Listening to Schubert with the proper spirit of reverence and appreciation

Franz Schubert: Symphonies no. 2 & 5

What a bright and long-burning genius was Franz Schubert, partially obscured though he was by the Great Genius Beethoven. Schubert had an intensity that belied his lack of personal charisma when placed against the larger-than-life 19th century masters. His songs and his piano sonatas are obviously at the very pinnacle of greatness, but when it comes to Schubert's orchestral music it's the earlier, slighter symphonies I love to listen to (not counting the Unfinished Symphony, of course, which is both great and loveable). This is something I expect is fairly common; there's something about Schubert and his music that inspires this kind of love. I was enjoying listening to this clear, bright, thoughtful recording from Antwerp while reading Deborah Solomon's fabulous biography of the artist Joseph Cornell, Utopia Parkway, and saw that Cornell shared this Schubert love:

Cornell's latest fascination was with Franz Schubert, one of many composers who glowed with a special incandescence in his imagination.... Cornell's records meant so much to him that sometimes he couldn't even bring himself to open them. After acquiring a set of recordings of Schubert's Trio in E Flat, Cornell noted in his diary: 'I await the proper moment to unfold its loveliness and enjoy it in the proper spirit of reverence and appreciation it deserves.'

I highly recommend this disc from Maestro Herreweghe, and further recommend that when you buy it you go ahead and open it, or load the MP3s on your computer or phone or whatever, and listen. You'll love it.

Awesome beauty, incredible strangeness

This new disc of Gesualdo madrigals from Philippe Herreweghe and his Collegium Vocale Gent highlights the awesome beauty and incredible strangeness of the music of the powerful and cruel Italian Prince. This is music of an oddly superficial beauty, but there are clearly intense emotions under the surface. All of this is presented with Herreweghe's customary calm, clear, polished, focussed musicality.

I've long been more than a bit squeamish about the tone of many writings about Gesualdo's life, and
I definitely take umbrage with the liner notes written for this disc by Jens van Durme. He writes of Gesualdo's murder of his wife in this fashion:

The extramarital freedoms that Maria allowed herself culminated in outright tragedy in the early morning of 17 October 1590, when she was lured into a trap by her husband, caught in flagrante delicto with her lover Fabrizio Carafa, and horribly murdered. The reputation of Carlo Gesualdo as a psychopath was born. Yet, according to local custom, he had not only the right but also the duty to settle this matter of honour as he did.

And that's the end of the matter, right? Nothing about Gesualdo's mutilation of the corpses after he had done the deed. A Prince who did his duty. I'll discount some of the unproven tales of his other outrages, which are outlined in Werner Herzog's 1994 film Death for Five Voices, and still call him a murderous psychopath.

Here is the beauty that comes from the psychopath. It's a mystery.

Exquisite, uncompromising late music by Stravinsky

I recently read Edward Said's insightful book On Late Style: Music and Literature Against the Grain, and now I keep coming across examples of late works unexpectedly. This new disc from Phi brings together a group of choral works from Stravinsky's final years. It includes two major works, Threni and the Requiem Canticles, that are relatively under-performed and under-recorded, for such important pieces and such a popular composer. Said brings up examples of "...artistic lateness not as harmony and resolution, but as intransigence, difficulty, and unresolved contradiction", and there is an aspect of this in some of the works on this superb new album from Philippe Herreweghe, with the Collegium Vocale Gent and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic. It's true, for example, of the great Threni, the first of Stravinsky's works to use dodecaphony throughout. The "intransigence, difficulty, and unresolved contradiction" here is by no means an indication of any problems the composer had with a new system of composition, since the 12-tone regime is completely integrated into the Stravinsky sound. Rather, the whole project, from text (taken from the Book of Lamentations) to the textures of voices and instruments and its odd structure, with canons and pitch-less chanting, is an expression of Stravinsky's own contradictory personality and religious/spiritual life.

Not that there is a complete lack of consonance or surface beauty. Even within the uncompromising scheme in Threni there are fine moments of consolation, and there are even more in the Requiem Canticles. Stravinsky scrupulously avoids sentimentality, and Herreweghe does the same, but there is a fine feeling one might call human welling up in this music. Here is the exquisite (and exquisitely sung) Exaudi from the Requiem Canticles:

The disc ends with a short motet by Gesualdo, Da Pacem Domine, which is 3 minutes and 20 seconds of pure beauty. It retains the style of the Mantuan master but sounds completely modern. Perhaps this says more about Gesualdo's time travelling magic than Stravinsky's editing, which consisted of the addition of a missing bass line only. In any case, it's a fitting close to an outstanding album, one of the best choral discs of the year.