CRITIC-AT-LARGE: Leonard Lehrman
Is The Rest Really Just Noise?
©2008
Alex Ross’s long-awaited book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007, 624 pp., 21 photos, no musical examples), is the most ambitious overview of its kind since William Austin’s Music in the 20th Century (W.W. Norton, 1966, 708pp., 41 photos, many musical examples). Comparing the two may be instructive: Austin concentrated on Schoenberg, Bartók and Stravinsky, but tried to make at least some room for as many talented composers and writers on music as he could, devoting 111 pages to pure bibliography. Most of today’s readers on music have less interest in bibliography and the majority, alas, cannot read music.
Many of the composers Austin referred to, suggesting that they “merited… studies” (p.505), do not appear at all in Ross’s book, the clear implication being that, as per his title, to him they are just “noise.” So far as what factors went into his selection process, that could and perhaps should be a subject for a whole symposium. As Brian Kellow wrote in Opera News: “Ross is probably the most erudite music critic we now have in the U.S.” So I suppose one should be thankful for the care and attention he lavishes on those whose works he deemed worthy of attention. See, for example, the article on his blog, “Blitzstein lives,” at therestisnoise.com/2005/03/blitzstein_live.html, in which he mentions my completion of Sacco and Vanzetti—though it’s not mentioned in his book.
The book abounds in delightful little tidbits: The Princesse de Polignac, née Winnaretta Singer, heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune in the 1930s, “wrote that a Bach chorale ‘reconstitutes the past, and proves to us that we had a reason for living on this rock: to live in the beautiful kingdom of sounds.’” (p.105) I must read that to my church choir.
Virgil Thomson’s condescending attitude toward black people—“They live on the surface of their consciousness.” Ross comments: “Perhaps Thomson was the one living on the surface of his consciousness.” (p.141)
Milton Babbitt “produced music so byzantine in construction that one practically needed a security clearance to understand it.” (p.401) I remember once reading aloud at a meeting a review of Babbitt’s Relata II in The Nation by Benjamin Boretz, and asking Babbitt what Boretz’s analytical terms meant. “I don’t know; you’ll have to ask Ben Boretz” was his reply ….”
Connections are an important part of the book, examining links between Gershwin and Berg, Shostakovich and Britten, Wagner’s family and Hitler, Strauss and his Jewish colleagues & family, Cage and Schoenberg, Feldman and Sibelius, Messiaen and Boulez, Stockhausen and the Beatles. Thomas Adès is given his due, for among other things his opera The Tempest. John Adams is given more than his due. Is Nixon in China really “the greatest American opera since Porgy and Bess?”(p.536) But where is John Eaton, who also wrote a Tempest, with Ross’s esteemed predecessor at the New Yorker, Andrew Porter, as librettist? And where are Douglas Moore? Jack Beeson? Carlisle Floyd? Robert Ward? Hugo Weisgall? And so many others….
Samuel Barber gets quite a bit of space, though not for any of his operas. The recent revival of Vanessa at NYCO proved that work’s worth. Lauren Flanigan brought the title role almost to the level of sympathy enjoyed by the more musically satisfying role of Erika, sung beautifully by Katherine Goeldner in the daunting shadow of the original Erika, Rosalind Elias, who this time portrayed the mostly silent but omnipresent Countess, 49 years after the work’s premiere. Richard Stilwell was delightful as the Doctor, created originally for and by Giorgio Tozzi.
Another work seen at City Opera this year, Richard Danielpour’s & Toni Morrison’s Margaret Garner, could best be described as fitfully moving. Heard in workshop some years ago, the music at first impressed one as having gleaned a good deal from Regina and other ragtime/jazz-influenced operas. Yet the lovely Act I finale seems strangely incongruous in the way it (probably inadvertently but clearly, at least to these ears) quotes the Scottish folksong “Loch Lomond,” for no apparent reason.
The Brecht-Weill Mahagonny is given quite a bit of space by Ross. This is indeed a seminal work of the 20th century, and an almost unalloyed pleasure to watch on PBS in the recent Los Angeles opera production, with a magnificent performance by Audra MacDonald as Jenny, both vocally and corporeally, as she seemed to be channeling Elizabeth Berkley, morphing into Condoleezza Rice. Her diction, along with that of Anthony Dean Griffey, John Easterlin, and Donnie Ray Albert, was particularly commendable. I said almost unalloyed: Many of translator Michael Feingold’s turns of phrase are quite felicitous, esp. the “kick” line, though there were also many unnecessarily prosodically awkward passages. On the whole, as is widely acknowledged with the case of the Threepenny Opera, his translation is just not as good as Blitzstein’s, which in the case of Mahagonny has never been performed, except in some concert excerpts that were part of the Blitzstein Centennial. Some company really should at least consider doing the whole thing some day. Contrary to rumor, it is not incomplete; only editing decisions remain to be made. An example of the differences between the translations: “Ach, bedenken Sie” has exactly the right stresses in Blitzstein’s “Think it over, please.” Feingold’s “Won’t you change your mind” puts an improper primary stress on the last syllable, which should be a secondary, not primary stress.
Who is writing theatre music as powerful as Weill’s today? One answer is Christopher Berg, a performance of whose musical, Back Home, aka War Brides we attended last September at the N.Y. Musical Theatre Festival. A very effective theatrical device similar to that used in the Mahagonny production had the women turn their backs to the audience and, opening their coats, pretend to reveal themselves to the inspection of upstage males. The work, based on true stories of the bureaucratic struggles of British women who married G.I.’s to come to America to be with them, has power, verve, and heart. In fact I can’t think of another composer today who can change the temperature of a room with his music, the way Leonard Bernstein used to do by entering it. Who else? Stephen Sondheim, of course. His best, and most operatic, work, the ballad opera-cum-Grand Guignol Sweeney Todd, is back again, this time as a movie. As was the case in the recent barebones stage revival, the soaring musical climax of the “Kiss Me” ensemble doesn’t soar; in fact it’s cut completely from the movie, which is a great pity, as it deprives the relationship of the young lovers (a very good Jamie Campbell Bower and Jayne Wisener) any depth. But that aside, the film is a tour de force for the stars, Johnny Depp, Alan Rickman, Sacha Baron Cohen (whose part is transposed down, except for one long note in stratospheric falsetto) and director Tim Burton’s life-partner Helena Bonham-Carter. This must be the most difficult music any of them has ever sung; they bring it off surprisingly well. So does boy soprano Ed Sanders in the role of Toby. And despite all the unrestrained and explicit bloodletting, the cinematic opening up of fantasy portions of number after number is truly stunning. The title ballad and framing device of the play has also been cut—but only the vocal parts: the music is still there, under the credits.
Estelle Parsons, who strove mightily to do justice to the role of the Widow Begbick in Mahagonny’s ill-fated 1968 Broadway premiere (as did Patti Lupone in the recent Los Angeles production), starred at The Kitchen Dec. 13-15 & 19-22 as both the Madam and the Mother Superior in an adaptation of another Feingold translation of another Brecht work, with a Hanns Eisler score, Die Rundköpfe und Die Spitzköpfe. (The Roundheads and the [depending on how you translate it] Pointedheads, Pointheads, or Peakheads.) This mammoth play of 1931-34 has never been produced the way its creators intended: At the U.S premiere, which I translated & directed at Cornell in 1973, 40% was cut and it still took 3 hours. East & West Berlin productions, on which I served as advisor, also made extensive cuts. The 15-song score, though, is one of the best ever written to a Brecht text. (Even better than The Measures Taken, which Ross examines in some detail, but calls “supremely vicious.” (p. 204)) Bill Austin (whom Ross seems to confuse with Arthur Berger, on p. 373) called Roundheads “even better than Threepenny Opera.” In 1998, celebrating both Brecht’s and Eisler’s centennials, the West-Park Chamber Society presented the complete 45-minute score (though with piano and organ substituting for the original 15-piece orchestration, which had been used at Cornell), using a cast of 6, as Brecht had indicated could be used in a possible film operetta version, linked together by narration.
The production at The Kitchen, adapted by director David Gordon under the title Uncivil Wars: Collaborating with Brecht & Eisler, used a cast of 9 and lasted 90 minutes. Most of the score was there, with just two exceptions: Casting both the nun and the whore with the same actress, the lovely and capable Autumn Dornfeld, illuminated aspects of both roles, as was the case with Parsons’s casting, but unfortunately resulted in the need to cut the Isabella-Nanna Duet, which is really the high point of the score. “The Song of the Movement” also bit the dust. Music Director Gina Leishman personified Eisler in dialogues with Valda Setterfield as Brecht, and did amazing service accompanying on piano, harmonium, accordion and ukelele. But New York has still not seen all this piece has to offer. And once again Feingold’s translation leaves much to be desired. The night we attended, so did he, at what I understand was the first time he had ever heard the work, and I learned that he intended to make revisions. It would be nice if they would consider using mine, which the late Martha Schlamme preferred to his—even though he was her manager—and presented at Aspen in 1981.
As Ross points out, both Gershwin and Brecht (first with Weill, then with Eisler), one-third of the way through the 20th century, were attempting “a ‘great fusion’ of classical and popular inheritances.” (p. 286) I submit that the most important such later work, two-thirds of the way through the century, is one by a composer he completely ignores, but whose work all of us at NMC know, or should know: the 1967 cantata I Have A Dream by Elie Siegmeister. New Music Champion Bob Sherman, who called Elie “one of our giants,” hosted the N.Y. premiere with my Metropolitan Philharmonic Chorus Jan. 15, 1989, Siegmeister’s 80th birthday and Dr. King’s 60th. Exactly 20 years later, for Dr. King’s 80th and Elie’s centennial, the same chorus plans to revive the work with Mimi Stern-Wolfe at the piano in several different venues. Stay tuned.
Finally, to tie up loose ends from last issue, some remarks on the June 20-23, 2007 American Composers Alliance Festival, the high point of which was John Eaton’s latest opera, Pumped Fiction, which has now been reviewed twice in these pages.
Highlights of the Festival included the virtuoso marimba playing of Alexander C. Lipowski in Christopher Adler’s “Signals Intelligence,” combining anvils and other metallic surfaces; soprano Nancy Ogle’s agile traversal of Jan Gilbert’s cycle with flute, viola and cello, “The Lady of the Broom”; soprano Patricia Sonego and pianist Christopher Oldfather’s premiere performance of Raoul Pleskow’s “On Lines from the Latin” (for which the texts of only 5 of 7 sections were provided in the program—Vienna-born composer Pleskow explained his use of the texts saying he loved the Latin language); the Second Instrumental Unit String Quartet’s premiere performance of Elias Tanenbaum’s moving “Bring ‘Em On,” inspired by George W. Bush’s cocky challenge to the Iraqi resistance; the first movement of Hubert Howe’s Symphony #3 (which seemed to end on the dominant, crying out for more movements, of course); Minghuan Xu and Winston Choi’s molto tremolando rendition of Richard Brooks’s Rhapsody for Violin and Piano; and Choi’s stunning premiere performance of John Melby’s Concerto #2 for Piano and Computer. Melby learned a lot from his teacher Milton Babbitt, who was also represented by two short pieces, but was not able to attend. But if this work is any indication, his talent for form, expression, and communication surpasses that of his teacher at least as much as Berg did Schoenberg!
The Laurel Leaf Award was conferred on cellist and new music enthusiast Fred Sherry, who really ought to play the piece that followed the presentation: Elizabeth Bell’s eloquent Soliloquy for Solo Cello, written for and recorded by her son, played here by Loren Dempster. Sonego, Oldfather, Dempster, and violinist David Fulmer also performed Harold Seletsky’s Apathy, a 1985 work which attempts, with some success, to express despair and rage at the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima.
Also part of the Festival, at “Piano Piano,” a duo-piano concert at Tenri Cultural Institute of New York, June 22 (covered by BLC), Idith Meshulam and Eric Huebner performed Copland’s Danzon Cubano, followed by Elizabeth Bell’s Duovarios, a little gem of construction, a “set of tetrads arranged in a palindrome” in one piano over which a varying tone row is sounded in the other. The resulting effect was a rigorous but highly engaging game of now-you-hear-a-theme-now-you-don’t. Karim Al-Zand’s Pattern Preludes comprised six etude-like nods to composers Bach, Chopin, Debussy et al, but all highly original in sum. Elliott Schwartz’s Test Drive for Piano Duet featured his usual clever and witty bag of tricks, lots of quotes (including a working out of the official State of Maine song), cascades, trills, sonorities from inside the piano,—all propelled by a celebratory idea, to fully demonstrate the colors of a newly purchased Steinway grand for the Freeport Performing Arts Center. John Cage’s Experiences, which predates his use of prepared piano, was unusually straightforward, including many deceptively simple ideas. Christopher Auerbach-Brown’s Introspections #3 and 4, very brief but warm studies, slow in tempo but with sequences that are alternately well and vaguely defined, as in the waltz (#4), made one want to hear the first two as well. Robert Helps’ nine-minute Eventually the Carousel Begins was a bit hard to grasp at first listening, with its shifting tempi and quick thematic development. Rob Redei’s Capriccio for Two Pianos nostalgically recalled memories of the composer’s city of birth—Budapest—featuring chimes on a favorite trolley running along the Danube.