Theremin and Back Again

The musical world suffered a tragic loss this past weekend, as pioneering engineer Bob Moog died of brain cancer Sunday at the age of 71 at his home in Asheville, NC. Moog is best known for his invention of the first analog synthesizers to find common use by professional musicians. Moog instruments have found their way into everything from psychedelic rock to art music, and many of the earlier examples of Moog’s instruments have in recent years become collector’s items. In the 1980s, as digital synthesizers began to supplant their analog counterparts, Moog’s production slowed, but many musicians have since come again to value the unique feel of the analog units.

My first up-close experience with a Moog-style analog synthesizer came when I was in high school, working a low-budget light-design gig with a close friend of mine. One of the acts in the evening of puppetry featured musical accompaniment by a fellow in his early twenties tweaking the dials on a four-octave keyboard—probably a MiniMoog, in retrospect—that looked to my untrained eyes like a reject from Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. It was a stubby thing, not at all elegant, but the sounds it produced were something from another world. As a child of the 1980s, I was no stranger to electronically-produced sounds in music, but this was something totally new to me. I was surprised not only by its unique warmth but also by its astounding flexibility and expressive range. Hearing it employed as a solo instrument was a musical experience that I’ll never forget.

It wasn’t until recently that I learned that Moog was a theremin enthusiast, a fact that I should have surmised long ago by the sound of his synthesizers. Invented in 1919 by a Russian engineer, Lev Sergeivitch Termen, the theremin was the first real electronic musical instrument—Termen developed it while researching proximity sensors. The instrument itself is controlled by variances in the proximity of the player to the instrument’s two metal antennae, with one hand typically controlling pitch and one controlling dynamics. This, of course, makes the theremin somewhat unique—the player at no time actually touches the instrument. The sounds that result can be eerie, almost like a supernatural performance on a musical saw.

Initially, Moog’s instrument manufacturing company specialized in the theremin, but Moog took Termen’s idea one step further by creating synthesizer modules that allowed the player to manipulate the shapes of the soundwaves in addition to their length and amplitude. He started with single-effect modular synthesizers that were controlled by a central keyboard, and eventually moved on to integrated units like the MiniMoog I saw as a wide-eyed teenager. Now, Moog Music not only makes synthesizers but is also the industry standard in theremin manufacturing. Moog’s influence is pervasive in modern music—everyone has heard his sounds, but very few people know what went into creating them.

Music lovers will certainly miss Bob Moog and his “magical connection” to musicians and music-making. I can only hope that his unfortunate passing will reignite an appreciation for the electronic music on which he had such a profound effect.

Putting the Arts Back in Marching

This past weekend, the eager young performers of Drum Corps International (DCI) descended on Foxborough, MA for their annual World Championships. The ensuing spectacle did not disappoint, with the New Jersey-based Cadets taking home top honors, with the Cavaliers (Rosemont, IL) and Phantom Regiment (Rockford, IL) rounding out the top three.

In any discussion of DCI specifically, and marching activities in general, musicians tend to drift into two opposing camps. There are those who feel that these sorts of activities can represent the best in quality performance and are vital to the motivation and education of young musicians. There are probably just as many who feel that the marching arts are inherently unmusical and that promoting competition in music is contrary to the spirit of the arts. Both sides have proven to be rather vocal in their support or dissent, with viewpoints as varied and numerous as the different marching experiences students have in high school, college and independent marching ensembles in the United States.

Opponents’ arguments can be very compelling. There are still high school band programs in which marching band is the only aspect of music-making seriously focused on by the instructional staff. There are the tales of innumerable students who have permanently turned their backs on music-making as a result of music programs in which the goal was not to grow musically and personally but to beat the other guys. I pride myself on never having been involved with such a program, but they’re clearly still out there.

DCI seems, to an outsider, anyway, to eschew this kind of attitude. There is still scoring and competition involved, and champions undoubtedly take pride in their achievements. But the stories I hear most often from ex-corps members sound like tales from a mobile summer music camp, an atmosphere in which every member—and every competing corps—does everything in its power to push the musical and visual envelope. Long gone, it seems, are the days of putting the latest pop hit out on the field for a ten minute “park and blow.” Groups in recent years have performed everything from Gershwin, W. C. Handy and Nobuo Uematsu (he of Final Fantasy video game fame) to Bartok, Schoenberg, Bizet and Shostakovich with frightening musical and visual precision.

I’ve been on both sides of the fence of this issue. My high school had (and still has) a very competitive marching program that taught me a lot about leadership but made me question what I wanted to accomplish as a musician. I’ve been on the educational staff of several high schools now and have had friends and colleagues march drum corps. I’ve come to the conclusion that the marching arts do have a lot to offer our young musicians, but only if we are very careful about how we promote and execute them. We must remember that our goal is music and personal growth first, with competition a very distant second. We must use this activity to bring students in, to give them a home in music. And if our students have musical aspirations that do not include marching, we cannot penalize them. We must equally encourage them by opening up opportunities with community ensembles, chamber music and private lessons. Too many band directors act first for the glory of their program rather than for the needs of their students, and we, as young teachers, must not make the same mistake. As the new school year dawns again, then, I put forth a challenge for the young educators among us to constantly keep in mind the future of our field and the educational good of our students, who will bear the torch of this noblest of arts when we are old and grey. Best wishes for a healthy and happy school year.

Is This The New Classical Music?

A few weeks ago, I took a well-needed vacation to Nashville and to Atlanta to attend one of those lovely concert-in-the-park concerts that seem to occur around this time of year. Little did I realize just how much my companions and I would be in shock as to what we would be hearing. The concert was one of many in a series with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra with featured guests. We were going to this particular concert to hear country singer Wynonna. Now because none of us had any of the details, we didn't know it would be so pops-oriented --- the orchestra playing western-inspired music in the first half (Copland's Rodeo from Billy the Kid, John Williams March of the Cowboys, etc) and then Wynonna singing some of her songs along with standards with the orchestra as accompaniment. My Nashville friends weren't too pleased with the setup and frankly neither was I. But this was not the first pops concert I had been too and on that long 3 hour drive back to Nashville, I tried to figure out why it irked me so much. Then I came to some sort of conclusion. It wasn't the idea of a pop/classical merger as much as it was the reasons for the occurance.

The past five to ten years or so have seen an abundance of collaborations just like this in every genre. The first one that always comes to mind is the album S&M, the tandem effort of Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony. As far fetched of an idea as that may have been, it was much more succesful than the same idea implemented by the Scorpions with their biggest hit, Rock You Like A Hurricane. For some reason, people thought that this would be a good idea, especially if it was at its most extreme --- pairing heavy metal with classical. Now instead of taking the best parts of both genres to create something new and musically exciting, each group sticks to their previously defined roles, the orchestra providing some sense of overpowering drama that can only be achieved by a massive amount of strings and the other group, no matter what they might be, showing that they can still rock even with those white-haired old fogies behind them, that being what someone might say of orchestral musicians, not my term.

The cheapening of the music does no good for either party. Those orchestras that take part thinking that this might award them some newfound publicity are sorely mistaken on most occasions and those die hard fans of the other present genre clamor for something else, something old instead of this new venture into the classical world (it can be said that fans can be the most brutal, whenever their favorite artist turns in a new direction, unleashing a backlash that could never be predicted). And as a result, the idea that in order to succeed as a new, young classical artist is to be as crossover as possible, no matter how true that might be, is propagated. From this arises artists like Josh Groban and Charlotte Church, finding success in a mainstream world that seems intolerant of the musicians and sounds of old.

So what does all of this mean? Probably nothing. It is, like many things a fad, one that will, if it hasn't already, start to fade away. If anything, it's telling of the public and the industry's idea of what classical music is and should be. But this is by no means a death sentence for the art. If anything, it's a chance for the music to have a place to evolve in American culture, just as it has always done except this time a little more publically. And hey, no one said that evolution was pretty.

Le Sacre du Printemps: A Silent Movie to the Music of Igor Stravinsky

A friend of mine recently recommended this short film, directed by the late Oliver Herrmann. In short, it is a story of three people:

1) an apparently successful yet mysophobic brain surgeon in his mid-40s,
2) a 20-something girl, a survivor of parental sexual abuse who still lives with her predatory father and torpid mother, sleeps in her childhood bed and now spends the bulk of her time seducing and having sex with anonymous strangers, and
3) a woman in her late thirties so obsessed with the death of her husband that she keeps all of their possessions covered in white sheets, undisturbed, and sleeps in what appears to be a coffin.

God, played here by a portly black woman, spends her time fashioning creatures out of bread dough in her kitchen, some of which go to the Earth below and some of which remain in her kitchen—strange, colorful prototypes never considered for mass production. She places our three characters in an unnamed, impersonal metropolis and watches as their lives intersect in a grand human experiment. As Stravinsky’s score plays out, we see the development and manifestation of the characters’ neuroses. As the characters reach an emotional snapping point, there is a solar eclipse, and they find themselves on a tropical island, where Santeria orishas take them to a place where all of the world's religions are practiced side by side, peacefully. Here, the characters undergo an ancient Santeria ritual that is meant to heal them of their emotional scars.

Visually, Sacre is a fantastic film--Herrmann, initially a photographer by trade, had a particularly poignant sense of intense color and drama without dialogue. His broad palette of vivid colors is as striking in this film as is Stravinsky’s revolutionary orchestral colors and use of rhythm. The characters are played very expressively, without speaking a word. Each is entirely believable and heartbreaking in her obsessions. The music is as true to Stravinsky's jarring vision as I can imagine it, as performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker under Simon Rattle. Sadly, Herrmann did not live long enough to see the final screening of the film, as he died two days before its release from complications arising from diabetes. I fully recommend seeing it if you get a chance. This is a genre of filmmaking that has thus far been sadly overlooked, and I feel it deserves more attention from music and film lovers alike. Stravinsky himself is quoted in the film’s production notes:

“…I have always had a loathing for those who listen to music with their eyes closed, without their eyes playing an active role. When you want to understand music in its whole meaning, it is necessary to see the movements and gestures of the human body, through these you learn…”

Personally, I look forward to seeing Herrmann's other silent films, set to Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire and Schumann's Dichterliebe. Hopefully, after Herrmann’s death, other filmmakers will take up his mantle and continue to bring these great works of music to new audiences through the use of film.

Hermann, Oliver. Le Sacre du Printemps: A Silent Movie to the Music of Igor Stravinsky. eins54 Film, 2003. Music by Berliner Philharmoniker, Simon Rattle, cond. www.eins54film.com.