“Queen Marie Antoinette of France“ (1783)
Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
___________________
first of all, let me grievously repent an
egregious confusion I probably left
in my last diatribe, I said that the second
movement of the Opus 54, no 2 sounded
to me like a minuet, I had, through
embarrassing inattention, confused its,
however unmemorable, adagio with that
of this Opus 55, no 3, which I’d listened
to in too quick succession, driven as I
am by my thirst for epiphanies
the Opus 54, no 2 will do, but I’m not
going back for seconds, nor to the
Opus 55, no 3, though here’s where
I flaunt nevertheless Haydn, not to
mention Bach, Mozart, Beethoven,
all the way to eventually Bruckner,
Brahms, the extraordinary Richard
Wagner, passing through Schubert,
Mendelssohn, the Strausses, father
and son, and the unrelated Strauss,
Richard, another incontrovertible
giant, and I nearly left out the
unforgettable Liszt, all of them
forefathers of our present music
you might have noticed that these
are all Germanic names, obedient
to the Hapsburg empire, with
Vienna as its supreme cultural
capital, and it was that
Austro-Hungarian dynasty that
indeed nearly single-handedly
secured our Western musical
traditions
a few Italians are remembered,
from the 18th Century, Scarlatti
maybe, Boccherini, Albinoni,
but not many more
no one from France, but they were
about to have a revolution, not a
good time for creative types,
though, incidentally, Haydn was
getting Tost, to whom he was
dedicating his string quartets for
services rendered, to sell his stuff
in very Paris
then again, Marie Antoinette, I thought,
was Austrian, an even archduchess,
and would’ve loved some down-home
music at nearby Versailles
so there you are, there would’ve been
a market
the English had Handel, of course,
who was, albeit, German, getting
work where he could when you
consider his competition, he was
too solemn and plodding by half,
to my mind, for the more
effervescent, admittedly Italianate,
continentals, Italy having led the
way earlier with especially its
filigreed and unfettered operas
but here’s Haydn’s Opus 55, no 3
nevertheless, the best Europe had
to offer, socking it to them
Haydn’s having a hard time, I think,
moving from music for at court to
recital hall music, music for a much
less genteel clientele, however
socially aspiring, we still hear
minuets, and obeisances all over
the place, despite a desire to
nevertheless dazzle, impress
then again, I’m not the final word, as
my mea culpa above might express,
you’ll find what eventually turns
your own crank, floats your own
boat, as you listen
which, finally, is my greatest wish
R ! chard
the ravine at Baby Yar
___________
Shostakovich’s Symphony no 13,
“Babi Yar”, to me is not a symphony,
it’s a cantata, a text with accompanying
orchestra, which is what we have here
does it matter, perhaps not that much,
but it’s like going to a restaurant where
you’re looking to enjoy what they’ve
posted on their website but when you
get there they tell you they’re out, you
can only have what they’re serving
unless it’s sensational, you’re put out
Shostakovich’s Symphony no 13,
“Babi Yar”, is not sensational, not only
too mired in local history, no matter
how horrid, how very horrid, but too,
musically, not inspired
note that with voice to concentrate the
composition, the orchestra becomes
just backdrop, no more of
Shostakovich’s signature obbligatos,
that gave distinction and significance
to individual orchestral players’ lone,
often poignant, complaints
the choice of a bass to anchor the
enterprise is especially, I think,
unfortunate, like putting all your eggs
in one basket, that basket lugubrious
and forbidding – I thought of Taras
Bulba, or Alberich, the gnome in
Wagner’s “Ring”, singing – the jokes in
the second movement, “Humour”,
go flat, people wouldn’t laugh, but
tremble rather before the domineering
patriarch, oligarch, the composition
needs the grace, the lightness, the
breath, of a female figure, voice
Bach is famous for cantatas, but what
came up for me was Carl Orff‘s
incomparable “Carmina Burana“,
written in, coincidentally, 1937, from
medieval texts the composer had
found, in Latin, describing, in lurid
lyrics, the spirit of cloistered monks
during the Medieval Era
you’ll enjoy the translation of the
Latin into English here, something I
hadn’t experienced before, giving
a whole new meaning to the word
“monastery”
R ! chard
“Carpenter“ (1929) – note the industrialization
of the subject, however
Cubist, for better or for
worse
_________
Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 2 doesn’t
sound like a symphony – one movement
only, a chorus – but was never meant to,
it had been conceived as a piece in
commemoration of the October
Revolution, a significant event in the
Communist cosmology, and
commissioned by that very polity,
hence the name, “to October“
but later, the symphonic poem was
included chronologically, thus no 2,
in the Shostakovichian oeuvre – if
you’ll excuse that pedantry, “oeuvre”
being too sweet a word for me not to
resist its austere territoriality – the
Symphony no 2 in B major being
first performed in 1927
it starts a shade above inaudibly, which
I often find irritating – unless, of course,
it’s Wagner, or Richard Strauss, who
knew what they were doing – suggesting
something significant is rumbling,
brewing on the musical horizon, after
which we enter in a lively fashion upon
a dance, full of folkloric flavour
but the harmonies are atonal, discordant,
a society, however traditional, is in disorder,
tonality, one of the stalwarts of Classicism,
along with tempo and repetition, has been
upended, distorted, the commune, the
community, can, no longer unburdened,
with only discordant harmonies, dance,
though you can feel them trying
Ravel does something similar in his
“La valse“, where, with a distortion
of tempo, the world is spinning
with only a change in volume, intensity,
in Shostakovich, the music becomes
martial, autocratic, peremptory, nearly
even frightening
I found at this point that the subtlety of
the move from the conviviality of dance
to the aggression delivered by a more
forceful music, marches and so forth,
lay in a mere alteration of the musical
pulse, from seduction to, indeed, rape,
in a simple change of rhythm – thus is it
written in our very sensibilities
a violin obbligato then intervenes,
strangely, but welcome, in a piece of
brash, by this point, agitprop, but
soon becomes as vociferous as
earlier the crowd who wanted to,
however awkwardly, dance
the obbligato, incidentally, instead of
an out and out solo part, as also with
the piano in Shostakovich’s First
Symphony, suggests the work of a
a community, a Soviet ideal, rather
than that of an individual asserting
hir particular predominance, if you
listen between the lines
a particularly impressive chorus
eventually delivers a tribute, a
hagiographic poem, to Lenin, which
Shostakovich abjured, but delivered
nevertheless for the money, and for
the influence, reportedly, however
ignominiously, for he was young,
not fully formed, innocent yet
it resembles, of course, a cantata, a
religious chant – see Bach, one of the
evident muses of Shostakovich – but
which addresses here a political
system, a cute trick of contemporary
secular regimes, the several –isms
within our post-religious ideological
societies
watch for it
note the spoken, or rather, prosaically
proclaimed last verses of the oration,
hortatory, don’t you think, or what
R ! chard
psst: incidentally, few composers are as
political, though few have been
under such ideological pressure,
as Shostakovich
“Lohengrin“ (1977)
_______
this morning, requiring especially strong
medicine to get me through my day, I put
on “Lohengrin“, Wagner’s masterpiece,
directed by the thorny and unpredictable
Werner Herzog, from Bayreuth, the high
temple of that music, its very Acropolis,
1990, to lighten my load, to give me
mythic, maybe even Sisyphean,
perseverance, it didn’t disappoint
Elsa of Brabant is accused by Friedrich
of Telramund of having killed her brother,
who stood before both of them in line to
the throne, Ortrud, Friedrich’s wife, stands
silent throughout the first act looking
positively Machiavellian, Lady,
incontrovertibly, Macbeth
Elsa, summoned to plead her corner, tells
of a shining knight who appears to her in
her dreams, calls upon him to defend her
honour, he shows up at the very last
moment, on no less than a swan
he’ll only fight for her, he says, after she’s
offered him her anticipated kingdom, her
throne, her very honour and chastity, to
do with what he will, should he win for
her her cause, if she’ll pledge to never
ever ask about his origins, despite his
extraordinary entrance
she accedes, of course, though no other
knight, critically, has shown up to redeem
her
the shining knight conquers, of course,
but Ortrud, during the celebrations,
lurking ominously nearby, doesn’t give
the impression that anyone’s going to
live happily ever after, so long as
she can help it
it was the end of Act 1, I got up, made
a sandwich, I’d watch the following act
tomorrow, and so on, until the distant
end of that four-hour saga, to which
the epithet “Wagnerian”, for “epic”,
also, manifestly, belongs
wistfully I wondered about my own
knights in shining armour, who might
be my own guardian angels, entering
on fabled, maybe, even, swans,
concluded one of them had just been
Wagner, who’d turned, from heavy to
at the very least wistful, my day
around
wishing you Wagners
Richard