Portrait of an artist

Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 11 November 2005 02:33.

Yesterday evening I took my daughter to Brighton College to see the inimitable and wholly entertaining Joanna MacGregor in concert. The experience, both visceral and cerebral, left me pondering – and that, in turn, left me searching all today for a quiet moment in which to fix some of those thoughts.

A Joanna MacGregor concert is, within the small, refined world of classical piano performance, an event. She brings to the platform so many conflicting qualities – thorough-going unconventionality, inner simplicity and warmth, a distinct impression of personal frailty, a quite awesome power when called upon, a high cerebral capacity, utterly eclectic tastes – one can only call her, in contemplation of the fusion of these things, an artist. Quite probably, she is a unique artist. Certainly, she is a unique individual.

Life for a soloist on any instrument is one long Grand Tour. Lord Byron did his Tour poetically just the once, in 1809. Concert performers play to an ever-changing global audience until their powers finally wane, which can be well in to their seventh and even eighth decade. Sic transit gloria musicum, I suppose.

In any case, if you begin your career fresh from one of the great conservatoires, say, chasing the big piano prizes, you are already embarked upon a special school of human development. As success finds you, so irresistible formative influences will be brought to bear. The intellectual demands of the music, the discipline of practise, the draining intensity of performance, the constant battle against nerves, the celebrity and the love of the audience … all these things will bend you to the task, like a peach tree braced on the southern face of an old garden wall. You will adapt or one day you will snap. Out of it should emerge a complete and highly individual performer - and not merely a public persona. Classical music performance is too demanding and consumes too many human resources to be the bedfellow of a fake.

On the evidence of my eyes yesterday evening Miss MacGregor is a truly complex but genuine individual. And it is that individualism that I found both attracted me and repelled me. Since I was just a kid I have never been “good” with that part of humanity which, rejecting tiresome commonalities, seizes unto itself the disshevilments of alternativism. I cannot see in what way the flight into weirdness is different or less objectionable than common or garden snobbery. Since the incentive is usually dislike of self at some level, it is probably worse.

But … the dreadlocked, middle-aged wild-child seated at the Grotrian-Steinweg the College had hired for the night deserves better of me than that. The peach tree is not growing naturally, after all. And it has a particular and precious genus - a genius, indeed, which complicates the process no end. What right has some dull mortal to weigh the psyche of one who can produce such sound out of a box of stressed wood and steel? None perhaps, save that individualism is necessarily salient, and salience tempts an inveterate leveller!

I can surely question her on aesthetic grounds, though. Miss MacGregor is a famous advocate of jazz, tango and new music. Of the latter, I will say only that one of the earliest indicators of Western Man’s demise has been his cultural collapse. It manifested itself as early as the 1890’s. These days the movers and shakers of serious music keep pretending that rare and exciting “new talent” is constantly emerging. Perhaps these people are merely in denial or stubborn, or perhaps they just have to maintain their artistic hegemony and the associated income flow somehow. But however rare and exciting, these new talents never emerge far enough to be remembered. How could it be otherwise? We cut the roots of our cultural heritage. The tree is dead – Miss MacGregor please, please note.

Her attachment to jazz is more disconcerting. She has about her the worn air of someone who has been on the road with the loose, hard-loving, hard-drinking characters whose relationship with a sax or horn far outweighs any they ever formed with another human being. In the College Hall she played Professor Longhair and Doctor John with huge drive, powering the sound out of the piano as though she was jumping and sliding a ‘68 Mustang through the streets of San Francisco.

I did not enjoy the ride. Jazz is earth music. It belongs to sexual instinct. It is African. Our classical tradition is the opposite. It is noumenal. It contains ideas, not instincts. One might not agree with all the philosophy contained in it, but the operation of the mind is always a higher precept than the grinding of the hips. I know jazz is undergoing a rebirth these days and is terribly popular with the urban chic. But if you don’t want Africans to live in your house why take their music into your mind?

In the end I look at Joanna and like something about her, a surviving simplicity, something untouched by the waves of applause, the mind-numbing hours in anonymous hotel rooms, the jamming sessions in the French Quarter. I suspect that life, actually, has been extraordinarily tough for her and her own God-given talent extraordinarily demanding. In return, she survives it by being much tougher than she looks. Individualism isn’t at all like the soft, prissy self-authoring myth commended to us by liberal politics.

After the interval we were treated to the Goldberg, for which Joanna has garnered much praise since she approached it, finally and after much self-doubt, a couple of years ago. She spoke first, though, of the two Glen Gould recordings and how the great man preferred not the seminal version he recorded at the age of 22, and which the whole musical world still associates with him, but the one recorded at the end of his life. It was, Joanna said glowingly, rough. Rough! The earthy, vital, individual Joanna MacGregor had spoken. And she played.

There is something precious even about a wrong-headed, infuriatingly modernistic eccentric when she can give us, the audience, a few moments in which to touch the face of J.S.Bach.

Tags: Music

Comments:

Posted by Edgar Mice Burrows on Fri, 11 Nov 2005 03:05 | #

“1. Instead of turning up our noses at jazz, in superior musical virtue and fastidiousness of taste, we ought rather to take the attitude of spurring it on with friendly interest, of setting it the task to progress toward further and higher achievement, and of giving actively sympathetic encouragement to every sincere attempt to develop this peculiarly American product into a fruitful and significant contribution to musical art.”

—point one in the Patchwork Manifesto. See http://patchworkmouse.blogspot.com/

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Fri, 11 Nov 2005 04:38 | #

An enchanting essay!

“the dreadlocked, middle-aged wild-child seated at the Grotrian-Steinweg”

I don’t claim to be an expert, but ... are <u>those</u> dreadlocks? I’d have thought braids.

(She’s a nice-looking woman, by the way.)
______
Moratorium-plus-Repatriation!

Posted by Kubilai on Fri, 11 Nov 2005 06:37 | #

There is something precious even about a wrong-headed, infuriatingly modernistic eccentric when she can give us, the audience, a few moments in which to touch the face of J.S.Bach.

Ever since experiencing, which quickly led to being completely engulfed in classical music, it is extremely difficult to go back to more modern and popular modes. Bach is the most prolific and his genius has few peers, and some argue if any really. While I enjoy the piano, I lean heavily towards the violin followed by the cello. My favourite concertos are by Sibelius and then Tchaikovsky. Brahms and Beethoven are outstanding as well. There are so many names that are amazing really, Mozart, Dvorak, Glazunov, Haydn, and on and on. Dare I say on this blog, even Felix Mendelssohn’s violin concerto is very touching. It goes to show how wonderful, multi-tiered and unbelievably deep this music genre is that it has been able to last for centuries.

I know jazz is undergoing a rebirth these days and is terribly popular with the urban chic. But if you don’t want Africans to live in your house why take their music into your mind?

This is funny because it reminds me of how pubs and dance clubs would counteract an “African” invasion of their places. It is common knowledge in the bar business that once a bar gets pegged as being a black bar, its days are numbered. For one, blacks do not spend money drinking. They may suck on one bottle of beer all night if at all. They are there primarily to prey on white females, obviously as if that needed to be said. Blacks drive away many of the “normal” customers by this disgusting behaviour and their penchant to get into brawls on a regular basis which has the effect of clearing the house out. I’m only reiterating stories told to me by at least a dozen different bar/dance club owners. So what is the trick that these owners use to get rid of their African invasion? They turn the places into country and western bars for several weeks or a few months. They play nothing but C&W music to rid themselves of the menace. It works like clockwork. C&W is kryptonite to Blacks. LOL

Posted by Luke the Drifter on Fri, 11 Nov 2005 07:03 | #

The potential loss of posts like this, and of individuals capable of writing them, is reason enough to be reinvigorated in the fight to preserve the people who gave birth to the West.

Find me a Zimbabwean who could write it-it might be remotely possible, but I won’t hold my breath.

I think that the ability (perhaps a predisposition) to empathize, sympathize, and project one’s own expectations and beliefs onto others, as exhibited here, is simultaneously and contradictatorially one of the most beneficial and one of the most detrimental elements of Western man.

The Little Fugue in G Minor is my favorite piece by Bach. I was transfixed from the first time that I heard it. Perhaps it is somewhat ironic to note that the second-best rendition of it I’ve found, (with my search being limited to the now-essentially-defunct Kazaa), is by a filipino. Yet there’s no filipino equivalent of Bach.

Posted by Martin Hutchinson on Fri, 11 Nov 2005 14:34 | #

Plenty of East Asians who could write it though. One of the fascinating things about classical music is that its universality has spread to East Asia, even as jazz and pop have engulfed the West. The Croatian opera composer Ivan Zajc, for example (pronounced Zy-eech)(1832-1914) is so obscure outside Croatia that there are no recordings of him in the Archivmusik catalogue, yet he is performed regularly in Japanese glee clubs. His greatest work (reputedly—all of his stuff is rare) Nikola Subic Zrinski, 1876, concerns the Croatian hero who was killed in Szigeth, southern Hungary in 1566, fighting off Suleiman the Magnificent’s last attempt to reach Vienna. Its chorus finale is apparently popular in Japan, having been taken there during the Meiji period, presumably by Japnese coming West to pick up modern culture—would give you a link of Japanese glee club singing Croatian, but the bloody website with it on is down.

Classical music was captured by the state-funded bureaucracies about 1900; modern classical appeals only to music teachers, who are paid to like it and inflict it on the young. My 13 year old son gets harassed in school for liking classical; such is the decline of Western civilisation, which has fallen further since my own youth, when it was still quite fashionable among the young. Blame democracy and the proletarianisation of culture.

I wonder whether classical music appeals especially to that new intelligence gene that appeared 8000 years ago? Would explain why East Asians go for it and Africans don’t.

Posted by Martin Hutchinson on Fri, 11 Nov 2005 14:54 | #

Here you are, don’t say I never give you anything—Waseda University Glee Club—press the “U Boj” link that appears when you get the page of Japanese and off you go.

http://www.ne.jp/asahi/wglee-obmem/2002/sound/uboj.html

This is the finale of the opera. It begins when Zrinski, beseiged in Szigeth with the Ottomans advancing on him, learns that his wife Yelena has killed herself.—He reminds himself that she is in heaven, then his henchmen appear, and they together steel thesmelves with enormous enthusiasm for the suicidal assault on the Ottoman horde. The opera ends when the horde appear and all the good guys get slaughtered.

What they don’t know (and is made clear earlier in the opera) is that Suleiman has already died, frustrated by Zrinski’s rersistance, so the final assault is merley Suleiman’s henchmen going through the motions before returning home—thus Zrinski, in resisting to the last, has saved Europe. This is probably unique among grand operas in that ALL the principals get slaughtered by the end, incluidng the baddie.

Posted by Luke the Drifter on Fri, 11 Nov 2005 16:27 | #

Plenty of East Asians who could write it though.

Really? Your examples concern only performance and appreciation. They can clearly do both of the latter, but what about composition specifically?

I’m not familiar with any great Asian composers in the western-classical genre.

Asian compositions are fundamentally different to me. I think that the aesthetic sense might be something that is somewhat influenced by genetics, though I can’t imagine the mechanism.

Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 11 Nov 2005 18:02 | #

Luke: I think that the aesthetic sense might be something that is somewhat influenced by genetics

The sociobiological antecedents of black music are plain as day. IQ must play a role therein. It is perfectly reasonable to surmise that serious composition in the Western tradition is akin to abstract thought, the gateway to which has been assessed at IQ 124. Rather few SSA’s but plenty of Orientals meet that requirement.

However, Orientals are notably conformist. Their own aesthetic traditions are very narrow in range and trammelled by strict rules. I don’t see any reason why that might not be a product of adaptive behaviour - not unconnected to their relative low testosterone output.

In any case, the free expression which underpins Western art is missing from the Oriental tradition. Musically, as one travels west free, individualistic expression begins to enter the equation only in the (performance-based, not compositional) “variation” techniques for the Indian sitar.

It is a fact that the serious music world is extremely “diverse” (though it may not remain so - there are 8 million pianists under instruction in China!). There are Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese, Indians, Turks etc at my daughter’s London conservatoire. But very, very few young English musicians study in Moscow, Kiev etc. It is a form of race replacement, I suppose.

Composition-wise, “our” emerging young “talents” are frequently not English or even European. However, the sociobiological question isn’t unwittingly put to the test by them, since the established tradition of Western music writing is, as I said in the post, perfectly dead, and whatever they are writing it isn’t anything connected to that.

Posted by Martin Hutchinson on Fri, 11 Nov 2005 20:38 | #

Luke, Orientals aren’t writing good classical music currently, but nor are Westerners, as GW said—they are however capable of aesthetic appreciation, which is what I was referring to from your original post.

Orientals aren’t all strong conformists, they vary—Koreans are much less conformist than Japanese, for example. Also none of Bach, Handel or Haydn, for example, were raging icoloclast radicals. Classical music requires a patron group who are leisured, rich enough to commission it and cultured enough to enjoy it, and opportunities for composers better there than they can get from the state bureaucracy.

The money probably needs to be old; even the US robber barons, amply rich enough, commissioned the New World symphony but not much else (and that was commissioned by the millionaire’s wife, not the man himself.) It would be nice to think that the zillions made over the last 20 years would produce some good new classical music, but I doubt it.

If classical music is ever revived, I would expect Japan and East Asia to play a major role—maybe more major than the US/UK< as they have been less corrupted by the rubbish. I don’t think their low testosterone should prove a barrier—only Bach of the major names was spectacular in that direction.

Posted by Luke the Drifter on Fri, 11 Nov 2005 22:45 | #

Classical music requires a patron group who are leisured, rich enough to commission it and cultured enough to enjoy it, and opportunities for composers better there than they can get from the state bureaucracy.

More importantly, it requires individuals (or, in your view, potential sponsees) capable of writing it. While the preconditions you list can and have arisen in Asia, I don’t believe that we’ll see a flowering of classical composition there.

I think that classical music often has a deep and ineffable spiritual component. I also think that spiritual expression, like aesthetics, is a trait that is genetically influenced. Different peoples have differing affinities for differing spiritual and aesthetic expressions.

There’s been a number of recent articles regarding, for example, a genetic predisposition for religious belief, and the inheritability of political perspectives. It makes sense to me that the expression of these tendencies would vary from population to population, and that they would influence the innate, aggregate spiritual and political compost from which cultures arise.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Sat, 12 Nov 2005 01:32 | #

“There’s been a number of recent articles regarding, for example, a genetic predisposition for religious belief, and the inheritability of political perspectives. It makes sense to me that the expression of these tendencies would vary from population to population, and that they would influence the innate, aggregate spiritual and political compost from which cultures arise.” (—Luke the Drifter)

Excellent point, and anyone with his head screwed on frontwards and two functioning eyes in it can see that this is exactly what goes on. This and other things of this nature are exactly what give national personalities to members of the various human races in their aggregates and part of what makes each race and nation create its own distinctive cultural expressions and give its own special tinge to any adopted foreign culture it embraces. The Japanese don’t play baseball the way white Americans do and never will until the end of time as long as the two races remain intact. It’s the same for everything else the two races do. Anyone who can’t see that needs an eye-and-brain transplant.
______
Moratorium-plus-Repatriation!

Posted by Luke the Drifter on Sat, 12 Nov 2005 03:49 | #

Fred: This and other things of this nature are exactly what give national personalities to members of the various human races in their aggregates and part of what makes each race and nation create its own distinctive cultural expressions and give its own special tinge to any adopted foreign culture it embraces.

I’d guess that it’s something akin to this that prevents GW from identifying himself as a WN. A WN, almost by definition, doesn’t primarily seek the perpetuation of any particular W group. Yet each such group is undeniably unique, if only subtly so, and the loss of any one of them is tragic. That’s part of the reason I’m opposed to the EU: it hastens the loss of distinctiveness.

But when faced with a far-worse alternative, as we are in America, (and in Europe as well, with its increasing proportion of immigrants), I won’t strenuously resist sacrificing the pursuit of a too-specific (and probably unattainable) objective in service of a more realistic and more generalized goal.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Sat, 12 Nov 2005 03:58 | #

“Yet each such group is undeniably unique, if only subtly so, and the loss of any one of them is tragic. [...T]he EU [...] hastens the loss of distinctiveness.” (—Luke the Drifter)

Simplest truth perfectly stated. Could not have been better put. Thanks to Luke the Drifter!
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Moratorium-plus-Repatriation!

Posted by Andrew on Sat, 12 Nov 2005 09:24 | #

My 9 year old daughter is learning to play the piano, well let’s say tinkling the Ivory, but a lot of room for improvement. I have a profound respect for a musician who have mastered the art of piano playing, it is indeed hard and requires the most outstanding form of discipline, need I say in a modest way my daughter is not quite there yet. OK no where near it.Working on that.

Posted by Svigor on Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:41 | #

It would be nice to think that the zillions made over the last 20 years would produce some good new classical music, but I doubt it.

I’d settle for the zillions providing the world with all of it (classical) royalty-free over the Internet, right down to the obscure Croation stuff you mention.

Fat chance of that; today’s patronage-largesse consists of competitive altruism via wealth transfer to Africans.

Posted by Svigor on Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:45 | #

Luke, I’m a WN and I’m very much in favor of micro-level European particularisms. I see the two (macro and micro) as harmonious. This has been blogged about here more than once and I’m certainly not alone in my sentiments.