Asked rather less often than the tiresome, “Who is your
favourite composer?”, people do occasionally pose the more entertaining, “Who
is your least favourite composer?” It’s
an impossible question to answer because, while it is astonishingly easy to
list pieces of music one never wants to hear again (strange how much easier it
is to compile this list than one of pieces one could not live without), every
composer whose music appears on that list can salvage their reputations with at
least one moderately acceptable musical offering. We do not write a composer off for writing a
few bad pieces; even if we are happy to describe a composer as “great” on the
strength of one or two really good works (can one claim every single Bach
Chorale Prelude to be the work of an absolute genius?).
Usually at this time of year, if anyone asks me which work I’d
like never to hear again, I’d have no hesitation in pouncing on Lowell Mason’s banal
Joy to the World, possibly the most
irritating and overblown of all Christmassy melodies. (I find it incredible that there are still
sadly deranged people out there who believe this piece of musical drivel to be
by Handel: you have to be pretty ignorant of Handel’s genius to recognise any
connection.) But even then, I would
never write off Mason as my least favourite composer (he did, after all,
compile some rather nice tunes in his many song books for children), and I live
in hope that I might one day see the light and recognise what this Christmas tune
has that justifies its ceaseless exposure for around two months of the year.
However, this year even Mason’s music has an allure, largely
because it is not by Ludovico Einaudi, a composer of whom I had never heard
until I attended a piano recital last week.
I hope you will, like me, on hearing this name instantly ask;
“who?” I must confess that when I saw
his name on the recital programme my initial reaction was that it was a
spoof. After all while the given name is
Italian-ish, there is something suspiciously concocted about the family name,
which could loosely be translated as “One who hears oneself”, and when I heard
the piece performed – called Divenire – it
sounded suspiciously like a basic improvisation using simple chords which, after
a predetermined period of time, stopped dead in its tracks. The “programme note” with the recital, and I
put it in inverted commas because it conformed to none of the criteria one
would normally expect in a recital, was of use only if you had the score in
front of you (which even the pianist did not), since it merely suggested points
of reference in specific bars. It was
dreary, aimless, unstructured and served no point other than to fill a bit of
time. I left convinced it was a very
feeble attempt to hoodwink a gullible provincial audience.
But then, during the week, two students presented the same
work to me and I began to wonder. None
of the performances convinced me it was anything other than a pointless waste
of time and (admittedly minimal) effort, but clearly the students were under
the impression it was serious music, and in fairness to them and to Einaudi, I
tried to find out more. I came across an
article dated April this year from the London based Daily Telegraph in which a nicely impartial reporter wrote; "The music of Ludovico Einaudi may defy definition – you
could call it pop, classical, minimalist, easy listening”. What dread such a statement engenders in my
heart. We do like to categorise things,
and I am the first to accept that defining music in such terms is dangerous and
misleading. But there are limits. It’s a bit like suggesting a certain drink
defines definition – "you could call it wet or dry, sweet or sour, alcoholic or
non-alcoholic, tasty or bland" - there have to be some basic perameters. I am reminded of the time André Previn was
supposed to write a new work for the Cardiff Festival of Twentieth Century
Music. In charge of writing the
programme notes, nothing I did could get Previn to respond to my request for
some description of the new piece. In
the end, the Festival Director wrote to him direct and received this matchless description
of the new work; “It may be long, it may be short. It may be fast or slow. It is scored for a flexible ensemble which probably
includes a piano.” As the Director
deduced; “He hasn’t bloody written it yet!”
The Daily Telegraph piece
also suggested that Einaudi has legions of “quietly fanatical fans” (whatever
they are), and further trawling through the dark recesses of cyberspace, one
encounters some of these in full (quiet) voice; “So cute. I love him!” writes
Hailey Lytle (albeit beside a picture of a boxer dog, so to whom she is
referring remains a mystery). The more
verbose and deeply perceptive Mohammad Nabeel describes Einaudi’s music as “Very
very. Very. Very nice”. Thornham10 has a
very clear view; “Just amazing this sing cleanses the mind” (of both grammar
and spelling, it seems), while of the 6 million (I kid you not!) who have viewed
a performance of Divenire on YouTube,
Nick1309 is a little obscure in his comment; “it makes me come the frissons!!”,
although his fellow-listener Petr Kolář has neither any reservations nor the
need to hide behind pairs of exclamation marks; “this is masterpiece. I love
that”.
And if the impression is that Einaudi’s fans are about as eloquent
in English as he is in music, here is something rather more substantive from
Adarsh Rao; “I live and die for this piece of music. Ever since 2009 I've heard
this song on almost everyday of my life. I'm learning to play this on piano and
will learn to play it on violin too. I ll play this on every occasion of my
life and can't go by a day without listening to it and I hope my family plays
this on my funeral”. The piece which poor
Mr Rao’s family must by now be heartily sick of is I Giorno, which is almost as dire as Divenire. What is it about
this aimless, drivelling and pointless music which gets so many people so
(quietly) excited? It passes me by. Are people’s emotions so superficial that
this adequately reflects their mood or fulfils their need for the intensity of
experience which only music can provide?
I would hope that one of Einaudi’s quietly fanatical fans
will be able to explain what his music has that I fail to appreciate, but
unless and until they do, he remains the best placed candidate for my Least Favourite
Composer.
Dr Marc,
ReplyDeleteGood to hear that Paul de Senneville and Olivier Toussaint, the composers behind the Clayderman bandwagon, have some competition to head your "least favourite" list.
This posting send me scurrying to YouTube to find out what sort of music could possibly match your description. And funnily enough your comments and those of his fans both seem to apply.
Yes it does sound like someone improvising with a very limited repertoire of chords, and yes it lacks so many of the distinguishing features of pop, classical, minimalist and easy listening that it could be a bit of each. And a bit like the taste of intensively farmed chicken, there's almost nothing there, but with a bit of imagination you can persuade yourself that there is. And yes it is "nice, very very nice", at least in the sense that this expression is (or was, when I was a student) was used to damn with faint praise something that lacked any individuality or strong characteristics that might offend.
To me it sounds like hotel lobby music, lift music or (perhaps worse) background music to the slideshow of the hotel facilities which plays in endless loops on channel 1 of the hotel TV. Inoffensive, mildly hypnotic, relaxing, vanilla flavoured, saline-drip sort of music, music that comes in small packets of blended apple and banana for those who are just starting on solids, music intended to fill in the uncomfortable gaps when one might otherwise be tempted to think, music to help time pass as painlessly as possible.
And having said all that, as I write I find it playing over in my mind. Despite the lack of a theme, I found myself trying to hum it.
It is catchy.... But whether like Cold Play, or like a cold, I cannot say.
Dr Peter