This coming Sunday, Oct. 18, appears to be the most popular day of the year to hold a concert. As I've mentioned, the Monmouth Symphony Orchestra will be performing at the Count Basie Theatre, 99 Monmouth St., Red Bank at 3 p.m. A pre-concert talk will begin at 2:15. I will be there for that concert as my orchestral prelude, Certain Dark Things is on the program. Roy Gussman conducts and the MSO Concerto Competition winner, Suejin Jung, will be the soloist in Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3. I was one of the judges on the panel that selected Suejin, so I can attest to her capability. She's an extraordinary player. Also on the program will be Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, a work that was a huge inspiration to me as a young man.
While it seems like this concert was framed around me, the opposite is actually the case: Pictures and the concerto winner were scheduled before my piece was added. My connection to the other two works is a pure coincidence.
More information is available on the website, www.monmouthsymphony.org. Tickets are $30, $25 for seniors and $5 for school-aged children, available by calling the Count Basie Theatre box office at 732-842-9000.
If you're not interested in joining me at the Count Basie, you can take your family to the Algonquin Arts Theatre performance of The Jungle Book, also starting at 3 p.m. Produced by The Magik Theatre (refer to Hesse's Steppenwolf to understand why that's a weird handle for a children's musicals production team), the show is 60 minutes long and "perfect for children of all ages". The Jungle Book story by Kipling is a more harsh and deeply entertaining story than is told by Disney, but I suspect this production will rely on the more popular version.
Tickets are $12 for children and $15 for adults, seniors, and students. To reserve seats or obtain more information, contact the box office at 732-528-9211, boxoffice@algonquinarts.org or visit the website, www.algonquinarts.org. Algonquin Arts is located at 173 Main Street in downtown Manasquan.
And there's more! But I have to get ready for class and I'll post those later.
--C.
www.theandofone.blogspot.com
Showing posts with label Pictures at an Exhibition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pictures at an Exhibition. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Pictures
As I mentioned in my Asbury Park Press column two weeks ago, Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" was one of the pieces that served as an entry for me into the world of classical music. I had heard Emerson, Lake and Palmer's version and liked it a lot. As a teenager, I saw the group perform at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena--in the style of concerts at the time, those were more or less spectaculars, almost like Broadway productions in scope. A professor of mine, referring to a Genesis concert he attended, said it confirmed his notion that they should be called "shows" and not "concerts." He was absolutely right. The ELP performances in particular involved a lot of lighting and visual special effects, a lot of theatrical antics, particularly by keyboardist Keith Emerson.
But as much as I liked the band's shows, the real experience for me came from its recordings. I liked the luxury that records provided of getting to know music in detail, to the point where a few seconds of a simple timbre could tell me exactly what part of what recording I was hearing. ELP's music in particular offered a lot of opportunity for discovery, not the least because their music was often drawn directly from classical sources.
Sometimes that connection was overt, as in the band's performance of Aaron Copland's "Hoedown" and Mussorgsky's "Pictures." And sometimes it was hidden, as in the band's arrangement of "The Barbarian" by Bela Bartok (not credited on the album) or in their original compositions like "Take a Pebble" that drew on classical models.
After finding the Mussorgsky score for piano solo in a practice room bench, I worked hard, very hard, and ultimately taught myself to slog through the three opening movements "Promenade"," The Gnomes" and a reprise of the "Promenade." It would have been no great thing to master a few of the other movements, but my teacher didn't insist and, being a kind of lazy teenager, I never did.
Building on my interest in "Pictures", my teacher handed me some Beethoven Country Dances and a couple easier sonata movements, Bartok's "The Barbarian," Debussy's "The Golliwog's Cakewalk," Chopin's preludes and Bach's two-part inventions. I was astonished that the Bartok was the same piece that appeared on the ELP album and I dove into it with all my heart. The "Golliwog" I came to love, with its ragtime references and comic timing. The Chopin and Bach I've never stopped exploring--a copy of both sets has been on or near my piano ever since, and led me directly to the Chopin Etudes and the Bach "Well-Tempered Clavier." Before I knew it I was in a deep world with wild-haired composers and glorious and strange musical styles sprouting up all around me.
Mind you, if my teacher's goal was to keep me excited, she made some serious missteps. I never did master a Clementi Sonatina--I considered it too much like boring beginner's music and just wasn't interested. I was wrong about that, as it turns out. The Clementi Sonatinas are interesting, even if they're not very rockin'. But the style was too reserved for me as a teenager. It's interesting, in that respect, that she didn't give me some of the more characteristic Beethoven sonatas with their drama and passion, or push me to learn the Rachmaninoff Prelude in G-sharp minor that she knew I loved so much.
Those are the mistakes teachers make. In my case, I can't really call them mistakes, in fact. I was a difficult student and by and large, she did well, more or less single-handedly turning me into a pianist. So these are just questions that continue to inform my own teaching and the exploration of music.
It is kind of nicely symbolic that I never learned "Pictures" completely. That piece opened a door--I walked through and found myself on a long journey. And I am not even close to being done.
--C.
But as much as I liked the band's shows, the real experience for me came from its recordings. I liked the luxury that records provided of getting to know music in detail, to the point where a few seconds of a simple timbre could tell me exactly what part of what recording I was hearing. ELP's music in particular offered a lot of opportunity for discovery, not the least because their music was often drawn directly from classical sources.
Sometimes that connection was overt, as in the band's performance of Aaron Copland's "Hoedown" and Mussorgsky's "Pictures." And sometimes it was hidden, as in the band's arrangement of "The Barbarian" by Bela Bartok (not credited on the album) or in their original compositions like "Take a Pebble" that drew on classical models.
After finding the Mussorgsky score for piano solo in a practice room bench, I worked hard, very hard, and ultimately taught myself to slog through the three opening movements "Promenade"," The Gnomes" and a reprise of the "Promenade." It would have been no great thing to master a few of the other movements, but my teacher didn't insist and, being a kind of lazy teenager, I never did.
Building on my interest in "Pictures", my teacher handed me some Beethoven Country Dances and a couple easier sonata movements, Bartok's "The Barbarian," Debussy's "The Golliwog's Cakewalk," Chopin's preludes and Bach's two-part inventions. I was astonished that the Bartok was the same piece that appeared on the ELP album and I dove into it with all my heart. The "Golliwog" I came to love, with its ragtime references and comic timing. The Chopin and Bach I've never stopped exploring--a copy of both sets has been on or near my piano ever since, and led me directly to the Chopin Etudes and the Bach "Well-Tempered Clavier." Before I knew it I was in a deep world with wild-haired composers and glorious and strange musical styles sprouting up all around me.
Mind you, if my teacher's goal was to keep me excited, she made some serious missteps. I never did master a Clementi Sonatina--I considered it too much like boring beginner's music and just wasn't interested. I was wrong about that, as it turns out. The Clementi Sonatinas are interesting, even if they're not very rockin'. But the style was too reserved for me as a teenager. It's interesting, in that respect, that she didn't give me some of the more characteristic Beethoven sonatas with their drama and passion, or push me to learn the Rachmaninoff Prelude in G-sharp minor that she knew I loved so much.
Those are the mistakes teachers make. In my case, I can't really call them mistakes, in fact. I was a difficult student and by and large, she did well, more or less single-handedly turning me into a pianist. So these are just questions that continue to inform my own teaching and the exploration of music.
It is kind of nicely symbolic that I never learned "Pictures" completely. That piece opened a door--I walked through and found myself on a long journey. And I am not even close to being done.
--C.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Certain Dark Things
I mentioned in my Music Notes column last Sunday (Sept. 27) in the Asbury Park Press that the Monmouth Symphony Orchestra is performing my short piece Certain Dark Things on their concert at the Count Basie Theatre 3 p.m. Sunday Oct. 18. The piece was originally written as a piano solo dedicated to my wife, Lauren and orchestrated a couple years later.
The title comes from the Sonnet 17 of Pablo Neruda. Lauren had given me the poem as a gift a few years ago. I have tried several times to set it to music, failing each time, mostly because I can't come up with an accompaniment that satisfies the warm spiritual and sexual turbulence of this poem. The melody is easy and I have half a dozen different solutions sketched out. But the harmony and the underlying rhythms … that's another matter.
Is there codependency there? Yeh, probably. But who cares? In the moment of its expression, what is captured is the overpowering sweetness and despair of love mutual and complete, yet antagonized by outside forces, the honking traffic of mundanity. The lovers here are pressed together "between the shadow and the soul" like flower petals in a book and their devotion, their allegiance, their tryst, is apparent to no one but themselves. Something in that image is so sad, so ecstatic and so perfect. It is the final union, the perfect transcendence of Otherness that rejects bright daylight joy and the spark of individuality and yearning. It closes the circle as near to God as we can get.
Certain Dark Things, then, is my instrumental answer to the problem, an attempt to capture some small aspect of the poem in sound without the direct explication of words. I don't attempt a broader spiritual or theological meaning. Just using the poem as inspiration for an emotional state that is carried through here. Another day, the music inspired by the same source could be quite different. But today, it is thus.
--C.
The title comes from the Sonnet 17 of Pablo Neruda. Lauren had given me the poem as a gift a few years ago. I have tried several times to set it to music, failing each time, mostly because I can't come up with an accompaniment that satisfies the warm spiritual and sexual turbulence of this poem. The melody is easy and I have half a dozen different solutions sketched out. But the harmony and the underlying rhythms … that's another matter.
I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving
but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.
Is there codependency there? Yeh, probably. But who cares? In the moment of its expression, what is captured is the overpowering sweetness and despair of love mutual and complete, yet antagonized by outside forces, the honking traffic of mundanity. The lovers here are pressed together "between the shadow and the soul" like flower petals in a book and their devotion, their allegiance, their tryst, is apparent to no one but themselves. Something in that image is so sad, so ecstatic and so perfect. It is the final union, the perfect transcendence of Otherness that rejects bright daylight joy and the spark of individuality and yearning. It closes the circle as near to God as we can get.
Certain Dark Things, then, is my instrumental answer to the problem, an attempt to capture some small aspect of the poem in sound without the direct explication of words. I don't attempt a broader spiritual or theological meaning. Just using the poem as inspiration for an emotional state that is carried through here. Another day, the music inspired by the same source could be quite different. But today, it is thus.
--C.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
