Week 8: 27 November 2023 – “Wachet auf,” Toccata and Fugue in F Major, and Trinity 26

Plus: My favorite organ recording, BIBI in Spanish, five centuries of Medici music, and more!

As always, we recognize that Bond Chapel is situated in the traditional homeland and native territory of the Three Fires Confederacy—the Potawatomi, Odawa, and Ojibwe Nations—as well as other groups including the Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Miami, Peoria, and Sac and Fox. We remember their forced removal and dispossession, but also remember to speak of these groups in the present tense, as Chicago continues to be resound with tens of thousands of Native voices. 

Maybe it’s just because I’m not a huge Fleetwood Mac fan to begin with, but I really do think that Chicago-based Lakota musician Frank Waln has drastically improved “Dreams”:

Great by itself, and his spoken remarks about the performance are great too. But it’s especially impressive when you consider that his original music is in quite a different style:

Give me that over Rumours any day.

Week 8: 27 November 2023 – “Wachet auf,” Toccata and Fugue in F Major, and Trinity 26

Please save applause for the end of each set

Toccata and Fugue in F, BWV 540

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Duet in E minor, BWV 802

Duet in F, BWV 803

Duet in G, BWV 804

Duet in A minor, BWV 805

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Du Friedefürst, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 1102

Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 645

Fugue on a Theme by Legrenzi in C minor, BWV 574

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The F-major Toccata is a titanic piece, longer by itself (438 measures and 9 or so minutes) than the entire Toccata and Fugue in D minor (143 measures and 8 or so minutes). As that combination of measure counts and timings indicates, the piece really zips by, using the time signature of 3/8 to indicate a very quick dance feel. And “dancing” is exactly what Bach makes you do: the pedal solos in the piece are some of the longest, quickest, and widest-ranging (more on that later) that Bach ever wrote.

How does the piece fill up 438 measures? As always with Baroque music, the answer is repetition. (To be repetitive myself, Bach’s inspiration here is again Vivaldi.) Repetition at every level of the music—take this chunk from the second pedal solo for example:

You don’t need to be able to read this notation to see the repetitions. I blocked out the most literal ones by color: the first measure boxed in green is the same as the second but up a step; the same goes for orange; and the first two measures boxed in red are identical to the third and fourth. But you can also probably see that the same shape, in various stretched and compressed forms, is being used throughout this passage (indeed, the whole piece).

That’s repetition at the level of the measure or pair of measures. There are also larger-scale examples. As you can see from the beginning of the screenshot, the pedal is much less active before its solos. Instead, it holds down the fort while the hands play in canon:

Talk about repetition! The hands play identical music at a distance of two measures apart, continuing for 54 straight measures before they let the feet interject. When the pedals do get their say, it’s with another version of the same music (for 30 measures). And then the whole process repeats in another key. Even after the music gives up these exact forms of repetition (for the remaining 270 measures of the piece), it still follows a Stravinskian kind of cut-and-paste logic, taking three or four phrases and repeating them in various keys and combinations for the rest of the piece.

As usual, when described this way, the piece must sound incredibly boring. And, just as usual, it really doesn’t sound that way. What Bach learned from Vivaldi was not repetition for the sake of repetition, but how to use these sequences, echos, reprises, canons, and transpositions in order to control the flow of musical time. Each time one of the repeating segments returns, it gives us a roadmap for what to expect over the next few measures. And three times, Bach exploits this sense of expectation to pull the rug out from under us (but shouldn’t we see it coming the third time?):

On an organ like the Reneker at Bond Chapel, you can really hear how crazy this D♭ dominant seventh chord is supposed to sound in this style. The organ’s tuning is being pushed to its absolute limits.

So is the rest of the organ. As hinted above, the pedal solos use a higher note (F4) than almost any organ had at the time; the manuals seem to call for a D6 that was also quite rare at the time. And then there’s writing like this:

These thick, thick chords are a real test of the organ’s wind, and you can hear that as well at Bond. This piece is just as much of a test for the organ as it is for the performer.

The Fugue is a little bit calmer, switching from speedy, modern, string-band 3/8 to the more stately, old-school, and “choral” 2/2. But it’s important not to overstate the contrast: the Fugue is only slightly less adventurous harmonically, only slightly less intense for the pedals, and only slightly less taxing for the organ than the Toccata. Without repeating itself further, the piece manages to form a complementary, but unified pair.

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I imagine that, for many of us, Bach’s inclusion of four Duets in the Clavier-übung III (“keyboard practice”) brings to mind the Two-Part Inventions that remain a staple for beginning piano students everywhere. It’s not a bad comparison. Just like the Inventions, these pieces are exercises in equality for the hands, who constantly trade off playing each other’s parts. (That equally makes them exercises in invertible counterpoint for the composer and composition student.) And, because of how Baroque composers associated keys with emotional states and musical formulas, you might even be able to hear some figures shared between, for instance, the A-minor Duet and the A-minor Invention.

On the other hand, you might not; except for maybe the G-major Duet, these pieces sound strikingly little like the Inventions. The latter are, after all, pieces for students and children. The Inventions are designed not to be too challenging in terms of technique, and also to be relatively easy to appreciate musically. They’re short and sweet.

By contrast, the Duets are not only over three times longer, but significantly less winsome. None of them have the easy charm of (for example) the B-flat-major Invention; the closest approximation would be the beginning of the the F-major Duet, which then goes completely off the rails with nearly atonal music like this:

This is chromatic, angular, difficult, and even awkward music. Why would Bach publish these instead of the Inventions?

Well, that difficulty must be the point. In just about every case, the music Bach published is a lot more complicated and often less attractive than the music he left in manuscript. The Six Partitas for keyboard (much as I love them) can be a lot less fun to listen to than the English Suites; the Trio Sonata from the Musical Offering is certainly the most ungainly piece of chamber music Bach wrote; the Art of Fugue is not trying to win many fans, or at least not in the way that the Well-Tempered Clavier fugues might. This is music that’s willing to be a bit ugly to make a point: COUNTERPOINT, in yer face. Bach’s reputation for “difficulty” was as cultivated as any avant-garde musician’s.

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“Du Friedefürst,” conveniently, is yet another kind of duet. Imagine something like a continuo bassline accompanying the chorale tune in the soprano. (Although, when the piece suddenly speeds up for a second verse of the tune, you might want to swap a violin in for the poor singer.) Simple and endearing, it’s an early piece (all you Georg Böhm fanatics out there will surely hear the resemblance) that isn’t trying to make any grandiose claims about COUNTERPOINT.

But I don’t want to make it sound like Bach simply stopped trying to make friends and influence people as he got older. There’s a reason “Wachet auf” (“Sleepers wake”), written some thirty years after “Du Friedefürst,” is so famous and beloved—stop me if you’ve heard this one before:

Despite the somewhat weird and rambling pedal/continuo line, the violin/right hand is solid gold, a justifiably famous tune that covers a huge amount of ground without sounding jumpy. And the tenor line really sings out against it. Left on reed indeed.

Whether or not you believe that the Toccata and Fugue in D minor is actually by Bach, it’s a bit ironic that “Wachet auf,” his second most famous organ piece, is also possibly not by Bach. Obviously the movement itself is (it’s from the cantata BWV 140), but like the rest of the Schübler Chorales, the arrangement may have been done without his participation, permission, or even knowledge. 

There’s a similar irony with the Fugue on a Theme of Legrenzi: as best I can tell, nobody has ever turned up a piece by Legrenzi that actually contains this theme.¹ Poor Legrenzi! This piece is surely how he’s best-known,² and who knows if he’s even really connected to it? It’s a bit of an undignified fate for one of Venice’s major composers, an innovator whose instrumental music in particular was a big influence for later composers like Vivaldi and Bach himself.

Still, maybe it’s not so bad to be remembered in association with this piece. Who needs a prelude when you have a fugue like this? Or really two fugues: this is a straight-up double fugue, in the sense that we first get a fugue on one theme (first 36 measures), then another fugue on another subject (next 34), and then a fugue on both at the same time (34 more measures).³ And really, since the piece ends by exploding into 20 measures of free improvisation, maybe there is a Prelude after all—it just comes at the end this time.

My Favorite Organ Recording

This week’s F-major Toccata and Fugue and next week’s G-minor Fantasy and Fugue both feature prominently on what is probably my favorite organ recording (that I’ve heard so far):

“Who?” Yeah, me too. There’s no way I ever would have found this recording if I hadn’t been looking for inspiration when learning the Reger Ein feste Burg that ends the disk. Amid a sea of fine but somewhat bland recordings of that piece, I was jolted awake by Ander-Donath’s opening pedal solo: unafraid to rush ahead wildly and then pull back dramatically, it immediately evoked some of the verve I was hoping to get out of the piece. The rest of the performance is equally willing to throw caution to the wind, always prioritizing the broad sweep of the music over making every single note come out. (Not that it’s even really possible to make Reger sound “clear.”)

It was Reger so good that it made me want to listen to the rest of the disc. I should clarify that I don’t typically want to listen to older Bach recordings. I adore pre-1950 recordings for Romantic music: back then, performers tended to be a little less concerned about “hygiene” or making the plushest sound Deutsche Grammophon can pick up, and instead prioritized singing lines and élan. But the Bach of early twentieth-century musicians can sound, well, very strange. It’s clear that this music was in somewhat of a foreign language to them—or at least that they felt the need to treat it that way for their audiences. Pablo Casals adopts a strangely heavy, scratchy tone for his Cello Suites;⁴ so does Adolf Busch, who also becomes significantly more rigid than usual with rhythms and tempos in his otherwise wonderful Brandenburgs and violin concertos; and Wanda Landowska gets noticeably more spiky and separated when moving from Beethoven on the piano to Bach on the harpsichord. And that’s to name three older performers whose Bach I listen to. I’ve never been able to get through the Mengelberg Matthew Passion, strong as I can recognize its musicality to be. 

So I was expecting something like that leaden, detached approach, or maybe the thin, somewhat antiseptic, and even downright squeaky sound of ‘50s and ‘60s German Bach recordings. (With genuine respect for Helmut Walcha and Karl Richter.) What I wasn’t prepared for were performances that just play the Bach like music. By which I mean that Ander-Donath seems to follow roughly the same musical instincts with the Bach as he does with the Reger. That’s not to say that he makes Bach sound like Reger—it’s not Romanticized per se, so much as played with the same abandon, the same attention to large phrases and important moments. 

The result, strikingly, is a Bach that sounds pretty “modern,” at least from the perspective of “historically informed performance.” Sure, Ander-Donath’s articulations and crescendos aren’t what any HIP performer would adopt (although they surely helped bring things across on his organ in his space), but his tempi and other interpretive choices can come surprisingly close to performers like Ton Koopman. It’s still surprisingly difficult to find organists willing to take the F-major Fugue as fast Ander-Donath, even after decades of HIP conductors showing us that its closest musical analogues (alla breve choral fugues) start to make a lot more sense at that kind of tempo. Similarly, Ander-Donath’s “Komm Heiliger Geist” BWV 651 is electrifying, taken at a speed that both allows you to actually comprehend the chorale tune and perhaps get a bit of the feeling of the Holy Spirit rushing in.

Moreover, Ander-Donath’s recording is historical in one important sense. As far as I can tell, these might be the only surviving recordings on the Dresden Frauenkirche organ before its destruction. Although Ander-Donath’s instrument was significantly expanded from its original form, its core (audible especially in the composition of the mixtures) was a 1736 Silbermann instrument that was one of the grandest of the “Bach” organs. Not just an organ of Bach’s time and in the style he was accustomed to: an instrument that he gave (essentially) a dedication recital on, and which was played by his son Wilhelm Friedemann and other students throughout the 18th century. Bach loved the musical scene at Dresden and spent much of his later years trying to become more involved with the Saxon court; Ander-Donath was surely acting in part as a custodian of this legacy.

By now, you may have started pondering how and when the Dresden Frauenkirche was destroyed. 

Or you may have looked up the album and noticed the date of the recording. 1944.⁵

Lacking access to German libraries (and the inclination to request scans etc.), it’s hard for me to know exactly where Ander-Donath stood during the war.⁶ It’s safe to say that he didn’t leave his position in solidarity with Hugo Hahn when the latter was expelled from the Frauenkirche for his work with the Confessing Church. Still, it’s possible that Ander-Donath was also involved (more quietly) in resistance activities; but I haven’t been able to rule the opposite out.

I think it would be a bit too simplistic to start moralizing here about Ander-Donath, or any other musician under Nazi rule, as an individual. There’s a reason Thomas Nagel used civilians in Nazi Germany as a star example for the notion of moral luck: musicians like Ander-Donath had to face substantially harder ethical decisions than what’s been put in front of most of us. All the more reason to praise the heroism of those individuals who resisted, of course. But it’s almost the least interesting thing you can say about any of these individuals to simply start assigning blame. It’s obvious enough that aiding and abetting the Third Reich in any capacity was a moral atrocity: then what?

I think we miss something crucial if we just stop there. If we were, for instance, to simply try and forget about musicians like Ander-Donath and Wilhelm Furtwängler, we’d also in some sense be trying to forget about why Bach and Beethoven performances flourished under the Third Reich. About what this music meant to the Nazi culture ministry. I sometimes get the feeling that Bach has escaped this association somewhat, while Beethoven (along, of course, with Wagner) shoulders the brunt of its weight. Sure, it wasn’t Bach’s Ninth Symphony being played at Hitler’s birthday every year; but I don’t think there’s much doubt that, for many of his listeners, Ander-Donath’s custodianship of the Frauenkirche’s Bach organ was an affirmation of, let’s call it, the Greatness of the German/Saxon Spirit.

What should we do with this information? Probably nobody thinks that listening to Beethoven or even Wagner will turn somebody into a Nazi, even when performed by avowed or potential Nazis. (Although doesn’t the last movement of the Fifth sound a bit fascist to you too?) And, on the other hand, I don’t think there’s a huge number of people reading this who are listening to Bach to glorify the German Spirit—or at least, not in That way. I don’t want to exaggerate here; the stakes are probably not that high for most of us.

Still, maybe remembering the uses this music was put to can be a good reminder to examine what we ourselves are trying to get out of it. That’s not a call to stop enjoying Bach (or Beethoven, or even Wagner). What I’m saying is that it’s an opportunity to ponder why we’re listening to this music: for the sake of some grand cultural tradition? From some sense of obligation? Religious devotion? Purely for pleasure? As historical documents? And conversely, it’s a chance to think about why we may not (also) be listening to something else. Mark that down as one reason I always include the following section….

What I’m Listening To

Mon Laferte – Autopoiética

This one comes by request from a faithful reader, and I’m glad I didn’t miss it. Laferte is usually right up my alley, throwing Latin American genres in the blender and spitting out classic albums like La Trenza. Part of the fun is seeing how mariachi and Andean music will sound together on the record, how cumbia will rub up against indie rock. When it works, the effect is fantastically kaleidoscopic. 

It was a little hard to imagine how much further Laferte could go, how she could undergo further “autopoiesis” and reinvent herself again. So it was delightful to hear her indeed go into new territory with the synthed-up and slightly glitched-out reggaeton of “NO+SAD,” the electropop-techno blend in the title track, and especially the vocodered and synthed rendition of “Casta Diva” that closes the album.⁷ I bet you never thought you wanted to hear Bellini with a reggaeton beat, but you’ll be glad you did.

All of that said, I have to admit to being a bit disappointed with most of the rest of the album. None of it is bad per se, but even some of the bops (“Metamorfosis”) end up being fairly generic “Latin pop.” Or worse, almost yawn-worthy ballads (“40 y MM”) and sleepy by-the-book bossa nova (“Préndele Fuego”; yes, I read the spicy lyrics, but the music itself would surely have been cut from Modern Times). There’s lots of cool stuff going on in this album, but I wish it had brought that level of creativity for all of the tracks.

François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles – Saint-Saëns: Symphonic Poems - Le Carnaval des animaux - L'Assassinat du duc de Guise

In case you haven’t been following along, Roth⁸ and his orchestra have spent the past couple decades answering a question I’m not sure many people had thought to ask: “What if Debussy, but period instruments? Why not Stravinsky and even Ligeti while we’re at it?” (Les Siècles has also gone back to Berlioz and even Beethoven.) The results are usually fascinating, not least because “historical performance” is often just an impetus or excuse to try taking composers’ written decisions a bit more seriously (not just literally), to undo some of the standard interpretive choices that everybody adopts. And most importantly, Les Siècles are fantastic musicians, always playing with panache and vigor as well as attention to detail. 

It’s especially nice to hear this approach with music as tired as Carnival of the Animals (and with pieces that used to be tried-and-true potboilers, like Le Rouet d’Omphale and the Samson et Dalila “Bacchanale”). I haven’t gone back and listened to every recording of the piece, but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard the pianists do as good a job of sounding like stuttering novices in “Pianistes.” “L’Éléphant” sounds as ponderous as you could hope for. And in general, the sound is slick and lean, giving more of the original “chamber” feel than I’m used to hearing for this piece. 

I should have gone and tried to watch the film for The Assassination of the Duke of Guise. It’s not easy for me to make sense of this music (one of the very first film scores) without it. Let me know if you try it yourself—even better if this performance brings out things in the movie that other recordings don’t.

Maher Cissoko – Kora World

Even if you don’t know his music (both of the previous albums are very much worth your time), Maher Cissoko’s surname probably clued you in: Cissoko comes from a long line of griots. So it’s probably more important for you to pay attention to his lyrics (in several languages) and message than to listen for anything I might say about the music. 

That said, this is really lovely playing, showing off the kora’s possibilities as well as you could hope. The production might be a little too reverbed-out for some people (“Kora Meditation”), and maybe you don’t love the more obviously folk-pop-inflected songs like “Laye Diallo.” Obviously it doesn’t bother me; in fact, given that Cissoko has released much more straightforwardly “fusion” albums with his Swedish guitarist wife Sousou, but I appreciate how even these solo releases don’t try to present a “pure traditional” style. Cissoko clearly has a preferred musical language for communicating his ideas, and at least for me it’s quite effective. 

BIBI (with Becky G) – “Amigos”

Maybe this is a crossover I should have seen coming. After all, BIBI’s biggest hit was already drenched with reggaeton influences:

…while Becky G has made a career out of collaborations with artists from across the genre spectrum. In terms of musical personality and style, it’s probably not that huge of a leap from working with KAROL G to a collab with BIBI.

That said, it’s still a leap across the Pacific. To be sure, it’s not Becky G’s first such leap:

But there’s much less that’s identifiably “Latin” about j-hope’s song. Compare that to, well, “Amigos.” It’s not just the language of the title, or about Becky G not singing in English on this song:⁹ here, BIBI joins her in Spanish for the chorus. And even beyond the chorus, it sounds to me like BIBI is phonetically bending her Korean and English to match Becky G’s Spanish.

It wouldn’t be the first time. Take K-pop’s most famous reggaeton-style song to date:

The “Latin” sounds of “Antifragile” go beyond just the instrumentals and vocal lines: at 0:46 and again at 1:49, Eunchae, Chaewon, and Sakura unmistakably mimic ROSALÍA’s pronunciation of Spanish, even though they’re singing in Korean and English. BIBI doesn’t do anything quite as drastic in “Amigos,” but the contrast with her normal pronunciation and delivery is pretty clear when compared to “BIBI Vengeance.” (Even more so compared to earlier tracks like “BAD SAD AND MAD”.)

I think all of this is going beyond simple musical trend-chasing. After all, “Latin” and “tropical” sounds already had their moment in K-pop, years ago. 

But there’s something quite different about the “Latin fusion” sound in KARD or MAMAMOO, at least when put up against the linguistic integration (and actual collaboration) in “Amigos.” Or when compared with TXT’s song featuring Anitta:

I suspect that this is just the beginning. Certainly, it’s not a coincidence that LE SSERAFIM and TXT are on the same label—HYBE, of “taking the K out of K-pop” fame. Or, within the past few weeks, of “buying Spanish-language label Exile Content” fame. 

This is a sound business strategy. It’s not just that Latin American music is booming, or that Spotify’s subscriber numbers have long been driven by massive growth in Latin America. There’s also specifically higher demand for K-pop (on a relative basis) in Latin America than in Europe or North America. (Presumably related to the relatively high popularity of anime there as well.) Anybody who’s been to a K-pop concert, event, or store in the US can confirm this pretty easily. But these fans have not gotten the kind of representation within K-pop that Americans, Australians, or Southeast Asians have: there’s no mainstream Latin American idol to compare to Jay Park, Rosé, or Sorn.¹⁰ Collaborating with and featuring Latin American artists is a step toward filling this gap. Bang Si-Hyuk and BIBI are just tapping a growth market.

To me, there’s possibly no wilder version of this strategy than the recent career of Kim Nayoon. Nayoon was just about set to be a standard K-pop idol in the mid-2010s, training under Starship Entertainment (IVE, MONSTA X, SISTAR) and competing on K-pop Star 1; it seems that her debut, and ultimately career were derailed by a combination of deciding to go to college and then Covid-19. I only know this because she’s one of relatively few former trainees to give public interviews of any kind—and it seems fairly clear to me that her AMA was an attempt to juice her second career, as an influencer on Instagram and TikTok.

Who knows if it was the AMA that did it, but Nayoon does seem to have made it as an influencer. And she’s used that visibility to bring her career back full circle:

But if you listen to the song…it’s all in English and Spanish!¹¹ Then try reading the comments. Or her Instagram posts. As far as I can tell, Nayoon hasn’t tried to promote in Korea, or even really in English, at all; I couldn’t find coverage of this song in any of my normal K-pop news sources.¹² This is a version of K-pop exclusively for Latin America.¹³ But it seems to be important to Nayoon (or her fans, or both) that “Volar” be “K-pop” in some capacity. Nayoon released a Korean version of the song few weeks ago, and she’s been sure to give her music all the trappings of K-pop: dance challenges, an official fandom name (Yoonit), the whole nine yards. As she puts it: “#volar #nayoon #debut #yoonit #latinkpop #kpop”. Maybe HYBE should just sign her now.

æspa – “You”

If I’m going to make this section really represent “what I’m listening to,” then I really ought to say something about this song, which I must have played over a hundred times in the two weeks since it came out.¹⁴ 

That’s not to say I think it’s the best song ever. I imagine most people, even K-pop fans, will probably find it unbearably saccharine, trite, or maybe even boring. If I had to hazard a guess, there are two things going on that keep me listening:

For starters, this is the first good example I’ve heard in a long time of a kind of music that I have a huge nostalgic soft spot for. Call it “midtempo 2nd-gen ballad,” the kind of song that makes up a huge part of SNSD’s first album. When I first found K-pop in 2009, SNSD was the group, and the harmonies in songs like “Merry Go Round” made a huge impression on me: what’s not to like about a version of 90s R&B that’s been drenched in sugar syrup until it becomes gulab jamun? Who doesn’t want TLC with more sophisticated chords, better tunes, more interesting instrumentals, and slightly better vocals? (If your answer is “me,” don’t worry—you’re probably in the majority. My favorite SNSD song, which is very much in this style, was ranked as their absolute worst single by Billboard.)

Relatedly, I appreciate SM Entertainment’s continued commitment to having their groups harmonize at least some of the time. It’s always a little depressing for me to see nine-member groups that (can) only really sing in unison—so much wasted musical potential! So I’ve always appreciated this side of æspa’s discography. Even if the harmonizing helps to spike the song’s glycemic index further.

It also doesn’t hurt that “You” borrows heavily from IU’s “Friday.” You had me at that guitar lick.¹⁵

But honestly, I think the thing that keeps me listening to this song is structural. Unlike so many of the SNSD songs linked above (“Tinkerbell,” “Merry Go Round,” “Baby Baby”; “Honey” would also fit), “You” doesn’t lead off with a hook of any kind. Instead we get birds chirping, some pretty nondescript piano noodling and vocalizing, and then right into the verses. As you might expect, the music gets catchier and more distinctive going through the prechorus and into the chorus. But for me, by far the most earwormy part of the song is the postchorus (1:15).

It would be completely normal, even expected, to lead off the song with this phrase, to repeat it as many times as possible—but instead, Artiffect have decided to only give it to us twice.¹⁶ In other words, the song builds and builds, and it gives us something nice and memorable—but it cuts the catchiest bit off short before it’s possible to be really satiated. For me, the only remedy is to hit replay. If this song shows up again next week, you’ll know why.

Also liked…

Aesop Rock – Integrated Tech Solutions

Sakari Oramo and BBC Symphony – Bacewicz: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1

Chris Stapleton – Higher

Verneri Pohjola – Monkey Mind

Danny Brown – Quaranta

What I’m Reading

I was intrigued to see that Anthony Cummings has put out a book about music in Florence over the surprisingly wide span 1250–1750. I’ve learned a lot from Cummings’ previous work on 16th-century music, and I appreciate his commitment to John Shearman and Nino Pirotta, two scholars I admire a lot.¹⁷ And I was interested to see what it would look like to put all of that music together within the frame of a single argument or narrative.

Another part of what intrigued me is that books with this kind of title (“Music in [Italian City], [date range]”) have historically tended to be presentations of new archival research on patronage, something that seemed fairly unlikely for Cummings, especially given the book’s five-century scope. Indeed Music in Golden-Age Florence is nothing like that: instead, it’s an old-fashioned survey of music and musical life over this period. That’s not to say that Cummings’ own research doesn’t factor in, but it’s mostly treated in the same way as work by Frank D’Accone, Blake Wilson, and other scholars: it’s synthesized for the sake of a broad overview. 

OK, so what is the larger point? Maybe I’m oversimplifying, but the book seems almost designed as a reminder that “everything goes through Florence,” at least during the later Republic and Medici period. If you care about one or more of trecento polyphony, Dufay, the birth of the madrigal, the birth of opera, and the invention of the piano, it can be pretty cool to be reminded of Florence’s role in all of them. While not quite serving as a Florence-centric “history of music in Italy” for this time period (Claudio Monteverdi’s name, refreshingly, doesn’t appear even once), the book can can almost feel like it at times. Indeed, when the book is summarizing “related developments” (e.g. the later 16th-century madrigal in Ferrara), I think it takes some alertness from the reader to remember that Cummings is not quite talking about music in Florence for the moment.

Aside from showing the central role Florence had for Italian (European) musical developments in this period, Cummings’ structure also gives him the opportunity to bring to light some much less well-known repertoires (17th-century Florentine sacred music; 18th-century Florentine opera) and put them conversation with the more famous musical developments of their times. Of course, his treatment can’t (and probably shouldn’t) be completely even, but it does a remarkably good job of covering the bases. I learned a lot.

It’s always possible to quibble. The presentations of Florentine political history are masterfully concise, but sometimes so tightly packed in that they may not even be particularly useful for readers who aren’t already familiar with the events in question. It’s not always clear to me who the audience is supposed to be—untranslated Latin on one page, an explanation of the word “melisma” nearby. And Cummings’ favorite periods are quite clear. When discussing trecento music, he seems almost at pains not to name the Squarcialupi Codex (that music’s most important manuscript source), but he has no problem devoting some space to discussing two substantially less famous (and important) manuscripts from the late quattrocento. To me, it felt like the discussion was rushing right past Francesco Landini and Paolo da Firenze and Jacopo da Bologna in order to get to the big set-pieces (the dedication of Santa Maria del Fiore; the big sixteenth-century Medici intermedii). I’m glad that Cummings recognizes the importance of trecento music enough to think it worth including, but I almost wonder if it might have been a tighter and more consistent book had he simply let the chronological bounds be a “Medici Golden Age” from something like 1397 to 1737.

Then again, I shouldn’t assume that this book’s readers would then have proceeded to go read up on and listen to Francesco and Paolo and Jacopo. And what general-readership book could they have even gone to? I hope this book reaches a wide enough audience to get people interested in these composers—or in La Pellegrina, or any of the numerous more obscure figures it discusses. Cummings’ prose is clear and clearly intended to be accessible; his synoptic point of view is a refreshing change of pace for work on these repertoires. And overall, I’d say these qualities make Music in Golden-Age Florence a book at least worth exploring for most people interested in early modern European music of any kind.

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Thanks for reading, and for listening if you can make it on Monday!

1. I’ve seen hypotheses that it’s actually derived from a tune by Bononcini, or Palestrina, or somebody else—if you take only the most generic parts of a theme, it turns out you can find lots of others that look like it.

2. In a further cruel twist, the second most famous thing about Legrenzi is that Handel pilfered some of his music for the oratorio Samson.

3. Both tunes sound an awful lot like Italian violin music to me—why do we tend to assume that it’s the first subject that’s supposed to be by Legrenzi?

4. Richard Taruskin, a fine cellist himself, dissected this well in the review “Six Times Six.”

5. The reason for the poor audio quality, incidentally, appears to have been more due to wartime shortages than from 1940s technology. (Ander-Donath, drawing on his engineering background, seems to have been compelled to make his own recording equipment from scratch.)

6. This is not for a total lack of material: there appears to be a family memoir and a few articles—just all a bit too hard for me to get my hands on.

7. Maybe the aria’s inclusion is less of a surprise if you know that her previous album was called 1940 Carmen. Or if you know that her album Norma—where was this song then?—is titled after her own first name.

8. Son of Saint-Sulpice organist Daniel, if anybody was wondering.

9. She has one Spanish-language verse on “Chicken Noodle Soup”.

10. Yes, I am aware that Huening Kai/Huening Bahiyyih’s father was born in Brazil; and yes, I am also aware of BLACKSWAN’s Gabi.

11. I sincerely apologize if you do actually listen to the song.

12. Not helped by constantly having to stop Google from giving me results for Nayeon.

13. If the “JTOP” listed on Spotify and Genius as her label/distributor is the same as this one, then her target audience should be “#miami #ny #world 🌎”.

14. Apologies to Luvies, and honestly to most other MYs, for picking this song over “Chill Kill” and “Drama” respectively.

15. I would say that Giselle’s stated preference for this song was also a factor, but I was already several dozen plays in by the time I saw that video. [EDIT: Ningning gets it too.]

16. The second chorus cuts straight to the bridge instead of this postchorus, an epic moment of deferred gratification.

17. Even if the constant citations of Raphael’s Cartoons in The Lion’s Ear started to make me giggle after a while.