Month: May 2018

Musical prodigies

Last night, I attend a fascinating concert presented by the Hispanic Society of America, entitled “I am Carreno.” Preceded by a short lecture on the life of Teresa Carreno, the program was performed by 4 musicians dressed in mid-19th c. attire, reciting from contemporaneous accounts of Carreno’s performances and performing not only her own music, but music by her many teachers, mentors and students. I did not know about her before this, but from what I learned (and have since read on-line), she was a prodigious talent. Already touring at age 12, she was not only an extraordinarily talented pianist, but could do it all. When meeting Bellini, he recognized her talent, and started her on the road to operatic performance as well, at which she also excelled – and had a career spanning decades as both a pianist, composer, operatic soprano, conductor and impresario.

The program included music by Bellini, Gounod, Liszt, McDowell and others who Carreno either studied with, taught, married or simply met along the path of her extraordinary career. While the performances of these varied works was well done, I have to say that, except for the one Mozart aria, I found all of the music entirely trite. The composers on the program, were, by and large, musical giants who were born with nearly limitless natural skill. But, it reminded me that talent isn’t all. Liszt is, to my mind, the pre-eminent example of this. Another Mozart, except with Mozart’s profundity missing. An incredible talent who wrote an amazing quantity of music that I never want to hear (some exceptions to this, here and there). The compositions on the program, to my mind, mostly belonged in the composer’s trash can rather than in the repertoire. Watching some of them performed, given their level of difficulty, can be impressive – but the musical result just doesn’t merit all of the technical fireworks. The music by Carreno herself that was on the program, fell into that same category. I am curious to listen to more, to see if that is the case, but at least from what I heard last night, as a composer, her musical talent, however amazing, wasn’t enough to join the ranks of the great composers.

While it is an important question, I don’t believe I can define what it is that separates the music that makes my spirit soar from the music which merely entertains (at best) or is annoyingly trivial (at worst).

Music for Peace Project

Dating back to when I stood, as a ten year old, on the Gettysburg battlefield site, at the spot where Pickett began his ill-fated charge, the ease with which men choose to go to war has always entirely baffled me. Always possessed of a vivid imagination, standing there with the sounds and terrors of battle raging in my mind, I had an intense realization that grown-ups who could bring this upon themselves, for any reason, were insane. I knew the world could and should be different, and grown-ups who chose otherwise were not to be trusted.
While I can intellectually explain to myself the many reasons that men are led into war, emotionally I never can quite get it. The logic of peace seems so profound, why invent reasons to go to war – but men do – for all the wrong reasons, whether money, power, boredom, rage or whatever.

A deep underlying belief that peace is possible, despite all evidence to the contrary, has motivated my inner life ever since that sunny afternoon walking across that field of knee high grass. It has certainly motivated my musical life, as I continue to write music intended to inspire thoughts about the possibility of peace. My most recent work in that vein sets, for mezzo soprano and orchestra, seven poems from a powerful anthology edited by the American poet Sam Hamill, in which he collected the best from submissions by over 11,000 poets who responded to his call, in the year following 9/11, for poems to protest the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A side benefit of my working on this music was connecting, via LI and FB, with the poets, sharing the common desire that reasonableness would prevail over war. There is always another way, if people only search for it.