Classical Convert

My Latest Listening Material

In the last week or so I’ve been particularly listening to/discovering:

• Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 30, Op. 109 - The next installment in my apparently accidental quest to work backwards through Beethoven’s solo piano repertoire. It’s similar to number 32, sorta. There are two relatively quick and dramatic initial movements followed by a paced, more gentle set of variations for the finale. I love the contrast between the end of the flowing, watery first and start of the Baroque-ish second.
• Shostakovich, Symphony No. 14, Op. 135 - I keep wanting to get into this, since (as regular readers know) in general I love Dimitri’s late stuff, especially the Alexander Blok and Marina Tsvetaeva songs. This has so far seemed more, errr, impenetrable. More strident. An additional barrier is that I have the Haitink version, in which the texts are sung in their original languages (or German) and I can’t stand the Herz/Schmerz rhyme in “Loreley”. It reminds me of insipid pop rhymes like: ‘my heart wants to fly/so high in the sky‘. Yeah yeah, I know I’m being ridiculous, but I can’t help myself. I think I’ll listen to Rostropovich or Jansons instead.
• Beethoven, Missa Solemnis, Op. 123 - My first impression of this is: Wow, this is gonna take freakin’ ages to understand. It somehow doesn’t sound very… Beethoveny? Maybe that’s just because it’s full of people singing, which up to this point I completely didn’t associate with Ludwig. The “Kyrie” has been in my head all day.
• Shostakovich, Symphony No. 4, Op. 43 - Ahhh… the classic abandoned at the last minute fourth. It’s probably a good thing he came out with the 5th instead of this, or Stalin would have been royally pissed off. It wanders all over the place, jumping from one mood to another (Mahleresque, I think is how it gets described) and has loads of sonic weirdness and dissonance, and the first example of his tick-tocking percussion finish (used again in the 2nd Cello Concerto and 15th Symphony). I love the grating dissonances in the horns, which sound like bizarre trills, and the flitting between playful melodies and dramatic climaxes in the humongous final movement (27 minutes for Rostropovich, who I prefer to Haitink for this one).

I wonder which of these will morph into favorites…

Me vs. Atonalism

A post I wrote a few days ago has generated way more controversy than I though it would. The general gist of it is that I was dismissing the second Viennese school as being way over the top. I suggested that the future of classical music is the use of atonality as a contrasting key: instead of writing a piece in, say, c-major and modulating between that and c-minor (or a-minor), a piece will switch between tonality and atonality in a similar fashion, but not stick in the land of atonality.

In short, I feel that atonality in music should be a fleeting thing, because tonality speaks to something deep inside us. It is satisfactory on a fundamental level, as opposed to atonality, which is only satisfactory in an academic sense.

However, several people have expressed strong disagreement. Chris Culver says:

“If atonality isn’t your thing, fine. But it’s ridiculous for you to make universal pronouncements like “it sucks”, or that no one can understand it without the score (plenty of people can)”

I agree that maybe I was a tad harsh in my initial criticism, but I still feel that my point is basically true (for me at least, I understand that people are going to constantly disagree about music). However, I am certainly willing to accept that the tonal/atonal blend I was evangelizing would probably not have come about, if not for the dramatic steps of Berg, Webern and Schoenberg.

Matt commented that:

“I’m not sure that you really have a handle on what you’re talking about here. You’re conflating categories of music (”atonal”, “serial”, “twelve-tone”) which are actually subsets of one another … The melodies in late Shostakovich are tonal.”

And then goes on to suggest six pieces I am completely unfamiliar with to better appreciate what the atonalists brought to the table - which I shall definitely work on acquiring. However, I strongly disagree with his latter statement that late Shostakovich is tonal. The principal themes in, say, the Violin Sonata (Op. 134) and the twelfth String Quartet (Op. 126) are tone rows, but he develops these as if they were tonal themes. That’s what I mean by developing atonal ideas in a tonal fashion.

As for atonal vs. serial vs. twelve-tone, I appreciate that the distinction is subtle, and kind of back-and-forth. As I understand it, atonalism (which really just means the absence of tonal center, which could almost apply to (some of) Debussy as well as Schoenberg) encompasses serialism (the strict use of twelve tone rows, each note in the scale used just as much as any other, in a specific order) which is almost the same as twelve-tone music (which might refer to less strict use of each note to an equal degree)

But, I’m fully prepared to be not quite correct about this… I’d be delighted to hear what you think. Comment below!

Goodbye Rostropovich

The soon-to-be-even-more-legendary-than-he-already-was cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich passed away last week. There is no way I can give a summary of his life better than the BBC or Wikipedia can. My contribution is a link to this sweetly innocent and enchanting performance of his, conducting Shostakovich’s “Tahiti Trot”, an orchestration of the song “Tea for Two” (which he apparently did on a 100 ruble bet).

[YOUTUBE]http://youtube.com/watch?v=rSwkz5AJGds[/YOUTUBE]

I think I first became really aware of Rostropovich when I discovered Shotakovich’s cello concertos, both of which were written with Mstislav in mind, and both of which were premiered by him. It’s sad to lose such a huge figure in the musical world, and with such a link to the great dead composers. His legacy will be large, though. It’s strange how much bigger artists can grow in the public eye after their deaths.

Serialism Versus Edgy Tonality

Here’s an idea, the real thrust and import to Schnittke, Auerbach, and late Shosty is the revolutionary direction they have taken classical music. Yes, that’s a little controversial sounding because people *always* seem to bitch about how Shostakovich was stuck in the old boring romantic tradition while Boulez and Cage and everybody were doing so many wonderful, exciting things to push the frontiers of music!!1!1!!

Yeah, well, atonalism and over the top minimalism suck.

Sure, they’re academically “interesting”. Right. We can sit around and analyze all the clever stuff we’ve been doing and maybe argue with our friends about how 4′33” is actually very interesting and clever… but is any of this really enjoyable to listen to? Really? The tonal system is there because it sounds so bloody good to people. Forcing yourself to adopt some other system is all good and well as a practical exercise, but it doesn’t exactly communicate very well with real, human listeners who do not studiously study the score for clever inversions and retrothingies.

I think Berg, Webern, Schoenberg completely overreacted. They saw the late romantics pushing the boundaries of the tonal system and went completely over the top, when what they really should’ve done to still be appealing to listen to (except for Berg maybe, he wasn’t so far off) was to just push it a little more, to veer out into atonality without losing it completely. Just go on little expeditions.

That is what I feel classical music is coming around to. Tonality is essential. It’s okay to break away for alittle bit, but you must come back to it in the end. I feel that Shostakovich was very close to this towards the end. His violin sonata, for example, or 12th string quartet both use fundamentally atonal melodies, but they develop these in an tonal fashion. Schnittke and Auerbach both seem to do a similar thing (listen to Schnittke’s string quintet for a prime exmaple of atonalism fading to tonality).

It’s almost as if atonality has become the most fundamental mirror “key” to classic tonality. Instead of modulating to the dominant from the tonic you now modulate from tonality to atonality, but just like in the classical tradition, you pretty much always come back to the tonic in the end.

The Joy of Lera Auerbach

Today, after a miserable non-work filled day filled with snow-loathing for the piles and heaps of white stuff that are lounging around everywhere, I perked up a little after discovering the amazing Lera Auerbach. I found her name in a review of a disc with the Shostakovich Violin Sonata, along with one of her pieces. The parallels they were drawing sounded intriguing, and after a bit of googley detective work, my suspicions were satisfactorily satisfied.

Here website has a wonderful section in which you can listen to full performances of some of her works. This is extremely well done: these are not stupid 1 minute long samples, and they are reasonably good quality - an excellent decision on the part of whoever designed the site. This is especially true given that there are a very limited number of recordings of her works available on CD.

She’s a young Russian composer, only eight years older than I am. Her music reminds me of a less prickly, more melodic, more frenetic, and more modern, late-Shostakovich. Her music is essentially tonal, but with veerings in and out. I’m starting to feel that is the most essential quality for me to truly fall in love with a piece of music, and hers contains this in bucketloads. It reminds me a little also of Prokofiev, she has some of his motor rhythms and friskiness.

In short, I’m definitely going to be purchasing some of her music in the next couple of days. It’s wonderful!