Let's Go Steelers!
Part of being a graduate student in creative writing, I’ve found so far, is that any time someone tells a good story, or successfully relates an anecdote it is proper to recommend that said person turn it into a personal essay. “That’d make a great non-fiction piece!” Now, I have enough ego to honestly think that I do tell a pretty good story from time to time (at least the ones that have been more thoroughly canonized into my personal history (my “Life in Anecdotes,” as it were)), but I don’t think that any of my stories would make good non-fiction pieces. I don’t think anybody would want to read a short essay about me crashing my bicycle in Pittsburgh, no matter how many laughs it consistently gets as an anecdote. Nor do I read all that much non-fiction anyway. That piece about ketchup that Jack linked to was fucking boring (well, the part about mustard was okay…).
Which I only bring up because what I find happening now, in social context here, in the MFA program, is that I mostly just want to talk about music. Which is reasonable, I suppose, and I swear its not just me trying to pretend like I’m not trying to be a writer, its just, to avoid having people tell you that you should really try to write down that anecdote, its easy to just talk about something dull and difficult-to-relate-to. To make it more obvious that, really, I shouldn’t be writing this stuff down (the irony of writing this down in blog-form being left untouched (is that irony? Ever since the Hipsters everywhere started drinking Pabst (and in Portland, where they already drank Pabst, started drinking Iron City) I’ve had a harder and harder time remembering what irony really is (is it that drinking Pabst or Iron City doesn’t suddenly make your rich parents any less rich?)).
And when I say that “I want to talk about music,” what I really mean is that I want to blog about the record that I’m listening to right now. Ormandy & Philadelphia – the American Premiere Recording of Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony. I don’t know anything about the pedigree of this particular recording – I’ve had the LP since Freshman or Sophomore year of college, and never really looked into it or sought out any other recordings – I’m happy with this one. Although, its also probably to the point where I’ve burned the sound of this one into my brain extensively enough that I really should go seek out a bunch of other ones, to get a better sense of what Shostakovich’s 4th actually tastes like.
The Fourth Symphony is really, to me, the only interesting part of the Shostakovich vs. Stalin narrative that has been unjustly spoon-fed to the American classical music audience since Testimony (and as we always mention here, Testimony has been rather thoroughly debunked) was published. And not the part about Shostakovich withdrawing it before performance due to fear of political ramifications, but the fact that he reproduced the score years later, almost entirely from memory. That feat never ceases to amaze me. (In a similar instance, I probably like Mendelssohn’s “Reformation” Symphony way more than I would if I didn’t know that he also wrote the thing out in his head before he committed it to the page.)
But also for the actual music – its something I’ve done several times here in Miami already since plugging the stereo in – the opening of Shosty 4 is for me just plain unnerving – I stand in front of the glass doors that lead to my balcony, stare out at the wasteland that is where-I-live, and fully believe that the World is as much of a fucked-up-mess as I think it is. It’s a symphony that never completely settles down, but I do sit down after the first couple minutes, and during the interior movement; no need to stand-and-stare. But then, again, for the final movement, the World is going to end. A movement where I’ve actually been compelled enough to actually write out what I think about the music, more thoroughly than this (but of course, that text will not to be shared due to my continuing moratorium on trying to describe music with words on this blog). But yeah, Nate's really the Shostakovich scholar here, I should probably be leaving that sort of thing to him, anyway.
Which I only bring up because what I find happening now, in social context here, in the MFA program, is that I mostly just want to talk about music. Which is reasonable, I suppose, and I swear its not just me trying to pretend like I’m not trying to be a writer, its just, to avoid having people tell you that you should really try to write down that anecdote, its easy to just talk about something dull and difficult-to-relate-to. To make it more obvious that, really, I shouldn’t be writing this stuff down (the irony of writing this down in blog-form being left untouched (is that irony? Ever since the Hipsters everywhere started drinking Pabst (and in Portland, where they already drank Pabst, started drinking Iron City) I’ve had a harder and harder time remembering what irony really is (is it that drinking Pabst or Iron City doesn’t suddenly make your rich parents any less rich?)).
And when I say that “I want to talk about music,” what I really mean is that I want to blog about the record that I’m listening to right now. Ormandy & Philadelphia – the American Premiere Recording of Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony. I don’t know anything about the pedigree of this particular recording – I’ve had the LP since Freshman or Sophomore year of college, and never really looked into it or sought out any other recordings – I’m happy with this one. Although, its also probably to the point where I’ve burned the sound of this one into my brain extensively enough that I really should go seek out a bunch of other ones, to get a better sense of what Shostakovich’s 4th actually tastes like.
The Fourth Symphony is really, to me, the only interesting part of the Shostakovich vs. Stalin narrative that has been unjustly spoon-fed to the American classical music audience since Testimony (and as we always mention here, Testimony has been rather thoroughly debunked) was published. And not the part about Shostakovich withdrawing it before performance due to fear of political ramifications, but the fact that he reproduced the score years later, almost entirely from memory. That feat never ceases to amaze me. (In a similar instance, I probably like Mendelssohn’s “Reformation” Symphony way more than I would if I didn’t know that he also wrote the thing out in his head before he committed it to the page.)
But also for the actual music – its something I’ve done several times here in Miami already since plugging the stereo in – the opening of Shosty 4 is for me just plain unnerving – I stand in front of the glass doors that lead to my balcony, stare out at the wasteland that is where-I-live, and fully believe that the World is as much of a fucked-up-mess as I think it is. It’s a symphony that never completely settles down, but I do sit down after the first couple minutes, and during the interior movement; no need to stand-and-stare. But then, again, for the final movement, the World is going to end. A movement where I’ve actually been compelled enough to actually write out what I think about the music, more thoroughly than this (but of course, that text will not to be shared due to my continuing moratorium on trying to describe music with words on this blog). But yeah, Nate's really the Shostakovich scholar here, I should probably be leaving that sort of thing to him, anyway.
3 Comments:
Nate and I saw the Fourth Symphony in concert in March '06, in Carnegie Hall (Gergiev and, I think, Rotterdam). I remember almost nothing about the music itself. I've never been able to get this piece to "stick" by listening to it on CD, either. I know Nate has a different impression of it.
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Probably one of the most moving concert experiences of my life was when I was in Utrecht in 2005, to see a performance of Shosty 4 with the Netherlands Radio Symphony/Wigglesworth. When the piece was over, and we had just finished listening to several minutes of a Cmin frozen wasteland, the audience held their applause for probably a good thirty seconds or more. I remember writing in my journal that night that the audience "understood" the message of the symphony.
I was also pretty lucky on that trip because the following night I saw the same piece with the WDRSO in Cologne with Bychkov.
If you're looking for recordings I recommend Jarvi/Royal Scottish National Orchestra. The WDRSO with Barshai is also pretty good, but the strings can't quite keep up at first in the "fugue from hell" and the final double-timpani thing in the last movement goes by too quickly.
I also recommend Shosty's 15th symphony as well, it probably my 2nd favorite, after 4. It is probably more disturbing in some ways.
Yeah, the endings of the 4th and the 15th are comparable in the obvious ways. What makes me so fond of the 4th especially though, is the unresolved fanfares that seem to try to end the piece loudly before it takes another minute or whatever to melt away softly.
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