mlr | Entries tagged with meme

Morton Feldman - Rothko Chapel

I discovered this piece (the first of several parts) about a month ago looking at the upcoming season of the San Francisco Symphony. They are performing it in February on a concert with the Mozart Requiem. Interesting choice for a symphony concert since it involves only a few musicians (other than a chorus): solo viola, celeste, and percussion.

Nice piece. We'll see if it works for insomnia - it's 3:30 A.M. as I post this. I suddenly woke up after four hours of sleep. It occasionally happens to me.

Paul Hindemith - The Four Temperaments

I think this category deserves a runner-up. Not that I don't stand by my first choice - if the B-52s don't provoke dance from at least one of your members, you might need to check to see if you're still alive.

But I don't think I quite paid Terpsichore her due. Even if our limbs and muscles can't come close to what our minds imagine, I think it is still important to acknowledge the Dance of the mind. The childhood glee from running and leaping into the air is something our minds don't forget.

I'm not a particular fan of ballet, but if I notice that a Balanchine documentary is going to be broadcast, I stay glued to the TV. There was something about his choreography that was more than all the others: more cerebral, more athletic, more demanding, more real.

In 1940, Balanchine commissioned Paul Hindemith to write a score for his troupe and paid him out of his own pocket. Somehow I think Hindemith knew that in order to please Balanchine he couldn't bring anything to the table that would be dour or heavy in any way - after-all this was Stravinsky's turf. His creation, The Four Temperaments is perhaps his finest composition. And in kind, Balanchine created dancing that was soaring, spiritual, and breathtaking.

YouTube is only partially helpful with this. There are two small clips by the Dutch National Ballet. The first one is a brief excerpt, the second one a bit longer - but after 40 seconds of Hindemith's music, it switches to more recent scores written to accompany the Balanchine choreography. Someone else has bothered to post parts of an excellent recording by the L.A. Philharmonic which I can recommend.

Roam - B-52s

I don't think this needs explanation.

Our Love Is Here to Stay - George & Ira Gershwin

For me to remember the words, the song can't be too obscure or the lyrics too long. (I like a lot of 80s songs, but I quickly get to the mumbling stage trying to recall the words.)

No one sings like Louis Armstrong. He turns every single word into an event. The rhythmic shifts, where the word falls slightly after or before the beat, give his singing (and playing) a tight-wound energy that is scintillating. But at the same time he is engaging and easy-going. Ella's style is actually quite different - much smoother for one. The difference between them might be compared to how a granddaddy handles a new grandbaby vs. a grandmother.

Underneath all of this is the perfect piano playing of Oscar Peterson.

This was the last song that George Gershwin wrote. Ira wrote the lyrics after his brother's death. He later collaborated with Kurt Weill, Harold Arlen and others.

River - Joni Mitchell

The pictures in this video are all wrong for me. I see the hard earth of Texas, the dried grass, the frosty cold of the prairie countryside, the nascent snow, the deserted and lonely highways, the warmth of large gaseous automobiles, and on the edges, the spectral presence of my family (now mostly gone) and my friend Glenda (thankfully still around).

The first time I heard Joni's Blue album was in December '71. I immediately loved it. I loved all of the songs. It was the first pop album that had a strong effect on me - the experience was long overdue. And not to be often repeated.

I never really thought of River as a Christmas song, it just obliquely refers to Christmas in a few places in the lyric, and has a nice touch of Jingle Bells in the intro. In the past 10 years there have been lots of covers and such, but when the album came out I didn't know anyone outside my circle who paid any attention to this song or any of the others.

Since it was oblique, it was the perfect Christmas song for me in the early 70s. The sense of isolation mixed with yearning, of being on the outside of things, and the philosophical questions that isolation poses, were all part of my inner Christmas. (Ang Lee's The Ice Storm captures this holiday angst. It also captures the early 70s better than any other movie.)

As I have come to know now, this reflection is actually a necessary part of Christmas. To truly experience the sparkling light, the warmth, the humanity, the hope, the momentary truce of all strife, it's important to know something of the chasm. In every good Christmas story, there is always dark before the breaking light. Judy has to sing the sad Have yourself a merry little Christmas before the real thing can come.

Béla Bartók - Contrasts

Somewhere sent my mind in many directions! But finally it has come to rest (for the moment) in Austin, Texas - where I went to school.

I held a position in the Music Department as an accompanist, which had come through an audition. I lost count of how many recitals I accompanied. The Old Recital Hall was surprisingly small, with absolutely perfect acoustics, graceful wood paneling, and the most wonderful old Steinways - everyone agreed it was a perfect room for music. My favorite person to accompany was also a friend: a tall, bearded clarinetist - Robert Williams. I played two recitals for him. Almost unheard of, he asked me what I wanted to play and then followed through by programming those pieces. We played the Brahms Clarinet Trio, the Berg pieces for clarinet and piano, and Bartok's Contrasts. The violinist on the Contrasts was Judy Mass - who eventually became a member of the L.A. Phil. Unfortunately I lost touch with Robert.

Thinking about Robert and his girlfriend, Catherine Schieve, brings back many Austin memories: the Thanksgivings with her family, the times the three of us would go boating on Lake Travis, the late night desserts we would have at the Old Pecan Street Café on 6th Street. But the most intense memory is just stepping out of the Old Music Building into the Austin night: the moist, heavy air which seemed to carry so much energy, the live oak trees, the sound of traffic on Guadalupe Street mingled with the water splashing in the Littlefield Fountain.

I googled Catherine's name and actually found a recording! where the three of us can be heard. The piece is Serpentine. I had no idea.

You are too beautiful - Rodgers & Hart

Tuneful and tasteful
Schmaltzy and smart
Music by Rodgers
Lyrics by Hart

I drove to Albuquerque on Friday night in my continued Great Piano Quest. The piano I went to see was OK, but I found another I liked much better. I am really considering this one...

The piano storeroom suddenly emptied for a minute and I quickly propped up my iPhone. I just played an old standard for a few seconds before someone came back in. Somehow the sensor didn't flip, and so the clip is upside down.

This song reminds me of a singer I accompanied in the 1980s, Jo Davis. She become a very good friend, and she and her daughter became a big part of our lives. She moved from Texas to New York the minute she could get away in 1950 or '51 - something like that. She had a long romantic relationship with Percy Heath, the bass player. Later she married an abstract expressionist painter, Warren Davis. They eventually moved to Santa Fe, where he died of kidney failure as a young man. Jo was left stranded, trying to raise her young daughter with only his paintings and her singing for an income. For several years they moved to Texas where I met her.

She was a wonderful singer - and still is! She knew all of the old songs. Her charts were often yellowed and crinkled with age and in total disarray. They suggested the bohemian life she had lived New York in the 50s hanging out in the jazz clubs. Although she was occasionally in need, I would never have called her poor, because she was not poor in spirit. She lived a wonderful life full of passion, adventure, and dreams. I miss her voice, and playing for her, and her laughter, and all the fun times we had.

She moved back to Santa Fe in 1989, and I try to see her a couple of times a year. Kira grew up to produce Sisterhood of the Travelings Pants 2 and several other movies. She is now a mother herself and has an amazing and rich life in Hollywood with her husband. I played at her wedding at the Santa Fe Opera House several years ago. It was exciting to see Kira surrounded by her glamourous friends all dressed to the nines. It was also quite emotional for us that knew the hardships she and Jo had endured.

Jo had a philosophy of life that if you truly follow your dreams and do the right thing, good things will come to you. It could have come straight out of an old song. At the time, I could pay lip service to this - but underneath I was still a cynic.

Now, of course, I've come 'round - I know there is something to it.

Stravinsky - Symphonies Of Wind Instruments

This piece was written in memory of Claude Debussy. In the last decade of his life the older composer warmly and graciously befriended the young Stravinsky.

The last part of the piece could be called mournful (or sad). There definitely is an elegiac character to the piece. With Stravinsky an elegy would never be weepy or sentimental, but rather ceremonial and solemn.

This video has beautiful and sensitive camera work. I think it would be very useful with children. It shows the embouchures, the breath control, and the spirit of playing each of the different instruments. Stravinsky's writing for wind instruments was distinctive during the entire course of his career - in fact it's hard to think of another composer who wrote so remarkably for winds.

For high spirits try Musica Antiqua Köln's recording of

Brandenburg Concerto No. 3

Where did he get the joy? Well - with that mind, who can say. But in part it was from Vivaldi. In his 3rd position as the organist of the ducal chapel at Weimar Bach had an enthusiastic employer. One of the dukes had a large music library and was always acquiring the latest things. Music by the fiery Venetian was all the rage. Bach probably performed many Vivaldi concertos with the duke's orchestra. He also arranged several for solo instruments. Bach's own compositions were gradually infused with the Vivaldi style and spirit.

An update on yesterday's post about Carmina Burana. Israel read it later in the day. He said it was thought-provoking, but a little too much. He was quite surprised I really didn't like it. He had conducted it once with a High School band, and said there was nothing more fun to perform. He said "Besides, what would the dance floor of the 90s have been without the disco version of 'O Fortuna'".

If you had asked me any time in the past 30 years, what my least favorite piece of music is, I would have said without hesitation Carmina Burana. Today, I would probably say the same thing, but with more hesitation.

First let me state what is not equivocal. The piece owes a great debt to Stravinsky - almost too great a debt - especially to Les Noces and Oedipus Rex. This is indisputable and can be found in any discussion of the piece. While the two Stravinsky scores are just two of dozens of seminal works of his that spawned imitation, Carmina Burana is the only score of Orff's to hold any such reputation.

Second, my opinion. I'm not fond of the piece, but that's not to say that I think it is 'bad'. It is rather effective. But to me the music is pompous and silly - the musical equivalent of Dungeons and Dragons. It also irks me that 'O fortuna' can be used to sell anything from tractors to pimple gel, while the brilliant Stravinsky scores are generally unknown to even the average musician.

The third reason is where I have trouble. We live in a time in which that horrible phrase 'politically correct' has meaning. Young artists, filmmakers, composers have to pass through this sieve before they can ever have any valid voice in our society. Is this fair?

If it is fair applied to the living, then why not the dead? And if there are things that are 'politically correct' and things that are not, surely on that logic there are things that are even 'more politically correct'. But being 'more politically correct' has never made a work of art any better. Or has it? It certainly gives a new work more cachet in our society.

If there was ever a politically in-correct work of music it is the Carmina. One of the books I read this summer was Michael Kater's Composers of the Nazi Era. While it is clear that Orff was at times a scoundrel, reading about him actually made me a little more sympathetic instead of less. In the past, one of the reasons that I would have given for disliking Carmina would have been its Nazi origin. But, conversely, is this any reason to admire Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima -- to me another silly piece.

Alex Ross writes: Strauss and Orff were assiduously cultivated by the Nazi regime not because they had exceptional sympathies with the Nazi movement, but because they had a self-evident power to affect broad audiences. Their surrender to Nazi overtures is an ineradicable stain on the biography of each; but the music itself commits no sins simply by being and remaining popular. That “Carmina Burana” has appeared in hundreds of films and television commercials is proof that it contains no diabolical message, indeed that it contains no message whatsoever.

I don't know if I totally agree with him. And I honestly do not know what to think about this aspect of Carmina Burana.

I enjoyed the first two entries in

cpratt's meme. But I have a fairly limited knowledge of popular music, so I'm going to slightly change it to suit what I know.

My favorite piece of music:

Beethoven

String Quartet, Opus 130, 3rd movement

Runner up:

Mahler

Symphony No. 9, 1st movement

This is maybe a better performance of the Beethoven movement.

And this a more visually interesting performance of the Mahler.

This silly program claims I write like
Vladimir Nabokov

This is based on my last post - but I'll take it. Flatter yourself here.

a meme from

mark_monroe:

then: health food
now: healthy food

then: saturday afternoon, saturday night
now: sunday morning, livejournal

then: pleasure
now: happiness

then: blithe
now: mindful

then: negative, certain, judgmental, entitled
now: positive, doubtful, forgiving, OMG

then: negative
now: negative

then: rent
now: rental

then: 17
now: 100

then: isherwood
now: bowles

then: opus 109
now: bwv 769

then: barcelona
now: santiago de compostela

then: mother/father/older brother/younger brother
now: older brother

then: israel
now: israel

then: abandoned it
now: getting it back