#91: Ludwig van Beethoven, "Missa Solemnis"
Ludwig van Beethoven, Missa Solemnis, released 1990 by Deutsche Grammophon

Charlotte Margiono, soprano
Catherine Robbin, mezzo-soprano
William Kendall, tenor
Alastair Miles, bass

The Monteverdi Choir
The English Baroque Soloists

Alastair Ross, Organ

John Eliot Gardiner, Director

Missa Solemnis for four solo voices, chorus, orchestra and organ in D Major, Op. 123
1) Kyrie. Assai sostenuto (Mit Andacht)
2) Gloria. Allegro vivace
3) Credo. Allegro ma non troppo
4) Sanctus. Adagio (Mit Andacht)
5) Agnus Dei. Adagio

Beethoven's Missa Solemnis is considered one of his greatest achievements, among the finest settings of the Mass. It's a hugely ambitious piece, with five gigantic movements that altogether span nearly an hour and a half.

And I'm going to have to go ahead and admit that it did nothing for me.

I found the Missa Solemnis overstuffed and pompous, lacking in the thematic unity and rigor that's one of the things I love most about Beethoven. The moments that stood out – whether for their excitement, delicacy, or sheer beauty – felt unearned and unconnected to the piece as a whole, isolated from one another, as if he had some great bits and pieces of music lying around and just tossed them into this work when he couldn't think of anything better to do.

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#92: Artis Quartett, "Weigl/Berg String Quartets"
Artis Quartett[1], Weigl/Berg String Quartets, released 1990 by Orfeo

Peter Schuhmayer, Violin 1
Johannes Meissl, Violin 2
Herbert Kefer, Viola
Othmar Müller, Cello

Karl Weigl: String Quartet No. 3 in A Major, Op. 4
1) I. Innig bewegt
2) II. Kräftig bewegt
3) III. Sehr langsam
4) IV. Stürmisch

Alban Berg: String Quartet Op. 3
5) I. Langsam
6) II. Mäßige Viertel

Alban Berg: Lyric Suite (1926)
7) I. Allegretto gioviale
8) II. Andante amoroso
9) III. Allegro misterioso – Trio ecstatico
10) IV. Adagio appassionato
11) V. Presto deliriando
12) VI. Largo desolato

I don't know much about Karl Weigl. According to the liner notes, he was a luminary in the European music scene before fleeing to the US before World War II, after which he faded into obscurity. This particular work won the Beethoven Prize, which I know nothing about but sounds very prestigious indeed, and it's a damn fine piece of music.

The musical language is late Romantic, still tonal but never settled, willing to wander far from home, take unexpected paths. He sometimes uses rough rhythms and salty harmonies which are strongly reminiscent of Bartók's explorations of folk music[2].

The first movement seems to begin in medias res, fading into a graceful and lyrical idea that trades back and forth with a confident, joyous dance, finally ending with a gentle caress. The second is a rustic dance that feels like a competition between the four instruments; it presages some of Shostakovich's own creepily twisted dances. The third movement is mournful but restless, occasionally trying to surge forward into some cheer, only to fall apart. And the last begins with a nod to the Scherzo from Beethoven's Ninth, which is a pretty cocky move. The allusions to the Ninth don't stop there, as much of the movement alludes to themes from the first three, compellingly transformed and juxtaposed against some new ideas.

This piece deserves more than its relative obscurity.
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Alban Berg was, along with Anton Webern, a disciple of Arnold Schoenberg; together, the three are known as The Second Viennese School, the most important practitioners of Schoenberg's twelve-tone system.

Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone system as a way of organizing pitch in the absence of the rules once imposed by tonality. He had begun to write atonal music in 1908 but felt it necessary to find some formal means of controlling and harnessing his ideas, a way of ensuring that everything in a piece was related and self-consistent; he finally codified the basics of his system in the early 1920s.

At its most basic[3], the system is designed to make sure that no one pitch has priority over any other. Composers create a twelve-tone row, a sequence of all twelve pitches that must be followed in order. This sequence can be transposed, used in retrograde (mirrored horizontally), used in inversion (mirrored vertically), or used in retrograde inversion for a total of 48 different sequences. Note that pitches can be played in any octave, or on top of one another to create harmony – although "sonorities" might be a more appropriate word.

While it sounds extremely restrictive, the system still offers a great deal of freedom. Choosing different orders for your pitches can result in wildly different sound worlds, and one can even subvert Schoenberg's original intention and create a row that churns out tonal music. As well, some composers ignored the directive to use all twelve pitches, or use each pitch only once, as in Stravinsky's Cantata.

Of the Second Viennese School, Berg owed most to Romanticism, which considered music a vehicle for the expression of deep and profound emotion. He saw himself continuing the work of Mahler, and so Berg often constructed his rows in ways which were – while still atonal – powerfully allusive to tonal music; thus of his peers his music is the most easily apprehended, as it follows tradition in sentiment and, to a smaller extent, language.
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I can't find much to say about his String Quartet; it strikes me as unfocused and without direction. One of the greatest challenges of writing atonal music is creating momentum without the incredibly powerful tension/release provided by tonality; and even the best composers can't succeed every time.
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Berg's Lyric Suite is one of his most celebrated pieces, a six-movement work that tells the story of a doomed love affair, almost certainly inspired by an actual affair of Berg's[4]. It's a searing, painfully intense experience, ending in total despair, not to be listened to for pleasure but for beauty.

The movements alternate between fast and slow, and each successive movement takes a more extreme tempo, fostering a sense of spiraling out of control, veering from edge to edge. The Allegretto is lilting and carefree, an airiness chased away by the tender and searching Andante. The Allegro is furtive and hushed, bursting suddenly into an ebullient Trio, a stolen moment of passion. The erotic Adagio that follows swells and fades, a kind of consummation whose joy is quickly dispelled by a jagged, agonized Presto. Its unhinged violence fades into the utterly dejected final Largo, in which a tormented melody rises out of a bleak, barren landscape, and peters out into quiet annihilation[5].

This is not to be listened to lightly.
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(1) Under "B" because I bought it for Berg.

(2) Though, as they were contemporaries, it may be unfair to put it this way.

(3) Many composers imposed stricter and arcane rules upon themselves to increase order and self-similarity within the row, some of them extremely abstruse.

(4) Though the real-life affair probably merits being described as "successful".

(5) I will say that while atonality is versatile, I honestly don't think it's very effective at conveying positive emotional states; even the movements intended to be happy sound somewhat demented. And it's worth noting that often the most powerful moments in Berg's music happen when something tonal coalesces out of a maelstrom of notes.

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#93: Alban Berg, "Kammerkonzert; Violin Concerto"
Alban Berg, Kammerkonzert; Violin Concerto, released 1962/1986 by CBS Records Masterworks

Kammerkonzert for Piano and Violin with 13 Wind Instruments
Isaac Stern, violin
Peter Serkin, piano
Members of the London Symphony Orchestra; Claudio Abbado, Director

1-7) I. Thema scherzoso con Variazioni
8) II. Adagio
9-11) III. Rondo ritmico con Introduzione (Cadenza)

Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, "To the Memory of an Angel"
Isaac Stern, violin
New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, Director

12) I. Andante; Allegretto
13) II. Allegro; Adagio

I'll just be blunt about the Kammerkonzert: I find it boring and impenetrable. At its worst, listening to atonal serialism is like being forced to watch somebody play solitaire, or like trying to interact with someone who's only interested in engaging with themselves.
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Berg's Violin Concerto was commissioned by violinist Louis Krasner; it is an elegy for Manon Gropius, the beloved daughter of close friends and luminaries Alma and Walter Gropius. As befits a work about profound mourning, it is at turns haunting, tormented, nostalgic, desolate, and, finally, resigned. The depth of its emotional evocativeness has made it one of his best-loved pieces.

One of Berg's signature (and most effective) techniques is to insert brief sections of tonal music, islands of stability that coalesce out of a sea of atonality, and then dissolve; the effect is one of finding lucid stillness in fond reminiscence, of being haunted by memories whose remembered joy only makes sinking back into grief all the more painful.

The piece is in two halves, life and death. It begins delicately and sweetly, segueing into a playful dance that gets a little out of control before coming back under control. The opening of the second movement is a distortion of the first's, ominous and agitated; the music veers back and forth at a faster and faster pace, eventually wearing out and fading into acceptance and a keening Bach chorale.

It's a gorgeous but harrowing work, made all the more touching for its real-life roots.

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#94: Alban Berg, "Wozzeck"
Alban Berg, Wozzeck, released 1987 by Deutsche Grammophon

Wozzeck, Op. 7, an opera in three acts after the drama Woyzeck by Georg Buchner
Vienna State Opera Chorus, Vienna Boys' Choir; Helmuth Froschauer, Chorus Master
Vienna Philharmonic; Claudio Abbado, Conductor

Wozzeck is based on Georg Buchner's unfinished play Woyzeck, which uses the story of a lowly soldier who kills his lover in a fit of jealousy to explore themes of poverty, authority, and oppression. The work is powerful enough that it's been staged and adapted countless times despite being fragmentary and incomplete at the time of Buchner's death[1], and was a particular influence on Expressionism.

Berg arranged the original play into three acts of five scenes each, providing the symmetry he enjoyed working with. In his adaptation, Wozzeck is a soldier who is constantly humiliated by his commanding officer and whose moonlighting as a medical test subject may be driving him mad. His sometime lover Marie – with whom he has a son – begins flirting with a Drum Major, and he murders her in a fit of insanity-tinged rage before drowning in a river. A slightly more descriptive plot synopsis can be found here.

Berg being Berg, there is a deep musical structure at work: each scene uses a form normally reserved for instrumental music, giving the opera greater thematic unity than more traditional structures would have. As you might expect, the music is very darkly beautiful, deeply infused with pathos and despair, making the moments of tenderness within – such as a lullaby Marie sings to her son – incredibly poignant and all the sadder. Berg was a master of exploiting the tension between atonality and tonality, using each to heighten the impact of the other, heightening the extremes of emotion he can conjure, and this opera was one of his masterpieces.
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(1) Oddly, one can consider it one of the first works of (unintentional) postmodernism in that no definitive version can exist – it must be created and assembled anew with each performance.

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#XX: Luciano Berio, Sinfonia/Eindrücke
Luciano Berio, Sinfonia/Eindrücke, released 1986 by Erato
Orchestra National de France; Pierre Boulez, conductor

Sinfonia for eight voices and orchestra
Régis Pasquier, violin
New Swingle Singers; Ward Swingle, conductor

1) I.
2) II. O King
3) III. In ruhig fliessender Bewegung
4) IV.
5) V.

6) Eindrücke

Luciano Berio was one of the 20th century's most important avant-garde composers; he's best known for his work in electronic music and his exploration and use of extended techniques for both instruments and voice, most of which is informed by the idea of collage: atomizing something into its component parts and exposing them isolated from their usual context, reassembling them differently, or juxtaposing them against fragments of other works.
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Berio's Sinfonia is considered one of his masterpieces. Scored for orchestra and eight voices, it's a dense and challenging work, unpredictable and disorienting. In addition to the nonstandard use of the orchestra, the vocalists are speaking, whispering, and yelling as often as singing, and Berio often breaks down the texts[1] further down than sentences, into words and even phonemes.

The first movement is jerky and random, flitting between fast, loud exhortations and quiet...and I find it somewhat dull and exasperating. It's very difficult to make atonal pointillism compelling, and I don't think Berio succeeds; the constant unpredictability actually fosters a sense of sameness. The second was originally composed shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King, and is a solemn meditation on his name...that I also find fairly dull.

The third movement is the most compelling, a pastiche of musical quotations that swirl around its core, the scherzo from a Mahler symphony, over all of which a vocalist chants a mocking, despairing speech. It's like traveling through madness, being assaulted by violent swings of thought and memory, with the only constant an inner monologue that consists mostly of contemptuous prattle. In its aftermath, the haunting fourth movement is a lovely respite, a slow wash of cluster harmonies, and the fifth returns to the homogenous cacophony of the first.

Eindrücke is very much like the framing movements of the Sinfonia.
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(1) Lévi-Strauss's Le cri et le cuit, Samuel Beckett's The Unnameable, and a whole bunch of random found stuff (graffiti, annotations in scores, etc.)

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#96: "Romantic Favorites for Strings"
Romantic Favorites for Strings[1], released 1983 by CBS Records
New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor

1) Samuel Barber: Adagio for Strings, Op. 11

2) Ralph Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis

3) Ralph Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on "Greensleeves"; David Nadien, violin

4) Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky: String Quartet No. 1, Op. 11: II. Andante Cantabile

5) Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor: IV. Adagietto

I own this CD because of the Barber, which is an utterly gorgeous piece of music. It's a mournful work that evokes profound grief; its recurring motif is a pleading melody that grows more insistent and inconsolable until it breaks down and settles into acceptance and resignation. It's used often (and effectively) in scenes of battle and its aftermath, and I'm not sure why somebody considered it a "Romantic Favorite", but there it is.

The Vaughan Williams pieces and the Tchaikovsky are nice enough, but they're basically more elevated forms of Muzak: pleasant and ignorable. I'd usually put this disc on when I wanted to hear music without having to listen to it.

Gustav Mahler's "Adagietto" is also absolutely lovely; seeing as how it'll come up again later when I review Mahler's Fifth Symphony, I'll save talking about it until then.
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(1) Filed under "B" for Bernstein, because I never know quite how to file compilations.

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#97: "Bernstein conducts Bernstein and Gershwin"
Bernstein conducts Bernstein and Gershwin, released 1992 by Sony Classical

Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story" (Orchestration: Sid Ramin & Irwin Kostal)
New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor
1) Prologue. Allegro moderato
2) "Somewhere". Adagio
3) Scherzo. Vivace leggiero
4) Mambo. Presto
5) Cha-Cha ("Maria"). Andantino con grazia
6) Meeting Scene. Meno mosso
7) "Cool" Fogue. Allegretto
8) Rumble. Molto allegro
9) Finale. Adagio

10) Bernstein: Overture to "Candide"
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, conductor

11) Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue (Orchestration: Ferde Grofé)
Columbia Symphony Orchestra; Leonard Bernstein, piano & conductor

12) Gershwin: An American in Paris
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, conductor

Leonard Bernstein was probably the last nationally renowned classical musician in the United States. A renaissance man, he was a virtuoso pianist, a celebrated composer, and led one of the nation's great orchestras, The New York Philharmonic, for decades[1]. He was one of classical music's great ambassadors, lecturing and performing frequently on radio and television in an effort to court a wider and younger audience.

Bernstein himself was a colorful figure. Never shy, he was an outspoken leftist and liberal, often drawing scrutiny from government organizations, and he's infamous for his sexual promiscuity, as well as coming out as gay in the late '70s. Many of his later works are overtly political and transgressive in semantic as well as musical content[2].

Even according to his own reckoning, Bernstein's compositional style is difficult to pin down because his conducting and performing activities precluded him from truly focusing on writing. It can best be described as eclectic; Bernstein drew from a wide range of sources, from avant-garde modernist techniques to the popular music of his day. Apparently some of his detractors went so far as to call his work more pastiche than composition.

West Side Story is his best-known work, a musical based on Romeo and Juliet about a romance between members of rival gangs in contemporary New York City, and the Symphonic Dances are a distillation of the dance music Bernstein wrote for it. It's particularly striking for its use of jazz and Latin styles, fusing them with the angular, unpredictable rhythms of Stravinsky. It's really fun and engaging to listen to, and it's brilliantly and colorfully orchestrated; the refreshing physicality and energy of the Symphonic Dances was a rarity in the new music of that time[3].

Candide was an operetta based on Voltaire's novella, which I know nothing about. Composed at about the same time as West Side Story, its Overture is just as energetic. Its brash and overconfident opening is constantly mocked by the winds and strings, before transitioning into (and alternating with) a more lyrical, optimistic theme. It's a bright, lively piece.
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George Gershwin is recognized as one of America's first great composers and songwriters. Like Bernstein, he straddled the worlds of classical and popular music; strongly and influenced by French compositional techniques and jazz, he collaborated with his brother Ira on many musicals, and his output also includes orchestral music, film music, and the opera Porgy and Bess[4].

Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris are large, free-form orchestral compositions that aim to be musical journeys, recasting a consistent idea in different musical contexts. They're wonderfully crafted and graceful, but their unfailing pleasantness means that they lack a real sense of dramatic contour. Each piece has its moments, but there's never any real sense of tension; and their episodic nature is kind of clunky, and makes sections feel somewhat disconnected. Both are quite lovely, but I feel as if one of their failings is how hard they try to be nice and safe.
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(1) His accomplishments as a musical philosopher and thinker are in a little more dispute. The Unanswered Question, a series of Norton lectures on basically the entirety of classical music, is noteworthy for its breadth and depth of thought, but his attempt to comprehensively apply Chomsky's theories of language to music has been criticized for its logical shakiness.

(2) In particular, his MASS, commissioned by Jackie Kennedy.

(3) And of today's as well.

(4) Which was incredibly daring for its time, requiring a full cast of classically trained African-American singers.

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#98: betwixt, "the salty tang"
betwixt, the salty tang, released 1999 by archenemy

1) Jailbreak '98-'99
2) Mosquito Bites
3) Sound of America
4) Spencer For Hire
5) Stop-n-Start
6) Back of a Hand
7) Melvin Belron's Wedding
8) Merkin
9) Needlessness
10) Dead Animals

betwixt was a local band; I used to work at Crate & Barrel with their drummer Dave Nelson, and I went to (and dug) a couple of their shows. They were a four-piece outfit, showcasing a female singer with a coldly seductive voice, heavily fuzzed-out guitars, a cellist who provided both bass and melodic lines, and some frenetic, clanky drumming. Their sound was lush and richly textured, and the modal nature of their music gave it a hypnotic, Middle-Eastern feel. They remind me at times of My Bloody Valentine with the swirling dreaminess of their tunes.

I'm sorry they're no longer around; I really like their sound. My favorite tracks are the first four and "Merkin", I particularly like the constant distortion on "Mosquito Bites", the klezmer influence on "Sound of America", and the meditativeness of "Merkin".

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#99: Andrew Bird, "Noble Beast"
Andrew Bird, Noble Beast, released 2009 by Fat Possum Records

1) Oh No
2) Masterswarm
3) Fitz and the Dizzyspells
4) Effigy
5) Tenuousness
6) Nomenclature
7) Ouo
8) Not a Robot, but a Ghost
9) Unfolding Fans
10) Anoanimal
11) Natural Disaster
12) The Privateers
13) Souverian
14) On Ho!

Andrew Bird is a purveyor of what's commonly referred to as chamber pop, music written with a pop sensibility but with a strong classical music influence, in instrumentation and compositional approach in terms of motivic development, formal structure, harmonic shifts, etc[1]. It's an intriguing genre, particularly for folks who are tired of the standard four-piece rock outfit or of standard pop's overproduced cookie-cutter approach to songwriting, but who are still moved by songs qua songs.

Bird is a violinist with a frictionless voice, and his music is informed by as much folk as classical in its lilting rhythms and gentle harmonies. Noble Beast is his fifth studio album, and most of its songs have a meandering, improvised quality, as if they're in no hurry to get anywhere. While that can be an appealing quality, here it results in music that sounds directionless, twee, and, well, flaccid[2]. They're nice to listen to, but I never really got the sense that these songs had a strong core reason for existing.

There are exceptions, of course. "Not a Robot, but a Ghost" is my favorite song on the album, and it has a crispness and urgency, as well as poignant lyrics that liken codebreaking to trying to salvage a failing relationship. I also really dig "Anoanimal", which has a sense of sad and deranged isolation reminiscent of Radiohead.

Noble Beast is nice enough, and there are a couple of gems. But it falls victim to some of my own criticisms of chamber pop – it can fall prey to pretention and self-indulgence, and can be overly precious, substituting cleverness for inspiration.

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(1) "Eleanor Rigby" is actually a pretty good example; see also Owen Pallett, Sufjan Stevens.

(2) Sorry, but it's honestly the most appropriate word for my perception of it.

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#100: Björk, Debut
Björk, Debut, released 1993 by Elektra Records

1) Human Behavior
2) Crying
3) Venus as a Boy
4) There's More to Life Than This
5) Like Someone In Love
6) Big Time Sensuality
7) One Day
8) Aeroplane
9) Come to Me
10) Violently Happy
11) The Anchor Song

Björk is one of the most daring and original musicians active today. Her most striking feature is her feral, primal voice, which veers from wild and savage to childlike, innocent, and vulnerable; it alone would probably have made her famous. That she's also a great songwriter seems simply unfair, and that's without discussing her fluency in a wide variety of genres. Simply put, she's a hell of a musician who's admirable not only for her talent but her fearlessness and self-assurance.
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Debut is her first true solo album[1] after fronting a number of bands, most notably The Sugarcubes. Though it's best classified as a dance-pop album, it's very eclectic, also featuring some heartfelt torch songs and even a jazz standard...and it's so hard to encapsulate that I feel like the only way to talk about it is to call out each track individually.

The opening song of her solo career, "Human Behavior" is so unusual that it's practically a manifesto and a challenge, a declaration of uniqueness. It's a tribal, hypnotic song driven by a bass line played relentlessly by what sound like primitive timpani. Above it soars a melody that sounds ethereal and alien even though it's in the "correct" key – part of how she does this is by centering the melody on notes that aren't part of its supporting chords, and by phrasing it such that ignores barlines; both elements make it feel ungrounded and unbalanced.

"Crying" is a more conventional dance tune, with boring verses that are redeemed by a lovely chorus and bridge, and "Venus as a Boy" is a mellow song that's harmless and kind of cute.

"There's More to Life Than This" is a rather odd song. On the surface it sounds like a generic dance track, with a thudding beat and minimal musical activity, with – oddly – a layer of dance party ambience. Yet the song itself is about the shallowness of the club scene...and in the middle, everything quiets down and Björk confesses to us that what she really wants to do is leave. It's weird, and cool, and mischievous.

That's followed by a delicate arrangement for harp and voice of an old standard, "Like Someone in Love", with some city ambiance barely audible underneath, as if we're hearing her sing this in her head while walking down the street.

These last two are particularly disconcerting because pop recordings are usually presented as definitive, idealized manifestations of the artist's vision of a song, and they exist in isolation as if they're for you and for you alone (if not necessarily to you). The real-world noise marks these specific, non-ideal performances, and makes us aware that these are being sung in a specific context for somebody else. In fact, it goes a little further in "There's More to Life..."; in that moment when everything else drops out, Björk stops singing to the crowd and addresses us directly. It's a clever and startling way of making us conscious of the fourth wall of music.

Things return to normal-ish with "Big Time Sensuality", a buoyant, celebratory dance track. I find "One Day" and "Violently Happy" flat and boring. "Aeroplane" is worth taking a closer look at, if only to mention that it prominently features a sax quartet, used to lovely effect; and those saxes reappear in the last track "The Anchor Song", but the straightforward back-and-forth between the quartet and Björk gets dull quickly.

Despite the wide range of styles on the disc, it all feels unified by Björk's incredibly human voice, how fully present and engaged she is with each song, as if she feels each one deeply and uniquely. And though it features a lot of dance tracks, Debut seems most inspired by the ebullience and heartfelt sincerity of big band jazz and old-school movie musicals, and an impulse to lay everything bare that draws from German Expressionism. While it's not always successful, it's always genuine, and that counts for a lot.
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(1) She recorded an album of covers when she was eleven.

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