TT 532: Marijane Meaker’s memoir HIGHSMITH: A ROMANCE OF THE 1950's

Happy Pride

The news is not good. The Administration is shockingly reactionary and regressive. Today in New York City, the annual Pride March will be not just about gay rights but the larger issue of human decency.

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Nobody writes smoother prose than Patricia Highsmith, and she was also a rare crime writer that invented new plots from a whole cloth. The most famous book is The Talented Mr. Ripley; a short story, “The Snail-Watcher,” is unforgettable.

How did Highsmith find those perfect words, over and over again, to fill those memorable and surprising pages? It turns out that she worked from first thing in the morning until about 4 PM. After finally getting up from her typewriter, she would make martinis for herself and her girlfriend. She then took another martini into her study, shut the door, and read the dictionary for an hour before returning to her partner for dinner.

This is just one of the many wonderful details in Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950’s by Marijane Meaker. Meaker is perhaps best remembered as Vin Packer: If you’ve ever thumbed through a rack of ‘50’s paperback novels, you’ve seen Packer’s name; Spring Fire for Gold Medal was the huge bestseller, although there were about twenty other Packers in that era as well.

It is uncommon for a memoir documenting a love affair with a famous author to be written by another experienced writer. Meaker’s tale of words and wounds is technical, detailed, and psychologically acute.

The subtitle “A Romance of the 1950s” alludes to how difficult it was to be gay in that era. “You could still be fired for being a homosexual, or lose your lease, your straight friends, your family—even in a big city like Manhattan, you were safer in the closet.”

The opening of the book boasts a perfect page.

TT 531: Lalo Schifrin

and his peers

Johnny Mandel passed away in 2020; the Henry Mancini centennial was last year; Lalo Schifrin died yesterday at 93.

All three could play jazz professionally, all were good tunesmiths, all were possessed of a kind of instinctive genius when it came to orchestration. (In Hollywood, orchestration really matters!) In every case there is a huge discography with a few lucky hit tunes—mostly from the 1960s—accompanied by seemingly endless hackwork done on deadline.

Those few hit tunes are part of the fabric of humanity, rare moments when something truly popular has idiosyncrasy and complexity. For some, this the peak of their listening sophistication; for others, they are gateway drugs.

We need these hits. We need them desperately. Those three helped raise the musical IQ of American society!

On the other side is the idealistic perspective: “What could they have done if they hadn’t been so successful in a commercial industry?” There wasn’t a lot of obvious deeper engagement with the blend of jazz, classical, and pop that made the hits. There didn’t seem to be a profound late style or worthy final masterpieces. There was mostly just answering the phone, negotiating the contract, and turning out what the producer wanted—all the while making the kind of money that most composers or jazz pianists could only dream of making. (After he passed away, Mandel’s Malibu midcentury compound with five bedrooms and servant quarters was listed at $23.4 million, while YouTube offers a glimpse “Inside Henry Mancini’s $11.6 Million Malibu Home.”)

In the end, being a huge success in Hollywood doesn’t seem to help one be either a jazz pianist or a composer.

Still, we remain eternally grateful for their monumental contribution to everyday musical life. The three in competitive creative juxtaposition:

Johnny Mandel was the most sophisticated and competent. He could write in any style, and also contributed the best standards (“The Shadow of Your Smile” alone). His score to Point Blank is a modernist masterpiece.

Henry Mancini made the best records. Each detail is a jewel. Sensational easy listening. Mancini kept up with the times in impressive fashion; his themes from the 1980s like Newhart are still good.

Lalo Schifrin wrote one of the greatest pieces of “danger jazz” in history, the theme to Mission: Impossible! (The only other contender for top slot is the James Bond theme by Monty Norman and John Barry.) Schifrin’s score to Dirty Harry is his modernist masterpiece: those disembodied vocals over fierce funk rhythm section are unforgettable. Schifrin was the most competent instrumentalist, playing jazz piano at high level with Dizzy Gillespie and others. (At this early stage of his career, the Argentinian Schifrin was an early international exchange student of jazz, proving that anyone from anywhere on the globe could contribute to the music.)

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Is writing a good melody the most challenging thing to do? Maybe so. Some of Lalo Schifrin’s tunes border on the hopelessly banal: The great Steve McQueen movie The Cincinnati Kid is actively harmed by Schifrin’s title song, an uninspired square ditty in 12/8 that even Ray Charles can’t save.

However, Schifrin certainly could also come up with a memorable theme on occasion. “Danube Incident,” a cue for Mission: Impossible!, had a bit of a resurgence around the turn of the century when it provided the framework for the Portishead hit “Sour Times.”

Ben Street and Reid Anderson both called my attention to this track; for a moment The Bad Plus even considered covering “Sour Times.” But my deeper interest was caught by the source, which I found hopelessly addictive.

Tootie Heath was a straight-ahead drummer supreme, but he also liked to listen to rock, pop, and funk in the car. When Ben and I presented him with “Danube Incident,” Tootie loved it right away. Plastic silverware was placed inside the piano to emulate the sound of Schifrin’s cimbalom, and we turned Tootie’s incomparable cross-stick up in the mix.

Tootie later told me that of all the records that he made, his family members liked Tootie’s Tempo, especially “Danube Incident.”

Billy Hart book on the way

+ Politics and links

July 8! From Cymbal Press! Oceans of Time: The Musical Autobiography of Billy Hart.

Billy’s quartet with Walter Smith III, Ben Street, and myself will be at the Village Vanguard that week. Books will be for sale at the club and Billy will be happy to sign one for you.

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When I voted for Zohran Mamdani yesterday I actually felt something, like: Could this happen? It was unlike most times in the voting booth. A historic upset.

The race for NYC mayor seemed to reflect the general, where the Dems have been foisting the “party elders” on us since Hillary Clinton. It’s all been really low energy, and probably the biggest reason we have Trump v.2 in there: They can’t run anyone who people like! People like Zohran. It’s undeniable.

Dems need to learn to win, mainly through learning to take pleasure in helping the right charismatic person on their side to win. Mamdani and his team are showing the way. (Recommended reading, posted just before the election: “Up with Zohran” by Hamilton Nolan.)

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Other political comment: Many lefty publications on Substack are using A.I. art to decorate their posts. At some point I predict this to be an inflection point, where it will become rather shameful to act this way. Get out ahead of the curve. Take a photo, or reprint commercial art like a book or album cover, or pay an illustrator. (Illustrators are cheap, by the way, and getting cheaper.)

Relevant post: “Erotic Decisions” by Tamara. We all want to live an erotic life, correct? Don’t use A.I. art.

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Read all about it:

Astonishing comment on Brian Wilson by Matthew Guerrieri.

Jacob Garchik transcribes Miles Davis on multiple version of “Oleo.” This is more like it.

Vinnie Sperrazza listens to Al Foster: Part one, part two.

I felt for Vin when he mentioned agreeing with Stanley Crouch about something (part one) and was immediately attacked in the comments. (“Welcome to my life,” l joked to Vin, before participating in the argument on his page.)

The most relevant Crouch essay on the topic of 70’s fusion—including Miles Davis—remains a truly awesome Village Voice piece from 1979, “Black Music: Bringing Atlantis Up to the Top.”

TT 530 part two: Richter's Diabelli Variations and Arrau's Schubert C minor sonata

(parenthetical to previous Alfred Brendel post)

Lazy Sunday (“Wake up in the late afternoon”). After publishing a fairly concise comment on the late Alfred Brendel, I've kept in the mode of listening to great classical piano music.

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In high school I mostly cared about jazz, although the Glenn Gould recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations made an impression. My friend Eric Stassen (who knew so much more about European repertoire than me) followed up by giving me Sviatoslav Richter’s CD of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations (recorded 1986), which I listened to just as much as Gould’s Goldberg.

After I got to New York in 1991, I studied a bit with excellent classical pianist Fabio Gardenal at NYU and started buying LPs of standard repertoire on the street. Quite literally the street: There would be outdoor vendors near Waverly Place offering terrific finds for a modest price. CDs were expensive, so old LPs were the way to acquire some basic familiarity with core repertoire.

Somewhere in there I found a copy of Joseph Horowitz’s book Conversations with Arrau. While probably intended for those who already knew who Claudio Arrau was, the volume also proved to be an engaging introduction to the lore of the classical virtuoso. On Waverly Place they had Arrau’s Phillips records of Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, and Liszt for $2 a pop. I’d buy a new LP every week and listen while reading what Arrau had to say about the repertoire.

In my experience, understanding the dimensions of pre-20th Century repertoire is not that hard. Each composer is so different. One Beethoven, two Beethoven, three Beethoven: The language then unlocks. Same for anyone else truly great in the canon. (In America this is all frequently considered a hopelessly esoteric topic, but in Europe many relatively young people still sort of “get” the great composers the way they “get” Shakespeare or Orson Welles.)

Pretty soon I had amassed a large library of recordings and scores. I couldn’t really play classical piano—Of course, I couldn’t really play jazz, either. But the cheerful pursuit of both disciplines would go on to essentially be the story of my life, an undertaking that provides me with an infinite amount of material to study, practice, and attempt to make my own.

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When looking over Jed Distler’s list of top-shelf Alfred Brendel, I noticed that he cited recordings of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and Schubert’s C Minor sonata. I gave a quick listen, and immediately returned both stamped, “no sale.”

Part of what Brendel is up against is my own history as a listener. I have already mentioned Richter in Diabelli, while the Schubert C minor was one of my favorite Arrau LPs.

This is one of the major problems faced by all critics in any genre: How do you get away from first love? Early moments of initial contact can never be undone. Youthful passions afflict our every judgement. It’s the only real reason any of us are in this game anyway: We are still chasing that germinal intoxication.

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Tabling Brendel for now, I went back and re-listened to Richter and Arrau.

The Diabelli Variations is late Beethoven, quite tough and experimental in its way. Famously Beethoven thought the proposed theme was horrible—I dunno, it’s not that bad—and proceeded to take it apart for an hour. Each variation is quite different from the next, the emotions range from bitter sarcasm to lofty transcendence. One of the strengths of Richter’s recording is how each track delivers a radically new sonic image, even though it is live record with an out-of-tune piano. Incredible piece and incredible performance.

The C minor sonata of Schubert is also a late work, one of three final sonatas. Looking back, I can see now that I liked this sonata partly because it is so clearly modeled on Beethoven (the adagio is even in A-flat) but sounds so different. Arrau tells the story directly and without fuss. I read somewhere that Arrau’s piano sound was “bronze,” a good description, although his left hand is no longer quite as even as it could be on this circa-1980 recording. (Arrau was born in 1903, and time comes for us all.)

Temperamentally Richter and Arrau inhabit different places of the beat. Richter is quicksilver, rushing into each new event with gusto, while Arrau is measured, appropriate, and secure. But both have rhythm; rhythm in a cosmic sense, rhythm in a Classical sense. When they start an Allegro there is absolutely no doubt of the organization of tempo. The phrases exist against an (unheard) ground bass.

My teacher Sophia Rosoff called it “emotional rhythm,” after Virginia Woolf, who wrote in a diary:

Style is a very simple matter: it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can't dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it; and in writing (such is my present belief) one has to recapture this, and set this working (which has nothing apparently to do with words) and then, as it breaks and tumbles in the mind, it makes words to fit it. But no doubt I shall think differently next year.

I will keep listening to Alfred Brendel, and to Maurizio Pollini also. (I posted a somewhat skeptical note after Pollini’s recent passing.) They were both immensely famous but neither was ever my favorite, especially in Beethoven or Schubert. When Brendel or Pollini begin an Allegro, I just don’t always hear enough rhythm, at least compared to most Richter or Arrau. (To my mind, both Brendel and Pollini are better in Beethoven concertos than Beethoven sonatas, for the orchestra takes on so much of the essential beat.) But, following Virginia Woolf’s lead, I will keep leaving room to “think differently next year.”

TT 530: RIP Alfred Brendel

Jed Distler's guide, Brendel's writing, plus piano music circa 1921, starting with Brendel's OUTSTANDING recording of the Busoni Toccata

Jed Distler’s podcast The Piano Maven is a terrific listen (footnote 1) and Distler’s latest episode offers ten favorite Brendel recordings.

I trust Distler, and have made a note of his choices. (Brendel is not the only mid-century giant who recorded major pieces three or four times, so it can be a bit troublesome sorting out what is what on the streaming services.)

Schubert C minor sonata the first recording on Vanguard

Mozart Concertos in D minor and C minor with Charles Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Schoenberg Concerto on DG with Rafael Kubelik and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

Liszt Totentanz with Bernard Haitink and London (I just listened to this, it’s great, never would have known about it but for Distler)

Beethoven Diabelli Variations 1988 Phillips

Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition first version for Vox

Mozart Sonata in F, K 533 from 2003, although Distler also recommends the 2008 farewell concert

Weber Sonata in A-flat

Schumann Concerto Kurt Sanderling 1998

Brahms Variations on an Original Theme

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I never saw Brendel live in the 1990s, in part because his records of the core repertoire never really resonated at home. He obviously could play the music, but I did not “feel it.” Additionally, the fraught act of managing my slim finances helped keep me away from Brendel at Carnegie Hall.

While the pianist had an enormous career supported by a devoted fan base, my casual criticism was not unique. Most of the obituaries note that some connoisseurs thought that Brendel was overrated, and in fact Jed Distler himself has a complicated relationship to Brendel.

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To muddy the waters further, I went through a love-hate relationship with Brendel’s copious writings on music. As a college student I was initially delighted with his first book, Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts, but soon had an about-face where I decided that Brendel was just too high-handed and aversive.

Brendel usually starts an essay from a place of scolding: “Let me tell you why so many are wrong about this esoteric topic.” Good examples of this rhetorical gambit are found in Brendel’s first three essays on Liszt, all three written years apart, all commencing with a complaint about then-current Liszt reception. At one point Brendel tries to take the argument into Charles Rosen’s territory, decrying what Rosen says about Liszt in Rosen’s The Romantic Generation. Here I simply must put my foot down and insist that when it comes to Franz Liszt, Charles Rosen is right and Alfred Brendel is wrong. (Footnote 2.)

That said, spending the last few days poking around in the final compilation Music, Sense, and Nonsense (which includes Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts among other more recent pieces) was undoubtedly a good use of my time, for the essays are entertaining and educational. They also clearly made an impression: With some regret, I acknowledge that Brendel is certainly an influence on whatever I try to do in my own writing.

One of the most charming chapters is “A Lifetime of Recording,” which tracks Brendel’s progress with various labels and the industry. One paragraph is a suitable coda to Distler’s list. (Footnote 3.)

In a separate essay on live recording, Brendel is particularly happy with the 1983 Beethoven concerto cycle in Chicago with James Levine conducting. I just listened to the 4th Concerto and was impressed by the tremendous amount of rhythmic flexibility in both pianist and orchestra.

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There’s always more to learn. Not long ago I heard a record by Brendel that just blew me out of the water, a live performance of the Busoni Toccata in Vienna in 1979. Holy moly!

If I had heard this in the 1990s, I might have a completely different relationship to Brendel. It’s not too late, which is why I copied down the lists from Distler and Brendel himself: I want to refer to this page when revisiting the late great pianist’s recorded legacy in the future.

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Ferruccio Busoni is already someone I return to with interest. To some extent his compositional output might have been too eclectic, but a singular image finally emerges in his late work, with the Toccata generally considered to be one of his best pieces. (Footnote 4.)

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The Toccata is from 1921, a particularly good year for piano repertoire from all over the globe. There was not a unified idiom or message, everything was up for grabs, the assortment of masterful sounds is wildly diverse.

(Debussy, Scriabin, Reger, and Granados had not made it to the 1920s; Ravel had finished his last big piano work, Le Tombeau de Couperin, in 1917. Atonality was brand new and not widely accepted. Ragtime had landed, but just peeking through the curtain was much more jazz and pop music to come.)

Igor Stravinsky Trois mouvements de Petrouchka (1921) Stravinsky only wrote one virtuoso showcase, and many would declare it his most important piano work. I was delighted to hear an up close version from Owen Williams in an ASU practice room a couple of months ago.

Arnold Schoenberg Suite for Piano Op. 25 (1921-23) As with Trois mouvements de Petrouchka, Schoenberg’s Suite is the most popular work of this composer (at least for virtuosos). Indeed, this is surely one of the two most performed 12-tone works in all of piano history, with the comparatively easy Webern Variations being the other. The Suite is complex—naturally—but a good live performance can deliver something absolutely rarified. A few years ago I sat in the front row in a small hall while Steven Beck delivered a mesmerizing sermon of pure dissonance.

Sergei Rachmaninoff, Paraphrase of Kreisler’s Liebesleid (1921) With typical snobbery, Alfred Brendel insists that Rachmaninoff was not a genius but a grand seigneur. While I personally would have no problem calling Rachmaninoff a genius, it’s also true that some of his most famous compositions can be a bit on the nose. At any rate, I have unqualified reverence for the transcriptions. “Liebeslied” is a charming waltz by the famous violinist, and Rachmaninoff’s own recording of his marvelous transcription is one of the greatest things of all time.

Gabriel Faure, Nocturne no. 13 in B minor (1921) Faure’s last piano work starts like Bach but soon expands into a whole other universe of harmonic possibility. The substantial dimensions suggest a Ballade. Vladimir Horowitz made this one almost his own personal property.

Ferruccio Busoni Toccata “Preludio, Fantasia, Ciaccona” (1921) Two brilliant etudes surround a quasi-religious episode in Busoni’s remarkable “visionary” style. Busoni was always somewhat neoclassic, but his late work added straight triads used in a blocky and unexpected way. This harmonic grammar is elusive and “incorrect,” but it works. I’m still not used to writing this sentence, but: The best recording I’ve heard is by Alfred Brendel.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold Three Pieces from Much Ado About Nothing (1921) There is not much Richard Strauss or Gustav Mahler for the solo pianist to play; this is what we have instead, a little set not in the active repertoire, yet probably Korngold’s best solo piano piece. (The early sonatas from Korngold’s prodigy years are amazing but not quite there.) Recommended recording: Martin Jones.

Darius Milhaud Saudades do Brasil (1920-1921) This polytonal and groovy tribute to Rio de Janeiro includes Milhaud’s most popular piano pieces. The great composer William Bolcom, who also wrote many delightful ragtimes (a shared interest with Milhaud), plays the suite on an old Nonesuch LP.

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Widening the frame away from 1921 by a year or two in each direction produces much more….

Charles Griffes Piano Sonata (1919) The talented American composer sadly died young in 1920. His lone sonata successfully marries a bit of Debussy and Scriabin to New World grit. I like Leonid Hambro (which also must have been one of the first recordings) but that’s hard to find. Garrick Ohlsson’s recent Griffes overview is excellent.

Carl Nielsen Suite Op. 45 (1919-20) Nielsen was not a dedicated piano composer, at least when compared to his powerful symphonic writing, but the Suite has a mysterious and elusive beauty and boasts absolutely unpredictable harmonic progressions. Recommended recording: Leif Ove Andsnes.

Leopold Godowsky, Triakontameron, (1919-1920) Godowsky wrote 30 pieces in 3/4 time covering six volumes; he claimed to have written each in a single day. All the pieces have quality, and some are genuinely interesting. I prefer certain Godowsky transcriptions and the brilliant original Java Suite, but Triakontameron is still part of a certain moment of extreme fecundity in the piano world. Godowsky himself made a piano roll of the most famous movement, “Alt-Wien.”

Nikolai Medtner Sonata-Reminiscenza (1920) Like his friend and peer Rachmanioff, Medtner was a bit out-of-step with contemporary thought. His best music has truly wonderful qualities, and the Sonata-Reminiscenza might be his most immediately charismatic larger work; the opening theme is unforgettable. Marc-André Hamelin’s recording is exceptional.

Béla Bartók Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs (1920) Charles Rosen regarded Improvisations as one of Bartók’s best piano pieces; Rosen also made an excellent recording. The work is attractive but rather patchwork compared to authentic Bartók masterpieces Three Etudes (1918) or Piano Sonata (1926).

Heitor Villa-Lobos, Rudepoêma (1921-26) The largest piano work by Villa-Lobos is a real adventure, a deep percussive dive into the innards of the piano. Recommended recording: Marc-André Hamelin.

Paul Hindemith Suite 1922 (1922) In what is perhaps a minority opinion, I regard the uptempo moments from Suite 1922 as the peak of Hindemith’s piano writing. (Others would argue for the Sonatas or Ludus Tonalis.) Indeed, I’ll go a step further, and rank the suite as the best “jazzy” work from a European composer of the era. I just love the live Sviatoslav Richter recording from late in Richter’s life.

Sergei Prokofiev Two Pieces from "The Love for Three Oranges" (1922) Prokofiev’s masterful transcription of a March and Scherzo from his 1919 opera have proven to be among his most popular piano pieces. Recommended recording: Frederic Chiu.

Dmitri Shostakovich Three Fantastic Dances (1920-22) Written when just a teenager, these charming works show that the composer already had a personal style well in hand. Shostakovich clearly agreed, for he took the time to record them himself in the 1940s.

There’s surely much more, especially from composers I don’t know so well such as Poulenc, Krenek, Szymanowski, de Falla or Frank Bridge. I’d put Ruth Crawford Seeger’s gorgeous Nine Preludes in there, but since they are from 1924-1928, that is starting to feel like a little bit of a different historical moment.

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Footnotes

1. Jed Distler notifies his Piano Maven listeners via Substack. Not long ago Distler reviewed the Debussy record of Hiroko Sasaki; Hiroko will be my duet parter on the next “classical” recording featuring my Sonata for Piano Four-Hands.

2. The Brendel/Rosen debate comes down to Rosen’s assertion that something like the hit Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 is central to Liszt’s identity, whereas Brendel wants the layperson to learn about the subtle harmonic innovations of the obscure Variations on "Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen." Again, Rosen is obviously right. (The discussion of Liszt in The Romantic Generation is just fabulous overall: at one point Rosen compares Art Tatum playing “Tea for Two” to Liszt taking up an opera melody, a superb and snobbery-free analogy.)

3. On his list of preferred records, Brendel praises his own Vallée d'Obermann. I listened. He can play this music well, but not for the first time I am left with the impression that Brendel lacks a natural melodic line. Compare stately Claudio Arrau or demonic Lazar Berman in Obermann; both can “just play the pretty tunes” in a manner that can elude Brendel.

4. One of Brendel’s earliest recordings was the very first traversal of Busoni’s massive Fantasia Contrappuntistica, just recently reissued in excellent sound as part of the historical Toblach Ausgabe series, a release that also includes intriguing rarities by Liszt and Richard Strauss.