I recently read two books about music: How Shostakovich Change my Mind by Stephen Johnson and An Equal Music by Vikram Seth. The former is by a music critic who responds very deeply to music and who was helped to deal with his bi-polar mental state by listening to Shostakovich. The latter is a novel narrated by an English violinist, and its very much about the experience of playing in a string quartet and the meaning of music in the protagonist's life. Last spring I read Romain Rolland's long novel, Jean-Christophe, which is about a composer, for whom music is the most meaningful thing in his life. All three books illustrate the difficulty of writing about music.
How does one avoid getting technical when talking about music? How does one share one's personal experience of music with people who might be equally moved by the music that moves one, but who associate it with entirely different emotional experiences? And, in general, how does music arouse emotion in the listener? What kind of emotional experience does music offer?
I wrote rhetorical questions just now, because there are, as far as I know, no good answers to them.
Last night I went to a performance of Handel's Orlando Furioso, an opera based on Ariosto's vast poem, which in turn, is based (loosely) on the Old French epic, La Chanson de Roland. This opera is rarely performed, for good reason, and it raises more questions about music.
The music is heavenly, of course. It was performed marvelously by Israeli singers from the Tel Aviv Opera Company, accompanied by fine musicians. But the story is ridiculous. The proposition of representing Orlando's insanity with stately baroque music is nearly a contradiction in terms.
I love baroque music. Recently I have been working on Telemann duets for two flutes. But for me, the main emotion that it conveys is that of marveling at its abstract beauty (though the religious emotions conveyed by Bach's cantatas is certainly palpable). However, secular passions, such as romantic love, were often regarded as threatening in the eighteenth century, the Age of Reason, as it used to be called simplistically, and the purpose of music was not to express and wallow in emotion so much as to crystallize and control it.
The Henry Crown Auditorium was packed with mainly elderly music lovers, and I found myself wondering what drew them to it and what they got out of it. Attending a concert of classical music is a bit like attending religious services, a way of confirming one's values and solidarity with those who share them, adulation of Western Classical Music. That holds for me, as well.
However, I was puzzled by the opera itself, wondering what it could have meant to the listeners for whom it was intended, and by what it could possibly mean for us today? According to the program, and I knew it anyway, Ariosto's impossibly long poem was one of the most influential works of literature written in the 16th century. Today it is probably unread and unreadable. Maybe that's the main thing we have to learn from the opera and the poem it's based on: how far away we are from there.
I applaud the performance of this opera, especially since it was done so well, and I'm glad I attended, but it didn't make me want to hear the other forty-one operas that Handel wrote.
How does one avoid getting technical when talking about music? How does one share one's personal experience of music with people who might be equally moved by the music that moves one, but who associate it with entirely different emotional experiences? And, in general, how does music arouse emotion in the listener? What kind of emotional experience does music offer?
I wrote rhetorical questions just now, because there are, as far as I know, no good answers to them.
Last night I went to a performance of Handel's Orlando Furioso, an opera based on Ariosto's vast poem, which in turn, is based (loosely) on the Old French epic, La Chanson de Roland. This opera is rarely performed, for good reason, and it raises more questions about music.
The music is heavenly, of course. It was performed marvelously by Israeli singers from the Tel Aviv Opera Company, accompanied by fine musicians. But the story is ridiculous. The proposition of representing Orlando's insanity with stately baroque music is nearly a contradiction in terms.
I love baroque music. Recently I have been working on Telemann duets for two flutes. But for me, the main emotion that it conveys is that of marveling at its abstract beauty (though the religious emotions conveyed by Bach's cantatas is certainly palpable). However, secular passions, such as romantic love, were often regarded as threatening in the eighteenth century, the Age of Reason, as it used to be called simplistically, and the purpose of music was not to express and wallow in emotion so much as to crystallize and control it.
The Henry Crown Auditorium was packed with mainly elderly music lovers, and I found myself wondering what drew them to it and what they got out of it. Attending a concert of classical music is a bit like attending religious services, a way of confirming one's values and solidarity with those who share them, adulation of Western Classical Music. That holds for me, as well.
However, I was puzzled by the opera itself, wondering what it could have meant to the listeners for whom it was intended, and by what it could possibly mean for us today? According to the program, and I knew it anyway, Ariosto's impossibly long poem was one of the most influential works of literature written in the 16th century. Today it is probably unread and unreadable. Maybe that's the main thing we have to learn from the opera and the poem it's based on: how far away we are from there.
I applaud the performance of this opera, especially since it was done so well, and I'm glad I attended, but it didn't make me want to hear the other forty-one operas that Handel wrote.
