This morning, my daughter Eliza sat on the floor with her tablet and watched Loonie Toons, while I ignored her and listened to Beethoven.
She'll be fine.
Op. 119, 11 Bagatelles. Written on and off over the course of 30 years, these bagatelles were published between the two sets I wrote about yesterday.
I watch-listened to the first four on Youtube, played by Valery Afanassiev.
I enjoyed his playing, but I was mighty distracted by his resemblance to this guy:
It's moments like this that I realize you can't listen with your eyes.
But the Albino Torturer (Valery Afanassiev) is a fascinating guy. On top of being a concert pianist, which would probably eat up most of my time, he's an exile, a poet, a playwright, and a novelist. He's also known for his unconventional tempos and interpretations of canonical music. I loved what one critic wrote about his take on Schubert's last three piano sonatas:"the perversity encountered here so angered me that I felt I could not dignify what I found here with any kind of coherent analysis".
What else did that critic expect in...THE PIT OF DESPAIR!!!???
I pray a critic writes something like that about my acting some day.
To enable listening without picturing the late great Mel Smith, I found the remaining 7 bagatelles played by Alfred Brendel. I don't have much to say about these, but number 10 was 13 seconds long, which must be some kind of bagatelle record.
Also, as I listened carefully I realized, Brendel was humming! You too, Alfred?? Does anyone NOT hum???
A bagatelle is tiny billiard game, a layered dessert and a French water park.
A bagatelle is a line of leather jackets. For example, the "red scuba jacket":
Bagatelle is a restaurant in the Meat Packing district of NYC. Here's what Mike F said about it on Yelp: "The food was solid. The environment was decent. Then the DJ hit the floor and the place went nuts."
Then there's Bagatelle, Los Angeles. Sammy C of Trip Advisor fame had a great time, but "my date's food came out over cooked. Then after we sent it back, it came back under cooked. I let her finish my meal. The poulet fermier. It was ok. I wish it was brined a little longer."
I feel ya, Sammy.
Bagatelle is also an Irish rockband, unfortunate enough to have started recording around the same time as U2 and unfortunate enough to have named their band Bagatelle. Here's their biggest hit, "Summer in Dublin" (with lyrics). I like the way they awkwardly squeeze a lot of words into tiny musical phrases.
But the bagatelle we're talking about is:
a short piece of music, typically for the piano, and usually of a light, mellow character. The name bagatelle literally means "a short unpretentious instrumental composition" (wikipedia).
Beethoven wrote three sets of these little pieces. Today I listened to two of the sets, the first and the last, Op. 33 and Op. 126. I would've listened to the middle set, Op. 119, but a guy can only consume so many bagatelles in a day.
The first set thoroughly lived up to the wikipedia definition: light, mellow, short. There was nothing in them that immediately made me think, "Beethoven". As several of my top-secret on-line sources pointed out, Beethoven composed these pieces in his early Classical period, which might be why if played alongside Mozart or Haydn, I'd have a hard time saying, "Beethoven".
Then I listened to Op. 126. These were Beethoven's last works for the piano. Analysts believe he wrote them to be played in a row because of a margin note he included for publishing, "ciclus von Kleinigkeiten" - cycle of little songs. "Cycle" suggesting they were a tapestry. Beethoven wrote to his publisher, Schott, that the bagatelles "are probably the best I've written."
Op. 33 was near the beginning of his creative life, these were near the end, two years before he died. They are jaw-droppingly contemporary sounding: haunting, spare, even jazzy.
Here is the fourth in the set to give you a sense of what I mean:
That's Alfred Brendel playing. I picked it mainly because of the droll Woody Allen-ish screen shot. The recording I listened to was Glenn Gould. I liked it better - even with the humming - because, oddly, I found it lacked warmth which emphasized the strange idiosyncracy of this music.
John Steinbeck, in his trademark "This is a cigarette" pose.
I'm reading 'East of Eden'.
On page 130 Steinbeck writes:
"Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone...A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then - the glory - so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man's importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men."
I read this the same day I listened again and again and again to Beethoven's Piano Sonata Number 21, Op. 53, "The Waldstein".
In the list of Beethoven's most famous named piano Sonatas - Les Adieux, Moonlight, Pathetique, Hammerklavier, Appassionata - "Waldstein" doesn't sound too exciting. It sounds like a sandwich. Or a neighbour: "That's Mr. Waldstein. He has a pug."
Of course, glib shit aside, it is exciting. It is whirling deep masterpiece and very very exciting. The Sonata is named after the many-namedCount Ferdinand Ernst Joseph Gabriel von Waldstein und Wartenberg, a close friend and patron of Beethoven, and what drew me to it was an interest in the sonata. It is a word I've known my whole life but never really known what it meant beyond "a type of musical composition". And this:
(I swear that's the last time I do that.)
I turned again to Aaron Copland's great little book, "What to Listen for In Music". I won't regurgitate what Copland wrote on the subject. The facts are out there: I'm not here to educate. I'm here to provide you with pure unusable subjectivity.
After breaking the sonata down into its traditional parts and explaining its position as "the basic form of almost every extended piece of music", he directs the reader to the Waldstein sonata because of "the utter contrast between the first and second thematic groups".
To paraphrase: unlike many other sonatas, the musical building blocks of the sonata-allegro first movement are quite easily discerned by even the untrained ear (me, maybe you) and therefore the sonata is a useful illustration of the form.
So I did as Copland said and listened to it. And right from the first racing bars, shot through its elegiac stillnesses and dizzy passage work, its unsure seeking second movement, its excitement, its thrill: the glory. Exactly what Steinbeck described: "a man pours outward, a torrent of him". The sheer physical act of playing it, let alone imagining it, dreaming it, wrestling with it, and then, in the age of ink on paper, transcribing what was in his head - thousands upon thousands of notes - onto the page - it is unfathomable. And this is ONE work of hundreds. I know he suffered for it, but my god - the glory. The gift.
I can't imagine the cost.
I couldn't stop listening to it. I'm listening to it now. I listened several times to Maurizio Pollini play it on a Deutsche Grammophon recording, live at the Vienna Musikverein. This was my favourite. Not because of the playing, but because of the coughing. The recording was replete with coughs - raspy ones, wet ones, barky ones, stifled ones. As a theatre actor, it made me writhe. The whole time I was thinking of the poor guy onstage frustrated out of his mind, having his recording fucked up by the guy in row G who should've stayed home.
Fine as his playing was, I loved it out of sympathy and support for Pollini.
Side note: Theatre coughing is a blight. If you cough in a theatre it is the same as abruptly yelling. It is just as loud and just as distracting. So if you wouldn't yell, don't cough. Step outside. Get a goddamn lozenge.
Then I listened to Horowitz. I used to have a burnt CD of Horowitz playing a mix of classical and baroque piano hits and I loved the brightness and clarity of his playing, no matter the tempo; the feeling that there was a great soul and brain behind the playing. I felt like that again listening to him play the Waldstein.
Then I was Youtube shopping for another recording and came upon this one, performed by Mikhail Pletnev. I'm listening to this now.
Now this was fun. I didn't know this existed. Along with Pletnev's thrilling playing, there's a video of the score that page turns at the appropriate moment! So you can follow along!
To my dork mind, a real pleasure.
I'm not fully musically literate, not by any stretch, but literate enough to track the ebb and flow of the piece, to see where the melody passed from the right hand to the left, the call and response, the abrupt changes in tempo and tone - the whole beautiful structure, like standing outside a gothic cathedral.
And it makes me feel like the Emperor in 'Amadeus' ("Too many notes"), but seeing that sky-filling flock of black birds on the page, each one toiled over and revised and perfected, filled me with awe at the sheer labour of making this music.
One sentence you don't expect to write in a blog about Beethoven is "Sally in Our Alley". But I just did, because Beethoven wrote an arrangement of a well-known English song called, "Sally in Our Alley" (1725).
And it makes sense that he did because "Sally" and "alley" totally rhyme. Therefore, good lyrics.
The song's thesis is:
"She is the darling of my heart,
And she is in my alley."
I love her. She is in my alley. Alleys are for love.
The song is number 25 of Beethoven's "Scottish Lieder", Op. 108. It's a light, pretty, cheerful arrangement. Though translated into German the title is "Das Baschen in unserm Strasschen" and it suddenly seems about 65% less cheerful.
Beethoven wrote 25 arrangements of Scottish and English folksongs, with lyrics by a range of UK heavy-hitters like Lord Byron, Robbie Burns, Sir Walter Scott, and the author of "Sally in Our Alley", Henry Carey, a renowned English satirist, patriot, poet and songwriter. Here are the complete lyrics. Saucy stuff. And that final lyric really clears up a big question I had about this relationship taking place entirely in an alley:
OF all the girls that are so smart There's none like pretty Sally; She is the darling of my heart, And she lives in our alley. There is no lady in the land Is half so sweet as Sally; She is the darling of my heart, And she lives in our alley.
Her father he makes cabbage-nets, And through the streets does cry 'em; Her mother she sells laces long To such as please to buy 'em: But sure such folks could ne'er beget So sweet a girl as Sally! She is the darling of my heart, And she lives in my alley.
When she is by, I leave my work, I love her so sincerely; My master comes like any Turk, And bangs me most severely: But let him bang his bellyful, I'll bear it all for Sally; She is the darling of my heart, And she lives in our alley.
Of all the days that's in the week I dearly love but one day- And that's the day that comes betwixt A Saturday and Monday; For then I'm drest all in my best To walk abroad with Sally; She is the darling of my heart, And she lives in our alley.
My master carries me to church, And often am I blamèd Because I leave him in the lurch As soon as text is namèd; I leave the church in sermon-time And slink away to Sally; She is the darling of my heart, And she lives in our alley.
My master and the neighbours all Make game of me and Sally, And, but for her, I'd better be A slave and row a galley; But when my seven long years are out, O, then I'll marry Sally; O, then we'll wed, and then we'll bed- But not in our alley!
Here is a tenor singing Beethoven's arrangement. Because he's a tenor, it's impossible to detect any sexuality in this recording, but it is fun to hear how his voice makes it all sound so life-or-death, especially lines like, "Her father he makes cabbage-nets".
I just looked at the on-line list of his complete works. In keeping with my intent for the blog, I was intentionless. I mean, I intended to find what to listen to next, but with so little forethought it that felt intentionless. I reconsidered hunting down Op. 1, Piano Trio No. 1 in E-flat major, then my mind bucked that as no fun and my eyes went wandering up and down the list. I finally stopped on Op. 129, "Rondo a capriccio", "Rage Over a Lost Penny".
As soon as I read the title, an entire elementary school worth of questions shot up their hands in my head.
"Rage? That's a strong word - why?" "How much was a penny worth back then?" "What was Beethoven like when he lost it?" "How did he lose this penny and why did he care enough to write a rondo?" "What exactly is a rondo?"
I played the Youtube video eagerly, expecting the 19th century equivalent of Rammstein. Up came a pianist sitting in what looks like her study. She's wearing a fancy blue blouse, but otherwise looks like she's at home, submitting this video for a competition or a grant or her parents. It's very civilized and calm. And I'm thinking, "this has to be a trick. She's just baiting us into feeling comfortable before releasing the rage." She began to play. Fast and urgent, not remotely angry, but I knew it would come. Just when we felt cozy - pow. I waited. Knowing Beethoven was just building up to it - easing us into complacency before rage-punching us. I waited and waited and waited and then...it was over. The rage stayed home. It was a great performance of a nimble lovely piece of music, but a total rage let-down. I wanted piano-biting rage. Rage visible from space. But what did I get? Barely irritation. Not even pissy. Maybe, at the most, lightly miffed.
Which means the title might be a self-aware joke - from deafness and isolation and solitude, a joke.
Here it is. As in some of the Diabelli Variations, you get the sense of tremendous power capable of the lightest touch (a quality I admire in my favourite actors as well):
Robert Schumann wrote this of the piece: ""it would be difficult to find anything merrier than this whim... It is the most amiable, harmless anger, similar to that felt when one cannot pull a shoe from off the foot". I agree, Bob. Shoe pull anger. And by the way, a rondo is "an instrumental composition typically with a refrain recurring four times in the tonic and with three couplets in contrasting keys". This is also a Rondo:
So is this:
March 20, 2017: FOOTNOTE
In looking for details about something else, I came across this, explaining the title, "Rage Over a Lost Penny": "People complained he kept odd hours and played the piano too loudly, and, worst of all, he had a habit of shouting at his servants for stealing from him – the Rondo a capriccio of 1795 later gained the nickname Rage Over A Lost Penny because on the night he was writing it, the composer was sure a maid had stolen his gold penny and he turned his entire apartment over looking for it."
Not writer's block because six blog entries, two unfinished short stories and two unsuccessful fringe shows maketh not a "writer". I am blogger - a blogger who chose to write about a subject he knows nearly nothing about and who now, standing before an Ayers Rock-size work of art, is paralyzed for something to say.
The monolith of art in question is Beethoven's Diabelli Variations. (I've learned that even though variations are several short pieces, they constitute a single work of art with a cumulative effect. So, "work of art" - singular. Thank you Aaron Copland's "What to Listen for in Music")
Now for some reason, I thought the Diabelli Variations were some slight lil' thing Beethoven tossed off between symphonies just to prove he was better than the other composers of his time. I pictured him composing the variations with his feet, while his hands did something real, like write a symphony or adjust his ear horn.
What's the origin of this idea?
I don't know.
But I feel certain I bought the CD at Sonic Boom, a record shop in Toronto. At the time of purchase, Sonic Boom was attached to Honest Ed's, on Bathurst just south of Bloor. When my wife and I lived nearby, at Palmerston and Ulster in an small, angular attic apartment with a great skylight and a raccoon problem, my idea of a perfect day was getting a coffee and going to Sonic Boom, searching for a bit of happiness in the form of a used CD. (Sidenote: as I write this, raccoons are murder-fucking beneath our apartment window. Raccoons - my theme. No variations here, folks. Racoon racoon racoon.) The particular joy of Sonic Boom - a joy that set it apart for me - was the clack. When you first walked in, lined up in four or five waist level rectangles a few feet in front of the cash, they had all the recently arrived used CDs set out. Each rectangle had a sign saying what day of the week the CDs in it arrived. The CDs were divided by rows. There were two types of CDs per rectangle: regular CDs - rock, hip hop, alternative, country, RnB, blues, metal, everything except the section entitled "Jazz and Classical", off in the corner like the pimply kid on the playground who likes to read. And so me and whoever else was on the music hunt would stand in front of these things and quickly flip through the CDs, Yes or No'ing in our heads, and as CD case hit CD case - clack. Clack clack clack clack clack. Such a satisfying noise. And when a lot of people were in there, it got loud enough to compete with whatever they were playing over the speakers. The CD clack. Pure joy.
The CD cover is a black and white image of Daniel Barenboim's face. It looks like a negative, but inverse: his face is white and the whole background is black. Or at least that's what it looked like until three days ago when my 7 year old pulled it out and coloured Barenboim's face Smurf blue. Now when I play the album I picture him playing inside a polka dot mushroom.
But why did I think the Variations were a "minor work"? I don't know, but the best I can come up with is that they're not the Goldberg Variations. In my mind - and the mind of many, I think - the Goldberg Variations are inexorably connected to Glenn Gould, who as a Canadian, is basically our Beethoven. And Bach. And Mozart. He's not known for his compositions, no, but he is Canadian classical music. (I know that statement is wrong and I hope it irritates someone somewhere). He is iconic. And as an arty teenager living in Kitchener in the 90s, I went to see "32 Short Films About Glenn Gould" (1993, dir. Francois Girard): one short film for each of Bach's beautiful variations. It starred Colm Feore. Feore, a star of the Stratford Festival, was already one of my theatre heroes and coupling him playing Gould with Bach's music almost made me cum a treble clef in iambic pentameter. It was formative. And important.
So for me, the only Variations were the Goldberg Variations. Or rather the Feoreberg Variations. I have to watch that again. It still feels important. Though less important than the beer cooling on my window ledge.
Be right back.
Hi. Have I said anything musically astute about the Variations yet?
No.
Well, I'm not going to.
But they floored me.
They completely floored me: with their vigour, humour, solemnity, beauty, inventiveness; their show-offy-ness and playfulness; their depth, their silliness, their scale, their mockery, their power and profundity, their variety and vast humanity.
I can't tell you anything about them historically or informationally that's not on Wikipedia:
This is no minor work. This is the work of a great artist at full-power, glowing, relentless, taking a piece of light playful writing and elevating it, scorning it, deepening it, batting it around like a big cat and making it so much more than it was - and you know what is was because Theme and Variations begin with the theme. There it is. Track One. Diabelli's little waltz, far too fast for anyone to dance to without tendon damage. And Beethoven brings it again at the middle (15), clearly mocking it, in case you'd forgotten the dross he turned to gold and again near the end, also, I think, as a reminder to the trip you've taken.
It's incredible. I won't go variation by variation, but variation 20, with its ocean-bed depth and sustain just slayed me. It's so modern, minimal, pared-down, and powerful.
Here's what Wikipedia says about it so I can stop it with the adjectives:
An extraordinarily slow-moving variation consisting almost entirely of dotted half notes in low registers – a striking contrast with the variations immediately before and after. Diabelli's melody is easily identified, but the harmonic progressions (see bars 9–12) are unusual and the overall tonality is ambiguous. Suggesting the title "Oracle", von Bülow recommends "an effect suggestive of the veiled organ-registers". Kinderman writes, "In this great enigmatic slow variation, No. 20, we have reached the still centre of the work ... the citadel of 'inner peace'".[42] Tovey calls it "one of the most awe-inspiring passages in music".[38] Brendel describes this Variation 20 as "hypnotic introspection" and offers as a title Inner sanctum. Liszt called it Sphinx. Diabelli's two-part structure is maintained, but without repeats.
I LOVED the Diabelli Variations.
I said I'd be loving stuff on this blog and I loved them.
Today I listened to Six Variations in F major, Op. 34.
This piece is found on the same 1992 Naxos CD with the pissy sister on the cover and Jenoe Jando playing beautifully, humming and groaning in the background, like the lonely guy one bathroom stall over. Towards the end of his scant but impressive bio, wikipedia briefly states, "He is known for singing while playing, and to stop this, he puts an unlit cigarette in his mouth."
And it all ties together again! Bernstein and his magic floating unlit cigarette; Jenoe Jando puckering around an unlit cigarette for the sake of his Naxos contract.
Wikipedia also told me Jenoe Jando was born in Hungary in 1952, which is where two roads that seem parallel, when followed far enough, in fact, dovetail into each other.
Beethoven dedicated the Six Variations in F Major (among other works) to "Princess Odeschalchi, who before her marriage to the Pressburg nobleman Prince innocenzo d'Erba-Odescalchi, had been, as Countess Babette Keglevich, a pupil of Beethoven." Picking up that strand, I followed both the Princess's families: the one she was born into and the one she married into. Her maiden family, Keglevich's were Croatian by origin, whereas the d'Erba-Odescalchi were Italian nobles. And yet, through the forces of business, war and exile, certain branches of both families ended up in Hungary. Why does this matter? Because by the time we reach the mid-twentieth century on her Erba-Odescalchi side, we have Prince Kodaly Odescalchi and his son, Paul, who were members of the Hungarian Resistance to the Nazis and then later to Communism. That means that the family of the woman to whom these variations are dedicated, two hundred years later, were involved in trying to topple the regime that Jenoe Jando was born into and spent his whole life working under. Her family directly affected his life: musically, politically and, no doubt, personally.
I found that exciting.
Then again, I am committed to listening to all of Beethoven, so my excitement threshold might be slightly lower than your average person.
A final note, these variations were written in 1802, coincidentally the year Beethoven penned the previous entry's "Heiligenstadt Testament". The liner notes about the variations, which I suppose were used as a teaching tool, state ""The fifth variation is a March in C minor and the final variation starts as a compound rhythm Allegretto, leading to an Adagio that the composer's pupil Ries claims he was compelled to play through seventeen times, before the cadenza satisfied his teacher, who displayed, in these lessons, an unusual degree of patience."
I wonder how many of those repetitions were due to Ries's playing and how many of them were Beethoven, straining through frustration, anguish and love of his pupil, just to hear.
This is Glenn Gould playing the variations. Enjoy his playing, his left hand and his face:
It's 9:19pm. I started drinking beer at 12:45pm. I was day-drunk, fell asleep watching Sherlock, put my daughter to bed and now here I am, fresh as a newborn AA meeting.
This will probably all end once I'm employed again, but in the meantime, I've happily rolled down the Beethoven rabbit hole a few times and one such tumble, yesterday, in a grocery store parking lot on my phone, left me weepy and raw for this man.
Here is the Heiligenstadt Testament. In this heart-wrought letter to his brothers, Beethoven confesses the agony he's in as he begins to lose his hearing and feels cut off from his friends and his art.
Remember the Naxos label? I'm sure it still exists, but record stores barely do, so it's hard to say.
It was (or is) a discount classical music label. When I used to buy CDs, I was nuts about Naxos because 1) it was cheap and 2) even though very few of the musicians on the recordings were famous or renowned in North America, they were excellent. But one day I was working my job at the Anglican Book Centre (mystery) and I was talking to Brenda (who got me the job - deeper mystery). Brenda was a classical singer and she mentioned she was about to do a recording for Naxos with her choir. I was excited for her. Naxos! That's huge! And Brenda rolled her eyes and said, "I'm basically doing it for free." She went to explain that Naxos paid performers peanuts, which is how they could afford to sell their CDs so cheaply.
I'm not a journalist. I never checked if that was true. I just got indignant (indignation - which at the time I loved more than love or life). I decided to stop buying Naxos CDs.
(Dear Naxos, if this isn't true, forgive me. I'm just a poor boy, from a poor family. Easy come, easy go.)
Today's selection is a Naxos recording. Beethoven's Eroica Variations, played by Jenoe Jando (there's supposed to be an accent on that last "o", but I don't know how to do that with this keyboard. Sorry Jenoe. So much apologizing in this entry. Sorry.) Here's Mr. Jando.
Eroica is the Italian word for "heroic". Because this is a Naxos recording, I'm guessing Jenoe Jando felt pretty heroic as he recorded not just the Variations, but several other pieces, in the Unitarian Church in Budapest from April 6th to 8th, 1992. I was in Grade 10, rehearsing the role of Cliff Bradshaw in 'Cabaret' at my arts highschool and poor Jenoe Jando was probably in the basement of that church, chained to the piano, playing day and night as his Hungarian Naxos overloads seasoned him with paprika.
Poor Jenoe Jando.
One thing about Jenoe Jando. As I listened, I kept hearing what sounded like someone humming along. At first I thought maybe it was our upstairs neighbour talking or singing. I took my headphones on and off until I was sure: yes, Jenoe Jando was humming along to his own playing.
Now, not that I don't think his humming came from a genuine place. I'm sure it did. His playing is astounding. And given that it's Naxos, he was probably humming to keep warm in an unlit bunker. Humming was probably the only proof he could give himself he was still alive. But even so, if you play piano and you're not Keith Jarrett or Glenn Gould - don't hum along. Just don't. Even if your left hand becomes a lobster claw when you're not humming, don't hum. Even if humming is the only thing that keeps you from eating your score, don't hum. I just think hum-piano should stop at Jarrett and Gould; or rather, I should say: I wish it had stopped at Gould and Jarrett, because I don't like it when they do it either. Geniuses or not.
But humming aside, it Jando plays beautifully.
(Like Jando or Gould or Jarrett could give a flying fuck what I think of their humming or their playing. Ha. Typity-type I go.)
One other thing - the cover art. A painting called The Sisters by William Beechey. It's old-fashioned. Two sisters sitting at a keyboard with a score on it. The one sister is clearly trying to get her sister to look at something on the score and her sister is having none of it. She's staring away like "No fucking way am I looking at that again." It's pretty great. If I could write dialogue for the painting it would go, "Look" "No" "Look" "No" "Look" "No" "Look" "No".
OK. Today's piece was: The Eroica Variations, Op. 35.
Sangyoung Kim plays them here. Note the dramatic false-start-with-bench-adjustment!
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