"Music is, fundamentally, the art of feeling."

Yesterday, I had one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences that happen surprisingly, delightfully often here.

My beloved orchestra, the Bach Society Orchestra (a.k.a. BACHSOC), played John Adams's "The Wound-Dresser," a setting of a Walt Whitman poem for baritone and orchestra. Then, Professor Helen Vendler, a scholar of poetry, President Drew Faust, a Civil War historian (and president of our glorious university, and object of my undying love), and John Adams himself oh my god had a casual panel discussion about the piece.

John Adams is possibly the most significant living American composer. His music is just transcendent--if you've heard it, you'll know when I mean when I say it can be like drinking light. It is amazing. I'd actually never listened to Adams before this year (ah, that's an embarrassing revelation), but I've been on something of a binge lately, and he has definitely rocketed up to my twentieth century top ten list.

On a more personal note, he conducted BachSoc back in the day when my father played clarinet in it, and apparently they knew each other and played chamber music together. Incredible!

John Adams impressed me a great deal. His commentary on the piece when he coached us during the dress rehearsal cut right to the heart of the musicality, his speech was peppered with metaphors--I love finding out the images composers use to visualize their music. He spoke just brilliantly on a dozen different things--choosing which verses of a poem to set, the meaning of the vernacular in literature and music, technology in music, etc etc etc...

One of the coolest things I learned is that when he sets a text, he will record himself speaking the line and then consider the rhythm and intonation in natural spoken American English when he puts it to music.

The title of this post is his--and I think it is quite admirable for a man who is obviously so deeply intellectual about music to say that it is "the art of feeling."

I think this reflects his commitment to musically coherent music. I'm not at all one of those bitter classicists who whines about this newfangled modern music what with its minimalism and its atonality and why don't any of these whippersnappers write tunes anymore (and it's not like John Adams is known for his hummable melodies, anyway). So I don't at all believe that music has to be tonal and melodic and pretty to be good. But I do think, as I am led to believe John Adams probably does, that the purpose of music is to stimulate the emotions.

It's notable, I think, that music is unique among art forms for actually being incapable of communicating ideas. (I assume this is somehow a controversial statement, and it is definitely not my own thought--I don't remember where I read it, though...) While adding words or accompanying information certainly allows music to communicate ideas (see: opera), music itself says nothing. You can't teach facts or tell a story through music. Music isn't even really about anything.

If we believe that, then I think we have no choice but to declare music "the art of feeling." Because even without words or historical context, the "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's 9th Symphony and and the "Dies Irae" from Mozart's Requiem (please excuse the cliché examples) still somehow communicate things that are very different to us. I wish I could speak with some real understanding about this, but I am fundamentally ignorant about music--I can just say that to me, music that succeeds in causing its audience (even an audience as ignorant as I am) to feel is good music.

P.S.: All countless millions of you who asked me, "John Adams, the president?" are philistines and uncultured rubes, so there! (I am mostly kidding. Mostly.)

Interpretation

One of the things I have been neglecting in the Rachel Opera Project is comparing different performances of the same work. Generally I just pick up whichever recording happens to be on the library shelves. This is, of course, lazy, because I think you can hardly say you know a work until you've listened to all the definitive recordings and formed an opinion on which tempi you like best, whose voice you think works for the role, etc. Because opera is a sung dramatic form, it has even more room for interpretation than orchestral music.

Here is an example of an aria that has had a particularly interesting performance history: "Seerauber Jenny," or "Pirate Jenny," from Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera. The work is a 1928 socialist opera (!), and the aria is about--well, you'll see.

Here is what you could call the definitive early version, sung by Kurt Weill's wife, Lotte Lenya, in the original 1931 film. It's sung in German, but it has (clunky, literal) English subtitles. Take a look:



What do you think? I'm still a little unsure of the director's decision to shoot the entire song with her standing still, devoid of facial expression. And when I first listened to it, I was underwhelmed by the song as a soprano aria; her voice seems tinny and shaky, and not only because of poor sound quality. That said, the more I listen, the more I like it. Her totally straight-faced, low-key delivery makes it somehow more serious and terrifying. When she says "alle" at the end, I am totally convinced. And scared.

Now here's a live performance by Hildegard Knef. She recorded versions of both this and "Mack the Knife," the other most famous song from the Threepenny Opera, but I chose the live version instead because--well, take a look:



This is a very different song all of a sudden! Her performance in the live is infinitely rawer and wilder than in the recorded version. I love the spoken sections, I love the freedom she takes with the tempi, I love love love love the way she makes the chorus stand out--when she starts in with "Und ein Schiff!", it's amazing, every time! Also, frankly, I think the aria works better for a lower voice.

It's possible to go too far to this extreme, I think; several other recordings (including amateur ones!) that I've heard have consisted mostly of fortissimo belting and shouting, of which I disapprove on principle. But I think the Knef performance is spot-on perfect and probably my favorite recording of all the ones I've heard.

But "Pirate Jenny" has another incarnation in Nina Simone. She was a jazz musician and civil rights activist. Listen to what she does with it:



Pretty awesome, right? (Also, isn't that an incredible translation? So good!) This performance should be credited for what it did to transform the song's social setting in the US. I admit that there are a lot of things I'm not crazy about in this recording: I don't think the song needs her vocal embellishments, I don't actually like her voice, and I think something feels weird about her pacing/pronunciation/something. But to me, all of that is totally erased when we get to the end and she's rasping, "And as they pile up the bodies, I say... that'll learn ya." Ah! Amazing!

Which Pirate Jenny is your favorite? Do you think any of these recordings are taking too much freedom with what's on the page? Or does what's on the page not matter?

Glitter and be Gay

The opera project is going remarkably well.  I am still combatting an unhealthy obsession with Benjamin Britten's Turn of the Screw, aided by a 1982 film version of the opera in which little Miles is quite clearly attempting to seduce the governess!  (Remember how I said that Britten wasn't on the opera project?  This was clearly unrealistic.  Not only have I been listening to Britten all week, but I've also been bothering everyone involved in my opera company to agree to perform an unstaged version of this opera.  I mean it!  It's amazing!)

I've finally gotten around to listening to an opera that's actually on the list: Leonard Bernstein's Candide.  (I like the 20th century.  I can't help it!)  Of course I've heard (possibly even played??) the overture; everyone has.  But I'm enjoying the heck out of the opera itself.

I made the mistake of pausing in my first listening session to attend a meeting.  The unfortunate consequence was that I spend an hour with the catchy part of "Glitter and Be Gay" stuck in my head.  Fast forward to 2:50 and observe:

(Note that my selection of the performance by Kristin Chenoweth is not at all an endorsement of her as a great coloratura soprano, which I'm not sure she is--I was just so deeply charmed by her jumping up and down mid-aria!)

What I find particularly fascinating is that Turn of the Screw was written in 1954 and Candide was written in 1956.  In spite of that--the instant I turn on a recording of Candide for the first time, I understand what's going on, I like the sound of the music, I enjoy listening to it.  Now, after a week of listening to Turn of the Screw for basically my every waking moment, reading the libretto, watching video--there are still some scenes where my musical brain totally rebels and doesn't understand in the slightest what's going on.

Everyone raised in an environment where he is exposed to western music, particularly western classical music, has this innate understanding of what music is supposed to sound like.  Particularly those of us trained as musicians since childhood can instinctively feel what's going on in a piece of music and where it's going to go.

Candide, despite having some dissonance and some rhythmic funkiness (that's a technical term!) that was presumably avant-garde in the 1950s, for me fits very easily within the same musical framework that centuries worth of classical music does.

Turn of the Screw, although it's far from the most unusual or out-there work, requires something different of me.  My conventional understanding of melody or harmony or the way a piece should fit together just doesn't apply, and I am left adrift--like I have to consciously work to do what my brain usually does unconsciously, which is to order noise into a musical framework.  I have a decent ear and I always hear the musical logic in, say, Mozart.  Britten sometimes still sounds like noise to me.

I rebel very strongly against the idea that simply because Bernstein is easy to listen to and Britten is difficult to listen to, Bernstein is somehow better music.  This way of thinking is prevalent among philistinesa surprising number of well-educated musicians--that the job of music is to be beautiful, pleasant, and emotionally stimulating.  I am a rather aggressive proponent of the idea that sometimes the job of music is to be ugly, challenging, and intellectually profound.

At the same time, I fight against my own (pretentious) assumption that because Bernstein is easy to listen to and Britten is difficult to listen to, Britten is better music.  Bernstein is brilliant, sophisticated, and awesome in his own way.  The question for me, I suppose, is--if it's possible for music to be sophisticated whether it's beautiful or ugly, how do I evaluate if music is sophisticated or not?  Even setting aside the question of historical context, how do I listen to an opera and determine for myself if it's 'good' and 'sophisticated' in a way that isn't pretentious--in a way that doesn't needlessly elevate difficulty and dissonance over ease and harmony?

Sharpie markers, mania, success

I'm not sure which way the cause and effect relationship runs, but I know that the more organized I am, the happier I am. Or the happier I am, the more organized I am?

Either way, I am beginning to be pleased with the idea of the new school year. I can tell because I am building a command center. The Rachel Command Center is an ever-evolving organizational system mostly involving Sharpie markers and inappropriate enthusiasm--I plaster my walls with pieces of paper in cheerfully color-coded profusion, each one purporting to organize some aspect of my life. Hearts, smiley-faces, and exclamation points are all integral elements of the Rachel Command Center.

So far I have a shopping list (urgent, because I live in Boston and I don't own an umbrella), a knitting plan (complete with due dates and sub-lists for specific projects), and the Rachel Opera Edification Project!

A scene from this year's Met production of Peter Grimes, my current Favorite Opera Ever.

I have decided that, since I love opera more than almost anything else in the world and quite whole-heartedly believe that it is the greatest of all human artistic endeavors, I should make a concerted effort at familiarizing myself with the greatest operas throughout history. (This feels like a particularly immediate concern because I only have access to Harvard's libraries for another year--alas!)

My list is pretty fantastic. It covers nearly four centuries of opera history, from Monteverdi's L'Orfeo in 1607 to Birtwistle's Mask of Orpheus in 1986. (Isn't that great?) I alternate between older and newer works, because I figure that I'm going to get bored with classic opera, and contemporary opera is presumably going to be a little challenging (I've got operas by Alban Berg and Gyorgy Ligeti on the list ♥ ). No composer gets more than one opera on the list, even Mozart, Wagner, or Puccini. No operas I already know are on the list, and Benjamin Britten is barred from the list completely because I love him with such insane passion right now that I know I'd listen to nothing but Britten if I had my druthers. Did you know that "druthers" is a contraction of "would rathers"? Fantastic!

I am so, so, so excited about this. It's high time I took my musical education in my own hands; I should have done this years ago. Also, Nancy, you should quake in your (ostrich-skin) boots. This, in addition to my newly acquired speakers, heralds the beginning of the year of obscenely loud opera in our room. All the time. ♥