Over the last few weeks I’ve been fretting over the apparent malaise that seems to be resting upon and stifling American music. Okay, let me specify. I don’t mean American Classical music; the one-two punch of Ned Rorem and Phillip Glass exhausted that genre 30 years ago.
This reminds me to check a google search for "ned rorem". aworks is on the first page of results. That doesn't seem right...
It's day two of my seven day free Rhapsody trial. Music on demand on the iPhone is great. Selection on Rhapsody is great. The website is woefully inferior to lala, has no social features of note, and plays aren't "scrobbled" to my last.fm account. Overall, I'm still enthused.
After Philip Glass yesterday, this evening it's Ned Rorem. Browsing Rhapsody by genre, Classical / 20th/21-st Century / Twenty-First Century gets me a list of key albums, including Ned Rorem's Symphonies on Naxos. To be honest, I'm surprised this is listed as such a notable album for the decade.
Rorem is an 85-year-old composer; I'm not sure he is still composing or writing although Wikipedia suggests he is writing a sax concerto for Branford Marsalis. The composer on the movements in his third symphony:
I is a Passacaglia in C, a slow overture in the grand style. II was written originally for two pianos eight years before the rest, and incorporated as the second movement of the symphony. It is a brisk and jazzy dance. III is a short, passionate page about somnambulism, full of dynamic contrast, and coming from afar. IV is a farewell to France. V is a long and fast Rondo, in itself a Concerto for Orchestra.
Hmm, I wonder if his Paris Diary is available on Kindle so I can re-read it?
aworks: rhapsody mind expansion. lala: symphonies. last.fm: recent "scrobbled" listens. rhapsody: key 21st century albums. wikipedia: ned rorem.
c-works. 
symphony. 
fifties. 
flutey. 
From Sequenza21, Greg Stepanich reports various contemporary musical news, including an item on Ned Rorem:
Rorem, who's 81, told me last week he's about a third of the way through the orchestrations for his new opera, Our Town, set to the seemingly imperishable 1938 play by Thornton Wilder. He wouldn't say how he'd approached this nearly iconic work — "The music should speak for itself,” he said — but that he's quite aware of all the associations audiences will bring to the opera. "I'm feeling very exposed," he told me. The opera premieres Feb, 24, 2006, at the Indiana University Opera Theater.
Well, that's interesting. Note that I happened to read this while Aaron Copland's film score for Our Town was playing in the background. The 1940 film, screenplay also by Thornton Wilder, stars a young William Holden (image of of an older Holden via Wikipedia).
Today's Wall Street Journal has an article "Highbrow Lament: Classical-Music Fans Feel Slighted in Era of the iPod; The Problem of Audible Gaps" (subscription; also available here). It talks about the less than great selection, the audio catalogue tags that are less than accurate, and problems with gaps or clicks when playing a work with multiple tracks.
Kirk McElhearn has also recently written a Playlist article on classical music and iTunes, where he recommends using the join feature. Based on his advice, I tried it this weekend on a Terry Riley CD (combined into one worked albeit with the loss of individual track access--should I rip both ways?). I also plan to try his recommended open source software for merging tracks already ripped (I was not happy with some experimental tools). I will say, listening to 35+ tracks, one at a time via shuffle over the course of a month, from Rzewski's The People United The Tracks United They Will Never Be Defeated!, was less than rewarding, so I want to solve this problem.
Regarding availability, the WSJ article reports VirginDigital (a Windows only, non-iPod service) has 70,000 classical tracks for purchase, compared to say, Musicmatch's 12,000. And, signs indicate market share for classical music may be substantially greater for downloads than with CDs. Still, selection is a problem. The article quotes Susan Graham, of all people:
"It's like the budget bin at a record store," says opera singer Susan Graham, who has searched sites like Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes for specific recordings of works such as Mahler's "Songs of a Wayfarer" or his "Ruckertlieder" but has come away empty-handed. ITunes's selection, she says, "was very mainstream, with only the most popular or generic offerings."
I checked and unfortunately, iTunes has a slender selection of Graham's music as well; mainly, a set of her performing songs by Ned Rorem, including Opus 101 from his Santa Fe Songs cycle.
The pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard plays at Zankel Hall in Manhattan on Monday:
PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD — Pianist. Carter ("Two Diversions"; "Night Fantasies"), Ives (Sonata No. 2). Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall, 7:30. (212) 247-7800.
I wasn't aware Aimard was playing Night Fantasies. Carter's best work in my opinion.
At Tower today, I saw the Aimard/Graham Ives CD. I had already exceeded my quota on new CDs with the Nonesuch 25% off sale (the new Adams and the Kronos Harry Partch) and a Godspeed You Black Emperor double CD. Next time...
Serene and noisy, somber and mysterious, the organ work A Quaker Reader is an attempt by Ned Rorem to link his Quaker religion and his vocation (composition). As evidenced in his many published diaries, he was greatly influenced by his Quaker upbringing, be it through his pacifism, reflection, or truth-seeking. This piece does not offer the joy or redemption of say, Bach's Lutheranism, but is substantial nonetheless.
Rorem in the liner notes:
But if there exists no Quaker music, there can be music by a Quaker. And if my religion means silence while my craft means sound, that craft (that sound) has always very consciously been devoted to banishing the noise which forms an ever vaster cloud between humdrum and mystical realities.
Speaking of his diaries, what I remember most:
Amazon samples A Quaker Reader including the fifth movement "The World of Silence" (Real format), which is anything but.
Just as often, though, Mr. Rorem puckishly frustrates those expectations. "The World of Silence," "One Sigh Rightly Begotten" and "Ocean of Light," all in "A Quaker Reader," are robust and at times ferocious movements.
