Claude Debussy (Classical Music)

Claude Debussy

A French “Impressionist”

Today I am observing the 150^th birthday of a famous and remarkable innovator to whom so many twentieth century musicians and composers are indebted.  I doubt if many of you reading are very familiar with his name, some perhaps not at all.  Claude Debussy was born on August 22, 1862 and over the fifty-four years of his life (he died in 1918) he introduced a style of classical composition that impacted upon the shape of Modernist orchestral classics in the decades that followed and even the work of pop musicians.  Though he himself did not use the term in reference to his own work, his along with that of other French music masters influenced by him acquired the designation Impressionist. 

Impressionist art on canvas put in its appearance during Debussy’s life.  The labors of such portraitists as Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh come immediately to mind.   We are treated to only sketchy, suggestive glimpses of the subject, as opposed to classical works that strive for a graphic likeness.  It is an attempt to tell how the subject feels to the artist, and it calls upon viewers to fill in the details, using their own imagination and emotions.  Short, broken brushstrokes are employed, creating shimmering colors and shaded effects – this instead of attempting the ideally imagined scene or its Romanticized heightening. 

Many have heard in the sounds Debussy created the musical equivalent to an Impressionist painting.  (Maurice Ravel was a contemporary of his who composed in like vein.)  Short strokes of sound, sometimes with barely an echo of a melody, rather a wispy, loosely configured construct, not a clearly delineated series of notes with which you could hum along!   The music is discursive, rambling, volatile, disjointed.  It sounds rather spontaneous, even if it is anything but that from the musician’s point of view.  What other well known cult of musical expression could be so described?  Nothing less than jazz itself!  It is no surprise that the jazz era followed right on the heels of Debussy’s and Ravel’s lives. That is not to say that either of them wrote jazz; they did not.  Their work simply inspired free form and exploration.  And that is not to say that the Impressionists never used melody.  Among Debussy’s masterpieces are the ever so popular “Claire de Lune” and “The Girl with the Flaxen Hair,” both notable exceptions; they are very melodic in texture.  There is even a hint of melody in “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” another of his works that is often played.  But at least 95% of his compositions are on this order.   

My favorite of Debussy’s Impressionist works is “La Mer (The Sea.)”  At anywhere from 23 to 25 minutes in play time, it is made up of what many musical scholars have called “tactile sensations.”  There is no real resolution of chords in it nor is there anything that could reasonably be called development of ideas.  Those “tactile sensations” in his work have replaced ideas.  He does not require the ocean’s obeisance to the music, but just the opposite; he makes the music subservient to the ocean.  He gives us a series of impressions of the sea, in which we do not hear the sound of waves per se, but in which we are coaxed into feeling them.  The music does not lord it over the sea with some lush theme, as in a movie score.  He suggests the rhythm of the sea; he plays as the sea plays, on the sea’s terms.  As one author has put it, “the images are implied rather than specific.”

The only feature “La Mer” holds in common with tradition is the three-movement format.  In the first movement the mood is wondrous and mysterious.  A pleasant cruise over that sea is in progress.  For the most part all is peaceful, although there is an overtone of danger.  In the last minute of it the sea’s majesty is saluted with a lightweight fanfare. 

In the second movement shimmering strings tell us that life on the sea is asserting itself – maybe ships being navigated or dolphins at play or divers plumbing the depths.  The waves get a little stronger, signaling perhaps that vigilance is being demanded of the living creatures before this restless and unpredictable colossus of water.  

The third movement introduces a note of distress, something stalking and threatening!  A leviathan or a predator or perhaps a storm!  By the end, the sea has become a brawling force, the water crashing against the shore.  The giant has at last asserted its sovereignty.

A constant restlessness pervades the work.  It never settles down.  In the absence of melody the orchestra churns and surges and drifts and quivers and shudders and agitates and boils.  This is a giant that never quite sleeps.  Yes, the style is something to get used to.  Our rhetorical sensibilities have a hard time with it.  But I invite you who have a nose for exciting and exhilarating musical sounds to try it out.  It is the perfect introduction to French Musical Impressionism.  Careful listening may allow you to catch the drift (so to speak, no pun intended) and go with it.  It mesmerizes me, if I choose carefully the time to listen to it.

         

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I welcome feedback.  Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net

To Kill a Mockingbird (Movie Reivew)

To Kill a Mockingbird

(2 hrs & 9 min, b&w, 1962)

2012 marks the 50^th anniversary of this brilliant, practically flawless and by now immortal motion picture.  Though based upon a best seller, namely Harper Lee’s bitter sweet evocation of life in the deep south during the Great Depression, the film has taken on a life of its own on the silver screen over and beyond the book.  It was released in late fall of 1962.  At least three generations have become acquainted with it; it has become legendary in its veneration, for its rectitude of spirit and for its unimpeachable honesty about a crucial segment of American life and history.  Seldom does a first rate novel lend itself so perfectly to movie treatment. 

Director Robert Mulligan, Screenwriter Horton Foote and Producer Alan J. Pakula (who later became a celebrated director) did everything just right.  All the book’s rich and essential details have been superbly captured and illuminated under their penetrating and watchful eyes.  They correctly understood that the story is basically concerned with a child’s enlightenment through tragedy and pain and through the ministry of a loving parent.  Accordingly, all that happens on the screen is told from the children’s point of view, just as it should be. 

And who are the children?  A six-year-old girl named Scout and her twelve-year-old brother Jem, played with gusto and complete sincerity by Mary Badham and Philip Alford respectively, live in a world unto themselves, full of mischief and make believe and wonder and perplexity.  Scout is a very fitting name for the girl, because she is not the sweet, demure little southern cutie that many would like for her to be.  She can hold her own in a fight and can match the boys toe to toe in the daring department.  It takes all the gentling of which he is capable for her widowed father Atticus Finch, a small town lawyer, to give her the stability she requires and really wants beneath her feistiness.  These kids are confined within little more than their quaint neighborhood in their small rural town, until something momentous happens to expand their horizons, something awesome, troubling, bewildering and eventually traumatic.  They are caught up in their father’s defense of a poor black man against a charge of attempted rape.  The fallout from this trial lands upon their tender heads.

Gregory Peck gives a warm, shaded, luminous portrayal of Atticus – arguably the best of his career.  Few scenes of courtroom contention have ever been as stirring as the one in which he takes center stage, where with simple honesty and eloquence he battles for the life of his client against entrenched redneck prejudice.  And Brock Peters rocks me to my soul’s foundation as the victimized African American whose fate hangs in the balance.  

Add to all these qualities the film’s intricate disclosure of the mores and folkways and rhythms of the community.  Mulligan and Foote linger over small details, soaking up local color.  They take their time and accomplish the remarkable feat of telling a story surrounding a sensational trial without getting caught up in the sensational in their manner of presentation.  I shudder to think how vulgarized Lee’s book could have become in the wrong Hollywood hands.  And keep an eye out for Robert Duvall making his movie debut in the small non-speaking role of a mentally handicapped young man who ultimately plays a crucial part in the children’s lives.   

So many priceless scenes!  I could write pages and pages about this great work!

The reminiscing voice of Scout as an older adult woman provides us with the film’s narration, once again in respect for the novel, in which the same story-telling device is used. Some of the film’s most beautiful poetic language falls from this person’s lips.  Regrettably I have not been able to find out who does this narration; I presume it is Harper Lee herself, since it is drawn essentially from her own writing in the book.  No mention of the name appears in the credits or in any of the special features attached to the DVD.  I am also inclined to believe it is Lee because there is much of autobiography in the character of Scout, Atticus being a fictionalization of Lee’s own father.

That lovely sequence during the opening credits has no equal.  Scout is heard off screen humming to herself as she goes through a treasure chest and does crayon drawings, finishing off with a giggle. It combines soothingly with Elmer Bernstein’s gentle, dreamy score.  We are being promised that each subsequent scene will be just that – a treasure, a jewel, something extracted delicately from a hope chest of memories.  And the film more than lives up to this opening promise.  Try as I may I have never been able to get through the last fifteen or so minutes of the movie without becoming tearful.  Not that the movie is a “tearjerker” in the colloquial sense; it just strikes many tender chords.  Though I never lived in a small town as a child I feel as if I am revisiting a place inside myself. 

It is inconceivable to me that anybody should miss seeing “To Kill a Mockingbird” at least once in his/her lifetime.  A gift from heaven!

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com

I welcome feedback.  Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net

Variation on a Primal Theme (Poetry)

VARIATION ON A PRIMAL THEME

A wizard told me a strange tale ’bout a

future simian of transmuted sight,

reborn to light new and unheard of fires,

unique, but not for long a neophyte.      

Hear him scratch, digging for he knows not what,

roused by the two-legged beasts who plunder. 

No alliance will he broker with them. 

He’ll only hold them somewhat in wonder.

He will ponder the riddle: why these beasts,

keenest of mammals, their assets intact,

has him mimic their coarse proclivities,

despite the rude ribaldry of the act.

What storms of mind, what spasms of the heart

render keepers as possessed as the kept?

Is it some passion or idiocy,

something drunk or some foul bed where they’ve slept? 

He’ll evade this boorish display no less

than a hidden hornet’s nest, but he’ll probe

his newfound heart and soul and signify

by a scratch fore and aft of his earlobe.

Some strange mogul of the id will teach him

that reason lies within his gifted touch,

not to be deceived by cookie fortunes

inside nut shells, cocoanut husks and such.

All alone for what he’s compelled to prove,

only by instinct will he construe it,

no cricket, frisky frog or tipsy toad

as intrepid as he to pursue it.

Like his human forebears will he then note

a grip his primate’s paw has never known, 

a distension from fetal hunch, as from

some covert nucleus suddenly grown.

A new current in the brain, a new stretch

of skin, new quickening concentration,

new sight with which to see, new vigor in

the mind, free of animal fixation.

Erect with his new and riveting thoughts,

each moment will face him with a new door,

entranced at the sun’s elixir, over

which only lymphatic sight glanced before. 

The blink in his eyes will become a flash,

opening the shutters to seek and find,

the tongue, rash with sparks of speech, feet in stride

with drummers in far corners of the mind.

Thereafter, in a sedentary pose

he’ll peruse what miracle has been wrought,

his chin cupped in upturned hands so as to

buoy the sacred head busy with thought.

Hands will rest upon hips as if to hold

in regal place the new vertical line

drawn from the earth beneath his feet and the

celestial heavens by his robust spine.

      

But a click of the heels together won’t 

transport this pilgrim home or make his day.

He must trample the serpent’s lair, eat grass, 

trusting soil and rock to meet him halfway.

He must be quicker than quick sand, kick stones,

walking and running for all that he’s worth,

with dagger speed cutting the air in front,

ready for the next hard place in the  earth.

From nature below his feet and the grand

heavens above his keen head, he will learn.

When he finds his way back to the other

mammals, some of them will greet his return,

though they will be reticent to applaud.

But eager for requital he will chance

To don friendly footwear and on two legs

will with open arms break forth into dance.

The caper this time will be all his own,

no mimicry, no burlesque, no pretense.

To no drummer but his own will he jump.

He’ll sing his own tune and make his own sense.

How reads the weird tale after that, in what

precise place will he be consigned to dwell?

No oracle, no reading of the stars,

no fervid prophet’s tongue can yet foretell.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com

I welcome feedback.  Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net

Forrest Gump (Movie Review)

                                      Forrest Gump

                            (2 hrs & 21 min, color, 1994)

Absurdist comedy in motion pictures has been around now for quite some time.  When I think of this genre, my mind jumps immediately back to “Dr. Strangelove” and “The Graduate” and to the1960s in general, when it began to stake out a place for itself in the mainstream of even Hollywood product and has since become entrenched in the movie audience’s fertile field of familiarity.  There is a difference between absurdist comedy and screwball comedy.  The latter has been around ever since the 1930s.  A screwball comedy is humor that has not a single serious thought in its head – pure fun, tomfoolery, escape.  The absurdist, on the other hand, takes the drama of the real world very much to heart but tweaks it until it makes ridiculous sense.  The absurdist gives the world a chance to laugh profoundly at itself.  Absurdist humor, if it’s worth its salt, is also sobering.

The 1994 classic “Forrest Gump” is absurdism of a very high caliber.  It takes the late twentieth century just far enough out of the bounds of painstaking realism without undermining its basis in fact.  It does not make the world as we know it and have absorbed it disappear; it makes it stand on its head and shake off all allegiance to probability so that instead of its bare facts we get a slant upon its giddy and relevant truth.  

Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks) is a deep south fellow with a pea-sized brain but with unheard of motor attributes and an innocent and trusting nature.  His life story through which we are conducted is as unlikely as any fictional adventure can get – unlikely, but likeable, yea, even loveable to many including myself.  In the course of the narrative, thanks to a loving but feisty mother (Sally Field), he goes from playground “idiot” as a child to college football star to Vietnam War valiant to industrial millionaire to loving father.  He turns out to be an effortless match for every crisis faced by the Baby Boomer generation.  Hanks is one of the very few actors who in my estimation are equal to giving him force and dimension and soul, and he does so superbly without compromising the characterization’s unusual premise.

While Gump is unspoiled by the onslaught of staggering world events, he finds that challenges of the heart are much more formidable.  One challenge is the bitterness he encounters from a lieutenant under whom he serves and whose life he saves in the midst of combat.  It seems the lieutenant loses both legs and resents Gump for depriving him of the honor of dying on the battlefield in the tradition of other fallen heroes in his family line.  Gary Sinise portrays him in realistic mode, becoming a kind of dramatic straight man to Gump’s outrageous innocence and comes to play a very vital part in the narrative.  Much of the absurdist comedy’s sobering effect derives from the stark contrast between the two figures.                  

The other challenge of the heart is the childhood sweetheart Jenny (Robin Wright) who weaves in and out of Forrest’s life and is slowly worn down by his good intentions and patience, before their relationship reaches a bitter sweet conclusion.  I will not say anything more about that or the relationship with the lieutenant for the benefit of those who have not seen this classic.  All I will say is that Forrest may not have much of an IQ, but he has a king-size heart, acquires a heap of common sense and gives pure pleasure as we  watch him wend his way.

There are some nitpickers who have accused the movie of glorifying brainlessness.  How so?  Does “Tobacco Road” glorify poverty and ignorance?  Does “Lord of the Flies” glorify juvenile malevolence?  Does “Young Frankenstein” glorify grave robbing?  What we have in “Forrest Gump” is a motion picture with a wide wingspread that encompasses a host of issues and emotional plateaus. The character of Gump is all of us denuded of our guile, sophistication, and self-possession.  His story gives us a kind of uncluttered window on the world we know, and he makes something disarmingly pure out of passive aggressiveness.

Robert Zemekis takes the directing honors.  Eric Roth wrote the cockeyed screenplay, derived from a novel by Winston Groom.  It won six Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Director and in the eighteen intervening years has never been out of circulation.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com

I welcome feedback.  Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net

Sunday in the Park with George (Stage Musical)

                             Sunday in the Park with George

                                (2 hrs & 26 min, color, 1985)

“Art isn’t easy.” 

Those words of dialogue that are uttered in the second act of this landmark work of musical theater should ring true for any number of people – certainly for the patron who attempts to penetrate the mysteries of a painterly image, also for those who aspire to put something on canvas, and most especially for those who attempt a whole new approach to the craft.  I know for a fact that there are many practicing painters among my readership, and it would be a shame if any of you should leave this world without seeing this miraculous achievement in words, song, choreography, set design, technological prowess, visual virtuosity and soulful resplendence.  It draws its audience many fathoms deep into their ethereal selves.  That any finer tribute could be paid in theatrical terms to those who wield the brush or to creativity in any artful form is inconceivable to me.  It has been twenty-seven years since it skyrocketed to critical and public acclaim on the Broadway stage.  And what we have here is a televised presentation that was mounted in 1986, one year after that premiere, and is now widely distributed in DVD.  (Netflix has it.)  Recently I revisited the disc and was so moved (once again, as way back when) that I have purchased my own copy for future revisits.       

The George of the title is the Frenchman Georges Seurat, who lived a very short life from 1859 to 1891.  Seurat introduced a new kind of dot-like brush stroke, his canvases consisting of thousands of tiny flecks, so close to each other that it remained for the eye to combine them into amalgamations of colors that fused and formed light-struck surfaces.  No mixing on a palate was required.  The work to which he devoted two solid years of his life was “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” a landscape with many individuals in their Sunday best clothes casually posed in profile on the sloping bank of a river, and it languished in back rooms for many years afterward before finding its audience.  Today it is a revered portrait hanging in the Chicago Museum of Art and the focus of this musical.

The play is a witty, mirthful, multi-faceted musical with a huge cast and a libretto that stands very much alone in the halls of fame.  Two genius minds essentially brought it about – the composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim, a man of many original concepts that have made stage history over the past half century, and a writer named James Lapine (who also directed the original stage version).  The director of this televised version is Terry Hughes.  But there are numerous technical wizards who engineered the unusual stagecraft that gives visibility to the Seurat technique in terms that the average member of the audience can comprehend.  Translucent scrims play a vital part in visualization.  Actually, the production as conceived would have been an impossibility not too many years earlier.  The technology had not yet been invented.  Much use is made also of overlapping dialogue/lyrics and scenic juxtapositions.  The play would be a delight just to watch, if its content were run-of-the-mill.  But there are delights upon delights upon delights, for both the eye and the ear.

The narrative is a work of fiction inspired by the idea of Seurat.  Next to nothing is known about his private life.  George (portrayed by a fabulous Mandy Patinkin with a voice that contains almost as many contrasting shades and dimensions as the painting) is a kind of Everyman Artist, and Dot, the woman in his life, is brought to exciting life by an equally fabulous Bernadette Peters.  What a twosome they make – impeccable chemistry!  She is at first both his lover and his model.  The opening scene has her standing grumpily in the hot sun wishing they were back at his studio making love, while he sketches and sketches in the shade.  The lyrics she bounces about are hilarious, reflecting her mixed feelings about him, loving his art but feeling discounted.  They are of course in Paris of the 1880s on that La Grande Jatte island on a Sunday, a place where the working classes normally strolled about, with occasional high society visitors as well.  Here the scenery is manipulated by Seurat’s wave of the hand to suggest the phase to which his concept of the painting has evolved at each given moment. 

During Act I we meet an assortment of colorful, highly energized  characters – George’s mother and her nurse; a German couple trying to enjoy their day away from sweaty labor; two dithery, giggly young women with eyes out for available young men; a woman-chasing chauffeur; a soldier; a fellow artist of Seurat, his wife and bratty girl child; a boatman and his dog; a baker (whom Dot later marries when she gives up on George); and an elderly American couple from the deep south licking their French pastries and making snide conversation about the country they are visiting.   The nineteenth century scene comes to a climax during the first five or so minutes of Act II, when Seurat has finally gotten everybody positioned on the canvas precisely the way he wants them.  They all act as if they are Seurat’s captives, not happy with their poses or profiles and complaining about the heat under their thick clothing and parasols.  The sequence is a real hoot; it almost makes me double over with laughter. 

Then for the rest of Act II we find ourselves in America a whole century later, in the 1980s.  Another George (also portrayed by Patinkin), descendent of Seurat, is displaying a new invention called a chromalume and honoring his ancestor by the showcasing of “A Sunday Afternoon” in an adjoining gallery.   He is making his presentation assisted by his grandmother Marie (again, Bernadette Peters), a ninety-eight-year old senile woman who is the daughter of the original George and Dot, still hanging onto life decades later.  All the performers we saw in Act I return playing various individuals reacting with varied opinions to the works on display.  George bristles under some of the inane comments he hears, voicing his irritation to the audience.  He walks patiently nevertheless in Seurat’s shoes “bit by bit putting it together” and is finally confronted with the question of where his artistry might go in the future.  He gets some very unexpected help in resetting his sail, and the play reaches a final and heart swelling peak.

In spite of the comedic tone, there are moments when we do get some sobering insight into this obsessive man’s soul and spirit.  Dot accuses him of hiding in his work.  He replies that he does not hide in it; he lives in it.  “I am what I do.”  He demonstrates that claim when she informs him that she is about to give birth to his child (to be Marie of the second act) and that she is going to marry the baker.  He is compassionate with her but encourages her in her decision.  He cannot give her what she wants; the baker can.  It is that simple for him.  And the process by which the painting emerges, the day by day sweat and labor, is wonderfully envisioned.  The scene in which he works on the canvas all alone behind a scrim is a phenomenon of music, lyrics and controlled lighting.  There simply has never been anything else quite like it in the history of theater that I know of.

     

The show ends the way it begins, with George considering manifold possibilities and naming the qualities of which canvas art consists:  “Order, Design, Tension, Composition, Balance, Light and Harmony.”  Each word is sounded out as if it were a chime or bell being rung.  For me the play rings many exciting bells, and I am not a painter.