(program)
Mercury Wing Classical Recording. Recorded in N/A. // Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) // Swan Lake Ballet Suite
Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Antal Dorati
The Opera Direction has commissioned me to write music for the ballet The Swan Lake. I accepted the work, partly because I want the money, but also because I have long had a wish to try my hand at this kind of music. “” tchaikovsky, The Life and Letters
this is the last of the four week stretch of tchaikovsky’s music——and the month-and-a-half of russian composers——a journey inspired by an excerpt from a book by musicologist leonid sabaneyev about the character of russian composers:
Music here was a terrible narcosis, a sort of intoxication and oblivion, a going off into irrational planes. Drunken mysticism, ecstatic sensations against a background of profound pessimism permeating existence. It was not form or harmoniousness or Apollonic vision that was demanded of music, but passion, feeling, languor, heartache. Such was Tchaikovsky’s music and such also was what the music of Rachmaninoff developed into. “”leonid sabaneyeff, Sabaneyeff
i admit it’s not clear how the search for a terrible narcosis leads to Swan Lake, but here we are (then again is that not exactly what we hear and see in the dance of the Black Swan in the ballet’s finale?). there have been, however, more obvious instances in this nearly two-month stretch of the kind of music that possesses more often than it entertains: the fourth movement of shotakovich’s Symphony No.10 and the demonic depths from which the DSCH theme is repeatedly summoned; the languorous expressiveness of the soloist in the second movement of rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.2 and the wildly undulating notes that begin prokofiev’s Symphony No.3. this last month of works by tchaikovsky has revealed a composer that believed as much in pretty mozartian little melodies as in the macabre colours that appear in the grand finale of this Suite——really there is no ending quite like it, a climax both subtle and spectacular.
The origins of Swan Lake go back several years. Probably in the summer of 1871, Tchaikovsky made up a ballet, ‘The lake of swans’, at his sister’s house at Kamenka, for his nieces to perform. His brother Modest, who was also staying, danced the prince, their eldest niece Tatyana danced Odette. “” robert philips, The Classical Music Lover’s Guide to Orchestral Music
a lot of deserved attention is going to the revamped choreography that the National Ballet of Canada will present in their Swan Lake in the new year, in honour of Artistic Director karen kain’s 50th year with the company——though hopefully nothing much will change in the corresponding music.
elsewhere in music this week i came across a great podcast recommendation for classical music lovers, indeed music lovers of all sorts: the CBC’s ‘This is My Music’. each week a canadian musician or conductor is invited to host a nearly two-hour curated stretch of the music that means the most to them, their own recordings, their favourite recordings and the non-classical music that inspires them to most, a great listen with new episodes every sunday. come to think of it that’s what i’m trying to do here: sharing with you my music, though it’s not mine and i’m not a musician, at best i’m merely a somewhat lousy librarian...stockpiling, sifting, whistling a tune with a sharp pencil behind one ear...
(song of the week: Leaving Adana — Hijaz)
with exams over, my attention has since turned to what seems like the even more daunting task: finishing Songs For The Cold of Heart——the 2018 novel by quebecois author eric dupont——the punishing length of which has kept me from the other things i’d like to read for the better part of the last couple of months. i find in this novel the same quality and literary aesthetic that i enjoy so much in the french authors of the past century, the styles of george bernanos (Diary of A Country Priest, Mouchette) and louis-ferdinand ceéline (Journey to the End of the Night): an obsession with the infinitesimal details of quotidian life in some little french town concentrically organized around some snow-covered parish that is often simultaneously the site of devout worship, match-making and exceedingly petty gossip——and overlooked by a mild-mannered cure who doesn’t let his cassock prevent him from having some very strong opinions about the quality of one winery over the other. it is the endless intrigues of such pettiness that dupont has spun into a six-hundred-page tome about the several and variously strange generations of one quebecois family, an epic anchored by the defining events of the previous century. breathlessly paced, the book is an encyclopedia of ridiculous and unmistakably canadian circumstances, elongated by the author’s fetishistic indulgences in the details of events that may or may not have happened. a highly recommended read, dupont is soon to be a nationally celebrated treasure. as, inevitably, reading leaks into writing, i’ve been thinking too of what i consider to be pertinent details in the things i write and the connections i make between musical experiences, and my thoughts eventually wandered onto the near seven-year journey that brought me to my choice song for this week, ‘Leaving Adana’:
in the winter of 2011 i was sixteen and readying to leave an abusive and intensely religious household with what was, at least in retrospect, a woefully insufficient amount of preparation. perhaps too much of my time was spent stockpiling music for whatever the journey would bring——i’m still on it——and also in retrospect, i realize now that that was time well spent. music has been a balm, a soothing poultice for every injury, major and minor, over the past 8 years. it was during these stockpiling sessions that i discovered, for example, the music of Bon Iver, and through one of the random miracles of the internet that i stumbled upon a song, ‘Oryssa’, by Trio Chemirani, a persian classical band that has since become one of my favourite sources of instrumental music. i immediately devoured the length of their entire discography and subsequently flew off on other tangents connected to them, bands and collaborations involving the same family of percussive instruments (zarb, daf, riqq). one of those tangents brought me to ‘Hems’ by Hijaz, a cross-cultural jazz ensemble blending traditional middle eastern instruments into european jazz styles. ‘Hems’ is the first song off their 2011 album Chemsi——a truly staggering work, effortlessly sliding in and out of various tempos and instruments to create a multivariety of moods that altogether constitute music that makes for great dinner-party-rasa.
‘La Musicienne’ Tamara de Lempicka (1929)
this discovery was before the advent of Apple Music and Spotify and was therefore lacking in platforms through which i could hold on to shards of music i find for further investigation at a later more stable date. and so i eventually forgot about ‘Hems’ and about Hijaz. in an entirely different circumstance was i in the fall 2015 when a passing recommendation brought me to ‘Identical Snowflakes’, a wintry love song of sorts whose melodic prettiness is merely a context for lyrics that aren’t without a couple sharp edges (“We were cut from the same paper that was folded long ago / So let all the other Snowflakes turn to snow”). the band responsible for the song is a brooklyn-born project, of various folk-americana derivatives, that go by the name Hem. so when i tried to find that song on Apple Music, i was met with a resounding no clue dude, which is not an unusual response from the platform’s often lackadaisical music library. searching with the title instead of the artist’s name yields a song called ‘Two Identical Snowflakes’...by a band called Hijaq. a bell was ringing in my head but i couldn’t quite place what it was for. several attempts and combinations led to searches for songs that doesn’t exist, namely one called ‘Hem’ by Hijaq——the response to which was ‘Did you mean Hems by Hijaz’——yes fucking right i did, and just like that i was reunited with this band and this absolutely gorgeous album.
(i for one don’t believe in ‘coincidence’ or ‘chance’, not in favour of belief in any kind of purpose to the happening of events great and small. i prefer to subscribe instead to a fervent belief in the absence of any divinely ordained purpose, so much so that the fact that we have a word for coincidence and chance seems to me to defeat the very purpose these words describe. coincidence?——there are no incidences, let alone two that coincide. chance?——as if there was anything else but chance. but of course we need these words, and even more, those who don’t believe in any kind of purpose are too human, all too human, to live without certain conceptual exceptions to the rule. storytelling, for example, is impossible in the mind that can’t afford to contradict its strict atheism with a little belief in myth and in the magic of its power. if you’ve seen the film Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013) you might recall a subtle detail that’s relevant here: Emma and Adèle’s conversation about their belief/disbelief in chance is a prominent one near the top of film, before their interactions graduate to more indubitably more delicious topics. each side makes a convincing argument against the other and the issue seems agreeably split, but filmmaker abdellatif kechiche seems to pick a side in the most subtle way: the scene wherein Emma and Adèle first encounter each other in passing is accompanied by a tipsy little jingle on what sounds like a steel drum, the antipode of a grand motif that suggests a predestined union between the two. then at the very end of that film, after the two lovers say their last goodbyes at a kitschy art gallery, Adèle wanders out to the street, and her retreating figure is accompanied by that same jingle. now if you believe in chance——that is in there being no design or designer pulling the strings that pull our lives——and are unaware of the influence of the director on the film’s world, then what a wonderfully bizarre coincidence that final scene must seem. perhaps so too, to a lesser degree, my reunion with Hijaz? but of course only a mind predisposed to a belief in design would describe anything as coincidence. that then is the indisputable starting point which every atheist must ignore in order to form a cohesive sense of self, that we are predisposed to seeking patterns. what then to do with this pattern-seeking instinct, in a universe with no intention to make patterns——is the ultimate conundrum of the atheist. sure you might excise your belief in a god, but we are nonetheless irretrievably steeped in our godliness, in the fantastic talent for devotion characteristic of the species. thankfully there are no shortages of cheat-codes in the face of such a conundrum, music for example. music is impossible without an inexplicable belief in the inevitability of certain patterns. one of the features of an absolutely irresistible melody is the indescribable feeling that it simply couldn’t be any other way, as if it were a thing that was born fully formed, athena out of the head of zeus, an absolutely necessary pattern. But perhaps that’s just because they satisfy our inclination to the belief that patterns exist even prior to the mind capable of perceiving them. to that extent i can’t take seriously an atheist who isn’t addicted to music, it shows they lack seriousness of any kind, that they are still strangers to that aforementioned talent for devotion that is in every one of us, god or no god. that talent merely looks for a worthy host, the source of all patterns, the point of convergence. in that sense, ‘God’ and ‘coincidence’ are merely synonyms. my belief is that to lose one’s belief in the former is a necessary precondition to fully enjoying the bizarre and mesmerizing magic of the latter. only then are we sufficiently capable for the utmost respect for those among us who are able to design patterns of their own. the artists among us, the musicians especially. indeed i held my breath in regards to everything i read of nietzsche——that magnificent atheist who asked the most beautiful question on the topic till date: Is there anyone that believes less than I do, so that I may learn from them?——until i came across his little quip that ‘Without music life would be a mistake’...only then could i breath a sigh of relief and mutter ‘ahhh, comrade’. and yes, it would be a mistake, how else could one design a life worth living after having done away with the possibility of an ultimate designer, if one could not thereafter bathe is the multitude and variety of designers?).
of course another two years had to pass before i gave the rest of the album a full listen, and two years after that to make up my mind as to my favourite song on the album: ‘Leaving Adana’ is the perfect example of everything this album is. the piano is a bisecting line that runs through the entire piece, with the percussions (drum set and zarb) on one side and strings (standing bass, oud, violin) on the other. The slow pressure that builds up from the start finds relief in a sizzling violin cadenza at the halfway point, the beauty of which comes through much more in the studio recording.