CGF Newsletter 48: Claws out!
Virtually no critic likes the reality of Bayreuth’s Parsifal; a titanic takedown
Name That Tune
This week’s Name That Tune was submitted by Listener Jeremy, who recently visited Seattle! (see above) Here’s your hint: this composer taught or mentored both Kurt Weill and Edgard Varèse.
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 classicalgabfest@gmail.com instead of commenting so the rest of us can have fun guessing.
Last Week’s Results
CGF Newsletter 47
Georges Bizet, Roma (Symphony No. 2)
Joey was the only one with enough gumption to guess on this one: Bob Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn, and Mahler (!) Not bad guesses, and interesting that he heard the string writing as so very German.
The piece was the result of Bizet’s turn at the Villa Medici as winner of the Prix de Rome. He wavered on calling it a symphony, considering it more of a symphonic suite. Call it what you will, it’s a four-movement orchestral work whose weakest link—unfortunately—is the first movement. I imagine that’s a huge part of what’s kept it out of the repertoire. You gotta start strong!
Think you can stump your fellow Listeners? Go ahead and try!
Head to our Google Form to upload a 30-second clip of an unidentified piece of classical music for us to try to identify.
The Reviews are In
...and the critical mass of the critical class is not overly taken with the Bayreuth VR Parsifal. Here’s FOtP Zach Woolfe in the Times:
Yet there is something bland and empty at the production’s core. It’s not clear what Scheib thinks the nature of the sickness is at the root of this Grail cult, so it’s not clear what Parsifal’s climactic redemption offers. If the final AR image of plastic bags, echoed by one onstage, gestures toward a critique of environmental despoliation, it’s a wan gesture.
This means the augmented reality has little profound substance to support, just a jittery desire to stimulate — to ornament and impress — which is just what Wagner didn’t want from stage technology. Scheib’s AR decorations rarely inspire emotion or a sustained sense of wonder: the impression, as Gurnemanz says to Parsifal, of time becoming space.
The inadvertent result of all the lavish resources is to prove the superiority of the live over the digital — to keep us sneaking back under our glasses from the augmented real to the really real.
The AR technology is clearly in its early stages, with a free-trial-version aesthetic. Gamers familiar with “Fortnite” or “Ghost of Tsushima” won’t be impressed by the graphics. Most of what you see is the stage, darkened by the tinted glasses, and in front of it, a series of optically unimpressive and dramaturgically indifferent objects flying around: rocks, literal holy doves and bloody swans, trees, battery parts…—actually, there’s no point listing them. The objects don’t look good and there clearly wasn’t much thought put into their selection and design.
Punch up
Speaking of VAN magazine, they ran a great article this week that I can’t help but share: “Adams 2.0: The Musical Decline of John Adams” by George Grella. It’s full of tasty morsels like this:
What a bizarre and frustrating shame it’s been, then, that as my ears continue to open up as I grow older, so has Adams’s output become increasingly inessential. If his music up through the early 21st century was generous, his work since then has become the equivalent of a crank yelling at the kids to get off his lawn.
Grella goes on to point out the many failings of Adams’ post-2000 output, singling out Dr. Atomic, The Gospel According to the Other Mary, and Scheherazade.2 for particular scorn. (How On the Transmigration of Souls and City Noir got left out of the mix, I’ll never know.) Having played a minor role in the creation of Scheherazade.2 myself (I was Adams’ assistant when he conducted the second-ever performance in Cincinnati) I’ll say that I quite agree with Grella’s points about this piece (and all the others) in this article.
About ten years ago, I made a decision to use whatever public fora* were at my disposal to elevate the music that I love rather than tearing down the music I hate. I would encourage others to do the same. You’ll make more friends than enemies and it’s just a better way to lead a life that’s far too short.
But man, it sure is fun to read a tear-down, especially when the author speaks truth to power and the target is the king.
*In private fora I can be a catty little bitch!
Classical Mixtape
J. S. Bach, “So oft ich meine Tobackspfeife”
I’ve been obsessed with this video since it was released by the Netherlands Bach Society last week. The staging. The shirts. The boys doing googly eyes at each other. What does it mean??
The piece itself is a curious little work in Bach’s output, seemingly a secular song about smoking a pipe. But dig just beneath the surface, and you’ll find that it’s really an allegory that is wholly in line with JSB’s normal dreary Lutheran outlook on life:
Whene'er I take my pipe and stuff it
And smoke to pass the time away,
My thoughts, as I sit and puff it,
Dwell on a picture sad and grey.
It teaches me that very like
Am I myself unto my pipe.Like me, this pipe so fragrant burning
Is made of naught but earth and clay;
To earth I too shall be returning,
It falls and, ere I'd think to say,
It breaks in two before my eyes,
In store for me a like fate lies.No stain the pipe's hue yet doth darken;
It remains white. Thus do I know
That when to death's call I must hearken
My body, too, all pale wilt grow.
To black beneath the sod 'twill turn,
Likewise, the pipe, if oft it burn.Or when the pipe is fairly glowing,
Behold then instantaneously,
The smoke off into thin air going,
Till naught but ash is left to see.
Man's frame likewise will burn
And unto dust his body turn.How oft it happens when one's smoking:
The stopper's missing from its shelf,
And one goes with one's finger poking
Into the bowl and burns oneself.
If in the pipe such pain doth dwell,
How hot must be the pains of Hell.Thus o'er my pipe, in contemplation
Of such things, I can constantly
Indulge in fruitful meditation,
And so, puffing contentedly,
On land, on sea, at home, abroad,
I smoke my pipe and worship God.
The Classical Gabfest Newsletter is a spin-off of the now-defunct Classical Gabfest Podcast. It is a co-production of William White, Joseph Vaz, and the Listeners (i.e. you.)
The NTT sounds *awfully* Prokofievian to me. (Neoclassical cadence, string counterpoint, certain harmonies.) Next best guesses would be Shostakovich and Honegger.
I hear Hindemith in those teasing trills, but I don’t think it’s Hindemith.