Proms 2022: Betsy Jolas – bTunes (World Première)

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Chris L

I haven’t heard it yet, but the very premise strikes me as musical mutton dressed as lamb – why, surely Schnittke was doing much the same thing (theatrics and all) in his (much longer) 1st Symphony half a century ago!

Kevin

Nothing much in common with the hysterics of Schnittke as you’ll find out . A rather unpretentious and naive piece I thought . While not her best work, glad she got an airing at the Proms.

Chris L

You’re right, of course: there’s nothing like the ostentatiousness of Schnittke’s sudden switches. Nevertheless, while stylistically Jolas doesn’t ape the earlier work (as, frankly, you’d bloody well hope, given that her birth preceded Schnittke’s by several years!), in terms of what her piece is setting out to do, something Alex Ross said about the symphony chimes a little too closely (for me) with what is said above…

Western musical history is re-created as a barrage of garbled transmissions, a radio receiving many stations on one channel. Despite its veneer of goofiness, this triumph of planned anarchy has a simple and serious effect. It produces the sound of music, rather than music itself—what is overheard by a society that no longer knows how to listen.

[My italics.]

Kevin

I like the Ross quote but is there a problem in aping something which comes before you? There are some good precedents for this: Bizet (1838-1875) meticulously based his Symphony in C on the Gounod (1818-1893) Symphony. The former has been a runaway hit ever since it was first discovered whereas the latter has sunk into oblivion. A very thin line between pastiche/academic and something which bursts with vitality.
Oddly enough, I found the Jolas came across more persuasively at home on my iphone than in the hall. The grandeur of the setting at odds with the flavour of the piece.

Chris L

Absolutely no problem with aping whatsoever, as long as the “aper” doesn’t try to give the impression that they’re doing anything other than aping. The tenor of Jolas’s programme note suggests to me that she’s fallen into the all-too-familiar New Music trap of believing one has to “sell” each piece as more groundbreaking than it truly is…

D G

I appreciate that the assessment in the post and in the comments is based on a kind of immanent reading of the piece itself, along with its programme note, but I am somewhat troubled by the casual dismissal of the work of a major composer whose aesthetic has been long-honed and thought through over a period of decades, and who has been written out of most Anglophone histories and popular reception for reasons–conscious or not–of gender. For a far more nuanced and in-depth sense of Jolas’ compositional concerns, the eight-hour interview available here might sever to dispel some of the casual dismissal. https://entretiens.ina.fr/musiques-memoires/Jolas/betsy-jolas/sommaire. Personally, I found that–particularly when witnessed live–the piece was self-aware of the performative nature of the classical concert in witty and entertaining ways, full of textural variety and interest, and playfully subversive of the conventions of the concerto. Perhaps a certain reading of the programme note overdetermined things: I didn’t read it until after seeing the piece live. I’m not sure the Schnittke comparisons really hold water, either: Jolas’ take on musical history–Mozart, Bach, Haydn, etc–is very much her own.

[I also wanted to add how much this blog in general is very much appreciated, both in making available the musical material and in providing the detailed and thought-provoking commentaries that accompany it.]

Last edited 2 years ago by D G
D G

I hasten to say that your writing and presentation is almost always thought-provoking and well-written. I just felt that this piece was perhaps not being given a very fair hearing. I think part of my issue is that, while Jolas is reasonably well known in France, she’s virtually written out of histories of the music, a few recent premieres and newspaper articles excepted: that she has to be almost one hundred years old for her to get this sort of recognition–in this case, a Proms slot–is a bit grim. Perusing the commercially available recordings of her work on a site like discogs compared to many, generally male composers, indicates the disparity. I don’t mean that all the work should be praised straight off the bat, unthinkingly, but I think there are broadly structural questions at play as well. So in that case I’m thinking about those general questions.

In terms of my take on the piece, Jolas has made similar comments about attention spans and structure for other recent pieces like ‘A Little Summer Suite’ or from Bachville’ piece. But I think it also relates to a slightly older idea of ‘wandering’ or ‘strolling’ music–an idea that, in the long interview, she connects to her work of the seventies. The idea of strolling or ambulation–in the case of this piece, perhaps more like sprinting–between musical elements has a rich history behind it, not just in her music; we could even link what she does, particularly in the Bachville piece, to remixing, and in the case of B-Tunes, a remixing of elements from some of her own earlier pieces, if I’m understanding correctly. So I wonder if it’s the B-Tunes/I-Tunes pun and the apparently critical framing about digital technology and attention spans that influences how the piece is heard as conceptually incoherent and then in turn as aesthetically uninteresting. Personally, I don’t read the programme note so much as negatively critical, as reflective/observational of the kinds of listening that surround it–which might include five-minute chunks and excerpts on a concert programme as much as an i-tunes playlist–in a way that’s more ambivalent or circumstantial than hostile. And in terms of the listening experience, its humour or lightness is not grimly parodic, critical, or satirical, but lively and engaged. To me, the programme note would suggest the piece adapts something already in her practice, as a way of thinking about form and structure, to contemporary digital listening practices.

Of course, a lot of this may just be a matter of taste–I enjoyed the piece as a performative experience, and thought its odd, hard-to-place atmosphere fitted well with Mahler One, and I enjoyed it again listening to the recording. But different pieces strike different people in different ways!

D G

Oh yes, very much so. And hence the importance of this site in general in tracking what’s out there and, hopefully, drawing more attention to it!

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