For A Symphony, Is It Funny?

So we went to see the L.A. Philharmonic with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting at the new Frank Gehry designed Walt Disney Concert Hall. Partly to see what the fuss was about the building (new for us, it wasn't here when we left) was and partly to listen to Beethoven, something I wouldn't have been caught dead doing when I was a teenager or a twenty something. But now that I have so much less to prove I can listen to Beethoven and marvel at the music. And also marvel at how many film composers just totally rip him off.

Anyway, listening to Beethoven now, in the aughts, is different than listening to him when he composed the music. For one thing he was breaking rules then, so people were shocked, shocked! But I listen to it and it just sounds pretty. It sounds marvelously, wonderously, gorgeously, telentedly, stupendously pretty, but I can't hear the rules breaking. And I wonder what it would be like to hear the rules breaking. Would I have to spend a couple years only listening to Bach and then listen to Beethoven to hear the rules break?

Probably nothing at this point could make it seem new and out-of-bounds. Partly because I'm such a rock-and-roll-punk-john-cage-schoenberg modernist, (just making up one of those german words there) and partly because I am pretty ignorant of the rules of classical composing. Scherzo? What's a Scherzo? It sounds germanic so I'm randomly capitalizing it.

For example (of my ignorance), who knew that the 8th Symphony is a joke? It's supposed to be FUNNY. Apparently the bassoons keep on correcting the strings, who keep on starting a little phrase in the wrong key, stopping, getting a correction from the bassoons and starting again. Who knew that the metronome was INVENTED during Beethoven's lifetime, and that he thought metronomes were super-duper, and so he added a little homage to the metronome in the 8th - with the bassoons again. I mean bassoon players everywhere must become jubuliant when orchestras schedule the 8th. "We get to do the puffy cheeked metronome thing AND correct those snotty strings!!!!!" Well I bet people who attend the symphony and read the program notes know these things, but I was pretty ignorant until I read my program.

But gosh, it is fun to go to the orchestra. The new Disney Hall is warm and intimate and has lovely accoustics. And it's wonderful to see the musicians play their instruments. I don't really listen to orchestral music and think of the component parts, but when you see the orchestra you see the tool that is making the noise. All the different kinds of horns, the wood winds. All the spit maintenance that happens. And it's rather thrilling, during the 7th Symphony when Beethoven just jumps the melody from section to section and you can see the melody move between them. It's rather bravura.

There was also, I thought, a rather dynamite new work commissioned for the LA Phil by Anders Hillborg that had a dynamite percussive ending, I really love when pianos are used as percussion instruments.

So there you have it. The new hall is a great addition to LA, it's a lovely place to hear music and I'm glad the LA Phil is doing the job it's doing.