Archives for November 2003

TT: Here’s how

November 19, 2003 by Terry Teachout

I went to a classical concert last night about which you probably haven’t yet heard–though I expect you will.

The Elements String Quartet, a comparatively new ensemble (it was founded in 1999), recently commissioned 16 composers to write short pieces for string quartet inspired by evocative photographs of the composers’ own choosing–wedding photos, pictures of their parents, candid snapshots, vacation scenes, whatever. The Elements Quartet has been previewing these pieces throughout 2003, and on Tuesday the group played all 16 at Manhattan’s Merkin Concert Hall.

Here are some striking things about “Snapshots,” the title given by the quartet to this project, which was underwritten by a foundation called Premiere Commission, Inc.:

The string-quartet literature is all but devoid of short, free-standing pieces. Quartet programs generally consist of three or four large-scale works. The 16 “Snapshots” pieces, by contrast, can be used invidiually to open or close a program–or played as encores–in addition to being performed as a full-evening unit. They can also be programmed in smaller groupings of three or four pieces at a time.

The “Snapshots” pieces are widely and exceptionally varied in style. Some are light, others fairly weighty (though never ponderous). A few of the composers, like John Corigliano and David Del Tredici, are well known in the classical-music world, but most are less familiar. Several of the pieces are by non-classical composers, including Lenny Pickett, the musical director for Saturday Night Live, and jazz musicians Regina Carter and John Patitucci.

All 16 pieces are immediately accessible to the untutored ear. (Most, in fact, are unabashedly tonal.)

The members of the Elements Quartet talked to the audience from the stage about several of the pieces and the photos that inspired them, and introduced all the composers who came to the concert. This sort of thing is standard operating procedure for the group, which is known for its informal on-stage demeanor.

Theater designer Wendall K. Harrington took the 16 photos and wove them into a handsome-looking evening-long video that was shown during the concert on a large screen placed on stage behind the Elements Quartet. (The actual photos were hung in an upstairs gallery where a post-concert reception was held.)

Merkin Hall was full. I’ve never seen so large and enthusiastic a crowd at a program consisting entirely of new music for string quartet.

What about the music? Well, I liked eight pieces, disliked four, and didn’t feel strongly either way about the other four–a staggeringly high batting average for a new-music program. I was particularly impressed by Justine Chen’s “Ancient Airs and Dances,” John Corigliano’s “Circa 1909,” Daron Hagen’s “Snapshot: Gwen and Earl’s Wedding Day, December 20th, 1951,” Paul Moravec’s “Vince and Jan: 1945,” and Chen Yi’s “Burning” (the only 9/11-inspired work), all of which I want to hear again as soon as possible. Also noteworthy was Sebastian Currier’s “REM,” the shortest work on the program, a brilliantly effective little scherzo that will make a terrific encore piece.

Aside from the music, what struck me most forcibly about “Snapshots” was the extent to which it departed from prevailing norms of classical concertizing without degenerating into silliness or pandering. Unlike the Kronos Quartet in its heyday, the members of the Elements Quartet don’t wear outr

TT: Up there on a visit

November 18, 2003 by Terry Teachout

Ingmar Bergman has fallen from fashion, but I well remember when he was the very model of a Foreign Filmmaker, the man whose movies embodied everything that wasn’t Hollywood. Those, of course, were the days when Hollywood wasn’t cool: if you wanted to impress your date, you took her to a Bergman. (A little later on, it was O.K. to take her to one of Woody Allen’s ersatz-Bergman movies.) Now he belongs to the ages, and I know more than a few self-styled film buffs who’ve never seen any of his work.

I don’t mean to sneer. Except for Smiles of a Summer Night, I hadn’t seen any of Bergman’s early films since my college days–not until last night, when I watched the Criterion Collection CD of Wild Strawberries in the company of a film-loving friend. We’d been planning to get together for weeks to watch it, and a hole opened up simultaneously in our schedules, so we sent out for Vietnamese food, planted ourselves on the couch, and let ‘er rip.

Here are some fugitive observations gleaned from our evening:

Wild Strawberries is much lighter in tone than I recalled, and actually made me laugh out loud quite a bit. (It’s rather like the middle-period novels of Henry James, which always turn out to be funnier than you expect.)

The surrealistic dream sequences–especially the examination scene–haven’t aged well. To contemporary eyes they seem obvious, even quaint.

The pacing is slow–not painfully, but noticeably.

The lighting is superlatively good.

When I was young, Wild Strawberries struck me as exactly what old age must be like. (Had it been a novel, I would have scribbled neatly in the margin of the last page, “This is true.”) Now that I’m middle-aged–and eight years older than Bergman was when he made it–I know better. It’s far too benign, albeit gorgeously so. It reminds me of what an old music critic once said to me about Der Rosenkavalier: “It’s by a young man pretending to be an old man remembering his youth.”

As soon as I got home, I looked Bergman up in David Thomson’s New Biographical Dictionary of Film, where I found the following paragraph:

Many people of my generation may have joined the National Film Theatre in London to see a retrospective survey of Bergman’s early films after The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries had come to represent “artistic” cinema. The first critical articles that I struggled with–as reader and writer–were on Bergman. Inevitably he suffered from being so suddenly revealed to a volatile world. Looking back, it seems no coincidence that those two films are his most pretentious and calculating. Within a few years he was being mocked and parodied for his earnestness and symbolism. The young cineastes led to the art houses were rediscovering the virtues of the American films that had delighted them as children. The new French cinema endorsed that love of development and replaced Bergman’s concentration with improvisation, humor, offhand tenderness, and a non-Northern feeling for the beauty of camera movements as opposed to the force of composition.

I quote Thomson at length because I couldn’t have said it better myself, though I wouldn’t have put it quite that harshly. Wild Strawberries is a beautiful movie–one that knows how beautiful it is, and wants you to know, too. The older I get, the less readily I warm to that kind of art, be it film, painting, music, the novel, or what have you. This isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy revisiting Wild Strawberries after a quarter-century. I did, very much. But I don’t know whether I’ll ever feel the need to see it again, whereas I rarely let a year go by without watching The Rules of the Game. Which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about me, aesthetically speaking.

TT: Almanac

November 18, 2003 by Terry Teachout

“He was the first important composer since Mozart to show that seriousness is not the same as solemnity, that profundity is not dependent upon length, that wit is not always the same as buffoonery, and that frivolity and beauty are not necessarily enemies.”

Constant Lambert (on Emmanuel Chabrier), Music Ho!

OGIC: Fortune cookie

November 18, 2003 by Terry Teachout

“I think that if I get into the habit of writing a bit about what happens, or rather doesn’t happen, I may lose a little of the sense of loneliness and desolation which abides with me. My circumstances allowing of nothing but the ejaculation of one-syllabled reflections, a written monologue by that most interesting being, myself, may have its yet to be discovered consolations. I shall at least have it all my own way and it may bring relief as an outlet to that geyser of emotions, sensations, speculations and reflections which ferments perpetually within my poor old carcass for its sins; so here goes, my first Journal!”

Alice James, diary, May 31, 1889

TT: The road to hell

November 18, 2003 by Terry Teachout

Just a reminder that Our Girl and I are separately swamped with deadlines and other similarly pressing stuff. (I just finished writing my drama column for this Friday’s Wall Street Journal, and I’ll be tied up with the National Book Awards throughout most of Wednesday.) Good things are in the pipeline, but it may be a day or two before we can get them up on the page. Check this space for details. We’ll be back!

TT: Eau de nuit

November 17, 2003 by Terry Teachout

I was thinking about Crossfire, a 1947 film noir with a dream cast (Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan and Gloria Grahame, thank you very much), when a synapse fired in my brain and I finally remembered something I’d always meant to post.

I took down Lee Server’s Robert Mitchum: “Baby, I Don’t Care” from my bookshelf, turned to the chapter about Crossfire, and there it was–a wonderful little “found poem” that Server stumbled across in the screenplay. It’s a list of the film’s settings, compiled for the use of the production department:

Int. Cheap Rooming House

Ext. Police Station

Int. Hotel Washroom

Ext. Park Bench

Int. Hamburger Joint

Int. Moviehouse Balcony

Int. Bar

Int. Ginny’s Bedroom

Int. Street of Cheap Rooming Houses

Has there ever been a pithier summary of what makes film noir noir?

TT: All right we are two non-bloggers

November 17, 2003 by Terry Teachout

It might just be a slowish week here at “About Last Night.” Our Girl is up to her elegant neckline in life-related for-profit activity, and I’m kind of busy myself. Yesterday I saw a four-hour-long play. Today I’ll be writing a non-theater piece for the Wall Street Journal (can’t say more, details to follow). Tomorrow I write my drama column for Friday’s Journal (I saw two really good shows and a stinker). Wednesday will be totally devoted to the National Book Awards. I vote on the nonfiction prize in the morning, then I’ve got to run home, put on a black tie, and go to the Big Fancy Dinner that evening. On Thursday I plan to see Master and Commander, and I’ll be checking into a rest home the following morning. (Just kidding.)

The point is that postings this week may possibly be sporadic and/or erratic. Or not. You never can tell around this joint. At any rate, I posted quite a few items in the past couple of days, including the latest on the Great Blogosphere Contretemps, about which infinitely more below–the air is full of links–so there’s no shortage of stuff to read.

Which reminds me: if the Great Blogosphere Contretemps has brought you to “About Last Night” today for the very first time, go here to read an old posting explaining who we are and what we do. Alternatively, you can browse the right-hand column, starting at the top. Either way, all will be made manifest.

Contrary to any impression you may have gotten from the newspapers, we’re glad you stopped by. Please come again–and bring a friend.

P.S. To those who inquired, my Wall Street Journal piece about the Looney Tunes Golden Collection is finished but not yet published. I’ll let you know when it hits. (And yes, I do have some fresh Top Fives up my sleeve. All I have to do is write them and code them and post them and love them….)

P.P.S. To those of you who’ve been running into me at parties and asking who Our Girl is, she is beautiful and mysterious and wanted in at least seven countries. That is all you know and all you need to know.

P.P.P.S. Our Girl is finally getting her very own e-mailbox, possibly as soon as this week! Watch this space for details.