The Fredösphere

Previously I told you how my Christmas anthem Fear Not came to be composed and performed. I said I wrote the thing in 2 evenings, an insanely insane time frame for your host, who is by nature cautious and circuitous in all his creative efforts. By necessity, the result was a cut-n-paste job, at least in the accompaniment:


Around the time we sang the anthem (in church services) I met Aaron Tan, who has been charged with organizing a new music concert for the local chapter of the American Guild of Organists. He invited me to present a piece, and I decided on a revamped version of Fear Not. This will happen tomorrow.

Composing this anthem has been quite satisfying. I've learned something about myself: I don't particularly like, or pay much attention to, repeated patterns in music. I'm a bit shy about admitting this; it's like a painter saying he doesn't put much thought into what kind of brush strokes he uses. Indeed, my whole life I have struggled to become a comprehensive musician; in my youth I was even careless of melody, believe it or not, prefering music with interesting chord progressions.

Previously, my strategy for dealing with my own limitation has been to make virtue of necessity: write a lot of a cappella choral music. This worked well for me because I love choirs above all ensembles (when they are good) and because the voice is the one instrument I'm truly comfortable in performing with.

Fear Not is my first piece with an accompaniment built on an optimal pattern, one simple enough to bend flexibly as the music flows and changes, yet interesting enough that it can be sustained from beginning to end. I finally settled on something that doesn't require laborious, arbitrary reinvention from measure to measure. It's so exciting, because it's better and easier to work with this kind of pattern, once the initial experimental stage achieves its goal.

(And that's another trend in my composing: a lot more work in planning and brainstorming; a lot less work in laying pipe.)

The new pattern can be seen in this line, the second of the piece:

Notice the one-note delay between the leader RH and follower LH, which leads to some funky dissonances, especially when the supertonic is flatted.

In the end, I switch to double time that is more impressive but significantly easier to play (which is a wonderful thing; my organist Jeff Greunke will probably be thinking very grateful thoughts by this point, or at least, less homicidal ones):


There it is. My first "real" accompaniment. I'm looking forward to tomorrow night.

Labels: Choral, Composition

My good friend Tony C. Smith of the StarShipSofa podcast has very kindly agreed to run a commercial for my science fiction jazz chamber opera, They're Made Out of Meat. You, my faithful readership (Hi, Aunt Virginia!) are about to be rewarded with a Christmas gift. Among the privileges of membership here are an early hearing of the audio I prepared for Tony. That's right, folks: you get to listen to a commercial ahead of everyone else!

Enjoy:

Labels: Composition, SoundClip, They're Made Out Of Meat

Lately I've been hearing the words of the angel "I bring you tidings of great joy" in strong, phat, masculine, sustaaaaaained chords in close voicings. I hear a men's choir bellowing in that comfortably high area of the voice that is so satisfying to sing in and listen to. I wanted to hear male voices sing "Glory to God in the Highest" and hear them land on an A-major triad on the word "highest." I asked my friend Aaron for suggestions that fit that description and his reaction was what I expected: "that's usually for women's voices." Yes. Scored for women, and usually with plenty of flouncy bounce. I think we have discovered a cliché, and when we discover them, what do we do? We smash them.

Not finding what I wanted in the existing repertoire, I considered writing something myself. But I was running out of time. Should I compromise and pick something ordinary? I received a sign, a word straight from the pulpit when the preacher of last Sunday's sermon urged us to consider the implications of that first command: "fear not!" Perhaps the sheperds were ordered to stop being afraid because they were in the presence of something legitimately frightening. Perhaps these angles were warrior angels. We were asked to imagine a Rambo angel, or an Ah-nold angel. Yes. I can do that.

Which brings me to one of my favorite adjectives: seraphic. A terribly underused word, I think. I wanted to hear an angelic choir purged of all things cherubic and binging on all things seraphic. (And now is time to mention the choir with my all-time favorite name: Seraphic Fire.)

Sunday night, I jotted down a few notes for the vocal parts and came up with a motif for the piano accompaniment. Monday night, starting at 9:30 p.m., I faced the necessity of starting from an empty Finale document, and creating in one shot an entire piece in one night. I much prefer a plodding pace and had never before faced that much pressure. The gamble paid off. By 1:00 a.m. I was done.

The piece is hardly perfect—a future revision would probably need to expand each section, and as you can see in the excerpt below I let slip an embarrassing parallelism—but it achieves all its mission-critical objectives. The men's choir I assembled for this piece obviously liked it. It was written very much for the purpose of being a blast to sing, and that was evident in last night's rehearsal. I gambled that my tenors, none of whom are true first tenors, would not be worn out by the several sustained high-Gs. I was elated when they rose to the challenge. (Alan: you're a star!) Lots of high Gs, but no high As: by long, bitter experience I've learned to live with limitations.

If you've ever sung in a men's choir, look at this part (in 6/8 with 60 bpm), then tell me honestly: wouldn't you love to bellow away at this phrase? Be honest. This is what men singers live for, no?

Labels: Choral, Composition

In my previous post I asked you to go read Terry Bisson's marvelous story They're Made Out of Meat.  Today I'll tell you about my new relationship to the world of Meat.  Having noticed the story's unusual structure, that of pure dialog without a single word of narration, I realized the story worked as the script to a play, and needed absolutely no modification for dramatic adaptation.  From there, the next step should have been easy to see, but as is often the case, it took me a long time to understand:  namely that I could turn Meat into an opera.

A few things made me hesitate.  The size of the project was intimidating, as I estimated the resulting piece would be 10 minutes long.  (As it turned out, 15 minutes would have been closer to the truth:  more than twice the length of any piece previously written by me.)  The story was under copyright, and the thought of contacting/negotiating/wheedling/wrangling the author for permission was dismaying.  (Few things are better at sucking my will to live than asking a stranger for cooperation.)  Finally, I had recently decided upon another artistic project that seemed to me to be the thing I should be devoting the next several years of my life to and I didn't want a large distraction to delay it.

In the end, I couldn't say no to Meat although it did make chopped liver of an entire year of my life.  I contacted Terry Bisson by way of my good friend Tony C. Smith, he of the StarShipSofa podcast.  Terry turned out to be wonderfully, even miraculously, cooperative.  My first email to him was long and lawyerly, and was ignored.  My follow-up email was a couple of sentences, and Terry responded with a reasonableness and trust which still awes me whenever I think of it.  It's a model for how I should treat others when I become rich-slash-famous.

Tomorrow:  an opera is born.  Meanwhile, let me tease you with one minute of Meat:

Labels: Composition, They're Made Out Of Meat

My favorite SF short story is a very short story indeed by Terry Bisson entitled They're Made Out of Meat. The two minutes it takes you to read the whole thing will be the best possible use of your time. Do it. Now. I'll wait here 'til you're done.

Wasn't that fabulous? I've been re-reading that story for years and re-urging all my friends to read it, yet only recently (about a year ago) did I notice the secret of its brevity: it contains not one word of narration. The entire story is pure dialog. Not even a "he said" anywhere.

I meditated on that profundity for a while and finally noticed the story in its original form reads like a play, or a script for a movie. (Or—he said, trembling with excitement—the book for an opera.) Clearly I'm not the first person to have noticed this; someone has made a movie directly from the story:


They're Made Out Of Meat - The funniest movie is here. Find it

So now you ask, why is the Fredösphere talking about a short story that reads like a script, and could easily be made into a work of drama? Why, in short, is he talking about a science-fiction story that is practically begging for operatic treatment?

Keep asking yourself that question. Perhaps one day soon I will answer it.

Labels: Composition, Opera, They're Made Out Of Meat, VideoClip

"What Shall We Do With a Drunken Robot" is a piece of fluff I created as part of a comprehensive strategy to procrastinate on my top priority (secret) project. My production values as a recording engineer are low, but I made the recording anyway, using the following musical instruments: banjo, synth, slide whistle, washing machine, and sundry percussion.

My dear friend Tony C. Smith of the StarShipSofa podcast liked my robot song well enough to include it in the latest SSS edition, which you must go download and listen to right now.

Tony efforts at promoting SF have resulted in their first physical artifact, a book anthologizing some of the best stories of the show. Here's the blurbage:

StarShipSofa Stories Volume 1 is only a few days away from going on sale. Here's a sneak preview of the cover art, designed by Skeet.

Skeet's brief was to create a picture that would pay homage to the 50s SF pulp magazines. I think he's produced an amazing piece of work.

Get ready for the 16th September when the book will be available to buy in print form. There will also be a new website and free eBook released on that day.

I hope you think it captures the style and feel of the SF Golden Years.

Labels: Composition, Starship Sofa

It's not easy to write convincing fiction when one of the characters is a great artist. The explanations of the art and its greatness usually fall flat. Two embarrassing examples from Ayn Rand's novels come to my mind instantly. In the opening pages of Atlas Shrugged, the theme of a mysterious symphony keeps popping up, one that is brilliant and perfect precisely because it was never written (oooh, that's spooky!). The other example comes from the The Fountainhead: Howard Roark's architectural masterpieces are left mainly to the imagination in the novel (I presume—I never read it) but must be shown in the movie version because of the nature of the medium. This showing is not to Roark's advantage because the artists hired to create the architectural drawings and matte paintings inevitably relied on clichés, because if they were geniuses like Roark they wouldn't be working in Hollywood. (One friend's reaction upon seeing those "masterpieces" was to blurt out, "he invented the 1950's!").

Two works of fiction from the world of SF feature characters who are musicians, and to my delight get them mostly right. First is Ian R. MacLeod's Song of Time. A supporting character, prominent in the first few chapters (the ones I've read so far) is a brilliant young pianist who dies a slow death, but not before transmitting his passion for music to his sister, the main character. I'm amazed to report that some of the lad's advice on the topic of practicing is actually useful. Amazing.

The other musician, a composer actually, is the first-person main character of the short story Empire of Ice Cream by Jeffery Ford, available from my good friends over at the Starship Sofa Podcast. I thought it regrettable that the story told of a magnum opus consisting of two-voice counterpoint (only two? To carry an extended work? I doubt it) but otherwise the depiction of the life and work of a composer felt right to me. As a bonus, the character is also a synaesthete, one of a group that, long-time readers know (hi Mom!), I have made the butt of good-natured jokes here at the Fredösphere (if jokes about concentration camps can ever be good-natured. . . and I say, when they're about synaesthetes, they are!).

Labels: AynRand, Composition, Creativity, MusicTheory, Starship Sofa, Synaesthetes

I'm pleased to present this excerpt from my latest premiere:  The Moon That Dreamed of Earth, performed by the Vocal Arts Ensemble of Ann Arbor, directed by Ben Cohen.  This piece sets a poem which I wrote based on my short story of the same name:

Patiently unwind the slender tendril binding you to me.
Drift away but cast a backwards glance until the sun grows cold. [. . .]

Thanks to Ben and the musicians of VAE for this fine and enthusiastic rendition.  The performance was in March, 2009.  Enjoy.



(You'll notice I've also added this sound clip to my music player above.)

Labels: Composition, SoundClip

Forgive my lack of self-promotion.  I had a premiere over the weekend.  The Vocal Arts Ensemble of Ann Arbor, under the direction of Ben Cohen, performed my choral piece The Moon That Dreamed of Earth.  And they did a fine job, too, making for a very satisfying evening as it was programmed among a smart set of music on the theme "On the Street Where We Live."  I'll post a recording when I get a copy; meanwhile, here are the program notes I wrote for the occasion:

A solar system is the smallest of small towns.  Imagine a planet may have a mind and a soul generated by its magnetic field.  Unless it has the energy and patience to call across the light years separating star systems, it may choose its friends only from among a small collection of planets:  rocky, Earth-like worlds, who usually die young as their cores cool and the electromagnetic activity within themselves ceases; or gas giants, who are as a rule pompous and self-absorbed; or the Sun itself, whose great magnetic field shouts above all other voices in the language of the stars, glorious but unintelligible to mere planets.

In such a situation the Earth, in our imagination, finds itself tormented by grief and regret, realizing too late its companion, the dead Moon, loved him with a gentle, unselfish love.  Now the Earth spends the eons reading the record of the Moon's thoughts, caught and preserved in metallic lava flows which orient themselves to the Moon's magnetic field and then harden into an "epitaph of stone."

So the Earth loves in return, and mourns, and watches the dead body of his lover as she slowly drifts away in an ever expanding orbit.  If we humans listen, we can overhear Earth's love song accompanied by the repeated notes of signaling satellites as they rise, pass over, and disappear into the horizon.

Labels: Choral, Composition

I'm working on something jazzy right now and my compositional approach has changed.  I spend more time at the piano because I can't really hear the chords I want to write.  I have to try them out.  Here's the thing:  I have the most success finding the sound I want not by thinking about the chords, but rather by positioning my fingers into configurations that experience has shown me are likely to be successful, and then throwing them at the keyboard.  I, the least kinesthetic person on earth, am feeling my way through this piece.  Banging my way, really.

Routinely I find the pitches simply don't matter.  Certain intervalic relationships must be present, but there's a lot of leeway--major vs. minor, perfect vs. diminished or augmented.  There's a tired old joke that classical musicians ignorantly believe that, in jazz, it doesn't matter what notes you play, that it's all about keeping things plausible through boldness and fluency.  Maybe I'm revealing my ignorance here, but hey, I gotta speak the truth as I see it:  individual notes don't matter.

Maybe what I'm writing isn't really jazz.  Ah, that's the problem:  we haven't carefully defined our terms!  Let the pointless semantic head-butting begin!

Labels: Composition, Creativity

A very enjoyable meeting last night led to some tentative plans for next year that, if they pan out, will require me to write music for an orchestra.  Now, let me be clear:  we're talking here about a chamber orchestra.  Nevertheless, it's a band with a full string choir, a half-dozen woodwinds, a few brass, and percussion.  This would be--easily--the most diverse instrumental ensemble I've ever composed for.  I am, weirdly, less happy than I should be.  (Must ... manufacture ... happy ... thoughts.)

This experience has forced me to consider head-on an odd quirk of my composerly personality.  Why have I so little ambition to hear my music played by the big bands?  Why are the vast combinatorial possibilities not stimulating and challenging me?  And they are truly vast:  the number of possible sub-ensembles in an orchestra of n parts, and not counting tutti or the Cageian empty set, is 2ⁿ - 2.  If an orchestra score has 15 parts, that would be 32,766 sub-ensembles.

It's not that I'm one of those needy wimps who rely on limits to stimulate creativity.  It's just that I do not find orchestras all that exciting.  It's difficult for an ensemble of that size to avoid a sound that congeals into some kind of bland glop.  Now, add a piano or organ and make it a concerto, and suddenly I'm all ears.  The very clear contrast (not to mention, the drama) introduced by the soloist makes all the difference.  (And let it be a soloist which a huge range of dynamics, pitches, and tone colors; violin or even trombone concertos don't quite generate the sparks I want.)

Or, there's always my first love:  human voices in combination.  Not a soloist, please; what I really want is a choir of angels.  In fact, for the orchestral project I mentioned above, I'll have the freedom to insist on putting a vocal quartet front and center.  Now if only I can find a stealthy way to pour pancake syrup into the bells of the winds and the f-holes of the strings on the night of the performance (oopsies!!!), I'll be all set.  Only the singers will remain.  We'll return to that ancient dream, the primordial ocean of our ancestors, and listen for God's own perfect ensemble:  till human voices wake us, and we drown.

(Ending this with an allusion to T. S. Elliot?  I wasn't expecting that.  Weird.)

Labels: Composition

Who besides Daniel Wolf is blogging brainily about the process of composing?  If there are others, I want to (I should!) know.  Most recently he's making an analogy about the world-building of speculative fiction and role-playing games.  Yeh got yer composing, yeh got yer SF; perfect.

Next, let's sample some SF video.  First, we return to the most SF country that ever was, the USSR, for an animated interpretation of Ray Bradbury's There Will Fall Soft Rains:


...followed by a Star Trek mashup called A Cavalcade of Redshirt Fatalities:



Finally, we explore two interstitial realms of the almost-real and the almost-fake.  Of the former, Design Observer reverse-engineers the Steampunk movement and finds it wanting, making good points but adopting a regrettable "gatekeeper" tone in the process:  how dare these people design when they're clearly not real designers?!  (I like DO; why do I only link when they annoy me?  Maybe I am the regrettable gatekeeper.) Of the almost-fake, check out these "tilt-shift" photos (more here) that make true cityscapes look like cheesy H0-scale models.  Be-yootiful, and don't miss the skeptics in the comments section.

Labels: Composition, Creativity, fun, Futurism, VideoClip

I think this post needs a special tag: SelfAbsorbedInfoDump.

Not much has been written here in a long time about current projects. I'm certain millions of my fans await with bated breath word of the birth of my next art child; no doubt they worry obsessively as the silence drags on.

They (those poor millions! or at least, those poor several--Hi, Mom! Hi, Aunt Virginia!) worry with good reason. I've endured my first-ever experience with writer's block. The experience has been unnerving. However, it has ended, and I think I know why it happened, and how it may be avoided in the future.

First, there's the awkwardness of shifting some of my creative efforts to a new, unfamiliar field: short science fiction. It's not so much that I don't know what I'm doing in fiction--I certainly don't, but the newness provides its own unique motivation, in the form of heedless optimism. The problem lies in the need to manage my time less wastefully, and to avoid endless fiddling and procrastinating. Each one of two projects can act in turn as an excellent distraction from the other.

Another problem is the continuing psychological change that began in my around my 40th birthday. This change of life, which I have decided quite arbitrarily to call "puberty," has made me far more cagey about choosing projects to pursue, and more inclined to ruminate before committing to any creative decision. I find myself asking myself truly bizarre questions, like "would any person other than me appreciate this if I proceeded to write it?" and "is it possible that my first idea may not be optimal?" That creativity gets harder as one ages is not a new observation, but for me it is a new experience. (The upside is, let's hope, and increase in quality. I'm continually appalled by how little introspection I used to bring to my writing.)

The final problem is specific (let's hope it will prove to be unique) to my current music project. It came to pass that I needed to rewrite the whole thing, and my usual laziness roused itself with uncommon industrious zeal against the prospect of revisiting material I previously thought was complete. My piece, commissioned for the May 2008 concert of the Vocal Arts Ensemble of Ann Arbor, is a setting of a poem I wrote as a companion to a SF story I wrote, both called The Moon That Dreamed of Earth. Ben Cohen, the VAE director, warned me the May concert would be challenging one for his choir (it included Argento's Peter Quince at the Clavier, a wonderful setting of poems by Wallace Stevens) and I thought I had written something straightforward. After I sent the score to Ben, he gracefully suggested I would be happiest with the premiere if it were postponed until the fall. I looked again at the score, and was appalled by its difficulty. Part of the problem was readability; it had a 6-flat key signature, and began with an accidental (an F-flat ... F-flat! I was rather proud of that one, given my self-identification as a stylistic conservative--a not perfectly honest identification, I now realize) and partly it was the dense tone clusters I called for, plus the lack of instrumental accompaniment that would have given the singers a point of reference.

Yes, the piece was a monster. Rewriting it was an unappetizing prospect, and I avoided the work for a long time, playing around with ideas but never committing to a plan. Finally, I saw the need for drastic action, and I borrowed an idea from the SF author Gene Wolfe: an entertainment fast was the only solution, so at home there would be no movies, no books, no internet until I had completed the piece.

I didn't stick to the plan to the bitter end, but I stuck with it long enough to write half the piece, in only three days. (That's an unbelievably prolific burst, by my standards.) In so doing, I also adopted an approach that has worked well for me before: I wrote the piece backwards. That is, I wrote the last section first, then the middle. I recommend this approach for any writers who, like me, form a very clear idea of the ending and for whom beginnings are the challenge.

I'll be blogging more about The Moon That Dreamed of Earth in the future. Writing the text was one of the most satisfying creative experiences of my life. (I've fallen in love, love with my Roget's!) Whether any of it--poem, music, or story--is of interest to anyone but me remains to be seen. Stay tuned! Mom, Aunt Virginia: I'm talkin' to you!

Labels: Composition, Creativity

In an earlier post I commented with pleasant surprise on a Swedish composer's attempt to create an opera on a science fiction theme.  Commenters assured me this was hardly the first composer to attempt such a feat.  Daniel Wolf cited as ancient an example as Haydn, which impressed me to no end.  Those of you familiar with my Haydn animus won't be surprised my mental picture of Haydn as a space opera-tor is that of the salt vampire of Planet M-113.

Anyhoo, I'm pleased to add another work to this growing list:  Jacques Offenbach's adaptation of Jules Verne's Le Voyage dans la Lune.  Wikipedia has the details, including a wonderful photo showing costumes and a set from the original lush (but to the modern eye, goofy) production.  Kudos is due (hey!  I conjugates that verb real good!) to io9 for dredging up this information (especially considering that deep historical perspective is not what you expect from a Gawker-related site) in a terribly interesting roundup of info on Georges Méliès' groundbreaking 1902 SF film A Trip to the Moon, which itself was recycled in a trippy music video by The Smashing Pumpkins called Tonight, Tonight:



And I suppose I'll have to comment on The Man that Fell to Earth if I ever get up the courage to watch it.

Space.  And opera.  What else have I overlooked?

Labels: Composition, Culture, Futurism, movie, Opera, sci-fi, VideoClip

I promise, as a representative of the Software Interface Designer Community, to kill myself in ritual fashion to atone for the criminally bad UI of an alarm clock formerly owned by James Lileks.

Meanwhile....

Last Sunday I unleashed folk music on my Lutheran congregations.  This was not some 70s folk-ish abomination wherein the Kyrie chant is accompanied by a guitar played by Sally Field in a nun suit.  No, I'm talking about a hard-core folk abomination with banjo and washtub bass.

I'm not joking.

Well, the washtub was used only at the University Lutheran Chapel, since the regular bassist couldn't make that service, and we sing in the balcony there so the congregation never saw (and, I hope, never noticed) the washtub. 

We sang my arrangement of "There is a Fountain Filled With Blood," a vivid, not to say morbid, hard-core independent revivalist Freewill Baptist metaphor if there ever was one.  This rendition redeemed the previous attempt to perform it in a church service, years ago, which was ruined when one of the trio of singers left the sanctuary just before it was time to sing, on the deeply mistaken belief that he had time to run an errand.  (Later, I found out he was annoyed we started without him.  I wanted to punch him in the nose.)

My banjoist boasts of near-contact with folk music royalty.  He explained to me who Lloyd Chandler is:  the writer (maybe) of the original version of the song, "Conversation With Death," (AKA "O Death") which was adapted by Ralph Stanley and made known to the wider public by its use in the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou.  Dan, my banjoist, mentioned proudly that he once visited North Carolina and helped install a septic system in the home of one of Lloyd Chandler's cousins.

So, I've sung in a folk band with someone who installed a septic system for a cousin of Lloyd Chandler, who wrote (probably) the song "O Death."  I am so going to use that the next time I play Name Dropping.

Labels: Composition, OldTyme

Kyle Gann writes of Karl-Birger Blomdahl's science fiction opera Aniara, a surprisingly early (1959) attempt to merge these two disparate art sensibilities.  Blomdahl employs a wedge-shaped 12-tone row:

[T]ruth be told, there's something about science fiction, this "woo woo we're in outer space" feeling, that makes the discomforting 12-tone idiom ring more plausibly. In addition, the chromatic aura is cut by and blended with two other idioms. One is a kind of Swedish outer-space bebop that attends the "Yurg" cult around Daisi Doody - by which I mean that it doesn't sound like Blomdahl's trying to write bebop, only that he's created a hybrid music indebted to it. The other idiom is the electronic music used for various sequences, such as when the computer-like being Mima is transmitting images of the Earth destroying itself.

(Daisy Doody is a character in the opera, an entertainer aboard a ship adrift among the stars.)

There seems to be a trend:

In fact, one of the first things I did in Europe was to visit the American expatriate composer Wayne Siegel in Aarhus, Denmark, who teaches electronic music at the Royal Conservatory. (My profile of him just appeared in Chamber Music magazine.) And Siegel played for me excerpts of his own science fiction opera, Livstegn, or "Signs of Life" (1993-94), about a scientist plunged into a personal crisis by his unexpected discovery of intelligent life on one of Jupiter's moons.

Folks, we need to band together and smother these infants in their cradles.  We've got to shut down all news, all discussion; let the world forget these works were ever written.  Why?  Because I want to write my own space opera and I want to preserve the illusion that I got there first.  I also want to use the title Space Opera and pretend nobody else ever thought of it.

Indeed, I've been neglecting this blog lately as I give some attention to science fiction.  My latest project is a choral work which I've decided to combine with a science fiction story which will have the same title and theme.  I've progressed enough on the story that I'm sure at least it won't be a train wreck, so I'll start mentioning it now.  I'll still withhold the details (even from the Wifeösphere!) because I think it best to externalize my plans by implementing them, not talking about them.

I'm having fun with the gang over at Starship Sofa, an SF podcast.  Those craving to hear my voice should download this week's episode, wherein I play celebrity guest and explain why Flowers For Algernon left me wanting less.  (The novel is a favorite of host Tony C. Smith.)  I'm also an occasional contributor to the group blog there, and I've served a stint as a reader of stories for the podcast; I may continue if I decide I'm willing to put in the time required to prepare properly (which is a lot).

Finally, have a peek in here:  forget the giant face; scientists have found a secret doorway on Mars!

Labels: Composition, sci-fi

This ... Is ... Science!  You've got to read The Most Hated Holiday Song in the World at Design Observer, about a very intelligent but not very sincere attempt to use the science of opinion polls to design art with likableness maximized and minimized.  The most and least liked music are two utterly brilliant songs.  The satire is subtle; I honestly liked the likable song, at least the first half, which would not been out of place on a Kenny G (Mr. Likable himself) album.  In short, I liked it.  The unlikeable song is a patchwork affair with a rapping operatic soprano, accordion, pipe organ, banjo, tuba, Walmart jingles...aw, heck, just what you expect:

The Most Unwanted Song, however, is mesmerizing: over an accompaniment of bagpipe, tuba and accordian (statistically, America’s least favorite instruments), an operatic soprano (our least favorite type of singer) raps (ditto) about cowboys (ditto). Their research indicated that the most hated lyrical subject is holidays (disliked by 33%), so the song is suitable not only for Christmas, but Easter, Labor Day, Veterans' Day, and Halloween. These interludes are introduced abruptly by a children’s chorus (“Hey everybody, it’s Yom Kippur!”), who couple their refrains with cheerful commercial messages. By the end, the subject has shifted to human slavery and genocide. The whole thing, going on for nearly 22 minutes (the least favorite song length), is as impossible to ignore as a car crash.

Besides the music, there's painting.  You'll get George Washington in a landscape with deer, drinking from a stream--the deer, not the former president.  Plus, some utterly delicious Socialist Realist parodies.  I recommend Stalin and the Muses.

I haven't laughed this hard in ages.  Wow.

Labels: Composition, Creativity, Culture, Design

Thanks to an anonymous visitor who left a thoughtful response to one of my Haydn jeremiads.  I'm glad he or she was not provoked by my needlessly provocative attack on Haydn, which are always intended (but often do not appear) to be delivered with at least 50% of my tongue in my cheek.

It's not that I don't dislike Haydn, it's just that I recognize this is purely a question of taste.  Haydn is an excellent craftsman in the shaping of melodies; it's just that I am always listening for a certain harmonic structure (which I attempted to define in that link above) which Haydn lacks, for reasons Anonymous makes clear.  Also, the forms Haydn helped develop seem primitive in his hands--all those literal repeats don't hold my atrophied attention.

It's sad, really.  Driving home from Saturday night's inaugural Vivo concert, sponsored by the Common Cup coffeehouse at the University Lutheran Chapel, the wifeösphere expressed a timid opinion that she actually liked the Haydn symphony (conducted by the eager young maestro Brett Luginbill).  I had to assure her enjoyment was completely legit, and that she is in good company.  It helps to hear Haydn played live, in a space just the right size to make a 20ish-piece orchestra ring out loud and clear.  The Chapel makes a chamber group sound loud.  Loud is good.

Some day I'll learn to write about music without mentioning my irrelevant whims.  Meanwhile, for a more coherent essayist, see Daniel Wolf describing the role of passagework in music.

Labels: Composition

Throw that piano out the window of your garret apartment right now!  Reactable is the future of music making, and all those other crappy user interfaces--trombones, harps, Casio keyboards--are hereby obsolete!

Well, maybe not.  Still, it's fun, and slightly mesmerizing, to watch Reactable players (should we call them Reactablists?) work those funky blocks on the glowing blue table.  But would the music hold your attention without the visuals?

Labels: Composition, Creativity, Design

So many things to blog about!  Sunday saw the premiere of The Prophet, my setting of a poem by Aleksandr Pushkin, translated by Babette Deutsch.  Brian Altevogt led the Concordia University Choir in a very thoughtful interpretation.  As I mentioned to Brian, it's very satisfying to hear flesh and blood singers in music that previously had been performed only by a MIDI keyboard.

I believe a recording will show up here at some point; in the meantime, enjoy a bit of the text in all its gory glory:

I dragged my feet through desert gloom
Tormented by the Spirit's yearning,
And saw a six-winged Seraph bloom
Upon the footpath's barren turning.

And as a dream in slumber lies
So light his finger on my eyes
My wizard eyes grew wide and wary:
An eagle's started from her eyrie.

[...]

And to my lips the Seraph clung
And tore from me my sinful tongue,
My cunning tongue and idle-worded;
The subtle serpent's sting he set
Between my lips--his hand was wet,
His bloody hand my mouth begrided.

And with a sword he cleft my breast
And took the heart with terror turning,
And in my gaping bosom pressed
A coal that throbbed there, black and burning.[...]

One quirky detail I'll pass on to you:  Brian programmed me immediately after PDQ Bach.  What an act to follow!

Labels: Composition, Poetry

No Halloween is complete until you've taken three minutes to listen to The Superstitious Ghost.  Use the mp3 player above, or the one below, or use this link.  Listen, especially if your name is Brett Luginbill.  (Brett is a young conductor I just had the privilege to meet today.  He wants to start a classical music concert series at the University Lutheran Chapel, and, as Homer Simpson would say, I wanna let him!)



Enjoy the fine performance by my friends Lorna Young Hildebrandt, Kara Alfano, Karl Schmidt, Paul Max Tipton, and on piano, Tom Strode.  Then go see the extreme pumpkins.  (Hat tip to Transterrestrial Musings.)

Labels: Composition, SoundClip

I went to the Borders website to find out when Alex Ross' new book The Rest Is Noise will be available.  I noticed it will be released in several formats:  hardcover (of course)... audio cassette (retrograde, but some will want it)... audio CD (tempting)... CD-ROM...

CD-ROM?  What the heck?

At first I was stunned, but then, realization came.  Of course, Alex Ross wouldn't be so dumb as to miss an opportunity to create spin-offs.  What were seeing here is the first hint of The Rest Is Noise as a computer game!  Brilliant, positively brilliant.

Alex Ross (aided by his marketing team) certainly kept his cards close to his chest.  His website contains not one hint about this.  I wonder if Borders goofed by releasing the information ahead of the big, inevitable announcement.

So, what's it going to be, Alex?  RPG?  MMORPG?  Real-time strategy?  I think I know the answer already.  I know Alex fairly well (heck, I once talked to the guy face to face for two whole minutes).  He's a lover of form, order, and restraint.  I know he won't be able to resist the classical simplicity of a good first person shooter.  Here's an excerpt from the announcement Alex will be making any day now:

Gameplay consists of exploring the now-derelict music conservatory, and piecing together the incredible events of the previous months through the discovery of audio logs left by dead white European male composers. Slowly, a horrifying picture begins to emerge from this patchwork of narratives, one of an immense ideology of atonality run amok, and the terrible toll exacted on conservatory's luckless inhabitants. But you soon realize that the stakes are much higher than was thought -- it seems that N.E.A. plans to wipe out or mutate the entire population of the music establishment, and remake classical music in its own self-delusional, atonal image.

Thusly, your goals will shift from simple survival to the preservation of Common Practice Harmony, which of course can only be accomplished through the complete and utter destruction of N.E.A. To achieve this goal, you must gain access to Citadel's music library, located on level 9 of the vast station. Along the way N.E.A. will use every trick in the network to stop your progress, and you have to be clever, as well as good with a baton, if you hope to make it out alive. Conducting is a large part of the game -- you'll have to match wits with everything from once-human cyborgs to converted maintenance droids to newly graduated music performance majors.

Labels: Composition, Culture

I spent last evening rehearsing with a local barbershop chorus.  I have a few thoughts.

It is very good for a conductor to spend time on the other side of the baton.

Barbershop is a world that intersects but slightly with the church music world, and even more slightly with the high-brow choral world.  It has a blue-collar vibe that is startling.  When the local director wants his singers to sit down, he yells "sit dooooown!"  The church ladies' perms would curdle if a choir director talked that way to them.

Barbershop groups tend to be somewhat flexible stylistically when they perform, but they are not given that latitude when they compete.  The Barbershop Harmony Society defines what music is "contestable."  I have heard rumors of barbershop's reputation for stylistic conservatism; it is a topic discussed in whispers, usually in seedy bars in third-world seaports.  It is one thing to hear the rumors; it is quite another thing to sit down with the official BHS Contest and Judging Handbook and read its rather (!) detailed, über-geeky rules for chord use:

The dominant ninth chord is used primarily when it is implied by the melody and the melody lies on the ninth.  Occasionally, the ninth may appear in another voice to create a pleasing duet or to create natural voice leading.  Only the root or fifth may be omitted, usually the root.  Use of a chord with the fifth omitted must be justified by a valid musical reason.  If the root is present, it must be voiced more than an octave below the ninth.

They also disallow instruments of any kind.  Looks like a plan to introduce an airplane propeller into my next barbershop composition is a non-starter.

Which brings me to the next point.  You know my agenda is to write music for these guys.  "But Fred," you scream hysterically, "those rules!  They'll stifle your artistic expression!"  We roll our eyes at the rules because personal expression is a Myth that dominates our modern understanding of art.  Then we reconsider, reminding ourselves that constraints often stimulate creativity:  think Rachmaninoff's Vespers.  The truth is that art struggles in environments that are too permissive, but also, in environments that are too restrictive.  There's a region of magical twilight where just enough resistence leads to just the right kind of struggle that results in a satisfying work of art.  That finding that region is difficult is only one more way that Art Is Hard.

I'm going to try writing a contestable barbershop composition.  I won't spend all my time in the barbershop world, but I'm going to enjoy it while I'm there.  I will wallow in lush harmonies and indulge my wildest passing-tone cravings.  One does not fill one's bathtub with chocolate pudding every day, but one does it once in a while, right?  (You do do that, right?  Hello?  Anyone?)

Frankly, I completely get the reason these rules were developed.  Novelty grants a short-term advantage but causes mission creep over the long-term.  These guys want a contest of barbershop music, and they don't want their contest spoiled because some jerks perform a "barbershop rap" or some other abomination that brings the house down and wins the trophy.  (A bronzed shaving brush, no doubt.)  Coney Island Baby:  yes.  Phoney Island Baby:  definitely not.  It's in the nature of things that, over the years, BHS judges were forced to define what barbershop means, in ever more legalistic terms.

If you read the rules carefully, you'll find they include escape clauses.  A little of the vermouth of dissonance is allowed, as long as the important chords deliver lots of the gin of dominant and tonic.  I'll look for subtle ways to subvert their paradigm.  If I'm lucky, I'll subvert it and make them like it.

Labels: BarbershopHarmony, Choral, Composition

Don't miss Trailers From Hell, a link I got from 2Blowhards. It's old trailers from films good and so-bad-their-good. It's got the trailer for Colossus: The Forbin Project, a sci-fi movie I'm fond of because I stumbled across it by accident on TV one Sunday afternoon. I found the evil computer to be hilarious; my experience as a programmer told me no giant hardware/software development project done with minimal testing will ever, ever result in a system that has more capability than the designer intended. No, not more, and almost certainly much less. I'm more forgiving now of these sci-fi classics, being more aware of how bad the truly bad stuff is, so I'd like to see the movie again.

In other artsy-geeksy news, Alex Ross links to nerdcore artist Bad Spellah and his take on that classic of speculative fiction, Wagner's Ring.

I met yesterday with choral conductor Brian Altevogt of Concordia University here in Ann Arbor. He gave me a fresh round of suggestions for improving my latest opus, The Prophet, a setting of a poem by Pushkin (translated with verve and élan by Babette Deutsch). Brian's ideas were all good as usual, and it's a privilege to work with an interpreter so deeply engaged in the creative process from beginning to end. It's also nice to hear my music played with feeling, something I don't get from my midi keyboard. Thanks to Brian's play-throughs, I come away from these meetings with increased optimism. Brian's latest plan is to perform The Prophet with his choir on November 4, at the Chapel of the Holy Trinity on Concordia's campus. Mark your calendars.

Labels: Composition, sci-fi

I'm pleased to announce my music can now be heard thanks to the shiny new XSPF player I have added to this site, which you no doubt noticed above.  Select one of the tunes, then work the start/stop/pause controls to your heart's content.

At the same time, I am unveiling the recording of Poor Richard's Almanac, premiered by the Vocal Arts Ensemble of Ann Arbor, directed by Ben Cohen.  They did an excellent job performing the piece, and I am grateful to them for comissioning it.  I hope you enjoy it.

Labels: Composition, SoundClip

Phor your Phriday phun, it's that Honda choir commercial, take two!

Meanwhile, some music composition toys, found via Stumble Upon.  (You do have the Stumble Upon add-on with your Firefox browser, right?  Right?)  By some amazing coincidence, both these computer-based music generators compose in a minimalist style.  What are the chances of that???!

Is this called The Pixel Plant?  Or DMF?  I dunno, but it needs no explanation.

Grotrian Pianos, however, needs plenty of explanation.  Fortunately, the mouse-over help instructs you to bringen sie neue tönen ins spiel and also to wählen sie aus den vorgegebenen kompositionen aus.  (That is, "bring your new tone into play," and "thy whales were to be going out composing toboggans," if my German can be trusted -- and if it turns out he can't, I'll order him beaten.)

Labels: Composition, fun

The Vocal Arts Ensemble of Ann Arbor sang my Ben Franklin piece Saturday night, and they did a great job.  The audience laughed their heads off, but that was a good sign, considering it was a comedy number.  I enjoyed watching every choir member lean forward as they approached the punchline ending with the word "cows" to make sure no one missed it.  (Really.)  I've been promised a recording, and you'll be the first to hear it when I get it.

(I'm not being rude by failing to link to the VAE website, incidentally, since they don't have one.  Well, actually they do have one, but it hasn't been updated since something like 1934, I think.)

Director Ben Cohen is especially good at programming, and I can commend to your attention The Choral New Yorker by Irving Fine, a setting of poems from a high-culture magazine called ... called ... well, the name escapes me now, but I think it had something to do with Newark.  The "Newarker" maybe, although that doesn't seem quite right.  Check out especially "Hen Party" which you can read here by scrolling about half way down.

Labels: Composition

Very cool:  Terry Teachout is writing an opera.  (Aren't we all.)

I'm glad to say I've adopted Google Notebook as a tool for organizing projects, which mainly means a place to store bookmarks to poetry I'd like to set, snippets of lines I've written myself, and titles of works I'll probably never get around to writing (but who knows?).  I've needed a project organizer for a while, and especially lately, as I've become more serious (more is a relative term here, people) about writing science fiction.  Fans of this plot, rejoice:  I'm writing it.  I even have a audience of non-zero size already in place, ready to read it.  Teaser:  imagine Augustus Caesar sitting in Albert Einstein's lap.  (This Albert Einstein.)

Beyond that, I harbor special ambition to combine my two main interests into one project.  No, I don't mean anti-popes and synaesthesia, I mean composing and sci-fi.  I don't mind sharing with you my working title -- Space Opera -- since it has almost certainly been used already.  [Accessing ... accessing ... --yep!  Darn.]  I've got some plot ideas that I think are a teeny bit original, so I'll keep quiet about them.  Sadly, considering how long it will take me to write this thing, it's only chance of attracting interest will be as a piece of retro-futurism.

On a related note, yes Don, you're right:  this is the greatest shampoo commercial ever.

Labels: Composition, Creativity, sci-fi, VideoClip

Alex Ross continues to dig for new music ideas you can ... dig.  Here's one idea that's good enough to steal:  generate notes randomly, then constrain the randomness with a few smartly-chosen rules, and listen for the music to pop out.

Meanwhile, YouTube brings the vast world of choral music to your door -- just search for "choir" and let the goodness stream in.  Or you can go straight to the Red Army Chorus backing an annoyingly driven tenor soloist (forgive the redundancy) while the crowd roars and the dancers kick their heels and the smoke swirls around the giant mutant mullets.  Surreal.  Or, check this out:  as he enters, school girls swoon and the cameras flash and the adults become very deferential.  Is this Taiwanese idol a pop star?  No, he's a choir director!  (Truthfully, he's both.)  More seriously, the Bulgarian State Radio Choir never fails to amaze.

Labels: Composition, VideoClip, vocal

April 23 is Technopeasant Day, in which we are encouraged to give away "professional quality work."  It's an admirable idea and I'd like to participate; too bad all my work is amateurish.

Last night I enjoyed a visit to a rehearsal of the Vocal Arts Ensemble of Ann Arbor.  They're rehearsing my setting of Ben Franklin aphorisms -- "early to bed and early to rise" and all that.  This piece is more obviously playful and jokey than anything I've done lately, and I'm worried how well a choir can successfully deliver its punch lines -- but this group completely understands what they need to do, so that's encouraging.  I also found an encouraging portent in that their director, Ben Cohen, is the spitting image of Gustav Mahler.

Labels: Composition