In this issue:The Gorgeous Guitar of Julian Bream
I was astonished at how much feedback I got from my Laura Love essay. My astonishment is in part at discovering that there are Objectivists who like country, jazz, Latin, reggae, and folk. (I really should get out more.) A couple of people had intelligent and provocative things to say about the passages from "Philosophy and Sense of Life" that I quoted.
I love hearing from people; it's a considerable inducement to keep writing this column. My only wish though, is that if you have something substantive to say, try posting it to the list instead of just sending it to me. I think we could get some great discussions going and really get some conceptual "chewing" done. Even if you just want to shoot the breeze about your musical tastes, then Reviews or Atlantis is there for this purpose. Maybe I'm not the only one who needs to get out more.
Our next issue will be a mind-blower. We will discuss overtone singing, the practice whereby a single person can vocally produce two, three or even four notes at once. We will look at examples of overtone singing from two completely unrelated cultures: Tuva (Mongolia) and the Italian island of Corsica.
JULIAN BREAM THE ULTIMATE GUITAR COLLECTION, RCA
Let's start by clearing some things up. First of all, I hate the title of this collection. It cheapens a great artist. I suppose they couldn't say "Guitar for Dummies," so this is what came to them. Secondly, I am reviewing the 2-CD set, not the 28-CD set of the same name. Thirdly - cards on the table - I don't own this set.
Although this collection is drawn from RCA's 28-CD collection of Bream's work, almost half of it is actually from a single release, "Julian Bream Plays Granados & Albeniz." I have this disc, and originally I was going to review just it, but it seemed silly to me to recommend a single mid-price disc, when over twice as much music is available for a couple of bucks more. The Granados and Albeniz disc constitutes almost the whole of disc two of "The Ultimate Guitar Collection." I have another Bream disc that contains two tracks that ended up on disc one. And I have spent a fair amount of time with disc one on a listening station, so I can give at least a sketchy review of the half of the Collection I don't own.
Julian Bream was born in 1933 in London. He became a successful classical guitarist while still in his teens, at a time when the Anglo-American public was not used to hearing classical guitar. He was an important figure in the 1950s and -60s revival of Renaissance and Elizabethan music, leading The Julian Bream Consort (on lute) for this purpose. He has toured extensively and is widely respected.
The great Spanish guitarist Andres Segovia once characterized the guitar as "an orchestra viewed through the wrong end of a telescope." By this he presumably meant that despite its small scale, a guitar has a full musical capability. Most instruments lack this capability, because they can only produce one or sometimes two notes at a time, so they cannot produce harmony or counterpoint on their own. (The famous pieces for solo violin, such as Bach's, are written to include an implied bass part.) A versatile guitarist is fully capable of accompanying himself on his instrument in a way no other classical instrument can, except the piano. (Note that this is because Western music is polyphonic. In monophonic traditions such as those in the Middle East, no accompaniment is necessary.)
Like many guitarists, Bream is a skilled arranger for his instrument. This is a necessary talent for guitarists, because the repertoire written originally for classical guitar is actually quite small. This is a problem encountered by many other virtuoso instrumentalists, such as flautist James Galway and trumpetist Maurice Andre. They frequently end up transcribing baroque concertos originally written for other instruments, such as the violin, for their own instrument. Or they might transcribe solo or chamber works featuring violin or piano. (Transcription is an interesting practice I hope to discuss in a later issue.)
Bream is fortunate in that his ability to play the lute widens his repertoire. The first six tracks on disc one of "The Ultimate Guitar Collection" are, ironically, written for and played on the lute. The first three are an absolutely delightful concerto by Vivaldi, which Bream seems to have rearranged so as to feature the lute more prominently. The next three are Elizabethan solo lute pieces, including one by the master of melancholia himself, John Dowland as well as the original version of the immortal "Greensleeves." You may be surprised upon hearing"Greensleeves" to find that it was a more formal (and somewhat more stilted) piece of music than the popular versions you are used to. It is of course still quite lovely.
I hate to say it, but I am not as impressed by Bream's ability to play the lute as by his ability to play the guitar. He deserves an enormous amount of credit for helping revive this beautiful instrument, but perhaps because he had to re-discover so much lost technique, he never achieved the mastery of it that he did of the guitar. At its best Bream's lute sounds very much like his guitar; otherwise it sounds a little bland.
I can't resist injecting a piece of interesting historical trivia. The word "lute" is a corruption of the Arabic name for their version of the instrument, "el oud." And "el oud" means "the wood," and is one of the few near-cognates between English and Arabic. (Actually it's almost certainly a false cognate, but let me enjoy the fantasy.)
Turning now to the pieces for guitar, I was quite impressed. I thought disc two was better than disc one, but that may be because I've been able to listen to the disc two material much more closely. Disc one did contain an exciting rendition of "The Miller's Dance" from Manuel de Falla's "The Three Cornered Hat." Most classical guitar pieces are plucked note by note, not strummed in chords, but "The Miller's Dance" contains dramatic, flamenco-like slashes across the strings as well as a few percussive beats on the body and strings simultaneously to make a sound like a tuned drum.
There is also a pair of pieces by the two Albenizes, Mateo and Isaac. Mateo's Sonata in D was a bit too civilized. I've heard more fiery, denser performances. Isaac Albeniz' "Leyenda" is a haunting piece of music, and Bream is more than up to it, seeming almost to manipulate the acoustics of the recording location to bring out the sound he wants.
Disc one closes with Joaquin Rodrigo's famous "Concerto do Aranjuez," which student musicians across America have long delighted in calling "Concerto de Orange Juice." I'm actually not familiar with the Concerto. It reminds me Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherezade" in its sultry romanticism and seemed well-played. Other than that, I don't feel qualified to comment on it.
Disc two contains the material that I've lived with for years (as well as a few additional tracks I am not going to discuss, since I have not heard them, even on a listening station). It's on the Granados and Isaac Albeniz pieces that Bream's absolute mastery becomes most evident.
What is it that makes Bream so great? Well, he's very proficient technically and a master of phrasing. But to my mind his great skill is his ability to produce tone color. My problem with the classical guitar is that no matter how quickly or accurately it's played, all the notes come out with the same timbre. Since classical guitar makes more limited use of rhythm and dynamics (volume) than folk guitar (e.g. flamenco), the sameness of the notes becomes tedious after awhile, at least to me. Segovia was capable of coaxing tone color out of his instrument, but his phrasing was more erratic than Bream's (and in all fairness he was so much older that we don't a lot of high-fidelity recordings of him in his prime). Eliot Fisk is technically nonpareil, but doesn't communicate any feeling to me whatsoever. John Williams (the guitarist, not the movie composer) can communicate feeling but isn't proficient enough. The wunderkind of the moment, Paul Galbraith, who plays an 8-string guitar mounted on a spike like a cello, is capable of virtuoso playing and produces almost no tone color whatsoever.
Of the guitarists I've heard, only Bream combines all the features that I at least want; and only Bream, of living guitarists, can produce such exquisite tone color. Bream can make his strings buzz or ring or make a muted sound like a harp. This performs several functions. First, it sustains interest with variety. Second, it enables Bream to achieve a greater distinction between the bass and treble parts of the music. Third, it gives Bream the option to punctuate phrases with "special effects." Fourth and most important, it allows Bream to add a kind of "prosody" to the music.
Let me explain this. Just as alliteration, rhyme and the rest make connections between words in a poem and allow the poet to create satisfyingly predictable patterns, so does tone color allow a guitarist to create connections and patterns - not among words of course, but among phrases, which are the building-blocks of music. If Bream ends a phrase on a twang and then ends the next phrase, which is a variation of the first, on a twang, then he draws attention to the similarity. Or if the second phrase is a more melancholy variation of the first, he can end the second with a muted color, thereby reinforcing the difference.
Even within a phrase tone color can be useful, as can be easily seen if you imagine a phrase of your choosing running from the muted to the astringent to the ringing and back again. Along with timing and dynamics, tone color is a key tool of phrasing, which is after all the primary interpretive freedom of the solo musician. (Leaving aside improvisation and ornamentation, of course, which have a limited role in the Western classical tradition.) Thus tone color is a major factor in keeping a performance psycho-epistemologically interesting and meaningful.
The Granados and Albeniz pieces are ripe for Bream's treatment. Although they were written for the piano by composers who never wrote a single note for the guitar, they transfer to the latter instrument with astonishing ease. This is not surprising. The guitar saturates Spain's musical culture, which is heavily influenced by Moorish and Persian ideas from the time of the Islamic occupation. As Spanish music these pieces cry out for color and fire, and Bream delivers.
Some of the pieces, like Granados' "Dedicatoria" are more serene and wistful and Bream employs mellow, sometimes harplike tones in it. But this mood gives way to the restlessness of the "Tonadilla: La Maya de Goya" which Bream accents with buzzing sounds. This in turn gives way to the "Danza Espanola #4 (Vilanesca)," which is full of dramatic and tender motifs that Bream brings to life with his playing. By contrast the "Valses Poeticos" is (or are?) almost jaunty and Francisco-esque. The "Danza Espanola #5" is tense and dramatic. You can hear the roots of tango in this dance.
Albeniz contributes a more melancholy air to the proceedings with his "Mallorca Opus 202." It is a song of poignant ruminations and a hint of regret. His "Suite Espanola" takes us on a little tour of Spain with miniature portraits of Cadiz, Granada and Sevilla. I'll be visiting Sevilla when I can; it sounds like a passionate place. There is a separate portrait of Cordoba that makes it sound like a thoughtful city with depths of feeling concealed beneath the surface.
It's amazing what a master can do with a musical work. I would count the Granados and Albeniz album among my favorites - but I wouldn't really count many of the works on it as favorites. It's Bream's performance that makes these pieces come to life for me. For sound samples from CDNow, click here.
Now, since I know some readers are waiting for the tail that wags the dog, I'll bring up two issues and invite public comment:
1. To what extent is the overall effect of a work of music the product of the performer(s) versus the composer? Is there any legitimate tension between the two? How much does interpretation involves psycho-epistemological factors like tone color in phrasing and how much involves emotional issues?
2. Spanish and Hispanic culture seems to produce a lot of passionate and erotic art. Is there some sense in which they have overcome the mind-body dichotomy - despite their Roman Catholicism - when we Anglo-Americans have not? Might this have something to do with the contribution of Islamic culture or with the climate?
Whatever the answer to Question 2, I can promise that A Musical Odyssey will be returning to Spain again in the none-too-distant future. Thanks for reading.