WCPE--TheClassicalStation.org’s blog

Blogging will be light for the next few days since I'll be going out of town. So here's something to tide you over till I get back next week.

http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=12289

Bet you didn't know the man could swing. Check it out about 1:45 in.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Chris Speck

Classical music blogger Jessica Duchen posts about this relatively new phenomenon called Alt Classical. Apparently, younger composers these days are distancing themselves from established classical composers so much they are being given the "alt" moniker. I'm sorry, but I maintain that we've had Alt Classical all along and have been calling it "Modern Classical". That atonal stuff, that minimalist stuff, the experimental stuff, you know, the stuff that makes no sense and hurts one's ears because one is not smart enough to appreciate it. I know it would be rude if I didn't hide my contempt for this kind of music, but it wouldn't be honest, either.

Okay. So the big news is that The Chicago Symphony has just appointed two young shake-em-up composers, Mason Bates and Anna Clyne as next season's composers in residence. Bates recently performed during the YouTube Symphony Orchestra and Clyne recently had a piece commissioned by Carnegie Hall. None other than Riccardo Muti approves. I'll admit to being new to this whole phenomenon, so I'll reserve comment except to say that both of these composers have backgrounds in electronica, Bates in particular since he has experience as a DJ.

So here's how blogger Greg Sandow opines:

"For years, the BIg Five orchestras -- New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Philly, Boston -- featured modernist new music. Boulez, Matthias Pintscher, Birtwistle (a Cleveland favorite), Magnus Lindberg currently in New York, Carter and Babbitt currently in Boston. Along with a welcome dose of John Adams, but the emphasis was modernist. Or, in other words, on music that hardly anyone likes (whatever its virtues might be), music the normal audience can't respond to, and which also has no base (for instance among artists in other fields, or younger people) outside the classical audience. It's music like this, I think, which leads orchestras to conclude that new music doesn't -- no matter what many people might expect -- attract a young audience.

"But of course there's another kind of new music that a young audience really does like, and that's what Mason Bates writes, and I'd think also what Anna Clyne writes. I've called that style alt-classical in endless posts here, pointed out that it has an audience (in New York, quite a large one), and challenged mainstream classical music institutions to wake up and start programming it."

I gave you quite a taste there, but read the whole thing. I can't help wonder however if this step he's celebrating is really more "alt" than "classical". He also goes out on a limb when he assumes that music "hardly anyone likes" may have "virtues". This is despite mainstream refusal to accept modern classical for going on a century now. He fails to accept the possibility that mainstream audiences may reject modern classical because it has so few virtues to begin with.

Anyway, Anna Clyne wrote something on her web page that made me think. She says she's passionate about "collaborating with innovative and risk-taking musicians." The presupposes that taking risks is always good. Is it? How often did Mozart or Beethoven or Brahms take risks? Sure they may have taken financial or political risks with their music. But my feeling is that musically they took few risks at all, meaning that they knew their stuff was good before publishing it. They, geniuses that they were, were good enough to make safe bets most of the time. They weren't experimenters. They weren't trying to push or prod audiences. They weren't commissioning orchestras to play their work just to see what would happen. Having read biographies recently on Mendelssohn and Rachmaninoff, this kind of risk-taking was the last thing on their minds when they were composing. When asked about his inspiration for the Prelude in C Sharp Minor, Rachmaninoff characteristically quipped, "20 rubles." Apparently, his publisher offered him something like 100 rubles for five short works on piano, and that piece was one of them.

You see, the great ones at one point or another had to compose to survive. They best way to do this is to compose pieces people will buy and enjoy. Of course, they found ways to keep the music fresh, but enjoyable it always had to be.

It's nice to hear that the Chicago Symphony is trying to attract younger audiences. But if their young Alt-Classical composers place risk-taking on a higher plane than making great music, well, people will be soon searching for an alternative to that.

Chris Speck

Highly recommended (from me) comes Ann Patchett's 2001 novel Bel Canto. Few novels I have read can match this one for portraying the sheer joy a person can take from music. Katsumi Hosokawa, an all-business Japanese businessman loves opera...really, it is a profound love that seems to come from nowhere. He is constantly working, he's taciturn and serious. He does not devote the same love to his family as he does to his opera recordings.

A South American nation desperately wants Mr. Hosokawa to invest in their industry. They lure him to their country by offering him a birthday party -- with a live performance by Roxanne Coss, Mr. Hosokawa's favorite opera diva. Of course, Ms. Coss is young and beautiful. Of course, she has no idea who Mr. Hosokawa is. And of course, after she sings for him and a host of other foreign dignitaries at the home of the nation's vice president, something happens.

That something is a terrorist attack.

This might have provided complications either in the publication or reception of this novel due to the contemporaneous 9-11 attacks. But the terrorists here are not cold blooded killers. You see, they want something, and will hold the entire group hostage until they get it. That something is the president, whom they wish to kidnap. When discovering that the president is not there (he preferred watching a soap opera in his living room instead, a hilarious maguffin), the terrorists hunker down with the entire group as hostages.

And slowly the music wins them over.

Opera divas often have fanatical, and mostly male, admirers, and this novel, in a sense, explains how. I won't delve into detail except to say that where you would not expect music to conquer hearts, it does in Bel Canto. There may be some issues of believability here since numerous people among the captors and captives prove to have genius level aptitude for certain subjects: music, cooking, math, language in particular. Aside from this, the plot is tight, the characters intriguing, the love stories stirring, and the ending unexpected. But it is the treatment of the music which makes this novel so special, especially for people who love classical music.

Chris Speck

I swear, sometimes I think classical musicians are like athletes. It's all about training for them. Every once in a while you hear about a fanatical parent that trains their child so much that the child becomes a prodigy and then goes on to achieve something great. Beethoven's tribulations with his father are well known. Chinese pianist Lang Lang has now opened up about his.

Perhaps not as harrowing as Beethoven's story, Lang Lang's still has pathos and drama. His father was beyond strict, and once they moved to Beijing to pursue music full time, when Lang Lang was not even 10, he bacame his son's only companion. Well, taskmaster, really. When Lang Lang was rejected by his music instructor, Lang senior instructed his son to jump to his death from a tall building. He really meant it, apparently. You're aware of China's one-child policy? The boy was the old man's only shot at greatness. He didn't blow it, that's for sure.

So, here we a fairly obvious ethical dilemma. Do we push our kids to greatness whether they want it or not? Do we rob them of their childhood, all for an unknown? In these cases you only hear about the success stories, never the failures. How often do kids decide to jump off that building -- figuratively or literally? Is classical music worth it? Is anything worth it?

My son is five, and has been studying piano for about a month. At this age, Lang Lang was giving concerts. But so what? We do our half hour a night. He can just do "Mary Had a Little Lamb" with his right hand. If he has the ear and the ability, then who knows? Considering the odds, however, I am not counting on it. Right now, the goal is get him to focus and learn. Because if he can learn piano, he can learn almost anything.

Chris Speck

Is Glitz Good for Classical Music? is the question posed by New York Times columnist Daniel Wakin. I doubt it was a serious question, especially considering that his piece focuses on Gustavo Dudamel, the new Latin American heartthrob who became the conductor and music director for the Los Angeles Symphony this year, and he's not even thirty. From all accounts, the guy waves a mean baton. So, yes. If a player has chops, then any glitz they bring along is only icing on the cake. Was there glitz surrounding Franz Liszt in his heyday? Well sure, but he was first and foremost a phenom on the piano.

That's what you can pretty much count on with classical music. There are few Anna Kournikovas out there. If you can't play the music, people will know, and any hype or glitz surrounding you won't last -- unlike with pop music where a star can rest on his laurels and ride the crest of past successes for decades. Sure there will always be critics. Classical music critics seem like a real picky bunch, but no matter how you see it the overall quality of the music is high. This is because the price one has to pay to be a top classical musician is pretty high. Here is Lang Lang's story for a good example. The problem is that with such skill and sacrifice, there should be greater rewards in terms of money and popularity.

Fans of classical music need not worry about too much glitz. Perhaps they should worry about there being not enough of it.

Chris Speck

It seems like everyone who cares about classical music has an opinion about how it should be these days. How it should be played, taught, learned, marketed, sold, what have you. So here we have Tom Service, a columnist for the UK Guardian, who believes that classical is music being used in too many television ads. He complains that "classical music is used to sell us cars, watches, jewellery, and other largely pointless trinketry" (as if cars and watches are pointless trinkets). Then he says what we all should do instead is share classical music "with people who haven't yet encountered it."

I can't be the only one who sees how silly this is.

Playing classical music in TV ads is a way of sharing it. Would he prefer no TV as exposure at all? He seems to think that this kind of exposure desensitizes us of the "rich meanings of classical music." I would like to see that proven somewhere because I am highly skeptical.

I think that this kind of exposure (while not ideal) is by no means bad and does help provide in our minds a substrate upon we can build a greater understanding of the music should we decide to go there. In other words, it makes us more familiar with the music. I cannot imagine a downside to that. And if it helps companies sell their products, even better.

Chris Speck

We all listen to music for different reasons. Better yet, we can never know for sure why someone else listens to music. So, since they are not you, it's safe to say that their reasons aren't your reasons. Or mine.

As a kid, music was a therapy for loneliness. For me. Bottom line. I needed it for that reason. The only kind of music that mattered was rock n' roll. Classical was so sterile, so clean. It brought me nowhere. But rock responded to those pressures which made me lonely: from my family, my peers, myself, and dragged me kicking and screaming to a place where I could feel whole again.

And it did this by doing everything it you weren't supposed to do. It was loud. You weren't supposed to be loud. It was vulgar. You weren't supposed to be vulgar. You see where I am going with this, right? Growing up, I had to do what I was supposed to do. And for some ineffable reason this felt wrong. I felt wrong. And rock, at least temporarily, fixed that.

I'm not talking about older rock or the architects of classic rock like the Beatles or the Beach Boys. I'm talking more about the loud, angsty, angry rockers who sucked me into their sonic sanctuaries where I could nurse my childish grudges against mankind and feel justified at the same time. AC/DC, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Guns n Roses. As I got older and supposedly more sophisticated, I exchanged these bands for the Velvets, the Stooges, The Sex Pistols, Superchunk, Bruce Springsteen in his darker moments. I dug other stuff too, of course, and by no means is all rock is like this. But when I felt most at odds with the world, when I was at my lowest, this is where I took cover.

That's something classical music could never do for me. It seems that that was never its point. It's not there to make you whole. It's not there to fight your demons for you. It leaves that to you (as it should), and instead, assumes that you are already grown up enough to appreciate what it is about to give you. That is its starting point: the grown up. And from there it takes you to God, whatever or however you may perceive Him to be.

I am not lonely anymore. So it make sense then that classical now makes sense to me. Rock is still there, but I don't need it like I used to. I can still sympathize with Springsteen's Magic Rat. I can still raise my fist with Bon Scott's Problem Child or hurl profanities at my slack co-workers as Superchunk would have me do. But I cannot become these people anymore. I have a family, a career. I have more important things to worry about.

But classical music is another matter. It is important enough. I did not know what beauty was until I first listened. I mean, really listened. Like in my mid-thirties. It took some effort and time, and then all I could wonder was how I could have lived so long without it.

When Tom Lehrer referred to rock and roll as "children's music", it was funny, and somewhat true. Much of the time rock does speak to the maladjusted, underachieving teenager in all of us. This isn't necessarily bad, but it is something that classical music never does. Instead, classical music requires an adult perspective above all else. This is why I believe we should expose our children to classical music as much as possible. Sure, they can still be kids. But someone who has that adult perspective as a kid will turn into one heck of an adult. One who is already whole and spared the dirty job of having to become that way while in their prime. Instead they could be doing great things.

Chris Speck

I always love reading about how classical music has pragmatic uses. It's as if its beauty and power isn't enough, and the real reason why you should listen to it is because it actually can serve a function, like it will help your flowers bloom. Or, even better, some scientific study somewhere reveals that it has medical or psychological effects, like it can help you recover from surgery or fight depression.

Well, I guess when there's smoke, there's fire.

One thing I noticed in this article is how people now claim that classical music lowers crime.

"In 2004 British transport police played classical music in London’s metro stations and were astonished with the results in six months: robberies were down 33 percent, assaults on metro staff fell by 25 percent, and cases of vandalism decreased 37 percent.

Classical music also proved effective in preventing gangs from gathering in supermarkets. Graffiti scribblers were also “repulsed” by the sound of Vivaldi and Tchaikovsky, according to the Web site SixWise.com.

What is more, classical music reflects the morality of times when a belief in the divine dominated people’s thinking and made people more modest and reverent. Reverence is a mood in opposition to irritation."

While this is great news, I'm a little confused. Why does this happen? Because classical music instills a sense of reverence in the criminal or because it "repulses" them like water to the Wicked Witch of the West? ("Mozart! Beauty! Noooo! It burns! It burns!"). The only other time I can recall of music serving such a civic function is when in 2008 a Colorado judge sentenced youthful noise offenders to sit in a locked room and listen to Barry Manilow as "punishment."

I know, it's funny. But it's not the same thing.

Anyway, we shouldn't get too excited about these findings because they are hardly scientific. To do it right, you would need control groups, like metros playing no music at all, versus groups that play all kinds of music and then factor in populations, traffic patterns, weather, current events, and a whole host of other things that may also affect the outcome. Perhaps there was also an increased police presence in these metros, and that's the real reason why crime diminished. It might not have been classical music at all.

Still.

You never hear about negative affects of classical music, do you? Has there ever been a study where classical music actually makes things worse for an animal or plant or law-abiding citizen? That certainly would be news, right? I can see the headlines now.

"Proven: Playing Mozart in Cars Increases Road Rage!"

"Proven: Chopin in Airplanes Turns Up Tensions Among Airplane Passengers!"

"Proven: Verdi Causes Riots in Circus Tents!"

Nah. I can't see it, really. It's just too ridiculous.

Chris Speck

One of the sweetest classical music-related stories you can find is Marrying Mozart by Stephanie Cowell. Published in 2004, it chronicles Mozart's relationship with the sisters Weber in Mannheim and Vienna. If there is anything inside of you that can fall for a good love story, then reading this novel will make you fall, and then get up, and then fall again.

Drawing carefully on historical figures, Cowell treats us with distinct, believable characters, and always treads that thin line of objectivity. Mozart is sweet, but impulsive and self-absorbed (of course). Guided by his financially careful mother, the 21 year old genius meets the Weber girls (Josefa, Aloysia, Constanze, and Sophie -- all under 20) in Mannheim, and over time falls in love with more than one of them. And they all fall for him, in their own peculiar ways and for their own peculiar reasons. Of course, the nominal villain is their pathologically shrewd mother. She has big, if outlandish, marriage plans for all her daughters and can't bear that they waste their time on a penniless musician. And so it goes.

Some readers might get turned off by all the tears and melodrama. Hearts ache, hearts break, oh, boy, do they. Such drama is treated with the utmost respect by Cowell. There is no irony. Nothing to laugh at. But we must remember that this story, which takes place over four or five years, is essentially about the Weber sisters in their teens, and what are teenage girls but susceptible to melodrama? (Mozart himself plays the crucial, if supporting role, and his marriage to one of the sisters is almost like a Maguffin -- it takes place on the penultimate page of the book). Further it is a great love story, told once by history, and retold nicely by Cowell, with just enough detail in the candle wax and cobble stones and cold coffee served next to lemonade stands closed for the winter to bring us back to a young girl's 18th Century Europe. But not enough to overtake the story or to deprive us of those breathless moments when the characters she has asked us to invest our time in catch glimpses of true love. You see, their loves become ours. Like I said, sweet.

This however brings me to a confession. One reason for the wonderful sense of discovery I felt while reading this novel was my complete ignorance of Mozart's love life. I had no idea which sister he would marry. So Marrying Mozart became quite a pager turner for me. But I do wonder how I would have reacted to the novel had I known.

Probably the same. It's a sweet story. Such things occur often enough in life. And once in a while an author hunkers down and gets it right. And we're all the richer for it.

Chris Speck

Seems like one of our, er, eleven world heavyweight boxing champions these days loves classical music. He is the Russian Nikolai Valuev. At seven feet tall, his acromegalic, circus freak demeanor is arresting. But he is, by all accounts, a cultured guy, nerding it up not only with classical but with Russian lit as well. He often plays Chopin as his walkout music before fights.

I just can't tell if it's snark when this article's author wonders if Valuev's walkout music should be something uplifting and powerful, like Chopin's Revolutionary Etude, or the A minor Mazurka, Op 17, no 4, because it is more enigmatic and will have Valuev's opponent cowering with existential angst before the bell.

Chris Speck