Listening to 20th century music: spotlight on a favorite blog

 I studied the Quartet for the End of Time in Professor Lori Dobbins' class last year at UNH and loved Messiaen's language. Here is an excellent guide to the work from Michael Barry's blog. Thanks for posting!

Songs for the Road

The one accessory any car of mine must have is a radio. The car is my favorite (and usually, only) place to hear current popular music beyond YouTube, and therefore my only automatically produced playlist (I've never liked Pandora's interface - too much of my own choices imposed on what I hear).
"Driving" or "train" songs especially appeal to me. I'm not sure if this is due to my actual music preferences, or my love for automobile travel (and pseudo-nostalgia for/idolization of train travel). Here are some great driving songs - the ones that sound like you're on the road, not just songs about being on the road.

God is great, Beer is good - Billy Currington

Ok, it's not about driving or travel at all, but the rhythm's steady "chugga chugga" beat and leisurely pace (cut time; according to my metronome, about 72bpm) has that perfect "road" sound. The song itself is simplistic  'easy listening country', with a I V vi IV progression for the verse and an interesting if sentimental twist at the end.

Me and Bobby McGee- the Kris Kristofferson version
This time, a song about travel, with a similar beat. Kristofferson's recording isn't a bit rushed, very laid back. Janis Joplin's version is iconic but more high-energy - contrasting qualities which extend beyond the metronome mark and the rhythm section to the voices themselves.







Hey, Good Lookin'

the 2000s cover by Jimmy Buffett and friends from 2004 is an entirely different animal compared to the Hank Williams original. The "good times" community feel of a group of star soloists sharing a good-natured pick-up line is perfect for summer and road trips - though once again, the beat of this song places it in this category, not so much the content. The quality of the voice is once again key - like Joplin and Kristofferson, it's not so much the authenticity of the original singer but the atmosphere the cover creates.





End of the Line - Traveling Wilburys 
The music video for this quintessentially "travel" song takes place on a train. The Traveling Wilburys were an all-star group that included Eric Clapton,George Harrison, and Bob Dylan.


Two of Us - Beatles
A little more upbeat than the other songs here, this piece is actually much more nostalgic and almost bittersweet than the "in the moment" mood evoked by most of this list.
I could probably make a playlist of just Beatles road songs. Here's another:

Any Road
Off of George Harrison's last album, Brainwashed, this song features his son Dhani on guitar and a world-wise lyric from Harrison. Definitely a must for any Beatles road trip.



Mockingbird - James Taylor + Carly Simon
I heard this on a drive through upstate NY, and it makes excellent driving music. The singers' voices mix in an inventive quasi-polyphony; the original version of the song was written and sung by siblings Inez and Charlie Foxx.

 City of New Orleans: Willie Nelson
Suggested to me for this list - this is an all-time favorite of mine and mentioned on my post Songs from my mother, but it is also equally appropriate here for its "train" theme and rhythm. Actually, this song is always appropriate!
(As a side note, Willie Nelson sings great music for any road trip playlist. "On the Road Again" has a much more upbeat feel though, not the "train" beat this post highlights.)

And so this is Christmas

almost. But the song I want to explore today is never out of season: John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "Happy Christmas (War is Over)." Like most Christmas songs worth a second hearing, this one has been covered by various artists, and their new takes can add to the overall beauty and community of the song. The harmonic progression of “Happy Christmas" is fairly simple but effective. Dissonances in the accompaniment and melody highlight the song’s attitude of hope in the face of the world’s concerns.

sung by John Lennon and Yoko Ono

One of the most touching moments of the song, whether rehearsed or candid, is Lennon and Ono’s whisper of Christmas wishes to their children before the music starts.  “War is Over", the song’s subtitle, is sung to the countermelody during the chorus. The theme of peace and hopes for a better world echo “Imagine,” released 2 months earlier in 1971. Lennon never stopped hoping for peace and this song, though beloved as a Christmas standard, is an eloquent protest of the war in Vietnam and war anywhere.

sung by Maroon 5

Of all the covers I have heard for this song, Maroon 5 makes the most interesting counterpart to Lennon's version. In contrast to most of the others I looked at (Celine Dion, U2, Sarah Maclachlan), their version begins plainly with the lead singer solo and a piano playing a single line, and does not get much more decorated with that. All the rest choose to begin with guitars strumming and perhaps add tambourines for rhythm, a stylistic choice which echoes Lennon's original recording.  The significance of the instrumentation here reflects the different emotional content in each version. Lennon and Ono are joined by a children's choir, and take the song up and up the scale through modulations, perhaps in a gesture of joy. Maroon 5 skips the upward modulation and chooses to keep the song in a medium-low vocal register for the majority of the song, which keeps the atmosphere intimate and hushed, nothing like the exuberant but deep emotion of Ono singing "war is over/if you want it."

The single line played against the soloist is the countermelody, later used in the chorus with the words “War is over/if you want it/now” with “nota cambiata” non-harmonic tones. The starkness of the piano line makes every dissonant interval in the countermelody stand out, and the vocal line is changed minutely to add emphasis to these dissonant notes. Instead of the tender and hopeful atmosphere of Lennon's version, Maroon 5 seems bittersweetly nostalgic and perhaps more world-weary than optimistic. At 2:55, the lyrics "let's hope it's a good one" are given a bitter cast by the dissonance in the melody over a minor chord (ii), which resolves to a major chord through passing notes in the bass. These notes are harmonized and brought out by strings, which have been added as the song gains momentum. In each repetition of the chorus the chords resolve in the same pattern, but the addition of the strings and the emphasis on the IV chord, bright and sunny, twists this chorus unexpectedly into optimism. Perhaps the singer does not really believe war is over, but by the end of the song we feel it may be possible.

Moondance

We've all heard Van Morrison's jazz tune "Moondance." How do the covers measure up?

Original version by Van Morrison, with lyrics

The verse is mostly made up of the same A A’ phrase, but Morrison’s feel for the music makes these repeats anything but repetitious. He allows the words to shape the lines in terms of intensity and momentum. Morrison’s voice in this song (both as an instrument and as “author”) is confident and casual, and retains its “rock” timbre while singing convincingly in a jazz style. He sounds like he has the whole night to spend on song and romance, and conveys a laidback yet eager attitude.
Covers for this song are not hard to find, and I heard many of them in between listening to the singers I already knew (Buble, McFerrin, Morrison).

sung by Catherine Reed

Reed does a decent job of varying the phrases, but as noted in comments, her decision to drop her voice at the end of each phrase makes the words less than audible. In a song like “Moondance,” attention to little details make the whole piece more passionate – you can’t rush over any words (even repeated sections) and come across convincingly. Also, her choice of timbres for contrast occasionally strike my ear as odd. Reed’s voice becomes big where the song could be interpreted as soft, etc.

sung by Grady Tate

According to Wikipedia (unsourced, unfortunately), Morrison was pleased by Tate’s cover. Tate changes the melody in little ways, making it his own and increasing the intensity, and in general sings a higher-energy “Moondance” than Morrison. In the first verse, the brushes on the drum sound like the leaves Tate, an excellent drummer, mentions in the lyrics.

sung by Kai McKenzie

McKenzie is called in the caption for this video “the top UK Michael Buble tribute act.” He has a very clean voice; in my opinion his version is way too clean. Every word, even when the song really gets going before the break (2:00), is chopped neatly into place (though the attacks themselves are scooped in a very pop-music style) and the timbre barely varies from the first verse to the end.

sung by Michael Buble

Here’s Buble himself, at the Verizon Wireless Arena of my home state. Singing this live, he brings as polished an approach to the overall song as if he were in the studio. As with Reed, some of his phrases seem “hard” where they could be softer and more tender (such as 3:17 “make some more romance”); this seems to be his way of sounding forcefully romantic or dramatic, not something Buble is known for. Like Tate’s version, he raises the intensity of the song overall from Morrison’s original and it works, especially live.

sung by Charlese

This version strikes me as more idiomatic than the Catherine Reed version, though uneven overall. Charlese uses a great variety of vocal color, and patterns the intensity of her phrases on the text like Morrison. Her voice gets breathy at times in an awkward way, but overall she has plenty of feeling and a free but intense approach to the song.

sung by Bobby McFerrin

Saving arguably the best artist for last, here is Bobby McFerrin. Son of an opera singer, he is a consummate musician and sings the “instrumental” solo at the beginning of this track. McFerrin changes the melody right from the beginning and interpolates new wordless solos, while sticking to the low, calm atmosphere of Morrison’s Moondance. Because the repetitive elements (vocal melody, guitar accompaniment, rhythms) in the song are carefully rearranged and varied, McFerrin manages to make his version even more laidback and precisely romantic than Morrison’s. A similar, live version is linked below.

sung by Bobby McFerrin (recorded live)

Gilding the Lily? Additions to Classic Pieces

What do Edvard Grieg and Ignaz Moscheles have in common? Aside from being European composers of the second half of the nineteenth century, they both felt certain classics of the solo piano repertoire could use a supplemental second piano. Grieg wrote a second piano part to three Mozart piano sonatas, and Moscheles practically rewrote 10 preludes from the Well-Tempered Clavier, conceiving of

Atonal Counterpoint from Norway: Fartein Valen

Valen (1887-1952) lived his entire life a bachelor in the country of Norway, but made important strides in the field of 20^th century music despite his relative isolation. His particular atonal “dissonant counterpoint” was developed in all likelihood completely unaware of Schoenberg’s work, though based on the same recognition of the need for a solid ground when leaving tonality behind. Valen was fond of the polyphony of Bach and worked out contrapuntal solutions which, while not tonal or based on consonant intervals, are as intricate and complex a system as that of the old masters. Interestingly, Valen studied composition with Max Bruch about ten years after the latter had mentored Ernst Mielck (see Friday’s post).

Much of Valen’s work is available at IMSLP, which is where I first encountered this fascinating composer. Recordings are available through Naxos for most of his work including the pieces written after 1923 which are not yet in the public domain. In addition, here is a taste of Valen’s unique style, from YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7kPHBiB0Lc Nachtstuck, from a set of 4 piano pieces

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q2rBzyPzhM Glenn Gould plays the 2^nd piano sonata (part 1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hrz-vSBpVw&feature=related (part 2)

Sources: Grove, Naxos, links from Wikipedia

Pop music and ear training

Oh, the things you learn from life when you're a music major.

I sucked at ear training when I got to UNH. Some of my friends have even said I might be a little tone deaf, because it takes a lot sometimes for me to match pitches, or tell if I'm singing sharp or flat. (That's why it's fortunate I play piano!) But nevertheless, I didn't have any remedial theory homework the summer between orientation and freshman year, and I got passing grades – actually quite decent ones – in the four semesters of Ear Training. For me, the breakthrough came halfway through the second semester, over Spring Break 2009.

I went to New Orleans for an alternative spring break trip, and doing light carpentry work with my team, heard a LOT of pop songs. If I didn't know the words to most of them the first day, by the end of the week I did, and I noticed many common features among songs that got frequent airplay. Certain chord progressions repeated throughout this repertoire, and it became possible for me to improvise the melody or a harmony line along with the song by following the progression. Not surprisingly, the songs were harmonically simple and mostly picked up on three common progressions in Western music: I IV V I, root progression from dominant to tonic; I vi IV V I, the rock'n'roll progression (heard in songs like Heart and Soul); and the blues, I IV I V IV I. These progressions make improvised lines easy to create because of the common tones in I, IV, and vi, and knowing cadential formulas from Theory I provided the basic framework to follow. (Theory taught me to resolve tritones out, and to take the melody 3-2-1 over a I64 V I bass – all features of Western tonality which are woven through pop music whether we normally pay attention to them or not.)

After spending a week immersed in pop music, I found theory and ear training both easier. The easy melodies which stick in your ear are also very useful for immediately recognizing the 3^rd or 5^th scale degree, and even intervals are better remembered in a pop context. (Minor 6^th is the first two notes of "In My Life" by the Beatles; Major 6^th is the first two notes of "All at Once You Love Her" from Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Pipe Dream;" and the Star Wars theme begins with a perfect 5^th.) I've never stopped listening critically to pop music and along the last 2 years, I've found some gems in odd places. Two of my favorites are below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt0_oPPK6eA From the Country end of the spectrum, Big & Rich "Save a Horse Ride a Cowboy." The melody is doubled at the octave, and the two singers mix pitched speaking voices with singing. Overall, the effect strikes me as a reflection of early styles of organum, where the melody would be doubled with a perfect interval (4^th, 5^th, octave). Their speaking-singing also reminds me of Rex Harrison speaking his way through Henry Higgins on Broadway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4xp2lgiAjY Amie, by Pure Prairie League. The main body of the song is very typical of 1970s folk blends like America or Kansas, but near the end as the song is playing out (and nothing new is happening in the text) the supporting harmonies highlight the melody in an unusual way. Leading to IV through V7/IV over 1 (in this case, A – A7 –D over an A pedal), the melody itself is sung below the backup vocals. The lyrics here are "fallin' in and out of love with you" and until the word "love" the backup vocals are following the melody's contour a third above. At "love" the interval between melody and accompaniment widens to a minor 7^th, as the backup vocals follow a descending line above the melody's pedal point. This dissonance is very exposed by being higher than the melody, but the well-matched timbres of the voices mitigate the dissonant quality and allow this passage to express tension in a wistful way, while bringing the song to a quiet close.

Verdi: the Falstaff fugue - Spring 2011

Verdi’s last opera may well be his greatest, and Falstaff has received its share of analysis and interpretation from multiple angles, as befits this great magnum opus. This paper will address some details of the overall work, while focusing in greater depth on the fugue[1] at the end of Act III, a topic which receives less attention than others in this opera.

Falstaff, Verdi’s last opera, premiered when the composer was nearly 80 years old. The project had been germinating in his mind for years,

Consonance: Different Approaches to Organum in Paris and Aquitaine - Spring 2011

The innovative expansion of music into polyphony forever changed the face of Western music and widened the horizon for composers of the future. Two major schools of free organum have had a lasting legacy which continues to influence music today in overt and hidden ways: the Parisian school at Notre-Dame, the great Gothic cathedral; and the manuscript tradition preserved at the abbey of St. Martial, at Limoges. These traditions date from an era when music was created largely in religious context and preserved in both functional memory and print; the ideas of “composer” and “genius” had