tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186118329509553435.post644251543561832352..comments2024-03-09T15:11:29.350-08:00Comments on Exotic and irrational entertainment: My musical Mount Rushmore: Monteverdi, Handel, Mozart, and...Pessimisissimohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04223566131580795337noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186118329509553435.post-43904634704052525162008-03-31T07:51:00.000-07:002008-03-31T07:51:00.000-07:00M. Lapin, you have indeed put your finger on the d...M. Lapin, you have indeed put your finger on the diseased liver of this exercise, which is its (Dostoevskian?) absurdity. The idea of selecting just four composers (whatever one's criteria) out of the thousands that have existed is even more problematic than choosing four presidents out of 28 (that is, all the ones before Coolidge, who was in office when Mount Rushmore was planned). At least we only have to carve their faces on the mountain mentally--Vivaldi's nose rivals Stravinsky's in its grandeur!<BR/><BR/>But granting the absurdity of the exercise and its real-life model, your choices--which span something like 650 years--also point up the shameful narrowness of my own, which span a mere 200.<BR/><BR/>On the madrigals/motets question, you're right both times: Machaut wrote motets, which typically involve two or three voices, while Monteverdi (and Gesualdo) wrote madrigals, which generally involve four or five voices. What the other features are that distinguish the two forms, I'll only be able to say once I look them up in the <I>New Harvard Dictionary of Music</I>.<BR/><BR/>A final note: I don't think that Cary Grant dangles by a rope from Washington's nose, but by his fingertips from Washington's lapel--a less compelling image, indeed. (The number of Hitchock films where someone dangles from a height is truly extraordinary. Off the top of my head: <I>Murder, Young & Innocent, Sabotage, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest</I>...and I'm sure I've missed some.)Pessimisissimohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04223566131580795337noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186118329509553435.post-34086152147776423872008-03-30T16:19:00.000-07:002008-03-30T16:19:00.000-07:00First, when I think of Mount Rushmore, I think of ...First, when I think of Mount Rushmore, I think of Cary Grant precipitously dangling from a thread of a rope on a massive nose...<BR/><BR/>Then I think of the Presidents themselves: Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln I can understand, but Teddy Roosevelt?!?!...<BR/><BR/>And then, I reflect that this massive monument looms over the landscape of the Black Hills of South Dakota, that is to say, Nowhere.<BR/><BR/>So given the connections between Nowhere and Utopia, a mishmash of "Great Presidents" who really have nothing in common to unite them, and the helplessness, paltriness of myself in relation to such a massive presence...<BR/><BR/>My Musical Mount Rushmore: Machaut, Monteverdi, Debussy, Stravinsky.<BR/><BR/>Why? Well, first of all, I nearly detest the musical canon, particularly the Germanic one, from the Baroque through the Late-Romantic period. That is, the vast majority of the repertoire that I play as a cellist in my community symphony. And why is that? Because I find the entire notion of a “canon” the failed human attempt to establish some kind of “universal aesthetic” to replace “God’s cosmos.” Since neither exist, it strikes me as a rather futile project. Sure, I can admire the achievements of the symphonic canon and get swept up in its emotional fervor, but so what.<BR/><BR/>What is unavoidable for me is the massive presence of modernity: living in the world we have made and continually transform, a world both “against nature” and against tradition. I also have cultural love/hate relationship between popular and elite cultures. What this means is that I have a predilection for cultural hybridity, in this case for modernist music with roots in popular sources. So...<BR/><BR/>1. Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300-1377): I love Medieval and Renaissance music, much of which is anonymous or credited to obscure and elusive figures. For me, Machaut expresses that late-Medieval-into-Renaissance modernity where individual composers become important. Drawing upon both liturgical sources (“Messe de Notre Dame”) and the <I>trouvère</I> tradition (the CD collection “Dreams in the Pleasure Garden”), Machaut was an early modernist in the sense that he did not engage in “word painting” (where the music gives expression to the form or meaning of the words), but treated words as merely another textual element, whose cadence, rhythm, or sonority constituted its its own beauty and meaning (like Symbolist poetry).<BR/><BR/>2. Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643): Gets us from the Renaissance to the Baroque, without sacrificing the polyphonic heroism of the former for the system of the latter. That is, I start with the motets, and love them. Actually, I like Gesualdo’s motets better. But Gesualdo expresses the end of an era (the motet pushed to the limits as monstrosity), whereas Monteverdi uses the multi-lineal vocals to create a new form: opera. Check them out: <I>L'Orfeo</I>, <I>L'incoronazione di Poppea</I>, <I>Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria</I> are all totally amazing, better than any bombastic stuff you’ll hear on the FM dial.<BR/><BR/>Aside: Pessimisissimo has amply supplied me with both Machaut and Monteverdi recordings, for which I am eternally indebted to him.<BR/><BR/>3. Claude Debussy (1862-1918: I realize that I couldn't discount the nineteenth century altogether, and Debussy is who I settled upon. Not surprising: he admired the Symbolist poetry Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine, as well as Charles Baudelaire, setting music to poems by each of them. He was a cosmopolitan, enthralled by “exotic” gamelan music, and revived the “primitive” pentatonic scale, loved composing popular tunes (“Claire de la lune”) and children’s music, as well as producing some of the most avant-garde ballets and operas of the era (learning from, and then poking fun of, Wagnerian pomposity). I can’t believe that I don’t own a single recording featuring him.<BR/><BR/>4. Igor Stravinsky (1881-1981): One of Time magazine’s “Top 100 People of the Twentieth Century” -- how can you get more simultaneously pop and elite culture than that? OK, I'm already getting bored with myself... Suffice to say, I was a nerd as a teenager, and loved the “Firebird Suite” opening to Yes concerts. Then, I actually heard Pierre Boulez’s glorious recording of the <I>Firebird</I>, and never listened to Yes again. Instead, I discovered <I>Petrushka</I>, <I>Rite of Spring</I>, and my favorite opera, <I>The Rake’s Progress</I>. Folk songs, multitonality, jarring modernism, it’s all here.<BR/><BR/>I dangle from Stravinsky’s massive nose, in a monument in the middle of Nowhere.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com