Seeing Music
During most of my career as a music professor, the text for my music history and appreciation classes was a book and a set of CDs. It worked fine.
When I left teaching in 2006 to write, YouTube was barely a year old and consisted of three cat videos and Numa Numa Guy. But now that I’m back in the classroom, the primary text for my music appreciation courses is YouTube.
Me in 2004 A fugue starts with a monophonic melody called the subject, with a really clear initial motive. As that melody continues, the same melody enters in another voice on the dominant, now called the answer. Because of the clear head-motive, you can easily hear that second entrance. A third voice enters with the subject on the tonic again, then a fourth with the answer on the dominant, and you have a complex contrapuntal texture of four independent melodic lines. This ends the fugal exposition, which is followed by a series of short developmental sections called episodes (etc)
Me in 2018 Watch this, I’ll be right back.
[arve url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddbxFi3-UO4″ parameters=”start=4″ /]
I joke, a little. I’ve written before about how constant motion through time makes music hard to study. These visualizations go a long way to making complex musical ideas accessible, which is why I love them so.
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Radiohead and the Lament Bass
6 min text | 8 min music
One of my favorite Radiohead songs uses a technique with roots going back more than 400 years — the lament bass.
A quick bit of history, then Radiohead.
The lament bass started life as a thumb in the eye of Renaissance composers, especially madrigalists who overused a technique called word painting. Instead of writing a madrigal with one emotional reference point — joyful, sad, what have you — these madrigalists would reflect certain passing words of text with a winking musical illustration of that word. The word “high” gets a high note, “running” gets fast notes, and so on, even if it suddenly jolts you out of the emotion of the overall piece. The audience titters at the drollery, and the composer writes MOAR WORDPAINTING on his hand.
Sometimes it works well:
0:30
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That’s the madrigal As Vesta Was Descending from 1601. The word descending gets a downward run, ascending is an upward run. Later there’s a duet on two by two, a solo on all alone, and a long held bass note on the word long. It’s all harmless and cute for one reason: the word painting never contradicts the overall joyful emotion.
But to be a madrigalist in the 1590s is to never ignore your shoulder-devil, painting every word even if it wildly snaps you out of the emotion of the piece. A lyric like
Grief o’erwhelms my soul, tears flow like rain
Never again shall I be happy
So let me die now, alas
would start dark, then the word “happy” would suddenly repeat six times in up-tempo major, like Up With People crashing a wake, before returning to slow minor for the last line.
Listen to Carlo Gesualdo, The Mad Duke of Verona™, setting this actual text:
I die, alas, in my suffering,
And she who could give me life,
Alas, kills me and will not help me.
O! sorrowful fate
0:35
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dVPu71D8VI” parameters=”end=36″ /]
Gesualdo murdered his wife and her lover, then wrote mournful music for the rest of his life by way of apology. Nobody does stab-me-in-the-heart, throw-me-down-a-well sadness like the Mad Duke. But he’s also a late Renaissance madrigalist, bless his heart, which means he can’t resist showing what a very clever boy he is. Even in the sentence “she who could give me life KILLS me,” the word “life (vita) goes into perky major cartwheels for a few seconds (0:16-0:30) before plunging back into sighs on “O! sorrowful fate.” That kind of crazy-quilt has no relation to actual human emotion.
The Renaissance also loved complex polyphonic textures (several overlapping melodic lines at once, like the “vita” section above), which buggers the text, which guts the emotional impact.
This elevation of cleverness over emotional clarity started to grate on some influential patrons of the arts, who were pretty sure that the music of ancient Greece and Rome was simpler in texture (one melody over a subdued accompaniment) and more emotionally unified. Their only evidence was ancient written accounts of music dramas being interrupted by audience members wailing inconsolably and throwing themselves off parapets. So these 16th century patrons gathered composers and theorists to discuss the problem of “music today” and to plot a new movement, one that assured a more unified emotional expression and much more parapet diving. Sad music would be sad from stem to stern, and peaceful music peaceful, and joyful joyful.
And lo! the Doctrine of Affections was born.
It was an idea meant to improve the expression of emotion in music. Simplify textures so lyrics could be understood. Keep tempo and rhythm consistent. Composers would choose an emotion from a list — Descartes suggested admiration, love, hatred, desire, joy, and sorrow — and stick to it. Keys were assigned specific emotions (C major is “rejoicing,” D major is “warlike,” G minor is “kindness,” etc.). A catalog of bass lines was created, each reflecting a different emotion. These eight notes, for example
signified “peaceful contentment.” Repeat the bass line for a peaceful, contented piece:
0:40
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfxrNblTr4o” parameters=”end=39″ /]
If you’ve been to a wedding, you probably know the rest.
Sadness, on the other hand, called for a bass line descending by scale steps (like white keys on the piano) or half steps (white and black keys) from the first note of the scale to the fifth. Called the lament bass, this descending line is like a silk thread tying the chords together, creating centuries of smooth, gorgeous harmony.
Three Examples of the “Scale Lament”
Here’s a bit of Monteverdi’s Lamento della Ninfa (1620) with the repeating lament bass on scale steps.
0:38
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYdnUHCpomQ” parameters=”end=38″ /]
And a bit of Ray Charles using the same technique 330 years later:
0:22
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Tiz6INF7I” parameters=”start=2 end=24″ /]
Even the Lord God his own damn self likes to wail over the lament bass:
0:36
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QW2Wh1OZBA” parameters=”start=181 end=217″ /]
Four Examples of the “Chromatic Lament”
The chromatic lament uses all of the half steps (white and black keys) for even more emotional juice. Follow the pulsing notes in Vivaldi’s cello:
0:18
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FmS4_fsau0″ parameters=”start=27 end=45″ /]
…or Mary Poppins, of all things:
0:13
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG6O4N3wxf8″ parameters=”start=7 end=21″ /]
Here is that same melting line in the brilliant “Butterflies and Hurricanes” by Muse:
0:21
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hucz0qsXEUQ” parameters=”start=8 end=29″ /]
…and of course “Stairway to Heaven”:
0:12
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9ioyEvdggk” parameters=”end=12″ /]
Radiohead’s Lament
Then there’s Radiohead.
A big part of my attraction to Radiohead is their wide spectrum of influences: Romantic harmony, New Orleans jazz, minimalism, punk rock, aleatory, non-Western — they reach into nearly every corner of the musical world. When the score for There Will Be Blood blew my hair back, and I thought I heard the influence of radical avant-gardist Krzysztof Penderecki in it, and then learned that Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood wrote that incredible score, and that he calls Penderecki his favorite composer…I thought, why not. That’s Radiohead.
So I wasn’t surprised when a beautiful lament bass shows up in one of my favorite Radiohead songs, Exit Music (for a Film). Here it is.
4:25
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50rlHVe6g9Q” /]
The lament bass starts right on the voice entrance at 0:23. It’s subtle the first three times, the lowest line of the guitar, but still serves the purpose of a silk thread linking and guiding the harmonies. And the last time (3:21) the lament shouts right on through.
There is so much more to the song: the Picardy third (a major I in a minor key) that ends each verse; the simultaneous Mellotron choir and the modulation to Pluto at 1:27, then the smooth slide back to Earth; that guitar tremolo countermelody at 2:50.
But it’s the lament bass that informs so much of the richness of this remarkable song. And at 3:21, it all comes together — Mellotron, tremolo, lament. Add the single melody over accompaniment, and it’s a perfect fit for the doctrine of affections — emotionally unified and effective from beginning to end.
I have seriously heard this a hundred times, and I’m going to listen again right now. That says something right there.
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Feature image by Allesandro Pautasso via Flickr | CC BY-NC-ND 2.0; Thumbnail by angela n. via Flickr | CC BY 2.0
Mr. Rogers and that Mind-Blowing Jazz Piano
Seeing the documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” on the life and work of Fred Rogers reminded me of two things I sometimes forget:
1. There is genuine goodness in the world.
2. A mind-blowing pianist is for some reason playing absolutely top-shelf jazz as Mr. Rogers changes his shoes.
I’ll leave the goodness to others. Let’s talk about that piano.
Rogers hired Pittsburgh jazz pianist Johnny Costa (who was called “the white Art Tatum” by the black Art Tatum, aka “Art Tatum”) as his musical director. Costa said yes because Rogers offered him the exact amount of his son’s college tuition — which, as the father of three kids halfway through college, I So Get. But Costa had a condition: he wanted to play sophisticated music instead of kiddy stuff, believing that kids could handle it. Rogers was an accomplished pianist himself, and not condescending to kids was a big part of his philosophy, so it was not a hard sell.
But jazz in general is one thing. What actually happens in the opening theme of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is seriously great jazz.
0:00-0:14 He opens on a celeste, the magical bell piano you have already met in Harry Potter. Already there are some gems, like the jazz chords at 0:07 and 0:10. At 0:11 you get those three sweet melting chromatic chords, very nice.
At 0:32 , the celeste hands off to a jazz trio as Fred enters, laying back to not eclipse the entrance, but still delivering gorgeous piano-lounge jazz.
Then the real fun starts. 0:43-0:50 is just so subtle and tasty, with the piano doing that straight-against-swing thing that’s so hard to master. He improvises the melody in such a way that it dances with Rogers’s singing, overlapping the lyrics but saving more complicated gestures for the spaces in-between — the kind of listening you only get from a skilled jazz collaborator.
But it’s the closing flourish at 1:22 that goes seriously Art Tatum and is so Italian-Chef-Kissy-Fingers perfect it makes my eyes water.
Enjoy.
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eInUUfyqa5o” /]
Need more convincing? Check out these closing credits (h/t Gary Gibson):
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cY70y_g20GA” /]
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Dance of the Atonal Cowboy (Ginastera)
- July 16, 2018
- By Dale McGowan
- In The List
- 0
7 min
#12 in Laney’s List
I spent most of my musical life unconvinced by atonal music (music without a key). I dutifully listened to all the landmarks of Schoenberg and Berg. I understood it and could analyze it and even compose atonally, but it just failed to reach me as a listener. Here’s a taste (16 sec):
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAcZk9mE3tU” parameters=”start=44 end=60″ /]
DISLIKE.
It took me years to admit that I simply didn’t like (most) Schoenberg, that I didn’t find it effective as music. I’ve spent a lot of time among people for whom such a statement is evidence of a lack of sophistication, the confession of a triad-hugging simpleton. Whatever.
Schoenberg’s goal was the liberation of music from what he called “the tyranny of tonality,” setting it free from the tired clichés of key and chord and progression. I’m with him in spirit — by the end of the 19th century, Western music was running in some deep, exhausted ruts. But to my ear, Schoenberg took away too damn much. I couldn’t find the motives and shapes and repetitions that are also part of the narrative your ear follows. It’s not that they aren’t there in Schoenberg — do the analysis and you’ll find them. But I can’t perceive them as a listener in the ruins of tonality he keeps burning and re-burning.
Then…I discovered atonal music that WORKS, that friggin’ DELIGHTS me, throwing the tonal center out the window but keeping those other elements of motive and shape and repetition. Now two of my favorite pieces of music in the world — two of the pieces on Laney’s List — are atonal. You’re about to hear one of them.
The first time I heard “Danza del gaucho matrero” (Dance of the Arrogant Cowboy) from Danzas Argentinas by Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) I was a music professor sitting in a student jury exam, the end-of-semester mini-recital required of all music performance majors. The performer was one of our top pianists. I was supposed to write something intelligent about her progress since the previous semester. Instead, I remember being so gobsmacked by the sounds coming out of the piano that I wrote nothing at all.
The movement starts with a dark, grumbling tangle of sound, low on the keyboard, forming no recognizable chords or key. But there is shape and repetition, flying by so fast you have to listen hard to catch it. Here are the first four measures, which are gone in 2.5 seconds:
Listen to just those 2.5 seconds:
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R4PrfFeQp4″ parameters=”start=1 end=5″ /]
Hear how he groups the notes in sixes, then extends to 12 the third time (blue arrow)?
DOOdle deedle deedle DOOdle deedle deedle
DOOdle deedle deedle deedle deedle deedle
Then it repeats, with a change:
DOOdle deedle deedle DOOdle deedle deedle
DOOdle deedle deedle doo POP! — POP!
(How’s that for sophistication?)
Then both repeat again, at which point we’re only 10 seconds in. At 0:12, a new figure repeats twice. At :15, another one, and at 0:19, another one. So you are on a runaway horse, and the atonality says there’s no home at the end of the trail, but the composer had the basic human decency to give you a saddle horn to hold on to — these fascinating, repeated rhythmic structures.
At 0:42 it becomes tonal! Kind of. Can a piece be both atonal and tonal? No, it cannot. Wait, there’s THIS one!
It continues galloping (because once you see “Dance of the Arrogant Cowboy,” there’s no other way to think of it) between tonal and atonal sections, but we never get thrown because Ginastera, you mad genius, you gay Argentine caballero, you gave us a saddle horn of repetition!
Listen.
12. GINASTERA “Dance of the Arrogant Cowboy” from Danzas Argentinas (2:57)
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R4PrfFeQp4″ /]
EXTRA CREDIT Just to show how repetition of elements can make even a wild atonal piece coherent, see if you can hear the mistake between 0:42 and 0:47. She misfires the first time, then nails the repetition. If atonal music was pure chaos, you wouldn’t be able to spot that.
1 Chopin | 2 Scarlatti | 3 Hildegard | 4 Bach | 5 Chopin | 6 Reich | 7 Delibes | 8 Ravel | 9 Ravel | 10 Boulanger | 11 Debussy | Full list | YouTube playlist
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A Velvet Revolution (Debussy, Afternoon of a Faun)
- June 27, 2018
- By Dale McGowan
- In The List
- 0
12 min
#11 in Laney’s List
He was the most impressionistic composer of all time, but he didn’t like the label. I get that. A label becomes a pigeonhole that makes the audience assume what they will hear before they hear a note, and then (most aggravating of all) measure the result against that assumption. Add the fact that “impressionist” was first coined by a critic in 1874 as a mocking epithet, plus the fact that much of his work isn’t impressionistic at all, and you can see why he resisted it.
Prelude to ‘The Afternoon of a Faun’ by Claude Debussy (1862-1918) is a revolutionary piece. It’s been called the first truly modern composition, a claim I didn’t understand at first. It’s not angular or dissonant or rhythmically jarring like Stravinsky and Schoenberg. How can anything this smooth and elegant be modern?
But once you start taking it apart, holy cow.
It was written as a musical “prelude” to a Symbolist poem describing a faun (goat-man) drowsily recounting his conquests of nymphs as he lolls in a meadow. And just as Impressionistic painting uses muted colors, vague lines, and suggestions rather than statements, Debussy leans toward the muted tone colors of strings and woodwinds, quiet dynamics, and fragmentary melodies to blur the musical lines. That’s all interesting but not revolutionary.
It’s the harmony that points ahead to the 20th century. The opening gesture in the flute (0:30-0:40) starts out in No Key Whatsoever — just a sinewy mix of whole-tone and chromatic scales without a center. Then suddenly it snaps into focus with a clear outline of E major (0:40-0:48). Just as you adjust emotionally to this new home, the faun sprints away, and the harmony moves to B-flat (0:49-0:59). Here’s the thing: B-flat is literally the furthest you can get harmonically from E major. It’s another planet. It simply isn’t done, or (mostly) hadn’t been prior to this. It’s every bit as adventurous and unchained as Wagner, but because each line, each individual part in the orchestra is moving smoothly by step or half-step from chord to chord, the harmony itself can cross through intergalactic space without a bump because Debussy knows where the wormholes are.
This is a composer inviting you to trust him, to surrender to the music — then rewarding that surrender.
Seven spots:
- The silence at 0:58.
- The perfectly-executed swells at 1:54-2:19, and then the flute, and then the harp.
- 4:00 to that achingly beautiful transition at 4:38. Oh my god.
- 4:56. Normal chord, jazz chord, normal chord, jazz chord.
- The build to the horns at 5:21, and then THE HORNS AT 5:21.
- 5:29. Close your eyes and enjoy one of the most mesmerizing passages of music ever written. Hear how the flutes and strings seem to be following unrelated pulses? Wait, why are your eyes open??
- The unbearable yearning sweetness of the two violins at 7:50, and the 30 seconds that follow.
11. DEBUSSY Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (10:47)
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlLoXvamfZw” parameters=”start=27″ /]
1 Chopin | 2 Scarlatti | 3 Hildegard | 4 Bach | 5 Chopin | 6 Reich | 7 Delibes | 8 Ravel | 9 Ravel | 10 Boulanger | 11 Debussy | 12 Ginastera | Full list | YouTube playlist
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When Film Music is a Mickey Mouse Operation
Studying film scoring at UCLA was the musical experience of my life. For a full year we wrote to scene, furiously scribbled out the parts, had them played by pros and critiqued by actual film composers, then on to the next and the next. It was practical, intense, and insanely great.
For one session, one of us scored a street fight with these intricately-timed percussion hits on every punch, something that’s really hard to pull off. When the instructor Don Ray played it back against the visual, he said, “Okay, see how Matt landed those hits on the punches? That’s mickeymousing.” Two minutes later, “And again, there’s mickeymousing.”
We all nodded, impressed.
The next week was a rooftop chase, and every single one of us included this magical mickeymousing technique. Every action on screen had a corresponding pop in the music.
By the third cue, Don was laughing and shaking his head. “My fault, my fault. I was too subtle. Last week, when I mentioned Matt’s mickeymousing? I didn’t put enough stink on it. IT’S A BAD THING. It draws attention to itself. Don’t do it.”
As the name implies, lining up the score with the small details of the action started with the early Mickey Mouse cartoons, all the way back to Steamboat Willie. But the absolute heyday of mickeymousing was Looney Tunes:
0:42
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It isn’t only in animation. Here’s Bill Sikes beating Nancy to death in the otherwise homicide-free musical Oliver:
0:18
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjblvX95Blw” parameters=”start=69 end=87″ /]
By the 1980s, the technique was used mostly for comic effect, like so:
0:54
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And so:
0:52
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If you’re scoring a coyote sneaking up on a roadrunner, or scoring a parody, or scoring in 1938, mickeymousing is a terrific idea. Otherwise <insert stink here> IT’S A BAD THING.
And yet how perfect is this…
0:31
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4QYcrR4KGU” parameters=”start=22″ /]
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