Category Archives: Admirable Others

Ligeti, Liszt, and Bartók

By Posted in Admirable Others, classical, Music Writing, Program Notes Tagged , , , , , , 4 Comments
Ligeti gettin jiggy wit it.

This weekend (May 25-28), guest conductor Jaime Martín conducts the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in music by Bartók, Liszt, and Ligeti. It’s Ligeti’s centenary–he was born on May 28, 2023, and died June 12, 2006–which means that he’s getting programmed a bit more often than usual, although still not as often as some of us would like. Also on the program is the rising young virtuoso George Li, whose presence on a Liszt and Ligeti bill pleases me with its lilting plethora of ells.

I wrote these notes for the concert, the last installment of the regular concert season. (I’ll keep updating my blog, though; I have a capacious backlog.)

Martín Conducts Ligeti, Liszt, and Bartók

by Rene Spencer Saller

György Ligeti (1923–2006): Concert Românesc für Orchester (Romanian Concerto)

Ligeti was born into a Jewish Hungarian family in Transylvania who moved to Kolozsvár (now Cluj-Napoca, in northwestern Romania) during his infancy. In 1941, unable to pursue his goal of becoming a scientist because of the Jewish quotas at the local university, he began studying composition at the nearby conservatory, then walking all the way to Budapest in the summertime so he could take lessons there as well. World War II not only interrupted his formal training but also destroyed his family: his father and brother were forced into Nazi concentration camps, where they died, and in 1944 Ligeti himself was sent to a labor camp. He survived the Holocaust, as did his mother, who had been imprisoned at Auschwitz.

When the war ended, Ligeti resumed his studies at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest. After graduating in 1949, he spent a year researching Romanian folk music, collecting recordings and making transcriptions much as the Hungarian composers Bartók and Kodály—both significant influences on the young Ligeti—had done a generation or two earlier. In 1950 he was appointed professor of harmony and counterpoint at the Academy. As a composer, he focused on exploring the folk idiom (the Romanian Concerto is a sterling example) and tried not to violate the dictates of Socialist Realism, however tedious and oppressive he found them. 

When the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 failed and he could no longer endure the creative and political restrictions imposed by the Soviets, he moved to Vienna and then Cologne, where his style underwent a dramatic change, moving away from the essentially tonal, folk-derived idiom of his Soviet years to a less accessible, sometimes even strategically hostile, musical language. He worked with Karlheinz Stockhausen at the Electronic Music Studio of Westdeutscher Rundfunk until 1959, when Ligeti chose a still more independent path, moving away from formulaic and systematic compositional techniques—all those established schools and scenes—to an equally challenging but more organic and inquisitive approach.

It is this Ligeti—dense, uncompromising, micropolyphonic—whom my friends in noise ensembles and experimental rock bands mostly worship, and for good reason: Ligeti was hardcore before there was a word for it. Many of us were formed by our first, indelible exposure to his music by way of the soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which used Ligeti’s 1966 choral piece Lux aeterna (without his authorization) to accompany the scene in which the rocket shuttle approaches the lunar monolith site. Elsewhere in the film Kubrick used portions of Ligeti’s Atmosphères and Requiem (1963–65). However disrespectful, the director’s violation of Ligeti’s intellectual property rights spawned legions of ardent young Ligeti fans, allowing his music to reach listeners who likely would never have heard of him otherwise. His influence is incalculable, but it often goes unnoticed, possibly because his style never stagnated over the many decades of his career, and it touched so many people who don’t attend conservatories or engage with traditional concert culture, from aging punk rockers to Gen Z–ish aspiring cinéastes encountering Kubrick and Ligeti for the first time in college film classes. 

A Closer Listen

Completed in 1951, the Romanian Concerto reflects Ligeti’s attempt to sneak his microtonal experiments into a seemingly “safe” (under Soviet strictures) musical context: the folk-derived concerto, in the tradition of Bartók and others. But as Ligeti explains in his program note, even traditional folk music could end up in the censors’ crosshairs if it was sufficiently dissonant. 

Cast in four movements, the concerto lasts about 15 minutes in the average performance. The orchestra calls for three horns, with the third seated at some distance. Ligeti composed the first two movements by adapting his 1950 composition Ballad and Dance for Two Violins. The first movement, a gracious and enveloping Andantino, deploys fourth and fifth intervals to create harmonies that sound both ancient and (to our modern ears anyway) crazy-future. The second movement, a fleet-footed, percussion-rich dance with scampering violin and piccolo passages, is played attaca, which means it immediately follows the first, without the customary pause between movements. In the third-movement Adagio ma non troppo, also played attaca, one horn recalls material from the opening Andantino while another, positioned at some distance, evokes a distant alphorn response; rather than the conventional equal temperament, Ligeti calls for the horns to use natural tuning, which often sounds dissonant to modern ears. The “alphorn” effect returns at the end of the finale, but not until Ligeti has doled out generous portions of mysteriously buzzing strings and a fiddle-flavored, Roma-inspired violin solo that whips the rest of the orchestra into a righteous tizzy.     

The Composer Speaks

“In 1949… I learned how to transcribe folk songs from wax cylinders at the Folklore Institute in Bucharest. Many of these melodies stuck in my memory and led in 1951 to the composition of my Romanian Concerto. However, not everything in it is genuinely Romanian as I also invented elements in the spirit of the village bands. I was later able to hear the piece at an orchestral rehearsal in Budapest—a public performance had been forbidden. Under Stalin’s dictatorship, even folk music was allowed only in a ‘politically correct’ form, in other words, if forced into the straitjacket of the norms of Socialist Realism: major–minor harmonizations… were welcome, and even modal orientalisms in the style of Khachaturian were still permitted, but Stravinsky was excommunicated. The peculiar way in which village bands harmonized their music, often full of dissonances and ‘against the grain,’ was regarded as incorrect. In the fourth movement of my Romanian Concerto there is a passage in which an F sharp is heard in the context of F major. This was reason enough for the apparatchiks responsible for the arts to ban the entire piece.” —György Ligeti

Franz Liszt (1811–1886): Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major for Piano and Orchestra

Liszt may not have invented the symphonic poem, but he was the first to call it by that name. He also may not have been the first Romantic rock star—he styled himself after the demonically gifted violinist Niccolò Paganini and wasn’t too proud to admit it—but no one was better suited to the role. He was handsome, exciting, and wildly talented, forever at the vanguard of pianistic technique. He redefined what it meant to be a virtuoso, an entertainer, a celebrity. Rival concertizers came off like sausage-fingered dolts by comparison; noblewomen swooned and bore him illegitimate children. He was gracious to the rude, and he was loyal to the insufferable (including his son-in-law, the brilliant monster Richard Wagner). On and off for almost 60 years, Liszt taught hundreds of students for free. He was a tireless booster of other composers, living and dead. 

He also managed to compose a massive body of work: 13 symphonic poems, two symphonies, two piano concertos, several sonatas, hundreds of vocal pieces, and even organ music. Imaginative and wide-ranging, his music not only distilled the spirit of Romanticism but also gestured beyond it. 

Although Liszt composed at least 20 pieces for piano and orchestra, he completed only two full-fledged piano concertos. The First Piano Concerto, in E-flat major, didn’t receive its premiere until 1855, and he revised it over a quarter-century. A third piano concerto, left unfinished at his death in 1886, was reconstructed in the 1980s.

Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 took years to write. The composer sketched out the main themes in 1830, when he was just 19. For more than two decades, he worked on the score, tweaking and polishing it even after the 1855 premiere. By the time the First Concerto was finished, he was experienced enough to recognize stale formal habits and subvert them in ways that seemed both startling and inevitable. For concert pianists, it is the ultimate bravura showpiece, the Mount Everest of concertos. But its technical difficulties are never an end in themselves. 

A Closer Listen

From the sumptuous first movement to the dreamy, proto-Impressionist second movement, the boldly original scherzo, and the breakneck finale, the concerto’s four movements are richly varied. Yet they feel coherent, thanks to the compulsively hummable main theme, always a reliable presence behind its myriad disguises. 

Although it’s impossible not to gape in wonder at the shivery trills and fleet-fingered polyrhythms, to marvel over the ways Liszt transforms the piano into a harp, a drum, some kind of strange hybrid instrument, the orchestra is never shortchanged. Liszt, generous on so many levels, gives important cameos to the other instruments: the clarinet that duets with the piano in the first movement; the cellos and basses that introduce the luminous song of the second movement; the assertively pinging triangle that punctuates the scherzo; the oboe that brings it all back home. In the end, the orchestra gets the last two notes.


Béla Bartók (1881–1945): Concerto for Orchestra

You’d never guess that the Concerto for Orchestra, which ranks among Bartók’s most popular and accessible works, was the product of a sad, impoverished, terminally ill man. But working on the commission gave the Hungarian expat a much-needed boost, and his concerto traced a similar per aspera ad astra trajectory. He explained his intentions in his own program notes: “The general mood of the work represents, apart from the jesting second movement, a gradual transition from the sternness of the first moment and the lugubrious death-song of the third to the life-assertion of the last one.” His theme isn’t about mere survival; it’s about the will to live.

In 1940, after the death of his mother, Bartók fled Nazi-occupied Hungary for the United States, where he spent the last five years of his life. Although he settled in New York, with his much-younger wife, he never truly left his native country behind. His musical language was steeped in the folk idioms of the Eastern European countryside. 

For years he and Zoltán Kodály had logged countless hours as musical documentarians, using Western notation and early portable recording phonographs to capture Hungarian, Slovak, and Romanian folk melodies from indigenous singers. Those years of immersive field work meant that Bartók carried his homeland with him, no matter where he happened to be living. 

When Boston Symphony Orchestra music director Serge Koussevitzky commissioned the concerto, Bartók was perilously poor, depressed, and racked with high fevers caused by undiagnosed leukemia. He weighed only 87 pounds. Aware of Bartók’s grim circumstances and his stoic refusal of charity, Koussevitzky offered him a $1000 advance to compose a new orchestral work in memory of Koussevitzky’s late wife. Although the Russian-born entrepreneur really wanted to cover Bartók’s medical expenses and probably never expected him to fulfill the assignment, Bartók was buoyed by the prospect. He set out for a sanatorium at Lake Saranac in upstate New York, where he finished the Concerto for Orchestra in less than eight weeks. He orchestrated it the following winter, while recuperating in North Carolina.

The Composer Speaks

“The title of this symphony-like orchestral work is explained by its tendency to treat the single orchestral instruments in a concertante or soloistic manner. The ‘virtuoso’ treatment appears, for instance, in the fugato sections of the development of the first movement (brass instruments), or in the perpetuum mobile–like passage of the principal theme in the last movement (strings), and especially in the second movement, in which pairs of instruments consecutively appear with brilliant passages.” —Béla Bartók, from his own program notes

A Closer Listen

Cast in five movements, the concerto boasts brisk contrasts and weird symmetries. It’s a storehouse of stylistic touchstones: Bach fugues, peasant folk songs, angular tonal experiments, birdsong, night music. There’s even a jab at Dmitri Shostakovich’s recent “Leningrad” Symphony, which Bartók considered a celebration of state violence and duly despised. 

The first movement, Introduzione, starts slowly and mysteriously, then develops into a swifter fugato section. Presentando le coppie, or “Presentation of the Couples,” contains five sections in which instrumental pairs (bassoons, oboes, clarinets, flutes, and muted trumpets) are separated by specific intervals (minor sixths, minor thirds, minor sevenths, fifths, and major seconds, respectively). Elegia, the central Andante, is a poignant nocturne based on three themes derived from the first movement. The fourth movement, Intermezzo interotto (“interrupted intermezzo”), pits Eastern European folk tunes against a parodic quotation from Shostakovich (itself a quotation from Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow, which Bartók probably didn’t realize at the time). The propulsive fifth movement brings it all back home with more fugal splendor and folky exuberance. 

Copyright 2023 by René Spencer Saller

Bela Bartók listening to his wax-cylinder field recordings, collected all over the countryside of Eastern Europe, in countries that no longer exist, really, at least with the same borders. Anyway, Bartók and his pal Zoltan Kodály went around with their recording equipment (they also transcribed folk songs using standard Western notation, making performance notes as needed) like a couple of proto-Lomaxes, and we are all in their debt because they captured tons of stuff that few people cared all that much about at the time. And I am aware that he was young in this photo–young and so handsome!–whereas he was looking quite sick and decrepit when he wrote the Concerto for Orchestra, but hey, it’s my blog, and I’m an admitted flibbertigibbet.

Franz Liszt, in his later years.





On Birdsong and Messiaen

By Posted in Admirable Others, General, classical, Rants and Appreciations Tagged , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Olivier Messiaen, transcribing birdsong, which he incorporated in most of his compositions, especially in later decades.

The synesthete and mystic-slash-ecstatic composer and organist Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) has long been a favorite of mine, but lately I find myself thinking a lot about his use of birdsong. He wasn’t the only composer to transcribe birdsong–Mozart and Beethoven did it, too–but no one listened to birdsong more closely or with greater devotion. According to some estimates, he incorporated the songs of more than 320 birds in his music. According to his colleague and sometime frenemy Pierre Boulez, “what he wrote was his imagination of birdsong.” Imagination aside, Messiaen did meticulous research on his beloved subjects and became something of an ornithological expert in France, and certainly one of the leading authorities on bird vocalizations. When he died, at 83, his widow, Yvonne Martenot, commissioned a bird sculpture for his headstone.

I learned a lot about Messiaen’s use of birdsong from this website, to which I’m sure I will return often.

And why have I been thinking about birdsong so much? It’s the Merlin Bird ID app from Cornell Ornithology lab, my new favorite addiction. So far in my backyard I have recorded a good couple dozen different species, and I’m learning to distinguish them without the Sound ID app being on, although I love to have it on anyway just in case it picks up something I miss. Messiaen lacked this app, but he more than made up for it in his listening and transcribing skills.

I could share any number of bird-related links, but I have chosen Catalogue d’oiseaux, composed between 1956 and 1958; he dedicated it to his second wife, former pupil, and forever muse, the brilliant Yvonne Loriod (1924-2010). Her sister, Jeanne, played the recently invented Ondes Martenot in Messiaen’s extraordinary Turangalîla Symphonie, the only symphony in his substantial catalogue.

Catalogue d’oiseaux contains his transcriptions of songs by more than 80 species of birds, all lovingly labeled in the score. The 13 movements feature birds from the eastern French Alps, then the southern Spanish border, then the northern coast. The composition, which takes about 2 hours and 45 minutes to perform in its entirety, is dedicated to Yvonne, like all of Messiaen’s major piano works since about 1942, when he met the former child prodigy in his harmony class, the first he had taught after being imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. Loriod impressed him from the start by playing his Eight Preludes from memory. (It wasn’t difficult for her in the slightest, thanks to her photographic memory. By 12 she had memorized all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, as well as Mozart’s concertos. Two years later she had committed Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and all of Chopin and Schumann to memory.) The pupil and professor fell in love right away, but they couldn’t marry until 1961, two years after Messiaen’s first wife, the violinist and composer Claire Delbos, died as a result of cerebral atrophy, after nearly 20 years of suffering from total amnesia and other cognitive problems. Messiaen, a devout if somewhat unconventional Roman Catholic, had sole custody of their only son and wouldn’t consider divorcing her, even after falling in love with Loriod. He visited Delbos often, even though she never recognized him.

Loriod is fascinating in her own right. She was also a respected composer, although her works, unsurprisingly, were seldom performed, and she remains underprogrammed. She spent most of her life playing and promoting her husband’s music.

Yvonne Loriod and Olivier Messiaen
Olivier and Yvonne, poring over a score, their love language.

The Composer Speaks

“I give bird songs to those who dwell in cities and have never heard them, make rhythms for those who know only military marches or jazz, and paint colors for those who see none.”

*********************************
“It’s probable that in the artistic hierarchy birds are the greatest musicians existing on our planet.”

**********************************

“The birds are the opposite of time. They represent our longing for light, for stars, for rainbows, and for jubilant song.”

***********************************
A bird’s song is something extraordinary, an absolutely impenetrable chaos, a prodigious entanglement.” 

***************************************
“[…] In order to translate these timbres, harmonic combinations are absolutely necessary. Even in very fast movements, where I reproduce bird songs either in the orchestra, or on the piano, each note is provided with a chord, not a traditional chord, but a complex of sounds destined to give the timbre of that note. There are as many invented chords as there are notes, which is to say for a bird piece comprising of one or two thousand notes, there are one or two thousand invented chords. It is an enormous task for the imagination….”

“…Birds always sing in a given fashion.  They do not know the octave interval. Their melodic lines often recall the inflections of Gregorian chant. Their rhythms are of infinite complexity and variety, but always of perfect precision and clarity.”

Messiaen at the organ. He would serve as organist at La Trinité, in Paris, for more than 60 years.

Rest easy, Rita Lee

By Posted in Admirable Others, Music Writing, Rants and Appreciations, Rock & Roll and Other Forms of Popular Music, Various Worthwhile Things 2 Comments
Rita Lee in 2010

The sui generis Brazilian singer Rita Lee died a few days ago, on May 8, and I didn’t want to let the sad occasion go unremarked here, even though I don’t have time to write the tribute she deserves right now. (Filthy lucre! But the good kind.) So I went through the ol’ archives and found a record review that I wrote in 1999 about the great Luaka Bop compilation (curated by David Byrne) Everything is Possible!

The RFT links are always iffy for me, so I’m cutting and pasting the review here instead. And if you don’t have any Os Mutantes records, you could do worse than start with this collection. Really, though, you can’t go wrong with any of it. Back when I did a weekly community radio show on KDHX FM-88, I played a lot of Os Mutantes, probably at least a track or two every month, and found that it always went over well. It’s impossible to quantify but safe to say that Rita Lee’s artistry and charisma are a big part of the timeless appeal.

OS MUTANTES

Everything Is Possible! (Luaka Bop)

By René Spencer Saller on Wed, Jul 21, 1999 at 4:00 am

To say Os Mutantes, a Brazilian trio formed in the late ’60s, were ahead of their time is to understate their singular genius, to suggest that we’ve somehow caught up with them. If only! The music founding members Arnaldo Baptista, Rita Lee Jones, and Sergio Dias created together, a crazy amalgam of psychedelia, bossa nova, experimental rock, samba and pop, is timeless: it sounds as innovative today as it must have sounded 30 years ago, and it will probably sound just as brilliant 30 years from now. Everything Is Possible! is a fabulous compilation of songs the Mutantes recorded between 1968 and 1972, ranging from the trippy, cannabis-inspired “Ando Meio Desligado,” which sets Jones’ silvery vocals against a bass line cribbed from the Zombies’ “Time of the Season,” whacked-out keyboards, and distorted electric guitars, to the exquisite “Fuga No. 11,” with its tinkly bells and majestic Sgt. Pepper-inflected strings and horns. Every song on the CD is at once gorgeous and freakish, catchy and cacophonous, familiar and deeply mysterious. It’s no surprise that fans of the Mutantes include Beck, David Byrne, Stereolab’s Tim Gane, Arto Lindsay, and the late Kurt Cobain (who tried unsuccessfully to convince them to reunite so they could open for Nirvana in 1993).

With Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Tom Z, and Gal Costa, Os Mutantes were part of the Tropicália movement, an avant-garde group of leftist musicians who sought to revolutionize Brazilian pop culture with the use of electric instruments, subversive humor, far-out stage personas, and surreal arrangements. They pissed off just about everybody, from uptight leftist folkies (think of the guy who screamed “Judas!” during Bob Dylan’s electric tour in 1966) to the draconian military dictatorship, which effectively killed the movement shortly after its inception by arresting Gil and Velosa and forcing them into exile. Even under censorship, however, Os Mutantes continued to record, releasing a handful of albums (the first three, reissued on the Omplatten label, are highly recommended) before they broke up for good in 1978. Live, they dressed up like Sancho Panza, a pregnant bride, and space aliens. They wrote songs with outrageous titles such as “Ave Lucifer” (“Hail Lucifer”). They created their own instruments, from the backwards wah-wah pedal on “Dia 36” to the can of bug spray used in place of a high hat on “Le Premier Bonheur du Jour.” What more could anyone want from a band? They’ll blow your mind, they’ll crack you up, they’ll steal your heart, and they’ll make you believe that everything is possible.

Copyright 1999 by René Spencer Saller



A marital collaboration

By Posted in Admirable Others, General, Hausfrau Frivolities Tagged , , 1 Comment

This is what happens when they let long-married, refrigerator-sharing people have magnetic poetry sets. We move the words around a lot, between the two of us, usually when we are waiting for our geriatric feline hospice patient Hodiamont to finish eating one of the six to eight meals that he must eat daily to maintain his wraithlike corporeal substance. (He eats a special food for cats who have thyroid disease but who are allergic to the standard medication, which Hodiamont is.)

Anyway, I liked this one, so I thought I’d take a snapshot of it with the iPad to preserve it. The authorship breakdown is five lines by Mr. Christian Saller, four lines by Mrs. Christian Saller, but I will leave it to you to guess who wrote what.

And yes, the little word magnets, which are more than a decade old now, could use a good scrubbing. They don’t look nearly that dirty when they’re not blown up, but still that is no excuse for the filth. I will leave it here as a chastening exercise (as well as a reminder to bust out the Dr. Bronners, stat).

Alban Berg’s Altenberg Lieder

By Posted in Admirable Others, classical, General, classical, Music Writing Tagged , , , , , 2 Comments

One hundred and ten years ago yesterday, when another culture war was under way, a concert took place at Musikverein Wien, in which Arnold Schoenberg (I prefer the Americanized spelling that he adopted late in life) conducted music by himself (his Chamber Symphony Op. 9), Alexander Zemlinsky, and Anton Webern. It’s known as the Skandalkonzert because violent skirmishes erupted among audience members during Alban Berg’s Altenberg Lieder, and the concert could not be continued. Mahler’s sublime song cycle Kindertotenlieder was canceled on the spot. (Likely just as well, since grief-stricken art songs about dead children are known to kill a vibe, especially after the adrenalin rush of a literal brawl.)

Even though I missed the concert centenary by a decade and a day, I thought I’d share some notes I wrote about Berg’s Altenberg Lieder, for a 2016 St. Louis Symphony program that also featured works by Holst and Vaughan Williams. The Berg songs are the most underperformed of that lot, so I have extracted those notes from the original program.

Wordless Weirdness

This program presents three intensely unorthodox works. One has remained extremely popular since its premiere, which might mitigate its essential weirdness. The other two pieces—widely admired today, if underperformed—were maligned and misunderstood when new. The partial premiere of the Altenberg Lieder could scarcely be heard over the heckling, which soon devolved into a riot. The response to Vaughan Williams’s Flos Campi was less hostile but still fell short of enthusiastic. Even Holst, that extraterrestrial tone painter, failed to appreciate his old friend’s cantata-concerto hybrid. “I couldn’t get hold of it,” he confessed sadly, after the 1925 premiere. Whereas both of the English composers’ suites contain only wordless vocal music, Berg’s songs supply actual lyrics, in German. But the combined effect of Altenberg’s oddball koans and Berg’s strangely shifting sonorities only serves to destabilize. Abstract and irreducible, the music inhabits a zone of infinite expression. It tells a story that language can’t betray.

Remarkable Resilience

Alban Berg was a remarkable man for many reasons, but his resilience undergirds all of his other strengths. It allowed him to continue composing against formidable odds. Sensitive and severely asthmatic, he took piano lessons from his aunt, but his early training was spotty at best. For most of his career, he endured toxic levels of vitriol and scorn. Music critics in Vienna, where he lived all his life, were notoriously vicious, and his so-called supporters weren’t always much nicer. 

Take his master and mentor Arnold Schoenberg. Their relationship began in 1904, when Schoenberg, then 30, accepted the 19-year-old novice as a student. For the next six years, Berg was his most loyal disciple. Five Songs to Picture Postcard Texts by Peter Altenberg (usually shortened to Altenberg Lieder, or Altenberg Songs) was Berg’s first major venture as an independent composer. Whether Schoenberg deliberately sabotaged his former apprentice remains unclear, but the March 1913 premiere, at the Vienna Musikverein, was an unqualified debacle. As the concert’s organizer, Schoenberg deserves much of the blame.

The planning was slapdash, the rehearsals subpar. On a set list that also included works by Webern, Mahler, and himself, Schoenberg programmed only the second and third Altenberg songs, flouting the work’s cyclical coherence. Even worse, the soprano who had been hired to sing Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder flatly refused to perform the two Berg numbers, so a tenor was pressed into service at the last minute. Berg based the Altenberg Lieder on the mildly bawdy, epigrammatic blank verse of Peter Altenberg, but it’s unlikely that anyone heard more than a word or two in the general din. The first song was barely under way before the jeers escalated to physical violence. After some damn fool whipped out his pistol, the cops showed up. They broke up the so-called Skandalkonzert and sent everyone home.

Adding insult to injury, Schoenberg delivered a harsh critique a few weeks later. The compact, cryptic style of composition wasn’t working, he announced; Berg should go big or go home. Deferring to his master’s judgment, he abandoned his lieder. Until his sudden, squalid death at age 50, from an infected insect bite, Berg focused mainly on two  eternally radical operas, Wozzeck and Lulu, which kept his posse of haters fuming for decades. (Some of the meanest and most wrongheaded gibes in Nicolas Slonimsky’s Lexicon of Musical Invective involve Berg.) A complete version of the Altenberg Lieder wasn’t performed until 17 years after the composer’s death, when Jascha Horenstein conducted it in Paris. 

The cyclicity of the five lieder plays out on numerous levels. The opening “Seele, wie bist du schöner…” is prefaced by a sumptuous orchestral interlude teeming with odd sonorities. Theory nerds may notice that Berg employs elements of 12-tone composition a full decade before Schoenberg codified serialist technique. The concluding song in the cycle, “Hier ist Friede” (“Here Is Peace”), is similarly framed. Luscious and sinister, it plants a woozy kiss on the short stack of postcards and releases them to oblivion.

Copyright 2016 by René Spencer Saller

Christian Schmitt Organ Recital at the Meyerson

By Posted in Admirable Others, classical, Music Writing, Program Notes, Rants and Appreciations, Various Worthwhile Things Tagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment
César Franck, criminally underrated by everyone except organists

A very fine organist passed on a fellow very fine organist‘s compliments on my recent annotations to his recital today on the Lay Family Organ at the Meyerson in Dallas, and he even urged patrons to read them, which goes way beyond my wildest expectations for this Sunday. Obviously, getting compliments is a nice boost in general (unless, I guess, the compliments are coming from actual Nazis—poor Orff!), but for me, someone who is constantly aware of my overall organ ignorance, especially when it comes to the technical details that are at the very heart of organ artistry, I know just about enough to feel unequal to the task. At any rate, I’m always especially nervous about writing organ notes because I’m not an organist. I do know several organists, though, and I know how scrupulous and knowledgeable they are (and how likely to notice errors). One of my favorite classical critics, the prolific freelancer and longtime Dallas Morning News critic Scott Cantrell, trained as an organist, and I know he attends all those concerts. I have extra incentive not to screw up and embarrass myself in front of someone I respect so much.

Most of all, though, I don’t want to mess up the organ notes because I genuinely believe that more people would be interested in the pipe organ and its glorious repertoire if they knew more about it. I do not want to be a bad ambassador. Speaking for myself, I probably wouldn’t have become interested in the pipe organ if I hadn’t happened to have wandered into a free recital at the Notre-Dame Cathedrale in Paris, when I was a cash-poor and awe-struck 19-year-old fille au pair from Missouri who had never visited a city bigger than Chicago or older than New Orleans. If there was a program, I didn’t see it, and to this day I can’t remember what I heard, only that I loved the way the chords inhabited my body for a time, how the sounds could be felt as well as heard, inscribed on my musculoskeletal system like notes on staff paper.

To this day I feel certain that more lives would be greatly enriched by regular exposure to the king of instruments. You could listen to nothing but J.S. Bach fugues for the rest of your life and still find plenty to discover, but you don’t have to stop there, and you won’t want to after you get to the rest of the repertoire. Maybe you will find yourself drawn to the Bachian rigors of Max Reger, or the trance-inducing tintinnabulations of Arvo Pärt, or the languorous chromaticism and birdsong mimicry of Olivier Messiaen, or the sublime and inimitable Franckness of César Franck, but I urge you to give it a shot, especially if you associate the pipe organ with dreary sermons or civic occasions (in which case, I prescribe an immediate dose of Charles Ives’s organ music, stat!).

I’m already falling behind on both my blog content goals and my annotation schedule from my miraculously patient clients, so here are my program notes for the wonderful Christian Schmitt program. Insofar as all my links seem to be going bad, I’ll just cut and paste them from my Word document rather than linking you to the Dallas Symphony website, where they also appeared, as well as in the printed program. I extend my eternal thanks to all the organists who keep this vital art form alive. And the rest of you should try to find a local pipe organ recital in your cities and see if this music speaks to you the way it does to me and so many others.

Schmitt Organ Recital

By René Spencer Saller

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750): Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor, BWV 582

Although regionally famous for his mind-bending organ improvisations and locally infamous for his hot temper, Bach lived in relative obscurity. He spent his entire life in Germany, where he was born. As an organist, a court musician, a choir master, a music teacher, and the father of 20 children, he was probably too busy to tour the continent. Yet somehow he cranked out more than a thousand compositions, in every major genre except opera. Many scholars estimate that he wrote about twice that much. Although few of his compositions were published during his lifetime and most of his original manuscripts were lost, his contributions to the solo organ repertoire are incalculable: at least 200 known works.


The Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor is among the finest of these. The passacaglia form calls for a series of variations over a repeated bass figure (basso ostinato—Italian for “obstinate bass”), usually in 3/4 or 3/2 meter. The genre was already more than a century old when Bach composed this, his only surviving organ passacaglia, probably in Weimar between 1708 and 1712. Somewhat unconventionally, he crossed the passacaglia with a chaconne—a related form that also features a basso ostinato—and created a spectacular double fugue.

Arvo Pärt (b. 1935): Annum per annum for Solo Organ

When Pärt was born, his native Estonia was an independent Baltic state. Five years later, the Soviet Union launched an occupation that would last for the next half-century (not counting a three-year stint under German rule). Although he attended conservatory, Soviet bureaucrats went to great lengths to prevent Pärt and his peers from hearing any music created outside the Soviet Union, aside from a few contraband scores and tapes here and there.

Although commentators today call him a “holy minimalist,” Pärt first embraced the neoclassicism of Bartók, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev before shifting to the serialism of Schoenberg. Most of the music Pärt preferred was banned by Soviet censors. Frustrated, he immersed himself in the study of plainsong and Gregorian chant—the sacred roots of early European polyphony. By focusing on the distant past, he found an original voice: austere, tonal, liturgical, and deceptively simple. He was particularly inspired by a technique he called tintinnabulation, which refers to the ringing of bells, or more specifically, to the way that sound resonates, how it blooms and decays in space over time.

In 1980 Pärt fled the Soviet Union for Vienna, later settling in Berlin. That same year he composed the organ mass Annum per annum for the 950th anniversary of the Speyer Dome Church. The mass is dedicated to Saint Mary, Mother of God and the guardian of the dome; to Emperor Conrad II, the founder of the dome; to St. Cecilia, the patroness of musicians; and to Leo Krämer, the organist at Speyer Dome Church who premiered the piece. 

Annum per annum consists of five movements, all variations on cantus firmus, the literal Latin translation of which is “firm song.” In polyphonic music the term refers to the foundational melody, the source from which all subsequent musical procedures spring. Each of the five movements contains an introduction and coda, although Pärt indicates in the score that these may be omitted by the organist if desired. The movements are distinguished by the letters K, G, C, S, A, which refer to the five ordinary parts of the Catholic mass (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei). 

Annum per annum is best known for its dramatic opening, in which the organist holds a gargantuan, loud-as-God chord, and then lets the notes dissipate as the air is shut off. The effect is experienced by the body as much as the mind—and who knows, maybe even the soul.

César Franck (1822–1890): Choral No. 3 in A Minor

As a composer, Franck was something of a late bloomer, although his life in music began quite early. His greedy father bullied him into the role of child prodigy on the piano-recital circuit, and he was relieved when the passage of time ended that phase of his career. Introspective and painfully awkward, he preferred poring over his counterpoint exercises and experimenting with new organ registrations. After angering his father by leaving the family home in his early 20s, he supported himself by teaching music. 

A few years later, after his marriage, Franck became a church organist, a position he cherished and retained for the rest of his life. He was widely beloved by his apprentices and students at the Paris Conservatoire, who called him Pater seraphicus (Seraphic Father). His harmonic language was indelibly marked by the magnificent Cavaillé-Coll instrument that he played for more than 30 years at Ste. Clotilde. Its rich array of stops allowed Franck to create the unique sounds and textures that characterized his compositions.

In the summer of 1890, Franck suffered a head injury after a horse-drawn trolley collided with the cab in which he was riding. Although he dismissed his symptoms as minor, they quickly worsened, and before long he could barely walk, much less fulfill his duties at the Conservatoire. He hoped to recover over vacation, and he felt well enough to compose three remarkable Chorals in just two months, completing Choral No. 1 on August 10, Choral No. 2 on September 12, and Choral No. 3 less than two weeks later. But almost as soon as he resumed teaching, he caught a cold that turned into pneumonia. He died on November 8, 1890.

The Choral No. 3 in A Minor, the last of the set, opens with a glittering two-part Toccata surrounding a lyrical Adagio, which introduces a new theme, rapturously sung by the Trompette over soft accompaniment. Although the Choral is consistent with genre conventions, Franck finds ingenious ways to combine his three main themes, weaving them into a spectacular polyphonic tapestry. You might detect the influence of Liszt, particularly his “Weinen, Klagen” Variations, as well as traces of Bach and Beethoven, but Franck retains his unmistakable Franckness throughout: psychedelic but also heavy, an unlikely mixture of the delicately ornate and the sludgy-visceral.  

A quick note on nomenclature: the word choral, as Franck understood it, refers not to the chorale, or Lutheran hymn-melody, but simply to an original theme harmonized in the style of a chorale. 


Theo Brandmüller (1948–2012): “Die Kruezigung” (The Crucifixion) and “Pieta” from Sieben Stücke zurPassionszeit (Seven Works for Passiontide)

Born in Mainz, Germany, Brandmüller began making his first public appearances as a pianist and composer while still in his teens. From 1968 to 1972, he studied music education and sacred music in Mainz and Detmold. He underwent additional training in composition with Giselher Klebe from 1970 to 1975, then with Mauricio Kagel in Cologne and Cristóbal Halffter in Madrid. In 1977 and ’78, Brandmüller studied organ with Gaston Litaize and composition with Olivier Messiaen in Paris before transitioning to a teaching career. At the time of his death in 2012, following a sudden illness, Brandmüller was a professor of composition, analysis, and organ improvisation at the Hochschule für Musik Saar, in Saarbrücken, Germany, and the recipient of many international awards and prizes. 

Brandmüller composed Sieben Stücke zur Passionsveit, from which “Die Kruezigung” and “Pieta” are extracted for this performance, in 1983. In addition to organ, it is scored for metronome and speaking voice. Brandmüller was at the console for the world premiere on April 26, 1983, at the St. Georg parish church in Mainz.  

The Composer Speaks

“The thoughts of the seven small musically related pieces revolve around the events of the Passion. Realistically ‘described’ details of the passion theme become—increasingly clear—visions; melodic sound-shapes emerge from the rhythmically bizarre initial position; the central piece, The Sweat Cloth (of Veronica), thanks to its sound mirrored form, is a reflection of today’s situation, our current situation! 

“A sarabande (The Crucifixion) and a circular canon on ‘Dona nobis pacem’ (from Bach’s Mass in B Minor) conclude the cycle. 

“All seven pieces are inspired by the passion cycle of the sculptor Richard Hess, whose unembellished, deeply felt reliefs begin to speak musically.”  —Theo Brandmüller

 

Charles-Marie Widor (1844–1937): Moderato from Symphony No. 10, “Romane,” Op. 73

Born in Lyon in 1844, Widor seemed destined to serve the king of instruments. His father was the organist at Saint-François-de-Sales for more than 50 years. Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, who revolutionized the pipe organ for the French Romantic age, was a family friend. In 1870 Widor was hired temporarily to play organ at Saint-Sulpice, in Paris. He held on to the job until 1934, just a few years before his death at 93. (He was even buried in the crypt of Saint-Sulpice.) Among his many compositions are 10 organ symphonies; three symphonies for orchestra with organ; and Bach’s Memento, six original arrangements of music by J.S. Bach. 

Nicknamed after the architectural style of the two churches to which they were dedicated—the gothic Saint-Ouen abbey church in Rouen and the Romanesque basilica of Saint-Sernin in Toulouse—Widor’s last two symphonies represent his crowning achievement for organ. The Ninth, or “Gothic,” repurposes the Christmas Day Introit “Puer natus est nobis” (Unto us a Child is born), and the 10th, or “Romane,” uses the Easter Gradual “Haec dies quam fecit Dominus” (This is the day the Lord has made). In honoring the churches, these two symphonies also pay tribute to the organ builder, Cavaillé-Coll, whose state-of-the-art instruments grace each structure—and inform the music of each symphony. Widor himself debuted the “Gothic” in its namesake church in Rouen.

Widor’s “Romane” Symphony takes full advantage of the rich sonorities available on the Saint-Sernin’s Cavaillé-Coll. In his later years, Widor came to believe that organ music should derive its themes from sacred music; his 10th Symphony, like its predecessor, is steeped in plainsong. 

In his preface to the published score, Widor described his Easter Gradual “Haec dies” theme as “an elegant arabesque ornamenting a text of several words—about 10 notes per syllable—a vocalise as elusive as birdsong; a sort of pedal-point conceived for a virtuoso free of restraint. The only means of holding the listener’s attention with so fluid a theme is to repeat it incessantly. Such is the plan of this movement that sacrifices everything to the subject. Here and there the composer has somewhat timidly embarked in development, but this departure is quickly abandoned and the original plan of the work resumes.” 

Franz Liszt (1811–1886): “Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen”—Präludium nach J. S. Bach

Franz Liszt, the first superstar piano virtuoso, retired from concertizing at the peak of his fame, when he was 35 years old. A year later, the handsome and charismatic Hungarian set up house in Weimar with Princess Carolyne von Sayn Wittgenstein, whom he had met on his last tour and hoped to marry, pending a papal dispensation. While Liszt served as Kapellmeister to the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar, he also cultivated a flock of eager young acolytes, including his daughter Cosima’s future first husband, Hans von Bülow. Up to that point Liszt had only played organ once in public, but he was a quick study. He composed most of his organ music during these Weimar years, while also conducting the works of other composers he admired, especially Beethoven; Berlioz; and his second future son-in-law, Richard Wagner, for whom Cosima left Bülow. 

One composer Liszt held in particular esteem was J.S. Bach, who had, more than a century earlier, spent several productive years in Weimar.  In fact, Bach was working in Weimar when he composed the church cantata “Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen” (“Weeping, lamenting, fretting, fearing”), BWV 12, for Jubilate, the third Sunday after Easter. He led the first performance at the court chapel in Weimar on April 22, 1714, the same year that he was appointed Konzertmeister, a post that required him to write and perform a new church cantata every month. 

One reason for Liszt’s renewed interest in the organ: Bach’s complete organ works, which had only recently been published for the first time. Among Liszt’s first completed works in Weimar were his piano transcriptions of a half-dozen of Bach’s preludes and fugues for organ. 

Liszt composed his variations on “Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen” in 1859, as a prelude for solo piano. After his daughter Blondine died in 1862, he extended the prelude into a set of 30 variations, turning it into a kind of elegy for her. He transcribed the work for organ the next year, while living in Rome, where he had moved in a last-ditch (and ultimately futile) effort to get the Pope to annul his lover’s marriage. 

Copyright 2023 René Spencer Saller

A Shadow of the Street

By Posted in Admirable Others, Music Writing, Rants and Appreciations, Rock & Roll and Other Forms of Popular Music Tagged Leave a comment

Two portraits of the 24-year-old Édith Piaf, who was born Édith Giovanna Gassion, on December 19, 1915. Photos by Jean Gabriel Séruzier, 1940.

One of these days I’ll get around to writing a real essay about La Môme Piaf, who is one of my all-time favorite singers. But for now I will mention only that when I first met my darling dog Edith (Piaf’s namesake), the song “Milord” came to my lips, especially the line “une ombre de la rue.” (My husband found this “shadow of the street” running in traffic on a very busy intersection in North St. Louis City—specifically Natural Bridge, near Grand Avenue—and brought her home to me.)  My Edith has the same Parisian cernes, the same tiny, plucky street-waif mien, the same huge-eyed, hungry-hearted courage and nobility. I took this photo within 10 minutes of meeting her, and we haven’t been apart a single day since.

P9100005.JPG

Here is a very late and impossibly moving performance of “Milord” from the early 1960s.

The original French lyrics are provided below, along with my own translation:

Allez venez, Milord

Vous asseoir à ma table

Il fait si froid dehors

Ici, c’est confortable

Laissez-vous faire, Milord

Et prenez bien vos aises

Vos peines sur mon cœur

Et vos pieds sur une chaise

Je vous connais, Milord

Vous ne m’avez jamais vue

Je ne suis qu’une fille du port

Une ombre de la rue

Pourtant, je vous ai frôlé

Quand vous passiez hier

Vous n’étiez pas peu fier

Dame, le ciel vous comblait

Votre foulard de soie

Flottant sur vos épaules

Vous aviez le beau rôle

On aurait dit le roi

Vous marchiez en vainqueur

Au bras d’une demoiselle

Mon Dieu, qu’elle était belle

J’en ai froid dans le cœur

Allez venez, Milord

Vous asseoir à ma table

Il fait si froid dehors

Ici, c’est confortable

Laissez-vous faire, Milord

Et prenez bien vos aises

Vos peines sur mon cœur

Et vos pieds sur une chaise

Je vous connais, Milord

Vous ne m’avez jamais vue

Je ne suis qu’une fille du port

Une ombre de la rue

Dire qu’il suffit parfois

Qu’il y ait un navire

Pour que tout se déchire

Quand le navire s’en va

Il emmenait avec lui

La douce aux yeux si tendres

Qui n’a pas su comprendre

Qu’elle brisait votre vie

L’amour, ça fait pleurer

Comme quoi l’existence

Ça vous donne toutes les chances

Pour les reprendre après

Allez venez, Milord

Vous avez l’air d’un môme

Laissez-vous faire, Milord

Venez dans mon royaume

Je soigne les remords

Je chante la romance

Je chante les milords

Qui n’ont pas eu de chance

Regardez-moi, Milord

Vous ne m’avez jamais vue

Mais vous pleurez, Milord

Ça, je l’aurais jamais cru

Eh, bien voyons, Milord

Souriez-moi, Milord

Mieux que ça, un petit effort

Voilà, c’est ça!

Allez riez, Milord

Allez chantez, Milord

Ta da da da da da

Ta da da da da da

Ta da da da da da

Ta da da da da da

Ta da da da da da

Mais oui, dansez, Milord

Ta da da da da da

Ta da da da da da

Ta da da da da da

Bravo, Milord

Ta da da da da da

Ta da da da da da

Ta da da da da da

Encore, Milord

Ta da da da da da

Ta da da da da da

Ta da da da da da

Ta da da da da da

Ta da da da da da

Ta da da da da da

Ta da da da da da

(Written by Marguerite Monnot, Joseph Mustacchi)

Come along, Milord!

Sit at my table;

It is so cold, outside,

Here it’s comfortable.

Relax, Milord,

and put yourself at ease,

your troubles on my heart,

and your feet on a chair.

I recognize you, Milord.

You’ve never seen me:

I’m just a girl from the docks,

A shadow of the street…

But I brushed right by you

while you were passing yesterday.

You were more than a little proud.

God! The heavens filled you.

Your silk scarf

floating on your shoulders,

you were so beautiful

one might have said the king…

You were walking victoriously

A woman on your arm,

My God! How beautiful she was!

I felt coldness in my heart.

(chorus)

Say that it’s enough sometimes

For there to be a boat

So that everything falls apart

When the boat leaves.

It took away with it

The sweet girl with the eyes so tender

who had no way of comprehending that

she was breaking your life.

Love, it makes for weeping

like this very existence,

which gives you every chance

only to snatch it back afterwards…

Come along, Milord!

You look like a waif!

Relax, Milord,

Come into my kingdom:

I heal remorse,

I sing romance,

I sing about milords,

who haven’t had much luck!

Look at me, Milord,

You’ve never seen me before…

But—you’re crying, Milord?

I never would have believed it!

Ah well, there there, Milord!

Smile at me, Milord!

Better than that! A bit of effort!

There we are!

Come along, laugh, Milord!

Come along, sing, Milord!

La-la-la…

Yes, dance, Milord!

La-la-la… Bravo Milord!

La-la-la… Again Milord! … La-la-la…

(Translation by René Spencer Saller, copyright 2016)

And just for good measure, here is a 1954 performance of “L’Accordéoniste,” another favorite. The song was composed expressly for Piaf by Michel Emer, shortly before he was deployed to the front (in World War II).

La fille de joie est belle

Au coin de la rue là-bas

Elle a une clientèle

Qui lui remplit son bas

Quand son boulot s’achève

Elle s’en va à son tour

Chercher un peu de rêve

Dans un bal du faubourg

Son homme est un artiste

C’est un drôle de petit gars

Un accordéoniste

Qui sait jouer la java

Elle écoute la java

Mais elle ne la danse pas

Elle ne regarde même pas la piste

Et ses yeux amoureux

Suivent le jeu nerveux

Et les doigts secs et longues de l’artiste

Ça lui rentre dans la peau

Par le bas, par le haut

Elle a envie de chanter c’est physique

Tout son être est tendu

Son souffle est suspendu

C’est une vraie tordue de la musique

La fille de joie est triste

Au coin de la rue là-bas

Son accordéoniste

Il est parti soldat

Quand y reviendra de la guerre

Ils prendront une maison

Elle sera la caissière

Et lui, sera le patron

Que la vie sera belle

Ils seront de vrais pachas

Et tous les soirs pour elle

Il jouera la java

Elle écoute la java

Qu’elle fredonne tout bas

Elle revoit son accordéoniste

Et ses yeux amoureux

Suivent le jeu nerveux

Et les doigts secs et longs de l’artiste

Ça lui rentre dans la peau

Par le bas, par le haut

Elle a envie pleurer c’est physique

Tout son être est tendu

Son souffle est suspendu

C’est une vraie tordue de la musique

La fille de joie est seule

Au coin de la rue là-bas

Les filles qui font la gueule

Les hommes n’en veulent pas

Et tant pis si elle crève

Son homme ne reviendra plus

Adieux tous les beaux rêves

Sa vie elle est foutue

Pourtant ses jambes tristes

L’emmènent au boui-boui

Où y a un autre artiste

Qui joue toute la nuit…

Elle écoute la java

Elle entend la java…

Elle a fermé les yeux…

Et doigts secs et nerveux

Ça lui rentre dans la peau

Par le bas, par le haut

Elle a envie gueuler c’est physique

Alors pour oublier

Elle s’est mise à danser, à tourner

Au son de la musique…

ARRÊTEZ!

Arrêtez la musique…

(lyrics and music by Michel Emer)

The call girl is beautiful

on the corner over there.

She has a client

who keeps her stockings full.

When her job is done,

she goes on her way

to look for something slightly dreamy

At a dancehall in the outskirts.

Her man is an artist.

He’s a weird little guy,

an accordionist

who knows how to play the Java.

She hears the Java

but she doesn’t dance.

She doesn’t glance at the dancefloor.

And her loving eyes

follow his jittery playing

and the long, dry fingers of the artist.

It gets under her skin

from the bottom, from the top.

She has the urge to sing, it’s physical

All of her being is tensed.

Her breath is held.

It’s a work of art molded by the music.

The “girl of joy” is sad

On the corner over there.

Her accordionist

left to become a soldier.

When he returns from the war,

they will have a house.

She will be the cashier,

and he will be the boss.

How beautiful life will be!

They’ll be real big shots.

And every night for her

he’ll play the Java.

She hears the Java,

which she hums low.

She looks again at her accordionist,

and her loving eyes

follow the jittery playing

and the long, dry fingers of the artist.

It gets under her skin

from the bottom, from the top.

She has the urge to cry, it’s physical!

Her entire being is tensed.

Her breath is held.

It’s a work of art molded by the music.

The prostitute is alone

Over there on the corner.

The girls who make nasty faces,

The men don’t want them.

And too bad if she croaks,

her man is never coming back.

Farewell to all those beautiful dreams.

Her life is fucked.

Yet her tired legs

take her to the dancehall

where there’s another artist

who plays all night long…

She hears the Java.

She listens to the Java…

She closes her eyes…

And fingers, dry and nervy–

It gets under her skin

from the bottom, from the top.

She has the urge to scream, it’s physical!

And so to forget,

she begins to dance, to turn

to the sound of the music…

STOP!

Stop the music!

(Translation by René Spencer Saller 2016)

A Gift Repaid with Interest

By Posted in Admirable Others, General, Rants and Appreciations, Rock & Roll and Other Forms of Popular Music 5 Comments

bigstar-1

Five years and a couple of weeks ago, I assembled a box of gift records for my best friend’s son, on the occasion of his Bar Mitzvah ceremony. And then yesterday, completely out of the blue, I receive a link to a performance by said Bar Mitzvah, who is now 18 years old, of a song that appears on one of the albums I gave him. My best friend, his mother, made the video animation. She has him singing on Delmar, as he is wont to do. He turned out even more wonderful than we imagined, and here is the proof.

Along with the box of LPs that I gave him, a copy of this letter. I had never been to a Bar Mitzvah ceremony before, and I haven’t been to one since.

Letter to a Bar Mitzvah

12/03/2011

Dear Adam,

I don’t know much about Judaism, and yours is the first Bar Mitzvah that I have attended, but a bit of Internet research yields the following fun facts:

  • You are now responsible for your own actions. (Uh oh!)
  • You may be legally married by Jewish law (Uh oh again! Please wait a few more years at least, because 13 is awfully young to settle down.)
  • You may possess personal property. (Finally: something that doesn’t warrant an “Uh oh!”)

Obviously, I don’t know anything about the many religious rituals and ceremonies in which you are now eligible to participate, so I won’t presume to hold forth about those. I’m going to talk about your rite of passage in more general terms. I wasn’t brought up in any faith, and I have never been a religious person, but I did survive adolescence. What got me through, what jump-started me into puberty and ushered me into adulthood, what made the whole dreary enterprise seem worthwhile and sometimes even magnificent was rock & roll. When I was confused, or frustrated, or pissed off, or in love with some boy who barely knew I was alive, I could always rely on my music. No matter what I was feeling, I could always find an album that would make me feel understood, less alone in the world. My human friends disappointed me sometimes, but my record friends never let me down. Do you know the Beach Boys song “In My Room”? It goes, “There’s a world where I can go and tell my secrets to/In my room, in my room/In this world I lock out all my worries and my fears/In my room, in my room.” My room mattered to me because that’s where I kept my records and my record player. Nothing could touch me there. My room is where I was my best and truest self.

Most kids these days have iPods, and they can carry their “room” around with them wherever they go, but I think they’re missing out on the magic that comes with having a personal sanctuary filled with sonic totems: a turntable, LPs, dust jackets, real speakers. Vinyl records, unlike mp3s, have an odor, a life force, a physical presence, a past. They crackle a little when they get worn, skip when they’re abused. If you treat your LPs right, they will outlive you. When all the CDs and mp3s have died their little unmourned digital deaths, the vinyl will abide. I own many records that belonged to people who are dead now, and it comforts me to think that my record collection will be dispersed among future generations when I’m gone.

I took good care of my records when I was a teenager (invest in a Discwasher cleaning system, if you don’t have one already—when records are free of dust and debris, they’re much less likely to get scratched—and make sure to replace your needle fairly regularly, about every 6 months if you use your turntable every day), and I hope you’ll do the same so you can bequeath yours to a worthy recipient someday. I still have records that were given to me by my grandparents, parents, ex-boyfriends, and old friends. Some of my albums, I know, are worth a lot more on eBay than I originally paid for them, but their monetary value means nothing to me. How could I put a price on a friend, on a memory? Whatever I paid for the albums in my collection, my investment was returned to me a millionfold. I paid stupid meaningless money for them, money that I might otherwise have blown on Diet Coke and nail polish, and they gave me knowledge, experience, passion. They helped me make sense of it all: the hormonal maelstrom, the endless hurdles, the darkness and doubt.

The albums I’m giving you today aren’t supposed to be comprehensive, some kind of starter kit for a young collector. I picked out 18 from my personal stash because Wikipedia told me that the number 18 has special significance for the Bar Mitzvah; supposedly, it represents the Hebrew word for life or something. (Also, given the fact that several of the albums I gave you are doubles, that was the maximum number I could fit in the box.) These 18 albums are not at all representative of a well-rounded person’s taste. The only thing these records have in common is that they meant something to me when I was a teenager, and I know they have something to do with the adult I am today. Here’s a truth that adults never seem to mention when they’re lecturing you about growing up: The Teenage You never goes away. All those lyrics you pore over now will be imprinted on your consciousness forever. You’ll forget your wife’s cousin’s name, your license-plate number, your grocery list, countless appointments and passwords, but the songs you love now will be seared into your soul until you die. They’ll matter to you in a way that songs you’ll love later never will. I can’t guarantee that these albums are going to have the same significance for you that they did for me, but I do know that the Future You will be shaped by everything you love now. So love widely, love deeply, and love well.

Won’t you let me walk you home from school?

Won’t you let me meet you at the pool?

Maybe Friday I can

Get tickets for the dance

And I’ll take you.

 Won’t you tell your dad, “Get off my back”?

Tell him what we said about “Paint It Black.”

Rock & Roll is here to stay

Come inside where it’s okay

And I’ll shake you.

 Won’t you tell me what you’re thinking of?

Would you be an outlaw for my love?

If it’s so, well, let me know

If it’s no, well, I can go

I won’t make you.

(from “Thirteen,” by Big Star, on one of the albums I gave you)

Love,

René

 

 

 

Kraftwork

By Posted in Admirable Others, classical, General, General, classical, Various Worthwhile Things Tagged 1 Comment

Shannon_Wood_fix

I had the good fortune of interviewing Shannon Wood, St. Louis Symphony Principal Timpani, for Playbill. We met in his percussion studio/rehearsal space, across the street from Powell Hall. We talked about Kraft’s Concerto for Timpani and Orchestra, No. 2, his mallet business sideline, and lots of other fascinating stuff.

You can read it here if you like:
http://tinyurl.com/zs6g9mq

 

First SLSO Youth Orchestra concert of the season: 11/24/13

By Posted in Admirable Others, General, classical, Music Writing, Program Notes, Uncategorized Tagged Leave a comment

My program notes for the first SLSO Youth Orchestra concert of the season, on Buxtehude/Chávez, Pärt, Britten, and Dvorák. The Youth Orchestra concerts are free (well, except for a $1 service charge for tickets). You should go.

Click to access 4303.pdf

Get tickets for the concert here:

http://www.stlsymphony.org/youthorchestra/concerts.aspx

And yes, I realize that I am missing an important diacritical mark above, in a certain Czech composer’s name. I really ought to learn how to make that weird mark over the “r,” and I really ought to learn the name for it and stop calling it weird.