Music vs. Theater

I’m happy to announce that the first movement of my string quartet is now available for free download. I’ve also written up extensive notes for that movement if you’d like to know more about the composition and where it came from. (Of course you’d like to know more. Why else would you be reading this blog?)

I hope you’ll take the time to listen and follow along with the program notes. I spend hundreds of hours composing this piece (not including the time writing up the essays for each movement) and I’m very proud of it. It’s all time wasted if no one gets to hear it. So I’m counting on you here.

The other two movements will be released in the weeks to follow (I’m editing as fast as I can), so be sure to check back.

There’s a fine line between a practical joke and engaging theater.

This video (courtesy of the always entertaining Mind the Gap blog) documents an elaborate prank the likes of which could only be organized in the name of global commerce and fermented barley beverages. 1,000 soccer fans were forced to miss a championship game by their bosses or girlfriends, and instead attend (i.e. suffer) a concert of classical music.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEqJV1acgN4

It pains me to see classical music as the butt of the joke, and the enthusiasm of the crowd when the match starts up makes me squirm a little. How must the poor string quartet have felt, hearing a crowd start cheering at the realization that they’re about to shut the hell up?

But what a divine bit of experiential theater. I wish the video did a more accurate job of portraying how things actually went down when the reveal was made (I sense a pretty heavy editorial hand in this clip). How quickly did different members of the audience catch on? How quickly did they start abandoning expected concert protocol? When did the beer start pouring?

I can think of some other examples of such extreme context switching in real performance situations. John Fisher’s Medea the Musical starts out as an ultra campy gay rendition of the Euripides yarn for a good 15 minutes before the director stops the show and you realize that you’re actually watching a play within a play about a gay theater company’s campy production of the Euripides yarn. Similar hijinks occur in Noises Off.

A lot of great theater is about the setting up of expectations and the twist, the surprise, the sudden reveal that makes you reconsider and reevaluate everything you had experienced up until then. But these are examples of a special kind of twist. This isn’t the story twist that you’ll often find in thrillers (Hannibal Lecter’s amazing escape scene in Silence of the Lambs is a great example), but an experiential twist. A twist that isn’t contained in the character’s world, but leaks into the audience’s world and their understanding of what they’re actually experiencing.

But if theater depends on a series of lies, an elaborate ruse, perhaps events that create disorienting moments when the “joke” is revealed are more honest than the ones that never acknowledge the lie.

Either way, Theater definitely kicked the stuffing out of Music in this video. But I’m pretty sure Music was payed good money to take a dive.

ps – My soccer hooligan friend Shona just informed me that the reveal is actually in the music.  The quartet starts playing the “Champion League Anthem”, which is apparently recognizable by any fan. There’s a surge of applause in there that doesn’t really make sense unless you recognize the song.

Fractal expert Loren Carpenter brought my attention to a technical paper that found evidence that the distribution of shot lengths in cinema have been steadily evolving over the past 100 years to exhibit a 1/f power distribution.Your first question is probably, “what the hell is a 1/f power distribution”. And your second question is probably “why do  you have a photo of a hot girl on this post if you’re just gonna be talking about math?”  Ummm… Let’s start with the first question. It’s easier. (waving hands) It’s a distinctive pattern that seems to crop up all over biology, physics, nature and art, and there’s increasing evidence that this pattern is hard wired into the way our neurons fire. (stop waving hands). As for the second question… well,  uhhh… Let’s talk a bit about the paper first.

I find two interesting bits in this paper. First, since the entire art of cinema is only 125 years old, you can actually analyze its evolution from the earliest experiments on film. This paper claims that in just  few generations, editors and directors have unconsciously gravitated towards a film cutting style that we are neurologically wired to prefer. (Perhaps since it more closely mimics the natural rhythms of our eyes, how frequently we dart and change focus.)  However, the paper admits that other issues such as narrative, plot, and close ups of attractive people in revealing bathing suits will trump even perfectly neurologically correlated editing techniques.

Read the rest of this entry →

Imagine a company that dubs old super 8 films onto VHS.  If you like, they’ll even dub a nice soundtrack of classical music in the background for your listening pleasure.

Well, looks like they didn’t always listen to the entire album before dubbing it.  And what we have here is a great example of the overwhelming power music has to skew your perceptions.  Mid-twentieth century atonality does not make for an easy trip down memory lane.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZEdBRzBDLM

To be fair, the deck was stacked against film in this battle.  There is something innately creepy about old footage.   Something about memory and nostalgia and existential dread…

This was sent to me by Craig Good (via Robert Popper) along with a challenge to identify the piece.  I’ve completely failed.  I’ve scoured the catalogs of Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Carter, Sessions, Boulez, Babbitt with no luck.  Anyone else recognize it?

Music vs Theater. What the heck do I mean by that? Is it a lawsuit? A wrestling match? A fight to the death? When I was pitching potential blog titles to my friends, some were confused by the implications of this particular one. After all, I’m trying to make works of music and theater, why would I want a title that makes it sound like they can’t work together?

Here.  Lemme splain…

Obviously, music and theater are separate things. And if you try to combine them in a single piece, they won’t necessarily work towards the same goal. They can operate on separate planes, like a form of macro counterpoint. Usually composers try to make the music act in tandem with the theater, illuminating nuances or internal states of characters, setting atmospheres, supporting the action. But it doesn’t always. How many musicals grind to a halt to make way for the dance number, or cram in a song that doesn’t advance the action one bit, but may sell an album? (I think I’m letting some of my preferences show through. That’s OK.  It’s a blog.)

Sometimes the music works against the theater due more to stylistic reasons. They’re different and sometimes incompatible languages.  Many audiences expect a degree of naturalism in their theater. Conversation on stage should sound like conversation in life. Sung theater immediately makes the conversation, well, less natural. The pacing of the action is altered. This isn’t always a bad thing, but it creates a challenge that must be addressed. In future posts we’ll take a look at different solutions through the eras and how well they’ve held up.

But perhaps it’s not so obviously true that music and theater are different things. After all, theater has innate music in its rhythms and sounds. And music relies on creating tension and resolution over time, a purely abstract form of drama or theater.

With Music vs Theater I’m interested in this overlap, the middle of the spectrum. The area where you’re not sure if  you’re experiencing the theater of music or the music of theater.

I’ll be performing a 25 minute excerpt from Failing That as part of the Stage Werx Solo Sunday festival on February 28th.  This excerpt will follow the arc of Steven Scafidi as he finds himself completely unprepared for a final exam.

These workshops are a great way to see a work as it develops, and also a great way for me to see what works and what doesn’t work.

I’ll be presenting my piece in the first half of the evening (note the early start time, 7pm).  My good friend, the lovely and talented Katie Rubin will be presenting a section of her solo show in the second half.   I hope to see you there after the show.

Read more about Failing That (including audio samples)  here.

You can purchase tickets here.

Composing music is not easy.  At least not for me.  It’s hard.  And slow.  And kinda lonely.  And it requires a lot of sitting around with a piano or computer or piece of paper and trying to will something into existence.  Ironically, it has almost nothing in common with the activity that usually compels one to try to compose music, namely, LISTENING to music.

Read the rest of this entry →