I'm writing this from O'Hare Airport in Chicago, where I'm waiting for a flight to Sioux Falls, SD. There I'm going to hear the premiere of my new symphony, played by the Dakota Chamber Orchestra, the chamber wing of the South Dakota Symphony. Which, in turn, is an orchestra the music director, does a terrific job, doing big, unusual repertoire, and getting the orchestra to play exceptionally well.
He also programs a lot of new music, and commissioned this piece from me.
symphony has come to mean a major, deeply serious piece, and this one isn't all that serious. It's a symphony in the 18th century meaning of the word, which means that it's meant as entertainment.
In the 18th century, after all, music wasn't considered a very high art, and instrumental music, because it didn't have any words, wasn't thought to be serious at all. (This is beyond any dispute. See, for instance, Mark Evan Bonds' book,
It's a bit of a gray area, for the last few, because the understanding of instrumental music was starting to change, and some people were starting to say it was serious. Still, the full conviction of that didn't hit till after 1800.
-- four movements, in the usual forms: sonata form, lyrical slow movement, scherzo, and finale, again in sonata form.
(And yes, I know the scherzo is mostly a 19th century innovation; so sue me.) In these forms, I used century music, but also blues, pop, and bluegrass. Not that the piece is a pastiche, but all these elements are in it.
The ensemble is the same one Haydn used for his early symphonies: two oboes, two horns, bassoon, and strings.
Though I also indulged myself in a solo string quartet, because one way this piece departs from the 18th century -- and God knows, it'd quite a bit more detailed than most of what you'd find in Haydn. You'll understand that I'm hardly saying I'm better than Haydn, but only that I've absorbed so much music in which many things go on at once -- Prince, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Steve Reich, so much else -- that now I think that way, too, and it's reflected in everything I write.
That might be why this piece is only 13 minutes long. There's a lot going on at any one time, so there's less need for the music to spread out lengthwise.
you see "Symphony" and click on the proper links.
And here are some tidbits The main part of this is fast and bright, but I started with a slow introduction, just as Haydn often did. And here I snuck in a bit of pop culture -- tiny, soft fanfares, that emerge in the solo string quartet. I was thinking of the 20th Century Fox movie fanfare, which (especially in grandeur.
My fanfares aren't theatrical or grand, but they're meant as a wistful echo of those old, simpler days. (It's not for me to say if they're cheesy -- or whether, if they are, that this would be all that bad.)
Unabashed pop.
A doo wop ballad, straight out of the 1950s, complete with a blatantly cheesy jump, toward the end, up a half-step into a new key. I loved every moment of writing this, and I'm completely unashamed of it. But I do have to say that this isn't straight )
The scherzo section is broadly rhythmic.
The trio is pure ear candy, a shameless indulgence, maybe even more shameless than the doowop ballad. (18th century composers wrote ear And then midway through the trio, the music starts to play in reverse. If nobody hears this, that's just fine.
I worked really hard to make the reversal sound seamless. When the scherzo returns, it's the literal retrograde of the beginning -- the same music played backwards. This you might be able to hear, if you listen; scales that went upward now go down.
But, again, you don't have to hear it. The game I'm playing here is that the music flows perfectly well in both directions, A romp --the fastest, most rhythmic music in the piece, and meant to be greatly hushed. Though finally there's a big climax, with some virtuoso celebration from the first horn.
The South Dakota horn player says that he accepts the challenge, and I'm eager to hear how he'll do with it.
The premiere is Thursday night. They're going to play the piece three more times, in three other South Dakota cities.
I'll get recordings, and I trust that I'll be able to put them on line. And of course if any other orchestra would like to play this piece, I can e-mail the parts.
Posted by gsandow at April 16, 2007 4:09 PM
Read how the Melbourne (Australia) Symphony found a way to do it.
(A chapter from Innovative Arts Marketing, a book by Ruth Rentschler.) Note the four conclusions. The younger audience itself must plan the program; you have to play more new music; you have to lower ticket prices; you won't make any money doing all of this, so you have to see the program as a long-term investment.
Some people do it right...
Why PBS doesn't broadcast opera. A in Opera News explains the reason -- hardly anybody watches. Why public radio is cutting back on classical music.
The bad news -- few people listen, and those who do, don't give money -- is in a New York Times piece that we can't link to. You can search for it, though, on their : "Public Radio's Private Guru," by Samuel G. Freedman, published 11/11/01.
You'll have to pay to read it, unfortunately. The classic study of this, done in 1991 by Harvard psychology professor Richard Hackman, isn't available on the web (as far as I know). But you can learn Hackman's findings in an with him, from Harmony magazine, the unhappily defunct publication of the Symphony Orchestra Institute.
Since there's so much talk about the "Mozart Effect" (or the alleged "Mozart Effect"), we need this thorough listing -- -- of online scientific studies. They're not just about the fabled Mozart stuff, of course, but about everything known about the effects music can have. Very useful at a time when many people think classical music is tangibly, even physically good for us.
Who's the audience for the performing arts? A report from five cities, by the Performing Arts Research Coalition. It's encouraging -- lots of people go to performing arts events, and even those who don't go think they're important.
Roomba, the robot vacuum cleaner What's notable, first, is that people know about it. People come to our home, see the little thing drinking electricity at its charger, and they'll ask, "Does it work?" The answer -- which both we and our neighbors across the street learned at Xmas, when Roomba showed up in both our houses, as a present -- is "Yes!
" It's odd to watch at first, working its way apparently at random across the floor, clearly having no idea where the dirt is, lightly bumping into things, turning in a new direction, and moving on. (Its bumping mechanism is a marvel of construction, firm enough to leave no doubt that there's an obstacle, but so flexible that it does no damage either to Roomba or anything it hits.) But the random-seeming progress really isn't random.
Roomba remembers where it's been, and slowly builds a map of the entire room, then cleans until every part of that map has been covered. Then it either turns itself off, or, best of all, locates its charger (if it can) and heads back on it, and then turns itself off. The room, you'll then discover, has been cleaned.
Roomba isn't quiet, and there's a learning curve involved. In complex rooms (rooms with angles, or with lots of furniture, or stairs heading downward) it might be best to close off the area you want Roomba to clean, using the supplied "virtual walls," little boxes that send out beams that Roomba won't cross. But once you learn a few tricks like that, you can depend on Roomba.
Set it going, go out for a walk, or do some work -- and your home is vacuumed. If the company's forthcoming model, which claims to mop the floor, works as well, I may well get one. The latest William Gibson novel.
We'd associate him with cyber-this and techno-that, and look for his books in the science fiction section. But this one was recommended to me by someone who wouldn't be browsing there, and the cyber stuff -- present-day technology, this time, nothing from the future -- isn't really the point. This is a poignant story about decency, devotion, and above all about the power of art.
Note, though, that the art in this book is an enigmatic film, released in segments on the Internet, and finding there a niche of devotees, who ponder what it means, along with how (or even whether) the segments fit together. We're far from classical music, in other words, and in fact in a world that classical music (at least the mainstream kind) never seems to touch. If I made this into an opera, I'd have a musical composition set drifting on the web in fragments.
And come to think of it, would such a thing (if it were to happen) gather any interest for classical music?
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