Here is a recording of e. e. cummings reading his own “anyone lived in a howtown.”
MP3: Play audio file (howtown2.mp3)
If you find that you’d rather dance, hear the poem set to music by Kim Delmhorst. I think it would be a perfect 2-step.
MP3: Play audio file (howtown.mp3)
[Merci un violon, un jambon]
One of my composition students claimed today that she “hated” C sharp major. Puzzled, I froze for a moment thinking that perhaps the vibration of one of the octaves rattled her fillings or vibrated her skull in an annoying way. I pointed out that 7 sharps could be really bothersome and that D flat, the same key, has only 5 flats. It didn’t matter. She didn’t like C # major.
I raced to the piano and played the first verse of Rufus Wainwright’s “Poses” and the Beatles’ “Fixing a Hole” which are both in D flat (or C#). She changed her mind immediately.
Dear Ralph,*
I have gone through the material that you sent me. I have to say I don’t understand why Hector thinks you are a composer. You seem like mostly a songwriter. I wrote some songs in my day, some good ones, and some really bad ones. You can find them in the collection called “144 Songs by Charles Ives.” I told my audience in the back of that collection, that some of these songs are good examples of what NOT to do. You don’t seem to have the sense to know what is good and what is not so good. But, you’re young. I’m an old curmudgeon, and I know it. (You’ll have to excuse me if I’m direct, but that’s the way I am.)
Your parents taught you about folk music. My father encouraged me to break outside the mold–nothing was wrong, and tradition was suspect. You rebelled against your parents’ music by embracing opera. I rebelled against my hopelessly old-fashioned teacher at Yale, Horatio Parker. He was the epitome of what was wrong with so-called “modern” music. When I studied with him, I did what he wanted, but I built up such a resistance to his teaching method that I spent the rest of my career rebelling against him.
I’m not going to give you assignments. I don’t have the patience to “correct” your work. I’ll give you some advice which I think you should take.
First of all, you need to expand your tonal resources. Your use of pre-fab guitar chords in songs will keep you rooted in folk music. If that’s what you want, then fine. If you want to become a REAL composer, your chords need a hell of a lot more pepper. Sometimes your chords are so goddam pretty I wanna upchuck. I have to say, I found one chord in your song “Poses” that I want to steal. I have to say that it’s one of the best chords I’ve heard in the last 100 years:
You need to discover the power of having two keys happening at the same time. My Dad used to have us sing rounds after dinner, but everyone had to be in different keys.
Try this: you know the Christmas song “Silent Night,” sit down at the piano and play the accompaniment with the left hand in C major, and the simply harmonized melody in the right hand in D major.
Now I want you to sit at the piano playing one chord with your left hand (3 notes at least), and another with your right hand. Nowadays they are calling them “polychords.” I just call it “one chord in one hand and another in the other.”
Finally, listen to the world around you. There are always simulataneous realities that can be heard and followed. Now, I’m hearing a plane fly over, I’m hearing a child cry next door, the sound of my keyboard, and I’m hearing myself talk the words to you as I type them. That is a sound world that is entirely natural. Find a way to put it in your music.
I will contact you in a few days via instant messaging to have a real time lesson.
Get to work lad.
Charlie
——
*Ives insisted that Rufus change his name to Ralph.
My old buddy from Harvard, Peter Sellars, was invited by our Dean to visit our music task force. The committee’s task is to dream up new ways of teaching core offerings in music that can be applicable to young performers, historians, composers, and world music students. We have been encouraged to think “blue sky.” Peter is perfect, if not Mr Blue Sky himself. His discussion of the [downward] momentum of classical music and the need of music education reform was inspiring. I pushed him on who? what? and how? and his blue sky became a bit more grey. I guess that will be OUR job as how to implement it.
I asked him whether he had a blog, imagining that his could be very popular. “Ten years ago, I realized I was working all the time and getting nothing done.” I assume “working all the time” meant working on the computer, having email, and modern communication. “I rarely use the phone. When I want to see someone, I get on the plane, visit them and spend the entire day with them. I want to be in the room with them, see their eyes, and visit in person. Too much is lost in email.”
Hmm, well good for you Peter, must be nice, but wow, that sounds like a LOT of travelling. Peter is not at all full of himself. He is affable, friendly, and gives the best hugs I think I’ve ever had from a friend! Thanks for your blue sky Peter.
[Email sent to M. Rufus Wainwright from M. Claude Debussy; 19 February 2007]
Mon cher,
Do not listen to that macho cowboy Ives about changing your name. He is an idiot.
I was assigned to oversee your work on your new opera, but told not to interfere. I have been in correspondence with Ms. Brown about my insistence on passing on some advice to you directly. I’ve tried to send it to you psychically but you are not getting it, so I’ve asked for, and been granted an intervention.
Your work is really quite good for your first attempt (although I can not say that I was ever a master of that form myself). Your melodies are terrific. There are still some elements that many of us are concerned about, so we will try our best to pass on what we can for your further education while you are working on the opera. Most of us see you as a ray of hope in this bleak horizon of so-called “contemporary music.” There are others who see you as a modern day Karen Carpenter, which in their eyes is not a compliment. Don’t listen to them: they are just jealous. Composers: a touchy lot. The bottom line is to NOT write for them. Write for yourself and if it is your fancy, your audience. But don’t fall into the trap of writing for composers.
Rufus, when you compose, you tend to lay down a chord as a starting point and begin from there, roving from chord to chord via your lovely melodies. This may be because of how musicians have been trained and still are.
When analyzing music, it is common for musicians to refer to “chord progressions” meaning, a series of chords that follow each other. We teach students to be able to hear and take down as dictation these chord progressions.
As music becomes more contrapuntal, or melodically elaborate, using chordal analysis to describe the texture becomes less effective to describe what is going on harmonically. Listen to the opening of my La Mer. Screw trying to analyze the chord progression, realize that these are mode progressions. I have very consciously chosen modes that govern all of my harmony, all of my texture, and all of my melody. But instead of moving to a new chord, I move to a new mode. In the opening 3 minutes of the first movement I go through the pentatonic mode, the Rimksii scale, Mixolydian, and Lydian flat-7.
If I were able to materialize and land a teaching job in some University, I would retrain my theory students to hear in MODES instead of only chords. For instance, we look at an opening of a random Mozart piano sonata. Rarely is it just chords. With my appellation recommendations, we will refer to the area that is governed by the tonic chord, or “I” will be I/Ionian. The IV will be IV/Lydian. We look at Bach counterpoint, and if we try to think of it harmonically, there are “in” notes and “out” notes. We rationalize the “out” notes as passing tones or non-harmonic accented passing tones and so forth. Referring to harmonic regions MODALLY makes ALL of the notes “in.” The “out” notes would be, in the case of traditional Western music, chromatic neighbors.
Students would learn the difference of a chord progression that goes from:
I/Ionian – IV/Lydian
to
I/Mixolydian – IV/Mixolydian
The first harmonic progression is typical of diatonic “classical” harmony. The second is typical of 20th Century and after blues inspired chord progression. Traditional choral analysis would call this:
I – IV
and
I flat-7 – IV flat-7
In terms of information and the endless possibilities alone, the first option seems a far richer way of explaining musical passages harmonically. Yes, when we are sitting on a subdominant IV chord in a classical work in C major, the most stable notes of the collection are F, A, and C, but the JUICIEST notes are the B, and D and E, and G, and why exclude them and call them “out” notes?
Before you nod off, let me make my point: set a MODE in motion to fire your inspiration. A chord is limiting. I know that you know how to do this, as I’ve heard it in your “Agnus Dei” and in “Bloom.”
Rufus, my boy, you can invent your own modes. Sit down at the piano and find 6 notes that make you horny to write music. Or 7 notes, or 8 notes. Write them down. Name them. I hate the modern trend of set theory appellation where pitch collections are referred to as numbers. I prefer names that come from history or at least the moods they evoke. I just wrote a mode yesterday that I called “Sappho.” I found that is had a slight patchouli aroma!
I have been limited to this one email until much later. Embrace modes Rufus. Learn the power of mode progressions.
Keep up the good work, and learn from Charles, even though he can be an impossible man from time to time. He has a good heart, he is just biochemically unbalanced.
Astral hugs,
C. Debussy
[Kisses to Kate.]
[Charles Ives has been granted permission from Rosemary Brown to correspond with Rufus Wainwright and Roger Bourland via instant messaging software. This is a transcript of their correspondence from this morning.]
CI: Hello, hello. Mayday. Do you read me?
RW: Yeah, hi. I’m here. Hello Mr Ives.
CI: Call me Charlie.
RW: You can call me Rufus.
CI: I will NOT call you Rufus. What kind of composer would be called Rufus? Listen to me boy, take my advice. I told Aaron Copland early on to change his name from Kaplan to Copland. He never regretted it and told me so. Change your name to Ralph. Now that’s a man’s name. “Rufus?” that’s a dog’s name. Ralph. A good masculine name. Ralph, yeah, Ralph.
RW: But that’s not my name, and I don’t care how masculine it is or isn’t.
CI: Shut up boy. When you are working with me, you’ll take my orders like a man and say yes sir.
RW: (blushing) Yes sir. (Eyes roll to the ceiling.)
CI: Alright Ralph, I’m new to this inter-astral communication and I’m feeling a bit light headed, so let’s continue our communication later this week.
RW: I can’t wait. (Rufus offers a rude finger gesture to the computer screen.)
CI: Good to hear it. I’ll check in with you later, RALPH.
RW: Thank you Charles.
CI: Call me Charlie. Charles is too formal. Say, do you know Roger Bourland?
RW: No, I’ve heard he’s writing a book about me but I have no idea what it’s about.
CI: No, the Roger Bourland I know is a VP for Mutual of New York Insurance Company. I doubt he’s alive now. We’re old fishing buddies.
RW: Nope, I don’t know him either.
CI: Alright, well Roger-and-out!
RW: xoxoxo
CI: Huh?
RW: Goodbye Charlie.
CI: Goodbye for now.
Rosemary Brown at the piano; Franz Liszt looks on.
I was recently contacted by the famous, or infamous British weekend pianist and spiritualist, Rosemary Brown (1916-2001). Rosemary spent much of her life channeling new compositions by a variety of deceased composers including Liszt, Schumann, Beethoven, Debussy, Chopin, Grieg, and famous music writer, Sir Donald Tovey. (For more information on Rosemary, read here, here, and here.)
I know you are looking at me suspiciously thinking “contacted you?” Well, yes. I use an instant messaging program where I keep in touch with friends and colleagues in real time. Yesterday, a new name popped up on my screen: “Rose Brown” and a message that said “Roger, are you there?” I clicked the ACCEPT button and replied “who IS this? Do I know you?” Here is a transcript of our conversation.
Rose: My name is Rosemary Brown–you can call me Rose. You know me. You have my LP “A MUSICAL SEANCE” and my book “UNFINISHED SYMPHONIES.”
Roger: Aw c’mon, who is this really?
Rose: I told you, Rosemary Brown. I have come to commission you to carry on my work.
Roger: Rosemary, er, Rose, I have no interest in channeling other composers music, much less trying to convince the world that I am doing so.
Rose: I don’t want you to do that. I wish to use you as a mouthpiece of composers who are still in Fermatatory, what you refer to as Purgatory. Each of them has unfinished business before they progress onto their next spiritual step, a tempo-ness, not unlike your concept of atonement, but with less baggage. These spirit-beings do not have the skill or power to materialize on your planet, but they have been able to adapt to your internet simply by using their minds. I am not typing on a keyboard to you right now, I am envisioning the words and they are appearing on your screen. I have been appointed the coordinator for this project. We tested you last year when you almost unwittingly began to channel Hector Berlioz for the purpose of offering Rufus Wainwright composition lessons. We were pleased with your work and were authorized to transfer those responsibilities to Charles Ives.
Roger: You mean it was YOU behind all that? Like Stravinsky and Le Sacre, I was but the vessel through which that information passed. I simply entered a trance state and wrote down what came through. Wow, I’ll have to think about this.
Rose: No, you do not have an option. You WILL be the mouthpiece of this stranded band of composers. I will authorized communication channels for them to contact you directly on your computer. I know that Mr Ives has received Rufus’s package of materials and will be in touch with him directly. I’ve asked him to CC you and me as well. I know that you will take this duty seriously. If you need to contact me, google my name and I will get it, as I have a direct feed from Google (they bartered with me).
Tomorrow Is Such A Long Time
If today was not an endless highway
If tonight was not a crooked trail
If tomorrow wasn’t such a long time
then lonesome would mean nothing to you at all
Ah but only if my own true love is waitin’
Yes and if I could hear her heart a softly poundin’
only if she were lying by me
would I rest in my bed once again
I can’t see my reflection in the mirror
I can’t speak the sounds that show no pain
I can’t hear the echoes of my footsteps
and can’t remember the sound of my own name
Ah but only if my own true love is waitin’
Yes and if I could hear her heart a softly poundin’
only if she were lying by me
would I rest in my bed once again
There’s beauty in the silver singin’ river
There’s beauty in the sunlight in the sky
But none of these, and nothing else
can steal the beauty
that I remember in my true love’s eyes
Ah but only if my own true love is waitin’
Yes and if I could hear her heart a softly poundin’
only if she were lying by me
would I rest in my bed once again
© Bob Dylan
Here is a fascinating 8 minute animation about natural history by Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer. Reminding me of Monty Python, I wonder whether having a science teacher like Svankmajer who had this kind of a sensibility might not have made me more curious about science as a lad.
I couldn’t tell by the credits who did the music, but you’ll clearly hear a 12-tone theme that hits us throughout the whole video: count ‘em, all 12. The composer doesn’t seem interested in the inversion or retrograde, rather he wants us to make friends with his original set. Ok, ok, uncle, I’m friends with it already!
[via Ursi]
In America, we are “celebrating” presidents day, which, I guess, combines George Washington and Abraham Lincoln’s birthday in one weekend. Hmm, why no Grover Cleveland day?
I have a great idea, and I bet if I put if up for a national referendum, it would pass: Let’s forget about “President’s Day” and make it Valentines Weekend, where all employees get Friday AND Monday off. Couples can do romantic stuff for four days, singles who wish they weren’t can line up dates, and singles who are happy to be so can do whatever they want.
Let’s make more holiday time for love. Presidents? eh, who cares.
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