On Enjoying Difficult Music

Last night, I finished downloading the 2000 reissue of Pierre Boulez's DG recording of Complete Webern. Everything Webern published in his lifetime as well as his early, unpublished stuff and posthumous releases are packed onto 6 discs, totaling about 6 hours. All of his 31 published scores clock in at around 3 hours, the length of just one Mozart opera. That his influence on postwar music has been so pervasive is really amazing.

I had been interested in hearing more Webern after picking up a budget priced CD of his orchestral works. I liked that they were mostly about 3-6 minutes long and so could be easily digested or gone back to and listened again to catch what I inevitably would miss in these dense but sparse compositions. I'm really starting to like Webern; more than Schoenberg - another tough composer I felt I should get over my preconceptions about and just listen to. This is not easy listening music, that's for sure. Even his uber-romantic, Mahler-influenced romantic pieces (which are even tonal!) are tough to crack. But it's rewarding to hear how the melodic line jumps from instrument to instrument, and how everything really does fit together despite sounding chaotic. He has a reputation as an emotionless composer, but I hear quite a bit of emotion: there's the typical-for-atonal-music overwhelming terror and despair in, say, the 6 pieces for Orchestra, but there's some beauty, too, some really gorgeous and affecting shifts in volume in the way he ends some of his movements - I'm thinking, specifically, of the end of the first movement in his 5 pieces for string orchestra; there's also some humor, too. Hearing sarcasm, or anything remotely comedic, was a genuine surprise, but it's there. Especially in the piano pieces.

Anyway, if you're interested in getting some stuff that your friends will think your pretentious for trying to appreciate, or if you want to scare little children/roommates/whoever, then I would suggest picking up either of these Naxos recordings. If you like those, try and find the complete works.