Music Writing by Carson Arnold

 


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LADIES AND GENTLEMAN

The following is a written introduction for the live concert of Debussy's opera, Pelleas Et Melisande, performed last Monday night.

 

A week ago the record shops were really busting out the dry. One place was playing Zeppelin's "Good Times Bad Times" while another had "Smells Like Teen Spirit" full blast. And not only that, no joke, ten minutes before they threw it on, a kid walked into the store with the song cranked off his headphones. It was a musical Twilight Zone in the ripe and even eerie to a Nirvana chum like me who thought last winter's biggest accomplishment was learning from my friend how to play the same tune with my thumb in a frigid cottage...(and it was). But I wasn't paying attention, and had far lovelier valuables under my arm including Debussy's opera, Pelleas Et Melisande. Odd...despite I have no technical training besides four years of grade school percussion, I can easily say it's the one of the most beautiful classical works known to the archive and not at all be acquainted with one, single solitary note of it. And I suppose I'd love to keep it that way-- clueless to the generics, and instead swimming in the passion that developed 'em. Oh well whatever never mind.

 

What I've always found ironic about classical music is that seemingly the ones who are legitimate enough to comment on its movements are the academia, the professionals, whereas the soul purpose of the music itself was to stimulate and draw the natural emotion we all possess, endless in Chopin, Mahler, Beethoven, but never discussed openly in the raw flesh. Like this opera, why few have confronted this, is because you can't estimate it, you can only experience. Of course, Debussy was a marble of illusions; the master; he even looked cool; perpetually lost in an arrested development that never veered into superstition or a soundtrack, as it did with Ravel, but like a child's book, took the sentiments of the world (and music's most micro designs) and expanded into a transparent view from reality-- a fantasy-- his own garden. Last Monday the door was open, I walked inside and listened to it-- yet this wasn't the first time-- Karajan's interpretation was-- I owned Pierre Boulez's-- the two, completely different-- Karajan an enforcer, Boulez like a virgin. It's a toss up depending what mood mischief could cause, but 'Lez had the sympathy for harps and fertile tones that make for an unwinding forestry of touch; his breathing spells for Debussy's Nocturnes have always been as if the high-rise to the heavens. Even when I purchased it (after a series of other LP sacrifices in attempt to lower the price) the clerk almost seemed partially un-anchored by its departure, his eyes watching it like both the fading of a boat and the debris of the Titanic all in the same glow. And although I was scolded last year for calling Boulez infamous, who but anybody who oriented out of the icicles of the nineties' Teen Spirit could not think Boulez's approach, angelic and all, was anything more than infamous, if not exotic? Even on Pelleas' cover, picturing a blurry girl pacing down a few stone steps from (or into) a mermaid of trees, depicts much of the opera's adventure. But frankly, I have no clue to what the story's about 'cuz, it ain't me babe, I rarely follow along-- exceptions to Berlioz-- with operas-- no patience-- I instead listen for the heart-- voices become just another instrument swimming in the measure-- to life insisting. However, as the opening moments uncoil a perfume of unknown tinkerings, I'm more than blush to step inside and read what it is I hear.

 

Erotic. The beginning is like a hand slowly opening. Deep strings.

 

'Tis a fairy-tale almost inspired by the dreams of Balzac or later Hesse in that a family (Pelleas the husband, Melisande the daughter) are bewitched in the enchantment of an eternal woods where castles sink around the few witnesses of their death, birth, and everlasting love. Except for Puccini, this is a break from the lobby debauchery of most armored operas, in that romance (almost imaginary, though) is the coda to every path the scale roams. The vocalists (chasing one another while holding hands) swell in splattering the expression and even more with the underlying imagination that is never to easy to proof and never too hard for the listener to simply lean back and let it entirely drown within...All Debussy's sweat for that synopsis? But for great reason: the music. I find it most tearfully similar to Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, of which airs this beaming fantasy that remotely dreams in the neurosis, and after coming to terms with it-- compulsion-- the crave for such love is on. The charm of Pelleas is in this--after it finishes you almost feel as though every aspect of the opera's afterlife is watching you move and perform. Vividly have I felt this response and shadow from music's ring. It's the very sound the sleeper heard when they awoke from Roy Orbison's "In Dreams". Particular compositions like Kodaly's "Night On The Mountain" or any swaying rhyme of Janacek's have risen furious passions, but none as dashing, if not incidental. Running my finger across the spines of Debussy's life-- La Mer, Jeux, Preludes-- there were certainly fleeting seconds of this majestic fortress, yet (or maybe, Nirvana-boy, 'cuz it's an opera) here, everything is fluttering the man's personal zenith and our will to live and amuse for such a wonder.

 

Traveling back, if you listen to Nirvana somewhere between hearing this opera, though obviously totally different, you get a sense of something honest coinciding within both. The youth of today ain't doin' the time to classical music for many reasons-- mostly 'cuz it's boring, ain't sexy, and either are the people who listen to it. It's been like this since the pictures-houses were first invented, and that's why people are so bonked out today on the reaction of the avant-garde, but not the purpose. Ahh, four years ago when I'd come home I would delicately light the evening with Bach's Suite in E Minor for guitar, as performed by Baltazar Benitez...Yeah right! Hell, I'd throw on the loudest crap possible to quench my ears. It had voice, it had blood, it's what I could hear, and wasn't symbolizing something no one could identify with; as is Mozart, and though brilliant, is a steam-roller of perfect calculations that after a while-- symphony 24, 28, 34-- doesn't even feel like music, nor sound, but slightly artificial. Debussy was the opposite of all this, a Revolution 9 of the arts, and my experiences with Nirvana and Debussy remain identical-- they're human.

 

Oceans, and more oceans, and more oceans, cover the music. God, this was Debussy; that blue blanket, either the sky, either the sea, sound, swiftly encompassing its abyss by the waves of harps and weightless orchestra. I'm totally absent to any of the academics, nor do I give a damn, but whatever it took to evoke the poetry between a few violins and one voice, is a certitude I shall pursue, no doubt. Everything, from the beginning fruits, to the closing drifts, are no more than a beautiful harmony of this world and music's finest intentions. I'm glad to be alive.

 

The curtains rise to a stage of trees. Gouland is lost while hunting. Somewhere a child discreetly cries. And the strings slowly drift along.

 

 

--Carson Arnold - November 15th, 2003

 

copyright 2003 Carson Arnold


 

H(ear) is an online music column consisting of interviews and articles written by Carson Arnold. As an independent writer and musician living in the woods of Vermont with his family, Carson widely encourages one to submit their art, writing or any interesting piece of material that you would like to share. H(ear) is accepting both promos and demos for review or any other valuable music-related subjects. If you wish to make a comment or would like to receive H(ear) weekly by email please contact Carson at [email protected]

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