Still remembering after all these years

Courtesy DoctorsHangout.com

I've been talking a bit about memorising again in this blog, and have started to work my way back through the pieces - Scripture extracts and poems - that I've learnt over the years. After working over the last year on the huge Psalm 119 with its 176 verses (around about 360 lines; some verses have three lines as opposed to two) and its repetitions that vary marginally but can be confusing to keep in the right place, everything else seems a piece of cake.

It's been intriguing to come back to the pieces I'd memorised in the past - which I've revised more than a couple of times over the years - and find that they're mostly intact. I've now caught up with nine of them, and only one has proved hard to get back into. The others have mostly picked themselves up again during a half an hour's walk with the dog. Which has surprised me. I thought I might be starting almost from scratch, but in fact, the memory has kept hold of these lines over the years, parked them somewhere in the archives, went off and found them now that I need them again, and after a bit of dusting off and polishing, has brought them back into the main store.

As I say, only one has proved hard to get to grips with. Some of the lines were intact, but others took some real relearning. This was another Psalm, as it happens. Number 37, which, like Psalm 119, has quite a bit of repetition built into it. Furthermore, it doesn't flow logically from one thing to another. It's as if the writer decided he has a theme and he has to hammer it home, revolving around and around it until he's satisfied that he's covered all his bases. The fact that to the reader it seems like he's gone into a bit of overkill is another matter.

Another Psalm (139) came back much more easily, and there was a reason for this. Like 37, it has a focus and comes at it from all sorts of angles. But I'd first learned this psalm by adding a tune (of sorts) to it, and between the remembering of the tune and the revising of the words, it came back to me within the proverbial half-hour dog-walk.

All this is encouraging because I'm due to hit the big 70 next year (all things being equal, and God willing) and I'm heading into that time of life when things can go wrong with the body and the mind - if they haven't already. I could still get dementia/Alzheimer's (two blood relations, an aunt and an uncle, have had it) so I'm not assuming that doing all this memory work will necessarily stave off trouble with the brain. No one really knows, although we keep on saying that keeping the brain active and creative is supposed to help.

But apart from whatever might happen in the future, what this ability to remember stuff is saying is that the brain never stops enjoying working. The idea that our brains kind of go into old age mode after a while is a nonsense; it seems that they're much more likely to keep functioning even when the body is having problems if we encourage them. (By the way, I note that a recent movie is using the other piece of nonsense about us only ever using ten percent of our brains as its tagline. That bit of twaddle was discredited decades ago.)

Body

Jack Body is the composer of the week on the Concert Programme. His music has its moments, with some pieces that are exciting because they're almost entirely rhythmic, and others that hang around a tiny phrase and barely move, becoming like a kind of brainworm. I don't think that's quite the word I'm looking for: I mean when a tune gets in your head and you can't get rid of it. Although that's pretty rare with Body's music, which seldom stays in the mind. 

But it occurred to me this morning what it is that makes his music inaccessible. It's geared for top quality players, people who are either professional musicians, or who specialise in this kind of modern music, or amateurs with exceptional skills. Compare this approach to the way composers in the past worked: they provided music that both amateurs and professionals could play, at least in terms of the smaller scale works. I haven't heard much of Body's music that sounds to me as though a decent amateur could manage it - at least not without a lot of hard work. And then, who would they play it for? You have to be a true Body disciple to really want to listen to his music. I've had the radio on most mornings this week when his music has been played. It doesn't come across as satisfying music somehow - it's intellectual and not often emotional, to me at least. The piece currently on has a flute and a harp tripping around a few notes over and over, making slightly different patterns, but not actually going anywhere at all. Nothing to engage the heart. 

Yesterday I heard parts of an interview with James McCarthy, a British composer whose cantata, 17 Days, is being performed in NZ. McCarthy made two comments during the course of the interview which struck me as significant: "I want to write music that people want to perform," and, "It took me ten years to get the modernist approach to writing out of my system." I hope I've quoted him accurately, but I jotted these down almost as soon as he said them. McCarthy's music is being performed (and yes I know Body's is too), but it's performed to large audiences and to rave reviews. It's not reactionary - there's plenty of modern sounds in it - but it can be listened to and will affect the heart as well as the head. 

For me this is the great lack in Body's music: the heart doesn't often get engaged. (The flautist and the harpist are now chattering around another couple of phrases, and still going nowhere...and now two women are chanting the same phrase over and over...and over...)

The 'New' Music

Just listening again to some of the tracks from the Resound series that are available for downloading via the Concert programme.   The composers include Jack Body and Jack Spiers, Eve de Castro Robinson, Ross Harris, and others.

It's an interesting thing - to my mind - that there's a kind of uniformity of expression amongst many of these composers: the extreme angularity of vocal lines, for instance; anything that smacks of melody has to avoided at all costs.  The setting of words that never highlights them but merely uses them as sounds.  The dissonant chords that waft in and out in a random fashion.  The fiddly bits on wind and brass instruments that don't seem to connect with the rest of the piece: flutes fluttering without focus, trumpets butting in with little edgy moments.   Long sustained chords that go nowhere.  Instruments used for a few bars and then forgotten.   Rhythmless movement. 

And at the end, an audience that isn't really sure that the piece is finished. 

What surprises me is that there's so little parody of this kind of music - or perhaps the music is already a parody of itself?

To be fair, some of the music I've downloaded off this site, even where it's off the wall, is actually music, in that it knows where it's going, enjoys setting words, uses electronic elements intelligently (and musically), and has rhythm.  Father's telescope, by Kit Powell, with its surreal text, is a lot of fun, for instance.  Nelson Wattie is the baritone stretching up to notes that seem curiously out of reach, and Barry Empson is the 'actor', speaking lines in and out of the music.  

John Psathas

Great documentary on John Psathas, the New Zealand composer, on the weekend. It was called Sound and Fury. I caught up with it last night on video.

Quite a bit of the music was familiar, because I seem to have acquired several CDs with Psathas music on them, but it was good to see the pieces being played as well as hearing them. The one in the German Festival was so energetic - typical of Psathas' style, but it was energetic enough for him to say it even got him going. And the Marimba concerto was just fantastic.

But apart from the music, his comments on the process of composing: the need for uninterrupted concentration and the way interruptions make you easily lose the thread; the way working as a composer makes you guilty because you're not involved with your family; the way a bit of your music will get inside your head and wake you in the middle of the night, and so on.

All very familiar, even for this much less able composer.

Interesting too that he was a pupil of Jack Body at university. I can't imagine a composer less like Psathas!

Christopher Norton

I don't seem to have mentioned on this blog that last year I bought a book of NZ pieces from SOUNZ entitled First Fifteen.
In spite of the title (which relates to the number of composers), there are 32 pieces in it, ranging in difficulty from moderate to difficult (John Psathas' Waiting for an aeroplane comes at difficult the end of the range), and though a few of the pieces are either beyond me in terms of just getting my brain and fingers to coordinate, and a very few are just not my cup of tea (Dorothy Buchanan, and my old bête noire, Jack Body), I've thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the rest. It's been my best music purchase for a long time.
One of the pieces is by Christopher Norton, who comes from Dunedin originally (his sister attends our church), and whose made a big name for himself by composing heaps of pieces in modern styles for people learning the piano. This piece is four, three (it swings back and forth between 4/4 and 3/4) and is a delight: tricky enough to require a bit of work, but very playable once you've got your fingers around it.
So, recently, when I discovered the Sheet Music Plus site, where you can buy music online at both full and sale price, I searched for the volume that four, three comes from, and ordered it. The Christopher Norton Rock Preludes Collection arrived yesterday, and again the pieces are tricky enough to make you work, but not hard to play once you've figured things out. Looks like I'll be getting my money's worth out of this lot too. It's a site I'll need to keep away from. Our local music shop has cut back on the amount of sheet music they have in stock these days, so I don't visit them much. Sheet Music Plus has virtually everything you'd want on the planet, it seems, which could get very pricey!

Apropos of nothing to do with the above, but I don't seem to have mentioned Howie Mandel and his brief videos for Buy.com that keep appearing on You Tube. They're annoyingly busy and Mandel is a bit like a frenetic wasp; furthermore they often border on the crude. Guess he's got to make his money somehow.

Body change?

If our entire body is supposed to renew itself every 7 years, if all our blood renews itself every three to four months, and if even our skin renews itself every 28 days, how come I wind up with exactly the same spots, wrinkles, scars and bumps every time?
According to a book by Larry Dossey called Space, Time & Medicine, the body only takes 5 years to renew completely. He says somebody called Aebersold has concluded that 98% of the our 10 to the power of 28 atoms are renewed annually. The same source says the lining of the stomach is replaced every week (so much for cast-iron stomachs); the liver is regenerated every six weeks.
Hmmm. Does this mean that the DNA coding actually changes in accordance with the bumps and bruises we receive through life and keeps track of them? How odd.
Another source claims men take a year longer than women to completely change. I wonder why?
My suspicion is that there may be an element of truth in this body change business, but it’s hard to find a medical fact about it. Most sites that talk about it are promoting beauty products, rather than medical information. Have to keep digging on this one, I think.

Ryan Youens

A few years ago at Dunedin City Baptist (somewhere between 2002 and 2005) a young fellow called Ryan Youens used to play the piano during the worship, on occasions. It was a period when we had a number of fine pianists; there was also another youth who was training to be a doctor.

Ryan's been gone from Dunedin for at least three years, so it was good to catch up with him on Facebook today, and learn something of what he's doing.

He completed his Masters degree in composition early in 2007 at the New Zealand School of Music in Wellington, working with Jack Body, Michael Norris and John Psathas. (Note that his teachers include one of my favourite composers and one of my not-favourites!)

Ryan had already had a fairly illustrous academic time: he began studying at Auckland University in 2001, moved to Otago University, studied with Anthony Ritchie and graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree with first class honours in 2005. He also received a couple of prizes during his Otago stint.

Ryan’s work has been performed by the Gruppetto Quartet (Greece), Auckland Symphony Orchestra, Southern Sinfonia, Marama Chamber Orchestra, Dunedin Youth Orchestra, Southern Consort of Singers, The Committee and at the 2007 Asian Composers League Festival in Wellington.

He's been a part of the NZSO/TODD Young Composer Awards on three occasions and his piece “Rakaia” was a part of the 2008 NZSO/SOUNZ Readings.

Ryan now lives back in Auckland, his hometown, works as a composer, music copyist and engraver, teaches music, conducts several orchestras and is frequently arranging and orchestrating music which has been performed in New Zealand, Europe, North and South America.

Sounds like Ryan has a busy career ahead of him!

Thanks to the SOUNZ site for some of this info

On the Street Where I Live

We’re so serious about our New Zealand music. I’ve just been watching Jack Body’s On the Street Where I Live, which features Stephen de Pledge playing the piano, and Body’s (disembodied) voice talking casually about his house.
At the end of the video we have a quite unnecessary few moments of Body himself telling us something about the piece. But what is there to tell? It’s all there in the work: a composer chatting on about his house, the birds, the street; a pianist fitting in a random bunch of notes that sometimes fit neatly to the words, most often merely trickle around them. Seldom do they add much to the speech, which is a pity, because it’s plain that Body could have done something with more depth in it. What he says is simple and charming; what the music does is just twitter away in the modernist style, offering little for the listener to get hold of, and doing a few crashes when Body talks about being overwhelmed by stuff in the house, and a few knocks and whistles when he talks about birds.
The music's about as interesting as office furniture. It's there for the voice to sit on, but contributes nothing to the listener.
Stephen de Pledge plays it all with a seriousness that probably mostly comes from having to concentrate deeply in order to make sure he fits in with the recorded voice. And he does that perfectly. Full marks to him, at least.

Go sing Gao Ping

After my complaints about gutteralising tennis players yesterday, now we have classical (fine/modern/serious) pianists who sing along with their own compositions - intentionally.

I've just been listening - half-heartedly - to Gao Ping, who writes his own music, and writes it for a 'vocalising pianist.' Oh, dear. Of course the audience raved at him (well, there was one bloke going 'Yahoo' above the polite clapping), and of course the man can actually play. But his idea that it's not unusual for pianists to sing along to their playing is okay, except where it detracts from the composer's music. I suppose you could say it isn't detracting in this case, but that's a moot point. I kept thinking my wife was calling me from upstairs.

For the record, he was playing: Concealed Kisses; Lightspeed Worlds; Prayers Mask; Two Soviet Love Songs for Vocalizing Pianist. There were bits of Shostakovich thrown into the last one, and some popular melody by Gershwin, or Irving Berlin, or Cole Porter, or somesuch. And then it ended with a great crash, and a fall down the keyboard...and surprise! that was it. (The yahooer then yahooed.)

Ping's site tells us: "A New Zealand critic described Gao Ping's performances as "spellbinding" and "magical." Jack Body has said that Gao Ping is a "total musician, a pianist of great intelligence and sensitivity, an astounding improviser, and a composer whose effortless fluency I envy deeply." The People's Music has called Gao's recitals "sensational" and the Cincinnati Enquirer praised Gao's technique as "fleet and facile".

I'm afraid Jack Body's opinion of what is new and what is worthwhile - and mine - don't often coincide. Occasionally Body will produce something that could conceivably be called music, but in general he's made his name doing things that nobody calls music except those who want to be on the bandwagon looking for the Emperor's new clothes.