“Five minutes ago, quite near here, I met a colleague--Adalbert, the short-story writer. ‘God damn the spring!’ he said in his aggressive way. ‘It is and always was the most abominable season of the year! Can you think a single thought that makes sense, Kröger? Have you peace of mind enough to work out any little thing, anything pointed and effective, with all this indecent itching in your blood and a whole swarm of irrelevant sensations pestering you, which turn out when you examine them to be absolutely trivial, unusable rubbish? As for me, I’m off to the café. It’s neutral territory, you know, untouched by change of season; it, so to speak, symbolizes literature--that remote and sublime sphere in which one is incapable of grosser thoughts. . .’ And off he went to the café, and perhaps I should have followed him. . .
“One certainly does work badly in spring: and why? Because one’s feelings are being stimulated. And only amateurs think that a creative artist can afford to have feelings. It’s a naïve, amateur illusion; any genuine, honest artist will smile at it. Sadly, perhaps, but he will smile. Because, of course, what one says must never be one’s main concern. It must merely be the raw material, quite indifferent in itself, out of which the work of art is made, and the act of making must be a game, aloof and detached, performed in tranquility. If you attach too much importance to what you have to say, if it means too much to you emotionally, then you may be certain that your work will be a complete fiasco. You will become solemn, you will become sentimental, you will produce something clumsy, ponderous, pompous, ungainly, unironical, insipid, dreary, and commonplace; it will be of no interest to anyone, and you yourself will end up disillusioned and miserable. . . For that is how it is, Lisaveta: emotion, warm heartfelt emotion, is invariably commonplace and unserviceable. . . All emotion, all strong emotion, lacks taste. As soon as an artist becomes human and begins to feel, he is finished as an artist.”
(from Tonio Kröger, published in 1902, when Mann was 25)
Of course, this being the perspective of a fictional character, it is almost equally likely to have contradicted Mann’s actual feelings on the matter as it is to have coincided with them, but given the somewhat unsympathetic manner in which he tends to depict the suffering artist in general, I imagine the latter is more plausible.
While I’m not sure I agree with the assessment altogether, I do feel Mann (through Kröger) was onto something. A degree of emotional involvement is necessary for inspiration (otherwise, why write at all?), but I think proper execution does demand a certain distancing of the artist from his art. Just as one tends to overlook the flaws of those dear to him, so will he fail to notice or choose to ignore the flaws of his own work if he thinks too highly of it.
I think W.B. Yeats put it best, and far more succinctly: “Rhetoric is fooling others. Sentimentality is fooling yourself.”
Parts of Olivier Messiaen's Turangalila-Symphonie are still an utter mystery to me, but I'm continuously amazed at the sheer catharsis of its finale.
The work is highly experimental in its breadth, scope, density, and dissonance. While there are moments of blissful contemplation and fairly uplifting fanfare, the piece is dominated by a mass of cacophony that overwhelms---it's much like the late work of Charles Ives, namely the second of his "Two Contemplations" composed in the early 1900s, only with about 40 years' worth of atonal theoretical development on top of it, and for a greatly expanded orchestra. It's fascinating, definitely, but the barrage of what is, in places, essentially indecipherable noise lasting for close to an hour instills a certain anxiety in the listener that increases to the point at which he or she is tempted to flee the concert hall. There are motifs that recur throughout, a Wagnerian touch of familiarity for which the listener ought to be most grateful, but their occurrences are seemingly random; certain progressions that lead into them early in the work build and continue to build later on, never resolving in the manner the listener expects, which only heightens the tension.
The finale consists of a new theme as well as a conglomeration of several introduced and elaborated upon in the previous nine movements, executed at a dizzying pace and increasing in breadth and volume, in its final moments, to a climax seemingly unattainable. The ondes Martenot, that bizarre electronic instrument (that could only have been invented by a Frenchman) that features prominently in the earlier movements of the piece, makes its final solo atop tremendous, glistening chords for full orchestra, and what sounds like a profoundly perfect cadence gives way to a tumultuous recapitulation of the movement's earlier thoughts before three penultimate chords tracing the G-flat major triad (the tonic) sound, introducing the gradual buildup to a final chord that never seems to reach its loudest. The rumble of bass drums, cymbals, and a thunderous roll of the enormous gong blare and blot out the radiant chord, ending the piece with only the indeterminate echo of a metallic crash.
(If you can make it through this movement, you have my immense gratitude and respect. It is, admittedly, not at all palatable if you're unaccustomed to 20th century dissonance, but once you hear what I'm talking about, beginning at roughly 4:45 and continuing to the end, you'll be glad you listened.)
That last buildup (6:39 to the end) is the catharsis to which I refer. Finally, we have a resolution, perhaps the first harmonically unblemished, major chord of the entire piece, amending for the great discomfort and moments of absolute terror throughout the previous 60 or so minutes of music, and doing so as immensely and assertively as possible.
It reminds me of something I read while studying Ezra Pound's Cantos in college, regarding the ancient Greek Eleusinian Rites. This complicated process of wandering and confusion, followed by a great light or revelation, to which Pound equated his inscrutable collection of poetry, is mirrored beautifully by the progression of what is, I consider, Messiaen's magnum opus.
An interesting thought on which to conclude--when asked what, if anything, the massive symphony meant, Messiaen replied, simply, "It's a love song."
Despite innovations that have been made over the past century in acoustics, sound engineering, and recording technology, there really are still only two widely used methods when it comes to recording for orchestra: the Blumlein stereo pairing, and the Decca tree.
The Blumlein stereo pair, as its name suggests, consists of a single pair of bidirectional microphones suspended several feet above the center of an orchestra, slightly in front of the conductor. For many subgenres of orchestral music, it is still the preferred method, but it creates problems for recording performances of pieces written for expanded orchestra, particularly so for those of a late Romantic persuasion that feature dramatic, sometimes explosive changes in dynamic.
Specifically, I'm talking about the works of Gustav Mahler.
The big problem with stereo miking of the Blumlein method is that, with a bidirectional microphone, the third dimension of an orchestra, so to speak, will lose clarity. Particularly, voices in the back rows of the of the orchestra (brass and percussion) will be present only as secondary or background input to the two main lines, which will be dominated by the tremendous string sections. Naturally, the stringed instruments, being closest to both "north" and "south" pickups of both microphones, will be more prominently featured through those main lines and will, all things being equal in terms of overall volume, tend to overpower the more distant regions of the orchestra.
A counterargument to this, of course, is that all things seldom ARE equal within an orchestra in terms of overall volume, that the larger and louder woodwind, brass, and percussion instruments traditionally are placed well behind the strings and higher woodwinds precisely because of their tendency to overpower such softer instrument groups. In other words, the effect perceived by a member of the audience will be that of a proper mixture or equalization of the interacting voices.
That's fine, but what if such dynamically disparate instrument groups are both asked to play suddenly at high volumes, as in any number of instances within Mahler's symphonic catalogue, for example? Unless close attention is paid to levels mid-recording, the two mainlines of the Blumlein setup will be maxed out by surges of sound from the string groups, saturating the north and south regions of both left and right channels and leaving little “audio space” for the central and back portions of the orchestra.
To compensate for this, engineers at Decca Records developed a three-channeled modification of the Blumlein model in the mid 20th century, one they aptly called the “Decca tree.” One dual channel provided for the right side of the orchestra and another for the left, each with standard north-south regions, and a third for the center, with what could be called, for comparison, an "east-west" span. A novel idea, to be sure, and nowadays, anyone with basic knowledge of surround sound would think it common sense, but the dramatic difference in sound quality made huge impact on the way orchestral recordings were made.
Unfortunately, many sound engineers seemed simply to go along with it without wondering whether it was even the most appropriate method of improving sound quality. Absolute care still needed to be taken with regard to the mixture. It always should be remembered that the intent of an orchestral recording is to duplicate the sound as it would be perceived from the audience, not necessarily from a point immediately above the orchestra.
Hence, when recording with the Decca tree, levels in the central channel had to be manually reduced to account for any change in dynamic that might have caused, say, a trombone to overpower a violin, were the two, in essence, seated side by side.
More clever methods didn’t come about until the initial rage surrounding the Decca tree subsided. The best of which I’ve read, one which probably didn’t emerge until the advent of digital recording, involves distance-miking in layers (e.g., three above the orchestra, three ten feet in front thereof, three another ten feet beyond that) and compressing each set, and while this can create a more expansive or atmospheric quality to a recording, the levels of the outer layers must be turned up so high that there is a greater risk of ambient noise and interference (i.e., orchestra members shifting in their chairs or sniffling, or the conductor turning the pages to his score or humming along with the music).
I recently repurchased a version of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony I’d misplaced long before I’d thought to back up any of my CDs on my computer, and while listening to the first movement, I noticed a remarkable difference in the quality of the mix. I switched immediately to another version of the symphony, and then yet another (I own three versions of it---leave me alone), and the difference between them attributable to method of recording was very pronounced...
(Context: After a solemn, solo trumpet introduction and initial outcry from the entire orchestra at fortissimo, the piece descends into a soft, C-sharp minor dirge that lasts for over five minutes and is punctuated only briefly by one more similar, full-orchestral proclamation. As the funeral march (literally, "Trauermarsch") draws to a close to the disquieting rumble of the bass drum, the same eleven notes of the opening trumpet solo are played again, delicately, only to give way to much louder, more violent segment in B flat minor.)
(For the purpose of demonstration, I've only used, varyingly, the first violin, trumpet, trombone, second horn, cello, bass, and tympani parts for the reductions constituing the visual accompaniment to the following excerpts, since the full score is quite large and most of the rest of the instrumental parts for this portion function either as doubles or as "background" or "bass chord" harmony.)
(1) A perfect recording, likely done with a carefully monitored Decca tree and, I'm guessing, compressed layering:
(2) A slightly less wonderful recording, very likely done with a Blumlein setup:
(3) And a not so great recording, probably done with an improperly engineered Decca tree:
I didn't plan it this way, but apparently I have a pretty decent composite-control group for this experimental comparison: recordings (1) and (3) were both conducted by Leonard Bernstein, and recordings (1) and (2) were both performed by the Vienna Philharmonic (recording (2) was conducted by Lorin Maazel and recording (3) performed by the New York Philharmonic). Two legendary conductors, two legendary orchestras, yet three very differently sounding recordings...
Version (1) was recorded on the Deutsche Grammophon label, and as I mentioned, it likely was done with a Decca tree and/or layering, because the mixture between upper brass, mid-lower brass, and upper strings, the most prominently featured parts in this passage, is impeccable. The trumpet shines through where it needs to, the pulsing trombone chords remain noticeable but not overbearing in the background, and the frenetic violin parts are dazzling, yet not too "in your face."
Version (2) was recorded on the Sony Classical label and, again, probably was done with a Blumlein setup. Granted, it was remastered a little over a decade ago, but the string parts are still too loud and the middle and lower brass not loud enough. The trumpet really needs a more commanding role in order for these several minutes of music to work.
Version (3) also was recorded on the Sony Classical label, and clearly, the middle and lower brass parts are far too overdone. This is evidence of a poorly managed Decca-tree setup; the sudden change of volume that takes place here has not been accounted for, and the result is a somewhat obnoxious sound.
Of course, the likely explanation for this disparity in quality is that Deutsche Grammophon has been recording classical music since literally the turn of the century (19th/20th, that is), whereas Sony Classical, which never really specialized in making its own orchestral recordings (other than remasterings), functions largely through a subsidiary label, Legacy Recordings, which was only founded in 1990. Guess it takes a while to figure out the tricks of the trade.
Christopher O'Reilly released an entire CD of piano transcriptions and "liberal rewrites" several years ago that are stunning. I wouldn't at all mind hearing the Emerson Quartet perform an arrangement of this particular song. Actually, I'm pretty sure it was "The String Quartet" who covered it a number of years ago, but that version, from what I remember, involved little layering (which, one can imagine, is somewhat essential to duplicating the effect of sustained, undistorted electric guitars and un-muted chimes) and was, on the whole, rather sparse. That those jokers call themselves "THE String Quartet" bothers me, as they aren't particularly good. Perhaps "A String Quartet" would suit them better. Whatever.
Whether the counterpoint present in this excerpt was intentional or the result of boredom and an abundance of free channels through which to overdub, the polyphony is simply beautiful.
He's the audio. The transcription I've provided was done in haste and excludes percussion, chime, and acoustic guitar parts, all of which are relatively straightforward. The segment in question begins at 3:59.
Of course, I couldn't manage to transcribe the rapid, computer-generated chimes at 3:28 and the very end of the piece, but I'd really like to sometime---it may take considerable caffeine and focus, but I'd love to find out how they interlock.
As you may notice, the fourth transcription line (guitar 2) is performed in a split-sextuplet manner--that is, twelve evenly spaced eighth notes per measure. I wasn’t sure how best to illustrate this in the time signature and figured pointing it out here would suffice. And, of course, when you subdivide these increments into groups of five, the resulting rhythmic contrast is somewhat confusing, but every thirty beats (or five measures), this errant rhythmic progression and the predominant 4/4 time converge, which is quite clever. This is one of the first instances of such polyrhythmic experiments Radiohead recorded, to my knowledge---if you can find an earlier one, I'll take a bow and admit defeat. It's precisely such time-signature trickery, I think, that has earned their more recent music such praise, since their more recent music doesn't contain polyphony nearly as splendid and mesmerizing as this.
"If, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is only an illusion and not a reality. It is simply an additional attribute, which, by tacit and inveterate agreement, we have lent it, thrust upon it, as a label, a convention - in short, an aspect unconsciously or by force of habit, we have come to confuse with its essential being…
-Igor Stravinsky, from his 1935 autobiography
I'm not sure how I feel about this.
A painting--that is, the physical use of color and shape upon a canvas or against some other medium, is neither, we'll say, "sad" nor "happy" of its own accord, yet it does tend to evoke such emotions in the viewer. The shape and color alone are meaningless, yes, yet when pieced together in certain patterns, they come to represent something that has an associative quality to the viewer; they become more than the sum of their parts, as it were.
When looking at a photograph, one does not sense that one is looking at a flat piece of glossy paper strewn with random patterns of color, but that one is viewing actual people, places, etc., captured in a particular moment of time. That it is, in fact, a flat piece of glossy paper not in any way related to the people or places depicted thereon doesn't even register to most people at first; we actually have to remind ourselves of it.
It's interesting, this cognitive leap--associations of this sort seem most often to take place unconsciously, as though either such links are pre-set in our pattern-seeking brains (nature) or we are conditioned from very early age (nurture) to associate certain sights, sounds, or combinations thereof with particular concepts or emotional states. I wrote some time ago about this, actually, as pertinent to the triad and major and minor keys---why do we automatically associate major keys with happiness and minor keys with sadness? Consonance with peace and serenity and dissonance with discomfort or terror?
It's a fascinating realm of aesthetics---metaesthetics, I suppose one could call it, and from a cognitive standpoint, I suppose Stravinsky is correct, but by his estimation, then, every form of representation would be, at its core, meaningless. After all, what are written words but arbitrary symbols against a background? What is speech but random currents of air modified by the muscles and bones of the mouth? If one form of representation is to be reduced to its own threadbare physicality, then ought not all?
That representations of any sort evoke images, thoughts, sounds, etc., in the viewer, reader, or listener is what makes them worthwhile. Why would a person who cannot read Cyrillic spend hours pouring over Russian archives? Must I know WHY it is that I love chocolate milk, or does it not suffice merely to say that I love it, and that is all?
My succinct response, then: Very intriguing, Igor, but really...What's your point?
(Incidentally, this is how I've come to view most philosophy)
Go ahead and give it a shot, and I'll post the answer as a comment in a few days. I would say, "no cheating," but I really can't imagine how one might do so.
"They're called parallel harmonies. Think of an instrument with a fixed set of notes, or maybe a piece of wood with pegs---the same chords, but played in different keys, so you don't really have to readjust your finger positioning to play through progressions. It's very useful if you're playing in, say, a hotel lobby or restaurant or something, because you can easily talk and play at the same time. [plays a series of soft-jazz-sounding chords while speaking...] 'Well, yes, I went to Juilliard, but...now, I'm pretty much free every evening. What are you doing?'"
I thought it was funny, at least. :) You kinda had to be there.
(Context: Performance Today, the American Public Media program (formerly of NPR), has a weekly call-in game, the "Piano Puzzler," in which a caller is played a popular tune disguised in the style of a classical composer and asked to identify both the tune and the composer. Bruce Adolphe, a composer and pianist associated with Juilliard and Lincoln Center, writes the music in advance and performs it live for the caller, and each week, after the answer is revealed, he gives a sort of impromptu, miniature music theory lesson pertaining to the piece or style in question. The above quote was taken from one such session.)
As far as Mahler's slow movements go, I think this one is so much nicer than the Adagietto from his Fifth Symphony, yet that one is far more popular. It perplexes me.
I actually own this DVD. That's how much of a dork I am.
The piece itself (the Fourth Symphony as a whole, that is) is one of the earliest exposures I had to Mahler's music. I bought a copy of it for $4 in the student union one Wednesday afternoon during my junior year at FSU. The first time I listened to it, I was trying to read some assigned Henry James while sitting through a quiet evening shift as a receptionist for the housing office. Now, whenever I hear the opening bells and flutes of the first movement, I'm reminded of such wonderfully boring occasions.
Anyone interested in hearing more should definitely give the fourth movement a look as well, as it is quite lovely:
I suppose the latter video will double as visual testament to why camera operators shouldn't be allowed to conduct close-up shots of vocalists during performances such as this--regardless of how talented a soprano may be, she always will look a bit goofy mid-phrase.
This isn't terribly important, but I'd like to point out that the J.G. Wentworth commercial featuring characters of an opera production singing about their immediate need of cash makes a grossly inappropriate stylistic pairing.
Namely, the music being performed is of a notably classical persuasion, rather like something out of an early Mozart opera, while the costumes and setting appear to depict figures of Norse Mythology, an operatic trend that did not come about until Richard Wagner's late works, nearly eighty years after Mozart had died.
"So what?" you may ask...
Well, musical tastes had evolved considerably by the time Wagner wrote his sagas about warring gods and goddesses. Romanticism was in full swing; most composers had drifted away from the staunch formalities of the baroque and classical eras and embraced a more free-form and, in some cases, almost indulgently emotional approach to their works.
Coupling Mozartian music with a Wagnerian set is about as appropriate as having the plot of 'Pride and Prejudice' take place in a Soviet P.O.W. camp.
I suppose the imagery of robust women in lengthy hair weaves and Viking helmets is one stereotypical to opera in general, but to the number of us who actually know a bit about the genre, such an error is most upsetting.
Well, not really, but it's certainly a little irritating.
In the Wentworth ad people's defense, though, the conductor character actually does appear to be keeping time, not just arbitrarily waving his arms like most fictional conductors do, and I did appreciate that.
Also, though it pains me to say so, the ad proved effective in that, though annoyed by it and not at all in need of cash from a structured settlement, I nevertheless did remember the phone number:
This started as an aimless blog, then found itself devoted, for a time, to music, and now is back to being an aimless blog. Perhaps it one day again will assume objective or direction of some sort, but for now, it's just a place where I can posit musings, anecdotes, rants, etc.
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