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October 18, 2005
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Reviews
By Renato
Rodolfo-Sioson
San Francisco Symphony
Lars Vogt
Herbert
Blomstedt
(10/15/05)
By Anna Carol
Dudley
Vivica Genaux
Craig Rutenberg
(10/16/05)
By Robert
Commanday
New York Metropolitan
Opera
Falstaff
(10/12/05)
By Jules
Langert
San Francisco Contemporary Music Players
(10/10/05)
By Michelle
Dulak Thomson
San Francisco Symphony Chamber Players
Lars
Vogt
(10/16/05)
By Heuwell
Tircuit
BluePrint Ensemble
(10/14/05)
By Alan
Rich
By Tom
Heimberg
By Janos
Gereben
Mickey Butts, Executive Director/Publisher
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When I tell acquaintances about my involvement in the increasingly marginal field of classical music, more often than not I get the response, "I don't know enough to get interested." For most people, it seems that this art form is a lot of work, with a payoff of dubious merit.
Yet more and more, musical institutions are tackling the knowledge hurdle head on. Lengthy program notes now include bibliographies and discographies. Preconcert lectures sometimes include roundtable discussions among visiting experts. Conductors chat during performances and take questions from the audience afterward. Arts organizations put on multievent, multiday learning bashes that until recently were restricted to performances of Wagner's Ring.
For the recent premiere of John Adams' Doctor Atomic, for example, the San Francisco Opera and partnering organizations put together special Web sites and scheduled more than 30 lectures, seminars, films and exhibitions over a 53-day period. Music lovers could become enlightened by detailed analyses of the Manhattan project; the Faust project; Oppenheimer's favorite poems; Ferlinghetti's visit to Nagasaki; Civil Defense pamphlets; the favorite course of 19th century college presidents (ethics); and Director/Librettist Peter Sellars' passionate musings on "free-floating electrons" (dancers), the "simultaneous interplay of multiple cosmologies," "how to say no to a step in your life," "time inside of time, space inside of space," and on and on.
On November 11, the San Francisco Symphony will inaugurate its "Friday 6.5" series, featuring "a lively introduction of each piece by the conductor," something that already happens during the open rehearsals, and not infrequently in regular MTT concerts. But this is old hat compared to the Concert Companion tested by the Kansas City Symphony and other orchestras, a technology that "delivers explanatory text, program notes and video images to handheld devices — in real time with the music."
Is this "edublitz" of information help, or hype? Is musical sublimity dependent on intimate knowledge?
In my experience, the doctors administering edublitz are hitting a capillary instead of the artery. What my acquaintances fail to understand is that my knowledge of classical music came after hearing the music, not before. It's the music that drove me to learn all the leitmotifs in Wagner's Ring; it's the music that sparks my interest in background information, not the other way around. The pleasure of the music makes it worthwhile to spend extra hours or years trying to extract even more meaning from music's soul-entralling stimulus. Learning may enhance and increase enjoyment, but I would insist that considerable pleasure must arise first from hearing the music itself — not necessarily the whole piece, but at least enough of it to generate a tickle of interest that must be satisfied by further listening and exploration.
But I'm afraid too many people have never gotten into the habit of listening to classical music because they are afraid that they have to learn a lot before they'll get anything out of it, or that they couldn't possibly enjoy it right off. I would warn them that the real fear should be that they might intuitively like the music, and as a result might want to learn something more, get hoodwinked into going to concerts, and perhaps even willingly turn into a dreaded "classical music snob."
Knowledge, once it is understood not to be a prerequisite for enjoyment, can still greatly enhance the experience of listening to music. The trouble is that too many of the knowledge-transfer endeavors today are concerned with appurtenances rather than the music itself. This is not a surprise: music is not verbal; discussing it requires a specialized vocabulary; musical notation is understood by a small minority; and musical meaning is highly subjective. It is therefore far easier to design an "edublitz" around statements available in writing like composer biographies, sung texts, social histories, pundit exegeses and the like.
But being knowledgeable is not the same thing as being smitten with the music. When I heard Mozart's 17th piano concerto at the age of eight, it might as well have been "Moe's Art" to me. Nothing but its enthralling sound mattered. These days there is too much talk and not enough music in the classical-music knowledge business; yet it is the music itself that is most likely to generate a love of music.
New-music concerts are often the least likely to generate enough music exposure to enhance appreciation. In the 19th century, most music was new to its listeners. Recordings hadn't been invented yet and musicians were cheap, so audiences routinely demanded and received, on the spot, repeat performances of pieces they liked. Nowadays new music, however challenging on first hearing, is only played once.
Instead of thick program notes, why can't key excerpts of the music be played in advance of a performance? Recordings could be made from rehearsals, or the musicians could play excerpts as part of the concert. The Philharmonic Orchestra of New Jersey has offered and trademarked Discovery Concerts that perform illustrative sections of a composition along with spoken commentary, then conclude with a complete uninterrupted performance. Marin Alsop puts this technique to good use in her Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. She will have the orchestra play favorite parts of new works, often accompanied by brief but wry commentary. These elaborations build anticipation for hearing the excerpts in context, as well as increase understanding of the work.
It should be pointed out that Doctor Atomic's organizers made an effort to preview the music at some pre-performance events. Excerpts for vocalists and piano were played in special gatherings as the work progressed. Most notably, MIDI renditions of the score were played to fortunate attendees of Sarah Cahill's preview lectures. But these laudable moments were drowned out by the rest of the hoopla.
Important as the first atomic test was in world history, the public should have been exposed less to panels of historians, novelists and poets, and more to Oppenheimer's "Batter my heart" aria. That would have brought people into the War Memorial Opera House in droves, for the right reason — afterward, to know more.
(Jeff Dunn is a freelance critic with a B.A. in music and a Ph.D. in geologic education. A composer of piano and vocal music, he is a member of NACUSA and president of Composers, Inc.)
©2005 Jeff Dunn, all rights reserved
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