SAVORING PHILIP GLASS
September 23, 2008 by Josh
Connecting with people through his music has been the credo of Philip Glass for some forty years. As far back as 1967 he viewed the modern music scene as being transformed by “a generation of composers who were in open revolt against the academic musical world.” He said,” I personally knew that I didn’t want to spend my life writing music for a handful of people…I wanted to play for thousands of people; I was always interested in a larger audience. I saw that possibility from a very early age and I unswervingly set myself that goal.”
Glass restored a vital component to music: the composer as performer. The Philip Glass Ensemble, formed in 1968, became the core of his endeavors, a group driven by his sense of innovation and business savvy. As the son of a record-store owner, he knew the importance of selling his music. Rather than have others perform his music, Glass banked on the broad appeal of what he himself had to directly offer his public with his ensemble of amplified flutes, saxophones, keyboards, and synthesizers. “I felt that if I had a monopoly on the music, that as the music became known there would be more work for the ensemble.” Determined from the start to provide financial support for his ensemble and ensure performances of high quality, Glass worked for ten years at a variety of day jobs, as cab driver, plumber, and furniture mover. By 1978, however, with grants and commissions assured, he was able to concentrate on composing.
Performances of northern Indian music by Ravi Shankar he heard in Paris in the early 1960’s helped lead him to “a whole different way of thinking about music.” His resulting accessible style, often simplistically labeled “minimalism,” has typically meant working with basic rhythmic cells in an additive, cyclic process. While seemingly rather static and incantatory, this is a music that invites the listener to shed conventional standard listening habits, freeing one from memory and anticipation, in favor of savoring the moment–”to be able to perceive the music as a ‘presence’, freed of dramatic structure, a pure medium of sound.”
Virtually all of Glass’s works from the mid-70’s on have been for dance, film, or theater. My favorite among his film scores, Koyaanisqatsi– the title is inspired by a Hopi word for “life out of balance”– was released in 1983. It was produced and directed by Godfrey Reggio, and presented by Francis Ford Coppolla. This 87-minute film provides a uniquely rich experience in savoring. Lacking any narrative or any identifiable character or dialogue, it presents the viewer with a series of compelling images, including clouds chasing clouds across the desert of New Mexico, the dynamiting of a failed housing project, crowds swarming in and out of Grand Central Station, road rage driving patterns on one of the Los Angeles freeways, and much more. Glass substantially expands his initial instrumental ensemble to include a vocal ensemble—one hears dark oracular voices at various points– as well as lower strings and brass, namely violas, cellos, double basses, French horns, trumpets, trombones and tuba. This is a remarkably prescient film anticipating in many ways the disturbing message of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.
Glass’s mostly widely acclaimed music for the theater is represented by his operatic trilogy about “historical figures who changed the course of world events through the wisdom and strength of their inner vision.” They are Einstein on the Beach (premiered in 1976 with a title shared with Nevil Shute’s apocalyptic novel ), Satyagraha (1980, the story of Gandhi’s nonviolent struggles starting in South Africa and continuing in India), and Akhnaten (1983, about an Egyptian pharaoh martyred for his monotheism).
A work I have particularly come to love is his 1987 concerto for violin and orchestra, a medium realizing his dramatic convictions. For him, the concerto form is “more theatrical and more personal” than pure orchestral music. Written in three contrasting movements and using a conventional orchestra, Glass’s work brings together his trademark permutations of cyclic rhythmic cells with a romantic warmth and soaring lyricism. Most memorable for me are the slow movement, with its solemn ground bass and passionate solo violin utterances, and the ebullient finale culminating in a slow coda with a solo line soaring into the stratosphere as we savor what we recall from the start of the work.
MILES DAVIS: A CASE OF TAPPING INTO INNER STRENGTHS
June 20, 2008 by Josh
So many of us look up to role models, heroes whom we try to emulate. But all too often we find ourselves falling short and feeling frustrated. Yet there are inner strengths which we can tap to find our individual voice. And sometimes the results can be absolutely spectacular, defying all expectations.
In the history of jazz there is no example more inspiring and compelling than that of Miles Davis. When he first came to New York in the fall of 1944, supposedly to study at Juilliard, he was really intent upon pursuing bebop performing opportunities on 52nd Street with his saxophone idol, Charlie Parker. And in fact, the following year, at the tender age of nineteen, Davis had the good fortune to be included in an historic recording session, the first featuring Parker as a leader.
Yet, Davis early realized that he was out of his depth here, unable to match the blistering speed of his saxophone hero or the stratospheric brilliance and rhythmic virtuosity of trumpeter of Dizzy Gillespie. But, resilient and resourceful, he was determined to find his own voice. Rather than trying to compete with these greats, he looked inside himself to mine his particular strengths. What he came up with was a distinctive style and aesthetic, something very different.
His was a mellower sound in the trumpet’s middle register, where understatement, restraint, and even a touch of vulnerability became his distinctive trademark. Davis was soon to earn a place in the jazz pantheon for a series of recordings made for Capitol Records in 1949 and 1950, subsequently released as Birth of the Cool. Listeners heard this new sound of Davis as part of a nonet–an ensemble consisting of the three rhythm instruments of piano, bass and drums, together with six wind instruments arranged in pairs, in high and low ranges: trumpet and trombone, French horn and tuba, and alto saxophone and baritone saxophone. Pieces like “Jeru,” “Israel,” and ” Boplicity” are now part of the Cool canon.
Capitol Records’s liner notes suggest the effect this had at the time: “Under one branch of the modern jazz tree, it’s cool and quiet. Here a unique group of musicians is gathered–exponents of a carefully casual style that flows with studied ease. The jazz they play is pleasant, almost unobtrusive, but with each new hearing it reveals a surprising wealth of sparkling new ideas. Some of these stylists’ most imaginative music is collected in this album–thoroughly intriguing performances that truly qualify as classics in jazz.”
Davis never stood still after this. Two other landmark recordings from the 1950’s were Sketches of Spain and Porgy and Bess, both major collaborations with Gil Evans. In the following decades Davis was on the cutting edge of fresh developments, whether it be hard bop, modal jazz, jazz-rock fusion or MIDI sequencng and sampling.
Lynne adds: Josh is very intrigued by Miles Davis’s ability to accept the fact that he could not do what other great jazz musicians relied on for their reputations. Instead, by exploring his own gifts to their fullest, he developed a whole other form of jazz. After that he continued to innovate, as if by making that choice he had discovered the fountain of eternal creativity.
PLAYING THE BUILDING
June 1, 2008 by Josh
“I’m not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down.” Amidst preparations for his launching of a highly unusual multimedia event, DAVID BYRNE, founder of the Talking Heads was recently talking about his hope for the future of popular music.
The scene is “a paint-peeling hangar of a room, ” the Great Hall of the Battery Maritime Building, once a bustling ferry terminal in lower Manhattan which has been dormant for over half a century. But these days it is alive with the sound of music. No, it is not exactly Rodgers and Hammerstein that you can hear, but a place vibrating with the sounds of rusty steam pipes, ceiling girders, and columns, triggered by a Weaver pump organ retrofitted with relays, wires, and air hoses, all connected to an array of solenoids and such.
This is a site to visit, until August 10, 2008, where anyone can come press those organ keys and play the building. But, more than that, it invites people everywhere into an egalitarian rather than hierarchical world in which, to quote Buddhist American composer John Cage, “Everyone is in the best seat.” Cage was in many ways a walking oymoron, one who refused to acknowledge boundaries and came to see all the world as music. He was prone to such paradoxical aphorisms as “My purpose is to eliminate purpose,” and “I have nothing to say, and am saying it.” He wrote a book with the highly provocative title of Silence. Wrappping up a seminal address to the Music Teachers National Association more than fifty years ago, Cage spoke of the importance of “a purposeless play…an affirmation of life…a way of waking up to the very life we’re living.” He composed a famous (some say infamous) piece of “music” called 4 minutes, 33 seconds, where a performer comes out on stage, sits down at a piano, stopwatch in hand, raises and lowers the lid at various points, but never plays a single note. The audience is asked to wake up to the sounds of the environment in a place where music is conventionally made and become alive to new possibilities.
So go play the pipes in your kitchen, bathroom, or whatever. Have fun as you sing with your environment, tapping into the child within you.
BEREAVEMENT, OPTIMISM, AND MUSIC
March 10, 2008 by Josh
Lynne has just shared an absolutely riveting article with me, “Second Nature: “Your Personality Isn’t Necessarily Set in Stone.” It comes from the current issue of Psychology Today (April 2008). What especially caught my attention was a remarkable story of optimism in action.
David Fajgenbaum, a freshman at Georgetown University, was faced with the predicament of a mother dying of brain cancer. Rather than avoid this fact by escaping into the whirlwind of college activities, he spent every weekend with his family. Even more significant, he had an inspiration. Because there was no on-campus counseling for grieving students, he established a support group, Students of Ailing Mothers and Fathers. It soon expanded into some 20 chapters and has come to serve high school kids as well. This is an unforgettable example of the way human beings can transcend grief through dedicating themselves to extending comfort to others.
Two of the great composers of the 19th-century, Johannes Brahms and Gabriel Faure, each wrote masterpieces of musical consolation, unique settings of the Requiem after similar losses. Instead of focusing on the usual fire and brimstone of divine judgment, their music transports us to world of serenity, a calming world for the survivors of personal loss.
Brahms began working on his monumental A German Requiem around 1865. Although he said that he had “the whole of humanity in mind,” it is clear that the deaths of his beloved mentor Robert Schumann and then his mother were precipitating factors, intensifying his feelings about both the dead and, more important, the living. Rather than follow the traditional Catholic liturgy, it draws upon such sources as the psalms, prophetic writings, and The Gospels. The general tone of the work is set in the opening movement, which begins with the following quotation from The Gospel According to St Matthew: “Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.”
The year 1888 saw the premiere performance in Paris of Gabriel Faure’s Requiem, a work written in the shadow of his father’s death. Like the Brahms, it is sublimely serene, even though the text comes from the Catholic liturgy. One of its movements, “Pie Jesu” (”Lord, have mercy, Lord, have mercy. You who take away the sins of the world, grant them peace.”) has taken on a life of its own with its otherworldly sound.
Peace and comfort will await you when you immerse yourself in this music, music which has inspired singers and listeners alike for well over a century. Open yourself to its transcendent beauty. Savor the experience and allow it to suggest ways you might, like David Fajgenbaum, transform your loss into some positive action.
BEETHOVEN: THE WISDOM OF A SOFT ANSWER
November 23, 2007 by Josh
“A soft answer turneth away wrath.” The timeless wisdom of this biblical proverb (Proverbs 15:1) has found artistic expression in one of Beethoven’s most divine creations– the slow movement of his Piano Concerto no. 4, a work I have previously written a post about (see post for 14.10.2007)
For some 19th-century commentators, this movement evoked the image of Orpheus taming the wild beasts, even though Beethoven himself is nowhere on record as having claimed any connection with the Greek legend. Yet the music has such compelling power as to make the association quite convincing.
What is unmistakable is the vivid contrast presented at the outset. Using only unison strings playing in angry clipped phrases in an uncompromising martial rhythm, Beethoven has his solo instrument respond in a gently pleading voice. And by the midpoint of the movement it has won over the strings as it grows ever more expansive. For their part, the strings now punctuate the music with subdued pizzicato chords, harmony coming to them at last. And in the exquisite closing moments of the movement, with the piano now in serene control, we hear in the lower strings only a distant echo of the opening anger. In the eloquent words of Edward Downes: “The stern voice of the orchestra relents, the octaves melt into harmony, and at the very end, orchestra unites with solo in a little sigh of acquiescence.”
Lynne suggests: as you listen to this movement, pay particular attention to the musical process Josh has described.
Have there been times in your life when you have felt furious and then, through dialog with a quiet inner voice, been able to bring yourself back to a state of equilibrium? Can you recall times when you have intuitively calmed others’ fury through your quietness?
Savor each memory as you listen to the movement.
If anger has been hard for you to let go of, try imagining that the piano is the voice of your inner wisdom gradually growing strong enough to be heard as you listen with new ears and new awareness.
JAZZ, A MUSIC WITHOUT BOUNDARIES
October 19, 2007 by Josh
It was around 1917 in New Orleans that Louis Armstrong acquired his first Victrola and began collecting records. He once recalled it this way: “Big event for me then was buying a wind-up Victrola. Most of my records were the Original Dixieland Jazz Band–Larry Shields and his bunch. They were the first to record the music I played. I had Caruso records too, and Henry Burr, Galli-Curci, Tetrazzini–they were all my favorites. Then there was the Irish tenor, McCormack–beautiful phrasing.”
These operatic influences were a critically important element in shaping Armstrong’s whole cognitive process during his formative years. They help explain much of the bravura of his brilliant playing. Even more fascinating is how sound bites from such operas as Verdi’s RIGOLETTO, Bizet’s CARMEN, or Leoncavallo’s PAGLIACCI can be found embedded in his improvisations. In fact, in one of his interviews he spontaneously burst out singing an excerpt from the “Quartet” from RIGOLETTO, saying “that was the first thing I used to make all the time”–meaning that early on he practiced this “lick” in different keys.
In addition, there is a unique piece performed by Armstrong called “Skid-Dat-De-Dat.” In all fairness, most of the credit for the creation of this number should go to Armstrong’s second wife, Lil Hardin. The structure of this piece is totally unique in that it is organized in modules of four measures, with an underpinning of four chords moving in whole notes, one per measure. The reason I say that it is “totally unique” is simply that the form of most jazz pieces from this period is based on the twelve-bar blues or the thirty-bar structure of the popular song–sometimes called “Broadway song form.” In any event, basing my research on very compelling circumstantial evidence, I have concluded that this structural detail is explained by Lil Hardin’s classical music studies at the time, including her earning a diploma from the Chicago College of Music and giving a recital of music by Mozart, Chopin, Debussy, and others. Specifically, I have argued that “Skid-Dat-De-Dat” owes a huge debt to the fugue subject with which the finale of Mozart’s last symphony, the “Jupiter,” begins.
Later jazz musicians, like Charlie Parker, J.J. Johnson, and the Modern Jazz Quartet also borrowed ideas from such composers as Stravinsky, Ravel, Bartok, Hindemith and J.S. Bach–a topic too vast to pursue for now in any detail.
For those interested in pursuing this topic further, a good place to start are some of my own publications:
“Louis Armstrong and Opera” THE MUSICAL QUARTERLY, Summer 1992.
THE MUSICAL WORLD OF J.J. JOHNSON (Scarecrow Press and Institute of Jazz Studies, paperback edition, 2002)
LOUIS ARMSTRONG AND PAUL WHITEMAN: TWO KINGS OF JAZZ (Yale University Press, 2004)
As a music without boundaries jazz clearly fosters a spirit of openness and a receptivity to ideas coming from many different sources, some of which might be surprising to many listeners.
A MAGICAL BEETHOVEN MOMENT–ONE OF MY DESERT ISLAND CHOICES
October 14, 2007 by Josh
I have had a love affair with a piece of music for almost sixty years. I am talking about Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 4 in G. There are so many details in this masterwork that transport me to a very special place of sheer joy, especially the opening fourteen measures–a magical introduction to a very great work that in performance lasts some 38 precious seconds.
Like the genius he is, Beethoven breaks with tradition by having the piano begin with a solo. What he uses–something conclusively known from his sketchbooks and clearly audible to anyone familiar with Beethoven’s music–is a serene, gentle version of the fate motive with which his Symphony no. 5 begins.
At the very start, we hear the pitch of b as a melody note supported by G major chord. But when the orchestra softly and sweetly comes in, that same pitch of b is now part of a B major chord–an absolutely magical touch. And before we know it, we have been brought back ever so gently to the home key of G.
There are some wonderful recordings of this piece. The one I first heard, in the 1940’s, features a performance by the great Artur Schnabel and the Philharmonia Orchestra under Issay Dobrowen. A more recent performance that I own and treasure is part of the Complete Piano Concertos with Alfred Brendel and the Chicago Symphony conducted by James Levine. Another performance, whose opening takes my breath away, is by Krystian Zimerman and the Vienna Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein, near the end of his life.
Any one of these would be an asset to own and listen to repeatedly.
JAZZ IMPROVISATION–WHAT IT REALLY IS.
October 14, 2007 by Josh
I have heard people say so many times “when jazz people improvise, they make things up as they go along.” Even some music appreciation textbooks that I’ve seen say pretty much the same thing.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Think about it. Very few jazz performers work completely alone. To “make things up as they go along” would only invite chaos. Instead, every player in the group improvises on the underlying structure of each piece of music played, sharing an understanding of this with all the other musicians in the group.
In fact, a huge body of jazz depends on working with what are called “standards.” These can be blues like “St. Louis Blues,” or songs like “I Got Rhythm,” “Body and Soul,” or “Summertime.” All of this music has a definite form and phrase structure as well as a pattern of chords that serve as the underlying skeleton upon which the improvisation is built.
In most live performances of jazz, the reason the audience applauds after various musicians’ solos–that is, their improvisations on the bones of the original piece–is that a good improvisation is such a source of real satisfaction, indeed happiness, to both performers and to any perceptive listener as we hear a new “take” on an old melody.
LUCIANO PAVAROTTI, KING OF THE HIGH C’S
September 11, 2007 by Josh
Music, happiness, and thrilling vocalism–an unbeatable combination. Luciano Pavarotti, King of the High C’s, who succumbed to pancreatic cancer on September 6, 2007, represented all of that in spades. Millions who saw him on TV found his expansive personality and generous figure irresistible.
Pavarotti was the superstar in The Three Tenors, sharing the international spotlight with Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras. Together they sold recordings and videos by the millions.
The sobriquet, King of the High C’s, became attached to Luciano Pavarotti with good reason. No other tenor of his generation, and relatively few of the past, could hit that note, an octave above middle c, with such spine-tingling brilliance. Some have even gone so far as to say that hitting this note with such power is unnatural for a man, that it is almost freakish.
Then there are those who hear the experience of that sound as tapping into some deep memory. Maitland Peters, chairman of the voice department at the Manhattan School of Music, was quoted in a New York Times article as saying: “The reason it’s so exciting to people is, it’s based on the human cry. It’s instinctual. It’s like a baby. You’re pulled into it…there’s nothing in his way.”
It turns out that the runaway top choice on iTunes for Luciano Pavarotti is the aria “Pour mon ame” from Donizetti’s opera FILLE DU REGIMENT. It climaxes in no fewer nine consecutive octave leaps to the high c, bringing the piece to a spectacular conclusion.
Some questions:
1) What memories do you have of hearing, and perhaps seeing, Luciano Pavarotti?
2) Is he your favorite tenor?
3) Do you feel yourself drawn to the tenor voice or do you have other vocal preferences?
4) Do you yourself sing, and what are your personal memories of singing?
HURRICANE KATRINA AND NEW ORLEANS FUNERALS
August 22, 2007 by Josh
It is now almost two years to the day since hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and surrounding areas with such devastating force in August 2005. I am still shaken by the fact that I was in New Orleans giving a talk at the Louis Armstrong conference early in the month, and the good times seemed to be rolling without end. Now, although many in the city are still struggling with basic survival needs, the French Quarter–the heart and soul of New Orleans jazz–seems to be returning to its former vibrancy.
This fact highlights for me the amazing message of resilience which, paradoxically, the traditional African-American music of the New Orleans funeral communicates so powerfully. This music flows from a unique set of beliefs and many famous quips.
For instance, the jazzman, Jelly Roll Morton has been credited with the hair-raising pun about the end of someone’s life: “It was the end of a perfect death.”
Or how about: “Rejoice at the death and cry at the birth.”
In a traditional New Orleans funeral march, the music is sad and slow on the way to the cemetery as mourners march to the poignant strains of the band playing “Flee As a Bird,” inspired by the opening verse of Ps. 11–”Flee as a bird to your mountain.” But on the way back to town, usually to the lodge or home of the fraternal order, which has traditionally paid burial expenses, sick benefits, and small amounts to beneficiaries, the musicians break loose with a lively number like “Oh Didn’t He Ramble.”
Lynne asks, Why do we write about funeral music on a site called Music and Happiness? Because we believe that this ability to move from sorrow to joy is an essential aspect of human resilience in the face of its greatest challenges–destruction and death. So listening to music with this awareness in mind can lead each of us through our own moments of despair into the knowledge that hope still exists. Hope is one of the great virtues connected to happiness.
What music carries you from a place of sadness into one that arouses your sense of hope?