Mad Art

Now before I suggest the special Mad Art Compose Your Own series, six concerts with music by crazy artists or about madness itself, I have to give credit where it is due. At a party a while back my wife and SLSO cellist Chris Carson got into a discussion about inventing alternative programming with compelling themes. They agreed that people love the idea of the mad artist, Van Gogh being the ideal, and thought there should be a series devoted to composers that would appeal to audiences who read Sylvia Plath and Malcolm Lowry, love the art of Egon Schiele and Jackson Pollock, and whose favorite movies are Harold and Maude and King of Hearts.

So, with kudos to Mrs. Silva and Mr. Carson, here is my 2008-2009 Mad Art Compose Your Own Series (ask for it by name):

A Fine Madness Sep 26-27
The composers here are all reasonably sane (John Adams, Rachmaninoff, Bartók), but the fine madness of the title refers to the bizarre locales evoked by Adams' Guide to Strange Places, the madness of war that underlies Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra (written with a longing for a homeland that has been destroyed), and the Rach 3, which has all those Shine, you've-got-to-be-crazy-to-play-this connotations. Talk about extreme.

Scaling Infinity Oct 17-18
The program is Bruckner 8. This is from the great Nicolas Slonimsky's bio on Bruckner from the Biographical Dictionary of Musicians: "He suffered from periodic attacks of depression; his entire life seems to have been a study of unhappiness, most particularly in his numerous attempts to find a woman who would become his life companion. In his desperation, he made halfhearted proposals in marriage to women of the people; the older he grew, the younger were the objects of his misguided affections; a notorious episode was his proposal of marriage to a chambermaid at a hotel in Berlin. Bruckner died a virgin."

Seasons of the Heart Feb 6-7
Tchaikovsky 5. Tchaikovsky: repressed homosexual, manic-depressive, drank unboiled water during a cholera epidemic and died.

Transformations Mar 27 & 29
You've got it all here: Wagner, the supreme egotist; Bernd Alois Zimmermann committed suicide; Sibelius suffered epic bouts of depression, drank as if there were no tomorrow, and produced no new work the last 30 years of his life.

The Damnation of Faust Apr 17-18
Berlioz: one of the first great drug-induced geniuses.

Ode to Joy May 8-9
The title of Thomas Adès Asyla is plural for "asylum." One movement is titled Ecstasio, or "ecstasy," referring both to the feeling and the drug.

There you have it. Of course, the rich paradox is that all this music made by drunks and depressives and narcissists and wild men is incredibly beautiful and uplifting. The swan theme from Sibelius 5? It didn't come from out of the bottle. As the poet Anne Sexton said, depression was not her muse, but her tormentor.