The Original One Hit Wonder

So posting youtube videos on the blog seems popular, so I thought I better try it. Heres my favorite.

Music Quote of the Every Few Days

"My whole trick is to keep the tune well out in front. If I play Tchaikovsky, I play his melodies and skip his spiritual struggle." - Liberace

I don't know how I feel about this. Though it may be necessary to play pieces "out in front" if its not your favorite music, it sounds like he plays without caring for the music. Liberace was fairly crazy.. but it really sounds like he played for money and not for music. Or maybe the struggle is not meant to be the players problem, but the composer.

The Rest is Noise

Alex Ross's first book The Rest is Noise seems like it'll be a really great book. I've read the first two chapters now, and the book meshes history and music perfectly. He doesn't just give you the life of Strauss and in what year he wrote Salome, he discusses his relationship with Mahler and the opposing style and popularity of Bizet operas at the time. A knowledge of music history is not essential, but is helpful. He is also able to describe difficult and confusing music like Salome, with all its incest and necrophilia, while getting overall idea across. This could basically supplement a 20th century music history text, although there is no music notation.

Music Quote of the Every Few Days

"The pause is as important as the note." - Truman Fisher

Don't actually know who this is, and couldn't figure it out, but this is an important lesson to learn. Personally, I still haven't mastered this though. I use continuous notes while writing both my invention and my fugue for counterpoint. I wanted some rests, but they are extremely difficult to place. Anyway.. that is really enough about counterpoint.

Great Online Music Downloads? Where?!

So I started an eMusic (eMusic.com) subscription a while ago. Its not quite like the iTunes store because its a monthly subscription, but for $11.99 you get 30 tracks a month. Originally I signed up because I saw a 35 free tracks advertisement, and it turned out to be a great deal. After a couple months I stopped my subscription though.

Then they email me a deal to get 75 free downloads if I restart my subscription. So every couple months now, I get 105 downloads for $12. Like all subscription services, you have to stay on top of the pay date, and downloads DO NOT rollover each month, so you have to make sure to use em, but if you can do that, there is a great selection of music.

Music Quote of the Every Few Days

“If this word ‘music’ is sacred and reserved for eighteenth and nineteenth century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound.” – John Cage

Well, Cage must have been tired of people calling his music.. not music. But this statement is a product of its time. Music has taken on such a broad definition to encompass everything that anyone cares enough to call music. I'm glad this is the case. Music should not be a term to describe a period of organized sound. It is universal.

Rachmaninov CD

A remastered CD of Rachmaninov playing Rachmaninov was recently released and it is absolutely amazing. It is so rare to hear the composer perform their own work, especially from that time, so I had always worshipped the original recordings, static and all. The new album is flawless though. I’ve never heard a piano sound better. It does only have his own compositions though, not any other of his recordings.

Music Quote of the Every Few Days

“Most people use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be soporific.” – Aaron Copland

I could not agree more with this statement. If anything, much of the music I prefer to really listen to is stress inducing. Lately, anything I listen to consumes me though. I feel totally incapacitated when I’m actually hearing music I care about, which is fairly depressing because to be productive I can only put on the mindless crap... or Journey.

So Blogs.. yeah

Recently, I have not found anything which seems appropriate to blog about. I could just tell you about my lunch, which was some darn good soup, but I prefer to do my part to keep that pointless stuff off the internet.
Instead, today will be the first episode of my Music Quote of the Every Few Days blog.

“No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.” – W.H. Auden

I’ve always been intrigued by Auden. He seemed to draw from the ancient epics in much of his poetry, which is unique for its time. But did he actually have a strong interest in it, or was this just a remark at the absurdity of opera? Well, apparently he found freedom in writing librettos. He wrote and co-wrote a number of them, even for composers such as Britten and Stravinsky.

YouTube Drains Intelligence

YouTube may be a major part of the internet's future, but it also promotes ignorance and discrimination at a horrific level. While video content is fairly controlled, the 'Comments' section on each runs rampant every form of prejudice and obscene interjections. In order to provide an example I attempted to curb the ridiculous deficiencies of mind in many of these comments, but I came up with nothing but a string of %$*@ and %&##$@*, including "normal" vulgar language, up to seven racial slurs, Nazi slogans, and often the word 'kill' interspersed within.

Nothing is actually done to discourage this even though it is clearly stated in YouTube's Terms of Use: We encourage free speech and defend everyone's right to express unpopular points of view. But we don't permit hate speech (speech which attacks or demeans a group based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity).

Clearly these are violated on a daily if not by minute basis. I can tolerate the occasional "you're a &#@% %#$%!s" since there is no clause on half-witted behavior, but even so it is clearly a form of hate speech on an individual level (unmentioned by YouTube; they only specify attacks on a group, as seen above). Users have the option to vote "thumb up" or "thumb down" on comments, and eventually, with enough negative votes, the comment will appear minimized. This is a cop out method; rely on other users to moderate themselves. This could easily be solved by erasing posts and/or users with key negative words. Time to step up YouTube.

For these reasons, I despise YouTube.
I admit though, that on a personal level, I am ecstatic that the #@$%s who write these comments spend their life watching moronic behavior on this website and will never be able to find their way out of YouTube.

What Happened to Art?

Modern art holds tight to a small place in the world, visited by few people. People like Jeff Koons exploit this. His "art" is always created by other people, and in the case of many paintings, often reproduced with minor variations to give an illusion of uniqueness. A huge balloon animal is cool.Who cares about the second one. An inflatable lobster on a trash can is... well, at most amusing. An inflatable dog kidpool in the middle of a ladder is strange. An inflatable caterpillar in a ladder and you start to wonder who the hell cares.
A refrigerator on florescent lights is slightly less interesting than the ladder thing, but the speaker on florescent lights is just bull$%!# now.
Vacuums!?! Com'on!!
The only people who care for a giant colored-chrome balloon dog are small children, just cause they like shiny things. The only people who buy this [junk] are people with too much money, giant egos, and tiny brains.

Lets go to something even less creative than Koons' "work."
Damien Hirst put a dead shark in a tank of formaldehyde and put it on display. This isn't art. This is something you see at a museum and think "that's cool, a shark." Eventually the spoiled child of the past comes out and has to have that cool thing, deciding to recreate it.

Recently there was a piece by Yzaal on ebay, which you can see here. This was two DJ's fairly successful attempt at infiltrating this world of modern art. With a couple blotches of paint, some lines, and a few finger prints the "art" sold for $465. While a couple DJ's do this as a prank, people like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst exploit the public for massive amounts of money. Reverse Yzaal and you'll get what these "artists" really are.

Coming Back to Cartoons...

The truth is that much of classical music was first introduced to me through Warner Brothers cartoons. Shorts like "Rhapsody Rabbit" were the first places I heard Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, or really any Liszt until 10 years later. The cartoons used many operas for a variety of shorts: Wagner in "What's Opera Doc?," Rossini in "The Rabbit of Seville," and Mozart in "Long-Haired Hare." As amazing as The Ride of the Valkyries is, I still imagine Elmer Fudd in the viking helmet singing "Kill the Wabbit, Kill the Wabbit!", and so it shall be until I find the time to watch the Ring cycle.
These days, Looney Tunes is not even on the air. I remember coming across them until 5 or 6 years ago, but they have since disappeared. The cartoons were an important part of my childhood, but now they're considered old and outdated. Now all the classical music introduced to kids is Spongebob's stuckup neighbor, Squidward, playing a horrible sounding sqeaky and out-of-tune clarinet.

Beethoven and His Nephew

In 1815, Beethoven’s younger brother Carl succumbed to tuberculosis. Carl left behind his son and wife, but his death began one of the most tumultuous periods in Ludwig van Beethoven’s life. Beethoven had it set in his mind that he must raise his nephew, Karl, as his own child. Beethoven struggled for years to obtain sole guardianship of Karl, and to keep him away from his mother, Johanna.

Solomon provides a detailed look at many of the events within the first five years of the conflict. He also refers to a variety of sources to obtain perceptions of Beethoven’s motivation during the conflict. What Solomon fails to include are interpretations of the events, and Beethoven’s own mentality, prefacing the conflict. Solomon glosses over the fact that two years earlier, Beethoven’s brother had already appointed him as guardian while seriously ill. This was not a whim of Beethoven’s when he saw his brother on the edge of death, but a clear goal that Beethoven kept over multiple years. No discussion of Beethoven’s prior relationship with Karl or his brother (besides some financial matters) is mentioned, making it difficult to deduce his motivation other than strictly delusional.

It would not be difficult to see Beethoven’s actions surrounding his brother’s death as a midlife crisis though. Beethoven was nearly 45 years old at this point, and had little in his personal life to show for it. Two years prior Beethoven wrote his infamous unsent letter to his “eternally beloved,” and Beethoven’s worsening deafness made social interaction increasingly difficult. Beethoven saw his brother’s death an opportunity to gain something he desired and would validate his life, a son.

Solomon sets out to argue that Beethoven used the “appropriation of his nephew” as the main method to achieve a new “psychological and creative equilibrium.” From this he enters into the long discussion of events. It is only at the end of the article that Solomon reaches many of his arguments of Beethoven’s motivation during these events, making the comprehension somewhat disjointed. Solomon continues on, but never arrives at Beethoven’s new equilibrium leaving the reader somewhat unsure of what he was discussing.

When Solomon brings Beethoven’s feud over Karl to a close in his article, he omits significant future events that are clearly related. The relationship between Beethoven and Karl continues to encounter problems, leading to Karl’s attempted suicide, which Solomon mentions but ends his discussion years before it occurs. Karl went to great lengths to commit suicide as an escape from his demanding uncle, but ultimately achieves his escape with his life intact, and Karl later decides to enlist in the military which Beethoven reluctantly agreed to; important issues that Solomon had not got to.

In the process of finishing the article, Solomon also neglected to prove his conclusive argument: that Johanna’s “passionate struggle for her son” kept Beethoven from losing “his own humanity.” Both parts of this argument are left basically unsupported. Solomon himself describes Johanna’s surrender by starting a new family, concluding the conflict ended at this point; this implies that Beethoven has finished a transition into his new mentality once Johanna has given up, not by the actual struggle. We are also given very little support that Beethoven actually kept his humanity during this time. We see only a downward spiral in Beethoven’s brutality during the fight over Karl, and increasingly delusional thoughts: from needing to raise the boy, to being his actual father, to following a mission from God.

Solomon also successfully disproves the commonly held belief that Beethoven was unproductive during this time, detailing work in Beethoven’s compositions, performances, and social life. More direct comparisons between Beethoven’s work and specific events would have helped the musical discussion, something not often possible, but easily attainable with the level of detain Solomon had given. Though not as comprehensive as would have been preferred, Solomon has detailed many events and aspects surrounding this time period of Beethoven’s life, and provided an overview of the complex narrative which had passed.

One Night at Kells

Kells Irish Pub is the place to come for a genuine good time; you cannot be disappointed. The atmosphere is unequalled and the music fits perfectly into the ambiance of the night. The act on Monday was Tom May, a figurehead of folk music. He is the producer and host of River City Folk, a nationally broadcast weekly radio program in its 23^rd year now, as well as a singer, guitarist, and songwriter. Originally from Nebraska, he now makes his home in the Pacific Northwest. May is known for founding (and continues to organize) Winterfolk, an annual charity event and Portland’s largest acoustic music concert. May is also a regular at Kells, often performing for a week each month. His Monday set had an Irish focus, playing many traditional songs. It is easily the next best thing to being back at a pub in Ireland, if not better due to his skill and professional experience. May enthralls listeners with his broad baritone voice as he sings Irish ballads such as “The Spanish Lady” and “A Walk in the Irish Rain.” As a prelude to another song, May even took out his Irish whistle and played a tune with as much skill and style as I’d seen in my last eight days through Ireland.

Kells has an authentic air about it. There are scores of Irish whiskeys proudly displayed behind the bar, validating the class of the pub, but don’t be frightened of the pub food either: it is a mix of authentic Irish and local favorites, and the kitchen does a great job. The acoustics of are great for a venue like this; speakers hung above the stage project clear and evenly, and the volume can always be the right level depending on your seating. Kells was not packed on Monday by any means, but I was surprised at the overall number of patrons; tables were at least half full throughout the night.

It may have been the mood of the night, but May showed an inclination towards the deeper and serious songs such as “Black and Tan”, a song about the suppression of the Irish independence revolution, and “There Were Roses”, recounting the murder of the writer’s friend in a senseless act of religious discrimination. Between some of these songs, May talked specifically about the much improved political condition of Northern Ireland and his hope for the future, which gave these songs all the more meaning. These songs are really some of the most beautiful, and May gives a wonderful and heartfelt rendition. That isn’t to say that the traditional drinking songs were completely neglected. After a quick “Happy Birthday” to a party up front led May into a rousing “Drunken Sailor”, completely changing my concept of it as humdrum pirate tune. He also sung a Scottish love song to the well-loved beverage “O whiskey, whiskey, Nancy Whiskey / Whiskey, whiskey, Nancy-o.”

May has a vast knowledge of songs, from Irish and Scottish, to American and his own folk-inspired work. He performed a few of his own songs Monday night, including the title track off his new album Blue Roads, Red Wine, a song about his own travels with his favored drink. He also played his signature song, a tribute to one of his favorite places in the country, “Just Another Night at Kells.” After twelve full albums, various compilations and over 33 years of experience, you can be sure that Tom May knows his music and is a regular worth seeing at Kells.

Has the Web Revitalized Classical Music?

I really do think that online classical music sales are a great thing. I use a site called eMusic every so often, and generally for classical music because their collection is really huge and contains everything I’ve ever looked for whether it is a brand new sax concerto, or some Debussy piano works. It’s a monthly subscription fee of $9 for 20 or 25 tracks so its really one of the most affordable online music options. I find the most convenient part is the ability to purchase single tracks, because often I am looking for specific pieces and it saves a lot of money over a CD.

Classical music is something that is rarely pirated, especially if you want a specific performer. It's never like the latest Metallica album that everyone has downloaded and is readily available for free. Yes, you'll be able to find Beethoven's 5th, but Symphony No. 1 will be much more difficult to find.

One other area the internet has influenced classical music is in the availability of public domain scores. Sites like the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP.org) and Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org) have huge databases of full public domain scores. They are much more convenient places to find rare single works, instead of having to order a whole book from Germany.

I'm Finding My Religion Again

What’s going to be playing at the end of the world? Ask R.E.M. and their new album of this year. After a slowing pace during the last decade R.E.M. has returned with Accelerate, its best album of the decade. Invigorated by their 2006 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the trio’s fourteenth studio release Accelerate embodies their refreshed energy. Compared to Around the Sun, the poorly received release of 2004, R.E.M. took a different turn: revivifying the rock, while shying away from alternative ballads. The majority of songs are fast-paced and considerable focus is placed on the guitar. The group also took a new path in the distribution of Accelerate. A week prior to the US release, the entire album was available for streaming over the internet.

The album opens with "Living Well Is the Best Revenge," scornful words to an ex-lover in rapid lyrics. This track has the classic R.E.M. form, chord progressions, and overall sound. While not the strongest track of the album, it is a connection to previous work. “Man-Sized Wreath” continues with vague, but potent lyrics and a classic feel, which is enough for a two and a half minutes. The first single and hit of the album is “Supernatural Superserious.” The lyrics immediately grab you “Everybody here comes from somewhere / that they would just as soon forget” and the song is supported by a driving guitar, and a catchy chorus sporting great writing.

It is obvious from “Hollow Man” and others that Stipe’s vocals on Accelerate emanate directly from his heart and experience; few songs from previous albums easily compare to his commitment on this release. Slow, somber verses contrast wonderfully with the running choruses of empowering lyrics. “Houston” an acoustic based track, a sort of modern folk tune, is followed by the title track “Accelerate”, another variety of typical R.E.M. sound with a focus on distorted guitar. “Until the Day is Done” is a sullen acoustic song with clear underlying political discontent: “the battle’s been lost / the war is not won / … / the verdict is dire / the country’s in ruins.” The last four tracks of the album focus strongly on a variety of rock songs. “Mr. Richards” brings back the guitar distortion in a fashion more akin to the Smashing Pumpkins than to R.E.M., but “Sing for the Submarine” is a masterpiece of R.E.M. style infused with novel techniques, movement, and harmonizing. “Horse to Water” identifies one of R.E.M.’s lyrical methods of taking a phrase, and riffing through more or less random thoughts and rhymes. As the final track “I’m Gonna DJ” expresses the hopes to DJ the party when the world ends.

A notable shortcoming to Accelerate is its length. With eleven tracks, the album comes in shy of even 35 minutes, making their new album their shortest of all fourteen. This may be great for radio play, but any R.E.M. fan will quickly search out the bonus tracks: two extra studio tracks and four live performances from the album. Fueled by their recent Hall of Fame status, production of their first ever live collection in 2007, and successful new album, Accelerate is R.E.M.’s new motto as they move forward. R.E.M. is a group that will always have a future, and as their current progress suggests we will not be disappointed by their next album. So even if R.E.M. does not get the gig to “DJ at the end of the world”, we know they will still be somewhere on the playlist.