Bits, Atoms, and Beethoven
Leonard Slatkin did a great thing last night: he made an entire hall of jaded, sophisticated concertgoers (bathing in the cream bath that is Carnegie Hall) really listen to Beethoven's 9th. And it's all related to the current battle between innovation and intellectual property overreaching.
Slatkin turned around and talked to the hall about Mahler's re-orchestration of this symphony. He pointed out that Beethoven died sixty years before Mahler's prime as a great opera conductor and composer, and that during those sixty years a lot changed: orchestras got bigger, halls got bigger, and instruments evolved. Notes that a flute couldn't play in B's time became accessible. (There are still notes that the sopranos in the Kennedy Center chorus couldn't reach last night, but let's be charitable: pitch has gone up an awful lot since B's time, and human vocal cords haven't changed that much.)
Mahler, as a guy with dramatic flair and an urge to actually hear the melodies of the piece, liberally redrafted the orchestration of the 9th. He used massed winds to emphasize points. He changed dynamics and articulations. He had the entire wind section raise their bells (a very Mahlerian move) to play what had been a lone piccolo's trill near the end of the last movement. He marked up the famous recitative so it would sound meaningful instead of plodding. Slatkin illustrated this for us, using the orchestra to provide musical examples. Slatkin pointed out that lots of conductors had done similar things to the 9th — the Szell 9th, the Toscanini 9th, the Walter 9th.
He ended by saying that during the last 25 years or so we've adopted this prayerful, pure (my words, not his) approach to “classical” music. We see and hear these works as unchanging and unchangeable. But that's not what they are — they're not frozen in amber, they're not things we're supposed to respect in the abstract. They change with the times.
Some people near me arrived after this portion of the concert, before the NSO actually played the symphony all the way through. When I told them about what they'd missed, one woman said: “Oh, well, I'm very familiar with the piece,” as if she couldn't imagine that it might change. And then she told her husband that the symphony was 70 minutes long. Wellll, maybe it is and maybe it isn't! It depends what's being done to it.
Maybe (here's the tie-in to innovation and intellectual property) we're in an era in which we're beginning numbly to accept that “content” is just provided to us. It's an atom, a thing that floats in space, unchanging. We can hear or see it, as part of a mass content-absorption experience, but we are at a distance from it.
But musical experiences are informational. They're made of bits, not of atoms. They should happen anew every single time, if things are going well. Music isn't wallpaper, and you don't “acquire” concerts. You experience them.
Anyway, the performance was stunningly beautiful, full-hearted, and novel. Maybe that's just me. I thought it was.
And I did get the sense that everyone in the hall who had been there for Slatkin's talk was listening intently with new ears.
Comments
2 Responses to “Bits, Atoms, and Beethoven”
Got something to say?
But musical experiences are informational. They're made of bits, not of atoms. They should happen anew every single time, if things are going well. Music isn't wallpaper, and you don't “acquire” concerts. You experience them.
A drawn out sentence or two, but repeated by almost anyone, when asked if there are any special memories related to music that they remember. How many biographies or autobiographies of musicians and artists invariably recount that first concert, or concerts, as being one of the most influential events in their lives.
Tom
This comment is just to say thanks for drawing my attention to Mahler's retouche of the 9th. I finally got hold of a recording: Gerhard Samuel conducting the Cincinnati Philharmonia Orchestra. The recording is available from Centaur Records.