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2015: What Kind of Blog Is This?
2015 Off the Podium Reflections, Statistics, and Top Ten Posts
Disclosure: self-indulgent meta-post follows
It’s the last week of 2015, and looking back I decided to review my experience writing Off the Podium this year and share some statistics, what I have learned, and in a way give an overview of what exactly this blog is about.
Writing has been something I have wanted to do for years now, and I began to write in secret some time ago, but it was last year’s career transition that found me leaving the classroom to work at the symphony that finally enabled me to begin writing in earnest. I just couldn’t put it off any more!
Petrarch’s Lyre
The Lute Part IV
The Lute and the New Humanists
The lute was already well-established as a favorite instrument in Italy by the 14th century (the Trecento). The happy circumstances that led to the rise of the lute as the emblematic and most revered instrument of the European Renaissance can be traced to its being readily on hand for the new humanist philosophers and poets who created the movement.
Already the lute was so familiar that in the early years of the century Dante (1265-1321) had used this simile to describe the counterfeiter Master Adam encountered in the eighth circle of Hell:
Io vidi un, fatto a guisa di lēuto
(I saw one, who would have been shaped like a lute)~ Inferno XXX, 49
Inferno: Canto XXX by Priamo della Querci (c.1400-1467) ~ surely the potbellied man in the scene on the right is Dante’s Master Adam
But Petrarch actually played the lute, and equating it with the the lyre of Classical Greece, he imbued the cultural perception of the instrument with a rich symbolism that permeated European art, music, and poetry for centuries.
The Accelerando Begins
This fall, Nashville Symphony Education & Community Engagement staff have been very busy not only with the delivery of the Symphony’s current education and community programming as often described here on Off the Podium, but with preparations for the launch of our new Accelerando program in 2016.
The launch of Accelerando was announced at a press conference on September 28, and we have been working closely for the last months with representatives from the orchestra and from our community partners – and with others both within our community and beyond – to plan all the details of the launch and make plans for what amounts to the establishment of a small but intensive music school for students from underrepresented communities based here at Schermerhorn Symphony Center, but reaching in many directions out into the community.
The Boar’s Head Carol.
posing with the Boar’s Head before a Tastes & Sounds of the Season performance, Nashville School of the Arts, 2012 ~ photo by Brooke Semar
This is the first holiday season in years that I have not spent consumed by the preparations and execution of a big school performance. Over the last 25 years I directed many of these, with students of all grade levels K-12. In fact, for much of my adult life, I have spent most of each fall listening to, arranging, teaching, and rehearsing Christmas and holiday music – beginning as early as August in some years.
However, in the last few months when I found myself reminiscing about it, I realized that it was already far too late to write anything that would be of any immediate use or interest to choir directors and elementary or middle school music teachers who may read this – most initial planning for these extravaganzas happens in the summer.
I decided to put off writing in earnest about my experiences producing these performances – and my thoughts on how and why to do so – until next summer, when it will hopefully be more useful. But so as not to gloss over the whole issue without any consideration at all, we will content ourselves with a single post this season about a carol whose performance became a hallowed and beloved tradition for so many of my students over the years. I am talking about, of course, The Boar’s Head Carol.
Education & Community Engagement at the Nashville Symphony: Fall 2015 Review
from my Instagram feed: your Nashville Symphony Education & Community Engagement Department: (l to r) Kelley Bell, Walter Bitner, Kristen Freeman ~ during a break from filming
December is here and the holidays are upon us. Having made it through Thanksgiving already and fearing that Christmas and New Year’s may arrive before I do this, I am dedicating this post to a look back on the activities of our department this fall.
As I wrote this post, I became astounded at the ground we have covered in just the last four months – the depth of the Nashville Symphony’s engagement in our community and the wide range of educational activities we offer is truly remarkable. I am so proud to be able to come to work every day and participate in all of this!
Matthew Halls on J.S. Bach and the Oregon Bach Festival
Part 2 of 3
Continued from An Interview with Matthew Halls (Part 1)
I asked Matthew Halls what he felt about dramatizations of the Bach Passions – for example, the stagings of the St. Matthew and St. John Passions by Peter Sellars with the Berlin Philharmonic.
Matthew Halls: I have many different feelings on this. The work that Peter Sellars did with the Berlin Philharmonic is wonderful – it’s inspiring, it gives you a new insight. I also saw an incredible realization by Deborah Warner (with the English National Opera), and Katie Mitchell’s done some work in this field as well. There seems to have been a trend in recent years to give dramatic presentations of Bach’s great sacred works.
Fundamentally, I have nothing against this. Any way we can present music from the distant past in a way which is going to make the presentation of the ideas more vivid for someone coming to see the piece for the first time: that gets a big gold star in my book! That a wonderful way of helping and reinterpreting the music of the past.
I think that it comes with the acknowledgement that I’m not quite sure what Bach would have made of it. But at the same time – this is the 21st century and we face different challenges. As long as the integrity of the music survives then I’m really interested and excited by all sorts of approaches to the music.
The Medieval Lute
The Lute Part III
two lutenists from the 13th century manuscript Cantigas de Sancta Maria of Alfonso the Wise
By the middle of the 16th century, professional lutenists led by virtuosi such as Francesco da Milano had established the lute, and more importantly secular instrumental music, as a deep, abiding, and richly developed component of Western culture. The impact the early lutenists made on both their contemporaries and on the generations that followed influenced the course and development of our musical traditions in ways that are still felt today.
How did the lute rise from a little-known cultural import to become the defining instrument and symbol of music in Renaissance Europe – including its elevation to preeminent stature as the instrument of princes?
Roger Wiesmeyer Plays Mozart
Roger Wiesmeyer
“I just adore it.” says Roger Wiesmeyer, speaking of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491. “I’ve never played it on piano before. I’ve sat in the orchestra for performances of this concerto three or four times and every time it just completely captures my imagination, for at least the week after – I’ll have at least two weeks of living with it and thinking about it all the time. There is this incredible mood that Mozart casts with this piece.”
A few days ago Roger and I sat down after a rehearsal to talk about this piece, which we will be collaborating together to perform this week. Roger will be performing the solo piano part – the part originally played by Amadeus himself – and I am playing a reduction of the orchestra’s part on second piano for the first and third movements. The second movement – a slow Larghetto – will be performed by Roger joined by Nashville Symphony musicians Kate Ladner, flute; Jeremy Williams, violin; and Keith Nicholas, cello in a quartet arrangement by Johann Nepomunk Hummel, an Austrian composer and pianist who was a contemporary of Beethoven.
Anton Bruckner and his Romantic Symphony
Linz, Austria ~ engraving by J. Ouartlev, 1863
Austrian composer and organist Anton Bruckner is primarily known today for his symphonies – his music is often paired with that of Gustav Mahler as the apotheosis of the late Romantic Austro-German symphonic tradition. Although Bruckner and Mahler symphonies share many characteristics – a common musical heritage and language, the robust late nineteenth century orchestra, sprawling scales and harmonies in which the symphony seems to encompass an entire world of expression – in many ways their music also differs. Mahler was 36 years younger than Bruckner, whom Mahler admired and considered his forerunner – at 17 years old, Mahler was present at the premiere of Bruckner’s Third Symphony in 1877. Mahler famously said “A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.” and his symphonies contain myriad references to themes, experiences, and objects from life. Many of Mahler’s symphonies incorporate vocal soloists and chorus – and hence text – whereas Bruckner’s symphonies are without exception purely instrumental works (which is interesting to note as Bruckner also composed many sacred choral works in addition to his symphonic output). Bruckner’s symphonies inhabit a more abstract, elemental “tone world” than Mahler’s – every bit as overwhelming, inspiring, and at times terrifying as Mahler’s, but for the most part at more of a remove from direct references to the world we live in. The Romantic Fourth Symphony is an exception.
An Interview with Matthew Halls
Matthew Halls (photo credit Eric Richmond)
Part 1 of 3
This week Matthew Halls is in Nashville to conduct the Nashville Symphony in four performances of Johann Sebastian Bach’s six Brandenburg Concertos, complete in one concert. The performances will be held October 22-25 and feature Mark Niehaus, trumpet, and Jun Iwasaki, violin. Tickets are available here.
British conductor Matthew Halls is one of the most versatile musicians in classical music today. In the early years of his career he worked as a keyboard player and early music conductor but he is known today for his dynamic work in music of all periods. Matthew Halls is Artistic Director of the Oregon Bach Festival, and conducts symphony orchestras and opera all over the world.
I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to sit down with Matthew and talk about music and his career for an hour this week before rehearsals began – here follows a transcript from our conversation.
Walter Bitner 