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Thoughts from Today

Our current unit is Music Since 1945 class is Minimalism.  Of course, we started off by listening to music of Philip Glass and Steve Reich, which was great, but today we moved on to Michael Torke which was awesome!  We also listened to some music from John Adams, who is one of the greats in American minimalist composition.  Listening to a lot of minimalist music and discussing it today made me think about some questions.

1. How would my listening experience be different if I played a different instrument as my main instrument?

I’ve heard a little about this from talking to some of my musical friends, but it seems like people who play either cello or double bass tend to listen to the bass line when listening to a piece, or at least find it easier to pick it out.  In Music Theory, I often find it difficult to hear the bass line of a piece (partially because it’s so low, but partially because I don’t usually listen to or play bass lines), but apparently cellists do not usually have that problem.  Between my previous discussions with cellists/bassists about listening to bass lines and then the mention today of the immense percussion in minimalist music because of the Gamelan inspiration, I got thinking about how listening from a different perspective would change my listening experience.  If I was listening as a percussionist, would I find the music more interesting or would I automatically tune in to the percussion parts?  If I was listening as a cellist, would I automatically listen to the cello part?  French horn?  Clarinet?  I’m really curious because I feel like as a violist, it’s pretty hard to tune into the viola part, so I find my ear wandering back and forth between different lines and instruments unless I actively pick a part to listen to.

2. Does giving your piece a creative/not standard title inhibit the listener’s imaginative experience while listening?

While listening to works such as “Ecstatic Orange”, “Bright Blue”, “Yellow Pages”, and “Short Ride in a Fast Machine” (all of which we listened to in class today), I find myself trying to relate the music back to the title.  For example, in “Ecstatic Orange”, I found myself thinking about different shades of orange and cultural perceptions of orange.  However, if the piece had simply been titled “Movement 1″ and the whole group of pieces (including “Bright Blue”)  was titled “Suite for Orchestra” instead of “Color Pieces for Orchestra”, would I have listened differently?  Would I have decided that each section was a different color?  Would I have found many different colors within one section?  Would I have come up with a totally different story?  I am very torn on the issue of if a work should be given a creative title.  I feel that it inhibits my personal creativity and imagination while listening to a piece, because I’m trying to find the title within the work.  However, I also understand that the composer is representing his/her/their personal experiences and meaning behind the piece, which is important.  This relates back to the debate about whether the composer’s intent or the listener’s perception is more important, which I am also unsure about.  

Any opinions?

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Thoughts on this anyone?  I'm not sure

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Experimental Music!

http://mentalfloss.com/article/51417/7-experimental-adventures-classical-music

This link is to an article about some experimental adventures in contemporary classical music, including but not limited to: rubber ducks, helicopters, vacuum cleaners, and a vase of roses!  It's so interesting what inspires people to make music!  Enjoy!

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Brian Ferneyhough: Music of the New Complexity

I was very inspired by our discussion today in class of the music of Brian Ferneyhough, a British composer who has spent most of his career in California at UCSD.  His music is classified as part of the school of Music of the New Complexity, in contrast to composers such as Arvo Part who often find themselves grouped in to the school of Music of the New Simplicity.  Ferneyhough's music, while incredibly difficult to notate and also to learn/perform, actually achieves an aleatoric (random/improvised/spontaneous) effect.  The complex mathematics behind his beat divisions and meter signatures, as well as very specific extra-musical requests of the performer require a virtuoso performer who has a strong grasp of the extended techniques that he writes in his compositions.   The specificity of his music renders many performances sounding very similar, but also requires an enormous amount of time to coordinate especially his works for multiple instruments.  Today in class, we listened to three examples of his works, one for solo flute, one for an assorted ensemble of strings/winds/percussion, and one for solo piccolo (links below).  

1. Unity Capsule for Solo Flute (the first 2 sections are in the first link, followed by the third section in the second link)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y71cx8Vj15Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H74A-Hn6DVQ

2. La Chute d'Icare

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a7fyKqX5Wg

3. Superscriptio for Solo Piccolo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2wBFWwJBNA

I am very intrigued as to the social circumstances in the world to allow for both Music of the New Simplicity and Music of the New Complexity to co-exist and both have large followings and also critics.  I also find it intriguing that Ferneyhough draws a lot of his inspiration from Ancient Greek mythology.  It seems that both composers of the New Simplicity and the New Complexity discovered the power of reaching to the past for inspiration and drawing on old ideas to create new compositions, yet they achieved such drastically different results.

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More Listening Ideas!

Here is the list of pieces that we've listened to so far in my Music Since 1945 class.  Most are available on YouTube, although not all are available.  There are a mix of choral and orchestral works, as well as some for smaller groups.  If any particular composer jumps out at you, explore more - this is just a very abbreviated overview of the pieces of each composer!

1.       Wagner

a.Prelude to Tristan and Isolde

2.       Schoenberg

a.Three Piano Pieces, Piece 1

b.Pierrot Lunaire

c.String Quartet 4, Movement 1

3.       Webern

a.5 Orchestral Pieces

4.       Berg

a.Violin Concerto (1935)

5.       Penderecki

a.3 Miniatures for Clarinet and Piano (1956)

b.3 Miniatures for Violin and Piano (1959)

c.The Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima

d.Saint Luke Passion

e.Viola Concerto

6.       Ligeti

a.Artikulation

b.Volumina for Organ

c.Continuum for Harpsichord

d.Hungarian Rock

e.Lux Aeterna

f.Reqiuem

7.       Pӓrt

a.Symphony 1, mvt 1

b.Symphony 2, mvt 3

c.Symphony 3, mvt 1

d.Pro et Contra Cello Concerto (all)

e.Spiegel im Spiegel

f.Saint John Passion

[musicalperusing]

Piece of the Day

The piece that has really inspired me the most recently was Arvo Part's Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirrors in Mirrors).  The simplicity of one key and two simple parts interlocking in such a beautiful, introspective way makes it easy to reflect on life and let yourself be at rest.  It is very interesting to think about Part's musical journey and I wonder a lot about how he got to this point.  Going back in time to find inspiration is such a beautiful process.  This piece was originally written for piano and violin, although many other instruments have been substituted for the violin.  However, it is the most powerful with a violin because the range and timbre were specifically chosen to contrast the piano's part.  Part seems to be guiding us to be able to think our own thoughts, which is a nice change from so much music where the composer seems to be directing you to follow his/her progression of ideas.  I am fascinated by how the simple beauty of this piece fits so well with peaceful and also somber ideas and it has been used in films and ballets ranging from documentaries on Auschwitz to The Simpsons.  Listen and let your mind wander!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8qg_0P9L6c

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Piece of the (???)

I guess I should figure out a title for this, since it's completely irregular.  Anyway, the piece of the day is Ligeti's Sinfonic Poem for metronomes.  This piece first came across my radar at NC Governor's School West in 2012 and, as we are currently studying Ligeti, came up again in my Music Since 1945 class.  It was written in 1962 as his last event-score piece and as his last part of a relationship with Fluxus.  The piece starts with 10 performers setting the metronomes (the old-fashioned kind) on stage and winding them all up to full capacity and then setting them to different speeds.  Then there is a break of 2-6 minutes depending on the whim of the conductor and then a downbeat is given to signal the performers to start the metronomes as close to simultaneously as possible.  Then the metronomes wind down slowly over the course of the piece and different illusory rhythms are heard throughout.  Overall, a light-hearted and fun piece!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCp7bL-AWvw

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Emotional Power of Music

I've been thinking a lot lately about the importance of music in society and what it's roles can be in different settings.  This was partially sparked by discussions of Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima and St. Luke Passion.  A composer's intentions and emotions behind a piece aren't necessarily those that are conveyed to the audience and each member of the audience has a different reaction/understanding of the music.  As a Polish Catholic, Penderecki wrote the St. Luke Passion from a religious context for religious church members to listen to, but it has also spread far outside of that context.  Whether or not you understand/believe the story behind the Passion does not necessarily have to change the emotional power of the piece.  Both of these pieces are incredibly moving in different ways and are both enhanced by the power of the stories that go along with them.  However, outside of those stories they are still intensely powerful.  The raw emotion of a human voice crying out or the sound of a strings section wailing together create an internal response that goes beyond a simple explanation with words.  I think that it's very important for us as listeners to not only seek to understand a piece on a surface level of "pretty" or "I like it" but to really understand where a composer is coming from, the context of the piece, its storyline, and to truly feel the emotional connection with the music.  I know this is kind of an incomplete thought, but I just really feel that we need to spend more time emotionally connecting with music instead of just the black and white notes on the page.

Links to the pieces referenced above are here:

Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HilGthRhwP8

Saint Luke Passion (warning, this one is over an hour long, but the first 20 minutes will provide enough explanation)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNWs-F9-f_M

[musicalperusing]

Piece of the Day/Week/Whenever I Remember...

Today's piece is by a Chinese contemporary composer named 谭盾 (Tan Dun).  He is widely known for his composition for the medal ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics in 2008, as well as his movie score for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."  This piece is from his organic music collection and is titled "Water Concerto for Water Percussion and Orchestra."  He incorporates instruments that use water as a basis for sound.  He has other similar pieces, including a paper concerto.  Tan Dun says that his inspiration came from the sounds of the area of Hunan (a province whose name means "south of the lake") where he grew up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU7R2JydwNE

Here is an excerpt from the solo water percussion part if you're interested in hearing it alone!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SfWHjfkP7c

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Hedgehog Inadvertently Plays a Respectable Measure of Jazz Just by Walking Atop Piano Keys

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Piece of the Day

Today's piece of the day, while not a contemporary classical piece, is probably out of the typical musical repertoire of most of my followers, so I think it's justified anyways.  The goal is to make you think about how different cultures use music as an illustration for different aspects of life.  This piece is a traditional Chinese song titled "Beautiful Night".  It was originally composed for the Chinese instrument 二胡 (erhu or er4 hu2), which has two strings as the name suggests.  Here's a link!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgYJx5UXwq4

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Piece of the Day

Today's piece is Steve Reich's "Clapping Music."  While some people disagree about whether or not it is actually music, I believe that since the composer intended it to be music, we should at least respect it as his interpretation of music.  Anyway, I really like "Clapping Music" because pretty much all string players really want to be percussionists and I wish my sense of rhythm was that strong.....

If you have a chance, Google search the PDF of the music for this piece and just observe how much musical notation changes with the advent of composers writing instructions to the musicians and with graphical notation (not really used here).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhhIZscEE_g

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Music Since 1945 Reflections

There are a lot more connections between composers that you could ever begin to understand.  Even just listening to the three pieces that we studied this week, I realized how many different connections can be made.  The others in my class all brought different perspectives because of their different instrument backgrounds and personal experiences and I really liked today's discussions.  I really wish I had worn my t-shirt from NC Governor's School Instrumental Music... It says "I don't like it" on the front and then "today" on the back; all of the students in the NCGSW Orchestra 2012 got these shirts because our conductor, Orlando Cela, made us promise never to say that we didn't like a piece of music.  We were allowed to say that we didn't like it today, but we were asked to reevaluate our opinion every day and continue growing and expanding our musical horizons.  This is very similar to my Music Since 1945 class, in which we are expected to learn to appreciate the music that we listen to, even if it doesn't become our favorite music or something that we necessarily choose to listen to all the time.  I really liked the discussion that we had today about the different purposes of music and how some music doesn't fit certain circumstances as well.  

Today, we discussed some of the history of Penderecki and listened to his 1956 "Three Miniatures for Clarinet and Piano" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYrv53UaS2E) and his 1959 "Three Miniatures for Violin and Piano" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nksdg47dX4Y).  The difference between the two sets of pieces is quite astounding, especially given that they were written only 2.5 years apart.  I really appreciate Penderecki's use of silence and his experimental techniques as used in the violin/piano miniatures.

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Piece of the Day

https://soundcloud.com/david-t-little/haunted-topography

Maybe I should make it the piece of the week since I'm really bad about doing this every day?  Anyways, today's piece of the day is "Haunted Topography" by David T. Little.  This piece was written in 2013 and was premiered by (I think?) another orchestra first, but I played in the second (maybe first?) performance of this piece with the North Carolina Honors All-State Orchestra in November 2013.  The story of this piece is that a young soldier was killed in a war and his mother was told of his death, but was never shown where he was killed on a map.  Some twenty years later, someone pointed out the city to her and she was finally able to begin the grieving process.  This piece essentially works its way through the grieving process and is one of only two pieces that has ever made me cry while performing it.  While the subject matter is heavy, I think that this piece is a perfect example of why we need music.  Nothing this powerful could be combined into some words on a page.  The music of the soul is reflected in this piece and allows both musicians and audience alike to connect and experience the power of emotions together.

[musicalperusing]

Alban Berg

Yesterday in Music Since 1945, we discussed Alban Berg's Violin Concerto, dedicated "to the memory of an angel".  Berg wrote the piece as a part of his personal grieving process for the loss of a woman he loved; the woman was Manon Gropius who was the daughter of one of Gustav Mahler's former wives.  Many people believe that this piece is the reason that his composition Lulu was never completed; the violin concerto was written in the last year of his life and he put aside his other works to write it.  It is a concerto in two movements with two sections each.  Berg, though he wrote using a tone row as a serialist composer, actually managed to arrange his tone row so that he not only had several tonic-dominant relationships, but also was able to quote a Bach chorale in the middle of the concerto (about 19 minutes in).  Here's a link to the piece!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lnsW5cStyw

Another profoundly powerful work about grief is Haunted Topography by David T. Little, which can be found on SoundCloud at https://soundcloud.com/david-t-little/haunted-topography.

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Ponderings....

A few days ago, I was asked to perform in a recital this summer by my first private viola teacher (I'm super excited, but that's a totally different story.... she has really inspired me and I'm really proud of the fact that she went to Juilliard on a full scholarship for violin I didn't even know that was a thing that was possible.....).  Anyway, we then continued the conversation by talking about her current viola studio and the development of her students over time.  She mentioned that she had just dropped teaching one student because while their technique was quite good, there was no musicality and the student clearly did not feel passionate about playing viola.  However, she kept one student whose playing is technically very weak, but she clearly loves playing viola.  She said that while listening to her playing wasn't necessarily the most pleasing in terms of tone and pitch, she would rather listen to her play for hours over listening to the other student play for ten minutes.  

This has been on my mind a lot over the past few days as I struggle with how I personally sound.  I wonder why teachers spend so much time at the beginning of learning an instrument focused only on technique and then later begin to request musicality.  I understand that beginners are not necessarily capable of creating different emotions or expressing their musicality well because of a lack of technique.  However, I feel that dismissing musicality so much for the first several years and focusing almost entirely on technique stifles musicality later in life.  I personally find that I am in a place where I am considering dropping many of my musical commitments because I am in a huge musical roadblock.  I know that I'm not alone in this feeling; many musicians find themselves in a place where because the music is so technically difficult, all musicality gets pushed to the background in vain attempts to play every note perfectly.  I am very frustrated with my current failed attempts to connect emotionally with the music that I am playing because I am so bogged down in the black and white notes on the page.  I find myself forgetting that music is not merely the black and white on the page, but the colors that come to life when human emotions reach out through the vibrations of the air and touch the soul of those listening.  That is what I want my music to do.  That is why so many of us spend so much time agonizing over the minute details of our black and white pages.  Because we want to connect to and make an impact on the world around us.  

If you are a musician and you are struggling, I promise that there are others who understand you, so reach out to us!  If you have the magic formula to musicality, I'm sure we'd love to have that too :P  Anyway, please don't forget about the colors of music in the struggle to master the black and white.  Let music brighten your world and express the parts of you that cannot be said with words :)

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Piece of the Day

Wow sorry guys, I totally slacked off on this (aka forgot that I was doing a piece of the day) so here is the piece for today!  I'll try to be better about it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lbs7cUuk9z4

This piece is John Adams' "The Chairman Dances" (subtitled "Foxtrot for Orchestra").  It is considered an out-take from the opera that Adams wrote called "Nixon in China"; as per the title, it was inspired by Nixon's visit to China at a time when the US presence in China was not as important or established as it is becoming today.  

An interesting note about the title: Instead of the common perception of "dances" as the plural form of the noun "dance", Adams actually meant it in the present tense form of the verb "to dance".  The piece is supposed to represent Chairman Mao's wife crashing the presidential banquet and performing a seductive dance, which then provokes Mao to dance a foxtrot with his wife.