Fire!!

I like Billy Joel.  Who doesn't?  I like a lot of his songs, but one that holds a special place in my nostalgia bucket is We Didn't Start the Fire, written and released in 1989, included on the Storm Front album.  The song is nostalgic not just because I remember hearing it a lot as a kid, but the song itself is nostalgic as it is basically a list of  headlining topics spanning forty years of history.  Which is how Joel wrote the song.  He started with the year he was born and began listing major people and events.  In the year 1949, the year of his birth and the starting year of the song, Harry Truman was president, Doris Day was a hit singer (and Johnnie Ray), Joe DiMaggio was a popular athlete and Walter Winchell was a notable journalist.  And so on. 

There are a few interesting touches, though.  Because it's what's called a "patter song," there is no melody to speak of (except for the refrain).  However, when Joel sings Brooklyn's got a winning team (1955, Brooklyn Dodgers win the World Series before moving to California) the crowd cheers!  The bit about the horror movie Pyscho (1960) is mentioned over the trademark screeching violins.  In 1969, we land on the moon, moonshot.  Four items are out of place, chronologically: Begin, Reagan, (these were relevant in 1977), Palestine, terror on the airline (these belong in 1976).  Rhythmically, the transposition sounds better.

Not the most profound song ever written, but I still get a kick out of it.  And it's interesting how much of the list is still relevant and well-known to much of the population.  Sort of a distillation of world history into a four minute song.

Oh, yes.   HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

NASA and ICA

My nerd quotient just went up.  Not only am I a member of the International Clarinet Association (Go clarinets!), but I am now also a member of the North American Saxophone Alliance, or NASA. Go saxophones!

Clarinetfest (ICA) is in Lincoln, NE next year, and it is on my agenda to attend.  I attended my first Clarinetfest about four years ago when it was held at Kansas City, MO.  Kansas City is also home to the legendary 18th and Vine jazz district, which I made a point to visit while attending Clarinetfest.  At 18th and Vine, I visited the American Jazz Museum (as I recall, this was actually the first non-Clarinetfest thing I did while visiting Kansas City, MO).  There I  paid my respects to Charlie Parker and saw his plastic Grafton (the alto he used on occasion when his good horn was in hawk at a pawn shop.) 

Anyway, the purpose of these groups is to provide performance and educational opportunities for anyone interested and enthusiastic about the respective subjects.  Both organizations publish periodicals (The Clarinet and The Saxophone Symposium) and hold conferences where members can hear players, new music and learn new things.  Considering I love saxophones nearly as much as I love clarinets, membership seems like a logical choice. 

WOODWINDS RULE!!!

Vortex Cortex

Really feel like my mind is being pulled in a million different directions right now:

Beethoven's Tempest and Waldstein piano sonatas.  These are just fantastic pieces of music.  I'm now fully appreciating the genius of Ludwig van Beethoven. 

Diminished and octatonic scales.  I know them, and can write them, but translating them to my fingers (and to chord symbols) is a bit of a challenge, still.

Charlie Parker and bebop jazz.  Because everyone thinks about Charlie Parker and bebop jazz from time to time, right?

The music of Tom Waits.  Why has it taken me so long to discover this guy?!  I mean, really!  He's creative, musically interesting, and just the right amount of crazy.  Must look into more of his music.  Expect to hear more from me about this.

Preparing one of my clarinet students for the Iowa All-State Music Festival.  Yes, I am now the proud teacher of an All-State student!  I can't describe how wonderfully happy this makes me!

If you need me, I'll be huddled on the floor, organizing and refiling the contents of my brain.

Not Squidward

A friend recently posted on Facebook a screen shot of SpongeBob Squarepants that featured the clarinet stylings of Kelpy G.  This cracked me up.  Obviously, Kelpy G is a parody of the saxophonist Kenny G. Kelpy even kind of looks like Kenny.  Or does Kenny look like Kelpy?  The mind boggles.

Kenneth Bruce Gorelick (the G of Kenny G), born June 5, 1956, is a smooth jazz, contemporary, "easy listening" American musician.  In 1973, while still in high school, G was hired as a sideman in Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra.  After studying accounting at the University of Washington in Seattle, he signed on to the Arista Records label in 1982.

More recently, aside from being one of the top-selling solo instrumentalist in America, he makes an appearance in the Katy Perry video Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.) as Uncle Kenny (playing on the roof at the party).  Interestingly, the actual saxophone player you hear on the track is Saturday Night Live musical director and tenor sax hero, Lenny Pickett. 

While I fully applaud G's success at making a name for himself, and at furthering the popularity of the saxophone, I'm a bit indifferent with regards to his music.  A bit too monotonous for my taste, but perhaps that's what "smooth jazz" is supposed to be like.  On the other hand, whenever I tell someone who asks that I play the saxophone, I get the maddening response: "Oh, I love the saxophone.  I love Kenny G."  Why maddening?  Because there are so many other truly fabulous and talented saxophonists out there, historically and currently, that it seems a shame that the only saxophonist that people are aware of is Kenny G.

Oh,well.  Play on Kenneth.

COFFEE!!!

Did you know that J. S. Bach wrote a Coffee Cantata?  Amazing!  I was looking through an old book about the music of Bach and came across this gem of a piece.  After researching it a bit more, I can confidently tell you that it is, indeed, one of the coolest things to come from the Baroque era.

The work is labeled as a cantata, but is actually closer to a comic opera.  Here's the backstory:  Early 18th century Leipzig saw the introduction and subsequent fanaticism of the tasty, brewed stimulant.  Bach was the director of a group of student musicians known as the Collegium Musicum between 1732-1734.  This group met each Friday at Leipzig's Zimmerman Coffee House to give concerts.  It is likely that the cantata was written for this group.  The libretto was written by Christian Friedrich Henrici.
A libretto is the text to a large musical work, like an opera, oratorio, cantata, or musical.

The story is about a father, Herr Schlendrian (literally, Mr. Routine) and his daughter Lieschen, who loves coffee.  She loves it so much that she is willing to give up all luxuries and fine things for her coffee.  A conflict arises when Schlendrian refuses to let Lieschen marry if she will not give up her coffee habit.  Lieschen finally relents, but when her father is absent, decides that her allowance of coffee must be included in the marriage contract.  In other words, she will marry no man who will deny her her percolated beverage of choice.

 If I can't drink my bowl of coffee three times daily, then in my torment I will shrivel up like a piece of roast goat.

A reading from the book of Hepokoski and Darcy

I'd like to read to you a passage from one of my music theory texts*.

WAIT! COME BACK!!

It's good, you'll see:

Similarly problematic MC deformations also occur from time to time in Beethoven. 

[I'm not going to bother explaining what an MC deformation is.  Sorry.]

In the first movement of the String Trio in C Minor, op. 9 no. 3, the triple hammer blows of the presumed I:HC MC seem so vigorous that in the third hammer blow (m. 20) the upper voices are chromatically knocked out of their usual places.

[Isn't that great writing?  There's more!]

Or one might recall the witty finale of the Symphony No. 8 in F, op. 93.  Here TR (beginning in m. 29) gets stuck--like an eccentrically ramshackle, mechanical contraption with out-of-control gears, levers, pulleys, and puffing pipes--and cannot accomplish the articulation of the MC.  The requisite sonata-gears shift nonetheless, and the contrasting S breaks in unmistakably in m. 48, although at first in A-flat major (bIII), the "wrong key."  One more swelling gear-shift, mm. 56-59, smooths out the S-process into the correct key, C major. 

If I can make my analysis paper even half that interesting to read, I'll consider my semester in Tonal Analysis well-spent.

* Elements of Sonata Theory.  James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy.  Oxford University Press.  2006.  Pages 49-50.

Theoretically speaking

This semester of immersing myself in music theory has been exactly what I needed.  It's been good to revisit ideas that I sort of knew but only half-remembered from the first time around in my undergrad classes.  Right now, the concepts and ideas are all floating around like a ball of disorganized Christmas lights.  The minor modes and synthetic scales are still a bit jumbled and the chord functions are less than crystal clear, but I can see now where my confusion lies.  I can see more easily the little traps I tend to fall into while analyzing the harmonies of a piece of music.  The more ways I can think about each idea, the more untangled they become and can be nailed down in the proper spot.  (The nailing down of ideas floating around in my head was actually a big motivation for me to start writing Music Zombie.)

The two courses also seem to compliment each other.  In Jazz Theory, scale and chord function are being hammered down, and the same ideas will pop up from time to time in Tonal Analysis.  For example, to figure out the key center of a particular part of music (or in the case of a jazz tune, the tune itself) both professors mentioned (spookily, at about the same time) looking for the dominant.  In music-speak, this means to look for the chord built on the 5th scale degree of a key.  In the key of Eb, the dominant is Bb7 (because Bb is the 5th scale degree of the key of Eb: Eb-F-G-A-Bb.)  And, if you'll recall, a chord is a stacking of intervals of thirds.  That is, notes that are separated by a note in between them.  C-E-G is a C major triad.

The 7 part of the chord symbol means to add a lowered (flat) seventh scale degree on top of the chord.  The chord without the 7th is usually strong enough for Western ears to hear the pull down to the tonic (home key), but the addition of the 7th scale degree makes it even more obvious.  The lowered seventh makes the chord really want* to resolve to the tonic key.  By resolving to the tonic key, the listener can establish key.  If the dominant instead goes to a chord that is not typical, such as a VI chord, it becomes a Deceptive Cadence.  (A cadence is the music-speak term for the harmonic ending of a musical phrase.)  In a Deceptive Cadence, the composer fools our ears and brains and catches us by surprise.  "HA! Fooled you!!"  When the cadence resolves in the way that our ear expect it to, we call it a Perfect Authentic Cadence.  "Practically perfect in every way."

Anyway, lots of other things seem to cross over too, and everyday I get a clearer picture of how music works.  Music isn't random and the little parts fit together beautifully when one takes the time to see it.

*Our brains actually "want" the resolution.  Notes and tones, being non-alive things, can't really want anything, but I digress.

The Mendelssohn-Bach link

We owe a lot to Felix Mendelssohn.  Besides writing some lovely works for voice, piano, opera, and orchestra (not to mention some wicked hard clarinet licks), Mendelssohn brought the music of J.S. Bach back to life and re-introduced it to the world.  Without his "Bach revival" we may not now have a full appreciation of all that the Baroque master gave us.

Mozart studied some of Bach's writings, and Beethoven studied the preludes and fugues of the Well-Tempered Klavier as a student.  But after Bach's death in 1750, his music wasn't given much regard.  In 1829, however, a twenty year old Felix directed a performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, the first such performance of the work since nearly 70 years after Bach died and almost 100 years after the first performance of the piece (directed by the composer).

Listening to the Passion now, I am grateful to Mendelssohn for reminding the world how truly beautiful the large choral works of the Baroque era are.  A restorative for the soul.

Wilkommen

Last night was the preview for Chicago.  A preview is basically a dress rehearsal with an audience.  While the audience was entering the house (that is the term for the auditorium), there was music being played over the PA.  Finding-your-seat-music, perhaps.  Playing was the soundtrack from Cabaret, a show that also features the work of John Kander and Fred Ebb.  I loved this soundtrack when I was in high school, and, now that I revisit the plot, I realize that, as a kid, I had absolutely no idea what was going on. 

Cabaret is about a Berlin nightclub, the Kit Kat Klub, and is set in 1931, just as the Nazis were rising to power in Germany.  I had initially thought that it was a love story, and in a way it is, but it is a tragic love story.  There is a love triangle, a pregnancy, an abortion, a pineapple, and forbidden love in a time when Jewish people were in very real danger of losing their lives (found in the sub-plot between the boarding house owner and a Jewish fruit seller).  The Emcee's songs in the Kit Kat serve as a commentary on the action: dancing with an ape to show how love is blind, how greed and money carry more influence on day to day life than we'd like it to, and how terrifying prejudice and the desire of power can disrupt ordinary people's lives.  It's a brutal satire of the politics of that time period, wrapped up in a seedy, musical bow. 

The music is great, though.  Originally produced on the London stage in 1968, there was a Broadway revival in 1987, and yet another London revival in 1993, featuring Alan Cummings as the Emcee (this is the recording I'd listened to).  Joel Grey was the Emcee in the Broadway revival, and played the role in the 1972 film version, starring Liza Minelli as Sally Bowles, and directed by Bob Fosse (Fosse haunts me.  It's like that movie The Number 23, where the number 23 shows up in permutations, direct relations, or indirect relation to the character.  Fosse is my number 23.  He's everywhere I look.)  As with most film adaptations, the movie plot is slightly altered from the stage show, but the elements are still there.

Life is a cabaret, old chum.  Come to the cabaret!

Cold gin, hot piano

Last weekend, I played for the musical "A New Brain".  That show is over, but I still have some of the melodies stuck in my head.  That may soon change because this weekend, my second musical of the month opens: Chicago. 

Chicago opened on Broadway on November 14, 1996.  By June 1997 the show had won six Tony Awards, including Best Musical Revival and Best Choreography.  In March of 2011, the show has become the 5th longest running in Broadway history, with 5960 performances.  The music, book and lyrics are by the outstanding John Kander and Fred Ebb (who are also the musical forces behind Cabaret and The Kiss of the Spider Woman).  The original director and choreographer for the show was Bob Fosse, though, sadly, he died before the show opened.

Set during Prohibition-era Chicago, the music is mostly ragtime and early jazz, with just enough contemporary injection to make it sound fresh.  And, as I can personally attest, some of the clarinet and piccolo licks are tricky!  I think the original pit calls for at least three reed players (there is a bass clarinet cue in one of my parts), but this production will use just one (so I have consolidated the music from Reed 1 and Reed 2 to cover the really cool stuff.)  Also in the pit are trumpet, trombone, violin, bass, drums, and piano.

I couldn't help but notice that this particular musical has a sinister ending.  I mean, the murderers get away with murder!  The musical is based on a play that was inspired by the murder case and trial of Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner in 1924 in Chicago.  The play was written by reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins.  Roxie Hart was based on Annan, who was accused of killing a man, then listening to the foxtrot record "Hula Lou" repeatedly before calling her husband.  Velma Kelly is based on Gaertner, a cabaret singer, who was accused of killing a man in her car.  Both women were found not guilty.  The lawyer character, Billy Flynn, is based on the two lawyers who represented the women. 

It's just a noisy hall, where there's a nightly brawl. And all. That. Jazzz!

Brainy bones

This weekend I am playing in the orchestra pit of a musical called A New Brain.  It is a recent musical, created by William Finn and James Lapine.  It opened Off-Broadway in 1998, and to some degree, is autobiographical, describing Finn's personal experience with Arteriovenous malformation.  I had to look that one up.  An Arteriovenous malformation is a congenital deformation of the connections between veins and arteries.  This means that the blood travels directly from arteries to veins without first travelling through the capillaries.  It is genetic, which explains the song Gordo's Law of Genetics.  The musical centers around songwriter Gordon Schwinn's medical crisis and the healing power of art.  The music itself is good, for the most part, but with an unusual orchestra ensemble of reeds (alto sax, clarinet, piccolo, and flute [that's why I'm in it]), French horn, cello, drums and piano (and a variety of keyboards/synths). 

In the spirit of the show's opening this weekend, here is a giant brain cell.  Just for fun.  :-)



Take a look at those dendrites!

 On a completely unrelated note, here is a blue trombone:

It's a P-Bone, a plastic trombone, endorsed by trombone artist Jiggs Whigham.  Yes, it's a real instrument (not to be confused with other instrument-shaped-objects that may be found elsewhere.)  I got the opportunity to try the blue one and it plays reasonably well, though a bit thin in tone.  The slide moves well and it's really light!  They are also available in red, yellow, and green.

B A C H Part 3

More fun from Herr Bach!  Let's take a look at something he wrote just three years before his death: The Musical Offering, or Das Musikalische Opfer.  The Offering is a collection of fugues and canons, a trio sonata calling for a flute, violin, and a basso continuo (I'll explain that in a minute), and two ricercars. 

Before I go on to the good stuff, I'll briefly explain what basso continuo (pronounced: bass-oh continue-oh) means.  In the Baroque era (basically defined as the time between 1600 and 1750, and ending with Bach's death) it was common practice to have a solo or small ensemble of solo instruments accompanied by any instrument capable of playing chords, like a harpsichord, guitar, lute, or organ, or any bass instrument, like a cello, bassoon, or double bass, or, in some cases, a combination of these.  The continuo instrument was "realize" their music, which was basically a line of bass notes plus symbols that told them what kind of chord to play over the bass notes.  This means that continuo parts were largely improvised.  (There was actually a lot of improvising going on in the Baroque era, but that discussion must wait for another nibble.)

Continuo-ing with the Offering canons:  Bach wrote a couple of interesting canons (canons are like fugues, which, you'll remember, are two or more voices, with staggered entrances).  Some of the more interesting ones are called "crab canons".  These pieces can be read forwards, backwards and upside down (progression, regression, and inversion.)  A musical palindrome.

B A C H Part 2

I love J. S. Bach.  His music tickles the brain cells.  Another person I greatly admire, cognitive scientist, computer scientist, writer, and all-around smart person, Douglas R. Hofstadter, also likes Bach.  Last time I started discussing The Art of Fugue.  In his deeply fascinating book, Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Hofstadter reminds us that in the Art, Bach encoded his name.  But, wait! you say, musical notes don't include H!! You are correct, but in some countries, what we call B (natural) they refer to as H, and what we call Bb (flat), they refer to as B.  Get it? 

So, in the Art, we see Bach entering his name. B. A. C. H. --->  Bb. A. C. B-natural.  Introducing it into the melody of the final fugue of his final work, The Art of Fugue.  In fact, the work itself is unfinished, the final Contrapunctus stops before it reaches a conclusion. 

This is so much fun!  Tune in next time!  

:-)