A History of Western Music: Chapter 99

Like the faint sound of thunder, rumbling in the distance, then gathering in volume
until, with a great roar, it all comes crashing down, an avalanche of Europe’s concert halls,
like the 7.4 cubic kilometre chunk of the Jakobshavn glacier, calving into the sea below:
the red and Alaska yellow cedar stages and smoked birch parquet floors, a reverberating crack,
splintering on the rocks below, seals clapping, barking CHUM CHUM, CHUM CHUM:
the balconies and loggias, walls panelled in vertical grain, plaster and gypsum board,
cherry wood acoustic panels, the Cologne Gürzenich, the Festspielhaus and Mozarteum,
the Teatro della Pergola, the Graf-Zeppelin-Haus, the Grosser Musikvereinssaal,
crashing and splintering on the rocks below, then sliding into the sea;
the gilt of the Palais Garnier with its Chagall ceiling, the staircases of the Staatsoper,
the neo-classical façades and baroque rotundas, the Mariinsky, Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu
splintering on the rocks below and crashing into the sea. CHUM CHUM, CHUM CHUM, they bark.

A further rumbling and here they come, a second avalanche of chamber ensembles and string quartets:
There’s Suk, Dvořák’s son-in-law,
                                                                  arms and legs akimbo, bow in his right hand, Strad in his left,
                           like the ‘falling man’ of the Twin Towers,
                                                                                                  in what seems like slow-motion,
                      falling into the maw of nothingness: the dichroistic flames of the violin
                                           turning from gold to dark red as he falls
                                                                                                                          into echoless space. And on his heels:
                                                             Oistrakh, then Marsick and Carl Flesch,
                                                                                     the old Euro-Men in their monkey suits
and high, starched collars,
                              the fistula of a rotten, paternalistic culture, ‘an old bitch gone in the teeth’,
                                                                                                   burst and spewing pus:
                                                        plates    ribs    necks    and    scrolls,
                                                                                                           a rain of spruce bellies, maple backs
                                                                  black-dyed pear purls, white poplar sandwiched between,
                   the fittings, pegs, tail pieces,
                                                                            ebony, rosewood, Oregon mahogany,
                                seasoned for ten years.
HERE COMES EVERYBODY:
                                       the Lerner, Pro Arte, Budapest and Busch,
                                                                                        the Ysaÿe, the Kolisch, Prague and Bohemian:
                        Auer, Yankelevich, Yampolsky,
                                            snow on the Neva, the clank of steam pipes in the recital hall
                                                                (spare me, please, this sentimental tosh),
                            stifling, bombastic, hothouse scum,
                                                                                                       temperamental, over-rehearsed neurotics,
              lackeys, degenerates, playthings of the haut bourgeois …
                                                Mao would have known what to do with them …
      CHUM CHUM, CHUM CHUM, they bark
                                                             besides themselves, raucous with bloody-eyed glee …