A KGB officer came to check the symphony orchestra before their trip abroad. He watched the rehearsal. Sharing his impressions:
– Overall, not bad, you can feel the team spirit, especially those with the bows. But there are some shortcomings: that guy at the back, during the whole rehearsal, only hit with his stick about three times – he was mostly slacking off…
– Well, that’s our drummer, that’s his part…
– Don’t give me that, there’s only one Party for us, and he needs to hit more often! (C)
Anna Artamonova, this relates to your question about how we work 🙂
Nadya says, write about contemporary composers, not just about contemporary artists. Well, of course, she means classical, not pop music ones.
Here’s a good one for today – Mexican composer Arturo Márquez with his piece Danzon No. 2. Director Guillermo Ortiz Pichardo made a small short film about it, slightly nonsensical, but very much in tune with the music. By the way, the composer himself appears at 5:19.
In the comments, I’ve left a piano rendition of a segment performed by Yuja Wang. It might even be worth listening to these three minutes first. A really cool performance.
Today, I was reading about dissonances and decided to see if there are any compositions where dissonances are deliberately used as the main material. And I stumbled upon György Ligeti’s Atmosphères.
Listen, it’s very unusual and hardly resembles music at all. He used something called micropolyphony, creating dense webs of chromatic notes moving at different speeds and at various distances from each other.
If you feel like you don’t understand such music and don’t find this assembly of sounds beautiful, imagine instead of an orchestra playing it with solemn faces, a Stanley Kubrick film, for example. Suddenly, everything falls into place.
About a week ago, when I watched The Shining, the first thing I texted a friend was, “Notice that there’s no music in the film,” to which he replied that there is, but it’s so well made and integrated that you don’t notice it. Actually, The Shining has a very cool soundtrack, very well-selected.
So, specifically, this composition Atmosphères (as well as parts of Lux Aeterna, Requiem, and Aventures) was used by Kubrick in his 2001: A Space Odyssey. Another piece, Lontano, was used in The Shining. And Musica ricercata was used in Eyes Wide Shut. By the way, Musica ricercata is quite good; I’ll drop a link in the comments.
I finished “Theodora”. It’s a three-hour opera in a production by the Royal Opera House. About Christian saints and martyrs Theodora and Didymus, who lived in the 4th century in what’s now modern Syria. On stage – prostitutes, pole dances, a bomb, essentially, the full package.
And yes, originally it’s not an opera, but an oratorio, meaning originally on stage there is a chorus that sings for three hours, and nothing else happens. In the production, however, the oratorio is decked out like an opera, plus a bit more.
In short. The plot. Briefly. Valens, the Roman envoy, forces everyone to worship Roman gods, and threatens to execute those who refuse. Theodora, a Christian, does not comply. Her lover, Didymus, secretly converted to Christianity, tries to save her by disguising himself in her dress. In the end, Theodora surrenders to the enemies to save Didymus, and both die as martyrs for their faith. Afterwards, they were canonized by Christians in gratitude.
The oratorio is in English. That’s unusual in itself. Well.. in English. “Vouchsafe, dread Sir, a gracious ear. Lowly the matron bow’d, and bore away the prize…”. English from three hundred years ago. I understood “Carmen” in French with subtitles better. But no matter, there are translations you can hold in your hand and glance at one-eyed, plus everything happens veeery slowly there.
So, what we have here. A classic plot on a religious theme. In Katie Mitchell’s production, they decided to break all norms at once, making the oratorio into an opera and also setting it in modern times. It turned out pretty cool, actually.
Katie Mitchell situates the action in, as they called in an Alicante publication, a “Putin-like” embassy in Antioch, where rooms function as a brothel. This is the first theatre piece to involve an intimacy coordinator for sex and violence scenes (Ita O’Brien).
Valens, the Roman envoy in Antioch, wears a red sweater. He hasn’t heard of the #MeToo movement, hence the brothel accommodates “comfort women” for him and his bodyguards. They in red lingerie dance on poles in the red room (kind of a striptease; Holly Weston and Kelly Vee).
Next, we are introduced to Septimius, Valens’ head of security. His task is to ensure that all citizens publicly worship Roman gods as a sign of loyalty. Otherwise – death.
Here comes Didymus, one of the bodyguards. Didymus used to believe in Roman gods but secretly converted to Christianity. He’s in love with the Christian Theodora, the head of the household staff at the embassy.
Theodora plans an assassination attempt on Valens with a homemade explosive. They actually assemble it on stage with duct tape and some stuff.
Septimius uncovers the conspiracy and defuses the bomb. Theodora’s punishment – she becomes a “comfort woman”. For this, they dress her up as Marilyn Monroe. Oh, actually, it seems more like Louise Brooks, but never mind, they look alike.
Then the drama continues with an escape, Didymus saves Theodora, then the other way around. But ultimately, as in all operas, things end up not very well, but specifically in Mitchell’s production, good prevails over evil.
The role of Didymus is played by Jakub Józef Orliński. He has a beautiful scene where he changes into heels and a shimmering dress, in which he continues to perform until the end of the opera.
Jakub has a rather unusual voice. He is a countertenor. It’s the highest male voice. After castrati fell out of favor – quite rare. Google it, his voice is very beautiful. I’ll leave a few links in the comments.
The first performance of “Theodora” was in London, at the Royal Theatre in Covent Garden in 1750, and this production 272 years later comes from there too. Quite symbolic. True, back then it flopped – almost no audience. But now, it’s a classic.
I am listening to the opera Cosi fan tutte, half-watching the libretto in another window. Suddenly, I notice a whole section isn’t translated. And they completely skip it in the opera. That is, after “O ciel”, it jumps straight to “Ei parte”. I go to Google to figure out what’s going on. Seems there were many cuts, but in the entire libretto, only this aria is untranslated. Everything else is translated. I find another version of the libretto with a side-by-side translation, and there, Aria No. 24 by Ferrando “Ah, lo veggio, quell’anima bella” is missing altogether. That’s precisely why it is also missing from the parallel translation—because the translation is from the booklets of various productions, and in them, the aria is omitted.
I started digging deeper, it turns out that Aria No. 24 is feared and not included in most productions and even studio recordings because it is very difficult to perform. “Ah, lo veggio, quell’anima bella”. However, of course, if you wish, you can find a few performances from different theaters on YouTube.
UPDATE: Suddenly, ChatGPT has developed a sense of humor. It replies to me, “Although Mozart can no longer participate in the staging 😄, his music is sometimes subject to adaptation”. It even added a smiley face! And this was a reply to the third question with no Personalization message, and all the questions were serious.
In the Mozart opera “All Women Are the Same” or Cosi Fan Tutte by the Royal Opera House production, the one on the right (Dorabella) resembles Mizulina, while the one on the left (Fiordiligi) resembles Skabeeva.
I’ve always been curious: why do people assume that famous singers, musicians, and even artists must be intelligent? For instance, if some lady with a mere three years of schooling blathers some nonsense on the tram, nobody rushes to tweet about it, right? But if it’s not a lady from the tram, but a lady from the TV, suddenly there’s this expectation for her to be sensible.
I also don’t understand why sometimes these same singers are asked to comment on events. And others, probably their fans, for some reason regard their opinions as more substantial than those of an unknown person who is, obviously, closer to the topic.
There are good examples, though—like Makarevich, whose interviews on arbitrary topics genuinely reflect an understanding of how the world works and, I can’t quite find the word, wisdom, perhaps. But if you look deeper—he is just another intelligent person. There are many like him, but he also sings. And if an interviewer wants to talk to him, it’s only because Makarevich has something to say. Most celebrities, in general, have nothing to say. And often, even if a thought does mature in their head, they can’t express it clearly.
If you think about it, people who from an early age dedicated themselves to a profession—athletes, actors, often musicians—inevitably see the world around them skewed by their passion. Frankly, much of it remains unseen to them.
The same goes for Polunin, who can’t write in Russian without a dictionary, yet for some reason, people are interested in his opinion on matters other than the very thing he’s been doing since childhood.
I’m exchanging tickets for The Nutcracker over the phone.
– What is your card number?
– Five quadrillion three hundred seventy-three trillion six hundred sixty billion two hundred sixty-three million three hundred thirty-four thousand eight hundred seventy.
– Expiration date?
– October twenty-eighth. That’s basically half of October.
– Done!
Turns out, you can exchange the tickets, and now we are not going to the ballet on Sunday, but on Saturday.
We attended Beethoven’s 4th concert (Jeremy Denk, Christopher Zimmerman) and Rachmaninoff’s “Symphonic Dances”. It opened with the premiere of a contemporary composer Quinn Mason’s “She Dreams of Flying. Honestly, out of the trio, only Beethoven truly resonated with me, followed by Rachmaninoff.
I had never heard Rachmaninoff’s “Dances” before—they had somehow passed me by. Yet I am well-acquainted with his Second and Third Concertos, I know his Vocalise, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, and once even attempted to learn the Prelude in C-sharp minor (to no avail), and it was with these expectations that I attended the “Symphonic Dances”—a piece which Rachmaninoff himself considered his best. And somehow, it just didn’t click. The first part is beautiful, the second a bit more complex, but beyond that, it became less comprehensible to me. There are some allusions to religious motifs, and that’s where I completely lose track.
Quinn Mason appeared to me like something out of a museum of modern art—all the components of art in place, and clearly resonating with someone, but that someone is not me. Probably, it’s somewhere in the same corner as Schnittke with his experiments.
Beethoven’s 4th concert with Jeremy Denk at the piano was wonderful. There’s nothing to critique here. Especially the second part is superb.
For those who play the piano — there’s a very interesting channel by Mikhail Proshin. I’ve been subscribed to it for a long time and have watched it for a while. Just to illustrate, here’s the latest from it. It has a good thought, very applicable to my case.
He talks about the trap of professional musicians (I am not professional). They often perceive music “top-down”– as a finished product that must be reproduced. This results in them giving equal attention to both fundamental and minor elements, which can hinder development and prevent enjoyment of the process. Amateurs, lacking high technical skill, simplify compositions, accompany themselves, and focus attention on the basic structures of music. This allows them to quickly understand and internalize musical basics, such as chords and harmonies, and use this experience in other songs. A professional might learn 100 songs without truly understanding them, and quickly forget many — this is just my case. An amateur, by simplifying 100 songs, can extract fundamental knowledge and build their own style on this basis, experiencing 100 situations of success.
The idea is that playing “from the bottom up” is not just simplification, but a conscious process that helps better understand music and enjoy performing it. A very good thought, indeed.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 