Musing 42

No Accounting For Taste

Of course - carrying on the theme from my last post - it’s still all a matter of opinion, what makes a good recording, even when there might be a common - musicological - consensus on “quality” and “persuasion”. Still trying to discover how noteworthy or negligable the recoding of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps by Haitink and the Berliner Philharmoniker (Philips) might be, I discover there are 38 recordings to date in total of this composition. Many of them “classical”, meaning the category this particular recording from 1947 would fit into.

Does this make the recording of a lesser technical quality or are we all supposed to be able to hear through the recording technology to the actual playing? However, the recording "studio" (say an old church) seems to add much to certain performances. Likewise the acoustics of a concert hall, but also the orchestra itself is technically an instrument which is not suited to all pieces alike. Then there is personal preference: a Steinway of a Bösendorfer? But when it comes to the conductor, we come to the true dynamics of a performance. How far can he take us to the original? Or bring us in touch with the music behind the composer's indications even? This presumes we should be able to listen "around" all other veneers, be they scratched or polished. And yet, there seems to be a big trend towards remastering old recordings. None of these considerations help me decide what is good for me?

There is not a lot I can do with the advice to listen to the version I like best. I am not always as able to know what that might be. Especially not with a new piece, or a challenging piece I know I’ll have to listen to many times before I appreciate its musicality. I am not much in it for the story, but rather for the telling. It is part of my soul-training not to accentuate personal sympathies or antipathies. I want to read the writing on the wall and hear the planets sing (go to Holst!!).

Can I have a favorite if I already struggle to know how to listen to a composition? I keep slipping behind the music to the source from which it once flowed. Often, especially for symphonies, operas and Lieder that gets me stuck right in the middle of a man’s life. Not quite the aim of the piece, I don’t think.

Music is not my medium; it is not my native language. I need all the help I can get to set the notes against their cosmic harmony and thus transfer this fabulation that is the composition into the type of etheric that my Heart can hear. Music that emotes or moves (the physical body) is not so much for me. I am always looking for ways out (of the mind) into the soul. It makes it easier for me when I have plenty of semi-tones or extensive breath.

Rickety Perfection

With that date attached to it, suggesting profuse scratchiness and exiguous resonance, I prepared myself to expect this Haitink 1947 recording to be a bit “off colour” to my modern ears and I choose to ignore that factor, since I had just listened to a couple of original recordings of Mosesti (1953-59) and felt thoroughly nostalgic for it (? I’m not that old). Perhaps, though, I appreciated the Mosesti CD because he played two obscure composers, a Sinigaglia and Illersberg - for which I have nihil comparison. This is how these pieces are now, to my ears, supposed to sound (rather thread-bare or ethereal)! There you go: regardless of how technically adequate this muscian may or may not have been, this makes a “perfect” recording - not likely to be outdone in a hurry. (Mosesti nor his choice of composers are familiar names to me, at least.)

Perhaps, after listening to 38 versions of Illersberg’s violin concerto in G major, I may wonder why they kept Mosesti as “the one”. Perhaps, this piece doesn’t lend itself to that many interpretations? Maybe, it’s not musicologically interesting to record time and again? It may be too similar to “better compositions” which sound similar -dare I say Tchaikovsky, Respighi, Cherubini? I don't know, but it doesn't sound super "original", but I don't care. It's pleasant to listen to. For me it’s got a charming and unique Italian (filmic) style, with delicate woodwinds suggesting sunny, mountainous villages with charming olive trees on stoney ridges and vineyards pasted up the valley hills. Even if Illersberg sounds German to me, the Antonio bit doesn’t.

(Wikipedia teaches us that Antonio Illersberg is known for being an exemplary musician of his hometown Trieste: “Autore di fama ed interesse prettamente locale, Antonio Illersberg si può sicuramente considerare uno dei massimi esponenti della cosiddetta scuola compositiva triestina.”)

I pick up this recording by Haitink then, feeling comfortable that I can listen through the lack of veneer on the one hand, and the “make up” of the time, on the other. But this still doesn’t mean I’ll be getting closer to perfection. We saw yesterday that the original, authentic rendition may be unmemorable. Stravinsky himself failed to impress with his recordings.

An older recording (with limited or distorting equipment) does not necessarily take us back to the bare bones of the composer’s intent. On the contrary, often orchestras were charged to play according to popular taste: it’s all about the entertainment factor after all. You have to pull in the punters if you want to keep the show going on. You can’t keep on putting notorious performances on (like Stravinsky’s Rite and 6 other separate occasions in the artisitcally conservative 1910s - including Alban Berg, Prokofiev, and Satie) and have your bread and butter walk out on you.

Something authentic per definition is always lost in a recording. What then is there to be gained by a susequent enhancement? A deseperate recovery of the original intention? Why would it not shine through what is, blemishes and all?

This is a familiar discussion amongst photographers, at least the ones who spend more time behind their computer than their camera. I have had some desperately end up defending their manipulations against the backdrop of the good old tradition of tweaking by pointing to Ansel Adams and his manual (darkroom) enhancements. Hm. Not convinced this justifies erasing and smoothing the skin of Minnie Driver (Wikipedia expample).

The Fiction of Art

Yesterday, on my walk I passed many lovely buds and bulbs in flowers, but resisted the temptation to take a photo of them (what for? Perhaps, I will start composing a “palet” of flower colours/plant-greens to make a concept piece of art using “natural colours” in a digital medium). It did make me ponder briefly why so many Steemians post up shots of their local nature? Aren’t we a sweet and tender bunch of folks!

Then I came across a flowerbed of daffodils and red tulips which seems to be the council’s favourite planting scheme, this year, littered with various undefinable scrap materials (nearby a building site). A chunk of metal, a sheet of plastic, a rippped carton, a bit of cardboard box.

[nicholasrobb1989 did stop to take a picture of his eye-sore / object d’art]( https://pixabay.com/en/litter-bottle-rubbish-waste-blue-460984/)

Was it ugly? Not ugly enough like a derelict railway sheltering a heap of hobos on crack to take a meaningful photo. Was it an eyesore? The circumstance was too forgiving and the mess too incidental in this particular neighbourhood to get me hot under the collar. Soon this public border would be tidy like the rest of the stretch along the road (opposite the fancy hotel).

Choices, choices to be made as a communicating artist, always: what is worth noting and sharing and preserving for an artificial while longer? That white carton against the red and yellow bulbs stuck out for me, and is burned onto my retina, but would it make an artistic statement? I don’t think so, for it had nothing of any cosmic, eternal importance to say. Only to me it was an indirect prompt to consider the meaning of art. (Hence it would serve good stead here as an illustration of the theme addressed.) It was like a piece of food falling off a fork. Leaving a little stain perhaps, maybe a more persistent one if it happened to concern a blob of cranberry sauce, but it cannot mean much of anything unless you transfer it with fabulation into a story of its own making (the fishbone that got away, which would otherwise have got tucked away in the tidy forkful to choke the dinner guest to death).

The question remains: how many Rites do we need to hear Stravinsky arightly?

Or is the situation, rather, that we shall have as many Rites and approximations of this mood that came to Stravinsky in spring, as it takes us to hear the rite arightly?

It could well be that the imperfect version will prevent the listener from hearing properly. More likely, though, the inspired version will spark the connection more effortlessly. But there is always the fear that such sweeping along may make the listener indolent (and in need of ever more spectacular recordings. I often wonder, would Beethoven at all recognise any of his music in the latest recordings? Now the modern Klavier really allows some proper hammering?)

Will it matter which version of the Sacre I kept and treasured most? Much more interesting and relevant and exciting would be the question: when will I get to see a live performance? I think that would make all the difference and put an end to all my searching (I'd get a copy of the version I saw, no doubt about it, regardless of all the reviews). In the end its only ever about your personal experience. So if you don't really love the piece, it's only theoretical (study material). I don't think my final attic is meant to house such materials.

I might end up in a music free attic. I might move ever closer to a city concert hall with an interesting programme (tottering around the world to the cities with the best programmes, clutching tightly to my zimmerframe!). I'll be too deaf to really hear how good or bad any performance sounds, but I will be hearing the music notwithstanding.