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Igor Stravinsky's Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments

With Mangos, Sausage,  and Cous Cous

Dave:  Chris, last time it was Beethoven. Well, let me hit you with another big guy, Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971). Most people know Stravinsky for The Rite of Spring, but I am going to recommend another piece, Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments. Written around 1923, this is an example of his neo-classical style--in other words, a composition in which Stravinsky conscientiously recalls the style and techniques of an earlier age. Stravinsky’s Concerto gives a big nod to the Baroque music of Bach and Handel (for a kick check out Bach’s D minor Harpsichord Concerto and compare the first movement with Stravinsky’s.)

Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments is a three-movement work that is about 20 minutes long. After a somber, dirge-like introduction, the piano explodes into a blur of perpetual motion. The model is Bach but the accent is all Stravinsky—syncopation, ostinati, crisp orchestration, and the amazing “wrong notes” that just seem to work.  The second movement is one of the more tender moments from Stravinsky. The tune, simple, almost clumsily stated by the piano in the opening bars, becomes broad and quite dramatic.

The third movement returns us to the syncopation and rhythmic intensity of the first movement. Quite simply, it grooves. A favorite moment of mine occurs near the middle when the brass introduce a melody that sounds like it should be a college fight song. I find the thought of Stravinsky and college football amusing.  I suspect that this reveals a bit of the composer’s musical wit.

Consider this when you listen to this music--Stravinsky described himself as a craftsman who “made things.”

So what do you think? I am thinking a late afternoon listen out on the patio with...

Chris:  Dave, with your description of Igor’s Concerto on my mind, I walked home (quite hungry), stopped at the grocery store, and picked up some vittles that eventually comprised the following meal:

Combine two cups of chicken stock with a cup of water in a pot and put on to boil. 

Then gather together the following: a cup of Israeli cous cous; one good sized mango, diced approx. ½ inch cubes; half of a medium sized onion, also diced to about half an inch; two spicy sausages, sliced laterally almost all the way through the casing on the other side; one tomato (I like Plums for this, and just in general) roughly chopped; two handfuls of mixed baby greens (the now ubiquitous and extremely convenient mesculin mix that you find in the grocery store is good), one cup of pistachios, one mint leaf, one basil leaf, and a small bunch of chives.

By the time you assemble and prep the ingredients, the cooking liquid for the cous cous should be ready and boiling, so drop the cous cous in there and turn it down to a simmer.  Cous cous is just a form of pasta, so you may need to add some extra water, but you want it to absorb most of the liquid and the flavor of the stock-water solution (2:1 just because I used canned stock and I didn’t want it to be too salty).

Heat a sauté pan on high and add a tablespoon of olive oil (canola’s fine too), place the sausage in there (exposed meat side down) and let it get a nice deep golden brown.  This is where your inner craftsman starts making flavor through a combination of caremelization and Maillard reactions.  The heat creates an environment in the pan that encourages interactions between sugars and proteins, resulting in a vast diversity of complex flavors that are collectively pleasing to most palates.  It’s important to learn how to control these reactions.  See Harold McGee’s, On Food and Cooking, or Peter Barham’s, The Science of Cooking for details on this.

One rule to abide: don’t crowd the pan.  If the pan contains too much meat (or whatever it is your searing) it won’t get hot enough, and these tasty flavor compounds won’t have the opportunity to form.

You’ll notice that some of the color will form on the sausage meat, and some will stick to the pan.  The stuff on the pan is often referred to as the “fond”, and is an important contributor to the flavor in this and many other foods.  You don’t want the fond to get too dark, so monitor your heat and adjust if necessary.  Also note that the rate at which this color and flavor forms will increase over time.

Flip the sausage over and let it sear for not more than a minute, then remove it from the pan.

Add the onions to the pan.  The heat will force the plant cells in the onion to surrender their water and the sugars and amino acids dissolved in it.  This solution will begin to remove the fond form the bottom of the pan (“deglazing” and essentially stopping the caramelization and Maillard reactions), and its solutes will begin to react with the heat and cause additional browning on the surface of the onion.

Stir a little bit.

After a few minutes (depending upon how hot your pan is, and the ratio of onion to pan surface area), the onions should take on a golden color (with some darkness at the edges). Add the tomato, which will serve to further deglaze the pan, and contribute more moisture to dissolve all of those “SanFrantastic” flavor compounds you’ve created!  You’ll notice that all these liquids are quickly combining to become your sauce.  Give a stir or two, add half of the mango chunks, and stir gently.  The natural pectin from the mango and tomatoes will give the sauce a nice texture allowing it to adhere to most everything it touches.

Place the remaining mango on the plate and lace it with the mint leaf sliced really thin (chefs call that “chiffonade”).  It’s blueberry season, so if you got a bush in the back yard, or have a pint of berries in the fridge, you can sprinkle some on top of the minted mango.  I didn’t, but I’ve got blueberries on my mind.

Now, add the sausage back to the stewing fruit and vegetable mixture.  I added a little water (maybe 2 or 3 table spoons) to thin it out a little and provide a medium to finish cooking the sausage.  Spoon the sauce over the sausage a few times, add the chives and basil (chopped), give another stir, turn off the heat and let the residual heat finish cooking the meat.  Be careful not to over cook the sausage and dry it out.  Also, too much cooking will darken the color of the mango and tomatoes beyond what some may consider aesthetically appealing.  The matrix in the pan should have colors reminiscent of a Hudson River hillside in autumn: orange, gold, red and some brown.

OK, place the greens on the plate or in a bowl (when I eat outside on the porch I prefer to use a bowl.  Sometimes it’s easier to eat from a bowl because I can pick it up and move it around without spilling the sauce –might even keep the warmth in a little bit longer too).  Sprinkle the greens with a little salt and pepper.

The cous cous should definitely be done by now.  If there is excess water in the pan, drain that off, and then put the cous cous in the middle of the plate, on top of the greens.  Note: the regular small cous cous will of course work for this as well (as will brown rice, or quinoa, which sounds pretty good, actually), but keep in mind that the smaller cous cous will cook quicker.

When you place the cous cous on the greens the heat will wilt some of them, but not all.  I like that because some of the greens are bitter and when wilted, they mellow and mix nicely.  Some greens around the perimeter of the plate will remain crisp.  So we’ve got a salad on the edge.

Pour the sausage and mango sauce over top.  The sauce will coat the cous cous well, and also serve as a dressing for the greens.  I forgot about the pistachios.  The purpose of the pistachios (when I made this) was to stave off my hunger.  I saw them in the store when I got the mangos and sausage, because I was really hungry after work.  But this brings up an important point, I believe: try not to cook while ravenous because it complicates things.  When I’m really hungry, I’m impatient, and my judgment is off, and I make mistakes.  I like to nibble on something while I cook (the constituent ingredients of the meal, if nothing else)--maybe some olives, a piece of bread, some cheese and some mustard or something (whatever you have around).  Prime your senses, don’t bind them with hunger (we have this luxury).

But I had some pistachios left over so I chopped them up, placed them under the broiler for a brief moment just to warm them, and threw them on top.  Actually the pistachio is the great-great-great grandparent of the mango, so we’ve inadvertently got a nod here between the old and new.

I found this dish to be nicely balanced: spicy and sweet, soft and crunchy, the cool and minty mango with the hot and steaming cous cous and sauced meat, providing the palate with a variety of shapes, sizes, textures, and flavors to negotiate with.  Diversity of sensory stimuli is kind of important when it comes to some foods and ones perception of them.  Sensory scientists have shown that after a few bites of something, the “flavor” of that food diminishes.  Essentially the brain is saying, “OK, tasted that, it’s good, not harmful. Consume, digest and all that, and move on to the next stimuli.  Don’t waste energy firing anymore neurons on that.”  It’s a psychophysical phenomenon called “fatigue”.  The flavors are there, but your brain can’t be bothered to acknowledge them after the preliminary introduction.  In fact, chefs (hybrid craftsmen and empiricists) will tell you something similar.  This is one of the reasons chefs often design meals that consist of many small, intensely flavored dishes.  The first two bites are what count.  Also this allows them to express more of their ideas through their food in one sitting.  I would guess that Igor’s doing sort of the same thing.  He’s got some things to say (some musical ideas to share) and they are best expressed using a variety of audio stimuli.

Truth be told, I had a glass of cold milk with this, but a Pilsner Urquel would hit the spot.  Also, wine gurus will likely tell you that a cold climate Chardonnay could provide a nice balance of oak, acid and fruit to compliment this dish.

A note on scaling up:  Typically. I cook for one or two people, but these recipes are more or less ready to scale up (just some multiplication).  However, keep in mind that you don’t want to crowd the pan, in this scenario. It’s a whole other bag of beans if you’re looking to create an experience for 20, 40 or a hundred people.  Maybe there’s an analogous situation when creating music.

 

Dave:  Diversity of sensory stimuli is just as important in musical composition as well. The best composers keep the music continuously fresh without ‘crowding the pot.’ Stravinsky may sound like his pot is crowded but what is actually going on in this work is his ‘spicing up’ of some familiar musical flavors. Stravinsky has a heavy spice hand and therein lies so much of his music’s charm.

Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony

With Roasted Beets, Grilled Chicken and Asparagus

Dave:  Dr. Loss, it is the perfect time of year to introduce you to one of my favorite pieces of music, Beethoven’s 6th Symphony in F Major, Op. 68. The 6th, also known as the “Pastoral,” consists of five movements, instead of the traditional four, and Beethoven supplies a title for each that makes his artistic intentions obvious.

            I.          Awakening of cheerful feelings upon arriving in the country.
            II.         Scene by the brook.
            III.       Merry gathering of the country folk.
            IV.       Thunderstorm
            V.         Shepard’s song. Happy and grateful feelings after the storm.

The piece lasts about 45 minutes. This is an easy work to get into. Think of it as a 19th Century concept album. Sit back. Relax. Let Beethoven guide your imagination.

To complement this piece of music you have never heard, Chef, what do you recommend?

 

Chris:  I'm sensing steamed or roasted beets (cut to random sizes and shapes) lightly salted, peppered and coated with olive oil--served cool or at room temperature in a shallow bowl.

Place a piece of bread (if not fresh, then toast it) leaning along the inside of the bowl, and touching the red beet exudate.

Place a boneless chicken thigh in a ziplock bag with some fresh or dried herbs (any combo you prefer -I'm thinking chives, parsley and thyme) and smash it thin (with hand, hammer, or other blunt object).

When you broil, saute, or grill it, it will be done as soon as it kisses the heat.  Place the cooked chicken in the bowl, opposite the bread.

Rinse 6 or 7 spears of asparargus and cook them with the same heat that you cooked the chicken (1 minute should do), and then toss them anywhere in the bowl.

Uncork or unscrew your favorite wine, perhaps try a pinot gris –it should be a taste and aroma reflection of the earth (for some that may be water, and that's ok).  There are plenty of flavors to go around in this meal.

 

Enjoy the simplicity of the ingredients and at the same time the complexity of flavors.  An inaudible conversation, a debate really, between your different sense modalities will be taking place.  The gestalt of this discourse is what you'll perceive.

 

Dave:  I could very well say the same thing about Beethoven’s 6th, “simplicity of ingredients…complexity of flavors.” By the way, Beethoven is Dutch for “beet-garden.” Sounds like a terrific suggestion.

Jean Sibelius’ The Swan of Tuonela

With Cholent, or 'Sue's Stew'

Dave: Chris, I recently heard of the ‘Slow Food Movement.’ And so, always ready to turn a phrase, I thought why not ‘slow movement food?’ With that I have selected for this installment of “Lagniappe” a tone poem, The Swan of Tuonela by the gifted and imaginative Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1975).

Franz Liszt in the middle of the 19th Century coined the term, ‘tone poem.’ A tone poem is typically a symphonic work that is based on an extra-musical idea, often a work of literature. A synopsis of the literary source is usually provided to the audience before a concert so that they may familiarize themselves with the narrative on which the work is based. . This allows the audience to understand the reason for the musical processes that are in effect for that particular work.

Sibelius composed the tone poem The Swan of Tuonela in 1893. It is the third of a set of four symphonic poems, the Lemminkäinen Suite, Op. 22. However, The Swan was originally intended to be the prelude to an opera based on Finnish legends about the warrior hero, Lemminkäinen. When the opera was never realized, Sibelius created the suite.

In the score, Sibelius describes the extra-musical source that his music graphically depicts:

"Tuonela, the land of death, the hell of Finnish mythology, is surrounded by a large river with black waters and a rapid current on which The Swan of Tuonela floats majestically, singing."

The music is somber and much of this is created through the orchestration. The atmosphere of this otherworldly river is depicted with strings and harp while the English horn represents the swan swimming along the black waters of the river of death. This is one of the most famous English horn solos in all of orchestral music. The piece is roughly 9 minutes long. The music is elegiac, reflective, and while one might feel a cold chill, there is a certain warmth, perhaps compassion, that comes through. The texture of this music, and the pure beauty are captivating and there is hardly a time when I listen to this work that I am not completely caught up in the music. I often find myself sitting completely still, contemplatively, as the music drifts along.

Many an orchestral player has jokingly referred to this piece as the “Swan of Salmonella,” but I am sure we can avoid that connotation here!

So, Dr. Loss, what would you recommend?

Chris: Dave, just in time for Passover, we’re going to make some Cholent, an old Jewish preparation, steeped in tradition and cultural history, that is easy to prepare. The main ingredients are a tough cut of meat, some potatoes, carrots, onions, and lots of time. Time for the meat proteins and fats to “melt”, and the vegetables to release their juices at the very low cooking temperatures required for this recipe. But before we get into the mechanics of making Cholent, I want to talk a little bit about Slow Food and evolving culinary traditions.

The Slow Food movement has captured the attention of chefs, gastronomes and other thoughtful eaters. The movement celebrates global cuisines, culinary heritage, and traditional techniques. It is in part a reflection of a macro-trend in the food industry to provide “authentic” culinary experiences, and to use food to express ideas, convey ideology, and educate consumers. Many people are looking for more than flavor and nourishment in their stew pots and breakfast bowls -they want an experience. Experiential cuisine can manifest itself in many different ways. In some cases it’s fantastical and confounding, like the cuisine of Ferran Adria or Grant Achatz. Their creations can be surreal and abstract, and cause the diner to question their environment and their personal perception of it. These dining experiences often result in self awareness, and self-discovery. In other instances, experiential cuisine helps create a sense of place in time with food, and puts cuisine in an historical and or geographical context, by strictly adhering to techniques and ingredients from a region or culture. Salumi, in Seattle, comes to mind. Food in this instance becomes a foundation or mooring to steady the wandering culinary spirit. The Cholent for Sibelius, is for most, I imagine, in this later category.

As I mentioned, the recipe will require very low cooking temperatures (225 F) and as a result, an extended cooking time of 18-24 hours. This culinary technique is many hundreds of years old, and evolved out of Jewish Sabbath laws that do not permit work after sundown on Friday. Traditionally, Jewish women would put the Cholent ingredients into a pot, seal the pot shut with a flour and water paste, and bring it to the local bakery. Although ovens would have been turned off for the Sabbath, the residual heat would suffice to cook the stew long and slow, over night, ready for a hot meal on Saturday after Synagogue. (The etymology of Cholent is thought by some to be French: chaud, for hot, and lent for slow.)

The dish has persisted because it is very adaptable. There are versions of Cholent in Hungary, India, Morocco, Georgia, Germany, Spain and of course America. Robust culinary techniques and traditions are forged over time and out of necessity, and this is definitely the case for cholent. This dish can involve a variety of ingredients, and there is no right or wrong way. I want to share my Mom’s version, which is part of my culinary tradition and history. It is for me, the flavor of comfort and security. I’ll call it Sue’s Stew, “a version of Cholent.”

1. Take approximately 3 pounds of beef brisket, place it in a plastic bag, and coat it with 1 package of Lipton onion soup mix, and set aside.
2. Peel and roughly chop 2 pounds of onions, and place in a large sauté pan with half a stick of butter on med-high heat. Add 1 chicken bouillon cube and cook.
3. Chop 2 cloves of garlic together with 10 peppercorns, and kosher salt (not sure why my mother has always done it this way, but she does. It’s her technique and tradition. I wouldn’t be surprised if it does in fact result in a specific flavor quality, as the ions in the salt might disrupt the activity of enzymes in the garlic that cause characteristic garlic flavors -anyway) add this to the onions, as they begin to turn golden, then continue to cook until golden brown, and remove from the heat.
4. Rough chop two pounds of carrots (big two inch chunks), and halve or quarter 2 pounds of potatoes.
5. In the bottom of a large pot, for which you have a tight fitting lid, place half of the golden browned onion/garlic/bouillon mixture. Then place a layer of potatoes, carrots, and handful (about 2 tablespoons) each of dry pinto beans, lentils, barley, and wild rice. Then place the soup mix coated brisket on top. Layer in reverse, the bed of ingredients just set under the brisket, topping off with the second half of the golden browned onions.
6. Place 6 whole unshelled eggs, around the beef and grain-veggie mixture.
7. Now, because you will not add any water at all –moisture for the grains and beans will come from the veggies and meat, it’s important to seal the pot very tightly before placing it in the oven. My mother uses a tightly crimped layer of tin foil and then places the lid on top, to seal the juices in the pot.
8. The pot can be placed into a low oven (190-225° F) and should be forgotten about. At about 18 hours or so, you’ll be reminded of the Cholent by the warm savory aroma of stewing beef and earthy grains and legumes that will inevitably escape from the pot. This is the sort of food that you should not check on while it is cooking. The key is to trap the moisture in.

In my house we would serve this with gherkins or pickled green tomatoes, and ketchup.

The eggs are a snack that you can eat with the meat and veggies, and grains, or separate from the meal. They eggs become an earthy olive color, and are packed with savory goodness.

Note: if you want to formulate your Cholent to contain reduced sodium, you could remove the onion soup mix and bouillon, and substitute 8 or 9 whole mushrooms (baby portabellas or shitakes are good), a sprig of thyme, half a bay leaf, and sprinkle the meat with paprika.

The flavor of this stew is well balanced somewhere between savory, sweet and salty, and it will improve with age and reheating.

 

Dave: Chef Loss, it sounds delicious. In so many respects this recipe is the perfect culinary metaphor for Sibelius' tone poem. The slow tempo allows the listener to savor the English horn's warmth and beauty gliding easily over the strings' background. The orchestration is a fantastic blend that balances solo instrument with string ensemble. Each harmonic shift is deliberate and sweet. There is legend and cultural tradition at the core of this composition. Just as Slow Food is an experience, so is this slow movement. Combining the experiences of Cholent with The Swan of Tuonela would be...well, let's just say, there is nothing wrong with leftovers!

Reminiscences of George Crumb at Swarthmore College

Contemporary music is often perceived to be imbued with esoteric and abstract meaning, leaving many concert goers thinking, “Well, I suppose that was good, but I didn’t understand it!” As a music student at Swarthmore College, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, there seemed to be a culture of intellectual competition in how obscure musical meaning could be, either intended or interpreted. During my sophomore year, I took a seminar on Contemporary American Composers, where we read all about a particular composer during the week leading up to the seminar meeting, and then the composer in question would attend our seminar to lecture, if they wished, and answer our questions. I remember Milton Babbitt’s visit as the ultimate in the intellectual interpretation exercise. The music we looked at of his was strictly serial, with numerical and mathematical patterns and iterations buried in the score. Someone asked him how he would instruct a trombone player to play a certain section of a piece with feeling, and his response, as I remember it, was that this was an irrelevant question.

Another week, George Crumb came to visit our seminar. I immediately identified with his contrasting approach to composition, as it was refreshingly down to earth, and based on what seem to me to be aesthetic creativity. He told us about all the instruments he had lying around in his home and how he would tinker around and try out different combinations to see what timbres sounded good together. Only then would he sit down to actually compose at the piano.

The following year, I had the opportunity to play in a recording session of George Crumb’s “Dream Sequence (Images II)” with members of Orchestra 2001, the resident contemporary music ensemble at Lang Concert Hall, on the Swarthmore campus. The instrumentation for this piece is prepared piano, violin, cello, percussion, and “off-stage glass harmonica,” a set of pitched wine glasses. The percussion set includes Japanese temple bells, a Thai wooden buffalo bell, crotalés, sleigh bells, maraca, and suspended cymbals. Crumb utilized the piano’s range, colors, and special properties for potential acoustic resonance, such as having the pianist hang paper clips on particular strings, so that those notes had a metallic buzz to them, and reaching into the body of the piano and scraping credit cards along the strings. The instruments alternate, sometimes overlapping, with flickers of movement.

Surrounding these explorations of timbre and resonance are the floating and eerie shimmers of wine glasses, where the players run a wet finger around the rim of the glass causing vibrations in the glass itself to create a crystalline drone. (You can try this at home!) Playing a few together, at different pitches gives the whole piece a hypnotic atmosphere of silvery grays and greens. My role, along with two friends, was to keep one or two wine glasses each resonating with its haunting and space pervading tone for the duration of the piece.

Crumb had specific glasses that he brought, labeled with the particular pitches, and lines indicating the level to which they should be filled with water. Apparently, great care had been taken to find glasses with the right responsiveness, timbre, and clarity, and to find the precise water level that would be in tune with the main instruments. The pitch is determined by the size of the glass and the amount of water it contains, and the loudness depends on the speed of the player’s finger. It is quite difficult to create a completely steady dynamic, and the subtle variations, layered over a few different pitches, creates an amorphous but fluctuating cloud of sound where each pitch floats, as if breathing, in and out of focus.

I was quite intimidated to be in the same concert hall as this great American composer, not to mention to be involved in a session recording his composition. But he proved to be more concerned with getting the right feeling out of the performances of the piece, with each gesture rich with movement, rather than every note in the right place. Crumb is refreshingly straightforward, attentive to aural and visual pleasure and detail, seeming to prioritize personal response and meaning over buried symbolism of esoteric and abstract theories, though his pieces are certainly rich with discoveries that are not heard, such as the beautiful and artistic scores themselves. My experience of playing with Crumb showed this, but it is also evident in a story told to me by my wonderful flute teacher at the time. She was rehearsing An Idyll for the Misbegotten, his piece for amplified solo flute and a three-person percussion section. She had prepared the piece technically and musically, but there was one passage where she was not sure about the particular interpretation Crumb had in mind. When she asked him about it, he replied in his warm, slow drawl, “Well, Pam, how do you think it should go?”

As a performer used to being at the mercy of composers and conductors, being given interpretive artistic reign like this was a wonderful, though scary, gift of freedom. Fortunately, George Crumb is open to the creative variations of live performance and collaborative aesthetic exploration.

Further Information

George Crumb’s official website: www.georgecrumb.net

Orchestra 2001: www.orchestra2001.org

Spotlight on the 2007 Classical Grammy Nominees

by Joanna Wulfsberg

 

We can safely assume that the paparazzi will flock to Justin Timberlake rather than Bernard Haitink. And it’s unlikely that Martha Argerich will beat out Beyonce for the cover of People magazine. Nevertheless, the 49th Annual Grammy Awards, to be held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on February 11, 2007, features some of the classical music world’s most glittering stars and coveted awards. Here’s a look at a few of this year’s classical categories and the musicians and albums nominated.

Selected by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Grammy (short for “Gramophone”) Awards consist of 108 categories, of which 11 honor classical musicians. (Another two are given for the production and engineering of classical albums.) After record companies and members of NARAS submit their entries for the year, the members vote twice, first to narrow the list in each category down to five finalists, second to select the winner. To ensure that the voters know something about the repertoire, rules state no one can vote in more than nine specialized categories in the first round or more than eight in the second round. Finally, all members of the Recording Academy help choose the four biggest awards – Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. In theory, these can come from any musical genre, but no classical record or artist has ever won.

Out of all the nominees, this year’s sentimental favorite is surely the mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, nominated in the categories of Best Classical Album and Best Classical Vocal Performance. Hunt Lieberson died on July 3, 2006, succumbing to cancer at the age of only fifty-two. After her breakout performance, in a 1985 production of Handel’s Giulio Cesare staged by quirky director Peter Sellars, Hunt Lieberson quickly gained a devoted following for her distinctive, rich tone and incredible musical intelligence. Baroque music, particularly Handel, was one of her specialties, but she also performed a great deal of contemporary music, particularly after she married composer Peter Lieberson in 1997. It is her husband’s music that is featured on the nominated album, namely his Rilke Songs, Horn Concerto, and a work for cello and orchestra called Six Realms.

Rounding out the category of Best Classical Album are Bernard Haitink and the London Symphony Orchestra for their recording of the complete Beethoven symphonies, Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony’s recording of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, Martha Argerich and many collaborators for their disc of chamber music entitled Live from the Lugano Festival 2005, and René Jacobs and the Freiburger Barockorchestra for their new recording of Mozart’s late serious opera La Clemenza di Tito. All of the conductors involved have previously won Grammys, as has Argerich.

Hunt Lieberson’s competitors for Best Classical Vocal Performance include a three-time winner in the category, the baritone Thomas Quasthoff. Quasthoff’s current nomination is for the album Betrachte, meine Seele, a compilation of sacred arias by such composers as Bach, Handel, and Mendelssohn. British tenor Ian Bostridge, nominated for his recording of Britten song cycles, took home a Grammy in 1999. Bernarda Fink, also up for Best Classical Album and Best Opera Performance as Sesto in La Clemenza di Tito, has put together an unusual disc of songs from her native Argentina, in tandem with her brother, bass-baritone Marcos Fink. The final Grammy candidate in the category is baritone Patrick Mason, whose album showcases the little-known songs of American composer Amy Beach.

One of the most talked-about works of the year, the opera Ainadamar, by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov, has received multiple nods for a Grammy. Taking as its subject the death of Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, Ainadamar incorporates popular styles from all over the world, including flamenco and klezmer. One of the nominations for Ainadamar is in the category of Best Opera Recording, which means that the award would go not to Golijov but to the producer and performers. The latter include singers Kelly O’Connor and Dawn Upshaw (a frequent Golijov collaborator) as well as the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under the baton of Robert Spano.

In addition, Ainadamar is one of the choices for Best Classical Contemporary Composition, going up against two other pieces recorded by Spano and the Atlanta Symphony: The Here and Now by Christopher Theofanidis and Paul Revere’s Ride by David Del Tredici. Rounding out the category are Elliott Carter (for Boston Concerto) and James MacMillan (A Scotch Bestiary). Carter has already won in this category for his Violin Concerto; the others, all of whom are considerably younger, would be first-time winners. Golijov was nominated last year for Ayre and is probably the favorite this year.

In the year that marks the thirtieth anniversary of her death, legendary soprano Maria Callas is being honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Ironically, she never received a Grammy while she was alive. At the opposite extreme is the conductor Sir Georg Solti, who raked in the most Grammy awards of any musician in ANY genre – 31, with another 74 nominations besides!

Unfortunately, space does not permit an overview of all the categories and nominees.

For the official list, check http://www.grammy.com/GRAMMY_Awards/49th_Show/list.aspx

Thinking About Talking About Thinking About Music.

by Greg D'Alessio

 

Music has a notoriously uneasy relationship with language. Words always seem inadequate to the experience we have of listening to music especially any sort of explanatory or theoretical discussion. In large part when we come across these sorts of things- in a concert program, liner note article or classroom most of us have one or both of two responses:

1. “Yuck, I hate thinking about music like this, -why can’t I just listen to it?”

I think it’s worth standing this one on its head because even the most hardened academic has had, I suspect, to deal with such feelings. The question is can we “just” listen to music without thinking about it. Well, that depends on exactly what we mean by thinking, and how we describe that thinking in words after we have both listened and thought. This is traditionally the province of music theory, a discipline occupying a place in the heart’s of most people somewhere between algebra and accounting.

The problem with music theory, as opposed to literary or art theory, is that we really have to take it on faith that the things we are talking about have even the remotest relationship to actual music. Whereas, if someone talks about the figure in foreground in a painting, or the difficulties the main character goes through in a novel everybody can immediately see the relevance. By which I mean that you can’t read a book and have no idea that there is a main character, nor can you look at a painting and be unaware that there is a figure in it, but you can listen to a piece of music quite happily and be totally unaware of the technical aspects of it. In fact, except for formal classes in harmony, the overwhelming majority of people listen to the overwhelming majority of pieces without really pausing to think about, well, anything at all except “here comes that one bit I like”. And I’m talking about musicians too – myself included. So, to suit up in the music theory armor and start paying attention to all those chords and intervals and themes seems not only like hard work, but hard work that is actually taking us away from what we like about music not towards it.

The problem seems to revolve around this thing “theory”. We tend to associate it with the scientific method, “Einstein’s theory of relativity” –that sort of thing. Basically we take theory to be factual postulates, or at least fact-based guesswork, that explains some sort of complex phenomenon. Music theory therefore is usually portrayed as explanations of what is “really” going on in a piece of music. On the other hand most music theory is exceptionally dull and music, at least music we like we find the opposite of dull, so our minds, not unfairly, rebel. The problem again is that the things that theory seems to be concerned with don’t seem to be the things that we love about music.

But there is an interesting thing about this word theory, Originally the word “theory” comes from an old Greek word “theor”. A theor was someone you who send to visit an oracle or to witness a divination, or ritual, or some other dwelling on a mystery or existential paradox. The original meaning of theory then was some sort of intense concentration on a mystery the goal of which was not to explain that mystery but rather to deepen or intensify it. I think we could do worse than to try and incorporate this sense of theory into our approach to music.

What I mean is we shouldn’t think of discussing music as a weird kind of algebra for sounds, or crossword puzzles for notes, but rather an intensification of whatever it is we are doing when we are really listening to a piece and totally following it. I try and think of theory as a very slow and intense kind of listening that you then try and talk about, rather than any sort of proving out of a conceptual or structural scheme. The best writing on music makes us more interested in a piece rather than less interested. It is, unfortunately, rare.

The other very common response we all have to discussions of pieces of music is:

1. “Yes but, was Beethoven (or the composer in question) really thinking X when he wrote this? (X = any given analytic observation being made about a piece)”

This is a killer because it seems as though what we are doing when we analyze a piece of music is trying to uncover the secret plan of the composer thereby understanding what the piece is all about right? So if the composer was not thinking of something, but we seem to hear it in the music, who’s right? It must be the composer surely; after all we aren’t trying to tell Beethoven what his music was all about …are we? Well, as it turns out, that is exactly what we are trying to do.

There is actually a name for this problem, its called the “intentional fallacy”, meaning the fallacy of assuming that a person’s intent in saying (or writing) something is the sole determinant in what it can mean. We see this in everyday life all the time. Someone may say something, and even entirely mean it, but we are free to interpret the meaning of what they say on the basis of their body language, the situation at the time, our own prior experience, even our own internal emotional state, and so forth. We are not obliged to simply and only “take people at their word” about everything. Indeed, to do so would give us a false and potentially dangerous view of the world.

This basic situation is made much more acute, and also harder to recognize, when it comes to music. Firstly, it is in general very hard to say concrete things about music of any kind, even though there certainly seems to be a lot going on, and composers are not necessarily very good at it – if they were they would be writers or theorists and not composers. Secondly, in most instances composers have not said what they think their music is all about at all, or when they did they focused on issues which seem trivial to us, either because they were so close to their own work that they could not get perspective on it, or because over the intervening years concepts about music has changed. Lastly, just because someone can write music well doesn’t mean that they are particularly self-aware. It’s always quite possible that they have literally no earthly idea what their music is “about” but just “how it goes”.

In any case, even if a composer had written an exhaustive essay saying” I Ludwig Van Beethoven do set forth herein the entire musical meaning of my Piano Sonata Opus XYZ” we are not obliged to take him at his word any more than we are when our friend “explains” why they have had a string of bad relationships. Think of analysis not as archeological work to uncover the fixed objective meaning of the work of a composer, but more as a collaboration between you, the composer, maybe even a particular performer, and then all the various other people who have thought about the piece since it was written, (plus you have to factor in all the music that you know that the composer didn’t), all aiming at a new interpretation of what the piece might mean. Pieces are moving objects.

Or think of it this way: The composer just starts the process: he throws a ball over a high fence, he has maybe an idea of where he would like it to go but once he throws it, its literally out of his hands, we are on the other side of the fence and how or whether we catch it, what it means to us when we do, is all determined not only by how he threw it but by circumstances after it left his hand, and by our own abilities and internal conditions. All this is a long way of saying “It doesn’t matter what Beethoven, or any other composer thought, or didn’t think about their music (especially since for the most part we have no idea what that was), what we are interested in is what we think about their music”.

So, whatever our resistance to talking or reading about music I think that it is ultimately an essential act and however we might like to shut down the speech centers in our brain and just let music happen to us I think that we are language making creatures to the core and some attempt to mediate the musical experience is ultimately crucial for our understanding of it.