On Music
GOODMAN, JOHN
On Music FROM ASPEN TO ALTAMONT BY JOHN GOODMAN Nobody went naked or smoked grass or dropped acid, even though some of the Woodstock Nation were in attendance; decorum prevailed in its own...
...Albert Schweitzer and other luminaries...
...In Chicago, the concert was free but a riot ensued anyway...
...On the other hand, Joan Baez' derogation of redneck America, "Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man," is cheap and easy...
...The line between peace, brotherhood, love-magic on the one hand and bad trips, bad Karma, physical violence on the other is a ragged and uncertain one...
...Beyond the stories of incredible promoter and performer greed, beyond the demands of the kids for free concerts and the intense middle-class community resistance, there lies a more obscure conflict...
...As such, their purpose is to educate as well as entertain...
...God knows the concert hall provides enough ritual for the rest of the year...
...Far from being unpleasant, it is rather marvelous to hear Baroque flourishes trumpeted out of windows or to find yourself attending to the flippant run of a bassoon...
...Besides the ratty fatigues, one could discern mail-order sport coats and narrow ties, bubbly print dresses, shirtsleeves, cowboy clothes--even a see-through and a Cardin suit or two...
...The cancellation story was essentially the same in Florida, North Carolina and Louisiana...
...It has something to do, I think, with the Woodstockers' mythical explorations of Love and Death...
...and the Saint-Saens Piano Concerto No...
...They helped make the mythical search and the reality come together, for once at least...
...Besides the regular weekend series of three concerts, there are outdoor band and student concerts, Monday recitals, operas and workshops, open rehearsals...
...Erected in 1965 and seating 1500, it is one of the handsomest of these arenalike structures I have seen, and the acoustics are quite good...
...Now enrolling about 500 students, the school offers a full curriculum of music study from late June to the end of August, concurrent with the Festival's nine-week season...
...He led the Aspen Chamber Symphony in Toru Takemitsu's Dorian Horizon (1966), two early Beethoven songs (sung poorly by Yi Kwei Sze) and Haydn's "Clock" Symphony...
...a Bartok-like piece by Gyorgy Rayki, Lamentazione...
...decorum prevailed in its own fashion, albeit not after the manner of Tanglewood, Ravinia or any of the larger, more pretentious summer music festivals...
...At Altamont, by Ralph Gleason's extended account in Esquire, the love-death polarity was etched more sharply: the happy comity of the more remote crowd, the violence near the stage...
...25 in G Minor...
...Certainly there is plenty of uncritical fervor generated in the typical subscription series audiences of our major orchestras...
...The other end of the musical spectrum was represented by the Conference on Contemporary Music, originated in 1958 by Darius Milhaud, who is still a member of the Aspen faculty...
...2 in G Minor, with William Masselos as pianist...
...It is contiguous to the buildings of the Institute for Humanistic Studies, where high-powered executives and scholars come to unwind and discuss Social Issues under the auspices of the Liberal Arts...
...The Festival Orchestra, under Jorge Mester's direction, also played Mozart's Symphony No...
...Aspen, Colorado, has its own singular social mix--something between a classy resort and a commune--and its Music Festival seems, as they say, to get it all together...
...Saint-Saens' fustian, warhorse Concerto is as challenging, even brutal, to a pianist as anything in the standard repertoire...
...Like the film, the discs are a severely limited and edited portrayal of the Woodstock experience...
...The concert-lecture-discussion format was expanded in 1950, and the following year a music school was begun...
...You can hear this spiritual surge and the performers' responses to it all in the three-disc documentary Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More (Cotillion sd3-500), a must for any serious rock collector...
...During this period the town is filled with musicians, and the sound of music is inescapable...
...Rock Festival" is a misnomer for these vast gatherings...
...But in Aspen, for some reason, the applause seemed more clearly a result of the performance and the occasion...
...Although this Festival, like many others, did the Beethoven Bicentennial Bit this year...
...They rose to their feet, cheering and bravo-ing wildly--probably in a sympathetic gesture to Masselos as much as in recognition of the bravura of his performance...
...This year Earle Brown and Alexander Goehr were composers-in-residence...
...Festivals elsewhere, please take note...
...The incident seemed to typify the casual yet enthusiastic nature of concert-going in Aspen...
...In Chicago, the riot--violent as it was--appeared to erupt quite spontaneously...
...A highlight of the festival was the appearance of Akeo Watanabe, who with Seiji Ozawa is one of Japan's great conductors...
...The market for large rock festivals is depressed right now, the bottom having dropped out last December after Altamont, that tense assemblage of 300,000 in California where some Hell's Angels in fact murdered a man...
...I have never seen this happen in a full-scale concert performance before, and I guess most of the audience had not either...
...Aspen brings music literally into the streets, as a summer festival ought to do...
...these congregations always stand in awe of great concert personalities and the standard repertoire...
...One could hardly imagine a more beautiful setting for a concert series...
...Who can deal with bad vibrations in a crowd of 400,000...
...Everyone has implicitly acknowledged this, for there has been a great deal of blather about "what Woodstock taught us," what it meant, why the legend can never be recreated, and so forth...
...In New York there was a great hassle over money: Performers didn't get paid and about 20,000 kids crashed the gate, after which a riot ensued...
...Although the Aspen Festival's setting is inimitable, its easy style, diversified programming and appeal to a wide range of music patrons--not to mention its intense musical concentration--can be emulated...
...Music Director Jorge Mester stressed many of The Master's little-known works and planned concerts to demonstrate specific influences on and by Beethoven...
...The performances I heard were invariably of high quality, as was the programming...
...Watanabe is a master of tempos and subtle variations in dynamics: His Haydn was done with great precision, losing none of its fervor to the miniaturistic approach...
...I may as well add my two-cents worth...
...He and the orchestra had to stop and start again, but then proceeded without a flaw to the climactic ending...
...But it is wise to remember that these are the true minstrels of a generation playing, talking and singing...
...For me, the highpoints of the album are Joe Cocker's "With a Little Help from My Friends" and Sly and the Family Stone's "I Want to Take You Higher," both performed with more intensity or relevance than ever before...
...More informally, there are always hordes of Woodstockers twanging in town...
...Aspen's blend of music and the humanities began in 1949 with the Goethe Bicentennial Convocation, attended by Dr...
...Masselos got through it all exceedingly well, except for a point in the second (Scherzo) movement when he apparently turned two pages of the score at once...
...Richard Dufallo was Artistic Director...
...Benjamin Britten's Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (his early series of impressionistic sketches...
...rather, they are like what the Welsh call an eisteddfod--a convocation of bards and minstrels--on a grand, electrified scale...
...A concert of chamber music was devoted to "works by composers who have influenced Beethoven...
...Although many of the performers deal in overt or covert ways with politics, that is hardly the dominant tone of the album...
...More typical and more indicative of the troubles of the Woodstock Nation was the Powder Ridge, Connecticut, fiasco in late July...
...There was a little informal music, but the promoters finally knuckled under to a combination of community pressure and legal injunctions...
...In the middle of August I spent several delightful days in Aspen...
...The Conference culminated in a performance of alea--chance-oriented works--by Brown, Gilbert Amy, Betsy Jolas and Harrison Birtwhistle...
...At the urging of super-hype promotion and tribal need, the kids began assembling at least a week before the festivities were to begin...
...And there is incessant practicing...
...The Takemitsu piece, like much Japanese modern music, shows the influence of Olivier Messiaen, but is a unique and fascinating exercise in Eastern rhythms and tonal purity...
...The recent summer also witnessed another kind of festival, of course, that had Woodstock as its prototype...
...Love" won out because the "death threat" was tangible enough to require people to rise above themselves...
...If Altamont was "a bummer from the beginning," so seemed Woodstock...
...But in the Catskills the rain and mud, the food shortage and general hardship, the possibility of disaster, even, were all recognized as very real threats, and therefore could be handled...
...i.e., Mozart, Bach, Haydn and Boccherini...
...Politics and rock is another subject, but the late Jimi Hendrix's total dislocation of "The Star Spangled Banner" expresses far more political zap than poor Joan can muster...
...Aspen lies in a valley, virtually surrounded by mountains, and the Music Tent-Amphitheater--a few minutes' drive from the town's center--is situated in open fields with spectacular views...
Vol. 53 • October 1970 • No. 20
