[This is the first in a series of posts in which I simply document some of the odd little things I create when my internal virus is activated. In this introductory post, I'll begin with a quick exploration of the virus.]
Back when my blog was barely a year old and I nonetheless had the audacity to refer to "longsuffering readers," I wrote the following:
Longsuffering readers of this blog will have learned that I have a weakness for wordplay. (To quote my blogger profile, "I adore alliterations; elegant allusions; absurd non sequiturs; and buffalo wings.") My own experience of this weakness is that there seems to be a little software-like program running most of the time in my brain which samples incoming words, whether heard, spoken, read, thought, etc. and looks for connections that might produce something punny . . . er, um, funny. ....
[and, a few sentences later] Obviously, this software falls into the "virus" category, as I suggested awhile back about my sonnet "problem."
[Note that I've also written about this kind of "punspiration" in another post.]
In the same category as what might be called the "Dad Joke Virus" and the "Onegin Sonnet Virus" is the "Musical Mashup Virus." Indeed, if it turns out that I am merely some sort of AI automaton, this Pavlovian response would likely be my defining feature. When presented with any opportunity to combine two musical somethings which have been connected unexpectedly, it is almost impossible for me to resist finding a way. And there's always a way. Partly, this is simply about the pleasure of using magical technology (it all still seems magical to me because I grew up in a world before most of these tools existed), but it is also such a satisfying way to encounter or, dare I say, "play" [with] what is generally iconic music. Iconic music, by definition, is always at risk of being too familiar, so I think there's something useful in recontextualizing it by hearing it in conversation with something else.
On to today's exhibit. From a friend, I heard about a situation where a picture of Gustav Mahler was accidentally used in a video about Gustav Holst. Of course, I couldn't resist exploring this connection, and again, the more iconic the component parts, the better. For Holst, it was kind of a no-brainer to use the opening of "Mars" from The Planets, both because it's well-known and because it's suitable as an accompaniment to...something else. Since I had a Holst accompaniment in mind, the famous unaccompaniedtrumpet solo which opens Mahler's 5th raised its hand as a partner, and I liked the idea that the former emphasizes a low pedal G while the latter is centered on a C-sharp - an unsettling tritone apart. Of course, you might say, wouldn't it have been better if the two were centered on the same pitch or a perfect fifth apart? But since both openings express high stress, I think the distant dissonance (better here than a minor second) works well to set each work off from the other and take the stress to another level.
And, as so often happens, other connections quickly became apparent, most notably the importance of triplets in each motif, but also the way Holst's opening tune in very low instruments (not shown here) settles uncomfortably on a tritone (spelled by Holst as D-flat) above the pedal G - which, with a little finagling, meant it could land on the same pitch (spelled by Mahler as C-sharp) as the Mahler does at the end of its second phrase. And that arrival provided me a good excuse to end things there and not go too far with this.
My favorite thing about this little experiment was taking advantage of how easy it is to combine simultaneous time signatures in Dorico, music notation software I've been learning. You'll see that I displaced the "Mars" melody by one quarter (inserting a single 4/4 bar into its 5/4 context) to make it resolve with Mahler. (Technically, this melody is delayed by a full bar minus that one beat.) Although this puts Holst's melody out of sync with its own accompaniment, I think that works fine because the point of that accompaniment is that it is metrically unstable, due to the unusual quintuple meter and the alternation of triplets and eighths. I only wish I could get Gustavo Dudamel to conduct it, but Dorico + Note Performer do a pretty decent job!
The idea of combining two works in which one is more distinctly melodic and the other more accompanimental is foundational to the most amazing live mashup experience I've ever had, which you may read about here. This is also the basic principle of my recent re-working of "Morning Has Broken" with a Bachian backup. And if that's not enough, the Double Gustav video now joins a long list of other such videos which you may sample here.
Stay tuned for more random things I smushed together when I seemingly had nothing better to do.
Last spring, at the Catholic boys school where I teach, we graduated four strong singers who provided a dependable core for our choir the past few years. With a larger but less experienced group to start this school year, the pressure of preparing them to lead the singing at our monthly all-school Masses has had me looking for creative choices for what they might sing.
Our most recent Mass was on the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi (Friday, Oct. 4). I suppose I could have taken one for the team and tried to play this (Liszt's virtuosic evocation of St. Francis talking to the birds - and no, I'm not serious that I would ever try that in this context), but I had the idea that it would be nice to sing the famous words of the "Prayer of St. Francis." I'll admit I was partly attracted to the opening line, "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace," because I liked the musical resonance of the word instrument, even if the prayer is not literally referring to musical instruments. I thought it would be interesting to think of the choristers as musical instruments who deliver this prayer about being instruments for good.
The day when I was thinking about this happened to be the feast day of Hildegard of Bingen, perhaps the most famous composer of chant melodies, so pretty soon that connection had inspired a simple, chant-like melodic figure for the opening words of Francis's prayer: "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace." Because I wanted a bass part with a narrow range and which would not be difficult to learn, I leaned into the idea of treating this phrase as if it belonged to a musical instrument by turning it into an ostinato - which is a fancy way of saying it repeats a lot as a kind of accompaniment to the simple tenor melody above. Even when the basses finally get to sing new words (after intoning that opening line eight times in the background for the first half of the prayer), the melodic figure is mostly unchanged. The piano plays a series of chords in open fifths which provide varied harmonic context for the unchanging ostinato.
Of course, one of the most enduring lessons I've learned in working as a composer is that writing simple is hard, so the resulting piece is a little more complicated for young singers than I might have hoped, mostly because of the uneven rhythmic flow.* But I'm stubborn, so we went ahead with the arrangement as I first wrote it, and they did a nice job singing it with reverence and delivering the text. I, at least, found it moving, and I've appreciated the opportunity to get to know this prayer better. Although it is supposed to sound "old" (Francis lived a long time ago), I believe that chant can serve as a very natural way to deliver words in a way that can still be relevant for listeners.
The recording here is a fully synthesized one I created for practice purposes - which means that for now you can only hear this vocal music in instrumental form. I added some strings and harp to give it a bit more character and distract from the sound of wordless synthesized voices. Given that everything is in middle to low register, the result is a little muddy, but I this does a decent job of showing the basic idea. And these are beautiful words. I'll likely keep tooling around with this, including having my church choir sing a variation of it (with real cellos, since I have a couple of cellists under my roof), but here is where it is for now:
* UPDATE: After reviewing the song with the choir this morning, I'm remembering that probably the most challenging thing about singing this for my students is understanding how to be expressive in this style. Learning the melody notes and even the timing with 5/4 bars is not so bad - but the fact that the mostly linear, unrhythmic melodic style isn't conventionally "catchy" is an issue; and understanding how to shape phrases like this with subtlety, informed by natural text inflections, is not - it turns out - something that can be learned overnight.
Here's how I began an unfinished blog post back in 2017:
I'm slightly worried this blog is going to turn into a "Tales from the Organ Bench*" kind of thing, which really shouldn't happen until I've had at least two organ lessons in my life. But, much as my organ technique is kind of an improvised thing that has evolved in the context of real-time necessity, I take special delight in musical discoveries that happen under pressure.
I was sick for much of the week leading up to this past Sunday and had missed Thursday choir rehearsal, so things were already feeling a bit less settled than ideal. I then discovered about 20 minutes before the service that the music for the scheduled prelude (based on Salzburg, the opening hymn tune) was not on the premises, so I got to make up something on the spot, for which the poor listed composer will have to take all the blame. I've actually been scheduling hymn tune improvisations as preludes fairly regularly in 2017, so that wasn't too disconcerting.
The other place in the service where I'm most likely to do a bit of freestyling is at the end of Communion, depending on time needed. We generally have a choir anthem and a congregational hymn scheduled as the Eucharist is celebrated, but another 1-3 minutes of fill is often required. In such cases, I almost always just continue quietly with the hymn that's just been sung, sometimes noodling extra things here and there, slowing down, changing some harmonies, or making a fool of myself.
As it happened, both the anthem and hymn were pretty short, and so I'm most appreciative for the soprano who, during pre-service rehearsal, asked if I was going to have to keep playing that hymn over and over when we ran out of verses. The hymn, "Jesu, Jesu," based on a Ghanian folk song, is quite simple and circular, and as I thought about it while the service was already going, I did start to worry that I was going to get trapped in a loop. And, this tune wouldn't be high on my list of "tunes in which to get stuck looping." [UPDATE FROM THE FUTURE: Here's a tune I don't mind getting lost in.]
So, as the service progressed, I started thinking about this potential problem and wondered if I should just plan on having something else ready to play once the hymn ended. In some cases like this, I'd pick something to anticipate the recessional hymn that would soon follow, but remembering that the communion hymn was in E Major, I did my standard mental trip to The Well-Tempered Clavier to ponder what Kapellmeister Bach had ready-made for me in this key. Then I remembered that the E Major prelude from the WTC Book I is in the same sort of lilting 6/8 [technically, it's in 12/8] as the hymn above, and it's a piece I know well as we used to analyze it every year in a class I taught.
My WTC is always nearby, and as I had already chosen to play the folksy hymn on the piano, I was then able to segue right into the Bach. To my delight, it felt even more natural then I'd expected, and I'd also forgotten what a gratifying piece it is to play, fitting beautifully under the fingers and featuring lots of opportunity for dialogue between the hands. There are a couple of brief chromatic passages that made we sweat in the moment, but everything went smoothly. Because I did end up needing to fill time for a while, I played the Bach twice through (leaving out the brief coda the first time), and it could not have timed out more perfectly. If only every Sunday went this way.
I guess maybe I was waiting to make a recording to finish up the post, or maybe had some grander plan in mind, but that post never got published. Anyway, seven years later, I was thinking about this again since I recently made another unexpected Bach connection with a Sunday morning hymn. In this case, the processional hymn was to be the lovely, folksy Morning Has Broken, which is best known in a sweetly sung pop version by Cat Stevens. (That piano intro/interlude is famous, I guess, though it seems like an odd fit with the tune.) As this was a Sunday featuring a more relaxed musical style, with a couple of guitarists on hand, I knew I would be at the piano instead of the organ.
So, in looking for a prelude, I noticed I'd played Bach's well-known Prelude in C Major from Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier as prelude last time we'd sung this hymn (with the associated fugue played as postlude that day). I'm not really sure why I'd chosen that other than that it was low-key summer Sunday and C Major fit with the version of the tune in our hymnal. In thinking about it, I wondered if I could combine Bach's iconic, flowing arpeggios with Morning Has Broken. After all, Bach's prelude was turned into the accompaniment for a beautiful setting of Ave Maria by Gounod. (That may be one of the most perfect examples of building a new work on top of a completely, self-contained work. It's always felt to me like Gounod discovered the solution to a puzzle Bach had left behind.) After a bit of time noodling around in Dorico (notation software I'm learning upon the news that Finale, my old friend/nemesis, is being put out to pasture), I had something that works pretty well.
Since I had about five minutes of time to fill, I ended up playing Bach's original prelude flowing directly into my new "Morning has broken chords" arrangement. Although the first four bars stay very close to Bach, from there, the broken chords are led more by the tune in the left hand so that the entire arrangement is less mashup than homage. However, the power of suggestion should not be underrated in cases like this. I've often found that the mere hint of a connection can make two different works seem like natural partners. (Sometimes, if I'm playing a postlude with no specific connection to the recessional hymn which precedes, I'll start off the postlude - with apologies to the poor composer - by incorporating some bit of the hymn tune - even just a few notes. In my mind at least, this can make the entire postlude seem as if it was inspired by the hymn, even if the actual connection vanishes within a bar or two. Perhaps I'll post some examples of this kind of thing in a future post. UPDATE: There's one example found in this post.)
The recordings posted below were made in a slightly unusual way. I recorded them by playing a full-size Kurzweil digital keyboard connected to my computer, but I wasn't loving the sound. So I looked around at various virtual pianos on hand and found a nice "American Home Grand" in a set I'd downloaded for free. I simply ran the MIDI data through that, and I have to say I really like the result. The piano has a tender but clear sound that works really well here. It's still missing things I love about the feel and sound of a real piano, but it was fun to experiment with this not quite the real thing. Though a sampled virtual piano like this is intended to replicate the sound of an acoustic piano as closely as possible, in some ways the most interesting thing is discovering something new in a sound because it's different.
To circle back to where I started, I also recorded the Ghanian hymn tune "Jesu, Jesu" transitioning into Bach's E Major Prelude using the same setup. The arrangement of the tune which I play here is worth a few words. Many hymnals publish the song with very simple, block chords, but this version (printed in F Major via that link) is written in a style that could be described as "Bachian," with active inner voices, countermelodies, and some subtle harmonic shadings. Though some might find the effect appropriative, I think it's a lovely meeting of two different styles that works quite well - and, of course, it makes the transition into Bach's prelude almost seamless. As for the prelude, I forgot how delightful and expressive it is. Though it looks conventional on the page, it's that perfect marriage of mechanical and magical that Bach does better than anyone.
Since hymn tunes played such a vital role in Bach's career with all his chorale harmonizations and chorale preludes, it's very satisfying to find how well his music can work alongside these more contemporary melodies. (And I tossed in a little surprise at the end of the "Bach.")
* See, from the past year (this footnote is from 2017 as well):
P.S. Just realized this at least the second blog post which I've titled "Bach to Bach." If you'd like to read these posts back to back, go here: MMmusing: Bach Day #3: Bach to Bach
Last year in the summer I experimented with creating a major key version of Schubert's Erlkönig, and then before long, I'd added new English lyrics and eventually a voice to sing them in a post called: "It talks." So, perhaps it's no surprise that, having created a mashup of Vivaldi's Concerto in A Minor with Dr. Dre's Still D.R.E., I realized I needed to create a rap to go with this new/old beat.
So I did, and though it's pretty silly, perhaps some music history profs will find it useful to help teach Vivaldi; the Red Priest drops some knowledge here students might want to know. Although I will likely find some need to tweak this more (getting the mix to work is a challenge - not so different from being an orchestrator/conductor), I'm going to release into the wild so you can use it for your cool weekend parties.
I'm teaching a new class (for me and school) in digital audio production this fall. Although I've been toying with audio in various ways since this blog debuted in 2007, I'm still learning my around more modern styles - specifically the concept of "making beats" (not in the sense of 'pulse' but rather as backup for raps, etc.) and working with loops, etc. Obviously the most fun way to prepare is to practice, so I remembered an idea which had come to me over the summer and decided to take it for a spin.
Over the last few years, I've found the most requested "song" non-pianist students ask to learn to play on the piano is the very simple looping hook from Still D.R.E., a 1999 song by Dr. Dre, featuring Snoop Dogg. It really only involves learning two bars of mostly repeated 8th note chords in the right hand with a simple three-note bass progression that is empty on beats 2 and 3. So when a student at summer chamber music camp asked if I could play this song, I confidently launched into it. However, having just accompanied a famous Vivaldi violin concerto in the same camp that week, an idea came to me, unbidden (as ever).
And that's mostly all that needs to be said. I think the connection, with the quarter pickup leading into repeated 8th notes, is pretty obvious. I'm proud to say that this was just a 24-hour turnaround from when I started to when I posted the "completed" video on YouTube. Although there are many options for how I might have handled the visuals (including a score animation, which however might give away some of my work), I settled on the simple idea of "stills" to go with the "Still D.R.E." theme. There is some very low-quality animation if you pay attention, but the images are really just space-filler. Since Snoop Dogg amplified his status as fun-loving, good-time celebrity during this summer's Olympic games coverage, it was a nice coincidence that he appears in the photo I used from the original song, so I put him to work a little.
One last production thing. I was having a hard time finding a good digital match for the lo-fi cello which plays the bass line at the beginning of the original song. Then I realized I'm a pretty lo-fi cellist myself, and my cello now has a pickup installed since my son will be playing it in a school jazz band this year. So, although most of what you'll hear is generated by synths, the cello line is played by a real life cellist! I still didn't really achieve the squeezed sound on the original, but that just means I have more to learn - or unlearn.
LYRIC POET: Are we embarking on a study of the meaning of meaning? YOUNGER BROTHER: I sure hope not. (from Leonard Bernstein's The Joy of Music)
NOTE: There are more than 450 possible outcomes.
About Me
MICHAEL MONROE
I'm a pianist and college music professor in the Boston area. This is not me. Neither is this. Curiously, these most Googleable Michael Monroe's are each musicians. This IS me.
