Author: brigglerintune

I am a freelance trombone player and blogger in New York City. I enjoy, and can play, music of all types and genres.

Meaningful Like a Lullabye

In Poetics of Music, Igor Stravinsky states that music has no meaning. He does not argue that music has no effect on people. And neither does he argue that certain types of music do not have meaning for individuals or groups. He simply states that a tone or chord, sounded, is not a word. A Bb major chord is not “cat” or a certain melody does not mean or imply “sword” unless we are told or shown the meaning. This is one of the central mysteries of music: it sounds, it effects, but it does not mean anything.

This mystery makes it difficult to argue for the superiority of one musical style over another. Take the trombone. You might be surprised to find the trombone is the oldest instrument in continuous use. For five hundred years, it has remained fundamentally the same instrument physically. Heinrich Schutz, a seventeenth century composer and contemporary of J.S. Bach, wrote complicated, beautiful music for trombone quartet.

Trombone players have been well represented through the years. Mozart wrote solo music for the Austrian Virtuoso with the funny name Thomas Gschlatt. During the Gilded Age there was probably no player finer than the Sousa band’s Arthur Pryor. He played unhindered by the  supposed superiority of the classical canon or dime-a-dozen cornetists. Band music was popular music, dance music. He played with a facility unsurpassed in his day. “Tricky Sam” Nanton, who played in Duke Ellington’s band, created an amazing “singing” effect using a trumpet mute and the business end of a toilet plunger. Tommy Dorsey played stratospherically high on the instrument; Bill Waterous plays high and fast. Stewart Dempster created his own bag of tricks.

Does the trombone solo from Mahler’s Third Symphony mean more than the trombone solo from Edith Piaf’s Polchinelle? Mahler’s solo is louder, larger scale, longer, but more meaningful? Music well written (or well conceived) and well played is meaningful like a lullabye and not like an argument.

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40 Years

Nicolas Slonimsky famously posits there is a forty year lag between a composer making an outlandish musical statement and acceptance of his crazy idea as a masterpiece. This number seems arbitrary and historically inaccurate to me. Looking at music history, one will see there is not a single “hidden gem” composer. Every composer considered great in our current times was a working, accepted musician during his or her lifetime (I’m looking at you, Mrs. Beach).

It’s ridiculous to assert that time alone brings about acceptance. Yes, the Eiffel Tower was first reviled and then became a beloved landmark, but Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc was hated and removed. Even in popular music, Van Halen was more popular than Patti Smith and remains so. I can think of no example of a dusty foot locker of music being found in a barn from whence was pulled a trove of near miraculous symphonies.

Time can and does change what the listeners hail a masterpiece. If you are in the know, Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory is an insignificant trifle, barely worth the listen – low entertainment – unplayed by the modern orchestra. It was wildly popular in his day. Contemporary tastes toward Beethoven may change, however. We could find his C Minor Mass in every other action movie instead of his 9th Symphony. Let’s not forget to mention embarrassingly popular music from other well known composers such as Mozart’s Wind Serenades and Aaron Copland’s movie music.

Let’s take a trip forty years back to 1974. Where are the shocking, neglected, large-scale, or difficult works from that glittery era that are played by professional symphonies and chamber groups across the land? Sweeney Todd? Something by William Bolcolm? Shostakovich String Quartet #15? If the forty year prophecy is correct, then we should be happily hearing Berio with our Beethoven, smug and comfortable that the past audience (or our younger selves) were simply ignorant and wrong.

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Briggler In Tune

 

Sometimes, I will voice opinions far afield from what a musician is “supposed to think”. At other times, I will be firmly in favor of an old favorite; an advocate for the familiar. I hope you will find my reasons interesting and find agreement occasionally. I like to think that I can’t be “above it” but rather really “in it”. I don’t claim to know better but to know why my take belongs to me.