The 13th season of Istanbul Recitals concert series opened with Valentina Lisitsa on 12th October, in Sakıp Sabancı Museum The Seed. Located next to the Bosphorus, with warm weather, moonlight, garden and its nocturnal sounds; the place itself was like a music.
The theme of this concert series is explained as:
"Istanbul Recitals means extraordinary artists
On the high platform of classical music, Istanbul Recitals is the only concert series focused on recitals with internationally popular virtuosos of world halls, prestigious domestic and foreign participant institutions and distinguished viewers from the city's peaks, for the last 13 years"
which explains why tickets are so expensive :D I haven't gone before, due to that reason and because of my busy schedule. However, finally I was there, drinking my wine across the stunning view and waiting for Valentina Lisitsa's live performance.
The concert has begun with Beethoven No.11 B flat major Piano Sonata, Op.22 (1800). This four movement sonata is seen as the last work of Beethoven's youth. Written at age 30, this classical piece was dedicated to his patron Count Graf Johann Georg von Browne. Beethoven named this piece as "Grand Solo Sonata" and it was published in 1802. As the name suggests, it lasts around 25 minutes. Lisitsa's ability to express the contrasts between second movement "Adagio con molta espressione" and the others was delightful.
Second piece was Chopin's Scherzo* No.2, B flat minor, Op.31. Chopin wrote four scherzos in total and this one was published in 1827 when he was 27 years old. This one movement romantic work was dedicated to Countess Adele Fürstensein. Lisitsa's performance was playful as it supposed to be yet, she impressed the audience with her distinguishing sensitivity and agility.
After the break, Lisitsa played 6 Rachmaninoff preludes selected from Op.32, Op.23 and Op.3. Rachmaninoff composed 24 preludes in total like his predecessors**. She played G major No.5, G# minor No.12 and B minor No.10 from Op.32. These 13 preludes (Op.32) was written in 2 weeks in Moscow after Rachmanivoff's return from USA concerts in 1911. No.10 is said to be inspired from Swede painter Arnold Böcklin's painting "Returning Home". No matter how improvised they sound, a great effort lies beneath these pieces. In fact, Lisitsa could perform them fluently as they were effortless. From Op.23, she played G minor: Alla Marcia No.5 and B flat major No.2. Rachmaninoff wrote these grandioso preludes at age 30. She also played a solo prelude C# minor Op.3 No.2. Lisitsa's performance and strength were affected the audience in a way that no one could even breath between pieces.
Closing piece of the concert was Spanish Rapsody S.254 of Liszt (1863). This solo piano work was dedicated to Eugénie, Queen of France (Napolion Bonaparte's Spanish originate wife). Lisitsa's brilliant performance, her focus and strength was remarkable throughout the concert; especially on this 13 minutes long piece. At the end, audience showed their appreciation and admiration with strong applauses!
Youtube Views
Valentina Lisitsa is announced as "The Queen of Rachmaninoff" on her website valentinalisitsa.com and on the program booklet and prior announcements. She is also defined as "the first "YouTube star" of classical music".
She has more than 200 million views and more than 500 thousand subscribers on her YouTube channel. Her Beethoven "Moonlight" Sonata, III "Presto Agitato" recording itself exceeded 40 million views. An important note: there is no use of the term "popular" in any of these resources; yet I argue her fame under this term in order to reflect audience's perception.
By making a quick comparison, legendary woman pianist Martha Argerich (who is still alive) doesn't even have her own YouTube channel and most viewed video is 7,5 million. Other legends like Alicia de Larrocha and İdil Biret, as well as younger contemporary pianists such as Katia Buniatishvili and Momo Kodama, Imogen Cooper (they are the other woman pianists of Istanbul Recitals 13th season) doesn't have more than thousands of views. Furthermore, many other female and male pianists can't reach Lisitsa's statistics on YouTube***.
Standardization
So, it bring us to the question of "Is popularity against music as art?", and/or vice versa. Do you have to choose one over the other? Do they exclude each other, or mutually exclusive? Can you avoid being commodified while being popular or should you sacrifice some artistic qualities in this sake? Is art for art's sake? If it is not, what is it for? :)
And also, what determines the artistic value of a musical piece or a musician? Is it better if more people listens to it or is it a bad music/musician if only few people listens and loves it? In my opinion, "intentions" should be considered as well in order to answer this. If a musician wants to be popular (not to make "art") and earn a lot of money and can't have thousands or millions of listeners; then it may be called "valueless" under those circumstances. However, if the musician just wants to express him/herself or give meaning to his/her existence through music, "make art", etc. then its value can not be determined through the listener numbers; i.e. popularity. It also verifies that popularity is not a measure for artistic value..
Yet, how will we be able to assess the value if it is not popularity? Whenever such discussion raise, I always remember Adorno's article "On Popular Music****". As one of the foremost continental philosophers after WW2, he was also a composer and a musicologist, he put the notion "standardization" and mass production into the center of popular music discussion: "A clear judgment concerning the relation of serious music to popular music can be arrived at only by strict attention to the fundamental characteristic of popular music: standardization."****
He mentions several sub-concepts under this:
1. Structural standardization: Popular music aims at standard reactions, stimuli that provoke the listener's attention. The composition hears for the listener. In serious music, each musical element, even the simplest one, is "itself", and the more highly organized the work is, the less possibility there is of substitution among the details.
2. Imitation: The musical standards of popular music were originally developed by a competitive process. As one particular song scored a great success, hundreds of others sprang up imitating the successful one. The most successful hits types, and "ratios" between elements were imitated, and the process culminated in the crystallization of standards. Under centralized conditions such as exist today these standards have become "frozen". Noncompliance with the rules of the game became the basis for exclusion.
3. Pseudo-individualization: mean endowing cultural mass production with the halo of free choice or open market on the basis of standardization itself.
In this sense, Lisitsa's fame on YouTube should be named as popularity; yet the music she performs and interprets, the artistic work itself doesn't fall into popular music because of the unstandardized and unique nature of the classical music (i.e. "serious music") that we still listen today (to admit, there were many copy-paste imitative music written in 18th and 19th century as well).
Commercialisation, Consumption, Commodification
As we discussed above, due to inherent unstandardized nature of classical music, it can not be commodified easily. It is hard to consume easily, it requires a lot of time to appreciate and practice and create a new one. That's why its popularity is so limited and will always be limited. In popular music; "The composition hears for the listener."** At a certain point, it becomes a "Café" background music, however there are copyright issues that make cafés to choose play classical music but no one composes a new "serious music" to be played in a Café :D
While there were times that "popular" music was considered as a working class music due to easily understandable nature, this meaning is faded soon. This was true in the age of avangardism; artists and composers were mainly creating works that an uneducated ear or an eye could hardly appreciate, so for wider audiences making popular music was considerable. However, after the second world war, this purpose was disappeared and music that can't be commercialized didn't survive.
There is also another aspect that we should never forget while thinking about this subject; Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninov, etc all those "serious music" composers were themselves "popular" in their times. And they were composing and playing for earning money. They were funded by newborn bourgeoisie and some nobles and the more listeners they get, the more they could compose ! This didn't make their music standardized; because alongside of lack of structural standardization and mass production, there is also no "imitation" in their music.
We concluded above that popularity is not a measure for artistic value, so not being popular also doesn't make a music "art". But not being standardized, mass produced or imitated surely increase the artistic value of a music.
Finally, in Valentina Lisitsa example, you may ask "Is she a better pianist than the less populars on social network?", and the answer is "No". "Is she a worse pianist because she is popular on YouTube?", the answer is again "No". Millions of views of a Youtube video doesn't make the music she plays a commodity or a standardized popular music. It only makes it commercialized which is inevitable as in 18th and 19th century. A popular pianist and popular music should be distinguished in that sense; Lisitsa is a popular pianist today, however the works of Rachmaninoff is not and will not be. Finally, if you ask "is popularity against music as an art?" the answer is "No" again: as long as you don't consume the artist and the art work like a commodity and you do appreciate it, more people listening to Lisitsa's videos only raises hopes for the future of classical music, art and humankind.
*Scherzo: means "joke" in Italian; a movement or passage of light or playful character,
**Beginning from J.S.Bach, composers such as Chopin, Scriabin, Shostakovich wrote 24 preludes in all 12 tones with major and minor keys.
***I only searched their official channels, the number of videos uploaded to YouTube with their names should be considered also for a better analysis.
**** Originally published in: Theodor Adorno, Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, New York: Institute of Social Research, 1941, IX, 17-48
Also online:
Comments