Lost Souls

This past weekend the symphony gave the premiere performances of a piano concerto we commissioned, Lost Souls, by an Israeli composer named Avner Dorman. Before we announced our season I'd never heard of Dorman.

The piece began with the soloist absent from the piano. The strings began by playing a series of high, sustained harmonics with something that sounded like it could become a theme in the orchestral piano part being doubled by celeste. Then the lights began to dim. Then they got dimmer. Then they went out completely.

Now it's at this point that I immediately flashed back to our performance a nearly two years ago of Christopher Rouse's percussion concerto, Der Gerettete Alberich (which should have been subtitled Ein Stück Scheiße* but, unfortunately, that describes most of Rouse's music), where the soloist enters the stage dramatically representing Alberich from Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. I hate this kind of meaningless theatricality in contemporary music. If it serves the purpose of the music, fine; but if it doesn't then it's empty.

But back to the piece.

The soloist strikes his first notes and immediately the stage lights return to normal. It was at this point that I thought to myself that, with a little thought, I could have made 10 minutes of music out of that first 2 1/2.Ultimately, for the sake of giving the piece a chance, I decide to get over it. It's now at this point that I should probably give a little background into the work and its title, Lost Souls. Mr. Dorman (only 2 years my senior) told the audience that the inspiration for the piece actually came from the playing of his friend, Alon Goldstein, for whom the concerto was written and who was our soloist for the evening. He mentioned that Mr. Goldstein's playing seemed "from another time" when he was playing Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, etc. but very modern and edgy when he played more contemporary music. It was this idea, that of pianists and composers long gone hanging over and interacting with the composition as "ghosts" coupled with "edgy" and "modern" music combining with music of another time.

The piece was your basic fast-slow-fast format, was occasionally clangorous, occasionally wistful and largely unmemorable. How's that for a description? Forget it. The best way for me to describe the piece is to say that it sounded like the composer sat down and thought to himself, "You know, Leonard Bernstein never wrote a piano concerto. I wonder what that might sound like punched up with more "modern" harmonies and contemporary orchestration technique." And you can definitely tell that Dorman studied with John Corigliano, as you can tell every person who's ever studied with Corigliano. The only student that's ever transcended that is Elliot Goldenthal (but that's another post). The piece seemed to be short on melodic/motivic development or, for that matter, interconnectedness. The orchestral textures are oftentimes dense without any sense of clarity. It felt to me that his goal was to try to combine Old-World post tonal harmonies with the rhythmic drive of pop and rock music. I can totally get behind this. It's something like what Esa-Pekka Salonen does in his own music, only far more successfully because that "pop/rock" influence is heavily filtered and far more subtle (and even for all that harmonic and rhythmic complexity there's some sort of melodic idea that the listener can hang their ear on, even if it's not easily distinguished at first).

As I was driving home and thinking more about the piece I began to get really annoyed. I got annoyed because I could have written a piece that sounded like this**. You, dear reader, could have written this. Do you know why? Because it takes a lot of training (as most of you have) to write this music. It does not, however, require a great deal of imagination.

*A piece of shit

**To be clear: I have very little interest in writing music like this; music that's flashy, all surface features, and requires little or no thought on the part of the listener.

The Star Trek Drinking Game

So I was watching a bit of the Star Trek reboot this morning and it occurred to me that it should have a drinking game to go along with it. I've only managed a handful of rules so far but I'm thinking that with the aid of you, the Loyal Reader, that we might be able to expand this into a full-fledged game.

1. Every time Kirk checks a girl out, drink.
2. Twice is she's not human.
3. Every time there's a lens flare, drink.
4. Every time there's some sort of inside reference to the series or the other films, drink.
5. Every time Bones complains about something, drink.
6. Every time someone (or something) doesn't understand Chekov, drink.

That's all I've got for now. Suggestions?

Decorum

There is an old saying that I'm sure many of you know. It goes: "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." This isn't a new saying (etymology here) but it does seem appropriate to the following.

Some of you may know that the president is in Asia this week for a series of meetings with various heads of state. He was in Japan early today where he met with the Emperor (as I understand it a largely ceremonial position not unlike the English crown and the Swedish monarch). It was here that he committed a terrible faux pas. Something so unforgivable that perhaps he should consider never coming home? What did he do? You haven't heard???

He bowed.

That's right. He bowed. He decided to show a courtesy to the (ceremonial) emperor of another nation. In contrast, Dick Cheney met with the emperor twice. No bow. And since Obama did it and Cheney didn't (twice) Obama must be wrong. And you may not have noticed but, apparently, the world has come to an end (and it isn't even 2012 yet).

I suppose, in the interest of fairness, when one looks at the photos, it does rather look like a deep bow. But let's also not forget that the president is well over six feet tall and the emperor appears to be about, well, let's face it, he could be on TLC's Little People, Big World.

So the president bowed. It's being treated like the first time a sitting president has ever bowed to another head of state. Nixon bowed to Hirohito (Hirohito!!!) in 1971 (on U.S. soil no less), Eisenhower bowed to Charles De Gaulle in 1959 and let's not forget previous president and the Saudi king. It's called being polite. This is why the rest of the world might have been as happy as many of us were to sweep away the previous administration and "Cowboy diplomacy*". We don't have to show the rest of the world at all times that we are their superior in every aspect. Why don't people get this? Why is there this whole sect of people who believe that, because we're America, we are better than everyone else?

*Cowboy diplomacy = shoot first and don't bother asking questions because we're 'Merica and ain't gotta ask questions.

Half-Empty

I walked by a coworker's unoccupied desk today. She had been away long enough that her screensaver came on. It was a sign that read, "Think good thoughts and good things will happen to you." I put a Post-It note on her monitor that read, "This is such a load of crap*". We have a similar disposition so she thought it was pretty funny.

*The universe doesn't care.

Shameless Promotion

I've got a guest column over on Michael's blog at The Temp Track. He does his nifty Film Score Friday Top 5 lists and he asked me to contribute. So I did. Check it out and leave some feedback.

More Fun With Revisionist History

So there I was, minding my own business. I was have a perfectly pleasant drive to work this morning getting my Teutonic Triskaidekan on when I see the following on the back of the vehicle in front of me:


(For those that need a refresher, the mortgage system crumbled in September 2008 with the collapse of Lehman Bros. and much of the rest of the mortgage industry teetering on the brink after that and sending the economy into a tailspin. It was then that Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson along with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke requested $700 billion to rescue these corporations so that the economy didn't collapse completely. With no questions asked and no legal recourse and no congressional oversight.)

Returning to the above bumper sticker, you'll notice that the "O" in "honk" utilizes the campaign symbol of Presidential bid. Could someone refresh my memory and tell me who was the President of these United States of America for ALL of 2008? I'm pretty sure it wasn't Barack Hussein Obama. Not yet anyway.

I suppose this is reflective of the success of neoconservatives at revising history and making people believe that the mortgage bailout occurred under the Obama administration. The economic stimulus bill happened on Obama's watch, but not the mortgage bailout. Get your history right.

Minimalism and Beyond

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Second International Conference on Minimalist Music, brilliantly coordinated by David McIntire and Kyle Gann (both of whom are linked to their blogs on the sidebar). Luckily it was here in Kansas City so I didn't have to travel. Five days of (largely) fascinating paper sessions and brilliant concerts of beautiful music (much of it from composers whose music I'd never heard). For me the real highlights were hearing Sarah Cahill perform a concert of works I'd never heard (except for John Adams' China Gates) and hearing Charlemagne Palestine perform his organ work Schlingen-Blängen which, sadly, lasted less than two hours. I could easily have listened for another two hours. It was that amazing.

One of the paper sessions proved particularly relevant as the presenter gave a paper on minimalism in The Truman Show. It was actually a great thing for me because it helped me to think about how I wanted to approach film music research. I downloaded the author's dissertation and am slowly working my way through it and - in particular - the bibliography. Yes. I am a serious nerd.

Overall it was really great to be in an environment of collegiality and scholarship with a common interest and was another kick in the pants to get my ass back in school.

Otherwise, not much is new. The munchkin is now four months old; smiley and bubbly (most of the time) and fantastic. We haven't been to the movies since Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (which I found to be far better than its predecessor, Nicholas Hooper's score included). Recently, though, we did watch Bill Maher's Religulous and I have to say I was actually pretty impressed with the restraint he showed. As anyone who has watched his show can attest to, he has a general animus toward religion. However, for the documentary, he seemed genuinely interested in why people feel the way they do about religion and managed to do it with a little less mockery.

That's it. It's not exciting, but that's what it is.