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This keeps coming up-ke 3 Apr 11:03 AM (14 days ago)

More than ten years ago, I tweeted the following:

Student is piano-practicing Office Krupke (quite fast) next door; I keep thinking/hearing parts as Bizet's galop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3unfO1yxcfE

This is a connection which has stuck with me even though it's a fairly tenuous one. (I've yet to Google evidence that others have discussed it.) Of course, to some degree, once such a mental connection has been made, it perpetuates itself naturally, but I do think there's an affinity between these manically lighthearted works. For Bernstein's "Officer Krupke," the lightheartedness is meant to relieve the dramatic tension that has been building, with the harmonic instability underscoring how unsettled everything is for The Jets as misunderstood juvenile delinquents. (In the original stage version, the song comes after the disastrous and deadly rumble). For Bizet, a playful chase mood prevails, with surprising harmonic twists suggesting evasions and escapes.

First, if you don't know one or the other of these works, here's Bizet's Le bal, the "galop"-style finale of a 12-movement suite for duo pianists called Jeux d'enfants (Children's Games). [video should start at the 1:08 mark]

Winter Journeys 24 Feb 7:29 PM (last month)

I was on February vacation last week, and though I didn't have a chance to escape our cold winter weather, I did have some time to take walks, listen to music, see some movies, and muse to myself about connections among these experiences. Early in the week, I already knew I'd be hearing acclaimed pianists Yuja Wang and Víkingur Ólafsson in a Friday duo-piano recital which would feature Schubert's remarkable Fantasy in F Minor for two pianists at one piano - so I chose to listen to that on a cold, gloomy, colorless Thursday afternoon walk.

The piano is such a generally self-sufficient instrument that piano duets are usually more about creating an opportunity for social music-making than they are about epic musical statements. Even works for two pianos, while allowing for some really big sonic energy, can seem excessive and without the advantage other chamber ensembles have of coloristic diversity resulting from the use of varied instruments. The kinds of textures enabled by four hands at one piano can shine more light on the delicate upper reaches of the instrument and can make it easier to weave multiple contrapuntal threads together than two hands can naturally handle. But there's still something surprising about how far Schubert was able to push this otherwise modest ensemble in this unique and unsettling fantasy. And no matter how much pianists like to talk about coloristic sonic possibilities, the sound of a piano still has a distinctly black-and-white (or grayscale?) character, which I believe Schubert uses to advantage here. 

Anyway, almost as soon as the familiar haunting theme began on my Bose headphones, I thought how appropriate it was for the setting. There's so much I could say about this music, its unusual structure, its moments that sound like ice cracking open, but I was especially surprised by my reaction to the recapitulation which begins at the 12:53 mark in the video below. Although it begins as an exact repetition of the opening, I was struck by how different this music sounded after all that had come before.

This caused my mind to wander (to return!) unexpectedly to the movie my wife and I had seen in a theater the night before. The Return is a 2024 film which depicts the final "arrival back home" part of The Odyssey. We had gone to see it because it was playing at a local arthouse cinema, but didn't know much about it going in. I didn't love everything about it, but it is brutally honest as a depiction of what it means to return to a home that is no longer what it was - and the familiar events I've often thought of in high-minded literary context lead to an extremely violent and disturbing conclusion.

I'm not sure Schubert's Fantasy can be said to end with quite such an obvious bloodbath, but after the recapitulation first seems simply to be going home, a violently contrapuntal coda arrives [14:25] to dispel any sense that things will be the same. Although I wouldn't want to draw any one-to-one correspondences between these works of Homer and Schubert, there is a "Homer-ically" episodic and adventurous quality to Schubert's Fantasy with its "trills gone wild" section [4:30], a tender love duet [5:24] and the swashbuckling scherzo  (beginning at 7:12) that soon follows - plus the unsettling return [12:53] and the devastating finish. In short, it's remarkable that Schubert could pour so much depth of human experience into what first might seem to be a humble parlor duet - which would've been played on a much more modest instrument than the TWO nine-foot Steinways Wang and Olafsson used Friday night. 

I could do a whole philosophical exploration on the propriety of using two pianos for this music intended for two pianists sitting side-by-side at one instrument, but will save that for later - or never. I will add that I met up a few hours before the Symphony Hall performance with the friend who had invited me. She and I read through the Schubert together, and though it was hardly polished, I think my three experiences of this music (via headphones on a walk in 20 degree weather, sightreading with a friend, and listening with 2500 other people) were all worthwhile and offered usefully different perspectives. For the record, the Wang/Olafsson performance was exceptionally well-played, although I'm not sure this music is most at home in a space as large as Symphony Hall, even with an extra piano thrown in. 

And now it's time to end this winter journal journey by observing that today is the 18th birthday of this blog. MMmusing can now vote! As a special birthday offering, I'm uploading something Schubertian on an unusually large multimedia scale. When it comes to walking through snow and ice in the depths of winter, nothing captures that experience like Schubert's song-cycle Winterreise (Winter Journey*) which, like the Fantasy, was written in the composer's final year. In fact, all of my favorite Schubert comes from this final year: Winterreise, the Fantasy in F Minor, the Cello Quintet (string quartet plus extra cello), the Piano Trio No.2 in E-flat, and the Piano Sonata in B-flat. It's unbelievable that one person wrote all of this earth-shattering music in a year in which his young and troubled life was coming to a much too early end. 

The experience of listening to the Fantasy on a wintry walk prompted me to listen to a performance of Winterreise from 1997 in which I collaborated with a wonderful, expressive, and very intelligent bass, Mark Risinger. (Mark is also a world-class Handel scholar.) There's no video from that performance, but now that it's almost thirty years old (which is almost as long as Schubert lived), I really enjoyed listening to it and reliving the amazing experience of learning and performing it. As a one-off live performance, of course it isn't perfect, but I think it captures the music quite well, so it's worth sharing. Honestly, it's probably my favorite Winterreise recording, with no apology for personal bias.

Rather than add a score to follow, I've uploaded the video with the German text alongside English translations - I'm not sure I even knew these texts myself very well back in 1997, but I think Schubert's music often does a lot of the work.

Happy MMmusing Day. Enjoy this bitter walk through ice, snow, heartache, and death alongside a hurdy-gurdy! [direct link here]

Christmas Eve 2024 24 Dec 2024 3:16 AM (3 months ago)

It's been a good year on the blog, though the last month has been quiet due to a very busy work schedule. For Christmas Eve this year, here's a brand new work I wrote for our church's Lessons and Carols service as sung by the choir on Sunday. I only wrote this over Thanksgiving weekend, so they had less than a month to learn it, and we had only one and a half run-throughs with the strings.

Christina Rossetti is quite well-known for a couple of other poems which have become well-known Christmas hymns: In the bleak midwinter (set by Holst, and even better by Darke) and Love came down at Christmas. But I thought this poem, which is new to me, has a very special quality with its emphasis on paradox and the lovely "refrain" ending to each stanza. My goal in setting it was to bring out this mysterious quality, but I won't say too much about the technical aspects for now - I still have shopping to do! 

Here are Rossetti's words:

Christmas hath a darkness

   Brighter than the blazing noon,

Christmas hath a chillness

   Warmer than the heat of June,

Christmas hath a beauty

   Lovelier than the world can show:

For Christmas bringeth Jesus,

   Brought for us so low.  

Earth, strike up your music,

   Birds that sing and bells that ring;

Heaven hath answering music

   For all Angels soon to sing:

Earth, put on your whitest

   Bridal robe of spotless snow:

For Christmas bringeth Jesus,

   Brought for us so low.

And here's what it sounds like. [This is the live recording with no edits, although I did supplement it here with a backdrop from the digital practice version I'd made just to help smooth out the room sound.]

OK, I will say one technical thing about the music, which was actually in part an accident. The first five pitches (A-G-F-D-C#) of the main melody (introduced by violin and sung by the women right after) are also the five pitches with which that final couplet concludes both stanzas. I don't think I did this intentionally, but I was very satisfied when I realized it was so.

Merry Christmas.

Ghosts of Christmas Past:

• The Twelve Composers of Christmas
• Fugue on Adeste fideles
• Fugue in Royal David's City
• Vertical Christmas Medley
• In Season
• In Season Re-mix
• Sleigh Ride in 7/8 Time
• Sleigh Ride in a Fast Machine
• Sleigh Ride of the Valkyries
• Trippin' with Chestnuts
• Carol of the Beethoven
• A Christmas Carol (16-minute feature film!)
• The Twelve Tones of Christmas
• Christmas Time is Here

Carousel Memories (Emptying the Desk Drawer #5) 18 Nov 2024 8:36 AM (5 months ago)

November is off to a busy start, so I'll express my nostalgia for the bygone days of September and October (when I had a lighter teaching schedule and was a little younger) with this recording I made late one October night after a recital. This wistful little waltz by Dick Hyman was written for the soundtrack of Woody Allen's 1985 The Purple Rose of Cairo - which is, perhaps, my favorite movie of all time. It is an almost perfect film, lighthearted and clever but also touching and sad. Set in 1935, there's plenty of fun music from the era, but Hyman's Carousel Memories is the music that stays with me (ok, also this). The film celebrates the escapism that movies provide while also critiquing the emptiness at the end of such escapes. Although the music was written in the 80s, it expresses nostalgia not only for the 30s, but also for hopes and dreams which turn out to be unrealistic. 

Anyway, if you haven't seen it, you should! And if you only have 60 seconds, try these Carousel Memories. (You may hear the version used on the soundtrack here. You may hear Hyman playing it live and then riffing on it here.) I don't have a published score, so my little version is something I worked out, though I've realized it differs in some details from both of the links posted parenthetically. It has always sounded to me like something which could almost fit into one of Robert Schumann's collections such as Carnaval, Davidsbündlertänze, or Scenes from Childhood. This is a commentary both on the elegance of Hyman's work and the forward-looking expressive world of Schumann. In other words, both Hyman and Schumann should be flattered by the comparison (if either were to care about my opinion).

Bracing Bruckner (Emptying the Desk Drawer #4) 4 Nov 2024 10:18 AM (5 months ago)

A couple of months ago, a friend shared an unusual radio station tribute to the great Austrian composer Anton Bruckner on the occasion of his 200th birthday. I believe you may still view it here - and be sure to unmute the sound! And what sound do you hear paired with a picture of the composer and some basic biographical background. Aching strings? A richly scored brass chorale? A sublime motet? Hyperpop party music with Chipmunk-style vocals and a heavy backbeat?

Haydnween (Emptying the Desk Drawer #3) 31 Oct 2024 3:51 PM (5 months ago)

This new entry in my "Emptying Out the Desk Drawer" series, meant to preserve random little things I created for social media, is actually a cheat because, far from gathering dust in a corner, this ghastly creation is bursting with country-fresh flavor. I just made it a few hours ago in as little time as possible - which was part of the point. Think of it as Transcription Tartare.

"this piece is well-crafted—making good musical sense, artfully blending high energy with more reflective moods, etc. But whether one actually likes listening to it is a matter of taste. I'll say no more, except to make it understood that I in no way desire to undermine [Friend #1]'s enjoyment of the piece."

To which I responded:

"I desire to undermine [Friend #1]'s enjoyment of the piece."

This was just because I thought it was a funny thing to say, but of course, I immediately thought of how I might carry out this undermining. My pride in what I'm about to post comes from how quickly it was generated and how diligently I avoided doing anything to make it not sound awful. I quickly found MIDI data for the first movement, entered this into Soundtrap (perfectly useful educational software for producing music, but with a not so sophisticated sound palette), assigned the parts to digital saxophones, added the most obnoxiously heavy and uncool drum part I could find in twelve seconds and....that's about it. (OK, I did add two sound effects.) 

The point is, usually even when making something intentionally bad, I would look to refine the mix, maybe pan parts left and right to add clarity, do some EQ work, smooth things out with reverb, adjust some balances, maybe mix in a few different-sounding instruments. Maybe be disappointed that the only option provided for "baritone sax" was "Baritone Sax - Staccato."  If nothing else, maybe tweak the alignment so the drums are precisely on the beat. Nope. The point here was to make this sound as bad and unproduced as possible. 

So, of course....I love it. I've already said way too much to introduce it, but will finish by saying it seems like a natural thing to post on Halloween. Booo!

Riding the Railing (Emptying the Desk Drawer #2) 24 Oct 2024 11:28 AM (5 months ago)

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I might start posting some ephemeral multimedia things I'd only posted on Facebook as a way of preserving/exploring them a bit more. I have a list of dozens of such items, though oddly enough, new topics have been popping up here more often than usual, so it's taken me some time to finish this post. This pattern actually goes back more than a decade with the blog. Once I post one or two things, I'm much more likely to start posting more.

About two years ago, a friend posted an image of a staircase with two bars of music designed into the railing. The treble clef actually looks pretty good, although there are some peculiarities about the music shown - especially the lack of a clear meter. It's a common theme for musicians to be annoyed when musical symbols are deployed as if they only exist for their appearance. (I was recently shown some designs for signs at my school in which quarter notes were used to decorate a page, with multiple stems on the wrong sides.)

Surely, the best response was from a friend of the friend who wrote:

But maybe there’s a REAL bar at the top of those stairs. The designer obviously knew where one was.

My own response was predictably more...well, I invested a lot of time in it. Here's what I wrote:

 A friend (h/t David) shared this image of music in measures of 13/16 and 10/16 designed into a staircase. At first I just wanted to hear this musical nonsense, but then of course I felt compelled to make something of it. Those lovely implied 7th chords! The challenge is to use that 13+10 meter to some "advantage." 

I'll add that though the original design might well have been conceived with no sounds at all in mind (at least as suggested by the durations), in addition to the implied arpeggiations of 7th chords in each bar, the second bar inverts the intervals of the first bar, and we get two motivic perfect fifths (all of those things are related, of course) - and perhaps most *notably*, the tune begin and ends on E. Because of natural patterns and symmetries in musical design, all of these things could easily have happened by chance.

You may hear the musical notes shown via this nifty little player (note that the music won't play if your phone is set to Do Not Disturb.) 

P.S. By the way, this genre of musical railings has many more examples than I'd have expected as this simple Google search shows. 

Songs Without Singers #8 (and #7) 22 Oct 2024 2:07 PM (5 months ago)

There were some sixteen years between 1983's Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi and 1999's Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Much as many people assumed that George Lucas was done with those movies in 1983 (of course, he should have stopped there), my six-part series of "Songs Without Singers" from 2008 surely seemed to have reached its conclusion sixteen years ago, after excursions with Chausson, Strauss, Poulenc, Schubert, Hoiby, and Stanford. I've since repurposed the Chausson, Poulenc, Hoiby, and Stanford with updated scrolling scores, all as part of 2021's Introspective Retrospective Recital project, and I'd like to re-record the Chausson, Schubert, and Strauss on better pianos, but otherwise I hadn't thought a lot about it.

However, in my most recent post, I mentioned (via hyperlink) Gabriel Fauré's early song Lydia. Considering its place in my own pantheon of perfect, self-contained and somewhat restrained miniatures, I wrote: "Fauré perhaps come closest with this song, which loses points for being a bit too emotional but gains points for the refined counterpoint in the piano part. Turn it into a piano solo (why haven't I done this?) and it would be a model example."

So...it just so happened I had a chance after a Friday night recital to sit and record on a very nice piano for a bit. First of all, I made a new recording of last post's obsession (also originally for voices): Messiaen's O sacrum convivium! Although I have some lingering affection for the "Lo-fi" version I'd made on a practice room piano, I wanted a richer sound, less noisy pedal, and a chance to be at least a little more accurate with some of Messiaen's additive rhythms. I also decided I preferred playing all four parts throughout rather than sustaining repeated notes in lower voices. Here you go:

Timeless French Timepieces 17 Oct 2024 10:50 AM (6 months ago)

[This post was an unexpected journey in many ways. It started simply with having fun entering some notes by Messiaen into a computer...Eventually, I get around to that.]

For years I've had this quarter-baked idea that there are certain compositions which exhibit a special kind of small-scale perfection. Although these impressions are certainly subjective, the feeling I have is that every part of the whole has an inevitable, organic quality - almost as if the composer simply discovered a perfectly formed crystal and shared it with the world. With such pieces, it's as if the music simply generates itself like some sort of mathematical proof.

There are fine examples of this from core German composers, such as Bach's Air*, Pachelbel's You Know What, Mozart's Ave verum corpus, the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, Schumann's Des Abends, Rheinberger's Abendlied, Strauss's Morgen. What all of these works have in common is a kind of continuity that makes it possible to hear the whole piece as one thing - like a beautiful sphere which simply rotates so we can experience its oneness across time. 

An important part of this phenomenon (as I experience it) is that there be a certain degree of emotional detachment - which, oddly, makes it hard for me to find something to include by Schubert, Mendelssohn, or Brahms, even though all are expert at crafting miniatures. (Maybe this is the closest I can think of for Mendelssohn.) The same goes even more so for Chopin and Italian opera arias which tend towards full heart on sleeve. As a natural introvert, sometimes I appreciate a little distance from overt expressions of feeling. 

On the other hand, the French sensibility is ideal for this vague, barely defined thing I'm trying to articulate. Stravinsky famously compared Ravel to a Swiss watchmaker, and it is that kind of craftsmanship I have in mind. A perfectly made watch can be a thing of beauty, but it also exhibits a pure, objective kind of elegance which is the perfect marriage of machine and magic. Each little part does its part in sync with others and the result is a very slow and perfectly coordinated ballet which marks time. Each movement (a word which happens to be connected with watches and music) is logically connected to what comes before and after. Music which exhibits such elegance is often less about feeling on the surface, though our response to that formal satisfaction might feel emotional in a less obvious way.

Ravel has some lovely miniatures, including this exquisite Menuet, and perhaps even this paradoxical monstrosity (which I love). But my favorite examples of this kind of...you know, I almost used the word "confection," but that's not right as that would be too sweet...my favorite examples of this kind of crystalline construct are not from Ravel or Debussy. (Debussy wrote some excellent miniatures, but they are too improvisatory or too sensual to qualify here.) 

The ideal embodiment of this kind of nonchalant perfection has to be Couperin's Les Barricades Mystérieuses, a work which has its own mythology. (I highly recommend checking out the multiple subsections found under the "Mysterious Barricades" tab there.) 

That's not my favorite recording (I prefer something fleeter), but I chose it because the visual of the score, with its lovely interlocking suspensions, is such a part of how I experience this music. (I also like this recording, although the sound is a little too soupy.) Maybe that's part of what I'm looking for - music that looks the part even when you don't hear it. It's hard not to feel that this music really could unlock something purer and deeper in how we understand the world. Music which sounds right on a sub-aural level? (Once again, this concept is only a quarter baked!)

Honestly, nothing quite matches Couperin's barricades for balance and subdued expression. (The music doesn't tell you what to feel, but it might make you feel something profound.) Moving on to other French composers, there are a couple of perfect tunes which are perhaps too famous and too expressive for this topic, but still worth mentioning: Gounod's uncanny "discovery" of a melody which floats above a Bach prelude and Saint-Saëns' perfectly poised evocation of a floating swan. (Sorry, Massenet, great tune - but too sappy!)

Fauré perhaps come closest with this song, which loses points for being a bit too emotional but gains points for the refined counterpoint in the piano part. Turn it into a piano solo (why haven't I done this?**) and it would be a model example. Poulenc offers a few options as well, including this and this. Both of those songs are deeply expressive, but contained within French reserve.

An unexpected entry here, which nevertheless always finds its way into my thinking on this topic, is the brilliant Widor Toccata. As thrilling and dramatic as it can be, the perpetual motion figuration and the inexorable logic of the harmonies give it the same sense of inevitability and unified construction as other works mentioned here. I play it every Easter Sunday, and from the moment I dive in, it feels like one big spin cycle from beginning to end.

Before I get to my final destination, I have to mention the Satie Gymnopédies, works which certainly look the part and are almost caricatures of this idea. As I've written before, they are directionless in a way that maybe seems less meticulous than a classic watch, but they beautifully embody the concept: a musical entity generated by a single idea which spins out for no other reason than its own internal logic. (Maybe more like mobiles than watches?) When everything lines up, experiencing these hand ballets is like stepping outside of time.

So...speaking of stepping outside of time, the composition which prompted all of this is by a composer who is more known for big, bold, heterogeneous works, including one about the end of time. When writing about Olivier Messiaen some years ago, I observed that his music "might variously be characterized as old-fashioned, modern, sweet, brutal, simple, challenging, mystical, colorful, sensual, sacred, jazzy, naturalistic, intellectual, etc." Messiaen's motet O sacrum convivium! - a relatively early, very approachable work - isn't brutal in any way, but just about everything else in that list might apply. Here's a lovely starter recording, sung a cappella:

I first encountered this music when subbing as an accompanist for a local chorus, and I fell in love from the first rehearsal. Even the feeling of playing those ripe chords on the keys - the exotic F-sharp Major key signature, the unusual spellings, the hypnotically asymmetrical rhythms. I've since had my church choir sing it with organ accompaniment, and I've played it as an organ solo multiple times during church. Although it looks a little intimidating at first, it turns out to be very easy and gratifying to play on the organ. (I can handle a pedal part which moves that slowly and infrequently.) 

Because the choir is going to sing it again, I decided to create practice parts for them - which meant I had the extra privilege of getting to encounter and manipulate these notes from the engraving point of view. A major theme of this blog is that this kind of encounter can be as enlightening as playing or listening to music. 

I also knew there was tremendous potential energy in having the notes entered as data, and because this music can feel like it flirts with the eternal, I realized I would have to experiment with s..t..r..e..t..c..h..i..n..g it out, as I've done with other works in the past. This proved as satisfying as I'd hoped, and so we'll end today's journey with a couple of very different extremes. 

First of all, just as Couperin's mysterious barricades have drawn lots of interest outside of the classical world, especially with guitarists, I was surprised - and not surprised - to find multiple guitarists as well as marimbaists and jazz ensembles playing Messiaen's motet. The harmonies definitely lend themselves to those worlds, although it would seem that this music demands a constant sustain not natural to guitar. But I knew from my first time accompanying that this music is very satisfying on the piano, so I've made this informal little practice room version. I wish the pedal was quieter, but this is the kind of thing I'd love to include if I ever get around to creating another "Introspective Recital." I love the way it looks on the page, I love the way it feels under the fingers, and I love the way it sings and rings. (You may notice I took some liberties as to when I re-play repeated notes in the lower voices, although I haven't done very careful thinking about it. UPDATE (10/20/24): This is a newer recording on a better piano. The original version I posted is here.)

But, at the other extreme is my new hyper-sustained version. The slowest "real" recording I'd found was one led by Myung-Whun Chung clocking in at just over seven minutes. Using virtual instruments, I created a "performance" - which will surely horrify some - which almost doubles that. (Yes, I could extend out to infinity, but I wanted to keep the metrical pacing within perceptive reach.)  In part because I find the synthetic sustained sounds can be a bit dull and because I liked the idea of an underlying pulse, I mischievously added some distant drum loops to which I'm now rather attached, but I'll leave that version in the playlist at the end of this post. This version is just pure sustain.

So there you have it, two quite different takes on an extraordinary four...or seven...or fourteen minutes of music - music in which the composer evokes the wonder and mystery of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. And he does seem to have captured something that is both tangible and earthly while also linking to something transcendental. Messiaen would touch on such glimpses of the eternal many times more, most notably in both the fifth movement and the final movement of his Quartet for the End of Time. I love both of those movements, but whereas the composer spins out endless melodies there (which would really suffer if played by non-humans), it feels as if the entire O sacrum convivium! is generated by the vibrant major seventh harmony with which it opens. I've listened to my fourteen-minute versions many times now and find they pull me along just as inexorably as if played in a quarter of that time.

To give you a sense of the broad range of ways in which Messiaen's motet can be adapted, I've created this playlist which includes my new videos plus many varied takes in all sorts of contexts. I'm not surprised this music has transcended its expected classical boundaries. Hopefully, you'll enjoy getting to know it as well. Although I'm sure not everything on the list will be to everyone's tastes (and some might even be mildly scandalized), it's true of Messiaen in general that while his music has something for everyone, most will also find something bewildering in his idiosyncratic style. I love the Quartet for the End of Time and at least parts of the enormous Vingt Regards sur l'enfant-Jésus - and yet there are times when I have no idea what he's getting at. For me, that strangeness is strangely part of his appeal.

============

P.S. One more honorable mention in the "whatever this category turns out to be" is Charles Stanford's partsong, The Blue Bird, which cast a spell on me decades ago which has never been broken. You may hear my piano take on it here, and note that its warm key of G-flat Major is the enharmonic equivalent of Messiaen's bright F-sharp Major. (They use the same set of mostly black-key pitches - and yet they somehow feel quite different, at least in part due to the appearances of the scores.)

Also, since quite to my surprise this post has now cited more than twenty different works, I'm adding a playlist which includes them all for convenience. (Yes, I've made a few "unusual" choices for recordings to include.) If you're wondering if my shaky thesis about a particular kind of perfect work is just an excuse for me to write about music I like - well, why do you think I have this blog? 

============

* In re-reading my "German" list, I realize the most obvious choice (among many) for a Bach piece in this mold is the C Major Prelude from WTC, Book I. Sometimes, I actually find that piece too mechanical, and I'm surely biased by feeling that the Gounod "Ave Maria" melody is what brings out its best qualities. But whenever I play it, it does seem perfect, and it feels very gratifying under the hands. The Air I mention can invite a bit of Romantic indulgence, but when played properly, its poised counterpoint is spellbinding.

** UPDATE (10/22/24): Now I have!

The Two Gustavs (Emptying the Desk Drawer #1) 10 Oct 2024 11:17 AM (6 months ago)

[This is the first in a series of posts in which I simply document some of the odd little things I create when my internal virus is activated. In this introductory post, I'll begin with a quick exploration of the virus.]

Longsuffering readers of this blog will have learned that I have a weakness for wordplay. (To quote my blogger profile, "I adore alliterations; elegant allusions; absurd non sequiturs; and buffalo wings.") My own experience of this weakness is that there seems to be a little software-like program running most of the time in my brain which samples incoming words, whether heard, spoken, read, thought, etc. and looks for connections that might produce something punny . . . er, um, funny.  .... 

[and, a few sentences later] Obviously, this software falls into the "virus" category, as I suggested awhile back about my sonnet "problem." 

[Note that I've also written about this kind of "punspiration" in another post.] 

In the same category as what might be called the "Dad Joke Virus" and the "Onegin Sonnet Virus" is the "Musical Mashup Virus." Indeed, if it turns out that I am merely some sort of AI automaton, this Pavlovian response would likely be my defining feature. When presented with any opportunity to combine two musical somethings which have been connected unexpectedly, it is almost impossible for me to resist finding a way. And there's always a way. Partly, this is simply about the pleasure of using magical technology (it all still seems magical to me because I grew up in a world before most of these tools existed), but it is also such a satisfying way to encounter or, dare I say, "play" [with] what is generally iconic music. Iconic music, by definition, is always at risk of being too familiar, so I think there's something useful in recontextualizing it by hearing it in conversation with something else.

On to today's exhibit. From a friend, I heard about a situation where a picture of Gustav Mahler was accidentally used in a video about Gustav Holst. Of course, I couldn't resist exploring this connection, and again, the more iconic the component parts, the better. For Holst, it was kind of a no-brainer to use the opening of "Mars" from The Planets, both because it's well-known and because it's suitable as an accompaniment to...something else. Since I had a Holst accompaniment in mind, the famous unaccompanied trumpet solo which opens Mahler's 5th raised its hand as a partner, and I liked the idea that the former emphasizes a low pedal G while the latter is centered on a C-sharp - an unsettling tritone apart. Of course, you might say, wouldn't it have been better if the two were centered on the same pitch or a perfect fifth apart? But since both openings express high stress, I think the distant dissonance (better here than a minor second) works well to set each work off from the other and take the stress to another level. 

My favorite thing about this little experiment was taking advantage of how easy it is to combine simultaneous time signatures in Dorico, music notation software I've been learning. You'll see that I displaced the "Mars" melody by one quarter (inserting a single 4/4 bar into its 5/4 context) to make it resolve with Mahler. (Technically, this melody is delayed by a full bar minus that one beat.) Although this puts Holst's melody out of sync with its own accompaniment, I think that works fine because the point of that accompaniment is that it is metrically unstable, due to the unusual quintuple meter and the alternation of triplets and eighths. I only wish I could get Gustavo Dudamel to conduct it, but Dorico + Note Performer do a pretty decent job!

A Piece for Voices as Instruments of Peace 8 Oct 2024 4:58 PM (6 months ago)

Last spring, at the Catholic boys school where I teach, we graduated four strong singers who provided a dependable core for our choir the past few years. With a larger but less experienced group to start this school year, the pressure of preparing them to lead the singing at our monthly all-school Masses has had me looking for creative choices for what they might sing.

Our most recent Mass was on the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi (Friday, Oct. 4). I suppose I could have taken one for the team and tried to play this (Liszt's virtuosic evocation of St. Francis talking to the birds - and no, I'm not serious that I would ever try that in this context), but I had the idea that it would be nice to sing the famous words of the "Prayer of St. Francis." I'll admit I was partly attracted to the opening line, "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace," because I liked the musical resonance of the word instrument, even if the prayer is not literally referring to musical instruments. I thought it would be interesting to think of the choristers as musical instruments who deliver this prayer about being instruments for good.

The day when I was thinking about this happened to be the feast day of Hildegard of Bingen, perhaps the most famous composer of chant melodies, so pretty soon that connection had inspired a simple, chant-like melodic figure for the opening words of Francis's prayer: "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace." Because I wanted a bass part with a narrow range and which would not be difficult to learn, I leaned into the idea of treating this phrase as if it belonged to a musical instrument by turning it into an ostinato - which is a fancy way of saying it repeats a lot as a kind of accompaniment to the simple tenor melody above. Even when the basses finally get to sing new words (after intoning that opening line eight times in the background for the first half of the prayer), the melodic figure is mostly unchanged. The piano plays a series of chords in open fifths which provide varied harmonic context for the unchanging ostinato.

Of course, one of the most enduring lessons I've learned in working as a composer is that writing simple is hard, so the resulting piece is a little more complicated for young singers than I might have hoped, mostly because of the uneven rhythmic flow.* But I'm stubborn, so we went ahead with the arrangement as I first wrote it, and they did a nice job singing it with reverence and delivering the text. I, at least, found it moving, and I've appreciated the opportunity to get to know this prayer better. Although it is supposed to sound "old" (Francis lived a long time ago), I believe that chant can serve as a very natural way to deliver words in a way that can still be relevant for listeners.

The recording here is a fully synthesized one I created for practice purposes - which means that for now you can only hear this vocal music in instrumental form. I added some strings and harp to give it a bit more character and distract from the sound of wordless synthesized voices. Given that everything is in middle to low register, the result is a little muddy, but I this does a decent job of showing the basic idea. And these are beautiful words. I'll likely keep tooling around with this, including having my church choir sing a variation of it (with real cellos, since I have a couple of cellists under my roof), but here is where it is for now:

Bach to Bach 24 Sep 2024 6:18 PM (6 months ago)

Here's how I began an unfinished blog post back in 2017:

I'm slightly worried this blog is going to turn into a "Tales from the Organ Bench*" kind of thing, which really shouldn't happen until I've had at least two organ lessons in my life. But, much as my organ technique is kind of an improvised thing that has evolved in the context of real-time necessity, I take special delight in musical discoveries that happen under pressure.

I was sick for much of the week leading up to this past Sunday and had missed Thursday choir rehearsal, so things were already feeling a bit less settled than ideal. I then discovered about 20 minutes before the service that the music for the scheduled prelude (based on Salzburg, the opening hymn tune) was not on the premises, so I got to make up something on the spot, for which the poor listed composer will have to take all the blame. I've actually been scheduling hymn tune improvisations as preludes fairly regularly in 2017, so that wasn't too disconcerting.

The other place in the service where I'm most likely to do a bit of freestyling is at the end of Communion, depending on time needed. We generally have a choir anthem and a congregational hymn scheduled as the Eucharist is celebrated, but another 1-3 minutes of fill is often required. In such cases, I almost always just continue quietly with the hymn that's just been sung, sometimes noodling extra things here and there, slowing down, changing some harmonies, or making a fool of myself.

As it happened, both the anthem and hymn were pretty short, and so I'm most appreciative for the soprano who, during pre-service rehearsal, asked if I was going to have to keep playing that hymn over and over when we ran out of verses. The hymn, "Jesu, Jesu," based on a Ghanian folk song, is quite simple and circular, and as I thought about it while the service was already going, I did start to worry that I was going to get trapped in a loop. And, this tune wouldn't be high on my list of "tunes in which to get stuck looping." [UPDATE FROM THE FUTURE: Here's a tune I don't mind getting lost in.] 

So, as the service progressed, I started thinking about this potential problem and wondered if I should just plan on having something else ready to play once the hymn ended. In some cases like this, I'd pick something to anticipate the recessional hymn that would soon follow, but remembering that the communion hymn was in E Major, I did my standard mental trip to The Well-Tempered Clavier to ponder what Kapellmeister Bach had ready-made for me in this key. Then I remembered that the E Major prelude from the WTC Book I is in the same sort of lilting 6/8 [technically, it's in 12/8] as the hymn above, and it's a piece I know well as we used to analyze it every year in a class I taught.

My WTC is always nearby, and as I had already chosen to play the folksy hymn on the piano, I was then able to segue right into the Bach. To my delight, it felt even more natural then I'd expected, and I'd also forgotten what a gratifying piece it is to play, fitting beautifully under the fingers and featuring lots of opportunity for dialogue between the hands. There are a couple of brief chromatic passages that made we sweat in the moment, but everything went smoothly. Because I did end up needing to fill time for a while, I played the Bach twice through (leaving out the brief coda the first time), and it could not have timed out more perfectly. If only every Sunday went this way.

I guess maybe I was waiting to make a recording to finish up the post, or maybe had some grander plan in mind, but that post never got published. Anyway, seven years later, I was thinking about this again since I recently made another unexpected Bach connection with a Sunday morning hymn. In this case, the processional hymn was to be the lovely, folksy Morning Has Broken, which is best known in a sweetly sung pop version by Cat Stevens. (That piano intro/interlude is famous, I guess, though it seems like an odd fit with the tune.) As this was a Sunday featuring a more relaxed musical style, with a couple of guitarists on hand, I knew I would be at the piano instead of the organ.

So, in looking for a prelude, I noticed I'd played Bach's well-known Prelude in C Major from Book I of  The Well-Tempered Clavier as prelude last time we'd sung this hymn (with the associated fugue played as postlude that day). I'm not really sure why I'd chosen that other than that it was low-key summer Sunday and C Major fit with the version of the tune in our hymnal. In thinking about it, I wondered if I could combine Bach's iconic, flowing arpeggios with Morning Has Broken. After all, Bach's prelude was turned into the accompaniment for a beautiful setting of Ave Maria by Gounod. (That may be one of the most perfect examples of building a new work on top of a completely, self-contained work. It's always felt to me like Gounod discovered the solution to a puzzle Bach had left behind.) After a bit of time noodling around in Dorico (notation software I'm learning upon the news that Finale, my old friend/nemesis, is being put out to pasture), I had something that works pretty well.

Since I had about five minutes of time to fill, I ended up playing Bach's original prelude flowing directly into my new "Morning has broken chords" arrangement. Although the first four bars stay very close to Bach, from there, the broken chords are led more by the tune in the left hand so that the entire arrangement is less mashup than homage. However, the power of suggestion should not be underrated in cases like this. I've often found that the mere hint of a connection can make two different works seem like natural partners. (Sometimes, if I'm playing a postlude with no specific connection to the recessional hymn which precedes, I'll start off the postlude - with apologies to the poor composer - by incorporating some bit of the hymn tune - even just a few notes. In my mind at least, this can make the entire postlude seem as if it was inspired by the hymn, even if the actual connection vanishes within a bar or two. Perhaps I'll post some examples of this kind of thing in a future post. UPDATE: There's one example found in this post.)

The recordings posted below were made in a slightly unusual way. I recorded them by playing a full-size Kurzweil digital keyboard connected to my computer, but I wasn't loving the sound. So I looked around at various virtual pianos on hand and found a nice "American Home Grand" in a set I'd downloaded for free. I simply ran the MIDI data through that, and I have to say I really like the result. The piano has a tender but clear sound that works really well here. It's still missing things I love about the feel and sound of a real piano, but it was fun to experiment with this not quite the real thing. Though a sampled virtual piano like this is intended to replicate the sound of an acoustic piano as closely as possible, in some ways the most interesting thing is discovering something new in a sound because it's different.

To circle back to where I started, I also recorded the Ghanian hymn tune "Jesu, Jesu" transitioning into Bach's E Major Prelude using the same setup. The arrangement of the tune which I play here is worth a few words. Many hymnals publish the song with very simple, block chords, but this version (printed in F Major via that link) is written in a style that could be described as "Bachian," with active inner voices, countermelodies, and some subtle harmonic shadings. Though some might find the effect appropriative, I think it's a lovely meeting of two different styles that works quite well - and, of course, it makes the transition into Bach's prelude almost seamless. As for the prelude, I forgot how delightful and expressive it is. Though it looks conventional on the page, it's that perfect marriage of mechanical and magical that Bach does better than anyone. 

Since hymn tunes played such a vital role in Bach's career with all his chorale harmonizations and chorale preludes, it's very satisfying to find how well his music can work alongside these more contemporary melodies. (And I tossed in a little surprise at the end of the "Bach.")

• NFL Pachelbel
• Sunday Jukebox
• Sunday at the Improv
• Triangulated Counterpoint

It's a rap! 6 Sep 2024 9:32 AM (7 months ago)

Last year in the summer I experimented with creating a major key version of Schubert's Erlkönig, and then before long, I'd added new English lyrics and eventually a voice to sing them in a post called: "It talks." So, perhaps it's no surprise that, having created a mashup of Vivaldi's Concerto in A Minor with Dr. Dre's Still D.R.E., I realized I needed to create a rap to go with this new/old beat.

So I did, and though it's pretty silly, perhaps some music history profs will find it useful to help teach Vivaldi; the Red Priest drops some knowledge here students might want to know. Although I will likely find some need to tweak this more (getting the mix to work is a challenge - not so different from being an orchestrator/conductor), I'm going to release into the wild so you can use it for your cool weekend parties.

Piece out!

Still waters fun reap 1 Sep 2024 2:38 PM (7 months ago)

I'm teaching a new class (for me and school) in digital audio production this fall. Although I've been toying with audio in various ways since this blog debuted in 2007, I'm still learning my around more modern styles - specifically the concept of "making beats" (not in the sense of 'pulse' but rather as backup for raps, etc.) and working with loops, etc. Obviously the most fun way to prepare is to practice, so I remembered an idea which had come to me over the summer and decided to take it for a spin.

Over the last few years, I've found the most requested "song" non-pianist students ask to learn to play on the piano is the very simple looping hook from Still D.R.E., a 1999 song by Dr. Dre, featuring Snoop Dogg. It really only involves learning two bars of mostly repeated 8th note chords in the right hand with a simple three-note bass progression that is empty on beats 2 and 3. So when a student at summer chamber music camp asked if I could play this song, I confidently launched into it. However, having just accompanied a famous Vivaldi violin concerto in the same camp that week, an idea came to me, unbidden (as ever).

And that's mostly all that needs to be said. I think the connection, with the quarter pickup leading into repeated 8th notes, is pretty obvious. I'm proud to say that this was just a 24-hour turnaround from when I started to when I posted the "completed" video on YouTube. Although there are many options for how I might have handled the visuals (including a score animation, which however might give away some of my work), I settled on the simple idea of "stills" to go with the "Still D.R.E." theme. There is some very low-quality animation if you pay attention, but the images are really just space-filler. Since Snoop Dogg amplified his status as fun-loving, good-time celebrity during this summer's Olympic games coverage, it was a nice coincidence that he appears in the photo I used from the original song, so I put him to work a little.

One last production thing. I was having a hard time finding a good digital match for the lo-fi cello which plays the bass line at the beginning of the original song. Then I realized I'm a pretty lo-fi cellist myself, and my cello now has a pickup installed since my son will be playing it in a school jazz band this year. So, although most of what you'll hear is generated by synths, the cello line is played by a real life cellist! I still didn't really achieve the squeezed sound on the original, but that just means I have more to learn - or unlearn.

Sketchy Post 25 Aug 2024 2:49 PM (7 months ago)

As these last few days of summer drift away (faculty meetings start tomorrow for me), I had an unexpected experience a couple of days ago. I accidentally composed a piece! Ok, it's less than a minute, and it's quite derivative (of itself), but I still kind of like it.

Lost in Brahms 5 May 2024 5:20 PM (11 months ago)

Four or five days ago, a Facebook friend posted an image of the opening two pages from the finale of Brahms German Requiem. Alongside, he wrote:

"I've just spent 55 minutes on these nine bars. The downbeats evaporate at m. 5 like a bubble popping...."

Part of the experience of being a musician is getting happily lost in a tiny bit of music. Or maybe not always happily. I and, I'm sure, many other music students have memories of lessons where the teacher somehow never got past the opening bars. Although the purpose of such microscopic focus is to make sure everything is good under the hood when an actual performance happens, such moments are also part of the fascinating way in which music intersects with time. 

These experiences can go both ways from a time perspective. I've been in rehearsals where obsessive focus on tiny details has made time seem to stop in the worst sense - a two-hour rehearsal suddenly seems like four hours. And I've been in rehearsals (usually when music is being run continuously) where time stops because one stops noticing time, only to realize that two hours felt like thirty minutes. Both are experiences of being lost in the music - one unpleasant and maddening and the other a state of flow or even transcendence. 

Score study has a special relationship to time because it often involves mentally twisting and turning the musical object at particular moments to see what's going on inside, all while the real clock is still running. We often don't notice the paradox of how much time we might spend thinking about one or two seconds of music. Thus, getting lost for 55 minutes in the opening bars of a richly layered work can make a lot of sense. 

Of course, I also playfully reinterpreted my friend's comment to mean he was just listening realllly slowly at a tempo which stretched 36 seconds into 3300 seconds. Indeed, stretching the music to last that long can actually be done, and I'll reveal what that sounds like below. There's a website called 9beetstretch where a complete performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, stretched out to 24 hours, is continuously livestreamed. That's stretching things by a factor of about 24. You may sample the effect here: the first movement only takes about 5.5 hours! I've never listened to the whole thing, but listening in is something else. 

Mostly, the super slow Beethoven sounds like some sort of untamed ambient music. Even in the three instrumental movements, it often sounds like wordless voices from an apocalyptic soundtrack. The precision of a world-class orchestra is revealed at a fractal level to have all sorts of tiny discrepancies of attack which become rhythmic events of their own. The fact that music is fundamentally about vibration becomes apparent as the concepts we usually use to understand the vibrations (melody, harmony, rhythm) lose their meaning. If you know the quick-paced scherzo, I recommend sampling some of that in the x24 version because the notes go by quickly enough that it is just possible to follow what's happening. But it mostly sounds like...well, you decide. 

So I was interested in various ways of slowing Brahms down, and though it is possible simply to distort the audio of a live performance to pretty much any length, I also thought it would be fun to hear a synthesized version where the notes are just played really slowly (and not distorted). This eliminates the otherwise inevitable imprecision of attack and pitch - so much that I found it necessary to add some very soupy reverb to smooth out the edges, creating a dream-state effect. I've tinkered with this on and off the past few days and have found the process really satisfying, even if the result is little more than a curiosity. 

What I find appealing:

• Getting to know just about every single note and instrument choice used by Brahms in this short passage. The time spent listening and manipulating is its own kind of score study. It's a kind of literal experience of what it means to get lost in the details.
• Getting to spend time "conducting" the result by adjusting general levels and attack levels for various pitches, etc. I am no expert at mixing audio, but it is fun to think like a conductor, in this case using sliders and automation curves instead of baton and words. 
• Basking in the admittedly hallucinatory soundworld which results.

For various reasons, I settled on a much less dramatic stretch factor of around 3.5x. (Synth sounds are just kind of boring if note changes are too far apart.) This makes it quite easy to process the familiar music, but it still enables a new awareness of certain passing moments, like how non-harmonic passing tones create a lot of tension when one takes the time to listen to them.

Brahms' music itself is quite striking as a beginning (the beginning of the end of the requiem). Coming on the heels of the large-scale and emphatic sixth movement, this seventh movement begins as if in the middle of something over a secondary dominant. Sopranos first and violins next are sent into their stratospheres as we seem to be glimpsing heavenly realms. (The German text translates as: "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth.") The mostly rising accompanying figure in the strings is written so that the 8th note pairs are constantly reaching across the beats, which provides a restless kind of forward motion in what is otherwise a steady tempo. As my friend's quote at the top suggests, Brahms also plays with texture with the pedal bass notes dropping out after four bars, almost as if we're leaving earth's gravity behind.

So, hopefully you will find two minutes to indulge this little indulgent thought experiment of mine. At least I only did nine bars! You could do worse than to get lost in these good vibrations.

And though I do NOT recommend listening to all of the following, the technology just made it so easy to stretch Brahms' 36 seconds out to 55 minutes, I couldn't resist. My son and I did listen (please don't alert DSS) to the first seven minutes in the car yesterday. It takes a little over six minutes to get to the entrance of the sopranos in m.2. After that, the wobble of the high voices would probably give you a headache. (I don't make any claims for how precisely the yellow highlighter tracks exactly where things are!) 

This is not my first entry into the world of videos that flirt with eternity. Here's a short playlist. My favorite, by far, is a very slow, synth string version of Schoenberg's gorgeous, but super dense a cappella Friede auf Erden. I find this "performance" to be genuinely beautiful. (I even...shh...kind of prefer it to the original!) The other three videos found here are more about looping infinitely, but I've listened to all of them all the way through with some satisfaction. Perhaps I have...unusual tastes.

Sound Tracks 22 Apr 2024 11:01 AM (12 months ago)

I was flying back to Boston from Atlanta Friday night, and by good fortune had a port side window seat in front of the wing. I hadn't thought much of the view I might get on this budget Spirit Airlines flight, but as we descended from clouds into the Greater Boston area, I started noticing I could see a lot of detail out the side, although honestly the window looked too small and smudgey to think I could do any worthwhile photography. I took a few phone photos that looked pretty bad and kind of put the idea way. 

Then as I started seeing the Boston skyline way in the distance, I thought this might be a nice approach and started video-ing. In this way, I captured the last two minutes of the flight in gorgeous, dusky skylight, with clear views of the South Boston waterfront all the way to the crossing of Boston Harbor (almost at water level!) and onto the Logan Airport runway which sits just across the harbor from downtown.

When I got home, I did some triangulating with Google Maps, working backwards from the very clear view of the "Rainbow Swash" design on a giant National Grid LNG tank that sits right on the ocean's edge, followed shortly thereafter by a spectacular view of UMASS-Boston and the JFK Library. In the opening of the video, I could pretty clearly see what looked like a cemetery, and after following the flight course backwards, I identified the Cedar Grove Cemetery in Boston's southeastern Dorchester neighborhood; the long white roof of another nearby location turned out to be the Ashmont MBTA station. Here's the basic flight path I retroactively charted:

Anyway, I came here not to talk about Boston geography (though the views coming in over the city and harbor are gorgeous), but rather to talk about the music I chose to pair with this majestic descent into town - because I had to share this video on social media, and the cabin sounds of overhead announcements are so pedestrian. [To be fair, although the views are awesome, you don't get a great view of the Boston skyline which is more classically photographed from a little further north across the harbor. The three tallest buildings in Boston (including the Hancock and the Prudential) can be seen early on rising up over Back Bay in the upper background, but as they are west of downtown, they always remain in the distance.]

When looking for the right soundtrack, I thought of the terms "soaring" and "flying," and I think I even did a search for those terms with "classical music." But on my own, I pretty quickly thought of the glorious "whales" scene from Disney's Fantasia 2000, which is accompanied by music from Respighi's Pines of Rome. There are lots of great "big finishes" in classical music, but this one has just the right kind of stately, inexorable grandeur that an airplane descent calls for, even if Disney has its whales ascending. (Notice how often slow, steady, rising scales are heard amidst all the gleaming fanfares.) It took just a little experimenting to get it to line up pretty well, and I feel confident in saying this soundtrack complements the visuals very effectively. In fact, for me the music elevates the experience quite a bit, mainly because the music is SO good. (But I'm also genuinely amazed at the quality of video one can get from an old iPhone through a small, smudgey window.)

Preluding and Fuguing 5 Apr 2024 6:08 AM (last year)

Only a couple of days before Christmas, I mentioned using a "make myself write a fugue trick" by submitting a title for a work that did not yet exist for the Christmas Eve service leaflets. I suppose this trick works because it's very easy to commit by email to doing something, and I know that once the paper is printed, I will have successfully backed myself into a corner. It's even possible that I have done this in the past because it's easier in the moment to commit to writing something (which ultimately will take a lot of time) than it might be to find an alternative piece to play. I might be saving myself 10-20 minutes in the moment even though this will likely cost me many hours of work on the other end. Not a good interest rate, but still genuinely appealing to the true procrastinator!

Once again, after looking at this year's draft for the Easter Vigil leaflet, I knew I wanted something different for a slow/fast pair near the end of the service. The final hymn was to be We know that Christ is raised (#298 in The Hymnal 1982), sung to Charles V. Stanford's stirring tune ENGELBERG. So, before I even gave it much thought, I was signing on the dotted line to play a Prelude on Engelberg and a bit later a Fugue on Engelberg. All that was left was....well, the hard part of manufacturing notes.

I'm actually not going to go into too much more detail here about these new pieces and am choosing not even to reveal much of the scores, in part because both feel a little unfinished, even though I think they served their purposes well. (The prelude was needed during a quiet time before the final hymn; the fugue immediately followed that hymn.) However, I thought it was worth pointing out a cool trick I stumbled on (or did I?) for writing the prelude. 

First of all, ENGELBERG is a really outstanding tune, very singable and featuring climactic Alleluias at the end of each verse. I actually think a historical disadvantage this tune has is that it is perhaps used too often with too many different texts. It apparently appears six times in the 1904 edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern, and it appears three times in The Hymnal 1982. This can make it seem a bit generic when matched up against another famous stirring tune which also begins after a strong downbeat and also ends each verse with Alleluias, but which is very strongly associated with only one text. Still, it's a good sing:

I improvise quietly around hymn tunes pretty regularly, and though I would like to be much better at this, I felt pretty confident I could devise a simple plan for a nice, quiet, reflective prelude. I was sitting at the organ to see what I might come up with, and within just a few seconds, a little noodling had given me the idea that the first fifteen notes of the melody could be sped up into an ostinato pattern. (An ostinato is basically a musical figure which is designed to be repeated many times, "obstinately" one might say - at least in this case!) Here is the opening of the tune and then the ostinato figure it generates:

To be honest, there's not much more to this prelude, as I just added a simple ascending pedal line to the bass part and kept both repeating (with occasional variation) while a middle voice slowly works its way through the tune. It is quite repetitive, but it is designed more for quiet liturgical function than concert use, so I'm OK with that.

[Quick Confession Time: Although I do take some credit for devising this ostinato structure, I had remembered in writing this post that I had once looked at a large-scale organ Fantasia which Stanford wrote based on this tune. I think I even faked my way through parts of it before. In looking it up now, I only now remembered that Stanford, after introducing the tune in quarter notes in the pedal, immediately adds an improvisatory sixteenth note figure for the hands which certainly anticipates what I ended up doing, though he doesn't quote the tune as explicitly. It is somewhat likely that my subconscious memory of this passage helped to "inspire" my approach.]

The fugue is a pretty straightforward three-voice affair with quite a few modulations in a short time. The fugue subject uses only the first ten notes of the tune, although the closing Alleluias are referenced in the flexible countersubject material. [Fugue begins at about 3:05.]

Hopefully at some point I will post more polished versions of both, but here's what we have for now. Happy Easter!

Seventeen, Going on Eighteen 24 Feb 2024 6:43 PM (last year)

No time for a major post to celebrate this blog's seventeenth anniversary. But I thought I'd post this fun video I made a little over a year ago. It's been on my list of things to blog about for all of that time, and I'd still like to say more about it, but the basics are as follows:

I'd created a worksheet for an Intro to Music Theory class which provided a series of arpeggios. The students' job was to identify the triad quality represented by each arpeggio. As usual with a worksheet, I made some effort to create a semi-random sequence of triads so there wouldn't be any obvious pattern to help students guess the answers. This also means that the patterns created were intended not to have any clear functional relationship from bar to bar. But...I noticed while absent-mindedly playing the page for the class that I kind of liked the way the unintentional progression progressed. 

So, I tweaked a couple of minor things, added a bass line, and soon had produced this fun little bit of ambient music. 

Whose Fault Is It Anyway? 3 Feb 2024 1:45 PM (last year)

One of my favorite parts of teaching middle school boys the past five years is that we spend a quarter of every fall semester slow-watching Into the Woods. In my opinion, it's a perfect musical for this transitional age - a show that is constantly exploring what lies "in-between" the safety and familiarity of childhood/home and the excitement and danger found in wishing for more freedom and responsibility.  Every middle schooler lives in this transition between kid and grownup.

In addition to watching, we do multiple projects which give the students a hands-on opportunity to engage with Sondheim's musical ideas. This year, I found a good deal of success getting groups of four students to learn a central section of the big "Your Fault" number in which characters argue back and forth in rapid-fire fashion. (Believe me, rapid-fire argument comes naturally to these boys - but they don't usually do it with a beat.) The students also work on digital audio projects - using a Garageband-like educational platform called Soundtrap - in which they are provided with motifs from the show which they can re-mix by looping, changing instruments, changing tempo, adding beats, etc. 

This year, to give them more opportunity to interact with "Your Fault," I entered all the notes in MIDI format for the five characters and the piano reduction of the accompaniment. Once I had this complex two-minute ensemble reduced to data, I knew there was a lot of potential energy for me to do something creative. For starters, I just made this simple re-mix, meant to sound kind of silly and lighthearted. (It's all saxes with a beat, bringing out the playfulness of the back and forth but minimizing the angst.):

Once upon a time... 25 Dec 2023 5:44 AM (last year)

Once upon a time, I wrote my first twenty-first century fugue back in December, 2015. (I do have one ancient twentieth century fugue as well.) I've played this fugue at some point just about every year since, but have never been happy with the original piano recording I made on an out-of-tune piano. So, the other day when I found time on a beautiful Steinway to record my new "O come, all ye faithful" fugue, I did a few takes of Fugue in Royal David's City and definitely improved on the old version. (A better organ version is still on the to-do list.) 

Just in case you don't know the original tune which famously opens every King's College Lessons and Carols service, here it is. Some of the verses are printed below as well.

MMerry Christmas!

1 Once in royal David’s city

stood a lowly cattle shed,

where a mother laid her baby

in a manger for His bed:

Mary was that mother mild,

Jesus Christ her little Child.

2 He came down to earth from heaven

who is God and Lord of all,

and His shelter was a stable,

and His cradle was a stall:

with the poor, and meek, and lowly,

lived on earth our Savior holy.

3 And our eyes at last shall see Him,

through His own redeeming love;

for that Child so dear and gentle

is our Lord in heav'n above,

and He leads His children on

to the place where He is gone.

4 Not in that poor lowly stable,

with the oxen standing by,

we shall see Him, but in heaven,

set at God’s right hand on high;

when like stars His children crowned

all in white shall wait around.

Old Faithful 23 Dec 2023 6:47 PM (last year)

This will be short, but as the year comes to a close, I've used an old technique to get me to do something I otherwise might not do. In this case, I submitted a new Fugue on Adeste Fideles as title of the prelude for tomorrow afternoon's second Christmas Eve service. The fact that this fugue didn't yet exist was just a way of writing a check that I'd have to cash.

For better or worse, the check has cleared, and I even have a couple of recordings to show, one a rather overblown virtual organ fest and the other a quiet run-through on piano this morning. As with all of the two-dozen or so hymn fugues I've written in the past few years, I've often thought of these as primarily functional and flexible, so I like the idea that this fugue can reach a grand and triumphant conclusion - or remain a mostly calm, contemplative piano meditation. 

What with the busyness of the holidays and three church services tomorrow, I haven't exactly perfected this piece or the recordings, but these will have to do for now. Merry Christmas!

'Tis the Season 21 Dec 2023 9:56 AM (last year)

Back in 2014, the 50th anniversary year for Terry Riley's iconic aleatoric masterpiece In C, I was inspired by a pun (as so often) to create a holiday homage. It may have been that the pulsing C's which traditionally anchor performances of Riley's work first reminded me of jingle bells. I can't remember for sure, but once I made the "In C  → In Season" connection, there was no going back. Best of all, I think it really works.

Rather than the 53 generic riffs in C Major that Riley devised, I used melodic snippets based on well-known seasonal tunes. Thus, part of the game of listening is to hear these various melodies emerge from the texture and intermingle in unexpected ways. You may read about the origins of In Season here, and I highly recommend a visit to this dedicated page which includes an embedded virtual performance and links to the score and instructions. 

Although I forced some family members to play along back in '14, I've never assembled a real performance...until this year, when the combined high school and middle school bands at the school where I work performed it. I don't have a recording yet of that performance, and I likely wouldn't share it anyway as it was necessarily under-rehearsed. And, though I think it was a real success, I realized how challenging it is to perform for young musicians. They've spent so much of their early years of training learning to play at the right time, with a clear sense of meter and how things fit together. Although In Season demands a very strong sense of rhythm, it's not easy to play confidently when the concept of a downbeat quickly evaporates.

So, I had the idea of creating a new virtual performance for the blog this year. Just as performing this music is more challenging than a quick glance at the score might suggest, creating a decent virtual performance was/is..a big headache. Since my 2014 virtual performance mostly featured orchestral instruments, I decided to go more with a mallets/electric/plucked/synth ensemble this time. I hoped it would be easier to get satisfying sounds, but creating a good mix that feels "of the moment" is daunting no matter what instruments are used.

By the far, the most fun and instructive (for me) aspect of creating this was working from start to finish in a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) rather than a score-based setup. The advantage of the DAW is that each of the fourteen melodies can be encoded as a MIDI loop which can be dropped onto a beat grid and then looped as desired simply by dragging. No worries about messy ties over barlines. There was still a lot of decision-making about when to pause a given instrument and how to think about having it converse with the others. In our recent performance with students, I emphasized often the important of having them take many breaks simply to listen rather than play constantly. This was in part to keep them from being overwhelmed. With MIDI, the "players" can go on forever without a break, so I had to make decisions about putting spaces in - fewer still than would be likely in any live performance.

Look, the truth is, I could easily spend dozens of hours perfecting this, but at some point I had to remember I had a family and settle for something which is still spontaneous in many ways. I did have fun converting the DAW "score" into an interesting visual as well. Although the "notes" are tiny, it's color-coded so you can see which track is doing what. (You'll have to determine for yourself what the instruments are, but they should go more or less left to right across the stereo spectrum.*)

I realize a skeptic might look at this or Riley's piece and figure it's all kind of random and silly (I know because I was an In C skeptic for decades!), but there is a real order and sense of structure which I believe emerges. You can see the fourteen snippets below. Here's what I wrote back in 2014:

I think [the] large-scale structural aspect of In C is under-appreciated (at least it was under-appreciated by me for decades), and in a small way, I've tried to create some structural flow within my holiday jumble. Most obvious is that the more rhythmically busy patterns occur in #6-11, bookended by the two longest and slowest fragments, #5 and #12. (Note also that #5 ascends and #12 descends.) #3 leads very naturally into #4, both by shared dotted rhythm and the G-F-E connection. #4 ends with the same rising G-C that begins #5. Only C-D-E-F-G are used through the first five fragments. A appears only in #6 and #8-12, with the leading tone B appearing only in the climactic #10-12. (There's a sense in which 9-11 transitions into A Minor, the relative minor of C, and then the expansive #12 brings us back to C.) The final fragment, #14, is the only one not to include C, so it serves as a kind of implied dominant that might lead back...

Sondheim Slanted Evening 30 Nov 2023 6:27 PM (last year)

Hopefully the post title is reason enough to be wary of where we're headed here. Just two years and one day ago, I was writing a tribute to the remarkable creative force behind Company, Sweeney Todd, and Into the Woods, and here I am presenting a couple of silly distortions of his exquisite musical/lyrical ideas. But it certainly comes from a place of affection.

First up, a couple of months ago, I mentioned seeing just a two-bar cadential figure shown in a question on a Facebook group and I knew at once I'd played this flourish.

It took me a bit of time to realize it's the closing gesture (hear at 2:29 here) from On the Steps of the Palace, Cinderella's big number from Into the Woods. When I mentioned this to some friends online, one repeated a suggestion she'd made before about combining Sondheim's Steps with Borodin's lovely orchestral tone poem In the Steppes of Central Asia. Ultimately, I failed to resist this temptation.

As it happens, I was making this around the same time as I was converting Schubert's Erlkönig to a major key, and we were discussing major/minor modes in a couple of theory classes, so I found it interesting that the "key" to getting Borodin and Sondheim to play nice together was to set the former's plaintive minor key melody against the latter's major key ostinato accompaniment. (If you don't know the originals, you may follow the links in the previous paragraph.) 

This turns out to be a nice way to look at the concept of relative major and minor keys, keys which are "related" because they basically use the same set of pitches but with a different starting/ending note. One simple way to say this is that if one starts on the sixth note of a major scale (down two from the original home pitch which can be called 1 or 8) and follow the scale trail up to the same note, one ends up with the major key's relative minor. Thus, Borodin's minor key melody, which begins on scale degree 5 can actually be harmonized in major simply by treating each scale degree as if it is two lower. The same pitch is now treated as scale degree 3.

I'm sure that sounds quite pedantic, so here's a quick demo. 

First you hear Borodin's melody more or less against his original minor key harmonies, starting on scale degree 5. (This version is already transposed to the key [B Minor/D Major] I used in my mashup below, and the meter has also been switched from Borodin's 2/4 to Sondheim's 6/8, with a few other melodic adjustments.)

Then you hear the exact same melody against the repeating accompaniment vamp Sondheim uses in his song, except the vamp is downshifted from D Major into the same B Minor as the melody.

Finally, you hear the exact same melody against Sondheim's original accompaniment, this time shifted back up to its original D Major. Though not all minor-key melodies transfer so easily (I think it helps that the original minor key melody does not use scale degrees 1 or 2), this one actually works fine against the new harmonies - but it certainly sounds different! It's worth noting that one reason this mashup sort of works is that both Borodin's melody and Sondheim's melody (which you don't get to hear here) spend a lot of time over pedal bass notes (basically meaning the lowest note in the accompaniment doesn't change).

To complete my silly little arrangement, we open with the major-key melody which opens Borodin's tone poem, then transition into Borodin's main tune (now contextualized as major) and, of course, we end with the flourish that got me into this mess in the first place.

Concentric Circles: Nardini → Kreisler 11 Nov 2023 7:01 PM (last year)

Time and again, I return here because of some happenstance by which I make unexpected connections between two works. We've had:

• Stravinsky and Copland
• Copland and Mendelssohn
• Beethoven and Strauss
• Shostakovich and Vaughan Williams
• Britten and Ives
• Jackson and Menken