And I’ll tell you what, it doesn’t get much more random (aleatory?) than that playlist, I guess they all wish they had my collection….no?  Anyway, Happy Birthday Maestro, Requiscat in Pace

In related news, it was wonderful to find a blog where Thomas Benton (aka William Pannabacker) is taken to task for his “reckless scare piece.” Another excellent find was Davy Rakowski’s blog zio davino!  It is very interesting and fun to read. You know what? He talks about music!!! and when he doesn’t, he talks about writing recommendations and we even get a glimpse into the search committee room. All the kewl kids are over there, what are you waiting for?

Although it might be unfair to have to buy the same recording several times, the better quality recordings supplied what could often amount to refreshing new versions of an old song. And Led Zeppelin was particularly good for this. Take for instance the fact that the squeaky bass pedal that could barely be heard in “Since I’ve been Loving You,” on L.P. became quite obvious on C.D., Plant’s giggle at the top of “Whole ‘Lotta Love” and of course no one was really sure about Bonham’s odd count in to “The Ocean” until it was heard on C.D.

We’ve done four already

but now we’re steady

And then they went

One, Two, Three, Four”

Led Zeppelin – The ocean

Uploaded by derutcarf. – Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

Silly, I know, but these things were important to us then.

Of course, even before “digital technology” came out, Zeppelin knew how closely folks were listening to their music. For example, at the top of  “Black Country Woman” an airplane is heard flying overhead. The sound engineer offers to do it again but Plant tells him “Nah, leave it.”  Even more interesting is the way Page uses this rapt attention to draw the audience in so that he can blast them away seconds later with a really irresponsible shift in volume (at 26 seconds in, duck!):

\”In My Time of Dying\” (Excerpt)

The first night I bought Zeppelin’s album, Physical Graffiti, I took it home and listened to it on headphones after everyone else had gone to bed. I doubt I will ever hear the opening chord the same way as I did that night…it was sublime (and damaging to my ears). Like Beethoven did with his fortepiano, Page is merging technological advances with his compositional process, the greater volume leads to greater intimacy, and leaves the listener off guard for the big effect. (I am not saying that Page and Beethoven were on par by any means, except to say that they both composed with the technology of their day.)

Anyway, the point I am trying to get to is that with the development of the internet and when the audience co-opted the distribution medium (now the MP3), the order of importance in innovation was inverted and the size of the medium trumped fidelity to the original recording. I now have an MP3 recording of “Since I’ve Been Loving You” that I can put onto a really small flash drive, but in which I simply cannot hear Bonham’s squeaky bass drum. Ironic, no? Anyway, I still wonder what is next. Lossy file formats are being replaced by better file formats, file storage is improving and drm technology is progressing, but one assumes that Music Piracy will also continue to thrive.

I doubt I’m alone when I say that I miss the community. I miss meeting at the record store on the weekend. I miss the packaging and most importantly I miss the experience of listening publically. Knowing what other folks were listening to and letting everyone hear what music I liked, whether in the car or the house. It was an expression of identity more complicated than fashion, or haircut, or slang and it was nice. Instead we put in the ear buds (and put on the eye shades, etc…) and lose an important way to express who we are—a faceless advertisement that is more interested in showing his media device than what he is playing on it:

Do  you really want to be this guy? Microsoft Zune with its “Social” software seems to recognize this opportunity, but it is still really primitive.

Finally, what really terrifies me is what we are about to lose. The strength of digital/internet audio technology is in its ease of reproduction and distribution. But for long term preservation, the technology stinks. And this is made worse by the fact that the collections are quite fragile. Take the biggest, Record Rama in Pittsburgh, where the owner has gotten really old but is having difficulty getting someone to take it over:

The offering price for 3 million records, 300,000 compact discs (over 6 million individual song titles) is now 3 million dollars. I know it is a recession, but shouldn’t this be conserved?

It is a travesty.

One of the negative aspects of the DME (Dial M era) of musicology blogs was the frequent “meta-musicological” rant. In the new era, this has actually worsened. Currently many of my favorite writers are spending more time describing their blogs (and other’s blogs) than they are actually blogging. I am much more interested in what you have to say about music than what you have to say about what others say about what is being said about musicology and academia. Really! There is a such thing as too much self-reflection. Like the dysfunctional children of psychiatrists (“Psyks”) who develop into neurotic adults, this metablogging could potentially make us dysfunctional. (It is important to note that Psyks are usually only crazy to the extent that their parents are: “”narcissistically impaired,” suffering from a “god complex,” prone to over intellectualize rather than react, etc…”) This whole blog thing is new to all of us and not yet fully understood in terms of its power and capability—let’s not get stuck in a period of woeful contemplation of grammar and prose.

Of course this has all been spawned by the recent attention given to the blogosphere in the AMS newsletter. While we all love attention, was it really a good thing? Samples and Wallmark will now be known as the two that did the Taruskin challenge, reading Taruskin’s History as if it were THE bible, ten pages a day. Further, how can they be objective when Taruskin called for the end of Dr. Chrissochoidis’s career on the AMS email list.–this because he didn’t like an opinion piece in The Chronicle (Thank God the ACLS felt differently!) What might Taruskin say about a blog that criticizes his book? Finally, beside the obvious vanity, there seems to be several prominent scholars with serious reservations about the content and approach in Taruskin’s History. If, in ten, twenty, or thirty years, Taruskin’s book loses its favor, what will folks think of Samples and Wallmark? (By the way, I personally still prefer the old OHWM by a country mile) Finally, for a blog, I am just not interested in hearing what they have to say about what Taruskin has to say about music. I would rather read what they think about the music without the Taruskin gimmick–quite interesting perspectives that should live autonomously. On the other hand, I do like their bibliography.

Ryan, over at Amusicology, was tasked with defining what “constitutes a musicology blog” for the newsletter. His answer notes three characteristics: “primary authors/contributors are musicology Ph.D.s or graduate students well on their way; the majority of posts are about musicological subjects and concerns; the blog has been updated within the past few months.” I think this is a fair definition-at least for the blogosphere so far. My problem is that more often than not these days “musicological subjects and concerns” seem to avoid the music. Let’s get back to the basics, this is about the music people!

New Composer of the post: Richard Beaudoin The website doesn’t have any music (!?) but you can hear a nice piece here.

In the meantime I have managed to be rather productive, I just sent off my fourth article (in the last six months) for review. Of these four children, so far one has been accepted, one given a positive (I think) R & R and the last two are in waiting. This productivity is, no doubt, the reason for my absence on this blog. My goal for the summer is to prepare one more article and then reduce it for presentation here (VERY EXCITING!). I don’t want to submit it because I would like to incorporate it in a volume of Spektrum with some other papers. Then, in the fall I am going to tackle the book proposal—this I will do regardless of the economy, the job market, the weird shift of American Musicology from a humanities to a Social Science, and any other junk that might get in my way—if I must be a theorist, so be it. I am in it for the research, it is important and worthwhile.

Indeed, for my research, waiting another year might not be so bad. After all, everyone remembers that it was the moral thing for Donna Anna and Don Ottavio to do.

(Apparently for the King’s theatre production, Don Giovanni was a married King George and Donna Anna was his wife. Here she arrives home from Italy to find him philandering with the naked women in the background.)

Of course E.T.A. Hoffmann in his own version has Donna Anna die before the year is up. Further, the final scene was cut for a large part of the 19th century. What is it about the Romantic Era that refused to wait (to the point they would cut Mozart), while the Enlightenment expected it? One is tempted to connect it to Napoleon and his daemonic effect across Europe. Napoleon, after all, would wait for no one, but the year of waiting continued through 1821 when Weber has Max and Agathe wait a year before they too can get married.

In my opinion this has to be one of the most anticlimactic endings in all of opera. And there are more parallels. In both operas the man is remarkably weak—Don Ottavio is just not a threat to Don Giovanni. In the name of his offended honor, another character would have challenged the offender to a duel and not merely seek to “bring him to justice.” Max, on the other hand, can’t shoot his rifle anymore–for that fact alone he doesn’t deserve Agatha.

(Kostelnička makes Števa wait and remain sober for a year before he can marry Jenůfa but that occurs early in the opera and, if anything, Janáček’s opera is the exception that proves all rules.)

Comparing Don Ottavio’s year sentence with Max’s is, er, enlightening….

Mozart (or Da Ponte) gives absolutely no reason. Donna Anna’s not ready, and that is the way it is going to be. I understand Hoffmann’s position, if Ottavio can’t speak up for himself, what kind of husband is he going to be—surely not one Donna Anna would endure. It is not really enlightened or romantic, just weak.

On the other hand, Max is given his sentence because of his dealings with Caspar and Samiel, but the reward at the end of the year is ensured because the Hermit is seeking to replace the trial shot with virtue. Yet, what is really interesting is the line in between “And if they succumb to the toils in which passion entwines them, who is to raise the first stone?” “Succumb?” Did Max and Agatha “SUCCUMB?” (Womit sie Leidenschaft umflicht,) Nah,  it’s just good ‘ole passion, nothing dirty. But that is a Romantic idea, no? In anycase, I’m with the Romantics, waiting a year just stinks, (I would never cut Mozart) but if Max can wait a year, so can I.

Good Job Alex, 3/4s of the class are done!

Composer of the day? Oh gosh, I’ll have to go with John Adams. I just taught his Death of Klinghoffer on the Hill yesterday—The Mrs.’s First Song actually brought tears to teenager’s eyes!

Oh, ciao, thanks, and Happy Birthday.

The paper went well (I think), although I might have included too much. The questions were excellent, three of which particularly stood out. One person asked about the implications for Wagner. The second was about Schumann’s instrumental music, and the third was in regard to a statement I made about Verdi’s tinta. The first two questions were addressed with the idea of how I could extend my research, while the third, and most challenging, tried to place a limit on it. It was essentially the application of a criticism usually applied to Rudolph Reti’s ‘thematic process,’ questioning whether or not we only find what we are looking for in the music. It was a criticism that, although I should have been, I just wasn’t prepared for. I gave an apology that cited specific musical moments which other scholars have discussed for similar traits but it felt weak—I will work on that! Anyway, this article is growing in my mind, it is becoming the seed for something that is beginning to take the form of a much larger work on thematic processes in 19th century dramatic music. In all it was  an excellent experience—for this alone Ithaca was wonderful.

The other papers were SO INTERESTING!!!! The paper before mine, on the Delaware Skin Dance was remarkable—and ethnography of the highest quality. It seems that my session was second time (at least) that this paper was given and you could tell that the delivery, while seemingly improvised, had a bit of polish. Another interesting paper presented a comparative analysis of progressive songs by Copland and Shostakovich. Copland’s song was the more composed, written for “the elite” (those who can read and perform music) despite its populist message, while Shostakovich’s was a little simple—perhaps the exact opposite.

There was a paper on Genoveva which gave the title character’s arc a gendered read. During the questions session, I pointed out that Genoveva’s story (in these terms) is the same for nearly every other fictional woman from the time, and including some paintings. When one considers how often these women were meant to be read as symbols of the German nation, the thesis could be expanded and quite important—here’s hoping! Here’s a fun Germania…

The paper that was the most fun was written on Puccini’’s La fanciulla del West. It gave a discussion of Puccini’s efforts to learn about the forests of North America, particularly the great Sequoia tree:

This was the paper that brought the work to life for me—Well done!

As for the composer of the day (or I should say post) Michael Schell seems very interesting. Check out “Spider Baby” and buy a C.D.—It’ll make you human!

“Turning Japanese.” However, the singer describes it (many years after he wrote it) as: “all the clichés about angst and youth and turning into something you didn’t expect to.“  This understood, it is quite a quaint song, a lament for a girl and how her absence makes him feel foreign. For that, it is a good song, and I wonder now if any of Vapor’s other tracks might have merited a listen—nah, probably not. 

Back then, however, there were really only two redeemable qualities for me. First, as a pop song, the annoyingly addictive refrain “I think I’m turning Japanese, I think I’m turning Japanese, I really think so….” has been stuck in my head more times than I’d like to admit, often I think for no reason at all. Second, the chimes near the end (@2:40 in the video below) are disturbingly beautiful, or should I say charmingly unfamiliar? Add the strange Japanese woman wandering around in the video, and some angst ridden artists with black clothes and white sneakers and the video was the definition of cutting edge in its time. 

The Vapors Turning Japanese via Noolmusic.com 

At this point one would have thought the song would just go away, and perhaps reappear in one of those gross “remember the ‘80s’ collections by Time/Life/Warner/ÁOL/Disney/CNN/etc/etc. 

Unfortunately, a cover has been recently appearing all over the web with Kirsten Dunst headlining a version of the song that leaves the music essentially unchanged (the tempo is a bit faster, and the production is cleaner, but otherwise unchanged.) It seems odd to see Dunst in a variation of Sailor Moon cosplay, and the video is just crazy, filmed in the Akihabara district of Tokyo. 

 

Katy Perry, a little while ago, did the same thing except her costume was more Joan Jett than
somebody else. The underlying message of Perry’s exoticism is, notably, much more in line with
the Vapor’s idea.

 

On the other hand, the Dunst “Turning Japanese” video was commissioned by artist Takashi Murakami and directed by McG. It supposedly screened last fall at a London art show called “Pop Life: Art in a Material World”. In other words, it wasn’t made for public consumption, and seems to be getting pulled off YouTube quite quickly. The embed below may not be around for long. 

Ache outros vídeos como este em universomovie
 

  

Video is also supposed to be published here although it is really hard to find. 

Over at CNN, there is some truth in the criticism (coupled with some rather overt misogyny): “Murakami sells his work almost exclusively to Western buyers. Throughout his career he has toed a thin line between embracing elite global patrons and playing off his success as a self-aware scheme to sell foreigners the version of Japan they want to see.” I wonder if Murakami is as self-aware enough to realize that he is actually giving a version of Japan that HE THINKS the west wants to see—his own form of prejudice. I’m sure this version is attractive to some, but to others less so. Perhaps it is fair Karma that the racism has turned around and the West is now unfairly simplified, but it still irks me. Just where is the line between convention and stereotype?

The stripped-down accompaniment, the clean sound, the plain old “in the box” chord progression:

Describing the progression in Roman Numerals doesn’t really do it justice. VI – II – V – I implies an overall motion to the final chord. Perhaps better to say V/V/V – V/V – V – I, but that doesn’t really do it either. The fact that the progression returns to the beginning is perhaps more defining than its resolution to the final chord. But that’s the reason I like it so much, and it rings so true to the song.

The song describes a snapshot in time, without any resolution. The point is not the expression of any process that is to be resolved,  but of the feeling experienced within that process. The recurrence of the progression is part of it, the fact that over and over again Joe (the fictional character) sees these pretty women out walking with gorillas. This fact is further emphasized by the repeated elision in the melodic line, the late arriving G# that descends to the F# in order to return to the  beginning. The chorus is a soliloquy on how the process feels (“Is she really going out with him?”) and the B section (“But if looks could kill…”) is his waking dream of breaking from the recurring nightmare. 

Better, this analysis provides us with a justification for the Raconteur’s identical progression in  “Steady as She Goes.”

Here I was thinking I was smart for hearing the similarities, but it has been mentioned before in at least two places. The first place, a blog, seems to be concerned with whether or not Jack White was conscious of the similarities and the second seems concerned with which is better: “”Steady” proves White’s non-Stripes chops (he’s not allergic to bass after all!), but Jackson’s track is a stone classic.”

The circling progression allows the listener to relive the moment over and over again—“Steady as she goes…” Isn’t that really what this music is all about? Hmmm.