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!

Back in New York, In Full Swing

We are back in New York after an extended period in Vancouver.

The first show I saw was a new piece by the choreographer Pam Tanowitz, whose work we saw last winter and which made me think of her as one of my favorite living choreographers.  The work, entitled, "Sequenzas", was done at the Joyce Theater as part of their "Quadrille" series.  The stage of the Joyce was moved to the center of the theater, and the audience watched from either the remaining existing seats in the auditorium, or from seats on the stage.  Tanowitz's work addressed this idea nicely; it really felt like it was meant to be seen from either side, and it was refreshing to have a change from the normal proscenium viewpoint.  Tanowitz's movement is very much in a post-Cunningham style, both complex rhythmically and quirky and sometimes very witty.  My only problem with the piece was the long stretches with no music, thought the rhythmic thumps of the dancers bare feet were quite fascinating in themselves.  The music was three of Berio's "Sequences" for solo instruments (viola, harp, trombone) and a David Lang duet.  (Tanowitz often favors contemporary music).  The music, however, did not really interact with the movement, but rather served as a kind of background or alternative strand of meaning, in the Cunningham style.   I missed the intricate coordination the movement with the complex rhythms of the Nancarrow string quartets that Tanowitz used in the last piece I saw.   Ultimately, for this musically oriented person, an hour of pure movement was too much for me to keep totally focused on.   I eagerly look forward to her next piece, though!

Vera was not here for this show, as she was in Italy helping a friend.   I also saw/heard another Balanchine-Stravinsky evening at the NYC Ballet, this time with our friend David M from Vancouver.   I tried an experiment this time; balking at the price of the center tickets in the second tier, I bought some very cheap tickets on the side, right over the orchestra.  I missed central perspective of the intricate stage assemblages that Balanchine creates with his large groups of dancers, but there was certainly plenty to see from a different perspective.  And the sound of the orchestra was crystal clear, which at times made me want to shut my eyes and just concentrate on the music.  But my eyes were always drawn back to the stage.   I especially enjoyed the the "Symphony in Three Movements".  The music is one of my favorite pieces of Stravinsky's, and I was struck this time by the similarity in the ways that both Balanchine and Stravinsky use large groups, masses of instruments or crowds of dancers, moving them around, both colliding and dissolving.  The other highlight was "Movements for Piano and Orchestra", a marvel of musical concision and choreographic intricacy which I could watch endlessly if given a choice.

Sandwiched in-between these two dance shows, I heard a concert (also with David) of music of one the 20th century's other great modernists, Duke Ellington.   The Juilliard Jazz Orchestra put on a fabulous concert of all Ellington; the first half was all music from 1930 and before, and the second half all from the now neglected music he wrote after the war.   It was amazing to hear how the arrangers and the Juilliard students managed to recreate the sound of those classic 1920's recordings and bring them to life in live performances.   Ellington had such a brilliant and creative sense of how to compose with his orchestra; each of these short pieces has an astonishing degree of inventiveness.   Banjos and growls aplenty.  And, in the second half, we heard the same inventiveness, although composed with the more conventional jazz orchestral sound of the post war period.   One amazing piece was "The Clothed Woman", which has an extended piano solo which sometimes ventures into Debussy territory, and even, to my ears, 1940's Messiaen.   The students were excellent soloists.  The first half was conducted by Vince Giordano, who has been leading a swing band in New York for many, many years and probably knows more than just about anybody about this music.  (And I do remember back in the 1980's, when Vera and I danced to his band at a party.)

Lastly, it was back to Juilliard at the end of the week to hear a concert done by their new music ensemble. I knew nothing about any of the composers before I went, but sometimes you just have to take a chance to hear what is out there.  The results, were, as to be expected, disappointing.  That's part of the game of going to a concert of new music, though.  I count myself lucky if I hear a single piece on a concert which I really like.  The most striking thing in this concert was that each of the pieces was about 20-30 minutes in length, with no immediately discernible attempt to provide significant contrast and variety;  what ever happened to movements?   It takes a masterful sense of shape and construction to sustain a work over that period of time, and rather what you got  instead were very similar ideas repeated over and over again.  There was one piece for cello and ensemble that had a fairly continuous lyrical line throughout the piece.  At about half way through I realized I had not heard a single staccato or pizzicato note. I wanted one!   I did get some pizzicato in the very last notes of the piece.   I'm being harsh here, but I think all of the pieces could have been much shorter without losing any of their ideas.   Which brings me to a pet peeve of mine, the fact that composers virtually never have editors.   When someone writes a book, there are always (at least there used to be) competent editors who would often get writers to clarify and cut their ideas.  I am thinking of the legendary Max Perkins.  Would that many composers could have the same resources.  Part of the problem, of course, is the nature of the medium.  Complex notated musical scores do not lend themselves easily to sustained advance consideration, and the financial resources available to composers are very slim.  It would be nice if every work was given a rehearsed reading, with the composer then able to return to his or her desk and revise and make an entirely new set of scores and parts.   Operas, though, are often workshopped and edited, perhaps because of the enormous financial resources (and risk) involved in putting on an opera.   But, the music must go on.   There was a healthy crowd on a Saturday night at the concert (it was free, after all), and if people like Joel Sachs (the conductor and programmer) didn't pursue this music, the musical world would atrophy and die.   So I would happily go again, because you never know what you will hear.

Goodbye Japan

We spent our last day in Kyoto wandering around the city somewhat aimlessly.   We saw the Nishiki market, a local food market which has all kinds of indescribable delicacies.
We then caught the 5 PM bullet train back to Tokyo, and then another train to the airport, where we got our late night flight back to Vancouver.   When I was going through security, I removed my shoes (which is not required in Japan) because they have metal in them.   A pair of slippers instantly appeared for me to wear as I walked through the metal detector.  (Never mind that the Japanese slippers are always too small for my very large feet.)
This somehow symbolic of how Japan works; people are incredibly polite, thoughtful, and friendly, and every potential event is anticipated.   In our hotel we were provided with slippers to wear in the room (one is never meant to wear your street shoes indoors), and a separate pair of slippers to wear  in the bathroom.   Everything is incredibly efficient and well run, and the aesthetic value of many things is paramount.     All of this makes for an excellent visitor's experience, but I have no idea how this all feels to someone who lives there.  Does it become oppressive?  Do people get tired of constantly shifting from one pair of slippers to another?    If I were there for a long time would I start to miss the anarchy and rudeness which is part of the essential character of places like New York?   I really don't know.

What does strike me though is that by visiting Japan, you encounter many different ways of thinking about things, from urban spaces to interpersonal relations.   These ideas often challenge our own Western notions, and make you think again about how we conceptualize our world.  Consider, for example, that in general streets in Tokyo don't have names.   (The larger streets have been given names, mostly as a result of Western influences.)  There are neighborhoods, sub-neighborhoods, and gradually smaller chunks of the city that are identified by numbers, and numbered not necessarily according to any logic of adjacency.   While this makes sense to those who live there, I suppose, it represents a whole different way of conceptualizing city spaces than what we in the west are used to.   For me, this is just one somewhat trivial example of how some of the things we take for granted in the West can be thought of differently.  And while Japan has certainly absorbed and in many cases improved on ideas that come from the West, there is a sense in which they still somehow maintain a very distinctive and unique way of doing things which is very Japanese.  And, sometimes, you think they really do have a better way of doing things that we in the West could learn from.

I can't wait to go back to Japan and see more.

Kyoto Temples and Gardens

Kyoto abounds in both Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines.   In the context of Western religions, one of the striking things about Buddhist temples is that they almost always include a garden component. In fact, in some cases, it is the garden which is the focal point of the temple.  How different from our Christian churches!   I won't try to understand why this difference exists, but, needless to say, for me it makes the whole experience of visiting a religious site very different.   So in Florence we spent our time visiting churches; in Kyoto we spent our time visiting temples with gardens.   One can specifically seek out the most famous and spectacular of the the temples, and one can also just wander the neighborhoods, checking out many of the unrenowned yet often intriguing local temples.  And there are a lot of them!

But we did visit some of the most famous ones.   For example, there is the famous "Golden Pavilion" (Kinkakuji), which is an impossibly picturesque building, covered in gold and set next to a small lake and beautiful gardens.   It should be noted that my pictures carefully disguise the fact that the site is extremely crowded with tourists, which certainly interferes with but does not destroy one's appreciation of the beauty of the landscape.

This path is closed to the public, which is why it is empty.  Standing behind me are selfie-snapping hordes.

One of the things we learned about Buddhism during our trip was the fact that there are many, many different sects of Buddhism.   Thus Zen Buddhism was founded, and then gradually many different variants of Zen Buddhism emerged, each, of course, with its own temple.

We visited one of the oldest Zen temples, Kenninji Temple, founded in 1202.   This was much less crowded that the more famous ones, and you could wander at will in most of the rooms and garden.  The garden featured the famous Zen style of raked gravel and rocks for contemplation.

An interior room with a screen painting:

View of an interior courtyard with a rock garden; the three stones in the middle represent Buddha and two Zen monks.

 This part of the temple had a recently painted extravagant ceiling.

We also went to a suburb of Kyoto called Arashiyama, famous for its bamboo groves and temple gardens.   The bamboo groves are visually striking;  

We also visited a temple in the area, Tenryuji.  It is famous for its gardens, which were laid out in the 14th century, and have stayed more or less as they were conceived.  (The buildings are not the originals, and date to the 19th century.)   The gardens are famous for the rocks and the concept of "borrowed" scenery, as the view of distant mountains are part of the whole plan of the garden.

More leaning and propped up trees:

In scroll paintings one often sees what I think are very stylized and exaggerated depictions of trees.   When you see trees like this in person, you realize the the images are more realistic than stylized.

 Another impossibly twisted tree:

The trunk of the same tree:

Leaving the town of Arishiyama, we took a wonderful old two car urban train through suburban Kyoto neighborhoods.  It was like riding an old trolley.

We saw a special exhibit at the Kyoto National Museum entitled  "The Art of Zen".   It was displayed in a beautiful new building that houses special exhibits for the museums.  The older part of the museum, a building built in the 1890's, was close for renovation, so we didn't see the permanent collection.   The exhibit had some wonderful landscape paintings which allowed your imagination to fill in the details.  But there were also too many portraits of important people in the history of Zen Buddhism.  They weren't very interesting for me.

We also visited Sanjusangen-do Temple.  It is famous for its 1,001 statues of the Thousand Armed Kannon, dating from the 13th century.   It is a remarkable sight, housed in a temple built at the same time, a building reputed to be the longest wooden building in the world.  They are very strict about not allowing picture taking, as it is a religious site.   But it is a very special and obsessive vision; each of the statues are slightly different.  

Here is a picture from the internet.   The statues in front are Hindu deities; I'm not quite sure what they are doing there.

Kyoto Castles and Shrines

We visited the Nijo Castle, a fortress built by the Shoguns in 1603.   Because it is a castle and not a temple, the architecture tends to be more flamboyant, as it was designed to impress any visitors.   There were numerous rooms where supplicants at different levels were required to congregate, and many colorful screen paintings on the walls.  (Although the originals are now removed for preservation's sake.)   The castle also features the famous "nightingale floors", floors designed to emit high pitched sounds whenever anyone walks on them, and thus alert the guards to the presence of intruders.   Though when there are hundreds of slipper clad tourists trudging through, the effect is quite different, though still quite striking.   The castle also features some very beautiful rock gardens; we stopped at a tea room overlooking one of them.  

The entrance gate:

Exterior of the castle:

The rock gardens:

One of the highlights of our stay in Kyoto was a visit to the Fushimi Inari Shrine.    This is a Shinto shrine, located on a small mountain in the southern part of Kyoto.   It is a shrine to Inari, the Shinto goddess of rice.   There are various shrines at the base of the mountain, but the truly spectacular part is the thousands of orange gates (torii) that lead up to the top of the mountain.   There really are thousands of them.   It is an indescribable sensation to be walking through a sea of orange gates, while around you there is a beautiful green forest.  Needless to say, the beginning part is extremely crowded with tourists, but the further up you climb, the fewer people there are.   Along the way, there are many small mini shrines, with mini gates.   And foxes are the messenger of Inari, so there are many states of foxes of all shapes and sizes.    We hiked all the way to the top of the mountain.


A large fox statue at the base of the mountain:

A stage for musical performances?

Vera had the foresight to wear orange pants:

Mini gates:

The gates as seen from outside the path;

Foxes and mini shrines:

We keep climbing, and there are more and more gates!

Bamboo forest outside the gates:

Orange and green, everywhere!

A basin for ritual washing:

Still climbing!

One of the smaller shrines at the top.

All of the gates have inscriptions on them, apparently naming the donors. etc.   (The gates are gifts by people or businesses as offerings to the goddess, in hopes of good luck and prosperity.)  But you only see the inscriptions when you are heading downwards.

I saw this guarding a ritual washing station at a temple near our hotel: