I'm going to diverge a little from the pop/rock basis of the Fault Poking Playlist this week. This is because today, 7 July, happens to be the 148th birthday of Gustav Mahler, who happens to be my favorite composer (and the subject of my music MA thesis). Mahler was a composer whose creative output happened almost exclusively in spectacular geologic settings, and those settings had a profound influence on his work.
Mahler was essentially a "summer composer." From the age of 20 onward, he worked as a conductor for most of the year, taking the offseason months to do the bulk of his composition - the sketching short scores and drafts of works that he would flesh out and orchestrate during the rest of the year. Starting in the early 1890s, this summer work was done away from the bigger cities, nearly unfindable in the mountains.
The first summer home was in Steinbach am Attersee, in lower Austria. This is about an hour and a half outside of Salzburg; it is still small enough to not have its own train station. The Attersee is a large oblong Alpine lake and has the clearest blue water I have ever seen (I visited in the summer of 2005). Behind it rises the Höllengebirge, a sheer vertical limestone face, 1800 meters high. In his hut by the lake, Mahler composed a good dozen art songs, most of his Second Symphony, and all of his Third. When Mahler was visited in Steinbach by a friend, who asked him to give him a tour of the area, Mahler replied that he had composed it all into his Third Symphony, and that listening to that piece would be as good as getting a tour. The first movement of that symphony is meant to portray the rock that underlies the rest of the environment at Steinbach. Mahler described it as "lifeless, crystalline nature." The movement opens with a unison melody from ten french horns, majestic and solid as the mountain face (and, if you happen to be in the back of the viola section, sitting in front of all of those horns, like getting hit in the back of the head with a big chunk of said rock). Having seen the mountain myself, and having played the symphony, I think Mahler was absolutely right to say he'd captured the landscape in notes.
The Second Symphony, another Steinbach-era piece, has a different sort of geologic significance. Namely, its fifth movement includes a portrayal of an earthquake. In the storyline of the piece, this earthquake opens up the ground so all the senseless dead people can come out of the ground and gather together to be rejoined with their spirits and thereby fully resurrected. Mahler's earthquake is all percussion - rolls on the cymbals, snare drum, bass drum, and timpani, beginning pianissimo and crescendoing to fortissimo over the course of two measures, ending with a bang. To my ear, he got the rattling aspect just right, but at the same time, my experience with earthquakes tells me that even the small ones go BANGrattlerattlerattle rather than rattlerattlerattleBANG. The actual rupture, followed by the building response, not vice versa. My guess would be that Mahler never actually felt a quake (though news of the 1906 San Francisco one really upset him) - or is there a circumstance where the bang could come last?
The second summer home, occupied from 1900 to 1907, was at Maiernigg am Wörthersee, also in the Austrian Alps, not far from Klagenfurt. The setting here is similar to that at Steinbach: house and composition hut nestled in the woods between a wide Alpine lake and steep mountains. The only reason Mahler abandoned his first summer home was the fact that noise from other vacationers got on his nerves, so it makes sense that he would seek the same geologic setting without all the noise. Mahler composed another dozen songs here, as well as most of the Fourth Symphony, and the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Symphonies in their entirety. There is no concrete landscape scene for Maiernigg, like the Third provides for Steinbach, but there are still ample mountains and valleys in the verbal descriptions Mahler made of his works from this period. He even devised a very specific orchestrational device here - the low sound of offstage cowbells to represent looking out over the landscape from a high peak.
The third summer home was at Toblach, aka Dobbiaco, high (elevation of the valley in which the town lies: 4072 feet) in the Dolomites of Italy's Südtirol/Alto Adige region. Mahler moved there in 1908, after his young daughter's death in 1907 made the prospect of returning to Maiernigg too painful. Though there are lakes in the area, there isn't a single large one that characterizes the landscape like at Mahler's previous two summer homes. The mountains at Toblach, however, are perhaps more breathtaking than at Steinbach or Maiernigg - they are far higher, and consist more of points and spires and crags than continuous rock faces. Low clouds (of which there were plenty when I visited in 2005) may completely obscure even the lowest peaks in the area. Mahler did not speak so explicitly about working the specific landscape of Toblach into the music he wrote there (Das Lied von der Erde, the Ninth and Tenth Symphonies), but he really didn't need to. The title "The Song of the Earth" says so very much, and the soundworld coupled with the text to the final movement paint a picture that can only be Toblach at night, if one has seen the place for comparison. That final movement, "Der Abschied" ("The Farewell") is a long and poignant farewell to life, which begins with the sun setting behind the mountains, and ends with praise of the Earth itself, which always renews itself in cycles. Perhaps those cycles are seasons, but for such an inhabitant of the mountains as Mahler, he would likely have been thrilled to know that mountains come and go in great cycles as well.
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Monday, July 7, 2008
Thursday, June 19, 2008
June Sixteenth
One year ago Monday, I flipped my car off the freeway and was certain at the time that I wasn't going to survive the wreck.
This Monday, I graduated from UC Riverside with a Master of Arts degree in music composition.
Both of these things are kind of hard for me to believe, in a way, though both for different reasons. I still think about that accident almost every day, but considering how active I am now, driving and not suffering any residual pain, it's kind of hard to consider that it really truly happened, even if I remember all the details so clearly. And it's hard to believe it's already been a whole year, because I still remember it all so well. And as for graduation, after two years of school that became increasingly intense with each quarter, it's hard to believe that it's over (for that department, at least), rather than it's going to get even more intense. Being allowed to stick the letters "M.A." after my name if I feel like it seems almost anticlimactic after all that work.
I obviously never expected the accident. Who would? It took such a short time to occur, and yet changed my summer and my life and work since then in an enormous way. But I always expected that I would earn the Master's in music - and that's ultimately not changing my life nearly as much as I thought it would. I went into it knowing it would be the next step to making myself a better composer who was more likely to get a job in the field. But I'm coming out of it into a totally different discipline, not to the job world or to a music PhD. I certainly didn't expect that before the accident, for all I was fascinated by the local geology, but now that I've started working on it, I'm certainly glad for the change of course. I don't know if I really would have thought in earnest about switching if not for the shakeup that was that wreck. Can I be glad about a effect of an event, while still loathing the event itself? I suppose so, weird though it may be.
This Monday, I graduated from UC Riverside with a Master of Arts degree in music composition.
Both of these things are kind of hard for me to believe, in a way, though both for different reasons. I still think about that accident almost every day, but considering how active I am now, driving and not suffering any residual pain, it's kind of hard to consider that it really truly happened, even if I remember all the details so clearly. And it's hard to believe it's already been a whole year, because I still remember it all so well. And as for graduation, after two years of school that became increasingly intense with each quarter, it's hard to believe that it's over (for that department, at least), rather than it's going to get even more intense. Being allowed to stick the letters "M.A." after my name if I feel like it seems almost anticlimactic after all that work.
I obviously never expected the accident. Who would? It took such a short time to occur, and yet changed my summer and my life and work since then in an enormous way. But I always expected that I would earn the Master's in music - and that's ultimately not changing my life nearly as much as I thought it would. I went into it knowing it would be the next step to making myself a better composer who was more likely to get a job in the field. But I'm coming out of it into a totally different discipline, not to the job world or to a music PhD. I certainly didn't expect that before the accident, for all I was fascinated by the local geology, but now that I've started working on it, I'm certainly glad for the change of course. I don't know if I really would have thought in earnest about switching if not for the shakeup that was that wreck. Can I be glad about a effect of an event, while still loathing the event itself? I suppose so, weird though it may be.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Gongs, Gods, and the Ring of Fire
Java is the most densely-populated island on Earth, both in terms of humans and in terms of volcanoes. With cities built between these peaks and farms reaching uncomfortably far up the slopes, it is no surprise that this volcanism has greatly influenced the culture. National Geographic ran an article on Indonesian volcanoes in culture and the conflicts between spirituality and science earlier this year; I saw discussion when I was first getting into the geoblogosphere. But for all it was an interesting article, and for all the cultural discussion that was there, music didn't come up at all.
A few weeks ago, I got into a discussion with a few ethnomusicologists and an anthropologist over whether central Javanese gamelan music is high art music or not. It is considered one of the major fine arts of Indonesia, but at the same time, this music is used for so many purposes and events that it not, in the strictest sense, art music. But regardless of how it's classified, its aesthetic, origin, and some of those uses are undeniably geological.
A gamelan consists largely of bronze keyed instruments and different styles of tuned gongs, both horizontally and vertically suspended. There are string and woodwind instruments involved, as well as vocals, but the core set of instruments are all heavy metal. The instruments, particularly, the gongs are cast by digging the form into the ground and casting molten bronze into it. The word gamelan comes from gamel, which means "to forge." While the heat from the actual volcanoes isn't used to melt the bronze, the heat of these forges is symbolic of the heat within the volcanoes. With that starting point, it could be read further that the molten bronze itself references the lava, forming the instruments like the volcanoes formed Java to begin with. The instruments are made as a set, not interchangeable with instruments from other gamelans; each set is given a name, often related to the landscape and natural setting of the city in which the set of instruments is to reside. UC Riverside's is Kyai Telaga Semu, or "Venerable Lake of Illusions," referencing mirages in the desert surrounding the university. UCLA's is, amusingly, "Venerable Dark Cloud." I have no doubt that volcanoes find their way into the names, where appropriate.
The most important instrument in a gamelan, though it has the fewest notes, is the great gong. The legend of the first gamelan states that the sultan needed a way to contact the gods, so he invented the gong; other gongs were added to contact other gods, and the ensemble grew. The gods in question are believed to reside in the volcanoes; there are some volcanoes, most notably Merapi, which is located between Javanese cultural centers Surakarta and Yogyakarta, with resident gamelans in caves on the slopes, which are played to keep the godly residents of the volcano appeased and less inclined to induce eruption. To speak to a volcano, the sound would need to be loud and low. The great gong consists of several hundred pounds of bronze, and makes a sound so low that it tests the bottom range of human hearing. When playing in a gamelan, you can feel the gong just as much as you hear it; the compressional sound wave pulses past you, as if the gong is the central vent of a volcano unleashing an explosion, or the epicenter of an earthquake. Even the names of instrument and mountain are related: gong ageng, or "great gong," has the same root as gunung, or volcano. A further connection here is that the animistic spirit of the gamelan resides in the gong, much like the larger gods reside within the volcanoes.
Javanese gamelan music is cyclical. There is a set framework pattern of notes that is repeated over and over, with variations in tempo and underlying texture. This music also has three basic levels of instrumental parts: those that play the framework, those that elaborate virtuosically within the framework, and those that punctuate. The gong is the strongest punctuation - it marks each repetition of the cycle, and marks the very beginning and the very end of a performance of a piece. To me - though I have not yet heard or read anything that definitively confirms or disproves this - having the gong be the beginning and the end at once is like the explosive part of an eruption cycle. Is the bang the end of one buildup, or is it the event that allows the next buildup to begin? Another feature of gamelan music is that more punctuation indicates a more intense mood, regardless of speed and volume. A quick piece with sparse punctuation would be considered less intense than a slow piece with frequent punctuation, and pieces used to represent fight scenes in shadow puppet theatre or dance have multiple punctuation strokes per note of the main melody. Could this relate to the eruption cycle as well - the more noise and material shooting out of the volcano, the more intense the eruption? These particular connections are things about which I have not seen research, but I am very curious to know if this is real, or if I'm just overanalyzing. I suspect I'd need to speak/read Javanese to figure this out, so I may enlist one of my Javanist ethnomusicologist friends to help me dig, since the only Javanese words I know are directly related to gamelan.
I've been playing in the UCR Javanese gamelan for two years now, and I absolutely love it. I joined the group for purely aesthetic reasons - I loved the sound of the music - but the more I learn about the structure of the music and the culture behind it, I appreciate it more and more in deeper ways. The undeniable connection to geology in this music is an added bonus, but one that makes gamelan even more fascinating and beautiful to me.
And now, since I've been jabbering about this for a lot of lines, here's a soundfile of a gamelan piece. This is the group in which I play, from our 6 June 2008 concert. We're not Javanese professionals by any means, but our instructor and guest singer have been studying Java for decades, and we had a guest director come in from Yogyakarta to work with us. These are good people to have in charge. This particular piece is a ladrang, which has 32 notes per stroke of the big gong, and it is often used to open a concert.
Ladrang Wilujeng
A few weeks ago, I got into a discussion with a few ethnomusicologists and an anthropologist over whether central Javanese gamelan music is high art music or not. It is considered one of the major fine arts of Indonesia, but at the same time, this music is used for so many purposes and events that it not, in the strictest sense, art music. But regardless of how it's classified, its aesthetic, origin, and some of those uses are undeniably geological.
A gamelan consists largely of bronze keyed instruments and different styles of tuned gongs, both horizontally and vertically suspended. There are string and woodwind instruments involved, as well as vocals, but the core set of instruments are all heavy metal. The instruments, particularly, the gongs are cast by digging the form into the ground and casting molten bronze into it. The word gamelan comes from gamel, which means "to forge." While the heat from the actual volcanoes isn't used to melt the bronze, the heat of these forges is symbolic of the heat within the volcanoes. With that starting point, it could be read further that the molten bronze itself references the lava, forming the instruments like the volcanoes formed Java to begin with. The instruments are made as a set, not interchangeable with instruments from other gamelans; each set is given a name, often related to the landscape and natural setting of the city in which the set of instruments is to reside. UC Riverside's is Kyai Telaga Semu, or "Venerable Lake of Illusions," referencing mirages in the desert surrounding the university. UCLA's is, amusingly, "Venerable Dark Cloud." I have no doubt that volcanoes find their way into the names, where appropriate.
The most important instrument in a gamelan, though it has the fewest notes, is the great gong. The legend of the first gamelan states that the sultan needed a way to contact the gods, so he invented the gong; other gongs were added to contact other gods, and the ensemble grew. The gods in question are believed to reside in the volcanoes; there are some volcanoes, most notably Merapi, which is located between Javanese cultural centers Surakarta and Yogyakarta, with resident gamelans in caves on the slopes, which are played to keep the godly residents of the volcano appeased and less inclined to induce eruption. To speak to a volcano, the sound would need to be loud and low. The great gong consists of several hundred pounds of bronze, and makes a sound so low that it tests the bottom range of human hearing. When playing in a gamelan, you can feel the gong just as much as you hear it; the compressional sound wave pulses past you, as if the gong is the central vent of a volcano unleashing an explosion, or the epicenter of an earthquake. Even the names of instrument and mountain are related: gong ageng, or "great gong," has the same root as gunung, or volcano. A further connection here is that the animistic spirit of the gamelan resides in the gong, much like the larger gods reside within the volcanoes.
Javanese gamelan music is cyclical. There is a set framework pattern of notes that is repeated over and over, with variations in tempo and underlying texture. This music also has three basic levels of instrumental parts: those that play the framework, those that elaborate virtuosically within the framework, and those that punctuate. The gong is the strongest punctuation - it marks each repetition of the cycle, and marks the very beginning and the very end of a performance of a piece. To me - though I have not yet heard or read anything that definitively confirms or disproves this - having the gong be the beginning and the end at once is like the explosive part of an eruption cycle. Is the bang the end of one buildup, or is it the event that allows the next buildup to begin? Another feature of gamelan music is that more punctuation indicates a more intense mood, regardless of speed and volume. A quick piece with sparse punctuation would be considered less intense than a slow piece with frequent punctuation, and pieces used to represent fight scenes in shadow puppet theatre or dance have multiple punctuation strokes per note of the main melody. Could this relate to the eruption cycle as well - the more noise and material shooting out of the volcano, the more intense the eruption? These particular connections are things about which I have not seen research, but I am very curious to know if this is real, or if I'm just overanalyzing. I suspect I'd need to speak/read Javanese to figure this out, so I may enlist one of my Javanist ethnomusicologist friends to help me dig, since the only Javanese words I know are directly related to gamelan.
I've been playing in the UCR Javanese gamelan for two years now, and I absolutely love it. I joined the group for purely aesthetic reasons - I loved the sound of the music - but the more I learn about the structure of the music and the culture behind it, I appreciate it more and more in deeper ways. The undeniable connection to geology in this music is an added bonus, but one that makes gamelan even more fascinating and beautiful to me.
And now, since I've been jabbering about this for a lot of lines, here's a soundfile of a gamelan piece. This is the group in which I play, from our 6 June 2008 concert. We're not Javanese professionals by any means, but our instructor and guest singer have been studying Java for decades, and we had a guest director come in from Yogyakarta to work with us. These are good people to have in charge. This particular piece is a ladrang, which has 32 notes per stroke of the big gong, and it is often used to open a concert.
Ladrang Wilujeng
Friday, June 6, 2008
I have not been subducted! I promise!
With all the posts about the geoblogosphere expanding and going "mainstream," I feel even more guilty about not posting anything in two weeks than I would have anyway. I'm good at the self-guilt-tripping thing! I am sorry for not having read your posts all that carefully in the past couple of weeks!
One major reason for this is that, since my last entry on 22 May, I have played in eight concerts: three of Renaissance music (Tuff Cookie, I'm not going to bring the school's viol on a cross country flight when I head east this summer, but maybe I will haul it to AGU!), two of all-Russian orchestral music, one of bluegrass, one of student compositions (a piece that I composed was also on this concert), and one of music from around the world (in which I played mariachi, bluegrass, and Javanese gamelan). I still have two more concerts left before the end of the quarter, and this list doesn't include the ones from earlier in May.
This is a lot. It is making me exhausted - I do, after all, have other school work! But I think that if this were last quarter, it would be burning me out a lot more than it is. I'm sure the reason I'm not spontaneously combusting in all of this is knowing that, even though the music department still owns me until next Monday, this stuff is no longer my job. Finding out that I did officially get in to the earth science department after waiting so long to hear relieved a lot of stress on its own, but I didn't expect it would make such a difference in my outlook toward the rest of music school. With the ensembles, I can really enjoy them again, since they have no bearing on my academic future or career. That my attitude toward some of the more tedious groups improved almost immediately upon my receiving that acceptance letter tells me even more that I've made the right choice about switching majors. I'll be learning tons of things about a science that's always fascinated me (both now, in school, and in the future, through research), all the while preventing myself from completely burning out on music. Win win!
(The geology classes have also gotten me off my butt and out of my apartment a lot this quarter. That does not happen with music classes. Getting outside every weekend and stomping around on desert mountains has also, I think, been wonderful for my sanity. And not to mention for getting rid of some of the weight that comes from being a music major who never gets outside.)
And that got pretty rambly. I guess that's what happens when I write 12:30 AM blog entries after long concerts. I promise I will write more about actual geological topics soon!
One major reason for this is that, since my last entry on 22 May, I have played in eight concerts: three of Renaissance music (Tuff Cookie, I'm not going to bring the school's viol on a cross country flight when I head east this summer, but maybe I will haul it to AGU!), two of all-Russian orchestral music, one of bluegrass, one of student compositions (a piece that I composed was also on this concert), and one of music from around the world (in which I played mariachi, bluegrass, and Javanese gamelan). I still have two more concerts left before the end of the quarter, and this list doesn't include the ones from earlier in May.
This is a lot. It is making me exhausted - I do, after all, have other school work! But I think that if this were last quarter, it would be burning me out a lot more than it is. I'm sure the reason I'm not spontaneously combusting in all of this is knowing that, even though the music department still owns me until next Monday, this stuff is no longer my job. Finding out that I did officially get in to the earth science department after waiting so long to hear relieved a lot of stress on its own, but I didn't expect it would make such a difference in my outlook toward the rest of music school. With the ensembles, I can really enjoy them again, since they have no bearing on my academic future or career. That my attitude toward some of the more tedious groups improved almost immediately upon my receiving that acceptance letter tells me even more that I've made the right choice about switching majors. I'll be learning tons of things about a science that's always fascinated me (both now, in school, and in the future, through research), all the while preventing myself from completely burning out on music. Win win!
(The geology classes have also gotten me off my butt and out of my apartment a lot this quarter. That does not happen with music classes. Getting outside every weekend and stomping around on desert mountains has also, I think, been wonderful for my sanity. And not to mention for getting rid of some of the weight that comes from being a music major who never gets outside.)
And that got pretty rambly. I guess that's what happens when I write 12:30 AM blog entries after long concerts. I promise I will write more about actual geological topics soon!
Monday, May 5, 2008
Tag Cloud?
Look, it's a bandwagon! Watch me jump!
Here's my thesis:
Erm. Relevance? May I have some Geoblog relevance? Ask me in two years, and I'll have one with earthquakes and faults and things! But for now, here's some idea of what's been devouring my life and free time for the past few months. (I can't wait until this year is over.)
Here's my thesis:
adler adorno being character cheerful composition connection described entire fifth final floros four fourth grange hero la life mahler major material movement music nachtmusik nature night number positive previous quoted rather references rehearsal rondo-finale second section seventh sixth sound summer symphonic symphony taken theme third tonal waltz work world wunderhorn
created at TagCrowd.com
Erm. Relevance? May I have some Geoblog relevance? Ask me in two years, and I'll have one with earthquakes and faults and things! But for now, here's some idea of what's been devouring my life and free time for the past few months. (I can't wait until this year is over.)
Friday, April 18, 2008
Sounds of 1906
In the course of compiling that playlist of earthquake-related songs I mentioned a few entries ago, I came across a handful of songs written in the wake of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire. It makes absolute sense that with this, like so many other tragedies, reactionary songs popped up within days (if not hours) of the quake. These songs give an interesting snapshot of reactions and how they changed with time, as well as into musical idiom for addressing the public about significant events. I was able to find only sheet music for two of them, two with only recordings, and one with both recording and sheet music.
Interestingly, all five songs are in a major key, despite their images of flames, collapsed buildings, and dead bodies. As someone who has grown up playing music in the Western Art idiom, I was very surprised by this, since it's encoded in music from the beginning of tonality that, generally, major is happy and minor is sad. I would have expected a dirge or a lament. Instead, the songs are not only major, but have an upbeat/dancey piano accompaniment. It occurred to me, though, that the classical idiom is the wrong one from which to look at these. They are, decidedly, the popular music of 1906, and therefore express their feelings in a familiar and accessible - if not overdone - manner for the sake of the audience. It's not any different from that Columbine song written by two students of that school, or many post 9-11/pro-America songs - major key, moderate to fast tempo, nothing compositional (as opposed to lyrical) to distinguish them from any of the popular love songs with which they cohabit the airwaves. I don't know why popular music fell into the habit of major key songs about depressing topics - I'm sure ethnomusicological work has been done on it, or if it hasn't, perhaps it should be.
Four of the songs have words. The fifth, "Firemen's March," is for solo piano. Without the image of San Francisco in flames on the cover of the sheet music, the sound alone could be taken as any perky military (or civil, I suppose) march. The interesting thing about this one is that the cover of the sheet music also declares that the piece was actually composed on 18 April 1906, while the composer was sitting on a hill and watching the subjects of his piece attempt to save the city. To be frank, I think this guy is completely insane. Though the event surely would have inspired me musically (I actually am planning a piece based on it), I would have been sure to get my butt out of the line of fire before I started actually writing anything. I personally get very absorbed in the creative process when composing, and I wouldn't want to be lost to the world scribbling notes while sitting on a hill, only to not notice fire creeping up the back of that hill, or to have an aftershock drop something on me. The composer lived to have his work published, lucky that he was, but I don't think it makes him any less crazy.
The other four songs, for voice and piano, show how the public emphasis of the tragedy shifted away from the earthquake and toward the fire in very little time. The copyright dates on the ones with printed music ("The Stricken City" and "The Burning of Frisco Town") put them in April and May of 1906; judging by the title, I would place "Death Comes at Dawn" closer to the tragedy, and judging from the descriptions of aid in "San Francisco, Our Beloved, Arise," I'd place that one a little later on. The emphasis in the first three songs is on the fire, as was the government-pushed-for goal ("Earthquake? What earthquake? Our ground is safe! Any city can have a fire!") - the mention of the earthquake goes from one verse to one sentence to nothing at all between "Death Comes at Dawn," "The Burning of Frisco Town," and "The Stricken City." "San Francisco, Our Beloved" mentions both earthquake and fire in one sentence, then turning its attention to the important healing process - though hopefully not too soon to heal without learning from what did the breaking to begin with.
"The Burning of Frisco Town," "San Francisco, Our Beloved," and "Death Comes at Dawn" can be heard on this page, toward the bottom. Some lyrics have been modified to mention the date 18 April more specifically, and "Death Comes at Dawn" has been changed to "The Earthquake Came at Dawn," purportedly to "soften the image of the destruction." To me, that's a modern keeping with the revisionism that started in 1906 - if we say "earthquake," but say it as a way to cover the effects, how does that stand for how anyone will cope with the next big one? The San Francisco earthquake and fire were horrific things, both for what they did do, and for how much future is still in them. They should stand up and be retold as a cautionary tale. The old songs, with their denial and coverups, deserve to be played, along with the statement of, "This is how they coped. How will we?"
Interestingly, all five songs are in a major key, despite their images of flames, collapsed buildings, and dead bodies. As someone who has grown up playing music in the Western Art idiom, I was very surprised by this, since it's encoded in music from the beginning of tonality that, generally, major is happy and minor is sad. I would have expected a dirge or a lament. Instead, the songs are not only major, but have an upbeat/dancey piano accompaniment. It occurred to me, though, that the classical idiom is the wrong one from which to look at these. They are, decidedly, the popular music of 1906, and therefore express their feelings in a familiar and accessible - if not overdone - manner for the sake of the audience. It's not any different from that Columbine song written by two students of that school, or many post 9-11/pro-America songs - major key, moderate to fast tempo, nothing compositional (as opposed to lyrical) to distinguish them from any of the popular love songs with which they cohabit the airwaves. I don't know why popular music fell into the habit of major key songs about depressing topics - I'm sure ethnomusicological work has been done on it, or if it hasn't, perhaps it should be.
Four of the songs have words. The fifth, "Firemen's March," is for solo piano. Without the image of San Francisco in flames on the cover of the sheet music, the sound alone could be taken as any perky military (or civil, I suppose) march. The interesting thing about this one is that the cover of the sheet music also declares that the piece was actually composed on 18 April 1906, while the composer was sitting on a hill and watching the subjects of his piece attempt to save the city. To be frank, I think this guy is completely insane. Though the event surely would have inspired me musically (I actually am planning a piece based on it), I would have been sure to get my butt out of the line of fire before I started actually writing anything. I personally get very absorbed in the creative process when composing, and I wouldn't want to be lost to the world scribbling notes while sitting on a hill, only to not notice fire creeping up the back of that hill, or to have an aftershock drop something on me. The composer lived to have his work published, lucky that he was, but I don't think it makes him any less crazy.
The other four songs, for voice and piano, show how the public emphasis of the tragedy shifted away from the earthquake and toward the fire in very little time. The copyright dates on the ones with printed music ("The Stricken City" and "The Burning of Frisco Town") put them in April and May of 1906; judging by the title, I would place "Death Comes at Dawn" closer to the tragedy, and judging from the descriptions of aid in "San Francisco, Our Beloved, Arise," I'd place that one a little later on. The emphasis in the first three songs is on the fire, as was the government-pushed-for goal ("Earthquake? What earthquake? Our ground is safe! Any city can have a fire!") - the mention of the earthquake goes from one verse to one sentence to nothing at all between "Death Comes at Dawn," "The Burning of Frisco Town," and "The Stricken City." "San Francisco, Our Beloved" mentions both earthquake and fire in one sentence, then turning its attention to the important healing process - though hopefully not too soon to heal without learning from what did the breaking to begin with.
"The Burning of Frisco Town," "San Francisco, Our Beloved," and "Death Comes at Dawn" can be heard on this page, toward the bottom. Some lyrics have been modified to mention the date 18 April more specifically, and "Death Comes at Dawn" has been changed to "The Earthquake Came at Dawn," purportedly to "soften the image of the destruction." To me, that's a modern keeping with the revisionism that started in 1906 - if we say "earthquake," but say it as a way to cover the effects, how does that stand for how anyone will cope with the next big one? The San Francisco earthquake and fire were horrific things, both for what they did do, and for how much future is still in them. They should stand up and be retold as a cautionary tale. The old songs, with their denial and coverups, deserve to be played, along with the statement of, "This is how they coped. How will we?"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)