Tchaikovsky

New York Times ^ | December 8, 2002 | DIRK OLIN

[Borges]

Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky's ''Nutcracker'' will be performed on stages from small towns to the New York City Ballet this month -- and in ''literally hundreds of productions around the world,'' according to Jeffrey Milarsky, music director and conductor of the Columbia University Orchestra. That, along with the ''1812 Overture,'' ''Swan Lake'' and certain other works, means that Tchaikovsky, as Milarsky says, ''is played more than any composer.'' Yet where Milarsky and other members of the classical music establishment herald a revival of esteem for Tchaikovsky during recent years, Milton Babbitt, 86, a giant of the serialism movement in modern composing, has a problem with him. ''He said Brahms was an untalented bastard -- that's a quote,'' Babbitt says. ''But I've learned a lot from Brahms, whereas I can't say that about Tchaikovsky.'' Richard Einhorn, 50, whose compositions have been performed from Lincoln Center to the Netherlands, makes even less effort to disguise his antipathy: ''Tchaikovsky has as much to do with real classical music as the Three Tenors have to do with real opera. Most contemporary composers I know haven't listened to Tchaikovsky since the third grade, when they were forced to watch 'Fantasia' and gagged.''

Babbitt and Einhorn echo earlier derogations of his work as too sentimental (the Victorians) or insufficiently Russian (a group of composers who were Tchaikovsky's late-19th-century contemporaries), but the emergent issue now is a question that could throw what the critic Terry Teachout calls ''the Tchaikovsky wars'' into Armageddon. Is Tchaikovsky's music gay?

[Borges]

I’ve always thought it appropriate that Beethoven and Hegel were born the same year. The Beethovenian idea of sonata form with its constant forward motion and a constant sense of Becoming...is an apt musical correlative to the Hegelian Dialectic.

[Blind Eye Jones]

Once Wagnerism mixed with German philosophy, it eventually led to Hitler.

Would that be the philosophy of Nietzsche? Nietzsche and Wagner reunited under National Socialism? Talk about Hegelian Dialectic — where the thesis and anti(Christ)thesis had a big falling out — leading to Nazi synthesis. Today they would be the equivalent of Blues Brothers with a dead God in tow. Classical music has taken a beating.

I agree Tchaikovsky mangles the sonata form but the music didn’t suffer with his “music first, form later” approach. Brahms is more like a well oil and fine tuned touring machine with all the internal parts just clicking along. If you appreciate complex structure and deep relations Brahms (and Bach) is the ticket.

Berg and Webern adapted the Wagner-Schoenberg traits but opted for Brahmsian brevity, while Bartok and Kodaly tried a different blend of components.

I wonder if modern compositional practices really chuck out the baby with the bath water. The dissonance of a new language — say Schoenberg’s serialism as a new non musical means of organizing sound — really can’t be a substitute for ideas that are born from tonality. Certain qualities cannot be expressed. Unless, that is, you re-tune the human ear. Which they are trying to do but haven’t succeeded. For example, dissonance resolving to less dissonance doesn’t cut it for a modern resolution in the same way tonality resolves. If I can use an analogy, modern music is like a lover trying to express feelings of love with words that have all the vowel sounds removed. All he is left with are consonants. It’s a harsh, edgy, angular sound. It’s not a full vocabulary or language.

Today's modern music is something else. I hear of a guy writing a symphony using some bug that gave off a high pitched sound by scratching their legs. There wouldn't be anybody left in the audience... yes, cricket sounds would be all that you'd hear.

Tchaikovsky’s music was gay, but also Brahms’. He described Brahms as a bearded lady.

Is it true that Tchaikovsky danced with Saint Saiens... and at the YMCA? ;-)

[Budge]

The music of the great romantics, Tchikovsky, Brahms, Listz, etc. are not heard enough these days. The fact that these snobs trash them explains a lot.

[Borges]

They weren’t trashing Brahms. Besides he gets played all the time.

[dfwgator]

The only manly composer, in his book, was Bach.

"Ahhh, Bach!"

[Billthedrill]

Author John Updike...described Brahms as a bearded lady.

Brahms might have kicked his butt for it had he done so to his face. Anyone who played piano in a brothel to make ends meet has seen the seamy side of life. Anyway Clara Schumann thought he was hot.

[Publius]

Ken Russell brought two short novels together in one volume, titled Beethoven Confidential and Brahms Gets Laid. The latter is about Brahms long-time relationship with Clara Schumann. It's a very enjoyable read.

[Borges]

Brhams and Clara Schumann had a platonic relationship.

[Publius]

Would that be the philosophy of Nietzsche? Nietzsche and Wagner reunited under National Socialism? Talk about Hegelian Dialectic — where the thesis and anti(Christ)thesis had a big falling out — leading to Nazi synthesis. Today they would be the equivalent of Blues Brothers with a dead God in tow.

Hitler was not much of an original thinker. He cribbed from Nietzsche and Houston Joseph Chamberlain, stole from Vienna mayor Karl Lüger -- and then tried to package Mein Kampf as some profound new revelation. It was just old (poisoned) wine in a new bottle.

The Wagner connection stems from Hitler's understanding of political theater, no doubt coming from time spent spellbound at Bayreuth. Take a look at old newsreels of Nazi funerals. They are staged to look like the entrance of the gods into Valhalla from Das Rheingold. The mass rallies had a sense of the last scene of Die Meistersinger but with all the people in uniform. Hitler thought he was making a connection with the great German past as filtered through Wagner.

Today's modern music is something else.

I have good news. The younger generation of composers has returned to melody, classical form and tonality. Check out recent works by Ron Coleman, Jeffrey Cotton, Ronn Yedidia and Patrick Zimmerli, many of which we have commissioned for the Seattle Chamber Music Society.

[Publius]

Maybe yes. Maybe no. Brahms biographer Jan Swafford agrees with you, certainly.

[Borges]

Mostly he cribbed from Nietzsche’s proto-Nazi sister Elizabeth.

[Blind Eye Jones]

The younger generation of composers has returned to melody, classical form and tonality.

Yes, I’ve heard that’s true and that their big gig in the sky is to write scores for movies. Usually, it’s music professors writing for other music professors. It becomes so rarefied that only the elected know what the elected are doing.

Hitler thought he was making a connection with the great German past as filtered through Wagner.

Yes, it is opera seria or maybe opera buffa depending on how you look at it. Hitler, I believe, had a vision of an angel appear to him to tell him that the Aryans and not the Jews were now the new chosen race. The Christian God was dead — thanks to Nietzsche — and the new God had new plans for Hitler and the master race. Usually the Germans, at least dating back to Goethe, were enthralled with the Greeks and saw themselves as heirs of the Greek Spirit. This new pagan opening, this looking for “root,” shuts the door on the Jews and Christianity, both of which was a bane to German culture. Christianity especially so to Nietzsche and Judaism to the great anti Semite Wagner. Some Germans even believed that the German race were ancient descendants of the Greeks and this sets up a new tension eclipsing the old one of Athens vs. Jerusalem (reason vs. revelation). When reason is gone (by the way, Nietzsche hated Socrates) it then becomes a question of the will to power and Moira or dark fate... new gods, new Being or the return of Being, according to Martin Heidegger. Heidegger was the preeminent Nazi philosopher who saw Being or some primordial Grand Spirit rise within the Nazi movement. Sure enough something terrible was born slouching toward Jerusalem.

I could go on but I won’t bore you. The crazy thing is that I can’t prove any of this — my pet theory — but it feels right.

[Borges]

The Christian God was dead — thanks to Nietzsche

Not this again. Nietzsche was descrbing the state of Western Culture at the time. He wasn't saying it was a good thing. The fact is fervent religious belief held much less of a place in the post-Englightenment, 19th century materialist world that Nietzsche was responding to.

[Non-Sequitur]

bump

[Billthedrill]

He also put that line into the mouth of a Madman. He also regretted he ever wrote it. ;-)

[Budge]

I understand that. I’m just saying the romantics simply are not played enough.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Shame on you not respecting the Lone Ranger’s theme song.:}

[Borges]

You know that the William Tell Overture is the Lone Ranger theme and not the 1812 Overture right?

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

It been a long time since I heard either.

I remembered after you corrected me.

[Mike Powell]

Oh yes, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky the Romantic Era master. Some of his symphonies, ballet and overture are just timelessly brilliant.

Mozart and Tchaikovsky, the two master of their class.