Are we poorer for the death of the letter? (Books - The Leonard Bernstein Letters ed. Nigel Simeone)

I used to write 2, 3, and 4 page letters in complete and descriptive sentences to friends, family, and at least a couple of paragraphs to colleagues.  Now I dash off 40 2-line emails a day, and sometimes just 2- or 3-word text messages to friends.  As I read The Leonard Bernstein Letters, a collection of correspondence to and from the maverick conductor, composer, and music proselytizer from 1932 to 1990 edited by Nigel Simeone (Yale University Press, 2013), I wondered if the world had become a poorer place for the death of the letter, or, and perhaps this is even more import, will it be poorer when we try to reassemble the details of the working life, the creative process, or the origin of relationships of our great creators, thinkers, or leaders?  It's not the platform that I see as impoverished, goodness knows that I am an enthusiastic used of digital media.  The loss I fear stems more from the way we use those platforms for correspondence.  It is a loss of the depth with which the writer engaged in the scene, the effort taken to convey ideas, the level of intimacy expressed and sought, that were part of the tradition of letter writing.  Perhaps it's the art of letter writing that I mourn.  Even the physical acts performed: handwriting or typing, the folding of the paper, the addressing of the envelope - communicated intention.  Digital correspondence is stripped of the collateral communicative contents of those acts.  As I enjoyed the richness of Bernstein's working and personal relationships, I saw my understanding of the man, his process, and his collaborations grew.  Sure email saves time, but in not taking that time something is also lost.

What is more beautiful to listen to than a cello? Two cellos. (Bach Concerto for two violins in D minor - 2nd Movement - Largo)

These guys have gone viral doing cello duets of rock and roll, but their classical playing is also intensely musical - how they listen to each other.

The solo voice in NYC

The 105th Helicon Symposium, a series of salon-like chamber music concerts in intimate settings, presented solo works by Bach, including Johnny Gandelsman playing the Chaconne from the violin Partita #2 in D Minor. It's meditation listening to an extended piece for a single instrument while New York's own never-ending score plays in the background.


Brooklyn Rider
The Knights

Send in the Clowns - Judi Dench

From Sondheim's A Little Night Music - Judi Dench singing Send in The Clowns.



and, oh my god, Simon Russell Beale, Daniel Evans, Julien Ovenden, and Bryn Terfel in Everybody Ought to Have a Maid from the Sondheim Proms.

Martha Argerich, Joshua Bell, Mischa Maisky, Henning Kraggerud, Yuri Bashmet in Shotakovich

This will get your blood flowing. Gorgeous.

A little necrophilia to go with your incest? A rave for Stratas as Salome.

I thought with my adulterous literature kick (Heat and Dust and The Master Bedroom) I would add a dash of incest and a little necrophilia, so on Alex Ross' suggestion we got the 1970s film of Struass' Salome with Teresa Stratas. Wow! Thank you Alex. If you are not familiar with Oscar Wilde's script, it's classical epic meets bad horror film. Pretty over the top. Add Richard Strauss' music and then that raucous lyricism can really, well, sing. Strauss loved those crazy women - Elektra, Salome, Helen, Ariadne. He had a taste for the overwraught. His music is gorgeously lyrical and sort of cacophonous at the same time. In Salome, Elektra and Die Frau Ohne Schatten, all Strauss operas, you can hear Vienna but the machine is broken and has been repaired with parts from the junk shop - a sort-of steam-punk classical music. It's gorgeously right for this material. He wrote more strictly lyrical stuff too - check out his Four Last Songs if you don't believe me. More ravishing songs do not exist.

Anyhoo, Salome, the production by Gotz Friedrich is in a sort of 1970s biblical epic style. I expected Charlton Heston to appear at any moment. Everyone is a bit over-the-top, even Stratas but she is also perfect. Astrid Varnay, one of the reigning Wagnerian sopranos from the 1940s and 50s plays Herodias - Salome's mom, like a drag queen. This is a role typically played by over-the-hill sopranos. It's not supposed to sound nice. And she really gets into it. The crunching of the scenery can be heard for miles and she probably used the conductor's baton as a toothpick afterwards. Speaking of which the conductor Karl Bohm produces sweat-producing theatrical tension in the famous final scene that, with Stratas' singing, brought it home in a way I've never heard in any other version. Bernd Weikl sounds gorgeous as Jokhanaan. All in all this DVD is a really satisfying blend of film and opera and features the most committed and sumptuously sung performance of this sex-starved girl-woman you are every likely to see. Stratas really gets her. This is a rave-worthy film.

Elswhere on the web... A Man Comes Back to Life in a City of Death

Image from the site of Phil Douglis - check out his many lovely photos

Since I could not be less inspired this morning I thought I would send you over to John Coulthart's place for his lovely post on Bruges la Morte, Georges Rodenbach's late 19th century novel which is a symbolist study of the psychology of grief. It is set in Bruges - a small, ashen -colored, gothic town in Belgium, built on a set of canals. The photo at the top of the post is of Bruges. The town specializes in chocolate (as most of Belgium does) and lace, which creates an interesting juxtaposition. As one walks down the streets that are eternally in shadows because of their narrowness or their nearness to the cathedral, the shop windows are sparking with their displays of chocolate and lace. If you visit, there is a 15th century castle of the princes of Burgundy which now serves as a very affordable B&B. I hope you sleep soundly. It is haunted. Everyone at the sumptuously laid breakfast table the next morning had circles under their eyes.

One of my chief reasons for linking you to JC's lovely post on Bruges la Morte - a truly under-appreciated work - is that it is the basis for Erich Korngold's 1920 opera Die Tote Stadt - an equally under-appreciated work. I know it sounds like a downer - it's not. The score is juicily romantic and the story combines compassion and imagination. It's one of my favorites. It's little surprise that Korngold, as a compatriot of Freud in early twentieth century Vienna, was drawn to this strikingly psychological story. Korngold lived in the bubbling cauldron of scientific/ philosophical/artistic change that was post-World War I Vienna. Though he was also a contemporary of Schoenberg's and his music is undoubtedly modern, it is much more accessible and tonal. If you're not familiar with it, I highly recommend checking out a recording of Die Tote Stadt. I still think that the first one is best. Sadly, there is no video of Frank Corsaro's grand production with Ronald Chase's projections enveloping the entire stage.

Korngold was a child prodigy who fled Austria when the Nazis rose to power and ended up in Hollywood writing film scores - the work for which he is best known. His story is an interesting one. The very good biography I link to must be out of print and is pricey, but your library may also have a copy.

Jeff Buckley - Dido's Lament

Jeff Buckley Lament, as promised

Lament for a Genius - (Jeff Buckley - Live at the Green Mill)

My friend Sheila over at The Sheila Variations had a great memorial post to Jeff Buckley the great rock troubadour, who died ten years ago, remembering a concert she and I attended together at the Green Mill in Chicago. Not only the best live performance I've ever attended -period - but most influential one for me as a an acting teacher and director. My memory of that great evening was that it started with a depressed woman with very talented hair singing songs of doom to open the show. Every bit of her exuded gloom - her diction was depressed, her outfit was depressed, never mind the songs. She invited JB up on stage to do the final song with her. He reluctantly gave up his position at the bar where he'd been drinking a too much tequila, still in his overcoat, slunk up to the stage, and sat on the floor with his back to us so that she would have the limelight for the end of her set.

When JB and his band got up on stage they tuned and suddenly photographers were everywhere, shooting pictures which made Buckley very self conscious. I should just say that I'm going to take the liberty of imagining some of the thing's Buckley thought, and I could be way off. The tour was for the release of his then new album - Grace. He riffed vocally for a while with no words - just 'ah' - until they stopped taking pictures, he seemed to hate the photographs, The first several songs he could not find his footing, he would sing a piece from the album and would feel it was lifeless and just moan to us "God this sucks. I'm so sorry. I wish I could give you all your money back." It was agonizing to watch. He was a performer that was all about being with the music at this one moment in time that would never come again. His tour was about publicity and performing the same pieces over and over again like he did on the recording, but because he'd said some stupid thing to Rolling Stone or MTV - some really influential media outlet in music they threatened would cost him any future publicity- he was kicking himselft and censoring himself and just couldn't get past it. He was not meeting his own standards. He apologized after every one of the first few songs and then, I believe it was on Leonard Cohen's Halleluiah, he started the song and then quieted the band and began riffing a capella - I believe it was on the line "it's a cold and it's a broken Halleluiah" - I think he just couldn't stand not being with the music any more. He improvised for at least five or ten minutes on that phrase until he finally found his way to the moment he was in - disappointed in himself, in the conflict created by career and art, in love with the music, and finding that new moment in a song he's performed 100 times. I've always thought that that was the job of the artist - not just a live performer, but a painter or a writer too. It's the part of the work that is hardest in some ways. I'm obsessed with artists' creative processes, how we awaken ourselves to the moment we're in rather that the moment we think we should be in - because of our artists' expertise - about the right words or the prettiest notes - we get sidetracked and start trying to get out of the lousy moment we're in (which is the actual pay dirt) and instead get to some "better" thing we think should be there to make the song or the character or the sentence good, right, funny, brilliant - or in some way appealing to our vanity. That struggle is a tough one - it's a daily war for an artist - and the thing that always amazed me was that he fought that battle right in front of us. When I think of the really great performers I've seen - Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in concert (Alex Ross at The Rest is Noise who always has great writing on music, has some excellent posts on Hunt Lieberson), Kim Stanley on film, Billy Crudup in Waking the Dead, Geraldine Page in almost anything at all - that's what they all do. It's an act of courage really - to strive to be your imperfect self in front of everyone.

The rest of Buckley's concert was like being under a spell. It's sad that there is not more music to be heard from him, more of that haunting voice, great taste in songs (he sang Pink Floyd like Rock ballads, Edith Piaf, Benjamin Britten - stupendous stuff), and that we can't see him continue to wage that battle. I'm sure it would have been beautiful.

And what is more fitting than having him sing his own lament (let's see if I can figure out how to post this recording and slide show). Hah! I've succeeded, it's above. "Remember me, but ah, forget my fate." How apt.