tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56113544742550528422024-03-13T16:26:24.121-04:00ThoughtLightsNotes on notesDan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.comBlogger105125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-63938502237026041282011-07-16T23:42:00.002-04:002011-07-17T00:45:18.377-04:00Words on words and musicI'm here in New York for the summer, chipping away at the dissertation and enjoying the panoply of free cultural events the city has to offer (a sampling: outdoor screening of Manhattan in Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn Rider's eclectic and invigorating concert of classical, Brazilian, bluegrass, Japanese, and Roma music, and dreamy atmospheric rock of Radio Dept. at sunset at the Seaport). Farmers markets have bountifully overfed me.<br /><br />Life is good, so good in fact that I'm going to complain just for a change of mood. I haven't seen any Broadway yet (except Kelli O'Hara and Matthew Morrison's great performance at the Capitol Fourth concert (yeah, I know they had the cast of Million Dollar Quartet too, but that doesn't cut it at the moment)).<br /><br />A few days ago, I came across <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/theater/musical-or-opera-the-fine-line-that-divides-them.html">this article</a> in the Times, asking one of the perennial favorite musical quirky questions: what's the difference between musicals and opera? For my money, I'm still partial to Sondheim's distinction: if it's on stage by an opera company and the audience goes in expecting to see an opera, it's an opera. In other words, nothing is inherent in the work, it's all about expectations. Nevertheless, I think we all can identify common tropes in both the work and performance style, and so I looked forward to this take. For the record, I don't think a satifying single definition will ever be found—in fact, I don't think one even needs to be articulated—but as with any marker of genre, they can be useful.<br /><br />Tommasini doesn't start well with a title asking us to "respect the difference." To me, this suggests snobbery from the start, and an implicit critique of ones that purport to borrow from or assimilate to the other. He begins by noting the common word "opera" appearing all over the place, and indeed suggesting that so manny efforts to cross the boundary are unsatisfying. He makes a few points I contest. For instance, I wouldn't peg Pagliacci as unrivaled in crowd-pleasing, and most importantly I wouldn't follow the conclusion he draws from A Minister's Wife, where, after praising the score insists it must be "pretentious musical theater or tame quasi-opera." I think there's space for a work like that, or if not we should make space.<br /><br />Tomassini quickly dismisses highbrow/lowbrow, complexity, and spoken dialogue, all things that do not yield a strong division, but I think might be more fruitfully considered at length. Instead, he writes, "Here’s the difference: Both genres seek to combine words and music in dynamic, felicitous and, to invoke that all-purpose term, artistic ways. But in opera, music is the driving force; in musical theater, words come first."<br /><br />There's something to this, performance-wise. The bain of crossover singers from opera doing showtunes is that the words get garbled, but I don't think that's the issue. I mean, I can recite the text by heart, but hearing Kiri Te Kanawa try a cockney accent in My Fair Lady is no match for Julie Andrews. There's a great bit too on José Carreras singing West Side Story where Bernstein continually stops rehearsal because he cannot sing "still" properly. Jerry Hadley has fared a little better with a brighter more natural sound. Dawn Upshaw, with her clarity comes close. (Renee Fleming surprised me, although her most recent crossover album of indie rock loses the operatic quality altogether but never really finds something to replace it and the result sounds just empty, boring). For my money, the only true cross-over artist is Audra MacDonald. I think there is something vital to not just the words, but how they're sung, their placement and clarity, their ease and naturalness. Musical theater does not, as opera does, repeat lines at least not verbatim. Although they do take more time to ease out their sentiments than a normal conversation.<br /><br />But as his reasoning went on, I grew more skeptical of his theory. He draws on Cole Porter's lyrics to "Anything Goes," but says nothing about their setting. For opera, he turns to Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti. But this example is surely flawed, right, since the entire second act is lifted from a Broadway show, and the surrounding material is so self-consciously Serious Opera that it hardly illuminates anything. I'm not an expert on libretti, so perhaps someone could speak to how important the text is in opera studies, but I hesitate to put the music in the backseat when it comes to musicals. I think, "in olden days," the melody, the standalone work carried just as much importance as the text. And with a variety of scores inching toward the operatic- Bernstein's Candide and West Side Story, Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, Guettel's Light in the Piazza, the score carries the words more often than not. Now Tommasini grants that all these works are musically strong but that the words "do most of the heavy lifting." I'm not sure what that means. Does it mean that the music tells the story more effectively in opera? Because I don't think that's true—I think viewers rely on the action and/or the text just as much, and plenty of moments in musical theater tell a story through music. Does it mean that the story is more important to the musical? I think just the opposite is true, given the equally common practice of excerpting a tune from Broadway show and an aria from an opera and the interpolation of new songs into early musical theater (and Baroque opera).<br /><br />In the end, I'm disappointed largely because the distinction feels unnuanced and ill-thought out. For instance, he attributes the importance of melody to opera, not musical theater. But also because Tommasini never provides a good reason why this distinction he's drawing matters and to whom. He writes that theatergoing audiences may not care about the divide. Well, if that's true, then why is this article being written? I think audiences do care, returning to Sondheim. When going to see the Glimmerglass production of Annie Get Your Gun, what will make the work a success? For those going because they love Deborah Voigt, their definitions will vary from those whose first love is Berlin's tunes (and lyrics).<br /><br />When thinking about the differences—yes, I think it has to be plural—between these two, at the forefront should be our understanding of to whom and why. For listeners, words play a big part, performance style, production values, choreography, maybe even subject matter. For composers, it would look different. There's something interesting: why compose an opera or a musical theater piece. There, money, advertising, subject matter (again), prestige (probably again, though I didn't initially list it and now think twice), all matter there. We might also gain something out of the overlap. The opera-ness of many rock operas derives in part from near continuous underscoring. This is also what makes them often worse for the wear, because they lack any distinctness. So I'll end with a beginning of my own definition as an avid listener. Musical theater thrives on distinctness of moments: a choreographed number, a set number, even in the shows like Sweeney Todd's second act or Next to Normal (the best rock opera to date in my opinion). Opera produces a more fluid (not unified, necessarily) product that divides into longer scenes. Operatic excerpts always feel to me a little arbitrary and incomplete in the way they begin and end, perhaps because of this. But such a distinction alone is not satisfactory enough, it's just one piece of a complex question whose answers is a lot further than Tommasini would have us believe.Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-90259988447017357502011-06-12T22:57:00.002-04:002011-06-13T00:31:37.071-04:00On (not) writingI took last summer off for a little perspective in terms, and also to refocus energies elsewhere. And coming back, I'm not sure either of those panned out in the ways I thought. There were several times I started writing something, but couldn't quite get it out in a way that made sense for me, or that I wanted to write something but just got busy. And these I suspect will be continuing problems for me, but for the mean time I'm back largely in part to a) my missing this and b) the feeling that it's worthwhile beyond me.<br /><br />There's been a lot of discussion lately on the AMS listserv (and echoed nicely over at <a href="amusicology.wordpress.com">amusicology</a> about the place of blogs. I don't imagine I get much draw outside of people I already know, but it's a way of disseminating even in small steps some thoughts. I could also be a better self-promoter, I suppose. But modest aims are fine, I think, for where I am. It's nice, honestly, to feel like I'm communicating more with these folks more than the once-or-twice-a-year conference or trip.<br /><br />Instead, I think the broader goal for me is pedagogical, self and otherwise. Taking this teaching writing seminar underscored how much I value that sort of daily, low-stakes writing (an added bonus of where the free time went, I did more fiction reading, and intend to continue this trend!). It's hard to square the publicness with the lack of a really public readership, meaning that ideas occupy this nebulous space of inquisitive working through and digested and eloquent. I'm the kind of writer who likes a space to sort of see it on paper or hear myself talk it out, hence I'm back. But I've also seen a lot about blogs in the classroom. We had listening blogs in one class, but the class was too large (in my opinion) to really make it a space for much discussion to erupt and, in a fitting parallel to <a href="amusicology.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/little-richard-unfails-musicology">Ryan's post</a> students managed to spread the rumor that they didn't need to actually do it and it was a losing battle. I like the idea of blogs though, as a space for working out ideas, sharing perspectives, continuing exchanges and collaboration beyond the classroom, and I expect to continue this in the fall when I teach freshman writing. Blogs are good for just practicing writing, doing it daily, letting students get feedback on their ideas, learn how to make and support arguments, how to provide commentary, and to realize that their ideas participate in a broader conversation.<br /><br />All of this is to say that if we want to make musicology active in the public domain, keeping that in mind in the classroom is a good idea. We encounter students who will become musicians, medical researchers, administrators, psychologists, whatever- the people who will become potential readers of our words. But if the classroom is just a place to learn about musical form, concerts attended just so they can write 3 pages rehashing it, music and its teachers seemingly cut off from the modern world, they won't go into the world expecting to see musicologists playing an active role. They may very well appreciate what they learned, they may remember us fondly, but they won't see us as a missing part after they get their diploma. Which would be a shame, because what I love about my work and my colleagues is how they make me feel connected to a larger world, and hope that my presence in it will be of use to someone.Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-33622590617908683892011-06-08T23:02:00.002-04:002011-06-09T01:03:19.779-04:00MahlertiaSo, somehow my summer vacation away from blogging turned into a year. I've had a lot happen in the interim, but nothing terribly earth shattering. Some dissertation got written as well as a couple conference papers and a side project article that's in final editing before submitting it, I got to try my hand at teaching film, took a job applying prep seminar, and I think the biggest was taking a seminar on how to teach writing. This summer we're getting ready to teach freshman writing in the fall, and the new assignment is SYLLABUS. It's getting scarily concrete.<br /><br />I'll write more on that and a few other topics that have been brewing (some, like this one, in response to AMS listserve activity). But I want to launch back into this on a more gut level topic, specifically being stirred by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's season-closing performance of Mahler 9. They were great about providing me with an apology pair of comp tickets after last year's concert replaced Nielsen 5 with Rachmaninov's 2nd symphony (which I'd just heard two weeks prior) without my being notified. I was disappointed (as a friend and I agreed, it's like being promised a ride in juiced up rare car only to get a ride in a really big minivan).<br /><br />The concert was absolutely amazing. Bernard Haitink had a perfect rapport with all the musicians, who were actively into it, and just nuanced control of all the disparate parts. I'll also put this forward: Mahler 9 is my vote for favorite/best symphony. Here's some musings on what grabs me.<br /><br />The first movement starts out in little fragments, a note here, a rocking motive in the harp that recalls immediately the adagietto of Mahler 5 (and less immediately "Beautiful" from Sunday in the Park With George), and ultimately reaches this lovely three-note motive that never resolves to the tonic. It just hangs there, but somehow inflects a gentler yearning than what I'd expect. Like it's content to rest there on the second degree, and so are we. It's hard to summarize this movement most of all; it's like reading a novel that covers so much territory without getting lost. The orchestra kicks into high gear with the brass charging forward in a heroic effort that again doesn't get resolved, the mood darkens, then sweetens as the opening motive comes back, building back up again. And here's the thing: this movement struggles on and on, it's quixotic, it's <i>weird</i>. The melodies end abruptly, the orchestration turns on a dime, the harmonies are muddy and indistinct. The concert sold out, but maybe it's the name because late Mahler isn't really an audience pleaser. 90 minutes of this without intermission. Anyway, the first movement has the most marvelous ending- everything sort of peters out into a sweet chamber music moment built around that opening motive that hangs on the second scale degree until a harp and flute resolve it in the upper register. It's like magic, really, not just fulfilling that which you've been striving for for so long, but exceeding it with sheer simplicity of that one note that feels both attained (at last!) and unearthly, out of reach. Perfection, held just long enough to stop your breath.<br /><br />The second is just the opposite: silly, earthly, bizarre. A folk dance burbles up through the orchestra but only for so long. Soon another dance tune intercuts it, then another and another, like a comic traffic pile-up. Then Mahler has fun with this wealth of ideas: the tunes get chopped up. They start answering each other in wrong keys, sliding around like dizzying musical banter, or maybe even like a cream pie fight. And since I work on collage, that's what this is: a collage of these various dance tunes, remixed in ever-changing ways and positions. I find it interesting that the folk dance movement provides the impetus for Mahler's release like this- maybe there's something to the physicalness of dance that allows this sort of musical embodiment of spinning out of control, fumbling around. And intercut with the dances are moments of rest, these echoes of that first movement motive. And then it ends like the first movement, hanging unresolved, then resolving in this cute little ripple of notes- different effect, similar means. I half-stifled my giggle.<br /><br />The third movement is something of a march that can't quite decide on its character. A little overly self-serious at times, chipperly dysfunctional at others. Haitink caught, I think, the perfect tempo- there's a danger of letting it run away with itself, which undercuts the pomposity of it. The middle section is another statement of what will become the opening 4th movement theme, presented at first half-formed, harmonized in and out of tune, starting to blossom into the tenderest moment yet once the strings take it up, but that thought is left hanging, and the theme simply asserts itself again inquisitively, plays around a bit, before the clarinet takes it up in a mocking tone a la Till Eulenspiegel and the march theme inserts itself in playful counterpoint. This is something I love- the themes get treated in practically every way. They're comic, they're sweet, they're bombastic, and Mahler nails every mood just right.<br /><br />I love the fourth movement most of all. It's the only one that doesn't feel like it's fighting against itself. It's the most harmonically triadic and grounded. Also, we've been introduced to the themes in more parodic fashion in the third and second movements; what's surprising is how straightforward it is and how effective it is just to let them unfold. The tone is incredibly hard to pin down. It's happy, but in a sad, irrevocably lost way, or maybe it's sad in a warm, accepting sort of way. It yearns but it doesn't feel directional or unfulfilled. More like it's <i>about</i> yearning than it <i>is</i>yearning. There's a climactic moment where the tension builds until the opening unison string gesture bursts in and the horns solidly affirm the main motive. But then the ending enriches it by reducing the orchestra to just a few instruments, in quiet, uncertain, dark counterpoint. The two different impulses are never really resolved; what we get is a rich but intimate string texture at rest, very fragile stability: a tonic chord, but with oscillations up and down in the violas that threaten to break it at any moment but by the end haven't. <br /><br />If I seem overly anthropomorphic here, it's only because I want to emphasize how this symphony feels natural. Music seems to unfold in a logical but free way. It makes sense in ways that make sense when you hear it. And you should hear it (live, if possible).Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-56488961043604293882010-04-01T17:58:00.002-04:002010-04-01T18:09:07.527-04:00Too fool for schoolI hope today's weather is not a prank, because let me tell you, I don't want more snow after the beautiful t-shirt weather sunny day we've had. Plans to hold some of class outside were put aside because nobody did the reading, so I went outside for 15 minutes while they all read. Maybe sections tomorrow will go better.<br /><br />There's a lot I've missed posting about—SAM certainly merits some attention, and our double-bill of speakers Tom Turino on Peircian semiotics and David Huron on musical emotion also left me reeling with ideas. But I can't really be bothered with that on a blissful day like today, so instead I'll share a brief observation: there's very little less satisfying to me than finding the perfect music to fit the weather and mood of a day. Today, serendipitously talking about film with my Australian friend, we turned to Picnic at Hanging Rock. And while the day was much hotter, and the clothes much stiffer, there, the slow movement of Beethoven's Emperor concerto winds its way through the suffocating heat like a hint of a cool breeze. It's almost palpable. And putting that on as I headed back to the library (ugh), dawdling outside until the concerto ended, made for a perfect diversion.<br /><br />Enjoy yourselves.<br /><br />PS: for another, uh, diversion, and appropriately for today enjoy this <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/endlessly-single/id363207606">not-a-joke cover</a>.Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-68049268607675546782010-03-07T12:49:00.003-05:002010-03-07T13:32:58.917-05:00Best of 2009: CinemaWell, it's Oscar night day, and my mind is already looking forward to the baked brie I'll be making and enjoying the uncertainty of a number of my predictions. So it's a good day to talk about the best 2009 had to offer.<br /><br />Let's start with what I'm hoping wins BP: The Hurt Locker. I just saw it a second time, and loved it even more. There's a lot to be said for its construction- 2.5 hours of grueling tension which almost never lets up. But a second viewing led me to pay much more attention to the nuances of character, the way they feel actually complex to the viewer. Twice one character considers killing another, but we're never sure of the reasons. The characters remain enigmatic to us the way they remain just as enigmatic to each other, and probably to themselves. I also caught more of a character arc in the main character, the way his defenses subtly break down over the course of the film. This was actually only one of several Iraq movies to emerge this year, including the equally unsettling, complex study of war's effects The Messenger, and the disarmingly sharp satire In the Loop. In both of those, the war is off-camera but strongly felt nonetheless.<br /><br />On a related note, 2009 was a year of powerful violence at the cinema. Steve McQueen's Hunger, a visually rapturous, gut-wrenching film about the hunger strike of Bobby Sands is one of the more remarkable exercises in pure filmmaking but never feels overdone. Equally beautiful in its depictions of violence is Michael Haneke's austerely creepy The White Ribbon, in which a German town clings to tradition, order, and naivete as a number of unexplained acts of cruelty are unleashed. Haneke still proves the master of taut psychological suspense, but does so with increasingly subtle overtones here.<br /><br />There were a few welcome romantic diversions. I prefered the looseness and performances of the under-appreciated Away We Go, with award worthy comic performances by the leads John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph, to the overly quirky but smartly observant 500 Days of Summer, both good doses of summer love with a sharp aftertaste. And the platonic romance between Maria, the camera, and the camera store owner in Everlasting Moments, one of the year's most beautifully crafted films, was perfect and small. And the first third of Up captured the year's best romance, one whose absence provides the balloon-buoyant film with its necessary heft. But the bulk of this year's best relationships were shared between two men. Goodbye Solo, a quiet, charming film slowly spins a tale of finely-etched friendship between a cab driver and a suicidal man. Humpday and Funny People, both with their flaws, worked their best because of the way easy camaraderie between two men resulted in honest, soulful revelations. Moon, an impeccable science fiction movie, mused on a friendship between two clones, with funny and very human results. The Hurt Locker and The Messenger also fit this bill quite well.<br /><br />Family loss was at the center of two excellent foreign films. STill Walking, a Japanese film riffing on Ozu's Tokyo Story but finding very much its own voice as a family struggles with the loss of a brother many years earlier. And Summer Hours, a smart French film about the loss of a family's heritage and unity in a globalized world. Political and smart without hammering a moral across, and ending on the perfect grace note. That similar sense of loss is what anchored Spike Jonze's sober and virtuosic adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are.<br /><br />There was fun to be had at Star Trek and Up and Harvard Beats Yale 29-29, but none moreso than at Tarantino's uproarious rewriting of history in Inglourious Basterds. But the year's best comedy was a tart-edged throwback to Preston Sturges, where social realism and commentary mixed with screwball humor. This, of course, was Up in the Air, a film of immaculate comic timing, three incomparable leads and a stellar supporting cast, the flim rises above its topicality to be the best American comedy since Lost in Translation.<br /><br />And that leaves us with what I have sometimes called the year's best film, certainly its most underrated. In such a crowded field, Sugar has gone almost unnoticed, which is fitting. Whereas Avatar, The Blind Side, and Precious all deal with race in an ultimately glossy and unsatisfying way, Sugar nails the complexity of being an immigrant in America with pathos and a richness lacked by anything else this year. And the ending is a perfect mix of uplift and heartbreak. Rent it.<br /><br />Top 10 of 2009:<br />10. Away We Go<br />9. Summer Hours<br />8. In the Loop<br />7. Inglourious Basterds<br />6. Hunger<br />5. The White Ribbon<br />4. The Messenger<br />Threeway tie for first at the moment<br />Up in the Air/The Hurt Locker/Sugar<br /><br />In short, I'm rooting tonight for The Hurt Locker, Wallace and Gromit, and a probably misguided hope for Meryl Streep (although that category rightfully belongs to Carey Mulligan, just as Actor belongs to Colin Firth, but I am aware of reality).Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-72210606853945024372010-02-23T21:11:00.003-05:002010-02-23T22:03:04.627-05:00Best of 2009: MusicLess organized, but here are some of the better new albums, new songs, and rediscoveries.<br /><br />Grizzly Bear: album, Veckatimest; song, Two Weeks<br />Marvelous blend of warmth and cold across their songs, vocal harmonies are lush but the backgrounds can be marvelously spare. Two Weeks has enough of a pop edge to keep it immediately catchy but its subtle in how it unfolds.<br /><br />Avett Brothers: album, I and Love and You; song Heart Like a Kickdrum<br />Pure adrenaline in that song, but there's a wonderful immediacy to the music, being half bluegrass folk roots and simplicity, half screaming punky energy. Their album is full of its share of perfect, heartbreaking tender moments too.<br /><br />Animal Collective: song, My Girls. <br />Catchy in a way that seems so weird to work, but it does.<br /><br />Bon Iver: album, Blood Bank. <br /> 4 songs, rich and focused. I need to listen more to get under them, but it's been rewarding so far.<br /><br />Various artists: song, Mashup from Glee: It's My Life/Confessions. <br />Pure power pop hooks, immaculately assembled.<br /><br />Various Artists: album, Dark Was the Night<br />It doesn't quite hang together as an album for me, but the parts themselves are some of the best offerings from a variety of sources- Grizzly Bear, The Books covering Nick Drake, Beirut, Sufjan Stevens, a marvelous small gem of a song from Iron and Wine, and a long but meticulous song from the Decemberists. And more.<br /><br />And the best song of the year, Phoenix: album, Woldgang Amadeus Phoenix; song, 1901.<br />The video for this song is hypnotic, a light show, and what's more it is fit so musically with the song itself. The song grows out of a sparse, electronic texture into a fairly masterful dance hit. Vocals, guitar riffs add in. Then around a minute in, it bursts into a high-octane version, sunnier in its orchestration and with adrenaline-filled sense of slow build. Then at 1:15 or so, it manages to build even higher with a siren, until the chorus erupts: a few fleeting moments of full gratification. But here's the kicker- that moment is backed by that initial soundscape, setting up a second cycle perfectly, never dropping you for a second.<br /><br /><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/4rbGj4_qYgI&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/4rbGj4_qYgI&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br />And since rediscoveries are so great, here are five recommendations of CDs that languished too long until this year:<br /><br />Gil Shaham, Barber and Korngold violin concertos<br />Neeme Jarvi, Nielsen Symphonies<br />Europa Galanta, Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione<br />Dawn Upshaw, I Wish It So<br />Radiohead, The BendsDan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-85619691954837747482010-02-17T21:53:00.002-05:002010-02-23T21:14:32.059-05:00Best of 2009: PerformancesTime for a late catch-up of favorites, in several parts. No time like the sick-on-the-couch present.<br /><br />Best live performances of 2009.<br /><br />10. Next to Normal. A tuneful rock musical, anchored by marvelous performances and a gut-wrenching story.<br /><br />9. International Contemporary Ensemble's production of John Adams. Vibrant reminder of just how good Adams's music is and how many ways it's good, from the shimmering textures of Shaker Loops to the quirky humor and sweet nostalgia of his Gnarly Buttons, played with precision.<br /><br />8. Finian's Rainbow. Marvelous score, one of the best, in a no-frills, consummate performance.<br /><br />7. Andras Schiff, The last Beethoven sonatas. One of the more compelling renditions of Beethoven, unmatched in the intensity of the quietest moments. The silence that hung in the audience after the last sonata's gentle conclusion was perfect.<br /><br />6. West Side Story, Broadway. This revival not only gives a powerful reminder of just how good that score is, but also manages to nail the awkward pain of young love perfectly.<br /><br />5. Grizzly Bear. Thrilling new indie band in a low-key, high-quality, intimate stage performance. Being something of an ignorant fan, it was like confirmation of their promise, even if the format of a classical-style concert was odd.<br /><br />4. Stile Antico. One of the most stunningly clear, intimate vocal ensembles, in a marvelous program of simple Tallis and extravagant Byrd.<br /><br />3. St. Louis Symphony. A marvelous program (luminous Wagner, Adams's dark, compelling Guide to Strange Places, Zimmerman's hypnotically spare Canto di Speranza, soaring rendition of Sibelius 5), conducted with vitality by Robertson.<br /><br />2. Newport Music Festival. Marvelous performances, from the intimate music of The Low Anthem and Iron and Wine to the sheer joy and tunefulness of The Decemberists to the unmissable singalong with Pete Seeger. Next time, bring sunblock.<br /><br />1. Our Town, Off-Broadway. Rarely is theater this compelling, this emotional. David Cromer's minimalist reworking of Wilder's classic feels fresh, its nostalgic aspects retain all their power, particularly in the stage manager's simple, direct delivery makes it feel honest rather than applied, but the intimacy of the characters is so engrossing and human. Marvelous.Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-11085634834125593162010-02-03T23:33:00.000-05:002010-02-09T00:48:11.465-05:00Pierre, Part II & ConversationsPierre Boulez gave a brilliant concert a couple weeks ago. The Ravel Tombeau de Couperin was marvelously clear, graceful, and warm. The Dalbavie flute concerto, an example of "spectralism," followed. This piece is generative, the flute will elaborate from little cells from the orchestra, and the melodic lines sort of ripple back and forth. This makes a fascinating pairing- two texturally active, technically precise works, but one sharp and cool, the other atmospheric and warm. The second half was the Bartok opera Bluebeard's Castle, the sort of work that makes you wish Bartok wrote for films (other than Kubrick). Musically, the work is an astonishing array of orchestral colors, coupled with knockout vocal performances, Dramatically, though, I personally feel that Judith had little business complaining that the first room, which revealed a torture chamber, was "horrible" with its blood. I mean, it's a torture chamber. They're not supposed to be spotless or bright. And, by the way, just wait until you see the kitchen. This guy's been a bachelor for quite some time.<br /><br />The next day, he gave a charming conversation with Glenn Watkins. There was a lot of little musicological stuff, some poetically evasive answers about the future of music ("music is a series of accidents that become important"), some wry personal comments (his disgust at the thought of retiring was a high point), and best of all just wonderfully evocative comments about other composers- Stravinsky's instrumentation, Bartok's inventiveness with form, and his programming choices ("Why not?" was all he said about the Schumann Rhenish symphony).<br /><br />Then various things happened in the mean time. They're probably not that exciting to you all, but they sure took up my week.<br /><br />This past weekend, we held our graduate student conference. The papers came from a variety of places, and it was again nice to see a broad variety of quality work from several disciplines. <br /><br />Ramon Satyendra led a wonderfully provocative workshop discussion about how we evaluate different types of musical/analytical arguments. What do you do with important things that don't fit your model? How helpful is being invested in your model? How do the historical contexts of the theories themselves shape our understandings? I still have real big problems with the Lehrdall scientific mathematical modeling approach (the idea that so much of the work is just shelved to focus on melodic and harmonic pull is ridiculous), but that's part of the fun. David Lewin's work on Schubert's Ihr Bild, on the other hand, is a marvel of insight.<br /><br />Kofi Agawu gave one of the most direct, clear, and thoughtful keynote addresses I've seen. He talked about how tonality served as a colonizing force in Africa, how it accompanied certain acts of oppression, and how Africans have in various ways sought to reinvent, subvert, or move beyond its colonial work.<br /><br />Cupcakes. Oh my god, they were so good.<br /><br />Finally, one of the greatest compliments was given to us this year. One of the participants noted how the Michigan campus was one of the friendliest and most collegial environments. That's a large part of why I chose this program, something I love about SAM too, and nice to see that it extends to our colleagues. So, next year apply and come! I promise you these cupcakes are worth it.Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-30671311226757052002010-01-28T00:29:00.002-05:002010-01-28T01:34:56.195-05:00Orchestra SummitIf I may draw your attention to the <a href="http://www.insidethearts.com/OrchestraSummit/">flurry of blogging activity</a> from our fair University, which is hosting an American Orchestras Summit this week.<br /><br />I attended a bunch of the panels today, and there are a number of ideas bouncing around out there. <br /><br />Of greatest impact for me was Barbara Haws of the NYPhil Archive about the need for dialogue between music and the other arts. I could not agree more. I can't count the number of times I've been deferred to simply because I'm supposedly an expert in this. When did this start, this silencing of people from expressing opinions, observations? Would more teaching of terminology help? Theory? How about more teaching of music production angles too? I think this would help. And for those of us on this side of the gap, we need to engage with the other arts. My colleague Nate Platte designed a film music class with plenty of modeling and readings from film studies- just the way it should be. My dissertation is delving into the visual arts through collage, and I'm still meeting with resistance on occasion, or at least pressure to keep that talk down. It's a musicology dissertation first and foremost, and perhaps with job markets in mind spending time discussing visual arts at length would be unwise, but shouldn't a scholar want to open it up more easily for other fields? Or perhaps this is a major difference between dissertation and book.<br /><br />A second idea was the call by Evan Chambers and Ken Kiesler to get beyond the capitalist system of judging our success, something I''ve maddeningly been ambivalent about embracing. It's obviously full of merit, but also just as obviously full of impracticality. But what would this mean? Obviously money will continue to be part of the equation, but how else can we tangibly and meaningfully measure success (and wouldn't money eventually enter back in)? I can think of ways (artistic excellence, new collaborations, new audiences) but all of these things have been on the table for some time, and it seems to me that in order for post-capitalist ideas, what can be offered besides money? Advocacy perhaps, but that usually diverts back to money. And the various nonmonetary thrills gained, the surge of energy or memories, the community aspects, are already there at least for me.<br /><br />Finally, I liked Michael Jensen's discussion of the perils of technology. There's undeniably something more powerful about live performance. But is there a way to harness this more fully? Is there, for example, a way to make the event of attending these just as much about attending as the music (akin to a dance, a sporting event, or something?) I like attending things with less good music if the environment is welcoming and fun, if there's another draw (my folk dancing is like this- even when the band is subpar, the crowd can make up for it). And if the music is top-notch, it's just an added layer. A while back, Lawrence Kramer had an editorial about making concert going more like museum going, but that parallel is unfortunately, I think, too fraught with disjunctures. Still, I like the idea of the symphony as a flexible space, something that allows multiple levels of artistic encounters. A second paradigm it seems worth drawing from is the live show of a popular band. Isn't classical music sort of like loving a band, knowing it in enough depth to rhapsodize about one recording over another (akin to alternate takes for a band or cover versions), wanting to see it live because you love it and know the experience will be different. Could there not be something more like music festivals, encores, surprises in the programs, audience participation, audience interaction? Maybe the space needs to open up more for these possibilities. I think part of what I love about the University of Michigan's collage concerts is that it starts to approximate some of these (not all).<br /><br />And finally (I know, it's a long post and it's late and I'm teaching in the morning), there's no single model that has to be fully and exclusively adopted. I think sacrifice is key here- we have to be willing to lose somethings we love to gain other things. I am happy to see programming I don't like on a program for diversity sake. I don't need every concert I attend to be the best in terms of artistic quality, and as much as I love new music, I don't need it 24/7. And others don't really just need Beethoven. And still others can admit the populist stuff to the table too, right? An orchestra isn't your personal object, and yet the people who I think love it, maybe more than others, treat it like that. There's a certain inflexibility that creeps into the thinking- programming I want, formats I want, quiet and polite. But there's no reason that it has to either all get tossed out or perfectly preserved. It's nor yourchestra, its ourchestra.<br /><br />And with that poorly made pun, I'm out.Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-10667947001006077252010-01-25T00:13:00.002-05:002010-01-25T00:37:29.902-05:00Pierre, Part IJust back from a lovely, spur-of-the-moment weekend in Chicago to hear Pierre Boulez and the CSO rock their way through The Firebird, a Boulez piece Livre pour cordes, and Bartok's Concerto for Two Pianos and Percussion. The Boulez, possibly the first I've heard live, was very engaging, well textured, little fragmentary ideas sort of eliding and coalescing into more solid bits. The Bartok is a very cool piece, it's not really improved by being a concerto over the sonata, but if that's what it takes to get it played, so be it. Very exacting, lively, and I love the last movement with its jaunty little melodies, and then the sweetest ending imaginable, a little throwaway cadence and the drums fading perfectly into nothingness. Finally, the Firebird gets me everytime in the final movement, but what really came out so well in this performance was the clarity of texture, especially in the phenomenal wind playing. There's such energy and vivacity to the score, but then moments of simplicity really come across as almost naive. My favorite moment may be the games of the princesses- everything bubbles, then the music is cut short, a bit savagely here, then out of this limbo comes that gorgeous oboe solo, the tension just evaporates as quickly as it set in. Boulez isn't one for sentimentality, everything happens in tempo, but that actually works to great effect here- it's what is played rather than how it's played that communicates everything, or at least a delicate balance between the two.<br /><br />Also on the new music front, I went to the composer's forum. SOme very nice stuff, including a Michael Nymany quartet that got a lot of richness out of the ensemble, and a marvelous piano/violin duo. I didn't think much of the first few excerpts, but the final two numbers were amazing. The penultimate featured string glissandos and these wisps of arpeggios fragilely arranged, and the final one a static D major chord over which lines spun out in all directions. Gorgeous.<br /><br />Bedtime approaches, but soon I'll get around to year in review things, as well as Pierre Parts II and III (CSO is doing Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle here with Ravel and Dalbavie, and then Boulez is giving a talk).Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-59081091335751653212010-01-09T21:53:00.002-05:002010-01-09T22:20:34.406-05:00New year, same place.I have, as you may have noticed, not posted much. It's partly been in a moderately successful effort to gear myself to writing more of a dissertation, and more recently because I just wanted to step away from the musicology world and enjoy my break. Which I did. I enjoyed the company of family and friends, discovered I can make an omelet that doesn't fall apart (while making jokes about Anubis), can sleep just as little on break as during the school year, and I can recite from memory the entirety of the theme song for The Nanny.<br /><br />You can all expect more movie reviews, top tens, and other year end bits, but I want to start just broadly. Academically, his has been the first year of really, truly writing a dissertation, a year without structure. It was the last academic class I will likely take- a film historiography class I loved. It was also my one shot class of teaching my own course. These are all big moments, ones I've learned from: I like teaching. I excel at using my own enthusiasm to structure something. I don't quite know where I want to fall in the easy/hard grading spectrum. I still struggle with getting momentum early on in classroom discussions, especially early in the semester. And I also struggle with consistent writing production and self-editing. That's been the biggest issue I've faced in 2009, and will continue to face in 2010. And here's where the standard resolution making comes into conflict for me: I don't really know what I want to resolve, or how. <br /><br />Dissertationally, I'm still figuring out how to be more effective. Not necessarily either quality or quantity, but just feel more satisfied.<br /><br />I also need to be doing more other projects, publishing, papers, and yes, blogging. Balance.<br /><br />I also need to read more pleasure books, practice some piano maybe. I've also considered trying to do some fun, social sightsinging, without performing or perfecting. And of course, I'd like to revisit movies and do more pleasure reading.<br /><br />But the one resolution I've made is to keep up more with current music. I think NPR's All Songs Considered is a good starting place. Other suggestions?Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-45538871871498221872009-12-17T00:09:00.002-05:002009-12-17T01:13:12.476-05:00Bad news on the doorstepOne of the perks of being done with grading is the ability to resume my role of moviewatcher, and last night's selection The Messenger is a marvelous, somber film with perfect pacing. While The Hurt Locker is sweeping up critics awards (and deservedly so), this makes something of a companion piece, viewing the current war with much-needed pathos and intelligence. The film follows two men, played by Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson, who are assigned the task of informing various people that their spouses, sons, and daughters have been killed. As you can expect, the film is pretty harrowing. The blows aren't softened, nor are they windows into deep thoughts; they simply spill out in raw emotion, and then we leave. These moments may make up the emotional core of the film, but they operate somewhat on the periphery. Actually, almost everything operates on the periphery of the story: a romance broken off, a romance begun with a widow played by the always superb Samantha Morton, and a subtly potent scene in which a welcome home party wanders irrevocably from joking into awkward silence, echoed later by a wedding toast that narrowly avoids disaster. Even the central relationship between Foster and Harrelson never feels like it commands attention. There are plenty of tears, and a rewarding number of laughs, but the film is governed by its silences, and that's I think its central achievement: a sound design that provides much of the drama that goes unspoken by the characters. In one scene, a father's Mozart and a daughter's rock and roll clash moments before the characters confront one another. The film makes prominent use of noise: loud, aggressive rock music, a method of blocking out the silence, aggressively loud phones ringing and talk radio ad television advertisement hosts practically assaulting the listener, and elsewhere equally loud silences. It's the attention the film pays to the details, and by that I include the personal details nailed by the film's performances and richly warm timing, that makes it so deeply affecting and deeply believable. I can't recommend this one enough.Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-27959978320332507612009-12-09T00:55:00.002-05:002009-12-09T01:37:04.669-05:00I can't believe it's only the first snow of the season! I'm nestled up on the couch with the blog, enjoying the peace and quiet before tomorrow's storm of grading begins. I also can't believe I've gone this long without blogging, although it's been a whirlwind of activity since AMS, including:<br /><br />-Well, AMS. It was a fantastic, if crazy with all the people. There were people I never saw until they were checking out of the hotel. But those I did see were great. There was a variety of papers (more than I expected to go to)- Robert Fink's illuminating and provoking look at the design process of Disney Hall (how wonderful, really, to reach out into other fields (especially architecture and urban planning!)), Albin Zak's fascinating look at novelty records of the early 1950s (the best music of the weekend), the fantastic handout by John Howland tracing the path of orchestras in "luxe pop," a handout which beautifully captures not just ideas but the process of making them, and my advisor's rather successful look at Jimi Hendrix's versions with the national anthem. There was a fun evening spent with bloggers <a href="http://www.pmgentry.net/blog/index.html">Phil</a> and <a href="http://amusicology.wordpress.com/">Ryan</a>, tasty food at Sabrina's with fellow Michiganders, the horribly inefficient giant musicology party with everyone where I saw no one, and those great moments on the escalator or in the lobby, catching up. More of those please. Ottawa, people?<br /><br />-Money, Writing, Grading. A large part of my craziness since returning has been the need to get out a second chapter, grade things, and in the course of a week, write a fellowship proposal I wasn't informed I had to do things for. I survived, but let's not speak of this again. On the upside, the chapter is coming together<br /><br />-Writing. I just moderated a panel yesterday with Jim Wierzbicki, one of our great mentors here who's leaving for a job in Australia. Jim's role here is editor of MUSA, but he's also one of the most helpful and giving of his time for students. He wanted to organize a panel on publishing, which included two of our most published scholars, Judith Becker and Richard Crawford. Seriously, it was a delight to have these three there, eating pizza and sharing stories, offering great advice. There's a lot I could say, but two of the most revelatory moments were the advice to read fiction and poetry to get yourself accustomed to the art of writing well, and when doing interdisciplinary work, the key isn't the inter, it's the discipline (i.e. know the field you're entering as well as someone in it). I came out of it with new zeal, much of it directed to the drafts I've been reading of my students. Maybe we should start a book club, reading short stories and other bits? I can pass on a recommendation of the New Yorker this week, with a story by Ian McEwan of an interdisciplinary marriage, and Judith Becker's new article in Ethnomusicology about the process of interdisciplinary work in the sciences.<br /><br />-I gave a lecture for the ethnomusicology class. It was on transcription and documentation and politics. The lecture itself felt rough and boring, but I really enjoyed section that week, in which I led students through the newspaper in search of photos that revealed more than just documentation. This week, it's test review.<br /><br />-Thanksgiving. I made food for 25 people: a 24 pound turkey, squash stuffed with feta, rosemary, and cranberries, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes and apples, sauteed mushrooms, garlic green beans, cranberry sauce, and 12 pies (pumpkin, sourcream apple, pecan oatmeal). Wine followed, work did not.<br /><br />-Musical performances, movies, Glee, and assorted moments of fun. I will say the score to An Education is among the most buoyant musical bits this side of the Candide overture.<br /><br />And now, it is time to head to bed in preparation of the piles of grading and maybe piles of snow! I will endeavor to be more active once again...Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-79197900157524707292009-11-12T08:25:00.002-05:002009-11-12T08:39:18.564-05:00I'd rather be in Philadelphiaand I am! Hours before AMS 2009 kicks off, I'm loving every minute of being back home (for certain definitions of home, I suppose). I'm happily staying on the fold-out couch of my good college friend Cameron, who lives in a long-walkable distance from the conference. I can also attend this conference guilt -free (and resume posting) since I finally got everything together and revised my chapter, sending it off to the committee last Monday. What else have I done?<br /><br />-teaching and grading. I now need to turn my attention to the lecture I'm giving the freshmen music students next week (!) on documenting music and the issues involved with notation, recording, video, photography etc. Any suggestions are welcomed!<br /><br />-dancing. i"ve been teaching a 6-week Scottish dance class in Ann Arbor that has come to a close. Theres an enormous amount of pride in seeing people learning, having fun, and making lots of noticeable progress. Very heartening. I've also gotten in a couple dances here, which is quite satisfying.<br /><br />-food and friends, here and in New York. Tastiest adventure: making acorn squash stuffed with feta, rosemary, and dried cranberries and butternut squash with cinammon, brown sugar, and walnuts, with Scrabble while roasting. My mouth is already watering for the food to be had at AMS.<br /><br />-research. Just a bit.<br /><br />-musicals! I saw Finian's Rainbow and Next to Normal. An odd pairing to be sure: one is an classic bit of musical comedy, the other a contemporary musical which tends to mean serious drama and a pop rock score. In fact, one of the fun games you can play at either is to try to find someone under 35 at Finian's Rainbow and someone over 35 at Next to Normal. But both were excellent. It astounds me how good the score to Finian's Rainbow is, and how far good songs performed with extra care and not a hint of irony can go for taking a weird, schtick-loaded book to soaring heights. Oh, and the clever, clever lyrics still get me, written by a guy who came of age decades earlier. Delicious. And Next to Normal actually churns out a fair amount of variety and memorability in its score, with several nice turns of phrases, but the power of the show is in its astonishingly-acted book, drenched in emotion without losing much of its crispness. I may have more to say, but that will have to wait until after this conference. It's good to be back here and out east.Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-67625164768417031602009-09-11T11:22:00.002-04:002009-09-11T12:00:06.219-04:00This Song Is Your SongSince no one ever comes to office hours the first week, I may as well post some scattered thoughts. This summer I attended two music festivals. The first left me elated, the second self-conscious.<br /><br />At the start of August I went to the Newport Folk Festival. The experience was nothing short of amazing, even though I spent 9 hours in the sun without suntan lotion (do not repeat, details involve a late connecting flight out of Newark, bans on flying with liquids, disliking checked luggage, and closed a CVS on Friday night/Saturday morning) and went solo. The impetus for going was to see The Decemberists, a band I've managed to just misalign schedules with, which is a shame since they're fantastic. They took a break from their current tour list (their new album, played straight through as something akin to a rock opera, or so I've heard) to mix in a variety of older and newer songs. Also high on my list were The Avett Brothers, an extremely engaging stage performance of punk-tinged bluegrass, the lush choral explosion of Fleet Foxes, the storytelling genius of Ramblin' Jack Elliott, the gut-grabbing power of Mavis Staples, the dreamy simplicity of Iron and Wine, and a variety of new talents including the laid-back and lushly textured textured clarinetfolkrock of Low Anthem (sort of combining the best of what I like about Fleet Foxes and Iron and Wine) and Ben Kweller's pop-country entry that marked the closest thing to pop (although much of the concert flirted with that genre pretty freely). And as I mentioned, the heartwarming magic of singing along with Pete Seeger.<br /><br />The second festival was significantly smaller: The Kansas City Ethnic Enrichment Festival. There I saw some delicate and lovely thai instrumental music, amazing capoiera, familiarly catchy bulgarian dances (a couple of which I know I've done), some start-and-go Russian music. But throughout, I just felt unsure. The thai music was lovely, but I could barely hear it over the talking. The capoiera was easily the most crowd-pleasing. The Malaysian dancing was utterly confusing, as it all seemed to be done to muzaky, synthesized music with what I might consider oriental inflections. And through it all, the jokey, well-meaning emcee kept embarrassing me, about as much as the lame attempts by performers to engage the audience.<br /><br />Part of it may be comfort zone, that the people at the folk festival really came to get what they expected and heard. A big part is probably the professionalism of stage presence, although Fleet Foxes had their share of awkward filling in the gaps with rambling stories. But there was such an air of community in the folk festival, singing along, listening, striking up conversations easily with those around you (even I of the closed mouth found it pretty easy to chat up others, regardless of age, gender, or attractiveness). At the KC festival, I just kept feeling out of place; whereas one seemed to draw us into commonness, this other emphasized difference in a lot of ways that made me uncomfortable. The emcee's jokes and stereotypes, the language barriers for some performers, the poor thai musician who didn't want to talk to the audience despite the constant goading of the emcee, and the fact that what seems like a good, well-intentioned idea didn't do much to enrich me. I saw a wide variety, but that's about it: the buffet is seldom as good as a well-cooked course. But it did make me reflect upon the variety at the folk festival, the interesting intersection of folk and popular genres, the diversity that goes perhaps more unseen precisely because you feel like you're bonding, and the diversity that isn't visible or maybe isn't there (e.g. politics). It struck me that the lyrics "This land is your land, this land is my land" are particularly great because they don't level out the differences--it's not merely reduced to "our" land--but something more complex, a land that is not only shared but unites different people together. That's more or less what this concert did for me. This music was my music, their music, your music.Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-52693595458925868172009-09-09T12:04:00.001-04:002009-09-09T12:06:28.056-04:00CentennarySchool begins, and I get to make a 100th post.<br /><br />In lieu of anything substantial (because, well, nothing has really happened here yet), I'll relay to you the note someone left in my carrel:<br /><br />Purpose for this research?<br /><br />I think this bodes well.Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-83090702369831637252009-09-04T12:45:00.002-04:002009-09-04T12:50:02.210-04:00We're walking, we're walkingI was just in Seattle, a city that has won my heart effortlessly through having ballroom dance lessons built into the sidewalks (you know, those feet with numbers and arrows?)! How can I resist?<br /><br />But one of the things we did was take the Underground Tour, a tour with surprisingly little to look at. Like, almost nothing. And yet, it was great. And as I was going on the tour, I realized just how much teaching is like the process of tourguiding: adding just enough color to make things interesting, supplying deeper facts (but sometimes subtly), engaging the crowd, and keeping it moving. The tourguide we had was funny,a rticulate, knowledgeable, and seemingly unscripted. I really hate tours that just feel like a preprepared sheet that you'd get more out of reading yourself, or better yet, a book. But when guides are engaging, informed, and fun, it doesn't even matter if you're standing in a basement looking at a single dusty photo. That's what I want to be.Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-16856468234257895652009-08-31T13:20:00.002-04:002009-08-31T13:35:29.167-04:00PhDon't?As has been <a href="http://musicology.typepad.com/dialm/2009/08/should-i-go-to-graduate-school-the-cometojesus-talk.html#more">making</a> <a href="http://musicology.typepad.com/dialm/2009/08/yes-but-no-but.html#more">the</a> <a href="http://amusicology.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/should-i-be-a-musicologist/">rounds</a> recently, I thought Id weigh in briefly during my half hour here in the Denver airport, which sensibly has free wireless by the way, on the whole should I go to grad school thing.<br /><br />I should begin by making my own perspective clear. I've been in my program for 4 years now, and still love it. By and large my friends are also in grad programs, though not exclusively, I know a lot of good, smart friends who don't know what they really want to do in a long-term sense, and I have two siblings who never went to college. The short answer is that I don't know, and I think the above posts do a good job of making some recommendations, which I almost whole-heartedly echo. I have no practical post-PhD experience. And there are a lot of bad reasons I've seen people get disenchanted with the process, though I want to stress that at some level, going may have been smart for some of these friends: it made them quickly decide what they actually wanted to do. And that's my little spiel here: you have to know the details of what you like, and build your decisions around them. <br /><br />For me, I had three years off working an increasingly frustrating arts admin job and a filler year at a music publisher. I quickly discovered that I missed using the part of my brain that dealt above the practical side, that I hated budgets and loved the promotional aspects, in short, the aspects that allowed me to indulge complex arguments and the music itself, and where I failed was the practicality angle, being decisive about things I wanted to treat with more nuance. I also missed the general atmosphere of school, and realized that it was that kick that propelled me to work (this is not to say I was lazy in my work, but that the effort was increasingly noticeable). And so thanks to my years off, I vowed to enter into grad school only focusing on the parts I loved: the discussions, the self-propelled knowledge, the music itself, and the camaraderie. The parts I found more tedious (testing, politics), I've only applied myself as much as was necessary, and once done, let that go. Teaching, once I tried it, confirmed that I loved doing it, but that was a big big question mark.<br /><br />My flight is boarding, but here's to enjoying not only what you do, but learning what you enjoy and how to enjoy them even more!Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-66440445183696383922009-08-19T15:29:00.002-04:002009-08-19T15:54:59.974-04:00Naive and Sentimental MusicThis weekend in New York brought not only humidity, but the respite in air-conditioned musical opportunities (the real perk of summers in NYC is the abundance of this stuff when everywhere else takes the summer off).<br /><br />Monday night, I caught the International Contemporary Ensemble (even their acronym is pleasing in this heat!) performing a delightful array of John Adams chamber music. Shaker Loops, his breakthrough piece, still holds attention with its crisp energy, pulsing through its harmonic trajectory. While the shimmering fast bits sound perhaps the most characteristic sound, the slow movements really shine with snatches of melody unravelling, always leaving you wanting more. After the more minimal style of Shaker Loops, we got the more pop-infused style of Gnarly Buttons, Adams's clarinet concerto of sorts, making a rather nice bookending of his styles. I really love this piece; the sort of spinning out of lines from a single idea in the first movement and the colorful minimalist Hoedown that really does evoke the clippity-clop plunking rhtyhm and delicate orchestration of the Copland without direct quotation. But the prize for me is the hauntingness of the last movement, inspired in part by his father's battle with Alzheimers, as this plaintive melodic phrase (to which the words "Put Your Loving Arms Around Me" could be set) echoes over a held chord in the piano, with little additions But the even the simplest phrase slips away pretty early, and the music becomes increasingly agitated and aggressive, only to return ever so briefly to the hint of what was lost. After the break, they played Son of Chamber Symphony, a work I didn't know going in, but really enjoyed hearing it in the context of both styles, catching both the hypermelody of the later styles with the first movement and the sort of throwback rhythms and chords of the final movement (inspired by but not rehashing the News aria from Nixon in China).<br /><br />A different kind of sentimental and naive music came on Saturday night when my lottery luck continued, getting us two front row tickets to West Side Story (aka the greatest Broadway score ever written). It really astonishes me just how amazing that music is. What normally would be a vamp or a throwaway introductory refrain before a song here is just as richly satisfying as the songs themselves. You almost wish it was underscored throughout. The standout was the Dance at the Gym, where the music has aged much better than the 1950s lingo, the brash jazzy chords reined in just enough to match the dancing on stage (oh, what dancing!), but as soon as I settle on that, I want to throw in so many other moments. The blisteringly funny Gee, Officer Krupke. The swooning on the balcony as they sing Tonight. Anita's fire in practically everything. The Somewhere ballet's ravishing simplicity. And going through the score, it's just as impossible to choose a favorite. I'm not even going to try, but I will tell you the moment that comes at the end of One Hand, One Heart, where the two lovers suddenly turn a mixture of shameful and fearful at the mock-wedding they've just conducted is one of the most unforgettably potent I've witnessed on stage to date. Highly recommended.Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-56570002593666286492009-08-17T10:56:00.002-04:002009-08-17T11:01:26.316-04:00Daily ArtAt the Yale museum, they were installing some stuff, with two pulleys resting on wood blooks, a half-hoisted scrim in the background. I asked the desk if it was construction or art, and they told me it was the former although they'd been trying to come up with a title. But there's I think a case where modern art, with all its seeming lack of artistry has sort of paid off, if it encourages us to enjoy the beauty in daily landscapes (photography has done this too). Walking through the Highline Park, I marvelled at how quietly nice the place was, the undulating concrete strips giving rise to benches, the tracks and wheels integrated into the landscaping, the views of the lower west side. A lovely night, nowhere in particular.Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-4693355095878125732009-08-13T15:28:00.004-04:002009-08-13T15:59:59.056-04:00Lunch breakFinishing up here at Yale, I spent a nice leisurely lunch strolling through the two art museums. There's something so arresting about those Turner and Constable landscapes, that tension between the canvas's subject matter and abstraction, swamped entirely by color and light, the warmth even in those turbulent cloud scenes. And there were two exhibits, one of Dalou's women sculptures, and one of conservation. The latter was more interesting in theory than practice. It raises a number of usually hidden choices museums make—how to display something, how to treat functional objects as nonfunctional, how varnish affects a painting (especially interesting in the case of the Hopper painting, to which Hopper took the unusual step of varnishing the work himself), but there was too many words, to much vagueness about what it really meant, and worst of all, no real basis for the viewer to sort of have an opinion based on what was there. It read more like just a case for the defense. The former, a small exhibit centers 5 sculptures, beautiful, intimate scenes of women absorbed in quiet activities (books and babies), with some drawings from other French artists in England and contemporaries. The problem with it is that these bookended rooms with the sketches were difficult to reconcile with such a specific collection of works; they seldom had the same subject matter or expressive style, which may have been the point, that Dalou was radical in a certain way, but it seemed more disorganized. Still, I could marvel at those all day, but unfortunately Ives's handwriting needed some more deciphering.Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-57022225936594082212009-08-07T18:58:00.003-04:002009-08-07T19:32:10.993-04:00Mostly Meowzart, Meow (re)MixGreyhound now carries wireless. This is great for people like me who keep meaning to update but keep having things like life getting in the way. This lifestyle of spend all day in the archive because you only have a few days, and then spend all night playing pub trivia, or better yet contradancing and then swimming in Walden Pond with other contradancers and then having cider and cheesefries is proving quite bad for the option of writing. I'm certainly not getting any of the dissertation done, but neither am I updating here, until now. Sort of.<br /><br />On the heels of <a href="http://www.beigerecords.com/cory/Things_I_Made/DreiKlavierstucke">cats performing Schonberg</a> comes a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeoT66v4EHg">cat concerto</a>! ADORABLE!<br /><br />So why post all this? I'm doing it oddly enough to seize upon Phil's <a href="http://www.pmgentry.net/blog/2009/07/our-missed-opportunity.html"> idea </a> that we ought to have something to say about the AutoTune the News. I can say that I love it, especially number 6, and that I actually went to college with Evan Gregory (and Andrew, but I knew Evan as a fellow music major and proud member of the college chorus's tenor section). And so I thought I'd take up the challenge.<br /><br />It seems to me one could say a number of things. For a start, there's the obvious points about techn it's a good example of how technology has made music so much easier to create and distribute, although I stress that Evan at least has a bachelors training in all this stuff, so he's not clueless by any means. It might for some raise questions of whether autotuning or this sort of remixing really counts as talent, a relevant issue for my friend Josh Duchan who did his dissertation on collegiate a capella.<br /><br />There's the second level, the notion of the sound bite has totally pervaded the culture; what I like about these is that it draws a nice link between soundbites and the musical equivalent of the hook: something that grabs your attention and is in some way the essence of the song. And that's where I think the AutoTune series is best. It's political commentary is smart, similar to the Daily Show in its seizing on the more ridiculous aspects of our 24-7 news coverage (a favorite topic of Stewart's), though certainly a bit more absurdist. But what impresses me about the evolution of the series is it goes from a clever idea and commentary to an increasingly good musical number. In the early bits, Katie Couric's highly inflected vocal delivery is perfect, but in the later bits, it's almost wall-to-wall hooks ("Biden's God Bless America in #5, Boehner's Hell No! and Freedom in number #6); and the repetition of the hook maps so sweetly onto the repetitiveness of these politicians' buzzwords. In these later episodes, they move from simply sampling to a certain artistry in the give and take between themselves and the soundbites--in short, from arranging to composing.<br /><br />I guess where I'm going with this is that the technological and political aspects are interesting, but what it meant for me was just sheer enjoyment. The cleverness and humor (likewise, the cats) are something I feel are constantly in danger of being lost in analysis by musicologists, a shame since the goal for me is always to share what it is about the music I love with people who might love it similarly. Hooks are good like that, perfect for visceral, immediate pleasure. Better than, say, writing a dissertation.<br /><br />Coming up soon(ish), a report on the Newport Folk Festival at 50.Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-80329571196368466522009-07-29T15:42:00.003-04:002009-07-29T16:43:15.683-04:00Music at the Movies: 2009While home, I availed myself of the "dollar" theater ($2.50) to see The Soloist, a film I had been on the fence about way back when. While in Philadelphia, I decided to see Tetro, a film I can't really explain why I went to it (directorial starpower?).<br /><br />But both of these rank really high on my film music side, if less high on my film side. Tetro's score is composed by none other than Oswaldo Golijov, and while the film's use of it isn't terribly inventive, the music is really quite marvelous on its own terms. Also, I admire the film's use of the Brahms first symphony, a work that always feels exhausting to listen to and is given a formidable presence, the operatic structures, and the use of dance (even though it looks fake and out-of-place in its final presentation). On the other hand, The Soloist is surprisingly good, tender and human without being sappy or formulaic, but what really grabbed me is how effective the film is at visualizing music. There's a synesthetic experience which goes on a little too long, but the poetry of the gliding cameras, the images and music somehow really works together in a way that is altogether rare, simple, and elegant. That's three hits for Joe Wright.Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-54858230361407274132009-07-18T12:08:00.002-04:002009-07-18T12:23:47.381-04:00How to procrastinate, archive editionAt the Library of Congress, I've been exceptionally productive (I'm in Philly airport now, heading down to North Carolina). The Antheil correspondence here is fascinating, doubly so for the comparisons of letters to a childhood friend and those to Mary Bok, who gave him money. Let's just say they don't always match up.<br /><br />Yesterday I went to the National Archives 2 (I cannot avoid thinking about National Treasure 2 when I say or type this). Here's how you procrastinate there- it's very easy because they do it for you!<br />9:45 arrive, realize you'll miss the 10 am pulling of records, next pulling is at 11.<br />9:48 get through the metal detector.<br />9:50 get instructed to take a tutorial on the computers<br />9:51 realize that this is practically like reading the website, which, being the studious scholar you are, you have already done the night before.<br />9:55 still take that tutorial<br />10:00 go up, get told more info, get your picture taken<br />10:05 go put your things in a locker. This is hard but doable if you have a suitcase.<br />10:08 try to close the locker, fail. Fail repeatedly. Get your money back.<br />10:12 figure it out: there were two quarters blocking the mechanism. On the upside, you have 50 cents more!<br />10:15 go to with your computer to the entry desk, give them your card, have them ask you for a form you don't have<br />10:18 get said form<br />10:20 get through security<br />10: 25 register upstairs<br />10:30 wait for assistance<br />10:38 get a finding aid, proceed to start filling out forms<br />10:45 get told you did it wrong, fill them out again<br />10:50 get a new finding aid, get told to fill them out again<br />10:58 they come to collect for the 11 am pulling, ask the guy if everything is correct, get told yes.<br />10:59 turn them in phew!<br />10:59 get them returned with the comment that you neglected to fill in something<br />11:03 turn them in late, but the guy knows it wasn't really your fault and takes them back personally<br />11:09 discover there's no wireless; go eat a sandwich<br />11:13 discover checking out is more complicated than checking in, go upstairs to retrieve aforementioned form<br />11:19 check out, eat<br />11:35 check back in.<br />11:40 check to see if material is pulled; repeat every couple minutes until 11:58, when material is available.<br /><br />After that, it's a lot like the LOC, except you get to take everything with you on a cart, and can make your own photocopies (after another complicated process I'm too hungry to get into).Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5611354474255052842.post-25819471517607323812009-07-11T23:32:00.003-04:002009-07-11T23:47:48.791-04:00Away We Go!The title, for those out of the loop, is a worthy summer comedy to take yourself and even a date too (not a first one though). It's funny how Sam Mendes, the dude who made some atrociously overwrought suburban dramas lets himself go into a breezy comedy with a real affecting lead couple. It's a treat.<br /><br />As for me, I've taken off for the summer, Thursday flying to New York for a day before heading down here to Philly for a wedding (ironically, I had an unexpected layover in Philly). Getting on the plane, I picked up the first pleasure book in a long while, and had settled into my chair. The book is Devil in the White City, a well-recommended bit of pop nonfiction (a rarity for me) on the designing of the Chicago World's Exposition and the serial killer who stalked it. But as I started reading, I grew displeased. I mentally started criticizing the author's proclivity towards meandering sentences that dump factoids indiscriminantly, especially noting the ones that have <i>nothing at all</i> to do with the story. Worse still, he made all sorts of judgments about how he thought things went down with the serial killer. I was flipping to the back to check out the endnotes, and horrified to discover no citations for his revisions. And as I put the book down, switching to a podcast of This American Life, I paused, wondering whether all this dissertation research has ruined pleasure reading, or if these are valid criticisms. I honestly don't know, but was greatly relieved that This American Life still charms me more than just about anything.<br /><br />Friday, I wandered over to Columbia to check out the George Antheil papers. Our university has a program with them, so getting a reader's card was super easy, and they have wireless you don't have to log into, and the staff is very friendly and the room quite attractive and spacious. My only complaint: handwriting. Roger Sessions needs to make his Ls bigger. Several other correspondents were even worse, and then we hit the ones in French. It's hard enough for me to read a language I half-know, but when you don't even know what half the words are, the context is completely shot. Perhaps I'll make photocopies and have a friend look at them, but considering this is a small part of only one chapter (although the dude is fascinating, especially when he talks about Hollywood), I probably will let it slide. I am resolved to insist upon handwriting samples before embarking upon future studies.<br /><br />The above statement should not be in any way reflective of my own hand writing and note taking. If I leave unfinished manuscripts, good luck.Dan B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/16607252722370047536noreply@blogger.com0