About the Composer

Frank Pesci raised an interesting question on his interesting blog today. I wanted to comment, but his site doesn’t allow comments from non-”Blogger”-ers. The basic question is:

Why is “do”, “C.” Meaning, why has the default understanding of the solfege syllable “do” become synonymous with the English character “C” (and not “A”)?

And some related points are:

A few things need to be sorted out before we begin. First is the fact that only English speaking countries use the English alphabet (A through G with accidentals) to delineate pitches. Next, we will forego the initial usage of Guido of Arezzo’s system of, essentially, movable “ut,” and focus on the common acceptance of the fixed “do” system, with “do” corresponding to the note associated with the English letter “C.”

First, a correction: It’s not true that only English speaking countries use letter names for pitches. They do so in Germany and in Central/Eastern Europe as well. You may sometimes see “B” for what we call “B Flat” and “H” for what we call “B”.

As for the main question, I don’t have all the answers, but I suspect it has something to do with the letter names system being based on the minor scale (in movable do, the minor scale starts on “la”). If we equate “la” to “A”, the relative major is “C”, or “do”. There’s no real significance to the letter “C”, and the answer lies not in fixed “do”, but actually in movable “do”. So, whereas Guido d’Arezzo’s system of syllables uses the major scale as a basis (do [ut], re, mi, etc.), letter names use the minor scale.

I’m no musicologist; this is just a guess. Please comment if you have a more thorough explanation.

By the way, the origin of those solfege syllables is explained pretty well here.

If you know Frank, please pass this along. Meanwhile, I’m adding him to “Other Blogs”.

I’ve made some changes to this site, which may be confusing to regular visitors. In an effort to do away with my now superfluous old pre-blog static site, I’ve reorganized a bit.

The main change, which I’m sure will cause all kinds of problems, is that the blog itself is now at www.aboutthecomposer.com/blog, instead of at the root. I’ve decided to have a somewhat more static home page for the benefit of visitors who don’t really know what a blog is.

Also, as much as I liked the spiffy fly-out submenus, I don’t think they were working very well, so now my categories and blogroll are visible on every page at the left, along with more direct links to my career stuff.

Fun stuff on the new home page, by the way. Have a look.

The writing’s been on the wall for years, and it has finally happened. Tower Records, once the only place in some cities with a decent classical selection, is gone. Stephen Brookes of The Washington Post has an upbeat take on it.

Yes, as good as the selection was, it’s nothing compared to that of online stores, and increasingly, download services. Personally, I rarely buy CDs anymore, and if I do, it’s online. On the other hand, in the past year or so, I’ve done a lot of spontaneous buying on iTunes, because it’s so easy and inexpensive. Plus, this way, I can get that Symphony of Psalms without having to own yet another Poulenc Gloria, which is something that has always bugged me about CDs.

Not being much of an audiophile, I’m not even bothered by the supposedly degraded quality of MP3 and similar files. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.

So, yeah, I’m happy with all that. But, being the nostalgia nut that I am, I have to say it is a bit sad. I was in my teens when the first Tower in D.C. opened, and I have fond memories of hours spent hanging around in there. Then, when I was in college in Philadelphia, a magnificent Tower “Classical Annex” opened at 10th and South, and this became a major hangout. (My lack of a social life is a subject for another post. Or not.)

But, progress is progress. The fact is, I don’t ever go into record stores, so there’s no point in mourning Tower for nostalgia’s sake. As for the future, I expect that the download services will continue to improve, as they have so far, in terms of selection, pricing and ease of use. I also predict that more record stores will close, and that eventually CDs will be the domain of used book and record stores. That’s fine; I would like to see places like that thrive.

P.S. — I’ve added Stephen Brookes’ blog most of the shebang to my “Other Blogs” list. He’s one of the Post’s classical music critics, and a deeply experienced journalist and photographer. There’s a trove of great writing on his site.

P.P.S. — There’s a related post on Dog and Pony Show, another interesting blog. This writer is apparently from the Sacramento area where Tower Records originated.

Photo credit: Original Tower Records Sign by Tom Spaulding via Flickr.

MySpace has failed to capture my interest, although I was an early adopter (and gradual dropper) of similar services, such as Friendster and LinkedIn.  Friendster, which I believe originated this social networking phenomenon, seems to be purely for social interaction, which is fine, but not for everyone. (Plus, it makes me feel old.)  LinkedIn, is all-business and not particularly well suited to artistic professions, but it’s improving with time.

Classical Lounge seems promising in that it’s very specific to folks in classical music, which means less noise and more potential for a being useful networking tool.  It’s very clean and focused, and it’s easy to figure out.    Setting up a profile is completely painless. Give it a try. The network is small now, but you can help it grow.

David has a good overview of how Classical Lounge is different from MySpace, and Hugh Sung has a good description of how it works.

Here’s my profile, so you can see what it looks like.

Well, I made it! The first post in the About the Composer archive is dated August 17, 2005.

The blog started out as I was just rolling up my sleeves to work on Letter To Hungary, a commission I had recently received.  I thought it would be fun to write about the evolution of the piece. There was a bit of that, but eventually I found myself writing about all sorts of other things, including interesting friends, interesting music and my very interesting son.

As a one-year retrospective, I’m putting links to some of my more popular posts below in the “Related Posts” box (in reverse chronological order).

It’s been fun, and I plan to continue indefinitely. Thanks for reading!

Last month aworks wrote something that has fascinated me ever since:

I just have no interest in harmony. I can’t hear it, I don’t enjoy it when I recognize it, it’s boring to read about, etc. Timbre on the other hand…

It had never occurred to me that one can enjoy music without enjoying harmony. You might read that and think, “Goodness, how closed-minded!” That’s a matter of opinion; to me it’s a perfectly valid point of view, although I don’t share it. (I do agree that harmony is pretty boring to read about, but sometimes we just have to.)

If anything, my own closed-mindedness is exactly the opposite. I rarely enjoy music where the emotional content is not driven by harmony; where it’s all about timbre and nothing else. (Although, for some reason, I do quite like Varèse.) My mind wanders during 12-tone music, and music that’s all about timbre and/or atmosphere, like that of George Crumb, for example. Harmony, not necessarily tonality, is the key to activating the listener’s Emotional Goose Bumps.

Not that I don’t appreciate timbre at all. It’s a major component of lots of music that I like: Stravinsky’s Les Noces is largely about timbre, as is most of Steve Reich’s music, which I thoroughly enjoy.

Back in the late Eighties, a fellow composition student and I became obsessed with a relatively recent work he had discovered. Joseph Schwantner’s Sparrows, for soprano and chamber ensemble, combines all of your favorite late-20th-Century shtick with accessible, almost-cloying-but-not-quite lyricism.

Largely based on a pattern of fifths, the harmonic language is devised in a way so as to avoid predictability. It’s a cycle using familiar diatonic-sounding harmonies, although it avoids triads and the harmonic progression never really resolves. For example (I use the terms “minor” and “major” very loosely here): B-flat minor - down to G-flat major - down to F minor - down to D-flat major down to C-minor, etc. In other words, down a major third, down a minor second… resolution never occurs. But it’s beautiful to hear.

(Oops. Sorry…. just made you read about harmony.)

This harmonic idea is combined with some aleatory, humming string players, bowed vibes, etc., making for a richly interesting sound experience.

Have a listen:

“Sparrows” is a well-rounded work too: there’s a “B” section to, which contrasts the material I’ve just described beautifully. It’s not as immediately accessible; quite dark and angular in fact.

Check out the instrumentation in this little 45-second clip.

It’s the Lieber and Stoller song “I Keep Forgettin’”, recorded in the early Sixties by Chuck Jackson. I’m really enjoying the syncopation and the crazy percussion, particularly the little xylophone riff, which if you listen carefully, you’ll notice is actually doubled with piano. Very cool effect.

Chuck Jackson is best known for having recorded the Bacharach songs “Any Day Now” and “I Wake Up Crying”. This song turned up on The Very Best of Chuck Jackson 1961-1967. I like his voice a lot, but after about the fourth or fifth song, this album wears thin. The songs are all too similar to hold my attention, and some of the lyrics are just unbearable.

But, I’m mainly in it for the arrangements.

Just came down from doing a bit of bedtime reading to my son. Tonight’s selection was a little on the long side compared to the usual fare, so found myself looking for ways to make it more interesting for myself as well as my son.

I thought it would be fun to see if I could make good decisions on the fly about which words to emphasize, where and for how long to pause, what to do with pitch and tone, etc. Eventually, I realized what it was I was doing:

Acting.

Not that I was any good at it. I’ve never acted before; in fact, ever since school I’ve gone to great lengths to avoid any form of public speaking. But having been involved with theater for many years, the craft of acting is something I’ve thought about a lot, and I admire people who do it well. It’s harder than most people think.

Meanwhile, during all this I was also thinking about how much fun it would be to do a little semi-staged duet based on this particular book. My “acting” choices were merging into composition choices.

Here’s the thing: to write good dramatic music you need to use the same bone in your head that actors use when they’re doing what they do. Especially in opera, where the performer doesn’t have a lot of room for interpretation, you’re the one making the acting choices.

In a straight play, an actor can trial-and-error dozens of different line readings until he or she finds the “right” one. It can even change from night to night. But, if it’s sung, the composer has already made that decision for the actor, and there usually isn’t much latitude for reinterpretation.

(Hopefully, the composer has given it some thought.)

As long as I’m kvelling about other bloggers, today I notice that Fredösphere shares my enthusiasm for Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest, both the film and the score.

Fred’s comparison with Philip Glass is valid, and that opening montage is a great combination of music and image.

I first encountered that “Overture” when I was in my teens. I was sitting at a piano playing some sort of noodley-noodley ersatz Philip Glass thingy, when a friend pointed out that it sounded just like the North By Northwest “Overture”, so I had to check it out.

Does anyone know if there’s a study score available, by the way? Some other Bernard Herrmann scores are out there, but I haven’t seen this one. I once did a fairly meticulous mental transcription of the basic material, but I’d love to see the real thing.

It’s been a while since I’ve added a new blog to the set of feeds that I monitor regularly, and I almost never add anything new to my “Other Blogs” list (see the flyout menu to the left). Recently I added Red Black Window the blog of composer and Renaissance man Roger Bourland, who may be the most like-minded music blogger I’ve encountered so far.

For one thing, Roger shares my interest in the study or non-”classical” music, and we’ve both been caught analysing 60’s rock, only he’s a lot better at it. Here’s a post I wish I’d written. I wish I had time to piece together exactly what he’s up to, but there are several posts where he appears to be giving composition lessons to Rufus Wainwright, about whose music he is now preparing a book.

I’ve only scratched the surface. Please also take a look at Roger’s “traditional” web site, which is a work of art in itself (you’ll need your Flash plugin in working order). Having spent some time in the “Listening Area” there, I can say that he and I are like-minded aesthetically as well as, uh, bloguetically.

P.S. - Roger and I also share views on botanical-infused spirits.