Symphony A to Z Introduction (something by Rachmaninov in G minor)

- live performance September 25th, 2006 featuring:
Peter Henderson, piano
Kristin Ahlstrom, violin
Anne Fagerburg, violoncello
(AKA The Ilex Trio)

I go out to see live music an average of once a week. It's what I do for fun.
I don't go to movie theaters.
I'm not a fine dining connoisseur.
I don't hang out at the mall.
I'd rather watch sports on TV, if at all.
Cicero's, Blueberry Hill, The Pageant, Mississippi Nights, Off Broadway, Venice Café, The Hi-Pointe: these are my sanctuaries.

There's something about live music that just can't be captured on a CD. It doesn't even have to involve the elaborate stage show of a Flaming Lips or the choreographed dance routines of a Jessica Simpson, usually it's just the pure energy of a group of musicians gelling on stage together.

I can't remember the last time I saw classical music (maybe that's not the right term) – symphonic music performed live. It might have been on a grade school field trip to Powell Hall?

Rock shows are electric – and by that I mean plugged in. There are cables and cords and power strips strewn all over the place. The singer sings through a microphone, the guitar cabinets are miked, the drums are miked, and the bass and keyboards are fed directly into the PA, which spits out all this sound in a thick paste. What you end up with is a wall of sound (intentional Phil Spector reference), but it loses that intricacy of stereo sound that The Beatles first started experimenting with in the mid 60's.

Sidebar:
(from Wikipedia)
The Beatles' album Let It Be was produced by Phil Spector and is cited as a famous example of his "Wall of Sound". Paul McCartney claimed that the production had ruined the work, particularly McCartney's composition "The Long And Winding Road", and a 'de-Spectorised' version of the album was released as Let It Be... Naked in 2003. George Harrison and John Lennon not only favored the production style but they continued to use Spector on various solo projects. George Harrison's All Things Must Pass and John Lennon's Imagine and Rock 'n' Roll albums featured the production sound; each musician would later have similar misgivings over the style.

The sound from the Ilex Trio in the Maryville Auditorium was different. Although the three musicians were seated very close to each other, there was a sense of separation between the sounds. I believe I heard the violoncello performer most prominently because she was pointed directly at me. I have a feeling that every seat in the auditorium offered a little bit different listening experience.

That being said, I found the violoncello part somewhat unnecessary. The piece was at times homophonic – when one of the strings would drop out and the other would take the lead, or when both strings rested and the piano carried the tune. But when it morphed into polyphonic melodies the violoncello seem to occupy the same frequency spectrum as the piano part which was predominantly in the lower registers. I think the melody would have been less muddled if it had been composed as a piano/violin duet.

As a listener of popular music I'm used to choruses and verses that bang you over the head with their repetitious melodies. Many symphonic pieces to me seem to deviate so far from where they started; it's hard to see how the composer justifies it as still being the same song. This piece, however, had a 1-2-3-5 melody pattern that kept reappearing (sometimes in a highly modulated form) that held the composition together.

This Rachmaninov piece also held my attention by swerving back and forth between tonality and atonality. Stately melodic sections would deviate into tension filled atonal romps and then resolve back into the safe arms of tonality.

It was particularly interesting to watch the body language of the performers. When the piece entered its most tension filled moments the string players used so much vibrato I thought they were going to snap the necks off of their instruments. Dr. Henderson was especially interesting to watch – flailing his arms, banging his head, and at times leaving his piano bench entirely.

I always thought of symphony performers as a strict and rigid breed. I imagined they ate their candy bars with a knife and fork, only watched foreign films with subtitles, and ironed their undergarments. I figured they'd have to be a bitter bunch, forced to spend their lives performing tunes written exclusively by dead guys and taking direction from a dude in a tux waving a stick. Tonight I saw a performance filled with intensity and passion.

"Transfigured Night" by Arnold Schoenberg, or [if you force me to I guess I'll try to fake it]

This piece makes me feel...

NOTHING.

I've tried. I've played the whole thing through numerous times: while sitting on the couch, while making dinner, while on the treadmill, while in the car, while waking up in the morning, while drifting off to sleep at night. It just does nothing for me. Usually I get distracted and start cutting my toenails or pondering over how much my next Discover Card statement is going to be. It doesn't hold my attention. It's not that it's bad; it's just nothing.

Maybe it's because the song is composed entirely of strings. (There's my timbre analysis) The sound of strings just doesn't move me. It reminds me of a sketch from the Dave Chappelle Show:

here

First Dave visits a business meeting in an office building and proves (with the help of John Mayer) that white people can't resist dancing to the sound of electric guitar. He gets similar results in a fancy restaurant full of white people. As a control he then has Mayer play guitar at a barbershop in Harlem. No one dances. In fact they tell him to, "shut the f@#$ up." Then he gets Questlove to play a drum kit and all the African Americans start dancing. With the addition of an electric piano he gets the Latin Americans dancing too.

So string ensembles don't get me dancing. I'd argue that it's due to my gender, race, age, and/or socioeconomic background, but I'm guessing I'm not that different than Dr. Henderson in any of these regards and he goes gaga over this stuff. Perhaps Dr. Henderson is the exception to the rule.

Here's my THRMFT+ examination of the fifth section, Adagio (2):

Texture = Homophonic
Harmony = From the supplemental reading I've gathered that it has a high degree of atonality, but personally having trouble recalling any memorable melody it's hard to tell when the piece diverges from the tonic. It seems that the fifth section is less atonal than some of the previous sections.
Rhythm = This piece needs some rhythm. It seems completely random to me.
Melody = Unmemorable
Form = The reading says its ABACA.
Timbre = String Orchestra
+ = I gather this is the conclusion of the story when the guy who has discovered his gal has been knocked up by another guy decides to forgive his gal and raise the child as his own. So I guess I'm supposed to feel happy for them? (I thought the poem was awful. Maybe it lost something in translation.) The music does suggest that things are calmer or that some crisis has been resolved, but frankly I think this section of music could be used with any sappy Hollywood film with a predictable happy ending. It's my belief that if you want to tell a story using music you're going to need to have some lyrics. It's also nice if you can wrap it up in around three minutes, instead of a half-hour. I'm curious whether each member of the symphony audience is given a copy of the poem and, if so, whether or not they are told when transitioning from one stanza to the next?

In conclusion, if I never hear this piece again for the rest of my life that would be fine with me. And if I do hear it again I probably won't even recognize it.