Heavenly Music

The old becomes new

There is a growing trend today to perform "ancient" music as it was performed for the first time. This is called "Period Performance Practice" and I am enthusiastic to put it mildly! The days of the Berlin Philharmonic doing the "Four Seasons" should be put to death....permanently. Hearing recordings of large orchestras slaughtering Baroque masterpieces is quite aggravating and nauseating! In Toronto, we are blessed to have "Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra", "I Furiosi Baroque Ensemble", the "Aradia Ensemble"(which regularly records for NAXOS), the "Toronto Consort", the "Toronto Continuo Collective" etc.....

What a great group of musicians as they have blessed us with their love and expertise of "Ancient" music! DOWN WITH EQUAL TEMPERAMENT, in which all keys are equally ugly!

Truly CIVILIZED music!

This is Boulez

One can't help being mesmerized by this composer's magical and mystical music. This is GREAT music and should be heard more often, EVERYWHERE!

The best "Four Seasons"

This is the Dresden version with winds and is a period performance. Listen to the horns and oboes....truly marvelous! ENJOY!

Listening to Haydn's Symphony......

Here in South Central Ontario, we have a radio station that plays Classical Music. I have heard Haydn's symphony, Bach's Symphony, Tchaikovsky's "Romeo & Juliet"(the three minute version) and among many other fine examples, one of Franck's many Symphonies! The trouble is Haydn wrote 104 Symphonies; which Bach...which Symphony?; "Romeo & Juliet" runs for about 20 minutes and Franck only wrote ONE Symphony!!! Do the announcers actually know about what they are talking about or should we expect them to say that Elvis was one of the Beatles? The other day when I turned on the radio, I half expected them to be playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons. You know the one...big, loud and lush(no period performances here). You'll never guess.....the Spring concerto! What else is new?!

They don't seem to ever play works in their entirety....NEVER! This is why Mahler's Symphony no.2 is 5 minutes long(the fourth movement). In actuality the symphony runs for more than 80 minutes! And when it is not another J Strauss waltz, it's a Sousa March or Gregorian Chant(acording to them....happy music). If it is longer then 10 minutes, it's too long to broadcast. This is Classical Music to an awful lot of folks out there. Imagine the shock when purchasing Beethoven's Ninth and finding it is really more than an hour long, not 3 minutes!

This is the state of Classical Music today and probably all the other arts are also being sold for their "Greatest Hits" quality. Perhaps very soon we'll hear Lady Gaga singing Schubert Lieder, Britney Spears as Carmen(she already lives the part) or Andre Rieu and his Orchestra doing a "Straussian(Johann)" rendition of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde".

Uneducated(this includes the PNR[Pretentious Nouveau Riche]) classical audiences are not to blame. However when I hear the PNR talking about the Messiah's recording of Handel's Messiah, I want to SCREAM!! On CBC last Sunday, an announcer was saying that, on hearing Shostakovitch's cantata "The Song of the Forests", the composer was ahead of his time!? In what....dog years? The piece may be nice to hear, but it is pure Stalinist propaganda! Where do the announcers get their info.....from old KGB agents or radio broadcasts from Uranus?

Twentieth Century composers?.....no way...."that hurts my ears".

I LOVE THIS PIECE!

twelve tone or bust?

I believe that tonality does have a place in 20th Century music, as some of my favorite composers of that period never abandoned it. For example I adore Martinu, Janacek, Hindemith and so many more. Take William Schuman's works...he never abandoned tonality but instead, in his later works, wrote in a bi-tonal style. Bartok wrote his works utilizing the whole-tone scale, which he found in the folk music of his homeland. Hindemith, in his early years, incorporated jazz influences found so common in Berlin of the 20's. Vaughan-Williams, in some of his works looked back to the different modes more common of the Medieval and Renaissance periods. There are so many other cases too numerous to mention. I commend them all!

Composition graduates are coming out of universities with attitudes that are too conservative. While it is fine to compose in an "ancient" way, I would expect that they would at least look back to Berg or Schoenberg for inspiration. Atonality is not dead! While serialism can be an end unto itself, it could adapt. Perhaps the finest example of adaption is Schoenberg's marvelous "Serenade, opus 24". The work is atonal and it is the composer's first attempt at incorporating serial techniques. Fortunately for us the composer did not serialize the rhythm and did repeat melodic fragments. Tough to listen to....sure, but what a desirable experience to get to know the treasures found in this incredible masterwork! Abandoning tonality would be a loss, as many a composer has rekindled interest in using it in their works. Spend time with Penderecki or Rochberg to discover that atonality and tonality can exist side by side without sounding like a "John Williams" soundtrack style symphony. I'm afraid that the new compositions being heard in the concert halls, on the radio and in recordings sound far too derivative and half the time I expect a T-Rex or Luke Skywalker to appear!

George Rochberg's Symphony no.2 (1st movement)

Great 20th Century classic!

Not for........

I should point out that this is blog NOT for people who think that Beethoven is a cuddly St Bernard from the movies. NOR is this for brain-dead folks who absolutely adore Lady Gaga. I have some tolerance for popular music but the trend today for the kind of crap that seems to invade our ears(i.e. American Idle[the spelling is correct], etc...) to be quite appalling! Nor is it for the pretentious nouveau-riche who must buy yet another J Strauss waltz cd or think that Mahler's Symphony no.2 is 5 minutes long and wonder if Andre Rieu has yet recorded it! Just to clear something up to all of you nitwits, Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic have never recorded Gregorian Chant......so sorry!! GET A LIFE!

WHY?

Why bach to boulez? There are more Bach to Brahms concerts happening today and an extreme lack of Berg to Boulez. In each of the periods of Western Music, there were changes that defined each period. Often the changes were painful and conservative elements tried their best to hold on to the old ways. In most cases the changes upset the ears and senses of the concert goers. If Bach, in 1749, had heard Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique or even Mozart's Jupiter symphony, he would mostly likely have called them the works of the devil. But the Western mind did adapt. The best case in that argument is the struggle between the "Wagner" school and the conservative "Brahms/Hanslick" school. As a composer in that period, you would have to choose which school to follow at least in the world of Vienna. In France and Russia changes were coming in reaction to both schools of thought. Impressionism in France and the nationalism of the Mighty Five in Russia. BUT the audiences adapted! In the first half of the 20th century everything changed as schools of composition popped up everywhere, usually with the audiences either raving or kicking and screaming. What an exciting time that was as Stravinsky, Hindemith, Bartok and Schoenberg(just to name a "few") unleashed upon the world their masterpieces! WE ADAPTED, or did we. Tonality was pushed to its limit and in many cases ripped asunder.

It is my belief that Pierre Boulez is the greatest living composer. His works are tough to listen to but given some education, anybody could understand and appreciate his works. His is a formidable voice! His masterpiece "Pli Selon Pli" must be heard as it is a great work. The composer spent 32 years creating this work, the least we can do is listen to it and not just through speakers in our living rooms. Why not in the concert halls of North America? The attitude today is to schedule what pleases the ear and NOT the brain. As a young man of eighteen years old, I first heard Webern's Five Pieces, opus 5 and loved it.....still do! Webern's Opus 6 pieces for large orchestra(totally serial) are beautiful and serene! George Rochberg's Symphony No.2, the first American serial symphony to be written, is a glorious and easily accessible work! All these works should be known BUT sadly are absent in the concert halls. SHAME!!

Enough with back to Bach.....it is time to look back to Boulez!

Bach to Boulez

Please note that the title to my blog is actually pronounced "back" to Boulez. I am aware as to how Bach's name is actually pronounced but I thought the name was not only catchy but totally appropriate.
In this blog I hope to unleash my frustrations mostly about Classical Music, but often I will spend time generally complaining about religion and the unbalanced times we live in(at least that is what Ignatius J Reilly was fighting against in John Kennedy Toole's masterpiece novel: "The Confederacy of Dunces"). Unlike poor Ignatius, I do not have a problem with my pyloric valve nor do I "like" dogs but I do wash my bedsheets! I may be unusual in my opinions but not as terribly so as would one find from Robertson Davies' character "Parlabane" in one of my favorite novels: "The Rebel Angels". Feel free to comment but please realize that I am an Aquarian and we are always right.....the rest of you poor suckers are WRONG!