Near the end of the four-week jazz class I teach in
the U's lifetime learning program, a woman asked me, "So are you saying
that rock is inferior to jazz?"
The question caught me off guard, because at the time, as
near as I can remember, I hadn't been saying anything about rock specifically. Perhaps I'd been describing how
the jazz fusion movement of the mid-1970s often degenerated into long, noodly
solos and primitive rock rhythms.
"Inferior?" I replied. "I'm not saying that
at all. That would imply that musical experiences exist on a straight line,
like SAT scores, with some being superior to others. No. It isn't like that. Brahms'
Requiem and "Shall We Gather By
the River" differ radically in scale and complexity, but one isn't inferior to the other. They appeal to
the heart in different ways."
I don't know if she was satisfied with that answer, but a
little later I brought up the question of which single rock artist would be
most likely to endure in cultural memory a hundred years from now, and she
quipped, "The Rolling Stones will still be touring a hundred years from now."
I was thinking about that exchange this morning as I
reviewed the unusual range of musical experiences Hilary and I had over the
weekend.
It all started with a Friday morning concert of the Saint
Paul Chamber Orchestra. The program
consisted of a brief Donizetti sinfonia followed by a woodwind octet by Mozart,
meatier yet still fresh and bright enough for the morning occasion, played with
exemplary musicianship as usual. The final piece, the third of Beethoven's
Razumovsky quartets, arranged for string orchestra, seemed a little over-heated
and moody in comparison. The program notes refer to "a slow and despairing
introduction," a "somber" mood in the second movement, and a
"whirlwind fugue" in the finale. But Beethoven quartets, in my view,
are best listened to at home, late at night, when the bizarre frustrations,
disjuncts, and meandering asides that characterize his work can be fully
relished, and even groveled in, preferably in front of a fire. In a huge
suburban church at noon, I couldn't quite get my head around it all, and kept
thinking about the gaggle of young priests, wearing floor-length black robes and white collars, who were
sitting in the balcony to our left, looking down.
That evening we attended a performance by the Oratorio
Society at the Basilica of St. Mary in downtown Minneapolis devoted to French
sacred music from the romantic era: Frank, Fauré, and Honegger, followed after
intermission by Duruflé's Requiem. The harmonies were rich and shifty in the
best French manner, and the sentiments, though familiar, approached the
sublime.
Saturday was on off-day. Removing leaves from the gutter. Yet
music intruded once again when we took a break from yard work to visit the
offices of Coffee House Press, where some hand set broadsides were being offered
for sale as part of a larger craft fair being held in the building's atrium.
As
we stepped inside, we were greeted by a quaint half-shouting tune by The
Talking Heads that was wafting from a speaker somewhere nearby. That naturally brought to mind
associations with Blondie, Television, and other CBGB heroes of the Blank
Generation, with whose music I have a passing acquaintance dating from my Bookmen
days.
The broadsides themselves had been wrapped in plastic
sleeves and spread out across several old-fashioned linoleum-topped tables. In
case you wanted to examine one of them closely, white cotton gloves had been
placed here and there in pairs. Many of the broadsides were signed, though the
only authors I remember now are W. S. Merwin ($65) and William Burroughs ($260).
A publisher's office is a hallowed place, don't you think?
Anyone who admires authors and loves books ought to be fascinated by this locus
of artistic and intellectual activity—just a bunch of desks, really—where great
things take shape, and later get marketed, though nothing much is actually produced,
stored, or sold here. In the Coffee House offices one or two small platen presses are sitting on tables, and a number of antique typewriters
have been arranged in a row on top of some file cabinets.
Before we left I bought a book dating back to the days of
Toothpaste Press, a precursor to Coffee House. It's a collection of poems by a Finn
named Pentti Saarikoski, translated by Anselm Hollo and published in 1983. It was
hand-set in what looks like 11-point Centaur, which reminds me of a piece of
advice David Godine once gave me: "Never use Centaur under 14
points." But the pages are handsome and easy enough to read. I guess in this
case Godine was wrong.
Life
was given to man
for
him to consider
in
which position
he
wants to be dead:
gray
skies float by,
star-meadows
hang
and
the earth
comes
into your mouth
like
bread
Our next musical event, on Sunday
afternoon, was a fluke: a few days earlier, while waiting for a friend at the
Turtle Bakery, I started thumbing through a neighborhood newspaper, the Longfellow Nokomis Messenger, and came
upon a notice from the Mount Olive Lutheran Church announcing a free, 4 p.m.
concert by Ensemble Me La Amargates Tu. The group was described in the notice as one
of the world's leading Sephardic music ensembles. I found that hard to believe,
but the price was right, and the late afternoon start time was also appealing.
The
performance turned out to be top-notch. The drummer and the guitarist were from
Mexico, the singer from Argentina, the woman playing recorders from Greece, and
the cellist from Venezuela, though he seemed to know quite a few people in the
audience. (I later learned he teaches in Eau Claire.) I gather than they've been
playing together for quite a while, but pursue independent careers, meeting a
few times a year wherever it's convenient to rehearse and perform.
The folk
songs they shared with us were from Turkey, Greece, the Balkans, and Morocco.
Good stuff. The lyrics were in Ladino, a Sephardic dialect peculiar to those
areas. The printed text looked simpler and more straightforward than modern
Spanish, in the same way the Occitan looks less tricky than French. (Well, what
do I know about languages?)
Though "early music" concerts can
sometimes be underwhelming and even dreary, this one was enlivened repeatedly by the expressive
voice and dramatic delivery of tenor Esteban Manzano. And the lyrics, which
ranged from lengthy medieval ballads to enigmatic love songs, were worth
following in the program.
If
the sea was of milk,
and
the boats of cinnamon,
I
would stain myself,
to
save my flag.
If
the sea was of milk,
I
would become a fisherman;
I
would fish for my sorrows
with
small words of love.
If
the sea was of milk
I
would become a merchant,
walking
and wondering
where
does love begin.
Here's the
original, so you can brush up on your Ladino.
Si
la mar era de leche,
los
barquitos de canela,
yo
me mancharfa entera
por
salvar la mi bandera.
Si
la mar era de leche,
yo
me haria un pexcador,
pexcaria
las mis dolores
con
palabricas de amor.
Si
la mar era de leche,
yo
me harfa un vendedor,
caminando
y preguntando
donde
s'empieza el amor.
During the
intermission I noticed a gentleman in the reception area opening about 20
bottles of Charles Shaw merlot. That would come out to roughly half a bottle per person.
We might have lingered after the concert to sip some of that wine and learn a little
more about Ladino but we'd booked some seats for the evening show at the Dakota,
ten minutes away downtown.
Clara delivered well on a number of Jeremy's
original compositions and also sang a heartfelt rendition of Billy Stayhorn's
"A Flower is a Lovesome Thing." It was a long, leisurely set
punctuated by a brief intermission. Osowsky isn't a "jazz" singer but
she has a lot of humor and sass, and her voice is genuinely compelling. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, and
so were we.
Setting
these performance styles side by side—German/classical, French/liturgical, New Wave electrical, Renaissance/Ladino, and jazz/lieder—which can
be said to be inferior to which?
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