About the Composer

This week it’s Frank Zappa. I was a fan as a kid, long before I knew that he was also a “composer”, and long before I really knew what a composer was. In particular, Just Another Band From L.A. was a staple in our house, thanks to my older brother, and I was the only tween in our neighborhood who could recite and sing “Billy the Mountain” in its entirety.

When I was in college, I encountered 200 Motels for the first time via an obsessed friend. I never got that familiar with it, but some of it made a lasting impression on me. Roger blogged about it a few weeks ago, and I was more recently reminded of it for other reasons.

What I’m currently listening to over and over again is the song “Strictly Genteel”, an overblown pop anthem that serves as the finale of the movie. Having not listened to this stuff in many, many years, I’m more keenly aware of Zappa as an orchestral composer. We all know that he was good at aping Varèse and Webern, but this song shows his more transparent and lyrical side. I like the way he moves back and forth between the two worlds.

Let me walk you through some of “Strictly Genteel”. Here’s the opening, just to get oriented. The lyrics are, of course, hilarious (to me, anyway).

Lord, Have mercy on the people in England
For the terrible food these people must eat
Etc.

(This is Theodore Bikel singing, by the way. Not one of the more prominent things on his bio, I’ll bet.)

A bit later, after one of several odd transitions, we get to hear the full-blown anthem theme in its over-the-top splendor. Again, pretty funny lyrics.

God help the winos, the junkies and the weirdos
And every person who’s adrift in the storm
Etc.

Now, here’s an instrumental (well wordless anyway) interlude that I like a lot. It reminds me of a passage in the “Wild Nights!” movement from John Adams’ Harmonium.

Next, winding up toward the end, it’s a wonderful chromatic variation on the anthem theme, followed by an episode that I think is absolutely beautiful. Again, I must highlight some lyrics.

Lord have mercy on the hippies and faggots
On the narcs and the weird little children they grow
Help the black man
Help the poor man
Help the milkman
Help the doorman

(Let me know if I don’t have that quite right.)

So, immediately after completing my last post, I went on to do my usual cursory scan of current news, and discovered that my last post was the wrong post.

As I was writing, throngs of thickheaded people were in the middle of making a mockery of the 1956 uprising by disrupting the day’s events, chanting inane nationalistic slogans and provoking the police to resort to teargas, rubber bullets and water cannons.

So much for national unity.

Just in case you happened to read about this in the American press, I must clear up a few things, because the reporting has been fairly shallow and misleading.

• There is no parallel between this and what happened in 1956
• There is no parallel between what happened in 1956 and what happened in 2003 in Iraq.
• Yes, the Socialist Prime Minister recently stepped in dogshit, and he’ll need to face that sooner or later.
• No, he shouldn’t resign
• What happened today was clearly planned carefully by extreme-right elements, hoping to exploit the PM’s current weakness.

You might say I have a point of view on this, I guess.

Thanks to Scott for use of the photo above.

Today, October 23rd is the 50th anniversary of the 1956 uprising. Ordinary citizens took to the streets, temporarily forcing Soviet tanks out of the capital, Budapest. For a two-week period, Hungary was free. Of course, the Soviets returned on November 4th with reinforcements, and that was that.

I lived in Budapest in 1989, when the uprising began to be discussed freely for the first time since it happened, and I’ve been fascinated with the topic ever since. Over the past summer, I helped out a bit with some translation-related work on the upcoming documentary film Torn From the Flag and had the priviledge of seeing some unbelievable archival footage. You can view some similar footage, as well as photos and other information, on the 1956 Portal.

If you’re in the Bay Area, please drop by my wife’s Open Studio this weekend. She’s a sculptor who works in bronze and, more recently, cast glass.

It’s all afternoon both Saturday and Sunday. Details are here, and here are galleries of her work: Sculpture, Drawings

This is part of the annual San Francisco Open Studios organized by ArtSpan.

Also, we’re literally a five-minute walk from the spectacular new de Young museum which opened last year in Golden Gate Park, so make a day of it!

Poking among some neglected subscriptions in Google Reader, I just came across this interesting approach to learning how to sing atonal, or otherwise difficult, music. This is from The Concert, the blog of a New York soprano.

In a nutshell, the idea is to break the piece into smaller tasks, the first being to concentrate on one small section at a time. Within each section, strip the material of text and rhythm, only focusing at first on the pitches. Basically, learn the string of pitches one interval at time.

But, here’s the part that, for me, makes this so smart: in learning this string of intervals, sing against some held note on the piano. Our soprano suggests finding the closest thing to a tonal center, or just “C”. I would suggest looking at the accompaniment to the material you’re learning, and find something prominent there to sing against, so you’re ahead of the game when you actually get to the point of singing with accompaniment. If the music is well-crafted, there should be all kinds of things in the accompaniment to support the singer.

Now, personally, I don’t write (or like) atonal music in general, and I think it’s particularly problematic for the voice as an instrument, but I really admire this soprano for being willing to take these careful measures to get it right!

I’m also not a huge fan of Modus Novus, that bain of musicianship students everywhere, which contains atonal sight singing exercises, but I recognize it as a necessary evil. Along those lines, I think the technique described here is a great approach to doing those exercises, not only for singers, but all musicians, no matter what their instrument is.

The sewer project has turned out to be a complete fiasco. It now appears that my studio is going to look like this for at least a couple more weeks.

Meanwhile, I’d been revising Letter To Hungary for its upcoming second performance, and the parts are just about due. I’ve been forced to work at my desk, where I do have Sibelius, but it’s not hooked up to any playback gear.

Yes, over the past four years or so, I’ve become spoiled by Sibelius playback. Fortunately, it’s mostly about tweaking dynamic markings and orchestration, so there’s really no need to play anything back, but today I did grapple with one very important passage that needed some relatively elaborate reworking. It was a struggle, but I got it done.

I’m not sure how I feel about this phenomenon with Sibelius. I was never one of those geniuses who writes everything in his head, but I did use to be able to accomplish a lot without being able to play back what I was writing. You know… back when it was pencil and paper. In cases where I needed to hear how harmonies progressed, I would plonk it out on the piano. But here’s the thing: I’m not a good pianist, and I rarely write for piano. Sibelius playback has saved me countless hours trying to work out composition problems by playing back exactly what’s on the page instead of the best my fingers can accomplish.

If my inner hearing has suffered, other aspects of composing have improved. Writing for strings, for example, was enhanced I think because Sibelius lets me think orchestrally. Also, I work much more quickly now than ever. I’ve learned to get my ideas down without agonizing over whether they’ll work. I play back frequently and do trial and error and triage until the problems are solved.

As for my revisions, I’m mostly satisfied. I had shown the piece to my former teacher (thanks, C.S.!), who had some wonderful suggestions. One in particular I simply can’t pull off under the current circumstances, which I regret.

After this, I’m just holding off on composing until I get my room back. I guess I’ll catch up on paperwork

Normally, I avoid writing about what everyone else is writing about, but I can’t help jumping on the Steve Reich bandwagon, as we celebrate the composer’s 70th birthday. I’m certainly as much of a fan as anyone else.

Right now, I’m listening to a big Steve Reich retrospecdtive on NPR’s Fresh Air. I seem to remember Fresh Air being where I first heard Reich interviewed around 1986 or so. Check out the interviews here.

As always, it’s interesting to hear him speak about his work, and there’s no doubt of his important innovations. But, when it comes down to it, I just plain enjoy his music. It’s pleasing and infectious. The technical stuff doesn’t particularly interest me any more. When I was a student he was so controversial; the sort of thing that made my teachers roll their eyes. I’m really glad he now gets appropriate recognition.

Oh, and there’s a tempting new 5-disc retrospective CD . Hmmmm….. Is it really only $31?

Here’s today’s excuse for not composing. Jackhammers, I tell you. Jackhammers.

The picture is taken from the window of my home office. They’re cutting through the driveway and the garage floor underneath me.

Get me out of here.

But it gets better. Behind the garage is the room where I compose, and guess what: they’re cutting through that room too. So no composing for me for at least the rest of the week. Who knows how long it well take to get my studio put back together. Parts are due for an upcoming performance, and collaborators are breathing down my neck. Awkward

By the way, folks, a word to the wise: If you think you might need to replace your sewer line, don’t wait until you definitely need to replace your sewer line. Trust me.