#5: Society of the spectacle
Leftovers
In their Cal Performances debut (Mozart K. 575, Schnittke No. 3, and Grieg) Quatuor Ébène blew me away. Then I blew off some steam at Mercury Soul.
A composer I met seemed to like me as I listened to him describe his work, which he called polystylistic collage, then less, after I said “Oh, like Schnittke.” In fact I don’t know much of his music — not that I’m avoiding it — but what Schnittke I have heard sounds like a lot of people. Does it do anything new, or need to? I used to think that work had to justify its existence but now that I’m creating things myself I’ve relaxed my standards; mostly I just want to enjoy life.
Speaking of hedonism, Schnittke wrote a cantata on Faust, a story I’ll take in whatever form it comes: Busoni, Berlioz, Mahler, Liszt… the Gounod is so long I don’t know it well, but I adore its quotations of Mendelssohn’s Midsummer chords, and the excerpts Balanchine turned into his ballet Walpurgisnacht. (In a wobbly circle, Balanchine’s Midsummer incorporates music from Mendelssohn’s Faust-adjacent oratorio, Die erste Walpurgisnacht.)
But the Faust that holds a special place in my heart was my first: Boito’s Mefistofele. Before Act 4 bores me the parallel parades of Easter and the Witches’ Sabbath dazzle me — at least, they do in Robert Carsen’s loud staging, whose muted revival I saw in my early 20’s but which in this SFO production from 1989 has the devil Samuel Ramey, and my 10th grade theory teacher, the child angel whose hat falls off during the bows.
Grace Cathedral looked pretty, all lit up last week for Mercury Soul. And at War Memorial, my house of worship, what phenomenal acting in Dani Rowe’s MADCAP, a ballet about an ill-at-ease clown. In fact I couldn’t stomach the grotesquerie of so many i - #vii - i progressions, which, in combination with the staging’s larger Hot Topic sensibility, reminded me uncomfortably of middle school.
At 12 I thought Grieg’s G minor quartet great; at 22 I jeered at it but still went to the house — when in Bergen — where I would have heard the organ recital had I had the money. At 32 I can’t help but cringe at Grieg’s plainspokenness but I want to love him and sometimes do.
They cheated on each other a lot, which makes Edvard’s “Wedding Day at Troldhaugen,” his present to Nina for their 25th anniversary, feel both more profound as a piece and, as a gift, not enough. Then again the older I get the less I care about getting anything.
In another decade, god willing, I’ll have something else to say about Grieg. That’s one thing I look forward to about music: it being around for my whole life.
Wish List
Endorsements
The recent Grieg album from Edward Gardner and the Bergen Philharmonic, especially the Symphonic Dances, Op. 64
Two Elegiac Melodies, a tuneful string orchestra piece played far less often than the Holberg Suite
The good people of Youtube who comment the time stamps of their favorite moments
Explorations
Thinking about Holberg I remembered Peter Warlock: did he write anything beyond his neo-Renaissance kiddie classic The Capriol Suite? Probably no one cares, but yes. The pseudonymous composer was a “combative and controversial” critic (though a friend and champion of Delius), and a practitioner of the occult, according to his outsize Wikipedia page, one section of which bears the subheading “Unsettled Years.”
The music of another critic, Joseph Marx, whose songs and sumptuous Autumn Symphony I can’t wait to get to know
Extra tunes via Apple Music