by Alex Ross
128 Newbould has discovered: Brian Newbould, Schubert: The Music and the Man (Gollancz, 1997), p. 13.
128 “inner, unfathomable turmoil”: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther and Selected Writings, trans. Catherine Hutter (Signet, 1962), p. 107.
129 John Reed suggests: John Reed, Schubert (Schirmer, 1997), p. 143.
129 “Beethoven does not lie here”: Newbould, Schubert, p. 277.
129 “disorder of experience”: Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation (Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 95.
131 as Youens observes: Susan Youens, Schubert’s Poets and the Making of Lieder (Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 189.
131 “loving pair”: Graham Johnson, “Schubert and the Classics,” notes to vol. 14 of the Hyperion Schubert Edition (Hyperion CDJ33014), p. 28.
132 “Schubert [is] half-sick”: Maynard Solomon, “Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini,” 19th-Century Music 12:3 (Spring 1989), p. 201. For more on Schubert’s sexuality, see Rita Steblin, “The Peacock’s Tale: Schubert’s Sexuality Reconsidered,” 19th-Century Music 17:1 (Summer 1993), pp. 5—33; Maynard Solomon, “Schubert: Some Consequences of Nostalgia,” 19th-Century Music 17:1 (Summer 1993), pp. 34—46; Kristina Muxfeldt, “Political Crimes and Liberty, or Why Would Schubert Eat a Peacock?” 19th-Century Music 17:1 (Summer 1993), pp. 47—64; and contributions by Kogi Agawu, Susan McClary, James Webster, and Robert Winter in the same issue of 19th-Century Music.
132 “dominating aversion,” “indifferent to the charms”: Solomon, “Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini,” p. 196.
133 “fashionable political ideologies”: Rita Steblin, letter to the editors, The New York Review of Books, Oct. 20, 1994.
133 “open, flexible sense of self”: Susan McClary, “Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert’s Music,” in Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology, ed. Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas (Routledge, 1994), p. 223.
133 “If Schubert fell” : Elizabeth Norman McKay, Franz Schubert: A Biography (Clarendon, 1996), p. 219.
133 “Schubert is much praised”: Karl-Heinz Kohler and Dagmar Beck, eds., Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, vol. 3 (VEB, 1983), p. 330.
133 “Kill it, kill me”: Deutsch, Schubert: Dokumente, p. 193.
134 “history of my feelings”: August von Platen, Die Tagebücher des Grafen August von Platen, ed. Georg von Laubmann and Ludwig von Scheffler (Cotta, 1896), p. 487.
135 “It’s sigh, it’s nostalgia”: György Ligeti, coaching the Borromeo String Quartet in Schubert’s Quartet No. 15, New England Conservatory, March 10, 1993.
8. EMOTIONAL LANDSCAPES
This profile appeared in The New Yorker on August 23, 2004, under the title “Bjork’s Saga.” I interviewed Bjork in Reykjavik in January 2004; in Salvador, Brazil, in February; in London in April; and in New York that summer.
140 “an earth sprite”: Teresa Stratas, “Stratas, Lenya, and the Two Annas,” notes to Lotte Lenya’s recording of The Seven Deadly Sins (Sony Classical MHK 63222).
144 “the tyranny of mankind”: Halldór Laxness, Independent People: An Epic, trans. J. A. Thompson (Vintage, 1997), p. 211.
145 “degenerate”: Árni Heimir Ingólfsson, “‘This Music Belongs to Us’: Scandinavian Music and ‘Nordic’ Ideology in the Third Reich,” paper delivered at the American Musicological Society New England Chapter meeting, March 23, 2002.
147 “obsessed with the marriage”: “Björk Meets Karlheinz Stockhausen: Compose Yourself,” Dazed & Confused 23 (Aug. 1996).
147 “all this retro”: Ibid.
148 “Bad Taste will use”: Mark Pytlik, Björk: Wow and Flutter (ECW, 2003), p. 27.
153 “Invisible and free!”: Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Penguin, 1997), p. 235.
153 “The album represented”: Conversation between Björk and Asmundur Jónsson, notes to Live Box (One Little Indian 355).
153 “cyborg/nature dichotomy”: Greg Hainge, Call for Papers, www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=129595 (accessed Dec. 7, 2009).
9. SYMPHONY OF MILLIONS
This article appeared in The New Yorker on July 7, 2008. I visited Beijing in March 2008. My principal source for the history of classical music in China was Sheila Melvin and Jindong Cai, Rhapsody in Red: How Western Classical Music Became Chinese (Algora, 2004). I also consulted Yayoi Uno Everett and Frederick Lau, eds., Locating East Asia in Western Art Music (Wesleyan University Press, 2004); Hao Jiang Tian with Lois B. Morris, Along the Roaring River: My Wild Ride from Mao to the Met (Wiley, 2008); and Mari Yoshi-hara, Musicians from a Different Shore: Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music (Temple University Press, 2007).
160 “facing dwindling popularity”: “U.S. Conductor: China’s Large Population Can Help Keep Classical Music Alive,” Associated Press, Feb. 23, 2008.
161 “concrete example”: Joseph Kahn, “Chinese Unveil Mammoth Arts Center,” The New York Times, Dec. 24, 2007.
164 “By 1992, the Party”: Richard Kraus, The Party and the Arty in China: The New Politics of Culture (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), p. 171.
166 “apply appropriate foreign principles”: Melvin and Cai, Rhapsody in Red, p. 207.
166 peculiar stylistic boundaries: Ibid., pp. 252—54.
166 When Henry Kissinger first visited: Ibid., pp. 265—70.
10. SONG OF THE EARTH
This profile appeared in The New Yorker on May 12, 2008. I interviewed John Luther Adams in Alaska the previous month. The composer has published two collections of writings: Winter Music: Composing the North (Wesleyan University Press, 2004); and The Place Where You Go to Listen: In Search of an Ecology of Music (Wesleyan University Press, 2009). The quotation “Much of Alaska is still filled with silence” comes from p. 9 of Winter Music. John Haines’s poem “Listening in October” can be found in his collection The Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer: Collected Poems (Graywolf Press, 1996); “Return to Richardson, Spring 1981” appears in Haines’s Of Your Passage, O Summer: Uncollected Poems from the 1960s (Limberlost Press, 2004). Also worth reading are Haines’s memoir The Stars, the Snows, the Fire: Twenty-five Years in the Alaskan Wilderness (Graywolf Press, 2000) and Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in an Arctic Landscape (Scribner, 1986).
11. VERDI’S GRIP
This chapter is an expanded version of an article that appeared in The New Yorker on September 24, 2001.
189 “Nobody comes to Verdi”: Mark Lamos, quoted in Matthew Gurewitsch, “Poking Holes in Verdi to Let Audiences In,” The New York Times, March 4, 2001.
190 “What if it is entirely your fault”: E.TA. Hoffmann, “Beethoven’s Instrumental Music,” 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. 98.
190 “The box office is the proper”: John Rosselli, The Life of Verdi (Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 2.
190 “You have to be wall-eyed”: Giuseppe Verdi and Arrigo Boito, The Verdi-Boito Correspondence, ed. Marcello Conati and Mario Medici, trans. William Weaver (University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. xxi.
190 “in your work you think”: Robert Spaethling, trans. and ed., Mozart’s Letters, Mozart’s Life: Selected Letters (Norton, 2000), p. 221.
191 As Mary Jane Phillips-Matz recounts: Mary Jane Phillips-Matz, Verdi: A Biography (Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 54-73.
191 “The dominant mood”: Rosselli, The Life of Verdi, p. 41.
192 he was, in fact, criticized: Roger Parker, Leonora’s Last Act: Essays in Verdian Discourse (Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 35-36.
193 “that cheap, low, sentimental melodrama”: Leonard Bernstein, The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard (Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 411—17.
194 “A fine civilization we have”: Marcello Conati, ed., Encount
ers with Verdi, trans. Richard Stokes (Cornell University Press, 1986), p. 351.
195 “USE FEW WORDS”: Phillips-Matz, Verdi, p. 195.
195 vocal babbling: Julian Budden, The Operas of Verdi, vol. 2, From “Il trovatore” to “La forza del destino,” rev. ed. (Clarendon, 1992), p. 147.
195 “Tadolini is a fine figure”: Rosselli, The Life of Verdi, p. 51.
197 “a dark-haired, impeccably gowned”: Peter G. Davis, “Brangelina Sings!” New York, March 6, 2006, p. 70.
198 “If I have to think” and other quotations: Gurewitsch, “Poking Holes in Verdi to Let Audiences In.”
199 A 2008 staging in Erfurt: Harry de Quetteville, “German Staging of Verdi’s A Masked Ball on 9/11 with Naked Cast in Mickey Mouse Masks,” The Daily Telegraph, April 11, 2008.
200 as the staging manual explains: David Rosen, “On Staging That Matters,” in Verdi in Performance, ed. Alison Latham and Roger Parker (Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 30–31.
200 Philip Gossett … notes: Philip Gossett, Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera (University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 477—79.
200 “Copying the truth”: Rosselli, The Life of Verdi, p. 6.
200 Gossett further points out: Gossett, Divas and Scholars, pp. 473—74.
202 “one needs to be totally pragmatic”: Andrew Porter, “In Praise of the Pragmatic,” in Latham and Parker, Verdi in Performance, p. 26.
203 the scholar Roger Parker has found: Roger Parker, “Arpa d’or dei fatidici vati”: The Verdian Patriotic Chorus in the 1840s (Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, 1997), esp. pp. 83–84.
203 “inappropriate reaction”: Philip Gossett, “Becoming a Citizen: The Chorus in Risorgimento Opera,” Cambridge Opera Journal 2:1 (1990), p. 55. See also Gossett, “‘Edizioni distrutte’ and the Significance of Operatic Choruses During the Risorgimento,” in Opera and Society in Italy and France from Monteverdi to Bourdieu, ed. Victoria Johnson, Jane F. Fulcher, and Thomas Ertman (Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 181–242.
203 The greatness of Verdi is a simple thing: The final paragraph of this article was written on Sept. 12, 2001. When I wrote of “the spiritual magnificence of a dying man,” I had in mind Father Mychal Judge, the chaplain of the New York City Fire Department, who died during the destruction of the World Trade Center the previous day I once heard him speak, and I think of him often.
12. ALMOST FAMOUS
This article appeared in The New Yorker on May 21, 2001. More information about the St. Lawrence Quartet can be found at its website, www.slsq.com.
13. EDGES OF POP
This chapter incorporates four New Yorker articles: “Grand Illusions,” May 19, 2003; “The Art of Noise,” July 13, 1998; “Eighty-two Very Good Years,” May 25, 1998; and “Generation Exit,” April 25, 1994.
221 “Vicenzo, how’s your little girl?”: Gay Talese, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” in The Frank Sinatra Reader, ed. Steven Petkov and Leonard Mustazza (Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 128.
223 As Michael Azerrad points out: Michael Azerrad, Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana (Doubleday 1993), p. 228.
224 “jock numbskulls”: Ibid., pp. 199-200.
224 “I wanted to fool people”: Ibid., p. 215.
225 “Rock Death in the 1970s”: Greil Marcus, In the Fascist Bathroom: Punk in Pop Music, 1977–1992 (Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 57-78.
225 “No detestation nor dehortation”: John Donne, Biathanatos, ed. Michael Rudick and M. Pabst Battin (Garland, 1982), p. 46.
14. LEARNING THE SCORE
This article appeared in The New Yorker on September 4, 2006.
229 Irc California, between 1999 and 2004: Music for All Foundation, 2004, The Sound of Silence: The Unprecedented Decline of Music Education in California Public Schools: A Statistical Review, available at www.musicforall.org/resources/advocacy/sos.aspx (accessed Dec. 17,2009), p. 12.
229 In 1993, researchers claimed: Frances H. Rauscher, Gordon L. Shaw, and Katherine N. Ky “Music and Spatial Task Performance,” Nature 365 (Oct. 14, 1993), p. 611. For challenges to the original study, see Christopher Chabris and Kenneth Steele et al., “Prelude or Requiem for the Mozart Effect,” Nature 400 (Aug. 26, 1999), pp. 826–27.
230 “represented single”: Music for All, The Sound of Silence, p. 18.
230 “In the true spirit”: Richard Deasy and Mike Huckabee, “Putting the Arts Front and Center on the Education Agenda,” www.ecs.org/html/projectsPartners/chair2005/ArtsPubs.asp (accessed Jan. 16, 2010).
236 “remote pedestal”: John Dewey Art as Experience (Penguin, 2005), p. 4.
236 “When an art product”: Ibid., p. 1.
236 “In my own experience”: Paul Woodford, Democracy and Music Education: Liberalism, Ethics, and the Politics of Practice (Indiana University Press, 2005), p. 74.
236 “To tap into imagination”: Maxine Greene, Releasing the Imagination: Essays on Education, the Arts, and Social Change (Jossey-Bass, 2000), p. 19.
15. VOICE OF THE CENTURY
The original version of this chapter appeared in The New Yorker on April 13, 2009.
239 “In this great auditorium”: Allan Keiler, Marian Anderson: A Singer’s Journey (University of Illinois Press, 2002), p. 212.
239 once every hundred years: Ibid., p. 156.
239 “My roof is too low”: Marian Anderson, My Lord, What a Morning: An Autobiography (University of Illinois Press, 2002), p. 149.
240 “She sang as never before”: Martin Luther King, Jr., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., vol. 1, Called to Serve, January 1929–June 1951, ed. Clayborne Carson, Ralph E. Luker, and Penny A. Russell (University of California Press, 1992), p. 110.
240 “Genius, like justice”: Keiler, Marian Anderson, p. 212.
240 “a nation that, for few measures”. Richard Powers, The Time of Our Singing (Picador, 2004), p. 48.
241 “We don’t take colored”: Anderson, My Lord, What a Morning, p. 38.
241 “a voice of unusual compass”: “Miss Anderson Sings,” The New York Times, Aug. 27, 1925.
241 “mistress of all she surveyed”: Howard Taubman, “Marian Anderson in Concert Here,” The New York Times, Dec. 31, 1935.
242 “spirit of pragmatism”: Raymond Arsenault, The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert That Awakened America (Bloomsbury 2009), pp. 105–106.
242 “I always bear in mind”: Anderson, My Lord, What a Morning, p. 244.
242 train-station waiting room: Franz Rupp related this story in the documentary Marian Anderson, produced by WETA-TV and aired in May 1991.
243 “My music was dedicated”: Nina Simone with Stephen Cleary I Put a Spell on You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone (Da Capo, 2003), p. 91.
243 “No white symphony orchestra”: Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography (Simon and Schuster, 2005), p. 59. For “ghetto mentality” see p. 61.
244 “Bach made me dedicate”: Simone, I Put a Spell on You, p. 23.
244 “looked on with intense suspicion”: William Eddins, “Soul Food for Thought,” Sticks and Drones, www.insidethearts.com/sticksanddrones/2009/01/16/bill-eddins/1091 (accessed Dec. 10, 2009).
16. THE MUSIC MOUNTAIN
This article appeared in The New Yorker on July 29, 2009. I visited Marlboro Music on three occasions during the summer of 2008. I interviewed, among others, Emanuel Ax, Jonathan Biss,Anthony Checchia, Sasha Cooke, Charlotte Dobbs, Richard Goode, Romie de Guise-Langlois, Soovin Kim, Yo-Yo Ma, Philipp Naegele, Nicholas Phan, Rebecca Ringle, Frank Salomon, James Austin Smith, Joshua Smith, the late David Soyer, Arnold Steinhardt, and Mitsuko Uchida.
246 “create a community, almost utopian”: Rudolf Serkin interviewed on the Bell Telephone Hour, 1967, as quoted in notes to the Music from Marlboro recording of Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet (Columbia MS 7067, LP).
251 “It’s all wrong”: Stephen Lehmann and Marion Faber, Rudolf Serkin: A Life (Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 17.
17. THE END OF SILENCE
This chapter appeared in The New Yorker on October 4, 2010.
265 “There’s no such thing”: Richard Kostelanetz, Conversing with Cage, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2003), p. 65.
265 “Good people of Woodstock”: David Revill, The Roaring Silence—John Cage: A Life (Arcade, 1992), p. 166.
265 “Now, Earle”: Kyle Gann, No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage’s 4’33” (Yale University Press, 2010), p. 191.
266 “an act of framing”: Ibid., p. 11.
266 “let sounds be just sounds”: John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage (Wesleyan University Press, 1973), p. 70.
266 “It begged for a new approach”: Gann, No Such Thing as Silence, p. 11.
266 “Art is a sort of experimental station”: Cage, Silence, p. 139.
266 “absolutely ridiculous”: Gann, No Such Thing as Silence, p. 15.
267 “John Cage was the first composer”: Morton Feldman Says: Selected Interviews and Lectures, 1964–1987, ed. Chris Villars (Hyphen, 2006), p. 183.
267 “John, I dearly love you”: Cage, Silence, p. ix.
267 “Noted for: being radical”: Thomas S. Hines, “‘Then Not Yet “Cage” ’: The Los Angeles Years, 1912—1938,” in John Cage: Composed in America, ed. Marjorie Perloff and Charles Junkerman (University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 78.
268 “Much of our of boredom”: John Cage, I—VI (Wesleyan University Press, 1997), p. 9.
268 “not much different from not being”: Kostelanetz, Conversing with Cage, p. 280.
268 “He was open, frank”: Carolyn Brown, Chance and Circumstance: Twenty Years with Cage and Cunningham (Random House, 2007), p. 81.