When Morty Met Sam: More Music and Dance

I went to a rehearsal of the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Alan Gilbert.  The first piece was a nine minute Ligeti work for solo trumpet and orchestra, "Mysteries of the Grand Macabre".  It's Ligeti in his Ubu Roi mode, verging on slapstick; entertaining, but a divertissement for the most part.   The second was Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which is of course one of the most famous and well known orchestral pieces in the known universe.   But when was the last time I actually heard it performed?  I can't remember.   So it was exciting to hear a live performance.  Gilbert does favor a big band approach to Beethoven, with a large string section and a powerhouse sound.  This makes for an impressive, and dynamic performance, but with the concurrent loss of details.   I prefer my Beethoven in halls smaller than David Geffen Hall, which normally works better for very large orchestras.   But the second and third movements were absolutely wonderful, and, of course, there are very good reasons why Beethoven's Fifth is cultural phenomenon that it is.  It's an amazing piece.
The best part of the program, though, was Bartok's "Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste".   Again, it is one of those works that I think I know very well, but that I haven't heard performed live in I can't remember how many years.   In Gilbert's brief introduction, he referred to the piece as the greatest piece of the 20th century.  That certainly startled me, but after the performance, I was certainly disposed to consider the idea.   I tend to forget how original Bartok's musical world is.   He had both an extraordinary imagination for sound and a rigorous musical intelligence.   Did anyone write his kind of "night music" before him?   He really invented this sound world which has now become a cliche of film scoring.   And how many composers would have the audacity to begin an orchestral piece with a slow, complex fugue for strings.  In the rehearsal, Gilbert ran the whole piece, and then went backwards through the piece, fixing sections here and there.  It was an interesting way to hear the piece, hearing highlights in retrograde after hearing the whole piece.  

We went with David M to a dance show at BAM entitled "Neither", with choreography and set design by Shen Wei.   It was set to the "opera" for soprano and orchestra by Morton Feldman, with a text by Samuel Beckett.   I was hoping for a live performance of the music, but it was set to a recording.   The music is extraordinary; it's one of Feldman's best pieces; he uses a palette of exquisitely balanced orchestral colors.   As is common with most of Feldman's work, the average dynamic is pianissimo, and the very sharp dissonances he employs sound exquisite in the hushed dynamics.   Unfortunately, the recording was set to play at an extremely loud level; thus the "ppp" dynamic of the opening became fortissimo.   What was delicate became apocalyptic.   This was not good.
The choreography had its moments of interest, but there were also many moments where the movement was repetitive and not very interesting.   The whole notion, though, of setting choreography on "Neither" is quixotic, though, or at least problematic.  And given the loud volume, the music tended to dominate.  I'm still glad I saw it, though, and I would love to hear a live performance some day.   Barbara Hannigan, please!

A brief description from the web concerning the origins of Beckett's text for "Neither":

This extract is taken from Damned to Fame. The Life of Samuel Beckett by James Knowlson, published in Great Britain by Bloomsbury Publishing plc, London, at £25.00 hardback and £8.99 in paperback and by Simon and Schuster in New York at $35 hardback and $20 in Touchstone paperback. The extract recounts the 1976 meeting between Feldman and Beckett in Berlin where Beckett was rehearsing his plays Footfalls and That Time. (The numbers in brackets refer to the notes in Knowlson's book, reproduced here at the end of the text.)

Around noon on 20 September, during a rehearsal at the Schiller-Theater, the American composer and Professor of Music at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Morton Feldman came to meet Beckett in the small Werkstatt theatre. Feldman, who wore thick horn-rimmed glasses because his eyesight was so poor, related how he met Beckett and their subsequent conversation:

I was led from daylight into a dark theatre, on stage, where I was presented to an invisible Beckett. He shook hands with my thumb and I fell softly down a huge black curtain to the ground. The boy [who had escorted him] giggled. There were murmurs. I was led down steps to a seat in the front aisles ...(96)

After this unpropitious start, Feldman invited Beckett to lunch at a nearby restaurant, where Beckett only drank a beer.

He [Beckett] was very embarassed - he said to me, after a while: 'Mr. Feldman, I don't like opera.' I said to him, 'I don't blame you!' Then he said to me 'I don't like my words being set to music,' and I said, 'I'm in complete agreement. In fact it's very seldom that I've used words. I've written a lot of pieces with voice, and they're wordless.' Then he looked at me again and said, 'But what do you want?' And I said 'I have no idea!' He also asked me why I didn't use existing material ... I said that I had read them all, that they were pregnable, they didn't need music. I said that I was looking for the quintessence, something that just hovered.(97)

Feldman then showed Beckett the score of some music that he had written on some lines from Beckett's script for Film. Showing keen interest in the score, Beckett said that there was only one theme in his life. Then he spelled out this theme.

'May I write it down?'[asked Feldman]. (Beckett himself takes Feldman's music paper and writes down the theme ... It reads 'To and fro in shadow, from outer shadow to inner shadow. To and fro, between unattainable self and unattainable non-self.') ... 'It would need a bit of work, wouldn't it? Well, if I get any further ideas on it, I'll send them on to you.'(98)

At the end of the month, still in Berlin, Beckett mailed to Morton Feldman in Buffalo a card with a note 'Dear Morton Feldman. Verso the piece I promised. It was good meeting you. Best. Samuel Beckett.'(99) On the back of the card was the handwritten text (Beckett never called it a poem) entitled 'Neither', beginning 'to and fro in shadow/ from inner to outer shadow/ from impenetrable self to impenetrable unself/ by way of neither'. The text compares the self and the unself to 'two lit refuges whose doors once neared gently close' and owes one striking image to the play on which he was working so intently: 'unheard footfalls only sound'.

Beckett did not know Feldman's work at all when he wrote the text for him. But, by a strange coincidence, only a few days after posting 'Neither', and in London by this time, he was listening to Patrick Magee reading his own For To End Yet Again on BBC Radio 3, when he noticed that, in the second part of the 'Musica Nova' concert that followed the reading, there was an orchestral piece by Morton Feldman. He listened to it and found he liked it very much.

Last spring I had the great pleasure of hearing for the first time a live performance of Messiaen's extraordinary "Turangalila Symphony".  Little did I know that I would get another chance six months later, when the Simon Bolivar Orchestra under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel performed it at Carnegie Hall.  The performance was exuberant and full of energy, but unfortunately lacking in the detail and clarity that make all of Messiaen's complex rhythmic juxtapositions clear.  The strings, in particular, were pretty mushy in their articulation.   I suppose it would be uncharitable to compare the performance to that of the NY Philharmonic last spring, where all of those details were wonderfully clear.   I was also not too happy with the pianist Jean Yves Thibaudet.  His performance of the "Jardin du Sommeil d'Amour" was severely lacking in the special poetry of Messaien's birdsong inspired melodies; it felt more like sight reading.  (Though of course, all the fiercely difficult and loudly energetic parts were done very well.)   Still, complaints aside, I heard many things that I have never heard before in the piece, and I remain in awe of the splendid originality of Messiaen's music.  The strange combinations of saccharine cosmic bliss and fearsome dissonance are mind-blowing.  Hindu cowboy music!   Music from another planet!