Musing's musings

How's about a little travelin' music?

It seems appropriate to mark this day with some musique d'occasion. This isn't a random list by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a few tunes that occurred to me as possibly being appropriate as we send the Worst. President. Ever. into the dustbin of history and welcome the dawning of a new epoch in our nation's life. Feel free to add your suggestions in the comments.

1. "I Made My Excuses and Left," Pet Shop Boys, Fundamental
2. "Ship of Fools," Erasure, The Innocents
3. "Non più andrai," Mozart, Le Nozze di Figaro
4. "Yahoo!" Erasure, The Innocents
5. "Why Should I Grieve?" Francis Pilkington
6. "Why Say Anything Nice?" Barenaked Ladies, Barenaked Ladies are Men!
7. "Goddamned," Jay Brannan, Goddamned
8. "Resign," The Click Five, Greetings from Imrie House
9. "2000 Miles," Erasure, Wild
10. "You're Crashing, But You're No Wave," Fall Out Boy, Infinity on High
11. "Bed of Lies," Matchbox Twenty, Mad Season
12. "Love to Hate You," Erasure, Chorus
13. "Lies," The Click Five, Greetings from Imrie House
14. "Good Riddance," Green Day, Nimrod (the album title is also apposite)
15. "Kiss You Off," Scissor Sisters, Ta-Dah!
16. "Say Goodnight," The Click Five, Greetings from Imrie House
17. "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen," Mozart, Die Zauberflöte
18. "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)," R.E.M., Eponymous
19. "Wind of Change," Scorpions, Crazy World
20. "FCC Song," Eric Idle
21. "Goodbye," Night Ranger, Seven Wishes
22. "Miserere," Gregorio Allegri
23. "Justorum animae," William Byrd
24. "Remembrance Day," Bryan Adams, Into the Fire
25. "Turn! Turn! Turn!," The Byrds, Turn! Turn! Turn!
26. "Siderum Rector," William Byrd
27. "Trumpet Voluntary," Jeremiah Clarke
28. "Pomp and Circumstance Marches, March No. 1," Sir Edward Elgar
29. "Breathe," Erasure, Nightbird
30. "Comfort ye, my people," Handel, The Messiah
31. "Laudate, Dominum," Mozart, Vesperae Solennes de Confessore
32. "Gloria in excelsis Deo," Vivaldi, Gloria
33. "For the Beauty of the Earth," John Rutter
34. "Here I Am, Lord," John Michael Talbot, Table of Plenty
35. "Joy to the World," Handel
36. "Do Not Fear to Hope," Gary Daigle and Rory Cooney, Change Our Hearts
37. "Let Justice Roll Like a River," Marty Haugen, Wondrous Love
38. "Glory and Praise to Our God," St. Louis Jesuits, A Dwelling Place
39. "As Water to the Thirsty," David Haas, As Water to the Thirsty
40. "Keep on Hoping," Jason Mraz, Geekin' Out Across the World
41. "The King Shall Rejoice," Handel, Coronation Anthems
42. "La Réjouissance," Handel, Music for the Royal Fireworks
43. "Life is Wonderful," Jason Mraz, Mr. A-Z
44. "And We Danced," The Hooters, Nervous Night
45. "The Times They Are A-Changin'," The Byrds, Turn! Turn! Turn!
46. "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)," Simon and Garfunkel
47. "I Am a Rock," Simon and Garfunkel
48. "Never Surrender," Corey Hart
49. "They Who Do Justice," David Haas, Creating God
50. "La Vie en rose," Edith Piaf
51. Choral finale, Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, Ludwig van Beethoven
52. "Dona nobis pacem," traditional

Who says science and the humanities don't mix?

One of the nicer perks of my job is our departmental subscription to Science, which comes to me first each week. I even occasionally get time to read it before somebody else bugs me for the last issue. Since I had a little downtime yesterday afternoon, I was perusing the March 28 issue when I stumbled across this little item (subscription and/or membership required).

It seems that there may have been a reason why composers in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance composed the way they did. And that reason may have had something to do with the size and shape and construction of the buildings in which their works were performed--which may in turn have had something to do with the way that cathedrals and chapels were designed. An architectural historian took the choir of St. John's College, Cambridge (along with a bunch of acoustics people and some musicologists) on a very special choir tour to Venice, where they sang a variety of works in 11 different churches and chapels around the city.

Polyphonic works (for example, a Byrd Mass--though in some cases that might be a special case--or a Tallis motet) get mushy in great big spaces like the Basilica di San Marco. There's too much room for the sound to bounce around, and it makes it very difficult for the audience to make out the words. Simpler melodies, like plainchant (or Gregorian chant, or simple polyphonic works like Byrd's Masses) work better in the big spaces. The best spot to sing a really complex polyphonic work is in a smaller space, like a side chapel off of the bigger cathedral. The historian speculates that composers may well have tailored their works for the building in which they would be performed (which, really, any good composer should have done). She even speculated that it might have been possible, with a big enough choir, to achieve something like "surround sound"--which may explain some of the really gigantic works in the early polyphonic repertoire, like Tallis's Spem in alium, composed ca. 1570 for 40 voices. That's 40 voice parts (eight choirs of five voices apiece), not just 40 people singing the same three or four parts, by the by.

Having spent some time singing in spaces big and small, and having attended services in some pretty doggone big churches, the group's findings, which were reported, according to Science, at the Cambridge Science Festival last month, don't surprise me much. I distinctly remember a small chapel on the campus of a choir college or a seminary (I don't remember which it was) in Nashville, where we stopped on choir tour my junior year in college. Obviously, since at least one of the functions of the place was to train singers and musicians and directors for choral work, the chapel at the school was designed with singing in mind: all stone and glass and wood, hard surfaces that keep even a small space vibrant.

One of the pieces we were singing that year was C. P. E. Bach's 1749 Magnificat which, while it's a middle-period piece by chronology and should therefore be more in the classical style, is written in a style much closer to the Baroque or Rococo style favored by C. P. E.'s more famous father. (What that means to non-music buffs is that it's a little more florid and has a lot more weaving of the various lines than you would expect in a classical-period piece.) And I do remember that our director had the darnedest time reining in the soloists (including me), because that little space did such wonderful things for a voice that we were all hanging on to notes longer than we should have, just to enjoy the sound a little more.

By contrast, it's really been an experience going to Mass in places like the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the Church of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor in the Galilee, or Notre Dame in Paris. All of those spaces are simply huge--and at Notre Dame, just as would have been done in medieval times--while Mass is going on in the central nave, the tourists and the pilgrims continue to go in and out, oohing and aahing as they gawk at the spectacle, in the side aisles. Even with modern microphones and loudspeakers, it can sometimes be difficult to follow what's going on in a space as big as that--particularly if the speaker or the singer(s) isn't careful about enunciating and allowing for the reverb time.

It's nice to know there may be a scientific basis for those empirical observations.

More fun with the iPod

Again via my friend Josh, the iTunes* meme:

1. How many songs total: 4,088
2. How many hours or days of music: 11.2 days
3. Most recently played: Five for Fighting, "Michael Jordan"
4. Most played: Jason Mraz, "Mr. A-Z"
5. Most recently added: Pine Leaf Boys, "Zydeco Gris-Gris"
6. Sort by song title:
   • First song: John Michael Talbot, "Abba, Father"
   • Last song: Ton Koopman, Variatio 9 from J. S. Bach's Goldberg Variations
7. Sort by time:
   • Shortest song: "He that Dwelleth in Heaven" from Händel's Messiah is the shortest actual song at 11 seconds. The shortest track is Rob Thomas saying "iTunes Originals" at 5 seconds.
   • Longest song: Jason Mraz, "Welcome to Schubas" (medley), at 34:15
8. Sort by album:
   • First album: Abba, "Abba" (from which I have only two tracks)
   • Last album: I Musici, "9 Concertos" is the last actual album. The last track to show on this sort is a Capitol Steps clip I downloaded from their web site, "These Boobs Were Made for Gawking."
9. Search the following and state how many songs come up:
   • just like: 1 (Marty Haugen, "Let Justice Roll Like a River" from Wondrous Love)
   • fuck: 3 (Jason Mraz, "10,000 Motherfuckers" from Selections for Friends; Lewis Black, "Fuck, New York, Los Angeles" from The White Album; and Eric Idle's "FCC Song All Fucks")
   • book: 51 (all 48 tracks from Daniel Barenboim's album Das Wohltempierte Klavier, Book 1; The Cambridge Singers, "Lute-book lullaby" from Christmas Night: Carols of the Nativity; Sting, "The Book of My Life" from Sacred Love; and Enya, "Book of Days" from Shepherd Moons)
   • fat: 5 (Bill Cosby, "Fat Albert (Buck, Buck)" from The Best of Bill Cosby; John Michael Talbot, "Abba, Father" from City of God; "My Heart is Inditing: Kings Shall Be Thy Nursing Fathers" from Händel's Coronation Anthems; The King's Singers, "Fatal la parte" from The King's Singers' Madrigal History Tour; and Patrick Doyle, "My Father's Favorite" from the soundtrack to Sense and Sensibility)
   • springsteen: 0

*I did the searches in iTunes, but used my iPod's music library instead of the very limited selection I actually have in iTunes on my computer.

Mon coeur fait mal

"Mon coeur fait mal" is French for "My heart hurts" or "I'm heartsick." Which is, in fact, a reasonably good descriptor of the way I feel about the state of this nation, about the Democratic presidential nominees, and a few other things in life. But if you notice the tag on this post, it says "Music," so I'm not talking about any of that stuff.

No, I'm blogging the music that's currently pumping from my iPod into my ears. It's a track from the Pine Leaf Boys' latest album, Blues de musicien. I caught Jason Beaubien's feature about the band Thursday on Morning Edition as I was driving to work. While I don't believe I've got a drop of Cajun blood in my veins, and I've only ever set foot in Louisiana once--and that was decades ago--I know good music when I hear it, and this is definitely good music. I can't seem to get this track out of my head since I first heard it, and I've been playing it several times a day. It seems oddly upbeat for a tune with such a sad title, though perhaps that's a bit of reverse mojo--"I feel lousy, so let's have some damn good music and cheer ourselves up."

My only regret is that my Parisian-style French really doesn't do much to help me with the Cajun dialect. I can translate all the songs' titles, and pick up a few words here and there in the lyrics, but I still haven't the faintest idea what, exactly, the boys are singing about. I was hoping their website might have a lyrics section, but I didn't see one. Oh, well: guess that means I'll just have to keep listening until I figure it out!

Another voice joins the Choir Invisible

After a long battle with prostate cancer, Dan Fogelberg died today, aged 56.

I was first introduced to Fogelberg's music in my college days, by a couple of friends who were absolutely crazy about him. And while my liking for him and his music never approached their level of devotion, I could still appreciate his talents as a musician and songwriter. Nevertheless, I can honestly say the world is reduced by his passing. He was a craftsman of the old school--lyrics that often made one stop and think, melodies and harmonics that went well beyond the three chords and a drum track that seem to suffice for so many musicians these days.

God be good to him. My thoughts and prayers are with his family. It's always hard to lose a loved one, but doubly so at this time of the year.

If this goes on

(H/t to Robert Heinlein for the post title. I'm not suggesting anything nearly as radical as what he describes in his story of the same name.)

I caught the tail end of a segment on NPR's evening business report tonight as I was driving home from class. It would appear that someone is pulling the RIAA's chain again (or vice-versa) about digital rights management. I'm not sufficiently interested in the details to look them up, but no matter. There must come a day when the RIAA wakes up to and accepts the salient fact that it will never again be able to monopolize the music market in the way that it did 20 or 40 or 60 years ago.

That is, however, unlikely to keep them from trying. Repeatedly.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, another legacy of Bill Clinton's that progressives would do well to forget--but only after erasing it from the statute book--is a godsend to the recording industry. It extends copyright far beyond anything the Framers ever intended, and well beyond the limits necessary to protect intellectual property, and concentrates most of the power in the hands of a very few, very greedy corporate fatcats looking to get fatter still.

It's because of DMCA that when you download something off iTunes, for example, you have a hell of a time copying it to another computer or backing it up in a different format. Once upon a time, when music was produced primarily on vinyl, once you'd bought it, you could do with it whatever you pleased. You could play it on any compatible machine, whether yours or anyone else's. You could resell it when you got tired of it. You could rerecord it on audiotape, either as-is or in combination with a variety of other music, whether for the purpose of enjoying your purchased music in other settings or to create your own compilation.

In the DMCA world, on the other hand, and as far as the recording industry is concerned, when you download an MP3 file from iTunes or Napster or any of the other music repositories online, you're effectively renting or licensing the music, not buying it. They control what you can do with it, and what they're willing to let you do is far less than what we used to be able to do in the bad old days of turntables and cassette decks. Nor are the media companies stopping at music: they're trying to export the same rights-management ideas to the realms of movies and books.

If this keeps up, sometime about 50 years from now, there will be one--and only one--media conglomerate. It will produce, and control, every kind of intellectual property--books, scholarly journals, online databases, music, art, theater, radio, film, television, and any other(s) not yet invented. It will charge users an inordinate fee for access to its materials, which users will gladly pay, lest they be condemned to a colorless life devoid of any means of stimulating the mind. I suspect that, should this unhappy state of affairs come to pass, the profession of "booklegger," first described by Robert Heinlein in, I believe, Between Planets in 1951, will move from fantasy into reality.

Friday Random 10, God, it's hot edition

Here's how we play our little game: Take out your iPod or other musical device. Put it in "random" mode. Hit "play." Write down the first ten tracks that come up--and no fair putting in ones you think will make you look cool, or omitting ones that make you look like a total dork.

Here are mine for today:

1. Stacked Actors (Foo Fighters, There is Nothing Left to Lose)
2. Argue (Matchbox 20, Yourself or Someone Like You)
3. Rise Up (Nemesis, Rise Up)
4. Coventry Carol (The Cambridge Singers/John Rutter, Christmas with the Cambridge Singers)
5. Homeland Security (Lewis Black, Rules of Enragement)
6. Everlasting Grace Is Yours (David Haas, Where The River Flows)
7. Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36, iv. Allegro molto (Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique/John Eliot Gardiner, Beethoven: Nine Symphonies)
8. Because Our Love Is Real (Erasure, Nightbird)
9. Snakes in Schubas (Jason Mraz, Selections for Friends)
10. Gaîté Parisienne: Allegro (The Boston Pops/Arthur Fiedler, Gaîté Parisienne)

Friday Random 10, I'm not dead edition

Regular readers may have noticed that this regular post did not appear last week. That was because I was temporarily without a computer and internet access while on a brief family, well, "vacation" isn't quite the word. But I'm back home this week and the computer's power issue has been fixed, so here goes.

Here's how we play our little game: Take out your iPod or other musical device. Put it in "random" mode. Hit "play." Write down the first ten tracks that come up--and no fair putting in ones you think will make you look cool, or omitting ones that make you look like a total dork.

Here are mine for today:

1. Music for the Royal Fireworks, Overture (The English Concert/Trevor Pinnock, Music for the Royal Fireworks)
2. Mystery Sonata No. 1 (Apollo's Fire, Noels & Carols from the Old World)
3. Prelude No. 9 in E (Evgeny Kissin, Chopin: 24 Preludes)
4. Lights (Scissor Sisters, Ta-Dah)
5. Pax Deorum (Enya, The Memory of Trees)
6. Partita No. 5 in G major, BWV 829, iii. Corrente (Igor Kipnis, Bach: Keyboard Partitas)
7. Remembrance Day (Bryan Adams, Into the Fire)
8. You Alone Know Our Hunger (David Haas, Where the River Flows)
9. "Nun schwanden vor dem heiligen Strahlen" (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Antal Dorati, Haydn: Die Schöpfung)
10. Bella Luna (Jason Mraz, Mr. A-Z)

Friday Random 10, Sunset Boulevard edition

Here's how we play our little game: Take out your iPod or other musical device. Put it in "random" mode. Hit "play." Write down the first ten tracks that come up--and no fair putting in ones you think will make you look cool, or omitting ones that make you look like a total dork.

Here are mine for today:

1. Chorus (Erasure, Chorus)
2. Messe propre pour les convents de religieux et de religieuses, Gloria, I. Dialogue sur les grands jeux (Jean-Baptiste Robin, François Couperin: Organ Masses)
3. Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Op. 31 No. 2, "Tempest," iii. Allegretto (Steven Lubin, Beethoven: The Piano Concertos)
4. Wild Child (Enya, A Day Without Rain)
5. Tell Me Ma (Gaelic Storm, Gaelic Storm)
6. Das Wohltempierte Klavier, Book 1: Prelude in B major, BWV 866 (Daniel Barenboim, Bach: The Well Tempered Clavier)
7. Dona nobis pacem from the Missa in Tempore Belli ("Paukenmesse"), Hob. XXII (English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir/John Eliot Gardiner, Haydn: Heiligmesse and Paukenmesse)
8. Lazy Days (Enya, A Day Without Rain)
9. Lilies of the Field (John Michael Talbot, Signatures)
10. Variation on a Theme by Josef Haydn, Op. 56a, Variation IV: Andante con moto (Staatskapelle Dresden, Brahms: Variations on a Theme by Haydn)

Friday Random 10

Here's how we play our little game: Take out your iPod or other musical device. Put it in "random" mode. Hit "play." Write down the first ten tracks that come up--and no fair putting in ones you think will make you look cool, or omitting ones that make you look like a total dork.

Here are mine for today:

1. One and Only (Barenaked Ladies, Barenaked Ladies Are Men)
2. Riu riu chiu (Apollo's Fire, Noels and Carols from the Old World)
3. Sonata in D minor, K. 141 (Igor Kipnis, The Virtuoso Scarlatti)
4. Dixit Dominus in D, ix. Gloria (The Academy of Ancient Music/Christopher Hogwood, Vivaldi: Gloria)
5. Kpanlogo (Knox College Choir/Laura Lane, Knox College Choir 2002)
6. J. S. Bach, Suite in E-flat major, i. Allemande (Micaela Comberti/Colin Tilney, The Six Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord)
7. Magnificat antiphon: Nativitas tua Mode II (Choir of King's College, Cambridge, Gregorian Chant)
8. The Dreame (Jane Eaglen, Soundtrack to Sense and Sensibility)
9. Sonata in C major, K. 330, iii. Allegretto (Daniel Barenboim, Mozart: The Piano Sonatas)
10. Unaccompanied Cello Suite No. 3 in C major, B WV 1009, vi. Gigue (Yo-Yo Ma, Bach: The Cello Suites)