativity, or at least that it continues to be heard and felt.

Don’t forget to tune in to WOSU 89.7 FM Dec. 16 for a day of special Beethoven programming.  See you then!

–Jennifer Hambrick

Katie DeJongh

“Going Green” is the hot phrase these days.  ProMusica Chamber Orchestra is doing that musically this weekend with a program that gets us out into nature.  Even if you’re one of those for whom getting back to nature means  sitting under a tree while you check spreadsheets on your laptop, I promise you a painless trip into the great outdoors this weekend.

We don’t often think about our own death.  First, it’s creepy.  Second, we’re too busy doing all the things only the living would want to do.  Third, it’s difficult for us to wrap our minds around being (not being?) in a state of non-existence (though weren’t we all once in that state before we touched down on earth?), evidence that this world and all its trifles is a never-ending dream.

But die we all must, eventually.  And as Halloween approaches we can at least look death in the eye, maybe even chuckle at it a bit, can’t we? 

Do you remember the tradition of death masks?  It extends back at least to Classical antiquity and involves taking a mold of the face of a recently deceased person to preserve his or her likeness forever.  As with all rituals surrounding death, the preserving and viewing of death masks are for the living: to remind us that, although each of us will die, we share a place on the great deathless continuum of humankind, a continuum that includes the likes of Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Mahler other brilliant minds that came before us.

All of these stars in the classical music firmament appear in painted portraits or even photographs.  But often those images don’t give a sense of what the people they depict were like.  Being three-dimensional, death masks offer a final impression (literally) of an actual flesh-and-blood human, who once occupied space on our planet.  I found online some images of composers’ death masks and thought we could have a little Halloween fun looking at them here.

Beethoven

Let’s start with Beethoven, because we all love him.  He was known in his day for his eccentric public demeanor.  He was almost always broke, his personal hygiene was questionable, and his short fuse was the stuff of legend.  His music expresses the full gamut of human emotions, from tenderness, to fury, to the profound longing for peace and redemption.  I say the longing for peace, because I’m not sure Beethoven’s music ever really does convey peace, just the earnest and reasonable hope that one day all the world’s problems and annoying people will go away.

My sense is that Beethoven loved humankind but often wasn’t so thrilled with people.  But I don’t believe the author of the now famous music to Schiller’s An die Freude (Ode to Joy) was ever truly satisfied with this distance from the public; he just had to get through life as a hypersensitive genius in a heartless world, and removing himself from the vortex of society was one way to do it.  I like that Beethoven’s death mask shows him in an eternal pout, as though all of those deep emotions, all his love for and anger with and ambivalence toward human beings, were still coursing through his veins.  But I wouldn’t choose this moment to ask for his autograph or to ask him if his deafness made him write all those dissonances in the opening of the finale of the Ninth Symphony.  Let the man rest in peace if, in fact, he really did find it.

Schubert

In 1827 Franz Schubert was one of Beethoven’s pallbearers and marched in the procession that made all Vienna weep.  The following year, Schubert, the composer of Schwanengesang sang his own swansong after a life of prolific composing and, depending on whom you read, sexual abandon.  This deathmask of Schubert isn’t to me so interesting as knowing about the place where he died: an apartment on an upper floor of a building on Vienna’s Kettenbruckengasse.  Impressions from a pilgrimage I made to this building one warm August day several years ago remain with me.

I entered the building off a wide but otherwise nondescript street and walked up what I remember to be a fairly narrow set of stairs to the building’s third (was it the second?) floor.  Imagine a hallway lined with doors made of dark wood and wrapping in a square around a central courtyard.  For a moment, I stood still, wondering whether to turn right or left.  Then, to my left, a woman with curlers in her hair and wearing only shorts and a bra scurried out of an apartment into another door nearby.  I decided then to turn right.  Only steps away was an open door, which led visitors like me to the very room (now a museum) where Schubert breathed his last. 

I wondered whether Schubert had neighbors who might have run through the hallways in their underwear.  I wondered who carried him down that long and narrow staircase and transported him to his resting place in Wahring cemetery, outside Vienna.  Was Schubert’s death, I wondered, as richly human and dramatic as his hundreds and hundreds of songs?

Wagner

Speaking of drama, let’s talk about Wagner’s death mask, which resides in the Richard Wagner Museum at his former home, Wahnfried, in Bayreuth.  Wagner was much maligned in his own day (by some for his music, by some for his unambiguous anti-Semitism) and remains controversial today.  But this death mask suggests that he really may have found peace in his parting.  There’s the character in Die Meistersinger - Sixtus Beckmesser, the official marker of Nürnberg’s song contest - whom Wagner casts in ridiculously peckish music.  Beckmesser was Wagner’s operatic effigy of the Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick, whom Wagner hated for criticzing his music in preference for that of Brahms.  

Did Wagner really care about his critics?  I’m not sure.  He might have had just the right pathologies not to care.  On the other hand, those pathologies may have come about as scars from too much bruising of a skin too thin to endure much of anything at all.  But what didn’t kill him made him strong enough to compose the Ring cycle, and in his death mask I see a grin, maybe at Hanslick, maybe at the world at large.  Were he at the time the mask was made able to thumb his nose at all of us, I almost think he might have.

Mahler

Gustav Mahler might have done many things, but I doubt nose-thumbing would have been among them.  This was the composer so traumatized by the hurdy-gurdy man’s playing of Ach, du lieber Augustin on the streets outside his death-ridden and contentious family home that for the rest of his life he harbored truly pathological angst about death and the trials of life. 

In his music, Mahler sought to reconcile life and death, or at least to come to some conclusion about whether either was good or bad.  In Das Lied von der Erde, the baritone sings “Dark is life, is death,” but in his Fourth Symphony, the soprano sings sweetly of all the bread and saints in heaven.  I’m not sure whether, in this life, Mahler ever came to any firm conclusions here.

But when I look at Mahler’s death mask, I see a hint that maybe death for him turned out to be not so dark, more light and angels.  Yes, there’s the impression that he’s still mulling things over, but there’s also what appears to be a gentle smile, like one he might show a sweeetly singing angel.  In that smile there might even be some confirmation of an afterlife, about which Mahler composed music so sublimely beautiful in his Second Symphony - his so-called “Resurrection” symphony - that even the rocks weep to hear it.  When I look at this death mask, I hear the final chord of Das Lied von der Erde, an inconclusive harmony suggesting the infinity of death and life, drifting away into silence, the great canvas of time and life and music.

Happy Halloween.

–Jennifer Hambrick