18:
I discovered a most remarkable piece of information today: a list of the 365 top selling songs of the 20th century as compiled by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America). I encourage you to spend a few minutes and look down the list to see what songs have charmed Americans for the past eleven decades (sorry, I’d love to see similar statistics for Europe; if anyone finds this information let me know). What does it tell me? Well, that Americans are fickle and unpredictable in their tastes. The list is truly a who’s who in popular music. No one gets to stay at the top for too long. Even the Beatles. I note that Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Hank Williams, and Stevie Wonder are the only artists to have two or more top selling songs. Sure, everyone on the list has fans for life, but as far as staying on top, it just doesn’t happen. People want variety. It changes from year to year. Pick any 10 consecutive years and look at the songs. No matter who or how old you are, you’ll find songs that you know, and that likely have special meaning for you. As weird as it is, the mercurial tastes of the public is unpredictable and wonderful.
I’d love to study the melodies on this list and see whether there is anything they have in common. I don’t see “Sweet Dreams” on the list, (see my previous post) or Jobim’s “One Note Samba.” Most of the songs I recognize are all fairly melodic, and are songs that people like to sing. (I don’t claim to know all these songs and would appreciate it if you would point out the songs that have bad melodies.)
When we go to a museum and see a piece of artwork we are attracted to, we have the option of buying a print of it, or a book by the artist. In music, when we hear a song we like, we buy (or procure one way or another) a recording of the song so that we can relive the experience as often as we like. And quite often, we love to sing along with it. We can only reproduce the song in our body by singing the melody (unless you have Bobby McFerrin talents). We are able to reproduce the song monophonically in our voice, or whistle it, and many of us “hear” the accompaniments in our inner ear. We can own the song without an iPod or CD, LP, or tape player just by singing it. Singing it (most often alone) creates a biochemical “high.” Like most drugs, their effects wear off after a while, and we move on to find another that produces a similar effect.
As we age, old songs that we used to love come back and rekindle the old buzz. We hum them, listen to them, shed a tear, get covered with goose bumps, and remember. Melodies that we learn in our youth, especially between, say, 10 and 18, are irrationally special to us. They may or may not be good melodies. It doesn’t matter. They remind us of old times. Old friends. Smells. Places.
Such is the power of melody.
VT ImageBase (http://imagebase.lib.vt.edu/), housed and operated by Digital Library and Archives, University Libraries; scanning by Digital Imaging, Learning Technologies, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. URN 03SM0381
17:
In the Baroque, Italian composers deemed melody as the most important element in a composition, whereas French composers held melody as subordinate to harmony, melody being merely the top voice of a progression of chords. This is clearly an oversimplification, but these philosophies have resonated down through the ages. Some songwriters come up with a chord progression and improvise a melody to fit it. Some songwriters write words first then fashion a tune to fit it, and then figure out what chords best accompany it. And finally, some songwriters come up with a tune, compose the harmonic accompaniment, and then come up with words that sound appropriate, or at least cool. (For an informative program on melody, listen to this NPR special on melody.)
My modernist colleagues don’t really like to even use the term “melody” as it evokes a musical language that they are happy to see gone (see my post on Jan. 15 on Sequenza21). Famous teacher of 20th century composers, Nadia Boulanger, urged her pride to embrace “la grande ligne” or the grand line as a kind of scaffolding from which the song or composition hangs.
Each of us has our own taste in melody. I prefer one that has an attractive shape, that goes somewhere, and has a well planned climax. I have little patience for a wandering operatic recitative whose function is not so much to melodically entertain, but to impart text using notes. I, like the masses of yore who would talk and even leave during the recitatives, wait for the arias: there is the real melodic reward.
Take a look at this melody:
This is the opening of the 2nd movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No.7. Using the aesthetic criteria I put forth, this melody is dull and boring. (Melody did not come easy to Beethoven. His sketchbooks show that he labored profoundly trying to come up with a great tune.) Add the chords and the rhythmic motive (quarter, eighth eighth quarter quarter) and that bad melody becomes unforgettable.
The Eurhythmics, an 80s duo fronted by Annie Lenox, recorded “Sweet Dreams” and made millions from one of the worst melodies I know. Look at the notes below and you’ll see the entire tune comes from these three (ok, four) notes. Sung out of context, the tune is aimless and repetitive, with no direction or shapely construction. But add Annie’s butch delivery, and that electro-pop hook underneath, and everyone races for the dance floor.
The melody of “Sweet Dreams” can be thought of as “organic” in that the melody of the verses are all generated by this melodic sequence. The melody of the Beethoven passage is organic in that it all is delivered atop the incessant rhythm. Rufus Wainwright writes organic melodies as well. They are not wandering recitatives, or tunes that rely on underlying vamps or rhythms. They are melodies that can stand alone and shine. Add the accompaniment and they are even better. This is one of the qualities of his music I find so attractive, and one that I will be exploring in my book.
15:
This morning I watched the 1991 PBS special Songs of the Civil War that features the McGarrigle sisters, Rufus and friends singing “Better Times are Coming” and “Hard Times Come Again No More.” In it we see a 17 year old Rufus Wainwright lost in the joy of singing. Not only he, but his mother and aunt, Kate and Anna are swept up in the power of those songs. It brought home the fact that at the core of Rufus’s musicianship, is a genuine love and passion for singing.
I tell my students, especially as winter approaches, to remember that music can be a marvelous antidepressant, a magical rejeuvenator that replenishes the spirit. And it’s contagious to listeners.
After seeing the recent Scorsese documentary on Bob Dylan, I realized that I know and love most of his music from that period. When I went away to study “serious” music, I abandoned my guitar, and much of the music I grew up with: the Beatles, the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Gram Parsons, Joni Mitchell, and Bob Dylan. The Dylan documentary got me back in touch with my own roots, and helped me to no longer be ashamed of being “an old folkie.” Nowadays, I love to sit at the piano and sing songs that I used to play on the guitar, on the piano. I bounce back and forth between the Beatles, the Kinks, Rufus, old hymns… Not something I’m going to confess to my avante garde composer colleagues, but I don’t care. It makes me happy.
Hearing Rufus sing these old Civil War songs made me realize that he too is an old folkie. But he hasn’t left his roots: “The Makers Make” is really a folk song. Nothing earth shattering to comment about harmonically, just a good ol’ solid folk song. And that’s good enough.
13:
As an artist, being influenced by someone is a tricky confession. I once told ex-Byrd David Crosby that he was a tremendous influence on my compositional aesthetic. I played him some examples of my music where I heard an obvious influence, but he was baffled. Music critics are notorious in their descriptions of new music by referring to other composers or compositions, rather than actually trying to describe the music in prose without such crutches.
In 20th century Classical music, an explosion of musical styles and languages replaced any sense of a common tongue. In science, Thomas Kuhn wrote of a preparadigmatic period where multiple theories are postulated about the challenge of the day, and then one huge discovery is made, say, relativity, and scientists spend then next few centuries working out the ramification of this one discovery. Classical music is still waiting for its Einstein. In popular music, the Beatles would get my vote for the most important paradigm in the 20th century. Rufus Wainwright has many of those similar qualities for me. He combines elements of many different songwriters and composers; he is not simply a collage of styles, but, in my opinion, is becoming a paradigmatic figure.
Rufus has spoken in many interviews of artists the he believes to have influenced his musical language. As a guest host on a KCRW program, he played a bizarre array of artists who were supposedly influential on him, a roster that left many of us baffled. Artists are often blind as to their actual influences. What I am asking your assistance in is offering YOUR opinion of who was influential on him. I ask that you not just say “Jeff Buckley” or “Serge Gainbourg” but cite specific songs or compositions where you hear explicit similarities.
12:
The previous posting seems to have garnered a flurry of responses on two of the RW bulletin boards: rutopia and rw.com.
I post their responses here.
A technique I use in teaching music theory from time to time, is after I’ve lectured for a while, I’ll stop, and with a straight face, draw a false conclusion to see who is actually listening:
“Soooo, two plus two is seven” and then go on. The students who are listening, interrupt me and say “hey, wait a minute.” Although my last post wasn’t exactly an example of this technique, the final line was calculated to provoke, and it did. It achieved exactly what I wanted, which was to hear a variety of opinions on who can sing Rufus’s songs. Read the comments on the previous posting as well as the ones here to see the range of responses people made. I will insert my own responses to them in the comments section.
09:
In my idealistic way, I thought “what a great idea to transcribe his piano and voice songs so that ‘everyone’ can sing them.” I met with soprano Juliana Gondek the other day to find three songs for our upcoming March 9 concert at UCLA, and we were both surprised at how so few of them work for soprano. Let me be more specific: many of his songs are really to be sung by a gay man. The way that a gay man writes lyrically about his love for another is not the way a woman would speak about her (male) lover. For a straight man to sing a Wainwright song, he would have to be quite secure in his sexuality. My guess is that most would be uncomfortable singing the gay oriented songs. And to have a lesbian sing the gay songs would be, well, peculiar. Changing the words is a traditional solution, illegal, but a possibility.
So should Rufus Wainwright’s gay-specific songs only be covered by gay men?
04:
I plan to use notated musical examples in my book, although I know many interested readers do not read music. It is my hope that they can look at the lyrics to guide them through the shapes of the notes and try to understand whatever point is being made. My question to those of you who are in this category is this:
1) would musical examples deter your from reading or buying the book? or reading a chapter where there are short musical examples?
2) would having web-based playback of the musical examples be of help?
03:
Friend and musicologist Mitchell Morris and friend and composer Mark Carlson have had to put up with my obsession about Rufus Wainwright for the past several years. Mitchell encouraged me to write a paper about RW: “present it at musicological conference, let our community discover him.” So, I started writing an article, and it seemed like a good idea to sketch out an outline as well. I showed it to Mitchell, who looked at it and said: “Roger, this is not an article, it’s a book. You should write a book!”
Having just taught a graduate seminar in analyzing the late String Quartets by Beethoven, it occurred to me that a close reading about selected RW songs could be quite interesting. As someone (a Professor of music composition at UCLA) who loves teaching people how music works, it occurred to me that writing a book about RW’s music could be an effective way for people to learn how music works, but instead of studying Mozart or Beethoven, use RW as the subject. It would ideally serve two purposes: education non-musicians about musical form and structure thereby helping them to appreciate music in greater depth; and introducing Rufus Wainwright to the Classical Music community.
This is a tricky proposition, considering that musicians have a language to communicate about musical structure and meaning, and it’s one that is not always understandable to non-musicians. Musicologist Rob Walser encouraged me to write for an ideal reader. I realized that my ideal reader is one of my current students, Nick DePinna. Nick is a young composer who straddles the classical and pop/jazz worlds; he is also someone who is as passionate about RW’s music as I am. As Nick is a student, he wants to learn about compositional technique, as well as what makes music that he likes, work.
On the other hand, I joined the official (US) Rufus Wainwright bulletin board and met an enormous community of RW enthusiasts of all ages, educations, nationalities, and opinions. I realized that too much technical description might alienate these possible readers. I know many of them will look forward to reading this book to glean whatever they can about a songwriter they cherish so much.
My brother, Andrew Bourland, co-founder of ClickZ and guru of doing business on the internet, and my partner, Daniel Shiplacoff, both have encouraged me to create this blog in the interest of getting your feedback on this project.
I hope that gives you a good picture of my goals. It’s January 3, 2006. I’m hoping to finish the book in the next year or so. Contribute if you will.
Roger Bourland
Los Angeles
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