Of Mozart, Parrots, Cherry Blossoms in the Wind: A Composer Explores Mysteries of the Musical Mind (Limelight)

• ISBN13: 9780879102869.
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The majority of musicians, it seems, are pretty much in the same position as Plato's Homeric rhapsodists: for all the compelling intensity with which they practice their art, whenever they attempt to explain to the uninitiated just how it's done--what lies behind "inspiration"--the whole process remains shrouded in mystery. In particular, there are precious few composers who can write with in and lucidity about the trade they have chosen. (Literary giants who have succeeded through their trade in conveying something of the reality of music--such as Thomas Mann and Aldous Huxley--are also conspicuous for their rarity, but that's another discussion.) All the more reason, then, to savor the unusual talents of Bruce Adolphe in this collection of essays, aperçus, and provocative speculations. Adolphe is a sort of musical polymath who wears the hats of composer, teacher, and writer. He's written operas, song cycles, chamber music, and musical fables for children and leads seminars at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In his writing on musical education, Adolphe is especially drawn to meditations on the role of memory in shaping the imagination and creative process (as in his book What to Listen for in the World). Of Mozart, Parrots, and Cherry Blossoms in the Wind offers a pleasurable assortment of self-standing feuilletons that flit hummingbird-like from topic to topic. There are reflections on the metaphoric meanings of sonata structure and the fugue, on the subtext of George Bernard Shaw's contempt for Brahms, on silence in the traditions of East and West, and on how much a composer "contrives" in conceiving the complexity of a piece of music. Yet several underlying themes recur and intersect throughout the essays, coming up in different contexts but always inviting the reader to reconsider pat opinions and take a closer look at what is really going on in this language that is simultaneously so abstract and so sensuous. Perhaps the most compelling of these Grundthemen involves the relation of tradition to originality, the tension between our collective "musical art gallery" and the desire to say something new (Adolphe is understandably fond of alluding to T.S. Eliot). Instead of vaporizing into overgeneralized platitudes, the discussion gets firmly rooted in considerations of specifics. Adolphe clarifies, for example, Beethoven's act of balancing the weight of the past with his individual genius through a particularly clever comparison of the Grosse Fuge with a Native American myth and Sam Shepard's play True West. Adolphe has a sure touch for the helpful, colorful analogy. Sonata form is like a "courtroom trial"; late Beethoven is the "counterpoint of conflicting states of mind," similar to the therapist's use of free association; dissonant "passing tones" resemble "people who briefly obstruct your view in the theater by moving to one side or the other." Along with this, the reader must be warned, comes a weakness for puns that can make you wince: in his piece on George Crumb's whale music, there is mention of the time before humans "beat logs (creating the early logarithms)." Adolphe's arguments do not always convince. His attempt to deflate the concept of postmodernism as just another chapter in the anxiety of influence, for example, doesn't fully account for the specific and unique predicament of contemporary composers. But he does seriously engage the issues that matter, and he does so entertainingly, in a superbly tuned and perspicuous style. There are many moments when one would like him to burrow into a particular point in greater depth. Yet even if we don't get a full meal, such is Adolphe's epigrammatic knack that the hors d'oeuvres are pure pleasure in themselves. --Thomas May