Twittering a symphony concert

Today (July 30), the National Symphony Orchestra will experiment with twittering during a concert at its outdoor venue at Wolf Trap:

"With this first ever in-time symphonic Twitter you can have the conductor as your personal guide through Beethoven's most colorful and atmospheric work,” explained NSO @ Wolf Trap Festival Conductor Emil de Cou. “I have designed the tweets to go perfectly with ideas I have about the piece as I conduct it but also some interesting commentary to go along with the sights and sounds of Beethoven's day in the countryside: an adult musical pop-up book written for first timers and concert veterans alike."

The messages will begin during intermission and provide facts about Beethoven’s life and work. Once the concert begins, the tweets will be sent at specific points in the score, becoming streaming program notes that mark musical signposts depicting Beethoven’s symphonic tribute to a day in the country.

Please note that the Filene Center does not allow electronic devices to be used in the main house, only on the lawn.

Again, this is only for a portion of the audience at Wolf Trap. I personally think it is a great idea, one that might open up a score for some people. I think lots of patrons can star strong with a score, following it at the beginning, but lose the line later and get frustrated. A tweet might put a few back on track.

Of course it depends on the repertoire ("Four Dance Episodes" from Copland's "Rodeo," Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto (Sarah Chang) and Beethoven's Symphony No. 6, "Pastoral") and the quality of the tweets (written by the night's conductor, Emil de Cou). I look forward to reports on how it went. Maybe we will see this in the future, esp. since the worthy concert companion experiment didn't do so well.

Mother Goose and Father Bach together at last

Combining nursery rhymes with classical music has been down before, but I don't know if anyone has taken it this far. But it makes so much sense in this engaging new disc it makes you wonder why it took so long.

"Mother Goose Meets Father Bach" is the brainchild of violinist Monique Mead, who, in addition to being a talented musician and teacher, is the wife of PSO concertmaster Andres Cardenes.

"Mother Goose meets Father Bach" offers the imagined meeting between the two icons, with each teaching the other -- and children -- their respective crafts. Mead is Mother Goose and actor Gregory Lehane is Bach. The music is Bach's Orchestral Suites, taken from a previous recording by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. The lessons are the likes of alliteration, articulation and pairing.

The concept is simple enough, to stimulate language skills of young-uns (no not to make them smart) by the combined use of rhyming and a structured musical language -- a sort of dual use of grammar. Here is a bit of the opening track, with the famous "Badinerie." The characters generally talk and sing on one track and then the music repeats alone on the next, so your child and you can match Mother Goose and Bach on their own. Some of the tracks/lessons (such as Bach explaining Rondo form) are for older children, but young kids will still enjoy the music.

You can buy the disc at various online outlets, or by visiting Mead's Mother Goose and Father Bach Web site. It is available locally at Borders Books in Shadyside (but, alas, not at Curtain Call anymore).

RIP Michael Steinberg

One of the best writers on music in America, Michael Steinberg, died yesterday. I happen to have his collected writings on symphonies sitting on my desk right now. He will be missed, and the story about his time at the Boston Globe that the obit below references is, I believe, that he was so harsh on the Boston Symphony Orchestra that it hired him to get him to stop (and presumably to have him apply his ideas rather than just keveching). Pretty amazing guy.

The obit provided by his family follows:

Michael Steinberg, among the pre-eminent music critics of our time, died on Sunday, 26 July 2009 at the age of 80. Despite the onset of cancer more than three years ago, he continued to live a full and vigorous life. He was revered by professional colleagues – the musicians, conductors, fellow writers, composers, educators, and orchestra executives with whom he collaborated over the course of a six-decade career – and loved by hundreds of thousands of audience members whose ideas and feelings about music were shaped by the unerringly lucid and insightful commentary he provided in program notes and pre-concert talks. A teacher of music history and criticism, a chamber music coach, a narrator, he was also the premier writer of program notes for audiences of orchestral, choral and chamber music, his works appearing not only in symphonic program books, but also on recordings, most notably those of John Adams’ operas Nixon in China (1988) and The Death of Klinghoffer (1992).

 Steinberg was born on October 4, 1928 in Breslau  in the last years of Weimar Germany and spent his adolescence in England, his mother having campaigned successfully to get him to safety via the Kindertransport, a rescue mission that saved nearly 10,000 children in the months leading up to World War II. By the end of the war, Michael, his mother, and a brother 15 years his elder, Franz, had emigrated to St.Louis, Missouri. Steinberg studied at Princeton with Strunk, Babbitt, and Cone, graduating in 1949 with a degree in musicology. On a Fulbright scholarship, he spent two years in Italy, where he met his first wife Jane Bonacker (they divorced in 1977). Upon his return from Italy to the U.S., he was drafted and spent two years in the Army stationed in Germany in the 1950s. He served as head of the music history department at the Manhattan School of Music (1954-55; 1957-64), and taught at Smith College, Hunter College, Brandeis University, and the New England Conservatory. During these years, he was appointed music critic at the Boston Globe; his tenure in that position is the stuff of legend among serious writers about music.

 Steinberg’s first staff position at a major orchestra was Director of Publications  for the Boston Symphony (1976-79). In 1979 he  joined the San Francisco Symphony  as Publications Director and Artistic Adviser (1979-1989), which combined the tasks of writing program notes and designing the season’s repertoire, in close consultation with then music directors Edo de Waart, followed by Herbert Blomstedt. In 1983 he married Jorja Fleezanis, the Associate Concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony; when she was named Concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra in 1989, they moved to Minneapolis. He became program annotator to the New York Philharmonic in 1995, while continuing to serve as pre-concert lecturer in San Francisco, Minneapolis, Boston, Los Angeles, and New York. He took the post of Artistic Adviser with the Minnesota Orchestra, while maintaining the positions of program annotator for both the San Francisco Symphony and the New York Philharmonic.

Even after announcing his formal retirement in 1999, Steinberg kept working. He wrote for the San Francisco Symphony. For the West Coast chamber music festival Music at Menlo, he introduced programs, coached ensembles, and led several evenings of their “Encounter Series.” He also coached students at the International Festival-Institute at Round Top, Texas. Each summer, public poetry readings were highlights of both the Menlo and Round Top festivals, where Steinberg not only gave  his own memorable readings  but also selected poems and lovingly coached both students and faculty in their readings. He believed poetry to be a vital component of music-making, and that performing musicians could arrive at a better understanding of musical phrasing and impulses by reading poetry aloud. In Jorja Fleezanis’ words, he believed that “rhythm, the gait, and the expression required to read poetry well are intimately linked to what is required to play music well.” 

Taruskin's Oxford History of Western Music goes paperback

It's a little less heavy, but no more lightweight: controversial musicologist Richard Taruskin's Oxford History of Western Music has just been published in paperback.

Still, as I wrote in my review of the hardcover version, it is still not something you are going to want to take to the beach to read and the author's domniating presence and agenda weakens the project. But if you want one of your own to form your own opinion, at least it will be substantially more affordable now, at $185 a set.

Can't keep Mozart down: new works discovered

The foundation declined to provide more details Thursday, saying specifics would be made public during a presentation in Salzburg on Aug. 2.

During the event, Austrian musician Florian Birsak will perform the pieces on an original Mozart piano.

The foundation, established in 1880 and a prime source for Mozart-related matters, seeks to preserve the composer's heritage and find new approaches for analyzing him.

Discoveries such as the one announced Thursday are rare but not unheard of.

In September, Ulrich Leisinger, Mozarteum's head of research, said that a French library had found another previously unknown piece of music handwritten by Mozart.

The work, described as the preliminary draft of a musical composition, was found in Nantes in western France as library staff members were going through its archives. Leisinger says the library contacted his foundation for help authenticating the work.

There have been up to 10 Mozart discoveries of such importance over the past 50 years, Leisinger said at the time.

Wood Henry clap here? Applauding issues at the BBC Proms

Well I am back from a nice vacation, just in time to see the latest silly flare up from someone who feels that classical music is so delicate that it can't withstand exuberance from patrons who don't know the "rules" of engagement.

Apparantly, Jonathan Lennie, the classical music editor of Time Out magazine in London, recently wrote an article lamenting audiences applauding at the "wrong" time. Here is an article about it from the Daily Telegraph. Sorry I don't have the original article at the ready to post.

(The irony of this is that this controversy comes at the BBC Proms, one classical music festival in world that considers the vibrancy of the audience to be a crucial element of its success and a difference compared to other festivals.)

The Daily Telegraph (London)

July 15, 2009 Wednesday

Don't clap, you're;
spoiling;
the Prom

By Nick Allen

AUDIENCES at the Proms do not know the correct time to applaud and need educating to avoid spoiling the music for others, according to a classical music expert.

Jonathan Lennie, the classical music editor of Time Out magazine, attacked those who try to impress others by racing to be first to applaud as they recognise the closing bars of a piece. He also criticised concertgoers who applaud between movements.

Mr Lennie, in an open letter addressed to the Loud Clapping Man Who Sits Behind Me At Concerts, said: "You don't have to clap, you know, particularly between movements in a symphony, or songs in a song cycle.

"You don't have to reward the performers halfway through, this isn't opera, they do not expect it and most often resent the intrusion.''

He added: "Particularly in a profound piece of music the silence that follows that music is part of that music.

It also allows a moment of reflection. If someone claps into that it shatters the moment and it's lost.''

Roger Wright, the Proms director, had "sympathy'' but added: "The Proms is a special place. More important is what the composers and artists think about this.''

There had been no indication performers wanted audiences to stop clapping. He added: "Mozart rather enjoyed audiences clapping and Brahms was rather disappointed when they didn't clap.'' Leonard Slatkin, the American conductor, says that the way audiences are showing their appreciation is returning to the customs of centuries ago when it was normal to acknowledge a performance as it was going on.

Like Wright I have some sympathy to Lennie. I am not doubting Lennie's expertise (how can I with a guy named after LB!?  ;-)   ) and I agree that a quiet moment can be hurt by someone clapping but, most "errant" clapping comes from louder music (some composers wrote endings to first movements that demand clapping, such as those of Mozart's Symphony No. 41, "Jupiter," Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1, Tchaikovsky Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6, and many more.

My feelings are, one, that classical music is not so delicate that it has to be protected from reality (especially since most of it was not premiered in hermetic environments) and two, that audience members are a vital part of the live experience for me. If some audience members feel the urge to express their joy by clapping at a musical moment, most of the time I have no problem with it. I have also had moments enhanced by noticing that other patrons were as rapt as me -- that creates a certain magic for me, esp. when it is with a group that is typically louder or more expressive. Anyway, this argument will never go away -- I wrote about it in 2007 -- so tell me what you think in a reply below.

Western music in China in Chinese

I have had my writing translated into European languages before, both as a journalist and as a CD liner-note writer, but this is really neat: a Beijing newspaper called Reference News ran a version of my story on Western music in China -- the first time I knowingly have been translated into Chinese!

It is an honor, since the article was by an outsider trying to figure out China's musical culture. But I wonder just how it was taken by readers. Did they think I had insight, or did they think I was full of it?

I guess that's partly answered just because some editors there thought it good and sound enough to run, and after all, it had quotes by American musicians praising Chinese students. But, maybe they just wanted an excuse to get another photo of the superstar Lang Lang into their pages!

Either way, it is a fitting end to a eye- and ear-opening trip to China with the Pittsburgh Symphony in May.

Happy birthday, NewMusicBox

Ten years ago, I was working at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, covering the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and other groups, as well as working as a copy-editor in its Web site, then one of the most innovative and robust ones in the country. But because I wasn't the chief classical music critic -- that was back when criticism in newspapers had more a future than it does now! -- I was applying to jobs and looking for other writing opportunities.

I can't quite remember how it happened but I became aware of a fantastic new "Web-zine," as we called it, run by the American Music Center in New York. It had the somewhat goofy name of NewMusicBox -- goofy simply because I thought of most contemporary music as "out of the box" music -- but it used the Internet to its full potential at the time by using hypertext links. Because of the links and the space the Internet offered compared to print, the articles almost shocked in how much more depth and comprehensive treatment they provided.

I was excited and I pitched editor Frank Oteri soon after. Or maybe he pitched me at the Music Critics Association of North America meeting in Chicago that year. I can't remember. In any case, I ended up writing this long article looking at just how much American music U.S. orchestras actually play. My wife, Allison Schlesinger, took the photo of me. I was trying to be cute by holding $ in one hand and a score in the other...

Looking at it again, I can hardly believe how much work went into that article. It is so comprehensive, with reports on 20 orchestras. I surely didn't get paid much for it, but it was something I was and am really proud of. It showed me the potential of the Web to pass on information about the arts, and maybe some other readers, too. If not, I would think that the many great articles on the site that came in the next 10 years did that.

This summer, NewMusicBox is celebrating its decade of providing quality articles helping both composers, performers, audiences and industry folks learn much more about so many topics in this biz. I hope you take some time to browse some of its archive.

Congratulations, NMBx! May you have another 10 x 10 years of raising the bar for writing about music and supporting composers.

Oh, and check out its excellent Counterstream Radio when you get the chance.

Daniel Meyer lends a helping hand, and ear

The gregarious Daniel Meyer, outgoing resident conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony and outgoing music director of the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony, will soon be moving on to other cities (Erie, where he is music director of the Erie Philharmonic and Asheville, where he leads the Asheville Symphony Orchestra) as he builds what will surely be a big career.

But he isn't cutting ties quite yet (not to mention that his wife, the violist Mary Persin, is from Greensburg): the Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra just announced that it has appointed Meyer as artistic adviser for the 2010-11 season.

"Daniel will oversee the artistic leadership of the WSO as the board reviews possible successors to music director Kypros Markou, who will be leaving the orchestra after 31 years following the 2009-2010 season," a presser stated. "His duties with the Westmoreland Symphony include programming for the 2010-11 season, hearing auditions for new musicians and overseeing the artistic development of the WSO during this transition year. Daniel will conduct the WSO at its opening night classical concert in late October of 2010, the Young People’s Concerts and the Home for the Holidays concert."

It almost seems Meyer is a candidate himself! Who knows, maybe he is, but Meyer already is pretty busy. In any case, The WSO will invite music director candidates to conduct the remaining classical concerts of the season.