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notable
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MUSIC
NEW:
(December 23) - Year-end roundup on classical music - Ben
Kieffer interviews me
on Iowa Public Radio's The
Exchange.
NEW:
(December) So... year-end roundup time. Entry #1:
the winner of the Pulitzer Prize in music, David Lang's
The Little Matchgirl Passion. Beautiful. The committee
is no longer in an uptown
ivory tower. It's also telling that no CD is out - the piece
was distributed free online
here. No waiting. The age of Youtube.
NEW:
(December) Entry # 2 Newspapers are dying and music-critic gigs
disappearing, but I'm struck by how good the critics in the
USA are in 2008. Having Anne
Midgette on the staff of the WaPo is a prime example.
NEW:
(December) Entry # 3 - people are playing the old stuff better
than ever.
NEW:
(November) I gotta get back into this - haven't touched
this site since April. Wanna think about 2 things: (1) why
we like the music we like; (2) the question of music
affecting life/personality/behavior. The latter strikes
me as politically fraught, complex, nuanced, easy to get wrong.
But it's what jumped out about me in this story
from NPR. (3) Felix Mendelssohn. Strongly recommended
background reading: Deborah Hertz's brilliant How
Jews Became Germans.
SOON:
Updates of blogroll, booklist, music, etc.
NEW:
It's scientifically
designed to be the most unpopular song ever written.
Naturally, I love it. Especially the rapping opera singer -
April 2008
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Clap
Your Hands Say Bravo!
The
above reminds me of a previous question about whether It's
OK to Applaud between movements at a classical concert.
The proscription against that sure chimed with the proscription
against "histrionics." Anyway, I hold with those
who say Express yourself! See: Alex's short essay
and Greg's post
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.
Essential:
the 2nd edition of Lydia Goehr's The
Imaginary Museum of Musical Works
(published in 2007). Our core sense
of what music IS (at least for classical fans) turns out to
be about 200 years old.
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Why
not just give Alex
Ross his Pulitzer right now and be done with
it? (for
The
Rest Is Noise.)
So I wrote in October. I'm delighted that the NY Times
has since put it on its "10
Best Books of 2007" list and that the Washingon
Post, LA Times, Economist, Time,
Newsweek, and Slate put it
on their best-of-year lists. His writing has by itself improved
the future of music.- Jan 1, 2008 |
.
The
tone of moral outrage sounds Leon-Wieseltierian, and he bullies
the defenseless, but Richard Taruskin
on the
state of classical music
is not to be missed. (Much more essential, though, is his
Oxford
History of Western Music. There he had to seek the
tone of the balanced observer - although his difficulties with
that role are part of what make the book so utterly compelling.)-
Nov. 2007
Recordings on my mind these days: here
.
some notable online radio/
lecture sources:
Open
Source Radio, the model
in harnessing the Web for creating radio, IS BACK!!!!
NPR's
Planet
Money often succeeds in making the arcane intuitive.
authors@google
- amazing series of invited lectures at the corporate
campus.
Thinking
Allowed with Laurie
Taylor on the BBC - great title, eh? Great show,
too; listen online.
WGBH's
"Forum" trove
-huge collection of lectures and interviews from the
Boston area.
bloggingheads.tv
- political
argument on a higher level than the Sunday talk shows.
Thoughtcast
with Jenny Attiyeh -
master interviewer at work.
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recordings
I'm lovin': -
.
I
love Ravel. I'm into his piano
trio anrd
piano concertos (notably, Krystian Zimerman). On
Youtube you can watch the Beaux
Arts Trio playing this Trio and Leon
Fleisher play the Left-hand Concerto and Martha
Argerich play the G Major! And Rattle/Berlin
in La
Valse ! - a You Tube not to be missed.
*
Isabelle Georges and the Sirba Octet, Du Shtetl a New York,
a joy.
.
Barenboim
on Beethoven - a
6-DVD set from EMI, On Discs 5 and 6 Barenboim gives masterclasses
to young pianists, including Alessio Bax, Jonathan Biss, and Lang
Lang.
Sample this
Youtube excerpt. E.g., the part about a piano crescendoing
on a single note.
.
Ludwig
won't roll over: In fact, he's never had it better. Yes, I
love golden-agers like Schnabel, Arrau, Kempff, Busch, Klemperer,
Furtwaengler, the Quartetto Italiano, etc. But not the lead-age
mentality. So many people devote so much of their lives to this
music now that we shdn't be surprised that some of their playing
is so great. Examples: Garrick Ohlsson's op. 2 no 3; Mitsuko Uchida's
op. 101; Paul Lewis in Op. 10 no 2; the Takacs quartet cycle;
the Vanska symphony cycle; Angela Hewitt's Op. 7 (i haven't had
access to more of her cycle-in-progress); Jonathan Biss in op.
13 and op. 28; Peter Serkin in op. 27 no 1; .... more to come
as I think of them. [BTW, I oppose Vanska's extreme literalism
in principle, but the results shut me up.]
Newish
recordings [as of April 2008] that have jumped out at me:
Stephen Hough playing Chopin Ballades and Scherzos
on Hyperion; in fact, anything by Stephen Hough, come to think
of it; Trevor Pinnock's return to the Brandenburgs
on Avie; Peter Watchorn's WTC book 1 on his own
Musica Omnia label; Rene Jacobs in Don Giovanni
on Harmonia mundi; Marc-Andre Hamelin's Haydn sonatas
on Hyperion: the the the Shahams playing Prokofiev on
their own label; Yevgeni Sudbin playing Scarlatti; Hausmusik
playing Mendelssohn; Pierre Hantai playing Scarlatti.
[I'll update this one of these days.]
Handelian
bliss, part 1: Andrew Manze and the Academy of Ancient
Music's recording of Handel's
Op. 6 concertos - and btw, this opus is not just another set
of Baroque concertos, but a cornucopia of invention (some of which
is plagiarized, but who cares?) And this is not just another recording.
Try the effortlessly overdotted rhythms at the beginning of op.
6 no 10; you can hear how to these players this style has become
a natural language. And try the unhurried Allegro Moderato in
the same concerto - the vitality comes from within, not from mindless
briskness, and the performance makes you feel the music's almost
childlike delight. The group plays with tons of character throughout.
And you can download it.
Handelian bliss, part 2: Don't hold Gramophone's
enthusiasm against it: the
Messiah by the Dunedin Consort and John Butt really is inspired.
Ideal for those who've heard the thing way too often and don't
care if they ever hear it again (because it's the first attempt
to record the Dublin premiere version, and it makes the "small-chorus"
ideal so intimate); just as ideal for someone coming to it for
the first time.
.If
you like the idea of Ira Gershwin and
Kurt Weill performing "The
Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria" et al., you
gotta hear them. Available at emusic.com and on a CD, "Tryout."
(Also:
don't miss their musical/ operetta Lady in the Dark.)
.
I love The
Shins.
I like the way James Mercer's lyrics play with cliches
- evoking them then subverting them. (E.g., in Saint Simon,
"Mercy's eyes are blue [evoking cliche, but then.... ]/
when she places them in front of you [were you expecting that
image?]/ Nothing holds a Roman candle to ["Roman"
transforms the "holds a candle to" cliche, making it
resonate with the song] etc... ) I like how the music works
with the words - sometimes by opposition. (Try A Comet Appears
- the line "let's carve my aging face off/ fetch
us a knife/ start with the eyes/ till all that's left is a grimacing
smile "- such
a violent image, such
tender music. And the two adjectives earn their keep; the verbs,
like "carve" and "fetch," do more of the work.
As they should.)
I like how he undermines the potential repetiveness of the strophic
song through meaningfully varying the returns [Australia:
"damned to be one of us, girl/ faced with the dodo's conundrum/
i felt like I could just fly/ but nothing happened every time
I tried" --- later in the song becomes "dare to be one
us, girl/ facing the android's conundrum/ i felt like I should
just cry/ but nothing happens every time I take one on the chin..."
- with a beautiful, surprising new harmony at "take one on
the chin..".] I like his control of metaphor (in the same
song - Australia - early on, the line "keep your wick
in the air and your feet in the fetters" is a striking set
of verbal sounds, but seems obscure; but much later in the song
it connects to "you don't know how long I've been/ watching
the lantern dim/ starved of oxygen..." And the last line:
"so give me your hand and we'll jump out the window.."
-- that chimes with the dodo's conundrum, maybe?) Above all the
music... the man has always been known for his ability to write
a hook, and his music is inventive way after the hook. Australia
uses a polka rhythm, begins with a hook full of syncopation, and
then has the melody start in the same non-tonic harmony that the
hook reached up to. Similar invention right through to the end.
Here's an interview with Mercer on the craft of songwriting: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/40237-interview-the-shins
My top-10 Shins list, in alphabetical order: Australia;
A Comet Appears; Kissing
the Lipless; New
Slang;
The Past and Pending; Phantom
Limb;
Pink
Bullets; Saint Simon; Sleeping
Lessons;
Those
to Come.
.
I love Ben
Folds. If Sasha Frere-Jones hates it, it's
probably for me.Contrary to John McWhorter, of whom I'm a big
fan, there is a kind of verbal intelligence available in the pop
world even now. More on this later.
.
Nigunim
by Frank London, Lorin Sklamberg,
and Uri Caine - moving, beautifu, (Thank
you, LK.). Even though I don't
romanticize the Chassidim as they seem to. Also: Srul
Irving Glick's A
Night at Heaven's Gate And, in a different vein,
the Klezmatic's Woody Guthrie CDs.
.
I love
Rene
Jacobs in Haydn's symphonies 91 & 92
on Harmonia mundi - check out 92's
opening . What
is more beautiful than a string section playing superbly and perfectly
in tune? - Which brings us to....
.
...another
exclusive! - sample
Simon Rattle and
the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in the Brahms
Tragic Overture. Rattle, who's often
dissed as superficial, proves otherwise. I've heard other conductors
project these inner voices but make them sound like too-precious
detail. Here they are meaningful - and moving. Beautiful phrasing.
(also: the strings in Rattle's new Berlin Mahler 9th on
EMI. Phew!)
.
Eric
Ewazen's Down
a River of Time is heartfelt. I like so much
of what I hear from this unabashedly neo-romantic composer.
.
When old means new: the Debussy
release
from Andante.com (early recordings, e.g., Coppola's La
mer) . And at emusic, Sibelius bud Robert
Kajanus conducting the Sibelius Fifth.
Kajanus and Coppola bring a lightness, volatility and spontaneity
to the music that would be hard to regain once the works became
Classics.
.
Mozart
- Benjamin Britten and Sviatoslav
Richter playing the first movement of
the duo sonata in C, K. 521 (iTunes) strikes me as a mind-blowing
synthesis of imagination, finesse, and wild energy. The musical
equivalent of the right stage of hypomania. And Rene
Jacob's recordings of Mozart's Don Giovanni (at
youtube, here's a documentary), and Figaro and
Cosi - no "hypo" to this mania!
.
What's
on my iTunes? Aside from the above?: Ray Charles,
I Don't Need No Doctor; Martha and the Vandellas,
Jimmy Mack (the stereo version), Miriam Makeba's
The Click Song, Mahler Adagietto by Bruno
Walter with the New York Phil,. (and his Mahler Fourth from
Vienna in 1955, from the Andante set); Paul Robeson (anything
I can get my hands on, but above all Balm in Gilead); Louis
Jordan (Look
out, sister, look out!);
Neal Young's Harvest Moon; Death Cab for Cutie's
Plans; Joni Mitchell's Hejira, Paul
Simon's Only Living Boy in New York City; and lots
of Handel and Bach (two opposites, really). And a lot of
Bob Dylan (notably Blood on the Tracks, and John
Wesley Harding, and Modern Times, and odd songs like
Isis, and Tears of Rage, and Visions of Johanna,
and and and...) and of the Beatles.
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.Too
Many Books!!
.
On
my bedstand right now:
Dreams from My Father
(of course). America
and the World - very user-friendly format, transcripts of
conversations by Brzezinski and Scowcroft. Eric Rauchway's The
Great Depression and The New Deal: A Very Short Introduction
is the best single volume and perfectly priced for a recession at $10.
Gelman's Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State.
Soon: Krugman's new edition of The
Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 and
Recent
enthusiastic endorsements:
Michael Heller,
The Gridlock Economy; Matt
Yglesias's Heads
in the Sand. Deborah
Hertz,
How
Jews Became Germans
Assignments:
Every journalist really should be forced to read Jonathan Gruber's
Public
Policy and Public Finance before covering political /economic
assertions. And if you're at all involved in media, you MUST read chapter
5 - "Media: The Dog That Didn't Watch" - in Jonathan Chait's
book The
Big Con.
.
Some
of the books I'm glad I spent the time on
recently:
Music:
Alex Ross's The
Rest Is Noise.
Not just for classical music fans; if you have any interest in 20th-century
history (or great writing) don't miss it. Also, don't miss Richard
Taruskin's Oxford
History of Western Music (if you've browsed this page, you've
really gotta read it).
Economics:
Paul Krugman and Robin Wells's Macroeconomics
and Microeconomics
( the "Essentials" book drawn from these is going for $26
online used); Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales's
Saving Capitalism from the
Capitalists; Robert Shiller's Irrational
Exuberance;
Jonathan Gruber's Public
Policy and Public Finance; the late John Macmillan's
Reinventing
the Bazaar
Modern
History and politics: Daydream
Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power by Fred
Kaplan. Tony Judt's Postwar;
Mark Mazower's Dark
Continent; Gershom Gorenberg's The
Accidental Empire; and
Polarized America by McCarty, Poole and Rosenthal.
Todd Gitlin's The Bulldozer and the Big Tent And
The Conscience of a Liberal by Paul Krugman (which is a
revisionist view of 20th-century American economic history, not a screed.)
Psychology: James Surowiecki's The
Wisdom of Crowds
(and here's my interview
with Surowiecki - and yes, I'm aware the political prediction markets
don't tell us much); Judith Rich-Harris's
No Two Alike . And for politicos, Drew Westin's The
Political Brain.
Memoirs/Diaries:
Frank Conroy's Stop-Time;
Victor Klemperer's I
Will Bear Witness, Vikram Seth's Two
Lives, Margaret Sartor's Miss
American Pie ; William Shirer's Berlin
Diary; Frank McCourt's Teacher Man; Barack Obama's
Dreams from My Father (heard of it?).
Investing:
William Bernstein's The
Intelligent Asset Allocator; Larry Swedroe's The
Only Guide to a Winning Investment Strategy....(2005 revision; terrible
title, excellent book); Burton Malkiel's A
Random Walk down Wall Street (get the latest edition); David Swensen's
Unconventional
Success; John Bogle's Common
Sense on Mutual Funds. Kudos to Larry for his absolutely correct read
on mortgage-backed securities (and CMOs) when most advisers were pushing
them.
Many, many more but I'll stop there
.
my
news
.
recent-ish publications.
My review of John Butt's Playing
with History is in the autumn 2006 issue of The Journal of the
American Musicological Society .
I guest-edited the fall issue of The Journal of Musicological Research
(on 20th-c performance)..
The BBC Music Magazine liked this site: "[A]
refined voice... intriguing articles
on early music and performance from a wide variety of publications. A
cleansing experience after all this mud-slinging." - April 2002
(may
I also mention my modesty and avoidance of self-promotion...?) .
My chapter on "Conducting Early Music" appears
in The Cambridge Companion to Conducting (ed. Jose
A. Bowen, 2004). Kind review here
.
.
My archived shows
The
Wisdom of Crowds with
James Surowiecki and Joyce Berg. Better: just read The
Wisdom of Crowds. My followup read will be Cass Sunstein's Infotopia.
His review
of The Wisdom of Crowds is well worth reading: http://www.powells.com/review/2004_06_24.html
. BUT - see this new study http://palmdesert.ucr.edu/conferences/economica2007/erikson-gdi.pdf
- showing why prediction markets are LESS successful than polls at
predicting election outcomes.
my interview with Daniel Altman
about his first book, Neoconomy
(now available for $0.01 at Amazon...)
And
an mp3 of Studs Terkel (on
his book And They All Sang) - WFMT called with the opportunity
to do a short interview with Studs, and everyone was on vacation, so...
I did it. What an honor.
And
I just interviewed the brilliant Rebecca Sheir of Alaska Public
Radio about her Third Coast-award-winning documentary, The End as Beginning:
An Audio Exploration of the Jewish View of Death. I'll play parts of it
interspersed with the documentary on KSUI tomorrow. Here's the interview
itself (17 minutes) rebecca mp3
.
How
to Invest- revealed! - a short transcript
from when I used to host radio shows on this. Still pretty timely. (TIPS
are yielding a little less, but not enough to make a difference to what
Larry says.)
.
Beta: a wiki for classical-radio producers in English-speaking countries,
who need to think about ratings as well as musician: what pieces from
the last 30 years would work in our format? (Not: what are the most important
pieces, or the greatest pieces? Just... what will fit into the sound of
classical radio?) Here's a beta
version.
Contact
me: sherman.bd at gmail
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