Listen to This

by Alex Ross

  34 “a narrative of the flow”: Alexander Silbiger, “On Frescobaldi’s Re-creation of the Chaconne and the Passacaglia,” in The Keyboard in Baroque Europe: Musical Performance and Reception, ed. Christopher Hogwood (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 18.

  34 “Zephyr returns and blesses the air”: Translation by Alan Curtis, in notes to his recording of Monteverdi’s Complete Duets, vol. 1, with Il Complesso Barocco (Virgin Classics 45293).

  35 “emblem of lament”: Ellen Rosand, “The Descending Tetrachord: An Emblem of Lament,” Musical Quarterly 65:3 (July 1979), p. 349.

  36 “opera as we know it”: Ellen Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre (University of California Press, 1991), p. 1.

  38 “a display designed by men”: Susan McClary Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (University of Minnesota Press, 1991), p. 89. See also Suzanne G. Cusick, “Re-Voicing Arianna (and Laments): Two Women Respond,” Early Music 27:3 (Aug. 1999), pp. 437–49.

  38 “a sense of the supernatural”: Wendy Heller, Emblems of Eloquence: Opera and Women’s Voices in Seventeenth-Century Venice (University of California Press, 2003), p. 101.

  39 Rose Pruiksma notes: Rose A. Pruiksma, “Music, Sex, and Ethnicity: Signification in Lully’s Theatrical Chaconnes,” in Gender, Sexuality, and Early Music, ed. Todd M. Borgerding (Routledge, 2002), pp. 227–48.

  39 “One dreads the arms”: Ibid., p. 233.

  40 “proceed with relentless power”: Wilfrid Mellers, François Couperin and the French Classical Tradition (Dover, 1968), p. 202.

  43 “of such a nature”: Hans T. David, Arthur Mendel, and Christoph Wolff, eds., The New Bach Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents (Norton, 1998), p. 105.

  43 “presence of grace”: Ibid., p. 161.

  44 “the lone violinist”: Susan McClary Reading Music: Selected Essays (Ashgate, 2007), p. 334.

  44 “repeated strumming”: Alexander Silbiger, “Bach and the Chaconne,” The Journal of Musicology 17:3 (Summer 1999), p. 375.

  44 “Some of these ventures”: Ibid., p. 384. See also Raymond Erickson, “Secret Codes, Dance, and Bach’s Great ‘Ciaccona,”’ Early Music America 8:2 (2002), pp. 34–43.

  45 Martin Luther vilified: See Martin Luther’s “Sermon von der Betrachtung des heiligen Leidens Christi” of 1519. Eric Chafe, in Tonal Allegory in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach (University of California Press, 1991), pp. 134—40, argues that “Weinen, Klagen” is modeled on that sermon.

  46 “Time’s cycle had been straightened”: Karol Berger, Bach’s Cycle, Mozart’s Arrow: An Essay on the Origins of Musical Modernity (University of California Press, 2007), p. 176.

  46 “Orpheus’s lyre opened the gates”: E.T.A. Hoffmann, “Review of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony” in E. T A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings: “Kreisleriana,” “The Poet and the Composer,” Music Criticism, ed. David Charlton, trans. Martyn Clarke (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 236.

  46 “that has the following Crucifixus”: Lewis Lockwood, Beethoven: The Music and the Life (Norton, 2003), p. 406.

  48 Alexander Poznansky has established: See Alexander Poznansky Tchaikovsky’s Last Days: A Documentary Study (Clarendon, 1996).

  48 So argued Stefan Wolpe: See Martin Zenck, “Reinterpreting Bach in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” in The Cambridge Companion to Bach, ed. John Butt (Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 240-50.

  49 “I was very much impressed”: György Ligeti, remarks at Theory and Musicology Symposium, New England Conservatory, March 9, 1993.

  49 Richard Steinitz … defines: Richard Steinitz, Gyorgy Ligeti: Music of the Imagination (Northeastern University Press, 2003), p. 294. See also Steinitz, “Weeping and Wailing,” Musical Times 137:1842 (Aug. 1996), pp. 17-22; and David Metzer, Musical Modernism at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century (Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 144–62.

  50 “fast, exuberant, passionate”: Steinitz, Ligeti, p. 340.

  50 “the weirdest music I had ever heard”: W C. Handy Father of the Blues: An Autobiography (Da Capo, 1991), p. 74.

  51 chants of the Ewe and Yoruba peoples: Gilbert Rouget, “Un Chromatisme africain,” L’Homme 1:3 (1961), pp. 32–46.

  52 as Peter Williams points out: Peter Williams, The Chromatic Fourth During Four Centuries of Music (Clarendon, 1997), pp. 237–38.

  53 As Everett notes: Walter Everett, “Pitch Down the Middle,” in Expression in Pop-Rock Music: Critical and Analytical Essays, 2nd ed., ed. Walter Everett (Routledge, 2008), p. 150. See also Everett, Foundations of Rock: From “Blue Suede Shoes” to “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” (Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 275-76.

  53 “absolutely stone, raving mad”: Will Shade, “Dazed and Confused: The Incredibly Strange Saga of Jake Holmes,” Perfect Sound Forever, Sept. 2001, www.furious.com/perfect/jakeholmes.html (accessed Aug. 21, 2009). Holmes went on to apply his talents to advertising, writing or co-writing such well-known commercial jingles as “Be All That You Can Be,” “Be a Pepper,” and “Raise Your Hand If You’re Sure.”

  3. INFERNAL MACHINES

  This chapter incorporates portions of two NewYorker articles: “The Record Effect,” June 6, 2005, and “The Well-Tempered Web,” October 22, 2007. In addition to the works cited below, I consulted Michael Chanan, Musica Practica: The Social Practice of Western Music from Gregorian Chant to Postmodernism (Verso, 1994); Timothy Day A Century of Recorded Music: Listening to Musical History (Yale University Press, 2000); Evan Eisenberg, The Recording Angel: Music, Records, and Culture from Aristotle to Zappa, 2nd ed. (Yale University Press, 2005); Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music (Harvard University Press, 1996); Roland Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph: From Edison to Stereo (Appleton-Century 1965); David Suisman, Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music (Harvard University Press, 2009); and Emily Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900–1933 (MIT Press, 2002).

  55 “These talking machines”: “Statement of John Philip Sousa,” Arguments Before the Committee on Patents of the House of Representatives on H.R. 19853, to Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright (Government Printing Office, 1906), p. 24.

  55 “The time is coming”: Emily Thompson, “Machines, Music, and the Quest for Fidelity: Marketing the Edison Phonograph in America, 1877—1925,” Musical Quarterly 79:1 (Spring 1995), p. 139.

  55 “The nightingale’s song”: John Philip Sousa, “The Menace of Mechanical Music,” Appleton’s Magazine 8 (Sept. 1906), p. 279.

  56 Glenn Gould … predicted: Glenn Gould, “The Prospects of Recording,” in The Glenn Gould Reader, ed. Tim Page (Vintage, 1990), p. 331. 1.

  57 “annihilate time and space”: Thomas A. Edison, “The Phonograph and Its Future,” The North American Review 262 (May–June 1878), p. 536.

  57 “A friend may in a morning-call”: Ibid., p. 533.

  57 “piano-finished”: William Howland Kenney Recorded Music in American Life: The Phonograph and Popular Memory, 1890-1945 (Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 51.

  58 “The difference between what we usually hear”: Greg Milner, Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music (Faber and Faber, 2009), p. 67.

  58 “The orchestra’s tone is so lifelike”: Howard Taubman, “Records: Kubelik Leads Modern Selections on Mercury Label,” The New York Times, Nov. 25, 1951. 1.

  58 “audience distraction”: Colin Symes, Setting the Record Straight: A Material History of Classical Recording (Wesleyan University Press, 2004), p. 74.

  58 “I wonder if pure tone”: Milner, Perfecting Sound Forever, p. 54.

  59 Jack Mullin: Ibid., p. 114.

  59 Clinton Heylin points out: Clinton Heylin, Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions, 1960–1994 (St. Martin’s, 1995), p. xi.

  60 “Listening to a CD”: Milner, Perfecting Sound Forever, p. 195.

  60 As Jeff Chang recounts: Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t St
op: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (St. Martin’s, 2005), pp. 7-85.

  61 Benjamin’s discussion of the loss: Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility,” second and third versions, in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 3, 1935–1938, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings, trans. Edmund Jephcott, Howard Eiland, and others (Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 119; and Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 4, 1938–1940, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings, trans. Edmund Jephcott and others (Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 268.

  62 “a more effective unity”: Gould, The Glenn Gould Reader, pp. 334—35.

  62 “phonograph effects”: Mark Katz, Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music (University of California Press, 2004), pp. 3-7, 146.

  62 Katz proposes: Ibid., pp. 85—98. For more on the vibrato issue, see Styra Avins, “Performing Brahms’s Music: Clues from His Letters,” and Clive Brown, “Joachim’s Violin Playing and the Performance of Brahms’s String Music,” in Performing Brahms: Early Evidence of Performance Style, ed. Michael Musgrave and Bernard D. Sherman (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 11–47, 48–98.

  63 “Musicians who first heard”: Robert Philip, Performing Music in the Age of Recording (Yale University Press, 2004), p. 25.

  63 “Freedom from disaster”: Ibid., p. 17.

  63 “sways either side of the beat”: Ibid., p. 110.

  64 “death-of-tradition”: Will Crutchfield, “What Is Tradition?” in Fashions and Legacies in Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera, ed. Roberta Montemorra Marvin and Hilary Poriss (Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 248.

  67 “The machine is neither”: Katz, Capturing Sound, pp. vii, 190.

  67 “Members of the musical public”: David Hajdu, Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture (Da Capo, 2009), p. 166.

  67 “In music, as in everything”: Benjamin Boretz, “Interface Part II: Thoughts in Reply to Boulez/Foucault: ‘Contemporary Music and the Public,”’ in Perspectives on Musical Aesthetics, ed. John Rahn (Norton, 1994), p. 123.

  68 “We could not know”: Hans Fantel, “Sound: Poignance Measured in Digits,” The New York Times, July 16, 1989.

  4. THE STORM OF STYLE

  This essay appeared in The New Yorker on July 24, 2006.

  71 “As touchy as gunpowder”: Michael Kelly Reminiscences of Michael Kelly, of the King’s Theatre, and Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Including a Period of Nearly Half a Century; With Original Anecdotes of Many Distinguished Persons, Political, Literary, and Musical, vol. 1 (Henry Colburn, 1826), p. 257.

  71 “so rare a genius”; Derek Beales, “Joseph II, Joseph(in)ism,” in The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia, ed. Cliff Eisen and Simon P. Keefe (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 239.

  72 “the Viennese gentry”: Emily Anderson, trans. and ed., The Letters of Mozart and His Family, 3rd ed. (Norton, 1985), p. 814.

  72 “the most extraordinary Prodigy”: Stanley Sadie, Mozart: The Early Years, 1756—1781 (Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 62.

  72 “the miracle whom God allowed”: Ibid., p. 140.

  72 “Such people only come into the world”: Anderson, The Letters of Mozart and His Family, p. 814.

  72 “as proud as a peacock,” “dreadfully conceited”: Ibid., p. 739.

  72 “I think that something is going on”: Ibid., p. 532.

  72 John Rice’s biography: John A. Rice, Antonio Salieri and Viennese Opera (University of Chicago Press, 1998).

  72 “Salieri, that very gifted Kapellmeister”: Anderson, The Letters of Mozart and His Family, pp. 938-39.

  72 “black thoughts”: Ibid., p. 917. For sensations of coldness and emptiness, see pp. 943, 963-64.

  72 “true goal of our existence”: Ibid., p. 907.

  73 “Two opposing elements”: Ibid., p. 816.

  73 “Other great composers have expressed”: Nicholas Kenyon, The Pegasus Pocket Guide to Mozart (Pegasus, 2006), p. 283.

  73 “sound of the loss of innocence”: Scott Burnham, “On the Beautiful in Mozart,” in Music and the Aesthetics of Modernity: Essays, ed. Karol Berger and Anthony Newcomb (Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 49.

  74 “Mozart as a Working Stiff”: Neal Zaslaw, “Mozart as a Working Stiff,” in On Mozart, ed. James M. Morris (Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 102-12.

  74 “erotically tinged drive”: Maynard Solomon, Mozart: A Life (HarperCollins, 1995), P. 11.

  74 “Your whole intent”: Robert Spaethling, trans. and ed., Mozart’s Letters, Mozart’s Life: Selected Letters (Norton, 2000), p. 192.

  74 Ruth Halliwell: Ruth Halliwell, The Mozart Family: Four Lives in Social Context (Clarendon, 1998).

  74 “Where money is plentiful”: Anderson, The Letters of Mozart and His Family, p. 545.

  74 “The best way to make”: Ibid., p. 676.

  75 “love, joy, physical and spiritual contentment”: David Cairns, Mozart and His Operas (University of California Press, 2006), p. 68.

  75 “moving, terrifying, and altogether unusual”: Anderson, The Letters of Mozart and His Family, pp. 666, 700.

  75 “These concertos are a happy medium”: Ibid., p. 833.

  76 “departure points”: Ulrich Konrad, “Compositional Method,” in Eisen and Keefe, The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia, p. 107.

  77 “evolved along sound lines”: Hermann Abert, W A. Mozart, ed. Cliff Eisen, trans. Stewart Spencer (Yale University Press, 2007), p. 45.

  78 “There is no real reason”: Sadie, Mozart, p. 479.

  79 Scott Burnham notes: Burnham, “On the Beautiful in Mozart,” p. 44.

  79 “you see the trembling”: Anderson, The Letters of Mozart and His Family, p. 769.

  80 “four completely different kinds”: Charles Rosen, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, rev. ed. (Norton, 1998), p. 286.

  80 “feelings of impending doom”: Julian Rushton, Mozart (Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 220.

  81 “sensuous genius” ; Daniel Herwitz, “Kierkegaard Writes His Opera,” in The Don Giovanni Moment: Essays on the Legacy of an Opera, ed. Lydia Goehr and Daniel Herwitz (Columbia University Press, 2006), p. 134.

  82 “a bon vivant who loves wine”: E.TA. Hoffmann, “Don Juan: A Fabulous Happening Which Befell a Traveling Enthusiast,” trans. Julian Rushton, in Rushton, W A. Mozart, “Don Giovanni” (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 128.

  82 “conflict between godly”: Ibid., p. 128.

  82 as Michael Noiray observes: Michael Noiray “Don Giovanni,” in Eisen and Keefe, The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia, pp. 145—47.

  82 “fate being underlined”: Peter Williams, The Chromatic Fourth During Four Centuries of Music (Clarendon, 1997), p. 141.

  83 “change from ignorance to knowledge”: Jessica Waldoff, Recognition in Mozart’s Operas (Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 55.

  83 “unflinching, unreflecting”; Ibid., p. 178.

  83 “life without awe”: Philip Kitcher and Richard Schacht, “Authority and Judgment in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Wagner’s Ring,” in Goehr and Herwitz, The Don Giovanni Moment, p. 179.

  5. ORBITING

  This profile appeared in The New Yorker on August 20, 2001, under the title “The Searchers.” In the course of researching the article, I attended the following Radiohead shows: Vista Alegre, Bilbao, May 26, 2001; Théâtre antique, Vaison-la-Romaine, May 28; Arena di Verona, May 30; Red Rocks, Denver, June 20; The Gorge, George, Washington, June 23; and South Park, Oxford, July 7. I consulted Mac Randall, Exit Music. The Radiohead Story (Delta, 2000) and Jonathan Hale, Radiohead: From a Great Height (ECW Press, 1999).

  6. THE ANTI-MAESTRO

  The original version of this profile appeared in The New Yorker on April 30, 2007.

  105 “culture of performance” ; Joseph Horowitz, Classical Music in America: A History of Its Rise and Fall (Norton, 2005), pp. 383-88.

  106 “The gravitational center”: Alex Ross, “A Parade of the Maverick Modernists, Joined by the Dead,
” The New York Times, June 19, 1996.

  107 “We don’t want a temple”: Bernard Holland, “Los Angeles Plans New Concert Hall,” The New York Times, June 1, 1988.

  112 “Somehow I’ve ruled out”: Mark Swed, “Conductor in a Candy Store,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 20, 1996.

  7. GREAT SOUL

  The original version of this chapter appeared in The NewYorker on February 3, 1997. In addition to the works cited below, I consulted Peter Clive, Schubert and His World: A Biographical Dictionary (Clarendon, 1997); Walter Frisch, ed., Schubert: Critical and Analytical Studies (University of Nebraska Press, 1986); Christopher Gibbs, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Schubert (Cambridge University Press, 1997); David Gramit, “The Intellectual and Aesthetic Tenets of Franz Schubert’s Circle” (PhD diss., Duke University 1987); Ernst Hilmar, Franz Schubert in His Time, trans. Reinhard G. Pauly (Amadeus, 1988); and Richard Kramer, Distant Cycles: Schubert and the Conceiving of Song (University of Chicago Press, 1994). More recent publications of interest include Charles Fisk, Returning Cycles: Contexts for the Interpretation of Schuberts Impromptus and Last Sonatas (University of California Press, 2001); Christopher Gibbs, The Life of Schubert (Cambridge University Press, 2000); Lawrence Kramer, Franz Schubert: Sexuality, Subjectivity, Song (Cambridge University Press, 1998); Scott Messing, Schubert in the European Imagination, 2 vols. (University of Rochester Press, 2006—2007); and Susan Youens, Schubert’s Late Lieder: Beyond the Song-Cycles (Cambridge University Press, 2002).

  124 “You consider yourselves artists?”: Friedrich Dieckmann, Franz Schubert: Eine An-näherung (Insel, 1996), p. 286.

  125 “I am Schubert”: Franz Grillparzer, Sammtliche Werke, vol. 1 (Cotta, 1887), p. 175.

  125 “Their world-system is human”: Otto Erich Deutsch, ed., Schubert: Die Dokumente seines Lebens (Breitkopf & Härtel, 1996), p. 110.

  125 “pure, powerful being”: Ibid., p. 193.

  125 “Enviable Nero”: Ibid., p. 233.

  125 “guileless child”: Robert Schumann, Schumann on Music: A Selection from the Writings, trans. and ed. Henry Pleasants (Dover, 1988), p. 142.