What a strange and mysterious symphony. What captivates me is its use of “negative space.”
It opens in a void. All darkness and quiet, no key, no specific tonality. It’s like wandering in a dark room. How big is the room? We don’t know — we’re lost in the emptiness.
And as the symphony progresses, it always wants to return to the darkness, the negative zone of silence. It’s as if the notes of the symphony are written around a great emptiness, to show its architecture.
It’s about something other, something mysterious.
I conduct it this weekend, in misty, beautiful Victoria, BC.
The Composer is Dead, an incredible project I did with Lemony Snicket and Nathaniel Stookey is out in stores! It’s a book with a CD of the San Francisco Symphony conducted by yours truly. I’m so so so proud of this project. Here’s a nice YouTube promo that was done. I’m even in a few shots!!
So rehearsals for Mahler 9 begin tomorrow. Mahler entered my life as a teenager. I spent hours and hours listening to this music by myself, playing bass gigs so I could buy another Mahler CD. I think a lot of teenagers have their own personal “sad” music. For my friends it was The Cure or New Order or Depeche Mode; for me it was Mahler. It’s tragic, cathartic, full of yearning. Even when it’s joyful there’s always a tremendous cost. The hugeness of the music reflected the feelings I had inside of me. The questions it asked were questions I was asking myself, too shy to ask others. From a young age, I always took metaphysical questions very seriously. I thought about death and what it all meant. Mahler became my constant companion on this journey,
I opened up my high school yearbook last week and there it was, an “I <heart> Mahler” bumpersticker. I put it up over my seat in student government for everyone to see. I wanted more people to <heart> Mahler too. But more importantly, it was a mark of my individuality, what set me apart. Mahler’s sadness was my sadness. It was my mark of rebellion. Mahler was my purple mohawk.
I’ve spent the last few months immersed in Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, in preparation for a concert in a few weeks with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. It amazes me that I’m actually going to conduct this piece soon — it’s something I’ve dreamed of doing for a long time. I’ve been trying to figure out how to share this experience on the blog. I could go on and on, but I’ve never been into reading long blog posts (or writing them). So I’ve decided to do a series of “Mahler Entries,” which will be a collection of experiences I’ve had with the piece. I hope it will get people excited about the work. I personally couldn’t imagine what my life would be life without it.
So I’ve got a Mahler 9 coming up in a few weeks with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. As you might imagine, I’ve been working on this piece for months and months and living with it for years and years. This symphony is about the end of a lot of things, not least among them the end of Vienna as Mahler knew it. The symphony is, in my mind, a witness to the end of the Austro-Hungarian empire and a collapse of the traditions and culture of that city. A good book to read about this is the extraordinary epic novel by Joseph Roth, The Radetsky March. It talks about how the Radetsky March becomes a parody as the empire collapses and becomes more and more decadent. Sound familiar? Those who know the second and third movements of Mahler 9 will get what I mean. In fact, the third movement of Mahler 9 may be a parody of the Radetsky March itself.
But what about the parody of the second movement? It’s about the ländler and the waltz. As I’ve been studying the second movement this week it occurred to me that I’d never seen a ländler danced or heard an authentic folk version played. So I did a search on YouTube and decided to go even further by typing in “Bohemian Ländler,” the kind of sounds Mahler might have heard in his childhood in Iglau.
This is what I got:
It occurs to me that there are more sources at our fingertips to learn about music than ever before. Who knows if this clip is accurate, but it certainly feeds my imagination.
I find every journey to the South really really interesting. This is my first time in Memphis.
First, the orchestra: excellent group, great hall. They love to play music, which is what makes me happy when I conduct. No matter how good an orchestra is, if it feels like just another day at the office what’s the point? Of course I have to do my part to make this happen. So in many ways, when I’m working with a given orchestra in a given week, I’m thinking to myself, “How can the music-making be as vivid, as distinctive as possible?” Kudos also to David Loebel (music director - the real thing), and the excellent staff, who have really built something here.
The visit to the town has been full of feeling and emotion for me as well. Seeing the National Civil Rights Museum was incredibly moving because the facade of the museum is the actual Lorraine Motel, where MLK was assasinated.
What made it even more moving was seeing it in context. With Barack Obama elected president, MLK’s sacrifice and struggle really hit me more than ever before. But there was another context in which I saw this museum: it sits next to one of the poorest zip codes in America, with an infant mortality rate higher than Nigeria! We still have a long way to go. We can do better than this.
Also of course, this is the birthplace of blues and rock and roll. It’s still an enormously musical place. Shouldn’t cities like Memphis and New Orleans be our Vienna? They’re not of course. In the US we have trouble celebrating our own culture. The more I think about it, the culture we celebrate is just a reflection of having and making a lot of money. That’s why we don’t have Carnegie Hall in Memphis.
Beyond that — I’ve been exploring and eating. The best fried chicken ever (Gus’s), catfish, ho-cakes, and some BBQ to come. I’m going to try and hear some American music as well after rehearsal tonight.
Working with the Columbus Symphony this week. They’ve recently recovered from a near-death experience (the orchestra was dark for 6 months) where all sorts of bad things happened. Despite this, the orchestra is playing very well. They are a great group of musicians.
There are challenges ahead here, and everywhere for orchestras “in this economy” (that dreaded and ubiquitous phrase). I tend to look at the situation very objectively. It’s easy to point fingers, and play the blame game, but it’s not particularly productive, I think. The objective problem is this: orchestras are non-profits, they need more donors and more earned income (audiences). We need to get more people excited about orchestral music. How?
Well I always put my self in the shoes of one of these “new people.” Why aren’t they coming? Do they hate music? I don’t know anyone who hates music, actually. We all know why “new people” don’t come to the symphony. “It’s stuffy, elitist, snobby, boring, not fun, and they don’t play the music I like.” That’s what they say, but of course most of them haven’t been to a single concert.
It’s the image.
Why don’t orchestras work on their image more? It’s the key. We’re doing all the right stuff. We play a variety of music in my orchestra, from Bach to Radiohead. No one can say we don’t have at least one concert that offers “music they like.” We add untold depth and riches to our community through our educational programs, and by playing the worlds most beautiful music at the highest level.
But not enough people know that.
Image. Image. Image.
Let’s start with the word “symphony.” If you are not a symphony patron, does that word have a positive, negative, or neutral connotation? I think for many it’s a negative, because of its stuffy, snobby vibe. But there’s another romantic side to the word that I notice in contemporary culture. (Justin Timberlake, for instance, in his song “My Love” — “if I wrote you a syyyymmmphony.”) Can we turn the image of the symphony to the romantic thing Justin croons about in his song? We need to start at the very beginning with the word — symphony — that defines us. With imagination, we can make the word what we want it to be.
Here’s a great example of how musicians are much more open-minded than audiences or critics expect them to be. During a snowstorm last week I had some time to watch a 3-hour documentary on Kraftwerk and German electronica. For those of you who don’t know Kraftwerk, you should. Here’s what they look like …
… and that’s more or less what their music sounds like.
Anyway they were saying how much they dug the music of James Brown because of the “pictographical rhythm” of his music. Yes! They’re absolutely right! In songs like “Get It Together” or “Let Yourself Go” you can really see the rhythm. That’s also true for the Rite of Spring and a lot of Stravinsky as well. Anyway — “pictographical rhythm” — what a great description. Music fits together an cool and unexpected ways.
The YouTube Symphony is up and running. I think this is super-cool, and this is only the beginning. They started big, and they started right. Read the ARTICLE.
