Soviet RAWR!

Sometimes, for fun, I read the backlogs of old musicology blogs. (I know, I'm a dweeb with a capital D.) The other day, in the midst of a dweeby backlog-reading episode on "Dial M for Musicology", I came across this lovely quote:

"What I've always appreciated about anger-driven music is its ability to vent those feelings without engendering them; I suppose the function is similar, in this way, to good songs about love or yearning. They enable a side of the personality to be tapped without making catastrophic life choices."

Isn't that just wonderful? I've often wondered about what exactly draws me to Soviet music. The fact that I feel very connected to it is no question at all. But so much Soviet music is (and I know that I'm generalizing here) angry and tragic and fierce and impassioned, and my general personality displays none of these characteristics. I was born in the South. I was raised to be sweet and meek and mild. I am one Georgia-peach-accent shy of a debutante.

Despite all of that, I love this strong Russian music, and the above quote explains exactly why that is. I can perform music like this, and it enables me to tap into all these emotions which are new and unique to me. It is precisely because I'm neither tragic nor angry by nature that I get so swept up by this music. I can express all of these near-forbidden emotions without actually becoming tragic or angry. It's like riding a rollercoaster. You get the adrenaline rush, but then you get to walk away with nothing left but the exhilarating feeling. To me, there is something very stirring about that, and my performance of the music is better for it.

This and That

I picked up Alex Ross' latest book, Listen To This, this afternoon. I've only read the title essay, but it's wonderful, and I think I need to let it sink in before I continue reading.

In the last few weeks, I've been wrangled into several conversations about how [insert musical genre here] is just terrible and worthless and really should just disappear from the face of the earth. Country music. 20th century classical music. Rap music. I find this to be incredibly frustrating, because no one ever wins. We just argue in circles about this music vs. that music.

I like the fact that music speaks so strongly to people. If I didn't, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. I find it interesting that people feel so strongly not only about music that they like, but music that they very much dislike. Classical musicians, I think, are the worst about this. Because classical music is BETTER, right? It is higher up in the hierarchy of musical excellence. Any other musical genre is sub par. If you do listen to country music, you consider it a guilty pleasure, not music of the same value as, say, Beethoven.

I think that there's a deep problem in viewing music this way. Music is an art form. It is subjective. I believe that on its deepest level, the duty of music is to speak to people. In the words of my dear Shostakovich, it "lifts and heartens people for work and effort." Life is hard, and music makes life less hard. If you think about music through this (I will admit) rose-colored-glasses-view, then trying to talk about classical music as better than rap music or country music or any other kind of music just doesn't make sense.

What is unfortunate is that so few people relate to classical music. As Alex Ross so eloquently put it,

"The music does not lend itself to the same kind of generational identification as, say, Sgt. Pepper. There may be kids out there who lost their virginity during Brahm's D-Minor Piano Concerto, but they don't want to tell the story and you don't want to hear it. The music attracts the reticent fraction of the population. It is an art of grand gestures and vast dimensions that plays to mobs of the quiet and the shy."

I am one in the "mobs of the quiet and the shy". I grew up in a happy, sunshine-y world of flower-picking and finger-painting. In my brief foray into teen angst, I read nothing but Dostoevsky and pretended to understand him. Because of this, I love happy, sunshine-y Mozart and Haydn and irrevocably Russian Shostakovich and Kabalevsky, among others. I did not lose my virginity to the Brahm's D-Minor Piano Concerto, but that sounds perfectly lovely to me. My taste for classical music is certainly in the minority.

What I am trying to say is that classical music is wonderful, and it's music that speaks to me. Do I want to say that it's the best music? Of course I do! But if someone else is more moved by Nirvana than Mozart, who am I to tell him that his taste in music is bad or underdeveloped or simply just wrong? I can tell him that he might like Mahler (which is, in fact, exactly what I would do), but I cannot so boldly assert that he has no idea what he's talking about and that his opinions are grossly off-the-mark.

I understand that I sound sickeningly idealist right now, but I'm 21 years old. If ever there were a time in life to be idealist, I think this would be it. Also, if you have read this far, I applaud your patience.

Solitary Confinement: Part 2

This is to clarify/expand on my last post. If you haven't read that post, then read it here. For the record, I'm trying to state my opinions and thoughts very clearly. The problem is, I get super-excited about things. When I do get super-excited about things, I tend to dash off a blog post about it and leave it at that. And my super-excited mind doesn't always articulate things very well. So please bear with me as I start trying to be more serious about this blog. That's all.

Anyway, here's a clearer idea of what I was trying to say.

People used to sit around and play classical music in parlors. They would sit around after dinner and sing Schubert lieder together! Like in Jane Austen novels! Somehow, classical music has completely shifted away from that communal mentality. I think that part of that shift has to do with the ever-growing gap between classical music and popular music, but that's a post for a different time. (I have all *kinds* of things I could say about that.) The real problem, I think, is this intense aura of ceremony and pomp in which classical music has cloaked itself. Classical music is only performed in the most formal of settings. There is a stage. There is a spotlight. There is a soloist.

I feel as if there's this idea that any performance of classical music has to be a spectacle. My argument is not with the spectacle itself, but with the fact that classical music is only ever performed in this setting. Classically trained musicians never play together in informal settings, at least as far as I am aware. If we do play in informal settings, it's as practice for playing in formal settings. All of the solemnity is stifling. I'll go back to folk music, as I did in the first post. Folk musicians will sit around and play music for each other. I think that's really nice. I think classically trained musicians should do that as well. I think it would be good for them, myself included. I truly believe that not only would a more appreciative sense of the music evolve out of that idea, but that a more distinct comradeship would develop among classically trained musicians.

(For the record, this little post took me a cumulative six hours to write because I kept going off on all sorts of excited tangents about Liszt's rock-stardom and why people feel afraid of classical music and the barriers between performer and audience. I hope you appreciate my succinctness.)

Solitary Confinement

I read this article the other day. It really made me feel better about the 4+ hours I spend locked in a practice room every. single. day. I've always been introverted, but my lack of social-ness is something I've been thinking on lately. I'm not trying to imply that I need to overhaul my life. I'm a quiet person, and I like spending time by myself. But I think pianists often tend to drift into a sort of isolated, self-absorbed cocoon. I'm trying to remedy this for myself by doing more collaborative work. Accompanying is always fun. I'm taking ensemble next semester. (The ever-talented Mario Barbosa and I are duo partners, and we are going to shake Baylor to its very foundation with our phenomenal piano duo skills. Just fyi.) It will be good.

However, I do think this is a problem (for lack of a better word) among classical musicians, or at least pianists. And I do believe that it is limited to classical musicians. I read this little post on the same day. He's essentially saying that folk musicians have something going on with this whole community thing, that they tend to value communion with other musicians over individual talent. I don't have much insight into the world of folk music, so I can't comment on its verity. (My fiance is a folk musician of sorts, but he's as much a musical perfectionist as I am, so he might not represent the general idea very well.) I don't think that pianists should all suddenly stop caring about playing well, but it might be nice to get back to that original communal role of music.

Soviet Russia, You Did Something Right

Seriously. I don't understand how people are not heralding Kabalevsky as a composer of genius. I've been listening to his other music this week, and it's really wonderful. There's very little recorded music of his that I can find, and it's unfortunate. He wrote vocal orchestral works called "Revenger of the People" and "A Letter to the 30th Century" and "Poem of Struggle." I can't find recordings anywhere. I can't even find scores anywhere. It is immensely frustrating. *But* I have been able to find a few symphonies. His second symphony is my favorite of the few that I've found. It sounds like a really well-done film score. There's some great imagery, and the instrumentation is fantastic (in my humble opinion).

His efforts to bring music-making to children aren't recognized in the way that they should be. I played some of his children's pieces when I was in high school, and they are so charming. Intermediate level literature so often falls into this trite, banal rut. Like children are incapable of appreciating any sort of sophisticated musical character. I think it's ridiculous, and I love that Kabalevsky took children and pedagogy seriously.

I kind of want to write a really amazing biography on Kabalevsky. I can't find a single book on Kabalevsky or his music. I can't even find a poorly written book, much less a well-written book. But I feel that to do the proper research, I would really have to learn Russian. The real question is, do I love Kabalevsky enough to learn Russian? Or rather, do I love Kabalevsky enough to deal with the Cyrillic alphabet?

Scarlatti sonatas

I have secret crushes on too many dead composers. I need to start being a more discerning critic or no one's going to take me seriously. Then again, I could just say, "LISTEN TO EVERYTHING!" But then I wouldn't have reason for this blog, and that would take all the fun out of it!

My favorite of the week is Scarlatti. I'm playing two right now, K 420 and K 548. By the way, the harpsichordist for the second sonata is Scott Ross. He recorded the complete Scarlatti sonatas. ALL 555 OF THEM. Then he died.

After a nasty and unsuccessful stab at a Bach French Suite a few semesters ago, I had resigned myself to disliking Baroque music. Or at least disliking performing it. But dear Scarlatti has breathed new life into me! He's like Bach, if Bach had been less stubbornly German (all that brilliant counterpoint and the stoic Art of Fugue). Scarlatti is just more athletic. It's much more enjoyable to play, speaking from a purely physical perspective. It's more simple, but then again, everything feels more simple than Bach.

Scarlatti has this way of taking such simple motives and developing them in such simple ways, and somehow creating a gem of a sonata. Every single time! K 420 is a good example of this. In each of the two sections (all of his sonatas are in binary form), you hear bright repeated notes. For some reason this reminds me of a banjo--a distinctly un-Spanish instrument. The repeated notes fold themselves into scale patterns which then fold themselves into these sweeping arpeggios. The rhythms are the only thing that drives the piece forward. There are no singable melodies, no particularly striking harmonies or key changes. I think it's actually quite boring in theory, but it's not boring at all when played with the right energy.

I'm writing a paper this semester on the influences of Spanish folk music in Scarlatti sonatas, so you will probably be hearing more about him in the next few weeks. Just a warning.

Emanuel Ax

Y'all. Emanuel Ax came to Baylor. I am not joking. This is not a dream.

I had been really excited about this since I heard about it last September. A few years ago, I heard Emanuel Ax perform the second Brahms piano concerto with the Houston Symphony, and it still inspires me to this day.

He played a Schubert program, and it was wonderful (duh). I love his conservative playing. I like that when he plays Schubert, I hear Schubert, not Emanuel Ax. He doesn't let his artist's ego get in the way, like so many do (*ahem* Lang Lang).

He does this thing, y'all. He sits down to play something, and plays it as if he was born playing it. It's like he just waves his hands and--voila!--magic happens! And then he gets up and bows all bashful-like like he hasn't just played that little A Major sonata more beautifully than I've heard it played in my entire life.

This post has no point except to let you all know that I have the world's biggest pianist crush on Emanuel Ax. I am in love with him. That is all.