An Oddest Proposal

Excerpt from Thomas Mann, regarding sentiment, the artist, and his art

2009-04-19T17:57:00.003-04:00

“Five minutes ago, quite near here, I met a colleague--Adalbert, the short-story writer. ‘God damn the spring!’ he said in his aggressive way. ‘It is and always was the most abominable season of the year! Can you think a single thought that makes sense, Kröger? Have you peace of mind enough to work out any little thing, anything pointed and effective, with all this indecent itching in your blood and a whole swarm of irrelevant sensations pestering you, which turn out when you examine them to be absolutely trivial, unusable rubbish? As for me, I’m off to the café. It’s neutral territory, you know, untouched by change of season; it, so to speak, symbolizes literature--that remote and sublime sphere in which one is incapable of grosser thoughts. . .’ And off he went to the café, and perhaps I should have followed him. . .

“One certainly does work badly in spring: and why? Because one’s feelings are being stimulated. And only amateurs think that a creative artist can afford to have feelings. It’s a naïve, amateur illusion; any genuine, honest artist will smile at it. Sadly, perhaps, but he will smile. Because, of course, what one says must never be one’s main concern. It must merely be the raw material, quite indifferent in itself, out of which the work of art is made, and the act of making must be a game, aloof and detached, performed in tranquility. If you attach too much importance to what you have to say, if it means too much to you emotionally, then you may be certain that your work will be a complete fiasco. You will become solemn, you will become sentimental, you will produce something clumsy, ponderous, pompous, ungainly, unironical, insipid, dreary, and commonplace; it will be of no interest to anyone, and you yourself will end up disillusioned and miserable. . . For that is how it is, Lisaveta: emotion, warm heartfelt emotion, is invariably commonplace and unserviceable. . . All emotion, all strong emotion, lacks taste. As soon as an artist becomes human and begins to feel, he is finished as an artist.”

(from Tonio Kröger, published in 1902, when Mann was 25)

Of course, this being the perspective of a fictional character, it is almost equally likely to have contradicted Mann’s actual feelings on the matter as it is to have coincided with them, but given the somewhat unsympathetic manner in which he tends to depict the suffering artist in general, I imagine the latter is more plausible.

While I’m not sure I agree with the assessment altogether, I do feel Mann (through Kröger) was onto something. A degree of emotional involvement is necessary for inspiration (otherwise, why write at all?), but I think proper execution does demand a certain distancing of the artist from his art. Just as one tends to overlook the flaws of those dear to him, so will he fail to notice or choose to ignore the flaws of his own work if he thinks too highly of it.

I think W.B. Yeats put it best, and far more succinctly: “Rhetoric is fooling others. Sentimentality is fooling yourself.”

Turangalila

2009-04-10T08:32:00.013-04:00

Parts of Olivier Messiaen's Turangalila-Symphonie are still an utter mystery to me, but I'm continuously amazed at the sheer catharsis of its finale.

The work is highly experimental in its breadth, scope, density, and dissonance. While there are moments of blissful contemplation and fairly uplifting fanfare, the piece is dominated by a mass of cacophony that overwhelms---it's much like the late work of Charles Ives, namely the second of his "Two Contemplations" composed in the early 1900s, only with about 40 years' worth of atonal theoretical development on top of it, and for a greatly expanded orchestra. It's fascinating, definitely, but the barrage of what is, in places, essentially indecipherable noise lasting for close to an hour instills a certain anxiety in the listener that increases to the point at which he or she is tempted to flee the concert hall. There are motifs that recur throughout, a Wagnerian touch of familiarity for which the listener ought to be most grateful, but their occurrences are seemingly random; certain progressions that lead into them early in the work build and continue to build later on, never resolving in the manner the listener expects, which only heightens the tension.

The finale consists of a new theme as well as a conglomeration of several introduced and elaborated upon in the previous nine movements, executed at a dizzying pace and increasing in breadth and volume, in its final moments, to a climax seemingly unattainable. The ondes Martenot, that bizarre electronic instrument (that could only have been invented by a Frenchman) that features prominently in the earlier movements of the piece, makes its final solo atop tremendous, glistening chords for full orchestra, and what sounds like a profoundly perfect cadence gives way to a tumultuous recapitulation of the movement's earlier thoughts before three penultimate chords tracing the G-flat major triad (the tonic) sound, introducing the gradual buildup to a final chord that never seems to reach its loudest. The rumble of bass drums, cymbals, and a thunderous roll of the enormous gong blare and blot out the radiant chord, ending the piece with only the indeterminate echo of a metallic crash.

10 Turangalîla-symphonie, for piano, ondes martenot, & orchestra, I-29- No. 10, Final.wma -

(If you can make it through this movement, you have my immense gratitude and respect. It is, admittedly, not at all palatable if you're unaccustomed to 20th century dissonance, but once you hear what I'm talking about, beginning at roughly 4:45 and continuing to the end, you'll be glad you listened.)

That last buildup (6:39 to the end) is the catharsis to which I refer. Finally, we have a resolution, perhaps the first harmonically unblemished, major chord of the entire piece, amending for the great discomfort and moments of absolute terror throughout the previous 60 or so minutes of music, and doing so as immensely and assertively as possible.

It reminds me of something I read while studying Ezra Pound's Cantos in college, regarding the ancient Greek Eleusinian Rites. This complicated process of wandering and confusion, followed by a great light or revelation, to which Pound equated his inscrutable collection of poetry, is mirrored beautifully by the progression of what is, I consider, Messiaen's magnum opus.

An interesting thought on which to conclude--when asked what, if anything, the massive symphony meant, Messiaen replied, simply, "It's a love song."

Problems with recording for orchestra

2009-03-23T20:13:00.025-04:00

Despite innovations that have been made over the past century in acoustics, sound engineering, and recording technology, there really are still only two widely used methods when it comes to recording for orchestra: the Blumlein stereo pairing, and the Decca tree.

The Blumlein stereo pair, as its name suggests, consists of a single pair of bidirectional microphones suspended several feet above the center of an orchestra, slightly in front of the conductor. For many subgenres of orchestral music, it is still the preferred method, but it creates problems for recording performances of pieces written for expanded orchestra, particularly so for those of a late Romantic persuasion that feature dramatic, sometimes explosive changes in dynamic.

Specifically, I'm talking about the works of Gustav Mahler.

The big problem with stereo miking of the Blumlein method is that, with a bidirectional microphone, the third dimension of an orchestra, so to speak, will lose clarity. Particularly, voices in the back rows of the of the orchestra (brass and percussion) will be present only as secondary or background input to the two main lines, which will be dominated by the tremendous string sections. Naturally, the stringed instruments, being closest to both "north" and "south" pickups of both microphones, will be more prominently featured through those main lines and will, all things being equal in terms of overall volume, tend to overpower the more distant regions of the orchestra.

A counterargument to this, of course, is that all things seldom ARE equal within an orchestra in terms of overall volume, that the larger and louder woodwind, brass, and percussion instruments traditionally are placed well behind the strings and higher woodwinds precisely because of their tendency to overpower such softer instrument groups. In other words, the effect perceived by a member of the audience will be that of a proper mixture or equalization of the interacting voices.

That's fine, but what if such dynamically disparate instrument groups are both asked to play suddenly at high volumes, as in any number of instances within Mahler's symphonic catalogue, for example? Unless close attention is paid to levels mid-recording, the two mainlines of the Blumlein setup will be maxed out by surges of sound from the string groups, saturating the north and south regions of both left and right channels and leaving little “audio space” for the central and back portions of the orchestra.

To compensate for this, engineers at Decca Records developed a three-channeled modification of the Blumlein model in the mid 20th century, one they aptly called the “Decca tree.” One dual channel provided for the right side of the orchestra and another for the left, each with standard north-south regions, and a third for the center, with what could be called, for comparison, an "east-west" span. A novel idea, to be sure, and nowadays, anyone with basic knowledge of surround sound would think it common sense, but the dramatic difference in sound quality made huge impact on the way orchestral recordings were made.

Unfortunately, many sound engineers seemed simply to go along with it without wondering whether it was even the most appropriate method of improving sound quality. Absolute care still needed to be taken with regard to the mixture. It always should be remembered that the intent of an orchestral recording is to duplicate the sound as it would be perceived from the audience, not necessarily from a point immediately above the orchestra.

Hence, when recording with the Decca tree, levels in the central channel had to be manually reduced to account for any change in dynamic that might have caused, say, a trombone to overpower a violin, were the two, in essence, seated side by side.

More clever methods didn’t come about until the initial rage surrounding the Decca tree subsided. The best of which I’ve read, one which probably didn’t emerge until the advent of digital recording, involves distance-miking in layers (e.g., three above the orchestra, three ten feet in front thereof, three another ten feet beyond that) and compressing each set, and while this can create a more expansive or atmospheric quality to a recording, the levels of the outer layers must be turned up so high that there is a greater risk of ambient noise and interference (i.e., orchestra members shifting in their chairs or sniffling, or the conductor turning the pages to his score or humming along with the music).

I recently repurchased a version of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony I’d misplaced long before I’d thought to back up any of my CDs on my computer, and while listening to the first movement, I noticed a remarkable difference in the quality of the mix. I switched immediately to another version of the symphony, and then yet another (I own three versions of it---leave me alone), and the difference between them attributable to method of recording was very pronounced...

(Context: After a solemn, solo trumpet introduction and initial outcry from the entire orchestra at fortissimo, the piece descends into a soft, C-sharp minor dirge that lasts for over five minutes and is punctuated only briefly by one more similar, full-orchestral proclamation. As the funeral march (literally, "Trauermarsch") draws to a close to the disquieting rumble of the bass drum, the same eleven notes of the opening trumpet solo are played again, delicately, only to give way to much louder, more violent segment in B flat minor.)

(For the purpose of demonstration, I've only used, varyingly, the first violin, trumpet, trombone, second horn, cello, bass, and tympani parts for the reductions constituing the visual accompaniment to the following excerpts, since the full score is quite large and most of the rest of the instrumental parts for this portion function either as doubles or as "background" or "bass chord" harmony.)

(1) A perfect recording, likely done with a carefully monitored Decca tree and, I'm guessing, compressed layering:

(2) A slightly less wonderful recording, very likely done with a Blumlein setup:

(3) And a not so great recording, probably done with an improperly engineered Decca tree:

I didn't plan it this way, but apparently I have a pretty decent composite-control group for this experimental comparison: recordings (1) and (3) were both conducted by Leonard Bernstein, and recordings (1) and (2) were both performed by the Vienna Philharmonic (recording (2) was conducted by Lorin Maazel and recording (3) performed by the New York Philharmonic). Two legendary conductors, two legendary orchestras, yet three very differently sounding recordings...

Version (1) was recorded on the Deutsche Grammophon label, and as I mentioned, it likely was done with a Decca tree and/or layering, because the mixture between upper brass, mid-lower brass, and upper strings, the most prominently featured parts in this passage, is impeccable. The trumpet shines through where it needs to, the pulsing trombone chords remain noticeable but not overbearing in the background, and the frenetic violin parts are dazzling, yet not too "in your face."

Version (2) was recorded on the Sony Classical label and, again, probably was done with a Blumlein setup. Granted, it was remastered a little over a decade ago, but the string parts are still too loud and the middle and lower brass not loud enough. The trumpet really needs a more commanding role in order for these several minutes of music to work.

Version (3) also was recorded on the Sony Classical label, and clearly, the middle and lower brass parts are far too overdone. This is evidence of a poorly managed Decca-tree setup; the sudden change of volume that takes place here has not been accounted for, and the result is a somewhat obnoxious sound.

Of course, the likely explanation for this disparity in quality is that Deutsche Grammophon has been recording classical music since literally the turn of the century (19th/20th, that is), whereas Sony Classical, which never really specialized in making its own orchestral recordings (other than remasterings), functions largely through a subsidiary label, Legacy Recordings, which was only founded in 1990. Guess it takes a while to figure out the tricks of the trade.

The genius of Radiohead

2009-03-17T14:08:00.016-04:00

It is no surprise to me that Radiohead is among the modern, nonclassical groups most frequently covered by classical artists.

Parts:
------
1) Vocal 1
2) Vocals 2 and 3
3) Guitar 1 (electric, clean/undistorted, mid-high sustain)
4) Guitar 2 (likewise)
[5]) Bass

Christopher O'Reilly released an entire CD of piano transcriptions and "liberal rewrites" several years ago that are stunning. I wouldn't at all mind hearing the Emerson Quartet perform an arrangement of this particular song. Actually, I'm pretty sure it was "The String Quartet" who covered it a number of years ago, but that version, from what I remember, involved little layering (which, one can imagine, is somewhat essential to duplicating the effect of sustained, undistorted electric guitars and un-muted chimes) and was, on the whole, rather sparse. That those jokers call themselves "THE String Quartet" bothers me, as they aren't particularly good. Perhaps "A String Quartet" would suit them better. Whatever.

Whether the counterpoint present in this excerpt was intentional or the result of boredom and an abundance of free channels through which to overdub, the polyphony is simply beautiful.

He's the audio. The transcription I've provided was done in haste and excludes percussion, chime, and acoustic guitar parts, all of which are relatively straightforward. The segment in question begins at 3:59.

Let Down - Radiohead

Of course, I couldn't manage to transcribe the rapid, computer-generated chimes at 3:28 and the very end of the piece, but I'd really like to sometime---it may take considerable caffeine and focus, but I'd love to find out how they interlock.

As you may notice, the fourth transcription line (guitar 2) is performed in a split-sextuplet manner--that is, twelve evenly spaced eighth notes per measure. I wasn’t sure how best to illustrate this in the time signature and figured pointing it out here would suffice. And, of course, when you subdivide these increments into groups of five, the resulting rhythmic contrast is somewhat confusing, but every thirty beats (or five measures), this errant rhythmic progression and the predominant 4/4 time converge, which is quite clever. This is one of the first instances of such polyrhythmic experiments Radiohead recorded, to my knowledge---if you can find an earlier one, I'll take a bow and admit defeat. It's precisely such time-signature trickery, I think, that has earned their more recent music such praise, since their more recent music doesn't contain polyphony nearly as splendid and mesmerizing as this.

Meaning in art?

2009-03-16T15:34:00.011-04:00

"If, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is only an illusion and not a reality. It is simply an additional attribute, which, by tacit and inveterate agreement, we have lent it, thrust upon it, as a label, a convention - in short, an aspect unconsciously or by force of habit, we have come to confuse with its essential being…

-Igor Stravinsky, from his 1935 autobiography

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

A painting--that is, the physical use of color and shape upon a canvas or against some other medium, is neither, we'll say, "sad" nor "happy" of its own accord, yet it does tend to evoke such emotions in the viewer. The shape and color alone are meaningless, yes, yet when pieced together in certain patterns, they come to represent something that has an associative quality to the viewer; they become more than the sum of their parts, as it were.

When looking at a photograph, one does not sense that one is looking at a flat piece of glossy paper strewn with random patterns of color, but that one is viewing actual people, places, etc., captured in a particular moment of time. That it is, in fact, a flat piece of glossy paper not in any way related to the people or places depicted thereon doesn't even register to most people at first; we actually have to remind ourselves of it.

It's interesting, this cognitive leap--associations of this sort seem most often to take place unconsciously, as though either such links are pre-set in our pattern-seeking brains (nature) or we are conditioned from very early age (nurture) to associate certain sights, sounds, or combinations thereof with particular concepts or emotional states. I wrote some time ago about this, actually, as pertinent to the triad and major and minor keys---why do we automatically associate major keys with happiness and minor keys with sadness? Consonance with peace and serenity and dissonance with discomfort or terror?

It's a fascinating realm of aesthetics---metaesthetics, I suppose one could call it, and from a cognitive standpoint, I suppose Stravinsky is correct, but by his estimation, then, every form of representation would be, at its core, meaningless. After all, what are written words but arbitrary symbols against a background? What is speech but random currents of air modified by the muscles and bones of the mouth? If one form of representation is to be reduced to its own threadbare physicality, then ought not all?

That representations of any sort evoke images, thoughts, sounds, etc., in the viewer, reader, or listener is what makes them worthwhile. Why would a person who cannot read Cyrillic spend hours pouring over Russian archives? Must I know WHY it is that I love chocolate milk, or does it not suffice merely to say that I love it, and that is all?

My succinct response, then: Very intriguing, Igor, but really...What's your point?

(Incidentally, this is how I've come to view most philosophy)

My weekend in South Florida

2009-03-12T15:26:00.017-04:00

South-central Florida, really.

So, my cousin Lilly and her fiance Ben were married last Friday! Quite a lovely event that went off without a hitch, so to speak. It took place on the beach close to sunset at the Trade Winds resort in St. Petersburg, and just about everyone in attendance stuck around for several days following to get some R&R and visit with friends and relatives, old and new.

I took Thursday and Friday off last week, and though it did not occur to me at the time, it since has come to my attention that this was the most non-holiday related vacation time I'd taken in my nearly four years with the company for which I work. I have quite a bit of paid vacation saved up, and I must say, I definitely could get used to doing this every other month or so!

Here are a few highlights of my extended weekend--they don't detail much of the actual wedding, but rather, they recount several attributes to my trip as a whole that made it memorable. We'll start with what I did just before I left and proceed from there:

Swam laps in an outdoor pool at 9:00 in the morning in 39 degree weather. I'm not the most relaxed traveler, especially in backseats of cars for trips lasting longer than two hours, so in anticipation of such tedium, I decided to do about 3,000 yards in the pool the morning we left---nothing too intense, just a light warm-up, some kick boarding, and a moderately-paced mile-swim. Owing both to the weather and the time of day, I had the entire lap pool to myself, something which never happens. After finishing my workout, I held my breath and glided off the wall underwater several times, as I used to do after swim practice as a kid, enjoying the absolute silence and tranquility of it. It was the most relaxed I'd been in weeks, and it got my weekend off to a very nice start. By the way, getting into the water isn't so bad, but exiting and making it back to the locker room definitely will make your heart skip a beat.

Almost had my guitar stolen within five minutes of arriving in St. Pete. I was carrying it, in a hard case, and my laptop from the lobby of the hotel to my room. I paused to readjust the strap of the latter around my shoulder and, in doing so, had to set the former on the ground for a moment. I hadn't noticed that a group of somewhat sketchy late-high school/early college spring breakers had been passing by, and when I looked up, one of them was crouching, arm outreached, in a stealthy attempt to grab the handle of the case. He saw me turning, and our eyes met for a fraction of a second, which I suppose was enough time for it to be conveyed to him that, had he proceeded with the theft, I'd have dropped my laptop, chased him down, and acquainted his face with the concrete, because he immediately aborted his mission, turned, and ran. My brother witnessed the encounter and could respond only with a bit of nervous laughter.

Met some great people / had a blast at the rehearsal dinner. I somehow managed to be seated immediately across from the bride and groom, among people mostly of the groom's side, so the conversation was lively, tangential, and at times, chaotic (like a party scene out of a Beckett short story, only with nicer people and more wholesome topics of discussion). Social settings of this sort usually bother introverts such as myself, but I felt oddly at ease on this particular occasion--probably just because it was my little cousin's wedding and I was excited for her :). The food was excellent, the company warm and enjoyable, and the stories told and slideshow chronicling the couple's lives and relationship hilarious (and, of course, sweet).

Revised the wedding music (a final time) the night before. Due to a number of miscommunications between me and Lilly (the bride), I had been under the impression that piano music had been desired for the pre-processional (it had, in fact, been needed only for the procession of the bridal party). For this reason, I had recorded about 25 minutes' worth of piano arrangements of several classical works and a couple of my own pieces and compiled a CD, since the ceremony was to take place on the beach and, therefore, I would not have had access to a piano for a live performance. After the rehearsal dinner, a number of relatives (mostly from the bride's side) were hanging out and having drinks on the beachside patio, and I brought along the aforementioned guitar to provide some background and, possibly, sing-along tunes (the latter of which wouldn't have surprised me at all, given my family). I learned, within minutes of arriving, that I actually had been expected to perform LIVE on the GUITAR for the pre-processional, for Lilly promptly asked, upon seeing the guitar, "Are you going to play some of the pieces you're playing tomorrow?" This ought to have been rather stressful, but it actually didn't bother me, somehow, so I went along with it: "...Yes! I wanted to get your seal of approval!" I played through a few vocal-less songs I'd written (some years ago), and fortunately, she loved what she heard. She thanked me again for agreeing to play, gave me a hug, and said "That will be wonderful." (Phew!)

Had the best omelet in the history of the world. I normally am not a big fan of scrambled eggs, but a la carte omelets cooked to perfection in front of you are too fantastic to pass over. The omelet in question included chives, mushrooms, tomatoes, ham, and cheddar. I relished it along with some crisp hash browns with catsup, astonishingly fresh cantaloupe and honeydew, and coffee so good it required neither cream nor sugar as I alternated between watching the waves and perusing the New York Times. That first morning, I was probably the only guest at the entire hotel out of bed by 7:30 a.m., so I had no company, but I didn't really mind. (Was this really worth its own bullet-point? Absolutely.)

Ran on the beach. I used to hate this, but I think I'm in better shape than I've been at any other point at which I've elected (or been forced) to go for a shoreline run, so this weekend, it was actually quite enjoyable. I'm not certain how far I went, but judging by time intervals, I would estimate about 3 miles on each outing (ran 2 to 2.5, walked the rest). By the morning of the third day, it was obvious that spring break was in full swing, and therefore, the run more closely resembled the obstacle-dodging of a football practice, but it was still nice.

Played miniature golf the day of the wedding...with, among others, the groom, best man, groomsmen, and pastor. The ceremony was to take place at 5:00 p.m., and since guys really don't have too many preparation rituals through which to go for such an event (namely, hair and makeup), we were left with several hours to kill during the middle of an exquisite day. Ben had decided his last social outing prior to tying the knot was to be a quick 18 holes, so we spent midday and early afternoon several miles down the road from the hotel at Smuggler's Cove Miniature Golf. My team came in third out of four, but only because, I'm convinced, the two teams ahead of us cheated. Most of the them later went to play volleyball (incidentally, right in front of the room in which the ladies were having their hair done, which, it turned out, infuriated the ladies to no end), but I had to shower, dress, and arrive early for sound check and to warm up for my part in the wedding itself...

Provided guitar music for a beachside wedding. The ceremony was beautiful, the brief and somewhat comical interruptions by a plane and a couple para-sailors notwithstanding. The music went smoothly, I guess. I'd heard myself play the pieces I performed dozens of times, but I wasn't sure how they were going to go over with those in attendance. Everyone I spoke to afterward said it sounded excellent, though, and just about everybody involved in the wedding seemed very appreciative--I even got a hug from my Uncle Bruce (father of the bride), who's usually more of a "handshake and pat on the back" kind of guy, so I suppose these all would indicate I did an okay job. :) The only regret I have about the experience is not wearing sunglasses; I was seated in the back of the outdoor "auditorium," looking into the sun as I played for close to 30 minutes and for another 30 minutes as I strained to watch the ceremony itself. All that squinting left me with a heck of a tension headache during the first part of the reception. Lesson learned.

Got carded for champagne at the reception. I was seated at a table of mostly 20-somethings, and as the champagne was being served shortly before the first toast, I noticed everyone else at my table had had his or her glass filled, yet mine remained empty. At first, I thought the waiter had run out and needed to open a new bottle, but after about a minute, I looked at the next table and noticed him filling their glasses as well--he had skipped me. It wasn't that I desperately wanted some--I don't particularly care for the stuff, but I thought it would be appropriate to have at least a small glass ready for when the time came to toast the newlywed couple, so I politely said to him, the next time he came near our table, "I think you forgot mine. May I please have some?" He looked at me quizzically and asked, "Are you of legal age?" to which I responded, "Yes, of course." Then he actually asked me for my ID, which I'd left upstairs in my room. When I told him this, he said he couldn't serve me without seeing it. Not wanting to make a scene, I just told him, "Never mind. I'll do without." Nobody at the table seemed to notice, nor did they when I toasted with my glass of water. It wasn't a big deal; I just thought it pretty funny, because I'm 26, and I don't think I look at all younger than 21. Some people disagree, apparently.

Actually went in the ocean for a few very uncomfortable minutes. I couldn't have left without going for at least a dip, and it may have been over 80 degrees outside, but that water was still somewhere around 55 to 60. The whole act was ill-advised.

Paid to go down a 40-foot slide once. The bride's cousins from New England found this attraction particularly amazing, which was kind of funny (in an endearing way), but I guess they don't really have water parks in upstate New York (whereas Orlando, where I grew up, has more than its share of them). As for the $4 fee...It was totally worth it. Every penny. Why the hotel was charging guests is beyond me, though, given the nightly cost of a room, but I guess it's simple supply and demand: if you have the only three-and-a-half-story slide at a beachside resort, people will want to go down it enough to pay for it.

Spent the better part of 3 days in the sun without getting a sunburn. I have no idea how I managed this, since I hardly used any sunscreen, but it's true. I was amazed.

It was a lovely getaway, altogether, and I'm very happy for the new Mr. and Mrs. Miller!

Of course, spending a few days relaxing at the beach has made this week at work all the more agonizing, but c'est la vie. As I mentioned, I'll just have to take vacations with greater frequency in the future!

You'll never guess who wrote this

2009-03-10T21:29:00.012-04:00

Go ahead and give it a shot, and I'll post the answer as a comment in a few days. I would say, "no cheating," but I really can't imagine how one might do so.

Just a funny quote from the radio...

2009-03-04T10:24:00.008-05:00

"They're called parallel harmonies. Think of an instrument with a fixed set of notes, or maybe a piece of wood with pegs---the same chords, but played in different keys, so you don't really have to readjust your finger positioning to play through progressions. It's very useful if you're playing in, say, a hotel lobby or restaurant or something, because you can easily talk and play at the same time. [plays a series of soft-jazz-sounding chords while speaking...] 'Well, yes, I went to Juilliard, but...now, I'm pretty much free every evening. What are you doing?'"

I thought it was funny, at least. :) You kinda had to be there.

(Context: Performance Today, the American Public Media program (formerly of NPR), has a weekly call-in game, the "Piano Puzzler," in which a caller is played a popular tune disguised in the style of a classical composer and asked to identify both the tune and the composer. Bruce Adolphe, a composer and pianist associated with Juilliard and Lincoln Center, writes the music in advance and performs it live for the caller, and each week, after the answer is revealed, he gives a sort of impromptu, miniature music theory lesson pertaining to the piece or style in question. The above quote was taken from one such session.)

Why I love Bach

2009-03-03T13:21:00.003-05:00

He, too, was a coffee drinker.

Mahler's Fourth

2009-02-26T19:11:00.011-05:00

As far as Mahler's slow movements go, I think this one is so much nicer than the Adagietto from his Fifth Symphony, yet that one is far more popular. It perplexes me.

I actually own this DVD. That's how much of a dork I am.

The piece itself (the Fourth Symphony as a whole, that is) is one of the earliest exposures I had to Mahler's music. I bought a copy of it for $4 in the student union one Wednesday afternoon during my junior year at FSU. The first time I listened to it, I was trying to read some assigned Henry James while sitting through a quiet evening shift as a receptionist for the housing office. Now, whenever I hear the opening bells and flutes of the first movement, I'm reminded of such wonderfully boring occasions.

Anyone interested in hearing more should definitely give the fourth movement a look as well, as it is quite lovely:

I suppose the latter video will double as visual testament to why camera operators shouldn't be allowed to conduct close-up shots of vocalists during performances such as this--regardless of how talented a soprano may be, she always will look a bit goofy mid-phrase.

Commercial feedback

2009-02-20T12:10:00.012-05:00

This isn't terribly important, but I'd like to point out that the J.G. Wentworth commercial featuring characters of an opera production singing about their immediate need of cash makes a grossly inappropriate stylistic pairing.

Namely, the music being performed is of a notably classical persuasion, rather like something out of an early Mozart opera, while the costumes and setting appear to depict figures of Norse Mythology, an operatic trend that did not come about until Richard Wagner's late works, nearly eighty years after Mozart had died.

"So what?" you may ask...

Well, musical tastes had evolved considerably by the time Wagner wrote his sagas about warring gods and goddesses. Romanticism was in full swing; most composers had drifted away from the staunch formalities of the baroque and classical eras and embraced a more free-form and, in some cases, almost indulgently emotional approach to their works.

For your consideration:

(1) Overture to a Mozart opera:

La clemenza di Tito K621: Overture - Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields/Sir Neville Marriner

(2) Overture to a Wagner opera:

WAGNER: TRISTAN UND ISOLDE: PRELUDE - Mariss Jansons

Coupling Mozartian music with a Wagnerian set is about as appropriate as having the plot of 'Pride and Prejudice' take place in a Soviet P.O.W. camp.

I suppose the imagery of robust women in lengthy hair weaves and Viking helmets is one stereotypical to opera in general, but to the number of us who actually know a bit about the genre, such an error is most upsetting.

Well, not really, but it's certainly a little irritating.

In the Wentworth ad people's defense, though, the conductor character actually does appear to be keeping time, not just arbitrarily waving his arms like most fictional conductors do, and I did appreciate that.

Also, though it pains me to say so, the ad proved effective in that, though annoyed by it and not at all in need of cash from a structured settlement, I nevertheless did remember the phone number:

Chorus: "Call J.-- G.-- Went-worth! 8-7-7-CASH-NOW!"
Basso: "8-7-7-Cash-Now!"

Life of the would-be artist

2009-02-15T11:59:00.021-05:00

Alexander Borodin, William Carlos Williams, Charles Ives, and Wallace Stevens.

Perhaps the most noteworthy thing these four had in common was that they all were successful professionals in fields apart from the arts. Borodin was a chemist and Williams a physician, and both Ives and Stevens were prominent insurance businessmen. Essentially, each put his artistic pursuits secondary to his career, something most would consider prudent nowadays, but one has to wonder--what if they hadn't?

That is, what if they had foregone steady incomes and committed themselves wholeheartedly to their artistic ventures? What if they had sacrificed comfortable lifestyles and "weekend composing," as Borodin himself put it, and faced, instead, precarious and ascetic existences as Bohemians? All four were unquestionably gifted, but might their abilities have seen even further development? Might Borodin now be seated at the head of the table of 19th century Russian composers instead of Tchaikovsky? Might Ives' name be on the lips of music theorists more frequently than Bartok's or Schoenberg's in discussions of 20th century musical innovation? Might Williams' Paterson now be taught in classrooms in place of Eliot's The Waste Land?

On the other hand, what if composers such as Tchaikovsky or Chopin hadn't received generous commissions and grants from patrons, or what if Leo Tolstoy had been born not of wealthy lineage, but into utter poverty? The necessities of living likely would have compelled such artists to seek work unrelated to their talents, employment that would have deprived them of precious time and energy. Mozart died at the age of 35---imagine if he had had to spend twenty of those years working as a luthier or a blacksmith to support himself. Instead of the vast catalogues of unique and wonderful works we have for each, we might have been left with only a handful---or, what's more, we might not even know their names.

The amount of time one must devote to one's craft in order to produce work of lasting significance is subjective, of course, owing largely to natural talent and energy level, but I firmly believe that innate ability alone is insufficient to accomplish this. An artist's work can not flourish unless he is afforded a certain amount of free time and energy, which, in most cases, requires some form of subsidization that exempts him, to a degree, from elements of day-to-day living. When this form of income is not available, he is left with a decision to make, one that will place him somewhere between two polar alternatives: 1) Secure himself financially and create in his spare time, or 2) Create uninhibitedly and risk utter ruin or even a reduced life expectancy.

I'm reminded of a question posed to me by a friend with whom I regrettably have lost contact in the years since my first at college (I'm hoping she eventually gets a facebook account, as I'd love to find out how she's doing):

"Would you rather be successful during your lifetime but forgotten once you're gone, or overlooked and poor your whole life but have your work remembered forever?"

Of course, as it applies to the issue at hand, this is admittedly an exaggerated paradigm; Borodin et al certainly have not been forgotten, and not all "remembered" artists have been impoverished and miserable during their lifetimes. All the same, being an idealistic 19-year-old at the time, the latter proposal appealed more to me, but now, at 26, I have come to reconsider the matter and reversed my stance on it. My reasoning is thus:

By choosing to pursue a career, one implicitly acknowledges the risk that one may never have ample time or energy to perfect one's craft, which, while a somewhat disheartening prospect, is by no means a guaranteed outcome, for if one cares enough, one can always make small adjustments (i.e., the adage "If something's important to you, you make time for it"). Also, a steady income, when coupled with wise investing and healthy living, provides the possibility that one may retire with two, three, or even four (or more, if you're extremely lucky) decades remaining in one's life. Four decades is longer than Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, or Mozart spent on this earth.

On the other hand, by electing to give one's "all" to one's craft, one must recognize both that, 1) while there is a small likelihood of fame and fortune, it is more probable that one will go unnoticed by the public in one's lifetime, and that 2) there is no guarantee that one's work will be remembered after one is gone.

Those things considered, the former just seems a more sensible alternative to me. Of course, the romantic in me condemns this reasoning and accuses me of "selling-out," and it may be that, when I'm quite older, I'll regret not having taken more risks as a young man, but for now, this particular risk just appears to outweigh the potential reward. Still, I have to wonder, is this practical or cowardly---or is it possible the two are synonymous? How does everyone else feel on the issue?

Bottom of the Ninth...

2009-02-08T20:13:00.026-05:00

I normally am not one to take issue with a particular musician's performance interpretation of a piece, but when it comes to something as monumental as the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, I feel there simply are certain concessions that should never be made.

Specifically, I'm bothered by the manner in which many conductors take the liberty of rushing through the final words sung in the entire symphony. I'm referring, of course, to that final, 3/4-time (NOT split 3/4) "Maestoso," that tremendous, sustained V7 chord ("Tochter aus Elysium..."), the cascading thirds, and the towering two measures that follow:

(excerpts from Franz Liszt's piano transcription, which faithfully follows Beethoven's specifications---the orchestral score is too large to post here)

You'll notice that just before the lead-in to the final "Freude schoener Gotterfunken," there are no markings of time or meter change whatsoever, yet mastri like John Eliot Gardner and even Sir Simon Rattle (with whose works I typically find no fault, by the way) feel it ought to take the form of a springy, tumultuous, clusterf*** of a summation and then give way to a somewhat more slowly paced, less interesting "instrumental outro," to put it one way.

No, sirs! Absolutely unacceptable.

The Ninth is a pivotal and epic work, one whose thematic, motivic, and developmental scope went further than any symphony prior to it (and many after) and whose performance, by conservative means, requires almost half an hour more than just about any other symphony of its time period. The initial "Ode to Joy" theme brought to its conclusion in this finale is one that has been built up and varied to extraordinary degrees for the previous 25 minutes. This is its final iteration---one last, joyous outcry---a sort of benediction. The closing lyrics of the symphony and their orchestral accompaniment are marked to be performed "maestoso" because they should be just that: majestic. They should be expansive, sweeping, and all-encompassing, not at all manic or bumbling.

For your consideration:

(1) Here is an APPROPRIATE performance of the entire final chorus. It is less than two minutes in length, and given that it is taken from what, in my opinion, is one of the finest recordings of the Ninth Symphony ever made (Sir Georg Solti leading the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus), I submit that it is worth every second. The measures in question begin around 0:53. Again, the Liszt piano transcription has been used as the accompanying sheet music for purposes of spatial economy:

(2) Here is an INAPPROPRIATE performance, by Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, of the few measures in question only (I've excluded the rest of the final chorus since the other differences between the two are negligible for the purposes of this blog post):

For perspective…I know some people complained about how long it took Return of the King to conclude, but if, instead, just as the One Ring had disintegrated and Sauron's tower had collapsed, a ten-second montage of Frodo and Sam hugging, people of Middle Earth cheering, Aragorn and Arwin kissing, and then Frodo, Bilbo, Gandalf, and the elves sailing away had flashed across the screen, I think people would have been duly pissed off.

"The Earth rotates in the key of D major"

2009-02-07T15:36:00.023-05:00

I'm convinced this is just about the most singularly and independently perfect phrase of classical-era symphonic music ever written:

It also happens to be one of the catchiest---I can't imagine hearing it and not experiencing at least a few seconds of levity. It was written not by Mozart or Brahms, not by Schubert or Beethoven, but by one of classical music's perennial go-to guys, Joseph Haydn. It's from the fourth movement of his Symphony No. 101 (yes, he wrote over a hundred; the man was relentless), and I've had it in my head for the better part of the afternoon.

Here's an audio sample, before I get too ahead of myself:

HAYDN: SYMPHONY NO 101 IN D MAJOR, H 1 NO 101, CLOCK: IV. FINALE. VIVACE - ENGLISH CHAMBER/TATE, J.

What's so great about it? Well, for starters, its simplicity. It's brief, not too ambitious or flashy, being fairly self-contained and presenting little more than the part-writing devices taught in any first-year music theory class, yet it manages to provide (to borrow from literary theory) an exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement all within eight measures.

[***Readers completely uninterested in music theory might be best advised to skip the following six paragraphs***]

Interestingly, the first seven notes of the "exposition" (the first two measures) are the same as the first seven notes of the "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The key of D major is firmly established, and a lovely bit of contrary motion in the cellos/bases provides a sort of pseudo-voice exchange, which is always fun.

The "rising action" would be the third measure, where, in addition to the leading part (violins) literally rising from the sixth to the supertonic, we jump quickly from G major (the subdominant) to E minor. The dominant, plagal half-cadence in the fourth measure serves as a bit of a false climax.

The actual "climax" occurs in measures five and six, in which the progression moves through a nice bit of conservative dissonance (a diminished vii, then a diminished vii of iii) to the high-point "G," the third of the E minor triad. The lower three voices then release for a moment, allowing the lead to descend to the tonic ("falling action") before all four execute a dominant-key echo of measure three and cadence perfectly back to the tonic, which would serve as the "denouement."

What I also love about the opening of this movement (once we leave the brilliant initial phrase behind) are the thematic/rhythmic exchanges that occur in the next ten or so measures:
The staccato rest-quarter-quarter-quarter "pulse" of the violas in measures 9 and 10 is picked up by the first and second violins in measures 11 and 12, and likewise, the slurred quarter-quarter-quarter-rest theme of the first and second violins in measures 9 and 10 is answered by a theme of the same character---only sequencing downward instead of upward---from the violas and cellos/basses in measures 11 and 12. This sort of call and response is nothing all too fancy in terms of symphonic technique, but I love the way it's utilized here.

And after this little detour through the dominant, we have the opening phrase repeated just one more time before (after the entire set is repeated once) the brass and woodwinds join in and the movement-proper begins, so to speak.
[***Welcome back!***]

I think I love Joseph Haydn's music for the same reason I love Felix Mendelssohn's: it's exuberance. The music of both radiates an unapologetic happiness that is irresistible.

In Haydn's case, I suppose this was the result of actual contentedness with life. Here was a man who, in so many ways, was contrary to the stereotypical image of the classical composer---he got along with his employers and colleagues, he did not lose himself in alcohol or drugs or have affairs with married women, he enjoyed tongue-in-cheek humor but declined to condemn, through satire, political figures or entire social classes, and, perhaps most importantly, he actually liked people, and they actually liked him. Haydn was famously good-natured, even earning, at one point, the nickname "Papa Haydn" among his younger contemporaries. I just think it's refreshing to read about a normal, emotionally healthy, well-adjusted artist who managed to produce work that has endured for centuries---sort of the antithesis of the writer, musician, or painter who spends a lifetime feeling sorry for himself and whose biography invariably sobers its readers.

So thank you, Papa Haydn, for your unflinchingly positive outlook and all the wonderful music that came about because of it.

Now if only I could get that theme out of my head.

[(Humming) Daa…daa.. dumm….dadadada dum da da da daaaaa dum…]

Mozart's Piano Sonatas -- Drawing the line between accompaniment and counterpoint (and why it doesn't really matter)

2009-02-02T09:42:00.023-05:00

It has been said that Wolfgang Mozart's works for solo piano, including those for soloist with orchestra, are unforgiving of flawed technique, that while many intermediate or early-advanced players may be capable of handling the notes on the page, it takes a player of impeccable precision, timing, and touch to perform the pieces perfectly. Mozart was, after all, a virtuoso pianist, so it follows that his works for the instrument would require such rigid attention to detail. I do not at all refute this. I've studied most of the sonatas and even performed (imperfectly) a couple of them, and I submit that the slightest degree of miscalculation in hand position, timing, or dynamic can result in entire portions of a melodic line being botched.

However, I've also heard the good Amadeus' piano repertoire criticized, most prominently by Glenn Gould, for its lack of mature counterpoint--or, in some cases, the absence of counterpoint altogether. At face value, this does seem a baseless accusation, as anyone familiar with these pieces will tell you they contain an almost constant dialogue between left and right hand. What is meant, then, by "lack of mature counterpoint" or "altogether absence of counterpoint?"

What I believe Gould meant was that the secondary, tertiary, etc., voices of Mozart's keyboard works are devoted more to simple harmonization than they are to layering distinct musical thoughts beneath a leading melody. Almost all motion that takes place in, most often, the left-hand part is movement between and/or through components of a triad that fulfills the harmonic implications of the theme taking place in the right hand. Perhaps the most frequently used and best example of this is the Alberti bass, in which the three (or more) notes of a triad are sounded in an alternating and repetitive fashion so that a more interesting texture is provided than the straightforward, repetitive pounding of the full chords they comprise.

Here's an example with which almost everyone is familiar:

(From the K. 545 "Sonata facile" in C major, first movement)

While this left-hand part does provide a nice little bit of fractured polyphony, it would not be considered "counterpoint" in the strictest sense, as it infers only the bass chords of the main theme and thus serves only as a backdrop or "harmonic canvas." Mozart uses this figure liberally, and when he isn't, he's either playing unison parts with both hands, restricting his non-primary voices to operating merely in parallel thirds (or minor sixths, if you prefer) in order to complete the harmonies of the primary voice, or, as it were, simply pounding out the bass chords.

Now, occasionally, he misleads us with what could be a simple countermelody akin to the Aria of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations:(From the K. 333 Sonata in B flat major, third movement)

Here, we have the contrary motion and somewhat differed rhythm that hints at a contrapuntal exposition, but it seems to fit too nicely. And then, beginning the second measure, we see parallel thirds utilized to form a C minor triad, and again two measures later as part of a cadence to the tonic, no less. While the sparse use of parallels isn't exactly "prohibited," their use does essentially violate the operating principle of counterpoint (i.e., "contra" + "punctus"), so we begin to suspect Mozart of being up to his typical devices. These suspicions are confirmed when, in the second iteration of the main theme, Mozart just spills the beans and reverts to his Alberti bass.
Of course, it isn't that Mozart was incapable of writing with advanced counterpoint. Indeed, his operas, symphonies, masses, and multiple instrument chamber works provide ample testament to his proficiency at writing for numerous voices. The problem, I believe, is that, as a virtuosic pianist, he may have been too prone to ostentation in his melodic lines, at the expense of his counterpoint.

Another composer whose works exhibit this characteristic---flourishing, elaborately ornamented melodies in the right hand and more or less straightforward chords and arpeggios in the left---was Frederic Chopin, who, incidentally, also did not find much favor in Glenn Gould's eyes. And interestingly, though they were of different musical eras, the ability of both Mozart and Chopin to produce highly personal and memorable melodies is what largely has distinguished their music over the centuries. They both could write "anthropomorphic" themes, to put it another way, themes seemingly calculated to have the effect of a human voice in terms of their range, behavior, and impression upon the memory of a listener. Everyone recognizes (and many can hum, upon request) the opening melodies of Mozart's Rondo alla Turca, or Eine kleine Nachtmusik, or Le Nozze di Figaro, and likewise, Chopin's vast collection of Nocturnes, Ballades, and Polonaises are among the most recognizable and treasured in the standard repertoire because of their synthesis of technical skill and an evocative, almost "sing-song" character.

Their appeal, in other words, is of a more emotional nature, whereas the appeal Gould seeks---that of contrapuntal complexity, is more intellectual. This is not to suggest, of course, that works highly praised for their contrapuntal achievements lack an emotional element, but such works often are interpreted so that any such element is overshadowed by the work's academic virtues---which is, needless to say, unfortunate.

Thus, it would not be fair to dismiss Mozart's piano works as inferior to those of, say, Domenico Scarlatti, Johannes Brahms, or Joseph Haydn, nor would it be appropriate to categorize the works of the latter three as emotionally deficient. Though dimensions of counterpoint may separate them, each should be judged based on its combined appeal to both left- and right-brain.

In fact, I am inclined to conclude that the emotional appeal of a piece ought always take precedence over the intellectual, since music was first a spiritual practice and only much later an academic...But I'll not go that far.

The present participle of "lol" is "lol," not "lolling"

2009-01-29T07:39:00.019-05:00

I ended up working until 9:00 p.m. on Sunday to meet a foolishly optimistic deadline I had set for myself. My afternoon and evening at the office were punctuated by a trip to the mechanic's to have my brakes reworked, which served as kind of a respite, but leaving the former to return to several more hours of the latter when all I wanted to do was swim a couple miles, eat a bountiful and well rounded supper, watch Flight of the Conchords, and go to sleep was, to say the least, somewhat disheartening.

I have Dave Barry to thank for cheering me up, briefly though it may have been. I stopped on my way back to pick up Jimmy John's for dinner, and while waiting for my turkey sandwich to be made, I noticed a poster with a list written by Barry, one of my favorite columnists. Being in no particular hurry to get back to my desk and resume editing, I lingered for a moment to read it, and I was amused enough to google it when I did get back...

16 Things it Took Me Over 50 Years to Learn
by Dave Barry

1. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
2. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."
3. There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."
4. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.
5. You should not confuse your career with your life.
6. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
7. Never lick a steak knife.
8. The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.
9. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.
10. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.
11. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age 11.
12. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers.
13. A person who is nice to you but rude to a waiter is not a nice person. (This is very important. Pay attention. It never fails.)
14. Your friends love you anyway.
15. Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.
16. Thought for the day: Men are like fine wine... They start out as grapes, and it's up to the women to stomp the crap out of them until they turn into something acceptable to have dinner with.

------

There are a number of interesting topics (to me, at least!) about which I've been eager to write for the past week or so, but as I mentioned, I'm buried in work currently, and I also have another grad school application to complete by the first of February, so the blog will have to wait.

Manageable dissonance in 20th century music -- Follow-up on an earlier post

2009-01-24T15:03:00.015-05:00

"Neptune" from Gustav Holst's The Planets came up on my mp3 player's shuffle the other day, and I noticed, in its opening measures, a polytonal chord pairing that illustrated rather well something I had attempted to describe about half-step pairings in my recent post about Webern. Take a look...

(Keep in mind that the bass flute part sounds a perfect fourth lower than it appears--e.g., the first note is a B natural.)

(Here is an audio sample, for anyone interested--the piece is replete with instances of what I'm talking about, but the particular chord pairing in question occurs about 12 seconds into it. Nevertheless, I highly recommend taking the time to hear the entire thing):

HOLST: THE PLANETS, OP 32: VII. NEPTUNE, THE MYSTIC - DAVIS/TORONTO SYMPHONY

First of all, I think this is one of the most intriguing musical works of the early 20th century, regardless of genre. Not that this is at all relevant, but I just wanted to throw it out there.

In my post about Webern's Op. 27, I mentioned the problem that comes from pairing pitch classes of half-step intervals in certain situations, namely, within an octave or so of each other and in the mid- to upper-range of a single polyphonic instrument or group of similar monophonic instruments. Their harmonic or tonal implications or place in a progression notwithstanding, pairs of this sort are so dissonant, they tend more often to distract or even repel a listener than to draw his or her interest:

Piano Variations op. 27 - Anton Webern

Granted, Holst's and Webern's compositional styles and harmonic languages were oppositional, but Holst displays a remarkable orchestral craftsmanship in "Neptune" (among other movements and pieces) by showing that highly unnatural harmonic relationships like the ones embraced by Webern can be highlighted without the occurrence of discomforting dissonance, even if the context is entirely different. Take a closer look at the piccolo, oboes, and trombones in measure 3:

Here, we have a G-sharp minor triad stacked atop an A minor triad. This means that, effectively, there are three half-step pairs sounding at the same time (G-sharp/A, B-natural/C-natural, and D-sharp/E-natural). If these pitch classes were played simultaneously within the same octave in the middle of a keyboard, the result would be grotesque. However, because here the triads are played by instrument groups of disparate timbre and range, not only do they not clash, but to an extent, they even sound compatible.

Perhaps this is because the secondary dominant of A (i.e., two steps up the circle of fifths) is a B natural, which happens to be the third of the G-sharp minor triad. Perhaps it's because, by some sublime sonic intermingling, brass and reed instruments just sound wonderful together. I can't be sure, but it's pretty neat regardless.

Where nobody knows your name

2009-01-17T18:39:00.023-05:00

I didn’t have a topic in mind when I opened my laptop and decided to write an entry---just an assortment of thoughts with no perceivable unifying theme. So, I’ll just write…

I’m blogging from the Southwood Starbucks, one of my favorite spots in Tallahassee. My preference for the place is rooted not in the quality of its products, the cleanliness and calm ambience of its lounge, or the friendliness and professionalism of its baristas (even though all, it should be noted, are unparalleled), but rather in that I am least likely to run into anyone I know at this particular coffee shop. I’m of a mind that everyone needs a place like this, a place where they can take refuge in anonymity, as it were, and quietly devote themselves to a novel, a newspaper, a crossword, a notebook---or even just sip tea and enjoy a few moments of solitude.

I was listening to Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet For the End of Time in the car on the way here, and I have to say, clarinetists who can play the third movement solo probably rival US Marines in terms of lung capacity.

My family's Golden Retriever, Penny, seems almost overnight to have aged ten years. She has a snowy face now and encounters some difficulty climbing stairs or jumping onto couches. The latter behavior has earned her considerable reprimand from my father over the years. My brother and I still pick her up and let her sit with us when Dad isn’t around.

I completed and submitted three graduate school applications this week---FSU, University of Tennessee, and West Virginia University. So far, most people have reacted with both surprise and puzzlement when I’ve mentioned WVU as a possibility, but then, most people I know have never actually been to West Virginia. It’s one of the more naturally beautiful states I’ve visited. Of course, I’m one of the minority who actually prefer the mountains over the beach, when given the choice, and I'm also rather averse to large, crowded cities (e.g., I will never, ever understand the appeal of living in a place like NYC).

Perhaps I've taken growing up less than 50 miles from a beach for granted---it took less time to get to Cocoa from our house in Orlando than it takes one to cross the roughly seven-mile diameter of Tallahassee in late afternoon. Logically, I spent practically every weekend of every summer at the beach from early childhood through high school, and while it has always been an enjoyable experience, it has never filled me with the apparent bliss it does most others.

As for the culture shock I'm expected to encounter at West Virginia, should I end up going, I don't imagine there will be one. I've spent considerable time in the Appalachians, and though Virginians and North Carolinians might take offense at me saying so, I do not detect much of a difference between their states and West Virginia in terms of culture.

I’m currently reading Samuel Beckett’s collection of early short stories, More Pricks than Kicks. The central character of them, Belacqua, is impulsive, immature, and self-righteous---he reminds me somewhat of myself at about 18 or 19 years old. It’s been an amusing read, needless to say.

A friend’s recent blog post about the seemingly insignificant occurrences in one’s life potentially having drastic effects on that life’s course made me wonder where or how I might be today had I chosen differently at various points. It also made me recommend (and immediately thereafter want to reread) Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, one of the most fascinating and lovely pieces of literature I’ve come across. I put down Kundera’s Life Is Elsewhere several years ago and have yet to complete it. I should look into that.

That nagging “what if” question creeps up on everybody now and then, and while a part of me does feel I should be taking it into consideration particularly with regard to my selection of a graduate program, I can’t bring myself to worry. I think I’ll be happy wherever I end up.

It is now 6:30, and I am hungry.

Muddy Bunches of Notes: A Breakfast Serial

2009-01-15T09:33:00.036-05:00

I'm afraid there's something about Anton Webern's Op. 27 Variations for Piano that doesn't quite work. Quickly recognizable is that characteristic pointillism of his, which certainly did him justice when he applied it to full orchestra in, for instance, his Op. 21 Symphony (one of his most fascinating pieces), but for solo piano, I'm sorry to say, it evokes the image of handfuls of nails being scattered onto concrete.

(t-tinng tink! t-tink!)

There is also the problem of register: Webern might have taken into consideration that sounding immediately parallel components of a tone row (i.e., a half-step apart) within the same, say, octave-plus-one, particularly in the middle to upper range of an instrument, produces a sort of harmonic constructive interference that makes the inner ear ache sharply. (If you're unsure of what I'm talking about and would like to hear an example, the next time you find yourself in front of a pipe organ manual, go ahead and maximize the choir division and, at about two or three octaves above middle-C, sound an A, an A#, and a B simultaneously.) Actually, not only was he well aware of this, but in fact, such an auditory assault was likely his intention all along.

Take the opening few measures of Op. 27, for example (I'm not sure of the actual time signature--when transcribing, I tend to revert to 2/4--but the pitch and timing relationships have been preserved):
In the very first measure, we have two pairs of half-step related pitch classes sounding at the same time, each within a single octave, give or take. If that doesn't get us started on the wrong foot...well, I don't know what could. Schoenberg, on the other hand, was a bit more cautious and considerate with his approach. He'd use these pairs only sparingly, tending instead to place such notes beside each other as part of a progression rather than stacking them, thereby emphasizing the dissonant relationship without anybody getting hurt (see his Op. 25 Suite for Piano for details). He almost seemed to acknowledge that his new found harmonic language was already approaching the limit of the audience's patience, that, in a sense, whatever could be done to preserve sonority within a network of holistically unrelated, functionally equivalent pitches, ought to be done. And perhaps this is why Webern decided to dispense with such a practice---his mentor had done it to be nice, but the critics had still hated his mentor's music. Why, then, ought he even bother with such a courtesy? Why not simply go all-out with his dissonance?

I have the same problem with a number of Messiaen's solo and chamber piano pieces. With so many tone clusters, it's sometimes difficult to concentrate on any sort of progression, and to the unfamiliar listener, some of it sounds literally like fists randomly pounding the keys.

But I mention Messiaen for another reason, too. He and Webern had something else in common besides the like-register infraction: they both also were into palindromic progressions. Look again at the excerpt from Op. 27 above, and then at this rather crude diagram of the interval relationships throughout it:Note the sharp symmetry of the progression (hypothetically; my illustration leaves much to be desired), marked at its center by a dotted line. The first few measures, which also contain a complete dodecaphonic tone row, sound the same played backward as they do forward. Pretty neat, huh?

So then, we'll give Webern, say, a 95 for the clever, contrapuntally executed tone row, minus ten points for the intra-octave, half-step pairings, but plus five for the palindromes. Now, depending on where you go to school, that's anywhere from a mid-range B to a low A, so nice job, Anton.

Rachmaninoff or Stravinsky?

2009-01-11T11:38:00.012-05:00

Several posts ago, I mentioned that I'd recently (finally) become acquainted with Rachmaninoff's Choral Symphony, The Bells. One of the nicest things about having classical music as a hobby is that it is a relatively inexpensive one. Utilizing a 40% off coupon I received in an email from Borders Rewards, I obtained an exquisite recording of said piece for five dollars.

After returning to my parents' house (where I'd been visiting for the weekend), struggling with the CD's impenetrable cellophane wrapping, and burning the music to my mp3 player, I decided it might be nice to listen to the piece while taking a walk along the periphery of the pastures adjacent to the easternmost part of the neighborhood (call me a sentimentalist, but there's something unequivocally wonderful about listening to classical music while outdoors on a pretty day). By the beginning of the fourth movement, I'd probably traveled close to a mile and was thus nowhere near paper or writing utensil (I really ought to start carrying a small notepad and pen with me), but I made a mental note that I had to listen to it again when I had arrived back home and could transcribe it, as it was quite beautiful.

What also struck me about it, though, was the remarkable similarity it had, in terms of theme, tone, and orchestral texture, to the first few measures of the "Berceuse" from Igor Stravinsky's ballet, The Firebird (and perhaps more notably, the 1919 suite he created from movements of it). As I mentioned a while back, I'd suspected (unfairly) Rachmaninoff of ripping off thematic and harmonic elements from Karol Szymanowski's Third Symphony, which turned out to be impossible, as the former had finished writing The Bells years before the latter even started writing his Third Symphony, but this similarity to Stravinsky's work was even more pronounced. Observe:

(1) The opening of the fourth movement of Rachmaninoff's The Bells: (Instrumentation---First treble staff: English horn soloist; second treble staff: first and second violin; bass staff, upper parts: harp and cello; bass staff, lower part: double bass.)(Tempo/dynamic: Lento lugubre)

(2) The opening of Stravinsky's "Berceuse":(Instrumentation---alto staff: bassoon soloist; bass staff, upper part: cello 1 and harp; bass staff, lower part: cello 2)

(Tempo/dynamic: Lento misterioso)

Of course, this is more easily discerned if one can hear it. If you feel like going to the trouble (or simply don't take my word for it), check out the following links to listen—the similarities of which I write occur in the opening 10 or 15 seconds of each: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_d4oHozTZw (The Bells, mvt. IV); http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8cG703ngSw ("Berceuse" from The Firebird).

Now clearly, given that the two pieces were completed within only a few years of each other (The Firebird in 1910 and The Bells in 1913), I was curious as to the origin of the singular musical thought behind both of these fragments—perhaps more than I ought to have been, but bear with me…

Although they were both turn-of-the-century Russian composers, it is unlikely Stravinsky and Rachmaninoff ever even met. Rachmaninoff was ten years older, so he was already a world-class concert pianist and a composer with complete symphonies and concertos to his name around the time Stravinsky was scribbling his first sketches. This hypothesis also owes significantly to the fact that, after the Revolution of 1917, Rachmaninoff spent much of his life in exile in America, and Stravinsky likewise in western Europe.

In addition to the age difference, their styles and focuses as musicians were, on the whole, completely disparate. Rachmaninoff remained devoted to an aesthetic most of his contemporaries considered antiquated, that of 19th century giants such as Tchaikovsky and Grieg, whereas Stravinsky, despite a nationalistic reverence for Russian folk music, seemed determined to create increasingly progressive and experimental works, even to the point of outraging audiences, if necessary. Rachmaninoff entered the conservatory at a very young age and later toured extensively as a pianist, whereas Stravinsky, who had been a law student prior to considering seriously a career in music, made a name for himself writing scores for a prominent Russian ballet company in Paris—the very first of which being The Firebird, the commission for which he received only due to another composer’s laziness (an interesting story in itself, but I’ll not digress).

The premier of The Firebird took place in Paris in June of 1910, when Rachmaninoff, having completed an exhausting tour of the United States the previous year, was spending the summer resting and composing at his family’s estate in rural Russia, and while the ballet did become a hit throughout western and central Europe, Rachmaninoff probably did not have a chance to attend a performance of it (nor would he likely have wanted to, being the quiet traditionalist he was) before beginning work on The Bells.

Was it possible, then, that these two very dissimilar composers had happened to produce strikingly similar music at about the same time without having heard each other's work? The only conclusion I could reach was that the thematic elements the two works have in common are rooted in Russian folk music, an interest in which was perhaps the only thing Stravinsky and Rachmaninoff had in common.

So, to sum it all up, Stravinsky's Firebird was completed around the time Rachmaninoff began working on The Bells, but this implied influence is most likely misleading.

I'm sure this will offend some people...

2009-01-09T08:02:00.020-05:00

It almost made up for the disappointment of Oklahoma's loss last night to see Tim Tebow receive a flag for unsportsmanlike conduct in the closing minutes of the game for doing the Gator chomp after a play to antagonize an opponent. I've maintained for some time now that the kid is a bit of a jerk, his clean-cut, Christian boy-next-door image notwithstanding, and it's always puzzled me that his aggression, self-importance, ostentation, and even melodrama have won him the affection of sports announcers for pretty much every network that has aired a UF game, some of whose reverence for the guy is outright comical. Last night's commentators sounded more like high school cheerleaders gushing over their dates with the star-quarterback/prom king than professional television journalists recounting interviews with a college athlete.

I guess the behavior does sell, though, and I'm not, by any means, refuting the guy's athleticism. He is sublimely talented, that is unquestionable, but there have been plenty of athletes even more so who also have managed to display infinitely more humility and graciousness when facing victory or defeat. Why, I wonder, is it seldom the quiet hero, the stern, selfless figure who seeks only to do what is best for his team and who politely declines recognition for his individual effort, who receives attention these days? Why do so many mild-mannered professional athletes only get national attention every four years while shamelessly self-promoting juggernauts with overabundant testosterone and pathologically inflamed senses of competition are glamorized and idolized weekend after weekend? Why will modest record-breakers and national or world champions be more or less forgotten by the media within a month of their accomplishments while people continue to obsess about showboats like Usain Bolt?

Getting back to Tebow and UF, though---It could be argued, of course, that having graduated from FSU, I'm naturally biased. This may be true, I suppose, since UF has always been quick to point out that it is "the better school" in the state, and they've had the better football team since well before I even left for college. All the same, I think my assessment of their quarterback's character is, to an extent, objectively valid.

So enjoy the moment, UF fans, but don't act too surprised a few years down the road when Tim Tebow's career fades and his aggrandized ego stands out all the more.

Felice Anno Nuovo! (Did it have to be on a Thursday, though?)

2009-01-02T12:39:00.017-05:00

The turn of the year clearly hasn't been a very good few days for the ACC.

Clemson lost to Nebraska, 26-21. Other than the negative impact on the ACC's bowl record and therefore the calculated difficulty of FSU's schedule for the purpose of BCS rankings next season, this one didn't bother me much. Neither did Boston College's close loss to Vanderbilt, who hadn't won a bowl in 53 years---the kids were so excited about it afterwards, and one couldn't help feeling kind of happy for them.

But then Georgia Tech was trounced by LSU, 38-3, and not only was this bad for the ACC, but it made our loss to Tech this season sting just a little more. Oh well.

My only team to do well yesterday was UGA, who beat Michigan State 24-12. I also had a good chuckle during that game when I realized that the D-minor fanfare the Georgia band was playing at every third-and-long situation for Michigan State was none other than the hymn Dies Irae, the thirteenth-century Gregorian melody that has been widely used to represent death throughout classical music literature. It goes something like this:

Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Shostakovich, and even some non-Russians (I promise) have incorporated it into some of their darker works. I knew I'd heard the tune played at Georgia games previously, but I never made the connection, for some reason. Perhaps, recognizing that whatever was being played was in D minor, I'd thought it the dreadfully overused opening chorus to Carl Orff's Carmina Burana (a splendid work, by the way, that most seem to confuse somehow with John Williams' contrived score to the atrocious Star Wars prequels) and tuned it out. Anyhow, I thought the allusion quite funny, but nobody else in the room seemed to get it.

I kind of wanted Penn State to beat USC, since pretty much nobody good-natured or unspoiled has ever come out of the latter university (prove me wrong, please), even though the victory would have kept octogenarian Joe Paterno ahead of Bobby Bowden in their epic battle for most career wins, but alas, USC proceeded to march the ball downfield repeatedly and establish a commanding lead before the first half was over. I lost interest rather quickly after that and decided to do a couple sketches while awaiting the inevitable (and dinner). It didn't occur to me at the time, but this was actually the first music writing I'd done in about six months, and since I'm at the office now on my lunch break and have access to an excellent scanner, I thought I'd exhibit them here...

The first is a meager attempt at a dodecaphonic matrix based on a single tone row, inspired, of course, by my recent readings of Glenn Gould's essays about Schoenberg (cf. previous post). I first experimented with this sort of composition while an undergrad at FSU and actually got to where I was reasonably comfortable with it, but the amount of effort required for this scrap alone reminded me of why I'd been content to move away from it:

The second, on the other hand, is a reduction of a neat little theme for orchestra I'd had in my head the past week or so. Clearly, it was much less tedious to write (the top two bars were remnants of the serialist sketch and are thus unrelated):

Not much can be gathered from this bit alone (especially since I neglected to include any tempo or dynamic markings---it would probably be Moderato tranquilo, by the way), but I think it could sound rather nice, if developed and executed properly. As I currently imagine it, double bass, bass clarinet, and bassoon would play the first-beat, sustained chord, though I'm not sure of the order, horn and second and first flute would hold, at pianissimo, a middle-F, middle-A flat, and middle-B double flat, respectively, for the second and third beats of each measure, cello/viola/second violin would take the second and third beat eighth note chords, and the solo would be either for violin, in which case I'd take it an octave higher, or for English horn, in which case I'd drop it an octave (I suppose both could be done with different iterations of the theme, but that remains to be seen---I do think I prefer the English horn, though, if I had to pick one).

The problem is, I don't really have much time to sit down and thoroughly compose these days, apart from fragments such as these. It would be nice to be able to get through, say, an entire movement of a string quartet without putting it on hold for weeks or even months at a time, but as things are, there just aren't enough hours in a day.

I think my resolution for this year will be to set aside two hours every week during which I will do nothing but compose. I would say, "one hour a day," but I know this won't work because I've actually tried it before. Two hours a week, however, seems manageable. It may be that I end up encroaching upon my pool/gym time to meet this quota, but it's healthy to express oneself creatively, too, so I think it'll be worth it.

A few thoughts on atonality

2008-12-31T13:38:00.017-05:00

When I was a little kid, it puzzled me that certain chords (or even keys) naturally sounded "sad" and others "happy." When, at about 5 years old, I asked my mother why this was, she gave me the standard, literal explanation, that the "happy" chords were "major," the "sad" were "minor," and that the difference was due to several notes in the scale being lowered, and that was all.

Of course, I came to realize over the following years that she never really answered my question.

*****

I came across the following in an article written by Glenn Gould about the musical contributions of Arnold Schoenberg. Earlier in the article, he'd mentioned the gulf created between artist and audience due to the emergency of atonality and, later, 12-tone music and Serialism. His observations about atonality's prevalence in culture and how the relationship between the modern audience and the composer of modern music might be repaired were interesting:

"No matter how little interest there may be in the more significant developments of music in our time, I think there is little doubt that there are some areas in which the vocabulary of atonality—using this term now in a collective sense—has made quite an unobjectionable contribution to contemporary life. It has done this particularly in media in which music furnishes but a part—operas, to a degree (if you can consider styling Alban Berg's Wozzeck a "hit"), but most particularly in that curious specialty of the twentieth century known as background music for cinema or television. If you really stop to listen to the music accompanying most of the grade-B horror movies that are coming out of Hollywood these days, or perhaps a TV show on space travel for children, you will be absolutely amazed at the amount of integration which the various idioms of atonality have undergone in these media.

When this background music creeps up on us subliminally, as it were, we seem to accept the devices of a dissonant vocabulary as being perfectly comprehensible. It is rather frightening, though, to realize that the integration of dissonance, from which all of this new music of our day has emanated, has assumed a character in the minds of many people which is satisfactory only for displaying the fundamental beastliness of the human animal and which tends to be dismissed when it attempts to lead a life of its own, a life which is capable of as wide a variety of emotional impact as that of any other musical style.

However, composers are on the whole an incredibly persuasive lot, and one can be reasonably confident that, in the end, good relations between composer and audience can be restored. It may even be that these various forms of integration in which the references of atonality have so far achieved some success—the horror movie, the science fiction space travel epic, may provide to a degree the necessary common bond. Not that I would wish to perpetuate horror movies, and not that space travel may have much to do with Serialism, but I suspect that the cliché nature of these devices in the public character of this atonal vocabulary, and that it will, for our own strange, twisted times, provide something of the same sort of public reference that the Lutheran chorale provided in the church services of Northern Europe in the late sixteenth century. There is no question that the Lutheran choral acquainted many hostile parishioners with the strange new organization which was to become known as tonality, and I have a suspicion that the Adventures of Captain Stratosphere and all other such lunacies that hold us, and particularly our young, captive these days will have some significant part in making a rapprochement between a hostile public and the music of our time. "

--from "Arnold Schoenberg: A Perspective" (University of Cincinnati, 1964)

Though his approach and examples do give a tone of one somewhat out of touch with pop culture, I think Gould makes a valid point. Music of a more contemporary aesthetic, which I would broaden to encompass minimalism as well as any form incorporating atonality, does seem to fare better when serving as accompaniment to a different artistic medium.

The example of science fiction films I find particularly convincing. Four years after the article from which this excerpt is taken was published, Stanley Kubrik released 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the film, in addition to utilizing well-liked pieces such such as Johann Strauss Jr.'s Blue Danube and Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra, Kubrik also chose to feature prominently several works by a then little-known Hungarian composer of avant-garde music, Gyorgy Ligeti. These pieces (Atmospheres, a portion from his Requiem, and Lux Aeterna) all fit into a subgenre Ligeti himself called "micropolyphony" and, aside from momentary flourishes, are almost completely atonal. For instance, the overture to the film (and the music heard at the intermission) consists of only a dissonant orchestral sound mass comprising every note of the chromatic scale played in unison by different instrument sections (a "tone cluster"). On their own, the works do evoke a sense of terror in the listener, and most people wouldn't willingly sit through them under any circumstances, yet when used as backdrops for images of night-covered planets, enigmatic monoliths, and an extended, vivid stargate sequence, they function splendidly and heighten the impact of the film--indeed, some critics have argued that the soundtrack to 2001 is a much a character as any actor plays in the film.

Likewise, Gould's analysis of the role of atonal music in the horror film genre is an accurate one; in fact, this role is perhaps even more significant than that it plays within the realm of science fiction (though the two often do overlap). Incidentally, the same filmmaker who created 2001 later employed atonal music (in some cases merely dissonant) again in The Shining, this time calling on the orchestral trickery and nightmarish harmonies of Bela Bartok and Krzysztof Penderecki. And again, these pieces are the sort to which most would not freely listen, yet their use as compliment to a visual spectacle enhances the experience and, like it or not, makes an atonal music listener of the viewer.

However, this has not, in my opinion, reconciled listener and modern composer as Gould predicted it might have by now. This realization of which he writes, that atonal music can be poignant in a positive or enchanting way, has not yet reached the general public. In fact, the general public has not come close to embracing the modern composer--for concert music, most of it hasn't even caught up with mid-twentieth century. The pieces I mentioned above were written between 1930 and 1970, yet their statuses as standalone works have not transcended, in mainstream culture, the spheres of the films to which they are widely attributed. Schoenberg, the veritable progenitor of modern atonality, wrote his first freely atonal and dodecaphonic pieces in the first two decades of the twentieth century, yet to this day, with the exceptions of, perhaps, professional classical musicians, students doing so for the purposes of curricula, and the occasional enthusiast, almost nobody listens to any of it.

The reason, I suppose, is this curious fascination we all have, as listeners shaped by the musical language in which we have been immersed since birth, with the triad. Though we may try not to, we cannot help but associate it with an emotional state, be it profound or subtle, positive or negative, depending on factors such as its modality, "major-ness" or "minor-ness," shape, diminishment or augmentation, texture, dynamic, and, perhaps most importantly, use as an element of a progression, either as the sum or implied sum of melodic parts, or, in whole, as part of a sequence of other, similarly formed triads.

But why is this? To reiterate my question: Why do some chords still sound "happy" and some still sound "sad?"

The answer may be just as simple and confounding as that to any question regarding the nature of spoken language: because it made the most sense to our developing minds---it was the most naturally orderly manner in which our pattern-recognition, order-seeking brains could arrange it.

That given, then, when key is removed entirely and notes of a chromatic scale are no longer part of a hierarchy, but are given equal importance, the triad loses its shape; it becomes distorted or "squished," like a cubist painting for which the principles of perspective have been abandoned. It stands to reason that the connotative emotion might, therefore, distort proportionately, but because the music exists only for the instant in which it is being heard (of which I wrote a while back), it probably will not be at all recognizable to the listener in that instant alone. It will sound confusing and altogether alien, for which the corresponding emotional state of the listener likely will revert to anxiety or dread.

And sadly, until the language of atonality has become familiar enough a presence in the lives of the public to be loosely understood, pieces written within its scope probably will continue to be met with such sentiments.

Brief account of a complicated fan-artist relationship

2008-12-29T09:35:00.007-05:00

It's still amazing to me how dramatically Radiohead's sound has evolved over the years.

I spent much of Christmas Day transferring music from CD to laptop, and then from laptop to my new mp3 player (a Zune, which I received for Christmas and cannot recommend highly enough over any iPod product). Coming across Pablo Honey and having not heard it in more than a few years, I decided to give it a thorough listening, and I must say, it's hard to believe it's the same band, really. The sound of the album is much more youthful and raw. There's a charming, organic quality to it---just a voice, unaltered by electronic effect, two or three electric guitars, a bass, and drums. One can easily picture the five Brits performing in a smoky basement nightclub or rehearsing in a rundown studio apartment in Cambridge. The songwriting is, of course, much simpler than anything on their later albums, a typical track taking place in a single key and in 4/4 or 6/8 time, and the lyrics being of a less poetically ambiguous, more rock-oriented nature. It was refreshing to hear, actually; most of the band members were younger than I am now when it was released.

Admittedly, it took me a while to warm to Radiohead's newer sound. I became a devoted listener beginning with OK Computer, their third album. The band had matured, by that point, to utilizing piano and string accompaniments in their songs, and the songwriting itself had developed a vivid, ponderous, and darkly complicated nature at which Pablo Honey and The Bends had only hinted. Although considerably more electronically and classically influenced than these previous two albums, OK Computer is still relatively user-friendly (forgive the pun).

Kid A, the album following OK Computer, saw the band move further away from their '90s alt-rock roots, featuring some tracks which completely lacked guitar and/or live drums. And again, the songwriting continued to mature. This album is widely considered Radiohead's best among fans. It is also the last one I loved at first hearing (prior to their latest, which I'm getting to).

When Amnesiac was released a year or so later, I began to drift away. The continued computerization of the music seemed static to me. I wanted to hear the simpler, more relatively singsong tunes of their earlier days and, frankly, was a bit annoyed by the course their sound was taking.

By the time Hail to the Thief came out in 2003, I had almost completely lost interest. I didn't even buy the album until it had been in stores for nearly a year. Then a junior in college majoring in creative writing, my nonclassical tastes had shifted to the instrumental minimalism and compositional simplicity of folk music, so the prospect of hearing what had once been my favorite band err further toward utter electronicism did not appeal to me. To my surprise, however, Radiohead had begun to find a way, with this album, to integrate their electronic fascination with their traditional sound. It still wasn't my cup of tea, but it gave me hope.

Then, at the beginning of this year, In Rainbows was released. I don't think I could have been more pleased with it---the integration that had sprouted with Hail to the Thief blossomed in their seventh studio release. Shifting time and key signatures, layered and interlocking arpeggios of opposing triads, finger-picked acoustic guitar riffs, bizarrely syncopated bass rhythms, alternating electric and live drum tracks, heartbreaking string arrangements, and lovely, minimalist piano centerpieces fill the record, making it a ghostly echo of the band they were when I first heard them.

In good faith, I decided after hearing In Rainbows to work backwards and give Radiohead's middle-period albums another chance, and to my surprise, upon this reevaluation, I discovered I actually adored them; the music is every bit as interesting and moving, only the media are slightly different. I wish I had been more open-minded when they were first released.

Suffice it to say, then, I feel I've been unfair in my treatment of the band---this entry was spurred by a guilty conscience. So, I'm sorry, Thom, Johnny, Ed, Colin, and Phil. You guys are the best, and I'll never doubt you again. K?

Drinking stories of 18th century composers

2008-12-15T16:18:00.010-05:00

This true story was told today on American Public Media (which, by the way, is steadily replacing NPR as my favorite radio source) by a conductor just before a piece by Haydn was aired, and finding it pretty amusing, I thought I'd paraphrase it and share it here. There's nothing outrageous or absurd about it by modern standards---it's just a testament to the personality of one of my favorite composers:

So, Josef Haydn and Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf were out pub-hopping one evening in Vienna sometime around 1764, when they were both rising-star composers in their early thirties. They were approaching yet another beer hall when Haydn heard what he thought sounded like some of his own music being played, rather poorly, by a small string ensemble inside. He and Dittersdorf entered and determined that the red-faced, glossy-eyed group of hall musicians were, in fact, performing one of his minuets. The sound of the group left much to be desired, but they were playing with such enthusiasm and merriment that Haydn couldn't help but smile. Having consumed a fair amount of ale himself and being in a prankish mood, he pulled up a chair next to the lead violinist of the group and sat down.

After a time, he asked, "Whose minuet is this?"

The group continued playing, none of them having recognized the composer in person. The lead violinist, clearly annoyed at being interrupted, snapped, "Haydn's."

Haydn then stood, moved to the front of the group, and proclaimed, "That is a STINKING minuet!"

The music immediately ceased. The inebriated string players looked at each other, then at Haydn, and in unison, they leapt to their feet and encircled this man who had derided the composer they adored. Haydn stayed in character, though, refusing to back down or retract his remark, and for a moment, it looked as though the beer hall musicians were going to give him the beating of his life. Thankfully, Dittersdorf was a tall and burly fellow with a bit more common sense than his diminutive friend; he grabbed Haydn by the coat collar and dragged him toward the exit, as though he meant to toss him from the establishment (to the cheers of pretty much every patron therein). As soon as they made it outside, though, the two exploded with laughter, collected themselves, and continued on to the next pub.

The end.

My sick week

2008-12-13T15:29:00.026-05:00

So it turns out the difficulty I encountered with what should have been a relatively light swim workout last Saturday, of which I wrote in my previous post, was due not to the lingering effects of holiday indulgence and inactivity, but to my body being assaulted and ultimately overridden by terrorist viral agents. The cold that ensued was one of the most vicious, unrelenting, and generally unpleasant battles in which my typically sturdy immune system has engaged in many flu seasons. All told, I went through about four boxes of Kleenex, two and a half cartons of orange juice, half a dozen cans of chicken soup, seven or eight cloves of garlic, too many Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules to count, and an entire bottle of NyQuil Cold and Flu. I also missed three days of work and spent far too much time watching reruns of Top Chef on Bravo.

I technically am still sick, as the radical-fundamentalist virus left in its wake a sinus infection that has me spraying caustic, distasteful chemicals up my nose and swallowing equine-appropriate antibiotics twice daily, but at least I'm back at the office.

My doctor advises that I wait at least a week before returning to the pool (or doing any other sort of exercise, for that matter), which frustrates me, since it not only means I'll have to work extra-hard just to reach the level I was at prior to getting sick, but also, it's my only truly effective means of tension relief, and December tends to be a stressful month for me (professionally, not personally).

I have to say, I've been pleased with my progress at swimming these last few months, the minor setbacks of work deadlines, a sprained muscle in my back, and this present illness and recuperation notwithstanding. I'm finally getting comfortable with distance sprints. Just to clarify---I guess "distance sprint" would be a bit of a misnomer. To distinguish from a "sprint," though, a "distance sprint" isn't done at 100-percent effort. Rather, for "distance sprints" I go at about 80 to 90 percent and aim to maintain a 50-yard split of 34 seconds (was 37, then 36, then 35, etc., and likewise will continue to go down, hopefully) for distances greater than 300 yards. Most of my swimming, prior to a few months ago, consisted only of distance sets, for which, if I even kept track, I would try to keep only about a 40sec./50yd. split pace, but over much larger distances (1,000+ yards, a typical workout consisting of only two or three sets--needless to say, this gets pretty boring). What has made the difference, I've decided, has been the addition of dryland and weight training to my routine. Prior to a few months ago, I did no sort of cross training outside the pool, so my swimming had kind of hit a plateau, but since I started rowing and biking twice a week and lifting once a week (in addition to swimming between 20 and 25K), I've noticed the swim workouts have been getting less grueling, and I thus have been able to increase the load and intensity. I'm at the point where I can swim a 400 in a little over four and a half minutes (but not on any sort of interval—I still need a good two to three minutes' rest after each such distance sprint), and while this obviously isn't at all competitive for my age group, personal bests are all I really care about.

Shifting gears...

I heard a piece on the radio yesterday for choir and orchestra that I was certain was by Karol Szymanowski---the progression, development, orchestral texture, harmonic dialect, and overall tone were indistinguishable. I was intrigued to find out, however, that it was Sergei Rachmaninoff's choral symphony, "The Bells."

I have sort of a complicated relationship with Rachmaninoff. As a pianist, I find myself paradoxically both an adoring disciple and a traumatized victim. Other pianists know what I'm talking about. Vocalists probably feel the same way for Puccini, violinists likewise for Paganini, flutists for Faure, et cetera. Just about all of Rachmaninoff's music for piano or piano and orchestra is brilliant, but much of it that doesn't call for the instrument, however, I don't find all that interesting (his "Symphonic Dances" for orchestra and "All-Night Vigil" for a cappella chorus being noted exceptions). It's certainly inspired, but I feel much of it is overambitious and/or not well thought out. Either I had never heard "The Bells," or I had heard it at some point but paid insufficient attention to it at the time, but given the remarkable similarities of the work to works by Szymanowski, which I've always found more compelling in general than Rachmaninoff's non-piano works, the discovery that it actually was by the latter composer surprised me.

With all due respect to Rachmaninoff, I suspected him of that age-old sin among composers---deriving his musical ideas from his contemporaries. Given that "The Bells" was his opus 35, I knew it and Szymanowski's Third Symphony, the work with which it had the most in common, likely were written around the same time, the early 1910s. However, upon consulting Wikipedia (whose accuracy when it comes to esoteric information such as this is unquestioned, as far as I'm concerned), I learned that Rachmaninoff completed "The Bells" more than a year before Szymanowski even began writing his Third Symphony.

So, think of a teacher examining two tests with identical answers, one completed by one of his/her top students and the other by a "C" student, and finding out the student with the higher class rank was the one who cheated. That's kind of how I felt. Suffice it to say I was unfair in my treatment of Rachmaninoff in this case. Sorry there, buddy.

College football Saturdays

2008-12-06T21:52:00.011-05:00

Other than a 4K swim (which was much more difficult than it should have been---I still blame Thanksgiving, though it was over a week ago), this has been one of the least productive days in a good while, and I'm damn proud of it.

-Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged comb across head
-Ate cereal and some banana/nut bread
-Watched (listened to) MSNBC while reading Sports Illustrated
-Short nap
-Checked email, facebooked a bit, had some more banana/nut bread
-Alternated between SportsCenter and GameDay while browsing for music on Amazon (without buying anything)
-Read about 4 pages of Beckett's 'Watt'
-Another short nap
-Turkey/provolone/spinach/tomato sandwich w/vinaigrette (I only mention the particulars because it was a GREAT combination) and some Goldfish for lunch
-Watched first quarter of Navy/Army game
-Decided conclusion of Navy/Army game was foregone
-Went for aforementioned swim
-Ate some leftover beans and rice
-Watched SEC Championship!!!
-Lamented Alabama’s loss of SEC championship
-Dinner with family

And now, I’m watching OK vs. Mizzou. I think days like this are necessary once in a while---even minus the swimming. What could possibly be better than sleepily watching college football on a Saturday afternoon?

Again, the outcome of the SEC championship was not exactly what I’d hoped, but UF played a hell of a game. I still think Tebow’s end-zone antics are a bit over the top, but could that not also be said of probably 90 percent of all college backs and receivers? I do have to admit, he’s an amazing athlete. He's quick on his feet, he can fire the ball like a bullet, and if he wants to run it inside, there’s really no stopping him. One can only hope the extra point kicker misses, I guess.

Second verse, same as the first

2008-12-03T08:12:00.022-05:00

It turns out, when he wasn't busy offing his wives or invading France in the grand tradition of English monarchs, King Henry VIII was an accomplished composer of chamber music. His "Rose Without a Thorn," a suite for brass ensemble, was on the radio a short while ago and is characteristic of its time---harmonically simple and polyphonic, yet lacking the more mature counterpoint of contemporaries like Thomas Tallis or Alessandro Striggio. It is, in other words, clearly written by an amateur, yet it possesses a charm not often found in Renaissance music (a statement purely of personal opinion, I should note). I have to say, for example, I found the piece much more interesting than anything Georg Frederic Handel ever wrote (with the exception of his oratorio, "The Messiah," which I suppose I cling to for sentimental reasons), and the latter was born more than a century after the good king died (and was, in fact, a composer of the Baroque Era, not Renaissance).

Giovanni Palestrina, another contemporary of the king's (but half a continent away at the time), could have shown him a thing or two about counterpoint. I recently read it was Palestrina whose polyphony Johann Joseph Fux (just to get this out of the way, his last name is pronounced "fooks." Sorry, kids.) analyzed in order to create his Gradus Ad Parnassum, a book widely considered the Bible of classical counterpoint--Haydn, Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, among many others, studied and revered it. I suppose the lesson here is that it isn't enough merely to come up with a great idea---one really should write it down.

While on the subject of textbooks...I was listening to the first movement Bartok's "Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste" the other day and realized the fugue that dominates much of it is almost fits the textbook definition, and I had to take note of this, since it's pretty rare one finds a perfect (or nearly perfect) fugue. They're quite difficult to write, and I imagine most composers eventually get to about the second transitional episode and decide they'll throw the initial theme out the door and begin anew—they figure, "nobody's paying THAT close attention anyway," perhaps.

For those new to the topic, I'll explain...Put very simply, a fugue consists of three or four (or more) voices, entering in sequence, all playing variants of the same theme followed by secondary, tertiary, etc., counterthemes, in a prescribed order, all layered together to create a polyphonic matrix. To correct myself, there is no blueprint for a perfect fugue as a whole—to call a fugue a "perfect" fugue, then, would be misleading. The only real part of it that can be "perfectly" executed is the exposition, in which the voices enter one at a time. The first voice carries the theme (in the tonic, of course), which progresses to the secondary theme as it is answered by the second voice carrying the same initial theme, but in the dominant. Likewise, the second voice progresses to the secondary theme, while the first proceeds to a tertiary theme as the third voice enters playing the initial theme, this time back in the tonic, but likely in a different register.

Think of it as a musical Rubix cube. Mapped out very basically, a fugue exposition might look something like this:

Et cetera.

Essentially, the exposition is a modified round. The voices enter in a sequence and follow the same progression, but the key at which the sequence begins alternates between the tonic and the dominant (or subdominant) with each entrance (first in tonic, second in dominant/subdominant, third in tonic, fourth in dominant/subdominant, etc.).

We're all familiar with the round:

Given Palestrina's/Fux's standards of counterpoint, the interlocking framework of a fugue is a somewhat limiting factor when it comes to themes utilized; primary themes and primary counterthemes would need to be constructed such that motion in the same direction and leaps to perfect fifths or fourths were limited, particularly at identical points in parallel progression (e.g., third beat of the second measure of counterpoint). This sounds easy enough, but such care would also need to be taken to prevent such illegal interaction between subject 1 repeat, subject 2, and countersubject 2, subject 1 second repeat, countersubject 2, subject 2 first repeat, and subject 3, et cetera, as well. All told, it's a staggering number of relationships that must be taken into account to write a "perfect" fugue exposition, and it does limit what can be done thematically.

But, as mentioned, the structure of the fugue itself, apart from the prescribed central notion of the exposition, is relatively freeform; as long as the general idea of voices entering in sequence and in alternating keys is preserved, it's more or less kosher, so to speak. In other words, perhaps only so much can be done with initial theme, but in terms of DEVELOPMENT of that theme, the choices are limitless.

Take, for example, J.S. Bach's Fugue No. 12 in F minor from book II of the Well-Tempered Clavier:

Devices put to use:

Sequence model of fugue exposition:

Notice that some liberty is taken with the prolonging of V4's entrance; the first three voices firmly reestablish the tonic through Ptrans2, then are taken through a neat modulation five steps through a circle of fourths. Then, the primary theme is played in its relative major of A flat and sent through another transitional passage and yet another series of modulations (this time in the dominant) before the fourth voice is ever heard. In juxtaposition, consider the second segment of the famous "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" for organ, by the same composer (granted, this piece is thought to have been by a composer other than Bach, though traditionally it has always been attributed to him, and for the purpose of this demonstration, we'll just assume it is authentic-Johann Sebastian, since in many stylistic ways it is very similar):

And a very long time passes, the fourth voice finally entering in the bass somewhere around two minutes into the piece. Here, first of all, the order of voice entrance is almost reversed, beginning with the second lowest, proceeding upward with each iteration, and then jumping back to the lowest. The first modulation series takes place before the third voice even enters, but this arguably is necessary, since the fugue voices move from tonic to subdominant (as opposed to dominant) and therefore need to be reestablished in the dominant in order for a proper cadence to be executed and the third voice to enter.

As detailed in the above list, there are limitless possible series of progressions that can be employed utilizing relative minors, shifts to major or minor, and even, as we later see with Bartok in the aforementioned "Music for Strings…", inversion of the exposition altogether. The ingenuity is not only managing all four voices (or more) so that they do not violate each other contrapuntally, but in inventing new permutations through which to take the theme.

Even though Bartok's harmonic language is completely foreign to that intended by Palestrina/Fux, I don't think I detect any such infractions in the first movement. It's difficult to say, since the models in Gradus are fashioned only in a seven-note scale in the Dorian mode, but I'm certain there are no parallel fifths or octaves, which is convincing enough.

Worst. DJ. Ever.

2008-12-01T07:41:00.012-05:00

I found this "music shuffle survey" while perusing my very old, no-longer-published blog (I'll be honest---it was a LiveJournal account I started in high school). I'd been asked, as I often am near the end of the month, to hang around the office to help out last Wednesday, my deadlines for the month having already been met. So, basically, having made my 40 hours and with little to do and time to kill the morning before I left for Thanksgiving weekend, I decided retaking the silly thing couldn't hurt. I had meant to post at the time, thinking I had hit "publish," but in fact, I had only saved it. Oops.

It's pointless and a bit of a waste, but what can I say...boredom got the better of me. If any lesson can be taken from the experience, though, it is that I own far too many Glenn Gould recordings and would, indeed, make a horrible DJ.

******

Put your music player on shuffle with all your music in the list. Make a list of the first 40 songs that come up. You can repeat artists if you want. If you have any repeat tracks, skip to the next track.

1 .Sergei Prokofiev – String Quartet No. 2, second movement
2. Maurice Ravel – Ma Mere L'Oye (ballet), last movement, "Le Jardin feerique"
3. J.S. Bach – "Well-Tempered Clavier," book II, Prelude in B flat minor (Glenn Gould)
4. Samuel Barber – Symphony No. 1, third movement
5. Gustav Mahler – Symphony No. 8, first movement, just after the introduction
6. J.S. Bach – Goldberg Variations, Variation 4 (Glenn Gould, 1981 recording)
7. Erik Satie – Sports et divertissements, No. 7, "La peche"
8. Olivier Messiaen – "Eclairs Sur L'Au-Dela," eighth movement
9. Dmitri Shostakovich – Symphony No. 9, fifth movement
10. Igor Stravinsky – "Le Sacre du Pritemps," second to last movement (I forget the title)
11. Arnold Schoenberg – Suite for Piano, Op. 25, last movement
12. Anton Bruckner – "Ave Maria"
13. Erik Satie – "Gnossiennes," for piano, No. 4
14. Modest Mussorgsky – "Pictures at an Exhibition," fifth movement (piano, not the orchrestral arr.)
15. Gustav Mahler – Symphony No. 2, middle of very long fifth movement
16. Aram Khachaturian – Concerto-Rhapsody for Violin and Orchestra
17. [Don't know the name of the artist] – [First track from the "Juno" soundtrack]
18. J.S. Bach – Two-part invention No. 6 in E major (Glenn Gould)
19. Arnold Schoenberg – Six A Cappella Mixed Choruses, No. 5
20. J.S. Bach – Sinfonia (three-part invention) in C major (Glenn Gould)
21. Anton Webern – Concerto for Nine Instruments, Op. 24, first movement
22. The Beatles – "Helter Skelter"
23. Gyorgy Ligeti – "Lux Aeterna." Wow...the transition from "I got blisters on me fingers!!" to this dark choral work was eerie.
24. Gustav Mahler – Symphony No. 7, second movement ("Nachtmusik I")
25. Francis Poulenc – Sept Chansons, No. 4
26. Josef Haydn – Cello Concerto No. 1 in C, first movement (Mstislav Rostropovich)
27. Coldplay – "Violet Hill"
28. J.S. Bach – English Suite No. 3 in G minor, second movement (Glenn Gould)
29. Maurice Ravel – "Rhapsody espagnole" for 2 pianos (orchestral arr.)
30. Camille Saint-Saens – "Le Carnaval des Animaux," No. 2, "Chickens"
31. Franz Schubert – Impromptu in E flat, D. 899
32. Igor Stravinsky – "Chi disse ca la femmena," from "Pulcinella"
33. Bela Bartok – "Romanian Folk Dances," arr. for string orchestra
34. Anton Webern – Quartet, Op. 22, first movement
35. Camille Saint-Saens – "Havanaise," for violin and orchestra
36. Sigur Ros – [Untitled track 5 from third album]
37. Jean Sibelius – Symphony No. 6, first movement
38. A Perfect Circle – "Crimes"
39. Radiohead – "Idioteque" (live)
40. Arnold Schoenberg – Five Pieces for Orchestra, No. 1

01. Which song do you prefer, #1 or #40?
Their breadth and tone are entirely different; it would depend on my mood.

02. Have you ever listened to #12 continuously on repeat?
No. Choral music can be unspeakably depressing in large doses.

03. What album is #26 from?
A lovely collection of Haydn concertos (first cello, first and second horn, and trumpet) I found at Borders for 7 dollars.

04. What do you think about the artist who did #15?
He wrote some very poignant and intense music, some of which can, at times, be a bit over-the-top. I was more into him during college, but I still listen to a symphony now and then.

05. Is #19 one of your favorite songs?
Not particularly. It's pre-atonal/serialist Schoenberg, and to be frank, the guy wasn't that extraordinary a composer when it came to tonal music (arguably why he gave it up).

06. Does #20 have better lyrics or music?
Though it is quite lyrical, it does not have lyrics.

07. Do any of your friends like #3?
It's Gould playing Bach, so even if they didn't, I don't think they'd tell me.

08. Is #33 from a movie soundtrack?
I'm sure it has been used, as parts of it are quite famous, though for which films, I couldn't say.

09. Is #18 overplayed on the radio?
I doubt that could be said about any of the pieces or songs that made my list.

10. What does #21 remind you of?
Swimming in the evening after class, actually. The first time I heard it, I was listening to my mp3 player while walking from the Williams Building to Leach.

11. Which song do you prefer, #5 or #22?
Unless I'm in an emo kind of mood, number 22.

12. What album is #17 from?
The soundtrack to the film, "Juno."

13. When did you first hear #39?
When I bought and first listened to the album on which it appeared, so... in tenth grade, maybe?

14. When did you first hear #7?
I don't know that I'd ever heard it until I bought the collection of Satie piano works on which it appears.

15. What genre is #8?
Classical. More specifically, late 20th century French.

16. Do any of your friends like #14?
Running out of questions to ask, are we? It's a very clever and memorable piece, so I'm sure a number of the classical music listeners do.

17. What color does #4 remind you of?
The beginning, of deep blue transitioning to an aquamarine or turquoise, like the sky just before dawn; the end, a sort of orange-tinted crimson

18. Have you ever blasted #11 on your stereo?
No. That would probably elicit a number of puzzled looks.

19. What genre is #37?
Early 20th century/very late Romantic classical.

20. Can you play #13 on any instrument?
I've never tried, but Satie's piano works have a reputation for being not too difficult to play, and this one sounds like no exception, so I'm going to go ahead and say "yes."

What is your favorite lyric from #30?
The piece has no lyrics. Why does this question have no number?

21. What is your favorite lyric from #24?
Same as previous response.

22. Would you recommend #23 to your friends?
To those interested in modern classical music, yes, though if they've seen "2001: A Space Odyssey," they're already familiar with it.

23. Is #2 a good song to dance to?
As it is part of a ballet score, I would say so.

24. Have you ever heard #16 on the radio?
Not to my recollection.

25. Is #32 more of a "nighttime" or "daytime" song?
The larger piece of which it is part is frolicsome, so probably daytime.

26. Does #36 have any special meaning to you?
That particular track doesn't, but the album on which it appears is the first I bought by Sigur Ros, and I bought it at a somewhat difficult time, so it kind of does.

27. Do any of your friends like #31?
I'm sure the pianists do, as most of them probably have studied it, if not performed it (though that might be ample reason for some of them to DISLIKE it, I guess).

28. Is #25 a fast or slow song?
The tempo is moderate, but the feel of the song is somewhat slow.

29. Is #35 a happy or sad song?
Slightly happy, I guess. It's upbeat, but not necessarily jubilant.

30. What is one of your favorite lyrics from #9?
Alas, no lyrics for this one, either.

31. Is #34 better to listen to alone or with friends?
I prefer to listen to it alone. Webern can be kind of hard to follow amid distraction (comparable to reading Henry James or William Faulkner in a pub---it can be done, but you'll probably miss some of the nuances of the writing).

32. When did you first hear #27?
When I finally bought the album, about six months ago.

33. Name 3 other songs by the artist who did #6:
Brandenberg Concertos, Art of the Fugue, any of the numerous Toccatas for keyboard or organ

34. Do you know all the words to #10?
Again, no lyrics. Sorry.

35. Does #28 have better lyrics or music?
[Sigh]

36. What album is #29 from?
A 2-CD collection of the composer's orchestral works by the Montreal Symphony.

37. Who does #38 remind you of?
A former room mate--the CD is one I borrowed from him several years ago and have yet to return (in my defense, though, he still has my copy of 'The Book of Laughter and Forgetting,' which I consider far more valuable, so if anything, he still owes me).

*****

Here endeth the post.

[Curtain...]

2008-11-19T13:54:00.005-05:00

I've resolved to update this more often.

Presently, its been reduced to something of a periodic boredom curb, which, I guess, would make the infrequency of my postings a good thing (cf. the old "idle hands" idiom), but I've certainly not made it a priority--nor will I, for that matter. Nevertheless, I have a potential vehicle for the sharing of ideas at my disposal, so I'll try to be more diligent about using it.

(Not that I have any regular readers yet. Soon!)

It's possible my reluctance to write more than once in a good while for this blog is rooted in the history of my last blog. It, on the other hand, was one updated almost daily, each entry consisting of little more than aimless griping. It was trivial and painful to read, in reflection, so when I started this blog about a year ago, I was determined to make each entry one of at least some degree of substance. Hence, the inclination to post an entry has been one I've more often suppressed than to which I've submitted. Perhaps I've been a bit austere with this auto-censorship, though--in nearly a year, there have only been a dozen posts, give or take. Certainly I can do more.

Naturally, most of the entries so far have pertained to music in some capacity; this probably will not change much. I have far more thoughts on the subject than I have time to write about them, but perhaps I can set aside 20 minutes every Sunday afternoon to share a few.

This likely is more information than was necessary---I probably could have stopped typing after the first line.

Hungarian wit for a Friday afternoon

2008-11-14T13:39:00.012-05:00

I'm listening to a recording of books I and II of Gyorgy Ligeti's Piano Etudes and wondering what it was about them I used to find so unappealing. I imagine the jumbled and frantic sound mass of the very first, aptly named "Disorder," took me aback and thus began the CD on the wrong foot when I first listened to it several years ago. How my relationship with atonality has evolved since then, though--beginning with complete revulsion, it has progressed through begrudging tolerance, resigned acceptance, odd fascination, and ultimately, periodic preference over the tonal.

The polyrhythmic sequences of the Etudes are a bit disorienting, but when attention is paid more to what might loosely be described as "melody," the syncopation, while oddly structured, somehow seems to fit. I'm enamored of the polymodality of the softer etudes, namely Nos. 2, 5, 7, and 11. The fragments of familiarity apparent with repeated listenings make them even more palatable; just when you think you're lost, you see a familiar structure that leads you back. They also have a distant and reflective (yet unassuming) feel, reminding me somewhat of Schoenberg's "Six Little Pieces for Piano." I admit I tend more often to think of the piano as one of ostentation and bulk of sound than one of tenderness, but recordings such as this, by the Turkish pianist Idil Biret, remind me that it can still be delicate when necessary.

From what I've seen, heard, and attempted, I submit that these pieces are nearly impossible to play to Ligeti's specifications. I was slightly incensed by an article in the New York Times some months ago detailing a recital by Pierre Laurent-Aimard at which certain members of the audience rose to leave as the program turned from the standards (Rachmaninoff, Chopin, etc.) to these selfsame pieces. Even if the music is not to one's liking, the display of virtuosity in performing them (without flaw, I imagine, as is Mr. Laurent-Aimard's tendency) is certainly worth just a few minutes more. Furthermore, it is commonly held etiquette that leaving in the middle of any performance is terribly rude. On the other hand, a great deal of talent and effort go into the creation of any number of films, many of which achieve some degree of critical acclaim, a fraction of which I've found so paltry and irksome that I've left theaters in which they were being played shortly after they began, so I suppose my annoyance with Laurent-Aimard's tasteless, tactless audience is somewhat hypocritical. Moving on...

If you're into broadening your musical horizons with some unorthodox late-20th century works, I recommend giving these a listen. Your initial response may be one of disgust, but be patient. Pay attention to the highest note of any polyphonic progression--it's probably the most easily traceable melodic line. Then, try to listen for that same melodic line repeated in the left hand. Ligeti has kept the works somewhat linear in that respect. Also, don't try to follow the rhythm or determine the meter for now; just accept that "it's complicated."

Why A shouldn't not be 440 Hz

2008-09-23T06:53:00.020-04:00

Period-set musical pieces, those performed on period instruments and/or in period intonation, annoy me to no end. I suppose traditionalists have a valid argument when they submit that the timbre of a stringed instrument, in particular, differs based on open intonation--an F natural two octaves above middle C, for example, sounds brighter on an open E-string than on an open E-flat (give or take)-string. However, if the temperaments/intonations of other instruments of preset intervals, such as flutes, recorders (heaven forbid) or reed instruments of any sort cannot be calibrated to match the lowering of the concert pitch, it should not be done.

Case in point: several of Pierre Phalese's "Fourteen Dances" were playing on the radio a moment ago, featuring what can only be described as an oboe-like instrument so grossly out of tune it may well have been performed on an instrument of Arabic or Indian origin. It was absolutely hideous, and of course, it being the very first thing I heard upon turning on the radio, I expressed my disgust with due utterance of WTF, turned off the radio, and proceeded immediately to look up the name of the piece and write a blog entry about it. It's a trying life.

The logic behind the argument I've often heard that period instrumentation and pitch heighten the authenticity of a piece of music and allow it to be enjoyed in a fashion more closely resembling that in which it was originally enjoyed (or not enjoyed, as the case often was) doesn't satisfy me, and here is why...

If you really wanted to experience a Mozart Symphony the way it was experienced when it was first performed, you wouldn't stop merely at the sound quality of the orchestra performing it. You would need to render the atmosphere of the performance suitable as well:

The hall in which the performance takes place will need to be poorly lit (candles only, please) and improperly insulated and ventilated, making it drafty in winter and stuffy in summer.

While on the subject, the performance probably should not take place at a northern-hemisphere latitude lower than that of, say, Austria or Hungary--possibly northern Italy.

Seats in the auditorium should be made of unfinished wood and sparsely cushioned, if at all, and if you aren't an aristocrat or royalty...sorry, but you'll probably be standing the entire time.

Your clothing should roughly match that of the time period in terms of material and discomfort, and you probably shouldn't wash any of it or yourself within several days of attending (nor should anyone else in attendance).

Diet should be modified several days in advance in order to match your gastrointestinal functions to those of the time (fatty, heavily spiced meats, mealy breads, unpasteurized milk, and heavy ales), and public facilities at the venue should be...well, you can imagine. Actually, there probably won't be any, so you'll just have to hold it.

You probably shouldn't take any sort of vitamin, herbal supplement, or headache, cold, or other sort of medication that wasn't available at the time.

Et cetera, et cetera. Changing something as simple as the performance tuning of a piece does not come close to recreating the experience of the piece had by the people who first experienced it. So basically, if a slight difference in timbre is something that noticeable and important to you, then by all means, play your music on period-instruments and in period tuning, but don't try to sell me the pretentious idea that you're somehow preserving the spirit of a piece by experiencing it "the way it was meant to be experienced."

Still, though...

It brings up the question of time-variable aesthetics: should a piece of art be evaluated based on the standards of the time (and place) it was created, or by more contemporary criteria? More importantly, what characteristics bridge the two and make a piece of art "timeless?" And, perhaps even more importantly, should the origin and age of a piece of art be considered paramount in any assessment of its worth, at the expense of objective aesthetic evaluation?

The latter question is, perhaps, rhetorical; regardless of how impressive or unimpressive a piece of art is, its age, place and person of origin, and/or rarity will be considered foremost in any appraisal of it. I suppose this is both inescapable and, in a way, understandable, so there is no point debating it.

Transhumanism as an end to, not continuation of, humanity

2008-07-29T14:26:00.017-04:00

(NPR is usually to blame for these early afternoon distractions.)

It is the idea of mankind's advancement to a higher form through technology, the synthetic continuation of the evolution of the species. Of course, this began when his ancestors first started using tools fashioned from their environments—weapons for hunting, artificial shelter, eating utensils, clothing, etc. By today, synthetic enhancement is a universal constant of mankind, from simple accoutrements such as garments, shoes, and glasses to more sophisticated products of technology such as blood vessel stints, artificial joints, hearing aids, and, perhaps foremost, information technology. All have been steps taken in a volitional evolution; mankind has progressed to the point at which he can decide the manner in which he evolves.

As the technologies man creates become smaller and more integrated in his daily life, they become gradually more a part of him as an organism. The pacemaker is a perfect example of a currently existing technology without which [a] man certainly could not live, a technology that has become an integral part of him. So, for that matter, would be any form of internal or pharmacological medicine. For some time now, efforts have been made to map the human brain and duplicate its functions with a computer. And, of course, the closer man comes to understanding the biomechanics of his own brain, the more likely it is he will try and eventually be able to improve them by synthetic means: neural implants. The idea is, admittedly, somewhat amusing--comparable to a computer running out memory and being equipped with a new board, it is believed that man will someday be able, through a surgical procedure (or, more likely, nanotechnology), to upgrade his brain in order to enhance its performance well into his octogenarian years.

A darker theory, however, is that, once the human brain is mapped and its processes duplicable by computer, a living human's mind—every thought, memory, and feeling had by a human his entire life, could be, essentially, copied and converted into a stream of electronic data. The theory is contingent on the materialist notion of cognition and consciousness, that the mental and emotional states of a person are the result only of electrochemical reactions—that there is, essentially, no such thing as the human spirit/soul--being correct, but that given, the implications are mind-boggling (so to speak). If a person's mind were "copied" and put into a computer, would the consciousness of the person transfer to the computer as well--would the computer then be a conscious being constituting a person?

The goal of "copying" a person into an electronic form is, at its core, no different than any other endeavor or longing man has made or had to prolong his life indefinitely—just another Fountain of Youth. But obviously, death, as much as it is feared and lamented, provides value to all life--if a being could, by continuous transfer from failing vessel to newer vessel, ad infinitum, live forever, of what value would a single thought, feeling, or moment be? This is paltry rhetoric, of course—already asked and answered by countless writers and thinkers throughout the centuries. Forgive my long-windedness.

Ray Kurzweil wrote a great book about all this ten or so years ago. It's called The Age of Spiritual Machines, and I read it in high school for the lamest of reasons: Raine Maida highly recommended it. Kurzweil believes that humans will be able to "transfer consciousness" into newer forms by the end of the 21st century.

And people ought not be dismissive of such predictions as mere science fiction; it behooves us to remember that most of the scientific achievements of the 20th century were, in some cases less than a hundred years earlier, considered foolishly beyond possibility.

All the same, I don't really buy into any of it, but it does, nevertheless, throw me into a mini-existential crisis whenever I think too much about the soul. There are times I am forced to agree that "nothing is more real than nothing." I am agnostic, which basically means that, in addition to admitting I don't (can't) really know anything, I tend to consider seriously pretty much any philosophy put in front of me.

Lieder by Hugo Wolf, Phrase Repetition, and Minimalism

2008-07-28T08:59:00.008-04:00

I very much like that Beethoven Satellite Radio Network (and, for that matter, most classical radio stations) select their music for each hour based on a given theme or composer. It's convenient to know at the top of an hour that I can change the station for 50 or so minutes if I don't particularly feel like listening to summertime waltzes or dreadfully uninteresting Handel overtures.

"Wo find'ich Trost" from Hugo Wolf's "Mörike-Lieder " is a beautiful piece. It's very Wagnerian in its harmonic language, and somewhat so in terms of development, but there are certainly Debussian-Holstian-Respighian phrase repeats imbedded in the latter—that is, instead of the melodic and harmonic progression moving directly from A to B to C to D, and so on, and perhaps being repeated, echoed, or varied later on, A is played and repeated, and likewise with B, C, D, et cetera. This device is one that aids the listener in establishing a quick frame of reference, of which I wrote in an entry a while back, particularly for a piece whose harmonic or polyphonic complexities are not easily digested in a single listening.

Music is an unfortunate art form in that, in presentation, it only exists in the instant it is being played. Its impact is entirely dependent upon the attention and memory of the listener. Literature and the visual arts, on the other hand, can be reread or gazed upon and pondered at great length, at the viewer's necessity or discretion. With music, the phrase "Einmal ist keinmal" comes to my mind—if you only hear it once, you may as well not hear it at all, since perception and memory are flawed. Of course, when Nietzsche used these words, he was writing about life, not music, but in a way, I think the expression somewhat suits the latter (and not the former, I should add). One's temperament or preoccupations are likely to impair one's ability to absorb sufficiently what a piece of "instantaneous" art has to offer, so second, third, fourth, etc., hearings arguably are necessary.

At any rate, this immediate, identical (or nearly identical) repeat of a phrase in music assists the listener insofar as it presents a second, third, fourth...or hundredth, in the case of Philip Glass, listening of the piece within the piece itself—in pieces, so to speak. By contrast, works by Mahler, Bartok, and Shostakovich contain very few repeats at all. In Bartok's late string quartets, for instance, it's sometimes difficult even to determine in what key the music is taking place, let alone keep up with any sort of development. It's extremely clever, but the casual listener likely will be baffled by it.

And I mention Philip Glass for a good reason—the proliferation in the mid- and late-20th century of minimalism. Contemporary nonclassical music is, in the strictest sense of the term, minimalist by nature. The ubiquitous one-four-five progression, which has existed in Western music for the better part of a millennium now, is still used a great deal in modern popular music, but in a very limited and repetitive way—and there is nothing wrong with this. Its simplicity is part of its appeal, but I digress...Its roots are in folk music, a creature whose fundamental characteristics have, to a small extent, always been shared with formal classical music. In other words, minimalism in classical music only formalized a piecemeal utilization of classical structures and devices employed by the folk tradition for centuries (though whence the structures originated is debatable). Of course, some call the minimalist movement an era of "dumbing down" music, but I consider it a sort of door-opening to a broader public by coming full-circle (learning processes are, after all, usually based on repetition)—provided, of course, the broader public actually takes an interest in tracing the ancestry of the musical forms it presently finds most appealing, a provision which is, for the most part, wishful thinking…And, of course, not all minimalist music consists of simple melodic/harmonic structures, but whatever.

Wolf's Italian Serenade, which followed shortly after "Wo find'ich Trost," was very unlike the Mörike-Lied; it was early Romantic in flavor—almost classical, in fact. A bit disappointing, actually, since I'd enjoyed hearing "Wo find'ich Trost" and was looking forward to hearing more like it. I do suppose, though, that, pursuant to my own advice, at least a second listening would be necessary.

In terms of his placement in musical genre, I'd put Wolf right in with Aleksandr Skriabin—too forward-thinking to be completely Romantic, too conservative to be considered true-20th Century. Slightly more accessible than Skriabin, though.

Contrapuntal Radio and Very Rural Canadian Wisdom

2008-07-27T14:13:00.016-04:00

Glenn Gould was commissioned by the CBC to produce a series of radio programs in 1967 to commemorate Canada's centennial. Specifically, he was asked to center the programs around the isolated communities in the northernmost and outlying portions of the country, where Canadian society in any modern sense had not yet reached.

The pianist took some [relatively] portable recording equipment and miles of tape and headed to Fort Churchill, a small outpost in Manitoba on the shore of Hudson's Bay. During this and several subsequent trips to similar settlements in and along the arctic frontier, he interviewed several dozen locals; geologists, meteorologists, mechanics, priests, and fishermen were his most common subjects. He discussed with them their experiences of the North, their thoughts on the nature of man and of isolation's effect on him, their assessments of Canadian society and culture, their economic and political philosophies, and even their favorite foods and music, and in the end had far more material than he could ever reasonably condense into a one-hour radio documentary. As a solution to this, Gould experimented with splicing bits of the recorded voices together in layers. His expertise at classical counterpoint no doubt aided him in this task; he managed to edit parallel voices, sometimes as many as five or six, such that pauses in some interlocked with words of others and all could, more or less, be clearly heard. Thus, "The Idea of North" was born.

And, because I'm such a nice guy, I've included an A/V sample (please forgive the [Korean?] subtitles):

(This is one of the Thirty-Two Short Films about Glenn Gould, which is sadly no longer available on DVD. The actor is Colm Feore, a superb Canadian artist and all-around congenial fellow.)

"The Latecomers" and "The Quiet in the Land," which explored similar ideas in, respectively, Newfoundland outports and Mennonite colonies, followed over the next decade. Unfortunately, Gould passed away in 1982, at the age of only 50, so contrapuntal radio, which had not, by his estimation, nearly reached its potential, more or less died with him. The three programs, aptly dubbed "The Solitude Trilogy," were not well received—practically everyone who heard them decided they were too difficult to follow. The experience of listening to them is not unlike trying to participate in multiple conversations at once at a party--the structures of the brain responsible for speech recognition work in concert with shortterm memory, focusing on one voice while storing the other for later processing. At times, it is quite confusing, and participation in each will likely be limited, but it is possible.

The first time I listened to "Idea of North" from beginning to end, I admit I was a bit overwhelmed—likewise with "Latecomers" and "Quiet in the Land." Each required several hearings to deconstruct the masses of sound and reassemble the ideas, and when I did so, I found that many of these interviewees, some of whom had little more than a middle-school education, were incredibly well spoken and insightful—even philosophical, in a casual, disarming way:

[Scotch-Canadian man]: "It sounded a bit ridiculous, but I was taught sufficiently by me parents that, 'The other guy knows something, too, so don't open your big mouth 'til ya find out what he's all about.'"

[Canadian/American man]: "I believe that people who are removed from the center of society are always able to see it more clearly…If you go back to the 19th century, there was nobody in the United States who saw the 19th century American society with such clarity and decisiveness as Thoreau, who saw it from the perspective of the cabin in the woods."

[Different Canadian man]: "It's related to the whole attitude of Mennonites to the arts, which is a complete temperance. For example, I can't imagine any congregation today hearing a 12-tone church anthem and then somehow suggesting that this could glorify God, too."

[Same Scotch-Canadian man, voice in tandem with Canadian/American's]: "I minds the time, shall I say, forty-five years ago, when one could go around this island, and everybody had a patch of potatay ground. People were growing the odd cucumber, and squash, turnips, cabbage. And most everybody had a cow, and a half a dozen sheep, and a dozen hens. And then we got the federation—then we got the dollars in our pocket. And Joe Blow figured, 'Why should I grow any more potatays? I'm gonna show that guy who got all the money next door to me...that I don't have to grow 'em! I can buy 'em the same as 'ee does.' Well then, they kill the cow, they kill the sheep, they bought their eggs at the grocery store, and the tin cans started to pile up, but they didn't pile up in the landwash--they piled up in a pile behind his house. And that's where, in my opinion, sir, the spirit of Newfoundland has died."

[Same Canadian/American, voice in tandem with Scottish-Canadian's]: "So that there was really a state of anarchy without any of the manifestations of government control, we lived in a sort of communal society in which all work was done jointly, but at the same time, there was a concession to private property, in that we had separate woodpiles—similarly, working on big enterprises required a whole community's effort. For example, if you had large boat to pull up in the fall or to launch in the spring, the word would go around that, on a certain day at high tide, so and so was going to pull up his boat. Well, on that date and time, with one accord, the whole community would be assembled, without any specific arrangement having been made."

[The following done in call-response form, though the interview subjects never met each other and did not pre-write any of their comments or expect their recorded voices to be used in such a way]:

Man: "I think there's too much emphasis placed on this business of mutual stimulation between artists. The artist who is really worth anything works best when he is alone, I think."

Woman: "I can sit in my bedroom alone and be very creative, but creativity is judged to a certain extent by what other people think, whether other people assume this is 'creative.'"

Man: "Any writer who isn't doing his own thing isn't doing anything worth doing at all, really. The idea that you have to know exactly what the current trends are—that the antihero is the thing that is en vogue this year, and the hero will be back next—this sort of thing is just nonsense."

Woman: "By being a total hermit, you can be creative for a while, but after a while, you have to get out in public to know whether you're being creative."

Man: "You have to write for yourself first of all, and then, if it happens to be relevant for other people, too, why, that's wonderful."

Woman: "Art is judged by people. Whether this is right or wrong, I don't know. It's judged by how much people will pay and who will listen to you or who will buy your work. Unless you're very well off, you can't sit and be creative for years and years on end. You'll eventually have to make money to keep yourself."

Man: "My novels pay for themselves."

Interesting stuff. It's refreshing, I think, that such desolate, inhospitable regions of the world can yield nevertheless progressively minded and even optimistic individuals (hence my similar fascination with Scandinavia, which boasts some of the most prosperous, happy nations in the world). For more samples, visit the CBC's archives at http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/music/topics/320-1709/. The entire recordings are only available via Amazon.com or some online service similar thereto, but I'd be happy to share them with anyone interested.

It's a lovely Sunday afternoon, so I think I'll go for a swim.

Excerpts from recent reading

2008-07-15T14:16:00.008-04:00

Just a few kernels of (modest and oblique) profundity, or bits which I found merely amusing, taken from the first book of Samuel Beckett's Three Novels, much of it from a ninety-page mass of near-free-associative prose without a single paragraph break...

"Yes, the great cloud was ravelling, discovering here and there a pale and dying sky, and the sun, already down, was manifest in the living tongue of fire darting towards the zenith, falling and darting again, ever more pale and languid, and doomed no sooner lit to be extinguished. This phenomenon, if I remember rightly, was characteristic of my region. Things are perhaps different today. Though I fail to see, never having left my region, what right I have to speak of its characteristics."

"And I for my part will never lend myself to such a perversion (of the truth), until such time as I am compelled or find it convenient to do so."

"And it was not only no worse, to my mind, but it was better, in this sense, that I was there. That is a strange way, is it not, of looking at things. Perhaps less strange than it seems. For being in the forest a place neither worse nor better than the others, and being free to stay there, was it not natural I should think highly of it, not because of what it was, but because I was there."

"Anger led me sometimes to slight excesses of language. I could not regret them. It seemed to me that all language was an excess of language."

"Since in this way I shirked the issue, have I to apologize for saying so? I let fall this suggestion for what it is worth. And perfunctorily. For in describing this day I am once more he who suffered it, who crammed it full of futile anxious life, with no other purpose than his own stultification and the means of not doing what he had to do."

-Molloy

Thinking one understands what Beckett was all about when one has only read "Waiting for Godot" is no different, by my estimation, than thinking one knows what The Beatles were all about only having listened to "Let it Be." It's kind of unfortunate that "Godot" is the only exposure most people get to the former's work, in very much the same way it is unfortunate that "The Metamorphosis" is the only exposure most high school kids get to Franz Kafka's.

One reason, I imagine, for the absence of Beckett's fiction from the classroom is its extraordinary denseness and frequent (altogether?) irreverence for the traditional models of the novel taught in middle and high school. Another, though, certainly must be its episodic vulgarity. Beckett, like his friend and mentor, Joyce, seemed to have no qualm with highlighting some of the more grotesque elements of humanity, sometimes in an indelicate or even frightful (albeit artful, always) manner. Indeed, many would argue that the works of both writers would lose a great deal of their uniqueness were they to be without such accentuation. Of course, this is debatable, and before I depart on such a tangent, I should return to the subject at hand...

That Beckett's novels might be omitted from high school curricula on grounds of their occasional obscenity bothers me. I do not believe in literary censorship. I should note, of course, that I do believe in censorship for the passive or incidental arts—one cannot help, for instance, if one looks at a television in one's line of sight and catches a glimpse of something horrible, just as one cannot help hearing something unspeakably offensive when another drives by with it blaring from his/her car speakers. Literature, however, is a fully participatory art form—it requires an active effort on the part of the viewer. If one finds a book offensive by page 3, he/she is not (nor should be) required to see it through to its completion.

At least give high school kids the choice, the opportunity to read Beckett, I say. And Joyce. And Fitzgerald. And Burgess. And Ellis. Et cetera. Preface the assigned reading with a sort of disclaimer, and if a student feels the material might be in some way morally objectionable, let him/her elect a different, less offensive reading assignment. My suspicion, however, is that, given what kids are already exposed to by pop-culture media these days by the time they even get to high school, most students will not find the writing all that upsetting.

How did I even arrive at this...Oh yes, Molloy. Great, great book. Of course, none of the excerpts I've included in this entry reflect the "vulgar" qualities of Beckett's literature—they were simply, as I mentioned, bits I found clever and enjoyable.

Same-sex couples wishing to be married on church grounds denied—Story from NPR this morning

2008-06-16T16:08:00.012-04:00

A New Jersey couple, two women in their eighties, requested to hold a wedding ceremony to celebrate their civil union at a pavilion on a boardwalk owned by a local church (Methodist, if I heard correctly). The church declined, citing (obvious) religious reasons—it stated that the pavilion was used for religious services (i.e., was part of the "house of God"), and that, given the church's stance on same-sex marriage, such a wedding would not be permissible. The church did, however, say that the wedding could take place along the boardwalk. The couple were outraged and filed a lawsuit for discrimination.

Argument of Couple: The church is open to the public, and therefore, discrimination based on sexual orientation is prohibited. It would be no different than a restaurant owner telling a would-be patron that, because of the color of his skin, he were not allowed to dine in the establishment.

Argument of Church: The church is a religious institution, and as such, its rights of belief and practice are protected under the First Amendment. The Bible explicitly forbids same-sex marriage, so refusing to let same-sex couples conduct a wedding within its walls is not necessarily a willful act of discrimination, but rather an act of strict religious adherence.

I should preface my editorial remarks by stating that I am not against same-sex marriage. I've never understood how it could possibly harm anyone; I believe that as long as a citizen's lifestyle is not causing damage to person, property, or "public decency," as it's often phrased, the government ought to keep out of it.

That said, I'm going to have to side with the church on this one. Here is my reasoning:

The founding principle of this nation was freedom from tyranny. This is why the freedoms of speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition make up the very first amendment to the constitution—they are paramount. Any church, thus protected, therefore, cannot be forced by federal or any local or state government to do (or not do) something that contradicts its own religious beliefs. The government could not, for example, enforce the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed in a Catholic Sunday School or require a priest to tell the members of his congregation to worship the head of state above Christ—these are hyperbolic examples, of course.

The government can and has intervened in the practice of religion in the past, specifically wherever a religious entity has engaged in or promoted acts which cause damage to person or property. A church cannot, for example, have members of its congregation commit acts of vandalism or violence under protection as religious practice, and likewise, an individual cannot justify the breaking of the law as requisite of his religious beliefs (e.g., cases in which murders were committed "because God told [the defendant] to do it" invariably meet with conviction).

However, the church is not, in this case, engaging in any act that would endanger the health or welfare of the public or of any individual—it is merely declining to permit a ceremony to be conducted on its premises that could take place anywhere else in the state which permits it.

This also would not constitute discrimination because no one is denying the two women admittance to the church in question based on their sexual orientation; they are at liberty to attend services, just as the general public is. It must be taken into consideration, though, that any two members of the public at large are not necessarily entitled to a wedding in a given religious establishment. Weddings are conducted at the discretion of the administrators of the religious establishment. In many denominations, approval of the head of the establishment is required in order for a wedding to take place, and in such cases, the criteria for qualification, in addition to a wedding license, are religious in nature. Ergo, refusal of a religious establishment's administration to allow a wedding between two people based on criteria established by the faith to which the two people seeking the wedding willfully subscribe (or to which they implicitly defer, if not of the faith and merely requesting use of the facilities, which are private property and use of which must, therefore, be granted) cannot be construed as discrimination. It would be no different from an Imam refusing to perform a wedding of two Christians in his mosque.

I do feel bad for the two women seeking the marriage, but the law is quite clear--the church is not required to concede use of its property or engage in any conduct contrary to its belief system. Perhaps the courts will disagree with me.

It's May, but it feels like July.

2008-05-27T06:44:00.012-04:00

The only Borders in Tallahassee, which has been, for the longest time, the town's only reasonable source of well-priced classical music (apart from the sparse collections of recordings of all-too-frequently performed works such as Beethoven's Fifth and Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue"--the unquestionable merits of such works notwithstanding--one might find at Best Buy, Target, or the nightmarish Walmart) has, of late, greatly reduced its CD inventory, particularly in the classical music section, and significantly raised the prices of the fraction of CDs it has retained.

Casually asking one of the employees about this some months ago, when I began to notice the diminishing shelf space allotted to classical music, I was told the store was merely reducing the number of duplicate copies on its shelves, which made sense; the place had far too many versions, for example, of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring," and, as much as I adore Mahler, I admit they have more copies of his symphonies than they ever could sell.

However, as some time passed, I found that this certainly was NOT the case, that they were eliminating entire artists from their selection; by only a few weeks later, their classical section had atrophied from a modestly healthy two and a half aisles to a meager single aisle--clearly, there could not have been that many duplicates. Indeed, certain artists whose divider cards I recalled seeing were no longer to be found.

Granted, my tastes have veered far from what could be considered the mainstream in classical music, but in my past few visits to Borders of Tallahassee (it used to be a weekly Friday-afternoon fixture, classical music being relatively inexpensive, and each visit not necessarily resulting in a purchase), I've been disappointed.

Of course, I've heard talk on NPR of Borders being bought-out by Barnes and Noble, so it's likely the decrease in unpopular titles and overall increase in prices are symptoms more of the company's financial hardships than its selling out figuratively. Only time will tell...for now, I have Amazon.com to keep me content.

I've been reading Sartre's plays lately--they're odd, but not in the absurdist way one might expect. Huis Clos ("No Exit," though this is not how the title literally translates) , being a modernist depiction of Hell, is thought provoking and, obviously, rather dark, but there was a slight melodramatic flare to it that surprised me. I suppose one can't really make inferences of a thinker's qualities as a playwrite from the characteristics of his nonfiction texts, but I expected the play to be more compact and...well, difficult to follow. Obviously, Sartre wrote it in this manner in order to not overwhelm his audience, most of whom likely were not the sort who could (or would want to) readily digest his philosophy.

I didn't care much for Les Mouches ("The Flies"), a re-take on the Orestes-Electra story, but I suppose this is because I never found the Orestes-Electra story all that interesting to begin with--fellow kills king and marries queen, princess becomes a servant, prince-in-exile returns to avenge his slain father, yada yada (Of course, there's more to the story than this, but if you're really that interested, go read it for yourself--the original story, that is--Electra by Sophocles or Orestes by Euripedes). I can appreciate the play for its indictments of religion--really, of any belief system contradicting the whole being-for-itself (vs. being-in-itself or being-for-others), but the plot itself was somewhat stale.

Les Mains Sales ("Dirty Hands"), on the other hand, I'm very much enjoying. It's set in late World War II in a fictional eastern-European country and concerns a young intellectual entangled in an assassination plot of a local resistance leader.

I find Sartre oddly comforting--I don't necessarily agree with his ideas, but he nevertheless put forth a unique and fascinating way to look at the world/existence/being (and I know he wasn't the first of his breed--Husserl, Heidegger, Kant, Kierkegaard, Hegel, et al were precursors). I think my long-time perception of existentialism as a bleak or oppressive philosophy was simply due to my approach to it by means of Kierkegaard, who sought to reconcile the notion of nonexistence of absolute truth with his own faith in (or desperate need of) God, and also through Unamuno, who addressed consciousness as a plague of sorts. Sartre's take on it is rather liberating, as far as I understand it; admittedly, though, I've only read a bit of his philosophy at this point, but this is my initial take on it.

I need to be going, as I am at work and I have deadlines approaching.

2007-12-18T13:10:00.001-05:00

First blog entry.

Hello.

Okay, that's enough for now.