Still on the trail of our two classic Operatic Bad Days, we pause to sniff an elder tree

Friedrich Schorr as Hans Sachs

We're early in Act II of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. The scene is a street with houses on the left and right, separated by a narrow alley that winds toward the back of the stage. The right-hand house, grand in style, is the goldsmith and mastersinger VEIT POGNER's; the left-hand house, simple in style, is the cobbler and mastersinger HANS SACHS's. In front of POGNER's house there is a lime tree; in front of SACHS's an elder. -- As the act began, not long before, it is a pleasant summer evening, and in the course of the action of the act night falls.

At this point SACHS is in his workshop, unable to get out of his head the audition "mastersong" presented to him and his fellow mastersingers this morning, breaking all the rules, and yet, and yet -- Now, having just said good night to his apprentice, DAVID, he arranges his work, sits on his stool at the door, and then, laying his tools down again, leans back, resting his arms on the closed lower half of the door.

HANS SACHS: How sweet the elder smells,
so mild, so strong and full! --
It relaxes my limbs gently,
wants me to say something. --
What is the good of anything I can say to you?
I'm but a poor, simple man.
If work is not to my taste,
you might, friend, rather release me;
I would do better to stretch leather
and give up all poetry. --
[He tries to work, with much noise, but leaves off, leans back once more, and reflects.]
And yet, it just won't go. --
I feel it, and cannot understand it --
I cannot hold on to it, nor yet forget it;
and if I grasp it wholly, I cannot measure it! --
But then, how should I grasp
what seemed to me immeasurable?
No rule seemed to fit it,
and yet there was no fault in it. --
It sounded so old, and yet was so new,
like birdsong in sweet May: --
whosoever hears it
and, carried away by madness,
were to sing it after the bird,
it would bring him derision and disgrace! --
Spring's command,
sweet necessity
placed it in his breast;
then he sang as he had to;
and as he had to, so he could --
I noticed that particularly.
The bird that sang today
had a finely formed beak;
if he made the Masters uneasy,
he certainly well pleased Hans Sachs!

-- English translation (mostly) by Peter Branscombe

Friedrich Schorr (b), Hans Sachs; London Symphony Orchestra, Leo Blech, cond. EMI, recorded May 10, 1930

Franz Crass (bs), Hans Sachs; Bavarian Radio Orchestra, Kurt Eichhorn, cond. EMI, recorded c1971

by Ken

Two weeks ago I set out to explore some of what I'm calling Operatic Bad Days ("On an operatic bad day you can sometimes see forever -- but oftentimes not"), offering as a sort of model, though a far from ideal one, Sir John Falstaff's massively self-pitying monologue at the start of Act III of Verdi and Boito's Falstaff, after dragging himself out of the Thames, decrying our "Thieving world! Villainous world! Wicked world!" (Eventually, believe it or not, this is going to tie up with our still-ongoing discussion of the underlying link between Schubert's "An die Musik," Richard Strauss's "Zueignung," and the Prologue to Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos.)

Then last week I revealed ("Promissory note for one of our still-to-come Operatic Bad Days") that one of the OBDs I'm targeting takes place in a Wagner opera -- maybe Tannhäuser, maybe Tristan und Isolde, maybe Die Meistersinger, maybe Parsifal, or maybe even Lohengrin. In the process last week we heard a lot of music, and if you haven't taken it all in, it's still there.


I STILL FEEL BAD FOR NOT TALKING ABOUT LAST
WEEK'S PERFORMANCES, BUT I HAD MY REASONS

Promissory note for one of our still-to-come Operatic Bad Days

Along the way, we hear how Wagner made it
possible for folks everywhere to get married

MONDAY NIGHT UPDATE: Okay, I think we've got something more like a post. There's still work to be done, notably the addition of texts, but for now, whew!
TUESDAY NIGHT UPDATE: I wound up substantially rejiggering and in some aspects entirely reconstituting the Tristan and Meistersinger lineups, in addition to adding the promised texts for each, so progress is being made. I feel a keen need for fuller context-setting of the "days" dramatized in these excerpts, but fear that trying to plug the gap will lead to utterly exploding the post. Hmm. Still to come for sure: texts for Lohengrin [done!] and Tannhäuser.
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE: I've not only done the Tannhäuser texts but popped in as-brief-as-possible situation-setters for Tannhäuser, Tristan, and Meistersinger. At least for now, I think we're there, wherever "there" is, except for whatever cleanup of the wreckage I'm able to undertake.



by Ken

Last week we started talking about Operatic Bad Days ("On an operatic bad day you can sometimes see forever -- but oftentimes not"), looking first at the case of Sir John Falstaff (courtesy of Maestro Verdi), dragging himself out of the Thames to drown his sorrows at the Garter Inn. Sir John, I think we can agree, got what he deserved and deserved what he got, but not so much with the two OBD sufferers whose cases always crowd my mind. By way of setting the mood, while I struggle with what was supposed to be an "easy" post, here's a tease. [SUNDAY UPDATE: Now filled out a little more!]

WAGNER: Tannhäuser: Act III Prelude


Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded Oct.-Nov. 1961

Staatskapelle Berlin, Daniel Barenboim, cond. Teldec, recorded June 2001

London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, cond. EMI, recorded Dec. 13-14. 1972

WAGNER: Tristan und Isolde: Act III Prelude


Symphony of the Air, Leopold Stokowski, cond. RCA, recorded 1960-61

Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Carlos Kleiber, cond. Recorded during a live performance of the opera, Oct. 7, 1973

Staatskapelle Berlin, Wilhelm Furtwängler, cond. From a live performance of most of Acts II and III, Oct. 3, 1947

WAGNER: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Act III Prelude


London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, cond. EMI, recorded January 1974

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rafael Kubelik, cond. From a broadcast performance of the complete opera, October 1967

Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded during concert performances of the opera, Sept. 23-27, 1995

WAGNER: Parsifal: Act III Prelude


London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, cond. EMI, recorded January 1973

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Hans Knappertsbusch, cond. Philips, recorded live at the 1962 festival

Welsh National Opera Orchestra, Reginald Goodall, cond. EMI, from a recording of the complete opera, June 1984

THEN AGAIN, IN CASE YOU THINK YOU'VE STARTED
TO SENSE A PATTERN HERE, THERE'S ALSO THIS

On an operatic bad day you can sometimes see forever -- but oftentimes not

"Wicked world. -- There's no more virtue. -- Everything's in decline."

-- A man who knows a thing or two about, you know, things

A man staggers up to an inn . . .

The exterior of the inn, which along with its name bears the motto: "HONNY SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE." A bench beside the door. It's the hour of twilight.

Our man is seated on the bench, meditating. Then he stirs himself, pounds on the bench with a big fist, and turning toward the interior of the inn calls to the host.

by Ken

Even if we make clear that by "an operatic bad day" I don't mean a bad day for the audience (of which I often feel I've experienced not just my own share but a whole bunch of other people's) but a bad day for the main character(s) onstage, it may seem oxymoronic to be talking about "operatic bad days." Aren't they mostly pretty rotten? Isn't this what opera is usually about? Isn't it a significant part of what we normally think it means for something to be "operatic"?

The kind of bad day I'm thinking of, though, isn't just a day when everything seems to go wrong, even disastrously wrong. I'm thinking of the kind of day when the victim realizes that he/she has played a major role in setting off the unfortunate chain of events, and as a result, despite a certain lack of totally accurate perspective, owing to the inevitable bleakness of spirit, sees truth(s) stretching out as far as the imagination can see.

The part about the victim realizing that he/she has played a major role in setting off the unfortunate chain of events clearly excludes out companion today. In Sir John Falstaff's imagination nothing is his fault, and never mind that it was his own crackpot scheme to seduce one or maybe two of the merry wives of Windsor, not even for libidinous satisfaction but to tap into their not-so-merry husbands' coffers to provide himself with a bit of working capital, blindly falling into separate traps set by both the women and men of Windsor, that resulted in his being dumped unceremoniously into the Thames in that giant basket full of rank laundry.


SIR JOHN'S FEELING OF VICTIMHOOD CERTAINLY
IS EPIC, THOUGH -- RUNNING DEEP AND, ER, WIDE

Sunday Classics' "Sicilienne"-style sendoff for Chuck McGill -- as prélude to a tasting table of morsels from Gabriel Fauré

Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't watched any Better
Call Saul episodes since before the Season 3 finale


The McGill brothers, Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) and Chuck (Michael McKean), are seen here in . . . um . . . well, not-that-much-happier times -- this scene is from "Klick," the final episode (No. 10) of Season 2 of Better Call Saul.

by Ken

It's kind of embarrassing that it wasn't till the premier episode of Sieason 4 of Better Call Saul that I registered the death of Chuck McGill (Michael McKean), the big brother of our new-old friend Jimmy McGill, previously known to us, in Breaking Bad, as his later self, Saul Goodman. I mean, flashing back even in my dim memory, I had to have known from the Season 3 finale that Chuck was a goner in the fire that consumed his house. Still . . . . I guess I couldn't believe that the show's creative team, headed up by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, would let go of such an extraordinary character (which everyone on the creative team has told us in interviews was heavily influenced by the extraordinary and largely unexpected qualities Michael McKean brought to the role), with so much about him still to be explored. And I guess I had enough faith in the devious story-telling skills of Vince, Peter, and their team that I wasn't prepared to believe Chuck was really gone until the proverbial last nail was pounded into the coffin.

However, from the start of Episode 1 of Season 4, it became clear that Chuck was indeed kaput, gone, good-bye. Naturally one of the first things I thought of was -- well, here's how I put it in that unprecedented Monday edition of Sunday Classics of Feb. 23, 2016, "Special late-Monday Better Call Saul edition: Chuck McGill plays the Fauré Sicilienne!" (Set in front of Chuck on his baby-grand piano was an edition of the Sicilienne for violin or flute and piano.)


Original (2/23/2016) caption: Sure enough, there's a piano in Chuck McGill's living room! Given the light level, don't hold me to it, but isn't this Howard (Patrick Fabian), the managing partner of Chuck's law firm, arriving for his "delivery for McGill" in tonight's Better Call Saul episode, "Cobbler" [Season 2, Episode 2]?

At the time I wrote in part:

If there's one thing probably none of us expected to see, it was Chuck McGill (Michael McKean) at the piano playing the piano part of Fauré's Sicilienne. But there it was, at the top of tonight's Better Call Saul episode, with something like this score page just visible to Chuck, and to us, with the little bit of natural light that found its way into his otherwise-dark living room -- Chuck can't, of course, have electric light.

Eventually, of course, Better Call Saul masterminds Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould and their team would gradually fill us in, in their patented time-hopping, circuitious way, but at this point I don't think we knew much of anything except that there was all too clearly a huge something-or-someone missing from Chuck's life, and now suddenly we had him playing the piano, with the obvious indication that the missing something-or-someone had something to do with classical music, specifically either the violin or the flute -- the version of the Sicilienne Chuck was playing from was for violin or flute and piano. (It took two subsequent episodes in Season 2 and another in Season 3 to fill for us the void left in Chuck's life left by the implosion of his marriage to Rebecca, indeed a violinist. Ann Cusack, who has played Rebecca, was back for the first episodes of Season 4, in -- kind of literally -- the wake of Chuck's passing.)

And at that time we heard the Sicilienne three ways --

For violin and piano:

Krzysztof Smietana, violin; John Blakely, piano. Meridian, recorded c1993?

For cello and piano:

Steven Doane, cello; Barry Snyder, piano. Bridge, recorded in Rochester (NY), January 1992

For orchestra, with flute solo (no. iii from Fauré's Suite from the incidental music for Pelléas et Mélisande, Op. 80):

Orchestre de Paris, Serge Baudo, cond. EMI, recorded June 1969


WE HAVE ANOTHER VERSION OF THE SICILIENNE,
BUT WE'LL ALSO NEED TO BACKTRACK A LITTLE

So I slapped on this CD I'd picked up -- and had to share this little Intermezzo, Cavatine, and Andante con moto

Yehudi Menuhin, violin; Jacques Février, piano. EMI, recorded Nov. 22-30, 1971

by Ken

Yes, I know we still have important work to complete on Schubert's song "An die Musik," Richard Strauss's song "Zueignung," and the Composer's memorable declaration in the Prologue to Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos that "Music is a holy art," dealing with the important (to me, anyway) questions: (1) What links them? (2) What the hell does it matter? The next, and hopefully final, installment is mostly written, though I suspect that a good part of what keeps me from trying to push it to completion is the fear that it isn't as near to completion as I'm pretending.

Meanwhile, did you listen to the little Intermezzo above? Is that beautiful or what? And did you note Yehudi Menuhin channeling an inner Gypsy I didn't know he had in him. That Intermezzo is one of three movements that grabbed my attention on a CD I slapped on while doing something-or-other at the computer -- all, interestingly, slow movements, from three different works by the same composer. And if you don't know who he is as we listen to the other two, so much the better, because if I hadn't known, I doubt that I would have guessed, and especially not from these slow movements, because even though this is a composer I'm reasonably familiar with, I don't have very good "markers" to identify his music, especially not music of this sort. Or rather these sorts, since these three slow movements are hardly peas in a pod.

So let's listen to a little Cavatine and a little Andante con moto.

Sonata for Cello and Piano:
ii. Cavatine

Pierre Fournier, cello; Jacques Février, piano. EMI, recorded Nov. 22-30, 1971

Trio for Piano, Oboe, and Bassoon:
ii. Andante con moto

Jacques Février, piano; Robert Casier, oboe; Gérard Faisandier, bassoon. EMI, recorded Jan. 20-21, 1964


"THE GUITAR MAKES DREAMS WEEP"

Dept. of Unfinished Business: Lean to the left, lean to the right, stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight!

"The people all said, 'Sit down! Sit down, you're rocking the boat!"
[Watch this Tony Awards clip based on the 1992 Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls (which includes a full-cast version of the song "Guys and Dolls") on YouTube.]


Walter Bobbie (Nicely-Nicely Johnson); from the 1992 Broadway Cast Recording, Edward Strauss, musical dir. RCA, recorded May 3, 1992

Stubby Kaye (Nicely-Nicely); Original Broadway Cast recording, Irving Actman, cond. American Decca, recorded Dec. 3, 1950

David Healy (Nicely-Nicely); National Theatre Cast Recording, Tony Britten, cond. EMI, recorded April 1982

"Stand, Old Ivy! Stand firm and strong!"
[Watch the this whole scene from the 2011 Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, albeit in murky video and audio, via this YouTube clip. ("Grand Old Ivy" begins at 2:11.)]


Daniel Radcliffe (J. Pierrepont Finch), John Larroquette (J. B. Biggley); from the 2011 Broadway Cast Recording, David Chase, cond. Decca Broadway, recorded Apr. 10-12, 2011

Robert Morse (Finch), Rudy Vallee (Biggley); Original Broadway Cast Recording, Elliot Lawrence, musical dir. RCA, recorded Oct. 22, 1961

Robert Morse (Finch), Rudy Vallee (Biggley); film soundtrack recording, Nelson Riddle, music supervision. United Artists, recorded 1967

Matthew Broderick (Finch), Ronn Carroll (Biggley); 1995 Broadway Cast Recording, Ted Sperling, cond. RCA, recorded Apr. 2, 1995

by Ken

It's just a coincidence, I swear, more or less, even as I was thinking of a way into this unexpectedly fraught question of when to stand up and when to sit down I happened to be gradually working my way through Thomas L. Riis's 2008 Yale University Press study Frank Loesser (in a $2 thrift-shop purchase of a pristine hard-cover copy). After all, on any given subject it's likely that we can find toe-tapping wisdom from the master.


COULD WE TAKE A QUICK SECOND LOOK AT THESE VIDEO CLIPS?

"An die Musik": How does a musical setting (of a "not strikingly original" poem) that's "conventional in every way save for its greatness" achieve that greatness? (Part C of A-B-C)

Or: "Speaking of Schubert's 'An die Musik,' Strauss's 'Zueignung,' and the Ariadne Prologue, a few (eventually) final questions, Part 1Yc" (following last week's Part "1X")

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! In the light of (another) day, I've brazenly added a sixth version, Christa Ludwig's, to the five performances we were already tracking through Graham Johnson's observations about "An die Musik."


In this continuation of the February 2012 master class at the Jerusalem Music Centre we dipped into in Part B, Graham Johnson works with Hungarian-born mezzo-soprano Hanna Bardos (with pianist Emma Walker) on Schubert's "Death and the Maiden."

TODAY'S A-B-C POST AT THE TIP
OF YOUR CLICKING FINGER

Part A (nos. 1-3 + other stuff)
Part B (nos. 4-7 + other stuff)
Part C (nos. 8-10 + other stuff)

by Ken

Once again, for reasons of capacity somewhere along the distribution line, presumably on account of all those damned (oops, that just slipped out) audio and other embedded files, I had to break this post up -- and broke it, for safety's sake, into not two but three postlets. In part B we left off with no. 7 (in my pedantically imposed numeration), the piano postlude to the first stanza of "An die Musik":

The piano postlude mirrors this descent in a succession of sequences of chords built around appoggiaturas which lean and sigh, tugging on the sleeve and pulling the heartstrings. A simple yet heart-stopping excursion into the subdominant subtly emphasises that this hymn of praise is also a type of prayer.

[We're going to hear that postlude again (and again and again and . . .) in the audio clips for no. 8. -- Ed.]

OKAY, LET'S GET BACK TO IT!

"An die Musik": How does a musical setting (of a "not strikingly original" poem) that's "conventional in every way save for its greatness" achieve that greatness? (Part B of A-B-C)

Or: "Speaking of Schubert's 'An die Musik,' Strauss's 'Zueignung,' and the Ariadne Prologue, a few (eventually) final questions, Part 1Yb" (following last week's Part "1X")

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! In the light of (another) day, I've brazenly added a sixth version, Christa Ludwig's, to the five performances we were already tracking through Graham Johnson's observations about "An die Musik."

"In reality, the song is a dialogue between the voice and the pianist's left hand, the quasi-cello bass line of the music. The right hand is the true accompanist and mediator in this heavenly conversation; it pulsates in a way which is crucial to the mood of the song although the listener may only be subliminally aware of its magic."

-- from Graham Johnson's commentary on "An die Musik," in
the Hyperion Schubert Edition (©1994 Graham Johnson)

Part of a February 2012 master class at the Jerusalem Music Centre in which Graham Johnson works with Hungarian-born mezzo-soprano Hanna Bardos (and pianist Emma Walker) on Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" -- and among many interesting points gives her his thinking about tempo and composers' metronome markings (and what he considers the understandable but often misplaced desire to manufacture "drama"), offering her the opportunity to persuade him otherwise! (We'll see and hear a good deal more of this in Part C.)

TODAY'S A-B-C POST AT THE TIP
OF YOUR CLICKING FINGER

Part A (nos. 1-3 + other stuff)
Part B (nos. 4-7 + other stuff)
Part C (nos. 8-10 + other stuff)

by Ken

This isn't the time or place for fooling around, so let's just pick up right where we left off in Part A, at no. 3: "After 'wilder Kreis umstrickt' an eloquent little falling chromatic motif in the left hand (a single bar) is a prelude to the magic which will lift the spirits (and the vocal line) into higher regions."

Before we go on, however, one question: Does it occur to other listeners, with regard to the observation of Graham's requoted above, "In reality, the song is a dialogue between the voice and the pianist's left hand, the quasi-cello bass line of the music," that others of the pianists we've been tracking -- perhaps all of them? -- make more of this in their performances than Graham does in his?

Anyway, onward!

[4] "At this point a generous and eloquent four-bar phrase takes wing ('hast du mein Herz zu warmer Lieb entzunden'), this time without the dallying on long low notes which has characterised earlier phrases. It is as if the whole song has caught fire and is aglow with the warmth of the music itself."

"An die Musik": How does a musical setting (of a "not strikingly original" poem) that's "conventional in every way save for its greatness" achieve that greatness? (Part A of A-B-C)

Or: "Speaking of Schubert's 'An die Musik,' Strauss's 'Zueignung,' and the Ariadne Prologue, a few (eventually) final questions, Part 1Ya" (following last week's Part "1X")

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! In the light of (another) day, I've brazenly added a sixth version, Christa Ludwig's, to the five performances we were already tracking through Graham Johnson's observations about "An die Musik."

"The poem . . . is not strikingly original . . . . [T]he setting is conventional in every way . . . save for its greatness. Sincerity and heartfelt devotion seem to emanate from every note, and also a type of exaltation which enable us to glimpse for a moment the transfigured state, remarked on by his contemporaries, in which Schubert wrote his music."

-- from Graham Johnson's commentary on "An die Musik,"
in Vol. 21 of the 37-volume Hyperion Schubert Edition

"In reality, the song is a dialogue between the voice and the pianist's left hand, the quasi-cello bass line of the music. The right hand is the true accompanist and mediator in this heavenly conversation; it pulsates in a way which is crucial to the mood of the song although the listener may only be subliminally aware of its magic."

-- also from Graham Johnson's commentary

TODAY'S A-B-C POST AT THE TIP
OF YOUR CLICKING FINGER

Part A (nos. 1-3 + other stuff)
Part B (nos. 4-7 + other stuff)
Part C (nos. 8-10 + other stuff)

by Ken

Last week we had an overview of "An die Musik", drawing on the above-sourced commentary on the song by Graham Johnson, who in addition to being one of the day's most acclaimed accompanists served as both artistic director and album commentator for Hyperion Records' invaluable Schubert Edition, a gathering of all the composer's songs in 37 volumes -- by comparison, setting aside the zillion other records he's made, the other song-compendia he's undertaken for Hyperion (of Brahms, Schumann, and Fauré and Poulenc and a number of less prolific French composers) seem like just another day's work. (Hyperion has enlisted other pianists for other song compendia, including Liszt and Richard Strauss.)

I said that this week Graham would be leading us through the song, and so he will -- through its entire vast spaces -- all of three minutes, and at that in strophic form, meaning that its two stanzas (or strophes) are essentially identical musically. And so, while we have a number of issues, both substantive and procedural to address, I thought we would plunge right in with the first of ten specific points Graham makes. (I should add that the pedantic numbering of those points has been added by yours truly, to help us keep track of where we are in this broken-up format.)


WELL, BEFORE WE PLUNGE IN, MAYBE WE SHOULD
HAVE ONE MORE BIT OF OVERVIEW FROM GRAHAM

In reality, the song is a dialogue between the voice and the pianist's left hand, the quasi-cello bass line of the music. The right hand is the true accompanist and mediator in this heavenly conversation; it pulsates in a way which is crucial to the mood of the song although the listener may only be subliminally aware of its magic. Except in the postlude to each verse, these chords have no special thematic significance, but the piano needs to repeat notes in order to sustain a harmonic background, and the accompanist has to find a means of allowing these chords to 'happen' without appearing to strike each one individually -- something which would break the music into a succession of pedantic downbeats. Underneath what should be a gliding stream of harmony, the left hand sings its heart out, warming the voice into action.

©1994 Graham Johnson

AND SHOULD WE MAYBE HEAR THE SONG STRAIGHT
THROUGH AGAIN? YES, I REALLY THINK WE SHOULD

A poem that's "not strikingly original" in a setting that's "conventional in every way save for its greatness" -- let's welcome back Schubert's "An die Musik"

Or: "Speaking of Schubert's 'An die Musik,' Strauss's 'Zueignung,' and the Ariadne Prologue, a few (eventually) final questions, Part 1X"

"The poem . . . is not strikingly original . . . . [T]he setting is conventional in every way . . . save for its greatness. Sincerity and heartfelt devotion seem to emanate from every note, and also a type of exaltation which enable us to glimpse for a moment the transfigured state, remarked on by his contemporaries, in which Schubert wrote his music."

-- from Graham Johnson's commentary on "An die Musik,"
in Vol. 21 of the 37-volume Hyperion Schubert Edition

"I always think of this song as a prayer, an expression of deep gratitude, felt deeply at a time when there is so much suffering elsewhere."

-- Lotte Lehmann, in her introduction to her broadcast
performance of "An die Musik" on Oct. 8, 1941

Lotte Lehmann, soprano; Paul Ulanowsky, piano; with spoken introduction by the singer. American radio broadcast, Oct. 8, 1941

by Ken

Yes, we're still technically engaged in the stretched-out post that began last week with "Speaking of Schubert's 'An die Musik,' Strauss's 'Zueignung,' and the Ariadne Prologue, a few (eventually) final questions, Part 1." If the classification is important, we might call this "Part 1A," or maybe "Part 1X" (as I've styled it provisionally above), since it's not only an interlude of sorts but actually a prelude to the interlude -- it won't become clear, or clearish, till next week, why suddenly we're listening to Lotte Lehmann's October 1941 broadcast performance of the song.

My original thought, when I decided we ought to spend more time with "An die Musik," was to make this a brief pre-post to a later-today fuller follow-up post devoted to this unique Schubert song, to be finished up in time to get to a Sunday-afternoon walking tour. However, to give myself a better shot at getting to the tour and getting some Saturday-night sleep, I decided to cut myself even more slack and defer the fuller rehearing of "An die Musik" to next week, which then will be Part I-don't-know-what in this series.

The Lotte Lehmann performance above is from the second of the 15-minute radio broadcasts the 53-year-old singer did on 13 consecutive Wednesday evenings in the fall of 1941, backed by trusted accompanist Paul Ulanowsky. The programs, generally consisting of three or four songs by a single composer (weighted toward his best-known, and introduced by the singer, as "An die Musik" is here), kicked off on October 1st with Beethoven. On October 8th, after "An die Musik," she sang the beloved "Serenade" from the Schwanengesang collection and, for a big finish, the harrowing "Erlkönig." (I'm thinking maybe we should hear the rest of this little broadcast group. Yes, stay tuned, I think we can work it in.)


IT'S LUCKY THAT THE E-ROOM IS MOSTLY CLEARED,
AS I'M ABOUT TO OWN UP TO A DEEP CHARACTER FLAW

Speaking of Schubert's "An die Musik," Strauss's "Zueignung," and the "Ariadne" Prologue, a few (eventually) final questions, Part 1

"There is a realm where all is pure"

Funny business on the island of Naxos: Ernst Stern's design for the original (prologue-less) 1912 Ariadne auf Naxos

R. STRAUSS: From the Prologue to Ariadne auf Naxos:
The Composer, "Musik ist eine heilige Kunst"

THE COMPOSER: Music is a sacred art, which brings together all men of courage, like cherubim around a shining throne, and for this reason it is the most holy of the arts. Holy music!


From a performance at Buenos Aires's Teatro Colón conducted by Lovro von Matačić, October 1964

by Ken

From last week's post ("We have more 'An die Musik,' 'Zueignung,' and 'Musik ist eine heilige Kunst' -- but remember, this only sounds like a "good news" post"):

Just to touch quickly again on what I shorthanded as the "Reverse-Strauss" that's driving this series of posts: What's so wonderful about this excerpt, and indeed the entire comically, over-the-toply-serious character of the Composer, is that our real composer, Richard Strauss, mostly meant all of the things that come out of our over-the-top young Composer's mouth, but he would almost surely never have dared utter them "straight." Instead, as he and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal conceived the character, he can make these things not only resonantly beautiful but borderline hilarious.

I mean only to suggest here: What if it's the exact opposite? What if the sentiments truly are preposterous, and we only kid ourselves that they have some real-world applicability? Wouldn't that be a kick in the head?

By hook or by crook we're going to finish up with "An die Musik," "Zueignung," "Musik ist eine heilige Kunst," and the perspective I've been calling a Reverse-Strauss -- in last week's post and the previous week's ("Today's sacred word is 'heilig' ('holy' or 'sacred'), chez Schubert and R. Strauss -- make of it what you will"). I'm afraid, though, that the finishing up isn't going to happen today; I'm reckoning it'll take us another two posts.

And along this twisty way, we're going to be fielding some questions, starting with this one:

Q1: Who says that Strauss "mostly meant all of the things that come out of our over-the-top young Composer's mouth"?

We have more "An die Musik," "Zueignung," and "Musik ist eine heilige Kunst" -- but remember, this only SOUNDS like a "good news" post

We have our missing recording of "An die Musik"!
So let's hear it along with its intended companion --




Pavel Lisitsian, baritone; Naum Valter, piano. Melodiya, recorded 1961

Fritz Wunderlich, tenor; Hubert Giesen, piano. DG, recorded November 1965

by Ken

Last week, for possibly predictably perverse purposes of your proprietor, we focused on three bits of music that almost inevitably suggest some connection to the proposition that life is good, life is worth living ("Today's sacred word is 'heilig' ('holy' or 'sacred'), chez Schubert and R. Strauss -- make of it what you will"). Our cases in point were the Schubert song "An die Musik," Richard Strauss's song "Zueignung," and the moment in the final minutes of the Prologue to Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos when the super-serious Composer of the super-serious opera seria Ariadne auf Naxos, in the countdown to its first performance (under troubled circumstances, to put it mildly, in the home of "the richest man in Vienna"), declares, "Music is a sacred art."

However, we only heard two of the three song performances we should have, performances I've lived with so long and so closely that they're inextricably woven into my consciousness. The problem was that one of the two intended "An die Musik"s I had only on an old MK LP I've cherished for more than 40 years (since I plucked it out of a 99-cent bin in the old Sam Goody bargain store across 49th Street from the old West Side store), and at the moment I'm unable to make audio files from LP. Anyway, as I hope you've heard above, the Armenian-born Soviet baritone Pavel Lisitsian's "An die Musik" is now united, as intended, with the much-lamented tenor Fritz Wunderlich's, originally recorded as part of a glorious group of Schubert songs to fill Side 4 of his wonderful 1965 DG Schöne Müllerin (the way the Schubert song cycle, which now fits comfortably on a single CD, usually came to us in those days, on three LP sides).

Over this past week I've scouted for a companion to Jussi Bjoerling's March 1958 Carnegie Hall encore performance of "Zueignung," again with the limitation that it would have to come from my CD holdings, or possibly via digital download. We heard some pretty good ones last week, and I heard lots more this week, but just now we're not looking for pretty good, we're looking for magic. As often happens, though, the joke was on me. I found magic, but not with "Zueignung." Oh, I'd just heard a very very good one, but again, we're not looking for very very good. I couldn't be bothered to stop the disc after the very very good "Zueignung," and wound up hearing something like this:

R. STRAUSS: "Zueignung," Op. 10, No. 1,
plus a special bonus performance (at 2:09)

Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Geoffrey Parsons, piano. BBC Legends, recorded live at Summer Festival, Wigmore Hall, July 15, 1978


OHMYGOODNESS! ARE THERE ANY WORDS? WELL,
FIRST OFF, I HAVE TO EAT SOME UNKIND ONES