154: Tangled Web

A Met donor falls short and turns up dead

Name That Tune

This week’s Name That Tune was submitted by Listener Neal. Here’s your hint: this piece was written to celebrate an imperial family anniversary, contrary to the received narrative about the composer’s political life and motivations.

As always, your goal is to provide as much accurate analysis as possible. First try to get the nationality, year, and genre, then make educated guesses about the composer and — if possible— the piece. If you know the piece immediately, send us an email at toneprose@substack.com instead of commenting so the rest of us can have fun guessing.

Last Week’s Results
Tone Prose 153
Szymanowski, Harnasie

Listener Kevin actually knew this one (as I thought he might.)

Listener Tammy and Listener Eric weighed in as well, and we got some really interesting guesses. Tammy knew the geographic location of the Tatra mountains (given in the clue) and zoomed in her map to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Ukraine. That got her to Penderecki, Lutosławski, Martinů and maybe Ligeti. There was a little overlap with Eric’s guesses, which included Martinů, Kodály (and in a bit of a zag, Villa-Lobos.) Great guesses all around!

Think you can stump your fellow Listeners? Go ahead and try!

Head to our Google Form to submit a YouTube link OR upload your own 30-second clip of an unidentified piece of classical music for us to try to identify.

Weird, Wild Stuff

From the New York Times:

He was a regular at some of the most prestigious and glamorous events on New York’s cultural calendar, from gala performances at the Metropolitan Opera to black-tie soirees for American Ballet Theater and the Frick Collection.

And as Matthew Christopher Pietras began donating to arts organizations, he found himself eagerly courted by institutions that are desperate to find new generations of young patrons. He was invited to join the board of the Met Opera and began sponsoring galas. When the Frick Collection reopened this year after a $220 million renovation, his name had been inscribed onto a wall alongside those of other donors, and a staff position had been named for him.

Then, this May, everything went terribly awry.

Mr. Pietras, who had worked for the Soros family and described himself to people as a financial manager, arranged to transfer a $10 million donation to the Met Opera on May 28. That evening, he attended American Ballet Theater’s spring gala. The next morning, a Soros representative reached out to the Met and told the company that the money actually belonged to a member of the Soros family and not to Mr. Pietras, according to a Met official with knowledge of the institution’s actions.

The Met reached out to Mr. Pietras for an explanation, and he briefly responded that he would look into the issue, but the organization did not hear from him again. The next day, just before noon on May 30, the police were called to his apartment near Madison Square Park, where Mr. Pietras, 40, was found dead.

Mr. Pietras’s sudden death, which is still under investigation by the medical examiner, has forced the Met and the Frick to contend with a swirl of questions about his philanthropy.

For the Met Opera, which returned the $10 million after Mr. Pietras’s death, the bizarre turn of events created a real financial problem at a moment when credit ratings agencies have expressed concern about its reliance on large draws from its endowment fund. With an unexpected shortfall in its cash flow, the Met got permission from the executive committee of its board in June to draw another $5 million from its endowment to help make up the missing funds, according to the Met official. Several committee members offered to make up the remaining $5 million that the company had been counting on.

😬

Tone Praise

Respighi, Ballata delle Gnomidi (Ballad of the Gnomes)

I had never heard of this piece until just a couple days ago. Apparently it was composed between The Fountains of Rome and The Pines of Rome. Quite a barn-burner with all the usual Respighian flare, and the poem on which it is based has to be read to be believed:

Their flimsy skirts are fluttering in the wind, as the women drag the gibbering gnome along.

The tiny man kicks wildly as he hangs between two females, both soon to be his, whom a single marriage bed is now awaiting.

O she-gnomes, may this race with him be brief, lest he falls exhausted as the Great Bear fades from heaven.

No torches lit that monstrous consummation, but outside, hordes of gnomes were waiting, eager for their prey.

And then a ghastly scream pierced through the night, so painful as to chase away the darkness.

Then—silence.

The dawn was slowly breaking as the mad wives dragged their lifeless trophy from the bed-chamber.

And they carried him away, followed by a teeming mass of cunning little demons muttering prayers which sound like dreadful curses, in a blasphemous tongue heard only in the depths of blackest hell.

A rough pathway brought them to a cliff-top, whose sharp ridge towered above a sea of cobalt blue.

In a trice, the defiled bridegroom was hurled over, and the ritual was at an end.

Now, at the summit of the hill, after their sleepless night, the two women sway in the morning breeze, and as daylight breaks, the tiny folk

join the bloodthirsty widows in their dancing.

They shriek, they bite, they mock and cackle loudly, an insane frenzy seizes each and every gnome, as in a Witches Sabbath!

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