Intermezzi

Beethoven's Ninth from Two Hong Kong Secondary Schools: A Review

2011-05-19T03:13:00.021-04:00

A Review of

Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, Fourth Movement
Karen Ka, soprano; Erica Lowe, alto; Dennis Lau, tenor; Frankie Fung, bass
Choirs and Orchestras of the Belilios Public School and Wah Yan College, Kowloon
conducted by Woo Zun Hin
Choral coaches: Lillian Mak, Lesley Ka-Hei Chan

May 14, 2011

No other piece in the history of Western classical music has been subject to as much political interpretation as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Beethoven's employment of choral forces singing Schiller's "An die Freude" ("Ode to Joy") in the finale makes it possible to argue how this symphony may explicitly represent different symbols, ideals, or ideologies. Even back in the 19th century, Edgar Quinet described the Ninth as the "Marseillaise of humanity." During the First World War a French novelist asserted how the Ode should be a hymn of the Allies, and how it belongs to the world except the "criminal Germany." Then, to celebrate the reunification of Germany in 1990, the Ninth was performed under the baton of Bernstein who took the liberty to substitute "Freiheit" (freedom) for "Freude" throughout Schiller's text. In China, during the Cultural Revolution the Ninth was a source of bourgeois corruption according to some, but compatible with principles of class struggle according to others.

These interpretations have surely influenced how musicians perform and think of this work. The Ninth is certainly complex enough musically to allow different readings for rendering different potentially extra-musical ideas. It is difficult, for instance, not to believe (or imagine) that Furtwaengler was trying to portray something horrifying in his infamous 1942 performance of the Ninth in Berlin. We are so used to the notion that performing the Ninth amounts to making a statement on the human condition that, we sometimes forget there can be other simpler, more innocent perspectives on this symphony that are equally legitimate.

It is thus especially refreshing to hear the version of the "Ode to Joy" reviewed here, performed by the Choirs and Orchestras of Belilios Public School (BPS) and Wah Yan College, Kowloon (WYK), who offered an unpretentious and direct reading of this great symphonic finale on May 14, 2011 for the WYK annual concert. I feel that these young musicians from the two secondary schools in Hong Kong and their conductor, Mr. Woo Zun Hin, conceived this movement as an enthusiastic expression of happiness and a joyful celebration of friendship. There was no exaggerated phrasing and dynamic contrast, no lengthened fermata, no extreme accent, no excessive ritardando over important cadences. The music did seem to flow naturally from these students who, for most of the movement, did not appear to be trying too hard to enunciate something beyond their grasp. The genuine feeling of these energetic players makes watching this performance a uniquely moving experience.

It is evident in the clip that the students have worked very hard with their conductor on this concert. Overall the students' playing and singing did live up to the technical challenges demanded by the work. Despite some technical shortcomings, their command of their instruments and voice seemed sufficient for expressing their musical intentions. For instance, the opening instrumental recitatives and the several orchestral statements of the "Joy" theme were musically rendered, technical imperfections notwithstanding. The ensemble nearly (but fortunately did not) fall apart at several difficult spots, but these only made the performance more exciting to follow. For a secondary-school ensemble, intonation, tone quality and diction were outstanding. At several spots there could be a more nuanced calculation of the balance between the strings, winds, and the soloists, but this did not distract me from following their musical argument.

The BPS/WYK Orchestras and Choirs are commended for their effort, and more so for their courage of even attempting Beethoven's Ninth, one of the most sublime musical works ever created. I congratulate Mr. Woo, the soloists, the students and their coaches for their achievement, and wish that this experience of theirs will continue to inspire them to strive for an even higher level of musical understanding.

Finale of the Ravel Piano Trio

2009-08-16T03:04:00.005-04:00

I will rehearse the finale of the Ravel Trio with AW and JP tomorrow afternoon.

Years ago, when I heard this movement for the first time from a recording, I found it disgusting and incomprehensible. I regarded those loud triad chords from the piano as grotesque and unnecessary. I thought, what's the point of pushing the piano to such an extreme? And those trills in the strings - was Ravel thinking of replicating the Devil's Trill?

Of course, I now think very differently. But the finale is still the most elusive of the four movements in the Trio, and to my mind, also the least rich. There are long stretches of music in the movement (e.g., the section starting from the violin's statement of the theme till the point when the piano starts shouting out those chords) in which the piano accompaniment supplies nothing more than a noisy background to a main melody played by the strings (and it's actually pretty challenging to make those many notes sound like noises). Most of the movement is textured as an opposition between a very thick piano part and the strings playing in unison. The coda is essentially the same pattern of chords repeated several times. The entire finale cannot but give one an impression that Ravel was rushing through it -- and yes, he needed to finish it before being enlisted to the French army.

The pentatonic main theme of the movement does have its own special charm. Delicate, playful, and transparent, it almost sounds like a tune produced by a Chinese music box. The opening is actually my favourite spot of the entire movement.

Schubert: Auflösung (Dissolution), D. 807

2009-08-08T15:26:00.008-04:00

What a song! This lied must be counted as one of the most exceptional pieces by Schubert. The composer seems to have gone far beyond his time for the sake of musically defining a very special sentiment - that feeling of having a lot of energy lying dormant within oneself, but at the same time, being unable to release it. That energy is powerful enough to incapacitate one's action or thoughts. Tormenting as this state of being is, one may also feel heavenly from the rapturous emotions brought about by this saved up power:

From every recess of my soul
Gentle powers well up
And envelop me
With celestial song.

The opening of this piece settles on the tonic for quite a few measures. Our natural expectation that the chord must change, at some time, imparts to the listener an anxious feeling that something dramatic is about to happen (the same method of psychological manipulation would later be employed by Wagner in the Prelude to Das Rheingold). The rapid ascending arpeggios floating on top of a pedal-point sustained by repeated low octaves in the piano part are so amazing, and almost expressionistic - they are ecstatic, exciting, but under moderation. The harmony changes at a very slow pace until the words

Dissolve, world (Geh unter, Welt)

at which the chords change twice as fast all of a sudden. By this point, the inner energy circulating within one is intense enough to render any sensory perception impossible. One is, by the end of the lied, totally burnt out, albeit in a blissful state, as expressed by the last repeated cry: Geh unter, Welt, Geh unter, Welt, Geh unter, Welt!

Debussy: Nuit d'Étoiles

2009-08-07T04:00:00.003-04:00

To help myself to understand the Ravel Trio better, I have been listening to more French music these days.

With a cooler temperature and gentle breezes, tonight was the perfect time to replay Nuit d'Étoiles [Starry Night], a setting by the 20-year-old Debussy on a little poem by Théodore de Banville. There is nothing deep in this chanson - no mysterious colors in his use of harmonies, nothing special in its overall structure, and nothing particularly dramatic. The accompaniment tends to be quite mechanical - the figures are repetitious, and yet not creating a special color or effect. Transition between sections (esp. that between the third stanza and the last statement of the refrain) are awkward. The alignment between the melodic lines and the lyrics is also uninspiring (e.g., how can the line "je rêve aux amours défunts" [I dream of a love long past] be paired with high notes and ascending leaps?).

And yet, despite these compositional flaws, I like this piece a lot. The melodic line itself is charming and beautiful in a simple and but romantic way -- something that perhaps only a 20-year old man could be inspired to write down. There is such a perfect Belle Époque feel to it that as I listened to it, I could not but imagine this chanson as an improvised accompaniment to some early 20th-century black-and-white silent movie. This is nostalgic music, and almost too pleasantly nostalgic. As the beautiful line was being composed, the composer of course didn't know that the Belle Époque was to be gone very soon.

Finding the right pictures for the Schubert B-flat and Ravel Piano Trios

2009-08-05T02:57:00.004-04:00

I had another long but very rewarding rehearsal today with AW and JP. Pieces for the night included the 3rd movement of Schubert's B-flat Trio, and the first movement of Ravel's Trio (again!).

To me, the third movement of the Schubert B-flat is the most elusive of the four movements, and, from the performance perspective, the most difficult to bring out. The tempo - set by the pianist, ie, me, alas - needs to be just right. Too fast, it becomes a frantic drinking song; too slow, the charm and lightness of those staccato notes are lost. It's so easy for this movement to end up sounding squared - the rhythmic motives are repetitious, and there isn't much variation in note values throughout. It's also not easy to conjure up a "mood" or a picture for this Scherzo and Trio. I see the Scherzo as a light, almost dainty, and somewhat elegant minuet, and the Trio as a kind casual salon music with a tinge of sadness. AW sees lots more personal sentiments/emotions/sadness in the Trio (perhaps because she has the most melodic part to play?); she even feels that the Trio is little meditative (which I sort of agree). JP, not inclined to associate this music with definite pictures, regards the whole movement as music beautiful in its "simplicity". There are so many interpretive possibilities for this movement.

One important thing I learned today concerning the Trio of this movement is, because the entire Trio is constructed as a quasi-canon between the violin and cello, there is little room for the pianist to take time even at the sensitive or expressive spots (or else the cellist would have the most difficult time keeping the line).

We also spent sometime duscussing a workable "mood" for the first movement of the Ravel. To me, this movement, and French music of late 19th / early 20th century in general, has an impersonal quality in the sense that the music is more about depicting impressions or sensations of, say, a traveler, rather than expressing the composer's inner sentiments, angst, or deep emotions. The following is, I think, a wonderfully appropriate (and useful) picture for the movement's second theme that we came up with: a calm lake by a green mountain, the surface of which is occasionally decorated with ripples from little water droplets (musically depicted by that D note played by the piano with cello pizz., on the 3rd beat).

Origins of religions and hallucinatory experiences

2006-02-26T15:30:00.000-05:00

I found this news report from the Globe and Mail (cited below) thought provoking. In essence, the author of the book seems to be saying two different things:
(1) that the origins of most organized religions can be traced back to early shamanic experiences, some of which were induced by hallucinogens;
(2) that nowadays one should be granted the right to access these experiences, even at the cost of taking hallucinating drugs, because one is the "sovereign of one's consciousness", and these experiences "cost no harm to others."

The first point is a worthy question that many scholars have explored - David Lewis Williams, for example. The second point, however, sounds more like an opinion peculiar to the author. Most countries nowadays have outlawed hallucinogens, because we believe that our "normal", "chemically-unaltered" experiences tend to be more similar across individuals (i.e., they tend to be more objective), and thus, can more easily become the basis of a consensus. Drug-induced visions or mental states, on the other hand, tend to be more subjective (in the sense that each particular vision can be wildly different from another). The modern day's sentiment of treasuring more objective experiences is at least in part due to the pervasiveness of the scientific culture, but objective experiences are perhaps also more conducive to social harmony, given the complexity of today's urban society. The author's proposal sounds like a kind of individualism pushed to the extreme: individual choices are not enough to define a person; each needs to have unique experiences, unique to the point of defying the possibility of another person experiencing them.

It should be noted that drug-induced experiences, unlike dreams, also have the peculiar power to influence one's opinion radically, precisely because it can be so unique, to the extent that it becomes inexplicable. I could not quite imagine (yet) that a president would make a decision based on his/her hallucinatory vision the night before.

A worthy exercise concerning point (2) is to provide a historical explanation of why we no longer value hallucinatory experiences, much like what Foucault has done in his "Madness and Civilisation".

**************************************
Original article:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/ ... RTGAM.20060225.wxposner25/EmailBNStory/Science/home

Globe and Mail, Feb. 25, 2006

Tune in, turn on . . . evolve?

MICHAEL POSNER

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

On the walls of dozens of caves in southern France and northern Spain lie some of the most majestic works of art ever painted. Drawn 25,000 to 40,000 years ago, the paintings have puzzled anthropologists since they were discovered more than four decades ago.

Where did this astonishing display of talent come from? Why did these prehistoric societies decide to paint these scenes in such remote locations? And what inspired them to paint the strange array of bisons, horses and therianthropes (part animal, part man)?

A scientific consensus of sorts has finally emerged on one of those questions: Although there are still dissenters, a majority of anthropologists now champion the theory that the paintings in Europe were the work of shamans, and in part the product of trance states, likely induced by psilocybin (the psychoactive ingredient in some species of mushrooms).

Similarly, South African anthropologist David Lewis-Williams maintains that the remarkable rock art of the San people of southern Africa, also painted at least 25,000 years ago, is the result of shamanic trances created by drumming and ritual ecstatic dancing.

In his new book, Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind, published by Random House, British writer Graham Hancock has taken Prof. Lewis-Williams's research as a point of departure to posit a theory as fascinating as it is provocative: If it's true that cave art derives from altered states of consciousness, then it constitutes a watershed moment in human history, marking the first visible encounter with the supernatural, the first expression of spiritual myth.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the paintings were begun just when, according to anthropologists, human civilization made a great leap forward in terms of social organization, hunting-and-gathering skills and general creativity.

Mr. Hancock (previously author of Fingerprints of the Gods and The Sign and the Seal) notes striking similarities between cave paintings produced by shamanic artists 25,000 years ago and the abundant descriptions of fairies, elves, angels and other fantastic creatures commonly reported in Europe from the medieval ages to the 17th century.

And what is their modern equivalent? Mr. Hancock suggests the myriad accounts of alien abduction. His new book devotes several hundred pages to documenting these parallels, showing a surprising commonality of visions.

Although he does not rule out the possibility of extraterrestrial encounters, Mr. Hancock says the vast majority of these accounts are more logically explained by spontaneous entrance into trance states.

Because few of the alien abductees are users of mind-altering drugs, the most likely explanation, he believes, is that the brains of a small percentage of the population contain slightly higher levels of dimethyltryptamine (DMT) than already occur naturally in humans, as well as in other mammals, frogs, grasses, barks and flowers. Such people, he says, don't need to consume magic mushrooms or any other drug in order to enter trance states: Their hallucinogenic potential is more or less built-in.

Mr. Hancock insists that just because such events and encounters may not have occurred on a physical plane, it doesn't mean they never happened. His book quotes Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD, who wrote that the brain, biochemically altered, tunes to "another wavelength than that corresponding to normal, everyday reality."

As part of his project, Mr. Hancock plunged himself into the netherworld of mind-altering drugs -- he ate psychedelic mushrooms, took the African drug ibogaine, drank ayahuasca tea 13 times and smoked DMT. His own drug experiences included multiple encounters with "spirit beings" that, he insists, have profoundly changed him.

"This life we look at is only a fragment of reality. . . . What the physicists have arrived at with the notion of parallel dimensions, through their methods, is pretty much the same as what shamans are arriving at through their methods," Mr. Hancock says. "Except shamans are ahead of the quantum physicists, because they can actually get into those dimensions."

Going a few steps further than the late John Allegro, a Dead Sea scholar who suggested in the 1970s that early Christianity was essentially a mushroom-and-sex cult, Mr. Hancock maintains that all religions are "rooted and grounded in shamanic experiences."

In Toronto recently to promote his book, Mr. Hancock said organized religion as we know it is "the attempt to account for and explain those experiences. And then the bureaucrats come in, take it over, become the priesthood, impose themselves as the sole intermediaries, and eventually lose the connection to the spiritual life that once was at the heart of the religion. We've seen that again and again.

"I don't even know if God isn't one of those things that happen after the bureaucrats step in. Indeed, many monotheistic religions are very opposed to altered states of consciousness. And so we've lost contact with the origins of religion."

The use of most hallucinogens, of course, is outlawed in most Western nations. In that context, Mr. Hancock -- a former Economist correspondent in East Africa who gave up journalism to begin writing bestselling books about lost civilizations -- says most of us live under a repressive regime.

"If you pause to think about it," he says, "the essence of a human being is consciousness. Without it, we are nothing. So it's a transgression of my sovereignty as an individual that some other individual can rule on what experiences I may or may not have with my consciousness, doing no harm to others."

Long prison terms await those convicted of experimenting with their consciousness. That, Mr. Hancock says, "tells me our society is deeply afraid of this problem and is engaged in a propaganda war to persuade us that these drugs are dangerous."

Various long-term studies show that the only people seriously adversely affected by hallucinogens are schizophrenics. Meanwhile, he says, more common risks are played down. "Look at the mass slaughter on our roads. Look at over-the-counter drugs, which also kill many people. Look at extreme sports. We don't seem to have a problem with any of that."

Even if the current prohibitions were lifted, Mr. Hancock thinks it's unlikely that millions would sign up for a psychedelic journey. "Taking ayahusaca, for example, is a scary experience. Most people would be quite happy to stay locked in their world."

Mr. Hancock himself is not finished exploring the mysteries of human consciousness. Acknowledging the gap between the lessons learned while in a trance state and applying them to life afterward, he says his experiences have made him less intolerant, less judgmental, less prone to anger. "I've really tried to take those insights and integrate them."

He intends to spend part of this summer at a retreat in Brazil, where ayahuasca is legal, drinking the tea every other day for two weeks. "I'm only certain that there's a huge mystery here," he says. "I'm not certain what the answer to the mystery is."

Michael Posner is a feature writer for The Globe and Mail.

On defining the mission of a concert

2005-12-02T15:23:00.003-05:00

Comments to Dennis Wu's post, "Chinese University Chamber Chorus" (Nov 11, 2005)

The question you posed at the end of your little exposition is something about which I often ponder: As a concert producer, how should I define the goal, or "mission", of my production? A related but more difficult question is: why do people go to concerts anyway?

To these difficult questions I have nothing insightful to offer, other than just describing some of my recent concert going experiences. Last summer my brother and I went to a show put on by the "Blue Man Group", whose productions have by now become a Bostonian attraction well-known to many Americans. A group of performers, painted and dressed in blue, acted as though they were aliens having just arrived the planet Earth. Through rhythmical music and humorous skits, they showed their "curiosity" on human behaviors and some urban social phenomenon. The show was simultaneously a rock music concert, an exhibition of new-age experimental musical instruments, a drama inviting audience participation, an acrobatic display of the performers' agility, and perhaps also, a subtle social critique. At the end of the performance, the audience were invited to clad the theater in white by pulling those hundred rolls of toilet tissue paper installed around the hall; at this time, the ceiling lights were flashing so brightly, slowly, but steadily, as though the distance between the stage and the audience's perception was mediated by a digitizing mechanism. Every one was ecstatic, shouting and cheering loudly with vigorous movements. I felt I was experiencing a moment of mass mania.

This concert, or vaudeville, contrasts sharply with a chamber music recital I went to last week at the Harvard Sanders Theater. The Boston Chamber Music Society (BCMS) performed a Romanian fantasy (arranged for a piano sextet), a clarinet fantasy by Debussy, an 4-hand arrangement of the Rhapsody in Blue, and finally, Brahms's G major string quintet. It was a purely musical journey: no explicit drama, no invitation of audience participation (other than applauding at the end of each piece), no surprising visual experience and action. The last piece - Brahms's Op. 111 - was highlighted in the program by turning all audience lights off. The symmetric seating plan of the five string players under the theater chandelier seemed to have converted the stage into an altar where Brahms's legacy was celebrated with grandeur and solemnity.

In what ways then are the goals of the Blue Man Group and the BCMS similar and different? In the former concert, there was an emphasis on overt audience participation and novel sensory experiences. The audience was invited, as a group, to create and unfold a story, unique to each "performance", with the performers. The audience would find the show convincing, or persuasive, because they would feel that they were not just passive receivers, but active contributors to a process created by every one in the theater. May we say, then, that the "mission" of the Blue Man Group might be to create an environment in which each individual would find him/herself to be a part of a larger whole as he/she actively interacts with the performers.

Similarly, the BCMS had created an environment in which each listener would feel that he/she belongs to a larger whole. But the process of engagement is in this case quite different -- it depends not on overt participation, but on the audience prior knowledge of the repertoire, or the audience curiosity or attentiveness, or just their imaginative power. They could only "contribute" by being quiet witnesses to the ritual being performed by the musicians on stage, and thus, any "engagement" has to be confined within the mind of every individual listener.

Defining the goal, or "mission" of a concert, then, is perhaps identical to finding an appropriate and effective way to engage the audience so that they would find the concert to be a temporary and precious opportunity to experience being part of a larger whole. Of course, this process of engagement would depend on the producer's prior expectation of the potential audience (i.e., asking the question of what the audience would find engaging), and the willingness of the audience to try out a mode of engagement novel to them.

******************************************************
Original post by Dennis Wu (http://blog.denniswu.org/archives/000534.php)
Chinese University Chamber Chorus
Friday Nov 11 2005 11:18 AM • TrackBack (0)

Every performing group and every show the group performs may have a specific, artistic or socialistic mission. I produced one or two shows which primarily to make fun and educate the ones on stage, rather than delivering well-performed arts or to entertain the ones watching there.

Certainly, mission glues a group together. One will face questions of its existence when it lacks a direction. After the night of the Chinese University Chamber Chorus (CUCC), the need of mission placed me into thoughts again.

---
The chorus opened up with a hit Hallelujah chorus of Handel's Messiah (which piece you'll definitely hear some more times in the months to go). The integral music the piece demanded overwhelmed the chorus which hadn't broken the ice. The chorus lifted the energetic songs easily, Rutter's O Clap Your Hands and Joseph Martin's A Festive Psalm were well sung. However, an arrangement of The Lord is My Sheperd exposed certain weaknesses of the chorus.

That was also true to the Hallelujah. I think the parts were not lack of integrity, and for some songs that require purity, that will be a big minus. The few coming a cappella will be daring in this regard. The singers in the groups were having good and sweet voices with good pitch control. But they're not always in harmony.

It reminds me a tiny fragment in the Kyrie of Kodaly's Missa Brevis, when an unaccompanied soprano section is divided into three parts singing high triads. Harmony is the first point to note, purity the second. That is demanding for a small group, but I think all the a cappella singings of the chorus was not that experienced and sensitive in this area.

There were moments of cheers and humours by the members singing and acting energetically. The famed chorus from Les Mis?rables ended first part with the tricolore waving, which was an impress of the concert video of the famous musical. Their performance was not top-notched and well polished, but they have a good musical sense and they're quite well-presented on stage.

---
The concert borrowed a term familiar to many travellors. "Final Call" invites me to hurry for a journey. This musical journey is a bit an assorted one, it was a religious first half and an entertaining second. However, there were rooms of improvement in running a smoother show. Not many patient people can concentrate through many breaks to change stage settings and run-ins run-outs. The chorus's action may look even more charming when they were acting in uniform, for example the Masquerade.

The amplification should have a little adjustments transiting from mass chorus to ensemble group, and miking position matters as well: the breath and sheet-turnings became increasingly annoying. Curtain calls arrangement could be made better by simply adding a full-light cue after a black-out. More can be added to the list.

And, finally, what the Chorus wants its next show to be is the question that remain unsettled after the thought. To sing perfectly well, or to perform in a perfectly entertaining, or even a surprising show by means of drama, actions or any media, or to do everything? It's a good sign to have new elements in a choral production, which is certainly entertaining and brings more listeners to the art of singing. Putting everything together nicely requires more efforts to be put in the production, and that will be even more challenging when the trade-off
starts to take effect.

The trees of Schubert's and Schumann's

2005-07-08T23:35:00.001-04:00

Lately I have been completely carried away by Schumann's Myrten, Op. 25 (Myrtles) - a song cycle presented to Clara as a wedding gift (myrtle is the German symbol of marriage). The cycle's strong sense of unity and the variety of emotions it contains have filled my mind's eyes (and ears) with wonder and pure joy. Some of the lieder have just been replaying themselves repeatedly in my head, uninvited.

Among the 26 lieder in the cycle, I am especially fond of Der Nussbaum (The Nut Tree). A humble maiden sleeps beside a nut tree, accompanied by gentle summer wind and the rustling leaves, dreaming of a possible marriage. It is interesting to see how the poet, Julius Mosen, introduces the maiden in third person, so as to convey the delicacy of the scene:

Paired together, [the blossoms] whisper,
Inclining,
Bending
Gracefully their delicate heads to kiss.

They whisper of a maiden who
Dreamed
All night
And all day of, alas, she knew not what.

They whisper - who can understand
So soft
A song?
Whisper of a bridegroom and next year.
[Trans. Richard Stokes; from booklet accompanying The Songs of Robert Schumann - Vol. 7 (Hyperion), pp. 38-9.]

In the very thorough CD booklet, Graham Johnson rightly points out that the persistent repetition of the opening motif in this lied conveys the maiden's (i.e., Clara's) obsession with her perhaps over-fantasized love (p. 41). While the delicacy of the music is quite obvious, I also hear a tinge of childishness along with purity when the soprano begins the melody with those repeated Bs, and when she rises later, in the same phrase, to the high B, echoing the opening motif from the piano. After all, Clara Wieck was still a child when Schumann composed this song in 1840.

Johnson also interestingly notes that Der Nussbaum, and also Schubert's Der Lindenbaum, were sung by many choral societies in the 19th century as patriotic part songs (p. 39). Why were the Germans so obsessed with tress as a music-cultural symbol of their own? (The Christmas song O Tannenbaum now comes to mind as well). Perhaps this may be related to another of their obsession: the idea of a lonely person wandering around. Were the German wanderers lonely and nostalgic to the point that they had to associate every tree in Die Schwarzwald with a painful memory in order to pass time?

Even though both Der Nussbaum and Der Lindenbaum are about romantic love, the two lieder are rather different in mood. Schumann's is delicate, feminine, and Schubert's, poignant, masculine. But in both, the tree is seen by the narrator as a source of hope. In the last stanza of Schumann's lied,

The maiden listens, the tree rustles;
Yearning,
Musing
She drifts smiling into sleep and dreams (p. 39).

The maiden must be dreaming of her husband she heard from the whisper among the blossoms of the nut tree! In Schubert's lied, the wanderer exclaims in the last stanza:

Now I have many hours
Spent far from yonder place,
Yet still I hear it rustling
"Here will you find your peace!"
[p. 50 of booklet accompanying Franz Schubert: Lieder - Vol. 3 (Fischer-Dieskau/Moore), Deutsche Grammophon].

Does the lime tree turn the wanderer's nap into an eternal sleep?

Perfunctory performances

2005-07-04T18:12:00.002-04:00

There are at least two musical pieces, a perfunctory performance of which would not only not do a disservice to the composer, but would actually be preferred. The first is obviously Saint-Saens's "Pianists" from his Carnival of the Animals, depicting two pianists learning to play a scale-like passage. The performers are supposed to deliberately miss some of the notes in the beginning, and then, show gradual "improvements" along the way. I can still remember attending a live performance of the Carnival by the Boston Chamber Music Society: the ascending scale in the opening was as mechanical and uneven as it could be, and the resulting effect was absolutely hilarious. It reminded me of the years when I struggled to play scales and arpeggios evenly, a stage of learning that almost every pianist is condemned to go through. Putting such an episode amidst pieces for "the animals", Saint-Saens has perhaps inadvertently emphasized the artificiality of what we consider as fine art. Is he trying to say: it is more "natural", and thus, closer to the beasts, if pianists can play scales with less refinement?

The second example I am thinking is less well known, but equally noteworthy: Schumann's "Familien-Gemaelde", from his Four Duets (Op. 34). I came across this little piece while listening to Graham Johnson's remarkable cycle of Schumann songs (Songs of Robert Schumann; Vol. 7; Dorothea Roeschumann/Ian Bostridge/Graham Johnson; Hyperion). Here, perfunctoriness is preferred, in the sense that a very musical or refined rendition would take away the homely, domestic atmosphere that Schumann wants to impart. In this duet, we hear a simple, albeit attractive, melody with an equally simple chordal accompaniment. Listening to this duet, we can almost see a snapshot of the everyday musical life in Schumann's family: after dinner, Clara sits down in front of a slightly out-of-tuned piano; two of the Schumann children then volunteer to sing before an audience consisting of a few friends, and then, Robert, the composer, is urged to be the page turner of Clara. The performance is then concluded with cheers from the audience admiring the charm of the singers' voices as well as Schumann's music.

This duet, and perhaps many other lieder of Schubert and Schumann, was meant to be consumed domestically by the rising middle class. It was a time without televisions and CD players; such Biedermeier pieces fulfilled their need of entertainment. We have long passed the age in which composers would still write quality music for amateurs or connoisseurs.

By the way, I cannot recommend the Graham Johnson series of Schumann songs more highly. I truly think he deserves to be called the "King of Accompaniment" of this era.

The first blog entry

2005-05-18T00:10:00.000-04:00

I have just started this experiment of publishing my thoughts, and ideas coming from my discussions with friends, through this webblog medium. May be this will become a new way for me to encourage exchange of ideas, to discover new possibilities, and to make connections between some seemingly unrelated phenomena.

I was told, in the introductory webpage, that webblog is meant to be a peronsal diary. But now we have means to publicize these personal ruminations, emotions, experiences, or perhaps just some random firing patterns in my association cortices. The internet now seems to be blurring the boundary between "private" and "public", and between "permanent" and "ephemeral". Am I now just joining the crowd, committing myself to exhibitionism?

-Vincent