Venice rolls out 25 world premieres in 16 days
NewsIn her second edition as head of the Venice Music Biennale, composer Lucia Ronchetti is packing in premieres by the likes of Rebecca Saunders, Unsuk Chin and (surprise, surprise) the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaya.
There’s even some Vivaldi, packaged as a sound installation.
Ronchetti says: ‘The Absolute Music festival will present some of the major protagonists of the current global electronic and digital scene, as well as performers and improvisers active in the field of experimental jazz.’
All will be made clear in a press rollout later today.
Pianist Patricia Kopatchinskaya & performers and improvisers active in the field of experimental jazz? Wow! That combination reminds me of pianist/avantgarde composer Franco Evangelisti, who founded the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza in the mid 60’s. In an instance, they played piano with violin bows and hanks of horsehair placed around the piano strings. Of course, that was more than half a century ago, but maybe the wheel is being rediscovered, this time electronically.
If she plays piano, that will be a surprise.
The principal function of festivals like these is as much about asserting international status as celebrating art. The best analysis of these practices is in the writings of philosopher and linguist Antonio Gramsci, best known for his theory of cultural hegemony, which describes how the state and ruling classes use cultural institutions to maintain power and authority. In short, hegemonic cultural control legitimizes the elite’s power without the use of violence, economic force, or coercion. Specific kinds of art that can be used to symbolize the arcane knowledge of the elite become a consciously created social construct.
Interestingly, Venice which was long a wealthy port city, has been a paradigm of these practices for over a thousand years when it, Genoa, Pisa, and Amalfi were already fabulously wealthy maritime powers during what we call the Dark Ages. They traded mostly with the Moors who were one of the greatest powers of the time, and their architectural influence is seen everywhere in Venice.
Art as an expression of status is something especially important for Italy which gets a bit shunted aside among the big Western countries. It’s a chance for Italy to say, yes, we’re here, look at us. Never mind that like all the big festivals, it is a social construct and rather artificial. At least it doesn’t have that whiff of horror like Bayreuth or Salzburg for those who understand the social constructs of the high arts and the sorts of power they assert. If we really want to revive and enliven classical music, we have to think a bit more deeply than what is represented by the grand façade of these festivals.
This is a interpretation of cultural enterprises through the lens of Bourdieu and Foucault, who could see art only as an instrument of elite power, i.e. the elite (which elite is irrelevant, there are always elites and that is always wrong) is not in the slightest interested in art but use art to suppress the masses who are always the victim of whatever elites do or don’t do. In this way, art is being politicized and deleted of any meaning, be it artistic, psychological or social meaning. Any well-intented act by any government or elite institution MUST be an instrument of suppression. This absurd neomarxist delusion has caused endless suffering and destruction of culture.
In the case of the festival concerned, it seems rather the other way around: quasi-artists exploiting the ignorance of elites / institutes to get their money and 15 minutes of fame through entertainment that has no link to serious music.
The concert sequence from the movie “Intelligent holidays” by comedian Alberto Sordi. Two poor fellows are sent by their intellectual sons to listen a contemporary music performance. In Italian but easily understandable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD8-fnyOj3o
Mamma Mia. Patricia Kopatchinskaya totally butchered the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto that I heard in Los Angeles. Now she’s a komposer? I am sure her compositions are fit for compost.
We regularly get sent loads of new music scores here by famous composers who want some form of recommendation. Of course they get them, we are very generous people, but after that we use it as compost for the gardens, and greenery never flourishes so beautifully as being fertilized by real music. There was only one type of lily which, to our great surprise, began to produce mild squeezing sounds through their calices.
Sally
yeah and if you put her compost on your plants they will die. It ain’t no Miracle Gro.
That’s cool. Any men? Or are WE now the oppressed and will soon get to be advocated for and have the scales tipped so we get more opportunities that are now being denied? Let’s take to the streets! Who’s an ally! It’s great to be the underdog.
‘The Absolute Music festival will present some of the major protagonists of the current global electronic and digital scene, as well as performers and improvisers active in the field of experimental jazz.’
With classical music this has nothing to do.
It is entertainment, not art.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU-q3_xXKTg
The snippets of music are quotes from Debussy.
This is about ‘tenderness’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vc4qX-M_7Y
A capella feminine utterances:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH4a5zxCsVc
A capella masculine utterances:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA8ZadTI2cs
Educational stimulation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhNjkOTQ16Q
Woman being intimate with a grand piano (sensational):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmZsUkaqUhc
My PA loves this stuff to bits, she has been listening to this the entire morning, and I know she has a special taste.
It will be her fourth edition as head of the Venice Music Biennale, not second