composer's notebook
essays & criticism on musical matters
commentary
Thursday, January 26, 2006
I report, you decide
Enjoy this rant by an old old friend — delicious in its vitriol, yet way out of the park in comparison with my own strong feelings on matters of intellectual copyright. I couldn't disagree more with the thesis of the essay ... but its barbed points (penned by Chicago-based writer Noah Berlatsky) are coherent and straightforward and it's worth hearing him out. At the very least, just so you can argue back. Noah's view is mostly from the perspective of the world of contemporary comics and graphic novels, and when he touches on the intellectual copyrighting of music, it's with an eye toward hip/hop-based sampling, but it's an easy leap toward applying his anger toward the confusing morass of contemporary concert music's licensing issues.
And handing it to him, as it were, Noah definitely puts his money where his pen is, by distributing the essay under a Creative Commons license. You won't find me doing anything like that (as I have to make a living, Noah) but the gesture is appropriate and I applaud.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Top Hat & Cane
Best. DVD. Ever.
It arrived last week. I started seeing the ads in the magazine itself a few months before the holidays—wide-eyed and curious, but generally dismissive ... an 8-DVD-ROM set of the entire archive of New Yorker magazines, from the first issue in 1925, to early last year. Every page, every ad, every cover, every cartoon, for $100 ($61 on Amazon). Who would want, or need such an excess? Secretly and silently, I did.
Recent travels in the Pacific Northwest for fun and friends found us in our host's Portland home-office ... where I spot The Complete New Yorker set on their bookshelf.
"Oh my G-d—you have it!" I exclaim, with what was probably a little too much excitement. I lower my voice to a level of grave seriousness. "How is it?"
One half of Team Portland looks at me as if I've just asked if ice cream tastes good. "It's EVERY New Yorker," she replies slowly. I nod silently, understanding. Five minutes later the online order was in, and I was happily thumbing (digitally) through their copy, safe in the knowledge that my very own set was on the way.
Despite the obvious (yet understandable) missing feature of universally-searchable text (the cross-referenced article abstracts are searchable, not the texts themselves), the set is a marvel of design and substance. Every page, every front and back cover, scanned and perusable—as if your hometown library's microfiche machine had a love child with Adobe Acrobat. And who wouldn't pay 60 bucks for every New Yorker COVER, let alone every issue, searchable and indexed in a database worthy of the Library of Alexandria? The short stories alone contained in the 8 DVDs will take me years to get through. Just the poetry would be an anthology of epic proportions. So I am a happy camper, starting my playtime with the set by randomly searching composers of the 20th century and reading reviews of their New York premieres. How about a 1953 issue reviewing (glowingly) the NY Phil premiere of the William Walton Violin Concerto, with soloist John Corigliano (Sr.)? It's gems like this you stumble upon, just randomly punching buttons on your keyboard.
For those with the yen for the visual, there are the advertisements, arguably the best part. Who can resist staring at a deliciously mid-century page, describing the virtues of Pinesbridge Farm Smoked Turkey Party Soup ("Huntsman Style!"). And for the truly heady there is an interface designed just for you: a button to skip you from cartoon to cartoon, throughout every issue. (Note: the cartoons from those early issues? Not so funny. If you think the current cartooning is inscrutable, you should check out the offerings from 1925...)
I've put in only a few hours of exploration so far, so there's much procrastinating to go. Next up will be a thorough perusal of every Kenyon poem they ever published. I then plan on making my way through all contributions by Stanislav Lem.
You'll find my rotting bones here, at this computer desk, where I expired reaching for DVD #7...
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Book Tour
One of the highlights of visiting Portland (besides the company), was the precious two hours spent browsing at Powells, bookstore to the Gods. While perusing the stacks, jaw firmly scraping the floor, I felt as close to an archeologist as I ever have, unearthing relics from the shelves and briefly holding them in my nervous hands before I returned them to safety, far from my credit card. Because at Powells (City of Books, an entire city block, like Macy's), the used gems are mixed in with the new publications, and part of the fun is finding that un-findable tome, calmly sitting there, waiting for you.
The first used gem I found in Powell's fantastic music section: the Selected Letters of Virgil Thomson, which I plucked off the shelf at first with curiosity, but then after flipping through a few pages, held onto with excitement. Thomson was a character for the ages, and his letters read like a juicy novel, where all the players are straight out of that beloved list of ex-pats in pre-war Paris ... Copland, Gertrude Stein, George Antheil ... I've ripped through half the letters already on the airplane voyage home, and have giggled maliciously on almost every page. The peek into Thomson's world of cafés with Picasso at Le Boeuf sur le Toit was just too rich to pass up. I restrained myself from purchasing the copy signed by Thomson in the '80s (about $100 if I remember correctly), and grabbed the dog-eared used volume for $6.
The more exciting find was huge, in heft and in importance: Letters from a Life, Seleced Letters of Benjamin Britten. I've been looking for the out-of-print Britten letters for 10 years—anytime I've gone into a used bookstore's music section (almost always a disappointing experience, even in NY) it's the first thing I look for—I've never actually ever seen a copy. And here was Vol. 3 (1946-51) staring me in the face. This one volume (itself, a mammoth item) would have to do for now, it was all they had—so volumes 1-2 are again left for future discovery. But now I've tasted blood, and must have the others. My internet search has begun in earnest. It's only a matter of time...
I was later tempted by a gorgeous (and complete) mid-19th century edition of Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, hiding not so very far away from the aisle of Howard Zinn (ya gotta love Portland). It was rough walking away. But I eventually settled on a copy of Blair Tindall's spicy book on sex and the Classical Music scene of the 1980's, released I believe sometime last year. Too many people have asked if I've read it yet, so it's time to dive into the coke-snorting fun myself.
My pile was now getting pricey, and Better Half had put together an impressive stack of books herself, so it was time to run while we still had available credit. Next trip out west, I'll bring field rations and a tent. Perhaps the easygoing Portlanders at Powells won't mind me camping out.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Back in town
Taking a long holiday trip interrupts notebook posts, it would seem. And if we include the interruption of my travels to Chicago for the Midwest Clinic, and the ubiquitous family visits, it's turned into an almost month-long hiatus. So unsurprisingly, some notebook items have fallen through the cracks:
• I finally uploaded a smokin' new Avenue X live recording, courtesy of Robert Ambrose and the Georgia State University Symphonic Wind Ensemble. I've dropped hints before about this recording, and it's well worth the wait—it peels paint.
• And leftover from last month's year-end roundups, in mid-December The New York Times named Acoustica one of the "most notable CD's" of 2005. Critic Allan Kozinn wrote:
After a handful of superb but relatively conventional new-music discs, the enterprising ensemble Alarm Will Sound hit on an unlikely project: transcribing the idiosyncratic pop electronica of Richard D. James (better known as Aphex Twin) for orchestral instruments. Daft as the idea may seem, these reconfigurations work, often brilliantly. It's almost enough to rehabilitate the concept of crossover.
Daft indeed ... that's what I thought at first. I'm still shaking my head at how brilliantly AWS pulled it off. But it's excellent to see in print the acknowledgment of how well the whole thing flies.