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Nixon, Ross, Schoenberg and a chunk teaching girls chained

Some of you reading this last week you came to movie theaters of your city in which was projected live from the Met Opera Nixon in China of John Adams. Others, like me, live in the ass in the world and we have no theater near you go to see the opera, which does not prevent us from talking about it, as evidenced by these lines, because as I've said many times, if only we were talking about what we know would have a master gunsmith blog.

Well, I rise to speak of the recent retransimisión of Nixon in China, opera I've only heard bits and one that I'm very curious (although I've heard others say that the same author and never have just convinced) that was more peculiar than their broadcast its musical qualities, and widely discussed in other blogs as Fernem Land In or squid in its ink. And specifically, what makes me write about this opera is the fact that a recent composition work forms part of the repertoire, at least across the Atlantic, where it has been performed with some frequency since its release in 1987. In fact, today you are representing at the same time at the Met in New York and the Four Seasons Centre in Toronto, home of the Canadian Opera Company, and is planned at the opera seasons in Kansas City and San Francisco next year.

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Regardless of my opinion about the work, not yet formed, or my views on the music of John Adams in general, I must say I am glad that today has a work managed to become part of a repertoire that seemed unchangeable, and running the risk of moth-eaten or spread only through the rediscovery of forgotten scores of the past. I have always maintained that every time you need a few artists who discuss topics of interest to your audience and do so in the language of the time, and it seems unnatural that anyone in the XXI century, feels more affinity with the romantic stories Walter Scott and Victor Hugo to music by Donizetti and Verdi with the issues of dealing with the operas of John Adams. Mind you, I'm talking about themes, not musical quality. I am the first to enjoy as a dwarf with Lucia di Lammermoor or Ernani, but acknowledge that these operas address issues of concern to the public at the time of their releases and now have been as museum pieces, as well as literary works in which they were based.

I guess this is where you jump over one saying that it is better known evil than good to know that the public still prefers the works life before these moderneces and always will be more successful a good Tosca a Nixon in China. Well, no, or at least not at all levels. Following the retransimisión of Nixon in China has been a movement in social networks, specifically Twitter, which never before produced. And this movement, a young public interest to discuss their impressions of an opera, sometimes live, there has been a Tosca or La Traviata with nor a Valkyrie but Nixon in China with . As discussed some tweets (you can read HERE ), is the first hashtag themed opera received a massive following since there is Twitter. Music critic Alex Ross, author of famous book about contemporary music The Rest is Noise (badly translated into Castilian because of Luis Gago as The eternal noise) said, also via Twitter: "It's very fun-Actually kind of thrilling, to read the reaction to # nixoninchina twitterwide. Is this Prophetic?" (It's actually quite fun, exciting, "read the reaction on Twitter at # nixoninchina. Is it prophetic?). Well perhaps the answer is yes.

Our country is also about to produce a combination of contemporary works, as the recent release of The blank page Pilar Jury Tetro Real Madrid joins the imminent appearance of 1984 Lorin Maazel on the undercard of the Palau de les Arts. Those who have attended the premiere of the first report that has some positive aspects but fails to overcome the burden that is a bad script, which seems to augur a short life. Nor 1984, which will serve as a farewell to its author as Music Director of the Palau de les Arts, seems unlikely to survive it, because so far its programming in theaters has been linked to its presence as a director and would not be unreasonable to think that the Maazel has imposed itself as an indispensable condition to sign his contract. In any case, the fact that premiere new works, are better or worse, is always a sign that the genre is still alive.

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I left for a final reflrexión not mine, but the aforementioned Alex Ross in the aforementioned book The Rest is Noise . It is quite common to hear voices in the audience who accuse the contemporary authors are not interested in pleasing the public, to feel superior and composing music extremely difficult, if not downright experimental, without taking into account that those attending the theaters like melody traditional free atonality, no twelve-tone, without minimalism, no such rarities. It is also common, unfortunately, to hear that he died with Puccini opera, or at most with Strauss and the fault of the composers who, thereafter, they forgot the public. Well, that's not so, there were the composers who gave back to the audience but the audience who turned his back to the composers. And if there is a case in which this change in attitude is evident, this is the Arnold Schoenberg.

Schoenberg, of humble origin, had to struggle and strive to studying music first and to get to premiere his compositions later. Heir to the Romantic tradition of Brahms, Wagner and Mahler, his first compositions represent an evolution, never a break, the style prevailing at the time, a new twist to the music of Mahler, Strauss, Zemlinsky ... Listener early pieces as string sextet Verklärte Nacht or lieder Gurren expecting to find something arid and rugged, the style of Schoenberg's mature serial composition, often surprising because it is much easier than I thought the thread that binds with audience favorites such as these Mahler and Wagner is obvious. We can say, and say well, that Schoenberg had in mind the tastes of the public when he wrote, merely a step in the evolution of music. However ...

... composers did have a good reason to rebel against the bourgeois taste: the cult of the past ruling threatened their own livelihoods. Vienna was really obsessed with music, but I was obsessed with old music, with works by Mozart and Beethoven and the late Dr. Brahms. Was shaping a canon and contemporary works were beginning to fade from the concert programs. In the late eighteenth century, 84 percent Directory the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig music was composed by living composers. In 1855, the figure had dropped to 38 percent in 1870 to 24 percent. Meanwhile, the public was enamored of the cakewalk and other popular news. Schoenberg's reasoning was: if the bourgeois public was losing interest in new music, and if the emerging mass public had no appetite for classical music, new or old, the serious artist should stop waving their arms in an attempt attention and leave, however, a loneliness in the company of their own principles.

The Rest extract is Noise by Alex Ross

Schoenberg, therefore, did not give back to the audience, but, after seeing how the public turned its back, decided to concentrate on their experiments, oblivious to receiving these were between a hearing closed to any new development. In these experiments with atonal serialism emerged, which meant another step forward in the evolution of Western music and thanks to which we can enjoy truly wonderful as his opera Moses und Aron or Wozzeck and Lulu , its disciple Alban Berg. However, Schoenberg always regretted in his heart this disconnect with the public. In another chapter of Alex Ross, Ronald Schoenberg, son of the composer, recalls how once, when the family had moved and the United States fleeing the Third Reich, came in a juice bar on Highway 1 and the radio was broadcasting Verklärte Nacht. "I never saw him so happy," he says.

So, if it was the public who closed the doors to contemporary musicians, forcing them to start crossing the desert, must also be the public who come to meet the composers, hear their creations, supporting and creating better losing once and for all that fear of accommodating modern obsession that makes many in-band close to anything other than his umpteenth or umpteenth Tosca Traviata . That there is life after Puccini.

And finally, I leave you with the video Martian days, just found on Youtube. A mixture of images of beautiful girls with perky breasts Verklärte Nacht as background music to the haunting title "Tits and Schoenberg, you need nothing more" . A combination that I would never have happened and that will certainly attracted more than one to the music of Schoenberg. Do not ask me who it was or what he intended to hang it, that I am the first surprised.

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