Compositions Decomposed

When the Metropolitan hosts a lecture, they mean business. There was the lectern. Perched behind it, speaker Alex Ross, music critic at The New Yorker, spoke into a microphone. There was a curtain, a hardwood floor, and little else. It was reminiscent of a university classroom, set in an auditorium. I kept recalling how fantastic those art history lectures were ... you know, the ones with the colorful slides and juicy stories.

Ross had wiry thin hair, appeared young, and was by turns sheepish and fiery as he read from the essay he prepared, "The Art of Fear" covering classical music created by Strauss and Shostakovich in the 30s and 40s under totalitarian regimes.

We live in a multi-media circus, with lights flashing, text running, and music streaming at us most of any given day. Our senses have adapted to the deluge of information flung at us, and perhaps come to expect it. As readers consume more media through the Internet we become accustomed to the story package. An article is no longer just a few graphs of quotes and background information. It's that plus video, plus a photo gallery, plus podcasts and blogs. It's surface and in-depth, take your pick. Text or image, a-la-carte.

So, a lecture where one is reading an essay about music, albeit a masterfully crafted one, leaves a little to be desired.

I kept thinking, 'Hey, we're talking about critics who called Shostakovich's work cacophonous and rife with discord. How about a sampling of that sound?'

Wouldn't it have been illuminating and engaging to have heard a few bars. Or to have seen some slides of the mastermind at work? Perhaps a video clip?

Whispers of the Met's attempt to rival MOMA with showy displays of modernism and an embrace of the contemporary have been bandied about lately. But, with lectures such as this, the museum still rings of classicism and sleepiness. To be sure, classicism steeped in respected tradition. But lacking in the zing department nonetheless.

I went to the lecture a fan of Shostakovich, eager to learn more about his music and dealings with Stalin. One listen to this music tells the story of diverging from all that was known before, of risk, of a Russian artist preparing compositions for Stalin's totalitarian regime that possibly contained a deeper message for the public masked in what critics called dissonance.

Yes, sure, there were details of these things mentioned at the lecture. But, this was no Guggenheim Works & Process where you see something or hear something and then have a speaker translate it and explore it with an audience. And, this was no 92nd St. Y where the hall is ever packed and anticipation is palpable before a speaker appears on stage. Nope. Sleepy. Old-school. One-dimensional in a three-dimensional world.

"I'm sorry honey, I know it wasn't what you expected," a frail, grizzle-haired woman in front of me said to her husband just after the lights went on and the scattered attendees prepared to exit.

A-haa, so it wasn't a reflection of my age that I was feeling somewhat dissatisfied.

Walking down the stairs to the left of the auditorium exit, a woman was gesticulating, searching for words to express her thoughts. "I just wish there had been more ... examples," she said to her friend who looked as puzzled as she that just like that, the lecture was over and done.

Perhaps, had the audience been invited to scrawl questions on slips of paper (as they do at Y lectures) or had a microphone been passed around, had people somehow been encouraged to interact, (pinot and cheese reception anyone?), someone might have asked the question rambling through the auditorium, "Um, excuse me, is this all there is?"

YGAT