The Best American Poetry

György Ligeti (1923-2006)

How many of you listen to "modern music" (i.e. Boulez, Stockhausen, Cage, Kurtág, Xenakis, etc.) for sheer pleasure? I've been into this stuff since very early childhood so it's just as pleasurable for me to listen to a Mahler symphony as a Stockhausen opera.

But I completely understand the fact that our 21st century ears are still plugged into the 19th century ... our "pop" music is diatonic, the TV jingle is diatonic, the scores for Star Wars are definitely diatonic (or sometimes chromatic ... chromaticism can be used in both a diatonic and dodecaphonic context).

Most people react to non-diatonic music with a feeling of having listened to noise, incoherent musical sounds, or -- often -- just an annoying waste of time.

So I propose this experiment. Listen to all or some of the following four compositions by György Ligeti and observe your reactions:

1. Atmosphères (1961)
2. Requiem (Kyrie) (1963-65)
3. Lux Aeterna (1966)
4. Aventures (1962)

The first work is for orchestra; the other three all involve singers.

2001: A Space Odyssey
directed by Stanley Kubrick

Yes, I'm certain most of you recognized the above music as part of the score of this cinematic masterpiece from 1968. Were you able to enjoy the music on its own merits, or did you immediately begin to associate the sounds with images from the film?

It's not an academic question, because audio and visual cues comingle in our brains, and sometimes fuse together!

• Atmosphères plays over the first three minutes of the film, before the MGM logo even appears. You could say that the music "sets the mood," or in its urgency, is subtly telling the audience to quit jabbering and prepare for the experience. But if you soak up this non-visual prelude, you will find a gigantic pay-off later in the film.
• The next Ligeti we hear is when the apes meet the monolith -- the music is the Kyrie from the Requiem. This music will accompany every appearance of the monolith, except the final one. We see the syzygy as the music reaches a peak and Kubrick cuts it off abruptly. The camera looks out on the African plains and the Moonwatcher episode begins, culminating in the bone/satellite Also Sprach section.
• Lux Aeterna makes its first appearance when Floyd's shuttle is approaching the monolith site. The music takes a break while the crew has sandwiches and coffee, and then resumes until it turns back into the Kyrie -- the leitmotif of the monolith -- and is overwhelmed by the high-pitched shriek of the radio signal.
• If your home-video version leaves out the Intermission, you've missed Atmosphères again. Shorter than the opening cut, but still an important cue to what will come next.
• A supertitle: "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite." Kyrie returns as we observe another syzygy -- this time from Jupiter. We hear almost the entire movement (Kyrie eleison = Lord, have mercy) -- nature's cosmic terror; mercy seems irrelevant!
• Now the payoff from having heard Atmosphères so often. As Bowman passes through the Star Gate, and we observe his face in a frozen scream, we hear ten minutes of music, accompanying one of the best-known scenes in cinematic history.
• In the alien apartment, we now hear Aventures for the first time. Strange vocal noises pierce what seems like silence.

The actual techniques Ligeti used to compose these works is fascinating, maybe a subject for a future post.

Oh yes -- Kubrick and all his lawyers somehow neglected to pay (or even correctly credit) Ligeti for his brilliant music. Ligeti sued; it was settled, and all must have been forgiven, for Christiane Kubrick accompanied Ligeti to the premiere of Eyes Wide Shut (1999), after Stanley's death.

John Cage (1912-1992) [by Lewis Saul]

In July 1973, I got a call from my high school alma mater -- The Interlochen Arts Academy -- inviting me to join other recent Composition Major graduates for a symposium with John Cage.

We were told to bring a tape of one of our compositions -- not too lengthy -- and a sleeping bag.

I arrived at Interlochen filled with deep emotions common to every alumni -- it is a magical place where I spent the best year of my life!

The next morning, I was pleased to see a few friendly faces from my senior year (1970), and others I didn't know. We met Mr. Cage in a large classroom and after the introductions, one by one, we threaded up the reel-to-reel, or cassette tapes in some cases (this is OLD tech, kids!) and played our music. Cage made short pithy comments after each tape. Mine -- a short improvisational work for electric clarinet and keyboards -- solicited a smile and the remark, "that is valuable social music."

Obviously pleased to be done with that business, he loaded us in a bus and we drove for a few hours until we reached the wild untouched world of the northern Michigan pine forest.

Cage had us form a large circle, and proceeded to give a serious lecture on morel mushrooms.

He taught us how to look for them on trees blighted with Dutch Elm Disease, and -- most importantly -- how to be certain we weren't picking any false morels, such as Gyromitra esculenta or Verpa bohemica -- both morel lookalikes which are poisonous!

For the rest of the day, we all went mushroom hunting, filling our little baskets with these weird-looking fungi, as Cage went around checking everyone's haul to make sure that they were all true morels.

Dusk. We made a large circle of rocks and built a campfire. Cage had checked all the morels, which now were placed in a large bucket. Out came sticks of butter and thinly-sliced garlic. JC carefully cut up the morels and put the mixture into a large pot which was then put on the fire.

In a few minutes, we were all feasting on buttery morels. They were delicious!

It got dark. We fed the fire. Some of my compadres started to ask Cage some questions, most of them ridiculous. Cage never gave a verbal answer, only staring back at the questioner, and smiling, devilishly ...

"Why did you write 4'33"?" [if you don't know what that is, click on the link. It is perhaps what John Cage is best well-known for in folks who haven't really bothered to investigate his oeuvre ...]
"What made you decide to invent the prepared piano?" [once again, a ridiculous question -- Cage was inspired by work of Henry Cowell, and simply expanded upon the idea, taking it into new territory ...]
"What do you think of Composer X?" [a question no composer should ever ask of another composer ...]
Still smiling, lips pursed, Cage -- in a very soft voice -- said, "would everyone please shut up?"

Stunned silence. But not complete silence. People were making little noises, shuffling around in their sleeping bags.

But after a few minutes, as Cage looked at each of us with those piercing eyes, a complete silence fell upon the group.

Cage was delighted. The silence was deafening. Suddenly -- far off in the distance -- the very faint sound of an airplane ...

"Now, that's music!" Cage smiled -- a real smile, his eyes wide and gleaming with complete joyous satisfaction.

Studio Takes: Leonard Bernstein (born August 25) Rehearses "West Side Story" with Opera Singers

 

Theme Music: Claude Debussy's "Danse Tarantelle"

08 / 22 / 08

Today in 1862
Claude Debussy was born.
I remember where I was and what I was doing
one hundred years and two months later:
elementary algebra, trombone practice,
Julius Caesar on the record player
with Brando as Antony, simple
buttonhook patterns in football,
the French subjunctive, and the use
of “quarantine” rather than “blockade”
during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It was considered the less belligerent word.
Much was made of it in 1962,
centenary of Debussy’s birth.
And if today I play his Rhapsody
for Saxophone and Orchestra
for the ten minutes it requires of
my undivided attention, who will attack me for
living in Paris in 1908 instead of now?
Let them. I'll take my stand,
my music stand, with the composer
of my favorite Danse Tarantelle.

(from Poems in the Manner Of by David Lehman)

Happy birthday, Stacey!

"So laugh and sing, make love the thing, / Be happy while you may. / There's always one, beneath the sun / Who's bound to make you feel that way. / The moon is shining, and that's a good sign, / Cling to me closer and say you'll be mine. / Remember, darling, we won't see it shine / A hundred years from today." [Song: "A Hundred Years from Today"; photo credit: Star Black (c) 2011]

 

Tales of the Eighties: A Moment with Mal Waldron [by Alan Ziegler]

August 16 would be Mal Waldron's 97th birthday (he died in 2002). I spent a moment with him in 1983.

     “Look,” I say, pointing to a sign in a Greenwich Village club window, “Mal Waldron is playing.” Mal Waldron (when I first saw his name in print I thought it was a typo) was immortalized in the last line of Frank O’Hara’s poem “The Day Lady Died,” in which O’Hara recalls leaning on the john door of the 5 Spot while Billie Holiday “whispered a song along the keyboard / to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing.”

    Someone who performed with Billie Holiday and was written about by Frank O’Hara is within reach. We get a table.

     Mal Waldron is in the middle of a set, playing melodic bebop. I am transfixed by his eyes, which seem to float in his head, not looking at the keyboard or the audience but seeing everything inside and out, past and present. We can’t see his hands, there is only Mal Waldron’s eyes and the music. I want to lean up against the john door and briefly stop breathing. 

    After his set he sits alone at a table with a drink. I muster the courage to approach him. I ask him about the O'Hara poem and he says that lots of people have mentioned it to him.

    “Do you remember the night—when Billie whisper-sang only for you?”

    "It could have been a lot of nights,” Mal Waldron says.

from the archive; first posted October 2015

Hot Diggity (Dog Ziggity Boom) [with Perry Como and the Ray Charles Singers, 1956]

This was high on the charts when I was eight and riding a bicycle to impress a little girl. I am still fond of the song.

If you're hearing Emmanuel Chabrier's España (1883)
you're not wrong O
America we serve 
hot dogs to the King
and Queen of England
and did you know It was Al Jolson
who launched "hot diggity dog"
in the 20s, a decade famous for phrases,
like digga digga do and making whoopie.

"Our Love Affair": Which one? [by David Lehman]

Unsung heroes Arthur Freed (left; who produced The Wizard of Oz and rescued "Over the Rainbow" from extinction) and Roger Edens (who composed the "Dear Mr Gable" intro to "You Made Me Love You" for Judy Garland) teamed up to write the "Love Affair" that I prefer of the two great contenders in movie history. The rival, composed by Harry Warren, orchestrates the 1957 Cary Grant-Deborah Kerr tear-jeker,An Affair to Remember. That one has its appeal, god knows; I believe Nora Ephron regards the film and everything about it as the epitome of romance, and it's great for the string section.

But the one I vote for is the musical emblem of Strike Up the Band (1940) -- a movie directed by Busby Berkeley, in which, in one show-within-a-show scene, "demi-tasse" is the unlikely euphemism for hanky-panky. "Our Love Affair" carries the overture beyond the Gershwin title track, is sung thirteen minutes into the movie by Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, and recurs throughout as background music for the young romantics. I love Freed's lyrics in general -- he also wrote the songs in "Singin' in the Rain." I will write more about him some other time -- about Roger Edens, too, who, according to reliable sources, shared a birthday (November 9) with Kay Thompson. From 1942 through 1957 they gave joint birthday parties during which each presented a surprise production number using special material featuring their friends— Garland, Lena Horne, Gene Kelly, Dorothy Dandridge, Maureen O'Hara, Ray Bolger, Ann Sothern, Danny Kaye, Charles Walters, Cole Porter, Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane — with secret rehearsals, and neither telling the other what to expect.  Anyway -- See Strike Up the Band once and you'll know "Our Love Affair" forever.

The tenderness here coexists with brass. The song can be done in swing time or full of the most wistful longing. If you get a chance listen to the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra with the Sentimental Gentleman himself on the 'bone and boy singer Sinatra (24 or 25).  crooning the words.

https://youtu.be/sy_A62FKpbE?t=1

  -- DL

Deems Taylor introduces Frank Sinatra on V-Disc "for the men overseas" (1944)

Sinatra at the Stork Club, 1944

"If You Are But a Dream"
"Sunday, Monday and Always"  as "Dick Haymes, Dick Todd and Como." 
     "Why should it get their goat, each time I bend a note, Dick Haymes, Dick Todd and Como?"
     "The fact that girlies scream they say will bring me grief / but if they ever stop I'll find that I'm back on relief"
     "Every time I sing, I'm compared with Bing, by Dick Haymes, Dick Todd, and Como?"
Brahms's Lullaby

Judy Gemini, Born Today: An Astrological Profile [by David Lehman]

Born to sing America’s all-time favorite movie song, Harold Arlen’s “Over the Rainbow,” Judy Garland was as natural a Gemini as you will find – totally binary, loyal to a fault yet fickle, cheerful and proud yet sometimes suicidally desperate.  She habitually came late to the set fortified with bottles of “Blue Nun,” “Liebfraumilch,” and similar white stuff, which tasted terrible but did the job.

    On June 10, 1922, Judy Garland was born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, at 6 AM. With her moon in Sagittarius, and her Mercury and Venus in Cancer (her rising sign), the great singer had the heart of a poet, the sensitivity of an eternal diva, and a really good voice. If only there had been more Virgo in her chart, and four inches more height, the girl who embodied Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” might have had greater career endurance. Great as her later work was, in the movies, in concert, or on TV with friends Sinatra and Martin, she peaked as a child actress. She is why the "Andy Hardy" movies are still worth watching. The absence of earth signs doomed her to a nervous disposition and the likelihood of an early death. The 2019 movie Judy did Judy no favors.

          Born Frances Ethel Gumm, Judy craved the approval of father figures, was easily bruised by criticism, sometimes affected nonchalance but really cared very deeply about other people and wanted to be included in group activities. Her Saturn in Libra helps to explain her outstanding musical talent, and her will to succeed in motion pictures may be inferred from her midheaven in Pisces conjunct Uranus.

         The death of Judy's father at age thirteen stunned the young actress, who eventually broke off relations with her mother. The amphetamines helped in the short run. She had five husbands and a torrid affair with lyricist Johnny Mercer when she was eighteen and he, thirty. He wrote the words of “That Old Black Magic” and “I Remember You” with her in mind.

An old astrological adage: The stars favor the stars.  From the moment the teenage Garland sang to Clark Gable's photograph ("You Made Me Love You"), her astonishing rise to the heights of Hollywood glory was in the cards (Queen of Hearts high) as was, alas, the inevitability of internal conflicts and demons postponed but not resolved by the habitual use of narcotics. She was still in her teens when she and Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, and Bert Lahr sang as they danced along the yellow brick road leading to the wonderful wizard of Oz. That was in Technicolor. Already in the black-and-white of Kansas cornfields, she sang the anthem of eternal aspiration, “Over the Rainbow,” which was named the greatest song of the twentieth century in a survey conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Recording Industry Association of America in 2001.

          As kids Judy and Mickey Rooney teamed up in movies, and their duet versions of “Our Love Affair” and “How About You?” are the best out there. She did “The Trolley Song” in one picture and “The Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe” in another. The two best versions of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," the best American Christmas song not writen by Jews, are hers and Sinatra's. She would have made a great Annie Oakley in Irving Berlin’s “Annie, Get Your Gun,” and we still have tape of the one song she did (“Doin’ a What Come Naturally”), but she was too fucked up to do the movie and the part went to Betty Hutton.

         In Chinese astrology, Judy was born in the year of the dog. Her element is water. This is consistent with her destiny. Her relation to Minnesota mirrors that of Dorothy to Kansas except that there was no home to go back to. The three farm hands in the dream were almost recognizably there, surrounding her bed, when she awoke in Hollywood. Why did gay men have a thing about her? Because (a) they had good taste, (b) they could identify with her suffering, (c) they could admire her indomitable will, (d) they could smell the tragedy on her breath, (e) even macho boys could identify themselves with Dorothy Gale, (f) where gossip and conjecture overlap, anything goes, or (g) all, some, or none of the above. And remember: she was the mother of Liza Minelli, and all you need to do is see the 2014 revival of Cabaret (2014), good as it is, and compare Michelle Williams’s performance as Sally Bowles with that of Liza in the 1972 movie, and you will see the difference between an actress who is trying as hard as she can and a natural-born diva, with the vocal cords of a heroine and the soul of Judy Garland’s daughter.

            In the 1960s Judy was hell on wheels to work with, if Mel Tormé's account in The Other Side of the Rainbow is to be trusted. Mel Tormé was the music director on her short-lived television program, “The Judy Garland Show” on CBS, and Tormé says she tormented him. Judy would call you in the middle of the night, make you come over and hold her hand, make capricious decisions, stand up guest stars like Lena Horne, skip rehearsals, tell fart jokes on the set. On the other hand she was who she was, and you loved her when she lifted her glass and said “l’chayem.” She was so earnest you couldn’t help pulling for her. “This television jazz is all new to me,” she said. “The Blue Lady helps to get my heart started.” She couldn’t stand what she called the Smothers’ Brothers “goyishe humor,” and the show had other guests of that ilk. But when Barbra Streisand was the guest star, it was incredible. The two divas did a duet of “Get Happy” and “Happy Days Are Here Again” that you can listen to over and over again – it is the ideal rendering of two of the Depression’s enduring hits.

           Judy sang and danced with Gene Kelly (“For Me and My Gal”) and with Fred Astaire (“Easter Parade”), and the saints of St. Louis marched in and sang "The Trolley Song" in unison on June 22, 1969, the day of her death. She had a natural talent for the Al Jolson songbook ("After You've Gone"). At Carnegie Hall in 1961, with composer Harold Arlen in the audience, she sang "Get Happy," "Stormy Weather," "The Man That Got Away," and "Come Rain or Come Shine." Five Grammy awards! She was dead at 46.

            If Judy and Frank Sinatra had been lovers, they would have scored very high in passion, high in intimacy, average in synergy, and below average in commitment.

Happy birthday, Dean Martin

"I couldn't feel any better or I'd be sick
Tell me quick ain't love a kick in the head. . ."

June is Bustin' Out All Over

Richard Rodgers was Jerome Kern's successor as the greatest melodist on the Broadway stage. From Carousel (1945), the month of June is saluted with this sweet song perfect for ensemble singing. Lyric by Oscar Hammerstein: "To ladies, the men are paying court." "All the rams that chase the ewe sheep / Are determined there'll be new sheep /And the ewe-sheep aren't even keepin' score!" Musically the part beginning "but it's cumin' by gum / you can feel it come," is extraordinary. Here are four recordings. First, from 2013, is the Klezmer Company Jazz Orchestra with soprano Jennifer Tipton and baritone Graham Fandrei.   -- DL

From the 2018 revival:

From the movie (I wish I could find a video track as the choreography is superb):

As the British do it:

Happy birthday, Doris Day: Big Band Singer Par Excellence

On April 3, let's celebrate Doris Day, a very great singer. 

Dorisb4day is a great screen name because
of Oscar Levant’s witticism (he knew Doris Day
“before she was a virgin”) but mostly because
of the voice of Doris at break of day or when
driving on Rte 17 and listening to her sing
“Sentimental Journey” with Les Brown (“and
his band of renown”) and “Dream a Little Dream
of Me” or “Someone Like You,” “A Hundred Years
from Today,” or “Love Me or Leave Me,”
the face cherubic, the flip side of Sinatra’s
brooding in Young at Heart, blonde
and relentlessly upbeat, but there is sex in that voice 

1 / 4/ 18

from Playlist by David Lehman (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019)

Spring is Here [by Ella Fitzgerald and Rodgers & Hart]

 

 

Spring is here! Why doesn't my heart go dancing?
Spring is here! Why isn't the waltz entrancing?
No desire, no ambition leads me
Maybe it's because nobody needs me

Spring is here! Why doesn't the breeze delight me?
Stars appear, why doesn't the night invite me?
Maybe it's because nobody loves me
Spring is here I hear

-- Lorenz Hart

On Nelson Riddle [by Terry Teachout, 1956-2022]

Two excerpts from "The Man Who (Re)made Sinatra: The Riddle of Nelson" by Terry Teachout (February 6, 1956 - January 13, 2022) in Commentary (July / August 2021)

<<
Nelson Riddle was, perhaps, the greatest of all the arrangers who worked on the Great American Songbook, primarily because of the work he did in the 1950s with Frank Sinatra. The two men were brought together by Capitol Records in 1953 in the hope of updating Sinatra’s singing style, which still recalled his youthful crooning of sentimental ballads. Within a matter of years, Sinatra had recorded his two finest albums, Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! (1956) and Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely (1958), on which he emerged decisively as a mature artist, in part because of Riddle’s sympathetic backing. Riddle also wrote arrangements of like quality for Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Peggy Lee, and Dean Martin. Riddle’s innovative work defined the predominant postwar style of arranging, which may be the defining sound of the American century. Such an artistic force is deserving of a first-class full-length biography. Alas, Peter Levinson’s September in the Rain (2001), though full of illuminating detail about his life, is musically uninformed, while Geoffrey Littlefield’s newly published Nelson Riddle: Music with a Heartbeat, nominally co-written with Riddle’s son Christopher, is a vanity-press disaster, besmirched by factual errors and even more musically ignorant than Levinson’s book. Still, September in the Rain does let us see how Riddle developed as an artist, in the process enriching our understanding of the life of the chronically melancholy man and his uncomfortable relationship with the greatest popular singer of the 20th century.
>>>

<<< Today, Riddle’s style, especially as documented in the albums he recorded with Sinatra, is universally acknowledged as the high-water mark of postwar vocal arranging. Their making was a nerve-racking process for Riddle, who confessed to finding Sinatra terrifyingly mercurial: “Frank contributed a lot to the orchestral part of his own records, just by leveling a hostile stare at the musicians, with those magnetic blue eyes! The point of this action was to make me, or any other conductor, feel at that exact moment as if he had two left feet, three ears, and one eye.”

But the resulting tension, he admitted, was “a positive factor that found its way into the record,” and it brought out the best in Riddle. More than a half-century later, their albums sound as vital as ever—and his ability to overcome his fear of Sinatra and rise to the occasion is a large part of what has kept them so. >>>

For the entire article, click here. For the record, many Frankophiles consider "In the Wee Small Hoirs" an even better album of ballads than the great "Only the Lonely." Teachout is absolutely correct when he says that song arrangers are underpaid, underappreciated, and sometimes unacknowledged. Other Sinatra arrangers worth more than a mention include Billy May, George Siravo, Gordon Jenkins, Don Costa, Axel Stordahl, Quincy Jones, Neil Hefti, and Johnny Mandel. >>>

 

Two excerpts from "The Man Who (Re)made Sinatra: The Riddle of Nelson" by Terry Teachout (February 6, 1956 - January 13, 2022) in Commentary (July / August 2021)

<<
Nelson Riddle was, perhaps, the greatest of all the arrangers who worked on the Great American Songbook, primarily because of the work he did in the 1950s with Frank Sinatra. The two men were brought together by Capitol Records in 1953 in the hope of updating Sinatra’s singing style, which still recalled his youthful crooning of sentimental ballads. Within a matter of years, Sinatra had recorded his two finest albums, Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! (1956) and Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely (1958), on which he emerged decisively as a mature artist, in part because of Riddle’s sympathetic backing. Riddle also wrote arrangements of like quality for Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Peggy Lee, and Dean Martin. Riddle’s innovative work defined the predominant postwar style of arranging, which may be the defining sound of the American century. Such an artistic force is deserving of a first-class full-length biography. Alas, Peter Levinson’s September in the Rain (2001), though full of illuminating detail about his life, is musically uninformed, while Geoffrey Littlefield’s newly published Nelson Riddle: Music with a Heartbeat, nominally co-written with Riddle’s son Christopher, is a vanity-press disaster, besmirched by factual errors and even more musically ignorant than Levinson’s book. Still, September in the Rain does let us see how Riddle developed as an artist, in the process enriching our understanding of the life of the chronically melancholy man and his uncomfortable relationship with the greatest popular singer of the 20th century.
>>>

<<< Today, Riddle’s style, especially as documented in the albums he recorded with Sinatra, is universally acknowledged as the high-water mark of postwar vocal arranging. Their making was a nerve-racking process for Riddle, who confessed to finding Sinatra terrifyingly mercurial: “Frank contributed a lot to the orchestral part of his own records, just by leveling a hostile stare at the musicians, with those magnetic blue eyes! The point of this action was to make me, or any other conductor, feel at that exact moment as if he had two left feet, three ears, and one eye.”

But the resulting tension, he admitted, was “a positive factor that found its way into the record,” and it brought out the best in Riddle. More than a half-century later, their albums sound as vital as ever—and his ability to overcome his fear of Sinatra and rise to the occasion is a large part of what has kept them so. >>>

For the entire article, click here. For the record, many Frankophiles consider "In the Wee Small Hoirs" an even better album of ballads than the great "Only the Lonely." Teachout is absolutely correct when he says that song arrangers are underpaid, underappreciated, and sometimes unacknowledged. Other Sinatra arrangers worth more than a mention include Billy May, George Siravo, Gordon Jenkins, Don Costa, Axel Stordahl, Quincy Jones, Neil Hefti, and Johnny Mandel. >>>

 

Interview with Tzimon Barto: Languages, Poetry and Education [by Lera Auerbach]

 I am always fascinated by people who are masters of more than one profession.  I interviewed Tzimon Barto for the Best American Poetry blog. His passions and knowledge run deep. Tzimon Barto speaks seven languages fluently, reads ancient Greek, Latin, and Hebrew; his love of poetry is contagious, his ideas about education are inspiring.

      

For a taste of Barto's music-making here he is performing Mozart's Rondo for Piano and Orchestra in A major with the SWR Symphonieorchester and Christoph Eschenbach.

 

Borderless Creativity [by Lera Auerbach]

Insomnia © Lera Auerbach 2013

It is undeniable that creativity is one of the most important aspects of any profession. For an artist being creative is a matter of life or death. If you are not creative, you can't be an artist. Music emerges from silence, poetry from a white page, painting from a blank canvas. The artist brings to life ideas, sounds, images, giving form to that which was formless before. Yet that silence, that blank page or canvas - it is not empty, it is full of infinite possibilities.

I remember the first time I performed a piano concerto with an orchestra. I was 8 years old and very excited. Standing backstage, I was waiting for the orchestra to finish tuning. The chaotic, wild roar of the symphony orchestra tuning felt miraculous to me; it was my blank canvas as it contained limitless possibilities of music-making.

But the world of infinite possibilities can be also frightening, confusing and intimidating. The blank page can glare at you and leave you incapacitated, immobile, shrinking with each passing minute. How can one deal then with limitless freedom when everything appears possible, yet full of invisible walls that stifle your imagination?

The craft of an artist (and here I mean any artistic expression, be it a musical composition, literature or visual arts), requires building forms, structures within which a work of art can operate, the frames of space and time which it can inhabit. It involves creating certain restrictions within which the work can be free to emerge, and against which it can rebel, in other words, creating frames which can be altered, but nevertheless allow for creative thought to flourish and realize itself.

So, how does one sustain creativity in art when the Muses themselves are known for their disloyalty and fickleness? In my case this involved acting against the advice of my teachers, and following my calling against all odds.

I began playing piano and writing music when I was 4 years old. Soon my teachers presented me with a Solomonic dilemma: "Do you want to be a composer or a concert pianist?" I was told that in our age of specialization one cannot be both a virtuoso performer and a serious composer so I had better choose soon and focus." When I was 12, I wrote my first opera, which was staged and toured in Russia. When I mentioned this opera to my piano professor, who was a wonderful teacher by the way, he said rather sternly: "I don't want to hear anything about it. I don't care what you do in your spare time as long as long as it doesn't take away from piano practice."

Perhaps as a reaction to this, I started writing poetry and prose. Soon enough, my publishers informed me that I can't be publishing both poetry and fiction, that doing so would only confuse the readers and I would not be taken seriously. At the Juilliard School in New York, the pressures to choose only grew. Even today, after countless performances worldwide and with more than 100 compositions published, some of my well-wishers are still concerned that I may be spreading myself too thin. My response to that? I started creating visual art. As always -- I could not stay just with the paintings. Quickly I added mixed media, photography and sculpture.

It's not that I have not tried to limit myself to one form. And heaven knows, even one career in music is hard enough. But every time I tried to do so, the weight of a blank page became unbearable and I would feel depressed and accomplish less than when I allowed myself to fly freely with the child-like approach that everything is possible. My friends think that I am a workaholic, but I am not. I am a chronic procrastinator, always guilty of not doing something else. Yet somehow everything gets done with illusory effortlessness.

Experiencing art through its different forms helps to gain a fresh and unexpected perspective. Often we are unable to see what is right in front of us, but through the metaphor of art we recognize our own face. This is why a melody or a line in a book can move us to tears, as it becomes personal, and through sharing this experience we realize that we are not alone. Often enough, by immersing oneself in art, one may find solutions for seemingly unrelated problems.

And one more thought. There is no such thing as progress in art. Art does not follow the principles of Darwinism, at least not qualitatively. Picasso is not better than Rembrandt, Stravinsky is not better than Mozart, Pasternak is not better than Dante. Art changes and evolves so that the artist becomes an instrument and representative of his time. In one of his early interviews, Steve Jobs said that all his work will become obsolete by the time he is 50. Unlike art, technology becomes outdated almost overnight. Any scientific discovery, with time, will be found either obsolete or incomplete, whereas a work of art can remain relevant and whole throughout centuries.

In our fast-paced ever-changing world, art reminds us of our humanity, of that which is timeless and always relevant. Art communicates through the universal language of human emotions and thus, while representing its time, it is also capable of transcending it. Music of Mozart, words of Shakespeare, paintings of Da Vinci continue to inspire us, to move, to touch and to transport us beyond our daily routine; they are as powerful now as when they were created. Through these works we continue the dialogues between the centuries, as we individually attempt to answer some of the essential universal questions: Who are we? Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? What happens when we die? Why is there so much suffering, cruelty and war? These are the unanswerable eternal questions that define our existence. In the cosmic frightening vastness of silence of these unanswered questions, and facing the perpetual terrors of history, it is Art and Culture that become the frames allowing us to justify our existence and creatively flourish in any field we choose. Our art and culture give meaning to our lives and become our legacy. 

I know the price of Silence
When on the threshold of sound,
It congeals in the contour of emptiness
Blends with the beating heart.

The air is charged with fear
And opens into voiceless space.
Hypnotized by incorporeality,
The wind unfurls its wings in dance.

 ilence parches the mouth
As I catch it on my lips,
Mesmerized by the muteness of sound,
The dreary whiteness of the page.

From the archive; first posted February 28, 2014

Sinatra at the Sands, January 1966 [by David Lehman]

Ed. note: Jack Daniel's produced a limited-batch sour-mash whiskey called "Sinatra Century" to mark the singer's 100th birthday, December 12, 2015. Lehman's book Sinatra's Century: One Hundred Notes on the Man and His World was published by HarperCollins at the same time. An editor at The Wall Street Journal noted the coincidence and commissioned Lehman, who likes good bourbon, to review the new whiskey, which came in a gift box including a thumb drive containing the recording of a Sinatra show at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in January 1966.

1. The Background

Frank Sinatra discovered Jack Daniel’s one sleepless night in the early 1940s. “It’s been the oil to my engine ever since,” he later said. He famously praised “anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers or Jack Daniel’s.” Frank always kept a bottle nearby, offstage, and he was buried with a flask of JD in his casket.

In her autobiography, Judith Campbell Exner —the moll who was mistress to both John F. Kennedy and the head of the Chicago mob—recalled a day spent with Sinatra. He “acknowledged the comings and goings of an endless string of visitors, growled at flunkies, drank martinis, ate lunch, drank Jack Daniel’s, ate hors d’oeuvres, drank Jack Daniel’s, ate dinner, and drank more Jack Daniel’s.”

By the mid-1960s, Sinatra could drink a fifth of Jack Daniel’s and still go on stage.

2) The Anticipation

Like any respectable Sinatra aficionado, I have imbibed my share of Tennessee’s trademark sour mash whiskey. And as the author of a new book on Sinatra, I had an extra incentive to try the latest ultra-premium Jack Daniel’s bottle sent to me by my editor at The Wall Street Journal: a limited-edition 100-proof whiskey aged in 100 “alligator-charred” oak barrels (so called for the scaly interior surface left by the fire, the deepest of all the chars whiskey producers use to impart flavor and color to the liquor). It hit shelves in October—in plenty of time for toasts to Frank Sinatra on his 100^th birthday, December 12, 2015.

The whiskey is called Sinatra Century. By serendipitous coincidence, my new book is called “Sinatra’s Century.” I wrote it, quite simply, because I have loved the singer’s voice, his musical savvy, his definitive versions of great standards ever since I heard “All the Way” and “Witchcraft” on the radio when I was eight or nine and grasped the essence of swing from Sinatra albums a few years later. Timing it to coincide with the centennial, I wrote the book in 100 parts, because Sinatra’s career exists in exquisite counterpoint with what Henry Luce called the “American century” and because the century is the perfect form for a subject with so many facets.

Jack Daniel’s already has a top-shelf whiskey with Sinatra’s name on it – 90 proof Sinatra Select, which is selling well, at twice the price of single-barrel bourbons that are just as good. So there was a part of me that wondered whether the same would be true with “Sinatra Century” – whether JD is selling a name, an event, and a future souvenir rather than a whiskey that can go head to head with A. H. Hirsch Reserve or the best of Buffalo Trace’s Antique Collection.

3) The Presentation

The presentation of Sinatra Century is as lavish as it should be, priced at $379 or more per one-liter bottle. It arrives in a deep blue-indigo lacquered carrying case with an engraved brass handle on top. Pop open the case, and the bottle sits in a custom groove, like a dark liquid jewel set against black velvet. Each bottle is numbered—mine is FAS 23095, the initials standing for Francis Albert Sinatra. Also in their own made-to-size grooves are a hardbound booklet devoted to Sinatra’s relationship with Jack Daniel’s and a tie clip that doubles as a thumb drive.

That last item comes loaded with a previously unreleased album of a live Sinatra performance: thirteen songs, two monologues and a coda, all recorded at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in January 1966. Frank had just turned fifty and was teaming up with the brilliant arranger Quincy Jones backed by the Count Basie Orchestra, and what better way to return to that evening than with a rocks glass in hand?

4) The Proof

           Isn’t “proof” a lovely word? It stands in one context for the potency of a potable, and in another it means verification: a geometrical proof, say, or the proof of the pudding. Both senses come into play here. Would Sinatra Century prove potent enough to provide the perfect accompaniment to belters like “Luck Be a Lady” and “Fly Me to the Moon”? At 100 proof, it had better. (The standard “Old No. 7” Jack Daniel’s bottle clocks in at a mere 80.)

As to color, I said amber, my wife said topaz. I said tongue of flame, my wife said Stradivarius. She described the taste as “warm orange afterglow.” I took another sip and said, “Cognac.” She sipped and said, “The Cognac of bourbons.” Goes well with dark chocolate. Warms the soul “in a drear-nighted December” (to quote Keats).

The whiskey is the best I’ve ever had from Jack Daniel’s.

How to drink it? Neat or with a few ice cubes. We stuck to Sinatra’s own recipe: “three rocks, two fingers, and a splash”–a Sinatra haiku, when you think about it. We omitted the splash.

5. The Playlist

Sinatra Century promises not merely a whiskey but an experience. So you’re sitting in your favorite reclining armchair sipping and playing the recording of that Sands appearance of January 1966. It opens with a trusty icebreaker, “Come Fly with Me,” then turns to a ballad he’s sung since his crooner days, the Gershwins’ “I’ve Got a Crush on You.” Self-consciousness spoils the verse intro. The skinny singer can scarcely keep a straight face when obliged to sing “I’m your big and brave and handsome Romeo.”

He’s on safer ground with Cole Porter’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” Perhaps the most celebrated of all Sinatra’s up-tempo finger-snappers, it brings out his swinging best. In adapting Nelson Riddle’s 1956 arrangement, Quincy Jones makes miraculous use of reeds and muted horns to compensate for the lack of a string section.

Sinatra always maintained he was at heart a saloon singer and he proves it anew in “Street of Dreams” and Matt Dennis’s great, haunting “Angel Eyes.” As you savor another swallow, the pace changes with “Fly Me to the Moon,” a highlight of the night. Sinatra reinvented Bart Howard’s 1954 song: It wasn’t a sad wistful plea, after all, but an assertive proclamation of love. It was also a nod to NASA’s great decade, the conquest of space as a seduction song. Killer arrangement. Love that flute.

The timeless “You Make Me Feel So Young” shows Sinatra at his most buoyant, and then he turns up the warmth in Johnny Mandel’s Oscar-winning “Shadow of Your Smile.” Sinatra is dating Mia Farrow and Mia likes the song.

Frank Loesser’s “Luck Be a Lady” comes from the musical “Guys and Dolls.” In the movie version, Sinatra played Nathan Detroit, but it was Marlon Brando as Sky Masterson who got to sing this ode to gambling that marks the show’s heroic climax. Now, to correct the injustice, Sinatra demonstrates how the song should be sung. One of Sinatra’s anthems in the 1960s, a hymn to Las Vegas, here it’s as electric as “Fly Me to the Moon,” with a tail like that of “My Kind of Town.”

Time for another round.

The audience is hushed when Frank sings “It Was a Very Good Year,” where again the reeds do the work of strings, and then the Rodgers and Hart standard “Where or When,” not only a marvelous love song but also the greatest ever on the subject of déjà vu: “Some things that happen for the first time / Seem to be happening again.”

The nightclub act ends with a song Sinatra owns: “My Kind of Town,” the terrific tribute to Chicago that Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen wrote for their boss to sing in “Robin and the Seven Hoods,” his last movie musical.

By now you’ve made a dent in the bottle and you’re robustly singing along.

-- from  "Author David Lehman Takes On Jack Daniel's Sinatra Century," in The Wall Street Journal, January 5, 2016

Igor Stravinsky: "I surround myself with obstacles. . ."

Albert Gleizes, Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, 1914, Oil on canvas, 129.5 x 114.3 cm. Muséum of Modern Art Collection

"My freedom thus consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself for each one of my undertakings. I shall go even further: my freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint, diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit."

—Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons

-- sdl

Let it Snow X 3 [by Frank Sinatra]

 

MARIA - Dialogues on Stabat Mater [by Lera Auerbach]

Some works have parallel lives. In 2006 Musikfest Bremen and Lucerne Festival commissioned me to write a piece for Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica. As soon as I started composing it, I knew that it would be reborn as a theater work one day. I did not know at that time how or when. I thought of Maria, the Grieving Mother, and the Other Maria – the mysterious one who remained in the shadows, the two outlines becoming one, blending their voices in never-ending dialogue where one voice echoes the other. This weekend, in Nürenberg, Germany, will be the world premiere of the new ballet Maria, choreographed by Goyo Montero with Diana Vishneva dancing the principal role. How did it happen?

On May 14, 2019, I met with Diana Vishneva for dinner in New York after attending an art exhibition together. I have known Diana for many years. I wrote my ballet Tatiana (after Pushkin's Evgeny Onegin), choreographed by John Neumeier with Diana in mind, and she has danced it numerous times since its creation. Diana visited me in Florida earlier that year to explore our future collaborations. That spring day, in 2019, on the lower side of Manhattan, we spoke about my idea for the ballet Maria based on the music of my Dialogues on Stabat Mater. We talked about different ways how to make the ballet Maria a reality and who could be the ideal choreographer to realize it on stage. We both, at the same time, breathed out: Goyo Montero. I called Goyo from that restaurant, and he said: "Yes!" 

Dialogues on Stabat Mater is an experiment. I wished to create a frame, a dialogue, an outlook from our own time on the same subject as Pergolesi's celebrated masterpiece. And to base this dialogue not so much on the differences of cultural and harmonic esthetics between the 18th and 21st centuries, but rather on their similarities, which is much more challenging. The image of the grieving mother is universal, just as pain is universal, although its expressions may vary based on cultural or religious backgrounds. 

Dialogue can happen at different levels. Is it a dialogue between different times, a beginning and an end, musician and audience, soli and tutti, loneliness and understanding? Perhaps, after all, the difference is not that great between vocal and purely instrumental, sacred language and the vernacular, monologue, and dialogue? Any prayer is a dialogue even though the addressee may not appear present. To whom am I addressing this?