M is for Mahler

Enough of the break. Time to actually start working again. A couple housekeeping things first. Thanks to all for a splendid trip back in the states. It was great to relax with friends and family. Work has felt slow so far this year which makes it hard to keep motivation going. To combat this I'm getting ready for another long race. I'm going to prepare for the same half marathon I was going to do last year before the Army training intervened. We said goodbye to my good friend Mark Davis this morning. He is moving on to Atlanta for a brief stint and then probably leaving the band field for the greener civilian pastures. He will be missed.

And now, on with the show.

Gustav Mahler

We were getting ready to play some Mahler in an orchestra class at CCM when our director asked us a question that stunned me. "Why do you all like Mahler?" A simple question, but baffling on many levels. First, I don't really know how anyone can't like Mahler, but I suppose that's the musician in me talking. Second, how do you even go about answering that question? Mahler doesn't really have a ton of strong melodies like Tchaikovsky or the formal structure of Bruckner and Brahms. So what about it makes it good music?

Mahler is a pivot point in how I divide up music history. I'm probably not entirely original on this, but opinions are free. He is at the end of the German school of symphonists. I would argue that he is the pinnacle of what you can do with a standard, fully tonal, symphony. While he is not bound with form constraints that Beethoven used, he does respect large scale tonal choices. By not using form, he is forced to generate music in unique ways. This is the reason that so much of his work contains folk melodies and songs. They convey the emotion he is looking for and have a structure of their own that he is able to work into his own piece. Almost like a patchwork quilt.

Mahler is also the death of the classical symphony. While many people have recreated symphonies in the old style, any new symphony after Mahler had to change. It's hard to describe, but when you listen to the grand passages in the later Mahler symphonies it is difficult to imagine anything with a better emotional expression. The only thing left is to break with the tradition of tonality and form and to move on to something new. That something new is the explosion of style that happened in the early 20th century. Harsher, more atonal works with people like Shostakovich, modal and ambiguous tonality from folks like Debussy, and even the beginning of formalistic "pure" atonality, with Schoenberg and others. Why did all this start to occur at essentially the same time? A limit had been reached. There could be no improving on the tonal symphony and it is not in the nature of art to regress to simpler forms.

So the reason I like Mahler? I think it's because I feel like I'm listening to more than just a symphony. I'm listening to the culmination of Symphony. From Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, Bruckner, and everyone else, this is what emerged. It's high praise. Perhaps a bit higher than is merited, but as I said before. Opinions are free.

Mahler's output (if you couldn't tell from that whole spiel) was almost entirely symphonies. Other than symphonies, he wrote songs. Outside of those two things, he wrote nothing of great note. He wrote 9 symphonies and a few song cycles that are almost symphonies on their own. My favorite symphonies are nos. 5 and 6. They're all good, of course, but something about those two middle symphonies make me come back to them more than the others.

The first part of the 5th. Playing this movement during a reading rehearsal was a highlight of my time as a student.



Showing off his lyrical song chops here with a movement from Ruckert Lieder.



And the finale of the 8th. Amazing. Where can you go from here?

L is for Liszt

Franz Liszt

As a student in Cincinnati (and just about any other music school I'd wager) you are expected/required to go to approximately 1 "extra" musical performance each week. Usually that translates to somebody's recital. A lot of people would gripe and complain and use weird sources that would count toward the total. I just used the opportunity to hear some mighty fine playing from my colleagues. I quickly found out that graduate piano recitals were the best of the bunch, an opinion that I was surprised that I formed. As I look back, it's not hard to find the reasons I developed the opinion. 1) Those graduate piano students practice a LOT. They're in there 5+ hours a day on a consistent basis which means a nicely polished performance. 2) Almost all major composers wrote major literature for the piano. Too bad we can't say the same for things like, flutes, trumpets, clarinets, trombones, etc. 3) Have you ever watched a pianist go at it? Very exciting. The solo piano quickly became a new favorite listening hobby.

Saying all that to say that really I prefer Chopin as a solo piano composer, but as I said before, I couldn't leave out Copland. Still, Liszt is amazing and quite deserving to be on this list.

According to all accounts, Liszt was a musical freak of nature. Genetically he was blessed with strange hands that had skinny fingers without much in the way of the web between them. Mentally he was a prodigy on the piano, mastering the most difficult music before he could shave. As a performer he was driven to continually practice to extend his technique. I've heard numbers as high as 10 hours a day, but c'mon. We'll just say he practiced a lot and it shows.

So really he was a performer first but he still makes this list as a composer. An impressive feat. As a composer Liszt does a few interesting things but nothing that really sets him apart from his contemporaries in my mind. He wrote devilishly hard performance pieces for himself. Fine, but if you're writing to achieve a performance effect rather than making the musical expression your top priority, you're putting the cart before the horse in my opinion. To be fair, he composed quite a large library of music, both piano and otherwise and I have probably only scratched the surface of what's there. For instance, later in life he started experimenting with early forms of atonality. While it sounds intriguing, like I say, I haven't heard it.

Liszt makes the list primarily because I like the piano and so does he. Liszt has influenced modern piano playing probably more than any other historical figure to date. Unlike Chopin and many other performers of the day, Liszt played for a large section of the public and took on many private students. His technique and method of teaching has filtered down through all of these students and is probably the basis of the bulk of what is being taught at conservatories today. Kind of a funny side note, many pretentious students trace their piano lineage back like a genealogy. When they do, they don't usually stop at Liszt, because he took from Czerny who took from Beethoven. Obviously they must be getting the best piano instruction if their teacher's teacher's teacher's teacher's teacher's teacher's teacher's teacher's teacher's teacher's teacher's teacher was Liszt whose teacher's teacher was Beethoven.

*GROAN*

Anyway, some works or something. First up, Evgeny Kissin playing "La Campanella"



A good enough piece, but sort of explains my reluctance to fully stand behind Liszt as a composer. So many of his pieces are so technical that they just don't sound all that musical. Even his non-etude compositions end up sounding like etudes half the time. Still, great fun to hear and see.

Next, a chance for me to turn this negative sounding entry into something a bit better. Despite anything bad I've said up there, Liszt has a knack for writing impressive music. Technically, yes, but he can also be a very evocative composer. The symphonic poems are not my favorite, but many of them are quite good and paint if not pictures, then certainly moods. When you hear this next entry you'll probably understand what I mean.



Is it great composition? Too subjective to answer. Is it memorable? Certainly.

K is for Khachaturian

Aram Khachaturian

I like him so much I even learned how to spell his name without having to look it up. I was seriously tempted to put down Yoko Kanno just to break the norm, but she isn't really a classical composer. One of the most versatile composers around today and without a doubt one of my favorites, but not for this list.

Khachaturian is another Soviet composer. I would say he's generally considered #3 after Shostakovich and Prokofiev (Stravinsky, though Russian, is rarely included in the Soviets list since he left so early in his career and didn't look back). I'd agree, but it's really too bad for Khachaturian. I suppose a more productive thing to do would be to figure out what sets Khachaturian apart rather than just rank him and leave him.

While he doesn't have the power of Shostakovich or the wit of Prokofiev, Khachaturian is more than their match in the lyricism department. He takes more from the books of Mussorgsky and Borodin than from Rimsky-Korsakov. When I listen to Khachaturian I feel like I'm listening to amped up folk music rather than formalized classical structures. I suppose there's some merit to this opinion. Soviet officials wanted folksy, uplifting, popular music for the people and free of the music for music's sake influence that was becoming more the norm in western culture. That composers can avoid classical trends that date back to Beethoven and beyond is a ridiculous concept and made for one of the finest lines anyone ever had to try to tow. Khachaturian actually liked communism and was actively writing nationalistic, pro-state kinds of pieces and still got in pretty big trouble for not being "popular enough" or somesuch nonesense. Who knows what the leadership were interested in. Probably not the music.

Khachaturian had a productive career. Most of his music was written for large orchestras. A few solo piano pieces, some chamber music, and some ballets and other theater music. Of course most of his music is overshadowed by the Sabre Dance from his ballet, "Gayaneh". The Sabre Dance is one of those career making pieces in my opinion. Even if he had composed nothing else, he still might have made the list just for Sabre Dance. It's fun, distinctive, and interesting. It's fame is well deserved. There are plenty of "real" recordings and videos. Here's one that's a bit dated, but still quite a bit of fun.



Another fun piece is his music for the play "Masquerade", usually collected in a suite of 5 shorts or so. It has a nice folksy flavor, plenty of lyricism, and shows a real skill for theatricality that has certainly helped some modern day composers (I'm looking at you Danny).



And speaking of music for films, here is a piano transcription from "Spartacus", one of Khachaturian's ballets. It was used for the Coen Bros. film "Hudsucker Proxy" and is quite beautiful. Listen for those thick proto-John Williams-ey chord voicings. Gotta love it.

J is for Joplin

Scott Joplin

Leos Janacek almost beat out Joplin. Janacek has a lot of music that I enjoy thoroughly, but Joplin's music is something more. It's enjoyable, yes, but it's also interconnected with our lives so much more.

Ragtime is something that we can actually be proud of as Americans and Joplin really defined what we know today as Ragtime. So what is ragtime and why is it so darn appealing? Why it nearly impossible not to smile even though we've heard The Maple Leaf Rag hundreds of times? Why is The Sting a classic instead of just a good movie? Well, no easy answers but I'll give it a shot.

For me Ragtime starts with the bounding bass line. I can't play piano for beans but I can appreciate the extra care and coordination that has to go into the jumping bass line which is both oom and pah and more on top of that. Despite its complexity, I think it's the strong pulse and easily definable chords that give the necessary structure for the upper voices. I think it's that solid ground that makes ragtime feel comfortable to all listeners, not just musicians. Added to this firm foundation you get the syncopation that everyone talks about with rags going on top. It's an interesting fact that most people can sing rags to a certain degree. Don't they go against almost all rules of writing melodies? They're filled with wide intervals and complex rhythms and yet they somehow sound easy to the ear.

Beyond the mechanics of hearing the piece, there is also a melancholy to the music that, while hard to quantify, is harder to ignore. You can take most rags at the default uptempo and everything is fine and shiny, but the moment you take them a bit slower you can find a bit more emotion. Again, it's really hard to explain this technically, but do yourself a favor and listen to a few examples of someone playing "Bethena", "Solace", or even something like "Cascades" at various tempos. It's a very different experience. Musicianship of the performer can make a great deal of difference when looking for a good recording of a rag.

The problem with finding videos about Joplin is for all those reasons up there. Everyone loves him, everyone admires the music, and EVERYONE plays the stuff. Youtube and others are crammed with amateur recordings. Some good, some not as good, some young students, some adults. Mostly on piano, some guitar, even a bit of harp here and there. I just knew there had to be something beyond the mass of sameness out there. I wasn't quite sure what I was looking for until I found it. Behold, the result of my quest.


And just because I like them, here are the Muppets and Milton Berle. At about 3:00 he does a pretty shlocky version of The Entertainer, but I still like it. The first part of the Berle episode is also quality Muppet Show. He's a better guest than I was expecting.

Pause for a brief thought

2 items from my PX purchase earlier tonight: "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" and Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof".

One might say I have varied taste when it comes to film.

I is for Ives

Charles Ives

Almost a default victory. Not a ton of Is to choose from and among the ones I've even heard of, the only one I've ever listened to intentionally for longer than a few minutes is Ives. Truth be told, I'm not a huge Ives fan. He's interesting and I can see how some people would really dig what he does but not me. He's a novelty and like most all novelties, you grow tired of them soon enough.

He's grown a bit mythical over the years. There's a lot of stories about his musical prowess and where his ideas came from. My favorite "fact" I've heard about Ives is that he was able to keep 7 independent rhythms going in his body at once: left hand snap, right hand snap, left foot tap, right foot tap, left eye blink, right eye blink, and sing the the last rhythm. How's that for the ultimate musical freak show? But that kind of story outlines what people think of as his major contribution to 20th century music.

Ives was a big fan of poly-. I leave it blank because he liked polyrhythm, polytonality, polypieces? That last one is having two different songs going at once; don't know if there's a technical term for it. But Ives liked to mash up sounds into something new and fresh in ways that no one would think feasible. Surprisingly enough he has way more successes than he has failures in this regard. There's no disputing that there is some magic that seems to keep his pieces on track when every force of nature seems to want to let the wheels fly every direction.

He's another American composer and his choice of material reflects this. He has done a lot of old standard song arrangements along the lines of Stephen Foster (Oh, the Camptown ladies sing this song, etc.) and along with that the influence of hymns. He has a few blatantly patriotic pieces and a few pure music pieces, but all retain a flavor of New England in them.

Variations on America - A nice and easy piece to start with. It is what it says it is (America the song, not the country).

A Symphony: New England Holidays - A bit more advanced, but in the same ballpark as Variations on America. You get a bit more conflicting tonalities and pieces overlapping each other.

Though I haven't heard many, I do enjoy his song settings. He made one large collection of pretty much all of them called 114 songs. I'm going to research that one a little bit more myself.

Actually there are quite a few Ives/Youtube finds. Here are a couple.

A movement from 3 Quarter Tone Pieces. I like the section from 1:00-2:00 the best.



Say what you will about it's musical merit, it's at least interesting.

Here is something a little more digestible. I don't know for sure, but I assume it's from 114 Songs. Here you can hear both the odd harmonic turns he liked to take right along side some very straight ahead triadic writing in the spirit of Stephen Foster.



And with that I leave you again. This time for Budokan. Be back on Sunday with J.

H is for Haydn

Franz Josef Haydn

I was surprised to find out how much I like Haydn. It wasn't until later college years that I picked up this little piece of information. Before that he was lumped in with Handel, Mozart, and all the rest of the "sure they're good but do I really need to sit and listen to this stuff?" classical composers, but the more I listened to what he does in his music and the more I learned what made him a bit different than his contemporaries, the more he became a favorite.

When you talk about the classical period of music, you're talking about 2nd half of the 18th century and a little bit of fallout into the 19th. You might extend it a little in either direction, but I don't really think it's necessary. During this period you have the real formalization of the musical structures that still basically dominate academia, if not the actual compositional process. You also have the beginning of the Symphony, String Quartets, and Opera as the premiere forms of composition. So the classical period is very important and full of all the stuff I find interesting, and yet I think classical music to be rather dull. Everyone always screams about Mozart being great. Yeah, I can recognize that it's really good, but do I want to listen to it? Sometimes I guess, but 99/100 times I'm going to reach for something else. Even the great Beethoven. Okay, so he's great. Can we listen to something else? So why do I find Haydn to be more interesting?

I really don't know. A terrible answer, but about the best one I can give. A few guesses though. I find most of Haydn's contemporaries' music to be a little too predictable. Phrases are regular, the build is usually a very standard sonata form, and you get to the last V-I and that's it. Haydn plays by all those rules, but he's sly. He doesn't always have balanced phrases. He leads you into a direction you didn't think you were going to go only to take you back to more familiar territory almost immediately. It sounds quite exciting when I write it, but it's quite subtle. Haydn rewards close listening.

Another thing I like about Haydn is that his music isn't wracked with personal emotion and suffering. Not that I don't like Beethoven, but his music can feel a bit over the top at times. Haydn wrote a little bit more commercially (if it can be called that) and he wrote a lot. Here's where you mention the 104 symphonies, the ~70 string quartets, and stack of concertos he wrote. But it's not just chop shop work. Nor is it all the gimmicky stuff people talk about ("surprise" symphony, "clock" symphony, etc.). Each piece is carefully made and unique to itself. Listening to just about any piece is a rich experience.

For symphonies, you might want to start at the back with 104, the "London". His last few symphonies were probably his best.

String Quartets are all enjoyable across the board. He really was the father of the genre. Opus 76 is a good set of quartets to start with.

I also like "The Creation" quite a bit.

Now for a couple of concerto videos.

Rostropovich playing a movement of one of the Cello Concertos (dang, that guy's good)


Sorry for the vid quality but it's Maurice Andre for crying out loud. He's got one of the purest trumpet sounds I've ever heard and here he is playing a gem in the trumpet repertoire.

G is for Gabrieli

Giovanni Gabrieli

This was a tough choice. Two VERY close 2nds were Gershwin and Grofe, but I figured I'd done a lot of orchestral, 20th century, American composers so far and it was time for a bit of a change. Besides, I do really like Gabrieli.

That said, it's a bit of a brass player thing. I hope everyone is able to enjoy it as we do, but I don't know if that happens. The great thing about Gabrieli is that he wrote a lot of music for brass players (doesn't happen often) and he wrote music the way we like to play it (happens even less). Sure it's often chop killing, but it is absolutely glorious. It is brass music written for the way brass instruments were designed to be played. Lots of extreme dynamics, linear phrases, and powerful chords. It's pre-tonal music meaning that the music is less concerned with any harmonic progressions than it is with the interplay between the individual lines. There is a lot of counterpoint going on in Gabrieli's pieces and he also used a lot of antiphonal techniques (spatially separated choirs) to heighten this effect in many of his pieces. So while there are melodies, the general effect you get is the "wash of sound". But unlike the more ambient music modern composers like philip glass (he doesn't even deserve to have his name capitalized) there's actually interesting things going on during the general effect.

It's also music of the church to a certain degree. I say to a certain degree because most of the music we still have today from his time period (~1550-1612) is here today because the church has held on to it. Even though the bulk of what we still have is sacred, it appears that he didn't write much in the secular realm anyway. One could argue that this music really wasn't that sacred and that Gabrieli was probably just trying to pay the bills, but I'm not convinced. Life in Italy during Gabrieli's life was still highly influenced by the church. That's just the way it was. So while Gabrieli was hired as the organist/composer of these churches and by writing these pieces he was just doing his job, that doesn't mean he didn't consider these works offerings to God. They were written for the church and I really wish they were still played a bit more often in the church. It seems easy to say this is the kind of music we'll look forward to in heaven, but I just know it's only the faintest shadow of the glory that awaits.

Again, no vids that really does justice to the majesty of Gabrieli's music.

F is for Fine

Irving Fine

To say that he's one of my favorite composers is (how to say it diplomatically) a gross overstatement. To say that I just discovered he existed about 2 years ago is a bit more accurate. Honestly, I know very little about this composer, but the few pieces I've heard, I've enjoyed. Another fact I recently learned was that Fine and Copland were contemporaries, friends, and maybe worked together (Fine as arranger on some chorale pieces I believe). This is not based in any kind of scholarly study, so don't go quoting me for a term paper or anything. What is clear from all the sources I've seen is that he was highly regarded in musical circles but not widely known outside. Sort of a composer's composer.

The little info I scraped together from my own collection and wikipedia suggests that Fine's output wasn't too large, but it did cover several genres with a slight emphasis on vocal work. Other than that, I'll say that I enjoy his piece "Music for Piano" (Orchestrated into "Music for Orhcestra"). I'll leave it to you if you'd like to pursue it further.

There's a few clips on youtube if you're really ambitious, but nothing there really caught my eye/ear.

A short entry, but I'm of the mind that if you only have the materials for a tent, don't try to build a house.

E is for Elfman

Danny Elfman

Perhaps a bit of a stretch, but I'm not going to put down Elgar. While he's one of the only Es out there and has written some great things, I personally don't care for his stuff very much. Danny on the other hand...

Film music is interesting in that there are so many different approaches that are all valid and lead to very different film experiences. Some composers write to the action on the screen, some underscore emotional content, some only add musical punctuation at certain points, and there's all kinds of other techniques out there as well. Elfman has become pretty comfortable in the big orchestral style, but he's not always operating at 11. He can do songs and quiet moments as well.

The other great thing about film music is how intertwined it can become with the film project. Not all films have this, but certain film/music combinations have become one. Films like "Star Wars", "Chariots of Fire", "The Pink Panther", etc. Go ahead and try to think of any other music for them. Can't be done. I'd say the same goes for the Elfman/Burton films. Both men have a macabre sensibility that make their projects fit like vacuum sealed spandex gloves. Both have proven that they can work apart to good success, but I just ask why bother.

Stylistically I think I am drawn to Elfman because his music is probably most closely related to early 20th century Russian music with maybe a darker twist. He cites Stravinsky as a big influence but I hear a lot more Prokofiev than Stravinsky. In addition to that he says he enjoyed film music as a youngster. Hermann, Waxman, Korngold, etc. When you think about his style it's not hard to hear these influences.

Outside of films he has very little else. Apparently he has just started working on original concert pieces for orchestra, but I've yet to hear any. He has played and written some rock music in the past but I think that part of his life is now complete as well. It will be interesting to see where he goes in the future.

It's hard to pick out any favorite scores from Elfman because, again, they are tied so closely to the films they accompany. But here you go anyway.

Edward Scissor Hands - I think one of the best examples of Elfman you're going to find. An absolutely beautiful score.

Sleepy Hollow - Again a good representation but we get a lot of the darker/scarier side of what he can do. Not as tuneful or recognizable as Batman, but on the whole a very impressive score.

Nightmare Before Christmas - This is what happens when you just say go for it. It has the biggest Elfman fingerprint of all his films. Lots of fun little songs including this little number here.



Nothing complicated, just a pleasant little song.

Pee Wee's Big Adventure - If I catch flak for this, I'll take it gladly. Yes, it was his first major picture and yes, it's probably a little simplistic for some purists out there. I think it's fun. It shows an originality of style that someone like James Horner has never had, and there really are some great moments in there.

Notice how most of these references are from somewhat early pictures? It's kind of an interesting paradox. As his skills have gotten better the less apparent his music has become. Did Big Fish have a good score? The answer is yes, but to tell you the truth I can't sing you a bar of it from memory. I wonder how he looks back on his early scores. Does he look back at Pee Wee and wince at all the obvious mistakes he was making? Does he try to think how he would rewrite Batman if he had another chance?