I watched the two-hour documentary on Philip Glass this weekend called GLASS: Portrait in 12 parts. It’s a terrific look inside one of America’s most successful composers. The amount of work he has done in his life is stunning: operas, symphonies, film scores, concertos, chamber music, piano music. He confesses to getting up early in the morning and working all day: “that’s my secret.”
He doesn’t care whether people like his music or not. “There is plenty of other music to listen to. You don’t have to listen to mine. Listen to Mozart, or the Beatles…”
I love hearing him confess that he never has a plan when he starts composing–he just starts. When asked what he was composing, he answered: “It’s the 8th Symphony, but I’m not sure whether it’s the first movement or the third movement.”
Does Glass’s music mean that we should perpetuate kosher voice leading a la Bach, or throw it out the window as any chord can really go to any chord. One this is for sure, fingers still appreciate good voice leading, regardless of the esthetic.
What blew my mind was that Glass composes with pencil. PENCIL! Can you imagine the king of repetition using a pencil? Copy and paste is what computers do best Phil!
The film gave me a new respect for Philip Glass as an artist, an American icon, and as a person.
Our internet service has been mostly down lately. I came home from work yesterday, hopped on the computer. No internet. I tried to rip off our neighbor’s wifi connection but it kept dropping out. I realized how tied to the internet connection I am/we are.
Things pop into my mind: oh, I need to order those shoes. Too bad–no internet. What’s the name of that…? Too bad, no internet. I need to check.. Ah, too bad; no internet. OH! I need to remember to email…, oops, no internet.
I plopped down on the sofa and pouted. After decompressing, I read a bit more of Dan Brown’s fun “The Lost Symbol.” Then I went up stairs, tried in vain to log on again for 15 minutes before giving up again. Then I sat down and worked on my book for two hours. Before going to bed I tried to log on again with no luck.
This morning by some miracle, a little connection appeared, so I am posting all the blogs that have been waiting in my head. I better hurry before I get kicked off again. The ATT repair guy is coming on Friday. The company is so oversubscribed they can’t effectively take care of us anymore. And being without an internet connection sucks.
I have a confession to make: I didn’t care much for Rufus Wainwright’s last album “Release the Stars.” With some time between and some Rufus vacation, I returned to the music, able to listen again with fresh ears. Much of the RELEASE music is on the live album, “Milwaukee at Last” just released as a combo DVD and CD, is performed here. Filmed and performed in Milwaukee, where I lived in the summer of 1973, Rufus is in the middle of the tour, the music is impeccably performed, and Rufus––as a singer, pianist, guitarist, and songwriter––is at his peak.
There are interviews with the band members, clips and close-ups of the audience listening to his music, and of course LOTS of Rufus chat. In that every performance is so intense, the banter in between works well as a published live documentation. Seeing the “Release” songs live here make them come to life. All these songs “work” for me now. I get it.
I am overjoyed to see Rufus spending time crafting the difficult piano part in “Tulsa” as well as playing it and sing it at the same time. The CD version of this song had a string quartet––it works fine as a solo piano and voice arrangement, especially here. Rufus nails it.
Every member of the band (all male here btw) is a virtuosic multi-instrumentalist as well as a singer. I realized that this is not so far from the Philip Glass or Steve Reich ensembles in their early years–a little chamber orchestra to tour playing your music. What is interesting is how that instrumentation changes with every tour.
Gerry Leonard is the musical producer and guitarist for this show and does a terrific job. He is clearly senior to everyone else: hats off to Rufus for being consistently intergenerationally inclusive.
Last week in our MUSIC HISTORY, CULTURE, AND CREATIVITY class, we talked about musical embellishments. Robert Winter spoke at length about melodic embellishments in classical music–a rich resource to be sure. As A.J. Racy has been demonstrating Arab melodies for the past few weeks, virtually every phrase is filled with embellishments, and ones that are quite different than western embellishments. We closed the class with yours truly pointing out vocal embellishments in selected pop/folk music from America: The Carter Family singing “Wildwood Flower,” Doug Kershaw playing and singing “DIggy Liggy Lo,” kd lang singing Roy Orbison’s “Crying,” the riveting performance by Jimi Hendrix of “Star Spangled Banner” at Woodstock––LOTS to talk about there, and closing with Beyonce’s video of “SIngle Ladies”––”gentlemen, stop paying so much attention to the video and more on the melody!” Yeah, right.
The students in our fab new Music History, Culture and Creativity class have a challenging assignment this week. They are required to compose and record a one minute melody that includes microtones.
Last week one of the three teachers, AJ Racy, was on the stage with three students, a bassoonist, a bass clarinetist, and a violinist. He would play them a phrase that included some non-Western notes (ie microtones), and the students would try to imitate it. It was actually kind of funny watch students who have worked so hard for so long to TRY to play in “tune”. The fingerings that use for the notes don’t work for these “new” notes.
I told the students: define the mode you’ll be using, practice playing it so that you become used to the new intonation, then start improvising with the mode. Now, write a melody. I didn’t require that they notate the tune, but have encouraged them to do it for ease of learning and in case they have someone else play it. After they compose the melody, they must record it, convert it to an MP3, and then upload it to the class website so that their classmates can hear and comment on them.
A really interesting assignment, and a damned tough one too!
The amazing Eigenharp Alpha. A terrific instrument that one can play live. Looks like a cross between a bassoon and a sitar. I’d like to hear some other kinds of music. I’d assume it’s a flexible instrument–could be anything you plugged it into.
I think about retiring from academia quite a lot these days. One thing I would miss is the affiliation with an organization that ensures I have a performances of my music. Once you retire, you don’t have the same connection. I look at many American composers late works and no one seems to care too much. Oddballs like me may love Griffes or Carpenter or Reale, but the whole world? Not so much. I personally LOVE Stravinsky’s late work, but most don’t. It rarely gets performed.
What American composers of so-called classical concert music are still played extensively today? John Philip Sousa, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, I’m not going to count Stravinsky and Schoenberg (tho the verdict is probably the same) all come to mind. Not too many university professors or composers of “modern” music. These days John Adams is our most popular I’d imagine. Many of us may lust after John’s success, but we are also very happy for him, as he’s “one of us.”
I asked Aaron Copland what he was composing in fall 1976: “Nothing, and I am not accepting commissions; if people want to play my music, there’s plenty of it available in my catalog.”
Today I went through an old journal, listing old UCLA Music faculty and their appointments and salaries. I looked at all the composers and saw their careers over a span of decades. I sighed and thought about how none of their music is heard these days. And I’m sure that this is true for every music school in America.
NOTE TO SELF:
So, should I worry about what I compose after I retire? No. I’ll compose if I want to, and if someone or group commissions me. America doesn’t care about composers so much, especially old ones, so don’t expect to be any different.
So in your retirement, Roger, why not reinvent yourself? Try something new! Catch up on reading! Blog more (count on it), and put more energy into our publishing company. Travel. Meet some new friends. Take risks. Love life while you still have it.
I love being a composer and what it has afforded me in this life and this world. I have loved the time spent composing it, playing it in progress for my close friends, and most especially, having premieres of new pieces. I went into this profession knowing I would not ever be “famous” like the Beethoven club, and have accepted that.
It shouldn’t be relevant to anyone as to whether what you’ve done in our life lasts beyond your lifetime. You’ll be dead, or at least, not here. Your music is important here and now, and that’s enough.
This week I came home to discover a huge box from Amazon waiting for me on my porch. When Daniel got home I opened it to discover the new Beatles RockBand inside. Inside were a faux Hofner Beatle bass guitar, four drum pads with a bass drum kick pedal, and a USB microphone on a stand. Hmm, no guitars for John or George, nor more mikes. I guess they want people to share the microphone like Paul and George used to.
As someone who can play almost every Beatles song on the guitar or the piano, I was skeptical at best that this would be a rewarding experience. Sure, I’m as happy as I was when the film “Across the Universe” came out a few years back and converted millions of teenage girls into Beatles fans, but this device promised to actually get people to play and sing — not just listen on their iPod.
We unpacked the box, put in batteries, Daniel put together the drums, and I strapped on the bass, offering to sing and play bass for “Twist and Shout.” The more I thought about it, I cut back to just bass until I knew what I was doing. A video introduction started to get us psyched to start playing. Then the song started. Had I had a regular bass, I would have started and matched the music perfectly, but what the hell were these colored images streaming at me?? Oh! Those are notes, and they are color coded, and when they move past this line I’m supposed to do something. Totally flustered I tried to figure it out. The neck of my guitar has five colored thingees where the frets are, and they correspond to the colored bars coming at me on the screen. They didn’t correspond to high or low chords, or tonic, subdominant, and dominant, they just meant CHORD CHANGES: PLAY! So I gave up my years of notational experience and went with the flow, playing a red plastic button when the red bar went across the line on the screen, and ditto with the yellow, green and blue bars. I was starting to get it.
Daniel, who had previous experience with RockBand, was flailing away on the drums like a pro. I felt like an idiot. It reminded me of that moment when the original members of Kiss tried to play their own songs using RockBand without much success while Gene Simmons’ son was the pro.
Eventually, I started to figure it out. My brain made the switch to a new notational reality and “got it.” My refined sense of harmony took a backseat to the plastic five color keys on the neck of my Beatle bass and I had to just get over it.
Daniel then encouraged me to sing a song, which I did pretty well. One gets ranked by the number of correct notes one sings. Later on we performed “I Am the Walrus.” I have to say I was very proud to have a husband who earned a 99 percentile in the HARD mode singing that song. Wow!
We will probably add another guitar or two, assuming our friends decide this is a fun social thing to do. The makers of the program were smart in only releasing 50 songs so far; more will be added as time goes on, like software upgrades. I like the social aspect of this trend–not so far from sitting around the piano in the late 19th century singing parlor songs after dinner. Except we are singing, er, screaming: SHAKE IT SHAKE IT UP BABY NOW, SHAKE IT UP BABY, TWIST AND SHOUT!
