Nimble Tread

10, 9, 8, 7...

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Heber, the Receiver

Kyle Gann’s recently posted his take on the relationship between composer and audience, which, quite correctly to my mind, distils to the composer’s need to reconcile artistic vision with artistic pragmatism; in creating a work he should be guided by his expressive impulses, but must remember to chisel in a few handholds for the benefit of his listeners.  Reading Kyle’s entry made me think of a branch of film theory called reception study, which attempts to codify the ways in which audiences respond to the sensorial stimuli offered by film.  Within the paradigm of reception study, audiences are believed to be active rather than passive, which is to say they seek to create meanings rather than simply absorb those meanings presented to them on the screen.  It stands to reason that psychology plays a significant role in this branch of film scholarship, and, as is the case with other attempts at using mental science to make objective something that’s highly subjective, reception study often stands on shaky ground.  That said, it does provide some interesting insight into how people make sense of what they see, and how cinematic meaning fits into their lives. 

I’m well aware that reception study isn’t unique to film.  It’s been used as an analytical tool in parsing virtually every medium, from radio to plays, but has always struck me as being at its most potent when lurking in darkened cinemas.  From a psychological standpoint, there are more agents at work in movies, especially those agents having to do with wish-fulfilment, than in most other media, and now that technology’s given human imagination free reign, it would seem that the sky’s really the limit.  But I don’t think it is.  As a matter of fact, I think that the visual realization of what once only existed as a fleeting mental image has deadened the medium: audiences rarely need to supplement what they see on the screen with singular images they might create in their heads, and, as a result, have made reception studiers’ work easier.  In a sense, fantasies made real have robbed the cinema of much of its charm.  If an example of what I mean is necessary, I’d encourage you to read David Denby’s recent review of Peter Jackson’s King Kong in The New Yorker.

Bearing all of this mind, and thinking about what Kyle had written, it occurred to me that music may well provide the most fertile grounds for reception study in these modern times.  Like Kyle, I’ve been a member of countless concert audiences, and those around me certainly seemed mentally active (and, unfortunately, physically active on occasion as well).  What I find especially interesting about audience reactions to music is the sheer variety of ways in which they respond not only to the music itself, but to the composer and the experience as well.  There is, for better or for worse, a stigma of impenetrability that surrounds certain musical genres, with “classical” and jazz topping the list.  Both genres offer more and less user-friendly compositions, but jazz seems to provide less mental anguish to casual listeners.  Whereas words like “jazz” and “swing” elicit a certain carefree ethos, labels like “Classical,” “Baroque,” and “Romantic” conjure a historical weightiness that seems to rest on listeners’ brows.  Why do people read synopses when they go to operas – even English-language operas – but not when they go to a Broadway show?  They’re not going to miss anything – surtitles and lyric repetition will surely see to that – but, still, they do it.  There’s no denying that certain classical pieces are far too complex for novices to understand, but are they any more difficult to decipher than John Coltrane’s solo over Giant Steps?  Probably not.  Also, the vast majority of the contemporary classical concert repertoire, and of jazz standards, are well within the grasp of most listeners.  They just need to listen.  Someone might not know that Joe Pass has substituted an A7+5+9 chord for an Eb7-5, but that probably won’t stop him from understanding what the song’s trying to express.  A person might not know what a gigue is, but if the composer’s done his job well, hearing one will communicate the notion of a dance.  This framework, this implicit expression of an idea, is what makes music unique.  People are presented with a series of aural hints – some visceral, some cognitive, and some academic – and are then given free reign to cobble together their own version of the story.  Kyle was quite right in saying that “within reasonable social-group similarities, people don’t listen that differently.” But they do listen differently, just as composer’s hear differently, and as long as both parties continue to do so, music will continue to breathe, no matter what the doomsayers say. 

Old Year's Docket

 

I'd like to extend a warm welcome to those of you who've sashayed to this corner of the bløgösphère from vilaine fille's anglo-italo-franco domain.  With the year speedily drawing to a close, and having been on the receiving end of a constant stream of requests for entertainment advice from friends looking for kicks, I've cobbled together a list of probably-shouldn't-miss activities that will get everyone through to New Year's Eve, at which point you're all on your own.  Be forewarned, scheduling conflicts abound, so choose carefully.

The Royal Opera House is still working its way through The Nutcracker and Pinocchio (in the Linbury), but they'll be sneaking in one performance of Il barbiere di Siviglia with Joyce DiDonato, Toby Spence, and George Petean on the 30th.  The History Boys are back at the National Theatre, though I wish you luck scoring tickets.  The Barbican's supplying a never-ending stream of music's greatest hits, beginning with tonight's opera gala night, moving through tomorrow's Beethoven's 9th with the RPO,  and the next night's Classics with the LPO, before welcoming in the new year with a smattering of Gilbert and Sullivan ditties on the 31st.  Edwardo Scissorhands and The Snowman are at Sadler's Wells, though I'll whisper caveat emptor if kiddies aren't in tow.  Soprano Alla Ablaberdyeva and pianist Andrei Korbeinikov are at the Wigmore tonight, preparing the stage for violinist Anne Fontanella and pianist Gordon Black's mixed bag performance  tomorrow night; Anda Anastesescu plays Beethoven, Silvestri, Enescu, and Chopin on the 30th.  Theatre in this berg is far too expansive a subject for me to cover here, so I'll defer to the London Theatre Guide's codification efforts.  Ronnie Scott's is doing its annual New Year's Eve shindig, which I realize lies beyond the restrictions I've placed on this list, but it's sold out anyways, so it doesn't really matter.  I only mention it because the club will be closing for renovations in March, who knows for how long, and the prudent among you might want to pay the fellows on Frith Street a visit before the old is tossed out on its ear.  As with the theatre, one needs a score card to keep up with London museums.  I'll simply recommend the Persian exhibition at the British Museum, the  China: The Three Emperors 1662-1795 exhibition at the Royal Academy, and the Degas, Sickert, Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition at the Tate Britain.  There's always dancing at the Cafe de Paris, and sometimes, if it's Saturday and you're lucky, at the Savoy.  Finally, you might want to bear witness to the Speakeasy Swing Party at Le Quecumbar on the 31st.

I'm well aware that this list is highly subjective, and far from comprehensive.  I've simply mentioned things that I'm considering doing myself.  That said, I've been sitting at home listening to Maurizio Pollini play Chopin for nearly seven hours now, and my day has all the markings of getting wrapped up at the pub, where I intend to spend some quality time with Italo Calvino. To those of you for whom what I've listed thus far holds no appeal, I'll mention that Londoners have a terrific affinity for low-to-mid-grade explosives, and, if precendent is anything to go by, the yuletidinous Silent Night of present will shortly be supplanted by the fiery changing of the calendrical guard.  At any rate, whatever you choose to do, I hope you have fun doing it.

Christmas Snaps

Hope everyone's had a nice holdiay so far.  It's been snowing here today, and if things keep up at this rate, we might be bombarded with a millimeter or two by tomorrow morning. As I'm fully expecting to be snowed in, I've decided to get started on cleaning out the old digital camera.  It seems I've managed to become something of an urban nature photog:

Presidential Addendum

Incidentally, Dead shows aren't all that can be found at the Internet Archive.  I've been listening to presidential addresses and conversations these last few days, and have found the experience to be an enlightening exercise in oratorial comparison.  Feeling pretty good about President Bush's public speaking chops?  Why not have a listen to FDR declare war on Japan?  Or maybe JFK's inaugural address.  Caleb Crain's been breaking into cold sweats thinking about adult literacy in America.  I hope for his sake he doesn't start worrying about what a modern American public would make of the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debates. 

Bad Karma

Some people in my acquaintance have found this hard to believe, but I used to be a minor-league Deadhead, albeit one who preferred Polo sweaters to tie-dye.  I did go to a Dead show though, and there aren't many people I know (aside from my friend Adam, who came with my sister and me) who can say the same.  Hell, I even have a shoebox full of show tapes in a drawer at my mom's house, and believe me when I tell you that they were not easy to come by.  Back in the day, to wit the mid-90s, tape traders were a protective bunch, safeguarding their hard-won reels with tremendous fervor, and, like jewelry dealers, stashing the best of their boodle in a back room, to be trotted out only for preferred customers.  My memory of trying to score shows from '74 are not fond; for a demographic that prides itself on being mellow, these guys proved to be dicks, and stingy beyond words.  But times have changed, and I now sit here in my living room, computer on lap, not a scrap of tie-dye in sight, and every Dead show ever recorded just a click away.  So I ask you, who's got the last laugh, dude?

Patter

Dave Brubeck was back at the Barbican the other night, playing La Fiesta de la Posada with the LSO in the show's first half, and a greatest hits medley with his sons in its second.  Nice as it was to hear the old tunes again, the highlight of the evening was Dave's stream of commentary, which touched on subjects ranging from the Quartet's rehearsal-free recording of Unsquare Dance to his family ties to England.  My favourite story of the night had to do with the DBQ's European goodwill tour in the 50s.  It went as follows:

In 1958, President Eisenhower -- this is true -- sent us on a tour around the periphery of the Soviet Union.  The idea was to start up a cultural exchange and spread American art and music to that part of the world.  We went to Poland, England, Scotland, Germany, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Turkey, India, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and East and West Pakistan.  Fun tour.  We played twelve nights in Warsaw, where we were met at the train by all of the jazz musicians who lived there.  We saw Chopin's house, which meant a lot to me as I had grown up listening to my mother play Chopin on the piano.  And so, on our last night in Warsaw, I decided to play a song I thought of on the way over to the concert hall.  I had been hearing this Chopin theme in my head and wanted to play it for these people to show my appreciation for their kindness towards us.  I called it Djiekuje, which is Polish for thank you. 
Now, we were in Poland a few days ago, and I played the song for them again.  Amazingly, most of the same guys were there who had met us at the train station fifty years earlier.  They were really touched that an American jazz musician would play a Chopin tune.  It made me feel good to play it for them then, and I hope you like it when I play it for you now.

We did.

Form Before Function

Louis Henri Sullivan famously remarked that “form ever follows function.”  Well, not if you’re Matthew Bourne.  His latest effort, Edward Scissorhands, is currently enjoying a successful run at Sadler’s Wells, where tour buses have literally been lining the street, their drivers unloading tittering cargo and then sitting around for a couple of hours, working their way through the Times’ crossword and twiddling their thumbs.  I caught a glimpse of one of their number during the interval.  He was sitting in the front row passenger seat, his feet up on the safety barrier, reading a book.  All told, he looked very happy.  I, on the other hand, a ticket-holding theatregoer with nary a tourist to contend with or bus to manoeuvre, was feeling a bit down in the dumps: with the prospect of a second act hanging over my head, I realized that he’d gotten the better deal. 

Bourne is best known for his all-male production of Swan Lake.  He’s certainly been responsible for other shows – The Car Man, Highland Fling, and Cinderella, to name three – but none has enjoyed the critical acclaim of Swan Lake.  Bourne has claimed his productions are “musical theatre” rather than dance, which seemed modest at first, but has become increasingly true with each project, to the point where people involved with musical theatre would probably prefer him to find a new label for his creations.  Bourne started his dance and choreography training relatively late in life, a fact that’s always been apparent in his dances.  That said, most of his production have gotten by on the basis of being sums of their parts: his concepts and staging were very clever, and combined with solid storytelling, made up for somewhat amateurish choreography.  Unfortunately, this equation wasn’t sustained with Scissorhands.  Though he’d worked on the concept for seven years, which should have provided ample time for a good show to percolate, Bourne seems to have missed the point, not to mention the charm of Tim Burton’s 1990 film.  In an interview with Mark Shenton, he claimed to have made an effort to create Edward anew, to “explain a bit more about why he was made, rather than just accepting that he was.”  Instead, Bourne muddled the film’s clear back-story, and rendered Burton’s illusory 50s Xanadu-cum-dystopia into a theme park pageant.  He seemed so intent on doing something different than Burton that he didn’t consider the effects his changes might have on the story.  Take for instance the way in which Edward becomes incorporated into the Boggs’ lives.  In the film, Peg braves horror film paradigms and ventures up to the mansion on the hill to peddle her Avon wares.  Once there, she finds Edward, a boy who, in his words is “not finished,” cowering in a corner below a time-ravaged roof.  Here the civilized world has come to him on his own territory, and has lured him into its surreal clutches with the promise of normalcy and fulfilled curiosities.  Like Omai in the 18th century, Edward is the tame savage, feared and admired by society’s elite; but still he is a novelty, and like all such things has a short shelf life.

In Bourne’s version, on the other hand, Edward is discovered not in a mystical castle-on-high, but rather rooting through the Boggs’ garbage can.  His dress and jerky movements give him the air of a scavenging raccoon, and he’s lost virtually all the pathos and longing of Burton’s character.  Even though Sam Archer did a fine job as Edward, he was so hamstrung by Bourne’s restraints that comparing him to Johnny Depp would just be unfair.  He managed to convey a certain amount of wonder at his surroundings, but without words, as in the film, or expressive dancing, as in most ballets, he was left with nothing to do but mime his way through an hour-and-a-half.  The only times he came alive were during his duets with Kerry Biggin – who put in an outstanding performance as Kim – particularly the highly imaginative 19th century-style dream sequence dance, where, amid a score of dancing sculpted shrubs he was finally given an outlet for expression.  Unfortunately, as with the rest of the show’s dances, which seem to have been drawn from the Grease fount of choreography, Bourne simply ran out of steps.  Archer and Biggin are very capable, highly expressive dancers, but, like Peg’s neighbours with her Avon, I just wasn’t buyin’ what they were sellin’.  This is Edward Scissorhands meets West Side Story, where instead of the wonderful, macabre genius loci of Burton’s film, we’re given a generic 50s backlot set.  Bourne promised us Edward Gorey, but delivered Ed Sullivan, and that’s a shame.

The Inexorable March of Time

I was walking home from the RSA yesterday when whom should I spy hanging from a clock’s minute hand but Harold Lloyd, erstwhile star of the silent screen.  For the sake of clarity, I’ll add that he was doing so in a photograph, which, quite frankly, made the encounter considerably less dramatic, but still served the purpose of reminding me that I love Harold Lloyd.

Though he rounded out the triarchy of silent film comedians, Lloyd hasn’t enjoyed the widespread immortality of Keaton and Chaplin.  Some might argue that he couldn’t make the transition from the silent era to the talkie period, and so fell by the wayside.  To that I’ll ask: what about Keaton, then, who found himself working as a gag writer for, among others, Clark Gable (in Too Hot to Handle) and the Marx Brothers, and appearing in commercials for Simon Pure Beer before undergoing a resurrection in the 50s?  Some might argue that his films just weren’t very good, to which I’d respond, with uncharacteristic curtness, that his films were terrific, well crafted and exciting.  While he might have fallen slightly short of Keaton where directorial chops were concerned, he certainly gave ol’ Stoneface a run for his money in the stunts department.  That was, after all, a clock mounted on a real building that he hung off in Safety Last – and he did actually climb the building. 

Amazingly, though the clock image is one of film’s most iconic, few people have any clue as to the identity of its subject.  How such phenomenal deeds of derring-do can have gone forgotten is beyond me.  Fortunately, things are looking up for Harry Lloyd and, more contemporarily, his Trust.  New Line Home Video has recently issued a box set of 7 DVDs that includes a considerable variety of featurettes, interviews, commentaries, and, of course, Lloyd feature films, like The Eastern Westerner, Safety Last, and Speedy, which I first saw, with live piano accompaniment, at the Telluride Film Festival in 2001.  At $70 or so, it’s really a steal.

On the local front, Sony Ericsson Proud Galleries Central is offering an assortment of Lloyd photos to potential buyers.  At £350 a piece, these things don’t proffer quite the same value as the box set, but do provide a dollop of intrigue in that they not only include pictures of Lloyd, but also photos taken by him, most notably a series of How to Marry a Millionaire-era snaps of Marilyn Monroe taken at Lloyd’s estate, Greenacres.  If neither these nor the black-and-white publicity stills capture your particular fancy, there are also some 1950s nudie pics to be had, which, thankfully, are not of Lloyd.  There are, after all, limits to the adage “sex sells.”

I was hoping the NFT would jump on the bandwagon and run a few Lloyd films through its projectors, but, alas, no such luck as of yet.  So, if anyone from the NFT is reading this, how about it boys?  (And girls, of course.)

Pryor's Convictions

 I'm curious to see how the world will choose to memorialize Richard Pryor, who died today at 65.  I know how I'll remember him: as a man of acute comedic sensibility and singular intelligence who, at his best, could make you laugh and cry all at once.  His comedy had its roots in empathy; its fodder was the human condition.  Though his settings were socioeconomically specific, the stories he set in them were not, so that even a white kid from Canada, forty years his junior, could understand what he was talking about.  For those of you who've been blinded by his smokescreen of "motherfuckers," I'd ask you to listen to Live and Smokin' and That Nigger's Crazy, which offer a far better tribute to his virtues than anything you're likely to hear in the coming days.  As he said in 1974, "tell me them ol' lies of yours to make me stop thinking about the truth."