Strauss/von Hofmannsthal’s Ariadne auf Naxos tells the story of Theseus’s lover, whom he abandoned on a desert island en route to Athens. But it takes a roundabout way of getting there. It’s a pre-post-modern telling: a composer is commissioned to write an opera on the Ariadne story for a private party. It’s to be performed on a double-bill with a clown act. At the show’s start, the performers argue about who should go first: will the high opera be demeaned by the low comedy, or will it put the audience to sleep and deprive them of the jokes? These questions are soon made irrelevant, as the performers are told they must play simultaneously, so as to allow the revelers to get to the fireworks display that much sooner. (What a party!) Everyone scrambles to figure out how to make things work so they can still collect their performance fees.

In its full version, one gets to see the mash-up performance; this staging only included the prologue. As played, it had the feel of a backstage farce that was just warming up. Actors and collaborators duck in and out of doors, conspiring against each other. This production was sung in English, using a translation by Tom Hammond, with revisions by Nicholas Muni. While it made the proceedings more immediate, the translation felt very literal, sometimes to the point of being clumsy.

The performers came off best during moments of isolated transcendence. Mollie Adams’s Composer sung of his search for God through music. When she hit the loftier tones, you went there with her. Jennifer Caraluzzi’s Zerbinetta had some coquettish moments, but most of the prologue’s bawdy bits didn’t gel. Kelly Kuo’s orchestra flowed smoothly between subtle underscoring and Romantic Grandeur.

Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas is well-known for its music. But first, let’s take an opportunity to appreciate the librettist. Nahum Tate’s text may not be ostentatious, though it is sturdy, elegant, and highly musical. Anyways, this opera concerns the tale of another woman abandoned by her lover. Its tragic nature is explicit; death looms from the opening bar, which follows a straight line to the closing lament and Dido’s death. Even as she fell for Aeneas, their separation didn’t feel far off.

The singers — Cristina Bakhoum, Thomsa Suber, and Emily Brand sang Dido, Aeneas, and Belinda, respectively — sounded very lovely, light and delicate, though their diction didn’t always make it into the house. As actors, they seemed to have the manner of ghosts floating on stage. They felt more like masks than characters.

The set placed the action in a circular pit, filled with black sand. Risers on the far side accommodated the chorus, though they flowed in and out of the action as needed. The chorus was dressed in cloaks, which they removed to augment the set in different ways. They switched easily from Druidic onlookers to beach revelers. Nonetheless, the production was permeated with gloom. When Dido reached her demise, it felt like an afterthought, not the final turn in the tragic machinery. Both operas highlighted how awfully easy it is to be serious. The real challenge lies in repose.

Adam Baratz is a composer and pianist. He lives in Cambridge.

Today’s program, on April 3, had the BSO Chamber Players running through an eclectic, yet balanced, set. They led off with two suites of Kurtág miniatures. Hommage à R. Sch. is Kurtág ‘s actual title, assuming of course that one reads “-obert -umann.” His manner of Characterstücke seems to be the main reference point (also his op. 132, from which Kurtág’s clarinet/viola/piano/bass drum [!] instrumentation is derived). The six movements all have programmatic titles, many with references to the Schumann’s various alter egos — Florestan, Eusebius, Master Raro. Each was extremely short. All were generally under two minutes; one was under twenty seconds! They worked in an almost pictorial language; fragmentary gestures presented a scene that vanished as soon as it was conjured. Kurtág has a very deep knowledge of the instruments he wrote for. Their timbres wove into a single complex. William R. Hudgins’s clarinet was particularly liquid and sensual. The Bagatelles for Flute, Double Bass, and Piano, Op. 14d, felt cast from a similar mold — equally expert in construction, but broader in scope and technique. Another Hommage was included, here à J.S.B. One movement riffed on Debussy’s La Fille aux chevaux de lin.

Brahms’s Horn Trio, Op. 40, isn’t the only such piece, but he essentially opened and closed the book on the subject. He was really on when he wrote it. I don’t recall the last time I heard the piece, but once the musicians started, it might as well have been yesterday. The quality of each movement’s thematic material is very high. It’s all chiseled and clear. While the material is developed in an obviously, um, Brahmsian fashion, the fundamental melodies never get far out of sight. James Sommerville brought out the full timbral range of the horn, from a bucolic fog to the fierce pant of dogs on the hunt. Malcolm Lowe’s violin was warm and intimate. Inon Barnatan’s supple phrasing reminded everyone in the audience that Brahms isn’t deserving of his reputation as a stiff. The group led an exciting gallop through the last movement, reminding us also that Brahms is quite fun.

Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet — the Piano Quintet in A Major — closed the program. Even by Schubert’s standards, this is a piece teeming with melody. Just when one instrument seems to subside, another will burst from the surface without missing a beat. As the program notes had it, the piece’s abundance extends to its form: five movements instead of a more typical four. To ask if this was a performance “for the ages” would seem to miss the point. The musicians — Barnatan, piano; Lowe, violin; Steven Ansell, viola; Jules Eskin, cello; Edwin Barker, bass — were having a blast, following all the ebbs and flow of the surface, grinning through much of it. A fine way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Adam Baratz is a composer and pianist. He lives in Cambridge.

The first half featured unaccompanied choral music. Gustav Holst’s The Evening-watch was an existential dialog between Body and Soul. Its harmonies were lugubrious, a cloud drift faintly visible by moonlight. Edward Elgar’s Weary Wind of the West brought that weather to life. The text described a wind picking up and dying down over the sea. Vocal lines turned and crossed over each other accordingly, reaching harmonic rest by the end. The Prince of Sleep, also by Elgar, was a meditation on an anthropomorphized Dream. It circled around the same tonic, but never found proper rest. This was a lonely Dream, always in pursuit and never satisfied in his rich world.

Gerald Finzi’s My Spirit Sang All Day was a brief apostrophe of pleasure. Each third line of the text ended with “joy”; the joy is unnamed until the final reveal that it is romantic love. Vaughn William’s Three Shakespeare Songs set daemonic texts from The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They were glimpses of spirits and sprites, characters whose entrances and exits are violent, sudden, and transformative. Each song was full of opulent sonorities, proper settings for “such stuff / as dreams are made on.”

The first half finished with three folk-song arrangements. None took strong liberties with the music. Vaughn Williams’s Loch Lomand featured tenor Richard Simpson. His voice was light, bright, and clear, bouncing over the Highlands. Two Holst arrangements, My sweetheart’s like Venus and I love my love presented takes on love: The former showed a vision of an idealized love; the latter, a ballad of two lovers separated by the sea, one driven, by the wait, to Bedlam. The singers’ sound throughout had an even feeling, balanced and precise, with a very careful knowledge of where each pitch was.

After an intermission, the Cantata Singers presented a semi-staged version of RVW’s Riders to the Sea (libretto from J. M. Synge’s play). It told the story of an Irish family on a seaside town: A woman and her two daughters have lost their father and four brothers to the sea. The remaining brother sets out at the beginning to sell a horse. His mother tries to convince him not to, but he goes anyway. The one-act show is spent waiting for his return. He does come back, but wrapped in a sail and tied to a plank.

As staged by Alexandra Borrie, the family waited stage center while related pantomimes occurred on either side. A small orchestra of single winds was placed in front of the singers. This choice put undue visual attention on the musicians and made it difficult to hear the singers. Thankfully the program — a 116-page, quite thorough and academic tome, with many essays and photographs — included the text. It would have been otherwise impossible to follow the action.

The music had a stiff, static feel. The vocal parts mostly had the character of recitative. Emotional high points brought out snippets of melody. Recurring instrumental motives had the feeling of looming fate. The sense of claustrophobia was heightened by an off-stage wind machine.

The general affect of the concert was quiet desperation. Loneliness permeated most of the material. Even the opera, which included multiple characters, rang out with a sense of isolation. The performances took a worshipful distance from the music. At the same time, they often had an oddly hammy quality: the deliberate pauses after each piece, the wind machine, the extremely long light cue (perhaps a minute long) that faded out the opera. Still, the message was clear: there’s a little beauty everywhere in nature; but in the end, it takes and it takes and it takes.

Adam Baratz is a composer and pianist. He lives in Cambridge.

And yet, there’s still his music. Yerma is his operatic adaption of a play by Lorca. It was presented at BU Theatre as part of their annual Fringe Festival on October 16. It centers on a young married couple in rural Spain. Yerma and Juan have been married for several years. Yerma is restless. They have no children. Besides her own desires, she must contend with gossipy neighbors who want to know where the problem lies. Juan is a fine farmer, but does less well as a husband. He wants his wife to stay inside all day so the neighbors won’t talk about them. Yerma tries reasoning with her husband, contemplates an affair or divorce, tries prayer and folk remedies. None of these things work. Ultimately, she becomes overwhelmed by the life she’s trapped in. One night when Juan is drunk, she strangles him to death.

The libretto is taken directly from Lorca’s play, in a translation by Bowles. It is more a musical play (Bowles called it a zarzuela) than an opera. Instrumentation is a band that included piano/harpsichord, electronic keyboard, trumpet, and percussion. Music comes in between dialogue, with words that are structured much like song lyrics. The music reflects the WPA scene in which he received his musical training. It’s got plenty of those clear, open American prairie harmonies. But they’re tempered with rhythmic touches and a foreign folk feeling that draw them into a more surreal sphere. It’s not hard to hear Bowles as a link between Copland and Peter Garland, another lesser-known who’s done his time on the fringes.

As staged by David Gately, the emphasis was placed on Bowles’s WPA roots. The work was given a firmly naturalistic reading. Lines were read with a big, melodramatic feel. Metaphors were spoken as if they were literal, a take that pushed out the chaos and weirdness that was so often in the material.

The performers were all students. Their singing was strong for their experience, but their acting was less assured. As far as neglected works go, Yerma well deserves the airing, but one would hope to see it in a more sympathetic setting.

Adam Baratz is a composer and pianist. He lives in Cambridge.

The opera is one of big ideas, and it has a great many of them. What responsibility do we, in the present, have for the actions of those who preceded us? A half dozen TVs stood on both sides of the stage and played iconic newsreel footage from the past 50 years. How has our attitude towards war and a manufactured “other” changed since and as a result of World War II? A cameraman followed actors onstage, sending the mediated image for us to follow on the TVs. How does television affect our ability to relate to events at the scale of war? Nazi soldiers, young and old, offered defenses for their actions. What is the moral weight of an individual?

These are all, indeed, heady questions, but the production brought them up more than it interrogated them. Any one of those topics would fill a fine dissertation. To throw them out, one after another, in the span of 90 minutes felt intellectually irresponsible. The opera’s conclusion, that suburban America of the 1950s served as an anaesthetic for said headiness, felt slapped-on and simplistic. That decade in America had its own share of conflicts and inequalities. But their origin was fundamentally American, which gave them a much different nature than the European origins of World War II. Are we to believe, to play on the mathematics of the title of this opera, that all inequalities are equal?

Such thinking draws attention away from the individual and individual situations, focusing instead on the faceless masses lumbering through history. This was in fact where 3 x 3 = ? pointed the proverbial camera. No character was named. The lines between their very identities were blurred. Yet, the questions that Frau A struggled with were of an individual nature: how do you deal with history? How can you act ethically in modern society? One of the soldiers defended his actions by saying that if he didn’t shoot prisoners, someone else would have. The individual is readily replaceable, therefore worthless. If that’s the argument, why invest individual energies in writing and producing an opera? Would we have done just as well if everyone involved stayed home and watched Leave It To Beaver reruns?

The opera’s reality is one where looming, unknowable forces bat us about like puppets. As a philosophical stance, it has a long line of defendants. But this is art, not security camera footage. The reality of an opera is that it is a work, one written and produced by people. When the soldier said his hand was forced in shooting prisoners, those words were given to him by the librettist (Tina Hartmann). When those words were sung, the composers (Peter Gilbert and Karola Obermüller) provided the pitches. These people were the forces that guided the opera and those that dwelled within it. What granted them leave from the existential issues they outlined in order to take on this role? I don’t mean to sound hyperbolic, but the aesthetics of the work didn’t exactly mesh with the message.

The instrumentation used was spare, but provided a rich sound. Three musicians (Jay Hutchinson, clarinet; Rachel Arnold, cello; and Kana Zink, accordion) were hidden in the balcony. Live electronics from Gregory Cornelius balanced out the ensemble. Sounds were angular and icy, drifting with sudden collisions. Michael Sakir was a stolid conductor, guiding each element into place. The singers were integrated into this texture. Amanda Robie, playing Frau A, was nearly a constant presence. She brought a melodramatic touch to her character. The siblings (Tyler Wayne Smith, Chelsea Beatty, Andrew Wannigman) constituted a chorus of sorts, piercing and gray. The Nazi soldiers (Sean Malkus, Nathan Troup) were a cut out of older World War II movies. Copeland Woodruff’s stage direction had an even string of strong stage pictures: the old Nazi emerging from the audience, the cameraman snaking around the stage, the dead-eyed family staring at the TV. Its writers should be proud to have such devoted supporters.

Adam Baratz is a composer and pianist. He lives in Cambridge.

The show was staged Saturday evening, April 24, at Midway Studios, one of the school’s auxiliary theaters. Getting there was a bit like finding a speakeasy: venture to South Boston, drift into the industrial area near the post office, follow a couple side streets, enter the converted factory building. The stage was a black box theater with some brick walls. The orchestra had to be hidden at an elevated level. The walls created a very live acoustic for the choral numbers. Individual voices, despite amplification, were often swallowed. As might be expected with a school production, talent was uneven, but in some places it really shined. Steven Cardona may just be a Junior in college, but he’s also a very talented choreographer. He made sure standards like “The Man I Love” and “I’ve Got a Crush On You” got integrated into the larger story. Nathan Scott Hancock played an elvish Spelvin. He had a fluid dancing style and a fun comic sense. Olivia Kenwell’s Mrs. Draper was both a sassy and gawky guardian for her daughter, Ann. Chelsea Turbin brought a combination of ambition and naiveté to that character.

Adam Fenton Goddu’s Fletcher was often the broad-shouldered tycoon, but transitioned awkwardly between his imperious and comic moments. His daughter Joan (Marissa Miller) had a thin voice, but came off as the most sensible and mature romancer of the set. Jim (Taylor Avazpour), her beau, seemed stiff, I think a result of trying to maintain good posture for singing (which he did). The two of them never quite found their chemistry. Tim (Edward Tolve), the factory foreman and Ann’s suitor, found the harried posture of a middle manager. Sloane (Trey Harrington) had a lot of opportunity to show interesting emotions (a spurned lover given the opportunity to humiliate his rival), but his affect had a general feel to it. Stephen Markarian’s General Holmes was a mousey military man who balanced well his bumbling personality with his real authority as presidential confidante.

F. Wade Russo acted as both stage and musical director. He gave the music a light swing and a round sound. The band sounded refined, but not with the fun refined out of it. The set was quite minimal; banners and signs, basically. While there was no scenery to indicate “factory” or “Swiss Alps,” the variety in direction clearly communicated the variety in setting. The eye was never bored with the on-stage activity.

Love stories dominate musical theater. Strike Up The Band is no exception, but it ends with a twist. As the war ends, it appears Joan and Jim will finally be able to be together. However, their reprise of “The Man I Love” is cut off by the return of a mass chorus. It would appear Russia is agitating over caviar tariffs. Since Fletcher used his war profits to invest in caviar, he decides it’s time for yet another war. The couple is split again, as it’s implied Jim will have to return to active duty. Love, it would seem, doesn’t always conquer all.

Adam Baratz is a composer and pianist. He lives in Cambridge.

The format of this show, while typical of its time, will surprise anyone whose understanding of American musical theater centers on Rodgers & Hammerstein. Yaphank! has no story, or even recurring characters. It’s a series of songs (mostly) connected by the theme of war. They’re sung by a chorus with occasional soloists. As staged by American Classics, 10 singers were onstage with a pianist, trumpet player, and drummer (Joe Della Penna, Andrew Cormier, and Dean Groves, respectively). They wore army-styled garb and pulled occasional props out from under their chairs. Bob Jolly served as the “interlocutor,” providing context to the songs and the original staging. (This was particularly necessary when one song introduced a series of specialty acts.) He blended a little with the action, acting as a comic foil.

The subject matter of the songs was incredibly broad. Love songs to the ladies of soldiers (“I’m Gonna Pin My Medal on the Girl I Left Behind”), mock-tributes to alcohol subsitutes (“Bevo”), drag-parodies of the Ziegfield Follies, requests to President Wilson to send jazz bands overseas to entertain the troops, autobiography on army life (“Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning”), jingoistic attacks on the Germans (“The Devil Has Bought Up All the Coal” — “He’s piling it up by the ton / And, oh, what he’ll do to that Hun” — the Kaiser, naturally, once he gets to hell), true-tributes to those on KP (“Against his wishes / He scrubs the dishes / To make this wide world safe for democracy”). “God Bless America” — originally written for the show, but kept in the proverbial drawer for 20 years — was added as an encore.

The tone is consistently light and flippant. There are abundant references to contemporary culture, which gives the show a throwaway feel (which is fair, as it was only intended to be performed the one time). It insists on being fun and entertaining (as was the case with most Broadway shows in the 1910′s). The cast was full of very fine singers, but they seemed too self-aware to embrace the ridiculousness that makes early Broadway what it is. And yet, there was something a little atypical about the original production. Remember that the original performers were enlisted men? When they finished, they marched off-stage, out of the theater, to a truck which brought them to Hoboken, and from there on a boat to France. Now that’s theater.

Editor’s Note: There is a charming 1943 film version of Yip Yip Yahank called “This is the Army” available on DVD.

Adam Baratz is a composer and pianist. He lives in Cambridge.

This past weekend, Boston Metro Opera presented a group of one-act “operas,” all American, at St. John the Evangelist Church on Beacon Hill. A small cast (Ceceilia Allwein, Amy Dancz, Joshua May, Erin Mercuruio, Roselin Osser, Christopher Aaron Smith, Xavier Taylor, David Walther) cycled through the pieces while Aaron Likness stayed at the piano. They opened with Barber’s A Hand of Bridge (libretto by Menotti). It is exactly what the title indicates: two couples are together playing the game. As the hand unfolds, each player shares their internal preoccupations. They range from the banal (an attractive hat that Sally didn’t buy) to the burdened (Geraldine’s dying mother). There’s little drama in the room they share; the story is more how people in the same room can be in very different places.

The Face on the Barroom Floor, title on an actual painting in a Colorado bar, has inspired poetry, films, and an opera by Henry Mollicone. It presents parallel stories taking place in the same bar at different times. Both end with a fight over a woman and a gunshot. The music freely mixed styles. At one point, an actor walked over to the piano, tapped on it, and requested a change of mood: “How about something slow and easy, mister?” The diversity of material gave the opera an expansive feel, to the point where the music felt more decorative than connective.

Fables was a premiere, contributed by David Edgar Walther (who also sang in it). The biography on his website announces his accomplishments as a singer, composer, and powerlifter. His music was contrapuntal, just-dissonant-enough so to sound modern. It collected four of Aesop’s. Two involved a man and woman arguing over whether to spray for ants. There was also the Fox and the Raven and the Lion and the Mouse. Rather than be staged with actors, Joshua May and Xavier Taylor had a collection of stuffed animals and acted as puppeteers. It was a good, attractive idea, but just came off as “cute.” The whole performance had a jokey, ironic feel. It was hard to tell what made the composer and performers say, “This is a piece that we want to bring to the world.”

A fourth opera was to be featured, but last-minute licensing issues forced a substitution. Ten arias from different operas (Candide, Ballad of Baby Doe, Street Scene, The Old Maid and The Thief, Good Soldier Schweik, Vanessa, Susannah, Taming of the Shrew) were shared instead. The were mainly of the genre of reasons-why-others-don’t-understand-my-complex-emotional-state-and-how-that-inculcates-my-general-loneliness. What provides counterpoint in a larger piece can turn monotonous when strung together.

The venue was acoustically inappropriate for the concert. St. John’s is a slightly cavernous space. The piano often overwhelmed the singers and made it difficult to discern words. The singers all had solid vocal technique, but were less comfortable with being a character justifying his space onstage. There were a lot of exciting ideas presented in the program. However, opera is not just music: it’s musical theater.

Adam Baratz is a composer and pianist. He lives in Cambridge.

On stage, they made for a study in contrasts. Goode is the elder eminence, short and stout with a monkish haircut. He makes small, refined movements. His bows are polite. At the piano, his thick lips pucker out to the music. He seems to be half singing, half conversing with the material. Biss cuts a crisp figure, long and angular. His eyes have focus, as does his near buzzcut. He’ll use his body for dramatic effect, singing with his torso and exploding when big chords hit.

Their program brought together music of thoroughly canonized composers, but with enough thoughtful connections between the pieces that it hardly felt rote. They opened with a piece for single piano, four hands: Schubert’s Allegro (D. 947). Diabelli also gave it the title “Lebensstürme” (“storms of life”), a quality that is certainly suggested by the music. Swirling textures spread apart and regroup around a central theme. The playing had an elasticity to match, but they used a dry, clear sound that sometimes seemed at odds with the music.

Schumann wrote a series of six Studies in a Canon Form for pedal piano (op. 56); a pedal piano has pedals for playing notes, like an organ. Debussy arranged these for four-hand piano (played here on two pianos). The music is disciplined as well as gorgeous; history tends to focus on Schumann-the-Romantic, but there was also Schumann-the-Nerd. The phrasing of both pianists was sublime: supplely subdivided beats that made the clockwork sing.

Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, from his op. 130 string quartet, was arranged by the composer for piano four hands. Goode and Biss spread it across two pianos. The music can more than amply fill the extra space. Here, it is the music itself that is a vision of the Sublime. Unsurpassed craft yields unsurpassed emotional violence. The music’s contrapuntal and rhythmic complexities were tackled with clarity, never complaint, by the musicians.

Agon was Stravinsky’s last ballet. The piano duo arrangement was created for rehearsal purposes. The single timbre highlighted the Webern influence, while squashing the inventive (even by Stravinsky’s standards) orchestration of the original. The orchestration, unfortunately, also provides much of the music’s variety and momentum. The performance didn’t get the mechanical obeisance that Stravinsky’s rhythms are predicated on.

The program closed with En blanc et noir, a piano duo piece from the end of Debussy’s life. Its three movements come off as concise rather than short. Each is a masterpiece of texture. Other than that, it’s the kind of music that would suffer from description. The piece was a fitting close, as it seemed the best suited to the pianists’ strengths. They brought to it the clarity, restraint, and sensuality that Debussy’s music thrives on.

Adam Baratz is a composer and pianist. He lives in Cambridge.

Pierrot is a singular piece. It was written in 1912, during a stretch in Schoenberg’s career when all he could seem to write were singular pieces. It’s a “when worlds collide” song cycle: Commedia dell’Arte characters brought into the decadent avant-garde. It’s music that’s constantly on the edge; searing gazes, unplaceable screams, and bloody knives. The real twist is that the campy, vampy world of cabaret is never far away. The half-spoken Sprechstimme vocal style is as avant as it is of the theater (Pierrot’s commissioner and original singer was a cabaret singer). A healthy genre has since formed around the piece’s (then original) instrumentation: flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano.

Being a holiday night, a larger event was spun around the concert. Drinks and hors d’oeuvres to accompany pre-concert mingling. A commissioned video installation on a lunar theme. The crowd that came was not out of the formidably hip new music set. Instead, it seemed to be people attracted to classical music and an evening that would end at nine o’clock.

The Gardner is really a natural location for such an event — if you lived there, wouldn’t you invent reasons to have galas? The bar was set in front of El Jaleo(Sargent’s sensual portrait of a Spanish dancer). Projection screens for the video installation decorated the courtyard. The videos (Taro Shinoda’s Lunar Reflections, on display through January 31) stitched together overexposed urban night shots with close-ups of the moon. The scenes were largely still; any motion emerged from twinkling street lights. Their mood was contemplative, the focus on the gradual variations and their lunar parallels.

The concert was held in the museum’s tapestry room. It brought together a group of ringers, mostly New York-based (Sooyun Kim, flutes; Alexis Lanz, clarinets; David Fulmer, violin and viola; Eric Jacobsen, cello; Steven Beck, piano). Paula Robison, known primarily as a flautist, took the role of the speaker. She wore a plain white dress with a large collar. It resembled a nightgown and suggested a homebound insanity: someone who wandered out of her bedroom long enough to deliver her ravings, someone who would return to her quarters just as suddenly as she emerged. She was placed in the middle of the instrumentalists behind a nearly horizontal music stand, which gave her a sermonic stance. She held her ground for the duration and leaned on a small set of gestures. Her choices were sensitive to the text, but she kept a safe distance from any psychic edge (as did the dry, illustrative musicians). Fitting as it was, a blue moon can only provide the astrological scenery. Moondrunkenness is an individual effort, one that is needed for Pierrot Lunaire to come alive.

Publisher’s note: I do not consider the term, “ringer,” to be pejorative. In my understanding of musical parlance a ringer is a highly qualified professional artist who is brought into an assemblage with which she is not normally associated.

Adam Baratz is a composer and pianist. He lives in Cambridge.