The Fredösphere

I realized that, as I wrote yesterday's post, my thoughts drifted from the real point of the Cult of the Composer, which is not about Historically Informed Performance so much as a simple submission to the music as it appears on the page. In fact, I feel that the Cult, even in that reduced form, is not completely without problems.

I'll use Randall Thompson's Alleluia as an example, since I'm familiar with it and the controversy surrounding it. Written as a horrified response to the rise of fascism and European war, Thompson indicated a tempo of lento for the piece . . . which almost everyone ignores. Here's a (not outlying) example:



Sometimes, performances of this Alleluia are shockingly brisk. Is Thompson right, or the mob? Well, if by the mob you mean a very large group of highly-trained and talented choral conductors, I answer: the mob!

Alleluia simply doesn't work slow. Thompson made a mistake; it's just that simple. His emotions, while perfectly valid, do not translate to the piece. His dread is an artifact; an accident that has no bearing on the music, however strong both may have become entangled in his mind. Nobody thinks of invading Nazis when they hear this piece except the composer, and he was wrong. Wrong! Compounding the problem is the work's problematic key and register, which cause unaccompanied singers to loose pitch, especially at a slow tempo—but that's a secondary issue; the real point is, doing it slow is just wrong!

Whew. And now, some bonus goodies:

What do you get when you combine a big dumb object with retro-futurism and Nazis, and shake them for one minute? Atlantropia, that's what:



And finally, John C. Wright informs us that officials in Saxony want all Germans to obey the law and pay for the television license, and that means all Germans, even Friedrich Schiller!

Labels: Architecture, Choral, Composer, Futurism, VideoClip

That scraping sound you hear is my lazy rear end dragging itself to the keyboard to feed sweet wordlets to the loyal fans of Der Pfredöspher. (Hi, Tante Gertie!) Today, I bring a handful of webcandy; I hope soon to offer something more substantial.

Item One. Blogger Allen H. Simon describes a nifty programming idea: a concert of nothing but misattributed works. (I.e., Pseudo-Buxtehude, etc.) Then he goes and steps in it by attacking the Cult of the Composer. Yes, comments are open, and yes, the powdered wigs are flying. I'm sympathetic to the urge to demystify. Ultimately, composers are at the mercy of performers (especially dead composers!) and a stupid but well-researched performance cannot come close to an intelligently ideosyncratic one, in my opinion. Note the bad faith, or simple failure to understand the argument, of the purists who comment, and yet, I understand their fear as well. If only there were a way to prevent HIP (Historically Ignorant Performance) while letting the smart people have free reign. Perhaps a license of some kind could be issued. Shoot, if it were to be had from the Michigan Secretary of State's office, the long wait itself would weed out the lazy. Another problem: Solved! By the Fredösphere!

Item Two. I loved this quote found by Eve Tushnet:

Uyeda says that his approach to cocktail-making is grounded in the Japanese tea ceremony. It is an "adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order."
--"Tokyo, Cocktail Capital of the World," Hugh Garvey, in Best Food Writing 2009

Those words "adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence" ripped me out of, well, the sordid facts of my everyday existence, and wonderfully expresses exactly why I make art. Like the setting of the words of the Christmas angels, "Fear not! For behold. . . ." Or for that matter, the fantasy story about neurotic chiropractors that I wrote last week. (No; really.)

Item Three. Ten thousand thanks to David Price, my new best friend that I don't know. He gave me a very kindly review of my chamber jazz space opera They're Made Out of Meat, available as an electronic download for 89 lousy cents at Amazon. (Go buy the thing! Now! What are you waiting for?) He said my opera is "[p]layed absolutely straight by The Fredosphere, which is what makes it so great. The best $0.89 I spent all day." No notice has given me quite such a thrill, since so far as I know David is utterly unconnected to me (other than that whole "All Men are Brothers" thing everyone's talking about). Even Alex Ross linking to me, back in the pioneer days, although far more flattering, seems less shocking, since we are brothers of the blog, after all.

Labels: Creativity, Culture, Performance, They're Made Out Of Meat

I break my blogging fast (caused by laziness, not any Lenten devotion) to point out yet another computer that writes music. This one attempts to write new music in the style of an existing composer after analyzing his oeu·vre.

Apparently the project is stuck in that "90 percent done" state. Lot's a luck, guys. Will there ever be an algorithm of this kind that rises above the level of a toy? I ain't holding my breath.

Labels: Compooters, Creativity

André Michelle has made an addictive sequencer-like music toy and put it on the web. If you are, like me, someone who pines for evidence that auto-generators of non-sucky music need not rely on minimalist forms and the pentatonic scale, prepare to be disappointed once again. Still, the interface is so easy, it really is a tool that everyman can use to make music that is, as I said, non-sucky.

More ambitious, yet much higher on the suckiness scale, is CODEORGAN. I entered the URL of this blog and, by an algorithm which I didn't bother to research, my blog was turned into a pop song. C'mon, guys, the Fredösphere must sound better than that. You haven't come close to capturing its essence. It's soul.

(Both these toys come via the Daily Zeitgeist at Seed Magazine.)

Labels: Creativity, MusicTheory

How is it I made it to my forty-nth birthday (yesterday) without knowing it (almost) coincides (probably) with the birthday of the guy I was named after?

Bonus material: check out this truly horrifying bit of Prohibition History and the role of musicians in in predicting the future.

Labels: Composer, Culture, Futurism

Oh dear. They tolerated his clown costume. They forgave his use of Leonard Cohen songs. They pretended not to notice the Hawaiian shirt. But when the new vicar decided to fire the church choir director, that's when people drew the line.

Labels: Choral, Religion

You ought to visit Dark Roasted Blend for many reasons (for the retro-futurist art—yummy!—or the totalitarian architecture or non-Egyptian pyramids—yee-ha!) but today especially go see the World's Most Magnificent Pipe Organs.

I had to smile as DRB made a few mistakes with the terminology on a topic obviously unfamiliar to it. Like not knowing how to count how many manuals an organ has, or possibly meaning "ranks" when it says "rows" of pipes. (Where did they get that? The Wikipedia entry cited does not contain that word. Did they translate a foriegn source a little too literally?)

As a bonus, there's a bit of tantalizing information on "acoustic locators" intended to be used as aircraft detectors by a pre-radar Imperial Japanese military. They look like something you'd find if you dissected a 40-ton bat.

Labels: Organ