music to ponder | Richibi's Weblog

September 6, 2017

on “Elegy for the Victims of the Tsunami of March 11, 2011 in Japan” – Nobuyuki Tsujii

“Tsunami“ (1998)

__________

while watching Nobuyuki Tsujii play the
extraordinarily demanding Tchaikovsky
First Piano Concerto on television the
other night, with no less than Valery
Gergiev, conducting the resident
orchestra at the Mariinsky Theatre in
Moscow, for its White Nights, I was
wonderstruck by the challenges a
visually handicapable pianist would
have to conquer in order to reach
such an apogee

everything must be learned by ear, all
items must be discovered tactually,
from the piano itself to the very
individual keys, not to mention
the player’s very own fingers

there can be no visual contact with a
conductor, either, for cues, for
instance, nor for any other
accompaniment, for neither even an
audience, it would all take place in
the dark recesses of the head, the
amorphous and, I suppose,
confounding, cerebellum

later he played for an encore his own
composition, “Elegy for the Victims of
the Tsunami of March 11, 2011 in Japan“,
a fine addition to my budding collection
of threnodies

and a very, very moving piece

an elegy, incidentally, is usually written,
while a threnody is composed, but these
terms are often used interchangeably, as,
indeed, they are here

you’ll note the utterly Classical mode of
composition of the “Elegy“, it adheres to
a uniform tonality, a consistent tempo,
and the grounding and comfort of
repetition, returning always to the main,
endearing air, rather than more modern
tripwires and stridencies, traditionalism
being not an inappropriate, nor ineffective,
mode of address for honoured forebears

long live Classicism

R ! chard

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September 2, 2017

on “Song to the Moon” – Antonin Dvořák

“Rising Moon“ (1964)

Hans Hofmann

__________

the moon was out last night, grand
upon the starlit evening, either
waxing or waning, I’m not sure, but
not full, a gibbous moon, above the
buildings that scrape, in my big city
neighbourhood, in the very Cubist
manner, the night sky, see above

I’d been listening to Renée Fleming
singing Dvořák‘s “Song to the Moon“
in my head since I’d seen her do it,
on television, in a summer evening
concert at Schönbrunn, Vienna, some
few days ago, she, it, had been utterly,
sublimely, enchanting, I’m a Cancer, a
moon child, I speak to the moon

to the moon, I said, moon in the dark
heavens, who steal into every home
and hearth at night, find my beloved
and tell him what is in my heart, rapt
as I was in the spell of my special
planet, my personal orb, and the
enveloping Dvořákian magic, though
there’s been no beloved lately, just
trailings of the latest one who broke,
of course, my heart, which gives more
pathos, however, incidentally, to my
singing, I’ve giddily gathered

at home, I found Renée Fleming doing
the piece on the Internet, entirely as
splendidly, earlier, at London’s Royal
Albert Hall, September, 2010

listen

R ! chard

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September 1, 2017

an homage to the victims of the Titanic

“The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up“ (1839)

William Turner

_______

while I’m on the subject of threnodies,
which is to say “song[s] of lamentation
for the dead”, as I earlier stated, let me
bring your attention to this extraordinary
piece, an homage to the victims of the
Titanic

it doesn’t even have a title, much as
Mozart and Haydn didn’t before music
went mainstream, into public forums
rather than merely aristocratic salons,
and when an identifying moniker
instead of a number became manifestly
more practical, especially when the
emerging Middle Classes were
becoming the ones who were paying
the composer’s bills, at the opera
houses and the other sprouting
concert venues, when some composers
had even up to 32 sets of piano sonatas
to remember, three and four often to
a single set, opus number, as many as
there are movements in a very sonata

and that’s not counting the numbered
symphonies and string quartets of
theirs, left to similarly calculate,
decipher, extricate

it doesn’t have a title, I think, because
to my knowledge, it is the first of its
kind, a composition created by
computer, for computer, an entirely
self-contained digital work of,
manifestly, art – I’d been waiting,
diligently, for one – and like Beethoven,
after the work was done, the artist(s)
just felt the title best left to the
wordsmiths, thus – you’re welcome –
“Threnody for the Victims of the
Titanic“

sure, computers have done practical
things before, admirably, but never
told a story, and certainly never one
as profound as this one

these are the last moments of the
Titanic, digitally reproduced, in real
time, 2 hours and 40 minutes, they
are mesmerizing, you don’t want
to miss a thing

there are no voices, apart from a
few radio transmissions at the
start, spotting the iceberg, calling
out commands to beware, stop
the engines

afterwards only silence, and the
sound of the waves, the churning
of the engines, which have been
restarted, sounding as rhythmic,
incidentally, and numbing, as the
wheels on the railroad tracks of
Steve Reich‘s “Different Trains“,
another powerful threnody

later the flash and crack of flares,
the crunch of the ship sinking

the pervasive, however disrupted,
silence and the inexorable passage
of ever ticking time combine to be,
thereafter, transfixing, meditative,
ultimately transcendent, a fitting
setting for a threnody

I know of only another work to take
you to that venerable place,
Beethoven’s opus 111

and often enough Pink Floyd, for
that matter, and the visionary
Alan Parsons Project, of course,
discoursing on inexorable Time

and, now that I think of it, Elgar‘s
“The Dream of Gerontius“, whose
character goes from his deathbed
in the first act, to his afterlife in
the second, effecting transcendence
for us by, yes, ingenious
metaphorical proxy

but I digress

what I call “Threnody for the Victims
of the Titanic“ is a narrative with
sound, not a movie, not a television
program, it has more commonality
with a musical production than
anything else but painting in art
history, though its means are
intuitively literary, ship stories go
back to “The Odyssey“ through
“Gulliver’s Travels“ , “Treasure
Island“ and to one of my very
favourites, “Ship of Fools“,
relatively recently

I could add “Mutiny on the Bounty“,
“Moby Dick“, “The Caine Mutiny“

in art, a precedent would’ve been set
in our collective consciousness by
William Turner‘s celebrated “The
Fighting Temeraire …“, but I would
mention as well Caspar David
Friedrich‘s “The Wanderer above
the Sea of Fog“ for its existential
pertinence

a few literary points I’d like to stress
to back up my overt adulation, I find
it impressive that the Classical rules
of tragedy have been maintained,
unity of action, time, and place,
prescriptions going back to
Aristotle‘s “Poetics“ in our cultural
history, to profoundly express
tragedy, iconic, epic, misfortune

not to mention the Classical musical
imperatives of tempo, tonality and
repetition, none of which can be
faulted here in this consummate
composition

there is a no greater leveller of tempo
than time, larghissimo here*, in the
largest sense of that word, the
cosmic, the inexorable pace of
temporality in our brief heavens

a greater leveller of tonality neither
is there than the rigorously impartial
hum of the imperturbable Cosmos

nor is there greater repetition than
uniformity, however disrupted by
however fervent ever human
intervention, see Sisyphus, or
Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf“ for iconic disrupters

R ! chard

* Shostakovich had asked the
Beethoven Quartet to play the first
movement of his 15th String Quartet,
“Elegy: Adagio“, “so that flies
drop dead in mid-air, and the
audience start leaving the hall from
sheer boredom“

well this inspired elucidation is even
slower than that

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August 11, 2017

threnodies: to the victims of Hiroshima, of the Holocaust, and to the Canadian North

“The Scream“ (1893)

Edvard Munch

____________

before we leave too far behind the
anniversary of the annihilation of
Hiroshima, August 6, 1945, let me
introduce you to a piece that
purports to pay it homage

if I didn’t bring it up before, it’s
because the date was wrong, but
especially because the work
offends me, the only thing I like
about it is the title, a thing of
beauty, poetry – Threnody to the
Victims of Hiroshima – a threnody
is a song of lamentation for the
dead, which worked for me, this
one, no further than its title

there is nothing remotely
reminiscent of the tragedy
throughout the piece, it is a
collection of academic exercises,
pretensions, I think, without a
heartbeat

let me compare Steve Reich’s
threnody to the victims of the
Holocaust, the other signature
Twentieth Century atrocity, his
“Different Trains“, a work in three
movements, “America – Before the
War”, “Europe – During the War”,
and “After the War”, for string
quartet and tape, upon which
Reich has recorded interviews
with people relating impressions
from before the war, during, and
after, according to the movements

the quartet, you’ll note, must keep
time with the tape, and in this
production visuals have been
effectively added

Glenn Gould had done something
like this several years earlier,
incidentally, in his “The Idea of
North“, a threnody itself to that
very idea, a masterpiece, a
groundbreaking transcendental
work of the imagination, with
overlapping voices, which is to
say human counterpoint, though
without string quartet

you’ll note that distressing tonalities
affect throughout this other, much
more successful however, tribute,
but the different rhythms of the
recurrent, which is to say minimalist,
rails keep you emotionally, as it were,
on track

“Different Trains“ is appropriately,
and profoundly, commemorative,
not to mention unforgettable

Richard

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June 23, 2017

“My Romance” – Carly Simon

“Hot Jazz“ (1940)

Franz Kline

_____

in this video of one of her concerts,
Carly Simon tells the story of how
when she told her special guest on
the program, Harry Connick Jr., that
he was born the same year as
Sgt. Pepper, he answered, Sgt. Who

“Harry, you were born the same year that
Sgt. Pepper came out”, she said
“Sgt. Who”, he answered

the same had happened to me when
I’d told someone, a sprite, ten years
younger, don’t ask, about my
admiration for Susan Hayward,
Richard, he asked, who’s Susan
Hayward, to my utter consternation

I mean, Susan Hayward

you might not know who Carly Simon
is, nor even Sgt. Pepper, but the story
is that those who once had been our
very idols fade and become question
marks in the eyes of the following
generations

you might not either know who Harry
Connick Jr. is, but listen to both of
them here, Carly and Harry, put
together an entertainment enough
to turn an otherwise lazy hour into
an unmitigated enchantment

Richard

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March 15, 2017

“Daffodils” – William Wordsworth (an epitaph)

“Wild Poppies, Near Argenteuil” (1873)

Claude Monet

________

for Pat

a dear friend passed away recently,
Pat, the mother of my partner, who
passed away himself nearly 30 years
ago, was already of a certain age at
which death follows closely tripping
us up with itches and cramps and
dire debilities as we walk along the
winding road that isn’t that long any
longer

she’d already acquired Alzheimer’s
though she read still, understood,
even poetry, though she could not
remember what had happened
yesterday even, however traumatic,
that she’d fallen the day before, for
instance, and bore still corroborative
angry scratches escaped her, left
her puzzled, though never rattled,
ever compliant

you can forget all you want, Pat, I’d
said to her earlier in her prognosis,
but don’t ever forget I love you

since, during our regular Internet
encounters, along with her husband
on her end, she’s left the conversation
to him, but wraps her arms around
herself and tells me she wants to hug
me, we always end our visit with I love
you’s

when I went to visit her in hospital,
where she’d ended up following more
falls, which indicated eventually dire
complications, I brought her a teddy
bear

here, Pat, I said, I can’t be here always
to hug you, but you can think of me
when you hug this bear

she died a few days later, the last
words we said were, I love you, I
love you, before I flew back home
to Vancouver from Victoria

I was sad, I lit candles, then a day
later I thought, how do I get out from
under this somber cloud, I should
listen for her, I remembered

talk to me, Pat, I’ll hear, I entreated

when my dad died, I’d said, talk to
me, Dad, I’m your son, I’ll hear, and
I did

when his sister died, a beloved aunt,
I’d lit a scented candle inadvertently
in commemoration, when the air
suddenly filled with the aroma of
rosemary, which had wafted in on the
exhalations of the candle to fuse with
my own reveries in epiphanic, verily
transcendental, conversation

adagios, also, always remind me of
John, Pat’s son

talk to me, Pat, say something, I
said to the ether, and listened

last Thursday, at the service, turning
to the last page of the programme
which had been provided, I began to
read her favourite poem

I wandered lonely as a cloud, I read
but couldn’t make it through the next
line, tears welling up in my eyes, my
mom, who was with me, holding my
hand

thank you, Pat, I said, overcome with
emotion, this poem would be her
teddy bear to me

Richard

________________

Daffodils

I wander’d lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretch’d in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: –
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company!
I gazed – and gazed – but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth

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February 20, 2017

“First Piano Concerto” – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

“Concerto“ (1975)

Jack Bush

_____

if there’s a piece that defines Classical music
for most people, encapsulates it, even for
those who aren’t especially interested in
Classical music, that piece would be, I think,
Tchaikovsky‘s “First Piano Concerto“

strictly speaking Tchaikovsky isn’t a Classical
composer, but a Romantic one, the Classical
period in music having been transformed
some years earlier into the Romantic period
by none other than Beethoven, 1770 – 1827,
perhaps the most transformative composer
of all time – Tchaikovsky‘s “First Piano Concerto“
was written in the winter of 1874 – 1875, pretty
well at the end of the Romantic Period, which
then ceded to the Impressionists, just to get
our periods right

what the Romantic Period added to the
Classical Era was emotion, sentiment – note
the use of tenuto, for instance, beats being
drawn out, languidly, longingly, for pathos –
what it maintained was the structure, the
trinity of Classical conditions, rhythm, tonality,
and repetition, which is why even the most
uninformed listener will usually be able to
sing along throughout the entire performance,
the blueprint is in our collective blood, in the
DNA of our culture

to remain present a piece must remain
relevant to the promoter, an interpreter must
have reason to play it, substance surely plays
a big part, but technical considerations play
perhaps an even greater role towards a great
work’s longevity, “Chopsticks“, for instance,
is good but it won’t fill a concert hall

unless, of course, it’s with Liberace

the “First Piano Concerto” of Tchaikovsky is
the Everest of compositions, emotionally
complex and technically forbidding, nearly
impossible, it would seem, were it not for
those few who’ve mastered its treacherous
challenges, conquered its nearly indomitable
spirit

Van Cliburn put it on the map for my
generation, with a ticker tape parade in
New York to confirm it

Martha Argerich later on kept the ball rolling

and now Behzod Abduraimov, a mere youth,
born in 1990 in Uzbekistan, Tashkent, delivers
by far the best performance I’ve seen since,
giving it new life for the new millenium

behold, be moved, be dazzled, be bewitched

Behzod Abduraimov, watch

Richard

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February 11, 2017

“Is Art Truth?”

“Paradise”

Hieronymus Bosch

__________

“Is Art Truth?“, a friend asks after speaking of
its benefits, “Art accepts and tells the truth-Is
that it ?“, she inquires, wonders

art, like truth itself and beauty, is in the eye
of the beholder, I submit, and therefore my
definition is, once again, entirely personal,
though I’ve rigorously plumbed it

it requires background

art died for a thousand years, it was
essentially unrecorded, dormant from
the fall of Rome to the Renaissance, nor
promoted but for Catholic purposes,
hence the majestic cathedrals and the
magisterial altarpieces, works produced
by, however, communities until eventually
certain artisans were recognized as more
inspired than others, and given autonomy

enter Duccio, for instance

in time these new, necessarily idiosyncratic
perspectives – see Hieronymus Bosch, Dante
Alighieri – dominated, veering in their search
for truth in their art and beauty – selling points,
incidentally – towards less strictly orthodox
utterances

see above

art, and its contemporary science, were
chipping away at ecclesiastical dogma

till God died, and artists continued their
prescient march forward, shaping our
zeitgeist, our spirit of the times, with
their pronouncements for lack of any
other guides

but the voices grew personal, see Mozart,
often profound and prophetic, see
Beethoven, till the confluence of disparate
realities gave us secularism, each soul for
itself as a tenet, a credo, a belief, a truth

what did they have in common

I believe it was their quest for beauty
through truth, their quest for truth
through beauty, with a nod here to
the salient Keats

art is prayer, a search for, as well as a
manifestation of, one’s personal
identification with the sacred

it is not truth, it is not beauty, it is the
fervent intention itself, linked with a
correspondent workmanship, craft,
which inspires

see for instance van Gogh for this, who,
remember, nevertheless shot himself,
artists are mortal, merely, messengers,
ever, therefore, fallible, unsure, fearful
even, often, of their, perhaps
Promethean, fire

for consolation, or even maybe
transcendence, see again,
pertinently here, Beethoven

listen

Richard

psst: thanks, Joan

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January 31, 2017

“Symphonie espagnole” – Édouard Lalo

“La Trahison des images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe)“
/ “The Treachery Of Images (This Is Not A Pipe)“ – (1948)

René Magritte

___________

paintings don’t lie,
music doesn’t either,
only words do

in this age of fake news, maybe the
following piece of musicological
misinformation shouldn’t be so
surprising, yet there it is, flagrant,
disturbing and disorienting, and
apparently irreversible

Édouard Lalo‘s “Symphonie espagnole“,
however acclaimed as such, is still to my
mind, and to several others concerned, a
misnomer, the “Symphonie“ is actually a
concerto, and I can’t think for a moment
why Lalo would’ve called it otherwise

a symphony is an aggregation of sounds
to produce melodies and harmonies, a
concerto spotlights a soloist, who
generally determines the direction the
music will follow

or soloists

once you have a concerto, you can no
longer call it a symphony, it would be
to disregard a defining element, like
calling someone a girl once she’s
become a princess, for instance,
complete with glass slippers and a
tiara, it would be at the very least
disrespectful, if not out and out
dishonest

Lalo here is, however, magisterial, all
five movements glitter with, for the
violin, utterly magical moments, the
violinist weaving wizardry minute by
electrifying minute

after such a turn, one must allow
Lalo to call his opus what he will,
I guess, forgive him his linguistic
trespasses

listen

Richard

psst: I have not accorded Bartók the same leniency
for his “Concerto for Orchestra“,
however – the Lalo dilemma but in reverse,
an orchestra is by definition not a soloist
– for I’ve always found Bartók inscrutable,
sound and fury, here specifically, though
uncharacteristically scrutable in this
particular instance, signifying nevertheless,
I’m afraid, still nothing, no underlying animus,
philosophical, or existential, underpinning
but to kill time, a tragic and disqualifying,
flaw, unfortunately, in my, however humble
ever, opinion

but you be the judge

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January 19, 2017

Rutebeuf’s Lament – Rutebeuf/Ferré

“Friends Since Childhood” (2004)

George Stefanescu

__________

having disparaged the only translation
I could find on the Internet of a poem
that is in French as famous as in
English Elizabeth Barrett Browning‘s
“How do I love thee? Let me count the
ways.“, her 43rd “Sonnet[ ] from the
Portuguese”, I decided to translate
myself the excerpt from “La Complainte
Rutebeuf“, of Rutebeuf himself, 1245 –
1285, which became its indelible, and
apparently timeless, virtual
manifestation

Rutebeuf’s entire poem is written in
Old French, and excerpts of it were
adapted into an updated French in
1956 by Léo Ferré, a French
troubadour of the time, who then
made it into a song that everyone
French remembers, despite, or
maybe because of, its archaisms

though Ferré familiarized the French
for his listeners, it was still in an older
French, like rendering Chaucer‘s
14th-Century English into Shakespeare‘s
17th-Century counterpart tongue, “But
look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, /
Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastern
hill”, “Hamlet”, act l, scene l, lines 166
and 167, for instance

in my translation below, I eschew –
Gesundheit – such a daunting
challenge, but have chosen rather
to highlight the humanity that I find
especially compelling in the original
composition

Rutebeuf today would sound
something of a cross between Harry
Nilsson and Bob Dylan, I think, of my
generation, the one for his
straightforward simplicity, his crushing
intimacy, the other for his social
consciousness and probable greater,
therefore, longevity

but will even Bob Dylan endure 800
years

some will, some have, some do

but who

we will never know

Richard

______________

Rutebeuf’s Lament

What has become of my friends
that I had held to be so close
and loved so dearly,
they were too carelessly tended,
I think the wind has blown them away,
friendship has been forsaken.
And as the wind passed by my door,
took all of them away.

As time strips the trees of their leaves,
when not a leaf on a branch remains
that will not hasten to the ground,
and poverty befalling me,
from every corner appalling me,
as winter edges on.
These do not lend themselves well to my telling
of how I courted disgrace,
nor of the manner.

Not much of common sense, a poor memory
has God granted me, that God of Glory,
not much in sustenance either,
and it’s straight up my butt when the North wind blows,
sweeping right through me,
friendship has been forsaken.
And as the wind passed by my door,
took all of them away.

Rutebeuf

listen

Richard

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Richibi’s Weblog

Category: music to ponder

September 6, 2017

on “Elegy for the Victims of the Tsunami of March 11, 2011 in Japan” – Nobuyuki Tsujii

September 2, 2017

on “Song to the Moon” – Antonin Dvořák

September 1, 2017

an homage to the victims of the Titanic

August 11, 2017

threnodies: to the victims of Hiroshima, of the Holocaust, and to the Canadian North

June 23, 2017

“My Romance” – Carly Simon

March 15, 2017

“Daffodils” – William Wordsworth (an epitaph)

February 20, 2017

“First Piano Concerto” – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

February 11, 2017

“Is Art Truth?”

January 31, 2017

“Symphonie espagnole” – Édouard Lalo

January 19, 2017

Rutebeuf’s Lament – Rutebeuf/Ferré