Stein me away

As the end of the year draws to a close and juries, music theory finals and end of the semester recitals loom, I have been spending more and more of my time locked in the lovely practice rooms of Lewis and Clark College. As a college junior I have mastered the art of procrastinating, and thus, most of this time is spent not practicing for these very important examinations. This morning, as I was sitting in a practice room, wishing I were somewhere else, I began to stare at the Steinway & Son's logo, printed right above the keys on the rickety Steinway I had been practicing on.
The logo, which looks like this:



Baffled me for some reason. It may have been the many hours of practicing, but why is the logo a harp? Why isn't it some kind of pianoy thing? So I went in search of where this random logo came from.

Unfortunately, despite my finely tuned (pun intended) musicological research skills, I could not find the source of the logo. I did however find out many interesting facts about Steinway and Son's pianos. Such as:

-Each Steinway piano is completely handcrafted from start to finish, the strings are hand strung, and each hammer is calibrated by hand.
- All of the wood for one Steinway comes from the same tree (to guarantee continuity and sound)
- All the felt on a Steinway's dampers comes from a single long piece, each piece of felt is hand fitted to a damper by a trained Steinway technician.
- Each key is individually calibrated for a consistent feel

Find out more! Watch it happen!

http://www.steinway.com/factory/

Rockapella

Yay for LC acapella groups. Here were some of my favorites from the concert last night:

Iveseenit!

Not just a paltry insurance salesman, Charles Ives spent most of his life chastising the American political system through his penetrating prose and extraordinary works of music. His leider—like most of his compositions— walk a fine line between traditional tonality and untamed dissonance, while curiously mixing and manipulating meter. Often featuring Ives’ own lyrics, these songs flaunt Ives’ knack for text. Vote For Names, a work written for Soprano and three pianos, encompasses all of Ives’ brilliantly unorthodox leider style in under a minute.

Ives’ was a politically minded, progressive individual, but had a distaste for politicians themselves and the political parties they represented. He found the candidates in the 1912 election to be particularly irksome. This election was at the height of the progressive movement; a movement far too tame for Ives’ taste. Vote for Names was Ives’ commentary on the campaigns of Woodrow Wilson, running under the democratic nomination, William Howard Taft, for the republican party and Theodore Roosevelt representing his own “progressive party.” Ives felt there was little difference between these candidates’ platforms; they were all simply gushing crowd-please political rhetoric.

While the original manuscript of Vote for Names is fairly ambiguous, and the few published versions of the song vary greatly , the manic dissonance and hasty harmonic rhythm prevail in all. The three pianos represent the three candidates—all spewing “the same hot air election slogan hit hard over and over,” as Charles noted as the dynamic marking on the score. In this case, the slogan is mainly one polytonal chord, present in the second piano part, an E minor chord in the left hand and a D augmented chord with a flat nine in the right, theoretically, a meaningless chord . According to Ives, this chord was sadly devoid of meaning, representing the way he felt listening to politicians speak and voting at the polling office. This melancholy chord is drummed out in a meter of nine-sixteen, repeated in a constant rhythmic sequence of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. The first piano part consists of a strange chain of minor ninths, and the third piano part consists of three chords of just minor ninths followed by one consisting of minor seconds. The vocal line is similarly unique. Written without a meter, the vocal line sails up and down from the top of a sopranos range to the bottom. This represents the individuality and independence of the voter, possibly Charles Ives himself. When the text is combined with the dissonance of the pianos and idiosyncratic vocal line, Ives’ message is clearly pounded home:
Vote for names, names, names!
All nice men!
Three nice Men!
Teddy, Woodrow, and Bill!
After trying hard, to think whats the best way to vote,
I say,
Just walk right in,
And grab a ballot,
With the eyes shut and walk right out again.

Losing faith in the future of music

This is supposed to be high art? It makes my ears bleed! Why can't modern composers create music that is innovative and beautiful? ARGH!

Sex, Drugs and Romanticism

      Perhaps the most angst-filled era in the history of western music is the Romantic period. For the romantics, composition was not an occupational calling or intellectual paradox, but an innate passion. These emotional rebels idealized every aspect in life and believed music should reflect their principles. Theoretically, they laughed in the faces of traditional tonic-dominant relationships and revered secondary dominants and foreign key modulations. Berlioz’s (b. 1803- d. 1869) Symphonie Fantastique and Liszt’s (b. 1811-1866) Liebestraum are two pieces that demonstrate the fervor and drama of the Romantic Movement.

        The Symphonie Fantastique is the ultimate example of program music. The work was written in 1830, when Berlioz was just discovering his infatuation for the British actress Harriet Smithson. Many cite her along with Berlioz’s experimentation with Opium as the muses for the symphony.  However Berlioz’s memoirs allude to Goethe’s Faust—an epic poem about one man’s deal with the devil—for inspiration for the work. Berlioz supplied his own program notes for his “instrumental drama,” which relate the story of the music. The story is of a young artist who meets a woman so beautiful he becomes obsessed with her (first movement). He cannot shake her image even at the most exciting ball or peaceful countryside  (second and third movements) and he becomes increasingly lonely. Finally decides to kill himself with Opium, but it is only strong enough to knock him into a deep coma (fourth movement). While he sleeps he dreams he has been sentenced to death for the murder of his love and the procession to his death and funeral are filled with and orgy of terrible beings (fifth movement). An extravagantly large orchestration and inventive techniques create a new whimsical sound that narrates this fantastic story, while the constant presence of an idée fixe unites the movements.

            Liszt was interested and inspired by the Symphonie Fantastique, but the passion in his works is slightly more refined. Liebestraum are a set of three pieces that ooze sensuality. Though he composed many original works, Liszt was also inspired by transcriptions. He often transcribed his own work as well as the work of others (including Berlioz’s Symphony Fantasitque). Liszt completed the transcription of Liebestraum in 1850. Originally three separate lieder, the three pieces illustrate poems that tell of three very different types of love. The first poem Hohe Liebe describes saintly and religious love, while the second, Gestorben war ich divulges a description of erotic love. Finally, O liebe so Lang du lieben kannst imparts the truest love of all, a mature, lifelong love. The works are reminiscent of vocal works written in the romantic style, featuring sweeping cadenzas in both hands and solid melodic lines, but the pieces are more than simple lieder. They ebb and flow, leading you on harmonically before quickly changing directions all the while dramatically swelling and then quickly becoming hushed.  Together these pieces band together to create a marvelous drug of sensational emotions, better than the most surreal dramas or bodice ripping novels. 

Ranty Ranty Rant Rant

Why is it that an assignment with limited guidelines and infinite possibilities causes stress instead of joy? Why is it so challenging to be creative? Because we have been socialized to be terrified of making mistakes and, consequesntly afraid of becoming individuals. The American education system, created by a society that commodifies everything from iPods to a college education, has socialized us to believe that an impressive transcript and resume are the secret to Nirvana. The story goes that if you don't get good grades, you wont get into a goof college. Withought a good college you can't get into a decent Masters program, which is the only way you will be able to land a job lucritive enought to pay off your masses of student loan dept. However, in order to be successful in this quest for grades and first-class educations at exellent institutions of higher education, very few slip-ups can be made. Society has stamped mistakes with a big red X, a color and symbol that we have been taught to fear within the depths of our souls. This fear of error has kept our one-track minds in queue, quelling any shred of inspiration, innovation, or imagination.

We have also been trained to dread idle hands and loneliness. Because of this dread, any time that is not spent in class--or studying to boost those puny B pluses-- is spent hammering away at socially approved extra-curricular activitied (see: nationally recoginzed philantrhropy clubs and varsity sports). These activities don't just look good on transcripts, but also serve a deeper purpose. A full plate of extra-curricular activites keeps you in line, making you too busy for any personal exploration or experimentation, whether it be hallucinogenic, sexual or in artistic creation. Also keep in mind that those who are a little too fidgety from sitting in a desk all day are doped up with Ritalin or another pharmaceutical wonder.

I'm not saying there isn't merit in good grades, working hard or having extra-curricular activities, but there is something wrong with the obsession that surrounds them and what they give us-- a little mark on a trasncript or a note on a resume. A student shouldn't take a class because it will grant them the coveted, "easy A," but because they find the subjects interesting. Community service done soley for the purpose of how it looks on a college or graduate school application is meaningless to the individual and harmful to the community. Slogging away at sixty-hour-a-week jobs and studying for hours on end does not make us better people, it only makes us forget the things we once loved, bringing us further and further from our creativity. A creative life is a passionate and fulfilling one and limiting our addiction to work and our obsession with success will help us succeed in living one.

A La Gertrude Stein....

a white house on a white hill.
sitting like white on rice.
white as a ghost waiting for a white Christmas
but stuck, on ash wednesday.
and other shades of gray.
where this white bread is not as tasty as
the blue-plate special,
is a green room.
not green with envy.
living a white lie.
sitting at the beginning of the yellow-brick road,
wishing for more blue blood than white trash.
waiting for a red letter day,
where purple rain falls like agent orange, painting the town red.
perhaps once in a blue moon.
red rover.
red rover.
send that pink slip right over.
force that yellow belly out of its mellow yellow,
into some rose- colored glasses.
or maybe.
that’s just the pot calling the kettle .