Alex Ross's Blog, page 245

The future of books

Baby, the pet iguana of the distinguished young violinist Lara St. John, catches up on his reading.

Beatles meme

Ann Powers has posted fifteen favorite Beatles songs. I can't resist following suit.

1. "A Hard Day's Night." The ninth greatest chord of the twentieth century.
2. "Yes It Is." Amazing texture.
3. "I Want to Hold Your Hand." A downward major scale conquers America.
4. "Michelle." Lamento!
5. "And I Love Her."
6. "Tomorrow Never Knows." Bring on the Stockhausen!
7. "For No One."
8. "All You Need Is Love." The title is now inseparable from Klaus Kinski.
9. "Eleanor Rigby." If only string ensembles had been strictly rationed in rock/pop from then on.
10. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." More lamento!
11. "Julia."
12. "Helter Skelter." Beatles hardcore.
13. "A Day in the Life." Xenakis!
14. "Revolution 9." John Cage!
15. "Something." What Ann said.

Milhaud comes home

Photograph: Chris Brubeck

The Metropolitan Symphony, an energetic and progressive civic ensemble in Minnesota, is presenting this Sunday a ninetieth-birthday tribute to Dave Brubeck. In the course of preparing for the event, Bill Schrickel, the Metropolitan's music director (also the acting principal bassist of the Minnesota Orchestra), received the above photograph of a remarkable self-portrait by Darius Milhaud, which has long been a prized possession of Brubeck's. Milhaud taught the jazz master at Mills College, in Oakland, and became a close friend. In the 1950s, Brubeck and his wife, Iola, set about building a home in Oakland, and Milhaud asked them one day if they could reserve "one square foot" for him, because in his wanderings he had come to feel homeless, and, he said, "I want to have some place I can stand and say, 'This is my own.'" In 1958, Milhaud visited the finished home and saw the "Milhaud place"—a spot in the hearth of the living-room fireplace. The next day, he sent along the self-portrait, all the lines of which are themes from his jazz-classical masterpiece, La Création du monde. The inscription says: "To the 7 Brubecks, the owner of the square foot. Souvenir of Création du monde, Milhaud 1958." The Brubecks had the portrait engraved in copper and placed it in the hearth. They subsequently moved east, but Milhaud lives with them to this day. 

Avant-Hudson

The view from EMPAC, in Troy, New York.

Nielsen moment

Michael Schønwandt conducts the Danish National Symphony.

Book tour finale (On dabbling in pop)

The book tour for Listen to This is winding down. I'd have posted more zany pictures and anecdotes along the way, but a persistent head cold laid me low for a while. As it happens, several remaining events will place me in conjunction with colleagues in le Monde de Pop. On Monday, Nov. 15, I will appear alongside Sasha Frere-Jones, the New Yorker's pop critic, at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn. On Nov. 20, at the Miami Book Fair, I'll share a stage with the iconic rock critic Greil Marcus, who has a new collection of writings on Bob Dylan. And on Nov. 22, at Housing Works Café in NYC, I'll join a reading for Best Music Writing 2010, of which I'm honored to be a part. Also present will be such rock/pop eminences as Ann Powers (editor of the volume), Robert Christgau, Jody Rosen, Greg Tate, and Sasha again. I thought I'd take the opportunity to muse about my extra-classical adventures.

As I relate in the opening chapter of Listen to This, I grew up listening exclusively to classical music and had no time or patience for anything else. In college I delved into free jazz and underground rock, which resembled in certain ways the avant-garde composition I'd lately discovered. When I became a critic, I periodically tried to write on rock as well, with variable results. At the New York Times, I persuaded Jon Pareles to let me do occasional reviews of bands and groups such as AMM, Caroliner, and Thinking Fellers Union Local 282. I'm glad I got them into the paper of record, but I didn't really know what I was doing. I covered some of the same territory in occasional reviews for Spin, where Craig Marks and Eric Weisbard were indulgent of my peculiarly limited enthusiasms. In 1994 the New Yorker asked me to write an obituary for Kurt Cobain; I included this piece in Listen to This, since it holds up a little better than some of my other early efforts.

One problem was that I lacked a critical language. I'd been reading classical commentators from an early age, but I doubt I'd ever looked more than once or twice at pop writing, with the exception of Maximumrocknroll and other punk tracts. Producing the pieces was a tortuous process, and I was seldom thrilled with the outcome. (I have a bad memory of inserting the word "damn" into one of my Spin reviews in the hope that it would make me sound like less of a geek.) Nonetheless, once I became a full-time New Yorker writer, in 1996, I kept on trying. I liked the idea of transcending genres and addressing music as a continuous whole, as Wilfrid Mellers did so magnificently in Music in a New Found Land. Also, the magazine then lacked a pop critic, and certain assignments fell by default to me. Between 1996 and 1998 I produced three critical columns on pop: only the last of these, on Sonic Youth and Cecil Taylor, appears in Listen to This. It became clear to me that I couldn't hack it as a working pop critic. In time, the magazine did hire a writer who knew enough — more than enough — to accomplish the task. That's Sasha, and I learn from him constantly.

I'm happier with the three long-form pieces that I've included (with some revisions) in Listen to This: my essay on Bob Dylan and my profiles of Björk and Radiohead. In the first instance, I was speaking more as an obsessed fan than as a critic. In the others, I was chronicling the artistic process in journalistic style. By the time I wrote about Björk, I felt that I'd finally overcome my hangups on the issue of style — my fear of sounding square, my puzzlement over the simple question of what words to use. I decided simply to write about Björk as if she were another gifted younger composer, which indeed she is.

For Henryk Górecki

Tim Rutherford-Johnson has a perceptive obituary.

CD of the week: Monica Huggett in Italy

Marini: Passacaglio à 4

Biagio Marini, Passacaglio à 4; Monica Huggett leading the Irish Baroque Orchestra Chamber Soloists; Avie 2202.

Miscellany: Shirley Verrett, etc.

A looming catastrophe for UK music schools? This Daily Telegraph story suggests as much, although the figures are disputed.... "As simple, seductive, and beautiful as breathing": Andrew Patner A Midsummer Night's Dream at Lyric Opera of Chicago.... Joseph Horowitz throws some cold water on the Met.... Donald Rosenberg covers the crisis at Opera Cleveland.... Remembering the great Shirley Verrett.... Mark Stryker reports on another concert by striking Detroit Symphony players.... Jens Laurson, of ionarts, interviews Rudolf Buchbinder, in feisty mood. Editors at G. Henle Verlag respond to being called "morons." ... Another bracing new score by Andrew Norman, one of the most gifted of younger American composers: The Companion Guide to Rome, for string trio.... Tomorrow night at the Austrian Cultural Forum in NYC, Taka Kigawa digs into the archives of the Second Viennese School.... Worth exploring: the work of composer, vocalist, and dancer Gabrielle Herbst. She appears on Nov. 17 at Roulette.

Returning ghost

In the late 1980s I was an announcer at WHRB, the Harvard student radio station, hosting a program called Music Since 1900 and organizing "orgies," or comprehensive continuous surveys, of Britten, Nielsen, Shostakovich, Ligeti, and Mahler. On a more dubious note, I was responsible for an event called Schnorgy (works of Schnebel, Schnabel, and Schnittke) and an Ecstatic Radio Fantasia on Robert Ashley's "She Was a Visitor" (sample here). I'm ever grateful to WHRB for widening my musical horizons: as I recount in Listen to This, DJs in the station's jazz and rock departments broke down my lifelong resistance to non-classical music. WHRB — and in particular David Elliott, an alumnus and longtime guardian of the station — also led me to my present vocation: I made my debut as a music critic in a 1988 Program Guide, reviewing Robert Simpson's Sixth and Seventh Symphonies on Hyperion. Tomorrow afternoon (Nov. 10, 1-6PM) I'll be hosting Afternoon Concert on WHRB. My rather hectic playlist, ranging from the Eroica to Rothko Chapel, can be found below. Tomorrow evening I'll do a reading at Harvard Book Store.

Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 in E-flat, Op. 55, "Eroica"; Klemperer, Philharmonia Orchestra (EMI)
Schubert: Piano Sonata in A Minor, D. 784; Kempff (DG)
Strauss, R.: Salome, closing scene; Behrens, Böhm, Karajan, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (EMI)
Webern: Six Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6; Levine, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (DG)
Feldman: Rothko Chapel; California EAR Unit, UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus (New Albion)
John Adams: "Batter My Heart," from Doctor Atomic; Finley, Gardner, London Philharmonic (Chandos)
John Luther Adams: Dark Waves; Van Zweden, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra
Arañés: "Un sarao de la chacona"; Savall, Hespèrion XXI, La Capella Reial de Catalunya (Alia Vox)
Bach: Ciaccona in D Minor; Kremer (ECM)
Ligeti: Hungarian Rock; Chojnacka (Teldec)
Clemens Non Papa: Ego flos campi; Stile Antico (Harmonia Mundi)
Schoeck: Notturno for Baritone and String Quartet, Op. 47; Gerhaher, Rosamunde Quartet (ECM)
Lieberson: "My love, if I die and you don't"; L. H. Lieberson, Levine, Boston Symphony (Nonesuch)
Brahms: Intermezzo, Op. 117 No. 1; Radu Lupu (Decca)