Caprice - Summer 2013 short version

Recently I mentioned (in this post, skip to paragraph 15) my realization that I have a bucket list populated mostly by unbegun musical compositions.   The term 'bucket list' has not been around very long at all.  Less than a decade apparently.  That movie I didn't see popularized the idea. At least according to this article.

However, my list goes way back.  Some of the items date to when I was in college over 40 years ago.  Of course I didn't think of these as "things to do before I die", only as "things to do."  The part about "before I die" sneaks up on a person over the years.

One entry on my list is: write a set of variations on the famous theme by Niccolo Paganini.  That theme would be from his 24th Caprice for solo violin, itself a theme and variations.  Doing such variations is not a terribly original idea.  Many composers have used Paganini's theme before me.  (Find a list here.)

I was originally inspired to this idea by the Variations on a Theme of Paganini of Wittold Lutoslawski, a work for two pianos.  This was one of my introductions to how exciting modern music could be.  I highly recommend it.  He also made an orchestra version which preserves the fury.

Although Wittold called his piece "Variations on a...", it is really more of an arrangement of Paganini's 24th Caprice.  His variations track the original variations one to one.  My piece does exactly the same thing.  Hence it does not really qualify as the fulfillment for my bucket list.  I'll have to wait to do that.  Someday before I die.  Maybe.

Since I worked directly with Paganini's original material and didn't actually write any original variations, I have refrained from calling my piece "Variations on a..."  Instead I have named it Caprice. That's what Paganini called his piece - although he needed to give it a number as well.

It's highly likely that my compositional method is greatly different than Lutoslawski's.  My piece is longer and generally more relaxed than his.  I composed Caprice in approximately 90 short bits separated by silences over approximately 90 days.  These bits became the piece Summer 2013.  Later I removed the silences to reveal this piece.  Of course, I was intending to do this all along and had planned ahead somewhat.  Still, there were surprises.

Summer 2013 is kind of a journal or calendar piece, based on the compositional regimen of "write a little something every day".  Caprice (or rather Summer 2013, Short Version) might be thought of as the time-lapse version of the longer piece.  Soundwise, they are scored for electric violin, electric cello and piano.

 Click here to hear Caprice (Summer 2013 short version) by David Ocker - © 2013 David Ocker, 884 seconds

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If Internet search sites are to be believed, the term caprice is associated mostly with either a supermodel or a Chevrolet model.  Both, I dare say, have prominent headlights.

The picture of the college age Witold Lutosławski came from the University of Warsaw website.  He wrote his variations in the early nineteen forties when he might have looked something like this picture.

Caprice Tags: Niccolo Paganini. . . Wittold Lutoslawski. . . David Ocker

Summer 2013 from The Seasons

I've just posted the latest in my series called The Seasons.  It's the seventh season.  And it's available not a moment too soon, as the Equinox just passed.  You could listen to Summer 2013.  Screw all these words.

Here's a recap of the particulars of The Seasons in case you're just joining us.  These pieces are composed in small sections, theoretically one per day.  Often I actually create one per day if my energy level and other commitments allow.  These short musical events are separated by much longer silences, about 40 seconds of silence.  It turns out that a completed season consists of about 80% pure silence.

Why so much silence?  The silence allows several seasons be played simultaneously.  Or they can be played with any other music of your choice.  It's non-serial musical combinatoriality.  More interesting too than the serial kind.   The Seasons creates an unpredictable user-modifiable listening event in which the elements combine in unplanned ways.  Some people like that sort of thing.  Me, for example.

Now that Summer 2013 is finished, I've been listening to all seven seasons at the same time.  I'm a little surprised that the effect is not as uproarious as I would have predicted when I started the project.  Well, yes, there are moments when multiple unrelated segments overlap to form a thunderous crazy-loud cacophony.  Even so, silences still happen.  I wonder how many seasons it will take before silence completely disappears.  No matter how many seasons I play simultaneously I always hear interesting combinations.

Another reason for using this mostly-silent format is to exploit what I consider one of my strengths as a composer: the ability to have lots of different ideas.  I may not be so good at integrating all those ideas into musical coherence.  You can find lots of other composers who will do that for you.  Heck, they teach how to do that in colleges everywhere.

The Seasons is evolving.  The first season, Winter 2011, had a completely unrelated bit of music for every day.  Gradually I've given each succeeding season its own musical signature - a sort of unifying principal behind the notes.  I suppose my teachers would approve of this increase in unity.

The current season Summer 2013 is based on a well-known classical warhorse for solo violin which you will likely recognize.  (Need a clue? "24th Caprice".)  The sounds are limited to three instruments: electric violin, electric cello and piano.

Ultimately, the one-per-day structure of The Seasons turns it into something like a calendar - or maybe a daily journal.  More abstractly, it is a representation of passing time - not just for the length of the piece but of three whole months.  It is also a time-lapse musical representation of what goes on in my brain.

Sometimes real-life events are celebrated.  For example, many seasons have special musical qualities for each  Monday, the day I take out the garbage.  I call this Garbage Day Periodicity.  Summer 2013 does have G.D.P. although it will be very difficult to hear.  It will be more obvious in the upcoming short version.

Short version?  Yep.  Like the previous season (Spring 2013), there will be a short version, sans silence, of Summer 2013.  Stay tuned for that.  If your time is money or you can't stand silence because your tinitus is acting up or you're otherwise just an impatient on-the-go sort of person, that may be the version more suited to you.

Click here to hear Summer 2013 by David Ocker 
© David Ocker 4229 seconds

Click here for all MM posts about The Seasons.

Frazz

Summer Tags: Summer 2013. . . Garbage Day. . . 24th Caprice. . . The Seasons

Mixed Meters is Eight Years Old

I had a birthday.  It was a while ago.  Birthdays are hard for me.  What I mean is that I have a hard time with birthdays.  By that I mean - I have a hard time with my own birthday in particular.  This was true when I was a child and it's also true now as an adult.

Over the years I have learned to cope with the problem of my birthdays by trying not to expect much from them.  In fact I expect nearly nothing,  And that's what I get.  I'm fine with nothing.  It's the Expectations themselves which are the problem.

I have a blog.  Blogs apparently have birthdays too.  My blog, this very blog called Mixed Meters, just turned eight years old.  In Internet years (which are something like dog years - an anthropomorphic fiction derived from the notion that online lifetimes are somehow more comprehensible if we equate them to actual human lifetimes), Mixed Meters seems to have reached its early sixties.  That's not surprising because so have I.

If you're one of Mixed Meters' Three Readers you will have noticed that my blog, like me, has been slowing down recently.  There's not as much going on now as when the blog was younger.  Posts are less frequent.  Subject matter repeats.  Topics don't arouse my indignation or excitement like they used to.  This is a natural result of aging, of course, both internet aging and human aging.

I also believe that the slowdown is a result of isolation.  Mixed Meters just doesn't get that much attention.  Frankly, I would not have started blogging eight years ago if someone had told me just how little attention I would actually get.  Back in 2005 I expected to create some sort of community, even if only a small one, around Mixed Meters.  Like with birthdays, the real problem turned out to be my own Expectations.

With few exceptions, MM posts barely reach triple-digit hit counts.  If someone looks at a MM page for a fraction of a second, then goes away never to return, that counts as one Hit.  Google helpfully counts my Hits.  If someone else looks at a MM page, reads it beginning to end, listens to the music, and even spends time thinking about the content - that also counts as one Hit.  Hits far outnumber Thoughtful Readings.  Google does not care how many Thoughtful Readings I get.

Comments are also rare.  Google does keep track of those.  Over eight years, Mixed Meters has averaged 6 comments for every 5 posts.  That includes my own comments.  Honestly, more feedback would be nice.  Sometimes "comment free blogging" makes me feel like I'm just pissing in the wind.

Theoretically, blogging less means I have more free time.  This leads to the question "What do I do with my extra time?"  Well, you would ask that question if you were reading this post, which you have probably stopped doing already.  The answer is that my extra time goes into my life.  Overall, I do have a good life which I am thankful for.  I'm an extremely lucky person, bitchy blog posts not withstanding.

My life revolves around  the Four Ws.  These are Working, Walking and Writing.  Also my Wife.  The Four Ws are those things I have identified as being essential daily activities.  Described without W's, the four are earning some money, getting some exercise, doing something creative and being a good husband.

Each of the Ws leaves me plenty of room for improvement.  There are days when doing all four is quite difficult.  I formulated the Four Ws philosophy after reading a greeting card I saw in a gift shop. It said "The most important things in life are the ones you do every day."  Imagine what life would be like if every greeting card you receive, like the ones from doctors or insurance agents who never forget my birthday, were as life changing as that one I saw (and didn't purchase) in that gift shop.

My other activities include eating, sleeping, picking up the mail, cleaning up cat and dog shit, drinking coffee, reading and, of course, Facebook.   More important than any of those, I think, is taking out the garbage once a week.  I have even enshrined the act of taking out the garbage into my music.  I call this musical structure "Garbage Day Periodicity".

"Garbage Day Periodicity" can be heard in my on-going once-a-day composition project called The Seasons.  Garbage is an easy problem to solve.  If you have garbage you simply put it in the dumpster, put the dumpster at the curb and, eventually, someone takes the garbage away.  Problem solved.  If only I could do the same thing with my Expectations.

I spend much time thinking about music I would like to write.  I would like to spend more of my time actually writing that music and less time thinking about it.  I post all my new pieces on Mixed Meters. Alas, people don't listen much.   That makes sense because, like blogging, writing music is something else which I do in isolation.  With computers I can make performance-free music.  Also audience free.

The important thing is that I enjoy the process of creating music immensely.  I try to tailor the process to intensify the aspects I like and avoid those I dislike.  Luckily this has worked out pretty well for me.  I'm extremely fortunate that I can spend as much of my life writing music as I do.

I've been thinking about bucket lists.  Until recently I thought that I didn't have a bucket list - you know, a personal list of as yet unfulfilled experiences.   Then I realized that I do have such a list.  The difference is that it's filled with unfulfilled composition projects.  Lately I've crossed a few items off the list with The Seasons.  There are many more to go.  Someday I will actually write that parody of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, only, instead of a five-year old prodigy performing it, mine will be played by a ninety-five year old prodigy.

I'm also still posting my pictures.  I don't go looking for pictures, they find me.  My pictures are found objects in the truest sense.  If I notice something visually interesting on my walks or elsewhere, be it tree or trash, I whip the point'n'shoot out of my pocket and snap a couple photos.  I take enough that a few usually turn out well.  I post some to my other blog, Mixed Messages.  You can see the latest ones here, in the righthand column.

I suppose I will still find the occasional blog topic which gets my excitement and/or indignation up, you know, over politics or society or whatever.   Some topics force me to drop everything and write an essay of doubtful value and indefinite logic.  Naturally these postings produce Expectations that others will read and get excited and/or indignant as well.  After eight years, that idea has been completely disproven.

And, speaking of politics and society, my disappointment knows no bounds when I think about my youthful Expectations for the country I live in.  During my lifetime the U.S. has invented the Tea Party, fracking, Miley Cyrus, megachurches, Shock and Awe, Dick Cheney, Walmart, the NRA, the rapture, Real Housewives, Three Strikes laws, Grand Theft Auto and mass murder in schools - to name just a very few things I would gladly live without.   Society is SO fucked, people, and it saddens me to admit that my generation, the Baby Boomers, gets much of the credit.  I would like to apologize to the world for all these American things - and more.  Sadly, I have no Expectations that my apologies will help.

One thing I don't seem to do with my time any more is doodle.  I found the doodles gracing this post in a stack of music and other papers I had put away for later use and forgotten about completely.  Click on them for enlargements.  I suspect they date from the early 2000's before I started Mixed Meters.  You probably see things in them the same way you see things in Rohrshach ink blots.  The numbers will allow you to make comments about specific doodles, telling the world which one looks like a pregnant shark riding an upside down motorcycle.

Like these doodles, things out of my past are easy to turn into blog posts.  Mixed Meters could easily become a compendium of work I did years ago.  Realistically, you should expect more and more of this.  I have boxes and boxes filled with projects either only I remember or I have already forgotten.  If I don't post them here no one will ever know about them.  Then again, if I do post them here nearly no one will ever know about them.  Gradually my blog will become my autobiography - disorganized, incomplete and totally non-chronological.  Already, after just eight years, I discover my own posts that I've completely forgotten about.  My memory isn't what it used to be.

And so, the question "Why to blog?" remains without a satisfying answer.  Honestly, I could completely stop blogging and the world and my life and everything in between would not change one bit.  I could post completely random gibberish or I could give the real irrefutable answer to the meaning of life, and the reactions would be pretty much identical.  Hey, maybe the real answer to the meaning of life is random gibberish.  How wonderful that would be!  Probably I will continue blogging because I'm not ready to stop.  Until I am ready to stop I will simply continue.  Meanwhile you should expect more of my random gibberish and pessimistic drivel here.  I hope you enjoy it.

Trying the Same Thing, Expecting a Different Result

Earlier this summer I met up with my buddy pianist Peter Schmid at Aphrodita Japonica Studio. We decided to record him playing solo piano.  Once he started he didn't stop.  It turned out to be an epic improvisation, over 52 minutes with new ideas cascading one after another. He just kept going and going.  And now you can listen to the whole thing right here on Mixed Meters.

Once he had finished I gave him a beer.  He drank it but said nothing.  Then I gave him another beer which he also drank silently.  Peter is a man of few words sometimes and not much of a drinker.  Finally he said "I think I want to call it Trying the Same Thing, Expecting a Different Result."  What could I say.  Seems like a good title.

Click here to hear Peter Schmid's Trying the Same Thing, Expecting a Different Result - © 2013, 3151 seconds

Later I talked the notoriously reclusive pianist into giving me a biography I could share with my Mixed Meters' readers.

As a child Peter Schmid studied classical piano first with Miss Mabel Filcher and later with Dr. Lester Nordine at Reinecke State College.  He began his professional career playing pop music, most notably as rhythm keytarist for Jerry and the Willows.  

Peter moved to Southern California in 1983 where he devoted himself first to new classical music and then free improvisation. His music often has a sense of wildly free imagination, at other times there's a meandering stream of consciousness.  It has been described as "relentless and hostile dissonance tempered with flashes of unsophisticated austerity."    

For many years Peter supported himself teaching music in elementary schools in the San Gabriel Valley until Republican budget cuts reduced music programs.  These days he ekes out a living as a short haul trucker while honing his true craft by playing piano in what he calls "post-modern bordellos and upscale waterfront dives".    In his spare time Peter enjoys cultivating Bonsai and reading the novels of C. S. Forester. 

Peter has also led an innovative quartet of local musicians.  One reviewer said "They seem to read each other's minds."  They are Cornel Reasoner, bass, Luis 'Pulpo' Jolla, drums and percussion, and  Lori Terhune, guitar.

I like Peter's music a lot and am happy to be able to present some of it here on my blog.  Although it's extremely hard to describe and even more impossible to know how he does it, what I am sure of is that I would love to be able to play piano the way he does.

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A few recordings by the Peter Schmid Quartet can be found here.

Different Result Tags: Peter Schmid. . . solo piano. . . extended improvisation

I Don't Know Why This Piece Is Called Whiskey

I like ambiguous and misleading names for my pieces.  The names I like the most are self-referent: the title mentions itself.

For example, I've written pieces called The Name Of This Piece Is, This Is Not The Title and This Is Not The Title EITHER.

It is factually true that I don't know why this piece is called whiskey.  When I started it I needed to save a sound file before I could start composing and for some reason the word "whiskey" popped into my head at that moment.  Maybe I needed a belt.  In any case I saved the sound file as WHISKEY.NKM and assumed that's what I would call the music as well.

Of course, the title of the piece did not turn out to be Whiskey.  The eventual title, I Don't Know Why This Piece Is Called Whiskey, is incorrect on that point; it contains a fundamental falsehood.  I did not end up calling this piece by the name Whiskey.

I did chose to spell the word "whiskey" rather than "whisky" because I do like a bit of single malt now and then.  There's even a bottle of Laphroaig in the cabinet although I didn't bother to pour myself any while I was writing.  Nor did I partake once I was finished.  Thus proving that needing a drink was not the reason I chose that particular name (or rather, didn't choose that name).

I promise you that I was stone cold sober the whole time.  Also I'm sober as I write this spiraling-to-nowhere essay.  I haven't had even a glass of wine for weeks on end.  You see, temperance is one of my many endearingly annoying traits.  I've just never had much desire to over-indulge.

My music also has annoying traits.  While temperance and sobriety are not among them, my music can be quite ambiguous and misleading.  I would love to find a way to make my music refer to itself somehow directly, using only music.  You know: the whole "This Is Not A Pipe" thing.  I haven't figured out how to do that without using words.  Titles always use words.  Sometimes they misuse them.

Click here to hear I Don't Know Why I Called This Piece Whiskey - © 2013 by David Ocker 42 seconds

Apparently John Maynard Keynes' last words were "I wish I had drunk more Champagne."    It would be a good thing if we were to learn from his mistake.

Self Referencing Tags: self reference. . . single malt. . . 30 second spots

Tile Patterns

My local Vons supermarket was remodeled just over 2 years ago. Here's a picture of a remote corner of the building as purloined from Google Maps.

Note the stone tiles decorating the building.  They are black, perhaps made out of slate, (what do I know?) with reddish patterns, perhaps some sort of iron (again, what do I know?)

The interesting thing about these tiles, of course, is their abstract patterning.  I took closeups of a handful and brightened the pictures very slightly.  All together, there must be thousands of such tiles throughout the store and adjacent shopping center.  I've noticed that nearly all of them have some design or decorative interest.

Art, as everyone knows, is where you find it, even on the walls of a grocery store.

Click any picture for a better view.

Other Mixed Meters posts about tiles.
Foto-Buster  (a kiosk decorated with hand-made tiles)
Floor Shows (a man with a camera looks at his feet)
Russian Bestiary (scroll down for a tile peacock)

Tile Tags: architectural detail. . . stone tiles. . . natural patterns

The Rudy Schwartz Project

Back in the day Mixed Meters had a sidebar feature called "David's Favorite Music".  This listed all the posts I had written about music and musicians I particularly enjoy.  The list was short, eclectic and incomplete.  Eventually I removed it to simplify the blog layout.   You can still read all those posts via this link.

The top three omissions from the list - in no particular order - are Astor Piazzolla, Glenn Gould and The Rudy Schwartz Project.  Astor and Glenn have stopped performing these days so they won't mind waiting for their articles.   Meanwhile the RSP is more active than ever.  There are new albums, YouTube videos and even a Facebook page.

Here's a Rudy Schwartz Project tune I really like  - Stumpy (from the album Delicious Ass Frenzy).  It's about a bad-ass monkey with no ass.  I like the cool mistuned piano vamp.

Today's wonderful world of social media has brought me into contact with the fecund brain behind The Rudy Schwartz Project, the mysterious, talented, uber-creative Joe Newman.  Joe recently volunteered to remix a recent piece of mine, Not A Happy Camper.  (Listen to the improved version here.)  I'm finally writing this post as a feeble thank you to him for the excellent work he did on that project.  Maybe this extra publicity will get all the Mixed Meters readers to buy an RSP album.  That would be three more albums sold.

First, however, I think you must have questions you want to ask.

Your first question, I bet, is "Who is Rudy Schwartz?"

Answer: I don't know, but the Project named after him began in Austin Texas sometime in the 80s.  That was a time when independently produced, not particularly commercial music was distributed via the high-tech medium of cassette tapes.  I had several of my own tapes about that time and I suspect Joe and I must have traded.  How else could I have gotten my copy of Don't Get Charred, Get Puffy on cassette?  It's dated 1991.

Listen to one of my favorite RSP tunes ever: An Orange Is Nothing But A Juicy Pumpkin.  You can also listen to The Creation Science Polka.

Read an interview with Joe Newman discussing early period Rudy Schwartz.

Your next question, I bet, is "What happened after the early period?"

Answer: After the early years, Rudy and Joe disappeared for a long time.  There were no more Rudy Schwartz Project albums.  Then, suddenly, I think in the mid 2000's, Joe reappeared, living in Montreal.  He began releasing new albums fairly regularly.  The most recent is called Full Frontal Klugman.  Highly recommended.  Here's a fine tune from FFK entitled "You're Not Rondo Hatton"  (Rondo Hatton was an actor with a strange face and an apparently unintentionally musical name.)

Time for your last question. I bet you want to ask "Why do you like this music?"

Good question.  Here are some reasons:

1) The music of The Rudy Schwartz Project is politically topical.  It takes on some of the most destructive forces in American politics point blank using both outrageous humor and forthright anger.  Early RSP called out demagogues like Ronald Reagan, Phyllis Schlafly and Jimmy Swaggart.  Recent tunes excoriate George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin Pussy Juice:

Carry Me Back To the USA:

2) Joe Newman has an incredible talent for musical parody.  From popular music of the 1930's, or 50's rock 'n roll or 70's pop tunes.  He's covered John Denver and Bruce Springsteen tunes and the most off-the-wall version of Georgy Girl ever.  There are probably a bunch more covers he has done that I don't even recognize.

Road Trippin' With Waldo:  (Waldo Hamm is the RSP's mascot - a sock puppet reindeer.)

3) There is a keen element of cultural commentary.  Besides Rondo Hatton, there have been RSP tunes about Ernest Borgnine, Bob Eubanks, Nancy Kulp, Don Knotts, Doodles Weaver, Florence Henderson and the Dallas Cowboys, to name but a few.  Some of these are even complimentary.  The cultural reference aspect of Joe's work has been expanded by his move into video - as any of these examples in this post should easily prove.

Here's a redone television commercial called Colgate Clean:

Theme from "Sweet Movie":

4) Most importantly, Joe Newman is a creative, clever and curious composer who writes interesting, inventive and intriguing music. Aside from the subject matter he chooses or the pop cultural references he makes or the lyrics he sings, his music itself is a delight. Composers who use unexpected harmonies, sound collages, abrupt melodic turns and unpredictable changes in orchestration ought to be more common than they are these days.  When music gets pretty far out, I tend to like it.  I like this music.

A Nice Selection of Hasps:

In many ways I'm jealous of Joe Newman's talents as a composer.  He has combined cultural commentary and creative music making in a way that I would love to do myself, but find I don't have the necessary talents.

Finally, I have a question for you.

Can you name another composer who has combined these same elements: politics, parody, cultural commentary and cutting edge music?

Yes, the correct answer is Frank Zappa.  Many people have commented on Joe's debt to Zappa, even Joe himself.  The aspects of cultural parody, political commentary and cutting edge music which are well accepted in Zappa's music have not found many adherents in popular music since his death.  Those characteristics have been preserved and uniquely extended in Joe Newman's music.  I think he should get more recognition for it.  Any Zappa fan ought to really check out The Rudy Schwartz Project.  You'll be glad you did.

Frank:

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Waldo Hamm Tags: Rudy Schwartz Project. . . Joe Newman

I Need A Better Placebo

At times everyone wants to feel better.

If you don't like the way you feel at the moment and you want to improve on it some how, there are courses of action available.  Depending on circumstances (and availability) you could try eating chocolate, having sex, buying a pair of shoes, taking drugs or watching a funny movie, just to name the obvious solutions.  Listening to music (or composing it) is often my choice.

Not every remedy works in every case.  What's more, some remedies have side effects, often nasty ones.  These include weight gain, headaches, drowsiness or death.  Or something worse.

You can avoid dangerous side effects by taking a placebo - which is a treatment that does nothing but still works somehow.  That's because things often work just because people think that they work, even if those things don't actually work.  (I suppose religion could be a good example of a placebo.)

More remarkably, some placebos apparently work better than others.  Here's a list (from this site) of types of placebos roughly ranked by their effectiveness.

• Placebo surgery works better than placebo injections
• Placebo injections work better than placebo pills
• Sham acupuncture treatment works better than a placebo pill
• Capsules work better than tablets
• Big pills work better than small
• The more doses a day, the better
• The more expensive, the better
• The color of the pill makes a difference
• Telling the patient, “This will relieve your pain” works better than saying “This might help.”

Why am I posting a short superficial essay about placebos, I hear you wonder.  Well, I was looking for a title for a new short piece of music (I call them 30 Second Spots).  The phrase "I need a better placebo" popped into my mind.  This seemed promising because I like titles which contain logical inconsistencies, for example This Is Not The Title.  The notion of a "better placebo" seemed pretty logically inconsistent - until I did a little surfing.  I found it surprising that people have studied the subject and discovered that some placebos are actually better than others.  Who knew?

Click here to hear I Need A Better Placebo © 2013 by David Ocker 40 seconds.   I hope it makes you feel better.

Placebo Tags: 30 Second Spots. . . placebos

Mantra - Spring 2013 short version

Every three months I've been posting new "episodes" of The Seasons.  The most recent was entitled Spring 2013.  Each "season" consists of one short musical bit representing every day during the given three month period.  I try to compose one every day.  Most of the seasons have some musical idea that unify the music, although I do make an effort to write each day's event without referencing previous segments.

At the end of each quarter I combine these musical fragments, separated by longer silences, and post them here on Mixed Meters.   You can find links to the entire series easily enough.

I have also been making short versions of each season.  These have identical music to the longer version.  The only difference is that all the silence has been removed, generally a reduction of over 70%.  I have not been posting the short versions.  Until now.

The short version of Spring 2013 was more interesting to me than previous short versions.  This is because each segment uses the same identical rhythm (played twice in double time on Mondays).  When heard without separation this results in a very metric, rhythmical piece.  (There is one segment with a touching little rallentando, but that's the only exception.)

Since the rhythm in question is that of the mantra I use for meditation (usually during my walks), this piece is very personal to me.  That's because I know the words to the mantra.  I have no intention of sharing those words and, as a result, no idea how others will hear this music.

I decided that this version deserves its own descriptive title - I chose Mantra.  The word mantra holds certain religious connotations.  It usually means something repeated over and over.  My own mantra comes from the 80's when I was listening to the lectures of Ram Dass.

New Music Prudes will protest that there is already a piece entitled Mantra by Karlheinz Stockhausen.  They should not worry because because my own piece, Mantra, is identical to Stockhausen's.  Every pitch, every rhythm, every jot and every tittle of my piece is an exact perfect copy of what Stockhausen wrote over 40 years ago. This cosmic plagiarism just sort of happened by accident, I guess.

Click here to hear Mantra (Spring 2013, short version) by David Ocker  © 2013 David Ocker - 955 seconds

Mantra Tags: Spring 2013. . . David Ocker. . . The Seasons

Ring Festival LA - three years later

This is Mixed Meters third anniversary post memorializing Los Angeles Opera's attempt to hold an arts festival that would somehow make the music of Richard Wagner relevant to Los Angeles California.  I'll also discuss a history of the unofficial Wagner ban in Israel and then a Jewish actor's love letter to Wagner's music in the form of a film which, in my opinion, does a good job of discussing Wagnerian music's sordid involvement with Hitler and the Nazis.

RING FESTIVAL LA PLUS THREE

In November 2008 Placido Domingo announced:

“Ring Festival LA will be a defining moment in the cultural history of Los Angeles.” 

Read the whole initial press release here.  The festival happened in 2010.  Read more about it here.

At this point I think we at Mixed Meters (we in this case being the euphemism for me, David Ocker) are the only ones who think about this subject any more.  And it's entirely possible that I'm the only person who had any sort of defining moment as a result of their festival, as it got me interested in the relationships between Hitler, the Nazis, Wagner and his endlessly turgid music.

Last December the LA Times reported that LA Opera had paid off the $14,000,000 loan which squeaked them through their Ring cycle production. That loan was controversially co-signed for by the nearly 10 million residents of Los Angeles County thanks to the actions of our 5 elected Supervisors.

Since their go-round with Wagner LA Opera has been sticking with crowd-pleasing opera classics.  Although next year they will dip their toe into living memory by presenting Philip Glass's 1976 Einstein on the Beach.  My late 70's self would be thrilled.  My current self thinks Einstein is probably somewhat less boring than Wagner but still not worth sitting through.  (Addendum: they're also doing Billy Budd, premiered when I was three months old.)

Here's a cartoon to lighten the mood.

THE RING OF MYTHS - WAGNER: BANNED IN ISRAEL

In the endless discussion of why Wagner was such a creep, a prime topic is his anti-semitism.  Of course the extreme anti-semitism of his descendants and their support of Wagner's most influential and anti-semitic fanboy, Adolph Hitler, come up repeatedly.

Often one of the talking points in these discussions is the unofficial ban on the music of Wagner in the nation of Israel.    This subject still hits the news periodically.  I mentioned a development in my LA Ring Festival 2-year memorial.    The ban dates from November 12, 1938 when conductor Arturo Toscanini removed the overture to Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg from a concert by the Palestine Symphony Orchestra to protest the Nazi-organized anti-Jewish riots known as Krystallnacht three days earlier.

A fascinating book published in 2001 details the history of this ban: The Ring of Myths, The Israelis, Wagner and the Nazis by Na'ama Sheffi.  

Interesting facts abound.  For example, right after the war any music with lyrics in the German language, even works by Mahler, was deemed unsuitable by the public.  The music of Richard Strauss was banned along with Wagner's (although unlike Wagner it has since achieved greater acceptance).  In 1953 Jasha Heifetz was physically attacked and slightly injured by a man wielding an iron pipe.  His motive?  The violinist insisted on playing a work by Strauss in Israel.

Throughout The Ring of Myths prominent musicians paternalistically promote adding Wagner's music to the Israeli concert repertoire despite knowing there will be strong public opposition.  Zubin Mehta and Daniel Barenboim, I'm talking about you.  Their excuse is that Wagner is somehow essential to music history or orchestral technique.  This line of reasoning rings rather hollow in my ears - but my readers probably already know what I think of Wagner's music.

Sheffi does her best to help an outsider keep Israeli politicians, political parties and newspapers, across the entire spectrum from left to right, straight.  Uphill work!   Because most of the primary sources of this story (like newspaper articles and the archives of the Israel Philharmonic) are all written in Hebrew, this book gives a non-Israeli a chance to follow what would otherwise be a closed discussion.

The Ring of Myths clearly shows that the reasons for continuance of the Wagner ban have changed over time.  In the early years of the state of Israel anything even remotely connected to Germany would be protested.  As the relations between Israel and Germany improved (often represented by Israelis driving Volkswagens or Mercedes), Richard Wagner continued as an emotionally-charged symbol of the Nazis.   This emotion repeatedly got caught up in the arcane ebb and flow of Israeli politics.  In Israel, of course, religion colors most political debates.

Sheffi succinctly outlines these shifts in her preface:

In the 1950s and 1960s Wagner was an important argument for the factions opposing the restoration of ties with Germany; in the 1970s he was a vehicle for the anger of intellectuals at what they termed Israeli hypocrisy; in the 1980s he was a key figure in the struggle over the preservation of the memory of the Holocaust; and in the 1990s he served the national ultra-Orthodox religious ideology, which calls on Israelis to content themselves with Hebrew culture and stop copying the ways of the gentiles.

The last stage was most interesting to me since I often think that classical music has become a kind of religion for certain people.  This is most obvious in the cult-like behavior surrounding Richard Wagner's music.  People who argue in favor of Wagner seem to do so based on their deep personal, emotional belief in the power of his music.  This primary dogma informs each new debate in a logically unassailable manner.  Such fundamentalism is, in my opinion, just as basic to most organized religion as it is to Wagnerism.

Sheffi ultimately argues that Israelis can and should find better ways of commemorating the Holocaust than by symbolically banning Wagner.  Maybe.  I think that as a symbol Wagner is permanently stained by Nazism, just as the swastika has been.  Wagner and his music will continue as a symbol of Hitler and the Nazis for a long time to come.

WAGNER AND STEPHEN FRY

Stephen Fry, a famous English actor, is a Jew.  Some members of his family perished in the Holocaust.  Fry is also a big fan of the music of Richard Wagner.  He has explored the resulting existential tension  in a movie entitled Wagner and Me.  

It opens on a rehearsal of the Prelude to Act 3 of the opera Siegfried and then cuts to scenes of Bayreuth Germany home of the infamously famous Bayreuth Festival founded by and dedicated to Wagner himself.

Fry's narration, often exited, breathless, even awestruck, takes an immediate stab at explaining why this place is so important:

Well, for anyone who loves Wagner as I do this place is Stratford-upon-Avon, Mecca, Graceland all rolled into one.

Yep.  Fry's description of this shrine puts Wagner on the same level of not just great artists like Elvis Presley and William Shakespeare, but right up there with an actual religious prophet worshipped by a billion and a half people.  I keep sayin' - Wagner is a religious thing.

At first Fry wanders aimlessly around the Festspielhaus like a kid in a candy shop, gleeful, astonished and amazed by the smallest things because everything he sees or touches has some connection to Wagner.  He says "Oh, I wish I were a Valkyrie sometimes."

Then, standing in a hallway hung with pictures of conductors (we are shown Hermann Levi, about whom Wagner might have said "some of my best friends are Jewish") Fry gets around to explaining why he likes Wagner's music.

I must have been 11 or 12 when I first heard Wagner's music on my father's grammophone.  It was the overture to Tannhäuser one of his earlier operas and it did something most extraordinary to me.  I've always loved music.  I've always been hopeless at performing it, couldn't really play an instrument,  certainly can't sing, but it's made me do things inside.  It's released forces within me.  And no music has done it like Wagner's.

Later he refers to Wagner's music as "gut-wrenching", but I don't think those are the internal forces he has in mind.  Blessedly, Fry never tries to project his Wagner epiphany on other people.  Although he revisits the "it does things to me" theme, he keeps the revelations personal throughout the movie at least until the very end.  Fry continues:

To experience the music I love in the composer's own theater is something I've dreamed of doing for as long as I can remember.  But it's no secret that my passion was also shared by Him.

"Him" (Fry intones "Him" dripping in villainous overtones) is Hitler who pops up on the screen just at that moment, shown seig heiling from a window of Bayreuth

And like me he felt the magnetic pull of Bayreuth.  I'm Jewish and lost relatives in the Holocaust so before I take my seat in the Festival House I need to feel sure I'm doing the right thing.

Fry drops back from this ominous foreshadowing and gives us fine little essays about Wagner's biography and why his music is important plus some clips of opera productions. He meets Wagner's great-granddaughter, has a piano lesson on the Tristan chord, travels to Russia.  The photography of beautiful scenery, ornate opera halls and fairy-tale castles is exceptional.  Eventually he gets back to the Hitler question in two interviews.

One is with Dr. Joachim Köhler, author of a controversial book Wagner's Hitler, The Prophet and His Disciple.  They talk in the Nuremberg stadium where the Nazi rallys were held (think Triumph of the Will) and then Fry reflects alone on the Wagner/Nazi connection.

I suppose I think of it like this, imagine a great beautiful silk tapestry of infinite color and complexity that has been stained indelibly. It's still a beautiful tapestry of miraculous workmanship and gorgeous color and silken texture but that stain is real and I'm afraid Hitler and Nazism have stained Wagner. For some people that stain ruins the whole work. For others it is just something you have to face up to.

Later he talks to Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a cellist who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp because of her musical abilities.  He asks her "Am I betraying my Jewishness by playing Wagner and liking him?".  Her answer:

I think everybody has to come to terms by themselves.  I would never forbid anybody to listen to Wagner.  If it was the music without the drama one wouldn't probably argue with it.  But apart from the fact I would never have the patience to sit for 5 hours and listen to so much noise.

And, at the end, of course, Stephen Fry decides that indeed he can listen to Wagner at Bayreuth, that he can ignore the stain and that he is doing the right thing.  We see him, ticket and pillow in hand, eagerly entering the concert hall for opening night at Bayreuth.  And we should forgive him his besotted love of Wagner's music because he did ask the hard questions and faced up to the negative associations directly.

Finally he tells us that, if we've never heard it before, we should give Wagner's music a try.  He concludes:

I still believe, as firmly as I believe anything, that his work is important and is on the side of the angels.  It is fundamentally good.  

Yes, it comes down to a matter of belief.  He believes in Wagner the same way people believe in imaginary gods.  You accept the faith or you don't.  I think Mr. Fry is to be commended for not whitewashing the bad parts of his story but he completely fails to explain, exactly, what is so good, so angelic about Wagner or his music.  (Granted, he does explain why Wagner is so important.  Even I agree that Wagner is important.  I just wish he could be made less so.)

In the final analysis, you listen to this music and it does something inside of you, something gut-wrenching, or it doesn't.  That reaction - or lack of it - seems to determine your attitude towards Wagner and his music, probably for the rest of your life.  More than that, unless you were a Holocaust survivor, a person's attitude towards the music further seems to determine one's outlook on how Hitler manipulated Wagner as a symbol.   The entire topic has been reduced to dogma and symbols.  And just like in religion, a believer either has to accept the dogma and venerate the symbols or stay out of the church.

---

Previously I've written a lot about these subjects. Here are links which will show articles marked with these tags:
Ring Festival LA
Richard Wagner
Hitler and Nazis
Naturally, there's a lot of overlap.

The most cogent discussion of Wagner's music in contemporary culture was a lecture given by Leon Botstein as part of Ring Festival LA at the Hammer Museum.  (Skip to about 40 minutes.)  This was discussed in the MM post Suppose Wagner Had Been Jewish.




Beating a Dead Horse Tags: Richard Wagner. . . Ring Festival LA. . . Na'ama Sheffi. . . Stephen Fry

Spring 2013 from The Seasons

Today is the solstice, the longest day of the year in my half of the world.

Recently Mixed Meters has been celebrating solstices and equinoxes alike by posting sections of my piece entitled The Seasons in which I write one small bit of music every day and separate them all with long silences and then expect people to listen to these sections simultaneously with one another (or even with other people's music) so that these bits of music combine in unexpected and presumably more interesting ways, just as the segments of this long run-on sentence are probably doing in your brain at this very moment, and to that end, today I am posting the sixth segment of The Seasons, not unexpectedly entitled Spring 2013. which consists of about 90 segments each one of which corresponds to a particular day and most of which were composed on that very day.

Many of the seasons have some sort of musical idea which unifies all the segments.  Spring 2013 has raised the unification standard considerably since each musical bit has exactly the same rhythm - a simple 17 beat pattern that is quite meaningful to me and which I'm not going to explain.  Spring 2013 also has Garbage Day Periodicity - on Mondays only the rhythm is heard twice at double tempo.

Click here to hear Spring 2013 by David Ocker, © David Ocker 

4316 seconds

Click here for all MM posts about The Seasons.

Here's a picture of a long period of time.

This is a solargraph - a picture which I found on Wikipedia.  It is a kind of time lapse photograph which shows the movement of the sun in the sky over half a year.  The sun moves from right to left and the earliest days are at the top.  Read all about this picture here.


Seasoned Tags: Spring 2013. . . Garbage Day. . . The Seasons