I don’t want to say anything bad about the royal wedding, which was lovely and inspiring. Or about Sheku Kanneh-Mason, the cellist who played so gorgeously.
But one of the pieces he played was crazily inappropriate. And surely it’s amazing — a little bit wildly so — that no one planning the wedding seemed to know this.
The inappropriate piece was an arrangement of the Fauré song “Après un rève.” Go here for the French words and an English translation. You’ll see that the song is not about happy love, which would have suited the occasion.
Instead it’s the opposite. Someone dreams of love, and wakes up to find out it all was a lie.
So to me this suggests — not that I haven’t thought this before — that classical music has been losing its meaning. It registers just as something beautiful, maybe mindlessly so. Because, at least on this occasion, those planning an event watched by millions apparently never asked what one of their musical selections really was about.
It’s the idea we hear all the time: “classical” music (hate that term!) is a great thing to turn on when you want to relax and zone out.
Ironically, as I’m writing this I’m listening to Bill McGlaughlin’s enlightening Exploring Music episodes on Shostakovich, who wrote some of the least relaxing music of all time.
We have to face the fact that the public’s understanding of “classical” music is presently at the zero level. Can we “educate” people about this art form at all, or should we just give up?
I think we should present it as vividly as we can, with or without commentary, so its meaning is clear simply from hearing it!
A project that sounds simple, but really isn’t, because the pieces live in our time behind a veil. They’re thought of as masterworks, as beautiful, as civilized. Which comes close to killing them.
Nothing new, actually. The true content of The Rite of Spring (creepy old men doing what?), Afternoon of a Faun (it’s not about a deer, dear), and March to the Scaffold (enthusiastically played by kids in high schools everywhere, without explanation from their conductors), to name just a few. If audiences knew the back story to classical music works, it would probably generate more interest.
I once heard people from a US orchestra plan to promote Rite of Spring by asking audience members to create their own spring rituals. Like, they suggested, putting dried flowers in scrapbooks. Which clearly ignored what the piece is about!
Still, I think the violence of Stravinsky’s piece is unmistakable, likewise the eroticism of Debussy’s. And I thought everyone loved pointing out the beheading at the conclusion of March to the Scaffold, complete with the bouncing of the severed head. High school kids would love that! Certainly my six year-old son would.
Speaking of inappropriate wedding music, I remember one in which I was participating that included a harpist and a soprano doing Handel’s exquisitely beautiful “Lascia, chi’o pianga”, How can you not love that short, simple piece? But the words are so absurdly at odds to the idea of a wedding!
“Let me weep for my cruel fate / and sigh for liberty”.
That makes me smile and wince more or less at the same time!
On Twitter, someone I know mentioned a wedding with a bride who didn’t get along with her father. One of the musical pieces was “O mio babbino caro,” chosen as irony.
Once in an airport I heard a Muzak rendition of the Pet Shop Boys’ song “Rent,” with the refrain “I love you, you pay my rent.” The song (as the group explained it to me once) is about a woman kept by a wealthy man, no love on her part involved. I was a little taken aback, in the airport. Odd to hear a song that got me thinking of something so sad, even if mildly so. Though of course there was no singing, no lyrics to hear, and the musical arrangement just made the song seem bouncy. Something like the way “Born in the USA” (as I said in an earlier reply here) can sound like a grand patriotic anthem, when it’s really about America failing it working people.
Classytroll doesn’t seek commissions these days, but I did once compose a wedding mass for a Catholic ceremony conducted by a prominent Archbishop (not the “Royal Wedding” but EVERY priest within 50 miles tried to shoehorn themselves into that ceremony for sure!).
Now of course I wrote an original Wedding March (no Wagner allowed!) and several other processional pieces that were “event specific” with proper “meaning” and all…
But I couldn’t resist also “repurposing” a piece in extended chorale style that had been premiered at my last hip hop event!
In its original context, the hip hop chorale occupied the darkest place in the show set… But the Baroque texture was pure church music after all and I LOVED the counterpoint (violin and cello were trading flourishes over the chorale).
So I figured I could get away with including it…
And as all the important family members marched down the aisle under the stoic gaze of that Archbishop, none seemed bothered that this was a dark as death hip hop piece originally!
And later, when Infinity bought yet another re-orchestration of that SAME chorale style piece for the unveiling of their latest sportscar, none of the Japanese executives in the room thought it was “wedding music” or “dark hip hop”. They thought it was about their car.
Ultimately, artists decide what their work means and when.
And artists take risks!
And sometimes they are short on time, need the cash, and are willing to make it fit.
Maybe the wedding planners just didn’t want to fight with the bride and figured classical types objecting would be less damaging than a bride-zilla meltdown?
As an investor these days, I’m happy to be able to write ONLY what I want when I want… But I’ve got great sympathy for artists who repurpose their own works to make ends meet.
There’s a LONG tradition there!
And as an artist whose done it more than a few times, I can say it is always fun to see who figures it out, who objects, and who decides it was brilliant!
And just so the conspiracy theorists don’t go barking up the wrong tree, that wedding commission post above IS from classytroll… But inherited Greg’s pic since I asked him to move it for me after posting in the wrong place (thus his pic follows his “cut and paste”).
I don’t understand why they should be criticized/made fun of for using that work. Are we in classical music really so elitist that that we must critique in this manner? Why can’t a pretty piece be allowed to be just that, without over analyzing (or analyzing at all?)
I’m certainly not making fun of them, or even criticizing them. The problem goes way beyond the people who chose that piece. The problem lies in classical pieces losing their meaning. So now, as you yourself say, they’re pretty, and that’s all most people know of them.
My thoughts now have jumped to jazz players improvising on songs from the Great American Songbook, old pop standards. They always know the words, know what the songs are about. As would many of their listeners. Here, the meaning of the Fauré song has vanished in the mist. I wonder what Fauré would have thought. His song, so beautifully crafted, so suffused with sadness and regret, turned into something merely pretty.
I’ve often noticed that many of the students I teach at Juilliard don’t know classical music well. They know the repertoire for their instruments, and for ensembles (string quartets, wind quintets, orchestras) they’re likely to play in. But they wouldn’t know French art songs, except for the few who take my course and are singers.
In past times, I don’t think that would have been true. This song would have been known, if any Fauré song was. And merely hearing the melody might — for any classical music professional, or active member of the audience — bring to mind what the song is about.
Thank you for pointing out this detail in the manner of Sherlock Holmes (!) that will allow a deeper experience of Faure’s composition for future listening, confessing to be unfamiliar with it.
Regarding lyrics of jazz standards, Charlie Parker was as fond of the lyrics to arguably the greatest standard of them all, “All the Things You Are”, as he was of the actual music. He even referred to the song as “Angel Glow”, using words from the lyrics rather than the actual title.
One of my walking pathways takes me past the stately house where the composer of “All the Things You Are”, Jerome Kern, lived in Beverly Hills, and I invariably shake my head in astonishment for his artistic inventions. Oscar Hammerstein II was the equally memorable lyricist for this masterpiece.
Incidentally, my favorite vocal rendition of “All the Things You Are” is by Helen Forrest, capturing the charmed innocence of the song like no other.
Greg is right here… We SHOULD want to know the composer’s intended meaning. But classytroll also believes we should NEVER be shackled by it!
Tails were useful and meaningful when our ancestors were still arboreal, but modern humans don’t need the extra balancing and grasping arm… So today, a baby born with a vestigial tail (it DOES happen!) is “corrected” surgically.
Evolution reserves the right to change the meaning of anything and everything over time. Artist creators (not academics or critics) are the drivers of musical evolution… Thus they must be allowed to morph meanings or art is dead.
Now, whether or not the Royal Wedding planners are consciously trying to evolve by redefining an artistic trope is another question…
But can’t we all at least agree that artists have the right to try evolutionary experiments?
I for one don’t miss my lost tail!
Evolution gets it right in the end even if we don’t all agree upon what is “mutation” vs “improvement” in the moment.
I agree! Works of art start evolving new meaning the moment they’re released in the wild. So to speak. Meaning the moment the artist isn’t the only one experiencing them.
Which also means we can make our own evaluations of the new meanings. Some add new depth, new layers to the art. Some subtract meaning. For a Fauré song to lose its unforgettable (for those who know the original) tone of aching regret and become just another lovely tune — to me that’s devolution. When it starts happening widely in any field of art, as I think is happening in classical music, well, that’s not good for that field.
Great to have the beautiful work by a composer of the past who happens to be female though – Sicilienne by Maria Theresia von Paradis
“The death of expertise”.
More specifically: I think that artists (in this case Sheku) could dig much deeper with the works they perform. Craftsmanship, pleasure etc. are not enough. Additionally: What are the poetic circumstances? Deeper beauties, and kinds of order? Uniquenesses? The most profound ways that the work stimulates the listener? Dramatic, theatric, political, performative? Connections with history, tradition? And so on …
The piece was specifically requested by the bride .
And it’s a beautiful piece. Deeply colored — in the original song, especially as sung by a great French artist like Gerard Souzay — with regret. I can well understand the bride choosing it, if she didn’t know what the words said.
But, you know, that’s my point. She wouldn’t have known what the words said. Whereas if this were a pop song, she very likely would have, or else others close to her would. For a comparable case, you can go back to Reagan choosing Springsteen’s Born in the USA for use in his 1984 reeelection campaign. Thinking it was a song about loving America. Whereas in fact — as was quickly and widely pointed out — it’s a song about America failing its working-class citizens.
Note that this mistake was immediately pointed out, all over the place. Because people knew the song. In with Après un rève, people don’t know the song, even (in the bride’s case) people who love it. Even though it’s maybe the best known of all French art songs.
All of which says to me that classical music is just not known in our world. Not that this is new information, or in any way a surprise. The fact that the bride herself (and more power to her in all ways) picked it doesn’t answer my point. In fact, I’d think it reinforces what I said. Classical pieces function to some extent now simply for their beauty, with any history or meaning they have beyond that being to some extent lost. Unlike Born in the USA, which was a song actively known, in all of its meaning, when Reagan misinterpreted it.
Why is Springsteen and his body of work much better known to the general public than Fauré and his? In other words, why does Bruce belong to the category of “popular music” and Fauré doesn’t?
Certainly, one big reason is that “popular music” is popular just because it is generally constructed in such a way that many people can sing along to it, dance to it, and even pick up a guitar, learn to strum a few chords, and after a little practice accompany themselves singing it. Whereas art songs, and certainly most of the rest of the classical repertoire, are far beyond the abilities of most people to actively participate in performing them. They can only sit and listen, and that is not what most people want from music, though we classical music fans understand what pleasure can come from just sitting and listening.
Even the jazz standards, which Greg so often refers to, were popular in the same way in the ’30s, ’40s, etc. Many people understood the songs, sang along, and danced to them (boy, how they danced!). Now they have become “classical jazz,” and have suffered the same fate as classical music. Just sit and listen, or possible tap your feet or snap your fingers.
When savvy pop song composers extracted melodies from Chopin or Tchaikovsky, they could turn them into pop songs the origins of which most of the people who loved them didn’t have the slightest idea of. They were just pop songs like any other.
I very much appreciate the experiments that are now being made to put on classical music concerts that borrow the public’s manner of participatory singing and dancing with music. That will work with some pieces that could be considered “classical,” and are made for that purpose. But that’s not going to keep the Three B’s, etc., from fading into oblivion. How will the great public ever manage to sing and dance along with Brahms’ symphonies or chamber music, for example, to say nothing of Stockhausen or Cage? Well, good luck to anyone who wants to try!
Back in the day, I think people could sing along with Fauré. Certainly the relationship with classical music was different. In 1954, college students were surveyed about what music they liked. As part of that, they were asked who their favorite composers were. Beethoven and Debussy, they said. So clearly they were, as a group, vastly more familiar with classical music than college students today are. Would anyone ask college students now who their favorite classical composers are?
Greg says: Back in the day, I think people could sing along with Fauré. Certainly the relationship with classical music was different. In 1954, college students were surveyed about what music they liked.”
Having grown up in the 50’s and gone to music school in the 60’s, I can tell you from personal experience that only a miniscule fraction of the educated public could sing along with Faure songs, and the one exception would be “Apres un Reve” because of the instrumental transcription. Within that miniscule fraction, an even more minute percentage could have told you what the text was about. The only people I ever knew who knew their song texts were singers, vocal accompanists, or musicologists. Having done a lot of vocal accompanying myself, I can testify to the general lack of familiarity with the lieder repertoire, even among professional singers.
I agree. And people who do know art songs are most likely to know German lieder. The French rep, even back in those days (when I started studying singing), was not as well known, at least in the US. But I do think that, in those days, people planning a musical program would know more about the music they chose. As I think I said earlier, Après un rève is (I think I’m right about this) Fauré’s best-known song, and in fact the best-known of all French art songs. So if this were 1954, I agree that college students might not have known it (and wouldn’t have known Debussy’s songs, either, even though he was one of their top two composers). But I think royal wedding music planners would have.
I grew up in the ’40s, and can second your memories. Very few kids around me then cared about classical music at all. I played trombone in the high school band, and most of my friends were probably also musicians, as I remember. But even most of them wouldn’t have known one of the 3 B’s from the others.
I think your comments about the Faure piece put you firmly in the grumpy old man column. It is estimated that 3 billion people worldwide watched the wedding. 3,000,000,000. It seems to me that this is a good thing for classical music. I am not at all concerned that they didn’t read the English translation or the original French. Now get off my lawn.
Aren’t you on my lawn here? :-))
Greg, I must respectfully disagree. The instrumental transcriptions of Apres un Reve have become part of the standard repertoire for violin, viola and cello, and as such they have inspired and enriched the lives of countless thousands of people who couldn’t care less about the text of the song. The instrumental version is a living breathing part of our culture, especially in today’s world where the lieder recital is a relic of the past.
Another, even more compelling example is the Meditation from Thais, which has become standard fare for weddings, and has given inspiration to countless thousands, perhaps millions of people, none of whom knows or cares about the relationships among Thais, Athanael and Nicias. Compare that to the relatively miniscule number of people who have seen and loved the opera. Of course I know that artistic value is not determined by majority vote, but nevertheless the presence or absence of musical communication and inspiration is real and powerful. I once saw a masterclass on that work given by an eminent pedagogue who said that in order to do justice to the music, the student should study the opera. HOGWASH!!!
Along the same lines I had an epiphany when I listened to Louis Armstrong singing some standard songs, and then in the same performance playing the song on the trumpet. The instrumental version was completely different from the sung version — in tempo, style, feeling, and even the basic notes. He clearly felt no obligation to have the instrumental version reflect the feeling or content of the vocal version. On the contrary, the instrumental version utilized the unique qualities of the trumpet and whatever other instruments were playing at the time.
So summing up: the instrumental transcription has its own truth and its own meaning, and it is not “really about” the text of the vocal work that it was derived from.
Fauré, I can imagine, would be surprised by what you wrote. And in any case, to my ear, regret and sadness are built into the music’s DNA.
I understand what you’re saying about some pieces taking on a life of their own. But the unintended dissonance here is really quite striking. A song about unhappy love, played at a wedding. You can say it’s not about unhappy love anymore, but to some of us it still is about that. And at one time I’m sure that would have been true for many more people.
For an even stranger example of lost meaning, I’m thinking of a Pavarotti documentary I watched decades ago. When they talked about his supposedly warm and close family life, what he was singing on the soundtrack was Questa o quella. A complete contradiction, for anyone who knows Rigoletto, to any notion of a faithful husband.
So have opera arias, too, lost their meaning? They’re just something people sing? (Or — as someone once suggested to me — did the filmmakers put that on the soundtrack at just that point to say, “Well, really things aren’t as we’re describing?”)
Roy is right… Artistic license… If you are good enough, you can juxtapose opposite meanings and some critic will always declare it to be brilliant! So of course the greatest entertainer of his century was good enough to pull it off. And today you hear intentional opposites and redefinitions of pop culture lyrical tropes in great hip hop all the time. Part of the playful banter between artist and audience in any living art!
Where’s Leonard Bernstein, Victor Borge, and PDQ Bach when we need them? I learned a lot about classical music from them. Who are the prominent music “educators” today?
In jazz (another marginalized, yet frequently used music), people know about Wynton Marsalis (also a classical trumpeter) as an educator and historian. I learned about both by listening and reading. THta’s how we non-musician, music lovers go about listening and trying to understand music meant to be actively heard.
Bernstein here as requested (I’ve posessed classytroll to deliver a timely quote below )…
It’s not easy to listen to a piece and really know and feel what’s going on in it all the time. It may be easy to TAKE, or pleasant to hear for many people; it may evoke fanciful images in the mind, or bathe them in a sensuous glow, or stimulate, or soothe, or whatever. But none of that is LISTENING. And until we have a great listening public, and not just a passively HEARING one, we will never be a musically cultured nation.
Out of my head Lenny! Every time I meditate some long dead composer’s words start swirling in my mind… They’ve all got such big egos they don’t hesitate to take over when my defenses are down.
But now that I’m back to being good old classytroll… Here’s my rebuttle.
We DO have a “listening public” and we ARE a “musically cultured nation”.
But we are LISTENING to hip hop…
Or at least we should be…
Never has an art evolved so quickly to include all that has come before (hip hop gladly welcomes classical strings and counterpoint) while also pushing us forward… Both musically AND culturally.
You doubt?
Listen to “All The Beauty in this Whole Life”, the latest album by Brother Ali.
He’s an albino Muslim with a black son.
His song “Dear Black Son” is just staggering… Brilliant lyrics, timely topicality, personal resonance…
This is a LIVING art!
The conversation between artist and well informed audience is vibrant in hip hop…
Maybe classical artists should take notes?
And Lenny, if only you’d lived to see just how musically cultured America has become!
Maybe we aren’t the best at replicating the works of other times and cultures… But OUR art form that WE created is conquering the world (in every language)!
Yeah, the mindlessness is bad… Even when my kid plays a Beethoven Minuet on the violin…. no one knows anything about it, hard to get them to listen to explanations… That is why my friends play with a chorus, the Schiller Institute NYC Chorus…. do memorials for Martin Luther King and Bobby F Kennedy… the Beethoven Mass in C Major and Afro Amer spirituals… at least it means something https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dona-nobis-pacem-beethoven-mass-in-c-major-tickets-45987062542 Sunday Jun 10th in NYC, see link.
So many ways to give classical music meaning. Combining, maybe, the meaning it had in the past, when it was new, with meanings we give it now.