Jessica Balik

The idea that numerical properties underlie music has interested people since at least the Middle Ages.

The composer Kurt Weill and the city of Berlin are often mentioned in the same breath. Both the composer and the city are icons of the Weimar Republic, the name given to Germany’s government between 1919 and 1933.

Who is László Klangfarben, and what is a Schick Machine? Those were the two burning questions on the minds of audience and protagonist alike during Schick Machine, a theatrical and musical work commissioned by Stanford Lively Arts and premiered Saturday evening at Stanford’s Dinkelspiel Auditorium.

Initially, it might seem unimaginable that a silent film from the late 1920s could occasion a West Coast premiere of a musical score. But when the score is one composed for the film, then the situation becomes feasible, indeed. The film is Metropolis, a Weimar Republic work directed by Fritz Lang in 1927.

By definition, contemporaneity is an integral component of new music. But contemporary circumstances obviously engulf more than musical concerns: From war to the environment to the financial crisis, there are plenty of present-day issues that have nothing to do with music.

The performance I attended Saturday night began with a single performer, dressed in a white tunic, dancing on the stage while waving a flag. Immediately I grew nervous. I knew the performance was supposed to convey spiritual ascension, or even transcendence.

Abstract, intimidating, unintelligible: These are words I often hear used to describe new music. People who use them might assume that every new-music festival is chock-full of serious, difficult sounds that can daunt even trained musicians, not to mention the musically uninitiated. The Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, however, fits no such description.

From Beethoven to Wagner to Schoenberg, Johann Sebastian Bach influenced the subsequent course of Western music. Everybody knows that. Particularly influential is Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. This work consists of two volumes, each of which features one prelude and one fugue in every major and minor key.

The Finnish musician Magnus Lindberg is a man of many talents. He performs professionally as a pianist and as a percussionist. Moreover, he is a decorated composer whose compositional honors include the Prix Italia, the Nordic Music Prize, and the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize.