I have often blogged about the subject of beauty, particularly as it relates to poetry, so my sympathies with these two authors is pretty clear. I will not rehash my Wilfred Owen commentaries though. This is where Scruton’s essay is particularly interesting to me. He notes the change of value of art from beauty to expression. In essence, anti-art is valued more than “art.” Opposition to beauty is seen as necessary (at least by academics and decision-makers in arts).

For artists like Hopper, Samuel Barber, and Wallace Stevens, ostentatious transgression was mere sentimentality, a cheap way to stimulate an audience, and a betrayal of the sacred task of art, which is to magnify life as it is and to reveal its beauty—as Stevens reveals the beauty of “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven” and Barber that of Knoxville: Summer of 1915.

Of course, Scruton hits on three of my favorite artists of the 20th century in this paragraph. He continues this paragraph:

But somehow those great life-affirmers lost their position at the forefront of modern culture. So far as the critics and the wider culture were concerned, the pursuit of beauty was at the margins of the artistic enterprise. Qualities like disruptiveness and immorality, which previously signified aesthetic failure, became marks of success; while the pursuit of beauty became a retreat from the real task of artistic creation. This process has been so normalized as to become a critical orthodoxy, prompting the philosopher Arthur Danto to argue recently that beauty is both deceptive as a goal and in some way antipathetic to the mission of modern art. Art has acquired another status and another social role.

Barber certainly has lost his place, but I might disagree about Stevens, who seems to have only risen in poetic value. Nonetheless,  L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poetry and oodles of gagging confessional poetry and the perceived high value of these modes of expression seem to me the very essence of pushing “beauty” to the margins, that tricks and expression are more valued. Scruton’s article also addresses how we often find beauty, which I’ve broached in my way in talking about finding “quietness” or “cinema moments.” Essentially places of stillness. So much of the world around us is ugly. Ugly is easy:

In art, beauty has to be won, but the work becomes harder as the sheer noise of desecration—amplified now by the Internet—drowns out the quiet voices murmuring in the heart of things.

Scruton is liable to be skewered for his “romantic” fantasies of beauty, of his reaches for understanding of what beauty is, and for his frontal assault on bad art for its desire to push beauty out as a value. Jed Perl, by contrast, will probably be broiled for his unwillingness to simply accept Francis Bacon’s art as great simply because others say it is. Both Perl and Scruton are small cries in the wilderness, and I hope they are not overlooked simply because they challenge preconceived notions.

Perl’s strand really follows up on the idea of expression, that the artist is more important than the art (I think of Andy Warhol with this statement). And Perl says something extraordinarily true and so matter-of-factly that I wonder if it will be noticed at all:

The fact is that an artist’s outward behavior has no fixed relationship to the development or the value of his or her work. But to accept this fact, which really ought to be self-evident, one must accept also the freestanding value of art, an idea that today is devalued when it is not entirely rejected.

Art necessarily stands outside of the artist. We may be fascinated by artists (I am by Shakespeare, Shostakovich, and Caravaggio), but that interest is different than the value of the art. I’m led to my interest by the art (as I’m interested in Roosevelt by his actions) – without the art, I could care less.

Pop music, of course, uses both text and sound to create these moods, but I find the difference between the two striking. I think poetry can create these elements as well. The rhythm, the theme, the sounds contribute to this tone or mood. Poems can have color without relying on explicit color imagery, but of course, they can use that imagery. Wallace Stevens “Of Mere Being” uses images and colors to create a tone while retaining an element of abstraction, which is perhaps what I admire most about Stevens’s poetry: His ability to reside comfortably in the abstract imagination while providing a sense of concreteness to the poem.

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze decor,

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

Though, as readers of my blog may know, I am a fan of John Adams’ music, this was my first encounter with this composition. The film is an adaptation of the opera, so some differences exist (some choruses were cut), which should be expected. Woolcock also uses film to add to the opera by adding scenes related to this history of Palestinians and Jews from World War II through to the future as well as adding character development difficult to do in a stage performance. The 45-minute documentary on the DVD features a prolonged discussion with Adams and Woolcock about adapting the opera to a screenplay, which is very illuminating.

First and foremost, I found the film excellent. The music bears all the strengths of Adams’s music: rhythmic drive that uses Minimalist techniques without the monotony I sometimes find in Minimalist works, some beautiful melodies (if I use this term incorrectly, apologies) – particularly in the “Aria of the Falling Body” – , and exact tone and pace for the context of the scene (Adams addresses his attempts to adapt the text to the music. The libretto/screenplay is taut and contains some wrenchingly beautiful poetry (the final aria sung by Marilyn Klinghoffer, “You Embraced Them”). Alice Goodman wrote the libretto (she also wrote the libretto for Adams’s Nixon in China). The singing, nearly all of it as recorded during filming and not in isolation booths, is vibrant and strong. Sanford Sylvan (Leon Klinghoffer), Christopher Maltman (the captain), and Tom Randle (Molqui) are particularly striking and full of force and range.

Second, the opera has been controversial since its premiere in 1991. In December of 2001, Richard Taruskin in The New York Times was particularly critical, claiming that the opera romanticizes terrorists and that the Boston Symphony’s postponing of the performances of choruses from the opera in September of 2001 was appropriate. This critique sounds reminiscent of some comments I heard about Trainspotting as glorifying heroin use. After seeing both Trainspotting and The Death of Klinghoffer, I do not see how either critique can be supported. Particularly regarding Klinghoffer, the terrorist actions are in no way romanticized. If romanticizing means providing context for a person’s life and circumstances and offering some motives for his or her actions no matter valid or not, then, yes, this opera romanticizes everyone, including terrorists. But I do not see how context and a knowledge of history, especially as one as complex and long as the conflicts that rip apart Palestine/Israel/etc., is ultimately a bad thing. The actions of the terrorists come off as completely disgusting and morally empty as they rightfully are. The cruel and vindicative taunting and degradation and the murder of Klinghoffer are depicted as exactly that: actions without justification and morally reprehensible.

Yet…yet…to depict the rage and anger of people, to see how they just might think such atrocious acts, self-justified though they may be, will result in a freedom from oppression, degradation, and hopelessness seems to me a worthy effort. Why is that? Probably because understanding, even partially, the human condition, which includes the beautiful and the depraved, is worthwhile. And this opera strives to understand the whole context of the thousands of years of hate and misunderstandings that is represented in those few awful days aboard the Achillo Lauro. As Mark Athitakis at AMC Filmcritic says: “Every shot of destroyed refugee camps is paired with shots of concentration camps. Woolcock renders the conflict in terms of dead Palestinian and Jewish bodies, brutal accounting in a ghastly ledger.”

Yet…because maybe an attempt to understand others’ contexts might have resulted in a saner and more thoughtful matter might have gained more long term positive consequences in Iraq and elsewhere. To cast others as so clearly evil makes it too easy to dismiss them, it allows us to remove the human from them. No one is all evil and all good, and we blind ourselves if we think otherwise. And thus blinded, would one have conceived of the more successful attempts to “convert” terrorists to good citizens, to do what the PLO did with some of the Black September terrorists: They married them off?

Adams, Goodman, Peter Sellars, and Woolcock could have offered easy viewing, but they chose instead the more difficult route of trying to bring some understanding to a vastly over-rhetoricized conflict, where one seems condemned to remain with a specific position or risk ostracizing. One’s sympathies necessarily in this opera and film end with the victims, particularly Leon and Marilyn. But to have left it at that would have been a disservice to art.

The Wozzeck songs were done well (surprisingly I thought given the ISO’s strengths tend to the Romantic and Classical), but Robinson’s voice was unable to rise above the orchestra, so much of her performance was lost. The Little Organ Mass was well performed by the ISO and the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir. This orchestration for this piece is small, thus feeling like an intimate mass (I imagined the Esterhazies hearing this in their private chapel). Robinson’s performance here was not, I think, very strong. In particular, her annunciation of the the Latin was extremely poor, so her singing sounded more like a string of vowels or consonants, but not of words. Toward the Unknown Region, based on a poem by Whitman, was much stronger, primarily because this choral piece did not feature Robinson, and Conductor Mario Venzago led the symphony and choir with a gusto.

But I came to hear Gloria. This piece was not too badly marred by Robinson, but again her annunciation was poor. Her ending Amen sounded more like “Mmmmm-nnnnnnn.” However, the orchestra and choir did a good job at catching the spunkiness, the jazziness, and the sacredness that Poulenc embedded in it. Gloria is set to the text “Gloria in excelsis Deo.” One of the reasons I like this piece is that it finds in the text and expresses it through the music the joy and mystery of God, and Poulenc finds a unique expression of this with his humor and jazz. He has commented about how he saw in this music a bit of the spirit he saw in serious Benedictine monks playing soccer. So much of the music is unexpected in its playfulness. The “Laudamus te” section of the piece is fully of that jazzy punchiness. That section is followed by the “Domine Deus” section, which uses the solo soprano vocals in a melancholic, sacred tone. Robinson failed to achieve that startling, beautiful quality you can hear in Catherine Dubosc’s performance in my favorite version of Gloria. So I imagine the monks kicking the ball around and then heading back to their monastery for vespers.

The recording I own was conducted by Richard Hickox. The cover image is beautiful interior shot of the Pantheon in Rome, and this seems appropriate for Gloria. That beautiful interior space lit by natural light. Adding on layers of meaning, the pagan Pantheon becoming the Catholic Church of today. Again, a combination of the sacred and the everyday. The music on this album is wonderfully done.

Poulenc also composed what is probably my favorite opera: Dialogues des Carmélites. Early in Poulenc’s career, he was affiliated by Les Six, though the music Poulenc composed with that group is lighter fair – sonatas and bagatelles for flutes and oboes and other instruments. These short works are delightful and fun, but tragedy seems to have brought out the real genius of his music. A couple of his friends died tragically, but a fellow composer’s, Pierre-Octave Ferroud, fatal accident led Poulenc to visit the Black Virgin of Rocamadour, which in turn led to a profound spiritual transformation. After this, we begin to hear the genius of Poulence in Gloria, Stabat Mater, and Dialogues des Carmélites. In this latter work, we find fine vocal music with strong, beautiful melodies. In some sense, Poulenc is like a poet with strong opening lines. The opening of Gloria and Dialogues des Carmélites are immediately striking and, for me, unforgettable. And what else do we want from music but striking sounds the compel listening to again.

I knew that a life in academia would wear me down for certain. I saw young men and women still awaiting the big moment [the awarding of their doctorate]. For musicologists, for scholars of all sorts, this slow maturing seemed appropriate. But for someone trying to stake out a personal language, a genuine creative voice, a long period of graduate servitude seemed counterproductive. I thought that then, and thirty-five years later my opinion has not changed.

I find this interesting because it in many ways mirrors my own thoughts. I have flirted with attending graduate school myself now twice. Both times I have not followed through on that flirtation, and I am grateful for that. Simply put, I do not think that academic life would be conducive to my writing. For some people, this is possible. For me, I do not think it is. Robert Frost would venture into teaching poetry occasionally, but he always gave it up and returned to his poetry. He loved teaching. He loved poetry. But he found that the two did not mix for him. He could become a teacher of poetry or a writer of poetry. Fortunately, for us, he chose the latter.

For me, I think the ability to pursue my own reading paths, my own writing paths, my own daydreaming paths without any sort of external pressure to publish, to research, to specialize, and so on is critical to my writing. Graduate school and teaching poetry or other literature would, for me, have proved disastrous for my poetry. My poetry may never equal the heights of Frost, but at least I will have pursued my own path, and I think Adams summarizes accurately the dilemma for many.

Or the time driving through Illinois, Gina driving, the flatness of the central-eastern part of the state, late afternoon, late spring, the rhythm of telephone poles passing, and my turning to look at her and just the sense that nothing could have been better. No words. Silence except for the ambient sounds of the car. Copses of trees amongst the fields. And that sense of perfection. Perhaps what I mean by that is that in that very moment I would change absolutely nothing.

***

I think that these “moments” are often the things I try to capture in my poems. It is as if these moments, these ephemeral accidents are the very nature of life…a life to be appreciative of. We work away our days for endless reasons (mortgages, food, even enjoyment), but rarely do we seem to connect to a reason for all this. Art is one thing (watching PBS’s broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera’s performance of Peter Grimes the other day helped reinforce some of the very stunning achievements of human creativity…of a sense of pride in our abilities for creation). But I think that the beauty of living provides the impulse to art.

A Plaint to Man

When you slowly emerged from the den of Time,
And gained percipience as you grew,
And fleshed you fair out of shapeless slime,

Wherefore, O Man, did there come to you
The unhappy need of creating me -
A form like your own – for paying to?

My virtue, power, utility,
Within my maker must all abide,
Since none in myself can ever be,

One thin as a phasm on a lantern-slide
Shown forth in the dark upon some dim sheet,
And by none but its showman vivified.

‘Such a forced device,’ you may say, ‘is meet
For easing a loaded heart at whiles:
Man needs to conceive of a mercy-seat

Somewhere above the gloomy aisles
Of this wailful world, or he could not bear
The irk no local hope beguiles.’

- But since I was framed in your first despair
The doing without me has had no play
In the minds of men when shadows scare;

And now that I dwindle day by day
Beneath the deicide eyes of seers
In a light that will not let me stay,

And to-morrow the whole of me disappears,
The truth should be told, and the fact be faced
That had best been faced in earlier years:

The fact of life with dependence placed
On the human heart’s resource alone,
In brotherhood bonded close and graced

With loving-kindness fully blown,
And visioned help unsought, unknown.

***

The Verve is coming out with a new album in August. Awesome!

In particular, I love Naxos’s recording sung by Karina Gauvin. The text is based on James Agee’s essay (though some call it a prose poem). The full Agee essay is well worth reading, but below is the text of Barber’s song. The music captures beautifully Agee’s nostalgia for a time past, when things seemed simpler, purer, and thus more worthwhile. It captures a very specific time of day and laments the passing of this (”and who shall ever tell the sorrow”). And Gauvin’s voice annunciates clearly the words while maintaining the emotional longing behind each phrase. Wonderful music.

It has become the time of evening when people sit on their porches,
rocking gently and talking gently and watching the street
and the standing up into their sphere of possession of the trees,
of birds’ hung havens, hangers.
People go by; things go by.
A horse, drawing a buggy, breaking his hollow iron music on the asphalt;
a loud auto; a quiet auto;
people in pairs, not in a hurry,
scuffling, switching their weight of aestival body, talking casually,
the taste hovering over them of vanilla, strawberry, pasteboard and starched milk,
the image upon them of lovers and horsemen, squared with clowns in hueless amber.

A streetcar raising its iron moan:
stopping, belling and starting; stertorous; rousing and raising again its iron increasing moan
and swimming its gold windows and straw seats on past and past and past,
the bleak spark crackling and cursing above it like a small malignant spirit set to dog its tracks;
the iron whine rises on rising speed;
still risen, faints; halts; the faint stinging bell;
rises again, still fainter, fainter, lifting, lifts, faints forgone: forgotten.
Now is the night one blue dew.

Now is the night one blue dew,
my father has drained,
now he has coiled the hose.
Low on the length of lawns,
a frailing of fire who breathes …
Parents on porches: rock and rock.
From damp strings morning glories hang their ancient faces.
The dry and exalted noise of the locusts from all the air at once enchants my eardrums.

On the rough wet grass of the backyard my father and mother have spread quilts.
We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there …
They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet,
of nothing in particular, of nothing at all in particular, of nothing at all.
The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near.

All my people are larger bodies than mine, …
with voices gentle and meaningless like the voice of sleeping birds.
One is an artist, he is living at home.
One is a musician, she is living at home.
One is my mother who is good to me.
One is my father who is good to me.
By some chance, here they are, all on this earth;
and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth,
lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of the night.
May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father,
oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble;
and in the hour of their taking away.

After a little I am taken in and put to be.
Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her:
and those receive me, who quietly treat me,
as one familiar and well-beloved in that home:
but will not, no ,will not, not now, not ever;
but will not ever tell me who I am.

I hope that Bolcom’s Symphony No. 8 finds its way to disc soon, for I am anxious to hear it.