“Now that — uncertain ends, confident means — is about as good a general definition of creativity as I know.”

-Peter Schjeldahl in the October 12, 2009 New Yorker

(It’s a reminder not to try to control a work’s outcome)
(which turns out to dovetail nicely with some comments on a post from last year)

I should have put this up earlier: my friend Marc (violinist, Brahms, that’s him in the red sweater) is a finalist for the YouTube Symphony, so go vote for him. Today, because today is the last day. (Watch out for the incredibly cheesy video that starts up, and go straight to the Vote button, and search for his instrument, name, and/or composer, and hit the green thumbs-up button)

Beyond just looking out for my friends, I do think he’s the best performer amongst the Brahms choices. He has the clearest, most consistent interpretation, the cleanest sound, and the most rhythmic precision (and for what it’s worth, the best reverb, which sort of points out the problem of this whole thing: it’s pretty hard to compare the dude playing in the hall of his conservatory with the cello section playing scales behind him with the girl in her dorm room…)

But we have what we have. I was checking out the violas, and was really astonished that they all sounded horrible. But it’s the repertoire that was picked for them. The orchestral excerpts, like the development from the finale of Mozart’s 40th Symphony (starting on page 41), are all representative. But because of that, they’re not particularly showcases for the instrument. The viola’s problem, always, has been one of size: it’s too small to make the notes it’s tuned for, and as a result, it not only has a nasal sound, but it’s also very quiet (only the double bass has a worse problem in the string section).

The Mozart and Brahms excerpts, and even more the Rossini, and also the Beethoven’s Fifth to a lesser extent, show how composers have dealt with the problem when they need the viola to sound out. (more…)

“Imperfection is the mother of style.”

From My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk.

See also last month’s post and this one, too, for context.

Well, I’m back from Japan. It wasn’t a particularly explicitly musical visit, we only made it to one performance of anything and that was kabuki at the kabuki-za, which had some musical features (excellent use of the woodblock, for example) but the act that we saw was not predominantly musical. I also completely failed in my endeavor to hear some live gagaku (more…)

Warning: this post is going to be a bit Inside Baseball.

Just before I began vacuuming this morning, I turned on the last.fm channel for Steve Reich. I like last.fm, but it does have its eccentricities, like a few days ago when within an hour of starting the Monteverdi channel, I had already heard Berlioz and Verdi. So this morning, within three songs, it had, of course migrated to Xenakis, but by that time, I was making a ruckus with the vacuum cleaner.

I believe that, given the situation, David Byrne would lambaste my vacuuming, as well as all modern appliances because they are alienating. New father and Ph.D (late congratulations!) The Rambler would boldly defend my right to make noise with the vacuum and also to listen to Xenakis. Kyle Gann would first bemoan David Byrne for ignoring all of the good that electrical appliances have done for us, but also tell me that I’m making an error by trying to make music with my vacuum that is as complex as Xenakis’s. Daniel Stephen Johnson would accuse Kyle Gann of not understanding the difference between “modern” appliances and “electrical” appliances while declaring that his favorite music is when the vacuum gets attached to him and gives him a giant welt on the tummy. Darcy James Argue would try desperately to get everyone to calm down, but take a kick at the obscurist vacuum, anyway. Kyle Gann would post a photo of himself enjoying a modern and electrical appliance in order to establish that he was into modern electrical appliances long before Daniel Stephen Johnson was born. Daniel Stephen Johnson would write an update and go on vacation. The Rambler would offer us all food.

In the mean time, The Universe would make its own decision by pulling the plug on the electricity for just long enough that my computer would turn off, rendering gnarly Xenakis silent. Apparently The Universe prefers the gnarly sounds of the vacuum, which stopped for a brief moment and started right up again.

—–

If that didn’t make sense, if it’s full of false analogies and poor logic and confusing conclusions, good, because none of this stuff - trying to tell young composers what style of music they ought to write - ever made sense.

I’m glad that other bloggers have also been a bit uninspired recently. Myself, I’ve been to plenty of things that should have stimulated me to write something - Rossini (go Mr. Continuo Player for the inspired Pink Panther Theme when Basilio enters), student concerts, mostly excellent piano music at the Bouffes du Nord, Pascal Dusapin’s attractive new opera (though it was more of a staged monologue), Medea, Pascal Dusapin’s not-quite-right sound installation with Richard Serra’s sort of overwhelming sculpture at the Grand Palais (why do neither Serra nor Dusapin have websites???), but nothing was quite worth writing about. I even went to see J Mascis playing drums for some band called Witch, but, well, they were terrible. You get what you pay for at the Fleche d’or, which is to say, nothing, right?* (more…)

The tea shop outside our building hosts a band each Sunday morning. It’s a big shopping time in our neighborhood, since most stores close at around 1pm, and everything is closed on Mondays. Normally, when I walk out the door on the way to the green market, I’m serenaded by chanson française, or something a little like Mahler’s second exploit, or maybe if the band is being really edgy, they might be playing something like Puff the Magic Dragon. All family-friendly stuff designed to get the kids to stop and listen and dance and cry a little bit, thereby sucking mom and dad into the cute tea shop.

This morning, I left the house and immediately burst out laughing because the band was playing Sweet Child O’ Mine. It was embarrassing, especially since I was still laughing when I crossed in front of the band. I wasn’t laughing because I don’t like the song (as I confided to Sarah a few days ago, though I probably shouldn’t admit to it here, Sweet Child o’ Mine is probably a candidate for my five favorite pop songs ever - but in my defense there are probably one or two hundred contenders for the list and I don’t know how I’d possibly narrow it down). It wasn’t even because it was incredibly bad - they weren’t exactly a great band (and the drummer was playing some sort of African-looking lap-drum, which didn’t help), but they played passably - but because of how unexpected it was. Last week was Klezmer, so for some reason I was really expecting the same thing again, and when it turned out to be cheesy but excellent 80s hard rock, it made me laugh.

I’ve been meaning to put this up for a while, it’s from Adam Gopnik’s article on abridging classic novels in the Sept. 22 New Yorker. I truly do not work at the speed of blog. Anyway, here it is, first on Moby Dick:

“The subtraction does not turn good work into hackwork; it turns a hysterical, half-mad masterpiece into a sound sane book.”

And in conclusion:

“The real lesson of the compact editions is not that vandals shouldn’t be let loose on masterpieces but that masterpieces are inherently a little loony. They run on the engine of their own accumulated habits and weirdnesses [is weirdnesses a legitimate-enough word for the New Yorker? really? awesome!] and self-indulgent excesses. They have to, since originality is, necessarily, something still strange to us, rather than something that we already know about and approve. What makes writing matter is not a story, clearly told, but a voice, however odd or ordinary, and a point of view, however strange or sentimental. Books can be snipped at, and made less melodically muddled, but they lose their overtones, their bass notes, their chesty resonance — the same thing that happens, come to think of it, to human castrati.”

I’ve left in the weird analogy to castrati at the end, because I think it’s part of his point - a creative artist has to be fearless enough to make really really weird, rather unpleasant analogies. (more…)