The Fredösphere

Anti-Catholic:  muh-wah???  Why, I'm on the record many times stating my belief that many good Catholics are live Catholics.  At least, I think I'm on the record.  I've certainly thought it a lot.  I think.  The irony is that, like any good post-fundamentalist, I spent my early adulthood looking long and hard at communion with Rome, before choosing Pentecostal-spiced Lutheranism served on a bed of Evangelicalism.  And anyway, what anti-Catholic jokes are we talking about?  I've made a shtick out of anti-anti-pope-bashing, but that's pro-Catholic, ain't it?

And now, having done my duty on the subject of anti-popes, I give you today's blimp content.

Back to religion:  for those as obsessed as I with the science of religious conversion, Musical Perceptions gives us a snapshot of one underway.  God bless your search, Scott -- yours and everyone's.

Finally -- When Worlds Collide:  my day job brain and my artist brain alike enjoyed this take on the hot topic of boundaries and limits as stimuli to creativity, from the point of view of a IT guy who plays Dungeons and Dragons.

Labels: Airship, Antipope, Creativity, Religion

Golijov is coming to town this Friday for a talk and I will be in attendance, osmotically absorbing all the composerly wisdom I can.  In the meantime, this guy has the same problem as me, and his blog has one of the strangest tag lines I've ever seen.

Labels: Composer

My friend Alan sent me a link to a Saint Paul Sunday show in which Harry Christophers leads The Sixteen (all eighteen of them) in a concert and discussion of Renaissance and Baroque music.  Any concert that leads off with the Lotti Crucifixus a 8 and the Tallis If Ye Love Me can't be bad, but the singing of the Sixteen is so close to perfection, I felt I needed to pass the link on to you.

The interview portions of the show are conducted in a semi-whisper which is both amusing and compelling, as if the music and the church setting placed a holy awe upon those involved.  It reminds me of my college choir director's over-the-top reverence for the Lotti Crucifixus, which was so extreme he seemed afraid ever to let us perform it in public, although we rehearsed it every year.  A sad case, really, yet one that made a lasting impression on me.  Listening to that piece in a casual way is impossible for me now.

Labels: Renaissance, SoundClip

What's the coolest thing about the latest CD by English vocal composer John Tavener?  It's been reviewed at scifi.com.  It seems Sir John wrote "Fragments of a Prayer" for use in the futuristic movie Children of Men.  To be clear, he's not the composer of the full soundtrack, which includes music from diverse sources, but his music "is used sparingly throughout the movie during scenes of hope or sorrow."

"Fragments" delivers the gorgeous tone bath we expect from a Tavener song, and it's presence in the movie signals the composer's willingness to provide a bit of class to the film where it's wanted.   Just as we expect 5 percent of all music sales to be classical, it seems nowdays we expect 5 percent of each movie soundtrack to be classical as well.

My favorite part of the review is the summary at the end.  The reviewer assures us that time spent getting the album's strange music into our ears "will be amply repaid."  Something about this pain-gain observation cracked me up -- maybe it was the implication that the typical reader would find the concept novel.

That's all I have to say, except to note smugly the confluence of vocal music and science fiction is so utterly my topic, and that in the whole internet it is at the Fredösphere alone you find the exhaustive analysis you crave of the liturgical music found in Beneath the Planet of the Apes (to cite the most perfect example).   It's the reason you, my loyal fans, keep coming back for more.  You may now return to your regularly scheduled lives.

Labels: movie, PlanetOfTheApes, sci-fi, Tavener, vocal

Go to Kyle Gann's blog and hear a complete recording of his new choral work My father moved through dooms of love.  He even let's you download the score -- very generous for those of us who want to know how he voiced the spooky chord that opens the piece.

Gann's choral writing intrigues me because I suspect he belongs on the dance side of the Dance-Chant Continuum.  Also in the topic of moods in music, Scott Spiegelberg has been blogging up a storm on musical preference relating to personality type (confirming the absence of body piercing among fans of My Fair Lady) and listening habits relating to cognitive style.  There are surveys to fill out, if you like that sort of thing (as I do).

More theorizing/categorizing that caught my eye:  I'm a skeptic and a sucker when it comes to theories of historical cycles, so naturally I enjoyed Robert Gable's link to the Fourth Turning Generational Theories and his attempt to place Ives and Copland in the cycle it describes.

I'm enjoying reading Art & Fear, an extended essay for under-motivated creators, and the source of the 50-pot anecdote I referenced a while back.  The book is for those artists whose self-criticism has become neurotic and paralyzing.  I'm not in that category now, nor am I usually (for whatever reason). Although I rarely have a problem generating ideas or making decisions, my pace is slow.  Essentially, I'm a procrastinator, a closely related category.  It's good to understand the problem, which is a crisis of courage:

ART IS MADE BY ORDINARY PEOPLE.  Creatures having only virtues can hardly be imagined making art.  It's difficult to picture the Virgin Mary painting landscapes.  Or Batman throwing pots.  The flawless creature wouldn't need to make art.  And so, ironically, the ideal artist is scarcely a theoretical figure at all.

... and ...

Imagination is in control when you begin making an object.  The artwork's potential is never higher than in that magic moment when the first brush stroke is applied, the first chord struck.  But as the piece grows, technique and craft take over, and imagination becomes a less useful tool.  A piece grows by becoming specific.  The moment Herman Melville penned the opening line, "Call me Ishmael", one actual story -- Moby Dick -- began to separate itself from a multitude of imaginable others.

The irony is that, to the outsider's point of view, a work of art grows as it is created, but to the artist's, it shrinks -- and that is painful.

How ironic that the most talented artists are often the least confident.  You could even say the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Another irony:  the very week I start reading Art & Fear, Michael Blowhard found a Chesterton quote making a remarkably similar point.

Making the rounds:  St. Olaf's choir (with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra) gets lachrymose in a commercial for Nike's XX2 sneakers.