Deconstructing Brunch

I have not yet received much feedback about my most recent post, in which I combine a serious Sondheim song with a silly song about Barbie; but on a Facebook Sondheim forum, a commenter wrote: "I don't know whether to love this or to be horrified." I suspect this comes from a point-of-view which holds Sondheim's works to be somewhat sacred. I don't even completely disagree with that notion, but I think I've proven over and over here that playing around with greatness doesn't have to diminish the greatness. Meanwhile, this kind of play can yield all sorts of discoveries.

The Barbies Who Brunch

Well, here we are right in the middle of August with the annual existential crisis that marks the near end of summer. (I realize that in some parts of the country, school started weeks ago, but I've still basically got a week to go before real work kicks back in.) What better way to mark an existential crisis than by bringing together a world-weary Sondheim anthem and a Europop cultural critique of empty-headed materialism? But first, a little background.

Upgrading Haydn

Almost exactly five years ago, I wrote about an obsessive love I developed for the slow movement of a late Haydn string quartet - a post which included a homemade recording of my own piano transcription of this music. I believed then, as I still do, that this arrangement would rank as the best slow movement from any of Haydn's 50-plus piano sonatas, although you are free to disagree. [This, starting at 8:23, would likely be the closest competitor, but I am admittedly not a Haydn connoisseur.] My one frustration had been that the recording was made on my own piano which was not in great shape at the time - oh, and a kind YouTube commenter pointed out a wrong note in m.10, so that had always bothered me. [There were likely other wrong notes, and certainly some imprecisions, but this one - which I had misprinted in my arrangement - was just stupid wrong, although it doesn't sound bad.]

An Inner Augmented Sixth

First of all, HAPPY AUGMENTED SIXTH DAY! If you've forgotten to celebrate, or somehow don't know why today is so special, you can check in on the original "Augmented Sixth Day" post from 2012, plus other past celebrations here:

• Happy Augmented Sixth Day - 8/6/2012
• Happy Augmented Sixth Day! (2016 ed.) - 8/6/2016
• Augmented Reality - 10/16/2021
• An Aug 6 for Aug 6 in an August Sextet - 8/6/2022
• The Augmented Reality Waltz - 8/6/2025

Staggered Canon

When historians look back at the various projects associated with this blog, today's exhibit will not be among the most important or impressive in terms of inspiration or effort. But, today's project is certainly right on brand, inspired as it is by a technological happenstance which lit up my own interest. We'll get right to it.

Geographical Fun

About a week ago, a musically-minded Facebook friend posted that seeing Trinidad on a map always makes him think of....well, I only had to get that far to think I knew what he was thinking about. Though I was wrong! He was observing that the shape of the island of Trinidad reminds him of Gru's airship in Despicable Me...which is a connection I would never have made for a variety of reasons. (Someone has posted about this on Reddit as well.) Here's a quick comparison to see what you think:

So, that's not what I was thinking. But if you've spent much time around choruses, you might well guess that hearing "Trinidad" makes me think of THIS:

Joyful Morning with Bach (and Schumann...and Yo-Yo Ma)

Last night, the violinist in a chamber music trio I coach was a no-show at rehearsal. The cellist, pianist, and I gamely worked on their assigned music for most of the time with me sometimes singing the violin part (eek!) or playing it up high on the piano. But there was a point when I thought it might be fun to try something different. I asked each student what solo music they were working on. The cellist (about 12 or 13, I think) said she was learning the [very famous] Prelude from Bach's first cello suite. This reminded me that last year, in a very similar situation, I'd mentioned to a very young Bach-playing cellist that Robert Schumann had written piano accompaniments for all the Bach suites. So, on the spur of the moment then, I pulled up the music from IMSLP and we played a little of it together, but she was only ready to play about 10-12 bars.

Chant noir

Here is an unusual musical creation from a few weeks ago (with video added today):

Happy Birthday from The Alcotts

My official 20th year of blogging began on February 24th, although I failed to post on the 19th Anniversary this year. (I promise I won't forget next year when it's the 20th!) It's been a very busy winter, but a few days off means I'm finally back with new stuff to share.

Bartók Bells (Emptying the Desk Drawer #10)

A quick post featuring festive bells to end 2025 - a year in which I had the most blog posts of any year since 2014. This is a perfect example of the kind of not-so-serious but fun multimedia I find myself creating on social media. In this case, I think it also provides a nice little window into how my mind works in these situations...for better or for worse.

I can, can't I? (But, should I?)

While prepping for a school Christmas concert about a month ago, I went to some notation files folders to find my own accompaniment arrangement for Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You," a song I was slated to play with a big group of enthusiastic 8th graders. As I looked through multiple versions, I was surprised to find one with a left hand which borrows from a big hit of the 19th century - although it didn't carry the idea very far.

The Quick Carol (Emptying the Desk Drawer #9)

Time for a little Christmas cleaning. I was looking for something else among the tens of thousands of files on my computer and came across this micro-project I barely remembered from 2020. Someone had posted the following "formula for a Christmas carol" meme:

eGriegious Behavior

This perhaps belongs in my "Emptying the Desk Drawer" series, except that the material here has not been sitting around cluttering the desk for long at all - and a surprising coincidence last night made the content seem a little more purposeful. This journey began when a friend mentioned in a group chat that Grieg's oft-played Holberg Suite for strings began its life as a suite of piano pieces, although the string version is much better known. I commented that I had written program notes (p.4 here) about this music once, and there I had discussed 1) the work's origin as a nod to older musical styles, and 2) Grieg's added second-piano parts to Mozart piano sonatas which put a late 19th-century spin on late 18th century style. We'll start with #2 and get back to #1 a little later.

Birthdays Across Three Centuries

This is a pretty straightforward post, inspired in the usual way. It began three days ago when a young pianist I was coaching in a chamber group announced that it was his eleventh birthday. The group is working on the very well-known and high-spirited Rondo all'Ongarese ("in the Hungarian style") from Haydn's Piano Trio in G Major, a work which features a tongue-twister of a main tune with which the pianist and violinist must contend throughout. (This newly eleven-year-old pianist has no fear and never seems to trip - although we're not close to the tempo in that linked Argerich performance.)

Sharp Objects

Somehow in all these years of blogging, I've never written about my obsession with the first movement of Charles-Valentin Alkan's Concerto for Solo Piano. Actually, I did mention it in passing once here, and I've just added it to my otherwise rather static list of Favorite Music Works - a list which probably deserves a larger-scale re-visit. Leaving it off of that list was a big oversight, although I think my affection for this remarkable thirty-minute movement has only grown since then. I took a long walk this summer where I listened to the whole movement twice in a row, and I listened to it all on several other walks.

Sonic Signature Sequels (Sixty Second Symphony)

In my last post, I wrote about a new seven-second snippet written by Mason Bates as a sonic logo for the Charlotte Symphony - and I debuted my own first try in the genre; but I knew in my heart that it wouldn't be my last attempt. Sure enough, I now have six total sonic signatures to my name - which, to be honest, isn't that big a deal. That's less than sixty seconds of music! But I have found it to be a really gratifying exercise, especially in writing for full orchestra.

Seven Seconds or Less

Recently, a colleague shared an NPR story with me about how the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra had commissioned composer Mason Bates to write a very short "sonic logo" to be played by the orchestra. The story begins by connecting this to iconic logo sounds like the NBC and Netflix signatures which are really just a few gestures - less themes than motives. (The generic Netflix one barely qualities as a motive as there's really not much to it. It is iconic by the brute force of its ubiquity.) You may hear Bates' final product here:

Unexpect yourself

[I settled on the clumsy blog post title as an homage to the Philadelphia Orchestra's notoriously awful marketing tag from fifteen years ago.]

I've written before about my ambivalent attitude towards the "great" Joseph Haydn, a composer whose skill and influence I would never question, but whose music simply doesn't move me that often. Among other things, I find his supposed knack for humor to be pretty overrated, although he can hardly be blamed that an unexpectedly loud G Major chord (hear here at 0:37) has lost a little of its punch due to serious overexposure. 

We'll get back to that in a second. First, here's a little story from a few weeks back.

This just in!

Although I would not have anticipated this years ago when I was considering what I'd do with my life, it turns out that a new part of my high school job this year is running a livestreamed morning news show. It's involved a significant learning curve - still curving - but it's also been fun to work with the technology and, especially, the live performance aspect. Of course, I have a lot of experience performing as a musician, and I think some of those "thinking in the moment" skills transfer over. Managing scene changes, fades/dissolves, cueing announcers - there is a musical aspect to managing the timing of all of these elements.

I've got a little Liszt...to add to this list

In my previous post, I mentioned that I've long been naturally drawn to tune connections. Back in "The Aughts," when the blog was young, I wrote a series of what I called "Tune Theft" posts lightheartedly using the term "theft" to describe instances in which a given melody seemed to borrow quite a bit from a previous melody. As so often on the blog, I was interested in how it is that a given set of notes can carry a specific identity which can nonetheless be repurposed to create something quite different, much as we just saw with four notes from "Swing low, sweet chariot." You may find the original list, mostly from 2007 with some other additions grafted in, here.