Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano
In his notes on these pieces Messiaen gives more than two paragraphs of his very idiomatic theoretical explanation of the music and his equally personal metaphysical symbolism intended through it. After that he says:
Après ces explications tecniques et colorées, on comprendera pert-être mieux le petite poème mystique qui sert d'exergue à la pièce: «Mystère, rais de lumière dans la nuit - réfraction de la joie, les oiseax de slience - la personne du Verbe dans un nature humaine - mariage des natures humaines et divines en Jésus-Christ.
After these technical and coloristic explanations, one will perhaps understand better the little mystical poem that serves as an exegesis to the piece: Mystery, rays of light in the night - refraction of the joy, the birds of silence - the person of The Word in a human nature - the marriage of the natures human and divine in Jesus Christ.
The pieces have recurring themes, in this one most prominently the theme of the first "Regard" that of God which is in counterpoint to a myriad of bird songs and other thematic material.
I don't know if these 20 Visions have had more papers written about the complexities, theoretical, metaphysical, symbolic, thematic, bird song, etc. than any other 20th century work but I'll bet it's in the top five for that. I should go through all of those online and put out a list of them.
"Oh, yeah, you're the François-Joseph Fétis of our age. "
ReplyDeleteNah. I'm more of a Hanslick guy.
:-)
A phony and ignorant reactionary? Virgil Thomson got him about right:
DeleteIn themiddl eof the 1850s he had written a book on Beauty in Music. Thereafter, at the university and in print, he posed as world-expert and final authority on the subject. A classical education and a facile pen enabled him to defend his assumed position with ingenuity and wit. [Lacking both, you don't]. His determination to uphold the cause of classicism in music involved him in systematic denial of the artistic validity of Liszt, Berlioz, Wagner, Bruckner, Hugo Wolf, Verdi and Richard Strauss. He barely tolerated Tchaikovsky and Dvorak, ignored wholly the rising movement in Russia and France. Henselt, Lachner and Johan Strauss he always mentioned benevolently. The dead - Schumann, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Weber, Beethoven, Mozart, Handel, Bach - he treated with respect. The only living composer of class he deigned to defend was Brahms. His banner Hanslick carried aloft as the banner of counter-revolution till his own death in 1904.
I know how you know about him, that ass Henry Pleasants having produced a translated collection of some of his stuff. He was more his reincarnation than you are, reactionary that that idiot was. Thomson concluded his piece on him:
Having gone through my two provable indictments in reverse order, I am now back to the first, which is the matter of feeling. For me there is no warmth in the man, no juice, no passion for music. Sensuality, grace, some sparkle, a gift for ridicule and a colossal vanity shine through his selected reviews. So does the insincerity of his pretended love for Brahms's music. He states it over and over, but he cannot make it glow. What comes through everything is an ever-so-careful conformism to the bourgeois tastes of his own time, which, I am very sorry to say, are still the tastes of Bourgeois Vienna at home and abroad. But he did not invent even these. He invented nothing but the style and attitude of the modern newspaper review. That, with all its false profundity and absurd pretensions to "sound" judgment, he will probably have to defend at everybody's Last Judgment. He was second-rate clean through, and he had no heart. Max Graf thinks highly of Hanslick's literary gift. "His essays and articles," say Dr. Graf in his excellent book, Critic and Composer, "have been published in twelve volumes, in which his intelligence, charm, and clarity, and wit are preserved, like drugs and poisons in cut-glass vessels on the shelves of a pharmacy." Venom from contented rattlesnakes" was the late Percy Hammond's term for similar critical contributions.
No, Simps, I was being sarcastic when I compared you to Fétis. It might be said that while you're as big of an ass as Hanslick was, he wasn't as big a one as you are.
So you're defending Wagner?
ReplyDeleteHilarious.
:-)
A. I didn't write that, you idiot, Virgil Thomson did. B. I deny Wagner nothing that he doesn't merit while detesting his music. C. I would give you a list of the enormous number of great musicians and composers who have performed and found inspiration in Wagner's music, acknowledging that he doesn't need me to like him for him to have that. You know, Stupy, Glenn Gould was so in love with Wagner that he masturbated all over it in what I know I've pointed out to you has been called the most incompetent performance ever issued on a commercial recording. Arturo Toscanini who you claim to revere was famous for his Wagner performances and recordings. You calling them idiots? I will only confess to having accompanied some excerpts for voice majors when I was in college, I never performed his music, other than that. I prefer my Wagner as written by Mahler, who also loved his music, as did, by the way, your TV genius idol, Lenny. As I recall there was something of a stir when he conducted him in Israel, though I believe Mehta was the one who broke that embargo on his music in Israel.
Delete"Having gone through my two provable indictments in reverse order, I am now back to the first, which is the matter of feeling. For me there is no warmth in the man, no juice, no passion for music. "
ReplyDeleteOh sweet Jeebus, you've got to be kidding. If there's anybody whose every fucking written word proves he gets absolutely no emotional joy out of music, or any other form of art, it's you.
Seriously, Sparkles -- what the fuck is wrong with you?
You do know, Stupy, that that's what Virgil Thomson said as he held one of the most prestigious positions of music critic in the country, don't you?
DeleteAbout the only time I mention music I don't like it's to make fun of some stupid thing you've said about music. I've defended composers whose music isn't my favorite from things you've said about them. I don't have any problem with acknowledging the quality of music I don't especially like and even some I dislike, Handel, Nielsen, Chopin, Thomson. I've even said some nice things about some of Lenny's stuff one of his songs, Some Other Time, the dances from WSS, the Second of the Chichester Psalms. I might include some of the music he wrote for On the Waterfront, while acknowledging that most of what he wrote was pastiche. If it were up to me I'd only ever say good things about music, that was my intention from the first time I posted a short CD review online, that I'd rather support it than take it down. If it wasn't for you I'd never say anything about commercial crap.
"One is charmed, too, by his literary culture, his musical penetration, and smooth easy man-of-the-world ways. Reading him lightly, one might almost take him for the perfect music critic, if perfection is conceivable in so invidious a genre."
Delete"But no, three times no! Once because there is no real warmth in the man. Twice because the truth was not in him. And thrice because he never stuck his neck out."
After pointing out that Hanslick wrote for a conservative paper and was writing about Wagner in a way that was certain to please the conservative Vieneese audicence who read him, After pointing out that everything, every short coming and flaw in Wagner he pointed out had already been pointed out by far better musicians, composers and critics, including Fétis, Thomson went on:
"Actually there is not a point in Hanslick's attacks on Wagner that had not been made before. Berlioz, Meyerbeer, Rossini, and the youg Bizet had long since put their finger on the inequalities in his [Wagner's ] talent. These were common knowledge in music circles. Time had not altered, moreover, their reality. Wagner's contemporaries, including Hanslick, denied him no excellence for which he is still cherished. Nor were even his closest friends, save a few, unaware of his imperfections. Even Hanslick's main theme about how for all its beauties this music is not "the music of the future," not a beginning but a glorious and dangerous dead end, that too was a familiar idea. That is what the famous Wagner "case" has always been about, and Hanslick did not invent it. As a matter of fact, his reviews spent far more space unmasking Wagner's literary weaknesses, which he was capable of doing quite well, than analyzing the musical structure which he could not always follow, even with a score. He knew that Wagner could orchestrate, paint tremendous musical landscape scenes, and prosodize in German' but he had not the musical technique to understand Wagner's complex chromatic harmony and asymmetrical rhythm. So he complained about the "lack of melody," [always a dead giveaway of a composer who knows nothing about music] made fun of the librettos, and refuted the advertising. Compared to Nietzsche on Wagner, he was thoroughly superficial."
Make that [always a dead giveaway of a CRITIC who knows nothing about music]. If there's one thing Wagner could do, it is write a tune.
Delete"If it wasn't for you I'd never say anything about commercial crap."
ReplyDeleteLike you know what commercial crap is.
:-)
It's as common as shit, Stupy. Since the invention of the radio and movies it's ubiquitous. It's hilarious when an idiot shit-music critic like you pretends that it's somehow rarefied and inaccessible.
Delete