What (if anything) Ails Classical Music? A Neurologic Diagnosis

by Carl Ellenberger, MD

I went to a concert by the Gryphon Trio at "International Classical Concerts of the Desert." They played three chestnuts beautifully--Haydn, Dvorak, Beethoven--no doubt for the umpteenth time, on a raised platform in a ballroom attached to the Rancho Mirage Public Library slightly smaller than a basketball court. It was a 'classical' classical concert: two classical works -- intermission -- final classical work, lacking only the contemporary piece often sandwiched between the chestnuts. 

An attentive and enthusiastic audience filled all 300 chairs. At intermission I strolled around and identified only five people who appeared younger than age 60. Three may have been shepherded by a grandparent. Men wore coats and ties; women evening dresses, at 4 PM, here in a mecca for well-to-do retirees and golfing winter vacationers. 

Looking over grey heads in audiences, anxious observers for centuries have predicted the demise of classical music along with its listeners. Data from the NEA confirms that the classical music audience is indeed older and has been diminishing in size over the past few decades. Although death hasn't occurred, such predictions have intensified along with speculations about the pathogenesis of the terminal illness which may never have seemed more likely than it does now. Orchestras, dance, and opera companies have gone bankrupt; corporate, foundation, governmental, and individual patronage and concert attendance has plummeted; classical radio has almost disappeared (hooray for KUSC!); large record companies have turned to other music as the lifespan of the CD nears its end; schools have dropped music education; and so on. It was frightening to hear someone say the other day: "We don't know whether anyone will be listening to Beethoven 50 years from now." (For the record, I think it's more likely humanity will destroy itself first.)

Adam Gopnik wrote about music and his kids (Music To Your Ears, New Yorker, Jan 28): 

"It isn't a question of classical tastes against pop; it's a question of small forms heard in motion against large forms heard with solemn intent.... They snatch at music as we snatched at movies, filling our heads with plural images." 

Young generations rarely hear music sitting down and they rarely, as Linus in Peanuts confided decades ago to an incredulous Lucy, "just listen to it" (Brahms). They dance to it, sing to it, drive to it, jog to it. Sitting quietly for hours looking at 70 musicians bowing, blowing, plucking and pounding just isn't a pleasure they seek, especially those with little listening experience and attention spans shortened by TV and digital devices. A classical concert may be like incuriously staring for hours at a Cezanne canvas in a museum knowing little about art, history, or impressionism. (Gustavo Dudamel said last Friday that's how Monet showed him how to conduct Debussy's La Mer.)

Classical music, of course, is available in amazing abundance in the 'cloud.' You can mix movements of symphonies and sonatas with Sugababes and Boyzone into a random shuffle on your iPod for playing on your commute, your morning run, or in your bathroom, providing wall-to-wall 24/7 background on which to play out daily life. No solemn intent involved. An anonymous violinist can serve an identical Chaconne to millions of casual listeners, cost-effective and free while they rack up miles on a treadmill.

Speculation abounds as to the reason(s) for this change: the fast pace of modern life, the growth and evolution of alternative electronic entertainment, expensive tickets; inconvenience of traveling to concerts; an idea that classical music requires education and refined taste that, like for fine food and wine, requires years of experience; or that classical concerts intimidate the uninitiated, keeping them from concerts because they don't know the rules and regulations. We are accused of snobbery, of believing that only classical music is real music,  that we worship the "permanent collection," and ignore music of the present. We hear that younger generations reject the snooty formal affairs with old arrogant musicians in full evening dress.  

Undoubtedly, there is some truth and validity to all of the above, in varying proportions depending where, geographically and demographically you are talking about. People on the West Coast, for example, may be puzzled by all the fuss. Just try to get a ticket to hear the LA Phil in Walt Disney Hall! Meanwhile the Minnesota Orchestra is on the verge of collapse, other orchestras no longer exist. Emanuel Ax (Gretna Music, March 19) will play to about 400 people in Elizabethtown PA just weeks after playing to thousands in Berlin. Cultural life in the US may be condensing around islands of vibrancy separated by a vast wasteland inhabited mostly by the '99 percent' where all the 'fine arts' are low in priority and struggle to survive. The NEA data shows relatively small average declines but in many places the declines have reached extreme levels. 

Most of these thoughts are packaged into the word "classical" so we try to minimize its use. Most are in the minds of those who do attend classical music concerts; others probably don't have them. "Classical," of course, also connotes a sense of history, another concept often lost in the surge of 'progress' or daily scramble to pay the mortgage. 

Reassurance (speculative as is some of the above) came from the late pianist and scholar Charles Rosen. He felt that the future of classical music is assured so long as enough young musicians want to play it. Judging by the amazing rise in the level of performance over the years since my education, increasing competition among students for positions at conservatories, not just in the US but in Asia, South America, Europe, and even the Middle East, indicates to me that there is no shortage of young players entering the pipeline leading to artistry. Probably more good pianists play today than played throughout allof history.

The problems lie in the declining interest in (or in biz-speak, "market demand" for) the work of classical performing artists.

Nevertheless, we may be making a mistake to view this simply as a marketing challenge. Instead it may be a cultural change driven by multiple determinants. President Obama's State of the Union speech hinted at one. Based on accumulating evidence he drew a clear connection between what children do in their first decade of life--the earlier, the better--and what they can do and who they are as adults. Inherent in this connection is the concept of brain "plasticity" and "critical" and "sensitive" periods in child development.

Brain plasticity refers to gain and loss of brain abilities. Practice that improves performance on a musical instrument is a perfect illustration of plasticity, as is any kind of learning. Recently we have learned that acquisition of brain abilities is accompanied by actual anatomic, physiologic, and chemical changes that we can observe and measure in several ways, microscopic and macroscopic. Of course abilities must be maintained by regular use; otherwise they may be lost; plasticity in that opposite (losing abilities) direction is generally called "atrophy." 

A good example of detectable changes in the brain is the growth in size of the corpus callosum--the large cable connecting (see it crossing in the right image) the right and left hemispheres--in pianists who practice. If they start practicing before the age of 7 years, their corpus callosums become larger. "Bulking up" the corpus callosum by using it for the enormous degree of coordination -- "sensorimotor synchronization" --  between the two brain hemispheres required to play a Schubert Sonata, causes it to enlarge like muscles of a weight lifter; the enlargement is greatest if the practice starts before the age of seven years.

sliced front to back                    sliced side to side

That plasticity varies during the course of every individual's lifetime has been known for some time. In general it is greater when we are younger and declines with aging. But during our first decades of life we pass through critical and sensitive periods of plasticity for the acquisition of various abilities. For example, if a child does not use both eyes together because she was born with strabismus ('crossed' eyes) that are not straightened by about the age of 6, then she can never develop brain capacity for binocular stereoscopic (3D) vision, the most acute kind of depth perception. The critical period for acquiring that ability begins at birth and ends completely in the middle of the first decade of life. 

For acquisition of other abilities the first decade also has sensitive periods, as illustrated by the corpus callosum observation. These abilities, like language, can be gained to some degree at any age, but are more readily developed if they are acquired during the sensitive period. That reality has always been obvious to musicians, educators and scientists. You can't hope to become a concert pianist or olympic tennis star if you first sit down at the keyboard or walk onto a court at the age of 12, for example. That is too late. Now there is evidence (so far only in mice) that a switch gradually suppresses plasticity after adolescence, a protein called the "NoGo Receptor," (NgR1) in order to stabilize or "hardwire" the brain for life.

After the sensitive period ends you can certainly learn to play the piano or to play tennis, but you cannot become a pro. Language has a sensitive period that begins at birth, or very shortly after, and lasts for years, indefinitely tapering off in the second or third decade; some believe that humans take longer to fully develop (take longer to reach adulthood) than other species because of that long sensitive period for language. I would argue that that the same applies to music. Language and music are two abilities unique to the human species. Educators say "read to your kids." Perhaps they should say, "Read to and sing with your kids."

To a degree that remains to be clarified plasticity may be transferrable from one skill to another. For example, disciplined and guided practice on the piano may improve ability to acquire other skills, say ability in mathematics or language, or just improve general intelligence. (See "Learning Music Makes Kids Smarter" Oct 11, 2012, and this) Not all players in the student orchestras of Venezuela's El Sistema become musicians, but they are more likely to succeed in other fields than their non-musical peers. 

Both music and language education can start early, say at age 2-3 (compare that with education in philosophy or statistics that can't). Language is learned through conversations and reading with parents. Similarly musical training can begin with rhythm and simple songs and dances. There are few better illustrations of success-rewarding-effort than practicing a musical instrument. Think of a Suzuki class. An added benefit is that musical training can put very young children into cooperative and productive social contact. (We can suspect that most members of the current House of Representatives never played in the school band.)

Another advantage of very early education is suggested by other recent observations: the earlier and higher the quality of that early education, the longer the individual is likely to continue education--through college or graduate and professional schools and beyond. That observation may explain data from the NEA: the chance of an adult being in an audience for a classical music concert increases with the duration of that person's education. With a graduate-school education you are nine times more likely to be found at a concert (or in a museum) than with only a high school diploma. The naive explanation for that observation, that you must be highly educated to appreciate classical music, has little support. But another explanation may apply: if you associate with educated peers, they are more likely to go to, or take you to, a classical music concert than to a Justin Bieber Tour.

Knowing the brain's development schedule can help a student plan his life. If you start on the piano or tennis court when you are 6 years old, you might--if you have all the other requisite abilities, and sacrifice your teenage years to as many as 10,000 hours of guided practice--become a pro by the age of 20. That leaves the rest of your life for study of other things, to become a scientist, doctor, teacher, or judge, an Albert Schweitzer, for example. Learning to master the clarinet can equip you later to more easily acquire other knowledge and skills. 

You can't follow that schedule in reverse. Late-starting tennis players and pianists are forever amateurs, playing for their own enjoyment, rarely for ticket buyers. There is a difference between one child who starts to play the piano at age 5-6 and practices, and another who decides to imitate what s/he hears on an iPod at age 13.

Musical ability on one hand and understanding and appreciating complex music on the other, two closely-related brain abilities, are learned, and best learned when you are very young and your brain is most "sensitive" to that task. I am never surprised to learn from a member of our audience that s/he played in the school band or sang in a choir.

The reality that music education has been jettisoned by uninformed and cash-poor school boards gives me little hope that current and future generations will acquire what is necessary to understand classical music written in any era, including yesterday. If children continue to be denied opportunities during critical and sensitive periods of their lives to learn basic musical skills, gaining a life-long love of music will be increasingly unlikely as they get older. Indeed, learning anything might be more difficult.

Nevertheless, an amazing number of the very young somehow seem to discover a passion for music in time. Perhaps that number will even increase in the YouTube era as chance discoveries by web-surfing three-year-olds lead to, "Mommy I want a violin!" But considering the trends in our culture, they may have to play for each other when they become adults.

Addendum: David Hahn, songwriter and former Broadway conductor looks  at one part of the elephant: The 4,000 musicians in 51 major orchestras, 2% of all musicians in the US, are paid far too much for what the market will bear, largely because of the efforts of their union, the American Federation of Musicians. See Solving the Symphony Crisis for his suggested solutions.

Addendum 2: Listen to the brilliant and eloquent commencement address by flutist Claire Chase. Is this a map to the future?

Monsters of the Steinway, Pt 2: Joel Fan

by Carl Ellenberger, MD

Don't miss our next performance on the "Monsters" series by Joel Fan, pianist, on Saturday, February 23, 2013, 7:30 PM at Leffler Performance Center at Elizabethtown College. The final performance for this season by Emanuel Ax will be on Tuesday, March 19 at 8:00 PM. Go here for tickets or call: 717-361-1508. Follow links below to hear pre-concert performances of the program and to learn more about the Hammerklavier Sonata than you have ever known.

Alexander Scriabin, Sonata No. 5, Op. 53 in F Sharp Major

Born in Russia in 1872 Alexander Scriabin started out as a prodigy pianist, studying as a boy with the renowned Moscow pedagogue Nikolai Zverev, a despotic force in the Russian piano world whose other star pupil was Sergei Rachmaninov, Scriabin’s distant cousin. At one point they both lived in Zverev’s home with some other piano students. Scriabin and Rachmaninov were in classes together at the Moscow Conservatory and competed for the large piano prizes upon graduation. A hand “injury” (possibly “musicians’ dystonia”) supposedly while over-practicing the Don Juan Fantasie of Liszt, may have helped turn Scriabin toward composition.

He began composing "...very much in the style of Chopin, and ended it on the brink of madness, composing wild music of the future." --Ruth Laredo.  Scriabin considered himself to be a messianic figure. Near the end of his life (in 1915) he planned a mammoth work, the Mysterium, to commemorate the conflagration that was gripping all of Europe at the time, the “Great” War (WW I), which he thought would purge mankind and usher in a glorious new era of mystical wonder. The performance was to take place in a half-temple to be built in India. Bells suspended from clouds would summon the spectators from all over the world. A reflecting pool of water would complete the divinity of the half-circle stage. Spectators would sit in tiers across the water. Scriabin would be seated at the piano, surrounded by hosts of instrumentalists, singers, and dancers. Costumed speakers reciting text in processions and parades would form part of the action along with the dancers, whose choreography would include eye motions and touches of the hands in conjunction with odors of both pleasant perfume and acrid smoke. Pillars of incense would form part of the scenery. A light show, bathing the cast and audience in changing effects. It’s amazing how accurately he anticipated halftime at the Superbowl! (most of this paragraph came from pianosociety.com)

Scriabin was said to have "visions." ("No one knows whether Scriabin's music would have been the same had he not been possessed by his visions." --Vladimir Askenazy) Indications are that these included “synesthesia,” a rare tendency to conflate sensory stimuli, as described by the contemporary pianist, Hélène Grimaud: especially in concert, "colors can come unbidden, each connected to a particular key. C minor is black. D minor is blue. E-flat major is 'very bright—something similar to sunlight . . . and sometimes switching to green.'” (See Seeing Voices, by Oliver Sacks.) 

But Scriabin himself reported an even stronger stimulus:  ". . . the creative act is inextricably linked to the sexual act.  I definitely know that the creative urge in myself has all the signs of a a sexual stimulation with me . . . And note, please, that the creative artist is square in the middle of this -- the weaker he is in the sexual area, the weaker is his art."

Scriabin composed the 5th Sonata in a feverish burst of creative activity immediately after the completion of his popular orchestral work, Symphonic Poem of Ecstasy. The Sonata echoes the orgiastic, prismatic, and highly perfumed sound-world Scriabin evoked in the Poem, and in fact, as an introduction to this sonata, Scriabin attached a portion from the text of the Poem of Ecstasy: 

"I summon you to life, secret yearnings!
You who have been drowned in the dark depths
Of the creative spirit, you timorous 

Embryos of life, it is to you that I bring daring"


There are a million ways to play this very difficult sonata and almost as many recorded versions. Pianists argue over which performer dropped the most notes as well as how freely to play the printed score. One devotee of Scriabin's music, the pianist and conductor Vladimir Askenazy said: "Although one cannot say that without understanding his philosophy one cannot understand his music, one penetrates deeper into his music, if one studies what compelled Scriabin.  One cannot separate the man-as-philosopher from the composer of such beautiful music.  His music has a unique idealism.  It has its own laws and its own meaning.  His workmanship was nearly always impeccable.  He continues to be a fascinating and controversial figure in musical history, and a man about whom opinions will always differ."

You might start to listen with an early recording (1960?) by Vladimir Sofroniski who married one of Scriabin's daughters and concertized in Russia (where he lived and taught) and Europe on Scriabin's Becker piano. Alexander Scriabin plays (in 1910) his own Etude Op.8 No.12 here. He died before completing the Mysterium, at age 43 of septicemia extending from a sore on his lip.  

Sergei Rachmaninov, Sonata No. 2, Op. 32 in B-Flat minor

Unlike his Russian contemporaries, Scriabin, Stravinsky (b. 1882), and later Shostakovich (b. 1908), Serge Rachmaninov (1873 -- 1943) felt that he could not lift his works out of the 19th Century: “I feel like a ghost wandering in the world grown alien. I cannot cast out the old way of writing, and I cannot acquire the new. I have made an intense effort to feel the musical manner of today (1939), but it will not come to me.” He might have agreed with Sibelius: “Not everyone can be an innovating genius." As did other leading composers of the early twentieth century--Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Weill, Milhaud, Hindemith, Krenek, among others--he eventually settled in the United States (mostly in California). Rachmaninov’s new home was on North Elm Drive, in the center of the Los Angeles movie colony.

Despite being stuck in the previous century Rachmaninov’s works, most highly Romantic, still speak to 20th century listeners and beyond, partly because Rachmaninov had his own distinctive voice--you can recognize it immediately when you turn on your car radio--and also because his works thrive when the performer overcomes the astounding technical challenges to allow the themes to fully blossom. As increasingly facile pianists emerge from our current highly competitive conservatory environment, they look to such technical challenges (like “Rach 3” the concerto) to display the talents achieved by a lifetime (so far, short) of practice.

Rachmaninov’s 'full industrial strength' piano concerti are beloved by millions, and performed and recorded often by leading pianists including Horowitz, Earl Wild, Marc-André Hamlin, and many others, and many of their themes have found new homes in films, love songs, church anthems, and even television commercials. 

When Rachmaninov played solo concerts, audiences couldn’t get enough of his Prélude in C-sharp minor so he resisted including it on concerts. His other 'smaller works' are now less often heard: the Preludes, the Etudes, the Moments Musicaux. They mark him as the last of the colorful Russian masters of the late 19th century, with their characteristic gift for long and broad melodies imbued with a resigned melancholy which is never long absent. The songs are at last being recognized to be among Russia's best. In his later years, his style grew more subtle, as can be heard in the Paganini Rhapsody, the Corelli Variations, the last set of songs, and the Symphonic Dances. His operas failed to hold the stage because of deficits in their librettos, but recordings have enabled their splendid music to be appreciated. The four Piano Concerti are an ineradicable part of the romantic repertory, and the symphonies, though still overshadowed by the piano works, have gained in popularity. His masterpiece, according to some, is The Bells, which fuses and unifies all his powers.
In 1915, the year of Scriabin's death Rachmaninov made a memorial tour of Russia playing only Scriabin's music to acknowledge Scriabin's genius. Plenty of recordings of Rachmaninov playing his own music are still available.

Sonata no. 2 is a pyrotechnical tour de force full of lush and beautiful Rachmaninovian themes. Here is a performance by Marc-André Hamelin. 


Ludwig van Beethoven, Hammerklavier Sonata, No 29, Op. 106

Known as the Große Sonate für das Hammerklavier, or more simply as the Hammerklavier, this sonata is widely considered to be one of the most important works of the composer's third period and among the greatest piano sonatas. It is widely considered Beethoven's single most challenging composition for the piano, and it remains one of the most challenging solo works in the classical piano repertoire.

Dedicated to his patron, the Archduke Rudolf, Beethoven wrote the sonata between the summer of 1817 and late autumn of 1818, towards the end of a fallow period in his career. It represents the spectacular emergence of many of the themes that were to recur in his late period, the reinvention of traditional forms, such as sonata form; a brusque humor (humor? in Beethoven?); and a return to pre-classical compositional traditions, including an exploration of modal harmony and reinventions of the fugue within classical forms.

The Hammerklavier also set a precedent for the length of solo compositions (performances typically take about 45 minutes). While orchestral works such as symphonies and concerti had movements of 15 or even 20 minutes, few single movements in solo literature had a span such as the Hammerklavier's Adagio sostenuto.

The sonata's name comes from Beethoven's later practice of using German rather than Italian words for musical terminology. (Hammerklavier literally means "hammer-keyboard", and is still today the German name for the fortepiano, the predecessor of the modern pianoforte without its metal frame.) It comes from the title page of the work, "Große Sonate für das Hammerklavier", which means "Grand sonata for the fortepiano". The more sedate Sonata No. 28 in A, Op. 101 has the same description, but the epithet has come to apply to the Sonata No. 29 only. The work also makes extensive use of the una corda pedal, with Beethoven giving for his time unusually detailed instructions when to use it. (Thanks, Wikipedia for most of the above.)

As Sarah Palin might say, “there's Walmarts and Walmarts of stuff out there” about Beethoven and his Hammerklavier Sonata, almost all by writers more knowledgeable than I. And if you have made your way through half of the prose above, your eyes may have already glazed over. So for relief I refer you to the hilarious (but fictitious) interview by Jeremy Denk, not entirely devoid of heuristic value. For a pre-concert preview of the Hammerklavier here is a live performance by Jeremy.

Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Music

by Carl Ellenberger, MD

Reading Jon Meacham's marvelous Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power I noted references to Jefferson's love of music and found my way back to Thomas Jefferson and Music by Helen Cripe (University Press of Virginia, 1974) and then to Jefferson Himself, a volume entirely of Jefferson's own words edited by Bernard Mayo, 1942, to expand on the subject.

Jefferson indeed loved music ("Music is the favorite passion of my soul...") and especially enjoyed playing the violin and singing with his sister Jane when he was young. Later he encouraged his family to play and study music as part of his quest to provide them a broad education like his own (and to develop "resources against ennui").

To his daughter Patsy:

With respect to the distribution of your time, the following is what I should approve:  From 8 to 10, practice music.....

Jefferson acquired several violins, all lost now, harpsichords and pianos, and a glass armonica, a bizarre instrument using glasses filled with water invented by Benjamin Franklin. (Mozart wrote a quintet for it.) It isn't clear that Jefferson understood that studying and playing music can have the strong impact on the brain and learning in general as we know now (Learning Music makes Kids Smarter, Oct 11) but he did realize that the ability to play and appreciate music, like the other arts, could enrich one's life. The Jefferson family's huge collection of music, the Monticello Music Collection stored in the Alderman Library in Charlottesville, ranges far and wide in style and origin.

Many visitors to Jefferson's home at Monticello remarked about the wonderful evenings with good food and wine, sophisticated conversation, and musical performances, usually including Jefferson himself. One wonders how good a violinist he was. Many contemporaries extolled his musicality, for their own various purposes. The most reliable critic was probably granddaughter Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge:

With regard to Mr. Jefferson's skill on the violin....Mr. Randall's idea that he became "one of the best violinists of his day" is a little extreme. My grandfather would, I believe, have disclaimed it. When we remember that the violin is a most difficult instrument, and that great proficiency in the management of it requires the labor of a life--that sixteen hours out of twenty-four have sometimes been devoted to it, we see at once that the time given to music by Mr. Jefferson could never have accomplished more than a gentlemanly proficiency. No amateur violinist could hope to equal a professor. Mr. Jefferson [They still call him "Mr. Jefferson" in Charlottesville] played I believe very well indeed, but not so well as to stand a comparison with many other persons especially such as he must have met with abroad."

And indeed Jefferson must have heard a lot of good music in Paris. Mozart's opera, The Marriage of Figaro, premiered during his five years there. Regarding music in Paris: "...[music] particularly is an enjoyment the deprivation of which with us cannot be calculated. I am almost ready to say it is the only thing which from my heart I envy them (Parisians)...." 

But his earlier rhapsodizing, "Music...is the favorite passion of my soul" continues: "and fortune has cast my lot in a country where it is in a state of deplorable barbarism... In a country like [Italy], music is cultivated and practiced by every class of men, I suppose there might be found persons of these trades who could perform on the French horn, clarinet, or hautboy, and bassoon, so that one might have a band [at Monticello, perhaps]... Sobriety and good nature would be desirable parts of their characters."  Sobriety and good nature being well-known traits of musicians, of course.

Some observers have suggested that "deplorable state of barbarism" was also a little too extreme as a way to characterize American music in Jefferson's lifetime. (Others point out that he may not have listened to music his 600 slaves might have made.) But consider the following announcement of an event in Williamsburg--when Jefferson was surely there--from Thomas Jefferson and Music. It calls to my mind some suggestions for what Gretna Music could present in place of arcane chamber music to build our audience.

By Permission of his excellency, the governor, for the entertainment of the curious: On Friday the 14th of this Instant April will be exhibited, at the theater in Williamsburg, by Peter Gardiner, a curious set of figures, richly dressed, four feet high, which shall appear upon the stage as if alive; to which will be added a tragedy called Babes in the Wood: also a curious view of waterworks, representing the sea, with all manner of sea monsters sporting upon the waves. Likewise fireworks, together with the taking of the Havannah, with shops, forts, and batteries, continually firing, until victory crowns the conquest; to which will be added a curious field of battle, containing the Dutch, French, Prussian, and English forces, which shall regularly march and perform the different exercises to great perfection. The performer will lay his head on one chair and his feet on another, and suffer a large rock of 300 weight to be broke on his breast with a sledge hammer. Tickets to be had at the Raleigh Tavern...."

 (You can't find it on YouTube.)

MEMOIR: Ted Kramers, with Dave Brubeck and Richard Strauss

by Carl Ellenberger, MD

We just learned that a former neighbor in Mt. Gretna, Ted Kramers, passed away last week. Ted was well into his nineties and still vigorous. He told me the following story about 10 years ago. It's the same story that Alex Ross relates in The Rest is Noise (p 343, Zero Hour: The US Army and German Music, 1945-1949), naming Ted as "John" Kramers. Other differences in our two accounts may relate partly to Ted's memory. He was in his late 80's when I spent several hours with him to record the details. (My memory is no better but I wrote notes.)

In April 1945 Ted, a major in a Civil Affairs unit, entered Germany with the 103^rd Division of the US Army. The division moved east toward Munich and turned south toward Garmisch, Innsbruck, and the Brenner Pass, to link up with other American forces moving north from Italy. They felt safe, he said, and “loose” because they realized the Germans were on the run and the end of the war was near. But they were aware that they might stumble upon a “redoubt” where loyal units of the SS or Wehrmacht could make a last stand in the remote southern corner of Germany. Ted also remembers feeling then, as he said most American soldiers did, that the German army usually “played by the rules” and so he planned to be careful to “handle things correctly” as he dealt with the formalities of ending the war. Meyer Levin, in the Saturday Evening Post, described Ted as “a spirited fellow who whistled through a youthful blond moustache.” Ted’s wife, Ellen, confirmed that; his moustache by then white, Ted “wanted to move at the head of the pack” on their many tourist excursions all over the world.

Ted and his driver, Sgt Griess, went ahead of the division to locate a place for their next headquarters in Garmisch. On route they encountered survivors fleeing from Dachau and also were ordered to take the surrender of a small unit of Hungarians—who rewarded them with a huge supply of pretzels. Ted was anxious to find a headquarters because the Division was close behind. They were scouting for a large building on enough land for 30 large military vehicles and many more small ones in a protected location. Such would be preferable to pitching tents in an open field. 

They came upon such a place without much difficulty in the suburban outskirts of Garmisch at Zoeppritzstrasse 42: a large three-story mansion in a spacious glade surrounded by tall trees nestled in the Loisach Valley of the Bavarian Alps. The view of the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain, was magnificent. According to protocol, Major Kramers waited in the jeep while Sgt. Greiss approached the villa and knocked on the front door. A tall, straight-backed and courtly man wearing a jacket and tie opened the door and spoke in good English. Sgt. Greiss politely requested that he and the other occupants of the house come out and talk to Major Kramers. Ted respectfully asked the man and his family to leave in 20 minutes with any possessions they would need so that the Americans could temporarily occupy the villa.

When Ted and Sgt. Griess returned to the villa about 30 minutes later, the owner led them into a large salon with a piano and served tea and cakes. Ted thought him to be an unusually gentle and modest man, especially compared to other Germans he had encountered during his brief sojourn in Germany. The man sat at the piano and played excerpts from “Der Rosenkavalier.” By then Ted, a reluctant violin student in his Philadelphia school days, realized that the owner of the villa was none other than Richard Strauss.

Ted met a younger woman, probably Strauss’ daughter-in-law Alice who served as his secretary, another man, probably Strauss’ son Richard, and another woman—Ted never learned her identity but she was probably Stauss’ wife Pauline. Far from the frail old man described by some commentators, Strauss appeared to Ted as a healthy, sturdy, and proud man who “still had all his marbles” despite his obvious advanced age (79 years).  

Strauss built the mansion in 1908 according to a design by himself, his wife, Pauline, and Emanuel von Seidl, brother of the architect of the Munich Museum. The family initially intended the villa to be a summer home, but after financial reverses--a British bank confiscated his assets after WWI--and during the rise of the Third Reich, they found refuge there and a permanent residence. As the war worsened, Strauss's son and his family were forbidden from shopping in "Aryan" shops and could not go out for fear of being beaten up. Strauss himself was spied on.

Strauss modestly described himself as “a first class second rate composer” and was listed in the Garmisch telephone directory (according to his friend, the tenor, Hans Hotter) as ”Dr. Strauss, Richard, Conductor,” and not, as you might assume, “Composer.” 

At the time of Ted’s visit Strauss was arranging Der Rosenkavalier, an opera he had written many years earlier, as a suite for orchestra, in part to produce a legacy of value for his family. The image of Strauss’ fingers on the piano keys stayed with Ted and he always sat in the front row at our concerts for just that reason. The encounter was short because Ted was ready to take possession of the house. 

Ted doesn’t know where the Strauss family went that day but believes that they learned within hours that they could return immediately; the Army was ahead of schedule and passed through the town without stopping. Neither Ted nor any other Americans ever occupied the villa. 

After the war, having briefly accepted the post of head of the Reich Music Chamber (probably without an opportunity to decline and, he believed, “to do good and prevent even greater misfortune”), Strauss was automatically classified as “Grade I Guilty” by a denazification court and lost more of his assets. Many of his musician contemporaries treated him with contempt because he remained in Germany during the war and even conducted for the Nazi elite. (Toscanini said, "To Strauss the musician I take off my hat; to Strauss the man I put it on again.") In 1948 he was exonerated and reinstated as a German citizen. By then he and his family had been in exile in Switzerland where he wrote his exquisite Four Last Songs and Metamorphosen. Eventually he and his family returned to the villa in Garmisch several months before he died there in September 1949. Pauline passed away in 1950. The grandchildren still maintain the home (and a web site).

Other, more welcome, knocks at the same door about that time came from American musicians stationed with Army bands in the area. One of them, Dave Brubeck, wrote to me and certainly others: “I was stationed in the Army at Eibsee near Oberammergau, and often would pass by Richard Strauss’ home. I never had the nerve to go knock at his door, although I wanted to.” Pittsburgh Symphony oboist, John Delancie, did knock. The eventual result was the Oboe Concerto that Strauss completed later in the year in Switzerland. Leonard Bernstein was also in the neighborhood.

Ted Kramers received more publicity for his participation, a few weeks later, in one of the many “liberation parties” that roamed the countryside looking to free famous captives. His party freed ex-premiers Daladier and Raymond, De Gaulle’s sister, and Generals Gamelin and Weygand from the prison castle of Itter, a high class branch of Dachau used to lock up important prisoners. They “weren’t merely out for sport,” according to Meyer Levin who traveled with one of the liberating units. “They went out in advance of their main elements because one day was often the margin needed for rescue. To the very last, the Germans were dragging important prisoners to the remotest mountains.”

We will all miss Ted.

DIGITAL MUSIC and BASSOONISTS

by Carl Ellenberger, MD

To segue from the Nov 22nd post about the importance of recording of classical music--I am about halfway through Reinventing Bach--I hope you have discovered the magazine, Listen: Life with Classical Music, published by ArkivMusik. Responding to suggestions in my e-mailbox, I have purchased countless recordings from ArkivMusic over the years, ample evidence that the industry remains alive and well, even now when you can't find a neighborhood record shop selling 25 versions of Beethoven's Fifth. (To subscribe to 4 quarterly issues go to Listen. They are well worth $14.95.) Some articles are available online. The following tidbits caught my attention in the Winter issue.

"By studying encyclopedias and publisher catalogs, people have determined that that there has been about two million hours of music written since the Renaissance. And only about a hundred thousand hours of unduplicated music has been recorded. That leaves us one-point nine million hours to work with."

That wild estimate--but you get the point--came from Klaus Heymann, Founder of Naxos. He thinks physical CD's will be important for the next five or ten years, but "my estimate is not quite so rosy as some in the business, such as [one recording executive] who estimated the the CD would still be fifty-five percent of their business in 2017.... I estimated it to be only about 25 percent of our business by then." The remaining 75 percent, of course, would be "digital," streamed from the internet.

"Naxos also has one of the largest databases of classical recordings...nearly seventy-thousand albums from more than four hundred labels now--but it's so much more than a classical jukebox. You can search for a work by instrumentation, playing time, country of origin, year of composition, published. With all the liner notes and the hundred or so books we have published over the years, we have more content than Grove. There are more composer bios in the Naxos Music Library than on Wikipedia. It is a tremendous resource for students, teachers, program planners, radio stations, artists." Heymann lives in Hong Kong and New Zealand.

This month Esa-Pekka Salonen and his Philharmonia Orchestra with Touch Press will launch an iPad app called The Orchestra that looks at that amazing organization's inner workings. (What if Congress worked like an orchestra!) It features eight pieces of music through which the the musical and historical evolution of the orchestra is explained and experienced. iPad users can run several windows simultaneously: while the main screen may show the full orchestra performing, smaller windows can show the conductor, a diagrammatic layout of the orchestra that pulses in proportion to the amplitude of the section playing, video feeds of any of the musicians, a scrolling score and a graphical score of the sounds. 

Also included in The Orchestra is technical and historical commentary such as this by LA Times critic Mark Sved: 

"Having been asked too many times by composers to be gruff or comical, the bassoon got the reputation for being the clown of the orchestra, Bassoonists hate that label, of course, but like all great clowns, this baritone, double-reed instrument could just as easily be called the soul of the orchestra."

It is also possible, Mr. Sved, that certain people choose to take up the bassoon. ("Bassoon is not a great social ticket in high school." --Garrison Keillor) Bassoon students I knew at Eastman seemed to be a unique breed even before gaining much orchestral experience. Among other stunts they were experts of the pratfall, usually at inopportune times down the grand marble staircase at the far end of the Eastman foyer. (Their bassoon cases were empty.)

In case you are unconvinced of the vitality of the classical music recording industry (Norman Lebrecht?), here's a sampling of current recording labels from Listen, some of them personally produced by the musicians themselves: EMI, Virgin, Delphian, Harmonia Mundi, Sony, Naxos, Chandos, Deutchegrammophon, Decca, Analekta, Bis, SDG, Ondine, CAvi-music, Tactus, col legno, Opera d'Oro, Orfeo, Sono, Pentatone, Delos, Opus Arte, Atma Classique, Passacaille, LAWO, Evil Penguin, Globe, Philips, outhere, Avie, Naïve, DaCapo, Steinway & Sons, Linn, Hyperion, ECM, Tafelmusik, Alia-Vox, Accent, Sono Luminus, Reference Recordings, Chanticleer, Signum Classics, Ancalagon, etc.

Andreas Scholl

by Carl Ellenberger, MD

The last time Gretna Music brought a countertenor to Lancaster was in the late 1980's.  When Michael Dash, a giant African-American who had sung several roles at the Metropolitan Opera, sang the first note of Händel's "Furibundo," I deliberately watched the collective jaw-drop of all 425 listeners in St. James Church, who minutes later sprang to their feet to cheer. Equally astonished were staid native Lancastrians passing him on the street: they must have assumed the Eagles were scrimmaging in the provinces. "Furibundo," a Spanish word loosely meaning "raging maniac," was about the last sound you would expect to come from the lips of a fullback in a soprano voice.

Your next question is probably "so what is a countertenor and why do they exist?" I'll tell you that and then address another question that bothered me: Why did Händel cast a countertenor in a heroic male role, a King no less, such as the one Andreas Scholl sang last year at the Met in Rodelinda with Renée Fleming? Or for that matter also in the role of Julius Caesar?

The answer to your question has to do with the historic Roman Catholic Church (what doesn't? see "Threats to Music" Oct 20) and barbers. In the 16th century the Pope banned female singers in church and on the stage. For composers that was like having to write for a choir without soprano or alto sections. Popes and Cardinals, of course, continued to commission music requiring high voices and it was the Italians who had the greatest need for them in their operas (think Monteverdi, etc, and Handel, who spent 6 formative years in Italy). 

Fortunately (in one sense) Italians were crafty enough to figure out a solution. They learned that if a boy was castrated (barber-"surgeons" usually did it) between the ages of 8 and 13, their pre-pubertal high voice would remain for the rest of their lives. As an added benefit, without a pubertal testosterone surge their bony epiphyses (bone joints) would remain open longer and their arms, legs and ribs would attain greater length. With larger chest cavities breath control could be developed beyond that of an average female singer and their voices become more powerful--even while their vocal apparatus remained that of a young boy. 

It is estimated that over three centuries as many as 4,000 Italian boys a year were subjected to the snip (some probably encouraged by "stage parents"). Of course, most never developed into great musicians. Some who succeeded after intensive training, however, became the first rock stars of the modern music world, not only in the sense of musical prowess but also by attaining great wealth and celebrity and in becoming sex objects exactly as rock stars are now (but with no-risk guarantees for "bored wives" -- Norman Lebrecht). (See "The Castrato and his Wife" by Helen Berry; and know that castration does not always preclude erection.) Despite Popes and Cardinals outlawing the practice (that they created), making castrati peaked in the 18th century and finally ended only after the turn of the last century. Recordings of Alessandro Moreschi, the "Angel of Rome," document the last gasp of the barbaric tradition. By then women were allowed to sing in public, even by Popes.

Though castrati (and barber/surgeons) do not live on, the music that Händel and eventually English as well as Italian composers wrote for them does. An astonishing amount continues to be discovered and brought to life like gold from a newly-discovered mine, especially during an ongoing early music boom that began during the latter half of the 20th century. The much smaller boom of countertenoring, starting with Alfred Deller, follows, I presume, the desire to perform this music in a way close to the way it was originally intended. (We now speak of HIP, "historically-informed performance" to distinguish it from the discredited "authentic," too often a refuge for less capable playing on "primitive" instruments.)

A countertenor is thus a male singer who naturally would sing in the tenor or baritone range, but who has cultivated his falsetto range by "vibrating only the ligamentous edges of the vocal folds while leaving each fold's body relatively relaxed." Women can do the same, but listeners are less likely to notice the transition into falsetto high in their higher range. The falsetto range, less adorned by harmonics--higher frequency waves superimposed on the fundamental pitch--sounds more pure, as does a flute compared to an oboe or violin. Just about any adult can employ a falsetto. 

Regarding my question about why Handel cast a countertenor in the role of Bertrarido, hero and King in Rodelinda, practicality may be the best answer. After moving to London in 1713, becoming a naturalized British subject in 1727, and achieving fame as a composer of Italian operas, Handel hired Francesco Bernardi Senesino (1686 – 1758), a celebrated Italian contralto castrato as a lead male singer in his company, the Royal Academy of Music, for a handsome salary. Senesino remained in London for much of the succeeding sixteen years, became a friend and associate of many in the highest levels of society, and created seventeen leading roles for Handel including Giulio Cesare, Orlando, and Bertarido in Rodelinda. Composer and singer never got along well and eventually had a tumultuous falling out. 

By then public interest in Italian operas was waning and Handel turned to oratorio, Messiah (1741) his sixth, almost instantly establishing his position for posterity. Over its millions of performances the voicing and instrumentation of Messiah has varied tremendously, including occasional singing of the alto part by a countertenor. Perhaps to get back at the Popes, parts written for countertenors, like Giulio Cesare, are now sometimes sung by women! ("pants" roles)

Andreas Scholl, countertenor

Wednesday, December 5, 8:00 PM
Steinman Hall, Ware Center, Lancaster, 

Tickets: 717-361-1508; gretnamusic.org

REINVENTING BACH

Every so often a new book enters my world like a Hamas rocket landing in Tel Aviv (well, no analogy can be perfect). Such a book, Reinventing Bach by Paul Elie did so yesterday heralded by a a review, as brilliant as the book itself, by pianist Jeremy Denk ("Why I hate the Goldbergs," Nov 7), "the best music writer in America" according to music-writer Alex Ross of The New Yorker. 

Elie: "So familiar is the language of revival that we can overlook how fully it pervades the discussion of the arts--classical music, opera, painting and scupture, dance, literature, drama. The good thing is going out of the world, threatened by questionable forms of progress, and stands in need of revival. This is the story our society has told itself about the arts for a century or more--really ever since the arts were firmly established in this country--and the arts themselves thrive on the notion that they are threatened with extinction.... The drumbeat of revival in classical music--often set up in opposition to the shriekback of a popular culture enchanted with technology--obscures the fact that, for most of a century now, technology has been the means of classical music's survival."

Elie tells a fascinating story of the "revival of a traditional art through the technology that was supposed to be its undoing...the reinvention of Bach in the age of recordings." 

And be reassured that " the sudden ubiquity of recordings...didn't stop people from playing music "live." Perhaps "the spread of recorded music dealt a blow to amateur music-making and to music in public life--and that it banished classical music to the margins. But it is impossible to deny the extraordinary quality of the music-making in...the sixty years between the time when Pablo Casals recorded Bach's cello suites in London and Paris and the introduction of the iPhone in California. That was a golden age, and we know that it was because we can hear the music for ourselves."

I have read a lot about JS Bach, but Reinventing Bach is a revelation. After reading Jeremy's review, I downloaded the book ($12.99) to my eReader.

A GLASS OF WINE

I attended a wonderful performance at the Berkeley Art Museum by the Chamber Chorus of the University of California directed by Marika Kuzma. The 40-member ensemble stood on a cement floor in the center of an installation by graffiti artist Barry McGee -- below a damaged minivan hanging by its rear axle off the edge of a cliff (one of the museum's many balconies), its contents having spilled into the performance space as its hapless occupants tried to claw their way back up to the road (a higher balcony). (I took the installation as a metaphor for the fiscal cliff....)

The sound space was perfect for a cappella singing of liturgical music because the music could echo around in nooks and alcoves of several stories of the spare cement-block interior for as long as 2-3 seconds. The program marked the closing day of the (usually very secular) museum's exhibit, "Devotions" and was divided into two halves: music from the Byzantine liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and from the Roman Catholic Mass, each half offering representative prayers. The East was represented by wonderful Liturgies 1,2,3 by the contemporary Ukrainian composer Roman Hurko, as well as Arvo Pärt and Rachmaninoff; the West by selections from Vaughn Williams' Mass in G and settings by John Taverner (The Lamb by William Blake) and Trevor Weston (Ashes from Psalm 102), both living composers.

The performance was exquisite in every respect and moving even to a secular listener. The young singers, almost all undergraduates, or recent ones I presume, sang in perfect tune and ensemble, over a broad dynamic range, responsive to the able direction, the perfection of their technical ability matching the perfection of the liturgies. The performance was worthy of any of the great halls in the country.

Immediately outside the doors to the museum, still open for usual traffic, college street life continued oblivious to the sublimity inside: ethnic restaurants buzzing with patrons, street vendors with wares spread out on the sidewalks, small groups of students with backpacks or guitars in tattered jeans and shorts, cyclists weaving around them and defying cautious drivers as well as aged long-haired permanent denizens of the town doing the things they have done since the glorious '60's. 

Inside the museum a diverse crowd of young and old, some of the latter with long gray hair and ponytails, was only partly accommodated by the small number of folding chairs grabbed immediately after they were lifted off a single rolling cart 5 minutes before the concert. The majority of the audience stood around the back of the space and hung over many-levelled balconies surrounding it: young girls in tight shorts who I might have expected to see in cheerleading practice or trolling outside, young boys in baseball caps without their skateboards. An infant contributed to the sounds randomly from the depths of the museum. Strolling past the performance with bemused curiosity but not stopping to listen were families with children who had decided to check out the museum as part of their casual Sunday afternoon.

Admission was free to museum members (and at least one friend). Others could pay $10 at the museum entry desk--or just walk in to the concert. No ushers or ticket-takers were in evidence.


Few in that audience would think of the difference between this experience and what it would take for Gretna Music to field such a concert: an organization with a board of directors, volunteers, paid staff, office and other overhead, production costs, computerized ticketing, insurance policies, marketing expense, hall rental, transportation and housing costs, budgets, cash-flow statements, auditors.....ad infinitum (including frequent and regular meetings). 

We use the same software that concert managements use to set their artist fees. It predicts ticket receipts in any given venue and so they set their fees to match those receipts. We take the risk (of inadequate sales); they (or unmanaged musicians) take the money stipulated in the contract. To pay our costs beyond the artist fees (or the fees themselves if we fail to sell enough tickets) we must come up with additional revenue: from contributions, fund-raising projects like raffles, our Tour of Homes, and sales of stuff.

Sales of what stuff? T-shirts, CD's, candy, coffee, etc, the usual stuff, and the total receipts are always disappointing. That's why at almost every concert I attend -- Disney Hall, Verizon Hall, etc -- you can purchase wine and spirits at bars in the lobbies before the concert or at intermission, and in many halls you have several choices for food. 

You can imagine the obstacles to selling wine and spirits in a rural region. (Pennsylvania has a state "Liquor Control Board" and we are in James Carville's "Alabama" section of the state.) (Suggestions appreciated.)

I was inspired to write all this after reading: Aspen Music Festival Overwhelmed With Applications After Colorado Legalizes Pot. Great satire! But I'm serious about the wine. Aside from its economic benefit to Gretna Music, just like blazing a 'fat spliff' savoring a glass of wine can be a great accompaniment to a good concert.

THE GOLDBERGS

"music with neither end nor beginning, music with neither real climax nor real resolution, music which like Beaudelaire’s lovers, ‘rests lightly on the wings of the unchecked wind.” --Glenn Gould

Rather than repeat the legend (possibly true) of a pupil of Bach, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, giving private nocturnal concerts for the insomniac Count Kaiserling around 1741, let us turn to the estimable pianist and commentator, Jeremy Denk. During a “Goldberg” week on NPR last March Jeremy, who has played in Gretna several times, talked and wrote about “Why I hate the Goldberg Variations." I’ll let him speak for himself and recommend that you listen to his programs (Jeremy Denk vs. The Goldberg Variations: The Musical DNA) online at NPR Music. (Irony is Jeremy's middle name; he doesn't really hate 'the Goldbergs.')

Then you will be prepared and eager to hear Anne-Marie McDermott play 'The Goldbergs' and two Haydn sonatas in Leffler Performance Center at Elizabethtown College on Saturday, November 17, 2012, 7:30 PM. The work is one of the 'Monsters' of the canon to be performed on the new Ted and Betty Long Steinway. Tickets: $20/15 (or less if you subscribe) available on www.gretnamusic.org or by calling 717.361.1508.

And you will find you have also discovered Jeremy's hilarious blog: “think denk”. 

MONSTERS OF THE STEINWAY

One of the changes over my lifetime has been the decline in value of grand pianos. Most are now worth their weight in books, like those hundreds of books I have accumulated during 60 years of careful collecting, which is approximately the same as their weight in the mulch dumped from a truck onto our driveway in the Spring. An exception has been Steinway pianos (and a few others like Bösendorfer and Fazioli), which have maintained value. 

A few months ago a next-door neighbor in the process of downsizing was was happy to give us a 100-year-old Aeolian (the Volkswagen of pianos in the first half of the 20th C, long ago eviscerated of its player mechanism) for the cost (in muscular energy) of moving it from his living room -- and precariously rolling it down the street -- into our living room. The ancient beast can still almost play a Mozart sonata by itself. Instead of a piano in the parlor most Americans have a home theater system in the living room and an iPod in their pockets, and offspring, talented or not, strum an electronic instrument in their bedroom or garage.

So I can boast that in more civilized places like Mt. Gretna a surprising number of grand pianos, Steinways and Bechsteins among them, still slumber quietly in  dark ancient cottages, some tended with loving care by retired music teachers.

When I learned that the Board of Directors of Elizabethtown College had purchased a Steinway Grand for the Leffler stage to honor the 15-year tenure of President Ted and Betty Long, I must admit I was perplexed. There were already two Baldwin pianos on the stage, one of them ours, which, which regulated and voiced properly (they usually were not), could produce a sound indistinguishable from a Steinway, at least to the ears of >99% of the listeners. I could think of other ways of making music better at the college, ways that, as the Longs illustrated so perfectly, involve people rather than instruments or buildings: an endowed artist professorship, for example, or a permanent residency for an eminent ensemble of artist teachers. But then many other gifts would have been even less appropriate: a gala concert by a 'superstar' whose fee approached or exceeded the cost of the Steinway. That would have been soon forgotten and illustrated only the lack of a relationship between the quality of music and its perceived monetary value. The Steinway should allow for exquisite performances for the remaining existence of humanity on planet earth.

New Yorker, Jan 30, 2012

For our part in honoring the Longs we conceived the "Monsters of the Steinway" concerts that will begin on November 17 and extend into next Fall. This winter the new Steinway will deliver performances of Bach’s Goldberg Variations under the capable hands of Anne-Marie McDermott (November 17); Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata with Joel Fan (February 23); and in a special recital by one of our time’s most celebrated keyboard artists, Emanuel Ax (March 19). Rest assured that "Monsters" does not refer to any of the pianists but rather to their monumental repertoire: the Goldberg's, the Hammerklavier, Schubert's B-flat Major Sonata, and Ives' Concord Sonata. The complete programs are on GretnaMusic.org and the next edition of this blog will preview the November 17 performance of The Goldbergs.