Does Boulez conduct Wagner wih gloves on, the way Wagner conducted Mendelssohn?

My dislike of Boulez has come from hearing direct quotes from him and from his conducting, of which I heard an extensive selection of Debussy, and which is banal and incompetent. The orchestra (New York Phil) could have done better with no conductor. The fact that his tenure there was very short is quite indicative.

However in his defense I did like one thing he said, that music is not about expression of emotion or thought, but is a labyrinth to be endlessly explored. That struck me as a great statement even in the midst of my hostility.

Perhaps part of the frustration is this whole concept of a "system of values." I try to change my values if I discover something new (or old) that is worthwhile. But people like Boulez do not. They simply condemn what does not fit into their system. It is a kind of intellectual tyranny oddly reminiscent of Victorian repression over an art that above all must remain completely free to any idea, feeling or influence for its creation.

re: Boulez. I'm basically against him - he is arrogant and imperious, a musical bully - but I'm worried you overdo things. There's a suspicious neatness about it. For instance, you dislike his published musical opinions, and you somehow turn this into him being a bad conductor. There have been several great conductors with terrible opinions (Becham, Furtwangler, and especially Karajan). I think Boulez is a great conductor of certain kinds of music. His recent Mahler cycles are not great, but surely that's no surprise.

Have you ever sat in an orchestra pit yourself and tried to make sense of those vague, windmill-like motions some bad conductors make? If you have, you'd realize why Boulez has been a force for good in conducting. Boulez started conducting because he didn't want to hear inaccurate performances of his music. His obsession has been with giving the precise, unambiguous cues players need if they're going to play rhythmically complex music well. That makes him seem cold, more like a traffic cop than a romantic hero, and in romantic music, it's probably just wrong. But I'd say all younger conductors performing, say, Stravinsky or Messiaen have learned from his example, and the general standard of all performances of this repertoire have improved as a consequence.

Turning to Boulez's own music, I like some - not all - of it. For all that he's obsessed with the "development of musical language", his greatest gift is actually as a colorist. The best thing about much of it is the intriguing choice of timbres. My favorite piece is "Eclat", with its trilling cimbaloms. It's a bizarre thought that, even though Boulez's nemesis as a composer is probably Steve Reich, they actually like very similar sounds (mallet instruments especially).

Tha's interesting, Guy and yes I've sat in orchestra pits and done my best to avoid conductors. In fact the conductor of one symphony I was in was so bad the entire orchestra had to ignore him as a normal routine or they would be thrown off.

But I wasn't trying to extrapolate from criticism of his composing to his conducting. I was referring to some specific recordings. However I see what you're saying about the specificity of cues, etc.

Along these lines I remember one somewhat insane conductor I knew who was also a composer. He told me that he was rehearsing "Rite of Spring" and the orchestra was unable to play the meter changes, so he put the whole thing into 4/4 with syncopation and they played it just fine.

I doubt if Boulez would approve of that approach...

@William said:

Along these lines I remember one somewhat insane conductor I knew who was also a composer. He told me that he was rehearsing "Rite of Spring" and the orchestra was unable to play the meter changes, so he put the whole thing into 4/4 with syncopation and they played it just fine.

I doubt if Boulez would approve of that approach...

All the orchestras that I work with would refuse to play a re-barred version of "Rite" (and have done), because as they point out, when you know how it goes it is almost impossible to read with alternative notation.

DG

It's interesting we're talking about the "Rite Of Spring". I can't think of another piece of music which could ever sound as shockingly, suddenly "new" as that one. Original, new, modern (but atavistic and barbaric too). Stravinsky "samples" so much of it from elsewhere - Lithuanian folk songs, Skryabin, Rimsky Korsakov - but it STILL feels original, modern, new. I don't even hear a historical period in it so much - Stockhausen's "Gruppen", by comparison, sounds far more of its era (though to be fair, I've never heard it in a concert performance).

Here's a thought, one which could unite VSL's hardcore avant-gardists with its film score composers. I think originality must be a product of context. Once you've decided to do a ballet about barbaric pagan rituals & human sacrifice you're forced to come up with noises & rhythms you'd never think of if you're just sat at the piano trying to write a symphony or a string quartet. Once you've decided to write a piece of music to comemorate the horrors of the Hiroshima bomb (as in Penderecki's Threnody) you know you can't just write schmaltzy romantic melodies in E-flat Major - you're going to have to go to the limit to find sounds appropriate to that context. One of my favourite American composers is George Crumb, & his sonic originality always has an extreme context to inspire it; his Black Angels is inspired by the horrors of the Vietnam war, for instance.

(It's always like this. Monteverdi, when Artusi criticizes him for breaking the rules of the Palestrina style, says look, I need stronger music because I need to depict stronger emotions. Wagner pushes the harmonic system further for the sake of the drama.)

Laters

Guy

@"Guy SigsworthOnce you've decided to write a piece of music to comemorate the horrors of the Hiroshima bomb (as in Penderecki's Threnody)[/quote said:

[quote="Guy SigsworthOnce you've decided to write a piece of music to comemorate the horrors of the Hiroshima bomb (as in Penderecki's Threnody)

HA! That has to be one of the the biggest con-jobs in music. It's original title was 8' 37" (named for its duration, don't you know)
After several people commented on the extreme emotional impact it had on them, Penderecki changed it's name to "Threnody". After more performances and more "emotional impact"-type comments Penderecki changed the title once again to "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima"

How can a title like that not make a difference to the way you hear that piece?

I like the piece, and some other works of P, but I think he's an asshole.

best,
John

ROFL. That's f***ng hilarious about Pendorecki. What an arse!

Evan Evans

P.S. Although, come to think of it, I might do the same myself someday given the same conditions! [;)]

D****it you're right, I've put the cart before the horse -the Hiroshima title came later - which does rather mess up my theory!javascript:emoticon('[:O]ops:')

Guy

If this is true it shows the obvious equation: DISSONANCE = HORROR

I find this amusing, since the atonalists ever since Schoenberg have wanted everyone to believe that "a minor second is as beautiful as a major third" - Schoenberg. And yet Mr. Penderecki - the God of the avant garde - creates a cacophony, then gets a big reaction of horror from people, and so he decides to capitalize on it. And yet this contradicts the entire concept of dissonance is beautiful. Funny.

@William said:

If this is true it shows the obvious equation: DISSONANCE = HORROR

I find this amusing, since the atonalists ever since Schoenberg have wanted everyone to believe that "a minor second is as beautiful as a major third" - Schoenberg. And yet Mr. Penderecki - the God of the avant garde - creates a cacophony, then gets a big reaction of horror from people, and so he decides to capitalize on it. And yet this contradicts the entire concept of dissonance is beautiful. Funny.

Not to split hairs, but Shoenberg wrote Pantonal music, not Atonal. I know that you said since S, but I must say that some of his serial music is beautiful, as is the music of Berg. Others in the same "school" I could do without quite comfortably.
I must also piont out that a major 3rd (when played in tune) is a horrible interval, due to the fact that the loudest resultant tone is an augmented 4th below the lower note. This is something that Brahms found out too late to save the end of Sonatensatz... [:(]

DG

@William said:

If this is true it shows the obvious equation: DISSONANCE = HORROR

For most people this is true. Students very often use words like "creepy" when asked to comment on music with unresolved dissonances.
I think for the average listener (who, lets face it, is usually rather uneducated musically) a large part of this reaction is due to music's use in film. Your average Joe listener needs to see an image when he hears music.

Schoenberg's comments re beauty I take with a pinch of salt. There is almost no point talking about an interval as an aesthetic entity. How does the thing get used in context? There are achingly beautiful minor seconds in tonal music, and achingly dull ones in non-tonal music...
I always supposed that Schoenberg was on his didactic rant about emancipation of the dissonance, trying to force everyone to think like him.

best,
John

@JohnA said:

There are achingly beautiful minor seconds in tonal music, and achingly dull ones in non-tonal music...

er, lest it be thought I'm FOR tonal and AGAINST non-tonal, I should qualify the above statement and say I don't think all minor seconds behave this way in music...

best,
John

Must defend Penderecki. He is a kind, tolerant, intelligent, artistic human.

There might be a little pompousness, like Verdi maybe; there is certainly a shrewdness when dealing with public perceptions, like nearly any successful artist; the story is true-ish, that the piece came before the title. But the combination of piece and title is what has become important in his work, and his combination of characteristics have made him what he is.

Pantonal vs. atonal is a useless distinction. Pantonality is obviously a class of atonality since all tones simultaneously negate tonality. Schoenberg is however mainly known as a serialist.

A major third a horrible interval? It depends on the scale - tempered or natural or whatever tuning you wish to use.

I agree with John A about how these things are just too subjective to establish as principles. Also about how context is everything. That is what irritated me with Schoenberg's original statement, because he seemed to be removing context. Though perhaps that was not his intention. I also like some of Schoenberg and can easily see why he just had to do something different - after Gurrelieder.

I hope I'm not becoming a conservative reactionary(!), but I basically agree with William. Atonality/pantonality tends to be emotionally monochrome. It’s great for portraying paranoia, neurosis & the dark side, but not so good with other emotions. Schoenberg’s atonal Holocaust document "A Survivor From Warsaw" rightly shocks & horrifies me, but his atonal opera-buffo comedy "Von Heute auf Morgen" doesn’t make me smile at all. Of course the "vulgar" atonality found in film music corroborates this - it's used for tension, disaster, horror, but not for, say, romantic bedroom scenes. Could atonality be used to depict ecstatic happiness, an atonal "Gloria In Excelsis Deo"? If it can, I haven't heard the piece that does this - yet.
Classical tonality is a multi-dimensional universe of 168 (24 times 7) notes. In this universe "A" as the 3rd of F major is completely different from "A" as the key note of A major, & any good musician knows how to play with these multiple meanings. Schoenberg flattens it down to a single 12-note mode, a single chromatic raag, in a single emotional plane. All that multi-dimensional play (or ‘modulation’) is lost. There is a kind of play between serial transpositions, retrogrades & inversions & so on, but it doesn't begin to equal what's been discarded. Imagine a great Indian musician, say Hariprasad Chaurasia, living his entire life performing in a single raag, with a single emotional association, a single time of day. That’s what serialism feels like to me.
I'm not saying serial music is rubbish, because there are masterpieces of that single atonal raag: Pierrot Lunaire, the String Trio, Webern Opus 5 etc.


Laters

Guy

@Guy Sigsworth said:

I hope I'm not becoming a conservative reactionary(!), but I basically agree with William. Atonality/pantonality tends to be emotionally monochrome.

Snort!!!! Of course it is! Bloody rubbish!

Laters

@William said:

Pantonal vs. atonal is a useless distinction. Pantonality is obviously a class of atonality since all tones simultaneously negate tonality. Schoenberg is however mainly known as a serialist.

A major third a horrible interval? It depends on the scale - tempered or natural or whatever tuning you wish to use.

I agree with John A about how these things are just too subjective to establish as principles. Also about how context is everything. That is what irritated me with Schoenberg's original statement, because he seemed to be removing context. Though perhaps that was not his intention. I also like some of Schoenberg and can easily see why he just had to do something different - after Gurrelieder.

Pantonality and atonality are different in that with pantonality a tonal centre is all important. The fact that Schoenberg is known as a serialist has nothing to do with this distinction.

Regarding the major 3rd check out the example I gave. Talk to any string quartet player about intonation and you won't get any sleep for days... [:)]

DG

Yes of course DG but my point is the tonal center is NEGATED.

I think this post of Guy is a profound statement - I have felt this but never thought it consciously. So much is lost with the complete discarding of tonality. The most advanced tonality - what? Scriabin? Late Mahler, Early Schoenberg (before he realized he'd never be able to compete with Mahler and said to hiimself "You know, I better do something different") - these come close to losing all tonal reference, but barely hold onto it with the effect of including subliminally all of those elements that Guy is talking about as potential referents.

@DG said:

Talk to any string quartet player about intonation and you won't get any sleep for days... [:)]

DG

Doesn't 12-note music presuppose equal temperament?

@DG said:

Talk to any string quartet player about intonation and you won't get any sleep for days... [:)]

DG

Doesn't 12-note music presuppose equal temperament?

Theoretically, but to a string player trained within Western tonality I don't believe that it is possible.

DG