Our critics cast their eyes over this month’s selection of books on classical music
Claiming Wagner for France – Music and Politics in the Parisian Press, 1933-44
Rachel Orzech
Rochester 272pp (hb) £80
Wagner’s humiliating experiences in Paris, not least the debacle surrounding the 1861 revised version of Tannhäuser, undoubtedly prompted his strong aversion towards France. Yet by the early 1920s, any hostilities between composer and nation were long forgotten, and in 1933 Wagner’s popularity at the Paris Opéra appeared so unassailable that performances of his music-dramas accounted for 28 per cent of the season’s entire repertoire. However, the threat to Wagner’s reputation posed by Nazi appropriation of the composer provoked French critics into presenting their alternative universalist claim to his legacy. Inevitably, this position would be subverted after the Germans marched into France during the Second World War.
Rachal Orzech’s fascinating book traces Wagner’s reception during this period, drawing upon a huge swathe of articles about the composer that appeared in the Parisian press. The complex twists and turns in this narrative may be addressed primarily to an academic readership. But vivid descriptions of events such as the 1943 Paris Walküre, where French and German singers apparently performed their roles in their native language ‘in the spirit of mutual collaboration’, brilliantly expose the hypocrisy and absurdity of this political discourse. Erik Levi ★★★★
The Listening Service –
101 Journeys Through the Musical Universe
Tom Service Faber 300pp (hb) £16.99 Tom Service’s eponymous programme is currently the most intellectually provocative spot on Radio 3, and this book is a distillation of the show. It’s based on the belief that the whole world of music is interconnected, rather than separated off by artificial boundaries; eclecticism is the key. Each little chapter may be a story, a musical portrait, or simply a critical apercu; the hectic pace of Service’s broadcast commentaries comes over vividly on the page. Each chapter uses a QR code to direct the reader to the relevant programme online; each chapter sees Service scurrying across the genres to give our prejudices a thorough shake-up.
‘Is birdsong music?’ ‘Can music be gendered?’ ‘Prog rock – apotheosis or nadir?’ All rules are broken in this exhilarating musical joyride. There are moments of surprising profundity, if also would-be intellectual flights which fail to take off. Some chapters campaign, others deftly nail supreme musical achievements; every chapter urges us to make connections and listen afresh. Michael Church ★★★★
Perfection is Not the Word
For It
Felix Warnock
Austin Macauley 313pp (pb) £9.99
This intriguing memoir explores the travails of the music profession. Felix Warnock is well placed to give such an account: he began his career as a freelance bassoonist, before (in his words) ‘inventing’ the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. From here, he became its chief executive then ran The English Concert for another 15 years.
As suggested by the book’s title, Warnock is keen to highlight the complexities and absurdities of professional music-making, drawing playfully on his years ‘lurking, more or less unobserved, in the back rows of orchestras’ and subsequently at the helm of two top UK ensembles. Gladly, the memoir is also delightfully indiscreet: on describing an early OAE performance of Cherubini’s
Medée, Warnock notes that the English cast’s French accents ‘were on a narrow spectrum ranging from terrible to comically execrable’.
The book is self-published and a stricter editorial eye would have been welcome. That said, Warnock’s lengthy footnotes are often entertaining, covering everything from roving pet tigers in Soho to recording the soundtrack to the film Amadeus with The Academy of St Martin in the Fields (‘a near-death experience’). An enjoyably eccentric read. Kate Wakeling ★★★
Sound Within Sound – Opening Our Ears to the
20th Century
Kate Molleson Faber 312pp (hb) £18.99 For most listeners, 20th-century classical music is dominated by the pastoral movement, Britten and Pears, serialism and the avant-garde. In Sound Within Sound, Radio 3 presenter Kate Molleson introduces ten figures who challenged established ways of thinking about music but whose names are largely absent from our records. These include Ruth Crawford Seeger, whose teacher – and later husband – would not permit her to join a gathering of musicologists, telling her if she wanted in on the discussion she could sit on the other side of the door and eavesdrop. This anecdotal example of repression runs through many of the featured composers’ lives, making their stories all the more important. Some of the characters are highly eccentric – such as Julián Carrillo, who was so convinced by his microtonal principles he had the ‘zany audacity’ to imagine the practice sweeping across Mexico, and José Maceda, who staged a piece in Manila where 20 radio stations broadcast his work simultaneously. Essays are peppered with lively interviews and illuminating music descriptions, as Molleson opens minds and ears to new soundworlds. Claire Jackson ★★★★