Facing the Music with Nico Muhly

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accordion, Andrew Carwood, anthem, Ave rosa sine spinis, Beyoncé, catalogue, CD, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, compact disc, Destiny’s Child, Different Trains, Disclosure, English, evensong, Glenn Gould, Goldberg Variations, harp, headphones, Hindemith, Indigo Girls, Into the Woods, iPhone, iTunes, James Blake, jazz, jazz club, La Forza del Destino, London, loudspeaker, Merrily We Roll Along, musical theatre, Nasty Girl, oboe, opera, Orlando Gibbons, performance practice, photography, Pierre Boulez, radio, Radio 3, reed, saxophone, sculpture, Stephen Sondheim, Steve Reich, Stravinsky, Symphony in Three Movements, Tallis, tenor, The Cardinall’s Musick, The Guardian, The Hague, viola da gamba, Wendy Carlos, western art music, woodwind

Nico Muhly

The Guardian interviews composer Nico Muhly:

How do you listen to music?

In general, I listen at home on my big speakers. When in transit, iPhone with headphones. On the road, via satellite radio tuned almost entirely to 90’s on 9. Radio 3 until once they played Hindemith saxophone music and I had to take a month off.

What was the last piece of music you bought?

Via iTunes, Tallis: Ave, rosa sine spinis and Other Sacred Music, recorded by The Cardinall’s Musick and Andrew Carwood.

What’s your musical guilty pleasure?

No music should be associated with guilt; it is all pure pleasure. (Real answer: the Indigo Girls)

If you found yourself with six months free to learn a new instrument, what would you choose?

The oboe! Although one gathers it takes somewhat longer than half a year to get past the painful parts.

Is applauding between movements acceptable?

Sure, why not? Or maybe you should be tried at The Hague for it. I don’t know. The press have decided to invent some great crisis about applauding and I’m not entirely sure why. You know what’s scary? Going to the jazzzzzz clubbbbb. I have no idea what to do, when to applaud, how to grow my facial hair, when to stroke it etc. Go bother them about elitism and audience participation for a few years and let us get on with our work here, then let’s check in.

What single thing would improve the format of the classical concert?

I’ve always thought that in England particularly, it would be great to have a free program, particularly at the opera. It’s never struck me as being a £5 question to know who that lovely tenor was, or, indeed, to remind me of the basic plot of something fussy like La Forza del Destino. Even a simply printed thing would be, I think, useful; it doesn’t need to be glossy or have commissioned essays.

What’s been your most memorable live music experience as an audience member?

It hasn’t happened yet in the concert hall – for me, the sublime is attained on a random Tuesday, at a sparsely-attended evensong somewhere, with an Orlando Gibbons verse anthem being sung almost perfectly.

What was the first ever record you bought?

Lol, “record.” I think it would have been Different Trains, by Steve Reich, in 1992. It was a CD.

Do you enjoy musicals? Do you have a favorite?

I have a particular obsession with Sondheim. Into the Woods is a triumph in every way, and I live for Merrily We Roll Along.

How many recordings of the Goldberg Variations do you own? Do you have a favorite?

I own the world’s most fantastic collection of the Goldberg Variations (BWV 988) played not on the keyboard. Violas da gamba, reeds, accordions, harp, you name it. One of the things about Bach is that once you start ignoring the performance practice crazy people, with their orthodoxies and internecine cattiness, you realize that Bach works despite a saxophone arrangement. That having been said, I put on Slow Late Gould when I am feeling self-indulgent and Fast Early Gould in moments of controlled mania. If Wendy Carlos got her act together and made a recording I would buy it in one second.

Which conductor of yesteryear do you most wish you could have worked with?

I think I would have to say Pierre Boulez, even though he is still, at the time of this writing, quick. I’m obsessed by his Stravinsky recordings: how he teases out the brittleness and brightness of the woodwinds. I have a recording of the Symphony in Three Movements with Chicago that gives me chills to this day.

Which non-classical musician would you love to work with?

James Blake. I keep on telling English papers to tell him to call me and nobody is making it happen. Also those boys from Disclosure. I’m leaving this in your hands now.

Imagine you’re a festival director here in London with unlimited resources. What would you program – or commission – for your opening event?

Obviously Tom Adès arrangements of Beyoncé’s entire catalogue – including Destiny’s Child-era best-of. Then you get a huge orchestra together, fly Bey over, and get a graphic designer to make a big deal about accents aigu and grave with perhaps a commissioned sculpture and boudoir photographs. I’m shocked nobody has done this already. Can you imagine his version of “Nasty put some clothes on [gong] I told you [bell + muted trumpet] don’t walk out the house without your clothes on [piccolo filigree]?“

What do you sing in the shower?

See above.

– The Guardian

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Hagia Eirene in Istanbul

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acoustics, apse, architecture, atrium, Barocco sempre giovane, Constantine I, dome, Hagia Eirene, Haydn, Hindemith, Hurriet Daily News, Istanbul, Istanbul Bach Days, Jiří Bárta, Locatelli, mosque, museum, Nazlı Erdoğan, Ottoman Empire, Pachelbel, St. Irene Church, Stamitz, Telemann, Topkapi Palace, Turkish Ministry of Culture, western art music

Hagia Eirene

Hagia Eirene (St. Irene Church) stands on what is believed to be the oldest site of Christian worship in Istanbul. Roman Emperor Constantine I ordered the church in the fourth century, making it the first church built in Constantinople, and it is also the only church that was not turned into a mosque after the Ottomans conquered Istanbul in 1453. Eventually the Topkapi Palace walls enclosed the church, and the building was pressed into service as an armory and booty warehouse.

In the early twentieth century, the former church was transformed into a military museum, and now, under the control of the Turkish Ministry of Culture, the church’s original atrium, an apse containing five rows of built-in seats, and a great cross outlined in black against a gold background in the half-dome above the apse combine to create an extraordinary atmosphere for performances of western art music.

During the recent Istanbul Bach Days, the ensemble Barocco sempre giovane appeared at Hagia Eirene with soloists Nazlı Erdoğan and Jiří Bárta in performances of works by Locatelli, Pachelbel, Stamitz, Telemann, Bach, Hindemith and Haydn.

– Hurriet Daily News

Interview with Paul Miller: The Viola d’Amore in the St. John Passion

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aria, Baroque bow, bass, Betrachte meine Seel', Boulder Bach Festival, Boulder Bach Festival Players, cantata, chorale prelude, Erwäge wie sein blutgefärbter Rücke, Hindemith, Johannes Eberle, Kammermusik Nr. 6, Kleine Sonate, Leipzig, lute, luthier, Martin Biller, Mein teurer Heiland, Mittenwald, nylon string, organ, organ registration, organ stop, passion, pastorale, Paul Miller, Prague, Rick Erickson, solo stop, St. John Passion, St. Matthew Passion, sympathetic string, tenor, timbre, Tomastik, tone color, Tritt auf die Glaubensbahn, viola d’amore, Weimar, Zachary Carrettin

Edward McCue (EM) Few of us are familiar with the viola d’amore. What is it about this many-stringed instrument that Bach found attractive, and what role will it play in Boulder Bach Festival performances of the St. John Passion (BWV 245), under the direction of Rick Erickson, on 1 and 2 March 2013?

Paul Miller (PM) Bach already included the viola d’amore in his score for the cantata Tritt auf die Glaubensbahn (BWV 152) at the end of 1714, but we’re not certain what kind of instrument he would have known during his years in Weimar. It’s quite likely that that viola d’amore had five or six playing strings, but we’re not sure if that instrument included resonating, sympathetic strings strung below the playing strings. In any case, we can be certain that Bach appreciated the nasal quality of the tone produced by the viola d’amore and realized that it did not project as loudly as a violin.

Later, while in Leipzig, Bach featured the distinctive tone color of the viola d’amore in the St. John Passion. For nearly fifteen minutes, following the violent scourging of Jesus, a pair of these gentle instruments, with the accompaniment of a lute, reflect on the beating of this innocent man during a bass arioso, Betrachte, meine Seel’, and a tenor aria that immediately follows, Erwäge, wie sein blutgefärbter Rücken. With these two arias, Bach reveals what lies at the center of his interpretation of John’s gospel, that is, whatever bad happened to Jesus must be interpreted as being good for us. This is in stark contrast with the later St. Matthew Passion (BWV 244), where our guilt and sin are lamented over again and again.

Bach portrayed the interplay between darkness and light in the St. John Passion by employing the full Baroque palette of musical devices, including contrasts in tone color. Bach was so very sensitive to tone color, and since many of the organs of his day included a viola d’amore stop, I like to imagine him really enjoying that solo stop for extended periods of time.

EM Few twenty-first century listeners have had an opportunity to hear the extraordinary sound of the viola d’amore. How many orchestral string players have ever heard one, and when they do, how many commit to its mastery?

PM Few upper string players take the time to double on the viola d’amore, and when they do, they must contend with a number of thorny technical issues.

Since Bach didn’t specify a tuning for the strings of the instrument, Zachary Carrettin, our concertmaster for the Boulder Bach Festival Players, and I have had to discover for ourselves what tuning will work. We have found that a G minor tuning of the strings, even though the arias are in E flat Major and C minor, respectively, works really well. Even though there certainly would be other ways to go about it, we find that it is easier to play in tune with each other when we tune both instruments with the same open strings. While there are a couple of spots that are genuinely a bit tricky, most of it works pretty well with the G minor tuning, and we find that the open strings resonate very nicely in all of the right places.

Zach and I have also decided to play on instruments built by the same luthier, Martin Biller. Zach is playing on Biller’s classic Mittenwald model with an absolutely beautiful arched back of interwoven cherry and maple woods. I’m playing on an viola d’amore modeled after a flat-backed instrument made by Johannes Eberle of mid to late eighteen-century Prague, so you’ll see two instruments with different shapes but complementary sounds.

Lately we’ve also been working out other technical issues, including different ways of using the Baroque bow and string selections. Because our violas d’amore have seven strings, rather than the four found on modern violins and violas, it’s easy to crash into the wrong string if you’re not careful, and if you blindly insist on using gut strings, your instrument quickly goes out of tune. As a result, we’ve decided to use metal-wound perlon strings by the Viennese manufacturer Thomastik, the same string-maker that supplied Paul Hindemith when he composed and performed his Kleine Sonate and Kammermusik Nr. 6 for viola d’amore in the 1920s.

EM Paul, it’s obvious that you are very much looking forward to performing the two arias that include your viola d’amore, but what will likely be the high point of the St. John Passion for the other members of the orchestra, the chorus and the audience?

PM Even though I’ve always played one of the viola d’amore parts in previous performances, I think that the other players also like the d’amore arias because they give them a break from playing and an extraordinary opportunity to join the audience in listening to fifteen minutes of sheer beauty. But for all of us performing the St. John Passion, it’s the bass aria and chorale after Jesus has died, Mein teurer Heiland, that is truly amazing. This pastorale in 6/8, very much like a chorale prelude for soloist, chorus and orchestra, confirms that the terror of Jesus’ passion is finally over and that the brightness of God’s glory can now shine forth.

Bach certainly composed gems for the viola d’amore in the St. John Passion, but I’ve got to say that Mein teurer Heiland is even greater evidence of his musical and theological genius.