The three types of requiems

February 24, 2009

There are three types of requiems: a Type One requiem is performed by a symphony orchestra with chorus and soloists as a part of an orchestra or chorus’s concert season, that is really just another piece of classical repertoire that commemorates no one in particular; a Type Two Requiem is programmed to celebrate the death of a well known public figure or group (JFK, astronauts, air crashes, bombings, war victims, holocaust victims, AIDS, and so forth); and a Type Three requiem is used in a church service to honor the death of a member of the church.

Christ Church in Andover, a medium-sized Episcopal church, held a funeral for my brother last Saturday, and the choir came in on a Saturday to sing the John Rutter REQUIEM. The choir, with a single soloist, was able to put it together quickly, and perform it with only a solo flute and an organ. The Rutter Requiem is truly the common man’s requiem. There are not too many other requiems that can be put together so quickly with such small forces with such a huge impact.

The Stravinsky and Ligeti Requiems, which I love, are really art requiems, and not practical for a traditional funeral, and are really Type One requiems. Both works require professional instrumentalists, capable of interpreting modern music, and singers with perfect pitch, or terrific ears. The average church choir could never perform these works, and I doubt the composers would even want them to. An average congregation would be puzzled, if not offended by programming these pieces. [On the other hand, most new music aficionados will turn up their noses at the Rutter.]

The Mozart and Verdi requiems, though not as difficult as the Stravinsky and Ligeti, require a good orchestra, professional soloists, and a talented and dedicated chorus. These requiems can be either Types One or Two. Occasionally, excerpts from the Mozart can be performed with solo organ and be used in a Type Three venue. The problem, in my opinion, is that the common man, especially these days, doesn’t always relate to classical music. For this reason, I hope that composers will consider composing simple, accessible works honoring the dead and consider not using the [Catholic] requiem mass, and have a contemporary poet or lyricist supply the words.

My requiem, “Hidden Legacies” (text by John Hall), was written when AIDS was decimating gay men, and gay choruses who needed a musical vehicle to process and exorcise their anger and horror. The piece served its function for that period and I felt honored to have helped so many. The topic, instrumentation, difficulty, and musical language was appropriate for that time and only that time.

Requiem-type pieces can benefit from musical language that speaks to people of its time. Although, if “High School Musical” is any indication of what the American musical is evolving to, may God strike me dead.

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Seeing Frida

February 23, 2009

Christopher Stowens found this wonderful video of clips of the real Frida Kahlo. Worth watching.

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The problem with synthesizers

February 23, 2009

Last week I got an email from a student conductor who is performing a piece by John Adams, needing a synthesizer, specifically a Kurzweil K2500 or 2600. I knew that Robert Winter had a K2500 in his studio, otherwise I had no idea what to recommend. I asked him to tell me what patches the score called for, thinking we could come up with some generic sounds that would come close to what John wanted. The problem is that both synthesizers are no longer in production, and, although there are still some used ones around, there probably won’t be any in a few years.

Our world-famous composer is now tasting a bit of what I experienced: investing time and energy in writing music for instruments that are dead.

Between 1992 and 1994, I wrote three cantatas for gay choruses whose core instrumentation included three or four live synthesizers: “Hidden Legacies”, “Letters to the Future”, and “Flashpoint/Stonewall”. The synthesizers I used were the Yamaha DX7, the Yamaha TX802, the Roland D50, and the Kurzweil K2000 — all now long dead. I still own these synthesizers, but there is no software available that can download the sounds into them. I have held onto old computers with old operating systems in hopes that someday I can resurrect them. Many of the sounds that I used were sounds I designed myself that have no equivalent in traditional orchestral instruments or synthesizers, so there really is no substitute for these old dead sounds.

An alternative is to create a recording of the accompaniment in a kind of Music Minus One format. The problem here is that conductors are control freaks: they are opinionated about tempo, balance, and dynamics. They don’t like being a slave to a click track or the shackles of a prerecorded accompaniment, and for this reason alone, this doesn’t seem to be a viable option.

Synthesizer manufacturers treat their products like cars: they are hot for a year, then they take them out of production and replace them with a new, updated, better and improved version. These are financial decisions, not artistic decisions. So, composers who have composed music for them, and I mean notated music in the grand classical tradition, are just out of luck. What does John Adams plan to do about this? or his publisher, Boosey and Hawkes? Will the piece die because of this problem?

I have always hoped that someday a Glass Bead Game-type instrument would appear one day where one could punch in a number and have any historical synthesizer available at their fingertips. The problem seems to be that Roland owns its sound architecture, and Yamaha owns its, and so on.

Recently, virtual synthesizers have replaced physical ones. But the problem has been that we can’t access ANY of the sounds we created on the original instruments, much less import our old sound libraries into them. What good was that? Why has no one tried to update Opcode’s librarian software, or its suite of programming software designed for individual synthesizers? Part of the answer may be that certain sounds sound dated: but since when has that stopped a musician? We have a panoply of “early instruments” carefully maintained and used to faithfully reproduce the old traditions of performance and repertoire, but new music gets relegated to the chopped liver category.

Musicians who work in popular media use synthesizers for a CD, and then use them on the tour. After that, they move on to the next album. Their final product is a CD, not a score. But for those of us trained to be composers who create scores, so that people can re-create our music in years to come, we are out of luck.

With this current reality, I would advise all composers to NOT write for synthesizers in the traditional way, meaning notating music with patch changes and specifying synthesizers. Rather, they should specify “Synthesizer” and use generic terms that describe the kind of sounds you have in mind.

The instrumentation of the orchestra is closed. The only section whose instrumentation still evolves is the percussion section. Sure, you can put synthesizers in your score, just as you can a sitar, or erhu, or koto, but there is no guarantee that, in the future, anyone will be able to play those parts.

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Remembering Andy

February 22, 2009

[This is the eulogy I gave at Andy's funeral yesterday. I managed to get through the whole thing without crying until the last line. The most difficult part of the funeral for me was listening to the 53 bells, celebrating each year of his life.]

Good afternoon. I should preface my remarks reminding you that I am a university professor, and not a preacher. You will not get a sermon with three points, rather, from me you’ll get a two hour lecture, and I’ll give you a ten minute break.
—
When Andy was young, and his brain began to wake up and ask “who am I?” he reached into the Sorting Hat and pulled out a slip of paper that said: NEW – COMMUNICATE. He had no idea what this oracle meant, and shoved the piece of paper into his pocket, and saved it in a scrapbook.

Part of this oracle came partially true in two of his first jobs. For a while Andy sold EARTHSHOES. You know, those shoes that make your toes higher than your heels. They still make them. Then, he sold one of the new items made famous in the 70s: WATERBEDS. Well, the “communication” part didn’t make sense, but these first ventures WERE new.

When Andy moved to Boston, he was a first generation computer salesman. He worked in downtown Boston (COMPUTERLAND), and I remember visiting him there, surrounded by all these computers and devices. I was a bit skeptical. He was selling them before most of us even knew what they were. When he moved to Andover, he worked for Farallon, a company that made hardware dedicated to networking, which is, of course, COMMUNICATION between computers. Hmmmm…

Thank God, being a smart guy, he studied everything he could get his hands on about computers and this new generation of technology. His degree from the University of Andy served him well.

Not too long thereafter, the internet was born and Andy was one of the first with an email account. And he even knew how to get those primitive web browsers to work. Netscape, Mosaic, you may remember them.

Fast-forward to his crowning achievement: ClickZ, an online resource for internet marketing that he founded. Finally, the slip of paper from the Sorting Hat made sense. He was communicating to the online business world about doing business on this terrifying new frontier.

A few months before Andy died, he asked me to take over the administration of bourland.com and oversee the other domains he held. He confessed to me that one of his guilty pleasures was purchasing domains [e.g. bourland.com]. We went online and looked through a remarkable list of domains that he owned, ticking them off to indicate that they may expire on their expiration date.

So, having taken over the administration of this part of Andy’s life, I now receive email notices from time to time that such-and-such.com is about to expire; speak now or forever hold your peace. As Andy had already told me to let them expire, I let them expire.

The morning Andy died, I got out of bed; and with my morning coffee, read my email. There were an amazing number of domain expiration notices this morning. Being mildly superstitious, I thought to myself: this must be a sign, perhaps Andy’s domain too will expire today. I looked down the list of seven expiring domains:

autorespondercopymadeeasy.com
Successfulteleseminarselling.com
Rapidclickbankproductcreation.com
thefourdaycashmachine.com
healthierdogfoodsecrets.com
Acodeyoucanliveby.com
Fullcontactparenting.com

This last domain belonged to his wife, Jeanne; it was the blog Andy set up for her to write about her experiences as a mom: a full contact mom. This domain was expiring?? I emailed Jeanne and confirmed that she was ready to let it go. She emailed back “let it go.”

There was an irony in the language of the email that came with each expiration notice; see whether you agree:

This is just an FYI that because we did not receive a request to renew it, and because “acodeyoucanliveby.com” has expired, it has just been deleted from the registry. As such, it will soon become available for registration by anyone. If you would still like to recover “acodeyoucanliveby.com” please reply to this email within 5 days stating that you would like to do a “redemption”. The cost for this is a one-time fee of $100.

Thank you very much for choosing DreamHost!
The Happy DreamHost Domain Registration Team

Ok, now you’re asking: why is he telling us all this? As Carl Jung might analyze it, there seemed to be a familiar synchronicity in all these expiration notices. All this talk about expiring, and being deleted from the registry and a 5 day purgatorial waiting period, just in case you wanted to pay for redemption made me nervous.

I’m telling you all this because Andy and I always had a deal: whoever died first, the dead one would do something to say that they were on the other side; like stopping a clock. Andy and I revisited that promise a few months ago. He didn’t remember the stopping the clock part, but rather that we would send a sign. All these expiration notices could be a sign from Andy, but probably not. But still: I had the feeling that today might be the day. But there were no phone messages, no emails, so I guess he’s hanging in there. I took a shower. I got out, dried off, went to my computer again to look to see whether there was any news, and there is was: Andy had died 20 minutes ago. I cried, gathered my thoughts, and, like my brothers and father, decided to write a post about Andy on my blog. But for some strange reason, I couldn’t access it. I panicked. I checked other websites on the same server and they were all working. I tried another browser, no luck. I restarted my computer, ran a disk repair program, but no deal. My blog was unavailable. Dead.

Not knowing what else to do, I texted my computer genius husband, Daniel, who checked it out, only to report that is seemed to be working just fine. I typed in the URL again, and there it was.

Andy, was that you?

I conclude this remembrance with some selected comments taken from the readers of his blog.

In this blog you’ll find many people who’s lives would have been different had they not had the pleasure of meeting Andy Bourland. He was a friend, a confidant, and a colleague who touched the lives of many, and made the world a better place.

His words, thoughts, and genius will live on for all of us. It’s the little things that matter and Andy was a master of the small kind acts that change the world beyond one life.

Andy was always intelligent, always sincere, and always kind. I’m very glad to have called him friend, limited though our interactions were (we never met in person). He was both a sweetie and a visionary, and I’ll miss him.

Andy you were a generous person who was always willing to help and encourage people to think and go beyond where they were willing to go.

Sure, he was an Internet publishing genius, but also a great person, and that is the legacy for which he will be remembered longest.

Every time we spoke I left inspired and energized to do things better, faster, tighter — to take risks and continue exploring what it means to be an entrepreneur. From our earliest chats and that unforgettable meeting at the Chicago Airport in a lounge, to our latest calls and emails before you fell ill, I thank you for your advice, friendship, mentorship and inspiration.

Andy was the best boss anyone could possibly have: compassionate, tough, smart, generous. He wrote the nicest thing anyone ever said about me and published it for the world to see. He changed my life and enabled me to find prosperity I never knew existed. His sweetness and good humor made work for him a pleasure and our occasional disputes (mostly after ClickZ was sold) only made me realize how much I love him. Andy changed my life for the better. I hope he will always be my friend. God bless him. Godspeed.

Being a weekend aide at the Hospice House, I only knew Andy a short while. He was a gentleman with a quiet, genuine soul. His blue eyes and smile spoke volumes as his speech started failing him. He passed with courage and dignity as, I’m sure, he had lived his life.

It’s times like these that words are hard to come by to articulate the sadness and loss. This quote was given to me by my grandmother and may it give your family some peace and solace:

We cannot always
Understand the ways
Of Almighty God-
The crosses which He sends
Us, the sacrifices which He
Demands of us…
But we accept with faith
and resignation His holy
will with no looking back
to what might have been,
And we are at peace.
- Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy

In Andy’s final post on his blog he offered these remarks about facing his end:

“I’ve outlived pessimistic prognostications several times over the years, and I plan to live every day as a healthy person rather than playing the role of the sick patient waiting to die. I don’t give up that easily.
I’m prepared for the worst but hoping for the best. Should my time be short, I’m at peace with that too. I’ve lived a great life, have had many wonderful blessings, have been able to touch many lives and have no lingering regrets or unfinished business. If it’s my time to go, I go in peace.”

Andy, your time came, and we all know that you are at peace. Know that you are loved and will be greatly missed.

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Teaching functional tonality

February 18, 2009

Most theory courses and books gently introduce the notion of secondary dominants, usual V/V, and carefully avoid musical examples that have it until that magical chord is introduced. I find that it keeps popping up and I have to be like the Wizard of Oz and say “don’t pay attention to this chord, we’ll discuss it later.”

Yesterday I had a cathartic moment regarding teaching secondary dominants. First I explained and illustrated how every diatonic chord can have its own dominant. They don’t necessarily mean you are changing keys, but can be inserted into a musical phrase as harmonic embellishments. I think they got it.

Then to go the other way, we analysed Erik Satie’s Gymnopedie Nr.1 where there is very little functional tonality, no secondary dominants, sevenths are (naughtily) not resolved, leading tones are ignored, and the home key is very unstable, barely convincing and can be either major or minor.

Planting the reality that there is no ultimate law that says that chords MUST do this or that, but that if one wants to imitate or evoke a particular musical style, one must adhere to harmonic and melodic practices from that period.

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Andrew Rhodes Bourland (1955 – 2009)

February 16, 2009

My brother Andy died this morning.

Andy had cancer when he was 17, and the radiation therapy that saved him in 1971, slowly took his life away over the last few years. He checked into a hospice in December. That act alone let us all know he was ready. Even when he was at the hospice, he had a hard time deciding to die. His doctors said then as they always have: his urge to stay alive kept him alive. Looking into the faces of his children made it difficult to leave. [Funny simultaneity: Andy's son just texted me and we chatted, er texted.]

Andy and I always had a deal: whoever died first, the dead one would do something to say that they were on the other side; like stopping a clock. Andy and I revisited that promise a few months ago. He didn’t remember the stopping the clock part, but remembered that we would send a sign.

This morning, after I gathered my thoughts, I decided to write this post. I couldn’t access my blog. I panicked. I checked other websites on the same server and they were all working. I tried my website. It wasn’t working. I tried another browser, no luck. I restarted my computer, no deal. My blog was unavailable. Dead.

Not knowing what else to do, I texted Daniel who said it was working just fine. I called it up again, and there it was.

Hmmmm. You there, Andy?

[Photos by Roger Bourland: top, Andy in Palm Spring, 2000; bottom, Andy in Lincoln, Nebraska, 1974.]

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Technophobe?

February 15, 2009

I’m getting lambasted by some angry bloggers over a post I made the other day about an admissions issue. Clearly, I didn’t express myself very well.

Somehow I gave the impression that our school doesn’t accept MIDI realizations of scores in their applications. For the record, all of our composition faculty use Finale and/or Sibelius and we use the playback feature extensively. Our students use these MIDI playbacks in composition lessons, class, and seminar. We all believe it to be far superior to crashing through an ensemble piece using the piano.

I have used sequencers for years, and now mostly use Logic and ProTools, in fact, my recent entire 3 hour musical was entirely electronic: not a single live musician on the stage — except for the singers.

As a composer I am terribly private while I compose. No, I don’t compose by committee or with others, unless it is a film or a musical where collaboration reigns.

We accept MIDI realizations as applications and have for years.

When students ask why they did not get accepted into a program, our school lets us know that we are not required to offer a reason. The committee’s decision is final. When many students don’t get in because someone just barely inched them out, giving reasons other that “someone was just a little better” is not what they want to hear, but often it is the case. There are many talented composers deserving of college education that just barely get squeezed out.

With the specific student I cited the other day, it wasn’t that I was poo-pooing his choice to submit only MIDI scores, it was that he had had no interaction with musicians at all, in fact seemed to go out of his way to avoid them, which led me to remind him that OFTEN, music is a social art. I confess now that many times it is completely private and antisocial. Nonetheless, I stick to my guns that a great deal is to be learned from real live musicians; for composers to interact and write for real live musicians; for composers to have the experience of a live performance; and to get feedback from both musicians as well as performers. If my angry colleagues still find me hopelessly 20 years out of date, then I’m guilty as charged.

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Good music at UCLA

February 13, 2009

Two nights ago, I had the privilege of hearing the “We’re not the UCLA Faculty String Quartet, String Quartet” perform with selected students at a private fundraiser for the new FRIENDS OF STRINGS at UCLA. Oh My God! They sounded amazing. What a joy to have such talent as colleagues and students. Their’s was the best performance of the Ravel String Quartet I’ve ever heard.

Tonight I get to hear Opera UCLA perform The Marriage of Figaro, and I’ll be going with our viola teacher, Richard O’Neill. And in case you haven’t heard of him, here’s a video.

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Confession day

February 12, 2009

When I teach a music theory class for a year, that is about 60 lectures over an academic year, I figure that I can devote one lecture to whatever I wish, and usually it’s me. The Roger Bourland show.

Today we had The Roger Bourland show. I’m not sure what it is that makes me want to confess various failures, successes, and stories, about my musical life with bits of career advice, peppered in. I suppose that if there is one little helpful or amusing piece of information that moves, or is helpful to a student, then it’s worthwhile. Otherwise, it’s a day they get to listen to music by their nerdy professor.

I confessed my roots, what my musical influences were growing up, my earliest musical decisions, and the decision to become a music major in college; how I got along with other musicians while in college and a few amusing stories about my love life (seemingly off-topic, but pertinent to the music I later wrote).

I played some ugly music I had written. I played some gorgeous music I had written. I told them how music can indeed change lives. I told them about forming my music publishing company. I confessed to be terrible at promoting my own music. (”I love to compose it, and get it performed; and then I move on.”)

I encouraged young composers and performers to work together, but most importantly, learn from each other.

I told them if they were in love with a person who is jealous or intolerant of their obsession with music, DON’T MARRY THEM.

I warned them of prejudice: “People can find a million reasons to be prejudiced against you. Never be ashamed of who you are, or how you look, or how short you are, or…”

It is a vulnerable act — all that confessing — and I feel a bit raw going over it. My day didn’t stop there, after lunch, a graduate student filmed an interview with me, asking lots of probing composerly questions, largely issues brought up on this blog. We both enjoyed the volley of question and answer. And after a meeting and a lesson, I got to go home, play with the dogs, do a post to my blog [this], and now, back to work on my secret commission.

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Blogs: new life on Facebook

February 11, 2009

I recently discovered an option where my blog can be posted in the NOTES section of my Facebook page. I was amazed at the response — of course, the people receiving it are all my pals, but duhhh. Seems like a good idea. (BTW: for my Facebook friends, this is an RSS feed from my blog, which can be read at http://rogerbourland.com/blog/)

Last week, Musical Perceptions released its bi-annual ranking of the 50 Top Classical Blogs (yours truly was nr.34 on the Google rankings). Steve’s method and comments were instructive:

Google backlinks will count links from non-blogs, and don’t expire after 6 months, so older blogs have an advantage. There was a lot of movement on this list, including the complete dropping of Opera Chic from 2nd to 56th! The average change in number of backlinks among the top 50 was -139, the average among all 252 blogs was -38. I had another thought while polishing this list on why there are fewer links to classical music blogs. I know of many bloggers who have become active on Facebook or have created their own online social forums (NetNewMusic.net for one). Perhaps these opportunities to interact have reduced links as means of talking between blogs. I should also acknowledge that AC Douglas has found Google links to be fluctuating wildly right now, so any drops could be affected by that. [My italics]

He comments on the fact that many of the classical blog backlinks [and readership?] appear to have fallen (mine rose 161). He speculates that it could be a Google issue, or that Facebook, MySpace and other online forums have stepped up to the plate. Whatever the reason, it got me thinking and realizing that many would rather go to one website (e.g. Facebook) to check in on all their friends, rather than a myriad of different sites. I must say that I have thoroughly enjoyed the new social-ness afforded by Facebook. I now know what so many of my friends, colleagues and students have been doing. No increase in face-time, but at least I know what they are doing (or what they TELL us they are doing).

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