Mozart, Salieri - Other Composers As Well...Guys Out There Just to Make a Buck...

How about the evening that the Emperor had arranged to have both Mozart and the Court Composer Antonio Salieri  be present in order to  have  some of their music performed? Seems to me that I had written about that evening in one of my prior blogs. Wouldn't   you have loved to be that fly-on-the-wall during THAT  night? I most certainly would.
And how about that group of brilliant French  composers  called  Les Six, who were opposed to  Wagner and  Impressionism, and who have made their mark in the music history books?  Well, two of them were  contracted by CBS in New York to write some of the background  music for a giant documentary titled  "The Twentieth  Century" with the acclaimed journalist Walter Cronkite . Both Darius Milhaud and George Auric  lent their talents to this American-made TV classic. Auric also wrote music for movies, which includes the pop tune called "Where Is Your Heart," which became quite popular here in America  during the  1950's. And Darius Milhaud taught for a period at Mills College in California. His most promising student? Dave Brubeck.
Just a handful of examples of  renowned composers  just out to make a buck...

Mundane Musings of a Muddled Musician...

"The jury is out" - this is the status of a rather bewildering phase of my consciousness  these days:
As a musician, I find myself at a loss about the status and nature of what we call Greatness, as I listen to the leading pianists of the present period.
With the exception of the Israeli-Argentine pianist Daniel Barenboim and the  Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, whom I have  long considered   great musicians who happened to have chosen the piano to prove their  point, I have attained a position of a new form of confusion, as it pertains to my senses when I confront the other pianists whom I listen to almost daily.
There is no question as to the stature of the keyboard techniques the eminent pianists of our day possess.  For me, I am witness to the playing of the piano at the highest level of brilliance I have ever heard. These pianists  have achieved dizzying powers of performance that may well be unprecedented.  When I hear or see teenagers plow with relative ease through a number of the Horowitz transcriptions; or, pianist after pianist virtually incapable of playing a wrong note while whittling one of the last three Beethoven sonatas down to a new size - when I watch Juja Wang dispatch the Prokoviev Toccata as if  she  were cavorting through  a Clementi Sonatina - when I take note of pianists in increasingly large numbers showing such little effort in handling the most challenging knuckle-busters in the piano lexicon, then I realize just how far the technology of pedagogy has traveled this past generation.
Which leads to the issue confronting my senses today - has the very nature of  what is defined as 'greatness' in playing altered in some arcane manner because of the stultifying levels of technical achievement in our time? Or is it merely that I find it difficult to peer past this blinding technology  in order to behold that Thing called 'Great?'
I have no problem whatsoever in perceiving the absolutely wonderful level of beauty and liquescence (when demanded) made available by the leading pianists; the quality of tonal beauty is there for me to hear - the problem is when I listen to such keyboard giants as Hamelin and Trifonov I hear aspects of their total that I consider great, but I find myself stopping short of simply terming them as 'great.'
Why?
Is it that the gigantism of physicality in keyboard technique is obfuscating my being able to define  greatness in that performance?
For me, the jury is out at this point in time, in spite of the  transcendent level achieved in the playing of that particular piece.
My hope is that there will appear a way for that synthesis to be presented; and, soon...

Part Two of the Illimitable Power of Art...

In my last blog I discussed the strange but real connection that Adolf Hitler possessed in connection with Man's art; all beginning in his being denied admission as a student to the Vienna Institute of Fine Art twice, primarily and seemingly,  due to his inability to draw the human figure, which begot the genesis of the tortured, horrific  reality of Adolf Hitler, and the lurid reality that a portion of the nature of our existence in the 21st century, at least in part, remains with and within us, due to the 12 year Odyssey of Hitlerism.
Much, to be sure, has been written, and continues to be written  about this man. The primary reason for my bringing his memory back for the moment is, for me, strange irony germane to this man and Man's art.
For one, the art exhibit he  created back in 1937, visited by millions for the four months it existed, called Entartete Kunst (degenerate art), consisted of works of art which he considered dangerous and inflammatory; works of art, many by geniuses representing Expressionism, such as Picasso, Kokoschka, Kirchner, Dix, Kollwitz, and a host of others who have given us a number of works which are part of  the indestructible legacy  in the arts we call Great.
The irony that strikes me comes out of Expressionism, which Hitler hated -  that  powerful period coming out of the early 20th century that depicts the inner world of  the mind and its workings, rather than the outer world that the eye can behold. Many  of the powerful paintings and sketches created by the Expressionists depict the darker side of the human condition, with War as one of the primary sources as subject. Just look at Kathe Kollwitz and some of her work; or, Otto Dix; or Ernst Kirchner, just to name a few. The brutality and ugliness of the dark side will confront your senses - how about Guernica by Picasso, and its immortal statement about the horror and futility of War?
And Adolf Hitler, who  became one of history's most successful instigators of horror and pillage, railed in the most vehement manner against the powerful statements of Expressionism, calling them elemental threats to human sensibility and to the culture he represented.
In the exhibit he produced in 1937, he had a number of these works actually hung upside down, or at awkward angles and without frames, accompanied by various forms of graffiti scrawled on the walls of the gallery.
From my humble view, it seems to me that Hitler demonstrates his fear of the Artist, perhaps feeling that there would be no way to bend him into the shape that conformed to the ways of his thoughts and beliefs - but, NEVER admitting that reality to himself.
It is, perhaps, too easy to simply reason that Hitler did not understand the art he hated; especially when history certifies that he represented more efficiently, perhaps, better than anybody else, save Stalin,  in  modern history, the very subject we see so often in a great number of the works of the Expressionists.
Is there a greater mystery than the person we see staring back at us in a mirror?...