Music of the Baroque
Submitted by Jen Glagov on Fri, 12/05/2008 - 3:54pm.
Anyone who has their favorite place to sit in a concert hall can tell you that acoustics are important. But I recently heard a story on PRI’s “The World” that takes this idea to a new extreme. In the quest to learn how sound works in different atmospheres, two scientists simulated a performance of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor on Mars, Venus, and Saturn’s moon Titan, taking the unique characteristics of each into account. I was fascinated by the changes in pitch and timbre depending on the environment (one of my co-workers says this means I'm a true music geek).
If you need a respite from all the gloomy economic news—as I occasionally have in the few weeks since I heard this report—here’s a completely frivolous question: what music would you like to hear in space? I think I'd enjoy a little Arvo Pärt on Venus, or perhaps David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust" on Jupiter...
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Submitted by Jen Glagov on Mon, 11/03/2008 - 3:11pm.
In the South Florida Classical Review, Lawrence Johnson recently shared composer Ned Rorem’s view on current programming among many music groups. According to Rorem (who just turned 85), "The general public couldn’t care at all about what you and I are interested in, in other words, serious contemporary music. …But of course 150 years ago the only music that was played was contemporary music." Rorem theorizes that newspapers and critics ultimately cultivated today’s general dislike of modern classical music. "The general public avoids contemporary music. But of course now most contemporary music is comparatively listenable. It’s a twentieth century thing."
While I may not seek out twentieth-century music, I find that venturing out of my musical comfort zone is intellectually stimulating, and makes me think about my favorite pieces in new ways. Audience reactions to Music of the Baroque’s occasional forays into modern territory (Stravinsky’s "Pulcinella" Suite or our recent performance of Benjamin Britten’s Nocturne, for example) suggest that others feel much more strongly—both negatively and positively.
Do you like listening to twentieth-century classical music? Why or why not?
[*title indebted to Milton Babbitt's 1958 article, "Who Cares if You Listen?"]
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Submitted by Jen Glagov on Wed, 10/15/2008 - 1:05pm.
I love thinking about how music and poetry fit together in a piece of music, which is one of the things that attracted me to the early modern and baroque periods—they’re full of composers who were interested in figuring out how to interpret text through musical settings. Bach and Handel are probably the best known, of course; a few others that come immediately to mind are Claudio Monteverdi (his madrigals are exhilarating—try “Si, ch’io vorrei morire” from Book IV; Heinrich Schutz, especially the Geistliche Chormusik, Op. 11; and Henry Purcell’s semi-operas. Purcell’s ability to bring poetry to life through music influenced many composers—including Benjamin Britten, who marveled at the way he could write “independent, short sections mysteriously linked by subtle contrasts of key, mood, and rhythm.” If there are any fellow text-music aficionados out there, what are your recommendations? (Examples don't have to be baroque...or even classical.)
If you’re interested in poetry and music—and in hearing composers’ influences—Music of the Baroque is about to perform Purcell side by side with Britten’s Nocturne, in which he sets superlative poetry by Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Tennyson, and others, in a program led by Jane Glover called “Night Music.” Performances take place Friday, October 17 at 7:30 pm at the Harris Theater and Sunday, October 19 at 7:30 pm at First United Methodist Church in Evanston. Visit MOB’s website for more information and tickets.
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Submitted by Jen Glagov on Tue, 09/23/2008 - 9:51am.
Last Friday during our traditional office “jeans day,” I mentioned to one of my co-workers that I was so comfortable that I wanted to wear clothes like this every day. “But it would make Fridays less special if we always dressed like this,” she replied. As I walked back to my office, I found myself thinking about that brief interaction and its relation to a recent discussion of concert attire in Greg Sandow’s blog. Sandow argues that “formal dress for classical performances just looks weird, and ancient,” while those on the other side of the fence liked the tradition and thought it contributed to a concert’s ambience (I’m paraphrasing, of course).
What do you think? Do you like your musicians in tuxedos/all black, or would you prefer to see them in clothes they might actually wear on the El?
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Submitted by Jen Glagov on Thu, 09/18/2008 - 12:56pm.
Thanks to the personalities involved with the upcoming election, there’s been a lot of talk lately about our ingrained cultural biases about gender. And if you’re interested in historical perspectives, classical music is a great place to look for evidence about social attitudes that were prevalent in bygone times. Music of the Baroque is about to perform Handel’s Hercules, a fantastic music drama that is much more about Hercules wife, Dejanira, than the well-known hero. Without revealing too much, Dejanira—who seems a little unstable right from the beginning—becomes jealous of her husband’s connection to a beautiful prisoner, and ultimately sets off a rather unfortunate chain of events. When I was writing the program notes for the performances, I read an interesting article by David Ross Hurley entitled “Dejanira and the Physicians: Aspects of Hysteria in Handel’s Hercules” in which he discusses Dejanira’s psychological deterioration and the resemblances it bears to contemporary medical discussions of hysteria—which, of course, was considered to be the most common female malady. It’s a fascinating connection, and Handel’s musical characterization is completely riveting.
Anyone else have particularly striking examples of the way women are portrayed in music, classical or otherwise?
(Music of the Baroque is opening its 2008-09 season with Handel’s Hercules; performances take place Sunday, September 21 at 7:30 at First United Methodist Church in Evanston, and Monday, September 22 at 7:30 at the Harris Theater.)
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Submitted by Jen Glagov on Tue, 07/08/2008 - 12:41pm.
I’ve been listening to a lot of music the last few weeks while getting ready for Music of the Baroque’s 2008-09 season (one of my greatest job responsibilities), but I’m starting to worry a little. No matter how hard I try to think about other things, there are two pieces that won’t stop running through my mind: this chorus from Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, which is full of brilliant text-setting (scroll down to find an audio clip), and the “Laudamus te” from the Gloria of Bach’s superlative Mass in B Minor. Oh, well. If my life now has a soundtrack, at least the music is good.
What about you? What are you listening to this summer?
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Submitted by Jen Glagov on Mon, 06/09/2008 - 1:21pm.
When Antonio Vivaldi was working at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, a screen between performers and audience guaranteed that the young girls' reputations would not be compromised in any way by the act of musical performance. Times have changed, of course-and I recently found myself in a conversation about whether or not sex is actually a valuable classical music marketing tool. I immediately thought of violinist Lara St. John's wonderful 1996 recording of Bach's Partita No. 2 and Sonata No. 3. I heard St. John perform live on WFMT, and was so impressed by her interpretation of these unaccompanied works that I went out and bought the recording. To my surprise, the cover featured an almost nymphette-like St. John sporting nothing more than a strategically-placed violin. "If it takes nudity to get people my age to listen to Bach," explained St. John in an interview, "then so be it."
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Submitted by Jen Glagov on Wed, 05/21/2008 - 10:47am.
ASIMO’s appearance with the DSO a week ago has been the subject of discussion on this website—and because I was lucky enough to attend the concert, I was asked to write about my experience. As Mark Stryker wrote of ASIMO’s “performance” in the Detroit Free Press, “Let’s say right away that the display was a technological marvel and as cool as all get-out. But it was conducting in only the most limited definition…” He was right, of course. But for me, the evening was about more than ASIMO’s conducting prowess. From the moment I handed my ticket to the usher, it was clear that this concert was something special. The back of the hall was crowded with reporters and television cameras, and there wasn’t an empty seat in the house (I heard several subscribers commenting that it was nice to see the hall so full). And while it was obviously great publicity for Honda—who recently gave the DSO $1 million to create The Power of Dreams Music Education Fund—conductor Thomas Wilkins made it clear that ASIMO’s appearance was a metaphor for the seemingly limitless capabilities of human achievement. It also set the stage for a great concert, and the biggest applause of the night was reserved for the humans—especially Yo-Yo Ma, who received huge standing ovations for Haydn and Saint-Saens’ first cello concertos.
The day after ASIMO’s grand debut, Yo-Yo Ma gave a master class with three talented high school performers from the Detroit metro area. Rather than focus on nuances of technique or specific passages, Ma worked with each student on the emotional content of the music, helping them articulate what the music meant to them and then demonstrating how to use the cello to heighten their musical expression. Thinking about the music as a communicative tool made the musicians play better, and in many cases helped them overcome technical glitches. It was fascinating to watch—and it made me think about the previous night’s concert, too. Sometimes the emotional experience overrides the details. ASIMO’s appearance was amazing, and it attracted a lot of attention for the Detroit Symphony and for Honda. It was only one part of an evening full of optimism, good feeling and great music, however—and the robot ultimately became an important detail in a concert experience I’ll never forget.
Click here to see a video of ASIMO conducting the Detroit Symphony.
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Submitted by Jen Glagov on Mon, 05/19/2008 - 2:56pm.
Hello! I’m Jennifer Glagov, longtime program annotator for Music of the Baroque and current holder of the recently-created title “Special Projects Manager.” Although I worked for MOB from 1999 to 2002 as both the Box Office Manager and Director of Marketing, I took some time off (except for the program notes) to spend time with my son. Now that he’s six, he’s in school all day—and while I miss our lazy mornings in the park, returning to work at MOB has been a different kind of fun.
I’ve played violin since I was nine, but my background in music is predominantly academic. I hold the illustrious degree of “all but dissertation” from the University of Chicago, and actually enjoy reading the kind of dense prose you find in musicology journals, but I also love great concerts that can’t be described with words.
While researching the program for MOB’s May concert, I revisited Susan McClary’s essay, “The blasphemy of talking politics during Bach Year,” in which she tries to “demystify” music—particularly instrumental music—by talking about it in relation to existing social and political structures. For McClary, the fantastic harpsichord solo in the first movement of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 is a moment of liberation, through which Bach expresses a simultaneous desire for, and resistance to, social harmony.
What do you think? Is it interesting to “talk politics” when it comes to music, or is music something that should remain in a realm separate from the lives of its creators?
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Submitted by johnglover on Tue, 10/09/2007 - 9:17am.
Two months in and two programs later, 
I finally have a moment to catch my breath, collect myself, and formally introduce myself. I spent the last week mulling over what my first posting on the CCM blog should be. Would it be best to give insight into our current season or post some thought-provoking entry based on some of the other music blogs/books/articles I've been reading lately? In the end it seemed best to say hello and give some thoughts and observations based on my early experience as a newcomer not only to the CCM community, but to Chicago as well.
I just moved here from Los Angeles, where I was freelancing, teaching, and writing. The differences between the two cities were immediately apparent and incredibly invigorating. My earliest and strongest impression of Chicago is the wonderful feeling of community amongst the fine arts organizations and patrons and the unbelievable public spaces. In my first few weeks I would be strolling past the Gehry band shell at Millennium Park and suddenly find myself looking up at dancers from Joffrey performing on a marathon of free dance performances. Another afternoon, while eating lunch outdoors, the strains of Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem came wafting over the lawn as the Grant Park Orchestra rehearsed. Winter approaches, but I'm looking forward to snow as well (for now…)!
In the future I will write entries that give further insight into the work going on here at Music of the Baroque and hopefully provide thoughts that spark conversation amongst the readers of this blog. For now I thought it best to say hello. I suppose in terms of posting comments, this is a great spring board for bragging rights! What do you love about the Chicago Arts community? I look forward to posting and commenting here and seeing you all at upcoming concerts!
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