Music of the Baroque
Submitted by Jen Glagov on Tue, 09/23/2008 - 9:51am.
Last Friday during our traditional office “jeans day,” I mentioned to one of my co-workers that I was so comfortable that I wanted to wear clothes like this every day. “But it would make Fridays less special if we always dressed like this,” she replied. As I walked back to my office, I found myself thinking about that brief interaction and its relation to a recent discussion of concert attire in Greg Sandow’s blog. Sandow argues that “formal dress for classical performances just looks weird, and ancient,” while those on the other side of the fence liked the tradition and thought it contributed to a concert’s ambience (I’m paraphrasing, of course).
What do you think? Do you like your musicians in tuxedos/all black, or would you prefer to see them in clothes they might actually wear on the El?
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Submitted by Jen Glagov on Thu, 09/18/2008 - 12:56pm.
Thanks to the personalities involved with the upcoming election, there’s been a lot of talk lately about our ingrained cultural biases about gender. And if you’re interested in historical perspectives, classical music is a great place to look for evidence about social attitudes that were prevalent in bygone times. Music of the Baroque is about to perform Handel’s Hercules, a fantastic music drama that is much more about Hercules wife, Dejanira, than the well-known hero. Without revealing too much, Dejanira—who seems a little unstable right from the beginning—becomes jealous of her husband’s connection to a beautiful prisoner, and ultimately sets off a rather unfortunate chain of events. When I was writing the program notes for the performances, I read an interesting article by David Ross Hurley entitled “Dejanira and the Physicians: Aspects of Hysteria in Handel’s Hercules” in which he discusses Dejanira’s psychological deterioration and the resemblances it bears to contemporary medical discussions of hysteria—which, of course, was considered to be the most common female malady. It’s a fascinating connection, and Handel’s musical characterization is completely riveting.
Anyone else have particularly striking examples of the way women are portrayed in music, classical or otherwise?
(Music of the Baroque is opening its 2008-09 season with Handel’s Hercules; performances take place Sunday, September 21 at 7:30 at First United Methodist Church in Evanston, and Monday, September 22 at 7:30 at the Harris Theater.)
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Submitted by Jen Glagov on Tue, 07/08/2008 - 12:41pm.
I’ve been listening to a lot of music the last few weeks while getting ready for Music of the Baroque’s 2008-09 season (one of my greatest job responsibilities), but I’m starting to worry a little. No matter how hard I try to think about other things, there are two pieces that won’t stop running through my mind: this chorus from Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, which is full of brilliant text-setting (scroll down to find an audio clip), and the “Laudamus te” from the Gloria of Bach’s superlative Mass in B Minor. Oh, well. If my life now has a soundtrack, at least the music is good.
What about you? What are you listening to this summer?
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Submitted by Jen Glagov on Mon, 06/09/2008 - 1:21pm.
When Antonio Vivaldi was working at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, a screen between performers and audience guaranteed that the young girls' reputations would not be compromised in any way by the act of musical performance. Times have changed, of course-and I recently found myself in a conversation about whether or not sex is actually a valuable classical music marketing tool. I immediately thought of violinist Lara St. John's wonderful 1996 recording of Bach's Partita No. 2 and Sonata No. 3. I heard St. John perform live on WFMT, and was so impressed by her interpretation of these unaccompanied works that I went out and bought the recording. To my surprise, the cover featured an almost nymphette-like St. John sporting nothing more than a strategically-placed violin. "If it takes nudity to get people my age to listen to Bach," explained St. John in an interview, "then so be it."
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Submitted by Jen Glagov on Wed, 05/21/2008 - 10:47am.
ASIMO’s appearance with the DSO a week ago has been the subject of discussion on this website—and because I was lucky enough to attend the concert, I was asked to write about my experience. As Mark Stryker wrote of ASIMO’s “performance” in the Detroit Free Press, “Let’s say right away that the display was a technological marvel and as cool as all get-out. But it was conducting in only the most limited definition…” He was right, of course. But for me, the evening was about more than ASIMO’s conducting prowess. From the moment I handed my ticket to the usher, it was clear that this concert was something special. The back of the hall was crowded with reporters and television cameras, and there wasn’t an empty seat in the house (I heard several subscribers commenting that it was nice to see the hall so full). And while it was obviously great publicity for Honda—who recently gave the DSO $1 million to create The Power of Dreams Music Education Fund—conductor Thomas Wilkins made it clear that ASIMO’s appearance was a metaphor for the seemingly limitless capabilities of human achievement. It also set the stage for a great concert, and the biggest applause of the night was reserved for the humans—especially Yo-Yo Ma, who received huge standing ovations for Haydn and Saint-Saens’ first cello concertos.
The day after ASIMO’s grand debut, Yo-Yo Ma gave a master class with three talented high school performers from the Detroit metro area. Rather than focus on nuances of technique or specific passages, Ma worked with each student on the emotional content of the music, helping them articulate what the music meant to them and then demonstrating how to use the cello to heighten their musical expression. Thinking about the music as a communicative tool made the musicians play better, and in many cases helped them overcome technical glitches. It was fascinating to watch—and it made me think about the previous night’s concert, too. Sometimes the emotional experience overrides the details. ASIMO’s appearance was amazing, and it attracted a lot of attention for the Detroit Symphony and for Honda. It was only one part of an evening full of optimism, good feeling and great music, however—and the robot ultimately became an important detail in a concert experience I’ll never forget.
Click here to see a video of ASIMO conducting the Detroit Symphony.
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Submitted by Jen Glagov on Mon, 05/19/2008 - 2:56pm.
Hello! I’m Jennifer Glagov, longtime program annotator for Music of the Baroque and current holder of the recently-created title “Special Projects Manager.” Although I worked for MOB from 1999 to 2002 as both the Box Office Manager and Director of Marketing, I took some time off (except for the program notes) to spend time with my son. Now that he’s six, he’s in school all day—and while I miss our lazy mornings in the park, returning to work at MOB has been a different kind of fun.
I’ve played violin since I was nine, but my background in music is predominantly academic. I hold the illustrious degree of “all but dissertation” from the University of Chicago, and actually enjoy reading the kind of dense prose you find in musicology journals, but I also love great concerts that can’t be described with words.
While researching the program for MOB’s May concert, I revisited Susan McClary’s essay, “The blasphemy of talking politics during Bach Year,” in which she tries to “demystify” music—particularly instrumental music—by talking about it in relation to existing social and political structures. For McClary, the fantastic harpsichord solo in the first movement of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 is a moment of liberation, through which Bach expresses a simultaneous desire for, and resistance to, social harmony.
What do you think? Is it interesting to “talk politics” when it comes to music, or is music something that should remain in a realm separate from the lives of its creators?
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Submitted by johnglover on Tue, 10/09/2007 - 9:17am.
Two months in and two programs later, 
I finally have a moment to catch my breath, collect myself, and formally introduce myself. I spent the last week mulling over what my first posting on the CCM blog should be. Would it be best to give insight into our current season or post some thought-provoking entry based on some of the other music blogs/books/articles I've been reading lately? In the end it seemed best to say hello and give some thoughts and observations based on my early experience as a newcomer not only to the CCM community, but to Chicago as well.
I just moved here from Los Angeles, where I was freelancing, teaching, and writing. The differences between the two cities were immediately apparent and incredibly invigorating. My earliest and strongest impression of Chicago is the wonderful feeling of community amongst the fine arts organizations and patrons and the unbelievable public spaces. In my first few weeks I would be strolling past the Gehry band shell at Millennium Park and suddenly find myself looking up at dancers from Joffrey performing on a marathon of free dance performances. Another afternoon, while eating lunch outdoors, the strains of Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem came wafting over the lawn as the Grant Park Orchestra rehearsed. Winter approaches, but I'm looking forward to snow as well (for now…)!
In the future I will write entries that give further insight into the work going on here at Music of the Baroque and hopefully provide thoughts that spark conversation amongst the readers of this blog. For now I thought it best to say hello. I suppose in terms of posting comments, this is a great spring board for bragging rights! What do you love about the Chicago Arts community? I look forward to posting and commenting here and seeing you all at upcoming concerts!
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Submitted by John Ryan on Fri, 06/15/2007 - 5:22pm.
I can't help it, the song comes to me every year at this time (it goes to the tune "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead").
Every season has this glorious five minutes - the concerts are done, the final payroll is in the mail, the music is back in the library, the phone is strangely silent and the files are put away.
It's a great feeling.
For five minutes.
Then the cycle starts all over again - ordering music for next season, building concert rosters, creating rehearsal schedules, working on budgets and the million and one things that go into a (hopefully) smooth season.
But this is my five minutes, so I think I'll slip over to Millenium Park, lay down on the grass and enjoy a concert.
And relish the fact that it's not mine.
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Submitted by John Ryan on Thu, 04/05/2007 - 4:08pm.
We met last night to discuss Golijov's opera Ainadamar. It was a great discussion and we set our next meeting and chose repertoire.
Tuesday May 1st at 7:00pm. We'll be discussing George Antheil's Symphony No. 5 "Joyous" and a couple choral works by Eric Whitacre: Sleep and Water Night.
The Antheil is available on eMusic. The Whitacre is available on itunes.
More later, but mark your calendars now.
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Submitted by John Ryan on Fri, 03/23/2007 - 11:56am.
Mouse over to Outlook and mark down Wednesday April 4th from 7:00 - 8:00pm. It's the next meeting of our listening group and this time - at a more chat-friendly time - we'll be talking about Golijov's opera Ainadamar.
If the first thing you thought was "OMG, I don't want to listen to hours and hours of music." I hear you, but this one is an hour 20 minutes. Start to finish.
If the second thing you thought was "Golijov, must be modern. I pass." Give it a listen, you'll hear amazing singing, haunting orchestral colors, and a flamengo dance of bullets.
A recording by the Atlanta Symphony is available on itunes and includes 2 nifty new things. 1st, a booklet is downloaded as well. You can open it in Word. 2nd, there is a listening guide narrated by Osvaldo Golijov. That in itself is worth the download.
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