Where the Lilacs Grow

When is a war over? When a government says it is so? When the generals agree with a gentleman's handshake and say with a photoshoot smile, "Good game, guys!" When the general populace loses interest and simply walks away, first pretending then forgetting of the landmines left beneath their feet?

Not so easy, of course. The Civil War never really stopped, it merely shifted. From explosions on a battlefield to covert slinking, Confederate flags hung not quite hidden in the hearts of Real Americans™, a pipeline lay enough out of sight that the well-meaning white can say, "No, but I didn't see!" Then finally, with a cry through choked throats, the African Americans rise again en masse and lays bare again the cankerous boil in the soul of America, then, through every media outlet available, the quailing powers that be point at the protesters and shout, "Sic sempre tyrannis!" and the police march like a military, shooting in the name of.

The protests continue. In the face of plague and poverty and police brutality, the protests continue.

--- --- ---

Today's composer is George Walker (1922-2018). It is always sad to learn of a composer only because they died, but that is how his name first came to me. While in high school, Mr. Walker attended Howard University, which hosted his first piano recital. He then attended Oberlin Conservatory, and completed his early musical education at the Curtis Institute of Music, becoming one of the first black graduates from the music program. He eventually went on to become the first black person to receive a Doctorate in Music from Eastman School of music.

Mr. Walker was beyond a formidable pianist. Not long after his New York debut recital, he performed Rachmaninov's 3rd Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Eugene Ormandy. In 1950, he became the first black musician signed on by major management with the National Concert Artists, and he embarked on numerous tours across Europe. His teaching career is no less impressive, having held professorships at Dalcroze School of music, the New School for Social Research, Smith College, University of Boulder, Rutgers University, Peabody Institute of John Hopkins, and the University of Delaware.

The piece I am sharing, Lilacs, is also the first composition awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music to an African American. The text is drawn from Walt Whitman's poem, "When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd," written as an elegy to Abraham Lincoln.

Talk the Walk, Walk the Talk

Things are crazy Stateside right now. Protests, riots, police brutality, curfews, cities at war with their citizens, a house divided, this aggression will not stand, man. I only have two countries left before I've done a write up of every country in Europe (the others are on my Facebook and will travel over here in due time) but there's too much "here" here to ignore.

I'm not white, really, but I grew up so and the average Joe on the street would think so even though it ain't quite so. And what's a white dude to say when black people are being shot and strangled and tased on the daily? When brutality is brought to bear on centuries of wounds and the still scarred souls are rent bloody again, again, again? Not silence, surely, not silence, the joy of fascist desiring, but what words would do justice in a country so indifferently committed to injustice?

No words. I cannot speak for them, and will not. Rather let them speak through me. Become a cipher and let my silence be the space for them to speak. For we have spoken enough. It is past time to listen.

Today, Zé Taylor. Atlanta born rapper who decided to become a musician after auditioning for American Idol when he was 14. At 16, he took encouragement from friends who said his rapping was good, so he picked up that line and hasn't looked back. His albums dive head first into the intersection of race, religion, and sexuality. "The Gay Agenda" spotlights religious hypocrisy, while his more recent EP, "Fruit," takes a positive perspective. Referencing Galatians 5:22-23, the album draws inspiration from the naming of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. In an interview with Mefeater, Zé Taylor lists "Good Guy" as his favorite track in "Fruit," so here it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PGTgqDi7Q4

Sorry for just a link, Blogger won't let me embed the video probably because of copyright issues. Here's his Soundcloud if you dig it.

https://soundcloud.com/zaytaylor01

A Composer for Every Country: Austria

In the world of music history, Austria needs no introduction. Vienna, alongside Paris and Rome, rose to great cultural influence during the 18th/19th centuries, due in no small part to the expansion of the Hapsburg Family. Not just music, either! Austria was the birthplace of a great many names that made history books: Christian Doppler, namesake of The Doppler Effect; Gustav Klimt, decadent artist extraordinaire; Fritz Lang, director of Metropolis and M; Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher of words and logic; uh... walking meme Arnold Schwarzenneger, body builder and erstwhile governor of California. It's a lot, is what I'm saying.

In the world of music, the list of famous composers is kind of exhausting. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Joseph Haydn. Franz Schubert. Anton Bruckner. Gustav Mahler. Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Christoph Willibald Gluck. The of course, the Vienna Philharmonic and Herbert von Karajan stood as symphony and conductor par excellence. Not one but two Viennese schools of composers? It's kind of insane to think about, but I guess that's what happens when you have successive generations of musically trained emperors dump obscene amounts of wealth into the arts.

Local tradition and popular music of Austria is no less far reaching. Like... Have you heard a waltz, don't say anything the answer is "yes." Why? Because not one, but two Strausses decided to become the GOATs of the waltz, and one of those waltzes ended up being The Blue Danube and was put into countless cartoons and also 2001: A Space Odyssey. Also, Strauss II has a golden statue in his image. Not just the waltz, but also yodeling. Ok, so maybe not everybody's favorite, but to demonstrate the reach of Austrian culture, I want to point out Takeo Ishi, a Japanese guy who yodels with chickens. I hesitate to say he is "famous." I just bring him up to make a point.

Then, for some reason, lederhosen were a prominent detail in Ren and Stimpy because... just because, I guess.

My composer for the day is Marianna Martines (1744-1812). Ok, she's not strictly Austrian, because her father was Spanish, but she was born in Vienna and lived there her whole life. As a child prodigy, she frequently performed for Empress Maria Theresa. Her musical education was secured by the poet and librettist, Metastasio (Pietro Trapassi), who also saw to it she received an excellent general education, as well. Now, in a little game of "find the connection," let me tell you this: Marianna Martines lived with her family on the third floor of a building in Michaelerplatz, a plaza constructed in 1725. On the first floor lived the dowager princess of the Esterházy family. In the attic, Joseph Haydn. I'll leave it to your imagination how Haydn was introduced to his future employ (hint, it was Marianna). The cantata I've chosen as a likely demonstration of her ability as a singer, but she was also an excellent keyboardist.

Her harpsichord/keyboard concerti are quite wonderful, as well. 

A Composer for Every Country: Czechia

The current Czech Republic is the result of Czechoslovakia's dissolution in 1993. The Velvet Revolution which led to that dissolution is one of the few historical examples I have found of non-violent protest actually effecting national boundaries. I feel I have to call attention to that fact for some reason. Alas...

Czechia is further split into three smaller historical entities: Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia. That no country is comprised of a single cultural entity is a recurring theme in my admittedly cursory readings of each country's history. Besides the Czech, there are two groups are of note. On the Western Bohemian side are the Chodové. These people were drawn from the Carpathian Mountains, near Slovakia, Poland, and Ukraine to serves as guards against Germanic expansion during the late 1200's. The Bohemian Shepherd dog breed is descended from the guard dogs allowed to the Chodové as one of many privileges accorded to them in return for their guard duty. On the Eastern Silesian side are the Silesians. This group is the the cultural descendant of Celts, Germans, Slavs, and Polish peoples fluctuating through the area. If you want to start an argument, get a group of Polish and Czechs together, then tell the Polish that the Silesians are Czech and tell the Czech that the Silesians are Polish.

Artistically speaking, Czechia is another one of those European countries which isn't really touched on in art/music surveys. And yet, especially during the 19th century, the ideal of the Bohemian held a certain exotic appeal. One need only look at Puccini's la bohème for a famous late Romantic example. For some reason, Bohemians were always poor artists with a predilection to dying of pneumonia (la bohème) or getting stabbed by jealous lovers (Carmen). Why? Because the 19th century French got all floozy about the Romani, and somehow or another got it into their French heads that the Romani all came from Bohemia. News flash: they don't, but jump 100 years later and suddenly "bohemianism" is short hand for certain artsy-fartsy counter-culture. Like hippies. I'm sure the Bohemians are pleased by this turn of events.

In music, the big thing everybody and their mother knows from Czechia (Bohemia, specifically) is the polka. The polka is everywhere. It has a particularly strong presence in Texas and Mexico, because a lot of Czech immigrants ended up in the Gulf coast area. One big example is The Beer Barrel Polka, written by Jaromír Vejvoda . If you've seen Liberace, you've heard this song, but it was a smash hit during World War II years.

My composer for today is a good trek off the beaten path and into the weeds: Alois Hába (1893-1973). His early education showed a natural interest in Smetana, whose influence is probably hard to escape in Czechia, as well as late Romantics like Debussy, Scriabin, and R. Strauss. He also developed a fondness for Schoenberg's music, but had decided that, really, twelve notes wasn't enough to work with, so he started writing for 24, an octave divided into quarter-tones. And then he went full plaid, producing a full microtonal opera, Matka. His music necessitated the invention of a number of instruments: quarter-tone clarinets, quarter-tone trumpets, harmoniums tuned in 1/6-tones. He even established a "Department of Quarter-Tone and Sixth-Tone Music" at Prague Conservatory. So what does this all sound like? I'm glad you asked! It sounds like this.



There's also a crazy jazz cover of one of his Suites for piano, performed by jazz group Planet MicroJam. Czech it out!

A Composer for Every Country: Slovakia

I forgot this blog existed, but now it's back for now? For a while at least. The "Composer for Every Country" idea started on Facebook as a gesture of solidarity during the COVID-19 pandemic. I'd already made a number of posts on my profile, so there's quite a back log (North Africa and most of Europe), but I might as well keep going where I left off, which is Slovakia.

Only recently separated from Czechia by the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, even the idea of "Slovakia" as its own nation is really new. Over the course of history, the Slovakian region has been controlled by the Great Moravian Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. Also the Avars and... some guy named Samo? He united the Slavic tribes in the area, and seceded from the Avar for a time. That said, ethnic Slavs arrived in the area around the 5th century.

Like so many other nations, a lot of our contemporary understanding of local culture started up in the 19th century. Their traditional clothing is quite colorful, and while I'm no expert on the history of textiles and fashion, it looks kind of like a collision between Eastern European/Ukraine and German styles. No lederhosen, though. One of the distinguishing features of the region is their wooden architecture. The buildings have a deceptive simplicity about them. They're not super decorated, but their construction, particularly of the roofs, creates a certain texture that is quite nice to the eye.

Finding details about traditional Slovak music, however, has been frustrating, but I can tell you that the folk songs I've listened to sound like a dialect of Austrian songs. A well preserved dance is the odzemok, which involves a good deal of jumping, fancy footwork, and axes. The axes don't do anything in particular, but it does look impressive. And then, there's the fujara.

The fujara is an instrument that is really only found in the Slovak culture. Putting it into words is tricky... imagine a wooden flute. Now make it five feet long. Now attach another, smaller flute to the flute and put a mouthpiece on it, like a recorder. That's a fujara. It sounds like a flutey digiridoo, and you play it standing up because there's no other reasonable way to do it.

So our composer today is Ján Levoslav Bella (1843-1936). His career started in Levoča, where he composed a number of small form church tunes and folk arrangements. Then, in 1873, he visited Vienna and was exposed to the music of Schumann, Wagner, and Smetana, and he was never the same again. Upon his return, he wrote a large form symphonic poem called Osud a ideál (Fate and the Ideal) and began a general project of fusing traditional Slovak music with classical forms. The string quartet I'm posting is a result of that fusion.



To hear something more directly inspired by Slovak music, he has two sets of piano variations on different folk songs: “In Pressburg by the Danube” and "A Swarm, a Swarm is Flying."

Coming up is Czechia! If you have any suggestions for Czech composers (other than Antonín Leopold Dvořák, because everybody already knows about him) comment below!

Teaching Kids to Read Music Good and Do Other Stuff Good, Too

It is no secret that playing music is difficult. I mean, just go ask random strangers on the street to sing, and you'll get answers ranging from “I can't sing” to a black eye because there's some parts of town you don't just go and talk to random strangers. It gets worse if you give them a viola and ask them to try it out. I'd recommend against that.

Don't get me wrong. Some people can sing in this world. Some people can even play violas. But in America, at least, there is a noticeable dearth of musical knowledge. I would bet the pants on my head that the extent of the average American's musical repertoire consists of The Alphabet Song (aka Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (aka Ah, vous dirai-je, maman)), Row Row Row Your Boat, The Itsy Bitsy Spider, Frere Jacques, The Star-Spangled Banner, and random snippets of Stephen Foster tunes. Maybe some hymns. Oh, and a handful of Christmas songs.

I don't bring this point up to berate the American public, I bring it up because I've noticed it makes teaching musical literacy (by which I mean the ability to look at a sheet of music and sing or play it mostly accurately by sight, much in the same way a literate person such as yourself can look at these words I have typed and understand them mostly accurately the first time through)... Sorry, got lost in the parenthetical there. Teaching musical literacy is really hard in America. I don't know if it's just America. I suspect it's not, but that's the experience I've got to work with so I'm running with it.

To be sure, teaching literacy of any kind is rather difficult. Think of how long it takes or took your kids to learn how to read even their own language. It took a rather long time. Much, much quicker than your friend's kids, of course, but still. We're talking years of reading at a very basic level to get to the point where a bunch of otherwise random scribbles become imbued with the sounds and meaning of words they already know. Ask your kiddo to say “Cat,” and they say “Cat” pretty quick. Ask your illiterate but otherwise genius kid to read “Cat” and, all of a sudden, they're reduced to “C-A-T... Cat.” Reading is hard, is what I'm saying.

Reading music is also hard, but it is made more difficult by the aforementioned lack of musical... anything, really. Imagine you don't speak a word of Japanese. Imagine you don't even know what Japanese is. You are walking down the street when, suddenly!, you are the unwitting victim of a strange bearded man brandishing flash cards with Japanese writing on them. “What's they say? WHAT'S THEY SAY?!?!?!” he cries, shoving card after card in front of your face. Confronted with what is clearly gibberish, you find yourself unable to answer and flee out of embarrassment, tears of ignorance streaming down your face. That or you flee to call the police to report the dude. Please do. That guy's been causing a ruckus for weeks.

The point I am trying to make is that learning to read a language without having a basic knowledge of what the symbols are attempting to convey is almost impossible. And yet, in classrooms across the American Public School System, many teachers are faced with just such a problem. They stand in front of a group of kids who have hardly a handful of familiar tunes in their head, and the teachers have to somehow guide the students towards musical literacy. Oh, and they have to help the kids learn to play immensely complex and often unintuitive musical instruments at the same time. Good luuuuuuuuck!

It's no wonder so many people come away from those classes feeling like they can't music. To be sure, Suzuki Shinichi, of Suzuki Method fame, recognized this problem and solved it by creating a system in which children are literally raised as if music were a second language in the home. The students learn by ear before they are asked to associate music they already know to musical symbols. I'm less familiar with Zoltan Kodaly's Method, but I have read that he came to the same basic conclusion: teach the concept before the notation. Teach the speech before the reading.

This approach is possible in music classes today, but we teach at a disadvantage. The issue we face comes down to the increasing atomization of musical experience. People today are more likely to engage with music by listening than by participating. Sometimes, a song becomes widely popular and fans will sing along at the band's concert, but we're a far cry from the days when whole communities knew a range of tunes which were familiar to more or less everybody, or when mother's sang to babies as a matter of course (they still do, I assume, but such an activity doesn't seem widely represented in popular media). Musical participation is so low that it has come to feel awkward, even strange, to express oneself musically with others... unless one is a musician already, of course.

So what do? Changing cultures is often a fool's errand because social inertia is such an overwhelming force. But we can change classes, when and how they are taught, and we can convince people to give music and other arts more of a priority in the classroom. There are, of course, other challenges. The Suzuki and Kodaly Methods are both great at what the do, but they require specialized training and participation is often costly, both in time and money. I don't know how to pull those barriers down, but it starts at the roots. Maybe if enough of us teachers can grow fast enough, the weeds will one day become the lawn.

Beware the Dreadnought!

Can Do Attitude

While looking up tai chi videos on Youtube, I came across what must be the most sensible piece of advice I have ever heard. It was one sentence: “Focus on what you can do.” In this case, he was discussing a hamstring stretch. If all you could manage was to get your hands down to your shins, then that was enough. If all you could do was get your hands to your knee, then that was enough. Do what you can do long enough and eventually you can do what you couldn't. That is the phrase. “Focus on what you can do.”

The Rebuttal

But what about all the things I can't do?!?!?! What if I'm trying to learn an instrument I've never played before? If I've never played the instrument, then I can't play it yet, so I can't even focus on what I can do because what I can do doesn't even exist yet!

The Rebutted Rebuttal

Yeah, sure, but that's totally not an accurate representation of how learning works. Think Mr. Miyagi. The Karate Kid needed to learn him some karate, and learn it fast. What did Mr. Miyagi do? Did he have the Karate Kid doing Flying Crane Style Judo Chops? No, of course not. He had the Karate Kid wax his car. Why? Because wax on wax off turns out to be an essential basic movement in karate, or most any martial art. The Karate Kid could do the movement, but not yet the art. Once the movement was perfected, he could then learn to use it in a different context.

Take playing the cello. Can you make your left hand into a “C?” Yes? Then you've got the about the right shape for the fingering hand. Can you do the Longhorn or the heavy metal \m/ symbol with your right hand? Then you're about half-way to a decent cello bow hold. Not all the way, mind you, but you're a good chunk of the way there. Congratulations! You didn't even expend any effort!

The point is, whatever you are attempting to learn must sprout from the seeds of knowledge that are already at hand even when you are a small child. If this were not so, it would be impossible to learn anything at all. How does a baby learn to speak? For a whole year, the child is doing little more than listening to the environment and to their family. Then what? The child does what the child can do: babble. The child babbles and babbles their way through a huge number of phonetic variations and, with a bit of encouragement from a kind parent or teacher, is nudged in the direction of the “correct” babbles.

At no point does the child think, “Oh no! I don't know what antidisestablishmentarianism means! Whatever shall I do?!?!” NO! The child babbles until something clicks, then practices what clicked until more sounds make sense, and then practices those until finally the child manages a coherent sentence.

So it is with writing: the child begins scratching scratches with a crayon; over time, and with direction, certain scratches are rewarded as the “correct” scratches; soon, the child has learned an alphabet, or the start of an enormous pictogram vocabulary; not long after, the child is writing “i luv mommy!” with an adorable backwards 'y.'

So it is with math. And science. And music. The germination of every subject comes from the observation of the external world, followed by the steady application of the instinctive advice, “Focus on what you can do.” It hardly ever occurs to a toddler what the toddler can't do, except insofar as the toddler is constantly seeing people do things that look kind of neat and, hey, maybe I should try that, too because that would be even neater.

The Dreadnought

At some point in ones life, however, one encounters a nasty monster: the Dreadnought. It is a combination of “cannot” and “ought” and “dread,” and it stands as the nemesis of all things beautiful and true. It begins innocently enough: One ought not run into the parking lot without looking around first because you'll get hit by a car and killed. I suppose, now that I look at that sentence, that is not a particularly innocent though, but that's where it starts. It starts with self preservation.

As long as the Dreadnought is confined to the world of self preservation, then everything is fine. The problem is, the Dreadnought is a terrible, vicious, greedy, gluttonous monster that will stop at nothing until it consumes all things in its path. When a young student is ridiculed for incorrectly answering the teacher's question, there is the Dreadnought. Wherever is a standardized test also lurks the Dreadnought. Wherever there is shame or guilt or embarrassment over the acquisition of skill or knowledge, you can bet the Dreadnought is there, waiting to feed upon a poor soul resigning itself to the infernal circle known as Iquit.

The Dreadnought says that a mistake is a failure. The Dreadnought says that one ought to know something even if one's foundation is unprepared for such knowledge. The Dreadnought says that knowledge Ought to be learned out of obligation, for status, rather than for the pleasure of learning and knowing. The Dreadnought says that if one ought, but one also cannot, then there not only no “do or do not,” there is not even try. The Dreadnought does everything in its power to trick, deceive, harass, and browbeat its victims into the Infernal Circle, Iquit, for exiting Iquit is infinitely more difficult than entering it. Indeed, once the victim has stepped into Iquit, it is likely the victim will remain to be forever feast upon by the Dreadnought.

Do you know what the Dreadnought hates most? “I can.” It hates the person who says, “Well, I can't do that yet, but I can do this.” It hates the person who says, “I can't do calculus yet, but I can do advanced algebra, and that gets me a long ways there.” It hates the person who says, “I can't play Flight of the Bumblebee at tempo yet, but I can play it at 30 beats per minute.” It hates the person who says, “I can't speak Chinese fluently, but I can say 'Hello,' 'Goodbye,' and 'How are you today?'”

The Dreadnought hates all of these statements for one reason, and one reason only. It hates them because they represent another step in a the Stairs of Knowledge, the stairs that lead the Dreadnought's dinner up and out of Iquit. It hates all of these statements because it knows that the person who says them will not stay on that step; the person who says them will soon see the next step they can take, and then another, and then another, and then, one day, the Dreadnought's dinner will have left Iquit completely.

“I can do advanced algebra” becomes “I can derive this function, and now that one.” “I can play Flight of the Bumblebee at 30bpm” soon becomes “I can play Flight of the Bumblebee at 60bpm.” “I can say 'Hello,' 'Goodbye,' and 'How are you today” soon becomes “I can say 'Hello, nice weather we are having! Want to join me for lunch?”

Yes, my friends, the Stairs of Knowledge are long and arduous, but at the end of them lies a sweet, sweet reward. You avoid getting eaten by the Dreadnought.

If that's not reason enough, then also consider when you learn to do something cool, everybody will be all like, “Oh, wow, you can speak Chinese? I'm sooooo jealous! I can barely speak my own language with any amount of competence, much less two languages! Teehee!” So, you know, there's that, too.