In My Changer, 3/31/03

Palestrina

Missa Papae Marcelli

Choir of Westminster Abbey, Simon Preston, dir.

Deutsche Grammophon Archiv

This is a lovely and well-recorded performance that is entirely at the service of the music, and what music it is. I apologize in advance to my classically inclined for the upcoming history lesson, but I need to discuss the context of this work to capture my response to it. Before Palestrina, sacred vocal music had gone from the simple two-part organum counterpoint of Leonin and Perotin in Notre Dame to music in five, six, eight, or even more parts (40 in Thomas Tallis’ Spem in alium). The parts moved within the medieval modes, passed down from the Greek, so already the music sounds a bit alien to our diatonically trained ears. But what sounds most alien is how little relation the words have to the music. There are musical effects that reflect the words, to be sure; common are an opening of a tonal cloud at the words “Et resurrexit” in many masses, or grave dissonances for “Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis,” the plea for forgiveness of sins. And the music itself is quite literally fantastic: cascading melismas on any and all vowels, lines following independent courses that sometimes even included polyrhythms, ornaments of every kind and description, cadences most emphatic for their simplicity, the purity of bare vocal tones filling a cathedral.

But the metaphorical structure created by these lines, as fascinating as it is to behold and explore, has no visible features; the words being sung don’t come across in among this profusion of invention. I went to many concerts of Renaissance music when I was 13 or so and just beginning to be interested in classical music, and I couldn’t for the life of me follow the music where it was going. None of the syllables seemed to be reflected in the voices of even the Tallis Scholars, the most renowned (if not the best) Renaissance vocal music group.

It wasn’t any easier for Renaissance listeners than it was for me, apparently, and while I had been experiencing the music in an essentially secular concert setting, it was originally supposed to be inspiring devotion in Roman Catholic congregations. Having been thrown for a loop by the simple, hummable and catchy, and thus extremely powerful, hymn tunes of Martin Luther, the Catholics were about to scrap the whole polyphonic experiment when Palestrina stepped up to claim that he could write polyphony in the received style but which would allow the words to sing out, as it were. The Missa Papae Marcelli was his demonstration, and listening to it, after having listened only to old-style Renaissance polyphony for most of my life, was as much a shock as the sun is when you emerge from a cave. The words were there! They sounded beautiful! They sounded!

I tend to listen to this CD when I am stressed, because of the sweet tones of the singing and the lucid beauty of the music, and it has been a stressful time in Washington, D.C. lately. Which has not prevented me from indulging my taste for 20th-century desperation and languor, as you will see below.

Sergei Rachmaninov

Piano concerto no. 3 in D minor

Martha Argerich, piano; Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin, Riccardo Chailly, cond.

Philips

Buy it here

In the Oscar movie season beginning in December 1996, I was extraordinarily unhappily ensconced in a cinderblock dorm at the University of Chicago, and one of the movies that was taking critics’ breaths away was “Shine.” This film starred Geoffrey Rush as David Helfgott, a pianist whose exertions both mental and physical drove him insane, until he was able to lead himself back by conquering his fear of the piano. The real music that pushed him over was synedoche’d in the film by the above concerto, popularly known as Rach 3. A couple people in my dorm saw the film and purchased Helfgott’s CD (made post-insanity, of course) of the Rach 3; I stuck with my Earl Wild and Martha Argerich versions, hearing their copies of the Helfgott and concluding it was as awful as all the critics had made it sound.

Anyone who can play the Rach 3 has talent, but Helfgott didn’t have genius, and Wild and Argerich do (did, in the late Wild’s case). I like the Wild recording a lot, with its unabashed ferventness, impeccable technique and unerring way with Rachmaninov’s musical argument. But I always come back to the Argerich, which has all that plus a variety of beautiful tone that Wild could never command and a white-hot intensity that shoots through everything—even when she backs off in the cadenza by choosing the shorter, easier, more beautiful one, it seems to be a decision forged in fire. (Did you know that Martha Argerich was incredibly hot when she won the International Chopin Competition at age 19? Never have I seen such smokingness in a female instrumental soloist. But I digress.)

Anyway, that lead is there because I wanted to mention one time when I was talking to a dormmate of mine. He entered my room when I had Argerich in the Rach 3 in my changer and playing. He said, “Is this that ‘Shine’ music?” and I said it was, though not in Helfgott’s performance.

We chatted on other topics for a couple minutes as the slow movement drew to a close, its resigned lyricism having played out the string. When the arresting octaves of the beginning of the finale rung out over my speakers, I jumped a little bit from the bed where I had been sitting and began making little sharp motions with my hand, clenching and unclenching my fist along with the music, grabbed by the concerto and responding.

This dormmate had borrowed CDs of mine to play while he studied, and now he said, “I can see listening to this music to relax, or clear your mind. But it really excites you.”

“Yeah, it’s awesome,” I said.

“I could never find this exciting,” he said with a half-apologetic, half-mocking smile.

“Well, that’s why I love it and you find it pleasant occasionally,” I replied.

It’s sometimes been difficult being a young white person whose primary musical interests are classical and hip-hop. But whenever I start to question my devotion to those musics, I simply pop a good CD in my changer and let it erase all doubts.

Kevie Kev (Waterbed Kev)

"All Night Long (Waterbed)"

Sugarhill (Rhino reissue)

Buy a compilation with it here

Or sometimes I pop in a completely stupid CD. (I was reminded of this song by Mike Castle, but I'd been intending to write about it for a while.) Not that the greatest hits CD on which I find this track does not have more than its fair share of seminal essays of the Sugarhill era, from the justly celebrated opuses of the eponymous Sugarhill Gang to the Funky 4 + 1’s ebullient, exhilarating “That’s the Joint” to the joint that named its type, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message.” It also, however, does have this song, which is so full of nonsensical lyrics that it's actually quite memorable. (The producers also had the good taste to jack the Mary Jane Girls' "All Night Long" for the beat, and the legal acumen to append another word to the title so the jacking wasn't quite so obvious.)

Let us quote some of these lyrics (I am doing this from memory):