Below is the text of the keynote address I offered the attendees of the Center in the Square (CITS) Annual Dinner Sept 16, upon the request of some inquiring minds. I should say it's the text upon which my speech was based, since I didn't stick literally to the "script."
(I will return soon with an article or two about the upcoming MET HD broadcasts, and Opera Roanoke's season opener, Faust & Furious).
Thank you, Steven. I can't begin to express the depth of my gratitude for not only this opportunity and all those you've afforded me, but for one of the most important friendships in my life. Roanoke is incredibly fortunate to have you and Elizabeth in our midst. I also want to thank Jim (Sears) and George (Cartledge), all the CITS staff, the volunteers, and everyone involved in the capital campaign. It is a sign of your visionary leadership and commitment that you have mounted such a successful campaign in this climate. I'm reminded of one of my favorite quotes. Writing on the eve of WWII, C.S. Lewis observed:
"If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun."
Why Opera and why Opera Roanoke? I will try to answer both in about 7.’
We are about to begin our 35th Season: Hear, See, Believe:
Hear the Drama; See the Music; Believe it’s Opera Roanoke.
The experience of opera itself is one of the WHY’S. Looking for inspiration where other answers go, I turned to one of my heroes, Clint Eastwood. There are many days when I look in the mirror and ask "Well, punk; do you feel lucky?" And the answer most days is yes. Seriously, I was inspired by Clint's recent film Invictus, where Nelson Mandela (played by Morgan Freeman) inspires the captain of the (mostly) white rugby team (played by Matt Damon) with the question HOW?
“How do we inspire ourselves to greatness, when nothing less will do?
How do we inspire everyone around us? It is by using the work of others…"
So, I'm going to follow that advice and use the words of others to describe our opera season...
Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work… Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.
The Chicago Architect, Daniel Burnham, writing at the turn of the 20th century, could have been talking about our Opening concert, Faust and Furious, A Ride with the Devil. Mo. White will lead more performers than ever assembled on the Shaftman Hall stage in bringing an immortal tale to life. Joining three world-class, internationally-fêted stars will be the RSO & RSOC, my professional chorus, the Virginia Chorale, the Liberty University Chorale and our own Roanoke College Children's Chorus. 300 performers in a concert like you've never heard!
And if you don't recall that Goethe was the Shakespeaere of Germany, don't worry. If you need to "brush up your Goethe," fear not. Like all opera, it’s about love & death. Eros & Thanatos. Served with a twist. In this case, Satan. So save the date or be damned. You don’t have to sell your soul, just buy a ticket. Even if the Devil makes you do it, be there!
Opera is “larger than life”—it is so emotionally direct; it “takes the basic human emotions, pinpoints them, and magnifies them” (Bernstein), unfurling them towards you in the most splendid way imaginable! We don’t call it GRAND opera for nothing! The sheer range of expression in Opera is unsurpassable—and the means—the raw power of the naked human voice is like nothing else. The poet William Meredith puts it this way, in “About Opera:”
An image of articulateness is what it is:
Isn’t this how we’ve always longed to talk?
But it’s not GRAND in the exclusive sense, that it requires a special degree or indoctrination in order to GET it. The person sitting next to you doesn’t speak Italian either. But you both speak “human.” Opera was always meant to be a popular art, and a social one. And long before it was PC or necessitated by recessions, opera has always been the most collaborative, the most inclusive art form we have: music, word, drama, design, dance, & stagecraft & on…
Opera is the “total work of art” and makes for the grandest of experiences. And that grand, one-of-a-kind, larger-than-life world is at the heart of our season in a fully staged production of Madama Butterfly. Puccini’s masterpiece is the most popular opera in the US. If you’ve seen a great production, you know why. If you haven’t, you have two chances right here: March 18 & 20. And you can help guarantee our future as we consider the "how," "what" and "where:" join our matching-gift production fund campaign to ensure staged productions return to stay.
Our Season offers a rich variety of offerings. In between Faust & Mme Butterfly we get Intimate & personal with our Stars in the Star City Recitals. Think of these concerts as Opera Unplugged. One singer. One pianist. Nothing between his soul and your ears. Nothing between her voice and your experience.
This weekend, our colleagues in the Kandinsky Trio open their season at Roanoke College. I can’t wait to sit among the audience, forget about the rest of the world for a few blessed moments, and be transfixed by the power of Elizabeth Futral’s singing in the inimitable setting of the recital. Elizabeth will be gracing us with her beautiful voice and arresting stage presence in our Season finale, Mother's Day Serenade. Whenever I watch a great artist like Elizabeth, I feel the magic of the vicarious experience—those moments where we lose (or at least forget!) our selves and experience something other, something special, something extra-ordinary! Whether it’s attending the theater, looking at a painting, watching a film, reading a book—the vicarious experience is central to our existence. Why opera? Why NOT is the tougher question.
In Invictus, Mandela also says: we must all exceed our own expectations...
CITS is doing just that with its visionary campaign. And we at Opera Roanoke are thrilled to be a part of it, excited by the possibilities for collaboration, innovation, and rejuvenation. Among our new ventures this year are the MET HD broadcasts, hosted by Virginia Western Community College, and through their generous sponsorship, benefitting Opera Roanoke. These live, High Def movie broadcasts are a perfect entrée into the wonderful world of live opera. We are continuing our Sempre Libera program. That’s Italian for “always free” and it describes our ticket policy for students: always free. Just call us. We are launching an Apprentice program for local and regional college & university students this year. That’s the "why" and "where" for right now. And our future?
Looking ahead I envision an Opera Company that features a festival season with varied offerings of full productions in repertory, collaborating with not only our current partners like Center, the RSO & the Jeff Center, but our museums and galleries, the Ballet and MMT, and local businesses. This Opera Festival would help turn Roanoke into the tourist destination it could be, and build on the vibrant cultural center, that thanks to friends like you, it already is. Leonard Bernstein’s description of what makes opera great also applies to cities like ours:
Any great work of art is great because it creates a special world of its own. It revises and readapts time and space. And the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world; the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air…when we come out it, we are enriched and ennobled.
This is YOUR Opera Company. The great American conductor (and "father" of choral music in the US), Robert Shaw, speaking to his newly formed Collegiate Chorale in NYC, said:
This choir no longer belongs to one man. It belongs to each of us, everyone.
And what it does or fails to do from now on is your credit or your fault…
You don’t join the Collegiate Chorale. You believe it.
I will see you at the Opera. Thank you very much.
Postscript: below are the most famous couplets from the poem, Invictus. Below that is the excerpt Mandela actually read to the Rugby captain to inspire the team.
from Invictus, by William Ernest Henley
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul...
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena…who strives valiantly; who errs… because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. (Theodore Roosevelt, April, 1910)
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Arts Education: Against Ignorance
The following arrived in my inbox today from Opera America:
National Arts in Education Week, September 12-18, 2010
On July 26, the House of Representatives passed a resolution designating the second week of September National Arts in Education Week. Introduced by Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D-CA), the Congressional Resolution declares, "Arts education, comprising a rich array of disciplines including dance, music, theater, media arts, literature, design and visual arts, is a core academic subject and an essential element of a complete and balanced education for all students."
How telling that so essential a topic as arts education has been completely ignored as the nation focuses on a prospective act of base ignorance, the so-called "International Burn-a-Koran Day" scheduled for September 11 by an ignorant pastor and his misguided flock of 50 in Gainesville, FL.
One article I saw earlier today had the best advice I've seen yet:
"The best way to respond to Quran burnings is Quran readings, recitations, teaching, learning, sharing, living the best of the principles found therein," said Zaheer Ali, a New York Muslim leader and doctoral student at Columbia University. The pastor in question, Terry Jones, would make an excellent candidate for Ali's assignment, since he admitted having "no experience with it [The Quran] whatsoever."
One month ago I posted an essay called "An Ideal of International Harmony" and it referenced conductors like Georg Solti's and Daniel Barenboim's efforts to bring together ensembles of international personnel to embody just such an ideal.
Consciousness and conscience have been much on mind and in my heart this summer. While I try never to use this platform as a political forum, nor even veer towards the polemic, I do think we--as artists and fundamentally, human beings--should be more bold in affirming our common humanity and speaking, singing, playing & acting against ignorance.
I have also been referencing disparate voices that have been on my reading list this summer, and as is my wont, trying my best to weave them together with common threads. I believe one of my primary roles as an artistic director is to be an educator. And not just to middle, high school, and university students. The E.M. Foster epigram, "only connect" motivates me to fill in gaps in my own education. Gaps in our heads lead to holes in our hearts. Ignorance is the enemy of empathy. When coupled with fear & fueled by prejudice, ignorance leads to atrocities like the Inquisition and the Holocaust. The multi-layered textures of art are an antidote to ignorance. They are a rich source of tradition & learning, inspiration & innovation, and are a great place to start filling in those gaps of consciousness and conscience.
One of the compliments I treasure most is when someone remarks on the thoughtfulness of my programming. One of the Chorale's critics wrote last fall "if any area organization takes its education mission seriously, it is the Virginia Chorale." He was not referring to our Young Singers Project. He was referencing an eclectic program that combined familiar and unfamiliar repertoire, and juxtaposed Renaissance madrigals with a modern Shakespeare setting by Dominick Argento dedicated to the tragedy of September 11, 2001.
Another recent addition to my summer reading list is a new biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Its subtitle is "Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy." Bonhoeffer was executed for his role in the Stauffenberg "Die Walküre" plot to assassinate Hitler (the story was made into a recent film starring Tom Cruise, Valkyrie).
The book's chapters feature epigrams from Bonhoeffer's incisive writings and quotes worth remembering:
"When books are burned, they will, in the end, burn people, too."
That quote by the German, Jewish-born poet Heinrich Heine mirrors Sigmund Freud's chilling observation (following a 1933 "cleansing" of "un-German" books): "Only our books? In earlier times they would have burned us with them."
One of the most famous poems of conscience is quoted in Eric Metaxas' biography. It comes from a colleague of Bonhoeffer's, who made the tragic mistake of giving Hitler an early benefit of the doubt.
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Jew.
And then they came for me--
and there was no one left to speak for me.
--Martin Niemöller
The Muslim holy month of Ramadan has just ended, and the Jewish High Holy Days have just begun. I listened to my favorite Chanticleer recording earlier in honor of the interconnectedness of the three central Abrahamic faiths (that would be Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, in order of seniority). And on Earth, Peace features movements representing all three. The Turkish-American composer Kamran Ince contributed "Gloria (Everywhere)" which opens with a wonderfully fragrant image from the 13th century Sufist poet Rumi (who lived in what is now Afghanistan):
everywhere
the aroma of God
begins to arrive
The heart of the 12' movement sings an interfaith message of international harmony:
Moslems and Christians and Jews
raising their hands to the sky
their chanting voice in unison
begin to arrive
Later on the poet offers an antidote to ignorance all sides of today's bitterly divided world should heed:
if your eyes are marred
with petty visions
wash them with tears
your teardrops are healers
as they begin to arrive
(from Fountain of Fire, Rumitrans. by Nader Khalili,
Burning Gate Press, 1994, and CalEarth, 1996)
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." Wittgenstein's most famous aphorism creates a wide berth of application. Those who have not read the Quran and have not had conversations with Muslims have no business speaking about the subject, whether it be a Muslim community center in lower Manhattan or Islam itself.
"Those who do not know history are destined to repeat it," said the founder of modern political conservatism, Edmund Burke. One of the best op-ed pieces I've read during this xenophobic summer comes from The Philadelphia Inquirer's Dick Polman. "Where has all the love gone?" was reprinted in Sunday's Virginian-Pilot. He quotes at length comments "in the best American tradition" of considerable insight & intelligence, from a source that might surprise quite a few readers. They come from a 2007 ceremony at the Islamic Center in Washington:
"We come to express our appreciation for a faith that has enriched civilization for centuries. We come in celebration of America's diversity of faith and our unity as free people. And we hold in our hearts the ancient wisdom of the great Muslim poet Rumi: 'The lamps are different, but the light is the same.'" (George W. Bush)
The Chorale and Opera Roanoke are preparing to open their 2010-2011 seasons in October. The Chorale is performing music written by another victim of Hitler's Third Reich, the Lutheran composer, Hugo Distler. Opera Roanoke is opening with a gala-style concert based on three different versions of Goethe's Faust legend. Goethe is to German literature what Shakespeare is to English. A paradigm of the lifelong learner, Goethe began studying Arabic in his 60's, to learn more about Islamic art and culture. Daniel Barenboim's orchestra of middle-eastern musicians is named after Goethe's cross-cultural collection of poetry, The West-Eastern Divan.
Neither program is built or centered on interfaith dialogue, consciousness or tolerance. But music has a special power. It won't stop violence nor cure ignorance. But it shines a light into the hearts of those who open to it. A light lit, to borrow from the Quran, "within a crystal of star-like brilliance."
The ancient Chinese proverb, "it is better to light one candle than curse the darkness" is eminently good advice, for activists, artists and human beings of all parties, creeds, and affiliations.
National Arts in Education Week, September 12-18, 2010
On July 26, the House of Representatives passed a resolution designating the second week of September National Arts in Education Week. Introduced by Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D-CA), the Congressional Resolution declares, "Arts education, comprising a rich array of disciplines including dance, music, theater, media arts, literature, design and visual arts, is a core academic subject and an essential element of a complete and balanced education for all students."
How telling that so essential a topic as arts education has been completely ignored as the nation focuses on a prospective act of base ignorance, the so-called "International Burn-a-Koran Day" scheduled for September 11 by an ignorant pastor and his misguided flock of 50 in Gainesville, FL.
One article I saw earlier today had the best advice I've seen yet:
"The best way to respond to Quran burnings is Quran readings, recitations, teaching, learning, sharing, living the best of the principles found therein," said Zaheer Ali, a New York Muslim leader and doctoral student at Columbia University. The pastor in question, Terry Jones, would make an excellent candidate for Ali's assignment, since he admitted having "no experience with it [The Quran] whatsoever."
One month ago I posted an essay called "An Ideal of International Harmony" and it referenced conductors like Georg Solti's and Daniel Barenboim's efforts to bring together ensembles of international personnel to embody just such an ideal.
Consciousness and conscience have been much on mind and in my heart this summer. While I try never to use this platform as a political forum, nor even veer towards the polemic, I do think we--as artists and fundamentally, human beings--should be more bold in affirming our common humanity and speaking, singing, playing & acting against ignorance.
I have also been referencing disparate voices that have been on my reading list this summer, and as is my wont, trying my best to weave them together with common threads. I believe one of my primary roles as an artistic director is to be an educator. And not just to middle, high school, and university students. The E.M. Foster epigram, "only connect" motivates me to fill in gaps in my own education. Gaps in our heads lead to holes in our hearts. Ignorance is the enemy of empathy. When coupled with fear & fueled by prejudice, ignorance leads to atrocities like the Inquisition and the Holocaust. The multi-layered textures of art are an antidote to ignorance. They are a rich source of tradition & learning, inspiration & innovation, and are a great place to start filling in those gaps of consciousness and conscience.
One of the compliments I treasure most is when someone remarks on the thoughtfulness of my programming. One of the Chorale's critics wrote last fall "if any area organization takes its education mission seriously, it is the Virginia Chorale." He was not referring to our Young Singers Project. He was referencing an eclectic program that combined familiar and unfamiliar repertoire, and juxtaposed Renaissance madrigals with a modern Shakespeare setting by Dominick Argento dedicated to the tragedy of September 11, 2001.
Another recent addition to my summer reading list is a new biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Its subtitle is "Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy." Bonhoeffer was executed for his role in the Stauffenberg "Die Walküre" plot to assassinate Hitler (the story was made into a recent film starring Tom Cruise, Valkyrie).
The book's chapters feature epigrams from Bonhoeffer's incisive writings and quotes worth remembering:
"When books are burned, they will, in the end, burn people, too."
That quote by the German, Jewish-born poet Heinrich Heine mirrors Sigmund Freud's chilling observation (following a 1933 "cleansing" of "un-German" books): "Only our books? In earlier times they would have burned us with them."
One of the most famous poems of conscience is quoted in Eric Metaxas' biography. It comes from a colleague of Bonhoeffer's, who made the tragic mistake of giving Hitler an early benefit of the doubt.
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Jew.
And then they came for me--
and there was no one left to speak for me.
--Martin Niemöller
The Muslim holy month of Ramadan has just ended, and the Jewish High Holy Days have just begun. I listened to my favorite Chanticleer recording earlier in honor of the interconnectedness of the three central Abrahamic faiths (that would be Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, in order of seniority). And on Earth, Peace features movements representing all three. The Turkish-American composer Kamran Ince contributed "Gloria (Everywhere)" which opens with a wonderfully fragrant image from the 13th century Sufist poet Rumi (who lived in what is now Afghanistan):
everywhere
the aroma of God
begins to arrive
The heart of the 12' movement sings an interfaith message of international harmony:
Moslems and Christians and Jews
raising their hands to the sky
their chanting voice in unison
begin to arrive
Later on the poet offers an antidote to ignorance all sides of today's bitterly divided world should heed:
if your eyes are marred
with petty visions
wash them with tears
your teardrops are healers
as they begin to arrive
(from Fountain of Fire, Rumitrans. by Nader Khalili,
Burning Gate Press, 1994, and CalEarth, 1996)
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." Wittgenstein's most famous aphorism creates a wide berth of application. Those who have not read the Quran and have not had conversations with Muslims have no business speaking about the subject, whether it be a Muslim community center in lower Manhattan or Islam itself.
"Those who do not know history are destined to repeat it," said the founder of modern political conservatism, Edmund Burke. One of the best op-ed pieces I've read during this xenophobic summer comes from The Philadelphia Inquirer's Dick Polman. "Where has all the love gone?" was reprinted in Sunday's Virginian-Pilot. He quotes at length comments "in the best American tradition" of considerable insight & intelligence, from a source that might surprise quite a few readers. They come from a 2007 ceremony at the Islamic Center in Washington:
"We come to express our appreciation for a faith that has enriched civilization for centuries. We come in celebration of America's diversity of faith and our unity as free people. And we hold in our hearts the ancient wisdom of the great Muslim poet Rumi: 'The lamps are different, but the light is the same.'" (George W. Bush)
The Chorale and Opera Roanoke are preparing to open their 2010-2011 seasons in October. The Chorale is performing music written by another victim of Hitler's Third Reich, the Lutheran composer, Hugo Distler. Opera Roanoke is opening with a gala-style concert based on three different versions of Goethe's Faust legend. Goethe is to German literature what Shakespeare is to English. A paradigm of the lifelong learner, Goethe began studying Arabic in his 60's, to learn more about Islamic art and culture. Daniel Barenboim's orchestra of middle-eastern musicians is named after Goethe's cross-cultural collection of poetry, The West-Eastern Divan.
Neither program is built or centered on interfaith dialogue, consciousness or tolerance. But music has a special power. It won't stop violence nor cure ignorance. But it shines a light into the hearts of those who open to it. A light lit, to borrow from the Quran, "within a crystal of star-like brilliance."
The ancient Chinese proverb, "it is better to light one candle than curse the darkness" is eminently good advice, for activists, artists and human beings of all parties, creeds, and affiliations.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Fragments & Hedgehogs...
In Guy Maddin's quirky 2003 film, The Saddest Music in the World, Isabella Rossellini holds a contest (to award the movie's title) in order to save her struggling Winnipeg brewery. I recently received a review copy of a book that anoints Barber's Adagio for Strings for the crown, entitled, The Saddest Music Ever Written.
The saddest music written in the western world is found in the death-haunted song cycles of Franz Schubert, and in his two Wilhelm Müller cycles, Die Schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, in particular. If there is music more painfully hollow than the close of the latter set, than I can't wait to be so devastated by it.
Schubert's great cycles affected every song writer who followed him, and that influence continues to be felt--not only in classical music but in the worlds of jazz, pop, dance & theater. The composer most obviously in Schubert's debt was Robert Schumann. Even when finished, the miniature form of the art-song leans toward the fragmentary, and Schumann relished this fact in his great song-cycle, Dichterliebe. The opening song famously begins in the middle of a phrase, and ends with an unresolved cadence echoing its ambiguous beginning.
What is it about the romantic fragment? Charles Rosen's book, The Romantic Generation (based on his Norton lectures at Harvard) devotes nearly a third of its 700 pages to two chapters: "Fragments" and "Mountains and Song Cycles." Musicians know his more famous The Classical Style, which is rightly one of the ur-texts on the period of Haydn, Mozart & Beethoven.
Slowly sip the following sentence (about Schubert's Schöne Müllerin) to understand why I love this book so:
"The time of this song cycle is that of Romantic landscape: not the successive events of narrative but a succession of images, of lyrical reflections which reveal the traces of the past and future within the present."
Speaking of images, he simply lists the resonances of one of the cycle's primary symbols, the color green: "green is the color of hope, the color of the fading ribbon with which the poet hangs his lute upon the wall, the traditional color of the huntsman's [rival of the poet/composer] costume, the color of cypress, of rosemary, the color of the grass that will grow upon the poet's grave. Fluctuations of meaning replace narrative: they stand duty for action."
"Fluctuations of meaning" describe one aspect of the open-endedness of fragments, symbols and images. Fragments, aphorisms & epigrams, memory & dreams, relics & ruins--each and every one may be independent, sufficient unto itself.
Like water's inexorable need to stream--its restless coursing for a path in & through which to flow--is our human desire for space, room to breathe, and literal and figurative openness.
Rosen quotes the Romantic poet (under-appreciated in the English speaking world) Friedrich Schlegel on our subject:
"A fragment should be like a little work of art, complete in itself and separate from the universe like a hedgehog."
As I imply above, the fragment satisfies one of our needs for openness: to not have everything explained, every punchline spelled out. But if the hedgehog reference is opaque:
"The hedgehog (unlike the porcupine, which shoots its quills) is an amiable creature which rolls itself into a ball when alarmed. Its form is well defined and yet blurred at the edges. This spherical shape, organic and ideally geometrical, suited Romantic thought: above all, the image projects beyond itself in a provocative way."
And isn't that what we want from any "image" (or work of art)--to project "beyond itself" and provoke/evoke/invoke thought, feeling, response, release &/or relief?
We are stimulated when the familiar is made strange and the strange made familiar (to borrow from another under-appreciated romantic, Novalis).
Barber's Adagio is itself fragmentary in that it is the central movement of a three-movement string quartet. Many fans of this piece are unaware of both its origin and the vivacious music Barber wrote to encapsulate it. That it can be taken out of context and so beloved is but one sign of its value.
Another fragmentary torso (see Rilke's great sonnet, "The Archaic Torso of Apollo," referenced often in my essays and program notes) is Mahler's unfinished 10th Symphony. The visionary Adagio he left behind would have been the opening movement of another epic symphonic canvas. The last of his own works he heard performed was his 8th Symphony. His song-cycle symphony, Das Lied von der Erde (his 9th entry in the symphonic genre) his 9th symphony and his unfinished 10th form a valedictory--if fragmented--triptych of posthumously received masterpieces.
In the literary world, a similar phenomenon is still occurring with the posthumous publications (in English, especially) of the Chilean writer, Roberto Bolaño.
I am a promiscuous reader. One version of purgatory would limit me to only one book at a time (not being able to read would be hell). In addition to a half-dozen or so open books at any given time are a number of magazines and journals I look forward to receiving regularly. My favorite section of Harper's magazine is the "Readings" section near the front. I finally opened August's issue to find an excerpt from a Bolaño "story," "Literature + Illness = Illness" from yet another posthumously published collection (he died in 2003 from liver failure at age 50).
Bolaño's fame in the English-speaking world materialized like a brilliant star in the sky we hadn't noticed. Never mind that the source of its light was extinguished. The Savage Detectives, 2666, and Nazi Literature in the Americas (novels of 700, 1,200, and 200 pages, respectively) form the triptych on which this wildly ambitious writer's fame took shape in the US beginning in 2007.
Bolaño's output during the last years of his short life is astonishing. He only began writing fiction (poetry preceded it) in his last decade. As a result, each new volume that appears is eagerly anticipated by nerdy bibliophiles like myself. Bolaño was a bibliophile himself who also lived pretty hard during his fifty years. His work, like that of many an artist, has the patina of autobiography. He lived hard and worked feverishly. The line between working one's self to death and partying one's self to death must be as gray as his diseased liver was before it--and life--failed him. Equally gray is the line between autobiography and invention in his stories.
In the recent Harper's excerpt, "The Writer is Gravely Ill," death haunts the paragraphs as it does Schubert's syphilis-tinged songs. The narrator is in hospital and is suffering from liver disease. His "story" leaps from a thin narrative thread to references ranging from French poetry to German philosophy to sexual appetite and travel, ending with the narrator's--and author's--favorite modernist, Kafka. Bolaño's wit is as unpredictable and various as the Borgesian (and Kafka-esque) layers of reference that fill his tales with a deliciously dense polyphony.
Novalis said "fragments of this kind are literary seeds...if only a few were to sprout!" In tales like Bolaño's, they have--and whether or not helped by the tragic irony of posthumous "fame"--they continue to.
Who knows if Bolaño's life may be the stuff of great theater or opera (his passionate voice certainly sings with verismo fervor). His brief life's work is sprouting with meanings, beautifully provocative as a hedgehog.
The saddest music written in the western world is found in the death-haunted song cycles of Franz Schubert, and in his two Wilhelm Müller cycles, Die Schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, in particular. If there is music more painfully hollow than the close of the latter set, than I can't wait to be so devastated by it.
Schubert's great cycles affected every song writer who followed him, and that influence continues to be felt--not only in classical music but in the worlds of jazz, pop, dance & theater. The composer most obviously in Schubert's debt was Robert Schumann. Even when finished, the miniature form of the art-song leans toward the fragmentary, and Schumann relished this fact in his great song-cycle, Dichterliebe. The opening song famously begins in the middle of a phrase, and ends with an unresolved cadence echoing its ambiguous beginning.
What is it about the romantic fragment? Charles Rosen's book, The Romantic Generation (based on his Norton lectures at Harvard) devotes nearly a third of its 700 pages to two chapters: "Fragments" and "Mountains and Song Cycles." Musicians know his more famous The Classical Style, which is rightly one of the ur-texts on the period of Haydn, Mozart & Beethoven.
Slowly sip the following sentence (about Schubert's Schöne Müllerin) to understand why I love this book so:
"The time of this song cycle is that of Romantic landscape: not the successive events of narrative but a succession of images, of lyrical reflections which reveal the traces of the past and future within the present."
Speaking of images, he simply lists the resonances of one of the cycle's primary symbols, the color green: "green is the color of hope, the color of the fading ribbon with which the poet hangs his lute upon the wall, the traditional color of the huntsman's [rival of the poet/composer] costume, the color of cypress, of rosemary, the color of the grass that will grow upon the poet's grave. Fluctuations of meaning replace narrative: they stand duty for action."
"Fluctuations of meaning" describe one aspect of the open-endedness of fragments, symbols and images. Fragments, aphorisms & epigrams, memory & dreams, relics & ruins--each and every one may be independent, sufficient unto itself.
Like water's inexorable need to stream--its restless coursing for a path in & through which to flow--is our human desire for space, room to breathe, and literal and figurative openness.
Rosen quotes the Romantic poet (under-appreciated in the English speaking world) Friedrich Schlegel on our subject:
"A fragment should be like a little work of art, complete in itself and separate from the universe like a hedgehog."
As I imply above, the fragment satisfies one of our needs for openness: to not have everything explained, every punchline spelled out. But if the hedgehog reference is opaque:
"The hedgehog (unlike the porcupine, which shoots its quills) is an amiable creature which rolls itself into a ball when alarmed. Its form is well defined and yet blurred at the edges. This spherical shape, organic and ideally geometrical, suited Romantic thought: above all, the image projects beyond itself in a provocative way."
And isn't that what we want from any "image" (or work of art)--to project "beyond itself" and provoke/evoke/invoke thought, feeling, response, release &/or relief?
We are stimulated when the familiar is made strange and the strange made familiar (to borrow from another under-appreciated romantic, Novalis).
Barber's Adagio is itself fragmentary in that it is the central movement of a three-movement string quartet. Many fans of this piece are unaware of both its origin and the vivacious music Barber wrote to encapsulate it. That it can be taken out of context and so beloved is but one sign of its value.
Another fragmentary torso (see Rilke's great sonnet, "The Archaic Torso of Apollo," referenced often in my essays and program notes) is Mahler's unfinished 10th Symphony. The visionary Adagio he left behind would have been the opening movement of another epic symphonic canvas. The last of his own works he heard performed was his 8th Symphony. His song-cycle symphony, Das Lied von der Erde (his 9th entry in the symphonic genre) his 9th symphony and his unfinished 10th form a valedictory--if fragmented--triptych of posthumously received masterpieces.
In the literary world, a similar phenomenon is still occurring with the posthumous publications (in English, especially) of the Chilean writer, Roberto Bolaño.
I am a promiscuous reader. One version of purgatory would limit me to only one book at a time (not being able to read would be hell). In addition to a half-dozen or so open books at any given time are a number of magazines and journals I look forward to receiving regularly. My favorite section of Harper's magazine is the "Readings" section near the front. I finally opened August's issue to find an excerpt from a Bolaño "story," "Literature + Illness = Illness" from yet another posthumously published collection (he died in 2003 from liver failure at age 50).
Bolaño's fame in the English-speaking world materialized like a brilliant star in the sky we hadn't noticed. Never mind that the source of its light was extinguished. The Savage Detectives, 2666, and Nazi Literature in the Americas (novels of 700, 1,200, and 200 pages, respectively) form the triptych on which this wildly ambitious writer's fame took shape in the US beginning in 2007.
Bolaño's output during the last years of his short life is astonishing. He only began writing fiction (poetry preceded it) in his last decade. As a result, each new volume that appears is eagerly anticipated by nerdy bibliophiles like myself. Bolaño was a bibliophile himself who also lived pretty hard during his fifty years. His work, like that of many an artist, has the patina of autobiography. He lived hard and worked feverishly. The line between working one's self to death and partying one's self to death must be as gray as his diseased liver was before it--and life--failed him. Equally gray is the line between autobiography and invention in his stories.
In the recent Harper's excerpt, "The Writer is Gravely Ill," death haunts the paragraphs as it does Schubert's syphilis-tinged songs. The narrator is in hospital and is suffering from liver disease. His "story" leaps from a thin narrative thread to references ranging from French poetry to German philosophy to sexual appetite and travel, ending with the narrator's--and author's--favorite modernist, Kafka. Bolaño's wit is as unpredictable and various as the Borgesian (and Kafka-esque) layers of reference that fill his tales with a deliciously dense polyphony.
Novalis said "fragments of this kind are literary seeds...if only a few were to sprout!" In tales like Bolaño's, they have--and whether or not helped by the tragic irony of posthumous "fame"--they continue to.
Who knows if Bolaño's life may be the stuff of great theater or opera (his passionate voice certainly sings with verismo fervor). His brief life's work is sprouting with meanings, beautifully provocative as a hedgehog.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Notebooks
One of many books open on a shelf or table or stand is The Monster Loves His Labyrinth: Notebooks by the poet Charles Simic. Wry, epigrammatic, and breezily swinging between the worlds of poetry and prose, a (slightly longer than) typical entry reads:
"My ideal is Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy, a catalog of many varieties of mopiness human beings are subject to, everything from the gloom caused by the evils of the world to the kind caused by lovers' squabbles. Burton, who is one of the great stylists in the language, wrote the book to relieve his own low spirits. The result is the most cheerful book on general unhappiness we have."
We could adopt that last statement to describe many a melancholy-tinged opera: the most beautiful music ever heard--as the soundtrack to a tragedy!
Yet isn't that oxymoronic irony precisely WHY we venerate tragedy? (And isn't "oxymoronic" as fun to say as it is to write? Right? But we were writing about tragedy & art...). The beautiful AND the tragic: pain and suffering made meaningful through the transformative power of art? If that is not exactly it, then maybe it's the opportunity art affords in both vicarious experience and (as close as we can come to) objective observation. Through the tragedy given life via art I can better comprehend the political machinations that end in regicide, and more fully empathize with the all-too-human protagonist while experiencing the vicarious thrill of winning the battle/seducing my lover/defeating my adversary.
I mentioned Camus recently, and his collection of Lyrical and Critical Essays has been in the mix. He ends a notebook-like piece on travel, "The Sea Close by" with this operatic image:
"I have always felt I lived on the high seas, threatened at the heart of a royal happiness."
The opera quiz question from that quote: in which opera might Albert Camus feel most at home? I'd vote for The Flying Dutchman. Bluebeard's Castle could also apply, as we can easily leap from the pirate's "high seas" of freedom to the threat of land-locked prison.
Back in real life, the dedicatee of Arvo Pärt's 4th Symphony, Los Angeles, is a Russian political prisoner, A. Khodorkovsky. Commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the symphony is also concerned with guardian angels, whose presence the composer does not question. When asked what "idea" was behind the "guardian angel" subtitle, the 75 year-old composer (whose voice is mellifluous as his placid music) would have none of it. "What idea?!? There is no idea. It is reality. They are all around us. If more people could realize this..."
I heard the UK premiere at the BBC Proms (online). The quote above is from an interview with the composer, the one below is from the online program notes.
Pärt wrote of the symphony as "an expression of great respect for a man who has found moral triumph and personal tragedy. The tragic tone of the symphony is not a lament for Khodorkovsky, but a bow to the great power of the human spirit and human dignity."
Now there's a great description of the role of the tragic in art. Pärt's music traces an arc through it's three-movement structure, maintaining an undercurrent of calm (characteristic of his "holy minimalist" style). This stoic foundation generates material that unfolds and unfurls before returning to the still center. It is music for the soul.
In addition to Pärt's 75th birthday, it is the 250th of the soulful (and woefully neglected) composer Luigi Cherubini (I omitted Cherubini from a recent post about 2010 celebrations). Cherubini wrote one of the great tragic operas of the period in Medea. It was one of Maria Callas' most famous portrayals, but has since fallen out of fashion. Brahms had three portraits in his studio: Bach, Beethoven, and Cherubini. Beethoven thought Cherubini was the greatest composer of his (and their) day. Cherubini is buried a few feet away from his much more famous younger friend (whose bicentennial is also 2010), Chopin.
Ah, memory. And our relationship to it and history. Chopin has no need of an anniversary to be played or appreciated, and Cherubini can't get a notice even with a milestone occasion.
Before I do my part to correct that imbalance by playing my Callas recording of Medea (with a young Renata Scotto as the Seconda donna), I will share a few lines of a favorite poem by William Meredith.
The central line of "About Opera" is one answer to the question of why we respond so enthusiastically to this unnatural, excessive, melodramatic, implausibly over-the-top art form:
"Isn't this how we've always longed to talk?"
He closes with a wonderful quatrain that is both endearingly awkward and pitch-perfect in metaphor:
"What dancing is to the slightly spastic way
Most of us teeter through our bodily life
Are these measured cries to the clumsy things we say,
In the heart's duresses, on the heart's behalf."
(from Effort At Speech: New and Selected Poems, William Meredith. Triquarterly, 1997).
"My ideal is Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy, a catalog of many varieties of mopiness human beings are subject to, everything from the gloom caused by the evils of the world to the kind caused by lovers' squabbles. Burton, who is one of the great stylists in the language, wrote the book to relieve his own low spirits. The result is the most cheerful book on general unhappiness we have."
We could adopt that last statement to describe many a melancholy-tinged opera: the most beautiful music ever heard--as the soundtrack to a tragedy!
Yet isn't that oxymoronic irony precisely WHY we venerate tragedy? (And isn't "oxymoronic" as fun to say as it is to write? Right? But we were writing about tragedy & art...). The beautiful AND the tragic: pain and suffering made meaningful through the transformative power of art? If that is not exactly it, then maybe it's the opportunity art affords in both vicarious experience and (as close as we can come to) objective observation. Through the tragedy given life via art I can better comprehend the political machinations that end in regicide, and more fully empathize with the all-too-human protagonist while experiencing the vicarious thrill of winning the battle/seducing my lover/defeating my adversary.
I mentioned Camus recently, and his collection of Lyrical and Critical Essays has been in the mix. He ends a notebook-like piece on travel, "The Sea Close by" with this operatic image:
"I have always felt I lived on the high seas, threatened at the heart of a royal happiness."
The opera quiz question from that quote: in which opera might Albert Camus feel most at home? I'd vote for The Flying Dutchman. Bluebeard's Castle could also apply, as we can easily leap from the pirate's "high seas" of freedom to the threat of land-locked prison.
Back in real life, the dedicatee of Arvo Pärt's 4th Symphony, Los Angeles, is a Russian political prisoner, A. Khodorkovsky. Commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the symphony is also concerned with guardian angels, whose presence the composer does not question. When asked what "idea" was behind the "guardian angel" subtitle, the 75 year-old composer (whose voice is mellifluous as his placid music) would have none of it. "What idea?!? There is no idea. It is reality. They are all around us. If more people could realize this..."
I heard the UK premiere at the BBC Proms (online). The quote above is from an interview with the composer, the one below is from the online program notes.
Pärt wrote of the symphony as "an expression of great respect for a man who has found moral triumph and personal tragedy. The tragic tone of the symphony is not a lament for Khodorkovsky, but a bow to the great power of the human spirit and human dignity."
Now there's a great description of the role of the tragic in art. Pärt's music traces an arc through it's three-movement structure, maintaining an undercurrent of calm (characteristic of his "holy minimalist" style). This stoic foundation generates material that unfolds and unfurls before returning to the still center. It is music for the soul.
In addition to Pärt's 75th birthday, it is the 250th of the soulful (and woefully neglected) composer Luigi Cherubini (I omitted Cherubini from a recent post about 2010 celebrations). Cherubini wrote one of the great tragic operas of the period in Medea. It was one of Maria Callas' most famous portrayals, but has since fallen out of fashion. Brahms had three portraits in his studio: Bach, Beethoven, and Cherubini. Beethoven thought Cherubini was the greatest composer of his (and their) day. Cherubini is buried a few feet away from his much more famous younger friend (whose bicentennial is also 2010), Chopin.
Ah, memory. And our relationship to it and history. Chopin has no need of an anniversary to be played or appreciated, and Cherubini can't get a notice even with a milestone occasion.
Before I do my part to correct that imbalance by playing my Callas recording of Medea (with a young Renata Scotto as the Seconda donna), I will share a few lines of a favorite poem by William Meredith.
The central line of "About Opera" is one answer to the question of why we respond so enthusiastically to this unnatural, excessive, melodramatic, implausibly over-the-top art form:
"Isn't this how we've always longed to talk?"
He closes with a wonderful quatrain that is both endearingly awkward and pitch-perfect in metaphor:
"What dancing is to the slightly spastic way
Most of us teeter through our bodily life
Are these measured cries to the clumsy things we say,
In the heart's duresses, on the heart's behalf."
(from Effort At Speech: New and Selected Poems, William Meredith. Triquarterly, 1997).
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
The most wonderful time of the year...
I am not going to write about carols nor the Holidays. It is the time of year when Artistic Directors of all shapes and sizes write and edit their new Fall season program books. In my case, this means typing out the programs themselves (the real fun is in choosing them) and writing program notes (rewarding in itself, to write about one's loves).
And for the two organizations at whose helm I stand, I also draft, revise & revise again an opening letter--a welcome and hello, a pitch & manifesto.
C.S. Lewis, writing on the eve of WWII, inspires me every time I consider:
"If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun."
One of my jobs is to motivate and inspire community members to participate in arts organizations like the Chorale and Opera Roanoke. I used to take the tack the critic, Virgil Thompson dubbed the "music appreciation" racket: This stuff is good for you; it makes you smarter, more urbane, more sophisticated, more cosmopolitan AND cultured, etc, etc. It's healthful.
That approach, though valid on at least one level, can be condescending and moralistic. Though I still quote music's ameliorating effects on individuals and communities when writing grants and talking to corporations (music students score higher in other academic areas, choristers are more likely to volunteer & vote and are therefore, statistically speaking, better citizens!) I try to appeal directly to the heart when it comes down to it, because that's where this music touches me.
Donald Barthelme wrote, "one of the properties of language is its ability to generate sentences that have never been heard before." Music shares the same ability to generate combinations of sounds that have never been heard before in exactly the same harmony. We could ponder that metaphor alone for some time: the always individual & unique character of harmony in music.
Pause to consider the multiple resonances of the word "harmony." Not only "harmonious," and mellifluous adjectives (like those to describe music) are conjured, but so are harmony's opposites: discord, dissonance. From "harmonious marriage" to "political discord" a range of stimuli and responses appear in our consciousness and resonate in our bodies. With music, we can consider both the intellectual & philosophical resonances and thus better appreciate the idea of "harmony." We can also reflexively respond--pierced to the heart or punched in the gut--to the visceral power of the music. Harmony affects us in many ways. This is just one possible example of how an "artistic" experience comes to be.
Music is also special for offering participants the opportunity to hear something new--something different, something special--with every hearing. This truth resonates on two levels. While a painting may offer the viewer new insight with every viewing, only the live arts (like music and theater) offer the same along with what I will term "reception multiplicity." The opportunity to receive stimuli on more than one level, in more than one way. The painting changes the viewer, the viewer does not affect the painting. The music affects the listener, AND the listener affects the music. Because every live performance is unique, the audience-performer(s) dynamic becomes a factor in that equation.
If that seems academic and/or esoteric, here's another inspiring quote about creativity, inspiration, dreams & plans:
“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.”
The 19th century Chicago architect, Daniel Burnham said that. I know it courtesy of my friend, the architect Steve Wright, one of the best board members I've ever known. Steve always knows exactly what quote to share with me or which question to ask in order to bring me back to artistic center. Sometimes, even we preachers of the "gospel of the arts" need our own dose.
The Grandaddy of arts preachers was Robert Shaw, the father of American choral music in the 20th century, the conductor who put the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus on the map, and one of the best advocates for the arts we've had in speech and print.
He was fond of saying "falling in love requires three things: being in the right place at the right time for long enough time. Beethoven is not loved if Beethoven is not met. We have to play/sing/listen to Beethoven to meet him and fall in love with him."
And music is oh-so-worth the time! Lawrence Kramer has written a wonderful book of arts "sermons" with the rather bald title, Why Classical Music Still Matters (I wrote a "Musings" blog last August, called "Bearing the Music of the Heart" for those enquiring minds who want to read more about the book). He speaks of how
"This music provides as much insight as it invites; thinking about it gives me a means of pondering big questions of culture, history, identity, desire and meaning...The music stimulates my imagination and my speculative energies while it sharpens my senses and quickens my sense of experience."
That resonates with me. I'd bet it would with most professionals musicians & musicologists who, if forced to admit, still crave the (multiple leveled!) euphoric joy created by the experience of making music.
Kramer puts the message another way: "Don't deprive yourself of this pleasure, this astonishment, this conception!"
The great British symphonist Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote to his colleague, the great Finnish symphonist, Jean Sibelius, "You have lit a candle in the world of music that will never go out."
One of the reasons these candles are inextinguishable is because "great" art transcends the specific & temporary to resonate with the universal and timeless. How else can we account for the fact that at any given moment in history, somewhere in the world, someone is performing Handel's Messiah, Beethoven's 9th symphony, and any number of other monuments to the history of western music, one of the richest traditions any civilization has ever had. Period.
Conductors have been saying for generations that every one [both conductor & generation] must find/create their own Beethoven 9th symphony--the "Ode to Brotherhood &/or Freedom, Triumph, Peace, Glastnost, etc..." (depending on your generation).
“Classical music offers both an antidote to the distractions of the world and the adaptations required to negotiate them…It will invite you to hear meanings it can have only if you can hear them, yet it will give you access to meanings you had no inkling of before you heard the music.”
That means, along with pop-culture (entertainment like TV & movies), classical music can be a means of escape. It is entertainment as it stimulates our senses. And (and here's one avenue where it often parts ways with "mere" entertainment) it transcends the mundane to create meaning, impart substance and provide significance.
“Music teaches the value of a moment by giving that moment value,” wrote the poet, Anna Kamienska.
For all the reasons we've noted above, Norman Rockefeller wrote that philanthropy was "not a duty but a privilege."
Our audiences should feel the same way about attending our concerts and operas.
And for the two organizations at whose helm I stand, I also draft, revise & revise again an opening letter--a welcome and hello, a pitch & manifesto.
C.S. Lewis, writing on the eve of WWII, inspires me every time I consider:
"If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun."
One of my jobs is to motivate and inspire community members to participate in arts organizations like the Chorale and Opera Roanoke. I used to take the tack the critic, Virgil Thompson dubbed the "music appreciation" racket: This stuff is good for you; it makes you smarter, more urbane, more sophisticated, more cosmopolitan AND cultured, etc, etc. It's healthful.
That approach, though valid on at least one level, can be condescending and moralistic. Though I still quote music's ameliorating effects on individuals and communities when writing grants and talking to corporations (music students score higher in other academic areas, choristers are more likely to volunteer & vote and are therefore, statistically speaking, better citizens!) I try to appeal directly to the heart when it comes down to it, because that's where this music touches me.
Donald Barthelme wrote, "one of the properties of language is its ability to generate sentences that have never been heard before." Music shares the same ability to generate combinations of sounds that have never been heard before in exactly the same harmony. We could ponder that metaphor alone for some time: the always individual & unique character of harmony in music.
Pause to consider the multiple resonances of the word "harmony." Not only "harmonious," and mellifluous adjectives (like those to describe music) are conjured, but so are harmony's opposites: discord, dissonance. From "harmonious marriage" to "political discord" a range of stimuli and responses appear in our consciousness and resonate in our bodies. With music, we can consider both the intellectual & philosophical resonances and thus better appreciate the idea of "harmony." We can also reflexively respond--pierced to the heart or punched in the gut--to the visceral power of the music. Harmony affects us in many ways. This is just one possible example of how an "artistic" experience comes to be.
Music is also special for offering participants the opportunity to hear something new--something different, something special--with every hearing. This truth resonates on two levels. While a painting may offer the viewer new insight with every viewing, only the live arts (like music and theater) offer the same along with what I will term "reception multiplicity." The opportunity to receive stimuli on more than one level, in more than one way. The painting changes the viewer, the viewer does not affect the painting. The music affects the listener, AND the listener affects the music. Because every live performance is unique, the audience-performer(s) dynamic becomes a factor in that equation.
If that seems academic and/or esoteric, here's another inspiring quote about creativity, inspiration, dreams & plans:
“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.”
The 19th century Chicago architect, Daniel Burnham said that. I know it courtesy of my friend, the architect Steve Wright, one of the best board members I've ever known. Steve always knows exactly what quote to share with me or which question to ask in order to bring me back to artistic center. Sometimes, even we preachers of the "gospel of the arts" need our own dose.
The Grandaddy of arts preachers was Robert Shaw, the father of American choral music in the 20th century, the conductor who put the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus on the map, and one of the best advocates for the arts we've had in speech and print.
He was fond of saying "falling in love requires three things: being in the right place at the right time for long enough time. Beethoven is not loved if Beethoven is not met. We have to play/sing/listen to Beethoven to meet him and fall in love with him."
And music is oh-so-worth the time! Lawrence Kramer has written a wonderful book of arts "sermons" with the rather bald title, Why Classical Music Still Matters (I wrote a "Musings" blog last August, called "Bearing the Music of the Heart" for those enquiring minds who want to read more about the book). He speaks of how
"This music provides as much insight as it invites; thinking about it gives me a means of pondering big questions of culture, history, identity, desire and meaning...The music stimulates my imagination and my speculative energies while it sharpens my senses and quickens my sense of experience."
That resonates with me. I'd bet it would with most professionals musicians & musicologists who, if forced to admit, still crave the (multiple leveled!) euphoric joy created by the experience of making music.
Kramer puts the message another way: "Don't deprive yourself of this pleasure, this astonishment, this conception!"
The great British symphonist Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote to his colleague, the great Finnish symphonist, Jean Sibelius, "You have lit a candle in the world of music that will never go out."
One of the reasons these candles are inextinguishable is because "great" art transcends the specific & temporary to resonate with the universal and timeless. How else can we account for the fact that at any given moment in history, somewhere in the world, someone is performing Handel's Messiah, Beethoven's 9th symphony, and any number of other monuments to the history of western music, one of the richest traditions any civilization has ever had. Period.
Conductors have been saying for generations that every one [both conductor & generation] must find/create their own Beethoven 9th symphony--the "Ode to Brotherhood &/or Freedom, Triumph, Peace, Glastnost, etc..." (depending on your generation).
“Classical music offers both an antidote to the distractions of the world and the adaptations required to negotiate them…It will invite you to hear meanings it can have only if you can hear them, yet it will give you access to meanings you had no inkling of before you heard the music.”
That means, along with pop-culture (entertainment like TV & movies), classical music can be a means of escape. It is entertainment as it stimulates our senses. And (and here's one avenue where it often parts ways with "mere" entertainment) it transcends the mundane to create meaning, impart substance and provide significance.
“Music teaches the value of a moment by giving that moment value,” wrote the poet, Anna Kamienska.
For all the reasons we've noted above, Norman Rockefeller wrote that philanthropy was "not a duty but a privilege."
Our audiences should feel the same way about attending our concerts and operas.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Why Mahler 7
I am often asked by musician colleagues why my email name is "mahlerseven." No one questions the composer half of the name, but why Mahler seven? One answer is that Mahler 3, 5 & 9 were unavailable. Another is that it's my favorite number. The real truth is that I am a champion of the unsung underdogs (in everything but sports, where I like the Yankees, Lakers, and Roger Federer).
Mahler's 7th is the least appreciated and most misunderstood of the composer's 10-odd essays in the genre. The more I chewed on that, the more I relished my choice.
It is a particularly good time for Mahler's 7th Symphony, AKA: The Song of the Night. I have recently referred to the daily broadcasts of the BBC Proms, and in this sesquicentennial celebration of Mahler's birth (2011 is also the centennial of his death) the Proms have already offered Mahler 8, 3, 4, 5, & this past week, 7. (You can listen online for two more days to Ingo Metzmacher's interpretation of the enigmatic symphony played by the German Symphony Orchestra of Berlin--NOT to be confused with the Berlin Philharmonic, which appears in a September Prom under Sir Simon Rattle to play Mahler 1 and Beethoven 4).
The Proms broadcast was inspiring--WHRO & Performance Today listeners may have caught Fred Childs' frequent mentioning of the novel fact the "prommers" clap whenever they please. If a final cadence--regardless of where in a work it appears--so inspires them, there is a burst of spontaneous applause. The 20+ minute opening movement of Mahler 7 ends with a rousing march, and elicited such applause. So did the middle Scherzo, and of course, the rousing Rondo-Finale. I enjoyed the performance, notwithstanding the inconsistency of the playing.
I was pleasantly surprised to find my BBC Music magazine waiting for me in my VB mailbox the night after listening to the Proms broadcast on my laptop in Roanoke. The "disc of the month" was none other than a live recording of Mahler 7, featuring the BBC Philharmonic, led by Gianandrea Noseda. The cover touted the "high-octane performance," which not only lived up to that moniker but surpassed it.
Mahler's 7th is the last of his middle-period triptych of "pure" symphonies (each of his first 4 featured voices &/or wordless settings of songs). The 5th & 6th symphonies are paradigms of the genre, and rank among the most popular and critically acclaimed works by any symphonic composer. Beethoven was hero or nemesis--or both--to every symphonist who followed him. As one of the first great conductors in western music, Mahler also tackled Beethoven as an interpreter. This dual relationship to Beethoven had the effect of raising the stakes for Mahler the composer.
Mahler's 6th is the most classically balanced of his symphonies (though it is Brucknerian in scope and length at 80'). It is in the minority of his symphonies comprised of the standard 4 movements. The 7th superficially resembles the 5th in construction--it is a five movement structure with a rondo-finale following an adagietto fourth movement which follows a central scherzo. Both symphonies also feature striking & imposing--though very different--opening movements.
The subtitle, "Song of the Night" has stuck with the 7th because Mahler labeled the 2nd & 4th movements "Nachtmusik" (Nocturne or Serenade). These nocturnes are scored for unusual consorts of instruments in chamber music textures, and one hears why composers ever since are so taken with Mahler the orchestrator--here was a composer "tone-painting" with new brush-strokes. Along with Richard Strauss, Mahler invigorated orchestration to bring new color to a familiar palette. If you're unfamiliar with this sui generis symphony, start anywhere and just listen: each movement is its own unique sound world. It's no wonder the piece has been so misunderstood. Innovation so often is.
Noseda's performance, after an initial couple hearings, ranks alongside my favorite interpretations. In no particular order they are: Abbado's (2nd) recording with the Berlin Phil, Bernstein's (3rd) recording with the NYPO, and Boulez's with Cleveland (all three are on the DG label). Making the shortlist are David Zinman's new super-audio-DSD recording with the Tonhalle (Zurich) and Rattle with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
A great interpretation of this symphony must strike an Apollonian and Dionysian balance between the odd symmetry of the form (the five movements offer more contrast than continuity), the unusual scoring, and the architectural pacing required to get the massive opening movement off the ground. Since so many details beg for attention, the balance between highlighting felicities of orchestration, motivic gestures & poetic evocations must not supplant pacing the arc of the whole (for comparison, I have recordings that vary in length from 62' to 80' with every variation between).
It meets one of my criteria for being a great work--versus merely very good--because new details appear with every listening. All of the interpretations I mentioned strike that balance of eliciting crystalline clarity of detail while not micro-managing a detour from the forward thrust of the symphonic canvas. Mahler's music--like Beethoven's--has an inexorable drive, regardless of the tempo. That might be the best comparison between the two great composer's very dissimilar 7th symphonies. Each movement is literally propelled by forward-moving rhythm.
The opening motive of the symphony is, in fact, a rhythmic one. Said by the composer to represent a "rowing" motion, it conjures the romantic image of a boat on a lake at night. Once that poetic world is entered, the nocturnal associations accumulate quickly.
One of my favorite moments in ALL of Mahler comes 2/3's of the way through the opening movement (the "Golden Mean," the "Vanishing Point"--ah, the potency of numbers...). The full orchestra slowly unites around the principal themes, and swells like a great wave about to crest and crash. It yields just before the climax, as if in mid-air, to lull back to the rowing calm of the opening.
Speaking of numbers, I have always loved the number 7. But that's as original as being a Yankees fan (though I hope a source of less contempt). Given the near-universal status of 7 as a special or "lucky" number, its mystical and spiritual qualities make it symbolic. It is the latter resonance with which I identify. I came across a droll quote by the writer Terry Eagleton that parses one of the distinctions between religion and spirituality:
"There is a document that records God's endless, dispiriting struggle with organized religion, known as the Bible."
Mahler's symphonies document his struggle as a thrice-outcast artist: "a Bohemian [Czech] in Austria, an Austrian among Germans, and a Jew throughout the world."
He predicted his symphonies--most of which were misunderstood &/or maligned during his lifetime--would not become popular for 50 years. Bernstein helped usher in the "Mahler Boom" in the 60's and it has only crescendoed since.
Among other reasons to add Mahler 7 to your favorites:
*The eerie colors & qualities of the 2nd and 3rd movements. If the opening Langsam is a grand romantic nocturne, the first true nocturne (Nachtmusik I) is otherworldly. The Scherzo is literally shady. Schattenhaft (shadowy) is the marvelously ambiguous stylistic directive.
*The mandolin solo in the 4th movement (Nachtmusik II). Sing the opening violin theme--it's nothing but a simple descending diatonic scale, and yet it's magical.
*The timpani flourish that heralds the Rondo-Finale--it contains all three of music's building blocks in one swift motive: rhythm, melody, and harmony. That's not your average writing for the kettledrums!
*The ebullient, eccentric, infectious & irreverent Rondo-Finale as a whole (Mahler mocks everyone from Lehar to Wagner to himself). I am reminded why I love this composer--and music itself--every time I listen.
Mahler's 7th is the least appreciated and most misunderstood of the composer's 10-odd essays in the genre. The more I chewed on that, the more I relished my choice.
It is a particularly good time for Mahler's 7th Symphony, AKA: The Song of the Night. I have recently referred to the daily broadcasts of the BBC Proms, and in this sesquicentennial celebration of Mahler's birth (2011 is also the centennial of his death) the Proms have already offered Mahler 8, 3, 4, 5, & this past week, 7. (You can listen online for two more days to Ingo Metzmacher's interpretation of the enigmatic symphony played by the German Symphony Orchestra of Berlin--NOT to be confused with the Berlin Philharmonic, which appears in a September Prom under Sir Simon Rattle to play Mahler 1 and Beethoven 4).
The Proms broadcast was inspiring--WHRO & Performance Today listeners may have caught Fred Childs' frequent mentioning of the novel fact the "prommers" clap whenever they please. If a final cadence--regardless of where in a work it appears--so inspires them, there is a burst of spontaneous applause. The 20+ minute opening movement of Mahler 7 ends with a rousing march, and elicited such applause. So did the middle Scherzo, and of course, the rousing Rondo-Finale. I enjoyed the performance, notwithstanding the inconsistency of the playing.
I was pleasantly surprised to find my BBC Music magazine waiting for me in my VB mailbox the night after listening to the Proms broadcast on my laptop in Roanoke. The "disc of the month" was none other than a live recording of Mahler 7, featuring the BBC Philharmonic, led by Gianandrea Noseda. The cover touted the "high-octane performance," which not only lived up to that moniker but surpassed it.
Mahler's 7th is the last of his middle-period triptych of "pure" symphonies (each of his first 4 featured voices &/or wordless settings of songs). The 5th & 6th symphonies are paradigms of the genre, and rank among the most popular and critically acclaimed works by any symphonic composer. Beethoven was hero or nemesis--or both--to every symphonist who followed him. As one of the first great conductors in western music, Mahler also tackled Beethoven as an interpreter. This dual relationship to Beethoven had the effect of raising the stakes for Mahler the composer.
Mahler's 6th is the most classically balanced of his symphonies (though it is Brucknerian in scope and length at 80'). It is in the minority of his symphonies comprised of the standard 4 movements. The 7th superficially resembles the 5th in construction--it is a five movement structure with a rondo-finale following an adagietto fourth movement which follows a central scherzo. Both symphonies also feature striking & imposing--though very different--opening movements.
The subtitle, "Song of the Night" has stuck with the 7th because Mahler labeled the 2nd & 4th movements "Nachtmusik" (Nocturne or Serenade). These nocturnes are scored for unusual consorts of instruments in chamber music textures, and one hears why composers ever since are so taken with Mahler the orchestrator--here was a composer "tone-painting" with new brush-strokes. Along with Richard Strauss, Mahler invigorated orchestration to bring new color to a familiar palette. If you're unfamiliar with this sui generis symphony, start anywhere and just listen: each movement is its own unique sound world. It's no wonder the piece has been so misunderstood. Innovation so often is.
Noseda's performance, after an initial couple hearings, ranks alongside my favorite interpretations. In no particular order they are: Abbado's (2nd) recording with the Berlin Phil, Bernstein's (3rd) recording with the NYPO, and Boulez's with Cleveland (all three are on the DG label). Making the shortlist are David Zinman's new super-audio-DSD recording with the Tonhalle (Zurich) and Rattle with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
A great interpretation of this symphony must strike an Apollonian and Dionysian balance between the odd symmetry of the form (the five movements offer more contrast than continuity), the unusual scoring, and the architectural pacing required to get the massive opening movement off the ground. Since so many details beg for attention, the balance between highlighting felicities of orchestration, motivic gestures & poetic evocations must not supplant pacing the arc of the whole (for comparison, I have recordings that vary in length from 62' to 80' with every variation between).
It meets one of my criteria for being a great work--versus merely very good--because new details appear with every listening. All of the interpretations I mentioned strike that balance of eliciting crystalline clarity of detail while not micro-managing a detour from the forward thrust of the symphonic canvas. Mahler's music--like Beethoven's--has an inexorable drive, regardless of the tempo. That might be the best comparison between the two great composer's very dissimilar 7th symphonies. Each movement is literally propelled by forward-moving rhythm.
The opening motive of the symphony is, in fact, a rhythmic one. Said by the composer to represent a "rowing" motion, it conjures the romantic image of a boat on a lake at night. Once that poetic world is entered, the nocturnal associations accumulate quickly.
One of my favorite moments in ALL of Mahler comes 2/3's of the way through the opening movement (the "Golden Mean," the "Vanishing Point"--ah, the potency of numbers...). The full orchestra slowly unites around the principal themes, and swells like a great wave about to crest and crash. It yields just before the climax, as if in mid-air, to lull back to the rowing calm of the opening.
Speaking of numbers, I have always loved the number 7. But that's as original as being a Yankees fan (though I hope a source of less contempt). Given the near-universal status of 7 as a special or "lucky" number, its mystical and spiritual qualities make it symbolic. It is the latter resonance with which I identify. I came across a droll quote by the writer Terry Eagleton that parses one of the distinctions between religion and spirituality:
"There is a document that records God's endless, dispiriting struggle with organized religion, known as the Bible."
Mahler's symphonies document his struggle as a thrice-outcast artist: "a Bohemian [Czech] in Austria, an Austrian among Germans, and a Jew throughout the world."
He predicted his symphonies--most of which were misunderstood &/or maligned during his lifetime--would not become popular for 50 years. Bernstein helped usher in the "Mahler Boom" in the 60's and it has only crescendoed since.
Among other reasons to add Mahler 7 to your favorites:
*The eerie colors & qualities of the 2nd and 3rd movements. If the opening Langsam is a grand romantic nocturne, the first true nocturne (Nachtmusik I) is otherworldly. The Scherzo is literally shady. Schattenhaft (shadowy) is the marvelously ambiguous stylistic directive.
*The mandolin solo in the 4th movement (Nachtmusik II). Sing the opening violin theme--it's nothing but a simple descending diatonic scale, and yet it's magical.
*The timpani flourish that heralds the Rondo-Finale--it contains all three of music's building blocks in one swift motive: rhythm, melody, and harmony. That's not your average writing for the kettledrums!
*The ebullient, eccentric, infectious & irreverent Rondo-Finale as a whole (Mahler mocks everyone from Lehar to Wagner to himself). I am reminded why I love this composer--and music itself--every time I listen.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
"An ideal of international harmony..."
Last week (on my "Musings" blog) I wrote about musical birthdays & ended with a reference to the daily BBC Proms broadcasts available online (www.bbc.co.uk/programmes).
Earlier this spring I wrote a series of essays on Greek myths, with Prometheus figuring chief among them (see April's "Musings" posts).
I began the year writing about the polymath Daniel Barenboim--conductor, pianist, author & cultural ambassador. Speaking of his youth orchestra comprised of Jews, Muslims & Christians from all regions of the middle east, Barenboim wrote that music is
"unable to bring about peace. It can, however, create the conditions for understanding without which it is impossible even to speak of peace. It has the potential to awaken the curiosity of each individual to listen to the narrative of the other and to inspire the courage necessary to hear what one would prefer to block out."
Yesterday, one of the features of the Virginian Pilot was an engaging profile of the new president of Regent University, Carlos Campo. One of the points of focus was Carlos' activism in the area of immigration reform. He is part of a conservative movement--in dialogue with the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi--that advocates enrolling illegal immigrants in education and service programs as a path to citizenship. This sensible, middle-ground platform (Campos eschews the extremes of amnesty and deportation) is an example of the dialogue Barenboim advocates.
The 65th "anniversary" of the bombing of Hiroshima was observed this week. The main headline of today's New York Times reads "Across Nation, Mosques Meet Opposition."
I led off a recent post here on a new Civil War-era musical work with a reference to the current debate about states rights (vis-a-vis immigration reform in Arizona). I admired Carlos' transparency in his Pilot interview. He clearly stated the immigration issue was "personal" (he is Latino) and is not related to his work as President of Regent.
I may be blurring those lines here, but let me offer the caveat that my opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the Virginia Chorale or Opera Roanoke, members of either organization, their directors, trustees, and/or patrons.
As usual, I am merely attempting to connect a few dots.
Currently playing on my recently downloaded bbc iplayer is a broadcast from earlier this week of two Mahler symphonies (no.'s 4 & 5) played by the World Orchestra for Peace. Founded in 1995 by the late Hungarian maestro, Sir Georg Solti, this venerable ensemble is made up of musicians from 70 orchestras representing 40 countries. Every player is a principal from the likes of the MET, Vienna, Berlin, London, Paris, Warsaw, Chicago & the Concertgebouw orchestras. And they sound like it.
I am not a partisan of the Russian oligarch maestro, Valery Gergiev, but I put aside my bias while listening to him lead the (literally) central symphonies of my favorite composer. The finale of the 5th--my favorite symphony, period--was so inspired I literally burst into tears at its frenetic and thrilling close. But then again, I have the genes that make such emotional responses to stimuli not only possible but regular. I'm curious to know if anyone else responds in a similar fashion. The andante (3rd movement) of the 4th and the famous adagietto (4th movement) of the 5th also provoke emotional responses. As do the opening and closing movements of Mahler's 3rd, 7th & 9th symphonies, the choral finales of the 2nd & 8th, the slow movement of the 6th, and the single greatest solo vocal movement in Western orchestral music, the closing Abschied of Das Lied von der Erde.
You have four days left to listen to this broadcast online (all of the Proms are broadcast live, GMT. They remain online for one week for archival listening).
"What does Prometheus mean to man today?" asks Albert Camus at the head of his lyrical essay "Prometheus in the Underworld." The French-Algerian Nobel prize winner first came to my attention as a teen, when I discovered my favorite British alternative band, the Cure, had based their song "Killing an Arab" on Camus' first novel, The Stranger.
I believe we would have more productive dialogue in our country--about immigration reform and, among other things, Islam--if more people were taught to read (and to listen) intelligently.
One of the reasons we commemorate horrific anniversaries like the atomic bombing of Hiroshima is to be reminded the difficult lessons of history are forgotten if they are not actively remembered. This is one of the themes imbedded in Camus' novels and non-fiction. History and justice are blind. They both depend upon human beings for vision. This is not as simple as it sounds.
Camus cynically notes "Prometheus was the hero who loved men enough to give them fire and liberty, technology and art. Today, mankind needs and cares only for technology."
I do not completely share this view, though it's truth resonates with my experience. I posted a link on my Facebook profile to a study of artists in U.S. society called "Investing in Creativity." In one statistic of jarring disconnect, a near unanimous majority of respondents acknowledged having been deeply moved or inspired by artistic experience. Though 96% of folks claimed to highly value art, only 27% felt artists themselves contributed much good to society.
Camus observes that "myths have no life of their own. They wait for us to give them flesh." Prometheus returns in contemporary life whenever the Solti's and Barenboim's of the world act on their vision. Every creative act is an affirmation of life. That affirmation may not be as harmonious as a Mahler symphony, and it may be seen or heard only once. As Solti's widow, Valerie notes about the "sound" of their orchestra,
"every ensemble is remarkable. Music is wonderful. It never fails you."
The UN recognized the contributions by the World Orchestra for Peace in its ability to create "cultural diversity and dialogue" and help establish a "culture of peace."
In creating his utopian, eminently impractical orchestra, Solti asked--and aspired towards--"what could be achieved with an ideal of international harmony."
The arts can't bring peace. But they create spaces where human beings of all varieties can listen. That's something.
Earlier this spring I wrote a series of essays on Greek myths, with Prometheus figuring chief among them (see April's "Musings" posts).
I began the year writing about the polymath Daniel Barenboim--conductor, pianist, author & cultural ambassador. Speaking of his youth orchestra comprised of Jews, Muslims & Christians from all regions of the middle east, Barenboim wrote that music is
"unable to bring about peace. It can, however, create the conditions for understanding without which it is impossible even to speak of peace. It has the potential to awaken the curiosity of each individual to listen to the narrative of the other and to inspire the courage necessary to hear what one would prefer to block out."
Yesterday, one of the features of the Virginian Pilot was an engaging profile of the new president of Regent University, Carlos Campo. One of the points of focus was Carlos' activism in the area of immigration reform. He is part of a conservative movement--in dialogue with the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi--that advocates enrolling illegal immigrants in education and service programs as a path to citizenship. This sensible, middle-ground platform (Campos eschews the extremes of amnesty and deportation) is an example of the dialogue Barenboim advocates.
The 65th "anniversary" of the bombing of Hiroshima was observed this week. The main headline of today's New York Times reads "Across Nation, Mosques Meet Opposition."
I led off a recent post here on a new Civil War-era musical work with a reference to the current debate about states rights (vis-a-vis immigration reform in Arizona). I admired Carlos' transparency in his Pilot interview. He clearly stated the immigration issue was "personal" (he is Latino) and is not related to his work as President of Regent.
I may be blurring those lines here, but let me offer the caveat that my opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the Virginia Chorale or Opera Roanoke, members of either organization, their directors, trustees, and/or patrons.
As usual, I am merely attempting to connect a few dots.
Currently playing on my recently downloaded bbc iplayer is a broadcast from earlier this week of two Mahler symphonies (no.'s 4 & 5) played by the World Orchestra for Peace. Founded in 1995 by the late Hungarian maestro, Sir Georg Solti, this venerable ensemble is made up of musicians from 70 orchestras representing 40 countries. Every player is a principal from the likes of the MET, Vienna, Berlin, London, Paris, Warsaw, Chicago & the Concertgebouw orchestras. And they sound like it.
I am not a partisan of the Russian oligarch maestro, Valery Gergiev, but I put aside my bias while listening to him lead the (literally) central symphonies of my favorite composer. The finale of the 5th--my favorite symphony, period--was so inspired I literally burst into tears at its frenetic and thrilling close. But then again, I have the genes that make such emotional responses to stimuli not only possible but regular. I'm curious to know if anyone else responds in a similar fashion. The andante (3rd movement) of the 4th and the famous adagietto (4th movement) of the 5th also provoke emotional responses. As do the opening and closing movements of Mahler's 3rd, 7th & 9th symphonies, the choral finales of the 2nd & 8th, the slow movement of the 6th, and the single greatest solo vocal movement in Western orchestral music, the closing Abschied of Das Lied von der Erde.
You have four days left to listen to this broadcast online (all of the Proms are broadcast live, GMT. They remain online for one week for archival listening).
"What does Prometheus mean to man today?" asks Albert Camus at the head of his lyrical essay "Prometheus in the Underworld." The French-Algerian Nobel prize winner first came to my attention as a teen, when I discovered my favorite British alternative band, the Cure, had based their song "Killing an Arab" on Camus' first novel, The Stranger.
I believe we would have more productive dialogue in our country--about immigration reform and, among other things, Islam--if more people were taught to read (and to listen) intelligently.
One of the reasons we commemorate horrific anniversaries like the atomic bombing of Hiroshima is to be reminded the difficult lessons of history are forgotten if they are not actively remembered. This is one of the themes imbedded in Camus' novels and non-fiction. History and justice are blind. They both depend upon human beings for vision. This is not as simple as it sounds.
Camus cynically notes "Prometheus was the hero who loved men enough to give them fire and liberty, technology and art. Today, mankind needs and cares only for technology."
I do not completely share this view, though it's truth resonates with my experience. I posted a link on my Facebook profile to a study of artists in U.S. society called "Investing in Creativity." In one statistic of jarring disconnect, a near unanimous majority of respondents acknowledged having been deeply moved or inspired by artistic experience. Though 96% of folks claimed to highly value art, only 27% felt artists themselves contributed much good to society.
Camus observes that "myths have no life of their own. They wait for us to give them flesh." Prometheus returns in contemporary life whenever the Solti's and Barenboim's of the world act on their vision. Every creative act is an affirmation of life. That affirmation may not be as harmonious as a Mahler symphony, and it may be seen or heard only once. As Solti's widow, Valerie notes about the "sound" of their orchestra,
"every ensemble is remarkable. Music is wonderful. It never fails you."
The UN recognized the contributions by the World Orchestra for Peace in its ability to create "cultural diversity and dialogue" and help establish a "culture of peace."
In creating his utopian, eminently impractical orchestra, Solti asked--and aspired towards--"what could be achieved with an ideal of international harmony."
The arts can't bring peace. But they create spaces where human beings of all varieties can listen. That's something.
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