On the 100th anniversary of what Leonard Bernstein called the most important piece of music in the 20th century, here are a few of my favorite adaptations of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.
Departures from The Rite
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Remixing the Rite
It’s not every day that electronic music DJs dabble in the classical music realm…but often, when they do, the results are less than thrilling.
Okay…Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross won an Oscar for that last one—a remix of In the Hall of the Mountain King, from Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt.
“There’s this increasing wave in my part of music of the lack of respecting an original work for what it is,” says Stefan Goldmann, a DJ and composer of electronic music who lives in Berlin. He told me, he struggles with the idea of DJs remixing other people’s work.
“So, someone composes a piece of music in a certain way and somebody else just instantly says, ‘Oh, I can do better,’ and changes it around? At some point, I thought, why would everybody just change what I do as a music composer and producer to suit some different idea and we never get to hear the original anymore?” Continue reading
Arrested Development & Recapitulation
Created by @JamiePaisley
First of all, credit where credit is due: my puntastic colleague at KUSC, @JamiePaisley, created this, and many other, TV ad posters during our recent pledge drive. As a rabid fan of Arrested Development, this one was my favorite. And it got me thinking: what if the cast of AD were made up of classical composers?
Below, you’ll find my choices for which composer is best represented in the main characters of Arrested Development. Now…I could take this exercise deep into obscurity on either the AD or classical music side (see below), but for brevity’s sake, I’ve left it at just the main characters. So…where do I hit? Where do I miss? Let me know in the comments.
Michael Bluth – Right away, we’ll start with some controversy. Allow me to summarize how I feel about the music of Johannes Brahms in one syllable: meh. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, here’s why I think Michael Bluth is Brahms. I can also say it in one syllable: safe. Both are risk-averse, rarely challenge convention, and deride others who do. Plus, Brahms was a crusader against shoddy construction. “Without craftsmanship,” Brahms said referring to his rivals, “inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.” Continue reading
Wagner, According to His Critics
“One can’t judge Wagner’s opera ‘Lohengrin’ after a first hearing, and I certainly don’t intend hearing it a second time.” -Gioacchino Rossini
“Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.” -Edgar Wilson Nye, quoted in Mark Twain’s autobiography
“[The Prelude to Tristan und Isolde] reminds one of the old Italian painting of a martyr whose intestines are slowly unwound from his body on a reel.” -Eduard Hanslick
“Wagner’s music, in spite of all its wondrous skill and power, repels a greater number than it fascinates.” -The Era (newspaper)
“I can’t listen to that much Wagner, ya know? I start to get the urge to conquer Poland.” -Woody Allen, Manhattan Murder Mystery
“I cannot explain very well to myself what they have that distinguishes them from the rest, something arborescent or of the sky, not Wagner, not clouds on wheels; written above an abscess and not out of a cavity, a statement and not a description of heat in the spirit to compensate for pus in the spirit.” -Samuel Beckett
“Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches – he has made music sick.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
“After the last notes of Götterdämmerung I felt as though I had been let out of prison.” -Peter Tchaikovsky
“I like Wagner’s music better than any other music. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time, without people hearing what one says.” -Oscar Wilde
Happy 200th, Richard Wagner
“Richard Wagner” (1882) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris
“I write music with an exclamation point!” -Richard Wagner
There’s no middle ground on Richard Wagner. You either love him or hate him. Correction: there is a kind of middle ground that most people, including me, dwell in. To oversimplify, it is this: love the art; hate the artist. Wagner was a despicable man. He was proudly anti-Semitic and wrote those views into his characters (Alberich, anyone?). He was self-centered, violent, and had bad manners. But, oh, that music!
Tomorrow is Wagner’s 200th birthday. In celebration, here are 16 things about Wagner you may not know.
-We don’t know who his real father was. Most people believe his dad was Carl Friedrich Wagner, a police actuary, who died six months after Richard was born. Others think it might have been actor Ludwig Geyer, whom Richard’s mother Johanna later married.
-He once played an angel in one of Ludwig Geyer’s plays.
-He flunked out of most of his classes in school, only excelling in music.
-He considered himself to be “the most German of men.”
-His musical hero was Beethoven. Wagner and Bruckner shared mutual admiration for each others’ music.
-He briefly was the music director of the local opera company in Riga.
-His first purely musical composition was a Piano Sonata. He also wrote a String Quartet, two Symphonies, and patriotic music for Great Britain and the United States.
-He was once heterosexual life partners with Friedrich Nietzsche, before a famous falling out.
-He proudly sported the Neck Beard
-His trademark slouched beret is known in Germany as a Wagnerkappe. (Literally: Wagner hat)
-He could barely play the piano–or any instrument, for that matter–and wasn’t particularly great at reading music.
-Igor Stravinsky hated Wagner.
-Wagner’s first opera, Die Feen, was never produced during his lifetime.
-His manifesto was, “Kinder! macht Neues!” (“Children, make something new”)
-He knew how to handle the trombones: “Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them.” (This quote has also been attributed to Richard Strauss and various conductors over the years, but regardless of the source, the advice is sound.)
-He liked to wear women’s underwear.
Pulitzer Partita
Yesterday, composer Caroline Shaw won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for her a cappella composition Partita for 8 Voices. At age 30, she is the youngest winner in the prize’s history. The jury described Shaw’s composition as “a highly polished and inventive a cappella work uniquely embracing speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects.”
The work is in four movements and appears on a New Amsterdam recording by the ensemble for which it was written, Roomful of Teeth. You can see samples of the sheet music here. And listen to the entire piece below. Very cool stuff. I’m particularly fond of the second movement Sarabande.
In a statement, Shaw said: “The four pieces of Partita were inspired by my dear friends in Roomful of Teeth, during our time together each summer in residence at Mass MoCA, where Sol LeWitt’s bright designs overwhelm me every time. Together, in the ensemble, we’ve been exploring and expanding our love of harmony and the human voice. Partita is also a return to some of my musical origins – violin, dance, and the whimsical imagination of Bach.
“Receiving the Pulitzer is an honor, and I’m grateful to the board and to the jury for considering my music. Some say that it portends a career shift. I’m just going to keep trying to work hard to make good music with good people.”
Orchestra Musician: It’s Not a Cush Job
A couple of days ago, an article appeared in Bloomberg that was so misinformed, so short-sighted, so petty, so ignorant, and so utterly ridiculous that to let it go unchallenged would be irresponsible.
The article came from Manuela Hoelterhoff, the Pulitzer Prize-winning executive editor for Bloomberg Muse and author of Cinderella & Company: Backstage at the Opera With Cecilia Bartoli. Clearly, a capable and decorated writer who has been in the business for many years and deserves respect from this lowly radio host.
HOWEVER…
Earlier this week, Hoelterhoff decided to take on the labor dispute at the San Francisco Symphony. She proceeded to rail against the SFS musicians for “sulking,” saying they “have stopped working because they don’t like doing what they are meant to be doing.” As if a labor stoppage is ever about enjoying one’s job. Continue reading
