I.TOTENTANZ: THE SOUND OF NECROPHILIA

Just which side are you on? Nature or nurture? What do you believe to be the dominant determining factor in human behavior? Is it our genes? Are you programmed at birth to become the adult you are? Or is it as the behaviorists maintain, that we are a tabula rasa—a blank slate at birth, and we turn out the way we are molded and formed—like a chocolate bunny. The neo-Darwinians believe they have it all accounted for, and in one of his books, the smartest man in the world, Oxford University's Richard Dawkins (a handsome devil too, damn him!) demonstrates the principles for the ratio between libidinous and prudish females in an animal society, even a human society, especially human society. Sluts vs. prudes—it can all be reduced to a simple mathematic formula.

But hold! The Darwinians have done nothing as dramatic as B. F. Skinner getting pigeons to play olympic-class ping-pong through the art of operant conditioning. If the behaviorists can do that, what more are they capable of? And it would only seem to be common sense that my aversion to arthropods is the result of being stung by a swarm of wasps as a child in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. What? I'm supposed to have a gene for hatred of insects?

Nevertheless, I tend to favor the neo-Darwinians. But that's probably because of my Northern European genes giving me a pessimistic outlook. In a past life, I was likely a Calvinist minister preaching the doctrine of predestination. It is, seriously now, an interesting question and a difficult one to answer. (If you side with the behaviorists, I promise not to make fun of you.) This is a topic we should be discussing instead of another of my rants complaining about the state of classical music today, but the issue may be tangentially related to classical music after all.

Are there genes for musical talent? Seems obvious. Can one be conditioned to favor a certain type of music? That's what I've been saying all along! Kids today have been taught that it's uncool to like classical music, and that if they want to appear normal and well-adjusted and modern and stylish, they have no choice but to listen to whatever dreck the thugs and cretins of the music industry are flooding the airwaves with. That's why sales of classical CDs amount to a mere 2% of total CD sales in the USA, and most of that 2% is on the coast—among the primitives in the interior, classical CDs are as rare as a soufflé. Of course, things would be different if the radio played All Telemann, All the Time! ("This one goes out to the fantastic varsity squad over at Riverdale High! It's the 12 Fantasisies for violin, TWV 40! Hey, hey-y-y-y-y!)

So there's no point in broaching those topics. They're too easy. They're no- liver(er)s! (I took an oath that if I should ever resort to the threadbare Americanism "a no-brainer," may my right hand lose its cunning.) Instead, the question I wish to put forth is, What controls our degree of conservatism? Is it genes that cause one to turn tory? Is it our upbringing? Are we reacting to the more distasteful elements of modern society (feminism, deconstructionism, rampant antisocial behavior, infomercials, &c.)? The question is made even more difficult by the fact that as we age, we naturally grow more conservative and wax nostalgic for our youth, and that's a good thing. Natural selection would tend to weed out all those who decide to take up motorcycle racing at an advanced age. Childbearing brings dramatic changes in behavior because of the same selective process. Those who enter the mosh pit (for slam dancing) or engage in stage diving with an infant in their arms are much less likely to successfully raise their progeny and carry on their bloodline, so evolution has favored those who slow down once they reproduce.

But some people are of a basically conservative nature no matter what their age. Such people did not participate in the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, and they still advocate a restoration. They did not experiment with drugs, though they might have had consciousness contraction (instead of consciousness expansion) been offered. Sadly, those of a conservative bent are often xenophobic, which prevents them from experiencing the joys of the music and food of various cultures. (Remember, the art most closely related to music is victualry—see "The Analogous Arts, Part II") As such people age, they become blatantly hostile to anything novel or different.

Most important to our common interest here is what sort of music such conservative people—which again, generally means old people—favor. Among the lower socioeconomic castes, religious music is held in high esteem—hymns, old-time Gospel tunes, or in Islam, nasheebs. Jazz is always held in suspicion, but curiously, pop music that was once scandalous eventually becomes acceptable, especially if the performer is dead. Thus, Elvis Presley, once censored for his pelvic gyrations, has become a demigod. Do-wop, once the music of juvenile delinquents, is now eminently respectable, and we have the bizarre spectacle of septuagenarians nodding along happily to the song "Why Must I Be A Teen-Ager In Love?"

Among the upper classes and those with cultural pretensions, only classical music is acceptable. True, the composers themselves were rogues and roués, every one of 'em, but they're long dead, and we now have these prim and respectable types to perform this old music, which is why the performance is now deemed more important than the music itself. No one goes to hear the arias and banal songs, they go simply to be in the presence of Luciano Provolone. No one listens to Beethoven, they listen to that nice young man, Van Cliburn. Not Bach, but Glenn Gould. (Note to performers: retire or die young so as to develop a cult following.)

In my semi-lucrative career as a classical expert at an independent record shop, I encountered a procession of old and conservative people who made their way directly to the classical counter. Sunday mornings were the worst ("They must change the rubber sheets at the nursing home on Sundays," I'd speculate), as I'd then be confronted with people who had absolutely no intention of making a purchase. Instead, they'd come into the store and ask for LPs. "Look," I'd explain patiently, "It's 1999. CDs have been on the market for almost twenty years. In 1972, LPs had been on the market for twenty years; would you have gone into a record store in 1972 asking for a 78 r.p.m. record or a wax cylinder?"

This only made the old people bilious, and they'd fume that if they bought a CD player, something new would be introduced to make it obsolete. I'd try and reason with them that as LPs had been around for 40 years, they could expect CDs to be on the market for at least ten more years (being careful not to suggest that it was a moot point with them, anyway), but this had no effect, and they'd stand there, sucking air through their dentures, radiating animosity at the very idea that progress hadn't come to an obedient halt once they were born. Eventually, I changed my tactics, and told them that it was worse than that, that CDs already were obsolete, there was a new thing called an MP3 file, and that there would soon be no more record shops, but one would instead use his computer to obtain music in the form of digital MP3 files. At the mention of the word "computer" the old folk would usually go into an apoplectic fit and begin muttering, "A computer! A computer!" The very absurdity of the notion had proved to them that I was insane, and that they had to be on their guard against such blatant nonsense.

Such people, though legion, are actually not typical of a conservative mentality, as it would be far more accurate to classify them as morons. They were every bit as churlish and suspicious in their youth. Far more disturbing to me are those of normal intelligence who had purchased a CD player by 1990, but who had purchased only CD copies of LPs that they already owned. If their favorite LP was not available as a CD, their standard in choosing a CD of a familiar work was the degree to which it duplicated the performance they were comfortable with. The digital sound was heard as a detriment, as the luminous high frequencies were disturbing. So as to avoid any frightening clarity, I'd often turn the treble control way down when such a person wanted to audition a new recording.

Over and above any desire for low fidelity, though, is the typical classical buyer's preference for a performer, any performer, of the past. Anyone who is dead is obviously preferable to anyone living, and someone who died in 1962 must be better than anyone who died a mere ten years ago. The deader the better. This is because classical music is no longer a living, vital art, but it has become a museum of relics from a better time—the distant past—and according to this conservative classical mentality, anything old must necessarily be superior to anything new. It's quite simple: old recordings, old instruments, old performers—all good. Anything new, anything unfamiliar—reject it at once. This is the conservative mind at work. A bird in the hand (i.e., any known and familiar quality) is better than one in the womb. We know the past, and all of us here managed to survive it, so it's relatively safe, but anything new carries a risk ... an unknown risk .... the worst kind.

What causes such thinking? Is it nature—a certain set of genes? Or is it nurture? Were these people so traumatized in childhood by a reading of Jack and the Beanstalk that they vowed to never trade the cow for a set of magic beans? As I say, it's a good question, but whatever the answer, the results have been disastrous for classical music. None of the major orchestras in the USA now has a recording contract. Why should they? The major labels learned that the real profits in classical CDs are found in their back catalogues. Why pay performers and why pay engineers when you can reissue old recordings essentially for free. Pay some summer intern to go into the basement and dust off some old tapes or metal masters, haul them up on the freight elevator, and—voilá!—you have a "Legendary Recording of the Century" that the classical conservatives will treasure.

Does this classic recording have an overwhelming amount of tape hiss? Not a problem. Does it sound as if the microphones had been placed across the street? Who cares? Does the second bassoon suffer from a hangover and come in two bars early? None of that is of any consequence because the important thing is that they're all dead, you fool! Dead is good! Dead is where it's at! How can anyone be "legendary" if they're still alive? Let today's artists starve or get government handouts; we're making nothing but clear profit on this historic recording scam, and it's what the classical crowd wants! Look, the Music Museum Guide to CDs awards it Four Gilded Chamfrons, their highest rating! Says it's "Compelling, insightful and magisterial"!

Well, what about it? Weren't the performances better in the old days when classical music wasn't as marginalized as it is today? Weren't the performances at least more authentic nearer to the time when the pieces were written? Not really. In times past, conductors and performers took flagrant liberties with the music. A composer's score was not venerated to the degree it is today. In the November 3, 2003 issue of The New Yorker, critic Alex Ross discusses this at length.

The philosopher Lydia Goehr, in her book The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, shows that the concept of a "work"—an infallible score to be scrupulously realized in performance—did not exist until the Romantic period. Before then, scores were less like papal writs than like cooking recipes, leaving crucial details up to the taste of the performers. Singers would adorn their lines according to their abilities and whims. Instrumentalists would fill out their parts with ornaments and other sonic curlicues. Composers often doubled as virtuosos, throwing out ideas in off-the-cuff improvisations.... (After reading this I immediately procured a copy of Lydia Goehr's book. BEWARE! BEWARE! It is written in the most impenetrable academic gobbledygook imaginable and bristles with ghastly sentences such as these eye-glazers from the opening chapter, "A Nominalist Theory of Musical Works": [The evidence] ranges from an historical description of musical meaning and and æsthetic theory, changes which led to specific transformations in musical practice, to a sociological description of changing practical conditions, to an ontological description of how concepts shape practices. For strategic reasons stemming from methodological concerns, I begin with the narrowly philosophical matters, specifically the attempt by analytic philosophers to describe the ontological status of musical works.

Whew! She must have been paid by the word. "Practical conditions"—that similar to "At this point in time"? BEWARE! BEWARE!)

Mr. Ross was discussing music of the Baroque period and earlier, but there were also great liberties taken with scores in the nineteenth century. The great Felix Weingartner (1863-1942) jettisoned huge chunks from Wagner's operas when he conducted them, and he wrote two books on conducting Beethoven which advocate grave alterations to the composer's scoring, dynamics and tempi. In the twentieth century, the man most often associated with musical perfection and accuracy, Arturo Toscanini, made extensive alterations to the pieces he conducted. Musicians would see passages written in green ink pasted over the staves in their parts. He advised the conductor Massimo Freccia, "Change a-what a-you want, buta don't a-tell aneeboady." When Maurice Ravel complained to Toscanini after the Paris première of his Bolero, unhappy that the tempo was twice the speed indicated, Toscanini replied, "Eet's-a de only way to save-a de wark."

Not only were performances not faithful to the score, but the performance standards were quite poor in the old days. It is true that at one time you did have to get David Oistrakh to perform the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto—no one else could cut it—but today there are dozens of violinists who can perform it brilliantly—some in their teens. Just as today's athletes are surpassing the performance records of athletes in the past, modern musicians are performing better than ever—and for the same reasons: better training, a larger population to select from, and audiences are less tolerant of mistakes.

But just as there are sport fans who wax eloquent about the great athletes of yesteryear, there are classical conservatives who prefer only that the recording artist be dead. The older the artist, the older the recording, the better they like it. That's what happens when you get old.

The fact is that the old recordings are generally of shoddy performances. At the record shop, we got in a CD reissue of an 1896 wax-recording of the greatest conductor of his era, Arthur Nikisch, conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Of course, the sound is abysmal, but right away in the first movement, at the six-note french horn solo which heralds the arrival of the second subject, the horn player hits a wrong note. The french horn is a treacherous instrument, so it is common for a horn player to miss or break a note, and that was even more true in those days before the double horn became common (which allows valved switching to a horn in A when playing notes in the perilous B-flat to E register where every note can be played with open valves). In those days cracked and wrong notes were so common as to be tolerated. Today, wrong and broken notes are tolerated only in vintage recordings.

But then, glaring errors do have entertainment value. I have an old LP of Sir Eugene Goossens conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring (Everest #3047) in which, during the climactic sacrifice where the virgin dances herself to death, where the strings are all playing short, staccato, choppy and irregular chords—DIT ... DIT, DIT ... DIT ... DIT, DIT, DIT .... DIT, DIT—a violist (naturally) "drops one" (musician's slang for playing on a rest—i.e., when he's supposed to remain silent). I confess that of the three different recordings I have of Sacré in my collection, I listen to that recording the most.

Another howler—literally—is the recent re-re-re-re-issue of the Verdi Requiem as conducted by the "perfectionist" Toscanini. During the Libera Me finale, the soprano soloist (I forget her name, and I'm too lazy to look it up) doesn't even sing the right notes—it's hard to tell what the hell she's singing. I later found out that she was reputed to have had an affair with Arturo, and in return for the [pudendum], she was made the lead soloist. A friend once looked up her name in the Schwann Artist's Recording Catalogue and that was the only listing of her, so apparently (and thankfully) it was a brief affair.

Of course, classical conservatives who wish only to show how devoted they are to the "aht" of the past all rave over Toscanini and sigh that his recordings are immaculate—that such perfection has never since been equaled. The truth is that modern recording companies such as the TELARC and Chandos labels would never release anything as bad as Toscanini or Bruno Walter or many of the other old performers.

Speaking of Bruno Walter, there are those who reverently turn their eyes to the heavens and whisper that his reading of the Brahms symphonies is divine. They are always dismayed when I gleefully inform them that the "Columbia Symphony Orchestra" Bruno was conducting was in reality an Italian pickup orchestra, and Italians are notorious for being among the world's worst orchestral musicians.

The truth is that, other than the appeal of featuring dead people, the old recordings are nothing remarkable. Some of the performances are great, others not great at all, but the sound quality is uniformly abysmal. The Archives Forum regularly receives messages from disgruntled listeners who complain bitterly that the sound of MIDI files played on their Windows computers is completely unmusical. I often wonder how many of these same purists will turn from their computer to listen to a CD of a vintage recording and sigh, "Ah, now that's more like it!"

No matter how cheap of a sound card they have, the MIDI sound could not possibly be as bad as that of a vintage recording. Mozart never wrote for anything that sounds like a plastic kazoo, but he never intended surface noise and tape hiss either. As the preference for vintage recordings grows—and even the NAXOS label has a vintage recording line—it certainly can't be due to musical values. It can only be attributed to a fondness for the dead.

What causes that? Nature or nurture?