Prof. Carol

I sold off most of my goat herd yesterday. Ostensibly it’s because things are so busy, but in reality it was retribution! A whole mess of teenaged-goats (last spring’s kids) broke out of the fencing and devoured the landscaping around our house. Imagine sticks where blossom-laidened crape myrtles used to be. There goes that photo-shoot for Better Homes and Gardens.

Goats like shrubbery.

Then the renegades discovered the garage. Don’t ask. Our fierce guard dogs apparently found the whole thing amusing. I love my goats, their pea-brain expressions, their goofy curiosity, and especially the noises they make. In our noisy world, we forget just how loud the bleating of animals is. Or used to be.  

In Mozart’s day, not much was louder than the sounds made by animals, especially when in labor! The clip-clop of hooves, the snorts, yaps, and squeals—all of it formed a soundscape for daily life. In that much quieter world, music sounded with far more authority. A trumpet commanded attention. A single fiddle-player was sufficient for a dance.

The caption on this 1850 lithograph by Currier & Ives reads: First Appearence of Jenny Lind in America.

I was shaking my head in wonder the other day, looking at the Currier & Ives graphic depicting Swedish soprano Jenny Lind as she sang her American debut in 1850 in New York’s huge Castle Garden. How did her voice fill such a hall? Today, massive speakers would be stacked ceiling-high.  But audiences had a different concept of “loud” back then. Plus, the lady really could sing!

“Lindomania.” That’s what the press called the transatlantic fervor over Jenny Lind. Nicknamed the “Swedish Nightingale,” Lind was brought to the United States by that legendary impresario P.T. Barnum, and paid $187,000 in advance.  

Why was a circus impresario promoting an opera singer? Well, think about it. The astonishing techniques required to sing the fancy operatic passages we call bel canto (beautiful singing) were positively unearthly to folks who’d never heard such “goings-on.” In fact, most people today go into shock, the first time they stand next to (not in front of, please!) a professional opera singer. The shattering power cannot be described.  

Everything real opera singers do, from inordinate breath control to acoustic force, comes from talent, yes, but from specific techniques of vocal production that require years of training. A regular person, no matter how attractive or facile his or her voice, cannot do such things, any more than a regular person can fly across the trapeze “with the greatest of ease.” The superhuman abilities of acrobats and opera singers fit nicely together in the world of 19th-century American entertainment.

Jenny Lind triumphed in America also because Mr. Barnum interwove her image with two irresistible claims: first, he promoted her virtue. This makes perfect sense when we recall that women of the theater have been seen as “questionable” throughout most of Western history. Secondly, P.T. Barnum gave concrete proof of her virtue by linking certain performances to that most irresistible calling: the charity benefit.

Ah, if only we could have been there! To hear her fabulous virtuosity flying through the air. Still, by all accounts, the crowds were even more moved by her rendering of soft, sentimental songs such as “Home, Sweet Home,” a mega-hit of the 19th century.

Because ultimately, in music, it is the soft sounds that draw us in. The delicate, the intricate, the multi-faceted colors that our ears taste within a softer frame. The purr of the cat, the gentle whinny of our favorite horse, and the contented “baaahh” of a well-fed goat. . .

Yikes, don’t remind me. We will fix the fence. And despite their crimes, those particular wayward goats went not to the meat locker, but to a lady who will harness their energies to produce the next generation of trouble-makers.

Carol Reynolds, aka Professor Carol, a retired music history professor from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, has launched Silver Age Music. Her latest product is a multimedia course: “Discovering Music: 300 Years of Interaction in Western Music, Art, History, & Culture.” Prof. Carol now lives on a ranch, raises goats, and writes and lectures on classical music (to humans).

If you've ever seen "The Sound of Music," you've seen an opera, says Prof. Carol.

For weeks I’ve been driving to conferences spread as widely as Santa Clara to Birmingham. Returning to Texas, I jumped into events surrounding the Fort Worth Opera Company’s world premiere of a controversial opera “Before Night Falls” by Cuban-American composer Jorge Martín. 

Prof. Carol

Coincidentally, the very day of the premiere, May 29, a reader of Music After 50 wrote to suggest that “opera” might be a good topic for future posts. After all, she noted, “most people have never been to one.”

Your Honor, I object. Not to the topic: I’m ecstatic about the topic. I object to the statement that “most people have never been to one.” Most people have been to an opera (or at least watched one on video).

Prof. Carol

When I trained as a musicologist in the mid 1970s, a shift was in the air. Our professors had been scholarly pioneers shaped by WWII (and, in many cases, refugees from that war). The destruction they’d witnessed led them to focus on preserving musical and artistic treasures. 

They tirelessly unearthed, microfilmed (a new technology!), and catalogued everything of value they could find that was related to artists and composers. In doing so, they protected a heritage and set standards for scholarship that still hold today. 

By the 1980s, new sociological trends found their way into historical scholarship. Schubert’s music was one thing; Schubert’s personal life was something else. Things once private were out in the open. Composers’ diaries became the fodder for dissertations and symposia. Some of it was dull, but some was shocking, and all of it was dissected. Elements long viewed as personal (or peripheral) were proclaimed as critical in interpreting a composer’s music. 

So here’s the question: does it make a difference? Does knowing the details of a composer’s biography (personal life) make a difference when we hear or play music? If we learn about Cole Porter’s glamorous and sometimes risqué life, do we hear “I Get a Kick Out of You” differently? Do we sing it differently?

Many people would say that Johnny Cash’s music is inseparable from his rocky personal life. But does a listener need to know those details to be walloped by the universal punch of his heartfelt songs? Or can the songs speak without any of that attached?

What about composers of the past? Take two 19th-century giants as diverse as Liszt and Bruckner. Liszt, the original glamour boy of music, had distinct periods where he was on the road, seducing (and being seduced by) aristocratic admirers, but he turned away from that life mid-stream, became a focused composer and conductor, studied in Rome to become an Abbé, and finished life as an honored teacher, establishing the modern “master class” from his Garden House in Weimar. Is Liszt’s music more vivid if we know all this?

In contrast, the personal life of the exceedingly humble symphonist Anton Bruckner is almost impossible to find! It could fit in a long footnote! Just find a photograph of him seated quietly in his plain-Jane parlor, and tell me how such galactic music could come from that head! Does that enhance our awe when we’re pinned to the back of our seats during a glorious performance of Bruckner’s 8th Symphony?

One more thing. Are there composers and song-writers whose music we like, but whose personal lives or styles we care less about, or even disdain? Or, what about the opposite: do the details of some creative artists’ biographies fascinate us, while we can take or leave their music? Does it matter? That’s my question, and I’d love to hear your answers…

Carol Reynolds, aka Professor Carol, a retired music history professor from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, has launched Silver Age Music. Her latest product is a multimedia course: “Discovering Music: 300 Years of Interaction in Western Music, Art, History, & Culture.” Prof. Carol now lives on a ranch, raises goats, and writes and lectures on classical music (to humans).

Prof. Carol

My favorite sentence in all of music? That’s easy. Prima le parole, e dopo la musica. It means: “First the words, and then the music.” In terms of impact, it’s right up there with “A stitch in time saves nine” and “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

Prima le parole, e dopo la musica refers to the order in which compositions with words were created, at least traditionally. The text writer (lyricist, in our lingo) would write or arrange the words, and then the composer would take it up to write the music.

There were practical reasons for this. Throughout European history, official censors had to approve the words first. If you ever saw the Academy Award-winning movie Amadeus (1984), directed by Peter Shaffer, you might remember when the young Mozart gets into trouble because he’s composed an opera (The Marriage of Figaro) to an unapproved text—a play banned because of its disruptive elements.

Back then, a composer wasn’t fool-hardy enough to touch a text until it had the official seal of approval from the court, theater, or church censors. There was even a popular musical comedy written by Anton Salieri, Mozart’s rival, that spoofs the whole process. In Prima la musica, e poi le parole (First the Music, Then the Words, 1786), a court poet is suffering from writer’s block. But the monarch is waiting for his new opera! So, the composer finishes the music first, and the poet endures the irritation of fitting his text to already completed music.

How about in modern times, when court censors aren’t in charge of the arts? Even today, many composers prefer prima le parole. A composer looks at a text the way a seamstress looks at a pattern. From the outline of the text, a composer imagines the color, form, and flair of the music. 

Authors and composers do collaborate, of course. In larger works, like operas, there’s endless tweaking before everyone’s happy. Some of the rewriting is text-based, but some of it is musical, or practical. If the star singer demands two solo arias in the second act, then those arias get added. If a line turns out not to “sing well,” then something will be rewritten, whether words or music.

If you’ve studied how a musical (America’s favorite form of opera) comes to Broadway, you know that a lot is left on the cutting floor. One of my favorite reference books, The Collectors Guide to American Musical Theater, by David Hummel (Scarecrow Press, 1984), lists virtually every American musical you can think of. In great detail, it traces the many versions necessary until the musical finally succeeded (or flopped). Imagine if there’d been Special Features and Director’s Cuts on DVD back when Rodgers and Hammerstein were haggling over their masterpieces!

But can the text writer and the composer be the same person? Yes, absolutely. The 19th-century genius Richard Wagner gets the credit for upsetting this apple cart in the world of opera. Writing his own words (librettos) for his music dramas was one of the most radical things he did. And he did it in order to be in full control of his creations—that sounds modern, doesn’t it? It was bound to happen, and there are plenty of examples after Wagner. 

But just remember: the talent for writing great words is not identical with the ability to write great music. 

If you wanted to write a song, would you write the lyrics yourself (or have someone write them for you) – and then focus on the music? Or would you craft a melody first, and then seek the words? Give it a try both ways, even if it’s only a line or two, and see how it works for you!

Note from LRG: For more on songwriting, take a look below:

• The Way You Write Your Song
• Tips to Help With Your Songwriting
• A Unique Gift: A Custom Written Song
• The Art and Science of Songwriting
• First the Melody, Then the Words

Carol Reynolds, aka Professor Carol, a retired music history professor from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, has launched Silver Age Music. Her latest product is a multimedia course: “Discovering Music: 300 Years of Interaction in Western Music, Art, History, & Culture.” Prof. Carol now lives on a ranch, raises goats, and writes and lectures on classical music (to humans).

Prof. Carol

Sometimes called lyrics, or simply “the words,” text is the sixth element used to analyze music. Let’s say you’re a composer. You want to write a “love” song and are searching for a text. How do you decide what words to use? Let’s look at two well-known texts that express a lover’s admiration. The first starts with the famous line: How do I love thee?:
   
   How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
   I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
   My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
   For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

Contrast these words with another romantic text that starts with:

   The way you wear your hat,
   the way you sip your tea,
   the memory of all that…

And each verse of this song concludes with the line:

No, no, they can’t take that away from me. 

Which text makes the best song? It depends on several factors: What type of song are you writing? What kind of singer do you envision singing it? Who will be listening? With what expectations? 

A composer turning the first poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning into a song has the tougher job. The richness and depth of her words leave little for a composer to tinker with. Ask yourself: what in Browning’s poem begs to be “expressed more vividly” via music? That answer is: not much! 

And “expressing more vividly” is what a composer wants to do. Why else bother to set a text to music? Music can add depth to the words, shape them, interpret them, or even reinterpret them. But for that to happen, the words have to offer the composer some kind of opening. 

Now, consider the second poem, written by Ira Gershwin in 1937 not long before the death of his brother and collaborator, composer George Gershwin. This text starts off with a little jolt:   

The way you wear your hat…

What way? We don’t know for sure, but we do know the fellow likes the hat…and the gal underneath it! Ira Gershwin’s words are clever and airy. They pose more questions than they answer. They practically beg for someone to add music and connect the dots.

As a generalization, the most successful songs come from texts that leave something for the composer to “do.”  Composers often shy away from highly polished poetry—lines packed with complex imagery and multiple layers of meaning. Why? Because the ear hears only the notes and words passing by at any given second. 

There isn’t much time for the ear (the brain) to dissect the words and grasp deeper meanings. At least, not upon first hearing.  And a popular song must make a strong first impression, or it may not get a second hearing!

Look at it this way: listening to a song is an emotional experience. We want immediacy – a memorable melody, a clear beat, effective harmonies, and the colors (timbre) that please us. We aren’t looking for an exercise in literary analysis.

Meanwhile, take a collection of poems or texts of any kind. Riffle through them, and pick what you think would make the best songs. You might even want to take notes about the pros and cons of various poems (as song texts), and speculate what type of music would work for each one. It’s a fun exercise, and it allows everyone to sample the creative process.

Next time I’ll talk about the oft-quoted phrase: Prima le parole, e dopo la musica (First the words, and then the music), and why it’s one of my favorite sentences in all of music.

Carol Reynolds, aka Professor Carol, a retired music history professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, has launched a new company, Silver Age Music. Her latest product is a multimedia course: “Discovering Music: 300 Years of Interaction in Western Music, Art, History, & Culture.” Prof. Carol now lives on a ranch, raises goats, and writes and lectures on classical music (to humans).

Note from LRG: For more on songwriting, check out these posts:

• Tips to Help With Your Songwriting
• A Unique Gift: A Custom Written Song
• The Art and Science of Songwriting
• First the Melody, Then the Words

Prof. Carol

Timbre. It rhymes with “amber,” not “limber.” So, if you cut down a tree, don’t yell “timbre!” (or don’t yell it too loudly…). Timbre is actually a critical element of music, so let’s look at it. Timbre is the French term for tone quality or tone color. The word goes back to a Middle Greek word for kettledrum called tymbanon. To determine timbre, simply ask: ”Which instrumental or vocal colors are we hearing?”
 
Timbre helps create and distinguish styles of music. Take Big Band Music. If you think of the bands of Benny Goodman, Harry James, or Count Basie, what timbres, or tone colors, come to mind? Perhaps you think of the solo instruments these star leaders played so marvelously, like clarinet (Goodman), trumpet (James), or piano (Basie). Or maybe you hear the overall Big-Band sound: saxophones, trumpets, and definitely trombones. And what about the rhythm section? Without it, there’d be no Swing Era.   
 
Whether we swooned over Frankie Avalon or screamed to Mick Jagger, we witnessed the evolution of a powerful new musical timbre called the electric guitar. In the early years before electric guitars entered the mix, Big-Band guitarists placed their acoustic guitars in front of microphones, so they’d be heard. That amplification added a new twist to the acoustical guitar’s timbre—one that helped define the early Swing sound. 
 
Contrast the playing of Keith Richards or the early Swing sound that to the sound of Roy Rogers playing guitar. Not to mention Jimmie Rodgers! And what about steel guitar? It goes on and on. 

And who decides all of these issues of timbre? In much of music, it’s the composers and arrangers. They usually work in silence, filling the silence with mental sounds and endless questions: Is this musical line (texture) more effective using the timbre of cellos or bassoons? How much of this chord should be played by the harp, and how much by the cellos?  Should the trombones pick up one of those notes? Which sounds better on this melody: trumpet or flute?   What happens if the flute line is doubled below by clarinet? 

If you want a picture of how intense composing and arranging can be, check out the beautiful new autobiography by Grammy-award winner Sammy Nestico: The Gift of Music. Or if you really get interested, get his fantastic and valuable compendium (book and CDs) called The Complete Arranger. 
 
Let’s face it. People aren’t brought up to hear the intricacies of timbre. School curriculums don’t routinely include units where students learn to identify the sounds of instruments, and even draw the instruments to match sounds played on recordings. Some people rarely get to hear live music-making. For them, music happens by pushing a button . . . unless (like the readers of Music After 50!) they take up the hard work of learning to play and sing.

A trained ear can hear a lot more than an untrained one. That’s not to say that music training is a requirement, but that there are ‘secrets’ of music that are revealed to an ear that is trained to hear the basic musical elements: melody, rhythm, harmony, texture, and timbre. Which brings us to the sixth element—the one that’s sometimes present in music: words, or text. Let’s take up text in our next post.

Carol Reynolds, aka Professor Carol, a former music history professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, has launched a new company, Silver Age Music. Her latest product is a multimedia course: “Discovering Music: 300 Years of Interaction in Western Music, Art, History, & Culture.” Prof. Carol now lives on a ranch, raises goats, and writes and lectures on classical music (to humans).

Prof. Carol

Texture. It applies to music as well as fabrics! Actually, texture is one of five parameters used to describe style in Western music. These five dimensions are taught in music appreciation courses, so perhaps you’ve encountered them already. They’re: Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, Texture, Timbre, and the sixth one, if there are words, Text.

Melody, harmony, and rhythm are more familiar concepts. But what are texture and timbre? Texture, in music, is the “thickness” or “thinness” of the musical lines. In short, texture concerns the number of lines the ear takes in simultaneously. 
 
Think of a sandwich. A sandwich can be thin, with a layer of peanut butter (and maybe some jam squished in). Or you might eat a jumbo Italian sub with four layers of meat, two kinds of cheese, lettuce, tomato, onions, sauces, and a final layer of jalapeños (that’s how we eat Italian in Texas). Neither sandwich is better or worse—both have a place and an audience. 

Moving the sandwich idea to music, think of music sung by a barbershop quartet. Here, our ears absorb a four-part texture: four singers move together as a unit. Sometimes their lines coincide (four-part harmony) and sometimes they move independently. Either way, we hear four layers, or a four-part texture.

When a composer composes music, he or she thinks about texture. Should I make this part thinner or thicker to convey a different emotion?

To make a thicker, and more interesting, sandwich, we pile on more “stuff.” In music, we’d call it “thick texture” when we pile on more musical lines. Contrast this thicker-sounding texture with a smear of peanut butter, which translates to a single melody line.  Perhaps the composer would choose a thin texture for a scene in a film where a child is walking down a lane.  If other people rush in, then contrasting musical lines could be added, thickening the texture. And intensifying the effect. 

The contrast between thick and thin creates musical tension and release. It’s one of a composer’s favorite ways to create musical excitement.
 
In our cowboy town of Bowie, Texas, we’ve assembled a vocal ensemble. We call ourselves the “OK Chorale” (I know, it’s corny). We sing mostly a cappella, or unaccompanied, vocal music. We’ve been rehearsing a three-part Mass by English Renaissance composer William Byrd. There are just three musical lines (or voices, as they’re called). 
 
With only three vocal lines, how much textural contrast can there be, you might ask? You’d be surprised. Byrd was a genius with sound. One of his favorite tricks is to drop out the top voice—the highest voice—and let the two lower parts keep singing. It’s fantastic how the sound explodes when that high line comes back in!  
 
If Byrd can create tension-release with just three musical lines, think how much more tension-release Beethoven could cook up with a full orchestra. Now here’s the challenge. Take a piece of music and see if you can track the texture. First, separate, in your ear, the musical lines. How many are there?  If it’s a small group, maybe a singer, bass, guitar, drums, keyboard: basically a five-part texture (although the guitar and keyboard can layer extra musical lines into the sound). 
 
Once you determine how thick the texture is (how many layers are in the sandwich?), listen to the song and track the changes in texture. Every time the singer drops in and out, the texture thins or thickens. But what about the other instruments? Does the bass ever drop out?  The guitar?  The drums? And if so, what is the effect on releasing energy, or musical tension? And what happens when those instruments come back in? What emotions did it evoke?
 
It’s admittedly challenging to start listening to music this way. But it’s enlightening, too. Remember, whoever composed or arranged the song thought exactly in these terms. 
 
And if you don’t find enough tension-release in the songs you usually listen to, switch over to something else, perhaps jazz, classical, or Big Band. Take Duke Ellington’s Mood Indigo (1930), or the opening of Stravinsky’s Firebird (1911). Remember, every sound counts. 
 
In fact, “sound” is where we’ll start when we take up the topic of timbre in my next post. Happy feasting.

Carol Reynolds, aka Professor Carol, a former music history professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, has launched a new company, Silver Age Music. Her latest product is a multimedia course: “Discovering Music: 300 Years of Interaction in Western Music, Art, History, & Culture.” Prof. Carol now lives on a ranch, raises goats, and writes and lectures on classical music (to humans).

Prof. Carol

At the end of my last post, I referred to recent compositions that strike the “right tension” between composer and listener. Let’s pick up that theme.
 
Tension. We tend to think of tension as negative: a tension headache, or too much tension at work. Quite the contrary. Tension is a positive element in life. Think of the chick pecking open its shell. Tap, tap, tap, until, poof, there’s a hole for its startled head to poke through.
 
Tension is critical in the arts. It’s a creative force. Artists are constantly rapping against shells, trying to break through to something bigger, more alive. And you don’t have to be an “artist” to understand artistic tension.  Sometimes, the creative tension inside us leads us to study something—say music—at a later point in our lives.
 
Tension doesn’t exist alone. It needs its opposite: release. Tension-release, tension-release. From poetry to pottery, we find this dynamic, or interaction, in all of the arts.
 
So what about music? How does a composer set up tension-release?  How important is tension-release in capturing the listener’s ear? And, thinking historically, have the basics of tension-release changed throughout the course of Western music?
 
Let’s turn to an exercise in listening. Let’s use arguably one of the most famous pieces of instrumental music: the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony: “duh-duh-duh daah” . . . or “Fate Knocking at the Door.” At least, that’s what some people call the opening pattern.
 
Oh that pattern! It’s tense. It starts abruptly. We don’t know where we are in the beat. We can’t figure out the harmony. Just this opening pitch that’s drilled three times (“duh, duh, duh”). Each repeated pitch adds tension. 
 
Then, there’s a drop down to a longer pitch (a little bit of release). But then . . . there’s silence.  Silences (rests) are not always “restful”—this one certainly isn’t. We’re left hanging, unsure what we’ve heard, unsure what will happen next. 
 
Why don’t you take it from there? What happens next? What causes tension, and what creates release? Listen several times to the opening—yes, I know, we’ve all heard it a hundred times. But put on your analytical ears, and listen like a scientist. Track what you’re hearing and feeling in those first 15 to 20 seconds. Because that’s where Beethoven gives us the germ of the piece. In fact, it’s called a germinal motive: it germinates the rest of the movement.
 
I can promise you one thing (and I don’t make promises lightly!).  If you try this kind of microscopic listening, the entire musical experience gets more rewarding. Like any skill, it takes practice. But putting on “composer’s ears” and delving into the nuts and bolts of a musical composition is one fabulous ride. We’ll keep sharpening our analytical ears in the next post and look at a word people associate more with fabric than with music: texture.

Carol Reynolds, aka Professor Carol, a former music history professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, has launched a new company, Silver Age Music. Her latest product is a multimedia course: “Discovering Music: 300 Years of Interaction in Western Music, Art, History, & Culture.” Prof. Carol now lives on a ranch, raises goats, and writes and lectures on classical music (to humans).

"Professor Carol"

Frequently, and justifiably, thoughtful people bemoan the way “classical music” left its audience behind in the 20th century. This post was, in fact, spurred by just such a comment on one of my previous posts.

This person and others with similar complaints are referring to the gulf between composer and listener caused by waves of abstract and dissonant music that dominated the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. Away flew lyrical melody, engaging rhythm, and accessible harmony.

Form created by contrast and repetition—one of Western music’s treasures—became impossible for listeners to find, much less to enjoy. Add in the intoxicating new kid on the block: electronic music. Here the game revolved around technological possibilities starting with the new reel-to-reel tape recorders. Natural sounds were captured, then manipulated physically on the magnetic tape. (Jeffrey Plaide shows the process in this enlightening clip). The resulting compositions were “performed” by hitting the “on” button. Fascinating stuff, admittedly, but the human listener seemed all too often an afterthought, an object against which the electronic sounds could reverberate.

Of course, experiments in the 1950s simply blew the lid off of an already bubbling caldron. The modernism of Stravinsky, Strauss, and Schoenberg had disconcerted plenty of listeners in the 1910s and ’20s, grabbing them by the throat and shaking their ears out of their heads.

But, since the whole of Western culture was reeling under waves of technological revolution, political upheaval, and war, somehow it all fit. Then, in the 1930s and ’40s, artists showed a clear reaction to the chaos by nurturing a style we call Neoclassicism. Neoclassicism used plenty of modern harmonies and complex rhythms, but unleashed them more subtly, within the constraints of traditional musical forms—forms Bach or Haydn would have employed. It didn’t last.

The 1950s blew in: World War II was over and all hell broke loose. Jackson Pollock scattered blobs of paint across canvases on the floor. Merce Cunningham built dance sets from industrial materials scavenged from trash bins. And John Cage became a regular at the hardware store, buying bolts and screws to lace through his piano strings. Far too many composers, especially those ensconced in academic endowed chairs and institutes, chose to pontificate, rather than communicate. You might say they trusted their theories more than their audience’s ears. (For more on this topic, see New vs. Old Music Unending Battle in Classical Programming.)

The result is easy to analyze from our standpoint today. From Medieval Chant through the great symphonies of the 19th-century, Western music displayed clarity. No matter how innovative the melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic structures, listeners could follow them, if with a bit of effort. There was enough predictable material to give listeners an anchor. Without the anchor, listeners fled. Or at least went into hiding. But if it’s been awhile since you’ve listened to “new” music from the so-called classical world, you’re in for a surprise.

It’s baack. All of it. Aural clarity in the aspects of lyrical melody, agreeable harmony, engaging rhythm, and even perceptible form. (For starters, explore the music of my two favorite “Pauls”: LA composer Paul Cristo and Florida composer Paul Richards).The new music of today, to use the words of star-composer Sebastian Currier, “is meeting the listeners more than half-way.” And that’s the right tension between good composer and attentive listener. I’ll explore this tension, or musical interaction, between composer and listener in our next post.

Carol Reynolds, aka Professor Carol, a former music history professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, has launched a new company, Silver Age Music. Her latest product is a multimedia course: “Discovering Music: 300 Years of Interaction in Western Music, Art, History, & Culture.” Prof. Carol now lives on a ranch, raises goats, and writes and lectures on classical music (to humans).

Carol Reynolds

Classical Music. Ah, hah! There’s a label that causes trouble. What does it mean?  Most people would answer “the music of Mozart and Beethoven, Bach and Brahms…those ‘classical’ guys.” But what does that mean?
 
Those guys wouldn’t know what to do with the label “Classical Music.” They couldn’t have envisioned their music still being around centuries into the future.

Immortality? That was the least of their concerns. They were scrappy, hassled men who struggled to get their newest sounds into the mainstream. They needed a paycheck, a hot meal, and a roof over the family’s head. Their job security was frequently zero.  
 
Success and survival for a composer were synonymous. Either a composer had commissions and a patron’s favor, or he didn’t. There was no middle ground, at least not until the 19th century, when increasing numbers of composers circumvented the patronage system and took their works directly to audiences in the relatively new “public concerts.”

We have to pull the powdered wigs off these guys, and try to see them as they were: Talented, highly trained artistic craftsmen, hunched over their desks late at night, running their hands through their [short!] hair and chewing their fingernails to the bone, desperate to get music completed and copied, or to receive a letter of endorsement from some duke to whom they’d sent a new work.
 
Socially speaking, composers were upper-class servants. Look at the constricted language Beethoven had to use in a letter from 1823, in which he was simply trying to find out how King George IV had responded to his gift of a score of Wellington’s Victory: 

In thus presuming, herewith, to submit my most obedient prayer to Your Majesty, I venture at the same time to supplement it with a second [letter]. . . . For many years the undersigned cherished the sweet wish that Your Majesty would graciously make known the receipt of his work to him; but he has not been able to boast of this happiness. . . .

In other words, “Hey, King George, what about that piece I sent you?”
 
New music is always a product of its era. And all of the music we call “classical” today was new at one point, the ink still drying on the page. Would the present age inspire those impassioned notes Beethoven scrawled on paper? So if “classical” is a misleading description, how did it come to be attached to this music? And what was the musical world really like when Mozart hurried down the cobblestone streets of Vienna, late to rehearsals?  We’ll take up those questions in our next post…

Carol Reynolds, aka Professor Carol, a former music history professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, has launched a new company, Silver Age Music. Her latest product is a multimedia course: “Discovering Music: 300 Years of Interaction in Western Music, Art, History, & Culture.” Prof. Carol now lives on a ranch, raises goats, and writes and lectures on classical music (to humans).