Cast adrift in a sea of tonal ambiguity...

A few words about life and 21st century tonality from a distinctly practical and non-academic point of view:

Here's the thing about tonality: there's this relentless drive toward a resolution. It's a kind of inevitability, that once you declare your homebase, define it and then venture away from it, you ad-venture away from center until you find yourself in another key - another country - you can't remember how you got there, and you don't know how the hell you're going to get home again... and the worst of it, if you call for help - you're going to feel like a damn fool, or Wagner, or both.

How like real life, this is!

Ok, bear with me now. Tonality: the functional relationship of pitches to a single central pitch in a scale. The tonal center is like the king on a chess board, and all the rest of the pitches define that central pitch by the way they relate to it and to each other. Like, I am who I am because of the way you relate to me. and when that relationship is gone... whoops! I lose ground. my stomache gets all queezy and my head aches and I don't know where I'm going, and things pile up, and I don't have all the answers, and I become absent minded, the clutter grows, the seas swell and roil and I am cast adrift in a sea of tonal ambiguity.

There was a time when theorists believed that if it didn't sound pretty, it wasn't harmonic... that may still be true but the fact is, pretty sounds just float out here looking for resoluntion and it's dissonance that motivates! You know the urge to scratch that itch until it bleeds - that outright pain may be better than the goddamn tickle - get up and do something!

The Not-So-Easy Parts

It seemed like such a great idea:
1. Write a bunch of music.
2. Get people to perform it. (they love it, by the way. They all tell me how much they love it; how glad they are to be doing this. I love it – it sound’s great. The audience is going to love it – I hope.)
3. We have a radio interview lined up for Sept. 6th; we have newspaper interviews and stories lined up for that week.
4. We KNOW we have an audience of at least 26 people who will be at the informal dress rehearsal… it may be as many as 30-35 people total… plus 16 singers. So that’s a minimum of 45 people crammed into the livingroom. That will be cozy.
5. The recording tech was looking at the space and thinking about mic placement.(…he snapped at me when I said I didn’t want the mics too close to the singers – he said, “I’m the professional; I know what I’m doing here." Oops. Sorry.).
6. The conductor wants a contract.. or at least a letter of agreement .. She deserves a contract! I’ve got a budget all lined up – but Jesus, I’m betting on the come here! And it’s the same story with the pianist – she knows we’ll pay her. Nobody knows how or when.
7. I am not being paid. There is nothing in the budget for the composer. (Note to self: go back. Read the blog “the Dare”. right, right. Gotcha…)
8. We did get a small donation check ($250) in the mail just the other day. (pop that puppy right in the bank!)
9. What I need is UNDERWRITERS! (Yeah, yeah… that’s the ticket!) Someone to just write a check, hand it to us and say, “Here. This music deserves my support.”
10. I figure all we need is for 200 people to come to one of three performances and throw 15 bucks each in the basket and we’re covered. Right. Pray for me, mother of God! It’s just simple mathematics.
11. Now here’s an idea – as long as we’re recording these performances (no editing - just record it! ) we could put ‘em up on the web , like right here in the blog- and people could download tracks for, say, a buck each. And tell all their friends – it’ll be the next best thing to being there. Mozart had his subscribers. This could be like 21st century subscribers. And for a mere $2.50 a pop, I’ll throw in a ringtone for your cell. Cool, huh?
12. Do we really have to rent a piano? Maybe they’ll loan one to us for an ad in the program… and tune it for free…
13. Programs! Oh, yeah – I have to put together printed programs, flog ads, write program notes and print them. And have a list of donors, and a way to make donations – another begging insert for that –
14. Two out of five rehearsals done. Singers are really “getting” the music. We’ve sung through everything at least once… the hard piece is really beginning to gel. But we’ve had people missing at each of the rehearsals, and different singers will be missing next week. Time is not measured by “how many weeks between now and performance,” it’s “how many rehearsal minutes we’ve got left?” (like, y’know, “how much cash is available on that credit card?”)

The canvas of music is time. It is liquid air… it gets spent. Time gets all spent and time runs out and the music is still floating out there in the ether waiting for its turn to be heard, waiting for the frets to die down, waiting for the do-lists to be done, waiting for everyone to just sit down and listen and hear.

"… And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea."

Here’s another sound-file: “Explorers” (© 2002. MLPBadarak)
The text is from T.S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding” (used by permission.)
Do yourself a favor: Sit down and listen.
Then do me a favor: Send me a buck.

flogging the blog

I've been out in the blog-hood looking for other composers & musicians... I found a former student who's been living in Budapest. I found a former colleague who's a music critic in New York. I found the Daily Nooz - which is pretty funny. All the blogs have links to other blogs and/or sites, a trail of breadcrumbs to help quel my curiosity - or lead me down the rabbithole.

Somebody named Anonymous (could it be the famous medieval woman composer Ann Onymous?) has been posting my blog: urging me to link my site to these "interesting places" which turn out to be ads for money-lenders, drug sellers, plastic surgeons and other dens of dubious iniquities.

This morning, I read in the NYTimes (dot-com, of course) that some 62-year-old woman's entire online search-life was used as publicity by her server (AOL - by name). In a matter of minutes, people followed the breadcrumb trail of her search links and found this 62-yr-old Georgia widow who loves dogs and likes to help friends search for stuff online. AOL issued an apology. But there she is - user No. 4417749 - complete with her picture and every search she's made online, without regard for her motivation, no less privacy in the last year or more...
Quoth the NYTimes (Ur-blog?) "AOL removed the search data from its site over the weekend and apologized for its release, saying it was an unauthorized move by a team that had hoped it would benefit academic researchers." I hope user No. 4417749 has a new internet provider... umm... google? hotmail? Right.

Perhaps I'll go google myself now. (it's the millennial vanity)

Here's another soundfile. Enjoy.
http://www.villawisteria.org/MuFiles/Bells/4-Cascades.mp3