The Fredösphere

An article in the New York Times reveals what previously has only been hinted: architect Philip Johnson was a disappointed, and incompletely repentant, fascist.

Philip Johnson did not just flirt with fascism. He spent several years in his late 20's and early 30's - years when an artist's imagination usually begins to jell - consumed by fascist ideology. He tried to start a fascist party in the United States. He worked for Huey Long and Father Coughlin, writing essays on their behalf. He tried to buy the magazine American Mercury, then complained in a letter, "The Jews bought the magazine and are ruining it, naturally." He traveled several times to Germany. He thrilled to the Nuremberg rally of 1938 and, after the invasion of Poland, he visited the front at the invitation of the Nazis....

Today, any debate over an important figure with a fascist or Communist background easily becomes an occasion for blame games between right and left. Mr. Johnson is no exception. Morally serious people can have different views of his personal culpability.

But what's essential is to let the shadow fall - to acknowledge that fascism touched something important in his sensibility. Throughout his life, he was an ardent admirer of Nietzsche. His understanding of the great philosopher was surely deeper than that of the Nazis, but he was overly enchanted by the idea of "a superior being," "the will to power" and Nietzsche's view of art. And he loved the monumental.

Johnson had a point about Mussolini and train schedules. We must also admit the Nazis were great zeppelin builders. Anyway, here's the closer:

Philip Johnson now seems like an emblematic figure partly because he appears to have been happily, marvelously, provocatively, disturbingly hollow. It is an underlying fear of Western culture, one that has lasted since World War II, that there is no larger or ennobling content to mine. Mr. Johnson's main flaws as an artist - his tastes for razzle-dazzle and overweening scale - are equally the weaknesses of American secular culture. His main strengths - his openness to change, playfulness and urbane rejection of the Miss Grundys of the world - are equally it strengths.

Someone is starting a new men's chorus and needs help coming up with a name.  Gentle reader, I'm sure you will agree:  we are up to the challenge!  Here are my suggestions, not a single one with any hope of being chosen:

The Testostertones
Subterranean Winds (it refers to an aria from The Tempest by Henry Purcell)
Choir On Fhoir

And here are a few more great names, sadly already taken:

Throat Culture (I heard them once on The Prairie Home Companion)
Three Men and a Tenor (a quartet from this area)
Measure For Measure (a men's chorus from Plymouth, Michigan; their website shows them posing in the beautiful Pease Auditorium at Eastern Michigan University)
Seraphic Fire (mentioned on this blog last week; I suppose the adjunct boy's choir would be called "Cherubic Fire")

Uh oh!

As you can see from this picture, the maiden flight of the Airship Fredösphere was an incomplete success. It was going to be a big surprise, culminating in a triumphant mooring high atop the Empire State Building. In hindsight, I agree I should have contacted the authorities before attempting this "stunt," and yes, I need to apologize to anyone who may have been offended. My lawyer has advised me to be careful what I say, so for now I'm not going to comment on the damage.

And yet, if I am allowed to have an opinion here: sheesh! It's not like anyone died or anything, probably. New Yorkers are so uptight about their skyscrapers. It seems the entire city government has its undies in a bunch over this. The jerks.

I hear scientists have a new gas now, called helium, that's quite safe. Maybe I should give that a try next time.

Labels: Airship

NPR has a report on Les Choristes, including songs from the soundtrack you can download. They are starting to call it "Monsieur Holland's Opus" which is almost enough to make me run screaming from it. Seeing Mr. Holland gave me hives.

If you want to read about the other Oscar-nominated foreign film about redemption through choral music, read this review of As It Is In Heaven.

"Redemption through choral music." Heh. It reminds me in a perverse way of my three-year term as a board member of a non-profit community chorus. It was ... well, let's just say "redemption" is about the last word that comes to mind to describe that experience.

I suppose I am supposed to write a review of Wednesday's concert by the lahti Symphony. Frankly, I haven't yet figured out reviewing, and the negative aspect is dismaying: most of us lack the megaphone to make any difference by what we write, and those few who do must (or should) fear the destructive power they wield.

So to minimize the negligible, let me just quickly say Louis Lortie is a great pianist, and the Lahti is a great orchestra. Maybe they could have played a bit more crisply in a couple spots, but they redeemed all by ending the First Prokofiev Piano Concerto with a resounding bloink! which is more than you can say for the recordings I've heard.

They played Interludes from an opera by the Finn Joonas Kokkonen. It's unfamiliar, and I'm a lousy listener, but: I really liked it. Although written in the 70s, this music maintains a toe-hold on tonality, so that helps. Plus, it's live, which for orchestral music is rare enough to be a treat for me. Finally, I think I'm just getting better at paying attention as I get older. As I emerge from this fog I've been in for the first 40-odd years of my life, I realize how frequently I have turned off the world and retreated into my own thoughts. It's like my attention has had -- oh, what's a good word for it? -- a deficit, or something. Anyway, putting Kokkonen's effects-heavy orchestration first had the unfortunate effect of making Tchaikovsky's (Piano Concerto #3) seem thin by comparison.

Hill Auditorium is always inspiring, with its funnel-vaulted ceiling and excellent acoustics (for those who avoid the middle of the main floor). I noticed something odd: the sound of the piano was extremely directional; I could have pointed to the spot on the ceiling whence the sound reflected (30-40 feet above the right side of the stage). This effect did not happen with any other instrument or section of the orchestra. I suspect the piano lid was the culprit. It prevented the sound from traveling directly upward, so the reflective funnel or shell only came into play on the sides. Anyway, the result was fairly weird, yet not exactly unpleasant. It sure beats a dead or muffled sound.

There's a joke that ends with this punchline:

And they called it the Moron Tab and Apple Choir!

Recreating the improbable stuff that leads up to that punchline is left as an exercise for the reader, but the existence of the joke is a reminder of what a cultural icon the Mormons have built.  For your average Tom, Dick, and Harry -- as much as for your average Joe, Brigham, and Mitt -- the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is the only choir that could be called a household name.

So it's only natural, yet still weirdly fascinating, that the MTC would get the gig to sing on a soundtrack for the new Advent Rising computer game. What do you know:  sci-fi author Orson Scott Card was involved, so there's another Mormon connection.  Coincidence, you say?  I don't think so.

It's a mark of sophistication among choristers to prefer small vocal ensembles -- to prefer their precision over the vulgar mass of sound you get with a big group.  I share that bias, but I think its wrong to overlook the unique advantages that a big group has.  (And the MTC's performance of the Pligrim's Hymn that I linked to the other day is not too shabby at all in the precision department.)

Gorecki calls for a choir of "at least 120" singers for his monumental Miserere and he has a point.  That mass of sound would not be achieved if the piece were sung by an octet.  Beyond that, I think the deeply religious impact of the work would be lessened without the perception of a great number of identites being subsumed -- we perceive this as a metaphor for the soul's identity loosing itself, and then finding itself, through communion with God.

Darn, there I go getting all "deep" and everything.  Maybe I just like big choirs because they are loud.  Anyway, here's a nice article on Gorecki by Greg Sandow that you should read.

Last night I spoke to an old friend, one of those rare creatures who has built a harpsichord from a kit. It has been a long haul, but now the thing is really, finally (almost) finished. He waxed rhapsodic on the veneer he chose, a cross-cut mahogany (did I remember that right?) with 3-D qualities. That is, the color and reflective properties are view-angle dependent. Me, I just want to play the thing. He said the dampers need a bit of adjustment, which made me chuckle. If your personality runs anywhere near the perfectionist end of the continuum, beware: the various parts of a harpsichord offer an infinite number of opportunities for tweaking, tuning, repairing, improving, sanding, polishing, adjusting, and tightening.

In fact, I'm working on a design for a new kind of advanced harpsichord, one that can play an infinite gradations of dynamics. Get this: it actually has little felt hammers that strike the strings instead of plucking them. Of course, a problem with this is that you have to play very short notes, otherwise the hammers press against the strings, dampening them. I suppose what I need to do next is come up with some kind of mechanism that will cause the hammer to spring back even if the key remains depressed.

Anyway, the prototype is sitting in my basement right now, next to my boat and my Rubens. For now I'm calling it a "Soft Loud." I don't mean to brag, but I really think this thing could end up replacing the harpsichord as the dominant keyboard instrument.

I've added a new score to my music page: it's The Superstitious Ghost. Check it out, won't you? It's short, funny, and would make a great concert closer or encore. Sadly, I think this bit of fluff is the tighest, most well-crafted thing I've ever written. But hey, decide for yourself if its any good -- have a look!

Alex Ross anticipates with excitement the Lahti Symphony bringing Sibelius #2 to New York this Sunday. But wait a minute. I'll be hearing them this Wednesday right here in Ann Arbor. How is that possible? Before the Lahti visits the Capitol of the World, they visit a remote province? Where the townspeople look like this and the country folk look like this? This is a perversion of the natural order. This is wrong.

The wifeösphere won't be able to go Wednesday, so I have an extra ticket. It will go free to the first person who claims it. Email me: fred - at - fredosphere.com.

Patrick Dupré Quigley directs the choir with the deeply cool name of Seraphic Fire.  He wanted to honor MLK with a program of spirituals and gospel music, but he says there was a problem: 

"After the first few rehearsals, I thought `This is going to sound like Palestrina with different words,'" Quigley said. "This can't happen!"

He finally found the way to free his singers from their training in a move I find absolutely brilliant:

"We didn't have the large, round sound you traditionally get from African-American choirs," Quigley said. "Because the voices tend to be lower, there's a lot more `chest sound' used in the singing."

After much trial and error, Quigley finally hit upon an imaginative solution. He decided to simply switch his female sections around to get the richer, more robust effect of a genuine gospel choir.

"My altos are all singing soprano for this concert and my sopranos are all singing alto," Quigley said. "The sopranos can all bring their chest voice up higher, whereas the altos can use a big round sound in the low sections. When we did that, that was the turning point for us."

Read the whole thing right here.

Why is it so satisfying to watch an animal drink?  When I give my dog his food, I can walk away, no problem, but when I fill his water bowl I just have to stay and watch him lap it up.  What's up with that?

Byzantium's Shores has an idea what a concert at the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra is like.

"Regular folks" are comissioning new music compositions.  Somebody give these people a medal!

Linda Hoeschler, who was working at the Dayton Hudson Foundation in Minneapolis at the time, had an idea. She had recently advised the two composers who had founded the Minnesota Composers Forum. Why not, she suggested to her husband, commission a piece of music from one of them?

The Hoeschlers' two children play flute, oboe, cello and piano, so Linda Hoeschler asked Stephen Paulus to write a piece for those instruments. She asked Paulus how much he charged, and he answered $100 a minute.

"Well," she told him, "it's for our 15th anniversary, so how about 15 minutes?"

He agreed, and eight months and $1,500 later, "Courtship Songs for a Summer's Eve" was given its premiere at the Minnesota Club in St. Paul, during a 40-minute private concert.

Last summer the couple celebrated their 38th anniversary. In the intervening years, the piece had taken on a life of its own and been recorded twice. The Hoeschlers still vividly recall its debut.

All of my friends who have a sense of civic duty and generosity, and who are really, really rich are encouraged to give me money to write music right now!  Or right after you are done financing your film projects.

The article mentions Stephen Paulus, who in turn deserves a medal for writing the Pilgrim's Hymn:

Even before we call on Your name
To ask You, O God,
When we seek for the words to glorify You,
You hear our prayer;
Unceasing love, O unceasing love,
Surpassing all we know.

In fact, I've been promoting a system of barter where music manuscripts can become a kind of currency.  I hired a guy to do some plumbing repairs for me, and when he was done I decided to give him a new musical composition rather than cash.  The piece was titled 5' 17" and is one of my more experimental works; I performed it for him by sitting down at my piano and -- get this -- doing nothing for five minutes and seventeen seconds.  The idea I had is, you start noticing all kinds of ambient noises and that becomes the music!  (Actually, what I noticed was a dripping noise that I later found out was the plumbing "repair" that wasn't done right.)  Then I gave him the score, which basically is a blank sheet of paper with the title of the work on top.

Hoooooo, boy -- was he pissed!  I was talking with a composer friend the next day about the whole fiasco, trying to decide what went wrong.  Sometimes I feel like I just don't understand people.  I wondered, as I sipped my absinthe, if I should have scored the piece for circular saw and nail gun, you know, stuff those contractor guys can relate to.  As my friend fanned himself with his black beret, he informed me of another composition similar to mine, called 4' 33", by John Cage.  Wow.  Talk about coincidences.  My plumber must have felt my work was too derivative.  Oh well, live and learn.

Michael Blowhard thinks Traverse City, Michigan is cool.  He is right.

If you don't know why, have a look at a map of Michigan.  First, observe there are two peninsulas, the Lower and the Upper Peninsula.  (Apparently there are a lot of people who don't know that.)  If you notice the Lower Peninsula is shaped like a mitten, you will not be the first.  Look at the pointy prominence to the upper-left -- call it the pinky.  That's the Leelanau Peninsula.  It's separated from the rest of the land mass by the Grand Traverse Bay.  Look closely and you will see the bay is divided into two arms by another thin peninsula -- call it the hangnail on the pinky.  That's the Old Mission Peninsula.

Traverse City sits at the base of the Grand Traverse Bay, and it is a wonderful place to vacation.  The wifeösphere and I biked the Old Mission Peninsula and discovered how gorgeous it is.  Never have I lusted after real estate as I did there.  As of about eight years ago, it still had an undeveloped feel to it:  cottages scattered around the edge, and orchards and vineyards in the middle, along with a few outstanding restaurants. Chateau Chantal is there, a winery with an inn built into it.  Dang.  Can I go back?  Please?

Michigan's west coast has lots more to offer.  North of the Grand Traverse Bay you will find the Little Traverse Bay.  The name is deceptive; I believe the bay contains the deepest anchorage in all the great lakes.  (Okay, okay, spare me your jokes about the highest mountain in Iowa.)  Seriously, you will find some impressive yachts here.  Some of the housing is not too shabby either.  Petoskey is the city next to the bay where the eponymous stones are found.  Next door is Bay View, a Chautauqua with classic Victorian cottages that ooze charm.  We spent a few days there in a friend's cottage; I'm still not exactly sure why I didn't barricade myself in there with a shotgun and refuse to leave.  The association that runs the place sponsors concerts, lectures and other uplifting, ennobling activities, all within a vaguely religious context -- with the emphasis on vaguely.  (Our friends reported that a requirement for membership was an agreement not to get into arguments over abortion.  Heh.)

Go north from the Little Traverse Bay and you come to the tiara of the state:  The Bridge.  If the Upper Peninsula (the "U.P." -- we call its residents "Yoopers", and they call us "trolls," because we live beneath the bridge) had been given to Wisconsin as would have only made sense (I won't take the time to describe the political -- and military! -- machinations that lead to Michigan getting the U.P. as a consolation prize, but at least one cow gave its life for the cause of freedom and justice) I doubt there would have been much urgency to build the Mackinac Bridge.  As it is, the bridge serves as an important political unifier.  It is such an important symbol when it was new that people of my parent's generation made the bridge a tourist destination all of its own.  I've always wondered if there is any other large bridge in the world located in such a remote area.  The cities it connects have only a few thousand residents each.  Look at a picture:  you'll see the bridge connects two vast forests.

Once I picked up one of those travel guide books written by lazy people who do all their "research" by collecting tourist brochures at highway rest stops.  It informed me that the Mackinac Bridge connects the mainland to Mackinac Island.  Residents of the region will know just how jaw-droppingly, gob-smackingly, dip-waddingly stoopid that mistake is.  Mackinac Island is a famous tourist destination where there are no automobiles.  "Once you've crossed the bridge,"  the book warned, "you'll have to abandon your car, because it is not allowed on the island."  Indeed.

Erik Jorgensen is a student composer at the New England Conservatory who's quasi-aleatoric music draws inspiration from childhood memories of science fiction:

"When I was a little kid I never liked to read, and the only way my mom could get me to read books was with the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' science fiction books," he said. "It would be, like, if you want them to invade this planet, go to page 60."

Obviously they left an impression, because they inspired the basic idea behind Jorgensen's audience-interactive quartet.

"The piece is a kind of choose-your-own-adventure string quartet about the life of a mayfly," Jorgensen said. "It starts out with the mayfly hatching out of the water, then the audience votes as the piece goes along to decide what happens to the mayfly until it dies at the end.

"There's a whole bunch of different ways the piece unfolds," he continued. "The mayfly can go to New York City, go to the opera, stay in the country, marry this other mayfly - really bizarre things."

The A Cappella News tells us Les Choristes may be Oscar material, and has caused an explosion of interest in choral music in France:

Local choirs are having a heyday. In the past, "choral singing was not a so-called virile activity," said Bernard Lallement of the Association of Choir Directors for the Paris region. "It was better to play soccer than dare confess that you sang in a choir." Last year saw a 15 percent increase nationwide in children signing up for choirs, according to Thierry Thiebaut, director of a federation of 600 choral groups, "A Coeur Joie" (With a Joyful Heart). Demand is up 30 percent in the Lyon area, home of the choir featured in the movie.

From the same website we get a review of competing collegiate a cappella groups.  Those of you who collect cool band names like I do should check out the name of the winners:  Fermata Nowhere.

The University of Michigan has a very healthy a cappella scene, and I'm falling down on the job by not paying more attention to it.  I'll try to correct that as soon as I can.

The UAB choir will be performing at a venue in Paris, France, called the Notre Dame Cathedral.  I'm not familiar with the place myself, but they seem to be excited about it for some reason, so good for them.

Jessica Duchen puts down her shawm or glockenspiel or sousaphone or whatever it is she plays and finds herself seduced by the wealth, status and sheer glamour that comes from composing.  Great.  More competition.  Her slow start was caused by some...well, let her tell it:

So I trotted off to college thinking I might try composing - until I discovered a few things about the composing scene. First, it was entirely male dominated. I did have one female friend who refused to be put off by this and went for lessons with one of the place's resident eminent composers, but it was very clear, very fast, that we were not welcome in the clique - meanwhile, the place was full of arrogant little s**ts (male ones) who thought they were the next Beethoven and strode around the music faculty saying things like 'Prokofiev's rubbish'. But the attitude towards music that did not match accepted party lines - into serialism/modernism/systematic crafting evident only on paper and never to the ear - was the most destructive element. I well remember one friend - an extremely talented fellow - coming round for tea and saying, thoroughly perplexed, that his professor had just told him that he thought too much about the way his music sounded.

Helen Racide's arm pain makes you realize harp playing might have some serious occupational hazards.  She found near-miraculous relief through chiropractic adjustments.  It reminds me of what a life-changing experience using Flonase was for me: a "cold" that had lasted two months disappeared in twelve hours after my first use.  Hey, I'm not a doctor, I just play one on the internet, but fellow singers should check it out.

One of the games to which [the human race] is most attached is called "Keep tomorrow dark," and which is also named..."Cheat the prophet." The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. Then then go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.

G. K. Chesterson, The Napoleon of Notting Hill

Most of the music Tan Dun wrote for his Water Passion After St. Matthew gives you no hint that Bach was a brooding presence during its creation.  Yet how could the Leapin' Lord of Leipzig not be?  The Internationale Bachakademie in Stuttgart chose to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Bach's death with a commission for a new Passion in English -- and they chose Tan Dun to be the composer, an astonishing and counter-intuitive choice.

This music has almost no counterpoint.  There's not much even in the way of chords.  Tan Dun's mastery is displayed in his ability to create rich textures of sound through new "instruments" (basins of water, soda bottles, smooth-contoured stones, a water phone -- what the heck is that?).  This is music qua movie sound effects.  This is not my music.  Or should not be.

What fascinates me is what a gutsy project this is.  Tan Dun dares to write a piece to stand next to Bach's St. Matthew Passion.  He also dares to express the central drama of the Christian gospel -- this from the point of view of someone from a non-Christian culture, indeed a culture of hostility to all religion.  In the liner notes to the CD say that, thanks to the Cultural Revolution, his first contact with Bach's music, and through it, Christianity, came only when he had reached his 20th birthday.  "Even with virtually no experience of Bach or Christianity, he understood that this was music of hope and profound faith."

So, what's with the water metaphor?  If this were a traditional Passion, which restricts itself to the events of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, the metaphor would be a stretch.  Tan Dun chose to include the resurrection and even Christ's baptism and temptation, and these events justify the use of water as the sign of life, especially new life, makes sense.  The work begins and ends with the faint sounds of pouring water.

I usually don't have enough patience for this kind of music.  (If most of the 20th century's music can be called Wrong Note Modernism, then this is part of a later, percussion-heavy tradition we can call No Note Modernism.)  Tan Dun's remarkable dramatic sense maintains my interest.  It's sense of forward propulsion is so strong, I don't need the visuals.  This guy should be writing movie soundtracks -- I bet he would be great!

Satan's lines are sung by a woman.  Did Tan Dun steal the idea from Mel Gibson, or vice versa?  No, they both stole it from me!  In the 1980s I wrote a cantata on the temptation of Jesus for my senior composition recital.  I decided Satan's lines would be sung by a women's duet.  I thought the quasi-androgyny was appropriate (I guess I'm in good company).  Also, using two voices dilutes the sense of identity, which frankly wasn't appropriate in my cantata, but does reference the idea of demon possession, thereby lending a bit of creepiness to it.  Thank goodness I never thought to run their voices through a ring modulator.

In case I didn't say it earlier:  this Water Passion is fascinating, weird, compelling music.  The composer's vision is bold, his musical language is novel, but his message remains rooted in orthodoxy.  It is a remarkable achievement, and a generous gift.

Jeffrey Hart records in the January 2005 New Criterion his fond memories of the 1939 World's Fair in New York.  (I got my copy only a few days ago.  I don't know who screwed up, the publisher or the post office, but getting a magazine mid-month is pretty pathetic.  Come on, guys, I have needs.)  Hart  was a nine year-old with a season ticket and he visited the Fair repeatedly.  Clearly, it made a lasting impression, particularly the centerpiece:

In the sunshine, the first thing you saw as you came down the boardwalk and into the Fair was its dominating symbols, the Trylon and Perisphere [sic; why not Perösphere?  Looks like someone dropped the ball, har-har] the former a triangular spire fifteen stories high, the latter a gigantic globe a city block across....The Trylon and Perisphere remian in our minds today.  They have become something like the archetypes Jung imagined as central to the mind.  We have them in salt-and-pepper shakers, plates, scarves, pencil sharpeners, glasses, rings, ash-trays.  I have a copper penny rolled oblong with the image of the Trylon and Perisphere stamped on it, a souvenir of the Fair.  I wear it on a silver chain as a necklace along with a silver cross....The two gleaming structures were of course male and female symbols.  Inside the female globe, the designers had gestated their vision of the World of Tomorrow.  The called it Democracity, and it was the most popular exhibit at the Fair.

Let's look carefully at this bun in the Perisphere's oven.  Hart describes it as a model of a Corbu-inspired city planned according to rationalist principles, zoned into massive tracks devoted to worker's housing, industry, agriculture, recreation, and commerce, each linked to the others via superhighways.  Much effort was put into designing the Perisphere total spectator experience, with visitors riding revolving balconies while watching a multi-media presentation:

As the crowd watched from the two circular and suspended balconies, the familiar voice of radio announcer H. V. Kaltenborn exmplained how Democracity functioned.  After two minutes, daylight faded under the great dome of the Perisphere, and as dusk slowly deepened toward dark the dome twinkled with stars.  To a musical accompaniment a thousand-voice chorus sounded from the glittering heavens, while at ten locations on the dome you same images of marching men -- farmers in their work clothes, mechanics carrying tools -- and as they came closer you saw that they represented the various ethnic groups that make up the American metropolis, her presented as an image of national unity.

"Ah-ha!"  you cry; you see why the heck this article is quoted at length here at the Fredösphere -- its the juxtaposition of choral music and sci-fi!  Or at least sci-fi's twin, futurology.

What's with the "thousand-voice" chorus?  Clearly its purpose is to signal that the visit to the Perisphere is a religious event.

That's it.  I don't have any more points to make, really.  I saw it, I thought it was cool, I blogged it.  That's the formula.  I could express my horror one more time at the social engineers, but that's getting old.  I'm even getting tired of laughing at these outdated visions of the future, even though their predictions were so bad they failed to predict obvious stuff like this just six years away.

Labels: Architecture, Culture, Futurism

As I mentioned a while back, I have been creating a new Psalm for chanting every week (well, most every week) at the traditional service of my (Lutheran) church. Scores for these chants are available for anyone to use.

I heard about a new set of Psalm chants, called St. Martin's Psalter, arranged by Thomas Pavlechko. You can listen to a few chants at the link -- it sounds like Pavlechko has crafted them well. Like me, Pavlechko is bringing familiar hymn tunes into the chants to make them easier to sing. Nevertheless, the Psalms are not metrical, so there's still a lot single note repetition on strings of syllables -- the kind of thing I've tried to minimize in my chants.

In my arrangements, the congregation sings the hymn tune only, and the brief chant sections are sung by cantor alone. I've found that the free rhythm of the chant sections never work well in a group, even when that group is a choir that rehearses it a fair bit. Obviously, a lot of people like -- or put up with -- free chant in a group, and if you devote your life to perfecting it, I imagine it would be satisfying, but I find the experience has all the charm and grace of tug of war. I think I'll keep doing what I'm doing.

Knowing what I know about the type of people who read The Fredösphere, I'm sure most of you are planning to sign up for this cruise.  (The hat tip, by the way, goes to Gavity Lens.)  I urge you, before you commit, to read the disclaimer at the bottom of the page:

All persons signing up for this expedition come at their own risk, at their own expense, and for their own reasons. This advertisement is provided in a good faith effort to reach persons interested in this expedition, but the author of World Top Secret: Our Earth Is Hollow!, as promoter of this advertisement, takes no responsibility for any expedition arrangements.

GUARANTEES: By joining Our Hollow Earth Expedition, expedition members agree that there are NO GUARANTEES that this expedition will reach Inner earth. The expedition will make a good faith effort to locate the North Polar Opening and enter therein, but worst case scenario is that we visit the geographic North Pole, explore the region, and continue on to the New Siberian Islands.

I have a dream that someday I will put together a systematic overview of choral music in sci-fi.  In the meantime, Renewable Music points out two members of the musical avant garde who make cameo appearances in sci-fi stories.  And speaking of sci-fi, to The Standing Room, I say:  the anwer is "yes."

Marcus Maroney offers some information for those of you researching the important topic of program typos:

Finally, an anecdote from a friend in New Haven that is one of the funniest erroneous program listings I've ever seen or heard of.  The piece is "O, how amiable" by Ralph Vaughan Williams.  It was listed in the bulletin as "O, how am I able, Ralph?" by Vaughan Williams.

I missed that concert, as I was attending a performance of Lame Is Rob, but that reminds me of performance of The Messiah back in my home town.  The programs for the event promissed we would sing the Hellelujah Chorus.

Yet another composer begins writing for the most challenging instrument of all:  the blog.  Check out The Living Composer.

I think Forrest Covington should get some kind of medal for blogging step by step the creation of his latest orchestral work. Start at post #1 and keep following the links. Right now he's got a half-dozen or so installments.

This is a great opportunity to get inside a composer's head and watch how ideas go from raw dough to the (hopefully) fully-baked end product. It takes more than a bit of courage to display scores before they reach their final state.

I'll probably start talking about my current project soon, but it's too far along -- and I probably won't take the time -- for treatment similar to Covington's. I can report that my piece (music for a liturgical drama for a Maundy Thursday service) is over half done, and I expect the remaining part to come together quickly.

Ionarts reviews a new recording of the 24 Preludes & Fugues by Shostakovich right here.

My regular readers, assuming they exist outside of my rich fantasy life, will remember my minuscule piano practicing time each day is devoted to learning the A-minor fugue from Shostakovich's set.  The wifeösphere has complemented me on the music, thinking it was from my own current composition project.  In fact, she's done it to me twice.  Grrrrrrrr.  I could take it as a complement, except both times there was a certain quality in her voice that communicated "hey, now you're on to something.  Finally."

The wifeösphere is an excellent type of person for a composer to be married to.  She's intelligent and attentive, but lacking any strong interest in new music.  Yet with me dragging her to concerts and giving her the background information, she enjoys it most of the time.  A couple of years ago I took her to a sneak preview of Bright Sheng's opera Madame Mao (just the first act, performed in Ann Arbor with a piano accompaniment and a mixed bag of pro and student singers) and she really liked it.  That it was sung in English helped a lot.  The fugue anecdote I mentioned shows her ear has no trouble detecting masterful writing even when it is in a 20th century idiom.

The previous paragraphs were part of my first draft of this post.  So far, so good.  The following was going to be the closer:

When classical music jumped the shark in the 20th century, it lost people like the wifeösphere.  People of our class -- the over-educated middle -- ought to feel a duty to pay attention to hi-brow music.  Whether or not you think duty should be in scare quotes, the fact is, that duty once was part of the class identity, but now it is gone.  A generation of musicians gave them little they could relate to, placing too great of an intellectual demand on them for something generally considered mere entertainment.  These people need a ladder, a means of moving up from disposable popular crap to something more enduring -- and they need permission to linger on any rung where they feel comfortable.  In the 20th century, the people in charge cut the middle right out of the ladder.  That was a big mistake.

While rereading this one last time, I asked myself, do I really believe this?  Do I know what I'm talking about?  Here's a bit of contrary evidence:  anyone who runs a choir learns when it comes time to tour, if you can afford it, you should go to Europe.  You've got to hunt where the ducks are, and you can't swing a dead alto without hitting a choral music lover, if you are in Europe.  I don't know about the decline of classical music there, but I get the impression it's not nearly as bad over there.

Here in the U.S., how much time has the classical music tradition had to take hold?  One hundred years ago, how many decent orchestras did we have here?  One hundred years ago (according to Weston Noble) we didn't even know that choirs could sing without accompaniment and still stay in tune.

Maybe the real problem is that Americans have never accepted European-based music as their own.  Around the time we were ready to develop a significant body of our own music, technology suddenly made modern pop possible, so American music and pop music became synonymous.  Maybe in one hundred more years, things will have worked themselves out, and the gaps in that ladder I was talking about will have been filled in.

Darn.  These serious posts always turn out to be confused, sprawling messes.  Maybe I should replace this whole thing with some kind of wisecrack about Havergal Brian's underpants.

Yesterday I joked about choral music as a path to riches.  Well, according to David Toub at Sequenza21, it's true!  Well, it's true within the incredibly constricted context of the composing world:

[O]ne shouldn't feel constrained to write for chorus almost exclusively (the equation being one chorus = many more score purchases than three string quartets). However, I did have a teacher who instructed me to do just that. From a business perspective, he was correct.

If I may extrapolate from what he said:  it's funny and sad to think there might be someone out there who envies composers of choral music for their income potential.

Toub has lots of good advice about getting new music performed.  His internet experience has taught him what a website can -- and more importantly, cannot -- do for you:

I've placed several scores and MP3s on my personal Web site, but while I see that it gets some visits, it has not resulted in any performances. In other words, placing music on the Web is a good thing in terms of being able to show people your music, but no one is likely to go to your music page and immediately e-mail you asking to perform your works....

While having a Web presence may not guarantee performances, it doesn't hurt either. Having PDFs of one's scores may facilitate access to one's music. Instead of having to copy a series of scores and mail them to Europe, it can be easier on both parties to simply refer a musician to a Web site where your music can be downloaded. The Web can thus facilitate musical networking, and it can do so in a very substantial way.

I can read your mind right now.  You're saying to yourself, "that makes me think about underpants!"

The part that I loved about this episode [of South Park] was when the boys followed the gnomes to their cave, and started asking questions about how such a business is run. I found what seems to be a transcript of the episode, and here's the snippet I'd like to draw your attention to:
Gnome 1: This is where all our work is done.
Kyle: So what are you gonna do with all these underpants you steal?
Gnome 1: Collecting underpants is just phase one. Phase one: collect underpants.
Kyle: So what's phase two?
     [Silence]
Gnome 1: Hey, what's phase two?!
Gnome 2: Phase one: we collect underpants.
Gnome 1: Ya, ya, ya. But what about phase two?
     [Silence]
Gnome 2: Well, phase three is profit. Get it?
Stan: I don't get it.
Gnome 2: (Goes over to a chart on the wall) You see, Phase one: collect underpants, phase two-
    [Silence]
Gnome 2: Phase three: profit.
Cartman: Oh I get it.
Stan: No you don't.
Kyle: Do you guys know anything about corporations?
Gnome 2: You bet we do.
Gnome 1: Us gnomes are geniuses at corporations.

I admit it.  I started The Fredösphere with a similar business model:  step one:  create a blog; step three:  get rich & famous.

First, this bon bon:  some garbage collectors found what they thought was trash outside a museum and hauled it away:

Unknown to the binmen, the sheets were part of a city-wide exhibition of modern sculpture by Michael Beutler, a graduate of Frankfurt's Städel art school.  Thirty of the dustmen are now being sent to modern art classes to try to ensure that the same mistake never happens again.

I can't keep track of all these new music blogs.  Can we declare a moratorium please?  Lots of people are noticing the nifty online mag Sequenza21 has a new group blog for composers -- darn, another essential daily read.  Also, I just found choirgeek.com.  I don't know if the concept will take off but I like this guy's sense of humor:

Create an account and contribute concerts of your own choosing to the database. This is your chance to get in on the ground floor before choirgeek.com's meteoric elevation to "household-namism." I smell IPO.

Ah, yes.  Soon he will join the teeming ranks of all those who have got rich from choral music -- a trend lovingly mocked in that famous scene from The Graduate:

Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Ben Braddock: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Ben Braddock: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Choral music.
Ben Braddock: That's two words, sir.

Steve Hicken is writing an opera.  Unbelievably cool.  I don't know much about his music, but he sent me the score to a trumpet duet he wrote.  It was really good.  Stinkin' hard to play, but good. I wrote four one-act "operas" in my teen years (two were actually performed) but those brief pieces of fluff were profoundly shallow parodies of the form.  I guess I'll have to write a real opera now.  It will have to be better than Hicken's.  His will have two characters.  Mine must have three.  His will have three scenes.  Mine must have four.  His is about a girl with curious hair.  Mine must be about a girl with curious big hair.  His will have 400 f-words.  Mine must have 500.  No, wait -- I'm getting Steve Hicken confused with Jerry Springer again.

I turned on the radio during the drive to work this morning.  I turned to WGTE out of Toledo.  They were playing a Stokowski transcription of music from act III of Parsifal.  In a moment, I was There.

I haven't been There in a long time.  Wagner used to be my favorite composer, but maturity (or simple overexposure) has cooled my passion for that kind of over-the-top emotionalism.  Sadly, I was also turned off by listening to a Ring Cycle lecture on CD delivered by Peter Allen, who was for many years the famous voice of the metropolitan opera broadcasts.  Allen loves Wagner opera and knows it well, and he has a voice I could gladly listen to all day.  Yet, in spite of his enthusiasm, the plain truth of The Ring leaked out:  it has a dumb plot .  Siegfried is an uninspiring hero.  His only two accomplishments -- slaying the dragon and scoring with the broad in the horned helmet -- are purely selfish acts.  The guy's got no community service in his resume.  Then comes the whole embarrassing business with the magic potion that makes him a helpless puppet.  The final unforgivable indignity happens during the whole shark scene where Wagner has Siegfried visiting Florida so he can go water skiing.  This is lame, people.

I think the best packaging of the Ring is a CD called The Ring Without Words.  Lorin Maazel condenses the entire cycle into one hour of purely orchestral music.  You know me; normally I would prefer to hear the voices, but in this case I think this trampling on the composer's intention is okay.  I am somewhat familiar with the motifs and their meanings, so I can let the drama play out in my head while the music is playing; I'm not sure how much someone without that information would enjoy this disc.

Back to Parsifal.  I've ignored the opera down through the years.  I mainly know of it from an organ transcription of the prelude by Anthony Newman.  So many people have been bored by the opera, I've been scared off.  Today's broadcast reminded me it occupies it's own unique emotional space.  It reminds me of a gorgeous choral piece, the Corpus Christi Carol by Trond Kverno (hear far too little of it here and read a version of the text here) which recaptures Parsifal's strange, heterodox ambiance, the music that most perfectly expresses Wagner's carnal spirituality of asexual eroticism.

Carnal spirituality of asexual eroticism.  If you understand what that means, please let me know.  Or better, don't let me know; rather, seek professional help.  Like Wagner's music, these words intoxicate me by their strange beauty, not their meaning.

My wanderings through the wide world took me to an interview with a designer who mentioned one of "the rules" as though he were speaking of something everyone knows:  you discard your first idea.

What?!  Madness.  It reminds me of a rule from my standardized test taking days.  One of the tips they give you is to go with your first idea for the answer of a question.  Change it only if you recall a specific reason for believing your first idea was mistaken.  In other words, if you have a moment where you say to yourself:

Milton Berle?  No, wait, he was that comedian on TV.  The American painter who steered the middle course between Social Realism and Abstract Expressionism was Milton Avery

then by all means carefully erase that oval you made with your no. 2 pencil and change your answer to Milton Avery.  If all you feel is a vague uneasiness, a reluctance to commit to your answer, then what you are doing is indulging in destructive second guessing.

I believe creating art is similar.  Reject the first idea only if it is plainly defective.  Be wary of peevishness; be reluctant to open the door to the second idea.  The danger:  a third, fourth, fifth, sixth ... twentieth idea will come rushing in right behind it, and you'll waste time and frustrate yourself trying to decide among them.

Today we escape to the future of yesterday:  here are some beautiful examples of cover and poster art from the history of tomorrow.  You may want to add these to your Amazon wish list.

After seeing The Incredibles last weekend, I had to ask myself, why can't the real world be designed so beautifully?  Well, for one thing, being a work of CG animation, everything in the environment was designed by a single team -- in the real world, no one gets that kind of control.  (Although in situations that come close, the results are often monstrous -- think Chandigarh and Brasilia.)  Movie makers are also free from small commercial considerations like how much will it cost to build this house and will it stand up and will mounting kitchen cabinet doors on an angle make them impossible to open and can we find any customers willing to live in this thing?

Oh, it also helps that Pixar's design team has talent and experience up the kazoo, as a former boss of mine was wont to say.

Metropolismag.com has an morbidly fascinating article on "Superstudio."  They were a bunch of hyper-radical anti-architects.  The whole bunch sounds like people who needed to breathe into a paper bag, but hey, I suppose Italy of the 1960s was a tough place for ambitious kids just entering the job market. Because almost nothing they designed was ever realized, they are mainly known for their stunning, bizarre images:

One of the 1971 "Twelve Ideal Cities," City of Hemispheres depicts a crystal lake comprised of more than ten million sarcophagi, the occupants kept alive by sophisticated technology. While their bodies lie forever prone, they have control over the flying hemispheres, through which they are fed sensory stimuli.

And one of them is named Neo and looks a lot like Keanu Reeves.

A while back I started noticing that a lot of seemingly intelligent, even hip people were admitting a devotion to a TV show.  TV?  I haven't watched TV regularly since Malcolm in the Middle jumped the shark, I said to myself.  Yet when hip, even groovy people like Alex Ross are watching Alias, well, that must mean I should too.

I reserved the library's copies of the DVDs from the first season and waited.  Waited a long time.  Wow.  This show is popular.  Finally, I got my hands on them, just in time for the Christmas break.  Perfect timing.

Now the wifeösphere and I are hooked.  We are slaves to this show.  Alex Ross, you did this to us.  I hope you're happy.

A typical episode goes like this:

Sidney Bristow's boss in SD6 sends her on a mission to steal an ancient device, invented by Leonardo da Vinci, that turns lead into gold Sidney celebrates Arbor Day by having dinner with her father, but he never shows Sidney infiltrates a fancy party filled with diplomats and spies She breaks into secret lab in the basement Sidney beats up a guard; he's wearing body armor; she's wearing a blue cocktail dress; she administers 35 severe head traumas and receives only 20 herself, so she wins A colleague interrupts what they are doing to let her know how great he thinks she is; this leads directly to... Her colleague dies horribly She is seen by another guard; she walks slinky, talks stupid, asks where the bathroom is; the guard lets her pass She returns home, exhausted yet unbruised, but her best friend's latest emotional crisis leaves her no time for herself Her handsome reporter friend signals for the 1000th time his love, but if she marries him death with follow (ratings death) Her graduate degree is in jeopardy when she gets a D [sic] on a paper; she asks for leniency; what she doesn't ask is "what the heck am I doing going to school when I'm getting shot at, playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with three different international spy agencies, trying to understand the deaths of my mother and fiance, stringing along a half dozen guys who are in love with me, and trying to figure out why my father hasn't smiled once in the last 40 years" Sidney discovers a 666 tattoo on her scalp, bringing her closer to the day she learns her long-dead mother was really a jackal. She has an awkward conversation with her father which accomplishes some healing in their relationship, "healing" here being defined within the sick, dysfunctional context of the Bristow family.

Is that a winning formula or what?!  Works for me, anyway.

I don't pay attention to soundtracks as much as I should, but there was a moment in episode 6 (we're talking first season) that caught my attention.  During a funeral scene, a pop singer belts out the hymn "Be Still My Soul" with string accompaniment.  The harmonization was simplified (it was not an improvement over Sibelius' original, and this kind of thing I always find infuriating; chord progressions are important, people) but the choice still stunned me.  Thank goodness someone in Hollywood knows there are other hymns beside Amazing Grace.

Have you ever noticed how content-free Amazing Grace can be?  Remove just one verse, the only one that mentions God directly, and suddenly you've got a hymn that worships "grace."  Unlike this:

Be still my soul, The Lord is on thy side.

The Lord?  Aren't we getting uncomfortably specific?  That sounds too much like the patriarch of a monotheistic religion.  Can't we go back to "Grace," whoever she is?

Hey, Amazing Grace is loved by millions, and that's great, but it's too easily appropriated by all kinds of people who want some music to give a scene an ambiance of vague, yet old tyme religiosity.  And when those people include the kilt-wearing star ship chief engineer with an improbable accent, who plays the bagpipes at the funeral of a pointy-eared hobgoblin, well, I think that's our signal to retire Amazing Grace as a staple of Hollywood entertainment.

John Ashcroft, Trent Lott:  you thought they were history.  Yet they insist on coming back to commit an outrage against the body politic one more time.

All is not lost, however; some branches of the government continue to fight the forces of evil for the sake of the common good. If they fail to stop this, it might lead to yodeling about film noir. Or worse, yodeling about UFOs. Or worst of all, opera.

And here's a tip on a related topic: when your choir weighs as much as a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, that's nature's way of telling you something is very wrong.

Some entity named "Radish" has me on a list of favorite blogs over at Kinja.  I'm quite flattered, since the list has only nine blogs on it, and includes luminaries like Terry Teachout (recently confirmed by the Senate as our new Secretary of Amusement), and Alex Ross (who writes for some magazine; I think it's called the Newarker) and other sites I've enjoyed a lot, like Musical Perceptions and aworks and Jessica Duchen and even Superfluities (who gives us another peek at the creative process by telling us about the birthing of a new play).

There are a couple other sites new to me.  Using a kind of crude collaborative filtering, I assume that I should like anything liked by anyone sensible enough to like me.  So I looked at the new sites:  uTopianTurtleTop is an expert on the subject of -- brace yourself -- the Baby Jesus Christmas episode of Dragnet.  Why didn't you people tell me Dragnet had a baby Jesus episode?  What good are you?  The Standing Room is a singer and CD junkie in San Fransisco who is an expert on cantatas about cannibalism.

I don't know who or what Radish is; if you worked your way to the center of the matrix you might find a flesh & blood human there, but I prefer to think it might be a Voyager satellite with vastly expanded intelligence, or better yet, one of those silicon-based life forms that periodically organize themselves spontaneously within the internet and become self-aware (a fact which our government ruthlessly supre*#)%)#>>>>>>>>

Michael Blowhard can't understand graphic designers:

But, as far as I can tell, for many graphic-design people, "good design" is a crusade. They get worked-up about "good design"; for them, the "good" in "good design" is a moral "good" and not just a cool or snazzy "good." Graphic design can save the world! If graphic design could only be set free, then the world's oppressed generally will be set free too.

I wrote a comment to the post, then had my usual reaction:  I don't know what I'm talking about.  I don't know what Michael is trying to say.  If I send this comment, I'll only embarrass myself.  Then I sent it, (although sometimes I don't).  Particularly with the 2Blowhards, I find a strange loss of confidence once I get my ideas written up.  I suppose its because Michael is mainly concerned with the visual arts which is not my area.

Music is my area (supposedly) and Steve Hicken has updated his list of 101 essential pieces of the 20th century.  I'm glad to see Michael Daugherty is now on the list.  Inexplicably, the choir music from Beneath the Planet of the Apes continues to be ignored by everyone but me, however.

I took a quick look at a site Michael mentioned, Design Observer, and found this gem. Those who have looked around my site know I'm a sucker for any discussion of my favorite movie. Favorite that is, if favorite means "watched it a dozen times or more."

I've been listening to a CD I got for Christmas:  music by Constant Lambert.  It was a complete surprise, yet it was what I asked for.  Confused?  It's all thanks to the wizardry of the Amazon.com wish list.  The cool thing about having such a list is that you can add something to it, then months later have no memory of the item ever existing.

So how did I end up putting Constant Lambert on my list?  I don't remember at all, but it was probably one of those "if you like this, you'll like that" recommendations Amazon is always making.  How Amazon figures out those connections is achieved by pure witchcraft, I'm sure.

Wo ist Constant?  I was nervous, thinking she was a contemporary composer that I really should remember.  Well, he was an Englishman who lived 1905-1951 and drank himself to death.  The Rio Grande is his most popular work and was written when he was only 22, a funky grab bag of influences and styles that somehow avoids sounding campy.  I'm particularly interested in his cantata (also on this CD) called Summer's Last Will and Testament.  I'd like to know why the CD cover features a scythe-wielding Death riding over a city on a dragon, like a Nazgul.  This is from the liner notes:

What specifically motivated Lambert [to write the cantata] was the death in 1931, by his own hand, of one of his closest friends, the composer and scholar Philip Heseltine/Peter Warlock.  It was Heseltine who introduced Lambert to the world of Elizabethan music and letters which vitally determines the character of Summer's Last Will.  But Heseltine was also a deeply disturbed character whose influence on younger men was as much destructive as creative.

Uh-oh.  Alarms are going off.  What do they mean, "disturbed," and what's with that name change?  Here's a bit from a bio of Peter Warlock, the composer of some very nice art songs:

Although he had intended settling in Cornwall for a time, Warlock became alarmed at the renewed possibility of military conscription and in August 1917 fled to Dublin where he remained for the next year. During this period he became involved in certain occult practices which Gray claimed were psychologically damaging.

Red alert!  Well, okay, it's possible the occult wasn't the main problem.  Warlock was a drunk and a carouser and mentally unbalanced (possibly schizophrenic, although that's controversial), so he had plenty of arrows in his corruption quiver.  Nevertheless, somebody who would even flirt with the occult cannot have been a Nice Person.

Summer's Last Will, a cantata with surprisingly little singing, is a morbid fantasy:  summer turns to fall, we all turn to worm food, live large while you can, Lord have mercy.  Yow.  This piece has been neglected for many years.  The liner notes blame an indifferent first performance, but the macabre topic must be the real reason.

The wifeosphere informs me some of my music is too morbid for her taste (she claims as "proof" my choral setting of God's Judgment on a Wicked Bishop, wherein a mass-murdering prelate gets eaten alive by rats).  I suppose I fit the profile of a dabbler in the occult, with an eye for the esoteric and the morbid, and an arrogant regard of oneself as "special" and above the rules.  Yet I have never been remotely tempted -- there but for the grace of God....

I'm going to finish this monster post with a little story.  Someone I used to know was a convert to Christianity from a life of drug use.  Shortly after his conversion, he became convinced LSD had opened him up to a demonic influence.  He wanted help, but didn't know where to go.  Finally, he found a book that described a procedure for "self-exorcism", to be used only in extreme need.  My friend said the prayers, and ... well, he had an experience.  He felt as though the spirit left him, accompanied by what seems to be the common thing in these cases:  a bodily discharge.  It was a huge belch that filled the room with a foul odor and an menacing ambiance.  (Regarding self-exorcism:  my friend gave a nervous laugh, then said:  "don't ever do that."  And I would add:  don't create a reality TV show out of it either.)

I'm not trying to prove anything here.  You don't know my friend, and even I can't confirm the accuracy of his account, although I never had any reason to think he was lying.  I'm not under the illusion that one story will change anyone's mind.  On the other hand, I'm not embarrassed to admit I'm comfortable with the possibility of demonic activity.  If you can believe in spirits, and if you can believe they have free wills, then really, the rest follows quite easily.

Mainly I just think this sort of thing is fascinating, and if you are reasonably free of hangups, and reasonably curious, and have a bit of an eye for the bizarre, you should find it fascinating too.  It was in that spirit that on Monday I gave you a link to Philip K. Dick's weird visions, which I believe are nonsense, but hey, I'm not going to shut my eyes to it either (and that business of his son's illness cannot be easily dismissed, if true).  Overly refined sensitivity to religious controversy leaves people sadly ignorant of all the strange, unsettling, sublime and ridiculous experiences this sad old world has seen.

Well, there, I went and alienated half my audience.  In future additions of the Fredosphere, I'll discuss politics I think are stupid, religions I think are evil, people I think are ugly, Haydn, Mozart and other untalented losers, and the influence of the Avignon papacy on modern rigid airship design.  Alone.

There are a few fellow composer/bloggers out there.  One of them commented recently here at the Fredösphere, and I want to reward that behavior, so here, check him out:  Devin Hurd.  He works as a recording professional, and he likes to play games -- dangerous games -- with alternative tunings.  One recent post is titled "Scale of the Day: E Flat Lydian mapped to the Square-root of 2."  I'm not joking.  I once heard of a guy, he messed around with alternate tunings, and he went blind.  Devin, I hope you know what you're doing.

The A Cappella News found a nice article on the great Welsh tradition of men's choirs, born of the coal mining culture.  But I don't envy their rehearsal technique:

Like many Welsh male voice choirs, Morriston Orpheus is a charitable organization that sings to raise money for good causes and doesn't pay its members, except in satisfaction. Humphreys, a trim, energetic man about to retire, says achieving a homogenous sound is more important than nurturing soloists -- though hard-to-find tenors tend to be prima donnas -- and that almost no one in the choir reads music. So it was fascinating to watch Humphreys teach four-part harmonies by rote and then put them together.

Speaking of cave dwellers, the Great Satan is making an effort to win the hearts and minds and discretionary incomes of girls aged 4-8.  Hey! That's my Maharnicess you're messing with.  Apparently, these "Trollz" are not the bottom of the depravity barrel:

Unlike Bratz, the provocatively dressed, multiethnic dolls that were one of this season's best-selling Christmas toys, Trollz would never be caught, said Mike Verrecchia, DIC's senior vice president for marketing, seven or eight at a time, in a Jacuzzi together.

And yet:

...there is a bit of the vamp in the round anime eyes of Trollz and in their anorexic waistlines. And there is something unnerving about the miniature gemstone that begins to glow in the belly of each girl Trollz when, in the videos and cartoons, she comes of age and acquires "special powers," which boy Trollz never will have.

Wifeösphere!  Come in, Wifeösphere!  Initiate Operation Media Lockdown!  Duration, 14 years!  Acknowledge!

As all my regular visitors come straggling back after the holidays (you are coming back, right?) I want to make sure you all read my magnum opus, about the church scene from Beneath the Planet of the Apes.  At this point, I would like to declare myself, on the basis of extremely incomplete information, the world's foremost authority on the topic of choral music in sci-fi.

Let me also point out at this juncture that I know everything there is to know about zeppelins named after anti-popes.

Continuing in my role as sci-fi choirmaster, let me warn you of the existence of a nasty-looking little book called A Choir of Ill Children:

It is, without a doubt, an intriguing read. Despite an oddity that perhaps once was his undeveloped sister emerging from his side and eventually bitten off by his three-headed brothers in a fit of rage, Tom gains the reader’s trust and respect while still maintaining an element of creepy personal ties to the strange community that lives in the swamps. Meanwhile he yearns for, yet despises, the outside “normal” world. Although the unusual swamp people consider normal finger-removal, bread-baking monks, and creatures that sit in the bottom of pits eating chicken bones or anything else that crosses their path for a fifth of moonshine.

Read the review here.  Or better yet, don't.

Labels: PlanetOfTheApes

I invested far too much of my Christmas vacation time on reading Island in the Sea of Time.  (This is all Instapundit's fault.)  It's the story of how the entire population of modern-day Nantucket Island is suddenly transported to 1250 B.C.  It's got lots of cool problem solving (think of it as a Swiss Family Robinson with less smugness and more plot) and anthropological guesswork.  The riskiest move on the part of the author was to make the main character, a Cost Guard captain (and later, the island's de facto military leader) a black lesbian.  At times, she seems complex and believable (if very unusual -- she wields a mean katana).  Later, she turns out to be omnicompetent and downright numinous -- very annoying.  And in the ending of the novel, the author is more concerned with setting up the sequel than giving the reader a satisfying ending.  Sorry buddy, I don't think I'll reward your behavior by reading the next installment.  Not until I retire, anyway.

One way I judge a sci-fi work is the plausibility of its religious environment.  Much of the sci-fi I read growing up fails in this regard, particularly that written by guys like Asimov and Clarke.  Island in the Sea of Time scores very high on this test.  On Nantucket Island, Christians are a presence, and they behave much like any ordinary, complex bunch of people:  the Event disorients them for a while, and a few of them run amok, but most learn to live with the new reality and make it a part of their total metaphysical package.  That's exactly what I would expect.  Not everyone realizes this, but Christianity is a religion which by necessity knows how to display adaptability, maybe because of its early status as a minority religion, with it gestating in the catacombs, where people used fish necklaces to attain mystic mental states and communicate with Elijah -- no, wait, that was Philip K. Dick.

Ron Avitzur showed some adaptability when Apple Computer canceled his project and fired him.  He responded by refusing to stop showing up for work:

I asked my friend Greg Robbins to help me. His contract in another division at Apple had just ended, so he told his manager that he would start reporting to me. She didn't ask who I was and let him keep his office and badge. In turn, I told people that I was reporting to him. Since that left no managers in the loop, we had no meetings and could be extremely productive.

Read it all in The Graphing Calculator Story.

Here we are in the blogosphere echo chamber again.  Some people are commenting on the key personality meme that some of us got started a while back.  My fav is the Bookish Gardener's key analysis via the oeuvre of the Jackson 5.  That's the spirit, BeeGee!

Lately I've been thinking about the value of having a good ear for pitches and keys when memorizing music.  I've been a poor music reader all my life (for piano playing; I can sight read fine for singing).  While working on the A Minor fugue by Shostakovich, I have realized that, for me, getting a piece into the fingers cannot really happen until I have memorized the notes.  As a kid, I would spend months painfully practicing without much progress, until I had memorized by osmosis.  Now, with the Shostakovitch, I'm making the effort to memorize each section before working on the finger technique.

I recall playing an ostinato from Bartok's Mikrokosmos in a piano contest as a high school student.  Some lady came up to me afterwards and complimented me, then mentioned that the memorization must have been hard.  I thought, heck, the memorization was nothing.  I was a vain little twerp back then, though.  Now that I'm older, I'm a vain big twerp, but I have a clearer view of my strengths and weaknesses, and I would like to be a better music reader.  Nevertheless, with the Shoshtakovich, I think I've learned something about how to work within my limits.

What a lame title this post has.

You've read the overhype, now read the post.  Or read the background information in these posts here and here, if you have not already.  Okay, now, let's look at our subject of the day:  the most perfect, wacky, unbelievable example of choral music in sci-fi.  Two great things that go great together.  Except in this case.

It's easy to guess wrong about the future, and the easiest way to be wrong is to indulge in a simplistic extrapolation of trends occurring in one's own time, place, and social group.  You see this all the time in sci-fi, although you might miss it if you come from the same time/place/group as the author. 

One example of this lazy extrapolation that has always bugged me is how promiscuous and irreligious people of the future seem to be.  Sci-fi authors writing in the 60s and 70s lived in a social class that was loosing its religion and its sexual scruples; therefore, they assumed the trend was happening everywhere, and would continue in a straight line forever.  It' a silly mistake, and some authors have avoided it; two examples that come to mind are The Dune series and The Mote In God's Eye.

The assumptions in old sci-fi are obvious because we are removed from the author; this is what makes old sci-fi charming (or ridiculous, depending on its literary quality).  I loved the movie Sky Captain, which was not much more than an exercise is simulated historical sci-fi naievete, which is really a cool concept if you think about it.  What would have been really, really cool is if a sci-fi author of the 1930s had predicted that sci-fi authors of the future would indulge in simulated historical sci-fi naievete.  Darn; where's my time machine?

Pierre Boulez never wrote any sci-fi that I'm aware of, but he seemed to have an opinion about the future of music:  atonal music would win out.  Reality has not yet worked out that way, and Boulez has since mellowed (sort of) but could tonality yet atrophy?

As attorney for the plaintiff, I offer exhibit A:  an excerpt from Beneath the Planet of the Apes.  The scene is the underground cathedral where mutant humans of the future worship a nuclear warhead.  The rock has melted from a nuclear blast long ago, the people are hideously disfigured, and the Anglican liturgy has metastasized.  Hear the Mutant Party at prayer in wma format (212k) or, if you must, mp3 format (506k).

My, wasn't that blasphemous?  Well, as blasphemous as anything can be when it is irredeemably silly.  But did you notice the music?  I guess we could call this religion of the future the Cult of the Wrong Note.  The music is not quite atonal, but it is dissonant, and it has some high passages that would make it vocally taxing.  Yet this congregation pulls it off.  Indeed, when you watch it, you see them standing among the pews, not making much effort at all.  The visuals don't match the audio at all and the whole effect is surreal.

The choir sings a liturgy printed on booklets while worshipping a nuclear warhead: somewhere deep in the belly of this scene, a joke about missal envy is trying to claw its way out.

It would be interesting to find out the decision making behind this bit of futuristic liturgical creation.  Does the blame lie with some ignorant assistant producer who didn't know what to ask for?  Was the composer given too much leeway -- was he even having a bit of fun with this at the movie's expense?  (For a more complementary view, see this excellent account of how the music for the film was made.)

I prefer to view this document as a true picture of the future.  That way, Pierre Boulez can be viewed as a prophet.  Unfortunately, it doesn't work, since (as far as I know) he missed a bunch of other significant details:  mutants, telepathy, the worship of nuclear warheads, not to mention the whole "planet where apes rule men" thing.  Sorry, Pierre.

Labels: PlanetOfTheApes