The Quartet, by Chrisopher Levenson<\/p>\n
After the velvet hush
\nthe first chords assail us
\ngathered in darkness to watch
\nthe intent, horn-rimmed, screwed up
\nconcentration
\nof four foreign, middle-aged gentlemen
\nconsorting maestoso,
\nbowing and scraping.<\/p>\n
Out of the fidget
\nBrahms slowly emerges
\nlike the Brocken, misty
\nand far off and under
\nanother name.
\nFour spotlights, one over each
\nperfectly preserved specimen
\n(a 1750 viola, a violin
\nfrom 1672)
\nskewer these aural butterflies
\nto their sheets, only the frockcoats
\nand the black forelock of the one
\nwho is not bald (but perspiring)
\npresume
\nto follow other rhythms.<\/p>\n
By now the mind has wandered
\nso far from the auditorium
\nthat it takes a whole avalanche
\nof flurried sound to return us
\nto darkness and the strings\u2019 predictable
\ntwitter. The lento massage
\nof rich sound,
\nplangent agonies over-rehearsed into
\nmonochrome, are barely in time to
\ndither once more into a final
\nreverie, and chase it with a frenzied
\nrush towards silence.<\/p>\n
At last they are bowing, the four
\nearnest musicians, and leaving
\nallegro for refreshments, ma non troppo,
\nto our half-lit applause.<\/p>\n
From the author\u2019s book of poems entitled Stills<\/em> (1972) with permission<\/p>\n This insightful poem illuminates a troubling debate in Western Art Music, where the reception of music has become the topic of discussion. It follows a line of inquiry founded partly by Stuart Hall who formulated a Theory of Reception within the confines of Cultural Studies. Now countless musicians and music scholars are following suit by investigating the highly diverse ways that music is received by the listening public, not always to the good.<\/p>\n What began as a blog entry about performativity grew to an unwieldy essay on the topic. Rather than clog up the blog pages with reams of pages, I have decided to added it to my column entitled Music Matters. Please have a look at the discussion, then come back here to add a comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Quartet, by Chrisopher Levenson After the velvet hush the first chords assail us gathered in darkness to watch the intent, horn-rimmed, screwed up concentration of four foreign, middle-aged gentlemen consorting maestoso, bowing and scraping. Out of the fidget Brahms slowly emerges like the Brocken, misty and far off and under another name. Four spotlights, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6987,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[245631],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-m403j-pop-music-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6987"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1136,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions\/1136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/normanstanfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}