The Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Vancouver hosts a music series. One of the local favourites in the well-respected Canadian pianist Robert Silverman, a long-established import to the Vancouver music scene who has enjoyed renown as teacher, scholar, and performer there for three decades. I attended the third of his "From the Inside Out" series of lecture-recitals this past Saturday at two o'clock in the afternoon.
The very fine acoustic space of Christ Church made for interesting auditory observations of others. Before the concert, audience members were behaving in typical pre-concert audience ways: one lady behind me and to my left was clipping and filing her nails. The younger women immediately behind me spoke in a hush about something, presumably funny, in Polish: they giggled a lot. I hoped they weren't laughing at me. The music students farther back could only be heard when I concentrated on them: they were discussing their repertoire for the year, especially that which was represented on Mr. Silverman's program. One of the girls was excited to hear the performance of Chopin's Barcarolle; the young man was there mostly for the Liszt excerpts. The group of three to my right and a row back were the arrogant type and clearly had some sort of hierarchy in which the gentleman seated in the middle was the final word on all matters Classical music.
(Warning: there is a little bit of Western art music snobbery--the kind for which it is so famous, especially in media such as television and film--below.)
Part of Mr. Silverman's biography in the program read, "Robert Silverman resides in Vancouver where he was a faculty member at the University of British Columbia for thirty years, served a 5-year term as Director of the School of Music in the 1990s, and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters in 2004. He now devotes himself full-time to concertizing and recording. He is frequently heard on the CBC network, he plays Steinway pianos, and records for EMI, Stereophile, Marquis Classics, OrpheumMasters and CBC Records." Mr. Sir was reading it aloud, then stopped to laugh himself: "Concertizing? That's not even a word." His minions laughed, too. He read on, putting on a mock voice for "he plays Steinway pianos -- oooooh," before declaring proudly, "I myself am personally partial to 'Bozendorfers.'" The female minion to his left quickly slipped in her two cents (which Mr. Sir had dropped): "Oh, yes. Me, too."
Clearly the wealth of knowledge Mr. Sir possessed was astounding: 'concertizing' is in fact a word in common usage. It's been around for at least a century now. He was so proud of the Viennese lineage of piano fabrication (of which he spoke like a proud father waxing eloquent to the other good ol' boys in a satiric film set in a 1960s New England private library) that he ignored the umlaut on the first "O" and thus getting the pronunciation all wrong. I smiled at my own cleverness for noticing such things, and then at the thought: "I doubt that Mr. Sir or his minions would get anything out of a pun on Mignon [Goethe's character and poem from Wilhelm Meister, set many times by famous composers of German art song]," but said nothing. I found it interesting that packaging and marketing have as much to do with people buying another's word as it has to do with buying a more conventional product in a more conventional market.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Vancouver vignette no. 1
On 28 September 2007 at shortly after noon, Vancouver was enjoying a break from the flung cotton garment of cloud that she had donned that morning. The Pacific wind had stopped for lunch. It was too soon to be changing to go out for cocktails and dancing, but Vancouver nipped into the staff bathroom to feel naked and natural for just a few minutes before getting back to work.
On the north side of W Georgia Street between Howe and Hornby, two people (out of hundreds who, like the wind off the ocean, had taken a break for lunch) stood out. One was a gentleman in a very neatly tailored three-piece suit with very shiny, dark brown shoes. Although he allowed Motorola to make a direct contribution to fighting AIDS in Africa when he bought his red Motorola KRZR, he was still swearing quite angrily at whomever was on the other end of the conversation. The second was a young woman wearing a charcoal pencil skirt and a slim-fitting lavender sleeveless top. She couldn't hold a red Motorola KRZR because she had no arms, but she was laughing with her friend as they walked along.
On the north side of W Georgia Street between Howe and Hornby, two people (out of hundreds who, like the wind off the ocean, had taken a break for lunch) stood out. One was a gentleman in a very neatly tailored three-piece suit with very shiny, dark brown shoes. Although he allowed Motorola to make a direct contribution to fighting AIDS in Africa when he bought his red Motorola KRZR, he was still swearing quite angrily at whomever was on the other end of the conversation. The second was a young woman wearing a charcoal pencil skirt and a slim-fitting lavender sleeveless top. She couldn't hold a red Motorola KRZR because she had no arms, but she was laughing with her friend as they walked along.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Some words on Max Bruch
It is often remarked that history tends to be written by the winners, leading to a sense type of history that has been characterised as "monumentalist." One of the asterisks of music history is one Max Bruch (1838-1920), a conservative composer who wrote in the conservative stream for which his more illustrious and more celebrated contemporary Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) is now famous. He has also lived very much in the shadow of Brahms ever since; his name is inextricably linked to his popular Concerto for Violin in G Minor, Op. 26 (1868).
The viola has fallen victim to a similar fate with regard to repertoire. It lives in the shadows of not only the violin, but its other contemporary sibling (and frequent collaborator, particularly in the context of the string quartet), the violoncello. Violists are the subject of many jokes and much condecension in the orchestral world. Unlike fairy tales' too hot/too large--too cold/too small--just right paradigm, the viola takes the third position but is generally regarded to be awkward and unsatisfactory. With regard to size, in fact, the viola is remarkably analogous to the fashion models in the world who are neither anorexic waifs nor plus-sized. They're in-betweeners who have a tough time eking out a market.
Violists (the ones I know, anyway, and I know several) are most often fiercely passionate about their instruments, quick to defend their roles in the chamber and orchestral repertoire and quick to point out the unjustly neglected works that place the viola in the limelight that it deserves. I was a little shocked that a violist in one of my seminars (on Brahms, incidentally) had never heard tell of the man, not least because I would have expected said violist to have encountered some of the chamber music featurig the viola and especially the Romance for Viola and Orchestra, not to say anything of the ubiquitous violin concerto (which is currently available on perhaps 100 commercial recordings).
What has caused the near-total neglect of the over 200 works (save one) by this composer who was so well respected in his own lifetime? (A brief summary of some of his biographical highlights is perhaps in order here: compositional prizewinner at age 14. He held various court and conservatory positions throughout his lifetime, most notably at Berlin where his students included the Englishman Ralph Vaughan-Williams and the Italian Ottorino Respighi, both of whose reputations could safely be said to have exceeded that of their tutor. Composer/conductors as famous as Gustav Mahler programmed his operas after they had fallen out of fashion.) The melodic beauty is quite consistent across much of his output, but most works evidently lack the certain je ne sais quoi that has assured the aforementioned violin concerto to eclipse the man.
I'm writing here neither to defame my colleague nor to persuade you, gentle reader, to rush out and listen to the viola works of Mr. Bruch (although I do encourage it, but be warned: such recordings may be difficult to find and imports are generally overpriced). I write with my own writing and my career as a writer (I fully and happily acknowledge that the likelihood of my making a living solely by writing is very slim indeed, but that aside...) in mind.The wee case of Mr. Bruch has taught me a couple of lessons. One, it is important to strive for excellence at all times to have any chance of being critically and popularly well received (there are some debatable exceptions to this, but I'm not interested in cult phenomena and marketing just now). Two, if one is going to write solely for the fame and recognition of the masses, one is both writing for the wrong reasons and is going to be sorely disappointed the overwhelming majority of the time. Three follows from one and two: if one is writing because he or she loves, and so needs, to write, than excellence will always be the goal; the achievement of personal excellence (which still always leaves room for improvement) will be enough recognition to keep one going. Four, to open-minded critics (for what is the point of writing without an audience?), as in the case of Mr. Bruch, others will recognize dedication to the craft as a virtue in and of itself.
The viola has fallen victim to a similar fate with regard to repertoire. It lives in the shadows of not only the violin, but its other contemporary sibling (and frequent collaborator, particularly in the context of the string quartet), the violoncello. Violists are the subject of many jokes and much condecension in the orchestral world. Unlike fairy tales' too hot/too large--too cold/too small--just right paradigm, the viola takes the third position but is generally regarded to be awkward and unsatisfactory. With regard to size, in fact, the viola is remarkably analogous to the fashion models in the world who are neither anorexic waifs nor plus-sized. They're in-betweeners who have a tough time eking out a market.
Violists (the ones I know, anyway, and I know several) are most often fiercely passionate about their instruments, quick to defend their roles in the chamber and orchestral repertoire and quick to point out the unjustly neglected works that place the viola in the limelight that it deserves. I was a little shocked that a violist in one of my seminars (on Brahms, incidentally) had never heard tell of the man, not least because I would have expected said violist to have encountered some of the chamber music featurig the viola and especially the Romance for Viola and Orchestra, not to say anything of the ubiquitous violin concerto (which is currently available on perhaps 100 commercial recordings).
What has caused the near-total neglect of the over 200 works (save one) by this composer who was so well respected in his own lifetime? (A brief summary of some of his biographical highlights is perhaps in order here: compositional prizewinner at age 14. He held various court and conservatory positions throughout his lifetime, most notably at Berlin where his students included the Englishman Ralph Vaughan-Williams and the Italian Ottorino Respighi, both of whose reputations could safely be said to have exceeded that of their tutor. Composer/conductors as famous as Gustav Mahler programmed his operas after they had fallen out of fashion.) The melodic beauty is quite consistent across much of his output, but most works evidently lack the certain je ne sais quoi that has assured the aforementioned violin concerto to eclipse the man.
I'm writing here neither to defame my colleague nor to persuade you, gentle reader, to rush out and listen to the viola works of Mr. Bruch (although I do encourage it, but be warned: such recordings may be difficult to find and imports are generally overpriced). I write with my own writing and my career as a writer (I fully and happily acknowledge that the likelihood of my making a living solely by writing is very slim indeed, but that aside...) in mind.The wee case of Mr. Bruch has taught me a couple of lessons. One, it is important to strive for excellence at all times to have any chance of being critically and popularly well received (there are some debatable exceptions to this, but I'm not interested in cult phenomena and marketing just now). Two, if one is going to write solely for the fame and recognition of the masses, one is both writing for the wrong reasons and is going to be sorely disappointed the overwhelming majority of the time. Three follows from one and two: if one is writing because he or she loves, and so needs, to write, than excellence will always be the goal; the achievement of personal excellence (which still always leaves room for improvement) will be enough recognition to keep one going. Four, to open-minded critics (for what is the point of writing without an audience?), as in the case of Mr. Bruch, others will recognize dedication to the craft as a virtue in and of itself.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Test driving after Benjamin
"There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism," wrote Walter Benjamin in 1968's Illuminations. I came across Benjamin's writing during my undergraduate studies in music while examining issues of canon--widely accepted "truths" within Western art music. "Beethoven is great," for instance. There are stories that are not told because convention dictates that certain stories are simply so important that they get all the headlines time and time again. The act of barbarism to which Benjamin refers is the repression of those untold stories. The canonical stories that keep on getting retold are no less valid on account of the rhetorical blood on their hands. It is often interesting and illuminating to read about a new history, a parallel one, in music as in other areas of life.
Benjamin's barbarous documents exist in automotive writing as well. The automotive writing canon is bizarre if we continue the analogy to Western art music: active interest in contemporary art music is limited to a very small subsection of a very small portion of the consumer audience, whereas the bulk interest in cars lies in what is shiny and new. (The not insignificant minority of people interested in older cars sees itself represented in the media almost exclusively in restoration projects and collectors' items--shiny, new cars taken ahistorically. I'll ignore this specialty category here.)
One of Benjamin's chief concerns was the effect of consumerism and capitalism on establishing the canon (as is true for other writers of the Frankfurt School, of which Benjamin was a member, who applied the socioeconomic theory of Karl Marx to culture at large). Surely the mass media (which I may safely take, I believe, to be a reasonably sound representative of taste of the average member of the population) is responsible for this: one need not search through many hip-hop videos of the past ten years to find clips of new Cadillac Escalades or Rolls Royces. High-grossing films such as those in the James Bond series feature a new luxury sports car without fail; the real stars of movies like The Fast and the Furious were the cars. In general readership automotive writing (I'm thinking here of the newspaper and magazines such as Car and Driver or Motor Trend), cover stories most commonly feature cars that are all-new, redesigned, and better than all precursors (including pasteurised milk and sliced bread, and better for your general well-being).
The writing on automobiles that falls victim to barbarism is that on used cars.
"Good day, sir. I'm Carl. What brings you in today?"
A middle-aged gentleman who doesn't at all conform to the stock used car salesman character of visual media greats me with a smile and a firm handshake. He is well-groomed, carrying perhaps 30 pounds of excess weight (mostly at his midsection, but it shows in his face, too), and wearing flat-front slacks with black shoes (neither noticeably scuffed nor mirror finished like the rows of new cars glinting in the afternoon sun in the showroom) and a dealership vest with a name-tag.
I was wearing a suit--rather sharp if I may say so myself. A grey one with well-shined shoes and a lavender shirt. Complementary-coloured tie asserted its agency through diagonal striping and crisp white bands. I explained that I was hoping to take something out for a test-drive and that I wasn't looking to buy today: I had only an hour before I'd have to get along to a wedding.
The new context of my attire didn't phase Carl. Given my demographic (early- to mid-twenties, apparently reasonably affluent, well-mannered, white), he sized me up for something small and sporty. There was no talk of the SUVs or trucks, nor of the hybrid, nor of the people-movers, nor of the larger cars. From the very outset, Carl was determined to sell me either a Yaris hatchback or a Matrix.
The mood changed drastically with my next admission: "Actually, Carl, I was hoping to drive something used. I'm in grad school: everything in this room is out of my league. I'm not going to be here beyond August of next year so I'm just scoping out something a little more comfortable in the interim."
His shoulders drooped ever so slightly. Carl, however, is a good salesman. Naturally he was hoping for the larger commission and boosted sales rating that comes with selling a new car, but he pulled himself together and proceeded to treat me like one of the high rollers I typically associate with the annual auto show, hosted in February. Alas, there was no Yaris or Matrix for me. There was, however, an old Tercel. Clean enough. Odometer reading into the hundred-thousand plus category. Four speed automatic. One previous owner, non-smoker. Air? No. Cruise? No. CD player? Yes. And power mirrors. I love power mirrors. Brilliant. 1995 Echo, $13 900. More than I had in mind, but it'll do for today.
Off we go. A wee jaunt out the Queen Elizabeth II. I still call it Calgary Trail. So does Carl, it turns out. Same goes for Gateway Boulevard and Wayne Gretzky Drive--they're still Calgary Trail North and Capilano, respectively. We get it out to the highway beyond Ellerslie Road (it takes ages--traffic is just stupid with an uncommonly large number of semi trucks this Saturday afternoon) and give the comically tiny car a little go. Decent pickup for its size. It's no Ferrari, which is just as well. I couldn't afford one anyway and with my predilection for going quickly, I'd probably have myself killed before long. Probably a different story with a few friends (yes--I do have some) along.
"Plenty for getting around town, though, eh!" Carl asks. His rhetorical questions are really just positive reframes to make the car seem appealing as is possible. The melody of his phrasing is a little
unusual; we don't spend enough time together for me to be able to describe it more accurately. I'm reasonably confident that it could lead to some confusion with someone whose first language isn't English.
"You're a musician, you were saying!" Again, a question phrased as a statement. "What do you play?" Without giving me time to respond, "Check out the system! What do you like to listen to?"
I explain my predilection for classical music with a little smattering of Italian pop and jazz--piano and standards, mostly--and that I sing in choirs and play the piano, although my primary focus at university is music history. Carl turns the dial to 90.9 and proceeds to talk about his daughter's experience with piano. To not have someone automatically respond, "Music history? What do you do with that?" is incredibly refreshing. So much so that I forget how desperately I'd like a car with air conditioning.
We turn into the welcome centre with the large mock oil derrick near the City's limit. To check out the tight turning radius, Carl instructs me to make an illegal U-turn into the small one-way (the wrong way) for local traffic at the centre. Indeed--a tight turn.
"Good for parking at the university or downtown," Carl suggests.
"Or at Southgate," I say, smiling.
"I hate that parking lot!"
We get along, Carl and I. We merge onto Calgary Trail North and rant about the LRT. We pull back into the parking lot and hop out.
"Well, sir, what do you think?" Carl asks hopefully.
"Truthfully, Carl, it's a nice enough little ride but it's still out of my league just now."
"No, son, I understand. How's that little Tercel treating you?"
Carl had seen the car which he had sold to me two years prior and recognized it. We had taken precisely the same route and chatted about many of the same things in our little journey. I complimented Carl on his memory and his personable character and how nice it was that he wasn't pushy in the slightest. He beamed with pride. His philosophy has nothing to do with selling cars. He loves cars, loves driving, and loves people. His job gives him the opportunity to work with people who have similar interests to his own every day and he's happy as a clam. After having dealt with other dealers and salesmen in the past, I didn't consider going to anyone but Carl this time around. He gave me a new card and off I went.
What a pleasant surprise to get to know something affirmative of a person instead of just a brief impression of a car. Relative to other test drives I had done in the past, this test was passed with flying colours (Black sand pearl, specifically) by Carl--my real interest in the excursion. I'd sooner support a salesman with a sale and find a car that works than a pompous fellow who is reluctant to give me the time of day because I will not (because I cannot) sign on to a three year lease or cough up twenty-five grand on the spot.
My advice to ye who labour (part-time to pay for school) and are heavy burdoned (at said school with excess workload): test the dealer on a drive. I highly recommend Carl of Gateway Toyota fame to you.
Benjamin's barbarous documents exist in automotive writing as well. The automotive writing canon is bizarre if we continue the analogy to Western art music: active interest in contemporary art music is limited to a very small subsection of a very small portion of the consumer audience, whereas the bulk interest in cars lies in what is shiny and new. (The not insignificant minority of people interested in older cars sees itself represented in the media almost exclusively in restoration projects and collectors' items--shiny, new cars taken ahistorically. I'll ignore this specialty category here.)
One of Benjamin's chief concerns was the effect of consumerism and capitalism on establishing the canon (as is true for other writers of the Frankfurt School, of which Benjamin was a member, who applied the socioeconomic theory of Karl Marx to culture at large). Surely the mass media (which I may safely take, I believe, to be a reasonably sound representative of taste of the average member of the population) is responsible for this: one need not search through many hip-hop videos of the past ten years to find clips of new Cadillac Escalades or Rolls Royces. High-grossing films such as those in the James Bond series feature a new luxury sports car without fail; the real stars of movies like The Fast and the Furious were the cars. In general readership automotive writing (I'm thinking here of the newspaper and magazines such as Car and Driver or Motor Trend), cover stories most commonly feature cars that are all-new, redesigned, and better than all precursors (including pasteurised milk and sliced bread, and better for your general well-being).
The writing on automobiles that falls victim to barbarism is that on used cars.
"Good day, sir. I'm Carl. What brings you in today?"
A middle-aged gentleman who doesn't at all conform to the stock used car salesman character of visual media greats me with a smile and a firm handshake. He is well-groomed, carrying perhaps 30 pounds of excess weight (mostly at his midsection, but it shows in his face, too), and wearing flat-front slacks with black shoes (neither noticeably scuffed nor mirror finished like the rows of new cars glinting in the afternoon sun in the showroom) and a dealership vest with a name-tag.
I was wearing a suit--rather sharp if I may say so myself. A grey one with well-shined shoes and a lavender shirt. Complementary-coloured tie asserted its agency through diagonal striping and crisp white bands. I explained that I was hoping to take something out for a test-drive and that I wasn't looking to buy today: I had only an hour before I'd have to get along to a wedding.
The new context of my attire didn't phase Carl. Given my demographic (early- to mid-twenties, apparently reasonably affluent, well-mannered, white), he sized me up for something small and sporty. There was no talk of the SUVs or trucks, nor of the hybrid, nor of the people-movers, nor of the larger cars. From the very outset, Carl was determined to sell me either a Yaris hatchback or a Matrix.
The mood changed drastically with my next admission: "Actually, Carl, I was hoping to drive something used. I'm in grad school: everything in this room is out of my league. I'm not going to be here beyond August of next year so I'm just scoping out something a little more comfortable in the interim."
His shoulders drooped ever so slightly. Carl, however, is a good salesman. Naturally he was hoping for the larger commission and boosted sales rating that comes with selling a new car, but he pulled himself together and proceeded to treat me like one of the high rollers I typically associate with the annual auto show, hosted in February. Alas, there was no Yaris or Matrix for me. There was, however, an old Tercel. Clean enough. Odometer reading into the hundred-thousand plus category. Four speed automatic. One previous owner, non-smoker. Air? No. Cruise? No. CD player? Yes. And power mirrors. I love power mirrors. Brilliant. 1995 Echo, $13 900. More than I had in mind, but it'll do for today.
Off we go. A wee jaunt out the Queen Elizabeth II. I still call it Calgary Trail. So does Carl, it turns out. Same goes for Gateway Boulevard and Wayne Gretzky Drive--they're still Calgary Trail North and Capilano, respectively. We get it out to the highway beyond Ellerslie Road (it takes ages--traffic is just stupid with an uncommonly large number of semi trucks this Saturday afternoon) and give the comically tiny car a little go. Decent pickup for its size. It's no Ferrari, which is just as well. I couldn't afford one anyway and with my predilection for going quickly, I'd probably have myself killed before long. Probably a different story with a few friends (yes--I do have some) along.
"Plenty for getting around town, though, eh!" Carl asks. His rhetorical questions are really just positive reframes to make the car seem appealing as is possible. The melody of his phrasing is a little
unusual; we don't spend enough time together for me to be able to describe it more accurately. I'm reasonably confident that it could lead to some confusion with someone whose first language isn't English.
"You're a musician, you were saying!" Again, a question phrased as a statement. "What do you play?" Without giving me time to respond, "Check out the system! What do you like to listen to?"
I explain my predilection for classical music with a little smattering of Italian pop and jazz--piano and standards, mostly--and that I sing in choirs and play the piano, although my primary focus at university is music history. Carl turns the dial to 90.9 and proceeds to talk about his daughter's experience with piano. To not have someone automatically respond, "Music history? What do you do with that?" is incredibly refreshing. So much so that I forget how desperately I'd like a car with air conditioning.
We turn into the welcome centre with the large mock oil derrick near the City's limit. To check out the tight turning radius, Carl instructs me to make an illegal U-turn into the small one-way (the wrong way) for local traffic at the centre. Indeed--a tight turn.
"Good for parking at the university or downtown," Carl suggests.
"Or at Southgate," I say, smiling.
"I hate that parking lot!"
We get along, Carl and I. We merge onto Calgary Trail North and rant about the LRT. We pull back into the parking lot and hop out.
"Well, sir, what do you think?" Carl asks hopefully.
"Truthfully, Carl, it's a nice enough little ride but it's still out of my league just now."
"No, son, I understand. How's that little Tercel treating you?"
Carl had seen the car which he had sold to me two years prior and recognized it. We had taken precisely the same route and chatted about many of the same things in our little journey. I complimented Carl on his memory and his personable character and how nice it was that he wasn't pushy in the slightest. He beamed with pride. His philosophy has nothing to do with selling cars. He loves cars, loves driving, and loves people. His job gives him the opportunity to work with people who have similar interests to his own every day and he's happy as a clam. After having dealt with other dealers and salesmen in the past, I didn't consider going to anyone but Carl this time around. He gave me a new card and off I went.
What a pleasant surprise to get to know something affirmative of a person instead of just a brief impression of a car. Relative to other test drives I had done in the past, this test was passed with flying colours (Black sand pearl, specifically) by Carl--my real interest in the excursion. I'd sooner support a salesman with a sale and find a car that works than a pompous fellow who is reluctant to give me the time of day because I will not (because I cannot) sign on to a three year lease or cough up twenty-five grand on the spot.
My advice to ye who labour (part-time to pay for school) and are heavy burdoned (at said school with excess workload): test the dealer on a drive. I highly recommend Carl of Gateway Toyota fame to you.
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