At about 44:20 into Maestro we hear Louis Armstrong playing the tango section of “St. Louis Blues” on the soundtrack. What’s that doing in the film? There’s nothing in the film that would explain it.
Had Bernstein met Armstrong, known him, performed with him? We don’t know, at least not from the film. Was he familiar with Armstrong’s music? Judging from what I know of Bernstein, I’m pretty sure he was, and I’m also pretty sure that he liked it. But that doesn’t tell me what that bit of music is doing on the soundtrack. I’m also pretty sure that much of the audience for the film, probably most of the audience, didn’t recognize that as Louis Armstrong, though to the extent that they were explicitly attending to the soundtrack they would certainly have noticed that it was different from any of the other soundtrack music.
This raises an aesthetic issue that was hotly debated in the American academic world in the 1950s and 1960s: Are aesthetic objects, such as films or poems, self-contained and complete in themselves or does appreciation of them depend on contextual knowledge of one sort of another? In this particular context, in order to ‘understand’ or ‘appreciate’ that segment of Maestro (and perhaps the whole film) do you need to recognize that bit of music as being a performance by Louis Armstrong? If so, then I’m afraid most of the audience missed out. Beyond that question, we might also ask: Do you also need to know why that bit of music was on the soundtrack? Well, I’ve suggested at least a partial answer to that question: Bernstein probably liked Armstrong. But is that sufficient? Do we also need to know something about Armstrong’s position in American music? That’s a broad and nonspecific bit of knowledge. Is there something specific to Armstrong and Bernstein? That’s a more specific question. If the answer to that last question is “yes,” then I missed what was going on at that point in the film.
More generally about Maestro, it’s obvious to me, in part from having read a bit about the film and having watched a variety of YouTube videos, that there’s a lot going on in the film that I missed the first time I watched, and the second, and, well I suppose I’m now somewhere in my fourth time through. And I’m certainly not the only one in the audience who has missed a lot. How important is that? If the film is a self-contained aesthetic object, then it’s all there on the screen and on the soundtrack, and none of us have missed a thing. If the film isn’t self-contained, then just how much context must we know?
Let’s set those big questions aside and focus on the film. Here’s what a Google search dredged up for that segment of the sound track:
St. Louis Blues (Concerto Grosso) / Symphony No. 5 in C-Sharp Minor, Pt. 3: Adagietto • Louis Armstrong Quintet · Lewisohn Stadium Symphony Orchestra • Wiener Philharmoniker • Leonard Bernstein
The first thing we hear is an a capella statement by Armstrong, which starts at 44:00 or so in the film. That transitions quickly to the tango section of W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues,” which is also in the soundtrack. That then gives way to the Mahler Adagietto at about 45:30 in the film (03:50 in the above clip).
I did another YouTube search, this time on “St. Louis Blues (Concerto Grosso),” and came up with this, originally recorded in 1956:
It opens with the orchestra playing something that is obviously based on W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues.” The orchestra does this and that, reaches a climax at about 2:05, and then cuts off. We then hear Armstrong play a cadenza, the same one that’s on the film soundtrack. Then his All Stars join him in a performance of Handy’s song, which he’s performed who knows how many times before; it was a staple in his repertoire. At about 5:26 Armstrong is joined by the full orchestra (thus fulfilling the basic demands of the concerto grosso form) and this and that with the orchestra, and then Armstrong, the All Stars, join the orchestra to the end at 8:40 or so. Relatively little of that shows up in the soundtrack of Maestro, just Armstrong’s cadenza and the tango section of “St. Louis Blues.”
Where’s that 1956 performance from? The soundtrack indicates that it involves something called the “Lewisohn Stadium Symphony Orchestra.” What’s that? Well, another search turned up an entry from the New York Philharmonic Digital Archives about a concert that Leonard Bernstein conducted in 1956 at Lewisohn Stadium on July 14. It quotes from a review that appeared in The New York Times on July 16:
An evening of jazz was tried at Lewisohn Stadium Saturday night for the first time in the thirty-one year history of the Stadium Concerts. With Louis Armstrong and his All-Stars and the Dave Brubeck Quartet as the attractions, the program drew a sellout crowd of 21,000.
As an added feature, Leonard Bernstein conducted the Stadium Symphony Orchestra and Mr. Armstrong's group in a performance of ‘St. Louis Blues.’ This was filmed for use in a motion picture about Mr. Armstrong that is being produced by Edward R. Murrow. W.C. Handy, who wrote the famous blues, was present for this special presentation of the tune.
We now know about that particular connection between Armstrong and Bernstein, they’d worked together on that performance. (I should have guessed it.)
Here’s a video clip showing the “St. Louis Blues” segment:
We see Bernstein and the orchestra at the beginning; Armstrong's cadenza starts are roughly 02:18. At 02:52 we see a shot of W.C. Handy in the audience. At 03:29 we get a shot of Bernstein, arms folded, listening to Armstrong and his All Stars (Barrett Deems, drums, Edmond Hall, clarinet, Billy Kyle, piano, Dale Jones, bass, Trummy Young, trombone). At 03:20 Bernstein and the orchestra come in; they pick things up at 04:19, with Bernstein conducting in his typically enthusiastic style (FWIW, without baton). That and everything else in that clip had me laughing out loud to the end of the clip (and brought a few tears to the eyes).
There’s a long and convoluted tangle of stories about people and culture meeting in that one concert. W.C. Handy, King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, George Gershwin, Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman, Al Jolson, Leopold Stokowski, Bugs Bunny, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse, those are some names that come immediately to mind. Explaining just what they’re doing here, all scrambled together, that would take a while, and take me even further from the film at hand, Maestro. There is a perfectly reasonable sense in which all of that is implied by the presence of that music in the soundtrack. But it would be absurd to maintain that you need to ‘know’ all that in order to ‘appreciate’ or ‘understand’ the film.
All of that aside, we need to ask just what’s happening at that point in the film. Given that Bernstein got married in 1951 and judging from the ages of the children we see in that section of the film, it’s reasonable to think that that’s where we are in Bernstein’s life, the mid-1950s. But the film doesn’t show that concert. Rather, that bit of music shows up at 42 minutes or so into the film when Bernstein is at his Connecticut home with his wife, Felicia, their children, and various others, including his sister, Shirley. We see Bernstein and Felicia talking on the second-story terrace. Bernstein’s been lamenting that he feels no inspiration. We cut to the lawn where we see Felicia and Shirley talking about the “price” one pays “for being in my brother’s orbit.” As that conversation comes to a close, we hear Armstrong’s opening cadenza on the soundtrack.
The scene shifts to Bernstein and Felicia playing on the lawn with their oldest daughter while a Nanny holds their infant son in the background. As we hear Armstrong playing the tango section we cut to an indoor party where couples dancing (including Bernstein and Felicia), still with Armstrong on the soundtrack. During the scene the soundtrack shifts to an “Adagietto” from some Mahler symphony (no. 5). And then we’re back outdoors, with Bernstein cradling an infant (his son, Alex) and walking toward the camera. And then sitting on a swing alongside a friend (Aaron Copeland). As Bernstein is leaning over and kissing the baby we segue to a mostly dark shot where we see Felicia in the distance, beyond the edge of a curtain. On the curtain we see a moving shadow, of Bernstein conducting. I assume he’s conducting the Mahler, and then the visual shifts back to Connecticut and kids on the lawn (c. 46:01), with Bernstein puffing away on a cigarette. The visual stays in Connecticut for a bit and then, WHAM!, at roughly 46:41 we see Bernstein on the podium of some performance. As the music continues in the soundtrack, he leaves the podium – I assume the performance is over – and rushes into his wife’s embrace while we hear audience applause. And then we zip forward to 1971 in the Dakota apartment (I’m looking at the screen play), where a party is in progress.
What’s going on? In the film we see Bernstein feeling his creativity is gone and his wife musing about strains in the marriage. And then there’s a triumph on the podium. During the ‘down’ part of the visuals we hear what has to be a triumphant concert on the soundtrack, one featuring the music of a black composer and black performers. That music is switched for a very different piece of music from a different tradition, Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, in a successful performance conducted by Bernstein. The performance, like the Armstrong, is public, while the conversations we overheard are private. The Wikipedia entry for the Mahler indicates that the “Adagietto” “may be Mahler's most famous composition and is the most frequently performed of his works.” Moreover, “It is said to represent Mahler's love song to his wife Alma.” In context, Bernstein’s love for Felicia?
What are we to make of all this? I don’t know, nor, to tell the truth, do I much care just what it ‘means.’ How it works, that’s a different (kind of) question, one I find more interesting. (And more important.)
More later.
No comments:
Post a Comment