Well, fame, at least. Sorta. You’ve gotta start somewhere! 😉
Last fall while I was in the midst of the 30 Days Project, I was interviewed for an online publication called Michigan Women’s Forum. Since then, I’ve been checking the site periodically to see if the interview had been published. Well voilà ! Here it is!
At the time of the interview, I was posting the pieces on the blog McDoc and I started for recording our adventures in our new hometown, Our Detroit Odyssey. That blog has been sadly neglected of late… after all, I’m only one blogger! Anyway, that’s the link the interview gives, but I imported all of the 30 Days posts into Miss Music Nerd, so this is a better link for them. (The old links might not have audio anymore — oh, bother…)
In other news, it seems like only yesterday that McDoc and I embarked on the whirlwind adventure that brought me to my current location, sitting here alternatively typing and gazing out at a partly cloudy Michigan sky. But it has actually been almost one whole year since McDoc’s med school graduation, our wedding the next day, and our scenic San Diego-to-Michigan drive the following weekend (I can tell you, Piccolo has no interest in repeating a trip like that any time soon!). So we’re celebrating this weekend with a little trip to the exotic land of Windsor, Ontario. We hear you can get good Italian food there. 😀 Onward — south to Canada!
If you enjoyed this post, would you consider…
Dropping some change in the Miss Music Nerd Tip Jar?
I realized recently that I really need to remedy a particular gap in my musical knowledge: I can tell when a rhythm sounds “Latin,” but I couldn’t necessarily explain the difference between a rumba, and samba, a tango and a cha-cha-cha. It’s the kind of thing where I know it when I hear it, but I can’t define it precisely. (Kind of like obscenity! 😉 )
The reason it’s on my mind at the moment? Well, it’s a testament to my aversion to crowds that I’m at home tonight instead of at the movie theater clamoring to be among the first to see this movie. I’ll see it soon, don’t you worry — on a less-crowded weeknight, is all. 😀 Anyway, if you’ve watched the show, you’ll be familiar with its catchy theme music:
I’ve been trying to figure out exactly which Latin rhythm is being used here, and I was searching different rhythms online and consulting the music dictionary I have here at home, and lamenting the fact that I don’t have access to the Mother of All Music Dictionaries right now.
But then I realized, it may not conform to any particular traditional rhythm, since it was written by a couple of English dudes.
As such, I feel I’m within my rights to interpret it as I see fit. And the way I hear it, it combines the heavy accents and deliberate tempo of a tango with the bustling rhythmic energy of a samba. Thus, a tamba… or a sango… okay, let’s just call it Latin. 😉
Here are a couple of reference words I used to arrive at my brilliant analysis:
Tom Jobim: “One Note Samba”
One of my favorite stories from music history concerns the audience reaction at the première of Igor Stravinsky‘s ballet Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), which was given in Paris on this day in 1913 by the Ballets Russes. (I mentioned the piece during my May Day Spring Celebration post at the beginning of the month!) There was a primitivism to the music, and to Vaslav Nijinsky‘s choreography as well as the dancers’ costumes, which the audience was not expecting.
The audience members were not shy about expressing their opinions, either, even while the performance was in progress. According to Carl Van Vechten, an American writer who was in attendance, a loud dispute broke out between audience members who immediately disapproved of the work and those who supported it, and the dancers had trouble hearing the orchestra because of all the hubbub in the house!
The best part of Van Vechten’s description is a spontaneous interaction he had with the man seated behind him:
He stood up during the course of the ballet to enable himself to see more clearly. The intense excitement under which he was laboring, thanks to the potent force of the music, betrayed itself presently when he began to beat rhythmically on the top of my head with his fists. My emotion was so great that I did not feel the blows for some time. They were perfectly synchronized with the beat of the music. When I did, I turned around. His apology was sincere. We had both been carried beyond ourselves.” [1]
And you thought classical performances were stolid, boring affairs! 😉
Here’s a recreation of what started all the fuss:
If you enjoyed this post, would you consider…
Dropping some change in the Miss Music Nerd Tip Jar?
_____________________________________________________ [1] Carl Van Vechten, Music After the Great War, (New York: G. Schirmer, 1915), 87-88, excerpted in Music in the Western World: A History in Documents, Piero Weiss and Richard Tarushkin, eds. (New York: Schirmer, 1984), 441-442.
I was just reading the Composers Datebook (like a good little Music Nerd 😉 ) and I noticed that today is the birthday of György Ligeti (1923-2006), one of my favorite composers. (I seem to have a fondness for Hungarian composers — I wrote about another one earlier this month!) Whether you’ve heard of Ligeti or not, if you’ve seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, or Eyes Wide Shut, you’ve heard his music. (The director of these films, Stanley Kubrick, neglected to obtain Ligeti’s permission for the use of his music in 2001. Under threat of legal action, Kubrick paid Ligeti after that fact, and then did things the legit way for the subsequent films. [1])
I found out recently that the audio hosting site I had been using isn’t working anymore. It might come back at some point, but for the moment there are licensing issues to deal with. It’s too bad, because I was hosting my own music with them, so licensing really wasn’t an issue for me (though if they had wanted to pay me the vast sums of money that the record companies were demanding for use of their content, it wouldn’t have hurt my feelings! 😉 ). But, that’s show biz. I tend to agree with the assessment that the major-label music industry is “certifiably dysfunctional.”
At any rate, this meant that I needed to go back and change all the audio links for the 30 Days Project. It was tedious, but it’s done now.
So if anyone has clicked on this tab between May 1 and now and been disappointed to find no music there, please accept my apologies! It works now — I tested it! (And feel free to comment if there are any hiccups. That don’t seem to be intentionally part of the music, that is. 😀 )
It’s been a quiet Memorial Day here at McVirgo Manor. McDoc is on call at the hospital, and I puttered around the internet house as usual. I thought of going to a local parade, but then I got interested in the holiday-themed programming on my local public radio station. (As I may have mentioned in the past, In addition to being a music nerd, I am a hardcoreNPR nerd). There were interviews with the small number of World War I vets who are still living — I think the youngest one was 105! It was amazing.
I didn’t listen to the radio all day long, honest — but I did turn it on again an hour ago when I sat down to dinner. I happened to catch part of a show called Democracy Now, which can be almost too nerdy-lefty even for me, but since my usual 8 p.m. guy (don’t worry, McDoc is okay with it! 😉 ) had the holiday off, I thought I’d see what was shakin’ in commie-lib land. 😉
Well, it was heartbreaking. I heard excerpts from an event called Winter Soldier on the Hill, wherein nine Iraq war vets testified in front of the Congressional Progressive Caucus about what’s really going on over there. (In a nutshell: it ain’t pretty.)
Now, I’m a pacifist (a pragmatic one, but still), so I can understand that the average American might dismiss my views on war. But you can’t do the same to these veterans, who signed up for this [insert expletive-laden descriptor of choice here], which is more than most of us, elected officials included, can say.
Anyway, when I first heard the WWI vets this morning, I immediately thought of Britten‘s War Requiem, which I wrote about before. In that previous post, I included a video of the Dies Irae‘s opening section, with all its hellfire and brimstone. Today, though, I think the Lacrimosa section is more apropos. Here’s the Latin text with translation:
Lacrimosa dies illa,
Qua resurget ex favilla,
Judicandus homo reus:
Huic ergo parce Deus.
Oh this day full of tears
When from the ashes arises
Guilty man, to be judged:
Oh Lord, have mercy upon him.
Move him into the sun —
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds —
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved, — still warm, — too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
— O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?
On this day, let us remember the fallen, even as we seek to discern what we can do to stop adding to their number.
If you enjoyed this post, would you consider…
Dropping some change in the Miss Music Nerd Tip Jar?
It’s pretty nice having one’s own in-house physician. McDoc tells me when it’s time to use my inhaler (sometimes I don’t notice I’m wheezing before he does), when I need to go to the doctor for antibiotics (it’s generally looked down upon for a doc to write prescriptions for family members) and when I just need to take ibuprofen and get some rest. He also nags me to take my vitamins, a big pile of horse pills that he puts out for me every morning — ick! 😉
You might wonder, though, how well music and medicine mix together in a household. Pretty well, as it turns out — at least one of us is highly employable! 😉 But that’s not all!
Recently McDoc searched for info about the heart condition that Mahler developed toward the end of his life. He found a pretty cool-looking book: Music & Medicine: Medical Profiles of Great Composers, by By John O’Shea. I’ll have to look at it more closely when time permits; one thing I noticed right away was that, although syphilis certainly was popular among artistic folk in bygone centuries, at least a few composers — Mozart and Ravel, for example — were wrongly rumored to have had it. It does seem to have played a role in Beethoven’s deafness, however.
Looks like something that belongs in the McVirgo Manor library! Fortunately, McDoc and I both have birthdays coming up within the next few months… 😉
A funny search came up on my blog stats the other day. It warrants a visit from the One Word Answer Man (a concept I stole from this guy):
What is the organ word for nerd?”
Um… organist? 😛
Seriously, if I had to rank the instruments in order of nerdiness, organ would be up there. (Having played the organ myself, I feel qualified to say that!) It would have to do battle with the likes of the bagpipes, accordion, and viola. Sounds like a fun project!
Anyway, when these interesting searches show up, I like to plug them into Google myself to see if I can tell what the searcher was really looking for when they were shanghaied onto my site. When I did the search above, I came upon this: You just might be a church nerd if… (As the daughter of a church office manager, I’m fairly hip to the nerdiness, I have to confess.) The items that relate to church music are pretty funny… at least to me, as a semi-retired church musician:
You think that the music director choosing ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ for a hymn on December 22 is cause for charges of heresy.
You think that the music director choosing ‘We Three Kings’ as a Christmas Eve hymn is cause for a new reformation.
You’re sure that the organist using the trumpet stops on the organ during Lent is punishable by hanging.”
Amen, sister! 😀
If you enjoyed this post, would you consider…
Dropping some change in the Miss Music Nerd Tip Jar?
Not that kind of eye candy (sorry to disappoint!) 😉
A quick post today, as I’m visiting my sister-in-law, who is due to bring another nephew into the world for me very soon! 😀
I poked fun at the conductor yesterday, so today I’ll atone by showing some good conductor shots. First, the beginning of the piece. This performance is by a youth orchestra — pretty amazing for a piece that demands a high level of emotional maturity:
And here’s Leonard Bernstein conducting the ending, and providing some commentary as well (though I’d prefer it with just the music!) Check out those facial expressions! 🙂
Live performance is great for the visuals as well as the sound! 🙂
You know, I have a confession to make: I thought it would be pretty easy to capture my experience of hearing Mahler’s 9th last Sunday; after all, it hit me like a velvet anvil — something you don’t soon forget! And I didn’t expect my review to become a series — I thought I’d come right home and spill it all in a single spasm of manic elation. But I underestimated the task I had laid out for myself, and what it would take for me to feel I’d done the thing justice.
First of all, it’s the kind of experience that just takes a little time to digest; it’s kind of like you ate the elephant all at once rather than in the recommended way. Second, I got caught up in the back story, which I felt was pretty important, and that delayed getting to the music itself. (It’s hard to know exactly how much background you need to give in order to keep up the appearance of being a Responsible Music Scholar. Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about things like that! 😉 ) Third, I really wanted to look at the score while I listened to my CD, and the gods of library logistics decided to toy with me briefly before they allowed me get my hands on the dang thing.
Fourth, I just plain think too much. 😛
So what I now realize is that I would really like to spend weeks on end combing through it, analyzing it, playing bits of it on the piano, and just generally sinking into it like a giant vat of dark chocolate pudding. But I don’t know if y’all would bear with me through all that (if I’m wrong, lemme know!), and anyway, I have a few other things competing for my attention right about now (don’t we all? 😉 ).
Perhaps at some point I’ll work up some kind of detailed analysis that proceeds at a leisurely pace. For now, I’ll simply give my impressions and fleeting thoughts and goofy observations, without attempting to be responsible for all aspects of the piece, including the structure of each movement or the quotations from other works that appear. That info is widely available here on the ‘tubes or in CD liner notes (you should own a recording of this — really, you should), so I don’t need to reinvent the wheel.
Also, this isn’t a proper review in that I’m not really going to critique the performance, except to comment on a couple funny things the conductor did, but that’s fair game, right? I mean, the DSO rocks; ’nuff said.
So here are some things that struck me, blissed out and slightly hypoglycemic as I was. 😉
I started to mention before how Mahler makes the most of every section of the orchestra. And one thing I especially love is when what are called the auxiliary woodwind instruments are given a real workout. Piccolo, English horn, E-flat clarinet and bass clarinet, and — growlingly last, but not least — contrabassoon. All heard prominently, not just used as orchestrational icing. Some of them have enough to do that they don’t double on their respective “regular” instrument, as is often the case: the piccolo player plays piccolo the whole time.
And of course there are several beautiful solos from this group of instruments, but I have just two thoughts for the moment: 1) You don’t hear too many contrabassoon solos — it’s more often used to reinforce the bassline — and as I said yesterday, it’s frickin’ cool! and 2) E-flat clarinet kinda sounds like a regular clarinet after inhaling helium. 😀
Yesterday I mentioned Mahler’s use of short motives and sparse textures, in contrast with his usual soaring lines and rich orchestrations. The second movement doesn’t do the sparse thing so much — it sets forth its waltz and Ländler themes with the continuity and fullness you’d expect. And I was surprised when I noticed that, in contrast to my absolutely rapt attention during the small-building-block passages, I kind of checked out once a straightforward theme got going. I felt like we were covering familiar ground — no need to be so vigilant. Of course, my complacency was misplaced, as Mahler never stays easy or conventional for long.
Oh, that reminds me, here’s funny conductor comment #1: there were a couple of places where a quiet moment gave way to a bright beginning, and when the conductor gave his upbeat to the new section — conducting the louder dynamic as well as beating time — I could hear him inhale, even all the way up in the balcony. This is what I call a “sniff upbeat” — it happens quite often in chamber music, especially when the parts are very syncopated and the players are working hard to fit them together precisely — they sniff the upbeats together to get the downbeats just right! 😀
I’m not knocking the dance-like sections, please understand. I took notes as I sat there in the dark (I’m pretty good at writing without being able to see 🙂 ), and all I wrote about the 3rd movement was: “Rock ‘n’ roll!” 😉
But lest we get too comfortable, this piece features a higher degree of dissonance than Mahler’s other works — he seems to have gotten the memo that tonality was scheduled to dissolve at some unspecified point during that decade. One device he uses several times is to have one chord still sustaining while another, perhaps harmonically distant, chord comes in. The two chords remain recognizable, but the way they combine definitely pushes the envelope, even for late, late Romanticism in all its decadent glory. 😉
Another standard Mahler trick, which I don’t mean to disparage in any way by calling “standard,” is a particular kind of crescendo-to-subito piano progression. The music builds and builds, with one of his patented unwinding melodies, and just when you get to the place where you expect the really big, loud chord, you get a suddenly soft, suspended, sometimes crystalline resolution. It’s like riding a wave from its smallest beginnings, staying with it as it builds and builds and — instead of crashing down with it on the shore, being gently deposited into heaven, the wave having evaporated into a cloud.
At one point it occurred to me that there might exist, in some dank and dour precinct somewhere, an uptight meanie who might want to argue that Mahler’s music is maudlin. And I wondered if I needed to worry about that, or be embarrassed about shamelessly luxuriating in it, in case that meanie were right.
After careful consideration, I concluded that I just don’t care. 😛
A few years ago, I participated in a wonderful 2-week workshop for music theater artists. There were five composers, five lyricists, and five actor/singers. We were grouped together in varying configurations to create new works — I wrote five songs in 10 days! It was crazy, but the results were amazing.
I had a little trouble adjusting, though, because I was still in coursework at UCSD, where the kind of heart-on-your-sleeve sincerity that music theater really demands is, let’s just say, unfashionable. I had to reorient myself to writing tonal music, too, since I had been steeped in modernism for several years by that point. I was afraid that if I wrote down a C-major triad, I would go to hell. 😛 A few other participants in the program were similarly warped, so we helped each other out. By the end of it all, we had adopted this motto:
Dare to be Corny!”
Sometimes you’ve just gotta give yourself permission. 😉
So I’m not going to be embarrassed by how this music gets me. I know that there are certain pieces of music that will evoke their desired emotional response in me even after repeated listenings, even when I know what’s coming. “Sucker!” I think to myself. But, again — don’t care!
(This kind of thing started, for me, with Chopin, way back in my pre-teen piano lesson days. I think now that Chopin is like a gateway drug. One hit of that, and you’ll be snorting Bruckner and Mahler before you know it! Kids, say no to drugs! 😉 )
I’ll wind this down with funny conductor moment #2. The end of the last movement is a long, gradual fadeout — not the kind you’d find on an old pop record, where the chorus just repeats into oblivion for lack of anything better to do, but a sweet and poignant dying away that keeps you in the palm of its hand and on the edge of your seat until it’s done with you. As the final sustained notes finally died away, the conductor held his last pose for a noticeably long time, and the audience waited — I swear I wasn’t the only one holding my breath — for the ending to really sink in and resonate, for the prickling on the back of our necks to run its course — before he “put the piece down.”
It was so different from what you’d expect from the end of a great symphony — the traditional way involves triumphant chords that put several exclamation points on the conclusion of our heroic journey, and the conductor’s final decisive downbeat lets the audience know exactly when to start with the “Bravo!”s. This ending was no less powerful. In that moment of suspension, the audience was no less elated for being silent. And when the conductor finally signaled it was time, the ovation was just as roaring. In fact, the conductor was brought back to the stage three times, which was good because he needed plenty of chances to acknowledge all those soloists! 😉
It’s uncanny that that image from American Beauty came up for me, as I mentioned yesterday. Because I think the end of the monologue that narrates that magical dancing-bag shot perfectly sums up the whole of Mahler’s music, from the tragic to the triumphant to the transcendent:
Sometimes, there’s so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it, and my heart is just going to cave in.”
It gets me every time.
If you enjoyed this post, would you consider…
Dropping some change in the Miss Music Nerd Tip Jar?
Calendar Girl: Michigan composer pens 30 songs, one day at a time.
Miss Music Nerd 
