#A-TO-Z CHALLENGE 2015 – LETTER “L” – LYRICS

In the course of my music career, I had the opportunity to play in Opera Tampa for twelve seasons, under the baton of Maestro Anton Coppola, who finally retired a few years ago, at age 98. We should all be so lucky. We played Italian Opera only, and I really enjoyed it; it was also an education in playing rubato and and education in patience. Opera tells a story through lyrics, action, stage-setting and music, no better exemplified than by Giacomo Puccini's “Turandot” and the magnificent “Nessun dorma”.

Giacomo Puccini, Italian Composer, December 22, 1858 - November 24, 1924

I almost feel like Anna Russell in describing this opera, because it's a typical opera; love story, the Prince loves the Princess, but she doesn't love him. There's another mousy girl waiting in the wings; she kills herself because the Prince doesn't love her, and you think the Prince is remorseful and will off himself, so, you think, “Well, another unhappy opera.” but you're be wrong. Puccini died before he could finish this and unlike “Madama Butterfly” which is the most depressing opera I've ever played, this one ends happily for once. One of his students fiddled with it and gave it a happy ending for once, thank the Christ.

That, however doesn't make the lyrics any better. Here they are in English:

Nobody shall sleep!...Nobody shall sleep!Even you, o Princess,in your cold room,watch the stars,that tremble with love and with hope.But my secret is hidden within me,my name no one shall know...No!...No!...On your mouth I will tell it when the light shines.And my kiss will dissolve the silence that makes you mine!...(No one will know his name and we must, alas, die.)Vanish, o night!Set, stars! Set, stars!At dawn, I will win! I will win! I will win!

Pretty God-awful in my book. If someone sang that to me, I'd have them rushed to the E. R. to find out if they were brain-damaged, but that's Italian Opera and no one really gives a shit what comes out of your mouth, as long as it come out beautifully, and it does!

Rather than plague you with the Italian version, I think I'll just let Luciano Pavarotti sing it for us; he does a bang-up job! Tomorrow, we'll visit the Glenn Miller Orchestra!

#A-TO-Z CHALLENGE – LETTER “P” – P. D. Q. BACH

P. D. Q. BACH

P. D. Q. Bach is a fictitious composer invented by musical satirist “Professor” Peter Schickele. In a five-decade-long gag, that Schickele has developed, he performs “discovered” words of the “only forgotten son” of the Bach family. Schickele's music combines parodies of musicological scholarship, the conventions of Baroque and classical music and lots of slapstick comedy.

Anyone who's been to an American Circus has heard composer Julius Fucik's "March of the Gladiators". This "parody" Death Waltz has been making the rounds for years and turns up on music stands now and then and gives musicians heart attacks. It's never played, but just the sight of it is enough to make one quit music and take up selling encyclopedias door-to-door . It is more a statement about composers such as Richard Strauss, who upon consulting with a frustrated flute player over his "Ein Heldenleiben" with the score, noted that the violins had the same passage and that it was "unplayable in the first violins" as well. Having played the piece, I can attest to the unplayableness in some of the viola passages. In a measure of 16th notes, if you hit 12 right in the "Battle Scene" you're doing well. Since it's all a mad scramble, with the entire orchestra tearing  around, it sounds like, well, a battle!

I wore this album out, and several other that Schickele produced. One of my favorites is his take on Beethoven's 5th Symphony, where the announcers treat the first movement as if it were the first inning of a baseball game.

The name P. D. Q. is a parody of the three-part names given to some members of the Bach family that are commonly reduced to initials, such as C. P. E., for Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. PDQ is an initialism for “pretty damn quick”.

The biography of the composer is given by Schickele with citations such as the following:

• P. D. Q. was born in Leipzig on March 31, 1742, the son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Anna Magdalena Bach; the twenty-first of Johann's twenty children.
• P. D. Q. attributed his frequent headaches to having been christened in a shipyard, rather than a church.
• Defined the doctrine of Originality Through Incompetence.

One needn't be a musician to appreciate the wit of Schickele and his alter-ego, P. D. Q. Bach. As lecturer, Schickele would continue the commentary on a running gag that began in Concerto for Horn and Hardart and continue in the introduction to Six Contrary Dances on his Music for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion album, Schickele inferred from fictional evident that P. D. Q. Bach had a hollow leg that was considerably longer than the other one which explains the odd patterns in his dance music.

A take on the very famous Well-Tempered Clavichord by J. S. Bach. The music in this piece as well as being humorous, is dazzling for it's mixture of thematic material, development and execution.

 

P. D. Q. Bach Sonata for Viola 4 Hands and Harpsichord, S 440

Alicia Choi, Rose Wollman, viola, Garnet Ungar, harpsichord 

I'm a violist and made my living playing the viola for many years, but I had never seen this. I was in tears; this is one of the funniest things I've ever seen and how in the hell I missed this, I'll never know. Probably because I was too busy pretending to play the violin with my friend Nancy and first violin at that! ("What are those notes?" I asked her, during a break, when some batch of notes climbed off the stave up into the stratosphere. "Dunno. Just shift and play." Big help, so I just made sure that my "notes" were at least in the same key.

P. D. Q. Bach "The Abduction of Figaro" Act 1, Scene 1

This first scene plays up all of the silliness of Grand Opera, along with just having general fun with the re-iteration of phrases and musical lines, another "invention" of P. D. Q. Bach. What makes all of this so much fun, is that Schickele always gets very accomplished musicians to play along and join in the fun of satirizing their own art. I've always had fun playing music like this, and there are many other fine artists who satirize their own art forms. For more musical fun, check out Anna Russell and her Wagner's Ring Cycle interpretation. Ooh, it's terrific! 

#ROW80 - Young Person's Guide to the Opera

Young Person's Guide to the OPERA

Young persons today have lost sight of the fact that opera used to be the 19^th century's version of “Jersey Shore.” Well, kind of. Persons in operas did all sorts of outlandish things that just were not done in polite company. Actually, this analogy doesn't play out well, because all of the shit that goes on in “Jersey Shore” pretty much goes on in real life. Never mind.

Anyway, opera was THE form of entertainment back in the days before television and iPods and all of that, so composers and librettists were hell-bent on coming up with some pretty outrageous stuff to keep the hoi-polloi amused. In Italy, Puccini ruled and he wrote some beautiful stuff. Between Puccini and Guiseppe Verdi, Italian opera was well represented.

The Germans on the other hand, had a few problems. One of them was the Kaiser. Kaiser Wilhelm was a bit odd. He, uh decided, much like Stalin did in Russia several decades later, that he would decide what was acceptable for German audiences. Never mind that the Germans had been raised on the Aesir and Ragnarok and were already of a Berserker mentality. There was a problem with his favorite composer, who later became Hitler's favorite composer. Herr Richard Strauss lived long enough to achieve this dubious distinction, but Strauss really didn't give a fig what Wilhelm, or Hitler or Göebbels thought and went on to compose operas that were, ah, indeed in questionable taste. 

The other is that for sheer crazy, German opera just can't be beat. Before Richard Strauss, we had Richard Wagner, whose magnum opus is the “Ring Cycle,” 20 hours of mayhem. Incest, death, destruction, war, 20 questions with dragons, trolls, witches, stupid but good looking heroes, Brünhilde, Rheinmaidens, Välkyrie, Valhalla, topped off by Götterdammerüng. A very happy batch of operas indeed, called "Das Ringen der Nibelungen," or "The Ring Cycle." I'll let Anna Russell describe it for us.

This set the stage for Richard Strauss who thought wholesome stuff like Salome would be perfect for operatic treatment. Herr Strauss was an awesome composer, but he had not clue one about anything socio-political during his long life. He thought it was a swell idea to collaborate with Stefan Zweig as his librettist during his stint as Reichsminister of musik for the Third Reich under Josef Goebbels. Herr Zweig was Jewish and living in London. Herr Goebbels was pissed about it and Strauss was lucky not to get a one-way ticket to Dachau.

Well, during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm, who was a notorious blue-stocking, Strauss thought it would be a hella idea to do an operatic treatment of “Salome.” D'you remember this story? Antipas marries Herodias so he can get at her daughter Salome. John the Baptist is locked up in Antipas' prison under the palace. Salome gets a gander at John, as he squabbles over theology with some pharisees and goes all googly-eyed over him, but John spurns her for the harlot-in-training that she is. Antipas wants to see Salome dance, but she's all like, “Ewwww.” Herodias is rather annoyed at both Antipas and John (must be PMS) and she tells Salome to dance for Antipas, because Antipas will give her whatever Salome asks for, and she should ask for John's head.

Herodias is sick and tired of Antipas mooning over both Salome and John the Baptist. Antipas is afraid of John, as John is a man of God and keeps saying all this scary stuff from his cistern. So, Salome says, “Okay, A, I'll hip-hop for ya” and does the “Dance of the 7 Veils.”

This is a more modern treatment, but the staging is so well-done, I chose this.

Once done, she asks for the head of John the Baptist and the evil deed is done. Next comes perhaps the most unbelievably hellish passage in music imaginable, as a huge hand rises out of the cistern bearing the head of John the Baptist.

Antipas is horrified, but the nightmare is not yet ended. Salome proceeds to roll around on stage with the severed head of John the Baptist and sings the most glorious song of love that is also horrifying.

So, Antipas has her put to death by the Roman guards. Curtain falls.

Great stuff! Seriously, this is music I grew up listening to and played, so even though my ears are by no means jaded, one can see why I am pretty tolerant of today's Rammstein-like groups and less than thrilled with precious music like Mozart. I love Haydn. Haydn took chances and is wonderful. Enough digression.

Strauss went ahead and debuted this opera without the Kaiser's approval. The Kaiser's favorite minister later died wearing a pink tutu at some function or another. So much for propriety; the Kaiser had a really bad year.

I played in Opera Tampa for 12 seasons, so I have plenty of rich material to draw from. We did mostly Italian opera. Maestro Coppola (the same family that produced Francis and Nic Cage) summed it up this way: “Anyone can play a Goddamned German opera. It's just 1, 2, 3, 4.  In Italian opera there are so many rubatos and tempi changes it requires so much artistry. You are all here because you were hand-picked. Be proud.” Tyrant. I miss it. Maestro wasn't necessarily wrong, although in his waltzes, Richard Strauss affords lots of rubatos in the Viennese style. You may have picked that out in the "7 Veils." For the record, I LOVE playing Richard Strauss; supremely challenging and he pushes orchestras to the limits. In "Ein Heldenleben," (A Hero's Life" with him as the hero) during it's debut, one of the first violinists complained to him that a certain passage is unplayable. He casually looked over the score and said, "Don't worry, it's unplayable in the flutes, too." It is in the violas as well. Let's end this with one of the funniest Bugs Bunny cartoons ever.

Probably one of the best Wagner treatments I've ever seen.