Come Sunday Morning

[ To repeat ] At First Church in Boston (Marlborough & Berkeley Streets), the choir will sing Bless the Lord, O My Soul under the direction of Paul Cienniwa tomorrow, Sunday May the 31^st. The service begins at 11:00am (Chowder Time), and streams live on WERS 88.9FM (Boston).

No Cigar

This past Thursday, I was driving back to Cambridge to fetch my wife from her work. Typical day, really. I tuned into WCRB on the car radio, and heard the announcer advise that next up was a complete Vanhal symphony (a Symphony in F, played by the Salieri Chamber Orchestra). No news there, either. But the next and unusual step, was my own.

Normally, on hearing a work by, say, Vanhal announced on WCRB (and if you, Gentle Reader, should be an ardent Vanhallian, I apologize to you in advance), I tend to retune the radio dial to another station. But that afternoon, I decided to listen, and listen to the whole thing, primarily because I had recently heard the eccentric suggestion that it was “actually” Vanhal who composed works “attributed” to Mozart. All right, I thought; setting aside all questions of history and documents, let us consider if the composer of the work I am about to hear, could plausibly have composed mature Mozart.

I am going to consider three questions, and the comparison of that day was made all the easier by the fact that I had been listening to so much authentic Mozart all week. (And I do apologize to our neighbors who enjoy Vanhal; I hate to seem to run down a ‘grade-B’ contemporary of Mozart, who was grade-triple-A fit to beat all grade-As.)

1. Scoring (use of the orchestra). I am afraid that on this head, the Vanhal symphony struck me as staggeringly unimaginative, on the whole. On the plus side, there were some lovely solo-string passages (which modestly recalled the early Haydn symphonies I have been listening to). But the use of the winds was witheringly dull. There was not a single point at which the flutes, oboes or horns ‘broke free’ to play even a single independent measure; all of the wind writing (without fail) was simply a slavish doubling of something already being covered in the strings. The piece could have been composed for string orchestra alone, in other words, and the winds just added as an afterthought as a coloristic highlight. I needn’t tell anyone who has read any Mozart score, that the Salzburger could never be accused of such a paint-by-number approach to writing for the winds.
2. Harmony. There is a scatologically amusing exchange in Peter Shaeffer’s Amadeus, in which Mozart is overheard saying, “Have you heard his [i.e., Salieri’s] latest opera, The Chimney Sweep? Dog-shit. Dried dog-shit. Tonic-and-dominant, tonic-and-dominant, tonic-and-dominant — not one interesting modulation in the entire piece.” Subtract the tone of stagey scorn, and we have something close to a description of the Vanhal Symphony in F. All of the harmony, all the chord sequences, all the harmonic motion of every phrase, is dutifully correct, and unexceptional. There is nothing of the harmonic deftness and agility which can be found in practically any Mozart score which he composed past the age of 20. He had already milled out all that dutiful harmonic broadcloth as a youth, you see; so his compositional ear demanded flashes of inspiration. The difference (if you like) between a square dance, and the tango (harmonically speaking). The Vanhal is a thoroughly pleasant piece, mind you, but harmonically, it’s Mozart as a 15-year-old.
3. Composition/phrasing. Essentially the same quarrel as (2.) above. Nice work, but two orders of creativity beneath the mature Mozart.

In good conscience, then, I can only report that, based purely on musical considerations, what I have heard of Vanhal takes him completely out of the running as any possible “ghost-writer” for Mozart.

Which, of course, cannot be any surprise to most anyone. We should not normally punish these ‘workmen’ composers for merely doing their work stylishly and characteristically; it is in comparison to the fiery creative spirits such as Haydn and Mozart that their works pale.

A Mere Curiosity, To Be Sure

Dubious Documentation, Just Yesterday Division

From the composer’s notes to Naxos’ Elliott Carter 100^th Anniversary Release:

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Rhapsodic Musings (1999) for solo violin.
Rhapsodic Musings is a present to Robert Mann on his eightieth birthday. It is a small tribute to his extraordinary, devoted advocacy of contemporary music. As is well-known, with other members of the Juilliard Quartet he gave such pioneering and commanding performances of quartets by Bartók, Schoenberg, and many others, including my own, that many of these works became part of the performers’ repertory. His teaching and other activities brought these scores to the attention of students. Using his initials R.M. in the title of this short violin solo and in its main motive — re, mi (D, E) — this piece tries to suggest some of his remarkable human and artistic qualities. It was composed in June, 2000, in Southbury, Connecticut.

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It is apt to sneak by us, but Carter tells us he wrote the piece in 2000; this appears to have eluded the Naxos editor of the booklet, though, who gives the date of the piece’s composition as 1999.

I’ll repeat that

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That which cannot go into the form of cogs and compasses

John Ruskin, from “The Nature of Gothic” (courtesy of Laura Goodin):

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Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and strength must go to the accomplishment of the mean act. The eye of the soul must be bent upon the finger-point, and the soul’s force must fill all the invisible nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that it may not err from its steely precision, and so soul and sight be worn away, and the whole human being be lost at last—a heap of sawdust, so far as its intellectual work in this world is concerned: saved only by its Heart, which cannot go into the form of cogs and compasses, but expands, after the ten hours are over, into fireside humanity. On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness, all his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also, and we know the height of it only when we see the clouds settling upon him. And, whether the clouds be bright or dark, there will be transfiguration behind and within them.

Anatomy of Sonic Sentimentality

Our Intrepid Soprano Jaya tells us more about “Kum-Ba-Ya” than some of us will find it possible (or, advisable) to bear . . . .

Marginalia from an Underground Classic

. . . Beefheart was creating more headaches for Zappa. “Ordinarily, a singer goes in the studio, puts earphones on, listens to the track, tries to sing with it and away you go,” Zappa explained. “[But] Don couldn't tolerate the headphones. He wanted to stand in the studio and sing as loud as he could—singing along with the audio leakage coming through the three panes of glass which comprised the control-room windows. The chances of him staying in sync were nil—but that’s how the vocals were done.” Beefheart couldn’t fathom what Zappa was so upset about. “I was playing—just like the whales,” he told Zig Zag. “I don’t think there is such a thing as synchronization . . . that’s what they do before a commando raid, isn’t it?”

Kevin Courrier, Trout Mask Replica (pp. 97-98)

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That goes to show you what a moon can do.

Don van Vliet (Captain Beefheart), “Moonlight on Vermont”