Monteverdi at 450: Don’t Believe the Hype (Guest post by Andrew Dell'Antonio)

From Linda: Hello, everyone! I completed my eighteen treatments of brain radiation a little over a week ago, and as far as I can tell, I’m not experiencing much in the way of cognitive impairment. That’s particularly good news, considering that in the past month I’ve had some fantastic opportunities: I received a commission to write program notes for a concert by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and I’ve been selected as a contestant for Jeopardy!, with the taping next week. So, even though I have a clear idea of what I want to blog about next, I haven’t had the time to write the posts.

But people keep being wrong on the internet, and I’m not the only one who cares. My friend and colleague Andrew Dell’Antonio (co-editor of The Avid Listener) spotted a trend in the way newspapers are using Claudio Monteverdi to boost tourism, and he offered to write a guest post. My sincere thanks to Andrew for his contribution!

As a long-time admirer of Linda Shaver-Gleason’s insights on the perils of musical-historical cliché, I am absolutely honored that she has given me this opportunity to have my say on an instance of celebratory flim-flam from my own musical-historical backyard.

Claudio Monteverdi
Portrait by Bernardo Strozzi

We are in the 450th anniversary year of the birth of Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), verifiably one of the most prominent European musicians of the turn of the seventeenth century.  Anniversaries bring celebrations, and several have already been underway, the most noteworthy sponsored by the town of Cremona, where he was born, but also at Mantua, where he built his reputation, and Venice, where he landed and put down roots for the last 30 years of his long and productive life.

Most recently hype has bubbled up in a pair of posts from the travel sections of UK newspaper web sites The Guardian and The Telegraph, in conjunction with a planned performance in Venice of the three surviving operas by Monteverdi by prominent English ensembles directed by John Eliot Gardiner. Stephen Pritchard of The Guardian gushes:

The first composer to break through convention and display the true nature of humanity… a man who moved music out of the Renaissance into the Baroque, as much a revolutionary in his own artform as his contemporaries Shakespeare, Galileo, Cervantes, Caravaggio and Rubens were in theirs.

Myths about Beethoven's deafness: Guest post for The Avid Listener

After I've been teasing you about it for over a month, The Avid Listener published my essay "Beethoven’s Deafness and the Myth of the Isolated Artist" today! Here’s a preview:

Beethoven’s disability forms a large part of our concept of him as the quintessential Romantic Hero, as it is a tragic flaw he must overcome to produce his great Art.

The above clip [from Mr. Holland's Opus] mentions two stories about Beethoven’s deafness that have circulated for centuries. In one, Beethoven waves his arms at the podium, oblivious to the fact that the orchestra cannot keep up. In the other, he saws off the legs of his piano so he can feel the vibrations through the floor.

Neither of these stories is true.

Read more »

The Avid Listener also has
a spiffy logo.

The Avid Listener is a blog published by W.W. Norton & Company, intended to foster discussion in and beyond the classroom (hence the discussion questions at the end). I’m excited about this collaboration, as I got to blend my interests in musical mythbusting with their house style emphasizing multimedia presentations.

Also, I am very grateful for the input from Robin Wallace of Baylor University. He is currently writing an entire book devoted to Beethoven myths, and he was generous enough to share some of his drafts with me. He goes into more depth than I’m able to on this blog, so if this topic interests you, please check out his work!

I’m currently working on another off-blog essay about the cliché of making classical music look "cool," and I’m expecting that to be published next week. In the meantime, please enjoy the other wonderful essays on The Avid Listener, and keep sending me suspect links as you find them.