Grab Bag #1

A bunch of stuff with something or other to do with classical music: a Korean car, an Atlanta rapper, a blockbuster movie, a couple text messages. The “#1″ reflects my earnest hope to do this a few more times.

• I rode home from Detroit on December 20 in the backseat of a Hyundai Sonata, a car whose name has always puzzled me, since in its form one can detect no exposition, development, or recapitulation. Recommending it as a car name is that the word “sonata” sounds foreign in a nonthreatening way, unlike the word “Hyundai,” for better or worse. (Note: I drive a 2007 Elantra and really like it.) Also, to the extent that consumers associate classical music with the automobile in question, the associations are likely to be positive, connoting smoothness and luxury, unlike the potential associations for the “Hyundai Webern’s 5 Pieces for Orchestra.” Nonetheless, it was a spacious backseat in which to ride, and certainly classical fans who are in the market for a midsize family sedan could do worse.

• Here is a song called “Classical,” by ATL rapper Gucci Mane, that will show you what people who know very little about classical music think classical music sounds like. You only need to listen to the first 30 seconds or so to get the idea:

As a fan of both classical music and hip-hop, I am a little embarrassed.

• James Horner wrote the score for James Cameron’s supermegablockbuster “Avatar,” which I saw on Sunday. As expected from this composer, he has pastiched together a bunch of musical elements that have little to do with each other and neglected the opportunity to do anything in terms of establishing a structure. During the parts exploring the life of the native inhabitants of the moon Pandora, he lays on the “world music” percussion and singing so thickly and indiscriminately that it threatened (for me) to snuff out the life of the film. (At one point, he even has a chorus singing “Eywa,” the name of the deity that is spoken approximately 50 million other times during the film. I get it, Hornyboy.)

Horner does make one curious decision, which is to pay homage to Rachmaninov’s First Symphony by stealing its four-note opening motive, orchestrating it identically, and playing it at various grim martial moments during the film. (Chatter on the Internets indicates that this is a Horner signature; I am unwilling to systematically listen to Horner scores to verify.) After leaving the theater, I expounded on this to my moviegoing companion, who asked whether Rachmaninov’s work was in fact also inspired by nine-foot-tall blue aliens, because then the re-use would totally make sense here. Since no such inspiration has been documented, one is left to wonder whether Horner thought almost no one would notice (as has been the case in the past) or was trying to express an esoteric but profound connection between Rach 1 and the subject matter in question. I’m guessing Door #1.

• If you want to get a feel for the possibly fabricated yet totally hilarious adventures of America’s youthful dipsomaniacs, libertines, and narcotics abusers, texts from last night is your go-to resource. Given the vast scope of the site, classical music is touched on occasionally, or at least twice. This one:

Only you could turn Mozart into a stripper song

made me wonder: What Mozart “song” specifically was being employed in this unexpected yet appealing manner? One has to balance the impulse to select music that seems suited for such an endeavor (“La ci darem la mano,” anyone?) with the fact that the most common example of Mozart’s music close at hand for most people is probably “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,” which who knows how you use that. (Readers: Which Mozart piece do you think was being used? Suggest in the comments below!)

This other one, which I will not quote here for reasons of taste, inspires less speculation, with one exception: Were the implications of this text followed to their logical end, the blind auditions for string-player positions in symphonies would be totally different.

Go-Go Handel! (Who Did You Call?) Go-Go Handel! (What’s His Name?)

When I am not listening to classical music, often I am instead listening to go-go, the dance music native to, and unique to, the DMV. (I will allow Wikipedia to introduce the music to the curious.) “Okay,” you are thinking, “but your blog is called DMV Classical, so why should your readers care about go-go?” Well, the large institutions of classical music seem all aflutter about what to do to increase audience engagement, and I would venture that no audience excels the go-go audience in its engagement with its chosen music.

Despite near-zero levels of corporate investment, and despite advertising so marginal that even the best listings of go-go concerts are in part compilations of flyers posted hither and yon in the DMV, go-go bands pack houses seven nights a week. Though commercial recordings of go-go have never taken off, bootlegs of live shows (aka PA tapes, even when in CD or .zip form) circulate like beneficial viruses. Partisans eagerly debate go-go issues on the Internet and around town. (Just a week ago, on the Red Line, I heard two young women discussing which of their two high schools had the realest go-go concerts.)

Even nonparticipating residents of the DMV are never far from the go-go swing: Driving, biking, or walking around the city (especially south of Florida Ave./U Street and east of 16th), you will hear go-go music coming out of car stereos, cranked-up headphones, apartment windows, and even (further east and south) at backyard barbeques during the summertime, wafting into the breeze. Palaces of culture like the Kennedy Center, I am guessing, desperately seek such ubiquity in the minds of their target audience.

In addition, since go-go has survived without the commercial recording industry, it is exceptionally well-positioned to survive the precipitous decline of the commercial recording industry (which has, of course, affected classical music more than most genres).

Why go-go? In part, because go-go is amazing music. (If you think I’m wrong, please click on this link. How else can Richard Strauss sound so funky?) But classical music is amazing too (each in its own way, people). So we look further, and we quickly find a clue: The go-go concert experience, the rock of go-go’s continued vitality and viability, encourages and demands — indeed, could not survive without — the enthusiastic participation of the audience. This contrasts strongly with classical concerts, in which the audience often seems to be superfluous to the music-making.

Admittedly, often one will read quotes from classical musicians indicating that the crowd response shapes their performances. Here’s one from Hilary Hahn that I’m including just because I knew where to find it, not because it mentions Twitter and I’m courting Internet memes:

The problem [with tweeting during performances] is that acoustic performers rely on the audience’s attention and focus and can tell when the audience isn’t mentally present. Your listening is part of our interpretive process. If you’re not really listening, we’re not getting the feedback of energy from the hall, and then we might as well be practicing for a bunch of people peering in the window. It’s just not as interesting when the cycle of interpretation is broken.

I believe her, but how the hell can I, as an audience member, tell how the quality and intensity of our attention shapes Hahn’s interpretation? If I stare at her really hard and wish for it, will she use just a little more portamento? Contrast that with, say, a Chuck Brown concert, in which he always takes the time to sing the following, over a beat, to the audience:

Thank you so much for coming out tonight
Tell you nothin’ but the truth, you’re lookin’ outta sight
Show the world what you got, this is your spot
Do it how you wanna because we love you a lot

I’ve been to Hilary Hahn concerts, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t love me a lot! And such love is shown to go-go audiences because it must be given in return — if the audience does not participate in the call-and-response, the whole show sounds totally stupid, like a one-sided dialogue. In fact, engaging in popular calls-and-responses (like “Hold up!” “WAIT A MINUTE!”) is a surefire way to goose a lackluster show, because the audience knows and loves these chants and expects to participate in them.

But there’s more! If being loved and chanting does not meet your need for audience interaction, you can pass to the stage a slip of paper with the names of people in the audience who are celebrating a birthday. The talker will read these names and wish them a happy birthday. You can also make requests through said slips of paper. If you are a frequent attendee at a certain group’s shows, the talker will likely single you out for recognition during a percussion break (“14th Street Crew!”). Here’s a video in which a crankin’ go-go band stops the concert to warn someone that his Impala is illegally parked and will be towed. This is a kind of concern for the customer that classical performers rarely, if ever, show.

You are probably saying to yourself: “But Andrew, no classical concert could ever bring the audience into the music-making experience the way go-go does, with everyone knowing the words and hitting their cues!” And every December, classical music proves you wrong, because this is the one time of year that audiences get to help perform the most popular choral masterpiece known to English-speaking humans: the Messiah.

At the Kennedy Center’s annual Messiah sing-along, for example, people begin forming lines hours before the event, eager to pile into the Concert Hall and join a couple thousand others in singing their hearts out. Past participants have told me of people being turned away at the door. If it’s not the single most popular thing the Kennedy Center does all year, it’s certainly a strong candidate.

Hmmm.

•

Posting is about to get super-sparse for a couple weeks, so I’m going to take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy holiday season, including those of you who are already celebrating your specific holiday and those of you who (like me) are mainly celebrating the extra paid holidays coming up. Your attention is my gift (really! I mean it!). Thanks for reading.

We’re Just Incompatible: Me and the National Gallery

The concert of music by Fred Lehrdal, John Corigliano, and James (not Troy) Aikman at the National Gallery of Art on Sunday was probably every bit as good listening as Anne Midgette made it sound in the Post Magazine. And it’s free, so no excuse not to attend, in theory. And yet I wrote this blog entry instead of being at the concert. (Then I had to find time to edit it, which explains why it’s only being posted today.) Why?

For me, the National Gallery’s presentation of its admirable series of free concerts makes them virtually unattendable in reality. Here’s why:

• The time is unmanageable. The concerts are held at 6:30 pm on Sunday nights, and you normally need to get there at least an hour early to get a reasonable seat, since no tickets are provided. So you can either eat dinner at 4:30 pm or 8:30 pm. Neither of those are times I normally eat dinner. 8:30 seems more reasonable, except that after intermission all I would be able to think about would be dinner, plus it’s Sunday night so you would pretty much have to go to bed immediately after dinner to get up for the work week. My normal solution is to head to Gallery Place and have a burrito at Chipotle first, which shaves a few minutes, but what if you wanted to have a civilized sit-down dinner with another individual? Probably not everyone else has to eat on a schedule like I do, but if you do, it’s really hard to make the NGOA concerts fit that schedule.
• The West Garden Court’s acoustics are terrible. Tonight’s concert is being held as I type this in the East Gallery Auditorium, which fulfills the normal classical concert space expectations of being rectangular and enclosed with a big bank of seats in front of a stage. Normally, NGOA concerts are held in the West Garden Court, a beautiful space and a horrible place in which to listen to a concert. The marble from which the space is constructed naturally produces the most profound resonant effect you could ever dream of, and the high ceilings make sure that any echoing noise will travel a good long while before coming back down to audience level, resulting in a great blurring effect that has zapped many a concert of its sharpness and general poise.
• Also the West Garden Court provides remarkably few good seats. A big fountain takes up the center of the space, ringed by a walkway, with some garden areas (truth in advertising!) surrounding the walkway while allowing pedestrian passage to the fountain. Beyond the garden areas is a final rectangular margin of unobstructed marble. On one of these last rectangular sections sit the performers, facing…the fountain. So the best possible seats acoustically (at least in a normal hall) would actually be in the drink. But you might want to mitigate the resonant effects by sitting up close, in which case you would have to get in front of the stampede to the remarkably few seats in the walkway leading from the rectangular margin to the fountain. All the other seats obstruct one’s view of at least half of the stage, not to mention obstructing the hearing of at least half the notes. The seats are also of the temporary folding plastic kind and not especially kind to those with posterior amplitude.

One of the themes of my various ponderings about classical music is that, on the whole, presenters and performers ignore the body to pitch things solely to the mind. The NGOA’s selection of performers and repertoire have frequently impressed me, not to mention the generally top-notch program notes; I just can’t figure out how to enjoy it while sitting, either prematurely full of food or direly empty of food, in one of the narrow, mislocated seats in the place where the concerts are most often held. I’m sure that there are all sorts of constraints on the NGOA experience of which I am unaware and that they are doing the best they can within those constraints. But it is a shame.

Am I completely full of it, or is this concert series as annoying to others as it is to me? Or are there other concert series with which you find yourselves incompatible?

Commemorate Good Times, C’mon

Commenter “fn” left some stimulating thoughts on the 12 Cellos of the Berlin Philharmonic review, which I commend to your attention. Always a pleasure to be disagreed with in such an intelligent and agreeable manner. I wanted to follow up specifically on one comment:

And, by the way, the fall of the Berlin Wall was a big deal. Especially, when you’re German.

Looking back at the “Politics as Usual” section of that review, I can see what prompted that comment. I know it was a big deal, and I regret that I did not make that clear. The concert came the day after the 20th anniversary of the first big crack in the Iron Curtain, an event that unified a great city that happened to be the home of the 12 cellos, who in turn had chosen the day after said anniversary to perform a concert in (the metropolitan area of) the capital of a country that played an integral role in keeping freedom a going concern in said city. I’m not German, but I do have that heritage (cf: Lindemann), and I visited Berlin a couple times as a teenager and wandered around the ruins of the Wall and contemplated what it all meant in an emotionally charged teenage way. As fn noted, for those who are German, it’s even more of a big deal. So obviously the mere fact of the concert had emotional power for many attendees, in addition to whatever went on musically, given the circumstances.

What remains an open question for me is whether having 20 minutes of speechifying before the 12 cellists even played a note is the best possible way to commemorate the anniversary of this highly momentous event. (Much less 20 minutes of these particular speeches, but we’re going to assume for the rest of this blog entry that the quality of speechifying is exogenous to the concert.) For me, it would have been much more powerful if one of the cellists had spoken a few words before one of the pieces, on behalf of the group, about what it meant to them to be from where they’re from and to play in the DMV on that day. The 12 Cellos could then have dedicated the next piece to trying to refract or reflect on the emotions of the evening. What a heightened sensation that would have produced in, say, “Für mich soll’s rote Rosen regnen” (It Shall Rain Red Roses for Me), which according to the program notes is Berliner Hildegard Knef’s “secret hymn to her city.”

Still, the German Embassy helped to host the evening, so it was inevitable that there would be exogenous speech-making. From my perspective, the problem with doing it before the concert begins is that it both further separates the audience from the musical experience and seems fundamentally unconnected to it. The speech (well, a shorter speech) could easily have come right after the solemn Bach Contrapunctus with which the cellos began the evening—glowingly transparent minor-key playing with that Picardy third of hope at the end. Then the speech is part of the fabric of the concert.

We all love music so much that we are going to continue to use it commemorate mighty events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall. So let’s think about how best to do that, so that both the music and the commemoration are as powerful as they should be. Readers—any thoughts?

Islands are Surrounded by Water, After All (UPDATED 10/26/09)

Today, north on Route 29 from the Silver Spring metro, a guy was playing Handel’s Water Music on a set of steel drums. Specifically, the Menuet from the first suite in F major, in an understandably sparse arrangement. I passed on my way to do an errand, but dropped a buck in his bucket because of his inventive repertoire choice and the fact that he was making it fun. He nodded, and we both continued, him segueing into the Bourrée. Came back about seven minutes later and he was still plugging away at the 300-year-old music.

The point of this post is that this guy is pretty cool (if I owned an iPhone, I would have taken some video), but if you want to take a larger point, it could be: Classical music still holds a lot of appeal, so much so that street musicians will transcribe it to make money, and those who fret for the future of classical music should remember that in some ways we’re dealing from a position of strength.

UPDATE: I have been informed that this guy also plays Water Music at the Bethesda metro station. Also, I heard him from the platform on Sunday, and after he did some aqua tunes he launched into the first movement of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. So if you want to hear the Best-Loved Classics done on steel drums, go to Silver Spring or Bethesda. And give the guy some money.

Finally, Something Inspiring on that Giant HD Screen at Nats Park

I got an awesome press release from the Washington National Opera about the “Opera in the Outfield” simulcast of The Barber of Seville at Nats Park, which as you may know is happening this evening. I personally cannot go due to my desire to set a P.R. in the half-marathon I am running tomorrow, but others are apparently bound by no such constraints, as 20,000 people have completed optional reservations to sit in the pastures normally patrolled by Josh Willingham and Willie Harris and watch a 19th-century comedy.

The press release noted that the following things are scheduled to occur at the simulcast:

• The Armed Forces Color Guard and 42 members of the Air Force Band will present and retire the National Colors
• 42 members of the Air Force Band will play the Armed Forces Medley
• Pre-game activities will include a screening of Warner Brothers’ “The Rabbit of Seville”
• The Nat Pack [but not Clint! If you don't warn people about Clint, you don't get to use Clint! I think that's in the Geneva Convention somewhere -ALM] will bring out the T-shirt cannon for T-shirt tosses
• Raffles will include a $100 Mars gift certificate and a $500 shopping spree to Target
• Special guests will include Miss D.C. Jennifer Corey, D.C. City Council Chairman Vincent Gray, and the ever-popular [their compound modifier] Red M&M

So basically it’s a Nats game, but with more talented players. (Sorry, Ryan Z.!) Here are some things WNO could do to help Nats fans make the transition to opera even more seamlessly:

• The chorus should consist of a bunch of elderly gentlemen with scoring notebooks and transistor radios
• Everyone should refer to Placido Domingo as “P. Dingo” (although we should all be doing that anyway)
• There should be one singer with an incredibly powerful voice who is extraordinarily clumsy
• Every so often, one of the singers should pick up a prop and fling it wildly across the stage for no apparent reason
• After an exceptionally well-sung aria, the sound system should play “Bustin’ Loose,” and the singer should do a slow lap around the stage to soak in the love from the audience
• Kiss Cam at intermission
• After intermission, the opera should feature a bunch of new singers, one named “Saul,” none of whom are as good as the singers they replaced
• A bunch of fans of the Metropolitan Opera and the Opera Company of Philadelphia should come to the game and cheer whenever the WNO’s production falters
• An orchestral version of “Three Little Birds” after the final curtain to accompany the mass exodus from the stadium

Of course, that’s if the production wants to be Nats-like. If the production wants to succeed, I guess they should do everything differently.

13 Miles and Running, or, Give Me Body

Today I did a 13-miler in Sligo Creek Park and lands northward and decided to double-check on the post below by whipping out Schubert’s Ninth once I got into Wheaton Regional Park. Yes — it is wonderful running music! And once again I got the ridiculous high that comes from endorphins coursing through my veins, a forest, lambent in the morning, cocooning me in green, and the memory of an orchestra busily pushing the listener’s spirits heavenwards. It’s like an all-consuming ache that contains its own fulfillment. I never get bored or tired of it.

After I completed the finale, still running, I reflected on how, at this point in my life, the park seems like the natural habitat for D. 944 — hearing it in a concert hall, as fun as it would be, would also be something of a letdown, as the concert would lack the additional accoutrements with which I normally experience the symphony. Schumann spoke of the symphony’s “heavenly lengths,” and what’s more heavenly, as lengths go, than 13 miles on a gorgeous day running on a trail alongside a rippling creek?

The best Schubert 9 I’ve ever heard, no contest, was when the Berlin Phil and Simon Rattle came to town six years ago — lean, light, and precise, yet deriving a terrific cumulative force from those virtues, such that the Allegro vivace finale (especially) seemed to lift you out of your seat. If someone told me they were planning a similar performance in New York next week, I’d do my damndest to go, even if it were in a gas station somewhere. But getting to hear and see it, through some dimension-distorting reproduction device, while running in the park would really be the best thing. As will be frequently stated in various forms on this blog, music can engage both the mind and the body, and I love music most when it’s doing both.

26 Miles and Running

If you’re running the Marine Corps Marathon, the standard four-month training plan begins about now, and you’re probably looking at all those 18- and 20-mile runs you’re slated to complete and thinking “How the hell am I going to do those? I get bored at movies that take substantially less time than those runs will.” I trained for and then ran the MCM last year, in the thoroughly mediocre time of 4:56:57, and one thing I can attest to is that classical music is way underrated as running music.

Consistent with its place in the overall musical marketplace, classical music has not made an apparent dent in the running community’s consciousness. Apart from the “I’m a Runner” interview with Carter Brey, I’ve never seen Brahms or Mendelssohn mentioned in Runner’s World — more like Eminem, Coldplay, and even the classical music world’s favorite bogeyperson, Britney Spears. Yet the canon provides works with enough imagination and thrust to sustain interest for an hour, or even longer. Surely such music has a role to play when you know you’ll be out for three hours on that run.

If you’re treading with an iPod, you’d have to download 11 songs of standard length to match the duration of (say) “Eroica.” Classical music: What a bargain! If your mind, like mine, is equipped such that you can play back music in your head without recourse to recordings, that’s even better — you can isolate your favorite four-minute stretches of classical works, then repeat them endlessly until it feels as though your limbs and Schumann operate as one.

The key is not to mess around with works that will make you feel logy or alienated — you want your classical running soundtrack informed by the dynamism of the dance, to entertain both mind and body and to mesh effortlessly with the runner’s high I sincerely hope you also get at some point while running 20 miles. Here are my Top 5 works to run by:

5. Franz Joseph Haydn, Symphony no. 100 (“Military”). Big Papa Haydn makes the first of what will undoubtedly be a wildly disproportionate number of appearances on this blog with the “Military,” which I distinguish from the other London symphonies by its bouncy Allegretto slow movement, featuring emphatic “Turkish” percussion that keeps those knees up. I have vivid memories of pulling myself through a punishingly humid 15-miler in Sligo Creek Park with its crashes of cymbal.

4. Felix Mendelssohn, Symphony no. 4 (“Italian”). If you are trying to make a good time in a race, some plans advise that you turn up the pace for the last part of training runs, to simulate leaving it all on the course. No better way to do that than to trot at a brisk clip for the first three movements of this sunny opus and then get smacked in the face by the first minor-key chords of the Saltarello finale. No matter how many times I play this one in my mind, that opening always makes me push the throttle. The first and third movements, too, provide unfailingly buoyant music, with the third being pretty endlessly repeatable if you so desire.

3. Antonin Dvorak, Symphony no. 9 (“From the New World”). The trio section of the Scherzo of this one, also endlessly repeated, did me the great honor of getting me around the dead zone of Hains Point during the marathon. So many miles with so few people to cheer you on! In another symphony with a dynamite opening to a rousing finale, Dvorak also obliges the struggling runner by including an extremely memorable slow-movement theme that nevertheless has a usefully distinct and pace-able rhythm. This probably would be higher on my list if, unaccountably, it had not been such a late addition to my running rep — I didn’t think of using it for this purpose until a month before the race. I was too busy with the top two.

2. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Symphony no. 41 (“Jupiter”). I am not going to lie to you: The opening of the slow movement here is pretty rough for our purposes. Too many sighing pauses! But Lil’ Wolfie eventually fills in those gaps with helpful filigree. Plus, if you can get through that slow movement, you get so much else: the first movement’s grand harrumphing opening measures to push you on and little slinky second theme to keep your feet feeling light; a nice steady pulse in the minuet supporting catchy melodies; and that finale, a riotous burst of heavens-storming activity that allows you to repeat not only the exposition but also the development and recapitulation. It’s right in the score! Though you are probably not supposed to repeat the development and recap for three miles (a.k.a over 30 minutes), as I did one fine July morning last summer. This would be an easy choice for best all-time were it not for

1. Franz Schubert, Symphony no. 9 (“Great”). It’s an hour long even if you’re not embellishing it, making it the perfect iPod companion. Remember how propulsive all the moving parts in the “Jupiter” finale were? Schubert extends that for almost the entire symphony here. (Its endless churning has earned it the nickname of the “Bursitis Symphony” from string players, a fact I know from Charles T. Downey; you can make it your iliotibial band syndrome symphony! Though I’d recommend not.) And Schubert’s slow movement is marked Andante con moto, thoroughly grateful emphasis mine.

Some of my happiest memories of running are of waking up just after the crack of dawn (to enjoy a semblance of cool weather during the summer), getting it rolling in Montgomery County’s portion of Rock Creek Park, and then letting Schubert’s finest play in my head; the scherzo, indomitable and athletic without being ponderous, and the cries for joy and accumulations of notes in the finale of the finale resonated in my mind with the glowing-green trees and the occasional shafts of early morning light filtering down through them onto the trail. And, thanks to the miracle of numerous repeats, I have a whole lot of memories like this.

I was originally going to provide some additional works with features to like, but we’re already way over anything that could be considered a conscionable length for this post, so I’ll save that for another day. If you have a suggestion for Classical Music to Run By, though, be sure to leave it in the comments below — I’m still doing a 12- to 16-mile long run every weekend, and while that’s way easier than 20, there’s still plenty of time in which the support of suitable masterworks would be much appreciated.