Uh, yeah. This website alleges to have “found” a cassette of a lost Beatle album. Whatever. But it IS a wonderful mashup of Beatles tracks put together in fun new ways. Instant Beatles! Shazaam! Link -via YesButNoButYes
Young Maurice Ravel
My Dear Rufus
I heard your preview aria from your new opera and am quite pleased at your new direction.
Might I remind you to please not be overly influenced by Philip Glass, and his habit of getting “stuck” in one register when composing for the keyboard. Look at the piano music I have written and especially Claude’s brilliant Preludes. In fact, I encourage you to set aside some time to compose your own set of preludes, much like Billy Joel did.
I hope that your entire opera does not “hover” as much as this little jewel does. I encourage you to explore textures that you have never worked in. Learn how to compose a scherzo; a vivace section, like Vivaldi would; a gripping allegro; a captivating fugato (I don’t care about fugues for the most part), but especially get away from the omnipresent homophonic writing that exemplifies so much of your attempts at bridging classical music. You have a terrific sense of melody and harmony, but only a so-so sense of counterpoint. Learn how to make harmonic motion turn into a sea of individual voices. Discover other strong textures besides the Kleinian “wall of sound.”
Critics may tar you with the same brush that they did with Claude’s “Pelleas” — complaining about a lack of action. Be strong, my boy, be strong. Don’t let good reviews get you fat, and bad reviews get you down. Trust your momentum.
Best of luck with the premieres of your new opera. A very exciting time, indeed!
Hugs
Maurice Ravel
PS: And I love the new beard!
Dear Rufus
I am so proud and happy for you and your recent compositions. I heard your new Shakespeare Sonnets–they remind me of some of my own songs. You struggle with a desire for an old-time, folky sense of harmony fighting with being more harmonically adventurous. Meld the two my boy.
I have avoided sitting in on your opera rehearsals, wanting, rather, to be surprised. Like me, you don’t seem like a concerto or operatic composer. You have been, to date, a song writer. Nonetheless, I anxiously await your new opera, to hear your foray into that realm, and know that I will be cheering for you.
With hugs from the other side,
Franz Schubert
PS: Charles Tomlinson Griffes sends his love.
My favorite spot to blog is in my basement, on a couch, laptop in my lap, with the two dogs next to me under a tattered black chenille throw. It is quiet, centered, and comfy. To my right is the door that goes into a little hallway, the laundry room, and then back upstairs. It is through this door that composers — mostly dead ones, who have decided that they need to channel something through me — come. I haven’t bothered you with every incident, but will try to catch you up from time to time now that I have some time.
-
A few months back I was checking my email when I smelled patchoulli wafting through the door. Half expecting John Lennon, I was happy to see my old friend Hector Berlioz.
RB: Hector! So good to see you. What’s with the patchoulli?
HB: I have smelled it in your baths and thought it, well, exotic.
RB: (lol) Well, I like it, but some people think it smells like old hippy.
HB: It is an ancient scent my friend. Enjoy it. I come to you today with a very specific mission. How is your Rufus Wainwright book going?
RB: Well, I haven’t touched it but I’m planning on getting back to it right after the holiday.
HB: Finish it my boy while it is still fresh.
RB: The only thing I have done is to remove all my Rufus analyses from my blog. They’ll be back in the book, expanded, and folded into the main themes of the book.
HB: Do you still love his music?
RB: Yes I do. He is a brilliant song writer. Am I as obsessed with his music as I was when I wrote most of the book? No. That’s why it’s important I get it down before “the thrill is gone.”
HB: Very well. I am busy writing a new song for Edith Piaf. Harriet is well and sends you her love.
- Roger: Dude, I thought you died not too long ago. Maharishi: (Smiling with a white flower in his hand.) I am standing in front of you am I not? R: Uh, kinda. Please, come in.
(MMY floats across the doorstep, the way the South Park characters ambulate.)
M: A very beautiful home you have here. R: Why, thank you Maharishi M: Call me Maha R: Got it, call me Roho M You are trapped in the physical world and you are NOT a wise man. R: (Taken aback) I don’t know what you mean. M: You went out of town recently. You got out of your element, your community and your way of life, and you became intolerant. R: I beg your pardon Maha? M: I scanned your brain the entire time. Here are some exact quotes:
Ugh, I can’t believe how much cologne that man has on. Look at those beautiful teenagers smoking, what idiots. Can you believe he ate that entire plate of food? This person is trapped in 1972. Your view of the world is so myopic. Your taste in clothes seems to have stopped in 1973. It is so beautiful here!
M: So, with the exception of that last line, you are an intolerant, un-evolved dolt in addition to not being a wise man.
I stood up, and he disappeared And where he was standing, George Harrison appeared, playing a sitar, the gourd cradled in the hollow of his bare foot. His eyes looked really dilated, which made him look really cute. He didn’t say anything, just looked up at me for a few seconds, bobbed his head a few times with the music, and then went back into his inner world. I closed my eyes and nodded forward.
The door opened and my assistant walked in:
“Your 11 o’clock appointment is here.”
“Send him in Moneypenny” I thought to myself. “Someday I will learn to tolerate all the shortcomings of my earth co-habitants.”
“Excuse me?” she said.
“Send him in Moneypenny.” Her eyes glanced to to the ceiling.
The Beatles (George Harrison) – Blue Jay Way from the Magical Mystery Tour movie
I was puzzled to see the name “Scarlatti” on my calendar this morning for an eleven o’clock. My assistant, who can be a bear when it comes to scaring away people that I don’t need to see, said it was impossible to deny this man. She said he was a man with a strong Italian accent and finally agreed for a half hour appointment.
I began to think whether I’ve had students whose last names were the same as composers. I couldn’t think of any. Beethoven, Mozart, Berlioz, Stravinsky, Puccini, Verdi, Stockhousen, Berio, Josquin, and so on. Although I hear there are a pair of Bartok twins who are famous in porn, and of course Wagner is rather common. Poor John Adams’ google rankings have probably plummeted since the John Adam mini-series aired this season. But Scarlatti was in the first category. Could this be a great-great grandson of THE Domenico Scarlatti? Pshaw, of course not.
Promptly at 11 am, the door burst open and an elderly gentleman, or wait, he has a powdered wig and as he raced towards me with his hand extended, a waft of stench came over me that made me involuntarily wince, and then went into auto-correct mode and smiled and shook his sweaty hand. It was Domenico Scarlatti.
He began speaking in Italian at a fast clip until I grabbed him and told him that I don’t speak Italian. He smiles, and raised both arms in the air as to embrace me, and then spouted out what was probably five single spaced pages of text, seemingly without a breath. I blinked. My memory is not good enough to remember his exact words, but the gist of it was the following.
“I have become the Salieri of the Baroque. It was JS Bach who was the pinnacle of that era in the opinion of the present day, and this is unfair. We teach our students Bach this and Bach that as if no one else mattered. Listen to this.”
He sat down and dashed off one his little binary firey sonatas with great passion and power.
“Now tell me THAT is not worth studying!”
My mouth was still open, and I realized that I was staring at him. I snapped out of it.
“Mr Salieri, er, Scarlatti, I agree whole-heartedly that you SHOULD be taught and valued more. Why, I could imagine an entire class to playing, arranging and studying your work.”
He looked at me, and his face became a huge smile. Once again he raised his arms as though gesturing towards the heavens, and he disappeared.
The door opened and my assistant came in and said, “Your 11 o’clock is here shall I send him in?”
And in came my student for his weekly composition lesson.
“Should I come back?” he said.
“No, no, I was just daydreaming…”
[I am sitting quietly doing my morning Sudoku puzzle, drinking coffee. It's 5:30 in the morning. I look up and smell the air: tobacco? patchoulli? old scotch? And an ovoid figure hovers into the room and slowly comes into focus. It is Igor Stravinsky, with sun glasses in a kind of safari outfit with sunglasses, smoking with a cigarette holder. He steps down from the cloudlet he appears to be standing on and sits next to me on the couch.]
RB: Igor? IS: Aha! you know who to pronounce my name! (”eager”) Yes, I hope I have not startled you. RB: Well, a bit yes, but, I’d rather you not smoke in here. IS: (looking incredulous) You silly man, what a silly thing to say. I’ve come to encourage you. RB: Encourage me? IS: Yes. You are doing very well. You are a bit simple for my tastes, but good none the less. I have even given you some of your ideas. In fact, many of your favorite parts of your musical I have given you. RB: Oh yeah, whatever. IS: Do not mock me. RB: Oh, so now it’s that I am the vessel through which you pass? IS: Yes but you are not a very good channel. You put your own ideas in which is very annoying to me. RB: Uh, sorry. I uh…. IS: I must say that I am looking forward to helping you with your next two operas, the 2nd Thornton Wilder chamber opera and your big Mexican opera — whatever her name is. RB: Yeah, I’m going to call that one DUARTE’S WIVES. IS: That will be your most famous work. RB: Oh really? Well that’s nice to know. I look forward to it. Gosh, thanks Mr Stravinsky. I need to finish my Rufus Wainwright book first though. IS: I don’t understand your attraction for that man. RB: That’s because you’re not alive. IS: Yes I am. RB: No dude. You’re dead. You may have this floaty spirit body sitting here, but you are dead. You can’t get goose bumps anymore, or cry, or dance, or sing. IS: Well you don’t have to rub it in.
[With that final remark, he stubs out his cigarette on my couch, stands up, blows me a smoky air kiss and floats out the door. I return to my Sudoku puzzle.]
Cher Rufus,
I hovered over your Judy Garland concert. What a spectacle! You are such a good boy, such a gay boy, and full of life and music. I cannot impose my old fashioned French aesthetic on you, so I applaud you Rufus. Bravo!
Your old, old friend,
Hector Berlioz
PS: I snuck a peak at Bourland’s Rufus book, and it is really quite wonderful. If he’d just get off his behind and finish it, I’m sure many would love to read it.
Hector Berlioz: Happy fall Roger, it has been a long time since we have chatted! Roger Bourland: Hector! What a surprise! What brings you here? Rufus news? HB: I trust you are attending his performance of the Judy Garland tribute at the Hollywood Bowl? RB: Oh yes, I’ve had tickets for a year. We’re going with Frank and Terry. I just hope it doesn’t get rained out, as a storm is coming this way tonight. HB: I have connections, and will make sure that doesn’t happen. RB: Gee, must be nice to be dead. All the connections you must have boggles the mind. HB: Er, yes. Actually, Harriet and I have had a marvelous summer traveling all over this part of the Milky Way. That green button, you know, the one that humans can’t touch, wow! The places it can take you are, well, I can’t tell you, but you have much to look forward to after you’re dead. RB: I can wait. Now, why are you here? HB: It’s about that article you wrote about my fellow countryman, M. Boulez. It was not very sensitive of you. RB: Sensitive? HB: You say you can’t imagine him crying, or anyone else, listening to his music. Now, I must admit that I have never cried over his music, but he is French, and gosh darn it, you can’t insult my colleague like that. RB: Is that an insult? I can’t imagine Lucky Pierre giving a rat’s ass whether anyone cried over his music or not. HB: Well, that may be so, but I know, and this is a secret––don’t tell anyone––I have found him, two times, playing Rufus Wainwright’s “Dinner at Eight” and sobbing profoundly. Now THAT seems like someone who is in touch with his emotions. RB: Gosh Hector, I guess you’re right. He must have feelings after all. HB: Well, I didn’t want to make too big of a deal of it, but after all, he IS Pierre Boulez and he deserves a great deal of respect. RB: I imagine he already has it from the 2% of the French population that adores his music. HB: Now don’t get smart with me young man. RB: [laughing] I won’t, I’ll dig out my “I prefer Boulez” button and wear it all week. HB: I’ll bring you up to date with my lessons for Rufus, but I wish to enjoy my last few days of Indian summer as you American’s call it. RB: Ah! I look forward to it. I hope he has been a good student. HB: [yelling] Yes dear, I’ll come to do the dishes in a moment I’m just finishing up with Bourland. Yes he has, but I have to go now, so, more later. Hugs to Daniel. RB: And to Harriet.
Cher Hector,
My true nature as a hermit coupled with Rufus Wainwright’s hectic touring schedule has led me to the conclusion that I am not the right teacher for him. i am happy to hear that your opium habit is now in the past and would like you to reconsider taking him back as you have clearly done a great job thus far. And, I must confess, I have a very hard time being around him as I am so, so attracted to him. I wish I had a real body so that I could touch him, and that desire gets in the way. So, I am fated to stay here in purgatory, loner that I am. I know the gods wanted me to deal with my refusal to teach my craft, but I will have to try it out on someone else, someone not gay, not cute, not distracting to me.
Please send my love to Harriet, and do send me via cloud-mail, your latest piano piece. I can’t believe that you have taken up piano composition!
Je t’embrace,
Maurice
[Painting: Harvey Dunn, "Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique" (1918) ]
