Centenary in ¾ Time: Celebrating Philip Glass’ 75th Birthday

Compared to composers who have passed on, music by those who are still alive remains relatively underperformed, or at least obscure. Of course, the same could be said about a number of dead composers, whose names escape me at the moment. As he turns ¾ of a century today, Glass has established a reputation as one of the best-known among the living. Part it is negative, deriving from the perception of “repetition” in his works. Of course, those who dismiss Glass’ music for that reason are listening superficially, or they do not allow themselves to grok the subtle textures and transitions that unfold to reveal a richness which belies his “minimalism.” (At least Otto, the bus driver on The Simpsons, likes it.)

Perhaps without the expectation of hearing a “concert” in the traditional sense, it becomes easier to let Glass’ music work its magic. It should be allowed to breathe, and fill the space that you allow it within your soul. Listen closely, for instance, to the first 15 minutes of Music with Changing Parts (1971). I remember first hearing it back in 2003 or 2004, when Diane and I were returning home to Arlington, Texas, from a Saturday night spent in Dallas. She bought a recording at Borders (R.I.P.), and we listened to it on the way home. She drove, so it was easy for me to let the music and the nocturnal atmosphere envelop my senses. The car’s clock kept its tally, but time seemed to have gone missing. Perhaps I had gone on a vicarious trip through the universe?

Although I listen to other musicians and composers more frequently, I still count Glass as one of my favourites. His music may be a stark contrast to my fanboyish tendencies towards WagnerMahlerStrauss, but it works during those times when I want to enter a more meditative state of mind. Indeed, as I write this posting and listen to Music with Changing Parts, a warm orb seems to have formed around my heart.

My enjoyment of Glass’ music preceded hearing Music with Changing Parts. I already had recordings of Glassworks (1981) and a collection of violin works containing his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (1987). Diane’s interest in Glass expanded our mutual collection of his works. With social media sites that provide access to multimedia files, it has become easier to access his work. There’s also the Glass Engine, an online tool that categorizes his music by such facets as title, year, track length, and emotion; (From an information retrieval perspective, the less said about it, the better…) But even earlier than that, I remember watching Koyaanisqatsi (1982) on PBS sometime in the mid-1980s, probably when I was 12 or so years old. I was not yet back “into” classical music, broadly speaking, but I remember being mesmerized by the riot of visuals and Glass’ (at least to me) unique sound. (Koyaanisqatsi is a Hopi word that roughly translates to the film’s subtitle “Life out of Balance.”) Some visuals may act as temporal reminders of the period in which it was created, but it otherwise remains transcendent of time. Out of temporal habit, however, this posting seems appropriate for commemorating Glass’ position in this time and space.

[Ah, yes! And there are all those cross-genre connections. David Bowie, Brian Eno, Ravi Shankar, etc., etc., but detailed discussion of those will have to wait for another day.]

Auric, Mackie, and Lotte: The Best Tunes

On account of my hiatus from blogging, I missed some opportunities to commemorate music-related milestones in 2011. They include two centenaries: the passing of Gustav Mahler (18 May) and the birth of Bernard Herrmann (29 June). Also, a year ago today, film composer John Barry passed away at the age of 77. Perhaps most famously, he established the musical sound world for James Bond’s cinematic romps, even if his authorship of the iconic theme remains a topic of dispute.

Before my rediscovery of classical music in high school, I found the Bond scores compelling. They transported a small rural town kid from Ohio on the globetrotting adventures of the “gentleman” British agent, and made otherwise dull sojourns a bit more exciting. The music may match the films “too well,” a gripe of some critics who generally grouse about romanticism and the film composers who follow such traditions, but I have yet to hear what they would come up with to portray Bond’s sense of alienation in late capitalist society (or rather, have him confront it, rather than avoid it).

Many years later, with a broader range of music listening experience, I began to think about the genres upon which Barry drew to create the Bond film scores. Jazz stands out, but so too do (broadly speaking) classical influences. Some are quite obvious, especially what I take to be a sly nod to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, in the principal theme from the water-logged yarn Thunderball. Regardless of whether you believe that John Barry or Monty Norman was the original creator of the Bond theme itself, it does share some apparent affinities with the opening of Jean Sibelius’ Cassazione.

Beyond direct quotations, I believe that Barry’s usage of elements from various genres made his scores for Bond’s adventures unique… that is, until others caught on. Of course, spy film parodies have played such conventions to the hilt. Broadly speaking, of most interest to me is the theme from Goldfinger (1964). As Bond fans know, it remains one of the best films in the series, or at least the one that set the standard for various pale imitators. This description applies to less-than-stellar efforts within the series, as well as the phony proletarians that tried supplanting Bond in the 1980s and 1990s. The latter Reagan Era Commie and Eurotrash busters seem more and more dated, especially as they try to relive their former glories, while Daniel Craig effectively refreshes the Bond tradition.

At any rate, I wish to relate the theme from Goldfinger to the blog’s central theme of transcending genre. Barry himself self-deprecatingly called it “million-dollar Mickey Mouse music,” which I suppose shares some affinities with Richard Strauss’ self-assessment as a “first-rate second-rate composer.” From NPR’s commemoration of Barry, which includes excerpts from a 1999 interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, he discusses the source of his inspiration for the Goldfinger theme:

“They said, ‘Go away and write it.’ So I never discussed it with the director or the producers. I discussed it with myself, and I thought, ‘Well, what is this about? It’s a song about a villain.’ And then I started to reflect historically — there’s no songs about villains. People don’t sit down and write songs about villains. They write love songs. They write sad songs. They write torch songs.

“But songs about villains are very rare. And then I thought of Kurt Weill’s ‘Mack the Knife,’ which is the definitive song about a villain. So then I got my head on right, and I thought that’s the definitive song. He managed to bring off the most extraordinary song about a villain.

Indeed, the affinities between the Goldfinger theme and Mack the Knife from Weill’s 1928 work Die Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera) are easy to discern. Of course, Bertolt Brecht attached a more overt political agenda to his libretto for the work, while the one in Goldfinger is tucked away beneath the action. [I am shocked, yes, shocked, to hear that capitalists would make deals with a Communist nation!] Still, whether one sees Macheath as a villain or antihero who underscores the similarities between those who establish and rob banks (and even Goldfinger presumptively refers to Fort Knox as “his” bank at one point), the lyrics of both songs describe aspects of their respective titular villains’ traits. The Street Singer enumerates Macheath’s crimes, while Shirley Bassey remains more cryptic about Goldfinger. Nonetheless, the underlying message of both songs and the metaphors they employ are quite clear: Macheath and Goldfinger are criminal masterminds of whom you need to beware. With Macheath:

And the shark, it has teeth,
And it wears them in its face.
And Macheath, he has a knife,
But the knife one doesn’t see.

… and Goldfinger:

He’s the man, the man with the Midas touch
A spider’s touch
Such a cold finger
Beckons you to enter his web of sin
But don’t go in

Beyond the lyrics, both have irregular rhythms that hint at their subjects’ scheming. Furthermore, whatever one may think about them, a number of interpretations of both songs have emerged from musicians associated with various genres. Mack the Knife has been tackled by Louis Armstrong, Eartha Kitt, Bobby Darin, Frank Sinatra, and Marianne Faithfull. Other Weill songs have been reinterpreted in diverse genres, including The Doors’ version of Alabama Song from The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahaggony, as well as Threepenny’s “Pirate Jenny” by Nina Simone (And doesn’t that bring to mind Fiona Apple’s Get Him Back?). As for Goldfinger, musicians have reinterpreted it with poppy renderings, symphonic performances (including a rather lethargic arrangement), and “punkish” covers (such as this well-crafted 1978 version by the post-punk band Magazine).

Of course, none of this would be complete without mentioning Lotte Lenya. The spouse of Weill, she portrayed the villain Colonel Klebb in From Russia with Love, the Bond film that preceded Goldfinger (with yet another memorable opening credits sequence and score by Barry). One can only imagine how she would have sung the Goldfinger theme as well; it would have been an interesting touch, given that Goldfinger established the cinematic Bond’s cheekiness. Maybe a record of Lenya singing Mackie could give us a clue…

Auferstehung(?)

For starters, I’m not purporting to put myself at the same level as Jesus, Gustav Mahler, or Robert Powell. Nonetheless, the title for this inaugural reboot posting (“resurrection”) of Geheimnisvolle Musik indicates a renewed commitment on my part to keeping this blog up-to-date. Content will likely include commentary on interesting stories related to music, or on studies related to the categorization of music.

In the blog’s initial incarnation, the majority of postings focused on personal experiences with finding similarities among different kinds of music. As time allows, that content will be condensed into a single document. The current postings, now in a reverse-chronological format broken up by other postings, will disappear once the new document is up.

Why the major lull in postings? Well, I started doctoral studies in September 2010, and I have tried getting a handle on how to balance everything (coursework, various part-time work positions, etc., etc.). Now that I am finished with coursework and moving on to preparing for my comprehensive examination (which essentially consists of reading several thousand pages and showing “what I know” at some point several months from now), my time isn’t necessarily “freer.” It is more flexible, fortunately, and I can manage broader swaths of time more effectively. Since my coursework has covered such topics as critical theory, information equity, politics and aesthetics, content analysis, cognition, and so on, I hope to apply some of the insights I’ve gained to discussion of the issues addressed in this blog. I have also completed a book chapter that dissects genre’s pervasiveness as a mode of music categorization, and advocates alternative modes to facilitate greater musical discovery. That will appear in a book my spouse Diane Neal is editing (Indexing and Retrieval of Non-Text Information), which will be published by De Gruyter Saur in May.

So, with that, feel free to join in the discussion. Civil comments, spirited discussion, and even some of your own cross-genre associations are always welcome here.

Gershwin’s the Word

Okay… someone already took my original idea for the article title, but the allusion isn’t far off. 

Anyway, something else related to crossing genre: Brian Wilson doing an album of George Gershwin, with some samples on his Website. It underscores musical and cultural connections across genres, and that somehow make sense.

Fascinatin’.

Pandora Pandemonium

From The Onion, a story about Pandora employees desperately trying to please a man who kept disliking the songs on his personalized “Steely Dan Radio” station. Assumptions are made about what Mr. Lipton (the listener) might like, and a “panel of genre-bending musicians” is even convened to figure out how to get him to stick with a song. At the end, one of the panelists determines that Lipton is “probably just some bored, bitter asshole who isn’t capable of genuinely enjoying anything.”

Interestingly, The Onion didn’t ask Lipton himself why he kept skipping songs. We are only left with the impression of someone difficult to please.

In Lipton’s defence, perhaps Pandora is making assumptions that are all wrong. The story is, of course, an exaggeration, but it hints at deeper truths about such systems. How they rely too much on making selections based on genre, with selected artists as the primary guide. Even the biggest fans of certain musicians do not love everything by their favourites.

The solution is to look past musicians and genres, and to develop more sophisticated systems that make recommendations based on common characteristics that transcend genre. This can be for people whose stations cover a broad range of genres, or for those who wish to explore music outside the genre (or even subgenre) they typically listen to. In such a scenario, perhaps Mr. Lipton would be happier with the selections made for him… and Ms. Stefano of Milwaukee wouldn’t keep listening to Physical Graffiti over and over and over…

Summertime, and peggin’ genre is easy

Tied in with the CBC Radio Two Program Tonic, a selection of three different interpretations of “Summertime” from George Gershwin’s 1935 opera Porgy and Bess. One of them, of course, features an opera singer (in this case, Leontyne Price). The other two are by musicians typically associated with other genres: Ella Fitzgerald and Janis Joplin, respectively representing jazz and rock/blues… generalities that I proffer with some hesitation.

It may seem a bit odd initially to consider that musicians from diverse genres would perform a piece from an opera. But then, “Summertime” is so ubiquitous that it can practically stand on its own. With the song’s origins in African American musical styles, it makes sense that jazz, rock, and blues musicians (or at least those typically labeled as such) would perform the song, as well as opera singers.

Much else informs the overall style of Porgy and Bess. For more details about Gershwin’s eclectic musical development, Alex Ross’ The Rest is Noise provides a rich overview within the span of six pages (143-150). Interestingly, the preface of Ross’ book describes a 1928 meeting between Gershwin and Second Viennese School composer Alban Berg. Upon hearing Berg’s Lyric Suite, Gershwin worried about the worthiness of his own compositions. After hearing the American perform some of his own works on piano, the Austrian reassured him by saying, “Mr. Gershwin, music is music.” In a way, Gershwin repaid Berg by incorporating some of his musical ideas (most especially from his 1925 opera Wozzeck) into Porgy and Bess, which premiered the same year Berg passed on. Gershwin followed a few years later.

University: Wie schön…

(Part VI of “Mein Heldenleben: A Musical Autobiography”)

A slight digression, but this posting will return to the chronological sequence established before…

Alex Ross’ 2007 award-winning book The Rest is Noise is a highly-readable and accessible overview of the past century’s musical history, as well as an examination of the past century through its music. Although “classical” composers remain the book’s central focus, Ross eschews traditional musical narrative by colouring quite a bit outside the traditional lines of genre. He examines the fuzziness of such boundaries, drawing substantial attention to a number of artists one wouldn’t imagine appearing in such a book. Film composers. Jazz musicians. Rock stars. The same can be said about those who have praised the book, ranging from pianist Emanuel Ax to Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood to Björk, who aptly describes it as an “incredibly nourishing book [that] will rekindle anyone’s fire for music.”

In the first chapter (“The Golden Age”), Ross makes the bold assertion that the musical history of the 20th century begins with Richard Strauss’ opera Salome, based on the play by Oscar Wilde. More specifically, Ross refers to the Graz premiere in May 1906. Salome actually premiered on 9 December 1905 in Dresden, but Ross chooses to start with the Graz performance because it was attended by many of the major musical luminaries of Europe. (Rumour also has it that another attendee was a 17-year-old near-penniless malcontent, who would bring the continent to its knees 30 years later.) Ross contextualizes Salome by describing the wide-reaching aesthetic influence of Wagner, whose musical ideas Strauss simultaneously appropriates, expands, and (according to some scholars) parodies in a rejoinder to the Romantic ideals promulgated by his predecessor. This becomes most apparent in the opera’s final scene, a Grand Guignol twin of the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. (If you were expecting audio, sorry about the final scene image. A sample of the final scene itself appears later.)

After performing The Dance of the Seven Veils for her lecherous stepfather Herod, Salome engages him in a battle of wills to obtain the severed head of the prophet Jochanaan (John the Baptist) as payment. Herod’s desperate pleading with Salome to accept any of his other treasures fails. He finally gives in, and the opera careens towards its inevitable conclusion. In the final scene, which lasts somewhere around 15 minutes, Salome displays a number of emotions upon receiving her ghastly reward. Vindictiveness. Tenderness. Sadness. Ecstasy, upon kissing Jochanaan’s mouth. After the figurative and literal climax near the very end, where Salome enters a state of near-cosmic ecstasy, Herod abruptly orders his stepdaughter’s execution.

Naturally, the powers-that-be expressed concern about the opera’s content. Such concern apparently enabled Strauss to build his villa, as audiences went wild for his latest succès de scandale. As the success of controversial rock albums in more recent times indicates, plus ça change…

Beyond its scandalous aspects, Strauss’ opera is noteworthy for a number of other reasons. With the 1889 premiere of Don Juan, Strauss began to develop his reputation as a musical enfant terrible. Ironically, his personal life was fairly quiet and conventional. His marriage lasted longer than the entire lifetimes of some composers, and he enjoyed playing cards and drinking beer with friends. He also grew up in a contentious household, witness to his father’s abusive treatment of his mother, who ended up institutionalized. For this reason, as Ross aptly puts it, Strauss was “determined to maintain a cool, composed façade, behind which weird fires burned” (Ross 14). Perhaps his connections to Salome and Elektra (the topic of his 1909 opera of the same name) were deeper than many realized, and that his musical portrayals of their dysfunctional families were more than just masterful tricks of orchestration.

Subsequent premieres of his works were awaited with eager anticipation within the music world, even if critics had a field day demolishing them. The Graz premiere of Salome, with its aforementioned gathering of major present and future names in “classical” music, was no exception.

Ross describes the ambiguous tone world of Salome, embodied by the otherworldly opening notes of the clarinet, as well as the free-flow and convergence (even collision) of different realms of sound. Although the opera takes place in biblical times, Ross postulates that the sounds could just as easily portray a contemporary urban environment:

There’s a hint of the glitter and swirl of city life: the debonairly gliding clarinet looks forward to the jazzy character who kicks off Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. (Ross 7, 2007)

When I read Ross’ comparison of the openings to Salome and Rhapsody in Blue (just the first few seconds or so from each are necessary for understanding), I felt vindicated in having made the same connection years before. Perhaps Gershwin gave a sly nod to Salome in the opening of his jazz-infused tribute to the hustle and bustle of New York City. I would even go so far as to say that the lonely saxophone theme from Bernard Herrmann’s mid-1970s score to Taxi Driver shares similarities with the music by which Salome persuades the ill-fated captain of the palace guard to bring up Jochanaan (Du wirst das für mich tun, Narraboth…).

Perhaps Strauss had unwittingly tapped into a musical language about which he would have known little or nothing. He visited the United States for a tour in 1904, where he premiered his Symphonia Domestica at a Wanamaker’s department store in New York. Even if Salome contains some elements that sound vaguely like precursors of jazz, no record exists of him encountering the music that would eventually evolve into that genre. The slang term would come into common use a decade later.

When Strauss toured the United States again in 1921, the Jazz Age had already begun and Rhapsody in Blue would premiere a few years later. As outlined in the third and fourth chapters of Ross’ book, a number of composers had actively begun to incorporate jazz elements into their works. And yet, even as late as the 1950s, the notion of a classical musician discussing jazz seemed a bit of a novelty among the general public.

Kurt Wilhelm’s Richard Strauss: An Intimate Portrait contains what appears to be a typical Q&A from the press conferences to which Strauss would submit during his 1921 visit. One question consisted of his thoughts on jazz. His apparent response:

I have heard some in Europe. Very interesting, especially the rhythms. (Wilhelm 165, 1989)

Strauss wrote no explicitly jazz-infused compositions, and likely had no intention of doing so. He had already begun to focus on less-agitated works than Salome and Elektra, rendering him “obsolete” to composers who claimed to be moving musical language “inevitably” into the new century and beyond.

Strauss lived until 1949, witnessing and trying to survive as best he could the horrors brought on by that same 17-year-old who claimed to have attended the Graz premiere of Salome. Ross aptly contextualizes Strauss’ lifespan… born before Wagner finished his epic Der Ring des Nibelungen, and passing on as “American soldiers were whistling ‘Some Enchanted Evening’  in the streets” (10).

Another 43 years passed before my revelatory experience with Salome. I already had a few versions of the The Dance of the Seven Veils, a final scene conducted by Fritz Reiner, and one of the most the iconic complete recordings of the opera (Nilsson, Solti, Vienna Philharmonic, Decca). In the summer following my first year at university, I obtained a filmed version that really brought home to me the power of Strauss’ opera. It is the 1974 Götz Friedrich film with Teresa Stratas, whose singing seems more aptly spritely and youthful than Nilsson’s Valkyrie-sized portrayal. Her acting is also incredible. A diva in the truest sense, Stratas dashes about, pouts, cries, pleads, and zeroes in on the object of her character’s desire with unbridled intensity. Karl Böhm, a conductor who had worked with Strauss during the composer’s later years, whips the Vienna Philharmonic into a vivacious frenzy. Under Böhm’s guidance, the orchestra unleashes horns and timpani with ferocity (as one can note here, especially around 5:00 and 6:40), and plays up a number of the opera’s shimmering dissonances. The final scene is also available here, beginning around 2:20 or 4:30 (starting points for standalone recordings of the final scene vary, but I recommend starting earlier for the full effect). It continues here and here.

This, or something like it at least, is how it should sound, I thought.

I sought other Salome recordings that would enable me to explore its mysteries. Luckily, the first few years of the final decade of the 20th Century proved a bumper crop for interpretations of the Salome story…  both in recordings of Strauss’ opera, and in two songs by a rock band with whom I had yet to acquaint myself.

The first recording of Salome I obtained after viewing the film was led by Giuseppe Sinopoli, whose spacious interpretation of Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana prompted me to seek out his version of Strauss’ opera. Two other versions led by Zubin Mehta and Kent Nagano (the first full-length recording of the French version) were also released in 1991… the same year U2 released its single of the same name, and included the Salome-themed Mysterious Ways in the album Achtung Baby. (The Smashing Pumpkins rounded out the most recent fin de siècle with Stand Inside Your Love, its music video alluding heavily to Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrations for Wilde’s play.)

It would be another decade before I started listening to U2. I will say that I have noticed Straussian elements in some of the band’s songs, including the rhythmic similarities in the openings of “The Dance of the Seven Veils” and “Mysterious Ways.” But more on all that later, in the interest of staying with a more conventional chronologial narrative…

Coming to an orchestra near you… Video game music

Once again, from Alex Ross, an interesting post worthy of comment and contemplation. Included is a trailer for a PBS special called Video Games Live, which features an orchestra playing music from video games. This tactic is apparently being employed by orchestras strapped for cash in already economically dire times. From the looks of things, it is an immersive experience, complete with visuals to remind audience members what the music is portraying. Speaking for myself, it seems a bit overwhelming, and dictates too much what one might be better off imagining… especially if the target audience is already well-versed in the “plots” of various games. That audience consists of young people who might not have dreamed of going to a symphony orchestra.

Ross does have some misgivings with which I agree. As he says, “If the video… successfully captures the video-game-concert experience, I would pay good money not to have to see it.” Nonetheless, I do agree in principle (if not with the execution featured in the clip) with the idea of video game music being a way of introducing young people to the sonic wonders of orchestral music. Thinking of John Williams and his film music, it is essentially the same idea. Both video game and film music share a number of similarities, including the intention of accompanying pre-crafted cinematic experiences (as opposed to the generally stage-based experience of opera), as well as flexibility in the kinds of genres that both types of music may incorporate. Much of what appears in the clip sounds firmly rooted in the “classical” realm. Interestingly enough, it also brings to mind the idea of the “total art work,” rendered into the single German word Gesamtkunstwerk.

Richard Wagner coined this term in the mid-19^th Century, applying it to works of art that could incorporate all art forms… design, literature, and performance. The opera house he had built in Bayreuth for the performance of his own works aided in realizing this vision. The hidden orchestra pit ensured that audiences would focus on the stage, and that their eyes wouldn’t wander to the musicians. Completed in 1876, the principles of Bayreuth seemed to presage those of cinema, wherein audiences see premade gesamtkunstwerken in theatres with well-hidden sources of sound. A century after Wagner launched Bayreuth with his multi-part mythical epic Der Ring des Nibelungen, George Lucas brought it home with his own mythical cinematic epic that drew upon similar principles…right down to the Wagnerian soundtrack by John Williams.

Video games are yet another extension of Gesamtkunstwerk. The difference, of course, is that their audiences actively participate in guiding the action… at least insofar as programmers allow them to do so. When George Lucas released his original Gesamtkunstwerk, the video game experience was limited to things like Pong. Now, video games have become substantially more immersive, making them more and more similar to the theatrical ideas promulgated by Wagner.

Don’t believe me about the similarities between opera and video games (or, more specifically, Wagner and virtual reality)? A book has already brought those ideas together.

As more immersive gesamtkunstwerken emerge, and if some young people can learn more about the predecessors of the music that accompanies the games they play, perhaps the process will come full circle.

University: Better Listening

(Part V of “Mein Heldenleben: A Musical Autobiography”)

The release of Oliver Stone’s film about The Doors coincided with my burgeoning interest in the band. At the end of my first week at Ohio Wesleyan, I went with a pack of 15-20 other first year students to see the film, which happened to be showing at downtown Delaware’s Strand Theatre. From that, I would presumably learn more about the band’s background. When I mentioned to my brother that I had seen it, he pointed out that the film contained a number of inaccuracies. Upon further reflection, perhaps it was actually no more inaccurate in intention than Ken Russell’s film about Gustav Mahler.

Getting to The Strand requires a healthy walk from Ohio Wesleyan’s dormitories, and getting to a Saturday midnight showing typically means that one will encounter strange people along the way. That night, they all seemed clustered around the theatre. One of them, likely a “townie” (as we often called the more troublesome members of the local element), somehow managed to reach into the crowd and touch the hair of a woman among our party. For emphasis, he added with stoned suaveness, “I like your hair.” This prompted another woman in our group to grab my arm, and tell me that I was her date for the evening. Indeed, as the cliché goes, desperate times call for desperate measures.

When we took our seats, I noticed a couple of guys sitting in the front row, ready to maximize the experience. I’m sure they had already ingested some substances for further enhancement. Even before the movie began, one of them shouted for no apparent reason, “Doors, man!” I expected more such displays throughout the evening, but the film seemed to silence everyone.

A week-and-a-half before, my parents and I made the trek from Montpelier to Marysville. Located 20 miles west of Delaware, it seemed an ideal place for us to be close to Ohio Wesleyan, while also avoiding the crowds of families that would descend upon orientation day. We stayed at a then-new Old Country Inn (I think that was the name of it), had dinner at its homestylish restaurant, swung by my dormitory near dusk to ascertain move-in logistics, returned to the hotel, and retired for the night. As it happened to be on, I watched Godfather II until 2:00 A.M.

That day marked the beginning of the longest period I’ve ever gone with little or no sleep. It would mark my first time away from home and my parents, surrounded by people I didn’t know. It would be the dreaded lebewohl to Montpelier, and to the life I had known!

The first day was hot, with just enough places on campus lacking air conditioning. The former student union, where we received orientation materials. The dormitory, where my suitemates and I would keep fans running almost constantly through at least mid-September. Luckily, the recently-constructed campus centre did have climate control, which offered a marked sensation of cool relief after trying to regroup at my dormitory and trekking all around campus. Even waiting in line to pay for the textbooks I diligently picked up seemed a relief, as the bookstore had also moved to the new building.

As for suitemates, I only knew of their names and home locations prior to arrival. One from a suburb of nearby Columbus, another from Kalamazoo, and a third from just near New Orleans. (I’m sure they will recognize themselves if they read this, but I would prefer to keep them anonymous. As a compromise, I will refer to them by their hometown names, like in a bad war movie.) When my parents and I began hauling up my stuff with the help of an R.A., we noticed that Columbus and Kalamazoo had already claimed the sleeping quarters on either side of the suite. I decided to place my stuff on the side occupied by Columbus, upon noticing the heavy metal band posters displayed by Kalamazoo. There were a few others, I believe of Joe Satriani (of whom I had never heard) and Jimi Hendrix (of whom I had heard, but would not recognize his style for a few years), but the prejudice I had against metal was still too strong.

At the time, my knowledge of metal had been formed by generalities in the media, and what I observed of its most rabid fans back home. Typically, these were the “bad kids.” The ones who drank. The ones who did the drugs. The ones who stood on “Smoker’s Corner” (next to an old house near the high school), leering conspiratorially at everyone passing by. The ones whom I parodied in an abandoned bit of juvenalia revolving around an alien invasion, wherein the ringleader of a similar group of hooligans wore t-shirts for such bands as Metal Granny and [ha ha] Death & Disfiguration, speaking in a manner that would make Jason Mewes blush. Of course, they would meet some kind of bad end. Coming a few years before the Grand Guignol alien conspiracy activities of The X-Files, I probably planned on just having them disintegrated by something like an old school death ray.

Believing all the propaganda, including my own, I figured that heavy metal just plain signified trouble. If it wasn’t the music of Satanists (by that time, I had been an atheist for a few years), then it was certainly the music of people just itching to make trouble.

And then I met Kalamazoo himself.

Imagine my surprise when I found that he looked fairly normal, and that he had a mellow disposition. Taller than the rest of us, he struck me not as the antithesis of a metal fan. Rather, he just wasn’t what I was expecting. As I got to know him, his interest in metal seemed more and more incongruous. Consequently, my perceptions of this rock subgenre had begun to erode. Besides metal, other kinds of music emitted from his stereo speakers. He seemed keen on the artistic aspects of guitar playing, to which he would allude on a radio show he co-hosted with someone else from the dorm.

My image of metal fans was even more confounded by a music major from Pittsburgh, who would wear a Metallica t-shirt one day, and a Johann Sebastian Bach t-shirt the next. Pittsburgh also knew immediately what I was talking about whenever I mentioned Wagner, Strauss, or Mahler, and we would discuss the merits of specific recordings.

New Orleans, the last of the suitemates to arrive, was also a music major. (Anyone who went to Ohio Wesleyan around this time should already know whom I am describing.) He became known for carrying his trumpet case everywhere, once having the chutzpah to play from the audience during a concert. The story went that one of the Marsalis brothers asked New Orleans to jam with him. Unfortunately, he didn’t have his trumpet. It never left his side after that. Even when he already had a backpack and a tray full of food to manage.

His primary focus remained jazz, prompting my mother to engage him in conversation about various artists she remembered from her youth. Each seemed impressed with the other’s knowledge, and they would discuss jazz anytime my parents happened to be around. He also stayed up all hours so that he could engage in his required non-music studies, and find time to perfect his trumpet technique. Fellow students claimed that they could hear him at 4:00 A.M. in the music building, his lone trumpet echoing  into nearby Blue Limestone Park.

New Orleans also knew about classical, and he asked to borrow my recording of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony (Bernstein, Vienna Philharmonic, Deutsche Grammophon) to aid with practicing the opening movement‘s trumpet solo. I was better able to converse with him on that, as my knowledge of jazz was relatively slim.

On the side I took of the suite, Columbus had yet more music to contribute. He would wake up to one of the Columbus radio stations, which helped familiarize me with more current music. A dual major in Geography and Spanish, he would also sing along to recordings of Spanish popular music. And just as I had accepted the prospect that popular music of the 1930s and 1940s would fade further and further into obscurity, and that the Mama’s Family episode with Gen X’ers dancing to “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” was wishful thinking, out came In the Mood from Columbus’ stereo. As would become apparent within a few years, that kind of music would come back brasher than before, with a knowing contemporary sensibility.

Among the four of us in that dormitory suite, we represented a broad range of apparent musical interests. Me being classical, Kalamazoo being metal, New Orleans being jazz, and Columbus being popular. Although they underscore our diversity, the labels seem overall like crude generalizations. We already were interested in other genres, and learned even more about them from each other.

As the weather cooled, so did my apprehensions about university life. I had left my small rural town for a relatively tightly-knit community of students from across the nation, and from around the world. My courses all stimulated my intellectual curiosity, and I began to think of the world from a much broader perspective than before. Of course, this all happened gradually, as did the process of appreciating and enjoying a broader array of music. Classical music remained at the heart of my interest, and I would make even more discoveries within those realms as I progressed through university. A specific interpretation of a certain opera was one highly significant point, and my ensuing enthusiasm for it has led me on an almost 20 year quest to pursue and investigate its mysteries.

Classical music is tight yo

Via Alex Ross, via Anastasia Tsioulcas, via… Kanye West’s Twitter feed.

Before they get buried too far down, some other notable tweets from West’s account (which he apparently started just a few days ago):

29 July 2010 (Around noonish?)

“William Tell” Overture by Andre’ Rieu … Maybach music!!!

Leonard Bernstein is the shit!!! Hit flute player is snapping write now!!! Are those Christmas bells?

In New York!! 105.9 plays the hits!!!!!!!!!
That is “The Classical Music Station of NYC“

And…

Classical music is tight yo

Keep spreading the good word.