The Beatles.

This post is mostly about pop music, but I will say that I’m thinking about a Brahms piano music comparison for my thesis.

The following is a post I did for another blog I write for (Webster University Music Department blog). I thought it was interesting enough that I would put it on my own page.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the remastered Beatles albums that are due out next week and I’ve been debating for quite a while now about whether or not to listen to them. I mean, from a musicological perspective, I want to listen to the songs in their original form so that I can understand more about the instruments and mastering processes of the day. The Beatles recorded the albums using the technology they had available at the time, and to change any of the variables that make those albums what they are might compromise the historical value of the music itself.

To me, it’s the same as going to see a performance of a Strauss tone poem or a Beethoven symphony, in that they wrote for the instruments that they had available at the time. A section of a Strauss piece as played on the instruments that existed 100 years ago would sound vastly different from the same section being played on million dollar, world-class quality instruments made recently. For this reason, I enjoy John Eliot Gardiner’s performances because he usually uses period instruments in order to capture the original feeling of the piece.

I understand the general argument for listening to these new albums: that they SOUND BETTER. Well, sound is a qualitative thing- perhaps the albums sound exactly how they band wants them to. In assuming that we are ‘making it better’ by changing it, it not only causes people to associate the original albums with imperfection, but it causes us to therefore assume that we can improve an artist’s music by applying current technology to it.

So, the question persists: Should we listen to the new Beatles albums?

A few relatively short ideas I had today.

1. Mahler is unbelievable.

2. I don’t understand why stores like Target and Amazon charge so much for CDs. If the record industry is failing, charging MORE for their products definitely isn’t the way to go. If the Radiohead CD that I want costs the same amount of money as 100 blank CDs AND a burrito from Chipotle, you can be assured that I’ll be comfortable with the burrito and a burned copy of the album (which I downloaded years ago). Fortunately, many classical CDs are pretty reasonable. If you don’t care about having the best recording available, you can pretty much get almost any non-opera work you want for less than $12, which I think is great.

3. Today I read one of the best sentences of my life, but also heard the worst lyrics of my life.

Best sentence: “Beethoven’s last quartets are esoteric creations, sung by the creator himself, just as God might meditate in his heart, finding no partner of equal rank.” -Music in the Romantic Era (p. 38) by Alfred Einstein.

Worst lyric: “I said shush girl/Shut your lips/Do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips” -some terrible band I heard at the gym.

Like I said, it was a day of highs and lows.

4. I need to do my Thesis homework and read a chapter in the 20th Century book. I feel like most of my posts are going to end this way for a while.

Ravel, Bartok.

Well, I guess it’s time for a new post. School started yesterday. I’ve certainly been listening to and reading a lot.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Ravel’s solo piano, especially ‘Miroirs’. Pretty amazing stuff. ‘La vallée des cloches’ is one of my favorite pieces. The clocks/bells imageries in that piece are very cool, I’d like to see the score. I also listened to both operas, ‘L’heure Espagnol’ and ‘L’enfant et les soreileges’, both of which were great. Both operas had wonderful librettos, and his usage of different styles within each are very neat. I’m thinking about writing a paper on ‘L’enfant’ for my 20th Century class about the different styles he uses for each piece of furniture/animal/object in the opera.

I just listened to Bartok’s ‘Concerto for Orchestra’ with the full score. It’s such an incredible piece, each time I hear it, it blows my mind. Not as good as ‘Music for Strings, Percussion & Celesta’ though. I should have more to say- I’ve been thinking about making this post for the past few days. Now that my mind is working at full speed, I’ll have more to write about in the next few days.

PS. The first concert at the SLSO this year is Mahler 5, and I already got a ticket!

Books, Dr. Atomic Symphony, Berio, Grizzly Bear.

I haven’t had much time to blog lately- I’ve been working and studying a lot. Plus hanging out with friends and all that. Summer is not a good time to expect me to be on the computer for extended periods of time.

I’ve been reading quite a bit lately. I’m reading Brahms’ biography still, as well as a few books about medieval music, and Einstein’s book about the Romantic era. Michael is leaving in a week and gave me a pretty nice stack of books to add to my library. I’m starting to have a pretty respectable shelf of music books and scores. But I remember something Dr. Carter told me a while back- we were talking about musicology and he turned around and waved his hand at his enormous book collection and said something to the effect of “Do you see all these books? I’ve read all of these. And if you want to do musicology, you’re going to have to read more than that.” Suffice it to say, I have a lot of work to do.

I just picked up the official St. Louis Symphony Orchestra recording of John Adams’ Dr. Atomic Symphony. It sounds pretty great, I’m looking forward to spending some time with it. This is very exciting for me, because not only is John Adams one of my favorite working composers, but I was actually AT the premiere of this symphony, the same weekend that they recorded it. Very cool.

I recently heard Berio’s ‘Sinfonia’ for the first time. I think it’s a very cool piece, I’m going to try to do my 20th Century paper on it next semester. The third movement is based on the scherzo from Mahler’s Resurrection, which I wrote a paper on last semester. Apparently there is a score at Wash U with many of the musical quotations already marked, so I’m going to go check that out. It’s not cheating if it’s available to the public!

I’ve been listening to Grizzly Bear a lot. When their new album, ‘Veckatimest’, came out in May, I gave it a few listens and then shelved it. I just didn’t see what was so good about it. I liked their previous album a lot, but I just didn’t get the new one at all. Over the next few months, I came across a few die-hard fans, and each time I was convinced to give it another listen. Last week, I was talking to my friend Lou and he suggested that I give the album final shot, so I spent a lot of time with it over the next few days. Finally, late the other night, I had a breakthrough. I was listening to the album with headphones in my room, and when the harmonies in the chorus of “While You Wait For The Others” hit me, I finally knew what I had been missing. At least, ‘Veckatimest’ was more than the original “pensive Beach Boys in space” diagnosis that I had given it in May. Through repeated listenings over the past few days, I’ve come to realize that this album is actually pretty amazing. And even though it requires an incredible amount of patience to get the full effect, the full effect is completely worth the time that I put into it. Here’s a link to a live version of the previously mentioned song.

This post is already really long, so I’ll write another one about Pitchfork Music Festival soon.

A Post from the MetroLink

Thanks to the iPhone, I’m making this post while riding the St. Louis MetroLink. I’ve been reading Jan Swafford’s Brahms biography, it’s fantastic. Also read a great article in the New Yorker about the Marlboro festival. Man, it would be really awesome to get to visit it one day. I didn’t know that two of my favorite pianists were the current directors- Richard Goode and Mitsuko Uchida. I listened to her recording of Mozart Piano Sonata No. 2 in F Major today. Awesome piece of music. I played through the adagio of it today and it’s as satisfying to play as it is to listen to… Maybe even moreso.

Listened to Brahms’ C Major Piano Sonata yesterday, it was great. What a strong choice for Op. 1. When asked why he chose it instead of the Eb Scherzo, Brahms said that he wanted to appeal to peoples’ heads and not their heels. l listened to the Eb Scherzo, which was good but not as texturally satisfying as his later piano work.

I’m gonna get into Liszt soon.

Well, that’s about all I can write while on a train.

A few thoughts.

I’ll work on a better post soon, but I wanted to say a few things.

1) I just listened to Richard Goode’s recording of the Adagio from Beethoven’s 5th Piano Concerto. I don’t like it. I think I wrote about his performance of this a while back, but I just heard the album and I have the same problems with it. Rudolph Serkin still does it best.

2) I’ve been listening to Shostakovich’s string quartets. His 8th is really good- it will be the subject of my next post on here.

3) I have a lot of work to do. 

4) I wish I could be at the Mahler festival in New York.

Adés, Beethoven, Casual Concert.

I went to see the SLSO the past two weekends, but I’ve been too busy looking for a job to get on and write about it. 

Last weekend, I went to see a pretty cool program. They played Thomas Adés’ Asyla and Beethoven’s Ninth. It was a good program. The Adés piece was really very interesting. The title is the plural for the word Asylum, which you don’t hear too often. I suppose the piece was about emotions and feelings that could be associated with an asylum. It was four movements, and only the third movement had a title. 

One really cool thing about the piece was that they used an incredible amount of percussion. The entire back of the stage was filled with percussive instruments, many of which were used only once or twice in the entire piece. There were two pianos, one of which (an upright) was tuned a quarter-tone flat to the Steinway. From what I gather, Adés specifically requested that arrangement to simulate the effect of church bells, which when sounded create many tones in the overtone series that can’t be played by an even-tempered instrument such as a piano.

The overall effect of the piece was not unlike a John Cage piece- it sounded cool, but it wasn’t particularly narrative. It was something that I know I could have enjoyed more if I had studied the score. Asyla is definitely something that I plan to hear again, and next time I’ll be more prepared. 

And Beethoven’s Ninth was Beethoven’s Ninth. I didn’t think it was performed that well, and a few other people I know agreed. Clearly, there’s not much anyone can say in way of criticism towards the actual composition, however the Ninth is a monster and should be adequately rehearsed. I regret to say that I can’t offer specific examples as it’s been a week since I heard it, however I do remember that I was underwhelmed by the performance on the whole. The Scherzo, I do remember, was really very good though. 

This past weekend, I went to a very nice Casual Concert at the SLSO. It was the first performance in their four week summer series. Overall, they played very well. Debussy, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninoff, Mendelssohn… can’t do much better than that!

Other than that, I’ve been trying to relax after the semester. I got an A on my Mahler paper, so I’ve been feeling good about that. 

Things I’ve been listening to:

Bach- The Goldberg Variations (enjoying the never-ending comparison between Glenn Gould’s ‘55 and ‘81 recordings…)

Saint-Saëns’ Third Symphony “Organ”

Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words (all of them, but I’ve been specifically enjoying Op. 30 No. 1) 

Debussy- Estampes

Brahms- Piano Quintet, String Quintets, Clarinet Quintet

The new Wilco album (it rocks)

 

That’s about it for this post. I’ll have more time to write soon.

Saint-Saëns, Franck.

Awesome! SLSO’s ‘French Impressions’ concert was very good. Ravel’s ‘Le Tombeau de Couperin’ is always beautiful. I hadn’t heard the orchestration, but I do like the piano version. The ‘Sarabande’ was fair. 

The Saint-Saëns ‘Piano Concerto No. 2′ was the highlight for me. I really must have a thing for classical  period piano concertos. I suppose this was post-classical. I heard someone say neo-classical, but when I think about neo-classicism I think about late Stravinsky, so I’m going to go ahead and say that it was post-classical. I loved it. I’ve been too busy with finals to go out and get a recording, but I’m going to.

Marc-André Hamelin was incredible. A few of my pianist friends say that he has the best technique in the world right now, and I couldn’t really disagree with that. I haven’t heard every pianist in the world, but the latter movements of the Saint-Saëns lead me to believe that he knows what he’s doing. Speaking of Saint-Saëns, I’m listening to his Symphony No. 3 “Organ” right now. Really a fantastic piece.

The Franck Symphony in D minor was disappointing. The SLSO played it well, but I didn’t feel like it was a strong symphony. The first movement had epic ambitions, but it was actually somewhat substance-less to me. The second movement was static, and the third movement started off well, but lost my interest. I never really understood Franck- he’s famous for such a small body of work. I know there are other composers that are about as prolific (Berlioz, Mussorgsky…) but I feel like their contributions are more significant. I must be missing something- maybe I need to hear more of his organ works. I guess I’ll have to add “Investigate Franck” to my list of things to do this summer.

After the ‘French Impressions’ concert, Ethan and I went to lunch with one of the violinists from the orchestra. I won’t use the person’s name, however I will say that I learned some really exciting gossip about Joshua Bell’s sex life and also about what Richard Goode smells like  (and as I wrote this, I put on his ‘Waldstein’ recording and realized that I don’t care how he smells because he blows my mind). 

I don’t have too much else to say at the moment. I’m in the middle of finals right now. Almost done with my Mahler paper, now titled ‘Existential Issues and Mahler’s Second Symphony’.

With the small bits of free time I’ve had, I’ve been reading ‘Silence’ by John Cage. Some serious music philosophy in there. More on that when I have time to finish it.

A Pulitzer for Steve Reich.

I’ve sort of been waiting for a major event to occur in the world of classical music during the time I’ve been studying it in school, and that event has finally happened: Steve Reich won a Pulitzer Prize yesterday for his 2008 work ‘Double Sextet’. I listened to part of a rehearsal of the piece on YouTube, but there doesn’t appear to be a recording as of now. It sounded very cool- almost like a condensed sextet version of ‘Music for 18 Musicians’. I’m sure with all the publicity that comes with winning a major award, a worthwhile CD will be released of the piece. I doubt I’m the only person that’s excited to hear it.

Something else exciting is that I just ordered a copy of John Cage’s Silence, and I’m looking forward to reading it as soon as finals are over. 

I might add more to this post later on, but right now I have to change and get to the Cardinals game.

This has caused me many late nights…