Perfection Not Always Perfect

I've been listening to MPR (Minnesota Public Radio) fairly often, trying to regain my passion for classical music I didn't so much lose in college as have taken away from me. Strong words, I know. I'll tell that story sometime.

Anyway, they've played Camille Saint-Saens's Danse Macabre fairly often recently. Mostly because Halloween was not too long ago. I guess it would be classified as a tone poem which essentially tells a story through music. At their best, tone poems evoke a story. At their worst, they can sound like a movie score, not evoking so much as trying to pound visuals into your brain with the hammer of music. Listen to some Richard Strauss tone poems. You'll wonder why anyone listens to this schizophrenic music and then you'll read the story he's trying to tell, nod, and never listen to it again. Or maybe not. I seem to be alone in this.

I digress. Let me tell you the story of Danse Macabre as I remember it from those single slide projectors they used when I was in school. You know, the kind that you actually dreaded was coming out because it was actually more boring than the teacher teaching. Basically, as I recall, it begins with a ghost tuning his fiddle. When he starts to play a furious melody, other ghosts come out and dance around the graveyard. It's a really neat piece and I had forgotten about it. It's one of those that you can enjoy even if you're not into classical music.

So I used the word fiddle above. The difference between a fiddle and violin? Structurally, nothing. Honestly, I'm sure a Stradivarius can be a fiddle in the right hands. Stradivariuses very rarely find their way into those hands. But that's where the difference is, the spirit in which a violin is played makes a violin a fiddle. Now the recordings I've heard of Danse Macabre are played by professional orchestras, i.e. violinists. And it's all just a little too precise. All the notes are hit, and accurately. No sliding between pitches. No flourish. A simple playing of the notes on the page.

This is one of the excuses I gave as to why I left classical music (I majored in French horn Performance in college). A wrong note in a concert is nothing more than a mistake. On the stage? Wrong, but salvagable. Sometimes amazingly. And sometimes missed by the audience. Theatergoers don't generally have a play memorized or are seeing a new play. If you go to an orchestra concert, I'd bet half the audience knows the program inside and out and has favorite recordings. They know when a mistake is made. And have opinions about the interpretation of the pieces they're hearing.

Now, I think it's cool that people can develop tastes to such an extent, but that it has so invaded the entire classical music culture is a little disappointing. I would love, LOVE, to hear a recording of Danse Macabre with fiddle players. You know, all the Nashville session musicians and Alison Krauss as the soloist. That would be awesome. I feel like when this piece is played, strings should break. It should sound dangerous. Not like you're impersonating the ghosts but you are conjuring them.

Would Camille Saint-Saens approve? I don't know of any apochryphal stories about Saint-Saens like I've heard about Beethoven. A violinist complained that the notes in Beethoven's 9th Symphony were too difficult to play and he responded, "Do you think the muse in my head worries about what you can and can't play?" But hey, they're both dead, so, who cares? Maybe the playing would raise him from the dead.

Maurice Ravel's Bolero is another piece that often suffers from this same sense of perfection. It's another great piece. You've probably heard bits and pieces, but I strongly recommend you sit down and listen to it in one sitting. I think it's about 9 minutes long. I believe Ravel himself has described it as one long crescendo. It just drives from the beginning right to the very end, but you need the whole piece to really get caught up in it. I have a recording by a lesser orchestra that I love because they come the closest to letting themselves go. Essentially, the piece is a driving rhythm over which a melody is played continuously, given to different instruments. Toward the end, the trombones get the melody and in this recording, they really just let themselves slide into every note. Not hit it precisely. And it sounds, well, slutty. And it's great! I hate hearing it played cleanly.

And don't get me started on the vocal recitals I heard in college that included Stephen Foster songs. You haven't heard anything so utterly wrong as hearing some warble through "Camptown Races." Hey, I'm all for operatic singing...in operas! But simple songs? Come on. Don't kid yourself. I'd love to hear a recording of Stephen Foster songs sung by popular musicians. You know, the aforementioned Allison Krauss, Bruce Springsteen, Bruce Cockburn, Steve Earle, Bill Mallonee, Tom Waits, John Mellencamp. That would be a good album.