Prodigy?

Steve Hicken and I did the same google search for Jay Greenberg.  I learned that he was featured on 60 Minutes last night from my mother.  Kudos to CBS for having a bit about classical composers.

Like Steven (and doubtless many others), I arrived at the From the Top feature on "Bluejay" and listened to his Overture to 9/11 (a curious title...).  I agree that the piece is "well-, if not imaginatively, orchestrated, and competent."  I tried to take the inherent naivete in stride while listening, but it's pretty hard to do considering the piece's subject matter and the amount of press "Bluejay" has gotten. 

A.C. Douglas gushes:  "[P]erhaps this century will find in him a composer of genius the likes of which has not been seen since Mozart or Mendelssohn."  Hm.  I doubt either of them would have done something as irresponsible as quoting a chant without first finding out the meaning of its text, even at the age of 12. 

Perchance I am embodying the green-ey'd monster.  It's wonderful that "Bluejay" is being given the opportunities and exposure he is getting.  I'm wondering, has he produced something as sophisticated as Mendelssohn's seven Symphonies for Strings or as sublimely subtle as Mozart's An die Freude (both composed in their creators' twelfth years)? 

It will certainly be interesting to follow his development.  I hope that Whatever (or God) grants him many more years of creativity than Felix and Wolfgang received.

Update: A.C. Douglas responds to my comments:

I would first point out to Mr. Maroney that Greenberg was 10, not 12, when he wrote his Overture to 9/11 (to which I just listened). That two-year difference is hardly a quibble at that age.

Actually, we're both wrong.  He was 11 when he composed it.  Mr. Douglas is absolutely correct that the difference is hardly a quibble.

I would also point out to Mr. Maroney that Greenberg's being intellectually "irresponsible" on the matter of his not being sure of the exact translation of the Latin Dies Irae (not the meaning of the text, which he understood as a 10-year-old, and not its musical import, which he understood as a musical genius) is beside the point -- way beside the point.

I'm sorry, but it's entirely on the point.  Is the Dies irae at all appropriate in conjunction with 9/11 unless one thinks that the victims were being judged on that day by their God?  It doesn't take a genius, musical or otherwise, to garner the facile "musical import" that the chant has "something to do with the day of wrath."  If one actually takes care to find out what that "something" is--in a nutshell, wrath against the condemned dead--it's easy to see that applying it to a 9/11 piece might actually be pretty insulting to some.  Quoting something out of context, especially in a work of art that deals head-on with such an extremely sensitive and personal subject, is intellectually irresponsible.  Of course, to the general public--those who like to bandy about the term "genius"--the Dies irae theme brings to mind horror movie villains, which are what they want to equate the perpetrators of those events with.

As for comparing to Mozart, I remembered Mr. Douglas' qualifications entirely, but find them a moot point.

Update: A.C. Douglas seems wont to engage in veiled ad hominems, and has unfortunately taken this discussion in that direction.  I am confused why he insists--nastily--that Greenberg was 10 when he composed the 9/11 piece. I am far more inclined to believe this site, which says otherwise (and, apparently unlike this green-ey'd monster, has no reason to make such things up, as someone seems to think I've done....):

We were all blown away by an orchestral showpiece, “Overture to 9/11” written by an 11-year-old. Yes, an 11-year-old. More than exciting, but, possibly, of divine origin.

I'm wondering where Mr. Douglas found the information that rebukes this.

Should I apologize for voicing an opinion that I wasn't completely bowled over by the piece?  I sure hope not. 

The Dies irae esoteric?  Give me a break.

Tempted as I am to respond further to him, I bow out here.

Comments

[Andrew Howzer]

Marcus maintains his dignity on the front line of spittle from a prickly bastard.
This Blogger Douglas, who can't stand being contradicted, lost his dignity a long time ago on his blog, and only continues to worsen his situation. One wonders if he put so much effort into praising a young composer, so that his weblog garners plenty of attention in Google searches?
Douglas sarcastically calls Marcus a "mind-reader," and then proceeds to engage in hypocrisy: describing "their [composer's] inflated self-estimation of their limited talent" is at worst a ridiculous inference, and at best, a phenomenon of telepathy.
Douglas is no less than an Armchair Terrorist.
Well, it goes without saying that Douglas has long since realized his own lack of genius, and has come to a comfortable conclusion of his limited talents. Let him have his Golden Calf!

[Drake Riley]

I believe that Franz Liszt was a good deal older than 12 when he composed the Totentanz in honor of his fallen countrymen...Apparently he had not read the explanation that the Dies Irae should only be used to depict bad people who are worthy of wrath. Or maybe he used it to represent the those that caused the deaths, making them subject to divine wrath. Or maybe as other artists, he was employing some "poetic license", with the Dies Irae as the musical embodiment of death, and not that concerned about the pure theology of the original chant. What more obvious way to depict "death" than with the Dies Irae? Okay, so maybe it is so obvious as to not be very sophiticated. Apparently, a lot of composers have either not been very sophisticated, thought their audiences might not be sophisticated, or just wanted an excuse to use the tune because they happened to like it. Sometimes, simple is good!

[Marcus]

I'm not sure where Mr. Riley gets his information regarding the Liszt Totentanz. Nothing of the sort is mentioned in the various liner notes I have, nor in various orchestral program notes. The Chicago Symphony's program notes from a recent performance:

"During a concert tour of Italy late in 1838, Liszt visited the Campo Santo in Pisa, where he saw the fourteenth-century fresco The Triumph of Death, which shows Death on Judgment Day, cutting down his victims with a scythe. The next year Liszt conceived of a piece for piano and orchestra based on the Dies irae, which he ultimately called Totentanz (Dance of death). He didn’t actually compose the work for another decade, and he continued to revise it over the following one. By the time of the premiere in 1865, Liszt’s score was said to have been inspired not by the Pisa fresco, but by Hans Holbein’s woodcut series, known in Germany as Der Todtentanz (Holbein portrays Death as a grinning skeleton). Obsessed with death, Liszt was intrigued with the idea of Death actually dancing his victims out of this world, a recurring image in literature and art. (The fascination continued into the next century: in the final scene of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, the principal characters, who have died of the plague, join hands on a hillside and dance.)"

From the San Francisco Symphony:

"The Symphonie fantastique undoubtedly provided an early impulse for Liszt’s Dance of Death. Another came in the spring of 1832, when Paris, where he was living, was gripped by a cholera outbreak. The poet Heine described Liszt as “a frequent visitor to the home of Victor Hugo, where he would play the Funeral March from Beethoven’s Sonata in A-flat while all the dead from cholera filed past to Notre Dame in their shrouds.” And a countess living in Liszt’s apartment building recounts in her memoirs how she and the other tenants were once kept awake all night by his playing countless variations on Dies irae. Liszt first refers to Totentanz in an 1839 journal entry that describes three new projects; one of them—almost certainly this piece—he relates to a sixteenth-century series of woodcuts by Hans Holbein known as “The Dance of Death.” (For a time, this music was linked with a macabre Italian fresco entitled “The Triumph of Death,” which Liszt saw in Pisa, but that probably inspired the so-called Malédiction.)"

From the St. Louis Symphony:

"Franz Liszt’s Totentanz (“Dance of Death”) has a long and somewhat complicated history. The genesis of this work dates to 1838 and Liszt’s wanderings through Switzerland and Italy with his lover, the Countess Marie d’Agoult. Stopping in Pisa, the couple visited the cathedral with its famous leaning tower and nearby burial chamber, known as the Camposanto. On one wall of that building is a remarkable fresco entitled Il trionfo della morte (The Triumph of Death), attributed to the fourteenth-century Florentine painter and sculptor Orcagna. Liszt evidently was deeply moved by this fresco, and in 1839 he began planning a composition for piano and orchestra inspired by it."

Odd that none of these very high profile notes by noted musicologists mention the dedication you do.

Liszt was an extremely devout Catholic when this chant was still used in its liturgical context and, I have no doubt, knew exactly what the Dies Irae represented from a liturgical standpoint. Regardless, Liszt doesn't confront the audience with a title that links the piece to any specific programmatic ideas or persons. He uses the Dies irae chant as an abstract object on which he bases an abstract set of variations. Greenberg used it in a very different, directly pointed and programmatic context.

The text of the Dies Irae is not overly complicated and translations of it are certainly within the grasp of any normal fifth or sixth grader. A "genius" would be able to grasp it even easier.

[Andrew Howzer]

It's actually amazing, that a composer who used "Day of Judgment" music in reference to victims of 9/11, hasn't been accused of hating America, and being a Terrorist Sympathizer. I mean isn't Judgment their very intention. I would say the textual reference is very much relevant to the situation.

[Marcus]

I'm sure had an "adult" composer used it, a few more eyebrows would have been raised (or, sadly, maybe not). I, of course, doubt 100% that Greenberg hates America or is a terrorist sympathizer, I just think it was a pretty irresponsible choice on him, and also irresponsible of his teachers not to call attention to it. I'm aware he's a kid, etc., but he was dealing with a very adult and sensitive subject matter and should have put the requisite amount of research into it. I guess if he writes it down straight from his brain or whatever and refuses to revise it then he wouldn't do that, though. That's another irresponsible step, in my opinion.