Can I just say, it’s been a manic few weeks. I had 11 days away (which included 6 concerts with two orchestras of 3 different programs), a couple of days at home to rehearse and perform with Josh Ritter; meanwhile there comes a call from the NSO about their American Playlist concert (which I was slated to conduct in a few days) – John Mayer wants an orchestral chart for a Bob Dylan song, could I crank one out? In 48 hours?? – which I did, and after a quick 3 days in DC I was back home to rehearse and perform a premier of a jazz/orchestral with Evan Christopher and the Minnesota Orchestra last Friday and now…I’m in Maine for a week at a music festival to work with my favorite duo, Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson.
Yup, July tends to be a oddly jam-packed and tiring month. As I catch my breath here in my room in Waterville, ME, listening to an epic thunderstorm raging outside, I’ve finally uploaded from my phone a video I took while at the New Hampshire Music Festival a couple of weeks back. The program for the evening was an interesting combo: Ives/Three Places in New England (v. 2); Copland/Appalachian Spring; Beethoven/Piano Concerto #5.
Morgan came to find me after the concert; she’d been assigned to usher the first of two evening performances, and liked it so much that she switched with a friend and came back to usher the second night as well. As she put it, “The first night I was just going to stay for the first half, like we’re supposed to, but I ended up staying for the whole concert because I wanted to hear more.” I’ll let her do her own talking:
It was a thrill to encounter a first-time concertgoer who exuded such enthusiasm and had, self-admittedly, become a classical music convert. Which was a potent reminder to me why every performance matters; there are those out there encountering orchestral repertoire for the first time in their lives, and it’s contingent upon myself and my colleagues in the orchestra to make the music come alive.
Much that’s been written about this appointment, most referencing the expected topics: his youth, his vibrant podium presence, and the possibly galvanizing effect a youthful, charismatic music director could have on an organization fraught with financial woes and (through an extended music director search) a lack of artistic leadership.
I’ve not seen Nezét-Séguin live, but I’ve heard from my Philly Orchestra friends that he’s generally well-respected by the band, and from people in the know that he’s a major emerging talent. Both of which carry cautionary statements, of course: first and foremost, because no orchestra is entirely satisfied with its artistic leadership, simply because there are too many perspectives about musicianship and personal rapport among the 90+ members of a symphony for a unified opinion to exist. As mentioned in a Philly Inquirer article an anonymous Philly Orchestra musician commented that they had stopped hoping for an overwhelming mandate to gather around a particular conductor “because of the danger of creating an ideal so perfect that no one would ever meet it.”
Second is the emerging talent part: 35 is still awfully young in conductor-years (even the most fortunate among us didn’t get to stand in front of an orchestra until our late teens, in stark contrast to the average violinist, who’s been playing their instrument since 5 or 6), and there’s always the concern that there will be a certain amount of repertoire-learning (and general music director job-learning) in the glare of an international spotlight. That being said, some artists grow gracefully, spotlight or not. Time will tell, and I hope it works out for the fabulous Philadelphians.
What irks me a little is the armchair prognosticating about how the arrival of a youthful, energetic music director will do much to revive a flagging organization; conductor as savior. No doubt, in the Philly Orchestra’s situation – artistic leadership at the helm after an extended period sans music director – this might be partially true. But to me it has the chime of an unreasonable expectation, in the end. It’s much like the Dudamel hype – this young man will change the classical music world! – hanging hopes on an individual to rejuvenate a field which needs an entire health-regime makeover, not just a touch of Botox.
I know newspapers are prone to hyperbole, but it always seems unfair to have such great expectations. Why can’t we just say that a new conductor may bring new ideas and new repertoire to a venerable old institution, without all the game-changing talk?
Sarah’s last post, about a Philadelphia critic blasting iconoclastic piano legend Ivo Pogorelich for giving what the critic perceived as a “bad” performance (a performance which, from all appearances, went exactly as Pogorelich wanted it to go, begging the question of what defines “bad” if it isn’t simply a lack of competence) got me thinking about other musical boundary-pushers. When does a performer’s prerogative cease to be artistically satisfying, and become more about ego? Should we as listeners be allowed to carry our own aural history around with us to concert halls, using the stock of recorded music in our head to judge against any performer who dares try something radically different? And if not – if we decide that every performance should be judged in a vacuum – then aren’t we guilty of the musical equivalent of moral relativism?
Okay, that’s all probably a bit too weighty, so I’ll try to scale it back a bit. Specifically, Sarah’s post got me thinking back to performers who once caused me to completely rethink what music could be back when I was too young to have Perspective. Or, to give perspective another name, Baggage. I grew up in small towns near Boston and Philadelphia, two of America’s most conservative musical cities, where tradition reigns, concert halls are stately and dark, and there is an almost bizarre reverence for the way classical music sounded from roughly the 1930s to the 1960s. So you can just imagine my reaction when I happened across this performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons playing on Philly’s WYBE-TV back in the early ’90s…
The fact that Nigel Kennedy’s Vivaldi wouldn’t cause most young listeners today to bat an eye is testament to how much the world of concert music has changed in just the last couple of decades. At the time, I’d never heard anything like this, and I’d certainly never seen a rock-star-pale dude in a designer suit (funny – in my memory, he was wearing leather) stand on a barely lit soundstage and strut like David Bowie while he assaulted Vivaldi’s score with unauthorized ponticello, tempos at the outer edge of playability, and a rough-edged attack that could be said to be completely antithetical to baroque music. I mean, I never thought of a lute as a particularly ironic instrument until I saw the closeup of one in that video.
I found Nigel Kennedy utterly entrancing on first hearing mainly because I didn’t have any deeply ingrained opinions yet about how certain specific pieces of music ought to be played. And, of course, there is no “how it ought to be played,” really. Those distinctions are arbitrary shackles that we place on music when it becomes familiar enough for us to decide that we are now experts on its content. We all reach that stage eventually, whether it’s because we’ve listened too many times to a particular recording, because too many performers decided to perform a given piece exactly the same way in a given time period, or simply because we ran into a performance so captivating that we could no longer imagine that particular work being played any other way.
I soured on Kennedy less than a decade after I first heard him play, when my own taste-o-meter kicked in and I started to be offended by some of his more, shall we say, shameless interpretations of classic repertoire. But was it that he allowed his ego to get in the way of making music, or that I grew calcified in my view of how those pieces should sound? I’m inclined to say the former, simply because I can still appreciate so much of Kennedy’s earlier work, and I still love hearing familiar music reimagined in general, but then, I would take that view, wouldn’t I? None of us likes to consider the possibility that our own tastes might be governed by nothing more than arbitrary boundaries set up when our brains stopped deciding to accept new information.
When I read the review of Pogorelich’s Chopin that so offended Sarah, and then viewed the video of the concert that she posted, I have to admit, I had some sympathy for the critic. To me, there’s a fine line between exploring new ideas and simply steamrolling the composer with your own ego, and Pogorelich might well have crossed it.
On the other hand, I sit on stage for more than 20 weeks a year under the baton of a music director whose approach to Sibelius and Beethoven is hailed internationally as a revelation, but which might have gotten him booed out of a concert hall in 1960. I’ve played concerts with Osmo that have made me completely rethink pacing, flow, and harmony and how I can use them. His Sibelius 2 has pretty much ruined me for any other conductor. Same with his Beethoven 6. And judging by the ovations those performances have gotten from audiences in Minneapolis and around the world, I’m not alone.
But what that really means is that I’ve locked myself in, mentally, to believing that there’s a “right” way to play those pieces, and that it is Osmo’s way. I don’t really believe that, of course, but no matter how hard I try, I’ll probably never again be able to really enjoy the thick, syrupy Sibelius of so many mid-20th century conductors. And that’s my failing, not theirs. And while I don’t necessarily agree entirely with Sarah that a critic’s personal baggage should be checked at the door of the concert hall, there’s no question that a critic who allows his lone perspective to become more important than an appreciation of fresh ideas is probably doing his readers a disservice.
That’s not a phrase you really want to hear in a concert review. Particularly when it’s not referencing an avant garde contemporary work, but a Chopin piano concerto.
Pogorelich is a notoriously eccentric musician, so it’s no surprise that his performances can ruffle some people’s feathers, as Stearns’s clearly were. I’m annoyed when critics use reviews to bring in their personal baggage, which inevitably colors the content of the review. For instance, why is it relevant to make a snide comment about Pogorelich’s appearance:
On Wednesday that “something else” lumbered onto the Suntory Hall stage having put on so much weight that he looked almost moonfaced.
Yes, he’s probably a bit more substantial than he was in his (extremely lean) youth, but, really, how fair is it to judge a musician with that criteria? (And if you take a look at the concert photo of Pogorelich from the review, you’ll see a very average looking individual.)
And then the bit about Pogorelich “carrying himself with an intense sense of gravity that made you suspicious”. Well, I don’t think gravity makes anyone suspicious, unless you’ve had previous unpleasant experiences with a particular artist and hold a negative opinion to begin with. Again, why include this in a critique?
As for review of the actual performance, one must wait until 3/4 of the way down the page. Stearns harps mostly on the funereal tempos, the “relentless keyboard banging” and the interrupted nature of the music. On these points, I must agree. For your own take, listen to a bit of the actual performance below (and, no, I wasn’t there, this is a fortuitous Facebook/YouTube find):
Now, as to whatever reaction you have, hold on for a second. Let’s discuss a few points first.
As to the question of if it was music, for me the the answer is clear. It’s music in the sense that any organized set of pitches is music. It’s music in the sense that any individual’s expression of those organized pitch sets is music. Is it Chopin? Well, it’s certainly a huge departure, stylistically, from what we consider Chopin. But who are we to say what “Chopin” is?
This reminds me how audiences, but particularly musicians, adhere to notions of what constitutes an acceptable rendition of musical works. And while we are quick to judge on the basis of these widely-held aesthetics, we are just as quick to forget how mutable they are. For instance, if one listen to a performance of Mozart from the 20th century, one is struck by the lush, Romantic stylization in vogue at the time. From our 21st century years, accustomed to several generations of historically informed performance practice, it doesn’t sound “like Mozart”. From a 1950’s perspective, our Academy of Ancient Music-influenced musical perspective would probably not sound “like Mozart”. It just depends what you consider the norm.
This also reminds me of an exercise I once experienced at the Aspen Music Festival. A room full of conductors was asked to listen to a recording of Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony and to give feedback. Well, the recording was pretty radical – extremely slow tempos, rhetorical outbursts, extended (unwritten) silences. Of course, we young conductors were all too happy to tear apart the performance with snide comments about the lack of taste and understanding of Schubertian style.
When our tirade was over, the seminar leader smiled and said, “OK, if you take away your personal biases, what was interesting about the performance?”. We were so busy proving the “rightness” of our perspective of the piece that we neglected to listen with open ears to a performance which, on second hearing, had dozens of fascinating insights to ponder. Did I agree with it the second time around? Not necessarily. But I found many more details to contemplate and, yes, enjoy.
And that brings me back to my complaint about reviewers bringing their biases to the concert hall before hearing a single note. Does having a preconceived notion about a performer affect the way you hear a performance? Of course it does. We’re human, and it would be inhuman not to. But can we at least be aware of our predilections and attempt to listen with an open mind?
Now go back and watch that first video again.
Esoteric? Yes. Unusually heavy-handed (fingered?) at times? Yes. An unusually contemplative tempo that occasionally grinds to a halt? Absolutely. But to me, it revealed an oratorical quality in music that we often think of as simply “singing” or “flowing”. Whether I agreed with it (or really liked it) or not, I found it an interesting viewpoint.
And as for Stearns’s final paragraph:
Was it music? I’d say it was the most complete expression of contempt I’ve ever heard. At least Pogorelich can still inspire superlatives.
Why label it contempt? The prerogative of the interpretive artist is to find expression in the work of others. Pogorelich was simply doing his job. Whether we like it or not is dependent on our own preconceived notions. Let’s not pretend to understand the intent behind someone else’s artistic expression.
All that being said, as a basis of comparison, here’s a video of a young Pogorelich from the 1980 Chopin Competition – decidedly more conventional interpretations! But, again, as I said, just as much as a reviewer has the right to rant, a performer has the right to develop and transform as an artist.
Some final thoughts; by far the weirdest thing about the Philly Orchestra performance is that Pogorelich is using music (yes, that’s a page turner seated slightly to the left behind him). Granted, Pogorelich stepped in for an indisposed Martha Argerich, but it is a piece of standard repertoire that he’s recorded (and performed countless times)…
And as for Stearns’s assertion:
I consoled myself with the idea that being Ivo Pogorelich is a lot more difficult than listening to him.
Oof.
From hearing the performances, I think it might be rather interesting being Ivo Pogorelich. To each their own…
First of all, apologies for the sparse posting lately. Sarah and I both have a ton of work on our plates at the moment, and for me, that won’t be changing for at least another three weeks. So if there’s less new content around these parts than you’re used to, hang in there – we’ll be back at full strength by the end of the month, I promise…
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This past weekend, I was asked by our development staff to attend a pre-concert dinner the orchestra was throwing for some of our most generous and longstanding donors. I was happy to do it – stereotypes about rich arts philanthropists to the contrary, these are wonderful folks, not just generous but friendly to a fault, big-hearted, and utterly passionate about music. (Also – free dinner at Porter & Frye? I don’t know many musicians who would turn that down.)
The routine at these dinners tends to be pretty constant – a half-hour for cocktails (not for me, obviously, since I’m about to play a concert) and mingling, then a leisurely sit-down meal with one orchestra musician assigned to each table. As the dinner begins, a board member welcomes the crowd, then introduces someone from the orchestra who speaks briefly about the music on the program we’re all getting ready to attend. I filled the speaker’s role last fall, and this time around, it was our talented young assistant conductor, Courtney Lewis, who was tasked with demystifying a marimba concerto and Mahler’s most confounding symphony.
Courtney did a great job, assuring the diners that the marimba concerto was quite accessible and giving them a few things to listen for before launching into a very well-constructed narrative about Mahler’s 7th. His talk was a blend of established historical fact (things Mahler actually said about the piece) and Courtney’s own thoughts on, for instance, why the fifth and final movement of the piece sounds so completely different from anything else in the symphony. Mahler can be an intimidating presence for even the most experienced listeners, and Courtney’s disarming style probably went a long way towards alleviating the pre-concert stress of anyone in the room who had glanced at the program and been alarmed at seeing “90 min.” listed next to a single piece of music.
Still, not everyone was appreciative of the context Courtney was providing. A very nice woman sitting next to me at our table kept sighing softly whenever he attempted to assign a specific image or event to some part of the music, and eventually said to me under her breath, “Oh, well, he’s just making all this up!” I assured her that he wasn’t, and she revised her opinion: “Maybe not, but you just don’t need all this… stuff in order to listen to the piece!”
And there it was – the great unspoken clash of concert music in the 21st century. Populism vs. elitism. Words vs. music. Context vs. purity. Call it what you will – this is the seemingly unbridgable gap between those who believe that music gets better the more you know about it, and those who believe that music should be a purely aural experience, undisturbed by explanations or images. Those in the first group are the type who roll their eyes at the various conceits of the concert hall, who constantly question why we persist in following silly traditions simply because that’s how “they” did it 100 years ago, and who tend to gravitate to offbeat concert series like Inside the Classics or casual performances at non-traditional venues. The latter group revere the tradition and pomp of the grand concert experience, and sneer at the idea that some attention-challenged people seem to need to be led by the arm through a tour of the music before just hushing up and listening to it.
In music, as in politics, most people fall somewhere in between those two extreme positions. I’ve met people who are big fans of what Sarah and I do in our ItC shows, but are also quick to say that they certainly wouldn’t want every concert to be like ours. I’ve also heard from folks who regularly attend the academic-style pre-concert lectures offered at nearly all our subscription concerts, but who can’t stand the deliberately offbeat narratives Sarah and I construct for ItC. So most of us are centrists at heart, neither dogmatic enough to be offended whenever someone dares speak from the stage, nor free-spirited enough to believe that every piece of music should have a story told in words and pictures as well as notes and rhythms.
But just as most of us who call ourselves political independents actually wind up voting for one party over the other more often than not, it’s likely that your musical sympathies lie closer to one side or the other in the Context vs. Purity debate. And just as in politics, it’s not really about right and wrong (or right and left) as much as it’s about a clash of two competing (and compelling) philosophies. The divide is partly generational, partly educational, and yes, partly political.
I’m not naive enough to imagine a world in which these two philosophies and their adherents somehow wind up aligned in perfect agreement over the Right Way to listen to music, and I’m also not enough of a culture warrior to think it’s vitally important for one side or the other to win the argument. (There’s nothing I find more wearying than the commentators on both sides of this debate who are forever insisting, on the flimsiest of evidence, that All Of Concert Music will cease to exist within a generation unless their side wins the war immediately.) But I am endlessly fascinated by the different ideas people have about the importance (or lack thereof) of placing music in a larger context. I’d love to see a study on how such viewpoints dovetail with views on, say, education, or tax policy, or climate change. Not because I think I know what the correlations would be, but because I strongly suspect that I don’t.
Anyway, your thoughts on this simmering feud are most welcome – how much context can you take before you reach overload stage? What composers or pieces do you find you need the most “preparation” for? And if you’ve been listening to music your whole life, how do you think your perception of things differs from someone who’s interested in discovering “your” music as an adult? Discuss all this and more in the comments…
The phrase came to mind as I was flying back to Minneapolis last night (and in a decidedly non-Pythonian context) – I was putting Post-Its on my La Mer score to mark excerpts for our Inside the Classics concerts this week (fun arts and crafts!):
I’ve just finished a subscription week with the North Carolina Symphony (my “other” orchestra) and baritone (and dear friend) Randy Scarlata, a program of Liszt, Mahler and Dvorak. It’s an interesting mental leap to go from a very standard concert format playing some great warhorses – with 4 rehearsals, to boot! – to an unconventional format where I’m worried about timing my music theory portion and making a smooth transition between talking and conducting and marking excerpts correctly…and making it all happen on a single rehearsal.
But the very challenge is what makes it fun, and I remind myself that one of the reasons I do the things I do is that I love the different-ness of it all.
Rested and refreshed from my week off (really, truly, an entire week! I have to remember how good this feels…).
To get back into the swing of things (blogging included), “rest and refreshment” in a very different context:
September 22, 1802
Gentlemen,
It was a most pleasant surprise to receive such a flattering letter from a part of the world where I could never have imagined that the products of my poor talents were known. But when I see that not only is my name familiar to you, but my compositions are performed by you with approval and satisfaction, the warmest wishes of my heart are fulfilled: to be considered a not wholly unworthy priest of this sacred art by every nation where my works are known. You reassure me on this point as regards your fatherland, but even more, you happily persuade me — and this cannot fail to be a real source of consolation to me in my declining years — that I am often the enviable means by which you, and so many other families sensible of heartfelt emotion, derive, in their homely circle, their pleasure — their enjoyment. How reassuring this thought is to me! Often, when struggling against the obstacles of every sort which oppose my labors; often, when the powers of mind and body weakened, and it was difficult for me to continue in the course I had entered on;– a secret voice whispered to me, “There are so few happy and contented people here below; grief and sorrow are always their lot; perhaps your labors will once be a source from which the care-worn, or the man burdened with affairs, can derive a few moments’ rest and refreshment.” This was indeed a powerful motive to press onwards, and this is why I now look back with cheerful satisfaction on the labors expended on this art, to which I have devoted so many long years of uninterrupted effort and exertion…
Hip-hop might just beat out classical music as the most misunderstood and unfairly maligned musical genre in existence today. When I tell other classical musicians that I’m a hip-hop fan, the reaction tends to range from blank stares to outright revulsion. Only once or twice have I ever gotten a positive reaction of any kind. And that’s a real shame, because the creativity that’s out there in the rap world at the moment is truly staggering, and compared with genres like pop, rock, and country, the level of musical complexity and lyrical elegance that hip-hop employs is extremely high.
So why do so many people think rap is nothing more than violent, misogynistic garbage aimed at getting suburban white kids to dress and act like gang members from South Central LA? Well, let me turn that question around for a moment. Why do so many people think that classical music is nothing more than repetitive waltzes and elevator music played for snoozing rich people? The answer in both cases is, “Because that’s the only part of the genre that gets on TV on a regular basis.”
If you’re not already a fan of classical music and don’t know where to find the good stuff, Andre Rieu and whatever other garbage PBS airs during their endless begging sessions might be the only classical music you hear in a given month. Similarly, if you go to BET looking for hip-hop music, yes, you will find a parade of offensively talentless rappers who buy their backing beats from other people, treat women like their pets, and embrace the whole Thug Life thing. And here’s the important part: real hip-hop musicians feel the same way about the rappers on BET that you and I feel about Andre Rieu. These are musical hacks who have found a comfortable niche that makes them a lot of money. Which is fine – not everyone has to be edgy and daring – but they are not to be confused with shining examples of the genre they purport to represent.
Now, I’m not one of those sorts that believes that the election of Barack Obama was some sort of magical healing balm that is going to eventually allow Americans to put all our racial baggage behind us, but I do take a certain amount of hope from the fact that he has made a point of bringing quality art and music back to the White House, and that he seems to understand that hip-hop owes as much of its legacy to slam poetry and civil rights as it does to the Sugarhill Gang. I mean, honestly: Alexander Hamilton?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNFf7nMIGnE] (Hat tip to Bob Collins at MPR’s NewsCut blog…)
But it works, doesn’t it? And it comes off as passionate and real, not preachy and uptight, the way a song in any other musical genre would if it were about the same subject. By the way, that’s Lin-Manuel Miranda, the Tony Award-winning actor/writer responsible for the hit Broadway show In The Heights, which makes liberal use of hip-hop, as well as a range of other genres.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that we tend to brand unfamiliar music genres in our mind as somehow being reflective not of the artistry of the people making the music, but of the stereotypes we associate with the audience for that genre. Classical music goes in the “stuffy and elitist” bin not because it is, but because we have an image seared into our brain of stuffy elitist people listening to classical music. Hip-hop goes in the “violent and angry” bin not because it is, but because we have an image of gangbangers and wannabes listening to hip-hop.
Maybe hip-hop just isn’t your thing, and that’s perfectly fine. Bruckner leaves a lot of people cold, too. I’ll personally never be a big fan of Motown, though I can recognize that it’s quality stuff. But I’m always amazed at the number of musically sophisticated people who’ve never really even given rap a chance to impress them. If you’re one of them, and want to rectify that, Minnesota’s actually an excellent place to start…
I’m back in the Twin Cities and settling into my new house – the movers arrived yesterday with several tons of belongings (pianos and scores are very, very heavy), and with the cable installed I finally have internet access! I managed to unpack most of my books today and am in the midst of the arduous process of reordering, recataloging and reshelving several hundred scores.
Often, hearing just a few moments of an old, familiar song on the radio (80’s nostalgia, anyone?), we’re taken back into a particular moment in life – the summer of a first love, a memorable high school dance – (for me, 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” takes me back to a difficult couple of months during the messy dissolution of an orchestra with which I was working, but that’s a whole other story…) . I experience something similar when I merely glance at certain scores, because they bring back powerful memories of when I first encountered them.
Dvorak – Symphony #8: the first piece I ever conducted, at 16. My high school orchestra director handed me a baton and took off to take a phone call. I was both utterly enthralled and completely terrified; it’s the moment I got totally hooked.
Chausson – Symphony in Bb Major: on the podium at the Monteux School in Maine many years ago, being yelled at by Charles Bruck. One of the very few times I’ve had to fight back tears on the podium.
Bach – Brandenburg Concerto #1 onstage at the Curtis Institute with an all-star cast of classmates; extraordinary music-making, but more importantly, an extraordinary sense of cameraderie and a unity of purpose that one rarely experiences. The death of one of the performers several years ago only adds to the poignancy of the memory.
Brahms – Symphony #4: a subscription debut with a professional orchestra during my final student years; I had carefully annotated my own parts, and the concertmaster and I came to loggerheads with the bowings for the third movement. “It’s backwards!” he said; “But it puts the accent and the long note in the right place!” I replied. I won the argument – after several rehearsals, I finally won the concertmaster’s approval.
Strauss – Egyptian March: one of the pieces I conducted on a concert the night after my father died. I’ve done everything else on the program since then; subsequently, the memory of that awful period has been erased from them. But this is a piece I’ve not encountered since, and hearing it takes me back to a very dark time.
Stravinsky – Petrouchka: first heard as a young kid on “Dance in America” as part of a tribute to Nijinsky featuring Rudolf Nureyev. I had never been so mesmerized in my (at that point, very short) life, and hearing the whirling exuberance of the opening carnival tableau always reminds me of the sense of thrill and wonder I felt then.
It’s been a ridiculously busy couple of weeks moving my household (and husband) half-way across the country, an effort not without it’s stresses. But there’s a deep reassurance in opening box after box of my old friends, a flitting memory accompanying each, as I ease each volume onto the shelf.
My former colleague over at ArtsJournal.com, Laura Collins-Hughes, has detected a noticable uptick in the number of people who seem to be reading and talking about Dickens lately, and she speculates that it may be that the gloomy, moralizing Dickens is the ideal author for Hard Times. Which is interesting, because I have to confess that Hard Times make me want to read David Sedaris and watch old Eddie Izzard routines until I forget that we’re in Hard Times.
I wonder, too, about the music people choose to listen to when the real world is getting to be a bit much to bear. Does it make you more likely to look for something deep, dark, and meaningful on a concert program, or something escapist and light? What’s the better cure for an economic malaise and global unrest, something that socks you in the stomach but makes you think, or something that lets you just drift away from reality for a while? Mahler 6 or The Marriage of Figaro? Britten’s War Requiem or Bernstein’s West Side Story? Sinead O’Connor or Sonny & Cher?
More importantly, does anyone’s choice really change that much when times aren’t tough? If you answered Mozart, Bernstein, and the Bonos above, would you really be likely to drop $50 on an evening of Mahler if your 401(k) was looking a little better and there was peace in the Middle East? Or are we just who we are in our cultural preferences, regardless of global circumstances?
