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.