And Now For the Music

And Now for the Music
by Evan Hause

A Review of Of Mozart, Parrots and Cherry Blossoms in the Wind by Bruce Adolphe

for The American Book Review May-June, 2000 [Vol. 21, No. 4]

Composers throughout history have contributed an eclectic body of prose to the corpus of literature about music. One may find the written thoughts of virtually any composer in the form of letters, memoirs, journals, or program notes for their own music, but there are few crafted books about what it means to work creatively in sound by the composers themselves, at least prior to the 20th century. Additionally, the non-theoretical commentary by composers of the last century is most often fragmentary: essays, conversations, lectures, apologias, articles and autobiographies. The content of this literature varies widely, from meaningful insight into the general creative process, to descriptions and defenses of specific methodologies, to polemic which is relevant only to its particular time and place. Readers beware: composers say the darnedest things. They can impart words that are enlightening, technical, controversial, unpredictable, personal, poetic, and suspect all at the same time. Does interesting music possess these same traits?

Those who have studied a second language know that once a certain level of comfort with the rules is reached, a final leap must be taken into the lap of the culture from whence it comes. That involves thinking in the language, pondering abstractions and writing creatively, not to mention living in the region of the language. There are nuances to be gleaned that do not translate. For the language of music, one turns to a theory textbook for the structural rules and a music history book for an account of the environment which gave wing to those rules.

But where does one turn to learn about life inside this language? Bruce Adolphe, a composer and educator, has contributed 25 essays that illuminate the world of composing, listening to and performing music. He has written in a friendly, non-theoretical, personal style, and is clearly passionate about inspiring a wider comprehension of what music can do and mean in our daily lives. He is a clever tour guide to a broad musical landscape that encompasses not only 19th century Vienna, but the world just down the street, in the next room, or inside our very beings. One might learn that we all already live in a world where music is a first language.

Of Mozart, Parrots and Cherry Blossoms in the Wind is a collection of essays drawn from Adolphe¹s own lectures presented at various music festivals and concert series around the U.S. or at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York City. The essays fulfill a variety of purposes. They address common questions asked by audiences and musicians, they shed light on the composer Adolphe¹s own creative impulse, they enlighten as to particular composers and their works, and they illuminate relationships between music and other cultural and even scientific realms. Adolphe¹s ranging imagination relates acting to playing, cooking to counterpoint, courtroom dramas to musical forms, DNA to the tonal system, ritual to musical performance, visual chiaroscuro to musical timbre, and many more. He muses on problems in music education, the excitingly lawless world of stylistic diversity inherited by new composers, the bane of musical marketing, the experience of psychotherapy, and various other aspects of everyday culture as it relates to music. The title is an appropriate montage for this storehouse of treats.

Some of the essays distinctly function as listening companions to particular works, such as string quartets by Beethoven and Schubert, several of Adolphe¹s own compositions, or a work by George Crumb. These usually transcend typical program note fare and offer a unique perspective for even the most experienced listeners. For instance, the reader learns that Beethoven peered into people¹s windows, that Ravel lacked certain financial acumen, and about Mahler¹s dysfunctional childhood home, Prokofiev¹s annoying precocity, and Adolphe¹s own tumultuous personal life. No holds are barred in this mission to bring the listener closer to music¹s creators, to hear old war-horses with new ears, or to commence hearing a new work with an initial emotional attachment.

The "program note" essays are woven into a grander philosophical fabric, namely the discussion of music as metaphor. Adolphe returns to this theme in multiple contexts. We view Debussy¹s La Mer as "a metaphor for our own restless loneliness, a thrilling vastness and nameless uncertainty" instead of a (la) mere rendering of the sea. (Puns abound in this book.) We interpret a Beethovenian cadenza as a welcome emotional recess from the forward march of time¹s measured gait instead of simply a moment of performer bravura. The concept of dissonance is brought out of its musical context and compared to such ordinary events as having your coat caught in the door as you try to leave your house or, on a larger level, the disruption of routine that occurs when one visits a relative. Metaphorical play accounts for the lion¹s share of the scenery in this guided musico-philosophical hay ride. As Adolphe writes: "I will not attempt to describe the Grosse Fuge [of Beethoven], but rather urge you to listen to it, and to read [Sam] Shepard¹s True West. The best I can do here is to bounce metaphors from one work to the next, in hopes that they will collide, generating archetypal revelations of great force."

Frequently we are offered insight into the origins of the author¹s own compositions, and suggestions of the way real life events have provided initial stimuli of his compositions. Insomnia leading to a restless rhythmic idea, the juxtaposition of multiple emotions translated into a contrapuntal musical passage, or the stages of the mourning process realized in musical form are but a few chestnuts from the composer¹s reconnaissance missions into the woods of creativity. These are balanced with speculations about what inspirations composers long dead may have received from their Muses, based upon the truest source, the music itself. ("Perhaps both Brahms and Clara Schumann loved the pedal point for its historical resonance, its Bachian majesty. Perhaps they felt, but never consciously articulated, the pedal point¹s significance as a metaphor for their own relationship: a constant bond that could never be publicly acknowledgedŠ")

Adolphe is interested in topics as various as neuroscience, current film, and psychotherapy which is in itself evidence of a contemporary take on terrain well-trod by earlier 20th century composers such as Copland (What To Listen For In Music) or Schoenberg (Style and Idea) to name only two. The point is taken in several essays that a composer can rarely, if ever, be separated from the personality. He draws from his own experience with psychotherapy as a departure point for an exploration of the musical minds of Beethoven, Prokofiev and Shostakovich (the book¹s subtitle is, after all, A Composer Explores Mysteries of the Musical Mind). Asides informed by behavioral science pepper the text, such as a reference to Schubert¹s possible cyclothymia. Thorns of contemporary society and culture are held alongside corresponding mannerisms of yesteryear. For example, talk television is upbraided for its lack of quality conversation in order to highlight the "eloquentŠnearly forgotten kind of beauty" of a Mozart serenade, itself a beautiful conversation from an age of manners. [After reading this essay, I found myself in a Brooklyn Laundromat where three televisions blared three different morning "argument" programs simultaneously to the apparent amusement of several fellow Laundromatees.]

I enjoyed Adolphe¹s musings on education, as well as his response to common student and audience questions about the art form. In one essay, he revisits a few of the interesting composition exercises from his earlier book, The Mind¹s Ear, and supplies a bit more historical context than that book. (Indeed, portions of Of MozartŠ might serve to set up the exercises in The Mind¹s Ear, used in an educational setting.) In another essay he tackles the question often asked of teachers: did the composer mean to turn this or that technical trick? or was it read into the music by the analyst? In still another too-brief essay, he tackles "How Music Means," exploring music from three different historical periods in four pages. While it may be impossible to answer such questions thoroughly, they are thoughtfully pondered, and we have a well of informed contemplation to draw upon: "Music is not a particular action from daily life, but the resonance of action. Music is not a description of memory, but rather the shape of memory."

Adolphe frequently cites poets, a physicist, a neuroscientist, musical performers, critics, musicologists, composers and composers¹ friends, and, while understanding that these personal essays are not intended to substitute for musicological research, I frequently lamented the absence of a bibliography, or at least a list of recommended reading. Much biographical information about composers, some of it seemingly freshly unearthed, is mentioned. Another quibble is that I found the scope of music and composers a bit limited, but even more nagging was a hint of the traditional cliché that great music comes from great geniuses who suffer for their genius. The perpetuation of the tortured artist mythology, distancing listeners and the "famous" or "great" composers, and far too many anguished Beethoven anecdotes, run strangely counter to the contemporary spirit of the text. Nonetheless, this book would make an appropriate gift for classical music initiates as well as seasoned concertgoers accustomed to the standard repertoire. The topics unearthed are grand and deep, the discussions are short but not shallow, and the narrative connective tissue between them is negligible. The anecdotes are summoned to bring us in a circle around a crystal ball that shows us music, but necessarily cannot present a strict translation of the music itself.