Karl Miller writes:

>I am reminded of something one of my teachers once suggested.  Her idea was
>to place a ban on the music of Beethoven for some unspecified time period.

I'm ambivalent about this.  At one point, I would have agreed completely.
On the other hand, I've just gotten into standard rep.  At my local
symphony (which, incidentally, does enough new stuff to keep my interest),
some of the most revelatory performances I've ever heard were of things I'd
known forever:  Tchaikovsky 4th, Beethoven 3rd, Dvorak 9th.  Of course, all
of them were led by Klauspeter Seibel, the music director of the Louisiana
Philharmonic (or, as I like to call it, La Phil).  I think the key is
balance, which is why I'm at such a disadvantage arguing for new music.
Brahms, who for years and years had put me to sleep, I now like, so I'm not
really inclined to complain about programming him.  Nevertheless, my main
musical interests aren't really satisfied, since few are willing to indulge
me.  The harm, of course, is that what we always hear - from a very narrow
sliver of years, incidentally - tends to reinforce a narrow notion of what
music is and, worse, what great music is.

Speaking of La Phil, I went to a very interesting concert of French music,
mostly with a New Orleans connection:  Gretry, Dede, Gottschalk, Lambert
(not Constant, and pronounced "lamb-BEAR"), Bizet, Guiraud, Weigel, and
ending with a "cheater," Ravel's La Valse.  Gretry arranged a Creole dance.
Dede and Lambert were Black Creoles (one slave, the other a "free man of
color") who provided mainly music for dances.  Gottschalk, of course, is
better-known.  Seibel and La Phil's pianist, Mary Ann Bulla, did a piece
for two pianos.  Gottschalk's name survives mainly on the strength of his
"Creole" pieces, but most of his stuff resembles standard Chopin & Liszt
Romanticism.  This piece, however, was more exotic and jazzy.

The Bizet was the L'arlesienne Suite No. 2, one of my favorites.  This
time, I learned that the major creator of the suite was Ernest Guiraud,
the man who completed Les Contes d'Hofmann and who provided the recitatives
for Carmen, and a New Orleans native.  I never thought much of the Carmen
recitatives, so I underestimated Guiraud.  It turns out he composed major
portions of the L'arlesienne suites.  The farandole as composed by Bizet,
for example, was originally something like 60 bars.  Guiraud expanded it
to over 200 and provided my single favorite moment in the suites:  the
combining of the martial tune with the fife-and-drum tune at the end.  The
end of the intermission brought with it an original Guiraud piece, Overture
to d'Artevant.  A technical marvel, nevertheless it sounds like early
Wagner of nearly forty years before - something like Tannhauser, Rienzi,
or Lohengrin.  I was talking with one of the orchestra violinists during
intermission (it's the only player-owned professional orchestra in the US,
and orchestra members come out to schmooze with the patrons during the
break), who complained of its being written in "five sharps, with
accidentals, yet!"

Outside of the Ravel, the most interesting piece was Jay Weigel's clarinet
concerto.  Weigel's a New Orleans native who studied at USC and came back
home.  He now heads the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center and in that
job has revitalized the place.  This year he's inaugurated (and, just as
important, raised the funds for) a re-imagining of Diaghilev with a series
on collaboration.  It's been incredible so far, with a collaborative work
by Hannibal Lokumbe and a local church as well as a talk by Philip Glass.
As for Weigel's music, I think it's some of the best now being written, and
not just in this country.  Weigel really does have something new to say,
probably because he became a classical composer by accident.  He started as
a rock and jazz bass player and got into arranging.  In his talk before the
performance, he added his fellow musicians hated his arrangements because
the arrangements were too detailed.  He was taking away their fun.  Someone
told him, however, that if he re-scored for string quartet, he could get
players to read it for him.  Weigel also comes from New Orleans, with
musical traditions and an approach to rhythm not found anywhere else.
Indeed, Weigel's strongly individual profile often works against him, since
most classically-trained musicians have to puzzle over what he's doing.
On the other hand, jazz people get it, although Weigel's idiom isn't jazz.
The closest composer to him I can think of is the jazzy Milhaud.  The
orchestration is lean, the harmonies have bite.  But he doesn't sound like
Milhaud either, and the difference is his approach to rhythm and phrase,
very much a part of New Orleans music.  The clarinet concerto takes a Cajun
waltz tune for a walk - the first part slow and contemplative, the second
part a super-jam.  The opening is beautiful:  a solo clarinet against rain
sticks and distant rolls on the bass drum - an evocation of rain, which we
get a lot of in Louisiana.  The eskimos have 50 words for snow; we've got
60 for rain.  After the performance, Weigel said that he imagined a Cajun
fiddler on his porch, who played as he watched the rain come in.  Great
moment.  The tune itself, like a lot of folk melody, is in both major and
minor modes.  Weigel exploits this throughout the concerto, especially when
he sets up the two to clash simultaneously (maybe that's why he reminds me
of Milhaud).  During the second part of the concerto, audience members were
moving and tapping their feet, as were the performers who locked in to it.
Both the soloist, first chair Steven Cohen, and conductor Seibel were just
about dancing on stage.  It's not easy to find the groove of that music,
especially for the percussion.  For most composers, counterpoint is the
simultaneous handling of different melodies.  For Weigel, it's more the
building up through constituent rhythms of an underlying rhythm.  Weigel's
percussion players have to "hit it where it ain't" a lot.  Wonderful piece.
Weigel is imagining a new kind of American concert music, deriving from
popular sources and neither superficial with them nor overwhelmed by them.

After the Weigel, a little secular cantata by Gottschalk - "Rustic Scenes"
- for soprano, tenor, and bass, with orchestra.  An infectious South
American rhythm pervades the score.  Again, the audience moved and tapped
their feet to the music.  There was even a hint of the Carmen "Habanera"
in the soprano's solo number.  I suspect Gottschalk wrote it for his
Cuban concerts.  Anyway, quite charming and somebody ought to record it.

We ended with La Valse, which brought the audience to its feet.  Even the
vocal conservatives were chatting about how wonderful the Ravel was in the
lobby.  I remarked to my wife that they'd been raped in their sleep.  That
score is avant-garde even today.  Ravel stands conventional orchestration
on its head.  For example, the bass is usually the foundation of the
harmony.  Ravel deliberately muddies the bass, with note clusters in bass
and (I think) contrabassoon and tuba.  It's as if he took his fist and
banged on the lower end of the keyboard.  There are also these loopy slides
up and down the strings in the cellos, and that's really just maraschino
cherry.  There's the whole sundae to go.

All in all, a very interesting time.

Steve Schwartz