From the monthly archives:
With the subtitle of “The Most Bizarre Musical Number Ever Filmed” it got my attention. It’s really worth watching cuz it’s so bizarre! It just keeps going, getting stranger and stranger! Try to stick it out till the end.
I’ll have whatever SHE’S having.
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With economy being so bad, we all need to smile every once in a while. Here’s a Soviet baritone singing something, I’m not quite sure what: it’s either Yai Yai Yai Yai Yaaaaii, or Yo yo yo yo or Oh oh oh oh ohhhh. See how happy it makes him?
My primary flaw as a composer of late, is that I have lost interest in aggressively promoting my work (other than this blog). As Beethoven allegedly said: “I refuse to bow to Napoleon; he must come to me.” I teach my students that this NEVER happens, so who am I kidding?
I LOVE composing, and am [...]
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This just in from the LA Times:
A Rhode Island school district has voted to fire all the teachers at an underperforming school.
Amazing!
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Walter Rimler just sent in this amazing find. The music from Schoenberg’s 4th quartet seems peculiar–hardly back up music, but a cool bit of archival history for 20th century music fans. Listen to the eulogy Schoenberg gives to Gershwin at the end. Touching. Mr Rimler also has a new book on Gershwin I must read.
[kml_flashembed [...]
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Maestro Sahar sent in a video response to the Gershwin performance a few days back. It’s really an entertaining mash-up between Schoenberg piano music and Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm.”
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Yesterday Profs Bourland, Stulberg, Lindemann, Dean, Snow, Rice, Lysy(s), and Loza flew up to Emoryville, CA to meet with future UCLA applicants and their parents, give overviews of our program and answer questions. Kavin and Laura were there to answer all the nuts and bolts and deadline info.
This is, of course, recruiting. Even though it [...]
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Leonid just sent in this terrific performance of Tuvan throat singing. I had never heard this style of singing rhythmicized; I’m used to the Tibetan low droning technique and the Russian octavists in early 20th century Russian Orthodox choral literature. I realize that my brain isn’t used to making the melodic connections between the resonant [...]
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Susan brought to my attention a recent BBC article letting us know about a resurgence in interest in mugham music from Azerbaijan. After listening to a fair amount of it on YouTube — What a wonderful world we live in! — I found this performance. It’s a very different musical language from the one we [...]
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Today I lectured about what I’m now calling “chord cycles”–a series of chords that repeat over and over. In the Baroque, these types of compositions were called “chaconnes.” Composers think of any repeated set of chords as a chaconne, but historians are sticklers about that progression being a set progression. There are more arguments about [...]
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