So a very good friend of mine, Jeff Bergman, was crazy enough to start a blog about how he was going to listen to classical music for a year and expand his mind, blah, blah, blah. But his blog, A Year of Living Classically (http://yearofclassical.blogspot.com) got noticed by the New York Philharmonic and they gave him free tickets to the performance last night (cough, cough, nudge, nudge Metropolitan Opera? hello?)...anyway, his very lovely, very pregnant wife decided not to go, and that left me to fill the free void next to my high school buddy.
It's been years since I went to the symphony...not since I was in college in Baltimore, before I discovered the opera (the tickets were cheaper and who likes opera anyway?). Jeff, being the prepared, intelligent person that he is, sent me a podcast about the performance we were going to see, the review of the opening piece (a brand new piece by composer in residence Mangus Lindberg), and some other info...not that I read or listened to any of it...which deep down inside I know he expected, he has known me since Freshman year of high school. I didn't do my homework then, you think I'm going to start now?
The Lindberg piece, titled Al largo, I'm sad to say it, but is the reason I'm not that big a fan of contemporary classical music. It was like listening to the sound track of a space epic. Star Wars may be to blame, but who's to know. As a person who has grown up with epic movie sound tracks, this one just sounded like an action packed space adventure, with asteroid belts to navigate, space pirates to defeat, and cosmic bees protecting the alien princess that needs rescuing...but without the actual explosions to entertain the rest of my brain, it was just a bit lack luster. A bunch of loud, fast music, trying really, really hard to be exciting...but in the end was just music...no lingering emotion, just a expectation of when it was over the credits would magically fly by. Jeff liked it a lot, the NY Times, liked it a lot...I know nothing about classical music...it was just OK.
Intermission
The other half of the program was Beethoven's Missa solemnis, Op. 123, which was supposed to be his big devotional to God and all things that are holy. And it was big. Being a child that grew up with Handel's Messiah, it was interesting to see the difference a hundred years makes in "yeah, God!" opuses. Even though the text it draws upon (in the Lutheran Church at least) is used in the Celebration of the Eucharist and the Offertory Prayer (yeah, you didn't know I grew up in the church, did you?) it was very, um, yeah, big. It sounds like it is all about the angry God, and we're for real begging for mercy. And we're really begging, because any minute now one of those giant crashes of percussion and string crescendos will be his wrath smoting us. Whereas Handel was celebrating the beauty of God, there's no anger in the Messiah. Missa solemnis is not a piece I would have called beautiful, it had it's moments. Little spots that give you goosebumps, when you sway in your chair involuntarily at the same moment the violas do, little spots that are very Beethoven.
And 71 minutes later it's over, and I was left wondering what used to bring me to the symphony all the time in college...cause I really missed the costumes and "acting". It's strange, I listen to classical music at home all the time, where as I don't ever listen to opera, because it's just not the same when it's all in your head. Maybe too much TV has ruined my ability to really enjoy stillness.
But thanks, Jeff! I hope to someday return the favor (ahem, Met?).
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