A Minute with Miles

Words today from the great writer and critic Jacques Barzun. I’ve combined several related passages:

The words today of Hector Berlioz, writing about Beethoven:

Quotations, this week, from great musicians and writers. This is from the composer Ernest Bloch:

"Sonata” and “sonata form” are not the same thing, and that—in any kind of piece, not just sonatas—a movement composed in sonata form consists of three primary sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation.

“Sonata form” and the musical form known as the sonata are not the same thing. A sonata is a piece—usually for piano or for piano and one other instrument—that’s composed of several distinct sections called movements.

So here’s the famous riddle: Which came first, the chicken... or the violin? Or the piano? Or the valved horn? By the mid-to-late-1500s the members of the modern violin family had been perfected, and by 1600 the Baroque era in music had begun, with an explosion of music for the violin. The piano was invented in 1700 and eventually mass-produced, and by 1775 the Classical era in music was in full swing, with an explosion of music for the piano. The ranges and possibilities for brass instruments were increased enormously in the early 1800s when instrument makers figured out how to add valves to horns and trumpets, and the 19th century, the Romantic era in music, saw composers writing ever-more demanding and sophisticated music for the brass sections of their ever-expanding orchestras. Did all the new inventions fit new artistic trends… or were they responsible for them? Or both?

Franz von Suppé could be the poster child for composers who were extremely prolific and very famous in their own time, but who, if they’re now remembered at all, are only remembered for two or three pieces. In Von Suppé’s case, one of those pieces goes like this:

Fiddle is an older word than violin – there were instruments called fiddles long before violins. Violino, which is Italian for “violin,” is the diminutive form of viola, which until the 1700s was the generic term for any bowed string instrument. The word viola itself came from the Old French viole, which came from the Provençal viula, which came from the Medieval Latin vidula. I used to think, as others did, that the word fiddle also came from vidula. Pronounce the V in vidula in the German style, as an F, and, voilà! Vidula becomes fidula, which is awfully close to fiddle. I’ve recently learned, however, that things are probably the other way around. It turns out that the word Fidula is first found in Old High German in the 9th century, 200 years before the word vidula appears in Medieval Latin. So where did vidula come from? That seems to be a bit of a mystery.

One of the things I love most about the field of classical music is the way it brings together people from so many different countries. Throughout my career I’ve worked with musicians from the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Israel, Sweden, Finland, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Canada, France, Italy, Austria, and Germany. And I’m probably forgetting a few. Needless to say, the governments of all these countries haven’t always gotten along so well, to put it mildly. But in a lifetime of performing and teaching, I’ve never once witnessed an argument that had anything to do with where somebody was from, nor, for that matter, have I ever heard, among the musicians I’ve known, a single word of nationalist or racist invective. It’s very simple and very beautiful: when musicians come together, they come together to make music.

I came across a collection of the letters of Arturo Toscanini recently, and in thē introduction the editor writes, “A whole psychology textbook could be written about Toscanini and anger.” Well all I can say is that if there had been such a book, Toscanini should have read it. He may have been a great conductor, but he was also an ill-tempered tyrant. Because in his day conductors had absolute power over their orchestras, Toscanini never had to control his temper the way most people have to in civilized society. He could indulge it, in fact, and he did – often screaming at orchestras and treating orchestra musicians with great cruelty. Was he the only conductor to act this way? Certainly not. There’s a long list. Is such behavior indeed a symptom of psychological problems, of unresolved neuroses? I believe it is. Always. But let’s be clear: cruelty to musicians may once have been tolerated, but it’s not necessary for great music-making, and it never has been.