183: Punch and Yuja

A critic gets mowed and an opera that's just ok

Name That Tune

This week’s Name That Tune was submitted by Listener Jeremy. Here’s your hint, and it’s taken straight from Wikipedia with redactions (so DEFINITELY no Googling!): “The piece, which would later be called [title redacted], was meant to be an unconventional dance to be played in [a musical]. The musical closed down immediately after the first performance due to poor reception by critics and audiences on January 6, 1950, which led [composer redacted] not to attempt to get the piece published or performed again.”

Again, no Googling!

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 182
Barber, Piano Sonata

Big ups to Listener Kash, who nailed the composer ID based on the clip’s similarity to Barber’s piano concerto!

I guessed Prokofiev, Myaskovsky, and Martinů. Listener Eric guessed Villa-Lobos and Ginastera. And that was that.

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.

Smackdown

From the Guardian:

Pianist Yuja Wang today made public an email sent to her by writer, critic and Radio 3 presenter Norman LeBrecht, and her response that accuses the journalist of “derogatory misogynistic bullying”.

Lebrecht had written to the musician querying her decision to withdraw from a BBC Lebrecht Interview stating: “I am surprised and disappointed. I thought you were a serious person who stood by her commitments. I may have to revise that opinion.”

On her official Instagram account, over the screen grab of his email, Wang wrote her response: “@normanlebrecht this derogatory misogynistic bullying need [sic] to stop. We are human beings who grow with nourishing energy, not characters for you to abuse.”

“When we saw the social media post we took action – we have spoken to Norman Lebrecht and we will no longer be working with him at BBC Radio 3,” said Jackson.

As for my personal take on this tawdry affair, I am happy to cosign this video essay from Dave Hurwitz: Norman Lebrecht is a low-life muckraker who deserves to be knocked down a peg or ten, and while the email is egregious and rude, it doesn’t strike me as particularly misogynistic. However, Yuja saw her opportunity and she struck, and throwing in the accusation of sexism (which others were not likely to refute) seemed like a good way to score a total KO.

Opera Review: Fellow Travelers

I saw Fellow Travelers, the 2016 opera by composer Gregory Spears and librettist Greg Pierce, at the Seattle Opera this past weekend. Right off the bat, let me state that what follows is not a review of the production (which was perfectly well directed, staged, and sung) but of the opera itself.

I’ll start by laying out my theory of opera: though opera melds several art forms, it is primarily a musical genre, and it is the composer’s responsibility to create music that drives the narrative and characterizates the roles. In an ideal world, this is achieved equally by the vocal lines and the orchestral accompaniment, but if you have to pick one or the other, you go with the singing.

Is this really too much to ask? Apparently so, at least for the new operas I’ve attended over the past three or four years, including The Hours and A Thousand Splendid Suns. And judged against this rubric, I have to add Fellow Travelers to that list. I went in with rather low expectations, and I would say that my expectations were met. The story was fine, the music was bland, the melodies were scant, and the dramatic pacing was pretty random. The libretto was knowingly didactic in a way that’s sure to appeal to audiences for contemporary opera. One of the leads got fully naked on stage and he even had a pretty good body (for an opera singer.)

One of my concerns going into Fellow Travelers was that, since it’s a story of clandestine gay love, I knew I’d be comparing it in some regards to Heated Rivalry, the Canadian gay hockey show that has settler-colonized my entire brain. And of course, opera is such a different medium that that’s like comparing apples and oranges. But at one point I found myself saying “gosh, these guys sure don’t have that Hudcon chemistry.” And of course they didn’t. But then I realized, this is not the fault of the singers — it’s the fault of the music. The music is supposed to be the chemistry.

On TV, where close-ups are a thing, actors have the advantage of being able to use microexpressions to communicate finely gradated layers of emotion. Opera simply can not do this — it has to be the art form of the grande geste. For that reason, I think composers would do well to give careful thought to the subject matter they choose for their operas. Put another way: just because you liked a book or a movie or a TV show, that doesn’t mean it should be an opera. It could make a good opera, but you’ve got to fundamentally rethink the material.

And just in case anyone thinks I should shut up and put my notes where my mouth is, I wrote an opera (or an opera-oratorio) two years ago, in which I gave my best go at writing a grand, dramatic, music-forward stage work. You are more than welcome to give it a look/listen and judge it against the same criteria I’ve laid out here.

Tone Praise

Lili Boulanger, Psalm XXIV: “La terre appartient à l’Éternel”

I’ve conducted this piece several times and I’m gearing up to do so again and it’s just... so good. And so punchy!

Tone Prose is a co-production of William White, Joseph Vaz, and the Listeners (i.e. you.)