The Fredösphere

Everyone should listen to two culinary-related reports from NPR:  James Lileks talks about his book Gastroanomalies on Talk of the Nation, and Curt Nickisch samples absinthe (newly legalized in the U.S.) on Weekend Edition.  I am shocked they failed to mention the hot, trendy new drink, non-alcoholic absinthe, on either show.

Labels: Culture, fun

Throw that piano out the window of your garret apartment right now!  Reactable is the future of music making, and all those other crappy user interfaces--trombones, harps, Casio keyboards--are hereby obsolete!

Well, maybe not.  Still, it's fun, and slightly mesmerizing, to watch Reactable players (should we call them Reactablists?) work those funky blocks on the glowing blue table.  But would the music hold your attention without the visuals?

Labels: Composition, Creativity, Design

Eight months ago, the wifeösphere was convalescing after a pair of hammer blows in the form of a brain tumor and bacterial meningitis.  Reading was the only thing she could do without discomfort.  I was tasked with finding books she would like.  Naturally, I turned to Literature Map and entered a name, probably Madeline l'Engle.  Up popped Dorothy Sayers.  I went to the library and swept the shelves clean of her.

Later, wanting to join the Sayers club the quick and dirty way, I borrowed DVDs of BBC adaptations of Sayers' detective stories.  Sayers' answer to Sherlock Holmes is Lord Peter Wimsey.  He's the monocle-wearing son, but not heir, of a Duke; he's rich and sophisticated, and thus enjoys all the advantages and few of the obligations (beyond military service) of nobility.  He's also always the smartest (in every sense) person in the room, yet somehow not too arrogant.  He's Sherlock Holmes without the opium addiction or the misogyny; in short, he's perfect.

He's also perfectly portrayed by actor Ian Carmichael, who makes it impossible to imagine Lord Peter with any other face or voice.

I'll focus on The Nine Tailors, which the wifeösphere and I watched last week.  The title refers to the practice of ringing nine "tailor" or "teller" strokes of one church bell to announce the death of a parishioner.  Much of the mystery (involving some stolen and never recovered emeralds) revolves around the belfry of a certain country church, which boasts eight great bells. The rector fits the stereotype:  he's a scrawny dork infatuated by his ambition to ring an especially complicated change, all permutations of which require nine hours to complete.  Naturally the omnicompetent Lord Peter is an experienced ringer, so he participates in the ringing.

Ringing a change of any complexity requires certain manual skill:  one initiates the pull of the rope a second or two in advance of the moment the bell must ring, so the timing is tricky.  In addition, one must count carefully and keep track of the permutations, maintaining one's concentration over a long time.  This especially is what makes a change such an impressive feat, especially when one considers what an unappreciated feat it is.  (Surely only the ringers themselves ever keep count, or notice if a mistake is made.) 

Bell ringing is one of the purest examples of the matchstick cathedral mentality, especially when one considers the cost of the bells.  Like any geek pursuit, it intimidates with its arcane terminology:  "Kent Treble Bob Major," "cross and stretch," "calling up" and "calling down," etc.  Of course, in the age before electronic communication, church bells served an important function, as is shown in the final scene of The Nine Tailors where ringing of the bells warn townspeople to seek high ground before an impending flood.  They also play an important role in the denouement of the story; I wish I could give away the surprise, which is exquisitely calibrated by Sayers to illicit horror and amusement all at the same time.

This story reminds us that the hyper-mathematical impulse behind minimalism and its Eastern influences is not unknown in the West.  Perhaps we forget because we never quite thought of ringing the changes as music.  Silly of us, what.

Labels: Fiction

Do you remember what music you were listening to when you found out today is No Music Day?  I was listening to Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet (this album by MTT).  Having finished the Stalin chapter in The Rest Is Noise over breakfast this morning, I wanted to revisit some of my Prokofiev favorites on my iPod; that would be the first piano concerto, the Romeo, and probably the 5th Symphony.  Aw, heck, I better add Nevsky to the list while I'm at it.

No Music Day.  I just don't get it.

Labels: Culture

As Nicola Tesla once observed:  "there are only three kinds of people in the world; those who can count, and those who can't."  I'm enjoying the chorusing sounds of "Finey Lee," the Swedish multitracker.  Finey Lee's Youtube homepage has many offerings, but how many Finey Lees are there?   I especially enjoyed the tag to Scarborough Fair, which reveals the Finey Lee ensemble to consist of a set of identical (very identical) octuplets:



Having sung a few a cappella duets and quartets with myself, I can only marvel at the technical quality of these videos, from a musical and sound engineering POV.  He's also smart to stick to tags for his Youtube audience, especially with the eight-part music, which is compelling in small doses.  Bravo, Finey!   Or Lee.  Or whatever your names are.

Labels: Choral

Last night, the University of Michigan hosted composer Edie Hill for a lecture on the business of composing.  She's in town for the premiere of a new work commissioned by the U-M Men's Glee Club.  I showed up in the basement lobby of Hill Auditorium a few minutes before the lecture, noted that only a few others were there, and looked forward to a nice, intimate setting with many opportunities for Q&A.  Moments later the sound of a stampede announced the arrival of the entire membership of the Glee Club (probably 50 or more guys); it turns out they were having a rehearsal at Hill, and the lecture was scheduled during their break.  Ah, well.  They must have planned a photo session also, because they were dressed in white tie and tails.  All in all, this was not the ambiance I was expecting.

Edie Hill has a website for her composition business, as well as Hummingbird Press, which she runs.

UPDATE:  Welcome to all the Glee Club dudes who noticed this post, and sorry for my tone which came of as more of a complaint than I intended.  My disappointment was not meant to be a criticism, and I'm grateful your event was open to the public.  Meanwhile, there's one fascinating detail about Edie Hill I forgot to pass on:  due to problems with dyslexia, Hill did not learn to read music fluently until her undergraduate years.  Her success as a composer is doubly impressive.

Labels: Composer

The Church of the Holy Cross must be in a rough neighborhood, since its signage exhorts visitors to eschew nudity and weapons.  Well, no, it's not in a neighborhood; it's in Second Life.

Meanwhile, aworks noticed that Pandora now supports classical music.

Last Saturday, my ad hoc quartet sang a set of barbershop classics and "My Antonia," my new barbershop composition.  (Hopefully to become a contestable barbershop composition.)  I don't recall having more truly mixed feelings from a performance experience, although I'd give it an overall highly positive rating.  My unhappiness stems from my attempts to get the group organized and rehearsing early, which were frustrated in multiple ways.  In the end, we had to scramble around, recruiting a student from U-M (John Hummel is his name) and over-rehearsing the last few days, which wore out some of the voices.  My voice was one of the casualties, partly because I was experimenting with the high tenor part performed in my falsetto.  Is my falsetto technique fundamentally flawed, or did I simply try for more volume than was reasonable?  I'm not sure, but I'm told barbershop tenors frequently resort to falsetto, so somebody must know how to make it work.

It will take me a while to rework "My Antonia" and get it recorded, but you'll hear it here eventually, I promise.  Meanwhile, hear Max Q sing "You Can Fly."  The sound quality is marginal, but the tag ending is crazily ornamental even by the standards of the genre.

Labels: BarbershopHarmony

My co-worker Jeremy is shown here staggering under the overwhelming burden of all 48 CDs in an unabridged audiobook version of Atlas Shrugged he borrowed from the local library.  Somehow the floor of our office building is strong enough to bear the weight.  I presume it is made of Rearden Steel.

Labels: AynRand

While at my parents last week, and on my mother's advice, we stopped at a used book store in the nanocity of Orland, Indiana.  The town is a terribly quaint and slightly melancholy place with a village green and an empty row of classic store fronts in a state of disrepair.  In the store I purchased two science fiction titles--it would almost be more precise to say I purchased the two science fiction titles--but the real finds were in the absurdly well-stocked classical CD section.

My music collection naturally reflects my tastes, which is to say, it is freakishly deep and narrow.  I own nothing by Beethoven, for example.  Let that sink in:  I own no recordings of any Beethoven music.  This was not planned; remember, I'm not on some kind of anti-Beethoven crusade.  (He's not Haydn, after all.)  Only in the last few years have I begun to aspire to stylistic omnivorousness.

The point is, it's not hard for me to find music I don't own.  For example, in Orland I bought the four Brahms symphonies and Handel's Water Music, plus a no-name group singing barbershop classics.  (There is evidence the quartet is Fred, but they get no credit on the cover.)  These are disks you might find anywhere.  But who would imagine finding disk with Le Sacre and Apollo in rural Indiana?  And imagine my excitement at finding a Chanticleer disk I didn't yet own.

I'm enjoying the Stravinsky especially.  I find it impossible to listen to Le Sacre; Apollo is first on the disk, and when its sane nobility completes, I'm so satisfied, I can't bring myself to shift gears into Le Sacre's grinding rhythms.

Lean your ear in close to the computer.  Do you hear that melody:  Duh-DA duh-DA, duh-DA duh-DA?  That's the first movement of the Apollo which I'm listening to right now.  As Bjork would say:  gorgeousness!

Labels: local

Even by the low standards of its genre (that is, Conspiracy Music) this is dumb.  (Hat tip Instapundit.)

By the way:  in researching this topic, I stumbled upon the Codex Seraphinianvs, which arguably lives up to its billing as the weirdest book in the world.  I wouldn't exactly call my link an endorsement; I wouldn't exactly not call it one either.  You're on your own.  Good luck.

Labels: Culture

Fumes from newly refinished wood floors compelled the Fredöfamily to seek shelter at my parent's farm for a couple of days earlier this month.  The time away was slow-paced and enjoyable.  On Saturday my parents took us on a field trip to the surrealistically anachronistic Greenfield Mills.

In my adolescent years I hauled many wagonloads of wheat to Greenfield, so the visit stirred deep memories.  Just seeing the old, dorky slogan "New Wrinkle Four For Quality" preserved on the face of the main building like an artifact out of a time capsule was enough to stir deep and indescribable feelings in me.  Not all of them are positive:  old man Wrinkle could get grumpy if I delivered wheat with high moisture content, and I couldn't help taking it personally.

The mill produces and sells all kinds of flour products, but the truly odd side of the business is the electricity generation.  They are the smallest utility in the state of Indiana, serving only twelve customers.  Multiple generations of the Wrinkle family maintain the dam, the generator, and the transmission lines:  not your typical family business, to say the least.  As we toured the mill, I half expected to hear a lecture on the superior virtues of small-batch hand-generated electricity, how it was "richer" or "more complex" or "healthier" than the vulgar homogenized current produced giant corporate utilities.  I imagine the Wrinkles have cousins in Pennsylvania in the oil refinery business.

Labels: Culture, local

When ... Worlds ... Collide!  It was a mashup of religion, choral music, and sci-fi (sort of) when William Shatner read from the book of Exodus accompanied by orchestra and a choir of 350 singers.  A live recording of the work, written by David Itkin and performed by the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, is due for release any time now.  No word if outtakes from rehearsals will ever make it on to the internet; I'm hoping to hear a sound engineer say to Shatner, "can there be a little more excitement during the plague of locusts?"

Labels: Choral, Religion, sci-fi

So many things to blog about!  Sunday saw the premiere of The Prophet, my setting of a poem by Aleksandr Pushkin, translated by Babette Deutsch.  Brian Altevogt led the Concordia University Choir in a very thoughtful interpretation.  As I mentioned to Brian, it's very satisfying to hear flesh and blood singers in music that previously had been performed only by a MIDI keyboard.

I believe a recording will show up here at some point; in the meantime, enjoy a bit of the text in all its gory glory:

I dragged my feet through desert gloom
Tormented by the Spirit's yearning,
And saw a six-winged Seraph bloom
Upon the footpath's barren turning.

And as a dream in slumber lies
So light his finger on my eyes
My wizard eyes grew wide and wary:
An eagle's started from her eyrie.

[...]

And to my lips the Seraph clung
And tore from me my sinful tongue,
My cunning tongue and idle-worded;
The subtle serpent's sting he set
Between my lips--his hand was wet,
His bloody hand my mouth begrided.

And with a sword he cleft my breast
And took the heart with terror turning,
And in my gaping bosom pressed
A coal that throbbed there, black and burning.[...]

One quirky detail I'll pass on to you:  Brian programmed me immediately after PDQ Bach.  What an act to follow!

Labels: Composition, Poetry

A newly arrived copy of The Rest Is Noise sits amid the detritus of the cultural decay which it chronicles:



No, wait!  That is the confused jumble of new construction!  It heralds a glorious new art, unfettered by the bankrupt conventions of the past!  Watch as it is built before our eyes! 

(Really, it's the wood flooring of my house, in the middle of a refinishing job--but I'm sure there's a metaphor in there somewhere.)

Labels: Culture

So I guess I have something to add after all to the discussion of Richard Taruskin's article in The New Republic.

I agree with his critique of the claim that "classical" music embodies a moral superiority.  Like Terry Teachout, I don't buy the eat-your-spinach approach to promoting the avant garde.

And yet....

I can understand how the idea persists.  Consider a comment left on this blog by Fred Wickham:

On my 22nd birthday (over 43 years ago), my mother gave me the Stravinsky Violin Concerto. She knew only that I liked classical music, and the name "Stravinsky" sounded classical.

I listened to it and hated it. Actually, the music I liked was from the 18th and 19th century -- Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms. But I dutifully listened to it until -- I don't know, maybe the tenth hearing -- I began to like it.

This kind of experience is far from unique.  Why shouldn't it give snobs the hope that if only we could lock the rubes in a cage for a few days and force them to listen to Berio and Boulez over and over and over, eventually they would get it.  It's their laziness, not any inherent limitation in the music, that prevents their appreciation of it.

Labels: Culture