More on 'Shape-Note'

Last week's Music Notes column in the Aug. 29, 2010 Asbury Park Press on Sacred Harp singing mentioned that the "singing schools" style went out of fashion in the Northeast in the beginning of the 19th Century, but was preserved in the South and Southwest. The songbook The Sacred Harp from which the style takes its name, was published in Georgia in 1844 and has never gone out of print.

A couple more things need to be added to that history to give a more reasonably complete picture. First, the style died out in the North because it was considered vulgar. Had the more educated elite in the South had their way, it would have died out there too.

The taste of the time presumed that culture of any real value had to come from Europe. Anything made here was cheap imitation. As the economies in northern cities took off, those place shunned the second-fiddle, homemade culture in favor of the imported variety.

Shape-note was built on European traditions, but it was nothing like them. It was rowdy, democratic and required no education--not even an initiation or a profession of faith--to participate. You showed up, you were in. You learned the songs by singing them.

The areas that embraced this music and never let go were, at first, the wilder parts of the U.S., populated by working men and women who necessarily put less emphasis on education and refinement--Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Missouri, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas. Undoubtedly many of the folks in those parts envied the rich and would have followed them if they could. But as a rule, they were not rich. And to a very real extent, their lives literally depended on their ability to revere far simpler pleasures.

Here I could stretch the point to emphasize the empowerment provided by shape-note singing, the vitality of a congregation that needed no leader and the fear that such unmarshalled power could have aroused in the leaders of America's frail religious, economic and political societies. Probably there is some truth in that.

But maybe we don't need to go there. Maybe it's enough to say that this music, powerful for unlearned, represented the image of the dumb, backwoods hick that the socially elevated and "cultivated" Americans were hoping to banish.

As a side note, this history can't help but remind me of the current suspicions--by Tea Party-ists and others--about the secret society of "elitists" of New York and the Northeast forcing the rest of the country to live according to its standard. While it may be empty rhetoric now, that bad blood goes way back and has some basis in truth. It seems only slightly ironic that the North's great centers of education--New York, Princeton, Boston, Philadelphia--now embrace shape-note singing as a living American tradition. But with great centers of wealth and learning now located in the South and the West and the tracks of commuting paths blackening the continent's vast distances, all such purely geographical distinctions have to be taken as trivial.

And so to the second point: shape-note is a living tradition. Each generation since that of the first New England composers has added to the body of music that congregations perform. While the style is tightly constrained, it is not simply a recreation of the past--not a "living history" of the usual type, not merely a reenactment. The music is ever-changing. Each performance is really alive in the here and now--to which composers respond with even more here and more now.

I would love to see this tradition spread to every community--to hear the sweat and toil, the aggravations and indignities of common life expressed in full-voiced song challenging all the powers that be, to have political anthems and moral arguments composed and sung by opposing congregations in boiling shape-note battles. To have politicians answer the congregations in call and response. And if the candidate can't sing--bring on the hook.

Why not.

--C.
http://www.theandofone.blogspot.com

Today's Improv 8/26/10

kind of dark, but I like it



--C.
http://www.theandofone.blogspot.com

Today's improv 8/19/10

a fanfare, of sorts



http://www.theandofone.blogspot.com

Apparently Abstract

A painter doesn't necessarily begin at the left edge; a writer doesn't necessarily write chapter one first. They rely on an overall design, a plan or an outline that only they know. Typically, nothing is set in stone during the creative process. Once the material is more or less complete--or at any point for that matter--the artist can go back and rework the entire form or touch up the details.

Music is the same way. It can be composed in a freewheeling straight line, beginning to end. Or it can be designed from outside of time, as it were, to fit a predetermined shape. Either one can appear improvisatory. And either one can appear to be self-referential, assuming the composer has a memory and can plan on the fly.

Writing serious classical music, I often set up an abstract form in advance, based on a certain quality of material--an interval set, a polyrhythm, a numerical series that influences several domains simultaneously. My drum set solo that Peter Jarvis premiered spring of '09, Jungle 5-7675 works this way. At other times I'll choose a simpler form that can be more easily elaborated and tweaked as I move through the composition process, as, for example, in the prelude Certain Dark Things that I orchestrated for the Monmouth Symphony Orchestra last fall.

When working in pop song styles, the same thing happens, even if the designs are more rudimentary. Each pop song represents a preexisting form chosen from a fairly limited universe. Within each, there is a nearly infinite amount of variation possible. Listen to the similarities and differences in the verse-chorus structures of any two Beatles songs. Or compare "Happiness is a Warm Gun," one of the more abstract song forms in the Beatles' recordings, to the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations"--both use a juxtaposition of contrasting sections, but that's about all they have in common.

Nobody would argue with a songwriter who said he saw a creative opportunity in a particular form. Few would argue with Mozart or Brahms for choosing a sonata over a fantasia on any given day. But the choice of a more abstract form seems to raise hackles, precisely because the form isn't necessarily apparent to the listener. This even happens when fans of jazz or pop music try to engage with classical music for the first time--they think they need to be able to follow the intricacies of sonata form or fugue structure. They know just enough about it to know they are missing something, so they feel shut out from full appreciation. The more complex the form, the more likely we are to run into that kind of misunderstanding.

And it is a misunderstanding. Form should command the listener's attention only when the composer wants it to. Let's say I'm writing a piece that has a prelude-type form--that is, one idea extended from the beginning to end. As a composer, I may choose to divide up that music into much smaller bits of varying lengths to make the composition process more manageable and the overall shape more balanced. I may need that outline, but it doesn't need to be apparent to the listener. Then again, maybe I want the listener to hear those divisions, or some of them. Then it's up to me to mark them in some way--a dramatic change of harmony, an accent, a contrast of rhythm or timbre or dynamics. The notion that something changes at that point should be apparent. If the listener isn't hearing what the composer intends, the composer hasn't done his job.

Probably the most well-known example of this disconnect between formal design and the listening experience is Stravinsky's Symphony in C. This work was described by Stravinsky himself as a throwback to traditional form, "so unmysterious and so easy to hear on every level". But in 1962, Edward T. Cone's analysis of the first movement (from Musical Quarterly 48) found a detailed symmetrical map of phrase lengths that create syncopations against the constant unchanging time signature. This structure is highly remarkable because the work sounds, even to the most educated ears, like a perfect example of sonata form. But Cone's analysis revealed a hidden form that is arbitrarily sculpted to resemble sonata form: A wolf in sheep's clothing. This is one of the ways that Stravinsky always managed to sound like Stravinsky, regardless of the superficial details of style he chose to adopt. Would it matter to him that listeners typically don't hear the symmetrical march of integers guiding the phrase structure? No. The opposite in fact. As is evident from quote above, also from 1962, he intended the work to be heard in an open-faced sonata form; he could only have been magnificently pleased with the result.

Some composers--notably Charles Wuorinen, who knew Stravinsky and was one of my teachers--have chosen to draw elaborate details of form directly into the score. I have twice lectured on this subject, the relation between the written score and abstract forms--once at Rutgers University Graduate Composers Forum and at Kendall Kennison's composition seminar at Goucher. The value of these more eccentric scores relative to the final musical experience is debatable on a case-by-case basis. But composers continue to find them necessary. As such, they handily show off the split between the creative process and the listening experience.

Ultimately, when talking about abstract forms, it helps simply to be aware not only that the perceived form may be different from the composer's outline, but that the composer has already taken this into account. This was probably as true of Mozart as Messiaen.

Likewise, tracking the creative process can reveal many interesting things about a piece, but it may not be necessary for the enjoyment of the piece. Most composers are aware of this--although too many times I have heard composers in pre-concert talks launch into a "how it was made" lecture that makes the music sound about as interesting as a slide rule.

Performers, on the other hand, need to be constantly reminded: the score doesn't play itself. A successful interpretation depends on seeking out every detail you can find about the composer's intentions and then choosing how best to integrate those findings into a performance. The average crowd of listeners has it easier. They are the beneficiaries of all this work--if they don't get all of it, that's OK. As long as they know they don't have to. The music should speak for itself.

--C.
http://www.theandofone.blogspot.com

Today's improv

I hope to record these more or less regularly. As I get a few minutes during the day, I'll sit down at the piano and just play whatever comes out. Usually I'm working over the same idea in two or three different sessions, sometimes more. But the idea itself is very, very basic--like here it's just some black key fourths and fifths in the left hand over a white key arpeggio in the right. That's the extent of precomposition. Then I just play and whatever happens, happens. This is from this morning. There's no rehearsal or multiple takes or editing or anything. I recorded directly to Facebook video using the camera on my laptop. So it's pretty raw. Love that.



--C.
http://www.theandofone.blogspot.com
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Three Rooms Reviews

My CD Three Rooms (released November 2009) has been played on WPRB programs (The Worried Waltz hosted by Mr. Various aka composer Thomas Myernick and Clothesline hosted by Ui bassist and composer Wilbo Wright). It's also been reviewed by a colleague at the Asbury Park Press (unfortunately and completely mysteriously unavailable online) and by Rider colleague Christian Carey in his Sequitur21 blog File Under? . Both reviews were kind, but noncommittal. A couple other musician colleagues, Dane Scalise (Penny Nation, Invisible Movie Soundtrack) and Bill Milbrodt (Car Music Project), were more enthusiastic in their postings on the CDBaby.com page.

Another friend, Tim Herbert, sent me his compliments recently, calling the CD "an interesting minimalist endeavor". Tim was a bandmate of mine when we were both teenagers in Pittsburgh. Trust me, "an interesting minimalist endeavor" is high praise. But this morning, I got an email from him telling me I sounded like songwriting legend Jimmy Webb in his solo recordings. Webb was never a big influence on me, but I have to admit I'm pleased with the comparison.

"Don't get a big head, now," Tim said.

Like most songwriters, it is hard for me to understand what people hear when they listen to my music, so I'm looking for any sign of trends among the responses. It seems the people that are most excited about this CD are those who have some recording or songwriting background, or both. Some friends who are nonmusicians--who have praised some of my older music--are indifferent to this CD. And almost everyone who has liked it has said they have to listen to it more than once. Some of them have listened to it many times.

So I gather that somehow, in its simplicity, Three Rooms is still something of a challenge for listeners. That's a good sign. I was aiming in this CD to bring my classical and experimental music background together with my lifelong hobby of songwriting. I wanted the music to have some depth, some extra layers of interest, and still have a transparent, intimate feel.

So I'm left sort of back where I started, reaffirming the need to be true to my own instincts. And hoping that, for whatever reason, people will look for meaning in my work. If I'm honest in what I do they stand a better chance of finding it.

--C.
http://www.theandofone.blogspot.com

The Theremin Cellos

One of the things I didn't get to mention in my review of the Varese concerts at Lincoln Center is the use of two Theremin cellos in "Ecuatorial" (based on texts from the Mayan book of the dead). These appear to be of Floyd Engels' manufacture. Engels builds recreations of the original Leon Theremin-built instruments.

Theremin designed the instrument to Varese's specifications, specifically for this piece. He built a number of these instruments but all but two were lost or destroyed. The two remaining were broken for years, leaving Engels had to "reverse engineer" the instruments to reconstruct them. The Engels instruments were debuted in a performance of "Ecuatorial" at June in Buffalo in October of 2002.

Basically, the instrument is a Theremin triggered from a contact strip along a fretboard rather than from an antenna. The left hand fingers pitches like a cellist stopping the strings. The right hand (the bow hand for a cellist) controls a volume lever.

As you can see from the photo, the Theremin cello look like "Warehouse 13" artifact--a rockin' retro chic in black and bronze and knobs, complete with its own fabric-and-screen-covered amplifier/speaker box. For Varese's piece, each one sounded like a straight-up Theremin--kind of crappy, in other words, but entirely appropriate to the music. Obviously, being an electronic instrument, it would be appropriate to filter the sound through any kind of effects, giving the instrument a flexibility similar to an electric guitar. That is harder to do than it appears however because the Theremin cello's sound-producing mechanism is wired into its amplifier/speaker box. The instrument itself sends a signal but doesn't produce any sound. Even without this limitation, most Theremin players I've heard stick close to the original sound (think the sound used in the Beach Boys "Good Vibrations," although I think that was a related instrument, not a true Theremin). Why, I'm not sure. I think they think it's beautiful. Some days I think they're right.

Common wisdom is that Theremin is an instrument who's time has come and gone and that now it is mainly a historical instrument. But there a lot of Theremin players out there that would disagree with that, who see it as a vital, evolving instrument with a growing repertoire. Hopefully the exposure at Lincoln Center will spark a renewed interest Theremin's inventions and some new music for them.

Meantime, there's a wonderful (and sad) documentary on Leon Theremin that I can recommend to everyone, called "Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey", (1994, directed by Steven M. Martin). Great film.

--C.
http://www.theandofone.blogspot.com