Comments on: An Italian in San Francisco

By: zeno

zeno — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 13:29:53 +0000

Mr McDonagh, having visited repeatedly, and again last Saturday, I will respectfully disagree with your opinion that the new San Francisco de Young Museum building, by Herzog and Meuron, is not beautiful. I will even more strongly disagree with you that the building — like the new “sustainable” Rienzo Piano California Academy of Sciences now being built across the historic, newly restored Music Concourse from the de Young — is not “site specific.” Nor have I ever encountered the “funny model home smell” you report experiencing. (I do believe, however, that the commissioned Gerhard Richter’s “Strontium” large painting, for the atrium, doesn’t do the museum much justice — especially in that the building was designed, largely, to celebrate Ancient and Modern American Sculpture, Painting, and Crafts, as well as Oceanic, New Guinean, and African Arts.)

I will now assume that you are not looking forward to Herzog and Meuron’s new concert hall — in the historic shipping/commercial district of Hamburg, Germany:

http://www.hafencity.com/upload/images/Content/news/z_de_news_39_F2_fliesstext_kaiA.jpg

I was sad to have missed Mr Formenti’s Wednesday mixed recital in San Francisco (and thus I especially enjoyed your musical review and the comments above), but I did catch another Italian Cultural Institute sponsored concert that Wednesday noon — violinist Graeme Jennings performing Berio, Donatoni, and Sciarrino, at Hertz Hall, Berkeley. As you are in the San Francisco area, I assume, I hope that you might be interested in reviewing, here, some of Mr Jennings contemporary classical recitals, given that he is now based in S.F.

By: Jacob Sudol

Jacob Sudol — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 22:30:07 +0000

“Quarte-tones give Arabic music much of its expressive power, and some Western composers who’ve used them, like Alex North, in parts of his film scores like CLEOPATRA (1963), and UNDER THE VOLCANO (1984), have done so with wit and point.”

There is actually a lot of debate and skepticism about whether quarter-tones (or a 24 tone equal tone temperment) is the actual underlying tuning in Arabic music. Furthermore the actual interval of the quarter-tone is never actually stated melodically or harmonically in Arabic music or in the ways that Haas or many other Western composers use them.

In Europe and most of the Western world quarter-tones are actually used much more commonly as a refined level of quantization than as an allusion to the expressive power of Arabic music. Composers often use this higher level of quantization to more closely approximate patterns and auditory illusions or frequential harmonies and synthetic timbres. The former of these two approaches is Haas clearly what does in his “Hommage à Ligeti” (Ligeti being another composer who strongly loved patterns and auditory illusions such as the ones obsessively explored in “Continuum.”)

By: Nathan Brock

Nathan Brock — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 19:45:23 +0000

I second Mr. Lin above – late Ligeti is supremely “charming” – though part of the problem here is that word, “charming”; what does it mean exactly? I personally find a lot of even early Ligeti charming, including Aventures and others of his “crazy clockwork” – style works. But is there anything more charming than sheer beauty, and anything more beautiful than Ligeti’s Requiem? What is the point, in any case, of all of the Alex North references? After all, he composed nothing on the program, and has only a passing connection to Ligeti, a composer himself not actually played on the concert. Seems a bit like sour grapes somewhere…
I’m also a bit confused by your characterization of Sciarrino as “newly famous” – he’s been widely played (especially in Europe, to be sure, but in the US as well) for at least twenty years now…

By: Eric Lin

Eric Lin — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 18:29:48 +0000

What about late Ligeti?
The piano etudes? The concertos? The late songs?
Of course you’re talking about the Haas piece, which was composed before most of the late works, but still…

By: Michael McDonagh

Michael McDonagh — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 03:50:20 +0000

Well maybe Clocks and Clouds, but certainly not Ligeti stuff Kubrick chose for 2001, which Alex North wrote original score for. “Running ” North’s original score with his cue, Trip to the Moon, is worlds apart from certainly not charming Ligeti Kubrick used for this sequence. Genius and / or great talent is not incomptabile with charm — vide Ellington, Virgil Thomson, Glass, Bowles, and yes North. Is Ligeti’s Aventures, Requiem, or Lux Aeterna charming? But North’s score for 2001 is; and — it’s deep. Hope you might be interested in reading my piece on North’s 2001 scre. http://www.alexnorthmusic.com — Reviews — Heart and Soul… all tx all best M

By: Alan Theisen

Alan Theisen — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 03:21:04 +0000

“Ligeti has rarely been a charming composer”

Really?