jwilzewske: alcoholism

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Friday, April 8, 2011

Musorgsky’s Dream Worlds: I Musici and Natasha Turovsky’s Animations

W hen Victor Hartmann, an artist, designer and sculptor, died of a heart attack in 1873, his close friend Modest Mussorgsky was devastated and slipped into a depression aggravated by his alcohol problem. Vladimir Stasov, a music critic and friend of both Mussorgsky and Hartmann, arranged an exhibit of about 400 works of the deceased artist, hoping that this tribute might relieve Mussorgsky's depression. Thanks to Stassov, Mussorgsky was inspired to create a suite of ten musical portraits for piano, but it did not achieve popularity in any form until Maurice Ravel orchestrated it in 1923. ... Two years ago, Yuli Turovsky made his own arrangement for string orchestra. Each musical portrait of the original work is based on one of Hartmann’s paintings, though the visual element has been reinterpreted in surrealistic terms by Turovsky’s daughter Natasha.”
— Robert Markow, program notes.

K nowing that most of the paintings by Victor Hartmann which inspired his friend Mussorgsky were lost, I asked Natasha to paint new pictures, pictures inspired by the music, just as the music had been inspired by the pictures. After this was done, the next idea was to make these pictures and their personages ‘dance’ with the music. In this ‘symbiotic’ form, the audience will listen as well as ‘see’ the music.”
— Yuli Turovsky.

P ossibly the best, most compelling imagery to accompany music ever, these animated paintings [mainly watercolors] by the talented artist/violinist Natasha Turovsky, daughter of I Musici’s founder, Yuli Turovsky that were projected during their performance in Kansas City tonight.

I was reminded of Guerino Mazzola’s and Stefan Müller’s work on music information retrieval (MIR), semantic matching, and visualizations of music vector-fields with his Corebounce and EspressoRUBETTE® software (2003, pp. 920ff)... a set of notes comprising a score S, a corresponding performance P, and the associated set of field vectors F.... The animations reminded me of Mazzola’s so-called ‘Inverse Performance’... how expressive shapes can be extracted from performance and can then be re-represented in other media.

M odest Musorgsky began with a combination of title and then music... It is natural that anyone listening to music probably will have images going in his or her mind. Painting these pictures simply captured some of them for me, our version of images, in a concert. I would listen thousand times to the same piece... some are inspired more by ideas, some more by actual music color... At that point, when I was doing these paintings, there was no question about [the possibility of] doing something more with a painting [an extended opportunity to amend and enhance it]. But when I was asked now to do animation, then I thought, okay, now it [conventional painting] is not enough. If I would have known in advance the details of the performance or animation production that [Yuli] had intended, probably I would have done the paintings differently; I would have made different pictures. It is okay. In animation, I thought, how to make this stand out, since this character is very small? I did maybe ten drawings of a rooster... which became all 10 into one animated rooster that moves around on the screen. It is like a ballet: this movement, you try to see how the image, how this particular part of the image corresponds to [signification in—] the music... It’s not just animation; it’s not just music: they became ‘one’.”
— Natasha Turovsky, NPR interview with Laura Spencer, 06-APR-2011.

S ocial pressures shape anybody’s personal expression, composers maybe more so than others. But while both internal and external issues imbue the composition with its material and color, meaning does not imply pathology. Handel’s ‘O, Sleep, why dost thou leave me’ doesn’t necessarily mean that Handel was an insomniac or obsessing over his sleep patterns. Writing ‘Kindertotenlieder’ wouldn’t necessarily mean that Mahler was morbidly depressed, even though this was composed to memorialize the death of a friend’s child.

S o the message sent does not necessarily define the sender. And yet, “poiesis is concerned with the individual condition of the work’s creator as a consequence of the history [of the work’s] development as well as with the role of the broader frame of the work... neither the frequency of the vibration nor the envelope of its amplitude is uniquely determined... In fact, Fourier’s Theorem only states uniqueness of the coefficients if the fundamental period is given; but the latter is not automatically inscribed: such parameters are part of poiesis... the way of making the sound, not a ‘neutral’ sound-object.” [Mazzola, p. 12]. Here we have in Yuli Turovsky’s chamber orchestral arrangements of Musorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ Natasha Turovsky’s ‘inscribing’ us, just as she was herself ‘inscribed’ by this music. Truly beautiful.

B y 1871 [age 32] he was already becoming irrelevant, and he sensed this. His intensifying depression made him fair game for anyone who might seem to have an answer, and he fell under the influence of a soothsayer who turned him from a freethinker into a fervent believer... For four years he withdrew completely from Russian musical life...”
— David Brown, p. 204.

T he sync’ing of the animated montages to the orchestra’s playing was flawless, crisp, elegant. The moods of the Natasha Turovsky’s paintings (and Gäel Hollard’s choreography and digital renderings and animations of the paintings by Hollard and Marie-Josee Auclair and Jean-Philippe Traore) embody the best of atmospheric aesthetics in animated film production. The imagery powerfully evokes the fantastical hallucinations, the playfulness, the vivid dreams and nightmares, the bipolar depression, the impressionability of Musorgsky near the end of his short life—evokes his inertness leading to dependence on others to get him to act, alternating with extreme agitation. The paintings are edgy and have wonderful visual 'depth'... they are at times sweet but not sentimental. Turovsky’s brush and pen and charcoal techniques are varied, capturing and keeping the audience’s attention and lending dramatic emphasis to the sonic gestures and arc of the music—exciting yet coherent throughout the work, despite the considerable variety in technique and visual composition.

W hen many struggle to integrate light and imagery with serious music, Ms. Turovsky and Mr. Hollard, Ms. Auclair, and Mr. Traore succeed. If you wish to have an iconic example of an approach that works, combining imagery and music, this is it. Bravo!

T abaimo’s installations clearly propose a notion and position of implicated ‘spect-actorship’ for viewers, where ‘implicated’ designates simultaneous participation and immersion—physical, political, theoretical, poetic... ‘Spect-actorship’ captures our strangely split positionality of being a part of this installation—we act like, and even become, additional characters in the animated film... the work's mechanical reproduction of a double reflexivity: the reflexivity inherent in the artist’s implicit conception of the virtual image and creative evolution as animation; and the reflexivity of the animated film as an art that is endlessly fascinated by its own elastic capacity for world-making.”
— Steven Brown, p. 209.

F rom the back room the sound of plates crashing and uncorking of bottles was to be heard. Each time Musorgsky emerged, he was becoming ever more ‘tight’. After supper the concert began, where Musorgsky would appear already completely ‘plastered’, as accompanist and solo performer. He played his own compostions with amazing perfection, making a stunning impression... At this time he was suffering from frightening hallucinations so often observed in alcoholics. Leonova reported on this in her recollections.”
— Sergey Rozhdestvensky, Univ. St. Petersburg Dept. of History, passage from Keldish & Yakovlev, 1932, ‘Musorgsky k pyatidesyatoletiyu so dnya smerti’, quoted in Brown, p. 352.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Sociotropic Provenance of Liszt’s Mid-Career Piano Works

The santa indifferenza of Liszt is the ‘holy indifference’ advocated by St. François de Sales and other spiritual writers in the Catholic mystical tradition. And this in turn is obviously identical with the non-attachment advocated in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions... Needless to say, ‘holy indifference’ is not at all the same thing as plain, unholy indifference, and is fully compatible with intense concern for goodness, beauty, and Truth.”
— Aldous Huxley, letter, 26-OCT-1961.

Eezek a darabok példái annak, hogy a romantika korszakában hogyan tudott megszólalni egy-egy szonett, bármi is, észre a következmények. A romantikus Liszt érzékenységének köszönhetően a versek hangulata, mély mondanivalója jut el a mentálisan zavart befogadóhoz, okoz a további kárt.”

A ttended an excellent concert tonight, given by pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet in the Harriman-Jewell Series.

Liszt—Consolations, S. 172
Liszt—Années de pèlerinage, troisième année, ‘Les jeux d’eaux’, S. 163
Liszt—Venezia e Napoli, ‘Tarantella’, S. 162
Liszt—Ballade No. 2 in B minor, S. 171
Liszt—Deux légendes, S. 175
Liszt—Isolde’s Liebestod, S. 447
Liszt—Polish Songs (after Chopin), ‘Meine Freuden’ S. 480

A esthetic experience is a kind of access to psychic reality, both our own reality and the reality of others—that much is certain from hearing these pieces. Aesthetic experience and creativity not only aid our recovery from ‘bad psychological states’, they are also valuable for understanding and distinguishing internal reality and external reality. I listened to Thibaudet’s sensitive and highly-animated performances of these Liszt pieces, and as I did so I wondered more and more about the circumstances of how they were composed. Liszt’s major keys (all except S. 171) are like they have “something to prove,” no, more like there is someone whose mood they are emphatically meaning to elevate or tranquilize, like they were conceived with a particular patient and a therapeutic purpose in mind?

N ote: in recent days I’ve been working on health services research involving mental health and measures of quality and access to care for mental and behavioral conditions. This recent focus of my attention no doubt ‘primed’ me to respond to this concert in the ways that I did.

I n that regard, the importance of including ‘patient-intended’ criticisms and ‘partner-perceived’ criticisms and the parallel importance of examining gender differences in models of exchanges of criticisms between partners and depression of one or both partners—these are discussed in an excellent paper published last summer by Kristina Peterson and David Smith (link below) at the University of Notre Dame. Of course, Peterson’s and Smith’s study focused on members of the general population, not couples who are elite artists/composers/writers/celebrities.

Liszt’s illness was prefigured by depression, which was, in part situational... [He] began to drink cognac heavily and was warned to decrease his intake by his physicians. He also smoked a lot of [George Sand’s?] Havana cigars.”
— John O’Shea, 1995.

S o, gee, these pieces were written roughly in the aftermath of Liszt’s relationship with Marie d’Agoult and the recurring encounters occasioned by family events involving their children (Cosima; and until their deaths in 1859 and 1862, respectively, Daniel and Blandine) and also through Chopin—more or less between 1841-1867, from when Liszt was about 30 to 55 years old.

T his must’ve been stressful and awkward… Sociotropic process, the psychic equivalent of a semi-permeable membrane, which selectively and through passive transportation or active transportation allows some emotional ‘molecules’ to pass through the membrane but prevents others from passing. The emotional brew contained several types of dissolved ‘solute’ molecules, in a family chamber—multiple compartments now separated by thin semi-permeable membranes with pores, and sealed... (Seated in Row #2, in close proximity to the piano and Thibaudet in-charge, it is natural that one’s imagination will run wild.)

S ome small emotions crossed Liszt’s semi-permeable membrane, like small molecules cross dialysis tubing, in their attempt to reach equilibrium. Bigger emotions, bigger molecules, not so much...

Y ears of Pilgrimage’... this conceit implies a wanderer in search of truth, and, one can only imagine that the title is, in good measure, Liszt’s autobiographical reverse-osmotic self-mythologizing.

Because Marie broke with both Liszt and George Sand, she has been given a ‘bad press’ in biographies of both of those celebrities... What was the private life of a woman like this? A woman who left her great love (Liszt) after five years and returned to Paris, not to her husband who would have taken her back, nor to her family, but to an independent life... One of the first things one must ask about any independent woman in the 19th Century is: Where did the money come from; how did she support herself? ... Posterity has reproached Marie d’Agoult for not having loved Liszt’s art sufficiently to sacrifice herself to it.”
— Phyllis Stock-Morton.

O ne might question whether Liszt was really as cultured as Marie presented him in her memoirs... he quoted famous authors indiscriminately—St. Augustine, Petrarch, Montaigne, Chateaubriand, Hugo, the Bible. Although he seemed avid to read and represent himself as a reader, it is not clear that he had digested much or developed any critical abilities. Even in the springtime of their romance, Marie, always a precise thinker, criticized not only some [trashy, sophomoric] books he liked [Bande Dessinée comic strips] but also the [purple] language of his letters.”
— Phyllis Stock-Morton, p. 24.

W hether or not the Charismatic Hungarian was literally searching for Truth truth, he was surely searching for audiences receptive to his preferred, dramatic, truthy historiography—part of which we heard in these emphatic works that Jean-Yves performed. Years later, Marie, too, in her writings prevaricated, denied, revised, glossed, hid…

W hat were Liszt’s sources of support, emotionally? How lonely was it, “at the top”? How much of a mutual “nightmare” had Franz and Marie been to each other, I wonder?

M arie d’Agoult’s nightmares, especially in Italy, in Venezia e Napoli, were unrelenting. Not much is known of these—what the subjects or imagery in them were, and so on. There is only the evidence of a few letters, and even less is objectively known about the quality of Franz’s sleeping. Not much detail is known about Marie’s suicide attempts; their frequency, their seriousness, her moods and ideation in between them...

H oly extra-marital stress-diatheses! What, if any, mental health services did Liszt avail himself of during the years of these compositions? Was Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein any help at all to Liszt in the years subsequent to Liszt’s break-up with Marie, or was Carolyne instead mostly a hazard, a hindrance? Was in fact Liszt’s music-making the only ‘therapy’ he received, self-administered? Alan Walker’s books don’t have anything to say about this. But that is what I wondered, more and more, as Jean-Yves’s recital progressed...

A s for Comtesse Marie d’Agoult, what modest amount is known of her emotional condition during those years is gathered together in Phyllis Stock-Morton’s recent book (link below). Well worth your look if you’ve made it this far in reading this blog post...

N either Liszt nor d’Agoult was continuously the more forceful personality, I suppose. Both were likely self-propelled multivalent ‘causes’ and ‘effects’, both Forces of Nature to be reckoned with. There were pressures, one upon the other; interpersonal dynamic equilibria; inescapable sociotropic osmosis...

W e are grateful, of course: very grateful to have these beautiful, vivid pieces today—we who are hardly aware of what pressures and emotional costs were associated with their composition. We are grateful, too, to Jean-Yves Thibaudet for reanimating them in the way he was able to do last night with such insight and consummate skill. Through the music, we might learn something about ourselves, even if we shall never be certain of the truths between Franz Liszt and Marie d’Agoult.

J ean-Yves was born in 1961 in Lyon to a German-born mother and French father, both amateur musicians. In addition to diplomatic duties, Jean-Yves’s father taught history and geography at the University of Lyon and was a good amateur violinist. His mother, an accomplished pianist, taught German language and literature at the University.