Alderman Doolin’s Campaign Speech.

A 1913 classic from vaudeville comedian and early recording star Steve Porter, via UC-Santa Barbara’s Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project.

I do my best not to talk politics here. I’m fascinated by political history, and no doubt anyone who reads this stuff on a regular basis can probably figure out which way I vote. But in this forum, it usually only comes up if a) it’s something music-related, and b) I can get an easy laugh out of it. Political discourse on the Web tends to devolve into ad hoc nastiness way too quickly for my taste, and besides, I’ve always thought that, as important as it is, politics is a lousy way to pick your friends.

Now, unless sometime in the past month your piano teacher told you to go practice Vexations thirty times in a row, you’re probably aware that tomorrow is Election Day here in the US. I was going to do an election-related post on how economic issues affect the arts (executive summary: direct governmental arts funding is a political red herring; income inequality/middle-class wage stagnation and loose enforcement of anti-trust laws are bad for classical music in ways you probably hadn’t considered), but I haven’t had a whole lot of time for research lately, and while I never hesitate to write about music off the top of my head, I’d rather not delve into economics with half-baked data. And besides, like I said before, I do my best not to talk politics here.

So instead, here’s a little coincidence. I tend to leave my music listening choices to chance: either I stumble upon something and then I’m obsessed with it for a time, or I suddenly remember a bit of music from somewhere, and I go home, dig it out of my pile of records, and give it a spin. Anyway, over the weekend, I took stock of what I’ve been listening to a lot lately:

The weird thing: here’s the release/composition dates for all of the above: 1970-72 (Mayfield), 1970 (Godfather Brown), 1967 (Foss), 1969 (Williams), 1969 (spirit medium Brown), 1968 (Parks). So for whatever reason, and by a number of circuitous paths, I’ve gravitated towards a bunch of otherwise unrelated music dating from a particularly tumultuous five years of American history.

Last week, Jerry over at Sequenza21 called this election the most important in the last 250 years. He may have been exaggerating for comic effect. If he was serious, who knows? Maybe he’s right. The last few election cycles have seen both sides ratchet up the pressure so high that it’s kind of hard to tell anymore. And it’s probably just a random fold of my own history that’s brought all this music to the surface now. Still, regardless of your political persuasion, it’s been hard to escape that Yeatsian “things falling apart” feeling over the last couple of years, hasn’t it? Maybe it’s not a coincidence.

P.S. Am I the only one who finds it Dada-funny that Election Day is always right around Guy Fawkes Night? No wonder the British think we’re loopy.

It’s Friday! Stop working and watch TV!

And of course, there’ll be sport: Blair McMillen plays Annie Gosfield’s “Brooklyn, October 5, 1941” for baseballs, mitt and piano.

My keyboard harmony students have reached the score-reading section of their assignment packet. It starts off with an exercise in reading alto clef: Beethoven’s duet “with two eyeglasses obbligato,” for viola and cello, WoO 32. Which means I’ve spent the week listening to WoO 32 being played very slowly. It’s fun, actually: substituting molto largo for allegro turns the piece into a nice little bit of post-serial conceptual sound art. That is, until measure 9, when it turns into an Abba song.


The downward sequence, the downbeat suspensions, the passage through the relative minor on the way to the subdominant—it’s straight out of Benny and Bjorn’s toolbox. Great minds think alike! I’m not claiming they consciously lifted from Beethoven; in fact, this little progression was probably already something of a cliché when Ludwig used it. The point is, for Beethoven, it’s just a starting point. He goes on to juxtapose it with other themes, and then develop it, and vary it, and transpose it, etc., etc. Whereas, for Abba, such a progression would be the entire song.

That’s an exaggeration, of course, but not much of one. When I think of the differences between pop and classical, the main one for me is that the actual music of pop music is non-developing. Once you’re presented with the main material of the song, not much happens to it: maybe a modulation, maybe some vocal embellishment, probably a gradual building-up of the orchestration. But try and think of a pop song that does something as simple as reharmonizing the melody, for example. Or a pop song with a bridge that’s a conscious manipulation of the melody of the chorus. It doesn’t happen very often; and, more importantly, it’s not expected to happen.

Not all classical music is developing—there’s plenty of pop-like examples in pre-Romantic song and opera repertoire, for example. But I think it’s significant that the bulk of the “canonic” repertoire at least nods in a developing direction. Most Schumann songs are ABA (or even AA) form, but the second A section almost always has a significant (if small) variation of phrase structure or melody or harmony. Brahms opted for exact recapitulations in a lot of his shorter piano works, but you can skim through the songs for a master class in all the ways to backload harmonic surprises. Even Ravel’s “Bolero,” the epitome of monomania, has that kick-ass modulation and coda.

Do I wish pop music were more like classical music in this regard? Absolutely not—I think it’s one of the main sources of pop’s appeal. A great pop song starts with a terrific melodic hook, or a great harmonic change, and then just fills your ear with it. It takes a catchy cliché, like the Beethoven example, and lets you wallow in it for a minute or three. Wallow in a good way, it should be noted; it’s like calorie-free candy. It’s not much of a journey—it’s more like a little objet d’art: you experience it all at once, and it’s pretty much the same at the beginning and the end. There it is, it’s lovely, and then it’s over.

This isn’t a criticism—it’s actually the way I like pop music to be: a perfectly crafted crystallization of a single emotion or idea. And yes, again, it is something of an overgeneralization. I mean, there is pop-esque music out there that does try to take you from point A to point B. Teenage memories of Pink Floyd spring to mind; I suppose some of the Beatles’ more experimental efforts might fit this mold. But even a lot of that only tricks out pop-song structure to give the illusion of development. Take one of the all-time great songs, “Good Vibrations,” by the Beach Boys. It has to be one of the least well-behaved pop songs ever. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus—and then there’s this wild contrapuntal bridge that leads to a completely new mini-refrain that finishes up on a totally open-ended chord, and then you’re back into the refrain, only it’s not, it’s another transition into an instrumental refrain that repeats and fades. I think “Good Vibrations” is a masterpiece of 20th-century music, but for all its variety, it’s not really developing the material so much as looking at it from all sides. If there’s demonic or sardonic or somber implications in any of those melodies, they remain untapped.

That’s why I always keep turning to non-pop, old and new. For all the joy of pop, a lot of the time, it doesn’t feel like life feels: constantly changing, sometimes uncertain, frequently frustrating, but always driven by the quieter but equally vital excitement of discovery. Sometimes your experience of the world coalesces into a single beautiful moment—that’s pop music. Those moments are rare; it’s why we go back to our favorite pop songs over and over, a little reminder of what those moments are like. Most of the time, though, there’s just a glimmer of something, something that may seem commonplace, but might just might end up somewhere wonderful, and you follow that thread with equal parts apprehension and hope. And for whatever reason—temperamental, psychological, aesthetic—that’s the music I keep trying to write.

Or: adapt, improvise, overcome.

It seems the great-nephew of John Hughes, the composer of the great Welsh hymn “Cwm Rhondda,” isn’t a fan of a new recording of the tune in the style of the band Queen. Apparently, he doesn’t feel the revision rocks hard enough:

“John Hughes’ square-cut, driving harmonies are replaced with slushy Victorian chords and sloppy rhythms—the very things he was trying to avoid.”

Damn straight—what passes for rock and roll today is lame, lame, lame. Back before the Great War, they knew how to thrash.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Clawdd Offa, Carnival Messiah is returning to England. In the words of its creator, “It is like a multicultural presentation that takes George Fredrick Handel’s oratorio from the concert hall and places it in the middle of a Caribbean street parade.” Hilarious consequences ensue! No, actually, the piece is a “true embodiment of the West Indian culture and Carnival, as it relates to the slave trade and colonialism.” (In other words, don’t you dare stand during the “Hallelujah” chorus.)

I feel pretty sedated: sometime Ramones drummer Richie Ramone is coming to a pops concert near you, pounding his way through a drum-solo version of West Side Story by arranger Ron Abel. Don’t remember Richie? A commenter on the above article sums it up: “He was in the band for a short amount of time, played all of the songs about three times faster than they were supposed to be played.” Keep coolly cool, boy.

Not to be outdone by Trevor Nunn, Berkeley-area composer and performer Aaron Blumenfeld has written a sequel to Porgy and Bess. Well, kind of. It’s actually called Paigel and Bathsheva, and it takes place in… oh, let’s just let him explain.

Says the Richmond composer, “I thought it would be great to write a sequel showing how [Porgy] goes up north, and on the way he runs into jazz, rag, barrelhouse, jug band, gospel, all the early black folk music styles. Then I realized I’m not black.”

Blumenfeld, an observant Jew and the son of a rabbi, pondered changing his main character to a Jew starting out in Europe then shifting the scene to America.

There are parallels with the Heywood/Gershwin classic: Bathsheva, a rabbi’s daughter, is Blumenfeld’s Bess, courted by Pagiel, a young Jewish mystic. The original villain, Sportin’ Life, has a counterpart in Zishe, a rival suitor for Bathsheva’s hand. Zishe kidnaps Bathsheva and steals her off to America, with Pagiel hot on their trail.

Once Pagiel arrives, he is rescued from anti-Semitic thugs by a friendly black musician, who introduces the immigrant to a strange new kind of music: the blues.

OK, OK, it’s pretty goofy. But doesn’t this sound like fun the more you think about it? And what wouldn’t you give to have this sentence in your bio?

His publications include a 101-song collection of Chassidic melodies and “How to Play Blues and Boogie Piano Styles.”

One last revision: the Bank of England is giving Edward Elgar the hook, replacing his portrait on the 20-pound note with that of the Scottish economist Adam Smith.


I’ve been telling you for years that the free market doesn’t value classical music! Now do you believe me?