Douglas Chambers: The Reinvention of the World

Posted on July 18, 2020 by barczablog

I have been stuck on this one for awhile, not knowing quite what to write.

I’m trying to avoid being a downer, but it’s hard to see the silver lining when you’re deep in the dark clouds of a pandemic. A few days ago I started to watch the Met’s Wozzeck again (having seen it in the theatre early this year), but couldn’t make it through, overwhelmed by the darkness of the story.

03wozzeck

Peter Mattei in Wozzeck at the Met. (Photo: Paola Kudacki/Met Opera)

Last week, watching an old broadcast of Il trovatore starring Pavarotti & Zajick, I was struck by how melodrama, that medium of powerless protagonists with no agency in a world beyond their control, is a perfect reflection of the world of 2020.  No wonder melodrama was popular.

pavarotti2

I can’t get the Miserere out of my head.

In early May when I heard that Douglas Chambers had passed away, I took the opportunity to write a reminiscence of a rare individual.  I wrote about Stonyground, his inimitable book about his family property near Walkerton Ontario.

After that I compulsively, convulsively, looked about, needing another fix, wanting to again immerse myself in his unique discourse. A sci-fi novel long ago suggested that literature & poetry & art preserve the RNA of a person after they’re gone as though we were able to feel and see as they do.  To be deep in a text is to be inside the person’s soul & sensibility: or so it might seem.

In that spirit, I looked for & found something relatively obscure that I hadn’t seen before, namely The Reinvention of the World: English Writing 1650-1750, a book that first appeared in 1996, reprinted in the new century. A review of it inspired me to search for it and miracle of miracles, while I wasn’t able to find it in any of the U of T libraries [although later I discovered I was too hasty in concluding it wasn’t to be found here. Yes there are copies available…]  I was able to find a single copy via Thriftbooks, a used paperback that had been in a college library in Schenectady NY. Its spine was so solid, its pages so unbesmirched (I can hear Douglas telling me that’s not a real word. Or is it?), as to seem brand new. Talk about lucky. And it only cost me about $10 US. It was delivered earlier in June, I started reading and –argh – I regret that I finished it. There’s a kind of magical anticipation when you’re inside the book as it unfolds, an aura that wears off when you finish.

I must re-read it.

Of course it was like new because it probably scared off any possible readers. The back cover, that should serve to invite & inspire must have daunted the Schaffer Library patrons, when they saw this:

“At the centre of this book is the issue of power and its fictions, the ability to dominate with schemes of knowledge and the resistance to that domination. In his investigation, Douglas Chambers achieves a complex interweave of what have traditionally been thought of as ‘literary’ and ‘non-literary’ texts, a distinction that in the past has served to privilege one sort of voice over another. In the process, there is a deconstruction of the familiar canon. Milton, Defoe, Swift, and Pope are fully present–but often in new guises and with emphasis on their involvement in contemporary cultural issues– along with many lessen known writers of the age “

In some respects it’s the most ambitious of all Chambers writings, promising a sweeping synthesis across multiple disciplines, as you might expect from such a portentous title, undertaking something remarkable even if it’s rare.  How does thinking change, and what cognitive spoor might we find in usage & literature for the changes in how we understand the world?  We encounter discourses & counter-discourses, framing the reasons why some books could seem inevitable or necessary at least after the fact.

Like I said: ambitious.

It’s doubly poignant when I think of Douglas’ end, not so much because he was in a seniors’ residence with COVID19 but thinking of his sophisticated grasp of reality. If we look at the number of balls a juggler could keep in the air at one time as evidence of virtuosity, with Chambers’ prose it’s more a matter of how many complex ideas he could sustain within a single paragraph, not just keeping them all airborne but making beautiful patterns. When a mind such as this passes over to the other side we lose something significant.

Full disclosure: I found the book, tantalized by a bit of Graham Parry’s 1998 critique in The Review of English Studies, found here.  It includes a passage that will resonate with those who heard him lecture:

“There is a considerable discrepancy between the contents of this book and the professed aims of the series Writing in History to which it belongs. The series professes “to give students of literature access to recent ideas about history”, but the students in question must belong to some super-seminar at the Academy of Lagado, for they are expected to be familiar with a remarkable range of topics, authors and fictional personalities. However, while The Reinvention of the World may leave undergraduates and most postgraduates bewildered, it provides a fitful stimulus to those already expert in the culture history of the period.”

reinvention_coverParry is not exaggerating.

Chambers lives up to the review, as you might surmise from the table of contents:
“1) Introduction: Methodically Digested
2) The Geographical Part of Knowledge: Mapping and Naming
3) Earth’s Distant Ends: Travelling and Classifying
4) The Garden of the World Erewhile: Husbandry, Pastoral & Georgic
5) Th’Amazed Defenceless Prize: Opening and Enclosing
6) Childhood’s Tender Shoots: Instructing and Imagining
7) Conclusion: The Discourse of Resistance
8) Postscript: What We Have Forgotten
Appendix of Original Documents
Index”

 

Sometimes we’re reading about Milton or Pope or Swift and how their great works capture shifts in the preoccupations of the culture. Sometimes it’s someone decidedly more obscure. The Index is especially important for me, allowing me to circle back to the mentions of the works I need to either read for the first time or to revisit. Chambers has made a kind of travel book, like a Frommers Guide to send you voyaging not in a boat or a plane to another country but in a library to another world, going back to the 1650s or the 1730s as well as many important antecedents such as Erasmus, Vergil or Longinus. In a real sense this is a book to take you back to the scene of the crime, to revisit & rethink what you read & studied long ago. Chambers feels very contemporary in his multi-disciplinary approach that seeks to properly contextualize writers not via mere allusions to other writers but by unpacking the assumptions about maps, exploration, land, property, family, children…. I found myself reading sentences and then stopping to re-read, afraid I had missed one of the subtle voices in his counterpoint.

evelynIn passing I now begin to understand the reason for his fascination with John Evelyn, leading to his great final project The Letterbooks of John Evelyn, finished by David Galbraith just a few years ago (and that one is in the U of T library).

With over thirty references to Evelyn, some across multiple pages, Chambers unpacks & deconstructs aspects of daily life in every chapter using this remarkable record. So in other words, not only are we sent back to my Milton, Pope, Swift, Marvell, Traherne or Bacon, but after looking at this book we begin to see why Evelyn’s letterbooks matter as a window on another world.

For now I’m mostly reading books or playing the music in books.  TV is the horrors of CNN or CP24, statistics to scare you & remind you not to take off your mask, and perhaps teach you to shut the damn thing off (given that it’s more or less the same thing every day).   Live performance done on the internet doesn’t really work for me right now, more of a reminder of what I’m missing than a proper substitute. I feel a bit like someone starving outside a candy store or a party full of celebration & feasting.

No.  Books are my solace right now.

Posted in Books & Literature, Dance, theatre & musicals, Opera, Personal ruminations & essays, University life | Leave a comment

Ennio Morricone has passed

Posted on July 7, 2020 by barczablog

This is almost an insult, to post this short little thing in response to the passing of Ennio Morricone. I’m merely doing this to call attention to his range, to his influence, and yes, because it’s fun posting something moving & beautiful.

I wanted to show three different samples. In each case, yes yes, the music is interesting.

The first one really has little relationship to a sequence of film, because it’s not a score so much as an overture, to a film & to a whole style we’d see developed later in the films that followed. Yes this is the beginning of the collaboration between Morricone & Sergio Leone.

A Fistful of Dollars (1964) may not be a great film, but the best thing about it is its score. We’re in the presence of something symbolic, or dare I suggest, symbolist. The violence & the machismo is powerfully invoked from the first note, in a gradual inexorable crescendo.

I recently wrote about the use of the wordless chorus but somehow forgot this example, a most intriguing exception to the usual rule in the choice to have the chorus be so male.

The second one is from The Mission (1986) the film most people think of when they mention Morricone. But as you watch this sequence notice how the drama and the music are so perfectly linked.  You almost don’t notice the music because it’s so organic.

And to finish, this is really two for the price of one. This tiny little sequence from The Untouchables (1987) has two very different moods. The first is the sort of thing we hear in several Morricone scores, the mournful melody that might represent goodness or humanity as a consolation for the horror of the story.  In this case it’s a melody associated with Sean Connery’s character, remembered in this lovely bit of nostalgia, on an intimate & personal scale.

And then we suddenly segue into exit music, suggesting something triumphant & grand. If the first mournful melody didn’t give you the shivers, this one surely will.

He may be gone but the music is still there to explore, more than 400 films with some of the greatest directors of the last century.

mission_image

Posted in Cinema, video & DVDs, Music and musicology, Personal ruminations & essays | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Pete Davidson – The King of Staten Island

Posted on July 4, 2020 by barczablog

You might know Pete Davidson a couple of ways.

He’s a regular on Saturday Night Live.

He could be the avatar of sensational relationship failure, famously dumped by Ariana Grande, among others. Pardon me, I have no idea what he’s really like and I’m just reporting the tabloid version, which would have to be false & likely tasteless.

So I was genuinely surprised by The King of Staten Island, a new film starring Davidson that’s deeper than my prologue might lead you to expect.

Davidson’s underplayed performance is surprisingly good.  We’ve seen his comedy but this is real acting. I was watching him onscreen with Marisa Tomei, noticing that when she looked like an actor he looked like a real person.

He blew her off the screen, and I say that as someone who totally loves her work, always grateful to see her.

It’s directed by Judd Apatow, co-written by Davidson and apparently semi-autobiographical.

His father really was a fireman.

firehouse1

The last moment of the film before the credits blind-sided me. I don’t believe in spoilers so I won’t tell you what I saw except to say that I burst into tears. Yes I was impressed.

There was a bit of drama surrounding its release, as the theatrical release was cancelled, and the film was instead put out as a video-on-demand release instead. Given that we can only watch movies at home right now, that works just fine.

There are aspects of the story that touched me. Because I am a sucker for something sentimental? Or perhaps because they feel close to home.

  • The protagonist lost his father when he was young,
  • The boy idolized that father as a virtual saint.
  • As an adult, the grown-up boy tries to discover the real father beyond the ideal

Apatow is known for wacky comedies, but steps into a darker genre with this film, often startlingly realistic in its texture, whether through the camerawork, writing or direction. Much of the time I still felt we were watching a comedy, although some might quibble with the question of genre. On a big screen I think the audience would have been laughing quite loudly in places, perhaps nudging the needle and thereby changing that perception for the naysayers watching it at home on the small screen in the dark times of pandemic.

But it’s fun, it’s uplifting. I hope I don’t spoil if for you by saying that a Judd Apatow comedy starring Pete Davidson & Steve Buscemi will make you laugh. But it feels much more adult to me than earlier Apatow.  Perhaps Pete Davidson is growing up?

I like that it’s long. I didn’t want it to end.  And I will watch it again tomorrow.

You could do worse.

Posted in Cinema, video & DVDs, Popular music & culture, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Stewart Goodyear – Beethoven piano concerti

Posted on June 27, 2020 by barczablog

It’s 2020, a year I’m tempted to call “World, Interrupted,” recalling the 1999 film set in a psychiatric hospital. At times our virtual online lives resemble the simulation of real living as though we’ve been wrapped in strait-jackets, locked up in padded cells, prevented from hugging one another. Normalcy has been set aside as we’re all experimenting with varieties of physical distance, without any concerts or theatre performances during the pandemic.

And 2020 is also the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven on a December day in 1770. The commemorative concerts to celebrate? Postponed or canceled. If I could misquote Mame, it’s not that we need a little Christmas. We need a little Beethoven. Never mind “hauling out the holly”, we need a little Ludwig, right this very minute.

It makes me ever so grateful for the recent release of Stewart Goodyear’s Orchid Classics recordings of the five Beethoven piano concerti, recorded with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Andrew Constantine. I’ve been having my own little private festival.

Goodyear-Beethoven-WEBCover-1

It helps that the performances are all extraordinarily good. Let me explain what I mean, as I’m a bit mystified as to why Goodyear’s importance is not more universally recognized.  Is it because he’s black? or Canadian?  If he were American he would be a huge star.

Back in 2012 when I first encountered Goodyear as the soloist in the “Beethoven Marathon”, playing all 32 sonatas in a single day, the question of interpretation was almost incidental. We were witnessing something like an athletic feat, a happening. I was flabbergasted that the event was treated by some as a kind of publicity stunt, and not taken more seriously. As an impressionable nerd, I had plunged into what I considered to be the important question underlying this day, namely, does playing or hearing the sonatas this way change our perception & understanding of the composer & how he is to be understood, how he is to be performed: to which I say an enthusiastic “yes”. I can hold more than one idea in my head (as any musician can), balancing the appreciation for the feat, with my enjoyment of his interpretations, my gratitude for his witty commentaries, and a clear perception that his engagement with Beethoven was genuine.  While I think of myself as a Beethoven nerd (you know… having almost all 32 sonatas in my head? able to play the symphonies at the piano, etc), I felt like a neophyte  in his presence, as he played from memory, a feat making the role of Lear or Hamlet look small in comparison.

There was a youtube video early on of Goodyear performing the first & last movements of the Hammerklavier sonata Op 106, that should have served notice. I’ve been listening to people struggle with both movements, not quite sure how to approach them. Let’s just say that if we were to think of musical scores as puzzles or challenges addressed to the performers of the world, then Goodyear’s solutions are remarkable, coherent, agile & note-perfect.

Goodyear’s recordings of the Beethoven piano sonatas were confirmation of his secure understanding of Beethoven, an approach that reconciles the challenges of the composer, virtuosity with understanding & depth. Yet his is a light-hearted handling that dodges the ponderous pathway of an interpreter such as Klemperer: a conductor whom I worshipped at one time. Thankfully one can have lots of interpretations, several approaches.

So earlier this week when I started listening to the concerti set, I was high as a kite. I listened to the first concerto five times before I went on to the second one (also heard multiple times).

I had read Goodyear’s confessional program note, (that I can direct you to in its entirety online here and click “sleeve notes”), an indication of an unusually intimate connection to the music. I recall Anton Kuerti’s admonition in his own recording liner notes, that to play Beethoven one must become Beethoven. Imaginative identification is paramount. Reading what Goodyear writes I’m inclined to think that he doesn’t mistake himself for Ludwig van B, but does get inside him, understanding & empathizing.

I think Goodyear’s key insight is the following:

“My first impression while hearing the symphonies was that they seemed more public and more extroverted as the sonatas seemed more personal and more vulnerable. The complete piano sonatas felt like hearing a musical diary; the symphonies felt like individual declarations to the public. Two sides of Beethoven so far, equally powerful, intriguingly different.
My journey with the Beethoven piano concertos began at age nine when I entered a national piano competition in Canada. From the age of nine to twelve I competed, hearing movements of his piano concerti performed by various competitors. (In the final round of this competition, the competitors had to choose a movement from a concerto.) Another side of Beethoven was introduced to me as I heard my competitors perform these works; a side of great theatre, great drama, great virtuosity, and most importantly, great merriment. I felt like I was hearing Beethoven the entertainer, the actor, the storyteller, the playwright. So now, there were three sides of Beethoven; the sonatas were pursuits of inner truth, the symphonies pursuits of the highest qualities in humanity, the piano concertos pursuits of unbridled joy.”
Stewart Goodyear, 2019

You may not choose the same language, nor see the same qualities, but it’s intriguing to come to these performances with this subtext. What if we see the orchestral passages as “more public and more extroverted …, individual declarations to the public” and the solo piano passages as “more personal and more vulnerable”..? And then if we add the thought that these are theatre, performances where the piano soloist might be a kind of character displaying themselves with vulnerability, taking us inside their feelings, contextualized in a broader world by the orchestral passages. It means that in a sense we’re dealing with a kind of dramaturgy, where Goodyear understands the concerti as drama, the soloist expressing internal feelings, the orchestra underlining that or representing the broader world & the context. I’m not sure that it can apply uniformly—indeed how could it when the composer’s own understanding of the form changed so quickly from the first two through the last three? –but that’s a great start.

I will write more about the experience because I continue to listen to them daily.

I was thrilled by the cadenza Goodyear offers in the 1st movement of Concerto #1, the longest of the ones Beethoven gave us in 1809 (there are at least 3). It’s marvelous to listen to roughly twelve minutes of the concerto and then vanish into over four minutes of cadenza, surely the hardest & longest. Goodyear ends with a lovely ironic flourish, pulling back before the orchestra comes in for the brief tutti that finishes the movement.

Concerto #2 may be an earlier composition than #1, but it doesn’t really matter. Each of the first two has a youthful charm & elegance that satisfies, even while pointing unmistakably to the mature genius waiting for the new century to turn. We’re still in a realm of balance & restraint that shouldn’t trouble a fan of Mozart or Haydn, yet it’s as though we’re watching a teenage Lil Abner, about to sprout bigger muscles than we’ve ever seen before. Just you wait. So it’s apt to have a performance like Goodyear’s that sounds effortless, as though the player isn’t stressed, isn’t troubled, but sailing along without a care in the world.

For Concerto #3 the dramaturgy changes, which is hardly surprising considering how much else was changing. As the world was at war, the composer was also in battles, struggling with himself. This concerto appeared the year after his “Heiligenstadt Testament”, a letter in which he considers his diminishing ability to hear, the prospect of giving up performance, perhaps ending his life altogether in despair. No wonder that the composer takes a giant step, from the light & airy first two concerti, to one in that fateful key of C minor. The orchestra now begins to take us beyond mere sturm und drang into something profound, the depths of romantic anguish and an image of an implacable & indifferent world. It’s not enough to just play the notes. Constantine & that BBC Orchestra offer gravitas without being excessively slow, balanced right on the edge. Goodyear gives us something suggesting psychological insight, the 1st movement cadenza approached as though he were a method actor seeking to avoid being a ham. He builds to the big moments gradually without bombast, and with a searing clarity when the pain in the music requires it to finally burst out and show itself. Yet he’s very subtle the way he takes the passage to end the cadenza (with Constantine’s help) creating mystery and a drama to make you lean forward in your seat, wondering: what will happen next. While this Beethoven is still inevitable & inexorable it is also still capable of surprise.

Concerto #4 was probably the last one that the composer was able to premiere himself. I have to wonder, was that brilliant innovation of having the soloist come in alone nothing more than a way for a man in the process of losing his hearing, seeking to conceal it from his audience? Oh sure, it’s fabulous music. It’s also a very clever idea if you’re unable to hear. Ditto with the second movement too, possibly the most original single movement of a concerto written before 1850. (Although maybe the first movement of his violin concerto is even more original? I guess you can tell I like Beethoven…), where the orchestra comes in super loud (and visible, if not audible to the pianist), and then the soloist replies, in a very contrasting fashion. This movement has been spoken of as Orpheus calming The Furies, which is certainly apt. I think of it as a kind of sermon  and indeed I put it (via a piano reduction) at the end of a church service the Sunday after the Charlottesville murder of Heather Heyer . This entire concerto is full of energies brimming to the surface, whether in the sparkly piano in the slow movement or in the exuberance of either of the outer movements. Goodyear is magisterial, every note in place, enacting perfection.

It might surprise you after all this to hear that Concerto #5 is my favorite. While the musicologists will tell you that #4 is the most original, most innovative, seminal, ground-breaking… Oh dear, so many adjectives. But this concerto is the one I’ve always found most stirring, most inspiring. It’s a composition of heroic sounds, militaristic imagery and a series of struggles in the first movement. The second is a dreamy meditation that was selected to suggest the latent romance of the film Immortal Beloved. However far off the historical mark it may be, the way the composition is used in the film adds another layer to my love of this concerto. Constantine & the BBC NOW step forward assertively for this one with the most interesting accompaniment I’ve ever heard for this piece, and that’s in a lifetime of listening to a great many interpretations. Part of it may be good sonics, but it’s also the choice to bring out voices & percussion in key places. Goodyear seems to be surfing on a tidal wave of powerful sound, at times emerging from the heroic tutti, at other times tinkling in soft commentary.  Stunning, magnificent…

If you like Beethoven you really should get these recordings of the concerti. Stewart Goodyear deserves to be acknowledged as one of the finest interpreters of this music.

And I’ll keep listening to these great discs. beethoven_head

Posted in Music and musicology, Personal ruminations & essays, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

First recording of Scarlatti’s first opera

Posted on June 21, 2020 by barczablog

You may know the name “Scarlatti”.

Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757), wrote those fascinating sonatas for keyboard, but he’s not the only Scarlatti by any means. He had an older brother Pietro Scarlatti (1679-1750) who had some success as a composer.

Domenico’s father was Alessandro Scarlatti (1660 –1725), composer of over 60 operatic creations. They took various forms such as “dramma per musica” or “commedia per musica” or “melodramma” or “favola boschereccia” (woodland fairytale): and that doesn’t exhaust the list.

Alessandro’s very first opera was Gli equivoci nel sembiante which might translate roughly as “Mistaken Identities” although I saw an article that would call it “Folly in Love,” a pastoral comedy (identified as a “dramma per musica”). Dating from 1679, it’s the creation of a teenager, when Alessandro was not even 19 years old.

And it’s also very early in the history of opera.

  • Monteverdi’s operas in Florence and Venice are from the first half of the 17th century, La favola d’Orfeo (aka L’Orfeo) from 1607, L’incoronazione di Poppea from 1643
  • The mid-century Roman operas from composers such as Luigi Rossi & Francesco Cavalli created a new comic-opera style
  • In Paris the operas of Jean-Baptiste Lully may have been an influence upon Rossi.

My reading suggests that Alessandro may have been exposed to & influenced by the Roman operas of Cavalli & Rossi.

I’ve been listening to the opera, in what may be the first complete recording of the work, created for us by artists right here in Southern Ontario:

  • Capella Intima
  • The Gallery Players of Niagara
  • Nota Bene Baroque Players

scarlatti_cast_2

The members of Capella Intima sing the roles in the opera:

  • Tenor Bud Roach: Eurillo, a shepherd
  • Mezzo-soprano Vicki St Pierre: Clori, a nymph
  • Soprano Sheila Dietrich: Lisetta, Clori’s younger sister
  • Baritone David Roth: Armindo, a stranger, and Eurillo’s double

Bud Roach is also the Musical Director for the project.COVER

I’ve been driving around with this CD in my car, going through the opera a few times. I’m floored by what I’m hearing from that gifted teenager Alessandro in this new recording. The playing is of a historically informed style, wonderfully transparent & clear with a small ensemble that plays with great energy.

With comedy, especially one involving visual mix-ups we lose something when we only have an audio recording. I wish I could see this performed onstage. Roach is especially apt for comedy as we’ve seen in other performances here in the GTA with his Hammer Baroque or working with the Toronto Consort. He is often cast in comic roles both because of his clear light voice, but also because of his willingness to play. Sometimes he’s singing with great care and a fidelity to the score but at other moments we’re into something resembling the bold improvisatory spirit of Commedia dell’Arte, a style likely influencing Italian theatre & the operas of this time. Dietrich’s clear high sound is a lovely contrast to the richness of St Pierre’s voice. Roth’s lovely full sound is a welcome addition.

I hope we can look forward to seeing this performed live by this talented group sometime soon. In the meantime click on this link to order the double CD from Naxos.

Posted in Music and musicology, Opera, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Knave in the House of Cards

Posted on June 20, 2020 by barczablog

A meditation on dayjobs

A long time ago I was an undergraduate, a university student fresh out of high school. At the time a summer job was indispensable to help me afford my life between September & May, living in my apartment & studying.

As I look back, hindsight suggests that Socrates was right when he said “know thyself”. I envied those who had a narrow path to follow, circumscribed by the things they disliked.  I knew people who really only liked one thing and so could follow through single-mindedly.

Not me.  If you’re not sure what you are going to do, your choices become a bit more challenging. I am omnivorous, I love everything, as a student, and as an artist. There’s something to be said for specializing, for choosing one thing and sticking to it. If you are not limited by your taste, though, it becomes tougher. In my 20s I was sometimes a composer, sometimes a performer, sometimes a writer, music for plays, for film, for dance, a couple of musicals…. I was a coach, accompanist, a music director. And I was exploring the synthesizer and electronics, but also playing classical piano, and sometimes rock & jazz. 

I don’t think this makes me in any way unique.

And the whole time that I was exploring different aspects of music – theatre, I had a variety of jobs to support myself. Whereas the university experience precluded jobs in the winter, as I gradually segued into something outside the school year, the emphases changed, especially once I married & became a father.  The game becomes more serious.

I recall interviewing Philip Glass in 1981 before Satyagraha came to Artpark in Lewiston NY. He spoke of dayjobs in his recent past (I think he mentioned work as a cab driver and as an electrician… it was long ago, I wonder if I remember it right?). As I was still in my 20s I took that to heart, remembering the taunt in the back of my head that I couldn’t forget, namely “don’t quit your dayjob,” the ultimate insult to a serious artist. No I did not spend very long sustaining myself entirely on the avails of music.   So indeed I went back to a dayjob. Sometimes I worked in a bookstore, sometimes a library, sometimes I did construction, landscaping, carpentry, shipping-receiving, lugging & lifting. I got a job delivering mail at the University of Toronto, and got lucky in someone else’s misfortune. When the boss got sick, I became the new Manager, a job I’ve now held for 3 decades.
While I felt lucky to have the position, there’s cognitive dissonance, because my identity is in the arts, not in admin. It’s crazy when I’ve now spent so much time working.   I managed to mitigate those feelings somewhat by seguing into the academic realm, studying the disciplines academically that I had previously practiced. Even so, whether I was making music or studying it, that was all jammed into the spare time left to me after working a fulltime job, a divided life.

I mention this in context with the wonderful interview I shared from Margarete von Vaight, another person living a life divided between her art, her professional life & her studies. I feel it needs to be said in 2020, that you’re not a failure if you have a dayjob. At least that’s what I tell myself. Even so I feel like a turncoat, a traitor, a person whose loyalties might be suspect. That’s what I meant by the headline. Today especially the world of artistic creation feels profoundly disturbed, unsustainable, shaky at best.  The current business model? It’s a house of cards. Great opera singers have been staggered by the sudden disappearance of the medium due to wholesale closures around the world. The Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Seattle Opera, Royal Opera Covent Garden, the Paris Opera, have all cancelled huge parts of their seasons, while leaving us wondering what will happen with the loss of revenue. What will become of the performers who lost the gigs & their fees? What is to become of the art?

And the same applies in many other disciplines.

I don’t take comfort in having taken the safe path. I can’t claim to be smarter just because I survived, so fascinated with my job that my artistic activities were often shoved into the background. I had a fulltime job, while I finished my BA, then did an MA & a PhD in my spare time (although in fairness I cannot call myself “Dr”, as I didn’t finish) and also did at least a show a year, sometimes as many as 5 shows a year. There was the year when I did two operas in the space of a year, while going to class & working fulltime.

self_portait

Self-portrait? the stack is the job, the building academic study, the blue space: what’s left over

My vacation days were pretty wild that year.

The curious thing about the job activities is how seductive they can be. I learned computers, web design, finance, spread-sheets, learned a smattering of skills in labour relations, management… It made me a better teacher, a better music director. If you know who you are, venturing off into a new line of work can be fun rather than a threat. If you aren’t sure who you are, the money & the gratification can be so alluring as to lead you astray. I’m not saying I got lost, not when I’ve been having such a good time.

While I’ve asked myself “do you work to live or do you live to work” I try not to over-analyze. If I’m enjoying myself then I think I’m okay. I’m about to retire from my job with a pension, able to devote myself completely to creative pursuits. I will now have time.
It’s a strange world. Will opera be back in the usual way? Time will tell. And what of the young artists coming into the field? I’m hardly a person to give advice except to say that education is invaluable.

And universities & institutions of higher learning may function the way monasteries did in the Middle Ages, to preserve culture in a kind of dark age.

These are interesting times.

Posted in Essays, Music and musicology, Opera, Personal ruminations & essays, University life | Leave a comment

Disturbance in the Force: a Natural Experiment with Audiences

Posted on June 13, 2020 by barczablog

With all the performers, musicians, artists social distancing at home, you might think that this is an opportunity, that they’d be busy singing, strumming, painting…. All that time to create, right?

Yet it’s not what I hear on social media. There’s something not quite right. Is it like a writer’s block? I don’t know if that’s the write metaphor…

(bad joke… pardon me).

Perhaps the best way to describe it is the way Obi Wan spoke when he felt something inside, not quite right.

disturbance_in_the_force

Some people are struggling to survive. Many people are dying.  The artists are the most sensitive of us all.  Could artists, our canaries in the mine, be feeling something?

I am reminded of something that I read long ago in Keir Elam’s book The Semiotics of Theatre & Drama.  The theatrical transaction begins with the audience in this theory. The moment when they begin to show up –whether it’s 500 coming through the door or just 5—is when the process would be understood to begin, or so says the theory, and not in anything that the actors or musicians  might do.

As I recall Elam gathers together many different theories & the work of theorists, so he is more of a curator than author, as we walk through his museum of insights & observations.

He called it a “transaction” because it’s at least partly communication, perhaps also a speech act. It allows us to really ask a different version of the classic: if a tree falls in the forest, is there a sound? Let’s change it slightly. If an actor speaks on a stage but there is no audience, is there theatre? We might well say yes there is drama, but without an audience, can there be theatre? Without an audience there might be music but is there a concert?

And I suspect this is the root of the malaise in the artistic community. When one performs, one feels a connection to the listener / viewer. I don’t think it’s about applause per se. It might be connected to fees & a kind of recognition. If you make music or speak in a church, the silent connections can be the most powerful affirmations of community.

I’m remembering something from PSY100, the introductory Psychology course at University of Toronto that’s always enormously crowded (speaking of audiences). We were told of something called a “natural experiment.”  A soldier in WW I might have a bullet sever his corpus callosom, separating the usual pathway of nerve fibers connecting the left & right cerebral hemisphere. This would never happen as a deliberate act of surgery, of course.  But the accident on the battlefield allowed research on the functions of the brain by virtue of a de facto event rather than something done to test an experimental hypothesis.

Right now COVID19 is making our society change in so many ways. People are behaving differently and in the process we’re having all sorts of new views into human behaviour that might be understood as comparable to the natural experiments I spoke of, a kind of de facto accident of our society right now.

Not
“what happens when you separate the hemispheres?”
–but–
 “what happens when you separate the artist from the audience?”

You think the pandemic is difficult? It’s especially daunting if you’re one of the involuntary specimens in this ongoing experiment.

Posted in Books & Literature, Cinema, video & DVDs, Essays, Music and musicology, Opera, Personal ruminations & essays, Psychology and perception, University life | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

COC General Director Responds

Posted on June 13, 2020 by barczablog

COC GENERAL DIRECTOR RESPONDS TO MEDIA REPORTS OF AN EARLY DEPARTURE FOR PARIS

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Alexander Neef (Photo: Gaetz Photography)

Toronto – In response to recent media speculation out of France that COC General Director Alexander Neef plans on exiting his role with the Canadian Opera Company ahead of July 2021, Neef confirms that no decision has been made on accelerating a departure date.

In July 2019, Neef was appointed the next General Director of Opéra national de Paris, with plans for him to succeed current head, Stéphane Lissner, after the close of the COC’s 2020/2021 season. Yesterday, France’s Ministry of Culture confirmed that Lissner is departing the historic opera house a full seven months ahead of schedule, vacating his post following December 31, 2020. An article in Le Monde further speculated that Neef could now start his Paris appointment as early as January 2021.

“I certainly did not anticipate Lissner’s early departure,” says Neef. “I have not yet had any formal discussions – either with the Paris Opera or members of our Board of Directors – about accelerating the start of my engagement in Paris. Moreover, the ongoing global health crisis makes it difficult to envision how any significant changes to the intended timeline could be accommodated.”

“The COC continues to navigate an extraordinarily challenging time for the performing arts industry and that is where my focus is centred right now,” adds Neef. “I remain committed to our company and the work before us.”

Alexander Neef took over as General Director for the Canadian Opera Company in 2008. Over the course of his tenure, he has transformed the COC into one of the most significant opera producers in the world. Most recently, in the wake of COVID-19, Neef has spearheaded the launch of a number of digital programs and initiatives, housed on the company’s Digital Content Hub, as way of bridging audience members and the art form, at a time of physical distancing around the world.

*****

“Press releases and announcements” are presented verbatim without comment

Posted in Opera, Press Releases and Announcements | Leave a comment

Whither Canadian Opera Company: after Neef

Posted on June 11, 2020 by barczablog

Did you know? The first ever Monty Python episode was titled Whither Canada.

I suspect it’s a title meant to invoke the sort of bland but innocent British documentary we see here in Canada as “Hinterland Who’s Who” or “Heritage Minutes”.

Of course that’s not what the viewer got for this, the first Monty Python episode, nor the next 44, plus assorted films, concerts and more.

whither canadaMONTY_PYTHON

whither canadaMONTY_PYTHON2

whither canadaMONTY_PYTHON3

But it’s a question we might ask of the Canadian Opera Company, although I apologize, I’m not as funny as Monty Python.

“Whither COC”, although I’m tempted to put that first “h” between parentheses to suggest a second meaning for the word.

I wonder what’s ahead as we say goodbye to Alexander Neef the COC general director. If this was a year like the earlier ones in Neef’s tenure, one might wonder: does the company want to find a comparable successor, someone to lead the company along a similar path?

But this is not a year like any other.

  • The last two operas of the season could not be staged due to the pandemic.
  • Cancellations? Toronto Symphony concerts from April onwards, Stratford & beyond…
  • The Metropolitan Opera are closed until the end of December
  • Singers, musicians, artists & technicians in every discipline have lost some or all of their expected performance fees.

In 106 days from now it will be September 25th: the projected opening night of Parsifal.

In 19 days it will be June 30th, the renewal deadline for my COC subscription.

I have the option to cash in the two operas that we lost in April- May on the new season. But I wonder, will I be purchasing six operas for the price of four? Or is it to be a shortened season, perhaps four operas: for the price of, gulp, two?

For the customer? that sounds like a bargain, if indeed that’s what it comes down to. But it sounds like so much of a bargain that I wonder. Will the COC be able to survive?

If Alexander Neef leaves as expected in the spring of 2021, what shape will the COC be in? This is the backdrop as the COC cast about for a new general director to ensure the survival and prosperity of the company.

Implicit in that process of searching for new leadership is the whole question of identity.

  • What is the COC and whom does it serve?
  • What is its mission? It would be a good new beginning for the Company if the new leader were to articulate the mission of the company, a vision for the Company in Toronto and in the country bearing the Company’s name.
  • What do we understand by success for the COC? In other words, what are the strategic objectives that matter other than balancing the books and finding donors?

I’m putting this out there more in the interest of encouraging a conversation than to claim I have the answers.

In the aftermath of the pandemic the COC may want to retreat into a more Canadian model closer in spirit if not actuality to the founding impulses of the company seventy years ago, when the performers were all Canadians.  If Parsifal is to be staged in the fall its cast is mostly imported, a hugely expensive undertaking. One can think in the short-term, not unlike the governments planning for our survival during the pandemic, while remembering longer term concerns.

A short-term nationalistic approach to casting may preclude ambitious works such as Parsifal, while preserving the company.  It may seem like a lame analogy, but in a family’s finances, if one or both of the bread-winners lose your job, you put off expensive purchases, lavish vacations: until such time as you’re not going broke. Perhaps the COC might do the same at least for the short-term.

What if the Ensemble Studio members were to step into a more central role (excuse the pun), not merely the spear-carriers but the stars..? In their auditions they sang the arias belonging to lead roles, even though their time in the Ensemble Studio rarely affords such opportunities. They know how to act,  they know how to sing. Let’s give them the chance.

What if the next General Director were to be the steward of the company & the dream of Canadian opera, the guide & guardian of our talent & our culture.

What if the new General Director’s mission were to seek out the prodigals who have wandered away, offering them sanctuary & a welcome home? Go ahead, call it romantic & even nonsensical. But there are many singers right here in Toronto, across the country & abroad. It’s not so much that they deserve the chance (although they do), as we the audience deserve the opportunity to see & hear them, finally.

Imagine a Canadian hockey club filled with European players, when there are Canadians living here and abroad who could take the ice & play just as well or better. Is that crazy? But Canada punches above her weight as a producer of hockey players, AND opera singers. (Soccer players? No.)

But the point of the analogy is to suggest how crazy it is to bring in talent from afar if locals are being ignored, especially if the hockey team is funded or subsidized by a government agency. The COC gets money from granting bodies at several levels of government, who have not –at least not yet—demanded the hiring of Canadians as their quid pro quo for funding.

IS it such a crazy idea, when singers & artists get CERB-funds, when the companies are subsidized: yet there appears to be no accountability as far as how the grants are used?
Call me a Philistine. But I will be happier walking into the Four Seasons Centre to see a Canadian Opera Company comprised of Canadians, backstage, onstage, in the pit, in the front office.

The mandate could extend further afield, naturally. I grew up listening to stories about the COC tour, tales of funny ad libs from singers & character actors such as comedian Briane Nasimok.  Nevermind MAGA, by touring they could Make COC Canadian Again (is that MCOCCA?…oh dear that sounds more like something out of Monty Python).

I’m just putting it out there.

Posted in Opera, Personal ruminations & essays, Sports | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

“If you build it they will come” revisited, or Field of Dreams in 2020

Posted on June 3, 2020 by barczablog

I was looking for an uplifting bit of escapism.

Field of Dreams is a film that I’ve always loved. It still moved me when I saw it this weekend but now in a totally new way.

One of the small consolations of the pandemic is the clarity we are offered. Because life as usual isn’t possible, because things have been slowed down, we see and hear our arts as if for the first time. But that’s not always a good thing.

I was vaguely aware of the politics in the story of Field of Dreams, but watching it this week as we saw Americans take to the streets protesting the murder of George Floyd, the resonances were impossible to ignore. I understand the story differently now.

Novelist WP Kinsella (1935 – 2016)

I hope you noticed that it’s not just about baseball, that the game is a backdrop rather than the real subject.

Field of Dreams is based on Shoeless Joe a novel by Canadian WP Kinsella.

If you’ve seen the film you’d probably enjoy the book, although there’s a great deal that comes across differently with the help of cinema, the actors & the music of James Horner.

I make no apology that I’m offering spoilers for a novel & a film that appeared more than 30 years ago, back in the 1980s.

The protagonist of the book has a similar surname to the novelist. The farmer we meet played by Kevin Costner is Ray Kinsella. Ray is not your usual farmer though. He seems like a stranger in a strange land, both on his farm, and especially when he starts to hear voices & see visions: leading him to build a baseball field in the middle of the corn on his Iowa farm. Ray’s father had been a ballplayer and an admirer of Shoeless Joe.

The Shoeless Joe of the title is of course Shoeless Joe Jackson, who was among the players given a lifetime ban from professional baseball by Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the first major league commissioner, and a figure determined to bring integrity to baseball.  The story of the Chicago White Sox players taking bribes to throw the 1919 World Series has become known as the Black Sox Scandal. If you want to know more about this, you must see Eight Men Out, a film that will give you most of the facts of the complex story of bribes and bettors. And in passing it will offer you the best performance of John Cusack’s career. Unlike Field of Dreams, it’s about the hard realities of the game & the business of baseball, surely the best movie ever made about the game.

The two films –Eight Men Out (1988) and Field of Dreams (1989) – might be yin and yang, a complementary pair of opposites. Argh now I have to pull out Eight Men Out and watch it again.

Field of Dreams is less about the business of baseball than the poetry of the game especially when understood in context with the value of real estate.  That juxtaposition seems very timely in a summer when artists are going broke because of a pandemic. It’s a story about possibilities, about ghosts & visions, more a tale of what one wishes would happen rather than what really did happen.

So let’s talk about Field of Dreams. The ghosts of the Black Sox players, beginning with Shoeless Joe, begin to appear on Ray’s surreal baseball field amid the corn. Are they ghosts?

Ray’s wife & daughter can see the players but Ray’s brother-in-law, who only sees the land for its real estate value, can’t, and thinks the others are crazy for seeing something that isn’t there.

It’s a highly theatrical film given that we’re dealing with discrepant awareness, and that that the discrepancy is political.

We’re taken on a bit of a road trip, as Ray first persuades novelist Terence Mann – originally JD Salinger in Kinsella’s book—to come with him to a game at Fenway Park in Boston. The two of them then go looking for Archie “Moonlight” Graham, a ballplayer whose entire career totaled precisely 1/3 of an inning, before retiring to the life of a country doctor. Circling back home –after Ray has a middle of the night encounter with Graham’s ghost back in 1972, perhaps the very night Graham passed away—Ray & Terence pick up a young hitch-hiker looking for a chance to play baseball, none other than Archie Graham.

The last few minutes of the film are almost too tidy, as they tie up the knots in the story.

  • Ray was estranged from his father, both because baseball had become like a chore rather than a game, and after reading a Terence Mann book (perhaps analogous to Catcher in the Rye). The book somehow would epitomize their quarrel
  • Ray regrets what he said to his father (that he couldn’t respect someone whose hero was a criminal, meaning Shoeless Joe), and that he didn’t get the chance to take it back before his father died
  • Terence Mann suggests that the whole ordeal is Ray’s penance
  • Archie Graham gets his chance to play, finally
  • Ray’s little girl is choking on a hotdog: leading to one of the great moments of the film, when youthful Archie drops his glove and again gives up baseball to become the old doctor Graham, saving the child’s life
  • Terence the troubled novelist is invited to walk out into the corn, perhaps to rediscover his passion for writing
  • The voices in Ray’s head had been saying “ease his pain”, which Ray thought of at first was the pain of Shoeless Joe; at the end we hear that it could just as well be the pain of Ray or of his father
  • We meet a youthful ghost version of Ray’s dad, at this point looking younger than Ray, looking in fact a whole lot like JFK, the dead father of this generation: at least for the liberal left.

In the last scene of the film Ray belatedly (because he never could do it during his actual lifetime) dares to ask his father’ ghost to play catch with him. I have always been conflicted about this scene. I have misgivings about this moment, which is so syrupy sweet you might need insulin.  Even so I tend to prefer to believe in a film even when it feels contrived. yes it’s a humongous metaphor.  I can live with that.

But that’s the thing. In their reconciliation, we could be watching the story of what’s still unfolding even now in America, the break between generations.  The split we see between right & left persists like a family schism. Fathers and sons are still estranged. But Field of Dreams feels today, alas, like a liberal fantasy because of course it’s from a largely-Canadian & northern perspective, largely disrespectful of the attitudes you see among those who wear the red MAGA hats, who might identify with the farmers of Iowa who mocked Ray for being crazy enough to plow his field under, wasting a precious cash crop and bizarrely putting up a ball diamond in the midst of the corn instead.  One might ask whose dreams are signified in this film.

While James Earl Jones may be a black man with a huge role, he’s the only black person we see in the whole film, admittedly because the action is in Iowa where every single person seems to be white. Twice in the film a white person asks “is this heaven?” and is told “It’s Iowa”.

How does that feel if you’re a black person watching this film? Is heaven a place with only white people? Or maybe I’m just a bit overwhelmed by what I see on the news this week.

The split inside Ray’s family (between those who are able and willing to see the ghostly ballplayers, and those who only see land that is worth money) is apparently healed when (after the choking child is healed) his brother-in-law now suddenly can also see the ghostly players, muttering “don’t sell the farm Ray”.

I wish there could be a real healing between the estranged and conflicting groups in America.  Are they included in this dream? I hope so.

And the last thing we see in the film as Ray and his dad play catch, are the cars, now lining up for miles across Iowa –a lovely image to be sure—lending support to the notion “if you build it they will come”, a dream for the artists & visionaries.

Miraculously Ray & his family dodge foreclosure & bankruptcy because as the little child said “people will come”.

If only.  It’s a beautiful dream, one that I always wanted to believe.  I guess I might seem a bit foolish to say it’s too good to be true. It’s a dream after all.  What I wish for is a real reconciliation, between MAGA & BLM, between Democrats & GOP, Liberals & Conservatives. The film hints at this, and maybe I’m asking too much.

But that’s my dream.

Yet in the summer of 2020 ballparks and concert halls are closed.  I miss live performance, I miss live sports, indeed, I am missing baseball and opera and many other things besides. The Stratford Festival and the Metropolitan Opera and many others are likely closed for the rest of 2020. Lovely as that image of the cars may be it’s hard to imagine anyone getting out of the cars, or filling the lobbies at Roy Thomson Hall or Four Seasons Centre or Bell Lightbox, let alone our actual churches, temples & mosques.

Transcendence awaits the all-clear signal. In the meantime, I will keep watching the films, enjoying the chance to escape.

Posted in Books & Literature, Cinema, video & DVDs, Personal ruminations & essays, Politics, Popular music & culture, Spirituality & Religion, Sports | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment