I started this blog, Red Black Window, in Jan. 2006 as an open work-in-progress for my book on the music of Rufus Wainwright. Although it still has that component, I couldn’t keep the blog to only that component. I changed my subtitle to Roger Bourland writes about music and life. That seemed to give me plenty of latitude. The fact that I was on sabbatical from teaching from April through September afforded me time to give extra time to this blog. Now that school has started again, my posts may be a bit clumpy, but I trust that I will get a rhythm going with my new reality.
Because the fellow scheduled to play Mozart in my new chamber opera, MOZART AND THE GREY STEWARD, is having visa difficulties, we have decided to put off the performance to 2008. So, I will now put a fermata over the project until January.
That leaves me two months to finish my book on Rufus Wainwright. As I look at the table of contents I had originally planned, the book would likely be 600- 700 pages long. I don’t think the world needs that for the moment. I will scale back the number of pieces that I’ll be discussing, and revisit EVERYTHING I’ve written so far. As I revisit each analytic essay I cover, I will remove the corresponding posts on this blog. Because of copyright issues, I won’t be including full transcriptions of his piano music, but rather largish chunks. I like to imagine that some of my readers are traditional musicians who may only have a passing knowledge of who RW is and will sit down at the piano and read through it themselves.
I have learned from Ray Knapp and his use of online musical clips, that I can have the best of both worlds by having a physical book with supporting clips online. (Ray has two new terrific books on the American musical.) So, despite my preference for having this book just appear serially in my blog, I’ve heard my readers loud and clear that they want a physical book. Susan McClary has encouraged me to approach a well known publisher for this book, but I must admit that I’m tempted to give it to Yelton Rhodes Music and keep it in the family.
This just in from Ursi’s blog: the Thai Elephant Orchestra can now be heard on Mulatta Records courtesy of the instigators, Dave Soldier and Richard Lair. (Warning: the first sound is a trumpeting elephant, so be ready!)
I’m fairly sure that dogs do not have a sophisticated sense of time. Discussing something in the past tense with a dog is a waste of time. It will scan your sentence waiting for a word it knows, and respond accordingly. “Cody! Remember when I told you that I we weren’t going for a WALK?” And he would leap into the air with excitement, acknowledging the one word he knows, “walk.”
All too often we use the future tense with our dogs by saying: Fido, wanna go for a walk? Fido leaps into the air, and you respond, “Ok, but in a few minutes.” They have no idea what you mean. I’ve settled on, “you have to wait” and the dog lies down near you and waits, knowing that his fantasy, the WALK, would be happening in the near future.
After the walk, saying “did you enjoy the walk” just doesn’t translate.
[Photo: "Cody ponders the future" by Daniel Shiplacoff"]
When a teacher faces a class full of Freshmen music majors, s/he doesn’t always know what level they are. I made a syllabus for the new music theory book I’m using (Clenndining, Marvin: Norton) and passed it out to the class. After the 2nd week, it was clear that the students could go faster. So, I cut out weeks three and four and accelerated to the fifth week. The students seemed shocked when I announced to them “you’re smarter than this, I want to push you, not bore you.”
As Alan Watts once wrote: “spontaneity is the principle of the Tao.” College students need to learn from square one to go with the flow.
This is not one of the Flying Burrito Bros greatest songs, no, it’s just a lazy ol’ blues song. Why they chose THIS song for a video, and not something from the first album, I’ll never know. But check out Gram Parsons. For you Rufus fans out there, you’ll see a similar geekyness between Rufus and Gram.
Gram seems so gay in this video (he was not as far as I know). The curly head guy is Bernie Leadon, later with the Eagles. Chris Hillman (bass) and Michael Clarke (drums) were both former Byrds. Halfway through the video you’ll see Sneaky Pete Kleinow playing pedal steel.
One of the challenges in being a composer is that I put off things “until I finish the piece.” Those things can include email correspondence that doesn’t seem urgent and builds up to 100s of emails before I realize how overwhelmed I am. Being obsessed with working on a piece of music, I sometimes dash off poorly thought out emails in hopes keeping up, only to find later that my short comments were completely misunderstood and now I have to do damage control. Bookkeeping tasks (we use Quicken) get months behind; my sales tax for my publishing company is late. I now know myself well enough to put all my bills on automatic payment so that when I’m in my composing state, I don’t have to worry about late payments.
The other thing composers have to do from time to time is to not go out to parties or movies. Or go to beautiful places and stay in your room and compose, not doing the normal tourist thing. People assume we are just being anti-social, but if they knew how much work it is to put down a gazillion inspired notes, they would better understand. I also think about the friends I’ve not seen for a long time, and miss, and worry that they think I don’t love them any more.
For the past week, I’ve been gathering every program, review, piece of lost music, academic or professional achievement that I’ve done in the past 23 years and putting them in order and typing them into my RB database, with the intent of exporting my career in bibliographic format. Sheesh, what a lot of work, and as I said the other day, a lot of memories. I’ll only have to do this once. But it’s overdue and I’ve got to get it done so that I can get my life back. [This has nothing to do with composition, rather, a promotion at work, which is always a good thing.] When I finish this project, I’m hoping to take a composition break, and just teach and write words for a while.
sigh…
[Photo: "Waiting for the Rain to Stop" by Roger Bourland]
Speaking of music the US didnt’ get to hear, take a listen to Rosetta Tharpe performing “Didn’t It Rain”––in the rain––on the British TV special “Blues and Gospel Train” in 1964. I wonder whether she ever did a duet with B.B. King. Probably not, if she did, they’d sell be selling it at Starbucks.
This is one of those songs that has infected my brain and sometimes just won’t get out. It is SOOO catchy I should warn you that you might really like it a lot. I have changed the words and sing it to my parrots: “Aiko is a bird, she’s the goodest bird, she’s the goodest bird in the whole wide world; Aiko is a bird, if there ever was a bird, she’s the bird, bird, bird, bird, bird bird birrrrd. Aiko is a good bird, she’s a good good bird. She’s is the bird, she’s the bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird.” Do I have a career as a lyrics rewriter? No? I didn’t think so. Ah well, take a listen anyway and be ready to laugh. This clip is from SOUTH PARK The Movie.
I just watched the terrific documentary about Joni Mitchell called “Woman of Heart and Mind.” In it there is a brief discussion about her complex harmonies. I read years ago that she doesn’t have any idea what these chords are called technically. She has alway explored alternate tunings on the guitar and has subsequently found a new kind of harmonic progressions. She speaks directly in the movie about her chords, saying something like “I call them ‘chords of inquiry:’ chords are like questions. [...] Each chord reflects my emotion at the moment. Sometimes it takes weeks to answer them…’
This image of chords as living or gravitational entities is one that resonates with me. Yes, we teach young musicians to learn how to label such chords, but the Mitchell chordal syntax had no such alphanumeric names at their inception. There is very little traditional functional harmony; her chords function as emotion conveyers, made to amplify her poetry, and from time to time exorcise her pain. No music theory class was ever necessary for her brilliant compositions. Tonight I realized that Joni Mitchell is one of the great composers of the 20th century.
• • •
I don’t know how this slipped by me, but Joni Mitchell is now Dr. Joni Mitchell having received an honorary doctorate degree from McGill University:
After receiving her honorary Doctor of Music degree last night, Joni Mitchell urged McGill University music students not to ignore emotion in favour of intellect. Breaking from the solemnity of McGill University’s convocation ceremony, where she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree last night, the legendary singer-songwriter adopted a Bugs Bunny voice and said, “From here on in, everybody will have to say, ‘Eh, what’s up, doc?’ ” Turning serious, Mitchell spent most of her brief speech urging the graduates of the music faculty to “think about balance in art,” and not to ignore music’s emotional side in favour of its intellectual content. “The music I like is a balance of opposites,” she said.
Earlier in the day, at a McGill symposium devoted to her art and music, Mitchell delighted fans by attending the event’s closing round-table discussion at Redpath Hall. Meeting well-wishers and media before taking a seat in the front row, she addressed her reason for attending the ceremony: “It’s recognition for my total work,” she said. “That’s why I’m here.”
Asked whether she likes to talk about her work, she said music is a way of conveying emotion directly.
“To put it through the intellectual process does it a disservice, like translating from any language into another language. You lose something in the translation,” she said. [From ratboy's anvil]
Despite Joni’s request, I doubt that music theorists of the not-too-distant future will be able to resist trying to codify and tame her harmonic language.
Bluegrass meets the Jetsons! The US got short-changed not hearing the Swedish guitar-group, The Spotnicks. This cover of “Orange Blossome Special,” a song I got to know as a Bluegrass number, would have been a nice companion song to “Wipe Out.” (This is a Videoclip from a French-Belgian TV show. Contributed by thundernest and via Mr. Dante.)
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