Rued Langgaard: Music of the Spheres

To those who knew him, Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) was often regarded as a loner and an eccentric, even a bit of a crank. For most of his adult life, he held organist positions at various Danish churches, all the while composing prolifically. But his larger ambitions for both his compositions and organ playing were consistently thwarted, and he died almost completely forgotten. Only in succeeding decades were his works revived and recognized for their value, innovation, and beauty. Now he has taken his place in the pantheon of great Danish composers.

Both of Langgaard’s parents were pianists, and he started studying piano with them at age five. He showed early talent, and was composing his own music before he turned ten. He made his debut as an organist at eleven. Edvard Grieg heard Langgaard perform around this time and was much impressed, sending his parents an enthusiastic letter. Langgaard’s first compositions were published when he was thirteen, and his hour-long Symphony No. 1 was premiered by no less than the Berlin Philharmonic when he was nineteen – an event that Langgaard himself and many others saw as the greatest success of his lifetime.

But Langgaard came to regard himself an outcast in Danish musical society. Despite having studied briefly with Denmark’s most famous composer, Carl Nielsen, Langgaard later felt a profound resentment toward Nielsen’s success and fame. The Copenhagen Royal Theater’s rejection of Langgaard’s opera Antikrist in 1925 led to a long period of anger and darkness, and for a decade or more Langgaard wrote almost no new music. Only in 1940, when he won an organist job in the small town of Ribe – in the southwest part of Jutland, far from Denmark’s musical center of Copenhagen, where Langgaard had lived much of his life – was he able to compose again.

His overall output of some 400 compositions includes sixteen symphonies, seven string quartets, four violin sonatas, a host of piano and organ works, around 150 songs, and that one opera, Antikrist. His music inhabits a variety of sound worlds. For the most part, his orchestral works, including his symphonies, are large and lushly-scored, some in the manner of Richard Strauss. But he also had a taste for more unconventional sounds and techniques. With titles like “Heaven-Storming” (Symphony No. 6), Music of the Abyss, Antikrist, “Yon Dwelling of Thunder” (Symphony No. 10), and “Sun Deluge” (Symphony No. 16) fairly commonplace in his work, it’s clear that Langgaard gravitated toward big concepts, religious and philosophical and natural, in his work.

His fervent Protestant faith, with a touch of mysticism, led Langgaard to an obsession with the fight between good and evil, and even apocalyptic ideas. Langgaard came to feel music so important and powerful that it could change the world. He even envisioned a world theocracy in which music would be primary. But that could only emerge, he felt, out of the destruction of the current order. He went through periods of optimism, and profound pessimism, that the world and humankind were ready for such a change. Langgaard came to see music as “vertical” – as Bendt Viinholt Nielsen puts it at the langgaard.dk website, “reaching down into the deepest levels of the psyche, down to ‘the evil,’ and stretching at the other end of the scale up to the heavenly spheres, to the realm of the sublime and the divine.”

One of Langgaard’s masterpieces, and the work that brought his music back to public consciousness after his death, is Sfærernes Musik, or Music of the Spheres, BVN 128. Composed over 1916-1918 and published in 1919, it was one of Langgaard’s few orchestral pieces to be published during his lifetime. Music of the Spheres received its premiere on November 26, 1921 in Karlsruhe, Germany. That performance was a success, but one in Berlin the following year was not.

Those were the only two performances of the work in Langgaard’s lifetime; he tried many times to arrange for one in Denmark, but in vain. When Music of the Spheres was finally revived for a Stockholm performance in 1968, it was a great success, and that began the re-emergence of Langgaard and his music from almost total obscurity. Only in 1980 did the work get the Danish performance of which Langgaard had long dreamed.

Musica universalis, or the Music of the Spheres, was an ancient idea – first written about by Pythagoras and later elaborated on by people like Boethius and Johannes Kepler – that the movements of the planets in their orbits created a form of music, not necessarily audible but mathematically-based as well as religious and philosophical, that reflected the God-created harmony of the universe. As Kepler put it, the Music of the Spheres could be apprehended by the soul, and it provided the soul with a “very agreeable feeling of bliss, afforded him by this music in the imitation of God.”

Langgaard’s handling of the concept, though, was uniquely his own, informed by those apocalyptic ideas of his mentioned above. In the preface to his score, Langgaard vividly describes his work as “celestial and earthly music from red glowing strings, on which life plays with claws of a beast of prey – life, with a crown of iris on its marble face and the stereotypical – yet living – demonic smile on its lily-white cheeks…” Elsewhere he wrote, “In Sfærernes Musik I have in the darkness and despair of night completely abandoned any sort of motif, planned structure, form or coherence. It is ‘Music’ cloaked in a black veil and the impenetrable mists of death…” Much later, in 1950, he created a motto for the piece: “Kindly the stars may seem to beckon us, cold and unmerciful, though, is the writing of the stars.”

What is all this about? Music of the Spheres is highly unconventional, and highly atmospheric. While there are occasional stretches of more conventional melody, much of the music is static, focused on mood and space and texture. In the words of Bendt Viinholt Nielsen, one of the world’s authorities on Langgaard and his music (his initials are the BVN of the numbers associated with Langgaard’s works, which Nielsen cataloged), in Music of the Spheres Langgaard “set aside all that is normally understood by motifs, development, form and continuity. What takes centre stage instead is ‘themes’ such as space, timbre, height and depth, foreground and background.” Many passages are static, and quiet, with stillness at the center and decorations around the edges.

Some of the techniques Langgaard employed were well ahead of their time. In 1968, Per Nørgård made his fellow composer György Ligeti aware of the work. Ligeti responded, “I didn’t know I was a Langgaard imitator!” Langgaard had actually anticipated sounds and techniques – dissonant clusters of tones, minimalistic repetitions of short phrases, layering of seemingly unrelated sounds –that Ligeti employed in works like Atmosphères (1961) and Lontano (1967). Conductor Thomas Dausgaard elaborates: “Sometimes he builds up high clusters or patterns note by note, line by line, always very quiet, repeated over and over. I have this feeling with Langgaard that he wanted to wake our senses, as if we were new-born again.”

In Music of the Spheres, Langgaard calls for a huge chorus and orchestra – including eight French horns, four sets of timpani and multiple percussionists, and organ – along with a soprano and a “distant orchestra” of fifteen instruments. An orchestral piano has its lid removed, allowing the pianist to play directly on the strings, perhaps the first time that technique had been used. Yet, even with these huge forces, Langgaard uses them carefully. The organ has only a small part, and the first true tutti for the orchestra doesn’t arrive for close to half an hour.

The score is a fascinating document. Even if you don’t read music, it’s easy enough to visualize some of Langgaard’s effects, the repetitions of phrases and the way he layers music and moves lines about the orchestra. A pdf of the score is available for free at imslp.com.

The two sets of timings in the following listening guide are based on two different recordings of Music of the Spheres:

(left) the 1997 Chandos recording featuring soprano Gitta-Maria Sjoberg and the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir conducted by Gennady Rozhdestvensky. This recording, with the full score of the work as the visual content, appears below via YouTube. It’s also the one featured on KNCJ Wednesday Evening Classics on Wednesday, April 22, 2020 at 7:00 p.m. PDT.

(right) the 2010 Dacapo recording featuring soprano Inger Dam-Jensen, the Danish National Choir, the Danish National Vocal Ensemble, and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Thomas Dausgaard.

Music of the Spheres is in fifteen sections, played continuously.

I. Like sunbeams on a coffin decorated with sweet smelling flowers —
(0:00-2:34) (0:00-3:01)
In “Classical Lost And Found: Rued Langgaard’s Mystical Musical Universe,” Bob McQuiston describes the first seven sections of Music of the Spheres as “galactic mood music, with shimmering strings, exotic organ stops and pounding timpani. No full-fledged thematic ideas here, just a fascinating swirl of melodic nebulosities that pan in and out of audibility.” In this opening section, violin tremolos swell and recede as single notes pop out from the texture, with the timpani occasionally interjecting dramatically.

II. Like the twinkling of stars in the blue sky at sunset —
(2:35-5:08) (3:02-6:21)
A short phrase from the flutes flutters about repetitively. After a blast from the timpani and cymbals, the tremolos from the first section return with even more powerful timpani.

III. Like light and the depths —
(5:09-7:16) (6:22-8:42)
A tattoo from the timpani accompanies ominous French horns as a web of violins evolves and grows in strength. Here and throughout Music of the Spheres, Langgaard makes much of the tonal space between instruments, frequently contrasting “light,” higher pitched instruments, flutes or violins, and those in the “depths,” like timpani or low brass.

IV. Like the refraction of sunbeams in the waves —
(7:17-7:52) (8:43-9:45)
Fluttering flutes and very high violin tremolos ascend to the sky and shine brightly.

V. Like the twinkling of a pearl of dew in the sun on a beautiful summer’s morning —
(7:53-8:45) (9:46-10:20)
A variation on the descending flute phrase from section 2 emerges. The string textures become more elaborate and complex.

VI. Longing – Despair – Ecstasy —
(8:46-12:18) (10:21-14:04)
The strings play a repetitive, high-lying melody, punctuated by cymbal crashes, that has an almost Mahler-like intensity. A powerful orchestral crescendo, in which the organ joins but briefly, fades to a flowing, shimmering bed of strings and woodwinds, undergirded by deep brass. Then the tremolos from the work’s opening return again, and fade to nothingness.

VII. Soul of the world – Abyss – All Soul’s Day —
(12:19-14:34) (14:05-16:29)
Muted strings and high flutes and clarinets swirl and exchange phrases, with the timpani beneath them – one pounding out a beat, and the other providing a quiet roll. The timpani are then left alone, creating a mood of expectation. After a fraught pause, flutes and violins swirl and ascend again.

VIII. I Wish…! —
(14:35-15:55) (16:30-17:46)
Over two repeating notes, an alto soloist from the choir enters, singing the do-re-mi-fa-sol-la from solfège singing in the manner of a folk song. A second alto soon enters with the same syllables, followed by the altos and basses of the chorus, as the dramatic intensity grows.

IX. Chaos – Ruin – Far and near —
(15:56-18:02) (17:47-20:00)
A storm whips up within the orchestra. But it soon calms to desolate repeating phrases from the strings and a plaintive French horn line that gradually gains in strength, then calms again.

X. Flowers wither —
(18:03-19:38) (20:01-21:32)
This quiet, almost evanescent music has something of the character of a pastoral hymn, calm yet vaguely melancholy. It ends with a wandering solo flute.

XI. Glimpse of the sun through tears —
(19:39-24:55) (21:33-27:35)
Mysterious, almost static – yet beautiful – chords from the strings create a mood of quiet expectation. A descending figure over a quiet, ominous timpani roll leads to a new section in which gently dissonant chords from the flutes sound over an undulating bed of strings. A timpani crescendo leads to a reminiscence of the static chords from the beginning of the section, but more agitated this time, and played tremolo. Languor sets in with repeating tremolo figures from the strings and eerie, dissonant chords from the flutes.

XII. Bells pealing: Look! He comes —
(24:56-26:53) (27:36-29:28)
The music suddenly turns animated, with the constant motion of the strings building momentum. The tempo increases as timpani start to pound. Then, all at once, a lovely hymn-like theme suddenly appears, which serves as an introduction to the next section.

XIII. The Gospel of flowers – From the far distance —
(26:54-29:21) (29:29-32:07)
The soprano soloist sings a poem in German by Ida Lock (1882-1951), an amateur poet who had studied music with Langgaard’s father. The music is lush and gently exultant, reminiscent of Mahler or Richard Strauss. The following translation of the text comes from the aforementioned Dacapo recording of the work.

When my soul is submerged in an ocean
of tears and smiles from an eye,
it would seem to have caught the music
of a glorious symphony,
the air seems charged with rhythm,
conceived in sorrow and pain,
transmitting its sad, sighing longing
and the sound of its haunting refrain
through billowing waves of fragrance
down a winding rippling stream
from the ocean of tears and laughter,
from the soul’s ecstatic dream.

XIV. The new day —
(29:22-30:53) (32:08-33:32)
Horns and trumpets sound a fanfare as the music builds, with a solo violin and the pealing of bells.

XV. The end: Antichrist – Christ
(30:54-35:31) (33:33-39:58)
As mentioned above, around the time of World War I, Langgaard became somewhat obsessed with the figure of Antichrist, the end of the world, and, in its wake, the creation of a new Utopia based on art and religion. In this final movement, a long, crescendo D minor chord, some ninety seconds long, is sounded by the choir, with all sorts of fast-moving, dramatic decorations, including brass fanfares, from the orchestra in D major around the chorus. Then comes a timpani roll, fully a minute long, and high violin tremolos. These violent sounds from the timpani and cymbals contrast with the following “heavenly” sound of choir and harps, and the strumming of the strings within the piano. Then, as Bob McQuiston describes it, the chorus, singing a cluster of nine notes, disappears “as if swallowed up by some passing black hole, which suddenly flares into an orchestral supernova of sound. It quickly burns to a cold, dissonant cinder, ending this extraordinary journey much as it began in the vast emptiness of space.”

Ronald Stevenson: Piano Concerto No. 2 “The Continents”

Ronald Stevenson (1928-2015) was in many ways something of a throwback. He was also a Renaissance man: a prolific composer, virtuoso pianist, author, teacher, intellectual, and polymath. Author Malcolm MacDonald called him a “mephistofaustian composer-pianist in the pattern of Liszt, Busoni and Paderewski … [in] the mould of such great Victorian artist-socialists as John Ruskin, or the Transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau, for whom art and life and nature were all compact.”

The son of working-class parents – his Scottish father was a railway fireman and his Welsh mother a mill-worker – Stevenson was proud of his Celtic heritage and considered himself a Scot, having lived in Scotland from his twenties until his death. He studied at the Royal Manchester College of Music (where he also later taught; it’s now part of the Royal Northern College of Music) and the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome. As a self-identified “socialist pacifist” and conscientious objector – his politics are sometimes evident in his music – Stevenson applied for an exemption from military service but was denied, leading to his imprisonment for a year. From 1962 to 1965, he taught piano and composition at the University of Cape Town. He also taught at the University of Edinburgh and the Juilliard School, and was a visiting Professor at the Shanghai Conservatory.

He was an occasional radio broadcaster, creator of a twenty-six part BBC series on the music of Ferruccio Busoni – on whose music he was an authority and about whom he wrote a long study – and a series on the Scottish Pipe, Harp and Fiddle. He corresponded with the likes of Dmitri Shostakovich, Benjamin Britten and Jean Sibelius, and his long exchange of letters with Percy Grainger has been published by Toccata Press.

Among Stevenson’s compositions are hundreds of piano pieces, choral music, over two hundred songs, and a host of piano transcriptions and folk song arrangements. Probably his most famous composition – and one of his most ambitious, comprising some eighty minutes of unbroken music – is the Passacaglia on DSCH for solo piano (1960-62). Recordings of Stevenson’s music have been appearing at a steady pace in recent years. Along with multiple versions of the Passacaglia, Christopher Guild is engaged in a complete recording of Stevenson’s solo piano music for Toccata Classics, and a three-CD set of piano works played by Murray McLachlan was released by Divine Art. Fortunately, too, recordings of Stevenson himself as a pianist are available, many on YouTube. Here, Stevenson plays his Heroic Song, the second movement of 1967’s A Scottish Triptych.

Stevenson wrote four concertos – one for violin (composed for Yehudi Menuhin), one for cello, and two for piano. The first of Stevenson’s piano concertos, “Faust Triptych,” evolved over many years, starting life as a Faust Fantasy for solo piano inspired by Ferruccio Busoni’s opera Doktor Faust that was expanded into a trio of pieces – the Prelude, Fugue, and Fantasy – and subsequently orchestrated as the Piano Concerto No. 1 in 1960.

Around this time, Stevenson had become increasingly fascinated with the range of the world’s music. In the last chapter of his 1971 book Western Music: An Introduction, Stevenson wrote “Europe is tired. Western art must look to the East,” concluding that “the sum of world music is the complete music of mankind.” He hinted at this interest in the work that followed the First Piano Concerto, the aforementioned Passacaglia on DSCH. Based on the musical motto of Dmitri Shostakovich (in the German nomenclature, D = D, S = Es or E-flat, C = C, H = B natural), the Passacaglia incorporates allusions to Scottish, Spanish, Russian, and South African musical styles.

But this interest came to fruition in the Piano Concerto No. 2, “The Continents,” which was described by Tom Service as Stevenson’s “hugely ambitious attempt to create a journey around the world’s musical traditions with the piano the voyager.” Commissioned in 1972 by the BBC for the Henry Woods Proms, the Concerto No. 2 was premiered with Stevenson as soloist and the New Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Norman del Mar. That premiere performance is available on YouTube.

Stevenson described the origin of his work: “In the early 1960s, living in South Africa, I read a poem, Die Kind (The Child), by the Afrikaans poet Ingrid Jonker. The black child with a bullet through his brain in Sharpeville only wanted to play in the sun. As a symbol, he will travel through the world – without a pass book. This poem suggested to me the form of my Second Piano Concerto: a trek through the musics of the continents, with all the struggle of a piano pitted against an orchestra.” In a single continuous movement, the Piano Concerto No. 2 was described by Stevenson as having five sections, including a prologue and epilogue.

The following listening guide owes much to the description and notes included with the Concerto’s recording with pianist Murray McLachlan and Chetham’s Symphony Orchestra conducted by Julian Clayton, which has appeared on the Olympia and Regis labels. The timings below are based on that recording.

1. Prologue, including Africa and Australia

a. Prologue
(0:00-0:34)
This short, thundering introduction features both the Shostakovich-inspired DSCH motif mentioned above and the “Clavis Astartis Magica” theme from Busoni’s Doktor Faust, a melody which also appears in Stevenson’s Piano Concerto No. 1. (Clavis Astartis Magica, a book on black magic, is given to Faust in the opera’s Prologue 1; it becomes a guide to Faust’s summoning of Mephistopheles and accrual of power.)

b. Evocation of African drumming
(0:35-1:39)
This section, focusing on rhythm, features only percussion and piano.

c. Moderato
(1:40-3:32)
Stevenson maintained a long correspondence with composer Percy Grainger, and this atmospheric section, with high winds and strings, is based on an Australian Aboriginal melody that was first notated by Grainger in 1909.

d. European man’s agonized commentary on the passing of Aboriginal culture
(3:33-4:43)
Fluttering flute and downward arpeggios from the piano extend the mysterious mood of the previous section.

2. Asia

a. Allegro con urgenza (Vietnamese partisan song)
(4:44-5:08)
The Asia section has something of the form of a rondo, in which this Vietnamese song – in agitated music that has the pianist strumming the strings within the body of the instrument – serves as the recurring motto.

b. Javanese gamelan, transcribed for Western percussion
(5:09-6:03)
Harp arpeggios, piano chords, and tuned percussion evoke the traditional gamelan ensemble of Java.

c. Piano harmonics, muted orchestra and echo effects from tubular bells
(6:04-7:29)
This section is almost motionless until the ascending chords and arpeggios from the piano at the end.

d. Japanese pentatonic scale
(7:30-7:48)
The piano’s arpeggios continue.

e. Allegro con urgenza (Vietnamese partisan song)
(7:49-8:02)
The second appearance of the Vietnamese song.

f. Flute theme in Japanese haiku meter
(8:03-8:45)
Over a gentle accompaniment, the flute sings an abbreviated tune.

g. Chinese folk song, The Chrysanthemum
(8:46-9:45)
A burst of percussion introduces and accompanies the song, heard first in the piano, then the strings.

h. Allegro con urgenza (Vietnamese partisan song)
(9:46-10:08)
The third and final, dramatic appearance of the Vietnamese song, closing with a brass fanfare.

i. L’istesso tempo (Indian raga)
(10:09-11:46)
Over rumblings from the piano that evoke the drone of the tambura in Indian music, the piano takes the melodic line, with occasional dramatic outbursts from the orchestra. The section ends with the soloist once again playing the strings within the piano.

3. Europe

a. Poco lento (Scottish Pibroch)
(11:47-13:43)
A Scottish folk melody, with characteristic grace notes, is played by the piano over a drone accompaniment. The orchestra then takes up the melody, with slightly dissonant accompaniment, then piano and orchestra exchange phrases again.

b. Andante con moto (Western European fugue based on Prologue)
(13:44-17:33)
From the simple accompaniment of the Scottish Pibroch, Stevenson moves to more elaborate textures with a pair of fugues. This first one opens with, and focuses on, the winds in dissonant counterpoint. Momentum builds with the addition of French horn and chugging strings. Suddenly a Romantic, almost Rachmaninoff-like passage takes over, before the music speeds to its strident end.

c. Allegro (Eastern European fugue with piano ostinato in Bulgarian rhythm)
(17:34-19:05)
The repeated rhythm of the piano provides the foundation for this music, as the tension (and volume) builds. An arpeggio up the length of the piano introduces the next section.

d. Alla marcia
(19:06-20:51)
This section, with its march rhythm tapped out by the drum and pizzicato strings, features a Russian march based on the speech rhythms of the 1917 revolutionary slogan “Peace! Bread! And the Land!” One can’t help but think of passages in the symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich here.

e. Transition: Nightmare string chords with water music from piano figuration
(20:52-21:26)
An eerie, static mood is created.

4. America – Latin America

a. Blues
(21:27-23:16)
The piano takes the lead in this sultry music. Clarinet, trumpet, and trombone also take brief solos.

b. Moderato con moto
(23:17-23:41)
This section also evokes the music of the southern United States, with a strumming banjo imitated by the strings.

c. Evocation of an African-American Spiritual
(23:42-24:22)
Also featuring the bluesy harmonies of the previous sections, the winds and brass take the lead here.

d. Allusion to a traditional African-American Spiritual
(24:23-24:45)
The mood of the previous section continues.

e. Allegro ma non troppo (Amerindian Dance)
(24:46-25:52)
The tempo picks up, with exciting figuration from the piano soloist and outbursts from the percussion.

f. Homage to Latin America
(25:53-26:36)
Latinesque percussion instruments introduce this section.

g. String melody based on the poem Patria o muerte! by Che Guevara
(26:37-27:49)
The sustained, passionate melodic line of the strings is punctuated by the display of the piano, drum rolls, and brass fanfares.

h. Threnody for Heroes on cello quartet
(27:50-28:45)
After a pause, the cellos play their lament, with gentle strums from within the piano.

i. Funeral March
(28:46-30:26)
The mood of lamentation continues, somewhat more dramatically, with the brass section. Staccato chords from the piano accompany a short passage for the tuba, as the momentum builds.

j. Rag (based on previous Blues. An explosive jazz party in America’s backyard!)
(30:27-31:35)
The blues played earlier by the piano returns, with more energy than previously, helped along by the powerful orchestra.

5. Reminiscences, Piano Solo, and Epilogue

a. Molto moderato (Reminiscences. An inevitably failed attempt at an international melting pot of music)
(31:36-33:05)
According to Stevenson, “the denouement is a confrontation of the musics of different countries.” Conga drums, chattering woodwinds, and rumbling from the rest of the orchestra creates an unsettled atmosphere.

b. Piano solo (the individual voice striving to be heard)
(33:06-33:42)
Stevenson continues, “At the climax, the piano hammers out a repeated chord, as if to assert human rights.” This passage serves as a final cadenza for the soloist.

c. Epilogue, based on the Prologue
(33:43-35:03)
Over a rather solemn chorale and more powerful chords from the piano, the work ends, in Stevenson’s words, with “a reminiscence of the prologue – a question, yet with hope.”

Sunday Salon 5-19-19

Time and Place: 8:00 Sunday morning, at my main computer in the living room.

Reading: I finally decided to take the plastic wrap off of my copy of Haruki Murakami’s Killing Commendatore, and read the latest novel by one of my favorite authors. I’m now about three-quarters of the way in, and, while musing that the book could perhaps have profitably been 500 pages long, rather than around 700 (just a little too much repetition and marking time for me), I’m still enjoying it very much. At the same time I’m also a ways into Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, among the most-recommended “advice” books for authors, and one that seems to have lifted me, at least temporarily, out of my recent writing slump (or was it just laziness?)

Viewing: Perhaps it’s because I check out reviews before watching films, or because most of my viewing comes either from my own collection of Blu-rays and DVDs or from reliable sources like MUBI and the Criterion Channel, but I have watched a string of really fine films in the last couple of weeks. Just to mention a few … Love Education (2017) by the multi-talented and prolific Sylvia Chang, Joanna Hogg’s first feature Unrelated (2007; her first three films are all happily available on the Criterion Channel), the classic I Remember Mama (1948), and the most recent, and in my opinion probably the best, film by the wonderful Kelly Reichardt, Certain Women (2016). It is perhaps not a coincidence that three of these four films, all excellent, were written and directed by women.

Listening: I’ve lately been gravitating back toward my usual sort of music – modern and contemporary classical music that straddles the line between consonance and dissonance, between tonality and atonality (or at least free tonality). Recent enthusiasms include the symphonies of Allan Pettersson, orchestral and chamber music by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and Become Ocean by John Luther Adams, a remarkably atmospheric work that deservedly won Adams the 2014 Pulitzer Prize. Living amidst the desert as I do here in Reno, I can hardly wait for Adams’s “sequel,” Become Desert, to come out on CD next month.

Blogging: I’m still not making promises about my blogging on a more regular basis, although I’ve got lots of ideas and plenty of items partially finished.

Pondering: Throughout this morning, I’ve been listening to a very loud bird singing from the tree just outside my front door. Her song seems to have a seven-note core: roughly E, E, E, down to D, up to F#, back down to D, and a return to E. There are a multitude of variations, though. For instance, there can be anywhere from one to four soundings of E at the beginning, at the end there might be an added D or a second E, and so on. It is very pleasant, but it also got me thinking about composer Olivier Messiaen, who was famously obsessed by bird songs, transcribing many hundreds of them and including them throughout his compositions. I’ve noticed that my bird isn’t absolutely predictable about pitch, and definitely has a liking for microtonal variations of her song. This has me considering how Messiaen dealt with these variations, and the ways in which he adapted the songs for fixed-pitch instruments like the piano. I’d like to read more about this.

And finally: Speaking of Messiaen, for many months now I have been enjoying Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s recording of Messiaen’s Catalogue d’Oiseaux, thirteen portraits of birds (their songs, their habitats, their flight) composed in the second half of the 1950s. Even before I’d heard a note of the set, I was favorably disposed to it, having found inside its box, along with the CDs and booklet, a couple of feathers!

I’m a big fan of Aimard’s playing – his recording of György Ligeti’s Études is another great favorite. Having studied with both Messiaen and his wife, Yvonne Loriod (for whom he wrote the Catalogue), Aimard’s Messiaen performances seem pretty authoritative. Before the Catalogue recording came out, Aimard performed the entire set in a very special way at the 2016 Aldeburgh Festival, documented in this short video. I truly would have loved to be part of the audience for this!

Sunday Salon 4-28-19

Time and Place: 10:30 Sunday morning, at my main computer in the living room. I’m obviously getting my day off to a relaxed, or one might say slow, start.

Reading: It has been a good couple of months since I checked in with a Sunday Salon, so I’ll try to be selective about describing what I’ve been up to during that time. Much reading has occurred, fortunately. Among the books I’ve completed in recent weeks are Hiromi Kawakami’s The Nakano Thrift Shop, Italian Shoes by Henning Mankell, Yu Miri’s Tokyo Ueno Station, Belinda Thomson’s Impressionism, and, because I spend more time trying to motivate myself than I do actually motivated, James Clear’s Atomic Habits and the recently-released Keep Going by Austin Kleon.

Viewing: My enthusiasm about the recent launch of the Criterion Channel has been significantly tempered by the fact that its copy-protection methods are incompatible with my seven-year-old television. Therefore, I have to watch its films on my computer. Even so, I may continue the subscription simply because the offerings are so interesting. Film watching hasn’t been a huge focus for me lately, to be honest. But among the fine films I’ve watched are the classic William Wyler version of Wuthering Heights with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Cannes Palme d’Or-winning Shoplifters (as great as advertised), and, a very pleasant surprise of a film I hadn’t heard of previously, Microhabitat, the first full-length feature by South Korean writer-director Jeon Go-woon (thanks to MUBI for making this gem available).

Listening: There are two significant reasons why I haven’t been active on the blog recently. One is that I’ve started a new job as Content Coordinator and Producer at KNCJ Radio, where my task is to bring music, interviews, and such from our area’s excellent classical music community to the airwaves. My other reason for being away is that I agreed to do a series of three ninety-minute presentations on the connections between visual art and classical music for our local OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute). As usual, I vastly over-prepared for all three classes, and much of what I put together went unused. Even so, I learned a lot in the process. The topics were the Renaissance, Impressionism, and music inspired by specific works of art. This allowed me to listen to quite a range of music, from Renaissance choral music (Josquin des Prez and Monteverdi were my faves this time around) to Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead, Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel, and music by the Impressionists Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel (see one example below).

Blogging: As explained above, there hasn’t been much blogging lately, other than posting some paintings that I’ve been dealing with in the OLLI talks mentioned above. I hope my blogging habits will improve … but I’m not making any promises!

Pondering: An unfortunate thing I’ve had to deal with lately is the need to say “no.” In the last few weeks, I’ve been nearly inundated by requests for unpaid work, mostly writing projects but also donations of time and other services for non-profits. While there hasn’t been a project brought to me that wasn’t totally worthwhile, and while I appreciate that so many people like my work and want me to share it with them, I’ve had to put my foot down about how much I can, or want, to take on. I hope to get better at this “no” stuff one day.

And finally: Since I’ve been spending so much time with the Impressionist painters and composers recently, I though I’d end today’s Salon with an example. Water was, obviously, a major theme for the Impressionists. Musically, both Debussy and Ravel turned to the idea often. Maurice Ravel wrote his Jeux d’eau – which can be translated as “Fountains,” “Playing Water” or literally “Water Games” – in 1901, “inspired,” as he put it, “by the noise of water and by the musical sounds which make one hear the sprays of water, the cascades, and the brooks.” Here, Martha Argerich plays it with profound musicianship and appropriately dexterous fingers. This video was made back in the 1970s, but I’m willing to bet she could still tear through this piece in the same way today.

Sunday Salon 2-10-19

Time and Place: 9:00 Sunday morning, at my main computer in the living room.

Reading: I’ve managed to get somewhat stalled in my reading the last week or two. I’m making good progress in The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories, edited by Jay Rubin, and have spent a few very enjoyable moments, mostly in the evening, slowly making my way through The Big Book of Science Fiction, edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer. Both are quite large books, though, and may not be completed any time soon.

Viewing: A showing on Turner Classic Movies last week of F.W. Murnau’s silent masterpiece Sunrise, the first film he made after moving to America from Germany, got me hooked on Murnau again and led me to a couple of his other films. One was his third American film, City Girl (the second American film, 4 Devils, is, sadly and highly frustratingly, lost), as well as the film he made in Germany immediately before Sunrise, the highly atmospheric Faust. I may well continue with more Murnau, moving forward to his final film, Tabu – he died in a car crash at age forty-two right after completing Tabu – and backward to some of his German films, like Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh), Herr Tartüff (Tartuffe), and perhaps even a tenth-or-so viewing of the classic Nosferatu.

Listening: My music listening recently continues to be tied to the program note writing I do. Just a couple of days ago, I finished up notes for the next Reno Chamber Orchestra concert, which allowed me to revisit, and write about, favorites like Maurice Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin and the Variations on a Theme of Haydn by Johannes Brahms. Next up are notes for the Reno Philharmonic that will include Antonín Dvořák’s famous “New World” Symphony No. 9.

Blogging: My main post this past week was also inspired by recent program note writing, as I looked at some of the bad reviews received by Pyotr Tchaikovsky over the course of his life. I’ve also finally finished (I think) the article on the connections between Claude Monet’s work and Japanese art that I’ve been considering for many weeks now. That should appear in the next few days, as should a look at Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto, as I get back to the Japanese Literature Challenge I’ve been participating in.

Pondering: I feel myself being pulled in a bunch of different directions lately, and am getting a bit frustrated by my inability to focus on any one thing. There’s the Japanese Literature Challenge. There’s the ongoing program note writing. I’m also making a presentation on “Music and Renaissance Art” in a couple of weeks, and am fairly drowning in facts, dates, names, music, and paintings as I prepare. A couple of potential job offers are floating out there, too. All this and trying to maintain my daily schedule of exercise, meditation, and Japanese language studies are rather overwhelming me. Wish I had a larger, better-functioning brain.

And finally: This showed up on Facebook yesterday, and it provided a nice laugh to end the week.

Roy Smeck, Ukelele Virtuoso

Today’s Wordless Wednesday was suggested by the excellent Dust-to-Digital label … on the 119th anniversary of his birth, ukulele great Roy Smeck plays Anton Rubinstein’s Melody in F major.

Tchaikovsky’s Bad Reviews

“Oh, how difficult it is to make anyone see and feel in music what we see and feel ourselves.”
– Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

I mentioned in my Sunday Salon a week or so ago that I had recently written program notes for upcoming Reno Philharmonic concerts that include Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 (performances are this Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, should you be in the Reno area). This caused me to reflect how remarkable it is that artists like Tchaikovsky carry on working, given the quality of the reviews and feedback they have sometimes received.

In the case of the Piano Concerto No. 1, Tchaikovsky had wanted the piece to be given its first performance by his friend Nikolai Rubinstein, who had hired Tchaikovsky right out of college as a professor at the Moscow Conservatory and who conducted several premieres of his works. But when Tchaikovsky played through the Concerto for Rubinstein, what was the reaction? According to Tchaikovsky, “It turned out that my concerto was worthless and unplayable; passages were so fragmented, so clumsy, so badly written that they were beyond rescue; the work itself was bad, vulgar; in places I had stolen from other composers; only two or three pages were worth preserving; the rest must be thrown away or completely rewritten.” Fortunately, Tchaikovsky found a more receptive collaborator in pianist-conductor Hans von Bülow (von Bülow was just about to take off for an American tour, which explains why the Concerto was given its first performance in Boston, of all places).

Another much-loved work, Romeo and Juliet, was said to feature music that “sounds rather like scratching a glass plate with a sharp knife.” Francesca da Rimini, the orchestral tone poem, “is a musical monster” with “ear-flaying horror.” And the conclusion of the Symphony No. 5 “sounds like nothing so much as a horde of demons struggling in a torrent of brandy, the music growing drunker and drunker.” In general, wrote one Vienna critic, Tchaikovsky’s music “scorns logic, wallows in torpor, and time and again, collapses in dissonant convulsions.”

Perhaps the most famous, and withering, scorn was heaped on the now-beloved Violin Concerto. After completing it in a frenzied couple of weeks in March and April of 1878, Tchaikovsky’s plan was to dedicate the Concerto to Leopold Auer, the famous Hungarian violinist and teacher who was also concertmaster of the Imperial Orchestra in St. Petersburg. However, Auer didn’t like the Concerto and refused to play it for many years, although he eventually gave in to its charms (as did Rubinstein, in fact, with the First Piano Concerto). Violinist Adolph Brodsky eventually received the dedication, and it was he that was featured in the work’s first performance in 1881. By all accounts, the performance didn’t go so well. It led to one of the most famously abusive reviews in music history, from the well-known critic Eduard Hanslick. Hanslick described Tchaikovsky as “surely no ordinary talent, but rather, an inflated one, obsessed with posturing as a man of genius, and lacking all discrimination and taste.” Of the Concerto’s solo part, Hanslick wrote that “the violin is no longer played; it is yanked about, it is torn asunder, it is beaten black and blue.” His grand conclusion: “Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto confronts us for the first time with the hideous idea that there may be musical compositions whose stink one can hear.”

According to a survey by Bachtrack, Tchaikovsky came in at #7 in their list of most-often-performed composers of 2018. With 214 recordings listed for his Piano Concerto No. 1 at ArkivMusic.com, as well as 180 each for the Violin Concerto and Romeo and Juliet, it would seem that Tchaikovsky has had the last laugh, although the laughter may have been through a few tears.

Sunday Salon 1-27-19

Time and Place: 7:00 Sunday morning, getting an early start for a change, at my main computer.

Reading: As reported a couple of weeks ago, the reading year has gotten off to a fine start, with eight books completed already, and another two underway! Much of that recent reading has been related to the Japanese Literature Challenge 12, hosted by Dolce Belleza, that I have been participating in. I’ve already posted a review of the first book read for that Challenge, Masks by Fumiko Enchi. Reviews of two further books, Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen and The Japanese Sense of Beauty by Shuji Takashina, will be coming in the next week or two. My current focus is a volume I’ve been anxious to read since it came out a few months ago, The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories, edited by Jay Rubin (who is also one of Haruki Murakami’s main English translators). For a blog article or two as well as a presentation on Impressionism I’m doing in a couple of months, I’ve also completed Karin Breuer’s Japanesque: The Japanese Print in the Era of Impressionism.

Viewing: I only watched two movies this week. One was middling, a Korean historical drama called Empire of Lust. But the other, Gabbeh, a 1996 film directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, was outstanding, atmospheric and poetic and wonderfully colorful. Makhmalbaf is a prolific, highly-regarded Iranian director, but Gabbeh was just the first film of his I’ve seen. I will be seeking out more!

Listening: My main listening for the last week was related to program notes I wrote for the next concert of the Reno Philharmonic Orchestra. The program is an interesting one: Missy Mazzoli’s Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) (this gave me an excuse to revisit her excellent Vespers for a New Dark Age that she recorded with her group Victoire), Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony, and the famous Piano Concerto No. 1 by Tchaikovsky. The latter inspired a short blog post on Tchaikovsky’s bad reviews that I’m going to post tomorrow, so stay tuned.

Blogging: This week saw only the posting of my review of Fumiko Enchi’s Masks and a Wordless Wednesday bit of medieval illumination. Coming this week, I hope, are a look at Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto and the short article I’ve been planning for some time on the connections between Claude Monet’s work and Japanese art. My problem with the latter, which I’ve been thinking about for weeks, is the same one I often have – I enjoy the research too much, accumulate way too much information, and then have a hard time figuring out exactly what my subject is. I’ve got dozens of pages of notes for this darn Monet article, which probably won’t end up exceeding 1,000 words. We’ll see how it turns out, and what I actually end up writing about.

Pondering: I feel strongly the desire to travel, but also feel equally strongly the need to keep a close eye on my finances. What to do?

And finally: Something I came across this week, which has pleased me greatly and gotten itself lodged in my head, is a version of Queen’s song “Killer Queen” played on, of all things, a hundred-plus-year-old fairground organ. It’s much too delightful; the entry of the chorus (“She’s a killer queen…”) makes me laugh, in a good way, every time I hear it. The introduction to the video mentions a version of “Bohemian Rhapsody” for the same organ, which you’ll also find below in case you need it … which you might.

Beethoven’s Coffee

Along with being one of the great musical geniuses of all time, Ludwig van Beethoven is remembered for a variety of personal peculiarities – his wild hair, his explosive temper, his chaotic living arrangements (it is said that he changed residences between seventy and eighty times during the thirty-five years he lived in Vienna). His eating habits were distinctive as well. He loved salami as well as macaroni and cheese (parmesan was his cheese of choice). Every Thursday, he was served a very particular bread soup. As composer-conductor Ignaz Seyfried describes it, “Together with [the soup], ten sizable eggs had to be presented to him on a plate. Before they were stirred into the soup, he first separated and tested them by holding them against the light, then decapitated them with his own hand and anxiously sniffed them to see whether they were fresh.”

Beethoven also sometimes enjoyed cooking for guests. Here’s Seyfried again: “After waiting patiently for an hour and a half, while the turbulent demands of their stomachs were with increasing difficulty assuaged by cordial dialogue, the dinner was finally served. The soup recalled those charitable leavings distributed to beggars in the taverns; the beef was but half-done and calculated to gratify only an ostrich; the vegetables floated in a mixture of water and grease; and the roast seemed to have been smoked in the chimney … [his guests] found it barely possible to choke down a few morsels.”

In terms of his diet, however, Beethoven was remarkably fastidious about one thing – his coffee. His biographer and friend Anton Schindler once remarked, “coffee seems to have been the one indispensable item in his diet.” He always prepared his coffee himself, starting every day by counting out exactly sixty coffee beans and grinding them. Hot water would then be poured through the ground coffee via what has been described as a “glass contraption.” It is said that Beethoven’s sixty beans is about ten fewer than what would be used for a modern cup of coffee. Due to modern processing, though, the caffeine content in Beethoven’s coffee was likely far greater than that which we would enjoy today.

Beethoven wasn’t the only historical celebrity who had coffee idiosyncrasies. Remaining in the musical world for a moment, Johann Sebastian Bach was another famous coffee fan. He even went so far as to write a Coffee Cantata (Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht, BWV 211), in which a father demands that his daughter give up her coffee addiction so that she can find a suitable husband. She ultimately decides to marry only when she has found someone who loves coffee as much as she, and the cantata ends with an ode to the delight women take in the drink.

“Ah! How sweet coffee tastes,
more delicious than a thousand kisses,
milder than muscatel wine.
Coffee, I have to have coffee,
and, if someone wants to pamper me,
ah, then bring me coffee as a gift!”
(from Bach’s Coffee Cantata)

Theodore Roosevelt is said to have drunk a gallon of coffee in the average day. In 1907, he apparently also coined Maxwell House’s motto “Good To The Last Drop.” Mathematician Paul Erdös, who alternated between espresso shots and caffeine tablets, once said that “A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.” Honoré de Balzac supposedly drank fifty cups of coffee a day, starting at the same time he began his day’s writing, at approximately 1:00 a.m. Voltaire also drank between forty and fifty cups per day. He liked his coffee mixed with chocolate, and paid bonuses to his servants if they managed to secure particularly good coffee beans.

The award for the sweetest brew goes to philosopher and author Søren Kierkegaard. According to his biographer Joakim Garff, “Delightedly he seized hold of the bag containing the sugar and poured sugar into the coffee cup until it was piled up above the rim. Next came the incredibly strong, black coffee, which slowly dissolved the white pyramid.” He would then swallow the concoction in one gulp.

Sources:
“Beethoven’s Caffeine Addiction” (classical-music.com)
“Beethoven’s Kitchen” (The Daily Beethoven)
“Top 11 Famous Coffee Drinkers from the History Books” (Coffee Makers USA)
“Coffee: From Balzac to Beethoven, it has fueled artistic endeavor for centuries” (slate.com)

Sunday Salon 11-25-18

Time and Place: 9:30 Sunday morning (I slept in), at my main computer at home.

Reading: This week I finished two books, Michael Pye’s The Edge of the World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe and John David Anderson’s delightful Granted. I’m now at that great moment where I get to choose my next book – but haven’t yet!

Viewing: With the end of FilmStruck in just a few days, I’ve been engaging in a bit of a marathon of film watching, more or less a double-feature every day. I’ve completed watching the early Ingrid Bergman films included in the Eclipse DVD set Ingrid Bergman’s Swedish Years, seen a bunch of Japanese films from the 1950s through 1970s (perhaps my favorite segment of film history), and even made room for classics like last night’s viewing of Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth, with the unbeatable combination of Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. I’ll miss FilmStruck very much, but also look forward to the new Criterion Channel on its way in a few months.

Listening: Not a lot of music in my life this week, although I’ve been enjoying Recurrence, featuring the Iceland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Bjarnason playing works by contemporary Icelandic composers.

Blogging: The main accomplishment this week was a look at Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies by Ross King, an excellent book that enhanced my already-considerable appreciation of Monet’s late paintings. All of that Monet has inspired me to do another blog post on the connections between Monet’s work and Japanese art and gardens. Coming soon to a blog near you…

Pondering: I will soon be taking off for a few days in San Francisco, during which I will be taking in several art exhibitions, including two I’ve been looking forward to for quite a while: Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World at SFMOMA, and Gauguin: A Spiritual Journey at the de Young Museum. By the way, I will be Tweeting throughout my trip, so I invite you to follow me on Twitter for all the fun.

And finally: This Tom Gauld cartoon says it all…