I think this quote is doing the rounds on the Net, but it's worth putting it here anyway: 

Here’s the thing. When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.... So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years.

Chris Rock

"In Conversation" in Vulture

Fascicles

A friend on Facebook has just alerted me to the following delightful quote, which comes from the preface of an academic book: ‎"The editors will be grateful to our readers if they would report to the editors any errors (typograhical or otherwise) they encounter in this or the other published fascicles."

Typograhical is a great word, the sort of word someone just about to sneeze might use.  However, I didn't notice typograhical at first because I assumed the error was a substitution of fascicles for facsimiles.  I thought fascicles wasn't even a word, but I'm completely wrong on that score.  It has a long established history, and is used (as mandrel was in my previous post) in a variety of circumstances.  

Basically it refers to a bundle or a cluster of somethings.   It's common in anatomy in regard to nerves and muscles, and even vascular tissue, and it turns up in botany as a cluster of flowers or leaves, such as the bundles of thin leaves (or needles) of pines.   It can also be a particular edition of a series of papers published one at a time, or even an extension of that, as this article on Emily Dickinson's poems indicates. (That piece probably gets the prize for using the word fascicles more times than any other in as short a space as possible.)

Now that we've discovered the word, it's probable you could use it in a variety of circumstances, and fool your less literary friends (which included me until a few minutes ago).  A fascicle of briefcases for men who are waiting on the railway platform for their train.   A large (very large) fascicle of teenagers attending a rock concert.  The fascicles of poo the dog leaves lying around outside in a variety of places over a period of days (that's a very serial approach).  A fascicle of odd papers scattered over the top of my printer which is where odd papers now reside since I lost the use of a more practical space a couple of years ago.

So, there you go: two new words in a single day.  I'll be catching up with two-year-olds soon!

Where's the focus?

A certain kind of seriousness is a pitfall when we deal with an artform in a religious context. It arises from several sources: confusing the artform itself with what motivates the artist, insecurity about technical and choreographic skills, and secret uncertainty about the appropriateness of art in church.

These confusions and uncertainties account for the unfortunate self-importance of some dance made for religious settings. It is time for us to admit that the ludicrous stiffness and - dare I say it? - self-absorbed earnestness of this kind of 'religious' dance is not only highly questionable theologically; it is down-right off-putting to those who watch.

We may respond that we are not dancing for the watcher, we are dancing for God. But is that really what we are doing? Surely we do not believe that God needs our dance. We may be helped out of this confusion by remembering that even the Benedictines, those unsurpassed singers of Gregorian chant, emphatically state that they do not chant 'for God;' they do not chant because God somehow needs their chant. To be sure, they chant 'to the glory of God.' But they are quite clear that it is they - the community - not God, who need the healing, soaring, timeless beauty of the chant.

In the same way, it is our communities that need the communication our dancing has to offer. When dance is made to be watched, its primary flow of communication is outward toward real people, people like us.

What I am trying to say is astringently summed up in the comment of a cleryperson about dance he had recently seen in a cathedral liturgy. Very perceptive about the arts in the church, and also aware of his own physical reserve, he expressed his disappointment wit what he had seen by remarking, 'It was so tight and solemn! I could have choreographed it myself.'

This is from pp 34-5 of Performer as Priest and Prophet, the book I wrote about the other day. I found this comment about the Benedictines chanting to the glory of God rather than for the glory of God something that strikes a particular chord with me. When I played in church regularly, I always found it difficult to somehow get myself into a place where I was focusing on God in the playing. What I was mostly focusing on was my own self and my playing and whether it was good, bad or incredible; what I also focused on was the response of the congregation, not to me, but to what the music itself was doing amongst them.

The first of those two is something I suspect most artists have difficulty with: getting yourself out of the road. But there was considerable joy in having a sense that the music and you and the congregation were at one.

On the other hand, being a performer is a gift. The music will be different if you don't perform, if you merely play it. In church, if you don't lead the music, and draw the congregation along in that leading, then things are half-hearted and dull. Whether a performer can ever stand outside him or herself and just let the music take over is something I'm not sure about. I hear great artists saying it happens; I'm not sure that I'm convinced.

Intuition and Structure in Composing and more...

I bought a copy of a book called Performer as Priest and Prophet a few months ago, but hadn't got round to reading it. I first came across it at work, where my boss had a borrowed copy from the Hewitson Library. Something about it rang bells, and I bought a secondhand copy (it's out of print). However, with all the shifting around in the house due to the renovation of the kitchen, it kind of got shelved in more ways than one.

The book is by Judith Rock, a professional dancer (and former auxiliary NYPD police officer!), and Norman Mealy, a liturgist and musician (and occasional hymn-writer) - Mealy died before it was completed, but still had a great deal of input.

I only began reading the book this morning (in the bath - a great place to read: the mind seems more relaxed, and absorbs more, and is less distracted), so I can't really comment on it overall. But one thing struck me, and that was Rock's comments on intuition in the arts. (She wrote the Introduction.)

It made me consider how I write music. To an extent, I've tended to put down my way of composing. For the most part, I start at the beginning and finish at the end. Sometimes I do some chopping and changing on the way (particularly now that I work half between the piano and half between the Sibelius program), and at all times I'm looking for the right note or chord in relation to what goes before and after. But I seldom start out with a 'plan,' and sometimes the music just doesn't go - even though it seemed promising at the time - and gets abandoned before it reaches the end. Sometimes something that seemed promising is promising, but it takes a patch of time away from it to realise it. My piano piece, the one that wound up with the title, A Cowboy Learns the Tarantella, is a case in point. I woke up with the 'theme' running around in my head, went to the piano, jotted it down and then thought: that's pretty basic. But a few days later it came together, and 'basic' or not, it works. And Schoenberg Plays with his grandchildren - another piece that didn't in any way start out with that title (the titles tend to come later) - also started out with what seemed a great idea, but it just didn't want to work. It was only after I came back to it some time later than I saw the potential: same kind of material, but different approach.

I kind of find the music as I go along, rather than having it all worked out beforehand. Even with songs, it's as if a particular idea connects itself to the opening words, and we go along from there. It's very possible that a totally different idea could work - in fact, more than possible. What gets written on Tuesday may not have turned up on Thursday.

Structure suffers a bit in the process - I've discussed this several times in this blog - and there have been pieces, particularly pieces for larger forces than just a piano, or piano and voice, that have required some considerable sorting out. That's perfectly normal, of course, for any work, and I probably do it more with the piano pieces and such than I remember afterwards. It's just because they're smaller scale and more manageable in terms of tidying up structure.

What I'm saying is that I suspect far more composers work intuitively than we're led to believe by musicologists. The latter find all manner of connections in works afterwards; the composer doesn't think 'rationally' about these connections at the time; he or she tends to be so focused on getting the thing down on paper (preferably before it all blows away and he or she loses concentration) that he/she doesn't pick up a number of the connections.

But when you go back over your own work - particularly some time later, after you've forgotten the sweaty stage - you can often be surprised by what's turned up.

And talking of that, in one of the posts I just picked up regarding structure, I find that I was writing about a screenwriter called Blake Snyder. I'd forgotten his name altogether, but now realise I've just read a book by him called Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies: the screenwriter's guide to every story ever told. It's a sequel to Save the Cat! the last book on screenwriting you'll ever need. When I got Save the Cat! on interloan, I thought it was the first of the two books I was getting; it was the second. This second title goes through about fifty well-known movies and shows how each and every one of them follows a structure that's virtually identical.

Now whether that's really true is another matter. Whether the scriptwriters sat down and said: here's the structure, what story can we tell, is another matter altogether. I rather think Snyder has come along, like a musicologist, and made these films fit his theory. In the end the book isn't very inspiring. I'd still like to have a look at the first of the two books, though I suspect it's title is a little overblown. Yes, certain facets of storytelling turn up again and again, particularly in the movies - and there's a certain satisfaction in that. But quirkiness in movies, oddball approaches, the thing that is different, is also satisfying, and it would be horrible to think that we would have to endure endless movies all plotted along similar lines forever and ever Amen.

(Incidentally, I've just seen that Snyder died just last month of a pulmonary embolism- he was only 52.)

Well, I've strayed a fair way from my opening, but that's what happens when you don't have to go to work for a couple of days, and can relax while blogging!

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.

School of Rock

Caught up with The School of Rock on telly last night, and wished I'd recorded it. It turned out not to be in the least bit offensive, unless you regard rock 'n' roll as offensive in itself - as plainly some of the parents of children at this uptight school do. It's probably a fairly conventional story - oddball teacher (in this case he's not a teacher at all) takes hold of a straight-laced class and turns them into human beings - and it's been done umpteen times. The difference here is Jack Black, who's never been an actor I was much endeared to. In this movie, however, he's so alive and so hilarious with it, and such a screwball with a passion that you can't help but love him. (Both the character and Black's playing of him.) Black fills each scene with such manic energy that it's a wonder he doesn't explode. He's absolutely crazy, but manages a bit of responsibility when necessary. He's certainly more alive than his boring flatmate - and the boring flatmate's even more boring girlfriend who accuses everyone else around of manipulating when she's the one actually doing it.
Joan Cusack is a classic match for Black's antic personality. She seems all together, but just every so often some weird look comes into her eyes, and you know there's another maniac just waiting to break out. She never quite gets the chance to do it, even though she's primed a little with some beer in one scene, and later on meets a rock bandsman with a brain as speedy as a snail's, and almost seems to be about to leap all over his superb body (which he invitingly keeps on touching!).
There isn't a member of the cast who puts a foot wrong: the kids are great, the parents have their own manic style (the moment when it's announced that their teacher is a fraud is wonderful, as they all melt into: there's an axe murderer teaching our children), and the various rock band players are as dopey as they come - but endearing.
Mike White wrote the script, and plays the slow-witted flat mate. Brilliantly.
I loved it.

Performer as Priest and Prophet

...mediocrity is where most performers exist: midway between extremes, neither brilliant nor excessively dull. One does one's best with the gift one is given. The point is that to say yes to that gift as it really is, is to say yes to its limits - and yes to the honest work that hones and polishes the gift. This is not the anxious, angry work that is really a denial of limits: 'If I just do a little more, then I'll be able to..." A Salieri can never become a Mozart. To say yes clears the air so that one can see and rejoice in things as they really are.

From Performer as Priest and Prophet, chapter 4 (pg 75), by Judith Rock and Norman Mealy, published Harper & Row 1988

I don't think the authors mean by 'mediocrity' a state of poor artistry, but of the 'mean' between brilliant and excessively dull.