Composers vs. theorists

Today I had two experiences that reminded me that composers and theorists approach the teaching of music theory from different perspectives. I'm horribly generalizing in this statement, including the quite false assumption that composers and theorists are two separate sets. But there still is truth to it, especially when isolating all non-composing theorists from those who compose extensively. Composers look at music theory as a way to teach composition. Rules are taught as limits to engender creative control and artistic self-awareness. Theorists regard music theory as a means of explaining how music works. Rules are taught as norms of practice, so students can recognize when these norms are broken and when elegant solutions are produced to avoid breaking the norms*. So it is composition pedagogy vs. analysis pedagogy. And we are richer for both perspectives.

*I'm using this term just to annoy Norm Carey.

Is this thing on?

Resurrecting the Dead

A few days ago I was slow in switching from the NPR station with the pledge drive to the other NPR station.* During that delay, the local pledge announcer described one of the gifts, a CD that combines old recordings of Ray Charles with new arrangements and performances by the Count Basie Band.** I have mixed feelings about this, primarily negative. The joy of collaboration is in how both parties feed off of the energy and ideas of the other party. While the Basie Band can be inspired by Ray's singing, Ray's performance will not change to better fit with the band's ideas. But the effort in "aural Photoshopping" (from the Amazon review) could provide some interesting sounds.

* I am fortunate to live between the Indianapolis-based WFYI and the Bloomington-based WFIU, with access to both.

** What is it with these big bands that keep the same name decades after the founder died? This does not seem to be a healthy trend for jazz.

The Real Reason It's A National Holiday

From the Classic Posts files:

Eighty-six years ago today [now eighty-eight years], the great powers of the world sat at a table to make decisions which would have major geopolitical effects through the next century. Germany agreed to retreat from all invaded countries, surrender numerous weapons, return prisoners of war and stolen property, and to ensure that within fifty years a trumpeter/music theorist with specialties in cognition and acoustics would be born in an Allied country to be determined later. Because of the unusual characteristics of the last request, hindered in part by the second World War and the Wisconsin milk strikes of 1933, this birth did not occur until exactly fifty-one years after the signing.

How to Listen

Kenneth Woods has a good post about learning to listen to music, including a great anecdote about listening to multiple recordings of the Enigma Variations.

However, when we got to Nimrod and the first major arrival of that movement, we both felt something big, something cosmic happen, like the grim reaper himself walking right over our graves, and the same thing happened in the finale- a big, cathartic “wow” moment that no other recording had been able to deliver or even really hint at. We both came away with the impression that this was the only conductor who both knew and could put accross what the “Enigma” in the variations was.

Once we’d hear the whole thing, we could both look back and as musicians and see what the conductor was up to- the approach seemed so logical seen from the reverse. By downplaying the episodic quality of the piece, he was able to intensify the overall, cumulative effect of the work where it counted most. What might have seemed at first a matter-of-fact approach to phrasing was in fact an intentionally un-sentimental one, and this is a piece that benefits from a certain stoicism.

Frankly, all the other performers we’d sampled sounded like students by comparison (and there were some very distinguished recordings in this category). I’m usually quick to defend interpreters who like to take note of the trees and to smell the flowers and gild the lilies, but the evidence here was clear that there was a big price to that approach- none of the others were able to make the whole piece arrive with anything like the same degree of power.

In previous years I've toyed with the idea of writing a book on listening to music, or to form a listening club at school. Either case would focus on the various ways to listen: performer-oriented, composer-oriented, local features, global features, timbre vs. melody vs. harmony vs. rhythm, intramusical referents, intermusical referents, and extramusical referents. The difficulty comes in portraying a rigor while acknowledging all of the different ways to experience music and avoiding grocery lists of events or features. Eric Clarke's Ways of Listening is a step forward in this topic, though very much from a cognitive view whereas Kenneth is approaching the topic from a performance/analysis perspective.

Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra

Tonight's family concert outing was the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, coming to Greencastle to back up Ida Kavafian. Kavafian was fabulous, with a lovely dark sound that especially fitted the Dvorak Romance. But my favorite was Schumann's Second Symphony. While the Rhenish has become more favorable to me, I've always liked the cyclic nature of the Second. When the major motives of the four movements all come together at the end, it is like the musical version of a great novel. All the plotlines are intertwined at the end, revealing new relationships and new facets of the characters/motives. I was especially impressed with the woodwind section, including two lovely oboe solos by colleague Anna Mattix. And in a nice touch, the trumpets played on rotary instruments. The opening call seemed a little tentative, but the slightly darker sound and gentler pitch transitions that the rotary trumpet allows were very nice.

In other DePauw news, Eric Edberg has been Noised.

FriPod: You and Yours

You Are My Sunshine - Charles Mitchell/Jimmie Davis
You Better Go Now - Chet Baker
You Can't Hurry Love - Eddie Holland/Lamont Dozier
You Don't Know Me - Cindy Walker/Eddy Arnold
You Don't Know What Love Is - Don Raye/Gene DePaul Chet Baker Guy Barker Sonny RollinsWynton Marsalis
You Go To My Head - Haven Gillespie/J Fred Coots Clifford Brown Stan Kenton Dinah Washington
You May Be Right - Billy Joel
You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To - Cole Porter
You'll Have to Swing It - Sam Coslow
You're Blase - Ord Hamilton, Bruce Sievier
You're My Everything - Harry Warren/Joe Young/Mort Dixon
You're Next - Lilian Armstrong
Young Blood - Gerry Mulligan
Your Father's Moustache - Woody Herman
Your Latest Trick - Dire Straits