The final project for Music History, Culture and Creativity is to orchestrate a small piano piece by Stravinsky, Satie or Schumann. The students were furious at me, especially because papers and other final exams were happening at the same time.

I remember the first time I tried to “think” for orchestra–my brain hurt. Then after a while, you starting hearing it–bit by bit. Most non-musicians think it’s magical to “hear” music in your head, and in a sense, I guess it is. But it is a technique that we try to teach our students in conservatorites and music schools around the world. Some have good ears, and some don’t.

After all the kvetching and belly-aching, I was thrilled at the ability of my students to come through. 75% of them used Sibelius or Finale music notation software, and the rest notated by hand. I’ve got most of them trained to supply dynamics, tempo, phrasing and articulation, so I feel good that I’m making them THINK about the sound.

Many, I fear, were just afraid that they might not be able to do it. They would be penalized if they didn’t, so they did. And it wasn’t so bad after all!

I’m not going to tell you I have any amazing orchestrators quite yet, but by Jove, I think they’ve got it!

Diary entry:

This is a busy time of the year for teachers. Final lectures, final exams, final meetings, deadlines for various and sundry things, parties, and grading papers.

I lectured last week, the last week or the term, in MUSIC HISTORY, CULTURE and CREATIVITY about orchestration. The class must orchestrate a little piano piece I’ve assigned. They have a choice of the Ravel “Pavanne,” a movement from Stravinsky’s “Les cinq doigts,” a Schumann children’s piece, and the first Gymnopedie of Satie. On Tuesday I orchestrated two of my own piano pieces using SIbelius notation software. I had the piano piece already copied, so orchestrating involved copying, and filtering layers of the music and assigning and adapting those lines to the instruments in the orchestra. That process proved to be impressive to some and terrifying to others because of the additional terror of not knowing the software.

On Thursday, to balance the technologially-based demonstration on Tuesday, I passed out four blank orchestral pages and had students orchestrate the Stravinsky “Moderato” (from the same set) in class using only paper and pencil while the faculty and TAs walked around and guided them through the process. This was important because a number of students confessed to being terrified of having to write for orchestra. It’s true: I remember the first time I ever wrote for orchestra, having to “stretch” your brain to think for that many instruments, and it kinda hurts in the process. By the end of the class, I’m certain many felt more at ease.

My writing effort of late has been focused on editing and writing our department’s self-review––an exercise required of all academic departments. It is an interesting process to think about what we (the UCLA Dept of Music) are as a department: our strengths and weaknesses, and to see how much we’ve grown.

Last week at Royce Hall, James Conlon conducted the UCLA Philharmonia and Chorale in thrilling concert featuring Schoenberg’s “Survivor from Warsaw.” I remember singing that piece as a freshman and just being amazed by it. I can still sing it from memory. Nowadays it seems like “Survivor” is truly a protest piece, not so far from Bob Dylan, really. The piece was preceded and succeeded by short pieces by Schreker and Zemilinsky. I must say I LOVED the Schreker. It was a momentous day in the history of the department. It was also very cool to have the Schoenberg sons and their wives in the audience, looking very pleased. Neal Stulberg’s narration was captivating if not down-right creepy. It was thrilling. (I would have amplified the men’s chorus btw.)

MISC TO DO/DONE:
I’m gearing up to do Joe Bauer’s new short film, AMBUSH, working on it today.
I graded 80 little piano pieces last weekend and have 80 orchestration to grade next weekend.
I get to go to Palm Springs later this month. Yes!
School has stopped but still a lot of meetings left, then graduation next Saturday, where I get into my Harvard drag and announce the names of our graduating students. My academic life will slow down significantly after that ceremony.

The day after my school’s graduation, my sister in law has her graduation and party at our house, so that will be a lovely way to end the year. Why I remember when she was just a girl! [Julia is SO smart––it's amazing.]

I now have a nephew and a niece who want to move to LA. (These pix from 2000.) It’s an expensive place to move to I’ve warned them, but if they can get on their feet, it will be nice to have family near by.

On Saturday, we had two little families over for dinner, one has a 12 month old boy named Julian, and the other has an 18 month old girl named Julia. Cool symmetry, and they liked each other quite a lot. Good fun to watch the kids and parents interact.

(Our dog) Cody is undergoing chemotherapy. One week injection, the next pills, the next he has off: this for four cycles. He’s doing just fine. Turns out, dogs to much better than humans having chemo, because they don’t know they have a life threatening illness.

Now that Susan’s and my husband have jobs that take them out of the city, we’ve become a fun couple for going to concerts. Last night we went to two: Lana Chae gave a spirited first performance of my THREE IMPROMPTUS for piano followed by a performance of the Goldberg Variations. (I composed the piece to be paired with the Bach.) After a quick dinner in Westwood we zipped back to Royce in time to hear the Missa Solemnis, with Don Neuen conducting the Debut Orchestra and the amassed UCLA Chorale and Angeles Chorale with four terrific soloists.

Last night I watched some foreign film before dosing off. The final image was amazing! It was an aerial shot of about 20 men in a wide open field trying to catch an escaped ostrich. So funny and fun to watch. It put me right to sleep with a smile on my face.

[Photo credits: Stravinsky image in Public Domain; #1,2,3 by Roger Bourland; #4 by Raymond Knapp]

This week, friend, colleague, and expert in the Alexander Technique, Jean-Louis Rodrigue, visited our class to give an overview of that discipline. In the course of his overview he talked about musicians needing to come to grips with the fact that their art unfolds over time, and that we must give ourselves permission to enjoy and not rush that time.

He said to the class: “I want everyone to say ‘I HAVE TIME.’” The class obeyed.

“Again! I HAVE TIME.”

I found the notion cathartic. So often I am stressed about going to the bank or the post office or the dry cleaners and worrying about the time it takes. Or even going to concerts, thinking I’d rather be elsewhere.

No.
Stop.

I need to say to myself I HAVE TIME. And ultimately, I need to say that about everything in my life. Take the time to enjoy life. Give yourself permission to take the time, because most of the time, we really DO have the time.

Our students in the Music History, Culture and Creativity have a final project that involves providing music to a one minute clip of film, excerpted from the actual working print from which Paul Chihara worked. The excerpt is from a famous anime film and has SMPTE time-code streaming on top.

The class of 80 each has to score this one minute segment using only QuickTime Pro 7 ($29) and Audacity (available on both platforms and free). Quite a few students used GarageBand. The three professors have been discussing composing, and affect and effect and issues in film music around the world; we’ve had two guest lecturers speak about film music from different perspectives; and NOW they get to compose film music themselves! This is a real coup for me; the notion getting a class of 80 students composing film cues as naturally as if they were doing harmony exercises.

I am also quite satisfied that they taught themselves. I went over the process once in class, I put up a forum that so they could ask each other technical questions, and many used it.

In that adding music to video/film is becoming technologically easier and easier, why not add it to the list of musical exercises all music students should be required to do?

Yesterday Profs Bourland, Stulberg, Lindemann, Dean, Snow, Rice, Lysy(s), and Loza flew up to Emoryville, CA to meet with future UCLA applicants and their parents, give overviews of our program and answer questions. Kavin and Laura were there to answer all the nuts and bolts and deadline info.

This is, of course, recruiting. Even though it was a bit beyond the call of duty for all of us to give up our Saturday and fly up and back en masse, it was a good bonding experience as well as learning first-hand about our program. It gave the faculty a chance to get to know each other better and create better departmental bonds. It gave moms and dads and their child an opportunity to meet face to face with professors.

This kind of generosity in faculty members shows a genuine and touching devotion to their work.

—

As Chair, I’ve been sitting in on lessons and classes to hear first-hand our teachers in action. What a joy! I wish all of our performance faculty would sit in on each others’ lessons: they couldn’t help but learn from each other. I certainly have.

Today I lectured about what I’m now calling “chord cycles”–a series of chords that repeat over and over. In the Baroque, these types of compositions were called “chaconnes.” Composers think of any repeated set of chords as a chaconne, but historians are sticklers about that progression being a set progression. There are more arguments about the difference between passacaglias and chaconnes. Professor McClary suggested I just refer to a chord cycle as an “ostinato” (Italian for stubborn). Despite the historical sense of it, that didn’t seem like a good phrase either.

So, starting today, I’m going to refer to them as chord cycles, a term that seems self-explanatory, you don’t have to speak Italian, or know Renaissance or Baroque dance forms.

In the lecture I covered “La Folia,” the chaconnes used by Handel, Bach, and Purcell, the “I Got Rhythm” ["rhythm changes"] and “Blue Moon” chord progressions (I vi IV [or ii] V), the “La Bamba” variants (including “Louie Louie,” “Twist and Shout,” and “Wild Thing,” Bob Marley’s chord cycle from “No Woman No Cry” and a couple of more. I also looked at the circle of fifths in songs and how they are used (think: Vivaldi Winter/Four Seasons, “The Autumn Leaves,” and “All the things you are”). I closed with the “Sensitive Female Chord Progression” (vi IV I V) made clear in Joan Osborne’s “What if God Were One of Us.”

If you’d like to hear the whole set, here is a YouTube playlist that I made for the lecture.

[Musical examples from the lecture handout. Pg.2 is missing.]

Mark Carlson and I attended a concert given by the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA). My high school days are a very long time ago (1967-71), and I don’t spend any time around high schools these days, so I was prepared for a culture shock.

From a school of 579 students in music, art, and dance, we heard a GALA concert (read: everyone plays) with 203 high school musicians. WOW!

We heard a jazz band, a gospel choir, an opera excerpt, three piano soloists interspersed, the concert choir, a very large orchestra (!!!), and saw inspired and gifted teachers and leaders. The performances, yes they are young, were on a very high level. I am thrilled that LA can have such a terrific institution, and I encourage all donors to consider making a donation.

Mark and I sat through the 3 and a half hour concert without ever getting bored. It was so fascinating to watch and focus on individual young musicians, seeing their energy and musicality, seeing who are the young Elvises or Madonnas, the Chet Bakers (yes! there was one) and the cool jazzers, already thick with attitude.

I felt I was witnessing the ur-Glee.

I was impressed that the audience listened in rapt attention to the three piano solos, all brilliantly played. I would have imagined that the parents would lean towards jazz and yawn at the classical: but no, these are parents who paid to have their kids go to an arts school. They LOVE the arts. Silly me.

This is a high school where ALL the students are in the arts. There is no Marching Band or football team. Sounds like a dream to those of us who didn’t have that luxury. They are all shapes and sizes and ethnicities. One of the most remarkable observations I made last night was that the students seemed really happy. Most just beamed a kind of happiness. After the curtain went down after the grand finale, we heard a huge WHOOOOOOO from behind the curtain of 203 deliriously happy students who just put on a great concert.

There was another level for me. Dr Dan Castro is the musical and organizational force behind this program. I was Dan’s Chair for his Masters and Doctoral degrees at UCLA. In front of a near sold out Luckman Theater on the Cal State LA campus, Dr Castro publicly thanked me for being a mentor and teacher. He also acknowledged Mark Carlson for whom he was a TA, and Jackie DjeDje, Chair of Ethnomusicology. UCLA got a warm applause from the appreciative audience, many obviously proud parents.

So, in a sense, I felt like a grandfather of the event, or better, a godfather. And to be thanked is always a nice thing.

Take a listen to what they do.

This is NOT indicative of what we heard last night, I found this reading of a student arrangement of “Turning Japanese” [do they KNOW what that means??] scored for full orchestra.

There is a melodic principle, or tendency in melodies from the Renaissance; we teach it in counterpoint exercises known as species counterpoint. The rule I’m thinking about right now is that of gravity. After the melody leaps up––say the interval of a fourth to an octave––the tones after said leap must recover in the opposite direction, usually a step, but occasionally a third. (Think the first three note of “Somewhere O-[ver the Rainbow] and you’ll hear the principle: leap up, and then recover. That’s the melodic principle of gravity.

I teach this principle by likening it to gravity. Think of a ball. Throw it as high as you can up into the air. Then it stops and falls back to the earth. The height from the ground to that turn-around point is like the range of an instrument. A ball can’t be thrown up and then hover. So melody defies this and CAN hover, but the voice must eventually come down, as the tones in our sentences fall down. The opposite would keep a high note for a climactic dramatic purpose.

Rarely do tunes just ramp up and down a scale. They sashay and tease, jump and recover, and hover for effect. We breathe in sympathy to that tune and breathe when it does. Stravinsky once complained about the organ: “The monster never breathes.”

P.S. Susan reminds me that good organist DO know how to breathe. Which reminds me of our mutual late teacher, Elliott Forbes who, at Harvard when he taught species counterpoint, referred to the whole leap-recover thing like this: “From time to time one takes a lusty jump into sin and leaps–never larger than an octave–and one atones for that sin by recovering by step in the opposite direction.” I never thought of him as a hard core Christian, but I love the notion of melodic leaping as a lusty leap–it makes composing that much more erotic.

Image: “Runner” by Roger Bourland. Ink and guauche on silk paper.

This morning I woke up in 7/8. [For non-musicians repeat over and over: 1212123 and accent the ones a little bit and you'll get the feel.] It was the Bulgarian Radio State Vocal Choir (from “Le mystere des voix bulgares”) on the Johnny Carson Show. Take a listen and focus on two things: the time signature — sing along “1212123″ and then listen to how much 2nds are a part of their music. The duet after the first big section is one clear spot filled with 2nds. I find it fascinating how little they move considering the microtimers going off in their brains. They sway a bit, look very happy and have beautiful beaming faces. I listen to this and I can’t sit still.

This quarter, in our Music History, Culture and Creativity class, one of our themes is the notion of aural simultaneities. We chose this word as a substitute for the more traditional appellation, “harmony.” The term “harmony” tends to call up the Western notion of functional tonality, where every (or most) chord has a function. The most important function is for the dominant (V) to resolve to the tonic (I), The harmonic and melodic drama occur on the way TO the dominant from the tonic, and once there, the celebration of the resolution of the dominant to the tonic fill millions of square miles in the annals of music repertoire.

Not all the world’s music fits into such expectations. For instance, here’s a montage video over a performance by the Bulgarian Women’s Chorus. You’ll LOTS of 2nds, 4ths and 7ths — intervals treated as dissonances in the
West — in this largely 2-part song.

And my new favorite music comes from Sardinia. Susan McClary played some in class on Thursday and it blew my mind. Her point in this part of her talk was showing the evolution of melodies being shadowed a 5th above or a 4th below, and in the case of some Sardinian music, in parallel triads — a kind of Balkan Crosby, Stills and Nash! Here is a little documentary about Sardinian music that gives a nice overview.

How about some Sardinian sacred music?

Now where exactly does THIS one fit in? Caribbean throat singing Gospel?

And here’s one that shows how Sardinian music refuses to be functionally tonal. And was that Petruchka I heard flit by??

And one to blow your mind — the Tenores di Bitti sing “Mialinu Pira.”