Listen to This

by Alex Ross

  Reinhold Brinkmann sees the finale of the Fourth as an exercise in philosophical negation. He quotes the conductor Felix Weingartner: “I cannot get away from the impression of an inexorable fate implacably driving some great creation, whether it be an individual or a whole race, toward its downfall … This movement is seared by shattering tragedy, the close being a veritable orgy of destruction, a terrible counterpart to the paroxysm of joy at the end of Beethoven’s last symphony” Brinkmann thinks at once of Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus, in which the fictional composer Adrian Leverkühn is said to have “taken back” Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” But this may be going too far. Brahms was no iconoclast: his respect for tradition was absolute. His scary fury at the end of the Fourth may have to do with his determination to keep tradition alive. The music of the future, he implies, must be filtered through the inherited language. Premonitions of the spectral scoring of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern—the atomization of the orchestra into floating timbres—show the need for a negotiation between past and future. And the tone is not quite tragic. There is a joy in darkness here, an animal pleasure in violence. In the first variation, the brass, timpani, and strings make a curious noise-rrrrrRUH! rrrrrRUH!—like the growl of a sleepy dog.

  What does the movement evoke, if not the triumph of darkness? I wonder whether it is in some way a final answer to the question posed in the years after Schumann’s death. Job asked: Why is light given? Why go on? What do we have that is better than death? In all the late works, Brahms may be contemplating that problem. In the Intermezzos, he extols solitude. In the chamber works for clarinet—two sonatas, a trio, the Gypsy-flavored quintet—he values companionship, long conversations into the night. In the Four Serious Songs, based on biblical texts, he sees that “all is vanity” and gives himself over to “faith, hope, and charity.” In the Fourth Symphony, however, Brahms speaks in tones of rationalized thunder, as if he were reading aloud from the text of God’s own contemptuous answer to Job: “Where is the way where light dwelleth? and as for darkness, where is the place thereof? … Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail … ?”

  The radiant terror of God’s works finds an analogue in a tour de force of styles past and present. Around they go, chaconne and lament, Bach and Wagner, chorale and folk tune, village band and proto-modernist orchestration. The finale of Brahms’s Fourth is a Götterdämmerung in nine minutes, an apocalypse in strict time, musical history stripped to the bone. At the center is nothing, the gray void that the first movement revealed in two or three shivery glimpses. The whole of it seems a convincing demonstration of Nietzsche’s dictum that without music life would be a mistake.

  WHERE TO LISTEN

  If you would like to hear some of the music discussed in these pages, a free audio companion is available at www.therestisnoise.com/listentothis. There you will find streaming samples arranged by chapter, along with links to audio-rich websites and other channels of direct access to the music. An iTunes playlist of twenty representative excerpts can be found at www.therestisnoise.com/playlist. For a glossary of musical terms, go to www.therestisnoise.com/glossary.

  Additional Praise for Listen to This

  “Running through every piece is a spirit of adventure, common sense, joy, and, ultimately, engagement.”

  —Alan Moores, The Seattle Times

  “An impressive but never showy blend of historical reportage and thoughtful analysis … The triumph of Listen to This is that Ross dusts off music that’s centuries old to reveal the passion and brilliance that’s too often hidden from a contemporary audience. It’s a joy for a pop fan or a classical aficionado.”

  —Alan Light, The New York Times Book Review

  “Hugely enjoyable … offers fresh and unexpected stimulation at every turn.”

  —Charles Hazlewood, The Guardian (London)

  “Such a pleasure to read … a critic with an unusually wide frame of reference.”

  —The Economist

  “It is rare to find a music critic who can write as authoritatively about Mozart and Schubert as he can about Radiohead and Björk … . [Listen to This] is a reminder that a love of music need not—nay, should not—be bound by category.”

  —Toronto Star’s “Ten Best Books of the Year”

  “Lively and fascinating … Ross has a wonderful knack for catching the human gesture embedded in a musical phrase.”

  —Ivan Hewett, The Daily Telegraph (London)

  “Listen to This reveals … [Ross] to be the exact kind of critic his era needs … In other words, he’s a thinker with style and a stylist who thinks … . Alex Ross is one of the great civilized pleasures anywhere on any subject.”

  —Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News (Editor’s Choice)

  “A love letter to sound … Ross deftly draws in the ears of the seasoned and the uninitiated alike, demystifying the traditions of music while celebrating its ability to transform … . Undeniably essential.”

  —Doyle Armbrust, Time Out (Chicago)

  “Smart and thoughtful … The substantive, passionate writing contained in this book is a strong argument against the ossification of ‘classical music.’ It is also an argument for the continued relevance of the critic—someone who shows why we should listen to this, and why we should care.”

  —Geeta Dayal, Bookforum

  ALSO BY ALEX ROSS

  The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century

  ALEX Ross has been the music critic for The New Yorker since 1996. He is the author of the international bestseller The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, which was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and won a 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2008, he was named a MacArthur Fellow.

  NOTES

  SUGGESTED LISTENING

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  INDEX

  NOTES

  PREFACE

  xiii “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”: Alan P. Scott explores the provenance of this quotation at www.pacifier.com/~ascott/they/tamildaa.htm (accessed Dec. 7, 2009).

  xv “a specific variant”: Bruno Nettl, “Music,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., ed. Stanley Sadie (Macmillan, 2001), vol. 17, p. 427.

  1. LISTEN TO THIS

  This chapter is an expanded version of an article that appeared in The New Yorker on February 16, 2004.

  4 “Fewer classical records”: James Goodfriend, “Losing Touch,” Stereo Review 23:6 (Dec. 1969), pp. 54, 56.

  4 “The economic crisis”: Alfred Wallenstein, “Plan for Self-Help; A Conductor Gives His Idea of How Orchestras Might Solve Problems,” The NewYork Times, Dec. 10, 1950.

  4 “Concerts are poorly attended”: Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, “Mechanical Music,” in The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, ed. Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimend-berg (University of California Press, 1994), p. 598.

  4 “The death of classical music”: Charles Rosen, Critical Entertainments: Music Old and New (Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 295.

  6 “melancholy,, sometimes progressing”: Charles O’Connell, notes to Jascha Heifetz’s recording of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony (RCA Victor LM 2129).

  6 “There has been a stab”: Leonard Bernstein, The Infinite Variety of Music (Simon and Schuster, 1966), pp. 198-99.

  7 “I love the vast surface”: Carl Nielsen, Living Music, trans. Reginald Spink (Hutchinson, 1953), p. 40.

  10 dismissal proceedings: John Butt, Music Education and the Art of Performance in the German Baroque (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 17.

  11 “the former style of music”: Hans T. David, Arthur Mendel, and Christoph Wolff, eds., The New Bach Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents (Norton, 1998), p. 149.

  11 “Right in the middle”: Robert Spaethling, trans. and ed., Mozart’s Letters, Mozart’s Life: Selected Letters (Norton, 2000), p. 160.

  11 “While most
were”: James H. Johnson, Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (University of California Press, 1995), p. 9.

  11 Walt Whitman mobilized opera: See section 26 of “Song of Myself.”

  12 “the first classic that”: Johann Nikolaus Forkel, On Johann Sebastian Bach’s Life, Genius, and Works, in David, Mendel, and Wolff, The New Bach Reader, p. 420.

  12 “If the art”: Ibid., p. 420.

  12 “patriotic admirers”: Ibid., p. 418.

  12 “After the first act”: Cosima Wagner, Cosima Wagner’s Diaries, vol. 2, ed. Martin Gregor-Dellin and Dietrich Mack, trans. Geoffrey Skelton (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), pp. 894, 898.

  13 “monumental character”: Richard Wagner, Selected Letters of Richard Waner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (Norton, 1988), p. 210.

  13 “Kinder! macht Neues!”: Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt, Briefwechsel zwischen Wagner und Liszt, vol. 1, ed. Erich Kloss (Breitkopf & Härtel, 1910), p. 179.

  13 “New works do not”: Jan Swafford, Johannes Brahms: A Biography (Knopf, 1997), p. 190.

  13 “get upset when”: William Weber, The Great Transformation of Musical Taste: Concert Programming from Haydn to Brahms (Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 259. For statistics on concerts in Leipzig, see p. 171.

  13 “Music could quickly come”: Wayne M. Senner, Robin Wallace, and William Meredith, eds., The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries, vol. 2 (University of Nebraska Press, 2001), p. 16.

  13 “the great works of the great composers”: Lawrence Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 118.

  14 twenty-five cents: Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Sound Diplomacy: Music and Emotions in Transatlantic Relations, 1850—1920 (University of Chicago Press, 2009), p. 132.

  14 “America is saddled”: Arthur Farwell, “The Incubus of Musical Culture,” The International 6 (July 1912), pp. 31-32.

  14 “prestige-hypnotized”; Daniel Gregory Mason, Tune In, America: A Study of Our Coming Musical Independence (Knopf, 1931), p. 44.

  14 “We would respectfully request”: Ibid., p. 59.

  14 “After the Funeral March”: Ibid., p. 52. For more on Stokowski and applause, see Oliver Daniel, Stokowski: A Counterpoint of View (Dodd, Mead, 1982), pp. 288—89; and Herbert Kupferberg, Those Fabulous Philadelphians: The Life and Times of a Great Orchestra (Scribner’s, 1969), p. 78.

  15 Ellin Mackay: “Why We Go to Cabarets: A Post-Debutante Explains,” The NewYorker, Nov. 28, 1925, pp. 7—8. See also Mackay, “The Declining Function: A Post-Debutante Rejoices,” The NewYorker, Dec. 12, 1925, pp. 15-16.

  15 “‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band,”’ “the circus can be”: Gilbert Seldes, The Seven Lively Arts (Sagamore Press, 1957), pp. 264, 309.

  16 “sick moment in the progress”: Mason, Tune In, America, p. 164.

  16 “It is the Palais Royalists”: Quoted in Henry Osborne Osgood, So This Is Jazz (Da Capo, 1978), p. 146.

  17 $6.93: Howard Pollack, Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Marc (Henry Holt, 1999), p. 90.

  17 eighteen million copies: Norman Lebrecht, The Life and Death of Classical Music (Anchor, 2007), p. 136.

  17 According to one report: Goodfriend, “Losing Touch,” p. 54.

  18 “I intentionally won’t use”: Alex Abramovich, “Curator Rock,” Slate, Jan. 19, 2004, www.slate.com/id/2094027 (accessed Jan. 15, 2010).

  18 “No computers were used”: David Hajdu, Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture (Da Capo, 2009), p. 117.

  19 music is music: Edward Jablonski, Gershwin (Doubleday 1987), p. 167.

  19 “culturally aware non-attenders”: Rebecca Winzenried, “Stalking the Culturally Aware Non-Attender,” Symphony, Jan.—Feb. 2004, pp. 26—32.

  2. CHACONA, LAMENTO, WALKING BLUES

  22 “given by the devil”: Maurice Esses, Dance and Instrumental Diferencias in Spain During the 17th and Early 18th Centuries, vol. 3 (Pendragon, 1994), p. 131.

  23 “riding in to Seville”: Thomas Walker, “Ciaccona and Passacaglia: Remarks on Their Origin and Early History” Journal of the American Musicological Society 21:3 (Autumn 1968), p. 302.

  23 “So come in, all you nymph girls”: Miguel de Cervantes, Obra completa, vol. 2, ed. Florencio Sevilla Arroyo and Antonio Rey Hazas (Centro de Estudios Cervantinos, 1994), p. 771.

  23 “Vida bona”: Richard Hudson, Passacaglia and Ciaccona: From Guitar Music to Italian Keyboard Variations in the 17th Century (UMI, 1981), pp. 6–8.

  23 “Un sarao de la chacona”: Text from Villancicos y Danzas Criollas, recording by Jordi Savall’s Hesperion XXI and La Capella Reial de Catalunya (Alia Vox 9834).

  24 religious authorities had warned him: Jodi Campbell, Monarchy, Political Culture, and Drama in Seventeenth-Century Madrid: Theater of Negotiation (Ashgate, 2006), pp. 50—51.

  24 “lascivious, dishonest”: Louise K. Stein, “Eros, Erato, Terpsichore and the Hearing of Music in Early Modern Spain,” Musical Quarterly 82:3/4 (Autumn–Winter 1998), p. 661.

  25 “I consider music”: Igor Stravinsky, Chroniques de ma vie (Denoël/Gonthier, 1962), p. 63.

  25 Psychologists have found: Aniruddh D. Patel, Music, Language, and the Brain (Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 314.

  25 Mafa people of Cameroon: Thomas Fritz et al., “Universal Recognition of Three Basic Emotions in Music,” Current Biology 19:7 (April 2009), pp. 573—76.

  26 “A vision of the grave”: Robert Müller-Hartmann, “A Musical Symbol of Death,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 8 (1945), p. 201.

  26 “Change me to a rainbow”: Béla Bartók, Rumanian Folk Music, vol. 2, ed. Benjamin Suchoff (Martinus Nijhoff, 1967), p. 647; translation is in vol. 3, p. 561.

  26 “Woe is me”: Lajos Vargyas, Folk Music of the Hungarians, trans. Judit Pokoly (Akadémiai Kiadó, 2005), pp. 504-505, 706.

  26 “killing the bride”: Margarita Mazo, “Stravinsky’s Les Noces and Russian Village Wedding Ritual,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 43:1 (Spring 1990), pp. 99—142. See esp. example 8.

  26 Comparable laments: See Janos Sipos, David Somfai Kara, and Éva Csaki, Kazakh Folksongs from the Two Ends of the Steppe, trans. Judit Pokoly (Akadémiai Kiadó, 2001), p. 43; Elizabeth Tolbert, “The Musical Means of Sorrow: The Karelian Lament Tradition” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1988), p. 174; “Funeral Music” on the recording Indian Music of the Upper Amazon (Smithsonian Folkways FW04458); and Steven Feld, Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression, 2nd ed. (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), pp. 86–111.

  27 “It comes from the first sob”: Federico García Lorca, Deep Song and Other Prose, trans. and ed. Christopher Maurer (New Directions, 1975), p. 30.

  27 “Hey, the wind’s blowing”: Vargyas, Folk Music of the Hungarians, pp. 407, 669.

  27 Peter Kivy … argues: Peter Kivy, Sound Sentiment: An Essay on the Musical Emotions (Temple University Press, 1989), pp. 71–83.

  28 “not mere signs”: John Stevens, Words and Music in the Middle Ages: Song, Narrative, Dance and Drama, 1050–1350 (Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 303.

  28 “the intentions and passions”: Oliver Strunk and Leo Treitler, eds., Source Readings in Music History, rev. ed. (Norton, 1998), p. 387.

  30 “cheerful harmonies and fast rhythms”: Gioseffo Zarlino, On the Modes, trans. Vered Cohen (Yale University Press, 1983), p. 95.

  31 “If [the subject] be lamentable”: Thomas Morley A Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music (Randall, 1771), p. 202.

  32 “Speaking without a mouth,” “pleasing melancholy”: Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. 2 (Dent, 1932), pp. 116, 118.

  32 “No doubt pleasant are the tears”: Peter Holman, Dowland, “Lachrimae” (1604) (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 52.

  32 “musical sounds can evoke”: Patel, Music, Language, and the Brain, p. 319. />
  32 “The world has become sad”: Oscar Wilde, “The Decay of Lying,” in Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Perennial Library 1989), p. 983.

  32 arsenic poisoning: Francesco Mari, Aldo Polettini, Donatella Lippi, and Elisabetta Bertol, “The Mysterious Death of Francesco I de’ Medici and Bianca Cappello: An Arsenic Murder?” BMJ 333 (Dec. 23-30, 2006), pp. 1299-1301.

  32 “stun the beholder with their grandeur”: Skip Sempé, “La Pellegrina,” essay accompanying his recording of La Pellegrina with the Capriccio Stravagante Renaissance Orchestra and Collegium Vocale Gent (Paradizo 0004).

  33 “new manner of song”: Strunk and Treitler, Source Readings in Music History, pp. 659–62.

  34 “great submerged iceberg”: Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 1, The Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 619.