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Tag: “The Carnival of the Animals”

February 13, 2013

Beethoven – 32 Variations In C Minor On An Original Theme, WoO 80‏

of all musical forms variations lend themselves 
best to intellectual speculation, which is to say, 
by way of concepts, words, objects of rational, 
cohesive, not nebulous, thought
it is immediately evident that a set of variations 
considers the many facets of a given subject, in 
music represented by a theme to be analyzed, 
dissected, explored and, in the best of cases, 
rendered transcendental   
this is of course also the case in any science  
it is more difficult to so investigate a waltz, a 
sarabande, a rhapsody, which speak a much 
less literal language usually, unless of course 
the verbal construct itself has been applied to 
the composition, “The Carnival of the Animals“ 
or “Pictures at an Exhibition“, for instance, but 
that’s putting the cart before the theoretical 
horse, unfair and unethical 
variations demand inherently cerebral 
participation, a considered evaluation, a 
nearly literal result, music finds its one-way 
ticket thereby to veritable language 
around the same time as he wrote the 
“Waldstein” Sonata, 1806, Beethoven wrote 
Theme, WoO 80, my very favourite of his 
sets of variations, courtesy here of the 
inimitable Glenn Gould 
note, in passing, the similarities between 
the two contemporary works
of the C minor Variations, however utterly
improbably, played by one Ivan Moravec, 
an earlier great, accompanied by immensely 
helpful annotated commentary the sum of 
which is hugely more telling than its mere 
point form parts, sharpening in the process, 
inconspicuously but highly effectively, one’s 
aesthetic pencil, pulse 
what could be more fun than that 
variations, incidentally, are a most democratic 
form, where every iteration is the equal of the 
other, given always, however, that fixed and 
intractable initial model 
an interesting interpolation, incidentally, that, 
philosophically, of course, speaking, asking,
as it does, does democracy require, rest on, 
a founding contextual blueprint, in light 
especially of the infinite number of those 
blueprints possible
is our democracy merely an arbitrary, and 
only contingent, shade, therefore, of that 
ideational abstract
you decide
psst: WoO is an acronym for Werke ohne 
          Opuszahl, or, in English, works
          without opus number, Beethoven 
          seems to have been completely 
          unconcerned with naming his 
          compositions, that he’d written the 
          music had been apparently already 
          quite enough  

 

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February 6, 2013

Beethoven: Sonata no. 21 in C major, op. 53 (Waldstein)‏

the “Waldstein” Sonata, no. 21 in C major, opus 53, is
one of the few compositions that Beethoven named
himself, which is to say that he dedicated it to a
friend and patron, Count Ferdinand Ernst Gabriel
von Waldstein, if you can call that naming it

the ones with descriptive titles, the “Moonlight”, the
“Pastorale“, “The Hunt“, for instance, were mostly so
labeled by his publisher for ease of identification in
the growing market place, a more affluent merchant
class eager to take on the refinements of the nobles,
see such an instance of social mobility, however
lampooned, updated and upended, in again the
engaging and not at all unperceptive “The Beverly
Hillbillies“

this means that the suggestive names we’ve come
to associate with his sonatas, “Moonlight”, “Pastorale“,
“The Hunt“, were never conceived as such by
Beethoven, his compositions were ever purely musical
inventions, or more accurately inspirations, prophetic
pronouncements of a much more oracular order,
like Prometheus Beethoven was delivering nothing
short of fire

to match music to specific visual, or even emotive,
cues, incidentally, “Pictures at an Exhibition“,
“The Carnival of the Animals“, for example, came
later, already a nod to Beethoven’s even indirect
propositions

that titles were given to music, rather than the more
clinical and mnemonically difficult numbers, which
is to say, not easy to remember, isn’t very different
from the evolution of popular music in the early
1960′s

the Beatles, you’ll remember, had cuts on albums
that had nothing more than their group name in
the titles, or the title of one of the album’s cuts,
“Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” came
along to change all that, we saw the birth of the
concept album, where the whole extended affair
becomes a musical metaphysics, this is no
different from the move from the music of Mozart
to that of the more expansive Beethoven, music
is no longer a ditty but an extended technical
and philosophical text, listen to Pink Floyd take
on this mantle superbly in the Seventies, the only
other body since ever to effectively challenge
Beethoven in that especially rarefied field, with
the probable exception of the sublimely expressive
Schubert perhaps, who died much too young for us
to tell, for him to have decisively dialectically proven
himself beside these erudite peers, all having,
however, found ways to have us touch beyond the
sky, the very infinite, and into the no less infinite
confines of our more private and secret selves

what they state is that creation itself, absent any
other meaning, remains potent, perhaps even
ultimately redemptive

creation as a bold and noble response to eternity,
art as affirmation

you’ll note here that the structure of this sonata
is entirely Classical, unity of tone, unity of pace,
and the eventual return of the initial melody,
essential Classical components, what has
changed is the personal bravura of the composer,
Beethoven is not playing for the aristocratic court,
but for a wider, an infinite, audience, he is
pronouncing his and, by extension, our own place
and validity in the universe, by our ability as humans
to create, to respond creatively, and even sublimely,
out of only our otherwise flailing and indeterminate
existence

it is the Romantic response to the waning belief
in God, and incidentally a profound spur to,
argument for, our present notion of inalienable
individual rights

the personal soul has taken over from the earlier
unchallenged deity, the wavering concept of God
has had a seismic fall, and all the king’s horses
and all the king’s men will never be able to put it
together undiminished again

Beethoven is showing us that future

Richard

psst: Helena Bonham Carter plays excerpts from the
“Waldstein“, incidentally, in “A Room with A View“,
a movie entirely worth a revisit

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January 16, 2013

“Dumbo”‏

Pinned Image
 
                                                           “View of Murnau“
        
                                                           Wassily Kandinsky
 
                                                      ______________________
 
 
once again a movie for children of all ages – 
including for Zoë, incidentally, whose birth
date is coming up in May – “Dumbo“ is another
Walt Disney masterpiece, and once again
fraught with the tropes, the creative novelties
and devices, of the most modern arts
 
it’s not difficult to intuit the influence of
Saint-Saëns‘ – an awful lot of sibilants
in the possessive case of only those two
capitalized syllables, by the way – his, I say,

especially, of the elephants, for Disney‘s
famous sequence here of elephants on
parade, wherein psychedelia makes an
appearance in 1941 no less, years ahead
of its historical, and revolutionary, great
fruition, surely informing Warhol,
generally the entire Pop Art coterie 
 
he was transferring however what he’d
been learning from the German especially 
Expressionists, their attraction to bold,
dissonant colours, flat uninflected
surfaces, arbitrary and malleable
dimensions    
 
what Disney brought significantly to the
mix was essentially the spirit of fun, which
is what transformed all art after the First
World War, that generation’s response to
the utter failure of all that had come before,
politics, economics, ideologies, even the
very concept of the existence of God, none
of these had prevented the horror that had
been that signal event, the best defence, as
we said in the Seventies, was living well,
therefore the Roaring Twenties, therefore,
for that matter, the Seventies 
 
we haven’t retreated from that imperative
yet, be it for better or for worse remains
still to be seen, for faith or fun, the opposite
poles of personal responsibility, both fell 
and heal 
 
 
animals, incidentally, courtesy of the spirit
 
 
Richard
 
 
 
 
 
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November 2, 2012

“The Carnival of the Animals” – Saint-Saëns/Nash/Disney

in the same spirit of “music as literature” as in
Liszt’s “Années de pèlerinage“, or Mussorgsky‘s
“Pictures at an Exhibition“ especially, Camille
Saint-Saëns, composed his “Le carnaval des
through an anthropomorphised menagerie 
where the description is impressionistic rather
than narrative, which is to say more painterly
 
he composes in patches of musical textures
instead of melodic and linear paragraphs,
incompatible with the original association
of music as melody, or song, one’s response
would become thereby more intellectual
than emotional, one does not swoon, or
even sway, in other words, as marvel at the
synesthetic imagination, which lets you see
sounds and hear pictures
 
you’ll hear here, or “hear, hear”, the turtles
doing their determined interpretation of the 
can-can, at an improbable crawl, in playful
reference to Offenbach‘s “Galop infernal”,
mad gallop, from his “Orpheus in the  
“Underworld“, other such instances of 
compositional salutations follow, not at
all an unusual practice among composers,
great and small 
 
you’ll be enchanted by the shimmering
ethereality of the aquarium, by the grace
and majesty of the now mythic swan,
among other zoological bedazzlements, 
in 14 movements, in therefore essentially
a symphony, a piece for orchestra with
several movements
 
here they are        
I.      Introduction et marche royale du Lion
               (Introduction and Royal March of the Lion)
II.     Poules et Coqs 
               (Hens and Cocks)
III.    Hémiones (animaux véloces) 
               (Wild Asses)
IV.   Tortues
                (Tortoises)
V.     L’Éléphant 
                (The Elephant)
VI.    Kangourous 
                (Kangaroos)
VII.   Aquarium
VIII.  Personnages à longues oreilles
                (Personages with Long Ears)
IX.    Le coucou au fond des bois 
                (The Cuckoo in the Depths of the Woods)
X.     Volière
                (Aviary)
XI.    Pianistes
                (Pianists)
XII.   Fossiles
                (Fossils)
XIII.  Le Cygne
                (The Swan)
XIV.  Finale
 
 
you’ll want to read the poems that Ogden 
Nash later wrote about them, his very own
“Carnival of the Animals“, that now often
accompany the piece, a mistake, I find, for
exposing two entirely idiosyncratic and 
incompatible sensibilities opposite each
other, thereby taking away from each 
 
but Walt Disney has, and you will too have,
a great deal of fun nevertheless with both
of them, though they’re somewhat in his
version abridged, no swan 
 
 
Richard
 
 
 
 
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