The Search!Down!: Janis Joplin and Richard Wagner

In case you’re wondering, the term “Search!Down!” comes from a previous blog of mine. Inspired by Stephen Colbert’s Threatdown, it will act as an occasional accounting of terminology that somehow guided people to Geheimnisvolle Musik. Some of them are “false drops,” a bit of library and information science lingo, which describes results that are not relevant or pertinent to the searcher’s intended inquiry. Needless to say, they can be quite amusing. On The Rest Is Noise several years ago, Alex Ross commented on how he does not have naked pictures of Karita Mattila, likely referring one or more of her performances of the “Dance of the Seven Veils” in Richard Strauss’ opera Salome. (I’ve heard they’re easy to find.)

In my case, I had an interesting inquiry yesterday: what does richard wagner and janis joplin songs have in common

I don’t have anything about that. They both appear in separate postings. Wagner I talk about a lot, while I only mentioned Joplin in relation to her singing “Summertime” from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Nonetheless, it is most definitely relevant to the overall spirit of the blog. Now I’m curious myself. I don’t have a definitive answer, but I can expound on whether it is a correct notion. If we have evidence that a musician was influenced by someone else, that is objectively correct. However, I will flat out state that it matters not, whether the notion is ”right” or “wrong.” For this visitor to my blog, they made a connection that somehow made sense. Is Janis Joplin’s singing “Wagnerian,” whatever that means? Offhand, especially if my visitor comes back here, I can imagine that description being applied loosely to Ball and Chain. It sounds very much on blues territory, of course, and Joplin’s soul-wrenching singing puts me in mind of heavy metal, which has been associated on more than one occasion with both the blues and Wagner. Try this search, as well as this one.

Now, what I have is a tangle of cross-genre associations, which derive from my own experiences listening to music. Still, I suppose many of us would like to know if there is a definite connection? In other words, has anyone (such as a musicologist) seriously tried connecting Joplin and Wagner? Hmmm… Well, there’s this story about the musical likes of the editor of the Financial Times, dated last week. He cites varying levels of response/usage, but the question remains: why Joplin and Wagner (and Beethoven)? Why not just musicians within the same genre-based orbit as Joplin or Wagner (not Joplin “OR” Wagner, in the Boolean sense)? That’s part of the reason why this blog exists. To facilitate the exploration of such questions, which genre conventions and confines implicitly prohibit.

I welcome your inquiries about musical connections, even if they may seem “out there” in relation to the ways we’re conditioned to think about music. I also welcome guest posters; just let me know, and you can contribute to the dialogue…

Celebrating Williams, Remembering Ifukube

Well, I commemorated Philip Glass’ 75th birthday last week. However, until I visited my go-to music man Alex Ross’ blog this morning, I didn’t realize that today (8 February) marks the 80th birthday of U.S. film composer John Williams. The man whom one could readily refer to as the best-known living film composer. Say what you will about Williams’ composition style (as outlined by Norman Lebrecht’s grumblings), many of us have felt some emotional or physiological thrill in hearing some of his tunes. After a decade of reaction of against orchestral scores in Hollywood, perhaps most infamously embodied by Alfred Hitchcock’s dismissal of his incredible collaborator Bernard Herrmann, a supposedly “dead” form of music for film returned as a compelling force (no pun intended) with Williams. Luckily for Herrmann, some “New Hollywood” directors like Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese brought him onboard for some of their films. With the jazz-inflected score from Taxi Driver being his last, Herrmann passed away in 1975, leaving a slew of films like Carrie and God Told Me To on his plate; one can only imagine what wonderfully ferbile and tender music he would have created for both macabre tales.

Around the time Herrmann started to have his belated renaissance, Williams started to achieve fame as a film composer. I need not indulge in describing the thrill that can be brought about by hearing Williams’ scores. It may be hyperbolic, but it is easy for me to imagine that they provided an orchestral complement to the soundtrack of Generation X. The same kids who would not want to hear “straight” orchestral music might not mind something similar to accompany a Hollywood thrill ride (which ties in with my discussion of the inadequacy of genre categories, but more on that in subsequent postings). In my case, my mother played classical music at home when I was a kid, but I also watched movies with the classically-influenced Williams’ scores. Which informed my musical tastes more? Were they complementary? Considering that I gravitate most strongly towards late 19th century German Romantic composers like Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler, and Richard Strauss, it’s hard to pinpoint. I listen to their compositions more frequently, but I’m not going to put down Williams. Certainly, he opened the floodgates for many other film composers, and made it acceptable for their creations to be a part of cinema again. I can only hope that the either/or dichtomy of orchestral and popular music (another highly problematic genre-based dualism) can be put to rest, and filmmakers can be more agnostic what they use; if the music fits, accompany your film to it.

Oddly enough, on this date in 2006, a great Japanese composer also associated with film passed on. Akira Ifukube is perhaps best known for his scores to Japanese horror movies. And, yes, I mean The Big Gobowski himself, right down to his trademark roar (Resin-covered glove + double bass strings + slowed down playback = Run like Hell!). That music was another staple of my youth. Say what you will about the rubber suits, I still think they’re better than the CGI that has overtaken many special effects-based films. But that brief rant leads to another point I’d like to make; that Ifukube’s music lent soul to Toho’s iconic daikaiju, many with their own distinct musical motifs (such as the pteranodon Radon and the three-headed space dragon Ghidorah) and tension to what were otherwise outlandish and overblown spectacles… not much different from opera, really. That said, the first Gojira film was most certainly not played for any kind of laughs or vicarious thrills, and Ifukube’s score reflected that. See David Edelstein’s review of the 50th anniversary re-release, which also namechecks some personal favourites: Mahler’s 5th Symphony and Wagner’s Götterdämmerung (“Twilight of the Gods”). It is well-established that Ifukube tended to draw upon composers like Igor Stravinsky (and possibly a number of other Russian composers) as influences. Nonetheless, I can detect at least some affinities with the late German Romantic tradition as well. As a point of comparison, listen to the “redemption theme” that appears near the end of the immolation scene from Twilight of the Gods, and then the Requiem from Gojira tai Desutoroiâ, where G undergoes his own nuclear-fueled immolation. Coincidence? I’m not sure, but the affinities (at least for me) are quite compelling. (And don’t forget Somewhere from Leonard Bernstein’s genre-bending score for West Side Story.)

Oh… I need a Kleenex…

Beyond film music, Ifukube wrote a number of pieces solely for the orchestra hall. As the same Classical Net review mentioned earlier points out, Ifukube was also influenced by music of the Ainu, an indigenous group from Hokkaido. Admittedly, I don’t know as much about that aspect of Ifukube’s influences, but it further demonstrates the insufficiency of genre in defining what kinds of music we tend to enjoy. At least outside of Japan, I am certain that recordings of Ainu music would fall under the super broad “international” category, which actually indicates nothing substantial about its traits.

A summary? Sure… Besides the fact that this piece discusses two film composers, there’s also the underlying theme of the problems caused by genre as a way of categorizing music. Since orchestral and popular styles can appear in film, could both be considered film music? I know that some music is written “for” film, but pre-existing music of various kinds can be associated quite intimately with film, whether it’s The Blue Danube or Born to be Wild. But that’s yet another posting! And the same goes for definitions of “international” music, which may be someone else’s classical or popular music.

Madonna, Opera, and the Super Bowl

So I tend to remain oblivious about major sporting events, with a few exceptions. I’m better able to get into faster-paced sports like basketball and hockey (and I’m not just saying that because both have strong ties to Canada), but I still don’t root for specific teams. The 2010 Winter Olympics hockey showdown between my native land and place of residence was a major case in point, but both teams played very well. Even when Diane and I lived near Texas Stadium, we were always caught by surprise when we hit postgame traffic. I can only imagine how it is now with Cowboys Stadium also in Arlington, plopped amidst what used to be homes for people with low incomes, and partially funded with taxpayer dollars (while mass transit remains non-existent in Arlington).

Anyway, we remained rather oblivious to this year’s football playoffs and Super Bowl until recently. Since Diane is teaching two classes about social media this term, she wanted to tune in so that she could comment on how it is discussed in such forums as Facebook, Twitter, and so on. We started dinner (gluten-free pizza) around halftime, just in time to hear Madonna perform some of her classic hits, as well as a new song. To see her various costume changes, we would shuffle between the living room and dining room about once per song.

The presence of “Madge” at the Super Bowl brought to mind some opera-related associations. The connections make little sense at first glance, but the length allotted to the halftime show is sufficient to accommodate at least two of my favourite grand finales from opera. One is Brunnhilde’s Immolation from Richard Wagner’s Götterdämmerung; funnily enough, in relation to one of Madonna’s costumes, music critic Alex Ross made a reference to Wagner on Twitter. The other is the final scene from Richard Strauss’ Salome (from my favourite videorecording of the opera). For a rough translation, see Oscar Wilde’s original text, starting on page 20 at “There is no sound.”

In terms of their public reputations, the affinities between the Salome and Madonna are quite apparent. At a broad level, one could identify their connections to sexuality and dance (note the title of this book), as well as gay iconography (via Wilde’s authorship of the play Strauss adapted). Most stunning to me, however, is Madonna’s 1989 song “Like a Prayer,” perhaps best known for its controversial video. At one level, it acts as a provocative and moving commentary on many hot button issues, bringing together race relations, religion, and sexuality. At another, the erotic (and perhaps even spiritual) desire of Madonna’s character for a holy man has strong affinities with the relationship between Salome and Jochanaan (John the Baptist). In the latter, however, there are no double-entendres on a par with “I’m down on my knees” (though Wilde’s metaphor “scarlet band on a column of ivory” is none too subtle, either). As Wilde’s text states, and as Strauss’ music strongly implies, Salome desires Jochanaan, while the holy man remains adamant in his renunciation of the teenage Princess of Judea (see page 6 from Wilde’s text, beginning at “Who is he, the Son of Man?”). And then there’s the section with the organ heard near the beginning of “Like a Prayer.” It shares some aural similarities with the theme from this section (~30 seconds) of the Salome final scene (which also features an organ). Might both snippets act as some mimetic portrayal of the ambiguities portrayed in their respective works?

Would it be possible to do a performance of the final scene from Salome, or even some other operatic work, at the Super Bowl? (Madonna might not be able to do it herself, though it’s difficult to resist the possibility of it happening in a parallel universe.) Albeit in different ways, both opera and the Super Bowl have reputations for being overblown spectacles. With supertitles and interesting staging, the combination might just work. Send in the cheerleaders, and there would be something for everyone.

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’.