Musical Mocking

Satire and Musical Theater Combine!

Build it! Play it!

Making instruments out of unexpected things is pretty cool. Especially if these instruments make cool sounds and/ or music. David Byrne's playable building doesn't really do this, and it is sort of the obnoxious art that screams huge grant, lots of time, not a huge amount of creative genius. But its still pretty cool.

Musicological Mysteries.... Mozart's death

Possibly the greatest composer of the eighteenth century, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s life and death have spurred debate among experts of many disciplines. A child prodigy, Mozart was touring Europe by the age of seven and composed more than one hundred and fifty complex, original works before his death at the age of thirty-five. While the life and work of Mozart was fascinating, his death maybe even more so. Despite the popularity of Mozart’s work, he died in debt and was buried in an unmarked grave. Over the years a number of theories to his cause of death have circulated including murder, suicide and mass conspiracy. This paper will outline a few of the various theories surrounding Mozart’s death and the realities of each.
The most exciting explanation for Mozart’s death is that he was murdered. This suspicion first arose in 1791 because of an article in an issue of Musikalisches Wochenblatt, a Berlin newspaper, which stated, “Mozart is…dead. He returned home from Prague a sick man, and continued to get worse; he was said to be dropsical , and he died in Vienna at the end of last week. Because his body swelled up after death, some people believe that he was poisoned.” There are also reports that Mozart expressed suspicions to his wife Constanze towards the end of his life that he was being poisoned.
The most popular suspect of Mozart’s murder is Antonio Salieri, a fellow Viennese composer. Though many of Mozart’s letters suggest that they were friendly , musical historians have suggested that Salieri was extremely jealous of Mozart and used his position as court composer to limit Mozart’s career opportunities. The idea that Salieri “poisoned” Mozart’s career (and possibly Mozart himself) has appeared in many biographic works on Mozart and has inspired a number of dramatic pieces including the opera, Mozart and Salieri as well as the film Amadeus . The evidence which pins Salieri to Mozart’s death the confession which he gave in 1823 when he was admitted to Vienna General Hospital after committing to this and other terrible crimes and attempting suicide by cutting his own throat. As weak as this evidence is, the evidence against Mozart’s other “murderers” is weaker. Both Franz Hofdemel and Franz Xaver Sussmayr are suspected merely on the basis that they had reason to be jealous of Mozart . With even less evidence is the conspiracy that Mozart was poisoned in a great conspiracy by his fellow freemasons for revealing their secrets in his opera, The Magic Flute. While this theory is scintillatingly scandalous and explains why Mozart was buried in a mass grave when he died with many wealthy and well-connected friends, it is missing many important details, such as why the librettist of The Magic Flute, Emanuel Schikaneder, lived to the ripe old age of sixty-one . Another almost far-fetched theory is that Mozart poisoned himself with an overdose of Mercury, which he administered in an attempt to cure himself of Syphilis. Again, this is a very entertaining theory with little evidence to support it, aside from the fact that the swelling of Mozart’s body could possibly be a symptom of Mercury poisoning.
The most popular and most credible explanation for Mozart’s death, mentioned in every Mozart biography as well as the official report of death, is that of natural causes. Kidney failure caused by scarlet or rheumatic fever both illnesses suffered by Mozart in his lifetime, though this is not very exciting, and will never be entirely proved without an autopsy, it remains to be the most likely explanation.

This place is called what?!

When I first learned that the Music and Theater departments at Lewis & Clark were talking about doing a musical I was strangely uninterested. Strange because I was raised on a steady diet of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim. In high school I had big dreams of Tisch's Musical Theater program, but when financial aid fell trough I ended up coming to LC as an International Affairs major instead. Of course when I came to LC I had no idea they didn't "believe" in musicals, but the "purity" of the theater. It seems ridiculous now, but if I had known this I probably wouldn't have come here. Luckily the lack of Sondheim allowed me to be introduced to the great wide world of classical music. For two years I sang Menotti, Ives and Faure and fall so much in love with them that Andrew Lloyd Webber seemed like a distant memory. But now, my old love has come back to haunt me. I have been cast as one of the leading roles in Urinetown. Yes, URINEtown. Talk about purity of theater. I am apprehensively looking forward to a few months of very long rehearsals and a steady stream of obnoxious ear worms....

Brahms and Clara Schumann... Too Hot to Handle?

The nineteenth century saw a rise in the transcription of music by many of the great composers. In 1877, Johannes Brahms transcribed Bach’s Chaconne from the Partia No. 2 in D minor for solo violin into a piano piece (Edel, 47). This work exemplifies an interesting transcription as well as a work that is written solely for the left hand. Brahms sent this transcription to Clara Schumann, and correspondence between the two shows their close artistic relationship as well as his feelings towards the piece. In this paper I will examine the piece in terms of Brahms’ interest in Bach’s music and the function of a piano work written for one hand. The correspondence of Brahms and Clara Schumann will illustrate both the meaning of the piece and the nature of their relationship.
While Brahms created many new ideas with his music, he also loved to study the work of his predecessors; this allowed him to redefine and recreate old genres (Burkholder, 78). Brahms was particularly enthralled with Bach’s Chaconne and transcribed the piece for his dear friend and lifelong correspondent, Clara Schumann. In a letter included with the piece, Brahms refers to Bach’s original as “one of the most wonderful, incomprehensible pieces of music.” Brahms was interested in the effect of the voice produced by a solo violin. “On a single staff, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and the most powerful feelings” (Avins, 515). In order to maintain these powerful feelings in his transcription, Brahms confined the piece to one hand. Brahms also left the harmonic structure implied, as it would be on a violin, this is in contrast with the transcription done of the Chaconne done by Ferruccio Busoni which fills out the harmonies (Edel, 7). When describing the act of playing the piece, he stated, “the similar difficulties, the type of technique, the arpeggios, they all combine—to make me feel like a violinist! (Avins, 516)” Brahms concluded his letter with a few useful tips to Clara for performing the piece, stating that the left hand should not be strained and it should be played “mezza voce ” with “easy and convenient” fingering (Avins, 516). The transcription stays loyal to Bach’s original piece, although there are additions in reference to phrasing and dynamics.
Brahms transcription of this piece arose out of a desire to play like a violinist, though works for one hand only also serve more practical purposes. In the Romantic period, composers began to write and transcribe pieces for one hand only to accommodate pianists who had lost the use of one of their hands (Edel, 7). Coincidentally, the day Clara Schumann received the work; she had strained her right hand. In her response to Brahms, she states that the Chaconne was a “glorious refuge” from her injured state (Edel, 47). She also acknowledges the difficulty the piece; pianist’s right hands are normally much stronger than their left and pieces like these are often used as a technical devise to strengthen the left hand.


Works Cited

Johannes Brahms to Clara Schumann, 1877, in Johannes Brahms: Life and Letters, trans.
Eisinger and Avins. ed. Styra Avins, 515. New York: Oxford University
Press,1997.

Burkholder, Peter J. “Brahms and 20th Century Classical Music,” 19th Century Music,
vol. 8, no. 1. (Summer, 1984), pp. 75-83)

Edel, Theodore , Piano Music For One Hand. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2001, p. 7-48.

Meredith Monk's "Dolmen Music"--Review

Simple layers of music merge together to create a unique sound on Meredith Monk's 1980 album Dolmen Music. A dolmen is a small, plain tomb built with huge boulders. Monk's album, similarly, is hugely powerful music built with small, plain parts. The tracks on the album range from the meditative "Gotham Lullaby," to the rousing piece "The Tale." The tracks are harmonically sparse and rhythmically frank, made great by Monk's stunning voice. With the ability to emulate everything from an indigenous flute to a robot, Monk has no need for words in her pieces. When she does use them in "The Tale," they are strange and thought provoking-- "I still have my allergies"-- Who was trying to take them away? The Album comes to a climax on the last track, when other voices join Monk, imitating her original sound. This eleven-minute piece is an Opera without words; further illustrating Monk’s ability to make music from sound.

John Zorn, "Cat o' Nine Tails (Tex Avery Directs the Marqis de Sade)"-- General Thoughts

John Zorn’s, “Cat o’ Nine Tails (Tex Avery Directs the Marquis de Sade),” is a thirteen minute post-modern masterpiece on speed. Cut to pieces by San Francisco’s renowned Kronos Quartet, the piece begins with sawing scales that suddenly break into a perfect cartoon soundtrack—tentative hopping notes and sliding pratfalls. This comedic break, however, is suddenly interjected by strange brute sounds accompanied atonally. This luckily also only last a few seconds it is replaced by a quick foot-tapping bluegrass melody which again into something else. This cycle continues on for another 10 minutes, bouncing between the angriest, ear-wrenching noises to the most pleasing and elegant harmonies, then transforming into a slow waltz or a sultry jazz tune. Zorn’s ability to connect so many different sounds is admirable—as is the Kronos Quartet’s ability to create so many noises that sound so far from any kind of music on their instruments—unfortunately these things also make this piece grating, irritating and impossible to listen to.

Overture...

Hello and welcome to my blog? This sounds strange. Probably because I am not someone who should be allowed to have a blog. I am a performer, a listener, a thinker, a musician, an observer and a reader--but I am not a writer. Unfortunately for you, blogs are free to anyone who knows how to use the internet. This blog is an attempt to awaken my inner scribbler and possibly share with you some of my thoughts on my favorite subject (Music) along the way. You have been warned...