The Fredösphere

The rules of modern American politics require a person like John McCain occasionally to humiliate himself ritualistically.  What's these kids' excuse?

Mixolydian Mode has moved -- don't get left behind.

Here's a story on the Aristides Atelier, where painting is taught the old-fashioned way.  (You come in here with palettes full of mush...!)  Disturbingly, recent experience has caused me to question the emphasis on craft.  Just as everyone else is loosing faith in self-expression, I'm reminded that some people got it and some don't.  (More on that topic when I've processed it fully.)  Anyway, this talk of old-fashioned pedagogy reminds me of stories of the bad old days at U-M:  student composers presented scores to their teachers on vellum. Here at the Fredölogical Institute -- the only place in the world a student can get full, rigorous training in nested counterpoint -- I require my students to submit their counterpoint lessons carved in Italian marble.  Which means the kids learn to think really, really hard before committing themselves to each note.

Labels: Counterpoint, Creativity, VideoClip

Alex Ross continues to dig for new music ideas you can ... dig.  Here's one idea that's good enough to steal:  generate notes randomly, then constrain the randomness with a few smartly-chosen rules, and listen for the music to pop out.

Meanwhile, YouTube brings the vast world of choral music to your door -- just search for "choir" and let the goodness stream in.  Or you can go straight to the Red Army Chorus backing an annoyingly driven tenor soloist (forgive the redundancy) while the crowd roars and the dancers kick their heels and the smoke swirls around the giant mutant mullets.  Surreal.  Or, check this out:  as he enters, school girls swoon and the cameras flash and the adults become very deferential.  Is this Taiwanese idol a pop star?  No, he's a choir director!  (Truthfully, he's both.)  More seriously, the Bulgarian State Radio Choir never fails to amaze.

Labels: Composition, VideoClip, vocal

God of the Machine thinks the Saw Lady has the best observation on Joshua Bell's Slumming Qua Busking.  That's yesterweek's topic, but I link mainly because I want you to turn up your speakers and hear her soundtrack.

Yes, it's Friday, and I owe you a silly link, but this video of "The Zimmers," a bunch of old farts recording a cover of "My Generation" is no joke; it's genuine choral content of a kind you only get from the Fredösphere.  This is serious!

Labels: VideoClip, vocal

April 23 is Technopeasant Day, in which we are encouraged to give away "professional quality work."  It's an admirable idea and I'd like to participate; too bad all my work is amateurish.

Last night I enjoyed a visit to a rehearsal of the Vocal Arts Ensemble of Ann Arbor.  They're rehearsing my setting of Ben Franklin aphorisms -- "early to bed and early to rise" and all that.  This piece is more obviously playful and jokey than anything I've done lately, and I'm worried how well a choir can successfully deliver its punch lines -- but this group completely understands what they need to do, so that's encouraging.  I also found an encouraging portent in that their director, Ben Cohen, is the spitting image of Gustav Mahler.

Labels: Composition

Here's a bleg:  I'm looking for beautiful and original poems (or maybe prose fragments) on the subject of thoughts.  Especially, thoughts as animate objects or spiritual entities.  As always, anything startling or even jarring has the advantage, but the heterodox (from the Christian point of view) will be neglected.  Copyrighted stuff comes with entanglements I'd rather avoid, so old is good.  If you've got thoughts on thoughts, send 'em in.

Labels: Poetry

My mind was duly blown by the Craigslistlieder of Gabriel Kahane, found by Alex Ross.  Go to the kid's website and have a listening session right now.

This Friday I'll be hearing the University of Michigan Chamber Choir perform a piece by my old classmate Mark Kilstofte.  I see he likes the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins -- most unfortunate, as I recently added Hopkins oeuvre to my list of settable texts.  Darn it:  Must.  Quickly.  Discover.  New.  Poets.

This is old news, but I enjoyed the ironies in the story of Nine Inch Nails' viral marketing campaign, which was a huge success until a bunch of mindless jerks at RIAA decided to cut it off at the knees.

Finally, once you consider the french horn's origins as a hunting accessory, you realize it would be odd if a symphonic horn player did not have guns and explosives in his possession.

Labels: Composer

Folks, in a week that I have successfully lobbied for my church to skip this year's installment of the always awkward quasi-annual sing-along version of the Hallelujah Chorus during Easter services, let me make a modest proposal.  Let's initiate a 20-year, world-wide ban on the performance of anything from Handel's Messiah.  It needs to be done, and as musicians, we have the power and the responsibility to make it happen.

Among my friends, I am known as a Messiah grouch.  Hey, I like the piece -- I love the piece -- but I'm really, really tired of it.  I don't want to ban the thing forever (it's not like it's something written by Haydn, after all).  I just think we should give it a rest for a while.  During that time, audiences will fill the Messiah-shaped vacuum within themselves with other, less familiar works.  Possibly they will begin even to like them.  We'll see an end to performers degrading themselves in vain attempts to find a fresh approach to the music.  After twenty years, we can bring the Messiah back with the fanfare it deserves, and it can assume a more reasonable, proportionate place among all the fascinating music written.  Which includes even music written after the year 1890.

If we start now, we can have the ban in place before the Christmas season begins.  G' bye-ah to the Messiah shall be our slogan.  Discipline, Unanimity, Will -- with these three virtues, we will triumph.  Will you join me?

UPDATE:  A Coincidence?  Just four days after I wrote this, the words "Handel's Messiah" and "boycott" appeared on A. C. Douglas' blog.  Clearly, the very fabric of the internet is distorting itself in proximity to the planetary massiveness of this new meme.  In other words, I'm on to something here.

Labels: EnemiesList

This may not be the first time I've linked to the four singing horses (hat tip to A Cappella News) but it's a classic, so why not.  Also, I just noticed something:  when you turn on each horse's voice, it doesn't begin singing in the middle of its loop, as I expected.  This would be necessary if the four voices were kept in strict temporal relationships with each other.  No, when you turn on a voice, you're deciding exactly when it starts its part.  You become a composer, creating one of an infinite set of contrapuntal possibilities.

Okay, so I admit the description makes it seem more profound than it feels once you go there and try it.  Still, the concept startled me, and got me thinking.  This flexibility explains why the voice parts are so crabbed; five-part fully invertible counterpoint is child's play compared to writing four parts that must work at least kinda okay together with any possible temporal relationship. 

Here are more thoughts ... Could an example of standard-practice counterpoint exist within this framework?  Surely no, not a non-degenerate case.  Do examples of this approach exist in the wild?  Very likely, but the examples I know of that give this kind of freedom to the performer allow for freedom of tempo; they even tend to assume rubato.  Finally -- and be honest -- is the title of this post the most mind-bendingly brilliant pun you've read all day, or what?  Yes.

Labels: Counterpoint, vocal