jwilzewske: mannerism

Showing posts with label mannerism. Show all posts

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Berliner Philharmoniker: Schoenberg’s ‘Accompaniment’, Op. 34

Schoenberg discursively playing chamber pingpong in 1930

Schoenberg discursively plays ‘chamber pingpong’ in 1930

H ow words are understood is not told by words alone. How music is understood is not told by music alone. [How films are understood is not told by film alone.]”
— Arnold Schoenberg quote.

T hough originality is inseparable from personality, there exists also a kind of originality which does not derive from profound personality. Products of such artists are often distinguished by uniqueness that resembles true originality… Certainly there was inventiveness at work when the striking changes of some subordinate elements were accomplished for the first time. Subsequently, they achieved an aspect of novelty not derived profoundly from basic ideas. This is ‘mannerism’, not originality. The difference is that mannerism is ‘originality in subordinate matters’. There are many, and even respectable, artists whose success and reputation are based on this minor kind of originality… The moral air of such products is rather for success and publicity than for enriching mankind’s thoughts.”
— Arnold Schoenberg, Criteria For the Evaluation of Music (1946), quoted by Tom Myron.

T onight the Berliner Philharmoniker, under conductor Sir Simon Rattle, performed Schoenberg’s 1929 ‘Begleitungsmusik zu einer Lichtspielscene (Drohende Gefahr, Angst, Katastrophe) ‘ [Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene], Op. 34, at Carnegie Hall. What, if anything does Op. 34 have to do with ‘chamber music’, you ask?

W ell, if ‘intimacy’ is the defining quality of ‘chamber’ music idioms, then Op. 34 has considerable to do with ‘chamber’ collaborative motivations and expressive qualities. Hive-like sectional playing so ‘tight’ and in-tune that a whole section sounds like one person… ‘Open’ orchestration that accentuates individualism of parts… Parts covered by one musician (e.g., timpani; flute flutter-tonguing; heavily muted/smothered trumpet; clarinet near the end of the piece)… A spirit of ‘mutual discovery’ among the ensemble’s parts, instead of orchestral ‘exposition’…

A gainst those ‘chamber’ features you have the fact that the ensemble has a conductor, has 100+ members, and is playing in this large unchamber-like hall. So, go ahead and throw out my fascination with chamber-ness if you want.

J ust the same, maybe the writing does manifest chamber music idioms. Does any modest-size chamber orchestra ever perform this Op. 34, I wonder?

I n 1929 Schönberg was commissioned by the Heinrichshofen Verlag in Magdeburg to write music for films. The autocratic Schoenberg was not about to relinquish his artistic control, contract or no contract, and so he focused on the eponymous ‘threatening danger, fear, catastrophe.’

A s a result, Op. 34 is only loosely an instance of ‘program music’. It does not specifically address any particular film’s scenes or characters. The film was hypothetical, imaginary, never produced. The sections that comprise the work (Introduction; 12-tone theme; Song form; Ostinato; Four Contrasting Episodes; Subdivision into Tetrachords; Climax; Reflection on the Beginning of the Work) are fragments. They are idealizations of features that might occur in music intended to be coupled with a film—it’s a kind of meta-film score, a score about future film scores.

A ctually, Schönberg constructs the climax of ‘Begleitungsmusik’ by colliding a succession of tiny components without predetermining a ‘victor’. The 8-min piece is a series of ideas that enter and enter and enter, intruding upon other ideas that are still being articulated by other parts. New material that unexpectedly eclipses other material—that is a gesture that in 1930 was revolutionary but that we today recognize as a frequent element of film music: overlapping and occluding parts is a way to convey/reinforce that the ‘action’ is changing.

M ore than this even, Op. 34 has an amorphous pattern of rapidly altering meter. The tempo is ‘elastic’, changing on a timescale that is very short—several seconds only—in a manner that palpably means action. This piece feels decades ahead of its time, introducing gesture after gesture that we today recognize as ‘cinematic’.

A ccompaniment’/‘Begleitungsmusik’ is a term that evidently bothered Schoenberg. It’s such a politically ‘loaded’ term, connoting subjection of musicians and abandonment to some larger fate that is beyond their control...

B ut the accurate word for the film composer’s relationship to a director/producer is ‘abandonment’. It must surely be the rare film scoring gig where the director/producer is open to deep collaboration—open to the film’s aesthetic’s being seriously modulated or diverted by what the composer comes up with on her/his own recognizance, like what iconoclast Schoenberg was doing. In a highly competitive world where composers are required to deliver commercial results on tight deadlines, producers and directors do everything that they can to de-risk their projects, with carefully constructed contracts and scene-lists and storyboards. They restrict the budgets and the support in such a way as to preempt novel spiritual discernments and mental awakenings to deep creativity that might extraneously occur. They usurp the composerly role, as Moorefield puts it (link below), and the composer takes a subordinate one... For most film composers, their intimate, chamber Truths lie undiscovered and, if detected, unexamined or edited-away. Exceptions to this exist, of course; but still…

S o here, in the Berlin Philharmoniker’s beautiful, inspired account of Schoenberg’s Op. 34, we heard a singular, intimate Truth that refused to be subdued by film contracts, producers, commissions. It was a performance so dramatic and unusual that I wanted to put these few thoughts about it down here, even though it’s a bit OT for CMT…

A ccompaniment’ is difficult, isn’t it? Tough, in part, because it must sound ‘easy’ and not ‘ask too much’. The listener is to be shielded from the difficulties that arise from constraints that require the composer to shorten or prolong each phrase to match the film’s action, at whatever pace that action unfolds. The music suffuses us generously with deliberation and control that originate in the film but only tenuously so. The film’s action can ‘lean’ on the music if it wishes, like a cushion. The film can fall back onto the music if it needs to, like a trapeze artist’s safety-net. These are the cognitive assurances that the music suffusing us makes. Conventional ‘score-as-accompaniment’ is the epitome of supportiveness and of the absence of surprise and obtrusiveness/iconoclasm.

A nd yet, in Op. 34, sudden viola warmth floods the music—inviting but untrustworthy. There are bassoonistic surprises. Seeping drohende Gefahr, existential Angst.

T remulous cellos, holding the first two pitches in the 12-tone row, are joined by the bassoon and bass who are preoccupied with pitches 3, 4, 5, and 6. Pitches 6 through 12 enter precipitously in staccato fusillades. The score progressively explores violence and estrangement, via col legno bow-ballistics and brass and flute flutter-tonguing.

O kay, so maybe Schoenberg’s temperament was not well-suited to composing to commission ‘spec’ on short deadlines. But the duress illuminates so much about the composer as individual, and about small-ensemble perspectives! Originality is, after all, not necessarily something deeply ‘new’ but often the result of looking askance—an averted gaze that looks at the familiar in a fresh, detached way.

R ainer Seegers (timpani) was particularly skillful in animating Schoenberg’s averted-gaze existential feeling in Op. 34. Large-ensemble orchestration, yes; but still chamber-like sensibility.

I f you're a software programmer or a mathematical linguist, you might like to read Gorbman (link below) on what today we would call refactoring and code hierarchies... film music as cognitive refactoring of codes contained in the film's action/imagery, simplifying complex relationships between object classes and subclasses and/or confirming or refuting provisional concept bindings that the viewer has made based on the film's imagery.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Margaret Marco & French Baroque Oboe: The Composer, The Performers, The Audience

T he change in the disposition of sonic objects in the acoustic space may alter the perspective of the listener. Where various sound-objects move in different directions... the listener may reasonably assume himself to be at a point of rest. If, however, a number of sound-objects are spaced at various points of the compass... might suggest to the listener that he himself is spinning whilst the frame of reference remains still... Depending on the type of material used, closeness may imply intimacy, distance a sense of eavesdropping or of detachment, and, at various stages in between, a sense of interpersonal communication or more formalised social communication... and aural ‘magnifying glass’, quite different from our experience of normal acoustic perspective.”
— Trevor Wishart, p. 148.

L ike good butler, a good Baroque composer does not ‘eavesdrop’... she/he ‘discreetly overhears’.

N ot in the sense of surveillance or espionage, of course. More in the sense of parent/guardian or journalist. This CD contains recordings of seldom-heard pieces, infrequently-performed composers.

Margaret Marco – Hidden Gems: Oboe Sonatas of French Baroque

Bouin-Cinquième Suitte: I. Le Prudent-La Prudente
Cinquième Suitte: II. Tambourin
Cinquième Suitte: III. Musette
Cinquième Suitte: IV. Les Oiseaux
Huguenet-Première Sonate, Op. 1: I. Grave
Première Sonate, Op. 1: II. Gay-Grave
Première Sonate, Op. 1: III. Sicilienne
Première Sonate, Op. 1: IV. Gigue
Chedeville-Sixième Sonate, Op. 3: I. La Rivièr d'hier
Sixième Sonate, Op. 3: II. La Dificile
Sixième Sonate, Op. 3: III. Rondeau
Sixième Sonate, Op. 3: IV. Les Adieux de Brunoy
Naudot-Sixième Sonate en Trio, Op. 7: I. Musette
Sixième Sonate en Trio, Op. 7: II. Gavotte
Sixième Sonate en Trio, Op. 7: III. Allemande
Sixième Sonate en Trio, Op. 7: IV. Menuet
Sixième Sonate en Trio, Op. 7: V. Sarabande
Sixième Sonate en Trio, Op. 7: VI. Gigue
Naudot-Caprice en Trio, Op. 7: I. Caprice
Caprice en Trio, Op. 7: II. Tambourin
Caprice en Trio, Op. 7: III. Menuet
Caprice en Trio, Op. 7: IV. Chaconne

[50-sec clip, Margaret Marco, Jacques-Christophe Huguenet, ‘Première Sonate – IV. Gigue’, 1.6MB MP3]

[50-sec clip, Margaret Marco, Nicolas Chedeville, ‘Sixième Sonate – IV. Les Adieux de Brunoy’, 1.6MB MP3]

[50-sec clip, Margaret Marco, Jacques-Christophe Naudot, ‘Sixième Sonate – VI. Gigue’, 1.6MB MP3]

Margaret Marco, oboe
Barbara Bishop, oboe
Matthew Herren, cello
Rebecca Bell, harpsichord

T hese sonatas are not merely ‘evocative’. They report on particular kinds of relationships—between performers and their audience; between composers and performers and patrons. There are hints in these 18^th Century works, about the nature of such relationships that may have been distinctly French, plus elements that were widely-traveled... The rhythms and textures, the binary or rounded binary form with sectional repeats, the predominance of dance-inspired forms such as the courante, rigaudon, menuet, and gigue.

H idden Gems’ brings together works that share natural affinities characteristic of the time. But hearing them together illuminates some of their not-so-obvious ‘hidden’ qualities as well. Not only do the individual pieces seem to provide a [backhanded; unintended] commentary on each other, the pieces taken together embody who it was these composers were writing for. The pieces suggest how the performers conceived of their audiences. And the pieces contain clues about the aristocratic patrons and how they wished to be diverted and perceived by each other: a society that delighted in ‘overhearing’ juicy conversations. Even the music suggests ‘positioning’ in order to surreptitiously overhear things and repeat them to others, a rhetoric of reciprocal pleasure...

L anger’s [Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art, 1957, p. 218] philosophy [portrays] ... music-making as a symptom of ... eavesdropping. If music were only a matter of releasing pent-up personal desire, music’s formal excellence would not matter the way it does. In fact, the more ‘self-expressive’ something is, the less musical it is likely to be. Music, Langer is convinced, is not about exposing, discharging, or expressing feeling; and yet, it is clearly related to feeling in some way. How might that be? Simply, music is a presentational symbol; and as such it is neither a stimulus nor a symptom of feeling: it is ‘not the cause or the cure of feelings, but their logical expression’.”
— Wayne Bowman, p.210.

V arious performative strategies that ‘opera buffa’ adopts in the rhetoric of pleasure... [which] cannot exist without the eavesdropping presence of the audience.”
— Downing Thomas, p. 228.

W hile Chedeville and Huguenet and Naudot were part of the same tradition, culturally and musically, their backgrounds were very different. Nicolas Chedeville (1705-1782) was a prolific composer and instrument maker, a member of the Douze Grands Hautbois, a group of oboists and bassoonists who performed for state ceremonies during the reigns of Kings Louis XIV and XV. Jacques Christophe Huguenet (1680-1729) was a violinist and composer, appointed an ordinaire of the Royal Chamber in 1710 and a member of the Petits violons. Jacques-Christophe Naudot (1690-1762) was a self-taught Parisian flautist who had many aristocratic pupils and patrons. By contrast, not much is known about Jean-Francois Bouin; even his birth and death dates are not known. But from the title page of his compositions we know that he was a publisher and teacher of the ever-disparaged ‘vielle’ (hurdy-gurdy), about which he wrote a large, erudite, defensive tome. The righteous pique he develops in this book makes it a satisfying, if exotic, read—somewhat like reading transcripts of lawyers’ celebrated pleadings in courts of law, on behalf of hurdy-gurdies in the dock.

T hese works show sophisticated adults who as a salon game pretend to be children, amusing themselves with stylizations of fashionable dances. The differences in the composers’ approaches, and indeed, of their psychological make-up are evident enough. But the similarities of gesture and rhetoric are also evident. Marco’s and her colleagues’ musicianship is excellent, enabling us to hear and imagine these things (stylized ‘eavesdropping’ behaviors, relished and storied) beyond the musical texts themselves.

I admit I bought this CD with the somewhat ‘detached’ intention of learning something about composers I’d never before heard and woodwind ensemble literature about which I was totally ignorant until now. But I am thrilled to have found not a pallid scholarly account but instead a rich provocation to Baroque dreaming and conjecture, in French. Cool!

M argaret Marco is principal oboe with the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra and has appeared with various orchestras including the Orquesta Sinfònica de Maracaibo, the Rome Festival Orchestra, the Dubuque (IA) Symphony and the St. Joseph (MO) Symphony. She is the Associate Professor of Oboe at the University of Kansas and holds degrees from Northwestern University, University of Iowa, and University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. She served as President of the Midwest Double Reed Society and performs frequently on Kansas Public Radio and with the flute, oboe, piano trio Allègresse. She currently serves on the Executive Committee of the International Double Reed Society as the coordinator of the Fernand Gillet-Hugo Fox International Oboe Competition.

R ebecca Bell, harpsichordist, studied at the Royal College of Music in London, where she won the prize for clavichord playing while studying with Ruth Dyson and Robert Woolley. She has concertized in the U.S., Canada, England, the Netherlands, Italy, Austria and Germany. She is a founding member of Summerfest Kansas City where she served as the Artistic Director from 1995-1999. She is the harpsichordist for the Kansas City Symphony and the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra.

M atthew Herren has performed at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and The National Gallery in Washington and has recorded orchestral and chamber music for the Deutsche Grammophon, Sony, Atlantic, Helicon and London Decca Labels with The Orchestra of St. Luke’s. His performances have been broadcast on NPR’s Performance Today. Herren performs regularly with The American Composers Orchestra, The New York Oratorio Society, and The New York Concert Singers, Trio Fedele, The Kansas City Symphony, Kansas City Chamber Orchestra and Chamber Music Society.

B arbara Bishop is Associate Principal Oboe with the Kansas City Symphony and co-principal of the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra and Assistant Professor of oboe at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory. She trained at the Eastman School and has a Master of Music degree from the University of Minnesota. She is a regular Guest Principal with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.