Composer Matthew Aucoin; photo downloaded from matthewaucoin.com.
What a fantastical place is Matthew Aucoin’s brain! Pianist, conductor, composer, and author, he invites us inside his gray matter for a tour in his recent book, “The Impossible Art”. Mr. Aucoin, now 32, is a recipient of the MacArthur Award, commonly referred to as the genius award, and he is already viewed as one of America’s top composers – his composition Eurydice was performed in 2021 by Met Opera. The book is written in first person, a highly opinionated first person, and thereby, it reveals much about the author, as well as his subject matter, which is opera. “The Impossible Art” is worthy of consideration during your holiday shopping for anyone who loves opera or is interested in just finding out what it is all about.
I highly recommend this book mainly due to its most engaging characteristic. As Doctor Frankenstein yelled about his monster when lightning struck: “It’s alive!” Books on opera tend to be primarily studied and pedagogical. This one brings opera to life. Suppose Mozart had written a book discussing the composer’s task in his operas and those of his contemporaries, with its many attendant challenges and problems in combining singing, dancing, acting, music, costumes, and stage sets to tell a story made of dreams. I think Mozart’s would be much like this one, communicating his enthusiasm as well as his knowledge, bringing the picture he paints to life, broadening the reader’s perception and understanding of this massive art form that at its best, never perfect, can transcend its elements to speak directly to the soul of its audience. Thus, composer Aucoin calls opera impossible.
Cover photo of “The Impossible Art” by Matthew Aucoin; photo by blog author.
This 299-page volume published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux is subtitled Adventures in Opera and contains eight chapters, plus a list of works cited and a list of recommended recordings for the works he discusses. The author says in Chapter 1: “A Field Guide to the Impossible” that the remaining chapters are essays that can be read out of order, though I thought his order felt about right. He discusses operas by Monteverdi, Charpentier, Birtwistle, Stravinsky, Verdi, Adès, Czernowin, and Mozart that have affected him deeply, as well as his own works, Crossings and Eurydice. The works by the various composers are very different animals. One of the charms of his book is that Mr. Aucoin seems open to anything except bad art. He views opera as a generic term for a type of music much like ‘fiction’ is for books; his opera tent is very wide. He embraces avant-garde operas and classical works with equal enthusiasm, and he views the current opera scene in the U.S. as a thriving wild, wild west.
Another endearing feature of Mr. Aucoin’s book is that he advocates for loving opera from afar, that is, listening to recordings. That is how he developed his love for opera. As an author who advocates for listening to opera live, it helped restore a perspective for me that I needed to be reminded of. He also understands that opera speaks to you or it doesn’t; he mentions that his own sister does not care for opera. He also realizes our reception to opera can change. He states that initially, “Operatic singing struck me as jarring and unpleasant”. He gives as clear a description of the difference between opera and musical theater as I have read, and then proposes three laws of gravity for opera. He asserts that the libretto and the music for an opera, along with its other elements should not blend but should bump into each other, each transforming the others. If the book has a weakness, it is in being too often rational and reasonable, which as he states is the opposite of opera. Perhaps he should undertake the challenge to write an opera that would explain opera, but then, perhaps each opera is its own explanation, only using a language we can grasp but not fully articulate.
Mr. Aucoin’s prose is lucid and clever. He refers to opera as often being viewed in the US as “a kind of imported cheese, an especially pungent and funky one”. He refers to the relationship between words and music in opera as “not just one of respectful deference: it is also a battle of wills”, with an illuminating discussion of the working relationship between composer Igor Stravinsky and poet W. H. Auden. The main thrust of his book is a dissection of the operas he discusses, sometimes line by line, discussing changes in key and revealing the impact that the composer was trying to create in conveying the story being told. It is here the reader must ride along with him, even if you do not have a background in music; what you get will still illuminate the composer’s task.
I found myself wanting to attend again, or for the first time, the operas that he discusses whether by his comments on Verdi’s Shakespeare operas or Mozart’s Figaro or Chaya Czernowin’s Heart Chamber, to hear them through his ears, or at least after being enlightened by the insights he shares. In discussing Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s La descente d’Orphée aux enfers, his assertion that the opera makes “his depiction of suffering openly pleasurable, and exquisitely so” certainly makes me want to see this version of the Orpheus myth. He sees making suffering pleasurable but not in an exploitative fashion as a bridled task composers must deal with. In discussing his own full operas, he bravely shares his misgivings about his work on Crossings, a work about Walt Whitman, and he discusses his working relationship with librettist Sara Ruhl for Eurydice. I sometimes wondered in reading his opinions whether a particular one was expert opinion or a flight of the composer’s romantic imagination, or some mix. Nor do I have the positive responses to all of the works that the author does, but still, he makes me want to give each another viewing.
Mr. Aucoin, a very busy performer, conductor, and composer, found the time to write the book due to the pandemic shutdown of 2020. Making opera come alive in print is a gift. I hope he will somehow find the time to write more commentary on additional operas. Once I started reading the book, it quickly became a page turner. For my final verdict on Aucoin’s book, I will borrow a line from Harry Met Sally. When it comes to opera, I’ll have what he’s having