Just Feet It!

The organist of Trinity Episcopal Church on Wall Street in New York City gave a tribute to Michael Jackson for the organ postlude:

A new view of musical space?

Mind Hacks reports on a a new study in Perception which determined that people's comfort zones for personal space was altered by listening to music on headphones. The music hampers the ability of people to aurally track other people, especially important when those people are out of visual range (behind the listener). So more personal space is needed to feel safe.

What is a musical experience?

Okay, it took a week to recover from the Mannes Institute. It was fabulous, but the intensive reading and thinking involved required many days of decompression. One thing that really struck me was a line in David Huron's plenary talk. He said he poses the following question to his graduate students every once in a while: "If you had a chance to talk to God, and could ask Her anything about music, what three questions would you ask?" David calls these the God questions, and says these are the questions that should impell a research agenda. It made me think about what things I'm really curious about, tempered by what my training and resources permit. I also had a great chat with Steve Larson on metaphor theory while jogging through Central Park, giving me a much better handle on that mode of understanding music. I'll start posting weekly about Lerdahl's Tonal Pitch Space, working out my understanding of this complex idea as I attempt to explain it to you.

But for now, I'm bothered by something I read today in Harold Fiske's Understanding Musical Understanding. On pages 25-26, Harold writes,

[Sculpture can be observed by any angle and for as long as the viewer desires.] Not so for music, where 'viewing' time for music is controlled exclusively by the performer. And once over, returing to the room in which the performance occurred would not afford continued experience with the same work. Once the piece is over, it is over. Even playing the piece again (a recording for example) does not represent a continued experience with the piece but rather a different experience, though it is the same music being listened to.

First of all, I don't believe the performer controls all aspects of the performance time. Besides the instructions of the composer, there are constraints placed on the performer(s) by cultural expectations, acoustic limitations of the venue, and general perceptual limitations. And the listener does have control of what performance aspects to which s/he pays attention. This attention is a main part of Fiske's thesis that musical time is very different from clock time, thus the listener does control his/her musical time experience.

But the second thing is more troubling, that rehearings are different experiences rather than a continued experience. It is troubling, because part of me agrees that rehearings (whether a physical rehearing or a mental replay) are indeed different experiences. The listener has different knowledge by the time of the replay, etc. But the two hearings share a commonality of the schemata of the performance. The order of the notes, the timings, the timbres are all the same, just as a sculpture keeps the same physical features. So I really want to say that the rehearing is a continuation of the experience of the piece, just as when I revisit the sculpture it continues my experiences with that artwork, even though I have different knowledge from the last time I experienced it. What say you? Is a rehearing a completely new experience, or is it a continuation of the same musical experience?

Are you a Mannes or a Mouse(s)?

Tomorrow I am heading out to New York for the Mannes Institute for Advanced Studies in Music Theory. As you can see from the preparation page, I have been rather busy doing my assigned readings for the last month. I'm in two workshops, Tonal Tension with Fred Lerdahl, and Music and Embodiment with Eric Clarke. Preparing for Fred's workshop is killing me, trying to get a grasp on his Tonal Pitch Space. But it is also very invigorating, makes me feel like I'm in grad school again. In fact, I will be with many of my former grad school compatriots, like Rich Randall and Ian Quinn. And to go really old school, I will be rooming with a friend from my undergraduate days, Peter Martens. This is more of a think tank than a workshop, as the website describes it: "The 2009 Mannes Institute on Music and The Mind will be a seminal collaborative think tank for serious music cognition and perception scholars from around the world." I'm very excited, and hope to have time to blog about it each day. Oh, plus I've been rocking the house with Rock Band 2, my Father's Day present.

Viral Dancing?

My sister sent me this Youtube video of a "happening" in Antwerp. As a promo for a Belgian reality show searching for Maria for a revival of Sound of Music, 200 dancers started dancing to "Do Re Mi" in the Antwerp Central Station. Even though it has a commercial purpose, it does capture the spirit of brightening peoples days with unexpected art. This sounds like an interesting project to get my college students involved with, not necessarily dance mind you. Especially not me dancing, except to horrify my friends and family.

SatPod

Last night I saw Wicked at the Murat Theater in Indianapolis.  While I prefer "Popular" from the Broadway recording, the actress playing Elphaba had this gloriously warm and almost husky voice that was wonderful* in "I'm Not That Girl."  Her name is Carrie Manolakos, the standby on this tour.  In honor of the show, here are some complete musicals and operas that I have on my iPod.  (not including separate arias or numbers)

1. Les Miserables, composed by Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil, Herbert Kretzmer, Broadway Cast recording.

2. Ainadamar, composed by Osvaldo Golijov, conducted by Spano.

3. Pippin, composed by Stephen Schwartz, Broadway Cast recording.

4. Wicked, composed by Stephen Schwartz, Broadway Cast recording.

5.  The Greater Good or the Passion of Boule de Suif, composed by Stephen Hartke, Glimmerglass Opera.

6. La Bohème, composed by Giacomo Puccini, performed by Luciano Pavarotti, Mirella Freni, Etc., Herbert Von Karajan; Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

7. Tosca, composed by Puccini, performed by Price - Di Stefano - Taddei - Corena - Wiener Philharmoniker - Herbert von Karajan.

8. Bluebeard's Castle, composed by Béla Bartók.

*appropriate word for the musical.

Tom Sawyer in Academia

I received an interesting call for papers. The idea of "the cognitive function of riffs and other music in expressing difficult ideas" seems very questionable. How is Neal Perl's drum beat communicating Ayn Rand's concept of objectivism, separate from any lyrics? Answer: it isn't. There can be text painting, but that is a far cry from the music expressing the difficult ideas themselves. Even program music needs the words of the program to help make sense of the story.

The rock band Rush resonates widely for musician-fans and others interested in structural complexity, individualism, and a range of literary and stylistic influences. The group has explored such genres as heavy metal and hard rock, progressive and synth-rock, and post-progressive "power trio," along with various secondary influences. However, the band has also wandered among such lyrical interests as relationships, fantasy-adventure, classical mythology, European and world history, science-fiction, libertarianism, atheism, science, and technology.

We are looking for short articles (of around twenty pages) to add to this proposed anthology for the series that began with "Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book about Everything and Nothing" (2000), but since 2005 has also included (see http://www.opencourtbooks.com/categories/pcp.htm) music-related books about hip hop, Bob Dylan, U2, the Beatles, the Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, Radiohead, and Jimmy Buffett. Writers in philosophy, musicology, economics, and psychology have already committed to "Rush and Philosophy," and they are exploring the following areas from across Rush's career (1974- ):
-personal tragedies, self-determination, and Sartre
-the anthropic cosmological principle and atheism
-Canadianness in Anglo-American genres and in lyrics and images
-tribute projects of the band's music in death metal, trip-hop, and classical strings
-the band's combination of secular humanism and mysticism
-libertarianism and left-libertarianism, rather than "right-wing"
-the cognitive function of riffs and other music in expressing difficult ideas
-a roundtable on political economy, Ayn Rand, and Rush's "2112"

Contributions from women, minorities, and people from outside of North America are most welcome! Particular areas of interest for further articles include: balance through instrumental “songs,” humour, roundtables on music technology and rock critics, live albums as career anthologies, and recent "sightings" of the band in the mainstream media.

Deadline for one-page abstracts: July 19, 2009
Deadline for completed first-drafts: August 31, 2009

Please send to Durrell Bowman and Jim Berti: db@durrellbowman.com; koors58@yahoo.com

What is Boring Art?

Chad Orzel has opened up a can o' worms in looking at the latest NEA study bemoaning the deterioration of arts attendance. I'm not happy about the "boring" in the title, but I do agree that studies like these create artificial boundaries, especially in regards to music. The study only looked at classical, jazz, and opera music performances for music, and also did not consider any performances by elementary or high school ensembles. Chad's college students still count. There are questions later about school performances, as well as religious music.The results are based upon surveying people, and leaves definitions up to them, with little guidance. So the question on classical music reads: "[With the exception of elementary or high school performances] Did you go to a live classical music performance such as symphony, chamber, or choral music [during the last 12 months?]" What about the Bang on a Can marathon? Some attendees there would call it indy music, others would call the same performance chamber music. There is a later question that captures any sort of music festival: "Did you visit an outdoor festival that featured performing artists?" Today I was listening to Fresh Air, and Terry Gross was interviewing Janelle Monae. She is labeled as a hiphop artist, but the music I heard was jazzy musical theater. And what about musical theater, which is also surveyed as "live musical stage play"? Rent is musical theater and hard rock. Same with Hair and Tommy. My guess, based on the wording of the question, is that people would call those three shows live musical stage plays, but those same people would not count a performance of Tommy by the Who back in the 70's. Nowadays the borders between genres is blurry at best, as mentioned by Mark Swed in a review of the recent Ojai Music Festival. So Chad is correct that attendance at any sort of live music performance should be counted, as should attendance at performance art happenings that aren't part of outdoor festivals.

However, looking deeper in the survey, almost all the criticisms made by Chad or his commenters are covered in the actual study, just not in the brochure or the media coverage. There are questions about musical preference that include other genres. The survey includes "Classical or Chamber, Opera, Broadway/Show Tunes, Jazz, Classic Rock/Oldies, Contemporary Rock, Rap/Hip-hop, Blues/Rhythm and Blues, Latin/Spanish/Salsa, Country, Bluegrass, Folk Music, Hymns/Gospel, Other." And the survey includes downloading or streaming performances of "music, theater or dance" and images of "paintings, sculpture or photography" from the Internet. There is personal creativity: "Did you use the Internet to create or post your own art online including design, music, photography, films, video, or creative writing?" And consuming art in recorded or broadcast format (though that is limited to the "high arts", no movies or TV shows). As for commenters at Chad's blog who critique the study for ignoring literature, it doesn't. TThe survey includes reading books that aren't required for work or school and tallied whether they were Novels/Short Stories, Poetry, or Plays, and genres (Mysteries, Thrillers, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Other Fiction, Self-Improvement, Religious texts, History/Political, Biographies, Other Non-Fiction, Other). They also include questions on reading online materials, books-on-tape, and writing your own materials. However, movies and television shows are not covered in the survey.

But what is his Page Rank?

Thanks to my students reading music blogs that I don't read, and posting them on Facebook, I found out that Google is celebrating Igor Stravinsky's Birthday today, with some funky Google art:

Jazz in the White House

First Lady Michelle Obama hosted a Jazz Studio today for middle and high school students. Jazz greats like the Marsalis family and Paquito D'Rivera played along with students and led seminars. It is very cool that the White House is doing things to highlight culture, including their date on Broadway.

Best of the Rest: 6-15-09

It's time to start linking to those less-known music blogs again.

First up, violist Robert Levine has a series of posts on performing Mahler's 8th Symphony as a tribute to the departing Music Director Andreas Delfs. 'But I'm having great difficulty with the big triumphant theme in the second movement of the Mahler 8 being the same motif as "Silver bells, silver bells, it's Christmas time in the city.' I hate that carol almost as much as I hate the 'Carol of the Pogroms Bells.'"

Peter Matthews imagines dueling pianists in adjacent brownstones. "As if I needed another reason to love my nabe: I was walking along 12th Street yesterday when I was stopped in my tracks by the sound of a piano playing incredibly difficult figures."

Bruce Hodges is disarmed by Hilary Hahn. "But while I came for Ives, I was seduced by Ysaÿe"

Molly Sheridan finds a filk of the media industry.