Sinden.org continues to observe the Octave of the American Election. Normal programming, if there is such a thing, will resume eventually.
Major kudos to Miss Wombat of in time of daffodils for providing us with a keen election night musical analysis.
After his concession speech, the McCain camp piped in music from the film Crimson Tide: "a movie about an old white guy submarine captain, and the upstart young, black XO who have to deal with Russia attacking their sub."
This is, as Miss Wombat notes "an almost hilarious topical reference about black vs. white and experience vs. inexperience."
But more than that, isn't it a pointed reference a certain vice presidential candidate who was a threat to both campaigns? And to the ever present Russia, a country in close proximity to said vice presidential candidate's house?
Not to mention that the site of all of this drama is an electorally significant Ohio-class submarine?
Just as fettuccine alfredo is macaroni and cheese for adults, so is Ravel's Bolero Pachebel's Canon in D for those inclined toward twentieth century music.
Therefore, I really have to question if Bolero really is the result of "a torrent of creativity" as this article on a rare brain disease suggests.
Then afterwards baptised I was,
The Holy Ghost on me did glance,
My Father's voice heard from above,
To call my true love to my dance.
stanza from "The General Dance", a medieval Cornish carol
My new favorite setting of this text is Gustav Holst's.
Labels: music
The BBC's weekly broadcast of Evensong (from Lincoln Cathedral this week) includes, among other things, the first broadcast of "The Windows" by Tarik O'Regan.
It's neat poem that uses stained glass as a metaphor for preaching.
"The Windows" by George Herbert.
Labels: Evensong, literature, music
Getting some attention lately: laptop orchestras. Geeky.
I got to this via Jason Kottke who has been a little bit more classical music oriented since his interview with Alex Ross last month.
Today, Jason also points us to news about Tim Page, music critic of the Washington Post. If you read the email in question, it sounds like he's just being critical of something that's not classical music.
What, that's not allowed?
It seems to me that being a good soloist ultimately comes down to how you play your ensemble.
Take Augustin Hadelich, the young, Italian-born winner of the 2006 Indianapolis Violin Competition whom I heard perform Saturday. He played well, and with character, but there was a certain self-centeredness to his interpretation of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto. The tempo of each phrase was seemingly chosen with regard to how Hadelcih wanted his instrument to sound -- and the tempi fluctuated wildly.
This was distracting for me, as an audience member, because it seemed random. Maybe Hadelich doesn't really believe the Tchaikovsky is a worthy concerto and that he must put his own stamp on the piece for it to be effective. Or maybe he just has to be sure that his Gingold Strad will speak optimally at all times.
Either way, it seemed that Hadelich made these changes at the expense of the orchestra. I don't mean that he didn't talk about his ideas with the conductor ahead of time, I simply mean that the accompaniment didn't figure significantly in his decisions. To my thinking, this self-centered approach is a mistake.
As an organist, a soloist with a choral ensemble, if you will, I know that I play my best when I "play the choir" and the play to the choir's needs. Now granted, in modern terms, I am a soloist, but I could be considered an accompanying "ensemble".
I know that I am still learning to play the choir, and that it's not easy, but listening to Hadelich brought this concept into focus for me. Mature players are not musically self-centered, which actually brings the focus on their playing.
Life is better when we all get along.
It looks as though the Venezuelan Olympic team has taken a detour from the opening ceremonies to the Royal Albert Hall in London. They might still be in their track suits, but you should still hear/see what they do.
(Thanks Alexis!)
Labels: music, young people
This is not Michael Vick.
Q: Why does Michael Vick like marches by John Philip Sousa?
A: Because there's always a dogfight in the middle.
Yeah. I went there.
(The dogfight is the chaotic transitional section that follows Sousa's main themes.)
On the way home tonight on NPR's "All Things Considered" I heard listeners singing their entries for the theme song lyrics contest.
Lately, I've been reading This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin (now available in paperback). Levitin introduces the counter-intuitive concept of contour. It's maybe not so important to music or musicians as it is to our brain and our cognitive grasp of how music works.
Contour is a relatively gross characterization of a song's identity. However its utility has been shown in various laboratory experiments. There is evidence that for melodies we do not know well (such as a melody we have only heard a few times), the contour is remembered better than the actual intervals (Massaro, Kallman & Kelly, 1980). In contrast, the exact interval patterns of familiar melodies are well remembered, and adults can readily notice contour-preserving alterations of the intervallic pattern (Dowling, 1994). Infants respond to contour before they respond to melody; that is, infants cannot distinguish between a song and a melodic alteration of that song, so long as contour is preserved. Only as the child matures is he able to attend to the melodic information. Some animals show a similar inability to distinguish different alterations of a melody when contour is preserved (Hulse & Page, 1988). One explanation of why the contour of a melody might be more readily processed is because it is a more general description of the melody, and it subsumes the interval information. It is only with increasing familiarity, or increasing cognitive abilities, that the intervallic details become perceptually important.
The concept of "contour" was in evidence as I heard these NPR listeners try to sing the ATC theme song. It's not an easy tune. And though different listeners settled on radically different solutions to the question of pitch, all of them matched the contour.
Interesting.
Labels: music, science and nature
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