DeLillo Speaks Again

Longtime Ionarts readers may remember my translation of an interview that Don DeLillo gave to L'Express on September 11, 2003. Now Céline Curiol, in an article (Rushdie mobilise l'Amérique des lettres contre Bush, August 9) for Libération, has covered the symposium hosted by Salman Rushdie on August 4 at PEN, called State of Emergency. The article has already been translated into English by Matthew Murchison. Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, Russell Banks, and several others read literary excerpts that resonate with our time. I think that Ariel Dorfman has the best quoted line: "There has rarely been a moment when public discourse and truth were so far apart. When people are afraid, they do not question a lie." Yes. (See also Salman Rushdie's letter, from May 3, 2004, on behalf of PEN, to President Bush against the Patriot Act.)

The only American news reports of the event were Nick Catucci, Heroic Restraint, August 5, for The Village Voice; and Salman Rushdie on Terrorism, Intellectual Freedom, and the Patriot Act, August 10, from Democracy Now!. In the literary blog scene, Maud Newton was on top of the story.

Find God in Music

http://www.surprisedbybeauty.org

If you have been forwarded here from http://www.surprisedbybeauty.org, bear with us: the Surprised by Beauty website is being planned and built. Until ready, the URL links to this review.

Robert R. Reilly

Robert Reilly's Surprised by Beauty: A Listener's Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music has been with me since its publication. It is one of the most heavily bookmarked, annotated books I have, and much cherished. In the interest of full disclosure, I readily admit that I had the immense pleasure of getting to know its author and critiqued this book twice; once preemptively, before its publication, and again in a tome of a letter, unsent, still. This book is not perfect, and it is probably not first-order brilliant either, but it is beautiful! I treasure it as much as I treasure much of the music that I have since enjoyed because of it.

Surprised by Beauty is highly spiritual. Stephen Hough, the wonderful pianist who records for Hyperion (interviewed in the book), says on the jacket cover:

Robert Reilly has the unusual and delightful ability to infect the reader with insatiable curiosity about the composers he champions. Names that often were unknown, and sometimes unpronounceable, suddenly seem totally fascinating and worthy of discovery at the earliest opportunity. Yet beyond this level of exploration is his personal vision of music as something profoundly spiritual, expressive of what is best and most enriching in human life and having the possibility of leading us to encounter God Himself.

That is a good introduction to Surprised by Beauty. The opening quote of the book is from Max Picard: "[In] sound itself, there is a readiness to be ordered by the spirit, and this is seen at its most sublime in music." The love for music never ceases to impress, and as knowledgeable a man as Mr. Reilly is always a pleasure to have along for instruction. Before I delve at some length into examples I (dis)agree with in this book, let me summarize.

Robert R. Reilly, Surprised by Beauty (First Edition) Morley Institute Robert R. Reilly & Jens F. Laurson, Surprised by Beauty II (Revised and Expanded Second Edition) Ignatius Press

If you want loving introductions to the music of John Adams ("The Search for a Larger Harmony"), George Antheil ("Bad Boy Made Good"), Malcolm Arnold ("English Enigma"), Gerald Finzi ("Imitations of Immortality"), Stephen Gerber ("Keeping America Real"), Morton Gould ("Maestro of Americana"), Roy Harris ("Singing to America"), Vagn Holmboe ("The Music of Metaphysics"), László Lajtha ("Music from a Secret Room"), Gian Francesco Malipiero ("Beyond Italian Opera"), Frank Martin ("Guide to the Liturgical Year"), William Mathias ("Musical Incantations"), Carl Nielsen ("Music is Life"), Einojuhani Rautavaara ("New Northern Light"), Albert Roussel ("The Freedom of Personal Vision"), Edmund Rubbra ("On the Road to Emmaus"), Harald Saeverud ("A Norwegian Original"), Aulis Sallinen ("Scandinavian Consolation"), Peter Schickele ("Schickele Unmixed"), Franz Schmidt ("Setting the Apocalypse"), Alexander Tcherepnin ("From Russia With Love"), Eduard Tubin ("In From the Cold"), Geirr Tveitt ("The Music in the Waterfall"), Mieczyslaw Vainberg ("Light in the Dark"), Peteris Vasks ("Another New Northern Light"), as well as Duruflé, Elgar, Janáček, Martinů, Poulenc, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Vaughan-Williams, and Villa-Lobos—you have picked up the right book.

These are the composers dealt with in little chapters, ordered alphabetically and cobbled together from reviews and pieces written in different magazines. Nonetheless, there is a coherent line through the work, culminating in a few interviews with composers such as Robert Craft, David Diamond, Gian Carlo Menotti, Einojuhani Rautavaara, George Rochberg, and Carl Rütti.

Just for John Cage, Mr. Reilly has no kind words ("Apostle of Noise"). And the specter haunting some chapters, not to be rescued until Robert Craft takes up his cause, is Arnold Schoenberg. In fact, Schoenberg so rubs Mr. Reilly the wrong way that he elicits the book's strongest (and perhaps most contentious) statement from him: Ugliness is the aesthetic analogue to evil. When he discusses Moses und Aron and comes to the conclusion that Schoenberg couldn't finish that opera because he hadn't discovered Jesus in his life, I almost choked on my single malt. (To be fair, he is making a metaphysical point of negotiable validity here...)

Let me say it right away. As a lover of modern music—with a much higher tolerance for the unnecessarily absurd (Concerto for two cheese-graters, jet engine, electric toothbrush, and chromatic garbage disposal? Bring it on!)—I have grid (grinded?) ground my teeth many a time. A more conservative reader than me would find himself nodding along throughout the book. Either way, it is a veritable treasure trove. After every chapter, there is a little section discussing the merit of important works of that composer in different editions. This is immensely helpful in choosing where to start the musical discovery tour.

"All Music is Equal"

In a chapter on Peter Schickele (whose program structured my Saturdays until it was, unfortunately, taken off WETA—as, for lack of funding, no new programs are produced of Schickele Mix) Robert R. Reilly (RRR) notes his objection to Schickele Mix's mantra that "all music is created equal," which he continues to expose as nonsense by asking the highly rhetorical questions: "Is all poetry equal? Is a bottle of Thunderbird equal to a 1987 Caymus Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon? Is 'Who Let the Dogs Out?' on the same plane as a Mozart aria?"

Perhaps there is a kinder way to treat Schickele's statement. The proposition is that music ought to be qualitatively judged not by genre, but by where it stands within its genre. "All music is created equal" is not, to play with analogies, to say "all apples are created equal"—which is indeed nonsense; just look at the innate superiority of the Granny Smith!—but instead "that all FRUIT is created equal." Thus the question of whether strawberries were on the same plane as watermelons seems as silly as it probably deserves to be. One ought not to compare Mozart to Wagner or Wagner to Cage or Cage to Ligeti, and so forth, much less Mozart to Snoop Dogg or Diana Krall or Led Zeppelin. It would be not so much "unfair" (though, perhaps, that too!) but again: silly. The enjoyment gifted to us by—or garnered from—Mozart cannot be the same as that which we derive from Wagner or Ligeti or Duke Ellington. It may be equal for some in intensity, but it is not the same.

"All music is created equal" is not tantamount to saying that all music is the same (or even of equal quality). Hence, the same measure of beauty is grossly inadequate. Perhaps the joy from Cage's music can never be as intense as the joy from Mozart's pieces. This may be true for most listeners—and it is true for many reasons, intent not being the least among them—alas, they have value on their own grounds, if only in my opinion. In part I think that this way of thinking of music might be reflected by the actual quote with which Schickele Mix used to open, namely that it was a show dedicated to the proposition that "all musicS ARE created equal!"

In RRR’s discussion on Nielsen he makes a comment along these lines: "This makes a dramatic, but not musical point." Unfortunately, he continues calling it a "miscalculation." Quite frankly, I do not understand why. Is music not supposed to be about more than merely music? L'Art pour l'art? I find nothing wrong with that; indeed, I may well expect it from art to make a point that is not part of its essence. If that were the case, art would become a warped meta-communication about art; a chain of self-referential statements. If applied to films, this would mean that there would be no good cinema aside from 8 ½ or State and Main. I specifically want art to make statements. Afterwards, I may judge the statement to have been transmitted successfully or not, or perhaps so much at the cost of the art itself, that I do not value it for much besides the statement. Perhaps a piece of music is less a movie under such circumstances, but rather a documentary. But I will listen with great interest to such documentaries, even if they are titled String Quartet for the End of Time.These are just two of some of the qualms and reflections that occurred for me when reading the book. They happen to be qualms rather than delight, but that is, if anything, coincidence. For example, I enjoyed this sentence: "Anyone who enjoys Britten's music of this kind should likewise appreciate Mathias's" (p. 144). Indeed telling of the nonchalance with which he treats the breadth of his appreciation of modern music, while I imagine the greater part of his initial readership to wince even at the very idea of Britten, assuming that they know him or his work. I remember now a gentleman who introduced him and RRR's then-still-absent book mentioning Mahler's songs as though he had bitten into a lemon. "...should likewise appreciate Mathias's..."

His passion for Janáček's string quartets is so palpable that not having a copy at home must seem half a crime. His championing of Saeverrud (my initial reaction, too, was: Who???) is passionate and sophisticated. A book, in short, that will get much and repeated bedside reading and the occasional study: a charming companion through 20th-century classical music with amiably strong, if not always agreeable, opinions.

Robert R. Reilly's writings on ionarts can be read here. A second, considerably expanded and updated edition of Surprised by Beauty is slated to appear from Ignatius Press.

Ismael Rodríguez (1917–2004)

An article (Le "cinéaste du peuple" est mort [The "people's director" has died], August 10) by Françoise Escarpit for L'Humanité notes the death of Mexican film director Ismael Rodríguez, on August 7 in Mexico City. His films in the late 40s and 50s are considered the best of the golden age of Mexican film, especially Nosotros los pobres (We the poor, 1948), its sequel, Ustedes los ricos (You the rich, 1948), and Pepe El Toro (1953), which are, I'm told, perfect portraits of Mexican life in that period. His movie Tizoc (1957), which tells the impossible love story of an Indian (Pedro Infante) and a grande dame of the Mexican upper class (the stunning María Félix), won the Golden Bear at the Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin. As you would expect, there are numerous tributes in Spanish around the Internet.

Sadly, you can't get any of these movies through Netflix. Before you think about asking Netflix to buy them, I already checked, and you can't get any of his movies on DVD. Anywhere. To whom do I write to complain?

Richard Rodney Bennett's Opera

The comments on Opera in the 20th Century keep coming. I'll update the list in a couple days. In the meantime, here is something else to chew on. This article (Bold opera draws stars to rural nook, August 13) by Paul Smart for the Christian Science Monitor concerns the revival at Glimmerglass Opera of another opera I hadn't thought about for my class, Richard Rodney Bennett's The Mines of Sulphur (1965). Joanna Keller's article (Is There a Masterpiece in the House?, July 18) for the New York Times tells the story of how Glimmerglass ended up doing this opera:

Last August, the Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, N.Y., suddenly found itself short an opera for the coming — now current — season. Stephen Hartke, who had been commissioned to write one, informed the company that the music would not be finished on time. Since opera productions are typically planned three years in advance, the company had already hired the director, the designers and the singers. In searching for a replacement, they had something very specific in mind: a contemporary work that would fit the singers and the creative team already under contract.

Stewart Robertson, the company's music director, remembered an opera he had seen many years before, "The Mines of Sulphur" by Richard Rodney Bennett. It was given its premiere at Sadler's Wells in London in 1965. The production then toured, and Mr. Robertson, at 17, saw it in his hometown, Glasgow. "I can still envision the wonderfully gloomy set of that English country house," Mr. Robertson said recently. "And as the production began, I found myself transfixed. The libretto is a real page-turner. The score is sensuous, colorful, glittering and skillful. I've never forgotten the impact of that opera."

There's only one more performance to catch, on August 22: road trip, anyone?

The bulk of the CSMonitor article is about James Maddalena, who is playing a role that doesn't actually require much singing. As the author fills in some background on Maddalena's career, he drops another title, Stewart Wallace's Harvey Milk, which I have not heard yet either.

Opera in the 20th Century

Some Ionarts readers have responded to my question about what operas should be covered in a course on Opera in the 20th Century, which I will be teaching this fall. Here is what readers have selected so far, with those operas I had not yet thought to include in the course in boldface type:

• Britten, Peter Grimes
  
• Stravinsky, The Rake's Progress
  
• Berg, Wozzeck and Lulu
  
• Schoenberg, Moses und Aron
  
• Corigliano, The Ghosts of Versailles
  
• Lloyd Webber, Evita
  
• Janáček, Jenůfa and The Cunning Little Vixen
  
• Menotti, The Old Maid and the Thief, The Consul, The Medium, Amahl and the Night Visitors
  
• Floyd, Susannah
  
• Strauss, Salome and Elektra
  
• Gershwin, Porgy and Bess
  
• Glass, Einstein on the Beach and Akhnaton
  
• Adams, Nixon in China
  
• Bartók, Bluebeard's Castle
  
• Debussy, Pelléas et Mélisande
  
• Birtwhistle, The Mask of Orpheus
  
• Ligeti, Le Grand Macabre
  
• Messiaen, Saint François d'Assise
  
• Meredith Monk, Atlas
  
• Stockhausen, Light: Seven Days of the Week (Licht cycle)
  
• Schnittke, Faust and Life with an Idiot
  
• Karetnikov, Till Eulenspiegel
  
• Ullmann, Der Kaiser von Atlantis
  
• Braunfels, Die Vögel (The Birds)
  
• Hindemith, Mathis der Maler, Murder, Hope of Women, or Das Nusch-Nuschi
  
• Robert Ashley, Atalanta (Acts of God) or Dust
  
• John Moran, The Manson Family
  
• Shostakovich, Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District
  
• Prokofiev, Love for Three Oranges
  
• Poulenc, Dialogue des Carmélites
  
• Puccini, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, Turandot

That's already a pretty impressive list, too long to cover in a semester. However, if you know an opera that has scandalously been left off this list of the most important operas of the 20th century, you can still add it in the Comments section. Readers are also welcome to begin offering suggestions to pare down this list: what really HAS to be covered?

History of Ballet Staging

A now-archived article (Les fastes du ballet au XXe siècle, August 5) by René Sirvin for Le Figaro examined an interesting exhibit at the Musée Yves Brayer, in the southern French town of Les Baux de Provence (my translation):

On the initiative of the very dynamic octogenarian Hermione Brayer, widow of the famous painter and vigilant guardian of the Musée Yves Brayer in Les Baux de Provence, a magnificent exhibit of about sixty models for costumes and sets, loaned by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Bibliothèque du Musée de l'Opéra), is a tribute to the innovative taste of one of the great directors and patrons of the Opéra de Paris (from 1910 to 1945): Jacques Rouché, who several times invited Serge Diaghilev and his Ballets russes to the Palais Garnier.

The list of works on display is tantalizing indeed: Valentine Hugo's sketches in deep blue for a production of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande; Alexandre Benois's two models for Le Coq d'Or (1927); Paul Colin's Cubist costumes symbolizing musical instruments for Serge Lifar's first avant-garde ballet, L'Orchestre en Liberté (1931); Maxime Dethomas's set design for the "forgotten ballet" Les Abeilles (1917), featuring a stunning beehive with thousands of golden cells; Yves Brayer's designs for Lifar's Juan de Zarissa (1942); the original painting that inspired Utrillo for his thrilling sets for Louise at the Opéra-Comique in 1950. Les Magiciens de la Scène: Opéra et Opéra Comique de Paris, 1917–1950 will be open to the public until October 17, but I haven't been able to find many pictures.

See How Bright Her Beams Decline

The work year of the professional choir at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (of which I am a member) is about to conclude, because today is the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The choir is given an annual hiatus from August 16 until the Sunday after Labor Day. If you want to hear some good choral music, here is what we will be singing today at the Noon Mass at the National Shrine:

• J. F. Doppelbauer (1918–1989), Kleine Messe in F
  
• Heitor Villa-Lobos (1881–1959), Ave Maria (1938)
  
• Giovanni da Palestrina (c. 1525–1594), Assumpta est Maria (à 6)
  
• John Tavener, Hymn to the Mother of God (1985)

The Palestrina motet is one of the classics written for this feast (based on the famous Gregorian antiphon, usually sung at the Magnificat in Vespers), from which he derived his own Missa Assumpta est Maria. This is my first time singing the Villa-Lobos piece, and it has confirmed my admiration of his music, although it is only a decadent miniature. If you don't know it already, have a look at Sir John Beaumont's beautiful 17th-century text for this feast, Who Is She Ascends So High? (one line is quoted as the title of this post). He would probably be a much better-known poet of that era, except that he left his major collection of work in a manuscript, which is now lost. Here's his heartbreaking poem Of His Dear Son, Gervase, and some of his other poems can be found in the Humanities Digital Information Service.

Digital Slides a Reality

You may remember, a while back, that I referred to the death rattle of the slide projector. For someone looking at teaching A. P. Art History again this year, that news is cause for both rejoicing and trepidation. I had already started using some digital images, stored in a school laptop, to supplement our aging and incomplete slide collection, but the organization and presentation can be a hassle. Our analog slides are, many of them, faded and ugly, but how can a teacher hope to replace them all in the middle of teaching a course that requires so many of them?

An article (For Art History Scholars, Illumination Is a Click Away, August 14) by Karen W. Arenson for the New York Times discusses what might be the answer:

A vast digital library of world art has gone online with its first 300,000 images. The project — known as ARTstor and financed by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation — could eventually revolutionize the way art history is taught and studied. It is available for nonprofit institutions only. The way technology has been able to transform education is remarkable, said Neil Rudenstine, the former Harvard University president who is now chairman of ARTstor. "That only happens, if you are lucky, once a century."

Marguerite A. Keane, an adjunct lecturer at the University of California, San Diego, certainly feels lucky. Using ARTstor last spring during its test phase, Ms. Keane said she was able to assemble all the images for her semester-long course, "Introduction to Art History," in a few hours, the time it normally takes to gather slides for one class. If a student referred to a picture, she could usually locate it immediately and show it in class, zooming in on any details she wanted. "It was extraordinary," she said.

I must get my hands on this technology immediately. I still have a few weeks before classes begin, so ARTstor is on my to-do list.