The Taste of Music

By
James Macon Walton

Listening to the music of Berlioz and of Prokofiev is like listening to a banana split.

Jim Walton’s Recipe for his Banana Split¹

          Take a casserole dish, of, say, two-quart capacity, with an eight-inch square bottom, similar to those made by CorningWare.

          As when tiling a floor, line the bottom of the dish with ¾” cubes of chocolate marble pound cake. For “grouting” drip caramel topping between the cubes.

          Cover the pound cake with vanilla ice cream, also ¾” thick.²

          Next, side by side, lay rows of lemon squares and of angel food cake, also of ¾” cubes, on top of the vanilla ice cream. [The cookie style lemon squares should be made with a soft pie crust type pastry, not a hard or crisp biscuit type base.] As with the pound cake, for “grouting” of these sweets alternate fillings of strawberry preserves and canned crushed pineapple.

          Over the lemon squares and angel food cake place a sheet of strawberry ice cream, again ¾” thick.

          Then comes a layer of cake-type chocolate brownies, made with pecans, (not the wilted wimps you can buy in the grocery store, but ones of quality, as from Schermer Pecans of Glennville, Georgia) in ¾” cubes on top of the strawberry ice cream. For “grouting” use a hand-made chocolate syrup. [Please do not demean the creation with Hershey’s syrup!]

          Top the brownies with chocolate ice cream, once again of ¾” thickness.

          The chocolate ice cream is to host a mixture of bananas, fresh pineapple, fresh peaches, and fresh strawberries, cut into bite-sized pieces. [The ratio should be three portions of bananas to one each of pineapple, peaches, and strawberries.] Here also, the depth of the fruit should be ¾”.

          Seal the fruit with a thin blanket of hand-made chocolate frosting of a type which will form a hardened crust.

          To crown the fruit and chocolate frosting spoon on hand-made whipped cream [no Reddi wip, please!]. Sprinkle finely-chopped pecan pieces over the whipped cream. [Personal preference might allow for walnuts instead of pecans, although no self-respecting Southerner would permit such an insult!]

          Finally, there is the choice of cherries on top. [I love cherry pie and cherry cobbler, but I detest Maraschino cherries. My preference is for small cubes of cherry cobbler, with a soft pie crust type pastry base, placed an inch or so apart nestled in the whipped cream.]

          The resulting banana split is to be eaten with a table spoon. Start at one corner making certain to include a cherry and dip to the spoon’s depth. This spoonful is to be taken into the mouth, not immediately swallowed, but held on the tongue as long as possible. To be followed with the next spoonfuls from the next layers down into the split, again to be held in the mouth as long as possible. Then again down with the spoon, for another layer or two, to the bottom of the dish.

          In using an analogy between food and music, I do not reference an eighteenth century symphony where one would take a bite of steak, chew and swallow it, then take another bite of steak, chew and swallow it, then take a bite of potatoes, chew and swallow, then another bite of potatoes, chew and swallow, and so on, and so on, maybe with a few peas and a bit of gravy, but then back to the steak and the potatoes, one at a time, one after the other, and so on and so on.

          Nor do I reference a Baroque-era composition where, by analogy, two lovely streams merge to form a mighty river, and two foods are blended to form a new creation so delicious that it has become the favorite of all.

          Rather, my analogy is altogether and unto itself. Each spoonful of my banana split presents not one, or two, but the taste of three, four, five ingredients, individually different, distinct, identifiable, but, together, indescribable! While it may be that two spoonfuls hold the exact same mix of ingredients, I am told that the number of possible combinations of flavors in my banana split is 524,287!

          Thus it is with the music of Berlioz and of Prokofiev. The range of notes, keys, harmonies, melodies, instrumentation, tempo, and dynamics of their music is infinite. Indeed, their music is ever new, ever changing. If there is a repetition of a phrase in the music it provides but a brief respite, to allow one to assimilate that which has gone before and to gain strength to experience that which is yet to come.

          So, here is the challenge. Put on “Grand fête chez Capulet” (Hector Berlioz, Roméo et Juliette) and “Dance of the knights” (Sergei Prokofiev, Romeo and Juliet). While the music plays indulge yourself with spoonfuls of my banana split, actual or virtual. As the flavors ebb and flow over your tongue the music will surge to and through your sense of hearing.

          Then you decide. Can you? Can you taste the music?

          At the very least, you will never again hear the music of Berlioz or of Prokofiev but that there is a whisper of chocolate on your tongue and a smile in your heart!

Epilogue

          Some who read this article may find it offensive, nay, sacrilegious! These individuals will feel that for me to compare the works of these composers to the taste of a sweetish treat is a denigration of the sanctity of great music.

          Nothing could be further from my intent. For me, the compositions of Berlioz and of Prokofiev are so exquisitely beautiful that I find mere words inadequate to express the full range of my emotions when listening to such works. Therefore I have sought to enlist human senses, other than only hearing, to enhance my facility of expression.

          Actually, in this practice I am in good company.³ In a critique of the music of the preëminent late 18th/early 19th century French composer of opera, Étienne Méhul, Berlioz himself wrote: “[…] His musical system, if one can call such a doctrine a system, was based on solid common sense, which nowadays is held in such low esteem. […] He was convinced that musical expression is a delicate and rare flower, of exquisite fragrance, which cannot blossom without being nurtured and which a single breath can cause to wither.”⁴

          In the notes accompanying two Telarc CDs featuring the Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, there is the comment, unattributed, that this piece is a “stained glass window in sound.”⁵

          In an interview with the cellist Jonas Iten, posted on the Internet, Tsitaliya Mircheva, in her introduction to the interview itself, wrote, in part: “Have you ever felt how powerful, impetuous and enthralling music can be and at the same time tender and intimate, soulful and blissful like a lover’s touch? Music is capable of taking you on spiritual journeys and creating incredibly vivid portraits of your inner worlds if the performer knows how.”⁶
On the Web site talkclassical.com one contributor, using the name and photograph of the composer Edward Elgar, wrote: “Shostakovich tastes like dark chocolate to me!”⁷

          Then there are the oft-quoted words of Beethoven: “Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.”⁸

          In 1943, in the most poetic of these remarks, Jean Sibelius declared, “[T]he sixth symphony always reminds me of the scent of the first snow.”⁹

          Contrast what Sibelius remarked with the following: Eduard Hanslick, the most important critic in Vienna, reviewing the premier of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, wrote, in part, in Vienna’s New Free Press: “Friedrich Vischer once observed, speaking of obscene pictures, that they stink to the eye. Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto gives us for the first time the hideous notion that there can be music that stinks to the ear.”¹⁰

          Others of my readers might miss my premise entirely because they fixate on the makings of the banana split itself and overlook the essential role of music in my comparison. This is not an article about a banana split (per se). It is a serious and sincere effort to honor and celebrate the unique beauty of the music of two of my favorite composers. Because the music is exceptional, so must the item of food to which it is compared be exceptional. If you do not know this music…if you do not love this music…if you do not listen to this music…there is nothing I can say about this music which will resonate with you and you will then indeed be left with naught but the phantasmal of an elaborate culinary creation. To understand and appreciate my concept it is essential that you experience the taste of the food and the sound of the music simultaneously. Even those adventuresome enough actually to listen to the specific musical selections I cite, while trying to imagine a virtual tasting of my banana split, will find the effort lacking. I grant that, for someone to spend the time and money to create my banana split, for it to be consumed by even four people in a mere fifteen minutes, is a task to be undertaken by only the most devoted adherents to this project.

          My proposed solution is as follows. From your circle of like-minded friends select a group to join you for a Jim Walton’s Taste the Music Party. Double the recipe to serve eight. Have each participant bring one or more different ingredients for the banana split. Logistics suggest that the host or hostess, or one of them, could best manage the ice cream and whipped cream. Another guest can provide the sauces and toppings. A third would be in charge of the fresh fruits. Others, in turn, are to contribute the brownies and pecans, pound cake, angel food cake, lemon squares, and cherry cobbler. Each party-goer personally should add his or her item(s) to the creation of the banana split.

          And, of course, someone must arrange for the recorded music which is to be played!

          When the banana split is completed, served, and ready to be eaten, and the music is set to be played, I have a further request…actually a plea. Until both the food and the music are finished, let there be no talking. Savor the sweetness. Be enveloped by the music. Imagine. Enjoy.

          Then, when all is done, post pictures of your party on the Web. Post video to the Web. Send me links. Invite others to join you and to celebrate their own Jim Walton’s Taste the Music Party.

          But most importantly, tell me. Did you? Did you taste the music?

___________________

1. Serves four persons.

2. I recommend preparing the ice cream ahead of time. Form slabs of the ice cream to a pre-determined mold. All three flavors are to be ¾” thick, but each will have a slightly different measurement for its sides. The vanilla will be the smallest since it is to be placed near the bottom of the casserole dish, whereas the strawberry and chocolate will be somewhat larger since they are to be inserted higher in the split as the sides of the dish slope outward. Place the slabs of ice cream between sheets of wax paper, to secure their shape, and keep well frozen until time to begin construction of the split. When it is time to add the ice cream, it should be hard enough so as not to melt into liquid but soft enough to be eaten along with the other ingredients. Häagen-Dazs brand ice cream would be an appropriate choice.

3. I do not here consider the phenomena of those who experience synesthesia.

4. Hector Berlioz. Journal des Débats, 16 September 1851.

5. Telarc 80327 and Telarc 80059.

6. The interview presumably was in Switzerland, but no location or date is specified. Web site ZUG4YOU.ch!

7. Posted 1 June 2008.

8. Frequently quoted, but with no citation as to the written source.

9. http://www.sibelius.fi/english/musiikki/ork_sinf_06.htm

10. https://robertgreenbergmusic.com/music-history-monday-tchaikovskys-violin-concerto-in-d-major