I've spent the last several years building what is, to be honest, an absurdly large CD collection. The classical section is particularly ridiculous: I can't give you an exact number, but it rivals some libraries. I've decided to give myself a goal: Listen to one classical CD a day until I've listened to all of them. In addition to listening to them, I'll post a little blurb here. I may skip a few here or there, but for the most part, this will be my classical CD collection. A lot of it will be hopelessly obscure and esoteric, but you may also find a few things that you'll want to listen to. And so it begins... First, a confession: John Adams—the contemporary American composer, not the founding father—has never been my favorite, and in some ways, this CD highlights both the best and the worst things about Adams’s music. My issue is that his music often takes a while to get going, as if he’s fumbling around for an idea for 10 minutes, waiting for the piece to take shape. What this CD argues is that, once it gets into gear, the results can be stunning. In other words, there’s some very good music here, particularly the two-piano juggernaut that is “Hallelujah Junction.” This disc doesn’t get my highest recommendation, but it’s definitely worth a listen. What is clear is that Ralph van Raat (and the same should be said for Maarten van Veen, who joins him on “Hallelujah Junction”) is an outstanding pianist. This music challenges both technique and physical endurance (“Phrygian Gates,” for example, is almost 25 minutes long), and van Raat is more than up to the challenge. An outstandingly clear recording rounds out a solid disc of generally satisfying music.
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I’m not much for new year’s resolutions, especially the kind where you try to do less of something, or you try to stop doing something altogether. (A brief aside... I’m not the first person to point this out, but that’s not really how people work. We’re much better at building a new habit, or replacing something with something else, than we are at simply quitting cold turkey.) That said, the new year is as good a time as any to look back, see what you (or, in this case, I) did, and set some new goals. So, without further ado, here are some of my goals for 2020.
Read more. I love reading, but I don’t do it often enough. This is, in part, because I’m a slow reader, but honestly, that’s just an excuse. The fact of the matter is that I don’t make reading a priority, and I want to change that in 2020. My goal is to read at least one book every month. That may not seem like a lofty goal, but considering how many books I read in 2019, it would be a huge improvement. Blog more. One of my “big picture” goals in 2020 is to have more of an online presence. That may sound silly, but as a self-publishing, self-marketing musician, an active online presence is kind of mandatory. So my goal is to post on here more often: maybe once a week, maybe more, maybe less. Much of this will be about music, but some may be about film, some may be about faith, some may (unwisely) be about politics, and some may be about... well, about whatever is on my mind. Consider yourself warned. Get to know Bach’s cantatas. Johann Sebastian Bach (a.k.a., the Greatest Musician of All Time) wrote over 200 cantatas, and most people, myself included, don’t know them well at all. I will not solve this problem in 2020, but I hope to at least make progress. By goal is to get to know one of Bach’s cantatas every week, and when I say “get to know,” I mean that I want to have at least a general understanding of the music, the text, and how they interact. This will take effort, but if I know anything about Bach, I know it is effort that will be richly rewarded. Now. This isn’t a goal or resolution per se, but a friend of mine likes choosing a word for every year. My word for 2020 is “now.” Generally speaking, I’m much better at “then” or “later” than I am at “now,” and I’m even better at putting things off until I forget about them entirely. In 2020, I want to do more things the moment I think of them, or the moment they’re asked of me, but this is about more than being efficient or goal-oriented. I want to be more intentional about what I’m doing, about how I’m spending my time, and I want to be willing to say “no,” even when it’s difficult. But for those things that I do say “yes” to, I want that “yes” to be followed by action, by “now.” Happy New Year, my friends. Talk to you soon. My newest piece, at least, the next to be premiered, is entitled Symphony No. 1, “Apologia”, and it’s worth talking about why. Specifically, why am I calling it a symphony? What makes a symphony a symphony? What is a symphony, anyway? The short answer is that a symphony can be almost whatever you want it to be. Symphonies have been written for almost every conceivable group of instruments, from a quintet (Antheil’s Symphony for Five Instruments) to more musicians that will fit on most stages (Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand). They’ve lasted anywhere from three minutes (Milhaud) to well over an hour (Mahler, again). They’ve covered a wide array of subject matter, including loss (Górecki’s Third), world peace (Glass’s Fifth), a drug-induced hallucination (Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique), and even gastrointestinal distress (Beethoven’s Second, seriously). One through-line seems to be that, for the most part, symphonies are serious works based on serious themes, including — and there are too many examples to list just one — matters of faith. So, why call my new piece a symphony? Well, why not call it a symphony? And anyway, Dark Night of the Soul was already taken. The great Southern writer Flannery O’Connor was often criticized by her peers for being something as dull and unfashionable as a Christian. In one of her letters, she wrote: I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. A faith that just accepts is a child’s faith and all right for children, but eventually you have to grow religiously as every other way, though some never do. Perhaps the Spanish Basque writer Miguel de Unamuno had something similar on his mind when he said, “Those who believe that they believe in God, but without any passion in their heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the idea of God, not in God himself.” I am not a person for whom faith has ever come easily. When I hear about people leaving faith, particularly a faith that they grew up in, I admit, I see more than a little of myself. There have been times when I was almost certain that, at any moment, I would hang it all up and become a devout atheist. (Honestly, agnosticism has never felt like a viable option for me; I tend to be an all-or-nothing type of person.) And yet — spoiler alert! — I haven’t. I'm still here, questioning, doubting, and believing, day after day. Over the course of writing it, this symphony went from being something fairly abstract and concept-driven to something surprisingly autobiographical. In broad strokes, it outlines my abiding desire to believe as well as the real difficulties of belief that I’ve experienced, and that I still experience. It describes moments of bliss, even transcendence, but there’s also conflict and struggle, hypocrisy and dissonance, often overlapping with the voices of orthodoxy and tradition. That’s part of why there are so many hymn quotations — church music has always been a huge part of my life — that, and an enduring fascination with the music of Charles Ives. Ultimately, in more ways than one, the piece is an apology — hence the subtitle. I didn’t write it to try to convince anybody of anything, but to try to tell my own story as best I can. I don’t pretend that it is anybody else’s story — faith, or the lack thereof, is such a personal journey for everyone — although I do hope it will help leave the door open for others to share and ponder their own stories. Nonetheless, it is my story, a story of false starts, good intentions, faltering prayers, and ultimately, the decision to keep tying my shoes and putting one foot in front of the other. To quote Fanny Crosby, the great American hymn writer, “this is my story, this is my song.” EDIT: Symphony No. 1, “Apologia” was commissioned by Chamber Orchestra of Pittsburgh, Edward Leonard, Conductor and Artistic Director. It will be premiered by the orchestra and Maestro Leonard on Friday, September 14, 7:30pm, at First Unitarian Church, Pittsburgh, PA.
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AuthorChris Massa is a US-born musician based in Durham, England. You are on his site right now. Archives
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