Soho the Dog is embarking on its annual summer hiatus—posts will be spotty at best for the next couple weeks. Try to keep the drama to a minimum while we’re gone, OK? Upon our return, we’ll have interviews, dispatches from exotic locales, and a new quiz.

In the meantime, since part of that hiatus will consist of consultations with Wilson, our Midwest Critic-at-Large, here’s a bit of Chicago history, by one of the all-time great human beings, Jane Addams. Hull House, the first settlement house in America, was founded by Addams and Ellen Gates Starr in 1889, offering education and social assistance to the largely-immigrant working classes of Chicago’s West Side. Part of that education included a music school; in her memoir Twenty Years at Hull-House, Addams offered this report:

From the beginning we had classes in music, and the Hull-House Music School, which is housed in quarters of its own in our quieter court, was opened in 1893. The school is designed to give a thorough musical instruction to a limited number of children. From the first lessons they are taught to compose and to reduce to order the musical suggestions which may come to them, and in this wise the school has sometimes been able to recover the songs of the immigrants through their children. Some of these folk songs have never been committed to paper, but have survived through the centuries because of a touch of undying poetry which the world has always cherished; as in the song of a Russian who is digging a post hole and finds his task dull and difficult until he strikes a stratum of red sand, which in addition to making digging easy, reminds him of the red hair of his sweetheart, and all goes merrily as the song lifts into a joyous melody. I recall again the almost hilarious enjoyment of the adult audience to whom it was sung by the children who had revived it, as well as the more sober appreciation of the hymns taken from the lips of the cantor, whose father before him had officiated in the synagogue.
…
Some of the pupils in the music school have developed during the years into trained musicians and are supporting themselves in their chosen profession. On the other hand, we constantly see the most promising musical ability extinguished when the young people enter industries which so sap their vitality that they cannot carry on serious study in the scanty hours outside of factory work…. [A] young man whose music-loving family gave him every possible opportunity, and who produced some charming and even joyous songs during the long struggle with tuberculosis which preceded his death, had made a brave beginning, not only as a teacher of music but as a composer. In the little service held at Hull-House in his memory, when the children sang his composition, “How Sweet is the Shepherd’s Sweet Lot,” it was hard to realize that such an interpretive pastoral could have been produced by one whose childhood had been passed in a crowded city quarter.

Even that bitter experience did not prepare us for the sorrowful year when six promising pupils out of a class of fifteen, developed tuberculosis. It required but little penetration to see that during the eight years the class of fifteen school children had come together to the music school, they had approximately an even chance, but as soon as they reached the legal working age only a scanty moiety of those who became self-supporting could endure the strain of long hours and bad air. Thus the average human youth, “With all the sweetness of the common dawn,” is flung into the vortex of industrial life wherein the everyday tragedy escapes us save when one of them becomes conspicuously unfortunate. Twice in one year we were compelled

“To find the inheritance of this poor child
His little kingdom of a forced grave.”

It has been pointed out many times that Art lives by devouring her own offspring and the world has come to justify even that sacrifice, but we are unfortified and unsolaced when we see the children of Art devoured, not by her, but by the uncouth stranger, Modern Industry, who, needlessly ruthless and brutal to her own children, is quickly fatal to the offspring of the gentler mother. And so schools in art for those who go to work at the age when more fortunate young people are still sheltered and educated, constantly epitomize one of the haunting problems of life; why do we permit the waste of this most precious human faculty, this consummate possession of civilization? When we fail to provide the vessel in which it may be treasured, it runs out upon the ground and is irretrievably lost.

From the Mahler-Werfel papers at the University of Pennsylvania: (L to R) Alma Mahler, Don Ameche, Franz Werfel, “unknown man,” and Claudette Colbert, ca. 1943. The “unknown man” looks an awful lot like famous director and communist-hater Sam Wood, which means this was likely taken on the set of the movie Guest Wife. Alma probably got a kick out of that. (Thanks to reader Ben Weiss for the tip. Bonus: Nazi officials cross-dressing with Anna Mahler!)

In other news:

James Levine will miss the rest of the Tanglewood season—including the Carterpalooza—to have a kidney removed.

More get-well cards: Dame Joan Sutherland is recovering in a Swiss hospital after breaking both her legs in a fall.

More opera: that La Scala version of An Inconvenient Truth is set to be directed by none other than William Friedkin.

More critics? The Guardian is sponsoring a Young Critics’ Competition. The question is: who would you really like to see lie about their age and enter?

Now, I did drink a lot of champagne last night. My lovely wife and I watched The Philadelphia Story, which is a film that lends itself well to excessive consumption of champagne, if only in imitation of the characters. And when we turned off the movie, we flipped over to coverage of Boston’s Independence Day fireworks display. But like I said, I was full of champagne. So I just wanted to make sure: did the canned musical accompaniment to the fireworks really segue from the usual unmitigated country-pop crap to a somewhat clumsy edit of Pavarotti singing “Nessun dorma,” and then to the finale of Mahler 1? And then before the Mahler had died away, Craig Ferguson was making a bathroom joke? Did that really happen? Because that would be kind of weird.

Mahler for the Fourth. Weird.

Biological taxonomists (yet another career I occasionally cast a wistful eye at) spend their lives trying to draw a bright line between analogy and homology. An analogous variation is one the evolves independently among unrelated species—the example every biology book I have on hand uses is the appearance of wings on birds, bats, and bees, three unrelated species. On the other hand, the fact that Critic-at-Large Moe and I both have two nostrils of sufficient structural similarity points to our common Mammalian ancestor: a homologous variation.

Analogy vs. homology is how biologists draw family trees. Determine that a feature is homologous, and you can pin that species to a branch pretty surely. If it’s an analogous variation, or if you can’t tell which it is, it’s a wild card, basically. If you don’t distinguish between the two, you can come up with some pretty crazy biology pretty quickly—elephants related to goldfish because they both have two eyes, for instance. But if you think about it, when it comes to music, we tend to assume that all variations are homologous.

In part, that’s because it’s a safe bet—homologous variations fairly outnumber analogous variations in the comparatively finite world of music. But even when variations do arise independently—Schoenberg and Rufer both hitting on dodecaphony, for example—we attribute it to something “in the air,” that it was historically time for such a development. It’s hard to disprove that sort of analysis. Sometimes it really is just a case of a common evolutionary goal. But I think that there are also developments that blur the analogy/homology line; I also think there are composers who turn that blur to their advantage.

One of the more interesting musical evolutions is that of ragtime. Classic rag form is rather odd and open-ended:

It’s somewhere between the daisy-chain form of a generic Strauss waltz and the refrain-driven form of other 19th-century dances. But where most of those dances would round off the form, bringing back the initial theme and key at the end (like, say, the “Una Schottische”), classic ragtime lops of the refrain at the end, leaving you hanging both tonally and thematically.

You might think that the form evolved that way because the sequence of themes evolved into a cumulative enough progression that the return of the refrain became superfluous. But actually, it was the formal variation that came first. Scott Joplin’s early rags try out all kinds of possibilities, but never fully round the form. “Original Rags” (1899) starts and ends in G major, but arranges its themes A-B-C-A-D-E. “Maple Leaf Rag” (1899) uses the classic A-B-A-C-D form, but puts the final D in the original key, A-flat major. But both display the more interesting feature: the penultimate theme is more brilliant and “final” than the final theme (Joplin even marks the D theme of “Original Rags” double-forte and “Brilliant”). Compare the last two themes of “Maple Leaf Rag”:



The C theme stays high and fully voiced; the D theme descends to the middle of the keyboard and, in the right hand, almost completely avoids octave doubling. That’s a fairly consistent pattern in Joplin’s early output.

But between 1907 and 1909, Joplin writes a whole series of rags—”Gladiolus Rag,” “Pine Apple Rag,” “Fig Leaf Rag,” “Wall Street Rag,” &c.—where he makes the open-ended form a virtue. The D theme of “Gladiolus Rag” is typical:


The final theme now uses the fullest voicing, the widest range, the strongest and most repetitive syncopation, and the most adventurous harmony (both “Gladiolus” and “Pine Apple,” for example, feature prominent shifts to the flatted submediant in their final themes).

Our natural instinct is to analyze that as a homologous variation—Joplin must have got it from somewhere, perhaps the cavatina-cabaletta sequence of Italian opera, or perhaps Rossini overtures, or perhaps similarly obsessive passages in Chopin or Schumann. But the fact that he doesn’t arrive at this stylistic point until he’s been tinkering with the form for a decade or so implies, at least to me, that it was a reaction to the limitations of previously-evolved rag form, not an inspiration from outside—an analogous variation, in other words, not a homologous one. And remember that we’re also hearing the shift in light of ragtime’s transformation into jazz, where such final-theme characteristics do become homologous; the climactic, riff-driven shout choruses of both stride and pre-bop big-band swing can trace their lineage directly to Joplin’s triumphant D themes. (Interestingly, Joplin seemed to abandon classic rag form once he mastered it—the last two rags published in his lifetime, “Scott Joplin’s New Rag” and “Magnetic Rag,” are fully-rounded thematically and tonally.)

One of the reasons Joplin’s rags are considered such paragons of the style is because such analogous features sound homologous—the illusion of idiomatic and organic inevitability within the form is so strong. You could populate an interesting subcategory of composers with a particular flair for that kind of sleight-of-hand. But even within that category there would be variants. Francis Poulenc, for instance, conjures by mixing an analogous vocabulary with a homologous rhetoric. Robert Schumann almost does the exact opposite.

Schumann’s op. 39 Liederkreis, on poems by Eichendorff, seems at times to be a cycle-within-a-cycle, some of the songs commenting on or echoing other songs. The first shift in the cycle comes at the third song, “Waldgespräch”; the first two songs have set place and mood, but all of a sudden, the singer is telling a fairy tale about the witch Loreley, luring a traveler to her castle. The melody ends with a cadential figure, sol-do-mi-re-do:


The key relationships in “Waldgespräch” recall those in the first song in the cycle; likewise, the key relationships in the fourth song, “Die Stille,” recall those of the second. “Die Stille” end with the same cadential figure as “Waldgespräch”:


The eighth and ninth songs in the cycle are another reminiscent pair, with harmonic and motivic connections to the sixth and seventh songs, respectively. (In addition, there’s a strong literary echo of the seventh song, “Auf einer Burg,” in the eighth, “In der Fremde.”) “In der Fremde” brings the cadential figure back:


The ninth song, “Wehmuth” (which brings us back to the E-major tonality of “Waldgespräch”) ends with a variant of it:


It might seem like a stretch to say that Schumann intends to link these four songs (possibly along with another, “Mondnacht,” which ends somewhat similarly) merely through this stock cadential figure. But here’s the thing: that figure turns up nowhere else in Schumann’s song output. This is one of the keys to Schumann’s ability to deploy the analogous as homologous: his unifying motives are often so, well, obvious that you barely notice them. And yet here, they signal the boundaries of a sophisticated, experimental embedded narrative in the style of Schumann’s literary hero Jean-Paul Richter. (Which would explain the inverted character of the cadence in the ninth song, the singer emerging blinking from fantasy into reality.) The vocabulary is homologous, but it’s treated in a highly analogous way.

Given the often-indistinguishable visceral audience reactions to both extreme serialism and extreme minimalism, I think you might be able to make a case that the big shift in mid-20th-century experimental music was not so much a matter of vocabulary, but that composers no longer felt the need to try and massage the analogy/homology divide. Take for instance, the difference between Philip Glass and John Adams: where Adams, with his hints towards jazz and Impressionism, is deliberately asserting a taxonomic relationship with various established genres, Glass’s music, especially outside of a dramatic context, usually seems more concerned with internal proportion than external lineage. Features that resemble other musics are presented as analogous developments from within the technique. Music in Twelve Parts is a particularly fine example of this: the work’s ontology recapitulates a highly personal interpretation of tonal phylogeny.

Music, like other creative endeavors, is different from biology in that decisions regarding analogy and homology can come from both without and within, as if organisms had as much say in the classification of a variation as taxonomists did. The tree of music seems to expand and contract in cycles—at the moment, new music seems focused on homology, leaves at the edges rather than whole new branches. But if history is any indication, that will change at some point—the most vital evolutionary trees, after all, are the least orderly ones.

A little housecleaning: sometimes when a piece of music seems to be tending in a vaguely pop direction I’ll mock up a demo in GarageBand. That’s the story with this ditty, which has been sitting on the hard drive for a couple of years now. It was originally one of a projected cycle of songs, but I realized this week that I had absolutely no recollection of what the rest of the songs were even going to be about. So now it’s just an unusually well-groomed orphan.

“Timber” (MP3, 3.7 Mb)

Three things I remember liking about this song:

1. The crazy bass line under the chorus.
2. The quote at the end.
3. The fact that, if you put enough audio compression on high Beach-Boys-style falsetto, it sounds like the Chipmunks.

Yes, that is me singing. Sorry.

The International Music Score Library Project is back in business. Is that the proper colloquialism when the stuff is free?

子曰：「人而不仁，如禮何？人而不仁，如樂何？」

Zǐ yuē: rén ér bù rén, rú lǐ hè? rén ér bù rén, rú yuè hè?

The Master said, “If a man be without the virtues proper to humanity, what has he to do with the rites of propriety?
If a man be without the virtues proper to humanity, what has he to do with music?”

—The Analects of Confucius, III.iii
(trans. James Legge)

The Boston Symphony Orchestra e-mailed out a press release today detailing a curious promotion.

Tanglewood, Gulf Oil, and the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority are teaming up this summer for a special promotion at Gulf gas stations along the Massachusetts Turnpike between Boston and Tanglewood. For every $50 of gas purchased at participating Gulf gas stations, travelers can earn a free lawn pass to Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The promotion will run June 30 through August 22.

The participating Gulf stations, it should be noted, are those actually on the Mass Turnpike. So this is targeted primarily at people who use the Pike to get to and from Tanglewood, or who possibly have a regular commute that involves a big enough stretch of the Pike that they would be buying gas. (My own commute into Boston, for example, never passes any of the participating stations.)

It’s interesting to break this down a little. How many people would even spend fifty bucks on gas getting to Tanglewood and back? Let’s say that the Boston-to-Tanglewood commute is 130 miles, and we’ll go with today’s AAA average of $4.07/gal in Boston. At that rate, if it’s costing $50 for a round trip, you’re getting at best just over 21 miles per gallon—for almost totally highway driving. (I think we all know what kind of cars those are.)

Is it worth it, environmental concerns aside? Kind of, actually—a year ago, gas was, on average in Boston, $2.94 a gallon; if you’re driving a 21 mpg vehicle, it’s costing you $13.88 more in gas to get to the Shed and back this summer. A Tanglewood lawn ticket is 19 bucks. So that trip, all told, is $5.12 cheaper than it would have been last year, keeping ticket prices level for sake of argument. (The break-even mileage on that calculation is 15.46 mpg; worse than that, and you’re still paying more compared with 2007.)

But here’s the odd thing: if you have a car with decent mileage, it’s not much of a deal at all. Think of it—if it doesn’t cost you $50 in gas to get to Tanglewood and back, you’re going to need to go twice in order to get the free pass. The break-even for two Boston-Tanglewood round-trips in order to collect one free pass is 30.92 mpg; if your mileage is between 22 and 30 mpg, you lose money compared with last year. Here’s the breakdown for the official vehicle of Soho the Dog, the 1999 Honda Civic (29 mpg):

260 miles round trip x 2=520 miles
520 miles/29 mpg=17.93 gallons
(17.93 gallons x $2.94/gal) + $38 [two tickets] = $90.71 [2007]
(17.93 gallons x $4.07/gal) + $19 [one ticket] = $91.97 [2008]

(Mileage is from Boston for comparison; in reality, I’d be coming from Framingham, which is only 111 miles one-way, but even then, I’m only saving $1.70 over last year.) Above the 30.92 threshold, you’re saving money, but in order to match the 21 mpg one-trip savings of $5.12, you’ll need to be getting at least 42 mpg.

So this is a promotion tailored to people who own cars that get a) lousy but not abysmal mileage, or b) spectacular mileage. I’d be more inclined to regard this as a good idea if all Massachusetts Gulf stations were participating; even trying to drive less, I’ll almost certainly be buying two or three free passes worth of gas this summer. But by limiting it to stations on the Pike, it’s clearly aimed at those people driving the Pike to get to Tanglewood.

This will probably be a boost for sales at those participating Gulf stations and Pike toll revenues. Is it all that good a deal for Tanglewood? Here’s the thing—parking at Tanglewood is, to its credit, free. In other words, Tanglewood’s take doesn’t depend at all on how people actually get there. The argument is that, by making it less of a financial hassle to cover the distance, more people will show up (and presumably buy at least one more ticket in addition to the free one). But might that subsidy be better spent enlarging the Tanglewood bus service? The BSO actually runs buses out to Tanglewood for $30 round-trip—a deal if your vehicle gets less than 35 mpg these days—but it’s a limited schedule, Fridays and Saturdays only. Make that schedule more flexible, and I’d bet they’d get a lot of takers. (Including those prospective patrons with no car at all, who might be more inclined to buy a lawn ticket than someone who could afford to blow fifty bucks on gas.) And it’s a somewhat greener option to boot.

And if that doesn’t get people in the door?

From the July 2008 issue of Gourmet magazine, a recipe for porterhouse steak with pan-seared cherry tomatoes.

Delivering a lot of summer glamour for very little work, this gorgeous dish balances the baritone flavor and fat of the steak with the tomatoes’ coloratura acidity.

Did Gourmet just call baritones fat? (Next month: the tenorial high-maintenance gloss of hollandaise sauce.)

I only caught the second half of this year’s Sick Puppy Iditarod, the summer program’s marathon final concert that took up a good part of last Saturday, but that was still 4+ hours of fun. Some of my favorites: pianist Eiko Sudo’s sharp-dressed, unscheduled reading of John Cage’s “Seven Haiku”; Meghan Miller, David Russell, and Nicolas Gerpe’s appropriately spacey, far-out rendition of George Crumb’s Vox Balanae; and pianist Christina Wright’s bouncy, balmy playing of “Short Summer Dance” by SICPP’s composer-in-rsidence, Jo Kondo.

Part 6, the last of the concert, might have been the best. Frederic Rzewski’s “Moonrise With Memories” was limpid and gorgeous, anchored by trombonist Brandon Newbould, who was memorably joined by violinist Ethan Wood and clarinetist Ariana Lamon-Anderson taking vocal turns in the introduction to the second part. Helmut Lachnemann’s “temA” found mezzo-soprano Thea Lobo, flutist Miller, and cellist Rachel Arnold crisp and crazy, gracefully surmounting each new extended technique. And guest percussionist Mathias Reumert fomented a terrific six-player account of Louis Andriessen’s “Workers Union,” a riot of loud, funky lockstep clusters that is now my favorite post-midnight programming choice.

As usual, the long evening closed with Michael Finnissy’s “Post-Christian Survival Kit,” with the new-to-SICPP addition of singers bringing out the ecclesiastical echoes behind the freeform folly. The marathon has become one of the best nights among Boston’s dog days.

You can find a review of last year’s Iditarod here.