Also on the topic of electronic music...

Here's a video of a cat playing a mini-theramin. It's not really academic, but it's certainly something.


You may want to turn down the volume on your computer when you watch this

AL

Colin Stetson: The Murky Waters Between Jazz and Minimalism

For those of you who aren't in my tutorial (and who happen to read this blog), I should start this entry by saying that I LOVE Colin Stetson. If you don't know who he is, go look him up on Wikipedia.

Really, go ahead. I'll wait.

...

Ok, so now we're all up to date on the fact that (other than being a beefcake with a *mean* playing face) he's a multi-instrumentalist who primarily plays bass sax. He tours and records with scores of huge pop acts but also records his own music. Stetson's most recent solo release, New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges, was nominated for the Canadian Polaris Prize. This prize is a pretty big deal in the artier side of the pop music world - former winners include Arcade Fire, Final Fantasy, and Patrick Watson (as well as F***ed Up, but I don't think I can swear on this blog).

Those names should tell you a little bit about the sort of music that gets attention from the Polaris Prize committee - usually the nominees are genre-bending in some way, and the winning albums challenge notions of what "pop" music is. This totally holds true in the case of Stetson and his latest record.

To begin with (and this is going to get a bit recording-type-nerdy here for a second) the entirety of the instrumentals on NHW were recorded in a single continuous take, rather than by multitracking and layering various parts. This isn't entirely unheard of in instrumental music, but what is particularly interesting about this album is the textural depth that Stetson was able to attain. I played "A Dream of Water" in class last Friday, but I think it would be better for you to listen either to "Home" (the track that comes immediately after "A Dream of Water") or "Red Horse: Judges II."

In fact, I'll include links to youtube clips, for your convenience:
Home:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwJ0FUw9ZmE&feature=related

Red Horse: Judges II:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0tKKyEXYTI

(Oh, also, if you get a chance check out "Fear of the unknown and the blazing sun" - it's another example of the incredible musicianship on NHW)

Through the use of 20 creatively placed microphones, imaginative mixing and a mastery of extended techniques (circular breathing - he does it) Stetson is able to create a soundworld that amazed critics and fans alike.

He also managed to confuse people.

The promotion of NHW was fairly tied up in how it was recorded - it was important that the album was considered live. I could go on and on about how that's not really possible, since it's a recording, but that's not the point of this post. This connection between what Stetson had produced and a single, untouched performance is pretty telling about the market the music was being sold to. In pop music circles the term "live" is usually reserved for recordings of concerts, and overdubbing is a common practice. Colin Stetson and his PR team sold this record on the freakish playing ability and creative tracking and mixing solutions dreamed up by Stetson and his engineers - this record was sold as experimental.

This point is further hammered home by the fact that the album was released on Constellation Records - a Montreal-based label that deals with artists like Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Do Make Say Think.

But experimental what? Some critics felt the urge to label the album as a jazz excursion. That's even how NHW was labelled on Wikipedia, but I don't think I totally buy that. This article by Nick Butler at Sputnik Music touches on the reasons why music critics might feel inclined to think that way. However, as Butler goes on to point out, the pieces are highly structured and that blows the connection between Stetson and free jazz. And from listening to the record, it's certainly not a type of more traditional jazz, either.

A number of critics have drawn comparisons between Stetson's work on this album and Steve Reich's compositions. I think this is a particularly apt connection to draw; though I hear more Philip Glass in this album than Reich, trance-inducing repetition and sonic experimentation are clear themes here. Once you get past the sheer awe induced by the number of things Stetson is doing at once with a single instrument, the interest in this recording seems to come from a musical minimalist place. The variations from human error inherent in a single, unedited performance color the tracks and lend the variety needed to keep the interest of the listener.

This perhaps most pronounced on the track "Lord, I just can't keep from crying sometimes," which consists of vocals - overdubbed after the original sax recording session, by Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond - and a single, sustained C on the bass saxophone. Outside of the vocal line, which is itself pretty provocative, Stetson's inhalations, the rattles of the body of the sax, and the occasional squeels of the reed as Stetson leaps from one octave to another are the "hooks" of the track. That's not too far from what we talked about in class with regard to 4:33" - when you remove from a composition (or recording) what would traditionally be a focal-point, other aspects come into focus.

And then there's the connection between Stetson and electronic experimentalism via Laurie Anderson's work on the album. Anderson is a visual artist and composer who invented a tape-bow violin (the horshair on the bow is replaced with a section of tape with something recorded on it, and the violin has a tape-head mounted onto it). Anderson's work on NHW is purely in a spoken-word context, but the connection to the avant-garde past is still there.

Is it possible to have an "avant-garde past"?

I think it's clear that Colin Stetson's NHW is a complex case-study for where the lines between pop, jazz, classical, western art music, experimental music, musical minimalism and electronic music all meet, and how they can blurr into an indistinguishable mess. Perhaps we're too close to the music, time-wise, to be able to clearly pick apart the genre distinctions.

In any case, there's clearly some cross-pollination between previously established genres happening here - and it seems to be a very good thing.

AL

Muddy Modern Mahler

Each tutorial will, I’m sure, touch on the modernity in Mahler’s music in tomorrow’s section. I think now might be a good opportunity to take a quick look at the Solvik reading and see how that relates to the aspects of modernity that Dr Ansari touched upon in class today (it might even give you some insight you can bring to discussion in tomorrow’s class). Solvik problematizes Mahler’s relationship with modernity in a way that I think it particularly interesting; rather than accepting modernism as a stable term with an easily grasped definition, he seems to present it more as a polyseme (not would be a good time to break out that Google define function, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the terminology of critical theory).[1] I think this is a fairly accurate way of framing something that is notoriously slippery. Solvik makes the term modernism into something that more closely resembles a useful ontological tool than the elusive shadow that it can seem to be when grasped too firmly in the attempt to decipher what it “means”.

Let’s think about the aspects of modernity that we talked about in class today – a conspicuous sense of self-consciousness, an embracing of logic and the sciences, a rejection of formal or societal norms, and the striving for novelty. All of these characteristics can be construed as kind of wishy-washy. Take the acceptance of logic and the sciences, for example. This basic tenant of modernity seems to necessitate a rejection of the seemingly magical world of religion and spirituality; as Solvik points out, however, Mahler took science and the discovery of deeper biological and mechanical systems as proof of the spiritual realm, and of a connection between that and the physical world.

And there seems to be a direct connection between Mahler's beliefs and his contribution to the musical landscape of the late Romantic period. His second symphony, for example, deals extensively (musically, of course) with the prospect of life after death, eternal - that said, nobody is going to accuse Mahler's music of being unmodern because of this fact. Musically, it could be said to be quite modern - mixing song and symphonic form to break from formal norms, eschewing traditional harmonic progression, and often quoting his own music in later works (there's that conspicuous sense of self-consciousness).

So, like Solvik said, Mahler was a 'modern'. It was a complicated sort of modernity, but then in the perspective given in the reading there doesn't seem to be any other type.

[1] Go to Google, type define: search term. In this case you’re typing define: polyseme. This is my favourite function in Google, and it can be *very* handy.

Chopin and Liszt

Hello all - I would like to direct your attention to the work of the lovely Ms Kate Beaton over at Hark, A Vagrant! She's a Canadian historian (that is a historian from Canada, not one who works specifically with Canadian history) who currently creates HAV! from her home in New York. These strips are historically accurate (you know, within reason for comedy's sake) and are usually pretty funny.

I thought these strips on Chopin and Liszt were more or less related to the course material from the last week or two. I would encourage you to read more of these - she has some particularly funny strips on the Bronte sisters, as well as one on Beethoven.

A post on Mahler will follow in the next few days.

Cheers!
AL

19thC Opera (at the Movies, in the Movies)

The Metropolitan Opera Company’s website has to be one of the best websites for opera around. It has so much more than just the directions on how to order tickets online and the current season.

 In the top banner you can see those links, and it’s worth it to check out the live HD link. Why? Because you can actually find out which operas will be broadcasting live on Saturday afternoons at either the Westmount Mall movie theatres which has two different theatres reserved for the opera, one of which is the VIP so you can order a champagne and pretend you’re in NYC.  Or, you can go to Silver City movie theatres, though that one is open seating and you need to compete with the white-haired crowd who show up at least an hour early to get good seats. This is one of the savviest moves the Met has made since it first started its live radio broadcasts. Opera is so much more interesting when you can see it. It’s as much a visual experience as an aural one and the movie theatre broadcasts are so amazing.  Your $21 at the movie theatre gets you a much better seat than the partial view nosebleeds at Lincoln Centre.  It’s also a smart move on their part because they’re building an audience for the future. When I go to the opera, I’m still one of the only ones with brown hair, and mine has more than a few threads of grey in it now. If something doesn't happen soon, opera will be come culturally obsolete. Opera at the movies makes it far more accessible to teenagers and younger adults who have grown up in a visual culture. It helps erase the stereotype that opera is only for elitist snobs too.  

  

Besides CBC's "Saturday Afternoon at the Met," like most kids growing up in London, ON, I had little exposure to opera. Or, so it seemed. It wasn’t until music school when I had to listen to opera for music history listening quizzes (and ours were drop the needle) that I discovered how much opera I already knew and that some of the tunes were ones I genuinely loved. So where does someone who turned off the radio on Saturday afternoon hear this music? As I became more familiar with the major operas that we studied in music history, I started to pick it out in commercials, t.v. and movie soundtracks, figure-skating programmes, and orchestral suites or arrangements.  Now there's actually a growing field in musicology that studies opera on/in film. Marcia Citron has done a lot to further the respectability of this kind of research—see her books Opera on Screen (2000) and When Opera Meets Film (2010). I even came across a blog entry recently that lists the Top Ten Best Uses of Opera in the Movies . Personally, I love the Bugs Bunny opera cartoons. 

"What's Opera Doc?" 

And "The Rabbit of Seville"

One movie that didn't make it onto the Top Ten Uses of Opera in the Movies was the 1993 movie Philadelphia with Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington.  In one of the last scenes, the Tom Hanks character, a lawyer dying from aids, explains the meaning of his favourite aria to the Denzel Washington character, a lawyer helping Tom Hanks's character sue his firm for wrongful dismissal. 

I think that this scene from Philadelphia captures the aesthetic of opera and shows a good way to listen to it, even if it doesn’t reflect how people actually listened to it in the nineteenth century. I love how Hanks's character tries to get Washington's to experience the music in the way that he does, but until the end of the scene when you see Washington at home with his kids, there's no real indication that he "gets it." There's a lot more going on in that scene too, of course. It ties into the concept of the opera Queen and there's been a lot of work on that end of opera reception too. The intertextuality really works in this scene.  Tom Hanks looses everything because of his difference, as does the character singing the aria he loves so much. 

The music in nineteenth century opera, especially late nineteenth century opera, underpins the drama in such away that it reveals how the characters are feeling and can evoke that feeling in the audience. That’s where experiencing opera live, or at least watching a whole opera from beginning to the end, makes all the difference. As an audience member you experience the story with the characters and are gradually prepared for the music to have its meaning.  The more operas you see live, the more your appreciation for the genre will grow and your understanding of it will deepen. 

19thC Orchestral and Chamber Music

There’s a certain amount of irony about trying to say something meaningful about 19thC orchestral in a single paragraph, given the monumentality of these pieces by the end of the 19thC. It’s no wonder these massive public works form the bulk of our North American concert and radio broadcast programming. The sound envelops you and can penetrate to your core, if you let it. If you want to understand the aesthetic of the sublime, play in the orchestra or sing in the choir for a performance of Mahler’s “Resurrection” symphony. The number of musicians required to perform pieces like that symphony could make the contractor of a typical North American symphony orchestra pale. I suppose the prohibitive cost of performing these pieces explains why they’re generally reserved for special occasions: beginnings and ends of seasons or anniversary concerts. This year, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra is doing Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand at the end of their seasons. An orchestra in a delicate financial situation, such as our own Orchestra London can’t really afford to perform these works very often. University orchestras can and do. I still remember some of the performances of larger pieces like Mahler’s “Resurrection,” Verdi’s Requiem, Berlioz’s Requiem that my university orchestra played. For the requiems, we had to change our venue from the concert hall in the music building to a large Cathedral just to accommodate the players. There were two conductors, and one used a video monitor to see the other. At the climax of the pieces you could feel the building vibrate.

            I find it equally amazing that while there was this desire for grand concerts with ensembles requiring over 100 performers composers still wrote for chamber ensembles. When I hear that in the 19thC these pieces were performed in the home, I tend to think of high school when my quartet would get together at someone’s house to practice the music for a wedding. If you read the letters and diaries of someone like Fanny Hensel (Felix Mendelssohn’s sister), you discover that the “home” could often be a mansion and that there might be over a hundred “friends” in attendance.  This challenges our understanding of the private and public spheres. I suspect the real difference is that you have to be invited in order to be able to attend. And if you think that the concept of the 19thC salon—intellectuals getting together to play music with friends and discuss artistic and social concepts with artists and musicians on a regular basis—is a thing of the past, think again. In Milan, Italy, at least, the tradition is alive and well. I once had the opportunity to attend one of these and it was fascinating. One Saturday night, I tagged along with a friend of mine who had a piano trio to a Salon held in this 18thC apartment in a chi chi district of Milan. There was this fascinating mix of famous artists, poets, and musicians with regular amateurs. It was like a party, but instead of catching up on gossip or shooting the breeze about the latest political scandals, people presented their music or art. Through the course of the evening everybody just got up and played, or put their unframed paintings up on the keyboard of the baby grand and explained the concept, or read a passage from their latest novel or poem. Afterwards everybody drank wine and ate spaghetti standing up, on paper plates served from a giant salad bowl. I’m not sure what people discussed because my Italian wasn’t very good. While I’ve never heard or of this kind of thing happening in London or Montreal, you can join an organization designed to put people together who want to play chamber music. Maybe we could have a salon for this course!

Beethoven's 5th: Goblins and Shipwrecks

Here is a humourous and evocative take on Beethoven's Fifth, from E.M. Forster's wonderful novel Howard's End:


It will be generally admitted that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.  All sorts and conditions are satisfied by it.  Whether you are like Mrs. Munt, and tap surreptitiously when the tunes come--of course, not so as to disturb the others--; or like Helen, who can see heroes and shipwrecks in the music's flood; or like Margaret, who can only see the music; or like Tibby, who is profoundly versed in counterpoint, and holds the full score open on his knee; or like their cousin, Fräulein Mosebach, who remembers all the time that Beethoven is "echt Deutsch"; or like Fräulein Mosebach's young man, who can remember nothing but Fräulein Mosebach: in any case, the passion of your life becomes more vivid, and you are bound to admit that such a noise is cheap at two shillings.  It is cheap, even if you hear it in the Queen's Hall, dreariest music-room in London, though not as dreary as the Free Trade Hall, Manchester; and even if you sit on the extreme left of that hall, so that the brass bumps at you before the rest of the orchestra arrives, it is still cheap.
    "Who is Margaret talking to?" said Mrs. Munt, at the conclusion of the first movement.  She was again in London on a visit to Wickham Place.
    Helen looked down the long line of their party, and said that she did not know.
    "Would it be some young man or other whom she takes an interest in?"
    "I expect so," Helen replied.  Music enwrapped her, and she could not enter into the distinction that divides young men whom one takes an interest in from young men whom one knows.
    "You girls are so wonderful in always having--Oh dear!  one mustn't talk."
    For the Andante had begun--very beautiful, but bearing a family likeness to all the other beautiful Andantes that Beethoven had written, and, to Helen's mind, rather disconnecting the heroes and shipwrecks of the first movement from the heroes and goblins of the third.  She heard the tune through once, and then her attention wandered, and she gazed at the audience, or the organ, or the architecture.  Much did she censure the attenuated Cupids who encircle the ceiling of the Queen's Hall, inclining each to each with vapid gesture, and clad in sallow pantaloons, on which the October sunlight struck.  "How awful to marry a man like those Cupids!" thought Helen.  Here Beethoven started decorating his tune, so she heard him through once more, and then she smiled at her cousin Frieda.  But Frieda, listening to Classical Music, could not respond.  Herr Liesecke, too, looked as if wild horses could not make him inattentive; there were lines across his forehead, his lips were parted, his pince-nez at right angles to his nose, and he had laid a thick, white hand on either knee.  And next to her was Aunt Juley, so British, and wanting to tap.  How interesting that row of people was!  What diverse influences had gone to the making!  Here Beethoven, after humming and hawing with great sweetness, said "Heigho," and the Andante came to an end.  Applause, and a round of "wunderschöning" and "prachtvolleying" from the German contingent.  Margaret started talking to her new young man; Helen said to her aunt: "Now comes the wonderful movement: first of all the goblins, and then a trio of elephants dancing;" and Tibby implored the company generally to look out for the transitional passage on the drum.
    "On the what, dear?"
    "On the drum, Aunt Juley."
    "No; look out for the part where you think you have done with the goblins and they come back," breathed Helen, as the music started with a goblin walking quietly over the universe, from end to end.  Others followed him.  They were not aggressive creatures; it was that that made them so terrible to Helen.  They merely observed in passing that there was no such thing as splendour or heroism in the world.  After the interlude of elephants dancing, they returned and made the observation for the second time.  Helen could not contradict them, for, once at all events, she had felt the same, and had seen the reliable walls of youth collapse.  Panic and emptiness!  Panic and emptiness!  The goblins were right.
    Her brother raised his finger: it was the transitional passage on the drum.
    For, as if things were going too far, Beethoven took hold of the goblins and made them do what he wanted.  He appeared in person.  He gave them a little push, and they began to walk in major key instead of in a minor, and then--he blew with his mouth and they were scattered!  Gusts of splendour, gods and demigods contending with vast swords, colour and fragrance broadcast on the field of battle, magnificent victory, magnificent death!  Oh, it all burst before the girl, and she even stretched out her gloved hands as if it was tangible.  Any fate was titanic; any contest desirable; conqueror and conquered would alike be applauded by the angels of the utmost stars.
    And the goblins--they had not really been there at all?  They were only the phantoms of cowardice and unbelief?  One healthy human impulse would dispel them?  Men like the Wilcoxes, or President Roosevelt, would say yes.  Beethoven knew better.  The goblins really had been there.  They might return--and they did.  It was as if the splendour of life might boil over--and waste to steam and froth.  In its dissolution one heard the terrible, ominous note, and a goblin, with increased malignity, walked quietly over the universe from end to end.  Panic and emptiness!  Panic and emptiness!  Even the flaming ramparts of the world might fall.
    Beethoven chose to make all right in the end.  He built the ramparts up. He blew with his mouth for the second time, and again the goblins were scattered.  He brought back the gusts of splendour, the heroism, the youth, the magnificence of life and of death, and, amid vast roarings of a superhuman joy, he led his Fifth Symphony to its conclusion.  But the goblins were there.  They could return.  He had said so bravely, and that is why one can trust Beethoven when he says other things.
    Helen pushed her way out during the applause.  She desired to be alone.  The music summed up to her all that had happened or could happen in her career.  She read it as a tangible statement, which could never be superseded.  The notes meant this and that to her, and they could have no other meaning, and life could have no other meaning.  She pushed right out of the building, and walked slowly down the outside staircase, breathing the autumnal air, and then she strolled home.