Listen to This

by Alex Ross

  268 “Don’t you ever parrot”: Ibid., p. 104.

  268 “cheerful existentialist”: John Cage: An Anthology, ed. Richard Kostelanetz (Da Capo, 1991), p. 146.

  269 “One of the greatest blessings”: Ibid., p. 48.

  269 “People would lie in wait”: Hines, “‘Then Not Yet “Cage,”’” p. 74.

  269 Cage seems to have been the only American pupil: “String Quartet Plays at Composer’s Party,” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 6, 1937.

  270 “I believe that the use of noise”: Cage, Silence, pp. 3—4.

  270 “I decided to use only quiet sounds”: Ibid., p. 117.

  270 “to sober and quiet the mind”: James Pritchett, The Music of John Cage (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 37.

  270 “art imitates nature”: Gann, No Such Thing as Silence, p. 93.

  270 “haunting and lovely”: Ross Parmenter, “Ajemian Plays Work by Cage, 69 Minutes,” The New York Times, Jan. 13, 1949.

  271 “Well, they’re just playing my piece”: John Cage and Morton Feldman, Radio Happenings I—V, recorded at WBAI, New York City July 1966—January 1967, available at www.archive.org/details/CageFeldmanConversationl (accessed Dec. 9, 2010).

  271 Silverman … rightly emphasizes: Kenneth Silverman, Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage (Knopf, 2010), pp. 267-74.

  272 “improperly”: Brown, Chance and Circumstance, p. 266.

  272 “It is because of his specifications”: Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 264.

  272 “to its purest, scariest peak”: Richard Taruskin, The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays (University of California Press, 2009), p. 272.

  272 “Listening to or merely thinking”: Gann, No Such Thing as Silence, p. 198.

  272 John Adams … describes: John Adams, Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), pp. 56—61.

  273 “You mean he got paid for that?”: Gann, No Such Thing as Silence, p. 12.

  273 $24.15 a month in rent: Ibid., p. 14.

  273 “I wanted to make poverty elegant”: Kostelanetz, Conversing with Cage, p. 212.

  274 “the twenty-four kinds”: Silverman, Begin Again, p. 168.

  274 “I consider laughter preferable to tears”: The video can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSulycqZH-U. (accessed Dec. 9, 2010).

  274 “[A] monk was walking along”: John Cage, A Year from Monday (Wesleyan University Press, 1967), p. 135.

  275 “For two hundred years the Europeans”: Revill, The Roaring Silence, p. 283.

  276 “We would do well to give up the notion”: Typescript reproduced in the exhibition catalogue The Anarchy of Silence: John Cage and Experimental Art, ed. Julia Robinson (MACBA, 2009), p. 268.

  277 Cagemusicircus: See Alex Ross, “John Cage Tributes,” The New York Times, Nov. 7, 1992.

  278 “When one dies with this world”: Pages of Merce Cunningham’s diary supplied by Laura Kuhn, John Cage Trust.

  278 “I couldn’t be happier”: From Elliot Caplan’s 1991 film Cage/Cunningham.

  18. I SAW THE LIGHT

  The original version of this chapter appeared in The New Yorker on May 10, 1999, under the title “The Wanderer.” In the course of researching the article, I attended the following Dylan shows in 1998: Puyallup, Washington, Sept. 22; Portland, Oregon, Sept. 23; Eugene, Oregon, Sept. 24; Concord, California, Sept. 25; Mountain View, California, Sept. 26; Reno, Nevada, Sept. 27; Duluth, Minnesota, Oct. 22; Minneapolis, Minnesota, Oct. 23; Chicago, Illinois, Oct. 25; and New York, New York, Nov. 1.

  In addition to the works cited below, I consulted John Bauldie, ed., Wanted Man: In Search of Bob Dylan (Citadel, 1991); Glen Dundas, Tangled Up in Tapes: The Recordings of Bob Dylan (SMA Services, 1994); Michael Gray, Song and Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan (Continuum, 2000); Clinton Heylin, Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions, 1960-1994 (St. Martin’s, 1995); C. P. Lee, Like the Night: Bob Dylan and the Road to the Manchester Free Trade Hall (Helter Skelter, 1998); Wilfrid Mellers, A Darker Shade of Pale: A Backdrop to Bob Dylan (Oxford University Press, 1985); Robert Shelton, No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan (Da Capo, 1997); Bob Spitz, Dylan: A Biography (Norton, 1989); Paul Williams, Bob Dylan: Performing Artist: 1974—1986 (Omnibus, 1994); and Paul Williams, Bob Dylan: Watching the River Flow—Observations on His Artin-Progress, 1966—1995 (Omnibus, 1996).

  Since the article was published, several significant books on Dylan have appeared: David Hajdu, Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001); Benjamin Hedin, ed., Studio A: The Bob Dylan Reader (Norton, 2004); Greil Marcus, Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads (PublicAffairs, 2005); Mike Marqusee, Chimes of Freedom: The Politics of Bob Dylan’s Art (New Press, 2003; republished in paperback as Wicked Messenger ); Christopher Ricks, Dylan’s Visions of Sin (HarperCollins, 2003); and Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume 1 (Simon and Schuster, 2004), which, perhaps inevitably, turns out to be the best book ever written on the subject.

  281 “I wish Bob Dylan died”: Marc Jacobson, “Tangled Up in Gray,” The Village Voice, Jan. 30, 1978.

  281 “My God, he sounds”: James Wolcott, “Bob Dylan Beyond Thunderdome,” in The Dylan Companion, ed. Elizabeth Thomson and David Gutman (Da Capo, 2001), p. 278.

  281 “Bob Dylan, who helped transform”: Anthony Scaduto, “The Dylan Infection,” News- day, May 29, 1997.

  281 “Bob Dylan, whose bittersweet”: Bruce Weber, “Dylan in Hospital with Chest Pains; Europe Tour Is Off,” The New York Times, May 29, 1997.

  284 “one of the least talented”: Carl Benson, ed., The Bob Dylan Companion: Four Decades of Commentary (Schirmer, 1998), p. x.

  284 “Even if half-mad”: Don DeLillo, Great Jones Street (Penguin, 1994), p. 1.

  285 “Tarantula has six main themes”: Robin Witting, The Cracked Bells: A Guide to Tarantula, rev. ed. (Exploding Rooster Books, 1995), pp. 13, 34.

  286 “a reduction of form”: Aidan Day Jokerman: Reading the Lyrics of Bob Dylan (Blackwell, 1988), p. 116.

  286 “Late April. Dylan attends”: Clinton Heylin, Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments—Day by Day, 1941-1995 (Schirmer, 1996), p. 149.

  286 “Between January and June 1972”: Clinton Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited (William Morrow, 2001), p. 334.

  286 “Friends describe”: Ellen Willis, Beginning to See the Light: Sex, Hope, and Rock-and-Roll, 2nd ed. (Wesleyan University Press, 1992), p. 5.

  287 “There’s enough of everything”: Paul Zollo, Songwriters on Songwriting (Da Capo, 2003), p. 74.

  287 Joan Didion wrote of Joan Baez: Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968), p. 47.

  288 “Bob Dylan has walked”: Ad reproduced in Patrick Humphries and John Bauldie, Oh No! Not A-nother Bob Dylan Book (Square One, 1991), p. 175.

  288 “I wrote that when I didn’t figure”: Anthony Scaduto, Bob Dylan, rev. ed. (Helter Skelter, 1996), p. 127.

  289 “Look what they did”: Greil Marcus, Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes (Henry Holt, 1997; republished in paperback as The Old, Weird America), p. 17.

  289 “As if he had been waiting”: Marcus, Invisible Republic, pp. 35–36.

  290 “I was very disappointed”: Andy Gill, “Judas!” The Independent, Jan. 23, 1999. The identity of the “Judas!” shouter is contested; Andy Kershaw, in “Bob Dylan: How I Found the Man Who Shouted ‘Judas,’” The Independent, Sept. 23, 2005, proposed that one John Cordwell should hold the title instead.

  291 “certain bedrock strains”: Marcus, Invisible Republic, p. xiii.

  291 “What is this shit?”: Greil Marcus, “Self Portrait No. 25,” in Hedin, Studio A, p. 74.

  291 “more Dock Boggs”: Greil Marcus, “Comeback Time Again,” The Village Voice, Aug. 13, 1985.

  291 “If people are going to dismiss”: Lester Bangs, “Love or Con
fusion?” in Hedin, Studio A, p. 156.

  293 “cause-chasing liberals”: Paul Williams: Bob Dylan: Performing Artist, 1960–1973 (Omnibus, 1994), p. 94.

  293 “Genius is a terrible word”: Jules Siegel, “Well, What Have We Here?” The Saturday Evening Post, July 30, 1966, reprinted in Bob Dylan: The Early Years—A Retrospective, ed. Craig McGregor (Da Capo, 1990), p. 159.

  298 “I believe in Hank Williams”: Jon Pareles, “A Wiser Voice Blowin’ in the Autumn Wind,” The New York Times, Sept. 28, 1997.

  301 “self-surrender”: Daniel Cavicchi, Tramps Like Us: Music and Meaning Among Springsteen Fans (Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 43.

  19. FERVOR

  This chapter is an expanded version of a column that appeared in The New Yorker on September 25, 2006.

  303 “She simply stood there”: Charles Shere, review in the Oakland Tribune, April 17, 1972, reprinted by Barbara Stack in “In Memoriam Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (1954–2006),” July 11, 2006, www.sfcv.org/arts_revs/lorrainehuntliebersontribute_7_11_06.php (accessed Dec. 7, 2009).

  303 “A viola is a middle voice”: Charles Michener, “The Soul Singer,” The New Yorker, Jan. 5, 2004, pp. 42–43.

  304 “She started singing”: Ibid., p. 44.

  305 “Time itself stopped”: Richard Dyer, “Lorraine Hunt Lieberson: Her Luminous Voice Transported Listener,” The Boston Globe, July 5, 2006.

  20. BLESSED ARE THE SAD

  This chapter incorporates portions of an article that appeared in The New Republic on March 23, 1998, under the title “Why Is Light Given?”

  307 “Two guys visit Haydn”: Morton Feldman, Give My Regards to Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman, ed. B. H. Friedman (Exact Change, 2000), p. 166. For the original Haydn story see Richard Will, “When God Met the Sinner and Other Dramatic Confrontations in Eighteenth-Century Instrumental Music,” Music and Letters 78:2 (May 1997), p. 175.

  307 “That first entrance of the trombones”: Brahms’s letter to Lachner is transcribed in Reinhold Brinkmann, “Die ‘heitre Sinfonie’und der ‘schwer melancholische Mensch’: Johannes Brahms antwortet Vincenz Lachner,” Archiv für Musikwissercschaft 46:4 (1989), pp. 301-302.

  308 “Motets by Joh. Br.”: Styra Avins, ed., Johannes Brahms: Life and Letters, trans. Avins and Josef Eisinger (Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 553.

  309 “fresh beginning”: Reinhold Brinkmann, Late Idyll: The Second Symphony of Johannes Brahms (Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 88, 84.

  309 “the first major composer”: Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 3, The Nineteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 683.

  310 “The opinion held in many quarters”: Gunther Schuller, The Compleat Conductor (Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 279.

  311 “confused lack of money”: Avins, Johannes Brahms, p. 4.

  311 “It seemed as though”: Oliver Strunk and Leo Treitler, eds., Source Readings in Music History, rev. ed. (Norton, 1998), pp. 1157-58.

  312 “At the end, three hands”: Avins, Johannes Brahms, p. 189.

  313 “exceptions or excesses”: Ibid., pp. 150–51, 157.

  313 “The memory of Schumann”: Ibid., p. 449.

  313 Joachim once intimated: Max Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, vol. 1 (Wiener Verlag), p. 173.

  313 Jan Swafford … explains: Jan Swafford, Johannes Brahms: A Biography (Knopf, 1997), p. 169.

  314 “I shall never compose”: Brinkman, Late Idyll, p. 138.

  315 “Any ass can hear that”: Max Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, vol. 3 (Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1910), p. 109.

  315 “veiled symphonies”: Strunk and Treitler, Source Readings in Music History, p. 1157.

  316 “What Brahms was after”: Schuller, The Compleat Conductor, p. 293.

  316 “Our life is no dream”: Swafford, Johannes Brahms, p. 41.

  316 “Anti-Semitism is insanity!”: Margaret Notley Lateness and Brahms: Music and Culture in the Twilight of Viennese Liberalism (Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 211. For Little Bighorn, see Swafford, Brahms, p. 530.

  317 “tomorrow in Handel’s Hallelujah wig”: Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music (Harcourt Brace, 1968), p. 397.

  317 “I give the best and most appropriate thanks”: Avins, Johannes Brahms, p. 479.

  317 “[Brahms] knew his own worth”: Ethel Smyth, Impressions That Remained: Memoirs (Knopf, 1946), p. 238.

  318 “Art is a republic”: Swafford, Johannes Brahms, p. 180.

  318 “If you continue on right away”: Avins, Johannes Brahms, pp. 347–48.

  318 “furrowed, even ravaged”: Theodor W. Adorno, Essays on Music, ed. Richard Leppert, trans. Susan H. Gillespie (University of California Press, 2002), p. 564.

  319 Brinkmann devotes: Brinkmann, Late Idyll, pp. 125–44.

  319 “Look, Herr Doktor!”: Ernst Decsey “Stunden mit Mahler,” Die Musik 10:21 (1910/1911), p. 146.

  320 Brahms nods several times: On Wagner allusions in Brahms, see David Brodbeck, “Brahms, the Third Symphony and the New German School,” in Brahms and His World, ed. Walter Frisch (Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 65–80; and Robert Bailey, “Musical Language and Structure in the Third Symphony,” in Brahms Studies: Analytical and Historical Perspectives, ed. George S. Bozarth (Clarendon, 1990), pp. 408–409.

  320 “allowing a soloist to emerge”: Margaret Notley, “Late-Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music and the Cult of the Classical Adagio,” 19th-Century Music 23:1 (Summer 1999), p. 59.

  321 “unrestricted musical language”: Arnold Schoenberg, Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Leonard Stein, trans. Leo Black (University of California Press, 1984), p. 441.

  321 “Sing Lullabies of My Sorrow’”: Max Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, vol. 4 (Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1914), p. 281. For the matching of words to the melody of Opus 117 No. 1, see p. 279.

  322 as Raymond Knapp notes: Raymond Knapp, “The Finale of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony: The Tale of the Subject,” 19th-Century Music 13:1 (Summer 1989), p. 10.

  322 “Es fiel … ihm wie”: Swafford, Johannes Brahms, p. 4.

  322 “frozen”: Walter Frisch, Brahms: The Four Symphonies (Yale University Press, 2003), p. 125.

  322 As Notley observes: Margaret Notley, “Plagal Harmony as Other: Asymmetrical Dualism and Instrumental Music by Brahms,” The Journal of Musicology 22:1 (Winter 2005), pp. 128–29.

  323 modern conductors drag: On slowing tempos in modern Brahms performance, see Frisch, Brahms: The Four Symphonies, pp. 163–88; and Walter Frisch, “Whose Brahms Is It Anyway?: Observations on the Recorded Legacy of the B-flat Piano Concerto, Op. 83,” in Musical Meaning and Human Values, ed. Keith Chapin and Lawrence Kramer (Fordham University Press, 2009), pp. 102–15.

  323 “perhaps the most extraordinary”: Frisch, Brahms: The Four Symphonies, p. 130.

  323 Knapp also argues: Knapp, “The Finale of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony” pp. 6–8.

  323 “On a single staff”: Avins, Johannes Brahms, p. 515.

  324 “I cannot get away”: Brinkmann, Late Idyll, p. 221. For Mann, see pp. 222–25.

  SUGGESTED LISTENING

  These recommendations reflect one listener’s taste; prospective buyers can compare audio samples online before making any purchases. All recordings are available as this book goes to press, although some will inevitably go out of print as record companies reduce their catalogues. Most are also available as MP3 downloads.

  LISTEN TO THIS

  A secondhand LP of Leonard Bernstein conducting Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony ignited my love of classical music. Although kids today might just as easily fall under the spell of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring or Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, Beethoven’s indestructible masterwork remains a logical place to start. According to an online discography maintained by Eric Grunin, more than five hundred recordings of the Eroica have entered circulation since the invention of the phonograph: they range from the sinewy Arturo Toscan
ini (a 1939 live version with the NBC Symphony captures the maestro at white heat) to the compellingly neurotic Wilhelm Furtwangler (his grittiest reading comes from December 1944, with the Vienna Philharmonic) to the granitic Otto Klemperer (a 1959 EMI recording with the Philharmonia Orchestra is the most commanding of various efforts). Bernstein’s vigorous Eroica with the New York Philharmonic is currently available on a Sony disc that also includes the conductor’s Eroica lecture (“There has been a stab of intrusive otherness”). If you’re looking for a complete set of the Beethoven nine, Herbert von Karajan’s 1961–62 survey with the Berliners (DG) is consistently satisfying, though a little lacking in fire. Osmo Vänskä’s cycle with the Minnesota Orchestra (BIS) is a formidable modern rival.

  CHACONA, LAMENTO, WALKING BLUES

  Juan Arañés’s “Un sarao de la chacona, a joyous example of the original chacona dance, springs to life on the collection Villancicos y Danzas Criollas, with Jordi Savall leading Hesperion XXI and La Capella Reial de Catalunya (Alia Vox). Johannes Ockeghem’s somber Missa Fors seulement is resonantly sung by the Schola Discantus on a Lyrichord disc. Savall and company have also produced the most bewitching of all recordings of John Dowland’s Lachrimae, although at the moment it is available only as an MP3 download (Alia Vox). Andreas Scholl lends his pure-toned, emotionally charged countertenor to Dowland songs on the albums A Musicall Banquet (Decca) and Crystal Tears (Harmonia Mundi).

  Various classic arias of lament, including Hecuba’s apocalyptic threnody from Cavalli’s Didone, appear on the disc Lamenti, with Emmanuelle Haïm conducting Le Concert d’Astree and assorted star singers (Virgin Classics). The Concerto Vocale’s recording of Monteverdi’s Madrigali guerrieri ed amorosi (Harmonia Mundi) has a strikingly sensuous Lamento della ninfa. There have been many lovely versions of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas; I cherish a 1994 Harmonia Mundi CD with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson as Dido and Nicholas McGegan conducting the Philharmonia Baroque. The discography of Bach’s cycle of Sonatas and Partitas, which includes the Ciaccona in D Minor, is intimidatingly large, embracing most of the major violinists of the past hundred years; among latter-day recordings, I’d choose the idiosyncratic, questing Gidon Kremer on ECM. In the awesome realm of Bach’s B-Minor Mass, no conductor has gone deeper than Philippe Herreweghe, the leader of the Collegium Vocale Gent; his second account of the work, for Harmonia Mundi, sets the modern standard.