Week 2: Preface to the First Edition, A New Preface, Acknowledgments, Bibliographic Note, Note on the Music Examples.
By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger
Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends. I laughed out loud on pg. xviii when Rosen wrote, “But we know that performers of weak moral principles did not observe all written repeats.”
Some of you have expressed concerns about not understanding this text. I hope you will enjoy the book anyway. I don’t understand everything that Rosen writes, but I think I understand some of it, and I enjoy it immensely. It seems to me that playing the music provides the greatest tool for understanding it. I don’t play piano much anymore, and I never played that well. I feel lucky that I got to play Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven works while playing bass in student orchestras. However, I disagree with Rosen sometimes, and with other musicians who can actually play this music. We all experience the music in our own way.
Listening to the music provides the second best way to experience and learn about this music. Hearing it live seems a wonderful tool, but listening to records or watching recordings also help us understand the music. Reading about it also helps. I remember hearing Andre Previn talk about the privilege of conducting music “that is greater than we are”. Now, spiritually, I don’t know if I fully agree with this, but I love the line from the Upanishads Bob Wilson quoted in Masks of the Illuminati, ”Remove infinity from it and infinity still remains.” I keep coming back to late Beethoven, week after week, year after year, decade after decade, and it keeps bringing new delights.
This brings up the question of opera. Some people go to the opera regularly. James Joyce, Charles Rosen, and Stendhal went to opera regularly, and this experience seems central to understanding their works. I have not attended an opera in person since hearing Die Fledermaus in Vienna in 1985 from the highest, cheapest seats. (Or did I stand? I think I sat. Memory fails me.) Mozart’s great operas play a significant role in this book. I highly recommend Bergman’s film of The Magic Flute. Because of watching that film over and over again over the past 41 years, as well as listening to various recordings and getting to teach that film in various classes, I know that opera pretty well. In the mid-1980s I expressed my yearning to own more opera cd’s to a friend who kindly said they would pay for half of a three cd opera recording for me if I would pay the balance, so I got Solti’s recording of The Marriage of Figaro which I have listened to a ton over the decades. I feel familiar with the music of that opera, but I don’t understand the plot very well. I have started watching a YouTube recording of the opera, but I don’t have much appetite for watching opera on TV, alas.
8 comments:
Excellent post! I agree that playing the music seems the best way to internalize it with the next best way experiencing it performed live. I don't have the ability to play it instrumentally; live performances of classical music occur infrequently in this area so I will rely on recordings to absorb it. During the 2023 Xmas season I drove up to South Lake Tahoe to hear a performance of selections from Hayden's Messiah and some traditional Christmas songs. It took place in a church and I had a front row seat. The singers and musicians sounded amazing; it deeply moved me. I intend to take in more events of that nature which probably means driving to San Francisco. I'll have more to say later after getting caught up on some work.
Thank you, Oz. In college I played in the orchestra for two years, and both years we did multiple performances of the Messiah for Christmas. At the time I did not enjoy those performances that much. I hadn't learned to apprecaite Handel very much yet. I regret not relishing those perfomances more, but the experience of playing that music has helped me enjoy Handel in the decades since then. I notice that I learned to appreciate a lot of my favorite orchestral music through playing in orchestras. (I also played in the chamber orchestra for one year.) I consider Brahms's Third Symphony my favorite of his symphonies. Beethoven's Seventh and Mahler's First have a special place in my heart. We played all three in college. All those hours rehearsing and performing (and too few hours practicing) really benefitted my understanding and love of music. Louis Zukofsky's wife Celia arranged the final section of "A" using Handel keyboard music.
I thought the quote in the first paragraph was funny, too, and I also loved this line (from the "Acknowledgements" in the part about fixing mistakes): "It has been as great a pleasure for me to correct these errors as it was for my friends to discover them."
The most interesting bit in this part of the book was Rosen's forceful assertion that Haydn and Mozart were considered the most important composers when both men were still alive. As I mentioned earlier, I am struck by the number of informed people who like Haydn better than any other composer. I am looking forward to learning more about Rosen's opinion.
I was worried about being able to follow technical matters in the book and I am still worried after reading this prefatory material, but then again, such things are relatively. I am also attempting "Finnegans Wake" these days, and so far I am doing better with Rosen than with late-period James Joyce.
I don't mind watching operas on TV or even on a computer. I am faintly ashamed I have seen so little opera, but even so, I've seen (either live or on a screen) four Mozart operas, Adams' "Nixon in China," 2-3 Puccini operas, Saariaho's "L'Amour de loin" and a few other things. Perhaps I will find time to watch more operas as I work on this book.
I love Handel's "Messiah." I listen to it every December. This keeps it fresh in my mind, perhaps, but removes the danger that I will become overfamiliar with it.
I see I mistook Hayden for Handel re the Messiah. Seems par for the course of my classical music knowledge. I'm hear to learn.
I've never been to the opera and have an aversion to traditional opera music. It may have something to do with not understanding the language. Or it could be from watching The Phantom of the Opera at a young age. I do like the choral voices in Handel and Beethoven. I used to enjoy the liturgical choral music by the Armenian composer Komitas who influenced Gurdjieff. And I like to confront my limitations so maybe The Magic Flute will open that space for me.
Seems great that Rosen starts the book by acknowledging music as a language. Bill Laswell regards music as a language too. I expect many great musicians and some critics do. By language I don't simply mean the notes, time and dynamic instructions of sheet music, though that makes part of it; call that the mechanics of the language. I mean a language that signifies and communicates mysterious somethings or other that words cannot. I regard music as one way to activate, educate and expand life.
Deleuze regards style not as an aesthetic adornment, but rather something that creates its own kind of language out of the current language. He calls this a minor language. Jamaican patois or the way rappers communicate exemplifies minor languages out of English. Deleuze says a style manifests when language gets pushed to its limits. He said this in relation to literature, but it can apply to music. Rosen writes: " ... in other words the dramatic qualities of Hayden, Mozart, and Beethoven are due to their violation of the patterns to which the public was conditioned by their contemporaries;" i.e. pushing the then current musical language to its limits, taking it as far as it can go.
I look forward to hearing more of Hayden's jokes which get wittier with each playing according to CR.
- I wrote the above.
Great comments. Around fourth grade I looked at the contents of a multi-lp collection of light classical music my parents had. It delighted me to see Richard Wagner since we had the same last name. (It haunts me how much anti-semites like Wagner and Pound have influenced my life.) I fell in love with "The Flight of the Valkyries". Sortly after that my family started watching "Hogan's Heros" reruns, and I loved the use of Wagner's music in that show.
In junior high school in San Jose we went to the San Francisco opera once a year, for which I feel very grateful.
I too did not like classical singing very much as a teen, but I have learned to love it since then.
There is no substitute for live performance, even moreso for a multi-media artform like opera. I listened to John Adams’ Nixon in China for years before I had the great fortune to play in the orchestra for a production, but sadly I’ve never “seen” it — a common hazard of being in the pit. But for great works even a good filmed version can be very satisfying. I have deep appreciation for the MetOpera production of Philip Glass’ Akhnaten starring the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanza.
Readers of this blog might be interested in the book The Magic Flute Unveiled by Jacques Chailley, an exploration of the Masonic roots and symbolism of that famous opera.
I haven't seen "Nixon in China" live, but I did get to see it in a movie theatre in a Met broadcast, and that was a pretty good way to see it and hear it. It was a pleasure and a relief, as I had listened to the music for years.
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