App maker Smule just released their Magic Fiddle, and the St. Lawrence String Quartet took the bait. Couldn’t they have at least picked something more upbeat that Pachelbel’s Canon?
When I saw Lang Lang play his iPad, I thought it was kind of cute.
But it gets old really quick.
There’s something about this marketing campaign that’s just depressing. It turns the music into a joke or a stunt. I’m not sure whether people are laughing with or at the musicians: Hey, look at those dorks in the tuxes playing Mozart on iPads. What a bunch of dorks.
Like Bolero, it gradually builds, using a distinctive dance rhythm to drive the music forward toward the big finish. But there’s nothing erotic about La Valse: it’s a phantasmagoria that leaves you winded, and a little bit wounded too. As Ravel put it, a “fantastic and fatal whirling.”
Ravel wrote versions for solo and duo pianos, but it’s most popular–and most horrifying–as an orchestral piece.
Writing about Ravel’s Bolero in the movie 10(one of those movies that a guy who grew up in the post-AIDS 1980s finds horrifying) got me thinking about the songs that make me feel just a little bit … uncomfortable.
Here’s my top five (not that you asked):
1. Exile, “I Wanna Kiss You All Over”
What a coincidence: this song was a #1 hit the same year that 10 came out. How could anyone find this sexy?
This is the gold standard. Whenever I hear a song that is overladen with sexual innuendo (or explicit calls to action), it’s “I Wanna Kiss You All Over” that I compare it to.
2. John Mayer, “Your Body is a Wonderland” This is one of those songs that measured up to Exile’s.
3. Rod Stewart, “Tonight’s the Night” Another 1970s hit: #1 in 1976. Pete Townshend wrote a short story about this song. I read it when I was 14. It kind of messed me up for a while.
4. Bob Crewe and Kenny Nowland, “My Eyes Adored You” “… Though I never laid a hand on you.” This is just the wrong way to put it, man.
Here’s a fun fact: the same people who wrote Frankie Valli’s only chart topper (in 1975; what was wrong with people back then?) also wrote “Lady Marmalade.”
5. Def Leppard and “Mutt” Lange, “Pour Some Sugar on Me” What saves this from being totally creepy is the unabashedly exuberant chorus. That, and this:
Here’s what Uncle Fred had to say about Ravel’s Bolero: “It’s the most descriptive sex music ever written.”
According to his niece-in-law Jenny, played by Bo Derek in 10, “he proved it.” To anyone with qualms about pedophilia (I’m firmly in this camp), Jenny’s little story, meant to seduce poor hapless George (Dudley Moore), is uncomfortable, to say the least. (The whole movie gives me the creeps.)
Although he was an incestuous cad, Uncle Fred had a point about Bolero. As mentioned in an earlier post, the piece opens with the snare drum playing the distinctive rhythmic pattern of the Spanish dance it’s named after. The seductive flute melody that enters shortly after sets in motion a gradual blossoming to a climactic finale; as that rhythm pulses below, the melody repeats, the orchestration expands, and the music becomes ever more incessant and powerful. It’s hard not to get all worked up when you listen to it.
Bolero set Ravel for life financially. It’s hard to believe that the composer didn’t know he had a crowd pleaser on his hands, but he did express doubts that no one would want to hear it as anything more than ballet music. For Ravel, it was a chance to show off his chops as an orchestrator, an “experiment in a very special and limited direction.”
Some critics didn’t care for the piece in the few years after its 1928 premiere. Writing for the American Mercury in 1932, Edward Robinson called the piece “the most insolent monstrosity ever perpetrated in the history of music” that sounds like “the wail of an obstreperous back-alley cat.” Even today, a lot of critics look down on the piece, and programmers tend to consider it to be fluff. Fortunately, lots of orchestras still play it.
Now that the World Series is over, it’s time to start thinking about the Super Bowl–and the ads that’ll be on the Super Bowl broadcast.
During the third quarter of last season’s game, Coke ran an ad that used Ravel’s Bolero, a piece that even the composer might concede is among the cheesiest music ever written.
The ad, by advertising company Wieden & Kennedy, was set in Africa, but the music is based on the distinctive Spanish dance rhythm. Ravel’s mother was Basque, and although he didn’t make his first trip to Spain until 1924 when he was almost 50, he used the sounds of the country in early pieces like Rapsodie espagnole suite (completed in 1908) and his opera L’Heure espagnole (composed at around the same time, and premiered in Paris in 1911).
In the same year Ravel sat down to write Bolero, he made a triumphant tour of North America. Everywhere he went–from Houston to Montreal–people greeted him as a star. Ravel was overwhelmed: “You know, this doesn’t happen to me in Paris,” commented the composer after a Carnegie Hall performance of his orchestral music that was met with roaring applause and a standing ovation.
Flush with good ol’ American style fame, Ravel returned to the City of Lights; one of his first duties was to fulfill his promise to dance impresario Ida Rubinstein to write ballet music for her. The result, of course, was Bolero, which received its premiere at the end of the year, in November 1928 at the Paris Opera.
What’s all this got to do with the Super Bowl? Not much, beyond the aforementioned ad. But with its Spanish groove and colorful orchestration, Bolero is worth getting to know better.
If the takeaway was “Speak your mind, support it well,” I suggest that Ahmad–and all journalists–amend the mantra to include another line: “Expand your mind, and don’t stop learning.”
The Detroit News reported today that Detroit Symphony Orchestra management hired a lawyer to disuade local station WADL-TV from broadcasting a concert by striking musicians last weekend.
Since 2008, the Detroit Symphony has cut 30 managerial positions.
The base pay for musicians entering the group was $104,650–and a pension and health insurance.
The orchestra was $9 million in the hole last season, and were $10 million in the red in each of the previous two seasons. They owe $50 million in interest alone.
This is the fifth DSO strike since 1969.
It looks as if a lot of people in that organization–and the board has to take a hit here too–weren’t keeping watch, and were deluded about the state of the orchestra and the city as a whole. It’s not as if the problems with Detroit just happened: the Midwest has been de-industrializing for a long time.
Of course, the local American Federation of Musicians agrees. They demonstrated against City Center, handing out leaflets: “There is no music tonight” and “This is going to be a fake performance,” they said.
Is this really the best the union can do? In a sensible, oganized, adult way, AF of M needs to start making the case for music. This doesn’t cut it.
As reported on dfw.com today, the Fort Worth Symphony contract negotiations are growing contentious. The musicians, who have been without a contract since August 1, silently protested management’s proposed cuts on stage last weekend, although most audience members probably missed its significance.
Which is part of the point: it sounds as if the Fort Worth community just doesn’t care very much. Concert sales are down $120,000, and the orchestra had to cancel a number of concerts this year. The municipal arts council sharply cut its funding as well.
The musicians are probably, as orchestra president Andrea Koonsman notes, out of touch with financial realities (including the lack of community support), but it’s also worth looking at the way she and her team has overseen things. Last year, the orchestra lost $242,000 on a $11.9 million budget, according to the article. And they’re paying their music director over $300,000.
Mark Likes Music 
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