The Pianist and the Critic

(The following is an article I wrote five years ago. I’d almost forgotten about it till this morning, when by chance I came across it on the web. Amazingly, it found its way to the Wladyslaw Szpilman "The Pianist" Official Homepage (http://www.szpilman.net). It is an impassioned piece that I enjoyed re-reading.)

THE PIANIST AND THE CRITIC

“Those who can’t do, review.”

by Leonardo Ciampa

Last night I finally saw Roman Polanski’s film, The Pianist. I avoided it like the plague, the bitter taste from Shine being still in my mouth. (Shine was a perfectly enjoyable movie, until I actually heard Mr. Helfgott play in real life. Perhaps he was so named because even mit der Hilfe Gottes he still can’t play accurately.)

Not so with the Pianist and its subject, Wladyslaw Szpilman.

Firstly, just in terms of moviemaking itself, The Pianist is a phenomenal artistic achievement. This fact was all the more palpable because the previous movie my wife and I had seen was Gangs of New York. In comparison to Polanski’s work, Scorsese’s was like a bad comic book. Typical Hollywood sensationalism which, starting from the very first scene, screams to the viewer, “This is not in any way realistic or even artistic. This is just an extravaganza of superficiality designed to win awards.”

The Pianist had the ring of truth from the getgo – in large part due to the fact that Szpilman’s work was written in 1946. How brave to document his tragedy so soon after it ended.

There is an old adage, “Those who can’t do, review.” It’s one of those silly sayings about which I wish I could say, “They’re not accurate – they’re just debunking expressions used by people who like to dish.” Experience, however, has told me that this expression in particular is a truthful one.
Critic Norman Lebrecht suffers from the same ailment as virtually every other critic: They seem to be against everything but for nothing. Lebrecht’s book, The Maestro Myth, is a case in point. He glories in the demystification and deflation of every great conductor under the sun. The fact, however, remains that it is harder to conduct than it is to write about conductors.

Particularly deviant are Lebrecht’s criticisms of Maestro Szpilman, in a 2002 article entitled “The Real [sic] Szpilman Revealed.” Consider the following utterances:

Whether he was a good, bad or moderate musician is immaterial to his story.

No, in fact, it was perfectly material. Here is a man who was so respected that Jews and Gentiles alike rallied to his defense. Would they have done this for just anyone? What made Szpilman stand out among the millions and millions of other Jews who faced the same fate? Obviously (at least, it would be obvious to one with a rational and healthy mind), Szpilman was a special person with a special talent.

The composer Andrzej Panufnik … failed to mention [Szpilman] either in his memoirs, or (his widow tells me) in any of their conversations. Reich-Ranicki, who knew Szpilman in the ghetto, likewise omits him from his memoirs. … None [of the other important Polish musicians] made public acknowledgement of his contribution, if any, to their careers.

Lebrecht began his article by saying, “In classical music, you’ve got to be dead to be good. Only two or three composers at any given time achieve posterity while alive. The rest go gently into that good night, praying for posthumous recognition.” Why, then, does Lebrecht contradict himself by gloating over his inability to find contemporary kudos for Szpilman? How much contemporary kudos did J. S. Bach garner? As a keyboardist, some. As a composer? Yet another case of Lebrecht’s illogic and his obsession with desecration.

Szpilman did not achieve individual renown. He appears to have been a man with no shadow.

J. S. Bach was not renowned until Mendelssohn revived the St. Matthew Passion 77 years after Bach’s death. Shadows are not always contemporaneous with the people who cast them.

On the other hand, movies tend not to be made about critics’ lives! That’s why criticism contains more ax-grinding than aural discernment.

Musical evidence has begun to emerge from the archives of Polish Radio revealing Szpilman as an artist of ironic refinement and restrained muscularity.

The evidence does not reveal this. It reveals a musician of the highest order, a Golden Age style composer-musician who seems not to have lost a thing despite six years (!) away from his craft. All that should be there is there: a well-grounded technique, a singing melody, an ear for voicing the harmony, an understanding of the structure of the music, all unified by God-given style and taste.

[The] two tapes of the Chopin Nocturne in C-sharp minor … avoid bombast, triumphalism or sentimentality.

Is that piece bombastic, triumphal, or sentimental? Perhaps, then, Szpilman was a good interpreter.

The pianist can almost be heard to smile when there was nothing to smile about.

No, it is Lebrecht who inappropriately smiles. An autographical observation!

In the ubiquitous Rachmaninov Prelude in G-sharp he makes no attempt to compete with the fingerpower of Russian masters, but tosses the piece off with near casual panache.

Incorrect. Szpilman does have fingerpower, which is why the piece sounds “easy.” How Szpilman maintained that fingerpower during those six unspeakable years shall remain one of the great mysteries of pianism.

[The] Sony Classical disc that comes out this week [is] a testament to a shy executant.

Shy? Why, because in Chopin’s Nocturnes he doesn’t pour gasoline into the piano and throw a matchin? Szpilman is one of the only pianists in history to capture Chopin’s dreamy introversion. Or do you prefer Rubinstein’s jaded versions that reek of debauchery?

The most interesting discovery on the disc is Szpilman’s own music… (etc.)

Typical critic behavior: Disarm the reader with a seemly complimentary sentence, then whip out the condescension.

In the ghetto he composed a Gershwin-like concertino for piano and orchestra, astonishingly cocky in the deadly circumstances.

Cocky? Here Lebrecht is making two ridiculous comments – one, that Gershwin’s music is cocky, two, that Szpilman’s is. Is any music that is “lighter” than Beethoven’s somehow brash? And what is the relevance of world events? In 1937 America was in a depression, the world was at the brink of war, and Cole Porter suffered an accident that would eventually result in amputation. That didn’t stop him from writing songs like Most Gentlemen Don’t Like Love, From Now On, and Get Out Of Town. Should he somehow not have been allowed to write light-hearted songs at that time?

Naggingly persistent, [the Concertino] is not a particularly likeable piece but it lodges in the ear like a grommet. It’s one of those pieces you find yourself humming and wonder where it’s from.

Typical mentality of the 20th-century music critic: If a piece is popular, it must not be good. So if the piece didn’t stay in one’s ear, would it then qualify as a masterpiece?

In a year or two, Szpilman’s music will be played no more than Górecki’s.

An easy statement to make, because in a year or two no one will remember Lebrecht’s review in order to refute it.

Leonardo Ciampa
2 February 2004

Copyright © MMIV Leonardo A. Ciampa. All rights reserved.

Note: The soundtrack is played not by Szpilman but by another excellent Polish pianist, Janusz Olejniczak.

Musical Prejudice

Last week on PBS was an interesting documentary entitled "The Music Instinct: Science and Song." I caught very little of it (except to hear an excerpt of Mozart's K. 330 played so fast that it sounded like a cheap stunt, even by current standards of cheap-stunt Mozart playing. I don't know who the pianist was. I'm told he was blind; however, he was not deaf).

A point was made during the show -- not one of the salient points, but one that to me was very interesting.

To us Western Hemispherians, a minor scale sounds "sad." But what if that is merely cultural?

(The following, naturally, is my own expansion of this point. I do not wish to implicate the makers of the documentary for it!)

Clearly there are cultures where music in minor keys or modes is not experienced as being "sad" at all, while in our own culture, "classical music" is so often perceived as "dark," no matter how major the key or how joyful the mood. To many, the sound of an organ is "funereal," no matter how many sunny major chords the music radiates. Once I played a Saturday Mass at a Catholic church unaccustomed to anything bearing the slightest resemblance to "classical" music. I didn't play anything "heavy," but at one point I improvised, somewhat in the style of Mendelssohn, and in a major key. (There was not a profusion of minor or diminished chords. It was not "dark" music.) A parishioner stopped me afterwards and said that it sounded like a funeral. I realized that for people like that parishioner, no organ sound can be anything but gloomy.

Even my two-year-old demonstrated some musical subjectivity the other day. We were listening to a CD of Wladyslaw Szpilman, the fine Polish pianist whose life is portrayed in the outstanding movie "The Pianist." Szpilman was playing a composition of his own, the Concertino for Piano & Orchestra (1940). The piece has a jazzy element; it doesn't sound like Gershwin, but it mixes classical and jazz moods with the freedom that Gershwin did. My son said that the music was "scary." My wife opined, "No, it's not scary. I think it's mysterious." To me they were both wrong.

There are infinite examples of people's prejudicial reactions to classical music. Not long ago I played a funeral, and I played a piece by Ted Marier that I've always considered comforting. The celebrant said after that he felt it was "depressing." Yet at the very same funeral was sung Marty Haugen's "Shepherd Me, O God," which is firmly rooted in a minor tonality. What makes the Haugen "happier" if the harmonies are no less minor than the Marier?

Simply put, many people are allergic to "classical" music or anything that bears a resemblance thereof. There's no better way to put it: it's an allergy. At a shopping plaza in a neighborhood of Boston, there was once the problem of not-so-nice kids hanging around and causing trouble. So what did the plaza owners decide to do? Pipe in classical music! Now every time you walk through the plaza, you are treated to masterpieces of the symphonic repertoire. The kids are nowhere in sight. It repels them more effectively than any amount of armed policemen could have.

What causes a person to hate what is beautiful? The only explanation I can come up with is: it is like when you're sleeping, and someone turns on the lights in the room at 3 in the morning. At that moment, you hate the light. It doesn't seem possible that anyone could hate light, but in that instance you do just that. Our culture has become so dark that the light has become distasteful.

It's clear that no instrument of classical music inspires more aversion than the pipe organ. People who will happily go out to hear chamber and orchestral music of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert wouldn't be caught dead at an organ recital. To Catholics, perhaps the organ subconsciously represents all of the beatings they received from nuns in parochial schools. It represents something that their parents and grandparents loved, something that belonged to them. Interestingly, many 20- and 30-somethings who are too young to remember the Latin Mass or the mean nuns are fascinated with the organ's technological ingenuity and sonic richness. The 50- and 60-somethings are the opposite. They are the ones who want Kumbaya played by guitars rather than Bach played by the organ. They are married to Vatican II -- for richer and for poorer.

The root of the problem is the connection that people make between the organ and the church. They cannot conceive of the organ as a musical instrument separate from the church. The organ becomes the church. And if people don't like church, they're not about to like the organ. The organ becomes paid indulgences. The organ becomes papal infallibility. The organ becomes the pedophilia scandal. The organ becomes the church. That is the association people subconsciously, or even consciously, make.

But for a millennium and a half, the organ was as secular instrument that no one would have dreamt of bringing into the church. In Roman times, the hydraulis (a small, portable organ) was used in amphitheatres, to accompany the lions' eating the Christians. In the Middle Ages, when the great Gothic cathedrals were being built, organs still weren't thought of for the church. That's why many Gothic cathedrals are difficult to retrofit with an organ, without causing visual or acoustical problems.

At some point during the Renaissance, someone decided to introduce the organ to the church. Churchgoers were scandalized. They passionately believed that the organ was a secular instrument unfitting for the church -- the exact same reaction that many people have today towards electric guitars and drums in the church.

Interestingly, in South Africa the organ is thought of as a secular instrument. (The theatre organ or cinema organ is more popular in South Africa than is the church organ.)

For some reason, music in Latin elicits particularly strong reactions. In my whole life, I have never been able to understand why many clerics fear Latin hymns like they would fear a glass of water during a cholera epidemic. What is it about the Latin language that elicits such trepidation? No Rabbi is afraid to have Hebrew spoken in his temple. Why the Catholic priests' antipathy? In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI gave priests permission to celebrate a Tridentine Mass without first having to consult a bishop. That's all he did. Latin Masses were already allowed, but a priest formerly needed a bishop's approval before holding a Tridentine Mass. Benedict simply eliminated that extra administrative step. But look at the firestorm that resulted! Benedict was accused of trying to "bring back" the Latin Mass (which didn't need to be brought back because it was there all along). And then when word got out that there was one sentence in the Latin liturgy that could be construed as Antisemitic (the sentence has been since taken out), Benedict was seen as some sort of racist, trying to take the church back into the Middle Ages. It was insanity, but Latin inspires such insanity for some reason.

I think, in the end, the clergy are afraid that parishioners will flee from organ music and Latin hymns, just as people at the shopping plaza flee from the piped-in classical music. But I hate to tell you: there will not be one penny less in the collection plate if you do the Latin Agnus Dei instead of the English Lamb of God at a 4 o'clock Mass. If anything they will give more, because people sense quality even when they can't explain it. A person says, "Wow, this is a beautiful church," without being conscious of the fact that the color scheme of the ceiling matches the color scheme of the stained glass windows, or what have you. They know it's beautiful, but they don't know why. For the same reason, people will always respond positively to good music. Almost 25 years in this business tells me that good music is preferred by the majority of congregants but the minority of clergy. It is a musical prejudice not at all unlike that of my toddler who thinks the Szpilman Concertino is "scary." Priests are scared. The difference is: my son will surely grow out of it.