As some of you may know, I'm graduating in December. One semester early. Whop-dee-do. It feels nice, I'll admit. Not only I'm I severing the bonds which have enslaved me since age 6 but I'm also cheating the system - almost no one graduates North Park's music program in 3 1/2 years and lives to tell the tale.
Ironically, one of my main asperations right now is to take up a brand new set of fetters under the guise of Northwestern University. In the last few years, trombone has been reduced from the main passion of my existence to the little more than bain of my existence (at least where NP is concerned) no thanks to the pitiful orchestra program that they neglected to tell me about before I came there ("Sure, Neil...we have an orchestra") and especially no thanks to the bitter wench I call my trombone teacher.
We used to get along okay. She had priority issues (where trombone consumed every she was, breathed, ate, and excreted) but that was okay. But then last summer, I started to realize that I had been ignoring composition, the flame of which had been ignited at a young age. For some reason, it got pushed farther and farther back into the musical skeleton closet of my life. Recently, my love and a few other close friends compelled me through their love and enthusiasm for my music to take up composition on a regular basis. I never really stopped but I wasn't composing in any set frequency.
I came back to school last fall resolved to switch my major to a plain old B.A. in music and ditch the already smoldering performance degree I had somehow managed to keep alive. I say that not because I suck at performing - but as time at NP wore on, combined with the two aforementioned factors, I stopped practicing.
My teacher didn't take this too well but to make a long story short. I switched to a B.A. and consequently, am getting out of North Park early (I feel like a prisoner talking about his pending parole). My trombone teacher has responded skeptically to my composition, like anything else I do musically but I still intend on attending Northwestern University in the Fall of 2009 in pursuit of my Doctorate in composition.
It's a two year program for those "especially gifted" youngsters who have just graduated with their Bachelors. Otherwise, they place in you the three year program. Phooey, huh?
I'd rather have them call me "especially gifted" and place me in the two year program but I think at this point, I'll be happy just to have gotten accepted.
The portfolio is due in December and consists of Finale files of 3 to 5 representative compositions for a variety of ensembles (one professors of mine suggested I should submit at least one handwritten scores since my desk habits strongly echo those of Stravinsky...apparently), optional but preferred recordings of said works, and to top it off, two analytical papers, one focusing on a work written post-1950 and another written on a topic of my choosing [cough, cough]...Mahler 10...that one's already been written.
Wish me luck.
Part of the work I will submit will be part of the song cycle I'm working on.
What is this song cycle I refer to?
Somewhere last February, I got the idea to write a cycle of songs on a theme. I had a few seed ideas that I heard as vocal pieces with orchestral accompaniment. I gave my mind a few more weeks and I had enough to start working. Within a month, I had all themes and motives that I would use. The theme of the cycle was simple: I was at North Park, a place I often vehemently dislike; the love of my life was 3 1/2 hours away from me; and I was too much of a bookworm to feel like making any additional friends...the theme would be "Vereinsamkeit" or the act of being Solitary.
It's a cycle of four songs. The movement of keys from movement to movement is G# minor - E minor - C minor (already an augmented triad) - and G-flat major (which is a tritone relationship with C minor, the key of the third song; incidentally, the tritone C-G-flat serves as the foundational motive of that song). But I hate analyzing my music. I like my music to speak for itself and let the analyists do their work later - I'm a composer after all.
I will say that the first three songs develop the idea of "Vereinsamkeit" (with texts by Nietzsche and Lenau respectively) and in the final song, we get a glimpse of light, of hope and most importantly, of love and that is the point I want to make. The text of the last poem by the way is by Goethe. I may post the texts to these poems here for you to read, as German poetry is exquisitely lovely, but to keep the spirit of a world premiere (maybe...I'm at the mercy of North Park's not so merciful attitude) I won't post them until after the premiere.
The first and third songs are finished. The second is finished in my mind. Only the fourth is the one I continue to labor on.
Knowing me, I will probably discuss the cycle at length later on but this post has gone on long enough.
Some possible titles for the whole cycle are:
Waldelieder
Waldeschatten
Schatten im Ruckblick
Vereinsamtenlieder
Waldereise (which sounds like Winterreise so forget this one)
pick one...
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Perspective on Schubert
Last night, as I was driving, I had a thought about Schubert I'd like to share.
As you will notice upon reading my profile, Schubert is right up there with Mahler in my "favorite classical composer" catagory. But while it's rather easy to pin down my close-to obsession with Mahler, my passion for Schubert's music remains a little more elusive.
Since I first heard Schubert's music, back when I knew nothing about music (I still don't think I know much about music but that's another topic), I felt that there was something there - lyrical beauty, lush romantic harmonies that anticipated in many ways the linear chromaticism of Chopin and Schumann. But there was something else too...something that honestly scared me and some years ago I finally figured it out.
What frightenes me and awes me at the same time about this man's music is that, like any great composer, there is a meaning beneath a meaning in his music. The beauty and romanticism is easy to pick up on. But more often than not, this beauty is juxtaposed and layered against an impending tragic sense, or as I worded it last night, a "fatalistic sense of sadness" culminating in one central thought in Schubert's mind: death.
The man himself was dead before he reached 32. One of the greatest musical minds this world will ever see and he was gone one year after Beethoven himself passed. Nevertheless, death obsessed him and this is clearly traceable in his output.
If you know his song, the "Erlkonig", you know what I mean. This song consists of a setting of Goethe's ballad telling of a traveling father and his (presumably) ailing son who is further being accosted by a demon-spirit of sorts called the Erlking (in English). The boy, terrified of this, informs his father of every horrifying entreaty on the part of the Erlking and the father simply rides on, attempting to simply outrun and outsmart the demon-spirit. By the time he's reached their destination, he looks down only to behold the corpse of his son. There's a whole psychology being this poem which I won't go into but I hope you get the gist - and if you heard the music, with it's almost banal, but incessant rhythmic drive complete with it's wandering and twisting harmonies, the prose of the text becomes that much more poignant. But the central point is the same - death.
Schubert wrote his setting of this poem in 1815 - he was 18 years old.
There are other works - the song cycle, "Winterreise", which relates the story of a dejected lover who wanders the countryside in winter until, what the listener can only assume, he perishes amid the cold and loneliness he suffers. There is also the great song, "Death and the Maiden" which tells of a young woman confronted with death, to whom she eventually succumbs. This song was developed in a set of astounding variations in the second movement of his famous D minor string quartet, aptly named "The Death and the Maiden".
I hope I have proved my case. And if I've not, a challenge you to listen to any mature recording of a Schubert work, especially those I have referenced. Contestors are welcome to post their opinions.
And now that we have established Schubert's preoccupation with death, even if it was on the sub-conscious level, we must figure out why he might have been this way.
And here is where we arrive at what I was thinking last night. Several things must be taken into account. First off, Schubert's lifestyle: hedonistic. He composed by day but his evenings were given to parties, drinking, smoking, women, wine, gambling and all that that entails. It all wasn't bad. Some of these parties consisted of poetry readings or premiers of Schubert's own song settings. But the fact of the matter remains that he died of a disease (syphillis) that was most likely contracted in the midst of one of these faures in Vienna.
Secondly, we know that Schubert was dissatisfied with his life on earth. He is oft quoted as saying: "Sometimes, I feel as I don't really belong to this world at all." Of one thing he was sure - he fate and destiny as a composer. But he could not escape his feeling of being different and not belonging. I don't presume to know the psyche of Schubert, but given all these facts, it is my belief that the man was searching - searching for God, searching for meaning, searching for ultimate direction (the very things Mahler pursued). In this midst of these parties and excursions, he wrote music tinged with the thought of tragedy and death, he didn't "really belong".
I think the whole Viennese scene, of which he was a part of, took its toll and he simply got tired of it eventually. But knowing he didn't belong, and considering his own quest for God, and higher meaning, I think he had death on the mind.
Mind you, Schubert's death is not the same as Mahler's concept of death. While Mahler believed fervently in the transformational, almost redeeming quality, of death, Schubert's concept was blackened by fear of the unknown. Yet somehow, he was inexplicably aware of a higher order of things.
For more reading, see Patrick Kavanaugh's book, "The Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers".
As you will notice upon reading my profile, Schubert is right up there with Mahler in my "favorite classical composer" catagory. But while it's rather easy to pin down my close-to obsession with Mahler, my passion for Schubert's music remains a little more elusive.
Since I first heard Schubert's music, back when I knew nothing about music (I still don't think I know much about music but that's another topic), I felt that there was something there - lyrical beauty, lush romantic harmonies that anticipated in many ways the linear chromaticism of Chopin and Schumann. But there was something else too...something that honestly scared me and some years ago I finally figured it out.
What frightenes me and awes me at the same time about this man's music is that, like any great composer, there is a meaning beneath a meaning in his music. The beauty and romanticism is easy to pick up on. But more often than not, this beauty is juxtaposed and layered against an impending tragic sense, or as I worded it last night, a "fatalistic sense of sadness" culminating in one central thought in Schubert's mind: death.
The man himself was dead before he reached 32. One of the greatest musical minds this world will ever see and he was gone one year after Beethoven himself passed. Nevertheless, death obsessed him and this is clearly traceable in his output.
If you know his song, the "Erlkonig", you know what I mean. This song consists of a setting of Goethe's ballad telling of a traveling father and his (presumably) ailing son who is further being accosted by a demon-spirit of sorts called the Erlking (in English). The boy, terrified of this, informs his father of every horrifying entreaty on the part of the Erlking and the father simply rides on, attempting to simply outrun and outsmart the demon-spirit. By the time he's reached their destination, he looks down only to behold the corpse of his son. There's a whole psychology being this poem which I won't go into but I hope you get the gist - and if you heard the music, with it's almost banal, but incessant rhythmic drive complete with it's wandering and twisting harmonies, the prose of the text becomes that much more poignant. But the central point is the same - death.
Schubert wrote his setting of this poem in 1815 - he was 18 years old.
There are other works - the song cycle, "Winterreise", which relates the story of a dejected lover who wanders the countryside in winter until, what the listener can only assume, he perishes amid the cold and loneliness he suffers. There is also the great song, "Death and the Maiden" which tells of a young woman confronted with death, to whom she eventually succumbs. This song was developed in a set of astounding variations in the second movement of his famous D minor string quartet, aptly named "The Death and the Maiden".
I hope I have proved my case. And if I've not, a challenge you to listen to any mature recording of a Schubert work, especially those I have referenced. Contestors are welcome to post their opinions.
And now that we have established Schubert's preoccupation with death, even if it was on the sub-conscious level, we must figure out why he might have been this way.
And here is where we arrive at what I was thinking last night. Several things must be taken into account. First off, Schubert's lifestyle: hedonistic. He composed by day but his evenings were given to parties, drinking, smoking, women, wine, gambling and all that that entails. It all wasn't bad. Some of these parties consisted of poetry readings or premiers of Schubert's own song settings. But the fact of the matter remains that he died of a disease (syphillis) that was most likely contracted in the midst of one of these faures in Vienna.
Secondly, we know that Schubert was dissatisfied with his life on earth. He is oft quoted as saying: "Sometimes, I feel as I don't really belong to this world at all." Of one thing he was sure - he fate and destiny as a composer. But he could not escape his feeling of being different and not belonging. I don't presume to know the psyche of Schubert, but given all these facts, it is my belief that the man was searching - searching for God, searching for meaning, searching for ultimate direction (the very things Mahler pursued). In this midst of these parties and excursions, he wrote music tinged with the thought of tragedy and death, he didn't "really belong".
I think the whole Viennese scene, of which he was a part of, took its toll and he simply got tired of it eventually. But knowing he didn't belong, and considering his own quest for God, and higher meaning, I think he had death on the mind.
Mind you, Schubert's death is not the same as Mahler's concept of death. While Mahler believed fervently in the transformational, almost redeeming quality, of death, Schubert's concept was blackened by fear of the unknown. Yet somehow, he was inexplicably aware of a higher order of things.
For more reading, see Patrick Kavanaugh's book, "The Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers".
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Blogging again
Well...I'm back to blogging. It's probably not the wisest thing to reinvest time in considering I'm about to start my last semester at college that will do all but claim my soul and even then...
I had a xanga and then all my friends switched to facebook. And then I had another blogspot but I was told it was naughty to write whatever I felt like by a Professor who has way too much time on his hands. That site is still up but I've reverted to this one for the time being. The reason: there have been so many times I'll be up late listening to some piece of music or other and I'll have some semblance of a poetic thought that I'd like to share.
By the way, the first word of my blog title is a gargantuan symphony of ridiculous proportions by French composer Olivier Messiaen - if you do not know it, find a recording of it at all costs. It will change your life. It basically is the Rite of Spring's tonal cousin.
I'm listening to Mahler 4 right now. It's the last symphony of his to have captivated me which is probably because of it's smaller proportions and understated extra-musical meaning - at least compared to his other works which are so much more overt.
Specifically, I'm listening to the Adagio of this symphony. There are many beautiful moments in Mahler but I don't think of them speak to me with the same fervent beauty and poetry as the Adagios of his 3rd,4th,5th,6th and 9th Symphonies. Of the adagio of the 3rd, I'm always especially moved by it because it signifies to me a great spritual transformation.
The first movement of that symphony is this huge, almost banal dirge containing everything from insistent marches, to dramatic recitatives, to passages of such lyrical prose. In some ways it depicts death but by the time we reach the end of the last movement - the adagio I'm speaking of - we, the listeners, have been transformed with the figurative hero of the symphony from this death-like, forbodding state, to one that's been filled to the brim with timeless beauty and finally irrevocable redemption.
I suppose that curt synopsis makes no sense to those of you who don't even know the piece. But I'm not going to pretend like that paragraph did the symphony justice. Perhaps I'll talk about it in more detail later. That was more or less of the thought I had last night while listening to it. If you close your eyes for the last 6or so mintues of the symphony, you can almost see the hero of the symphony ascending to heaven - it is utterly breathtaking and poignant and one of the closest examples a composer has gotten to describing grace and redemption in music.
Ah, Mahler. I could go on about him forever.
Speaking of marching...and death - school starts in a few weeks. I'm frantically trying to tie up my loose ends before it gets here, but knowing I won't possibly get to them all, I've prioritized. For the time being, the first order of business is the song cycle - a cycle of four songs for baritone and orchestra that North Park is considering for their fall orchestra concert, which, oddly enough, falls on Halloween. More on this later.
My Love leaves for New York next week on business. While she's gone, I'll put the finishing touches on the cycle, scrounge up some possible repertoire selections for the duo children's choirs I'm heading come mid-September, and do some work on the analytical papers (and manuscripts) I have to submit to Northwestern with my doctoral portfolio in December - more on all this later.
Then school starts. But it's only one more semester.
Now that I've given you a whirl of events you had no idea were in my life, I must leave you now. I'll fill you in in the coming months.
I had a xanga and then all my friends switched to facebook. And then I had another blogspot but I was told it was naughty to write whatever I felt like by a Professor who has way too much time on his hands. That site is still up but I've reverted to this one for the time being. The reason: there have been so many times I'll be up late listening to some piece of music or other and I'll have some semblance of a poetic thought that I'd like to share.
By the way, the first word of my blog title is a gargantuan symphony of ridiculous proportions by French composer Olivier Messiaen - if you do not know it, find a recording of it at all costs. It will change your life. It basically is the Rite of Spring's tonal cousin.
I'm listening to Mahler 4 right now. It's the last symphony of his to have captivated me which is probably because of it's smaller proportions and understated extra-musical meaning - at least compared to his other works which are so much more overt.
Specifically, I'm listening to the Adagio of this symphony. There are many beautiful moments in Mahler but I don't think of them speak to me with the same fervent beauty and poetry as the Adagios of his 3rd,4th,5th,6th and 9th Symphonies. Of the adagio of the 3rd, I'm always especially moved by it because it signifies to me a great spritual transformation.
The first movement of that symphony is this huge, almost banal dirge containing everything from insistent marches, to dramatic recitatives, to passages of such lyrical prose. In some ways it depicts death but by the time we reach the end of the last movement - the adagio I'm speaking of - we, the listeners, have been transformed with the figurative hero of the symphony from this death-like, forbodding state, to one that's been filled to the brim with timeless beauty and finally irrevocable redemption.
I suppose that curt synopsis makes no sense to those of you who don't even know the piece. But I'm not going to pretend like that paragraph did the symphony justice. Perhaps I'll talk about it in more detail later. That was more or less of the thought I had last night while listening to it. If you close your eyes for the last 6or so mintues of the symphony, you can almost see the hero of the symphony ascending to heaven - it is utterly breathtaking and poignant and one of the closest examples a composer has gotten to describing grace and redemption in music.
Ah, Mahler. I could go on about him forever.
Speaking of marching...and death - school starts in a few weeks. I'm frantically trying to tie up my loose ends before it gets here, but knowing I won't possibly get to them all, I've prioritized. For the time being, the first order of business is the song cycle - a cycle of four songs for baritone and orchestra that North Park is considering for their fall orchestra concert, which, oddly enough, falls on Halloween. More on this later.
My Love leaves for New York next week on business. While she's gone, I'll put the finishing touches on the cycle, scrounge up some possible repertoire selections for the duo children's choirs I'm heading come mid-September, and do some work on the analytical papers (and manuscripts) I have to submit to Northwestern with my doctoral portfolio in December - more on all this later.
Then school starts. But it's only one more semester.
Now that I've given you a whirl of events you had no idea were in my life, I must leave you now. I'll fill you in in the coming months.
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