Two ballet premieres, one year apart

Two important ballet premieres took place on this day, just over 100 years ago.
First the ballet version of "L'après-midi d'un faune" - with Nijinsky. Stravinsky was in the audience. Exactly one year later, again May 29, was the premiere of the "Rite of Spring", and again with choreography by Nijinsky. Though many musicians like to mention the "riot" that followed the "Rite of Spring", the truth is on both occasions the "scandal" was caused mostly by the choreography, not really by the music. Actually most reviews barely mentioned the music at all. In fact "L'après-midi d'un faune" had caused a "riot" just the year before the "Rite of Spring", after Nijinsky ended it by simulating masturbation in front of a full house.

Liszt Piano Concerto No. 2

I'll just say a few words on this because it is one of those pieces many musicians might not necessarily enjoy playing.
What I like about it could perhaps be resumed in 3 main "ideas":

1. It is strikingly original. But my view of "original" is very "complicated"! It is relatively easy to write something that contains elements that are "different". The history of music is full of composers that "innovated" but nobody knows them now. In some way, one could argue that almost any "original" aspect of a "major" composer was anticipated, if not preceded by some minor composer in a now forgotten piece. Even today, modern music is full of "innovations" everywhere, but it is rarely actually original! I think there are at least 3 aspects of originality that must be satisfied, for it to really count as such. First of all, the "new" and original must arise from a need to express something genuine, and not as a gimmick. Secondly, it must make sense artistically, it should be an organic part of a coherent and convincing "whole", not stand against it. Thirdly, it must contribute to the defining "voice" of a composer, or artist. Only when all these conditions are met, a composer and a work is truly original. Many minor composers, instead (today too!) were "superficially" original - the history of music is full of them. But not truly original, because their originality is often a gimmick, or it doesn't contribute artistically to the work, certainly not in a coherent convincing way.

But then comes a truly original composer, for example Berlioz - and he is inspired by the "originality" in a Mehut or a Spontini, and maybe even "steals" some of it! But then when he uses it, it suddenly it is art! Because it is an organic part and it becomes a convincing element in his "voice" unlike when the "other composer" attempted it.

Same with Liszt! He might have heard the "Concertos symphoniques" of Henry Litolff and been influenced by them. And many other things: bits of Weber, Schubert, etc But what he absorbed and came out in the second piano concerto, was truly "Liszt"! And despite being a piece with a structure like no other, certainly for the time, it is a convincing "whole". There is a clear thematic unity in it. Motives continually transform and metamorphose into something else. But it is more like a symphonic poem, in its structure (Liszt championed the genre after all) than like a concerto, And it is clearly "Liszt"- his "voice". You can easily hear the mephistophelian Liszt, and the asphixiatingly beautiful, almost Wagnerian sugary moments, ha! Anyway...

2. It has moments of great beauty. Usually the lyrical ones. The beautiful French Horn Solo at the beginning, the Cello solos, the 2 violin solos, the divided violin line in the high register (that is almost  like a "Lohengrin" moment!), and some of the piano cadenzas. etc. Well, those are some of my favorite, at least...

3. It is so typically Romantic - restless, and unsettled, and it has plenty of musical ambiguity, which Liszt was very good at. It never really stays anywhere for long. Themes are not really completed, when you think you are safe in a tonality, or in a time signature, you are not! You relax at your own risk!

Anyway - enoughof this, cause I want to do some other work! :D

Polystylism

I listened yesterday to William Bolcom's "Songs of Innocence and of Experience". It made me think again about polystylism. I like the idea of polystylism, first of all because I believe it offers a virtually unlimited range of tools and expressive possibilities to artists and composers. The most important thing, beyond any other, is the expressive quality of art and music. Or else, why do we really do it? Thus, if in piece of art, or music, somebody manages to imagine and "invent" and bring into existence a work that is so expressive and varied and convincing while using polystylism, style is entirely unimportant. Rules and barriers and preconceptions, are much less interesting than a moving, inspiring, coherent, perhaps even life changing message.

But here is where the problem comes. Can something that uses polystylism extensively be truly coherent, and convincing, and balanced as a whole? Because polystylism per se is just a gimmick if it is used as a goal in itself, and not as a means to unexplored expressive heights! Polystylism should only happen because of a genuine need of expressing something beyond stylistic barriers. And it should be totally convincing, unless you want to create nothing more than caricatures. And those were interesting for a while - but there are too many around now, there is nothing new in it anymore. If a work switches too often, too suddenly, between styles that are maybe too "far" from eachother, it becomes an "artistic schizophrenia". Of course that can and should be surprises, but too many of them and there is no more surprise, but only an incoherent, incomprehensible mess.

Also, I know from my experience among other musicians, friends - and myself too - that it takes very little for somebody to decide they don't like a piece. Maybe just because of a short passage they for some reason find "boring", or "irritating", etc People can easily "condemn" a piece even only because of a short section of it.

Now, I don't want to imply that "Songs of Innocence and of Experience" fails. But so far, I am not convinced it succeeds either.

I don't have time for more now, I'm afraid.

"Irreversible" - "Tomorrow"

These are 2 versions of a piece for Brass section (4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba), timpani, bass drum and tam tam.
It is strange how this one came to be. I meant to write a piece for brass section, but not this one! This was just meant to be a preparation, an exercise in the sonorities, etc. I only meant to write some bars of different sounds. But somehow, in the end I turned it into a piece. But I want to write another one, completely different.

I am going to call this first piece "Tomorrow" - and the next one "Today". And together call them "Irreversible" - an idea inspired from a French movie I watched years ago.

From what I remember, the movie starts at the end of the story - something terrible happened, you have no idea what, you hear a horribly loud alarm, a body taken out from somewhere, etc. Then the camera starts to spin - like the whole world spins - and when it stabilizes again, we see what happened 10 minutes before. Then again, the "world starts to spin", and when it stabilizes we see what happened 10 minutes before that, etc, until the end of the movie. It takes a while until you understand what is going on, and there are some truly horrible scenes! But as you get closer and closer to the beginning of the story (and the end of the movie), the atmosphere is more and more peaceful and happy. However you know what is coming, you know what is going to happen - because it has already happened. It is irreversible!

The music for the pieces, is not inspired by the movie at all, but  the first piece is very dark! And it has a fairly terrifying crescendo before  the recap, I'd say - especially as it should sound played by a full brass section plus the percussion rolls! :)

 "Today" will be very different though. But like in the movie, if the pieces were played together, I'd imagine "Tomorrow" played first, followed by "Today" - hence "Irreversible".

And as I used paintings for my previous soundcloud tracks and I liked it, I used Caravaggio's "Medusa" for this one.

Destiny

Almost 100 years ago yesterday, Janacek was saved from being hit by a train, after falling on the railway, in Brno. Luckily that did not happen - or else there would be no Sinfonietta, no "Intimate Letters", no Taras Bulba, no Glagolitic Mass, etc. Everything can change in a minute.

Brass fanfares

 OK, finally a bit of time to work on a brass fanfare. And I looked at a few brass "fanfares" recently for "inspiration", but speaking of Janacek again, yesterday I looked at the score for the fanfare in Sinfonietta. Actually I think it is brilliant how the entire fanfare movement is made out of 2 motives, basically: the one that appears in the trumpets (second half of which is anticipated in the timpani) and the descending chords in the tenor tubas, which, when repeated, seem related to the second part of the other motive too. The great thing about having 9 trumpets in groups of 3 is not only that they can be loud, but they can be loud for some time, because they can bump each other.

I wanted to write one brass fanfare. But I think, I'll do at least 2. Because I'd really like to get a bit of the sound of a band like those in Moldova. But first I want to try something else...

Well here is one of those bands:

Ambivalent about Janacek

I don't know... I am ambivalent about Janacek. I like that he sounds very original and wild. (though that is really the stuff written at the end of his life; the earlier music is more "Germanic", late romantic). It is so clear that his best music "grows out" of the inflections and intonation and rhythm of the Czech language. And he has his own way of developing his musical ideas, usually through repetition and variation of short motives and patterns. (Enescu too considered that the "best" way of developing folk inspired music, as he thought using "western" symphonic development on those types of motives wouldbe like "setting diamonds in stone": -> bad). But that to me, also makes his music sound sometimes somehow superficial. Because the motives are always fairly short and "primitive" - there are no truly long lines. The patterns are always slightly twisted, warped. It is like a puzzle of many small pieces stuck together somehow artificially. The orchestration is always "in your face" and spaced in "funny" ways. And most of the times it is developed following the same "recipe". But Janacek, like the Russians, during and before his time, was looking for a "Slavic", non-Germanic sound. And he succeeded there. In some ways he is like a more modern (and less alcoholic, I guess!) version of Mussorgsky. With similar aspirations: to find a "slavic" sound, to derive the essence of the motives from the spoken language, etc.
Sometimes his music reminds me of the late poems of Dvorak, who Janacek idolized. But still, Dvorak was in essence a composer in the Germanic tradition. Janacek at his best was not. I don't know...
OK, rant over, sorry!

My "Schiele Quartet"

I've just finished writing a string quartet. I call it "my "Schiele Quartet", because the "departure point" of each movement is a particular painting by Egon Schiele. I wouldn't want anybody to think, though, that I mean to "represent" in music the painting! We often look at, or interpret paintings differently, and what I "see" may be different from what someone else would! It doesn't matter.
Maybe the painting is just the start of something else...
The first movement is "inspired by Schiele's "The Embrace". For me "The Embrace" is nothing like Klimt's "The Kiss", for example. I think "The Embrace" is intense, elemental, all consuming. I often think of paintings as "frozen moments of expression" - or maybe "frozen moments of intense expression". In a way, they are "perfect"! Because that moment will never pass, that atmosphere will never stop, what they express is almost eternal! An embrace, for example, will never break. They are not subject to the limits of our human condition.
I can even imagine this painting as "the last embrace", if I want to. Anyway, enough about the painting!
The main "body" of the music is essentially a Fugue, which is "encapsulated" by 2 very different sections. The first: tumultuos, intense, "all-consuming"; the last: tragic, an "adio" (the Romanian word of "Good bye for ever!"). At the end a quick allusion to the beginning too.
I wrote this fairly quickly, in fairly awful circumstances - some of it at the hospital... I may still change it, maybe add things later; I'll see...

The "departure point" for the second movement was Shiele's painting "Four Trees"; Four, lonely, desolate trees - and an "apocalyptic sky... I wrote a shorter and a longer version of this movement. The longer version  has a "mournful" canon, and then a quote of a particular verse from my recent choir piece. But I really don't feel like talking about it. I wrote almost all of this movement, like the previous one too, around my mum. Or right next to her. It has to do with Schiele's paintings too, but it is a lot more personal than that.
I finished this piece at 5 in the morning on a Monday, a few weeks ago. My sister and I gave her the last morphine at 5.30. At 6 she passed away, after so much suffering... But to me, she is immortal.

The '3rd movement': "Portrait of Herbert Rainer aged about 6 years". No tragedy in this one! But playful, naughty - or rather mischievous - slightly grotesque music. It is a Scherzo. With some allusions (but not that obvious!) to that great master of "magic" scherzos, Mendelssohn. I like my "allusions"! The previous movement had its "coded allusions" to Sibelius, which is strange, cause I am not that great of a fan, ha!

The "departure point", as I call it, for this last piece is "The Family".
This movement is muted all the way through (not so obvious on this computer reproduction), with some extremely quiet passages, especially in the recapitulation, where the music should just ... "evaporate off the strings", almost not as a result of any movement from the performers! So, if you listen to it, don't turn the volume too high, it should be "end of Mahler 9" type quiet, in the outer sections, especially, at the end! It is unfortunately hard to create a huge scale of dynamics on the computer... The middle section has a "wild", over the top, extravagant, "Eastern-European" episode! But still muted - it should be like a "hurricane in a cup". The outer sections should be extremely free. I struggled to suggest that on the computer. I had to use "Notes inégales". The entire thing would sound so much better with real musicians! I was also quite exasperated by a glissando which I just can't fake well on the computer...
But I don't want to talk about the music, or the painting! As Tom Redmond
would say: "let the music take you wherever it ... takes you!"


Here is a sample of my "immaculate" handwriting, while I was working on this!

OK, here is the entire piece, as a soundcloud playlist, with the movements in the "right" order. Even though it is a "Schiele quartet", expressionist angst and all that, and I am no doubt crossing a very "blue period" myself, the quartet is not all entirely desolate! It has a "light" scherzo, a mostly "playful" fugue, some wild, Eastern-European folk inspired bits, etc. But yes, some truly dark passages too, I guess.
For now with the long(er) version of the second movement and the short(er) version of the last movement. This is unfortunately a computer reproduction - not too bad. But, some things are ... missing. For example there should be occasionally a bit less of a "sense of pitch". Some "battuto", "col legno", "sul ponts", some glissandos, etc.. There is a ricochet passage, too.
But hopefully I can manage to perform it and maybe record it soon with real musicians! :)

Walton and his "rhythmic vitality"

We've just played Walton 1 (the first symphony). And I thought, I really like his rhythmic vitality! His music seems to me often so full of energy of a "healthy" kind! Life affirming! Ha! As I said, vitality. I am not always impressed with how he develops his ideas. But, still, those ideas are often quite attractive! Which is more than can be said about plenty of other composers.

And then I thought, there must be there people thinking exactly that! So I curiously searched , and found really tons of articles mentioning those exact words, in relation to his music: "rhythmic vitality", etc. So here's an entirely unoriginal observation, it seems!

East/West Berlin divide still visible from space due to different light bulbs

East/West Berlin divide still visible from space due to different lightbulbs pic.twitter.com/B7MRLFh046

— SciencePorn (@SciencePorn) May 3, 2015

Barenboim's Reith Lectures

I enjoyed listening to the Reith lectures Barenboim gave in 2006. In some way, I was expecting more; but, I forget they are not aimed specifically at musicians. I like his overall idea that one can learn about and better understand life, through music. And that clearly is not just a "nice sounding line" for him. He frequently compares the sense of timing, or proportion, subversion, harmony, balance, etc in music, with "real life" equivalents. Even politics. See the bit about the Oslo agreement and Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata, ha! :D (I think that is in the 2nd or 3rd lecture) And I like it, because ... I am also maybe "weird" in that sense, and happen to "see" musical (or programming) "metaphors" and analogies, so often, in real life! Some, who had the "privilege" of hearing me rant (sorry!) about that, will know I call them "metaphors", ha! Pretty much everything in real life can be interpreted (and hopefully better understood and clarified) as a musical (or programming) metaphor. But I am not Barenboim, perhaps I am just a little insane, after all!

And speaking of musical metaphors; sharps flats and naturals, foreign to the "general order", immigrants from other keys; can upset the tonality, no doubt, but bring colour and variety to it.

Anyway, back to the lectures - here are some great passages from the last of Barenboim's Reith lectures:

"There is nothing that I must not see in order to see, and there is no knowledge that I must forget." (Barenboim quotes Martin Buber)

"I believe people don't think about music... They just let it wash over them, and operate on them in an almost animal way! Music to me is sound with thought."

"Throughout these lectures I have been attempting to draw parallels between the inexpressible content of music and the inexpressible content of life...we have talked about the distinction between hearing and listening, the need to have a point of view, both in music and in life"

"Music shows us the inevitable flow of life, which depends on change"

"Music teaches us that everything is connected"

Speaking about power, strength and transparency - in music and life: "Even the most powerful chord has to allow for the inner voices to be heard; otherwise it has no tension, only brutal aggressive power. You must hear the opposition; the notes that oppose the main idea. In other words, the concept of transparency is essential in music, because if it is not aurally transparent, you cannot actually get the totality of the music... You only get one line of it!"

"In Jerusalem today, we have come full circle - this too I learned from music, ladies and gentlemen - because when you perform a piece of music, you have to be able to hear the last note, before you play the first." etc., etc.

Barenboim - ReithLecture no. 5