Der Platz ist verflucht!

One of the many phrases learned in my new program, Learning German Through Opera. Hopefully I'll run into a lot of conversations involving love and/or death. So, as Berg's Wozzeck throws his wife into the river, I'm just taking a break from reading Irish plays (also about love and/or death) to read the online libretto. I've never really listened to opera before, and I have to say that it gets stuck in your head a bit. There's more dialogue than I originally thought, and even the recitative (speak-singing) is almost just intoned talking. It's really kind of a disappointment; I was expecting uninterrupted atonal arias.

One of my favorite arias, Maria's (Wozzeck's wife, pre-drowning) first, where she sings "eia popeia," crops up again just after Wozzeck kills her on some scrambled ragtime-esque saloon piano riff. Genius. The Viennese are like the stoic grandpa: when he makes a joke, it's such a shock you're not sure whether to laugh.

Went to another new-music concert last night, this time a choral one. The choir moved around the audience, rearranging itself for each piece. It was in the chapel, so the pews were facing each other ("These Protestants must have straight backs") and the choir split itself up between the two sides, with half the choir on the furthest-back pew of each side. Kind of a cool effect, but it takes a special type of writing, which didn't always work out. You would need to sacrifice the traditional choral idea of blending and purity of sound for a distinctly individual performance; for the people in the back pews, there was always one person blasting into your ear. Some of them worked, some didn't. One that did was a German translation of the e.e. cummings poem

silence

.is
a
looking

bird:the

turn
ing;edge,of
life

(inquiry before snow

If you were wondering, the title means "This place is haunted!" said by Wozzeck at the start of Act I, Scene ii.

For aspiring violinists, cellists, and electric guitarists

If you want to be the first to perform my newly written piece (written in the last three hours) "Movement for Electric Guitar Trio I," then the first Electric Guitar Trio (like a piano trio but with an electric guitar instead) that e-mails me gets the score, first performance rights are free. About 3-4', lots of glissandi, and it must be played with the guitar on your lap, slide in your left hand (if you're right-handed). Good luck.

The palm stands on the edge of space

Oh man. I mean, a solid minute of 5-against-4, just destroying the piano. One moment a delicate consonance, suspensions hanging in the air, then a fortissimo crashing dissonance.

It's true that I do a lot of composing on the computer, but that seems to be a last resort. If you write a poem on the computer, you edit it, you pare the lines, you seem to interrupt yourself mid-sentence with the delete key. But if you write it on paper, you get a series of parenthetical comments, cross-outs where you can still see the
word, lines circled and moved, stanzas displaced. I won't diminish the invention of the musical typewriter, (Finale 2007, Garritan Personal Orchestra edition) but the last thing I need is for someone to interrupt the music in my brain with poorly humanized piano samples.

So, the pieces of my compositions that I keep are invariably the parts that go down on paper, straight from my brain. Anything added in the computer stage is tenuous at best, drivel at worst. I just wrote out, by hand, the eight-measure (each measure repeated 2-4 times) piano interlude bringing us back from the B section (B D Eb F Gb A) to the A section (C Db F Gb Ab Bb). And when I put it into the computer, I didn't change a note.

Hear the bad computer synthesis: Piano Etude

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I'm just a bit too tired, taking the night off from music. By "night off" I mean that I already practiced piano (Beethoven's first sonata and the beginning of the "Appassionata") for two hours or so, read scores while listening to recordings for about a half hour, and composed for another hour and a half. Basically, I've done nothing but music all night.

I decided to pick back up the barely thumbed-through book of Ezra Pound poems that I bought for class long ago. Once again, they don't make sense unless you read them aloud. It's like sitting there staring at music without trying to at least hum it, much less play it. So, mumbling under my breath late at night while exhausted from a weekend of working nearly 20 hours, also exhausted from the hot whiskey (hey, it helps stave off the cold), I found a new appreciation for Ezra Pound. Not really any poem in particular so far, but just lines like

Your mind and you are our Sargasso sea;
London has swept about you this score years
and bright ships left you this or that in fee:

that just make utterly no sense on a literal level, but when you say it aloud, sure, maybe it makes sense. But, continue reading the poem; she--the poem is "Portrait D'unne Femme"--is a shell of a woman, embodying multiplicity, a pretty face. That deliberately ambiguous phrase "Your mind and you are our Sargasso sea" is itself a portrait of her.

And this is why I now love Ezra Pound.

Anyway, I also have something saved up comparing Beethoven to Beckett (again). But that's for another day.

The Palm at the End of the Mind

I went to the Node Ensemble concert last night--the contemporary music group at Trinity--and Ben told me two weeks for scores, in time to start rehearsals and have a performance the third week of April. So, it's been a solid nine hours today of sitting here in my room. Maybe 2 1/2 hours sketching, an hour wrestling my computer, then a solid five of fleshing it out. So far, up to about three minutes. The instrumentation is: alto sax, violin, guitar, organ, piano, and two recorders.

I tried this thing where I pick six pitch-classes (any Db, any C, etc.) and only use those six pitch-classes for a good chunk of the piece. Lots of rhythmic looping, 5-against-3 and such. Then I switch to another six (gradually, of course) and eventually switch back to the original six. Also, there's a long section where the instruments all just stay on one note and play rhythms. Time falls apart; the measure is destroyed. They players only play the same rhythm (relatively speaking) but at different speeds. The rhythm is: three sixteenth-note triplets, eighth-note rest, two sixteenths, eight-note rest.

Probably about a minute of that right now, but I'd like to extend it to two or three minutes. The best part is when the organ comes blasting in, moving at 1/18th the speed of the recorder, and holds this deafening chord. The second-best part is the instructions to the pianist, in the last section, where while the right hand plays pianissimo the left hand hits the second-to-lowest Gb, Ab, and Bb with his knuckles, preferably wearing huge rings. Well, anyway. You'll just have to fly to Dublin.

New, in the Old Style: Sean Nos Settings in Contemporary Irish Classical Music

I'm finally getting my act together and applying for this Lilly Project summer research grant. They're specifically oriented for research in regard to a vocation, and they carry a stipend of $3,000. I e-mailed my composition professor (at Willamette) today to ask him to sponsor me, figured out a rough outline of my proposal, and so it's basically in the bag. You know, I don't feel like re-typing this whole thing, so here's the (relevant parts of the) e-mail:

I've been studying composition with Donnacha Dennehy at Trinity, and am interested in the fusion of ethnic (specifically Irish) music and song with classical notation and compositional style. Donnacha showed us one of his sean nos settings where he collaborated with an Irish singer to set one of the texts for singer and his ensemble, the Crash Ensemble. Since sean nos is traditionally unaccompanied, he had to record the singer and create a system of just-intonation that would capture the actual notes sang, not the equal-tempered approximations. You can hear something like this on one of his other pieces with a sean nos text and singer, Gra agus Bas (Love and Death). In talking casually around the school with some of the other students, as well as some of the graduate students, it seems like there's a strong resurgence in Ireland of incorporating this music into a contemporary setting.

Not all that tough, pretty much flawless. Just have to write up a budget, flesh out some details, and cash a check for $3,000. In other news, the Crash Ensemble is playing Feb. 15 as part of the RTE (national television station) music festival for living composers, focusing on the music of Arvo Part. I already bought tickets. And the Trinity new music ensemble is playing in the chapel tomorrow night, so I'm going to go see that and document it for at least the internet. Hopefully also for print, and maybe even to get me other writing jobs. If this sean-nos project pans out, it should keep me going through the summer and let me spend all my time, every waking hour, listening to newer, stranger sounds, while reading the newer, weirder scores.

And let their juices mingle

I made soup, get your mind out of the gutter.

Roughly the recipe for Escarole soup with garbanzo beans and pasta, except I couldn't find escarole. Also, I used dried marjoram/oregano/dried pepper mix, added potatoes and carrots, black lentils, coriander seeds, used (organic!) vegetable bouillion instead of stock, and added a half-onion. That's right, vegan soup. It almost overflowed in the pot. It's quite good, so I might just make it every week. Or every night, although it will take me a couple days to work my way through this.

So, I'm only a militant vegetarian when asked if I'm a militant vegetarian. I tried keeping it cool with the housemate, but there's something about, "You know, there are two kinds of vegetarians:" (and you know where that goes) that is like throwing gas on a fire for me. Imagine walking up to someone--"There are two kinds of Americans:," or "There are two kinds of women:," except this time it's a conscious decision on the person's part. I told him I was militant, but the glory of our liberal society is that I don't have to kill him. I forgot about this, although I knew he was a farmer, but it turns out that he's a cattle farmer. So, you know, argued for a while. Then I ate my soup and he ate his.

In other news, I slept for 3 hours last night (from around 2-5) in the midst of finishing my paper. Turned it in at 11 this morning, and now I just kind of want to start another one. I might have postpartum depression. Except I just played violin for a couple hours instead.

Like a hundred disillusioned hedge fund managers contemplating ending it all over the Golden Gate Bridge:

And to think, all in my back garden.

When Lily Briscoe (in To the Lighthouse) paints her picture, she must "be on a level with ordinary experience, to feel simply that's a chair, that's a table, and yet at the same time, It's a miracle, it's an ecstacy."

Probably my favorite passage.

What I Wish the Prompt Were:

"Killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of the woman writer," (Woolf). Discuss Lily Briscoe's relationship with Mrs Ramsay with complete disregard for this statement.

Back to writing.

Someone, someone please

develop this into a novel:

Elephant Shot Dead After Crashing Party

Tusker, we hardly knew thee.

Back to bend of bay

I try to rationalize my absence (laziness) by telling myself that writing a blog titled "Dublin on Nitrogen" while in the haven of a Richland basement would be a lie. Really, though, I was just playing Beethoven. Tons of Beethoven. Also some Debussy. Scriabin when I was feeling it.

So, I got back to Dublin Friday morning after traveling since 5 a.m. Thursday, after sleeping for all of an hour Wednesday night. I truly cannot sleep before traveling. Something in me feels that since I will be gone for so long I just need to enjoy every last microsecond of wherever I am. In this case, it mostly meant playing Beethoven and reading and eating leftovers.

I checked my schedule today (Saturday), after sleeping all day Friday and napping/reading all of Friday night. I saw that I was scheduled to work tonight until midnight, and Sunday from 3-10, and almost cried. I don't have my essays done, and they're due Monday afternoon. If I end up turning one in late I won't be too sad, but I couldn't stand turning both in late, or even poorly revised. Particularly, the one on Basil Bunting. I really like the poem, the class, the professor, and even my essay so far. The other one, on Virginia Woolf, might take a little more work, but I'll probably do fine. So, I did what I always do in a crisis: play piano. After a solid half-hour of Beethoven (and some Debussy), I decided to call in and say I couldn't make it, a solid 1 1/2 hours before I was scheduled to work. I said I was very sorry, tried to sound broken up, and the manager didn't really say anything, just thanks for calling. I'd like to keep this job for at least the next two months, unless I get some jazz gigs. Not so much for the money as for the peace of mind that I get from not having to keep a solid budget.

I've been slowly reading Beckett now, in my off-time. I'm on the first of his trilogy of short novels, Molloy. I have this theory that reading Beckett destroys one's ability to read anything else. He includes pages regarding a particular character's thoughts, and next to nothing about physical description. We don't even get the name "Molloy" until about a quarter in, and it's a first-person narration from his point of view. There are endless permutations of every possible outcome of a situation, cyclical and repetitive. The dialogue is not in quotes, not paragraphed out (there aren't even very many paragraphs for that matter), and often ended with asides saying, essentially, that this conversation took place mostly in his mind--in reality, he probably just grunted unintelligibly.

How does it ruin me then? Well, now when I try to read "normal" novels I get bogged down by the slightest physical description. I can now withstand pages and pages detailing a character's system of organizing his "sucking-stones" into different pockets so that he has a proper rotation of stones in his mouth, yet I can barely tolerate a half-paragraph of his-boots-were/her-eyes-were. Beckett just seems to take all of what other authors deem a necessity, throw it out the window, and in its place insert what seems an extravagance, a mockery of what was once considered essential. He, obviously, was not the first; Joyce, Woolf, and Faulkner all used stream-of-consciousness. However, Beckett has an irreverence toward what seems like the book itself. He does not work in this stream-of-consciousness in the Joycean way where it gives in to grand metaphor and Dedalus's Grecian/philosophical allusions. His does not make the claim a la Finnigan's Wake that in the part is represented the whole; his seems to point to itself as if to say, look at this, it means nothing.

I would compare this to Beethoven if I could. Give me two pounds of coffee, the scores of his late quartets, and a week.