Archive for March 26th, 2015

Auto-Correct: The Great Leveler

Thursday, March 26th, 2015

By James Conlon

 

Question:

What do Arnold Schoenberg, Edouard Manet, Francois Rene Chateaubriand and Titus Andronicus have in common?

Answer:

My spell-check doesn’t recognize their names.

 

About eighteen months ago, bending under a barrage of criticism and pressure to start tweeting, I began.  Entering the world of social media was not my thing. Remarks like “Get with it, Dad!” were the last straw.

I called my friend and colleague Esa-Pekka Salonen, who was already a tweeter, to ask how it worked. His presence on Twitter lent the whole thing some respectability. He was very helpful and, feeling slightly more comfortable and marginally less embarrassed, I proceeded.

A short time ago I saw one of his tweets, which are highly imaginative and invariably humorous. He recounted that he had entered the word “Sudafed” in some text he was writing, and his spell-check corrected it to “Dudamel” (because, I suppose, the auto-correct on Esa-Pekka’s device had “learned” the word Dudamel and was helpfully “assuming” his true intent…).

I am constantly astonished at what my spell-check doesn’t recognize. It was certainly not created with classical music or musicians in mind. I started to collect examples, like artifacts.  After reading Esa-Pekka’s tweet, I decided to share some of my findings. I offer:

 

AN ABC OF AUTO-CORRECTION  (only the tip of an iceberg):

The composer is on the left (you knew that) and the suggested alternative on the right.

ADES                          HADES

BERLIOZ                     BELIZE

BRITTEN                     BRITTANY (AS IN FRANCE)

BRUCKNER                 TRUCKER

COPLAND                   SCOTLAND

DVORAK                     DORKS

FAURE                        FARCE

GERSHWIN                 GEARSHIFT

HINDEMITH                HINDERMOST/INDEMNITY

IBERT                         LIBERTY

JANACEK                    JAMAICA

KORNGOLD                CORNFIELD

LUTOSLAWSKI            GLUTTONS/LOUTS

MILHAUD                    MILKMAID

ORFF                          DOFF/RUFF

PROKOFIEV                 PORKPIE/PUFF

RACHMANINOFF         RANCHMAN/DRACHMA

SALONEN                    SALOON

SCHOENBERG             SCHEMER/SCORNER/SCHOONER

TAKAMITSU                STALAGMITES/THALAMUS

ULLMANN                   MULLIGAN/SULLIVAN

VARESE                      OVARIES

WEILL                         DWELL/SWELL

XANAKIS                    ANTACIDS/HANKIES

YSAYE                        SAUTE/SPAYED

ZWILICH                     ZILCH/ZIPLOC

 

I guess classic music hasn’t quite made it yet.  But neither have Matisse , Manet, Van Gogh, Pissaro, Toulouse-Lautrec.

I need a Sudafed!

 

JAMES CONLON           COLON/COLONY/COLOGNE

 

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A Glimpse at Jost and Aperghis

Thursday, March 26th, 2015

By Rebecca Schmid

There has been too much music to keep up with between the Konzerthaus’ Festival Mythos Berlin and the contemporary music festival MärzMusik. At the Konzerthaus, I caught the premiere of Christian Jost’s BerlinSymphonie, an homage to the German capital in all is mercurial energy. The approximately 27-minute work for full orchestra creates a vivid enough landscape, blending minimalist textures with everything from sharp modernist gestures to snatches of smooth jazz.

Pulsating brass and a low string motive repeated above the hollow wooden sounds of a marimba capture the dark, mysterious side of Berlin—the bombed out churches, the abandoned banks of the Spree river—while lyrical woodwinds evoke its embracing thrill. Jost’s orchestration strikes an unusual balance between the accessible and the sophisticated, but it also recycles not so original ideas. A solo alto saxophone which emerges throughout the work as the soulful voice of the urban individual is at best clichéd.

The Konzerthausorchester Berlin gave a strong performance under its Music Director Iván Fischer, who since arriving in 2012 has brought the sections into impressive balance and softened the edges of an ensemble which has at times struggled with technical shortcomings. Whether or not one considers Jost a ground-breaking voice, the audience’s enthusiastic applause spoke to his communicative powers.

Georges Aperghis with the Klangforum Wien (c) Kai Bienert

Georges Aperghis with the Klangforum Wien

At the Philharmonie, MärzMusik offered contemporary music of a different breed. As part of an emphasis on the Greek composer Georges Aperghis, the ensemble Klangforum Wien performed his most recent large-scale composition 23 Situations (2013) under conductor Emilio Pomàrico. Written explicitly for the 23 musicians at hand, the work exploits a virtuosic array of extended techniques and theatrical elements.

The most compelling moments emerge with vignettes for individual players, such as the siren-like sighing of the violinists, the multiphonics of heckelphone which is then slapped, the celeste player’s absurdist chanting. In passages for full ensemble, Aperghis brings forth intricate webs of variegated timbres but also cacophonic chaos that is not kind to the ear. Shrieking piccolos and the banging chords of a piano do little to enhance the drama of this approximately one-hour work.

But when the full ensemble gives a final response to the Russian-speaking interjections of the accordionist, each instrument emerges with such immediacy that one has the sense of listening to a jumbled chorus, blurring the boundaries between word and sound, theater and reality.

Fore more by Rebecca Schmid, visit www.rebeccaschmid.info

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