Last Night
Last Night: Alex Ross at Town Hall
Last night, I took the PubliCalendar's advice and went to Town Hall to see Alex Ross, the New Yorker's acclaimed classical music critic. He's on a book tour for his new collection of essays, Listen to This
, and he gave a lecture on the persistence of descending and repetitive chromatic bass lines that have anchored sad songs throughout the history of music.
He had sound clips—Monteverdi, Cavalli, Bach, remote Transylvanian folk songs, Purcell, 1930s delta blues, the Eagles' Hotel California, Bob Dylan, Ligeti, and Led Zeppelin—to prove his thesis, which was, as far as I understood it: basso continuos that descend down a chromatic scale mimic the breathing pattern of someone who's crying. Meanwhile, the melodic treble lines that dance over the repetitive bass—transforming from style to style over the centuries—mimic the actual crying over the rhythmic breathing.
And so the "Chacona/Lamento" genre, as Ross neatly classified this persistent model (Chacona is a Spanish-guitar-driven folk style from the late 1500s that Ross used as the defining version of the motif), is the ultimate in catharsis. After all, Ross pointed out, you feel much better after a good cry.
Ross' final sound clip juxtaposed Dylan's "Simple Twist of Fate" ("forget about a simple twist of fate") with Purcell's "Dido's Lament," (where Queen Dido urges "but ah! forget my fate").
I'm not a big Dylan fan, but it was mind-blowing to watch Ross' sprawling musical thesis come together so specifically in the lyrics of sad jilted lovers, centuries apart.
He had sound clips—Monteverdi, Cavalli, Bach, remote Transylvanian folk songs, Purcell, 1930s delta blues, the Eagles' Hotel California, Bob Dylan, Ligeti, and Led Zeppelin—to prove his thesis, which was, as far as I understood it: basso continuos that descend down a chromatic scale mimic the breathing pattern of someone who's crying. Meanwhile, the melodic treble lines that dance over the repetitive bass—transforming from style to style over the centuries—mimic the actual crying over the rhythmic breathing.
And so the "Chacona/Lamento" genre, as Ross neatly classified this persistent model (Chacona is a Spanish-guitar-driven folk style from the late 1500s that Ross used as the defining version of the motif), is the ultimate in catharsis. After all, Ross pointed out, you feel much better after a good cry.
Ross' final sound clip juxtaposed Dylan's "Simple Twist of Fate" ("forget about a simple twist of fate") with Purcell's "Dido's Lament," (where Queen Dido urges "but ah! forget my fate").
I'm not a big Dylan fan, but it was mind-blowing to watch Ross' sprawling musical thesis come together so specifically in the lyrics of sad jilted lovers, centuries apart.
