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Alexandre Daudet (clarinet) Catherina Lemoni-O’Doherty (piano) BERNSTEIN, MUCZYNSKI, REICH

June 7th, 2011 - Boydell Recital Room, Trinity College Dublin

In 1886, Camille Saint-Saëns completed the now-popular The Carnival of the Animals, a playful suite for orchestra depicting in sound a noisy menagerie of hens, elephants, tortoises and jackals - amongst others (The flamingos of the animated Disney realisation of the Finale are a later addition of some artistic director or another on Walt Disney’s Fantasia team).

Does analysis spoil an artwork? Does dissecting a piece of theatre destroy its ability to captivate, and often more importantly, to suspend disbelief for a sufficient length of time? Do harmonic and formal analysis of a Beethoven piano sonata deprive it of its powers to evoke emotion in the listener? In the latter case, sitting down with an academic mindset is surely the most dispassionate act, at the time - but the fruits of the labour are invariably an increased appreciation of the skill of the composer, not least in terms of pure musicality, but terms of defining a musical fingerprint - an artistic identity unique to the composing artist. While it might destroy the naivety that most people seem to agree (without a terrible amount of justification) is essential for a first listening of a work, working at analysis is rewarding because it develops a skill of technical appreciation that can be applied to subsequent works, either by the same composer or in the same style or indeed a style that is diametrically opposed to that, remarking in analysis the stark contrast of structures between a style already studied and its antithesis.

These are some ideas I have had recently while reading Philip Roth’s novel American Pastoral, which, among other things, examines the nature of our endemic misconception of our fellow actors in this theatre of the absurd, namely the question of identity.

Given the fact we perceive directly (by sight – in a momentary glimpse or an eternal gaze, by sound, by touch and so on) a tiny proportion of the entire human population of the world, the question arises; where do the other 6 billion people live? When I die what conception of the totality of humanity dies with me? Have I lived a life that has engaged with even the slightest notion of the vastness of our species, and more importantly, have my moral choices suffered as a result of this fact? Growing up in this part of the world, I think I will die with a view that is stilted by the blinkered existence of comfort that I have lived to this point, the cataract of wealth and health blinding me to the painful reality of the lives of almost every other person on the planet, save for a relative handful of intimate acquaintances and companions (and of course, family – telling, I added this one on revision.)

Everyone has observed the sonic phenomena of a political crowd of dozens or hundreds of thousands of people. The human river shouts a slogan in a unison rhythm. Then another slogan springs from the head of the demonstration; it spreads towards the tail replacing the first. A wave of transition thus passes from the head to the tail. The clamour fills the city, and the inhibiting force of  voice and rhythm reaches a climax. It is an event of great power and beauty in its ferocity. Then the impact between the demonstrators and the enemy occurs. The perfect rhythm of the last slogan breaks up in a huge cluster of chaotic shouts, which also spreads to the tail. Imagine, in addition, the reports of dozens of machine guns and the whistle of bullets adding their punctuations to this total disorder. The crowd is then rapidly dispersed, and after sonic and visual hell follows a detonating calm, full of despair, dust and death.