Due to the fact that recently I have spent a considerable amount of time driving, I decided that there could be no better opportunity to revisit the Ring Cycle. I was fortunate enough to see it staged last June at the Vienna State Opera and while there were some serious deficiencies in the production — such as the Brünnhilde — I found the experience of seeing the entire work again to be engaging, albeit tiring. Vienna’s Ring Cycle circa 2003 used to be presented in a most civilized manner: after a mid-week performance of Rheingold, the lengthier operas were held for Sundays starting in the late afternoon, allowing for sufficient time to enjoy a fortifying goulash prior to the experience (not unlike the American National Football League’s once-per-week schedule). This time around, they decided to go for a more intense schedule, presenting all four operas within the space of a week. I think I prefer the leisurely approach: in the week version, I felt as through I was running some kind of opera marathon, not once but three times. After seeing the entire cycle, I decided that it would be the ideal time to cement the operas into my musical memory by listening to them whenever possible. Pairing many hours in the car with the Ring Cycle was an ideal combination.

What has struck me in my most recent exploration of these works is their reliance on moments, a characteristic that I associate more with Italian operas rather than German ones. Virtually all of us are acquainted with these events in Italian works: consider the dramatic moments as Canio puts on his costume in Pagliacci, Cavaradossi recalls a rendez-vous under the stars, or Aida conjures up distant Ethiopia. In contrast, Wagnerian music drama is rarely discussed in such terms. Instead, there is a fixation on motives, particularly those that can be traced throughout the work and serve as clear signifiers of objects.

Yet Wagner’s works are equally dependent on moments to make them work. There is one key difference between a Wagnerian moment and an Italian one: Wagner relies less on the singer and considerably more on the orchestra. Moments are by no means unique to the Ring Cycle. Consider the return of Isolde in Act III of Tristan und Isolde: as she enters, we hear the same music that was played when the potion took its effect in the first act. However, this is no passionate acknowledgment of love; instead, the lack of resolution is heightened by the scurrying motive in the strings that abates only after Tristan sings, ‘Isolde,’ an echo of his response in Act I and his last utterance before succumbing to the wound inflicted by Melot. Unquestionably, the motives serve a crucial role in this scene, but the culmination creates an operatic moment that is no less effective than those of his Italian contemporaries.

Considering the length of the Ring Cycle, it is astounding that Wagner created moments that are so sonically distinct that they can be remembered across operas. One of my recent favorites is the moment of Brünnhilde’s awakening in Siegfried (‘Heil dir, Sonne’), accompanied by a series of chords moving from an e minor to a C major, back to the e minor and then to a d minor. The passage stands out because of the unexpected progressions and the distinct orchestration in the winds and brass with harp accents. This sequence returns exactly twice more in the Ring Cycle. It is the first sound heard in Götterdämmerung (now lowered by a semi-tone) and, in what has to be one of the most poignant uses of a leitmotif in the entire work, when Siegfried suddenly remembers his love for Brünnhilde prior to his death and calls her name. The device is not unlike Tristan’s final ‘Isolde,’ yet here it creates a parallel with Brünnhilde in Siegfried since it is his own awakening from a spell.

Of the Ring Cycle operas, my favorite is Götterdämmerung, despite the fact that I am certain Wagner could have divided the acts more mercifully (the Prologue and Act I take two hours to perform). This was Wagner’s starting point and it is the closest to a conventional opera: we have a chorus in Act 2 as well as a trio; there is action instead of reflection (consider Act 2 of Walküre by contrast!); and all of the time-worn operatic themes surface such as tragedy, betrayal, and deception. Perhaps this is also why it features such unforgettable moments.

The University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz announced a three-day symposion on Bodily Expression in Electronic Music.

Speakers include Isabel Mundry, Georgina Born, Federico Celestini, Andreas Dorschel, Deniz Peters, Alva Noe, Simon Emmerson, Pauline Oliveros, Gerhard Eckel, and Kendall Walton.

Keynote by Jonathan Sterne from McGill University: “Is Music a Thing?”

Composers’s Roundtable with Lou Bunk (Brandeis University), Maxwell Dulaney (Brandeis University), Davide Ianni (Boston University), and Adam Roberts (Harvard University). Moderated by Jean-Francois Charles.

Details at http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/gradmus/program.php

Mobtown Modern

Matthias Röder speaks with the founders of mobtown modern, saxophonist Brian Sacawa and composer Erik Spangler, about recliners and drinks at New Music concerts, how alternative listening environments and video projections create remixes of well-known repertories, and what’s coming up next in Baltimore’s most innovative New Music series.

Zeitschichten.com: Erik, together with Brian Sacawa, you are curating mobtown modern, a new music series at the contemporary museum in Baltimore. What’s the concept behind mobtown modern and why are you teaming up with a museum?

Erik Spangler: The main purpose of mobtown modern is to introduce a wider audience to a range of new music that we personally find inspiring, and to shape a total experience for the listener that is more welcoming than the academic concert hall. We are working in partnership with the Contemporary Museum because we have a shared understanding of new music as a vital form of contemporary art, and they are generously donating a space to us in which we can design our ideal listening environment.

Zeitschichten.com: What constitutes such an ideal listening environment?

Erik Spangler: When I say “ideal”, I should clarify that it is not acoustically ideal for everything that we are doing, but that we are able to consciously shape the environment to our purposes. It is a blank space that we are able to redesign ourselves, thinking consciously about setting the general atmosphere. We typically create a lounge type of environment, with some very comfy recliners in the first few rows of our semi-circular seating arrangement, and some cocktail tables set up behind the rows of chairs. We set up a bar at the back, next to my DJ table, where people can grab a drink at any point during the event. How many times have you wished for that during a classical music concert? Behind the performers we have two large screens where our video artist, Guy Werner, projects his visual interpretations of the music. Guy also does unique lighting design for each of our shows. There are many different ways that you can experience this space as a listener, and I think it welcoming to a wider variety of people than the traditional concert hall.

Zeitschichten.com: The mobtown modern concert programs are always structured around a central theme. Last year’s October concert, for instance, was entitled “Sound Ecology” and featured music that was inspired by environmental sounds. The series’ first concert was dedicated to non-academic compositions (“To Cool For School”) while “Man vs. Music” showcased pieces that are extremely difficult to play. What is your aim in presenting themed concerts? Do you think that New Music needs mediation in order to be understood or enjoyed by the public?

Erik Spangler: We have organized each of our events around a central theme because we like to program the music very intentionally, like a “concept album,” in a way that creates links between the pieces. The flow from one piece to another, the dramatic arc of the event, is also really important. I personally think that anything we can do as presenters of challenging new music to draw an audience in, to create meaningful connections, should be looked into. New music doesn’t necessarily need mediation, but we see it as another opportunity for creativity.

Zeitschichten.com: When you say “creativity,” do you imply that the act of listening requires a creative mindset and that this mode of listening is fostered by a non-traditional performance venue?

Erik Spangler

Erik Spangler: We do see the non-traditional performance venue as a way of fostering a listening mindset that encourages you to hear the music through the lens of today’s culture, rather than through assumed concert-going traditions of the past. This specially designed listening environment automatically creates a “remix” of the music by presenting it in a different social context than the one in which it was probably envisioned by the composer. We also remix the musical compositions by presenting them in relation to new visuals. Sometimes the music is more directly remixed with the addition of new electronic layers, new instrumental arrangements, and DJ interludes between pieces.

Zeitschichten.com: Erik, as a composer you connect classical contemporary and hip hop styles, working mostly with electronic media. What are your main influences when it comes to electronic music?

Erik Spangler: I continue to work with both acoustic instruments and electronic media in my composition work, although electronica has become more central for me since it enables me to regularly perform my own music as a DJ. During my last several years as a composition graduate student I was inspired to start sampling from my acoustic compositions and to incorporate these sounds into instrumental Hip Hop, Dub, and Drum & Bass beats. My biggest influences in this area of composition have been DJ Krush, DJ Spooky, Blockhead, Prefuse 73, and Amon Tobin.

Zeitschichten.com: Many of your past concerts featured a prominent visual component, for instance in the form of special lighting or video projections. Brian, as executive director of the concert series you are – among other things – in charge of hiring musicians. Are musicians generally happy about the visual component of the concerts or do you need to convince them that the visuals do not distract the listeners but rather enhance their understanding and perception of the music?

Brian Sacawa

Brian Sacawa: We’re lucky to have the opportunity to be working with very open minded musicians who share our desire to enhance the listening experience through multimedia means. So far, none of our musicians have objected to the use of video during our shows.

There has been one instance when a composer objected to the addition of a video layer to his work and we were happy to accommodate him. I can understand this perspective and realize that some composers may want their works to stand alone and not be enhanced or “polluted” by a video presentation. I’ve definitely been to concerts that combined music and video poorly; I’m thinking of particular instances when the music, which should be the main focus of the evening, becomes subservient and almost like a soundtrack for the video being presented. That’s definitely not what we’re after. We try to overcome this issue by having our video mixed live during the performance so it’s more reactionary to the music, making the VJ an active participant in the performance as he improvises a video layer to the music. We’re fortunate to have Baltimore-based video artist Guy Werner working as our primary VJ. Prior to each concert, Guy listens to the pieces and gets a general idea of the theme and images he’ll use as source material. He then prepares banks of samples for each piece—just like a DJ bringing a big record bag to a turntable gig—and then improvises a new video layer live during the performance. Using this method for the video, we could perform any piece several times and never have the same exact visual material.

Zeitschichten.com: You have frequently participated in the mobtown modern concert series as a performer. Do the video projections have an impact on your interpretation of a work? Is there a dialog between musical performance and video projections?

Brian Sacawa: Since the projections are always done behind the performers, I can’t say that they have any influence on my interpretation of any given work. However, there is definitely a dialog between the video projections and the musical performance, but that comes exclusively from the video end. As I mentioned, our video artist Guy Werner, prepares banks of samples based on the feeling he gets from listening to a recording of the work prior to the concert. So he has a general “theme” of what his video will be though everything he does during the performance in terms of mixing and effects is purely improvisatory and influenced by the dynamic of the live performance.

Zeitschichten.com: In terms of the equipment needed for the series, what is the biggest challenge of not staging the concerts in a traditional hall?

Brian Sacawa: I think we’d have the same types of challenges in terms of equipment even if we had our concerts in a traditional hall. Not many concert venues have the sort of video and audio capabilities that we require for our series. If anything, having the shows where we do, in a kind of loft-like space, makes things easier for us; we’re not locked having thing in a certain space and so on. It’s more flexible and gives the option of changing things around if we feel like it.

In terms of the equipment that we do use for the concerts, again, we have some very dedicated people who contribute their own gear along with their services for extremely reasonable fees.

Zeitschichten.com: As a performer you have premiered many pieces for saxophone and live electronics. What are the skills that one needs to have when performing electro-acoustic music? Is it different from playing with other musicians?

Brian Sacawa: There’s definitely a different type of skill set involved when performing electroacoustic music as opposed to performing with other musicians. First, you really need to know every detail of the electronic part. Often, the only way you know if you are synced up properly is through subtle cues in the electronic part. In some pieces, like Erik’s “pastlife laptops and attic instruments,” this isn’t a huge concern since there is a prominent beat-based layer, while in others, say “Images” by Milton Babbitt, being attuned to shifts in timbre and register can really make or break a performance.

Second, unlike playing with other musicians, an electronic track is completely unforgiving. If you make a mistake the CD playback doesn’t adjust to you. Also, your sense of time has to be ultra-precise. For example, I have performed several compositions by Jacob ter Veldhuis and these pieces are quite rhythmic and sometimes have the live saxophone as much a part of the texture as the electronic part. Being able to blend in both timbrally as well as in perfect tempo is extremely important to the success of a performance of one of these works.

And finally, the most dangerous aspect of performing electroacoustic music is the technology aspect of it. Computers don’t like to work when you want them to. And you have to have good audio equipment to have a great sound during performances. So there’s an added aspect that is often out of your control as a performer, especially when you travel and play in different venues all the time.

Zeitschichten.com: Can you tell us something about upcoming concerts in the mobtown modern series?

Brian Sacawa: We have two concert left this season. Our next concert is the Sequenzathon, a marathon performance of Berio’s Sequenzas. We’ll end this season with a show we’re called “Out To Lunch”, which will feature music be composers who have at one time or another in their careers been called “crazy.” On this concert we’re programming music by Edgard Varese, Eric Dolphy, Frank Zappa, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Alvin Lucier. We’re also very, very excited about what we’ve got programmed for Season 3, though that’s a secret for now!

Zeitschichten.com: Thanks to both of you for this interview!

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Angela Gheorghiu with her portrait

Today I attended the Metropolitan Opera broadcast at my local movie theater in a performance of Puccini’s La Rondine (like La Traviata, only minus the tuberculosis and judgmental father).  I cannot thank the Met enough for getting these performances out to a wide audience because for many of us here in the US, it is virtually impossible to see good opera live.  This topic would require another blog entry in a more rant-like style, so I will defer for now and simply note that I very much enjoyed the performance, even if Angela Gheorghiu did have a bad cold (she still sang well, except right at the beginning when her voice seemed a bit weak.  But I digress again).

During the intermission, Renée Fleming spoke to Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna (the tenor) about the opera and why they have championed it so fervently.  Gheorghiu said that she enjoyed the role, particularly because unlike many Puccini operas, the heroine does not die (Fleming then made a ‘She’s Alive!’ joke).  This statement got me thinking about the famous feminist critique of opera, Cathérine Clement’s Opéra, ou, la defaite des femmes, translated into English as Opera, or, the undoing of women.  Clement’s book looks at how operas treat women, particularly the women who die, and how often these deaths are graphic, brutal ends.  Naturally, there are plenty of operas in which the women do not die, many of which are in the standard repertory (Mozart’s works, Fidelio, Rosenkavalier, and plenty more, even some not written by Germans), but Clement does have a point that many favorite works do end poorly for the soprano.  One critique of the study pointed out that in basing her argument primarily on the text, Clement ignores the precise vehicle which gives the women power: their voices. Yet to me, Clement’s study reveals less about operatic tradition and more about the operatic present. It would be one matter to look back and see a fixation on deaths for the female leads but to me, it is far more unsettling that these continue to be the works that dominate the operatic stage — and continue to do so without reflection about why they are still so popular.

Thus far, the female roles at the Met have been varied.  There was Salome, who is not only a soprano but a hysterical one; her death does feel mandated considering how far behind she has left conventional society.  In Thaïs, the soprano death is particularly bizarre: one minute she is a reformed courtesan crossing a river to leave her life of sin behind, the next minute, she is no longer of this earth [apparently these two operas teach us that sopranos should avoid deserts....see also Aida]. Contrast that with the courtesan Magda, the lead in La Rondine, who realizes that without money she and her love cannot be happy, so she makes the logical (and almost non-operatic) choice to go back to her benefactor in the end.  Has anyone heard of an opera company staging an ‘All Courtesan’ Season?  It would be very doable, even though Thaïs really should be staged only by extremely competent professionals.

The most telling work, though, that I’ve seen so far this season in terms of women was John Adams’ Dr. Atomic, a piece that, because it is new, cannot be simply dismissed as the product of a different time or place.  There were two main female roles in this opera:  Kitty Oppenheimer, the wife of the main character, and Pasqualita — I don’t have a brief statement of who her character is because her role was never made clear to me.  In fact, neither part had much of a role.  Kitty primarily quoted from works of literature and sometimes vocalized, whereas Pasqualita mostly vocalized and sometimes spread Mother Earth-type wisdom that one might find printed on the side of a Starbuck’s cup.  Both roles, then, featured women who sang, but who had no voice: no text of their own, no ideas to convey.  Earlier operas may have undone women, but in Dr. Atomic, they did not even require an undoing — perhaps this explains why they, unlike their predecessor compatriots, managed to escape the desert alive.  Womens’ voices are absolutely necessary in Dr. Atomic, particularly in the extremely effective opening chorus, where the combined power of the voices in a high part of the tessitura sets up the tense, driving atmosphere that permeates the rest of the opera.  But the women don’t seem to have much to contribute in Los Alamos; it is the men who sing of important matters, like science, math, chemical elements, and the weather.  The opera ends with a disembodied female voice speaking in Japanese, pleading for water presumably in the wake of the destruction from Dr. Atomic’s bomb.  She has a voice but no body; in the opera, the women had voices but no words — all in all, it’s hard to understand how these characters fit into the work at all, and that makes me truly wonder what this opera is saying about women.

This photo graced the cover of the July 20, 1942 issue of Time Magazine.  The story discussed the upcoming radio broadcast by the NBC Orchestra of Shostakovich’s 7th Symphony (‘Leningrad’), a piece that had been brought via 100 feet of microfilm from Kuibyshev to Teheran, then to Cairo, and finally to New York.  Time considered this work to be the most highly anticipated American debut since the 1903 Manhatten premiere of Parsifal, a piece that was apparently so lofty as to be devoid of political ideology or national origins.

The description of the ‘Leningrad’ identifies it as a symphony that does not quite succeed as an example of its genre:

‘Written for a mammoth orchestra, Shostakovich’s Seventh, though it is no blatant battle piece, is a musical interpretation of Russia at war.  In the strict sense, it is less a symphony than a symphonic suite.  Like a great wounded snake, dragging its slow length, it uncoils for 80 minutes from the orchestra.  There is little development of its bold, bald, foursquare themes.  There is no effort to reduce the symphony’s loose, sometimes skeletal structures to the epic compression and economy of the classical symphony.’ (53)

This is not to say that the symphony did not accurately capture its Zeitgeist:

‘Yet this very musical amophousness is expressive of the amorphous mass of Russia at war.  Its themes are exultations, agonies.  Death and suffering haunt it.  But amid bombs bursting in Leningrad [ed. note: not 'in air!'] Shostakovich had also heard the chords of victory.  In the symphony’s last movement the triumphant brasses prophesy what Shostakovich describes as the “victory of light over darkness, of humanity over barbarism.”‘ (53)

There are more detailed ‘program notes’ that follow, such as this description of the first movement:

‘The deceptively simple opening melody, suggestive of peace, work, hope, is interrupted by the theme of war, ‘senseless, implacable and brutal.’  For this martial theme Shostakovich resorts to a musical trick: the violins, tapping the backs of their bows, introduce a tune that might have come from a puppet show.  This tiny drumming, at first almost inaudible, mounts and swells, is repeated twelve times in a continuous twelve-minute crescendo.  The theme is not developed but simply grows in volume like Ravel’s Boléro; it is succeeded by a slow melodic passage that suggests a chant for the war’s dead.’ (54)

I have a lovely mental image of households across America tuning in to hear Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, Time Magazines in hand, following along with the broadcast.  Does anyone know if they ever tried this with Webern?

Biographical information about Shostakovich is provided, including a remarkably jaunty retelling of the Lady Macbeth scandal:

‘At the height of the Purge, when Russian nerves were badly frayed and people were plopping into prison like turtles into a pond[!], Stalin decided to hear Lady Macbeth. He did not like it, walked out before it was over.  Murder from boredom struck him as a bourgeois idea.  Besides, Stalin’s musical taste runs to simple, more tuneful things, zigzags between Beethoven’s Eroica and Verdi’s Rigoletto[!].  Also, he had a seat directly above the brasses.’ (54)

There is also a description of Shostakovich, the man:

‘At parties or among musicians, he unbends, jokes, outdrinks his companions.  He likes automobiles, fast driving, U.S. magazines, reads the U.S. authors who most appeal to Russia — Mark Twain, Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, Upton Sinclair  Strictly a city man, he dislikes dachas (Russia’s summer bungalows) and komaryi (Russia’s multitudinous mosquitoes).’ (55)

The article ends with an attempt to contextualize the Seventh Symphony and Shostakovich’s oeuvre: ‘Is Composer Shostakovich the last peak in the European musical range whose summit was Beethoven, or is he the beginning of a new sierra?’ (55)

Undoubtedly, you are curious to know why Shostakovich is wearing a fire helmet on his front cover.  When he was still in Leningrad during the Second World War (prior to his evacuation), he served in the citizens’ reserve fire brigade.

- The boundaries between music and non-music
- Amusicality
- Musical censorship (what it means to ‘un-music’ a place)
- Non-musical aspects or intentions of musical performance (dance, ritual, healing, etc)
- The (un)analyzability of music
- Noise, sound, voice, or silence
- Ontologies of music
- Criticism/Bad music

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be submitted by Monday, January 5, 2009 to gmfconference [at] gmail.com. Since proposals will be reviewed anonymously, we ask that your abstract not contain your name or academic affiliation. Please attach your abstract as a Word document to your email. Include your name and contact information within the body of your email. Speakers will be notified by February 1, 2009.

For more information, please visit: http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/gradmus

We look forward to reading your submissions!

Ryan Raul Bañagale and Michael Heller
Program committee co-chairs