Volume 23 Issue 2 - October 2017

Beat by Beat | Early Music
Towards Disinhibition...
a Modernized Manifesto
MATTHEW WHITFIELD
“Classical music is dying!” Charlie Albright reported for CNN
back in May 2016, and its death is not a quick and abrupt
one but rather slow and painful, like a cancer that kills
from the inside out. “With [its] stifling atmosphere of rules
and ‘appropriateness,’ it is no wonder that people (especially
youth) are apprehensive and often uninterested in the whole
idea of classical music. Somehow, classical music has become
inaccessible and unwelcoming.”
October is here and based on the above we can anticipate a wave
of the same old junk, identical to what came before, and identical to
what will come next, a musical merry-go-round of the first degree:
obsessive etiquettal xenophobia, predictable programming falling into
pretty, compartmentalized categories (like a mother cutting up a pork
chop for her child – easy to eat and it just tastes better this way) with
attention-grabbing headlines that ensure that the conductor’s circle
donors (who give more in a year than you’ll make in five) will remain
happy, contentedly perennial boons to the budget.
Wanna hear something German? Here’s some Bach…
Wanna hear something French? Here’s some Lully and Rameau…
Wanna hear something English? Here’s a Handel oratorio…
Wanna be up to your eyeballs in gentrified groupies spewing vapid
pleasantries? Here’s a post-concert reception…
Want something different?
Larry Beckwith conducting Toronto Masque Theatre's A Soldier's Tale
Aeneas and Dido?
Henry Purcell, particularly his opera Dido and Aeneas, has become
something of a fixture the last few years – Google “Dido and Aeneas
Toronto” and watch the 275,000 hits pop up. Musically, the relative
simplicity of Dido’s score has long permitted conductors, producers,
choreographers and directors free reign over the dramatic and visual
components of the theatrical production, resulting in a wide spectrum
of aesthetics. The beauty of Purcell’s opera, from a programming
perspective, is its brevity; the 40-minute-or-so runtime allows
another work, similar or contrasting, to be placed cheek to jowl with
it, thereby creating a more dynamic performance than the Purcell
does as a freestanding piece of music.
Larry Beckwith’s Toronto Masque Theatre is doing just that – pairing
Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with James Rolfe’s Aeneas and Dido to
form a uniquely expressive concert. Far from being just a convenient
inversion of the title, Rolfe’s Aeneas (commissioned by the Toronto
Masque Theatre in 2007, with a libretto by 2015 Giller Prize-winning
Regeneration
In recent years there have been some interesting and original
performances built around rather conventional repertoire, combining
standard tunes with new visual and environmental stimulation.
Alison Mackay’s multi-disciplinary Tafelmusik presentations of The
Galileo Project and House of Dreams, among others, have broadened
the horizons of many stiff-necked concertgoers in a way that is
both familiar yet new, good for business but also for the regeneration
of old music through new art forms. (“Thank Wotan for multimedia!”
Wagner and his Gesamtkunstwerk ideals are whispering somewhere
in the celestial ether.)
Multimedia collaboration is just one way that we can use old music
in new incarnations. Last month I wrote about the fresh, modern
movement that gets the cobwebs out of the canon by bringing classical
music to bars, clubs and taverns. (You can read my review of the
ClassyAF performance at Dakota Tavern on The WholeNote website.)
These stripped-down yet high-quality performances declassify art
music, removing the frills and snobbish attitude, making it less like a
liturgical rite and more like the pop music it was when it was written.
If you’re the guy who cringes when someone claps between movements
at a concert or a member of the conductor’s circle, stay far,
far away (and get your snotty nose out of my column!). If, however,
you long for a way to take in the music you love without all the extra
chi-chi superfluities, get out there and explore. Toronto is a wonderfully
diverse city with dozens of concerts and events taking place
every night, hundreds each month, thousands every year. I encourage
you to go to as many as you can and step outside your comfort zone.
Explore the different sections of this magazine, not just the ones you
always do, and support the artists that bring this city to life!
(As a side note, if you own a bar and want to host a mean set of
Bach and Brubeck, give me a shout…)
thewholenote.com October 2017 | 27