Overture 1812 finale Ernie Kovacs show

Genetic mysteries

I came from what is sometimes called a "musical family". We weren't exactly the von Trapps, but my father was choir leader of our church (putting on such ambitious productions as Handel's Messiah), and both parents were deeply involved in Gilbert and Sullivan light operas. My father played violin decently, though I don't think he ever left first position. My mother was so indoctrinated with musical expectation that she often expressed shame that she did not know how to play the piano. It somehow would have made everything so much better.

So when WE came along, of course, it was the same thing, except that the pressure was far worse. The expectation wasn't just competence or even excellence, but a world-class career. Joy had nothing to do with it. I'd say we had a moderate amount of talent. My sister had a warm mezzo voice which might have taken her to a career if she hadn't early-on wrecked her life. My brother Arthur was a talented flautist and guitarist, and also a schizophrenic, who ended up panhandling on the streets of Toronto (not to mention prostituting himself) before he died in a fire.

My brother Walt was the only one to actually apply his talent, teaching and playing oboe in an orchestra in the Okanagan. Not exactly the big time, and he had to supplement his income with being an accountant on the side (work he claimed to prefer). His two daughters ended up as professional string players, an interesting development (their mother being an orchestral musician).

Then there was me, so bad at the piano that my teacher came to my mother and said, "This child is unteachable". Since no one else in the family would touch the violin, I was "it" and was just dismal at it. It was only much later that I discovered or uncovered a voice that had been totally buried by my sister's histrionics. I was afraid to open my mouth before that.

(Strangely enough, at age 40, I had the mad desire to take another crack at the violin, and I did. I found a magnificent teacher and played for nine years, including a lot of public performing. What does this mean? I am not sure, but I wanted to take the instrument back and approach it on my own terms.) 


My kids came along early in my life, and not only did they show no signs of musical talent in any area, they were completely disdainful of it. I remember they called Pavarotti "Pavarotten". They excelled in sports - were champions, in fact, which baffled and surprised and delighted Bill and I. We were both hopeless klutzes and literally dropped the ball.

But then. . .

A lo-o-o-ng time later came my grandkids, and I sensed musicality in all of them right from the start. They have sung in choirs, played instruments in bands, and, most of all, danced - every kind of dance from ballet to jazz to tap to hip-hop, a discipline which demands being one with all types of music. All three grandgirls have excelled at it. Two of them are off in Vernon winning trophies at a competition even as we speak. (One grandgirl has no hearing on one side, demanding extreme listening skills and a focus that simply amazes me.)

And look at Ryan, adorable, his instrument a foot longer than he is! He caught his hand in the slide one day, an excruciating thing that demanded a trip to Emergency, but he went right back at it as soon as he was healed.

So what am I getting at? I was amazed at my kids and their ability to master any sport, the trophies crowding the bookshelves in their rooms. If any part of it was genetic, it must have been several generations back. But the music thing was there - at least on one side. Did it leap over the barrier, or is this just serendipity? I don't know, but it's gratifying to see .

And of course, it just hit me that dance requires athleticism as well as musical knowledge. The alchemy of genetics never ceases to amaze me.

SHEER FREAKING GENIIUS: Yuja Wang plays Mozart!

Perez Hilton in the 16th century?

I've always loved Faure's Pavane, hadn't heard it in a long time, maybe even years.  I knew there were two versions, the original orchestral setting and another with chorus. The first time I heard the less-often-performed choral version, I was shocked. Here were these two groups of singers, men and women, alternating lines, obviously singing of aching, longing, yearning, thwarted desire, mortality, grief, loss, and - well, that's what I thought for the longest time. It laid the piece bare, gave it a stunningly human voice and changed it for me forever. 

There's something a little heavy and sad about the beauty of that chorus and the call-and-response structure of the song, reminding me of wilting roses and lilies in a hot room in which a pale dead girl lies in state. In her waterfall of black hair is a gardenia placed there by her lover, who sneaked into her bier at midnight in a last act of tender devotion before stabbing himself through the heart and (etc., etc., etc.).

Every once in a while I wondered what the words meant - but no I didn't, because I thought I knew already. "Observez la misere!" could only be "See, see what misery we are in!" "Mon coeur" was repeated and repeated: o, my heart! The way the sad elongated phrases were looped and draped upon the sombre, pensive melody was elegiac and even a bit funereal. Wasn't the meaning pretty obvious?

I also thought I knew the meaning of "pavane": surely it meant a threnody, a song of mourning. Ravel's Pavane for a Dead Princess seemed to be a potent example.

I have no idea why TODAY, when I was busy, when I had to make a milk-run trip in to Vancouver, when I spent the day kind of turning in circles and eating too much, why TODAY was the day I actively began to wonder what the lyrics meant. I wanted to do a particularly poetic post on it, illustrating those shining, tear-dripping, grief-stricken lines.

When I finally found a YouTube version I could live with, on perhaps the 19th or 20th try, I thought Wikipedia might give me some help on the meaning of the words. I was a little disappointed, nay, taken aback,  to find out that the choral version was just an add-on to impress a girl:

Fauré composed the orchestral version at Le Vésinet in the summer of 1887.^[5] He envisaged a purely orchestral composition, using modest forces, to be played at a series of light summer concerts conducted by Jules Danbé.^[5] After Fauré opted to dedicate the work to his patron, Elisabeth, comtesse Greffulhe,^[6] he felt compelled to stage a grander affair and at her recommendation he added an invisible chorus to accompany the orchestra (with additional allowance for dancers). The choral lyrics were based on some inconsequential verses, à la Verlaine, on the romantic helplessness of man, which had been contributed by the Countess's cousin, Robert de Montesquiou.^[7]

Wiki was good enough to provide the French version of the lyrics, which looked so peculiar that at first I thought they must have made a mistake:

C'est Lindor, c'est Tircis et c'est tous nos vainqueurs!
C'est Myrtille, c'est Lydé! Les reines de nos coeurs!
Comme ils sont provocants! Comme ils sont fiers toujours!
Comme on ose régner sur nos sorts et nos jours!

Faites attention! Observez la mesure!

Ô la mortelle injure! La cadence est moins lente!
Et la chute plus sûre! Nous rabattrons bien leur caquets!
Nous serons bientôt leurs laquais!
Qu'ils sont laids! Chers minois!
Qu'ils sont fols! (Airs coquets!)

Et c'est toujours de même, et c'est ainsi toujours!
On s'adore! On se hait! On maudit ses amours!
Adieu Myrtille, Eglé, Chloé, démons moqueurs!
Adieu donc et bons jours aux tyrans de nos coeurs!
Et bons jours!

So where was all that grief, l'angoisse, wilting flowers, etc.? This just sounded like a bunch of people babbling, even gossiping. "Observez la mesure" merely meant "keep time", as in following an elaborate dance step. The pavane, far from being a song of mourning, turned out to be a formal, courtly dance from the 1500s: 

The pavane, pavan, paven, pavin, pavian, pavine, or pavyn
(It. pavana, padovana; Ger. Paduana) is a slow processional dance common in Europe during the 16th century (Renaissance).

They couldn't even figure out how to spell it!

But it got even worse than that when I found the English translation.

It’s Lindor! it’s Tircis! 

and all our conquerors! 
It’s Myrtil! it’s Lydé! the queens of our hearts! 
How provocative they are, 
how forever proud! 
How they dare reign over our destinies 
and our lives! 
Watch out! Keep to the measure! 
O the mortal injury! 
The cadence is not so slow! 
And the fall more certain! 
We’ll tone down their chatter! 
Soon we’ll be their lackeys! 
How ugly they are! Sweet faces! 
How madcap they are! Coquettish airs! 
And it’s always the same! And will be so 
always! 
They adore one another! They hate one another! 
They curse their loves! 
Farewell, Myrtil! Eglé! Chloe! Mocking demons! 
Farewell and good days 
to the tyrants of our hearts! 

—Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac 

(1855–1921)

Who's Lindor? Who's Tircis? Why this list of meaningless-sounding names? It begins to resemble some Perez Hilton screed about the latest tits-and-ass starlet, But it sounded so wonderful! It sighs, it even seethes a little. Bosoms heave, the men and women sing as across a huge gulf, the vast abyss separating male and female, etc. etc. But it's nothing like that at all. 

Faure had a great tune and just needed a few verses; this Montesq-whatever knocked them out for a price.  All calculated to please his "patron" the Countess, and if he wasn't boinking her I don't know who was, because this is just going to too much trouble for someone you're NOT boinking. And Faure was no fool - he knew full well that no one listens to the words anyway.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

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Stravinsky: Pulcinella (complete)

Pulcinella is a ballet by Igor Stravinsky based on an 18th-century play—Pulcinella is a character originating from Commedia dell'arte. The ballet premiered at the Paris Opera on 15 May 1920 under the baton of Ernest Ansermet. The dancer Léonide Massine created both the libretto and choreography, and Pablo Picasso designed the original costumes and sets. It was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev.

OK, enough Wikipedia (and I only use it because I'm too lazy to put it in my own words). This video is hardly the ideal Pulcinella, but the ideal Pulcinella may exist only in my own mind. It was one of the recordings I grew up with, and we played the spots off it, mainly because my father was on a Stravinsky kick and wanted to hear everything he ever wrote. I remember the music vividly, but not the conductor, the orchestra or the record label (else I might be able to track down a reissue).

As a kid, I suppose I knew a little bit about the ballet, something about clowns jumping around in those white outfits they wear in Europe, but of course I had never seen it. I still haven't seen it. I've never even heard a live performance of the whole work, only the ubiquitous suite. But always I had an echo in my brain of that first recording. I own five Pulcinellas now, and I don't listen to any of them because that first one spoiled me for anything else.

Why? The voices. The three singers, tenor, baritone and mezzo-soprano, are the spirit of the piece, and all too often they sound wooden, as if they just don't get it and are only singing the notes. The piece has to be conducted with a certain irony and even satire, a sour edge contrasting with lamb-gambolling sweetness. The music is often at odds with the odd-sounding words, which in fact have nothing to do with Pulcinella and the commedia dell'arte. The words are more like medieval sonnets about thwarted love. And yet they are splashed against this odd rococo backdrop, this motley set painted by Picasso.

There were a few Pulcinellas on YouTube, and a while ago I tried to find a good one. There is a rare performance of the ballet, but it's chopped up into 10-minute pieces. A more complete one exists, but someone has recorded it with atrocious sound distortion, as if they didn't even notice the music. What is the matter with people today??? I doubt if I will ever find the perfect combination, and besides, all those clowns jumping around is distracting when I would rather concentrate on the melancholy sweetness of the music.

Anyway, it took a hell of a long time to find a translation of the Italian words, and it wasn't on the internet either, but on a set of CD liner notes, with type so small you had to take a magnifiying glass to it. It had the Italian on one side and the English on the other, like a menu.(I once bought Coles notes for a Chaucer class, and it was the same deal) I had to transcribe the words line by line, and it took a while. I thought I posted something about it already, after all that work, but I can't find it. If this is repetitious, please forgive me.

Since I decided against the ballet version, which in fact was pretty silly, I had to make a few (gulp) gifs to fill the gap. I was trying to get something across which, as usual, I didn't quite. When you look up pulcinella, you get punchinello, a nasty little creature in a Milky the Clown-style puffy white suit, a conical hat and a nasty bird-beak. He's menacing, is what he is. He'd scare little children. But wasn't the commedia the thing that brought us Punch and Judy? Maybe they called it something else back then.

Pulcinella  

by Igor Stravinsky

(Tenor)

While on the grass

the lamb grazes

alone, alone

the shepherdess

amid the green leaves

through the forest

goes singing.

(Soprano)

Content perhaps to live

In my torment I might be

If I ever could believe

That, still far away, you were

Faithful to my love,

Faithful to this heart.

(Bass)

With these little words

So sweet

You rend my heart

To the depths.

Fair one, stay here,

Since if you say more

I must die.

With such sweet

Little words

You rend my heart

I shall die, I shall die.

(Soprano, tenor, bass)

I hear say there is no peace

I hear say there is no heart,

For you, ah, no, never,

There is no peace for you.

(Tenor)

Whoever says that a woman

Is more cunning than the Devil

Tells the truth.

(Soprano, tenor)

There are some women

Who care for none

And keep a hundred on a leash,

A shabby trick,

And have so many wiles

That none can count them.

One pretends to be innocent

And is cunning,

Another seems all modesty

Yet seeks a husband.

One clings to a man

And has so many wiles

That none can count them,

None can number them.

(Tenor)

One pretends to be innocent

And is, and is cunning

Another seems all modesty

Yet seeks a husband,

There are some

Who care, listen, for none.

Who cling to a man

And who flirt with another

And have a hundred on a leash

A shabby trick,

And have so many wiles

That none can count them.

(Soprano)

If you love me, if you sigh

For me alone, gentle shepherd,

I have pain in your suffering,

I have pleasure in your love,

But if you think that you alone

I should love in return,

Shepherd, you are easily

To be deceived.

A fair red rose

Today Silvia picks,

But pleading its thorn

Tomorrow she spurns it.

But the plans of men

I will not follow.

Because the lily pleases me,

I will not spurn other flowers.

(Soprano, tenor, bass)

Sweet eyes, bright with love,

For you my heart languishes.

The incredible genius of Yo Yo Ma

Every once in a while a piece of music pops into my head unbidden, from who knows where. We had a record of this piece played by Rostropovich, way back when, and listened the grooves off it. It's a gorgeous and amusing tone poem by Richard Strauss based on the adventures of Don Quixote, the Knight of the Woeful Countenance, and his sidekick Sancho Panza (I nearly said Pancho, but that's the Cisco Kid). This is YouTubed in six parts, but still worth hunting down and piecing together. This is my favorite of many favorite parts, the middle section, shimmering and shining with idealism like The Impossible Dream (and I must look up the best version of that one, sung by Richard Kiley). I always weep and bawl while listening to this, but then it seems I weep and bawl all the time now. Harold-itis. I just get the blues - I know I want this too badly. I can't see how anyone will get it, and I've put so many years in. The unreachable star?

My favorite scene from Amadeus

Everybody remembers this primal scene from Amadeus, when Salieri comes to realize that this snotty little pipsqueak he's been dealing with is the unlikely (unfair!) vessel for the Voice of God. His dotty little wife asks him, "Is it not good?" in the ultimate musical irony.

I made a gif out of the core of it, but then decided I needed to include the 3-minute clip, with the older Salieri attempting to explain his reaction to the music. The sheets sliding on to the floor is one of the most striking images in all of filmdom, and surely, seeing it again, F. Murray Abraham (now reduced to voice-overs on PBS nature shows) earned his column of plated gold.

(But what in God's name ever happened to Tom Hulce?)

Khachaturian - Masquerade Suite (Waltz)

No! No! This ISN'T the same piece I posted a few days ago! This is just the waltz from Masquerade, not the whole suite. But it's much better, with a dark and slightly sleazy circus atmosphere that is like the worn velvet on Viennese trousers, worn because its wearer has been furiously engaged in an activity both illicit and sublime.

Khachaturian, Masquerade Suite

A favorite. When I latch onto one of these, I listen to it over and over again. This is like dark, quirky circus music. The percussion, including nasty little snares and great smashing cymbals, is outstanding. Try to imagine the piece without it.

Lost and found, found and lost: the miracle of the Tube

This is one of those pieces I inadvertently tracked down through wonderful YouTube. I've been immersed in music lately, discovering those playlists of 148 complete symphonies end-to-end, many of them live performances with superb sound. I guess I didn't indulge before because I had a hard-and-fast rule: NO MUSIC while I was writing. Too distracting! My mind can't do two things at once.

But this writing doesn't matter so much (except to me): I write about whatever is at the top of my head (or over it!), and don't need to worry about some pecksniff of an editor picking it to pieces. It's wild and free. So maybe I CAN have music on while I write, because it isn't really writing, not like those miserable little 500-word blocks of text I had to turn out every week for newspapers.

This piece by Khatchaturian (an Armenian whose music straddles conventional romanticism and sexual/edgy/spicy/fierce/exotic Armenianism, with a dose of early-20th-century dissonance on the side) is one that I heard in my childhood, which whether I liked it or not was drenched with classical music. I was expected to be a musician, a violinist specifically, though I had little talent and no inclination. The fact that I went back in my 40s and took nine years of violin instruction is another story. 

My siblings were all vastly older than me, and always seemed to be coming home from university and Europe and stuff, and often they came bearing records. (And sometimes pot, but that's another story.) These were New Discoveries, things we hadn't heard before, outside the box of Bach and Brahms. Thinking back, there was nothing too spectacular about these things. Khatchaturian isn't exactly a secret, not with the Sabre Dance appearing on Ed Sullivan every week while Armenians juggled flaming torches. But this waltz, well. 

My brother called it Dark Waltz, and it would be right at home in today's climate of sexy vampires, Dark Shadows Redux, Beauty and the Beast gasping back to cheesy life, and Twilight. I searched and searched for the right version, played at the right tempo, as many of them are just too fast and miss the point: this is Armenia via Vienna, almost a wink or a trick or a parody of Strauss, with its lurking corners, sneaky dissonance and falling cadences. As a matter of fact, I have that queer feeling (did you know I'm queer? Neither did I, until this moment) that it is the SAME recording I listened to in my childhood. It's quite possible. Strange are the ways of YouTube, which to my mind gets better and better, so long as you ignore the Cretan-ish crap in the comments section. 

Things are within reach now. As far as I am concerned, I will never buy a CD again. I keep making discoveries, every day, and things from the past pop up and say, "HI!", with an idiotic look on their face. So I WASN'T hallucinating Clutch Cargo and his Pals Spinner and Paddlefoot, or Spunky and Tadpole, or I Married Joan (do-wah, do-wah!). It's all there, though I have no idea where people get these things, along with ancient Anacin commercials and even (selah, my Saviour) a rare clip of Milky the Clown bothering Little Nancy, the crippled poster child for the Whatever-it-is Pity Society in Detroit.

I mean, people must have vaults of this stuff in their basement. Hundreds, thousands of things, old TV themes like T. H. E. Cat (gifinated by me a few posts ago - what an amazing, elegant piece of animation!). Just stored? Do they come from musty old TV vaults? Or what? The mysterious provenance of them just makes it all better, I think. They seem to waft up from the past. Here I am again, only this time everything is different, and how. I'm not this bewildered little kid any more, but a bewildered adult with many of the same compulsions and dilemmas, with the same confusion as to why I am alive. 

I was assigned this, my life; I did not choose it. I guess no one does. But it does seem a heavy burden, and a long one, a long trudge through unknown territory. I savour all the discoveries I make, no matter how tiny. 

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"I'm Spartacus!" "No, I'M Spartacus!"

It's hard to believe that the music I waxed rhapsodic about yesterday is from a ballet called Spartacus. I've never even watched the movie, which is supposed to have homosexual under/over/whatever-tones, with a few deleted scenes from the Roman baths that are probably restored to the DVD.

All I remember is that stupid scene where Kirk Douglas is standing there and some guy yells out, "Hey, Spartacus?" and everyone else takes a step backward. Or something. I see it over and over again on those Top Fifteen Thousand Greatest Motion Picture Moments that I can never resist watching, bad as they always are.

Anyway, let's not be silly here. If you are serious about your music, which I always am, you will want to hear more than the glowing and gorgeous excerpts from this work that I posted yesterday. I so associated this piece with The Onedin Line that I assumed the music was composed to describe a great seagoing vessel, kind of like in Scheherezade where, in the last movement, "the ship goes to pieces on a rock surmounted by a bronze warrior".

But it ain't, ain't that at all, it's Spartacus, that sweaty guy with the big dent in his chin. I will try to put all that aside, because this music is truly remarkable. Not only that: with the help of someone from YouTube, I found the best version, the one that's excerpted in The Onedin Line. Now you can hear the whole nine minutes if you want to, or not. But I recommend it.

 

Aram Khatchaturian (whose last name sounds a bit like a chicken dish) is mainly known for that infernal Sabre Dance which you used to hear on Ed Sullivan during the plate-spinning act. It's circus music, and believe me, he is capable of far more than that. And just look at him, he was an absolute god when he was young, with those olive eyes, bow-shaped lips and serious demeanour.

I also found a picture of an Ashot Khatchaturian, a pianist I think. I had hoped he was a son or grandson or something, as there does seem to be a resemblance. No more can classical artists come on stage in sweaty crumpled white shirts, stringy hair and suspenders. They have to be seductive. This guy is, but they keep saying the other Khatchaturian is his "namesake". Could be that in Armenia, the name is as common as dirt.

Beethoven on acid: the roots of music

It surprises me how often things are joined together, even chained, or branch ever outwards yet back into each other. Or is it like one of those plants that puts down new roots along its runners, like a spider plant or a banyan, thus recreating a baby plant complete in all its parts?

Whatever. It's Sunday, I made a few discoveries that I found intriguing, and I want to capture them before they melt away like a Creamsicle on a hot sidewalk in August.  As I wrote in my last post, my little lovebird Jasper got sick and nearly died, until he suddenly popped back into vibrant health. This brought to mind the old Elizabethan round, Ah Poor Bird, which I had not thought about in. . . oops, half a century. Jesus, I'm getting old.

Then I remembered something my brother Walt said about Mahler: that a melody in one of his symphonies was actually Frere Jacques in a minor key. Bing-bing-bing: I realized that Ah Poor Bird (or something like it) may have been the original source.

Try it. Hum or sing Frere Jacques (and I don't know for sure if Americans even know it, but to Canadian children it's more familiar than O Canada). Then try Ah Poor Bird, as in the last post with the three singers. Compare and contrast.

Then we have the Mahler, conducted by Leonard Bernstein who is worthy of a post on his own. But he makes me sad, and he makes me sad because he had everything a person could ever want, including worldwide fame, and yet he was. . . sad.

He died of cancer at 70, I think, but it's a miracle he lived that long, smoking obsessively, drinking with ever-escalating ruthlessness and popping pills like candy. In his later years he seemed like a blurred version of himself. It affected his conducting. I heard a very late version of Beethoven's 9th that he conducted when the Berlin Wall fell: it lumbered, it galumphed, it didn't move along swiftly the way Beethoven desperately needs to to prevent it from sounding like Brahms on a bad day.

Beethoven has a heavy and profound and even dense and solid aspect, to be sure, but (being a paradoxical genius) there was also a mercurial quality,  quicksilver and fire, and he was unpredictable. He did things that shouldn't have worked, and wouldn't have worked for anyone else. He was definitely the father of Mahler, as twisty and bizarre as Mahler can be. Mahler is the bad son, like Beethoven on acid.

Speaking of dying too young, Mahler keeled over dead from heart disease at 50. A sad loss for the music world, though much of his stuff was too impenetrable for me to enjoy. Simply unlistenable. I don't expect Readers Digest compilations of Strauss waltzes, but I must be able to find a point of entry somewhere. When music repeatedly pushes me away, I can no longer stay in its presence.

OK then! Bernstein, Mahler, and oh, who was that other guy.  . . I mentioned Alban Berg, and he's a good example of being pushed away. His opera Lulu, which has nothing to do with To Sir with Love, is a lulu all right. It's a mess, a theoretical exercise that does not work in actuality. Not for me, anyway.

But it's interesting how much he resembled Stephen Fry. Almost no one resembles Stephen Fry. His face is like something you'd find on Easter Island, craggy and monumental. Kind of like. . . Beethoven?


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