Stop the presses! There's music in Plato's philosophical musings

A British professor's Eureka! moment in reading Plato shines light on two characteristics of Western behavior that often make me scratch my head: how we routinely discount the sophistication of our ancestors; and how fragmented the Western intellectual universe has become.

Today's example comes from University of Manchester's Jay Kennedy, as explained in yesterday's Guardian: "Plato's stave: academic crack's philosopher's musical code."

If the idea of reading about the arcanae of Ancient Greek philosophy makes your eyes glaze over, here is the gist: Plato's original manuscripts are ordered according to a mathematical formula that determines how an idea or argument will unfold within the time's equivalent of a successive paragraphs. That formula follows rules similar to Western music, where certain intervals are consonant and others are dissonant.

Professor Andrew Barker, a leading authority on ancient Greek music, said that "the results he's come up with look too neat to be accidental" and that if scholars confirm them, "he will have shown something quite startling about Plato's methods of composition."

What the article fails to mention is that we read ancient texts with a Modern sensibility, which separates science and the arts into two distinct camps. But you can't really appreciate anything that predates Romanticism without looking at both structure and surface as an organic, mutually dependent whole.

A Renaissance painting has one meaning on the surface, and dozens more represented in little clues embedded like little Waldos in the image. A strawberry can be far more than a strawberry, if you know the code.

In Baroque music, the choice of key, metre and harmonic progression tell you everything you need to know about the mood and purpose of the music -- before you've played or heard a note.

Why wouldn't the Ancient Greeks treat the composition of text the same way as they would music? Why do we Moderns treat speech and song as different things? (Read a Psalm in the King James Bible out loud, and savour the music in the words; read the same Psalm out loud in the Good News Bible, and see if you can find any sort of cadence at all.)

There is a growing number of people out there (including the Royal Conservatory of Music, through its Learning Through the Arts programmes) advocating a more inclusive view of the universe - one which allows music and particle physics to sit side by side. The magical and the rational do not have to be enemies.

A Pythagorean-mathematical analysis of Plato's texts won't change the gist or significance of the philosophical musings of Socrates and his groupies. But allowing the arts and sciences to intermingle a bit more in our here-and-now could help bring together a very fractured culture.

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The key figure in Kennedy's analysis is Pythagoras (who died in 450 BCE), a pre-Socratic philosopher who, like Socrates, never wrote anything down. So we have to leave it up to faith that his disciples recorded his theories more or less accurately.

One of Pythagoras's contributions to Western thought was in establishing a distinction between form and void (peiron and apeiron, in Ancient Greek). It allows us to separate sound and silence, matter and nothingness, the finite and the infinite.

There's more. Here's a nicely done, remarkably concise summary of Pythagoras's link to music -- which helps us understand better how Plato might have used this in his writings.

Rule no. 6 of collaborative playing: If everyone is lost except you, follow those who are lost

Most community music groups have packed up for the summer. As a parting thought, I thought I'd share a funny little list of dos and don'ts posted by ArtsJournal blogger Chloe Veltman.

Any amateur musician can relate to something here:

1. Everyone should try to play the same piece.
2. If you play a wrong note, give a nasty look to one of the other players.
3. A repeat sign means everyone should stop and discuss in detail whether to repeat that section or not.
4. If the ensemble has to stop because of you, explain in detail why you got lost. Everyone will be immensely interested.
5. If you are completely lost, stop everyone and say: "I think we should tune."
6. If everyone is lost except you, follow those who are lost. 
7. If everyone else has finished playing, do not play any notes you have left over.

Stratford Summer Music to host Mauren Forrester memorial concert, 'likely' on July 25

Stratford Summer Music has just announced that it will host the official memorial concert for Maureen Forrester, who died on June 16.

The concert will "likely" take place on July 25, which would have been her birthday.

The press release also says the following:

“Stratford Summer Music is honoured to have been selected by the Forrester family to be the host organization for what will be a splendid national salute to one of our country’s most important cultural figures,” said John A. Miller, Artistic Producer of Stratford Summer Music.  “Stratford is a city closely associated with Maureen through her performances at the theatre festival and her ongoing influence at the music festival.

"During July and August, 2010, Stratford Summer Music will dedicate its 108 concerts to Miss Forrester and present the tenth year of the Maureen Forrester Next Generation Canadian Artists series, this season featuring Saskatchewan pianist Stephen Runge, New Brunswick violinist Marc Djokic with Quebec marimbist Anne-Julie Caron, and British Columbia marimbist Pius Cheung."

More information, as well as a confirmation that this is a final date, is promised soon.

New opera thriving in U.S. despite tight budgets, high costs and long gestation process

Washington Post music critic Anne Midgette has written an apt assessment of the state of new opera in the United States that touches on all of the hot-button issues: commissions for a notable premiere rather than repeat productions of new works (although she forgets to mention John Adams' Doctor Atomic, which has had several productions so far); the thin line between popular entertainment and high art; and the difficulty in finding money and time to workshop new works before they reach the mainstage.

Near the end of the article, we find that opera directors are getting involved during the writing of a commissioned piece, to help ensure that it will work on stage. "We're all learning that this is what we need to do," says the Met's (Peter) Gelb. "It doesn't do any good to have a composition that doesn't have a dramatic arc to it."

Echoes of Rufus Wainwright's Prima Donna...

Just for fun, here are composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Sheer talking about the collaborative energy behind the creation of Moby-Dick, which was premiered in Dallas earlier this year.

Toronto G20 shenanigans point to purveyors of security as the shamans of the age

For more than a week, from preparation to dénouement, Toronto has become stage, set and supernumerary in a surreal play enacted over and over in cities around the world, in honour of national leaders' vanity. There is strutting and fretting on the part of so many players, from politician to anarchist, that it's not easy to figure out what the real point is, or even who the protagonist may be.

Even with a head full of jumbled musings and roiling emotions on the morning after this normally quiet, complacent city was turned upside down, the victims here are clearly visible: ordinary people who wish to lead their lives in peace. The main beneficiaries of this silliness are the shamans of security who, in a black parallel of Daoist yin and yang, work the many complementary, interlocking facets of fear and safety for material gain. 

We collectively live in their thrall, so much so that I think they deserve pride of place as symbols for this still-new century. From private security patrols and security cams around our homes to the army as security force in war zones, to security access cards and computer software, we prize what we can lock out and safely enclose more than anything else, it seems.

Instead of something conducive to Sunday contemplation, here's something a little hairier. Here are Simon Keenlyside and company in the "Come My Pretty" scene from Lorin Maazel's 2005 opera adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty Four. They are followed by Glenn Gould and string quartet in the first movement of Dmitri Shostakovich's G minor Piano Quintet.

Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky's new Verdi album makes NPR's Best Of The Year So Far list

Toronto-area soprano Sondra Radvanovsky's new Verdi album is highlighted on National Public Radio's "Best of the year so far" list of six classical discs. Hers is the only recording of operatic music on the picks, made by NPR's Tom Huizenga.

Here is what he says about Radvanovsky: "If she keeps on singing at this level, we'll have a major new star on our hands. She opens her mouth and huge streams of sound soar out like giant bolts of multicolored cloth -- shimmering silver, azure blue. It's a huge voice, yet she knows how to harness all that power."

The rest of the list includes a lot of new music. There are substantial audio clips from each album available on the NPR page:

-The Kiev Chamber Choir singing "The Creed" by veteran composer Valentin Silvestrov

-String quartet Brooklyn Rider's mesmerizing Dominant Curve

-A number of different performers in premiere recordings of new works by British composer Thomas Adès

-The fine Gothenburg Symphony interpreting Polish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg's Symphonies Nos. 1 and 7 (which dates from 1964 and is more of a harpsichord concerto with string orchestra)

-Veteran British pianist Imogen Cooper's second album of live performances of Schubert pieces

One man's grimace is another orchestra's path to ecstasy

One of the never-to-be-resolved debates in the music world revolves around how much physical expression a conductor needs to shape the sound of his or her orchestra. Valery Gerghiev flutters his left hand while Yannick Nézet-Séguin turns himself into an aerobics instructor.

Thanks to a link pianist Serouj Kradjian forwarded yesterday, here is someone who makes Yannick look like the Stone Guest. Meet Kazuki Yamada, winner of the 2009 edition of the biennial international conductors' competition in Besançon, France.

Here is Yamada leading Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique. In case you absolutely need to see more, the opening of the work is on the second clip:

It's appropriate to have an opera conductor take charge of Mahler symphonies

Daniele Gatti, a very talented opera conductor, recently took on the music directorship of the Orchestra National de France. This past Saturday, at the Festival Saint-Denis, he led a colourful, light-filled performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 4 -- from memory. The soloist is soprano Christiane Oelze.

This is a happy prelude to Gatti's plans to perform through all 9- 1/4 of Mahler's symphonies with the orchestra over the next two seasons. Mahler may not have written any operas, but he made his living as an opera conductor, and his symphonies are operatic in scope, and take a conductor who can think big, but cope with tiny details.

You can see and hear the all-Mahler program,  which begins with Blumine, in high-definition, for free, at medici.tv

Torontonian Phillip Addis charms Paris in début portrayal of Pelléas

It looks like Toronto baritone Phillip Addis, who we saw in Opera Atelier's excellent production of The Marriage of Figaro this season, has made a fine Paris début at the Opéra-Comique's production of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, which runs to the end of the month at the plus salle Favart. It's a role he has been chasing since he first began singing on stage -- and it's a special honour to be able to sing it at the place where the opera had its premiere.

In the latest issue of Diapason, critic Emmanuel Dupuy says Addis is nearly ideal as Pelléas:

le plateau réserve de très belles surprises, à commencer par le Pelléas assez idéal du Canadien Phillip Addis, physique adolescent, diction impeccable, exact format de baryton Martin ; un peu plus de variété, parfois, dans la couleur des sentiments, et ce sera parfait.

These words echo Yannick Millon's in altamusica:

Véritable révélation, le délicat Phillip Addis, d’un physique adolescent inespéré, est un Pelléas idéal : voix caméléon de baryton traditionnel sachant alléger à l’envi et varier la couleur aussi aisément que les barytons Martin d’antan, aigu admirablement projeté, sans oublier une diction à faire pâlir tant de nos compatriotes.

You can read more on Addis's website.

CBC concerts on demand give us a chance to savour Louis Lortie Chopin recital again

In early April, Louis Lortie gave an all-Chopin piano recital at Koerner Hall. His playing was fluid, sensitive and highly expressive. As beautiful as the music was, I didn't feel it, so I left at intermission to hear someone else who was playing at exactly the same time.

Many people came up to me afterwards with accusing eyes, wondering why I had left. My simple answer was that Lortie had bored me. The long answer, which only a couple of people got, was that, after the first couple of pieces, I could anticipate what Lortie was going to do with the next phrase. So, for me, it was like sitting through a favourite movie, one I've seen perhaps 20 times, when a new one had opened down the street -- one I might not have a chance to see again soon.

Anyway, as I sit supposedly not thinking about work, here is an opportunity to listen to Lortie again, thanks to CBC Radio's concerts on demand.