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Five Things: Music That Makes Me Think Deep Thoughts

The New York Times critics’ blah-blah about Lincoln Center’s White Lights Festival–dedicated to spirituality and exploring our “inner universe,” something like that–got me thinking about music that makes me contemplate the Big Questions.

1. Rheostatic’s “Shaved Head” on Whale Music


There’s nothing like a song about chemotherapy to get you thinking about the great beyond. At least I think it’s about chemotherapy. I hear in this song all the pain that comes with the realization that your relationship with the one you love is short, transitory. Every time I listen to this I cry, so I don’t listen to it much. It’s exhausting.

For end-of-life poignancy, it’s right up there with Alden Nowlan’s “This is What I Wanted to Sign off With.”

2. Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” 
In whatever version I hear it, this melody gives me that little chill on the back of my neck. You can’t help but feel as if we’re all in this together, and everything’s going to be OK.


(I was going to post a clip of Bernstein going on about Beethoven. I stand by my choice.)

3. Arvo Paert’s Cantus in Memorium Benjamin Britten


Back when I was in college, Symphony Nova Scotia had a series for 20th-century music, and their performance of this piece (with Peter Lieberson conducting) was something I still remember. It was like nothing I had ever heard. This version is by A Far Cry, a group from Boston.

4. Ani DiFranco’s “Amazing Grace” on Dilate


This album came out the fall I arrived in the US for grad school, and I listened to it a lot. It’s maybe the most lascivious version of “Amazing Grace” I’ve ever heard. But I like it (although I think the church bells at the beginning are a little obvious).

The close association I have with “Amazing Grace” is highly connotational. My mom told me once that “The Old Rugged Cross” was my grandfather’s (her dad’s) favorite hymn, and it was played at his funeral. My grandfather died just before I was born, and whenever I hear any spiritual, I think about how Mom’s story helped connect two family members that never knew each other.

5. Above all, though, there’s this:

Detroit Symphony Musicians Will Put on Holiday Shows

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra musicians, on strike for weeks now, are putting on their own holiday concerts, starting this weekend:


This isn’t the musicians’ first foray into concert production; back in September, after their contract was up but before the went on strike, they performed two concerts.

 If I were the musicians, who seem to be both unified and highly motivated to do things their own way, I would start thinking about how they can abandon the orchestra as a corporation and form a new group in Motor City. Stop picketing, and start doing more playing.

Oh, Come On! Really?

Is it really that cute, that groundbreaking, to do this sort of thing on an iPad?

David Hockney’s got a display of Apple art going on in Paris until the end of January:

As Open Culture mentions, the blog Messy Nessy Chic has some samples online.

In the above video, Hockney muses over the problems of displaying his iArt. He goes with hanging rows upon rows of iPads and iPods on the walls of the gallery.

I have an idea: print the damn things out!

Gorecki or Gretzky?

1. He’s the all-time NHL points leader, and scored 92 goals in 1981-82, a single-season record. Gorecki or Gretzky?

2. He won first prize for his First Symphony at the UNESCO Youth Biennale in Paris in 1961, his earliest significant critical recognition outside of Poland, decades before a recording of his Third Symphony was a hit in the US and UK. Gorecki or Gretzky?

3. His wife was involved in an illegal betting scandal that resulted in the arrest and conviction of former NHL player Rick Tocchet. Gorecki or Gretzky?

4. In 1979, he quit his job at the Music Academy in Katowice to protest the Communist government’s refusal to let Pope John Paul II visit Poland. Gorecki or Gretzky?

5. He was dealt in 1988 by the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings in the NHL transaction forever known by hockey fans as “The Trade.” Gorecki or Gretzky?

Gorecki Obituary Round-Up

On his blog The Rambler, Tim Rutherford-Johnson surveys the Górecki obirtuaries from major papers in the US and the UK.

A friend of mine wrote to ask how Gorecki avoided serious rebuke from authorities in Communist Poland. Apparently, Gorecki wondered the same thing:  

I remember these times with pleasure because they were a great reawakening for Polish music. I don’t know how we got away with it year after year.

A colleague of mine at work winced (virtually) when I located Gorecki’s relevance within the 1990s as a source for and inspiration to trip-hop musicians and soundtrack writers. Some obituaries Rutherford-Johnson cites do the same thing, focusing on the Third Symphony, while others provide a broader perspective.

Move Over Michael Feinstein, George Crumb’s Working on the American Songbook

There’s an article in the Los Angeles Times this weekend about George Crumb’s seven-part American Songbook project. There will be performances this season in LA, in Washington, DC and New York City, and a version of Song Book IV staged by Peter Sellars and sung by Dawn Upshaw at the Ojai Festival.

Delia Casadei describes the folk songs Crumb chose to adapt:

They are, in other words, more than references to an archaic lost world: Some of the bloodiest episodes of the country’s history are etched into their very sinews. They are the spirituals of African slaves, the lullabies of American Indians, the congregational singing of the English settlers and songs of the Civil War. And they have been on the lips of the entire country since time immemorial. 

 Name that tune: there’s a sample on the Bridge Records website. And read Casadei’s article.

More on Gorecki

As Tom Service points out in the Guardian, Gorecki’s legacy is much more–and much more varied–than the Third Symphony that brought him worldwide notoriety in the 1990s:

The thing is, the Third Symphony is untypical of Górecki’s earlier work, and only partly reflects his later. Górecki began his musical life as an uncompromising modernist in Poland. His orchestral works of the late 50s and early 60s made him a new-music sensation at the Warsaw autumn festival, and his music was heard at the same bleeding-edge events as that by Xenakis and Boulez.

His listening suggestion: the 1956 Piano Sonata. He links to one version; here’s another:


I don’t know if I would call this bleeding-edge modernism, certainly not at all like Xenakis or Boulez, but it does show a more lively, aggressive side. At the same time, there is a directness and consistency of affect to the Piano Sonata that is similar to the Third Symphony.

Another piece to look at is the Second Symphony, commissioned by the Kosciuszko Foundation in honor of Copernicus’s 500th anniversary in 1972. It opens with the driving rhythm of the piano sonata and a final movement that presages Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.

If you want to hear Gorecki discussing his music, go to NPR’s Deceptive Cadence blog, which has a 1995 interview with the composer posted.

It Never Ends

A couple of things struck me when I read that Gorillaz is recording its new record on an iPad:

  • Frontman Damon Albarn professes to be a technophobe but “fell in love” with his iPad at first look. And now he’s recording an album on it. That’s a pretty big leap. 
  • There’s no mention about how Albarn is using the iPad. Is he using Smule apps for instruments? Is he mixing stuff on it, using it as a virtual console? 
  • We should stop talking about all the great things an iPad can do. 
Here’s the video that Radhika Marya mentions was a YouTube hit: 

http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:uma:video:mtv.com:489414