Monday, July 11, 2011
SciAm on vacuums and subways, and a novel I love
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/2011/07/11/a-series-of-tubes/ The physics in this post are a bit beyond my level of understanding+ability, but it's well written and exciting to read nonetheless. Thanks Jennifer Ouelette for reminding me of Downsiders - a YA novel (which I loved!) about underground dwellings in NYC.
Star Wars: an opera in 5 acts
Who hasn't thought of Star Wars as a Meyerbeer-style rescue opera?
Ok, maybe that is just the opera geek in me. But the cast and plot have much in common with the grand opera of the 19th century. Hero rescues princess and wins a battle in the struggle against an oppressive empire, amid local color, grand spectacle, and grand music.
Ironically, the music would be one major obstacle in the translation of Star Wars from film epic to grand opera: John Williams doesn't seem likely to write an opera himself or allow his music to be incorporated into one. So a composer taking the story (with rights to use it) would need to create a new musical vocabulary for this piece: something iconic and unique enough to distinguish itself from the film's music, while balancing between operatic and vernacular to reach an audience appropriate to such a fusion of grand art and modern fairy tale. I don't think I could dream in my lifetime of doing Star Wars justice. But maybe someone else out there could.
Ok, maybe that is just the opera geek in me. But the cast and plot have much in common with the grand opera of the 19th century. Hero rescues princess and wins a battle in the struggle against an oppressive empire, amid local color, grand spectacle, and grand music.
Ironically, the music would be one major obstacle in the translation of Star Wars from film epic to grand opera: John Williams doesn't seem likely to write an opera himself or allow his music to be incorporated into one. So a composer taking the story (with rights to use it) would need to create a new musical vocabulary for this piece: something iconic and unique enough to distinguish itself from the film's music, while balancing between operatic and vernacular to reach an audience appropriate to such a fusion of grand art and modern fairy tale. I don't think I could dream in my lifetime of doing Star Wars justice. But maybe someone else out there could.
"Lover's Concerto:" elements of the classical
In the recent book, Beautiful Monsters, Michael Long takes a look at my personal favorite subject area: the relationship between classical and popular elements in music. Long is talking about the classical in pop today, as opposed to pop in classical music or classical "popular" elements such as opera themes. Beautiful Monsters features an encyclopedic dash through modern popular music, with hundreds of pieces referenced in passing. You would do well to read this book next to YouTube, because each reference is complemented by the actual sound material (not all of us have this music at instant mental recall) and the references are frequently cross-referenced.
One piece which I gradually recognized as familiar was "Lover's Concerto" by the Toys. I had first heard this piece as a small child, but not matched the piece to any title (though I still recall most of the lyrics and timbres perfectly) or group name. More recently, I had been stunned to find out that this piece is based on another famous miniature, of a very different era and aesthetic: a minuet by Bach. Duh. The meter is now 4/4, instead of the standard 3/4 of minuets, and in addition to having lyrics unrelated to Bach, the song is complemented by saxophone solos and a girl-group sound typical of the early 1960s.
Long's concern is with the use of the term "concerto," seemingly a misnomer here, to "place" the song in a classical register. At the very beginning of the song, before the band starts, several "concerto" chords on a piano are heard. The song's writers, Linzer and Randel, may indeed have felt "concerto" was foreign enough, and classical enough, to label the song with some exotic flavor, as well as to nod towards the classical origins of the melody. (I am unaware of the story of the artistic choice to use Bach material here in the first place; Wikipedia and allmusic cite the 'Bach' melody as well as the attribution of this piece to Bach, but do not hint at any motivation for the "classical" feel evoked here.)
The structure of the song is very tightly woven together, with the solo-group interplay intersecting with the instruments of the band. While the lyrics seem irrelevant to the title, they are well fit to the notes sung, with few awkward moments. When the saxophone solo takes up the melody during the break, the articulations are preserved from the vocal statement, slurring together the notes to which multi-syllable words are set. Tone painting is mostly avoided, even when dealing with lyrics which address "the rain / which falls," and this seems to avoid the full potential for cliche in a song which can only be heard through cliches.
As the song begins in this live video from the show "Hullabaloo," a bust of (presumably) J.S. Bach is seen in the foreground. The intro to the song features saxophones and a "hook" reminiscent of the Four Seasons, another group produced by the same label and often the same songwriters. This hook does not recur, but the sax scoring continues as a theme throughout. The classical bust as scene-setting reinforces the "novelty song" character of this piece; perhaps audiences were aware of the Bach association, making this scenery the only reference to the actual Bach material. In the personal consumption of the song, the only equivalent was this "Concerto" in the title and the piano chords of the first few bars, after which the "concerto" elements fade away.
"Lover's Concerto" continues to resonate throughout the book, as his many encyclopedic references bounce around and reappear. Long takes into account many different threads relating to this song: pastoralism, antique elements of the text, and the classical ethos evoked by the title. The great thing for me about classical music and popular music as two complementary bodies of work is the way we can enjoy a good pop song or a fun classical piece at different levels - the structure, the bones are there if you look, regardless of the (often enjoyable) surface material.
One piece which I gradually recognized as familiar was "Lover's Concerto" by the Toys. I had first heard this piece as a small child, but not matched the piece to any title (though I still recall most of the lyrics and timbres perfectly) or group name. More recently, I had been stunned to find out that this piece is based on another famous miniature, of a very different era and aesthetic: a minuet by Bach. Duh. The meter is now 4/4, instead of the standard 3/4 of minuets, and in addition to having lyrics unrelated to Bach, the song is complemented by saxophone solos and a girl-group sound typical of the early 1960s.
Long's concern is with the use of the term "concerto," seemingly a misnomer here, to "place" the song in a classical register. At the very beginning of the song, before the band starts, several "concerto" chords on a piano are heard. The song's writers, Linzer and Randel, may indeed have felt "concerto" was foreign enough, and classical enough, to label the song with some exotic flavor, as well as to nod towards the classical origins of the melody. (I am unaware of the story of the artistic choice to use Bach material here in the first place; Wikipedia and allmusic cite the 'Bach' melody as well as the attribution of this piece to Bach, but do not hint at any motivation for the "classical" feel evoked here.)
The structure of the song is very tightly woven together, with the solo-group interplay intersecting with the instruments of the band. While the lyrics seem irrelevant to the title, they are well fit to the notes sung, with few awkward moments. When the saxophone solo takes up the melody during the break, the articulations are preserved from the vocal statement, slurring together the notes to which multi-syllable words are set. Tone painting is mostly avoided, even when dealing with lyrics which address "the rain / which falls," and this seems to avoid the full potential for cliche in a song which can only be heard through cliches.
As the song begins in this live video from the show "Hullabaloo," a bust of (presumably) J.S. Bach is seen in the foreground. The intro to the song features saxophones and a "hook" reminiscent of the Four Seasons, another group produced by the same label and often the same songwriters. This hook does not recur, but the sax scoring continues as a theme throughout. The classical bust as scene-setting reinforces the "novelty song" character of this piece; perhaps audiences were aware of the Bach association, making this scenery the only reference to the actual Bach material. In the personal consumption of the song, the only equivalent was this "Concerto" in the title and the piano chords of the first few bars, after which the "concerto" elements fade away.
"Lover's Concerto" continues to resonate throughout the book, as his many encyclopedic references bounce around and reappear. Long takes into account many different threads relating to this song: pastoralism, antique elements of the text, and the classical ethos evoked by the title. The great thing for me about classical music and popular music as two complementary bodies of work is the way we can enjoy a good pop song or a fun classical piece at different levels - the structure, the bones are there if you look, regardless of the (often enjoyable) surface material.
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