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More on William Schuman by Drew Massey
In the current issue I offered Salmagundi readership a review of a biography by the composer William Schuman, a mid-century American symphonist who also was president of the Juilliard School and Lincoln Center for a number of years. If writing about music is like dancing about architecture, where, then, does that leave writing about writing about music? As a tonic for such troubling questions, here are a smattering of Schuman materials from the far flung web:
The author of the reviewed book, Steve Swayne, has put together a terrific site with multimedia excerpts of a number of Schuman’s works. I would particularly recommend either the Third Symphony or, what is perhaps his most well-known work, the New England Triptych.
As both an institutional mover and shaker and a composer, it can be tricky to picture exactly how Schuman might have been in person. An episode of the game show What’s My Line, though, gives an impression of his charm and sense of himself, in a way that a direct interview might not.
Finally, if you would like to see Swayne himself speak at length about Schuman’s work, he lectured at the Library of Congress last year about Schuman’s Seventh Symphony. This lecture is about an hour long, but gives an impression of Swayne’s exacting readings of Schuman’s work.
In a future issue of the magazine, I’ll be writing about some recent recordings of the British composer, conductor, and pianist Thomas Adès. Adès is a reluctant interviewer, but you can get an impression of his thinking on music by watching a video about a performance of Stravinsky’s Les Noces that he conducted (with interview segments of Adès interspersed).
In our last issue Greg Hrbek wrote about his nearly life-long obsession—I think we can safely call it that—with William Shatner, the singular and protean figure whose mainstream acting career (ranging from his portrayal of Captain Kirk in Star Trek to an Emmy-winning role in The Practice) is counter-balanced by his avant-kitsch spoken-word projects which find him performing rock lyrics over new versions of a disorientingly eclectic range of songs.
Since Hrbek’s piece appeared, Shatner has released a new recording, Seeking Major Tom, which Hrbek referred to in a private email (that reached the Salmagundi offices due to some unaccountable warp in the time-space continuum) as “probably the most important release since the invention of the player piano” (see “obsession,” above).
Here’s Hrbek from his essay in Salmagundi:
[Shatner’s] cover of “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” has become one of the most notorious artifacts in American popular culture. Depending on who you ask, it is either among the worst recordings ever made or the epitome of pure camp. Susan Sontag described camp as “a love of the exaggerated, the ‘off’, of things-being-what-they-are-not.” The Transformed Man is all those things. The songs are so exaggerated, so ‘off’ (warped by mannered spoken-word recitation, arranged in a style completely incongruous with the music’s original spirit), they lose all sense of prior identity. They are what-they-are-not. In other words, not Dylan, not the Beatles. Not so much bad copies as outlandish distortions. They bear about as much resemblance to their musical forebears as Ubu Roi did to its theatrical ones. You have to admit there’s a vision behind it all; and you can’t deny it’s a vision appreciated by a precious few.
— “The Science of Imaginary Solutions,” Salmagundi, #170-171, Spring Summer 2011
And here’s a track list and liner notes for songs Hrbek mentions in that essay which the author compiled especially for his Salmagundi readers in the adrenaline rush following the release of Shatner’s new record:
1. SPLEEN / LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS (5:54)
2. IN LOVE (4:46)
3. IT HASN’T HAPPENED YET (3:46)
4. PLANET EARTH (4:50)
The Beatles cover discussed in my essay has been hit and heard millions of times since the invention of the Internet. Much less listened to is the prelude to that track: a recitation of a Baudelaire poem, “Spleen” (When the low sky presses like a lid / On my spirit, heavy with pain). In 1998, thirty years after the release of The Transformed Man, Mr. Shatner recorded a spoken-word guest vocal for a Ben Folds side-project, Fear of Pop. That song, “In Love” (At puberty, I was sworn to secrecy / By the international brotherhood of lying fickle males), led to a 2004 album-length collaboration with Mr. Folds. The best-known track from that album is a cover of a hit by British pop band, Pulp. Lesser known is “It Hasn’t Happened Yet,” autobiographical lyrics by Mr. Shatner (When is the mountain scaled? / When do I feel I haven’t failed?). 2011: another concept album with guest appearances by members of Deep Purple and The Strokes. Mr. Shatner, eighty years old at the time of this release, renders Duran Duran’s New Wave song, “Planet Earth” (Look now, look all around / There’s no sign of life), in a tone and cadence suggestive of human consciousness immortalized in the body of an android.
Greg Hrbek’s most recent book, Destroy All Monsters, and other Stories, won the 2010 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction.
A related blog post: The Frankfurt School, Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories, and American Conservatism
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