English Touring Opera are delighted to announce a season of lyric monodramas to tour nationally from October to December. The season features music for solo singer and piano by Argento, Britten, Tippett and Shostakovich with a bold and inventive approach to making opera during social distancing.
This tenth of ten Live from London concerts was in fact a recorded live performance from California. It was no less enjoyable for that, and it was also uplifting to learn that this wasn’t in fact the ‘last’ LfL event that we will be able to enjoy, courtesy of VOCES8 and their fellow vocal ensembles (more below …).
Ever since Wigmore Hall announced their superb series of autumn concerts, all streamed live and available free of charge, I’d been looking forward to this song recital by Ian Bostridge and Imogen Cooper.
The Sixteen continues its exploration of Henry Purcell’s Welcome Songs for Charles II. As with Robert King’s pioneering Purcell series begun over thirty years ago for Hyperion, Harry Christophers is recording two Welcome Songs per disc.
Although Stile Antico’s programme article for their Live from London recital introduced their selection from the many treasures of the English Renaissance in the context of the theological debates and upheavals of the Tudor and Elizabethan years, their performance was more evocative of private chamber music than of public liturgy.
In February this year, Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho made a highly lauded debut recital at Wigmore Hall - a concert which both celebrated Opera Rara’s 50th anniversary and honoured the career of the Italian soprano Rosina Storchio (1872-1945), the star of verismo who created the title roles in Leoncavallo’s La bohème and Zazà, Mascagni’s Lodoletta and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
Evidently, face masks don’t stifle appreciative “Bravo!”s. And, reducing audience numbers doesn’t lower the volume of such acclamations. For, the audience at Wigmore Hall gave soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn and pianist Simon Lepper a greatly deserved warm reception and hearty response following this lunchtime recital of late-Romantic song.
Collapsology. Or, perhaps we should use the French word ‘Collapsologie’ because this is a transdisciplinary idea pretty much advocated by a series of French theorists - and apparently, mostly French theorists. It in essence focuses on the imminent collapse of modern society and all its layers - a series of escalating crises on a global scale: environmental, economic, geopolitical, governmental; the list is extensive.
For this week’s Live from London vocal recital we moved from the home of VOCES8, St Anne and St Agnes in the City of London, to Kings Place, where The Sixteen - who have been associate artists at the venue for some time - presented a programme of music and words bound together by the theme of ‘reflection’.
'Such is your divine Disposation that both you excellently understand, and royally entertaine the Exercise of Musicke.’
Amongst an avalanche of new Mahler recordings appearing at the moment (Das Lied von der Erde seems to be the most favoured, with three) this 1991 Mahler Second from the 2nd Kassel MahlerFest is one of the more interesting releases.
‘And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven … that old serpent … Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.’
If there is one myth, it seems believed by some people today, that probably needs shattering it is that post-war recordings or performances of Wagner operas were always of exceptional quality. This 1949 Hamburg Tristan und Isolde is one of those recordings - though quite who is to blame for its many problems takes quite some unearthing.
There was never any doubt that the fifth of the twelve Met Stars Live in Concert broadcasts was going to be a palpably intense and vivid event, as well as a musically stunning and theatrically enervating experience.
‘Love’ was the theme for this Live from London performance by Apollo5. Given the complexity and diversity of that human emotion, and Apollo5’s reputation for versatility and diverse repertoire, ranging from Renaissance choral music to jazz, from contemporary classical works to popular song, it was no surprise that their programme spanned 500 years and several musical styles.
The Academy of St Martin in the Fields have titled their autumn series of eight concerts - which are taking place at 5pm and 7.30pm on two Saturdays each month at their home venue in Trafalgar Square, and being filmed for streaming the following Thursday - ‘re:connect’.
The London Symphony Orchestra opened their Autumn 2020 season with a homage to Oliver Knussen, who died at the age of 66 in July 2018. The programme traced a national musical lineage through the twentieth century, from Britten to Knussen, on to Mark-Anthony Turnage, and entwining the LSO and Rattle too.
With the Live from London digital vocal festival entering the second half of the series, the festival’s host, VOCES8, returned to their home at St Annes and St Agnes in the City of London to present a sequence of ‘Choral Dances’ - vocal music inspired by dance, embracing diverse genres from the Renaissance madrigal to swing jazz.
Just a few unison string wriggles from the opening of Mozart’s overture to Le nozze di Figaro are enough to make any opera-lover perch on the edge of their seat, in excited anticipation of the drama in music to come, so there could be no other curtain-raiser for this Gala Concert at the Royal Opera House, the latest instalment from ‘their House’ to ‘our houses’.
"Before the ending of the day, creator of all things, we pray that, with your accustomed mercy, you may watch over us."
Ralph Locke’s recent book on Musical Exoticism is both an historical survey of aspects of the exotic in Western musical culture and a discussion of paradigms of the exotic and their relevance for musicological understanding.
Locke divides his investigation into two major parts, which may be characterized as 1) methodological, and 2) illustrative, the latter furnishing numerous examples starting with Händel and Rameau and extending through to current compositions including cinematic music.
In the first part Locke is careful to differentiate his position on exoticism and related terms vis-à-vis others who have approached this topic in the past. Locke’s introductory remarks, in which he elaborates on the meaning of “exotic” especially as used for Western music, set forth terms that he will use extensively in subsequent chapters. He broaches, for instance, an analytical paradigm which he terms “Exotic Style Only,” modifying this with his own “All the Music in Full Context Paradigm.” To be sure, both models receive full expression, with appropriate examples, in the following chapters. Yet the reader is here prepared for a critical discussion that will demonstrate Locke’s point that “exoticness often depends not just on the musical notes but also on their context as well as on other factors, such as the particulars of a given performance and the musical and cultural preparation of a given listener.” [4] Based on this assumption Locke seeks to broaden his readers’ understanding of the exotic in music while claiming that “musical exoticism is not “contained in” specific devices. Rather it arises through an interaction between a work, in all [author’s emphasis] its aspects, and the listener.” [3] Before closing his introductory remarks Locke reinforces such distinctions by reminding his audience of exotic environments or individual characters, often portrayed in opera, which are rendered by traditional, “non-exotic musical means.” [10] Examples of this tendency for Locke include Handel’s Tamerlano and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, both illustrating a culture or milieu in some way foreign to the potential audience. Neither work is composed entirely, or even consistently, of elements that would be identified as distinctly part of an exotic medium. The synchronization of the listener’s expectations with the composer’s means and intentions will then yield an exoticism that is, ultimately, a type of “reception.” [12]
In these issues marking his approach to the exotic in music Locke is able to draw on theoretical grounding in the work of fellow musicologists, e.g. Rose Rosengard Subotnik and Richard Taruskin. Here Locke is especially interested in approaches that are based not only on “musical analysis” alone but also those which consider societal components as well as extra-musical associations. This balance can prove to be difficult to maintain, even among those scholars who are suggested as leading proponents. As an example, the passage cited here from Subotnik’s work on Deconstructive Variations relies on the harmonic analysis of a Chopin score, reflecting a more text-based and traditional approach; only at the conclusion of the relevant chapter does the commentary move toward questions of music in society. Locke admits to the difficulty of submitting much of what he terms “Western art music,” e.g. sonatas, symphonies, quartets, to an overriding social analysis. It is surely then a logical first step in the revisionist approach to musical exoticism here taken that a number of Locke’s examples show a clear association with some “other” place and people. [20-21] This enables the author to establish categories of analysis for his “Full-Context” Paradigm, which may subsequently be applied to other musical examples or forms. Finally Locke considers the approaches taken in recent investigations with a specific focus on his chosen topic. Hence Jonathan Bellman’s and Timothy D. Taylor’s books are examined for their usefulness in the portrayal of musical exoticism, yet both are understood by Locke as functioning within the framework of an “Exotic Style Only” Paradigm, as found in the present study. Locke sets for himself the task of using the foundation already set by these previous scholars and of expanding the possible associations of exoticism with further “crucial and neglected issues.” [24]
In his proposed new definition of exoticism Locke relies on concepts such as “Here and There” and “home country or culture.” [47] Especially significant in the author’s new definition is a differentiation between the perceptions of listeners reacting during the composer’s day and those hearing a piece still performed many years later. As put succinctly by Locke, these latter “listeners may now be living in new and different cultural situations and may thus bring different values and expectations to the work.” [47] As an enhancement of suggestions first put forth by Dahlhaus, Locke assembles a “relatively comprehensive typology” [50] of stylistic features which have been typical in Western music perceived as exotic during the past few centuries. Here he considers not only matters of pitch and harmony or dissonance but also modal features and repeated patterns of rhythm or melody often derived from dance. Locke refers to variations on a number of these stylistic features in subsequent chapters when analyzing specific works and questioning how these might be perceived by a given listener in a given age as exotic.
In the second major division of his book Locke presents a disciplined survey of various musical forms from the beginning of the eighteenth century until the present day in order to arrive at a trajectory of the exotic in music. The section entitled “Handel’s Eastern Dramas” is intended by Locke to examine and compare the portrayal of various historical figures in the operas and oratorios with a relevant geographical anchor. Hence typical despots from the East, characters in Tamerlano and Belshazzar, are discussed from the viewpoint of ideological gesture, political message, and musical style. This depiction is then contrasted with a contemporary display of even greater geographical variety in Rameau’s Les Indes galantes. By using similar methods for analyzing musical-dramatic works from the same period Locke is able to develop, in gradually evolving chronological segments, an aesthetic of the exotic. This range of aesthetic and social concerns is then treated from Mozart’s Turkish style to the gypsy image in Carmen, emerging ultimately into twentieth-century works, a period starting with the exotic in Madama Butterfly. The reader and listener are then left — appropriately — with questions concerning additional works by those very contemporaries discussed, e.g. Gretry and Massenet, and how such pieces might be fit into the model as it further evolves. The extensive bibliography will serve, when combined with Locke’s suggestions for methodology, as a means to explore the topic of exoticism on many other musical avenues.
Salvatore Calomino
Click here for an online preview of Musical Exoticism.