Monday, December 13, 2010

Cultural and Artistic Plurality in America



"I like to be in America," from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story is a picture perfect synthesis of cultural and artistic plurality in America.  The composition style used in the film score for this song is reminiscent of both the Spanish Pasadoble and American Jazz.  Syncopation is the rule rather than the exception with it's compound meter wavering back and forth between a solid two and three beat rhythm.  Bernstein has fused the styles together in a very modern way that seems to communicate the tension of the racial conflicts and cultural identity crisis experienced in America at the time.  People just didn't know where they fit in and some people weren't sure these foreigners should fit at all into the American panorama.

The dancing accompanying this number fits into the time period when dance in Hollywood was still an experimental element of film.  While the overall dancing is quite well pulled off, it's certainly not something you would see in a music video today. The precision between dancers is rough and individualized, however revolutionary for the realm of musical film in the 50's.  Highly suggestive of classical dance technique this choreography blends flamingo/Pasadoble dancing with pirouettes and leaps accompanied by sharp hands and heels.

Humanistically West Side Story is a masterpiece interpreting in a variety of ways the confusion and racial tension of the 50's.  It is the definition of syncretism because it melds several different cultural artistic styles together that revolutionized score composition and theatrical dancing on Broadway.  However, it was not the last drama to be packed with heavy handed social and political statements regarding tolerance and immigration.

Icon in American Music


George Gershwin was not your traditional Julliard School of Music snob that grew up hearing music in the professional world his whole life and then because of his family’s money made it big time.  He came from a family of Russian immigrant Jews. 

He first displayed interest in music at the age of ten, when he heard a friend’s violin recital. George went home and on the family piano, purchased for the instruction of his older brother, began to play.  His instructors guided him to attend orchestral concerts. After attending he would go home and attempt to re-create the music he had just heard on the piano.  He studied classical composition technique and method with Rubin Goldmark, avant-garde composer theorist.

George got his start in New York City’s Tin Pan Alley earning $15 a week.  He published his first song, When you want ‘em you can’t get ‘em, When you’ve got ‘em, you don’t want ‘em at the age of 17. From there he went on to compose hit singles, one-act operas, and classic Broadway music that has become part of the American songbook.

George Gershwin has significantly contributed to the style and identity of American Jazz.  He has been considered one of the great names in American music.  The verity of this assertion is evidenced by the fact that even today youth around the country can recognize his work.  Gershwin’s signature has become part of the cultural consciousness in listeners, performers, and composers alike.

The song, They Can’t Take That Away from Me, from Broadway Musical Crazy for You, is characteristic of Gershwin’s style.  It provides a loose framework of basic chords within the harmonic structure of the song, leaving wide license for improvisation on the part of the singer and instrumentalist.  Such music paints a very soft picture that is both alluring and relaxing to the listener.  It plays on the deepest sentiments of American culture about romance, industry, and innovation.

I chose this artist because I find his music to be a great description of American identity.  He captures the feeling of both modernism and postmodernism in that his compositional style conforms to the conventions of academic and classic jazz while at the same time synthesizing the two styles to generate something entirely new, but familiar.  In my opinion Gershwin is the beginning of the uniquely American musical identity.

In trying to replicate his style and get a feel for the music I experienced two things.  The first was that the improvisatory methods that Gershwin intends in his music are very difficult to imitate.  Second was that the music felt very natural to me, almost like the rhythm was part of me, instead of something I had to learn. Further evidence of the place Gershwin holds in American cultural identiy.

Amerian Music


Adagio for Strings – Samuel Barber

I had never heard Baber’s Adagio.  It would be an understatement to say that the piece was extremely moving to me.  Barber has captured the very essence of sorrow.  The music in a very real way gets into your soul and sweeps you up into the long bow strokes of the strings.  It’s as if the music pulls you a long with it.
Sorrow in and of itself doesn’t really go anywhere it intensifies and it gives way.  That is precisely what Barber has accomplished in Adagio for Strings.  The meticulously composed harmonies are hauntingly beautiful, but simplistically repetitive.  Like sorrow, it harmonically stays in one place but pulls at every part of your heart.  The composition calls for parallel motion as the violins move up the cellos move down pulling apart until they relinquish into a compelling melodic unity. A continuous minor rise and fall occasionally giving way to a major resolution.
The commentary throughout the piece did not provide much insight into the foundation of the piece. It really just got in the way. In so many ways this piece of music has to be experienced, it can’t really be explained.  That is precisely what the commentators were attempting to do, explain the power of the music through their personal experience with it.  The chilling dissonance and moving line really say it all.

Rhapsody in BlueGeorge Gershwin

Gershwin’s Rhapsody is an American Icon.  It is a brilliant meditation on American ingenuity and vitality.  Gershwin has captured the bravura and idiosyncrasy of being American.  Rhapsody in Blue has condensed the life of an average American in the 1920’s into a matter of minutes.  It tells of the grand moments of triumph in one’s life and the quiet moments of reflection.
The recurring motif’s and random connections between theme’s reflect so much of the American personality.  America is a melting pot of traditions and ideas and that is precisely what Gershwin has shown in his composition.  He has synthesized Academic Jazz, Classical convention, African blues, and Latin rhythms into a masterpiece of plurality that is uniquely its own.
The background information in the audio clip was extremely helpful in putting this work into context.  I thought it did a great job at explaining not only the musical ingenuity and nuance of this work, but why it was important for the time it came from.  The fact that is was written in three weeks is merely a testament to the brilliance of the composer.  Rhapsody in Blue through its vitality and composition effectively paints an accurate picture of what America was what when it was written and what it remains today.
 
His Eye is on the Sparrow – Mahalia Jackson

This song really reflects American spirituality.  While there is a rich diversity of religious belief across the 50 states, this song reflects the concept of a city on a hill that is uniquely a part of American identity.  We believe that God is intimately involved in our lives watching us individually and collectively as a people. 
Mahalia’s rich interpretation of this music is representative of the African community’s contribution to both American religious and musical experience.  The song seems to speak to social change in America both culturally and demographically, as African American’s became an important and prominent thread in the fabric of American society.  The fact that this song was so widely accepted among Americans is strong evidence to support how integrated the United States had become.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

The Spirit of America


On November 13, 2010 Brigham Young University hosted the Amateur Dance Sport Championship.  Dancing has become an extremely popular form of entertainment in America with dance television series emerging as tremendous successes like Dancing with the Stars, and So You Think You Can Dance, and Films like Step Up.  But, even more importantly Americans aren’t standing by to let others having all the fun.  People are making dancing apart of their lives as evidenced from the vast array of competition on Saturday.

Dancers of all levels took the floor in the Ballroom at BYU. Many commented that they had never danced in their lives, let alone competed against others in a formal competition.  There were some that made fools of themselves, there were some that victoriously succeeded.  But, the fact of the matter is that young adults who never before had any interest in Dance are looking to it now for some form of expression and entertainment. 

History has demonstrated the prominent place that dance fills in western culture.  Due to the migratory nature of American culture dance forms have been borrowed rather than created here.  It wasn’t until the late 19th century that dance started to become uniquely American, and then blossomed into it’s own with the rise of jazz and the big band.  This period marks a fusion of European musical and dance techniques with American flare and innovation.  Out this period were born the Quickstep, Cha Cha, Jive, and American Swing. 

Unfortunately, as the war came to a close dance as popular past time died out.  But, the vitality and huge numbers of contestants at the Dance Sport Competition demonstrated that American dance is still very much alive and well. What started as a bunch of fun in the dance halls across America has become institutionalized and perfected into the basic steps and forms that allow for organized competition.  However, the evolution and innovation of American dance has not gone anywhere. In the recently released film Step Up 3 forms featuring traditional high technique from ballet and ballroom melded with street and funk forms emerging from common people raised the roof.  Such a movement seems to identify with the post modern movement away from forms and conventions to letting whatever emerges from the human spirit take control.

America the Sublime

Adirondacks, by Homer Doge Martin, inspires awe and wonder in passersby. The painting gives a glimpse of the world in its most natural state, wild chaos untamed by human convention and industry. Adirondacks tells the story and the hope of America. Martin accomplishes this American vision by subscribing to the artistic philosophy of the Hudson River School, catering to the desire to get back to Edenic paradise, and perpetuating the American concept of opportunity and a new life.

Martin in his earlier life subscribed closely to the Hudson River School, as evidenced through his choice to portray a landscape in his painting. Adirondacks communicates the awe and majesty that exists in the raw wilderness. The Hudson River School attempted to show nature as pastoral, creating scenes where man and the natural world can exist in harmony with one another. However, Adirondacks was painted in 1879; American history up to that point had revealed a rugged and aggressive natural world that was no respecter of persons.

As most of the colonizers discovered, a lack of respect for the power of nature in the new world could quickly cost you your life. You can almost see the Nietzsche-esque concept of the Dionysiac in this painting through the wild trees and bushes growing over anything and everything in their way in an epic struggle to reach the life giving sunlight and claim their own space to inhabit. The over all feeling of painting demonstrates symmetry and harmony, but the details of the picture and the brushwork show a much more aggressive vitality of the natural world. Martin has combined the two elements and created a nuanced romantic vision of the wilderness that is uniquely sublime.

Adirondacks also has a spiritual element in its composition. The type of awe communicated in this work is the same type of awe one experiences in a cathedral. Architects and clergy designed cathedrals so that when you walk in the cathedral is so big and so deep that you can’t help but feel small and insignificant in comparison to it, subsequently comprehending the grandeur of God. Looking at Adirondacks you get the same feeling, that there is something of divinity in this landscape and there is even more of divinity in it because it remains unpolluted by civilization, that it might look just as it did after the creation.

The discovery of the new world awoke a yearning for a return to a paradisiacal world that had been lost as society continually became more modernized. As America moved into the industrial age and the exploitation of natural resources further ravaged the land, locations that remained preserved became more and more important. There is certainly no paradox in the fact that this yearning for a return to a paradisiacal world brought religious settlers to the America’s and viewed their community as a city upon a hill and a light to the nations. From this mentality have stemmed many visions of America namely the land of promise and the land of opportunity.


Martin’s compositional style is extremely inviting. It seems to operate on the ideas of discovery, opportunity, adventure, and settlement. Part of the foundation that is America is the concept that you can shape your own future. The Declaration of Independence says that every man has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which is an extension of Locke’s life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. In this painting is evidence that both are true. There are still places to conquered, property to be owned, adventures to be had, and new opportunity to be claimed for any one willing to try their hand at chance. This is the American dream. To make your own way, owning your own land, tilling the earth, living off of your own industry, and forging your own destiny.  A compelling message for immigrants coming through Ellis Island and lower class citizens that had grown tired of working in factories, the idea that even though a good portion of America had been conquered there was still, to make a biblical allusion, an inheritance waiting just for them.

Adirondacks' rugged nature and aggressive survivalist attitude could also be interpreted as a commentary on the time period. Social Darwinism mirrored the behavior portrayed in the painting through the trees and bushes. Just as they fight to get to the top of the tree line and battle for space the viewer can practically see urban centers like New York with its crowded spaces and capitalistic battles to get to the top of the ladder with out any regard for those who are marginalized on the way. Only the tough will survive and by natural selection rise to the top.

Homer Dodge Martin’s Adirondacks is a breath-taking glimpse into the beauty of natural America. However, the painting is doing much more than painting a landscape, it communicates American ideals through its subscription to Hudson River artistic theory, its play on western desire to get back to an Edenic paradise, and through a call to the world that just like this landscape you don’t have to be governed by civilization you can make your own way. Martin’s Adirondacks is in a very real way America.

Friday, September 24, 2010

Change of the American Soul

On Friday evening, September 24, 2010, BYU held a concert of the combined University choirs. Each one of the choirs performed at least one work by an American composer. Of those performed there seemed to be a message communicated in Everyone Sang, by Dominick Argento, and Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy by Kirby Shaw. The message was a dialectic of composition styles and feeling in music from post war America to present day America.

Everyone Sang is an extraordinarily difficult composition to sing. It follows contemporary choral compositional technique. The rhythm alone is enough to throw even the most educated musicians. I found myself looking for some sort of direction in the music. The downbeat was nowhere to be found, there was no sense of tonal center, and chaotic entrances of random vowels were enough to throw the audience for a loop. This style of composition does not cater to an uneducated populous of easy listeners. It was intended for a highly elite group of musicians and listeners that would be able to make meaning out of the nihilistic sound that filled the air. This marks a shift in American music and artistic mentality. Music no longer seeks wide spread approval from it’s populous; it seeks to make a point, some artistic point that is purely for art’s sake. If this music is any sort of indicator for the sentiment across the United States, then we have fallen into a chaotic confusing mess of life that isn’t communal any more or shared. This music doesn’t invite the listener in, it excludes the general public and seems to say, “listen, if you can.”

However, if the piece is viewed through the lens of the title, then this music takes one a different feeling. The random entrances, and different pitches, and lack of cohesion could easily be viewed as a mass of voices striving to be heard amongst all the rest of the noise. If this is intended to be a reflection of American national character, I would say it’s spot on. I think that people the nation over have so many worries, ambitions, fears, and opportunities, that they are striving to get above the noise of life to just be heard. It accurately reflects the religious, ethnic, and political plurality that has become America.

Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy is written in a Jazz big band style. It is reminiscent of the post war era, where Jazz and Big Band music filled music halls and the radio speakers of most American homes. Its message is that of a home grown life. Pie’s cooked at home, and dear old mom baking for her family. This work invites the listener in. It compels you to participate with syncopated rhythms, and Jazz chords that lift you right out of your seat and make your body want to jam. The feeling in the audience was reminisce of the good old days, nostalgic looking back at when times appeared simpler and easier to understand. When compared to Everyone Sang this work compositionally meets that standard; it is simpler and easier to understand. So much so, that the body innately seems to know what to do when that rhythm hits your ears.

The difference in these two choral works is drastically different. They both reflect the fundamental change that America has gone through in the last 70 years. While it is difficult to distinguish if it has changed for the better, the compositional style and feeling of the works marks a difference in the soul of American culture.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

The Prayer of Peace

It was a building of grandeur designed to stir wonder and conviction in those who saw it. Gilded in the architecture of the ages; the great dome rises in the distance and inspires one’s thoughts upwards, to the idea of something greater, something bigger than yourself. Novus Ordo Seclurum was the creed. This edifice was intended to be a great light upon a hill to an ever-darkening world. From here the word goes forth to provide a better way to people of all walks of life.
Inside could be found people wearing the finest of clothing, both silks and suits. One dare not enter here without great learning. From the high lectern the congregation takes turns preaching sermons of liberty, equality, and constituency. Their speech persuades all in attendance to either cast his vote in approval or dissent. Fiery rhetoric accompanied by both tears and shouting, is occasionally interrupted with the sounds of applause by some and disapproval by others. This hall represents the greatest minds coming together to decide what the people really need and how best to get it to them. From this room have gone forth declarations of war, appropriations of money to those in need, and re-organizations of national borders.
On this particular day many took the stand to offer some prayer of peace. “End this war” they cried, “bring our troops home.” “This war has gone on to long. It has cost us too much money and too many lives. Our own citizenry has no stomach for this war. A great call has gone out from the international community to get out of Afghanistan and Iraq. Our allies are withdrawing money and personnel. All of these facts lead one to wonder why we are still there; what are we trying to accomplish? Surely God did not intend such a fledgling disregard for life.” As this talk filled the minds of those listening, the carefully crafted language painted scenes of tear stained faces of mothers, families anxiously awaiting the victorious return of a loved one only to find them adorned in silk and polished wood, and blood watering the soil of distant foreign lands. Such a view of the situation took its toll. The sorrow and repugnance shared by every heart in the room at the thought of a meaningless massacre of our brethren was so thick it was nearly palpable. “This must end,” was the thought that hung on everyone’s mind.
Deeply moved, a cry erupted, like a single voice from the body of representatives, making a motion to draft legislation calling for the immediate return of troops to their native land. “This is what the people want,” many said, “this is what they’re calling for, it’s the best thing for everyone.” Amidst the electric energy that swept the room like a brush fire, a man at the front of the hall, sitting above the lectern, arose in a melancholy spirit. The speaker at the lectern turned to see who it was and little shocked said, “We recognize the honorable Judge of the Supreme Court. What say you?” “I should like to say a word before the body casts its vote,” came the feeble reply. “Are there any opposed to this motion?” All eyes fell on the man. After all, it was not common that a judge should be in attendance, let alone request to speak in a session of congress. No one raised their voice in opposition. But, every mind muttered in the silence, “what could the old fool possibly have to say now?” The man at the lectern announced, “If there are none opposed, the body shall now turn it’s time over to the honorable Judge.”
Slowly and laboriously the old man made his way up the scarlet carpet to the lectern. Age had had its way with him, hunching his once towering stature and barrel like physique. He set his cane aside and looked out through his circle spectacles. As he looked over the body something remarkable happened. A sudden change came over him; he rose to his full height and in a deep voice said, “Esteemed colleagues and honorable representatives I am a servant of the people and yours. You have prayed your prayer of peace, and it shall surely be received, if such shall be your desire after I have explained the import, or shall I say the full import of such exhortation. For like unto many of the passionate pleadings of men, this asks more than they who utter it are aware–except one pause and think.

“Is it one prayer? I declare it is twain. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware; lest without intent you beseech a blessing and receive a curse. If you pray for the blessing of rain, it may come down in such abundance that it poisons the crop you intended to nourish.

“You have heard your servants prayer–the spoken portion at least. I will put into words the other part–the part that you silently prayed in your hearts ignorantly and unthinkingly. You have heard spoken hear today, ‘End this war. Bring our troops home. Why are we doing this?’ The whole of the uttered prayer is compact in these pregnant words. But, while you plead for peace you unknowingly bring war upon the world. What do you suppose will happen when our troops leave the communities of people here-to-for incapable of repelling the forces that took control of their countries to begin with?

“We walked in with the aim to destroy governments of terror, that holy war that has stirred conflict in the Middle East and brought death to untold thousands the world over. We have imposed our western way of thinking upon these people: set up democratic systems, told them they are free, constructed schools, and protected them according to the dictates of the people. But, what will happen now as we leave enemies on the edges of the their borders, remove our support from their government which is not yet fully stable, and leave freedom in the hands of people that do not yet know how to be free?

“We will invite calamity upon such regions. As people turn out to exercise their freedom and self determination in casting their votes with little or no protection, the booths will be ambushed by radicals, and either prohibited from voicing their opinion or ‘compelled’ to vote a certain way. Such will bring terror back into the seats of government and dash the hopes of those who fought along side us for a brighter future. All our work to educate children in freedom before they could be educated in the style of jihad will be lost. Children will again be taken from their homes and inspired to seek out freedom and destroy it, recycling the pattern that brought death and devastation inside our own borders and all the nations of the world in the first place.

“This is the unspoken prayer which you invoke, ‘For our sakes blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage to freedom, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white sand with the blood of their wounded feet.’ And all this you claim to do for the betterment of the people, when inside your hearts you only cater to the superficial needs of the people for fear you may lose your own seat in government.

“Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, vote! The Speaker awaits your decision.”

It was believed afterward that the Judge was a lunatic, because there was not sense in what he said.