... Lyric's 2009-2010 Season ...

So far this season, the Lyric has pretty much aced everything it's touched... I totally dug both The Pearl Fishers and Manon, found Lulu engaging and exciting if not fully convincing, and enjoyed Madame Butterfly about ten times more than I thought I would (Patricia Racette? flawless). I'm still kicking myself for missing Porgy (but sometimes life gets in the way of things). From the crazy (Lulu) to the standard (Madame), they've really gotten it right and deepened at least this still-novice opera-goer's troubling addiction... (And then there's Tristan, I'm braving you in just a few weeks...)

With that in mind, Lyric's announcement of the 2009-2010 season kind of whets the appetite. Packed with a lot of standard repertoire - Tosca, Marriage of Figaro, Faust, The Elixir of Love - it also throws in a few twists. Berlioz's Damnation of Faust hits the stage with Susan Graham in the role of Marguerite (and Paul Groves as Faust). Doesn't look like it's the Lapage production that the Met put on this season, which by some accounts may be a good thing... regardless, I'll take Susan Graham in just about anything.

Perhaps most exciting is Janacek's Katya Kabanova with the one and only Karita Mattila. The Lyric staged The Cunning Little Vixen a few years ago, when I was just sinking my teeth into opera, and I freaking missed it. Janacek's been on the top of my "composers I can't wait to hear live" list... looks like Katya will break me in.

And I'm definitely not mad at Ernani... I don't know that I can ever be mad at Verdi. Just the name gives me goosebumps...

So there may not be a Lulu, Tristan or Porgy, but considering the economic apocalypse and the cuts other companies have made, we here in Chicago can consider ourselves lucky... still a full season, with just a few performances cut.

CSO hasn't made much as far as a 2009-2010 announcement goes, but a postcard promises five weeks of Haitink at the end of the season (!!!) and Muti conducting Brahms' German Requiem... I'm already anticipating the organ (and some of the most beautiful music for chorus I can think of). It also promises some programming for Boulez's 85th birthday... if that means we get some Boulez compositions out of the deal, that's a definite win.

Still a lot to look forward to in the now, though... but it's never a bad thing to be able to look forward to the that-which-is-to-be... oh, and here's Mattila doing Sibelius' "The Tryst," which is just fantastic.

... i'm going driftless ...

I had the honor and privilege of attending the funeral of a young man this weekend, a death that, at this point in time, seems to rest on the furthest outskirts of reason and fairness.

I did what I often do in the situations that seem most baffling: I read, I thought, I listened.

In his book The Imperative, Alphonso Lingis writes:
Suffering is a premonition of dying, and prolongs itself into dying. It takes time to die. Suffering and dying extend a duration in which there is nothing to do, but suffer. The suffering one is reduced to himself or herself, disconnected from any future he or she could project or take hold of. The suffering one is disconnected too from the force and momentum of his or her past. Nothing one has experienced and assimilated prepares one for this. Death comes, of itself. Until it strikes, it remains absolutely out of reach, uncomprehendable, unnegatable, unconfrontable, unpostponable. What is impending is the unknown, not even apprehendable as impossibility or nothingness. ("The Summons of Death," p. 153)

And he continues:
Under the lurking shadow of death, we sense that there are out there harbors full of possibilities singularly destined for us. We sense that there are forest clearings illuminated just for our eyes, there are enigmas in the environment about us or in outer space for which our brain alone is wired... The approach of death, which darkens the field of time and cuts from us the array of possibilities that are for others, summons us to our own powers. It summons us to discharge our forces into the possibilities laid out singularly before us. (p. 154)

And further:
And do we not feel the summons of death in the attraction come to us from all corruption, all defilement, all decomposition? Do we not feel it in the swooning in voluptuous abandon? The sacred, that separated force which intoxicates us, is felt in all the outer regions where the things and the order of the world enter into decomposition. And do we not also feel a vertiginous peace beckoning to us in all evacuations, all disappearances? (p. 155)

In the next chapter, Lingis turns his eye away from the death alone, the summons of death, and gazes into the world of those who stand near the dying:
To have a friend is to be brought into the sweep of the laughter and weeping, blessings and cursings of that friend. It is to be led by the strength of her hands down paths lit up by the light of her eyes and the torments and courage of her heart. It is to answer for her wants and failings, to bring to her ventures and adventures our insights, our resources, our blessing. It is to shoulder her burdens and support her initiatives when she is stumbling and to heal her suffering with the resources of our health. What greater misery can we know than not to have been there when that friend, having been hit on her motorcycle, lay dying on the highway, when that friend lay dying of a stroke in his home unable to reach the telephone? We would have been there to help, to get help. We would have been there when there was nothing to be done. We would have had to be there. ("The Death of Strangers")

And finally:
In the assent then to die there is not only the resignation of hopelessness and the longing for nothingness as deliverance from suffering; there is also a surreptitious friendship with the death that comes which is a friendship with all that lives and dies.

Home from the funeral, I've listened to Greg Brown's "Driftless" several times through. I'm not really big on uploading mp3s, but I guess I'm sort of offering this one up as a sort of memorial.

Have I done enough father?
Can I rest now?
Have I learned enough mother
Can we talk now?
Will you visit me
in my place of peace?
I'm going driftless...

Well let's cry all our tears,
Cry 'em all out now.
Let 'em fly down and clean
all the rivers.
And the evening sky
Is the reason why
I'm going driftless.

Have I worn enough clothes
to go naked
Have I told enough lies
to see some truth
Round hill, round thigh
round breast, round sky
I'm going driftless.

Have I done enough father?
Can I rest now?
Have I learned enough mother?
Can we talk now?
And will you visit me
in my place of peace?
I'm going driftless.

... the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy pop musics ...

Sometimes fellow music addicts recommend music to me, and I ignore their advice...

Okay, not really ignore. I hear their advice, I know they're probably right (for any number of reasons), but I don't run out and pick up the record right away. The next time they see me, they ask if I've checked out __________ yet. "No, but it's at the top of my list," I reply, and that's usually a sincere response. The list is just too long, and the memory is just too flawed. When I finally make the purchase and beat the record into submission with the bluntness of the 'repeat' button, I usually kick myself for waiting so long. My calves bruise up - it's hard to kick yourself anywhere else - and I wonder when I'll learn.

Such was the experience with the record ruling my stereo right now, last year's self-titled lp from Fleet Foxes. I finally grabbed it a few weeks ago and have been unable to let it escape from my listening list. It's been commented on enough - it made a crazy number of "Best of 2008" lists - but I thought I'd share a few thoughts anyway.

It's an exceptionally lush record, a record that I can only call stunningly balanced. It's balanced in its instrumentation, ranging from sparse sections that seem as much guided by silence as by sound, to larger arrangements that, though rarely complex, seem perfectly weighted and considered. Balanced, too, are the thick layers of harmonies that often part to make way for undeniably well-crafted vocal lines, vocal lines that are often a bit longer than you'd expect to find in your average pop record. The production has something soft about it - I mean soft here in the way you might talk of a soft-focus lens on a camera - but also a ghostliness... what sounds like a flute solo in the middle of "Your Protector" sounds like it's coming from across a big, open plain, as do its muffled chorus vocals ("You run with the devil").

Like a lot of excellent records, its best traits are often the biggest threat to the quality of its execution; the juxtaposition of masses of voices and stark solo lines, for instance, could easily come off as too obvious a manipulation of dynamics, or the haunting, vaguely muffled production might be accused of being overly conscious of itself, too intrusive and intentional. But the record never falls into such traps; as I like to say, everything sounds in its right place.

Finally, the record tip-toes on the edges of a sound one is tempted to call Americana while calling for a number of comparisons to other artists such as CSN(Y) or The Band (the latter especially heard in the harmonies of the opening track, "Sun It Rises"). But imitation it is not... influences and genre serve as guiding forces here, not as models or even as foundations. At the end of it all, I find it completely original and absolutely enchanting. I'm half-expecting my coworkers to barge in and tell me to stop playing it over and over... either that, or they'll barge in and start singing along. We need more office singing, anyway...

Here's the video for their lead single, "Winter White Hymnal." When was the last time we heard nearly thirty seconds of a capella harmonies in a lead single, from a band that played Saturday Night Live? From a band that, according to Wikipedia, describes their sound as "baroque harmonic pop jams," no less. Kudos, kudos, kudos.



They played Letterman, too, performing "Blue Ridge Mountains," and pulled it off pretty nicely, too.



And here's an example of their penchant for longer-than-normal melodic lines via a live performance of their "He Doesn't Know Why":

... Fight One: Dudamel's Hair vs. Brahms' Beard ...

It's hard to get through the hype.

With classical music, it's harder to understand the hype. Not because the hype is always unjustified or overblown, but rather because there are so many excellent musicians, composers and conductors that determining why X gets the bees a-buzzin' and the tickets a-sellin' seems daunting, if not impossible. When you're a relatively new listener, you either buy the hype or steal the skepticism...

And the hype can be so insulated. If you overhear someone on the street say, "Did you hear Christian Bale is in town for a movie shoot?" you know who they're talking about. Your head starts a-fluttering because you loved him in Batman, and you wonder if you'll run into him while you're buying your groceries this week at Whole Foods.

But if you say "Dudamel's at the CSO" on a random street corner, the folks around you will not think, "Dude, Dudamel!!! I wonder if I'll run into him while I'm buying my groceries this week at Whole Foods." "Dude-a-who?" That's the more likely response. I don't know that classical is any more insulated than other niches - I remember sitting at the bar at the Empty Bottle, waiting for a show to begin, listening to two young guys have a five minute conversation about electronic artists whose names I didn't recognize. I thought they were talking in code; "Maybe they're terrorists," I thought, and I pulled out my phone and thought about calling Homeland Security. I'm sure every circle has its fair share of insulation. It's part of what separates, for better or worse, the casual fan from the rabid devotee (with most of us falling somewhere in between, really).

So I was a bit skeptical walking into Symphony Hall, the bees all a-buzzin', half expecting to sit down in my chair and find my foot stuck in hype honey. I was really there for two reasons: Brahms' Second, and it was my birthday. Well, okay, four reasons: Brahms' Second, it was my birthday, and Stephen Hough, although I wasn't particularly excited about Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21. I was curious to hear Barber's Adagio for Strings, but figured I'd be a bit bored by it. (That's all terrible, it makes it sound like I was walking in with teeth clenched... I was excited, really, just, um, unsure...)

When the lights did their thing, there was an awkward pause while waiting for Robert Chen to walk out, one of the longer waits between lights dimming and Concertmaster appearing that I can recall. Then another long, awkward pause between orchestra tuning and Dudamel appearing. I'm pretty sure I saw some of the violas snickering.

Dudamel took the podium, paused again, and then started at the Barber. He's got a good rapport with his barber, no doubt, as his hair was perfect, almost threatening to take my focus away from the music. As he moved, it moved. As he bounced, it bounced. When he jumped during the Brahms, I half-expected his hair to take flight and start dancing, suspended mid-air in the Hall, only to fall back perfectly in place as Dudamel wrapped up the piece. Very impressive. If I were a producer of 60 Minutes, I might have recommended a two-part special: one on Dudamel, and one on his hair.

Jokes aside, the Barber was very impressive as well. As a fellow concert-goer noted, the sound felt a bit thin in the beginning, but as the orchestra chewed up that long, massive swell building to that fantastic long-held high note, my ears went "Oooooooooh...." and my heart sighed, "Catharsis!" John von Rhein called Dudamel's tempo "glacial"... compared to recordings I've heard, I'd say it was a bit slow, but it never left any cracks open for overt sappiness or lapsed into melodrama. And if they sounded thin at the beginning, they sounded perfect as they pulled off of the swell, everything - sound, volume, tempo - balancing just beautifully. It's such a gorgeous and moving piece, something that's easy to forget... we've heard it in Platoon and, as Andrew Patner pointed out, in 9/11 (and other) memorial montages on the evening news. But hearing it live, played well, it renews itself. I don't know that I'll pass up an opportunity to hear it again. (As I wrote this, I listened to a Munch recording on lala.com; if conductors have a tendency to take the piece slow and milk the emotion a bit too hard, Munch took it at remarkably fast pace... I'm not sure which I prefer, the Adagio you can do the harlem shake to, or its alternative...)

A bit of a reset, and then Dudamel returned with Stephen Hough in tow. I was excited about Hough; I was charmed by my first exposure to him last year when I picked up his Mozart disc, reasonably titled A Mozart Album. He certainly didn't disappoint. I was struck by the lightness with which he approached the piece, an attribute that made some of the more virtuoso runs and left-hand/right-hand stunts all the more impressive. I think Mozart, along with Chopin, pretty much put the kabash on my personal piano studies, and the first movement of this concerto is a good example of why. Hough's lightness found a good match in Dudamel, who kept the tempo moving along pretty well, even during the famous second movement (another famous piece that would be hard to resist over-milking for emotion).

Intermission, and then the Brahms. After I read Swafford's bio on Brahms - or rather, as I read it - I started tearing through Brahms' music in something of a frenzy. More, more! I said, as I devoured the first piano concerto, the violin concerto and the first symphony. More! I cried, after relishing the Cello and Piano Sonatas. And then I hit my first wall: the Second Symphony. So much of the pathos and drama and tension that I admired in my Brahms explorations up to that point seemed missing from the Second. But when I unlocked it - which didn't take very long at all - it quickly became a favorite of mine, maybe even more than some of the earlier pieces that I'd played to death.

While I didn't leave the hall completely convinced by the Brahms, I did gawk-in-a-good-way at a number of things I'd never noticed before... particularly some of the ridiculous counterpoint in the third and fourth movements. The program notes referenced the use of material from the Violin Concerto (its second movement), another thing I'd never noticed before (but came out crystal clear after reading... as I left, I was humming the VC's second movement rather than the Second's second movement)... and the third movement of the symphony, which I'd kind of tossed aside as a bit forgettable, was actually pretty delightful. The fourth movement was kind of a mother-of-god rollercoaster. It was the movement that got Dudamel literally airborne, and it's not hard to understand why... the pace of it was super-quick... kind of made me want to get up and jump around.

All in all, I'd say the Mozart took the cake in terms of sheer performance, but the Barber and Brahms probably got me a bit more in the emotional, gutsy particulars. As a listener that still considers himself "new," trying to peg down or "grade" a conductor is tricky. It seems that all you can really rely on is how moved you are by the music and performance... in this respect, Dudamel "won."

But really, though, his hair...

---

Some nice writeups out there on Dudamel's return to Chicago. Andrew Patner shares his thoughts here, John von Rhein here. Thanks to DecSimp for pointing the way to this really unique post at a blog called Printers Row Poet (who saw the same performance I did, Thursday night's, and also noted Dudamel's impressive hair). Another blog that's new to me, The Highly Suggestible Type, offers another perspective on Hype. And some rather nice descriptive prose at yet another blog that's new to me, Farrago. Dudamel brings out the blogs!

Finally, Mr. Patner shares his interview with Dudamel tonight, which you can stream online at over at the WFMT site. Nice!

... and the worrisome years ...

The things we number in our lives, the events that we count off as we go about our business, may actually be a bit telling. We don't, for instance, count the number of hot dogs we've eaten or the number of newspapers we've thrown away still folded and unread. Some of us count the number of cavities we've had (don't ask, don't tell) or the number of pounds we've lost (or gained). Don Giovanni tallied his amorous conquests with great detail. Kinsey tracked his gall wasps. The things we number are often significant to us, but some of them are mundane. While attending a dinner party once, the bustling conversation was abruptly silenced by the sound of breaking glass. The host emerged from the kitchen: "I've broken a total of eight wine glasses in my life," she quipped, not even taking the time to count them off on her fingers.

I remember seeing the musical Cats in the fourth grade. It was a really big deal, my first large-scale, professional production of a musical. After the event, I kept a count of the number of days that had passed since I'd seen Cats, and then the weeks. In middle school, when I began buying records on my own, I kept a mental tally of how many I owned. Yet I never felt the urge to count the number of books I owned or had read, or the number of times I'd been on a plane. Why albums but not books? What makes one desire to number this, yet not that?

I celebrated a birthday on Thursday, and the more I thought about the idea of a birthday, the more strange and fuzzy the whole thing got. The counting off of years is something we do very readily, almost without thinking about it. The birthday passes, and we don't think twice about swapping a digit (or two, on some of the biggies)... it poses little difficulty for any of us to shift our verbal gearstick and to start saying "I'm twenty-six" instead of "I'm twenty-five." The transition may be easy numerically, but we still choose to pop off the event with great fanfare and, as the years pass, more and more existential and social hand-wringing. Beethoven's age delusion isn't that difficult to understand, really, considering the number of everyday expressions that infer a something beyond literal age: we say that he's young at heart, she's mature for her age, and when we get fed up in an argument we'll shove off with a hearty Oh, grow up!

Birthdays for the first twenty-one years are full of a lot of excitement as we edge our way closer to freedom; we're given permission to stay up later, and order off the larger menu at restaurants (even if we really just want the grilled cheese sandwich). We're soon able to drive, first with a parent, then on our own; teenage depression may very well stem from the fact that you're old enough to make plans, but dependent on parents - those people who fed and clothed you yet you've suddenly developed a rabid distaste for - to get you there. The mark of independence continues to come with the passing of birthdays as we no longer need a parental guardian to get into the movies we really want to see, and the advantages of age bring the ability to legally poison your lungs at 18 and legally kill your liver at 21.

The years between twenty-one and twenty-nine are relatively uneventful birthdays, almost not worth mentioning. We don't get any really exciting privileges during those years... society's fresh out of things to offer that we might really look forward to. Instead, you turn twenty-five and you can rent a car without any hassle and your auto insurance rates go down, but somehow that lacks the luster of a sweet sixteen or a bar mitzvah bash. The Birthday Administration definitely needs to come up with an idea or two for this stretch, maybe forbid us from eating lobster until age twenty-eight. The big 28 would arrive and we'd get all spritzed up, head downtown and proudly walk into that seafood restaurant that's been taunting us for so many years: Yes, I'll have the lobster, please...

But after twenty-nine we hit thirty, and a new sense of dread creeps in to associate itself with each passing year. When Maggie O'Connell turned thirty she noted that this meant all the good men were snatched up, and she didn't stand a chance at finding a husband until the first round of divorces started pushing through.

It's a bit redundant to note that every year seems to go by faster than the last, but we say it again, and again (and again), usually around the time that the party starts to die down and the guests start to leave. And those guests leave earlier at forty, fifty, sixty, we schedule the parties to end earlier, each party now commemorated with "over the hill" mugs and gag gifts filled with novelty first aid kits and packages of Depends, the obligatory joke about the flaming cake being a fire hazard or visible from space. We talk less of what we're doing these days, and more about what we did back then, as well as the things we didn't do but wish we had.

We mark off the years and things begin to reverse themselves: our car insurance rates go back up, our doctors tell us that we really need to stop doing the things we were given permission to do at ages eighteen and twenty-one, and we give up the riveting gore and sex of an R-rated movie for quieter movies, movies like How Green Was My Valley, movies that feature tender narrations that remember a better time and a better place, all the better if they're conveyed in the honey tones of a light brogue. In the same way that we were constantly reminded you were too young to do anything fun as a child - taunted by grown-up activities and "You Must Be This Tall To Ride" signs - we're reminded that now we're too old, reminded by the volumes of life insurance and estate planning advertisements that arrive in the mail, mail that sings "O Danny Boy" as you open the seal, like a really bad musical greeting card.

We know all of this ahead of time. It'd be terribly depressing if we didn't. Yet we also know that that's just half the story... numbers are useful in their own way, but numbering our age does little to note the good stuff, the stuff that happens between the cracks. Once we've earned all of our privileges in those first twenty-one years, we spend the rest learning that birthdays are less about a marking of age and more about everything that's gone into that age, that's made that age, its building blocks of desires and loves and whispered sweet-nothings and deep, dark heartbreak. We can measure the time we've known someone in years and numbers, but it's impossible to measure the stuff of those relationships and all of the good and the bad that went into and came out of them. Ages are useful for listing things that might have happened that year but the soul of those happenings, the cuts and bruises and take-no-prisoners passions, is tucked behind and under the number, barely hinted at by the frosting-painted digits and the societal signposts that mark another year's passing.

So we mark off the years and we cut the cake and try to get the piece with the frosting flower, and we accept the flood of birthday wishes from co-workers and friends. Digital birthday cards from distant companions remind us that we don't talk to those we care about nearly as often as we should, and we vow to do better. Every year we go through the same twenty-four hour cycle of elation and anxiety, we wonder what the coming years will bring and where the passing years have gone. The number of our age goes upward... and that's a good thing, it's good for them to keep going. It means that all those things that can't be numbered - memories, regrets, euphorias and sorrows - are still being accumulated, still being added to. It means that the things that can't be easily connected to a numbered birthday, that rough and wild undercurrent of a life being lived, is still pushing forward, pulling us under and lifting us up.

---

So what did my birthday bring? One trip to the CSO to see Dudamel run through Barber, Mozart and Brahms. One trip to the Lyric to see Madame Butterfly. Four cab rides. Two bars. Too many drinks (mostly for others). One deep-dish pizza consumed at too late an hour. One lost purse, segued into one found purse. One lost coat (status undetermined). Countless "happy birthdays," and one video wish from a *too cute* three year old.

And, finally, one exhausted, older and wiser thebigfunk, listening to a whole lotta Greg Brown:

... Three Initial Thoughts (c/o Charles Ives) ...

I'm planning to do one or two "in-depth" posts specific pieces later, but here are three initial (incomplete) thoughts on Ives, from my recent baptism in his murky waters. I've thrown in a few "don't throw tomatoes at me" moments, too, if only for entertainment purposes...

1) The Mahler and Stravinsky Connections
One of my favorite aspects of some of Stravinsky's stuff is the sheer audacity in his rhythmic and melodic layers... the opening movement of Petrouchka is a great example of what I'm talking about, one line's rhythms or melody spilling over and into the next, bits and motifs thrown right on top of each other, bumping heads and then making up with each other later down the line. Jan Swafford uses the word "bedlam" to describe some of Ives' more crazy soundwalls; while I don't think Stravinsky ever went as far as Ives, "bedlam" certainly comes to mind at times.

A good part of my admiration and appreciation of Mahler stems from his use of a similar method... take the first movement of Mahler's third, which I've been listening to a lot lately. There are a good number of melodic and rhythmic motifs throughout the movement - too many to count for this little anecdote - which Mahler introduces and then develops alongside and on top of each other. Where Mahler really gets me hooked, however, is the way he manages to use all of this as a way to gradually build a movement, all of these disparate elements coming together in one loooong emotional arc, a sort of metaphrase. I don't get the same emotional satisfaction from Stravinsky... please, don't throw any tomatoes, but Stravinsky and prog rock have a lot in common. Both are full of really crazy cool bits of music that make me lose my musical mind, but neither offers me much catharsis.

Ives has me hooked if only because he combines the gradual build of Mahler with the really nifty, ear-boggling stunts of Stravinsky, and he pushes both of those elements to absolute extremes. Take the first movement of Ives' Third Symphony... now, forget the fact that "O For A Thousand Tongues" is a favorite hymn of mine (probably due in part to Tori Amos' dissonant variation introducing her "Icicle"). Rhythmically, it's not one of Ives' extreme moments (compared with what I've heard so far)... but he's certainly effective here at layering the melodic and rhythmic motifs he plucks out of the tune over each other, up against each other, and he does it all in such a way as to build quite beautifully and dramatically to a very satisfying, stately, almost-straight-through reading.

A more extreme example would be the last movement of the Second Orchestral Set. I honestly can't get over the whole piece, I think it's strikingly beautiful and extremely moving to me, but the third movement... right from the opening, the murky combination of the brass, strings and voices each doing their own thing... and that murkiness receding and returning, with new phrases leaking in. By the time you've recognized "Sweet By and By" - first by a lone brass instrument (trumpet?), then by the strings, then in its glorious campfire retreat form - the movement is slipping away, rhythm still toppling over rhythm...

2) Sampling, Interpolating, Quoting...
While the increase of sampling in its many guises throughout music as a whole has, perhaps, helped to soften the idea(s) that sampling is lazy, elementary or stealing, I think the public at large still thinks of sampling as Puff Daddy/P Diddy/Diddy/Sean Combs stealing a whole chorus and changing the words. And I think there's still a general and vague sentiment that sampling is somehow, well, lazy, elementary or stealing.

Yet we know that countless composers "interpolated" other composers' or folk melodies into their music, perhaps none moreso than Charles Ives. Ives may be the most like a hip hop producer yet, however, in his use of very small portions of melodies or portions of music. This is probably due, in part, to his use of what Swafford calls "cumulative form"; instead of introducing themes in full at the start and developing them, as one might do in general sonata form for instance, Ives picks bits of a melody and slowly pieces it together, playing it in full toward the end. You can hear that in the above mentioned use of "Sweet By and By," or in the way "Just As I Am" is slowly and thoughtfully rebuilt over the course of the last movement in his Third Symphony.

This, combined with the second movement of Shostakovich's dj like methods over the course of his Trio No. 2, convinces me that many composers and hip hop producers have more in common than meets the immediate ear. (On Shosty's Trio No. 2: that's another post) Doubters need only return to Tribe's Midnight Marauders or perhaps a Public Enemy album to prove to their ears that I'm right.

But really... no matter what you call it, and regardless of the method - traditional notation or electronic/digital modification - it's kind of the same thing, no?

3) When the bedlam clears...
There's something transcendental about Ives' bedlam, no doubt, but there's also something to be said for what exists when Ives clears that wall of sound away. I'm thinking in particular of the striking third movement of the "Concord" Sonata, "The Alcotts." It unfolds so naturally, so easily, even in some of its more peculiar sounding passages it sounds just right. The first portion moves with the grace of a hymn, the second with the, um, grace of an easy popular song. I've not quite hit Swafford's rundown of its composition, but I don't care what its inspiration is: the third movement is and probably always will be a love song to my ears. (Sidenote: is that 'popular song' melody a quote? It's so direct and quieting... just gorgeous)

That's all for now.

... Give 2008 Something to Remember Me By ...

As much as we say we don't like resolutions, we make them anyway. I think we all do. The urge to reflect at the start of a new calendar year seems completely appropriate to me, and such reflection naturally sits with and leads into an act of resolution, whether explicit or implicit. Some of us resolve through hoping, looking forward at the future and praying for the best that is yet to come. Some of us go a step further and predict, we look into our own personal crystal ball and tell of our own futures, tell of the future of our worlds. Full resolving - "I will quit stubbing my toe on the same piece of furniture every week" - seems to me to be a combination of hope and prediction with a third ingredient, a promise of action, thrown in.

But there's another emotion, another sentiment, another half-action that seems understandable at the onset of a new year: fear. I wonder if we emphasize the hoping and the wishing and the resolving in an effort to push our fears aside, if only for a moment, to suppress them and displace them. No one wants to admit that peace in the Israeli and Palestinian conflict seems a long way off, but most of us fear that that is the case. And underneath all of those personal resolutions runs the fear that, by 2010, we will still be stuck in the same dead-end job, or we will still be living paycheck to paycheck. We fear that we'll still drink too much and too often alone, we fear that we will still be smoking, maybe even smoking more (when we already smoke too much).

We fear that all the parts of ourselves we deem lesser and imperfect are etched too deeply, and that time's ability to eat away at and erode isn't enough to take away our habits, our anxieties, our flaws. We fear that our willpower is not willful enough and our strength not strong enough. We fear that 2010, 2011, 2021, 2061, that all of the rest of these years we have are already largely written, our lesser selves riding a current too heavy to turn back by force alone.

But resolutions have the best chance of manifesting themselves and seeing themselves through if we know what lies underneath them, if we're unafraid to see the ugly driver in the car closing in on us. Somewhere in our fears, as a bit of their substance and their presence, sits the very possibility of their overthrow. So if I'm making a resolution on this New Year's Eve, it's really a resolution to be unafraid to be afraid, and to be unafraid to look into that fear and see what it's all about.




Yeah, because that's just what I need, to become more self-critical, to increase the amount of self-inflicted analysis I put on myself...

Happy New Year everyone!!!