The Fine Art of Listening

You might have had this discussion with a number of friends – if you could transport yourself to a different era, which would you choose? Which would you avoid? It’s all a game, but good party conversation.

I’m drawn to the explosion of musical achievement in the mid-to-late 19th century – the blossoming of German opera, the evolution of the tone poem. I’d stay away from the Enlightenment. And then there’s the 1910’s, leading up to the outbreak of World War I. I wish I could watch the events of that decade from a safe spot – sort of like watching a shark’s feeding frenzy from a steel cage. It’s completely fascinating, and equally scary.

The world had become modern and much more complex. Romantic sensibilities were shunned. The individual as a hero with a purpose was traded for the absurdity of existence in an human insect-hive. Would any of the “old ways” be relevant in the 20th century?

In the same way that militaries were rushing to be technologically one-step ahead of their enemies, artists were pushing boundaries to the extreme. The term avant-garde means just this – the “advance soldiers” who are doing the riskiest work, but with the greatest promise of reward (if they are successful).

The Austrian musical military was the Second Viennese School, who had created a new musical technology which was years ahead of France and Italy (and decades ahead of England, Russia, and the US). To oversimplify, the old tried-and-true approach to tonality was abandoned, and a new system of organization put into place. If you’ve never heard atonal music before, you might find it difficult to listen to – but if you are able to approach it with an open mind, you might find it quite beautiful, but in very different ways from tonal music. (side note – today’s piece is pretty tame as far as atonality goes …)

Alban Berg (arguably the best composer of the Second Viennese School, though not as famous its founder, Arnold Schoenberg) wrote a set of songs for orchestra and voice in 1911 (the same year as the Rite of Spring). When they were premiered, the audience began to riot – but this was fairly normal for this decade (again, see the Rite.) I would love to have been there – but inside inside a steel cage with bullet-proof glass, of course.

Yesterday, a Gallup poll announced that 13% of Americans smoke Marijuana.

Think of music and drugs, and you probably think of Bob Marley, the Beatles, Snoop Dogg, Janis Joplin … the list goes on and on – drug use is so commonplace among the famous that it’s simply accepted as a natural part of being an star entertainer. Of course, there are also the many tragic deaths due to overdose …

But before the turbulent 1960’s, were drugs and music a regular mixer? Is there any drug-inspired Art Music from yesteryear?

The first thing that comes to mind are Scriabin‘s Poem of Ecstasy, Glière‘s Red Poppy, Debussy‘s Evaporated Soul, and for those of you consider caffeine to be a drug, Bach‘s Coffee Cantata. I’m joking about these, of course. But I’m not joking about Berlioz’s March to the Scaffold, which the composer admitted was an opium trip. And then there’s this largely unknown piece by Sergei Lyapunov, a tone poem called Hashish.

If you haven’t seen the movie Amadeus, stop putting it off and go see it!

The movie stretched the facts a bit in order to craft a good drama; you can read about that by googling it. However, there were two things in the movie that were spot-on: first, Mozart was a dirty man who was obsessed with poop; second, his insane genius for composition. Even his farts sound as good, if not better, than the average classical symphony.

One of his most famous operas, Don Giovanni, opens with an equally famous overture. The music is out-of-this-world (standard for Mozart), but even more impressive is the fact that he wrote it 24 hours before the opera’s first performance. Legend says that he woke up drunk on the day of the premiere, rolled out of bed and wrote the piece. It’s more likely that he wrote it the day before. Still, that’s not exactly timely, especially in light of the fact that, in 1787, after writing a piece, the score was sent to a copyist who would have to hand-write the individual parts for the musicians to play – and even then there’s the not-so-small matter of the musicians rehearsing …

So the next time someone tells you not to procrastinate, remind them that one of the greatest pieces of music ever was a drunken last-minute quickie written by a potty-mouth.