The New Religious

I recently* received two review CDs that are modern takes on religion. First, Phil Kline's John the Revelator. This Mass in both English and Latin is performed by the vocal group Lionheart and the string quartet Ethel. Some of the movements sound very traditional, chant in polyphony or monophony such as the opening "Northport", and some are very modern, with pop-tinged beats, minimalist ostinatos in "The Man Who Knows Misery", crunchy dissonances like "The Snow Fell", explorations of George Crumb-like timbres in "Dark Was the Night" or jazzy extended harmonies in "The Unnamable" and "Sanctus". I'm ashamed to admit that one section of "The Unnamable" sounds to me like the Oompa Loompas singing in the newer Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie. The male voices in octaves, with mid-Eastern pop accompaniment, just reminds me of one of the musical productions with little red men. This is a fairly eclectic work, like a less-extreme version of Golijov. I think Kline strikes a good balance of contemporary and contemplative, and the performances are great.

The second CD is D'Arc: Woman on Fire, a music theater piece by Jay Cloidt and Amanda Moody. Based on the life of martyred Joan of Arc, this is much more like the brashness of Golijov's Ayre cycle, with 14th century hymns sitting next to electronica, indy pop sounds, solo cello (featuring ex-Kronos Quartet member Joan Jeanrenaud), and lots of recorded sounds mixed in. The vocals by Amanday Moody are more pop-ish than Dawn Upshaw's performance in Ayre, raw and focused more on the drama than the beauty of sound. The whole D'Arc recording production seems to lack some aural depth, making it feel a little amateurish despite the interesting compositions and good performances. The religious music isn't as spiritually intense or authentic as Kline's work, but still interesting.



*Recently by my standards, rather long ago for the Kline CD by blogging standards.

Up

Tonight I took the kids to see Pixar's latest film, Up. Twice I teared up, the relationship between the man and his wife was so sweet. I wish they didn't feel the need for the fighting scenes, but the dogs are great, especially Doug. And Russell is very cute without being overly so. I could tell my kids were affected by the absence of Russell's father. During the merit badge ceremony my son had to come over and sit on my lap, I think to confirm that I was there. I can't imagine parents who don't want to spend time with their kids, or who won't even realizing how damaging their absence can be. Perhaps I'm judging Russell's father too harshly, we aren't told why he stopped coming to the ceremonies, or why the first marriage ended. But c'mon, be there for your kid. They won't always have a giant, colorful, flightless bird who loves chocolate.

Lituus Envy

I am listening to the latest podcast of PRI's The World, which features music in the Geo Quiz. Apparently some crazy Scots have recreated a lituus and performed Bach with it! In reading up on this ancient Roman war-trumpet, I discovered that the Romans used different trumpets for different signals (according to Wikipedia):

The late Roman writer Vegetius briefly describes the use of trumpets in the Roman legions in his treatise De Re Militari:

“The legion also has its tubicines, cornicines and buccinatores. The tubicen sounds the charge and the retreat. The cornicines are used only to regulate the motions of the colours; the tubicines serve when the soldiers are ordered out to any work without the colours; but in time of action, the tubicines and cornicines sound together. The classicum, which is a particular signal of the buccinatores or cornicines, is appropriated to the commander-in-chief and is used in the presence of the general, or at the execution of a soldier, as a mark of its being done by his authority. The ordinary guards and outposts are always mounted and relieved by the sound of the tubicen, who also directs the motions of the soldiers on working parties and on field days. The cornicines sound whenever the colours are to be struck or planted. These rules must be punctually observed in all exercises and reviews so that the soldiers may be ready to obey them in action without hesitation according to the general’s orders either to charge or halt, to pursue the enemy or to retire. For reason will convince us that what is necessary to be performed in the heat of action should constantly be practised in the leisure of peace.”^[13] (De Re Militari, Book II.)

Like the Greek salpinx the Roman trumpets were not regarded as musical instruments. Among the tems used to describe the tuba’s tone, for instance, were horribilis (“horrible”), terribilis (“terrible”), raucus (“raucous”), rudis (“coarse”), strepens (“noisy”) and stridulus (“shrieking”). When sounding their instruments, the tubicines sometimes girded their cheeks with the capistrum (“muzzle”) which aulos (“flute”) players used to prevent their cheeks from being puffed out unduly.

This is the type of signal music Daniel meant in his comment to Saturday's post. However, while these trumpets were not intended to produce music themselves during Roman times, they were both reappropriated for musical use by Bach's time, and of course were the inspiration for those crazy trumpet parts in Respighi's Pines of Rome. Here is a video that includes pictures and audio of the litui used in Bach's "O Jesu Christ, meins lebens licht":

Utilitarian music

I'm sitting in a church, wearing my working tux, waiting to play the
processional at a wedding. Two other musicians are playing prelude
music, a variety of Baroque and roccoco duets for violin and cello. I
wonder how many of the congregants are actually listening to the
music. I would guess to the majority it is aural wallpaper, something
to contribute to the atmosphere but not to be noticed.

Certainly this has happened throughout music history, though I benefit
from a loud instrument, so the onlybtime I have provided wallpaper has
been in a jazz duo, when I used my flugelhorn or "stuck the mute in"
for anniversary parties. Otherwise my utilitarian music is meant to be
noticed, fanfares and processionals. Today when I play, the people
will know to stand for the bride, or that it is time to get up and
leave. I'm a glorified bugle. I can live with that.

What's the opposite of a fat lady singing?

That's right, it is a high school boy singing a falsetto tone loud and long enough to break a wine glass:

I'd been planning on getting back to blogging, and when I saw this on my Science Friday podcasts, I knew I had an opening post. I taught a Music Acoustics class for Winter Term back in 2004, and one of the student projects was on singers breaking wine glasses. The two students accurately described the controversy of this subject, mentioned in the video above. All I can say is, this is another reason why high school students shouldn't drink wine!

I had a very busy spring semester, both personally and professionally, thus blogging fell by the wayside. But I have some reviews to write, jokes to make, and opinions to espouse, and now have the time to do so. Plus I might start posting dachshund photos.

What's up?

This will be mostly a collection of mini-points, with minimal commentary on my part. One of my former students has started her own blog, called "Ugh!!!! Not another Arts Marketing Blog." She only has two posts up, but it should be interesting. And if you know of anyone who needs a kick ass arts administrator, I can put you in touch with her.

On Wednesday my Psych of Music class had an interesting discussion about the scientific investigation of creativity, specifically composition. It started with concerns on many students' parts that it would ruin the magic. This led to speculations on why scientists try to determine how people are creative, with one possible answer being the hope to create a magic creativity pill. Last week all of the students had thought it was fine to take any sort of drugs that might help performances, especially beta blockers or other means of combating stage fright. Yet yesterday those same students felt that a drug that boosted creativity would be wrong. We explored why they made that split, a very animated and far-ranging discussion.

In that same class, several of the students are always concerned that studies we read only involve Western music. A new article in Current Biology addresses that concern with regards to music and emotion. The team of researchers did a cross-cultural study with a native African population and a Western population. Both groups were able to recognize three basic emotions in Western music: happy, sad, and scared/fearful. This suggests that the emotional content in Western music is includes universally-shared signs. The same team also tried manipulating both Western and Mafa (the African culture) music, increasing the amount of sensory dissonance (intervals of pitches that interfere with each other). Both cultural groups preferred the original versions of both the Western and Mafa musics. The second part sounds questionable, but the fact that the Mafa listeners could identify emotional content in a type of music that they had never experienced, that is pretty amazing.

Fritz, T, et al (2009). "Universal recognition of three basic emotions in music." Current Biology 19/7, 573-576.

I was interviewed today for a news piece on the potential embarrassment of revealing music listening habits, and how iTunes may have affected this. It was an interesting discussion, ranging from social signals and the origins of music to the economic features of online music and Brittany Spears. I'll be curious to see how the piece turns out.

Finally, I recently discovered another online comic (I already follow XKCD), which had one punchline that was too perfect.

Online Experiment

Do you have Absolute Pitch*? Then the Brazilians want you! To take part in an online experiment, that is. They are testing the effects of specific timbres on the ability to label pitches, and want only those who either know or suspect they have absolute pitch. Here is the link, in English and Portugese.

* Known outside of cognitive science as Perfect Pitch.