Royal Danish “Partenope” is out!

The DVD, that is.

I plan to grab it off of Amazon.com the minute I get home.

*rubs hands together briskly*

LA Chamber Orchestra — Four Seasons + Mendelssohn, October 17, 2009 at Alex Theater in Glendale, CA

Lovely work!

A few quick impressions:

The pre-concert chat with the chitarra and theorbo players (John Schneiderman and Richard Savino) was quite interesting, but too short. Both men talked a bit about their instruments, which are not typically found in modern performances of Baroque music. With the Baroque revival and an increasing interest in period instruments and performance though, they are being seen and heard more and more frequently.

Technical bits: the chitarra is a five-string guitar, without the lowest string of the typical modern six-string guitars. The body is also much smaller, with a beautiful inlay of some sort over the hole in the top plate. (I don’t know the techie terms for guitar bits, I’m afraid.) The theorbo is a modified lute back during the days of gut strings. As a result of that materials limitation, if you wanted very low bass strings without wire-wrapping or steel, your only recourse was to make the neck on the instrument six feet long.

Savino mentioned something that I found interesting, though — that the technique and approach for both instruments was only “rediscovered” about twenty or so years ago. That struck me since, coming from a more operatic perspective, I’d always associated the Baroque revival with Baroque opera and the avalanche of countertenors we’re seeing now. Savino’s comment indicated to me that the revival is a lot larger than that. I asked both men what the revival looked like from their perspective, which Savino in particular answered … somewhat. In all fairness, it’s a big question. I do wish I’d been able to take both of them aside over wine or beer and some light snacks and talk with them for longer, though.

Savino’s chief response was that it meant that he and Schneiderman had a lot more repertory to choose from. Both men evidently began as guitarists outside of classical — Savino in rock and Schneiderman in bluegrass — and the new revival vastly increased the scope of what they could find to play. I wish I’d been able to talk with them about their own individual paths to Baroque; if they began in rock and bluegrass, I would guess that they each started out with a modern acoustic six-string or a Les Paul in their laps. But, when did each of them pick up a chitarra or a theorbo, and why? (Ultimately, I suppose the question is what caused the Baroque revival?)

Oh, well. That’s the frustrating thing about these little lectures. You never get quite enough information to satisfy your interest. Following was a great little pre-concert consisting of the most spritely Scarlatti keyboard piece played on a combination harpsichord/organ (a wonderfully “spooky” instrument, must be the Addams Family connection) by Patricia Mabee, and Vivaldi’s Trio Sonata in Em, with Mabee on the hybrid keyboard, and the principal bassoon Kenneth Munday, cellist Giovanna Clayton, principal flute David Shostac, and both men previously mentioned on chitarra and theorbo. Both pieces were just fantastic. I just love that self-conscious quality of Baroque music, just the joy in virtuosity and ornament for the sake of it. There’s something so innocently showy about it. Like Peter Pan crowing, “Oh, the cleverness of me!”

The concert itself was absolutely wonderful. I remember making a comment about this after seeing the Australian Chamber Orchestra with Andreas Scholl in Santa Barbara about how the revival has meant that people are no longer treating these Baroque pieces as clockworks but are instead attacking them with much more personality and excitement. This concert was a great example of that. The players were seated, with some tuxes in evidence, and a lovely taffeta gown on the concertmaster, Margaret Batjer.

But that was pretty much all the formality we were going to see, and it was kind of charming contrasted with the verve that they showed in their attack. The music was the box-office friendly Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi, and what I call The Mendelssohn Thing — the bouncy, bright Symph #4 in A Major that every person alive knows even if they don’t realize it.

Each “season” in the Four was prefaced by a reading of the sonnets that are associated with them, presumed to be written by Vivaldi but no one is really sure. Initial impressions:

“Spring” was more legato than I’m used to hearing it, without the dressage-like prance in each note snipped apart from the other. I like both ways; it was a nice way to approach the music, and the more angular sound of the chitarra and the theorbo as plucked instruments added just the right amount of “choppiness” to the music to keep it from sounding too smoothed-out. Adding in new instruments apparently allows for much more creativity in the whole approach to the music, which is a great argument for more innovation in performances, even of the old war-horse Classical Top 40. After all, Mozart never played any of his his dozen-and-a-half variations on a theme on anything like a modern piano, either.

“Summer” was amazing, and prodded the audience into breaking the “no-clapping-until-they’re-through” rule (a rule that annoys me personally; if something is particularly great, I want to clap!). The entire audience was so blown away by their approach that claps and shouts followed this movement. The music itself is a very stark reminder that, in Italy, summer isn’t quite the idyll that we like to think. It’s blasted hot there, and can be stormy. Much like my own memories of summer on the east coast, the people in that area, especially before the coming of air conditioning, must have found fall a wonderful relief from the oppressive heat of high summer.

Which it was here as well, after we’d finished expressing our appreciation for the incredibly energetic second movement. The standard hounds-and-huntsmen strains began, followed by the easier, slower second part, and the more cheerful third — beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

Then, “Winter,” with its frigid, sparkling coolness and what I think of as dripping icicles. They seized the music from the start and didn’t let go until they’d gotten everything they could out of it. Just wonderful, and such an improvement over the stuffiness of Baroque music during most of the last century.

The Mendelssohn Thing was, of course, just as good. During the intermission, I let myself read the program a bit as the lights came up, and when my eyes rose again, there were suddenly three times the chairs on stage. I laughed at myself; of course there were. The chitarra and theorbo were gone (sadly), but suddenly everyone else was there — the woodwinds, two trumpets, two horns, and two nice fat kettle drums. (I wonder how they’re tuned?) The cellos, basses, and violas doubled in number, and the march of the violins began.

Interestingly, except for the overwhelmingly female violins (typical), the orchestra was extremely balanced in gender, with a slight preponderance of men. One each of bass, horn, clarinet, oboe, and flute. Both bassoons and trumpets were men, and the timpani was a man as well. Four cellos and four violas, two each. Very pleasant, and it makes the nearly-all-male European orchestras like Vienna look very foolish for shutting out half of their potential talent pool.

Other random impressions:

Every single instrument was heard and needed. Sometimes there can be instruments in stage that seem superfluous, which is a shame considering that there is a person attached in all cases who is trying as hard as they can to be very, very good. But every single thing was used, heard, and balanced. Kudos to Batjer.

The bass violins were glorious. Sometimes they can get lost, but not here. Going off on a tangent, I can never lose the feeling of amazement I get every time I see a bass violin. They’ve existed forever, and I’ve seen them millions of times … but there is still a part of me that is blown away by the fact that such things exist. Like tornados, if you’d never seen one before in your life and I tried to describe them to you, you’d call me a liar. “No no seriously, it’s like a violin, see … except it’s taller than you.” On some level, that’s about equivalent to, “It’s this form of weather that descends out of the sky like a hose, spins 300 miles an hour, and eats your house.” Like the sneetch-necked theorbo, they should win some sort of prize for Most Improbable Musical Instrument.

I think one of the violists plays in a quartet in an Italian restaurant nearby on late Sunday mornings. To judge from the program, it may be the principal Roland Kato. (Update: After reading a comment left on the orchestra’s Facebook page by Kato, I’m mistaken. I have no idea who on Earth I’m thinking of!)

The lighting on stage was fairly conventional, with a strange sort of watery-blue shimmer on the back wall. It would have been lovely had they used that a bit, perhaps changing the gels on the lights from pale blue for Spring to deep blue or beige for Summer, then fiery red and orange for Autumn and white for Winter.

Speaking of color, the colors of the instruments were wonderful, with the violins more honey colored, the violas a bit darker, two of the cellos somewhat the color of Irish coffee, and both basses such a delicious, deep cherry-chocolate shade that I wanted to bite them to see if they tasted like they looked. If they had, they would have been Black Forest cake soaked in sherry. Marvelous things. (Here is a picture from the orchestra’s Flickr page. Don’t you just want to bite into those things?)

All in all, a great night — and a convenient one for me as the theater was close enough that I didn’t even have to get on a freeway. (That’s a big thing in southern California.) If you get a chance to see them, take it. Their website is www.LACO.org.

“No one else should sing that, ever!”

I’m not going to be any more specific, but only observe that it’s a good thing that no one said that about Senesino’s old roles for Haendel, after the two of them had their famously melodramatic falling-out — with much slamming of doors and swearing, I imagine.

I can’t imagine the loss to humanity had no one sung those old roles after Senesino and Haendel parted ways, after Senesino retired, or after he died. And I have no doubt that there were many people in his time who insisted that no one could sing them like he did, and who took exception to anyone who tried. Singers inspire incredible loyalty in their devotees, more so than any other type of musician. I’m an instrumentalist, but the best of us don’t come close to the fervor and devotion that the best singers inspire. We are in ankle weights, while they fly. That’s just the way it is.

Had Haendel’s operas gone into the ground with Senesino, the loss would have been incalculable. Not to mention no one would remember who Senesino even was nowdays; ironically, the man’s most devoted fans would have urged a custom that would have ensured his complete disappearance from memory. Instead, three hundred years in the future, we can enjoy today’s miracle voices scaling those heights in their own ways, and in doing so, keep the memory of a man dead for centuries alive and admired as the greatest of his time.

Would that have happened had his society refused to listen to anyone else in those roles?

To preserve and pay tribute to a singer, one must sing their music, and welcome those who do so. It’s the single most important form of immortality a musician can know, and the only way to guarantee that a brilliant voice will be remembered after it goes into the ground.

A few heartening quotes and observations

A quote from the liner notes of one of Gabriela Montero’s albums:

“Nothing repeats itself; I could never play back an improvisation unless I heard it and learnt it by ear.”

Observations from a Greg Sandow review of Billy Joel’s “Fantasies & Delusions” that perhaps could have been a bit more generous:

“[Billy Joel]’s not at ease with musical notation, so he plays his pieces into a computer, then has a copyist write them down. He thinks Chopin “writes in difficult keys,” though no classical musician would find them hard.”

“Mr. Joel can’t play his music himself because his piano technique, sensational for rock ‘n’ roll, isn’t good enough for classical work.”

It’s very heartening to me to find that one can be magnificently gifted and also have limitations. And most reassuringly, can state them out loud and absolutely without apology in Montero’s case.

I’m also heartened by Joel’s apparent opinion that Chopin “writes in difficult keys.” I’m not Horowitz, and I hate B and Bb. Period. Ugly shapes on the hand, ugly shapes in the mind. I know that some beautiful music is written in those keys, but that fact isn’t going to stop me from disliking them. Knowing that cod liver oil is good for me doesn’t make it taste any better.

C#, Ab, A, E, Eb, and D. Much easier, with nice space for a sometimes inconveniently long middle finger to distinguish itself from the rest of the hand. I began studying classical piano at the age of ten and stopped when I went off to college, so this may not qualify me to speak as a “real” classical musician, but it’s pleasant to me to learn that even a pianist and composer as gifted, prolific, and culturally significant as Billy Joel may also have groaned inwardly when he saw those two flats staring back at him like beady little possum eyes from the left side of the staff. One more flat — just one more! — would have made all the difference!

Most classical musicians probably have keys that they prefer, and I can’t be the only pianist who prefers keys the 1-3-5 chord for which follows the natural shape of the human hand. I think it’s more likely that, not having come out of a conservatory, Billy Joel’s musical pedigree never taught him that one doesn’t admit to disliking certain keys out loud.

I also feel that I should apologize to any readers I have (if any). I didn’t intend for this series of articles to become personal to me in any way, but now that I’ve become more personally invested in music-making again, things seem to be heading in that direction.

Classical improv and Gabriela Montero

Having just discovered her, I’m still on Cloud Nine:

Improvising on Billy Joel

Improvising on Edith Piaf

Spontaneous tango!

Rachmaninoff turned into a tango

Happy Birthday (She must be getting tired of that one.)

Two lovely podcasts from EMI

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

Her own website

A lovely article at the LA Chamber Orchestra website

Montero’s entire appeal is very interesting in a classical music arena, where audiences have gotten used to the soothing comfort of having heard something a dozen times and hence never being surprised. Unfortunately, I think that a large portion of the classical audience is composed of people who dislike being surprised, even pleasantly. And to be fair, many classical pieces are complex enough that they require repeated listening to reveal some of their most subtle secrets.

But the fascination with an improvisational musician consists of leaning forward and eagerly awaiting the unknown to come. What’s she going to do this time? is on the mind of just about everyone listening to Montero’s improvisational wanderings. Certainly operatic cadenzas can have some of that appeal, but even they have gotten a bit staid over the years; they all have an identical run-up lately, like a long-jumper approaching the sandpit with those long, one-two-three loping steps. Part of the beauty of Franklin’s rendition of “Nessun dorma” was hearing a familiar old warhorse aria done with a new approach, including a never-before-heard final cadenza and that equally unfamiliar, magnificent little arpeggio between the first and second repeats of the title phrase. Finally! A new way to sing it — and not by a piker but by one of the most respected voices of our time. (I’ve also recently discovered that pop singer Michael Bolton, who has quite a good voice, has recorded a CD of some well-known Romantic arias. I’m very anxious to purchase a copy and listen to new interpretations by an excellent singer who brings a whole new tradition of styles with him. I doubt that I’ll hear the one-two-three run-up in the cadenzas from him, or at least I hope I don’t.)

And Montero’s extended improvisational riffs finally expose the lack in the modern ethos of classical music through inviting people to hear it in the present moment, to sit forward a bit and await amazement at a new way of hearing. It may offend purists who prefer the comfort of predictability, but it will bring in entire new sections of society who like to be surprised — the same sort of people who see the newest movies on opening weekend, so as to avoid being “spoiled” for major plot twists.

Unfortunately for musicians, this means of making a living is a lot more work since the music cannot be treated as a commodity anymore (and even popular music is terrible that way). Music has become akin to software, where a company can pay its programmers to write something once, and then sell it a thousand times. But to keep this fascination level up, one must be endlessly inventive … and live. It’s not easy. The bar has been raised.

The Pythagorean Comma

One of the advantages of learning music on a piano as opposed to other instruments is the amount of music theory one picks up without realizing it.

However, one of the disadvantages of learning music on a piano is that one never learns that most of that theory is arbitrary and, depending on how you look at it, wrong.

I’ve been a pianist since I was 10, but have not played for a very long time. During the time I played, I had a habit of regarding the music I was producing more as a by-product that would tell me if I had moved my fingers correctly than as an artistic experience. Obviously, I have
been moved by the artistry of music — but not when I was producing it. If I was producing the music, I was obsessed almost entirely with doing it correctly. It was an experience of great stress and only rarely great beauty. The best I could hope for when I was on that stage was to not fail.

Only lately have I begun to try to combine the two experiences of music: rigor and beauty. And hence only lately have I begun to actually think about and investigate music as a mathematical, theoretical thing instead of simply either an experience of emotional transport (when I wasn’t responsible for it) or an experience of great stress to get it right (when I was).

One of the most interesting artifacts that I’ve run into in this new fascination is something that I was permitted to remain ignorant of for decades as a pianist, but which any guitarist or violinist probably knows like the back of their hand: the Pythagorean comma, the discrepancy between twelve perfect fifths and seven perfect octaves.

It’s not mysterious or mystical to me since I’ve forgotten more hard mathematics than most people have ever learned, and this truly is dirt-simple. It’s simply the difference between iterating a 1:2 ratio seven times versus a 2:3 ratio twelve times. *shrug* Easy as pie. Since these numbers don’t work out exactly, if you hop up by perfect fifths twelve times, you don’t wind up exactly seven octaves away from where you started. You overshoot by a tiny bit.

According to the numbers, that makes perfect sen– wait a minute.

What about the piano keyboard? The circle of fifths closes.

Except it doesn’t. Or rather, it closes on a piano only because each fifth has been flattened by just a bit, enough to allow the dissonance to ride under the radar and allow twelve not-quite-perfect fifths to fit neatly into seven octaves.

And the only reason a piano can force this is because each note has its own set of strings (a “choir,” as it’s called) that is dedicated to producing only that note. Unlike a guitar, where each string must do multiple duty to produce many notes as it is “cut” by a finger on the fretboard, a piano produces each note independently of all others.

I got a lot of music theory learning to play a piano, but the guitarists and players of other stringed instruments picked up a lot more acoustic physics. I recall reading an interview with rock guitarist Eddie Van Halen wherein he bemoaned the strangeness of the guitar, where tuning perfectly toward one consonance will knock another out of whack. In reality, it’s the piano that’s strange, where each note is slightly out of tune by exactly the same amount, and only because Western music demands that twelve fifths equal seven octaves, by hook or by crook. Bringing together one instrument with arbitrary tuning (the piano) and another that is constrained to obey the laws of acoustics (the guitar, violin, or any wind instrument) has, since the dawn of humanity, been a dicey proposition.

We expect to be able to transpose any piece of music to any other key with impunity, and we expect to be able to produce the same music (more or less) on instruments that operate in vastly different ways. Over the history of Western music, a menagerie of solutions has been developed by dedicated musicians to make this possible by addressing the problem of the Pythagorean comma, only one of which is the current “equally out of whack everywhere” solution called equal temperament. Meantone temperament, just temperament, well temperament … all are attempts to address this oddity in the mathematics which is inherently unsolvable. One can no more force twelve perfect fifths to fit into seven octaves than one can force pi to be a rational number.

At any rate, I’ve become fascinated with this new discovery of mine and have ordered several books from Amazon.com to learn more about this topic — all of which began with my diving into “A History of Western Music” and realizing that, for some murky reason, the authors seemed to imply odd things now and again, like G# and Ab might not be the same note.

This is why the best rock musicians start out in classical and jazz.

Enjoy:

Jazz/Rock drummer Steve Smith having a bit of fun!

:-)

:-)

“The Castrati in Opera” by Angus Heriot

This is a good enough book for anyone interested in early and Baroque opera and the florid music (and people) involved in it, but it’s a bit strange at times. It does include a useful list of the most well-known castrati and functions nicely as a quick catalogue of the better known names, along with their birth and death dates, places of birth and activity, and best known operas and roles, which does earn the book a spot on the shelf of any early opera devotee. But there are definitely some oddities that render it much less useful than Barbier’s later book.

The first thing that struck me is the familiar highbrow habit of refusing to translate foreign passages. For me, this was not a problem, but it always strikes me as a bit elitist. Contemporary books in this vein, that quote extensively from foreign sources, usually include translations alongside the original language in order to expand the reach of the book for any interested amateurs.

The second thing that struck me, and surprisingly noticeably, was the way the man never lost an opportunity to describe women singers in terms of contempt. Even when two men — a castrati and a well-known impresario, for example — were revealed as having acted like asses to one another, Heriot always made sure to interject a completely irrelevant comment to the effect that some imbecilic diva, surely above her station, acted in a much worse manner. Such examples are not always entirely out of place, but Heriot’s insistence on ensuring that the reader remains aware at all times that women singers were never as good as their castrated contemporaries and were always far more unstable makes one wonder.

In a modern book, such an attitude would stand out like the proverbial sore thumb, and this book was written in the 1950s, where such attitudes were taken more as a matter of course. Yet, in a book that purports to be an authority on male performers with feminine qualities, such undisguised contempt for the feminine does render Heriot’s judgments suspect. He spares no opportunity to print the most slanderous reviews of Cuzzoni and Bordoni’s performances and personalities, for example — and yet both women were deified in their lifetimes and the target of much ink spilled in their praise. I doubt they and the other prime donne of their times were quite the shrill harpies of pantomime comedy that Heriot would believe.

Now, I’m not incapable of rolling my eyes and moving on, and an occasional foolish remark can be overlooked. Unfortunately, Heriot’s remarks are frequent and predictable enough to become tedious. One settles into the book repeatedly only to be constantly brought up short by some shaded, Freudian agenda on the part of the author.

Again, as a reference book on the best known of the castrati, “The Castrati in Opera” does have a place on the bookshelf of the opera lover. However, the same person would probably find Barbier’s book a superior choice for its less oddly canted tone, greater psychological understanding of the castrati themselves, better treatment of the Neapolitan conservatories and understanding of the physiological results of castration, more thorough description of the history of opera up to that point, and greater awareness of both the features and faults of these extraordinary men.

Tamerlano tix acquired!

Tamerlano with Bejun Mehta, Sarah Coburn and the indefatigable Placido Domingo

Now, it’s time to hop back to Petrucci and print/bind the score, and grab a good version from Amazon.com to get up to speed on it. There’s one that I’ve found with Michael Chance, who is a bit flutey and definitely has that falsettist “buzz” to his voice but is a wonderfully creative singer who can have fun with a da capo, so I imagine it will be a good listen. I’ve also found another version with Domingo, but I’d rather be surprised by him since he’s quite good. Mehta, from what little I’ve heard of him, is glittering in vocal quality but occasionally goes off the center of the note by a shade, so I’m not sure what to expect. I may find him extremely frustrating, or I may come away very impressed.