I couldn’t resist the lure of Matthew Guerrieri’s quiz over at his wonderful Soho the Dog blog:
1. What’s the best quotation of a piece of music within another piece of music?
My geeky gut reaction is Berio’s Sinfonia, the third movement of which is a hugely complex running commentary on the Scherzo of Mahler’s second symphony, containing hundreds of quotations from other composers’ works. I have fond feelings for this piece: it was how I first came to love Mahler! Unfortunately, someone else who did the quiz has already taken this answer…
There are so many bad quotations to choose from (dying egomaniac Strauss doing Strauss, dying Shostakovich doing Rossini, Britten doing Rossini, in fact Lowell Liebermann doing Rossini), but I reckon I’m gonna have to go with Stravinsky’s use of Pergolesi (even if inauthentic Pergolesi) in Pulcinella. Technically it may be too substantial to be considered a “quotation”, but this is my blog, and I make the rules.
2. Name the best classical crossover album ever made.
Anything the Swingle Singers did in the 60s. Norman Lebrecht be damned.
3. Great piece with a terrible title.
Australian composer Paul Stanhope‘s mixed septet, Throbbing. We played the piece recently in western Virginia at the Garth Newell Music Festival, and on the plane over, while Matt was cueing his part to the piece, a clearly amused female flight attendant said,
“Oh, I bet that song has obscene words.”
This bit amusing anecdote was obviously passed to a higher authority, because, as Matt left the plane, the pilot gave him a wink and said,
“Good luck with that Throbbing number.”
4. If you had to choose: Benjamin Britten or Michael Tippett?
I don’t want to pretend to know enough Tippett to answer that question properly. I love me some Benny B and recently heard his second string quartet for the first time, the fabulousness of which made me wonder why we ever listen to Shostakovich quartets…
5. Who’s your favorite spouse of a composer/performer? (Besides your own.)
The wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, much lamented Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, wife of composer Peter Lieberson. Her voice tore me in two the first time I heard it, and I’ve since loved her recordings and DVDs with a fervor that is disturbingly close to religious. She turned her Buddhist husband from Lutoslawski-influenced musical modernist to John Adams-style, slushy neo-romantic.
A close second is Luciano Berio’s first wife, Cathy Berberian (another singer wife of a composer, and another muse). A once in a lifetime sort of performer (well, that’s what I’m told – I will never get to see her live, as she died in 1983), whose Monteverdi was as good as her Maderna, who inspired so much great music and who came to be inextricably linked with Berio’s magnificent Folk Songs, a piece tailored to her chameleon-like voice.
6. Terrible piece with a great title.
I had trouble thinking of one…Either Chasing sheep is best left to shepherds, or An eye for optical theory, both of which are tracks from Michael Nyman’s soundtrack for Peter Greenaway’s movie The Draughtsman’s Contract. I have to admit I still get great pleasure from the raw, pulsating energy of this score, but after sitting through Nyman’s hour-long, excruciatingly dull String Quartet No 2, I must say I’m willing to renounce my previous passion for the man’s music.
7. What’s the best use of a classical warhorse in a Hollywood movie?
Cosi fan tutte in Closer and Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder in Children of Men, because both enabled me to give a “superior” chuckle at my ability to realize the appropriateness of their use.
8. Name the worst classical crossover album ever made.
Anything by Paul McCartney – Liverpool Oratorio, Standing Stone, Ecce cor meum – whatever.
9. If you had to choose: Sam Cooke or Marvin Gaye?
Who?
10. Name a creative type in a non-musical medium who would have been a great composer.
Christopher Hitchens. I just think he is the sort of fiendishly intelligent bastard who could really write great music. His pieces would be concise, persuasively argued and beautifully crafted, but would have to be written between drinks at a cocktail party. One thing is for sure: his music would come out with all guns blazing.
For early-music nerds: Name a completely and hopelessly historically uninformed recording that you nevertheless love.
Without a millisecond’s hesitation, Tommy Beecham’s recording of Handel’s Messiah, complete with every wind and percussion instrument known to man. A highlight is the legendary Jon Vickers, who turns the tenor recits and arias into unbearably raw emotional statements. What is incredible is how much variety of color, dynamics articulation and phrasing Beecham squeezes out of his 300+ performers. Wow.
Very close runner-up: Roger Norrington’s Brahms and Beethoven symphonies with his HP-harassed Stuttgart band. In these recordings, Norrington clearly wants to have his cake and eat it: he uses a huge string section, which requires him to double the wind parts (much in the tradition of Beecham!); then he tells everyone to play “totally, absolutely without vibrato!” The results are very odd indeed, but I do find them strangely satisfying…
Comments 6
Christopher Hitchens.
No. No no no no no. Sweet jeebus no. Have you gone insane, man?
Having thoroughly skullfucked Orwell’s corpse, first thing he’d do would be to proclaim himself the musical heir to Benjamin Britten, but the first thing he’d write would be a (secular, natch) oratorio in praise of the freedom brought by the Great and Glorious Anti-Islamofasist Nuking of Iran.
Then he’d get recruit a bunch of Young Republican types to pass out a bunch of defamatory flyers before Rzewski concerts.
Posted 01 Sep 2007 at 9:01 PM ¶Thanks for your measured response, Darcy…
Okay, okay – so I courted a little controversy.
Great composers may not always be latte-sipping lefties these days, but you’d have to look pretty hard to find a right-winger among them. Randy Nordschow wrote an interesting article for NewMusicBox that included this:
“Some unscientific polling amidst my friends and colleagues revealed something, but can it really be true? Are all composers and performers of unpopular music (i.e. new music) diehard liberals? Well, I guess it’s human nature… birds of a feather flock together and all of that, but are we liberal because we’re creative, or creative because of our liberal ideals—insert obvious bird/egg metaphor—but with all the swirl of political discourse surrounding us, how come we never hear about a pro-Bush new music anything? There’s got to be some right wing composers out there, somewhere. And no, Ashcroft doesn’t count. “Let the Eagle Soar” wasn’t composed in sonata form, thankfully.”
I suppose I want to redress that balance. As someone totally and completely hooked on the KCRW show “Left, Right and Center”, I always feel dirty just getting one side of the political equation. (Unfortunately, this makes me a shocking devil’s advocate at parties…)
Also, despite the fact that I disagree with him on any number of issues, I do find Hitchens a totally engrossing and fabulously persuasive writer.
Posted 01 Sep 2007 at 10:01 PM ¶Hey Tim,
You’re welcome, anytime. [grin]
I’m afraid I find Christopher Hitchens intolerably loathsome, and a pompous gasbag to boot. I felt this way even before he went over to the dark side. His prose has always rubbed me the wrong way, and he’s not half as clever as he thinks he is. I’ll take James Wolcott, Charlie Pierce, or even the occasionally irritating Matt Taibbi over Hitch any day.
I’m also — no offense — quite sick of attempts by liberals to “redress the balance” by repeatedly caving in to the right wing. How about we start redressing the balance by ENDING THIS DAMN WAR, and not launching another one with Iran? THEN I’ll be in more of a mood to reach across the aisle and have measured, courteous discussions about the finer points of public policy. (Really, I will, I swear — before the Bush era I liked nothing better… )
But until the people who sold this war admit how wrong they were about it, and apologize profusely for their culpability, and their shameless, relentless demonizing of people like me, people who were opposed to it from the beginning, and own up to their total lack of intellectual honesty and consistency… well, I’m sorry, I’m not listening to a damn thing they say. Hitch, and his new buddies, Bill Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz, are demonstrably not arguing in good faith, and have been dead wrong about everything of importance in the past six years, so I see absolutely no reason to take anything they say seriously.
Bluntly, I have fucking had it with self-identified “contrarians” who are in reality bootlicking authoritarian cultists. And the fact that Hitch dares justify his crap by invoking Orwell… fucking ORWELL, fercrissakes, who actually FOUGHT FASCISTS in the Spanish Civil War… oh god that makes my blood boil.
As, uh, you can see. Sorry to get my back up. But fuckin’ Hitchens… yargh. Just… yargh.
Cheers, and happy music-making!
Posted 01 Sep 2007 at 10:43 PM ¶Wow,
You know, he does have opinions on other issues as well.
Pompous, yet, but I do think he is as clever as he thinks he is – I heard a lecture he gave, associated with his recent book on Thomas Paine’s “Rights of Man”, which totally bowled me over.
I am not going to defend my regular (unfortunately, completely unintentional) position as official contrarian, except to say that NOTHING is black and white.
I don’t know these other writers, except Charlie Pierce, who I know from “Wait, Wait” (I love living in Chicago!). Gonna check ‘em out. Much better than going to bed and getting the rest I need.
Tim
Posted 01 Sep 2007 at 10:55 PM ¶Hi Tim,
Ach, I’m afraid you won’t calm me down by bringing up Hitch dancing with Tom Paine’s bones. Another truly revolutionary historical figure, who would likely punch Hitch in the mouth if he knew how horribly he was misusing his legacy.
And yes, some things are, in fact, black and white. Hitler had to be stopped. Segregation was wrong. American involvement in Vietnam was a mistake. Women deserve the same rights as men. Gays deserve the same rights as heterosexuals. Creationism has no scientific merit. Global warming is real, and humans are causing it. And the Iraq war was sold on a pack of lies, and Hitch is still — STILL — shilling for it. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people are needlessly dead, and America’s international reputation lies in tatters, right next to the shreds of our constitution.
I can forgive a lot, but I can’t forgive that.
—–
James Wolcott’s blog is essential reading:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/blogs/wolcott/
His book Attack Poodles is essential for understanding the sorry state of US media.
Charlie Pierce is best known as a sportswriter, but he is a terrific political analyst. His recent profile of John Edwards in Esquire is first-rate:
http://www.esquire.com/features/edwardscontest0807
Matt Taibbi has written what is probably my favorite book review ever — “Flathead: The peculiar genius of Thomas L. Friedman”
http://www.nypress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.cfm
Posted 01 Sep 2007 at 11:15 PM ¶Thanks for reminding me of The Draughtsman’s Contract!
Posted 04 Sep 2007 at 11:22 AM ¶Post a Comment