parterre box

41 comments

• mrsjohnclaggart says:

  Katsenbaum? KASTENBAUM? What an idiot (Not you C/F him). You should check your Monteverdi. Harmonically that is one of the great minds in Western music, and since he invented a lot of what we think of as ‘harmony’ in a secular expressive sense (using some of the Church procedures he was trained in and extending and freeing them to express sexual longing — in the madrigali erotici for example) and virtually inventing a harmonically dense operatic form in l’Orfeo in which even the simplest change in emotion could be expressed with profundity and surprise. To compare Strauss with a giant such as that?

  Mahler oboe clarinet? Do you mean the quasi klezmer music generated by the phrygian (the oy veh mode) mode (throughout his work but obvious in the third mov’t of the first symphony)? Mahler’s Jewish Virgin Mary worship (the quote of Casta Diva in the second mov’t of the 8th — dedicated to the anything but chaste Alma) gives a lot of of his music its odd profile, as does a fascination with large vertical chordal organization (up to eleven note chords in the adagio of the 10th, something that Beethoven did only once famously in the 9th). Mahler may have been ‘original’ because he was nuts (ala Gesualdo) but original he was and Strauss seems stale in comparison.

  What does Wiesengrund (Adorno’s real name) have to do with it? His writing on Stravinsky is ridiculously bigoted (and in fact Schoenberg allegedly attacked Stravinsky long before Stravinsky wondered aloud in a not unadmiring context if the genius was in the theories — they were various and evolved constantly — rather than in the music).

  And what does Mozart with his sublime economy and honesty (where is there in Strauss anything like the quintet in g minor, written the summer before Don Giovanni, or indeed the 40 and 41st symphonies with their astounding organization?) have to do with Strauss’ harmonic free associations and sequences as banal and over extended as Tchaikovsky — only worse because so over extended and swollen? And yet the queens cry over the Rosenkavalier trio which is simply a variation of Mariandl/Oktavian’s “Nein, nein, i’ trink kein Wein”! Bruno Walter himself thought the whole finale of Rosenkavalier was a phony and cheap manipulation, eighth rate musically (and the quasi Schubert/kind of Mozart the final duet is not reassuring).

  People like Abate are unimpressive as are several other widely quoted now trendy hotties, as she once was only to fade into irrelevance. The issue isn’t enjoying Strauss (or Gershwin or Cheap Trick or the Sex Pisols) for what he was (they were), limits and manipulations and all, it’s making preposterous claims that the MUSIC itself (read a score!) doesn’t sustain. And trying to erect a house of cards theory about the intellectual importance and even influence of a virtuoso commercial opportunist is like organizing your political principals around the equally long winded and unwieldy Ayn Rand (except he was more talented).

  on December 19, 2009 at 9:05 AM
  • CerquettiFarrell says:

    Oy, so we disagree. Sorry for bringing up Kastenbaum, for he IS a idiot. But there are others. Still my feelings about Strauss (notwithstanding my love for Mont., Bach, Mozart, Beet, Berlioz et al) are very different than yours. That’s OK, everybody is entitled to his own special hate-composer. I for one think EXACTLY the same about Puccini, and always get puzzled when people go about discussing Tosca to eternity. That’s exactly what I think about him, virtuoso commercial opportunist. Gershwin? totally different, totally valid.

    See nothing wrong with free-association motivic development. Beethoven is a master at this. In the case of Mariandl-Marschallin this serves to strengthen the bond between Ochs-Marschallin and to point towards her hypocricy in dealing with her cousin. But she has chosen to love “in the right way”, as opposed to Ochs. This works. The final duet, by the way, is pure plagiarism – the evening prayer from Hansel. And it’s not the first time Strauss burrowed from Humperdinck – remember the appearance of the Sandman? The trill makes it to Salomes Schlussgesang, trill and all.

    on December 19, 2009 at 10:09 AM
  • ilpenedelmiocor says:

    I feel like I’m reading Joseph Kerman here.
    Time warp….

    on December 20, 2009 at 6:46 AM
• mrsjohnclaggart says:

  I am going to stop holding forth like a pustule in the crack of the rump of Jaqueline Tritter, I promise. (it’s all that cialis crossed with viagra and pig vomit that hubby ‘dan’ keeps injecting) But Vickar, I once wrote an endless reconsideration of RVW, admiring, and got TONS of hate mail and was told by the editor never to try anything like that again. (A former composition teacher and TWO former musical analysis teachers wrote me disowning me as a quondam student though the first used to tell me I was his most untalented student EVER, and one of the others threatened to flunk me for demonstrating that melodic inflection in Verdi, say in the Sleepwalking Scene or for a longer example the convent scene in Forza, had the same force as the harmonic organization of say, Schumann, in various of his works not only the songs (among the greatest ever written) but in the more adventurous piano music (such as Schumann’s failed attempt to evolve a logical set of variations based on Clara’s gimpy waltz in the otherwise fabulous Davidsbunderltanze).

  on December 19, 2009 at 9:21 AM
• Sanford says:

  MrsJohnClaggart, how nice to have you back where you belong. I don’t
  always agree with you, but I have really missed you.

  So glad to see I’m not alone in my feelings about Puccini. I saw my
  first Boheme last night at Amore Opera. My opinion has not changed.

  on December 19, 2009 at 11:14 AM
  • Baritenor says:

    How the HELL did you accomplish not seeing BOHEME for however many years you’ve been opera-going? I mean, it’s freaking everywhere. You never thought to yourself: “Tonight at the Met it’s Boheme, or I can stay home and do nothing?” Seriously? That’s just impressive.

    Also, do you really expect a cash-strapped, fledgling, small-house company to change your opinion on the work? See it at an A-house, with full orchestral colors in place and a good conductor, and tell me you don’t tear up a liiiiiiiitle bit at some point.

    on December 19, 2009 at 11:34 AM
    • Sanford says:

      I went because someone invited me and I made a promise to myself to never say no to anything free. Having auditioned for and been offered a contract by Amato, I knew what I was was getting. the rodolfo, mimi, and especially musetta, were quite good. what came from the pit was execrable. reeds dominated, so i heard alot of clarinet,oboe, and bassoon… even when they weren’t carrying the melody. but while i can find moments in all the puccini operas that i like , such as the cafe momus scene, the rondine aria, etc, i don’t like any puccini opera in it’s entirety.
      sorry about the typing;i broke screen on my laptop it’s hooked up to tv, using onscreen keyboard

      on December 20, 2009 at 9:56 AM
  • CruzSF says:

    LOL. I’m surprised that you hadn’t seen Boheme until last night, Sanford. For some reason, there are huge sections of this opera that don’t speak to me, but Mimi was never less than riveting and touching when I saw it at SFO, and that was with Gheorghiu.

    on December 19, 2009 at 12:58 PM
  • ilpenedelmiocor says:

    Oh yeah, I hate me some Puccini.

    And speaking of Joseph Kerman (11.2), he lumped Strauss (for whom I have to confess an incuable weakness) and Puccini together as the anti-Christs of 20th century music:

    “It is second-rate stuff…. They were hailed, rashly but pardonably at first, as the legitimate successors of Verdi and Wagner; but between Verdi and Puccini, between Wagner and Strauss, lies the decisive gulf between art and sensationalism. From the start Puccini and Strauss revealed a coarseness of sensitivity and a deep cynicism towards true dramatic values, characteristics that simply deepened as their techniques became more and more impressive. Talent, craft, and pretentiousness are no substitute for spirit.”

    Other than that, they’re pretty good.

    Kerman also gets credit for coining Tosca “that shabby little shocker.”

    on December 20, 2009 at 6:57 AM
    • ilpenedelmiocor says:

      incurable weakness, not uncueable

      on December 20, 2009 at 6:58 AM
      • Fritz says:

        Kerman was good at coining phrases, but was less good at predicting musical futures. His book, OPERA AS DRAMA was written in the early fifties, and here’s a sentence from it: “That works like TURANDOT and SALOME will fade from the operatic scene, as decisively as have L’AFRICAINE and LUCREZIA BORGIA, is scarcely to be doubted.”

        Note the certitude–”is scarcely to be doubted.” Well, here we are almost sixty years later, and TURANDOT and SALOME are still going strong. And LUCREZIA BORGIA and even L’AFRICAINE have returned for the odd look-in now and then. I wonder if Kerman (now 85) has retained his confidence about their imminent disappearance?

        on December 20, 2009 at 11:49 PM
  • Cassandra says:

    Uh… I’m not so sure that you should form an opinion on all of Puccini’s operas when you’ve only heard one performed live at a shoestring budgeted kid’s “opera” house that’s about eighty seats, has a pit that seats seven, and that’s not even run by the original head of the company.

    See Butterfly in an actual professional house with actual singers, conductor, orchestra, and production, and then we’ll talk.

    on December 20, 2009 at 7:06 PM
• Henry Holland says:

  CerquettiFarrell, you know Schreker’s other operas, correct? Der Ferne Klang, Der Schatzgraber and Das Spielwerk und die Prinzessin are the equals of Die Gezeichneten, at the very least, with Der Schatzgraber being my favorite. I can’t wait for the Los Angeles Opera Gezeichneten next year, Conlan should own that score.

  MJC’s mention of neo-classicism got my hackles up a bit, as I think the very-much-like-punk-rock-in-1977 Year Zero attitude of neo-c’s was a disaster. All of a sudden, within the space of a year or two, a whole raft of stuff from the war and pre-war years became aesthetically suspect. Thus, Schreker in 1920 went from having the four opera’s mentioned above performed more than Salome > Elektra > Rosenkavalier > Ariadne > Frau combined in German-speaking Europe to someone who, by 1925, was comparatively begging for performances.

  If I weren’t so tired and drunk, I’d dig up some really nasty things that Boulez once said about Stravinsky’s neo-classical period.

  on December 20, 2009 at 2:34 AM
• Harry says:

  Take the comment of Stravinsky about Von Karajan conducting his music like ‘hoochie coochie music’. When someone wishing to be remembered as the perfect iconoclast makes such arsehole complements about someone (even if it was Von Karajan!) promoting your music, one starts begging more, for profiling the actual creator of the music, than what they produced. What would have Stavinsky been , if not for ‘that jet propulsion promotion’ by that famous Paris Rite of Spring riot?
  Any budding classical composer, take a hint….. Employ a group of rioters for the premiere of your next new work.
  Why do I hear Copland in Rake’s Progress? Why do I hear Copland in Previns music? Any music is some of pattern re-fashioning of influences and sounds…. from what has gone before.The success of any music finally falls on what the public wants and will listen to. Nothing else finally matters. All the music academic talks and writings by self styled boffins in the World :about the upholding of supposed current construction standards of music theory, are only of value to get a pass mark or acknowledgment in quarters, that have the time to listen.
  Either tried long classes on the significance and meanings of Henry Moores’ sculptures…or the subject of Hogarth’s England!

  To the rest of us….. we let our senses do the judgment. The greatest pain in the arse is all this ‘Neo this… Neo that’. Nice terminology stuff though, to jointly dish around / confuse /and impress at some social climbing opera ladies’ benefit auxiliary ‘talk’. Might help those out of a present music job and seeking to ‘network’. And where this de-constructionist chatter fills the air… all that appears is a confused form of morse -code ‘speak’ instead of our human emotions being engaged into any ‘induced forms of feeling’ about the actual music.
  As if music itself, is incapable of communicating its own worth, if it in fact.
  How noble, is it, for some new classical piece, thought ‘oh -so -academically right’ -be commissioned with some misplaced Grant…. receive a performance or two … then get forgotten – cast into the void of silence for all time, after it bored its listeners shit-less? The history of Music, especially the 20th Century is cluttered with such failures.
  Spitting up some movement on a orchestral work, ‘drilling in’ on the use /or combination of certain instruments and then proclaiming genius or alternatively damming and smacking its composer over the head: is being totally disingenuous. Do we actually know why they did it or is it just a form of clever conjecturing; according to our own held pet theories about that composer?
  I.E I do expect anyone else to go along with my thought that the Mahler Symphonic Cycle is a continuing thought process- chain from first symphony to the last, touched along the way by his actual life experiences. Does not that orchestral ‘sickening 6 foot drop / crunch’ or the sharp hair-pin rise and fall on the strings at the end of the 1st movement of the Second Symphony mean something? But maybe not….. that is how I find I best personally appreciate him.

  Yet such thought, is no less valid than all the opinions of the ‘Neo-ites’ put together. Up there in their castles in the air.
  Let’s not beat around the bush….Vivaldi, or even Mozart was capable amongst their mammoth outputs, to write boring shit. Still do we dwell or pick up a pair of tweezers to try to find a piece here and there of it as finder, and then jump up and down….exclaiming ‘found it’? How juvenile.

  on December 20, 2009 at 9:20 AM
• kashania says:

  Personally, I’m get so bored by snobbery towards Puccini and Tchaikovsky. Butterfly, Boheme, Tosca, Onegin, Nutcracker, the Violin Concerto, the fourth, fifth and sixth symphonies — these are all great, great works and remain undiminished even in comparison to the works of “real” geniuses from Mozart to Stravinsky.

  on December 20, 2009 at 8:36 PM
  • Henry Holland says:

    What the FUCK are you babbling on about –at great length– Harry? I recognize the words as English but it might as well be Serbian for all the sense it makes.

    I’d add to the Tchaikovsky list Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty, both of which blew me away when I saw a production of each in the theater.

    I nearly fell of my chair when I read that Pierre Boulez listens to Tchaikovsky when at home, he just doesn’t want to conduct his music.

    on December 20, 2009 at 10:51 PM
  • CruzSF says:

    Kashania, personally, I like Puccini more the more I listen to his work. Fanciulla has become one of my top 5 favorites by any opera composer and I listen to it at least once a week. Re: Bohème, I don’t know … I think I should like but I haven’t discovered a way into it, yet. I’ve actually seen it live (which I haven’t done yet with Fanciulla) and I still felt like I missed something. Tosca and Trittico I like very much, too.

    on December 20, 2009 at 11:35 PM