More from Mrs. Lieberson

Below is a clip from John Adams' 2000 Christmas oratorio El Niño. This is one of my all-time favorite pieces of music and will probably be the subject of my dissertation... and the clip at hand is one of the most achingly beautiful extracts thereof. Perhaps it will clear the palate before the next round of excitement.

NPR story on the 4 track mind

http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2011/jul/26/4-track-mind/

My Taruskin Glossary

Increase your word power - read Taruskin!

My vocabulary is bound to undergo an overhaul and improvement if I continue to read Taruskin. It will take some effort on my part to track down the meanings of words he uses that are either unknown to me, or those that I do not see frequently enough for me to remember a precise meaning and therefore have to rely upon context for at least an approximate meaning.
Here is the word list I'm working on at present, thanks to the Bach article:
craven
antimetaphysical
simulacrum
noisomely
vouchsafed
hortatory
invidious

To the Museum?

Richard Taruskin’s onslaught against the contented interpretations of Bach’s music in the New York Times marks a new day for Bach listenership. I must humbly agree that after reading his review, my perspective of Bach’s music changed. While I have generally followed and supported the mainstream of Bach scholarship, Taruskin’s review shook my aesthetic perspective of what Bach should sound like (and what it should *not* sound like). Performances of Bach’s music that are focused on notions of beauty, clarity, and form, while nostalgically special to me, are now museum pieces in the depths of my memory.

Taruskin convincingly and forcefully presents Bach’s “dark vision” – one that is often ugly, violent, messy, and (perhaps most fearfully) real. He demands that a more visceral performance of Bach’s works is necessary to match the intended level of expression and intensity. He claims that Bach’s music “was a medium of truth, not beauty.” While some may have halfheartedly believed such ideas before reading this review, Taruskin lambasts these anemic views, stating “[Bach’s] works persuade us – no, reveal to us – that the world is filth and horror, that humans are helpless, that life is pain, that reason is a snare.” Sometimes ignorance is bliss indeed.

Music, as Charles Burney describes it, is “the art of pleasing by the succession and combination of agreeable sounds.” Based on this overtly sterile definition of what music is, Burney would not be able to comprehend the heights of natural expression in Leonhardt’s and Harnoncourt’s recorded performances of the Bach Cantatas. Taruskin, in his customary state of irreverence, claims, “This one is not for you, Dr. Burney.”

Taruskin’s writings are some of the most potent and convincing writings about music that I have encountered. The clarity of his powerful writings emerges from his assertive confidence, which some claim to be arrogance and haughtiness. As a writer, he has my utmost respect. I admire his command of the written word and his ability to ask penetrating questions. His knack for “going there” is one of his finest trademarks. While his aggressive personality does not align with mine and is not a model that I wish to follow, his writings do demonstrate a confidence and strength that I wish to emulate.

For me, writing a review of a review by Taruskin is a daunting task. Posting it online in a blog is pure terror.

To review a review

When asked to critique Taruskin’s critical writing - to review a review, I think I approached the reading with a question unconsciously already formed in my mind: what is the model and the ideal of a piece of criticism that we judge any specific writing against? Which, of course, has to deal with what a review is in essence, what is its function and purpose. Is a critical review some sort of “auxiliary” tool to access a work of art, therefore at the service both of the work of art and its appreciation by the consumers - or it is a literary creation standing in its own terms, independent to a certain degree from its cultural function and from the object of its criticism?

I remember, in my high school years, reading old critical essays about a 19th century Italian novelist and literally loving them as self-sufficient gems of prose and deep, argumented critical thought… while I absolutely hated the work of the novelist they talked about!

So, should a review be criticized for the social service rendered and the results accomplished as intermediary between a work of art and the people - or also judged as a piece of prose and a work of thought - if not a work of art itself?

Obviously both are in a way true, and obviously what I called the “cultural function” of a review is essential and indispensable. I believe Taruskin’s review fully and brilliantly accomplishes that purpose and function, while sometimes not completely escaping the temptation of becoming an independent critical-philosophical essay - but never abandoning itself to the other temptation, much more futile, of leaning towards a self-referential piece of ornamented prose.

This review - in its essential content - starts off with giving basic but detailed information about the Teldec recording, the peculiar history of a gigantic project, the endeavors and artistic personae of the two principal performers/directors of the performances; then goes on to the core of the critique, focusing on some of the most peculiar - and seldom discussed or even mentioned - aspects of Bach’s cantatas and of their interpretation under the direction of the pair Leonard-Harnoncourt, emphasizing how, in which pieces in particular and through what means those unique characters of the cantatas are displayed and strongly represented in the performances. The article is specific in describing the different approaches of the two directors and their different personalities as musicians; what is most important to me, it has a point, a strong one, which is supported by insightful arguments and carried out with lucidity and consistency. It does the job of a review: it engages the reader from beginning to end and it triggers his/her curiosity to listen to these recordings, to explore them trying to finally face up to “Bach’s dark vision”.

Then, of course, the review is absolutely provocative in its statements; surely it wants to astonish the reader with its main point about the “ugliness” of this music, disarming in the boldly repeated way it is enunciated. But the philosophical and historical arguments are strongly expressed, as well as the illuminating reference to the nowadays lost aesthetic of the sublime. Also, one should really go and listen to the musical examples Taruskin mentions to support his thesis: well, I did, and listening to the Harnoncourt rendition of Cantata no. 101, I could not avoid thinking that Taruskin is absolutely right, and that this piece of music is nothing but astonishing, wonderful, sublime ugliness.

I say in a previous paragraph: “in its essential content”. Because there is an aspect of this article that in my opinion can very well be criticized: that the reader may miss in part that essential content and remain entangled in the philosophical arguments, in the scholarly controversy about the “Enlightened” vision of Bach, and may get caught in the polemic urge of a debate between two schools of thought, in the surface of a prose almost nonchalantly disseminated with pungent, irreverent statements. But on the other hand, the style and the form are a medium to the essence of the writing - and anybody would prefer a very characterized, personal style to something flat and neutral. I guess we expect from a critic of the stature of Taruskin a very strong personality in each one of his expressions and a somewhat opinionated attitude - we almost take that for granted, and will probably be disappointed by the opposite.

The greatness of a writer like Taruskin is to be able to satisfy the basic function of a review and convey all its essential components in a few pages that at the same time are utilized as a channel for expressing his philosophical convictions, his personal and scholarly opinions, with an engaging, provocative style.

I think the postscript is a final touch of pure elegance, in that it gives voice to the readers’ critiques, reporting them as interesting contributions, without the need to further argue. A very obvious, conventional consideration struck me as the very last own words of the author in the article: “Of course, Bach is bigger than any one view of him” (314, Postscript). I don’t believe such a common place would have been thrown in there just by chance by someone subtle like Taruskin. To me it is a very stylish sign of balance after the somehow extreme quality of the opinions previously expressed: it closes the circle.

Museum Music or Living Art?

“I don’t like the word authenticity. Because it is dangerous. I’m not interested in museum music. I don’t intend to take my audience on a guided tour through Bach’s oeuvre.” – Nikolaus Harnoncourt

Both Richard Taruskin, eminent scholar and Nikolaus Harnoncourt, renowned conductor believe Bach’s music forcefully preaches a relevant message for today. Harnoncourt’s viewpoint, formed over decades of study and performing, is preserved in his mammoth discography while Taruskin’s is preserved in his record review, “Facing Up, Finally, to Bach’s Dark Vision.” Neither man views this music as merely a museum piece, but an actual relevant and living work of art.

As I see it, Taruskin’s review is more of a vehicle to continue his assault on a movement he considers invalid than it is to deliver an assessment of a collection of records. As such, his arguments are forceful and convincing. It must be noted that his career has been characterized by an undercurrent of questioning the veracity of modernism. In the 1980’s, when he challenged the philosophical underpinnings of the “early music” movement, he characterized period instrument specialists as having more to do with the dehumanizing aesthetic of modernism than with history. In his review of the Bach cantatas, Taruskin again links the early music movement with modernism when he argues,

The essential Bach was an avatar of a pre-Enlightened – and when push came to shove, a violently anti-Enlightened – temper. His music was a medium of truth, not beauty. His works persuade us – no, reveal to us – that the world is filth and horror, that humans are helpless, that life is pain, that reason is a snare.

At first glance, Harnoncourt would seem to share this view. On his personal website, Harnoncourt writes:

We as musicians – and indeed all artists – have to administer a powerful, a holy language. We have to do everything in our power to keep it from getting lost in the maelstrom of materialism. There is not much time left, if it is not already too late because the exclusive focus on thought and the language of reason, of logic, and the fascination we experience with the progress of science and our civilisation, increasingly alienate us from the essence of human life. It is probably no coincidence that this alienation goes hand in hand with the obliteration of religiousness: Technocracy, materialism and prosperity do not need religion; they don’t know religion, not even morality. Art is not a nice extra – it is the umbilical cord which connects us to the Divine, it guarantees our being human.

Harnoncourt foresees grave consequences from the decadent prosperity of materialistic age and argues that art is the vital conduit which connects us to the solution.

As synonymous as these two views seem on the surface, it is important to delineate one key difference. Taruskin is leveling an attack on the “early music” movement and their publication for failing to follow the recordings to the end. He is furthering his ongoing attack on modernity, which he deems to be dehumanizing. Harnoncourt, however is not leveling an attack on modernism. Furthermore, he does not claim that it is inherently dehumanizing. Rather, he argues that the exclusive focus on science, reason, and logic creates an imbalance which alienates us from the essence of human life. In this sense, Harnoncourt is not so rash in his assertions.

(It is humorous to note, that Taruskin’s chief weapons of choice in his assault on early music and modernity are logic and reason.)

After another reading, another inconsistency lies beneath the surface. Taruskin writes, “Anyone exposed to Bach’s full range…knows that the hearty, genial, lyrical Bach of the concert hall is not the essential Bach.” He assumes that anyone exposed to Bach’s full range would draw the same conclusion as he. He builds a false dilemma by asserting that we have to choose between the half dozen concert works and the works that he dubs, “essential Bach.” This, however, is not true for two reasons. First, the half dozen concert works, in my mind, could hardly be described as “hearty, genial, lyrical.” Try to listen to the six Brandenburg’s consecutively in one evening. Try performing them all at once. It requires the same intensity of intellectual engagement as listening to the Pacifica Quartet perform the complete Carter quartets in one evening. It certainly seems to me that he is building a weak argument on the other side so that he can knock it over with his deft pen. Second, while the core of Bach’s output may be the cantatas, one can hardly overlook the Well Tempered Clavier, Art of the Fugue, Solo Violin Sonatas and Partitas, Musical Offering, etc. In the case of the Musical Offering, I can hardly think of a work more fitting of Enlightenment ideals, yet Mr. Taruskin describes Bach as being “violently anti-Enlightenment.” I would argue that Mr. Taruskin, in this review fails to view Bach’s work in its totality.

My final point of disagreement with Mr. Taruskin is his assertion that historically informed performances are merely a product of modernity and are ultimately dehumanized prettifications of Bach. If you spend time with early music specialists of the “historically informed” movement, you find a remarkable amount of agreement from those who Mr. Taruskin attacks. In fact, they share the same goal but he is unwilling to listen. For instance, Harnoncourt writes, “Because wherever the goal is authenticity, historic correctness, you can see that it’s absolutely impossible. You can forget it. It has no real message. If the goal is to transport the contents of the music and the emotional importance of this music for the audience of today, then I love to be part of it.” In his liner notes for his Brahms Symphony cycle, Gardiner writes, “The idea that we can somehow reconstruct the ‘real’ and ‘original’ Brahms is, of course, a chimera. When all is said and done, our main interest is what Brahms can sound like in our day: what his music is has to say to us now.”

Nigel Kennedy recently played an all Bach concert and in his program notes, he accused period performance specialists of pushing Bach into “a rarefied and effete ghetto.” Perhaps, Mr. Taruskin would agree. However, the true genius of Bach is that it can be remarkably compelling with Klemperer or Herreweghe conducting St. Matthew’s Passion. Whether it is Suzuki, Rilling, Gardiner, or Harnoncourt conducting the cantatas, they still preach forcibly enough to make one squirm in their seat just as much as Jonathan Edward’s Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God.

In an interview in the New York Times from November 10, 1996, Harnoncourt concluded, “My goal is to make music in the best possible way. I follow what I feel and with a good cushion of source studies. But then I forget the sources, and just do it. Maybe I’m wrong. But it could be that I’m right.” Mr. Taruskin may very well agree with Maestro Harnoncourt on the point that these are not works which are museum pieces. We may not need a guided tour through Bach’s oeuvre, but we can certainly appreciate varied and differing performances of the works. Only then will Bach’s genius be realized.

Black and Blublockers

After writing this I had decided against posting it, but as the hours have added up my better judgment has dwindled down. So here it is:

Black and Blublockers:

Taruskin's shady view of Bach

So you're telling me that Bach has a dark side? What's next, an article discussing the often overlooked Bill Nye the Science Guy episode on how to build a meth lab?

Taruskin's article "Facing Up, Finally, to Bach's Dark Vision" really sends the sacred cow to the slaughter house. He seems to revel in bringing to light the darkness and despair of this ignored element of Bach's compositional output and personality. He rips off the rose colored glasses of the enlightenment through which we look at Bach, and forces us to accept the black and blue nature of so many of his church Cantatas. Bloodied and bruised our perception of Bach tumbles down to earth, an earth that is "filth and horror" and to a "life that is pain."

This dark perspective allows for one to appreciate Nikolaus Harnoncourt's deep and heart wrenching interpretation of these Cantatas for Teldec. It suggests that these harsh sounds are an accurate depiction in music, of the fallen and sinful world as Bach perceived it. Taruskin rejects the ad hoc thinking that forces one to look at these works through our preconceived notion of a "hearty, genial, and lyrical" Bach. He suggests that from Bach's point of view, the world was essentially a dark place. It's here that I find myself conflicted: On one hand, Taruskin's analysis of these recordings seems right on the mark. The careful detailing of Bach's graphic text painting rightfully justifies Harnoncourt's interpretation. His assertion that not all music has to be fun and pretty strikes a chord of truth in my soul, but on the other hand it seems that Mr. Taruskin falls into the same pit that tripped up the "enlightened rediscoverers" in the first place. That is to create a perspective of Bach that ignores a great portion of his compositional output and personality. It's like mocking those who thought the world was flat without presenting a logical well reasoned alternative, and instead only suggesting that the world is really a giant undulating triangle. Yeah they might be wrong and stubborn, but so might you.

Another thing troubles me with this assertion that Bach is essentially dark. Why form a wholistic perspective on Bach and his worldview from a relatively small sample? It seems that he takes joy in destroying the short sighted view of others, while only offering up his own shortsighted perspective. Mr. Taruskin you condemn those who don't allow these particular Cantatas to inform their perception of Bach, but does St. Matthew's Passion and the B Minor Mass not inform yours as well? Is there no place in your view of him for the Cello Suites or The Musical Offering? Why must we exchange our rose colored glasses for a pair that are black and blue?

Looking at the texts that serve as a basis for the Church Cantatas allows for one to understand and appreciate the musical goals and affects of these dark works. But Mr. Taruskin has removed them from their greater context: First, in how these texts functioned in the services for which they were written, and how those services fit within the context of the church calendar. And second, how Bach's Lutheran view of the 'world' fit into the larger Lutheran cosmology.

1. The church calendar progresses in such a way as to prepare the christian for large, seminal moments and celebrations. For example, it is the forty days of Lent and ultimately the tragedy of Good Friday which prepare the christian for the celebration Easter. The season of Lent functions much like the dissonance of a suspension waiting to be resolved at Easter. Is it possible that these Church Cantatas functioned to create a dissonance that would ultimately be resolved in the glorious cantatas we know so well? Or is it possible that their role in the service was juxtaposed with chorales extolling the grace of God, allowing for those present to be all the more grateful for this grace? Did not Bach inscribe the initials SDG (Solo Deo Gloria - to God be Glory) on all his Cantatas, and doesn't that inscription shed some light on Bach's perception of these works, or should that be ignored as well?

2. Bach and other early Lutherans would have created a distinction between themselves and the "world of filth and horror" around them. This distinction would be between being IN the world, but not OF the world. The unwarranted application of God's grace, freeing them from sin and filth, was a foundational element of their faith, as well as a shift from the strikingly darker worldview of medieval Catholocism. Bach would have thought of himself residing in God's Mighty Fortress. To Bach, the church served as bulwark that would never fail to protect the faithful from the dark and sinful world. One must recognize the Lutheran's view of redemption through Jesus providing the ultimate resolution to the dissonance of the fallen world, to understand both Bach's vision of the world and how these pieces fit into that vision. Understanding this, can't we accept Bach's dark vision of the sinful world without viewing him as essentially dark?

Ultimately, isn't it possible to accept Bach as a character who is as complex and refined as his compositions? Mr. Taruskin, why go through all the trouble to break down a simple and one sided view of Bach, only to throw up an equally narrow perspective. I am indebted to your insight, which has enabled to me to appreciate Teldec's collection of these oft overlooked Cantatas, but I'd rather not trade in my rose colored glasses for a pair that are black and blue. I'll try listening to Bach without glasses, if you don't mind.

CD review, or Taruskin's views on the aesthetics of listening?

Like several of you have already commented previously: Leave it to Taruskin to turn a CD review into a philosophical investigation on the aesthetics of ‘Enlightened’/modern listeners!

One of my favorite parts of this “review” can be found in Taruskin’s description of what different types of musicians (listeners, performers, and composers/scholars) value in a recording. As I am currently teaching Introduction to Music, opposing values in the aesthetics of music is something I encounter in most class periods. As Taruskin says of modern listeners and musicians, music in post-Enlightened society is often defined in the parameters of its agreeability. (How different from John Cage’s definition of music as “organized sound!”) I find this to be true of most of my students. When I play Cage’s “Aria” or a movement from Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire,” these pieces are generally met with distaste, and the inevitable discussion on the philosophy of music ensues. One of the most challenging topics to explain to my students is the idea that music can have a greater goal, a greater purpose, than beauty. However, being aware of this idea can also be problematic: as most music graduate students know, the heightened concern of composer and scholars (and I admit to being guilty of this myself) towards the objective analysis of a musical work often trumps our enjoyment of it.

Although I appreciate Taruskin inspiring these philosophical questions within me, some of his statements seem to be purposefully controversial (although, the post-script was quite funny!). For example, to categorize the “essential” Bach as being strictly functional—that is, inspiring awe or fear in God—seems an oversimplification. For example, on page 310 Taruskin writes: “For with Bach—the essential Bach—there is no ‘music itself.’” So, according to Taruskin, the quintessential representation of Bach’s music is undoubtedly sacred. But what about Bach’s time in Weimar? What about The Well Tempered Clavier? What about the Brandenburg Concertos? Bach’s works which conform to the guidelines of the Doctrine of Affections are contrary to the “essential Bach” Taruskin describes: though one may call them studies in a particular emotion, their function is far from instilling Lutheran values in listeners.

I do agree with Taruskin (and I commend him for enlightening his readers on this matter) that an accurate listening of Bach may require a shift in the listening aesthetic of many—that several of the cantatas on this CD are more accurately, both historically and functionally, performed in a harsh or dissonant manner. My criticism lies in his aggressive, extreme language. Clearly, when one writes “…the world is filth and horror, that humans are helpless, that life is pain, that reason is a snare,” (page 310), they aren’t being shy about pushing the readers’ buttons!

Response to Turuskin's "Facing Up, Finally, to Bach's Dark Vision"

I do not believe myself to be naïve. I believe there are great scholars whose work should be admired and respected. Furthermore, I believe all men, even the greatest scholars in their respected fields, are still human, complete with agendas, opinions, and soapboxes. Turuskin’s achievements are momentous, unfathomable landmarks in the field of music. They are not, however, a gratuitous credential for we scholars to blindly agree with. We needn’t wash the feet of a man with whom we may disagree with because of his past accomplishments.

That being said, I agree with the vast majority of Turuskin’s article. Personally, my love for Bach has been unwavering since entering college. His music embodies everything in music that I wish for. As Turuskin points out, to truly know Bach’s music is to recognize that it can be ugly, aggressive, painful, and sometimes downright exhausting. Listen to a violinist attempt to play multiple quadruple stops whilst bringing out a prominent melodic line. There is nothing beautiful about these fugues from the violin sonatas (BWV 1001, 1003, 1005). To say a composer’s music is at times ugly is in no way an insult. In what way is ugly music better than beautiful music? Absolutely none.

The portion (a mere sentence) of Turuskin’s argument that I take offense to is “Listeners value performances to the extent that they are beautiful-sounding.” (309) Bach, Ligeti, Lutoslawski, Carter, Penderecki – these are my favorite composers. Of course, these composers have created beautiful music, but its beauty is usually amidst horrific sounds of tone clusters, obtrusive polyrhythms, and harsh extended techniques. It is just these stretches of the grotesque that make the “beautiful” moments ever more sublime. How can one truly enjoy beauty without experiencing repugnance?

Taruskin the Persuader

Disclaimer: I read this review online, thus my page numbers are different from the hard copy.

As a musician who has so far avoided worshipping at the shrine of JSB, I have still heartily agreed with that book-mark sentiment: "Bach gave us God's word, Mozart gave us God's laughter, and Beethoven gave us God's fire." Leaving aside the thought that maybe Mahler gave us more fire than Beethoven, Bach certainly gave us God's word(s). Many and more of them, in fact. An endless stream of words flows through the cantatas, the Passions, and the B minor Mass, not to mention the interminable amount of notes which accompany them. And that's not even taking into account the verbosity of the cello suites or the keyboard works!

I realize that I am speaking what amounts to musical blasphemy, but I feel it allows me to have much less at stake than others when Taruskin takes aim at cherished illusions about one of the three B's.

Taruskin, at whose own shrine I might admittedly be found as a catechumen, gives here another textbook example of his guru-like ability to pull the metaphorical rug out from under his readers. The opening paragraphs set up a situation which encourages the unwary to feel comfortable (after all, who would argue that music is not "the art of pleasing by the succession and combination of agreeable sounds"?) and, as Taruskin continues, the reader allows his or her own prejudices to come closer to the forefront of their thoughts. The "music itself" does contain implications, does it not? Things that can be explicated and studied and that affect performance practice and performance reception. All that extramusical baggage, those "contemptible German church texts, which suffer from the earnest polemic of the Reformation," (p. 2) could get in the way of a true appreciation for the musical genius that is Johann Sebastian Bach.

BAM!

That's the noise Richard Taruskin makes when he suddenly turns and destroys the pedestal on which Bach has been placed. Being "hearty, genial, [and] lyrical" (p. 2) is only one aspect of his musical personality, Taruskin proclaims. Another side is more concerned with the truth (or more accurately the Truth) than with beauty. And the Truth for Bach is that "the world is filth and horror, that humans are helpless, that life is pain, that reason is a snare." (p. 2) Like Olivier Messiaen a few hundred years later, all those religious trappings weren't mere decoration for Bach, as Taruskin goes into detail to prove.

It is because of these details that my own admiration for Bach is now much more than when I began reading the review. Using the limitations of the performers' own equipment to further illustrate a text is surely a stroke of genius, whether that be intonation issues with period instruments or the lung-power of a vocalist. I found myself wishing I could listen to the performances before even completing the reading!

Thus, despite my earlier heretical sentiments, I am slow and surely coming to love Bach's music more and more, now thanks in part to the machinations and skillful pen of Richard Taruskin.

Taruskin and Bach, Anti-Enlighteners

Musicology is, after all, the scholarly study of Bach. (The dictionaries may realize this one day.) Among all the musical monuments carved out by Rome's Western heirs, Bach's 48 is for many in high places the inspired autograph, his ouevre the definition of objective excellence. Musical criticism, in turn, often becomes something like measuring any work to Bach's work--or the critic's view of Bach's. Myself a musicologist in training and an aspiring musical critic, I began musicologist-critic Richard Taruskin's "Facing Up, Finally, to Bach's Dark Vision" (New York Times, Jan. 27, 1991) expecting a well-written metaphysical feast on a highly nutritious musical topic.

To that disappearing species, the American lover of classical music, Richard Taruskin is probably the most famous musicologist alive today. His series of reviews for the Times means he has received more press than some emerging nations. Culminating in the massive Oxford History of Western Music (OUP, 2005), Taruskin's output is outstanding both for its length and its lack of professional courtesy. In my few years of experience seeing his work both public and semi-public, it strikes me that Bonhomme Richard loves nothing more than exposing other analysts' logical fallacies. (Perhaps the first Taruskin biography will be called Deconstructing Musicology or A Critic's Work Is Never Done.) Though this pastime leaves much to be desired in committee and department meetings, it more than makes up for in producing good copy. The real problem for his objects of criticism, of course, is that the aforesaid exposure so often Makes Good Sense to the postmodern mind--whatever that means, of course.

My expectations were confirmed. Taruskin's piece, ostensibly a CD review of Das Kantatenwerk (Hamburg: Teldec, 1971-89), is actually, like many of his writings, a well-coordinated attack on the Enlightenment and on Modernist aesthetics. Gustav Leonhardt and Nikolaus Harnoncourt provided merely a case study for Taruskin once again to argue his career's Uberthesis: "the music itself" is an elusive and useless concept. He alleges that formalism (in his words, exalting "the material sound of music" over "extramusical content") kills true musical expressivity--and that Bach would have had none of it. He downplays the Bach of Modernism--"'The Musical Offering' . . . after all arose out of contact with his son's employer, Frederick the Great of Prussia, ardent Enlightener of the German lands"--and calls the well-known Bach cantatas "unrepresentative."

Contra Burney's definition of music, "Bach's purpose [in church] was never just to please. If he pleased, it was only to cajole"--which is, of course, an excellent, if gentelemanly, description of Harnoncourt's Bach renditions. (Bonhomme Richard's sympathies for Harnoncourt's analyses may also have strengthened after the general disdain the latter seems to have experienced from musicological mainstays like Early Music.) Harnoncourt's performance practice, risky in 1971 but passe soon afterwards, is for Taruskin laudatory for its gruesomeness, like a horror movie excellent for glorying in gore. Taruskin actually calls it "authentic" and sees in it "the essential Bach," the Bach for whom "there is no 'music itself.'"

I savored the article, as I do every Taruskin piece I read, like a good four-course meal that allows return buffet trips. Taruskin's research is never shoddy, his illustrations are always on point, and his prose is always provocative (to borrow an adjective from the Oxford History's jacket copy). But the usual aftertaste was stronger than normal, stronger this time because of the dishes served.

In this article, Taruskin praised a recording passed over by consumers and ignored by critics, claiming that it represented "the essential Bach." What Taruskin actually means by this phrase (seven times!) is Truth over Beauty, even when opposed to it--Truth over even Reason itself. Truth, with a capital T, is something Bach seems to have been sure of. (Historical skepticism, a discipline of the Renaissance and its Enlightened heirs, does not permit me to be as sure as Taruskin is on this point.) This Truth was already being attacked in Bach's own day, and those attacks furnished the background for lines like "Shut up, stumbling Reason!" in Cantata 178.

The aftertaste came when I realized--even more so than usual--that I'd been had. In taking an anti-Enlightenment stance, Taruskin offered no alternative but his title. For me, however, the proper response is to look for the Truth. Instead of a nutritious feast, I'd just "consumed" something in reality more like a documentary expose of the agricultural industry that leaves the viewer neither full nor exactly hungry. My personal religious beliefs, I suspect, lie closer to Bach's than Taruskin's do. (What musicologist doesn't want to paint Bach in his own image? But hear me out.) But I was being expected to shudder at the ideas behind Bach's cantata libretti--ideas that, had I simply read the libretti or heard a "beautiful" performance, I might well have taken, literally if superficially, as Gospel. Now I have philosophical, aesthetic, and metaphysical baggage to unpack upon arrival before I can sit down to eat.

So in my spare time, I need to find that Teldec set and see if I really can stomach it. In the last analysis, then, Taruskin did accomplish one of a critic's main purposes; to provoke a desire to listen to something. I don't the effect on me was what what he actually intended, but I thank him for it. My contact with "the essential Bach" will surely not be the same, and I hope it even improves my contact with the Truth.

Taruskin the Iconoclast

Taruskin’s silhouette has loomed over my budding musicologist’s subconscious ever since a lazy Saturday some years ago when I read his work Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions on a whim. I was obsessed with Les Noces at the time, and his interaction with Stravinsky’s musical sources and the poetry of Kireevsky opened a new world to me—such depth, such insight, so much I would have never been able to figure out on my own by reading the score and fumbling through measure after tautly entwined measure of subcritical Cyrillic. My next encounter with the Taruskin phenomenon was his lambasting of another favorite composer of mine, John Adams, in the perpetual fallout from The Death of Klinghoffer.

So in reading his review of the Teldec recordings, I felt the shade of his specter once again—part of me wanted to recoil from his assertions about the reality of Bach’s visions, while another part of me wanted to devour every word on the page in much the same way one can eat an entire bag of potato chips trying to recover the initial shock of the salt and grease hitting the palate. The challenge from Taruskin’s approach to reviewing this particular set of recordings arises not from his frank language about the gritty polemics of Bach’s settings of Luther, but rather the very fact that he’s said something contrary to public opinion.

At my alma mater, there hangs a chintzy calligraphic sampler on a beloved professor’s wall that asserts, “Bach gave us God’s beauty.” And beautiful Bach’s music is indeed; we listen to the Credo from the B minor Mass and we cannot help but be transfixed by the throbs of transcendent beauty: the supple, poignant G major resignation of the Crucifixus becomes the subdominant of a burst of life—“insupportable, implacable, life!” in the words of Baudelaire—as the Et Resurrexit Tertia Die bursts out of the Paschal predawn glow. Surely this is Bach at his most beautiful. That said, Taruskin’s critique is not that people find Bach’s music beautiful, they find it beautiful for the wrong reason, that is, for the “perfection” thereof.

Taruskin appropriately pointed out modern music appreciation’s fetishizing of the raw materials of music, those things that can only be written on the page, to such a point that “when pressed to a logical extreme, some have even attempted to deny the reality of musical expressivity…all music stands or falls as distinguished entertainment” (309). To this point in the article, undoubtedly most people have been silently nodding their heads in agreement, until the next paragraph when Taruskin lets them have it by stating a simple assertion that stands in complete dissonance to the public’s view of Bach as the master formalist: “How utterly irrelevant this whole esthetic is to the Bach of the cantatas” (310)!

Ah, the refreshing power of cognitive dissonance. Even as I read it, I found myself scratching my head, but I immediately understood what Taruskin was going for: people have been reducing Bach to something comfortable and containable. To think that the educated masses that suckled on the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach could possibly misunderstand one of their idols! But this is the genius of Taruskin’s criticism: he points out something that has been left ignored for centuries, and when viewed in light of the cultural baggage surrounding the Bachian Cult in the West, it looks frightening in comparison. But the point is not that Bach is suddenly no longer the sun-encircled Apollonian deity the Western bourgeoisie has made him out to be; Bach simply has more layers than people care to acknowledge.

More on: Astonishment, Gratitude, Sharing, and Story

I would like to comment a little more on why I started this seminar on music criticism with a poem, specifically with Mary Oliver’s “Messenger.” This will give my perspective on studying, thinking, and writing about music as I begin my 36th year at UK.
I think of all engagement with music as “music appreciation.” Whether we are casually sight-reading a popular song or analyzing the advanced harmonic techniques of complex art music, whether we are listening (really listening) to music or trying to describe it to a friend or a student, we are “valuing it,” or in other words appreciating it. We are only able to experience music because we are alive and have our sense perceptions in tact. (Obvious, you may well say, but how often do we appreciate that!) As workaday and tedious as life can seem at times, it is also a mystery and a miracle, and when we wake up to that basic fact, it can be “astonishing.” So music can--and should--wake us up. What are the ingredients for that magic? Mary Oliver suggests that “all the ingredients are here, which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart and these body-clothes, /a mouth with which to give shouts of joy….” This doesn’t mean we have to force ourselves to be cheerful all the time, but I find this attitude a very good ground from which to begin, over and over again. We can and need to be discerning and make judgments all the time, but our critical writing and assessments can be based on that foundation. If you don’t accept this or it seems strange, try this attitude on and see (and hear) what happens.
So, What comes next after astonishment and gratitude? Sharing. In the poem that sharing takes the form of “shouts of joy;” for us it will take the form of writing accounts of our experience and discussing them with others, not exclusively members of our seminar. These accounts will be “stories,” even if they take the form of an academic paper. I have found it very helpful, both in my teaching and life outside the classroom, to realize that I am a storyteller—and so are you! And because of this realization I try to cultivate the art of storytelling. It can be astonishing. I think I will let me friend David R. Loy tell the rest of the story of this blog entry by quoting him from his recent book: The World is Made of Stories [Boston: Wisdom, 2010].

“The universe is made of stories, not atoms.”
-Muriel Rukeyser

Not atoms? Of course it is made of atoms. That’s one of our important stories.
What other stories make our world? Creation myths; folk and fairy tales; 17-syllabue Japanese haiku and three-day Indonesian shadow-puppet drams; novels romantic, fantastic and graphic; TV soap opera…newspaper features; op-ed articles; internet blogs; talk show chatter; office memos; obituaries and birth announcements; how-to-use manuals; and how you’re feeling this morning; what happened during our vacation; what to plan for the weekend. [LB: and “critical writing about music!]
A story is an account of something. “What’s the story on these unpaid bills?’
If the world is made of stories, stories are not just stories. They teach us what is real, what is valuable, and what is possible. Without stories there is no way to engage with the world because there is no world, and no one to engage with it because there is no self.
The world is made of our accounts of it because we never grasp the world was it is in itself, apart from stories about it. We do not experience a world and then make up stories to understand it. Whenever we try to peel them all away, to discover the reality behind, whatever becomes exposed immediately transforms into story, like excavated artifacts that disintegrate as soon as uncovered.
The same is true of ourselves, but that is getting ahead of the story.
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My life has allowed me to have this particular view. But rest assure, we are still going to attack and devour plenty of music, in serious, intelligent, heartfelt, and yes “academic” ways. But I hope this broader view will allow you to play in a bigger field, to be more honest and open, and to experience great joy and appreciation as we learn together and celebrate together. Isn’t that one of music’s greatest gifts?

Taruskin and Button Pushing

Response to “Facing Up, Finally, to Bach’s Dark Vision”
by John Michael McCluskey

Richard Taruskin has certainly earned his status as one the most prominent members of the musical writing community, and this review from the New York Times is representative of exactly what makes his writing engaging, challenging, and so fun to read. This response assumes a working knowledge of the content of the article, and deals instead with the makeup of the Taruskinian article.


Publicity is something Taruskin has never needed to generate. His writings include all the drama necessary to circulate his name, as he is sure to push buttons when they are available, whether they belong to individuals, journals, or even perceptions of beloved composers (the center of the chosen article). Taruskin generates conflict by intentionally using charged words and phrases, and then arguing that the correct definition/interpretation (by no coincidence, Taruskin’s) is different from the general consensus. My favorite example:

“There is no way this music can ever be fun. In fact, it is terrifying--perhaps more now than in Bach’s own time, since we have greater reason than Bach’s contemporaries ever had to wince at the sound of a high-pitched German voice stridently shouting reason down” (312-313).

Taruskin could have taken time to explain to readers that he is not attacking the importance, quality, or greatness of Bach’s works, but is indicating the value of a new interpretation. Instead, Taruskin jumps straight into “there is no way this music can ever be fun,” and in doing so attacks one of the musical values many readers hold as vital: enjoyability. This, of course, instigates reader commentary, backlash, and outrage, which Taruskin incorporates into his 1994 post-script, in order to prove his article’s value in generating discussion amongst the music community.


My favorite example of Taruskin’s button pushing (from this article) comes from his assertion that “Early Music has been ignoring the series since the 1986 releases...” (308). While this may have been true, Taruskin had no reason to include a jab at this prestigious journal. As a matter of fact, Taruskin should have thanked Early Music for not picking up on the detail that is his article’s main point: that Romanticized interpretations of Bach’s music may not be the best way to represent his cantatas. Because Early Music passed on a review, Taruskin was allowed the opportunity, five years after Leonhardt and Harnoncourt publication, to come forth with a new view on Bach’s oh-so-Lutheran works. Taruskin’s is a brilliant maneuver, to say the least; publishing a new, groundbreaking way of thinking about Bach, while simultaneously chastising Early Music for not having already had the same revelation. I believe, in this case, Taruskin manages to have his cake and eat it too.


Make no mistake here, Taruskin never pushes a button when he cannot back it up. However, his willingness to embrace controversy and reader discomfort contributes to making his writing so enjoyable. It helps turn pages, stimulate thought, encourages discussion, and, perhaps most importantly, sell copies.

Woven Together: Handel, Lieberson and Xerxes Tree

This may come as a shock to you: I have no hesitation to speak up in class. In spite of this, I've always been strangely reluctant to share things that I write. In the spirit of new beginnings, and also in the spirit of class requirements, I figure it's high time to move beyond these hesitations. I was particularly moved, some would say astonished, by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's recording played in in class on Wednesday. It moved me to do two things when I got home: First I made my wife Ellen listen to it.... twice. And then I wrote this review. So, here goes nothing.


Woven Together:
Handel, Lieberson and Xerxes Tree

"George Washington's contemporaries admired him not because he was a plaster saint or an empty uniform but because they sensed his unseen power." (Chernow, "Washington: A Life") Throughout his career as a military and political leader George Washington drew upon restraint as a means of power. Lorraine Hunt Lieberson wields this same restrained power in her performance of Handel's Ombra Mai Fui from the Opera Serse. She combines simplicity and subtlety with a sound that is embracing and warm, never overpowering the orchestra whom she seems to be speaking to, as opposed to singing with. As you listen to the piece you get a sense that you've stumbled in unnoticed on the deeply personal conversation of two lovers unaware that their moment is being shared. While you may feel like an outsider looking in, to borrow from the words of Alex Ross, "the warmth of her voice [brings you] close." The dynamic contrast and the arch of emotional content, beginning from nothing and rising to climax before returning back to nothingness, is subtle enough that it's effect is more felt than heard.

Tender and beautiful fronds
of my beloved plane tree,
let Fate smile upon you.
May thunder, lightning, and storms
never bother your dear peace,
nor may you by blowing winds be profaned.

A shade there never was,
of any plant,
dearer and more lovely,
or more sweet.

These words from Nicoló Minato's libretto romanticize Xerxes relationship with this beloved tree as opposed to admiration for this tree. He does not exclaim its stateliness or grandeur. He does not expound on its strength over time, instead he loves the tree for it's base existence, for merely being there. He loves the tree for accomplishing what all trees accomplish; for getting in the way of the oppressive sun. These words reflect on a profound truth of human existence: We desire not to be loved for being special, but to be specially loved just for being. As the aria develops, the orchestra and soloist are united in much the same way as the shadows of Xerxes and his tree; moving together with the rising and falling of the sun, one hardly knows where one begins and the other ends.

A piece of art can be considered great when it would be diminished by either adding or subtracting. Handel accomplished artistic greatness in his simple and understated aria. Lorraine Hunt Lieberson weaves her performance so perfectly to the form and function of the piece, it is impossible to tell where Handel's artistic voice ends and Ms. Lieberson's begins.

Learning to be astonished (and grateful)

We began this seminar with Mary Oliver's poem "Messanger," for the simple reason that as musicians we should be astonished every day by something (music or not). We can make that our "work," too. The joy and challenge is in sharing that amazement with others. In this case (that is, the seminar) we'll do that through words. "Word as needle." Penetrating, playful, precise, musical words. The music leading us to words, the words leading us back to music. Find words. Share them. Be grateful.

Messenger

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

Mary Oliver

Welcome

Welcome to our class blog for MUS 702, Fall Semester, 2011. Let's make this a thrilling blog! (But I'll need your help).
LB