Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

Anniversary issue

Above Death Valley, 2016.

I became a New Yorker staff writer twenty-five years ago, when Tina Brown made the inscrutable decision to hire a twenty-eight-year-old person as the magazine’s music critic. I am everlastingly grateful to have been given the opportunity. I thought I’d mark the occasion by choosing, out of the 750 or so pieces I’ve written for The New Yorker, twenty-five articles of which I’m especially fond. A number of them are caught up in personal experiences that are inseparable from the act of writing: moments of discovery, visits to remarkable places, memories of people who are gone. My three favorites, if anyone is wondering, are Death Valley, Luranah Aldridge, and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. Deep thanks to the hundreds of editors, copy-editors, fact-checkers, proofreaders, photographers, illustrators, make-up producers, web designers, and other New Yorker employees who have improved my work over the years; deepest thanks to David Remnick and Daniel Zalewski.

Schubert, Jan. 27, 1997.

Bob Dylan, May 10, 1999.

Kiki and Herb, May 19, 2003.

Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, March 22, 2004.

Leon Fleisher master class, April 19, 2004.

Björk, Aug. 23, 2004.

In memoriam Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Sept. 25, 2006.

John Luther Adams, May 12, 2008.

Fictional composers, Aug. 24, 2009.

Meredith Monk, Nov. 9, 2009.

Gardiner's Bach cantatas, April 11, 2011.

Ten Bars of Wagner's Ring, April 25, 2011.

The Busoni Piano Concerto, Jan. 9, 2012.

Harry Kessler, April 23, 2012.

Love on the March, Nov. 12, 2012.

Shakespeare, Wagner, Aldridge, July 29, 2013.

Norman Lloyd, Dec. 14, 2015.

Music and violence, July 4, 2016.

Death Valley, Nov. 14, 2016.

Kate Soper, Feb. 27, 2017.

Willa Cather, Oct. 2, 2017.

Street Symphony, Jan. 1, 2018.

Salieri, June 3, 2019.

Bristlecone pines, Jan. 20, 2020.

My mother and Brahms, April 16, 2020.

Ash Fure's Hive Rise, Hildur Guðnadóttir

Grinding Bass. The New Yorker, Dec. 13, 2021.

For Alvin Lucier

Allan Kozinn has an obituary in the New York Times.

Another Bára Gísladóttir moment

Via Tim Rutherford-Johnson.

Musical censorship in Poland

The celebrated Polish composer Paweł Szymański has issued the following statement. The piece that was heard in place of Szymański's it's fine, isn't it? was Arvo Pärt's Fratres. It would be interesting to know what Pärt thinks of this substitution.

I want to inform all who are interested that the program of the concert at the National Philharmonic in Warsaw on 20 November 2021 has been censored (organized as part of the third Eufonie International Festival of Central and Eastern Europe). As a result of these censorial activities, my piece it's fine, isn't it? for flute and orchestra, to be premiered last night, was taken off of the program.

On 12 November 2021, I was contacted (informally, in private conversation) with a request that I remove from the work mentioned above a sound clip to be played from a portable boom box, which forms an integral part of the piece. That clip contains a snippet from a public statement by Jarosław Kaczyński (leader of the ruling political party): "We won't be made to say that white is white and black is black."

I understand this to indicate self-censoring of the work. I have no influence on censoring activities by third parties; however, extracting them with my own hands is certainly no norm for me. On second thought, I accepted my interlocutor's argument that some people involved in performing the piece could feel implicated against their preferences with a politically satirical message, with my piece as the medium. Therefore (and despite the fact that the content of the piece is solely the composer's responsibility), bearing in mind good inter­personal relations, I reached a solution that was a wide-ranging compromise (in particular, a compromise made with myself). I proposed that for the premiere performance (on 20 November 2021), the clip that has been mentioned containing the Kaczyński quote be replaced by another sound clip saying "Text here has been removed by self-censorship."

For days I awaited a reaction to the compromise I proposed; at last, two days before the premiere, I received an e-mail sent from a private mailbox: "Paweł, with the organizers we've made the uncomfortable decision to remove your flute concerto from the program of the concert on 20 November 2021." To my message that "I await precise, formal information as to who specifically has made the decision to cancel the premiere performance of it's fine, isn't it? and what the reason was," I have received no answer.

Several reflections come to mind:

1. Despite the fact that Poland's constitution assures freedom of expression and forbids preventive censorship (Article 54) and grants freedom of artistic endeavor (Article 73), censorship actually still exists. The decision as to what can be said in public (shown, played, etc.) is made by unspecified, undisclosed parties operating by undefined rules. There are entire volumes written describing such informal censorial activities.
2. Quotes from Jarosław Kaczyński are also subject to censorship.
3. Information about applying censorship is also subject to censorship — we remember this too well from the previous era. Censors don't want to be accused of censorship.
4. As it turns out, even the information about applying self-censorship is subject to censorship. This is implied by the fact that the compromise proposal I've mentioned above was not accepted. When by the very course of nature the only person a maker can accuse of self-censorship is themself.
5. Censorship activities expand: they now encroach on the field of music.

There's an additional aspect: the affected person in this turmoil is the soloist, Łukasz Długosz, the flute virtuoso who put much work and his talent into preparing the demanding solo part. That he could not present this in front of an audience is only because someone, in a free, democratic country, is scared of the term "self-censorship."

During last night's concert, a voice announcing from the loudspeakers informed the audience that my piece would not be performed and would be replaced by a different one — giving no reason. It's fine, isn't it?

Paweł Szymański, November 21, 2021

(translated by volunteers)

Bookshelf

New and recent publications of interest.

Kira Thurman, Singing Like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms (Cornell UP)

Paul Griffiths, Mr. Beethoven (New York Review Books)

Theodor W. Adorno, The New Music: Kranichstein Lectures, trans. Wieland Hoban (polity)

Matthew Aucoin, The Impossible Art: Adventures in Opera (FSG)

Charles Hiroshi Garrett and Carol J. Oja, eds., Sounding Together: Collaborative Perspectives on U.S. Music in the 21st Century (University of Michigan Press)

Daniel K. L. Chua and Alexander Rehding, Alien Listening: Voyager’s Golden Record and Music from Earth (Zone Books)

Davóne Tines

 Becoming Vocal. The New Yorker, Nov. 22, 2021.

A Nightafternight playlist

New and recent releases of interest.

Chopin, Nocturnes; Stephen Hough (Hyperion)

Baritenor: arias by Mozart, Méhul, Spontini, Rossini, Adam, Donizetti, Verdi, Thomas, Offenbach, Leoncavallo, Lehár, Wagner, Ravel, Orff, Korngold; Michael Spyres, Marko Letonja conducting the Orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg and the Choeur d’hommes de l’Opéra national du Rhin (Erato)

Liza Lim, The Oresteia, Yuè Lìng Jié, Mother Tongue, The Navigator; Julie Edwardson, Deborah Kayser, Tyrone Landau, Andrew Muscat-Clark, Grant Smith, Jeannie van de Velde, Piia Komsi, Omar Ebrahim, Philip Larson, Talise Trevigne, Andrew Watts, with Sandro Gorli, Simon Hewett, Jean Deroyer, and Manuel Nawri conducting ELISION (Huddersfield Contemporary)

Time Travelers: works by Bach, Handel, Ravel, Ligeti, Barber, Brahms, Couperin, Rameau, Adès; Inon Barnatan (Pentatone)

Anima Aeterna: arias and works by Zelenka, Fux, de Almeida, Handel, Nucci, Manna; Jakub Józef Orliński, Fatma Said, Francesco Corti leading Il pomo d'oro (Warner)

Jessie Cox, When You're a Star (unknown tapes)

Ameriscapes: works by Loeffler, Hanson, Ruggles, Cowell; Robert Trevino conducting the Basque National Orchestra (Ondine)

Bach, Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut and Jauchzet Gott in allen Lande, Handel, excerpts from Brockes Passion and Giulio Cesare; Sabine Devieilhe, Raphaël Pichon leading Pygmalion (Erato)

Du Yun and Raven Chacon, Sweet Land; The Industry (The Industry Records)

Florence Price, Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3; Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra (DG)

Michael Pisaro-Liu, Tombstones; Barbara Dang and Muzziz (elsewhere)

Gubaidulina, Dialog: Ich und Du, The Wrath of God, The Light of the End; Vadim Repin, Andris Nelsons conducting the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig (DG)

Brahms, Symphony No. 4, MacMillan, Larghetto; Manfred Honeck conducting the Pittsburgh Symphony (Pentatone)

Josquin the Undead: Grandelavoix (Glossa)

For Nelson Freire

Jonas Kaufmann, Michael Spyres

Divo. The New Yorker, November 1, 2021.