Category: Music

The pebble not the stream

Via Robot Wisdom auxiliary: an excellent introduction to the works of Stephen Sondheim, illustrated with video clips (the clip from a concert version of Sweeney Todd is not to be missed, especially since the song is mostly cut from the Tim Burton movie). The article divides the works into starters, intermediates, and shows (like Pacific Overtures) for advanced devotees. And it’s not afraid to identify some weaknesses:

One knock against Sondheim’s career is that his influence on musical theater has been either non-existent or pernicious. (Oddly enough, the best example of Sondheim influence on popular culture may be Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s score for Disney’s Beauty And The Beast.) Performers love to sing his songs—”So-and-so sings Sondheim” remains a popular cabaret attraction—but the composers who’ve emerged in his wake have lacked his skill at deconstruction and reconstruction. The decades since Company have seen a lot of overtly complicated shows in which the songs are either straight, shallow pop (without Sondheim’s wit or transcendence), or just tuneless prattle. And frankly, Sondheim at his most “difficult” can himself sound a lot like the latter.

The Second Shepherds’ Play

The Folger Consort and director Mary Hall Surface’s reconstruction of this pre-Shakespearean mystery play is a marvel for the Christmas holiday season. Indeed, the genesis of this play is one of its mysteries. At one time it was attributed to “the Wakefield master,” as the manuscript had been bound with a cycle of 32 plays once thought to be performed in the town of Wakefield. (And yes, the apostrophe is in the right place, for there is also a First Shepherds’ Play in the codex.)

Despite our uncertainty of who wrote it, or even what century it was written it, the play presents a simple, engaging farce of three shepherds beset by a sheep-rustler Mak (our friend Andy Brownstein) who are visited by a heavenly presence announcing good news in the darkest time of the year. The Consort and Surface have built on the bones of the one-act script (perhaps the most richly characterized of the cycle) with period music, fun puppetry to manage scene changes, and a spot of sprightly dance to make a full evening’s entertainment. To aid our understanding, pronunciation follows Modern, not Middle, English, and vocabulary has been modernized, except for a few bits spoken by Mak in a “southern tooth,” like “Ich” for “I.”

We particularly enjoyed the blue streamers and mechanical whistler that evoke the wintry blasts of wind confronting the pastoralists. And the appearance of the angel from the Folger theater’s gallery level is a gem of low-tech theatricality. The shepherds’ offerings to the Christ child—a bunch of cherries, a bird, and a ball—are quite touching.

The three shepherds are played by Bob McDonald, Aaron Cromie, and Chris Wilson, and their comic skills are matched by their vocal musicianship. Of course, the highlight of a Folger Consort production is the array of old-fashioned instruments, and this one does not disappoint: we see and hear a slide trumpet, shawms, viols, lutes, and a hurdy-gurdy. The Consort restricted its music choices to tunes from England of the 16th century or earlier. Fortunately this means the inclusion of the stirring call-and-response “Nova, Nova,” a showcase “Gabriel fram heven-kinge” for Kate Vetter Cain, a surprising multi-voiced setting of “Sumer is icumen in,” and the haunting “Coventry Carol.”

What grace we have found.
Come, now are we unbound.
Let’s make a glad sound,
    And sing it not soft.

Is taste disinterested?

Via Arts & Letters Daily: Sam Anderson reviews Carl Wilson’s Let’s Talk about Love, a study of Céline Dion, singer beloved by Ghanaian cabdrivers.

Overcoming a reflexive distaste for the Québecoise, Wilson “feels a twinge of critical conscience” and immerses himself in her work, delving into the nature of musical taste.

Wilson tends to side with the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who argues that taste is never disinterested: It’s a form of social currency, or “cultural capital,” that we use to stockpile prestige. Hating Céline is therefore not just an aesthetic choice, but an ethical one, a way to elevate yourself above her fans…

Although Wilson never grows to love Dion’s music, he’s also no longer comfortable with his former scorn. He acknowledges the merits of her work: “It deals with problems that don’t require leaps of imagination but require other efforts, like patience, or compromise”; although it is “lousy music to make aesthetic judgments to,” it “might be excellent for having a first kiss, or burying your grandma, or breaking down in tears.”

33 Variations

Moisés Kaufman interweaves the musical mystery of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations for solo piano with the story of Katherine Brandt, current-day musicologist entranced by the enigma of how the piece came to be: why did Beethoven, solicited in 1819 by music publisher Anton Diabelli to contribute a variation on a 32-bar waltz of Diabelli’s for an omnibus publication, initially reject the commission, and then, over the course of four years, write not one but 33 variations on the inconsequential theme?

The play lies in the sweet spot of Kaufman’s writing: short, episodic scenes and monologues shifting back and forth in time (pace The Laramie Project), under a pall of sickness. For just as Beethoven (the maestoso Graeme Malcolm) completes his slide into deafness in the 1820’s, the crusty Dr. Brandt succumbs to ALS, otherwise known as “Lou Gehrig’s disease.” In the course of the play, she achieves a rapprochement with her daughter Clara (Laura Odeh), a costume designer (with some lovely dresses by Janice Pytel to prove it) who is still finding her way in life. And yet, Kaufman cannot quite make good on his promise that “this play is not a reconstruction of a historical event; rather, it’s a series of variations on a moment in a life.” Whose life? Beethoven’s or Brandt’s? And which moment?

Mary Beth Piel manages the slow debilitation of Dr. Brandt, but in the early passages her playing seems strained and unfocussed. Greg Keller does better as “just Mike” Clark, Dr. Brandt’s nurse (not doctor), as well as eventual love interest for Clara. Mike is a nerdy but sensitive caregiver, more adept in the examining room than in the dating scene.

There are some magical moments in the show, especially Dr. Brandt’s initial descent into the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, where many of his manuscripts are housed. The archive is represented as enormous walls of shelving, each holding a stack of storage cases lit with individual pinlights focussed downward, and the effect is celestial. And there is a point late in the second act where the “Kyrie” from Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis (another work from this late period of his career) is sung movingly by four characters from the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries (Kaufman works the intercentury territory staked out by Tom Stoppard in Arcadia). Most important is the multi-media impact of projected images from the Beethoven MSS, explained by Dr. Gertie Ladenborger (the equally crusty Susan Kellermann)—if perhaps explained at excessive length—and played live by the masterful Diane Walsh. The play succeeds in leaving us wanting to hear all 55 minutes of the complete composition, one that is not as widely available as other works by the maestro. It’s a “big, craggy thing,” in the words of Walsh, “kind of forbidding, but at the same time there’s playfulness and joy and eccentricity and satire.”

In the end, we’re no more knowledgeable about the reason for Beethoven’s change of mind that seemed to lead to obsessive deconstruction and reassembly of Diabelli’s ditty, and perhaps that’s Kaufman’s point. Dr. Brandt, in extremis, is reminded that the waltz is something to be danced, and the play closes on this tender note.

  • 33 Variations, written and directed by Moisés Kaufman, Arena Stage in co-production with Tectonic Theater Project, Washington

Squeezed

Suhas Sreedhar explains why the old Bruce Springsteen CDs that I’ve ripped sound so much quieter than newer tracks. The dynamic range of CDs (as opposed to vinyl) and digital signal compression technology made it happen.

In the 1980s, CDs were mastered so that songs generally peaked at about -6 dBFS [0 decibels full scale, the loudest point of the dynamic range] with their root mean square (RMS)—or average levels—hovering around -20 dBFS to -18 dBFS. As multidisc CD changers began to gain prominence in households toward the end of the decade, the same jukebox-type loudness competition started all over again as record companies wanted their CDs to stick out more than their competitors’. By the end of the 1980s, songs on CDs were amplified to the point where their peaks started pushing the loudness limit of 0 dBFS. At this point, the only way to raise the average levels of songs without having their loudest parts clipped—the digital equivalent of distortion, where information is lost because it exceeds the bit capacity—was to compress the peaks.

And as music players become smaller and more rugged (I moved from a sports-model water-resistant Walkman to a hard-drive-based iPod and aspire to a solid-state one), we’re taking them more places with us and we expect the music to be there. Music on the subway as the train rumbles through a tunnel is a commonplace now.

But the problem doesn’t just lie on the production end. If people are listening to songs in a noisy environment—such as in their cars, on trains, in airport waiting rooms, at work, or in a dormitory—the music needs to be louder to compensate. Dynamic-range compression does just that and more. Not only does it raise the average loudness of the song, but by doing so it eliminates all the quiet moments of a song as well. So listeners are now able to hear the entire song above the noise without getting frustrated by any inaudible low parts.

This might be one of the biggest reasons why most people are completely unaware of the loss of dynamics in modern music. They are listening to songs in less-than-ideal environments on a constant basis. But many listeners have subconsciously felt the effects of overcompressed songs in the form of auditory fatigue, where it actually becomes tiring to continue listening to the music.

Charlotte Church meets Enya meets Sarah Brightman

One more reason to read a book, a really long one, during pledge week: Claire Dederer explores the phenomenon that is Celtic Woman:

[Their popularity] may have something to do with the fact that they are Irish. Ireland is a country that does a lot of psychological heavy lifting for Americans. We’ve imbued the place with mysticism, greenness, quietude and rootedness. Milky-skinned maidens, singing beautiful music in front of a wall of ivy. It’s the very vision of what we want Ireland to be. Or at least what PBS viewers want Ireland to be.

Lafayette trip report: 4

Some non-birding props to hand out:

I had a nice meal, and a very nice couple of glasses of cabernet, at the Blue Dog Café. I had chosen it based on recommendations and its proximity to the hotel, unaware of its connection with the iconic canine of George Rodrigue. Heck, I didn’t even realize that Blue Dog was a Louisiana thing.

Solas on stageI slipped away from a couple of convention dinners and presentations to the Festival International de Louisiane, which (coincidentally?) was happening the same week as our birding event. Music on multiple stages, vendor booths from around the world, local food for $6 a hit—fabulous! My music choices ranged from local zydeco legends to Celtic and French gypsy-klezmer bands from Europe.

Under the rubric of the festival, I saw a staging of a version of Cody Daigle’s Life/Play, an experimental autobiographical blog-driven piece inspired by Suzan-Lori Parks’ 365 Plays/365 Days. It’s a little raw, some of the playlets are not much more than shoe-gazing, but there are some genuine theatrical moments there. I especially liked the Compliment Fairy, the dance (28 January) that The Guy does the night that his play is presented, and the fact that some of the bits are so unstageable that they work better with The Director reading the stage directions.

Thanks to local chain CC’s Coffee House for providing free wi-fi access.

I saw no pelicans on this trip!? But I did spy two road-killed armadillos on I-12.

Carmina Burana

The local company returns with a glorious restaging of Septime Webre’s signature work, Carmina Burana, preceded by the company première of Christopher Wheeldon’s Morphoses. Wheeldon’s exploration of biomorphic forms (scored by György Ligeti) demands strong partnering by Luis Torres and Jared Nelson, while Sona Kharatian and Jade Payette display silky arms with steely strength. And how often do we get to see a ballerina use her fingers to such good effect? Payette and Kharatian evoke spiny critters of the ocean deeps. Mark Stanley’s lighting effects (recreated by Joshua Michaels), achieved by coloring the cyclorama while pulling open slits with the upstage travelers, are top-notch.

The magic spectacle of 1999’s Carmina is recreated with a full staging. Members of the Cathedral Choral Society and Children’s Chorus of the Cathedral Schools are arranged on industrial scaffolding, forming a U on the deck, altogether making four layers of dancers and singers, with two followspot operators on a tier above them. (Unfortunately, some of the stage machinery at Thursday’s performance was not noiseless.) The “Tanz” passage, a dance with pushbrooms used to clear the deck of rose petals strewn across the stage in the preceding dance, retains its sexy wit. The soloist for “Olim Lacus Colueram” eloquently thrashes, to evoke the throes of the roasting bird. And the reprise of “O Fortuna,” as the soul (much-buffeted Jason Hartley) binds himself to Fortune’s wheel and ascends into the heavens, is still a heart-breaker. Special recognition to vocal soloists Laura Lewis, soprano; Robert Baker, tenor; and Stephen Combs, baritone.

Charles Cave offers a wealth of background information on the “scenic cantata” that is Carmina Burana, debuted in 1937 by composer Carl Orff.

  • Carmina Burana with Morphoses, Washington Ballet, Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater, Washington

Superstar

Via The Morning News, an upload of Todd Haynes’s notorious Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. The video is a little artifacty and it’s of the expected dubious provenance. But the 43-minute film, which tells the story of 1970s soft rock chanteuse Karen Carpenter’s demise due to anorexia-related issues, and which uses Barbie dolls for actors, is not bad—and at times, rather good. And dang, the woman could sing.