I feel like this isn't talked about enough, but the clarinet player/Berlin board member (Knut) and the veteran cellist Lydia passed over for Olga (Gosia) in the movie are in fact REAL MEMBERS OF THE DRESDEN PHILHARMONIC! Both of them had a substantial amount of lines in the movie, and one would think that they were actors by profession. Imagine my surprise when I saw them in the orchestra in a taped performance of Tchaikovsky's 6th on the DW yt channel. Bravo to the Dresden Phil not only for their playing but for their acting too.
As someone who has been a lifelong orchestral musician I loved how this managed to show how it didn’t matter how high, or far, you had gone in music & the profession it always found a way of beating you up, of wounding the ego, of showing the genuine concern & secret pleasure at someone else’s pain while ignoring the fact that your turn would come too. Lydia Tar having to make horrendous decisions about other peoples lives masked as genuine artistic decisions was spot on & the almost obligatory need for naked ambition to be able to succeed. Favorite part- when Lydia attacked the musical thief on stage in concert!
Oscars not what it used to be, along with everything it has become political and hijacked by Twitter hive minds. No way Blanchett lost her deserved Oscar over narrative which Michelle Yeoh had
You can tell that Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss are not high-powered musicians, but their approximations are so much better than most movies of this type--and what Blanchett manages to do in this scene is amazing. And so nice that they got Sophie Kauer to really play the Elgar Concerto, having an excellent real cellist as an actor only added to the realism of the movie.
I feel like this isn't talked about enough, but the clarinet player/Berlin board member (Knut) and the cellist Lydia passed over for Olga (Gosia) are in fact real members of the Dresden Philharmonic! Bravo to the Dresden Phil not only for their playing but for their acting too.
Blanchett had a standard Melbourne private girls school education in piano, so not surprising she could pull this scene off, but it did make all the difference in these scenes. The interpretations were with the simple (in technique) Bach Well Tempered Clavier #1 in C major, anyone with any formal piano training could do it, no ultra talent about it and it is the first thing any kid learns from their teacher. But it was still of great benefit to have her training in making this scene, made it much more realistic than the standard Hollywood fare where they replace the actor with someone who can actually play the piano and hide the face and the hands!
What I find really impressive is that Cate is able to not only play but talk at the same time! That's a high level of internalisation of the mechanics of piano playing (and something I have difficulty doing). Incidentally I'd heard that for the Geoffrey Rush "recital" in the café (wasn't it called the Moby Dick?) his hands pretty well approximated the positions and moves for the Bumblebee, but always in the near neighbourhood of the right notes, and the piano was not tampered or silenced. I'd love to hear a raw recording of what he actually played.
This is what I'm saying! Sure the piece is technically easy, but what's impressive/convincing is how casually she's playing it, transforming, it lecturing about it, etc, all without skipping a beat. I can't think of another piano scene like it in Hollywood (English language films at least). It's on par with some of the amazing piano scenes in Bergman and Haneke films.
Hahah it's nice to have a music 'nerd out' session about Lydia Tar's explanation / interpretation of Bach's C Major Prelude. And knowing music nerds like yourself would go to town breaking down frame by frame Cate's performance in that small segment, it's also very helpful to see where those references allude to. Like I didn't know the Peanuts reference and I wasn't familiar with Gould's interpretation of Bach, and also the 'academic nerd arguments' about music theory. Also really nice to point out why Max's leg keeps doing that anxious leg shake thing and what it means: that basically Max is not on the same tempo as Lydia and thus its a clash of ideologies and ego. I'm definitely for people to appreciate music by master artists as a whole. Even if the master artist wasn't a good person in real life/ their values don't jive with us, if they did amazing music, we all should study why that music is amazing. Vs the counter argument of 'if values of master artist don't jive with me, I'm not willing to listen or care to understand why that music is good.' it just comes off as a very close minded, insular, almost arrogant approach to learning about music. Like Lydia uses the Bach prelude to try to sell Max on why Bach is a genius and his music is good, despite what he thinks. That it honestly is a very simple piece of music, a beginner could play it and it is technically not hard to learn, an expert could play it in different interpretations, but either way, it is a genius piece of writing and it sounds amazing. It emotes so much with so little. But the disappointment comes when Max just goes 'nope, I'm not buying it.' Then of course Lydia didn't want to let it go and then turns into bully mode and berates him and the whole scene ends with Max storming out. But I suppose it is hard to separate art from artist because it is naturally intertwined. If an artist creates a piece of work, its a piece of their unique DNA and personality that is expressed in that art work. When an actor performs, their unique piece of their soul is expressed through the character. And same goes with writers, chefs, or anyone who creates art. Their thumbprints are what makes their work special. Thus why reputation is so important for these people/ public figures. Because the people who admire their work do naturally put these people on a pedestal and expect them to be mini-gods. 'If these people make amazing art, they surely must be amazing people in order to create such amazing art'. But yeah, people are people. People are not gods, they have their weaknesses too, but they also have pluses too. The amazing thing about Cate is Cate really gave herself to the character, she really went 200% with the authenticity of selling that Lydia Tar knows her stuff and she is a genius. Thus she enlisted the help of all the music consultants and wanted to get the conducting and the piano playing right and the coolest thing is the music professionals were very impressed and commended her on how great she did it! I mean sure if you want to reeeaallly nitpick, like maybe the conducting felt a bit too strong for that segment of Mahler 5, (I did watch a live performance recently by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra) but then again, it was for dramatic effect and also meant to show that Lydia was more about the theatrics of her performance as a conductor rather than channel music with the orchestra to express Mahler's intent. Like I love film and I love music and I know that somethings have to be heightened for film even if its not accurate in real life.
quote: I'm definitely for people to appreciate music by master artists as a whole. Art is a kind of separation. And we can fight over our favourite clowns. The separation between music and performer started with sheet music and continued with recording. Of course the product can be separated from the performer. We are talking about someone playing Lydia Tar, ie a clown playing an imagined clown! Now go and do the same: play a clown playing an imagined clown while his product becomes seperated from you. Now a real circus clown can put off his mask after the performance. But the famous artist can't! And that is the tragedy. Why do people need clowns, or even great master clowns? And what is this about the moralization of the consumption of the clown? quote: I'm definitely for people to appreciate music by master artists as a whole. See when you play some sheetmusic (or venen better: Jazz), then you enter a musical state. That means you seperate your interllectual bullshit from the here and now to get synchronized into the here and now. And you do so alone or with fellow musicians, without there being any edge of a stage or art being present! That process is called integration and it is the opposite of art. I comment on your comment to a comment on a film, which wants to ellicit commentary, not intergration. That film contains commentary about the mechanics of disintegration. So we see the continued disintegration which claims the idea of art ie the replacement of something yearned for by the product of the clown-industry. The more people speak about art, the more they are removed from music. But music is simple: join us, shut up and play!
That was one of the most fascinating and probative analyses I have every seen or heard about movies and composers and actors and the interrelationships of all of them. It makes me want to go see Tar this second. Thank you so much for this.
Very helpful both to understand that performing music is somehow not just hitting the notes on a piano in a prescribed way, but also to realize how good an actress Blanchett is with the insight you have provided. Thanks!!
Cate is a master all the way and she delivered THE performance of 2022... But now I'm terrified of Todd Field. This is an absolute and meticulous masterpiece for contemporary filmmaking. I loved his 2 previous films In The Bedroom and Little Children, but this was an absolute consolidation... Hoping he doesn't wait another 14 years to make another film.
This is the best description of Bach's Prelude I have ever come across. Raises so many more questions and demonstrates how to play. This is why the great Pat Metheny says "beside Bach we all suck"
It is all a matter of perspective. I am a better pianist than Bach was...because he never played piano. I am a better Composer than Beethoven was (at the age of 9) and I am a better musician than Mozart was (at the age of 2). There was a point in each of the great composers lives where they were total beginners and didnt know the first thing about music. There was a time when Mozart didnt know where middle C was. There was a point in time where Beethoven couldnt even play an A minor scale. But they learned how. And so can you or anybody else that dedicates every waking hour to mastering the fundamentals of their instrument. Beside 8-year-old-child-Bach, we are all musical savants. It's all a matter of perspective.
Pat recognized Bach as an improvisational master. I think there is a majority of musicians, trying to faithfully execute the notes in their music, who don't even have a hint of this.
@@allenapplewhite Very interesting comment. I enjoy playing music (as my channel's content suggests) and while I do not think I'm "really good" even on my best instrument (bass), I recognize that I am nevertheless able to do really good things at times on all of my instruments. I do what I do in order to try to have those times where other people can enjoy what I do as much as I enjoy doing it.
Thank you for this excellent commentary and dissection of this most amazing scene. And for your insights into Ms. Blanchett's performance and Bach's music. Really enjoyed it!
As further evidence of CB playing the piano, her DG album also lists: Bach, J S: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, BWV 846-869 Cate Blanchett (piano), Zethphan Smith-Gneist (speaker), Cate Blanchett (speaker) Recorded: 2021-10 Recording Venue: James-Simon-Galerie, Berlin Prelude in C Major, BWV 846 Track length 1:27
@@heartheart5543 I saw it in Vienna and there was a special screening/talk with the Austrian editor who mentioned things I didn't see so I might have to go see a 4th time (they joked the movie is basically a horror movie) It's amazing how you see new details every time
Thankyou- I am not a trained musician so loved your insight and wit One of the best films I have seen on Music - art - and performance Great Art / monster artist A phenomenal script Great direction And a phenomenal performance from Cate Blanchet Pivotal to the Film
This analysis of Bach’s music by way of Tar, was utterly absorbing, thank you, and makes me wish I’d seen the movie. It is incredible that she really played it all herself. Loved the Schroder and Lucy bits and Glen Gould❤️🇨🇦
Absolutely brilliant movie. Blanchett provides a master class in acting, and is given a genius script that has so many layers to explore. This video helped me connect some dots on the music and the use of it to elevate Tar's own storyline in it - and the storyline of everyone around her.
Thank you for 99% of this video, which is penetrating, honest, and enlightening about Bach, Todd Field, Cate Blanchett and many other performers and artists. "It's practically a requirement for practicing classical musicians to reject ... or otherwise abandon just about all the repertoire they play, on ethical grounds." When you state this at 20:30, I paused the video. People who have attended Curtis in the 80s and 90s, such as myself, may choose to abandon all of the theory they have learned* and still embrace all the repertoire. As a response to Professor Ewell's theory and analysis**, I am embracing today an even larger repertoire of music, and I use analytic tools that are more than sufficient as a professional performer, but which do not depend on fixation on hierarchies vertically integrated into my (or my students') thinking. (*which I surmise would disturb Dr. Wen, who was not teaching there until after my time) (**which 'theory and analysis' involve music, culture, and philosophy, as do his Curtis counterpart's)
I genuinely appreciate that you said the phrase "You're not listening to a piece by Bach, you are listening to a piece by Bach arranged by Glenn Gould." I really enjoyed your video, great detailed analysis of Cate Blanchett's playing. And I absolutely LOVED "Shine!" I drove three hours to a theater in another state to see it because it was released in very limited theaters. Though my two David Helfgott CDs I bought right after seeing the movie I hardly listen to due to the singing. But what an amazing story!
At first I was gonna focus on the scene in this comment, but given that I was still an aspiring professional music theorist and actually in the audience when Prof. Ewell gave his bombshell SMT keynote lecture on Schenker, I feel I should start there. So, warning: this is very long, long enough that I’m going to put the latter parts into replies. But first, before I start sounding more critical, lemme say: I think the video's wonderful, you did a great job laying everything out, I appreciate how even-handed and open and nuanced your intent is, and you did actually change my mind about something-namely, what Tár's point is with her stylistic demo. The first time I watched I thought it was meant to suggest that performer variation is something positive about Bach's music, that everyone can bring some part of themselves to it and have their own interpretation; but now I completely agree with you that she's making almost the opposite point, that a performer ought to strive to be "transparent" in revealing the essential truth of the composition. I"ll have more to say about that, but let's start with Ewell and Schenker. I'll try not to pretend that you've said anywhere near everything that you'd like to say about this topic, because it's just an aside in this video; I'm sure if you made your own video specifically about Ewell on Schenker, I'd probably be mostly in agreement with it. (For anyone else reading this who would like such a video, I'd recommend Adam Neely's RUclips video-essay about Ewell and music theory's "white racial frame" if you want a nicely accessible introduction that I think captures all the issues coherently and correctly - though of course I'd also recommend the published version of the keynote itself, "Music Theory and the White Racial Frame" on Music Theory Online. Also, while I'm doing asides: apologies to Neely, and to anyone else, if I'm reiterating points they've made; I'm not vetting this like I would for a professional publication so there may be the kind of accidental plagiarism where I forget under which points I'm repeating from whom; so, let me just offer this blanket statement that everything I say here is just me standing on the shoulders of the giants of critical discourse who've come before me.) But I think there's been a bit of a strawman of Ewell's positions in what you did say (and in the selection of what to highlight and what not to highlight), and since I think the (intentional) strawmanning in the Tar scene is one of the often missed nuances, it feels important to highlight it here too. (Also: one of the only times I'm going to bring it up, but strawmanning Ewell's arguments was also one of the main flaws of the travesty that was the extremely racist symposium journal issue responding to Ewell's talk-to which Ewell himself had, against all custom, not been invited to contribute-so let's be careful not to oversimplify here either.) Ok, getting started for real in the replies:
(1) So, to set the record straight: Ewell is not canceling European "classical" music (he is himself primarily an expert on it, I think specifically Rachmaninov?), which you might be interpreted as implying when you say (at around 20'30") that "practicing musicians" (but surely not musicians who practice non-Western-canon music, right?) would be logically required to reject Ewell's thesis or they'd have no repertoire to play. Nor is he even trying to cancel Schenkerian analysis-though it's probably fair to say he's in favor of abolishing requirements that every single music theory grad student, even the ones doing work on completely different genres, be forced to demonstrate proficiency with Schenkerian techniques, especially if there aren't any similar requirements to demonstrate proficiency in raga analysis, maqam analysis, harmonic theoretical systems pioneered by avant garde jazz musicians, etc. (Note that I'm saying "Schenkerian," it will matter in a moment.) But that caveat leads into the point: if we want music studies to promote equity and diversity and be inclusive, then it needs to not hold up white music as the be-all end-all of all musical practices ever. Like, this comment is going to be long enough as it is so I direct you to go to the article itself if you want to know just how white-centric academic music study is in the USA nowadays, but the point is, if we want students to understand the rich variety of musical practices, and come away from their education without having formed the belief that white music is inherently superior, then we need to stop pretending that the analytical tools handed down to us are perfectly neutral. If we want to talk about what makes music good, but our vocabulary for talking about what makes music good was shaped by people who were trying to make the point that the Western classical canon is the best possible music, then of course that vocabulary is going to tend to be bad at highlighting what makes other kinds of music good. We don't have to cancel Western music and its accompanying theory, but we might have to reduce the amount of space it takes up if we're going to make room for other approaches. (I'll bring this back up when we go back to talking about whether Tár's Max is a straw-person themselves: like, why can't Max say, "it's not that I want to cancel Bach for everyone, I just think enough other people are playing Bach already, so I want to champion other kinds of music"?)
(2) And let's be clear: white supremacists have, both historically and in the present day, weaponized white music theory's usefulness in showing how allegedly "objectively" good white music is in order to provide evidence for the thesis that white people are racially superior. It is a thing. You can see it from just casually dipping your toes into alt-right discourses; you can hear it subtextually in Trump's 2017 speech in Warsaw, "we write symphonies." It was part and parcel of justifications of European colonialism and American chattel slavery. And, of course, it was the *self-avowed* point of much of Schenker's writing. It is one of Ewell's main points that Schenker himself, specifically and unequivocally, wrote that he believed his theory was proof of the inherent superiority of white music and thereby of white races (and, specifically, Germanic peoples; he has relatively little praise for French or Italian composers, for instance). Schenker himself, specifically and unequivocally, thought that the parts of his theory that proved white racial superiority were essential to it. So if you think that you can use Schenker's tools to dismantle the house of racial superiority he was trying to prop up, you are already having to reject Schenker's own conclusions about his own theory. And it's worth emphasizing here that we haven't even gotten to the "purely" musical aspects of Schenker's theory. Yes, Ewell does offer the argument that Schenker's hierarchies of tones based on their relations to background structures is analogous to racist theories of racial hierarchies-and, again, he explores that precisely because it is literally what Schenker tells us about his own theory-but independently of that, there's also the argument that we might expect Schenker's theory to yield conclusions that value white classical canon music above other musics because, quite simply, that is explicitly what the theory was meant to do. (Another aside, and the only other time I'll reference that racist journal issue attacking Ewell, because this was one of the ad hominems it used: yes, Schenker was Jewish, in a time and place where that made him a kind of racialized other himself. That doesn't mean he wasn't also anti-Black racist-because he was: he literally wrote about how Blacks are racially inferior, the kind of horrific racist vitriol that it was really powerful to hear a Black man like Ewell quote in person at the keynote. And yeah, Black people can sometimes be anti-Semitic; cf Kanye West. But Ewell is not an anti-Semite, contra that awful journal hit-piece; Schenker's Jewishness is not what's being critiqued, it's Schenker's racism. I'm not Jewish myself, but every single Jewish musicologist I know and love would agree here. Okay. Enough. Moving on.) Ok, but what about the theory itself? Well, here's where I need to return to the term "Schenkerian," which in contemporary music theory usage refers to the large and heterogenous subset of music theory that has adapted aspects of Schenker's original theories. There's a long history of German music theorist immigrants and American music theory institutions I won't go into, but suffice to say, contemporary Schenkerian analysis may well be unrecognizable to Schenker. One major difference is that the metaphysical baggage from original Schenker has largely been jettisoned. Schenker believed in starting from the background, from the Platonic cosmic unity of the major chord as an emanation of the overtone series; to temporalize this eternal unity, melodies must deviate from it, by crossing stepwise between the tones of this unity, using the degenerate dissonances of non-chord-tones as stepping-tones; from the tones of each of these ur-melodies, new unities can spring and generate new melodies of their own, on and on, until enough detail has been built that you have the foreground surface of music as we know it. It should be pretty clear how this can be a problematic way to interpret all music, for all sorts of reasons; I think the general gist of the racial-hierarchy interpretation is that it's like saying, in this post-Edenic fallen state of the world where music must occur in time, yes we have to have the background unity unfolded into motion, but the resulting music can only be good when it maintains order, keeping those degenerate non-chord tones in their structurally subservient place; yes there is variety unfolded from unity, but in order not to descend into chaos, you've got to have hierarchies of value. The imperialist racial implications should be clear.
(3) By contrast, contemporary Schenkerian theory (in my opinion, at least) mostly starts from the musical surface and moves back, and does so much more under the influence of theories of musical perception (for instance, Bregman's empirical work on auditory streaming) rather than metaphysics. It's like: ok, clearly in Western classical, we have tones that fit with the harmony and tones that don't, and those harmonically structural tones can be felt as being in some sense prolonged by the more superficial and decorative activity of non-chord tones, and then once you've established some sense that music has this kind of surface/depth, foreground/background aspect, you just sort of concatenate those perceptions into increasingly nested levels until you've more or less reverse-engineered some of the big structural entities Schenker was talking about. And from this perspective, the structural weight or depth of a given musical element can be a little less freighted with value judgments. Indeed, I personally believe (though I think many others do too, so don't take this as necessarily my original insight) there can be anti-racist ways of doing contemporary Schenkerian analysis, ways where you emphasize how it's the least structurally important tones that often are the most interesting, that give the music its character and drama-that is, it's precisely the elements that are most contingent and gratuitous in a whole that make it what it is. This would be an analytical outlook that values plurality and diversity and nuance, the particular over the universal, perhaps even a music theory of the subaltern. This might not be a politically perfect outlook: it still has hierarchies, for instance, so it could veer into an approach where structurally unimportant notes are glossed as spices added to the real base of the meal, in a way that might be problematically resonant with neoliberal DEI initiatives that add merely token representation while not changing any of the underlying discriminatory structures, etc etc. But it goes to show that there are many ways of thinking about intersections of identity politics and music theory, and that maybe even apparently regressive analytical approaches might be consciously reshaped into sites of exciting experimentation, finding new ways to think along with music, to feel music, to inhabit music. But you can get there only by doing MORE thinking about how music relates to life and society in all its complexities, not less; you'll never experience everything there is to experience with music if you pretend music is only ever abstract sound uncontaminated by the political. And in particular: if you never face down and grapple with the aspects of his own theory that Schenker himself considered to be inherently racially charged, then how will you be sure that you aren't just replicating his own hierarchical value theories? How will you be sure that you aren't choosing what you value in music because you're seeking out music that validates a sense of everything ordered into its place, unless you are aware of what it means to be analyzing music for its unifying elements? (Btw, if anyone is wondering, yes I take some inspiration from Adorno, despite him being a dead white guy (indeed, also a Germanic Jew like Schenker) who occasionally had kinda racist things to say about the music made by Black people; see Fumi Okiji, "Jazz as Critique" for an example of using Adorno's hermeneutic philosophy for anti-racist music analysis.) Hopefully then I've made my point and drawn out two key themes from Ewell: (1) if we don't want to reinforce white supremacist views, it's worth finding ways to appreciate the value of all kinds of music and not just laud the white classical canon exclusively, so let's broaden our views and make sure we're not exclusively using theoretical tools that were shaped to work only with the classical canon; and (2), musical experience can be enriched by being more conscious, not less conscious, of all the meanings that might adhere to our ways of understanding it analytically. So what light does that shed on the masterclass scene in Tár? (Going forward I'm going to drop the accent and just write Tar, partly because I'm lazy and partly to emphasize a subtle point from later in the movie-that she was so desperate to rise to the top, not by challenging the rules of the game of European high-class prestige-chasing but by beating them at their own game, that she changed her own name, from something like Lynda Tarr to Lydia Tár.)
(4) First, more caveats: I like this movie a lot, I like the way Field aimed to give us something to talk about, it's great. And I think the scene is incredibly powerful. If there's something I dislike about this scene, it's only that it's sometimes a little too subtle (or requires too much insider knowledge) for it to be clear to everyone who watches that the film is not wholeheartedly taking Lydia's side here. I think, for the canny viewer who knows what this world is like, it can be clear that Tar is dominating the conversation in a way that doesn't allow Max to present their own views cogently, and consequently it means we're only hearing one side... but like, far too many people thought the scene was meant to unambiguously portray Tar as "owning" the cancel culture SJWs. Everything we get from Max is a bit of a strawman, both in what Tar allows them to say (given her control of the situation's discourse) and in Max's own views. There may be some kids out there who take things a little too far in some ways, but there are plenty of views very nearly adjacent to Max's that Tar would've had a much harder time rebutting. For instance, ok, easy shot at Bach for having 20 kids, but like, that's a fact that needs its context and it's not necessarily easy to see how that relates to the music. But what about Bach's relatively extreme religious beliefs, which are very explicit in much of his music (to the extent that the popularity of a texted work by Bach is very much dependent on how politically palatable later generations found the content)? What if Max had thrown in her face some of the very anti-humanist, "man is irredeemably sinful" ideology right there on the surface of Bach's choral music? Max should have at least a vague idea of this because one of the most popular new music history textbooks, Taruskin's Oxford history, spends quite a long passage discussing this (and Taruskin is not even really at the vanguard of progressive thinking, so we'd have to imagine a pretty conservative teacher for Max's history courses if he didn't read it). Or alternatively, what if Field had chosen lower hanging fruit and had Tar tell Max that they should've chosen some music by Wagner? Imagine how different the scene would've gone if it was Tar at the piano explaining the Tristan chord and why it's worth overlooking the virulent anti-Semitism that many, MANY scholars have argued is inseparable from the music in Wagner's operas (even in cases that aren't as obvious as the "unsouling" of Kundry, the "wandering Jew cursed for laughing at Jesus on the cross" archetype in Parzifal). Imagine if Max was Jewish and she was telling him to ignore that, because the unsouling music uses hexatonic pole chord progressions to warp the original, "pure" melody of German Protestant faithfulness in such a cool way. And again, a much more relevant way that Max is a strawperson here: they're being presented as wanting to cancel dead white guy music (or at least, they're allowing themselves to be talked into that position by Tar's questioning), rather than just deciding to champion music by other people to balance out the overwhelming imbalances of the classical music world. There's a big difference between responding to "why didn't you choose Bach?" with "I just can't bring myself to think dead white men are worth playing no matter how good the music is" versus "It's not about whether Bach is good or not, people can and should play his music, I just want to champion other kinds of voices." Or what about: "oh I'm just not that into Baroque music, and given that I aim to bring some racial and gender balance to the representation in this field, it's easier to just stick with more contemporary stuff because there are many more composers who aren't of over-represented demographics." Indeed, what about just "I don't like J. S. Bach." After all, plenty of J. S.'s contemporaries didn't like him; he was, in the eyes of many contemporaries, a weird old nerd who was obsessed with writing music in styles that were soooo last century; all the cool kids (including Bach's own kids) were into that hot new galant stuff, or if they were angstier, Sturm und Drang. Why is it so bad to just not be into Bach, if there's other music you'd rather be playing? Why is it Bach who's the "vegetables" you're forced to eat so you get your essential musical vitamins and minerals? What if a student was playing Bach and the masterclass leader stopped them to tell them they should have chosen Miles Davis, or a dhrupad in Raag Malkauns, so they could learn to improvise more freely? If it's okay to say "oh, that music is great, it's just not my jam," why is it not okay to say it about Bach?
(5) Indeed: why stop a student and insist they should've played something else at all? This brings us to something that-while I know you didn't want to make this a five hour video essay about everything about that scene-I was still surprised you didn't bring up, especially after the aside about having been a Juilliard student yourself: telling a student they should've played something else, and then going on a rant about it instead of teaching them how to better perform the music they did prepare, is an absolutely appalling breach of professional etiquette for a master class. Any analysis of the scene as a whole (which, again, I know you weren't trying to tackle) that doesn't start from that premise is missing something huge. And it's something people aren't necessarily going to get unless they're used to the norms of classical music academia; it's about as bad as calling a business meeting about a crucial and time sensitive issue, then spending the whole meeting excoriating your employees for not using your preferred powerpoint format. People like to talk about how Tar crosses a line and Max finally breaks and cusses her out and storms away, but honestly the line was already crossed when Tar decided to stir the pot and bring up an entirely situationally irrelevant composer rather than actually teach conducting, and it's a wonder Max had the patience they did. There's also the weird irony of Tar effectively "canceling" a fellow contemporary white woman musician, the composer of the piece Max chose to conduct, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, especially when Tar apparently still includes in her bio (in the previous scene) that she makes a point of championing new music by women composers. (Note that Max clearly does not have a problem in general with playing music written by white people!) I remember seeing a critic or two speculate that there was a subplot, deleted for reasons of runtime, that would've implied that Tar had some specific beef with Thorvaldsdottir. Regardless, the irony is that she ends up getting into attacking atonality as abstract and overly systematic and unfeeling-which is weird because I consider Thorvaldsdottir primarily tonal, using non-tonal elements only as special effects or textural landscape-like drones, but in any case to great rhetorical and emotional effect, not in a particularly systematic way and certainly not serialist in any rigorous sense. And yet it wouldn't be so much of a flip if Tar actually had been pro-serialist; certainly there are similarities in terms of the cultural capital of Bach and, say, the Second Viennese School, in terms of the way that complexity and elitism are tied together in discourse about them both. She could even have chosen Webern, whom Max could've objected to as a Nazi sympathizer (which he more or less was, apparently) while Tar went on about how the postwar avantgarde nevertheless upheld him as their idol because of what they believed were anti-fascist qualities of objectivity and austere, dispassionate abstraction in his work. (Imagine watching Cate Blanchett play the second movement of the Variations set, demonstrating the unity of pitch-space inversion and embodied physicality while her hands criss cross at lightning speed!) All this to say, her actions right from the start of the scene are a complete derailment of what a masterclass should be about, and it's really her own choice to bring up Bach that actually introduces identity politics in the first place; it could have gone so many other ways, but instead she tells a queer kid of color that they should've played a long-dead white guy who wrote music in a style completely different from what they chose.
It is quite common to "shake" your leg when confronted by something challenging. My students do it ALL the time. I have never mentioned it. It is a harmless nervous reaction.
Oh, totally. I'm a former leg bouncer myself. But in this scene it's deliberately used as a motif to dramatize the power difference between Tar and Max.
Yes, but there is a rhythm to the leg shaking that interferes with the rhythm of the piece they're practicing (Juilliard trained piano teacher here - 43 years teaching). I find that gum chewing creates the same problem. It has it's own rhythm. I ask my students to remove the gum. Your whole body "feels" the music. Thats why "Dalcroze Eurythmics" (the original music and movement) is so important.
The leg jiggling drove me nuts. I wanted to say "STOP!" I see it in real life, even on the subway. Anyone who does this should train themselves to not do it. They look ridiculous. One of my brothers did it a few times during dinner (years ago), but it was under the table, so we didn't have to SEE it. It shook the floor, so we would point it out to him and he'd stop. He apparently didn't know he was doing it. It is a nervous habit.
Happy we have Tonbase on earth! great Video Ben. Actually a great idea to produce more Videos of piano playing in feature movies! there are a lot of legendary performances!
I'm caught between being Well-Tempered and Ecstacy. :) My attraction toward Bach feels primordial, far from the cerebral engagement Bach invites, perhaps, demands. I love your comments, Ben. I am a Bach lover but not among the cognoscenti, for sure. I listen to Andras Schiff's play and lecture on Bach. I am amused by Gould but not enchanted. When I listen to Schiff, I am enchanted - gone into a universe far more beautiful than anything in my earthly existence. Tonebase is new to me. I plan to learn more. Thank you, Ben, for this clip and my introduction to Tonebase.
cate has played the piano before! there’s a clip of her somewhere from a theater production like idk ten years ago and she’s playing the piano and i was sooo impressed
I thought it was out of place that Tar would play Bach's C major Prelude in a masterclass. It would be like singing the ABC's at a college level creative writing class. The "clown face" in the script was put there for music nerds like me. lol. Coincidentally this piece is what taught me interpretation and remains a huge turning point in my growth as a student. I play it everyday as a warmup for years, as I'm sure thousands of others do too. Great writing.
Thanks for the comment! If the master class was for pianists, I think the Bach Prelude would have been out of place. But what made sense to me about the choice here was that Tar was making a point about the real meanings of music beneath the surface of the score - so I found was actually effective to choose something everyone knows and everyone has played (from beginners tot Schroeder to Gould) in order to reveal something about it that the students may have missed. It's her way of saying: you dismiss Bach, but have you even grasped the meaning of his simplest composition?
@@Jarnagua The piece made sense to me, given the context, but I agree with you that it seems very unlikely that a Julliard student would dismiss Bach and every other cis white male composer out of hand. That particular scene seemed a little forced to me in that regard, but I understand its purpose, and I do like the points she made to counter the student's opinion. It could also be that I'm completely out of touch and that it's a plausible scenario (hopefully not). It's a minor criticism though. I really enjoyed the movie overall.
It was probably the only piece she could play (play, talk and teach). She can act, but this movie was so bad that I don't know why she wasted time and effort on it. The first half hour was all pretension. Makes a musician cringe.
@@marti_flute Haha. I feel the same way about 'Whiplash.' True, this film is all about pretension, but you must admit, the classical music scene is rife with pretension among conductors. Maybe that's why it alludes to Lenny during her breaking moment - he was her role model and "relatively" unpretentious despite his success, talent and fame?
Thank you, thank you, thank you. This video is pure gold. It has so much work and love in it. I like how you make easy for everyone to understand complex music subjects.
Great episode! What annoys me the most these days is tendency to mix social trends and politics with art, especially music. I want classical music to be free from “modern” trends and phobias!
…. At least you have records and CDs to listen to without the context of a play or movie or some type of narrative. But do remember that with Beethoven’s Fifth, the first four notes were used by the Allies in World War II to comprise a synonym for victory. Dot, Dot, Dot, Dash [morse code for V]. I hope that’s not too political for you.
Lofty. Yet classical music wasn't free from the trends and phobias of its time. Bach himself was a man of faith, and a great admirer of Martin Luther, who was an antisemite. Does that mean that Bach hated Jews? Not necessarily. But basing his cantatas on Lutheran hymns does suggest a devotion to his faith and a desire to create music that was connected to his culture.
@@Jasper7182009 in the spirit of a "Lydia Tár" answer: Given that Beethoven composed his Fifth Symphony in 1804-1808, and Morse Code was developed in the 1840's, that means that -by the end of WW2- Morse Code had been in use for over a century, so I fail to see how the choice of dots and dashes for the first letter of the word "victory", as used "by the Allies" could be attributed to Old Ludwig, as you seem, rather laboriously, to claim. Hope that's not too factual for you.
@@mwright80 I am not interested in religious or political views of artists. I do not care if they would adhere to any current or previous norms or trends. I do not care if they were liked by Hitler or if they support Putin. I care about their art. I do not want them to be judged though a lens of any young or old activist
@@mfurman I can appreciate that. I'm simply pointing out that art isn't created in some kind of celestial vacuum. And to truly appreciate an artist's work, we need to understand that it's not just an intellectual exercise. Art is the product of a person's experience, which is informed by the social and political conditions under which they lived. And it's not unusual for composers to create works of art which also serve as social commentaries. It can be their own form of activism.
The Prelude in C is the first piece I learned because I HAD TO. It's simple and so complex; transparent and so full. I still play it now when I need comfort, or to calm and focus my mind. Excellent music and film analysis!
That was your FIRST PIECE? That is not exactly written for beginners. Sure it is easy to an experienced player, but for someone just being introduced to the piano...it is near impossible. I have never heard of a piano teacher assigning an early intermediate piece as a "first piece" to a beginner. You are either a liar or had an absolutely terrible teacher who had zero understanding of piano pedagogy. Either way...THAT SUCKS.
I love it because it is something I can play at my skill level. When I first learned it I tried playing just the chords formed by the arpeggios. I'm not surprised there's a well known analysis of the piece that does just that.
@10:00 Hey, isn't Glenn Gould the one who randomly started singing something that sounded like " *pohh* - *PAaaHh!!...* " while at the piano in a video clip and the interviewer also started "singing" inexplicably? ruclips.net/video/-jxnqltzaLo/видео.htmlsi=OgTePJMMtuyS-yIa
Very interesting exploration: I want to go and watch the film now. FYI 'Glen' was how Gould wrote his own name: he said if he wrote two 'n's, he wouldn't be able to stop until he got to three!
Today is March 21 - HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MAESTRO BACH, and thank you for your immeasurable contribution to music that has civilized and inspired humankind for over three centuries!
Wow ! Thankyou. I know you don't have time to read these comments .Mr. Laude you are a hero for taking this film seriously and really seeing and CITING the reasons for taking the film seriously on its OWN TERMS. You are one of the few musicians who can "read" a Film ! How much time did you spend to find the cartoon snippet . Ben Laude has a doctorate in piano performance .! I've been listening to him for years but I didn't know he had done the work ! He is so good once you see his posts you know he is worth listening to him ! Thankyou for taking on this important film which many supposedly intelligent female musicians have spoken out against the film not mining its larger depths only looking at it as a diatribe against women in power ;I think the larger idea is about power's effects on people in general . Wow- shereally did the Glenn Gould staccatto thing . Todd Feid makes life in his movies great directors do this ! And you found the Ibsen snippet . You are something !!! I have always been fascinated by Curtis because both JosefHofmann and Godowsky taught there . I was sohappy to hear Eric Wren talk about what endures in what we produce . The true tragedy of life I believe is people do not take creativity seriously - the viewer will not realize how important what the film is telling us as the young student shakes his leg. Teachers have a great labor to do in changing this . people think exposing people to art is important but the fear is of really educating people . Well most people dont know. I'm 50 and I jut found out that ends of phrases esp. in classical period decrescendos. The problem is education. I really believe there would be less violence if we had the best education possible ;obviously we would also perhaps have fewer dishonest entrepreneurs and republicans . Just a joke : our world's problems aren't that simple .
Music and film are two of the most precious forms of art to me as well as interpretations, psychological commentary, and anything that questions my own interpretations, beliefs, philosophy, and even personhood. Tár delivered all those. And so did this video. It was, to me, a much needed awakening for the neglected passions of my soul. It was nice to see a professional geek-out of a film about music and the psyche -- some of the things in this universe I feel passionate about. I thank you for that.
I love playing Bach on classical guitar, so much of it is readily transposable/practicable (Lute, Cello, Violin, Keyboard...). This was a great insight into a movie I enjoyed immensely.
Wow, what a remarkable breakdown! The nuances you picked up are incredible. The movie was just OK to me, but you added much more interest and respect for what Todd did with this. The level of detail you so brilliantly pointed out really took me by surprise. This was extremely well done.
Thank you for enriching my prior appreciation for "Tar," Blanchett, Bach, and Field! And for your use of levity to tease out some of the layering in this film. I am still reverberating with some of the questions it poses, so I echo what Linus might ask: "Who cares about the Occars?!"
Great insights here. There is obviously more to this film than meets the eye on first viewing. With Cate Blanchett acting and playing the piano so brilliantly, it a shame the Concert Master wasn't given as detailed coaching/training on playing & holding the violin !
Very engaging! Funny and interesting. Makes me DEFINITELY want to see Tar. I play this prelude on the organ sometimes as, yes, prelude music in funerals. And on an organ, it really matters that you hold down the two left hand notes while articulating the right hand notes in some way or other. (I usually play them detached, but not staccato).
Thank you for this wonderful video and analysis. More proof that Todd Field is a mad genius, TAR is one of the best films ever set in the classical music world, and Cate Blanchett gave (in my opinion) the performance of the decade.
Also, nice point about her talking to her own younger self. I believe the entire story and character actually centers around Tar's time smoking ayahuasca with the Shipibo-Conibo tribe, which is referenced throughout the film but not given a strong narrative stance (I believe the second trailer centers this idea more effectively with some footage that never made it into the movie). That experience awoke some sort of power in Tar that set her on a journey of musical and sexual conquest, and the film documents the disastrous end of this journey.
The accordion "apartment for sale" scene kills me every time. I feel like using some slight humor to portray a character clearly unwinding from herself and her reality was really clever and memorable.
This episode is really gold! And I am always impressed that actors learn actually many so called "jobs" to be as authentic as possible! What a blessing!!
For role in tar, Cate Blanchett learn how to conduct a real orchestra, relearn piano (she stop played piano at age 10), relearn speak german, and learn accordion for 15 or 30 minutes
I've worshiped (and played and studied) Bach all my life, but I think I have to give Cate Blanchett a fair share of my devotion and awe, as well. I saw _Tár_ - while blown away by Blanchett's power and brilliance, it was nonetheless an ugly, unpleasant (if profoundly skillful and powerful) movie about an internally profoundly ugly person. I was in tears watching the excerpts in this video. She is a genius -- not a Bach, but a genius. Of the rhetoric of the C Major prelude I found "her" "explanation" "right on" (in the _Fachsprache_ of my youth), the external dialogue of the 4-measure groups, and the dialogues within them, and the basic nature of counterpoint, "the organized control of consonance and dissonance", as I have taught, to be exactly what you and she said about "asking and answering questions", or more precisely, setting up, loosing, and resolving tensions of various sorts at various levels, and, indeed, it works without any interpretation at all, but sounds a lot better and can be perceived more easily via skilled interpretation. In the case of Bach as opposed to Mozart, Beethoven, or Stockhausen, it is (IMO) an omission not to mention his personal motivational and ontological system, to wit, Protestant Christianity. While it is an open question, and a fascinating one, as to what extent the narratives, drama, and ontological landmarks and forces of that faith underwrite his purely instrumental, non-chorale-based works such as the "Well-Tempered Clavier" (Is that a crucifixion I hear in the WTC I B Minor Prelude and Fugue, as many scholars posit?), there is no question that the bulk of the BWV you wear on your shirt is sacred music, whose "message" need not be guessed. While it is not, of course, necessary to agree with or subscribe to his religious _Weltanschauung_ , it is necessary to understand it. One need not guess or delve for the questions asked by the St. Matthew Passion and what are the answers stated therein. (BTW, in the "he was awful, but his music is cool" contest entered by Lydia Tár, let's start with Wagner.) (BTW BTW the origin of BWV 846.1 in earlier "lute preludes", to wit, thick counterpoint in thin arpeggiation, is worth thinking about, but not relevant to your or Fields/Blanchett's "points". The _Toccata Arpeggiata_ of Kapsberger is a stunning grandparent of the most famous harpsichord prelude. Not to mention that Bach, of course, didn't even write this for the piano.)
@@anne-louiseluccarini4530 It is true. But I was commenting only on her acting, and the dedication necessary to achieve these musical goals. Maybe her acting is more impressive than the preachy script, anyway.
The Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Australia played Mahler's Resurrection Symphony conducted by female conductor Simone Young as a tribute to Cate Blanchet
Erm, Simone Young selected the Resurrection Symphony to celebrate the reopening of the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House after it being closed for renovations for two years. The piece allowed for a full orchestra, plus the Syd Philharmonia Choir. It followed a fabulous new work by Indigenous Australian William Barton. The reopening of the Concert Hall and its fab new accoustics is a celebration for all Australians. I'm afraid Cate didn't have anything to do with it. Cate was the executive producer of a documentary about Simone Young though, that is fascinating and very much worth watching, which is a lovely tribute and acknowledgement of Simone's incredible career.
Memorable performance. But its significance was actually Simone Young's triumphal return to Sydney, after an acrimonious episode before she went to Hamburg. She was one of Cate Blanchett's models for the film.
Great video. I love this prelude. It's a way to find your inner, composer self. Trying to articulate differently like Gould, or even drop this arpeggiaton and invent a new one, change octaves, tonality, instrument, dynamics, anything. It's so versatile in its harmonic composition that it will work anyway you distort it and put yourself in. I love Bach.
This video exposes another layer in how to view this film. (The identity/politics of the composer/artist/writer vs the content of the art. As well as the sincerity of the conductor vs a power trip.) The more I think about “Tar” the movie, I find additional aspects are revealed.
thank you for the explanation of 'inner content' of Bach's music. i never touched his music yet, but the interpritatoin part 14:26 gave an amazing insight into the idea of the whole 'track'. i wish more content discussed the 'messages' of music through its musical details. it's actually really simple, but most of the 'content' is about technical terms as if the gist is actually there. while technique is only a means to be able to convey something music is really much more accessible, we just need to see it through the "language of art"
Encore! Fun to see your analysis, had no idea of the nuance and sophistication in this film. Also enjoyed your videos on Glenn Gould and what various professionals are willing to say about his interpretations, including the passionate S. Bernstein. Would love to see how you feel that conductors influence soloists, and vice versa. Abbado, L. Bernstein, Szell, etc...
Thank you very much for this analysis. I enjoyed it. Your explaination of "Bach arranged by Gould" allowed me to have some empathy for his "rapid" interpretation of the BWV 869 fugue.
It is interesting that Lydia Tár mentions René Redzepi and his recipe for reindeer in this scene. Redzepi is famous for reinventing the nordic cuisine in his restaurant NOMA (5 times winner as worlds best and 3 michelin stars) but also known for being an uncompromising perfectionist prone to outbursts against his staff (This is well-known behavior in haute cuisine, but this was actually shown in a documentary about him). I am sensing that Lydia and Rene has similar points of view about their respective forms of art...
Will you comment on having a digital piano/keyboard in the background? I would love to hear your use of a piano's nobler sound effects - and perhaps in context with a description of the pedal effects in Chopin's music, and on the length of the sounding of notes in older pianos (Chopin-Schumann age)?
Hi Donald! That's a nice idea. I could imagine a video where I pick a piece and play it on different instruments: beginning in my office there with the digital piano, then moving to my living room where there's an upright, and then moving to a concert hall somewhere where there's a concert grand, and then at the end on a 19th century period instrument. With the right choice of music there's lots to explore here.
This was a fun and insightful analysis to watch! I knew about Gould's approach, but not about Schroeder playing around with Bach before getting back to his beloved Beethoven. I love that he rejects the notion of money as a prime objective over art, and thus preferring, of course, to play for peanuts. wah, wah. :) Otherwise I feel in general there is a swath of people out there actively seeking to destroy the beauty of the past that at times has been created within an environment of despair, degradation or debauchery. We all have a choice, but to me it's insane to focus on the misery only. I marvel at the miracle of something extraordinary that was achieved despite it all. I've known a few great artists, and there's always a hitch. Wouldn't live with any of them, but I am grateful for what they have made.
Glenn Gould may have been eccentric, but he was a genius and reinvented the modern approach to Bach in Piano instead of Organ. His versions are still today some of the most sublime Piano versions of Bach. And Blanchett is not a Hollywood actress, she's a British (Australian) actress and that's all you need to say.
Lots of crap on RUclips, especially when something is analysed. This is NOT one of those pieces fo crap. Beautiful dive into the movie and ... wait for it ... some of the questions it poses. I've got to get this movie when it comes out in DVD. Well done, sir! (P.S. retired trumpet teacher, trombonist, conductor and conducting teacher)
At 12:28, Emese should be pronounced Em-esh-eh, not Emeez. Otherwise a very interesting analysis. 👍🏻
It's not em-ih-shay?
@@cynarainman7117 no
Always one of you...
@@cody7889 yeah right, as if it has anything to do with the content... "otherwise a very interesting analysis"
You beat my Hungarian heart to it!
Blanchett is a master actor, so I'm not surprised that these nuances punctuate her performance in 'Tar'. Incredible.
Se quien es 🏆
*actress
@@Muck006 Cate Blanchett is kind of a actress who transcends the gender with her masterclass performances. She's called legend for a good reason
Max's nervousness creating a 9/8 polyrhythm is such an amazing detail
Max's knee is the true musical genius of Tar.
Nuances and layers she brought to this role was astounding. This Juliard lecture scene was all one shot
I feel like this isn't talked about enough, but the clarinet player/Berlin board member (Knut) and the veteran cellist Lydia passed over for Olga (Gosia) in the movie are in fact REAL MEMBERS OF THE DRESDEN PHILHARMONIC! Both of them had a substantial amount of lines in the movie, and one would think that they were actors by profession. Imagine my surprise when I saw them in the orchestra in a taped performance of Tchaikovsky's 6th on the DW yt channel. Bravo to the Dresden Phil not only for their playing but for their acting too.
As someone who has been a lifelong orchestral musician I loved how this managed to show how it didn’t matter how high, or far, you had gone in music & the profession it always found a way of beating you up, of wounding the ego, of showing the genuine concern & secret pleasure at someone else’s pain while ignoring the fact that your turn would come too. Lydia Tar having to make horrendous decisions about other peoples lives masked as genuine artistic decisions was spot on & the almost obligatory need for naked ambition to be able to succeed. Favorite part- when Lydia attacked the musical thief on stage in concert!
I still cannot believe this masterpiece did not win any Oscar, specially for her performance. The Academy is a joke.
Exactly. 😩. It's a joke 😒
She was robbed
Oscars not what it used to be, along with everything it has become political and hijacked by Twitter hive minds. No way Blanchett lost her deserved Oscar over narrative which Michelle Yeoh had
You’re right, it is. Maybe if we all stop paying attention to them, they’ll go away?
always has been
You can tell that Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss are not high-powered musicians, but their approximations are so much better than most movies of this type--and what Blanchett manages to do in this scene is amazing. And so nice that they got Sophie Kauer to really play the Elgar Concerto, having an excellent real cellist as an actor only added to the realism of the movie.
That's kind of how I felt with Margot Robbie's ice skating in I, Tonya. Like, okay! Not bad at all!
I feel like this isn't talked about enough, but the clarinet player/Berlin board member (Knut) and the cellist Lydia passed over for Olga (Gosia) are in fact real members of the Dresden Philharmonic! Bravo to the Dresden Phil not only for their playing but for their acting too.
Blanchett had a standard Melbourne private girls school education in piano, so not surprising she could pull this scene off, but it did make all the difference in these scenes. The interpretations were with the simple (in technique) Bach Well Tempered Clavier #1 in C major, anyone with any formal piano training could do it, no ultra talent about it and it is the first thing any kid learns from their teacher. But it was still of great benefit to have her training in making this scene, made it much more realistic than the standard Hollywood fare where they replace the actor with someone who can actually play the piano and hide the face and the hands!
What I find really impressive is that Cate is able to not only play but talk at the same time! That's a high level of internalisation of the mechanics of piano playing (and something I have difficulty doing).
Incidentally I'd heard that for the Geoffrey Rush "recital" in the café (wasn't it called the Moby Dick?) his hands pretty well approximated the positions and moves for the Bumblebee, but always in the near neighbourhood of the right notes, and the piano was not tampered or silenced. I'd love to hear a raw recording of what he actually played.
This is what I'm saying! Sure the piece is technically easy, but what's impressive/convincing is how casually she's playing it, transforming, it lecturing about it, etc, all without skipping a beat. I can't think of another piano scene like it in Hollywood (English language films at least). It's on par with some of the amazing piano scenes in Bergman and Haneke films.
@@tonebasePiano nobody can do that, or would want to...
Geoffrey Rush didn't actually play the piano in Shine, an Australian Concert Pianist Simon Tedeschi did.
@@MrNurse2511 I specified the scene in the café.
It was a terrific movie - one of my all time favorites. If he wasn't a pianist, he was a damn good actor, because he had me completely fooled.
Thoughtful and thoroughly intriguing analysis and commentary on Cate Blanchett’s Tar playing Bach. Thank you for this video.
a bit off topic, but your BWV shirt is impeccable
Hahah it's nice to have a music 'nerd out' session about Lydia Tar's explanation / interpretation of Bach's C Major Prelude. And knowing music nerds like yourself would go to town breaking down frame by frame Cate's performance in that small segment, it's also very helpful to see where those references allude to. Like I didn't know the Peanuts reference and I wasn't familiar with Gould's interpretation of Bach, and also the 'academic nerd arguments' about music theory. Also really nice to point out why Max's leg keeps doing that anxious leg shake thing and what it means: that basically Max is not on the same tempo as Lydia and thus its a clash of ideologies and ego.
I'm definitely for people to appreciate music by master artists as a whole. Even if the master artist wasn't a good person in real life/ their values don't jive with us, if they did amazing music, we all should study why that music is amazing. Vs the counter argument of 'if values of master artist don't jive with me, I'm not willing to listen or care to understand why that music is good.' it just comes off as a very close minded, insular, almost arrogant approach to learning about music. Like Lydia uses the Bach prelude to try to sell Max on why Bach is a genius and his music is good, despite what he thinks. That it honestly is a very simple piece of music, a beginner could play it and it is technically not hard to learn, an expert could play it in different interpretations, but either way, it is a genius piece of writing and it sounds amazing. It emotes so much with so little. But the disappointment comes when Max just goes 'nope, I'm not buying it.' Then of course Lydia didn't want to let it go and then turns into bully mode and berates him and the whole scene ends with Max storming out.
But I suppose it is hard to separate art from artist because it is naturally intertwined. If an artist creates a piece of work, its a piece of their unique DNA and personality that is expressed in that art work. When an actor performs, their unique piece of their soul is expressed through the character. And same goes with writers, chefs, or anyone who creates art. Their thumbprints are what makes their work special. Thus why reputation is so important for these people/ public figures. Because the people who admire their work do naturally put these people on a pedestal and expect them to be mini-gods. 'If these people make amazing art, they surely must be amazing people in order to create such amazing art'. But yeah, people are people. People are not gods, they have their weaknesses too, but they also have pluses too.
The amazing thing about Cate is Cate really gave herself to the character, she really went 200% with the authenticity of selling that Lydia Tar knows her stuff and she is a genius. Thus she enlisted the help of all the music consultants and wanted to get the conducting and the piano playing right and the coolest thing is the music professionals were very impressed and commended her on how great she did it! I mean sure if you want to reeeaallly nitpick, like maybe the conducting felt a bit too strong for that segment of Mahler 5, (I did watch a live performance recently by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra) but then again, it was for dramatic effect and also meant to show that Lydia was more about the theatrics of her performance as a conductor rather than channel music with the orchestra to express Mahler's intent. Like I love film and I love music and I know that somethings have to be heightened for film even if its not accurate in real life.
Well said!
Having seen some Bernstein videos, I found the conducting of Cate's Lydia Tár pretty close to believable as a Bernstein student.
quote: I'm definitely for people to appreciate music by master artists as a whole.
Art is a kind of separation. And we can fight over our favourite clowns. The separation between music and performer started with sheet music and continued with recording. Of course the product can be separated from the performer. We are talking about someone playing Lydia Tar, ie a clown playing an imagined clown!
Now go and do the same: play a clown playing an imagined clown while his product becomes seperated from you.
Now a real circus clown can put off his mask after the performance. But the famous artist can't! And that is the tragedy.
Why do people need clowns, or even great master clowns? And what is this about the moralization of the consumption of the clown?
quote: I'm definitely for people to appreciate music by master artists as a whole.
See when you play some sheetmusic (or venen better: Jazz), then you enter a musical state. That means you seperate your interllectual bullshit from the here and now to get synchronized into the here and now. And you do so alone or with fellow musicians, without there being any edge of a stage or art being present! That process is called integration and it is the opposite of art.
I comment on your comment to a comment on a film, which wants to ellicit commentary, not intergration. That film contains commentary about the mechanics of disintegration. So we see the continued disintegration which claims the idea of art ie the replacement of something yearned for by the product of the clown-industry.
The more people speak about art, the more they are removed from music. But music is simple: join us, shut up and play!
👏🏻
Thank you for taking the time to express how I feel about that scene and Cate's effort
As a Cate Blanchett fan and a classical music fan, this is so far the most satisfying review of this film that i love. Thank you!
That was one of the most fascinating and probative analyses I have every seen or heard about movies and composers and actors and the interrelationships of all of them. It makes me want to go see Tar this second. Thank you so much for this.
Very helpful both to understand that performing music is somehow not just hitting the notes on a piano in a prescribed way, but also to realize how good an actress Blanchett is with the insight you have provided. Thanks!!
Cate is a master all the way and she delivered THE performance of 2022... But now I'm terrified of Todd Field. This is an absolute and meticulous masterpiece for contemporary filmmaking. I loved his 2 previous films In The Bedroom and Little Children, but this was an absolute consolidation... Hoping he doesn't wait another 14 years to make another film.
This is the best description of Bach's Prelude I have ever come across. Raises so many more questions and demonstrates how to play. This is why the great Pat Metheny says "beside Bach we all suck"
It is all a matter of perspective. I am a better pianist than Bach was...because he never played piano. I am a better Composer than Beethoven was (at the age of 9) and I am a better musician than Mozart was (at the age of 2). There was a point in each of the great composers lives where they were total beginners and didnt know the first thing about music. There was a time when Mozart didnt know where middle C was. There was a point in time where Beethoven couldnt even play an A minor scale. But they learned how. And so can you or anybody else that dedicates every waking hour to mastering the fundamentals of their instrument. Beside 8-year-old-child-Bach, we are all musical savants. It's all a matter of perspective.
Pat recognized Bach as an improvisational master. I think there is a majority of musicians, trying to faithfully execute the notes in their music, who don't even have a hint of this.
@@allenapplewhite Very interesting comment. I enjoy playing music (as my channel's content suggests) and while I do not think I'm "really good" even on my best instrument (bass), I recognize that I am nevertheless able to do really good things at times on all of my instruments. I do what I do in order to try to have those times where other people can enjoy what I do as much as I enjoy doing it.
This is so ridiculously specific and I love it
Thank you for this excellent commentary and dissection of this most amazing scene. And for your insights into Ms. Blanchett's performance and Bach's music. Really enjoyed it!
Your analysis is excellent and Ms. Blanchett’s performance was indeed superb. Thank you.
As further evidence of CB playing the piano, her DG album also lists:
Bach, J S: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, BWV 846-869
Cate Blanchett (piano), Zethphan Smith-Gneist (speaker), Cate Blanchett (speaker)
Recorded: 2021-10
Recording Venue: James-Simon-Galerie, Berlin
Prelude in C Major, BWV 846
Track length 1:27
Wow, what an analysis!!! I have just watched the movie. Cate is great. The movie is great. And after this video I just want to watch it again.
She is a human miracle. And Bach is SUPREME.
Looking forward to watching this movie.
you have to! I went to see it 3 times.
@@jotzu9055 me too watched it 3x in cinema in other country because my country did not screen this film
@@heartheart5543 I saw it in Vienna and there was a special screening/talk with the Austrian editor who mentioned things I didn't see so I might have to go see a 4th time (they joked the movie is basically a horror movie) It's amazing how you see new details every time
@@jotzu9055 yes in 2nd watch i saw detail that i did not see on 1st watch, in 3rd watch i saw detail that i did not see on 1st and 2nd watch
Thankyou- I am not a trained musician so loved your insight and wit
One of the best films I have seen on Music - art - and performance
Great Art / monster artist
A phenomenal script
Great direction
And a phenomenal performance from Cate Blanchet
Pivotal to the Film
It was brilliant!
This analysis of Bach’s music by way of Tar, was utterly absorbing, thank you, and makes me wish I’d seen the movie. It is incredible that she really played it all herself. Loved the Schroder and Lucy bits and Glen Gould❤️🇨🇦
Absolutely brilliant movie. Blanchett provides a master class in acting, and is given a genius script that has so many layers to explore. This video helped me connect some dots on the music and the use of it to elevate Tar's own storyline in it - and the storyline of everyone around her.
This movie was so well made that as soon as it ended I started it over and watched again. It’s the best film I’ve seen in years.
except that peruvian chant at the beginning.
You have just given me yet another reason to Love Cate Blanchett ~ !!! Gotta go look up that movie now 😀😍
Great movie, but I don't understand why love a fake person
@@Marc-13 she is a great actress. When I say I love Cate Blanchett I mean I love her as a performer. Actors are also real people
@@animalsarebeautifulpeople3094 Yeah of course she is a great actor, but not a great person.
@@Marc-13 I don't know her personally obviously, but to state that she is a "fake person" seems a bit much? are you trying to cancel her?
@@animalsarebeautifulpeople3094 Why should I cancel her. This cancel thing is bs.
Bach had twenty children because his organ didn't have any stops.
😛
those are the kids we know about
Ba dum Ching!
PDQ Bach is my favorite of Bach's illegitimate sons...Peter Schickele is doing some wondrous work unearthing the lost manuscripts!
A case of faded genes
Thank you for 99% of this video, which is penetrating, honest, and enlightening about Bach, Todd Field, Cate Blanchett and many other performers and artists.
"It's practically a requirement for practicing classical musicians to reject ... or otherwise abandon just about all the repertoire they play, on ethical grounds." When you state this at 20:30, I paused the video. People who have attended Curtis in the 80s and 90s, such as myself, may choose to abandon all of the theory they have learned* and still embrace all the repertoire. As a response to Professor Ewell's theory and analysis**, I am embracing today an even larger repertoire of music, and I use analytic tools that are more than sufficient as a professional performer, but which do not depend on fixation on hierarchies vertically integrated into my (or my students') thinking.
(*which I surmise would disturb Dr. Wen, who was not teaching there until after my time)
(**which 'theory and analysis' involve music, culture, and philosophy, as do his Curtis counterpart's)
I genuinely appreciate that you said the phrase "You're not listening to a piece by Bach, you are listening to a piece by Bach arranged by Glenn Gould." I really enjoyed your video, great detailed analysis of Cate Blanchett's playing. And I absolutely LOVED "Shine!" I drove three hours to a theater in another state to see it because it was released in very limited theaters. Though my two David Helfgott CDs I bought right after seeing the movie I hardly listen to due to the singing. But what an amazing story!
True about Gould. But Bach wrote in an age lacking the piano as we know it, and also conveying much less how to grasp his intentions.
At first I was gonna focus on the scene in this comment, but given that I was still an aspiring professional music theorist and actually in the audience when Prof. Ewell gave his bombshell SMT keynote lecture on Schenker, I feel I should start there. So, warning: this is very long, long enough that I’m going to put the latter parts into replies. But first, before I start sounding more critical, lemme say: I think the video's wonderful, you did a great job laying everything out, I appreciate how even-handed and open and nuanced your intent is, and you did actually change my mind about something-namely, what Tár's point is with her stylistic demo. The first time I watched I thought it was meant to suggest that performer variation is something positive about Bach's music, that everyone can bring some part of themselves to it and have their own interpretation; but now I completely agree with you that she's making almost the opposite point, that a performer ought to strive to be "transparent" in revealing the essential truth of the composition.
I"ll have more to say about that, but let's start with Ewell and Schenker. I'll try not to pretend that you've said anywhere near everything that you'd like to say about this topic, because it's just an aside in this video; I'm sure if you made your own video specifically about Ewell on Schenker, I'd probably be mostly in agreement with it. (For anyone else reading this who would like such a video, I'd recommend Adam Neely's RUclips video-essay about Ewell and music theory's "white racial frame" if you want a nicely accessible introduction that I think captures all the issues coherently and correctly - though of course I'd also recommend the published version of the keynote itself, "Music Theory and the White Racial Frame" on Music Theory Online. Also, while I'm doing asides: apologies to Neely, and to anyone else, if I'm reiterating points they've made; I'm not vetting this like I would for a professional publication so there may be the kind of accidental plagiarism where I forget under which points I'm repeating from whom; so, let me just offer this blanket statement that everything I say here is just me standing on the shoulders of the giants of critical discourse who've come before me.) But I think there's been a bit of a strawman of Ewell's positions in what you did say (and in the selection of what to highlight and what not to highlight), and since I think the (intentional) strawmanning in the Tar scene is one of the often missed nuances, it feels important to highlight it here too. (Also: one of the only times I'm going to bring it up, but strawmanning Ewell's arguments was also one of the main flaws of the travesty that was the extremely racist symposium journal issue responding to Ewell's talk-to which Ewell himself had, against all custom, not been invited to contribute-so let's be careful not to oversimplify here either.)
Ok, getting started for real in the replies:
(1) So, to set the record straight: Ewell is not canceling European "classical" music (he is himself primarily an expert on it, I think specifically Rachmaninov?), which you might be interpreted as implying when you say (at around 20'30") that "practicing musicians" (but surely not musicians who practice non-Western-canon music, right?) would be logically required to reject Ewell's thesis or they'd have no repertoire to play. Nor is he even trying to cancel Schenkerian analysis-though it's probably fair to say he's in favor of abolishing requirements that every single music theory grad student, even the ones doing work on completely different genres, be forced to demonstrate proficiency with Schenkerian techniques, especially if there aren't any similar requirements to demonstrate proficiency in raga analysis, maqam analysis, harmonic theoretical systems pioneered by avant garde jazz musicians, etc. (Note that I'm saying "Schenkerian," it will matter in a moment.) But that caveat leads into the point: if we want music studies to promote equity and diversity and be inclusive, then it needs to not hold up white music as the be-all end-all of all musical practices ever. Like, this comment is going to be long enough as it is so I direct you to go to the article itself if you want to know just how white-centric academic music study is in the USA nowadays, but the point is, if we want students to understand the rich variety of musical practices, and come away from their education without having formed the belief that white music is inherently superior, then we need to stop pretending that the analytical tools handed down to us are perfectly neutral. If we want to talk about what makes music good, but our vocabulary for talking about what makes music good was shaped by people who were trying to make the point that the Western classical canon is the best possible music, then of course that vocabulary is going to tend to be bad at highlighting what makes other kinds of music good. We don't have to cancel Western music and its accompanying theory, but we might have to reduce the amount of space it takes up if we're going to make room for other approaches. (I'll bring this back up when we go back to talking about whether Tár's Max is a straw-person themselves: like, why can't Max say, "it's not that I want to cancel Bach for everyone, I just think enough other people are playing Bach already, so I want to champion other kinds of music"?)
(2) And let's be clear: white supremacists have, both historically and in the present day, weaponized white music theory's usefulness in showing how allegedly "objectively" good white music is in order to provide evidence for the thesis that white people are racially superior. It is a thing. You can see it from just casually dipping your toes into alt-right discourses; you can hear it subtextually in Trump's 2017 speech in Warsaw, "we write symphonies." It was part and parcel of justifications of European colonialism and American chattel slavery. And, of course, it was the *self-avowed* point of much of Schenker's writing. It is one of Ewell's main points that Schenker himself, specifically and unequivocally, wrote that he believed his theory was proof of the inherent superiority of white music and thereby of white races (and, specifically, Germanic peoples; he has relatively little praise for French or Italian composers, for instance). Schenker himself, specifically and unequivocally, thought that the parts of his theory that proved white racial superiority were essential to it. So if you think that you can use Schenker's tools to dismantle the house of racial superiority he was trying to prop up, you are already having to reject Schenker's own conclusions about his own theory. And it's worth emphasizing here that we haven't even gotten to the "purely" musical aspects of Schenker's theory. Yes, Ewell does offer the argument that Schenker's hierarchies of tones based on their relations to background structures is analogous to racist theories of racial hierarchies-and, again, he explores that precisely because it is literally what Schenker tells us about his own theory-but independently of that, there's also the argument that we might expect Schenker's theory to yield conclusions that value white classical canon music above other musics because, quite simply, that is explicitly what the theory was meant to do.
(Another aside, and the only other time I'll reference that racist journal issue attacking Ewell, because this was one of the ad hominems it used: yes, Schenker was Jewish, in a time and place where that made him a kind of racialized other himself. That doesn't mean he wasn't also anti-Black racist-because he was: he literally wrote about how Blacks are racially inferior, the kind of horrific racist vitriol that it was really powerful to hear a Black man like Ewell quote in person at the keynote. And yeah, Black people can sometimes be anti-Semitic; cf Kanye West. But Ewell is not an anti-Semite, contra that awful journal hit-piece; Schenker's Jewishness is not what's being critiqued, it's Schenker's racism. I'm not Jewish myself, but every single Jewish musicologist I know and love would agree here. Okay. Enough. Moving on.)
Ok, but what about the theory itself? Well, here's where I need to return to the term "Schenkerian," which in contemporary music theory usage refers to the large and heterogenous subset of music theory that has adapted aspects of Schenker's original theories. There's a long history of German music theorist immigrants and American music theory institutions I won't go into, but suffice to say, contemporary Schenkerian analysis may well be unrecognizable to Schenker. One major difference is that the metaphysical baggage from original Schenker has largely been jettisoned. Schenker believed in starting from the background, from the Platonic cosmic unity of the major chord as an emanation of the overtone series; to temporalize this eternal unity, melodies must deviate from it, by crossing stepwise between the tones of this unity, using the degenerate dissonances of non-chord-tones as stepping-tones; from the tones of each of these ur-melodies, new unities can spring and generate new melodies of their own, on and on, until enough detail has been built that you have the foreground surface of music as we know it. It should be pretty clear how this can be a problematic way to interpret all music, for all sorts of reasons; I think the general gist of the racial-hierarchy interpretation is that it's like saying, in this post-Edenic fallen state of the world where music must occur in time, yes we have to have the background unity unfolded into motion, but the resulting music can only be good when it maintains order, keeping those degenerate non-chord tones in their structurally subservient place; yes there is variety unfolded from unity, but in order not to descend into chaos, you've got to have hierarchies of value. The imperialist racial implications should be clear.
(3) By contrast, contemporary Schenkerian theory (in my opinion, at least) mostly starts from the musical surface and moves back, and does so much more under the influence of theories of musical perception (for instance, Bregman's empirical work on auditory streaming) rather than metaphysics. It's like: ok, clearly in Western classical, we have tones that fit with the harmony and tones that don't, and those harmonically structural tones can be felt as being in some sense prolonged by the more superficial and decorative activity of non-chord tones, and then once you've established some sense that music has this kind of surface/depth, foreground/background aspect, you just sort of concatenate those perceptions into increasingly nested levels until you've more or less reverse-engineered some of the big structural entities Schenker was talking about. And from this perspective, the structural weight or depth of a given musical element can be a little less freighted with value judgments. Indeed, I personally believe (though I think many others do too, so don't take this as necessarily my original insight) there can be anti-racist ways of doing contemporary Schenkerian analysis, ways where you emphasize how it's the least structurally important tones that often are the most interesting, that give the music its character and drama-that is, it's precisely the elements that are most contingent and gratuitous in a whole that make it what it is. This would be an analytical outlook that values plurality and diversity and nuance, the particular over the universal, perhaps even a music theory of the subaltern. This might not be a politically perfect outlook: it still has hierarchies, for instance, so it could veer into an approach where structurally unimportant notes are glossed as spices added to the real base of the meal, in a way that might be problematically resonant with neoliberal DEI initiatives that add merely token representation while not changing any of the underlying discriminatory structures, etc etc. But it goes to show that there are many ways of thinking about intersections of identity politics and music theory, and that maybe even apparently regressive analytical approaches might be consciously reshaped into sites of exciting experimentation, finding new ways to think along with music, to feel music, to inhabit music. But you can get there only by doing MORE thinking about how music relates to life and society in all its complexities, not less; you'll never experience everything there is to experience with music if you pretend music is only ever abstract sound uncontaminated by the political. And in particular: if you never face down and grapple with the aspects of his own theory that Schenker himself considered to be inherently racially charged, then how will you be sure that you aren't just replicating his own hierarchical value theories? How will you be sure that you aren't choosing what you value in music because you're seeking out music that validates a sense of everything ordered into its place, unless you are aware of what it means to be analyzing music for its unifying elements? (Btw, if anyone is wondering, yes I take some inspiration from Adorno, despite him being a dead white guy (indeed, also a Germanic Jew like Schenker) who occasionally had kinda racist things to say about the music made by Black people; see Fumi Okiji, "Jazz as Critique" for an example of using Adorno's hermeneutic philosophy for anti-racist music analysis.)
Hopefully then I've made my point and drawn out two key themes from Ewell: (1) if we don't want to reinforce white supremacist views, it's worth finding ways to appreciate the value of all kinds of music and not just laud the white classical canon exclusively, so let's broaden our views and make sure we're not exclusively using theoretical tools that were shaped to work only with the classical canon; and (2), musical experience can be enriched by being more conscious, not less conscious, of all the meanings that might adhere to our ways of understanding it analytically. So what light does that shed on the masterclass scene in Tár? (Going forward I'm going to drop the accent and just write Tar, partly because I'm lazy and partly to emphasize a subtle point from later in the movie-that she was so desperate to rise to the top, not by challenging the rules of the game of European high-class prestige-chasing but by beating them at their own game, that she changed her own name, from something like Lynda Tarr to Lydia Tár.)
(4) First, more caveats: I like this movie a lot, I like the way Field aimed to give us something to talk about, it's great. And I think the scene is incredibly powerful. If there's something I dislike about this scene, it's only that it's sometimes a little too subtle (or requires too much insider knowledge) for it to be clear to everyone who watches that the film is not wholeheartedly taking Lydia's side here. I think, for the canny viewer who knows what this world is like, it can be clear that Tar is dominating the conversation in a way that doesn't allow Max to present their own views cogently, and consequently it means we're only hearing one side... but like, far too many people thought the scene was meant to unambiguously portray Tar as "owning" the cancel culture SJWs. Everything we get from Max is a bit of a strawman, both in what Tar allows them to say (given her control of the situation's discourse) and in Max's own views. There may be some kids out there who take things a little too far in some ways, but there are plenty of views very nearly adjacent to Max's that Tar would've had a much harder time rebutting. For instance, ok, easy shot at Bach for having 20 kids, but like, that's a fact that needs its context and it's not necessarily easy to see how that relates to the music. But what about Bach's relatively extreme religious beliefs, which are very explicit in much of his music (to the extent that the popularity of a texted work by Bach is very much dependent on how politically palatable later generations found the content)? What if Max had thrown in her face some of the very anti-humanist, "man is irredeemably sinful" ideology right there on the surface of Bach's choral music? Max should have at least a vague idea of this because one of the most popular new music history textbooks, Taruskin's Oxford history, spends quite a long passage discussing this (and Taruskin is not even really at the vanguard of progressive thinking, so we'd have to imagine a pretty conservative teacher for Max's history courses if he didn't read it). Or alternatively, what if Field had chosen lower hanging fruit and had Tar tell Max that they should've chosen some music by Wagner? Imagine how different the scene would've gone if it was Tar at the piano explaining the Tristan chord and why it's worth overlooking the virulent anti-Semitism that many, MANY scholars have argued is inseparable from the music in Wagner's operas (even in cases that aren't as obvious as the "unsouling" of Kundry, the "wandering Jew cursed for laughing at Jesus on the cross" archetype in Parzifal). Imagine if Max was Jewish and she was telling him to ignore that, because the unsouling music uses hexatonic pole chord progressions to warp the original, "pure" melody of German Protestant faithfulness in such a cool way.
And again, a much more relevant way that Max is a strawperson here: they're being presented as wanting to cancel dead white guy music (or at least, they're allowing themselves to be talked into that position by Tar's questioning), rather than just deciding to champion music by other people to balance out the overwhelming imbalances of the classical music world. There's a big difference between responding to "why didn't you choose Bach?" with "I just can't bring myself to think dead white men are worth playing no matter how good the music is" versus "It's not about whether Bach is good or not, people can and should play his music, I just want to champion other kinds of voices." Or what about: "oh I'm just not that into Baroque music, and given that I aim to bring some racial and gender balance to the representation in this field, it's easier to just stick with more contemporary stuff because there are many more composers who aren't of over-represented demographics." Indeed, what about just "I don't like J. S. Bach." After all, plenty of J. S.'s contemporaries didn't like him; he was, in the eyes of many contemporaries, a weird old nerd who was obsessed with writing music in styles that were soooo last century; all the cool kids (including Bach's own kids) were into that hot new galant stuff, or if they were angstier, Sturm und Drang. Why is it so bad to just not be into Bach, if there's other music you'd rather be playing? Why is it Bach who's the "vegetables" you're forced to eat so you get your essential musical vitamins and minerals? What if a student was playing Bach and the masterclass leader stopped them to tell them they should have chosen Miles Davis, or a dhrupad in Raag Malkauns, so they could learn to improvise more freely? If it's okay to say "oh, that music is great, it's just not my jam," why is it not okay to say it about Bach?
(5) Indeed: why stop a student and insist they should've played something else at all? This brings us to something that-while I know you didn't want to make this a five hour video essay about everything about that scene-I was still surprised you didn't bring up, especially after the aside about having been a Juilliard student yourself: telling a student they should've played something else, and then going on a rant about it instead of teaching them how to better perform the music they did prepare, is an absolutely appalling breach of professional etiquette for a master class. Any analysis of the scene as a whole (which, again, I know you weren't trying to tackle) that doesn't start from that premise is missing something huge. And it's something people aren't necessarily going to get unless they're used to the norms of classical music academia; it's about as bad as calling a business meeting about a crucial and time sensitive issue, then spending the whole meeting excoriating your employees for not using your preferred powerpoint format. People like to talk about how Tar crosses a line and Max finally breaks and cusses her out and storms away, but honestly the line was already crossed when Tar decided to stir the pot and bring up an entirely situationally irrelevant composer rather than actually teach conducting, and it's a wonder Max had the patience they did.
There's also the weird irony of Tar effectively "canceling" a fellow contemporary white woman musician, the composer of the piece Max chose to conduct, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, especially when Tar apparently still includes in her bio (in the previous scene) that she makes a point of championing new music by women composers. (Note that Max clearly does not have a problem in general with playing music written by white people!) I remember seeing a critic or two speculate that there was a subplot, deleted for reasons of runtime, that would've implied that Tar had some specific beef with Thorvaldsdottir. Regardless, the irony is that she ends up getting into attacking atonality as abstract and overly systematic and unfeeling-which is weird because I consider Thorvaldsdottir primarily tonal, using non-tonal elements only as special effects or textural landscape-like drones, but in any case to great rhetorical and emotional effect, not in a particularly systematic way and certainly not serialist in any rigorous sense. And yet it wouldn't be so much of a flip if Tar actually had been pro-serialist; certainly there are similarities in terms of the cultural capital of Bach and, say, the Second Viennese School, in terms of the way that complexity and elitism are tied together in discourse about them both. She could even have chosen Webern, whom Max could've objected to as a Nazi sympathizer (which he more or less was, apparently) while Tar went on about how the postwar avantgarde nevertheless upheld him as their idol because of what they believed were anti-fascist qualities of objectivity and austere, dispassionate abstraction in his work. (Imagine watching Cate Blanchett play the second movement of the Variations set, demonstrating the unity of pitch-space inversion and embodied physicality while her hands criss cross at lightning speed!) All this to say, her actions right from the start of the scene are a complete derailment of what a masterclass should be about, and it's really her own choice to bring up Bach that actually introduces identity politics in the first place; it could have gone so many other ways, but instead she tells a queer kid of color that they should've played a long-dead white guy who wrote music in a style completely different from what they chose.
This video is so insightful, your explanations are accessible to non-musicians but didn’t not try to water anything down.
yes she is the BEST. she doesn't need the Oscar. Oscar needs her.
It is quite common to "shake" your leg when confronted by something challenging. My students do it ALL the time. I have never mentioned it. It is a harmless nervous reaction.
Oh, totally. I'm a former leg bouncer myself. But in this scene it's deliberately used as a motif to dramatize the power difference between Tar and Max.
@@tonebasePiano Of course, you are quite right.
Yes, but there is a rhythm to the leg shaking that interferes with the rhythm of the piece they're practicing (Juilliard trained piano teacher here - 43 years teaching). I find that gum chewing creates the same problem. It has it's own rhythm. I ask my students to remove the gum. Your whole body "feels" the music. Thats why "Dalcroze Eurythmics" (the original music and movement) is so important.
I always had the feeling the student is just bored to the max - or it's simply ADHS ^^
The leg jiggling drove me nuts. I wanted to say "STOP!" I see it in real life, even on the subway. Anyone who does this should train themselves to not do it. They look ridiculous. One of my brothers did it a few times during dinner (years ago), but it was under the table, so we didn't have to SEE it. It shook the floor, so we would point it out to him and he'd stop. He apparently didn't know he was doing it. It is a nervous habit.
Excellent analysis. Thank you for that. It just added a lot more spice to the movie itself.
Happy we have Tonbase on earth! great Video Ben. Actually a great idea to produce more Videos of piano playing in feature movies! there are a lot of legendary performances!
I'm caught between being Well-Tempered and Ecstacy. :) My attraction toward Bach feels primordial, far from the cerebral engagement Bach invites, perhaps, demands. I love your comments, Ben. I am a Bach lover but not among the cognoscenti, for sure. I listen to Andras Schiff's play and lecture on Bach. I am amused by Gould but not enchanted. When I listen to Schiff, I am enchanted - gone into a universe far more beautiful than anything in my earthly existence. Tonebase is new to me. I plan to learn more. Thank you, Ben, for this clip and my introduction to Tonebase.
How about Bette Davis in "Deception"? Marilyn in "The Seven Year Itch"?
I've been waiting for this video, since it came out.
Fascinating analysis! It brings a whole new level of complexity to an already elaborate scene of the movie. Thanks a lot! Btw, loved your BWV tee.
cate has played the piano before! there’s a clip of her somewhere from a theater production like idk ten years ago and she’s playing the piano and i was sooo impressed
13:00
Bach, Mahler 5, talking about music, Blanchett's performance ... can't wait for the TAR movie release finally in Japan May 12th 2023.
I thought it was out of place that Tar would play Bach's C major Prelude in a masterclass. It would be like singing the ABC's at a college level creative writing class. The "clown face" in the script was put there for music nerds like me. lol. Coincidentally this piece is what taught me interpretation and remains a huge turning point in my growth as a student. I play it everyday as a warmup for years, as I'm sure thousands of others do too. Great writing.
Thanks for the comment! If the master class was for pianists, I think the Bach Prelude would have been out of place. But what made sense to me about the choice here was that Tar was making a point about the real meanings of music beneath the surface of the score - so I found was actually effective to choose something everyone knows and everyone has played (from beginners tot Schroeder to Gould) in order to reveal something about it that the students may have missed. It's her way of saying: you dismiss Bach, but have you even grasped the meaning of his simplest composition?
@@tonebasePiano Can any serious musician dismiss Bach, though? I mean, really? Great video. Thank you very much!
@@Jarnagua The piece made sense to me, given the context, but I agree with you that it seems very unlikely that a Julliard student would dismiss Bach and every other cis white male composer out of hand. That particular scene seemed a little forced to me in that regard, but I understand its purpose, and I do like the points she made to counter the student's opinion. It could also be that I'm completely out of touch and that it's a plausible scenario (hopefully not). It's a minor criticism though. I really enjoyed the movie overall.
It was probably the only piece she could play (play, talk and teach). She can act, but this movie was so bad that I don't know why she wasted time and effort on it. The first half hour was all pretension. Makes a musician cringe.
@@marti_flute Haha. I feel the same way about 'Whiplash.' True, this film is all about pretension, but you must admit, the classical music scene is rife with pretension among conductors. Maybe that's why it alludes to Lenny during her breaking moment - he was her role model and "relatively" unpretentious despite his success, talent and fame?
Ben, you're so good at this! Bravo!
Thank you, thank you, thank you. This video is pure gold. It has so much work and love in it. I like how you make easy for everyone to understand complex music subjects.
Great episode!
What annoys me the most these days is tendency to mix social trends and politics with art, especially music.
I want classical music to be free from “modern” trends and phobias!
…. At least you have records and CDs to listen to without the context of a play or movie or some type of narrative.
But do remember that with Beethoven’s Fifth, the first four notes were used by the Allies in World War II to comprise a synonym for victory. Dot, Dot, Dot, Dash [morse code for V].
I hope that’s not too political for you.
Lofty. Yet classical music wasn't free from the trends and phobias of its time. Bach himself was a man of faith, and a great admirer of Martin Luther, who was an antisemite. Does that mean that Bach hated Jews? Not necessarily. But basing his cantatas on Lutheran hymns does suggest a devotion to his faith and a desire to create music that was connected to his culture.
@@Jasper7182009 in the spirit of a "Lydia Tár" answer: Given that Beethoven composed his Fifth Symphony in 1804-1808, and Morse Code was developed in the 1840's, that means that -by the end of WW2- Morse Code had been in use for over a century, so I fail to see how the choice of dots and dashes for the first letter of the word "victory", as used "by the Allies" could be attributed to Old Ludwig, as you seem, rather laboriously, to claim.
Hope that's not too factual for you.
@@mwright80 I am not interested in religious or political views of artists. I do not care if they would adhere to any current or previous norms or trends. I do not care if they were liked by Hitler or if they support Putin. I care about their art. I do not want them to be judged though a lens of any young or old activist
@@mfurman I can appreciate that. I'm simply pointing out that art isn't created in some kind of celestial vacuum. And to truly appreciate an artist's work, we need to understand that it's not just an intellectual exercise. Art is the product of a person's experience, which is informed by the social and political conditions under which they lived. And it's not unusual for composers to create works of art which also serve as social commentaries. It can be their own form of activism.
The Prelude in C is the first piece I learned because I HAD TO. It's simple and so complex; transparent and so full. I still play it now when I need comfort, or to calm and focus my mind.
Excellent music and film analysis!
That was your FIRST PIECE? That is not exactly written for beginners. Sure it is easy to an experienced player, but for someone just being introduced to the piano...it is near impossible. I have never heard of a piano teacher assigning an early intermediate piece as a "first piece" to a beginner. You are either a liar or had an absolutely terrible teacher who had zero understanding of piano pedagogy. Either way...THAT SUCKS.
I love it because it is something I can play at my skill level. When I first learned it I tried playing just the chords formed by the arpeggios. I'm not surprised there's a well known analysis of the piece that does just that.
@10:00
Hey, isn't Glenn Gould the one who randomly started singing something that sounded like " *pohh* - *PAaaHh!!...* " while at the piano in a video clip and the interviewer also started "singing" inexplicably?
ruclips.net/video/-jxnqltzaLo/видео.htmlsi=OgTePJMMtuyS-yIa
Very interesting exploration: I want to go and watch the film now.
FYI 'Glen' was how Gould wrote his own name: he said if he wrote two 'n's, he wouldn't be able to stop until he got to three!
In an age where everyone is just interpreting old masters, I appreciate Gould's daring
When Gould plays, I sit up - and my attention never flags till the last note. He might be the only pianist who does that for me. Especially with Bach.
I haven't seen Tar yet, but I enjoyed this analysis. Informed, thoughtful and perceptive. Thank you.
Today is March 21 - HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MAESTRO BACH, and thank you for your immeasurable contribution to music that has civilized and inspired humankind for over three centuries!
Thank you for your in-depth breakdown and also the professional editing of your presentation. Appreciated!
Wow ! Thankyou. I know you don't have time to read these comments .Mr. Laude you are a hero for taking this film seriously and really seeing and CITING the reasons for taking the film seriously on its OWN TERMS. You are one of the few musicians who can "read" a Film ! How much time did you spend to find the cartoon snippet . Ben Laude has a doctorate in piano performance .! I've been listening to him for years but I didn't know he had done the work ! He is so good once you see his posts you know he is worth listening to him ! Thankyou for taking on this important film which many supposedly intelligent female musicians have spoken out against the film not mining its larger depths only looking at it as a diatribe against women in power ;I think the larger idea is about power's effects on people in general . Wow- shereally did the Glenn Gould staccatto thing . Todd Feid makes life in his movies great directors do this ! And you found the Ibsen snippet . You are something !!! I have always been fascinated by Curtis because both JosefHofmann and Godowsky taught there . I was sohappy to hear Eric Wren talk about what endures in what we produce . The true tragedy of life I believe is people do not take creativity seriously - the viewer will not realize how important what the film is telling us as the young student shakes his leg. Teachers have a great labor to do in changing this . people think exposing people to art is important but the fear is of really educating people . Well most people dont know. I'm 50 and I jut found out that ends of phrases esp. in classical period decrescendos. The problem is education. I really believe there would be less violence if we had the best education possible ;obviously we would also perhaps have fewer dishonest entrepreneurs and republicans . Just a joke : our world's problems aren't that simple .
Music and film are two of the most precious forms of art to me as well as interpretations, psychological commentary, and anything that questions my own interpretations, beliefs, philosophy, and even personhood.
Tár delivered all those. And so did this video. It was, to me, a much needed awakening for the neglected passions of my soul. It was nice to see a professional geek-out of a film about music and the psyche -- some of the things in this universe I feel passionate about. I thank you for that.
I love playing Bach on classical guitar, so much of it is readily transposable/practicable (Lute, Cello, Violin, Keyboard...).
This was a great insight into a movie I enjoyed immensely.
Wow, what a remarkable breakdown! The nuances you picked up are incredible. The movie was just OK to me, but you added much more interest and respect for what Todd did with this. The level of detail you so brilliantly pointed out really took me by surprise. This was extremely well done.
Thank you for enriching my prior appreciation for "Tar," Blanchett, Bach, and Field! And for your use of levity to tease out some of the layering in this film. I am still reverberating with some of the questions it poses, so I echo what Linus might ask: "Who cares about the Occars?!"
Great insights here. There is obviously more to this film than meets the eye on first viewing. With Cate Blanchett acting and playing the piano so brilliantly, it a shame the Concert Master wasn't given as detailed coaching/training on playing & holding the violin !
Thanks for this background. I found the movie frustrating yet intriguing. Your explanations only add to this intrigue.
Very engaging! Funny and interesting. Makes me DEFINITELY want to see Tar. I play this prelude on the organ sometimes as, yes, prelude music in funerals. And on an organ, it really matters that you hold down the two left hand notes while articulating the right hand notes in some way or other. (I usually play them detached, but not staccato).
i measure a man's intelligence on his sensitity to such important details! you are a man of intelligence and substance my friend!
@Jean Claude Peeters i used a famous quote honey... it wasn't about me. Thanks for the sugesstionand sorry for taking it as a given you knew it
Thank you for this wonderful video and analysis. More proof that Todd Field is a mad genius, TAR is one of the best films ever set in the classical music world, and Cate Blanchett gave (in my opinion) the performance of the decade.
Great movie, but I think there are minimum 5 performances from her that are better.
Also, nice point about her talking to her own younger self. I believe the entire story and character actually centers around Tar's time smoking ayahuasca with the Shipibo-Conibo tribe, which is referenced throughout the film but not given a strong narrative stance (I believe the second trailer centers this idea more effectively with some footage that never made it into the movie). That experience awoke some sort of power in Tar that set her on a journey of musical and sexual conquest, and the film documents the disastrous end of this journey.
Your use of "the architect of your soul" clip at the end made me burst out laughing. Irony is not dead!!
The accordion "apartment for sale" scene kills me every time. I feel like using some slight humor to portray a character clearly unwinding from herself and her reality was really clever and memorable.
Really like the Glenn Gould silver album on the background!
I saw Cate's performance of Hedda Gabler, with Nicole Kidman sitting in the audience right behind me!
This episode is really gold! And I am always impressed that actors learn actually many so called "jobs" to be as authentic as possible! What a blessing!!
For role in tar, Cate Blanchett learn how to conduct a real orchestra, relearn piano (she stop played piano at age 10), relearn speak german, and learn accordion for 15 or 30 minutes
Awesome video! Loved the 8 vs 9 and Eric Wen’s cameo!!
I've worshiped (and played and studied) Bach all my life, but I think I have to give Cate Blanchett a fair share of my devotion and awe, as well. I saw _Tár_ - while blown away by Blanchett's power and brilliance, it was nonetheless an ugly, unpleasant (if profoundly skillful and powerful) movie about an internally profoundly ugly person. I was in tears watching the excerpts in this video. She is a genius -- not a Bach, but a genius.
Of the rhetoric of the C Major prelude I found "her" "explanation" "right on" (in the _Fachsprache_ of my youth), the external dialogue of the 4-measure groups, and the dialogues within them, and the basic nature of counterpoint, "the organized control of consonance and dissonance", as I have taught, to be exactly what you and she said about "asking and answering questions", or more precisely, setting up, loosing, and resolving tensions of various sorts at various levels, and, indeed, it works without any interpretation at all, but sounds a lot better and can be perceived more easily via skilled interpretation.
In the case of Bach as opposed to Mozart, Beethoven, or Stockhausen, it is (IMO) an omission not to mention his personal motivational and ontological system, to wit, Protestant Christianity. While it is an open question, and a fascinating one, as to what extent the narratives, drama, and ontological landmarks and forces of that faith underwrite his purely instrumental, non-chorale-based works such as the "Well-Tempered Clavier" (Is that a crucifixion I hear in the WTC I B Minor Prelude and Fugue, as many scholars posit?), there is no question that the bulk of the BWV you wear on your shirt is sacred music, whose "message" need not be guessed. While it is not, of course, necessary to agree with or subscribe to his religious _Weltanschauung_ , it is necessary to understand it. One need not guess or delve for the questions asked by the St. Matthew Passion and what are the answers stated therein.
(BTW, in the "he was awful, but his music is cool" contest entered by Lydia Tár, let's start with Wagner.)
(BTW BTW the origin of BWV 846.1 in earlier "lute preludes", to wit, thick counterpoint in thin arpeggiation, is worth thinking about, but not relevant to your or Fields/Blanchett's "points". The _Toccata Arpeggiata_ of Kapsberger is a stunning grandparent of the most famous harpsichord prelude. Not to mention that Bach, of course, didn't even write this for the piano.)
It's worth bearing in mind that Cate Blanchett didn't write the script.
@@anne-louiseluccarini4530 It is true. But I was commenting only on her acting, and the dedication necessary to achieve these musical goals. Maybe her acting is more impressive than the preachy script, anyway.
I loved that scene. Her technique and even the message about the artist. Its great
The Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Australia played Mahler's Resurrection Symphony conducted by female conductor Simone Young as a tribute to Cate Blanchet
Erm, Simone Young selected the Resurrection Symphony to celebrate the reopening of the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House after it being closed for renovations for two years. The piece allowed for a full orchestra, plus the Syd Philharmonia Choir. It followed a fabulous new work by Indigenous Australian William Barton. The reopening of the Concert Hall and its fab new accoustics is a celebration for all Australians. I'm afraid Cate didn't have anything to do with it.
Cate was the executive producer of a documentary about Simone Young though, that is fascinating and very much worth watching, which is a lovely tribute and acknowledgement of Simone's incredible career.
@@gorgeousjoanna Simone Young has also conducted Franz Schmidt's apocalyptic oratorio, *Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln*.
Memorable performance. But its significance was actually Simone Young's triumphal return to Sydney, after an acrimonious episode before she went to Hamburg. She was one of Cate Blanchett's models for the film.
Lol so grateful you did this. This movie ate my insides.
This was super fun and insightful, thanks! I adored the film.
Another alum here. Nice breakdown (great t-shirt!) and spot on about the complexity of Lydia Tár. Thanks.
Great video. I love this prelude. It's a way to find your inner, composer self. Trying to articulate differently like Gould, or even drop this arpeggiaton and invent a new one, change octaves, tonality, instrument, dynamics, anything. It's so versatile in its harmonic composition that it will work anyway you distort it and put yourself in. I love Bach.
Thank you for perspective on the genius of Bach ..and the artistic genius of Kate Blanche …wonderfull 🙏🙏🏿🎩✨🎵
Magnificent performance. Outstanding movie.
This video exposes another layer in how to view this film.
(The identity/politics of the composer/artist/writer vs the content of the art. As well as the sincerity of the conductor vs a power trip.)
The more I think about “Tar” the movie, I find additional aspects are revealed.
thank you for the explanation of 'inner content' of Bach's music. i never touched his music yet, but the interpritatoin part 14:26 gave an amazing insight into the idea of the whole 'track'.
i wish more content discussed the 'messages' of music through its musical details.
it's actually really simple, but most of the 'content' is about technical terms as if the gist is actually there. while technique is only a means to be able to convey something
music is really much more accessible, we just need to see it through the "language of art"
Encore! Fun to see your analysis, had no idea of the nuance and sophistication in this film. Also enjoyed your videos on Glenn Gould and what various professionals are willing to say about his interpretations, including the passionate S. Bernstein. Would love to see how you feel that conductors influence soloists, and vice versa. Abbado, L. Bernstein, Szell, etc...
Thank you very much for this analysis. I enjoyed it. Your explaination of "Bach arranged by Gould" allowed me to have some empathy for his "rapid" interpretation of the BWV 869 fugue.
Thanks, Ben! That was awesome. I have been struggling with that film since I saw it. You have helped me to process it.
It is interesting that Lydia Tár mentions René Redzepi and his recipe for reindeer in this scene. Redzepi is famous for reinventing the nordic cuisine in his restaurant NOMA (5 times winner as worlds best and 3 michelin stars) but also known for being an uncompromising perfectionist prone to outbursts against his staff (This is well-known behavior in haute cuisine, but this was actually shown in a documentary about him). I am sensing that Lydia and Rene has similar points of view about their respective forms of art...
Will you comment on having a digital piano/keyboard in the background? I would love to hear your use of a piano's nobler sound effects - and perhaps in context with a description of the pedal effects in Chopin's music, and on the length of the sounding of notes in older pianos (Chopin-Schumann age)?
Hi Donald! That's a nice idea. I could imagine a video where I pick a piece and play it on different instruments: beginning in my office there with the digital piano, then moving to my living room where there's an upright, and then moving to a concert hall somewhere where there's a concert grand, and then at the end on a 19th century period instrument. With the right choice of music there's lots to explore here.
@@tonebasePiano Yes, that would be great!
@@tonebasePiano What a great idea. I'm subscribing to your channel in hope that you do this!
This was a fun and insightful analysis to watch! I knew about Gould's approach, but not about Schroeder playing around with Bach before getting back to his beloved Beethoven. I love that he rejects the notion of money as a prime objective over art, and thus preferring, of course, to play for peanuts. wah, wah. :)
Otherwise I feel in general there is a swath of people out there actively seeking to destroy the beauty of the past that at times has been created within an environment of despair, degradation or debauchery. We all have a choice, but to me it's insane to focus on the misery only. I marvel at the miracle of something extraordinary that was achieved despite it all. I've known a few great artists, and there's always a hitch. Wouldn't live with any of them, but I am grateful for what they have made.
Love your T-shirt!
And Kate.....of course!
Great analysis and interesting insights, but above all, a great film review where I hadn't expected it.
Glenn Gould may have been eccentric, but he was a genius and reinvented the modern approach to Bach in Piano instead of Organ. His versions are still today some of the most sublime Piano versions of Bach. And Blanchett is not a Hollywood actress, she's a British (Australian) actress and that's all you need to say.
Ben
Lots of crap on RUclips, especially when something is analysed. This is NOT one of those pieces fo crap. Beautiful dive into the movie and ... wait for it ... some of the questions it poses. I've got to get this movie when it comes out in DVD. Well done, sir!
(P.S. retired trumpet teacher, trombonist, conductor and conducting teacher)
This is a GENIUS analysis! Thank you!
Great analysis, really enjoyed your insights!
you make me want to go see the movie now. i saw the preview but couldnt get any idea what this movie is about.
Have to rewatch Shine again right now.
This channel is quite enlightening! Enjoyed it! 💙
This is an excellent vid - great analysis
She deserved that Oscar but that Tar is way ahead of this time
Fantastic video. This is my favourite channel on RUclips
Delightful video. Thanks.
This was so awesome! Thank you so much for putting this together. Very rare to see an actor actually play an instrument convincingly like this.