[POST CONSTRUCTION ZONE -- HARD HATS RECOMMENDED --
OKAY, SO MAYBE WE JUST GO AHEAD AND CALL THIS A POST]
IVES: "Memories":
Roberta Alexander, soprano; Tan Crone, piano. Etcetera, recorded in the Netherlands, released 1984
The other performances we heard "highlighted" in the last post:
Jan DeGaetani, mezzo-soprano; Gilbert Kalish, piano. Nonesuch, released 1976
Susan Graham, mezzo-soprano; Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano. EMI-Warner Classics, recorded in the Grosser Saal of the Vienna Konzerthaus, Nov. 6-8, 2003
And these performances (which we've heard before) remind
us that this could be a nephew remembering his uncle:
Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; Julius Drake, piano. Hyperion, recorded in All Saints Church (Durham Road), East Finchley, London, Nov. 1-12, 2004
Jerry Hadley, tenor; Eric Dalheim, piano. Live performance from the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), Nov. 14, 2000
by Ken
For personal reasons it was kind of important to me to get some kind of post up, in particular one that advances toward the other end of this detour from the last detour from the previous detour and so on, which produced the post "About this Ives thing, we can do it the easy way, or the hard way; or maybe we have to do it both ways." One thing in particular nagged at me as that post was taking shape, and nagged me even worse once it was posted: that what I was describing as "the easy way" of coming to grips with the Ives legacy was represented only by those three clips of the same under-a-half-minute bit of a song-section that is itself only part of the two-part song "Memories."
I think it made for a darned fine half-minute of music, but in my head I kept hearing and yearning for the full "B" section of "Memories" -- and so here it is. In the process we have also answered the question I posed as to which of those three performances we were going to really focus on. And I hope there are folks who've been here and naturally assumed, noting that Jan DeGaetani was one of the contenders, that she would be the "winner."
LET'S BE PERFECTLY CLEAR: IN THIS GROUPING
OF PERFORMANCES, THERE WASN'T ANY "LOSER"
And now that we've heard all three ladies, and our two gentlemen, sing all of the "B" section of "Memories," I think two things -- no, let's make it three things -- should be perfectly clear:
(1) These are all lovely performances, intelligently imagined and artfully sung, each a credit to the performers (pianists as well as singers) and a rich experience for the listener.
(3) And isn't it wonderful how differently successful the performances are?
And yet -- (2) At the same time, for me at least, one performance clearly sets itself apart.
In this larger context, we can properly appreciate how many things this song-section is about: cherished relationships, time, generational closeness and distance, aging, the everyday business of life and coping, and throughout, the role of song in getting on with life, even in adverse circumstances. Remember, it's not the uncle but his threadbare tune that we're told is "tattered" and "torn," that "shows signs of being worn," that "was sad" and, extraordinarily, "seemed to slow up both his feet," and that was nevertheless "kind-a sweet." I think we know, as we hear of his slowed-up, shuffling feet, as he nevertheless made his daily rounds, always humming rather than complaining, that the wearing-out isn't limited to the uncle's ear-strain-producing tune.
And it's in Roberta Alexander's stunningly yet totally un-self-consciously sculpted performance that we hear all of this imagined, processed, and reimagined through the filter of memory: that we can all, I think, see some version of the much-loved (and no doubt much-missed) uncle, and feel not just some of the pain that afflicts both uncle and niece but the love that not only bound them then but leaps over all the intervening years to be re-experienced in yet another retelling.
Each of our singing narrators has her/his own uncle, and each remembers him in her/his own way. Each experiences some mix of pleasure and pain, or at least discomfort -- the song, after all, is billed as "Rather Sad" rather than, say, "tragic." Each is re-experiencing her/his own relationship over this extended time gap.
From Jan DeGaetani we get a real sense of the haunting power of memory, still deeply felt as re-experienced, but seemingly all fairly well processed. From Susan Graham we get a generally vocally crisper mode of remembrance. But from Roberta Alexander, just listen to what we get! A voice bursting with both joy and sadness, in an endless variety of colors, tones, and shades -- all bound up inseparably with those beautiful words. And for all the rhythmic freedom, the written rhythms are only occasionally, and clearly intentionally, distorted -- as with that lovely catch at "from early morn" and, even more, "kind-a sweet."
Some readers will be familiar with my ritual diatribe against pianists who routinely maul, say, the Chopin ballades with fake rubato that dissipates the basic structure of the music. I wish they had a glimmering of what rubato is meant to do: to realize the notated rhythms in a way that's truer to their inner life than metronomic exactitude would be.
ADDING IN THE "A" SECTION OF "MEMORIES" RAISES
THE QUESTION: Just how fast is "As fast as it will go"?
Well, let's turn to our all-North American team of performers:
["B" at 0:41] Roberta Alexander, soprano; Tan Crone, piano. Etcetera, recorded in the Netherlands, released 1984
["B" at 0:35] Jan DeGaetani, mezzo-soprano; Gilbert Kalish, piano. Nonesuch, released 1976
["B" at 0:34] Susan Graham, mezzo-soprano; Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano. EMI-Warner Classics, recorded in the Grosser Saal of the Vienna Konzerthaus, Nov. 6-8, 2003
["B" at 0:48] Jerry Hadley, tenor; Eric Dalheim, piano. Live performance from the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), Nov. 14, 2000
["B" at 0:44] Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; Julius Drake, piano. Hyperion, recorded in All Saints Church (Durham Road), East Finchley, London, Nov. 10-12, 2004
Since we've been dealing so far only with the "B" section of "Memories," only repeated reminders of this fact have kept us ongoingly aware that "Memories" is a two-part song. The first shock when we reload the "A" section -- with its high-potency "feeling of expectancy" and "certain kind of ecstasy" -- is how strikingly different a mode of memory it takes us into. And the "A" section tempo marking, "As fast as it will go," doesn't so much tell us how fast the "A" section should go as put into question what calculations have to be performed to figure it out?
The most obvious consideration, it seems to me, is the words. You can go pretty fast if all you require is spitting out sounds. But if the "going" in "as fast as it will go" includes maintaining full or even substantial intelligibility of the words, aren't we talking about a significantly different range of tempos from those that enable the singer to simply spit the lines out? And if we further take this "going" to call for meaningful intelligibility of the words, well, that's going to make that much more difference. I don't doubt that the tempo marking is meant to suggest headlong, breathless rendering, but you can get that too if you're up against a requirement that the words have to be understandable -- and why, after all, would you be singing them at all if it didn't matter?
In this regard I can't say I found much satisfaction from our performances. Be honest now: If you didn't have the words helpfully provided by this department for you to read off your screen, how much would you know about the story being told in section "A"? I'm not sure I would even know that we're sitting in the opera house, the opera house, the opera house.
The obvious exception is Jerry Hadley, who actually has most of his fun in "A" rather than "B." He seems well aware that he's singing to a live audience, and God bless him, he wants them with him! If he settles for kind of a carnival atmosphere, well, I can believe that the mood in the opera house he's remembering sitting in was pretty carnival-like -- with, you know, all that ecstasy expectancy. It seems noteworthy that even with what I might describe as a kind of crude choice for his "A" section, Hadley takes the most time with it -- and yet achieves, I think, the only genuine impression of breathlessness among our singers.
I think Gerald Finley had something in mind here, because you'll note that he's chosen a decidedly un-breakneck pace. But he doesn't seem much more interested in telling us his story than the others, pitching his delivery in a sort of cradled croon. For that matter, his "B" section, while pretty enough, is both vocally and interpretively more generalized than Finley generally brings to his song-singing.
I might say that as I've been getting to know Finley's two Ives CDs better, I've begun developing a sort of impression that, however well he may have thought he had prepared the 31 songs -- including "Memories" -- recorded for the 2004 CD, he may have decided, in preparing another 30 songs for the 2008 CD, that the performance challenges are more considerable than he'd allowed for. Or it may just have been the natural process of acquiring experience -- maybe that second batch of Ives songs simply benefited from his experience of preparing the first batch. It does seem worth considering that 30 songs, however simple and straightforward you think most of them are, is still an awful lot of songs to prepare, especially if you come to appreciate that they're possibly not as simple and straightforward as you assumed.
DID THE LADIES HAVE A DIFFERENT PERFORMING AGENDA?
Remember that question we raised, "Just how fast is 'As fast as it will go'?" What if the singer takes this to mean, after all, "as fast as I can spit the damned thing out"? And then, with that framework in place, I'll do whatever I can with the words. Doesn't this sound kind of like what Jan DeGaetani is doing?
I guess, to each his/her own.
STILL TO COME
We still have more work planned among Ives's songs. And as we transition from the more-accessible to the less-accessible Ives, I'm thinking we might want to squeeze in some attention for the Third and Fourth Symphonies. Maybe the violin sonatas? Or the string quartets? All on our way to the showdown with the Concord Sonata.
OKAY, SO MAYBE WE JUST GO AHEAD AND CALL THIS A POST]
Roberta Alexander and indomitable accompanist Tan Crone
IVES: "Memories":
B, Rather Sad (Adagio)
From the street a strain on my ear doth fall,
a tune as threadbare as that “old red shawl.”
It is tattered, it is torn,
it shows signs of being worn,
it's the tune my Uncle hummed from early morn.
'Twas a common little thing and kind-a sweet,
but 'twas sad and seemed to slow up both his feet.
I can see him shuffling down,
to the barn or to the town,
a-hum-[drawn out]-ming. [Hums]
-- text by the composer
Roberta Alexander, soprano; Tan Crone, piano. Etcetera, recorded in the Netherlands, released 1984
The other performances we heard "highlighted" in the last post:
Jan DeGaetani, mezzo-soprano; Gilbert Kalish, piano. Nonesuch, released 1976
Susan Graham, mezzo-soprano; Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano. EMI-Warner Classics, recorded in the Grosser Saal of the Vienna Konzerthaus, Nov. 6-8, 2003
And these performances (which we've heard before) remind
us that this could be a nephew remembering his uncle:
Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; Julius Drake, piano. Hyperion, recorded in All Saints Church (Durham Road), East Finchley, London, Nov. 1-12, 2004
Jerry Hadley, tenor; Eric Dalheim, piano. Live performance from the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), Nov. 14, 2000
by Ken
For personal reasons it was kind of important to me to get some kind of post up, in particular one that advances toward the other end of this detour from the last detour from the previous detour and so on, which produced the post "About this Ives thing, we can do it the easy way, or the hard way; or maybe we have to do it both ways." One thing in particular nagged at me as that post was taking shape, and nagged me even worse once it was posted: that what I was describing as "the easy way" of coming to grips with the Ives legacy was represented only by those three clips of the same under-a-half-minute bit of a song-section that is itself only part of the two-part song "Memories."
I think it made for a darned fine half-minute of music, but in my head I kept hearing and yearning for the full "B" section of "Memories" -- and so here it is. In the process we have also answered the question I posed as to which of those three performances we were going to really focus on. And I hope there are folks who've been here and naturally assumed, noting that Jan DeGaetani was one of the contenders, that she would be the "winner."
LET'S BE PERFECTLY CLEAR: IN THIS GROUPING
OF PERFORMANCES, THERE WASN'T ANY "LOSER"
And now that we've heard all three ladies, and our two gentlemen, sing all of the "B" section of "Memories," I think two things -- no, let's make it three things -- should be perfectly clear:
(1) These are all lovely performances, intelligently imagined and artfully sung, each a credit to the performers (pianists as well as singers) and a rich experience for the listener.
(3) And isn't it wonderful how differently successful the performances are?
And yet -- (2) At the same time, for me at least, one performance clearly sets itself apart.
In this larger context, we can properly appreciate how many things this song-section is about: cherished relationships, time, generational closeness and distance, aging, the everyday business of life and coping, and throughout, the role of song in getting on with life, even in adverse circumstances. Remember, it's not the uncle but his threadbare tune that we're told is "tattered" and "torn," that "shows signs of being worn," that "was sad" and, extraordinarily, "seemed to slow up both his feet," and that was nevertheless "kind-a sweet." I think we know, as we hear of his slowed-up, shuffling feet, as he nevertheless made his daily rounds, always humming rather than complaining, that the wearing-out isn't limited to the uncle's ear-strain-producing tune.
And it's in Roberta Alexander's stunningly yet totally un-self-consciously sculpted performance that we hear all of this imagined, processed, and reimagined through the filter of memory: that we can all, I think, see some version of the much-loved (and no doubt much-missed) uncle, and feel not just some of the pain that afflicts both uncle and niece but the love that not only bound them then but leaps over all the intervening years to be re-experienced in yet another retelling.
Each of our singing narrators has her/his own uncle, and each remembers him in her/his own way. Each experiences some mix of pleasure and pain, or at least discomfort -- the song, after all, is billed as "Rather Sad" rather than, say, "tragic." Each is re-experiencing her/his own relationship over this extended time gap.
From Jan DeGaetani we get a real sense of the haunting power of memory, still deeply felt as re-experienced, but seemingly all fairly well processed. From Susan Graham we get a generally vocally crisper mode of remembrance. But from Roberta Alexander, just listen to what we get! A voice bursting with both joy and sadness, in an endless variety of colors, tones, and shades -- all bound up inseparably with those beautiful words. And for all the rhythmic freedom, the written rhythms are only occasionally, and clearly intentionally, distorted -- as with that lovely catch at "from early morn" and, even more, "kind-a sweet."
Some readers will be familiar with my ritual diatribe against pianists who routinely maul, say, the Chopin ballades with fake rubato that dissipates the basic structure of the music. I wish they had a glimmering of what rubato is meant to do: to realize the notated rhythms in a way that's truer to their inner life than metronomic exactitude would be.
ADDING IN THE "A" SECTION OF "MEMORIES" RAISES
THE QUESTION: Just how fast is "As fast as it will go"?
Well, let's turn to our all-North American team of performers:
Jan DeGaetani (1933-1989) from northeastern OhioIVES: "Memories":
Jerry Hadley (1952-2007) from northwestern Illinois
Roberta Alexander (b 3/1949) from Virginia by way of southwestern Ohio
Gerald Finley (b 1/1960) from Montreal, with roots as well in Ottawa
Susan Graham (b 7/1960) from Roswell, N.M.
A, Very Pleasant (As fast as it will go)
We’re sitting in the opera house, the opera house, the opera house;
we’re waiting for the curtain to arise
with wonders for our eyes;
we’re feeling pretty gay,
and well we may.
“O Jimmy, look!” I say,
“the band is tuning up
and soon will start to play.”
We whistle and we hum,
beat time with the drum.
[Whistles.]
We whistle and we hum,
beat time with the drum.
[Whistles.]
We’re sitting in the opera house, the opera house, the opera house;
we’re waiting for the curtain to arise
with wonders for our eyes,
a feeling of expectancy,
a certain kind of , a certain kind of ecstasy . . .
Sh-s-s-s.
Curtain!
B, Rather Sad (Adagio)
From the street a strain on my ear doth fall,
a tune as threadbare as that “old red shawl.”
It is tattered, it is torn,
it shows signs of being worn,
it's the tune my Uncle hummed from early morn.
'Twas a common little thing and kind-a sweet,
but 'twas sad and seemed to slow up both his feet.
I can see him shuffling down,
to the barn or to the town,
a-hum-[drawn out]-ming. [Hums]
-- texts by the composer
["B" at 0:41] Roberta Alexander, soprano; Tan Crone, piano. Etcetera, recorded in the Netherlands, released 1984
["B" at 0:35] Jan DeGaetani, mezzo-soprano; Gilbert Kalish, piano. Nonesuch, released 1976
["B" at 0:34] Susan Graham, mezzo-soprano; Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano. EMI-Warner Classics, recorded in the Grosser Saal of the Vienna Konzerthaus, Nov. 6-8, 2003
["B" at 0:48] Jerry Hadley, tenor; Eric Dalheim, piano. Live performance from the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), Nov. 14, 2000
["B" at 0:44] Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; Julius Drake, piano. Hyperion, recorded in All Saints Church (Durham Road), East Finchley, London, Nov. 10-12, 2004
Since we've been dealing so far only with the "B" section of "Memories," only repeated reminders of this fact have kept us ongoingly aware that "Memories" is a two-part song. The first shock when we reload the "A" section -- with its high-potency "feeling of expectancy" and "certain kind of ecstasy" -- is how strikingly different a mode of memory it takes us into. And the "A" section tempo marking, "As fast as it will go," doesn't so much tell us how fast the "A" section should go as put into question what calculations have to be performed to figure it out?
The most obvious consideration, it seems to me, is the words. You can go pretty fast if all you require is spitting out sounds. But if the "going" in "as fast as it will go" includes maintaining full or even substantial intelligibility of the words, aren't we talking about a significantly different range of tempos from those that enable the singer to simply spit the lines out? And if we further take this "going" to call for meaningful intelligibility of the words, well, that's going to make that much more difference. I don't doubt that the tempo marking is meant to suggest headlong, breathless rendering, but you can get that too if you're up against a requirement that the words have to be understandable -- and why, after all, would you be singing them at all if it didn't matter?
In this regard I can't say I found much satisfaction from our performances. Be honest now: If you didn't have the words helpfully provided by this department for you to read off your screen, how much would you know about the story being told in section "A"? I'm not sure I would even know that we're sitting in the opera house, the opera house, the opera house.
I think Gerald Finley had something in mind here, because you'll note that he's chosen a decidedly un-breakneck pace. But he doesn't seem much more interested in telling us his story than the others, pitching his delivery in a sort of cradled croon. For that matter, his "B" section, while pretty enough, is both vocally and interpretively more generalized than Finley generally brings to his song-singing.
I might say that as I've been getting to know Finley's two Ives CDs better, I've begun developing a sort of impression that, however well he may have thought he had prepared the 31 songs -- including "Memories" -- recorded for the 2004 CD, he may have decided, in preparing another 30 songs for the 2008 CD, that the performance challenges are more considerable than he'd allowed for. Or it may just have been the natural process of acquiring experience -- maybe that second batch of Ives songs simply benefited from his experience of preparing the first batch. It does seem worth considering that 30 songs, however simple and straightforward you think most of them are, is still an awful lot of songs to prepare, especially if you come to appreciate that they're possibly not as simple and straightforward as you assumed.
DID THE LADIES HAVE A DIFFERENT PERFORMING AGENDA?
Remember that question we raised, "Just how fast is 'As fast as it will go'?" What if the singer takes this to mean, after all, "as fast as I can spit the damned thing out"? And then, with that framework in place, I'll do whatever I can with the words. Doesn't this sound kind of like what Jan DeGaetani is doing?
I guess, to each his/her own.
STILL TO COME
We still have more work planned among Ives's songs. And as we transition from the more-accessible to the less-accessible Ives, I'm thinking we might want to squeeze in some attention for the Third and Fourth Symphonies. Maybe the violin sonatas? Or the string quartets? All on our way to the showdown with the Concord Sonata.
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