More fallout from my lecture at Stony Brook.

One of the students responded to the music I played them - 2 of the Preludes for Harpsichord, for Baroque Trio by comparing the sound of the harpsichord to horror movie music, or even better, to the music in the haunted houses or the especially the castle worlds in Super Mario Bros. This took me totally off-guard, but as soon as I heard it, it was pretty obvious. The harpsichord at the beginning of the first movement - high dissonant chords in funny rhythms kind of like screaming - does everything it should to fit the part.

The fact that I didn’t think of the harpsichord’s connotation in the popular imagination as a spooky instrument beforehand makes me nervous. I thought about The Doors, even though I sort of hate them, and of course I know the classical literature from the Baroque to Ligeti etc. But how did I miss the most basic contemporary cultural allusion that the instrument implies? (more…)

I’m back from New York. It was a long trip, and a good one. Two premieres is always a good thing. I also got to give two talks about my music and came back with a litany of new projects to work on.

The first of the talks was a nearly-impromptu affair for a first-year seminar at Stony Brook. The professor, who is running Stony Brook’s big premieres festival and for whom I used to TA, wanted me to come in and talk about the creative process. So, obviously, the conversation turned largely to a discussion of humor in music. Why not?

But the most interesting thing happened after the talk, when I got an email from one of the students in the class. The student asked me if I knew any “instrumental post-rock,” particularly Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mogwai, and The Red Sparowes . Of course, I’d heard of Godspeed (how could you forget a name like that?), but I’d never delved into the genre. In fact, I didn’t really know there was a genre called post-rock. I knew there was stuff kind of like this, but I didn’t know it had a name…

So I gave each of the above a listen. The first thing that surprised me was how bright each band sounded, not including Godspeed’s spoken word material. I was expecting something little more like Judas Priest or Pantera - relentless loudness and darkness - but found that especially the latter two were producing textures more like Nico Muhly, whom, as we all know, writes too prettily for his own good. (I don’t know why precisely so much of my blog seems to involve Nico, whom I’ve never met. I find his blog very engaging, and when the New Yorker writes a feature about you, you have to expect some snarky references, but that doesn’t explain it entirely…)

The second, well, not-exactly-surprise, was the extent to which I have a hard time hearing this music as “rock.” Which I guess makes it “post-rock.” But at what point does the pendulum swing far enough to make this stuff into genre no longer affiliated with rock? It struck me that there’s a parallel between the idea of post-rock and Kyle Gann’s concept of the post-classic. (more…)

Two days after attending the Paris Opera’s production of Paul Hindemith’s opera, Cardillac, I am left with two nagging, unsettling questions:

1) Mr. Hindemith, a major triad at the end? Was it really that happy an ending?

[note to self: In the future, resist the urge to end your pieces with a perfect chord unless it’s really musically justifiable!]

2) What was up with the midget in the dream sequence in the second act?

[I use the word midget here instead of something more sensitive because it really felt exploitative watching him. Like not, I’m watching a small person, but really I’m watching a midget, good god! Was this in the stage directions - in which case why wasn’t it ignored?! - or, even worse, is it some sort of contemporary reinterpretation? Or, if I simply attended the opera more often, would I discover that there’s a small person in the troupe, who’s gotta have work????]

Those incidents aside, it was an interesting trip. The opera itself is a bit uneven - some parts, like the final scene other than that major chord, glisten while others fall a bit flat. There’s not much to hold on to other than constant gyrations, though certain textures and harmonies clearly cycle back regularly. (I wonder whether the regularly-returning jostle-y dotted music connoting devious action was exactly the same figure each time or not) But some of the problem here might be that I have a very hard time perceiving the connection between melodies operatically sung and what’s going on in the orchestra. (more…)