By a random coincidence, two explorations of language and semitonal pitch crossed my path this week. First, Mark Liberman over at Language Log had a long post on pitch analysis of everyday speech. A team of Dutch linguists analyzed recordings of volunteers reading excerpts from Winnie-the-Pooh—first, some dialogue of Tigger (the happy, hyperactive tiger), and then Eeyore (the pessimistic donkey). Their conclusion: the readers tended to use major intervals for Tigger and minor intervals for Eeyore. The results, needless to say, are highly sketchy; it’s a small sample and a rather suggestive methodology. But it’s a neat concept, the idea that people associate major and minor with happy and sad even in speech. (Go ahead and open up another can of nature-vs.-nurture over this one.) Liberman then took the next step and did pitch analyses of various other types of recorded speech, finding that most examples did tend to revolve around two or three approximate pitches. (I think that just might be a matter of the natural range of non-trained speakers. I’d be curious to see more results for really well-modulated voices.)

And then, by way of gracious commenter Valdemar Jordan’s long-dormant blog, I found Joe Monzo’s microtonal analysis of Robert Johnson’s “Drunken-Hearted Man.” Fascinating, especially his efforts to pin down the exact nature of the “blue” flatted third:

After analyzing this song, I believe I have found a possible reason for hearing the “halfway between” 3rd. Johnson sings a common blues figure in

in the second half of the first two lines. It gives an interval of 11/10 [= (2^(2/12) – 35 cents) = 1.65 semitones] between G+ 11¹ [= 5.51 semitones] and F# 5¹ [= 3.86 semitones]. If G+ 11¹ is interpreted casually as the 12-equal G 2^(5/12), it makes the F# 5¹ sound like it could be either F 2^(3/12) or F# 2^(4/12), or somewhere between.

Short version: the equal-tempered scale makes for a pretty clunky approximation of speech and vernacular singing.

But since my ears are more accustomed to music than speech, I think I actually tend to hear things the other way around. Here’s an example. Most American and British speakers tend to end their sentences on the lowest pitch of the sentence. You can hear this in newscasters: there’s a baseline “tonic” pitch; most of the sentence is pitched higher than that, but the full-stop punctuation is signaled by a return to that low tonic. (Peter Jennings, in particular, used to do a neat gloss on this: he’d deliberately undersell the final punch line of a story by putting the whole thing on the baseline pitch, like a closing tonic pedal point.)

My current favorite news voice, though, is a gentleman who’s been filing reports from India and Pakistan for the NPR morning news roundup. (I haven’t been able to catch his name, and the NPR website is useless in this regard. He was on two or three days in a row last week. Can anybody help me out?) His voice, which sits in a tenor-ish range, is very well-modulated: he uses a huge range of pitches, and, like a lot of Anglo-Indian and Anglo-Pakistani accents, the sound is quite melodic. What’s interesting, though, is that he finishes his sentences in what, to my ears at least, is a typically subcontinental way—his final one or two syllables are higher than the “tonic” pitch of the sentence, which instead comes on the penultimate or antepenultimate syllable. If I had to put it in equal temperament, it might look like this:


I don’t know if this is a feature of Indian or Pakistani languages, or if it’s something that might have been picked up from indigenous musical style. To me, though, it sounds rather elegantly sly, and infectiously charming, regardless of context. Why? Probably because it reminds me of a jazz inflection—an ornamental blue note after the final tonic chord. It’s completely unfounded judgment—my favorable opinion of this man’s speech patterns is due to a totally unrelated and culturally irrelevant coincidence derived from my own idiosyncratic musical tastes. But we all form our impressions of people, at least in part, on the basis of the way they talk, and until now, I, for one, never thought very carefully about what that impression might be based on. I wonder how many other intuitive, snap judgments I’m making on the basis of my mental record collection?

Your latest composer casting round-up:

Ed Harris as Beethoven.

Joseph Fiennes as Vivaldi.

Morgan Freeman as Duke Ellington.

Jeff Bridges as Moondog.

I spent last week looking forward to my usual Saturday night fake concert date, where the lovely wife and I sit around the house and listen to the BSO on the radio. Last Saturday’s concert had Daniel Barenboim, one of my favorite pianists, playing my favorite Beethoven piece (4th Piano Concerto) and my favorite Schoenberg piece (only Piano Concerto). Levine also programmed Verklärte Nacht, apparently because he likes to lengthen programs solely to annoy the union. (I kid because I love.)

I listen to WGBH for my classical fix, but, in the mornings, the missus and I have the clock-radio set to the other classical station in town, WCRB. WCRB is awfully conservative with their programming, but WGBH chooses to put on “Morning Edition” instead of music, and we’ve decided that waking up to yet another damn Baroque oboe concerto is marginally preferable to waking up to presidential soundbites. Anyway, the WCRB announcers will periodically throw in one-line teasers for that week’s BSO concert. So all last week I was hearing this: “This weekend, James Levine and the Boston Symphony welcome Daniel Barenboim for a concert of Beethoven… and more!“

Don’t get me wrong: it’s fun to wake up laughing my head off. And I’ve decided that one of my career goals is to have WCRB announcers refer to me as “and more.” But it got me wondering again about something I’ve always wondered about: why do classical-music organizations devote so much of their advertising to the specific repertoire that’s going to be played? Talk about preaching to the choir. Obviously, the marketing types think that Schoenberg’s name is going to scare people, but really, the mention of any composer’s name is going to drive some portion of your audience away. (Tchaikovsky-haters may be vastly outnumbered by Schoenberg-haters, but trust me, they’re out there.) And there’s a huge segment of the population for which the mention of any composer is an instant eye-glazer. How do you square this circle? Easy: don’t tell the people what you’re going to play.

Every time I walk by Symphony Hall here in Boston, I’m met with a phalanx of posters, identical in every way, except for a listing of each concert’s repertoire. Instead of a marketing dart aimed at the emotions, I find myself reading fine print. Is this really the best way to get people inside? Sure, there will always be a schedule—I don’t think an orchestra could get away with not telling what’s going to happen on, say, a subscription series; rich people like to know what they’re paying for, right? But that doesn’t mean you need to advertise to the non-subscribing public in the same way. If the bulk of your prospective audience doesn’t know any classical music (or, more likely, has heard some of the big hits but doesn’t know what they’re called), telling them what you’re playing isn’t going to do much. So focus your energies on making it easy for them to take the risk.

Here’s one possible scenario: set up another series of concerts. Schedule them on Friday nights, on the late side—9 pm, maybe. Cheap admission: five or six bucks, paid at the door (yeah, it’s a loss leader of sorts). And don’t advertise the repertoire. Announce everything from the stage. (Better yet, have a beautiful girl in a skimpy outfit put big placards on an easel. It worked for vaudville.)

Yes, it’s an extra burden on the orchestra in terms of rehearsals and performances, but not having to plan the repertoire months in advance means flexible programming: you could reprise a piece from a previous subscription concert, preview a piece from an upcoming concert, do a pops piece or two, some contemporary music, throw on a warhorse… change it at the last minute? Sure. You could tailor the concerts to the orchestra’s workload, and not the other way around. Your local assistant conductor (quick, name that guy/gal) can get extra podium time and exposure. There’s even a possible benefit with your existing audience base: all those snobs who think they’re tired of Beethoven? All those stick-in-the-muds who stay away from new music? Can’t avoid it if they don’t know it’s coming, can they?

I sometimes daydream that I’m at a concert like this: the orchestra dives into “Rite of Spring” or “Bolero” or (hey, it’s a daydream) “Symphony of Three Orchestras” and the audience applauds at the recognition of the piece, like they do at rock concerts. How cool would that be?

I am astonished at the foolish music written in these times. It is false and wrong and no longer does anyone pay attention to what our beloved old masters wrote about composition. It certainly must be a remarkably elevated art when a pile of consonances are thrown together any which way.

I remain faithful to the pure old composition and pure rules. I have often walked out of the church since I could no longer listen to that mountain yodelling. I hope this worthless modern coinage will fall into disuse and that new coins will be forged according to the fine old stamp and standard.

Samuel Scheidt, writing to Heinrich Baryphonus,
January 26, 1651

(From Volume 51 of The German Library. Ach! Du Kinder gehen von meinem Rasen weg!)

Mystery solved! Not “atonal” at all, but At-tunal, which means “Water-Sun” in Nawat, the language of the Pipil, who are indigenous to El Salvador. It’s supposedly the name of a Pipil prince who helped another Pipil, Atlacatl, repel an attempt in 1524 by Cortes henchman Pedro de Alvorado to bring present-day El Salvador under Spanish control. (Alvarado was successful a few years later.)

If you don’t know Salvadoran history, the Quick Response Infantry units (“Atlacatl” was the first) were formed in the early 1980’s to go after leftist guerillas. After plowing through all the human rights reports that mention the Atonal division, I’m glad to find the name has nothing to do with music.

For my wife: in gratitude for another year, and in hopes of many, many more.

Over at aworks—just in time for Columbus Day—Robert Gable had an interesting comment this past weekend, a gloss on Steve Smith’s reactions to winning the Deems Taylor award (congratulations, by the way—anyone who can go from death metal to King Crimson to Korngold [as he did recently] and maintain not only sanity, but a high level of intelligence and empathy, deserves as many awards as there are). Steve wrote:

And truthfully, it works both ways: Knowing Mozart’s music doesn’t require me to know Schnittke’s, but knowing Schnittke’s music enriches my engagement with Mozart’s.

And Robert responded:

This is so wrong *grin*. Every year that I listen to Ives/Cage/Reich, I lose my ear for European music. I need to be precise here; I’ve probably listened to Sibelius more recently than any other non-American composer but it’s all those German/Austrian guys, circa 19th century, that I no longer relate to. I never expected that.

They’re both right—the more you know about Mozart (or Mendelssohn, or Beethoven, or whoever he’s channeling at the moment), the more you appreciate Schnittke. But enjoying Cage or Reich doesn’t really require any knowledge of past repertoire. (I’d disagree slightly about Ives, who was more engaged with 18th-century Romanticism than he likes to let on.) I don’t think this is just a function of quotation or stylistic games, either; I think it’s an American/European thing.

Think about it: the experience of most European music is enriched by a knowledge of their predecessors, even when there’s not an overt link. You know Chopin better if you know Bach. You know Debussy better if you know Wagner. You know Mahler better if you know, well, just about everybody, really. In the modern era, too: Britten and Purcell, Webern and Isaac, Barraque and Beethoven, to name a few. But most recognizably “American” composers never really fall into this category. (The one obvious exception is Bernstein, an omnivore of Mahlerian dimensions. Copland and Stravinsky? Nah.) Consciously or subconsciously, both the composers and their listeners are continuing this country’s long tradition of trying to surpass the old world by ignoring it.

In Europe (WARNING: large but entertaining overgeneralizations directly ahead), the usual path to cultural innovation is to first engage the past head-on and demonstrate its alleged obsolescence. Manifestos denouncing the present state of artistic affairs are common. Scandalous premieres abound (point being, they wouldn’t be all that scandalous if they weren’t being presented as the modern equivalent to the great works of yore—to have a scandal, you need a crowd that can be scandalized). The goal is to challenge and defeat the history of art on its own turf. Over here, though, the usual way is to pretend that the past doesn’t exist, that the culture is an empty page on which the artist can inscribe anything. Cowell’s early music comes out of left field with regard to the musical culture of its time. Cage as well—there’s no effort wasted on explaining what he did and didn’t learn, or unlearn, from Schoenberg. He just starts putting music out there. Think of Philip Glass: trained in a European vein, he completely erases that aspect of his musical thinking when he turns to minimalism, withdrawing and trashing his entire catalog. What’s interesting here is the blank-slate aspect: the ideal seems to be that of the fait accompli, sprung full-grown from the forehead of new music, as it were.

There are plenty of American composers that don’t fit this description, of course, but they tend to be thought of as more “European” than the others. Elliott Carter, for instance: even now, in his grand-old-man-of-American-music phase, I never read anything about him that doesn’t see fit to mention how much more popular he is in Europe. Given the relative cultural landscapes, I’d bet that Steve Reich is more popular in Europe than he is here. But it’s not pertinent to Reich’s music, which is perceived as more authentically “American.” The difference? Carter’s music engages the European “modernist” past (albeit from an American perspective). Reich’s ignores it. It’s the American way.

I’ve been reading Henry Adams’ huge History of the United States during the Jefferson and Madison Administrations. Most of it has to do with foreign policy—specifically, in the midst of the Napoleonic upheavals in Europe, America’s struggle to remain neutral and above the fray. It wasn’t just a tactical move, or an economic concern. Government officials saw the United States as historically beyond the old European ways, and were afraid that any contact with European quarrels would somehow taint and infect the ideals of the new nation. Old habits are hard to break: witness our long-standing and, unfortunately, current addiction to isolationism followed by rash unilateral action. But it’s the same tendencies that give rise to the American artistic habit of staking your claim out on the aesthetic frontier and not looking back. Me, I’m a backwards-glancing omnivore; if anybody ever sees fit to write about my music, expect qualifications about my relative popularity here and abroad. But my appetite happily encompasses Reich and Cage and Feldman and all the rest. It’s too bad we can’t make sure people with an ahistorical bent go into music instead of government.

Today’s news round-up: now with pictures!

Opening this weekend: Dvořák: The Musical! “Young love, mature love and illicit love are all a part of the summer in this new world.” A bushel and a peck, and a hug around the Czech….

Remember this painting? The one expropriated by the Nazis? The one recently returned to the family of its one-time owners and then sold for $135 million? Know who’s getting a forty-percent cut of that? Arnold Schoenberg’s grandson.

Speaking of which, I suppose if the Pentagon ever extends “don’t ask, don’t tell” into the realm of compositional proclivities, at least Salvadoran serialists will still be able to serve their country. (Seriously, every Spanish-English dictionary I have says “atonal” is the same in both languages. Can somebody enlighten me on this? And where do I get one?)

“Tom sure gets around since he learned to play the accordion.” Hey, they don’t call it a squeezebox for nothing, honey. (With special thanks to Lisa Boucher and Katie Hamill.)

The piece I’ve been working on (yep, same one—who do you think I am, Dennis Báthory-Kitsz?) is for two instruments, and in the movement I’m looking at, one of the instruments is working a lot harder than the other one. This wasn’t by design, but it got me thinking about what a piece that was designed that way would be like. I mean a piece where the technical demands of each respective instrument were so divergent that it was noticeable to the listener.

I’m not counting didactic pieces, where one part is for the student and one for the teacher, or occasional pieces written for amateur performers (like Barber’s “Excursions”)—with that type of music, if it’s done well, the contrast in skill is mediated, rather than exploited. I want music where the disparity is part of the drama. I’ve only ever heard one piece like this: a Charles Wuorinen song called “Christes Crosse,” really a recomposition of a song by Thomas Morley. (There’s an mp3 sample on Wuorinen’s website.) The soprano sings a simple hymn-like tune over and over again; with each repeat, the piano realization becomes more dense, complex, and frenzied. I’m not sure what effect Wuorinen was aiming for, but in performance, the result is a Beckettesque comedy of desperation. The pianist struggles mightily, while the singer grows ever more alienated from the collaboration, ultimately oblivious to the accompanist’s suffering.

There must be other examples—I can’t imagine that Cage or Berio (two likely suspects) never thought of something like this. The effective possibilities are intriguing; I could imagine using the idea to allude to narratives of cruelty, indifference, political disenfranchisement, stoicism, or slapstick.

What’s really interesting to me is that there was a time when I wouldn’t have even been able to come up with this idea. I remember a couple of years where my compositional thinking became so divorced from the physical necessity of performance that I was writing abstract sound, without any thought of how it would be produced. My guess is most composers go through a phase like this. I can’t imagine they stay there for long, though: we need performers, or else we perform the music ourselves. But I’m only realizing now that one of the main tenets of my aesthetic view of the world—the wonderful messiness of life—makes that materialist side of creating music a particularly enticing playground.

One of my several jobs is accompanying singers. (Composer? “Job” implies money to me.) I’ve been at it on and off since high school; I like singers (I even married one in one of my smarter moments), I like the repertoire, I like the fact that, in performance, the audience is paying more attention to the soprano’s dress than to anything I do. But one of the things I’ve never gotten quite used to is the multiplicity of keys.

In song repertoire, singers never let their particular voice type dictate their choice of material. Most pre-WWII vocal works are published in two keys, high and low. In the old days, pianists would also be expected to transpose at sight up or down a step or two to accommodate particularly fussy divas. By the time I got into the business, that sort of thing was frowned upon—I’ve only ever had to do it a handful of times. But now, thanks to notation software and online services like Schubertline, it’s making a comeback. Which is how, last week, I was introduced to the dubious pleasure of playing Fauré’s “Mandoline” in F major.

“Mandoline” is a Verlaine setting in which the singer views a party from some distance; wry comments about the attendees are followed by a rhapsodic description of their elegance as they seem to dissolve in the moonlit air. Debussy set it as well, and he changes the musical material with the mood of the poem, but Fauré seems to do very little musically—a quiet, jaunty figure in the piano conjures the title instrument, and a returning rising scale between stanzas directs our view from detail to detail. A contrasting section introduces some whirling arpeggios to illustrate the turn of the dance; and that’s about it. But Fauré chooses just the right key: the mandolin starts to play in G major, bright enough for wit, but not so bright that it’s catty. And at the first scene change, the rising scale is suddenly in F#, all the black keys coming into play—a sudden bit of legerdemain that perfectly captures the swoon of disorientation in the dim light, not to mention the whole affair’s hushed choreography as perceived from without.

G major, though, is considered the “low” or “medium” key—the “high” key is A-flat. Now the whole piece sounds deep and subdued, like old wood paneling. The contrast of moods is diminished, the shift of focus now in a comparatively prosaic G. But the A-flat version is still better than F. Fauré took great care to make his accompaniments pianistically elegant; even the most technically demanding of his piano parts lend themselves to the illusion of suave effortlessness. A-flat sits on the black keys enough to allow you the flatten out the fingers and glide, but the F major transposition is impossibly clunky. Chords that are tossed off in G now require odd shifts of the wrist, and the thumb keeps landing just a little too hard. The whole thing sounds deliberate and turgid.

Which, of course, it shouldn’t, since we live in an equal-tempered world, and all those keys are supposed to sound the same, right? But they don’t, because each key still retains its own place in the sonic spectrum, and its own physicality, be it of the hand or of the voice. (If you think a half-step difference between a “low” key and a “high” key is trivial, you haven’t hung around singers very much.) On the keyboard, keys in which the root is a black key are always going to sound different from their white-key counterparts because of the way they fit under the fingers.

Some pieces don’t transpose for obvious reasons. (I once encountered some Duparc songs in the low key; they were so far down on the keyboard I couldn’t tell what I was playing half the time.) And sometimes you trade one evil for another: a few years back, I played the Schumann op. 24 Liederkreis in a transposition for “low voice,” and I was so horrified to find that the Peters edition didn’t maintain Schumann’s key relationships that I ended up writing out half the cycle myself. In retrospect, I wonder if the editor wasn’t sacrificing that aspect of the piece in order to choose keys that more closely matched the color of the originals. (On the other hand, the old Peters edition left out the last song of op. 24, which I can only attribute to insanity. Particularly if you know the penultimate song.)

Composers are more sensitive to this sort of thing now. The only major post-WWII composer I can think of who published most songs in high and low keys was Barber. I think the same concerns hold for atonal music as well—certainly Ligeti got a lot of mileage out of the white-key/black-key dichotomy of the keyboard, and for an older example, compare numbers 4 and 5 of the Schoenberg Sechs kleine Klavierstücke. But now that transposition is available at the click of a mouse, I fear an entire generation of singers is going to assume the license to try out different keys until they find the one that’s the most comfortable. And ultimately, it’s not about which key is the most comfortable; it’s about which key sounds right.