Where in the world is Miss Music Nerd?

• Last weekend I was transported into the clouds by Cantata Singers — read about it here.
• Tonight, I’ll meet some Strange Bedfellows: Unexpected Concertos courtesy of BMOP. Check out this program:
  

  Andrew Norman Air: Concerto for Theremin (2011)
  Keeril Makan Dream Lightly: Electric Guitar Concerto (2008)
  Eric Chasalow Horn Concerto (2008)
  Avner Dorman Mandolin Concerto (2006)
  Luciano Berio Chemins II su Sequenza VI (1967) (featuring viola!)

  I’m particularly looking forward to the first piece… And I know of another Theremin Concerto I wish BMOP would program!

• Next week, I get to go to the Boston Symphony’s Project Debussy, this year’s version of their annual fashion design contest. The evening’s concert includes Debussy’s La Mer, which I love, plus works by Henri Dutilleux and Richard Strauss. Fierce!

Image by Ain't Baroque.

Q. What’s the usual makeup of a string quartet?

A. A good violinist, a bad violinist, a former violinist, and someone who hates violinists.

Happy 256th Birthday, Mozart! Today’s Writer’s Almanac entry has a nice rundown of his musical activities during his last year, up to his still-mysterious death. Don’t blame Salieri — regardless of what you may have read in previous installments of Friday Nerdy Music Links!

Here is a particularly lovely passage from that notorious Requiem Mozart was working on during his last weeks: “Hostias, et preces” from the Offertorium.

Also, check out #Mozartchat today on Twitter for fun facts and tributes.

The Week in Funny Music Pictures! Several music-themed cartoons flew over the transom at Music Nerd Central this week. Music nerd Andy asks whether this will be me in a few years:

My answer: what do you mean, in a few years?! I have to keep up with the times if I want to hold on to all the fabulous perks I get! (Cartoon by Bim Ingersoll, who is quite the musical comedian!)

From music nerd Monica: in case you ever wondered what a conductor does exactly, here are the instructions:

(Cartoon by Tom Cheney.)

What’s your blues name? Mine is either Pretty Eyes Smith or Jailhouse Gumbo Thompkins, depending on which alter-ego I use. Hmm, I think I’ll go with the Eyes… (hat tip to music nerd Jeremy.)

Cell Phone vs. Musician: the Battle Rages On! Here are two classical artists who fight fire with fire when it comes to the concert hall cell phone scourge, both using the Nokia ringtone. Talk about spinning straw into gold! I’d like to see the scores to these little gems!

Thanks to music nerd Glen for sending in this video of Slovakian violinist Lukas Kmit‘s improvised ringtone ditty.

I don’t know if pianist Marc-André Hamelin made this up on the spot, but he certainly has it polished to perfection: Valse Irritation d’après Nokia

What’s new in your music nerdosphere this week?

Because of my prestigious-sounding position as Classical Music Blogger for the GRAMMYs, people have asked me how to get tickets for the live awards show, or even if I could get tickets for them. As flattered as I am at the assumption of A-list-ness that implies, I must apologize and answer honestly that I have absolutely no pull in that department. I have a GRAMMY Fairy Godmother who arranges everything for me and the other bloggers, and I thank my lucky stars for that.

But because I care, I did inquire as to the possibilities for those who wanted to attend the live show, and while you can’t actually purchase tickets at this point, you can enter to win them, both for this year and next.

Hyundai RE:GENERATION Music Project
As part of the promotion for this music documentary hitting theaters on February 16, Hyundai is giving away a trip for two to both the GRAMMYs and the world premiere of the film.

The entry deadline is tonight at 11:59 pm Pacific Time, so hurry up and click!

Here’s a description of the film from the website:

FIVE DJs TURN THE TABLES ON THE HISTORY OF MUSIC

Follow DJ Premier, Mark Ronson, Skrillex, Pretty Lights and The Crystal Method as they remix, recreate and re-imagine five traditional styles of music. From the classical perfection of the Berklee Symphony Orchestra to the bayou jams of New Orleans jazz, our five distinctive DJs collaborate with some of today’s biggest musicians to discover how our musical past is influencing the future.

I recommend watching the trailer, because the soundtrack begins with someone on the piano sounding out the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony. It’s not made clear what this has to do with anything else going on in the film, but my curiosity is piqued!

If you want to plan ahead for the 2013, here are two contests for you:

2012 GRAMMY Nominees Album Entry with Purchase
If you purchase the 2012 GRAMMY Nominees Album, released yesterday, you’ll receive an entry code to win a trip to the 55th Annual GRAMMY Awards in 2013. This works for either the CD version or purchased download from Amazon or iTunes. The album features tracks from Adele, Coldplay, Foo Fighters, Lady Gaga, Tony Bennett with Amy Winehouse, and more. (I tried to get them to put Yuja Wang on there, but like I said, no pull!)

Hilton Hotels Musical Journey Story Contest
Hilton Hotels & Resorts also has a contest for next year. They are asking fans to submit stories of a musical journey they’ve taken, and the winner gets to go on another one! The submission deadline is February 6.

Don’t despair too much if you’re not a lucky winner, though — I promise you that the best seat in the house is probably in front of your TV screen! And if you want to be among the first to know the winners in the Classical categories, watch my Twitter Feed on February 12 starting at 1 pm Pacific!

When I was growing up, my family had a sheet music collection stashed near the piano, full of show tunes, old-timey popular music, hymns, and other sentimental delights. Sometimes I would catch my Mom or Dad playing and singing from this repertoire with an expressive abandon that they didn’t otherwise have much time for. This music seeped into my consciousness, and would eventually compete for space with the respectable classical music I learned in my piano lessons and, later, in college and graduate school. And that goes a long way toward explaining how I came to be the nerdy cheeseball you know and love today!

One song my Dad particularly liked was “The Lost Chord,” by Sir Arthur Sullivan (yes, that Sullivan), on a poem by Adelaide Anne Procter. The poet describes improvising at the organ and happening upon a “divine” chord that, among other things, “quieted pain and sorrow, like love overcoming strife.” But this being music, which moves in real time, that sublime chord couldn’t last forever, and the poet despairs of ever finding it again, except in heaven. Sigh!

The truth is, though, it’s not that any one individual chord is more beautiful than any other; it’s the movement from chord to chord that creates the magic.

That’s a rather long-winded explanation of why on earth I would have thought of Arthur Sullivan while listening to the Cantata Singers‘ performance of Alfred Schnittke‘s Concerto for Mixed Chorus on Saturday night. But there was chord-to-chord magic all over the place, as ephemeral and sublime as the Sullivan song describes.

Cantata Singers always impresses with their technical musical excellence, but what clinches it for me is their obvious affection for and commitment to everything they sing, especially when they choose works slightly off the beaten path, as they did here.

The text for Schnittke’s concerto comes from a sacred poem called The Book of Lamentations, by Grigor Narekatsi, a 10th-century Armenian monk. So you know this is gonna get serious. The poetic imagery traces a spectrum from anguish to ecstasy, and the music keeps up with it at every turn.

There are moments in the music that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up; moments that make you feel like the sky just opened up and you are floating into it, or that the ground is sliding out from under you — but in a good way; moments that — well, insert your preferred metaphor for being utterly transported here. If you’re a fan of sacred a cappella choral music, you may know what I mean. Certain works in this category seem designed, in the words of my music history professor Richard Taruskin, to “turn you into a mass of quivering, believing jelly.”

As John Ehrlich writes in the program notes, so numerous are these moments in the piece that “it becomes an empty exercise to try to point all of them out.” So I’ll give you just a few from the first movement.

Alfred Schnittke: Concerto for Mixed Chorus, 1st movement (excerpt)

About twenty seconds in, we are treated to a low D in the bass section — you’ve got to love that Russian bass sound — ending the phrase, “O Pav’elit’el sushchevo fs’evo” (“O Master of all living”). (After the performance, I heard one of the singers say there were even a couple of low Cs later on. Wow!). About twenty seconds later, a widely-spaced chord opens up for the text, “tvar’ashchij fs’o iz nichevo” (“creating all out of nothing”), with the first sopranos hitting a high B-flat that’ll blow your hair back better than riding in a convertible.

Just after around the 1:10 mark in the video above, we get one of those magical chord shifts that make me want to run to the nearest piano and figure out just what’s what. The text is “Nev’edamyj, fs’eznajushchij, strashashchij,” (“Mysterious, omniscient, frightening”), and the harmony moves from a G minor chord to G-flat Major, two chords that have one note in common (B-flat) but wouldn’t ordinarily be seen with each other in a traditional harmonic context. To me, it’s like seeing the sun break through the clouds at the end of a stormy day, just before falling into a wormhole and being transported to another dimension. (What can I say? If you’re in need of a flowery metaphor, I’m your gal!) A similar shift happens around the 2:00 mark, this time moving from C-sharp minor to C major at the words “N’evidimyj, izv’ech’nyj, n’eabjatnyj” (“Invisible, eternal, boundless.”)

Another glorious harmonic arrival happens at 5:55, on the words “n’eistashchimyj klad” (inexhaustible treasure), but then check out the sweet echo in the women’s voices immediately following, quietly jumping up an octave on “prechistyj dozhd’” (“purest rain”). If that doesn’t wipe the grime off the windows of your soul, I don’t know what will!

Here’s a playlist with all four movements of the work.

Arvo Pärt‘s Berliner Messe, using the traditional Latin mass text, is a bit less lush in comparison to the Schnittke — the program notes compare it to “a tart and cool limoncello,” while the Schnittke is more like a flourless chocolate torte — but still quite powerful and affecting. (I think I would have preferred to hear it first and the Schnittke second. I always like to end with a rich dessert!) It begins quite sparsely, with the organ accompaniment trading pedal tones and little homophonic snippets with different sections of the choir. The organ part was relatively restrained and spare throughout the piece, only going full throttle for a couple of Amens. I appreciated that; the organ never overpowered the voices or obscured the text.

Here’s a playlist with all movements of the mass.

Pärt’s setting of the Credo was particularly rhythmic, almost motoric. It was very appealing, though at times the natural accent pattern of the text was ignored in favor of the rhythmic pattern of the music, which is a pet peeve of mine. But you have to find some way to get through all that text!

Cantata Singers’ next performance is March 18, with works by J.S. Bach, Brahms, Demantius, and Liszt. If you’re in the Boston area, be sure to check them out, and tell ‘em Miss Music Nerd sent you!

Where in the world is Miss Music Nerd? Well, I write this, as usual, from my fortress of solitude in an undisclosed location, but tomorrow I’ll hear two concerts that promise to be stupendous:

• Quatuor Zaïde is an award-winning young French string quartet, currently in residence at New England Conservatory. Tomorrow, January 21st at 4pm, they will perform on the JP Concerts series in Jamaica Plain, with special guest pianist Yannick Rafalimanana. The program includes works by Haydn, Wolf and Franck. [DISCLAIMER: I am the Communications Director for JP Concerts. I bribed myself handsomely to plug this concert.]
• Tomorrow evening, I’ll head Cambridge for a Cantata Singers concert titled The Astonished Breath, featuring works by Alfred Schnittke (gesundheit!) and Arvo Pärt. Should be a wild party!

Let us pay our respects: Requiescat in pace, Etta James, matriarch of the blues. In her own words,

‘A lot of people think the blues is depressing,’ she told The Los Angeles Times in 1992, ‘but that’s not the blues I’m singing. When I’m singing blues, I’m singing life. People that can’t stand to listen to the blues, they’ve got to be phonies.’

And because I don’t think any music lover could ever tire of it:

On the ligher side:

Image by Ain't Baroque. Look at those teeth!

With apologies to Charlie Daniels

The devil went down to Georgia;
he was looking for a soul to steal
He was in a bind ’cause he was way behind
and he was willing to make a deal
When he came upon a young man
sawing a viola and playing it hot
And the devil jumped up on a hickory stump and said,
“Ah-HA! This one’s already mine!”
So he took the violist’s soul and got the hell outta there.
(Get it? The hell outta there!)

… No, seriously, Mr. Daniels. I do apologize.

Music nerds are nothing if not resourceful! When Wikipedia went dark on Wednesday for the SOPA strike, we stepped in and filled the music reference gap via Twitter: witness #ClassicalFactsWithoutWiki! A few highlights:

@XercesBlueMusic
Salieri totally murdered Mozart. It was in a movie and everything

@richching
Boheme was modeled after RENT.

@ClassicalKUSC
A Countertenor is the Tenor who keeps a tally of the singers present.

@RonniReich
Madame Butterfly is the sequel to Puccini’s little-known early opera “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”

@stravinskyite
It was supposed to be The Rite of Fall but he couldn’t get it done in time.

(That segues nicely into my own humble contribution:)
@MissMusicNerd
The riot at the premiere of Le Sacre was actually sparked by a patron in the front row accepting a telegram (Get it?)

Speaking of Mahlergate, the post-mortem commentary continues, and I’m sad to report that in some precincts it has been turned into an opportunity to whinge about classical fans being snooty and/or arrogant. As if! Amanda and Michael at thousandfoldecho analyze one example. Miss Music Nerd asks, can’t we all just get along?

You may have seen some of the “Sh*t ______ Say” videos making their way around the web. Here are two classical-related spinoffs I encountered this week:

Sh*t Opera Singers Say

Sh*t Choristers Say

And finally, here is a far less silly video — an interesting short film about the oldest piano shop in Paris:

La Mer de Pianos (Sea of Pianos) from Films & Things on Vimeo.

Proprietor Marc Manceaux discusses how he breaks down old pianos to harvest parts needed to repair and restore other old pianos. It’s a bittersweet endeavor, as he explains:

When I have to break one up I always have a little twinge of regret. I put off the actual kill until the last possible moment. But that’s what organ donation is all about.

Plus, taking them apart makes some pretty wicked sonorities!

What’s new in your music nerdosphere this week?

Say it ain't so!

As a composer and content creator, I care about copyright. I strongly believe that artists and writers should be compensated for their work. But what these bills propose seems like throwing out the baby with the bathwater, or going after a gnat with a sledgehammer, or — insert your preferred analogy here. I mean, if I’m understanding this correctly, someone like little ol’ me could be fined or imprisoned for posting a youtube video. I can’t go back to prison, people! (But that’s another story for another day.)

Many websites have decided to protest these bills today — some by going dark entirely, others by posting information and links for those of us in the U.S. to contact our congressional representatives.

Here’s what you’ll find if you go to English Wikipedia today:

And today’s Google doodle is quite illustrative:

Now, Since I haven’t been posting on a daily basis recently, it seems a bit… I dunno… redundant for me to go dark today. I thought it would be better to post information on the issue. Plus, I’m not confident that a) I could manage to figure out how to take my site down, and b) subsequently figure out how to bring it back again. I was embarrassed to confess to this until I saw that the Bloggess, who is a far brighter star in the internet firmament than I, had admitted it openly.

Here’s a link to the website organizing the strike. And you can view Wiki pages on the bills, even though other articles are dark today: SOPA and PIPA.

Finally, here’s a video on the topic that is both amusing and informative — let Lord Vader give you the scoop! (Hat tip to the Bloggess, whose contribution to the video may make you laugh and/or offend you.)

There must be a better way to protect copyright. Tell your reps what you think. Do it for the LOLcats!

How did I luck into a gig like this, you ask? Well, as I recounted last year, it all started way back in November of 2009, when the following email landed in my inbox:

Good Evening Miss Music Nerd,

I work for the Recording Academy and manage the Social Media program for the GRAMMY Awards. We would like to speak to you about participation in our Community Blogger Program for the upcoming GRAMMY Awards. If this is something you may be interested in, could you please contact me during this upcoming week? You can find out more about the GRAMMYs on various social media networks by clicking on any of the links below.

I look forward to hearing from you.

I was pretty sure this was some kind of a scam, and that my reply would prompt a request for my credit card number and mother’s maiden name. But I was too curious, so I followed up, and it turned out to be legit!

In a few weeks, I’ll get to hang out with an amazing group of bloggers representing a broad range of music genres and music-related topics.

Allow me to introduce them to you!

Americana: Twang Nation Baron Lane is a native Texan who grew up going to metal and punk shows, but was inspired to explore his roots while living in New York (and now, San Francisco). “It’s great/strange using social technology to promote music which is often influenced by sounds and themes that predate the Interstate Highway System,” he notes. (I know what he means — my genre predates electricity!)

Country: It started with the question of whether Kenny Chesney’s tractor is sexy, and has grown into a mission “to give fans a place to stay connected to country music and the artists they love,” says Erin Lefebvre, co-founder of Country Music is Love.

Dance/Electronica: Brent Burns grew up “at the foot of his grandfather’s guitar,” where he developed a lifelong love of music. Now, with his blog Kick Kick Snare, he brings you “hard-to-find, cutting-edge songs and artists that haven’t yet made it into the typical top-40, popular, dance, alternative or similar radio station play.”

Fashion/Lifestyle: London-based Izzy Lawrence is a TV and radio presenter who blogs about music and fashion from multiple continents! Check out her “Love from London” posts on LA’s KCRW.

Gospel: Will Dawson covers the Gospel scene at Dawson’s Ink, but he says, “Whatever the genre, from gospel to dixieland… music gives us life. It always comes back to that. Let’s live.” Hear, hear!

Jazz: Donna M, founder of Elements of Jazz, notes that “The general public’s perception of jazz is that decent, enjoyable music is no longer being created,” but she wants you to know: “There is a vibrant, sexy world of jazz out there. Want to find out more about it? Let’s find out about it together.” Sounds like a plan!

Pop/Dance: Arjan Writes about everything sweet and crunchy in Pop and Dance. He’s also a CNN contributor and an Out 100 honoree. Look for the red jacket!

R&B: “I’ve loved music for as long as I can remember,” says Kimberly A. Hines, a.k.a. Butta, “from my days of shaking my little shimmy in music class in elementary school when I should have been learning to play the recorder to creating some of the most hilarious (read: worst) rap songs and dances with my best friends during my college days.” Now she heads up the staff at SoulBounce.

Rap: Fave (Dantrel Robinson) produces the Friday Favecast, designed “to entertain, encourage and uplift as you wrap up your week.”

Rock: Meet Jamie Harvey, the Hard Rock Chick: “My favorite band is Nine Inch Nails and my favorite color is black. I collect gig posters, guitar picks and broken hearts.” Oh, and she goes to lots of shows!

Tech: Liz Burr describes herself as a Social Media Butterfly and huge web and media nerd. You’ll find her at the intersection of music and tech!

Is it any wonder I’m ridiculously proud to be part of a group like this?

I must apologize — I’ve been away far too long, and I have plenty to catch up on. For one thing, GRAMMY season is in full swing, so stay tuned!

But for now, I bring you an assortment of fun/interesting/newsworthy links from the past week!

First, a little eye candy: If you’ve ever wanted to play a musical instrument but weren’t sure which one was right for you, here’s a handy chart, courtesy of Piesone Art (click to enlarge):

In other music nerd humor, here’s the Viola Joke of the Week, brought to you by Jenn at Ain’t Baroque:

Q. What’s the difference between a dead snake and a dead violist lying in the middle of the road?
A. Skid marks leading up to the snake.

Want more? Here you go!

In local music news, (and another mention of a pun usually that would ordinarily make me go all Incredible Hulk, were I not won over by the style and charm of its deployment), the baroque ensemble L’Academie is running their annual fund campaign, Young, Fabulous & Baroque (far more tuneful than this, no doubt!). Their aspiration is “50k…or 5000 $10 cocktails.” In addition to their blinding musical excellence, this group has a real knack for making baroque music hip for a 21st Century audience. Check out their upcoming performance in February, The Vivaldi Code.

Beethoven and Brahms are still speaking: Music nerd-at-large Ed Tracey hipped me to two instances of famous composers making news from beyond the grave:

• A musician complaining about financial struggles isn’t news, except when it’s in the form of a handwritten letter by Beethoven.
• A newly discovered piano piece by Johannes Brahms will be premiered by Andras Schiff on BBC Radio 3 on January 21st. I’ll be curious to see how the score will be made available, since it is reported to be “a little Brahmsian gem that all pianists will surely want to play.”

Mahler 9, slightly less sublime: In the biggest story of the week, the online music nerdosphere was frantically abuzz this week over an errant iPhone that went off at the worst possible moment during the New York Philharmonic’s performance of Mahler’s 9th Symphony, creating such a disruption that condutor Alan Gilbert stopped the performance, and a few patrons became uncharacteristically obstreperous, calling for the offending phone owner to be thrown out. Eyewitness accounts can be found here and here, and after-the-fact commentary by the conductor is here.

As it turns out, said owner (who was seated front and center for maximum exposure) had done the right thing and turned the phone off before the concert started, but didn’t realize that the phone’s built-in alarm clock would go off even when the phone was powered down. Also, the poor soul was hard of hearing and didn’t realize at first that he was the source of the problem. He is a longtime season ticketholder not identified beyond that, for his own safety — because judging from the reactions of other patrons, we music nerds might appear mild-mannered most of the time, but mess with our gig and we will CUT YOU! Here is Patron X himself, in his own words.

I am on the record as subscribing to the view that hearing this piece of music live is a downright sacred experience; its quiet closing bars are so sublime and transporting that any interruption would indeed be upsetting. But I feel for Patron X, because you see, I too found out the hard way that a cell phone alarm is no respector of silent or off mode — during A CONCERT I WAS PERFORMING IN, no less. Fortunately I wasn’t actually on stage at that moment, so I was able to shut the dang thing off right away and the music didn’t have to stop!

Many commenters have called for signal jammers to be installed in all concert halls, or maybe the hiring of square-shouldered goons with sledge hammers at the ready. But such remedies are impractical, not to mention illegal in some jurisdictions. I was interested to read an account by an eyewitness who is new to the classical music scene, and was bemused at how “sophisticated people who had come for a night of culture and music and proceeded to be reduced, for a few moments, to the early stages of an angry mob.” Dude has a point — veteran audience members could stand to chillax, so as not to alienate budding classical fans (though I confess to having entertained thoughts of violence toward the cough-drop-unwrapping, plastic-bag-rustling set). “Can’t wait ‘til I hit up the ballet and we get a streaker!” he concludes. Hey, when that happens, send me a link, would ya?

Bonus video: here’s a mash-up of a Bernstein performance of the 9th with the offending Marimba ringtone, to recreate the experience for those of us who weren’t there!

What’s new in your music nerdosphere this week?

Imagine, if you will, that you are a composer. Not a historical composer, mind you — we’re not talking powdered wigs and candelabras here — but a composer living and writing music in the world today. You write a piece that deals with concepts and materials that inspire you and are important to you, and you find musicians willing to play it, and play it well. So get your piece recorded and released, eager to share it with the world!

Then you learn that some reviewers have taken the time to listen to your CD and write about it. In your heartwarming optimism and innocence, you look forward to reading these reviews, eager to see how sensitive, intelligent and dedicated music aficionados will respond to your work.

Be afraid, little composer, be very afraid.

One of the things I love about contemporary classical music today is the broad range of musical styles that coexist, more or less peacefully, side by side along the contemporary spectrum. If you know where to look, you can find just about anything you can think of (and several things you probably haven’t). Some of this music is experimental, conceptual, complex, and challenging to listen to, particularly if you approach it with the expectation that it will be similar to older styles of classical music. Because there is so much going on now, it’s pretty difficult to stay on top of it all, and it can be disorienting to hear, let alone try to evaluate, music that confounds your expectations and asks you to go beyond what you’re familiar with.

In short, music critics do have their work cut out for them. However, I think a piece of music deserves to be evaluated on its own terms, and when that doesn’t happen, I get annoyed.

What, you want examples? Okay, I’ll give you examples!

Composer and music theorist (and grad school colleague of mine) Ben Leeds Carson recently shared his frustration with me over reviews of a CD of his works for solo percussion. One of the works, A is for Azimuth and Arnica, is an experimental work in which the player is given sections of precisely notated music along with instructions and a sort of musical map. The performer is asked to make choices about the order of musical events, with the idea that no two performances will be exactly alike. To amplify that concept, the CD contains five different interpretations of the score by five different percussionists. Here’s a video of one of the performances, and there are excerpts from the others further down that page.

Now, here are some excerpts from the reviews:

A is for Azimuth and Arnica belongs to that style of indeterminate or quasi-improvised music in which the composer specifies a series of actions, rhythms, and instruments that are then combined to create the finished work. In my more facetious moments, I think of this as the Chinese restaurant menu approach to composition: Take one from column A, two from column B, stir, and voilà, instant music!” (Robert Schulslaper, “Feature Review: Carson: A is for Azimuth and Arnica. Meditations, Tenors.” Fanfare 34:5, May/June 2011, subscriber link)

You know, I love good snark even more than the next gal, but I fail to see the utility of this cute little metaphor. If Mr. Schulslaper is, himself, a composer — someone who puts the product of his creativity out there to be judged — he should know better than to be so facile. And if he is not, he should definitely know better. Composers make themselves pretty vulnerable when they share their music, and respect for that ought to be job one for a critic.

Later in the review, in reference to another percussion piece on the same CD, we find the following pearl of wisdom:

[T]he marimba and vibraphone are pitched instruments, so any set of notes can’t avoid being perceived as having a melodic shape. Still, don’t expect Puccini.

Friends, if you set down to listen to a recording of recently composed music for solo percussion and need to be told not to expect Puccini, you need far more help than this reviewer (or your humble blogger, for that matter) is able to provide.

Let’s try another, shall we?

Players are invited to sing, or chant. For percussion music, there is a disconcerting lack of regular, pulsing rhythm. Things never go especially loud. The pitched instruments, at least on this version, suggest an Asian harmonic influence. It is hard to describe the music much beyond this. It’s a non-starter for traditional music lovers, who can happily stick to Tchaikovsky. (Peter Burwasser, “Feature Review: Carson: A is for Azimuth and Arnica. Meditations, Tenors.” Fanfare 34:5, May/June 2011 subscriber link)

I’ll grant you, it can be hard to describe a piece of music verbally. But the fact that the reviewer is so adept at describing what’s not going on in the piece makes me suspect that he simply didn’t feel like trying.

And again with the references to a random historical composer who is conspicuously not noted for solo percussion works? Look, I get it, some people just don’t dig modern music. But these kinds of comparisons are the musical equivalent of going to a Chinese restaurant (since we’re on the topic) and complaining that the minestrone tastes funny. It’s no less unfair to the traditional composers, by the way — as if their music were not also challenging in its own way. As my musicianship professor John Swackhamer used to say when students complained about the complexity of modern music, “Do you think you understand Beethoven?”

In short, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that a reviewer a) know something about and b) not be demonstrably antagonistic toward the type of music under consideration. My little pipe dream, since I am a composer myself, would be that criticism come in the form of identifying ways that the music could do a better job of being what it’s trying to be — suggesting ways to fill in what might be missing. A review that uses a single piece as one more example of why the reviewer dislikes an entire category of music is of no use to anybody; listeners who already dislike the style don’t need to be told why, and listeners who might be interested are unlikely to find any helpful insights amid the antagonism.

So the big question, then, is: can Miss Music Nerd do any better? Well, I like to think so. I decided to bounce my thoughts off of the composer to see if my feedback might be slightly more useful than the comments above. Here’s our conversation:

MMN: I was on the fence about how to dive into this topic. I was wondering if it was okay to reference these reviews as counter-examples – “Here’s how not to write a review.” I don’t want to be nasty, but I really feel like these listeners did not in any sense have any willingness to try to go where you were going.

BLC: Not being heard on my own terms is something I have to live with, often, because these days, artists all have different ‘terms.’ In this case, however, I was concerned that the writers were claiming to review my CD, and instead, they were reviewing decades of music written between 1955 and the present, and lumping it all together. They were writing their reactions the whole idea of indeterminacy, the whole idea of pulselessness, the whole idea of resisting traditional Western ideas of melody, rather than commenting on the particular results of those ideas in my own work. What they said was fine, but the reviews shouldn’t have pretended to be about me, if they were really about Cage and Feldman, or ‘Asian music.’

MMN: I’ve been in the same academic environment as you, and part of me rejects it, but I’m open musically in ways that someone who had never been in that environment might not be. So I am willing to go there.

But I’ve been away from academia for a while now, and I think that I might come across to some people as anti-academic. I don’t think of myself as anti-academic, although I have baggage around it, and I have snarky things to say about it. So I might very well say something that sounds really anti-intellectual and ignorant, and I apologize in advance for that.

BLC: Go for it!

MMN: In your introduction to the score of A is for Azimuth and Arnica, you say, “Here are thoughts on this score’s tentative status as a composition: its possible differences and similarities from other scores that are called compositions.” As a listener, I get a little bit impatient with that kind of inquiry, because I guess if I’m going to listen to a piece, I want the composer to have made up his mind, even if only temporarily. What I want is, “Here’s a position that I’m standing in right now, and here’s what is coming out of that.”

In your instructions, I feel like you are being very careful to provide space for the performer to be a co-creator, to provide freedom and a way for it to be an inquiry and not a dictated, “Here is my work of genius” kind of thing. And I appreciate that, because I also resent the whole, “I am a genius composer and you will be in awe of me.” That whole thing is annoying in its own way, too.

But as I was listening to the performances, what I finally realized — and this was a breakthrough for me, because I’ve had this feeling with a lot of pieces without being able to put it into words — what I realized is, I could hear the commitment of the performers. I could hear how they were invested in it, because they had to learn the specifically notated music and also make their choices about how they were going to order the sections, and all of that, and it really came across, even though the music is not necessarily dense or super complex. You could hear the intensity of it. But…

BLC: But?

MMN: But, when I go and hear a Mahler symphony, for example, I can hear the commitment of the performers , and I can hear the intensity of it, and I am swept away by the experience emotionally. With your piece, I feel like I am observing the performer having an intense experience, but it does not translate into me having an intense experience, too. So I kind of feel like a voyeur instead of someone who is able to emotionally connect.

BLC: Well, I think that’s a marvelous way of distinguishing what I’m trying to do from what Mahler’s trying to do. I think with that distinction, you have actually understood part of what I meant by the phrase that these are not compositions in the usual sense implied when a score is said to be a composition.

I didn’t intend to be quite as evasive as I think I seemed to you, because following that statement, I then make a number of statements that are more affirmative about exactly what I mean by “composition” here. You seem to have taken primarily the message that I am leaving something out or releasing my grip, so that a performer can then invest something. Although that’s also true, it’s not the primary goal. That’s not what I mean to convey with this little paragraph about composition.

What I mean to convey there is, I started to love the word, “composition,” as it occurs outside of music. Imagine what music would be like if it were a soil composition or a population composition, or the composition of a dynamic weather process. It really resonated with me to just think etymologically about composition for a minute.

After having five, and now six or seven, different people play this piece, I’ve started to get, in my ears, a kind of naturalist’s love of these performances, that you might have as a bird watcher, or a hiker who was wondering whether the population of, oh, I don’t know, cyclamen, had gone up or down on the north side of bridges or something like that. You know, just fascinated by the flow of data through a landscape. I see these different performances as repeated visits to a forest, with some consistency of observation about what the forest is made of, but then all this variety as well. So when you talk about it as a voyeuristic experience, actually that has a very sweet feeling.

MMN: Well, that’s good!

BLC: With some of my music, I’ve actually wanted people to feel voyeuristic. A lot of my music is very quiet, and sometimes I think that encourages people to listen as they would to someone’s daydream — hopefully not uninvited, but — as they might read a diary, or a memoir or something like that. I mean, I get the negative connotations of voyeurism, feeling someone’s privacy’s been invaded…

MMN: Maybe that’s not the right word, because it’s not that I feel I’m invading anyone’s privacy; it’s more that I feel like I am watching the concert through a window, from outside, thinking, “Wait a minute, I want to come in!” But I can’t.

BLC: I see. A little bit excluded. You feel the performer’s commitment, but it’s not sweeping you up into it.

MMN: Yeah. I don’t emotionally engage with it. I appreciate everything about the accomplishment of what’s going on, but I end up feeling a little bit forlorn and abandoned.

BLC: Yeah, I can imagine that.

MMN: The thing is, having liberated myself from academia, I am no longer ashamed to say that I want to be able to hear a piece of music and say, “I love that piece because it’s beautiful!” and not have to say something intellectual about it.

BLC: I’m not sure if you were ever ashamed to say that!

MMN: Well, I thought I needed to be, and I don’t anymore!

BLC: Okay. Well, I will say that I still got something worthwhile about your comparison of this piece and Mahler and the phrase “swept up.” I’m pretty sure that I don’t want to sweep people up with this music. In most of the music I’ve written in the last fifteen years, for better or for worse, I have believed that understatement and sparsity and narrow ranges of behavior will, for some listeners, serve as an invitation.

Whereas you felt excluded, or not quite able to get into the feeling the performer had, it is my hope that some people will respond to the experience of privateness and smallness with a feeling of safety, a feeling of, “It is safe for me to listen closer. It is safe for me to think about time intervals on a micro scale in a way that wouldn’t otherwise be rewarding or inviting, but here, because of the smallness of the world, and because it is only moving in small ways, even when occasionally the notes are quite loud, the sense of movement is small; the sense of change from one moment to the next is small. And because of that smallness, I as a listener can begin to attend to issues and questions that otherwise would have been impossible.”

And I know that for some listeners, those issues and questions will never come up in the first place, so in that sense I can very well imagine it not being inviting. But I hope that for some listeners, for example, one could listen to six or seven notes striking metal and think, “What was happening to the pulse there? Why was it neither slowing down nor speeding up, but rather moving from a feeling of regularity to a feeling of irregularity without any fluctuation?” That kind of observation occurs rarely for listeners, but I hope not too rarely.

To put it in non-academic terms, “I suddenly felt like tapping my foot, but only for a minute. And then, why did I stop? Because what happened next was also interesting, but different.” I imagine some listeners taking on that narrative in their own heads — not in the performer’s head, but in their head as listeners, and enjoying the minute fluctuations that happen conceptually because of it.

MMN: Yeah, and here’s where I wonder what my experience would have been like if I had just listened to it without reading any of the text or looking at the score. Because I guess knowing that the process of preparing a performance had a lot to it, more than just reading a score, I somehow wanted to be able to perceive some of that when I listened to it. And I couldn’t, so I was left kind of puzzled.

BLC: Yeah, I can imagine that being a little disappointing. In some ways, the performances are not very different. Aiyun Huang actually said, “I’m concerned that our interpretations don’t really show breadth that’s possible with this score.” And a number of other people have said that, based on the concepts I was producing, they expected that I would be creating this sort of mini-technology by which people could create radically different rent performances that would spin off in really interestingly different directions. That would be really cool.

I actually want someone to write that piece, but that’s not what I wrote. It is a composition — it is one composition; it’s not an opportunity for music. It’s not quite as liberating as it sounds if you’re reading it through the lens of Cage. It sort of resembles, when you read that prose of mine, “Oh, he’s kind of doing a little bit of what Cage did. He’s not as determinate.” There’s a little bit of that, but it’s not that liberating. It is one composition, and it is a very specific description.

For me, it’s inspired by biology; it’s a very particular way that I feel about azimuth, in the context of arnica. I really love the rhizomatic movements of the root systems of arnica, and I didn’t want any performance to be about something else. I didn’t want any performance to have a different feeling than that.

MMN: Well, if you wanted to spin it positively, you might say that the fact that the interpretations aren’t so different means that the performers got it, got where you’re coming from.

BLC: I don’t mind that positive spin — that sounds great!

MMN: I guess I did have the impression that you were wanting to create more freedom than you said you were, and it reminds me of something that I always found frustrating in trying to produce academic writing: I felt I could never just make a statement without qualifying it and preemptively anticipating all of the possible objections to it.

BLC: Defending it. Yeah, I know the feeling.

MMN: So, with some of the sentences, I wanted to say, “Just tell me what you’re gonna do! Just tell me what you want this to be about!”

BLC: Yeah. The only problem with that is, just imagine for a second, the program note where I say, “I was inspired by the rhizomatic movements of the root systems of arnica plants.” Maybe that would have been better, but I read a lot of program notes like that, and to me, it really dampens my musical experience, truly. Titles inspire me, because they dangle a concept. I guess where I really want to give some freedom is to the listener, even more than to the performer. I don’t like the trend of composers having music that is about really special scientific or academic subtleties.

It doesn’t make the music more subtle; it doesn’t make the music more of an intellectual experience for me. I know that I felt profoundly musical when I thought about rhizomatic root systems, and there was a temptation to talk about that. But I felt that it would really diminish the possibility that someone else would feel musically.

What I want is for you to possibly have a glimpse of the musicality that I felt — not for you to have the thoughts that I thought. So I made that choice. I’ve definitely chosen in the other direction; you know, I’ve written program notes that are very ornate and specific about what inspired me. On this particular occasion, I decided to let the music be rhizomatic, instead of to try to convince people to think about rhizomatic biology while listening.

MMN: I can understand that. I think that it’s definitely tricky, because you could have written that program note, and then somebody would sit there and think, “Well that’s not how rhizomatic root movement sounds to me!” Which is a completely stupid argument to even contemplate having.

BLC: The other reason I didn’t talk about rhizomes in the CD jacket is because I wrote that in 2007, and then in 2008 and 2009, there were, like, six new books about Deleuze and music. Deleuze is a philosopher who talks about rhizomes, and it suddenly became very, very tiresome, the number of people who were using Deleuze in their discussions about music. I’m not shy about it — I’ll be the first to admit that Deleuze is a philosopher I find very inspired, and his fame is justified. It’s powerful stuff. But I did not want to just be folded into what’s become known as Deleuzian musical thought. That would have bothered me.

MMN: Having been removed from the academic environment, I have mixed feelings about the whole approach of writing a piece of music that is a piece of music, but at the same time asks questions about what a piece of music is, and can be, because I feel like the fact that that inquiry is going on can get in the way of it just being a piece of music. And part of me wants it just to be a piece of music, and not have to have an inquiry at the same time. Part of me wants to leave the seminar table behind and just hear a piece of music.

BLC: Well, I would say that there’s a difference between the desire of an artist to question the sort of normative limits of musical experience on the one hand, and on the other hand to be at a seminar table. I think those are two different things.

Erik Satie wrote pieces that really raised questions for people about what it meant to have a piece of music in front of you, or to hear something that was to be called a piece of music — some questions that were very difficult for people. It wasn’t the kind of avant garde thing where people were cussing and saying, “Oh, it’s noise, it’s nonsense.” But they were saying, “Why didn’t you finish that piece? Where’s the melody? Are you warming up? What is going on here?” It wasn’t a seminar conversation.

The reason that distinction’s important in the context of what you’re saying is that for Satie, at least, it didn’t get in the way of being just a piece of music. It maybe took a while before the vast majority of us could hear as just a piece of music. But now, although we still admire the formal peculiarities of his phrases, and we still admire his wit and we know he’s winking at us, it can also just be a piece of music.

I don’t know if I’ve managed to be experimental in a way that will be valuable or even that people might at some part of the world or in some subculture would say, “Oh, I just like that piece.” But I think there are people who would just think of A is for Azimuth and Arnica as just a piece, and be able to hear it like that. And maybe someday there would be a much broader segment of the population that could hear it as just a piece, regardless of whether they liked it or not.

MMN: Is that a goal for you, or is it just something that would be a happy accident?

BLC: I do want people to be able to just hear the music. I think that there may be a subculture of people who could listen to it over dinner, and that would make me happy. I don’t know if someone could be effective in a workout video to this music, but to listen to it on an exercise bike or something — I think that would be cool.

MMN: What, in general do you want a listener to bring to your music, and alternatively, to get out of your music?

BLC: I like listeners to bring to my music a readiness to try to hear in a different way. I am an experimental composer, which means I’m asking questions; I’m asking what’s possible. And I’m interested to know, what are the limits of feeling that something is coherent without pulse? I’m interested to know whether what we always assume about musical unity actually has to be the case in order for things to be unified?

I don’t want my listeners to have the same questions I have, but I want them to know that I’m asking questions about music, and I’m deliberately pushing some of the boundaries about what we normally consider to be musical. I want them to be ready to be there on those boundaries with me.

What I want them to get out of it is, I want them to find it beautiful. It’s a very good question you’re asking, because I don’t think you can get that thing out of it without being there in that space of readiness. Once a listener is there on the boundaries and ready to be experimental with me, I believe that they’ll actually get some very conventionally musical things, like development of ideas, and surprise, and lyricism, definitely. That would be the one thing that I think maybe people could get even without being willing to be on the boundary. I think that in spite of all of the walls that I’m pushing, I think my music remains lyrical; it remains phrased, and melodic even when it’s not pitched.

MMN: I think that’s true. I agree that your music is very lyrical, and this piece particularly is very delicate and beautiful. I still have this feeling that there’s something I want that’s not there, but that’s just me!

BLC: Well, I’m very gratified by your attention to the piece, and both categories of your response are quite valuable to me.

MMN: My pleasure!

One of the things Miss Music Nerd did with her summer was spend a lot of time pondering the concept of music criticism. And by “pondering,” I mean dreading, loathing, and, as one is well-advised to do with certain table wines, laying down and avoiding.

This is a rather inconvenient state of affairs, given that I’ve been going around calling myself a music journalist for a while now. I didn’t set out to become a music journalist; I just started writing stuff online, and in time, people started asking me to write more, especially concert and CD reviews. As Shakespeare said, “some are born music journalists, some achieve music journalism, and some have music journalism thrust upon them.” That is what he said, right?

Anyway… I know that “journalist” and “critic” are not necessarily the same thing (thank FSM), but when one stumbles onto review territory, the concept of criticism does sort of become relevant. And that’s a problem for me, because I find most of the music criticism I read to be temporarily diverting and amusing at best, and annoying and/or useless at worst. So I have been seriously contemplating abandoning the whole enterprise.

While I’ve been contemplating, a couple of my fellow composers, who also happen to be dear friends, have gotten some bad reviews. Not just bad as in negative, but bad as in appallingly poorly done, intellectually lazy and musically irresponsible. Reading them jolted me out of my omphaloskepsis, and though I continue to be reluctant and ambivalent, I feel I must trudge over to my phone booth, don my cape, and do what I can do to make things right.

...to the rescue!!

I’m going to start with a bad review of some bad reviews of my friend Ben Carson‘s CD, mostly in the form of an interview with him. Stay tuned!

Nicola Tesla

When you hear the word “opera,” do you picture a high-class affair in an ornate hall, attended by blue-haired ladies wearing furs, and featuring doomed lovers bellowing in a language you don’t understand, backed up by a chorus of soldiers carrying spears, and maybe a horse or two? You’re probably not alone, but you should know that today’s opera world reaches well beyond that stuffy old stereotype, from re-imagined versions of traditional repertory to freshly composed works by living composers. In one case, at least, opera can be downright electrifying!

Follow this link for the rest of the back story!

The production took place in a small hall at the Cambridge, Mass YMCA, and for a moment after I first sat down, I had the sensation of being back in high school, where I was a serious theater nerd. There was nothing amateurish about this production, though. Constumes were period-perfect, the singing was rock-solid, and sets and lighting were spare but inventive. It’s always fascinating to see how little you actually need to convey the drama of a story.

Chorus of Bees

Nova

Henry Ford

Tesla and Ford are both “pants roles,” portrayed by sopranos, a choice that lent a special poignancy to the rivalry between them, particularly in a scene where Ford and Edison gang up on Tesla in a way that becomes briefly physical.

Thomas Edison ponders the time prism

The one drawback of the experience was one that is a perennial problem with vocal music: I couldn’t understand the words as well as I wanted to, and the instrumental music overbalanced the singers at times. But regardless, I urge anyone who is in the Boston area to get to this show – there are performances tonight and tomorrow – and find out just how exciting a new opera can be!