I have had an amazing song stuck in my head the past month. Yes, it’s another upbeat, indie tune with clever instrumentation. But this time, it’s done with the soothing vocals of two English gentlemen. With beards! ‘The Birds and the Bees’ by Patrick and Eugene:
It was apparently used in a US VW Rabbit commercial, but I haven’t come across it. Instead, it came to my attention through one of YouTube’s amusing minute-or-less gag reels:
As a UT employee, I’m thrilled to be able to use its resources to continue my composition. Even as a Case Western student, continuing my studies was impossible because I was not in the music major brotherhood. Since taking composition classes was out of the question, learning was limited to me versus a couple aged books from a one-room music library.
A year later, the horizons have broadened. I’m no closer to taking music major classes, and that will probably never change. Instead, I have been given no less than a free pass to a warehouse of music. I park in front of Bass Concert Hall without fear of getting ticketed, wander aimlessly through n-thousand scores, and check out all the texts I want for four to six months. Not days or weeks…months! That’s a semester-long hold.
I had a trial run tonight. I flipped through a reproduction of a 200 year-old score and invested in several volumes about counterpoint: J.J. Fux’s (hold your snickering) The Study of Counterpoint (used by many of the old masters themselves), Walter Piston’s Counterpoint, and Kent Kennan’s Counterpoint. Maybe I’ll toss in a few words here about each volume as I peruse them.
The latest earworm I have looping in iTunes comes from an unexpected source. Two unexpected sources, actually: PBS’ show of talking heads The McLaughlin Group and rocker Andrew W.K. As John McLaughlin grows older and more senile (Saturday Night Live proves he’s been that way for more than 15 years), his banter with equally insane Pat Buchanan becomes increasingly odd.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Question: Does Romney’s endorsement seal the deal? Is McCain now the inevitable Republican nominee? I ask you, Pat.
MR. BUCHANAN: John, absent celestial intervention, I think he’s going to get the nomination.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Absent what?
MR. BUCHANAN: Celestial intervention.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, it happens, Pat. May he rest in peace, Paul Wellstone. John Heinz was killed in an airplane crash.
MR. BUCHANAN: Well, let’s not speculate on it.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Death comes in the night on cats’ paws, Pat. You never know.
MR. BUCHANAN: On little cats’ feet. That’s the fog, John, that comes in on little cats’ feet.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: I changed it to cat – Sandberg be damned.
I’m indifferent to Andrew W.K. and his style, but for some reason he found musical inspiration in this conversation. The resulting mini-tune is addictive as hell. I can’t help thinking that without knowledge of the song’s context, it wouldn’t be nearly half as interesting.
I have the attention span of a flea so my personal projects tend to be short and sweet. A couple projects are exceptions. I am pleased to be wrapping up one of them after more than two years.
Franz Joseph Haydn’s oratorio Die Schöpfung (The Creation) is one of my favourite works. I took countless music courses in college, but in the case of The Creation, I discovered it through Final Fantasy VII. ((The opening segment, ‘Die Vorstellung des Chaos,’ can be heard in Disc 1. A FMV shows President Shinra watching Midgar collapsing from his office; The Creation plays in the background. Haydn is given a nod in the musical end credits.)) You don’t have to care about religion to appreciate its depth and beauty. Haydn is music’s version of John Milton, in that he attempts no less than documenting the history of the cosmos.
I’ve been rereleasing public domain music under a Creative Commons license for years, all under the management of Mutopia Project. The overture to Fidelio was big. The complete Tchaichovsky Violin Concerto was bigger. The first of three parts of The Creation, though, intends to beat its predecessors to a pulp and leave them to die in the gutter. I only have a rough draft of the score ready, but it’s a clear demonstration that my efforts have paid off. Producing this draft may have taken 2.5 years, but surprisingly, only about a year of it was spent working. ((In more cases can I care to admit, ‘working’ includes time that I was interning and on the clock at the Federal Reserve Bank.)) The rest was sitting on my thumbs. Most of the time I was waiting for prohibitive bugs in lilypond to be fixed; sometimes it was just long stretches of laziness.
Copyright has also been a problem I’ve needed to work around; the edition I had been using is well away from copyright expiration, meaning I can’t release it without lying or finding a workaround. This year, though, came divine help. My father coincidentally informed me that the Harry Ransom Center at UT Austin picked up a first edition score of The Creation, likely the same edition used at the work’s 1798 première. By adapting my score to this publication, I’ll be using an edition that’s been out of copyright for almost 200 years. Problem solved.
I’d be honoured if you gave the draft a look [PDF, 11.8MB], even if only in passing interest. I’ll upload the MIDIs later for a more practical source of enjoyment. Movement 1 (‘Die Vorstellung des Chaos’) is the big mama and will need to be rendered separately. I apparently forgot to do Movement 7, but that can be fixed with a few minutes of quick typing. After some half-assed proofreading I’ll make individual instrument parts and ship the whole thing off. The desired end result: the largest legal but freely available score on the Internet.
Our next rerun is the 1936 Olympics of spamguy-brand blogging. Er, without the Hitler. This was the third post I ever made, dated February 12, 2003:
Took time off from my hectic homework schedule and went to see a performance of Mahler’s 2nd Symphony today. Simply oustanding; rarely can I say music has emotionally moved me. I was wary of listening to Mahler; I had only heard the 1st, a mediocre work of symphonic chaos disguised behind a double brass section, beforehand. I got quite a shock.
There are five movements to the 2nd, one of which (the fourth movement) is short enough to be called a prelude to the fifth. The first few were OK, but not outstanding. The fifth, though, was unique. Mahler himself called for a small brass section to play backstage, giving the feeling of an oncoming cavalry or such. The brass-happy orchestra gave way to the ominous drums of an oncoming march. As the music grew louder (at fffff, I believe), the first climax occured. A gigantic (for UT students) chorus stepped out and filled every available space, including the storage areas next to the organ. Even a little organist scooted herself into view from behind a hidden area. This action, IMO, all came a little too early, for they sat there for 10 minutes looking stupid. Had they organised (or should I say,
Still, all I can say is…wow. CD recordings don’t do it justice. Go and see it sometime on stage.
Now for a little rant to balance out the evening. I don’t deny the importance of the percussion section in any band or large orchestral work. Mahler calls for tam-tams and triangles and double timpani and gongs and general whacking of things. Despite all this evidence, I say now and will say forever: those who perform in percussion sections are freeloaders who like to hit things. There is no skill in hitting a triangle, nor a gong. One might make the counterargument that it takes a fine precision of mallet choice and such. Bull. Half the time the composer tells you what kind of mallet to use; the other half can take you ten minutes to learn. If they’re going to get the same credit for the hard work the string and brass and woodwind sections are exerting, they should help cater the post-concert receptions or something to compromise for their lack of function.
But I will make an exception with timpani. The timpani has actual pitch, and requires decent precision with the foot petal and skin to sound good. Plus it looks neato. That and the possibility of the xylophone are the only percussions I have respect for. Unless you care to call the piano a percussion instrument?
It will be at least a year and a half before I start playing Portal, but the concept already has me hooked. It’s inexplicable in 20 words or less, so I’ll point you to Wired, who is glad to clarify the iconoclastic storyline for you.
The music ain’t half bad, either. In fact, I find myself listening to the last song on the soundtrack, ‘Still Alive,’ on loop. The song is a lighthearted spin on the Half-Life universe (science kills people, then makes cool guns for killing more people, end of story) rendered by a heavily audio-filtered female singsong voice. It’s Valve’s best effort at music not meant as background texture. It also contains their best humour.
Listen and download the song here. (Warning: as the lyrics and YTMND image seem to suggest, there are numerous spoilers in the form of game in-jokes. I don’t feel spoiled yet, so I recommend indulging yourself.)
Go ahead and leave me.
I think I prefer to stay inside.
Maybe you’ll find someone else to help you.
Maybe Black Mesa?
That was a joke. Ha ha, fat chance.
Anyway, this cake is great. It’s so delicious and moist.
Look at me still talking when there’s science to do.
When I look out there, it makes me glad I’m not you.
I’ve experiments to run; there is research to be done
on the people who are still alive.
And believe me, I am still alive.
I’m doing science and I’m still alive.
I feel fantastic and I’m still alive.
While you’re dying I’ll be still alive.
And when you’re dead I will be still alive.
STILL ALIVE