April 16, 2004
On "Mr. Patner meets the Sphinx"
It's very tempting to agree whole-heartedly with Mr. Patner, and I think in many a previous conversation (even, in part, on some of the comments I've posted on this site), I have. But to be quite frank and honest about it, I'm torn at best.
I'm a firm believer that much of what Mr. Patner points out is not only part of the tragedy of music in America, but also it's blessing.
As usual, allow me to briefly qualify my comments (and split my infinitives, apparently).
First and foremost: on the economic support of music in this country. I have a feeling that much of this is due to too large a selection of performers and not a large enough base of buyers. I have a feeling too that the solution to this is not to keep jacking up prices. Case in point: Naxos. What they're doing really is a remarkable feat. i.e., much, or at least a majority of their selection is free for listening on-line (for a free registration). People who like what they're listening to can go ahead and buy the music. People who don't can keep searching. What really amazes me is that these recordings are cheap. How they do it still baffles me -- but the overall effect is amazing -- it allows the public to explore the world of classical music. After all, classical music is not the same a pop music -- tunes and voices which have been around for (at the maximum) 2 years heard almost ad nauseam on the radio.
No, no -- classical music has come to encompass all the music from chant to two part organum all the way up through John Cage, Rautavaara, and then some. In simply sheer volume, this sort of education, a testing of the waters is absolutely necessary, especially if you're about to plunge into a $50 purchase in some record companies.
And here's why I part with Patner on his comments on saturation and "music of our age." Part of what I feel makes it an amazing time to love music is precisely the amount of music that is out there. Even on a relatively unmusical campus, I've had the opportunity to perform music from late Renaissance (with period instruments) to Mahler 2, Carmen, to (yes) Rautavaara and that's only in one ensemble. How awful to be tied to a single musical period -- to regard the rest of it as inane and out-dated.
Although, there's something to be said in this demanding too much from audience members. When else have performers tested the patience of audiences by playing both Tallis and Ginastera in the same concert? contrasting Poulenc and Beethoven? There's something extremely frenetic about the entire ordeal, but also captivating. When else has music played such a dynamic role?
But then we get to the honest facts Mr. Patner painfully brings up. Where are the audiences? Where's the funding? Do we expect our star performers to hold day jobs? Where is the intense passion we saw in Schoenberg and Stravinsky? The intense discussion surrounding Beethoven's music when it first came out? Why does no one swoon in surprise when they hear a piece in the stylus phantasticus?
The question's answer is the same now as it was in the previous days -- it's all old news. How could anyone move on if one bright soul hadn't called Bach boring (certainly not me, but some one at some point did)? Where would we be if Beethoven hadn't fought bitterly against Haydn?
Not far at all, I suppose. But the scary part of it all, of course, is to see where it's all heading. There are no more of those composer celebrities we used to have -- Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Debussy, etc. And slowly, as I pointed out before, all knowledge of these masters are beginning to fade. But who knows -- as Mendelssohn washed the dust off of The Matthew-Passion, all this may just be leading another awakening forty or fifty years down the line.
But the question still remains (and I certainly think I resonate with Mr. Patner on this)-- what until then?
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://WWW.crescatsententia.org/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/809
Mr. Patner Meets the Sphinx
Here's the transcript I promised about a week ago. I just discovered that the full text could be found here (in my defense, I think WFMT just put the transcript up recently).
The text is in the minimized portion (click the link below). I'll put my own thoughts (even more of them) under a separate heading above.
Andrew Patner writes:
I am asked by just about everyone for my opinion about Daniel Barenboim's announcement that he will be leaving his position as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the end of the 2005-2006 season. And I'm asked, almost as frequently, for my views as to who is likely to - or who should - succeed him.
I don't think that the first is an unreasonable question: after all, it's my job to attend concerts of the CSO and to offer my opinions about them and the institution that presents them. But I also don't have an easy answer to that question and I think that this relates to why I have been fairly adamant about avoiding the second, more speculative question. The compilation of guess list, wish lists, shopping lists, aside from its impracticality - and let me assure you, whatever opinions I and my critical colleagues might have about who should be at the artistic head of the CSO, we will not be the ones making the choice! - also has an unseemly side to it - even if we did not have a music director in place for the next two-plus years it reduces other conductors, other musicians, other artists to little more than horse flesh.
But the other point here, and part of the reason that I have such difficulty with the first set of questions - why is Barenboim leaving Chicago and what do I think about it? - is that we do have a music director in place - an extraordinary, albeit complex, music director in fact - and one of the great musical figures of our time. And I think that aspect of Barenboim - that he is a great musician who possesses a combination of skills and experiences and insights that is unique in the world today - is why we don't really know what to do with him and why we have such a hard time talking about him and what is happening in the latter years of his tenure in Chicago
The definition of a music director in the 21st century is a conundrum. Classical music in this country faces a series of difficult and often contradictory issues - how is it that we are producing some of the finest orchestral players at a time when we are not producing audience members? How have we professionalized the management and promotion of concerts and orchestras at precisely the time that the economy to support such professional management is not there? What music or types of music truly constitutes the "music of our time" in a time of saturation, and extraordinary variety, of popular and recorded musics? How has music disappeared from the serious discourse, or what passes for serious discourse, of intellectuals in our society? How, if we all care so much about the institutions of major symphony orchestras, have we reached a point where so few of them are on the radio and almost none of them are on television or the Internet?
Part of the problem here is that many of these questions are questions that have been posed by Daniel Barenboim and that he could be a valuable figure in attempting to answer them. On the flip side, and I have asked Maestro Barenboim this question directly, how can someone in a leadership position ask these questions and then say "But it's my job to make music, not to sell tickets or answer practical-philosophical questions?" How can you criticize the American scene and then not become a full part of it?
It's my guess that if we could somehow bring back Gustav Mahler and let him know some of the questions that were are facing a hundred years after he fought his own battles in Vienna and New York he would just laugh at us. "Do you want a technical problem solver or an artist?" he would ask us in return. "Do you think that you can put together a 'job description' and then find someone who will fill it? Don't you recognize that the very nature of an artist is that he is impossible? He has no logical reason to exist? That there's no logical explanation as to where he finds the soil most nourishing? What do you think will happen when you get rid of an artist and try to replace him with someone based on any other criteria than greatness?"
I still don't have a satisfactory answer to those questions. And until I do, I'm not sure that I have any answers to the questions I posed at that start.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://WWW.crescatsententia.org/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/808