March 2004 Archives

Here's a press release from a major classical music publicity firm:

S U S A N  G R A H A M  S I N G S 

A T  Z A N K E L  H A L L

Well, stop the presses! Susan Graham, a singer, is going to sing! Who knew? And here I thought that she was going to tap dance.

Again we have a headline that doesn't tell us anything. Or, anyway, doesn't tell us enough, because, just maybe, the fact that Graham will sing at Zankel might be news. Zankel is Carnegie Hall's spiffy and artistic new performing space. The season there has been impressive; for Graham to join it might just be a mark of excellence. And there's also a subhead:

S U S A N  G R A H A M  S I N G S 

A T  Z A N K E L  H A L L

With Pianist Emanuel Ax

on April 12

So it's Graham and Ax, a reasonably stellar combination. Maybe that's news. And for busy critics, it's not dumb to put the date in a subhead; one of the first questions members of the press will ask themselves is always going to be, "So when is this concert?"

But I still think the headline's lame. Just compare it to

S U S A N  G R A H A M  W I N S 

N O B E L  P R I Z E  I N  P H Y S I C S

Quantum Theory Revolutionized

Or simply

S U S A N  G R A H A M  G I V E S  

O F F B E A T  C O N C E R T

though that's a little weak. Who says the concert's so unusual, and what makes it that way? But at least this headline tries to say something.

The press release, after the headline, reads like this:

Mezzo-soprano Susan Graham will sing in a Debussy-infused chamber music concert with pianist Emanuel Ax on Monday, April 12 at 7:30 p.m. in Zankel Hall at Carnegie, as part of Mr. Ax's season-long Perspectives concert series, featuring the works of Debussy, as well as those of composers who influenced him and works of composers influenced by him.

"Debussy-infused"? Sounds like somebody's been reading too many fancy menus ("Sauteed Gnats' Ears with Infusion of Debussy Husks in Alchohol"). But some will disagree with me, and think that this is lively writing. At least it's an attempt. What's more unfortunate is what comes afterwards. First, this is a chamber music concert. "Susan Graham Sings Chamber Music Concert" would have been a decent headline, since star concert singers don't usually do such things.

Second, this isn't a Susan Graham event; it's an Emanuel Ax event, part of a series -- and all the "Perspectives" events are important in New York's musical life -- that Ax is doing this year at Carnegie. So the headline should reflect this:

S U S A N  G R A H A M  S I N G S 

C H A M B E R  M U S I C  C O N C E R T

With Emanuel Ax, on "Perspectives" Series

Now, perhaps, we're getting somewhere. Note that the press release tries (or so I'd guess) to make the same point, more or less, by putting "Perspectives" in boldface. Though that's weak, because nothing explains exactly what "Perspectives" is. Maybe the publicists figured that "Perspectives" is a buzzword on the New York concert scene, and needed only to be highlighted, for the seven or eight critics in town who really care about it. Not, of course, that this will get anywhere with those critics' editors, of course, or with the non-music press.

And then how about the scholarly stuff about Debussy, underscored with that perky (not to say hyperactive) "influenced by him"? Well, I say nobody cares. Or, anyway, not many people in the audience care. Concerts are often planned with scholarly premises, but I don't think people often buy tickets with those premises in mind. Maybe, once again, that scholarly talk of influences might appeal to a handful of critics, who might then put the story in The New York Times. But then shouldn't the press release go on to talk about how that influence will actually be audible? Here's the program:

Debussy, Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp [italicized in the press release, though I believe the italics are incorrect; titles unique to a given piece belong in italics, but not purely descriptive names like this one, which other works might share]

Duparc, Songs by Duparc

Ravel,Chansons madécasses for Voice, Flute, Cello, and Piano

Saariaho, Je sens undeuxième coeur for Piano, Viola, and Cello (World Premiere)

Debussy, Ariettes oublieés

Very nice program. But, how, exactly, can we hear Duparc's influence in Debussy, and Debussy's in Ravel and Saariaho? (Especially in Saariaho, since not everyone will know her work.) The press release should briefly tell us, but it doesn't. Here's the next paragraph:

In addition to Debussy the April 12th program includes works by Duparc, Ravel, and Saariaho [best to give her first name, too, since, again, not everybody knows about her], whose Je sens un deuxième coeur for Piano, Viola and Cello, commissioned by the Carnegie Hall Corporation, will receive its world premiere. Ms. Graham and Mr. Ax will be joined by the Artists of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; [sic; that should be a colon, not a semi-colon] Ransom Wilson, Flute; Paul Neubauer, Viola; Fred Sherry, Cello; and Nancy Allen, Harp.

And that's it. That's all we learn about the concert. The rest of the press release, two long paragraphs, wanders off in bios of Graham and Ax, each at least twice as long as it needs to be. There's nothing about how this probably wonderful concert is going to feel, or what the music's like (especially the premiere; what kind of composer is Saariaho, for those who might not know her?). Or about the marvelous way the instruments weave together on the program, appearing in various combinations, but never all together. Or about how the performers -- terrific musicians -- feel about the music, and about working with each other.

Plus, if we're going to be lectured at, in italics no less, about who influenced whom, why don't we hear from the composer who's alive to tell us what she thinks? What does Saariaho feel she learned from Debussy? How has he inspired her? Every question I've suggested here is a lost opportunity, a chance to make the press release worth reading -- and (I can't stress this enough) to make it interesting for people who don't usually think about classical music.

And yes, I know -- these press releases aren't aimed at people like that. But why aren't they? And how will we ever learn to talk to a new audience, if we can't even talk to each other? Note how weakly -- or, rather, with what forced and unconvincing strength -- the words "world premiere" were put in boldface type. Again, "world premiere" might be a buzzword for a small elite of critics, and sometimes it might well work. Critics, impatient with conventional programming, really might be interested in this concert simply because there's going to be a world premiere.

But what kind of world do we live in when the fact of a world premiere is important, but its nature doesn't rate even a single word? That's not a world with even a remote connection with art.

One last complaint. The Graham bio is undone by fulsome overpraise:

One of the most sought-after singers of our time, Susan Graham is celebrated worldwide for the lustrous timbre of her voice, the enchanting allure of her stage presence, and the fervent emotion that infuses [not again!] her varied repertoire.

She sounds like a queen being flattered by a courtier. Can't we just say, "One of the most sought-after singers of our time [which is certainly true], Susan Graham is celebrated worldwide for her shining voice, her strong presence on stage, and her powerful emotion"?

And, please -- not more than one infusion in each press release.

"Arresting Cellist Wins Award, Will Make Debut." Why not say something like that?

That was my advice, in my last post, to people writing classical music press releases. Why not start with a headline that tells us why we ought to care about whatever event the release promotes?

Drew McManus agreed. My suggestion, he e-mailed me, is simply "common sense."

But there's one little wrinkle. If you're going to write a headline that grabs attention and is also honest, the artist it's about has to have distinctive qualities, either personal or musical, and preferably both. But it's not common in our oddly crippled business to ask what those distinctive qualities might be.

Young Concert Artists (I don't mean to single them out, but it was their press release that, almost at random, I happened to write about) holds auditions every year. Somebody wins. That somebody, no doubt, is pretty good. The judges probably discuss the winner's playing, and could tell anyone who asked them exactly what it's like.

But nobody asks them, or, if they do -- and if the discussion is continued elsewhere in the organization -- nobody seems to think that these are things with any public relevance. Just as, I might add, when an orchestra picks a new music director, nobody talks about what, exactly, that conductor does with the music he or she conducts. That discussion might not even happen among members of the orchestra's staff and board, and certainly wouldn't be shared with the public. "She'd be the first to say she's not the best conductor of romantic music, but give her a muscular 20th century score…"

Not even a sanitized version of that would ever be aired: "Though of course she loves music of all periods, she has a special affection for 20th century works." Instead, the orchestra issues a boilerplate press release, about how exciting and acclaimed their new conductor is, complete with an eye-glazing list of all the orchestras that she's conducted. Which is exactly what Young Concert Artists did with its cellist (who, by the way, I hear is really very good), though of course substituting concerts for conducting gigs. Though -- and this is a rather crucial point -- they couldn't list very many concerts, because their winner is very young. Which makes it all the more important to tell us something else about her.

Let's not pretend this does no harm other than to make publicity ineffective. As I said in my last post, it helps create an impression that there's nothing going on in classical music. Worse still, I think it sets up a feedback loop with how musicians actually play. If there's not much talk about musicians' individual qualities, then musicians won't develop individual qualities. Or at least that their individuality -- as part of a larger understanding that every musician ought to make an individual statement (something taken for granted in pop music, by the way) -- won't often be an issue when they're being trained. (Which is exactly what happens in conservatories.)

That, in turn, makes publicists less likely to write about a musician's individuality. And so the blankness of classical music reinforces itself, each version of it strengthening the others. And we wonder why the world doesn't care about us!

My wife and I are both critics; we both get press releases, announcing classical music events. Their quality, it's fair to say, is dismal. Which isn't to say they aren't written with professional skill, or some reasonable imitation of that. But they don't say anything.

Example (chosen just because it came in the mail today; it's no worse than many others):

43d Young Concert Artists Series Presents
the New York Debut of
Romanian Cellist Laura Buruiana

March 9, 2004 -- On Tuesday, March 23, 2004, at 8:00 PM, Young concert Artists presents Romanian cellist Laura Buruiana at the 92d Street Y, in The Jerome L. Greene Foundation Concert, marking her New York debut.

Notice how cleverly the first paragraph tells us, for the second time, exactly what was in the headline. At the very least, the headline could say something different, something catchy, something designed to catch our interest:

Two-Headed Cellist to Make Debut

See how it works?

But -- seriously, now -- the headline ought tell us why Ms. Buruiana (whom I don't mean to make fun of, and who might be an extraordinary artist, for all I know) is worth attention. "Arresting Cellist Wins Award, Will Make Debut." Why not say something like that?

But then nothing in the press release answers the very crucial question of why anybody ought to care about this cellist, or her concert. Here's the next paragraph:

Laura Buruiana won First Prize in the 2003 Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York. She also won the Young Concert Artists European Auditions in Leipzig, Germany in 2002, hosted by the Hochschule für Musik und Theater "Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy." This season, Ms. Buruiana performs all of the Beethoven Sonatas with pianst Alexander Meinel in concert series in Schneeberg and Leipzig, Germany.

Translation: Laura Buruiana is a young cellist who's doing fairly well, especially in Schneeberg (where I'd assume she'll get more attention than she'll get in Leipzig). But why should we care? (And why, by the way, do people in the U.S. need to know who hosted those auditions?)

Next we read:

Born in 1980 in Bucharest, Laura Buruiana began to play the cello at the age of 10. La Gazetta del Mezzogiorno (Bari, Italy) called Ms. Buruiana "An artist of instinctive musicality, gifted with absolute mastery of the instrument…She knows how to totally immerse herself in the score and draw out the profound essence of the music."

Why do publicists keep using such ecstatic quotes from publications their readers have never heard of, and whose reliability they therefore can't assess? Quite frankly, it smacks of both incompetence and desperation. When I read the paragraph above, here's what I think: Laura Buruiana either has only played in small cities, or hasn't gotten good reviews in big ones. And until I'm proved wrong, I'll have to assume that the Gazetta -- the only newspaper in Bari, a small Italian city -- overpraised her. The review is on its face implausible. "Absolute mastery"? "Draw out the profound essence of the music"? You couldn't think of three cellists in the world who'd deserve such praise.

Ms. Buruiana (for whom I wish only good things) is playing Georges Enescu, Franck, Hindemith, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky. The press release ought to tell us something interesting about her and her approach to music. Maybe she's irreverent: "If I were Norwegian, I'd be playing Grieg. But since I'm from Romania, I have to play Enescu." What was it like growing up in Romania, one of the most unpleasant of all communist countries, and a wreck since communism fell? What obstacles stood in her way? What kind of cello teachers did she have?

And what's her favorite piece on her concert program? What's her favorite moment in that piece? Who's her favorite composer? What cellist does she most admire? What's the most distinctive thing about her playing? What music does she listen to for fun? What does she do when she's not making music?

These are simple things, hardly complex or profound. But if you don't mention some of them -- or others like them -- you won't give anybody any reason to attend the concert. Or to care about the cellist. Or to believe that classical music isn't dead and empty, with nothing of any human or artistic interest going on for anybody.

Here's the cover of a new classical CD, from a major label, Universal Classics:

It's ugly and ridiculous. Brendel looks like he's in pain; Goerne looks like he's roaring. (And it looks worse in real life than it does here.)

When we in classical music aren't doing music -- and especially when we advertise or market ourselves -- we live in the same world as everybody else. Other people design good CD covers. It's not hard to do. If we don't do it -- especially for an A-list recording like this one -- we look like fools.

…on the Fat Issue:

1. It's common and reasonable to make casting choices based in part on how people look. Just last week I heard dance teachers at Juilliard say that students routinely lose out in auditions because choreographers think they're too heavy. Someone at Juilliard's opera program said the same thing happens at regional opera companies. This isn't discrimination, in any legal or ethical sense. It's art; choreographers and directors care how their productions look on stage. Regional opera companies are able to care, I should add, because they have no chance to cast stars so powerful that opera fans, at least, won't care how they look. (Though people new to opera might care -- and that's a legitimate concern for opera companies that need to sell tickets.) And in movies or theater, forget about it! Of course looks matter, and not just for glamour. Suppose you're directing Hamlet, and you think Ophelia ought to be petite (a thought reinforced, perhaps, because you've cast someone very large in the title role). So you only audition small actresses. Nobody will say you're discriminating against tall ones.

2. Opera, at its highest levels, is a fairyland. It's spectacle, not theater. Look at Juan Diego Florez and Olga Borodina in the Met's current L'Italiana in Algeri. Both are fun, in different ways (and Florez is so fine an artist that even his recitatives are a treat), but on stage they have no relationship. They occupy space; they go through the motions of acting their scenes together. But you can't believe they're lovers, as the opera says they are, and it's hard even to imagine they'd be friends. That's why Baz Luhrmann's La Bohème on Broadway was such a treat. The characters actually seemed to have relationships, presumably honed in rehearsals where it was possible -- because there time enough, because the singers could have been cast with their relationships in mind, and because (or so I'd guess) they and Luhrmann actually cared about all this -- to develop real interaction.

4. So if we want opera to be more than spectacle -- if we want it to be real theatreical art -- I'd like to see productions that, implicitly, at least, admit that fat singers are fat. Which does not mean that the fat singers have to look silly. Many large women are beautiful; many men go absolutely wild for them. So if we have a fat woman singing Tosca, why not stage the production so that Scarpia and Cavaradossi -- the two men in the opera who want her -- both like large women? Scarpia's henchmen, meanwhile, could think he's crazy, and could watch in disbelief when he makes his move. (Of course this would have to be staged subtly.) Or think of L'Italiana. Olga Borodina isn't fat, but she's a lot larger than Florez, who's trim and slight. I once was at a club where large women -- some of them very large -- went to meet men. Some of the men were very small. To imagine one of the small men with one of the very large women was delectable, as much, I'm sure, for the parties involved as for an observer. In L'Italiana (though, again, Borodina isn't fat), this could have been a tasty subtext, with Florez -- or, rather, his character -- visibly thrilled every time he got close to Borodina, dreaming that he'd be enveloped in her hug. Mustafa, the Bey of Algiers, whom Borodina wraps around her little finger, could have been crazy for large women, too. (Which might have been realistic. I once knew a quite large woman who went to the Middle East every year on vacation; men liked her there, she said.) All the women at his court could have been plump, which of course would have given Florez's character a constant thrill, no matter how much he pined for Borodina. Though there would have been one exception -- Mustafa's wife could be slim, which would help explain why he wants to get rid of her (and, when, he tries to give her to Florez, why Florez shudders so much). Truth in casting -- it could be lots of fun.

(I think I accidentally posted an unfinished version of this! Sorry for any confusion.)

From a brief Q&A with soprano Andrea Gruber, in the April issue of Opera News:

All-time favorite singer: Janis Joplin.

One thing I absolutely cannot live without: My CD player, mini-speakers, and hip-hop, R&B or rap music before I go onstage.

Guilty-pleasure CD: Justified, by Justin Timberlake.

And from a longer Q&R with singer-songwriter Rufus Wainright, in the March 14 New York Times Magazine:

Hero: Verdi. This is a bust of him [pictured]. He's my favorite composer. I'd like to follow the examples he set in his career, writing opera that was at the same time very popular and deep and very moralistic and righteous. And he wrote his best work when he was in his 70's. There was this steady climb. And in the opera world, you have to call him Papa Verdi.

Classical music and pop -- in the real world (as opposed to the classical music ghetto), they penetrate each other.

(Written as I'm assembling a pop compilation for my Juilliard class, designed to show how engaging, unexpected, and serious pop music can be, both musically and culturally. Here's what I've got, working forward from the early years of rock & roll: Chuck Berry, "Memphis"; the Jaynetts, "Sally, Go 'Round the Roses"; Sam Cooke, "A Change is Gonna Come"; Otis Redding, "Cigarettes and Coffee"; Bob Dylan, "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands"; the Velvet Underground, "Heroin"; the Band, "Rockin' Chair"; James Brown, "Get Up (Sex Machine)"; Bruce Springsteen, "Incident on 57th Street"; the Sex Pistols, "God Save the Queen"; Paul Simon, "Graceland"; Public Enemy, "Fight the Power"; the Pet Shop Boys, "Being Boring"; PJ Harvey, "Happy and Bleeding"; Radiohead, "Airbag."

(Perfectly arbitrary, as any compilation like this will necessarily be, and of course open to major objections for everything it leaves out. What, no Beatles? Nothing from right now? My main defense: I really love these songs. And it's fascinating to see what making a compliation teaches me. I seem to like pop that's incantatory, and full of delicious textures, as in "Memphis," the Band, James Brown, "Graceland," Public Enemy, the Pet Shop Boys, and Radiohead. Or, really, all the songs. If "Heroin" isn't a shock to the textural ear, I don't know what is. And check out the background harmonica that runs all through "Rockin' Chair," exactly the kind of sonic nicety people go wild about in classical music.)

Yesterday I shopped in a new Staples that providentially opened a block a way from me. Office supplies right down the street! A genuine convenience for the busy freelancer.

And as I was coming out, I noticed a big Staples ad, featuring the tagline "That was easy(SM)." The SM, of course, is a superscript, marking -- like dog piss on a tree -- Staples territory, a service mark they've legally registered, so nobody can steal it.

I had to laugh. Service marks like that -- and we see a lot of them in advertising -- accidentally tell a crucial truth. They highlight words that aren't really language, words that are nothing more than verbal smoke, designed to make us believe something that nobody -- not us, not the company -- really thinks is true. In this case, Staples wants to believe that shopping there is easy, when in fact the store (much as I'm grateful for its location) is large and confusing, with envelopes offered in inconvenient quantities, and pens sealed in boxes, so you can't try them to find out which one you'd like.

Still, these service marks are helpful. In any advertisement, they unerringly point out the biggest lie.

I've been in the Bahamas, on vacation, and I've also been intoxicated with a piece I'm writing, the slow movement of a prospective symphony. It's emerging as a pop ballad, with classic doowop harmony; cheesy, some might say, but isn't it supposed to be? And all scored for a Haydn-size orchestra, two oboes, bassoon, two horns, and strings. Quite a trick, I might say, scoring a pop ballad for those instruments. Where's the rhythm section? (Though that's not the biggest problem -- cello and double bass, playing pizzicato, can make a lot of rhythm. What's hard is adapting the lightness, the transparency of a small classical orchestra to music that, first, isn't often light or transparent, and, second, is normally built from several sonic layers, which the instruments I'm using can't easily create.)

But speaking of Haydn, there's something I forgot in my post on his Creation. If, as I suggested, we perform it with an understanding that Adam and Eve really are the climax -- because, in Haydn's conception, God needed conscious beings to see the glory of His work -- then one crucial moment is the duet and chorus near the start of Part Three, sung by the two first humans. It conveys both the freshness of Eden and -- with its measured pace and especially with the awed timpani that begin about two minutes in -- the majesty of what's happening. Without any special fuss, the conductor should make the awe audible.

And my Creation post spurred this from my music critic colleague Marion Lignana Rosenberg:

That's delightfully rebutted in Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form, a book by my favorite musicologist (and certainly the most joyful I've ever read), Susan McClary, whom you can read about here and here. Susan shows that musical structure is historically conditioned, just like clothes, literary styles, and philosophical ideas (my comparisons, not hers). And why wouldn't it be? Don't composers breathe and bleed like everybody else? Susan's discussion is in no way reductive. Music, after she examines it, doesn't dissolve into its cultural meaning. Just the reverse -- it seems more vital (and more musical) than ever.

Not long ago I went to hear Haydn's Creation at the New York Philharmonic. The performance wasn't much to write home about -- Maazel conducted with a kind of distracted ferocity, pushing the music forward, but not doing much else with it. Barbara Bonney, the soprano soloist, sang badly out of tune; Bruce Ford, the tenor, was not much more than competent. Only Thomas Quasthoff, the bass soloist, stood out, singing with more truth and radiant delight than any singer I've heard in quite a while. I wanted to jump on stage, and say to Bonney and Ford, "Don't you see? That's how you do it!" Quasthoff made it sound very simple, and also seemed to violate a basic vocal law of nature, singing a firm and sonorous low D (normally available only to the lowest basses) while also floating light, delightful baritonal high notes.  

But I'm not writing here to talk about the performance. I want to talk about the piece itself. Why do we perform it? Well, under the standard rules of classical music, the answer is obvious. Haydn is a great composer, enshrined in the classical canon. The Creation is one of his important works. Of course we perform it. Why wouldn't we?

But those are the old rules, and it strikes me that they're mindless. The performance of standard classical music -- no matter how seriously we think we take it -- turns into something very like an assembly line. Here's the repertory; now go out and play it.

And beyond that, classical music needs to operate under new rules. The new rules say that the old rules aren't working. What we do has to mean something. Meaning isn't guaranteed, just because, under the old rules, we're performing masterpieces. We need to have reasons for what we do. These reasons have to make sense to a new audience. Or, to put this a little differently, we need to give people a reason for coming to hear us. That doesn't mean we have to be crass, gaudy, or dumb. It means that we have to be more artistic -- and, in the case of The Creation, treat the piece as if it meant something, as any theater company would, whenever it puts a play on stage.

So what does The Creation mean? Well, it's a setting of the start of the book of Genesis. It recounts the biblical creation story -- the making of the world, the sun, the moon, the sky, the weather, all the animals, and finally Adam and Eve -- which these days, for many people, might not mean all that much. So we can't say we're performing The Creation because of its intrinsic interest. Instead, we have to ask why it shouldn't seem obsolete. The Philharmonic, I might add, performed the piece with supertitles (the text, of course, was sung in the original German), so its meaning, whatever that might be, was fully thrust in front of us.

And what was that meaning? Or, to put the question differently, what did we get -- and, even more, what could we get -- from hearing this piece?

Well, we might say that Haydn wrote beautiful music. His music, we could say, is so lovely that the text doesn't matter. But that would make us musical bimbos. We'd also be trivializing Haydn, a man we otherwise claim was a great artist. If he set a text to music, shouldn't his music -- if he had any artistic feeling at all -- mean something that grows from the text? Think, once more, of a theater company. It wouldn't put on Shakespeare or Eugene O'Neill or August Wilson without asking what their plays mean. We ought to take the same responsibility for everything we present. The Creation has a text. If that text doesn't mean anything to us, why are we projecting it over the stage in supertitles?

So here's another idea. Haydn, depicting all those fairytale events, uses a delightful musical paintbrush. He shows us the primeval chaos, the great explosion of joy when God creates light, the rolling of the waves, the slither of the newly created worms. So even if the theology of Genesis might not speak to us, can't we sing and play The Creation just to share Haydn's love of nature, and his wonderful delight in it?

But then wouldn't we still be bimbos? Wouldn't we be treating The Creation as not much more than an upscale Carnival of the Animals? We wouldn't be artists -- we'd be zookeepers, and in fact low-grade zookeepers, who don't care much about ecology, wildlife preservation, or animal behavior, but just maintain the animals because they're cute. We'd also end up not quite knowing what to do with Haydn's powerful religious choruses. Haydn, after all, doesn't just glory in brooks, whales, and thunderstorms; he's awed by the majesty of God, the great Creator. So what do we do with that? Do we perform The Creation as a religious ceremony?

For religious people -- religious Christians, anyway -- that might not be a bad idea. Though of course contemporary Christians might have theological problems, if Haydn's religious views differed from theirs. And what about people who aren't Christians, or aren't religious at all? What will The Creation mean to them? One solution -- I think my parents would have liked it -- is to say that Haydn's religious choruses convey his awe before the majesty of nature, an awe that he felt as religious, but that people now can understand in a more secular way.

But even then we've got a problem, because, if we think about The Creation this way, Adam and Eve -- who dominate the last half hour of the piece -- become a dragging anticlimax. All the cute parts, with the storms and the animals, come much earlier. But soon enough that's over, and when we're left with Adam and Eve, they can seem a little dippy. They praise the Lord, they praise the morning, they praise the evening, they praise the fruit they eat, they ask the brooks and animals to praise the Lord; Eve, archiacally, says she'll serve her husband. ("Thy will is law to me. Thus the Lord hath ordained; and obeying thee shall bring me joy…") It's all a bit much, and at the same time, too little; it doesn't seem either majestic or intimate enough to deserve all the music Haydn wrote for it.

Of course, one problem here might be Haydn himself, who, as his operas show, wasn't the finest dramatist. Or, as the New Grove Dictionary of Opera puts it, "the first master dramatist among symphonists…reveals limited feeling for the ebb and flow of dramatic action…in his works written for the stage." So in the last part of The Creation he writes three duets in a row for Adam and Eve, of successively less interest, when two might have been enough.

But that only means we have to be even more serious in our approach to the piece, because we're fighting not just its archaic text, but a lapse of Haydn's own. What can we do?

Here's a suggestion. The Creation isn't only drawn from the book of Genesis. Haydn's librettist also used portions of the Psalms, and, much more important, things from Milton's Paradise Lost. So the story isn't only about joy and praise. Added to Genesis are three things that stand out for me. First, at the end of the First Day, "Chaos yields" (to quote the text), and "the ghastly hosts of hell flee" down to the abyss. With despair, rage, and terror, no less. So there's evil on hand from the beginning.

Second, we're told that the oceans and the eagles weren't enough: