From the Front: A Far Cry

This weekend, I attended a concert by A Far Cry, a self-conducted string orchestra founded 2007 in Boston by a group of New England Conservatory graduate students who refer to themselves as "criers." The concert was entitled "Divisions," as it entailed various reorganizations of the orchestra into smaller ensembles within the whole of the orchestra. Another changing factor in A Far Cry's performance was the position of concertmaster, which was filled by a different member of the orchestra for each work on the program. Guest artists (called "Guest Criers" in the program) appeared in several works where additional instruments where needed. The program represented a broad range of styles and time periods, ranging from Fratres by Arvo Pärt and Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Thallis to a selection from Bach's The Art of Fugue.

A Far Cry's performance dynamic strongly resembles that of chamber music, although they perform orchestral repertoire with a group of 18 or more players. The communication and sense of cohesiveness in their playing were truly extraordinary, and more like what one would expect of a small chamber ensemble, which is perhaps why I was struck with the personal element of the performance. The "criers" seemed to be simultaneously individuals and a single unit.

A Far Cry is unique primarily because of their rotating system of leadership in the ensemble, giving it a sense of communal contribution and variety not found in a typical orchestra. Perhaps this, along with their programming and energetic performances, has caused them to be successful in a time when many orchestras are struggling. Granted, they do receive a significant amount of support from donors, which they dedicate much of to outreach in the Jamaica Plain community where they are based. In terms of attendance, I would say they are doing quite well, judging from the crowd at their Saturday night concert in Jordan Hall.

For additional information about their performance, see this Boston Globe review.

Related Reading and Viewing of Interest

I was very glad to see that Nicholas Cook’s Music: A Very Short Introduction begins Chapter 1 with a discussion of music and visual culture (“A Television Commercial” is the section heading). As Wayman Chin pointed out in class last week, too often we think of appreciating music as a purely auditory experience, and write out the great influence of the visual. Investigating how we think about music visually can often illuminate the cultural work that music is doing at the moment, and the wide variety of contradictory messages that can be sent simultaneously (Cook points out in the Prudential commercial how, while you see representations of rock music, you hear classical music, reinforcing the advertisement’s claim that one can be young and hedonistic while still making sound long-term investments).

A more recent article by Cook (“Representing Beethoven: Romance and Sonata Form in Simon Cellan Jones’s Eroica) provides a nice complement to Chapter 1 and 2, tackling both visual culture and the influence of the cult of Beethoven. Here is a link to the article on Google Books, appearing in the collection Beyond the Soundtrack (http://bit.ly/n5Tbsl ).

The Eroica that the title refers to is a BBC television movie representing the first rehearsal of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3. It is a subject particularly ripe for investigation, because, as Cook points out, it is so different from other composer-biography dramas such as Amadeus. The majority of the film (which is set entirely in one day) consists of a full performance of the Symphony by John Eliot Gardiner’s Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. Like a music video, the musicians on screen are miming in sync with their own recording.

While the musicians play, a large part of the film is dedicated to representing how aristocrats of the time (and their servants) listened to Beethoven. The result is somewhat similar to the drawing on page 21 of Very Short Introduction. Ultimately, the overall shape of the film uses the dedication of the symphony to Napoleon to comment on the impending fall of the aristocracy in Europe – Prince Lobkovitz is physically and economically in decline, even as he continues to hire Beethoven for more engagements. Many discussions of the merits or evils of Bonaparte ensue, and the film ends with Beethoven’s disillusionment when learning that Napoleon has crowned himself emperor. Cook does a fine job in his article of showing how the film tweaks the historical materials on which it is based to create the drama surrounding Napoleon’s coronation, and to craft a tone that equates the concepts“Beethoven” with “revolution”. The conservative aristocracy, in this film, is on the wrong side of history, both musically and politically. While some conversations are based on Beethoven’s own writing and letters, some of the listener’s comments reflect much later 19^th century ideas of Beethoven’s writing, especially the notion that he has written himself into his own work (that he might be the titular hero). These ideas about authenticity and authorship of course come up again in Chapter 2 of A Very Short Introduction.

Overall, the article is great, and the film is a great pleasure to watch, so I'd recommend taking a look, no matter how quick. Of course, the central historical problem is that while Gardiner’s musicians play beautifully, the actual rehearsal was a disaster, but that would not be nearly so entertaining to watch. The DVD is not very available in US libraries; you can of course buy it, but if you just want to see it for academic purposes only, the entire film has been posted to Youtube (part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J71gAMPz3_4 )

My webpage

In response to our discussion about webpages, here is my page.

Technical stuff for anyone who is thinking of making a website: Bandcamp is a great site for hosting your audio files. However, I have been feeling more limited by trying to make an entire site based out of their format, so I have been slowly working on building a different site through Wordpress that just uses Bandcamp for the audio. Ultimately I plan on having the new site promote wedding & event services more.

Sometimes we get excited about new technology, websites, or social networks and think they will totally change the musical world. To some extent, they do. But I've found that having a website doesn't make you nearly as visible on the web as we'd like to think. We still have to draw people to the website, which, more often than not, happens with people you meet in person, are referred to by others, in other words, old-school communication skills. In effect, I've found that my website functions mainly as an extension of my business card or my résumé: "for more information, see my website!" There are a few people from far-flung places who have visited my site after googling "Beethoven Sonata Op. 102 No. 1", but these are not particularly lasting relationships. In some ways this is an obvious point that's been made frequently, but it hits home a bit more when you see the effects in person, on your own site.

Study Questions for Cook, Music: A Very Short Introduction

Foreword

In what regard does music function as an agent of meaning?

Chapter 1

1. What are some defining characteristics of musical authenticity in rock? In its construct, who is privileged and who is disparaged? What cultural work do such distinctions do?
2. What are our some of our transparent assumptions about music?
3. How do they reflect the structure of a classic industrial economy? 

Chapter 2

1. What role does music play in the early nineteenth century’s construction of bourgeois subjectivity?
2. How does Beethoven differ from his predecessors?
3. What is the Beethoven cult?
4. Which two aspects of the Beethoven cult does Cook discuss? What is their significance beyond Beethoven?
5. What components of music’s mystical qualities does the Beethoven cult celebrate?  How?
6. How does such spiritualization affect the historic relationship between words and music?
7. What irony ensued? 

Chapter 3

1.      How have 21^st-century realities inverted the basic assumptions of 19^th-century musical culture?

2.     By what process did modern music become “modern music”?

3.     In Cook’s view, what are some signs of vitality in classical music? Which aspects are “beyond resuscitation”?

Chapter 4

1. What is the abiding paradox of musical notation?
2. Discuss the following statement:  “[N]otations…transmit a whole way of thinking about music.”
3. Why were 19^th-century writers inclined to believe specious incidents attributed to Mozart and Beethoven?
4. What is the underlying root metaphor of Western musical culture?
5. What does Cook see as the “basic paradox” of music?
6. How does Cook apply Dawkins’s “river of genes” image to music? 

Chapter 5

1. How do our perceptions of “Nikosi Sikelel iAfrica” differ from our perceptions of the “Hammerklavier”?
2. What hierarchy ensues from the traditional understanding of classical music?
3. How does a reception-based approach alter our perception of music? 

Chapter 6

1. Why is the concept of a definitive edition problematic?
2. Why can there be no certifiably “authentic” performance?
3. Conversely, how do “authentic” performances mirror our own time?
4. How did musicologists and theorists come to realize the necessity for engagement that had previously been the exclusive province of ethnomusicologists? 

Chapter 7

1. What is a transparent system of beliefs? Examples?
2. What applications does critical theory find in music?
3. What is Cook’s antidote to Tomlinson’s extreme pessimism? 

Conclusion

1. Comment on the following quote from Philip Brett: “[Music is] an enclave in our society—a sisterhood or brotherhood of lovers, music lovers, united by an unmediated form of communication that is only by imperfect analogy called a language, ‘the’ language of feeling.”
2. In what regards does music have “unique powers as an agent of ideology”?

Study Questions for Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow

Prologue

1.      Our current hierarchical system of cultural categories (highbrow, midbrow, lowbrow) seems fixed and immutable.  What cultural work is done by a historian who maintains these categories?

2.     What error might ensue?

Chapter 2

1. What was the status of opera in Walt Whitman’s New York?
2. What does the prevalence of parodies and arrangements suggest about a popular familiarity with opera?
3. How had the perception of opera changed by the end of the 19^th century?
4. What was the relative status of bands and orchestras in the middle of the 19^th century?
5. When Jenny Lind, and other eminent European soloists, toured mid-century America, whom did they appeal to?  How did Adelina Patti’s experience differ?
6. How were typical mid-century orchestra programs constructed?  How did sacralization affect this paradigm?
7. How did Theodore Thomas manage to draw crowds for his New York concerts?  How did his philosophy change when he went to Chicago?
8. Since the founding in the 19^th century of our country’s major orchestras, what has remained their abiding fiscal reality?  Who now employs the Chicago Symphony’s funding model?  How has that funding model changed, if at all, over the last century?
9. What are some of John Sullivan Dwight’s basic beliefs concerning the sacralization of art?
10. Through art’s sacralization in the course of the late 19^th century, what were some of the changes wrought in the public’s perception of music? musicians? the concert experience?
11. After a hundred years’ time, which of these perceptions have remained in place?

Chapter 3

1.      Faced with industrialization and increasing cultural diversity, how did America’s cultural elites respond at the end of the 19^th century?

2.     How might one characterize 19^th-century audiences?  To what extent did arbiters of culture attempt to modify audiences’ behavior, and succeed?

3.     What unintended consequences did more docile audiences create?

4.     To what ends did 19^th-century champions of culture maintain and disseminate pure culture?

5.     How did the Columbian Exposition’s Midway Plaisance and White City symbolize a growing gulf in American culture?

6.    How was American culture perceived to compare with European examples?

7.     What racial and cultural dimensions did the ideology of culture assume?

8.     How did Matthew Arnold contribute to our understanding of Culture?

9.    How did our invented notions of culture conflict with reality?

10.   As cultural categories codified, how were new forms of expressive culture characterized?  With what results?

Epilogue

1. What reactions have been provoked by the growth of cultural pluralism in the late 20^th century?
2. What is the logical fallacy of the cultural categories that we embrace?