800 Words: Evan and Hauptmann Rinderherz Go Through the Early History of Popular Music (a digression)

Evan: Herr Hauptmann, I’m afraid you suffer from Manny Ax Syndrome.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: What syndrome is that? And what does Emanuel Ax have to do with any of this?

Evan: Well, as I hope you know, Emanuel Ax is one of the greatest pianists of this, or any, time.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: He’s a bit too intellectually curious for my taste.

Evan: Well, that’s not his problem.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: It’s the world’s problem.

Evan: Regardless, Manny Ax is an amazing musician, but I remember reading an interview in Amazon. Manny recommended his favorite recordings. It was a great list: Cortot’s Chopin, Fleisher’s Beethoven, Adams’s Harmonielehre, Eugene Onegin, Oscar Peterson, and some other great discs. But there was only one thing to besmirch this otherwise terrific selection... Remember Two Things by Dave Matthews Band, which he said he was introduced to by his daughter.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Was ist Dave Matthews Band?

Evan: Dave Matthews Band was a fad rock group in the late 90’s which still sells out everywhere they perform. But music lovers have not taken them seriously in more than ten years. Every note Dave Matthews ever played is a love-letter to blandness and boredom.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: (finds Remember Two Things on youtube) Sounds like just another blundering American musician to me.

Evan: A much worse American musician than Manny Ax. But apparently, like you, Manny Ax can be the height of discernment on classical taste, yet a blithering idiot on any matter outside his purview. Apparently, his taste in non-classical contemporary music is precisely the same as millions of people who do not have enough interest in music to ever be interested in classical music.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: This is what happens when you try to appease the vox populi.

Evan: I don’t think that’s quite true. I think he genuinely liked what he heard. But unlike the rest of the world, he wasn’t subjected to Dave Matthews every day for four years, and he never had a chance to grow to hate them the way the rest of us did. And this is your problem too Herr Hauptmann. If you listened to David Hasslehoff for more than five minutes every five years, you’d want to kill yourself. But you like David Hasslehoff in the same way that Manny Ax likes Dave Matthews. It’s so bland that it doesn’t even offend the sensibilities of any out of touch classical music lover, and therefore by listening to it you won’t have to challenge any of your preconceived notions of what true art is.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Ah! Now I remember who Dave Matthews is! Isn’t he der new judge on American Idol?

Evan: No, that’s Keith Urban. You’re confusing your douchebag musicians who're popular in the South. And you never told me you watch American Idol!

Hauptmann Rinderherz: I watch to observe the badness of American music.

Evan: At what point does this continual need to experience the badness of American music become a love of something you claim to hate? It’s almost like a form of pornography for you.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: I’ve never looked at pornography in my life!

Evan: You should probably try it, it’ll make you happier.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Infamy! How dare you suggest such a dirty thing!

Evan: Albeit don’t do that dirty thing in my house.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: How can you suggest that any popular music will laed me to anything but suicide?

Evan: Because some of it is great!

Hauptmann Rinderherz: I’ve heard enough of it to know that is not true.

Evan: No you haven’t. If I’d listened to as little popular music as you did, I’d have probably concluded that everything was crap too.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: So you admit that it’s dreck!

Evan: No. Not at all. I admit that 70% of what people generally listen to is dreck. 20% of their music is mediocre. 5% of it is decent. 3% of it is good. 1.5% is great. And roughly .5% of it is as great as the greatest classical music.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: That is still .5% too much!

Evan: Herr Hauptmann, I’m willing to meet your snobbery most of the way. But you’ll have to settle for at least a small compromise. I’ve heard too much that’s good to ever regard my culture’s music as a total waste.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: What need there is for compromise when you are right?

Evan: The need is because you’re not right.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: History will vindicate me!

Evan: I guess that’s possible in some strange way, but you won’t be around to hear its verdict. In any event, there are already Americans who feel the same way as you, only they feel that way about American Jazz Music. To some Americans, music begins in New Orleans around 1920 and ends in New York around 1965.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Ach, Jazz. The barbaric horror of the jungle.

Evan: That barbaric horror is constructed from the same folk roots from which your beloved Deutsch Musik hails.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Prove it!

Evan: Alright. What’s most jazz improvisation except just the same way of developing counterpoint and ornamentation around a ground bass or cantus firmus?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: But it is such an inferior way of so doing!

Evan: Why is it inferior?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Because it is not written down! There is nothing planned, and therefore we cannot control the music!

Evan: Why can’t it be planned? Duke Ellington used to write out most of his instrumentalists’ solos. And even if they’re not written down, what do you think recording is? It’s just a new way of establishing permanence.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: But they still do not control the music.

Evan: Sure it is. It’s just a different way of controlling music.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: But it sounds so disorganized.

Evan: And yet when your beloved Furtwanglers and Edwin Fischers bend the tempo or rhythm, that doesn’t sound chaotic to you?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Nein. Because they do so to underline the harmonic rhythm and invention of der grossten meister!

Evan: Well, it’s just a different sort of rhythm in 20th century music. Most 20th century music takes the emphasis away from harmony and puts it on rhythm, often extremely complex rhythm. You might almost say that if the 19th century was about harmonic rhythm, then the 20th century was about rhythmic harmony.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Welche art von Bullshit ist das?!

Evan: Alright, you asked for it. I’m going to give you the quickest journey through 20th century music’s mainstream that you’ll ever get.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: It had better be quick...

Evan: Let’s start with Scott Joplin. Let’s just say he’s the American Bach. (Puts on a recording of Maple Leaf Rag)

Hauptmann Rinderherz: How could you dare even to mention this in the same sentence as Bach?

Evan: Because he’s at a similar waystation in music history. Bach took the accomplishments of the great polyphonists and created a music comprised of harmonic rhythm. Scott Joplin took the harmonies of the German tradition and created a music generated entirely by rhythm itself. Listen to those harmonies, they’re pure Schumann but with more rhythmic emphasis.  

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Do not you dare compare this mull to the Tondichter.

Evan: Alright, well, I give up. Did you hear about the lost impromptu by Schubert that was just premiered? It’s really beautiful.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Gruss Gott! Can I look it up on youtube?

Evan: Sure. Here, I’ll put it on for you. (puts on Solace by Scott Joplin)

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Prachtvoll! Simply magnificent! Listen to those chromatic innovations, as daring as anything until Schoenberg! Yet still mit die inner glut!

Evan: So...I have a confession to make.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Oh nein....

Evan: That was Solace by Scott Joplin.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Then I don’t like it.

Evan: What do you mean you don’t like it!? You just exclaimed it was Prachtvoll!

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Because Schubert would have written it in the correct spirit. When Scott Joplin writes something like this, it is unconnected to the proper wellspirit of music history and culture!

Evan: That’s entirely in your mind. You can will yourself to like and dislike anything you want with that mentality.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: What’s wrong with that?

Evan: Everything! Rather than focus on what strikes your ear as beautiful, you’ll just have a checklist of requirements from music which limit your reactions.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Some reactions are undesirable and base.

Evan: Why does it have to be that way?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Because it is the base of the kultur which redeems us all from the terrors of our world!

Evan: What if it doesn’t?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: But it does!

Evan: There’s no arguing with you. But for reasons passing my understanding, I’ll continue to preach to you. Try George Gershwin.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: At least he tried to write classical music.

Evan: He didn’t try. He succeeded. He was one of the great geniuses of the century, and had he lived past 38, he might have become the greatest composer of the 20th century and rescued classical music from the ghetto in which you’re so keen to keep us.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: That is unfair. It is not a ghetto. It is liberation!

Evan: Says the man who never leaves my couch.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Your couch is the most liberated part of you!

Evan: Anyway, if Joplin is the American Bach, then perhaps Gershwin is the American Handel. He’s ostentatious and theatrical where Joplin is inward, and yet he has far more expressive range and diversity than Joplin just as Handel did than Bach. He wrote at least one of the greatest operas ever written. He can write amazingly dramatic music for seemingly every scope and every mood, including dark ones, and also wrote some of the most artlessly beautiful music ever composed.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Er ist ein Nachahmung eines Komponisten.

Evan: Alright. Well then you’ll loooorve the next two.... Whereas Joplin and Gershwin both established their fame in the North, the other two ‘founders’ of American music established their eminence down South. They might be considered the “Vivaldi and Scarlatti” of American music because they took forms which other people used, produced literally hundreds of compositions in exactly the same form, and in so doing made these new forms palatable for a new era.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: I don’t care much for Scarlatti, and Vivaldi is terrible - the same boring sonatas and concerto 500 times!

Evan: If you listened to the new period practice recordings of Vivaldi you’d probably feel differently. But the new Vivaldi was a man named W. C. Handy, who grew up in rural Alabama and came up with the idea of notating the local form, the 12-bar blues pattern. He realized that you could become an endlessly inventive songwriter in that form, in music that could be endlessly adapted and still retain its universality. If you hear him in a great performance, Vivaldi makes minor keys fun. But W. C. Handy makes major key music into something sad.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: There is no way to make a major key sad! It is a violation of music’s fundamental laws!

Evan: Not only is there is no such fundamental law, but music is usually better when expectations like that are subverted. W. C. Handy wrote songs that smile through their tears, much as Mozart composed or Chekhov wrote.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: That is absolutely unfair to Mozart and even to Chekhov!

Evan: Is it? It’s just a different aesthetic, but no less profound.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Great workmanship is part of profundity! And there’s no need for workmanship in a 12-bar blues pattern!

Evan: Sometimes, you’re right. But that’s when the music is bad. When the music is good, there is an entirely different kind of workmanship that goes into it. And even when workmanship is great, instinct and emotional resonance are just as important. A great craftsman who expresses nothing but his craft (ahem, Hindemith) is infinitely less worthwhile than a mediocre craftsman who communicates with infinite expressive force (ahem, Janacek).

Hauptmann Rinderherz: I do not disagree, but I believe Janacek is an inferior composer.

Evan: Of course you do. Anyway, let’s look at our final composer before I go to bed. If W. C. Handy is the Vivaldi of the American “Mass” Tradition, then Jelly Roll Morton is our ‘Scarlatti.’ Scarlatti created the ‘sonata’ as we know it today. He may not have rendered it to the scale we see in Beethoven or even Haydn, but he created the binary sonata form in embryo, at the smallest possible scale. In almost exactly the same way, Jelly Roll Morton did the same with Jazz. The kernel of every innovation which Jazz later pioneered can be found in his pieces - the rhythm, the instrumentation, even the modal and chromatic harmonic daring of bebop.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Has it occurred to you that you’re generalizing and that these descriptions of American musicians are as worthless as your ‘Great Conductors’ Lists.

Evan: Of course, but who cares? In any event, we’ve digressed, and you certainly have a point. I’m already getting bored with these analogies, and we haven’t even made it to the Louis Armstrong/Haydn connection. In any event, let’s think about what comes next before we continue this dialogue.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Long as I don’t have to listen to more of this Dschungelmusik I’m fine with that.

800 Words: Evan and Hauptmann Rinderherz discuss the Berlin Philharmonic (part 3)

Evan: So you realize that that list I gave you of the best current conductors is worthless.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Gott sei dank! It was a chamber of horrors!

Evan: That’s a little extreme.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Why have you come back to the side of light?

Evan: Because that list was just a list of general practitioners. In order to make greater music, you need to have specialists who understand the composer on a deep level and take the necessary risks to create true understanding.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: So you admit that our world is diseased and requires the greatness of poettonesoundconsolation to lift us to a better!

Evan: No. I think the world is a hard place, and music helps us through it.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Ah! So you do admit it!

Evan: Alright. Sure. I admit that poettone... is that even a word in German? … is helpful.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: ein Sieg fur die Musik!

Evan: But you should understand the reason I did this. The conductors I named are, fundamentally, safe conductors who take no risks. At their best, they combine amazing energy and passion with intellectual rigor. But they take relatively few risks, because they understand that a risk is a risk because it’s usually not successful.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Oh nein. I worry again that you do not understand...

Evan: Maybe not, but I think the real glories of today’s performances of orchestral music are to be found elsewhere.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: I’m very afraid to ask where they are?

Evan: Well, let me think...what performances by living and active performers completely changed my understanding of the piece and made me love music even more...hmm... (Herr Hauptmann grows ever more open-mouthed at the list) … Harnoncourt's late Mozart Symphonies, Marc Minkowski’s Messiah, Gardiner’s St. John Passion, Harnoncourt’s Magnificat, Paul McCreesh’s Creation, Rene Jacobs’s Zauberflote, James Levine’s Marriage of Figaro, Gardiner’s Don Giovanni, Paavo Jarvi's Eroica, Thomas Fey’s Pastoral Symphony, Thielemann's Beethoven 7, Blomstedt’s Beethoven 9, Gardiner’s Missa Solemnis, Abbado’s Barber of Seville, Dudamel’s Symphonie Fantastique, Masur’s Italian Symphony,

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Stop! Please Stop!

Evan: I can keep going for another hour at least.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: You have betrayed the greatness of music for the dirtiness and disease of our base, cruel worldtime! .

Evan: Why do you take these things so seriously?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Because music is the food of the soul! Without your soul, you enter the horror of the unclean. You may even start liking Italian Opera!

Evan: I do like Italian Opera!

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Grauel!!!

Evan: Suit yourself.

Hauptmann: The worst part is, you do understand the soul of music. In this list great treasures of the spirit there are.

Evan: I’m not even sure the soul exists. But you’re right that music is a serious business and should be taken seriously. But come on man, you sound like you’d burn musical heretics if given half the chance. And do you even believe in God?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: I believe in music!

Evan: Touching... really... but if you believe in music, why do you hate so much of it?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Because music is a temple, and we must keep it clean for worship.

Evan: And Wilhelm Furtwangler is it’s prophet?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Ja! Furtwangler ist der Gottheit!

Evan: Do you have any idea how ridiculous you’d sound to anybody but me?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Let the outside world dissolve in mist! For us there would yet remain our holy art!

Evan: Holy German art?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: It is not my fault that no other kultur cares for the mysterium tremendum! Every other kultur is obsessed with sex and dirtiness!

Evan: Excessive Russian literature lovers say the same about Russia, Italian art lovers say the same about Italy, Greeks say the same about drama and philosophy, Franch...everything lovers say the same thing about France. No doubt, the time’s coming when Americans begin to say the same thing because of the holy temple of American cinema.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Everything you mention is a glory of the world... except die Franzosich...

Evan: And everything else is besmirched by our diseased world?

Hauptmann Rinderherz:Fast alles.

Evan: Here,... why don’t I put something on for you.

(Evan goes to his laptop, puts on Duke Ellington's Come Sunday)

Evan: Now can you honestly say that this is not food for the spirit?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Ach! Listen to that scheissetext!

Evan: And Schubert never set a bad text? And Wagner’s own texts aren’t crap?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: And those Falschung Debussy harmonies!

Evan: These harmonies are not Debussy at all! I tried to arrange this for chorus, I couldn’t figure out some of those chords and I have the perfect pitch to pick every note out of a hexachord by ear.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Has anyone ever told you you’re a f*cking ausfall?...

Evan: And who cares about who influenced the harmonies?! It’s what he does with them that matters. And this is some of the most spiritually consoling music since Bach!

Hauptmann Rinderherz: You are deluded. This is Americanischen popularkultur Mull!

Evan: This is not Mull! Here, listen to this... (puts on Old Man River by Jerome Kern)

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Oh Freud, nicht dieser tone!

Evan: The lyrics are truly great by any standard, and so is the song.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: How can you pretend that scheisse is fit for anything but Schweine?

Evan: Because this the opposite of scheisse. It’s a glory of the world.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Next you’ll tell me that Bob Dylan is great!

Evan: He’s not my favorite, but I do love a few of his songs.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: All his music sounds the same!

Evan: So does Mozart’s!

Hauptmann Rinderherz: You are disgusting.

Evan: So’s Parsifal, but I let you listen to it when you want.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: I shall not be treated in this manner!

Evan: You want me to stop insulting you?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: I want you to stop insulting music!

Evan: You should hear what other music lovers say. Many of them believe Dylan is the Beethoven of American music.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: What do I care what they think?

Evan: You’d probably be happier if you did.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: I do not seek to be happy! I seek to be uplifted!

Evan: Alright, well try another one. Here’s A Change is Gonna Come from Otis Redding, the American Schubert. It wasn’t written by him but this is my favorite performance.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: How can you think to compare to Schubert when this man did not even write this unbedeutend lied.

Evan: Redding wrote many great songs of his own. But there’s nothing unbedeutend about this song, it’s about the civil rights struggle, and you could even see this as being a song about spiritual hope, or even as a response to the Ode to Joy!

Hauptmann Rinderherz: What do Americans know about spiritual hope or joy?

Evan: Most of them know a lot more than you do.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: I know the joy of a better world than this one! What is the terribleness of this world compared to the greatness we bring from true music?

Evan: Well you’re listening to true music right now! But you don’t get it because your mind is closed.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: My mind is clear!

Evan: Your mind is farcockt.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Farcockt you!

Evan: Alright, this is getting too heated. Let me try one or two last pieces of music. (puts on Find the Cost of Freedom by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young)

Hauptmann Rinderherz: A decent volkslied. Nothing more.

Evan: Alright. Try this one... (puts on Hooked on a Feeling by David Hasselhoff)

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Oh. Ja. Ja. Das so gut ist! Listen to that beat! Like geschlechtsverker!

Evan: Oy gevalt. I thought you might have this problem...

800 Words: Evan and Hauptmann Rinderherz discuss the Berlin Philharmonic (Part 1)

(Evan gets home around 8:30 in the evening Thursday night to find that Hauptmann Rinderherz is still in his underwear. Hauptmann Rinderherz is the 53-year-old, crew-cutted, 6’6, 350 lbs, German man who’s been crashing on Evan’s couch since September. They met one day at bar trivia in East Baltimore, and quickly came to learn that this was a kindred spirit with a seemingly bottomless knowledge of classical music, and who’d been evicted from his apartment a week earlier. In a moment he’d come to regret endlessly, Evan invited Hauptmann Rinderherz to crash on his couch for the night. Since then, Hauptmann Rinderherz has never so much as left the couch except to go to the bathroom. Evan would later find out from HaWestbrook that there was, in fact, no apartment, and he’d been moving from couch to couch until his host tires enough of him to call the police. On Evan’s coffeetable is Hauptmann Rinderherz’s 400-CD collection of Carlos Kleiber and Sergiu Celibidache bootlegs, which the good Herr Hauptmann has not bothered organizing or even listening to because they can all be found now on his youtube channel, the views of which he seems to check as often as possible.

From the little information Evan can coax out of him, Hauptmann Rinderherz would appear to have been a rising star in the East Berlin police who specialized in interrogations (only violent criminals, not political prisoners), but his career was tragically derailed by the fall of the Berlin Wall. Because he refused under oath to falsely acknowledge that he was ever a member of the Stasi, he was not allowed to continue his police work. He then decided to pursue the music career he abandoned at the behest of his mother who told him daily that her fondest wish for her son was to die for Germany. Hauptmann Rinderherz was apparently a childhood musical prodigy, and even claims that as a teenager he studied piano at the Moscow Conservatory under Emil Gilels, but Evan has yet to see Hauptmann Rinderherz approach a piano or even hear him speak a word of Russian. For the first few years after the wall fell, Herr Hauptmann made his living operating a floor-buffer in the lobby of the Philharmonie. But when Simon Rattle was elected the next leader of the Berlin Philharmonic in 1999, Hauptmann Rinderherz was so disgusted that he elected to leave for America.

Hauptmann Rinderherz lived for the next few years as a loafer, jumping coal train to coal train for the next few years through all the various American cities until he happened to catch an episode of The Wire through the window of a Radio Shack in Toledo. He immediately realized that of all American cities, Baltimore alone had the gritty dinginess to remind him of the good old days of the Honecker dictatorship when everybody was banded together in the communal solidarity of mutual misery.)

Evan: Hello Herr Hauptmann! How was your day?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Ach. This latest post of yours is insufferably pompous - presenting your own personal opinions as though it’s a new theory. You never were much of an intellectual.

Evan: I’m not an intellectual. I just play one on the internet. And I never said it was anywhere near complete or anything more than attempt to gather my thoughts.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: We must work on your thought gathering ja? It is something you have very little ability for. 

Evan: Maybe I should have called it a self-interview.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Ah! Now I understand you. Like Witold Gombrowicz?

Evan: …Why not….

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Ach, such a magnificent novelist, the Poles never had another. Have you ever read Ferdydurke?

Evan: I tried, I didn’t like it.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: You wouldn’t.

Evan: What does that mean?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: It’s the same reason you won’t read Hermann Broch. You are intimidated by the thought that intelligences are greater than yourselves.

Evan:  I’ve just come around to the point of view that if you’re insecure enough to have to show off what you know, you’re probably insecure about the fact that you don’t know that much. (pauses to contemplate the various ironies of that last sentence…)

Hauptmann Rinderherz: (mutters) Typical anti-intellectual Americanische…

Evan: Most Americans I know would probably disagree.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: What do these idioten know? Spoiled and weak from comforts and thinking a year of unemployment is the world-end. In 1945 my mother lived on a single herring for a month!

Evan: She was dehoused by Allied bombing?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Nein. Just anorexic.

Evan: Ah. I’m sorry.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Bitte nicht, don’t apologize. She was my size and diabetic by the time I was five.

Evan: How do Northern Europeans always age so quickly?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: It’s in our blood. The new generation needs breathing room!

Evan: Are you at all aware of how you sound to other people?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Yes. But your demand for a sense of irony is an easily surmountable obstacle.

Evan: Y’know…I’m still trying to figure out if you’re charming or a genuinely offensive stereotype. And can I please use my own computer?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Here.

(Herr Hauptmann gives Evan the computer and picks up his copy of On Nature by Anaximander. Evan checks mail, looks at facebook, and checks his blog for pageviews. When he goes to twitter, he sees an extremely newsworthy development for classical music fans.)

Evan: Herr Hauptmann! Look at this! Apparently Simon Rattle is leaving the Berlin Philharmonic.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Mr. Tucker thank you very much for your hospitality. I shall leave right now.

Evan: Really?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Now that Simon Rattle is leaving the Philharmoniker, it is safe to go back to Berlin.

Evan: Well, far be it for me to stop you, but he's not leaving for another five years. And who knows, he might still change his mind and make peace with the orchestra.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Nevertheless, this is the greatest victory for Rattlehaters in our long, illustrious history. I must go join the cheering throngs who are dancing in the streets.

Evan: I highly doubt there are any cheering throngs to celebrate Simon Rattle's departure. And why do you hate Simon Rattle so much?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Ach! So viele grunde! He is the Barack Obama of music! A celebrity leichtgewichtler who put your hintere in the seat so he can feed you Scheissemusik! More rock singer than conductor!

Evan: What’s wrong with being a rock star? Wouldn’t it be great to have classical musicians who got the kind of publicity rock stars do?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: It is a pollution of music’s natural purity! The kultur industry now dictates how we must appreciate the classics! First they gave us a jazz conductor mit Leonard Bernstein, now we have this rock star Simon Rattle.

Evan: Was that any reason to leave Germany?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Ach nein! I came to America to meet der Johnny Cash!

Evan: So you actually like American popular music?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: He sang Der Ring!

Evan: Herr Hauptmann… I don’t think that the same Ring.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: I know that! But he is the noble savage! The animal vox populi which must be kept in complete kulturkampf from Heilige Deutsche Kunst! I came to America to resist rock music. I came to America to look der Johnny Cash in the eye and tell him that he shall not triumph!

Evan: Why must the two cultures be kept separate? Don’t you think classical musicians might learn something from Johnny Cash? Who, by the way, has been dead for nearly ten years.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Nein! So long as art is polluted by his energy we shall never free ourselves from the shakles of animal man to achieve our true worldspiritpotential!

Evan: I think that’s a little unfair. There is plenty of animal energy in classical music. And even if what you’re saying may have a very small grain of truth, why blame Simon Rattle for it?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Because musicians like Rattle are the reason that all that is good in art shall never triumph. And his performances are terrible!

Evan: No they’re not!

Hauptmann Rinderherz: So you truly believe that Simon Rattle is the Maestro from all the Maestros?

Evan: He’s one of them, certainly. He has his problems as a conductor, but he’s no lightweight. He’s a fantastic musician who came to Berlin for all the best reasons. The musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic knew that if they wanted to maintain their reputation as the world’s greatest orchestra, they had to modernize themselves very quickly. But they didn’t let Rattle finish the job, so now they’ll be just another fine German orchestra which specializes in Brahms and Bruckner – no different than the Staatskapelles Dresden or Berlin, but not quite as good as either. 

Hauptmann Rinderherz: So honestly you think the Philharmoniker lost its position as the world’s greatest orchestra by chasing Rattle from the baton?

Evan: The Berlin Philharmonic probably never was the greatest orchestra in the world, and it especially wasn’t the greatest under Karajan.  At least the Vienna Philharmonic was probably the world’s greatest orchestra in the 1870’s and 80’s, and it’s lived in that era ever since. But the supremacy of the Berlin Philharmonic was always a myth.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: I can’t believe what I’m hearing! Listen to how much better they sounded from the Karajan and Furtwangler years. Listen to the final years of Abbado!

Evan: Berlin never got Simon Rattle at his best because the more traditional members of the orchestra weren’t willing to give him their best. They resented the fact that he was their director at all, and that limited how willing they were to commit to his performances. And perhaps now that they know Rattle is leaving, they’ll perform better for him in the same way their performances for Abbado improved once they realized he was leaving too.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: They resented him because he wasn’t a conductor good enough!

Evan: Well it’s true that he’s not the greatest conductor in the world performance-wise. He has a kind of interpretive attention deficit disorder which makes him too reckless. Conductors like Bernstein and Barenboim have a level of genius that allows them make up their interpretations on the spot and still make musical sense, Rattle doesn’t but thinks he does. But even so, it’s amazing how many risks he gets away with, and I’ll take Rattle’s fearlessness over the kind of overprotective carefulness you get from most conductors any day of the week.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: But if he’s not performance-wise the greatest conductor in the world, he’s not the greatest conductor in the world. Only performances matter.

Evan: The performance is just one part of a conductor’s responsibility. Rattle is a great conductor because he brings music to others who would never hear it otherwise. He made sure the Berlin Philharmonic musicians were all well-paid before he even signed his contract. He’s involved inner-city children in concerts, he brought in great multimedia artists for interdisciplinary performances, he established an education department for the Berlin Philharmonic, he is absolutely undogmatic in terms of the repertoire he performs, and he’s always rethinking his interpretations of what he performs. To me, that is indicative of the fact that he is one of the very greatest conductors who ever lived.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Well I just think he is lucky. A wunderkind who was not talented yet had every advantage other musicians never have.

Evan: Well it can’t be denied that luck certainly played its role in Rattle’s career. But Rattle should be measured by what he’s done with his luck. And very few musicians have used luck to do more good.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Ach. Do good, what does good and evil have to do with music?

Evan: What is the point of Beethoven’s message if people aren’t there to hear it?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: People will hear it!

Evan: How?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: By force!

Evan: What??

Hauptmann Rinderherz: If they do not hear the message of die neunte symphonie, they must be made to listen and appreciate its importance.

Evan: Is this what you really believe?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: 300%.

Evan: So… then I’m just going to take a guess that you would like to see Christian Thielemann replace Rattle.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Ja ja. Er ist Der Meister. The greatest since Furtwangler!

Evan: High praise indeed. Though you do realize that he’s branching out now and making a real effort to conduct Russian and French music, right?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Ja. But he doesn’t look like he likes it.

Evan: Well, you’re in luck, because Thielemann will probably be the next director. 

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Wirklich? I thought he would be too committed to his work in Dresden and Bayreuth.

Evan: Furtwangler and Nikisch both conducted the Berlin Philharmonic and the Leipzig Gewandhaus simultaneously. Karajan held jobs with the Vienna Opera, the Vienna Symphony, the Salzburg Festival, and L’Orchestre de Paris at the same time that he headed the Berlin Philharmonic. I don’t think it’s good for music, but conductors hold multiple jobs all the time and put in too few hours with every one of them.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Do not give me false hope! A Thielemann Philharmoniker would be a golden age for music!

Evan: Well, Thielemann is a very talented conductor, but he conducts a limited repertoire. And even in his specialties, he has many of the same problems as an interpreter that Simon Rattle has.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Do not you dare to compare der meister to that Beatlesschwindler!

Evan: Think about it. They both have amazing ears for orchestral color, they both relish the big tunes, and they can both go to ridiculous interpretive extremes.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: It is not ridiculous when Thielemann does it! He lives and suffers for his holy art!

Evan: Well, I think he goes to a lot of excesses that don’t come off particularly well. But if you don’t want a heart attack from too much excitement, why don’t we discuss some of the other alternatives. How do you feel about Daniele Gatti? When it wasn’t certain Rattle would extend his contract past 2012, the musicians conducted a poll for whom they wanted to be the next conductor and Gatti was the winner.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Ein grosser Maestro. The greatest of the Italians except for Il Giulini.

Evan: Wow. No other Italians earn your approbation?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Toscanini was a kappellmeister, no imagination or gemutlichkeit. De Sabata has no innigkeit, Muti too much loves the Italian music, Chailly is an annihilator of all German, and Abbado used to be better before he went to Berlin.

Evan: But Gatti clearly loves Verdi.

Hauptmann RInderherz: Nobody’s perfect.

Evan: Well, I don’t much care for Gatti and I don’t see the big deal about him. Technically, his performances are often disasters, and that would be alright if he sounded like he inspires orchestras. But he doesn’t, and instead he just has a lot of interpretive quirks that his technique isn’t good enough to make the orchestras play.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: But there is so much innigkeit in his performances!

Evan: I’m still not sure what this innigkeit thing is… but I’ll let it go. And in any event, he keeps getting invited back to the greatest orchestras, so clearly orchestral musicians see something in him I don’t.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Ja ja. And certainly would he be preferable to Paavo Jarvi.

Evan: Really? I love Paavo Jarvi, I just wish he would stop trying to conduct 5 orchestras at a time.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Jarvi is terrible. Such awful Beethoven.

Evan: I love Jarvi’s Beethoven. Hell, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a performance by Jarvi which I didn’t think was great. But I don’t think you have to worry too much. He’s clearly beloved in Frankfurt and he’ll probably be the director of four more orchestras by the time the Berlin Philharmonic begins to consider who their next director might be.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Well if not Thielemann, the next director should be Andris Nelsons. Ein grosser Wagnerleiter.

Evan: Well I agree that he’d be a very good choice, maybe even the prudent one. He’ll be only 40 when Rattle leaves, he’s a very fine conductor of all sorts of music, including many composers you don’t like, and he always has interesting ideas. But if you expect another Furtwangler, you won’t get it in Nelsons.  

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Why not?

Evan: He’s far too catholic in his tastes to limit himself to German music. And his basic tempos are far, far quicker than Furtwangler’s. He’s more like Mengelberg than Furtwangler.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: To even have a Mengelberg today…

Evan: Well, you’re a Celibidache fan. What do you think of Semyon Bychkov?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: He’s no Celibidache! How can you make that comparison even?

Evan: They’re both uncompromising masters of the craft who hate the wear and tear of being a music director, they’ve whittled their repertoire down to the pieces they really love, they both started their careers at the top of the profession and then had periods of working in obscurity so they could get the results they wanted.