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!

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 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) ]

Rufus is writing words for a new aria at his desk in a chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland. He looks up and out the window at the amazing view. So far away from New York, and London and Paris. Deep breath. But he’s stuck on a word. “What rhymes with ‘choose it’? lose it, moose it, goose it, hmmm, toos boose, AH! MassaCHUSETTS!’ He writes the word down with abandon. Suddenly, he hears a hum. Well, maybe it’s more like a whir. He turns around quickly to see something disappear from around the corner.

“HELLO?!” Something falls in the bathroom. His heart beating frantically he walks down the hall trying to hear what is going on. “Must be a rat. Shit.” He gathers his strength, resolving that it is only a rat, and marches down the hall and into the bathroom and he jumps back in shock. There is a translucent silver orb hovering above the open toilet seat with what looks to be feathers wafting down from it.

Ravel: Sorry Rufus, I had to take a pee.

(Rufus looks in amazement as he sees a teeny tiny version of Maurice Ravel inside the sphere zips up his fly and turn towards him. As if the enlarge button was pressed, Ravel’s body gets bigger and bigger until his smiling face has filled the basketball sized sphere still floating above the toilet, which suddenly and unexplainably flushes. The whir sound becomes more pronounced as it hovers closer to Rufus until it stops, about 2 feet in front of his face. Maurice’s eyes flash down, and then back up.

Rufus: Maurice! Did you just check me out?

Ravel: We never had such opportunities in my time. But never mind, I’ve come to give you just a little lesson. Something has been on my mind and I need to share it with you.

Rufus: Oh good! Is it about orchestration?

Ravel: Well, to an extent. Uh, let’s go back into the living room.

Rufus walks back down the hallway with the silver orb close behind.

Ravel: I have never had interest in writing the kinds of songs you write. And so my words are to the other side of Rufus that wishes to compose in the classical tradition.

Your accompaniments are increasingly becoming CHORD CHORD CHORD CHORD CHORD CHORD CHORD CHORD… My point being, there is no counterpoint. All of YOUR notes are just notes in the chord. I imbue each note of my chords with a life of its own. I imagine one melodic line to be a mercurial fairy that leaves trails of shimmering gold dust in its path. Another line is the Nile winding its way through the Egyptian land. The next line is a frantic sperm that has only one thing on his mind. Another line is the wise old philosopher who has much to say, albeit very slowly. And another line is a gaggle of geese in flight. And, and, and..

Do you see my boy? Each line needs to be its own creature. Its own personality. Its own timbre. Its own register. Its own metabolism. Keeping these notes stuck in CHUNK CHUNK chords is like keeping those poor little creatures on a chain gang. I mean, it does have an effect, but I favor counterpoint. And I don’t mean fugues and such, I mean a multplicity of lines occuring simultaneously. Charlie Ives told me the other day that he didn’t think anyone could ever really hear more than four things going on at once. That may be true, but I imagine it varies from person to person.

Are you with me?

Rufus: Shakes his head. Uh, yeah. That’s a lot to take in. I mean, you know, I haven’t really started writing multi-part music like that yet. I guess I’m still piano based.

Ravel: As was I, but you must open up your inner ear to make that step. Get away from the piano. Slow your time world down. You want to have instant music. Yes, inspiration can come in a flash, but it must be balanced by setting it carefully, as a jeweler would set a fine piece, or a watchmaker executes his craft. You are so impatient. Slow down. Find the persona in each voice.

That’s all.

The sphere swelled and collapsed. A piece of paper fluttered to the floor. It appeared to be a Chinese fortune cookie fortune.

Perseverance furthers.

MR: Hello Rufus.

RW: (Startled) Who are you? You look very familiar.

MR: I am Maurice Ravel at your age. [34]

RW: Ah yes, Hector told me to expect you. He said that you would continue with my composition lessons. Very pleased to meet you sir.

MR: Please call me Maurice–not the English pronunciation “moh-rus” but the French, “mo-rees” with the accent on “rees.”

RW: Alright, Maurice, I can’t tell you what a relief it is being rid of that fag basher Ives. What are you going to teach me today?

MR: I don’t think you need teaching at all, you are fine just the way you are.

RW: (blushing) Ah c’mon, I’m nowhere near you in my craft.

MR: True.

RW: Hey, you didn’t have to agree quite so quickly.

MR: I really have very little interest in teaching, much less cloning or imparting my own musical language to another composer. Other composers need to be who they are. So, you are who you are, and that is just fine.

RW: Teach me.

MR: No.

RW: TEACH ME.

MR: No! [long pause] Alright, but just a little.

RW: (Turns his eyes to the ceiling, lets out a sigh, grabs a pencil and lights a cigarette) Ok, ready.

MR: I have just finished a new piano piece, “Tombeau de Couperin.” It is just what you need to study in terms of letting your piano technique continue to evolve. Those early songs of yours like “The Money Song” and “The Bela Song” have an attractive sophistication that your later piano accompaniments don’t. I know, you’ve been focusing on your VOICE. Your voice will fade as you age, but your piano technique can serve you well right up to the end. You’ve been favoring the “guitar-piano” style where your accompaniments are akin to guitar strumming. Fine for a while, but I want more.

I’d like for you to compose a set of piano preludes, each in a different character. Start with a Book I, a set of 12. I’d like you to study the following pieces, and procure several different performances:

1. Chopin: Preludes Op.28
2. Debussy: Complete Preludes
3. Debussy: Complete Etudes
4. Scriabin: Complete Preludes
5. Messaien: Catalogue d’oiseaux

I’ll give you a year to do it. I’ll pop in from time to time when I see that you’ve finished one.

RW: For solo piano right?

MR: Yes.

RW: This sounds like a great project, and something that will distract me from the opera.

MR: Well it’s late here, and I need to get going so I can have my walk in the park.

RW: This late?

MR: But of course.

RW: Oh, duhh. Got it. Have a nice cruise Maurice.

MR: Good luck on the piece.

RW: Good luck on your walk!

Cher Hector,

Please make that mongoose Charles Ives go away. He’s a jerk and really not that good of a teacher. He’s constantly popping up on my computer screen, my television, and even the GPS in my car. I can’t take it anymore. Please tell him to go away and leave me alone.

He insists on calling me Ralph because it’s more manly (and who cares what that is) and more American. Please! He has too many problems with himself to have the wherewithal to teach anyone else anything.

He kept calling passages in my music “fairy music” or “fairy dust” or “poofter tunes.” He screamed at me for about 5 minutes after hearing my new song for the upcoming Disney movie, MEET THE ROBINSONS. Please M. Berlioz, send me someone else!

Your Rufus

[Response from Hector Berlioz floated down from the ceiling while Rufus was composing at the piano. Rufus grabs the paper, looks up at the ceiling and all around--no one--and reads:]

My Dear Rufus,

My apologies for the unusual communication, but I’m having a “treatment” for my opium addiction and can’t bilocate at the moment. I responded as quickly as I could.

I’ll be sending you an new teacher this week, my fellow countryman, Maurice Ravel. He is very different than Mr Ives, and like you, he’s, well, like you. Maurice will contact you through your instant messaging program. His handle is bolero69. He is rather shy so you may have to draw him out. Let me know how the lessons go.

Je t’embrasse,

Hector

[Rufus turns on his computer, opens his instant messaging program, and BLAMO! Charles Ives' face appears on his screen.]

CI: Hey Ralph! (Ives puts his nose up against the camera, and then squashes his face against the screen, looking rather silly.) Ain’t this new fangled technology somethin’?

RW: (Laughs in his machine gun giggle.)Yeah, uh huh. Hi Charlie, you surprised me showing up like this.

CI: It’s time for your lesson.

RW: Ok, let me put out my cigarette and get a pencil.

CI: Your non-romantic lyrics are really quite attractive. I knew your grandfather and admired his writing greatly. I am happy to see you have inherited his way with words.

RW: Thanks! “Non-romantic?”
CI: I applaud you for taking on the BLOOM commission and setting texts that were not your own. It brought out a new facet in your writing. I encourage you to set other’s words from time to time for the rest of your life. It invigorates your own lyric writing.

Thoreau was a great musician. The rhythm of his prose, were there nothing else, would determine his value as a composer. He was divinely conscious of the enthusiasm of Nature, the emotion of her rhythms and the harmony of her solitude. In their greatest moments the inspiration of both Beethoven and Thoreau express profound truth and deep sentiment, but the intimate passion of it, the storm and stress of it, affected Beethoven in such a way that he could not but be forever showing it and Thoreau that he could not expose it.

RW: Ok, but I’m not sure what you’re getting at.

CI: Nature dislikes to explain as much as to repeat. It is conceivable that what is unified form to the author, or composer, may of necessity be formless to his audience. Initial coherence today may be dullness tomorrow, probably because formal or outward unity depends so much on repetition, sequences, antitheses, paragraphs with inductions and summaries.

RW: A great song has blood and guts and life experience and that you really have to lay it all down on the line. Music is fun and wonderful and happy, but it also requires pain, and you have to go through the pain in order to feel happy again.

CI: Exactly! But I mean real musical compositions, not just airy fairy songs. Real pieces! Manly pieces! When are you going to compose an instrumental composition Ralph?

RW: I tend to listen to songs as pieces of music. You know the famous story of Bob Dylan and John Lennon listening to either Bob’s or the Beatles’ new record. And Dylan’s going, “Yeah man, just listen to the lyrics,” and Lennon’s going “No, just listen to the sound…” and I’m with John Lennon on that.

CI: The sound, yes, that’s a good way of putting it. That’s what I have always thought about in my music, the sound. [pause] But one of the great disappointments in my life is being able to hear so little of my work. I worked so hard for so many years, er, uh, until 1926.

RW: Wow! You wrote all that music that music in that amount of time? You’re like superhuman.

CI: Why yes, I… (Harmony walks in)

HI: Charlie are you telling those fibs again? Don’t let him tell you he stopped writing in 1926, that’s hogwash. (She spits on the floor.)

CI: Well, he shuffles his papers, I wrote MOST of it before then.

HI: Whatever you say dear.

CI: (Looking back at Rufus) Why are you not having a woman sing your songs?

RW: I don’t understand.

CI: So many of them are about men, so I assume they are to be sung by a woman and you just haven’t found the right voice? or what?

RW: I wrote them for me to sing, I never really think about other people singing them. I mean I do after the fact, but not when I write them.

CI: But the words are about men.

RW: Charlie, I’m gay. Duh, pick up the clue phone dude.

CI: No! [long pause]

RW: Hello? [long pause]

CI: Good luck to ya fella. I’ve gotta go, I hear Harmony calling me for dinner.

RW: If you can’t deal with it, then I think it’s best we discontinue these lessons.

(Charlie’s face turns, shrinks to a point, and disappears.

RW: Scumbag!

This conversation is purely fictional, based upon and inspired by the personalities, interviews with, and the writings of Rufus Wainwright and Charles Ives.

I’ve been watching and listening to your recent scena and before Harmony and I go off to dinner, I need to point something out that will help it. Too much of the scene is the same dynamic. Give us a section that is breathtakingly quiet, and a section with a ear-blasting volume ol’ Berlioz would envy. Apply the same thing to the registral shape of your overall scene. Right now, you are flooding the bass, baritone, tenor and alto range. There is not a lot of highs. Strip away the bass for a while. It can become fatiguing. You’ve done these things before. I’ve heard them in several of your songs. You need to do it to this scene.

Charlie

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.

[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.]