Musical Ideals: Flow and Glow

A nebulous musical post indeed... Perhaps this is synesthetic...

There are two ideals I think for music. I could use pretentious Greek or Kabbalistic terminology, but it comes down to two qualities: flow and glow.

People are going to be what they're going to be. You can't force a disorganized type of person to be fastidious any more than you can compel a fastidious person to let out of place things go, and ultimately, when it comes to problem solving, you're either the kind of person whose instinct is to take care of it or the type to move on.

But you can note those who turn their personality type into a religion, and cannot tolerate the idea of letting people be what they are. If they are type A, they can either be the type who creates spaces that let people be themselves, or the repressive type who aims to form people into little automatons who carry out their wishes. I don't claim to know what people are personally, just in art. And when I hear the military-lke organization of a Wagner's musical religion or Prokofiev musical gymnastics, the terrified orchestral precision of Toscanini or Reiner, the mechanical tension of a Michelangeli's porcelain or Pollini's bronze, I know an authoritarian personality when I hear it... These composers are more interested in assaulting the ear than in communicating with it, and these performers repress in the name of self-effacement. They are mechanics, not musicians.

Similarly, among the type B's are the types who either become their surroundings, and appreciate the ebb and flow of life, or insist on bending life's entire experience to their personalities. When I hear the hollow effects disguised as intellectual pretension of Liszt and Richard Strauss, the faux-deep narcissism of Celibidache and pomposity of Barenboim, the neurotic inability of Horowitz not let a musical phrase pass without exaggerations that are strangely pedantic for an artist known for his visceral excitement, I know that there's something deeply inauthentic about their approach. So often this approach is shallowness disguising itself as depth, a pose that has nothing to do with real self-expression in an approach which should do nothing better than enabling an authentic self to emerge. There is neither glow or flow to be found here, just hollow posing.

Exaggeration does have it's virtues. When you hear a Capital S search, it certainly has its virtues, but it does not have that special flow. Gesualdo, Schoenberg, Richter, Gilels, Sokolov, Furtwängler, Scherchen.... These are astonishingly truthful artists in their various ways, but they do not communicate a love of life equal to its pain. They flow, but they're not rivers, they're whirlpools. You cannot listen to them without being pulled into a musical event horizon where the truths are too dark to be life's whole story. Where there could be hope and flow/glow, all is darkness: it can be wonderful, but it also sounds a bit like musical nihilism. When you hear the self-effacing understatement of Haitink or Backhaus, that's real self-effacement, even if the level of unadorned musical logic is almost oppressive, there's real musical truth there. Bernstein and Rattle, for all their exaggerations, still have the flow. They accelerate as often as they slow down, Bernstein has the incision of precise rhythm whenever the music calls for it, and Rattle has accelerandi which can sound like nothing short of tsunamis. Tennstedt, for all his variability of tempo, still has that glow. In fact perhaps he has it more than any conductor save Jansons and Klemperer - that sense that every note every player plays is important and valued. Arrau has a similar luminosity among pianists, but his deep burnish from within is obviously a very different, almost opposite sort of glow from the very light proportions of a Casadesus - which is almost more of a glitter (ditto Ravel...). On the other hand, both Solomon and Curzon generally quite consistent in their tempi, yet no one flowed better, each note melting into the next like a wave. There are musicians whose perfection and severity, like Haitink and Backhaus, borders at times upon the impersonal and mechanical (I'm thinking mostly of Dohnanyi and E. Kleiber, which in the past I called an ideal but now I wonder...), but there are still moments of such magic that the 'glow' is something you can't deny them. There are similarly 'flow' artists who go into all kinds of excess that verges on the too dark for life (Mitropoulos, Hess). They flow, but they overflow the banks quite often. And then there are the 'glow' artists which glow in a way that is more sensuous than warm and reassuring (Haydn, Beecham, Rubinstein). There are other conductors whom I thought including in 'flow', like de Sabata and Kondrashn, but if they flow, they flow continuously like rapids.

And then you have the artists who are so talented that it's simply too much for their own good - so much technique and intelligence that they can't help but become mannered in a way that's divorced from real expresson: Carlos Kleiber is the most obvious example. Koscis and Levit are like that on the piano. It is much more difficult to say that of a composer - genius is genius, but if there were one or two of whom it could be said, I suppose it would be Stravinsky and Hindemith, whose chameleon ability to write in any style disguised their true identities their whole careers long.

If I can define "Glow" more generally, I suppose it means the ability to let things stand on their own with trust and security. It is usually achieved by seeing music from the outside in - letting the music's perfection of form come through. The glow can be many things - a warm suntan in the heat like Verdi and Faure, a pure immersion in a place where light and dark are clearly defined like Bach, or a sunset against a grey sky like Brahms. It often depends on the security of knowing that every voice will get a space to speak what it has to say, but glow can also be achieved by simply letting the music speak of itself. I doubt anyone would call Vaughan Williams one of form's greatest masters, but in Vaughan Williams, but what other composers achieve by formal security, Vaughan Williams achieves by the simple humanity of letting every detail register.

And if Vaughan Williams was not quite a master of form, Ives is in the bottom third... And yet his music, even at its most hyperactive, is stationary, tied to very specific places as all the motion moves around it. It glows with everything from New England midst to the most chaotic brassy iridescence, but it always stays put, and the beauty comes to the place rather than searching for the beauty.

Debussy on the other hand, is one of form's ultimate masters. Not a note out of place, and yet everything flow. Whether gentle or darting quickly, everything is motion. Perhaps Debussy is, like Mozart, one of the only masters who has mastered both flow and glow, but surely Mozart deserves a spot by himself, glowing from the top of the mountain even as he eases down it by rivulet.

"Flow", rather, is the delight that comes from unpredictability. It's a different, and perhaps more difficult kind of light to generate, because it generally depends on a kind of risk taking the 'glowers' generally don't take to find things in music which are not integrated into the form. It generates security and trust, but does so with unpredictability. If the 'glow-ers' seem to emulate life as it would be lived ideally, the 'flow-ers' emulate life as it is, an ebb and flow. 'Life is what happens when you're making other plans', but the flowers show us that even if life works out differently, it can still be lived with all the same security, humanity, warmth, and compassion.

...Maybe you all understand what I'm talking about because I sure as hell don't....

20 Flow Composers:

Monteverdi

Handel

Late Beethoven

Schubert (the co-ultimate flow-er)

Schumann

Smetana

Mussorgsky (the co-ultimate flow-er)

Dvorak (the co-ultimate flow-er)

Rimsky-Korsakov

Mahler

Janacek

Nielsen

Ives

Cowell

Shostakovich

Messiaen

Berio

Schnittke

Golijov

MacMillan

20 Glow Composers:

Tallis

Byrd

Palestrina

Schütz

Bach

Haydn

Middle Beethoven

Mendelssohn

Chopin

Verdi

Bruckner

Brahms (the co-ultimate glow-er)

Faure

Sibelius (the co-ultimate glow-er)

Koechlin

Vaughan Williams

Bloch

Bartok

Ligeti

Tormis

...Mozart is all things.... Debussy, Chopin, Schubert, and Bartok all have many properties of both.

15 Flow Conductors:

Koussevitzky

Coates

Munch

Mitropoulos

Barbirolli (co 2nd place)

Jochum (co 2nd place)

Kubelik (the ultimate flow-er)

Fricsay

Bernstein

Maag

Pretre

Harnoncourt

Rattle

Honeck

15 Glow Conductors:

Beecham

Klemperer (co-second place)

E. Kleiber

Steinberg

Horenstein

Giulini

Sawallisch

Skrowaczewski

Tennstedt (co-second place)

Masur

Blomstedt

Dohnanyi

Rozhdestvensky

Jansons (the ultimate glow-er)

I. Fischer

...Monteux is all things.... So nearly were Walter and Fricsay and Ivan Fischer today. We will see about Kirill Petrenko... who may well be a Monteux but could ultimately also be a Carlos Kleiber... talk about blessing with faint criticism...

15 Flow Pianists:

Cortot

Schnabel

Friedman

Gieseking (the co-ultimate flow-er)

Solomon (the co-ultimate flow-er)

Grinburg

Curzon

Francois

de Larrocha

Haebler

Moravec

Kovacevich

Argerich

Lupu

Hough

15 Glow Pianists:

Rubinstein

Kempff (the ultimate glow-er)

Hess

Casadesus

Arrau

Cherkassky

Lipatti (honorable mention)

Badura-Skoda

Gulda

Brendel

Ogdon

Ashkenazy

Schiff

Zimerman

Lewis

...Hofmann and Rachmaninov are all things.... de Larrocha, Curzon, Firkusny, and Badura-Skoda too have that dual magic ability.