Music criticism

I'm reading Forbidden Music: the Jewish composers banned by the Nazis, by Michael Haas. It quotes a lot from early music critics, and two particular examples appealed to me:

On page 60, Julius Korngold (father of the film composer, Erich Korngold) writes about atonal music, in 1925.

The tonality traitors know well why they're against expression. They have to make a virtue out of necessity. Atonal cacophony negates sensual, melodic, emotional sensibility. We read in Alfred Einstein's Dictionary of Modern Music  that 'The atonal melody is fundamentally a purely mechanical product and presents us with a contradictio in adjecto - an absurdity, since the comprehending spirit is incapable of finding any coherent relationship between the individual notes. One cannot write music based purely on a negative principal.' Hence the flight into linear contrapuntal writing that lucus a non lucendo - cannot be correctly voiced - causing a flight from all relationships into the tonality death-zone: the Twelve-Tone Row; this in turn results in objective, soulless attempts at messing about with material; the psychological effects of pitch and tone themselves being raised as the postulate of 'new music.'

I first read that phrase the Twelve-Tone Row as the Twelve-Tone Death Row...

The above was directed to some extent at another music critic, Eduard Hanslick, who was also no slouch at making his opinions heard. Here he is discussing another composer, Karl Goldmark, and his opera Merlin. However, he sidetracks into some sniping at Wagner...(from page 59)

For all the musical independence that Goldmark has now acquired, it's apparent that in Merlin he still stands under the influence of Meyerbeer and even more obviously, Wagner...His musical expression is impregnated with Wagner essences, though Goldmark captures different perfumes from the ones that have been floating about for the last 30 years. Occasionally, though, he inhales too deeply. King Arthur reminds one with his spongy sentimentality of Koenig Heinrich and the Landgraf Hermann...The love-duet is inconceivable without the templates of Lohengrin and Tristan. One is further reminded of Wagner with his unnatural emphasis on the dramatic, the restless chromatic breaks, and the flooding enharmonic modulations....Yet the means by which the work is composed is quite different from Wagner. With Goldmark, the sung melody remains at the centre, despite the fact that it doesn't exactly flow in generous quantities, but at least it isn't allowed into stammering declamation, which swings back and forth over a melody being spun out endlessly in the orchestra. Where there is need of a lyrical oasis, Goldmark places these within the architectural forms which became the jewels of opera in the days before Wagner: choruses with knights and elves and women; even strophic songs, marches, and a well-organised ballet are offered.

The Promise

Over the last few days we've watched the four episodes of Peter Kosminsky's TV film: The Promise. Like much of Kosminsky's TV work, it's quite provocative, and your sympathies change as the story unfolds.

Two stories interweave: one is set in Palestine just after the Second World War. A young sergeant is caught up in the historic events of the time, when the British were keeping the peace - as far as possible - between the new Jewish settlers who'd returned to their homeland after the horrors of the concentration camps, and the Palestinians who had lived in the area for centuries and were suddenly finding themselves kicked out of their country by a people who apparently forgot, very quickly, what it was like to be treated badly because of who you were.

The second story is set in the present day: the Sergeant is now an old man dying in a hospital. His unsympathetic daughter and his granddaughter (who's barely known the supposedly grumpy old man) set about clearing out his house. The daughter, Erin, finds the old man's diary, with photos and newspaper clippings. Against her mother's orders, she keeps the diary, and takes it with her to Israel where she's going with a friend whose Israeli background means she has to go into the Army for two years. Erin is a typical know-all teenager who begins to find out a great deal more about the Israel-Palestine conflict than she would ever have learned in her native country, and also matures quickly as a result of trying to repair something that had gone wrong back when her grandfather was a young man.

The two stories gradually cohere. There are perhaps too many coincidences in the plotting, and the filmmakers slide over some questions about motivations that probably should have been asked, but for all that the film carries you along as you increasingly struggle - like Erin - to make sense of a country where a people who were hated almost universally for centuries (the Jews) and then were slaughtered in their millions, show almost no care or concern for a people who by accident live in the country the Jews claim as their homeland.

Kosminsky doesn't offer us easy answers: we begin by thinking that the Israelis are a pretty reasonable bunch of people, but gradually discover - as both the grandfather and the granddaughter do - that they have almost no sympathy for the Palestinians, and show little concern about killing them or destroying their property if the need, or mood, arises. Try as you might, by the end of the movie, it's likely your opinion of the Israeli people may be much less sympathetic than at first. Whether this is a more one-sided view on Kosminsky's part than is fair is left to our judgement.

Claire Foy plays the initially sulky teenager with ease - there are times when you want to wipe that sulky look off her face, even late in the film. Nevertheless, she makes the journey from sulkiness to a degree of wisdom effectively. Christian Cooke, as the Sergeant, has a face that often makes it look as though he's going to burst into tears, yet he convinces us that he's a man who can make wise decisions, is loyal, is strong in a crisis, and much more. He's particularly strong in his last scenes when everything he's tried to do for a Palestinian family goes wrong, and he's treated as a deserter and thrown into prison.

The rest of the enormous cast are superb, and with the film shot entirely in Israel (with places standing in for Hebron, Gaza, and the West Bank. Even the Ben Gurion airport stands in for Heathrow. The series in general received high praise when first shown, though there were a number of voices claiming that it was anti-semitic in tone, something which can be justified, if that's what you're looking for.

21.7.14
Since writing this review I've become more aware of the concerns that were raised over Kosminsky's series. This article goes into detail about these and provides some balance to the way in which Kosminsky nudges his viewers more and more into an anti-Israeli bias.

A movie and a book

Having heard good reports about A Song for Marion (also known as Unfinished Song) I was surprised at how disappointed I was.  It's mostly about Terence Stamp, a grumpy old man who seems to have no good reason to be so grumpy.  The script never actually gives him a reason, so Stamp is forced to  be grumpy just because he is. Vanessa Redgrave plays his wife who loves him dearly (he seems to love her greatly too); she dies fairly early on from a cancer that's returned after remission. Gemma Arterton plays the young schoolteacher who takes a community choir that Redgrave enjoys going to, and Christopher Ecclestone plays Stamp's son; at one point he asks the obvious questions as to why his father is so grumpy, but since Stamp isn't given any reason in the script he doesn't get a response (!)

The movie swings between delineating the realities of old age, and patronising old people: why is it filmmakers think old people want to do heavy metal songs or songs where sex appears in every line?  The two best songs in the movie (one sung by Redgrave and one by Stamp) are both much more worthy of inclusion than the rubbish ones the choir is supposedly learning.  Stamp and Ecclestone bring reality to their characters (it's a pity the mending of their relationship takes place off-screen) and Redgrave is good in the short amount of screen time she gets. The rest of the cast (including Arterton) seem to have forgotten that when your face is blown up on a cinema screen there's no need to gawk and gawp and overdo every reaction.  I lost count of the number of times people reacted in an actorish way (rather like people in bit parts in the worst kind of amateur theatre); presumably the director thought this was good.  Or else the movie was made for television primarily, where such reactions aren't so overblown.

I'd been told it was a film needing a box of tissues.  Nope, it isn't.  In contrast, I finished Chaim Potok's massive novel, In the Beginning, last night.  The end of this book definitely requires a couple of tissues (well, a handkerchief in my case, since I still use those now-seemingly-despised objects).  Potok seems to take a long time to get to the end; some judicious cutting would have helped, I think, but he weaves and connects themes and images constantly throughout the story, and perhaps without the space to do so the book wouldn't have been so effective. 

It's a pretty gloomy piece: the Jewish narrator, Daniel, is injured in a fall as a baby and damages something in his nasal area, meaning that he is prone to illnesses throughout his childhood.  The operation to cure this only happens in the last fifty pages of the 450 page novel.  His father was once a soldier fighting against the Polish Cossacks, back in his home country of Poland, and he has formed a group to bring his Jewish friends and their families to America, which is supposedly a land where Jews are treated better.  He has been greatly successful in this, and works as a real estate agent in the US.  There's a great sense of Jewish community and fellowship throughout the book, as well as the huge strength of family.  However, Daniel's grandparents on his mother's side are still in Poland, along with a number of other relations.  They dither and shilly-shally about coming to the US until it is too late.  Hitler comes to power, and the Nazi concentration camps come into existence.

We discover that Daniel's mother had been married before, to her current husband's brother. Confusingly he was also called Daniel, and Potok plays with this confusion a number of times in the book.  Daniel was killed by the Cossacks, and in proper Jewish tradition, Max takes his brother's wife as his own.  It wasn't that he had to; he could have put the tradition aside.  But there is obviously great love between Daniel's parents; it's never considered to be a marriage of convenience. The older Daniel was set to be a great scholar, and the younger Daniel inherits his uncle's brains. This turns out not to be such a good thing; he is bullied often in school, and despised for knowing more than those who have to work hard to study. And as he comes into manhood, he makes a decision to study outside the world of Judaism, in order to understand the Torah in a much deeper sense. We don't know whether he truly believes that the Torah is God's word (his younger brother tells him, eventually, that he doesn't, but he keeps up the traditions all the same); rather he is concerned for the argument, the jot and tittle of debate, the disagreements between ancient Jewish scholars, the reading between the lines, the working out why the Torah appears to contradict itself and much more. We read about a good deal of this during the book. Daniel soaks up all this kind of information as he grows, reading deep into the night, and causing those around him bewilderment.

The book almost seems like a biography, though one told in fictional terms. There is no plot as such, and yet in the last pages of the book, what we have learned over many pages about Daniel and his extended family causes us to be deeply affected as we read the last few events. The book is full of vivid characters, of wisdom and a deep understanding of people, particularly Jewish people. The book is soaked in the traditions and teaching of the Jewish people, and in their longstanding complaint against God and the world as to why they are treated so badly. There are no answers to this question - different characters offer different views on it, on why it should be so, and what can be done about it.  None of these things actually alter the suffering of this people.

Reading this book is like going on a long journey: there are varied discoveries, there are people you meet and get to know for a time who then vanish completely, there is a sense of humanity and warmth, and of travelling immense distances from one event to another.  Though there were times, as I've noted above, when it seemed a drawn-out journey, at the end it proved to have been worth the effort. 

Ivanhoe

I know 2012 is a major Dickens anniversary - the bicentenary of his birth - and I fully intend to read or re-read at least one or two of his books this year, but somehow I managed to get waylaid by another great 19th century author, Sir Walter Scott.   I picked up Ivanhoe late last year at the library.  It was an edition with a considerable introduction to it, and that encouraged me to get on and read it.  However, when I hadn't got very far through it (the first chapter) before I went to the US for my son's wedding I found I could get the book for free on Kindle, so I did.  Even then I didn't get round to starting the book (again)  until I went to Australia the weekend before last.

Though the writing style isn't on a par with Dickens', and is hampered in this particular novel by being full of words that were in current usage in days long before Scott was writing, words used to give colour to the period in which Ivanhoe is set (the 12th century), I found the book very readable.   However, it seemed to lose its grip about two-thirds of the way through, and I found myself skimming a good deal, mainly because Scott seemed to think some of his characters should speak at length just because they were important, or because they were expressing something of importance.   And at about the same point in the book, many of the characters seemed to start talking as though they were all cut from the same cloth.   It's as if Scott had lost the drive that got the book off the ground in the first place.

Furthermore, Ivanhoe, the supposed hero of the story, spends increasing times off the page after being wounded in the great tournament that occurs early in the piece.  This section is wonderfully done, incidentally, as is the great battle that takes place between the besieged Normans (the baddies) and the Saxons, who consist mostly of Robin Hood's men.  Yup, Robin Hood, or Robin of Locksley as he's more often known in this book.

Scott's novel is a major reason why we now think of Robin Hood (and Friar Tuck and Alan-a-Dale) the way we do.  Robin Hood had been the stuff of legend for around four centuries, but Scott managed to bring the various ideas about him into a cohesive form.   Robin and his band of 'merry' men rob the rich - who utterly deserve it in this novel - to give to the poor.  The act of robbery is barely seen as illegal; indeed Richard overlooks the criminality of it.  But what Scott does that really pulls together the idea of Robin as a worthwhile character is to align him to the Richard the Lion Heart story, making him another 'hero' (alongside Richard and Ivanhoe himself).  It's generally regarded that the legend that arose about of Robin Hood was related to a person who lived two centuries after Richard. Now anyone who thinks of Robin Hood thinks of a man who's Richard's contemporary.  This view of Robin Hood has been endorsed by subsequent movies and television series about him, turning someone who actually lived into a kind of legend.  The splitting of the arrow at the archery contest is Scott's invention; yet it too has now become thoroughly connected to the Robin Hood story.

Apart from Prince John (who disappears at a vital point in the book) I found the baddies all a bit too early-Hollywood to be convincing; Scott never seems to get into their psyches somehow.  And the heroine of the piece, Rowena, remains distant as well.  It's left to Rebecca, the 'other' heroine, to come alive, which she does for the most part, although even she gets some pretty long-winded speeches that are worth skimming through.  Regrettably there's no way she and Ivanhoe can get together: Rebecca is a Jew, and as we're informed on umpteen occasions through the book, the Jews are utterly despised and a blot on the face of the earth.  Whether it's Scott being a 19th century writer, or Scott detailing the way people thought in the 12th century, this has to be the most anti-Semitic book I've ever read.  It knocks Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice well and truly into the corner.   Not only is Rebecca's father a conniving, greedy usurer, he equivocates constantly: forever telling people who want money off him that he has none, that he's the poorest man on earth and that having to spend a cent will bankrupt him - and then being willing to lend the money he does have (and he has plenty) at great interest.  The anti-Semitism is alleviated by the character of Rebecca, who is aware of the hatred the Jews of her time experience, but behaves in a much more compassionate way than most of the Christians around her.

And then there are the clergy:  almost to a man they're unpleasant, greedy and unscrupulous.  The first one we meet is described as a man whose Order is supposed to be all about poverty, chastity, charity and so on.  He's the direct opposite in every respect.  The famous Friar Tuck makes an appearance about half way through the book, and seems at first a sympathetic character.  However, Scott seems unable to make his mind up about him, and by the end of the book, we dislike him greatly.   But the top of all these corrupt clerics is the Grand Master of the Knights Templar who comes into the story late in the proceedings; he's the world's most legalistic and uncompassionate creature who has no scruples about sending poor Rebecca off to execution as soon as possible.   If he didn't ramble on so much, he'd actually bring the book back to life at a time it badly needs it.

Ivanhoe struggles to be the 'hero' of his own story: he appears in disguise early in the piece, having been ousted from his family by his Saxon father before the story began, and then remains disguised at the tournament at which he beats everybody in sight - until he's wounded and has to be rescued by the Black Knight (Richard the Lionheart, also in disguise).   He spends a good deal of the rest of the book in the recovery room, being rescued from death by Rebecca, and then - again - by the Black Knight.  Rebecca falls in love with him, but can't do anything about it, because, of course, she's a Jew.  Not that Ivanhoe seems very aware of her love for him!  And then, at the end of the book, when Ivanhoe, in spite of his wounds, decides to go and fight on Rebecca's behalf at the tourney in which he must defeat the only remaining baddie of the original three, he's knocked off his horse by his opponent's lance, and, like everyone else, is surprised to see his opponent also drop off his horse - not because he's been damaged by Ivanhoe, but because he's been struck down by the hand of God, as one character decides must be the case.  This deus ex machina is perhaps the worst moment in the book.  There's been a terrific build-up to the rescue of Rebecca, and it all falls flat within a couple of pages.  Though, if God hadn't stepped in, the Black Knight was literally just around the corner ready to rescue Ivanhoe yet again!

There's one other awful moment, that even the footnote attached to it says everyone finds incredible.  Ivanhoe's rival for Rowena's hand, Athelstane, is a food-loving dolt, though he can fight decently in a battle.  He's been killed in the big siege, and taken off by the local priests to await burial.  We next hear about him at his family home where he's being mourned by everyone under the sun.  In the middle of it all, he turns up, not dead after all.   Please, Sir Walter!   I know you loved this character (he actually brings much of the real humour to the book, and Scott plainly enjoys writing about him) but this is just too fantastical for words, and his revival adds nothing to the book.   All he does is renounce Rowena as a possible bride, leaving the way open for Ivanhoe (yet again, the latter does nothing to deserve this success!)

This long criticism might indicate that I didn't enjoy the book.  I did, up until about three-quarters of the way through, when if seemed to run out of steam.  I finished it because there were still sections that were worth reading, and anyway, I wanted to see how it all panned out.

Ivanhoe's popularity over two centuries shows that it's got a good deal to offer (it's been filmed and televised a good number of times) and of course it's hard to gauge now just how popular Scott was as a writer in his day - for me, at least.  I obviously need to read some of his other novels to see how Ivanhoe compares, and there's no doubt that Scott is a great storyteller when he's on a roll.  Like other 19th century writers he was capable of stuff that was written for the sake of it.

PS. I've just been reading the review Bosley Crowther wrote of the MGM production of Ivanhoe back in 1952.  It's interesting to read that the main female role in the movie is that of Rebecca, not Rowena.    And the final battle between Ivanhoe (Robert Taylor) and De Bois Guilbert (George Sanders) is played out in full, as "....a wild go with axes and maces that would put a couple of angry blacksmiths to shame," not dribbled away as Scott deals with it.   Note also that the Black Knight (Richard the Lion Heart) in the original, becomes here Ivanhoe himself, meaning that he does his own heroic work.  Hollywood knows a thing or two when it comes to telling a story.  You can see a trailer for the movie here. 

Les Enfants du Paradis

I ‘d think it was in the early sixties that I first saw Les Enfants du Paradis. It must have made an enormous impression on me, because when I watched it the other night, scene after scene was familiar. It was as if I’d seen it only last year.
I’d forgotten how long it is: virtually two movies in one, with a first and a second half. (In the DVD I watched, the entire credits are repeated at the beginning of the second half.) But it never suffers from a feeling of being too long. The story, on the surface, is fairly simple. A man (Baptiste) loves a woman (Garance) who loves him in return, but initially no more than she loves others; another woman (Nathalie) loves Baptiste, but is unrequited. The famous actor (Frederick) has a casual but unsustainable love for Garance; Pierre, the strange interfering thief and murderer may or may not love Garance, and perhaps loves himself a good deal more; and then there’s the Count who doesn’t really love anyone, but still manages to add Garance to his trophy collection for several years.
If that helps you understand the story, well done. What seems simple is made wonderfully complex by a literate script and subtle performances from every member of the cast. We’re never completely in the know as to what’s going on with these people, because we’re party only to some aspects of what they’re thinking. Why they do what they do would fill volumes, and yet watching them is immensely satisfying. The actors bring such underlying depths to their roles that you could speculate on all sorts of motivations.
Marcel Carné directs without effects: everything is given over to the actors, and often scenes are played out at length with few cuts. There’s a heap of dialogue, but it’s rich and full of detail. Two wonderfully luminous women play the main female roles: Arletty and Maria Casares, the former exemplifying how to be in love with life and with the moment, and the latter perpetually torn by loving someone who doesn’t love her.
Jean-Louis Barrault (pictured at right) is endlessly expressive, whether he’s playing the young man who makes one mistake in his life (leaving Garance behind when he has the chance to stay with her) or in his extended mime scenes, which comment in their own way on the rest of the story.
Pierre Brasseur is Frederick Lemaître, the over-the-top actor who can pick up a woman with a few charming words, who can turn a awful tragic script into a high comedy, and who’s never sick of the sound of his own voice. Marcel Herrand is the strange criminal character who dresses as a dandy and has no apparent scruples. The world is under his thumb, so he imagines, and in the end he is the one to release Garance from the Count – by murder.
Louis Salou plays the Count, the only main character to appear late in the proceedings. He is seen to be increasingly sour, grim and selfish. It doesn’t help, of course, that no one, particularly Garance, loves him.
The film begins and ends with a huge crowd scene: the streets of Paris are packed with people. It must have cost a fortune to have had so many extras on board. The ‘trivia’ section on imdb.com notes: The production ‘involved building the largest studio set in the then history of French cinema - the quarter mile of street frontage, reproduced in scrupulous detail, representing the Boulevard du Crime, the theater district of Paris in the 1830s and 40s. This would have been a daunting prospect at the best of times but in Vichy France, when all artisans, transport, materials, costumes and film stock were all in short supply, it was a miraculous achievement.’
Because I know these actors only from this movie, though many of them were well-known in their time, it’s as if they inhabit the characters completely. And the remainder of the cast as just as good as the principals: Fabien Loris as Avril, Pierre’s simple accomplice, somehow dressed like a perpetual youth; Jane Marken as the landlady; Pierre Renoir as Jericho, the ragman, a kind of prophet, mover of fates, jack-of-all-trades; the various stage managers and theatre directors, and the three authors – two of whom invariably talk at exactly the same time and bring some light relief.
Here’s some more background on it, from Roger Ebert: ‘All discussions of Marcel Carne's ''Children of Paradise'' begin with the miracle of its making. Named at Cannes as the greatest French film of all time, costing more than any French film before it, ''Les Enfants du Paradis'' was shot in Paris and Nice during the Nazi occupation and released in 1945. Its sets sometimes had to be moved between the two cities. Its designer and composer, Jews sought by the Nazis, worked from hiding. Carne was forced to hire pro-Nazi collaborators as extras; they did not suspect they were working next to resistance fighters. The Nazis banned all films over about 90 minutes in length, so Carne simply made two films, confident he could show them together after the war was over. The film opened in Paris right after the liberation, and ran for 54 weeks. It is said to play somewhere in Paris every day.’
Wonderful, wonderful movie. Need to see it again!