Poem of the Week 2024/5

On Snuff-Taking

Custom, in this small article I find

What strong ascendance thou hast o'er the mind.

My friend's advice the first inducements were:

"Take it," said she, "it will your spirits cheer."

All resolute the offered drug to take,

But in the trial sickened with my hate.

By repetition I was brought to bear,

Then rather liked, now love it too, too dear.

Be careful, oh, my soul! how thou let'st in

The baneful poison of repeated sin;

Never be intimate with any crime,

Lest Custom make it amiable in time.

– Elizabeth Teft

As a lover of old novels, I was familiar with the concept of taking snuff, but realizing how imperfect my knowledge is I turned to that Sibylline oracle of our times, Wikipedia, & read what turned out to be their very interesting entry on snuff. It turns out I was mistaken in thinking that its purpose was to induce sneezing; apparently that was looked down upon as the mark of an amateur or a beginner. & many snuffs were flavored in some way. & – but this was no surprise, as it's a tobacco product – it is addictive & causes cancers, a link noted back in the eighteenth century, when this poem was written.

What I love about this poem is that its subject is very current – I think we've all heard people talk about their first use of some drug, legal or not (beer, marijuana, all the usual suspects), usually urged by what used to be called "peer pressure", & how they didn't like it at first, yet (somewhat inexplicably) they kept on trying, until they ended up not only loving it, but needing it – but the poem's treatment of the subject is echt eighteenth century: the moral reflections turned into general truths (the way Custom, or Habit, rules our behaviors, mental as well as physical, a theme beloved by Proust, & the warning to avoid vices lest we grow inured to them); the regular beat of the iambic pentameter lines; the rhyming couplets (though she does, unusually for her time, use a slant rhyme (take / hate); this doesn't seem like a case in which the pronunciation used to make it a perfect rhyme, as with Pope in The Rape of the Lock when he rhymes tea / obey); the vocative address to her soul, as the guardian against & potential victim of sin; in fact, the reference to sin, along with the rest of the vocabulary (soul. baneful poison. amiable); the whole sense that moderation & balance are best, even for poets (what a contrast with the Romantic poets of the late eighteenth & early nineteenth century, who welcomed drug-induced hallucinations as pathways to creativity!)

I took this poem from Eighteenth Century Women Poets: An Oxford Anthology, edited by Roger Lonsdale.

Museum Monday 2024/5

 

detail of Saint Francis Venerating the Crucifix by Domenikos Theotokopoulos (El Greco), now in the Legion of Honor, San Francisco

Friday Photo 2024/4

 

some graphically bold leaves from the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers

Poem of the Week 2024/4

On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again

O golden-tongued Romance, with serene lute!

    Fair plumèd Syren, Queen of far-away!

    Leave melodizing on this wintry day,

Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute:

Adieu! for, once again, the fierce dispute

    Betwixt damnation and impassioned clay

    Must I burn through. once more humbly assay

The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit:

Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,

    Begetters of our deep eternal theme!

When through the old oak forest I am gone,

    Let me not wander in a barren dream,

But, when I am consumèd in the fire,

Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.

– John Keats

Why is Keats sitting down to read King Lear, instead of going to the theater to see it? The reason is that, in a perverse tribute to the horrifying power of Shakespeare's tragedy, the version of Lear that held the English stage from 1681 until around 1838 (years after the death of Keats in 1821) was an adaptation by Nahum Tate that ended with Lear restored to sanity & his throne, & a still-living Cordelia marrying Edgar. (Tate was a Poet Laureate of England, best remembered for his adaptation of Lear, which is rarely staged these days, & his libretto for Purcell's Dido & Aeneas, which is still frequently done.) So reading was the only way to confront the real Shakespearian deal.

The poet begins by saying farewell to the more alluring world of Romance, a word which suggests a certain amount of fancy & playfulness with a perhaps tangential relationship to reality – a world with the possibility of escape from the world we live in, & of escapism. The description of Romance brings to mind The Faerie Queene, by Shakespeare's contemporary Spenser, & the reference to the Queen of far-away reinforces the suggestion. I wouldn't describe that work as serene or as an escape, but it does tend towards a "happy" ending, in which Virtue eventually & after hard struggles overcomes its many enemies. But perhaps serene refers more to the melodious sound of Spenser's verse, its sensuous & musical evocations, which were influential on Keats. There is a suggestion of danger in such charms, as the reference to Syrens hints; the sirens of course were sea-women of Greek mythology (best known from their appearance in The Odyssey) whose entrancing songs led sailors to their deaths. The lute, already an outmoded instrument in Keats's time, the olden pages (Spenser's epic is written in a deliberately & self-created "archaic" style & is modeled on the great Italian Renaissance epics by Ariosto & Tasso), the far-away, all suggest a work that, however absorbing & even irresistible, is perhaps also distant from modern & local concerns. Is there a danger of being lured into a lovely land, far from the crushing world we live in? The sudden appearance in the poem of the wintry day is a reminder that reality is often cold & harsh & cannot be safely escaped for too long.

There is a feeling that revisiting King Lear is a bit of a compulsion with the poet. Once again appears not only in the title, but in the body of the poem, as he turns from bidding adieu to Romance to explaining why he must (& that is the word he uses, the imperative must) read the original tragedy again. Once again suggests that this is a periodic corrective he feels obliged to undertake. That may make it sound like eating your vegetables. But the description of the Lear experience evokes not drudgery or duty but the frightening & the sublime: fierce, burning, humbling. Here is no concord as guided by the serene lute of Romance, but a struggle, a fierce dispute / Betwixt damnation & impassioned clay. Damnation is usually associated with divine forces, forces larger than humanity's powers. Yet humanity struggles against this fate. Redemption does not appear to be a possibility, nor does any sort of limbo. The universe opposes us, in the world of King Lear, with the hopelessness of damnation. We are the impassioned clay. Clay is interesting: it connects humanity with the basic stuff of earth, it is reminiscent of Biblical language, but the usual terms there are ashes or dirt. Clay in the Bible is also used in comparisons involving a potter working on a wheel: something being shaped, formed, yet fragile, breakable. The potter in that metaphor is usually God; are we clay being shaped by divine or otherwise unseen powers? & being smashed by the same? The power we have, between damnation & our clay-like nature, is being impassioned: driven to resist, not intellectually, but emotionally, spiritually.

This poem's form is a sonnet: a fourteen line poem in iambic pentameter. There are two main variants in English: The Shakespearian, three quatrains & a concluding couplet, & the Spenserian, an octave & a sestet. For this poem about Shakespeare's play, Keats chooses Spenser's form. The octave describes the poet putting aside the temptations of Romance to deal with the intensity of Shakespeare's tragedy. Then he opens the sestet by addressing, not the general spirit of a type of literature, as in his opening lines, but the specific poet who wrote the tragedy in question: & not just as a poet, but as Chief Poet, an acknowledgement of the primacy of what he created over the melodizing of Romance. But Shakespeare seems to be only a co-creator: listed as the other begetter are the clouds of Albion. Albion is an archaic / poetic term for Britain. It is of course suitable for the period in which King Lear is set. Perhaps as an elegantly outmoded term it also hints at the continuing influence & power of Romance. (& we shouldn't underestimate its importance as a rhyme for gone; English is a language notoriously poorer in rhymes than, say, Italian.) Mentioning England in connection with co-creation of Shakespeare's play gives it a bardic power: something rooted in the history of a nation (& King Lear was in fact considered an historical figure).

But it is not Albion itself but its clouds that are co-begetters of the deep eternal theme. Clouds gives us a force of Nature, something outside of human control, maybe suggesting a heaven, but one absent of a personified Deity. They are above the world, perhaps a source of poetic inspiration, or at least of seeing beyond the daily (to have your head in the clouds is to be dreamy, unrealistic). Clouds of Albion suggests some specifically British connection to this powerful natural force. The term also brings to mind the famous storms in the drama, during which the maddened Lear rages. Sunny & clear skies are usually preferred to cloudy ones. I will admit to being uncertain about Keats's old oak forest here. If I think of the landscape of Shakespeare's play, I picture the wild heath, or of the cliffs of Dover. Perhaps old oak forest is meant to suggest an older, even primeval & Druidic England. But forests, oak or otherwise, don't really play a major role in Lear the way they do in other plays by Shakespeare. Possibly the image is meant to suggest Dante at the beginning of his Commedia, struggling to find his way out of a dark & obscure forest. Possibly Keats just liked the image & the sound.

Why is Keats addressing Shakespeare, & Nature (& History) as represented in the Clouds of Albion? He is praying, in a substitution of the Poet & Nature for the Divinity, for guidance & mercy. When he has been burnt up, consumed, by the fire that is King Lear, when he has experienced the hollowing-out & purification, the catharsis that great tragedy is supposed to bring us as its moral justification (otherwise what is it but voyeurism towards the suffering of others?), he begs that he not be left to wander in a barren dream. Barren suggests sterility; the poet is asking that this bitter-sweet Shakespearian fruit will bear fruit in him. He's not necessarily asking not to be in a dream, just not in one that is barren. Dreams can be fructifying. Dreams are a poetic source common to both Shakespeare & Romance. & Romance, in a purged & renovated form, makes something of a reappearance in the final lines. The poet asks to be reborn after he is consumed, using the image of the Phoenix, the mythological bird whose immortality came from emerging newborn from the fire in which, after his allotted centuries have passed, he consumes himself. & though the phoenix appears frequently in Shakespeare, it is also the sort of mythological & allegorical creature that populates the Faerie Queene. & in a closing suggestion of Spenser, the final line is not in the usual five-beat line of a sonnet, but, as in the so-called Spenserian stanza invented for the Faerie Queene, a six-beat line. Turning from Romance to plunge himself once more into the harrowing world King Lear will, the poet hopes, allow him to turn as he wishes (at my desire) to a new, more urgent sort of Romance.

I took this poem from the Penguin Classics edition of The Complete Poems of Keats.

Another Opening, Another Show: February 2024

I don't know if I'm imagining this, or just starting these lists earlier than I used to, but it seems to me that events are being listed on organization's websites later than they used to be. Perhaps it's just events being added in an on-going, sometimes last-minute, basis. Maybe with all this talk about increasingly short attention spans it's felt to be better to list things closer to their actual occurrence. Maybe I'm hallucinating the whole thing. In any case there are some sites worth checking periodically through the month, as events get added: notably the Center for New Music & the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (the latter will often list concerts – many of them free! – without giving program details until shortly before the event; I tend not to list things that don't give the program, but it's worth keeping an eye on them for updates). There's also Noontime Concerts at Old Saint Mary's in San Francisco, if you're in downtown San Francisco around lunchtime on a Tuesday.

Theatrical

Happily Cutting Ball Theater is bringing back its Variety Pack festival, which will run from 1 to 18 February & include three different components: "the SHORT CUTS director series: 5-6 directors working with one repertory cast and set pieces creatively string together their distinct styles through a series of short play experiences that challenge the theatrical form; . . .  UNDISCOVERED / UNDEVELOPED where 2 local playwrights share semi-rehearsed readings of promising new experimental works, just itching for full production; and . . .  MIXED METAPHORS: an evening of non-scripted, non-traditional theatre pieces ranging from original music to dance to drag to puppetry, all devising an original piece on a communal theme over the course of one week"; get more information here.

Theater Rhinoceros presents the world premiere of Billy, written & directed by John Fisher; the description is "It’s been fifteen years since the Colonel has gone behind enemy lines. The Special Forces are back in action in this modern adaptation of a gay classic" (I'll admit to not knowing what "gay classic" this is based on). & it runs from 1 to 18 February.

​Aurora Theater presents Mary Kathryn Nagle's Manahatta, directed by Shannon R. Davis, about a Wall Street securities trader who returns to the ancestral lands of her Lenape people, from 9 February to 10 March.

ACT presents Kate Attwell's Big Data, which is about what you'd think it would be about, directed by Pam MacKinnon, at the Toni Rembe Theater from 15 February to 10 March.

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music Department of Opera & Musical Theater presents the musical A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder (based on the film Kind Hearts & Coronets) on 16 & 17 February.

Berkeley Playhouse revives Jonathan Larson's La bohème-based rock musical, Rent, directed by Kimberly Dooley, assistant directed by Peet Cocke with musical direction by Michael Patrick Wiles & choreography by Mel Martinez, from 23 February to 31 March.

Cal Performances presents the west coast premiere of Taylor Mac & Matt Ray’s Bark of Millions: A Parade Trance Extravaganza for the Living Library of the Deviant Theme, a four-hour production that "will stage 55 original songs – one to mark each year since the landmark Stonewall uprising", & that's in Zellerbach Hall on 23 - 25 February.

Shotgun Players presents Prose & Confluence, A Queer Cowboy Musical devised by Max Abner & Teddy Hulsker of Klanghaus, & that's at the Ashby Stage on 24 February.

42nd Street Moon revives William Finn's musical Falsettos, directed by Dennis Lickteig, about a man & his family negotiating gay life at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, from 29 February to 17 March.

Talking

Poet Ada Limón appears in conversation with Alexis Madrigal for City Arts & Lectures on 22 February.

Operatic

The Handel Opera Project presents Purcell's Dido & Aeneas, featuring Sara Couden as Dido, along with Handel's Apollo & Daphne, featuring Daphne Touchais & Bradley Kynard, at the Maybeck-designed First Church of Christ Scientist in Berkeley on 4 February.

Frederica von Stade & Jake Heggie will be giving a Master Class at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music on 18 February.

The Lamplighters give us Ruddygore; or, The Bruja's Curse (Bruja's curse rather than Witch's curse because the action has been moved, presumably for decorative reasons, to Hidalgo), & that's 24 - 25 February at the Yerba Buena Theater in San Francisco & 2 - 3 March at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts.

Choral

Kitka Women's Vocal Ensemble will be performing rescheduled Wintersongs concerts ("Seasonal Songs of Sustenance from Balkan, Baltic, Caucasian, and Slavic Lands") on 9 - 10 February at Saint Paul's in Oakland & on 11 February at Old First Concerts in San Francisco.

The Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir will perform their 9th annual Black History Month Celebration at Freight & Salvage on 11 February.

Volti will premiere a new work by Jens Ibsen as well as perform music by Aaron J Kernis, Joanna Marsh, Emma O’Halloran, & Forrest Pierce on 23 February at the Crowden School in Berkeley & 24 February at Noe Valley Ministries in San Francisco.

Vocalists

On 9 February at Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances presents soprano Renée Fleming with pianist Howard Watkins performing songs by Caroline Shaw, Fauré, Liszt, Grieg, & Kern; the second half will consist of songs by Hazel Dickens, Handel, Nico Muhly, Canteloube, Maria Schneider, Björk, Howard Shore, Kevin Puts, & Burt Bacharach, accompanying Voice of Nature: the Anthropocene, an original film by National Geographic.

Cal Performances gives us soprano Erin Morley, with pianist Malcolm Martineau, performing songs by Ricky Ian Gordon, Bizet, Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov, Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Richard Strauss, Zemlinsky, Schumann, Berg, Thomas Morley, John Woods Duke, Roger Quilter, Haydn Wood, Julius Benedict, Arthur Sullivan, & the anonymous Irish composer of The Last Rose of Summer, & that's at Hertz Hall on 18 February.

This year's Schwabacher Recital Series begins on 21 February with mezzo-soprano Simona Genga & pianist Hyemin Jeong performing Two Laurels, a program "featuring both traditional art songs and new compositions, bringing the audience on a journey through the intimate moments of a queer love story."

On 22 February, SF Jazz presents singer Kandace Springs, along with drummer Camille Gainer & bassist Aneesa Strings, to perform music from her latest album, The Women Who Raised Me, "a loving tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, and Dusty Springfield."

Jazz singer Dianne Reeves performs at the SF Jazz Center on 23 - 25 February.

San Francisco Performances presents tenor Lawrence Brownlee with pianist Kevin Miller at Herbst Theater on 29 February, performing Rising, a program including works by Joseph Marx, Jasmine Barnes, Brandon Spencer, Carlos Simon, Damien Sneed, Shawn Okpebholo, Joel Thompson, Verdi, Donizetti, Rossini. & Bellini.

Orchestral

David Milnes leads the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra in Ossicles - inside out by Edmund Campion, the Sibelius Violin Concerto (with soloist Daniel Kang), & the Rachmaninoff 2 on 9 - 10 February at Hertz Hall.

Here's what's happening orchestrally at the San Francisco Symphony this month: on 2 - 4 February, Jukka-Pekka Saraste will conduct the Schubert 6 & the Beethoven 7; & on 23 - 25 February, Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen will conduct Stravinsky's Pulcinella, with vocal soloists Sasha Cooke (mezzo-soprano), Nicholas Phan (tenor), & Luca Pisaroni (baritone), & the Brahms Violin Concerto with soloist Julia Fischer.

The San Francisco Symphony will also have a special concert celebrating the Lunar New Year (the Year of the Dragon is upon us) on 17 February, when Mei-Ann Chen, with featured violinist Paul Huang, will conduct the Spring Festival Overture by Huan-zhi Li, New Year Greetings by Phoon Yew Tien, Jasmine Flower (a traditional piece arranged by Li Wenping), selections from Folk Songs for Orchestra by Huang Ruo, Pizzicato by Vivian Fung, a selection from Violin Concerto: Fire Ritual by Tan Dun, Ali Mountain Evergreen by Che Chang (arranged by Yuan-kai Bao), & Gong Xi Gong Xi by Chen Ge Xin (arranged by Che-Yi Lee).

On 17 February at Hertz Hall, the UC Berkeley Philharmonia Orchestra, led by Thomas Green & Noam Elisha, will perform the Beethoven 3, the Eroica, Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture, & Jean Ahn's Ongheya.

On 10 February at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Edwin Outwater & student assistant Chih Yao Chang will lead the SFCM Orchestra in Grieg's The Last Spring, Ellen Reid's Petrichor, & the Bruckner 4, the Romantic.

Kedrick Armstrong conducts the Oakland Symphony in Here I Stand: The Artist as Activist, a program including the world premiere of an Oakland Symphony commission, Here I Stand: Paul Robeson, by Carlos Simon to a libretto by Dan Harder, featuring bass soloist Morris Robinson along with the Symphony Chorus & Pacific Edge Voices; the program also includes Joan Tower's Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman #6 & the Shostakovich 5, & that's at the Paramount Theater on 16 February.

Music Director Joseph Young will lead the Berkeley Symphony in French Reveries, a program featuring Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, Guillaume Connesson's A Kind of Trane (a concerto for saxophone & orchestra honoring John Coltrane & featuring soloist Robert Young), & Louise Farrenc's Symphony #3 in G minor, & that's at the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley on 25 February.

Chamber Music

The Circadian String Quartet, joined by pianist Amy Zanrosso, will give a two-day festival of piano quintets at Old First Concerts: on 3 February you can hear Dvořák’s Piano Quintet in A major, Opus 81, along with a transcription of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite by Circadian violinist David Ryther, & on 4 February you can hear Schumann's Piano Quintet in E flat major, Opus 44 & Shostakovich's Piano Quintet, Opus 57.

Lieder Alive! presents soprano Julia Bae, pianist Paul Schrage, & violinist Joel Pattinson performing works by Schubert, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, & Rachmaninoff on 4 February at the Noe Valley Ministry.

Cal Performances presents the Attacca Quartet, performing an "Attacca Playlist" (modeled after music-streaming services), featuring music by Caroline Shaw, Gabriella Smith, Philip Glass, & more, as well as the Beethoven String Quartet #14 in C-sharp minor, at Hertz Hall on 4 February.

The Berkeley Symphony presents pianist Alison Lee, violinist Sarah Elert, & cellist Douglas Machiz in Spirited Impressions, a French-centered program featuring Fauré's Piano Trio #1 in D Minor, Honegger's Sonatine for Violin & Cello, Jean Ahn's A Flashback of Ravel, & Debussy's Piano Trio in G major, & that's at the Piedmont Center for the Arts on 4 February.

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music presents Chamber Music Tuesday on 6 February, with guest violinist Melissa White, who will join Conservatory faculty & students to perform Mozart's Piano Quartet in G Minor, the Brahms Violin Sonata in D Minor, selections from Wynton Marsalis's At the Octoroon Balls, & Max Bruch's String Quintet in E-flat Major; the next day, White will lead a Master Class at the Conservatory.

The San Francisco Chamber Orchestra performs Dvořák's String Quintet #2 in G major, Opus 77, Jennifer Higdon's Autumn Music, three movements from Six Studies, Opus 70 by Alfredo Casella (arranged by P Lemberg), Poulenc's Sextet for wind quintet and piano, & Prokofiev's Overture on Hebrew Themes for clarinet, string quartet, and piano, on 9 February at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, 10 February at First United Methodist in Palo Alto, & 11 February at First Congregational in Berkeley.

Cal Performances gives us cellist David Finckel & pianist Wu Han, performing Beethoven’s Cello Sonatas at Hertz Hall on 11 February.

San Francisco Performances presents cellist Jonathan Swensen, violinist Stephen Waarts, & pianist Juho Pohjonen performing works by Shostakovich, Janáček, & Franck at Herbst Theater on 15 February.

Voices of Music presents vocal & instrumental works by Schubert & Clara Schumann, featuring tenor Thomas Cooley, Eric Zivian on period fortepiano, & violinist Augusta McKay Lodge, & that's 16 February at First Congregational Church in Palo Alto, 17 February at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, & 18 February at First Congregational in Berkeley.

Duo Chiaroscuro (mezzo-soprano Tristana Ferreyra-Rantalaiho & pianist Johanna Tarcson) will perform Love and Dreams, a program including works by Schubert, Lili Boulanger, Chausson, Duparc, Emile Paladilhe, Debussy, Peter Lieberson, Carlos Guastavino, & Alberto Ginastera at Old First Concerts on 18 February.

The San Francisco Symphony presents cellist Gabriel Martins with pianist Victor Santiago Asunción at Davies Hall on 21 February, when they will perform Schumann's Fantasiestücke, Opus 73, Debussy's Cello Sonata #1 in D minor, Webern's Drei kleine Stücke, Opus 11, & Brahms's Cello Sonata #2 in F major, Opus 99.

Sixth Station Trio (Anju Goto, violin; Federico Strand Ramirez, cello; & Katelyn Tan, piano) will perform music from Joe Hisaishi’s score for Howl’s Moving Castle at Old First Concerts on 23 & 25 February.

San Francisco Performances presents violinist Leila Josefowicz & pianist John Novacek playing music by Debussy, Szymanowski, Erkki-Sven Tüür, & Stravinsky at Herbst Theater on 24 February.

Cal Performances brings the Takács Quartet back to Hertz Hall on 25 February, where they will perform Hugo Wolf's Italian Serenade, Bartók's String Quartet #2 in A minor, & Schubert's String Quartet #15 in G major.

Instrumentalists

San Francisco Performances presents pianist Javier Perianes at Herbst Theater on 7 February, playing music by Clara & Robert Schumann, Brahms, & Granados.

Chamber Music San Francisco presents the local premiere of pianist Zlata Chochieva at Herbst Theater on 11 February, when she will perform Scriabin's 5 Preludes, Opus 15, Chopin's 12 Etudes, Opus 10 & his Polonaise-Fantasie, Opus 61, & Rachmaninoff's Variations on a theme of Chopin.

San Francisco Performances presents guitarist Pepe Romero at Herbst Theater on 11 February, when he will perform works by Luis de Milán, Gaspar Sanz, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Angel Barrios, Joaquin Malats, Granados (in a transcription by Celedonio Romero), Federico Moreno Torroba, Francisco Tárrega, Isaac Albéniz, & Celedonio Romero.

SF Jazz presents organist Cameron Carpenter at Grace Cathedral on 17 February, performing music he composed to accompany Lang's silent classic Metropolis (the phrasing on both the SF Jazz & the Grace Cathedral websites is a little tricky, & I'm not sure the actual film is being shown; it sounds as if Carpenter will be performing some of what he composed as a soundtrack to the film).

Chamber Music San Francisco presents pianist Tiffany Poon on 25 February at Herbst Theater, when she will perform Schumann's Kinderszenen, Opus15, Debussy's Children’s Corner, Bach's Preludes & Fugues #1 & #2, from Book 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier, & Chopin's Preludes, Opus 28.

At Herbst Theater on 27 February, San Francisco Performances presents pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, playing music by Mozart, CPE Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Carter (Night-Fantasies), Sweelinck, & Ives.

Early / Baroque Music

Philharmonia Baroque has a program they call Double Espresso, hoping to capture the novelty & fire of the early coffeehouses; Richard Egarr will play harpsichord & conduct, with Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya also on harpsichord, & you can hear them & the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in music by Telemann & Bach on 1 February at Herbst Theater in San Francisco, 2 February at First United Methodist in Palo Alto, & 3 February (matinee & evening performances) at First Congregational in Berkeley.

SF Jazz presents organist Cameron Carpenter playing Interpretations of Bach on 16 February at Grace Cathedral.

On 18 February the Cantata Collective continues its free Bach cantata concert series at Saint Mary Magdalen's in Berkeley; this time they're performing Christus, der ist mein Leben, BWV 95 & Es ist euch gut, daß ich hingehe, BWV 108, with soloists Tonia D’Amelio (soprano), Sylvia Leith (alto), David Kurtenbach Rivera (tenor), & Edmund Milly (bass).

See also the Handel Opera Project's performance of Purcell's Dido & Aeneas & Handel's Apollo & Daphne, listed above under Operatic.

Modern / Contemporary Music

David Milnes leads the Eco Ensemble in an all-Cindy Cox program, featuring Cañon, [Four Studies of Light and Dark], Hishuk ish ts’ awalk [All things are One], & the world premiere of scenes from The Road to Xibalba (featuring as soloists soprano Amy Foote, alto Sara Couden, tenor Michael Jankosky, & baritone Nikolas Nackley), for Cal Performances at Hertz Hall on 3 February.

Old First Concerts presents new music ensemble Earplay on 5 February, in The Poetry of Physics, a program featuring the world premiere of an Earplay commission, Ad Hoc by Miguel Chuaqui, the west coast premieres of Suzanne Sorkin's String Trio in Two Movements & Yotam Haber's Estro Poetico-armonico II, as well as Kaija Saariaho's Light and Matter & Ines Thiebaut's panta rhei.

Hauschka, which is "the recording alias of Academy Award and BAFTA-winning composer Volker Bertelmann" will be playing his new works for prepared piano at the Chapel on Valencia in San Francisco on 29 February.

Jazz

Pianist Kenny Barron will be the resident artistic director at the SF Jazz Center from 31 January to 4 February: on 31 January, there will be a Listening Party with Barron, moderated by pianist Benny Green; on 1 February, he will perform as part of the Kenny Barron Trio, along with bassist Kiyoshi Kitagawa & drummer Johnathan Blake; on 2 February he performs with his Quintet, for which his Trio is joined by trumpeter Mike Rodriguez & saxophonist Dayna Stephens; on 3 February he leads the local premiere of a new sextet dedicated to Latin-American music, for which he is joined by flutist Anne Drummond, percussionist Valtinho Anastacio, drummer Rafael Barata, vibraphonist Nikara Warren, & bassist John Patitucci; & on 4 February he closes his residence with Freely Improvised Music, for which he is joined by vocalists & multi-instrumentalist Jen Shyu, trombonist Kalia Vandever, bassist John Patitucci, & drummer Lesley Mok.

Cal Performances presents Brad Mehldau performing the Bay Area premiere of a Cal Performances co-commission, Fourteen Reveries, along with selections from Suite April 2020 & other works, at Zellerbach Hall on 10 February.

The Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, the California Jazz Conservatory's resident Big Band, will perform there on 11 February.

From 15 to 18 February, SF Jazz presents pianist Chucho Valdés with Irakere 50, "the new iteration of the legendary band that changed the course of Latin music in the 1970s and 80s."

Pianist George Cables, joined by bassist Jeff Denson & drummer Gerald Cleaver, will perform at the California Jazz Conservatory on 16 - 17 February.

Dance

The San Francisco Ballet presents two programs this month: British Icons, featuring the SF Ballet premieres of Song of the Earth (choreography by Sir Kenneth MacMillan to music by Mahler) & Marguerite & Armand (choreography by Sir Frederick Ashton to music by Liszt), from 9 to 15 February; & Swan Lake (choreography by Helgi Tomasson, after Marius Petipa & Lev Ivanov, to music by, of course, Tchaikovsky), from 23 February to 3 March.

On 9 February at the Great Star Theater you can see the local premiere of panels, "a dance film on grief made in the Bay Area, by Bay Area artists. . . .  [t]his film is fully a movement narrative, with no verbal speaking"; before the film there will be live dance from the cast, a piece entitled Grief Wrote Me a Letter, "a collection of 11 solos where each movement artist will express personal perspectives on what grieving is".

Cal Performances presents a collaboration among the Pina Bausch Foundation, École des Sables, & Sadler’s Wells: common ground[s] by Germaine Acogny & Malou Airaudo & the Bay Area premiere of Pina Bausch's The Rite of Spring, performed by "an ensemble of more than 30 dancers from 14 African countries", & that's 16 - 18 February in Zellerbach Hall.

Smuin Ballet presents Celebrating Michael Smuin, featuring his ballets Zorro! & Fly Me to the Moon, from 29 February to 3 March at the Yerba Buena Center.

Art Means Painting

Lee Mingwei: Rituals of Care, exploring the installation / performance work of the artist, opens at the de Young Museum on 17 February & runs through 7 July.

Cinematic

Here's what's going on this month at the PFA portion of BAM/PFA: Preservation Spotlight: David Schickele’s Bushman: Bushman will be shown on 3 & 24 February, along with his Give Me a Riddle (the earlier showing will include special guests, including Schickele’s family, & others who have worked to preserve his films); Documentary Voices 2024 launches 7 February & includes films scheduled through April; & Cauleen Smith – In Space, In Time, exploring the cinematic side of Smith's artistic production, runs 8 to 11 February.

The Roxie Theater in San Francisco will be showing two of my favorite films this month: Tarkovsky's magnificent & hallucinatory Andrei Rublev on 3 February & Lean's elegiac Brief Encounter on 4 February.

On 15 February the Roxie Theater hosts the Dimensions Film Festival, a "one night festival celebrating underground horror, scifi, and oddball films from both local and international filmmakers" focusing this year on monsters.

The Jewish Film Institute's Winterfest runs 24 - 25 February at the Vogue Theater in San Francisco; check out the schedule here.

The San Francisco Symphony, conducted for the occasion by George Daugherty, presents Bugs Bunny at the Symphony in Davies Hall on 10 February, when you can hear the orchestra playing the classics so wittily used in the Warner Bros cartoons. Kill the Wabbit, kill the wabbit!

Museum Monday 2024/4

 

detail of The Martyrdom of San Bartolomeo by Luca Giordano, now at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco; Saint Bartholomew, one of the 12 Apostles, was martyred by being flayed alive

San Francisco Performances: Jonathan Biss & Echoes of Schubert #1

Last Thursday night I was at Herbst Theater for the first of three concerts pianist Jonathan Biss is giving for San Francisco Performances. The series is titled Echoes of Schubert & pairs a new work with pieces by, obviously, Schubert.

The program book said the first piece would be the new one, . . . Expansions of Light, for piano by Tyson Gholston Davis, followed by Schubert's Impromptu #1, but the order was switched without announcement, leading some members of the audience to be gratified at how melodically Schubertian the new piece was. I couldn't really blame them, as the idea of the series is that the new pieces will play off Schubert's. When Biss came out after a brief pause following the Impromptu, he explained that Gholston Davis's piece was actually conceived separately from the Schubert series, though it did seem appropriate as its creation was encouraged by San Francisco Performances, which has a long track record of encouraging new music & new creators. Biss mentioned that the more he studied & played the piece, the more he was impressed by its architecture & the meaning behind each choice of a note.

Gholston Davis wrote the program note for his piece. Instead of describing the music directly, he described the Helen Frankenthaler painting that inspired it, Winter Light. (There was no reproduction of the painting on stage or in the program book, but you can find one here.) His description of the washes of color & how they interacted with each other & with him proved to be just as, if not more, effective than the usual musical descriptions of sweeping first themes & playful rondos. He doesn't explicitly link his approach to or name it as synesthesia, though Biss did in his remarks, saying that composers & performers often use the word color metaphorically but in Gholston Davis's case it is more literal. Of course we can bring our own associations & memories to the colors we see or the sound-colors we hear. Both color & sound manifest meanings that ultimately are only found separately in separate individuals.

Expansions is a triptych, with the first & third movements titled Arietta 1 & Arietta 2, in reference to Beethoven's use of that operatic term in his later piano sonatas; the middle movement was titled Interlude in the program but the composer referred to it in his note as Caprice. Something of Frankenthaler's wintery light entered into the framing movements; there was a lot of space around the notes, & their reverberations dying into paleness fit with the frosty light of winter. Caprice is a better title for the middle movement, as it did swirl around in a more playful way than the other more crystalline movements. This piece is one of a series that the composer is writing inspired by Frankenthaler's works, & I hope we'll get to hear all of them.

After the intermission Biss performed Schubert's Sonata in C Minor, one of the three piano sonatas Schubert composed just months before his early death. In the program note he wrote for the booklet, Biss pointed out that Schubert, unlike another prodigy with an early demise, Mozart, was always haunted by thoughts of death (Biss specifically cited Schubert's first great song, the still-celebrated Erlkönig), & the final three piano sonatas explore different approaches to & feelings about the end. He felt the C Minor sonata is an expression of terror at the relentless approach of death. The performance was dramatic & poetic, like some Elizabethan tragedy. There was one encore, the Schubert Impromptu #3, which came on us like balm after the sonata. The audience was collectively swooning.

There are two more concerts in this series, on 14 March & on 2 May.

Friday Photo 2024/3

 

on Lake Merritt in Oakland

Poem of the Week 2024/3

Four trees – upon a solitary Acre –

Without Design

Or Order, or Apparent Action –

Maintain –

The Sun – upon a Morning meets them –

The Wind –

No nearer Neighbor – have they –

But God –

The Acre gives them – Place –

They – Him – Attention of Passer by –

Of Shadow, or of Squirrel, haply –

Or Boy –

What Deed is Theirs unto the General Nature –

What Plan

They severally – retard – or further –

Unknown –

– Emily Dickinson

A casual glance takes in an unexceptional sight – an empty lot with a few trees on it – but it soon produces musing contemplation. The acre is solitary, but it must be surrounded by something; whatever that something is (farmland? houses? forest?) it seems separate from the acre, which appears to be uncultivated, mostly bare, even lonely in its non-human solitude. & on the acre, there are four trees, close together, or apart, we don't really know, but they do register as some sort of unit, a group of four. It's a strange number of trees to see: not a forest, not an orchard, just a small number of random trees. One tree would be striking & individual, alone, even majestic, upon an otherwise empty acre; more would be perhaps less noticeable, as we'd see them as a unit – a forest, or a farm – & we probably wouldn't even notice the Acre they were standing on. It's a peculiar & in-between number of trees, & it accentuates the otherwise emptiness of the Acre. The type of tree is not specified; they register not as fruit trees or shade trees or potential lumber but as just . . . trees, an archetypal category of object. They appear to be products of Nature, not ordered or planned or planted by humans, & if there is some design there it is not visible, & possibly non-existent; Dickinson is already entering metaphysical territory with the trees on their solitary acre: what is "Nature" here, & is there any sort of plan to it, divine or happenstance? What do the trees produce, or do? The answer, insofar as there is one, is in a word emphasized by the line break that puts it on its own in the last line of the stanza: they maintain.

The Emily Dickinson Lexicon (EDL) is an excellent on-line resource (maintained by Brigham Young University) for exploring the nuance & ambiguity of her language. Here is what it gives us for maintain: "Keep; continue; hold; preserve." So even more than simply being there, the word suggests that the trees somehow mark something, if only their own existence, & their being exists in time (the word might mean they continue), though the quantity of time is unknown. We don't know how long the trees have been there (long enough to be trees rather than saplings) or how long they will go on being there (will humans cut them down? will they succumb to time & die a natural death?). Like the human observing them, they are given existence as fellow living-things subjected to an unknown timeline, which gives them an odd sort of parity with the human observer. There is a certain dignity in the trees maintaining, rather than just being there, as they take their temporal trip to an unknown terminus. They would exist without the poet's observation, but her observation is making her wonder about the mystery & separateness of their existence: in an essential poetic act, she is remarking them.

The second stanza vividly reinforces the isolated & peculiar circumstances of the trees. There is emphasis & restatement, but the poet keeps circling around the unknown & unknowable meaning or meanings of a sight that has created a suddenly memorable moment. She invokes grand natural forces: the Sun, the Wind. Their existence seems to be separate from that of the trees, instead of part of some web of Nature. The Sun meets them in the morning; it doesn't greet or sustain or warm them, it just comes across them on its diurnal rounds. The Wind, too, sweeps by them, but seems to have its own separate existence from both Sun & the Trees. What we lump together as "Nature" is dissolving here; the large (the Sun, the Wind) seems equal to the small (four random trees) – or is it rather that the small is equal to the large? – & they seem disconnected, though tracking together.. Our four trees, not very significant on a larger scale, here rank with such mighty forces as the Sun & the Wind (Dickinson's use of capitals for such nouns helps embody them, not just as archetypes but also individual entities). The usual scale of value in "Nature" has been destabilized.

In the third stanza, the poet takes a closer look at the Acre. It too is a strangely separate entity, but the trees are rooted in it & the four trees & the solitary acre, though they have a separate existence, also act upon each other. Would the acre register as solitary unless there were these trees on it, making the poet realize how empty or isolated the rest of it is? Would we even notice the acre? Probably not; as the poet tells us, the trees give him (a peculiar & even slightly comic personification of the Acre as male – a lonely male; the earth is usually embodied as female) the Attention of Passer by. The Acre is noticed because the trees are on it, the trees are noticed because there's nothing else on the Acre. The attention is being paid by someone passing through; no one heads to the Acre or the Trees as a destination. This is not some picturesque beauty spot, but a random bit of the world that sparked the poet's attention.

& again our usual hierarchies of value are upended: the first possible passerby mentioned is Shadow. Shadows don't exist without an object that produces them by obstructing light, but whatever that object is here (a bird flying overhead? a cloud? something closer to earth?) it appears only in its insubstantial shadow form. & as the EDL reminds us, a shadow can also be a warning sign, a sign of approaching darkness, a phantom, or the ghost of a dead person. It is an ominous & evocative word, & a foreboding one to mention as a passerby. (Are there spirits unseen by us passing through the moment with us?) We go from this nonembodied & fairly magnificent entity to . . . a squirrel, a small swift little nibbling visitor. & only then we get a mention of a human: a singular in number but general in effect Boy. As the haply reminds us, it is chance that leads someone by this sight (or site), & these three very different visitors – shadow, squirrel, Boy – are equivalent in relation to the Acre & the Trees.

The Boy is presumably one old enough to wander by himself (he too is solitary) but young enough not to be working. Also presumably the passerby is made a boy because in nineteenth-century Amherst boys could wander more freely & with less supervision than girls, but depending on where exactly this Acre is, it is something a girl could come across without violating too many of her contemporary gender norms. & of course a woman – Dickinson herself – did in fact see the Acre & the Trees. (She could certainly have made the whole thing up, but it does seem like the sort of specific world-detail that would set her mind speculating). Specifying a boy is an interesting choice for a woman poet (who has earlier also defined the Acre as male). Perhaps it's meant to evoke the archetypal youth wandering aimlessly through whatever passes for wilderness in his area. Perhaps Dickinson is deliberately making the poem something (allegedly) non-personal & outside of her experience, another alienation device in a poem filled with overturned hierarchies of meaning & existence.

The final stanza essentially recaps the first, as the poet gives another statement of the mystery behind what might seem an ordinary & even insignificant occurrence – I'd say a final statement, but there's nothing final here. We have a summation but not a conclusion, as this sight, four trees randomly on an otherwise empty lot, a sight which clearly made a deep impression on the poet, yields nothing but mystery, no matter how long the image dwells in her mind, or ours. Are the trees part of some plan, Divine or Natural, & if so, do they advance it? or do they slow it down? Here's what the EDL gives us for severally: "Separately; individually; successively; collectively; in turn": we don't know if the trees "act" or "mean" in some larger way outside of their just being there, & we can't even know if they are to be taken as singular or as a group (in the long & large sweep of history, where is the border between us as individuals & us as a city, state, or generation?). The final word, one highlighted, as with maintain in the first stanza, by the line break & by being on its own line, is an emphatic Unknown, & instead of a conventional & final stop shown by a period, the poet concludes with one of her characteristic dashes. The syntax & the potential meanings are as unstable as everything else in the poem; they could go on into eternal ramifications or just drop off the metaphorical cliff. As so often in Dickinson, objects shimmer in a strange unsettled space between the everyday, even the mundane, & the cosmically significant.

This is Poem #742 in the Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H Johnson.

Museum Monday 2024/3

 

detail from Kehinde Wiley's exhibit / installation An Archaeology of Silence, as seen at the de Young Museum in San Francisco

Friday Photo 2024/2

 

California Street, San Francisco, New Year's Eve

Poem of the Week: 2024/2

This Be the Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

    They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

    By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

    And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

    It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

    And don't have any kids yourself.

– Philip Larkin

The title of this poem may seem obscure, but it is a reference to a once well-known poem by Robert Louis Stevenson:

Requiem

Under the wide and starry sky,

    Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,

    And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

    Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

    And the hunter home from the hill.

So Larkin's title immediately puts his poem in a context of death: Stevenson's poem is about a man nearing the end of his life, without regrets; there's Requiem as the title, of course; there are puns on will in the last line of the first quatrain (willingness to do something / legal document related to one's death) & grave in the first line of the second quatrain (engrave / burial place), &, more specifically, the phrase Larkin took as his title leads directly to the epitaph Stevenson's speaker would like. But the title's reference to Stevenson's poem also puts us in a very literary context: the correct but perhaps archaic use of the subjunctive be in This be the verse; the dry & somber diction; the echoes & evocations of Biblical language in Home is the sailor, home from the sea, / And the hunter home from the hill). Stevenson's poem also has a very formal, regular structure: two quatrains, regular four-beat iambic lines, & a very regular rhyme scheme, with the first three lines of each quatrain rhyming with themselves (sky, lie, die // me, be, sea), & the last lines of each rhyming with each other (will // hill).

A serious embrace of death, a model of traditional verse-making: Larkin immediately blows up these qualities in Stevenson's poem with his first line. It's difficult now perhaps to recapture the explosive power of fuck in this context, how surprising & funny it was. The word has been degraded by overuse to an irritating verbal tick, its shock nearly worn out. But when Larkin published this poem, in the early 1970s, it was just a few years after the word could legally appear in print in something other than low pornography, & it still didn't generally appear in poetry written in a traditional style, poetry with regular rhymes & rhythms & even indents on the second & fourth lines. & though the first two words – they fuck – gets at the generational realities of the poem (fuck, the act; no talk of love or marriage), the phrase is actually even more colloquial: it's about being fucked up, in this case emotionally & psychologically. There's a refreshing but bleak implicit rejection of traditional filial piety, which substitutes a pretty & generic idealized pair for the actual humans that are one's parents.

The speaker uses a colloquial obscenity, but in a comic way, & he seems to be somewhat mature: he's at a stage of life where he's looking around at the mess he's in, or the mess he is, &, looking for its source, he finds it, not surprisingly, in his source: his mum & dad. But he's moved beyond the angry adolescent phase of self-centered anger & is conscious that the damage may not (though it also may) be intentional. He's seeing his parents as individuals with their own problems, a realization which is always a sign of growing maturity. & he realizes he might be worse than they were: he has their faults but also some extra, added just for you (a hilarious echo of the you're-so-special tone found in marketing appeals & sentimental cards).

In the second quatrain, the speaker more fully explores what happened to his parents (& therefore what happened to him): they too, in their turn, were fucked up. In their turn is part of the speaker's realization of the on-going cyclical damage that travels down the generations. The portrait of the grandparents is harsh, almost contemptuous in its comedy: these fools, outlandishly costumed in "old-style hats and coats", as in an old family photo of the pompously dignified elders (hats & coats, always worn outdoors by respectable citizens; when Larkin was writing, men had started abandoning the obligatory hat, & even jackets were coming off). They were soppy-stern – again, a casual but precise phrasing, combining the perceived sentimentality & repressive respectability of the Edwardian & Victorian forebears. But beneath their façade of propriety they are, for a significant amount of time, at each other's throats – fucking up each other, in the process of fucking up their children. (This would be back in a time when divorce was not only difficult legally & religiously but also socially shameful.)

The final quatrain broadens the generational misery to a general social statement (man in this context means, as it often did then, humanity, not just the male portion of it). The on-going human trauma is like a natural phenomenon: it deepens like a coastal shelf, something mostly unseen, but continually growing, rendering the coastline shifting & potentially dangerous & out of human control. How do you break the cycle of emotional / psychological damage? As the cycle is inevitable, even a force of Nature, the only way to break it is to turn your back on Nature, meaning on life, & to refuse to have any children of your own (you stop the fucking up by stopping fucking). The tone is wistful as well as bleak; kids is a familiar, even loving term, & refusing to cause these potential children damage is a weirdly loving, though negative, act.

Stevenson's poem gives us a man looking back with satisfaction on the labors of his life, looking forward with contentment to well-deserved eternal rest; Larkin, by contrast, gives us a despairing but also comic look (à la Beckett) at the grubby realities of human life. He plays off Stevenson, & off the regularity of his traditional form, with a grim but also witty modern view of things. I think Larkin's is a perfect lyric: he moves, in twelve short lines, from comic shock & anger to a greater understanding of & empathy with others into an expansive requiem for humanity in general. (But as always when an artwork signals a kind of despair, the work's very achievement negates its hopelessness.)

I took this from the Collected Poems of Philip Larkin, edited by Anthony Thwaite.

Berkeley Community Chorus & Orchestra: Elgar, Wu, & Tippett

Yesterday afternoon I was at Hertz Hall at UC Berkeley for the third & final performance by the Berkeley Community Chorus & Orchestra of their latest program, Voices of War, a topic sadly as relevant as ever; in fact, as Music Director Ming Luke told us, though this concert might be seen as a response to the world's current conflagrations, these pieces had actually been scheduled years ago, only to be disrupted by the pandemic.

The first piece, Elgar's Sospiri, was a pleasant surprise, as it was not listed on the website description of the concert. It is a meditation for harp & orchestra, provoked by the First World War, & I'm surprised it isn't better known, as it is reminiscent of Barber's celebrated Adagio for Strings, with a similar dignified sense of mounting sorrow. Perhaps it's the piece's relative brevity, & its comparative emotional complexity (it doesn't build on a single subject as the Barber does, but moves meditatively around) that render it less suitable for public commemorations. It did seem a very personal statement, despite the large forces involved. I was glad to "discover" it.

The Elgar was followed by the wind blows full of sand, a setting by Sam Wu for chorus & orchestra of Li Po's Lament of the Frontier Guard, as rendered into English by Ezra Pound. Wu did not set the entire poem, but made effective use of large sections & fragments of it, which helped emphasize the dislocated & desolate effect of the work. The setting is bleak but beautiful as a desert is beautiful; waves of sound sweep forward, intersected with fragile, almost scratchy effects from solo strings. The chorus is sometimes united, sometimes halved, singing over & under each other in a sort of call-&-response way. as they contemplate the yellowing grasses & the chilly expanse of bones "white with a thousand frosts". As the words describe the imperial anger & brutal battles that left so many bodies to waste in this distant field, the music grows stridently martial, with the sort of harsh indifferent sarcasm of the marches in Shostakovich's symphonies. The battle recedes but the bones remain; the chorus's final word is forgotten. This powerfully effective piece was commissioned by the BCCO & given its world premiere in these performances. Wu was present & came on stage to an enthusiastic ovation. This piece wsa conducted by the group's Assistant Conductor, Samantha Burgess; Music Director Ming Luke directed the Elgar & the final piece, Michael Tippett's oratorio A Child of Our Time.

Tippett wrote the piece to express his profound anguish over the events surrounding Kristallnacht, but his aim was to write a piece about the universal underlying situation (the violence provoked by oppressing one group of people, including the violent force used to suppress their resistance) rather than the facts behind this particular situation: thus instead of Herschel Grynszpan, whose killing of a German diplomat in Paris was used as an excuse by the Nazis for a night of terror against German Jews, we have The Boy, & his Mother, & an unnamed power oppressing an unidentified people. They could be Jews, but they could also be Black Americans; the libretto mentions "pograms in the east, lynchings in the west", &, just as Bach used Lutheran hymns in his chorales, Tippett widens his musical & emotional net by using Black American spirituals for several of the choruses.

Tippett wrote his own libretto, at T S Eliot's suggestion. His lines may not have the rhythmic power of Eliot's work, but they make up for any lack of elegance with sincerity & directness, though that's not the same thing as simplicity; given his lifelong interest in Jungian psychology, Tippett references our shadow selves & other underlying psychological structures as he looks forward to some sort of future human reconciliation. Tippett's attempt in his libretto to create a universal situation certainly struck me as superior to Amin Maalouf's similar attempt for Adriana Mater, which has extraordinarily powerful music by Saariaho in the service of a clumsy & reductive libretto. Tippett was wise to write an oratorio, in which the action is interspersed with meditations / interpretations & suggestive emblems, rather than a more overtly dramatic opera.

The BCCO had certainly lined up a powerhouse quartet of soloists: soprano Brandie Sutton, alto Sara Couden, tenor Jonathan Elmore, & bass Kirk Eichelberger. Sutton sang her lines, which included The Mother's, with a soaring & anguished purity; Elmore was the plangent & earnest Son. Couden gave conviction & power to her meditations, & Eichelberger stentorian authority to his. The whole concert was pretty remarkable; I'll admit that I only recently found out about this group, though it's been around for nearly 60 years, &, as this program showed, it does excellent work.

The concert was free & open to the public, which is also a pretty remarkable thing, but though I understand the need to ask for money, I wish that particular speech had been placed somewhere other than right after Wu's piece, as it jolted us right out of the powerful effect he had created. We get bumped back into reality soon enough.

The program book mentioned that Tippett's use of spirituals in A Child of Our Time has "drawn charges of cultural appropriation". I find his use of them respectful & empathetic, & a way of incorporating the history of American racism as part of the universal struggle he is trying to depict. What's his alternative? Ignoring the oppression of Black Americans? Should he, a gentile from England, also not have been moved to compose by the plight of Jews in Germany? Cultural appropriation is a real thing, but also a complicated thing, & it's a term that gets tossed around more easily than it should, without much thought or distinction. The history of culture is the history of "appropriation": borrowing, outright theft, misunderstandings, re-interpretations, revisions, an empathetic realization that a culture that is not your own is saying something to you . . . The alternative seems to be a reductive insistence on a mostly imaginary cultural purity, & of course "cultural purity", unpolluted by foreign influences/appropriations, is a central tenet of fascism. & as the program also mentions, Pound, whose influential version of Li Po's poem was the basis for Wu's powerful work, was a fascist & an anti-Semite. Yet his version (or appropriation) of the Chinese poet speaks with harrowing truth about the effects of authoritarian violence, & Wu, an Australian of Chinese descent now active in the United States, made it the source for an excellent new work. It's a reminder that all we can do is try to make the best we can of a troubled & unsatisfying world.

Museum Monday 2024/2

 

Head of a Man in Near Profile Looking Left by Sandro Botticelli, normally at Christ Church Oxford but currently on view as part of the special Botticelli Drawings exhibit at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players: ArtZenter Emerging Composers Grant Concert

Last night I was at Herbst Theater for the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players Emerging Composer Grant Program Round 2 Open Readings, a concert which was free & open to the public, held in cooperation with the ArtZenter Emerging Composers Grant Program. As far as I know, which admittedly isn't all that far, this ArtZenter Program is new (& very welcome); established by Tony Magee of The Lagunitas Brewing Company, it is designed to fund "the creation of new music by emerging composers that explores the power and grace of the traditional orchestral ensemble". As Magee put it in his remarks before the second half of the concert, he is hoping to discover "the next John Adams at 25". Six new scores were performed by the excellent orchestra, conducted by SFCMP Artistic Director Eric Dudley. The six composers were there & each spoke briefly before his or her piece.

I will note, irrelevantly, that I've always disliked the term "emerging" as applied to artists. It conjures up gummy, half-formed larval butterflies semi-emerged from their sticky sheaths. But that state of transformation & surprising development is characteristic of all artists throughout their entire artistic lives. Artistry is not static or stagnant. What are these composers "emerging" from? I assume the answer is really "obscurity", but that's classifying them in an art-world hierarchy that doesn't offer much insight into their art. They know who they are, as do their friends, families, & colleagues. They are, I'm sure, conscious that they're still developing, but already they're at a certain kind of peak, with achievements ready to be unveiled to the public. What I'll loosely & arrogantly call "serious art music", especially of the new variety, is already so marginalized in the United States (not to speak of other cultures) that any resplendently "emerged" fame needs to be seen in perspective (I've referred to the aforementioned John Adams & Nixon in China to educated professionals & received nothing but blank stares in return). I suppose "emerging" is better than "young", though the program did give us the birth years of the composers.

Anyway: I shouldn't carp about the name of an excellent & generous project, one which resulted in an excellent & generous concert. The first piece was Eye of the Earth by Yeoul Choi; she based it on three poems by her father, Minsik Choi, who had always wanted to be a poet though he ended up in a very different (unnamed) profession. The poems were given in the program in the original Korean as well as English translation; the first, I am the Wind, led to an initially soft & reedy sweep of sound that soon developed muscular force as it swept on, leading directly into the other two sections, Cosmic Dust & That Person Is. . . This piece struck me as very well balanced & just the right length. Second was Her Dress Waves by Craig Peeslee; waves plays off the use of the term in physics, as well as conjuring up a more seductive image of a woman's dress ruffled by a summer breeze (the Her who owns the dress is undescribed & was not mentioned by the composer in his notes or his talk). Peaslee mentioned that he was trying for a rippling spatial effect similar to that found on some stereo recordings (he mentioned Pink Floyd, but that's lost on me). He suggested that those in the center of the auditorium would experience the effect better. I was off to the side (I had been more centrally located, but a woman with some kind of scent that disturbed my unfortunately delicate sinuses sat right behind me, fortunately with enough time for me to move) but I could see what the composer was getting at. The first half closed with Not Another Word by Ben Rieke, a piece exploring the difference between our inner lives & what gets expressed, & seen, by others; that might make things sound too abstracted & philosophical but this was another intriguing piece, with moments of near-silent solos giving way to abundance, or (artful) confusion.

The second half opened with Before Dawn, by Sepehr Pirasteh, a work inspired by the traditional dawn song of the Ghashghai people, nomads who lived near the composer's native Shiraz in Iran, a sound & experience he linked to ongoing struggles against political oppression. It is a haunting, almost lumbering tune, passing as in a swaying procession, with an eerie edge to the sound. Interestingly, given the composer's linkage of the music to uprising & resistance, there is no triumphant or affirmative ending; it ends more or less as it continued (which is a frankly more realistic assessment of uprising & resistance). Next up was Beyond the Pacific Ocean by Eda Er. She is originally from Turkey & mentioned the vast Pacific as both barrier & protection from the person she had been in other countries. There was an interesting use of percussion in the piece; perhaps misled by Debussy I was assuming an oceanic invocation would swirl around the strings, but the percussion, which did evoke lashing waves, spoke to the strength of the ocean. The piece ended with several resounding thwacks on a large drum. The final piece was Snap by Cole Reyes. He spoke about the many emotional uses of music: sometimes you need loud & energetic, others soft & inward. Snap has emotional connotations & connections here (as in, he just snapped!). The piece fluidly went from one affect to another. It was a good way to end the evening.

Here's hoping all six composers can continue to do their work.

Friday Photo 2024/1

 

good advice from Oakland graffiti