Howard Gardner on Mozart's Figaro

"The Disciplined Mind," a book by Howard Gardner from 1999, pleads for consideration of what he considers to be the most essential purposes for education. He articulates three "realms" that he believes "should animate education:" truth, beauty, and morality.

His example from the realm of beauty is a trio from the first act of The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart. Gardner admits early in the text that his choices for “realms” are personal and somewhat arbitrary, but by drilling down on his realms in stages throughout the text he creates a model for how an educator might develop their own examples.

Gardner has chosen an opera familiar to music lovers, but one which also presents considerable challenges. The Marriage of Figaro is long, and is one of the most complicated plots in the Mozart canon. Characters assume you know who they are, their backstory, and the nature of their intentions throughout this opera.

"Works of art, wrote Gardner, "call for many forms of understanding, at different levels of sophistication." Gardner asks us to understand the "choice of words," the "narrative sequence," and the way in which this opera deals with themes that were controversial at the time. He also asks us to seek to understand the music, "how it was constructed, which effects it achieves, how and why particular examples are wrought."

His presentation is mostly descriptive, and he divides the scene into nine sections. Here are Gardner's nine sections mapped onto the scene in the famous film of the opera by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle:

I. Agenda Setting [0:00]
"Each protagonist reveals goals (to himself or herself and to the audience)."

II. Susanna'a Alarm [0:47]
Gardner segments this section on Susanna's high A-flat where she "captures the attention of the men." A division created by the music rather than the text would start the section at the shift into F minor at [0:32], where Susanna begins to feel anxiety. There could also be a division at [0:58] with the shift into F major as Basilio and the count support her and "try to revive her."

III Recovery [1:25]
This section would also seem to start earlier than Gardner indicates, perhaps with the cadence at [1:16]. He marked the sectional change based on Susanna's first words rather than where the music itself shifts.

IV. Calming Susanna [1:33]
"Another key change, this time back to a stable 'home base' of E-flat."

V. Back to the Page [1:53]
"singing in an apologetic tone, with oboe accompaniment, Basilio backpedals on the gossip that he has been spreading about Cherubino's involvement with the Countess."

VI Banish the Page [2:15]
"All three protagonists refer to the page as 'poverino'--poor lad--in brief duets as well as in antiphonal passages."

VII What did Cherubino do? [2:34]
Gardner includes the "set of rising scalar tones" in which Susanna and Basilio ask the count to explain. Perhaps it would make more sense musically to simply start this section with the count's recitative [2:42] that explains what Cherubino did.

VIII Revelation [3:16]
The Count uncovers Cherubino under the blanket of Susanna's bed. "The orchestra joins in a lengthy A," writes Gardner "one long enough to allow the audience to appreciate the shocking discovery and to laugh heartily."

IX Three Tables Turned [3:19-5:05]
"Susanna, the Count, and Basilio," writes Gardner, "sing simultaneously, revealing their innermost thoughts to themselves and the audience but not, presumably, to one another." In this filmed version of the opera the trio takes place as if only the count was singing, and as if Basilio and Susanna are only thinking their parts.

Gardner challenges his students with this trio. It is a passage that is a mosaic of tightly constructed musical wit.

By using this passage Gardner gives us an example of a disciplined mind at work. It is not only a mind capable of internal rigor and discipline, but also one shaped by the "shopping mall of the disciplines." It is a mind that synthesizes ideas and that values creativity.

Back to School as Opera; a scene from Rossini

With a loud A-flat major chord that quickly becomes a german sixth, the music swings into C major. Rinaldo's friends have shown him his face reflected in a shield. He has spent so much time in the pleasure garden that he no longer recognizes himself. He is relaxed, wearing summer clothes, donning a hair wreath.

Like us, he has spent the summer away from University:



"What adornments are these," sings Lawrence Brownlee as Rinaldo [0:26], "what have I become?" His friends, Ubaldo and Carlo, have come to convince his to leave these illusions and re-enter his life as soldier on crusade.In one of the rare passages for three tenors in operatic literature, they all sing as Rinaldo warms in his realization.

Were there a fourth voice in this passage it would be mine. "Where did the paper for the photocopier end up?...My syllabus is almost finished." Perhaps, as a crusader, I have a more practical bent at this time of year.

In a magnificent vocal display, Brownlee takes the wreath from his head [5:10]. "I am still Rinaldo!" he sings [5:22].

We are all Rinaldo, still. And it is time to get back to school. Leave the pleasure garden. See you in class.

Rhythmic Urges and the Bass Drum Solo in The Rite of Spring

"Keeping Score" is a series of programs centered on specific works of classical music created by conductor Michael Tilson Thomas with the San Francisco Symphony. The series is articulate, charismatic and fun.

The episode on Stravinsky's Rite of Spring includes a section that explores the role of the bass drum in the "Danse de la Terre (Dance of the Earth)" that closes part one of the Rite [3:03]:



Jack van Geem, principle percussionist of the SFS [3:12], says the bass drum solo "is used for every audition that a percussionist has to take, because it is the first time that the bass drum is used in this way; as a solo instrument. What makes this piece stand apart from anything written before is that rawness and vitalness of the rhythmic elements."

The bass drum establishes a rhythmic field of triplets in this "solo." At first it is completely alone in this division; all the other parts subdivide in duple divisions, or are parts of quick gestures that divide in fives and sevens. Gradually the bass drum triplets attract, absorb, parts of these gestures; as one can hear in the brass and winds at [3:54-3:58]. At this moment the tam-tam gesture (supported by horns, clarinets and flutes) cuts across the triplets, and the bass drum seems moving with the current for the first time.

[4:00] "There really are no themes here," says Thomas, "it is all just a bunch of rhythmic urges that have been set down into different parts of the orchestra. Later [5:05], as Thomas highlights the violas and horns playing triplets, this is yet another configuration that is pulled into the vortex of the bass drum.

The cross-currents in this passage are articulated with great clarity by the San Francisco Symphony. "Everything drives on," says Thomas [5:31], "building and layering until it is just so crazy that it just can't be sustained. The rest of the band gives up with a bunch of whoops and shrieks." (The film is layered over whoops and shrieks from a russian folk ensemble to show similarities).

"Party's over," says Thomas [5:48], "Blackout."

Bream, Stravinsky; and the Voice of God

"Stravinsky is waiting," says the voice of God.

Julian Bream (bn 1933) is introduced to Stravinsky. Bream brought the lute into the modern age. He also commissioned or premiered a significant repertoire of 20th century classical guitar music from composers like Benjamin Britten, William Walton, and Hans Werner Henze:



[0:23] "Julian Bream," says a voice from the Twilight Zone: "is the world's best player of the lute."

Bream has always wanted to play the lute for Stravinsky because Stravinsky found the lute "a beautiful and expressive instrument." Stravinsky had also become influenced by the sound of early music and had incorporated influences from composers as diverse as Gesualdo and Machaut into his music.

[1:13] "Would you like to see a lute?" Bream holds cheese in front of a mouse. What could possibly happen?

"Stravinsky is excited by the physical presence of musical instruments." Hmm. The voice is too serious to pull off a line like this one, which could be from the pay-per-view version of Fantasia.

Then in the midst of distractions from every corner [2:00], Bream starts playing a pavane based on the Air called "Flow my Tears" by John Dowland. The text upon which the lute pavane is based glows quietly, concealed deep within in the background:

"Flow, my tears, fall from your springs!
Exiled for ever, let me mourn;
Where night's black bird her sad infamy sings,
There let me live forlorn."

This text is John Dowland's voice, and it is the real narrator for this video; "night's black bird" [2:21] set in G minor.

At [2:44] Bream skips ahead to the closing stanza of the original air:

"Hark! you shadows that in darkness dwell,
Learn to contemn light
Happy, happy they that in hell
Feel not the world's despite."

In whatever way Stravinsky has become connected to this sweet and unexpected performance, one can be certain he is not so disengaged that he is contemplating experiences from his childhood in Russia. But if one can hear beneath the babble that the voice-over has become there is a lute singing quietly about the strange advantages of being in hell: one need not feel "the world's despite."

[3:35] "Why don't you continue this in the next break, because..." says the world.
"The world pays homage. [3:53]" says God...