Self-Promotion

My review of Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish is up at the Los Angeles Times web site.

Horowitz on Dvorak

The Chronicle of Education has a terrific article on Dvorak and African-American music by Joseph Horowtiz, who knows this period in American musical history better than just about anybody. Horowitz writes of Dvorak's interest in black music and his encouragement of black composers--themes touched on in Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise. It's worth reading the article in its entirety--as well as Ross's book, of course. One point Horowitz makes cogently:

"Dvorak's prophecy that 'negro melodies' would foster an 'American school of music' came true, but in ways he could not have predicted. Dvorak had in mind symphonies and operas audibly infused with the black vernacular — but there is only one Porgy and Bess. Rather, the black tunes Dvorak adored fostered popular genres to which American classical music ceded leadership."

I don't want to oversimply, but let's face it: American music is black music. It's impossible to think of American music without spirituals, ragtime, jazz, rhythm and blues, and countless other African-American folk sources. And not just in popular music: spirtiuals and ragtime make their way into Ives, jazz was plundered by many composers, and contemporary composers are trying their best to work rock (derived from R&B after all) into their music, generally in the form of pulse or beat.

Horowitz's article puts all of this in the broader cultural context of the late 19th- and early 20th centuries, where American musical life was turbulent and fast-changing. It's not the staid Victorian world we imagine. But one thing that was true was the virulence of racism, and it is what forced Dvorak's prophecy to turn out as it did--bequeathing a strict divergence between "popular" and "serious" traditions that we are still reckoning with today.

(Via A&L Daily)

Where to Download Classical Music

Le Journal de Papageno has a useful list, with ratings, of the best classical download sites. Even if you can't understrand French, the rating system uses stars so it's easy to comprehend.

I'm in AM New York

The free daily AM New York has a piece today on annual anthologies, with prominent attention given to The Best American Science Writing 2007 and yours truly. You can find it on page 26 of the PDF edition of the paper.

Dress for the Met (Since They Don't Have a Dress Code)

Inspired by positive responses to an earlier post on this topic in which I lamented the lack of a dress code at the Met, I thought I would offer my tips on how to dress for a visit to the Metropolitan Opera. Most of these tips are addressed to men.

You don’t have to wear white tie, or black tie, or any tie at all, so long as you are neat and well dressed. I do think that if you are not going to do the business-suit look, you should wear at the very minimum a well tended sports jacket or blazer, pressed trousers, and a clean dress shirt. Having said all of that, I would definitely go for the tie. These days, with the tie-less look an office cliché, the right tie shows flair, not conformity.

If there is one thing to remember, it’s this: the Met is not a rodeo. So that means leather, jeans, sneakers, work boots, and so on, are out. And I mean it about the leather. Leather jackets are great if you want to look like an Eastern-European gangster. Leather pants, let’s face it, just don’t look good on anybody. So unless you are a recognizable rock star, leather should be left for your next “80s Night”-themed benefit.

Another thing to bear in mind: the 70s are dead, over, finished, done. So attend to your grooming. The bushy look just isn’t doing it any more. (This applies to the world outside the Met, too. Or it should.)

Try to keep in mind that it should be a special occasion. It is an excuse to get gussied up. So much of the world today has made accomodations to casual dress. Can’t there be some places, some occasions, for which some kind of formality is required?

Inertive Reactance

A few months ago, seeking to understand what was meant by such terms as "placing the voice," or "placing the voice in the mask," terms that are often used to describe singers' techniques, I came across an online discussion group in which a fierce debate on this very topic was raging.

One passionate poster, a singer and teacher, claimed that "placing the voice," in the mask, eyes, forehead, or any other so-called "resonating cavity," is a bunch of baloney. That intrigued me.

The January issue of Scientific American has an article on the human voice by Ingo Titze, physicist, singer, singing teacher, professor at the University of Iowa and director of the National Center for Voice and Speech. (Reading the article online requires payment. It's worth buying the magazine. Much of what it summarizes can be found throughout the excellent NCVS site.)

If I understand the article correctly, the human singing voice--whether operatic or otherwise--is produced when air from the lungs stimulates our inner sound source (in our case, the vocal cords, or vocal folds of the larynx); this sound goes through a resonator, the airway right above the larynx, and is emitted through the radiator of our mouth.

And that's it.

In other words, all we have to work with is the air from our lungs, our vocal tracts, and our mouths. No resonating cavities can create greater or lesser resonance. It may seem as though they do, but physically speaking, and physiologically speaking, they have nothing to do with the process. So this talk of "singing in the mask" or any other part of the face is, indeed, hooey.

How do we create resonance? It's a complex process that involves a kind of feedback exchange between the air flowing from our lungs and the vocal tract's various maneuverings. The term that gets used is "inertive reactance," which signifies a kind of push-pull action. Initially the vocal folds open and air from the lungs rushes through them; but then they snap back, creating a kind of vacuum right above the larynx--a vacuum that has the effect of shooting whatever air remains through the vocal tract.

On the NCVS site I learned some more interesting things. One is that lowering the larynx's position--as happens when you try to yawn, for instance--darkens the sound. (This may be the reason why speakers do a kind of yawn excercise before a speech, to keep their sound from edging up in brightness as it does when a person sounds nervous.) In this instance, science and vocal pedagogy are as one. Franco Corelli is no doubt the most famous exponent of the "lowered-larynx" style of singing, and here is the scientific explanation for the ravishing darkness of his sound. As for his peerless squillo, it has nothing to do with anything in his face: it's all in how he managed that mobile column of air going through his vocal tract.

So the next time you feel intimidated by an opera "expert" who tells you this or that singer is placing his or her voice "in the mask" or anywhere else, don't pay any attention!

Karajan Checklist

This being the centenary of Herbert von Karajan's birth, there will be commemorations aplenty, starting today in his hometown, Salzburg, with a concert by the Berlin Philharmonic. Here is my highly subjective list of the Karajan recordings I could not live without (unless otherwise noted, the orchestra is the Berlin Philharmonic):

1) Tristan und Isolde, Wagner (Orfeo). This is the live Bayreuth festival performance from July 23, 1952. The intensity of the performance--and of the performers, notably Modl's incandescent Isolde and Vinay's wrenching Tristan--is completely shattering.

2) Der Rosenkavalier, Strauss (Gala). This isn't the justly famous studio recording with Schwarzkopf. It is, rather, a live recording of a 1960 Salzburg performance with the dream trio of Lisa Della Casa as the Marschallin, Sena Jurinac as Octavian, and Hilde Guden as Sophie. Karajan's conducting here is, if anything, better than on the studio recording: better proportioned for one, less feverish and rushed, and in this performance he is the only conductor I've ever heard to make sense of the third-act prelude. Plus he is a remarkably sensitive accompanist to his singers.

3) Symphony No. 6, Mahler (DG). This is from his series, with the Berlin Philharmonic, of Mahler's symphonies. His reading is relentless and precise, an overwhelming combination. I've yet to hear a live performance this convincing.

4) Symphony No. 7, Bruckner (DG). This is his "last recording," made with the Vienna Philharmonic. It's somewhat lighter in texture than his earlier Bruckner-cycle recording with the Berlin Philharmonic, but it feels more passionate, more inspired by genuine human feeling.

5) Symphony No. 8, Bruckner (DG). This is from his Berlin Philharmonic Bruckner cycle, and it is not only fittingly grand in scale and conception, but it makes a powerful case that Bruckner's thoughts when composing it were of life passing and the unknown beyond.

6) Fidelio, Beethoven (Walhall). A concert performance from Vienna in 1953; Karajan was conducting the Vienna Symphony at the time and was waging a kind of war with the Vienna State Opera, so he put this on as a show of strength. Modl, Windgassen, Metternich and Edelmann are the leads; the Marzelline and Jacquino are none other than Schwarzkopf and Schock. There are many fine recordings of this opera, but this is the one that comes closest to how I hear the music in my head: vivid, rich, but not over-lush on the one hand or overly pared down on the other, with a gripping sense of momentum and real catharsis at the end. (And I don't think anyone ever conducted the "Fidelio" overture better.)

7) Symphony No. 8, Dvorak (DG). No one conducts the finale of this symphony as excitingly--those trilling horns sound as though they're exploding, but the ensemble never breaks.

8 and 9) Symphonies 4 and 6, Symphonies 5 and 7, Sibelius (DG). Sibelius's music, like Bruckner's, was a good fit for Karajan's esthetic--tonal and lush but also ascetic and emotionally cryptic. In Karajan's hands the orchestra glows and shimmers, and he lets the music speak for its eloquent self.

10) Symphony in D Minor, Franck (EMI). I believe this was Karajan's first recording with L'Orchestre de Paris. Not only do they sound world-class; he manages to conduct this music with a real sense of French style. No other performance that I have heard brings out the pealing brass in the finale of the coda, a testament to the remarkable clarity Karajan was able to achieve.

11) Organ Symphony, Saint-Saens (DG). Karajan pulls out every perfumed color, every effect, large or small, and brings it all to a pulse-racing ending--once again showing off his ability to bring the orchestra right to the edge but maintain ensemble to the very last note.

12) Sympony No. 2, Brahms (EMI). Many of Karajan's recordings with the Philharmonia are legendary, and rightly so; this one may be my favorite. The strings are plush but with just the right amount of bite to keep them from sounding overly honeyed. The tempi, the musical argument, the architectonics are all exactly right.

13) Symphony No. 9, Schubert (EMI). Karajan recorded a complete set of Schubert's symphonies with the Berlin Philharmonic. All of the recordings are excellent (although I think the tempi in his earlier recording, with the Philharmonia, of the "Unfinished" are less ponderous and more effective). Schubert's Ninth is a hard symphony to pull off. I like Karajan's approach--generous, large-scale, but that precise ensemble and textural clarity keep it from becoming heavy; if anything, it soars.

14) "Ein heldenleben," Strauss (DG). Karajan was a great Straussian, although, to be honest, I prefer Fritz Reiner in much of this music, especially the orchestral works. But this recording may give Reiner a run for the money; the overall arch and thrust of the music is more, well, heroic, more inspired--yes, it's less ironic, perhaps more earnest, but he sells it.

DG has set up a special Karajan web site to mark this anniversary; it looks as though they'll be putting out all sorts of special CDs and DVDs. And of course I must commend Richard Osborne's biography; it is more objective than one might expect from Osborne, a Karajanite par excellence. There are many anecdotes that show a side of Karajan that is endearing and vulnerable; Osborne does not shy away from the less-endearing parts of Karajan's personality, either.

Whosungit?

Melomanes who are also mystery lovers will no doubt want to flock to Paris where an enterprising troupe is reviving an "operette policiere" based on the famous character of Arsene Lupin. The French review I found called the evening "two hours of happiness." It was written in 1930, and the music is by Marcel Lattes, the nephew of Lupin's creator (and a victim of Auschwitz).

You can hear excerpts from the show on Benoit Duteurtre's loads-of-fun Radio France program, "Etonnez-moi, Benoit."

Thank You, Gert, Wherever You Are

G&T has seen a spike in visitors the past couple of days, thanks to a link on a blog that was hitherto unknown to me--Mad Musings of Me, written by one Gert who lives in the UK. My take on Placido Domingo's performance in Iphigenie was the attraction. So thank you, Gert, and welcome Mad Musings readers--hope you'll want to stick around here at G&T.

Where Did They Go?

Listening to a 1977 Met broadcast of Madama Butterfly last night on Sirius was somewhat nostalgic for me. The Sharpless was the American baritone Ryan Edwards. I had heard him the previous season when he sang Enrico to Beverly Sills's Lucia. He had a capacious instrument, strong and steady, and his Sharpless showed me that my memory wasn't playing tricks. He sang only 40-odd performances at the Met, mostly in the late '70s. I'm not sure what happened after that, although he maintains a web site that fills in some of the details.

Pinkerton was Giacomo Aragall, who had been singing at the Met for nearly a decade. He was in truly good voice. I never heard him in the house, but this performance really makes you wonder why he only sang 38 performances at the Met. His tenor was firm and elegant, although perhaps lacking somewhat in squillante and the kind of Italianate ring that some long for in these kinds of roles. Perhaps in the house it sounded washed out, although I'd find that hard to believe.

In those days, European opera houses, flooded with state subsidies, could offer singers more money than the Met, which was facing its own budgetary woes during a period when the United States was suffering through an economic downturn. Singers with big recording contracts needed the Met for promotional purposes, but a whole tier of excellent singers, like Aragall, may have felt that they could make more money in Europe.

As for the Butterfly, it was Renata Scotto in her justly famous portrayal. The wobble had started to creep into her singing, but overall her performance was heartbreaking, progressing from innocence to defiance and, finally, to tragic resolution. I missed some of these elements in Racette's recent characterization.

The only disappointing element was Giuseppe Patane's conducting. I always liked Patane--he never went for cheap effects and maintained good old-fashioned ensemble. In this performance he was perhaps a little too deferential to his singers; at times the momentum sagged to the point of stasis.

You never know what you're going to get in those '70s Met broadcasts--some performances were truly forgettable. Not this one.