The Noise of Time (Julian Barnes, 2016)

(201 pages)

Author is imagining what Shostakovich felt during decades of compromising with the Soviet power structure.  Shostakovich goes from promising early career, to a failed opera that garners criticism ("formalism!") seemingly from Stalin himself, to interrogation that seemingly could lead only to the camps, to varying levels of rehabilitation, to I guess what one could call becoming a useful idiot; he even joins the Party (surrendering his final hold-out).

Intersection of art and socialist politics (former must serve the latter).

The book received lots of favorable buzz but didn't do much for me.  This book gave a more interesting overview of Shostakovich's situation.  And Solzhenitsyn did a better job of conveying how the system created fear, in books such as this, or this, or this.  Also Grossman. 

Though I suppose this book differs a bit by its focus on the effect of the socialist system on a composer (artist).

Short read, but not particularly recommended.

Schubert's Winter Journey - Anatomy of an Obsession (Ian Bostridge, 2015)

Unusual, different, interesting; will need to go through this again as there was too much to digest.

Bostridge is a world-renowned tenor - very familiar with him - like his style, not at all the overwrought/tiresome approach.  Pretty clearly, he has what it takes to be a writer as well.

Though the book is nontraditional.  He takes Schubert's Winterreise - a 24-song cycle (lieder) written as Schubert approached his very early death - and constructs a book by devoting a short chapter to each song.  At the outset I wasn't too optimistic about this approach, but in the end it all ties together really well.

The songs are settings for 24 poems written by Wilhelm Muller - not exactly world-famous; a Romantic poet.

Bostridge does an effective job giving context for the poems and the songs - linking it to contemporary events in the world and in Schubert's personal life; explaining areas where German historical references are used; interesting throughout.

Romantic themes - nature, death, feelings.  The linden tree.

Book design is neat.

I had no idea that one of my favorites - Thomas Mann - used Winterreise in The Magic Mountain - Bostridge explains in detail.  Neat.

Leningrad - Siege and Symphony - The Story of the Great City Terrorized by Stalin, Starved by Hitler, Immortalized by Shostakovich (Brian Moynahan, 2013)

This book fit very well with this excellent overview of the Leningrad siege; this discussion of Sergei and Lina Prokofiev; and this novelistic presentation on the siege and its effects on ordinary folks.

I expected the book to be more focused on Shostakovich and the process of writing his 7th ("Leningrad") Symphony, but the author also mixed in a great deal of information about pre-war terror by Stalin and the military aspects of the Leningrad situation (siege, etc.).  And in the end it all fit together pretty well, much worth reading.

The overall story arc is entirely amazing.

Stalin always distrustful of Leningrad - some of its leaders not necessarily in his camp at selection time; plus general suspicion based on the city's proximity to the West.

Shostakovich - young, talented, popular; a symphony runs afoul of the authorities for whatever reason and is branded as "formalism" - never a good thing for one's future.

But war came along, Shostakovich did have useful allies within the government, and it was recognized that he could be used for propaganda.  One example is a famous posed photo where he serves in a fire brigade atop a building.  The photo was fake, but his service was real.  Eventually he was whisked out of Leningrad to the safety of the south - too valuable an asset to risk.  Most of the 7th ("Leningrad") Symphony wasn't written in Leningrad (though Shostakovich certainly had lived the life there).

Much more detail than I'd seen about the difficulties of keeping alive performances of classical music in siege-beset Leningrad.  Performers starved to death, or were too weak to function.  Performance halls (not to mention rehearsals) were ridiculously cold.  Performing the 7th in Leningrad itself was almost asking too much - but it was a huge success.  Military authorities timed massive barrages to reduce the risk that German bombers might hit the performance venue.

Tremendous propaganda value - Shostakovich's music helped ease fears in the Allied nations that the Soviets were Asiatic brutes, or something.

Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven (John Eliot Gardiner, 2013)

I feel a connection to Bach that is unlike whatever connection I feel to any other musician, or artist.  Quite possibly this is due to the sheer weight of cumulative exposure - my undergraduate piano teachers (and Joseph Henderson, who taught me for a semester during law school) emphasized Bach.  I've read four or five books (including this one) focused on Bach.  I listen to his works incessantly.  His B minor Mass (courtesy Phoenix Chorale) was, I believe, my single favorite concert ever.

So there's that.

This book is uniquely helpful.  The author writes beautifully and knowledgeably . . . but there is a depth here because the author also is a world-renowned musician who has directed Bach's works with pretty much unprecedented historical accuracy, precision, success.

Gardiner gave me a notion of the utter impossibility of JS Bach - the working conditions, the incredible volume of productivity, the sublime quality.  How could this be??

Gardiner gives me the idea that Bach could only have existed at that moment in that place - maybe that's true for all us, but it's true in an incredibly interesting way for Bach.  Born and bred in an old-school Lutheran style in a society still immersed in its agrarian, seasonal-cycle roots - but exposed to (and benefiting from) modernizing social developments and musical elements, including elements outside Germany.

As I've read elsewhere - the notion (foreign to us today) that someone like Bach was essentially a low-paid clerk-type figure, forced to deal with municipal flunkies, indifferent students, etc.  OK I just overstated that a bit - folks like Bach were recognized as unusual talents in their spheres - but overstated just a bit.  The towering figure of the "artist" did not yet exist.

I need to get to Leipzig, Eisenach, Thomaskirche.

It's really all too incredible. What a gift to us courtesy JS Bach, how does this happen?

Lina & Serge - The Love & Wars of Lina Prokofiev (Simon Morrison, 2013)

A very interesting and personal (due to access to family correspondence) look at what happened to Lina Prokofiev - and also of great interest from a general-historical perspective as her experiences unfold across the big events of the 20th century, with a focus on Russia.

(Also the story is made more interesting to us as we learn more about, and increasingly like, Prokofiev's music; for example Alexander Nevsky (performed with MusicFest in 2013), plus his second piano concerto performed with Phoenix Symphony by the 2013 Van Cliburn winner while I was in the midst of this book.)

Lina's mother was Russian; her father was Spanish; she tended to identify with the Russian side due to a grandmother.  The parents were actor/singer types of mediocre stature; ended up in U.S. to do performances, so Lina mostly grew up here, mostly in NY.  She aspired to be a singer - nice soprano voice but not quite enough.  Family was well-connected in Russian emigre circles.  She meets the talented Serge Prokofiev - somewhat struggling to break through notwithstanding his talent - and fell in love with him.  Serge seemed to behave mostly like a jerk throughout; she follows him to Europe; he finally agrees to marry after a number of years (once she's pregnant).

1930s - for propaganda purposes, Stalin wants Russian artists to come home (many had fled in aftermath of Bolshevik revolution) - Serge and Lina are enticed to return with promises of special treatment, honors, artistic freedom, etc.  Misgivings; they are tailed while in Paris during this time; but Serge felt the opportunity would be better in the Soviet Union, especially based on a Potemkin tour, I'll call it, arranged while they were considering their decision.

Once there - not possible to defect.  Some relatively good times early and they did live with special privileges; this fluctuates as Serge moves in and out of favor; Lina's singing career doesn't take off though they do perform together some; she is suspect to the authorities because of friendships with foreigners via embassies.  Tense, difficult, quite unimaginable.

Serge falls in love with a younger woman; is evacuated from Moscow as Hitler invades; Lina left behind to cope, with their two sons.  She was able to get excused after a day or so from the amazing tasks performed by the citizen teams digging tank traps on Moscow periphery - in favor of a desk job - but endured the bombing and food shortages (all as discussed here).  After the war - she's sent to the gulag for a 10-year sentence (or a "tenner" as these were called in Solzhenitsyn's book).  Just an amazing story, and she must have been a really tough individual.  Eventually released after Stalin dies.

Sad and sad.  Compelling throughout.  What folks like this lived through = just unbelievable.

Robert Schumann - The Life and Work of a Romantic Composer (Martin Geck, 2010)

As with this book by the same author, I'm trying to read stuff that might give me some kind of window into how composers work.  It's not really working (though the books are enjoyable enough in their own right).

A few Schumann thoughts:

1.  His efforts (successful) to marry Clara Weick are pretty well-known.  Hard to say that Clara's piano-teacher father was wrong to be a bit wary of young Schumann - who seems at least in his early days to have had a Werther-type Romantic personality.  Which seems to have gotten worse over time.

2.  Schumann was a very successful and creative writer in addition to his composing efforts.  Didn't have any idea he was doing so much musical criticism.

3.  I do find quite interesting the lives of these young folks in Germany in the post-Napoleonic years, the run-up to the 1848 disturbances, etc.  Schumann definitely caught up in this.

4.  The struggles of German composers to live up to, or move beyond, Beethoven.  Haven't appreciated how high his stature was - seemed to make it very difficult or impossible for others to even attempt symphonies.

5.  Interesting stories of his efforts to romance Clara - using pseudonyms etc. to work around the recalcitrant father.  Clara as quite an impressive figure - virtuoso pianist, incredibly supportive wife willing to subordinate her career.  They had a large family.

6.  I've found Thomas Mann's discussions of music very interesting (especially in his take on Faustus); this author refers to Mann's capacity to do this well, and uses an illustration from Buddenbrooks.

7.  How much these folks loved Bach (whose work was rediscovered, if that's the right term, by Schumann's contemporary, Mendelssohn)!  Schumann wrote out The Art of Fugue as a way to try to understand it.  Devoted to  The Well-Tempered Clavier and The Musical Offering as well.

8.  Friendly with Mendelssohn and Liszt.

9.  Became very close to Johannes Brahms - maybe 15 years Schumann's junior.  And who ended up very much in love with Clara, it seems.  This author wasn't pushing to develop a scandal-theme (and who knows if there was much of anything to support it anyway).   Certainly was a helpful support as Schumann deteriorated.

10.  Anxious, nervous personality - ended up in asylum, and died there in 1856 (age 46).  Clara lived another 40 years.

Still don't know much about how he went about doing his work.  Oh well.

Johann Sebastian Bach - Life and Work (Martin Geck, 2000) (translated 2006)

Bach seems impossible.  How could he produce so much high-quality art?

I rather like this reviewer's take on this question:  "Consider: A professionally competent 18th-century burgher raised a very large family, came and went as a busy and productive musical technician, associated himself for nearly three decades with a church in Leipzig whose school of 55 boys he taught music while also training a choir. He provided his employers with the cantatas they required for Sundays and feast days and was active in the civic musical collegium. He traveled, though sparingly, and spent tedious hours copying out his own material. He was disputatious about a lot of things but was finally submissive to the requisite councilors, dukes and princes. When the end came, he left behind, in the city of 32,000 souls, a huge family, an indigent widow and a library of compositions which would ordain him as the greatest musical artist who ever lived."

So what happened here?  The author provides all sorts of interesting information, but I guess there's no figuring out how Bach did it.  Bach was anything but the lonely-genius-artist - he was an engaged family man with a demanding day job.

As I get older, I spend more and more time with Bach's music.  And I'm pretty sure the greatest concert I've ever attended was  this presentation of the B minor mass).  (Interesting to read that Beethoven bought his own copy of this work a century after it was written.)

The last portion of the book focused on technical details - for me, sort of like reading a foreign language - I just don't anything about composition or theory.

I'm pretty sure I need to attend a Bach concert at this church in Leipzig.

Two and Three-Part Inventions
Well-Tempered Clavier
French Suites
Goldberg Variations
The Musical Offering
The Art of Fugue
Cantatas, Motets, etc. (thankful for youtube access)
Brandenburg Concerto
St. Matthew Passion
St. John Passion
B minor Mass
Etc.
Etc.

The First Four Notes - Beethoven's fifth and the the human imagination (Matthew Guerrieri, 2012)

The author came up with the idea of building an entire book around the first four notes of Beethoven's 5th Symphony.  277 pages, plus extensive notes and a detailed index.  Some reviewer made it sound interesting to me.

I'll agree that pretty much everyone recognizes the four-note sequence, that Beethoven was of course a very important figure, etc.  But the author was really straining to connect all sorts of events in political, cultural and musical history to this sequence - which quickly became tiresome to me.

So I blew through this one rather rapidly, and didn't learn much.

Postscript:  watching Diamondbacks play Dodgers for parts of a series on May 6 through May 8 - not sure if this happens regularly at Dodger Stadium - but quite often during these games the stadium sound system was booming out "The First Four Notes."

A Natural History of the Piano - from Mozart to Modern Jazz and Everything in Between (Stuart Isacoff, 2011)

Quick read, useful.

I had never really thought about the history of the "piano" other than some very interesting discussion in this biography.  Even basic stuff like:  when did a reasonably modern version of the instrument become available?  how did concerts in concert halls get started?  etc.

The author goes back to the amazing-ness of Bach, including a focus on this very interesting story.

Mozart - primitive touring, good enough to try to survive without patronage of nobles; playing as an "independent" in essentially taverns; a tough go.

As discussed in this interesting book - how the piano became sufficiently developed to fill a large concert hall; Lizst among the very first to utilize this.  He was a true rock star, to use modern (if already dated - do rock stars still walk the earth?) terminology.

Interesting story about Mendelssohn - how Wagner tried to bury him based on anti-Semitism; how Mendelssohn had conducted the St. Matthew Passion for the first time since Bach's death in 1750.

Plenty of other anecdotes about Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Debussy, Satie, many others.  Emphasis on the leadership of the Germans.

Mass marketing - particularly aimed at women - amazing success in planting pianos in private homes.  Like the one I grew up in.

Not a great book, but helps round out the picture on the development here.

The Ninth - Beethoven and the World in 1824 (Harvey Sachs, 2010)

I find many book ideas in the review pages of The Wall Street Journal. A couple months ago, I was reading a WSJ edition from back in July (saved specifically for the review pages) and saw a reference to this book - sounded interesting and I reserved it at library.

In the meantime (as discussed in separate link), I auditioned for the chorus in something known as "Arizona MusicFest" - which I've learned is a pretty talent-laden grouping that is performing - Beethoven's 9th. So that upped my interest in the book.

Which I would recommend. The author has a varied background in music, and I think does a very nice job of discussing Beethoven, Europe in 1824, what the 9th might stand for, etc.

Concepts:

1. He emphasized the Romantic ideal of the artist as unique genius earning a place in posterity. This was partly the "great man" notion in reaction to Napoleon. Interesting that, by comparison, folks like Bach and Mozart were doing lots of commissioned works and, at least in Bach's case as I understood it, viewed more as a skilled craftsman than an artist.

2. Beethoven studied with, among others, Salieri and Haydn.

3. How difficult to be going deaf at a young age - huge interference with social relations, etc.

4. Discusses the theory that the Romantics in part were reacting against the repression instituted after the French Revolution and Napoleon spread dangerous ideas throughout Europe. With political avenues barred, expression came via the arts. Makes some sense to me.

5. Compares to Pushkin, Byron, Delacroix as active in 1824.

The author goes through a long explanation of the 9th, how the four movements work together, how the use of a chorus in the fourth movement was entirely groundbreaking, etc. Despair-anger-acceptance-joy. The "brotherhood" message was revolutionary for its time.

This gave me some ideas why I sometimes find Beethoven music less enjoyable than other . . . a big factor would be the preparedness the listener brings (or doesn't bring).

And now - constant use at Euro events.

Old World and New: German and American Song (Katzin Hall, January 30, 2009)

Here was the blurb for the concert: "ASU faculty artists and guest artists celebrate German and American song, including Schumann's "Dichterliebe," Brahms' "Four Serious Songs," Barber's "Knoxville: Summer of 1915" and "The Promise of Living" from "The Tender Land," Aaron Copland's only major opera."

It sounded good. But wasn't. I think the performers did fine, but the programming was, let's say, suspect. Brahms' "Four Serious Songs" were certainly serious, and they were followed up by a group of 16 German songs that went on and on about the awfulness of life, love, etc. Wow. There were some nice moments in the second half but by this time we were pretty well shell-shocked.

First ASU concert that we didn't really enjoy. Had Chris, Kerry, Paul Jr., Mary Beth & Mike. Everyone had pretty much the same reaction. Another less than inspirational occurrence was the pizza at La Bocca on Mill Avenue (information here), where we went pre-concert.

Oh well.

Evening in the Palace of Reason (James Gaines, 2005)

This book was based on an interesting conceit - a visit by Bach to Frederick the Great during which Frederick posed a musical challenge - I didn't comprehend the intricacy, but it involved the use of canons and/or fugues. Frederick apparently was pretty sophisticated musically (though his employee - Carl Bach! - is thought to have come up with the challenge.) Anyway, Bach came up with what is now referred to as "The Musical Offering." I have listened to that CD quite often over the years but hadn't known about its background.

The book actually doesn't spend all that much time on this specific episode, which in the end didn't seem all that important to either party. But the episode did present an opportunity to compare and contrast the ages represented by Bach (old school Lutheran, belief in original sin etc.) and Frederick (Enlightenment, rationality, belief in perfectibility of man).

The author gave a brief biography of each protagonist; he concludes Bach was a bit of an individualist within the Lutheran tradition and in fact a precursor to the Romantics.

It was interesting to think of a person like Bach in those days -a village cantor or organist because there wasn't much else of a market for musicianship - recognized for talent, but in a role where followed orders and did music as a craft; his music depicted theological "truths." The notion of an independent artist expressing his or her own vision just didn't exist in that part of the world at that time. Yet Bach did some pretty independent composing, ergo the esteem in which the later romantics held him.

The portrayal of Frederick wasn't very flattering - the author spends a great deal of time explaining how his father was controlling and abusive, and how this appeared to affect Frederick's relationships ever after. He was intent on expanding Prussia, ended up with lots of wars. Apparently relatively progressive as a ruler; also somewhat forgotten until Hitler came along. Not sure why Hitler picked up on Frederick the Great, maybe he was as good a symbol as any that were available; I read that Hitler made the formal declaration of the Third Reich at Frederick's tomb. (I think the "first reich" was the Holy Roman Empire, and the "second reich" was the German empire as it existed after the unification by Bismark in 1870 through the end of WWI.)

The author gave a lot of details about canons and fugues, how they are constructed etc. I'm confident I still don't understand this, and could never pick out the elements - though I certainly like the sound of Bach's work of this nature, or at least the little to which I've been exposed.

Also, the author exults over Bach's B minor Mass and the Passion According to St. Matthew - I would agree that both are great listening. It's also interesting how Mendelssohn did a version of the B minor Mass that was catalytic in bringing Bach to public attention - after 100+ years of Bach having been largely forgotten.

Franz Liszt - Vol. 1 - The Virtuoso Years, 1811-1847 (Alan Walker, 1983)

For as much as I've been exposed to classical music, I just have never studied it or even read much about the leading composers, etc. So I'm trying to correct this situation. This author has done a three-part biography of Franz Liszt - who I certainly knew by name, and possibly would have associated with Hungary. But no more than that.

Anyway, the first volume of this biography was thoroughly interesting. At the beginning I was concerned that this was the kind of biography where the author is mostly interested in showing off how much research was done and why his work exceeds the efforts of previous biographers. There was some of that, but it ended up not being a problem.

Some things I took away:

1. Persons like Liszt leave no room for doubt that something like "genius," for want of a different term, absolutely exists in a small number of people. These folks simply have something the rest of us can never have. Liszt was able to learn music, perform in concerts at a ridiculously young age (~11), memorize, sight read, etc., in a way that simply was not normal. It's fascinating to think about.

2. Sort of like in the Goethe biography, Liszt came to the fore as a celebrity - there was a sufficient media machine to make him famous. Supposedly there was genuine Liszt-mania in many places he appeared during this period.

3. Carl Czerny was one of his earliest instructors. That's a name familiar to anyone who has done any piano practicing, his various exercises have endured.

4. Liszt's father took him around Europe on concert tours at an early age. I never had thought about the logistical difficulties - the concert industry didn't exist in anything approaching the format we know it. Not to mention difficult travels; this started shortly after the Napoleonic era.

5. The way this author tells it, large-scale piano recitals didn't exist prior to Liszt - one reason being that the piano technology wouldn't have permitted it. Piano performances were done in salon settings, probably building on from the harpsichord traditions. Liszt and his father ran across a piano manufacturer (Erard) in Paris who had an instrument that permitted much more difficult technical achievements at the keyboard, plus had the sound-generating capacity to fill large halls. Other manufacturers were making similar progress. I had no idea about this sequence.

6. And the description of a piano program as a "recital" - where did that come from? Of course, it was Liszt. Not clear exactly why he used it, but the term certainly caught on. His approach to programming also became a model.

7. It also was interesting to me that the early recitals so often ended with the performer doing "improvisations," often on themes submitted by the audience. Liszt supposedly was the master of this. Contrast to today's programs which - as much as I like them - are dominated by faithful renderings of whatever has become the accepted presentation of a work. I would believe the composers didn't intend for performances to be limited in this way.

8. Many of the commercial arrangements sound familiar. Erard shipped pianos wherever Liszt performed around Europe, gratis. And sold pianos everywhere - no possibility of better advertising than having Liszt demonstrate the product. Like today's "Steinway artists."

9. It was most interesting to read about Lizst's interactions with other 19th century luminaries, such as Balzac, Victor Hugo, George Sand, Chopin (Polish refugees were in Paris following yet another Russian sack of Warsaw), Robert & Clara Schumann, Hector Berlioz. Even a brief exposure to Beethoven in the early going.

10. There is a character in "Les Miserables" named Cosette - which is an unusual name. Turns out it is a diminutive for Cosima, Liszt's daughter - for whom Victor Hugo named the character.

11. These 19th century folks so often are involved in the 1848 revolutions - in Liszt's case, Hungarian nationalism was rampant as they sought a better deal with their Austrian overlords. Liszt lived mostly in Paris during these years, but was enthusiastically supportive of Hungary, did tours there, etc.