The complete idiot's guide to classical music (48 page)

Born in 1937, his father serviced radios and sold records. When a disc was a poor seller, he’d take it home, play it for his three kids, and the gang would ponder the reasons why it didn’t go. Since the things that didn’t go included Schubert Sonatas and Beethoven Quartets, young Philip decided early on that he had better explore other paths. Like Steve Reich, Glass majored in philosophy (at the University of Chicago), then studied music with Persichetti and Bergsma at the Juilliard School, and Darius Milhaud.

The young composer seemed well on his way, with some two dozen pieces published and many more performed, when he began rethinking his outlook. “I had reached a kind of dead end,” he said. “I just didn’t believe in my music anymore.” He applied for, and was awarded, a Fulbright Fellowship to study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, and then in 1965, found the breakthrough he had been looking for in Ravi Shankar. The world-renowned Indian sitar virtuoso, in France to score a film, hired Glass to notate his improvised music so that the western-trained musicians could play it.

The experience galvanized the young American as nothing had before. Discovering a completely different tradition of music-making, Glass abandoned his earlier concepts of composition. He researched music in North Africa, India, and the Himalayas, then used some of those Eastern techniques to evolve a new system based on short rhythmic phrases and static harmonies. He also put together a seven-player ensemble, the Philip Glass Ensemble, specifically to develop and perform his new works.

Audience response was mixed, even when the tickets were free, as they often were. Some listeners were mesmerized by the repetitive patterns; others just found them boring. But Glass was gradually developing a cult following. Virgin Records, a company specializing in rock, issued excerpts from his “Music in 12 Parts” in 1974, and two years later, “Einstein on the Beach” solidified Glass’ international reputation. A sensation at its premiere in France, this over four hour, multimedia opera, created with the architect, painter, and theatrical avant-gardist Robert Wilson, went on to major exposure in Austria, France, Germany, and Holland, before exploding onto the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House for two completely sold-out performances.

Glass has continued to produce works of great theatrical effect, among them three other expansive operas,
Akhnaten, Satyagraha,
and
The Voyage
(which had its world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in 1992), several film scores, danceworks, and a striking “collaboration” with the late director Jean Cocteau, whereby new music and stage action are presented against a screening of Cocteau’s classic film
Les Enfants Terribles.

We’ve just mentioned the operas (there’s also another, called
The Photographer
). Add the scores for the films
The Thin Blue Line
” and
Koyaanisquatsi,
the
Low
Symphony, based on the pop hit by Brian Eno and David Bowie, “Dance Pieces” for voices and instruments, and
Hydrogen Jukebox
, a theatre piece derived from poems of Allen Ginsberg, and you’ll have a fair notion of Glass’ far-ranging interests and explorations.

John Adams (1947–) has been called the modernist among the minimalists, because in addition to trying to slow down the passage of time with repetitive phrases and rhythms, Adams incorporates shifting tempos, colors, textures and dynamics. A New Englander by birth (Massachusetts), upbringing (Vermont and New Hampshire), and training (Harvard), Adams went west in 1971. He headed up the composition department at the San Francisco Conservatory for more than ten years and served (for most of that time) as advisor to, and later composer in residence for, the San Francisco Symphony. Recently, he has added an active conducting career to his busy schedule, leading his own music and that of other 20th century composers with the Los Angeles, Cleveland, and other major orchestras.

Adams’
Harmonielehre
won both
Time
magazine’s and
USA Today
’s nod for “Best Classical Album” in 1985, and two shorter works, “Shaker Loops” and “The Chairman Dances” pop up fairly often on orchestral programs, as does a dazzling little curtain-raiser intriguingly titled “Short Ride on a Fast Machine.” His two operas,
Nixon in China
(1987) and
The Death of Klinghoffer
(1991) both deal with headline stories within recent memory, and as such have been amongst the most controversial and widely seen stageworks of our day.

Electronic keyboards are so much a part of modern culture that we tend to forget that guitars weren’t always plugged in, and that the organ used to have air pumped through its pipes by manual labor. The advent of sound recordings put electricity to useful cultural service and radio made music accessible to people everywhere. The first electronic instrument dates from as recently as 1920—when a Russian scientist named Leon Theremin demonstrated what he then called an Aetherphone. He produced sounds by moving his hands in the air (breaking an electromagnetic field, the way opening a car door can set off a car alarm). Later renamed “theremin-vox” for the inventor and subsequently shortened simply to theremin, it was vogue in the 1920s and ’30s. This lead to semi-mass production of the instruments by RCA, concerts by theremin ensembles, and creation of such important works as Anis Fuliehan’s Concerto for Theremin, which was premiered in 1945 by Clara Rockmore, with Leopold Stokowski conducting.

The synthesizer is a contraption capable of generating and processing a vast array of sounds. There are many models, differing in capabilities, manner of operation, size, and appearance, but once the operator has input the necessary musical information, it must pass through an external amplifier and loudspeakers to be heard as sound. Synthesizers, like other forms of electronics, are customarily divided into analog and digital types. In principle, an analog synthesizer uses continuously varying voltages to fashion its sound waves, whereas a digital synthesizer uses discrete units of information.

The first synthesizers appeared in the late 1950s. They were programmable composition machines which, like their office computer counterparts, took up an awful lot of space and had a limited range of capabilities. Before this, virtually all electronic music had to be created by laying down tracks, one at a time, on magnetic tape, and then playing the completed product. The synthesizer greatly simplified some of these procedures, and made others unnecessary. Its use of voltage control, for instance, made it possible to create an infinite variety of pitches, amplitudes, timbres, and reverberations; in short, machines could duplicate most of the components of what we call music.

The early synthesizers, such as those developed by the pioneering American engineer Robert Moog (that’s pronounced Mow-g), were controlled manually; later models added all sorts of devices to produce predetermined sounds or rhythms on demand. The Moog was the instrument of choice for “Switched-on Bach” and other electrified versions of revered classics. Some music lovers were horrified at the onslaught, but unquestionably the new electronics switched a lot of young listeners on to the ineffable joys of Father Bach and his classical descendants.

The next step was taking synthesizers out of the studio and onto the stage as actual performance instruments. They were smaller now, had fewer component parts, and as a result were a lot easier to set up and operate. Composers of note began using synthesizers alongside standard instruments, until at last electronic music had come full circle: Like the theremin, which its inventor showed off to Lenin way back in 1920, the synthesizer was being used to create and supplement other sounds of beauty, not just to produce startling effects or imitate other instruments.

Theoretically, a synthesizer that can reproduce any sound would make musicians obsolete, let alone the baton-waver up on the podium. Ironically, one of the earliest explorations of this formidable possibility came from Pierre Boulez, who for half-a-dozen years was the chief conductor at the New York Philharmonic. In his “Repons,” Boulez used computers to analyze, synthesize, and replace symphonic sounds. Producers of Broadway shows have more than once threatened to use synthesizers in place of recalcitrant or striking musicians, and who knows what further manipulations await when opera companies hook up to the Internet. One hopes, of course, that wise heads will prevail, and that electronics will expand the scope of our musical horizons, not foist upon us imitations of the real thing.

 

• Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Khatchaturian are Russia’s top composers because their music is so compelling.
  
 

• Gershwin is an American icon because he became a household word loved by everyone.
  
 

• Copland and Bernstein are among America’s top composers creating captivating music.
  
 

• New technologies include synthesizers and electronic orchestras that can produce whizbang music.
  

When listening to opera, it is sometimes difficult to believe that those marvelous sounds come out of a human throat. It is also difficult to imagine that someone actually composed that series of notes for a singer instead of an instrument. Many of today’s opera stars spend at least as much time on the concert and recital stage as they do in their operatic roles. In their repertoire they have arias, lieder, and art songs, as well as a growing number of popular songs. The lines are not as sharply drawn between opera and musical theater (think of
West Side Story
and
Porgy and Bess
), classical, jazz, and pop. Opera evolved from its 16th century roots as an art form, and contemporary singers are expanding the range and scope of the vocal chord.

Chapter 19
 
Singing in the (Vocal) Reign

 

• Singers of a century ago
  
 

• Marian Anderson and Maria Callas
  
 

• Life after opera
  
 

• Living legends
  

What is more important in vocal music, the words or the music? The question has fomented centuries of controversy and sparked a famous aria by Richard Strauss, but the answer is clear: Neither! The singers are the true stars, the real audience draws, the actual makers of headlines. Sure
Carmen
has some good tunes, and
Tristan
some great half-hours, but it’s the diva (or divo in the case of a man) who is the box-office magnet. Way back in 1757, Parisians flipped over a young soprano named Sophie Arnould, literally fighting with each other to get tickets to her performances. As one French observer put it, “I doubt they would take such pains to get into paradise.”

Let’s stroll down the lanes of vocal history over the last 100 years or so, stopping to consider some of the first ladies of operatic song, and a few of the first gentlemen into the bargain. Most of them lived into the early years of sound recordings, so we can still partake of their artistry on CD reissues. Many reached their heights of vocal glory within the happy memory of us over-40 types; and before our chapter is through, we’ll also have touched upon a few of the legendary personalities whose gifts of song and aria continue to enrich our lives and broaden our musical horizons. We begin, though, with a couple of the prima donnas (literally, first ladies) who brightened the operatic scene a century ago.

They called her the “Swedish Nightingale,” and indeed Johanna Maria Lind was born in Stockholm (1820–1887). Though she studied in Paris, she became America’s favorite singer, and lived the last 30 years of her life in London. Among her many admirers were the composers Giacomo Meyerbeer, who jump-started her career by getting her the starring role in a Berlin production of
Norma
, and Giuseppe Verdi, who wrote the role of Amalia in
I Masnadieri
expressly for Lind.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
Meyerbeer got Lind an audition at the Paris Opera, but she was turned down. The soprano never forgot the insult, and when she became the most popular singer in the world, she took especial delight in refusing every offer to perform in Paris.

Unlike many other singing stars, Jenny Lind was modest in her personal life and unflashy in her professional dealings. In 1849, deciding that too many opera plots were immoral, she stepped down from the operatic stage, only to agree to an American concert tour organized by that noted arbiter of morality and taste, P. T. Barnum. She made her New York debut the following year, adding another 92 recitals (and marrying her accompanist) before returning to Europe. There she restricted her singing to oratorios and concerts, and later became a professor at London’s Royal College of Music.

Adelina (actually Adele Juana Maria) Patti (1843–1919) seems to have been born to the operatic life. Her father was an impresario, her mother a noted soprano (Caterina Barilli), an iron-willed lady who continued performing strenuous roles throughout her pregnancy. According to one legend, Adelina made her entrance into the world while her mother was singing
Norma
. That would have been an even greater story had it been true.

In any case, Adelina showed exceptional talent at an early age (her mother claimed that Adelina’s first cry was a perfectly pitched F-sharp). At the age of four, she could sing popular ballads and even a few arias. When Barilli signed on to do another
Norma
, her daughter was given a role as one of the priestess’ children. They say she unnerved the cast at rehearsals by joining in the duet “Miro, O Norma.” Adelina gave her first recital at the age of eight, went on her first tour a year later, then made her operatic debut at sweet 16 in the title role of Donizetti’s
Lucia di Lammermoor
. This was all in America, by the way, the family having moved from Madrid to New York when Papa Patti became manager of the Astor Place Opera House.

Thereafter, the world was Patti’s musical oyster. She sang for 25 seasons at Covent Garden, made wildly successful tours of Europe and the U.S., and continued to give farewell concerts for many years after her official operatic retirement. Her final performance, at a charity gala for the Red Cross, was in 1914: she was over 70, in the twilight of a magical career that had lasted for 63 years.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
When Adelina Patti came to San Francisco in 1884, she literally caused riots, with tickets scalped at wildly excessive prices and places in line at the opera house bought and sold like blue-chip stocks. The impresario, Colonel Mapleson, was arrested for overcrowding the theater (the judge dismissed the charge in exchange for a pair of Mapleson’s own house seats). The local newspaper reported, “It seemed that a large number of people had run completely mad over the desire to hear Patti sing. After the throng had melted away, the approaches to the box-office looked as if they had been visited by a first-class Kansas cyclone in one of its worst moods.”

Patti was far more the stereotypical prima donna than Jenny Lind. She managed to squeeze three husbands and quite a few high profile lovers into her schedule. In addition, she rarely showed up on time for rehearsals (in fact, her right to skip them was put into her contracts), and she sometimes didn’t even bother to meet her fellow artists before going out to sing with them on stage. Long before Lorelei Lee figured out that diamonds are a girl’s best friend, Adelina Patti never lost an opportunity to flaunt her fabulous jewelry, much of it gifts from royalty. At her last
Traviata
season, the London press estimated that she went on stage wearing nearly a half-million dollars worth of diamonds.

By the age of the gramophone, Patti’s voice had lost much of its sheen, but even those primitive early recordings reveal the subtle beauty, rhythmic sensitivity, and expressive power of her singing. According to another story, the great diva was very impressed when she heard her own voice on records, finally understanding why everyone adored her so. Now there’s a great story that might just be true.

He was short and plumpish and hardly the glamorous figure that Mario Lanza portrayed in the movie,
The Great Caruso,
but Enrico Caruso was not only the most popular singer of his day, but probably the most famous singer in the history of opera. The eighteenth of 20 children in Naples, Italy, he had to help support his family by working in a machine shop, but his goal of becoming a singer never wavered. He joined his church choir and sang on street corners to earn money for lessons. Drafted into military service, he was a hopeless misfit, but he so impressed a high-ranking officer with his powerful voice that he was actually released to purse his musical studies, his older brother Giuseppe reluctantly replacing him in the unit.

Unlike anything you may have gathered from the film, Caruso’s career actually got off to a fairly bumpy start. As a young man, he sang by ear well enough to land a part in
Mignon
, but when he couldn’t follow the orchestra at the first rehearsal, he was unceremoniously dumped from the cast. His first stage appearance in 1894 wasn’t much better, because Caruso was stuck in a bomb called
L’amico Francesco
by an amateur composer, Mario Morelli.

Four years later, though, he had increased his reputation to the point where he was chosen to create the role of Loris in Giordano’s
Fedora
, and after the national acclaim for those performances, there was no looking back. The story goes that the 24-year-old Caruso turned up unannounced at Puccini’s house, asking for an audition. The composer reluctantly allowed him in and asked him to sing “Che gelida manina.” Caruso did so, ending his impromptu performance with a spectacular high C. In amazement, Puccini asked “Who has sent you to me? God?” (Another version of that tale has it that Puccini asked Caruso “Who are you?” and Caruso fell right into character, picking up the operatic text at that point “I am a poet . . .”) Either way, Puccini soon convinced the powers that be at La Scala that Caruso should sing
La Boheme
, and later the tenor gave stellar performances of Puccini’s
Tosca
,
Madame Butterfly
, and
Girl of the Golden West.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
It was during
Boheme
performance that Caruso saved the show when Andres de Segurola became too ill to get through the famous “Coat Aria” in the last act. Years before Milli Vanilli came up with the idea, Caruso told the basso to mouth the words while the tenor turned his back to the audience and sang the whole aria for him.

In later years, Puccini became jealous of Caruso’s fame and fortune (especially fortune), when the tenor amassed what was then a king’s ransom for recording his arias. (Composers didn’t get royalties in those days.) Even at his most upset, however, Puccini always gave Caruso his vocal due, once ending a letter with the phrase “I salute you, O singer of many notes,” and admitting to anyone who asked that “his voice is magnificent.”

Few people would disagree with that assessment. Caruso sang with Nellie Melba at Monte Carlo, swept through Europe and South America to universal acclaim, and in 1903 made his debut at the Metropolitan as the Duke of Mantua in
Rigoletto
. He sang in the first radio broadcast from the Met in 1910, continued to make dozens of recordings, and was still in his vocal prime at the time of his tragically early death (from pleurisy) at the age of 48.