The Right and the Left of the Brain

Technically, the concept existed long before the scientific explanation came about: after all, gravity wasn’t invented when an apple hit Isaac Newton on the head in 1665 (so the story goes). The idea that people had a “dual nature” in the way they thought should have come as no surprise, but it wasn’t until 1968 when psychobiologist Roger W. Sperry published his innovative studies that verbal, analytic thinking was located mainly in the left hemisphere of the brain, and that visual, perceptual thinking was located mainly in the right. Sperry won a Nobel Prize in 1981.

In the old days, regardless of what century it was written in, music could be “classical” or “romantic” referring to the general style – “classical” being leaner textures, more logical, perhaps intellectually oriented and essentially clean; “romantic” meant denser textures, vaguer in terms of formal and harmonic clarity, more dramatic or emotional and, perhaps, “messy.” In this sense a composer in the late-18th Century writing in a dramatic emotional style could be “romantic” during the “Classical” period – think all those “Sturm und Drang” symphonies, or the D Minor Piano Concerto or G Minor symphonies of Mozart. And Mendelssohn, in some respects, could be a “classical” Romantic composer – sharing bits of both styles.

This stylistic dichotomy could also be referred to as “Apollonian” (classical) or “Dionysian” (romantic), going back to the Ancient Greeks (whether they used the distinction themselves or not) – Apollo, the god of such things as architecture (which would be logical, formalistic) and Dionysus or Bacchus, who gave men wine which of course has done little for logic and clarity for millennia…

These days, we mostly use the idea of “Left-brain” and “Right-brain.” And this is basically the gist of Sperry’s work.

While going through some books in a not-that-old box still left unpacked from the last move, I came across a copy of Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (A Course in Enhancing Creativity and Artistic Confidence) which was first published in 1979, making it one of the first books to apply this new scientific thinking and applying it to art. My edition was a paperback issued in 1989.

It’s not that I was interested in the art of drawing, but the concept seemed intriguing to me, wondering if it could be applied to musical creativity. I had been reading several books about “creativity” in general which seemed to focus on scientific creativity – the discovery of new theories or the invention of new contraptions – but rarely on musical creativity and then when they did, it often descended into what I would have thought was obvious and very shallow, compared to the in-depth, technical comprehension these authors found in the scientists and mathematicians.

It wasn’t until years later it dawned on me – d’oh! – that scientists understand the scientific mind but are completely lost when it comes to the artistic mind because (for them) it lacks the familiarity and the objectivity scientists need to exist.

The whole premise of scientific research is to “prove” something. Scientist A comes up with a new theory. In order for it to be “proved,” Scientist B has to be able to replicate it and come up with the same results.

If Composer A comes up with ideas about a musical composition, it is highly unlikely Composer B is going to come up with anything close to the same composition! In fact, even if Composer A tries it again, using the same concepts or ideas, his or her realization of them will no doubt result in a different composition even though it’s by the same composer. Oh, there may be similarities, but the artist is always looking for different ways to treat the same ideas whereas the scientist is always hoping for the same.

Yes, you can joke that Antonio Vivaldi wrote 600 concertos that sound like one concerto 600 times but that’s only because, to the untrained listener, the few that we know have a certain stylistic sameness. But like snowflakes, no two of them are the same.

And many listeners who are not musicians themselves can’t quite understand what performers mean when they say “every performance [of the same piece] is different.” Perhaps it’s not different from thinking the river you’re looking at is always the same because the water that flows by is made up of different molecules and so on.

Language also gives us problems in adapting to even the most obvious differences: what comes to mind when you see the word “river”? Is it the great Mississippi River or the Susquehanna River (which, at Harrisburg, is about a mile wide) or the Fenton River which I used to step across in the woods outside the University of Connecticut because it’s barely two feet across (“and you call this a river!” I used to tell my friends there in disbelief). But I digress, kind of…

The world, of course, is designed for people who are right handed. This discrimination is evident even in the words chosen to describe “right” and “left.” In Latin, the word for “right” is dexter from which we get dexterity (skill) (not to overlook the irony of a popular serial killer being named ‘Dexter’). The Latin word for “left,” on the other hand, is sinister from which we get… well, sinister (evil, ominous).

Even in French, the word for “left” is gauche from which we get gauche or gawky, awkward, tacky or sociably unacceptable; “right” is droit from which we get adroit (capable).

In old English, the word “left” comes from the Anglo-Saxon stem lyft meaning weak or worthless, “right” from reht or straight, just and ultimately (by way of the German recht) the word correct.

Enough? (Do we even need to get into politics?)

The duality in the world is also obvious: for example, light/dark, feminine/masculine, positive/negative, winter/summer and intellect/emotion, not to mention the more recent concept of digital/analog.

Ms. Edwards points out (p.38) the ‘L-Mode’ and the ‘R-Mode’ which she differentiates in the letters’ fonts: the L is bold, blocked and basic; the R is like script, full of curlicues and whimsy.

These two modes she describes with basic characteristics:

The L-Mode is foursquare, upright, sensible, direct, true, hard-edged, plain and forceful.

The R-Mode is curvy, flexible, playful, unexpected, diagonal, fanciful -- and she also includes the word “complex.”

Here is a paraphrase of her chart on p.40 which compares similar concepts and how they are applied on the Left-Brain or Right-Brain duality:

L-Mode is verbal, using words to name, describe, define.

R-Mode is non-verbal, focused more on awareness of things but minimal connection with words.

L-Mode is analytic, figuring things out step-by-step and part-by-art.
R-Mode is synthetic, putting things together to form wholes.

L-Mode is symbolic, using a symbol to stand for something (the drawing of an eye can substitute for the word eye; the + sign stands for the process of addition)

R-Mode is concrete, relating to things as they are, at the present moment.

L-Mode is abstract, taking out a small bit of information and using it represent the whole thing.

R-Mode is analogic, seeking likenesses between things; understanding metaphoric relationships.

(I think this might be more easily expressed as abstract, seeing the parts (for instance, data) whereas analogic would see the whole as the sum of the parts first – in other words, L-Mode would see the details, and R-Mode would see the “big picture”).

L-Mode is temporal, keeping track of time, sequencing one thing after another (in order)
R-Mode is non-temporal, without a sense of time (unaware of the passing of time, taking things out-of-order or at random)

L-Mode is rational, drawing conclusions based on reason and facts.
R-Mode is non-rational (I would prefer irrational), not requiring a basis of reason or facts (to reach a conclusion), willingness to suspend judgment.

L-Mode is digital, using numbers as in counting. 
R-Mode is spatial, seeing where things are in relation to other things and how parts go together to form a whole.

L-Mode is logical, drawing conclusions based on logic (rational), one thing following another in logical order, for example, like a mathematical theorem or a well-stated argument.
R-Mode is intuitive, making leaps of insight, often on incomplete patterns, hunches, feelings or visual images.

L-Mode is linear, thinking in terms of linked (successive) ideas, one thought flowing directly into another, often leading to a convergent conclusion (obvious)

R-Mode is holistic, seeing whole things all at once, perceiving the overall patterns and structures, often leading to divergent conclusions (not easily explainable but sensed)

Though she implies it within her chart, I would add at least one other : L-Mode is studied, applying rules that are learned to a given situation.

R-Mode is spontaneous, not paying attention to learned rules in varying degrees (being free with them; breaking them on purpose; ignoring them).

I might also add the easy confusion between the two in trying to memorize logically by thinking intuitively – Left-brained can be Logical but also Rational, applying Reason; while Right-brained can be… uhm… well, so much for mnemonics…

If you have to think about which is your right hand and which is your left (especially if you’re an actor and you have to think the opposite of normal when you’re on the stage because what is yourright is not the audience’s right…), you’ll probably have problems telling the two apart. That means you’re right-brained, first of all.

Add to that the seeming conundrum of the left-side of the brain controlling the right side of the body and vice-versa, meaning… uhm… well, let’s not get into that now, shall we?

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A few observations.

Musicians have long called the study of the language of music, “theory.”

“Theory” in science means something that is not yet or cannot be proven.

And yet any music theory teacher drums into you these rules about intervals and chords and how they work together and grades you on any infraction of these rules as if they are facts-carved-in-stone.

But like any language, you learn the rules and then you figure out how to break them. But first you must know what makes them work. Then you can bend or break them to your will IF you have something to replace them with.

(Ah, there’s a grammatical rule I’ve just broken: “never end a sentence with a preposition” or as one of my teachers once put, slyly, “a preposition is something you never end a sentence with.”)

Sometimes we break rules because it sounds more “natural” and sticking to the rules sounds too “formal.” For instance, if you’re talking to children, you’re not going to be speaking in King James English (speakest thou not in the olde biblical style from the 1600s) or in Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter. Likewise, if you’re going to compose a fugue (one of the most intellectual procedures in music), you probably don’t want to write in the style of, say, Britney Spears (there is a wonderful parody on-line of a guy who demonstrates how to write a fugue using a Britney Spears song – in the end, however, it sounds more like an old-fashioned fugue than it does a Britney Spears song, but still…)

Aaron Copland once wrote that a composer hears a new piece whole in a flash – the problem is then writing it down fast enough to get it down on paper.

This is what we call “inspiration.”

Since I could never do that, I figured, “well, I guess I’m not a composer.”

The thing is, that’s how Aaron Copland may compose, but it’s not how, say, Elliott Carter composes. Carter usually begins with a different kind of problem – usually one inherent in the instruments he’s writing for, or a more formal or even mathematical problem: something that requires a solution. For him, the inspiration comes later, usually in the different possible solutions that he can come up with and which ones prove to be the most productive in creating further solutions.

Copland’s approach is very spontaneous – Right-Brained.

Carter’s approach is more detail oriented, logical, painstakingly worked out – in other words, Left-Brained.

In the biblical story of Moses (left), he calls upon his brother Aaron (right) to speak for him. I’m not sure there’s a specific reason why – perhaps Moses stammered or Aaron had a more pleasing voice. Or maybe Moses, being the mystical conduit between God and Man, could not speak to the everyday situation, he needed Aaron to mediate for him, to interpret what he said (or what God said through him) so that ordinary people could understand it. In any sense, we get the idea that (Charlton Heston aside), Moses was the Idea Man and Aaron was the Big Picture Man, the Communicator – the Salesman.

Remember, it is Aaron who is forced by the doubters waiting for Moses to come down from Mt. Sinai, to give them a concrete image they can believe in – hence, the Golden Calf. The Right-brain is image-oriented, the Left-brain is abstract, idea-oriented.

When Arnold Schoenberg set the story of Moses as in opera (Moses und Aron which he left incomplete), he approached their roles in a very unique way. Not only did he differentiate the two brothers by making Moses a baritone and Aaron a tenor, he specified that Aaron should be a lyric (not a dramatic) tenor and that Moses does not actually sing but speaks in a form of declamation which is half-sung and half-spoken. Moses cannot approach song – Aaron turns Moses’ ideas into song.

Here is the first confrontation between the two brothers (ignore the picture):
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At 5:30, Moses sings the only line he actually sings in the entire opera (at least, that part Schoenberg completed): "Purify your thinking," he warns his brother, "free it from worthless things. Let it be righteous. No other reward is given your offerings." (The libretto, by Schoenberg himself, in a translation by Allen Forte for the SONY recording conducted by Boulez.)

While the second act concludes with Moses sinking to the ground in despair - "O word, thou word, that I lack!" - the text of the final act which Schoenberg wrote but never set to music is another, more dramatic confrontation between Moses and Aron, a trial in which Aron, a prisoner, is then set free and once set free, falls down dead. Moses' final words: "But in the Wasteland you shall be invincible and shall achieve the goal: unity with God."


By the way, Schoenberg’s method of composing with 12 pitches (which came to be known as serialism, one of the most abstract, intellectual ways to compose in the 20th Century) is extremely Left-Brained, so much that many listeners (and performers, as well) cannot hear any emotion in the music – to them, it has no heart, it’s all brain.

The problem is, not looking back far enough beyond the fact Schoenberg’s music doesn’t sound like “familiar” 19th Century music, Schoenberg came up with a system of organizing pitches (“theory”) that is a substitute, in a way, for the system we call “tonality” which was in use since about 1600, which can be just as systematic and rule-oriented and abused by untalented composers as serial music has been. But I digress.

I would like to point out, though, that when Schoenberg called his opera Moses und Aron, it wasn’t that Aron was the German form of Aaron (which is what most people suppose) and it’s not even that, in this form, it would be 12 letters (analogous to the 12 pitches of the chromatic scale or the basis of his 12-tone rows) – it was that it would not be thirteen letters. For all his logical left-brained rational intellectuality, Schoenberg was a triskaidekaphobe: he had a fear of the Number 13! How right-brained is that?!

Which brings me to one last point for this post: very few people would be completely 100% Left-Brained or 100% Right-Brained. There are lots of tests on-line you can take to see how you fare – the questions may seem odd: when you think your way through a problem, do you like to sit or lie down? I usually skew Left but there’s a good percentage of Right in my scores and that seems to work out in my personality as well as my composing and writing. My scores will be very different if I answer as I might have when I was specifically younger - or respond as a composer or writer as opposed to my personal life. Oddly, my personal life would be more Right-brained and my artistic life would be more Left-brained, a dichotomy that I sometimes find unsettling. But that’s something for another future post.

One of my favorite quotes these days is from a composer usually considered a “difficult” composer, Roger Sessions, who said,

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"Every composer whose music seems difficult to grasp is, as long as the difficulty persists, suspected or accused of composing with his brain rather than his heart -- as if the one could function without the other."
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It is not a question of whether we’re Right-brained or Left-brained but whether we can make a unity out of these internal factions each of us has in ourselves so we can communicate in some way with other people who have possibly very different internal factions.

These internal factions are what make us different from one another. It is what makes us who we are and why people react differently to the same piece of music.

It might explain why certain people identify with certain types of music – for instance, why a Right-brained Person could love Wagner but find Brahms tedious. Or why a Left-brained Person could enjoy Mozart but feel uncomfortable when listening to Berlioz.

Anyway, that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it…

- Dick Strawser

Debussy by the Sea

This weekend, the Harrisburg Symphony, conducted by Stuart Malina, performs Claude Debussy’s La Mer, three symphonic studies depicting the sea at various times of the day.

The program also includes other evocative works by Alan Hovhaness - his Mysterious Mountain - and Samuel Barber's nostalgic setting of life in Knoxville: Summer of 1915, plus Maurice Ravel's exotic Shéhérazade, tales from the 1001 Arabian Nights (don't worry, there are only three tales).

The S.S. Malina sets sail Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm from the Forum in downtown Harrisburg, with a pre-concert talk given by Assistant Conductor Tara Simoncic an hour before each departure.

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Visiting the wild coasts of French Brittany in his youth, the novelist Marcel Proust wrote of the sea at his mythical Balbec:

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[With the radiant sun upon the waves] that leapt up one behind the other like jumpers on a trampoline… the snowy crests of its emerald green waves, here and there polished and translucent, which with a placid violence and a leonine frown, to which the sun added a faceless smile, allowed their crumbling slopes to topple down at last, [one morning it was a] transparent, vaporous bluish distance, like the glaciers that one sees in the background of the Tuscan Primitives. On other mornings… the sun laughed upon a water of a green as tender as that preserved in Alpine pastures… less by the moisture of the soil than by the liquid mobility of the light… It is above all the light, the light that displaces and situates the undulations of the sea, [with the sun’s] tremulous golden shaft scorching the seas topaz-yellow, fermenting it, turning it pale and milky like beer, frothy like milk… as if some god were shifting it to and fro by moving a mirror in the sky. [I was] impatient to know what Sea it was playing that morning by the shore, for none of these Seas ever stayed with us longer than a day. The next day there would be another, which sometimes resembled its predecessor. I never saw the same one twice.
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Proust was not the only author ever to be captivated by the limitless and changeable sea, nor was Debussy the only composer to come under its spell, but Proust, writing of his experiences with the sea along the English Channel coast in the 1880s, seems like a reasonable introduction to the music Debussy composed, having spent some of that time along the English Channel coast in 1904 (for the record, Proust’s Balbec – in reality, Cabourg – is south of the Siene; Debussy’s Pourville, near Dieppe, is north of it.

Debussy composed his musical portrait of the sea between 1903 and 1905 (he may have started some sketches in 1902). He began working on it in the town of Bichain which is actually far inland, perhaps a hundred miles southeast of Paris toward Switzerland, in the historic region of Burgundy. But much of the time he was working on it, he was staying in Pourville (see photograph of Debussy taken that summer in Pourville, though not looking out toward the sea).

Finishing it March, 1905, he spends the month of August on the English side of the Channel, at Eastbourne, and on August 7th he is correcting the publisher’s proofs in advance of the October premiere in Paris.

La Mer may be the longest orchestral work by Debussy, the closest thing we have to a symphony by him, but a symphony in all its Germanic essence would be antithetical to Debussy’s aesthetic. He subtitled it “Three Symphonic Sketches for Orchestra,” a suite, basically, the symphonic in this case referring less to the extended ‘development’ of ideas usually associated with a symphony.

The first movement is entitled “From dawn to mid-day on the sea,” and the final movement is the “Dialogue of the wind and the sea.” These are comparable to the substantial outer movements one might find in a symphony. The middle movement is a light, scherzo-like movement, almost a waltz, entitled “Play of the waves.”

But Debussy is not concerned about themes and developments and modulations and harmonic schemes like Beethoven would be – even though most of the material evolves out of the primal intervals – the perfect 5th – that open the work, a kind of reverse-Beethoven’s 9th, in a way, but just as cosmic (or, perhaps, oceanic).

As marine biologist and conservationist Rachel Carson noted, like the sea itself, the surface of Debussy's music hints at the brooding mystery of its depths, and ultimately the profound enigma of life itself – after all, mankind carries the primordial salt of the sea in our blood.

Here is Riccardo Muti conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in this 1994 video recording. (The work is complete in one clip.)


(please ignore the fact the poster from Japan refers to it as La Mar...)

Debussy was a very visually oriented composer. Many of his works are small musical miniatures with evocative titles – think of “Claire de Lune” (Moonlight) or “Girl with the Flaxen Hair.” In fact, there are series of short works simply called “Images.” His studio was full of prints of paintings or those postcard-like souvenirs one might find at a museum – images which, given the vagueness of his harmonic style and almost anti-melodic approach to sound earned him the title “Impressionist.”

Usually, we tend to think of “Impressionism” in painting as soft and flexible, playing more with light than substance. This is easy to induce musically by the use of non-traditional scales, especially the whole-tone scale which has no harmonic function we associate with tonality, especially the strong functions of chord progressions like the dominant to the tonic resolution that gives it a satisfying, structural coherence. In several works by Debussy – think Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun or, again, “Claire de Lune” – the harmonic vagueness is matched by softer dynamics and even though there are climaxes, they are almost understated.

This is not the style in La Mer. This is at times very muscular music even though it may lack the harmonic bite some feel longer forms need to create forward motion. “Motion” here is like the motion of the sea, as Proust described it in the quote from “In Search of Lost Time” at the beginning of this post, vibrant and colorful – above all, colorful. This is not the French equivalent, sitting on the beach looking out across the sand, of the English pastoral school derided as the “Cow-Looking-Over-the-Fence” school of music.

In fact, Debussy would probably have had little patience with this "soft" approach to music: as a music critic, a career he followed briefly in the few years before he composed La Mer, he reviewed a work by Frederick Delius (usually considered an English Impressionist) as "very sweet, very pale - music to soothe convalescents in well-to-do neighborhoods."

And La Mer is anything but soft, sweet or pale.

Debussy may focus less on melody as he is on the “tracery and ornamenting” of a line much in the way Bach, that most German of composers, might have done, with a grace and suppleness both melodically and harmonically of his beloved Chopin (his first piano teacher was a big fan if not officially a student of Chopin’s). Debussy was just as influenced by the stylization of nature as seen in the landscape prints from Japan, particularly Hokusai whose “The Hollow of the Wave off Kanagawa” which he had in his studio and which adorned the first printed edition of Debussy’s score. But he was also influenced by the “infinite arabesques” and complex counterpoint of the Javanese gamelan, a unique and exotic sound-world he first heard in 1889 at the Universal Exposition in Paris.

Other influences, perhaps surprisingly, come from Russian composers at a time when Russian music was little known in Western Europe, especially Mussorgsky and his opera, Boris Godunoff, especially his spontaneity and freedom from traditional academic formulas (which caused many to consider Mussorgsky untrained or untrainable and even led his friends, like Rimsky-Korsakoff, to “clean up” many of his scores). He described these as “successive minute touches mysteriously linked together by means of an instinctive clairvoyance.”

In one of those serendipitous moments in music history, I love pointing out the one degree of separation between Tchaikovsky and Debussy – Nadezhda von Meck was a wealthy widow who was not only Tchaikovsky’s generous patron and musical confidant, she hired some musicians to form a piano trio when she visited Paris and traveled with them, taking them back to Moscow for two years where they lived in her house and played music for her and her friends. The pianist – whose additional responsibilities involved playing piano duets with her and giving her daughters lessons – was Claude Debussy.

He was 18.

While in Moscow, young Debussy would have been exposed to a great deal of Russian music, no doubt, though I’ve never read anything he has said about, for instance, seeing Boris Godunoff. Still, knowing that Mussorgsky’s opera didn’t make it to Paris until Diaghilev’s Russian Season in 1908, how else can you explain so many “revolutionary” concepts heard in Debussy’s opera, Pelleas et Melsiande which he began work on certainly by 1892 and which was premiered in 1902?

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Here is a chronological time-line of events in Debussy’s life during the time he was composing La Mer.

Some biographical background, first: Debussy married a poor seamstress named Rosalie (“Lily”) Texier in 1899, after having had a series of mistresses. Only five years later, in 1904, Debussy was already living with Emma Bardac, the wife of a wealthy banker who had earlier had an affair with Gabriel Fauré and whose daughter, Helene, was the inspiration for Fauré’s “Dolly Suite.”

But life sometimes gets messy and Lily did not take well to the idea of a divorce. In fact, in October of 1904, Lily attempted suicide by shooting herself in the stomach, and as the details became public, most of Debussy’s friends withdrew from him. In fact, much of the reaction against La Mer when it was premiered a year later had as much to do with the public’s distaste for the scandal as it did with its confusion over the music.

All of this, of course, is going on in the “background” while Debussy is composing La Mer (or is it the other way around?).

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1903

In June, Debussy writes his last article as a music critic and in July signs a contract with the publisher Durand for a set of Images for piano, including three pieces for two pianos which, in 1908, becomes the Images pour orchestre.

Between July 10th and October 1st, Debussy stays at Bichain (in Bourgogne, about a hundred miles southeast of Paris), his third visit there. During this holiday, he begins work on La Mer and completes the piano pieces Estampes and works on preparing the full score of Pelleas et Melisande for publication (the opera was premiered in April, 1902).

October 14th, he signs a contract with Durand for a second opera, Diable dans le beffroi (The Devil in the Belfry), inspired by a story by Edgar Allan Poe which he thinks he will finish in May, 1905 (he never does).

November 15th, his “Prelude to ‘The Afternoon of a Faun’” (completed in 1894) is programmed on two separate concerts in Paris.

1904

On January 9th, Ricardo Viñes premieres Estampes and on the 16th, Debussy accompanies a singer in the first performance of two songs, including one called La Mer.

During April and May, Debussy composes his “Two Dances for Chromatic Harp and Orchestra,” the Danse sacrée and the Danse profane.

Between August and mid-October, Debussy and his mistress Emma Bardac (the wife of a wealthy banker) stay in cognito at the Grand Hotel in Jersey, then goes on to Pourville on the Normandy Coast (see photo), working on La Mer and correcting proofs for the publication of Masques and Fêtes galantes, also reworks L’Isle joyeuse.

On the 13th of October, Debussy’s wife, Lily, attempts to commit suicide by shooting herself in the stomach. The news appears in the papers on November 4th and many of Debussy’s friends withdraw from him.

1905

On March 5th, 1905, he completes the first draft of the score of La Mer and it will be published in July, made available to the public in November with its brightly colored cover after the Japanese artist, Hokusai (see photo).

On May 4th, Emma Bardac divorces her husband Sigismond; she is a few weeks pregnant.

In June, Debussy publishes Suite bergamasque for piano with its famous slow movement, Claire de lune. The work was composed in 1890 but Debussy did not finish it for publication until this time.

On July 17th, Debussy signs an exclusive contract with his new publisher, Durand and is also placed under a court injunction to pay Lily a month income of 400 francs (which will be paid through his publisher).

From the end of July through the end of August, Debussy and Emma Bardac stay in Eastbourne, England, spending a few days in London before returning to Paris.

On August 2nd, the Civil Court pronounces the divorce of Claude and Lily Debussy. He figures he has, perhaps, two friends left.

On August 7th, he is correcting the first proofs of La Mer

On October 15th, La Mer is premiered at Concerts lamoureux with conductor Camille Chevillard. Debussy complains that the orchestra is under-rehearsed and the conductor is more fit to tame wild beasts than conduct musicians. The next performance, on October 22nd, is better received.

On October 30th, Emma Bardac gives birth to Debussy’s daughter, Claude-Emma, always known as “Chouchou”.

--- Dick Strawser
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The quotation from Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, now usually more accurately translated as In Search of Lost Time, is from the second of seven volumes, ”Within a Budding Grove” or ”In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower”, in the chapter “Place-Names: The Place,” translated by Scott-Moncrief and Kilmartin, published by Random House

Getting ready to Experience the JACK Quartet

It's a busy month, here at Dr. Dick Plaza, deep into my fourth NaNoWriMo Challenge - more on that later - but I just wanted to take a moment to point out some activity over at my Market Square Concerts Blog where I've been posting about the impending performance by the JACK Quartet.

The concert is Saturday (the 12th) at 8pm and it's in uptown Harrisburg at the Temple Ohev Sholom (it's on Front Street just below Seneca). And I'll be doing a pre-concert talk beginning at 7:15pm so please consider dropping in for that, too.

For more information, check out these posts:
Part 1 - JACK comes to town
Part 2 - An introduction to three composers on the program: Philip Glass, Caleb Burhans and the Odd Man Out, Guillaume Machaut
Part 3 - An introduction to Iannis Xenakis but more a consideration of listening to unfamiliar (and especially new) music, going back to the days when Brahms and Mozart were "new" and "challenging."

By the way, I'm so excited - Elliott Carter's 103rd Birthday is on a Sunday this year! December 11th - mark your calendars, now! (Here's a post about last year's birthday.)

- Dick Strawser

Halloween and I.T. (Infernal Technology)

Well, the best-made plans of trick-or-treaters oft get laid (in a manner of speaking).

I spent four hours today, delighted to have discovered a CD transfer of our 1979 performance of the opening scene from Johann Nepomuck Sauerbraten’s IL VAMPIRO and managed to upload it into my computer only to discover, never having tried this before, I have no idea how to get a sound-file posted on the blog. Oh wait, Blogger doesn’t support audio files, right…

Transferring it into a pretty nifty little video, however, with a couple of stills and lots of captioning to make it interesting turned out great until I found out the Windows Live Movie Maker software so highly touted by Windows, at least, is not a system supported by Blogger or YouTube or Facebook. So I will enjoy it on my own computer and tell you it’s really lots of fun…

But I couldn’t let Halloween pass without at least some suitable music, so to start off with, here’s something that sounds like what I felt like after four hours of playing with Windows Live [sic] Movie Maker (so far, Dead-on-Arrival) this afternoon...

Greg Anderson plays Ligeti’s Etude No. 13 (appropriately enough), "The Devil's Staircase."

 

One of the classic Halloween pieces is this paraphrase on the ‘Dies irae’ by Franz Liszt called Totentanz or “Dance of Death. The dies irae is the Gregorian chant for the “Day of Judgment, Day of Wrath” in the Roman Catholic Requiem text and any good and ghoulish composer from the 19th Century made hay with the dies irae at the drop of a… severed head, perhaps.

Pianist Benita Rose and conductor David Vaughan, former students of mine from the University of Connecticut, were all set to perform the work with the Willimantic Orchestra on Sunday but this kind of freakish snow-storm (perhaps you’ve heard about it) dumped two feet of snow and toppled many trees on the area, cancelling the concert.

So, in their honor, here’s a link to a period-instrument performance of Totentanz by Franz Liszt with pianist Pascal Amoyal and Anima eterna of Brugge (Belgium) conducted by Jos van Immerseel (note, for instance, the ophicleide which was what early-and-mid-19th Century orchestras used instead of a tuba). Since these videos are not available for embedding, follow these links for Totentanz Part #1  and for Totentanz Part #2.

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While most everybody has heard the ubiquitous Carmina burana by Carl Orff, very few would know the other parts of that choral trilogy and hardly anybody would know this piece, actually the last thing he completed, finishing it in 1972. It’s called De temporum fine comoedia which roughly translates as “The Play for the End of Time” and sets texts in Latin, Greek and German in a way that is more typical of Orff’s later style which, most definitely, is not the style we know from Carmina burana.

While I think the opening section with the nine sibyls is much scarier than the section with the nine anchorites, that’s the one I could find on YouTube, a recording with Herbert von Karajan and the Köln Radio Symphony Orchestra, choirs and soloists. Again, of the five parts of this section, only three are available in this country, why I don’t know. But here they are – hold on to your head.

(That is, if the embeds are actually visible - they're pasted into both HTML and Compose windows of Blogger but they don't always show up in the preview... No wonder I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Luddite...)

6) “Upote, maepote, maepu, maedépote… ignis eterni immensa tormenta” Never, never, in no place, at no time – eternal fire, measureless torment…
7) “Unus solus Deus ab aeterno in aeternum” God is One alone from eternity to eternity
9) “Mundus terrenus volvitur” The terrestrial world revolves (I’m pretty sure the next words are not ‘upper case’…)

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On the somewhat lighter side is this classic from the pen of Charles Valentin Alkan, composed more than a century before Monty Python. Here is his “Funeral March for a Dead Parrot.”

Here’s a link to a free download of the full score if you really want to follow along.
 
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For many people one of the most unsettling pieces of music in the 20th Century is Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, for any number of reasons.

For many other people, another very unsettling image is the Teletubbies. Daniel Capo has managed to combine the two in these videos of two extracts from Schoenberg’s Pierrot accompanied by my own translations of the texts.
Pierrot Lunaire Mondestrunken from Daniel Capo on Vimeo.

The wine we drink through the eyes / Flows nightly from the moon in torrents, / Like a spring tide Overflowing the far horizon. / Terrible and sweet desires / Drift in floods without number! / The wine we drink through the eyes / Flows nightly from the moon in torrents. / The poet, driven by devotion, / Befuddled by the holy drink, / Raises to Heaven his ecstatic head / And reeling, slurps up and guzzles / The wine we drink through the eyes.

And Mondfleck:
A snowy speck of shining moon / On the back of his black frock-coat, / So Pierrot sets out one languid evening, / Seeking fortune and adventure. / Suddenly, something’s wrong with his appearance, / He looks around till he finds it – / A snowy speck of shining moon / On the back of his black frock-coat. / Drat, he thinks, a fleck of plaster! / He wipes and wipes but can’t make it vanish! / And on he goes, his pleasure ruined; / He rubs and rubs till early morning / At a snowy speck of shining moon.

Pierrot Lunaire just got creepier... from Daniel Capo on Vimeo.

Well, that should do it for this Halloween.

Tomorrow starts November which is National Novel Writing Month during which I (and many other crazy people like me) will take on the challenge of writing 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. I’ve done it four times already, and made the goal each time.

This time, I’m doing a complete re-make of The Lost Chord, keeping only the title, many of the characters’ names – how could I just throw away the likes of Yoda Leahy-Hu, Iobba Dhabbodhú, LauraLynn Harty, the villain Tr’iTone and numerous agents with musical puns for names like Kay Gelida Manina or Barbara Seville – but completely changing the plot and setting and divorcing it all from the parody it originally was (if it wasn’t exactly original) of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol.

It begins tomorrow! Wish me luck!

- Dick Strawser

Baby Huey at the Met

Going to a concert to hear music performed live is “an experience,” something different than simply hearing music on your radio or iPod. Part of that experience is sharing it with the rest of the audience.

Performers have often said how they “feed” off the audience’s interest (or are affected by its lack) which can inspire or deflate their performance, individually or collectively. That’s often why live performances can be more exciting than recordings: musicians perform better when this sense of energy excites them, perhaps make them more willing to take risks in this one-time-only experience rather than when making a recording for posterity everybody wants to have note-perfect.

While we may all have our stories of wonderful performances destroyed by audience distractions, from cell phones to stage-whispers, it only takes one person in the audience to ruin our experience. It’s something that can be rude to the rest of the audience, maybe just the people near by but often the whole auditorium-full; it can be distracting to the musicians who have worked hard to bring you this experience after hours and hours of practice and rehearsal; it's certainly disrespectful of the music, whether Beethoven cares or not. And if you believe as I do that this can sometimes be a spiritual experience, whether it’s intended to be a religious one or not, it can be disrespectful to [insert name of Deity-of-choice here].

A few years ago, a performance of Schubert’s Quintet with the Miró Quartet and cellist Paul Katz here in Harrisburg was marred by an “eccentric gentleman of a certain age,” and I discovered later it might have been prevented by a more vigilant ushering staff. He had been overheard in the lobby after the second half had begun apologizing to the usher(s) for being late because he had been down drinking in a bar “with the [insert N-word here]” but since he had a ticket, they let him in unsupervised!

His wild gesticulations and irritating conversation destroyed the performance for many people in the audience, though fortunately the musicians on stage were largely unaware of his distraction which endured for the first two movements before he was finally expelled by one of the ushers, though only upon request of an irate audience member who had to get up from his seat, go out to the lobby and demand the drunk be removed from the hall or he’d do it himself!

And during such a sublime piece of music!

I don’t know why this happens, except that sometimes we feel we ourselves are generally more important than anything going on around us. Part of this comes from our being used to sitting in our living rooms watching television where talking during the program is a very natural thing to do: nothing sacrosanct about sitting in your living room. Unfortunately, Carnegie Hall is not your living room.

Maybe I’m an [insert derogatory term for ‘person of a certain easily irritated nature’ here], but when I’m sharing your living room with several hundred to a thousand or so other people, please: the climax of a Bruckner symphony is not the time to be sharing your recipe for bean soup!

I’ve often told the story about my experience with “Baby Huey at the Met.” Curiously, this one didn’t actually interrupt the performance, it was limited only to the moments "outside" the music, but it had me on edge during most of the first act, waiting... waiting... waiting for something to happen. Then, during the first intermission, I realized why he wasn’t going to disrupt the music.

“Baby Huey” was a memorable cartoon character from the ‘50s and ‘60s, a 200-pound duckling created by Paramount Pictures' Famous Studios, a “dense and stubborn” baby duck who seemed to have trouble fitting in with the world around him. I called the man in the seat next to me in the Metropolitan Opera House’s balcony that night “Baby Huey” not just because he was a Large Person. True, at 6'6" or so, and quite possibly 300 pounds, he may have had trouble fitting into his seat if not the world around him, but that is only because his subsequent behavior drew more attention to himself than his already noticeable presence. Had he been 5'7" and 140 pounds and still doing what I’m about to describe, I would merely have come up with a different name for him. The fact he was wearing a yellow shirt under a powder blue sweater amazingly too small for his pear-shaped build (this was in the days before mid-riff-baring t-shirts became fashionable) made the name inevitable: I didn’t even have to think.

In fact, I saw him as I entered the balcony handing my ticket to the usher and knew that my seat was going to be the empty seat on his right.

I just knew it.

Once I had crawled over his lap to get to my seat and settle in, I began reading the plot synopsis of Meyerbeer’s “La Prophete.” This was only the second live performance I had a chance to experience at the legendary Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center since I moved to New York City a few weeks before. The season had just begun and it was an opera new for me. I was, naturally, excited to hear something new, see a production that had been much maligned in the press (and rightly so, it turned out), to hear the great voice of Marilyn Horne in one of the lead roles, and just TO BE at the Met, not for a special occasion but something that could now, living merely a mile away, be a regular occurrence.

I needn’t have bothered reading the plot synopsis. Once he had recovered after my interruption, my seat-mate resumed reading the plot synopsis out loud in a kind of stage whisper not quite lost in the general pre-performance ambience. It was then I realized his right hand was positioned in front of him as if he were holding a microphone. He had a pleasant enough voice and he was, apparently, trying to be unobtrusive. But he read the entire plot synopsis word for word and then proceeded to continue talking about the up-coming performance, mentioning the cast and describing each of the characters. He was playing Radio Announcer, pretending to be the radio host of a Metropolitan Opera broadcast, perhaps inspired by the great Milton Cross who had had that role for 43 years and had died only a few years earlier.

The lights went down, the conductor entered the pit. My seat-mate said, with obvious pride and excitement, “The lights have come down, James Levine is now entering the pit to the audience’s applause – and now” (dramatic pause) “the first act of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s... ‘La Prophete’...” And the music began.

Now, at the time, I had no idea that Fate would one day place me in a radio station’s microphone booth, nor do I recall, as a child, ever playing Radio Announcer. That this was a man in his late-30s, perhaps, was a little more bothersome: my concern, as the music began, was “would he continue to give a play-by-play description of the stage action?”

Throughout the whole (and very long) first act, my Milton Cross Wannabee did in fact never utter a sound. Not that I wasn’t on pins-and-needles waiting for it to happen. It finally occurred to me, he would never do that because Milton Cross would never have done that. I was, I assumed, safe. After a while, I became oblivious to the person I could sense next to me.

At the conclusion of the first act, up went the right hand into microphone position (I wanted to see if he cupped his left hand over his ear) and he said, almost inaudibly under the applause, “And as the Prophet calls for the crowd in the church to baptize him as a prophet, the curtain comes down on the end of Act One of the Metropolitan Opera’s performance of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s ‘La Prophete.’ We heard tenor Giuseppe Giacomini as the Prophet and Marilyn Horne as his mother...” and so on, just as you would hear on the actual broadcast.

Once he finished what I now know we call “the back-announce,” he got up, stretched to his full height and wandered down the aisle and out into the lobby. I needed to stretch my legs, too, so I went out into the lobby just to stand around and admire the place and "people watch." But I couldn’t help noticing that not too far away from me stood my seat-mate, in his yellow shirt and stretched-to-the-limit little powder blue sweater, holding his hand with his imaginary microphone up to someone holding a drink in his hand, asking him what he thought of the performance!

Ah, it was time for the Intermission Feature!

I made sure I was back in my seat first. Mr. Huey settled down next to me, opened the program to the plot synopsis again, placed his hand in microphone position and reread the plot of the next act. When it appeared intermission was running longer, having already completed the cast list, he proceeded to fill by reading the names of the orchestra members. He was about halfway through the soprano section of the chorus (bad radio, by the way) when the lights came down and the audience applauded the entrance of Maestro Levine.

“The lights have come down, Maestro James Levine has entered the pit as the audience voices its approval with their applause, and our performance of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s ‘La Prophete’ continues with the Second... Act...” While I'm glad he hadn't thought to interview me, I was hoping he would at least have made up some call-letters for his station, but apparently he had not. Nor did I ever hear him mention his name.

Again, he was silent during the music. During the pauses between scenes, he might do a quick voice-over to explain why we weren’t hearing anything, give a quick mention of what we might expect in the next scene, all good features of a live radio broadcast: once the music began, the microphone-holding hand came down, and he never said a word.

And so it went for what was actually a very long performance (if it wasn’t over just before midnight, it certainly seemed like it). At the very end, he described each of the singers’ costumes during the bows, going on interminably just as the Met broadcasts still do to this day, and when the applause stopped and the Golden Curtain descended on yet another performance at the legendary Metropolitan Opera House, he intoned “And so the Golden Curtain descends on yet another great performance at the legendary Metropolitan Opera House.” I would have disagreed about the “great” but then I wasn’t going home to play Critic and write up a review for my blog (oh wait, I didn’t have one in those days). He got up, carefully tucked his pretend microphone into his pocket and went out into the lobby, satisfied with another broadcast successfully completed.

In all the performances I attended at the Met in those years, I never once saw him again. How could I miss him!? It may have been one of the more memorable performances I ever attended in my life only because of him (the opera, its production and the performance were all, admittedly, disappointing), but at least he did not spoil the experience itself for me, and for that I thank him.

Unlike other people who seem to think it would have been okay to do that during the music. Or to answer their cell-phone: not even to say "I'm in a concert, I'll call you back" but "I'm in a concert, what do you want?"

Backstage after that performance of the Schubert Quintet I'd mentioned earlier, I was telling cellist Paul Katz about the “eccentric gentleman” in the audience he'd somehow missed. He mentioned how, years ago, one man sat himself down, front row center, just as a concert was about to begin, then reached into his inside jacket pocket to pull out... a baton. He proceeded to conduct the Cleveland Quartet throughout the entire performance – and rather badly, Katz noted. It was one of the most difficult performances they ever gave, he said, trying to ignore this man they couldn’t help but see just a few feet in front of their music stands.

Just makes you wonder, out there, just... makes you... wonder...

Dr. Dick

Lady Mondegreen & the Buttocks-Pressing Song

Okay, it's been a tough couple of months, so perhaps something on the lighter side, this time.

Sometimes we only half-hear things or perhaps half-remember them... They can be embarrassing, when you’re thinking of one word and something that only sounds like it comes out of your mouth: if nothing else, it can take the brain in a whole different direction.

I remember someone who, for some reason or other, had mentioned a new diet plan – the “South Park” Diet. I was trying to imagine how the characters on South Park could actually promote a diet plan: perhaps that was what killed Kenny?

Years ago, when I lived in New York City, I was shopping at Patelson’s Music Store buying some orchestral scores (it’s a shop I referred to as “The Best Little Score-House in Town,” now alas a victim of the present-day economy). Next to me, a harried clerk had taken a phone call from someone looking for the Kodaly “Buttocks-Pressing Song.”

Kodaly – pronounced KOH-dai – was a Hungarian composer (see photo, left) who collected a lot of folk songs across Eastern Europe.

The clerk muttered something about odd folk customs one might find in Eastern Europe (immediately, the whole Monty Python “Fish-Slapping Dance” ran through my mind).

No, no “Buttocks-Pressing Song” by Zoltan Kodaly in stock. He even checked under Kodaly’s colleague Bela Bartok, who also published arrangements of hundreds of folk songs, and found nothing there, either.

Then he asked whether it was part of a set or an individual piece.

“An old English dance hall song?” he said in disbelief.

It turns out she was looking for “Could I but Express in Song.”

Having “googled” this more recently, I found it’s actually a frequently committed occurance, one that’s been around a while – and it’s not an English dance hall song but a sentimental ballad by the Russian composer, Leonid Malashkin.

That doesn’t mean the harried clerk hadn’t heard what he thought he heard.

Over the years, spending much time at a radio station, a colleague was asked about “The Errant Hornpipe” which we finally figured out must be by Handel: two sections of his famous Water Music, the “Air and Hornpipe.”

These are known as Mondegreens – something you hear that’s close but not close enough to win you a cigar.

“They have slain the Earl of Moray / And Lady Mondegreen,”  as a famous Scottish ballad goes.

How romantic, you might think.

Except the correct last line is “and laid him on the green”.

It's like wondering who Round John Virgin is in “Silent Night” or why the song called "Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear" isn't really about a bear at all.

And why is "Shirley, Good Mrs. Murphy" following you all the days of your life?

A friend of mine when she was 5 would sing “We shall come rejoicing, singing in the trees,” apparently because she had no idea what “bringing in the sheaves” meant.

Or another friend who enlivened childhood renderings of “Jingle Bells” by singing about “one whore, soap and sleigh” whether he knew what it meant or not.

A link I keep in my computer for a moment when I need a laugh was inspired by a Mondegreen from Verdi’s opera, Rigoletto, compounded of course by being in Italian but sounding like the tenor (here sung by Pavarotti) has a thing for elephants.

The original Italian is “e di pensier,” which basically means “and her thoughts” at the end of the Duke’s famous aria, “La donna é mobile” (which might come out “ La donna immobile” if it refers to the soprano Jess Enormous).

Now whenever I hear this aria, I can’t get “elephants, yeah” out of my mind!

Dr. Dick

Stravinsky's 3 Pieces for String Quartet: Behind the Music

The Juilliard Quartet is performing these seemingly insignificant little pieces (I mean, 3 very different pieces in about 7 or 8 minutes of music) which are very difficult to program and sometimes difficult to understand, they're so short.

But there really is a complex context around them, in terms of the music itself, what was going on in the composer's life at the time and the history of the time they were composed, not to mention the significance they play in the development of Stravinsky's style following his most famous work, premiered the previous year, his ballet The Rite of Spring, generally regarded as the work that began what we think of as 20th Century Music.

That's what I explore in this post, "Stravinsky's 3 Pieces: Building Bridges" over at the Market Square Concerts' Blog.

And this just added: a post about the Mozart Quartet, K.464, one of the "Haydn" Quartets, on the program - Mozart & Haydn: The Birth of a Musical Legacy.

- Dick Strawser

An Autumnal Interlude: from Haydn's "Seasons"

Though it's felt like autumn much of this past week, it officially begins at 5:05am EDT (that's 9:05am GMT) today (Friday, September 23rd) so I thought, after all these posts about very serious things, here's something to just sit back and listen to.

Soprano Gundula Janowitz sings the role of the peasant girl Hanne, tenor Peter Schreier sings Lukas and bass Martti Talvela sings Simon, along with the Wiener Singverein and the Vienna Symphony conducted by Karl Böhm in this classic DG recording of the "Autumn" section of Franz Josef Haydn's secular oratorio, The Seasons.

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Usually,I'm no great fan of many videos you might find on YouTube - copyright issues aside - and rather than spending hours trying to find one that might suit, I thought this one would be good for this post. Not an ideal recording (though, for its time, a fine performance), it also includes the texts in German and a less legible English translation. Admittedly, given the nature of the libretto (which Haydn detested), it might be better not to know what they're singing...

(Aside from other obnoxious issues I've recently been having with posting on Blogger, I can't seem to get these video embeds to fit in here, any more: though I'm using the smallest possible setting available, even smaller custom settings fail to fit. Grrrr... well, like I said about the text, anyway...)

Well, here's an English translation of the text for most of Part III (Autumn): unfortunately, the site I found does not include every number...

21. Overture (Expressing the Farmer’s delight at the rich harvest)
21a. Recitative Hannah
Whate’er the blossomed Spring put in white promise forth, Whate’er the Summer’s sun swelled to a full perfection, now in bounteous Autumn rejoice the heart of man.

22. Recitative Lucas, Simon
Rich, silent, deep, the harvest stands, far as the circling eye can see; The granaries can scarcely hold th’abundance of the flowing fields. The labourer’s pains are now repaid; and as he glances round on every side the prospect gladdens his grateful heart.

23. Trio & Chorus Simon, Hannah, Lucas
Thus Nature, with a lavish hand, rewards the toil of man; and in the lap of Industry the mellow plenty falls. Her bounties shine, in Autumn, unconfined. These are the gifts of honest toil: The cottage where we dwell; The clothing that we wear; The produce that we eat. These are the gifts bestowed by thee, O toil, O honest toil. Thou source of virtuousness - uniting every gentle heart: Thou source of justice - protecting every erring heart: Thou source of moral strength - which governs every cultured heart. O toil, O honest toil, from thee springs every good.

26. Recitative Simon Where once the plenteous harvest wav’d, some uninvited guests appear: scared from the stubble limps the hare, and, scampering, the harvest mouse. The farmer sees no wrong, and lets these creatures take their humble dole. The gleaners spread around and feed on nature’s charity. The clamour of the sportsman’s gun is heard, fast-thundering. With shouts resounding from the hills, wild for the chase, the huntsmen come.

27. Aria Simon
Behold, along the ravaged fields the spaniel goes in search of scent; and still obedient to command, he follows it unerringly. But now his senses are aroused; he hears the chiding voices no more. He races, and in mid-career he scents the game, and stiff, with open nose, he stands. In vain they beat their idle wings upon the surges of the air; though borne aloft they are not safe: the shot rings out from the fowler’s gun and down they fall from the towering height.

29. Chorus
Hark the mountains resound! The vales and forests ring! It is the shrill-sounding hunting-horn - the cry of the hounds and the huntsmen! The noble stag is roused by fear; and eagerly all of the pack pursue. See how he leaps, See how he bounds, O see how he flies! He bursts the thickets and sweeps through the glade, and fleeter than wind seeks the sheltering wood. The hounds have lost the scent; dispersed they seek the latent prey. Tally ho! The clamour of the hunting-horn has gathered them up again. Tally ho! With ardour redoubled, up behind the stag comes again the inhuman rout. Surrounded now on every side, he stands at bay and groans in anguish, while the pack hang at his chest. The clamorous horn proclaims the kill, relaying the glories of the chase, the death of the stag and the sportsman’s joy. Hurrah!

30. Recitative Hannah, Simon, Lucas
The vineyard now its wealth displays, with bending boughs and clusters clear, that swell refulgent on the day, as thus they brighten with their juice. The rural youths and maids, exulting rove the fields, each fond for each to cull the sweet Autumnal prime, and speak the vintage nigh. See how the loaded vats foam in transparent floods, while in their festive joy the jocund sound re-echoes. Thus they rejoice, nor think of the toil, from early morn to set of sun; but, when they see the juices ferment, their work gives way to merriment.

31. Chorus
Joyful the liquor flows, that by degrees refined, high-sparkling cheers the soul! Hurrah! Produce the mighty bowl! Now let us merry be! Let us drink now, drink in festive joy. Let us sing now, sing in festive joy. Hip, hip, hurrah! Three cheers for the wine! Three cheers for the soil that did no wrong; Three cheers for the vat that made it strong; Three cheers for the bowl we pass along. Let us drink now, fill the glasses, Once more let us drink in festive joy. Hurrah! Let’s praise the juice divine! Hey there! Three cheers for the wine! A band from the village now starts up the dancing: The fiddle is scraping, The organ is groaning, The bagpipe is droning. The children are prancing, The youths to the sound are advancing. The girls in their arms now are dancing An old country dance. Trip it, trip it, foot it featly! Trip it, trip it, step it neatly! Good fellows all, come fill the bowl! And drain it down! Gaily singing! Laughter ringing! Hip, hip, hip, hurrah! Joyous and jocund, let’s merry be! And now let all the company In friendly manner all agree Let’s merry be this joyful day! Hang sorrow! Let’s cast care away! Let us now both sport and play! Three cheers for the wine, the noble wine, that joyfully now appears! Let’s praise the juice divine. All hail to the wine. All hail!

(...remember what I said about the text? yeah...)

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On this first weekend of Autumn, however, I'll be taking in the first concert of the season with the Harrisburg Symphony conducted by Stuart Malina - a mostly-Russian program with Rachmaninoff's 1st Piano Concerto and Prokofiev's 5th Symphony. The odd-man-out here is Franz Liszt, a Hungarian-born pianist and composer who wrote a series of rhapsodies based on gypsy themes, six of which have also been orchestrated. The 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody, the most popular of these, opens the concerts - Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm at the Forum. An hour earlier, the orchestra's assistant conductor Tara Simoncic will be offering a pre-concert talk in the auditorium free to ticket-holders.

Then next weekend, it's the Juilliard Quartet who'll be coming to town, performing the curious and brief Three Pieces for String Quartet by Igor Stravinsky, Janáček’s 1st String Quartet inspired by Tolstoy's "The Kreutzer Sonata," and one of the string quartets Mozart dedicated to his friend, Haydn, the Quartet in A Major, K.464. That's at Whitaker Center, Oct. 1st at 8pm.

Personally, between all the rain and the flood - geez, the third worst flood in Central Pennsylvania since 1900 - I'm certainly glad to see this summer end. Now for the new season - both Autumn and the 2011-2012 Season!

Winter will be here, soon enough...

- Dick Strawser

Tolstoy & The Kreutzer Sonata: Literature & Music

I’ve discovered that reading Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata on a gloomy morning is not the best way to start the day. 

Preparing the post about Janáček’s 1st String Quartet for the Market Square Concerts blog, I decided I should reread the novella. 

If you’re not familiar with it or haven’t read it yourself, you can check out this wikipedian summary, the eQuivalent of Cliffs Notes.

You can read the complete novella here.

(If you think musical terminology is vague or confusing, consider this: a novella, too short for a novel and too long for a short story, is considered to be about 17,500 words to 40,000 words, though National Novel Writing Month (coming up in six weeks) considers a novel to be at least 50,000 words. On the other hand, “in Russian, novella is ‘povest’ (повесть), while novel is ‘roman’ (роман); short story is ‘rasskaz’ (рассказ) and it is the extremely brief form that is called ‘novella’ (новелла).” Perhaps more to the point, a novel has more characters, subplots and development of ideas whereas a novella has more focus on one unified plot from a single point of view.)

Tolstoy’s novella “is an argument for the ideal of sexual abstinence and an in-depth first-person description of jealous rage. The main character, Pozdnyshev, relates the events leading up to his killing his wife; in his analysis, the root causes for the deed were the 'animal excesses' and 'swinish connection' governing the relation between the sexes."

In an essay entitled “The Lesson of The Kreutzer Sonata”, Tolstoy (photographed here in 1908) explains his view of the subject matter. Regarding carnal love and a spiritual, Christian life, he points out that not Christ, but the Church (which he despised and which in turn excommunicated him) instituted marriage. "The Christian's ideal is love of God and his neighbor, self-renunciation in order to serve God and his neighbor; carnal love – marriage – means serving oneself, and therefore is, in any case, a hindrance in the service of God and men".

Of course, his religious viewpoints evolved over several years and might stem from the summer he began reading Schopenhauer in the late-1870s, while in the midst of writing Anna Karenina, a conversion he then shared with the character Levin. In 1882, he published “A Confession” which documented many of his new-found ideas, rejecting many traditional religious and social viewpoints.

Tolstoy, completing The Kreutzer Sonata in 1889, found himself confronted by controversy when attempting to publish it. Mimeographed copies – and I was surprised to see that Edison had patented a mimeograph machine in 1876 – circulated in Russia until it was officially available in print (see photo, right).

However, the book also ran into problems in the United States in 1890 when the United States Post Office prohibited the mailing of newspapers containing serialized installments of The Kreutzer Sonata, a decision later confirmed by the U.S. Attorney General .  

The New York Times reported in August, 1890, that four street vendors were “captured” by a New York City 1st Precinct policeman with cartfuls of “mutilated paper-covered reprints” of Tolstoy’s banned novel, admitting they’d received them from a “Barclay Street publishing house” and hawking them with the sign “Suppressed” in order to attract potential buyers’ attention.

The judge at their hearing was told by the prosecuting attorney that this book “came within the category of indecent literature,” showing the judge a specially marked copy with specifically marked passages.

Justice White, in the Tombs Police Court, apparently found “nothing likely to affect public morals” and felt the peddlers’ offense (“if any had been committed”) was misleading the public by “parading the book as a suppressed publication.” The peddlers and the publishers were then summoned for a further appearance.

Apparently, the case went on to the Common Pleas Court No. 4 in Philadelphia where, on Sept. 24th, 1890, Judge M. Russell Thayer ruled that Tolstoy’s novel, The Kreutzer Sonata, was not obscene.

He was quoted in the New York Times that day as stating in his opinion “[t]he book is a novel, possessing very little dramatic interest or literary merit. There is nothing in this book which can by any possibility be said to commend licentiousness, or to make it in any respect attractive, or to tempt any one to its commission. On the contrary, all its teachings paint lewdness and immorality in the most revolting colors. Nor is there any obscenity or indecency in the language used or in the story told, however it may offend a refined taste. It undoubtedly teaches the doctrine… that celibacy is better than marriage and a higher and purer state of being. And that it is the idea of a perfect Christian life, to which all Christian men and women should aspire. This strikes us, of course, as being very absurd and ridiculous, and as being opposed alike to Christianity and to the best interests of society. It may even seem to us to be the product of a diseased mind, yet the doctrine is by no means new in the world. The same idea was prevalent among many of the early Christians, who looked upon marriage as one of the consequences of the fall, and regarded it as has been said by a writer upon this subject as a tolerated admission of an impure and sinful nature.”

(Reading this 121 years later, I am reminded of the on-going arguments for and against the equality of marriage issues being discussed in our nation’s courts and legislatures today, but I digress… If proponents for the acceptance of marriage – arguing certain historical, social and practical considerations of the time – had meekly acquiesced to the teaching of these early Church fathers, it is very likely there would no Christians alive today to continue the argument.)

The Judge continues, “[t]he hermits and anchorites of the early Christian times considered abstinence from marriage and from all sexual commerce as the triumph of sanctity and the proof and means of spiritual perfection. Modern Christianity, with cleaner and more sensible view of the subject, while it denounces licentiousness, looks upon marriage as a divine institution. Roman Catholics regard it with the veneration of a sacrament, and all Christian sects see in it an institution which lies at the foundation of all civilized society.” (He ignores certain sects, including the Shakers and the Ephrata Cloisters, where celibacy was a requirement of membership, not to mention the Catholic attitude towards its priests and its monasteries.)

The Judge continues, “Count Tolstoi’s ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ may contain very absurd and foolish views about marriage. It may shock our ideas of the sanctity and nobility of that important relation, but it cannot on that account be called an obscene libel. There is no obscenity in it. On the contrary, it denounces obscenity of every description on almost every page. Nor can the language in which he expresses his ideas be said to be in any proper sense obscene, lewd or indecent. It is not against the law to print or sell books which contain ideas and doctrines upon religious subjects which conflict with and are contrary to the orthodox teachings upon the subject. Every man has the right under such a government as ours to discuss such questions, either orally or in print, if he does so in a proper and becoming manner, and does not in doing so violate the decencies of life. He may call in question and argue against any received doctrine of the Christian faith, if he uses in doing so proper and becoming language but if one should introduce into such a discussion blasphemous language or ideas, or obscene, lewd, or indecent thoughts or words, or should make his description the occasion for reviling and scoffing at the most sacred things, or speaking of them in a profane, abusive, or indecent manner, he would unquestionably be liable to be indicted and punished therefor.

“But a careful and critical reading of the whole book has clearly convinced us that it is not liable to the charge of either obscenity or indecency. On the contrary, as we have already said, its whole purpose and scope is to denounce those vices in the severest manner. The fact that the author in discussing the question of marriage has come to some silly and very absurd conclusions, opposed alike to what is ordinarily conceived to be the Christian doctrine on the subject and the general opinion of civilized societies throughout the world, does not make its publication or sale a violation of the law. The work may be offensive to our opinions and convictions, just as others are which are daily sold in our book stores without objection or challenge from anybody, but it cannot be justly said to be of an obscene or lewd character; nor is it either in its sentiments or language in any degree calculated to minister to corrupt or licentious practices or to gratify lewd desires, or to encourage depravity in any form.”

I particularly like Judge Thayer’s concluding statement:

“The court was reminded upon the argument that the Czar of Russia and the Post Office officials of the United States have condemned this book as an unlawful publication; that the former has prohibited its sale within his dominions and the latter has forbidden its transmission through the mails. Without disparaging in any degree the respect due to these high officials within their respective spheres, I can only say that neither of them has ever been recognized in this country as a binding authority in questions of either law or literature.”

That did not stop Theodore Roosevelt, then a member of the United States Civil Service Commission, from calling Tolstoy a "sexual moral pervert."

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When I started rereading the novella (my 1957 Vintage edition, translated by Isai Kamen, is 115 pages long), I soon realized I had not bothered to finish it the first time around, back in the mid-1970s.

(See photo, right, taken in 1908, of Tolstoy in his study.)

Rather than finding the author’s arguments about marriage “obscene,” I think I simply found the form of the piece – the first 52 pages are like reading a lecture (sermon, perhaps “screed” would be better terms) – tedious. At the time, I was just more interested in (pardon the expression) a ripping good story.

Back then, I was also reading Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and I practically glossed over (with glazed eyes) the “boring” bits that form the secondary plot of the novel, the bits that are eliminated from any staged or filmed version of the story of a woman who gives up her happily married family life to live with the man she loves. Tolstoy’s theories on agrarian reform and the other philosophical musings as expressed by the character Levin might pale by comparison, like space-filling interludes between the meat of the matter, but they are an important part of the novel's overall scope. (Maybe it’s time to re-read this one, too, since I’d added the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation to my library a few years ago.)

This is no different than his novel, War and Peace which I’ve read at three different stages in my life and found different reactions to it each time. The first time, as a kid, I remember skipping over much of the theorizing on the nature of history to get to the “good parts” with their thrilling battle scenes.

The second time, now in my 20s and in the midst of the Viet-Nam War, I realized how much those “good parts” were effectively and strikingly “anti-war” despite being considered great writing about heroic war-time events.

The third time, more recently, I tended to focus on the philosophizing more than the personal romance of the story which is usually what seems to attract film-makers and what most people tend to remember about the book. Though I was familiar with the story, I still found myself discovering new insights into the characters and their relationships.

(You can read my previous post about the impact of reading War and Peace this last time, during another period of modern warfare.)

So, this time, I persevered through Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata and while I still find the philosophical hectoring annoying, I also still find myself wishing somehow Tolstoy had followed the frequent writer’s advice, “don’t tell – show.”

Still, the story – depressing as it is – is a powerful one, particularly once it turns more to the “story” itself, the dramatic conflict between Pozdnyshev and his unnamed wife. And guess what: the building rage in the husband’s narrative is psychologically more compelling than if we were observing it second-hand through an omniscient narrator.

No doubt, had Tolstoy been forced to submit his work to a focus group, it would have ended up being about 60 pages long, if that, all the philosophizing about morality and society and the institution of marriage left on the cutting room floor. Even the violent scene about the murder would be considered tame compared to what one sees on TV these days (been there/done that, in a manner of speaking).

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With the intensity of such a dramatic situation, it’s not surprising it was adapted to the stage. In 1906, it ran on Broadway (see photos, right and below left). An article in the British newspaper, the Guardian – “The Kreutzer Sonata: Three Degrees of Separation” by Emerson Quartet violinist, Eugene Drucker, a novelist himself – included a photograph from a stage adaptation from 2009.  There were several film adaptations as well, three of them between 1911-1915. And of course, there is Prinet’s famous painting, “The Kreutzer Sonata” from 1901 (see header illustration) depicting an event that actually is never described (only imagined) in Tolstoy’s original: a passionate kiss between the violinist and the wife, one hand still connecting to the piano, carried away by the music’s passion.

Keep in mind that the husband in Tolstoy’s narrative is telling the story and much of what he mentions may or may not have happened – like that kiss – implied only in the way jealous minds imagine possibilities, then accept them as likelihoods before believing they are realities.

As I mentioned in the Market Square Concerts blog post, Janáček in his string quartet came to this not as a literal representation of its dramatic potential but as a psychological portrait seen from the vantage point of the wife.  

Curiously, in his later years, Tolstoy’s new-found religious attitudes created severe difficulties between himself and his long-suffering wife, Sofia (or Sonya). Their early years may have been marked by “sexual passion and emotional insensitivity,” a comment which makes The Kreutzer Sonata sound a bit autobiographical. She bore him 13 children, five of whom died in childhood (see family photo, below right, taken two years before he finished The Kreutzer Sonata). He died in 1910 at the age of 82, running off during the winter following a bitter argument with his wife, only to die in a nearby train station.

Though Janáček first began working on a string quartet – and then a piano trio – inspired by Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata in 1908, it wasn’t until 1923 that he actually composed the quartet we know by that name. Between those years, his own marriage deteriorated and they had already agreed to a mutual “in-house” separation before the composer met Kamila Stösslová in 1917.

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Tolstoy was considered a “Christian anarchist” but also had very strong views about other matters, not just religion and society. In addition to ideas about property and agrarian reform, he also was very clear about his views on art. For instance, he thought Shakespeare lacked any merit: reading the Bard’s most famous plays, he wrote, “not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium...".

His attitude about music is also obvious in this excerpt from Chapter 23 of The Kreutzer Sonata, when Tolstoy’s character describes the affect listening to music has on him. He had invited certain musically inclined friends to a dinner party and a little musicale with his wife playing the piano for this violinist named Trukhashevsky, a man he is already jealous of.

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“They played Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata,” he continued. “Do you know the first presto? You do?” he cried. “Ugh! Ugh! It is a terrible thing, that sonata. And especially that part. And in general music is a dreadful thing! What is it? I don’t understand it. What is music? What does it do? And why does it do what it does? They say music exalts the soul. Nonsense, it is not true! It has an effect, an awful effect – I am speaking of myself – but not of an exalting kind. It has neither an exalting nor a debasing effect but it produces agitation. How can I put it? Music makes me forget myself, my real position; it transports me to some other position, not my own. Under the influence of music it seems to me that I feel what I do not really feel, that I understand what I do not understand, that I can do what I cannot do. I explain it by the fact that music acts like yawning, like laughter: I am not sleepy but I yawn when I see someone yawning; there is nothing for me to laugh at, but I laugh when I hear people laughing.

“Music carries me immediately and directly into the mental condition in which the man was who composed it. My soul merges with his and together with him I pass from one condition into another, but why this happens I don’t know. You see, he who wrote, let’s say, the Kreutzer Sonata – Beethoven – knew of course why he was in that condition; that condition caused him to do certain actions and therefore that condition had a meaning for him, but for me – none at all. That is why music only agitates and doesn’t lead to a conclusion. Well, when a military march is played the soldiers march to the music and the music has achieved its object. A dance is played, I dance and the music has achieved its object. Mass has been sung, I receive Communion, and that music too has reached a conclusion. Otherwise it is only agitating, and what ought to be done in that agitation is lacking. That is why music sometimes acts so dreadfully, so terribly. In China, music is a State affair. And that is as it should be. How can one allow anyone who pleases to hypnotize another, or many others, and do what he likes with them? And especially that this hypnotist should be the first immoral man who turns up?

“It is a terrible instrument in the hands of any chance user! Take that Kreutzer Sonata, for instance, how can that first presto be played in a drawing-room among ladies wearing low-necked dresses? To hear that played, to clap a little and then to eat ices and talk of the latest scandal? Such things should only be played on certain important significant occasions, and then only when certain actions answering to such music are wanted; play it then and do what the music has moved you to. Otherwise an awakening of energy and feeling unsuited both to the time and the place, to which no outlet is given, cannot but act harmfully. At any rate that piece had a terrible effect on me; it was as if quite new feelings, new possibilities, of which I had till then been unaware, had been revealed to me. ‘That’s how it is: not at all as I used to think and live, but that way,’ something seemed to say within me. What this new thing was that had been revealed to me I could not explain to myself, but the consciousness of this new condition was very joyous. All those same people, including my wife and him, appeared in a new light.

“After that allegro they played the beautiful but common and unoriginal andante with trite variations and the very weak finale. Then, at the request of the visitors, they played Ernst’s Elegy and a few small pieces. They were all good, but they did not produce on me a one-hundredth part of the impression the first piece had. The effect of the first piece formed the background for them all.”

( Tolstoy: The Kreutzer Sonata – translated by Aylmer Maude. Signet Classic edition, New American Library, New York 1960.)
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I’ll close with an anecdote about Tolstoy’s musical taste.

In January, 1900, Sergei Rachmaninoff and the great bass, Fyodor Chaliapin, were invited to Tolstoy’s home, Yasnaya Polyana (see photograph of birches along the main entrance to the estate).

Rachmaninoff played one of his own compositions, then accompanied Chaliapin in his song “Fate,” which is partly based on the famous opening of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.

After the performance, Tolstoy spoke to Rachmaninoff (who was still smarting from the disastrous premiere of his first symphony almost three years earlier), asking him, “Is such music needed by anyone? I must tell you how I dislike it all. Beethoven is nonsense.”

Later, as his guests were leaving, Tolstoy obliquely apologized to the young composer.

“Forgive me if I’ve hurt you by my comments.”

Rachmaninoff, so the story goes, responded, “How could I be hurt on my own account if I was not hurt on Beethoven’s?”

One wonders what he would have thought about the intense and often neurotic music Janáček wrote inspired by one of his most intense and neurotic stories?

- Dick Strawser