NEW Luigi Nono : a Composer in Context

At last, the long-awaited publication of Luigi Nono: a composer in context, by Carola Nielinger-Vakil,(Cambridge University Press, 361 pp). Nielinger-Vakil is a leading light in Nono studies, having worked in the Nono archives and in Freiburg with André Richard, Nono's technological muse. She knows her subject extremely well!  Although I haven't read the book yet, it's bound to be a significant contribution to Nono studies.  For a taster. please read more HERE for chapter titles, a list of musical examples and a short extract. 

When I was 16 I turned on the radio, and out came these strange, haunting sounds, so distinctive that years later, when I formally heard La fabbrica illuminata, I recognized it right away.  Nobody told me that modern music was difficult or dangerous. I simply listened with open ears and an open mind.

Ian Bostridge - Schubert's Winter Journey : Anatomy of an Obsession

Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession, by Ian Bostridge, isn't yet another book about Winterreise.  Like the cycle, it is a journey of exploration. charting Bostridge's lifelong saga into the heart of the music, and into the world from which it came. Goethe may have been more of a classicist than a true Romantic, but his never ending search for knowledge defined his era and remains an inspiration for our own. In an era of instant expertise, this spirit of eternal discovery seems to have been replaced by fast-food thinking, instant expertise and Tea Party Intellectuals. We need books that don't leap to conclusions but focus, instead,  on the process of learning itself.

Questions are far more important than answers. This book is a Rückblick on a never-ending journey, whose goal lies not in conclusion but in the search that goes into understanding. It's a journey that takes courage and integrity. There used to be a body of opinion that the protagonist in Winterreise must have been mad, and must die in the end because he doesn't conform. But the protagonist, poet and composer deserve more respect.  In each chapter, Bostridge engages with the background to the ideas in the cycle, and with the wider social and artistic context.  "Winterreise is a historical artefact", he writes, ""made in history, and transmitted through and by it".  The poet, Wilhelm Müller, was a soldier who served in the wars against Napoléon in Russia, a "winter journey" if ever there was one. The chapter Der Lindenbaum opens up a panorama of ideas, which range from the symbolism of the Linden tree and its associations in folk magic, to a particularly thoughtful essay on Thomas Mann and the winter journey in The Magic Mountain.  Bostridge then proceeds to a technical discussion of triplet assimilation, then forwards to geology and the physical phenomena that are so much part of the cycle.  Many interesting observations. "To write on ice is an image of ambivalence, like writing on water but not quite letting go,.....Freezing feeling is....both to preserve and to anaesthetize it". Utterly relevant to interpretation of meaning.

Bostridge's sensitivity picks up on details like "eine Köhlers engem Haus" in Rast. Why such a specific reference, and not something more generic? Bostridge discusses charcoal burning and its economic context. Obviously we don't "need" to know this to enjoy the song, but the knowledge opens up new vistas which deepen our appreciation, and exposes the political undercurrents in Schubert's world. Incidentally, charcoal-burners were men who worked alone in the wilds. Is the charcoal burner an invisible precursor of Der Leiermann? Or another expression of the lonely mission the protagonist is driven to undertake?  Or a metaphor for artist and intellectuals and their role in society?  These questions matter, if we really care about the cycle and its deeper meanings.  Schubie doobie doo Schubert and Mahlerkügeln may be more popular with the masses, but as has been observed , the
"m" in "masses" might be silent.  Lieder is an art form of the intellect, a voyage into emotional depth, which all can undertake if they so wish. For this reason, Bostridge's book, with its wealth of ideas on art, literature and history, informs and stimulates. Had Bostridge stayed in academia, he might have been one of those truly good teachers who teach students how to think rather than what to think.

He also writes in a clear, elegant style with little of the logorrhea too many writers use to hide the fact that they aren't really saying much. His translations are simple yet emotionally direct.  Although he digresses, he always returns to the music and to the point.  Physically, this is a beautiful book, with thick, satiny paper and relatively few words per page,  and extremely well-produced illustrations. It is a throwback to the time when reading was a sensual  pleasure, to be savoured without rush. In some ways. it's like poetry, to which one can return to again and again and find more inspiration. Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an obsession might enrage those who expect confirmation of what they already believe, but for me, and, I think, many others, it's a springboard for ever greater engagement with the miracle that is Winterreise.   

Giacinto Scelsi, the Hölderlin of New Music?

If Hölderlin had written music might he have written like Giacinto Scelsi (1905-88)?   Scelsi's music  and Hölderlin's poetry have a similar moonstruck quality. Both were artists for whom the term "from another planet" could have been devised. Scelsi's music is fragmentary and eclectic, but fascinates me because it opens out strange vistas one might not otherwise access, just as Alice in Wonderland follows a rabbit into a hole in a tree and discovers bizarre, alternative reality.

Scelsi, the great grandfather of microtonality, was born  into the Italian aristocracy. A cosmopolitan sophisticate, he hung out with Cocteau in Paris, and was received as an honoured guest at Buckingham Palace. Yet when he died died only 25 years ago, he was something of a mystery, a recluse who had spent most of his life in secure institutions. His music is as strange as his life was: bizarre, obsessive, and elusive. Assuming, of course that it was his music, since there are claims that it wasn't. Perhaps Scelsi is as kin to Ferdinand Pessoa as he is to Hölderlin?  Pessoa used many identities that corresponded with each other –  a precursor of the modern internet troll, though he was genuinely creative rather than destructive as trolls are.

At last a new book, in English, Music as Dream: Essays on Giacinto Scelsi. edited by Franco Sciannameo & Alessandra Carlotta Pellegrini. Please read the review here in Soundproof Room, one of the finest blogs on new music, for a detailed summary. Please also read this article the late Peter Graham Woolfe wrote in 1986, when Scelsi was still alive - very perceptive. More on Scelsi, Xenakis, Murail etc on this site, too, please explore.,

"A homosexual story" Gerald Finzi on Billy Budd

A quotation from Diane McVeagh's biography "Gerald Finzi : his life and music" (p.210 )

"The first performance of Britten's Billy Budd was broadcast on December 1st. Gerald realized it was unfair to judge a broadcast of a stage work, but the music struck him as almost worthless though brilliantly presented, (his wife) Joy noted in the journal, "there are some exciting things such as the battle, and the sailors' pseudo-shanty, and many novelties, even novelties of banality, but he feels him to be the Meyerbeer of this age.... Rubbra phoned up between the acts completely exasperated by it." Finzi wondered how the world could take seriously "as a profound work a piece of flimsy mysticism covering a homosexual story" 

"In fairness", continues Joy Finzi, "G feels that there may be some deficiency in himself that makes him unable to appreciate opera as a whole because he found Bliss's The Olympians an unsatisfactory work and VW's Pilgrim's Progress a failure - in this case perhaps production"

As McVeagh mitigates, Finzi may not have heard much Meyerbeer, but was repeating the received wisdom  almost universally prevalent in the post-Wagner world. She also notes that the Finzis might have been interested in modern opinions of Billy Budd.. Finzi's ideas were by no means unusual. His assessment of the Bliss and RVW operas is relevant too since he knew both composers well. The British just didn't "do" opera  between Handel (who was German) and Britten.

It's important to respect what Finzi said, because he reflected the mainstream of British music at the time. Finzi at least followed what Britten did: RVW could afford to ignore, and as Joy Finzi noted, Edmund Rubbra seems to have disliked Btitten even more intensely. Finzi also picks up on the meaning of Billy Budd  much more perceptively than some modern observers and stage directors. Although homosexuality was illegal then, he was not prissy. He doesn't think it's a public subject but he's not demanding that BB be purged. Finzi's comments are interesting too because they are first hand. Britten was not as overwhelmingly famous as he is now. And Finzi's sharp enough to realize Billy Budd isn't a jolly maritime frolic.

Britten was not "British" in the sense of following the values of most other British composers of his time. Finzi was able to recognize that what Britten was doing was new, and that it was hard for him to follow. An honest appraisal. Ironically, Britten and Finzi shared a common fascination with Tudor and Stuart music, Finzi being one of the first and most serious collectors of Stuart poetry. His entire library has been preserved as a research archive..

Read Diane McVeagh's biography (details here) and Stephen Banfield's Gerald Finzi : an English Composer.  Until this fundamental dichotomy in British music is understood, Britten's place in British music won't be understood. With the Britten centenary on us, there will be media pressure to turn Britten into a "Little Englander". Resist, because it does Britten no justice, not the non-Britten mainstream of British music. Please do not use this material without acknowledging Diane McVeagh or myself.

The photo shows the church at Ashmansworth, a few yards from the Finzis' front door. It would be inappropriate to use metres!  The church is 12th century, and survived the Reformation because it was so remote. The Finzis were closely connected to it, and are buried there.

Lonesome Schoenberg's New World

"How Schoenberg became Lonely" by the biographer of his American years, Sabine Feisst. "Far from being isolated or alone, he in fact never failed to attract supporters in Europe and America, and scored substantial successes on both continents. Schoenberg’s penchant for the rhetoric of loneliness expressed something deeper than pessimism; it worked along with his unfailing ethical idealism to fuel his fighting spirit, which was the engine of his productivity, creativity, and teaching activities in both Europe and America".

Feisst's book, Schoenberg's New World (OUP, 2011) is an antidote to the demonization of Schoenberg currently fashionable in some circles, as if  "disappearing"  Schoenberg might somehow magic music back into the 19th century. Rumours are that some want him banned in LA of all places. Feisst demonstrates how integral Schoenberg was to the development of American music as well as European. Myths are made when people rehash the same old stories. A historian's job is to analyse how things come to be known. Please also see this clip of Schoenberg conducting Mahler in LA as early as 1934.

Opera fanatics, analyzed anthropologically

Why not study the anthropology of opera fans just as we study primitive tribes in obscure places ? There's a new book out called The Opera Fanatic : Enthnography of an Obsession by Claudio E Benzecry (2011). HERE  is a description which also covers a much more provoking title, The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire by Wayne Koestenbaum.

Benzecry apparently divides opera fanatics into four types. Heroes who keep the art going,  addicts for whom opera is an alternative to drugs, nostalgics who think the past was golden, and pilgrims, for whom opera is an outlet for OCD.  By which definitions, most people have one or more characteristics, yet certainly aren't demented. "The author hasn't read opera-l", said Gary, who forwarded this to me. (more soon)  It seems pretty normal behaviour, not all that different from other sections of the population, like Elvis impersonators, Havergal Brian devotees, or Cliff Richard groupies who think he's just waiting for the right girl. There was a stamp collector so devoted that he'd wander around China collecting first day covers behind Japanese lines. The Kempeitai couldn't believe an elderly gent would risk his life crawling under barbed wire to get a stamp. Luckily some of them were philatelists too, so he didn't get shot.

There are fans and there are fanatics, who live beyond reason and tolerance. Frankly some "fans" are so deranged that they harm the reputation of the very idol they worship. Obsession fills a psychological hole in a person's soul. In itself that's perfectly reasonable and healthy human behaviour. People keep pets, after all. It only goes haywire when they keep hundreds in squalid conditions and call it love. But even then, that's benign compared with those who would destroy others who don't believe as they do.  Politicians. And  some of the denizens on opera-l ! So, from opera fan to opera obsessive, to obsessive-in-general to extreme megalomania.  That's why it's a subject worth studying, though I'm not too sure about the methodology in either book.

"Anyone can do this job" Patrick O'Connor

Patrick O'Connor has passed away. I was shocked to realize how young he really was, as he looked eternal, like he's stepped out from the Bible. He seemed beyond time. Please read his obituary. "Anyone can do this job" was what a US Immigration official said about Patrick's job as a music critic. And yes, the official was right. Anyone sentient has an opinion, which is what art is about: you're supposed to respond in whatever way you can. It doesn't matter at all what the opinion is, but how it's arrived at.

Patrick was good to read because he did more than reactions. His opinions put things into context, stimulating you to learn and think and feel beyond the short term. So much opinion's just about consuming product, taking. Patrick, on the other hand, gave. HERE is an example. The concert was cancelled, but Patrick understood why it would have been important, and what it signified, so what he wrote endures. Ultimately that's much more valuable than "I love/hate". At the end of the day, whether one likes or hates anything isn't worth a bean. It's "how" knowledge is processed, and used towards greater understanding and insight. Knowledge makes a difference, but even then it's not quite as important as things like sensitivity, perception, humanity. These aren't things you can learn, like getting a B Mus and thinking you're God. Buddhists teach that "not" being full of oneself is the path to wisdom. Writers like O'Connor, John Steane, Michael Oliver, Neville Cardus, are/were all "ordinary" people but they put what they had to the benefit of others.

Sibelius a Nazi?

Q

Earlier this week an academic in North Texas announced a new book he's about to launch, which claims Sibelius had ties to the Nazis. I'm not falling into the trap of publicizing this book but you'll hear all about it. It's getting lots more attention than a normal book about music simply because now everyone wants to buy it to find out what it says, even if it turns out to be nothing. Sensation sells.

The allegation is based on three themes, that Sibelius liked myths, that he collected a pension and a prize from Germany and that he didn't help a Jewish musician. No specific evidence has been proffered so far and several specialists have queried the sources and interpretation. No matter what "evidence" may be found, the fact remains that such claims are profoundly ahistorical, presented out of context.

Sibelius's interest in Finnish myth was little different from a general Europe-wide interest in national myth - from Gottfried Herder to Walter Scott. Many countries, including Finland. had long been ruled from afar, so raising national consciousness was a necessary stage in awakening the idea of an independent nation. Nationalism in itself is not Nazism. Most nations would be equally "guilty".

Sibelius came of age at a time when the Russians were tightening control over Finland, which they then ruled. After Finland declared independence in 1917, there was a bloody civil war, where the opposition was supported by the Soviets. Weeks after Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the Russians invaded Finland, causing the terrible "winter war" where the Finns were outnumbered. So when the Hitler/Stalin pact collapsed in 1941, the Finns were forced into an uncomfortable alliance with the Germans. Note, with Germany, not necessarily the same as the Nazi party.

Sibelius received a pension sourced from German funds, but it didn't just apply to him but was a standard state benefit. He accepted the Goethe Medal from Germany in 1935. Ralph Vaughan Williams accepted the Shakespeare medal as late as 1938 and even went to collect it in person. That doesn't make either of them Nazis, because right up to the invasion of Poland in 1939, western policy favoured appeasement. Had Sibelius kicked up a fuss, the Germans might have tightened their relatively loose control over Finland, where Brecht and other enemies of the Nazi state had found refuge.

Then there's Sibelius's personality. Possibly clinically depressed, he holed up at Ainola, not helping anyone much. We don't know the exact circumstances of how the Jewish musician approached him for help, but the approaches started in 1931. And it's not as though Sibelius wrote his finest works in the Nazi period!

Because Sibelius's music was so much loved in the west, it made people sympathetic to his country. So after 1945 when Estonia, Latvia and other small nations were assigned to the Soviet bloc, Finland was guaranteed complete independence. Had it not been for Sibelius, Finland might have been punished after 1945, and handed over to the Soviet bloc like Estonia, Latvia, etc. The Russians ethnically cleansed Karelia and Ostro Bothnia, the Finnish "heartland". To this day, huge parts of these provinces (which Sibelius knew well) are still annexed to Russia.

Maybe there's proof, maybe not. But there are important differences of scale in moral responsibility. If such things "prove" Sibelius was a Nazi, then we're all complicit. Ultimately, this demeans the horror of what the Nazis did. If such circumstantial things "prove" guilt, that devalues the crime of active, deliberate evil doing.

After writing this I refered to Erik Tawaststjerna's monumental biography of Sibelius. There are plenty of references to Sibelius condemning racism. He loved Berlin in his youth, where his brother lived and where his publishing contacts were. One of the men he knew then went on to become a Nazi sympathiser (as many did). The guy lived beyond his means and his large family (many children) had no support. So Sibelius discreetly helped out. But that doesn't mean a bean about his politics. Sometimes people can be kind to others while not demanding that others think as one would like. Besides, most of Sibelius's friends were vaguely left oriented and liberal. The point is that we can't judge anyone in retrospect and out of context. If a writer wants to sell a book on this subject, he and his publisher are morally contaminated, benefiting from the Nazi association themselves.

Boy wonder growing up - Britten's Diaries

Benjamin Britten was uncommonly precocious as a boy. He kept hundreds of early compositions, meticulously ordered, almost like an old man in a boy's body. Read about the Red House exhibition in Aldeburgh and the new catalogue of his juvenilia HERE.

Now there's a new edition of Britten's letters from 1928 to 1938, "Journeying Boy : The Diaries of the young Benjamin Britten" ed John Evans, Faber, 504pp) Here he's off to school and then to the RCM, and thence into the world. These are his formative years, when he starts getting recognized as a composer, meets Auden, Berkeley and Pears, and to some extent comes to terms with his sexuality.

Each entry in the book is but a few paragraphs - Britten was never one to pour out his innermost soul, at least not in words others could see. Many of the entries are straightforward notes: he ate Italian at Bertorelli's, bought gramophone records at HMV (itemized) and liked cakes at Lyons Tea shops. Trivia perhaps but you get the flavour of the man, as Evans, the editor leaves in spelling mistakes and scribbles, which is a good thing.

Why "Journeying boy?" Britten is setting forth, into the world, and in German that's "fahrenden Gesellen". Since Britten notes nearly everything he hears, even on radios in other people's houses, we can track his influences. Lots and lots of Mahler – he heard Alfred Cortot play Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen in May 1931 and Henry Wood conduct Mahler's 8th Symphony in 1938 ("execrable performance!"), and plays Kindertotenlieder when he feels down about music. It's good to hear when and how he listens, though it's not news how much Mahler meant to him, although he and Mahler are very different as composers.

Britten is unequivocally "European". It's clear early on there's no way he's following the usual British composer career path. He likes Grace Williams (with whom he goes to see Emil and the Detectives) and thinks her Psalms are the best thing in a BBC concert which includes "dreadful concoctions by E Maconchy, R O Morris, Robin Milford and RVW (5 dreadfully boring mystical songs. It is concerts like this which make me absolutely despair of British music and its critics". Years later, he and Lennox Berkeley pass a pleasant evening dissecting and deriding William Walton. His disdain for British music and conductors is well documented but it's interesting to read how well he knew them, too. He sang RVW in a college choir.

Lowestoft and childhood recede rapidly. Britten's mother moves to Essex and takes up Christian Science. They visit Vienna and hear Mengelberg conduct Mahler 4 ("3rd mvt too long"). Elisabeth Schumann sings. He goes hill walking with Erwin Stein.

Nonetheless, Britten isn't quite as secure as he'd like to be. In 1937, he has dinner with Isherwood, Auden and friends "They are nice people, but I am not up to their mark tonight -feeling dazed, stupid & incredibly miserable-& so leave them at 9 with an overwhelming inferiority complex & longing for bed- if it weren't so single".

From comments in the diaries it seems that Britten wasn't in the closet. He's quite candid, about what happens with Berkeley, for example, and he's completely out to his brother who usually disapproves of what he does, but is surprisngly helpful. He and Piers Dunkerley go to Disney cartoons. "I am very fond of him - thank heaven not sexually , but I am getting too such a condition that I am lost wthout some children (of either sex) near me" Britten makes a clear distinction between his feelings for adults and children. He's quite open about what he does with Lennox Berkeley. His feelings for children aren't solely sexual as he's quite taken with Shirley Temple as millions were then, quite innocently.

In August 1937, Britten goes on holiday with friends, family and a boy called Harry Morris. Then Britten and his brother "have a first rate bust up". It's something to do with"'in loco parentis' wrath at my so-called conciet & bumptiousness". The rest of the holiday is "split", yet Britten says "Personally I'm not distressed". We don't know from Britten what happened but John Evans, in his editorial notes, says that blank pages in the diary "speak volumes" and makes a case that Britten's brother disapproved of the relationship, though there are long breaks in the diaries elsewhere. In later life, Morris was haunted by the idea that Britten made advances to him, but there's no specific evidence and it's third party .

Curiously, Evans makes a note (p 479) "One suspects that if (Britten) had been born into a different generation of gay men, he would have found a need to adopt a child, as so many gay couples do today" Perhaps I'm naive but I think gay couples adopt because they like being parents, as opposed to having unhealthy interests. All along, Britten's been helping Spanish orphans - indeed Morris was introduced as a potential protégé. So the idea of do-gooding isn't so far fetched. The Britten-Pears Foundation was Britten and Pears' legacy, their "child" so to speak.

Evans also suggests that the diaries end "abruptly" because of Britten's love for Wulff Schechen. On the other hand, there are other gaps in the diaries. In any case, Britten's blossoming relationship with Peter Pears, and their trip to America changed Britten's life decisively.

This is an interesting book if you're fairly up to speed on Britten and his circle: otherwise the proliferation of dates, travel plans and first names might not mean much. Diaries are tools, to be used in conjunction with other material. OPn nthe other hand, if you know anything about Britten, there's nothing new here. Evans suggests reading Bridcut regarding Britten's sexuality, but I suspect the truth will never be clear. Bridcut had an agenda, he was making a sensation TV show, so if Evans cites him as a source, it's worrying.

Britten's letters have been edited by Donald Mitchell (a monument) and Humphrey Carpenter's biography remains the basic text. There's a new book out, too, "Benjamin Britten: New perspectives in his life and work" ed Lucy Walker, published by Boydell, almost always one of the best music book publishers. But having shelled out big on the diaries, I'll have to wait, though the Walker book looks really interesting.

Von Hofmannsthal new book

Sounds interesting, a new book of Hugo von Hofmannsthal writings ed. J D McClatchy. Follow the link to a review in the TLS.

Isaiah Berlin

Excellent article by AN Wilson in the TLS on Isaiah Berlin. Please access HERE. It is one thing to have been such a person. But to model one's life on him ? Scary, scary, scary !!!!!
If you want real class read about Elijah Berlin

Haydn - sexier now ?

Earlier this year there was a talk at the South Bank with the title "Haydn : deeply unsexy ?" The idea was that Haydn doesn't sell the way Mahler or Mozart sells to audiences that don't normally listen to classical music. It's not Haydn himself but the way he doesn't fit the temper of modern times. "Who does he think he is writing baroque!" as someone said of Handel.

Andrew Clark in the Financial Times takes the Farewell Symphony as his starting point. Why do the musicians quietly remove themselves? Clark hears it as an elegant, but forceful response to the overbearing Prince Esterházy. Fortunately the Prince was astute enough to get the message. A suppressed rebel, then FJ Haydn ? But consider the times, when men could get disappeared for life if they upset the powers that were. And have things really changed so much?

Harrison Birtwistle did much the same thing in his Tree of Life (2008) but with less pointed portent.

Clark recommends Richard Wigmore's new book, The Faber Pocket Guide to Hadyn. Wigmore needs no introduction, he's original and perceptive. "...the Faber guides are a more substantial undertaking than the “pocket” appellation suggests. Wigmore’s lightly worn erudition is deceptive: without over-simplifying he has a knack of clarifying and contextualising all the relevant material, and is not afraid to give us the benefit of his own opinion. In his magisterial guide to individual works, he offers more insights than any other Haydn authority, signing off his chapter on The Seasons with the observation that the work “is killed by an excess of solemnity in performance”.

"Wigmore demonstrates that it is not enough for today’s scholars to know the territory through and through. They have to be able to sift and communicate it in a way that makes the reader drop the book and run to the music." Of course that presupposes people read to learn, not necessarily a given in this day and age.

Full article HERE

Neville Cardus - not a Beckmesser

By its nature, music criticism is ephemera, designed to be read as soon as possible after a concert or CD release and then forgotten. as quickly as the newsprint on which they're printed gets thrown away? So why do people still relish what Neville Cardus wrote in the 1940's? The man himself wasn't a literary giant like George Bernard Shaw who's remembered because people assume that being a famous playwright precludes the writing of opinionated tosh. But Cardus stands out because he wasn't just writing about what he heard but how it worked on him. When you read Cardus you're reading a man who's engaging with what he hears.

There's a story about a college professor who had a huge grant to build a machine that could produce music. Each phrase took hours of calculation. Along comes a man who cackles with delight, twitches a few knobs on the machine, and out comes something original and listenable. College professor says, "that cannot be music, he doesn't know how the machine works!" But the man was Luciano Berio who may not have had a clue about the machine but knew how to make it sing. Which further proves that even electronic music doesn't come from an object other than the human mind.

So what's the connection between Neville Cardus and Luciano Berio? Cardus wasn't a trained musician but, like Berio, used his brain creatively, applying intuition, knowledge and experience to the way he listened. What he did was a form of artistic expression, because he was channeling ideas about what he heard into something others could understand, and help them to think and feel for themselves. Not for nothing he was supposed to have said that music writing was "collaborative". The act of listening involves several layers of creative involvement. The performer is interpreting the composer's notes and the listener is processing in their minds what they're hearing. Listening is not passive, but a kind of skill in itself. Reading Cardus is like having a wise friend with you, enriching your experience.

Once Cardus spotted another eminent critic following a score during a concert. So he peeked. The other critic was reading the score of an entirely different symphony. The man was reading whatever he had to hand, to distract from an excruciating performance of what was being played. So neither man cared about theoretical perfection, but listened for artistic values.

Thoughtful listening is a skill in itself. Hans Sachs is the ultimate "good listener" who can see what Walter is getting at even if Walter hasn't got there yet. Beckmesser is so consumed by non-artistic baggage that all he can do is mark the slate with "mistakes". He gets more and more carried away with trashing Walter so that he almost destroys the poor kid. Whether Beckmesser can sing himself is immaterial (he's a Meistersinger too, after all).

Nuremberg would have lost a great talent if the Meistersingers had followed Beckmesser's hysteria. Unfortunately in the real world there are very few Sachs indeed, and millions of Beckmessers, many of whom haven't the faintest idea what they are talking about. But because they're loud and impressive, they carry the crowd. Everyone in an audience has an opinion, but not all opinions are the same (even if they agree). So it would be interesting to learn how Cardus got his listening skills and how he turned music writing into an art form of its own.

There's a new book out on Cardus which I cannot possibly recommend. There are lots of chapters, each only a few pages long. Lots of quotations which serve as padding rather than add substance. It's like reading a desk diary, full of amusing quotes but little attempt to order them into coherent analysis. Maybe it's biography for the twitter generation. How odd that the subject should be Cardus who was in many ways the opposite of what the book is like. By not naming the book I'm being kind. Since collections of Cardus's own work and autobio are still available check these out instead.

Prof. Henry-Louis de La Grange, Mahler 's greatest biographer

This day, 26th May, marks the 85th birthday of Professor Henry-Louis de La Grange. Prof. de La Grange is the world's foremost authority on Gustav Mahler. Last year he published the fourth volume of his monumental biography of the composer. It's probably the most significant in the whole series, because the years covered were full of incident. Mahler was going through radical changes in his life, and producing masterpieces like the 8th and 9th Symphonies, and Das Lied von der Erde.

The book is extremely important because it sheds so much new light on the composer. He died at a point when, perhaps, he might have been starting a whole new phase. He was only 50, entering a period when many composers are just reaching maturity.

Professor de La Grange's work has huge implications for how we appreciate Mahler's music. The more we understand about what made the composer tick, the better we are able to understand the way his music came about. Biography is thus an extremely useful tool for informed interpretation. It enhances performance, and deepens the way we listen. Mahler performance practice has benefitted so much from Professor de La Grange's insights. He has contributed so much to Mahler studies that, frankly, there is no way anyone can claim to "know" Mahler without knowing his work.

Read "Mahler Triumphant", a detailed synopsis of the volume HERE. It's written by Hugh Wood, the composer. It's an excellent description, so take the time to read it thoroughly..

This fourth volume is the culmination of a lifetime's work. The bust on the cover was made by Rodin. Anna Mahler, the composer's daughter, who was a sculptor, also made a bust which now stands in pride of place in the Médiathèque Musicale Mahler in Paris. It was bought by Mahler people all over the world to celebrate Professor de La Grange's 80th birthday. That's how much the author is loved and respected.

Mahler has been Prof. de La Grange's career. But he's had a remarkable life himself. He studied with Alfred Cortot, and the library contains the Cortot archives. He's been involved in music on many levels: he was one of the regulars at the Domaine Musicale concerts Boulez organized from 1954. At the first concert none other than Jean Cocteau arrived, in a flowing cape. Professor de La Grange is a modest man, preferring to keep the spotlight on Mahler, but his own life is a mirror of 20th century intellectual life and is worth volumes too. His parents were fascinating people too – his father, a French count, one of the first pilots in the early days of flying, his mother a lively patron of the arts. Such interesting people, no wonder they produced such an interesting son.

So Happy Birthday, Professor de La Grange, may you prosper! I can't begin to express how much admiration and affection I have for him and for his work. You need this book if you care about Mahler. Of all four volumes, this is the most important because it covers the most turbulent years and some of the more complex symphonies. Please explore this blog where there's LOTS on Mahler : original material, inspired by Prof de la Grange's pioneering work - see Mahler 10th posts for example

Jonathan Carr The Wagner Clan

Finally I’ve got round to reading Jonathan Carr’s The Wagner Clan. Carr was a top journalist with the Economist and the Financial Times. The Wagner Clan distils a lifetime of knowledge into 350 succinct pages. Carr’s direct, fluent style makes the book an easy, pleasant read but it springs from understanding the social and political background which created the phenomenon that is the Bayreuth Festspiele.

Much of the material isn’t new, but it’s put together with wisdom. Carr demonstrates how much of what we assume to be Wagner's views were in fact created by Cosima and others. Like The Master himself, Cosima was rootless, in denial of her own past, “more Catholic than the Pope”. Significantly the Wagner Idea attracted others similarly alienated – Houston Chamberlain and his curious assumed persona, Hitler the outsider with a monumental chip on his shoulder. Poor orphaned Winifred was doomed from birth, one feels, given that she too was rootless, raised by fanatics, as if genetically engineered to serve the "Wagnerian" image. Wagner’s image takes on projections that aren’t necessarily in his music, which is perhaps why it's so dangerously potent.

Carr is perceptive about Siegfried, reading between the lines of his ostensibly casual memoirs. Siegfried was heroic in his own lowkey way because he tried to extend his heritage. His descendants have each in their own way had to do the same.

Carr does not shy from confronting the Hitler connection. He sorts out myth from reality with cool analysis. Hitler for all his big talk had other things to deal with, alas. No one emerges clean, not even Friedelinde, for such were the times. Just before the book was completed, new material from British archives on her transatlantic ventures were released. They’re interesting reading. Friedelinde tries but the odds are against her.

Given Carr’s special expertise in postwar Germany, he’s particularly good on the complex politics through which the family retained control over the Festival. It’s a lesson in itself how such an institution can continue to be run on autocratic lines, without complete state direction. Carr passed away soon after the book was published, but the issue of succession haunts this account throughout.

Carr’s distinctive, warm hearted style and intelligence earn this book a special place even among the many volumes already written about the Wagners and Bayreuth (many by the protagonists themselves). I make no apologies for saying I loved reading it because it reminded me of the author, who was kind to me in bad times. So when you read this, remember that the man himself is reflected in the senstivity and fair mindedness with which the book is written.