The Fine Art of Listening

This week I’m playing trombone in a pit orchestra for a community theater production of Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s Jesus Christ Superstar. I was introduced to this show as a teenager and immediately fell in love with it. When I was 16 I played it on piano for a professional theater, and often sang it with friends karaoke-style. However, this was 20 years ago.

The music has been on my mind this week, and not just because I’m actively participating in it. It’s kind of like visiting your old high school or hometown. It might look the same, or maybe it’s completely different. Maybe the visit fills you with nostalgia, or perhaps with hatred, love, confusion, or maybe even a oceanic connection to the past and future. But let’s not get carried away here.

The question I want to pose here is, why do we find this overture easy to swallow (musically speaking) whereas John Adams‘ Dr. Atomic symphony (a post from last week) is much more difficult?

I’m not sure I’m ready to give an answer, but here are some of the questions I’m ponderings and my thoughts:

• Is JCS “Art Music” or “Consumer Music?”
• Are my personal feelings (of nostalgia) clouding my judgment of this music (IE am I giving this piece more credit than is due because I loved it as a teenager) ?
• Am I giving Dr.A more credit than is due because my conservatory education says I should like it?
• Both pieces use highly accented pitch clusters in a rhythmic landscape, and are either atonal or have tonality ambiguity.
• JCS uses a lot more percussion – the familiar drum patterns make it easy to follow the shape of the piece, perhaps making the “ugly” pitch clusters more acceptable
• JCS also uses short, motivic melodic fragments that are later sung to words. Does the word-association with the motifs help us to accept them, even if they are discordant?
• Does the lack of a “rock” drumset in Dr.A make it “highbrow” and the inclusion of one in JCS make it “lowbrow”

Both pieces are actually very similar in my mind. I find much to like in each, though I can also identify their shortcomings. Dr. A is much more interesting, with a wider variation of material and broader palette of musical colors and styles. JCS is beautifully concise and balanced, and the melodic fragments are bite-sized, not overdone – which is a great virtue.

Your thoughts are welcome – listen to the JCS overture, and then the first 4 minutes (or more) of the Dr. Atomic Symphony:

Q: What’s the difference between a musician and a pizza?
A: A pizza can feed a family of four!

Felix Mendelssohn was a wunderkind and successful musician all around – performing, conducting, composing. Unlike many musicians, he never really had to “sing for his supper.” He did, however, take an interesting commission to write a piece for a friend – he composed this mini-concerto for clarinet and basset-horn in exchange for a generous portion of dumplings and cheese Danish.

Q: What’s the quickest way to get a musician off your porch?
A: Pay for the pizza.

Russia’s music scene blossomed at the end of the 19th century. A group known as “The Mighty Handful” or “The Five” were defining what Russian music was, mainly in opposition with Germany, which was dominating the romantic music scene. You can read about the anti-German-music sentiment in another post.

But there was this other Russian dude, who wasn’t considered one of The Five. Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, like many musicians, made his living doing a variety of music-related jobs – conducting, composing, teaching, performing. By far, his most famous pieces are his two suites of Caucasian Sketches. This piece, from Suite No. 1, paints a grand scene of the Georgian mountains.

Another movement from the same suite can be found here.