aworks :: "new" american classical music

The Hours (2002). Philip Glass /welcome to the world! cup!/

Alexander the Gay from Malaysia time-blogs:

7.32 pm Came back from photography. Alone. Listening to Michael Reisman playing Philip Glass' score of "The Hours". The sun has set.
...
8.16 pm Came back from dinner. Campus is quiet. Walked under near full moon's glow and occasional glare from artificial lighting.
...
8.45 pm Crickets chirping outside my window. Philip Glass' piano music inside. Juxtaposition of harmonies.

Hmm, I like his form (in the post, in the post). Ok, my turn, if a bit more frantic...

6.33pm Home from work. Avoided first day World Cup spoilers. Watching Germany Costa Rica on tape. Alone except Sparky -- beloved, long-haired, barking, Dachshund.

6.35 pm Cranked iTunes over boring American announcers. Super Numeri's energetic The First League of Angels. Super Numeri website Flash upgrade? Not super. Napster also broken. Reliable software a difficult problem -- who knew?

6.39 pm Germany scores! Munich crowd ecstatic! Juxtaposition of emotions. Not Torsten "Handball" Frings? I'm ecstatic!!

6.41 pm TV shot of German coach/California resident/former star/future national goat or hero Jurgen Klinsmann. Yay Jurgen!

6.45 pm Wanchope for Costa Rica scores! Yay Wanchope!

6.52 pm Germany scores again!

6.53 pm Sparky: First World Cup. Yet to learn vestigal Germanic roots. Scared. Confused. ("Why is Dad yelling at TV. What's up with so much nationalism"). Walks out of room.

7.00 pm Lucky Man by ELP. Yes, so far, in a modest kind of way. And cheers Alex in Malaysia. Lucky Man synthesizer MP3 example.

7.10 pm Bored by second half. Blogging.

7.22 pm Hovhaness by Shanghai Quartet. Calming. True multi-nationalism?

7.25 pm In kitchen! Missed third German goal!

7.28 pm iTunes with Mick LaSalle! Great critic podcast -- just not now. Skip to Seeland by Neu. Appropriate Germanic mellow.

7.37 pm Germany too mellow. CR scores. I've Got Viking in Me by Four Tet. I like but sounds as if played in reverse. Foreshadowing of tomorrow's Sweden vs. underdog calypso of Trinidad & Tobago? 

7.40 pm John Fahey's Yes, Jesus Loves Me. I like but sounds as if played upside down. Bush theme song.

7.51 pm Handball scores. Boo! On my deathbed, hopefully not soon ("that f* Torsten").

7.58 pm Organist Jimmy Smith closes. The Cat. Brazil to come.

8.30 pm No, what happened? Goal, Ecuador versus Poland. Please (please!) don't let the US be one down versus Czech Republic (Monday 9am PDT, consult your local listings). Cheers to my former Polish colleague who visited San Jose. And again, sorry for the outburst, Sparky.

9.02 pm Half-time Commercials. iTunes plays Tinariwen's Nar Djenetbouba. Tinariwen -- best new music this year, bar none, albeit from 2002. "Music of the unemployed" or the next blues...

9.16 pm TV screen with computer font and garish green background circa commodore 64: Emergency Alert System: Required Weekly Test. Back to game, please.

9.35 pm Tommy Smyth re: Poland: Something has to change if they are going to get something out of this game. That comment from Bristol, Connecticut, which for whatever reason is not Germany. What, we can't afford to send all the announcers to the World Cup? Bonus Smyth quote: You take off your headset after a game, go to the ESPN cafeteria and nobody's celebrating. It's just weird.

949 pm Surely! It's Ecuador ecstasy! It's two-nil, they lead! Hmm, maybe they play well at lower altitude as well.

953pm Here we are. Here we are. We are antic. There it is. There it is! That's the picture. You see it for yourself. There it is. It's a man. There it is. via The Books' Be Good to Them Always. See also Music in a Suburban Scene.

10.05pm ESPN2's Eric Wynalda: I'd like to be in Quito tonight! Sure, any place is better than Bristol.

Saturday 6.00am aworks' Robert Gable: I'm here in Palo Alto at the Rose & Crown for England Paraguay. Or not. If it were Scotland, of course...

aworks: the hours philip glass alan hovhaness
goals (and teams) i care about: lahm wanchope klose klose(2). wanchope(2). some german loser best forgotten.
world cup etc: steve rubino on english vs. spanish soccer tv and again. poles and ecuadorians at a ny tire store

The Hours (2002). Phiip Glass /minimal*6/

Via Davin Yael, it's a web service that formats album thumbnails. Here's my newly created "bulk minimalism six-pack" coming soon (or not) to a Wal-Mart near you.

Create your own Music List @ HotFreeLayouts!

The Hours (2002). Philip Glass /inner chekhov/

Jeremy Eichler reviews a piano concert by Konstantin Soukhovetski and comments on the performance of the piano transcription of Philip Glass' The Hours:

He imported a slightly heavy Russian emotionalism to the work's coolly repeating figures, as if introducing Mr. Glass to his own inner Chekhov.

Scanning Soukhovetski's repetoire, it looks rather traditional except for Rochberg's Carnival Music Suite. Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue counts as traditional, in this case.

The Hours (2002). Philip Glass /2004 #5/

#5 on the aworks Top 10 Tracks of 2004, Why Does Someone Have to Die? is my chance to recap some political memories, even if I have not yet made sense of the election. The track is from the Philip Glass soundtrack of The Hours and was played during the Democratic National Convention this year.

I remember watching a John Kerry community meeting on CSPAN several weeks before the Iowa caucuses in February.  My thought at the time was "what a loser." He was low energy, didn't have a strong, clear message, and looked like he had no chance. Two weeks later, he won the primary and eventually the nomination.  Fast forward to a Kerry rally in Ohio the night before the election. Bruce Springsteen was there and played "No Surrender", which was apparently Kerry campaign's theme song. In a bit of an aesthetic faux pas, at least by rock concert standards, Springsteen finished playing "No Surrender" and they segued directly to the recorded version of the same song. And then, 36 hours later, Kerry had in fact surrendered.

Over the holidays, I read William Manchester's The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill Alone 1932-1940, where he explains why the British public was slow to hold Neville Chamberlain responsible for his futile attempts to negotiate with Hitler:

In politics the squeaky wheel gets little grease. This is partcularly true when a public figure challenging the leader [Churchill] carries a controversial reputation in train. The mass distrusts controversy. Reluctant to reconsider its convictions, superstitions, and prejudices, it rarely withdraws support from those who are guiding its destinies. Thus inertia becomes an incumbent's accomplice. So does human relevance to admit error. Those who backed the top man insist, against all evidence that they made the right choice.

And describing a key to Churchill's ultimate success:

"Politicans rise by toil and troubles. They expect to fail; they hope to rise." Perserverance is the worthiest of political traits, and certainly the most difficult; a British historian who takes a jaundiced view of Winston acknowledges that "To persist in a political career that appeared to others, and even on occasion to the politician himself, as finished, demands exceptional strength of character in a sensitive and proud man."

Pandagon's Jessie Taylor posts about an editorial  bemoaning the Democratic Party's star worship including Warren Beatty, Bon Jovi, Michael Moore, and Bruce Springsteen.  I don't know about that but buried in that post is a good comment by Avedon Carol:

The debate was Kerry's chance to tell the American people what he was about, and he didn't do it. Or rather, he gave the impression he was only about getting elected, and that ain't good enough.

By the way, The Hours soundtrack is #3626 in Amazon sales rank.  Pandagon's Ezra Klein blogs about how with Amazon "61% of the political contributions go to Republicans" and is ambivalent about what to do about it.

#6 Cage/Harrison, #7 Ives, #8 Ornstein, #9 Fink, #10 Garland.

The Hours (2002). Philip Glass /performance/

Although Keith Jarrett said classical music, unlike jazz, is about how you play rather than what you play, generally I don't pay much attention to the details of a particular performance.  This may be because I am listening to much new music where alternate performances just don't exist.  Still, when it comes to the piano music of Philip Glass, it makes a big difference to me who is playing.  While I don't think this music is interpreted as one might with say, Schubert, it needs to be played with touch, clarity and precision for best impact

The Hours soundtrack reduction for piano by Michael Reisman is a good case.  Comparing it to other Glass music played by Aleck Karis, Reisman just doesn't play with as much of a sense of flow or ringing beauty.  A decade ago, I saw the Philip Glass Ensemble play a backing performance to the films Koyaanisqatsi and Powasqatsi.  For the latter, I was in the first row in front of the keyboard section.  While I was impressed with the physical dexterity required to play that music on electronic keyboards, does that harm a performer's sensitivity playing on a traditional piano? 

Another thought listening to this music on piano is how I had to explicitly not compare it with the orchestral version on the original soundtrack. The version for orchestra is on the surface more poignant and emotional, even if less subtle and less interesting.

I was listening to this on CD in the car and then via MP3 on iPod.  In between, I listened on my iPod to much of this week's presidential debate (via a free download at audible.com). Both The Hours and the debate, appropriately, had a serious and somber quality.

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• Prior posts on The Hours: responsive commerce, kerry, classical brit award.

The Hours (2002). Philip Glass /responsive commerce/

Disclaimer: In this post, I write about my response to music and commerce rather than about the music itself...

In the Sixties, advertiser Tony Schwartz directed the Lyndon Johnson TV commerical linking Barry Goldwater with nuclear war via a girl counting daisies.  In the Seventies, Schwartz wrote a book, The Responsive Chord, where he says television is perceived in an auditory manner rather than a visual one, that truth is a print ethic, and that there is a "resonance principle" in communication:

...since the [electronic] experience is not stored in a symbolic form, it cannot be retrieved by symbolic cues...The critical task is to design our package of stimuli so that it resonates with information already stored within an individual and thereby induces the desired learning or behavioral effect...A listener or viewer brings far more information to the communication event than a communicator can put into his programs, commerical, or message...[the communicator] must deeply understand the kinds of information and experiences stored in his audience....

In the 2002 elections, Frank Luntz, the Republian pollster,  applied Schwartz's theories in getting the Republicans to carefully phrase their views, in order to elicit the desired reaction from voters:

it is time for someone, everyone, to start using the phrase "Daschle Democrats" and the word "obstructionist" in the same sentence.. It's time for Congressional Republicans to personalize the individual that is standing directly in the way of economic security, energy security, and even national security.

I was aware of this theory today in three cases of "resonance" while classical music shopping at the Mountain View Tower Record & Books this afternoon.   

Resonance #1: Although I visit the store at least once a month, for the first time, I saw a sign on the outside of the book store saying "We Carry Classical Music Books."  I'm clearly part of the audience that would care about this and not surprisingly,  the next thing I know, I'm scanning the classical music book shelves without even really thinking about it. 

Resonance #2: In the new classical releases section, I saw a piano-duo CD of Conlon Nancarrow's piano music, a new CD by Mark-Andre Hamelin with Ives' Concord Sonata and a piano reduction of the Philip Glass soundtrack The Hours.  I'm was trying to decide which one to buy.  I wasn't sure I really needed another rendition of the Ives so I passed on the Hamelin, which left Nancarrow and Glass.  I generally like The Hours soundtrack and I particularly like piano music of Philip Glass (especially if the performer is not the composer) but the Nancarrow sounded more interesting.  Then, on the back of The Hours CD, I read that the arrangement was by Michael Riesman and Nico Muhly.  Riesman is of course a long-time Glass associate but when I saw Muhly's name, I went a-ha and decided to buy it.    Muhly was the young composer mentioned by Alex Ross earlier this year and about whom I blogged.  Did I expect a fresh and lively arrangement?  Not clear.

Resonance #3: In the bag with my purchase was a set of stickers advertising the new movie i ♥ huckabees.  I did not think much of it until I was perusing today's New Yorker where the fall arts preview mentions the movie.  The cute character in the title was enough to link it to the clever flyer in my Tower bag and my response was to think "oh yes, I know that movie," all without conscious effort.  Who knows if I will actually see the movie? It is the only new movie coming out that I know of.

Do I feel maniuplated by all this cultural marketing?  No, since it is based on prior experience that for whatever reason I value.  Are there others who will respond to these gestures as well?  Probably for the i ♥ huckabees campaign; the audience who appreciates classical music books or up-and-coming American composers is presumably smaller. 

 

Related to my experience but still ignoring the actual music, I have to be impressed with the business model of Philip Glass.  He wrote a soundtrack for a movie, released that soundtrack on Nonesuch Records, got his colleague to arrange the music for piano, had that music published in "a book of arrangements for solo piano, geared for intermediate players," and issued a recording of those arrangments on his new Orange Mountain Music label.   I've read that his rationale is to maximize revenue so he can afford to subsidize the release of back catalog and support other interesting projects.

I can also imagine a scenario where The Hours breaks out into a popular success; it was played at the Democratic National Convention and although I have yet to actually listen to the new CD I just bought (I'm busy ripping it to MP3 files), I'm guessing the arrangement maintains the melodic, wistful but non-threatening tone of the soundtrack. 

Postscript:

• ♥ is a valid HTML character.
• Do I get all my cultural cues from the New Yorker?  To be fair, I can't remember if I first heard about Tony Schwartz in The New Yorker or The Atlantic Monthly. 
• Greg Sandow just pointed out that earlier classical music covered the range from high-art to popular entertainment and that we don't really understand where today's classical music fits in that spectrum; I suggest Philip Glass is a case in point.
• Lynn at Reflections in D Minor recently speculated  that "truly intelligent" people may eventually get bored with commercialized entertainment.  While I won't claim to be truly intelligent (I blog after all), I'm surprised that since I started aworks and since I got my iPod, I am listening more to Philip Glass than probably any other composer.  I rationalize that his admittedly more popular music could be an antidote to all that Ives and Cowell and Antheil I have been exploring this year.  But whatever the reason, I have to say that I am responding to Glass, especially in doses larger than a single track, particularly The Hours, Koyaanisqatsi, Piano Etudes, and Akhnaten.  And I'm listening to those works, not watching (one Akhnaten performance in Oakland aside).
• Resonance #4: By writing this post, I just realized I want to buy The Fog of War soundtrack and read and/or watch The Hours.   
• Amazon free MP3 downloads from the new CD: Morning Passages,  The Poet Acts,  Something She Has To Do
• Enough responding for today...

The Hours (2002). Philip Glass [Kerry]

Via TV's C-SPAN, tonight's Democratic National Convention played a video about a fire fighting tragedy in Worcester, Massachusetts and how John Kerry provided support to the family and survivors.  The video used music by Philip Glass from the movie The Hours, specifically Why Does Someone Have to Die.

The Hours (2002). Philip Glass

   (Via Philip Glass fan Pondblog and the Guardian), The Hours soundtrack by Philip Glass won the Classical Brit award for contemporary music.  The other nominees were Gidon Kremer for Happy Birthday and John Rutter for Distant Land.  The Kremer and Glass are both on Nonesuch; the Rutter is not yet available in the US.

The filmworks recommendation for The Hours:

Buy it... if you relax to atmospheric classical music led by piano and strings, harmonious by nature, but without clearly defined themes.

Avoid it... if you prefer scores with more sharply defined cue changes and thematic swells, or if you never plan on sampling any of Glass' work.

And from the BBC account of the ceremonies:

American soprano Renne Fleming, the recipient of this year's outstanding contribution to music award, joined Terfel for a duet of Bess, You is My Woman Now from the musical Porgy and Bess.

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An aworks operational update:  I've fixed the problem where the About Me was pointing to the wrong content.  The intended content, including a statement of "principles" guiding this weblog, is here.  On the other hand, my bookmark feed of relevant news and links is not working, due to a problem at feedroll.  Here's the HTML-equivalent as well as my underlying del.ici.ous RSS feed.  Today anyway, I'm more satisifed with America's classical music than its software engineering...