The Casual Blog

Category: music

August 7, 2010

First Friday

Last night was First Friday, Raleigh’s monthly celebration of its downtown food, music, and art scene.  Despite the heat wave, thousands of people were out.  At Moore Square, there was a two-girl circus act in which one lay on her back, legs raised,  and the other got on top and balanced in various ways with a big smile.  In City Market, there was an oldies rock band, and the listeners were mostly middle-aged.  But at Art Space, there was a thick crowd of twenty-somethings, many with unsettling tattoos.

Sally and I had dinner at Gravy, which features reliable Italian comfort food in a hip brick-walled and oak package.  Among other things, we talked about the problem that large food portions served in most restaurants pose for American eaters.  Partly because of too many business meals recently, I’d again picked up three pounds I didn’t want to carry about. This inspired my latest eating experiment:  cutting off about a third of my food before beginning to eat, and leaving that third on the plate at the end.  The eggplant pie (thin breaded eggplant with marinara and ricotta) was really tasty, but more than I needed, and I’m sure I’d have eaten it all if I hadn’t established a visible stopping place.

I was taught as a child not to leave food on my plate, which was supported with the moral note that children were starving in Africa.  It did not occur to me until much later that the tragedy of starving children was not going to be mitigated by over-eating, which would itself cause obesity, illness, and premature death.  But changing those early ingrained eating habits requires more than recognizing their lack of justification; you have to replace them with other, better, habits.  We’ll see if this cut-a-third system works.

After dinner we looked in some galleries and then strolled back to our neighborhood.  We stopped at Second Empire and had cocktails in their classic bar.  It turns out that stop lights that are mistimed and clog traffic are one of Sally’s pet peeves, and we discussed them for a while.  We got back to our building around eleven.  Just a few steps from our door, in front of the Still Life club, there was a lively scene, with girls with high heels, long legs, and very short black dresses coming or going.  Sally noted as she took Stuart out for his last pee of the day that she wanted to have another look at those dresses.

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July 15, 2010

Ballet class and open source

This week Sally and I went over to the Carolina Ballet studio at lunch time and sat in on a class taught by Ricky Weiss.  We needed to return a borrowed DVD, and also to meet Lola Cooper, a dancer whose shoes we’d decided to pay for.  We sat in front of the class close to the first line of dancers, which felt awkward at first.  I wondered if we would be a distraction or otherwise be inhibiting.  I would certainly feel ill at ease practicing the piano in front of strangers.

I gradually realized that our presence mattered little if at all.  The dancers were deeply focused on their work.  Their dress was varied, with some in leotards, some in sweats, some in shorts.  It was, of course, an attractive group — youthful and graceful.  Also remarkably strong and powerful.

Weiss didn’t have to say very much to direct the dancers.  A couple of comments, a couple of gestures, and he’d have the dozens of dancers moving in a new complex pattern in unison.  There is, of course, a ballet vocabulary of movement that has a long history, in which all these  professionals have long been schooled.  But the complex combinations of movements were demanding.  There were, not surprisingly, struggle and mistakes.

Practice makes perfect.  This aspect of ballet is very like classical music.  The musician’s performance is the net of hours and years of diligent practice, considering each tiny detail, shoring up each possible point of failure, developing the mind and body to serve a particular musical message.  It takes repetition, with the challenge of somehow avoiding mindless repetition.  I think of practicing the piano as a tool for exploring something inside that is otherwise unreachable, for connecting with both the deeper self and something greater than the self.  But it also is a discipline that looks toward the future, and the possibility of greater transcendence, paid for by hard, diligent effort.

One important difference from music was the social aspect of ballet class.  The dancers worked very hard, but there was also laughter.    A few times, they applauded for the extraordinary sequences of their colleagues.  At one point, Weiss directed the dancers to spin and do enormous hurdling leaps towards the corner where we sat.  Teams of three dancers at a time came flying at a high rate of speed directly towards us.  I tried to stay cool, but I was aware that  a small miscalculation by one of them could result in serious injury — to us!  They came close.  Ballet is more dangerous than you normally think.

After the class, we met Lola.  In the class, she showed grace and powerful technique, and in conversation, she was poised and confident.  She told us about her early enthusiasm for horses, her six years as a student at the American Ballet school, and her time in Seattle.   Along with seeking her pursuit of artistic excellence, she’s also a communications major at N.C. State.

She asked what we did, and I told her a little about my work with open source software.  I tried out on her my idea that open source methods are actually close to how a ballet is made.  A choreographer borrows freely, taking preexisting ideas from all available sources, and modifies those materials to make something new.  It’s very similar to the method of open source software developers.  Lola didn’t appear to buy it, but I still think the idea has merit.  She invited us to see her do a solo in a couple of weeks, which should be fun.

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December 25, 2009

An Xmas Carol

As a nonbeliever, I feel a deep ambivalence about Christmas.  The customs and traditions are strongly evocative of a many happy episodes in my childhood — longed-for toys, rich food, friendship and love.  But it also evokes memories and feeling of sadness and loss for loved ones now gone, who were integral to those early years.

And I’m deeply ambivalent at the sweet and absurd idea of Santa Claus.  The red felt suit, the jolliness, the limitless generosity are all great ideas.  But even now, I feel a slight bitterness and chagrin that my normally reliable and credible parents, when I put the “Is he really real?” question  to them squarely, gave some type of yes and set me up to make a fool of myself in defending the existence of Santa to the neighborhood kids.  I trusted them to tell the truth!  There may be, as recent studies suggest, some value in Santa for developing children’s imaginative powers.  But for me, even years later, there was a cost in terms of injured trust.  My Mom’s solution was to let me read the old chestnut Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus, which proposes to escape the problem of no Santa by redefining Santa as the Christmas spirit.  Really?

I know I’m not the only one with complicated feelings about Christmas.  Some love the shopping and the happy surprises, some love the story of the baby Jesus, some love being with family.  With all the pain and confusion in the world, I have no wish to add to the store without good reason.  I usually keep a low profile about my own irreligion, and especially so at Christmas time, when it seems that Christian beliefs are  for many on balance a source of joy.  But I don’t like flying under false colors, and I feel less than forthright when I say Merry Christmas.  There’s no problem with “merry,” but I don’t care to suggest I’m on board with the Christ part.  I usually go with “happy holidays” or something like that, but really, that just doesn’t sound as happy.  Yet another problem with no good solution.

Still, yesterday, after playing some really rich and beautiful music of Debussy, I found myself digging through the bottom of the music pile for my rarely used Xmas sheet music, and without any particular internal discussion I was soon playing through some favorite carols of my youth:  Angels We have Heard on High, Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Come All Ye Faithful, Joy to the World, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and the Chipmunk Song.  It was a bit like Proust’s madeleine:  memories of family gatherings caroling, happy shopping, beginner band concerts, presents, vacations from schoolwork, trips to see grandparents, fresh smelling decorated trees, wrapping presents, and houses smelling of fresh-baked cookies hit me all at once.  I felt the pure childlike joy of Christmas.

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October 3, 2009

Rigoletto gets a 7 on the Goosebumpameter

Opera is a forbidding art form.  It’s often in an unknown foreign language.  The productions tend to be long.  The plots are frequently complicated.  And the music is for many another unfamiliar language that’s difficult to penetrate.  On top of the basic music and theater, there are particular rituals relating to clapping, sitting, standing, and shouting. So it takes some time and diligence to learn enough about opera to be able to enjoy it without conscious effort.

Why bother?  For me, it was curiosity.  The fact that some operas, with all their discouraging aspects, have survived for hundreds of years suggests there’s something interesting going on.  Producing a single world class opera involves not only enormous financial expense, but also unbelievable human effort and struggle.  Each individual singer, each member of the orchestra, each dancer has devoted years of effort to master their individual art.  Beneath that mastery is the similar mastery of each individual’s teacher, and the generations of preceding artists before that that passed on their own understandings.  Each performance is, for those reasons alone, remarkable. If there are no major glitches in a live performance, where the artistic demands are intense, it is amazing.  And if the performance succeeds in connecting its many parts together, as intended, and touches us emotionally, it’s a miracle.

Remarkably, these miracles are not highly unusual.  It sounds unlikely , but Sally and I have witnessed several of them in the last couple of years with the Opera Company of North Carolina.  Last night we attended their Rigoletto.  Gaetan Laperriere was a strong  Rigoletto, Leoard Capalbo was a very macho Duke, and Sarah Jane McMahon was a lovely Gilda.  The principals sang with assurance and power, and were strong actors.  In the big, famous love-and-death arias, I measured a 7 on the 10-point Goosebumpameter.  It was great.

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July 12, 2009

The “classical” music problem

    When I was a student at Oberlin College, I knew a good many people who loved “classical” music (that is, broadly, the art music that began in Europe in the late 16th century).   I assumed back then that this would always be the case.   The music itself had managed to endure for substantial periods (more than 200 years for Bach, more than 100 years for Brahms, more than 50 years for Bartok).  Within the western high art musical tradition, there were vast troves of riches – many sub-traditions,  many genres, and within those genres, many styles, and many many nuances.   It was, clearly, inexhaustible.  And when, as a student of that music, I penetrated some of its depths, I found it got richer and richer.  I assumed that, as I got older, this would continue, not just for me but for others, and I would encounter more and more people with this same passion. 

    As it turned out, I was partly right.  My own musical tastes have broadened in terms of geography, periods, and genre (e.g. salsa, jazz, techno, hip hop, etc.), but I continue to find the western tradition a source of inspiration and happiness.  In fact, in recent years, I’ve found myself even more susceptible to its power – more prone to get goosebumps or misty eyes from a great performance.  I was wrong, though, in assuming that I’d gradually find more people who cared about this music.  There are a few, and I treasure them, but only a few. 

    I am sorry this is so.  This is not because I dislike being in a minority.  Great music itself counteracts loneliness by connecting us — to other listeners, contemporary performers, and prior generations of musicians and audiences.  There’s human communion that’s inherent in intentional listening. 

      What bothers me is the loss of so much potential joy. So many people would be enriched by making this music a part of their lives.  This musical tradition has caught and preserved in written form a comprehensive catalog of thought and emotion.  Not only does it give joy and meaning to individual lives, but it embodies an important part of what it means to be human. 

      Our schools for the most part have given up on broad based music education, and the commercial “classical” world has not done well in inviting in those without a basic grounding.  The customs of the ordinary American symphony orchestra – the dress, the silence, and ritualized clapping at specific intervals (and nowhere else) – are far from inviting to the uninitiated.   

     What is to be done?  Well, more listening, of course, but also more thinking and talking.  I highly recommend Benjamin Zander’s Ted Talks video http://tiny.cc/NatCs   It is a great introduction to the subject and explains  in about 15 minutes why this music matters.  Hint:  it’s about our deepest feelings.

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