With economy being so bad, we all need to smile every once in a while. Here’s a Soviet baritone singing something, I’m not quite sure what: it’s either Yai Yai Yai Yai Yaaaaii, or Yo yo yo yo or Oh oh oh oh ohhhh. See how happy it makes him?
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My primary flaw as a composer of late, is that I have lost interest in aggressively promoting my work (other than this blog). As Beethoven allegedly said: “I refuse to bow to Napoleon; he must come to me.” I teach my students that this NEVER happens, so who am I kidding?
I LOVE composing, and am in ecstasy over performances; and then I move on to the next piece.
I have a colleague who is very good about self-promotion: sends out scores, goes to lots of concerts, goes to premieres of his colleagues, goes to every new music concert in town, goes to HIS concerts anytime he has a performance, regardless of where it is, and he’s always giving out CDs of his music to everyone. No wonder his career is going like gangbusters.
I confessed this to RC a few weeks back: he called me on it and said that there was no excuse for not getting off my lazy white ass and sending him scores and CDs ASAP. “No, I’m not going to listen to your music on my computer. I have a 10 year old Dell laptop and no one would ever want to listen to anything on that.” I agreed.
I’ve gone back to the print shop and got copies of my scores. Wow. I haven’t done that in a while. I burned a pile of CDs — one piece per disc. I bought a printer a few years back, dedicated to making pretty CDs. It dried up in neglect. I just used a thick pen and wrote the title and my name on each disc.
Self-promotion is part of a composer’s responsibility whether we like it or not. Some get lucky and get representation. Others gotta do it themselves. Thanks to RC’s butt-kickin’ my momentum for such efforts has been set in motion again. Musicians have to keep finding their next gig for their whole lives. And that’s just how it goes!
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This just in from the LA Times:
A Rhode Island school district has voted to fire all the teachers at an underperforming school.
Amazing!
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Walter Rimler just sent in this amazing find. The music from Schoenberg’s 4th quartet seems peculiar–hardly back up music, but a cool bit of archival history for 20th century music fans. Listen to the eulogy Schoenberg gives to Gershwin at the end. Touching. Mr Rimler also has a new book on Gershwin I must read.
Notes from the Youtube post:
In this 1937 silent home movie, mostly shot by Gershwin himself, can be seen Arnold Schoenberg, and his wife Gertrud, Gertrud’s brother Rudi Kolisch (of the Kolisch string quartet) and Doris Vidor and a few brief glimpses of Gershwin himself. The musical extract accompanying the video is the beginning of Schoenbergs String Quartet no.4 Op.37, written in 1936, in a 1937 recording by the Kolisch Quartet that was sponsored by George Gershwin. Gershwin and Schoenberg were also tennis partners in Hollywood, and this film was taken on Gershwin’s tennis court at Roxbury Drive, Beverley Hills. Also included on this short video is a photograph of Gershwin at work on his famous oil painting portrait of Schoenberg, accompanied by Schoenbergs moving tribute to Gershwin recorded July 12th 1937, the day after Gershwins untimely death at the age of only 38.
For more information on Gershwin visit http://www.jackgibbons.com/gershwin.htm
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Maestro Sahar sent in a video response to the Gershwin performance a few days back. It’s really an entertaining mash-up between Schoenberg piano music and Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm.”
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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.
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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.
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Leonid just sent in this terrific performance of Tuvan throat singing. I had never heard this style of singing rhythmicized; I’m used to the Tibetan low droning technique and the Russian octavists in early 20th century Russian Orthodox choral literature. I realize that my brain isn’t used to making the melodic connections between the resonant singing style, and the style where the actual voice is clipped and we only hear the overtones. As I listen three or four times, I finally “get” it.
I love how his audience is entranced, leaning forward with enthusiasm and engagement. Listen to it a couple of times. It’s actually catchy.
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Susan brought to my attention a recent BBC article letting us know about a resurgence in interest in mugham music from Azerbaijan. After listening to a fair amount of it on YouTube — What a wonderful world we live in! — I found this performance. It’s a very different musical language from the one we know in the US, but holy moly, what amazing music.
I love the overall melodic trajectory of the piece in terms of range; I love the seriousness on their faces; I love the completely different take on what is considered a “vocal range.”
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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.]
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Amazing to find this clip of George Gershwin actually playing. Funny edits here, but still worth watching.
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