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Many of us lead double lives, and some of us even talk about them. One person who talks is Eric Barnhill, a pianist in a class I teach at Juilliard. On his website Eric writes: "I pay
the bills by working at temp agencies. Upon matriculation I will probably be that
delightful oxymoron, a full-time temp."When he takes
the subway home, says Eric, he thinks about his colleagues, heading home to kick back,
while his ambitions for the day are just beginning. "When I spend my day doing
something else, I ache to start practicing."I asked Eric
if he’d ever talk that way in a professional biography, the kind we’d read if we
went to a concert he was playing. That way he might ease his double life; he’d be
performing as himself. He answered that he’d feel uncomfortable, unless his bio fit
the music he was playing. He might write this way, he said, if he were playing Ives, since
Ives also had a day job; he sold insurance.I respect this
answer. These decisions, after all, are highly personal. And yet…which composers
lived only in their art? Mozart, we learned not long ago, wrote tunes for junky operettas.
Brahms wouldn’t want you to know how he made his living when he was young; he played
the piano in a most disreputable bar. Tchaikovsky -- I’m not making this up -- once
dressed as a ballerina, and danced a pas de deux with Saint-Saens. Eric,
today’s great composers are riding the subway with you. This is Greg Sandow, musing on music. Visit Eric Barnhill's website!
Ever wish you could quit your job, and be a great composer? I’ve
got news for you -- it is a job. Take
George Friedrich Handel, who in his younger days would have been amazed to learn that
he’d be remembered for the "Hallelujah" chorus. He lived in
London then, and ran opera companies that were supposed to make money. To make them pay,
he had to sell tickets. To sell tickets, he put monsters, mermaids, and fire-breathing
dragons on stage, all brought to life with the best 18th-century special effects. He hired
exotic Italian singers, who could not have been the well-bred early music types we hear in
his operas today. These singers were flamboyant and spectacular. Their costumes set
trends, or caused scandals, if they were too revealing. When two sopranos fought on stage,
the press wrote obscene comments. Imagine Handel on the cover of Vanity Fair. During
performances, he’d sit in the orchestra, playing outrageous harpsichord. When
opera stopped selling, he wrote oratorios -- with organ concertos added at intermission,
so he could show off on the keyboard once more. But
someone beat him to market, offering a pirate version of an oratorio he’d written
earlier. In those days, you couldn’t sue for that. So Handel retaliated, revising the
score, and offering his own production. "Esther, an
oratorio by the celebrated Mr. Handel -- authorized version!" Yes, that was Handel -- composer, showman, and entrepreneur. And this is Greg
Sandow, musing on music.
Not long ago I was at the Met -- the museum, not the opera house. Budd,
my painter friend, got me looking at Van Gogh’s brushstrokes. Van Gogh was a
ferocious artist; he’d paint a landscape, and attack the sky as fiercely as the rough
and rolling hills. Then we
looked at El Greco, at his "Vision of St. John," glowing with a light that has
no source, and yet is everywhere. I asked Budd who else back then made skin and fabric
luminous. Nobody, he said. No one else could have painted the blue, illuminated robe, the
transcendent flesh, the one dark figure, brown and weathered, but alive with inner light. Then I read
what the museum had to say. The painting, said the blurb beside the canvas, "is cut
down from a larger alterpiece. The missing upper part may have shown the Sacrificial Lamb
opening the Fifth Seal." Who cares? Memo to the
Met: Artistic scholarship is fine. But find yourself some poets. Have them describe the
paintings. Let them, in very few words, tell us what the paintings mean to them. Post what
they write. Let us react. Then post some of our reactions. Now your museum has not just
respect for art, but love. This is Greg
Sandow, musing about art today -- though shouldn’t poets write program notes for
concerts, too?
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