A Musical Parabola

By FRANK BEHRENS
ART TIMES November 2006

Earlier this year, a young composer named Jay Greenberg had his “Symphony No. 5” recorded on the Sony Classical label. I found it not only quite interesting but enjoyable, an adjective I have not applied to much recent compositions that seem to delight in pings and bangs rather than in any musical ideas. Being that as it may, the composer is quoted in the liner notes as saying that the third movement is based on the algebraic expression 1/x²_.

Those who work with such concepts know that is an expression that has no meaning when x is zero. (The rest will have to take my word for it for now.) Also, if you draw Cartesian axes (or, crease a page into four sections, if that makes more sense to you), the graph will stretch to infinity upwards and to the right in the upper right quadrant and to infinity downwards and to the left in the lower left quadrant.

If I say I heard none of this in the music, it might be the result of my obtuseness or of the composer’s failure to convey. What matter? The idea is an interesting one.

In fact, this all reminded me of what I did at a talk once in trying to define “great” music. Except there I used a parabola. Picture a horseshoe shape standing on its round part with its arms slowly spreading away from one another as they go infinitely upwards.

Now pick some point high on the left arm and call that Schubert’s “Ave Maria.” (Here I played the Kiri Te Kanawa recording of the same.) No one could deny the ethereal beauty and sincerity of the piece. Then I went down a bit on the left arm and played “Celeste Aida,” which happened to have the same harp accompaniment. Now here is a man worshipping a mortal woman, but you could not tell that from the music alone.  They both sounded beautiful and sincere.

Dropping down a bit more, I played “If I loved you” from Carousel. Again a harp, again sincerity, but some of the ethereal quality of the first two selections seems not missing but diminished.

Going father down found us hearing Jo Stafford singing, “See the pyramids along the Nile.” Now here was music meant for dancing. “You belong to me” are not words to speak either to Mary or Aida; but the effect is soothing (especially with Stafford’s famous detached delivery).

From there we went to Dean Martin’s “That’s amore,” with its “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie.” The feeling was that we were a long way from “Ave Maria”! Mainly because there seemed to be a distinct lack of sincerity.

When we got to a country-western song with its Darlin’s and Baby’s and down further to a disco piece with practically unintelligible lyrics, we knew we were near the low point on the parabola. Had I any rap, I would have placed that at the very nadir.

At that point, I paused to admit that some people would put those last selections at the very TOP of their preferences. But I also pointed out that to do so, one would have to turn the parabola upside down. I also had to admit that this parabola was built according to MY tastes, not that of a teenager in a poor urban setting or even one in the hallowed halls of Harvard. What is Great for me might easily Grate others.

Having pointed out that the essence of the disco piece was the steady beat, I then asked, “So what’s wrong with beat?” So I began to climb up the right arm of the parabola and played “Honey Bun” from South Pacific to point out that a bouncy beat is not necessarily a negative. To reinforce that, I played “La donna e mobile,” to show that a catchy tune with a steady beat can be a wonderful thing. And bear in mind, we were once more in the venerable realm of Verdian opera!

Having reached that point in tracing the shape, I finished with “Exultate jubilate” by Mozart, in which a bouncy and very catchy tune was combined with a sincere religious fervor to produce a truly “great” piece of music.

Naturally after all this, I really didn’t begin to penetrate the unanswerable question of what makes this piece of music great, that one not so great, and yet another trash. Perhaps the closest I have come to an answer appears in Peter Schaffer’s play Amadeus when Salieri gets to see some manuscripts of Mozart’s music, his original copies, with never a single correction anywhere on them.

Salieri looks to the audience and explains, “What was evident was that Mozart was simply transcribing music completely finished in his head. And finished as most music is never finished.” And here comes my point: “Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and the structure would fall.”

Close enough, I think. What do you think?

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