New additions
A couple new blogs added to the list. Piano blogging: The Well-Tempered Blog. And the smart On An Overgrown Path.
Sounds Like Now
A blog by saxophonist Brian SacawaArchive for Blog: Spring 05
Giro Stage 13
It was a tough day in the Dolomites for Ivan Basso, who gave up the maglia rosa to Discovery Channel’s Paolo Savoldelli in the Giro d’Italia. Despite the elastic seeming to snap on the day’s penultimate climb, Basso was able to recover enough to help the chase group pull back Lampre boys Simoni and Cunego. However, when Gibo attacked as the gradient increased to about 10 percent on the final climb, Basso didn’t have the acceleration to react. But Savoldelli certainly did. And by the end of the stage he’d taken over a minute out of Basso to be in pink for another tough mountain stage tomorrow.
In somewhat of a disgraceful move, the great Aussie sprinter Robbie McEwen, did not start the race today even though he wore the maglia ciclamina as the leader of the points competition. He deceided it was better to quit now and prepare for July’s Tour de France. Sprinters do this a lot. (Mario Cipollini, great sprinter that he was, never finished a Tour in his entire career.) They like to snatch up wins in the early stages and then retire before suffering up the very first climb. McEwen’s not as big of a baby as Cippo, but he could have at least started the race and then abandoned later on rather than simply not starting.
It’s a funny predicament that this puts a fan in. You route for your favorite sprinter and support them, but then sometimes they end up quitting. It’s a big let down. Who wants to route for a quitter? Tom Demerly, my bike guru and owner of Bikesport, was extremely offended when Alessandro Petacchi, the seeming heir apparent to Cippollini’s crown as best Italian sprinter, abandoned the 2003 version of the Tour de France after arriving at the base of the first mountain. His reaction is rather passionate. Read it here.
Makes sense (er, cents)
ACD sets me straight and points out an error in my last post (since corrected). I wrote mistakenly that there is 6 cent difference between A=440 and A=446. The real difference is more on the order of 23 cents I am informed. Here’s ACD’s errata notice and cent-calculation formula:
“The difference between A=440 and A=446 expressed in cents is more on the order of 23 cents, not 6 cents, computed thus: R=2^n/1200, where R=frequency ratio, and n=cents. Frequency ratio R=446/440=1.0136. Therefore n=23 (which works out to exactly R=1.0134 to four decimal places).”
Tuning up
The sometimes controversial Ilka Talvi has an interesting piece on tuning and intonation. A couple choice quotes: “Hearing music played absolutely in tune can be almost intoxicating. [N.B. That's exactly how I felt when I heard Karl Leister's spot-on intonation.] Ear training should be far more extensive and every music student should learn to understand the complicated ratios all intervals have;” “Teach the math behind music, it is fascinating.” I’m not sure if the math itself is fascinating, but at the very least it’s interesting. And it unlocks a dimension of playing music that makes it that much more engaging and pleasant. Here’s a great chart we use here at the University of Michigan. If you know what chord you’re playing as well as your chord function, you should have no problem playing in tune–well, that is if the people you are playing with share the same values w/r/t intonation.
Talvi brings up the fact that American orchestras play at A=440 while European orchetras play routinely well above that mark. I happened to experience this first-hand recently when I played with the Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic conducted by Yuri Temirkanov. I had been tipped off by my former teacher Gary Louie that the orchestra played a bit high–he played with the group for their show at the Meyerhoff in Baltimore. Not just “a bit” high. All the way up to A=446! (To answer Talvi’s question about how wind players deal with the inordinately high pitch: as a saxophonist I can just push the mouthpiece in (although I was running out of cork) but I really don’t know how the clarinetists did it. Their barrels looked the same as the ones I see Americans playing on, but my eyes could have been deceiving me. There was too much of a language barrier to get into some shop talk with the Russian clarinetists.)
Having an idea of what I was in for, I wanted to at least prepare myself for the shock of A=446. The night before the concert I actually practiced at that pitch level. Well, I think I was at A=446 though I couldn’t be exactly sure since my Dr. Beat only goes to A=445. The effect was like nothing I’d experienced. It is completely shocking to play that high when you’re accustomed to A=440. My ears began to hurt after about 30 minutes. I’m not kidding. It throws off your entire equilibrium.
We had the dress rehearsal a few hours before the concert. As the clarinet section trickled in, the principal player turned to me and gestured that I push in–way in–saying with a thick Russian accent, “4-4-6.” Playing the solo with the orchestra at A=446 was very different than practicing it by myself. Unlike the reaction I had in the practice room, on stage it didn’t feel funny at all. Actually, it was an experience I won’t soon forget.
Ambitious…
. . . is what you might call my summer reading list. (Although I think the prize for most ambitious goes to Terry Teachout, who jumped off the deep end rather innocently.)
I might not make it but you need to aim high, right?
Rock on
We learn from uTopianTurtleTop what classical musicians stand to gain by emulating rock bands.
Fair and balanced
There might be more music on NPR in the near future: ” The [Corporation for Public Broadcasting]’s board has told its staff that it should consider redirecting money away from national newscasts and toward music programs produced by NPR stations.” Sound good? Maybe, but not if you consider why. The Times reports today that NPR is being scrutinized by Bush appointees who lead the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The charge: NPR is too liberally biased. Come on. But even if NPR does lean a little to the left, it’s still more fair and balanced than some other news organizations. Suggesting that there be more music programming on NPR must be the Bush administration’s way of trying to appeal to the artsy, intelligent, NPR-listening types.
Dissing Maazel
Yes, yes, I know that Alex Ross already posted this quote. But what Anthony Tommasini writes in his article about the controversy surrounding the premiere of Lorin Maazel’s opera 1984 by the Royal Opera at Covent Garden is a brilliant observation: “Gifted composers would line up to write a commissioned work for Covent Garden. But Mr. Maazel has bought his way to the top withough having paid his dues as a composer. Typically, the path to a premiere at a leading house like Covent Garden entails writing dozens of songs, often for singers you know well: the best way to learn how to write for the voice. Composing short, effective dramatic works, perhaps a one-act opera. Peddling ideas to small and midlevel companies and often being rejected. Finally, getting a smaller-scale work accepted for performance–on the condition that you will make any suggested alterations and accomodate the whims of the stage director, who may be a musical ignoramus. It is an exasperating but invaluable rigmarole. By the time you get through it and are ready to write a substantive work for a major company, you should have learned the ins and outs of opera . . . And what of deserving composers? They might as well take their place among Orwell’s proles.”
Robert Lepage, the opera’s preeminent director, offered the following foreboding statement: “Maybe this is the future for the development of new operas. If you have the means, you develop your own opera.”
What can you say? Money talks. Money makes the world go ’round. Doesn’t the political party with the most in their campaign coffers usually win the election? Is Robert Lepage right? Is this the scary future, not only of opera, but of the classical music industry? I’m not so sure that it hasn’t been going on for some time now. But since Mr. Maazel’s received such harsh criticism for his opera (not to mention his vanity), the issue has finally bubbled to the surface and commanded a bit more attention. If you’ve got something to say about the topic, why not vent your frustrations in the Composers Forum over at Sequenza21.
Believe it or not
And now for a bit of absurdity: This cat is amazing. He blogs. He does all his own typing and gets tons on comments. Cat people (yes, you, Alex and Jerry) need to check this out.
The Sage hoax
Here’s a funny story about a fellow who “invented” a new state-of-the-art synthesizer back in 2000. He faked all the magazine ads with some marvelous Photoshop work and managed to get the European synth community on its head over a product that never existed. (Courtesy of Mark Pachucki.)
Thanks to ACD for re-adding Sounds Like Now to the list. And be sure to check out pianist Thomas Moore’s compendium of new music links.
