Richter, Max

[peterthekeys]

I did search for a thread about him, but couldn't find one, so I'm starting one here.

He was being interviewed on the "Today" programme on R4 this morning (at about 02:24:00 if anyone wants to listen online) about his new work "Voices", which he has apparently been working on for 10 years. R3 has several times broadcast his "Sleep", which is 8 hours long: it's broadcast overnight. Which seems to be a kind of Catch-22 (if I'm listening, I'm not asleep, and not deriving the benefits from the sleep; if I'm asleep, I'm not listening, and obviously not deriving any of the presumed benefits of the music.)

The use of music as a balm for the troubles of our age seems to be central to his philosophy, and that is obviously excellent. My problem is that I personally find his music boring. I've heard plenty of "new age" music which was more interesting (I've even heard harmony exercises which were more interesting.) Apparently, his style is based on postminimalism - the basis of which appears to be minimalism, without any of the elements which made (the best of) minimalism intriguing and attractive. It could be argued that it's background music, and intended to be such - but background music doesn't need to be boring (take Brian Eno's "Music for Airports" as an example: inobtrusive, but also fascinating if one focuses in on it).

It seems as though, increasingly, Richter is being held up as some kind of guru of music in our time.

[DracoM]

Agree with every word. Massively over-hyped.
Utube has acres of LoR-inspired or landscape or Gothic Tales inspired similar etc soundtracks available for long, long time listening if desired.

[kernelbogey]

I like his reimagining of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, to which the above strictures IMV do not apply.

[peterthekeys]

I like his reimagining of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, to which the above strictures IMV do not apply.

But why does the Four Seasons need "reimagining"? Is Richter arrogant enough to believe seriously that he knows better than Vivaldi?

If a composer takes a theme or other fragment of another composer and writes a work based on variations on it, the second composer is both showing his own skills, and (at least presumably) paying homage to the first composer (well, OK, Beethoven in the Diabelli Variations is probably just showing how much he could make of how little).

Did the Swingle Singers and Wendy Carlos "reimagine" Bach for their versions of them? In my view, they stuck both to the notes and to the spirit of the originals (admittedly the Swingle singers added a drum track). I suspect that Bach might have approved of both (given that he himself rearranged and recycled endlessly).

But it seems to me that something like the Vivaldi/Richter is more akin to Duchamp's version of the Mona Lisa - without the humour. (Possibly controversially, I feel the same way about Garbarek's saxophone-besmirched versions of Renaissance polyphony.)

Maybe it's about the difference between pastiche (which Sondheim defined as a "loving tribute") and parody - and of someone pretending that one is the other.

[jayne lee wilson]

I love those Jan Garbarek albums from Officium on, often have them drifting through the house..... sombre and soothing in troubled times.....(and timeout from my current Hindemith Obsession). I loved Officium the first moment I heard it (late night, Smooth Classics, in the kitchen...)...

But you omit to mention that his collaborators on the project were...... the Hilliard Ensemble...... it didn't bother them when they created this beautiful worldwide smash-hit with the saxophonist, did it? They loved making more new music or music anew... I often have their... er....pure Gesualdo playing here too....

Don't why ask why not......etc.... Music is about playing not preservation....

(BTW I do know the Richter Seasons...very enjoyable...... given the donetodeathbutforalltime nature of the Vivaldi, I only wish he'd gone even further into a sort of Uri Caine Beethoven Diabelli or Mahler Dark Flame inventiveness.....)

BTW Peterthekeys....."If I'm asleep I'm not listening..." ...are you sure....?........

[peterthekeys]

I love those Jan Garbarek albums from Officium on, often have them drifting through the house..... sombre and soothing in troubled times.....

Personally - I don't find them sombre and soothing - I just find them annoying: either the saxophone or the singing would be fine, but to me they just don't "mesh". (I stress that my opinion on these is just my own opinion - I'm aware that they're immensely popular. I also enjoy other works by Garbarek, where he's not reimagining someone else's work.)

But you omit to mention that his collaborators on the project were...... the Hilliard Ensemble...... it didn't bother them when they created this beautiful worldwide smash-hit with the saxophonist, did it?

I have nothing but admiration for the Hilliard Ensemble. I do wonder what they really thought of their work with Garbarek (academic as no one will ever find out). I guess that few artists would turn up their noses at the idea of collaborating on something which was almost guaranteed to become a "worldwide smash-hit"

(Apparently Howard Hanson wasn't told that they were using the big tune from his second symphony as the incidental music for the final scene of "Alien" - but he didn't sue them as he realised that it was probably the best publicity that he would ever get!).

Music is about playing not preservation....

Not sure that I'd agree with that - at least not entirely. Much of my own musical work (such as it is) is concerned with learning and playing works for which there is no "performing tradition", and in such cases, the published editions (if they exist) are often riddled with errors. In such case "preservation" - in the sense of trying to achieve a state where one is playing exactly the notes that the composer intended - is near-paramount (to me anyway). (I'm currently working on Kenneth Leighton's "Four Romantic Pieces" - one of his last works - and have so far found over 30 errors in the published score. In order to correct them, I obtained a copy of the MS. Not because I'm intending to record or perform them (currently, anyway) - but simply because it matters to me.)

In the wider context - a piece of music originates because someone composes it, and that lineage needs to be preserved - honoured might be a better word. If one is playing something that is not what a composer wrote, then - again in my view - it needs to be clear whether it's in the spirit of a pastiche (i.e. tribute) or parody (send-up). That applies even in the case of jazz musicians improvising on a standard. (Occasionally it might be both - the Spike Jones versions of things like the Blue Danube were presumably meant as parodies - but they are so brilliant that they could almost be tributes.)

(BTW I do know the Richter Seasons...very enjoyable......

I can only talk about my own likes and dislikes, and I'm happy to acknowledge that they're completely subjective

BTW Peterthekeys....."If I'm asleep I'm not listening..." ...are you sure....?........

If a work is so boring that it puts an audience to sleep, should this really be spun as a selling-point? (Maybe the composer should just take up hypnotherapy instead?)

I suppose it would boil down to whether or not I remembered any of it when I woke up

(Aside - odd coincidence: I've been interested in biofeedback for a long time, and only yesterday I was reading an article about sleep learning. Interest in it seemed to die out in the '70s, but apparently in Russia, research continued: the researchers there found that it was much more effective if it was used in the hypnagogic state between waking and sleep, and were trying to use biofeedback to extend this usually transient state)

[jayne lee wilson]

Well the wonderful Hilliard Ensemble couldn't possibly have known that it would be a smash hit; I can't imagine them as so cynical as to do it in case it became so; I think they were just being endlessly creative, curious musicians.

I feel the Richter, Uri Caine, Garbarek etc.... never feel that "they know better than the composer"...(anymore than Mengelberg when he conducts Beethoven in his own unique way).. I think they just love, love, love the given music so much, they felt, hey, lets try it this way & hey what about this idea, and this..........it seems to me to be about.... communication...on all kinds of levels...

The "original" scores, however hard to determine or to or edit, never suffer: they are all still there for anyone who wants to play or to hear them. Ignore any adaptations as they wish.

Sleep-biofeedback is very interesting. Long ago in a galaxy far away, a writer/tutor on Radio 3 described attempting a translation of a French Renaissance Sonnet into English (IIRC Ronsard).
As I'd tried this myself (very freely I mean how else etc), I was fascinated. They struggled and struggled, gave up and went to bed. Next morning the whole sonnet was there, in English, in their head; didn't need to change a word. There's so, so much we don't know, about how our brains work, and how our bodies - our very internal organs - influence how those brains work; right down to our cultural and political judgment. Yes, it is ....somewhat disturbing.

A given music may induce sleep because it gratifies you, comforts you, in some way, conscious or not (like putting your arm around the Cat); not necessarily because it bores you (I've nodded off listening to all sorts of things, not obviously sonically relaxing in any conventional sense...).
That latter idea of boredom is simply a conscious, essentially conventional, usually post-hoc, judgement... ........ for more on current Neurology - subscribe to New Scientist (cf 27 June 2020 - "Your Thinking Body"....)...

[Richard Barrett]

My problem with what Max Richter is doing has nothing to do with the ethics of "recomposing" things - of course it's never "necessary", and, as Jayne says, the original is always still there (except in the case of the Giazotto Adagio!). My problem is just that it isn't very well done. With regard to Vivaldi, I'm always going to prefer Vivaldi, who was working at the cutting edge of the musical possibilities of his time, to anyone who's trying to squeeze out a bit more profit from familiar classics. But why not do it in such a way as to let us hear Vivaldi in a new way, or to bring out into the open something you perceive as latent in the original? (and so on) If you're a composer, why not just compose something new?

[Serial_Apologist]

My problem with what Max Richter is doing has nothing to do with the ethics of "recomposing" things - of course it's never "necessary", and, as Jayne says, the original is always still there (except in the case of the Giazotto Adagio!). My problem is just that it isn't very well done. With regard to Vivaldi, I'm always going to prefer Vivaldi, who was working at the cutting edge of the musical possibilities of his time, to anyone who's trying to squeeze out a bit more profit from familiar classics. But why not do it in such a way as to let us hear Vivaldi in a new way, or to bring out into the open something you perceive as latent in the original? (and so on) If you're a composer, why not just compose something new?

Which was effectively what Schoenberg did with the Monn Cello Concerto - having, 30-odd years earlier, made a "straight" re-arrangement of the piece, presumably rather as he would do the Brahms (if you ignore the tongue-in-cheek xylophone added to its finale!). The "Schoenberg Cello Concerto" [sic} is, for me, a marvellously knowing piece of re-compostion, replete with Arnold's transhistorical awareness and in-depth absorption of post "Classical period", post-Brahmsian, post-Regerian harmonic, contrapuntal, and general sonata-developmental processes, seen in the light of his own conceptual advances, if that makes any sense and is not too convoluted. This is a work I've always felt crammed full of hidden depths and messages, in contrast to, for example, Stravinsky's "surface" (I wouldn't go so far as to say "superficial") way of treating the late Baroque idioms he used in "Pulchinella", and how these carried forward into his own brand of "Neo-Classicism" - of which there were many, by the 1920s.

Er - I wonder if this has any bearings on the present discussion underway?

[Richard Barrett]

S_A, I don't think there are many ways in which Max Richter and Schoenberg can be compared, although I do find the latter's Brahms and Monn arrangements about as unpleasant to listen to as the former's stuff, especially in comparison with Stravinsky's much more (IMO) irreverently creative approach in Pulcinella, which I used not to like but which has been growing on me in recent months (maybe some virus has got to my brain though).

[peterthekeys]

Well the wonderful Hilliard Ensemble couldn't possibly have known that it would be a smash hit; I can't imagine them as so cynical as to do it in case it became so; I think they were just being endlessly creative, curious musicians.

I'm going to back away from discussing this, based on the good old adage: when in a hole, stop digging. I'm aware that my attitude to Hilliard/Garbarek is based on my own dislike of it, rather than anything objectively relevant.

I feel the Richter, Uri Caine, Garbarek etc.... never feel that "they know better than the composer"...(anymore than Mengelberg when he conducts Beethoven in his own unique way).. I think they just love, love, love the given music so much, they felt, hey, lets try it this way & hey what about this idea, and this..........it seems to me to be about.... communication...on all kinds of levels...

There's a difference. When Mengelberg, or any other performer worth his/her salt, performs a piece of music from the classical period up to the late romantic period, they are endeavouring to re-create, as precisely as possible, the composer's intentions as expressed in the score, and therefore to play the notes, all the notes and nothing but the notes. Whilst they might vary the tempo, dynamics, intonation, balance, attack, etc., the pitches and note-lengths are sacrosanct. In the Baroque and earlier periods, there was more freedom: performers could include decorations, and the keyboardist usually had to improvise based on a figured bass part - but these variations were strictly in the context of the rest of the music. In the classical/romantic periods, soloists in concertos were given a chance to show off their technique in cadenzas - but often the composer would write these anyway. Even in jazz, the players have to improvise strictly in the context of a melodic line and harmonic template (and woe betide a player who gets it wrong - apparently Charlie Parker once had a cymbal thrown at him when he lost the harmonic pattern). Only in classical music from mid 20th century onwards are there instances of composers giving players increasing - sometimes almost total - freedom in what they play.

The approach of Garbarek, Richter, etc. is to take the original and add something to it. That for me is at least controversial, because it seems to indicate that they felt that something in the original was missing, and that they knew better than the composer. If a composer admires another composer, and imitates his or her style (either intentionally or unintentionally), then it's a tribute; if a composer sends up another composer, it's a parody. I can see that Garbarek's response to the renaissance polyphony was a tribute. But Richter/Vivaldi doesn't seem to fit into either of those categories (a parody is almost always humorous).

Just supposing that Richter fell into a time-warp and ended up in the late 18th/early 19th century, I wonder what would happen if he took it upon himself to "reimagine" something by Beethoven - at least before the latter lost his hearing. I suspect that Richter would be lucky to escape with his life.

On that theme - if Richter re-imagined Cage's 4'33" - maybe by overlaying two copies of a recording of it with an offset of 1", so that it became 4'34" - would it be a tribute or a parody?

The "original" scores, however hard to determine or to or edit, never suffer: they are all still there for anyone who wants to play or to hear them. Ignore any adaptations as they wish.

The point is that the score is the only extant record of the composer's intentions, and the only basis for someone to re-create those intentions: if either the autograph or the published edition contains errors, and if a performance or recording is made without correcting them, then the composer's intentions are not precisely re-created.

If a pianist performs or records a Chopin nocturne, and plays a wrong note, everyone knows about it - because virtually all pianists play the Chopin nocturnes, and any errors in the originals and editions have been endlessly discussed and corrected. But if - for example - I was to record the Leighton Four Romantic Pieces with the errors uncorrected, hardly anyone would know (because Leighton's work is - unfortunately - not widely known as yet, and his harmonic style is so complex and often gritty that the errors are just not that obvious. There are in fact only two recordings in existence - in one, the errors are present; in the other, they have been corrected.). Does that matter? Well, I guess that all I can say is that it matters to me.

The situation gets more interesting with the development of recording technologies. Debussy recorded his own "La Cathédrale Engloutie" on a piano roll - and on the basis of that, the musicologist Roy Howat proclaimed that Debussy had made a fundamental error when he wrote out the score, and - very controversially in my opinion - produced his own edition with the "error" fixed. So now we have a situation where some performers record Debussy's original, and some record Howat's version.

Sleep-biofeedback is very interesting. Long ago in a galaxy far away, a writer/tutor on Radio 3 described attempting a translation of a French Renaissance Sonnet into English (IIRC Ronsard).
As I'd tried this myself (very freely I mean how else etc), I was fascinated. They struggled and struggled, gave up and went to bed. Next morning the whole sonnet was there, in English, in their head; didn't need to change a word. There's so, so much we don't know, about how our brains work, and how our bodies - our very internal organs - influence how those brains work; right down to our cultural and political judgment. Yes, it is ....somewhat disturbing.

I troubleshoot computer problems for a living, and I've often found that I've woken up with a new insight into a problem which had seemed entirely insoluble when I went to bed.

I had a friend who was a composer: one night he was desperately trying to finish a work for a commission, and fell asleep over the score. When he woke up in the morning, the score was complete.

The hypnagogic state (between waking and sleeping) is fascinating - it seems to be a kind of chink into a dimension of enhanced creativity. The chemist Friedrich Kekulé supposedly had a vision of a snake biting its tail during a hypnagogic session, and realised in a flash that the structure of benzene was a ring, thus opening up a vast section of organic chemistry. Edison valued the state so highly for the stimulation of new ideas that he invented a technique for producing it. He would put a metal dish on the floor, and then take a handful of ball bearings; he would then allow himself to drowse. Eventually, his hand would relax and the ball bearings would fall into the dish, jolting him awake.

A given music may induce sleep because it gratifies you, comforts you, in some way, conscious or not (like putting your arm around the Cat); not necessarily because it bores you (I've nodded off listening to all sorts of things, not obviously sonically relaxing in any conventional sense...).
That latter idea of boredom is simply a conscious, essentially conventional, usually post-hoc, judgement... ........ for more on current Neurology - subscribe to New Scientist (cf 27 June 2020 - "Your Thinking Body"....)...

I have to admit that I often find that I nod off during first hearings of works which eventually end up amongst my all-time favourites.

Thanks for the New Scientist reference - I'll follow it up.

(Apologies for the length of this!)

[jayne lee wilson]

When I (re)discovered those Hilliard/Garbarek albums a few years ago, I had very little time for "serious listening"..... caring for an elderly person in her last years, their appearance on Classic FM, my respite late at night, really spoke to me.

But.... it led to my exploration and now, regular attention to.... the works of Palestrina, Gesualdo (especially the Tenebrae responsoria) and Monteverdi etc.....alongside those sax-adapts. I like those drifting through the house in a similar way. But I rarely sit and listen to them.

Recorded music however sacrilegious or licentious takes on a life of its own.... to the annoyance of some scholars and professional musicians. I do get that.... but the subjective, doubtless over-emotional, all-too-human musiclover (i.e e.g - me) gets attached to things and then....

AS for "Beethoven Reimagined".....

https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/beethoven-reimagined-yaniv-segal-bbc-national-orchestra-of-wales/at2x24lq86qfc

Please do try those Uri Caine recordings too, the Diabelli Variations with Concerto Köln especially (Winter & Winter). ....and thanks for your detailed, personalised and insightful responses Peter. Much to reflect upon.....

https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/les-variations-diabelli-uri-caine/0025091008629

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Diabelli-Variations-Caine-Concerto-Winter/dp/B084NY99LW/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=diabelli+uri+caine&qid=1593867203&sr=8-1

The things I've seen on the bedroom walls, between a sleep and wake.... well.... even football matches and less comforting images.... like videos in the windmills of my mind.... then you wake back, and.... they are just walls again.

"Gone is that music; do I wake or sleep?"

[peterthekeys]

Thank you for the recommendations - I will follow them up.

I have also several times had the experience of a piece of music "hitting the spot" in a particular situation, whereas at other times I might have passed over it. (I especially remember hearing for the first time Swingle II's crystalline rendition of Stanford's "The Blue Bird" on the radio, whilst driving in the middle of the night: I actually had to pull over and stop the car until it had finished.)

[Ein Heldenleben]

Thank you for the recommendations - I will follow them up.

I have also several times had the experience of a piece of music "hitting the spot" in a particular situation, whereas at other times I might have passed over it. (I especially remember hearing for the first time Swingle II's crystalline rendition of Stanford's "The Blue Bird" on the radio, whilst driving in the middle of the night: I actually had to pull over and stop the car until it had finished.)

The purity of tone and accuracy of pitch in that recording is absolutely extraordinary...

[Richard Barrett]

When Mengelberg, or any other performer worth his/her salt, performs a piece of music from the classical period up to the late romantic period, they are endeavouring to re-create, as precisely as possible, the composer's intentions as expressed in the score, and therefore to play the notes, all the notes and nothing but the notes. Whilst they might vary the tempo, dynamics, intonation, balance, attack, etc.

- and of course the instruments and various aspects of their technique! So what "the composer's intentions' might have been is much less clear than it might seem - on this very forum we often encounter the opinion that Beethoven or Mozart "would have preferred" pianos of the so-called modern type, or larger orchestras etc. Something is always added from the time and tastes of the performers, even in the most rigorous of HIPP realisations. And then there are cases like the Debussy piece you mention, let alone several Bruckner symphonies, where "the composer's intentions" are problematic in other ways. Arguably, then, there's only a matter of degree between someone like Mengelberg and someone like Max Richter. We could ask questions like whether Richter's versions of Vivaldi contribute to a listener's appreciation of Vivaldi (or whether this matters at all!). For myself I don't feel that I need Vivaldi/Richter or Hilliard/Garbarek or Mahler/Caine, whereas on the other hand I do feel that Isao Tomita's realisations of Debussy's piano music have made me appreciate Debussy in a different and valuable way. What's the difference? I think it has to do with the first three reimagining their source material in the context of and by reference to another existing style, be it minimalist composition or jazz or klezmer or whatever, whereas nothing previous to the Snowflakes are Dancing album had sounded anything much like it. Now that's what I would call a real reimagining. Webern's Bach ricercar is another example. Webern was using Bach's material as a substrate on which to create a new kind of orchestral sound, rather than to recreate a preexistent one. This is an issue I find myself thinking about a great deal, because often the music I appreciate the most combines an openness to as many musical possibilities as can be imagined with a refusal to fall into "eclecticism", and I want to know what this somewhat inchoate formulation actually means!