Dennis Bartel - KUSC

Erik Satie, a life in solitude

2009-11-19T01:35:00.000-08:00

Satie seems to me as a man who lives his life with his head down. Not so much shy; able at times to join the general chaos if wearing his same artful mask. Rather, Satie is absorbed, casually and utterly absorbed in his own thoughts in his one-room, unheated Arcueil flat, where no one ever goes but Satie. Maybe this state of being is not so uncommon among the populous at large, people living in similar kinds of solitude, maybe (like Satie!) with a cat, and that may help account for why Satie’s music lives on today, a century later. It is music of discreet charm and sly playfulness, and sometimes, oui, there is reverie, like a spoonful of sadness in your cup of coffee. Satie’s many tiny masterpieces – Oh, the Gymnopedies! the Gnossiennes! – bring the head down in solitude. I would even liken his music to crouching at a bush to watch a butterfly.

And Satie’s solitude went deeper than the mere fact of him living alone in his second-floor suburban flat in a corner house known as Les Quartre Cheminées where he spent his final twenty-seven years. After his death, all that was found in Satie’s flat was a hammock, a desk covered with papers, a candle, several old umbrellas, velvet suits and derby hats, notebooks, thirty years of notebooks, and the tin-can piano with pedals that worked by string. But hadn’t Satie said he had two pianos in his room, both white, stacked on top of one another? He did say that, oui, in the same way he gave his many tiny masterpieces titles that artfully masked, rather than revealed, their true intent. Which was solitude’s doing. Satie’s solitude is filled with barren space. “Wander about yourself,” he invited us. “I fill up the awkward silence.” I cringe when I hear Satie’s music described as simple, as if it does not contain enough notes, or is not sufficiently difficult to play. Its simplicity is its depth. As paradoxes go, that’s a favorite.

Satie’s music is simple as Toulouse-Lautrec’s lithographs are simple. The self-conscious effort to be artful appears missing in each. That Erik and Henri were friends will surprise no one who encounters the many tiny masterpieces of both artists. But where Toulouse-Lautrec looked for his subject in the audacious gaite bursting forth from beneath the red sails of the Moulin Rouge, Satie looked down at the keys of a tin-can piano in his dingy, bare-walled bohemian flat, his “cabinet,” and with technique severely limited brought forth the fine thoughts of his solitude, as if musing alone over coffee on the terrasse of Le Chat Noir, where Satie made his meager living as café pianist. As those who provoked his ire discovered, Satie could also sometimes muse nasty and brittle, to no less effect only stingingly satiric, like a drop of absinthe in your cup.

Satie wrote his many tiny masterpieces in La Belle Epoque, the beautiful era before the Great War turned Paris into a ferment of decay and destroyed everything beautiful. In his final years, Satie lived to see la belle return. “To place one’s trust in the young is something that is always absolutely essential,” said the wizened guru of Les Six.

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) Quartet in E-flat, Op.33, No.2, “The Joke”

2009-11-09T01:52:00.000-08:00

Composed in December, 1781, Haydn’s E-flat Quartet is one of the six Op.33 “Russian Quartets,” so-called because of their premiere in Vienna in the presence of Paul, Grand Duke of Russia, later Tsar.

Haydn had not written quartets for nine years. With his previous set, Op.20, he felt he had exhausted his resources in the form. Now, in subscription solicitations to supplement his modest kappelmeister’s salary, Haydn described these new quartets as “written in an entirely new and particular manner.” He devised a principle he called “thematic elaboration.” A theme is dissected, then each fragment of the theme is developed, and they are reassembled in unexpected ways.

The principle is well illustrated in the first movement, in which a falling fanfare theme is briefly stated, and then developed in a dialogue among the four instruments. Various sides of the theme are explored and elaborated upon until the concluding recapitulation.

The Scherzo, which was substituted for a minuet as part of the “entirely new manner,” includes a wavy glissando line then common only to folk music and popular dances; Johann Strauss would later take this “Viennese glissando” to new heights.

In the Largo, a melody circulates among the instruments, each providing a variation. The Presto scoots along à la rondo until we arrived at the coda, when the theme is cut to pieces by large rests, so that is starts, stops, starts, and…. Haydn was said to have wagered that “the ladies will always begin talking before the music is finished.” With his startling code to Op.33, No.2, which earned for the Quartet the nickname “The Joke,” Haydn often won his bet.

A Dvořák Family Album

2009-11-05T02:06:00.000-08:00

Dvořák and his wife Anna originally came to America with two of their children, Otilie and Antonin. They had planned to return to Bohemia for the summer after Dvořák's duties at the National Conservatory in New York were finished for the term (he taught three hours a day and conducted the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in eight concerts). Instead, upon learning of the town of Spillville, home to many Czech immigrants, Dvořák sent for his other four children to travel to the U.S. in the care of his wife's sister and the family housemaid. Above is Dvořák with his six children about to depart from New York to Iowa on a two-day train ride.

Here is Dvořák and Anna, six years before their journey to America. She had been one of his piano students and was the daughter of a wealthy goldsmith. It was only after her father died that the prohibition against her marrying a poor musician (which Dvořák was at the time) was lifted. At the time of their marriage Anna was also five months pregnant with their first child Otakar.

This is Dvořák and his youngest child Magda in 1901, three years before the Great Composer's death. The photo was taken on the occasion of Magda's first public performance when she sang songs by her father and an aria from Dvořák's opera Rusalka during the jubilee celebrations of Dvořák's sixtieth year.

The World's Most Popular Music

2009-09-25T01:30:00.000-07:00

With all data compiled - including recordings in print, frequency of performance, duration and pervasiveness in the world repertoire, and the subjective yardstick of audience avidity - the award for "World's Most Popular Music" goes to: Boléro!

Yes. This Spanish-Arabic flavored, gradual crescendoing tour de force by France's dandified Maurice Ravel is rooted in the repertoire of nearly every orchestra in the world, large and small. It has sold more records than even the Beethoven Fifth. It has crossed all geographic and cultural lines. It is the World's Most Popular Music.

I'm aware of the sneering contempt often shown this (in Ravel's words) "orchestral tissue without music." But those who despise Boléro for its ubiquity strike me as having sampled a spoonful too much from the snob merchant, and perhaps nothing will dissuade them from their self-limiting opinion. Besides, the vehemence of their contempt only helps validate Boléro's claim to World's Most Popular, for only a work of such high profile could engender such high-pitched loathing.

Therefore, as a public service, I hereby issue "A Perfect Ten Facts of Boléro" so that we may better know our Most Popular Work.

Fact One: The dancer Ida Rubinstein commissioned Boléro, originally asking for Ravel to orchestra pieces from Albéniz's Iberia. Instead, Ravel composed an original piece, which received its premiere at the Paris Opéra, November 22, 1928 by Mme Rubinstein's troupe, Walther Straram conducting.

Fact Two: In an interview published in London's Evening Standard, February 24, 1932, Ravel said, "I love going over factories and seeing vast machinery at work. It is awe-inspiring and great. It was a factory which inspired my Boléro. I would like it always to be played with a vast factory in the background."

Fact Three: The first recording of Boléro, on four 78-rpm sides, was made in January 1930 at the Salle Pleyel, by a pick-up Paris orchestra under Piero Coppola, the Italian conductor and composer active in Paris in the 1920s and 30s, who lived to sing the praises of Boléro into the 1970s. Ravel supervised the recording session, and when the orchestra began to record the final side Ravel stopped Coppola and made them start again because he felt the tempo had sped up. Despite this, the tempo on the final side was sped up anyway. The next day, Ravel recorded his own version of Boléro, and his was the only early record of the work which holds tempo throughout.

Fact Four: Ravel had a substantial record collection at his home in Montfort l'Amaury, outside Paris, including dozens of classical music works, a handful of popular recordings (e.g. a Pathé 78-rpm record of the Kentucky Singers performing "Tiger Rag"), and a few folklore recordings, notably of Egyptian popular songs, but only eight records of his own music, two of which were Boléro, one was Coppola's record, the other was by an unnamed orchestra and a conductor unknown to me, H. Kemp.

Fact Five: Upon completing Boléro, Ravel received the degree of Doctor of Music, honoris causa from Oxford University, and appeared at the school in academic garb to accept the honor.

Fact Six: The American premiere of Boléro took place November 14, 1929, with Arturo Toscanini conducting the New York Philharmonic Symphony. The New York Times reported, "Boléro brought shouts and cheers from the audience and delayed the performance by prolonged applause. The craft, the virtuosity are really thrilling." The performance is said to have made Ravel "almost an American national hero," according to the liner notes to the first American recording of the work, "and caused such wild excitement and enthusiasm as had never been seen in American concert halls."

Fact Seven: Prior to the American premiere, Toscanini had already conducted the work several times in Europe, always with a faster tempo than Ravel's score indicates, including an accelerated tempo near the end. Ravel openly objected to this practice of Toscanini's. Then, following a performance at the Paris Opéra, Ravel refused to stand to accept the applause when Toscanini pointed him out in audience. This led to what newspapers called the "Toscanini-Ravel affaire." Typically, Ravel quickly sought to make amends with the Maestro. In a letter he explained, "I have always felt that if a composer does not participate in the performance of his work, he should avoid the applause, which should be directed only to the performer or the work, or both." With this letter, the friendship between Ravel and Toscanini was restored.

Fact Eight: Boléro has been used in eight commercial films. In 1934 George Raft danced to the work in Boléro, directed by Wesley Ruggles, and also staring Carol Lombard. In the 1941 French comedy Boléro, directed by Jean Boyer, an architect played by Arletty is driven batty by his neighbor continually playing Boléro on his phonograph. The 1950 Kurosawa film Rashomon includes an imitation of Boléro by Takashi Matsuyama. The 1973 William Fertik short film won an Academy Award by wander behind-the-scenes in L.A. to Boléro. The 1977 Italian animated film Allegro Non Troppo uses Boléro to illustrate the evolution of the human race, from primordial ooze to modern man. In the 1979 Blake Edwards film 10, Jenny, a woman who scores eleven on the scale of a perfect ten, played by the braided Bo Derek, requires that Boléro be played on her record player in order for her to get "in the mood." Much to the distress of the philandering George Webber, played by Dudley Moore, the record keeps sticking at all the wrong times. The 1981 French film Les Uns et les autres, directed by Claude Lelouche, includes a complete performance of Boléro, with chorus, conducted by Michel Legrand, who slows the tempo down to a languid sixteen minutes and twenty seconds. In 1984, a film was made of the ice dancing World Championships held in Ottawa, at which the first prize was awarded to Jane Torville and Christopher Dean, who skated Boléro all the way to Olympic Gold.

Fact Nine: Ravel, who was proud of the work, on Boléro: "Its theme and rhythm are repeated to the point of obsession without any picturesque intention. This theme…flows successively through the different instrumental groups in a continuous crescendo, and after being repeated, always in C major, breaks out towards the end in E major. Both the theme and the accompaniment were deliberately given a Spanish character. I have always had a predilection for Spanish things. You see, I was born near the Spanish border, and there is also another reason:" (he laughs) "my parents met in Madrid.

Fact Ten: At age 58, Ravel began suffering symptoms of cerebral anemia and aphasia, which included difficulty in speech and a partial loss of memory. He took several months off from work to rest. (Interestingly, six decades later a British study published in Psychiatric Bulletin claimed that Bolero may demonstrate that Ravel was succumbing to Alzheimer's disease. The famous melody is repeated eighteen times without change and could represent perseveration, an obsession with repeating words and gestures, which is one of the chief symptoms of the disease.) Ravel returned in November 1933 returned to the conductor's podium to lead the Pasdeloup Orchestra. It would be his final public performance. On the program was Boléro. Four years later he died of a brain tumor.