concert review: Oakland Symphony

[calimac]

Gabriela Lena Frank, Concertino Cusqueño. Her orchestral works are even more colorful than her string quartets.

Anton Bruckner, Te Deum. This devout Catholic composer for some reason nearly gave up writing large-scale sacred music in his maturity; this is one of the few. Typical Bruckner orchestral noodling overlaid with vocal lines. Great chorus work, and outstanding principal soloists in powerful soprano Hope Briggs and well-textured tenor Amitai Pati.

Antonín Dvořák, Symphony from the New World. Closest existing work to the Platonic ideal of a symphony, this unsurprisingly had won an audience poll for what to play. Impressively deliberate performance of the introduction and slow movement, broad and stately in the finale.

Very good show. Glad that B. could accompany me to this, as it was a special occasion for me.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Can you describe, or hint at, what makes this particular work the archetype of a symphony for you? I probably would have picked Beethoven's Fifth, but that may be exposure as much as anything.

("Higgledy piggledy,
Ludwig van Beethoven,
Bored by requests for some
Music to hum,

"Finally answered with
Oversimplicity:
'Here's my fifth symphony:
Duh, duh, duh, dum!'")

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

To my mind, the word "archetype" contains an implication of fons et origo which I tried to avoid by using "Platonic ideal." The archetype is the work that others see, consciously or otherwise, either to follow or to reinvent, and in that context, the archetypal 19th century symphony is not Beethoven's Fifth, but his Eroica. What the Fifth is is the monument, the single work most admired, or more precisely looked on with the most awe and wonder.

The earthly representative of the Platonic ideal of a concept is the one that most nearly typifies all its essential qualities in the most idealized (i.e. excellent) form. It should completely eschew idiosyncrasy, but it still needs to be outstanding, not average. Beethoven's Fifth is far from typical, very idiosyncratic in its succinctness, cragginess, and unusual form. Whereas the New World, though it's arguable whether it's even Dvorak's greatest, certainly is great and is far more plan-set even than his other symphonies.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I don't make those particular terminological distinctions; I'd have to think about whether I agree with them. But it seems to me that what you're saying is that this work is what a taxonomist would call a "type specimen": as Wikipedia puts it, "a type is an example that serves to anchor or centralize the defining features of that particular taxon." That's an understandable concept. What I mean when I say "X" is things like that!

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I've been trained in physical anthropology, so I'm familiar with the term "type specimen" and use it frequently. But in biology, the type specimen is, almost inevitably, the first clear and easily identifiable case discovered. It's not a term I'd use unless a sense, even just a metaphoric one, of discovery or uncovering is present. That doesn't happen when the topic is 19th century composers writing symphonies. It can be true for readers discovering books: The Lord of the Rings is the type specimen of high fantasy novels in a definitely real sense, from that perspective. It's also pretty close to being the archetype. It's not the Platonic ideal; I don't think there exists a real one that fits that description.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Okay, that's a fair point.