š Thanks for reading Fran Magazine, a biweekly blog by Fran Hoepfner (me). Wednesday issues are free to everyone and Sunday issues are for paid subscribers only. Consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription for access to more Fran Magazine, and feel free to follow me on Twitter or Letterboxd.
Maestro moment
Apparently this is Bradley Cooper:
Listen, Iāll have to believe it, just on faith. I was informed by Michael Mann Facts who is pivoting to late-in-life Cooper Estate librarian that this must be Cooper because the Rocket in question is wearing a pair of shoes that seem to be the only pair heās ever seen out in.
Okay! Thatās Bradley Cooper then, dressing as his own Marvel character on Halloween. Itās no Leonardo DiCaprio as duck, but itās something close to that. I donāt think of Cooper as being particularly paparazzi shy, but I do feel like weāve seen more of him out and about lately. For someone who canāt promote their own movie (out this month!), this feels like the most effective form of self-promotion. I would not be surprised if he had some new weird stunt alongside ādatingā Gigi Hadid. Maybe heāll be in an NFL game box with Taylor Swift this weekend, I dunno.
In actual Maestro news, you may or may not have heard that the soundtrack to Maestro ā most of which is music by Leonard Bernstein himself ā will be released by Deustche Grammophon, with Cooper-as-Maestro on the cover of the album. If youāll recall last fall, TĆR did the same thing. It doesnāt seem insane for two classical music movies to release their soundtracks through DG. In terms of awards strategy and/or attempt at self-seriousness, however, I find this very silly. Maestro taking on the TĆR strategy of legitimacy in the classical music world undoes what is often so great about it (that itās insane). In lieu of looking through the tracks that are featured on the Maestro soundtrack, I encourage you to listen to me (HA!) on Cannes I Kick It this past week where we discussed Leonard Bernsteinās music itself.
Classical Music Hour
One of the most offensive accusations I have faced in my time as a classical music blogger is that I am just constantly sitting around and listening to John Philip Sousa. While this is admittedly funny to imagine, it is a lie!! Usually if I am scoring my own day, I am listening to something heavy and Russian, or melodramatic and German. Most of the time, however, I am just rolling the dice and picking a cityās classical radio station to listen to through my web browser, done and done.
Every now and then, however, I go through a phase of listening to ālight music,ā which is a late 19th century form of classical music that predates musical theater as we know it. These include the waltzes and polkas of Johann Strauss II.
This is the kind of classical music that goes viral on TikTok and then someone is like ānow why did Strauss have to eat like thatā or whatever. I listen to light music when I feel like I need to expel my brain out of my head and otherwise just get through a long day. Itās quick, motivating, exciting, and silly. Is it beautiful? Well ā I donāt think itās ugly, but I am not particularly moved by this kind of classical music. They call it light music for a reason.
Lately, however, Iāve been listening to the music of Eric Coates, an English composer who Philip L. Scowcroft at āmusicweb-internationalā refers to as the king (!) of light music.
Not unlike Arthur Sullivan from Gilbert & Sullivan, Coates composed in the late 19th and early 20th century, his work stretching from the Victorian era into the Edwardian era into the era that we now call āThe Crown on Netflix.ā
This era of classical music steers away from the long symphonies and virtuosic concertos of the Classical and Romantic eras of classical music, and the tunes become far more impressionistic ā very heavily concerned with nature ā as well as patriotic. It is hard not to listen to Eric Coates and think, āthis is someone who loves England so much.ā Coates was always composing a suite of music to celebrate seemingly average life in England; youāll find titles in his work like āThe Enchanted Garden,ā āFrom the Countryside,ā and āFrom Meadow to Mayfair.ā
I was first struck by one of Coatesās suites called āSummer Days,ā which Iāve linked above. Coates also has a suite called āSpringtime.ā Autumn and winter are not represented in his work. Compare the lilting gentle nature of Coatesās vision of summertime to that of Vivaldiās summer from several hundred years prior.
Coatesās music is all stripes and polka dots, lollipops and ice cream cones. Thereās not a hint of pessimism to a piece like that. Sometimes you need that sort of blind, stupid optimism! I wonāt fault it for being fully enjoyable. What I love most about the āAt the Danceā movement of āSummer Daysā is that it reminds me a bit of the waltz from Hector Berliozās āSymphonie Fantastique,ā which is where ā in that particular piece of programmatic music ā everything is going well up until the protagonist murders his lover.
Bonus Maestro moment. (Bernsteinās always at his most watchable when heās conducting with fervor, but Iām partial to when heās just having fun up there.)
What compelled me about Coatesās work the longer I listened to it was stumbling upon a very cynical composition from 1940 called āCalling All Workers.ā Maybe this is a socialist thing? I thought ā stupidly. No.
āCalling All Workersā was the theme song to a BBC radio program called āMusic While You Work,ā a twice-a-day continuous classical and instrumental music program designed to make factory workers more productive during the Second World War (and in the two decades that followed). This was, to pander to Fran Magazineās dwindling Zoomer audience, the equivalent of say, ālo-fi beats to study to,ā if you were intended to be building planes and bombs instead of studying for whatever it is you are studying for. There were all sorts of requirements that music had to adhere to in order to be featured on the show, including little to no intrusive percussion ā both because it sounded like potential gunfire and because it was distracting for the workers. In the years following the war, āMusic While You Workā became a far more popular commuting show than it did factory program. I imagine that driving ā which has a finite beginning and finite end ā to light music is much more appealing than six hours of screwing stuff together.
When divorced from its context, however, the Coates music feels like anything but work ā itās fluff, itās nonsense, itās useless. Should it have a use? Perhaps the most radical thing to do with music intended to be worked during or worked to is to listen to it for pleasure, during bouts of leisure and laziness. When I sit still still and listen to Coatesās music, trying to absorb its rhythms and cheerfulness, I find my mind goes otherwise blank. It doesnāt conjure much of anything. No images, no visions of story. I donāt find myself motivated to do much in response beyond hum or tap my foot, but even that feels like too much work.
Im glad you mentioned Leo as a duck. I saw it on twitter last night and couldnt stop laughing. what is that????
is it a literal dice roll to choose radio stations or do you have certain cities in rotation that you find yourself going back to?