AMS Happened A Couple Of Weeks Ago

I wasn't originally planning on doing a post-op of my maiden AMS experience, consider I thought that the general populace would find it boring as shit. However, an entire meme has passed me by with nary a tag and thus I realize that I should chop-chop on the posty-posty. Henceforth, what I learned on my "vacation" to Nashville.

1) I went to way more papers than other people.

Perhaps it was just novice enthusiasm but except for Saturday, which I took off to play a recital in Murfreesboro, I hit the morning and afternoon sessions everyday. So that's at least eight papers a day, which seems to at least double most people's actual attendance and multiply by infinity other people's preferred attendance (zero). However, I suppose all I could do would be going to papers since...

2) My schmoozing skillz are far, far from l33t

The receptions are the real reasons everyone goes to AMS. That and drinking will all your musicologist friends from days of yore. (The latter of which I did with my mentor from Boston and a Berlioz scholar who will go unnamed. Needless to say a microbrewery may not have been the best choice.) At first blush it seemed like the entourage I was a part of had no real ties to any of the schools that were receiving, thus all we could do was futz and be awkward until we shimmied over to the free food.

It turns out that something like half of the Iowa faculty has some connection to Florida State, and I actually ran into both of my undergraduate theory professors at the Eastman reception. This, I realize for future conferences, is more than enough to be able to proudly stride towards the free food. But all these other music bloggers that were clearly at the conference, didn't meet a one of them. But it turns out that I wouldn't have recognized Phil Ford anyway.

3) I am apparently more precocious than my forebears, by a considerable factor

Other musicologists writing about the event talk about finally asking a question after three years, where I think I waited three panels. Granted, I didn't go throwing down against Taruskin as concerns the Ballet Russes but I also didn't perceive a climate of fear. However this point led me to realize...

4) There is no expectation to be able to answer said questions.

Maybe I asked dumb questions, or was tacitly ignored because I'm not a bigshot, but those questions I did asked were barely addressed in even the most tangential sense of the term. However, with further observations those without my greenhorn status were getting very similar results. The batting average would have trouble staying on a double-A roster, shall we say.

That said, I didn't witness any throwdowns or utter evisceration. Perhaps I am actually misunderstanding the culture of the conference. Are questions not actually questions as much as suggestions for future improvement?

5) Even going to a lot of papers, it was scarcely a dry conference.

The papers went to alone discussed erections, The Shining (with footage of the naked chick), a band whose name I can barely speak (link NSFW, for serious), and the f-bomb. Nice.

All in all my first trip to the Lollapalooza of Musicology was good times. Now I'm wondering how this compares to some of the subgroup gatherings.

Sit Out A Couple Plays

I really should just write this apology post and link to it everytime since it's always the same reasons, but it's such a classic of the medium.

Earlier I posted about one of the trifold reasons that academic blogs, especially grad student ones, tend to fold. Around October or Novembertide all the academe on these Intertubes seem to slow down a touch, and the midterm crunch certainly isn't uninvolved in this phenomenon. In the ensuing calm before the finals storm however, blogs written by grad students don't seem to spring back the way those written by faculty do. At least in my experience, and I can't imagine I'm totally alone, the flurry of coursework inevitably leads to a crisis of faith.

Blogs tend to spring up when there are more ideas than opportunities for output, i.e. summer and winter breaks. (This blog, for instance, started in summer '06 despite me having parked the domain a whole year earlier!) Actual academic work provides an valve for/demands all that brainsteam. But we're inhabitants of the modern age, right? Not at all, in the halls of ivory towers across the land old media is totally going to waste new media everytime.

As far as I know musically minded bloggers have no shining example along the lines of a Kottke who was able to parlay currency of the Interwebs into success tangible by the old standards. And if we didn't have any faith in the old standards, we probably wouldn't be so worried about doctorates. This doesn't necessarily doom the grad student blogothon, but it requires keeping one's blog in one's heart in the face of crunches and cram time. And that's hard.

P.S. to Phil Ford, now that you're posting again too: In your face!!!!1

Wheel in The Sky Keeps On Turnin'

I'm not usually much of a linkinista guy, but this was cool so I make exceptions. In opposition to much of the aimless chatter that happens on NewMusicBox (yeah yeah, here too), composer Erik Spengler has written a comprehensive and readable primer on turntablism for his ilk.

In The Cut: A Composer's Guide To The Turntables

On one hand this seem a little late (not for Spengler, who's been doing this for years) but a cutting-edge DJs now uses the wheels of steel as mere controllers for digital media. Of course, to the perspective of turntables as instruments it merely enhances that idea. And it certainly answers the question of performance of electronic works.

Do You Hear What I Hear

School has begun and I'm starting a whole new program at a whole new school. Hence bad at the bloggy. Anyway, overheard at the UE-COGS event at The Mill:

"Musicologists don't like Miles David because he makes too many mistakes."

Respond.

Quantum of Venue

The Complexity Wars of a couple weeks ago have morphed into a discussion about treating the audience and their reaction to a work as a single entity, in an Composer vs. Audience sort of way. Kyle Gann says that reaction is more indicative of venue that anything else, Soho links it in a Freakonomics-way to the dialectic of American and British broadcasting, and Dial M wonders whether performers can bear to acknowledge the apparent disconnection.

Mahler/Post (Post-Mahlerian?) concert etiquette has entirely negated any connection between performance and reception in a modern symphony. The audience is either following rules of courtesy or applauding themselves for listening, no matter what a bunch of shits the NY Phil audience might be. While the "special unique snowflake" crowd may bristle at generalizing people as such, it does give another angle to explain music intertwining with society. This is, I assume, something musicologists are allowed to do.

The problem is, to use mathematical terms, that venue is rarely, if ever, the dependent variable. When orchestras do tour, their repertoire is universally more established* than the home court programs and potential crowd aberrations are much less likely. One of the few examples at immediate memory is the BSO doing home-and-away shows with Steve Reich's "Four Organs". The breakdown is a simple one:

Boston: Quizzical enjoyment
New York: Riot

There must be something to learn from this, although it seems to endorse Gann's "bunch of shits" prognosis. While I was writing a paper on "Four Organs" last year, the riot was explained away by everyone with a phrase similar to "The New York following of the Boston Symphony Orchestra was particularly conservative." How can you say this without data points like the Reich riot? Perhaps it is a dark road I'm traveling, attempt to quantize the Musicks as such.

Believe In Your Summer '08

The summer reading list is a tradition as old as the printed word and the acknowledgment of seasons. Having been a careless and fancy free performer for the past several summers said reading list usually consists of cleanup on a series of esoteric topics and angular science fiction/steampunk novels. But now I am a musicologist, and thus this has become Serious Business. The goal is not just to pass the looming entrance exams, but to the pass them with the grace and brutality of the ninja. Therein, the following schedule has been developed.

Eric Salzman - Twentieth Century Music: An Introduction
Carl Dahlhaus - Nineteenth Century Music
Charles Rosen - The Classical Style
Claude Palisca - Baroque Music
Allan Atlas - Renaissance Music
Jeremy Yudkin - Music in Medieval Europe

For bonus points:

Douglass Seaton - Ideas and Style in the Western Musical Tradition
Actually finish the goddamn Alex Ross

This will be accompanied by marching through all 173 selections in the Norton and doing at least nominal score study for each one. We will surely perish. Any thoughts?

Subjective Greatness

Through the usual channels of circumstance I scored tickets to last weekend's Celebrity Series gig at Jordan Hall, being told only that it was a Gershwin something or other. I can't exactly say I'm a musical theater man, but despite not having had the chance to crack Alex Ross's book I'm familiar with its opening vignette. Turns out the thing was a lecture-recital by Rob Kapilow, a jack-of-all-trades who has clearly found the meth stash in the PBS Kids hosts' lounge.


My immediate reaction was to fold my arms like a hipster, but Kapilow does hit on that age-old question of how to sell concert music to the masses. And this guy was doing it. His tricks are probably familiar to anyone who has heard his "What Makes It Great" programs (unlike me, who I realize appear to live in a complicated network of Afghani caves) but he had an audience doing phrasal analysis and apparently enjoying it. And this was a very polarized audience, I would assume that we were of the few audience members between the ages of 10 and 60.


I maintained my arms akimbo stance until a point where Kapilow pointed out a riff in "They Can't Take That Away From Me" that Gershwin knicked from Beethoven, a classical theme that Gershwin slaps some altered chord tones on. Not only did this jam home how much Gershwin was getting the chocolate in the peanut butter but I noticed that this was Kapilow's one foray into musiclogical esoterica that he seemed always on the verge of spinning off into. His ethusiasm and depth of knowledge were clearly sufficent to roll with the big boys, but he kept it restrained if you can use that word to describe him. It was remisicent of fiery instrumental playing at its best. A train that seems bound to come off the tracks, but never. Actually. Does it.


Watching the success that Kapilow connected with the crowd made me consider that the line between accessibility and jargon is not where I think it is. (i.e. the path to appreciation is significantly different than that of most theory/history cirricula) Whereas he went into phrase structure with detail, other topics were dealt with thusly:

Q: What kind of chord is that?
A: An awexome one.


My only question is that I saw him work this show with Gershwin songs, works that no one would percieve as "inaccessible". The thorniest work his website offers is "Death and the Maiden", so Xenakis and Andriessen will have to wait for their champions. Nonetheless he's coming back in April to pimp out the Waldstein sonata, so I might have to check out how he treats a work that's a little less immediately digestible.

Stupid Machine!

Two weekends ago I ventured to the western side of the state for the last time this summer for a two friends' wedding. (To each other. Congratulations Joel and Miranda) Being both musicians there were a few people there to wax musicological with, including a post-doc fellow from Lawrence and a friend starting her doctorate at Northwestern this year. (Congratulations Elissa) As conversations with other people tend to go I felt stupid and over my head by the end of it.

It's different kinds of stupid and over my head each time, however. This time I left the reception wondering just how ill-prepared I was should I attempt to continue on in musicology. It's not that I've taken less music history than the average performer, but most everyone else has had the opportunity (or obligation) to crawl inside many of the great masterworks, be it through song or orchestra or string quartet or whatever. Even at my most evangelical I can only find a handful of guitar pieces that might make mention in a general textbook.

Most of the major landmarks of the guitar repertoire, often the ones most responsible for extending the instrument's vocabulary such as Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal and Manuel de Falla's Homenaje a Le Tombeau de Debussy, are speedbumps in the respective composers' careers. A notable exception to this is Elliott Carter's Changes (no YouTube video, sorry), marking his turn towards production for solo instruments.

There are three exceptions to this quagmire, that I see anyway. One has managed to worm its way into the cultural zeitgeist, to the point where it practically defines the music of a region. By this I mean Rodrigo's Concerto de Aranjuez, particularly its Adagio. Yeah, it's famous and all, but taken in context a lot of its appeal comes from its quaint neoromantic stylings. The second is one of two appearances of any fretted instrument in the venerable Norton Anthology, John Dowland's lute song "Flow, my tears". That's cool , but it's really in there more to show how vocal songs became instrument works (see Lachrymae Pavan) and c'mon, it's the fucking lute.

I've got one tricksy weapon up my sleeve. Even passing musicologists know of Luis Narvaez's Guardame las vacas, a vihuela tune from the 17th century. Since it's the first documented example of a theme and variations. Booyakasha!

Perhaps I'm being too sad sacky about all this. While I lack the forced knowledge that playing important pieces brings, I also won't have the baggage that someone who bombed through said pieces in youth orchestra might have. Furthermore I'm sure people who've played dumber instruments have had success. Anyway, if you're unfamiliar with any of these hawt geetar jamz, all of the preceding links are to YouTube performances. So enjoy with gusto.

Pool image snagged from the Google Earth forums, photographer alas unknown

A Musicologist's Life For Me

(A note: The past two weeks certainly have happened. I'll probably be blogging things that happened during them in reverse order.)


A couple months ago I was reading Dial M for Musicology, a favored blog o' mine, when I noticed one of the links was a different color than the rest of them.

In a proper and rational manner I think to myself "Holy fuck! I must be projecting an extremely inaccurate onto the Interwebs!" Also I never thanked them properly for the link. A couple of days ago I made steps towards correcting this by giving a real life big kid lecture to the Music History 2 (survey class from Palestrina to Bach) that I normally TA, which weighing in at about 70 kids is the closest thing the Conservatory has to a pit class.

Anyone who has seen my normal state of dress knows that I wouldn't exactly pass Biz Cas Fri muster; indeed I can get away presenting to other graduate students while whatever attitude tee I've chosen states that Smith girls are often found in exciting positions or that January 31st must ne'er be forgot, but the freshmen are not as forgiving. Step 1 for lecturing was looking like I had knowledge, and luckily was able to reap selections from my other four outfits to invent a look I call Preppy McDegreeCollector. I wanted to kick my own ass.

None of this helped me actually give the lecture and with the other obligations I had earlier in the week (possibly to be blogged later, maybe) I gave myself a window of roughly 10 hours to prepare a 40-minute lecture on Couperin and Rameau, not precisely my strength. (Now de Visee and Corbetta on the other hand...) Furthermore I had to borrow most of the texts on the subject since my musicological library is weak to nonexistant, the 10 hours I spoke of before started at 11 PM. One thing working in my favor was that I hear that Rameau did some relatively important things with music theory, so it wasn't like I couldn't find anything to talk about. Convincing the masses that what they learned in their first semester of theory was approaching 300 years old, on the other hand....

I don't play Go nearly as often as I would like, but there is a saying within the community. "Lose your first fifty games as quickly as possible." I can only imagine how some of my former teachers would react upon seeing me say this, but I now have a bit of a notion of how earned the swagger of a well-loved professor is. Having taught a smaller listening section for three months now I've gotten a rhythm to it but it's a hell of a lot easier: I don't have to dress up, I can go on tangents, I can get away with the occasional curse word. Facing down a lecture class is a taxing exercise in a hateful duplicity. My section at least reacts to stupid jokes, but en masse (also in morning) it was explaining functional harmony, again, to a pyramid of skulls. Nevertheless, there was the constant knowledge that a single misstep could lead to cacophonous tragedy. Por ejample:

Me (paraphased): Hippolyte et Arcice was Rameau's first opera.
Student (no raised hand!): No, it wasn't.
Me (increasingly concerned): Yes, it was.
Student (defiant): No, it wasn't.
Dr. Seitz: Yes, it was.
-fin-

And that was when I got something right. I made more grievous missteps, most notably stating things that I wasn't unsure of as "Wikipedia knowledge" and ending my lecture by admitting defeat to Frau Doktor. On the other hand, I did have a hell of an opener that worked exactly how I wanted to. ("So Lully shoves a stick through his foot and dies.") All in all afterwords I felt basically the same I did after my junior recital: I was exhausted by not necessarily adverse to trying it again sometime. Now that is dangerous.