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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for April 14, 2016

Another openin’, another show (cont’d)

April 14, 2016 by Terry Teachout

oPaul Moravec and I are headed down to Florida this weekend for our latest premiere: John Sinclair and the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park are giving the first performance of our latest collaboration, an anthem for chorus and orchestra called Music, Awake! It was commissioned by the Bach Festival Society in honor of John’s twenty-fifth anniversary its artistic director. In addition to writing the text, I also wrote program notes for the premiere, which takes place on Saturday at 7:30 in Rollins College’s Knowles Memorial Chapel. The program, which will be repeated on Sunday at three p.m., also includes a complete performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

For more information or to order tickets, go here.

Here are my program notes, which will give you some idea of what the new piece sounds like. I hope you can come!

* * *

When the Bach Festival Society asked Paul Moravec and me to write a piece in honor of John Sinclair’s silver anniversary as its artistic director, it struck me at once that it should be an ode to music. Many great composers of the past, among them Handel, Purcell, Schubert, Chabrier, Vaughan Williams, and Britten, have written such works, and I thought it would be appropriate for us to seek to follow in their footsteps.

Not surprisingly, Paul agreed. “Everything a composer writes is, in part, an ode to music,” he says. “A musician devotes himself to an art that continually illumines his life with joy. Making music is a privilege, and sharing its power an honor. A composer shows his dedication to the muse through daily effort to achieve the ideal sound, the right harmony, the memorable melody. He expresses his thanks because, deep down, he knows that the art somehow justifies his being. As W.H. Auden says in his own ode to music: ‘You alone, alone, O imaginary song/Are unable to say an existence is wrong/And pour out your forgiveness like a wine.’”

ea9e29811cd072c00132f7c806a8cbc2In search of inspiration for the text, I looked at the last scene from The Winter’s Tale, a play that Paul and I both love, and found these words: “Music, awake her; strike!/’Tis time; descend; be stone no more; approach;/Strike all that look upon with marvel.” All at once the idea for a poem about music came to me. It would be what rhetoricians call an “apostrophe,” an exclamatory passage in which an inanimate object or idea—in this case, music itself—is addressed directly, as if it were alive. The poem, I thought, could be about what music does to us when we hear it and are, like Shakespeare’s Hermione, transformed by its magical power.

I began by changing Shakespeare’s first line to the more direct “Music, awake!” Next I decided to build the first stanza of the poem around “a,” “e,” “i,” “o,” and “u,” the five vowels that are the basis for all english-language singing. Seven hours later, at the end of a sleepless night of nonstop writing, I finished the first draft. As we did in our three operas, Paul and I then worked closely together to shape and simplify my words in ways that would inspire him musically.

“Music, Awake!” begins, as befits a festival, with a resplendent explosion of sound set in what Robert Browning called “the C Major of this life.” Dark clouds pass across the sonic sky as the soprano soloist implores “blesséd music” to “console us… and grant us peace,” but doubt is dispelled by the return of the opening choral fanfare, followed by what I hope Paul, who is modest to a fault, will forgive me for describing as a truly grand peroration.

To all this I need only add that we are proud and happy to have been invited to help commemorate this occasion. John is a distinguished musician—and a close friend. We hope that you find our joint contribution to this celebratory concert to be a fitting tribute to his great work.

* * *

UPDATE: To read the Orlando Sentinel’s story abut Music, Awake!, go here.

So you want to see a show?

April 14, 2016 by Terry Teachout

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:
• An American in Paris (musical, G, too complex for small children, reviewed here)
• The Color Purple (musical, PG-13, reviewed here)
• Eclipsed (drama, PG-13, Broadway remounting of off-Broadway production, closes June 19, original production reviewed here)
• Fun Home (serious musical, PG-13, many performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• The King and I (musical, G, perfect for children with well-developed attention spans, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, many performances sold out last week, closing Jan. 1, reviewed here)
• Les Misérables (musical, G, too long and complicated for young children, closes Sept. 4, reviewed here)
• On Your Feet! (jukebox musical, G, reviewed here)
• She Loves Me (musical, G, suitable for bright children capable of enjoying a love story, extended through July 10, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:
• Stupid Fu**ing Bird (serious comedy, PG-13, contains nudity, closes May 8, reviewed here)

arcadiaw2CLOSING SOON IN CHICAGO:
• Arcadia (serious comedy, PG-13, closes May 1, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN COLUMBIA, MARYLAND:
• Hunting and Gathering (comedy, PG-13, closes April 24, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:
• Hold On to Me Darling (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)
• Sense & Sensibility (serious romantic comedy, G, remounting of 2014 off-Broadway production, reopens June 17-Oct. 2, original production reviewed here)

Almanac: Thomas Mann on admiration

April 14, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“I have always been an admirer. I regard the gift of admiration as indispensable if one is to amount to something; I don’t know where I would be without it.”

Letter, 1950, quoted in Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Thomas Mann and His Family

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, ran earlier this season at New Orleans’ Le Petit Theatre. It previously closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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