Monotonous Forest

La voix humaine

Beaser and Bolcom Song Cycles; Fleming Unveils French Music. The Juilliard Journal, October 2012

This week's music that won't make it to New York

Writing about Bohuslav Martinů's Julietta (1937) at English National Opera, Jessica Duchen makes me wish I were there. And Richard Jones's production (speaking as an accordion fan) looks pretty swell.

Quote of the day

"With Boulez, we see the tip of the iceberg. With Cage, we see the tip, even though there is no iceberg."

(From program notes by Paul Griffiths for "Composer Portraits: John Cage," performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble at Miller Theatre)

On Ralph

The first nine months of 2012 have been filled with an underlying sadness in the wake of the death of Ralph Kaminsky, who died on January 15 at age 85. I have never met anyone like him. In a state-of-the-art listening room (with, for equipment geeks, two Wilson Audio Alexandria speakers holding court) he and his wife, Hester Diamond, hosted monthly salon-type afternoons in their home, inviting people for the sole purpose of listening to contemporary music. And I mean only contemporary music. He rarely played anything written before say, 1980. One of the few exceptions was Wagner's Ring, yet his passion meant that listeners were more likely to hear versions done within the last decade, such as the daring and original stagings from Copenhagen and Valencia.

The list of composers he championed – and in many cases, socialized with – is long: Hans Abrahamsen, Unsuk Chin, Marc-André Dalbavie, Beat Furrer, Gérard Grisey, Kimmo Hakola, Tristan Murail, Olga Neuwirth, Matthias Pintscher, Huang Ruo, and hundreds of others were a part of his regular listening. (Often overheard, “I listen to music by composers who are composing, not decomposing.”) And many contemporary music groups, as well, were part of Ralph’s daily life; Alarm Will Sound, Argento Ensemble, eighth blackbird, Either/Or, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and Talea Ensemble were just a few of his favorites. For Ralph's 80th birthday, Hester commissioned Dalbavie to write a cello concerto, adroitly done by ICE in 2008 at Columbia University's Miller Theatre.

Now and then he and Hester would host live concerts in their home. One evening was like no other: the JACK Quartet in Georg Friedrich Haas's mysterious third string quartet, “In iij. Noct.” (2001), performed in complete darkness. Ralph and Hester enlisted an expert crew to extinguish every light source in their living room: windows were fitted with plywood and sealed tight with tape (two different kinds, to avoid ruining the paint). Spaces around doors were blocked. LEDs on telephones, computers and wall switches – all obliterated. Before the hour-long journey began, Ralph turned off all lights to give the audience a sample of what to expect, for those who might panic. I placed my hand a half-inch from my nose and could see nothing. Afterward, JACK violinist Ari Streisfeld said they had done the piece a number of times, but this was the blackest environment they had ever experienced.

Ralph left so suddenly that it's still hard to grasp that he's gone. Many New York concertgoers will miss his familiar mane of silvery-white hair, and after a particularly provocative evening, that mischievous smile coupled with, "Well, what did you think of that!"

He also had a sly sense of humor, often coupled with unexpected timing. After a particularly nice lunch one afternoon, we got together a few weeks later. "Oh Ralph," I confessed, "I'm so sorry - I meant to send you a card." He pulled me closer and said, "Want to hear a joke? Why don't WASPs have orgies?" I shook my head and he whispered, "Too many thank-you notes."

At an age when some people begin to close off their options, Ralph assiduously – even defiantly – challenged his ears, and those of everyone around him. He may have been the sole person in New York City who owned every recording made by Kairos, the trailblazing music label based in Vienna. Once I asked him if he ever listened to any Bach or Mahler on his highfalutin system, and the cheerful answer was, "No, heard all that already – don't need to hear it again."

In the fall of 2011, at what would be his final meeting of the listening group, Ralph had just discovered the glories of streaming Internet audio and video, and transferring the results to his music room. The inaugural example was a spectacle commissioned by IRCAM-Centre Pompidou and the Warsaw Autumn Festival: Georges Aperghis’s dazzling, technically innovative Luna Park (2011)—perhaps the ideal valediction for a man dedicated to the pursuit of the new.

[Above: still from Luna Park (2011) by Georges Aperghis. Photo by Sylvia Gomes via l'Institut français de Pologne]

 

45 years ago

From Claudio Abbado's Facebook page comes this arresting 1967 shot (photographer uncredited) of Abbado and Martha Argerich in Berlin, where they were making their legendary Ravel and Prokofiev recording with the Berlin Philharmonic. Saturated color aside (dig the Fellini-ish blue), the photograph is a glance back at an elegant era in which movie stars and classical musicians were sometimes indistinguishable.

A modest John Cage centennial tribute

Recently I had the pleasure of delving into the massive library of two close friends, and wanted to have some fun with the collection in some way. Yes, for true Cagean serendipity, I could have subjected the results below to further processing, but I liked the idea of some kind of narrative emerging. And honest, I didn’t expect to find the last entry (for “E”), considering the possible Cage books that could have been found on the premises, but I almost had no choice, since for whatever reason, there were very few titles starting with that letter (and for that matter, “H” as well).

Also, I didn’t use the ladder to get to the shelves next to the ceiling.

Instructions: from a friend’s library, select at random eight books, each title starting with one of the letters of John Cage’s name, to make an acrostic.* Decide for yourself to use or ignore an initial “A” or “The” in titles. For each book, turn to page 100, silently read the entire page and select a complete sentence from that page. If there is no sentence, use whatever text is available. If there is no text at all, choose another book.

*Noting, but in this case ignoring Cage’s interest in mesostics, in which vertical phrases are formed from letters in the middle, rather than the beginning of words

* * * * *

Jacques Lacan and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis (Ellie Ragland-Sullivan, 1987, University of Illinois Press): “Later it speaks the truth of recognition needs, separation, anxiety, grandiosity, jealousy, love, power aspirations, and so on–a kind of ‘speech’ that cannot be isolated through memory.”

Openness, Secrecy, Authorship (Pamela O. Long, 2001, The Johns Hopkins University Press): “Patents became a means not only for profiting from craft processes and inventions but also for transmitting craft knowledge as artisans migrated across Europe, bringing their craft knowledge or inventions with them and gaining limited monopolies and apprentices in localities that sought new crafts and inventions.”

Hadrian’s Memoirs (Marguerite Yourcenar, 1957, Doubleday Anchor Books): “To me, who had not yet given first place to anything except to ideas or projects, or at the most to a future image of myself, this simple devotion of man to man seemed prodigious and unfathomable.”  

Native Son (Richard Wright, 1940, Harper & Brothers Publishers): “Directly in front of him he saw a small piece of blood-stained newspaper lying in the livid reflection cast by the cracks in the door of the furnace.”

Claire’s Corner Copia Cookbook (Claire Criscuolo, 1994, Plume): “This is a beautiful salad, colorful and delicious.”

Advertising the American Dream (Roland Marchand, 1985, University of California Press): “Then, while critics contemplated this new abyss of advertising vulgarity, Hill recharged Lucy Strike’s anti-sweets campaign with a series of visual blockbusters.”

Glorious Knits (Kaffe Fassett, 1985, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc./Publishers): “Cast off 5 sts at beg of next row, then dec 1 st at armhole edge on foll 4 rows, then 1 st at armhole edge on foll 4 alt rows, at the same time dec 1 st at front edge on next and every alt row until 21 sts rem.”

Empty Words: Writings ‘73-‘78 (John Cage, 1973/1981 edition, Wesleyan University Press): “Leaving from the kitchen, after walking past the reeds at the far end, we return as guests invited to dinner.”

 

Today's Prokofiev and Liszt report

2 Piano Faculty Members Show Their Chops. The Juilliard Journal, September 2012