I was a “quiz inquisitor” at my German class last Thursday. I had prepared, and then delivered, a musical quiz. I kept it reasonably brief. There were six questions. It didn’t go particularly well. Then again, it didn’t go particularly badly. My German was okay; I had taken the precaution of running it by an Austrian friend of mine beforehand. The class engaged, got some answers right and others not. I was well prepared, and the visual aids and the brief musical recordings were ready, although, absurdly, I got caught up in the chat and sometimes forgot to play them. I had “ripped” and “burned” a CD. The tech worked well. The quiz proceeded apace. One member of the class did particularly well and won the token prize, aus der Schweiz, a bar of Toblerone. At the end there was a polite smattering of applause. But I felt that I didn’t really connect. I’m used to coming away from any presentation with a sense of flatness, but on this occasion that feeling was unusually intense. I don’t really have a performer’s temperament. I decided to blow away the cobwebs by taking a walk round the Milngavie Reservoir, of a beautiful afternoon. The autumn colours were intense. My fretful thoughts were a jumble of recollections of the quiz questions, interspersed with other preoccupations of the day.
Question 1 was an ancient recording of Bertolt Brecht singing, with his remarkably guttural rrrrrrs, Kurt Weill’s Mack the Knife or, more correctly, Die Moritat von Mackie Messer, from Die Dreigroschenoper, the Threepenny Opera. Question 2 was a follow-on, Weill’s Bilbao Song sung by Lotte Lenya. Who was the singer? Clue: a picture from the film From Russia with Love, of Sean Connery pinning Lotte, playing the part of Rosa Klebb, to the wall, using a chair, in order to avoid being kicked by a winklepicker, so to speak, laced with Fugu poison, a neurotoxin.
Lotte Lenya had a beautiful voice, so fragile, tuneful and musical. She was Weill’s muse, as well as his wife. He heard all his early songs, imagined them, sung in her voice. It’s a soprano voice. Incidentally, have you noticed the way that ladies who use their voice in the public arena, in politics, in the media, are pitching their voice down, from soprano to mezzo to contralto? It is said that Margaret Thatcher trained herself in this way, in an attempt to avoid a hectoring, badgering tone. But this tendency has descended to a new level. It is particularly evident on the radio, and with speakers from the United States. It is the antithesis of Antipodean “upspeak” which is often thought of, particularly by those who naturally use it, as evidence of “cringe”, a tentativeness, a kind of built-in apology for whatever it is you are saying. This new phenomenon may be called “downspeak”, where the speaker ends the sentence not merely at a low pitch, but with a kind of amphibian croak, reminiscent of Henry Kissinger in his later years, when he sounded like an inscrutable Sphinx, or an oracular cicada. Listen out for it. Once you’ve spotted it, you begin to hear it all the time. Perhaps it is the newest version of the 1980s Dallas-Dynasty version of padded shoulders, when power-dressers looked like American footballers.
Question 3 was a picture of a concert hall in Vienna. Which one? I played the opening to Strauss’ The Blue Danube, which disappears in audience applause. What happens next? This was a recording of the traditional first encore from the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year Concert from the Musikverein. What happened next was that Daniel Barenboim and the orchestra wished everybody a Happy New Year.
Talking of voices on the radio, and “downspeak”, I’m intrigued by the latest predilection, on BBC Radio 4, for “crashing the pips”. In a previous age this was considered anathema. Now it’s de rigueur. Radio apparently abhors a vacuum – dead air. Even a second of silence is too much. This is rather in keeping with the tendency to embellish documentary programmes with background “music”. I say “music”, but really I mean musical drivel. I have the sense that programme makers are being guided, misguided, by managerial SPAVs who think they can effect an improvement. Some of the best of radio is pure silence. I particularly enjoy the silence at the commencement of the six o’clock news. After the tolling bells of Big Ben (themselves beguiling because, unlike RVW’s London Symphony, they are not straight crotchets but somewhat syncopated) the newsreader says, “This is the six o’clock news, read by —- ——. Good evening.”
Protracted silence. Longer than you’d think.
BONG…
Question 4 was a picture of the frontispiece of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. Why was it damaged? (Hint – the opening to the symphony’s funeral march. I forgot to play it!) Beethoven had originally dedicated the Eroica to Napoleon, but when Napoleon declared himself emperor, Beethoven lost his temper and gouged his name off the page.
Question 5 was multiple choice. It showed the quotation above the last movement of Beethoven’s last work, the String Quartet Op. 135.
Must it be? It must be! It must be!
What must be?
- I have run out of musical ideas, and must retire.
- Death is inevitable, and I must face up to it.
- My deafness is incurable.
- I really ought to pay the bill for my dirty laundry.
Of course the answer is (d). But this is probably apocryphal. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera has a slightly different version. Beethoven was insisting that someone pay him money he was owed. But the important point is that the “es muss sein” quote was not hifalutin, but quite mundane. Heaviness to lightness, Kundera would say, and not the other way around.
Question 6. I had a montage of composers’ portraits – Vaughan Williams, Dvorak, Schubert, Bruckner, and Mahler. What did they have in common with Beethoven? Hint – the solo horn opening to Schubert’s Great C major. Answer: they all write nine symphonies. (More or less.)
Anyway, it’s all done and dusted. Fret not. I find this a difficult time of year. The clock jiggery-pokery has been effected, and the ghastly prospects of Halloween and Guy Fawkes loom. I’ve got a ticket for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in Glasgow City Halls on Friday so can dodge the tricker-treaters. Mozart – Webern – Mozart. Not musical drivel. But maybe that’s why I’m fretful. Maybe the quiz was too hifalutin. Am I a musical snob?
jamescalumcampbell 