Let's face it, who actually sat down and listened to Webern for the first time and thought "that is absolutely brilliant!!!!"? Have any of you?
My dissonant emancipation started in my first year at university. In their infinite wisdom they started the first year of our music degree with Music of the 20th Century and an instruction to read Erno Lendvai's book about Bartok's string quartets before we even arrived. At the time I considered Vaughan Williams to be dangerously avant-garde so for a time I really did question my decision to study music.
I told Bojan Bujic, my tutor at the time, and someone who had been taught by someone had been taught by Schoenberg, that the music of the 20th century "hurt my ears". No, really, these are the words I used. I just didn't get Bartok, let alone Webern and Berg. Or Boulez.
However, experiencing a variety of music outside lectures and tutorials helped enourmously. I was gently coerced into being on the committee of the "Oxford Contemporary Music Festival" and ended up being one of the performers in Erik Satie's Vexations (which isn't really all that dissonant or atonal, just odd) and working front of house in a performance of Messiaen's Des Canyons aux Etoiles. I don't remember much about the piece but I do remember finding the timbres, if not the melodies, fascinating. I've spoken in an earlier blog about the effect Stravinsky had on me - and it was after one of these committee meetings that I first heard Rite of Spring - but it was meeting other people, other youngsters like me (well, except the working class Welsh part) which made me reconsider what I considered to be "not really music".
Singing avant garde vocal works also helped. Hideously difficult though it was, Jonathan Harvey's Come Holy Ghost was an amazing piece to learn and perform (even if I totally murdered the tenor solo in my final year) and is one I still use to teach aleatoricism. Even Tippett's St John's Service had good points (eg it was brief if nothing else). Of course, like most new things it was exposure to atonality, electronic music, music theatre (no, not Lloyd Webber and Les poxy Mis...Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle etc) and so on that allowed someone like me to start to not only appreciate but to enjoy what was, at the time, still fairly avant garde music.
I've come full circle now. I rave to my pupils about Bartok and force them all to listen to and study the score of the last book of Mikrokosmos if they are struggling for a role model in composition. I get my first year pupils to listen to Pierrot Lunaire and Berio's Sequenza for Voice to learn about using the voice expressively. We also listen to parts of 8 Songs for a Mad King and Curlew River and compare the use of voice and flute in duet. All fairly weird stuff but, at 11/12, the pupils don't yet fully realise that it is "weird". With older classes I also blackout a room and play them Threnody: The Victims of Hiroshima. I'm not saying that they all dash to amazon.com to try to buy Penderecki's greatest hits at the end of the lesson but their ears and minds have been opened a little and a lot earlier than mine were. And there's always one or two who do want to borrow the cd and have a listen, get hold of the score, find out more...
Older generations always complain about the music of younger generations. Listening to the grindcore metal (or whatever its called) of some of my pupils it reminds me of music I listened to as a first year undergraduate. Loud, dark timbres - imagine Varese played by guitars detuned down a 5th with heavy distortion and you'll get the idea. How can these kids not like dissonant music?
Dissonance is relative. The church bells I heard on Sunday morning near Milan on tour in 1989 sounded incredibly dissonant as I was hearing the wrong overtone (they were playing Ave, ave, ave Maria which I knew in the carol arrangement by Andrew Carter). Gamelan music sounds dissonant to most "western" ears. Quite a bit of medieval choral music sounds dissonant due to the rules and characteristics of music at that time. A 7th is dissonant but does a dominant 7th chord sound dissonant? A suspension is a dissonance and, back in the day, an unprepared suspension was only a close 2nd to murder (to music theorists at least) but the suspensions make the resolutions so powerful and meaningful.
So, open your mind and ears and listen. There is no such thing as bad music.
Except country and western
Friday, November 27, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
5 awful gigs I've done
As this is post 5 here are the 5 crappest gigs I've played. Crap for any number of reasons and in no particular order...
1 9th December 1993. Some Greek restaurant in Soho. A friend was the regular restaurant pianist and he could actually play. He got himself double booked so I played instead, thus allowing him to keep his other better paying gig. I was crap, was openly laughed at and asked to stop playing by the owner. This gig was on my 23rd birthday.
2 2004-ish. April. St John Passion in the Scottish Borders somewhere. I'd never done the Evangelist before. I sang really well in the rehearsal but my voice gave out two thirds of the way through the performance. The last half an hour was the worst musical experience I have EVER had. I redeemed myself two weeks later when we performed it again and I nailed it (no pun intended) but that one still gives me nightmares
3 Negociants, Edinburgh, 1994. We were called up last minute as there had been a cancellation. Our drummer couldn't make it as he had a real job so we did an "unplugged" set with piano, bass and guitar. There was a sound activated "trip switch" due to decibel levels. This went off when the pianist played an A for us to tune to (no digital tuners back then boys and girls) and went of at regular intervals throughout the gig. One of the more generous comments from the audience was "Fuck off you're awful". And we were. But we played to the bitter end!!!!!!!!
4 1995-ish. St Andrew's & St George's Church, Edinburgh with a programme of music by unknown (for very good reasons) Renaissance composers. The music was dreadful. My old university tutor was in the audience having been the external examiner for Edinburgh University Bmus performers. A viol consort came on and kept missing the point of imitation in an In Nomine or something like that so this music from 1570 sounded like Webern. OK, I'm being a bit pompous and haven't got time to explain to non musicians what this means but try youtube-ing Webern Bagatelles and Byrd In Nomines to hear what I'm on about. It was tongue-bitingly hilarious and skin crawlingly embarrassing, mainly as the players didn't have a clue. Thankfully I was just watching at this point.
5 Wedding in Troedyrhiw circa 1986. I was church organist and one of the bridesmaids reckoned she could sing and was asked to sing during the signing of the register. I accompanied her and it was completely dreadful. Oh deary deary me...Having said that I was asked to play the Widor at a friend's wedding in 1996 and totally murdered it. And at the first funeral I played the organ for (as a 15 year old in Troedyrhiw once again) the choir mistress sat next to me murmuring "slower, slower" all the way through the Dead March from Saul. if I'd played any slower I'd still be there now. On a more positve note I played the organ for a funeral 2 years after this in a neighbouring church, got an afternoon off school to do so and was commended on my improvisation. I'd run out of music as the hearse was 45 minutes late due to roadworks.
I've done plenty of gigs as a performer, conductor or composer with which I have been thoroughly pleased but it has been more fun trying to remember details about these awful ones than trying to remember details about really good ones.
1 9th December 1993. Some Greek restaurant in Soho. A friend was the regular restaurant pianist and he could actually play. He got himself double booked so I played instead, thus allowing him to keep his other better paying gig. I was crap, was openly laughed at and asked to stop playing by the owner. This gig was on my 23rd birthday.
2 2004-ish. April. St John Passion in the Scottish Borders somewhere. I'd never done the Evangelist before. I sang really well in the rehearsal but my voice gave out two thirds of the way through the performance. The last half an hour was the worst musical experience I have EVER had. I redeemed myself two weeks later when we performed it again and I nailed it (no pun intended) but that one still gives me nightmares
3 Negociants, Edinburgh, 1994. We were called up last minute as there had been a cancellation. Our drummer couldn't make it as he had a real job so we did an "unplugged" set with piano, bass and guitar. There was a sound activated "trip switch" due to decibel levels. This went off when the pianist played an A for us to tune to (no digital tuners back then boys and girls) and went of at regular intervals throughout the gig. One of the more generous comments from the audience was "Fuck off you're awful". And we were. But we played to the bitter end!!!!!!!!
4 1995-ish. St Andrew's & St George's Church, Edinburgh with a programme of music by unknown (for very good reasons) Renaissance composers. The music was dreadful. My old university tutor was in the audience having been the external examiner for Edinburgh University Bmus performers. A viol consort came on and kept missing the point of imitation in an In Nomine or something like that so this music from 1570 sounded like Webern. OK, I'm being a bit pompous and haven't got time to explain to non musicians what this means but try youtube-ing Webern Bagatelles and Byrd In Nomines to hear what I'm on about. It was tongue-bitingly hilarious and skin crawlingly embarrassing, mainly as the players didn't have a clue. Thankfully I was just watching at this point.
5 Wedding in Troedyrhiw circa 1986. I was church organist and one of the bridesmaids reckoned she could sing and was asked to sing during the signing of the register. I accompanied her and it was completely dreadful. Oh deary deary me...Having said that I was asked to play the Widor at a friend's wedding in 1996 and totally murdered it. And at the first funeral I played the organ for (as a 15 year old in Troedyrhiw once again) the choir mistress sat next to me murmuring "slower, slower" all the way through the Dead March from Saul. if I'd played any slower I'd still be there now. On a more positve note I played the organ for a funeral 2 years after this in a neighbouring church, got an afternoon off school to do so and was commended on my improvisation. I'd run out of music as the hearse was 45 minutes late due to roadworks.
I've done plenty of gigs as a performer, conductor or composer with which I have been thoroughly pleased but it has been more fun trying to remember details about these awful ones than trying to remember details about really good ones.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
4 Mozart
I'm not a big fan of Mozart. Obviously he was a genius, a prodigy and so on and his music will live on for ever and ever. It's just that it is so pretty. It's so well balanced, perfectly proportioned, just a bit clinical and clever for me. A gross generalisation of course, and there are bits I like. The Requiem for example (except for Süssmeyer's bits) is great and I love the opening movement of Symphony no 25 in G minor but then balanced against all that are the slow movements!!!!!
Ah, the slow movements. The only reason I sort of liked the slow movement of the Mozart sonata I played for grade VIII piano is that it was slow enough that I could play it reasonably well. Playing double bass in the slow movement of a Mozart symphony is like a creeping death by down beats. I just don't "get" it. Maybe if I played the violin I'd think differently.
Most musicians I know think me a philistine and that is probably fair enough. However, there is a part of me which doesn't want to like Mozart because everyone else does and, as a musician (as a human for that matter), you are meant to like Mozart. It's like part of the the job description. I remember buying "classical" collections as a teenager (in particular an LP of overtures with my O level set works on and ZZ Top's Eliminator in the same transaction which seemed to freak out the girl in Merthyr WHSmith for some reason) and inevitably you got Eine Kleine bloody Nachtmusik followed by the overture to Le Nozze de Figaro (when the best part of that is the trio in Act I (or is it Act II? Can't remember.) There's a lovely horn pedal point though...whoops, I'm getting enthused about Mozart now which isn't the point) plus there would be the Facile sonata...the scales, the alberti bass, that prissy tune, the fact that everyone tries to play it and slaughters it, usually (myself included). The same tunes over and over again on every damn "classical" collection. Obviously I should listen to more. Maybe the recitatives from Cosi or similiar. Or one of the other movements from Eine sodding Kleine.....
Having said that one of my favourite musical memories involves Eine bloody Kleine. I was busking around Europe after university and, in Salzburg, this guy was playing the opening arpeggio motif on the penny whiste whilst standing outside the Mozart Gebortshaus. He couldn't get past the 8th note without playing a C# instead of a D and kept repeating the same bit over and over again. It was even funnier than my cello playing in Copenhagen but that is a different story for a different post.
I gave some pupils homework to listen the first movement of a Mozart symphony (most of them went for 40 or 41) and the first movement of Bruckner's 7th symphony as a way of telling the difference between Classical and Romantic symphonies (sweeping statements but this SQA after all...). I asked them to also tell me which one they preferred and why. The ones who preferred the Bruckner did so because it seemed to have more going on, was less predictable, more "interesting". Those who preferred the Mozart found the Bruckner long winded and ponderous. I suppose Bruckner is long winded and ponderous, over the top, bombastic, repetitive, over blown, etc and that is precisely why I love his symphonies and motets in particular. I just switch off when I hear Mozart, however. Shame on me.
The more I listen to and play Haydn the more I enjoy it. Beethoven I love, especially the late stuff like the Grosse Fuge. Schubert is alright, especially the lieder. But Mozart...hmm...maybe I am a Philistine. I don't like the Beatles that much either. And I'm a huge Status Quo fan. So who am I to talk about music?
Ah, the slow movements. The only reason I sort of liked the slow movement of the Mozart sonata I played for grade VIII piano is that it was slow enough that I could play it reasonably well. Playing double bass in the slow movement of a Mozart symphony is like a creeping death by down beats. I just don't "get" it. Maybe if I played the violin I'd think differently.
Most musicians I know think me a philistine and that is probably fair enough. However, there is a part of me which doesn't want to like Mozart because everyone else does and, as a musician (as a human for that matter), you are meant to like Mozart. It's like part of the the job description. I remember buying "classical" collections as a teenager (in particular an LP of overtures with my O level set works on and ZZ Top's Eliminator in the same transaction which seemed to freak out the girl in Merthyr WHSmith for some reason) and inevitably you got Eine Kleine bloody Nachtmusik followed by the overture to Le Nozze de Figaro (when the best part of that is the trio in Act I (or is it Act II? Can't remember.) There's a lovely horn pedal point though...whoops, I'm getting enthused about Mozart now which isn't the point) plus there would be the Facile sonata...the scales, the alberti bass, that prissy tune, the fact that everyone tries to play it and slaughters it, usually (myself included). The same tunes over and over again on every damn "classical" collection. Obviously I should listen to more. Maybe the recitatives from Cosi or similiar. Or one of the other movements from Eine sodding Kleine.....
Having said that one of my favourite musical memories involves Eine bloody Kleine. I was busking around Europe after university and, in Salzburg, this guy was playing the opening arpeggio motif on the penny whiste whilst standing outside the Mozart Gebortshaus. He couldn't get past the 8th note without playing a C# instead of a D and kept repeating the same bit over and over again. It was even funnier than my cello playing in Copenhagen but that is a different story for a different post.
I gave some pupils homework to listen the first movement of a Mozart symphony (most of them went for 40 or 41) and the first movement of Bruckner's 7th symphony as a way of telling the difference between Classical and Romantic symphonies (sweeping statements but this SQA after all...). I asked them to also tell me which one they preferred and why. The ones who preferred the Bruckner did so because it seemed to have more going on, was less predictable, more "interesting". Those who preferred the Mozart found the Bruckner long winded and ponderous. I suppose Bruckner is long winded and ponderous, over the top, bombastic, repetitive, over blown, etc and that is precisely why I love his symphonies and motets in particular. I just switch off when I hear Mozart, however. Shame on me.
The more I listen to and play Haydn the more I enjoy it. Beethoven I love, especially the late stuff like the Grosse Fuge. Schubert is alright, especially the lieder. But Mozart...hmm...maybe I am a Philistine. I don't like the Beatles that much either. And I'm a huge Status Quo fan. So who am I to talk about music?
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
3 Byrd Four Part Mass
The Byrd Mass for Four Voices is a new set work for OCR A2 music. What a
fantastic choice. I enjoyed teaching the Integration of Music and Drama course for the last 5 years but this new, broad historical course gives real scope to look at the development of music and how social and economic history have played their part in new directions in music. After Byrd we move on to Bach's St Matthew Passion and from there to Stimmung!!!! The topic is called Music and Belief and, while it mainly looks at Christian belief in the context of "Western European Art Music" (I love labels like that..) the Stockhausen brings non-Christian ideas eg Tibetan chant and so on, plus the names of all manner of Mexican and Australian deities, not to mention Stockhausen's own erotic poetry. I'm particularly looking forward to that bit!
Back to Byrd. BBC broadcast a documentary called "Saced Music - Tallis and Byrd"a couple of months ago and it gave in interesting insight into the religious (and, given the era, therefore political) upheaval of the age and the way in which composers adapted in order to survive, not just "commercially" but just survive any purges of Catholics or Protestants (according to which monarch was in charge at any time). Out of such turmoil some of the most beautiful music imaginable has been created. In addition to teaching the Four Part Mass I'm rehearsing it with my school choir (all
my A2 class are in the choir I'm pleased to say) and, despite the high tessitura for the tenors and very low tressitura for the altos they are coping remarkably well with the contrapuntal lines.
I've always found the Byrd very singable. As an undergraduate choral scholar I sang mass every Sunday morning and some weeks it was more of a trial than others. Palestrina, though beautiful in its own way, was so difficult, especially for an 18 year old 1st year tenor. The Haydn and Mozart masses were quite twee, the Stravinsky just plain weird (at the time, I love it now) and the Vaughan Williams still gives me nightmares (especially "Qui sedes..."). The Byrd 4 Part was always lovely though (the 5 part mass less so as the tenors were split and on one occasion I was the only cantoris tenor on this line which was just great). Byrd seemed to float out effortlessly despite the early hour (well, 11:30ambut that is very early for an undergraduate) and the sound fitted theacoustic of the chapel perfectly. It was usually paired with the Byrd Ave Verum as a communion motet and this also remains one of my firm favourites.
The Four Part Mass is also one of the reasons I'm so keen on smaller vocal ensembles performing music from the Renaissance. I've been party to (as a soloist in another item on the same programme) the mass being sung by a choir of 120. For me it loses all its vitality, the dancing rhythms, the contrasts between sections for paired voices and those for the full choir in counterpoint and so on. It can also get quite turgid with a choir that large singing something slow and unaccompanied eg the "Sanctus". Devotional is one thing. Lethargic is another. For similar reasons I prefer my Handel with 3 or 4 to a part rather than the "Huddersfield Choral" take. Keep it light. Let the rhythms dance. It's all dance music, really....anyway, I digress...again...
Obviouly, as a music student we "did" the Renaissance and, as a choral scholar, I "did" the Renaissance too but its only since going into depth personally to prepare myself for teaching this course that I have really got into the detail of Byrd's style of writing, the way the text is infused with so much meaning via the music, the way he changes textures to reflect the meaning of the text, the sonority of the music, the difficulty of being a Catholic composer in a Protestant country who expressed his Catholicism in subtle ways through his music. He reminds me of Shostakovich in Soviet Russia writing subversive music in his symphonies which the authorities were too blinkered to understand.
fantastic choice. I enjoyed teaching the Integration of Music and Drama course for the last 5 years but this new, broad historical course gives real scope to look at the development of music and how social and economic history have played their part in new directions in music. After Byrd we move on to Bach's St Matthew Passion and from there to Stimmung!!!! The topic is called Music and Belief and, while it mainly looks at Christian belief in the context of "Western European Art Music" (I love labels like that..) the Stockhausen brings non-Christian ideas eg Tibetan chant and so on, plus the names of all manner of Mexican and Australian deities, not to mention Stockhausen's own erotic poetry. I'm particularly looking forward to that bit!
Back to Byrd. BBC broadcast a documentary called "Saced Music - Tallis and Byrd"a couple of months ago and it gave in interesting insight into the religious (and, given the era, therefore political) upheaval of the age and the way in which composers adapted in order to survive, not just "commercially" but just survive any purges of Catholics or Protestants (according to which monarch was in charge at any time). Out of such turmoil some of the most beautiful music imaginable has been created. In addition to teaching the Four Part Mass I'm rehearsing it with my school choir (all
my A2 class are in the choir I'm pleased to say) and, despite the high tessitura for the tenors and very low tressitura for the altos they are coping remarkably well with the contrapuntal lines.
I've always found the Byrd very singable. As an undergraduate choral scholar I sang mass every Sunday morning and some weeks it was more of a trial than others. Palestrina, though beautiful in its own way, was so difficult, especially for an 18 year old 1st year tenor. The Haydn and Mozart masses were quite twee, the Stravinsky just plain weird (at the time, I love it now) and the Vaughan Williams still gives me nightmares (especially "Qui sedes..."). The Byrd 4 Part was always lovely though (the 5 part mass less so as the tenors were split and on one occasion I was the only cantoris tenor on this line which was just great). Byrd seemed to float out effortlessly despite the early hour (well, 11:30ambut that is very early for an undergraduate) and the sound fitted theacoustic of the chapel perfectly. It was usually paired with the Byrd Ave Verum as a communion motet and this also remains one of my firm favourites.
The Four Part Mass is also one of the reasons I'm so keen on smaller vocal ensembles performing music from the Renaissance. I've been party to (as a soloist in another item on the same programme) the mass being sung by a choir of 120. For me it loses all its vitality, the dancing rhythms, the contrasts between sections for paired voices and those for the full choir in counterpoint and so on. It can also get quite turgid with a choir that large singing something slow and unaccompanied eg the "Sanctus". Devotional is one thing. Lethargic is another. For similar reasons I prefer my Handel with 3 or 4 to a part rather than the "Huddersfield Choral" take. Keep it light. Let the rhythms dance. It's all dance music, really....anyway, I digress...again...
Obviouly, as a music student we "did" the Renaissance and, as a choral scholar, I "did" the Renaissance too but its only since going into depth personally to prepare myself for teaching this course that I have really got into the detail of Byrd's style of writing, the way the text is infused with so much meaning via the music, the way he changes textures to reflect the meaning of the text, the sonority of the music, the difficulty of being a Catholic composer in a Protestant country who expressed his Catholicism in subtle ways through his music. He reminds me of Shostakovich in Soviet Russia writing subversive music in his symphonies which the authorities were too blinkered to understand.
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