The London Bach Choir, George Bernard Shaw, The Brew City Bruisers; a prelude...
....to a forthcoming review of Milwaukee's APERI ANIMUM. Stay tuned.
It was really worse than the influenza.
*******************George Bernard Shaw.
The last time the Brew-City Bruisers competed against theThe Hellions of Troy Rollers, I wasn’t there. This is not a reflection of disapproval. No one in Milwaukee County is more determined to make a pilgrimage to the New Berlin Sportsplex to cheer such an outré recreation than moi. But the Bruisers will need to wait. There is a more convenient way of experiencing the seductive charm of cultural chaos and mayhem. It can even be done, if you decide to take up the suggestion, reclining on your “Lazy Boy” (preferably with a glass of Riverwest Stein close at hand to embellish the occasion).
How? Read the music criticism of George Bernard Shaw. Try it for yourself; but if violent verbiage about music concerts gives you the heebie jeebies, make sure that the smelling salts are handy:
After Ysaÿe, we all hurried across the street to princess Hall to hear a concert given by the Bach Choir at the eccentric hour of 5:30. Unaccompanied part singing was the staple of the entertainment; and I can frankly and unreservedly say that I would not desire to hear a more abominable noise that was offered to us under the pretext of Bach’s “Singet dem Herrn” and some motets by Brahms. I will not deny that there was a sort of broken thread of vocal tone running through the sound fabric; but for the most part, it was a horrible tissue of puffing and blowing and wheezing and groaning and buzzing and hissing and gargling and shrinking and spluttering and grunting, and generally making every sort of noise that is incidental to bad singing, severe exertion, and mortal fear of losing one's place. It was really worse than the influenza. (Published in THE WORLD 20 May 1891)
Brutal stuff; but was he right? He wasn’t always. What Shaw said repeatedly about Johannes Brahms for example, though amusing, was bogus twaddle; so off the score that more than 50 years after the fact, when performances of that composer’s symphonies were the main draw on every Sunday-matinee orchestral program between Copenhagen and Poughkeepsie and his Requiem was first choice for background music at mortician conventions nationwide, the grouchy critic (miraculously and annoyingly still alive) wrote a public letter of apology for his youthful and pompous idiocy.
May his memory be the influenza.
Despite what Shaw had to say, the London Bach Choir triumphed. Their victory started at their inception and was significant. They presented music never before heard in Victorian London with the technical equipment that they had. Such an accomplishment was enough. Their one disadvantage did not belong to them. It was in the audience, scowling.
I’m surprised the reprobate was let in.
One further mark and proof of success of the London Bach Choir is the organisation’s durability. The choir, unlike Shaw who fell out of an apple tree at age 94 and was at last silenced forever, the choir continues to this day, very much extant and dulcet.
Influenza you say? This cheerful chestnut doesn’t sound like that to me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJW6JlYTrK0
So where does Milwaukee musicking stand in relation this meandering word-toccata? The happy news is that the city currently abounds in superb vocalism (and that it doesn’t abound in George Bernard Shaw). More specifically it has the splendid vocal early music ensemble Aperi Animum.
It took me seven years to hear them. The group has been singing together for that long. One solace to diminish the hurt of that neglect was that my first introduction to their work was a Compline service. This is right up their artistic alley. I came away not converted to the faith community for which the service was meant, but convinced of a notion that, if not specifically religious, certainly echoed religiosity.
For me that’s pretty good.
The thought was this: if all the musical instruments in the history of the world (except for the accordion and especially for the heckelphone-clarinet) were abruptly swallowed up and ground into sonic oblivion by a vengeful deity, the progress of music-making into the future would be not the least bit hampered. People would still sing. If they sang with direction and wisdom (and paid no attention to the music criticism of G.B. Shaw), surely some of those scholars would would end up sounding like Aperi Animum.
All would be well. No influenza.
*************************************************************************************************************
Reading your remarks about GBS put me in mind of “Saint Joan”, his play which had its first performance at the Garrick Theater, NYC, on 28th December 1923. I’m fortunate to own a 1925 hardback of the play, published by Constable and Company of London.
What immediately struck me about the book was its extraordinarily long preface (running to no fewer than 53 pages!) every word penned by Shaw.
A preface, I read, “often covers the story of how the book came into being, or how the idea for the book was developed; this may be followed by thanks and acknowledgments to people who were helpful to the author during the time of writing”. Not so, as far as GBS was concerned! No, what he has written is a highly opinionated (nothing wrong with that) essay about the subject of the play, Joan of Arc – or, if you’re of French extraction, Jeanne d’Arc. He gets round to the writing of the play after 45 pages.
But back to Saint Joan. The good lady was, he opines, “the most notable Warrior Saint in the Christian calendar, and the queerest fish among the eccentric worthies of the Middle Ages”. At eighteen, he continues, her pretensions were “beyond those of the proudest Pope or the haughtiest emperor… As her actual condition was pure upstart, there were only two opinions about her. One was that she was miraculous: the other that she was unbearable.”
“Unbearable”, in a roundabout way, brings me to the critics, and Shaw has a word or two or three to say about them, plus the theatre audiences of which they are a part. In the provinces, he writes, “the playgoer goes to the theatre for the sake of the play solely”. But “in London, the critics are reinforced by a considerable body of persons who go to the theatre as many others go to church, to display their best clothes and compare them with other people’s; to be in the fashion, and to have something to talk about at dinner parties; to pass the evening anywhere other than at home: in short, for any or every reason except interest in dramatic art as such”.
So there. We have been told, and put in our place. Or wait… was this, to use Jonathan’s description, “boneless twaddle”? Well, I somehow doubt the fine people of Milwaukee could care less; much better to be wrapped up in superb vocalism of the musical kind – much better, too, than a dose of the influenza.