Natasha came and sat on my head this morning as I was trying to get up - because of the delay that the cat engendered (how can get out of bed if the cat is sitting on your head?), I got to listen to the radio-alarm longer than normal, nearly half-an-hour, actually. They, RTL, were doing a feature on a French singer, Bernard Lavilliers, and played a song called “On the Road Again” - entirely in French except the chorus. It’s very eighties, somewhere between Don Henley and Richard Marx, with lots of synthetic everything, though quite pretty nonetheless. It’s in a nice minor and nicely proportioned. The second chorus has a nifty Gainsbourg-ian (Gainsbourien) flourish, with women’s chorus backing up the melody in twisted harmonies.
(I’d like to embed the video from youtube, but I’m having some technical problems. For now, just head here)
But in my current dual roles as setter-of-French-text and teacher-of-English, what stood out to me was his setting of the English text. Spoken French lacks the inherent accents that we have in English. This is one of the reasons English is a so much more efficient language - the English “that thing” becomes, in spoken French, “ce truc-là” - the added word, là, providing the emphasis that in English would be provided by verbally accenting “that.”
What’s problematic with the song is that it is set as though it were French - without clear accentuation. (more…)
My latest spam comment, refreshingly, was not selling prescription drugs, but was instead on the subject of Ozzie Osbourne, Tool, and Pantera. I wish it hadn’t been spam - I’d love it if some metalheads were interested in either my music or my thoughts on music. Why, oh why dear spam comment need you be so spammy? Come, heavy metal fans, visit me! And listen to this, this, and and maybe even this, even try all three at the same time, it’s sort of neat - you might like it? Queensryche was my favorite band for years, so if you like them…
The music, by the way is, respectively, The Future Croulebarbe, the fourth movement of the Six Short Pieces for Piano, and the Prelude and Fantasia
Glad to see others are just getting to Bernard Holland, too. But I have to take exception with this guy - I think this is the sort of response that Holland was trying to provoke. I take one small but representative quotation:
“You want to cater to the masses. We have that in pop concerts everywhere, but does that advance the cause of art? Of course, that is not their concern, but should it not be yours?”
I’m not even going to get into the drawn dichotomy between “pop” and “art” - why bother… but… Am I really supposed to be “advanc[ing] the cause of art” when I write a piece of music? (more…)
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…)
Natasha came and sat on my head this morning as I was trying to get up - because of the delay that the cat engendered (how can get out of bed if the cat is sitting on your head?), I got to listen to the radio-alarm longer than normal, nearly half-an-hour, actually. They, RTL, were doing a feature on a French singer, Bernard Lavilliers, and played a song called “On the Road Again” - entirely in French except the chorus. It’s very eighties, somewhere between Don Henley and Richard Marx, with lots of synthetic everything, though quite pretty nonetheless. It’s in a nice minor and nicely proportioned. The second chorus has a nifty Gainsbourg-ian (Gainsbourien) flourish, with women’s chorus backing up the melody in twisted harmonies.