Vespers uses Renaissance instruments; The Waking Sun and The Nobility of Women, Baroque. Some people have asked how do I do it, and why. We composers rarely ask ourselves “why” questions, but fair enough.…
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Category Archives: Composition
Profile in the Philadelphia Inquirer
Some scattered thoughts on the interview with David Patrick Stearns in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer.
Generous remarks by him, and by Donald Nally. Very generous. Am I notoriously self-effacing? Notoriously? I mentioned the Hi-Lo’s in a Broad Street Review article on Milton Babbitt (Stearns had done his homework), and don’t you know, in the living room right next to the sofa where he sat, the LP leaning against the turntable stand, “The Hi-Lo’s and All That Jazz.” Well, Gene Puerling’s chops do make it into Vespers, but more as an approach to counterpoint than anything else. Or…?
Knowing your own influences is tricky. I hear more Praetorius, Nicolai, Lutheran in Vespers, he hears Anglican. Go figure. I sent a new photo and they used the scruffy one from the recording sessions. Ugh (self-effacing, ha), but somebody likes it, I guess. Shout-out to Mélomanie, good! Can’t wait for those concerts.
I’m no pushover? Thought I was. He liked the birds, that’s good. And it’s true, we have German names for all the wildlife: Fritz, Hunding, Steffi, Gottlob (although him I’d like to trap and release in Pennypack, enough’s enough already). I’m incredibly blessed. All around. NY press, probably won’t be any, that’ll teach me to worry.
Apparently I said the word “butt.”
Milton Babbitt
First published in the Broad Street Review, 8 Feb 2011. Slightly edited since.
I had no idea what was happening. The saxophone caterwauled ridiculously, and the piano seemed to chatter away at some other piece. I could discern no melody or beat; there was no harmony or repeating gesture to hold onto. It was chaos, and I was this close to giving up on the music. It was by Milton Babbitt.
Babbitt, who just passed away at age 94, was the hero of certain composers and the bête noire of audiences—the few that ever heard his music, that is. He pushed full-tilt intellectualism in American classical music at a time when it was clearing its throat to be taken seriously as an academic subject. For Babbitt, though, “academic” wasn’t enough. He wanted music to be a quantifiable scientific discipline, and he filled rooms with these new machines called computers to make his point. Audiences didn’t understand his music, but as he would say, who understands particle physics?
Milton Babbitt went further than Schoenberg or any of the twelve-toners. All they controlled was the order of notes. Babbitt regulated everything: pitch, dynamic, rhythm, range, you name it. Total serialism it was called, Babbitt invented it, and the academy loved it.
I kept my love of Brahms and The Delfonics to myself when working on my master’s in composition, although I needn’t have been so circumspect, as teachers understand a lot more than students realize. It’s the kids who are the most hide-bound. I still remember the look on the face of one doctoral candidate when I unguardedly confessed to him, in my 22-year-old confidence, that all one really needed to know to write choral music was the English folk songs of Vaughan Williams, and maybe Gene Puerling‘s arrangements for The Hi-Lo’s. The doctoral student didn’t betray anger, laughter, or incredulity, but I’ll never forget the look on his face. It was pity.
Well, I haven’t really changed my mind and besides, I like schemes as much as anyone. I even caught the Sudoku craze for a while until I got bored counting numbers. I wasn’t a whiz at it, mind you, I just didn’t care anymore. I actually enjoy toying with musical systems, but I never bought into the demolition of tonality that lay underneath serialism. So, I didn’t take to it, and that was that. But then a couple things happened.
I read Ulysses. James Joyce exploded the English language and I picked my way through the blast zone carefully at first, looking closely at smoking shards of phrases that resisted meaning. Some yielded only sounds and some, echoes of sounds. Some let off delayed puns and I’d think, Really? He made a joke? And I got it? That gave me courage, and I read faster, no longer worrying about the meaning. Pretty soon I had finished it, and looking back across the landscape, I felt… renewed.
Then, the Art Ensemble of Chicago came to town, and I went to see them, my first time at a live performance of avant-garde jazz. Trumpeter Lester Bowie led in his white lab coat, and Roscoe Mitchell played saxes all the way down to the contrabass, the size of a filing cabinet. Guys in face-paint and feathers and African hats played dozens of instruments. In the middle of a 20-minute free-jazz squealing cacophony, audience members were leaving, but I noticed that I had become transfixed. My eyes darted from one player to the other as they moved. I couldn’t tell much, but I could tell that they were listening to each other, and I wanted to know what would happen next. Afterward, I had to catch my breath.
So here I was, now, with this piece by Milton Babbitt. The saxophonist and pianist caterwauled and chattered, there was nothing to hold onto, and just as I was about to give up, a literally funny thing happened. The jokes of Ulysses occurred to me. Free jazz occurred to me, and feathers and hats occurred to me, and I noticed that I had stopped trying to hold on. At that precise moment I also noticed something else.
The musicians were listening to each other. They were moving. They moved the way a flock of starlings moves over a field of cut corn: one feather on one bird moves and they all move; one causes the other, but there is no cause; they follow and are simultaneous, which is impossible, or at least too fast to tell.
Like particle physics, I guess.
And as quick as that, I got Milton Babbitt. He called the piece Whirled Series (that’s right, say it out loud—Joyce would). The theory behind it, I didn’t care about. Still don’t. I don’t care about physics, either, or Sudoku, or face-paint. All I know is, I had no idea what was happening. And I wanted to know what would happen next.
This Week at Pytheas
A mention in This Week at Pytheas:
David Patrick Stearns of the Philadelphia Inquirer called Kile Smith’s Vespers “breathtaking” and “ecstatically beautiful,” adding that “few have Smith’s lyrical immediacy and ability to find great musical variety while maintaining an overall coherent personality.” Kile Smith’s frequently performed music has been praised by audiences and critics for its emotional power, direct appeal, and strong voice. Listen to his “As Kingfishers Catch Fire” (2000) from the collection “Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins” . . . this week’s FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.
The Hopkins songs are pieces I’d been working on for a long time, first for voice and piano. I then orchestrated three for Jens Nygaard‘s Jupiter Symphony. I had a wonderful association with Jupiter, writing three works that they premiered: the Hopkins, the Variations on a Theme of Schubert with piano, and The Three Graces for oboe, horn, cello, and strings. They also played Three Dances.
The Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music describes itself:
a wide ranging web nexus for contemporary concert music. Our mission is to promote contemporary composers and their music through information, understanding and performances.… Contemporary classical/art/concert music is a living art form, fed by the creativity of composers across the country and around the globe.… There are more composers writing music now than there ever have been in the history of the world, and our goal is to help you connect with them and enjoy their art.
Vinny Fuerst started Pytheas a couple of years ago and has made it awash with all things new-music, with audio, video, and information of all kinds. It ought to be checked out, over and over.
Gallery of Success
A month ago I was honored to be the recipient of the Gallery of Success award from Temple University’s Boyer College of Music. It’s ”given annually to a graduate of each of the university’s schools and colleges, noting the success and distinction of Temple alumni.”
I lunched with sixteen other recipients from Temple’s schools and colleges, and a large roomful of guests. A highlight was to be seated with Maurice Wright and other Temple music folks, who took the time to come out. Another highlight was to be introduced to the assembly by longtime KYW radio personality Harry Donahue. What a voice, what a pro.
The portraits of me and some truly amazing people, the 2010 awardees, are displayed in the lower corridor of Mitten Hall, the very Gallery itself, for the next year. Along with boring bio stuff that I provided, this is some of what they wrote about me:
Kile is not the only member of the Smith family who is a Boyer alum. Jacqueline Smith (MM ’85), his wife, is a singer, organist, and the music director at Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Abington, PA. Priscilla Smith (BM ’05), his daughter, is an oboist pursuing a master’s degree in Historical Performance at The Juilliard School. She performs with many ensembles, including The Waverly Consort, Piffaro, Concord Ensemble, The Crossing, and others.
Now I know what put me on the short list!
Ooh, child
One of the best pop songs ever produced, “O-o-h Child,” from 1970, is #392 in Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” It crackles from Stan Vincent’s economical and unusual writing, its eight lines broken into two stanzas that see-saw back and forth. Their first lines:
Ooh child things are gonna get easier…
Someday we’ll put it together and we’ll get it undone…
Back and forth they pivot, the first stanza in F, the second in A-flat, odd for any song, pop or not. Another oddity is the tune’s beginning. It’s on the subdominant, not the tonic. “Ooh” is sung on a D, the third of the B-flat chord, “child” is on F; that’s sweet.
Sweeter still are the shifts between stanzas. Sounding for all the world like a night-club goose-it-up-a-half-step melodrama, the stanza-ending C (F’s dominant) indeed ascends, but the twist is that this D-flat is another subdominant, of A-flat, and so there you are: “Some” is a D-flat chord (sung on its third, which happens to be the tonic F, further camouflaging the shift), and “day” gets you to A-flat. Very sweet, indeed.
At the end of stanza 2, A-flat’s dominant, E-flat, makes a smooth Amen cadence under the sung B-flat, to the B-flat chord—the original subdominant—of “Ooh.”
All of that is delicious, and a brilliant pop vehicle for The Five Stairsteps. Add strings, pump with brass, and the arrangement sparkles. It’d be a top hit right there, but one element lifts it into the jet stream. I felt it when I first heard it in eighth grade, and it came rushing back to me when I heard the song a few weeks ago (on HD radio—I recommend it).
It’s the drummer.
At 13 I liked the energy, but now I can appreciate what a monumental force he is. The first thing that came to me when I heard this song again was, “Who is this guy?” It took a while, because I don’t know of any encyclopedia of session players, but I found him: Bernard Purdie.
Well, I just found him, but everybody, it seems, knows Bernard Purdie. See how many different folks he’s played for. He’s the laid-back funk shuffle in Steely Dan’s “Home at Last,” and the slap in Aretha’s “Rock Steady.” Miles, Hall & Oates, Percy Sledge… I confess a new-found respect for Van McCoy’s disco doodle “The Hustle.” (I know, I know… but when I heard it recently, I was about to change the station, and then a burst of machine-gun fire got me thinking, “Wait, that’s Purdie!” And sure enough, it is.)
He kicks the door in on “O-o-h Child” and takes over the room. I’m imagining him at the recording session, slamming into fifth gear, swerving into the left lane, and stomping on the gas, with the rest of the band g-forced into their car seats, stealing glances at each other. Hear it for yourself. Look at this Soul Train video (1970 was also Soul Train’s first year). The group is lip-synching of course, and the onstage drummer is just approximating, but the music you hear is the actual release.
Compare that to another TV performance here, on Barbara McNair’s variety show. The drummer’s big and busy, and the choreography sure is frenetic, but there’s no electricity. Purdie’s not there, and neither is the energy.
Bernard Purdie picks up “O-o-h Child” by the scruff of the neck and makes it the song it was meant to be. His tempo: polished granite. In this podcast interview with WFMU’s Michael Shelley, he refers (about a half-hour in) to the struggle to get his tempo across to everyone, and that had to have influenced his playing. His tommy-gun fills are a constant reminder of where the tempo is. Even the cymbal ride under the opening vocal (you can barely hear the 16ths between those rim knocks: tsit-tsit-tsit-tsit) is a friendly reminder from HQ that this is the tempo. It’s soft, insistent, and exactly in place, a steel needle stitching with silk thread. The long runs between stanzas are rivetingly precise, but the real truth lies in those phrase-bridging double- and triple-flams, little giddy-ups that make me smile every time. They aren’t show-off flourishes; they’re horse whips. Tight and righteous, they propel you through the song. And his hi-hat is a smart-bomb, close and hard: small, targeted explosions that make you flinch.
I thought of all this at a recent Baroque concert at church. Our Priscilla came down from New York to play oboe and recorder, James Finegan was the violinist, Ken Borrmann, the harpsichordist, and Jackie sang. But in this kind of music the Bernard Purdie chair belongs to the cellist: in this concert, our middle daughter, 15-year-old Elena.
Nellie’s been playing for six years, and it’s been a pleasure beyond describing, seeing her grow as a musician (as we’ve witnessed in Priscilla and are seeing in Martina the horn player, our youngest). She plays in different chamber ensembles, in a youth orchestra, Jackie keeps her busy playing in all sorts of situations in church, and she’s taking the occasional job here and there.
Nellie has exactly the right engine for a cellist, driving without pushing, tempo spot-on. She takes over when necessary, which takes nerve, and lurks in the foliage when called for, which takes humility. It all takes talent, of course, and all musicians need these qualities, but these particular ones often fall to the cellist as priorities, and in quick succession.
There are times when the cellist has to kick in that door and follow George C. Scott’s advice from the opening Patton monologue: “Wade into them! Spill their blood!” But when all is going well, as with this ensemble at this concert of Telemann, Schütz, Johann Nikolaus Hanff, and J.S. Bach, there are no such dramas. Everyone takes care of business; you can follow the eyes and see magic happen.
Jackie programmed the concert to end with “Mein gläubiges Herze” from Bach’s Cantata 68. Here, the cellist is hardly a continuo player anymore but soloist, wildly disproportionate for a soprano aria. It’s the element Bach uses to launch what would be a perfectly fine and beautiful tune into his jet stream. (Frankly, it’s the kind of nutty thing Bach does all the time and that redefines him out of the Baroque.) Here it is, with Concertus Musicus Wien, at perhaps one tick slower than where Jackie, Nellie, et al. performed it.
My faithful heart, rejoice, sing, be merry, your Jesus is here! Away with sorrow, away with lamentation! I shall just say to you: my Jesus is near!
Jackie insisted that Nellie move to the front for this finale. She took her place, looked at Ken, and launched herself, the ensemble, and the piece, proceeding to show us what rejoicing really sounds like. We heard why Bach is great, we heard what a cello can do, and we heard why Nellie should be playing it. Ooh, child.
Cello spirituals on the radio
Walked into WRTI on Saturday to tape a few more Now is the Time shows, and Mark Pinto was there holding down the fort, cataloging CDs during the Rigoletto broadcast and preparing for his post-opera airtime. “Hey, I’ve programmed your cello spirituals on New Releases,” he said.
“Fantastic, thanks!” I answer, “when will they be on?”
“Four o’clock.”
“Oh…today, you mean?!”
So that was it. On the air, for everybody.
I took a break from my taping at 4:00 and potted up the air monitor in the studio to have a listen. (The CD, with audio samples, is here—American Spirituals, Book Two are tracks 11–13.) Anne and Paul sounded good as ever. Here’s where we made that octave change, oh, right, here’s that added rubato, and now here comes that whole bar we added. Funny how you live with and worry over a piece for months, and then—at some point—it’s just music, not yours anymore. Yours, yes, but not yours because there’s nothing you can do about it. Not anymore. Happened twice to me this weekend, as I just finished my string quartet, and since I was well ahead of any deadline I had to force myself to give it up to the players. I’d still be messing with it otherwise. It’s a piece of music, just let it go, it’s not yours anymore.
Now it’s for everybody.
Update: CD and sheet music published by Paul Jones Music in the collection Sacred Music for Cello.
