Symphony in J

Berio's Sinfonia

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 09:28:00 +0000

When I'm seeking out new music to listen to, my first step in considering a work is to scour the internet to see what others have said about it, then try to decide whether it sounds like I would enjoy it. However, my true reaction upon hearing the music rarely conforms with what my research leads me to expect. Usually this discrepancy is due to the fact that music is difficult to describe in words (hence the prevalence of audio clips in these articles) and because everyone has different aesthetics and thus different responses to the same music. However, occasionally the divergence occurs because my own tastes surprise me.

I recently sought out a recording of Berio's Sinfonia out of intellectual curiosity. From what I had read, it sounded like one of the works I usually dismiss as experimentation for experimentation's sake, written by a composer more interested in presenting novel or shocking ideas than creating an engaging experience. I expected to be amused by it, and to fill a gap in my knowledge, but nothing more. Instead, I instantly fell in love.

What won me over was the schizophrenic third movement of this work, which is written for eight voices (two sopranos, two altos, two tenors and two basses) and orchestra. It's wild, exciting, and sometimes very funny. It also really rewards repeated listening and close examination, as there are countless easter eggs hidden throughout. There is plenty of music out there where studying the score may reveal an enormous amount of pattern and structure but ultimately makes me think, "So what if he used huge tables and complex mathematical operations to generate the notes? It just sounds random in the end." But in the Sinfonia, each nugget I discovered made me smile and contributed to my enjoyment of the overall work.

Okay, enough words; you want to hear this thing! Here's the opening of the third movement.

The very beginning of the movement sounds like a chaotic jumble, as if the different sections of the orchestra don't know what piece they want to play. But after ten seconds or so the orchestra seems to come to agreement as they settle into a familiar sounding work.

This is the scherzo from Mahler's "Resurrection" symphony! Okay, so in the Berio piece, it appears that the orchestra is directly quoting Mahler. But what's with all the other stuff going on? Let's listen to what the voices are saying. As the movement begins, all the voices shout "Peripetie", which just happens to be the title of the fourth movement of Schoenberg's Fünf Orchesterstücke. Let's hear what that sounds like:

So the opening of the Berio is taken from Schoenberg! In fact the entire Berio movement is full of bits and pieces taken from dozens of famous classical works (likely to be recognisable to an audience well-versed in the classical repertoire). Meanwhile, the voices sometimes comment on the orchestra's activities, sometimes sing along, sometimes wax philosophical and extensively quote text by Samuel Beckett. Through it all, Mahler's scherzo attempts to play continuously from start to finish, but it is constantly interrupted by the scraps of other works. Sometimes these works manage to temporarily overcome the Mahler completely, but it never gives up.

Here the Danse de la terre (Dance of the earth) from Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps gradually encroaches on the Mahler and eventually obliterates it completely. However when it seems to pause to catch its breath, it finds that underneath it all the Mahler is still doggedly pressing onwards undeterred. After a few more blasts to try and scare it away, it finally gives up, with the first tenor using a quote from Beckett ("the earth would have to quake, it isn't earth...") to comment on the disappearance of the Danse de la terre. The voices constantly make references, some direct and some almost opaque, to the musical quotations.

The tenor goes on, "one doesn't know what it is, maybe a kind of competition on the stage, with just eight female dancers..." which describes the Double pas-de-quatre from Stravinsky's ballet Agon. Indeed, we now hear this very piece as a new contender challenging the Mahler. At the same time, we additionally hear the beginning of the third movement of Debussy's La mer interrupting also. To me, it sounds like the urgent bassline of the Debussy in the lower strings is trying to goad the somewhat similar but unflappable bassline of the Mahler.

Here are clips of all the relevant passages quoted in the above excerpt, so you can hear how Berio has combined them.

Mahler: Symphony no. 2 "Resurrection"

Stravinsky: Le sacre du printemps

Stravinsky: Agon

Debussy: La mer

Perhaps my favourite fragment of the movement is the following drunken waltz:

The strings barge in, cutting off the Mahler with a lush waltz from Strauss's opera, Der Rosenkavalier. But after just a couple of bars, the orchestra suddenly changes its mind and switches to a very similar passage in Ravel's La Valse. As the dance gets more and more agitated, it slips back and forth seamlessly between the two, creating a grotesque hybrid. The effect is completely disorienting to those familiar with the two works, and may be more successful than either Strauss or Ravel were in exploring the intoxicating nature of the waltz.

Here are clips of the two waltzes, and a score reduction showing how Berio intercuts between them.

Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier

Ravel: La valse

A particularly chaotic moment in the movement features a scene from Berg's opera Wozzeck. Here is the Berio excerpt:

In the corresponding passage of the original Mahler, the orchestra recovers from the angry outburst and quickly returns to its initial mood. Berio however allows no such easy resolution, and the outburst is followed by the dreadful rising chords from Wozzeck's climactic scene where the protagonist drowns.

The eight voices are especially agitated here, variously shouting "Stop!" and "Keep going!" as well as acting out the dialogue from the scene (although they confuse what language the opera is in). Finally the orchestra reaches a tense discordant chromatic cluster which seems to have all the anxious energy bottled up inside it. After a few seconds, we hear a cleansing tone from the tam-tam, and the voices start giggling nervously, and all the tension is released.

The following passage of the Berio contains a particularly facetious joke:

The first tenor says, "I have a present for you," and, on command, the orchestra plays an abrupt chord. What type of a present is that?! Well, before we return it to the store, let's investigate where this chord came from.

It is, in fact, the exact same chord which opens the first movement of Boulez's Pli selon pli. The title of this movement? It's called "Don", which is French for "present"! Ho ho ho!

While this article was written to highlight some of the games which Berio plays with musical quotations, I wouldn't want to leave you thinking that this movement is nothing but an amusement. Somehow, the juxtaposition of all these elements in this almost absurd pastiche yields something with surprising emotional weight. I'll end this article with two passages which I feel exhibit the more sentimental aspects of the movement.

Humour

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:38:00 +0000

You're forgiven if you momentarily mistook the above excerpt for Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. In fact it's a parody of the work entitled 1712 Overture, written by Peter Schickele, a composer best known for the comedy music he has written under the pseudonym of P.D.Q. Bach. He frequently parodies well-known works or styles of classical music by exaggerating or distorting elements in a ridiculous manner, or by combining disparate works or styles unexpectedly. In this excerpt from 1712 Overture, he pokes fun at Tchaikovsky's use of percussion and repeated identical chords. Additionally, the main theme has been changed to the tune of Yankee Doodle (which happens to have the five first notes in common).

I don't have much interest in such music and would normally not seek it out, but I must confess that in listening to a bunch of P.D.Q. Bach as research for this article I was actually provoked to laugh a couple of times. The music is somewhat analogous to the Scary Movie films; it's somewhat satisfying to be able to recognise the source material being referenced, and occasionally funny to see them twisted to extremes, but mostly there's nothing really clever or subtle about the humour employed.

However, there's plenty of highbrow humour to be found in serious classical music. Of course, what's considered to be "highbrow" or "serious" is entirely subjective, and "humour" is by far the most subjective of all. Nonetheless, disclaiming to presume whether others will find these amusing, I would like to discuss a few examples of wit in classical music which bring a grin to my face.

The first movement of Beethoven's Symphony no. 3 ("Eroica") is a paramount example of the sonata-allegro form. After two welcoming chords, the exposition begins with the cellos playing the main subject in the symphony's key of E flat. Remember, the exposition section of a movement is about getting lost in the wrong key, and the development section is about finding the way back to the tonic. So we'll know we've gotten to the recapitulation when we hear the music leading us back to that main subject in E flat. Let's hear how that happens in the Eroica:

After an odyssey through a multitude of keys, the violins finally settle on a B flat dominant seventh chord — aha! Perfect for resolving to the tonic of E flat! Hearing this, the horn proudly enters with the main subject. But he enters alone! The violins are still playing that B flat dominant seventh chord; the horn has clearly jumped the gun. Embarrassed, the rest of the orchestra quickly tries to cover up his mistake by angrily drowning him out and then arriving at the actual recapitulation as elegantly as posisble.

I love this "mistake" from the horn, because Beethoven is breaking the fourth wall and playing with our expectations of the sonata-allegro form. Another punchier example of pulling the rug out from under our expectations comes at the very end of Ives' Symphony no. 2:

I think that one speaks for itself!

Shostakovich completed his Symphony no. 7 ("Leningrad") in 1941, and it enjoyed a huge popularity over the next few years. The centrepiece of the enormous first movement is a set of variations on a theme, stated at first quietly then building to a tremendous climax over ten minutes or so. Here are the first and last statements of this theme:

Bartók wasn't too impressed with the work or its popularity, and in 1943 wrote his Concerto for Orchestra, whose fourth movement included the following notable segment:

Interrupting the rather lyrical music come the scales from Shostakovich's Leningrad theme, repeatedly and thickheadedly trying to take over. But each time it crashes and burns. It seems like Bartók is deriding the concept of such an inane theme managing to come in and dominate the music as it does in Shostakovich's symphony. In the end, after the offending theme has been laughed away, Bartók's music continues as it was before the rude interruption.

Next up is another example which references another work, but this time not for the purpose of parody. The second movement of Simpson's Symphony no. 2 is a scherzo with an enormous amount of energy and momentum, full of tension and sudden outbursts and pounding timpani. Here are two excerpts from the first section of the movement.

Most scherzos, including this one, are in ternary form, with a contrasting "trio" section in the middle. Let's hear the transition into the trio:

After all the chaos which has preceded, we are suddenly confronted with the strings playing this peaceful saccharine tune, in an abruptly conservative tonal framework. This absurd juxtaposition always tickles my funny bone. It's like the music got so crazy that it finally reached 88 mph and travelled two hundred years back in time to the early classical era. And, in fact, the trio is a quotation from Haydn's Symphony no. 76.

The funny doesn't stop there. As the trio progresses, the rest of the orchestra tries to nudge the strings — gently at first, then more and more forcefully — back to the twentieth century, by introducing dissonances which don't belong in a classical symphony and disrupting their sedate character. It takes a lot of work, as the strings seem to be quite oblivious and continue in their serene fashion.

Eventually they succeed in uprooting the incongruous interlude, and yank the strings back into the character of the scherzo opening for the final section of the movement.

Finally I'll leave you with an excerpt from a very playful piece of music which deserves an article all to itself — Berio's Sinfonia. I'll be writing about this work next time!

Leitmotifs

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 11 May 2009 20:27:00 +0000

Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) is the largest well-known work of music ever written. The epic cycle of four operas written by Wagner, totalling fifteen or so hours, tells a tale of gods, dwarves, giants and heroes engaged in a struggle over a ring which gives the power to rule the world. In popular culture, it is probably most well known for the exciting opening to the third act of Die Walküre (the Valkyrie), known as Walkürenritt (the Ride of the Valkyries). This is another great piece of music which has become sadly overused and cliché.

The music of the Ring cycle is famous for its use of leitmotifs. This is a device used in storytelling music (here I mean a literal narrative story, not a figurative musical story as I have discussed previously) where specific musical ideas (the leitmotifs) are associated with specific ideas in the story. Wagner was not the first with the idea to use leitmotifs, but the scale on which he used them here was unprecedented and probably still unmatched. There are somewhere on the order of a hundred different leitmotifs recurring over the four operas. Each character has their own leitmotif, sometimes several to capture their different aspects. Various objects, such as the ring and the sword Nothung, also have leitmotifs, as do various places, such as Valhalla (the home of the gods) and the river Rhine. There are even leitmotifs for more complex ideas such as love, fear and renunciation. Towards the end of the opera cycle, as the number of musical associations rises, the usage of the leitmotifs becomes more sophisticated and dense, with several different leitmotifs often being quoted simultaneously in counterpoint.

The leitmotifs are not simply there to tell the audience what they can already see by watching the action on the stage. They frequently add another layer of meaning to what the characters are saying or doing which can only be perceived by those listeners in the know. It becomes a fun game to spot the leitmotifs and try to glean whatever extra connotations they may endow on the story.

To show some examples of this, I'm going to track one of the most important leitmotifs over the course of the cycle. I'll begin near the start of Act III of Die Walküre, the second opera in the cycle. Brünnhilde, the Valkyrie for whom the opera is titled, is trying to save Sieglinde from the god Wotan. Sieglinde is distraught over the death of Siegmund, her lover (and brother, ick), and says she doesn't want to be saved, until Brünnhilde announces:

Brünnhilde:
The world's most glorious hero bears,
o woman, thy sheltering womb!

The melody Brünnhilde sings while telling Sieglinde she is pregnant is the first appearance of a new leitmotif, which will only appear once more in Die Walküre. In the final scene, Wotan casts Brünnhilde into an enchanted sleep on a mountaintop and surrounds her by a magical fire, and the opera ends with him proclaiming:

Wotan:
He who my spearpoint's sharpness feareth
shall cross not the flaming fire!

Wotan uses the same heroic melody to declare that only one who knows no fear can wake Brünnhilde. Thus, the savvy attendee need not return to the opera house the following night to deduce that the fearless hero to rescue her will be none other than Sieglinde's unborn child.

Indeed, the third opera in the cycle is titled Siegfried, and this and the following opera, Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) centre around the hero Siegfried to whom this leitmotif refers. As a result, his leitmotif appears dozens of times; here are just a few of the notable occurrences.

The first instance is around ten minutes into the first scene of Siegfried.

Here we have Siegfried testing the sword that Mime has just forged for him, then, finding it unworthy, smashing it to pieces. He's a jerk. We just hear the first half of his leitmotif from the horns: as he wields the sword, we get just a glimpse of what Siegfried the hero might look like. This leitmotif is used specifically in moments where we see his larger destiny (and there are other leitmotifs used for other aspects of his character).

The second time we hear the leitmotif is when Siegfried tells Mime about the first time he looked upon his own reflection.

Siegfried:
And there in the stream I saw my face.

This moment is significant because, at that moment, Siegfried realises he cannot possibly be the son of a disgusting creature like Mime. As I said, he's a jerk.

Here is an example of two leitmotifs being combined. Mime is talking about the sword Nothung which Siegfried will use to slay the dragon Fafner. He sings Siegfried's leitmotif, and on his last note a trumpet enters playing the leitmotif associated with Nothung.

Here a woodbird has told Siegfried about Brünnhilde and her plight. Siegfried wonders, to the tune of his leitmotif, "Can I awaken the bride?" Of course, soon he does indeed pass through the magical fire and awaken Brünnhilde, resulting in the following climactic scene between Siegfried and Brünnhilde.

In the excerpt, we hear Brünnhilde's Valkyrie leitmotif as she sings (which should be familiar to you from Walkürenritt), but this turns to Siegfried's leitmotif as she finally embraces him. Thus, the third opera ends with them singing of their love.

Unfortunately, things don't go so well for them in the final opera, Götterdämmerung. Here are Siegfried's dying words:

And here is his funeral march:

And finally, we hear Siegfried's leitmotif once more just before the end of the entire opera cycle:

Following Wagner, many composers have made use of leitmotifs, not only in operas but in programmatic instrumental music. (Programmatic means that the music is intended to communicate a story or some other nonmusical ideas.) It has spilled over into other media as well. There is one particular use of leitmotifs which is much, much more well known than the Ring cycle: John Williams' scores for the Star Wars films.

Of course there are plenty of action films (mostly superhero films) with recognisable main themes, but the Star Wars scores go much further with a large number of leitmotifs. I'll bet that most Star Wars fans and even many non-fans will be familiar with a majority of the leitmotifs below, and perhaps be able to pinpoint their meanings also.

When the prequel trilogy was in production, I have to admit that I was far more excited about the prospect of new John Williams Star Wars scores than I was about the actual films. The highlight of Attack of the Clones for me was finally hearing the Imperial March in the penultimate scene, then having it modulate abruptly into Anakin and Padmé's love theme which in turn segues into the end credits music. However, in general I was disappointed to find that the prequel scores were not as extensive in their use of leitmotifs, so for me they do not stand up to the original scores.

I can only think of one other example in the medium of film where leitmotifs have been used so extensively: Howard Shore's scores for Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings films. It seems though that Shore's leitmotifs have not managed to permeate the public consciousness as Williams' have; it's hard to say whether this is because of the greater popularity (or at least rewatchability) of the Star Wars films, or simply because Williams' themes are more catchy and hummable.

Why haven't more film score composers utilised leitmotifs? Well, it just isn't possible within the scope of a two hour film to introduce and develop a bunch of leitmotifs; the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings films provided unique opportunities with both their length and the breadth of their stories.

Fortunately, there is another medium which allows for the telling of stories with even greater length and breadth than these film series: namely, television shows! A long-running TV show may continue for a hundred episodes or more, and contains dozens of recurring characters, locations and situations. They are almost the ideal candidate for the usage of leitmotifs, and there are many examples of TV shows whose composers have realised this.

There are two particularly outstanding examples of TV shows using leitmotifs that I'm familiar with. The first is the recently completed Battlestar Galactica, whose music by Bear McCreary is one of the main reasons I fell in love with the show. The other is Lost, whose idiosyncrasy of focusing on a particular character each episode makes it particularly suitable for the leitmotif approach.

I'm going to introduce just a few of the leitmotifs that composer Michael Giacchino uses on Lost, and then I'll demonstrate how he puts them all together into a cue.

In the first season of the show, this motif was used very frequently and served as a kind of main theme for the show. Since then, it has been used more sparingly, and generally underlines an emotional moment for any of the original Flight 815 survivors.

Kate's leitmotif has a very unsettled feel to it which suits her tendency to not stay in one place (or with one man) for very long.

Of course, the two most sentimental themes belong to the show's two greatest couples. The one heard above is Sun and Jin's theme. (The theme for Desmond and Penny is just as beautiful and also has an extremely similar harmony; I've always wondered whether this was deliberate.)

This leitmotif was initially used for the Others, but eventually it has come to be used specifically for Ben.

This is one of many action leitmotifs used on the show. This particular leitmotif is often used for explosive action involving dynamite or the smoke monster (when he's exploding trees).

This leitmotif was introduced in season four and represents the freighter. The leitmotif gives a sense of hope for our protagonists getting off the island, but also one of foreboding.

Now you can listen for all of these leitmotifs in a continuous five minute cue. The music is taken from the season four finale, "There's No Place Like Home".

We begin with Kate's leitmotif on the harp, as we see her on the helicopter reflecting on Sawyer's jump into the ocean. Then we hear the freighter leitmotif on the violins accompanied by brass, as the helicopter spots the freighter behind them. The action turns to the Orchid station, and we hear Ben's creepy leitmotif on the violins as he watches Keamy die. It ends on a wrong note as Keamy's death triggers the bomb.

What follows is a couple of minutes of tension-building music as everyone runs around on the freighter. The explosive leitmotif is used a few times in this section. Eventually the mood shifts and the violins play a repeated note suspensefully until the cellos enter with the Lost main theme. At this point, Michael is telling Jin to leave him alone with the bomb. The hopeful main theme pushes us to believe that Jin is going to make it onto the helicopter with his wife.

However, back on the deck we see that the helicopter is about to depart, and the main theme takes on a much more urgent tone in the violins and starts modulating crazily. It then becomes the freighter leitmotif as the helicopter takes off. As Jin reaches the deck and sees the helicopter in the air, we hear the frantic chords of Sun and Jin's theme. Finally we hear the desperate freighter leitmotif once more, then the music quietens for the final creepy scene between Michael and Christian before the freighter explodes.

The usage of leitmotifs in opera, film and television is very rewarding for that small minority of people like myself who enjoy obsessively poking for every hidden connection. But more than that, leitmotifs implant subconscious associations in the minds of the general audience which enhances the resonance of the characters and ideas in the story.

Muse tracks use Rach

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:18:00 +0000

In my previous post, I likened the usage of a tune from a classical work in a popular song to a translation of a story into a different medium. Forcing a Saint-Saëns melody over a duple time reggae beat is like taking the plot of Little Women and setting it on Neptune and making Meg actually be Beth from three years in the future. It may seem cool at first until you realise that the story doesn't actually work anymore.

Borrowing from a piece of music doesn't always mean telling the same story. In this article, I'm going to show some examples of elements taken from classical works and incorporated into a completely new story. Because the original story is discarded, there is much more freedom in how to use the borrowed element to its greatest effect without needing to be faithful to its former function.

This is the opening of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto no. 2. If you're a fan of Muse you might be able to hear parts from three of their songs just within these first two minutes!

Let's hear the beginning of the melody played by the orchestra as it comes in to join the piano.

Here's a simplified reduction of the bassline and chords (corresponding to the first half of the audio excerpt):

Now let's listen to a verse from Muse's Megalomania.

The similarity is not obvious to hear, but if the Rachmaninoff is played at about half the speed and transposed from C minor to E minor, then the harmonies are almost identical. The basslines match exactly save for one note, and the chord progressions differ only in details. However, the two melodies are completely dissimilar (apart from the fifth bar where they fleetingly dovetail).

On the one hand, the harmony of the verses of Megalomania is unmistakeably lifted from the Rachmaninoff; but on the other hand, the music is independent enough that someone familiar with the piano concerto wouldn't necessarily immediately pick it as the source upon hearing the Muse song. It's clear that the band did not simply take the Rachmaninoff passage and try to turn it into a song. Rather, they took one element from it that they liked, recognised it as a versatile device, and sculpted a new story which could utilise it.

Let's see what they do with the next passage from the concerto.

Again, Muse has taken the harmony from this passage and repurposed it for one of their songs. It can be heard in the chorus of Ruled by Secrecy, with an even slower tempo.

Taken out of context as they are here, these two snippets seem even more similar than the previous example. The basslines are note for note, and the chord differences are very minor. Even the melodies have the same shape, both walking around a scale that climbs from F up to D in the case of the Rachmaninoff, stopping instead at C in the case of the Muse song.

However, within their larger contexts, these passages could not be more distinct. The clearest indication of this comes from the fact that, while the chord progression has not been transposed (for example, both instances have F minor in the fifth bar), the two works are not even in the same key!

The piano concerto is in C minor, and the eight bars excerpted are just a chunk taken from the middle of a sprawling 28 bar phrase which takes a wild harmonic journey starting from the dominant and trying to find its way to the tonic. The climax is reached in the last bar of the excerpt, from which the harmony winds down in a convoluted path to eventually land back in C minor. In no way do the start and finish of the excerpt feel like the beginning or end of a phrase, but instead smooth points along a logical flowing curve.

Ruled by Secrecy is in F minor, and those eight bars constitute the entire chorus. Here, the first bar marks the beginning of a new section, which builds up and seems to resolve in the fifth bar where the tonic is reached — but instead of stopping, the chorus keeps pushing further and eventually reaches the D dominant seventh chord which is so intense and out of place that the chorus gives up on even trying to resolve it, and just ends on that strange unanswered chord.

It's really quite amazing how these eight bars have been cut out of the piano concerto and used in a way which is almost antagonistic to their original meaning. This is something like looking at a drawing of a walrus, and realising that if you cut out part of its torso and flipper and turn it at some oblique angle, then it looks like an umbrella.

Okay, there's still one more from the opening of this concerto.

And here's the corresponding section from Muse's Space Dementia.

This is the most direct quotation that Muse has used. Here the passages actually function somewhat isomorphically: a circle of fifths winding down to the tonic, with a nice harmonic twist at the end to conclude the phrase. However, in the Rachmaninoff, the circle of fifths is the culmination of an elaborate journey towards home, whereas Muse have used it to perform a tricky modulation away from the home key into the dominant minor. Because of the suavity of the harmonic progression, the listener may not even notice the modulation until the relaxed B minor turns into an urgent B dominant seventh and it all crashes back into the original key.

Wow, that sure is a lot of Muse songs drawing from the same piano concerto. But wait, there's more! Here's the beginning of the main melodic theme from the third movement of the concerto.

And here it is in the cadenza of Muse's Butterflies & Hurricanes, hidden in the low strings underneath the brilliant piano arpeggios.

Here the reference is so short and subtle that I could have missed it if the other three Rachmaninoff songs hadn't tipped me off. After all, if there's going to be another piano concerto reference around, surely it's going to be somewhere in the song with the bombastic piano solo.

Just to prove that Muse have heard more than one classical work, here's a final example which draws from Schubert's Ellens dritter Gesang (commonly known as Ave Maria).

And now, from near the end of the short Muse song, Soldier's Poem:

Listening to the lyrics, I wonder whether this a deliberate ironic allusion to Schubert's song. "And do you think you deserve your freedom? No, I don't think you do."

Butchering the classics

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 02:00:00 +0000

Barber's Adagio for Strings is perhaps the most overused piece of classical music in pop culture, so much so that now it is often used as a humourous indicator of over-the-top melancholy. This is a pity, because it really is a remarkable work. It also requires the utmost sensitivity to perform. To attain the depth of feeling without allowing the phrases to seem overly drawn out, the ensemble must maintain tight control of rubato, dynamic shaping, and balancing of parts to bring out the counterpoint.

Ferry Corsten had the brilliant idea of getting rid of all the rubato, dynamics and counterpoint from the piece and getting a synthesizer to play the melody over a drum track, presumably so that people could dance to one of the most mournful tunes of all time.

This is terrible. The long phrases seem ridiculously random and rambling when every note sounds identical. It's like a primitive text-to-speech program trying to read poetry.

Now here's an excerpt from the last movement of Saint-Saëns's Organ Symphony.

This moment in the symphony really is a little bit magical. But sometimes when I listen to it, I feel like it's missing something ... like a reggae beat! Fortunately somebody else felt the same way and made this song:

Scott Fitzgerald & Yvonne Keely: If I Had Words

Okay, perhaps I am somewhat predisposed to hate this because I can't stand reggae. (At least I think I can't; I haven't really listened to very much of it — all I know is that Jason Mraz's I'm Yours was a perfectly charming little song until he decided to reggae it up.)

But quite apart from the horrible beat, the rhythm and meter are all messed up. Saint-Saëns's original melody is in triple time; each of the four phrases consists of three bars which grow towards the final two bar note. This repeated assymmetry of a three bar build up versus a two bar release gives this passage a certain charisma. In the reggae version, the melody has been squashed into some kind of duple time which seems to mutate towards the end so badly that I can't figure out which beats are supposed to be strong. As a result, the tune loses all direction and instead meanders aimlessly, relying on the harmony to give it any value.

Let's see what other beautiful melodies we can defile!

Brahms: Symphony no. 3

This is the beginning of the third movement of the symphony. The melody is based on the three-note motif of two notes in dotted rhythm followed by a third note. The attraction derives from alternately placing the motif with the third note on the strong beat of the bar (so that the motif has a rising feeling), and placing it with the first note on the strong beat (so that it is falling).

Carlos Santana & Dave Matthews: Love of My Life

Everything about this is bad. Once again the meter is exchanged for a more palatable quadruple time, because if the general public ever heard a song in triple time they would fall over. All rhythmic variation has been eliminated and the harmony which has been fit to the tune is just nauseating. Why wouldn't you just use the original harmony?!

Borrowing from classical music doesn't always have to be a disaster. Here's one which I think does better. (This time I hope there should be no need for me to provide the corresponding classical source material!)

Walter Murphy: A Fifth of Beethoven

Still not my cup of tea, but objectively, this song is far more respectful of the original. I would say that this seems like a pretty accurate translation of Beethoven's Fifth into the language of disco music, in contrast to the earlier examples where I would suggest that the story was definitely garbled in translation. Each phrase quoted from the symphony has the same purpose and meaning in the adaptation, and the new added elements integrate seamlessly with these to form a coherent updated story.

Here's another one which does pretty well:

Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto no. 2

Eric Carmen: All By Myself

Generally speaking, melodies written for instruments do not work well as vocal melodies, and vice versa. In this case, I think that Eric Carmen did a great job choosing a suitable melody and adapting the rhythm to be more natural, resulting in a well-written song.

The moral of the day is: if you want to write a good song based on a classical music work, choose Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto no. 2. The next article will be all about songs inspired by this concerto!

Post scriptum: If you're not a classical music lover like me and find it difficult to understand how I feel hearing masterpieces being violated, take a listen to this.

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - Bohemian Rhapsody

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Story

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:26:00 +0000

What do I love about music? There are so many different layers of music to savour, and different people will cling to different parts of it; yet the ingredient I consider to be most crucial is one which often seems to be overlooked. The basic elements of music are melody, harmony, rhythm and texture. These four elements are not necessarily distinct or independent, and there may be other elements at play (such as lyrics, or context if the music is just part of a larger whole), but as far as pure music goes they do a pretty good job of categorising the components. (But in a surprise twist, the crucial ingredient will turn out to be NONE of these! You'll never guess what it is from the title of this post.)

Melodies in music are like the characters in a film. They are what draw the attention of the audience and are generally the most memorable part. To continue this clumsy analogy, harmony is akin to the direction in a film. Directors shape the delivery of the dialogue and the physical acting, just as the harmony informs how a melody is heard and interpreted; moreover they are responsible for setting the overall mood of each scene. Rhythm is like the editing; these tell us whether our heart rate should be presto or adagio, or whether the climax is approaching or behind us. Finally, musical texture is the set design, the lighting, the cinematography, everything which brings to life a world for the other elements to play in. I could stretch this even further by explaining how the wah-wah pedal is the best boy grip, but I should probably move on to the actual point before your eyerolling at this analogy threatens to upset the angular momentum of the planet.

The actors, directors, editors and miscellaneous crew may all do their jobs superbly, but it's not going to make me like the film unless all of these elements are working together to tell a story. The story is the reason that I'm watching the film; I want to find out what happens to all these characters, how the conflicts are resolved (or not). It doesn't matter how wonderful a scene is — if it doesn't fit into that point of the film, it's not going to work.

The same goes for music. Each moment of a work of music may sound great, but it won't make for a satisfying experience unless the whole tells a coherent story. I'm not talking about operas and musicals, or film scores, or even programmatic music; I don't mean stories with literal characters and events. I'm talking about an emotional path that the music takes us on from start to finish.

Now I'm using the word "emotion" in a rather broad sense here, and perhaps it's not really the right word to use. While music can definitely inspire such typical emotions as joy, pain, longing, awe, and fear, there are many other types of feelings triggered by music which may be more subtle or complicated than these: feelings associated with recognising a pattern in the music, or hearing a change from what was established, or grouping sounds in threes rather than twos. These may seem too intellectual to be "felt", but they work on a subconscious level, just like assonance and alliteration and all that balderdash you learned about in poetry.

Good music should organise these emotions into a cohesive narrative. Emotions have a logic to their progressions: fear leads to relief or pain; struggle leads to triumph or despair. On the other hand, you don't want the music to be too predictable (unless you're a boring fart), so it needs to balance unpredictability against congruity.

Some of you might be thinking that a lot of music you listen to does no such thing. After all, a huge chunk of popular music is just verse-chorus-verse-chorus-verse-chorus, right? Not so! I would be extremely hard-pressed to find a song which consisted solely of three or four repetitions of a verse and chorus with no variations other than the lyrics. Listen more carefully. Is the texture of the final verse identical to that of the first? Is there a bridge after the penultimate chorus? Is there a change of keys between repetitions? The general rule for this particular structure is that the end of every chorus except the last must leave you wanting more, so that the song feels like a journey with several points of arrival at milestones but always heading towards that satisfying final chorus.

To illustrate this with an example, I randomised my music collection, then went down the list and picked the first song which was in verse-chorus form. Then I decided I didn't want to use that one as an example, so I looked at the second one. After discarding several options, I decided to just choose a song I like. So here is the end of the first chorus of Arcade Fire's Intervention.

The chorus ends with a fairly decisive perfect cadence, which is a good indicator of the end of a chunk of music. It's like an answer to all the questions which have been raised. But on that last syllable of the chorus, the drums enter. Clearly the song is not in fact over, but just starting to warm up!

Now let's hear the end of the second chorus.

Again right on that last syllable, the song starts building up a chord to let us know there's still more coming. And then it modulates into the next verse — thankfully not up a step, as has become so clichéd, but instead quite pleasingly to the dominant key of G major. A change of key is a sure sign in verse-chorus songs that we're racing to the finish line, and indeed here is the end of the third and final chorus.

Each verse-chorus section stands by itself and has its own fitting ending, but the short interludes in between ensure that over the course of the song there is a clear direction and overall resolution. Okay, so I've chosen a very exaggerated example here, but you should be able to find an overarching structure like this in any song you pick.

A similar story has been told by the traditional sonata-allegro form for centuries. Here we have a movement which is divided into three parts. First we have the exposition, which introduces all of the thematic material for the movement, but it somehow does it all wrong and ends up in the wrong key! Here is the opening of Beethoven's Fifth; it begins in C, but after not even one minute, things start to go horribly horribly wrong.

That second theme announced by the horns is in E flat! And so the exposition finishes with what would be a very final-sounding sequence of chords if they weren't in the wrong key. Since the movement cannot possibly end like that, the exposition is followed by a long convoluted development section in which the music tries desperately to undo this mistake and get back to the right key. It takes a lot of wrong turns along the way, encountering many strange distant keys, but somehow it finally makes it back to C.

So then we get the recapitulation, which is basically a repeat of the exposition except that this time it's done correctly. The music learns from its error, and debugs the naughty passage which led to the wrong key before.

Hurrah, the second theme is now in C! Now all is right with the world, and the movement can finally achieve a satisfying resolution in the key in which it began.

What is the similarity between verse-chorus and sonata-allegro forms? When we listen to music, we are always waiting for resolutions. When a melody hits a leading note, we wait for it to get back to the tonic. In the harmony, we wait for the circle of fourths to return home. The verse-chorus and sonata-allegro forms allow the music to have several intermediate resolution points before the end of the piece. At these points, the audience should be feeling, "Okay, that wraps up that part of the story, but what about this other thing that's still brewing?" It's also nice that these intermediate resolution points are previews of the final ultimate resolution: they kind of sound the same, but don't quite deliver the full emotional punch which is saved up for the big one.

Verse-chorus and sonata-allegro forms are a very convenient way of telling a story in a safe way. Going back to my fantastic music/film analogy, they're kind of equivalent to something like the [two people fall in love, then have a misunderstanding, then work it all out in the end] story structure. They're effective: they help the audience know what to expect along the way, and deliver a satisfying ending. I'm not being derisive. Just as not all movies with the aforementioned story structure need turn out to be mindless chick flicks, there's a lot of great stuff which can be done within the verse-chorus and sonata-allegro forms (for example, the two examples above).

But things really get interesting when we start looking at non-traditional story forms. Think about a piece of music like Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody which has barely any discernable structure and is more like a moodswinging fantasia. Without the guidance of an organised form, how do we know that the parts are going to combine to form a meaningful story? This is the challenge faced by musicians/composers who experiment with new ways to sculpt their stories.

Of course, deciding whether a musical story is any good is just as subjective as judging any elements of music; ultimately different individuals will like different stories. I love the verse/chorus parts of Muse's Butterflies and Hurricanes (apart from the terrible lyrics), and think the piano interlude is great, but together they make about as much sense to me as a David Lynch film. (To be fair, probably one of the more accessible David Lynch films.) However, the song seems to be among many Muse fans' favourites, so clearly this is just a story which doesn't appeal to me.

At its best, music has the ability to sway our emotions just as profoundly as any novel or film. If I'm looking to lift my spirits, or feed my depression, or escape reality, all I need to do is look through my collection for some music which tells the story I'm looking for, and in a moment it will be taking me with it on a journey. That's what I love about music.

Misnomers

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 22:34:00 +0000

My inaugural blog post made liberal use of the terms "classical music" and "popular music". I use these terms because I believe they will be commonly understood according to how I intend to use them, and really because I cannot find superior alternatives. Actually I vehemently detest these terms, especially because most of the "classical music" I listen to is hardly classical, and much of the "popular music" I listen to is far from popular (that is, according to the literal definitions of the words).

Of course, to take the term "popular" in this naïve fashion to mean that all works of music in this category are popular is absurd. The label should categorise a piece of music based on its intrinsic characteristics, not by its public regard. However, considering the term "popular" as applying to a genre rather than its individual elements is also problematic, since it assumes the existence of some canonical way of dividing music into categories, then the label "popular music" applying to the most popular of these. Thus, the label gives no clues as to what actually distinguishes between the categories.

The word "classical" has many confusing meanings, but to me the word has connotations of belonging to (or being based on) old traditions from earlier cultures, and it just seems silly to apply this term to music which was written this year. The term reinforces the misconception that "classical music" was all written hundreds of years ago. There have been attempts to popularise new terms to describe this genre such as "art music" or "serious music", but these are insulting when you think about what they imply about non-"classical" music.

The lack of appropriate labels for "classical" and "popular" music stems partially from the difficulty in stating the distinction between these two types of music without giving a history lecture. A first instinct is usually to refer to the instrumentation of the music, but this fails to partition accurately when you consider that today we have all types of orchestral instruments being utilised in "popular" music, and electric guitars and drum kits appearing in "classical" works, and music from both groups being created entirely by computers or electronics.

Another way in which we might characterise the genres is by considering that "classical" music is generally composed so that a work exists as a written out score — it can be performed by any group of people and it is still considered to be the same piece of music. The performers attempt to realise the composer's vision of the music as strictly as possible. Thus we could consider "classical" music to be composer-centric. "Popular" music, on the other hand, is usually very closely tied to the performers. A band will sculpt their own specific version of a song, and if another band creates a "cover" of the song, then it is expected that they will bring something of their own to it and not just try to emulate the original sound. So "popular" music is performer-centric. However, this distinction of composer-centric versus performer-centric music is still not very satisfying, because it is more to do with real-world logistics rather than inherent properties of the music itself.

You may somewhat correctly be thinking that all of this discussion is moot since the terms "classical" and "popular" are now so vague as to be useless, and we can circumvent all this hoohah by sticking to more specific genres; subdividing "classical" into baroque, classical(!), romantic, impressionist, serial, neoclassical, minimalist, electronic, et cetera; and subdividing "popular" into rock, pop(!), folk, country, hip hop, electronic, et cetera. But it is useful (in particular for me, in this blog) to have the more general labels to use, and the fact remains that there does seem to exist a not-very-blurry line dividing "classical" and "popular" music, so why is it so hard to come up with a concise description of the difference between the two?

If you, my reader, have ideas for more suitable labels, I will be glad to hear them. Until then, I will reluctantly drop the quotation marks around "classical" and "popular" for increased readability and reduced cynicism.

Introduction

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 06:13:00 +0000

Have you ever been listening to some music, and completely fallen in love a shimmering Neapolitan chord arpeggiated by strings, or been haunted as cold clanging percussion drops away to reveal warm intimate guitars, and felt like you could talk about the rhythms and harmonies and textures for hours but you don't know who would listen?

This seems to be a recurring problem for me, which I am attempting to solve by starting up this blog. Honestly, I don't expect to have many/any readers (although clearly I expect at least a few of my friends to make it to the second post, or I wouldn't bother with this introduction). Writing these essays is really an excuse for me to solidify these ideas which swirl around haphazardly in my brain, and also for me to let loose my bombastic and oftentimes sesquipedalian tendencies. However, if people should happen to discover my blog and find themselves interested and enlightened by something I say, I'd be delighted. Nice comments on my posts will bring me an irrational amount of joy.

So what exactly am I going to be writing about? I don't expect to be doing a lot of reviewing here, although I imagine once in a while the urge to tell people how much I love (or hate) a specific work of music will get the better of me. My aim is to write more general articles about commonalities in music from different genres, what makes music interesting and how it works on us. While understanding a piece of music doesn't automatically make you like it, it can definitely open you up to listening to it in new ways — which may (or may not) lead you to appreciate it, which in turn can be a different route to liking it.

Since the primary audience of this blog is myself, I'm occasionally going to want to dive into some technical nitty gritty and carelessly drop musical jargon without trying very hard to make it accessible to a layperson. This shouldn't deter you; if you are interested, regard it as an invitation to do some reading on Wikipedia, or, better yet, to email me and ask me to explain it slowly. Otherwise, you should still be able to enjoy my essays without understanding the harmonic function of that Neapolitan.

My hope is that, in reading my essays here, you may learn to appreciate the music you love in new ways, and also broaden your horizons and discover new music to fall in love with. More than that, I aim to push myself to think about music more deeply by forcing myself to organise my thoughts in coherent written form, and to constantly be exploring new music myself.

Stereotypes

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 23:14:00 +0000

Elementary set theory partitions humankind into four groups:

Narrow-minded people who only listen to classical music.
Narrow-minded people who only listen to popular music.
Rare enlightened beings who enjoy both classical and popular music and write blog articles about how superior they are to others.
Philistine barbarians who don't really care about music.

(Thus, I manage to offend and alienate the entire audience of this blog before even reaching the second paragraph.)

Poohpoohers of classical music claim that classical music is boring and it all sounds the same and is only good for background music (if that). Many people think classical music is just for snooty pretentious people who don't know how to have fun. Then there are those who claim they like classical music because it's relaxing and soothing and nice to fall asleep to. I reckon those people would really love chloroform.

Naysayers of popular music, on the other hand, claim that popular music is boring and it all sounds the same and is only good for background music (if that). Some will go on to imply that popular music is made by stupid people for stupid people, whereas classical music is actually "art" which can be "appreciated".

To say that I disagree with either of these opinions would be somewhat dishonest. In fact, I happen to think that both groups of people are almost right. I find the vast majority of classical music to be boring — just as I do the vast majority of popular music.

But obviously I'm not starting a blog just to talk about how boring music is. Music is a huge part of my life — listening to music, playing music, creating music. I devote a significant portion of my time seeking out new music to listen to. And yes, most new music that I try out turns out to be uninteresting or distasteful to my ears. But it's worth sifting through all of that rubbish to find those rare specimens of music which set my spine tingling, or fill my blood with adrenaline, or inebriate me with their gorgeousness. Music that makes me feel.

I'm not saying that most music is bad and that I only listen to the good stuff. In general, if music is out there for people to hear, it's probably because it appeals to someone. Everyone just needs to find out what music speaks to them — and it won't always be the type of music you expect. Sure, it's nice and safe to stick with genres you know, but if you never explore new areas, you'll never have that experience of being dumbstruck by something different to anything you've heard before, that can affect you in completely novel ways.

Thus, to the poohpoohers I would like to say, classical music is not all dandy string quartets and fat women with wobbly voices. And to the naysayers, popular music is not just Britney Spears or the Backstreet Boys. Don't dismiss a vast and enormously varied world of music just because of that tiny sample of it which the world has presented to you on television or on the radio or in bars or in elevators.

Q: Are you suggesting that all music can be categorised as classical or popular? What about, for example, jazz?
A: Who cares. All jazz is inane and boring.

TV on the Radio: A Method

Adams: Short Ride in a Fast Machine

The Shortwave Set: House of Lies

Schnittke: Credo (from Requiem)

Battles: Rainbow

Lutosławski: Symphony no. 3