Berlioz on camera
Oct. 16th, 2009 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacThe second batch of MTT's "Keeping Score" programs premiered on PBS last night with an hour on the Symphonie fantastique. I approached this with misgivings. I'd only seen one of the previous set, on Tchaikovsky's Fourth, and was gravely disappointed. MTT acted as if the whole purpose of listening to Tchaikovsky was to decode the hidden autobiography in his music. This is the kind of nonsense that drove me away from literature classes, and if I were a beginner who accepted what MTT had to say about Tchaikovsky, I'd never have listened to any again.
The Berlioz program was much better. Partly because Berlioz wrote the autobiographical key straight out at the head of the score, so it's a work much more amenable to this approach, and nothing has to be decoded to find it. Also because MTT had more to say about the actual process of listening to this music, and how much fun you can have doing it. And lastly because under him the SFS is marvelously good in this work. I have their recording and it's a favorite.
The program is structured by cutting the story of Berlioz' life, emphasizing the Symphonie, into chunks and interleaving them with descriptions of the individual movements. I hope this wasn't confusing to beginners. The way MTT frames his account of the premiere around his description of the first movement, someone who didn't know the Symphonie could be forgiven for getting the impression that the first movement was the whole work. Also, MTT describes Berlioz' fondness for Beethoven's Eroica without clearly indicating that two chunks of music by the orchestra, one of them somewhat separated from this, are in fact from the Eroica. If you already know the Eroica on contact, no problem, but if you don't, it could be confusing. This is intended as a teaching program, and while I don't think it needs to be dumbed down in the slightest, there are times when descriptive clarity could be improved.
I learned a couple new things from this. I hadn't known that the Symphonie's opening theme is a song of rejected love from the composer's youth. And I was amused by MTT's suggestion that the fugue in the finale is the composer's revenge against his competition judges who'd made him write them. MTT does not mention that the Eroica is full of fugues.
But there are some things I know that the program leaves out. There is not the slightest mention of Lélio, which I thought odd. It might have muddled up the simplicity of the biographical narrative. As, apparently, would have a more honest account of Berlioz' marriage. MTT wants to give this dismally tempestuous union a happy ending, so he brushes over the problems and says that even though Hector and Harriet separated (oh well) he was still fond of her and supported her to her death. They're buried together, he says, and the camera caresses the tombstone. But it cannot entirely avoid showing the third name engraved next to Harriet's. Nothing is said about this. Whose is it? Well, I'll tell you whose it is, if MTT won't. It's that of Hector's mistress (and second wife). Oops.
It's still a pretty good program, and the little craggy bits at the website are good too.
The Berlioz program was much better. Partly because Berlioz wrote the autobiographical key straight out at the head of the score, so it's a work much more amenable to this approach, and nothing has to be decoded to find it. Also because MTT had more to say about the actual process of listening to this music, and how much fun you can have doing it. And lastly because under him the SFS is marvelously good in this work. I have their recording and it's a favorite.
The program is structured by cutting the story of Berlioz' life, emphasizing the Symphonie, into chunks and interleaving them with descriptions of the individual movements. I hope this wasn't confusing to beginners. The way MTT frames his account of the premiere around his description of the first movement, someone who didn't know the Symphonie could be forgiven for getting the impression that the first movement was the whole work. Also, MTT describes Berlioz' fondness for Beethoven's Eroica without clearly indicating that two chunks of music by the orchestra, one of them somewhat separated from this, are in fact from the Eroica. If you already know the Eroica on contact, no problem, but if you don't, it could be confusing. This is intended as a teaching program, and while I don't think it needs to be dumbed down in the slightest, there are times when descriptive clarity could be improved.
I learned a couple new things from this. I hadn't known that the Symphonie's opening theme is a song of rejected love from the composer's youth. And I was amused by MTT's suggestion that the fugue in the finale is the composer's revenge against his competition judges who'd made him write them. MTT does not mention that the Eroica is full of fugues.
But there are some things I know that the program leaves out. There is not the slightest mention of Lélio, which I thought odd. It might have muddled up the simplicity of the biographical narrative. As, apparently, would have a more honest account of Berlioz' marriage. MTT wants to give this dismally tempestuous union a happy ending, so he brushes over the problems and says that even though Hector and Harriet separated (oh well) he was still fond of her and supported her to her death. They're buried together, he says, and the camera caresses the tombstone. But it cannot entirely avoid showing the third name engraved next to Harriet's. Nothing is said about this. Whose is it? Well, I'll tell you whose it is, if MTT won't. It's that of Hector's mistress (and second wife). Oops.
It's still a pretty good program, and the little craggy bits at the website are good too.
