November / Month of the Sonata – 23
.jpg!Large.jpg "The treachery of images (This is not a pipe), 1928 - 1929 - Rene Magritte")
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Tag: Arnold Schoenberg
November 26, 2018
on the third day of C***mas
“Les musiciens“ (1952)
Nicolas de Staël
___________
on the third day of C***mas, I needed to
ready myself for the onslaught, I was
hosting, yikes, for someone from out
of town
I thought I’d had it all figured out, but
obstacles occurred, of course, to my,
nearly cowed, consternation
I needed help
I’d anticipated more violin concertos
to get me going, but, among my
several bookmarks, King Crimson
came up, a group I’d admired
tremendously in my formative years,
the 70s, when freedom of expression
prevailed, in all of its innocent
expectations
they are tremendous, if you like that
sort of thing, entirely progressive
rock
you’ll think me eccentric if I relate
them to Classical considerations, not
only are they rigorous about tempo,
tonality, and repetition, essential
Classical components, but reach
further into even tribal configurations,
their minimalism – later formalized by,
incidentally, Beethoven – of infinitely
repeated rhythms, like thumping,
intoxicating, essentially, thrusts,
heartbeats meeting heartbeats, very,
in other words, primitive, primeval
add to that, later, their superimposed
atonal riffs – Jimi Hendrix meets the
jungle – a direct reference to
Schoenberg‘s breakdown of the
orthodoxy of the musical scale, and
cadence, and reiteration, you’re left
with a history of our culture’s sonic
aspirations in a single incandescent
concert, despite a couple of egregious
commercial interruptions in the
download, a 21st-Century, it seems,
corporate roadblock
watch, enjoy
R ! chard
March 5, 2015
Alban Berg Violin Concerto
“Little Girl in Blue“ (c.1934-c.1935)
________
though Apollo had offered the two
complimentary symphony tickets
he’d scored to my sister and my
mom, my mom bowed out and
suggested I, an adept, should
instead go along, though I needed
to know more about the content,
who and what would be on, no
one knew
meanwhile my sister, preferring not
to leave her husband alone, opted
to cede her ticket to Apollo so he
could accompany me
after some research, when I gushed
that Akiko Suwanai would be playing
Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D
minor – his only one, I cried – Apollo
reconsidered, would, he said, come
along, my enthusiasm having struck
apparently a reverberant chord, a key,
maybe his D minor
once at the concert, to our surprise
and delight, my sister and her
husband, under the spell also of that
maybe bewitching key, had got rush
tickets for essentially, as it were,
a song, so that serendipitously we
all attended the superb performance
together
Dad does concert tickets too, my
sister exulted
Suwanai was transcendent, lifted me
from my seat at the very first touch of
her exquisite bow, I floated, though it
might’ve been also the magic chocolate
I’d bought at the corner, this is Vancouver
after all, known also, not inappropriately,
as Vansterdam
you’ve heard rapturous versions of
Beethoven’s Violin Concerto on at
least one of my earlier blogs,
Anne-Sophie Mutter’s there, Joshua
Bell’s, but I couldn’t get any of Akiko
Suwanai’s renditions on the Internet
found instead for you this wonderful
Berg, also his only violin concerto
Berg is of the Second Viennese
School, along with Schoenberg and
Webern, this is no longer Beethoven,
the advent of the First World War in
the Western world had fundamentally
altered everything, the arts were
reflecting this transformation, idioms
were abandoned in every creative field,
as well as in borders and forms of
government, rudiments were being
questioned, tested, see what Soutine
does, for instance, to traditional
representation above, to perspective,
colour, proportions
you’ll note that Berg’s Concerto
doesn’t stipulate a key, part of the
disintegration musical theory was
undergoing, twelve-tone music,
rather than the traditional eight,
was eliminating the subordination
of sharps and flats within scales,
atonality became dominant,
sounding a lot like the cacophony,
I think, of Twentieth-Century traffic
you won’t mistake however the
utterly Romantic sensibility beating
through Berg’s composition, midst
all the discord and the dissonance
you can’t miss his pulsing and
ardent heart, his wistful, dare I say,
heartstrings
there are two movements to the
concerto, the first representing life,
the second death and transfiguration,
Berg had written this, his last work,
for Alma Mahler’s daughter, Manon,
after she died of polio at the age of
18, Alma Mahler had been Gustav
Mahler’s wife, a musical giant, Berg
dedicated the piece, he wrote,
“to the memory of an angel”
Berg died later that same year,
Christmas Eve, 1935, he was 50
Richard
psst: the first part of the programme
had been a bust except for a
lovely piece for violin and koto
what’s a koto, I asked Apollo
it’s what you wear when you’re
coldo, he replied
a koto is a bit like a xylophone,
but with strings instead of
wooden bars, the performer
had dressed in traditional
Japanese garb for the special
Japanese occasion
January 3, 2013
“Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs”
“Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs“ is an
enchanted movie for children of all ages, that
means especially you, Manolito, that means
especially you, Aidan
you might however notice, in a more analytical
vein, the introduction of German Expressionism
even some Edvard Munch, the Norwegian, in the
bold, garish colours that expressed horror and
perversion for them following the First World War,
and did the same for Walt Disney later if you’ll
consider the evil queen’s mirror and mask, or
van Gogh branches in the threatening forest, flat
surfaces, notably on faces for instance, touched
with only daubs of colour for only perfunctory
shading and character, prefiguring incidentally,
Andy Warhol‘s Pop Art
artists talk to each other
musical atonalities, also, show up, to attest to
modernity, in the music tooted out by the pipe
organ, delivering ornery pipes and a climactic
cuckoo who can only emit a shrill, discordant
screech, we can thank especially Prokofiev,
the popinjay among the atonalists, for that,
with necessary nods to, for their more
theoretical groundwork, the more exacting
Stravinsky and the too dour, not to mention
for many too dire, Schoenberg
Walt Disney was introducing modern art not so
surreptitiously at all to the larger popular culture,
acclimatizing children especially to the new
upended and revolutionizing art, crayons at
the behest of individuality
you’ll also find interesting that Snow White
succumbs to an apple, much like Mother Eve,
both of whom are absolved, it’s worth pointing
out, by nothing other than transcendental,
transformational, regenerative and ever
inspirational, Love
think about it
Richard
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