Dietrich / FromMasterToMaestro

MICROSTORY OF ART ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM From Master to\\ Maestro or A rt Connoisseurship’s Journey into the Lan ds of Music, Sounds and Silences

Since we are talking way too much here, let’s imagine a silenced connoisseur, a listener (at least for a while). A traveller heading for the lands of music, sounds and silence(s). With open ears, but also with a curiosity what connoisseurship might be like. Out there, where everything is different (but somehow also familiar).
And the more our traveller listens and the more he hears he finds – that many phenomena out there he seems to know. Like for example the concept of fake.
›Are there musical fakes out there?‹, we might ask our traveller who has just come back, and whom we want to speak out now and tell us about his experiences. ›Tell us‹, we say, in our unsatiable curiosity, ›what did you see?‹
›Oh yes, there are‹, he replies. And if you are curious to know more about Maria Callas fakes, Jimi Hendrix-cover bands or a fake Schubert symphony be welcome to our readership. And hear also what our ethnographic traveller has to say on the more general phenomena as for example recognizing, knowing, attribution and yes, appreciation, to be found in both these worlds, the connoisseurship of art, and the connoisseurship of music, sounds and silences (picture above: pastemagazine.com).

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Berliner Tante:

Fake provenance of fake source material for a fake Schubert symphony in E-major by Gunter Elsholz (is it by the way true that Schubert hated the key of E-major?).

PS 1: Some sources, by the way, have ›uncle‹ instead of ›aunt‹ (Tante), respectively ›grandfather‹, respectively ›Berlin branch of family‹.

PS 2: As to ›fake‹ we follow here the view of Schubert-scholar Walther Dürr (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walther_Dürr).

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Blind Date:

Here referring to a section in German musical magazine Musikexpress/Sounds (now: Musikexpress; http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musikexpress) where musicians have to identify and to comment upon songs they are confronted with. See also: ›Kraftwerk‹, below, and compare ›Diskothek im Zwei‹, respectively ›Horowitz, Vladimir‹, below.

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Boasting:

Pretending of being able to recognize what is being played, by which orchestra and directed by whom (even if played backwards, and only the last orchestra hit resounds). Or: Pretending of being able to tell who’s soloing, on what guitar and assisted by what type of amplifier and what effect devices (slowing down the tape might, by the way, help).

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Diskothek im Zwei:

See: ›Horowitz, Vladimir‹, below.

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Grout, Jennifer:

Young American singer who displayed her astonishing connoisseurship of Arab music in the broadcasting show Arabs Got Talent (see for example: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/arts/music/jennifer-grout-sings-umm-kulthum-hits-on-arabs-got-talent.html?_r=0), a competition in which she finished third. The video of her first appearance in the show, alas, seems to be no longer available.

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Haydn:

See: Scott Fruehwald, Authenticity problems in Franz Joseph Haydn's early instrumental works. A stylistic investigation, New York 1988.

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Horowitz, Vladimir:

›This pianist is certainly yet going to be discovered some time‹, a participant once said in the notable Swiss radio DRS 2 (now: SRF 2) programme Diskothek im Zwei (now Diskothek; see: http://www.srf.ch/sendungen/diskothek/sendungsportraet), dedicated to the (blindfolded) discussion and finally identifying of musical work’s alternative recordings. ›This pianist is certainly yet going to be discovered some time‹, the participant said, instead of saying that the recording was by Vladimir Horowitz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Horowitz), which probably everyone knew anyway, and which resulted in general laughter (because, I imagine, everyone found this an elegant way to put it).

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Interpretation:

The one key concepts that probably, at least in some sense, separates art connoisseurship and the connoisseurship of music, since art works, if we don’t consider ›curating‹ as interpreting, do not win their presence, which in most cases might be a material presence, by interpreting. If, however, we would consider interpretation as something guiding perception, we would experience material works of art, in some sense, through interpretation only (in spite of the fact that the material presence of art works is not ›interpreted‹, but ›objective‹). Through interpretation only, as we are experiencing musical works, if we don’t read them and have them only resound within ourselves, by interpreters, having them resound, to be interpreted, to be interpreted by us.
Connoisseurship of music, thus, might focus on textual structures (scores, including ink spots, mistakes, and errors, and thus is related to philology, even if a folksong might never have been noted and might only exist as a musical idea, transmitted from one musician to another), but also on acts of interpretation (representations of texts), recorded interpretations and, one might add, experiences that result from hearing (possibly interacting with what we know, for example of texts or scores or the background of acts of interpretation).
While traditional connoisseurship of art, if we understand by that term for the moment the recognizing of authorship only, usually tends to neglect the taking into account of intellectual dimensions of art works (i.e. interpretation on a level of meaning; as if for example painting actually was music; music lacking or not necessarily demanding an intellectual encounter with a listener/beholder), but at the same time is interpretation of visual (formal) structure (›philology of the eye‹), be it self-reflective interpretation and philology, i.e. scientific connoisseurship, or not.
If we then open-up the range of what the very term connoisseurship means from mere recognizing towards an inside out knowing of something and the disposition and capacity to appreciate this something, especially in its varying shapes, differenciations and slightest distinctions, the connoisseurship of art and of music, of course, ressemble each other, as both fields of human practice and experience reveal a sort of yin/yang structure, wherein the capacity of being able to recognize something is the result of, rests on, and is also deeply intertwined with, the inside out knowing of this something, and the driving force of getting to know something inside out is curiosity and, more than that and maybe in the field of music more than anywhere: passion.

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Kraftwerk:

»Vince [Clark] (after the first Tüüt): Kraftwerk. Still find them quite good.« (Excerpt from a Musikexpress Blind Date (see above) with Pop band Erasure in 1987, and with Vince Clark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Clarke) referring to the 1986 Kraftwerk track Der Telefon-Anruf (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQpbH8iMQDo) ).

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More Experience:

Notable Swiss Jimi Hendrix-cover band around singer/guitarplayer Marcel Aeby (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ilx5eQiD55I and http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Experience). My recommendation in case you would ever need an expert (or an expert trio) to tell the differences between authentic Hendrix (recordings, bootlegs etc.) and Hendrix fakes.

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Mozart:

According to Wolfgang Hildesheimer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Hildesheimer): did prefer to play for connoisseurs.

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Recognizing Schubert:

On recognizing the Schubert tone (»He has hardly entered, but it is as if you knew his steps, his very way of opening the door...«) we hear critic Eduard Hanslick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Hanslick), not only with this snippet, but with a longer excerpt of his critic to the Unfinished’s premiere (source: aeiou.at; see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._8_%28Schubert%29):

»Wenn nach ein paar einleitenden Tacten Clarinette und Oboe einstimmig ihren süssen Gesang über dem ruhigen Gemurmel der Geigen anstimmen, da kennt auch jedes Kind den Componisten, und der halbunterdrückte Ausruf ›Schubert‹ summt flüsternd durch den Saal. Er ist noch kaum eingetreten, aber es ist, als kennte man ihn am Tritt, an seiner Art, die Thürklinke zu öffnen. Erklingt nun gar auf jenen sehnsüchtigen Mollgesang das contrastierende G-Dur-Thema der Violincelle, ein reizender Liedsatz von fast ländlerartiger Behaglichkeit, da jauchst jede Brust, als stände Er nach langer Entfernung leibhaftig mitten unter uns. Dieser ganze Satz ist ein süsser Melodienstrom, bei aller Kraft und Genialität so krystallhell, daß man jedes Steinchen auf dem Boden sehen kann. Und überall dieselbe Wärme, derselbe gödene, blättertreibende Sonnenschein! Breiter und grösser entfaltet sich das Andante. Töne der Klagen oder Zornes fallen nur vereinzelt in diesen Gesang voll Innigkeit und ruhigen Glückes, mehr effectvolle, musikalische Gewitterwolken, als gefährliche der Leidenschaft. Als könnte er sich nicht trennen von dem eigenen süssen Gesang, schiebt der Componist den Abschluss des Adagios weit, ja allzuweit hinaus. Man kennt diese Eigentümlichkeit Schuberts, die den Totaleindruck mancher seiner Tondichtungen abschwächt.
Auch am Schlusse dieses Andantes scheint sein Flug sich ins Unabsehbare zu verlieren, aber man hört doch immer das Rauschen seiner Flügel.
 Bezaubernd ist die Klangschönheit der beiden Sätze. Mit einigen Horngängen, hier und da einem kurzen Clarinett- oder Oboensolo auf der einfachsten, natürlichen Orchester-Grundlage gewinnt Schubert Klangwirkungen, die kein Raffinement der Wagnerschen Instrumentierung erreicht. Wir zählen das neu aufgefundene Symphonie-Fragment von Schubert zu seinen schönsten Instrumentalwerken und sprechen dies hier um so freudiger aus, als wir gegen eine übereifrige Schubert-Pietät und Reliquien-Verehrung mehr als einmal uns ein warnendes Wort erlaubt haben.«

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Scheibler, Ludwig:

The one connoisseur of art who left art connoisseurship for musicology (see also: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/DoingJusticeToForgottenConnoisseursAList). Cooperated with Austrian musicologist Otto Erich Deutsch (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Erich_Deutsch ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schubert_Thematic_Catalogue) and thus also contributed to Schubert connoisseurship, respectively philology.

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Schubert/Elsholz:

How much Schubert, how much Gunter Elsholz in here (https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/Franz-Schubert-1797-1828-Symphonie-in-E-1825/hnum/6686121)? (And is, by the way, the cover art also spurious? and what about the liner notes? and what about the term ›reconstruction‹ given by the web site, in comparison to the information given – or spared – by the cover? – all in all, a case for Orson Welles and the F for Fake brigade…).

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Silences:

Since silence can be defined only in opposition to sound, every silence is different in relation to its surrounding sounds, and we have to use the plural here. As to the recognition of various types and qualities of silence time distances between actual sound and silence play a role, or, more simply put, what goes on at the margins of silence, respectively of sound.

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Tipp-Ex:

Not in use in Schubert’s time (see also ›Berliner Tante‹ and ›Schubert/Elsholz‹, above). If you come over an allegedly newly discovered Schubert symphony, check it for traces of Tipp-Ex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipp-Ex) or similar substances. In case such traces would be found, this might possibly be interpreted as a clue that Gunter Elsholz was involved (can stylistic criticism possibly also be of help? Compare ›Recognizing Schubert‹, above).

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Third Kind:

We know ›authentic‹, and we know ›fake‹. But in music we yet have to take into consideration a third category: ›dictated by dead composer from beyond to medium Rosemary Brown‹ (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Brown_%28spiritualist%29).

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Williamson, John:

»Die Connaisseurs waren einigermassen verwundert, als Iggy Pop nach dem Tod Ron Ashetons doch noch einmal James Williamson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Williamson_%28musician%29) in die Band holte.« (NZZ, No. 117, May 24, 2014, p. 51)

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