FriPod: Running music

This is a continuation of last week's challenge. Phil lists all of those who shuffled their MP3s brazenly in the open. He, and one of the challengees, point out the lack of classical tracks among all of us classical music bloggers. But my last week's list had 50% classical, 20% jazz, 20% pop/rock/folk, and 10% world music. So Operachic is not the only one that is classical heavy. And this week's list is even heavier in the classical realm. This list of twelve tracks are what I listened to while I was running this morning. It was shuffle mode, though occasionally I would skip a track that wasn't conducive to running or that was too soft to hear in the fitness room. In some ways this is a more boring list, with only three that are not of a classical vein (four if you don't think film music is classical). But this shows my interest in early music (2 pieces) , and actually has more 20th century music than the previous list. #3 is special, as I played that piece on my senior recital. And "Battle Royal" is a great chart to run to. Duelling lead trumpets get the blood stirring and the legs pounding.

1. Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme Suite, IV: Entrance And Dance Of The Tailors - Rudolf Kempe/Staatskapelle Dresden Richard Strauss - Orchestral Works (Disc 6)
2. Five Preludes: 5-Andantino - Martin Jones Dmitri Shostakovich
3. Légende - Wynton Marsalis George Enesco
4. Canzona Quintadecima Detta La Lievoratta Per Due Bassi - Girolamo Frescobaldi Virtuoso Solo Music For Cornetto
5. Canon Du Carousel - Nick Norton & Anthony Plog André Danican Philidor
6. Carmina Burana, Auf Dem Anger - 7. Floret Silva Nobilis - Arleen Augèr, John Van Kesteren, Jonathan Summer, Riccardo Muti; Philharmonia Orchestra & Chorus Carl Orff
7. Symphony No.10 III. Purgatorio. Allegretto moderato Eliahu Inbal/Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt Mahler Symphonies 1-10 Das Lied von der Erde (CD 15)
8. Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Das irdische Leben Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 7 + Des Knaben Wunderhorn - 4 Lieder (Disc 2)
9. Battle Royal - Count Basie Orchestra, Duke Ellington And His Orchestra First Time! The Count Meets The Duke
10. So Far Away - Dire Straits Brothers In Arms
11. Foundations Of Stone - Howard Shore The Lord Of The Rings The Two Towers
12. Confrontation - Les Misérables Original Broadway Cast Les Misérables [Disc 1]

The Semantics of Music

Dave Munger has a post about whether music conveys meaning like language does. He explains an experiment by Stefan Koelsch, et al, a team at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig. The short explanation: music can convey some meanings the same as language. But I recall someone pointing out that no one has been able to write music that says, "Go get a gallon of milk, tomorrow." Or "I would have left if she spoke again." You may argue that the first example is done every day with commercial jingles, but those rely upon visuals or accompanying words to get the meaning across. And musical subjunctives only work in incredibly deep analyses that won't be universally understood (or even culturally understood).

Midwest Graduate Music Consortium

The Midwest Graduate Music Consortium is pleased to announce its 11th annual meeting on February 23rd and 24th, 2007 at the University of Chicago, with Scott Burnham as the keynote speaker. This year's conference will also include a concert of new music by composition students.

Politics of Comedy

The Catholic University is very busy this semester:

The Benjamin T. Rome School of Music is proud to present the 2007 Catholic University President's Festival of the Arts, "The Politics of Comedy," featuring a fully-staged production of Leonard Bernstein's 1956 comic opera Candide, based on the 1759 novel by Voltaire. Produced by Dean Murry Sidlin and created by him in collaboration with musicologist and assistant professor Andrew H. Weaver, the Festival will run from Sunday, March 11 until Sunday, March 18.

Opening with a chamber music recital, "Voltaire's World, Bernstein's World," on Sunday afternoon, the Festival will feature a variety of lectures and films exploring Voltaire's and Bernstein's versions of Candide. By bringing together scholars from a variety of disciplines, including Elizabeth B. Crist, assistant professor of music at Princeton University, and Jennifer S. Tsien, assistant professor of French at the University of Virginia, the festival will explore how both Voltaire and Bernstein used the same basic story to provide very different kinds of social and political critique. Voltaire's novel, written during the French Enlightenment, satirizes and offers alternatives to the fashionable philosophies of the day, while Bernstein's opera draws parallels between the age of Voltaire and the McCarthy era. It is hoped that the festival will not only provide insights into the production of Bernstein's Candide with which the festival culminates, but that it will also shed light on the means by which comedy and the arts can be put into the service of the public good, not only in Voltaire's and Bernstein's specific contexts, but also in our own world. After all, comedy continues to be an effective vehicle for political and cultural critique to this day, as demonstrated by the enduring popularity of such television shows as "Saturday Night Live" and "The Daily Show."

Tickets for Candide are $20 and $15; all other events are free and open to the public. Most events take place on the campus of Catholic University in Washington, D.C. The calendar of events is as follows; for more detailed information on each event, please visit http://music.cua.edu. All events are subject to change.

Sunday, March 11

4:00 p.m., Chamber Music Recital: "Voltaire's World, Bernstein's World"

Monday, March 12

4:00 p.m., Lecture by Elizabeth B. Crist and Jennifer S. Tsien

7:30 p.m., Film Screening: "Forrest Gump"

Tuesday, March 13

10:30 a.m., Roundtable Discussion: "Candide as Cultural Critique"

7:30 p.m., Film Screening, TBA

Thursday, March 15

12:10 p.m., Lecture by Mark Eden Horowitz, senior music specialist at the Library of Congress: "Candide and the Leonard Bernstein Collection at the Library of Congress"

6:30 p.m., Open Dress Rehearsal and Lecture

Friday, March 16

7:00 p.m., Pre-Concert Event: "Reminiscences of Bernstein"

8:00 p.m., Leonard Bernstein's Candide

Saturday, March 17

7:00 p.m., Pre-Concert Lecture on Bernstein's Candide

8:00 p.m., Leonard Bernstein's Candide

Sunday, March 18

1:00 p.m., Pre-Concert Lecture on Bernstein's Candide

2:00 p.m., Leonard Bernstein's Candide

Mahler this Saturday

The symphonies of Gustav Mahler require a conductor who is daring enough to explore a wide range of emotion. The Boston Philharmonic's Benjamin Zander is acknowledged as one of the world's leading conductors of Mahler. High Fidelity named his recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 6 as the best classical crossover recording of 2002, his recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 3 was awarded the 2004 Critic's Choice by the German Record Critic's Award Association and his recording of Mahler's 9th Symphony was nominated for a Grammy Award.

On Sunday, February 11 at 2pm, WGBH 89.7 in Boston is proud to present Zander and the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra in a riveting interpretation of Mahler's Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp. This WGBH exclusive broadcast, recorded live in November 2006, will stream worldwide at wgbh.org/classical also includes Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and Robert Schumann's Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 129, with soloist Alexander Baillie.

Benjamin Zander and the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra
Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp
Sunday, February 11 at 2pm
Streaming worldwide at http://wgbh.org/classical

Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic

Several of my friends are involved in this conference, including one that switched jobs since I last saw him.

Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic
Fourth Annual Conference – Spring 2007
Catholic University of America, Washington D.C.

Program
Friday, March 23
12:00 – 1:00 – Registration, Conversation and Refreshments

Session 1: Time, Text, and Narrative
Session Chair: Cynthia Folio (Temple University)

1:00: Multiply-Directed Moments in Brahms’s Schön war, das ich dir weihte. . .(Op. 95, no.7), 2007 Winner of the Dorothy Payne Award & Prize for Best Graduate Student Paper - Melissa Hoag (Indiana University)

1:30: Found in Translation? Discovering the Middleground of Music and Speech - Bret Aarden (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

2:00: Narrative and Inter-Self: Form and Expressive Meaning in Takemitsu’s Rain Tree - Tomoko Deguchi (Winthrop University)

2:30: Range, Tessitura, and Text-Setting in Byrd’s Vocal Polyphony - Jason A. Gersh (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

3:00 – 3:30: Refreshments and Conversation

Session 2: 20th-Century Music
Session Chair: Steven Harper (Georgia State University)

3:30: Hierarchy, Prolongation, and Harmonic Structure in “Majesty of Christ Praying That His Father Should Glorify Him” from Messiaen’s L’Ascension - Martin Lee (University at Buffalo)

4:00: Ligeti’s Pièce électronique no. 3 and its Relation to Stockhausen’s Serial Practice - Benjamin Levy (University of Maryland)

4:30: Repetition, Memory, and Stuplimity in For Samuel Beckett by Morton Feldman - Philip Duker (University of Michigan)

5:00 – 5:30: Reception

5:30 – 7:00: Banquet and Presentation of the Dorothy Payne Award & Prize for the Best Graduate Student Paper

Saturday, March 24

7:30 – 8:30: Officers and Members of the Board Meeting, with the Publications & Gamut Advisory Committee and the Gamut Editorial Board

8:30 – 9:00: Continental Breakfast For All

Session 3 – Tonality in Theory and Analysis
Session Chair: Adam Ricci (University of North Carolina Greensboro)

9:00: On Function - Jill Brasky (American University)

9:30: Understanding Hybridity: Comparing Geometric Models of Tonal Hierarchy - Richard Randall (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

10:00: One Step Beyond: Beethoven’s Whole-Tone Transpositions - Eric Wen (The Curtis Institute of Music)

10:30: Refreshments and Conversation

Session 4: Modernism
Session Chair: Carl Wiens (Nazareth College)

11:00: Bach’s Tetrachords and Stravinsky’s Blocks: The Sketches for the “Grand Chorale” - Don Traut (University of Arizona)

11:30: All in the Family: Contour, Musical Domains, and Motive ‘Families’ as Continuity in Webern’s Unfinished Cello Sonata (1914) - Carolyn Mullin (Florida State University)

12:00 – 1:30: Luncheon

1:30 – 2:00: Business Meeting, Including a Short, Exciting Presentation on GAMUT by Phil
Ewell of the University of Tennessee [GAMUT is the new online journal for this society]

Session 5: Rhythm
Session Chair: Stephen Hopkins (Penn State University)

2:00: A Circular Plot for Rhythm Visualization and Analysis - Fernando Benadon (American University)

2:30: Bimetricality and Linear Funk Drumming - Joti Rockwell (University of Chicago)

3:00: Nonlinear Time in Funk as Exemplified in James Brown - Gabriel Miller (The Ohio State University)

3:30: Hypermetric Irregularity, Incongruence and Innovation in Songs of Roy Orbison - Mark Richardson (East Carolina University)

4:00: Conversation and Adieu

The Proms and British Musical Life

THE PROMS AND BRITISH MUSICAL LIFE

23-25 April 2007, The British Library Conference Centre, 96 Euston Rd, London, UK.

The British Library, King's College London and the BBC are pleased to announce details of the first international conference devoted to the Henry Wood Promenade concerts.

Historians, musicologists, practitioners, media commentators, cultural authorities, concert-goers and those interested in the Proms as an influential cultural phenomenon are invited to come together to consider the role the Proms play in British musical life, the history of musical performance, changing audience behaviour, patronage, cultural politics, and the BBC. More generally, the three-day conference provides an opportunity to reflect on the current status of classical music.

There will be lectures, discussions, demonstrations and papers on such subjects as the history of the Last Night; what the Proms sounded like in the early years; the build-up to the BBC taking over the running of the Proms in 1927; the wartime years; the Proms as a historic media event that is part of national life; the changing visions of the Proms on radio and television; legacies from Malcolm Sargent to William Glock; the cultural politics of the BBC; Englishness and multiculturalism; the impact of technology on the Proms and the future.

Speakers include Georgina Born, George Benjamin, Asa Briggs, David Cannadine, John Deathridge, Jenny Doctor, Ivan Hewett, Nicholas Kenyon, Norman Lebrecht, and Paddy Scannell.

Oliver Knussen conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a concert at the BBC's Maida Vale studios featuring music introduced to the British public at the Proms, including works by Julian Anderson, Frank Bridge, Benjamin Britten, Alexander Goehr, and Arnold Schoenberg.