Muddy Modern Mahler

Each tutorial will, I’m sure, touch on the modernity in Mahler’s music in tomorrow’s section. I think now might be a good opportunity to take a quick look at the Solvik reading and see how that relates to the aspects of modernity that Dr Ansari touched upon in class today (it might even give you some insight you can bring to discussion in tomorrow’s class). Solvik problematizes Mahler’s relationship with modernity in a way that I think it particularly interesting; rather than accepting modernism as a stable term with an easily grasped definition, he seems to present it more as a polyseme (not would be a good time to break out that Google define function, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the terminology of critical theory).[1] I think this is a fairly accurate way of framing something that is notoriously slippery. Solvik makes the term modernism into something that more closely resembles a useful ontological tool than the elusive shadow that it can seem to be when grasped too firmly in the attempt to decipher what it “means”.

Let’s think about the aspects of modernity that we talked about in class today – a conspicuous sense of self-consciousness, an embracing of logic and the sciences, a rejection of formal or societal norms, and the striving for novelty. All of these characteristics can be construed as kind of wishy-washy. Take the acceptance of logic and the sciences, for example. This basic tenant of modernity seems to necessitate a rejection of the seemingly magical world of religion and spirituality; as Solvik points out, however, Mahler took science and the discovery of deeper biological and mechanical systems as proof of the spiritual realm, and of a connection between that and the physical world.

And there seems to be a direct connection between Mahler's beliefs and his contribution to the musical landscape of the late Romantic period. His second symphony, for example, deals extensively (musically, of course) with the prospect of life after death, eternal - that said, nobody is going to accuse Mahler's music of being unmodern because of this fact. Musically, it could be said to be quite modern - mixing song and symphonic form to break from formal norms, eschewing traditional harmonic progression, and often quoting his own music in later works (there's that conspicuous sense of self-consciousness).

So, like Solvik said, Mahler was a 'modern'. It was a complicated sort of modernity, but then in the perspective given in the reading there doesn't seem to be any other type.

[1] Go to Google, type define: search term. In this case you’re typing define: polyseme. This is my favourite function in Google, and it can be *very* handy.

Chopin and Liszt

Hello all - I would like to direct your attention to the work of the lovely Ms Kate Beaton over at Hark, A Vagrant! She's a Canadian historian (that is a historian from Canada, not one who works specifically with Canadian history) who currently creates HAV! from her home in New York. These strips are historically accurate (you know, within reason for comedy's sake) and are usually pretty funny.

I thought these strips on Chopin and Liszt were more or less related to the course material from the last week or two. I would encourage you to read more of these - she has some particularly funny strips on the Bronte sisters, as well as one on Beethoven.

A post on Mahler will follow in the next few days.

Cheers!
AL

19thC Opera (at the Movies, in the Movies)

The Metropolitan Opera Company’s website has to be one of the best websites for opera around. It has so much more than just the directions on how to order tickets online and the current season.

 In the top banner you can see those links, and it’s worth it to check out the live HD link. Why? Because you can actually find out which operas will be broadcasting live on Saturday afternoons at either the Westmount Mall movie theatres which has two different theatres reserved for the opera, one of which is the VIP so you can order a champagne and pretend you’re in NYC.  Or, you can go to Silver City movie theatres, though that one is open seating and you need to compete with the white-haired crowd who show up at least an hour early to get good seats. This is one of the savviest moves the Met has made since it first started its live radio broadcasts. Opera is so much more interesting when you can see it. It’s as much a visual experience as an aural one and the movie theatre broadcasts are so amazing.  Your $21 at the movie theatre gets you a much better seat than the partial view nosebleeds at Lincoln Centre.  It’s also a smart move on their part because they’re building an audience for the future. When I go to the opera, I’m still one of the only ones with brown hair, and mine has more than a few threads of grey in it now. If something doesn't happen soon, opera will be come culturally obsolete. Opera at the movies makes it far more accessible to teenagers and younger adults who have grown up in a visual culture. It helps erase the stereotype that opera is only for elitist snobs too.  

  

Besides CBC's "Saturday Afternoon at the Met," like most kids growing up in London, ON, I had little exposure to opera. Or, so it seemed. It wasn’t until music school when I had to listen to opera for music history listening quizzes (and ours were drop the needle) that I discovered how much opera I already knew and that some of the tunes were ones I genuinely loved. So where does someone who turned off the radio on Saturday afternoon hear this music? As I became more familiar with the major operas that we studied in music history, I started to pick it out in commercials, t.v. and movie soundtracks, figure-skating programmes, and orchestral suites or arrangements.  Now there's actually a growing field in musicology that studies opera on/in film. Marcia Citron has done a lot to further the respectability of this kind of research—see her books Opera on Screen (2000) and When Opera Meets Film (2010). I even came across a blog entry recently that lists the Top Ten Best Uses of Opera in the Movies . Personally, I love the Bugs Bunny opera cartoons. 

"What's Opera Doc?" 

And "The Rabbit of Seville"

One movie that didn't make it onto the Top Ten Uses of Opera in the Movies was the 1993 movie Philadelphia with Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington.  In one of the last scenes, the Tom Hanks character, a lawyer dying from aids, explains the meaning of his favourite aria to the Denzel Washington character, a lawyer helping Tom Hanks's character sue his firm for wrongful dismissal. 

I think that this scene from Philadelphia captures the aesthetic of opera and shows a good way to listen to it, even if it doesn’t reflect how people actually listened to it in the nineteenth century. I love how Hanks's character tries to get Washington's to experience the music in the way that he does, but until the end of the scene when you see Washington at home with his kids, there's no real indication that he "gets it." There's a lot more going on in that scene too, of course. It ties into the concept of the opera Queen and there's been a lot of work on that end of opera reception too. The intertextuality really works in this scene.  Tom Hanks looses everything because of his difference, as does the character singing the aria he loves so much. 

The music in nineteenth century opera, especially late nineteenth century opera, underpins the drama in such away that it reveals how the characters are feeling and can evoke that feeling in the audience. That’s where experiencing opera live, or at least watching a whole opera from beginning to the end, makes all the difference. As an audience member you experience the story with the characters and are gradually prepared for the music to have its meaning.  The more operas you see live, the more your appreciation for the genre will grow and your understanding of it will deepen.