New Ideas

One of my favorite parts of living in Philadelphia is having frequent opportunities to hear world-class music. I took full advantage of the city's musical resources this weekend. I spent Thursday evening at a piano recital by the Harvard musicologist Robert Levin, and on Saturday, I heard Stephen Hough join the Philadelphia Orchestra for a night of Russian music. On Sunday afternoon, I heard the Astral Artists present a program called "New Ideas," featuring modern chamber music and a world premiere of da l'Arte Della Danssar, a piece by their composer-in-residence and the 1998 Pulitzer Prize winner, Aaron Jay Kernis.

I'm not content with a high quantity of listening -- I care about quality. If I've learned anything from being a performing musician, it's that doing something well takes intense practice. That leads to a challenging question: How do you practice listening besides doing a lot of it?

Kernis's new piece actually helped me answer that question. Kernis set the following antiquated Italian line to music: "lo intellecto atento a quel che sona (roughly, 'the mind attentive to what sounds.')." As the soprano sang these words, the flute, harp, percussion, and viola gradually moved from frenzied, dissonant polyphony to calmer and simpler harmonies. Eventually, the singer and the flute joined in unison for the word sona (sounds).

That brief passage mirrors my listening patterns. I face a constant mental struggle at concerts. No matter how hard I try to lose myself in the music, trivial thoughts and concerns from my busy life eventually break through my mental guard. When they do, I practice better listening by forcing myself to be attentive to particular sounds. Sometimes I focus on rhythms; other times I concentrate on the shape of a specific instrumental line. Occasionally, I just hone in on the tonal colors of a particular instrument, such as the delicate chiff of the flute or the gleaming plinks of the harp. Whenever I lock into a particular sound, my distracting thoughts fade, and I settle back into unity with the music.

By bringing this listening technique to my attention, Sunday's concert didn't really give me a "New Idea," but it did help me better describe an old one. I hope that description can help some readers listen more deeply and remember that sometimes, the best way to get lost in the forest of music is to become absorbed in specific trees.

Burning

Today, tomorrow, and Saturday, the Philadelphia Orchestra will be presenting an All-Russian concert. The featured soloist is Stephen Hough, a British pianist. Hough is not only one of the most critically acclaimed virtuosi on his instrument but also one of the most famous classical music bloggers. In the following video, he shares the same insight that is characteristic of his blog posts.



Hough will play Tchaikovsky's, not Rachmaninov's, second piano concerto in Philadelphia. Many of his thoughts on the nature of pianistic interpretation still apply. My favorite part of this video is the end where he describes the "burning" that is essential to a human life. Musicians seem to have special license to use this kind of lofty, spiritual language to describe their lives, and I'm glad Hough takes advantage of it in his interviews and writing. I wish more people did. I'll write more about Hough after I attend his concert, but for now, I'm burning to hear how he handles Tchaikovsky.

Winning Eternity

"If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

I watched the State of the Union address this year with consternation. I won't fully explain my views on education here. I'll simply say that I think education accomplishes much more than helping students "win the future," which apparently will be a battle among global corporations.

I thought of our president's slogan Friday night as I watched a performance by the boys of the St. Thomas Choir School. The concert was hosted by St. Mark's Church in Philadelphia, and the proceeds went to support the opening of St. James School, an Episcopal middle school being founded in north Philadelphia.

Before the performance, Father Sean Mullen, St. Mark's Rector and a St. Thomas Choir School alumnus, spoke about the value of Episcopal education. The most powerful testimony for parochial education came not in his speech but in the music that followed.

The choir sang English and Latin texts with melodic precision, clear diction, and dynamic nuance. These words can't capture the experience, though. As I looked around the near-capacity sanctuary, the glances I exchanged with others seemed to say, "We are in the presence of something special."

When the choir stopped singing, I checked my watch and was surprised to see that an hour had passed. That amount didn't seem too long or too short -- it seemed irrelevant. Time had absolutely nothing to do with my experience at the concert.

I had that timeless experience because a group of boys dedicated themselves to studying and mastering the tradition of Anglican choral singing. That's the value of a real education -- it gives fresh insights with which to turn the mundane into the sacred. The boys at St. Thomas School might never win the future, but that doesn't matter. They've already won eternity.

Endless Distances

Admit it. You visited this blog, read the title, and wondered what blackberries have to do with my writing. Maybe you read the line about the "classic cocktail" and recognized that a Blackberry Bramble is a gin-based drink. Then you thought, "that explanation seems too simple. There must be something more going on with that name."

You were right. 

The cocktail line came first. I told my cubicle mate that I was going to start a blog, and she told me to bill it as a cocktail and pun on the word spirit. I liked her suggestion, and I started to look for drink names with personal significance. When I found Blackberry Bramble in a cocktail compendium, I knew I had a winner. 

You can't understand what the name means to me without reading a famous poem by Robert Hass. To find that poem, "Meditation at Lagunitas," click here.  

I could write so much about the poem. I'll ignore the part about blackberries for now and take the line that stands out most to me and probably anyone who has ever read the poem: "Longing, we say, because desire is full/ of endless distances." 

Writing is also full of endless distances. There's a distance between the author and the audience, a distance between the different ideas a writer synthesizes, and, perhaps most importantly, a distance between the blank page a writer initially sees and the text that eventually emerges. Good writing must bridge all these gaps at once. That's what makes it so challenging. 

As anyone who has ever set out to express a thought in words can testify, writing is an act of longing. 

That's why I named my blog Blackberry Bramble. I appreciate Hass's insight into the nature of language and cognition, which he expresses so elegantly in his reference to fruit. In the end, though, my Blackberry Bramble is not a grand statement about how humans use words. It is a simple reminder that each time I write, I take one more step towards bridging the endless distances in my life. 

Speaking of the King

Oscar voters who watched "The King's Speech" noticed the screenplay, acting, directing, and overall cinematic quality. I noticed Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. 

Spoiler Alert: If you haven't seen "The King's Speech" and don't want any information about the scene at its emotional apex, please stop reading (but check out my other posts).

Near the end of the movie, King George VI must deliver a speech by radio to rouse the courage of his subjects. As he steps to the microphone, everyone, moviegoers and monarch included, is unsure if he will complete the speech undisturbed by his pernicious stammer.

That's where Beethoven comes in.

As King George begins his speech, the movie's soundtrack switches to the second movement of the Seventh Symphony.

Audience members should instantly recognize the music even if they can't identify the piece. It's a soundtrack staple, and for good reason. It's memorable and supremely dramatic.

The music's power is especially surprising because the melody is so simple. After an introductory chord, the low strings begin to saw obsessively on repeated notes. Essentially, Beethoven turns the entire orchestra into a broken record player.

And somehow, in the hands of the master, the stutter becomes beautiful.

Beethoven makes each single note important because, perhaps more than any other composer, he has an acute sense of pacing, dynamics, and development. These characteristics envigorate the entire symphony and transform a repetitive line into one of the most memorable melodies in the symphonic repertoire. They are also the qualities that make "The King's Speech" a great film.

This synergy changed how I think about both the film and the music. I have heard the Seventh Symphony countless times but never once connected it to stuttering or realized that it, like "The King's Speech," can communicate redemption. I claim no cinematic expertise, but to me, movies aren't valuable because they have great acting, writing, or directing. They are valuable because, every once in a while, they give us a new perspective on something we love.

A Night at the Opera

When most Americans think of Tuesday night musical drama, they think of the Fox TV show, "Glee."

Yawn.

I mean no disrespect to Ryan Murphy's wildly popular high school melodrama. It just can't match the intrigue in the opera I saw last night, Arabella. 

In the opera, Richard Strauss's lyrical setting of a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, a girl raised as a boy secretly falls in love with a suicidal man but then tries to set him up with her sister in an effort to save her financially strapped family. 

And that's just the first act. For a sample of the brotherly ... er, confused sisterly love in the opera, click here.

People who don't normally watch operas forget how tawdry they can be. Rampant raunch seems incongruous with the gentility most operagoers project. 

Seasoned music fans wouldn't be surprised by sexual scandal from Strauss, a titan of late Romanticism. He is, after all, the man who shocked the world with themes like necrophilia and matricide in the famous operas Salome and Elektra. Would you expect a man who looks like this --->
to write about butterflies and sunshine?

Arabella is much lighter than Strauss's tragic operas, and I saw it in an appropriately pared-down production by the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia at the intimate Helen Corning Warden Theater. A solo piano provided the accompaniment, and characters in period costumes moved around simple yet historically evocative sets that changed between each of the three acts.

I won't attempt a full review. I'll just say that the show exceeded my expectations. The young singers delivered Strauss's trademark soaring melodies with strength and emotional intensity. Pianist/music director Luke Housner nimbly navigated between the scampering chromatic lines and stately chords in the accompaniment. Overall, I fully enjoyed my evening at the opera, and I look forward to spending future Tuesday evenings with the Academy of Vocal Arts. 

Sorry, Mr. Murphy.