Dah dah Dah

Two weekends ago our niece treated us to lunch at a Korean restaurant, for a combination of Australian Mother’s’ Day and Korean Parents’ Day (even though we’re not actually a mother and parents). We were sitting within sight and sound of a medium-sized screen playing K-pop girl groups. I got thinking, not for the first time (for example, the previous time we went to that restaurant) how indistinguishable most of the singers, groups and songs are. At least to me, but that might be because I’m a non-Korean man my age and my general unfamiliarity with K-pop girl groups. I could probably say the same about most current-day US/UK/Australian pop music. No doubt they become more distinguishable with exposure and practice. 

A few days later I was listening a video of songs of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. One song started which I didn’t recognise but could tell that the singer was Neil Diamond. (Don’t judge me!) A moment later …

Sweet Caroline (Dah dah Dah …)

Oh, that one!

But I have no idea how the chorus goes after that, not even the melody and certainly not the words. 

Anyone’s ability to distinguish any music or performers depends on exposure and active, repeated listening. (I tend to listen to music while I’m working, though many classical music videos come with scrolling scores, which I tend to pay more attention to when I’m not working.) Not surprisingly, I’m better at classical music and 1970s US/UK/Australian pop. Two years ago my wife and I were driving in the Blue Mountains. She turned on the radio and I recognised the voice of the presenter (who I know) of Australia’s leading classical music interview/discussion show. He interviewed the author of a book about Beethoven and his milieu and finished with a piece of loud and grand orchestral music. My wife asked me if I knew what it was and I told her Beethoven’s 9th symphony. She said “Are you sure?”. I said “… Yes”.

(A few minutes later) I’ve just listened to Sweet Caroline and realised that I knew the introduction/interlude and vaguely the rest of the chorus, but the verse is still a complete non-memory. I also remembered four chords and originally wrote (da Dah dah Dah).

Related to this is that list videos of No 1/greatest/favourite songs tend to play just the most recognisable part, which is usually the chorus. 

Advertisement

my guide

Speaking of bachs: In December 1933 the German composer Richard Strauss wrote a song titled Das Bächlein, (originally for voice and piano but the first recording that came up is for voice and orchestra), in which a wanderer asks a mountain stream where it came from and where it is going. It answers “I come from the womb of dark rocks. A merry childlike spirit drives me onward, I know not whither. He who called me forth from the rock, He, I think, shall be my guide.”

Strauss set the words for my guide rhapsodically. There can be no doubt that he realised the double meaning of mein führer (leader/guide). There is still debate about his interactions with the Nazi regime, even though he was cleared by a denazification tribunal in 1948. In the early days he might have seen it as the (or a) solution to the chaos of the previous 20 years, but after he reluctantly accepted the position of president of the Reichsmusikkammer he quickly lost whatever illusions he had and fell from favour, especially because of his professional relationship with author Stefan Zweig and personal relationship with his daughter-in-law and her family. The song wasn’t published until after his death. 

Bach and ch in general

One of my first piano learner’s books had a piece called Air from Bach, which I first pronounced as /bætʃ/ (batch). When one of my older sisters told me it was /bak/ (bark) (non-rhotic in Australia), I didn’t believe her until someone else (maybe our piano teacher or grandmother, assured me that it was. Except it’s not. The sound at the end is /x/, a voiceless velar fricative, the sound at the end of Scottish loch, or /χ/ a voiceless uvular fricative. Most English speakers don’t bother, either with Bach or loch or any other relevant word, but I vaguely remember hearing a monologue by Garrison Keillor on how he first started in radio. He volunteered for a student radio program (?to impress a girl), and when he needed to study, he’d put on the complete and uninterrupted recording of the Mass in B minor by Johann Sebastian Bacchh (in the days of LP records?). I can’t find that online. If anyone can help me, I’d be grateful. 

I was reminded of this by the username of my chief commenter of recent times, Batchman. While ch in English can be /k/ (architect), /tʃ/ (bachelor), /ʃ/ (champagne) or /x/ (loch), tch can only be /tʃ/ (unless is is split across two syllables, as in chitchat (which might end up as chi-chat in rapid speech)). Basically, words with /k/ are Greek, words with /tʃ/ are Germanic and words with /ʃ/ are French.

retarding

Musicians in the English-speaking often use Italian musical terms instead of the English equivalents. Somehow they sound more musical, or maybe we think they are more musical because we usually encounter them in musical contexts. One of these is ritardando, which I’ll explain more in a moment. Some composers, most famously the Australian-American Percy Grainger, preferred or prefer English, specifically Germanic, terms. In Grainger’s case, unfortunately, this was specifically related to his ideas about racial purity.

A few days ago, one of the choirs I sing in sight-read a work by the American composer Leo Sowerby, whose name I knew but whose music I had never encountered. Scattered throughout is retarding, the direct equivalent of ritardando, but still Latinate. Grainger probably used the undoubtedly Germanic slowing. (I don’t know what Sowerby’s motivation in using the term was.)

Lo-lee-ta

On 29 May 1913, one of the biggest bangs in classical music history took place in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, being the premiere of The Rite of Spring, a ballet by Igor Stravinsky. A combination of the music, stage design, costumes, story and choreography led to a near-riot (or an actual one, depending on whose account you read. In an interview some time later, Stravinsky referred to Vaslav Nijinsky‘s “knocked-kneed and long-braided Lolitas”. There is very little information about the interview, but it is obviously some time later because 1) it was filmed and is now viewable on Youtube, 2) Stravinsky looks considerably advanced in years and 3) he uses the name Lolita in that way, placing the interview after the publication of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel in 1955 (when Stravinsky was 73). (Indeed, the poster of the video suggests the early 1960s.)

A lolita (more often lower-case, but Pages for Mac just upper-cased it), is now an alluring (at least to a certain kind of man) older girl or young teenager. (Nabokov’s narrator specifies the age range nine to 14; he also calls them demoniac, placing the blame on them rather than himself.) Even though The Rite of Spring is about a pagan fertility ritual, it is questionable as to how alluring the dancers were or are, or were or are meant to be.

But the name Lolita goes back further than Nabokov’s novel. Dolores is a good Spanish name (Maria Dolores, Saint Mary of the Sorrows), which became Lola, which became Lolita. 

C flat minor

C flat minor (10 flats) is certainly a rarely used key. 99.9999% of the time it is simpler to use B minor (2 sharps). Someone asked on a music forum whether G flat minor (9 flats) and C flat minor exist and are ever used. Someone else answered “They are certainly extremely rare in classical music. In fact, I would be very surprised if they have ever been used at all.” (I suspect G flat minor and C flat minor are extremely rare in folk, jazz, rock and international music as well.)

At least C flat minor has been. By me. Twice. At least in passing. The first is in a song in Eb minor (6 flats). The bass descends stepwise: E flat – D flat – C flat – B flat. This would usually be harmonised: E flat minor – D flat major – C flat major – B flat major. Except the text talks about deep silence on a moonlit night, so I wanted the music to be sparse and bleak, so I used E flat minor – D flat minor – C flat minor – B flat major. I might have used D sharp minor (6 sharps) (D sharp minor – C sharp minor – B minor – A sharp minor), but that is too ‘sharp’ for my internal musical ear, although those keys theoretically sound exactly the same. 

The second is in a song which starts in C sharp minor and modulates to E flat minor. Again, I might have used D sharp minor, but the rest of the song spends as much time in the corresponding major key, and I’m not going to use D sharp major (9 sharps). From E flat minor, I would otherwise have used a C flat major chord except I wanted a harmonic twist for a text about separation and loss. (I do set happy texts sometimes!)

Searching the internet, I found a reference to a piano sonata in C flat minor composed by the Argentinian composer José Torre Bertucci and played by the Argentinian pianist Alfredo Corral. Further searching revealed that it’s actually in C sharp minor (4 sharps), which sounds a lot more reasonable. I can’t imagine that anyone would write a whole sonata in C flat minor.

Mozart and B-A-C-H

Most styles of Western European music (which have spread almost worldwide) use seven notes called A, B, C, D, E, F and G. It is possible to spell a small number of words with these letters; for example, the spaces of the treble clef spell F-A-C-E. In fact, most styles of Western European music are built on twelve notes, five of which are called, in English, ‘sharp’ or ‘flat’. In German musical terminology, though, B refers to B flat, and B natural is called H. Thus we can spell the surname of one of the most famous Western European composers, JS Bach. German B-A-C-H is English B flat – A – C – B natural. Bach was aware of this, and used these four notes in several of his compositions. Various composers have used it since, either as the basis for a  whole composition, or as a passing reference. Some draw attention to it, while others don’t. 

I was recently watching a video about the Requiem by Mozart, which he was in the middle of composing when he died. Relevantly, he died after writing eight bars of the Lacrimosa movement (Full of tears will be that day When from the ashes shall arise The guilty man to be judged) (video). I suddenly noticed that right there, four of the notes in the bass part are B-A-C-H. I haven’t been able to find anything online about this (eg, searching for ‘mozart lacrimosa bach motif’) but I can’t believe that I’m the first person in 200+ years to notice this.

Unbowed

Youtube suggested a series of videos on Korean movies, including reviews of individual titles and lists of ‘best [genre]’ or ‘most [concept]’, of which I have watched some but not all. One of them included the movie 부러진 화살 (bu-reo-jin hwa-sal). The literal translation of the title is Broken arrow, but apparently it is officially titled Unbowed in English. 

In almost any other context unbowed would be /ʌnbaʊd/, as in bow and pray. But the presenter of the video pronounces it as /ʌnboʊd/, as in bow and arrow, which kind of makes sense, because the movie is about a university professor who is arrested, tried and convicted for shooting a crossbow at the presiding judge of his unsuccessful appeal against wrongful dismissal. While /boʊ/ as a verb and /boʊd/ as an adjective are used in carpentry (a bowed plank) and music (a bowed string), /ʌnboʊd/ as an adjective rarely is, because we would say a straight plank or a plucked string. And as far as I know or can find, /boʊ, boʊd, ʌnboʊd/ are never used in archery: Bow your arrows! The bowed arrows arced their way towards the advancing enemy. The arrows remained unbowed as the messenger approached. (And would bow as a verb in archery mean nock or draw or loose (basically the archery equivalent of ready, aim, fire)?) 

Intriguingly, bow and pray and bow and arrow are related through their common meaning of bend/bent, while bow and stern (rhymes with bow and pray) is unrelated, being related to bough (of a tree).

Edison Denisov

I chanced on a reference to a Russian composer named Edison Denisov, about whom I know nothing other than his name, which is … almost an anagram. In fact, his middle name (patronymic) is Vasilievich, so Edison V Denisov is an anagram. (Vasili Denisov was a scientist.) As far I understand Cyrillic, it doesn’t work in Russian: the Э of his first name and the е of his second are different letters – Эдисо́н В Дени́сов. (The acute accent on a different letter in each name serves to mark stress, and doesn’t make a different letter.)

I must listen to some of his music sometime.

Words from paradise

One of the choirs I sing in is rehearsing a work consisting of five movements each setting one word from the Bible. The words – holy, hallelujah, selah, hosanna and amen – are from Germanic, Hebrew, Greek and/or Latin, and are now different degrees of ‘English’.