The most important things I learned this week weren't specifically about music. They were more about HOW to learn, and how to succeed in graduate school.
For example, I have a TON of reading to do. Not just required reading; there are tons of additional books on subjects I know so little about. Choosing what to spend my time reading is difficult. Knowing what to read for is also a challenge. But it's a challenge I must take up.
Now on to the good stuff...
African Music: I learned about "finding the beat" this week. It's sometimes tougher than it looks. I'm inclined to read African beat patterns in terms of 2/4 or 4/4, when in reality it's actually more like 12/8. I'm always amazed when the bigger drums come in, how they've been hearing this triplet feel the entire time, despite the bell pattern. I know it will take more practice (read: more listening) to really get the hang of things, but I'm already discovering how to "find the beat" in several African music examples that Dr. Agawu gave to us.
I also learned a lot about semiotics this week, which is the study of signs and symbols. I knew almost nothing of semiotics before this week. I had a glancing understanding as to the definition of the term, and I had done some research on concrete vs. abstract symbols within the realm of human development and education. But that was IT. But then this week, we had to read Eco, Peirce, and other semiotic writers, and it was like going from 0 to 60 in 2 seconds. I found myself overwhelmed.
But I persisted, and I managed to learn some basic things about semiotics. Namely, what the differences are between icons, indices, and symbols. Symbols are the most complex, because they are basically arbitrary identifiers which only relate to what they relate to because of some previously-established code. Words are symbols. The letters C - A - T do not in any way resemble a cat or create a cat. But somewhere along the line, a group of people decided to dub these three letters grouped together as C - A - T as a symbol for a furry feline animal who loves lasagna. My name is a symbol. It's just two phonemes thrown together: Han - nah. What's a han? What's a nah? They mean nothing? Not even together do they mean anything. But through repeated use, those phonemes have come to represent me and my identity.
Meanwhile, music tends to be more iconic and indexical. It's iconic insofar as it is directly mimicking something concrete. For example, Messiaen's bird calls in Quartet for the End of Time are designed specifically to denote actual birdsong. It's not a perfect copy of birdsong, but it's definitely an intentional copy, and we can recognize it as a bird's call. Indexical music comes through direct association. There's a direct cause-effect relationship between an index and its interpretant. Think of the phrase "when there's smoke, there's fire." Smoke is an index of fire. It doesn't physically resemble fire, but based on past real-life experience, we've come to understand that the two things usually show up together. The same can be said for, say, a V-I chord progression being an index of ending a piece. With indices, it's all about real-world co-occurrence. No one is forcing the two to come together; they just appear that way enough times to where we link the two together. This could either be through natural co-occurrence, or social co-occurrence. And since it's real-world co-occurrence, everyone's perceptions of an index can be interpreted very differently. While the Trumpet Taps may connote death to an army vet, for me it may connote something far less grave. It's all about what we've experienced.
Can music be symbolic? Sure. But the writer Thomas Turino argues that the true emotional power of music exists in its indexical quality. The fact that each of us brings something different to the table in terms of indices means that we each can have our own personal interpretation of a piece of music. Furthermore, this interpretation we experience is usually on a more primal level that has no language -- no symbol. It's therefore a more direct experience; we are forced to re-live previous experiences in order to interpret a work of musical art.
This is why I couldn't listen to "Almost Gothic" by Steely Dan for almost four years. Whenever I heard it, the music served as an index to a specific time, place, and relationship. It was "our song," so to speak. And the feelings I felt during that relationship were strong, but ineffable. I can say words like "love," but that word just doesn't totally encapsulate the exact nuances and facets of my emotion. I can't completely describe the love I felt. And because I can't describe it, I am forced to simply re-experience that feeling. Music facilitates this response. It's indexical ability to relate to one's first-hand experiences without the use of language are very powerful.
Anyway, I found that idea to be very interesting. I'd like to explore this more, because I do think that music acts as a symbol as well as an index/icon, but Turino didn't touch on that very much.
What does all of this have to do with African music? I'm beginning to figure that out, but I'm not entirely sure. Dr. Agawu did not finish his discourse on semiotics in African music in class. I did hear several examples of iconic African music. The most... well, iconic... is the talking drum, which literally mimics speech patterns.
10 Albums:
We went through a little crash-course of music from 1969 to 1990 via a playlist. Among the tracks were David Bowie's "Space Oddity," Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime," ABBA's "Dancing Queen," and Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car." While it was definitely fun to listen to these great songs and talk about how much we love them, I'm unsure about what exactly I was supposed to take away from that experience. All I really learned was that group listening is kind of hard to do because everyone approaches a song from a different perspective. And you're afraid to not like something because it may or may not be your neighbor's favorite song. I don't know. It just didn't seem very critical.
And I don't mean 'critical' as in 'fault-finding' or 'negative.' I just mean that I don't think we really listened to this music with new ears and unlocked it as much as we could have. I mean, yeah, "Purple Rain" is great... but WHY is it great?
I have this conversation with my husband all the time, because whenever he doesn't like a song, I always interrogate him as to why and he often can't come up with an answer. "I just don't like it," he'd say. "Do I need a reason?"
Well... yes! At least I need a reason. For me, listening to a piece is finding those reasons! This may be why I find most music to be at least somewhat tolerable. Because I listen to it in a way that breaks it down to its various parts (instrumentation, melody, harmony, rhythm, etc.) and I usually find at least one component part that makes the whole thing salvageable. (Example: Nicki Minaj's "Stupid Hoe" is overall a pretty lousy song, but at least her vocal delivery is interesting.) In any case, I find I can always explain why I like a track because I have the tools and vocabulary to do so. And if I find something I don't like about the track, I have the tools and the vocabulary I need to explain why I don't like it. I assume most composition and musicology doctoral students have those same tools and vocabulary.
...Yet I don't think those tools were used to their fullest in that class. There was a lot of "great" and "beautiful" and "different," but not a lot of evidence to support those qualifying phrases. At one point, a student said she didn't love a track. When asked why, she said "I can't put my finger on it." It was just like my husband, who knows jack squat about music!
Is music just that ineffable to some people? I mean, I totally get how these component parts of a piece can work together to create something far more than the sum of its parts -- that's what makes music so great. But at the end of the day, it is just sound. It's a series of vibrations hitting your ears and your brain is interpreting them a certain way. I don't think there's much subconscious activity going on there. It's like what Turino said; it's the emotions that are ineffable, not the music itself.
AAAAANYWAY I'm blabbering on.
Handel's Messiah: I got a chance to look at some REALLY OLD SCORES last week, all of them relating to Handel's epic oratorio Messiah. I have a long history with that piece, and I thought my experience with performing and listening to the work would help in this class. But it looks like this course is going to focus around primary source work. I'll have to use some skills that I don't have yet. For example, I have to create a critical edition of a piece of music that doesn't have one, yet. WHAT? I've never done something like that before! For the paper, I'm supposed to engage not just with the published score of Messiah. I'm supposed to be doing comparative work with the original source material, which sounds like a real challenge.
That said, I am glad I'm doing this kind of work on a piece like Messiah. A piece I already love and I'm already familiar with.
Russian Ballet
HOLY COW, the things I learned about Russian ballet from the Silver Age! Mainly related to the SYMBOLIST MOVEMENT and how Russian composers were interested in ambiguous reality. We looked over several ballets last week, including The Little Humpbacked Horse, Coppelia, and The Sleeping Beauty. I found Coppelia to be a particularly fascinating ensemble. The symbolists loved it because it concerned itself with crossing between the world of people and the world of mechanical dolls. The symbolists are constantly asking "What is reality?" A lifelike doll is a good apotheosis of this question; she is mechanical -- not real -- yet behaves like a real person? So... what is she, really? And who does she symbolize? Are we not all puppets, subject to forces much larger than ourselves? Who's the puppet master, if this is the case? What is our purpose, then? Good questions to consider as we study Petrushka next week.
We also talked about the notion of Dionysian ("capital-M") versus Apollonian ("lowercase-m") music. Nietzsche first came up with those Greek-inspired terms to denote music that is transcendent and ecstatic (Dionysian) from more banal, frivolous, purely functional Apollonian music. The Sleeping Beauty sort of places the two musics in foil with one another.
I'd explain more, but I don't have my notes with me and I've spent way too much time on this blog post as it is. Just know that I am LOVING this class, and I am very thankful that Dr. Morrison let me take it as an independent study course. It's laying the groundwork for what I might want to study as a dissertation topic!
Listening To: Dolly Parton's Coat of Many Colors, Handel's Messiah, Stravinsky's Petrushka, and Michael Bolton's "Love is a Wonderful Thing" six or seven times in succession.
Reading: Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy in the Spirit of Music
Monday, September 24, 2018
Monday, September 17, 2018
What I Learned This Week: 9/10/2018 - 9/14/2018
What I learned this week:
9/10/2018 - 9/14/2018
-- A LOT about African Music. I learned that African music (as a VERY generalized whole) is, in some ways, very similar to the music coming out of Western Minimalism. Both are cyclical, repetitive, based on the notion of doing a lot with limited materials. However, "African Minimalism" differs from Western minimalism in terms of designation, origin, and intention. Unlike Western Minimalism, African music was not a response to any earlier movement. While the Minimalists (Glass, Reich, Riley, et al.) wished to distance themselves from the more complex modernist movements of the previous generation, the music-making in Africa seems almost to have been born with language itself. It seems to have been invented" alongside language itself. There is also no term for "minimalism" in African dialects, so it differs in that regard as well. Finally, African music-makers are not intentionally creating their music in an attempt to clarify, make accessible, or demystify the musical experience. Unlike Western Minimalists who compose their music, African "composers" are composed by their music. Their minimalist techniques are not chosen out of a large collection of options. Their minimalism is the only way in which to make music. The choices, creative liberties, etc. come elsewhere in the compositional/performative process.
I also learned about tonality as a colonizing force in Africa, and how it does detriment to African music -- and African culture as a whole. While African musics have their own tonal systems, colonizing missionaries insisted on teaching native peoples their Western tonal language. Dr. Agawu states that this was a form of "musical violence." It was a means of asserting control. These days, it's hard to know exactly what pre-colonial African perceptions of "tonality" sounded like, since the continent is now inundated with tonal music. But we have some pure examples. Likely, Africans used different forms of pentatonic scales. There are no tonic/dominant relationships. Their scales were likely derived from language. It is a shame that this rich musical culture has been undervalued by European tonality. While there is no reason to abolish tonality from African music entirely (many African composers identify with it), it is important to not forget what has been lost.
-- Along those lines, I also read several articles/papers about African Music this week. I read Gerhard Kubik's article on Africa in the Grove Music Online Encyclopedia. The majority of the article was a narrative surrounding individual researchers, what they discovered, and how they went about discovering/notating their findings. My favorite discovery from this reading was how African composers use auditory stream segregation to their advantage in their music. Auditory stream segregation is a kind of shortcut for our brains; if we are exposed to a running collection of many different timbres or registers moving at a fast speed, our brain picks out the similar registers and perceives them as their own group. That's how we can hear those two "melodies" going on simultaneously in a Bach fugue, for example. African drummers use this technique with their drums, exploring melodies that can be created within larger textures of sound. It also serves a practical function in African music as well, letting players know what parts need doubling.
I also read part of Kofi Agawu's book The African Imagination in Music, which taught me how I might go about approaching such a rich collection of cultures. He stressed how music in Africa is more than just SOUND. It's language, it's dance, it's group participation, it's the act of playing itself. It's "incorporative, generous, and inviting." It demands listener participation. These are some of the core components of "truly African" music.
Eric Charry's "Music and Postcolonial Africa" deals more with modern (and Postmodern) African politics and how they have shaped music on the continent in recent years (1970s and later). He did, however, go into the deeper history of how European-born tonality spread during the colonial period. It was used as a tool for instilling discipline upon African populations, introducing the notions of clock-based time, industrial values, and order in place of the more "frenzied" drumming. Charry also mentions some shared sensibilities throughout the continent (participation, buzzing, steady rhythmic circles), he stresses just how beautifully diverse the continent of Africa is, and how much can be learned from these varying groups and traditions.
Another article of note is Anna Maria Busse Berger's "Spreading the Gospel of Singbewegung: An Ethnomusicologist Missionary in Tanganyika of the 1930s." Berger tells the story of Franz Ferdinand Rietzsch, a German missionary who, while serving in Tanzania, discovered the music of the people and tried his best to write about it. Rietzsch was a part of the Singbewegung tradition (a preservationist approach to music), as well as the field of comparative musicology. He discovered that many aspects of African music resembled medieval music, and hoped to apply this finding towards teaching African people how to approach tonal music. More so than his fellow missionaries, Rietzsch appreciated the musical traditions in Tanzania and wished to document and preserve them, rather than simply replace him.
My favorite paper this week was by David Temperley, who attempts to use Western music theory to describe African music in his paper "Meter and Grouping in African Music: A View from Music Theory." I learned about the Generative Theory of Tonal Music, conceived by Lerdahl and Jackendoff. This theory presents some "preference rules" as they relate to metric schemata. These are the kinds of rules that dictate how we discover the meter of a piece. For example, the downbeat of a measure usually has a louder tone, the beginning of an onset, etc. He then applies some of these rules to African music, and discovers that African music behaves very similarly to Western music in terms of meter. However, there are some cool differences. Africans, for example, are more likely to understand the idea of unsounded pulse. They also are more willing to accept syncopations and asymmetry, and they are more likely to place their "strong beats" at the ENDS of groupings, rather than at the beginnings.
-- Also brushed up on Minimalism by reading Keith Potter's entry in Grove Music on the subject.
-- Finally, I had my first class for 20th-century topics this week, taught by Dan Trueman and Iarla O' Lionaird. We are going to be taking a deep look into 10 albums written since 1970, and we're going to take the time to experience them on vinyl. These albums all happen to be written by women. I've heard of a lot of them, but the one they assigned to me is not one I am familiar with: Björk's Vespertine. I have a while to explore it, so we'll see what happens.
-- Speaking of vinyl, I'm reading a short book by Andrea Mazzariello called One More Revolution: A love song, on vinyl. It's a poetic exploration of the medium that is the vinyl record and how it impacts our relationship with music and listening. I'm enjoying it a lot. It makes me nostalgic for the days when, in order to listen to music, you had to buy it in a store, interact physically with it. While there are definitely perks to having digital access to music, I do find beauty in the vinyl record and hope the practice of owning and playing vinyls doesn't die out entirely.
-- I'm also reading The Music of Phillip Glass by Phillip Glass when I have a spare moment. I learned a lot about Einstein on the Beach this week, and I'm starting the chapter on Satyagraha now. What a fascinating composer!
-- I also watched Coppelia (Delibes) and The Sleeping Beauty (Tchaikovsky) in preparation for Dr. Morrison's seminar next week. I tried to find a performance of Little Humpbacked Horse by Pugni as well, but to no avail.
Listening To:
-- African Rhythms by Ligeti, Reich, and Aka Pygmy groups
-- Home body / symmetry and sharing by Andrea Mazzariello with David Degge and mobius percussion (very pretty album that reminds me a lot of Stuart Wheeler)
-- An assortment of African music from all over the place. I particularly like the album Cameroun: Flûtes des Monts Mandara and the Baka Pygmies album. They seem to have a song for everything!
9/10/2018 - 9/14/2018
-- A LOT about African Music. I learned that African music (as a VERY generalized whole) is, in some ways, very similar to the music coming out of Western Minimalism. Both are cyclical, repetitive, based on the notion of doing a lot with limited materials. However, "African Minimalism" differs from Western minimalism in terms of designation, origin, and intention. Unlike Western Minimalism, African music was not a response to any earlier movement. While the Minimalists (Glass, Reich, Riley, et al.) wished to distance themselves from the more complex modernist movements of the previous generation, the music-making in Africa seems almost to have been born with language itself. It seems to have been invented" alongside language itself. There is also no term for "minimalism" in African dialects, so it differs in that regard as well. Finally, African music-makers are not intentionally creating their music in an attempt to clarify, make accessible, or demystify the musical experience. Unlike Western Minimalists who compose their music, African "composers" are composed by their music. Their minimalist techniques are not chosen out of a large collection of options. Their minimalism is the only way in which to make music. The choices, creative liberties, etc. come elsewhere in the compositional/performative process.
I also learned about tonality as a colonizing force in Africa, and how it does detriment to African music -- and African culture as a whole. While African musics have their own tonal systems, colonizing missionaries insisted on teaching native peoples their Western tonal language. Dr. Agawu states that this was a form of "musical violence." It was a means of asserting control. These days, it's hard to know exactly what pre-colonial African perceptions of "tonality" sounded like, since the continent is now inundated with tonal music. But we have some pure examples. Likely, Africans used different forms of pentatonic scales. There are no tonic/dominant relationships. Their scales were likely derived from language. It is a shame that this rich musical culture has been undervalued by European tonality. While there is no reason to abolish tonality from African music entirely (many African composers identify with it), it is important to not forget what has been lost.
-- Along those lines, I also read several articles/papers about African Music this week. I read Gerhard Kubik's article on Africa in the Grove Music Online Encyclopedia. The majority of the article was a narrative surrounding individual researchers, what they discovered, and how they went about discovering/notating their findings. My favorite discovery from this reading was how African composers use auditory stream segregation to their advantage in their music. Auditory stream segregation is a kind of shortcut for our brains; if we are exposed to a running collection of many different timbres or registers moving at a fast speed, our brain picks out the similar registers and perceives them as their own group. That's how we can hear those two "melodies" going on simultaneously in a Bach fugue, for example. African drummers use this technique with their drums, exploring melodies that can be created within larger textures of sound. It also serves a practical function in African music as well, letting players know what parts need doubling.
I also read part of Kofi Agawu's book The African Imagination in Music, which taught me how I might go about approaching such a rich collection of cultures. He stressed how music in Africa is more than just SOUND. It's language, it's dance, it's group participation, it's the act of playing itself. It's "incorporative, generous, and inviting." It demands listener participation. These are some of the core components of "truly African" music.
Eric Charry's "Music and Postcolonial Africa" deals more with modern (and Postmodern) African politics and how they have shaped music on the continent in recent years (1970s and later). He did, however, go into the deeper history of how European-born tonality spread during the colonial period. It was used as a tool for instilling discipline upon African populations, introducing the notions of clock-based time, industrial values, and order in place of the more "frenzied" drumming. Charry also mentions some shared sensibilities throughout the continent (participation, buzzing, steady rhythmic circles), he stresses just how beautifully diverse the continent of Africa is, and how much can be learned from these varying groups and traditions.
Another article of note is Anna Maria Busse Berger's "Spreading the Gospel of Singbewegung: An Ethnomusicologist Missionary in Tanganyika of the 1930s." Berger tells the story of Franz Ferdinand Rietzsch, a German missionary who, while serving in Tanzania, discovered the music of the people and tried his best to write about it. Rietzsch was a part of the Singbewegung tradition (a preservationist approach to music), as well as the field of comparative musicology. He discovered that many aspects of African music resembled medieval music, and hoped to apply this finding towards teaching African people how to approach tonal music. More so than his fellow missionaries, Rietzsch appreciated the musical traditions in Tanzania and wished to document and preserve them, rather than simply replace him.
My favorite paper this week was by David Temperley, who attempts to use Western music theory to describe African music in his paper "Meter and Grouping in African Music: A View from Music Theory." I learned about the Generative Theory of Tonal Music, conceived by Lerdahl and Jackendoff. This theory presents some "preference rules" as they relate to metric schemata. These are the kinds of rules that dictate how we discover the meter of a piece. For example, the downbeat of a measure usually has a louder tone, the beginning of an onset, etc. He then applies some of these rules to African music, and discovers that African music behaves very similarly to Western music in terms of meter. However, there are some cool differences. Africans, for example, are more likely to understand the idea of unsounded pulse. They also are more willing to accept syncopations and asymmetry, and they are more likely to place their "strong beats" at the ENDS of groupings, rather than at the beginnings.
-- Also brushed up on Minimalism by reading Keith Potter's entry in Grove Music on the subject.
-- Finally, I had my first class for 20th-century topics this week, taught by Dan Trueman and Iarla O' Lionaird. We are going to be taking a deep look into 10 albums written since 1970, and we're going to take the time to experience them on vinyl. These albums all happen to be written by women. I've heard of a lot of them, but the one they assigned to me is not one I am familiar with: Björk's Vespertine. I have a while to explore it, so we'll see what happens.
-- Speaking of vinyl, I'm reading a short book by Andrea Mazzariello called One More Revolution: A love song, on vinyl. It's a poetic exploration of the medium that is the vinyl record and how it impacts our relationship with music and listening. I'm enjoying it a lot. It makes me nostalgic for the days when, in order to listen to music, you had to buy it in a store, interact physically with it. While there are definitely perks to having digital access to music, I do find beauty in the vinyl record and hope the practice of owning and playing vinyls doesn't die out entirely.
-- I'm also reading The Music of Phillip Glass by Phillip Glass when I have a spare moment. I learned a lot about Einstein on the Beach this week, and I'm starting the chapter on Satyagraha now. What a fascinating composer!
-- I also watched Coppelia (Delibes) and The Sleeping Beauty (Tchaikovsky) in preparation for Dr. Morrison's seminar next week. I tried to find a performance of Little Humpbacked Horse by Pugni as well, but to no avail.
Listening To:
-- African Rhythms by Ligeti, Reich, and Aka Pygmy groups
-- Home body / symmetry and sharing by Andrea Mazzariello with David Degge and mobius percussion (very pretty album that reminds me a lot of Stuart Wheeler)
-- An assortment of African music from all over the place. I particularly like the album Cameroun: Flûtes des Monts Mandara and the Baka Pygmies album. They seem to have a song for everything!
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Music 101: Day 1
I taught my FIRST MUSIC 101 CLASS yesterday.
It was a two-hour long class period. I'm fairly certain I had about 50 students in there, although now as I look at the current registrar I've noticed now I only have 43 students signed up. *sigh* It's like Dr. Johnson always says. You can't help it if some kids just can't take your class. It may not be by choice, but it may be. Your job is not to take it personally and keep teaching. Which I intend to do.
I do think that most of my students really enjoyed our class. I have lots of energy and enthusiasm, so it's hard to fall asleep, I suspect. I have discovered some things about the room that I don't love. Lighting is an issue. My darker power-points couldn't be seen very well in the bleary light. The pianos are both Steinways (good) that are pushed onto the far side of the room and can't be moved (bad). So I found myself running back and forth from my computer to the piano to play examples.
I made a few jokes, and my students giggled.
Some students are pretty witty. During our first discussion about music, what it is, and how we define it, I presented them with the Webster's 1828 definition of music, which is sounds that "please the ear." I asked my students, "Does music have to please the ear?"
"No," one kid said, fairly loudly.
"Why not?" I ask.
"Nickleback," was his answer.
It was brilliant.
We also talked about melody, harmony, texture, and dynamics that day. My favorite part of the class was teaching them about polyphonic texture. We sang "A Child's Prayer" together. One half of the class sang one part, and the other sang the second part. Afterward, I mentioned that the reason why polyphony is so effective is because there are often two very distinct messages in a song, and both deserve to be heard. But when they're played together, you get this whole NEW interpretation of both messages. In "A Child's Prayer" we have the innocent questioning of a child, while on the other side we have a parent's assurance that yes, Heavenly Father is actually there. And when they're played together, it's like this dialogue between parent and child that many people relate to and understand. It's not just some unknown narrator telling you to "Speak, he is listening." It's a parent, hovering over her/his child's shoulder as that child is praying for the first time. It's beautiful. I choked up as I talked about it with my students.
My other favorite part of the class was talking about harmony, and how things like tonic and dominant work. I used the example of "Heart and Soul," a song everyone is so tired of, but it's PERFECT for explaining how harmonic progressions work. I likened it unto a baseball diamond, where you have a home plate, but you can't just STAY on home plate. You have to take a journey around different bases (sub-dominant and dominant chords) before you can feel satisfied about coming back home. I thought it was clever. Perhaps my students didn't. Who knows.
My fear is that my students will get to the test and they won't be able to merge what I say in class with what's written in the exam. I want my students to succeed SO BADLY, but I must remember that in order for them to TRULY succeed, I must challenge them. The baseball analogy works here, too. If I gave them a bunch of freebies and easy answers, they'd never get past home plate to start. They need to take the effort and head round those bases themselves before they can really feel accomplished.
I'm learning some great stuff!
It was a two-hour long class period. I'm fairly certain I had about 50 students in there, although now as I look at the current registrar I've noticed now I only have 43 students signed up. *sigh* It's like Dr. Johnson always says. You can't help it if some kids just can't take your class. It may not be by choice, but it may be. Your job is not to take it personally and keep teaching. Which I intend to do.
I do think that most of my students really enjoyed our class. I have lots of energy and enthusiasm, so it's hard to fall asleep, I suspect. I have discovered some things about the room that I don't love. Lighting is an issue. My darker power-points couldn't be seen very well in the bleary light. The pianos are both Steinways (good) that are pushed onto the far side of the room and can't be moved (bad). So I found myself running back and forth from my computer to the piano to play examples.
I made a few jokes, and my students giggled.
Some students are pretty witty. During our first discussion about music, what it is, and how we define it, I presented them with the Webster's 1828 definition of music, which is sounds that "please the ear." I asked my students, "Does music have to please the ear?"
"No," one kid said, fairly loudly.
"Why not?" I ask.
"Nickleback," was his answer.
It was brilliant.
We also talked about melody, harmony, texture, and dynamics that day. My favorite part of the class was teaching them about polyphonic texture. We sang "A Child's Prayer" together. One half of the class sang one part, and the other sang the second part. Afterward, I mentioned that the reason why polyphony is so effective is because there are often two very distinct messages in a song, and both deserve to be heard. But when they're played together, you get this whole NEW interpretation of both messages. In "A Child's Prayer" we have the innocent questioning of a child, while on the other side we have a parent's assurance that yes, Heavenly Father is actually there. And when they're played together, it's like this dialogue between parent and child that many people relate to and understand. It's not just some unknown narrator telling you to "Speak, he is listening." It's a parent, hovering over her/his child's shoulder as that child is praying for the first time. It's beautiful. I choked up as I talked about it with my students.
My other favorite part of the class was talking about harmony, and how things like tonic and dominant work. I used the example of "Heart and Soul," a song everyone is so tired of, but it's PERFECT for explaining how harmonic progressions work. I likened it unto a baseball diamond, where you have a home plate, but you can't just STAY on home plate. You have to take a journey around different bases (sub-dominant and dominant chords) before you can feel satisfied about coming back home. I thought it was clever. Perhaps my students didn't. Who knows.
My fear is that my students will get to the test and they won't be able to merge what I say in class with what's written in the exam. I want my students to succeed SO BADLY, but I must remember that in order for them to TRULY succeed, I must challenge them. The baseball analogy works here, too. If I gave them a bunch of freebies and easy answers, they'd never get past home plate to start. They need to take the effort and head round those bases themselves before they can really feel accomplished.
I'm learning some great stuff!
Monday, November 9, 2015
Daily Log: November 9, 2015
Today I went to lunch with contestant #1 in the Great Quest for a New Faculty Member (from now on called simply Great Quest, or GQ).
He seemed like a very smart fellow, studying Rachmaninov and other Russian composers and their reception in historiography through time. But the cool thing was I totally could keep up with him in a conversation. He asked lots of questions about my thesis and it was awesome.
I didn't do much else today, research- or musicology-wise.
I did finish my project for 410 on Female DJs. I won't have to present until Wednesday, though. Which means I wasted a lot of stress and energy for nothing. I'll probably share some of my thoughts on that project in a later post (or not...).
I'm also reading part of a new book that features Pauline. The book is about earth and its relationship with art. I'll tell you more once I get into it.
He seemed like a very smart fellow, studying Rachmaninov and other Russian composers and their reception in historiography through time. But the cool thing was I totally could keep up with him in a conversation. He asked lots of questions about my thesis and it was awesome.
I didn't do much else today, research- or musicology-wise.
I did finish my project for 410 on Female DJs. I won't have to present until Wednesday, though. Which means I wasted a lot of stress and energy for nothing. I'll probably share some of my thoughts on that project in a later post (or not...).
I'm also reading part of a new book that features Pauline. The book is about earth and its relationship with art. I'll tell you more once I get into it.
Monday, November 2, 2015
Daily Log: 2 November, 2015
Discussed music alteration software like audacity, spek, and SPEAR. I downloaded Spek and Spear and I hope to do some work with spectrography in the near future.
Taught SS -- Starting on the 3rd today. Trying to figure out how I'm going to survive November with all of my comings and goings.
Read more of Bernstein's SFTMC book, including interviews and thoughts from William Miginnis and Terry Riley. I found out that Riley actually performed at a composer's workshop with La Monte Young HERE in PROVO! That's cool. I'm getting out of the realm of Oliveros with some of these articles -- especially the ones about the Buchla 100 Series. It's a cool thing, and Pauline did write a couple of pieces with it, but it never became her favorite compositional tool and I likely won't need to know too much about it.
Also finished correcting all of the unit 2 tests for 301. Now I just have to enter grades.
Listening to lots of David Guetta today. I think I know what House Music looks like.
Taught SS -- Starting on the 3rd today. Trying to figure out how I'm going to survive November with all of my comings and goings.
Read more of Bernstein's SFTMC book, including interviews and thoughts from William Miginnis and Terry Riley. I found out that Riley actually performed at a composer's workshop with La Monte Young HERE in PROVO! That's cool. I'm getting out of the realm of Oliveros with some of these articles -- especially the ones about the Buchla 100 Series. It's a cool thing, and Pauline did write a couple of pieces with it, but it never became her favorite compositional tool and I likely won't need to know too much about it.
Also finished correcting all of the unit 2 tests for 301. Now I just have to enter grades.
Listening to lots of David Guetta today. I think I know what House Music looks like.
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Update: October 28, 2015
So it's been a while...
I won't belabor you with details, but I HAVE A THESIS TOPIC:
Pauline Oliveros and the Quest for Musical Utopia
Gotta get into more Oliveros literature, some Utopian novels, and some research on other socialist/utopian musical movements; Dada, Futurism, Russian socialism, Cowell, Cage...
It's going to be a long, long year.
On top of that, I have to learn more German. I think I'll make it through the BYU translation test well enough, but will I have what it takes to pass a test from another PhD program that I would wish to apply to?
What I'm reading: The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Countercuture and the Avant-Garde, edited by David Bernstein, from Mills College. I hope to have a chat with him about Pauline soon. I've been in communication with him via email.
I've also been in communication with Michael Lee from Oklahoma. He has some interview material that he thinks would be useful for me.
Classes: Not many. Falls are unusually quiet at BYU. I'm technically only signed up for 2 classes: One is GEM, which I happen to ALSO be TA-ing for (yay, money!). The other is a Special Topics class on Electronic Music. It's engaging, not that much of a stress, but it has helped me a ton in figuring out what Pauline's electronic music language is. Currently we are looking at DJ and EDM music and culture, which is cool but not that inspiring for me.
ON TOP OF THAT, I am also:
1. Teaching a Sight-Singing Section
2. TA-ing for Dr. Howard, Music 301
3. Auditing Dr. Harker's Music 101 class...
This leads me to announce that I will be TEACHING Music 101 THIS SUMMER. MY OWN CLASS. My own syllabus, my own choice of text, my own tests... WOW. Surprised that Dr. Johnson trusts me with that. I should be getting a move-on in that area soon.
Since I last wrote, I have visited both the Oliveros Archives at the Houston Public Library and the Oliveros Archives at UCSD. I have yet to visit Oliveros or her archives in New York, but I'm getting on it soon. I hope to go out there in April or May.
Seems like a lot to do in only a year, but I'm thinking back on how much I have done this past year, and it seems like the harder stuff is actually over. All I have to do now is just READ READ READ, STUDY STUDY STUDY, and WRITE WRITE WRITE and I'll be there!
Part of why I want to re-introduce this blog is to keep track of what I am learning everyday so that I'll be able to better study for my oral exams at the end of my time here. This semester is not that much, but NEXT semester I am taking....
Baroque Seminar
Contemporary Seminar
Schenker Analysis
Philosophy of Music
I'll be a TA for both 303 AND 302 under Dr. Johnson next semester. Fortunately, I won't have to do too much in regards to office hours. I'm thinking I'm going to just have it be a by-appointment thing.
PLUS I'm teaching GEM (!) and Sight-singing. I'll probably be visiting some other 101 classes (besides Harker's) from time to time just to get a feel for the different approaches. I've already asked for all of the 101 syllabi that are out there, so that should also be useful.
Dr. Asplund has invited me to consider getting a second master's degree in performance art or sound art. It is intriguing, but I think I'm going to stick to Musicology. That will more likely ensure me a job, and it will allow me to do more teaching and more writing, which are things I am really good at. Performing is a wonderful hobby that I don't wish to lose, but I think that's all it ever will be. I'm not willing to devote enough time to putting programs and performances on, and I am not good at self-promotion in that way. I'm more of an appreciator than a creator of original music. But maybe that will change. I don't have to worry about applications for another year, so I've got time to consider it.
I think that brings you all up to speed about what I'm doing with my life right now. I'm about to go up and grade lots of tests for 301.
I won't belabor you with details, but I HAVE A THESIS TOPIC:
Pauline Oliveros and the Quest for Musical Utopia
Gotta get into more Oliveros literature, some Utopian novels, and some research on other socialist/utopian musical movements; Dada, Futurism, Russian socialism, Cowell, Cage...
It's going to be a long, long year.
On top of that, I have to learn more German. I think I'll make it through the BYU translation test well enough, but will I have what it takes to pass a test from another PhD program that I would wish to apply to?
What I'm reading: The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Countercuture and the Avant-Garde, edited by David Bernstein, from Mills College. I hope to have a chat with him about Pauline soon. I've been in communication with him via email.
I've also been in communication with Michael Lee from Oklahoma. He has some interview material that he thinks would be useful for me.
Classes: Not many. Falls are unusually quiet at BYU. I'm technically only signed up for 2 classes: One is GEM, which I happen to ALSO be TA-ing for (yay, money!). The other is a Special Topics class on Electronic Music. It's engaging, not that much of a stress, but it has helped me a ton in figuring out what Pauline's electronic music language is. Currently we are looking at DJ and EDM music and culture, which is cool but not that inspiring for me.
ON TOP OF THAT, I am also:
1. Teaching a Sight-Singing Section
2. TA-ing for Dr. Howard, Music 301
3. Auditing Dr. Harker's Music 101 class...
This leads me to announce that I will be TEACHING Music 101 THIS SUMMER. MY OWN CLASS. My own syllabus, my own choice of text, my own tests... WOW. Surprised that Dr. Johnson trusts me with that. I should be getting a move-on in that area soon.
Since I last wrote, I have visited both the Oliveros Archives at the Houston Public Library and the Oliveros Archives at UCSD. I have yet to visit Oliveros or her archives in New York, but I'm getting on it soon. I hope to go out there in April or May.
Seems like a lot to do in only a year, but I'm thinking back on how much I have done this past year, and it seems like the harder stuff is actually over. All I have to do now is just READ READ READ, STUDY STUDY STUDY, and WRITE WRITE WRITE and I'll be there!
Part of why I want to re-introduce this blog is to keep track of what I am learning everyday so that I'll be able to better study for my oral exams at the end of my time here. This semester is not that much, but NEXT semester I am taking....
Baroque Seminar
Contemporary Seminar
Schenker Analysis
Philosophy of Music
I'll be a TA for both 303 AND 302 under Dr. Johnson next semester. Fortunately, I won't have to do too much in regards to office hours. I'm thinking I'm going to just have it be a by-appointment thing.
PLUS I'm teaching GEM (!) and Sight-singing. I'll probably be visiting some other 101 classes (besides Harker's) from time to time just to get a feel for the different approaches. I've already asked for all of the 101 syllabi that are out there, so that should also be useful.
Dr. Asplund has invited me to consider getting a second master's degree in performance art or sound art. It is intriguing, but I think I'm going to stick to Musicology. That will more likely ensure me a job, and it will allow me to do more teaching and more writing, which are things I am really good at. Performing is a wonderful hobby that I don't wish to lose, but I think that's all it ever will be. I'm not willing to devote enough time to putting programs and performances on, and I am not good at self-promotion in that way. I'm more of an appreciator than a creator of original music. But maybe that will change. I don't have to worry about applications for another year, so I've got time to consider it.
I think that brings you all up to speed about what I'm doing with my life right now. I'm about to go up and grade lots of tests for 301.
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Daily Log: March 4, 2015
I wrote three pages of my Haydn paper! I am on a ROLL!
The bad news: It looks nothing like my outline. However, part of this has to do with the fact that I completely changed my thesis. So it's alright, I guess. I should probably chat with Harker and present him a NEW outline.
I decided to just buy the Mockus book. I also finally bought Deep Listening. I figure I should actually own books by or about Pauline Oliveros. They're going to become a big part of me the next three years, and I'd like to be able to mark up the books and keep the bibliographies.
I'm also curious about attending one of Oliveros's Deep Listening Workshops. It doesn't look like they had any since early 2014, so I wonder if I've missed my opportunity. I'll probably have to (*shudder*) call the guy in charge and figure out how I could possibly get a personal one here at BYU (with school funding, of course).
There's actually a lot of funding and such that I should be considering. I can probably do a lot of the travelling at my own expense. A drive down to San Diego or a plane ticket to Houston isn't bad. But I'd like to have stuff paid for by the school if I can get it. I'd also like to work on having Pauline Oliveros come out HERE to BYU. Wouldn't that be cool? I've got about a year and a half to make stuff happen. Better get down to it.
I was the only one to show up for class today in Classical Seminar, so it was cancelled.
We discussed Anthony Braxton's use of symbols as notation for improvisation in 20th-Century Counterpoint today, and were given the assignment to write a piece using this notation. I am excited, because I want to extend the technique one step further using colors.
The bad news: It looks nothing like my outline. However, part of this has to do with the fact that I completely changed my thesis. So it's alright, I guess. I should probably chat with Harker and present him a NEW outline.
I decided to just buy the Mockus book. I also finally bought Deep Listening. I figure I should actually own books by or about Pauline Oliveros. They're going to become a big part of me the next three years, and I'd like to be able to mark up the books and keep the bibliographies.
I'm also curious about attending one of Oliveros's Deep Listening Workshops. It doesn't look like they had any since early 2014, so I wonder if I've missed my opportunity. I'll probably have to (*shudder*) call the guy in charge and figure out how I could possibly get a personal one here at BYU (with school funding, of course).
There's actually a lot of funding and such that I should be considering. I can probably do a lot of the travelling at my own expense. A drive down to San Diego or a plane ticket to Houston isn't bad. But I'd like to have stuff paid for by the school if I can get it. I'd also like to work on having Pauline Oliveros come out HERE to BYU. Wouldn't that be cool? I've got about a year and a half to make stuff happen. Better get down to it.
I was the only one to show up for class today in Classical Seminar, so it was cancelled.
We discussed Anthony Braxton's use of symbols as notation for improvisation in 20th-Century Counterpoint today, and were given the assignment to write a piece using this notation. I am excited, because I want to extend the technique one step further using colors.
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
What I'm Reading: Sounding Out
Today I begin a new book:
Mockus, Martha. Sounding Out: Pauline Oliveros and Lesbian Musicality. New York and London: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2008.
This oughta be good.
It's due back on March 16, which gives me 13 days or so to read it. 5 chapters (excluding the introduction) means I need to read about half a chapter a day. 172 pages means about 13 pages a day.
This is going to be an intense regimen. But I'll be reading about lesbians, which means it'll go by quickly, I hope.
Mockus, Martha. Sounding Out: Pauline Oliveros and Lesbian Musicality. New York and London: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2008.
This oughta be good.
It's due back on March 16, which gives me 13 days or so to read it. 5 chapters (excluding the introduction) means I need to read about half a chapter a day. 172 pages means about 13 pages a day.
This is going to be an intense regimen. But I'll be reading about lesbians, which means it'll go by quickly, I hope.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Daily Log: February 18, 2015
Aaaaaaaaaand I'm back!
My regiment has been... well, off. Mainly because I've been putting all of my focus into compiling my notes for my Haydn paper, and now I'm correcting midterm essays for 302. I'd really like to create a post about how to become a better writer about music. I think my students need that.
Once I finish correcting 302 essays, I suspect things will start getting back to normal. I've learned not to try and do them all in one sitting, and to double check my scoring before I make their grades official.
In the meantime, we've studied Mozart and Beethoven in 302, and we finished up Haydn's London Symphony in 604. 20th Century Counterpoint has led us through a whirlwind of sound mass pieces, including lots of Ligeti's "micropolyphonic" techniques.
I then composed a short work using those techniques. I'll post about that some other time as well.
As far as my Oliveros research is concerned, I'm slowly working my way through von Gunden. I should probably start some of my other books that I have checked out before they're due at the library. And I've gotten my hands on a lot of sheet music.
LaRue... meh, I read a little bit of a chapter the other day.
I have a good idea about the kinds of points I'd like to address in my Haydn paper. The hard part now is figuring out what order to present them in. Do I want to discuss Haydn's background as a Freemason first, or do I want to just jump right into the music and explain his possible motivations for the choices he made later? Hmmm...
I did make some progress on Goethe poetry the other day. And I translated a source from German to English for my Haydn paper. It wasn't a very helpful source, however, so it felt like a slight waste of time.
A couple of important accomplishments:
1. Dr. Johnson wants to use portions of my Mussorgsky paper as a sample for his future students in 605. What an honor!
2. My piece "For Five Bodies" is probably going to be performed at the Salt Lake Library for their Concert Series called 12 Minutes Max. This is kind of important.
My regiment has been... well, off. Mainly because I've been putting all of my focus into compiling my notes for my Haydn paper, and now I'm correcting midterm essays for 302. I'd really like to create a post about how to become a better writer about music. I think my students need that.
Once I finish correcting 302 essays, I suspect things will start getting back to normal. I've learned not to try and do them all in one sitting, and to double check my scoring before I make their grades official.
In the meantime, we've studied Mozart and Beethoven in 302, and we finished up Haydn's London Symphony in 604. 20th Century Counterpoint has led us through a whirlwind of sound mass pieces, including lots of Ligeti's "micropolyphonic" techniques.
I then composed a short work using those techniques. I'll post about that some other time as well.
As far as my Oliveros research is concerned, I'm slowly working my way through von Gunden. I should probably start some of my other books that I have checked out before they're due at the library. And I've gotten my hands on a lot of sheet music.
LaRue... meh, I read a little bit of a chapter the other day.
I have a good idea about the kinds of points I'd like to address in my Haydn paper. The hard part now is figuring out what order to present them in. Do I want to discuss Haydn's background as a Freemason first, or do I want to just jump right into the music and explain his possible motivations for the choices he made later? Hmmm...
I did make some progress on Goethe poetry the other day. And I translated a source from German to English for my Haydn paper. It wasn't a very helpful source, however, so it felt like a slight waste of time.
A couple of important accomplishments:
1. Dr. Johnson wants to use portions of my Mussorgsky paper as a sample for his future students in 605. What an honor!
2. My piece "For Five Bodies" is probably going to be performed at the Salt Lake Library for their Concert Series called 12 Minutes Max. This is kind of important.
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Daily Log: February 5, 2015
Today I researched Haydn very deeply, reading through three books on the subject of The Creation and Haydn's history as a Freemason.
I also assisted students in preparing for the 302 midterm.
Speaking of which, we began our discussion of Beethoven as the forerunner of the Romantic Era in 302 today.
I also assisted students in preparing for the 302 midterm.
Speaking of which, we began our discussion of Beethoven as the forerunner of the Romantic Era in 302 today.
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Daily Log: February 4, 2015
I spent more time helping other students succeed than working on my own projects. It's midterm season, and lots of kids want reviews for the 302 materials before they take the tests.
It's annoying and fulfilling at the same time.
I did manage to read a little bit of LaRue and read a bit of material for my Haydn paper.
I also managed to lose my students' grades for my sight singing class. It happens, right?
It's annoying and fulfilling at the same time.
I did manage to read a little bit of LaRue and read a bit of material for my Haydn paper.
I also managed to lose my students' grades for my sight singing class. It happens, right?
Thursday, January 29, 2015
Daily Log: January 28, 2015
Today I assisted a student during my TA office hours for 302! Hooray! However, that means I did not practice my German.
I read some LaRue, but didn't get far.
We studied Haydn's Symphony 45 (the Farewell Symphony) in 604 and we listened to compositions in 20th-Century Counterpoint. Dr. Asplund described my piece, Boomerang, as "violent."
I also read a little bit of LaRue. But not much.
Today was definitely below par.
I read some LaRue, but didn't get far.
We studied Haydn's Symphony 45 (the Farewell Symphony) in 604 and we listened to compositions in 20th-Century Counterpoint. Dr. Asplund described my piece, Boomerang, as "violent."
I also read a little bit of LaRue. But not much.
Today was definitely below par.
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Music In Practice: "Boomerang" and my Journey through Pointillism
So if you keep up with my Daily Log posts (odds are you don't; they're quite boring) (no joke, they are), you'll know that my first composition that I wrote for my 20th-Century Counterpoint class ended up crashing and burning. Not because the concept wasn't excellent (Dr. Asplund said it was great), but because I didn't have firm understanding of the Webern inversion canon and did not successfully follow all of the directions of the prompt.
Fortunately, the next piece we were required to write was much more open-ended. We simply had to write a pointillistic piece. Pointillism, as we had defined it, meant that there could be no audible melody or counterpoint. The texture had to be thin and spread between several different instrumental timbres (in the case of this assignment, there had to be at least five instruments) in small two-to-three-note "points" of sound. Dynamics and articulation also had to be heavily regulated as well.
It was implied that we could create a rule or serial sequence if we desired, but our procedure could also be intuitive, without much pattern or organizational concept. While I was thankful that there was no arbitrary rule I had to follow, I found myself a little confused as to how to go about writing a purely intuitive piece that would have no melody, no harmony, and no counterpoint. I can't hear any of it in my head before I write it down. The only thing I could be very sure about was which timbres I wanted at certain times.
So I began writing my piece simply by throwing dots onto empty staff paper. I didn't think about clefs, instrumentation, or even rhythm. I just focused on pitch groups that seemed to "go" together visually on the page. I then stuck those notes into a notation document on my computer and started playing around with different rhythms. I hoped that the piece would turn out a bit disjoint, like you couldn't hear where the downbeats were, so I included triplets, sixteenth notes, and various durations to keep the listener guessing and free it from any sense of pattern.
One pattern, however, does arise. The piece is almost entirely palindromic. The first nine measures are played backwards (with some edits for articulation and attack) in the following nine measures. However, while interval relationships and rhythm remain an exact retrograde version of what was played initially, the pitches in the second half of the piece are raised by two semitones. Thus, when a G was originally played, now an A is played instead. The only instance in which the palindrome is not exact is at the very end of the piece, which includes a bar of rest followed by two chords, one fff and one pp. This acts as a coda to the piece, existing outside of the rest of the piece's formal structure.
As I put the piece together, I considered some of the conceptual implications to such a design. Immediately, I realized that this sporadic, pointillistic, palindromic piece seemed to mimic the movements of a boomerang. If you don't know much about the physics of the device, throwing a boomerang seems like a pretty miraculous feat. It travels in a somewhat skiwampus arch, made up of spinning circles that seem disjoint, but it still ends up returning to the point from whence it came. Thus, in this piece, I begin by throwing the boomerang, which sails in its unpredictable trajectory for nine measures, and then returns. It is then "caught" in the last two measures, with a satisfying fff catch followed by a quick breath of relief (ppp).
The raising of pitches by whole step invites a deeper layer of conceptual thinking, this time touching on the inevitability of change. Other things in our lives return to us like boomerangs, but something we come to realize as we gain experience is that while things do return, they most likely never return exactly as you first left them. While the trajectory of the boomerang in the second half of its journey is generally in the same direction, its return path is surely not identical to its initial course.
Fortunately, the next piece we were required to write was much more open-ended. We simply had to write a pointillistic piece. Pointillism, as we had defined it, meant that there could be no audible melody or counterpoint. The texture had to be thin and spread between several different instrumental timbres (in the case of this assignment, there had to be at least five instruments) in small two-to-three-note "points" of sound. Dynamics and articulation also had to be heavily regulated as well.
It was implied that we could create a rule or serial sequence if we desired, but our procedure could also be intuitive, without much pattern or organizational concept. While I was thankful that there was no arbitrary rule I had to follow, I found myself a little confused as to how to go about writing a purely intuitive piece that would have no melody, no harmony, and no counterpoint. I can't hear any of it in my head before I write it down. The only thing I could be very sure about was which timbres I wanted at certain times.
So I began writing my piece simply by throwing dots onto empty staff paper. I didn't think about clefs, instrumentation, or even rhythm. I just focused on pitch groups that seemed to "go" together visually on the page. I then stuck those notes into a notation document on my computer and started playing around with different rhythms. I hoped that the piece would turn out a bit disjoint, like you couldn't hear where the downbeats were, so I included triplets, sixteenth notes, and various durations to keep the listener guessing and free it from any sense of pattern.
One pattern, however, does arise. The piece is almost entirely palindromic. The first nine measures are played backwards (with some edits for articulation and attack) in the following nine measures. However, while interval relationships and rhythm remain an exact retrograde version of what was played initially, the pitches in the second half of the piece are raised by two semitones. Thus, when a G was originally played, now an A is played instead. The only instance in which the palindrome is not exact is at the very end of the piece, which includes a bar of rest followed by two chords, one fff and one pp. This acts as a coda to the piece, existing outside of the rest of the piece's formal structure.
As I put the piece together, I considered some of the conceptual implications to such a design. Immediately, I realized that this sporadic, pointillistic, palindromic piece seemed to mimic the movements of a boomerang. If you don't know much about the physics of the device, throwing a boomerang seems like a pretty miraculous feat. It travels in a somewhat skiwampus arch, made up of spinning circles that seem disjoint, but it still ends up returning to the point from whence it came. Thus, in this piece, I begin by throwing the boomerang, which sails in its unpredictable trajectory for nine measures, and then returns. It is then "caught" in the last two measures, with a satisfying fff catch followed by a quick breath of relief (ppp).
The raising of pitches by whole step invites a deeper layer of conceptual thinking, this time touching on the inevitability of change. Other things in our lives return to us like boomerangs, but something we come to realize as we gain experience is that while things do return, they most likely never return exactly as you first left them. While the trajectory of the boomerang in the second half of its journey is generally in the same direction, its return path is surely not identical to its initial course.
Daily Log: January 27, 2015
Much of today was spent writing a pointillistic piece, which is due tomorrow in 20th-Century Counterpoint.
I finished one hour of German translation of Goethe poetry.
I also found some time to study Pauline Oliveros's book Deep Listening. We performed on of her meditation exercises in GEM yesterday, and it was actually quite stirring.
We discussed Mozart's piano sonata and versatile style in 302 yesterday, as well.
I am tutoring a friend of mine to help her prepare for the Graduate Entrance Exam. I spent an hour with her on score identification today.
I finished one hour of German translation of Goethe poetry.
I also found some time to study Pauline Oliveros's book Deep Listening. We performed on of her meditation exercises in GEM yesterday, and it was actually quite stirring.
We discussed Mozart's piano sonata and versatile style in 302 yesterday, as well.
I am tutoring a friend of mine to help her prepare for the Graduate Entrance Exam. I spent an hour with her on score identification today.
Monday, January 26, 2015
Daily Log: January 26, 2015
Marginal success today. I completed my Haydn paper bibliography over the weekend, as well as read up on early symphony (Sammartini, Stamitz, CPE Bach, etc.) over the weekend. We discussed those in 604 today.
I also read an excellent article from Perspectives of New Music about John Cage's Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra. (Pritchett, James. "From Choice to Change: John Cage's Concerto for Prepared Piano." Perspectives of New Music 26 (Winter, 1988): 50-81.) I listened to two works by Feldman as well as Cage's concerto. We discussed those works in class today.
Further reading was done in Von Gunden's book. I'm now considering writing a short paper for 20th-century Counterpoint on Oliveros's early works. But perhaps new textural habits will come to be seen as I continue in the book.
Translated German for 1 hour. Goethe poetry.
Read part of the chapter on the Growth Process in LaRue's Guidelines.
Finally, I spent some time composing a piece I'm going to call Boomerang. It's just a pointillistic piece. Not serial at all, but it will have some symmetry in it if I can get the patterns down the way I want them to sound. Writing "melodies" in this kind of music is pretty much impossible (as was discussed in class today), so I need to sort of come to conclusions by trial and error. I'll probably write a post about the experience once it's finished.
I also read an excellent article from Perspectives of New Music about John Cage's Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra. (Pritchett, James. "From Choice to Change: John Cage's Concerto for Prepared Piano." Perspectives of New Music 26 (Winter, 1988): 50-81.) I listened to two works by Feldman as well as Cage's concerto. We discussed those works in class today.
Further reading was done in Von Gunden's book. I'm now considering writing a short paper for 20th-century Counterpoint on Oliveros's early works. But perhaps new textural habits will come to be seen as I continue in the book.
Translated German for 1 hour. Goethe poetry.
Read part of the chapter on the Growth Process in LaRue's Guidelines.
Finally, I spent some time composing a piece I'm going to call Boomerang. It's just a pointillistic piece. Not serial at all, but it will have some symmetry in it if I can get the patterns down the way I want them to sound. Writing "melodies" in this kind of music is pretty much impossible (as was discussed in class today), so I need to sort of come to conclusions by trial and error. I'll probably write a post about the experience once it's finished.
Friday, January 23, 2015
Daily Log: January 23, 2015
It's funny how the days you feel most like a failure end up also being the days when you get the most stuff done? I accomplished pretty much everything on my list of things to do today, and I think part of the reason why was because I ended up getting some pretty negative feedback on my Webern piece (not that it was a bad piece; I just didn't follow directions accurately, which is just embarrassing).
I read some stuff written by Stockhausen this morning. There were some assigned readings from the book Stockhausen on Music: Lectures and Interviews (London: Boyars, 1991). We also had to listen to Kreuzspiel and Kontra-Punkte, as well as Messaien's Modes de Valeurs et d'intensities. It would take a very, very long time to take these pieces apart; I probably shouldn't spend my time on them just now, since there are other pressing matters, but it's definitely something to look into.
I've been assigned to simply write a pointillistic piece, no need for serialism. Hopefully I can at least do that successfully.
We discussed Piccini and Gluck today in 604. I felt underprepared for this discussion as well, although I know plenty about Gluck's Orfeo. I guess I was supposed to read more of the Oxford History on the subject than I actually did.
So yeah, it was a pretty pathetic morning, but as I said, my failures caused me to throw myself into my work this afternoon. I spent most of it up in Dr. Johnson's office. I translated three Goethe poems (including Heidenröslein, which would end up in one of Schubert's most famous lieder) and studied Pauline Oliveros's Variations for Sextet. This was one of her earlier pieces, but it was the first that really epitomized some of her core compositional values.
I was informed today that I get the opportunity to write yet ANOTHER paper this semester, this one on the textural/contrapuntal style of any 20th-century composer. I'm thinking I might do Oliveros. It would make for great preparation for my thesis. As long as Dr. Asplund will let me.
Finally, I acquired several great sources for my Haydn paper. Our bibliographies (which, as Dr. Harker stated, are very much a work in progress until the end of the paper-writing process) are due on Monday, and we need at least 20 sources. Today I broke ten official ones; I think I'm closer to fifteen. But before I went home I went and checked out a bunch of other books about Haydn, Masonic music, and Mozart's The Magic Flute that I think would be helpful. I'm sure I'll be fine for Monday. 20 pages is a breeze compared to the 60/100 sources I needed to acquire last semester.
Here's to the freaking weekend.
I read some stuff written by Stockhausen this morning. There were some assigned readings from the book Stockhausen on Music: Lectures and Interviews (London: Boyars, 1991). We also had to listen to Kreuzspiel and Kontra-Punkte, as well as Messaien's Modes de Valeurs et d'intensities. It would take a very, very long time to take these pieces apart; I probably shouldn't spend my time on them just now, since there are other pressing matters, but it's definitely something to look into.
I've been assigned to simply write a pointillistic piece, no need for serialism. Hopefully I can at least do that successfully.
We discussed Piccini and Gluck today in 604. I felt underprepared for this discussion as well, although I know plenty about Gluck's Orfeo. I guess I was supposed to read more of the Oxford History on the subject than I actually did.
So yeah, it was a pretty pathetic morning, but as I said, my failures caused me to throw myself into my work this afternoon. I spent most of it up in Dr. Johnson's office. I translated three Goethe poems (including Heidenröslein, which would end up in one of Schubert's most famous lieder) and studied Pauline Oliveros's Variations for Sextet. This was one of her earlier pieces, but it was the first that really epitomized some of her core compositional values.
I was informed today that I get the opportunity to write yet ANOTHER paper this semester, this one on the textural/contrapuntal style of any 20th-century composer. I'm thinking I might do Oliveros. It would make for great preparation for my thesis. As long as Dr. Asplund will let me.
Finally, I acquired several great sources for my Haydn paper. Our bibliographies (which, as Dr. Harker stated, are very much a work in progress until the end of the paper-writing process) are due on Monday, and we need at least 20 sources. Today I broke ten official ones; I think I'm closer to fifteen. But before I went home I went and checked out a bunch of other books about Haydn, Masonic music, and Mozart's The Magic Flute that I think would be helpful. I'm sure I'll be fine for Monday. 20 pages is a breeze compared to the 60/100 sources I needed to acquire last semester.
Here's to the freaking weekend.
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Daily Log: January 22, 2015
Today I read LaRue's chapter on Rhythm in Guidelines for Style Analysis. He begins the chapter by stating how complicated rhythm is; obviously he was right, because I hardly understood anything he said from then on. I did understand one thing that I thought was pretty useful. It had to do with the terminology we use in describing emphasis we give to certain notes in a rhythmic passage.
LaRue suggests that the following terms be used only in these contexts:
Stress -- describes large-scale rhythmic emphasis (as in meter)
Emphasis -- describes middle-scale emphasis
Accent -- describes small-scale emphasis
I translated Goethe's poems for an hour today. Some of the lines I translated read exactly as Appelbaum says they should be translated. That makes me happy.
No sources today. I know I'll get enough to turn in a bibliography by Monday, but I worry that they won't be the BEST sources. I have some work to do over the weekend if I want my bibliography to be the best it can be.
Studied Haydn's 88th Symphony today, first, third, and fourth movements. The second was too formally complicated, so Dr. Johnson skipped it.
I also read a bit about Picinni and the development of more relaxed opera seria styles in Taruskin's Oxford History.
I also finished my Webern piece -- both score and recording -- for good today. I feel very confident about sharing it tomorrow.
I also took a stab at a phrase/text analysis of a song written by a friend of mine. We had discussed how to write "good" melodies earlier that day, and I figured why not see how his process worked?
Here's my initial "chicken-scratch" analysis. The colors in the text correspond with the lines that appear in the phrase arcs. Beside the arcs are primary vowels that are used within the rhyme schemes of that specific stanza. I prefer phonic symbols over IPA, probably because it's less to memorize. This would be a good place to present my findings once I've finished analyzing and "cleaned up" my visuals.
Here's a link to the bandcamp site for my friend's band Quiet House. The song is called "Rolling Waters." I really like looking deeply at music written by people I know. Knowing the stories and people behind a song always makes you appreciate it a little more.
I also picked up a very important book pertaining to my thesis:
Oliveros, Pauline. Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice. Lincoln, Nebraska: Deep Listening Publications, 2005.
In GEM today, we explored opposites and then performed a short "opera" based off of a poem by Sun Ra. It was slightly terrifying to put all of my trust into the man I was vocalizing with (he was the only one with access to the text), but I feel like the outcome was pleasant.
I was also challenged today to write poetry. Hmmmm....
Tomorrow I pledge to find and cite at least 10 more sources for my bibliography.
LaRue suggests that the following terms be used only in these contexts:
Stress -- describes large-scale rhythmic emphasis (as in meter)
Emphasis -- describes middle-scale emphasis
Accent -- describes small-scale emphasis
I translated Goethe's poems for an hour today. Some of the lines I translated read exactly as Appelbaum says they should be translated. That makes me happy.
No sources today. I know I'll get enough to turn in a bibliography by Monday, but I worry that they won't be the BEST sources. I have some work to do over the weekend if I want my bibliography to be the best it can be.
Studied Haydn's 88th Symphony today, first, third, and fourth movements. The second was too formally complicated, so Dr. Johnson skipped it.
I also read a bit about Picinni and the development of more relaxed opera seria styles in Taruskin's Oxford History.
I also finished my Webern piece -- both score and recording -- for good today. I feel very confident about sharing it tomorrow.
I also took a stab at a phrase/text analysis of a song written by a friend of mine. We had discussed how to write "good" melodies earlier that day, and I figured why not see how his process worked?
Here's my initial "chicken-scratch" analysis. The colors in the text correspond with the lines that appear in the phrase arcs. Beside the arcs are primary vowels that are used within the rhyme schemes of that specific stanza. I prefer phonic symbols over IPA, probably because it's less to memorize. This would be a good place to present my findings once I've finished analyzing and "cleaned up" my visuals.
Here's a link to the bandcamp site for my friend's band Quiet House. The song is called "Rolling Waters." I really like looking deeply at music written by people I know. Knowing the stories and people behind a song always makes you appreciate it a little more.
I also picked up a very important book pertaining to my thesis:
Oliveros, Pauline. Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice. Lincoln, Nebraska: Deep Listening Publications, 2005.
In GEM today, we explored opposites and then performed a short "opera" based off of a poem by Sun Ra. It was slightly terrifying to put all of my trust into the man I was vocalizing with (he was the only one with access to the text), but I feel like the outcome was pleasant.
I was also challenged today to write poetry. Hmmmm....
Tomorrow I pledge to find and cite at least 10 more sources for my bibliography.
Daily Log: January 20 and 21, 2015
After a three-day weekend, it's hard to jump back into the swing of things. Thus, a delayed post. I didn't do much during the actual weekend, although I had some great conversations with friends and I've been inspired to do more creative work as well as written work during my time here as a Graduate Student.
I gotta tell you, these are the best years of my life.
Tuesday was spent primarily doing some writing and recording work for my Webern piece. I have a whole post about it.
It should have been presented on Wednesday morning, but we ran out of time, so it will be shown first thing on Friday. This gives me a little time to re-record some of my vocals.
We also discussed Haydn's "Joke" String Quartet in 302.
Wednesday was a lot more productive; I found around 10 sources for my Haydn paper (I need at least 20) and translated some poems by Goethe. I will admit, the poetry is a bit easier to translate than Faust.
In 604 we discussed Pergolesi and the intermezzo (deja vu... we discussed the same thing in 302 last week).
I also acquired Pauline Oliveros's Three Songs, the earliest work she ever got published. I'm excited to explore those in more detail... possibly even perform them?
I gotta tell you, these are the best years of my life.
Tuesday was spent primarily doing some writing and recording work for my Webern piece. I have a whole post about it.
It should have been presented on Wednesday morning, but we ran out of time, so it will be shown first thing on Friday. This gives me a little time to re-record some of my vocals.
We also discussed Haydn's "Joke" String Quartet in 302.
Wednesday was a lot more productive; I found around 10 sources for my Haydn paper (I need at least 20) and translated some poems by Goethe. I will admit, the poetry is a bit easier to translate than Faust.
In 604 we discussed Pergolesi and the intermezzo (deja vu... we discussed the same thing in 302 last week).
I also acquired Pauline Oliveros's Three Songs, the earliest work she ever got published. I'm excited to explore those in more detail... possibly even perform them?
Music in Practice: "The Urge You Feel...", Mammoth Words and the World of Webern
I firmly believe that musicologists can and should also be composers, at least to a minimum degree. Part of what allows us to understand the compositional process -- and thus make assumptions about it and write about it in detail -- is to experience the process yourself. One of my favorite professors, Dr. Christian Asplund, also believes strongly in this. Thus, for his classes he requires all students to compose as well as study the works of great composers. This is a daunting task for me; I usually don't adhere the word "composer" to my list of identity aspects. But, as a musicologist who wishes to understand the nature of the composer's mind as he/she writes, I must rise to the occasion. Not only must I write, but I must also feel comfortable sharing what I have created.
Thus, I present this recurring segment, entitled Music in Practice, in which I share compositions that I have written that are related to my career and current areas of research.
My respect for Webern is great, but my affection toward his music has always been rather low. I only study his works when I am told to for a class. It's not that I don't like atonality. It doesn't make me uncomfortable. Webern's music isn't even that boring to me. It just doesn't stir me like, say, Berg's Wozzeck (written by another scholar of Schönberg alongside Webern) does. That being said, my appreciation for Webern has significantly grown after writing in his style. Along with analyzing his works, I've also had to write some serialist works as exercises, and I was never really pleased with the outcome. Somehow Webern is able to catch a great row pattern or pitch class that I just don't have much of an ear for. I'm too trapped in tonality to be a good serialist composer.
A new opportunity to achieve Webern's heights was placed before me last week. Dr. Asplund's first composition exercise that he assigned to us for 20th-Century Counterpoint was to write a piece in the style of Webern. The directive was to create a pointillistic inversion canon with an additional voice outside of the canon. All content needed to be in serial rows, and only thirteen pitches could be used.
Although I kept true to the directions given to me, I breached Webern's style in several small ways. I chose to keep things very simple and to use more sustained tones, which you could say stepped out of Webern's wheelhouse. I also chose to use a text. However, I feel like I captured some of Webern's conceptual spirit by presenting a very short piece that hopefully encapsulates an idea more fully than any other rendering might.
I chose to use a text that is essentially a very long compound word, modeled after the German idea of Mammutwörter. This term exactly translates into "mammoth words": long strings of words that are melded together to create a new word with its own unique meaning (the word Mammutwörter itself is a simple example of a mammoth word). A good example of a mammoth word is the word given to Wagner's idea of the "total art work": Gesamtkunstwerk. It literally is the three words smooshed together, but there a new, more complex meaning is implied when they are juxtaposed in this way.
English-speakers do this too. We have compound words like marketplace and inchworm and takeout. As with German compound words, there are rules that are usually followed in creating these new terms (here's a link to the Wikipedia article about this). But we often break our own rules when the need arises, sometimes stepping into the realm of ridiculousness. The hashtag (#) phenomenon requires us to see more complex, multi-word ideas as just one unit (example: #throwbackthursday is essentially a compound word that contains a compound word, thus upping the complexity level). Sometimes this compounding of words is done to an extreme degree for the sake of humor. In the internet sensation A Very Potter Musical, Harry Potter (played by the affable Darren Criss, see this link) calls his beloved Cho Chang supermegafoxyawesomehot. This new, preposterously long word has begun to engrain itself into the everyday vocabulary of young people (at least in my circle of friends, anyway).
I extrapolated on the compounding process to a similarly extreme level. I took a very specific idea idea (more like a situation, I guess) that I felt could be better described simply by a long string of words. There's this urge I feel sometimes to stroke a man's beard when it would be the most inappropriate time to do so. It is especially annoying when I feel the impulse with a professional colleague, especially as we are sitting across from each other at a table during a meeting.
So I made up a long word that describes this sensation:
Awkwardbusinesscoffeearmfacehairjoyfeelies
(Ex: I always get awkwardbusinesscoffeearmfacehairjoyfeelies when I go out to conferences with Dr. Matheson. It's terribly distracting.)
This word can be broken apart into three additional mammoth word combinations:
Awkwardcoffeejoy -- a coffee-shop romance between strangers
(Ex: I think there's some awkwardcoffeejoy going on between the guy behind the counter and that blonde girl over there by the fireplace. They're always smiling at each other.)
Businessface -- possession of deep focus and determination as one endeavors to complete a career-oriented project
(Ex: Sheila really had some businessface as she presented at today's conference. I bet she really wants that promotion.)
Armhairfeelies -- The sensation you feel when your long hair touches the back of your upper arms.
(Ex: I hate armhairfeelies, so I always wear long-sleeved shirts.)
I could use these words-within-the-word to create a pointillistic effect in the music. Three different voices sing these three smaller words in a hocketted fashion, so when you hear them sing it together, the larger word forms.
You can see this best with the score.
My choices for rows were pretty arbitrary. Both were taken from Webern's works themselves, and one of them (the one designated to the inversion canon) begins with the oft-used BACH motif (notes that spell out Bach's name: Bb-A-C-B, seen as B-A-C-H in German notation). I mainly chose these specific rows for their potential use of major and minor sevenths (a very "Webernian" practice, according to Pousseur*) and for their "singability."
Composing serial pieces for voice presents a number of challenges. I, myself, needed some pitch prompts from the piano as I quickly recorded this piece for class. However, when it comes to atonal works, I would argue that it is far easier for singers to keep track of a few fragments of the row at a time than it is for them to try and sing all twelve pitches in succession. Fortunately, awkwardbusinesscoffeefacearmhairjoyfeelies is twelve syllables long, so each syllable can have its own pitch. Thus, each vocal part is in charge of only a fraction of the entire row. By the end of the piece, the entire row has only been sung by the singers one time.
All of this occurs over an inversion canon of the BACH row, which can played by piano and baritone ukulele (or guitar, if you haven't a uke on you). This instrumentation was mainly chosen out of necessity; I can't play much else.
Of course, the word groups I used for text are probably far too long and abstract to be used in real-life sentences. I don't quite have the gift for words that allows me to create a new vocabulary that really fits the current linguistic context of English. But for the sake of a musical text, they serve their purpose well. Instead of taking several long sentences or more to describe these detailed and complicated sensations and situations to you, I can just tag in this word string instead, and you get the idea without excess explanation.
To emphasize this, I presented the "definitions" of these word clusters as the title, which should take more time to digest than the musical work itself:
The Urge you Feel to Reach across the Table to Touch the Beard of your Professional Colleague during a Lunchtime One-on-One Business Conference over Coffee
OR
The Sensation of Long Hair Brushing the Back of your Forearms
OR
A Coffee-Shop Romance between Strangers
OR
The Demeanor of One who is Incredibly Focused on a Career-Oriented Goal
Webern's brief, twenty-second-long pieces exhibit this same idea; why use a million notes when only a string of twenty-four-or-so very aptly placed notes would do? According to Schönberg, Webern's well-crafted pieces, though brief, speak for themselves and require no additional justification. They probably get the job done better than any full-blown, Beethoven-sized symphony written in the same serialist style could. So while it doesn't sound quite as true to Webern as it does to say, Boulez's Les Marteau sans Maître (a later total-serialist work that has a sung text), I consider The Urge You Feel... to be written with the spirit of Webern in mind, using some of his best-known techniques such as pointillistic texture, twelve-tone rows, the inversion canon, and rapidly-changing dynamics.
*All sources included in this essay are either hyperlinked or provided in the source list given in this earlier post.
Thus, I present this recurring segment, entitled Music in Practice, in which I share compositions that I have written that are related to my career and current areas of research.
My respect for Webern is great, but my affection toward his music has always been rather low. I only study his works when I am told to for a class. It's not that I don't like atonality. It doesn't make me uncomfortable. Webern's music isn't even that boring to me. It just doesn't stir me like, say, Berg's Wozzeck (written by another scholar of Schönberg alongside Webern) does. That being said, my appreciation for Webern has significantly grown after writing in his style. Along with analyzing his works, I've also had to write some serialist works as exercises, and I was never really pleased with the outcome. Somehow Webern is able to catch a great row pattern or pitch class that I just don't have much of an ear for. I'm too trapped in tonality to be a good serialist composer.
A new opportunity to achieve Webern's heights was placed before me last week. Dr. Asplund's first composition exercise that he assigned to us for 20th-Century Counterpoint was to write a piece in the style of Webern. The directive was to create a pointillistic inversion canon with an additional voice outside of the canon. All content needed to be in serial rows, and only thirteen pitches could be used.
Although I kept true to the directions given to me, I breached Webern's style in several small ways. I chose to keep things very simple and to use more sustained tones, which you could say stepped out of Webern's wheelhouse. I also chose to use a text. However, I feel like I captured some of Webern's conceptual spirit by presenting a very short piece that hopefully encapsulates an idea more fully than any other rendering might.
I chose to use a text that is essentially a very long compound word, modeled after the German idea of Mammutwörter. This term exactly translates into "mammoth words": long strings of words that are melded together to create a new word with its own unique meaning (the word Mammutwörter itself is a simple example of a mammoth word). A good example of a mammoth word is the word given to Wagner's idea of the "total art work": Gesamtkunstwerk. It literally is the three words smooshed together, but there a new, more complex meaning is implied when they are juxtaposed in this way.
English-speakers do this too. We have compound words like marketplace and inchworm and takeout. As with German compound words, there are rules that are usually followed in creating these new terms (here's a link to the Wikipedia article about this). But we often break our own rules when the need arises, sometimes stepping into the realm of ridiculousness. The hashtag (#) phenomenon requires us to see more complex, multi-word ideas as just one unit (example: #throwbackthursday is essentially a compound word that contains a compound word, thus upping the complexity level). Sometimes this compounding of words is done to an extreme degree for the sake of humor. In the internet sensation A Very Potter Musical, Harry Potter (played by the affable Darren Criss, see this link) calls his beloved Cho Chang supermegafoxyawesomehot. This new, preposterously long word has begun to engrain itself into the everyday vocabulary of young people (at least in my circle of friends, anyway).
I extrapolated on the compounding process to a similarly extreme level. I took a very specific idea idea (more like a situation, I guess) that I felt could be better described simply by a long string of words. There's this urge I feel sometimes to stroke a man's beard when it would be the most inappropriate time to do so. It is especially annoying when I feel the impulse with a professional colleague, especially as we are sitting across from each other at a table during a meeting.
So I made up a long word that describes this sensation:
Awkwardbusinesscoffeearmfacehairjoyfeelies
(Ex: I always get awkwardbusinesscoffeearmfacehairjoyfeelies when I go out to conferences with Dr. Matheson. It's terribly distracting.)
This word can be broken apart into three additional mammoth word combinations:
Awkwardcoffeejoy -- a coffee-shop romance between strangers
(Ex: I think there's some awkwardcoffeejoy going on between the guy behind the counter and that blonde girl over there by the fireplace. They're always smiling at each other.)
Businessface -- possession of deep focus and determination as one endeavors to complete a career-oriented project
(Ex: Sheila really had some businessface as she presented at today's conference. I bet she really wants that promotion.)
Armhairfeelies -- The sensation you feel when your long hair touches the back of your upper arms.
(Ex: I hate armhairfeelies, so I always wear long-sleeved shirts.)
I could use these words-within-the-word to create a pointillistic effect in the music. Three different voices sing these three smaller words in a hocketted fashion, so when you hear them sing it together, the larger word forms.
You can see this best with the score.
 |
| Click on the image for a closer look. |
My choices for rows were pretty arbitrary. Both were taken from Webern's works themselves, and one of them (the one designated to the inversion canon) begins with the oft-used BACH motif (notes that spell out Bach's name: Bb-A-C-B, seen as B-A-C-H in German notation). I mainly chose these specific rows for their potential use of major and minor sevenths (a very "Webernian" practice, according to Pousseur*) and for their "singability."
Composing serial pieces for voice presents a number of challenges. I, myself, needed some pitch prompts from the piano as I quickly recorded this piece for class. However, when it comes to atonal works, I would argue that it is far easier for singers to keep track of a few fragments of the row at a time than it is for them to try and sing all twelve pitches in succession. Fortunately, awkwardbusinesscoffeefacearmhairjoyfeelies is twelve syllables long, so each syllable can have its own pitch. Thus, each vocal part is in charge of only a fraction of the entire row. By the end of the piece, the entire row has only been sung by the singers one time.
All of this occurs over an inversion canon of the BACH row, which can played by piano and baritone ukulele (or guitar, if you haven't a uke on you). This instrumentation was mainly chosen out of necessity; I can't play much else.
Of course, the word groups I used for text are probably far too long and abstract to be used in real-life sentences. I don't quite have the gift for words that allows me to create a new vocabulary that really fits the current linguistic context of English. But for the sake of a musical text, they serve their purpose well. Instead of taking several long sentences or more to describe these detailed and complicated sensations and situations to you, I can just tag in this word string instead, and you get the idea without excess explanation.
To emphasize this, I presented the "definitions" of these word clusters as the title, which should take more time to digest than the musical work itself:
The Urge you Feel to Reach across the Table to Touch the Beard of your Professional Colleague during a Lunchtime One-on-One Business Conference over Coffee
OR
The Sensation of Long Hair Brushing the Back of your Forearms
OR
A Coffee-Shop Romance between Strangers
OR
The Demeanor of One who is Incredibly Focused on a Career-Oriented Goal
Webern's brief, twenty-second-long pieces exhibit this same idea; why use a million notes when only a string of twenty-four-or-so very aptly placed notes would do? According to Schönberg, Webern's well-crafted pieces, though brief, speak for themselves and require no additional justification. They probably get the job done better than any full-blown, Beethoven-sized symphony written in the same serialist style could. So while it doesn't sound quite as true to Webern as it does to say, Boulez's Les Marteau sans Maître (a later total-serialist work that has a sung text), I consider The Urge You Feel... to be written with the spirit of Webern in mind, using some of his best-known techniques such as pointillistic texture, twelve-tone rows, the inversion canon, and rapidly-changing dynamics.
*All sources included in this essay are either hyperlinked or provided in the source list given in this earlier post.
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