Locus iste at abruckner.com

In a nice coincidence, I just noticed that the music on the banner for abruckner.com (home of a very thorough Bruckner Symphony discography compiled by John F. Berky) is for "Locus iste," a motet Anton Bruckner wrote for the commemoration of a new votive chapel in Linz. According to the Bruckner Gesamtausgabe, Bruckner wrote "Locus iste" on August 11, 1869.

Kickstarter FAIL

I wish I could blame the failure of my Kickstarter.com project http://kck.st/kkHW1i entirely on the limitation against PayPal. But there were many other factors, such as my misunderstandings about Kickstarter.

This past week I have come to realize that Kickstarter.com should really be called Homestretchfinisher.com: it is really much better suited for projects that already have 95% of their funding and just need a little help getting that crucial final 5%. Wanting to start from scratch through Kickstarter is doomed to fail unless one has some way to cut through the noise.

So how do you cut through the noise? In the case of a classical project you would think that classical radio stations would want to help. You couldn't be wronger. The pathetic, contemptible, worthless morons at WRCJ-FM, having learned absolutely nothing from the demise of WQRS, have a stupid attitude towards what they call "free advertising." The manager of WRCJ would much rather punch himself in the face than allow a word to breathed on the air about my classical projects. Never mind that the replenishment of classical audiences is in desperate need of advertising, of reaching out to a younger demographic.

World-renowned composer Sean Hickey suggested to me that I talk to Sequenza21 and FIFA. It's possible that at Sequenza21 they think my idea to bring the world premiere of the Matthews Vuvuzela Concerto is absolutely idiotic. They're entitled to that opinion, but they didn't have the guts to actually say it. Instead, the very next day after my e-mail, they publish an article about how most people who use Kickstarter for their classical projects go about it all wrong, and wind up alienating their supporters. As for FIFA, I have no idea if they got my e-mail at all. To them I'm probably just one more deranged fan whose rantings they probably don't need to address.

You know what's the really sad thing about all this? There are at least a million people out there willing to contribute one dollar each to this project. If even a tenth of that million did not mind the limitation against PayPal, they would contribute to my Kickstarter project. But how are they going to know about my Kickstarter project if I can't cut through the noise and let them know that this is possible?

The hunt for Wagner tubas

It took a while, but I finally got some quotes on Wagner tubas made from scratch. When I first investigated the issue, the best I could find was "If you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it." That's more or less the advice of the Vermont Horns, a group of four horn players who wanted to play Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 in E major. What they wound up doing was borrowing the set from the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

It appears that only the world class orchestras own Wagner tubas, which are then used by whoever plays horn for them that season. Given that the Detroit Symphony plays Bruckner so rarely these days, it's possible that if I assemble a pick-up orchestra, I might be able to borrow their Wagner tubas for almost any time of they year. Nevertheless, and even though the strike is over, I imagine it might be a little awkward to ask for this. Regardless, I want to make sure I have a plan B.

Finally I stumbled upon the page for Osmun Music, sellers of brass instruments. A set of four Wagner tubas (two tenor in B-flat, two bass in F) made by Finke would cost at least $23,600 (including cases) and at least six months. The Hans Hoyer tenor tuba is slightly cheaper while the bass tuba of that brand is more expensive, I'm not sure why. The guy from Osmun Music on the phone told me that the Engelbert Schmid tubas are top-of-the-line; no price quote is given on the website and the only sure thing is that they're more expensive than the other brands.

All four brands offered by Osmun Music are made to order (note also that they don't sell pre-owned Wagner tubas, as they do regular horns, trumpets, trombones, tubas and euphoniums), which means that since I don't play horn myself, I don't know what to ask for. The guy confirmed what I already know about the mouthpieces (that the horn players would use their own horn mouthpieces they already have) but also told me quite a few things I didn't already know, such as that for the order the players can ask for their preferred alloys, whether to lacquer or not, and the number of water keys.

So I'm grateful to Osmun Music, now I don't feel quite as lost in the topic of Wagner tubas.

Living composers are better off without Wikipedia pages

One of the hardest things about being a composer in this day and age is dealing with the extreme public indifference to new music. The kinds of people who want to hear every single little stupid thing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote, even the works of doubtful authorship (but who completely lose interest when it turns out it was actually written by his father or a contemporary of his father's), couldn't care less about the magnum opus of the oldest living composer residing in their town. So, if you're a living composer and there's a Wikipedia article about you, that means you're a great composer and that your music is worth the investment of listeners' time, right? And that true, lasting success is on the way? Wrong.

Let's consider the specific cases of two Detroit composers, Keith Buckner and Prof. James Lentini. The latter is the very man who approved my admittance to Wayne State University's music program after reviewing a piece I wrote for flute, violin, timpani and harpsichord. There is a Wikipedia article about Prof. Lentini. But the true signs that Lentini has "arrived" are these: one, his music has been reviewed in Gramophone ("alluring Americana," in their view); two, his music has been recorded by Naxos; three, I could go on and on. A couple of weeks ago, the Lentini article on Wikipedia was nominated for deletion, and it wasn't until yesterday that the Wikipediots decided to err on the side of keeping the article.

Keith Buckner was not so lucky with Wikipedia, it would appear at first, but it turns out he was actually luckier: the Wikipediots deleted the article about him. That decision was also made yesterday. On the one hand, Keith has lost a Google search result. But he also has lost the headache of constantly having to monitor Wikipedia to make sure they're not telling ridiculous lies about him that could scare off potential fans. The week leading up to the deletion decision demonstrated this very clearly: according to Wikipedia that week, Keith died in 1996, or 1999, the idiots couldn't make up their mind which (because the truth is he's still alive as of this writing), nor could they make up their mind as to which of the thousands of diseases he supposedly had was it that supposedly killed him (reality is he's not in the best of health, but odds are he'll at least live to life expectancy). Some of the lies about his health were removed just before the article was deleted, but it still contained many other lies that would be a total nightmare for a publicity firm to deal with. For the last month, the top Google result for "Keith Buckner music Detroit" (it's a more common name than I realized) was the truth-deprived Wikipedia article, but now the top Google result is his LinkedIn profile, which he can control to present a deservedly positive image.

Fortunately for Prof. Lentini, the top Google result for his name is not the Wikipedia article, but his own homepage, with a link to the Gramophone review and a link to the Naxos catalog. Still, if I were him, I'd have my secretary monitor the Wikipedia article just in case bored teenagers who can't vandalize Barack Obama's Wikipedia article set their sights on easier targets.

To go back to dead composers for a little bit: does it help Leopold Mozart or Michael Haydn that there are Wikipedia articles about them? No, not one bit. What they need is concerts being put on with their music. In the case of Michael Haydn, I've done my part: the 2010 Music of Engineering concert, which started with Kinetic Energy by Keith Buckner (the "equation piece," as some call it), ended with Michael Haydn's Duo in C major arranged for violin and cello (you can hear this at IMSLP, by the way). To my knowledge, there are no complete recordings of any of Keith's composition on the Internet. But if you live in metro Detroit, you can go to Dearborn Music and buy the Tiger Stadium Postcard, and listen to his Prentis Street Sonata (tracks 3 and 4).

One last thought: there is still no article about Prof. James Hartway (a former colleague of Lentini's) on Wikipedia. And Elena Ruehr, who's getting some nice promotion from WCPE, doesn't have a Wikipedia article either. Ask either of them how they feel about not having a Wikipedia article. My guess is that they'd say they're better off that way. An article in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, now, that's the encyclopedia they'd like to be listed in.

The music of Grace Williams

The day before Memorial Day I went to Dearborn Music wanting to see where in the store the Tiger Stadium Postcard album was placed, and perhaps find out a little more about Lee Noble. I had also decided to buy an album of the music of Grace Williams, obscure whether as a Welsh composer or as a woman composer. I also bought Hindemith conducting Bruckner's Symphony No. 7.

At this point I should admit that there are very few women composers in my CD collection. I used to have chamber music by Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn, but chamber music doesn't appeal to me as strongly as orchestral music. And Clara Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor is not different enough from her husband Robert's, which I don't like too much either. I kind of like Florestan by Elisabetta Brusa, at least on those days when it doesn't seem feverishly over-emotional. The rest of Brusa's music which has been recorded by Naxos so far seems to me to be inhabited by an excessive uniformity of mood (which is wonderment at everything). Diatonicism in modern music has the danger of being too cloying, as British composer Robert Simpson points out in connection to Nielsen's music (which doesn't fall into that trap).

How refreshing then is the objectivity of Grace Williams. If the stereotype is that women composers write hysterically emotional music, then Grace Williams does not fit the stereotype. Sure there are tinges of Mahler in her music, but Mahler comes across way more hysterical.

I'm only beginning to get to know her music. Inevitably at this point there will be comparisons to composers with whom I'm more familiar. Grace Williams studied with Ralph Vaughan Williams (presumably no relation) and it is natural for commentators to hear bits of Ralph in Grace's music. I've already mentioned Mahler and liner note writer Malcolm Boyd also mentions Richard Strauß and of course Sir Edward Elgar. I hear Shostakovich, but I don't know how familiar Brits were with the Soviet in the 20th Century.

And I also hear Robert Simpson, a British composer about 15 years her junior, who, coincidentally wrote his Symphony No. 2 the same year she did (1956). I'm not saying the younger composer influenced the older one (though that's sometimes the case, e.g., Haydn and Mozart) but since I'm more familiar with Simpson at this point, I will of course hear Grace Williams that way. But I am also becoming aware of individual traits which will become more apparent as I familiarize myself with her music.

Composers shouldn't talk about their own music

Bach and Mozart wrote hundreds of musical compositions each. One thing they didn't write much of was prose describing their creative process and explaining deliberately unusual features in a particular piece, or in their oeuvre as a whole. Why does Mozart's "Prague" Symphony lack a minuet or what prompted him to conclude the "Jupiter" Symphony with a fugue? We can argue and speculate, but most likely we won't find words by Mozart that neatly answer these questions.

Today's composers are in a very different position, of course. With the modern obsession with free markets and the diminished attention span of potential Audience members, composers have to sell themselves: they have to write words that will convince the public that their music is worth buying the ticket or the CD. This leads to predictable topes and the occasional silly statement. It's a careful balancing act.

"My music blends old and new" is one such predictable trope, one that I am guilty of myself. You see, the "old" reassures you that my music has familiar elements you can savor, that it's not just one off-putting innovation after the other, demanding an unreasonable chunk of your time so that the music can grow on you. However, the "new" is very important to have as well, because if my music only rehashes old techniques that you already like, it makes more sense for you to listen old music and not bother investing the time required for my music to grow on you.

As for silly statements, a perfect example is what Robert Simpson said about Matthew Taylor conducting a performance of his Symphony No. 7 that stirred in him "a compulsion to compose a symphony for him." This was Simpson's Symphony No. 11. Simpson said that "it depends on his [Taylor's] opinion of that performance of No. 7 whether he considers this new symphony a reward or an act of revenge! If the latter, I do not share his views." Simpson could have done without that last statement and still gotten that polite fake laughter accorded VIPs. Robert Simpson is an excellent composer and a brilliant analyst of Bruckner's music. He's written very insightfully on Sibelius and Nielsen, too. But for his own music, I'd rather ignore most of his own words about it.

And then there's Ross Edwards, a pretty good Australian composer. In regards to White Ghost Dancing, Edwards says "I believe that music ... has enormous therapeutic properties." Yawn. Shut up. Something else modern composers would be well advised to avoid in talking about their music is suggesting what the listener's state ought to be. Edwards goes on to say that "the ideal state of mind for the listener is one of calm intensity with attention focused on each detail as it occurs, instead of projecting the mind back and forth in an attempt to perceive structural connections." Actually, that's quite insightful. But the reality is that a composer really can't dictate a listener's state of mind with prose directives, or perhaps even with events in the music itself (consider the surprise in Joseph Haydn's "Surprise" Symphony, for example). If the listener is worrying about the babysitter back at home, it doesn't matter how sublime the music is, the listener will be distracted.

Jacob Ficken, as a student composer, wrote an interesting piece called Memories for small orchestra which is perhaps over-ambitious in its aim for big orchestral effect beyond what eight players can deliver. Nevertheless, his music is quite well worth hearing and his prose about his own music is best ignored. "My hope in writing this piece is that both performers and listeners associate the music [with] their own special memories, thus making the experience more than just playing or listening to music." Well, la-di-da, this almost comes across just as dictatorial as Ross Edwards telling us what our state of mind ought to be in listening to his music. It's not enough for the performers to play his music and for the Audience to listen attentively, they also have to dredge up angry, sad or happy memories depending on the music? Really, it is quite enough to just listen attentively, and not be distracted by whatever worries plague one that day.

But I'm not advocating that composers say nothing at all about their own music. There can be great value in what they say to performers, even in those cases in which their scores are models of clarity. For those in the Audience, the composer best serves himself with a very brief explanation of what gave the inspiring original impetus and then letting the writers of the programme notes do their job. With Simpson's Symphony No. 11 it's quite sufficient for the Audience to know that the composer felt a compulsion to write it for Matthew Taylor after hearing the latter conduct one of the former's earlier works.

As for my own music that I'm working on, it will be enough for any future Audience to know that the impetus to write my Horn Concerto in B-flat major, which was commissioned by the Canadian accountant Ray Barnes, was the question "How would Bruckner have written a Concerto?" And in regards to my music for string quartet which has been performed in public concerts: my Quartet in G major was for a grant-funded experiment in which I wanted music spotlighting members of the quartet other than the first violinist (which is the case with the quartets by Michael Haydn, some early Mozart, etc.). I wrote the Quartet in A-flat major aiming for an extreme of rhythmic independence among the four players in the first movement which is followed by a unison minuet (like the one which ends Veracini's Overture in G minor). And in my Quartet in A major, I wanted to go to the extreme of writing as many double, triple and quadruple stops as possible, treating the two violins, viola and cello almost as if they were guitars. (This piece you can hear on the Tiger Stadium Postcard CD, which is available from Dearborn Music, Marwil, City Bird and Flute Specialists).

String quartets which play my music in the future may or may not care to hear what I think of past performances of my music. If they do, I will tell them.

Little pun with rehearsal letters

Wonder if anyone will appreciate this little pun: in the first movement of my Horn Concerto, the bassoons get cues for the solo horn. However, at rehearsal letter V, I give them a cello cue. Thus, in the bassoon parts, the players will see an enclosed letter V followed by the word "Cello."

After I noticed things had worked out this way, I also noticed I had neglected to give the bassoons a cue after a lengthy rest that ends at letter H. Should I give the bassoons a solo horn cue or a cello cue? For the sake of the pun, I opted to give them a horn cue.

New WSU Engineering video

Check out this YouTube video with snippets from the first Music of Engineering concert in 2010. After a little bit of Kinetic Energy by Keith Buckner, there is a tad of the Civil Minuet from my Engineering Suite followed by the end of the Michael Haydn Duo in C major.

Linked blog to Reverbnation

Just today I linked this blog to my Reverbnation page. If you go to my Reverbnation page, you can read the first paragraph of my latest post and click on a link to read more of it. Also be sure to listen to some music while you're there.

Busy day today

Can't blog much today. The Cinco de Mayo parade took more of my time than I had planned, and it made me late to the Detroit Medical Orchestra concert; I missed the Leonore Overture No. 2 but did catch all of Mendelssohn's "Reformation" Symphony. Now I have almost two gigabytes of photographs to go through.

Figured bass really helps piano reductions

Still working on the Horn Concerto in B-flat major commissioned by Ray Barnes through eBay.

A lesson that I learned from my edition of Antonio Salieri's Organ Concerto in C major for IMSLP is that a piano reduction of orchestral parts in a concerto is made real easy when you first do a figured bass realization from the bass parts. I admit I kind of dragged my feet on doing figured bass for the first movement (it was a snap for the last movement rondo because for the most part I could just copy and paste the figured bass for the A sections), but now that I sat down to do it, the task went pretty quickly. I'll have to leave it to another day to then use the figured bass realization as the basis for the piano reduction.

It should be noted that I don't want anyone to consider my figured bass realization authoritative even though I am the composer of the piece in the first place. Someone who is up to the task of doing figured bass on the spot from figures should use the provided bass part with the figures marked up.

What are YOU doing to support local composers?

I'm the kind of guy who can never come up with a snappy comeback on the spot when I need it. If I do think of one, it's hours or days later, when it's no longer relevant. I got into a rather acrimonious argument earlier today with a fellow who is a very dedicated musician, but perhaps also one with more ego than talent. At one point, he said "There are comp[osition] students just dying to get their stuff played." The fellow saying that conducts a small orchestra.

My lame response? "You'll get no argument from me on that." Of course there is no argument on the factual validity of the statement, though "dying" is a tad melodramatic. The problem should be with the moral qualification of the person making the statement. I can say "It's tough being a black man in America," but if I'm not myself black, what right do I have to make such a statement?

Though not quite a snappy comeback, a much better response would have been: "What are YOU doing to help those comp students who are 'dying' to have their pieces played? Are you going to the comp seminar and letting them know you're willing to do read-throughs?"

Maybe he has, I don't know because I didn't ask that. But I doubt it. I attended two rehearsals of his orchestra, a wind band with a couple of violins, really, and they were both entirely devoted to The Planets by Gustav Holst. The players enjoyed playing that and he enjoyed conducting that. I took notes and there's nothing in my notes about any local composers getting a read-through. But there's nothing wrong with that.

In general, if you're the conductor of an orchestra and you only want to play established repertoire, that's completely your prerogative and you don't have to explain your reason to anyone at all. Unless of course you also want to crucify yourself over the plight of living, local composers. Then you're a hypocrite.

Those of you reading this might wonder what I am doing to support local composers. It's a fair question. The answer is that I am doing a lot with what limited resources I have. From December 2006 to January 2009 I organized six string quartet concerts, all of which had music by living, local composers other than myself, and the performers were paid. One of those concerts didn't even have any original music by me (though plenty of my arrangements). In September 2009, I organized a concert at the Detroit Public Library with four Detroit composers (again, not counting myself). In 2010, the headliner for the Music of Engineering concert was Keith Buckner. I only wrote a piece for the concert at the last minute to make up for a hole in the programme.

And this year, if I get the opportunity to organize any concerts, odds are good it will have music by a living, local composer other than myself.

Planning the Horn Concerto

Now that I've shipped off the Symphony in A minor to the Boston metropolitan area, I can fully concentrate on the Horn Concerto in B-flat major which I have been commissioned to write by a Canadian fan of Bruckner's music.

So far I've jotted down some melodies, listening to Horn Concerti as I worked on page turns and rehearsal letters for the Symphony, etc. I've also gone to the library and copied out some melodies from Masses by Michael Haydn and Antonio Salieri. And I've read the chapter specifically for composers in Gunther Schuller's book Horn Technique, plus reviewed the chapter on the horn in Kennan's classic orchestration textbook.

I think it was Robert (from a Yahoo! Group for Bruckner fans) who said that Bruckner's conception of the first movement of a concerto would have been filtered through his understanding of sonata form, and it's possible that he would have looked at Mozart's concerti as a guide. So I'm thinking a sonata form with three subject groups fitted together somehow with the ritornello/solo structure we'd expect from Mozart or the older contemporaries of his he used as models.

The piece should use four orchestral horns (even Bruckner's Study Symphony doesn't, if I recall correctly), but in the slow movement I'll have them switch to Wagner tubas. I'm not sure if in Bruckner's Seventh Symphony he expects the Wagner tubas to be played by the same horn players, but in my Concerto that will be the case, so Wagner tubas throughout the slow movement.

Brahms cast his Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major into four movements, and I think Bruckner would also have done that, making the third movement a vigorous scherzo. For this purpose I plan to orchestrate a Minuet in D major for string quartet I wrote a few years ago.

The Finale should be a rondo. I think at least for his first concerto Bruckner would have so written it. The rondos Bruckner wrote as student exercises for Otto Kitzler pretty much go by the book, without the interesting deviations we sometimes find in Michael Haydn's secular oeuvre.

As for cadenzas, I will write them out but with instructions encouraging the soloist to make up his/her own.

It was yesterday that I pretty much laid out my plan to Ray, who commissioned the Concerto. He replied "Since my favourite Bruckner symphony is the Fifth, I am very pleased with your choice of key signature. As for the use of horns and Wagner tubas, that seems very novel and interesting! I also like your scherzo concept. This sounds exciting."