Black Music of South America ( Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil). Recorded by David
Lewiston. Nonesuch H-72036 stereo ($2.98)
Anthology of Music of Black Africa. Assorted sources. Everest 3254/3 (3 disks) sim. stereo ($14.94)
Hi-fi technology has done wonders for the recording of so-called primitive music, on location or even in the studio, but it has not solved the more basic problems involved. Recordings still remain a contradiction of the very sense of the material recorded. And it still isn't easy to find ways around the difficulty.
Wide-range sound adds intelligibility; quiet backgrounds do the same and allow much-needed dynamic range; distortion free peak levels help immeasurably to get around the often rude and sudden sonic violence of the sound--in the past mostly smeared into hopeless distortion. Stereo has gone into the jungle and the bush, adding immeasurably to recorded drama and clarity. Even Everest's simulated stereo adds its useful bit to the presentation. But the problems remain.
Is such a recording to be a slice, a sampling? Or is it a work, a whole entity, transferred (like Beethoven) to tape and disk for home replay? The distinction, you see, is meaningless; because in primitive music the very idea of a "work" is meaningless. Primitive music ( and much other music, too) does not have beginnings and endings. It simply exists, and goes on until people tire, or fall exhausted.
Like the very arbitrary European idea of a frame around a picture ( which seldom exists in other arts), the sonic "frame" of a beginning and an end, and a shape within the time-span enclosed by that beginning and ending, is entirely arbitrary. Music doesn't have to "begin" nor end! Even our own pop music proves the point, via endless verses to a tune, via the ubiquitous fade-out ( implying no real end, just a cessation) or via the Beatle-coda, an interminable extra tailpiece often longer than the tune itself.
The older way of documentation for primitive music, as we all remember only too well, was the short sample-just enough to record the nature of the sound, to rouse a bit of listening interest. But dozens of short samples one after the other, each quickly faded away, merely confuses and tires the ear. On the other hand-where do we stop? What to do about a tribal dance that goes on for hours and hours? Most do, and so do most songs.
In truth, there is no answer, only a varying degree of compromise. One can, of course, tape the whole thing, hour after hour, at no great expense. There it is, complete on twenty five master reels! Then what? We are straight back in the soup again. The taping isn't what counts.
It is the aesthetic choice of material for disk presentation that is the crux, and brings out the fundamental parameters of an essentially false situation. The true answer is-if you want to hear primitive music, go into the jungle and hear it.
Hour after hour.
Nonesuch's Explorer Series continues to present such music in an optimum fashion, i.e. in uncompromised hi-fi stereo sound, and in long enough segments so that one can, in fact, become interested and, to an extent, immersed in the actual experience. Good! These Black recordings from South America are limited, wisely, to a few areas, each amply represented and musically satisfactory in the listening, the excerpts all reasonably long. But a curious thing has happened. Some of the sessions, apparently, have been set up expressly for the taping. The music suddenly does, in fact, come to a stop-as thought the engineer had signaled OK, that's enough for this take. Those stops, alas, are as false as the fade-outs that we usually hear! For the music should not stop. Not ever! It should merely peter out.
The Nonesuch Black Music is, as could be guessed, Latin-American in sound, sung in dialect-Spanish with a familiar Latin overlay blending into the African base. Subject matter, similarly, transfers African-type gods and personalities into European-based saints and the like. Interesting and an authentic picture of current race melding.
Everest has picked up its tapes, apparently, in France; each of the three disks contains a different collection, all under varying French auspices. The sounds are wonderfully varied, much more primitive ( and free of European influences) than Nonesuch's South American material. The recording, originally mono, is reasonably clean and intelligible. Two of the disks are "on location," the third is via a traveling "troupe" presenting African culture, but in sound there isn't much difference; all are very authentic and unspoiled. Yet the old problem remains acute. Too many excerpts, and mostly much too short, virtually all of them faded out just as the interest begins to build. The majority are under three minutes, down to scarcely a minute. One musico-drama extends to eight minutes.
Everest has reprinted the notes complete with references to non-existent photographs and a mix-up of sides (on the labels as well as the notes!) in a fashion that ill befits these relatively expensive disks (as per their list price). Even so, there are good sounds here. I'd recommend the album if you are intrigued by Black music, or merely for the novel sounds it contains.
Performances?? Sound: A-; B
Mozart: Ascanio in Alba, K.111 (1771). Soloists, Angelicum Orch. of Milan, Polyphonic Chorus of Turin, Cillario. RCA Victrola VICS 6126 (3 disks) stereo ($8.85)
Mozart was fifteen when he was commissioned to do this full-scale festive piece for the Italian wedding of the Archduke at Milan ( then under Austrian rule)
with a princess from Modena, Maria Beatrice d'Este. It was a sort of pageant ballet and cantata, not really an opera, and wholly for festive entertainment. But, curiously, the young Mozart and his elderly librettist managed to get a large quantity of classic elegance into their show. One recognizes the sound of Mozart at once, even at fifteen. But what is really remarkable is the nearness of this work to the older classic Baroque opera of Handel, Telemann, A. Scarlatti. Mozart has absorbed the older tradition to perfection.
Only the gallivanting frivolity of the new galant style sets it off from Handel himself.
Here we have the old gods and goddesses and demi-gods, and the human beings that are mere pawns of the gods who control all. Here, too, are those cardboard human characters, not people but, rather, summaries of the various virtues and vices ( not many vices in this one! )the sweet, pure maiden, the dashing youth, her noble suitor, the maiden's doting father and adviser. Here are the gods, too, represented by Venus-the hero's grandmother. And here, even, is the inevitable messenger from the gods, a Faun.
All these creatures in the classic opera simply stood and sang. Each aria, at length, depicts a single feeling or Affekt, as the Germans put it, with all the repetitive power of musical persuasion. Each of the quicker recitatives advances the "plot" by a single notch, no more, like a time clock that clocks forward a tape at regular intervals. There is no continuous play-like action, no dramatic development of character-all that came in a different age.
The astonishing thing about this youthful but highly professional work is that Mozart has so beautifully combined the lofty, static elegance of the old tradition with the effervescent new galant style, new in his own time. The gods remain statuesque and all-potent, the human beings rejoice or bewail in the old lofty dignity; yet Mozart bubbles along as light as a feather, all friskiness and brilliance, in a kind of ginger-ale Baroque. His singers leap daringly, launch into fearful cadenzas (now almost unsingable), race up and down dizzy scales, yet retain their classic dignity. Some feat-and Ascanio in Alba was rightly a hit at the wedding celebrations, repeated a number of times before they were over.
This performance has some mixed virtues. The lead singers, Venus (Ilya Ligabue) and her grandson Ascanio (Anna Maria Rota) are excellent in voice and musicianship and a pleasure to hear.
The remaining singers, including the maiden Silvia, our heroine, tend towards the quavery and/or strident. Not unmusical-just uncontrolled in the vocal technique. Mozart's standards were far higher than ours for such parts. The orchestra, large for the time with brass, woodwinds and percussion, is full of verve if a bit squashy in the detail-work. The chorus, which acts as curtain to separate the various scenes, is solid and competent; Mozart nicely balances numbers for the women, the men, and the whole group.
One curious anomaly persists. The ardent hero, young Ascanio, who gets his girl as per Venus' orders, was originally sung by an alto castrato, a friend of the Mozart family and, since he was well known, presumably well into middle age.
A preposterous embodiment of male virility, but common enough in opera of the day, where vocal expression was what mattered, not physical accomplishment.
In this modern performance a later but no less preposterous tradition is followed --the hero's alto music is sung by a large voiced mezzo soprano whose female chest tones suggest both maturity and, perhaps, considerable bulk. One imagines a good 180 pounds of it at least! (A still newer tradition would have procured a male countertenor to sing the part, castrati being now unavailable.) Does it matter that our hero weighs a feminine 180? Not in the least. She is a superb singer and a splendid musician and in five minutes we are accustomed to her sound, representing male youth via female maturity.
Performance: A, Sound: B
Catharsis Eric Salzman: The Nude Paper Sermon. Tropes for Actor, Renaissance Consort, Chorus and Electronics. Stacey Keach, Actor; Nonesuch Consort; Members N.Y. Motet Singers, Rifkin. Elektra H 71231 stereo $2.98.
Luciano Berio: Sinfonia. Swingle Singers; N.Y. Philharmonic, Berio. Columbia MS 7268 stereo $5.98.
Believe me, it took awhile before I could bring myself into writing consecutive words about these wildly similar constructions in modern sonics. Phew! They represent a curious meeting of minds, out of the world of the 'big symphony orchestra and that of the Renaissance Revival, two types of music which seldom meet in concert. Yet, here they are on common ground to celebrate the modern age sonically as it must be celebrated-via noise, elaborately montaged. It works.
But it leaves you limp.
The urge to express one's own time--somehow or other--is basic to every age.
Ours demands implacable plurality. That is the idea behind many a multi-media show, bombarding the senses with unconnected, unrelated simultaneous messages. It is emphatically the idea between these two recorded works ( and their "live" versions). Poly-noise. Poly-music against poly-music. Poly-voices. Electronics. All combined in a fiendish hodgepodge of layered impact. Wears you down. Talk, talk, talk, never ceasing! Like tuning a dozen radios in and out, or listening to a cocktail party. And layers upon layers of music, or semi-music, bits and pieces. All ceaselessly combined, merged, bombarded outward. Don't we hear the same on any city street or crowded summer beach? It's a shocking sort of sound at first but you may yet come to feel, as I did, that the contrived sonics do convey the very stuff of life's pressures-and thereby, oddly enough, help us to feel much better about them. Catharsis, they call it.
Just forget about "art" or "music"-take it as it is.
Of the two works the Nude Paper Sermon, smaller scaled, is the most stylishly modern. It takes Renaissance music, both for voices and old instruments, as its base and makes use of text with a somewhat Renaissance flavor. ( The Renaissance-a time of change . . .) Its performers normally play the older music itself; so you will hear recorders, lute, portative organ, not to mention countertenor and other Renaissance-style pro voices. Indeed, the singers often seem to be singing actual old music, until they dissolve into dream-like dissonance or, more often, sheer off into wild whoops, groans, hiccups, and heavy breathing sounds. The recorders and lutes do likewise as well as they can and there is an overlay of occasional electronic burps to help out. A "chorus"-many voices all talking at once like at a party-they, too, tend to dissolve into wild shouts and yells.
Against all this there is the ceaseless monologue of the Actor, who spouts endless high-speed cliches, non-sequiturs, total generalities about Modern Life, out of which you are intended to catch only fragments, like radio. Such pompous nonsense-shades of a million news commentaries, public-service messages, political announcements, and radio sermons! Very healthy satire on meaningless message bombardment, and I liked it. The whole big melange is mixed down, easily enough, from eight original tracks and the only question I ask is how do they get the pro singers to make such incredible noises? If actors now must go nude, then singers must be ready to pant, gargle, gasp, or shriek on demand. These do it beautifully, and note in particular the soprano, Diana Tramontini. She's terrific.
As for Berio's more modestly titled Sinfonia, it is bigger and, in a way, more old fashioned, coming out of the symphony concert tradition. But again a ceaseless babble of voices, all talking, or singing, or gasping at once. Mostly in French ( the Swingle Singers are French) but also in other languages. Again the intermittent shrieks and pantings and general vocal hysteria, all beautifully controlled.
And against this vocal barrage you hear the N.Y. Philharmonic in all its sonorous majesty, playing a horrendous mixture of old-fashioned music and squealing dissonance, put together in the fashion noted above-into a patchwork of deliberate irrelevancies, tossed up like life itself.
Tough to play, but not half as zany as the Swingle element; the two together really make a fine controlled chaos! Good job.
The Berio stand-out movement is No. III, which is "assembled" (Berio's word) on top of the third movement of Mahler's Second Symphony, into which orchestral "container" he (Berio) projects fragments W of all sorts of other familiar orchestral works-Bach, Schoenberg, Ravel, Strauss, Stravinsky, Beethoven, even Berio himself, against the ceaseless babble of the Swingles. (The soprano sometimes airily joins in on a bit of familiar tune.) This part I'd like to hear minus Swingle. It makes a fine musical guessing game. I caught about half the items, first time through.
After you've played straight through all four sides on these two records you'll experience the final catharsis: you will positively revel in the total silence that hits you when at last you turn off your machine. That is an experience which justifies all the rest.
Performances: A, Sounds: A, Everything: A
THE BEETHOVEN YEAR
Carl Czerny: Variations for Piano and Orchestra on a Haydn Theme, Op. 73; Ferdinand Reis: Piano Concerto, Op. 55.
Felicja Blumental; Vienna, Salsburg Chamber Orchs, Froschauer, Guschlbauer. RCA Victrola VICS 1501 stereo ($2.98).
A terrific record this-in spite of unknown composers, two different orchestras and two conductors with lumpish names (see above!). The music is quite extraordinary; the performances on the piano are excellent and the pair of orchestras, no Philharmonics, nevertheless offer very adequate accompaniments in the full-Romantic style. RCA doesn't say where it picked up this one-not, I gather, the usual Harmonia Mundi tapes that glorify the Victrola label, mostly in Baroque and Mozart-period music. Wonder who was responsible? ( Surely not RCA itself.)
Czerny is hardly unknown, but his name means mainly those endless musical exercises trudged through by pianists in-development. (But they are musical, even so.) Actually, he was one of Beethoven's big proteges, and the unknown Ferdinand Reis was another.
Czerny played the first performance of the Beethoven "Emperor" concerto; Reis similarly played the Third Concerto its first time. Both, of course, played Beethoven's piano works as they appeared, straight from Beethoven himself.
Both were tremendous musicians-performers 'and also composers-as who but Beethoven should have known. In those days, a protégé was more than a mere finger musician.
What one feels, in both works, is a sort of kindly tolerance of the Old Man's genius, an enormous appreciation, born of closeness, but no slavish submission.
Beethoven is everywhere in both works.
There are even seeming direct quotes, or semi-quotes, perhaps unintentional.
(Reis's last movement begins with a note-for-note Beethoven idea.) Yet not a trace of the dogmatic, copycat imitation we expect from pupils of a Great Personality.
Throws abundant new light (for me, anyhow) on Beethoven's relationship with his musical associates-which could be stormy.
Czerny's variations turn out to be upon an ultra-familiar tune, Haydn's Kaiser hymn, later made into Deutschland saber Alles. Haydn's own celestially reserved variations on it are found in a late string quartet. These are almost funny, so totally different in style from Haydn are the giddily explosive Romantic fireworks, out of Paganini or Rossini. A grand show piece and beautifully styled for its period, post-Beethoven.
But it is the Ferdinand Reis concerto that steals the show. It is an astonishingly mature, expressive work after Beethoven, totally professional and authoritative, a really first-class piece of writing without competition that I can think of in the period. Reis! Listening, you would never know that this was other than one of the "great" genius composers of the Romantic era. No wonder that the entrepreneur Salomon, who had brought Haydn to London, took up Reis in that city and made him famous in his day, if later on forgotten. He deserved his short-lived fame.
Performance: A, Sound: B+
Wilhelm Backhaus Beethoven Sonatas Nos. 13, 24, 3. (Op. 27, No. 1; Op. 78; Op. 2, No. 3) London CS 6638 stereo ($5.98).
Wilhelm Backhaus is surely the grand est old man of the recorded Beethoven piano sonata. His recordings for London would seem to beat all records (in both senses )-for longevity, quantity, and quality-though I haven't totted up the others to be absolutely sure. My oldest Backhaus LPs date from the early fifties, among the very first London long-play recordings. He still goes right on, and the current Schwann catalogue is full of his Beethoven sonatas, though not in the sweeping "complete" format of such as Angel's young Barenboim, old Artur Schnabel (who did the first such set before the war) and that other Wilhelm, W. Kempff, whose complete set is available on imported Deutsche Grammophon.
(He used to appear on U.S. Decca Gold Label LPs.) Kempff, who mustn't be confused with Rudolph Kempe, is a precision performer on his records, impeccable in phrasing and sharp detail, powerful, passionate but, even so, a bit chilly. One admires, but at a distance. Backhaus is a very different sort. Elderly now, he is sometimes clumsy, blurring up the details in old-man fashion; but to my memory he has always been this way, a pianist interested in the grand lines and impact, inclined to be uneven in detail, using both a bouncy, staccato technique and a good deal of blurring pedal. But this man has such an unerring (and continuing) feel for the sense of Beethoven that these matters are of no account at all. His wholly natural, persuasive way with the composer is utterly musical.
Best of all, perhaps, is the lack of pose, the naturalness. So many pianists approach Beethoven with furrowed brow and determined mein, advertising loudly that now they are performing THE MASTER. (Orchestras likewise!) Yet for all their determinedness, many of them do not really understand nor feel the music.
With Backhaus, Beethoven is so comprehensible, so familiar, that there is no thought of anything but straightforwardness. For which, the thanks of us all.
Only the OP. 27, No. 1, "Quasi una Fantasia," runs into noticeable technical trouble here. The fugal segment with the running fast notes is just too much for the elderly fingers, though the sense is all there. The rest, and notably the early Op. 2, No. 3, is just fine. Backhaus is particularly good in the early works, so often treated as semi-youthful immaturities. He gives them their full due, without a trace of exaggeration. Try Backhaus first-then measure all the others.
Performance: A, Sound: B+
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Is Classical Music Dead?
By GREG MORROW
Many people are discouraged by the decline in popularity of what is called classical music-especially among the younger generation. Various explanations have been given-lack of musical education, high-powered commercial exploitation, reaction against the 'establishment' and so on. Here is the view of Greg Morrow, a 16-year-old youngster. You may not agree with him but we think he should be heard.
RECENTLY, I walked into a record shop in a nearby city, and as I was scanning the titles and labels I reached a very sad conclusion: classical music is in its death throes. In fact it may be dead already. For some people this may be a rather startling pronouncement.
However, consider the sales of classical disc and tape recordings. The percentage of classical recordings has declined from about 20% during the nineteen-fifties to a dismal 5% now. Of course, we have to realize that people's tastes in the nine teen-fifties were somewhat simpler than they are now. Small town America was America and life for many people during the Eisenhower Administration was uncomplicated and peaceful. As for music, well, there simply was not the variety to choose from and for the most part, popular music was rather unexciting. It seemed classical music was one of the few alternatives.... But, with the emergence of a young man from the South named Elvis we had something new.
"Something new" was a distinctly American phenomenon: rock and roll. All the supporters of the musical establishment were properly shocked by Elvis Presley and his new style of music.
"Sure, classical music is fine for the older folks" the younger set said "but who could possibly imagine our idol, Elvis, listening to a Beethoven violin sonata?" By the early nineteen-sixties classical music was in trouble. Anyone who listened to classical music in teenage circles was suspected of being something less than a swinger. After all, this was the Space Age, and was it really relevant to listen to the musty old music written by some guy a century or more ago? Young people across the land gave the verdict: classical music was not relevant. On the other hand, sales of classical recordings should have actually increased. After all, stereo was now on the scene and it was almost possible to recreate concert hall sound right in your own living room.
Never before had there been such a flood of recordings. But there was one thing missing-education. Musical educators had failed to provide a solid course in music appreciation at the elementary and secondary school levels. For years it seemed they could offer nothing more than the "William Tell Overture," "The Sorcerers Apprentice," and their like.
Now I have nothing against these two war-horses but it seems to me that music educators have driven the good old standards into the ground and exhausted their potential. Music appreciation courses were and are a sometime thing for many schools and the choice of music was often left to the discretion of the music teacher.
Often little or no modern music was included. This lack of contemporary music seems to have driven many young people away from the enjoyment of classical music. There are two other causes related to this decline of interest.
First of all, merely obtaining classical recordings is a problem in itself. Many of the record shops I have visited have only a few recordings on hand. Those shops who have a decent selection available usually charge full list price. I myself buy recordings from a large mail order discount house in New York but this method of buying cannot always be depended on. How can the problem of record availability be solved? No one appears to know the answer.
The second cause is lack of quality in recording. The popular music boom of the sixties has forced record plants to stay open virtually around the clock to meet the insatiable demand. The trouble is, quantity has increased at the expense of quality. In my opinion the quality of classical recordings is lower than it was a decade ago. And what about the current repertoire of classical recordings in the United States? The public taste in classical music has never stagnated for so long. Brahms and Beethoven form the background of popular recorded classical music. Much of the recorded material sold is made up almost entirely of nineteenth century (or older) works. Contemporary music should be given much better representation on recordings and in the concert hall. In my opinion, Igor Stravinsky is the only well-represented twentieth-century composer on recordings.
Columbia has done a superb job of recording the majority of his works for posterity. I believe part of the reason for his popularity is due to the magnificent recorded performances of his music by such masters as Ansermet on English Decca ( London), Bernstein, and of course by Stravinsky himself. Aaron Cop land's major works are also being given good coverage by CBS. This can be done with other contemporary composers. It may be expensive to produce these new recordings, but if the record companies expect to attract new customers for classical recordings it must be done.
So here we have one of the ironies of the electronic age. There is a plethora of almost all types of music and one can even select the program source e.g.radio, records, tapes, or live performances. Yet classical music seems to be declining in importance in this nation today. If something is not done to make classical music popular again we may find ourselves a musically second-rate nation.
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(Audio magazine, Oct 1970; Edward Tatnall Canby)
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