Shameful Self-Promotion

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A few weeks ago, I posted a clip of a piece I had written, almost the first ever.  (An earlier effort from my teen years also exists, which has a certain youthful charm of its own.)

I'm beginning to realize just how much work goes into this; first, you have to "outline" the piece, in the sense of the way it would go in the large scale.  What would be the main tunes?  (You can't write a piece of more than a minute in length with just a single tune.)  How will the tunes be repeated, or varied?  What will be the chords we use?  And so on, and so forth.

Then you have to worry about whether there is an overall balance to the piece; whether, once you have finished tentatively putting all the tunes in the right places, whether one of them is a little too overpowering where you have placed it...!  Finally, you worry whether it sounded too much like Bach, or Mozart, or whoever!  That part was just too difficult to fix, so I left it alone.

One of my biggest problem was instrumentation.  In a fit of enthusiasm, I wrote the parts in such a way that most of them were interesting tunes, even if hidden in the lower parts.  (Many composers put in more effort into this than even I did.)  So it would help the inner parts to keep their individuality if they were assigned to highly individual tone-colors.  One of the best choices was, from high to low: Oboe, Accordion, Clarinet, Bassoon, and String bass.  (The Bass would be played bowed; a double-bass, in other words.)  The accordion was just a little too out in left field, so I settled on Oboe, Clarinet, French Horn, Bassoon, and Double-bass.

Serenade 7

[Added much, much later:]  I have been tinkering with the piece for weeks, and my principal problem was that I could not use a flute anywhere in it, since every part went down to A below Middle C.  I got the idea to transpose it higher, and now it has a more conventional instrumentation: Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, and the bass doubled by a Bass Clarinet.

It has also been speeded up, and now has a duration of just about 3 minutes.  This is just a little too fast, but some features do come across better; the triplets don't seem to be quite as annoying as they used to be.

It is a short piece, and so does not require a lengthy guided tour.  You might enjoy listening for how the flute and oboe trade the opening tune around the 8th bar (or measure).  At this speed it sounds very cute and perky.

After the repeated first tune, there is the main minor key interlude, followed by the main tune again.  Then there is a second interlude in a more boisterous vein, after which the opening tune returns to round the piece out with a small coda.

There is a texture of churning triplets throughout, which is how I envisioned the piece from the outset.  So, as far as melody is concerned, the tunes are rather simple, but I'm hoping the complex harmonies provide some appeal.  The harmonies are not that complex; it's just that they're rather dense, moving more rapidly than most people are accustomed to hearing.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!

[P.S.: Here is the most recent version (2010/4/13).  It has been slowed back down (about 80 quarter-notes a minute), and I've taken out the bass clarinet and put in a double-bass, which works better at the slower tempo.

Arch

Gilbert & Sullivan: The Mikado

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Hello boys and girls!

Today we're going to talk about a subject about which I know very little: the famous D'Oyly Carte operettas of William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan.  You can easily find out tons about these guys by checking out Wikipedia.  The summary for the busy executive: Gilbert wrote the words, and Sullivan supplied the tunes.  Sullivan was a brilliant composer of light melodies, and Gilbert, in my very humble opinion, wrote some of the funniest lyrics I have ever seen or heard anywhere.  I'm writing this in a hurry, as usual, and I'm going to have to clean up this stuff fairly soon, but...

The Mikado, an opera set in an oriental land that looks suspiciously like a cross between the British conception of what China and Japan were like, was a clever satire of: Victorian England.  This is the only G&S opera with which I'm moderately acquainted, and it is the funniest thing!  Of course the jokes are little on the British side of humor, which means that there's a certain amount of reference to speech patterns that are considered funny by allusion, and other jokes that are funny only if you were there, back in the day.  But yet other portions are funny in any time and place.  This was drawn to my attention by my brother Ray:

To sit in solemn silence 

In a dull, dark dock,

In a pestilential prison

With a life long lock,

Awaiting the sensation of

A short, sharp shock,

With a cheap and chippy chopper

On a Big Black Block.

This same operetta features a lovely song, by a character with the improbable name of Yum-Yum, which goes like this:

The sun, whose rays

Are all ablaze

With ever-living glory,

Does not deny

His majesty

He scorns to tell a story!

He don't exclaim,

"I blush for shame,

So kindly be indulgent."

But, fierce and bold,

In fiery gold,

He glories all effulgent!

I mean to rule the earth,

As he the sky

We really know our worth,

The sun and I!

I mean to rule the earth,

As he the sky.

We really know our worth,

The sun and I!

Observe his flame,

That placid dame,

The moon's Celestial Highness;

There's not a trace

Upon her face

Of diffidence or shyness:

She borrows light

That, through the night,

Mankind may all acclaim her!

And, truth to tell,

She lights up well,

So I, for one, don't blame her!

Ah, pray make no mistake,

We are not shy;

We're very wide awake,

The moon and I!
Ah, pray make no mistake,

We are not shy;

We're very wide awake,

The moon and I!

This particular performer (Leslie Garrett) seems not to really understand the brilliant audacity of the lyrics! Valerie Masterson's rendition of the aria, provides a nice contrast, though the sound is a little distorted.  (Ms. Masterson is retired, but still active in music education and appreciation activities.)

In the US, the Pirates of Penzance is probably more popular than The Mikado.  There are several others, all funny.  They should be all exhumed and popularized while the present wave of Monty Python appreciation lasts!

 [Parenthetical note:  I seem to remember that Gilbert and Sullivan were not on the best of terms for the majority of the period of their collaboration.  I can't cite sources, but I believe there were witnesses to this fact.  In particular, I seem to remember that Gilbert delighted in writing lyrics with impossible meters, just to make it difficult for Sullivan to set them to music.  If this was true, then the aria above could very possibly have been an instance.  Though, as it stands, it has a very ethereally beautiful effect, especially with the frequent phrases with flute and clarinet in octaves that flit through the accompaniment like moonbeams, it must be realized that those phrases serve to disguise the fact that the music really strains to accommodate the lyrics.  But what an achievement it is!

Perhaps the mischief had to do with wagers; Mr Gilbert might have wagered that he could write lyrics which Sir Arthur could not set to music, and so forth.  (It was such a time in history; Jules Verne, for instance, based his story of Around the World in Eighty Days on just such a wager.)  So, even in the absence of direct evidence, we could surmise that there was less collaboration than sabotage in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.]

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Jigs!

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As far as we know, a "jig" was a medieval dance that was so popular it survived well into the Renaissance.  The same dance was called a Gigue in France, and many of the greatest composers wrote Gigues.

I'm pretty sure I've written about jigs before, but hey, why not write about them again?  I'm going to search for jigs on YouTube, and select the jollier ones for you folks; how's that?

Here's Mischa Maisky with a gigue from Bach, played for an unaccompanied 'cello. (It was written that way.)





Here is the last movement of the Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 (made famous in Love Story):


Here is the last movement of Bach's wonderful Suite No. 3 in D major.  (The Suite No. 4 is also in D major; that was a common key to accommodate valveless trumpets of that time.)



In my own mind, the poster-boy for a Jig is "Pop Goes the Weasel", a popular nursery rhyme:


Here is a Bach organ fugue called the Jig Fugue (by English-speakers, of course).

Here is a harpsichord jig by Handel:


One of the most delightful jigs are in Handel's famous Watermusic Suites.  Here's one:


Finally, here is one of my favorites: the Gigue from Bach's French Suite No. 5 in G major.

A Tribute to "Mr. K"

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An article forwarded to the Moderated Classical Music List (MCML) describes how the author joined several generations of students in a New Jersey suburb, in a musical performance in homage to their music teacher who had just passed away.

I myself have never played in an orchestra, but I have sung in choirs (much to their regret), and know a little of the feeling.  A couple of times a year, our own choir here in Pennsylvania gives a performance for the alumni --this means, the choir alumni, now-- and at the end of it, all alums are invited on stage: potentially nearly a thousand, but not all can make it every year, obviously, and they sing some favorite, in fifty different sharps and flats.  (Actually, they sing quite well; I was just kidding.)

Making music together is a strange thing.  You don't have to be a professional to enjoy it; in fact I would venture to suggest that it is only as an amateur that one can enjoy it all the way to the soles of one's feet.  There is an ethereal moment when it all comes together, and for that instant you're taken out of your body, and you can't believe it was you.  (It is harder with singers, because when you sing it's just a tiny bit difficult to hear everyone else.)  No matter how much you may despise your fellow orchestra members, but when you meet each other again, there is that delight in shared achievement (and shared suffering), and I believe this carries over into every thing you do.

This is my inspiration for supporting music education.  It is amazing that the richest country on Earth, the most decadent society that ever existed, finds it difficult to budget funds for this most valuable of educational ideas: music education.

It doesn't matter that orchestras consist often of pretty quarrelsome individuals, poorly paid, for the most part, each one convinced that the rest of them are a bunch of no-talent nothings.  But an amateur orchestra is a place where you see glimpses of genius, and we need more than ever to be shown those glimpses of genius regularly, and so do our children.  It's worth an enormous amount of money to have children feel this good about each other, even if for just a couple of times a week.

Apropos of very little, here is a Bach Cantata being sung by the Tolzer Boy's Choir.  This is cantata no. 148, the opening chorus.  It simply radiates glee, and the kids do a great job of singing it.




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March Forth! It's National Grammar Day

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Who knew?

I thought that, since anything goes with grammar, at least around here, that it could hardly inspire too many others.  But apparently there is an organization called SPOGG (The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, or something on those lines) that established National Grammar Day on March 4th.  One of the leading lights there is Mignon Fogarty, who manages to make Grammarization gramorous to the ordinary reader with dozens of entertaining little tidbits (I wonder whether that needs a hyphen?) on their website.

They certainly cleared up the confusion between that/which pretty efficiently.  You too could avail yourself of this information [that/which -- select one] is so helpful.

So, better late than never

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Kim Yu-Na: Beauty Distilled!

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I've just finished watching one of Yu-na's performances, and I'm absolutely ravished!  Every once in a while I see someone doing something so breathtakingly beautiful that for a few seconds I feel life is so utterly unfair, before I console myself that beauty isn't everything.  (Yeah, right.)  In figure skating (named, as it happens, for the 'figures' they trace on the ice: figure-of-eight, for instance, rather than whether they're overweight, or whatever), the beauty of the art is so intricately and inextricably connected to the beauty of the performer that the two are almost inseparable.  I've been in love with Peggy Fleming and the oh-so-cute Dorothy Hamill, as well as the charismatic Katarina Witt.

In a sense, the Olympics as a whole does embody the willingness of many of us to put more subtle values aside, and revel in pure physical beauty, and beauty in motion.  We're willing to forgive athletes a great deal because when we appreciate them, we're doing so at rather a more primal level.  (Some athletes, unfortunately, are unable to see the difference between the occasional indulgence and perpetual license.)  I think Frank Deford said this first, or at least before I did.  I could swear he used the phrase "primal level" at least once in the last year.

In related news, there is a huge controversy over Tiger Woods's so-called sex addiction.  Bill Maher has some insightful things to say about it.  On the serious side, why couldn't he (Tiger W.) clear his hobby with his wife beforehand?  I think more understanding wives are sorely needed.  On the other hand, maybe he did, but she was too embarrassed to reveal that fact to the public.  On the third hand, maybe they had agreed to a no-disclosure clause, according to which if Tiger went public with his extramarital affairs, he would support her claim that she was taken by surprise.  Bestselling novels have been written on flimsier foundations than this.

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What You See Is Not Always What You Get: Georgia and Verdana

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[This is mostly inspired by an article by Daniel Will-Harris from 2005.]

The virtual reality in which most of us swim has some interesting effects.  The process of becoming comfortable with dots on a screen as both text and image sometimes makes us ascribe greater continuity to it than we should.  A few years ago, the depiction of text on screen looked jagged to most of us, but as screens improved enormously, the text seemed --to eyes at first frustrated with pixellation, but later inured to it -- to become actually perfectly smooth.

To many people, the computer screen is just a means to an end.  As Whatsisname says in the article, to them the screen is just a preview of the real thing.  But for many others, the screen is the end of the process; a blog, for instance, seldom or never makes its way into print.

Meanwhile, with computers everywhere, and everyone getting interested in fonts and publishing (including college professors, who could now get their handouts and quizzes looking just the way they wanted, for instance), the number of talented artists working to create new fonts increased dramatically.  On the other hand, and probably quite appropriately, they viewed a font as something that had to look good (literally) on paper in the sense of being physically printed..  But one pioneer: Matthew Carter, took up the challenge (by Microsoft Corporation, as it happens), to create a font face that looked good on a computer screen.

How are computer graphic images designed to look good?

The earliest computer fonts and printers had just a few pixels to work with.  A dot-matrix printer, for instance, could not pretend to be really depicting a font such as, say, Times Roman, that Model T Ford of fonts.  They could only supply the users of 1980 with a (say) 8x10 matrix of dots, and some printers did a better job than others.  If you were a font designer whose job was to create the shapes that the little needles would ink onto your paper, you would obviously  start with a 8x10 matrix, and come up with something like you see here, and that would be "A". (Actually you wouldn't, because your A would have to stop a little higher on the matrix, since A doesn't go below the baseline!  Heavens, that is the ugliest thing I ever created.)

However, getting the great non-technical public computerized was the first challenge of the computer powers of the early 80s.  The Apple folks were the most successful, and probably to this day, it is "Apple folks" who most resent having to confront the fact that the images on their screens are not really as smooth as they have convinced themselves they are.

The new generation of artists, too, bought into this conceit, and designed fonts as if they would be eventually seen at infinite resolution.  A font designer would now create a font using mathematical curves--the same kinds of things you can do in Powerpoint, when you're building a curve.  This sort of curve is called a spline, because the formulas go from one dot to the next, but the angles are sort of "splinted" together to join smoothly.  The fewer the dots, the more elegant, mathematically.  And, with the technology of scalable graphics, the printers could print these at any size you wished.

Coming back to the screen, though, you were back again to roughly 6x8 matrices, but of course now we could use shades of grey.  Recognizing this, Carter and Microsoft decided to make fonts that would look good at 12 point size on the screen.  And Georgia, the very font we use for this blog, is one of the results.  So as long as you use 12 point on your screen, Georgia is going to look fabulous.  I always thought that Georgia sort of snapped into focus at 12 pitch, and now I know why.  Honestly, I would like to own a non-scalable version of Georgia, because it is just so elegant.

[Added later: as I look at Georgia on my browser, I'm amazed to see that Georgia is represented without dithering at lots of different resolutions; 12 point is just one of them.  Now that is a remarkable achievement.  And all of them, at least to some degree, have that stylishness that I associate with Georgia.  Georgia reminds me of a font commonly used in textbooks of about fifty years ago called American Typewriter, and similar related fonts: Bookman, for instance.  Georgia is far more graceful and refined, but it has that cheeky smoothness that American Typewriter had.  I seem to have misplaced American Typewriter somewhere; I loved to use that, especially for quick reports, as well as for URLs, where it was important to be absolutely clear in spelling.]

Verdana was created for the screen with different goals in mind, and you can read all about it in Mr Will-Harris's article from 2005.  One hopes that more designers have, even temporarily, decided to pursue the goal of fonts that will look good at common resolutions.

Here is an image of a block of text at 12 pitch, blown up roughly 400%, and a block of text at 24 pitch on my monitor, blown up 200%.  You can see how at the smaller resolution (for which the font was designed), it settles on the bitmapped design, while at other resolutions it relies on a sort of aliasing (using grey to smooth out the outlines), with limited success.  I think the bitmapped font is amazingly elegant, and Georgia actually looks gorgeous on paper, too, at any resolution.

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