The subject of Beethoven’s opera was derived from a play by Bouilly called Leonore, or, Conjugal Love. The opera was first performed in Vienna on November 20, 1805. The vocal parts are so difficult that the first cast complained they were impossible to sing. The city of Vienna was in disarray because the French had occupied it several days before the premier, and most of the city’s music patrons had fled. The plot of the opera turns on the rectification of injustice by a noble woman who disguises herself as a boy called Fidelio. She gains employment in the prison where her husband Florestan is incarcerated and held in solitary confinement. Under threat of the impending visit of a prison inspector who might discover Pizarro’s plot, Pizarro tries to persuade the warden Rocco to murder Florestan. Rocco refuses but agrees to dig his grave if Pizarro will commit the crime.

Leonora overhears the rudiments of the plot and suspects that her husband is the intended victim. Her plight is made clear in the aria she sings after Pizarro and Rocco exit. Pizzaro’s fury is incomprehensible to her, but she clings to transcendent hope beyond the darkening clouds.

Come to me, hope, let not the last star
That guides the weary fade from sight
Be it ever so far, light my goal,
Sweet love, that I may reach it

I follow my inner desire
I waver not
I am strengthened by the duty
Of true married love

To make sure married love is understood for the courage and vigor it inspires in Leonora, Beethoven repeats and extends the phrase and the word Gattenliebe through the final thirty two bars of the aria.

Ich folg dem innern Triebe
Ich wanke nicht
Mich stärke die Pflicht
Der treuen Gattenliebe

Leonora persuades Rocco to allow her to accompany him to the darkest cell. Before they descend, however, the prisoners are allowed briefly into the sunlight for exercise in the prison yard. The prisoners’ chorus is another expression of spiritual perseverance against injustice. The singing as prisoners come out of the darkness of their cells into daylight is like a chorus of souls liberated from hell. A solo tenor voice accentuates the only basis for hope.

Trusting we shall ever
Count on help from God
Hope whispers softly
We shall be free
We shall find peace

Pizarro is informed by an officer that the prisoners have been granted this moment of air and sunlight, and he comes in to angrily interrogate Rocco for taking this liberty. Rocco deflects his anger, telling him it is in celebration of the King’s festival and that it will keep everyone occupied while the man still in his cell dies. Pizzaro tells Rocco to go down and dig his grave. As the act concludes, the prisoners are sent back to their cells, and Rocco and Leonora prepare for their descent.

The final act begins in the darkness of Florestan’s cell. Florestan’s aria is among the most difficult in the repertoire. For most of the dramatic tenors in the world in any generation it is impossible. Beginning on a sustained G with the words: God, what darkness here! it is the contemplation of a man who has had the courage to speak truthfully against evil and now finds himself in chains. He takes consolation in having done his duty and commits his fate into God’s hands.

Oh painful trial!
But God’s will is just
I complain not
This allotment of sorrow
Is in thy hands

A key change signals the vision of Leonora coming to console him, light in the darkness, the breath of a murmuring breeze, an angel like Leonora in rose colored mist. The new theme ascends repeatedly into the upper extremes of the tenor range. Stentorian B naturals accent the phrase. My angel Leonora, my wife, leading me to freedom in the heavenly domain.

Ich seh, wie ein Engel im rosigen Duft
Ein Engel sich tröstend zur Seite mir stellet
Ein Engel Leonora, Leonoren, der Gattin so gleich
Der, der führt mich zur Freiheit ins himmlische Reich
Der, der führt mich zur Freiheit ins himmlische Reich
Zur Freiheit ins Himmlische Reich
Zur Freiheit ins Himmlische Reich

The exultation of the vision dispels the gloom for while before the prisoner sinks back down on the floor.

During the interval Leonora and Rocco have been descending into the darkness of the prison. Florestan sees the visitors as another hopeful sign and calls to them. While Leonora tries to determine if this is her husband, he sings, You will be repaid in a better world. Heaven has sent you to me. Once inside the cell, Leonora recognizes her husband, even while helping Rocco to dig the grave being prepared for him. Rocco gives Florestan a little wine and a piece of bread.

Pizarro descends into the dungeon brandishing a knife. He tells the prisoner he will die, but first he must recognize the man whom his testimony was intended to depose. Pizarro throws off his cloak and says, “The avenger now stands before you.” He attempts to stab the prisoner, but Leonora throws herself between Pizarro and Florestan, declaring that she is the wife of the prisoner who will expose the plot. Pizarro in rage is about to kill both of them, but Leonora draws a pistol and threatens to use it. At the critical moment the inspector arrives heralded by trumpets. Pizarro runs out to meet his superior officer. Florestan and Leonora embrace.

The ensuing dialogue leaves little doubt about the outcome. Rocco recognizes his freedom no longer to serve the tyrant Pizarro and cries, God be praised! Leonora and Florestan sing, the hour of retribution has come. Unspeakable sorrows now end in overwhelming joy!

The high ranking inspector liberates the prisoners, all victims of Pizarro’s tyranny. They sing, Justice, arm in arm with mercy, appears at the door of our grave. The inspector recognizes his lost friend Florestan, now in chains. He begins to unlock the shackles, but then turns to Leonora. The woman who saved her husband’s life should be the one to set him free.

Beethoven rewrote the overture to the opera Fidelio, entitled Leonora, four times. It has such nobility in its own right that it is often played as a concert piece. Yet none of the early performances of this opera were successful. Weber tried to revive it in Prague where it was again badly received. During Beethoven’s lifetime it was never recognized as the masterpiece it is now acknowledged to be. Beethoven said God never deserted him. Apparently, in faith like that of Florestan in chains, he was able to accept God’s will.

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The music begins as Figaro measures the bedroom he and Susanna will occupy after their forthcoming marriage. To Figaro’s dismay the chamber is within easy earshot of their master’s bell, which Figaro suspects will provide opportunities for the Count Almaviva to summon Susanna anytime of day or night, particularly while Figaro has been detained by some other obligation in his duties as the count’s valet. The feudal right of a lord to sleep with a servant girl on her wedding night, the notorious droit du seigneur, has been abolished by decree of the Count, but innuendo is strong that he will reinstitute it in this case. Sexual conquest by aristocratic men of women beneath their cast is a theme that recurs in Mozart’s operas. Don Giovanni is, of course, a prototype of the philandering menace. Count Almaviva is well married, but projecting his own immoderate desire, he is jealous of the Countess in her relations with her page, Cherubino. The Countess is innocent, but the Count does have amorous intentions regarding Susanna. The story of this opera turns on what would today be grounds for a sexual harassment lawsuit. It is some measure of progress that the kind of predatory attention that the Count pays Susanna is now illegal. In a time when servants were powerless against it, they resorted to wiles like those of Susanna.

As is evident, musical drama has, by this time, come a long way from liturgical metaphysics. Yet this comedy defies all attempts to turn it into a romp around the bedroom. Mozart’s most poignant music dramatizes the emotions of people contemplating the consequences of unfaithfulness. The aria Porgi, amor, qualche ristoro—Grant, love, some comfort—in which the Countess laments her husband’s infidelity is moving beyond words, even while Marcellina, Bartolo, and Basilio conspire in slapstick antics, attempting to marry Figaro to Marcellina, who is, in fact, his mother. Again in Act 3, the Countess ponders the loss of happiness in the aria Dove sono i bei momenti—Where are they, the beautiful moments? The lengths to which Susanna goes to maneuver the Count into a predicament in which he realizes his folly creates the appearance of complicity in the Count’s designs. Figaro feels this as betrayal for advantages supposedly to be gained by her place in the Count’s affections. The parallel emotions of the Countess and Figaro are provocative in their portrayal of humanity that transcends social status. That this comedy could succeed as entertainment among the aristocracy three years before the French Revolution is an indication of the optimism of an era. The implication is that many people understood that nobility is more a matter of character than the status lavished on one by birth or refinement, a lesson civilized people seem to have to relearn at intervals. Mozart’s sympathies with the liberals then contending for limits on the powers of governing classes may be a function of his own dependency on patronage, despite the fact that he was doing very well by it.

The layers of significance in this opera, which is only one of Mozart’s numerous compositions for the theater and the church, depend on musical craftsmanship in a tradition spanning many centuries. It may have been possible to artistically render social commentary on so many important issues in a play without Mozart’s music, but it is Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro that has survived, not Beaumarchais’. Is the meaning in the music or in the text? This is a question that never goes away in disputes about art. Those who have never heard the Countess’s arias sung by a soprano who has spent her life learning classical technique tend to reply that the same meaning can be conveyed without her thirty years’ study. A deeper question is whether there are sublime themes that cannot be contemplated in absence of music like this. The theology of the ancient Nicene Creed set to music by Mozart in the eighteenth century and sung by a choir in the twenty first compounds the impact of millennia of enculturation in the historic faith. Artistry and tradition, especially when used to illuminate virtue, or its absence, can be the impetus to sudden illumination, in some cases revelation of transcendent reality.

Mozart is full of overtones on universal moral themes, some of them in astonishing contexts, as when the Roman Emperor Titus, who destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE, turns up incongruously as the compassionate monarch in an opera titled La Clemenza di Tito—The Clemency of Titus. There are also interesting vestiges of Biblical lore. A tragedy from the French lyric theater provides the story for Mozart’s Idomeneo. Idomeneo, King of Crete, was among the most celebrated heroes in the Punic Wars. After dealing the death blow to Troy, he is returning to his own territory by sea. The opera finds him near the port city of Sidon as his ship is overtaken by a storm. In terror for his life he vows to the god Neptune that if he and the crew survive, he will sacrifice whomever he first meets on landing. Readers of the Biblical story of Jephtha quickly recognize the hazard in this vow. The sea god grants Idomeneo’s plea, but it is his son, Idamante, who comes to meet him at the port. The heir to Idomeneo’s throne and beloved of Trojan princess Ilia is now a potential sacrifice to Neptune. In bitter remorse Idomeneo laments the deity’s claim on his son. The aria Fuor del Mar—Fury of the sea, declares his misery in music that tests the limits of the tenor’s virtuosity: Stern God! Tell me, if my body was so close to shipwreck, for what cruel purpose was that wreck abated? Saved from the sea I have a raging sea more fearsome within.

On the recommendation of a confidant, the king decides to send Idamante to Argos rather than sacrificing him according to the vow, but soon after his departure a new storm arises. The ocean swells, and a monster emerges from the deep. This is but the beginning of suffering for people whose monarch has offended Neptune. The monster devours many inhabitants of Crete. The high priest of Neptune demands to see the king and tells him that he must render to Neptune that which is his. Idomeneo relents and concedes that his son will be surrendered. The priests and chorus make lamentation and plead for mercy. Finally, Idamante appears, willing to submit to his fate. Let the blow fall that will give relief in the present distress. I do not fear death, ye Gods, if your love bestows peace on my country and father. Ilia, Idamante’s betrothed, offers to take his place at the altar of sacrifice, but these displays of self abnegation move Neptune to compassion. His voice from the deep declares Idamante king and Ilia his queen. The sea god in this act seems more merciful than Jehovah in the similar plight of Jephtha.

This is a dramatic phrasing of a question those schooled in the Hebrew Bible still ponder. The God of the Bible commands holocausts against Canaanites and smites the children of Egyptians. These literary reflections of the ancient world seem alien to people heir to a civilization born of the amalgamation of Hebrew and Greek culture in Christianized Rome. Handel composed a setting of Jephtha’s story, and he couldn’t end it as the Bible does. In his improbable resolution, God intervenes using a deus ex machina, which isn’t convincing either. The conclusion of the matter in the book of Judges, after Jephtha’s daughter comes back from her lamentation in the mountains, is conveyed in the words: It came to pass at the end of two months that she returned unto her father who did with her according to his vow. This account is the kind of thing that makes people put the Bible back on the shelf, but the alternative, in Neptune’s irenic dismissal of the case against Idamante, is pagan. In the biblical metaphor of radical freedom God does not ask for Jephtha’s vow or compel him to keep it, but neither does God save him from a moral atrocity of his own making. Mozart’s affinity for an alternative ending alongside his opera of a completely fictional, compassionate Emperor Titus seems to confirm an image of Mozart as a prodigious youth evading the enormities of the real world.

The composer seems to have been a vulnerable soul. Peter Shaffer’s play, Amadeus, is as much a fiction as Mozart’s Emperor Titus, but it may have found some truth in its dramatization of Mozart’s psychological condition as that of a man plagued by guilt. The story attributes the hellish retribution on the philanderer Don Giovanni in the composer’s setting of the legend to Mozart’s feelings of terror about his own moral failings. It’s hard to imagine Mozart as, actually, depraved as the ravishing baritone who has no compunction about attempting to seduce a peasant girl on her wedding day. It’s not especially surprising to find in this opera that Don Giovanni, whose catalogue of conquests includes hundreds of women all over Europe—1003 in Spain, it is said—remains desirable to women in spite of his vices. Leporello’s Catalogue Aria is humorous, but this story, in its entirety, is not very funny. In the opening scene Giovanni kills Donna Anna’s father in a midnight confrontation. From this beginning, the motivations of the women in the opera are confusing or confused. Anna’s shrieking alerts the servants and her father that things are amiss, but before she calls for help, her first words are, in fact, You won’t escape; you will never get away from me. The ambiguity of these opening lines persists through the ensuing action. Anna makes Ottavio, her fiancé, swear vengeance on her father’s assassin, but, to the end, she is in thrall of Giovanni. After his demise, when the virtuous Ottavio wants her to follow through on their engagement, she puts him off for a year, saying she needs time to grieve her slain progenitor.

Another woman is also pursuing the unrepentant rogue. His next attempted seduction turns out to be Donna Elvira, an earlier conquest who is still on his trail. Giovanni escapes again, and Leporello tries to dissuade her from following him. This is the ostensible reason for the Catalogue Aria, a detail that tends to be overlooked in the interpretations rendered by most Leporellos. The valet’s dilemma is that of a man compelled to explain that his boss is an incorrigible cad. The fact that Don Giovanni is a nobleman is set in stark contrast by a scene in which he attempts to lead the peasant bride Zerlina astray. The groom is, of course, belligerent, and it is Leporello’s unsavory task to remove him. Giovanni in on the verge of success in the seduction, but Donna Elvira has not taken Leporello’s advice to go home. She snatches Zerlina from the clutches of the predatory “nobleman”. Donna Anna and Ottavio come in at this moment, and Elvira returns to expose and renounce Giovanni. He deflects Elvira’s rants by claiming she is deranged. Donna Anna recognizes him in this ruse, but the wedding feast continues. Apparently Giovanni is paying for the festivities. He sings his famous Champaign Aria still with an eye on Zerlina. Leporello distracts the groom while Giovanni draws Zerlina out of the room, onlythis time she screams for help. Ottavio and the women corner the Don and he narrowly escapes impalement on Ottavio’s sword.

Ruthless as he is ravishing, Giovanni changes clothes with Leporello. He is not ashamed to put his valet at risk for his life in order to deceive his pursuers, while he amuses himself serenading Elvira’s maid. The aggrieved groom, Masetto, who is not amused at nearly being cuckolded on his wedding day, is leading a band of armed peasants in the attempt to capture or kill Giovanni. When the posse discovers the rake disguised as Leporello, Giovanni sends in them general direction of Leporello and then beats up Masetto. Leporello has a near miss with Giovanni’s other pursuers, Ottavio, Donna Anna, and Donna Elvira, but he unmasks and escapes.

Having evaded all of his natural enemies, Giovanni’s defiance encounters a supernatural adversary in the cemetery to which he and Leporello have fled. A stone memorial statue of Anna’s father begins to speak. The Commendatore’s voice terrifies Leporello while it intones a challenge addressed to the unrepentant Giovanni. The rake tells Leporello to invite the Commendatore to dinner, and, trembling, Leporello conveys the invitation. In the mean time, Anna is delaying and dismissing Ottavio’s pleas that they be wed. Elvira finds Giovanni and interrupts him while Leporello is serving him dinner. She makes another appeal to Giovanni to reform. He contemptuously refuses and sends her away. On the way out she encounters the Commendatore on his way to accept Giovanni’s invitation to dinner. The stone guest enters. Trying to remain unperturbed, Giovanni orders Leporello to set another place at the table. The guest is not amused. He says, Those who take the everlasting bread need no temporal sustenance. Other matters bring me hence.

Giovanni says, speak your message. The Commendatore has come to confer in a reasonable fashion with the rank offender. He asks if Giovanni will sit at table and consider the terms of his surrender. Giovanni says he’s no coward; he will confer. The Commendatore asks for a handshake on the agreement. Once Giovanni’s hand is in the stone fist of the Commendatore, he begins to note a deathly chill. The guest commands him to repent. This is his last chance.

Pentiti, cangia vita, e l’ultimo momento
Pentiti, scelerato, pentiti, pentiti

Unrepentant and unrelenting, Giovanni rages even as he is dragged into the vortex. Voices torment him with threats of worse terrors waiting in the unending fire. Leporello is left to tell Giovanni’s pursuers that he is far away. There came a giant made of marble through the door and seized the master. Smoke and fire came from the ground and took him down.

Anna’s repeated delaying in her commitment marry Ottavio, even after the rogue’s demise confirms the ambiguity of the moral of this story. Anna says she will retreat to a convent to fast, pray, and ponder, and then, she promises, she will be Ottavio’s faithful wife. None of this inspires comedic release of the tension that has been building. Zerlina and Masetto are happily reunited. They join in the chorus warning that debauchery ends in destruction as has the inglorious Don Giovanni. Of course, directors in contemporary productions don’t know what to make of this morality play at the conclusion of the opera. Some years ago in Seattle the local company staged a production that parodied the ethos of a Catholic parochial school, complete with flashing neon cross, against the libertine’s revels. Some of this is arguably in the libretto; Don Giovanni’s music is robust in contrast to that of the virtuous Ottavio. Something is undeniably wrong with the world, and it is as evident in this opera as in the cinematic extravagances of the present era. Virtue is often not so interesting as vice.

Whether or not Shaffer’s guilt-ridden Amadeus is complete fiction, there is a morality play on another level than that apparent in this opera’s retribution on the seducer. It’s a question about whether virtue is life negating. The idea, that it is, has had many advocates, among them Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and currently, Darwinists holding forth variously as scientists or economists. This opera’s examination of the question is not as inspirational as that of Plato and Aristotle who conceived virtue as the noblest and most satisfying of human accomplishments and an end in itself. The Hebrew Bible puts virtue on a plane with wisdom and indicates on many occasions that God’s worldly blessing are on the righteous. Other Biblical narratives concerning Job, Jesus, and St. Paul require the concession that suffering often accompanies virtue and that crowd pleasers are frequently in the company of a multitude on their way to destruction.

There is some evidence in filth-obsessed letters of Mozart that he suffered from Tourette Syndrome. Shaffer’s play makes the composer’s scatological jests the object of Salieri’s disdain for him. Despite the evident mirth in his music, Mozart was on his death bed at age thirty six. He worked on sections of his Requiem in the final weeks of his life. The work was finished by his pupil Süssmayr with some more recent emendations. Mozart’s Requiem, as it is now sung, balances the fury of the Dies Irae and Confutatis with the lyrical Recordare. It has been a consolation to many generations. After the atrocities at the World Trade Center in 2001, fifty thousand people filled a sports arena in Seattle to hear it again as a classic inquiry into the enigma of the world.

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When the community of faith, the world-wide unity of the Church and her history, and the mystery of the living Christ are no longer visible in the liturgy, where else, then, is the Church to become visible in her spiritual essence? Then the community is celebrating only itself, an activity that is utterly fruitless. And, because the ecclesial community cannot have its origin from itself but emerges as a unity only from the Lord, through faith, such circumstances will inexorably result in a disintegration into sectarian parties of all kinds - partisan opposition within a Church tearing herself apart. This is why we need a new Liturgical Movement, which will call to life the real heritage of the Second Vatican Council.

The article is worth a few minutes to read in entirety and can be found here: http://thenewliturgicalmovement.blogspot.com/2008/04/music-for-dc-mass-end-of-era-and.html

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A second characteristic of a live performance is the life that seems to be present that isn’t in the studio recording. – for a live recording, one emphasizes not being boring; for a studio recording one emphasizes not making mistakes. I did a CD of a soprano soloist in our church. She had thought to record a performance of a fundraiser, but I prevailed on her to record in advance. She was a very good amateur soloist and most selections I had at least 3 tries. The CD came out very well. I recorded the concert also, and when I gave her the CD, I commented that I was thankful I had the real multiple cuts. While at the time of the performance, I enjoyed it immensely; however, while listening to the recording of the performance; I could hear all sorts of pitch problems that the life of the live performance had concealed from me.

When we listen to a CD, we are less tolerant of extraneous noises and dynamic range problems. In many ways, it reminds me of the problems in photography. For example, you look out and see a beautiful landscape of gorgeous fall trees. The picture is taken, and when you look at, you realize that there are power lines that your eye was able to ignore and see the underlying beauty. Or you see a person under a tree outside and your eye will automatically cancel out the green from the reflected from the trees. Take a picture of someone under a tree and they will look green. Of course, this is far from new; this is what impressionists noticed and how they made light “real.” It seems the mind, will correct the sound and light in real life but not in reproductions.

So, in getting a recording of a live performance, one must look beyond the minor imperfections to the music that is being conveyed. So returning to where we stared about two weeks ago, when one listens to music, either real or recorded, one must go beyond what has been recording and go to what should have been heard.

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I previously talked about the question of music being heard – in particular new pieces and commissions. I quoted Daniel Gawthrop about the small number of chorus-orchestral compositions that receive a second playing. There are multiple reasons, not the least of which is that people haven’t heard many of these new pieces. A couple of years ago, the Naperville Chorus presented Robert Hanson’s Psalms of David, a piece that was very popular with the chorus and our audience. But it really isn’t recorded so it it is difficult for groups not knowing of Bob Hanson to realize that this is a piece that is worthy of performance.

Today, it is easy to make recordings, but it is difficult to release a recording that uses any professional musicians. The additional costs make it virtually impossible. The recent SDG commission of Requiem by Christopher Rouse is a case in point. The Los Angeles classical music radio station wanted to play it on their sacred music show, but as of the last time a friend in the area checked, they didn’t have the funds. Another of Christopher Rouse’s pieces, Karolju was just released as a recording about 17 years after its first performance; this is a piece by a Pulitzer-prize-winning composer, and the piece is very accessible. We in Naperville may do it; I gave a recording of it to our Music Director and he was very interested. It is a question of orchestra size/shifting.

A second section may come from the resources often required for a professional presentation of these pieces. At this point, I am leaving what I know about; I hope I am not in the class of the efficiency expert listening to a symphony (see for example
http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~tfsmiles/humor/orchestra.html
which discusses these issues). I expect that most sacred choral music is done by amateur groups in this country. An orchestra, such as the Chicago Symphony may have only 4 or 5 concerts a year with choral music. I know that for our amateur chorus, one of the major considerations is the cost of an orchestra – we have to hire them – and the difficulty of the music; they have very limited rehearsal time for the amount we can afford to pay them. Certainly, the difficulty of the music is a consideration. While I suspect we could do something like the Bach B-Minor Mass, it would require more work than I think most of our members would be willing to put in. But Britten, Poulenc, Vaughan Williams, and Brahms we have done reasonably successfully.

For a professional orchestra, again cost is a consideration. They already need to pay a chorus; do they want to/can they afford to pay for a large orchestra with extra players? In the article cited above, which discusses the Schubert symphony, comments that the four oboes are not often needed so they could be eliminated and the their jobs spread among the other players. The thought of a tuba player playing the piccolo part comes immediately to mind. But it may be worth asking could a different balance of instruments give a similar effect? Would two oboes and a couple of other woodwinds give a pleasing substitute? Clearly, if the answer is no, then it won’t be done; this however may mean limiting the number of times a piece is played.

New music can be difficult to understand. When someone says, “you need to hear the music several times before you really understand it”, the question becomes, “where does one get the opportunity to hear new music multiple times?” Of course one can help this somewhat with program notes. The piece that comes immediately to my mind is Honeggar’s Cantate de Noel where at the beginning, the music attempts to depict the formlessness before the birth of Jesus and progressing to chant and finally carols weaving throughout. If the reason for the apparent formlessness is explained to the audience in advance, the whole structure of the piece is much more powerful and understandable. They are no longer trying to find form in music that is intended to be formless. To expect the average concert goer to figure it out on his/her own and in one listening is unreasonable.

Finally, a totally Quixote comment; if the Musicians Union could be prevailed upon to not need so much for the release of a recording of a premiere performance, it would make it possible for more people learn about new music. I will discuss the possible problems next week in a blog post that I am tentatively calling “Is it real or is it Memorex.”

As I see from the Soli Deo Gloria goals for the future, one of these goals is to make sure that every commission is recorded so it can be released on a CD. Clearly it is a question of money. Should one try to commission more music or to us funding to make sure that the music can be heard?

While something can be music even if it isn’t heard, if it is to make an impact on people’s lives, it must be heard.

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If a tree falls in the wilderness, and no one hears it, does it make a sound?

or the comparable

If a man says something and his wife doesn’t hear it, is he still wrong?

but one can also ask

If no one hears a composition, is it still music?

The reason I pose this question at all comes from the fate of much commissioned music. Is it music if the music does not make it into the repertoire? On Daniel Gawthrop’s website, he describes Behold this Mystery in the following way: “Further performances followed, and the piece has now earned a place in the small but distinguished category called Twentieth Century Extended Works for Chorus and Orchestra Which Have Received More Than One Performance. ”

I suppose it is cheating to answer my 3rd question above so quickly, but I have to say yes (the answer to the first, — I don’t care to return to that interminable debate, the answer to the second one is “of course” – (note, I have been married nearly 40 years). I have a friend that has to this point composed something like 600 pieces of music. Until recently most of them have never been heard and now, after I recorded two CD’s worth, more people have heard them. But even if that hadn’t happened, he still heard them in his mind and on his piano. As we all know, the Mass in B minor was not performed during Bach’s lifetime and possibly the first performance was more than 100 years after Bach’s death.

We are in a time in classical music much like the opening words of The Tale of Two Cities “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” For example, with recordings we can hear a wider variety of music than we have ever been able to hear. There are many composers. But today, composers in general don’t have musical groups to play their compositions and expose it to the public. All new music must compete with music from previous ages for an opportunity to be heard. With modern electronics, we can make satisfactory recordings of a live performance easily so that anyone can hear the music. But with the heavily processed modern studio recordings, the listener has come to expect perfection in recordings that just isn’t possible in a live performance. (I will return to this subject in two weeks time in a post entitled Is it real or is it Memorex) Musicians’ Unions have made it possible for classical musicians in the best orchestras to make a (good) living but have made it difficult to record new compositions.

I know that reading long posts on the Internet is not fun so I plan to continue this discussion next week in a post that I am tentatively calling Preparing for the afterlife.

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We have the stories in the Bible. We have the church traditions. We have the scholars and theologians who have studied them in detail… and are still studying. We can learn and understand much, but, at the same time, this crux of history brings heaven, earth, and hell together in ways that we can only begin to comprehend. For the artistically-minded, there is plenty of space for the imagination to soar. For the Christian, it can all be devotion to the Holy Son of God.

In this post, I journey toward comprehension of the cross through juxtapositions that are present at it. For example:

• Guilt punished Innocence for Guilt’s own crime.
• The Incorruptible One took on corruption to defeat corruption. As a result, we who are corruptible can put on incorruption. (c.f. I Cor 15)
• The Lion of Judah became the Lamb that was slain. (c.f. Revelation 5)

These are just some of my own. For more, I draw from the riches of Western hymns and Eastern liturgy and tradition.

Cross of Jesus from John Stainer’s The Crucifixion

Once the Lord of brilliant seraphs, / Winged with love to do His will,
Now the scorn of all His creatures, /And the aim of every ill.

Alas! and Did my Savior Bleed? by Isaac Watts

Well might the sun in darkness hide / And shut his glories in,
When Christ, the mighty Maker died, /For man the creature’s sin.

Selections from an Eastern Orthodox Holy Saturday liturgy:

In a new tomb He is laid, Who empties the tombs of the dead.
Light of salvation, how art Thou hidden in a dark tomb?
By dying, O my God, Thou puttest death to death through Thy divine power.
Hell was wounded in the heart when it received Him whose side was pierced by the spear.
The most pure Temple is destroyed, but raises up the fallen tabernacle.
The second Adam, He who dwells on high, has come down to the first Adam in the depths of hell.

Joseph of Arimathea receiving the body of Jesus from Pontius Pilate.

St. Epiphanius says: “…A mortal went in before a mortal, asking to receive God; the God of mortals he begs; clay stands before clay so as to receive the Fashioner of all! Grass asks to receive from grass the Heavenly Fire; the miserable drop seeks to receive from a drop the whole Abyss! Who ever saw, who ever heard such a thing?”

A hymn of Joseph of Arimathea speaking to Pilate:

Give me this stranger, who from infancy has been as a stranger, a sojourner in the world.
Give me this stranger, whom His own race has hated and delivered unto death as a stranger.
Give me this stranger, who in a strange manner is a stranger to death.
Give me this stranger, who has received the poor as guests.
Give me this stranger, whom His people from envy estranged from the world.
Give me this stranger, that I may hide him in a tomb, for as a stranger He has no place to lay His head.
Give me this stranger, whose Mother seeing His dead body cries out: ‘O my Son and my God, I am sorely wounded within me and my heart is rent, seeing Thee as one dead; but in Thy Resurrection I take courage and magnify Thee.’

How now can we respond to such things, too wonderful for us by far? We cannot, if we hope that our response will equal them. But, by faith, we can simply embrace, trust, die, and be reborn. And give thanks, now and forevermore.

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I thought of him recently, and his joke that does not apply to Leonard Bernstein’s opera, Trouble in Tahiti. This one-act opera’s running time is about 45 minutes. Perhaps for this reason it is seldom performed. Written in 1952, this opera depicts suburbia of the time, “Happily married, sweet little son…up-to-date kitchen, washing machine, colorful bathrooms and Life magazine, and a little white house in Brookline…Suburbia.” Just seven years after the end of the Second World War, funded in part by the GI Bill of Rights, suburbia had become a Garden of Eden for many families. And compared to the recent memories of World War II, the fighting and death abroad, the rationing at home, everyone’s life on hold till the war ended, suburbia certainly was Eden for many an American family.

The Next Theatre Company, Evanston, IL [http://www.nexttheatre.org] figured out an innovative way to bring Trouble in Tahiti to their audience. This opera has become the first act in the world premiere of The American Dream Songbook, described by artistic director Jason Loewith as “our hybrid world premiere music-theatre event.” After the conclusion of Trouble in Tahiti, the audience returns after the intermission for a second act titled, “The American Dream Revue” which consists of five contemporary songs written by Kevin O’Donnell, Michael John LaChiusa, Michael Mahler, Michael Friedman, and Josh Schmidt. Act One, which is Trouble in Tahiti, reveals an inner life of suburbia that doesn’t match its outer image. Act Two, “The American Dream Revue” sings songs of present day American Dreams. It left me wondering if this generation might not have any more luck in finding genuine happiness in their many and varied lifestyles than their parents or grandparents did in suburbia some sixty years ago.

The children and grandchildren of 1950s suburbia have other dreams. Many have repudiated suburban lifestyle, searching for other manifestations of Eden, through diverse careers, gentrified urban

neighborhoods and/or back to the land rural retreats to name just a few. How will these epiphanies of the American Dream look to people in another 50 years? What might our children and grandchildren’s dreams look like in 2058, and how successfully might their dreams take shape? And who will be the composers who capture these dreams in their music?

Music helps us to explore, communicate, and reflect upon each generation’s version of the American Dream. Music also often reminds us that each generation finds different and differing manifestations of their dreams, including the ever elusive American Dream. Leonard Bernstein’s short opera, Trouble in Tahiti does these things exceptional well on its own. Contextualized in The American Dream Songbook, it becomes even more focused for us today who still search for a Garden of Eden in our midst.

The American Dream Songbook runs until March 22, 2008 at the Next Theatre in Evanston, IL.

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I admit I have only begun to read the book, but I started without any particular expectation that I would be so astonished by the author’s incomprehension of things that most civilized people take for granted.  Mr. Carrier is former editor-in-chief at Infidels.org. His comments on the Bible are informed by so little imagination that he seems tone deaf to poetry and the dramatic texts that have inspired art and faith for millennia.  In brief, his claim is that the only viable methodology for knowing anything is rigorous logical analysis based on “experience”.  What he’d make of Shakespeare is anybody’s guess.  He thinks his methodology is the norm in science and technology and that everything we need to know can be ascertained through application of empirical rigor.  Apparently he’s unaware that enthusiasm for logical positivism dwindled off somewhere the middle of the twentieth century and that the rigor and professionalism, which he says he admires in industry and academe, are also applicable to the facile ideas he generates.  None of the four hundred pages of his book will ever see light of day in any noteworthy philosophical journal.

A teaching assistant at Columbia University, the writer claims some expertise in ancient languages and philosophy.  It seems abrupt then when he writes off ancient philosophy in less than one sentence: Plato, he thinks, “Made a mistake”.  He takes a couple of pages to dispatch the arguments of Alvin Plantinga, professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame, who, incidentally, does publish his work in reputable philosophical journals.  Mr. Carrier justifies this end-run around the professional rigor of the field in which chooses to publish by noting that philosophy only matters when it is intelligible in non-technical language to those who seek values grounded in experience that can be applied in real life.  Unimpressed by the Bible, he nonetheless claims to have read the New Testament in the original Greek.  This is dubious because the Koine Greek of the New Testament is, by any measure, dissimilar to the Attic Greek of philosophy and ancient history.  Koine resembles Modern Greek, not the language of Plato and Aristotle, just as Carrier’s language resembles the daily bilge of the Internet, not philosophy.

Reading Carrier’s book thus far has made me doubt that the groundswell of activity in the blogosphere is adding much to the public discourse, regardless how many infidels are making names for themselves online.  He says confidently that in school he mastered any science to which applied his nimble mind, but after graduation he was not in possession of any skills by which he could earn a living.  He admits spending years doing menial jobs such as gardening and waiting tables.  By now he might be qualified for service as a maître d’ in a good restaurant, but he has chosen to disencumber the world of its philosophical pretensions and religious illusions.  While he raised himself from “poverty”, he was content with the life of the mind and of good friends because in his youthful quest he had discovered the truths of the Tao. The Tao is self evident, coherent, and practicable as opposed to the childish nonsense of the Bible, he says, though he doesn’t enlighten us in these profundities.  As I recall, “The Tao that can be told is not the Tao”, a tenet that Lao Tzu seems to have neglected in writing about a hundred pages on the subject.  Richard Carrier does claim transcendental experience of all an encompassing unity and being.  He enlisted in the Coast Guard, and one night at sea, after being awake for something like 35 hours during training exercises, he attained cosmic consciousness or the equivalent.  He tells us that he continues to seek to improve his mind, but now “in maturity” he knows everything required to live a satisfying, knowledgeable, and moral life.

The writer’s misapprehension of how ethics might be theoretically grounded is very unlike ancient philosophy.  Plato’s discussions of justice are engaging dialogues that explore many facets of the ideal.  Carrier’s sophomoric monologues go on for hundreds of pages in such digressions as the kind of evidence that might indicate the truth of the proposition “I have a cat” –creaturely claws, hair on the sofa, vet bills, etc.  Some of Carrier’s role models, notably A. J. Ayer and Bertrand Russell, wrote like this, but it wasn’t long until people like G. J. Warnock and J. L. Austin dismantled silly arguments about sense data and evidence for things nobody would ever doubt.  When the cat is purring in my lap, I don’t need to produce evidence for its existence. 

I rehearsed most of this on the way to choir practice last Thursday night.  By the time I got to church, I was in a mood to demolish Carrier for anybody who would listen.  Of course, that was not the reason I was there.  I got involved in the Lenten music we were preparing.  Our conductor is a musical whiz and does not waste time.  If your mind wanders under her direction, even for a minute, you end up feeling as negligent to detail as is this infidel PR hack, Carrier.  We sang for a couple of hours.  Beyond our illuminated loft the music resonated in the distance of the darkened sanctuary.  Near the end of the rehearsal the conductor read the following notes on the transfiguration as related to the music she had selected for this Sunday:

In every year of the lectionary cycle, the particular Gospel proclaims the Transfiguration of the Lord on the 2^nd Sunday of Lent.  In addition to the image of the glory that Christ would receive in his Resurrection, the church has always seen in this event a glimpse of the promised glory that each follower of Christ receives as a baptized member of His Body the Church.  In a sermon about the Transfiguration, Pope Leo the Great wrote, “With no less forethought, Christ was also providing a firm foundation of the hope of the holy Church.  The whole body of Christ was to understand the kind of transformation that it would receive as His gift.  The members of that body were to look forward to a share in that glory which first blazed out in Christ their head.”

One thing missing in the work of currently fashionable advocates of religious abnegation is any sense of how faith, particularly Christian faith, provides hope in the face of unbearable sorrow.  The story of Jesus is hope starkly defined against the passion of the man of sorrows.  For Jesus, opposition is unrelenting, and there is treachery even among those he loves.  While he heals the diseases of the throng, he knows that suffering will continue and that the poor–and the poor in spirit–will be always among us.  Liturgical worship is a rehearsal for the passion none of us will ultimately evade.  Familiarity with it helps us to recognize ourselves in Jesus.  The crucifix behind the altar represents more than recurring cycles of the Lenten progression.  Everyone will eventually carry or hang on the cross.  Hours spent in contemplation in this atmosphere may improve our prospects.

We concluded our musical rehearsal by singing O Lux Beatissima, by Howard Helvey.  This is a setting of a text attributed to Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, deceased in 1228, that was used in the ancient Catholic Pentecost Sequence Veni, Sancte Spiritus.

O lux beatissima                              O light most blessed
Reple cordis intima                         Fill the inmost heart
Tuorum fidelium                              Of all thy faithful.
Sine tuo nomine                               Without your grace
Nihil est in homine                          There is nothing in us,
Nihil est innoxium                            Nothing that is not harmful.

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So what else is new?

The newness of A Whole New Mind, at least for lovers of music, is the author’s listing of “Symphony” as one of the six essential aptitudes – what he terms “the six senses” – that will increasingly facilitate professional success and personal satisfaction. Pink’s other five senses are Design, Story, Empathy, Play, and Meaning.

Chapter Six, “Symphony” (pp. 125-141) details this sense. “Symphony, as I call this aptitude, is the ability to put together the pieces. It is the capacity to synthesize rather than to analyze; to see relationships between seemingly unrelated fields; to detect broad patterns rather than to deliver specific answers; and to invent something new by combining elements nobody else thought to pair.” The author believes that symphonic thinking is best modeled by “composers and conductors whose jobs involve corralling a diverse group of notes, instruments, and performers and producing a unified and pleasing sound.”

Following each chapter devoted to one of Pink’s six senses, is a section titled, “Portfolio.” These sections have specific activities and exercises to help develop each sense. In the Portfolio section for Symphony, the author suggests listening to symphonies (no surprise here) and recommends five: Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Mozart’s Symphony No. 35, Mahler’s 4th Symphony in G. Major, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, and Haydn’s Symphony No. 94 in G Major. He also suggests, among other books, William Benson’s Beethoven’s Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture.

How we go about educating our young people in the midst of this paradigm shift so many writers have documented is a challenging question for all schools today. How we go about re-educating ourselves as out of school adults who also live, move, and have our existence in this paradigm shifting world is yet another challenging question.

A Whole New Mind with its emphasis on Symphony as one of the six basic skills necessary to thrive in the world of today and tomorrow is more music to our ears.

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