The Fredösphere

I see my old voice teacher, and now executive director of the American Choral Directors Association, Tim Sharp has recently conducted the premiere of a work for chorus and orchestra. Good for him, promoting new music and all that. The work's harmonic language belongs solidly in the Common Practice period, and indeed, shows no influence whatsoever of any of the various schools of experimental music of the last 100-plus years. Yet there is no disputing the craftsmanship on display; this is not the work of an amateur. (Follow the subsequent link for a brief video excerpt.)

The composer, by the way, was some guy named George Frideric Handel.

Labels: Choral, Composer

Terry Teachout Laura Demanski, a/k/a Our Girl In Chicago, loves the Edward-Goreyesque cartoons of Kate Beaton and so do I—whimsical confections of weirdness on historical subjects. I can recommend with especial enthusiasm Beaton's snapshot character studies of a self-revealing Genghis Khan, a self-regarding Søren Kirkegaard, and a self-restrained Nikola Tesla.

UPDATE: In the comments, Terry Teachout points out my mistake, since corrected. I don't know if I should be mortified by my careless error, or thrilled that it was noticed.

Labels: Comix

My friend and fellow StarShipSofa podcast groupie Matthew Sanborn Smith has started his own podcast called Beware the Hairy Mango. It's micro-casting with a focus on Matt's own flash fiction. (Matt specializes in flash to facilitate his goal of writing 1000 stories before his 50th birthday.)

Matt's stories are characterized by zany non sequiturs delivered via fire hose. If that isn't incentive enough for you to subscribe, perhaps your devotion to my science fiction jazz chamber opera They're Made Out of Meat will drive you into Matt's hairy, mango-y arms, since TMOOM is a subject of the Hairy Mango's episode 25.

Labels: Podcast, They're Made Out Of Meat

Why do we read a composer's biography? I know I'm supposed to appreciate each composer's body of work as an artifact utterly divorced from its context, but close readers of the Fredösphere (hi Mom!) already know I take a dim view of that Absolute Music mentality. The fact is, each composer's bio I've ever read has helped me enormously in understanding music. Intent is revealed, and a sympathy is built that gives me the motivation I need for close listening.

Fine. But that leads to another question: what about composer autobiography? John Adams has written his, called Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life, and I feel a strange curiosity: if you can write music really, really well, why turn to prose?

It all turns on the composer's abilities as a self-observer, and a prose stylist. It's likely most of my readers (hi, Aunt Virginia!) understand music composition, self-awareness, and writing prose are three nearly-orthogonal vectors. Granted that John Adams' life is worth studying, it does not follow that John Adams is necessarily the best guide to John Adams' life and work.

Well, I can say at the least the prose is no problem. Adams expresses himself very well, negotiating the shoals of a family with more than its fair share of, uh, colorful characters. (The Adams family produces bohemians, most of whom have little talent for making a living.) I admire the delicacy with which Adams describes his formative years, and the environment his parents created for him to develop as an artist and a man.

Someone—was it C. S. Lewis?—has opined that the first chapters of any biography are always the most interesting. Certainly they are there to answer the question, where did this strange, remarkable, miraculous personality come from? Yet, I don't think we get that question answered here. At some point John Adams begins playing a clarinet (his father's instrument) and very soon, he's the concertmaster of the local wind ensemble, outplaying his fellows 4 or more times his age. Modesty, or something else, prevents him from digging deeper into this mystery: why do some kids take to an instrument like a dog to a bone and worry wonderful music out of it?

Labels: Composer

More on my favorite mashup, vocal-heavy soundtracks of science-fictional stuff:

Via A Cappella News we read of Gaggle, a not-your-mother's-female-chorus from England with a sound described as "sci-fi riot." Fusty reputations, begone. You can here their heavily post-processed sound at their MySpace place but bewarned, perfect intonation is not a priority.

Via SF Signal comes this animation accompanied by the Schubert Ave Maria (of all things) depicting the rings of Earth—or what the rings of Earth would look like if Earth had rings, like Saturn's. Dang, rings would be cool. We gotta get us some of them rings!



Okay, this last one has no vocal music, but it's futuristic, it's (even better) retro futuristic, and terribly arty: it's the art of Retropolis: The Future That Never Was! Do visit the posters page. Heck, do visit this future! Let's please go there, and never come back.

Labels: Choral, Futurism, sci-fi, VideoClip, vocal

Saturday, 23-Jan-10, 9:20am We enter the school. I'm surprised at the lack of crowds; already this is looking better than last year. I am holding a cane-sugar-sweetened Mexican Coke in a tall bottle of real glass, thus signaling I am not to be triffled with. Der Drübermensch checks in.

9:30am I chat with my friend Daryl. He, his wife, and son are the only people I know here. Soon they are distracted by tournament administration, however, and I am left alone. The first of many stretches of time to kill presents itself. I am not afraid. I am armed with novels, histories, notebooks and music manuscript paper. I know how to kill time. I am the time slayer. I will teach time to fear me.

10:10am Der Drübermensch's first game begins. I walk to the other side of the room. Der Drü has asked me to stay close by in past tournaments, but I see no other parents hovering today. I decide he has probably outgrown it. Also, as this is a local, non-rated tournament in a familiar location, the pressure is less. It is very unlikely I will need to kill a fellow dad out behind the school in a bare-handed contest of family honor at any time today. If I die, I die for points.

10:25am I glance up from the stage at the end of the caffetorium. From across the room I see Der Drü make a move. Did he just capture a queen?

10:40am My optimism was unfounded. Der Drü looses his first game. As is typical at this level, it was a war of attrition. In the end, his army of pawns was no match for an army of pawns plus one rook.

11:10am 2nd game. I think about Light, a novel by M. John Harrison, which I finished reading in the interlude. A literary SF novel; high probability of being my kind of book. Sheesh, what a chore to read. What Terry Teachout would call an eat-your-peas aesthetic experience.

11:35am Der Drü loses the see-saw battle. This is his first game ever that was truly close. His queen and support staff were converging on the enemy king, but his opponent's pieces were similarly deployed. In the end, it felt like Der Drü was simply one move behind. Check-mate on a crowded board.

11:45am Pizza. I try the new Domino's for the first time. They weren't lying. I move their pizza out of the Inedible column, into the Reasonably Good column. As I am loyal to the local company, this feels satisfying.

12:25pm Game 3 begins and the tournament is, incredibly, ahead of schedule. I begin reading René Girard's The Scapegoat. The sudden shift to a sympathetic author is bracing. I do not like you, M. John Harrison / I do not like green eggs and venison. (Note to self: edit out this self-indulgent crap later.)

12:50pm Loss #3. The first frustrating game for Der Drü, since it was played on a tiny board and its unfamiliarity made him overlook a line of vulnerability.

1:15pm Pizza slice #3. This is boredom eating. I run into Daryl; he and I discuss Bay Bucks, Social Credit Theory, and Chestersonian Distributism.

2:35pm Der Drü, on the cusp of his first win! But, what is this? Why won't he capture that knight (his enemy's last powerful piece) and finish the kid off? Why, having promoted a pawn, does he start promoting another? Is he toying with the poor kid?

2:50pm A break, and a dad is subjecting his son to a post-mortem. "What's your move here?" Silence. "Look. At. The. Board." Yikes. And yet, I can sympathize, although I generally confine my yelling to the inside of my head.

3:05pm René Girard's thesis emerges: myths are records of acts of violence against scapegoated outsiders: panics, persecutions & pograms in times of pestilence. Interesting.

3:10pm Round 5—or is it? why is the tournament director ordering all games halted? Where did Der Drü go? Ah, here he comes. All is well. The games begin.

3:18pm The Scapegoat, borrowed via inter-library loan, is marked on every page with notations. Who are these markers, these defiling scribblers in books they don't own? Makes me want to assemble a mob to find these offenders and subject them to some persecution.

3:42pm Game 5 is a chessathon. Der Drü ahead, then behind, then ahead again! Now, nothing but kings and pawns on the board. And just like the ending of that Searching for Bobby Whatshisname movie, Der Drü and the pint-sized Evildoer sitting opposite him are marching pawns down the board. Said pawns arrive in consecutive turns, just like in the movie! No joke. And now, Der Drü extends a hand, graciously offering a draw. That movie, again! Unlike that snotty little fool from the movie, my son's opponent accepts the offer. Stop searching, gentlemen: my son, the new Bobby Fisher, is alive and living in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Labels: Culture, CuteKid, local, Mythos

It's right there on the front cover. It says it in the title of Geoff Dyer's book, But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz. It says it again, in LA Times critic David Thomson's blurb: "maybe the best book ever written about jazz." It's those two words "about jazz." I'm not sure those are the words—the precise words—I would have written.

I would have written that this book is about the jazz life. And this difference feels like more than a nitpick to me. Call me crazy (in fact, call me a crazy composer) but I was hoping for more talk about the music. You know, all that crazy theory stuff: harmony, counterpoint, form, orchestration. Or maybe some words on performance: the ins and outs of getting sound out of the iconic instruments of the style, or even talk of performer-audience dynamics.

Instead, Geoff Dyer gives us something completely different. My expectations (unformed, unfounded, I admit) was so subverted it took me a while to adjust. It took me a while to realize Dyer is attempting something very different. Something very risky.

Inspired by the intuitive and improvisational character of the music itself, he's composed a series of riffs in prose on some of the heroes of the style that he finds compelling. With caveats, he writes a kind of history of imagination. Maybe he's another Capote, writing a non-fiction novel. Maybe this could be classified most simply as historical fiction. In any event, it feels very unusual to me, possibly sui generis. (Hey, I've been called sui generis before so it can't be bad, right?)

It ain't history, but it still feels like an exhaustively researched book. Dyer convinces you he's been inside the heads of his heroes. It's a leap of the mind good enough to be disturbing. I'm honestly afraid to finish reading But Beautiful; I might end up with my head stuffed with a bunch of truths about the heater in Duke Ellington's car or the flask on Private First Class Lester Young's hip that just ain't so.

I'll also admit to a bit if disconnect from these stories. So much of the jazz life, particularly the rootlessness and especially the booze & hookers & drugs--is so utterly unseductive to me. The Lester Young chapter is the one I have in mind especially. Unless it were an overwhelming pity, I can' imagine what motive would make Dyer write it. (Maybe if I listened to some of Young's music, I would get it. Or maybe not; long ago I learned to appreciate jazz; more recently I've begun to steal from it; but to this day it still typically leaves me cold.)

Well, at least I've given you some information. I hope those of you who will love this book have figured out who you are, and will go get a copy. Believe me, this book has an audience. Any book this imaginitive is bound to.

Labels: Jazz

The Collage Concert is a showcase for ensembles and soloists of the University of Michigan School of Music (and Theater & Dance, as I must start calling it since that's what it's been called for years now). It began as part of the annual Michigan Music Educators conference, but has endured even as the conference has found a new home. Professor Emeritus Gustav Meier is credited with bringing the collage concept to Ann Arbor. As a student I performed in it but had not been back as a spectator ever, until last Saturday.

The concert's format is simple to describe, but terribly difficult to pull off: the final note of each piece overlaps with the first note of the following piece. Using light cues, the eyes of the audience are directed to various parts of the stage as (for example) wind ensemble is followed by piano soloist is followed by jazz band is followed by a marimba quartet is followed by choir is followed by brazilian singers and drummers are followed by the school's cast of Evita . . . etc., etc.

Think of the planning nightmares! There's the politically delicate task of choosing soloists and ensembles such that each department gets a chance to show off. Then there's the insane job of choosing music such that coincident starting and ending notes are consonant (yes, they do impose that requirement on themselves).

The show is simply the most densely entertaining thing I've ever seen, even more than a Michael Daugherty opera. It perfectly accommodates modern attention spans. Even music chosen from the most rigorous of the bleep-honk-snort schools of composition becomes a welcome diversion. And, if you truly hate what you're hearing, the consolation comes immediately to mind: this too shall pass, in about four minutes from now.

I'm already recommending next year's Collage to all my somewhat-but-not-very-classically-inclined friends. I hope I never miss another one.

Labels: local