IMSLP returns tomorrow! (fingers crossed, knees trembling, mumbling "I do believe in free public domain scores, I do believe in free public domain scores, I do believe in free public domain scores..." )
UPDATE: It bad been announced that the re-opening would be on July 1, but the website is back up and running now. Go see what's there.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Great Discoveries
Although I have inadvertently taken several blogging breaks of a week or longer, I usually seem to end up posting the day after suggesting I'll be on hiatus. The logic here is simple: the point of the average hiatus is that I'm supposed to be working on something else; whenever I'm supposed to be working on "something else," it's highly likely that I'll find something "else else" (like blogging) to do for as long as possible. Yes, I am in favor of crastination.
But seriously, it's worth nothing that Norman Lebrecht, he who so famously derided classical music bloggers and then became a classical music blogger, has just discovered something called YouTube. I'm not sure of the address for this YouTube site, but apparently there are a lot of videos of classical music to be found. Perhaps now that Lebrecht has redeemed the idea of blogging about classical music, he can show us all how to use this mysterious YouTube. Next week, perhaps he'll find a way for us to do searches on the World Wide Web so that I can find an address for YouTube. Or maybe there's some sort of collaborative, self-edited encyclopedia project just waiting to be found by Lebrecht.
In other news, I just discovered something called podcasts. Well, not really - I've been a faithful listener to The Sport's Guy's podcast for some time now, but they happen only every so often. I'm commuting many mornings between 5:30 and 6am when there's not a lot on the radio and I don't always feel like listening to music, so what's an iPod owner to do? For some reason, I'd never really explored the world of classical music podcasts before, but yesterday I stumbled on NPR's Piano Puzzler series. Now, I suppose if I ever listened to public radio I might have already heard of this series, but anyway, these little episodes are a lot of fun. Pianist/composer Bruce Adolphe disguises popular tunes in the style of various composers, and a phone-in contestant gets to try to guess both tune and style.
So, I downloaded a whole batch from iTunes and fired 'em up this morning. Good listening times. My only complaint is that they're so short; I got through five episodes in one commute. Also, although I understand that the format is geared for radio, it would be nice if Adolophe had more time to explain how he puts each creation together. Of the five I've heard so far, I recognized the composer (and, in most cases, a specific work as model) almost right away, but it would still be fun at the end to have him play the original model work back-to-back with his newly tuned version. And, for me at least, finding the tunes can be quite a challenge. It's amazing how much a different context can throw your ears off the scent. Fortunately, the podcast medium makes it easy to go back and listen.
=====
Quite coincidentally, this is now the second time I've broken an announced hiatus with a post inspired by Norman Lebrecht. He's the gift that keeps on giving.
UPDATE: I've since listend to more Piano Puzzlers on my way home from work today. It turns out that, unlike the first five or so I'd listened to in which the contestant guessed right almost right away, the show gets even better when the contestant is stumped - in a couple of cases now, Adolphe has thus had the opportunity to explain more what's going on. Still, there was one instance (I won't give the details away so as not to spoil) where neither the contestant nor the co-host (nor I) had ever heard the tune before, and yet Adolphe never really just played it (or, better yet, sang it) straight through. Maybe I ask too much.
But seriously, it's worth nothing that Norman Lebrecht, he who so famously derided classical music bloggers and then became a classical music blogger, has just discovered something called YouTube. I'm not sure of the address for this YouTube site, but apparently there are a lot of videos of classical music to be found. Perhaps now that Lebrecht has redeemed the idea of blogging about classical music, he can show us all how to use this mysterious YouTube. Next week, perhaps he'll find a way for us to do searches on the World Wide Web so that I can find an address for YouTube. Or maybe there's some sort of collaborative, self-edited encyclopedia project just waiting to be found by Lebrecht.
In other news, I just discovered something called podcasts. Well, not really - I've been a faithful listener to The Sport's Guy's podcast for some time now, but they happen only every so often. I'm commuting many mornings between 5:30 and 6am when there's not a lot on the radio and I don't always feel like listening to music, so what's an iPod owner to do? For some reason, I'd never really explored the world of classical music podcasts before, but yesterday I stumbled on NPR's Piano Puzzler series. Now, I suppose if I ever listened to public radio I might have already heard of this series, but anyway, these little episodes are a lot of fun. Pianist/composer Bruce Adolphe disguises popular tunes in the style of various composers, and a phone-in contestant gets to try to guess both tune and style.
So, I downloaded a whole batch from iTunes and fired 'em up this morning. Good listening times. My only complaint is that they're so short; I got through five episodes in one commute. Also, although I understand that the format is geared for radio, it would be nice if Adolophe had more time to explain how he puts each creation together. Of the five I've heard so far, I recognized the composer (and, in most cases, a specific work as model) almost right away, but it would still be fun at the end to have him play the original model work back-to-back with his newly tuned version. And, for me at least, finding the tunes can be quite a challenge. It's amazing how much a different context can throw your ears off the scent. Fortunately, the podcast medium makes it easy to go back and listen.
=====
Quite coincidentally, this is now the second time I've broken an announced hiatus with a post inspired by Norman Lebrecht. He's the gift that keeps on giving.
UPDATE: I've since listend to more Piano Puzzlers on my way home from work today. It turns out that, unlike the first five or so I'd listened to in which the contestant guessed right almost right away, the show gets even better when the contestant is stumped - in a couple of cases now, Adolphe has thus had the opportunity to explain more what's going on. Still, there was one instance (I won't give the details away so as not to spoil) where neither the contestant nor the co-host (nor I) had ever heard the tune before, and yet Adolphe never really just played it (or, better yet, sang it) straight through. Maybe I ask too much.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Grand Pause
This will certainly be a slow blogging week since I'm getting two summer classes off the ground and I have a major writing project due early next week. (!!!!) I'll be back in July, and that's not really so far away. In the meantime, you can peruse the always interesting musings of the mysteriously monickered commenter Fusedule Tecil here, here, and here. I'm tempted to jump in more on the soundtrack questions he raises, but alas, the jump will have to wait. Speaking of mysterious monickers, there's a very promising and fairly new blog written by an Osbert Parsely. Worth a look.
And if you want to get a little peek into the kind of insanity that is my family, you could head over to my kid sister's new blog and read in stunning detail about the extraordinary work she did for my daughter's recent "Brady Bunch" birthday party. Here (the intro), here (the cake), and here (the pinata). This sister is perhaps the most creative person I know, and I love that she's not afraid to lavish that creativity on the ephemeral. A Poulenc of the crafting world. Groovy times.
And, since I seem to be in the process of creating my first "link" post (I think bloggers are supposed to do this a lot), let me now point to one of my favorite posts of the year that didn't seem to get as much attention as it deserved: Jeremy Denk's remarkable contribution to Adaptistration's "Take a Friend to Orchestra" month. It captures so much of the complex, paradoxical experience it can be to love music and to love performing music. Everyone should read it - and then go listen to Falstaff.
I'll also point to one of my least favorite articles of the year, this takedown of the "average classical music audience" by Tim Mangan. It's not so much a question of disagreeing with the substance of what he's saying, as feeling that the hostile attitude towards casual listeners is so . . . hostile. I find this a bit with Greg Sandow as well - the sense that audiences who enjoy the "safe" experience of friendly, melodic masterworks are somehow less alive and worth caring about than the hip types who want thrill rides. Even if you believe (as Sandow seems to) that this audience is going to die away, I think anyone who chooses to come to a classical concert (for whatever reason) deserves a little more respect than Mangan shows. But I'm not supposed to be blogging, just linking, so I'll save that for another day.
And if you want to get a little peek into the kind of insanity that is my family, you could head over to my kid sister's new blog and read in stunning detail about the extraordinary work she did for my daughter's recent "Brady Bunch" birthday party. Here (the intro), here (the cake), and here (the pinata). This sister is perhaps the most creative person I know, and I love that she's not afraid to lavish that creativity on the ephemeral. A Poulenc of the crafting world. Groovy times.
And, since I seem to be in the process of creating my first "link" post (I think bloggers are supposed to do this a lot), let me now point to one of my favorite posts of the year that didn't seem to get as much attention as it deserved: Jeremy Denk's remarkable contribution to Adaptistration's "Take a Friend to Orchestra" month. It captures so much of the complex, paradoxical experience it can be to love music and to love performing music. Everyone should read it - and then go listen to Falstaff.
I'll also point to one of my least favorite articles of the year, this takedown of the "average classical music audience" by Tim Mangan. It's not so much a question of disagreeing with the substance of what he's saying, as feeling that the hostile attitude towards casual listeners is so . . . hostile. I find this a bit with Greg Sandow as well - the sense that audiences who enjoy the "safe" experience of friendly, melodic masterworks are somehow less alive and worth caring about than the hip types who want thrill rides. Even if you believe (as Sandow seems to) that this audience is going to die away, I think anyone who chooses to come to a classical concert (for whatever reason) deserves a little more respect than Mangan shows. But I'm not supposed to be blogging, just linking, so I'll save that for another day.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Text, Timing, and Silly Recits
At the end of my last post, I linked to a Family Guy remix that uses animated text to render the dialogue. [UPDATE: Youtube has removed the video, but here's the original scene. OH, and the original is back, at least for now.) I'd never seen anything quite like it, but I now see that there are plenty of other examples of "kinetic typography" out there. Here's Abbott and Costello talkin' baseball. Here's a famous Barack Obama speech, although I confess that his rhetoric does nothing for me. I've written often about how animated visuals can serve as a useful catalyst for listening to music; here we see a kind of animation that lets us see the musical qualities of speech - specifically, the typography gives us another way of appreciating the kind of subtle timing that makes effective speech happen. I particularly like the Family Guy piece because it's not so obviously musical. In both the "Who's on First?" skit and the Obama speech, the rhythm and pacing are already readily apparent.
By the way, I'm not a Family Guy guy (although I am a family guy) - I think my comic/satiric/cynical sensibility is pretty much frozen at mid-90's Seinfeld/Simpsons levels, and besides, I never found the talking baby to be anything but annoying. But I digress - this Family Guy argument about The Godfather is comic gold, and unlike a lot of the kinetic typography I've seen on YouTube, the leaping letters don't so much draw attention to themselves as help show the shape and rhythm of the discussion.
Note that it doesn't reveal the rhythms in a consistent notational way, so it doesn't function like a musical score. And an important point here is that a musical score would be almost pointless - or, put another way, the actors and director don't need a rhythmically precise score to create these complex rhythms, pitches, and timbres. If a writer tried to provide a precisely notated score, the actors would probably mutiny. The timing comes mostly from the gifted performers, although you can be sure an editor helped orchestrate the final product, especially since Seth MacFarlane performs multiple characters.
What's interesting about this to me is that it shows a fundamental challenge with creating effective recitatives in opera. Even though it's common and correct practice for opera singers to follow natural speech inflections more flexibly than what's notated, it's still difficult to create recitative that doesn't sound stilted, at least in English. (The pitches are arguably more problematic than the rhythms.) In other words, I often wonder if dialogue in opera wouldn't be improved by just allowing the characters to speak - and I don't just mean improved in terms of clarity, but also in terms of aesthetic success. Too often, it seems as if a composer is trying to do just what I said the Family Guy writer would never dream of doing. If the actors are sufficiently skilled, they should be able to weave their lines together with more subtlety and flair for timing than any score could suggest.
Of course, that brings up several problems. For one, opera is supposed to be sung throughout. Whatever. Second, composers expect to have much more control over such matters than any screenwriter or playwright would imagine. Silly composers. Third, opera actors might be really bad at acting and feel safer when restricted to the narrow range of options a score provides. That ties into my recent post about improvisation. There, I was taking an improv advocate to task for misrepresenting what it is that classical musicians do since he seemed to suggest there was no imagination allowed when just reciting a score. However, my point was not that we don't need improv training, and it could be argued that dialogue in a musical theater production (opera or other) is an area in which we'd do well to have performers trained to be creatively spontaneous. (Note that I don't mean improvisation of lines - just the sort of natural improvisation of rhythm, pitch, and timbre that is a part of all speech.)
As much as I tend to fall into the traditionalist camp within classical music culture, it will always puzzle me that modern composers have continued to be so intimidated by the opera-must-be-sung-throughout ideal. Let the people speak!
ADDENDUM: Someone might say, "but you haven't given a single example of an ineffective recit." Well, I just didn't feel like going down that road for today (the post is long enough!), but suffice it to say both that there are many cases in opera where the recit writing works well, and there are countless examples where we'd be better off with plain old speech.
By the way, I'm not a Family Guy guy (although I am a family guy) - I think my comic/satiric/cynical sensibility is pretty much frozen at mid-90's Seinfeld/Simpsons levels, and besides, I never found the talking baby to be anything but annoying. But I digress - this Family Guy argument about The Godfather is comic gold, and unlike a lot of the kinetic typography I've seen on YouTube, the leaping letters don't so much draw attention to themselves as help show the shape and rhythm of the discussion.
Note that it doesn't reveal the rhythms in a consistent notational way, so it doesn't function like a musical score. And an important point here is that a musical score would be almost pointless - or, put another way, the actors and director don't need a rhythmically precise score to create these complex rhythms, pitches, and timbres. If a writer tried to provide a precisely notated score, the actors would probably mutiny. The timing comes mostly from the gifted performers, although you can be sure an editor helped orchestrate the final product, especially since Seth MacFarlane performs multiple characters.
What's interesting about this to me is that it shows a fundamental challenge with creating effective recitatives in opera. Even though it's common and correct practice for opera singers to follow natural speech inflections more flexibly than what's notated, it's still difficult to create recitative that doesn't sound stilted, at least in English. (The pitches are arguably more problematic than the rhythms.) In other words, I often wonder if dialogue in opera wouldn't be improved by just allowing the characters to speak - and I don't just mean improved in terms of clarity, but also in terms of aesthetic success. Too often, it seems as if a composer is trying to do just what I said the Family Guy writer would never dream of doing. If the actors are sufficiently skilled, they should be able to weave their lines together with more subtlety and flair for timing than any score could suggest.
Of course, that brings up several problems. For one, opera is supposed to be sung throughout. Whatever. Second, composers expect to have much more control over such matters than any screenwriter or playwright would imagine. Silly composers. Third, opera actors might be really bad at acting and feel safer when restricted to the narrow range of options a score provides. That ties into my recent post about improvisation. There, I was taking an improv advocate to task for misrepresenting what it is that classical musicians do since he seemed to suggest there was no imagination allowed when just reciting a score. However, my point was not that we don't need improv training, and it could be argued that dialogue in a musical theater production (opera or other) is an area in which we'd do well to have performers trained to be creatively spontaneous. (Note that I don't mean improvisation of lines - just the sort of natural improvisation of rhythm, pitch, and timbre that is a part of all speech.)
As much as I tend to fall into the traditionalist camp within classical music culture, it will always puzzle me that modern composers have continued to be so intimidated by the opera-must-be-sung-throughout ideal. Let the people speak!
ADDENDUM: Someone might say, "but you haven't given a single example of an ineffective recit." Well, I just didn't feel like going down that road for today (the post is long enough!), but suffice it to say both that there are many cases in opera where the recit writing works well, and there are countless examples where we'd be better off with plain old speech.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Do You See What I Hear?
Since I've been on vacation, I've been doing lots of non-musical things like yardwork, housecleaning, and paying attention to my kids. This has slowed the output of Songs Without Singers, score visualizations, and the like, but I do have another little musical visualization to post about. My daughter and I spent the odd hours of a few different days assembling a Hogwarts castle from Harry Potter building cards she got for her birthday. (Full Disclosure: I've never read any of the HP books, which I suppose makes me a muggle, or some such. However, Daughter of MMmusing is a true fan.) In order to show off our creation to the various Harry fans among her far-flung cousins, I took a few pictures and a little video. (The castle was filmed on location in a thoroughly uninspired setting atop my Steinway. Hey, I'm just glad I can see the top of the piano, which often looks like a remainders table outside a Borders.)
Naturally, we snagged John Williams' lilting little waltz theme to accompany the montage. I'd never even paid any attention to this soundtrack, but it was remarkable to me how the music made the images seem to come to life. In fact, the music inspired some cool visual effects that I'm proud of, and I now wish I'd thought through the camera-work more purposefully - for example, I should have saved a wide-shot of the whole castle for the second statement of the theme, about 48 seconds in. As it happens, that second statement underscores the second pullback of the camera, the swirling strings seeming to lift the perspective upward as the spires and steeples are unveiled in a dizzying manner that exaggerates their height.
I mention this not because I planned it that way, but rather because the video and soundtrack just fell together that way, purely by chance. I love it when this sort of thing happens, because it shows how naturally the mind is conditioned to find meaning where meaning wasn't intended. Here's the other thing I like about this little video creation. As it begins, it's quite obvious that we're looking at a roughly assembled card-castle - windows oddly placed, brick colors not matching, misaligned joints, a few randomly added pieces that should've been removed, etc. However, as the video progresses into a few still pics, it settles on a slightly blurred wide shot that could almost be mistaken for a real castle, partly because the piano surface is less apparent. Then, just as gradually, this virtually realistic image becomes more and more abstract, shifting from three to two dimensions and becoming unreal again, but in a quite different way than we saw at first. A series of impromptu visual effects suggests a magical transformation that seems to lead the cardboard castle off into the world of fantasy, a world in which magic is more real than what looks real.
I know I'm overselling this - and yet, the evocative music really does make me see these images as poetic, certainly much more poetic than they deserve to be given how casually they were produced. At the end of the day, I come away more than anything with an appreciation of Williams' craft - particularly his ability to write suggestively. This and all my other humble video/animation creations also make me excited about how easily anyone can now create interesting motion pictures. Surely we're just at the tip of a whole range of possibilities when you consider how technology that once would've required a whole studio budget is now available to pretty much anyone. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this democratization of the film medium opens up extraordinary new art worlds.
Regular readers here will know that I see enormous potential in using visual imagery as a catalyst for musical understanding. See here, here and, of course, MMtube. Also, check out the cleverly executed text visualization (not my work) of a Family Guy discussion below. (Thanks to Youngest Sister of MMmusing for the link.) Notice how, in the absence of the original animation, the visuals animate and elucidate the dialogue - like subtitles on steroids. [Youtube has removed the video, sadly. Here's the original scene on which it's based.]
Naturally, we snagged John Williams' lilting little waltz theme to accompany the montage. I'd never even paid any attention to this soundtrack, but it was remarkable to me how the music made the images seem to come to life. In fact, the music inspired some cool visual effects that I'm proud of, and I now wish I'd thought through the camera-work more purposefully - for example, I should have saved a wide-shot of the whole castle for the second statement of the theme, about 48 seconds in. As it happens, that second statement underscores the second pullback of the camera, the swirling strings seeming to lift the perspective upward as the spires and steeples are unveiled in a dizzying manner that exaggerates their height.
I mention this not because I planned it that way, but rather because the video and soundtrack just fell together that way, purely by chance. I love it when this sort of thing happens, because it shows how naturally the mind is conditioned to find meaning where meaning wasn't intended. Here's the other thing I like about this little video creation. As it begins, it's quite obvious that we're looking at a roughly assembled card-castle - windows oddly placed, brick colors not matching, misaligned joints, a few randomly added pieces that should've been removed, etc. However, as the video progresses into a few still pics, it settles on a slightly blurred wide shot that could almost be mistaken for a real castle, partly because the piano surface is less apparent. Then, just as gradually, this virtually realistic image becomes more and more abstract, shifting from three to two dimensions and becoming unreal again, but in a quite different way than we saw at first. A series of impromptu visual effects suggests a magical transformation that seems to lead the cardboard castle off into the world of fantasy, a world in which magic is more real than what looks real.
I know I'm overselling this - and yet, the evocative music really does make me see these images as poetic, certainly much more poetic than they deserve to be given how casually they were produced. At the end of the day, I come away more than anything with an appreciation of Williams' craft - particularly his ability to write suggestively. This and all my other humble video/animation creations also make me excited about how easily anyone can now create interesting motion pictures. Surely we're just at the tip of a whole range of possibilities when you consider how technology that once would've required a whole studio budget is now available to pretty much anyone. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this democratization of the film medium opens up extraordinary new art worlds.
Regular readers here will know that I see enormous potential in using visual imagery as a catalyst for musical understanding. See here, here and, of course, MMtube. Also, check out the cleverly executed text visualization (not my work) of a Family Guy discussion below. (Thanks to Youngest Sister of MMmusing for the link.) Notice how, in the absence of the original animation, the visuals animate and elucidate the dialogue - like subtitles on steroids. [Youtube has removed the video, sadly. Here's the original scene on which it's based.]
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