An Effective Meme
via Musical Perceptions and Chandler Branch there is a list of alternative Mozart Effects doing the rounds. The original list contains tidbits such as:
LISZT EFFECT: Child speaks rapidly and extravagantly, but never really says anything important.
MAHLER EFFECT: Child continually screams – at great length and volume that he’s dying.
And via comments and editing at musical perceptions we have in addition:
RZEWSKI EFFECT: the child tells the teacher that s/he is a victim of capitalist society in 36 different ways.
BACH EFFECT: Child weaves multiple sentences into an eloquent whole that takes ages to be properly understood.
So I am going to submit:
SHOSTAKOVICH EFFECT: Child appears to work diligently, but on careful examination you find his work mostly consists of disguised remarks about how much he hates you.
Anyone else fancy a go?
Present-ed Music
Two CDs received by moi, ich, ik, me over the brief but very pleasant (and already being missed) Christmas excursion to Maine are:
Which got stuck on my ultra-selective Amazon public wishlist so it must be something that was particularly attention grabbing when it got all aural up in my ears. It hasn’t had any listening time yet due to not being available on the CDDB — the database which mp3 ripping software uses to work out the names of tracks (which, incidentally is how the Hatto scandal was detected). I’m extra lazy when not officially at work, so couldn’t be bothered to spend the five minutes required to type in the track names. The Naxos info for this recording is here.
The other CD I got is (was?):
This was on the hitlist due to: 1) me wanting to own every available Shostakovich opus, but also 1++) me especially being fond of the late (post about Op. 100) pieces. Until now these had been unfamiliar. After a couple of listens all of these pieces sound WONDERFUL. The main event, Op. 119, is a 30 minute cantata-ey type piece in the style of his symphony No. 13. Very, very similar, in fact – but since I flippin’ love Op. 113 that’s not necessarily a negative thing at all. Op. 131 “October” is a vibrant little nationalistic number commemorating one of the revolutions, it reminds me of the driving 2nd movement of the 11th symphony. The 3rd piece on the CD, op. 42 ‘Five Fragments” are a set of five precursors to the desk-drawered and schizophrenic 4th symphony. Some of the fragments survived the transition basically intact, others I can’t place so well. All are interesting, but short. The Naxos CD info is here.
More thoughts as they get processed! Anyone else get anything interesting for xmas?
One of my favorite bits in Shostakovich Op. 43
This section from the third movement of Shosty’s wildly rampant Symphony No. 4 is one of my favorite bits from the whole great big opus (and I seriously mean great, in the dictionary definitioney type way: it’s a 65 minute monster) is that which I have shoved below. To get you in the mood, It’s the second big climax of the movement – there’s just been a building, driving fugal section which you can kinda hear the tail-end of in the snippet below. It keeps rising, tensing up even more -and then snaps at 0:37 into a wonderfully flowing, weighty Russian melody. It’s the bit after that which is especially fun though…
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… in the cheeky little section starting at 1:02, there is a fanfare played on a select few of the brass instruments which is repeatedly punctuated by blasts from a bunch of other members of the orchestra. If you listen to the pattern of these blasts they are first in groups of one (this happens seven times, up until 1:08) then it’s a group of two (dum-dum) then two groups of three (da-da-da) then a four, and finally a very quick five.
Whenever that bit comes on in the car the steering wheel gets smacked in time to those “counting” orchestral hits. Either that, or my poor suffering girlfriend’s leg.
Sort Of Away For Labor Day
Wow, I’m completely, totally dead in the legs. Me and my girlfriend climbed up Snowy Mountain in the Adirondacks this morning. Since graduate students are obliged not to believe in the holiday nature of Labor day, we decided to scoot off just for one night. That was last night. Now my legs are aching and I am very much looking forward to sleeping in a real bed which does not spontaneously deflate at three in the morning.
And more importantly, I get to satisfy another desire. All the way back, past the scenic overlooks and plethoras (yeah plural, each town had their own personal plethora) of yard sales the last two Shostakovich Op. 127 Alex Blok songs were in my head. They’re so mournfully, beautifully, ominous. Sort of like the threat of the huge numbers of experiments and data analysis I need to have done yesterday looming over the horizon of the mountains. A dark dream weighs down upon my breast indeed…
Oh how sombre we are tonight.
The last few dissonant notes on the piano at the end of “music” are amazing. Have a listen to the last minute and a half or so below:
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Velvety Blue
Oh dearie old me, real life is getting way more than a tad too intrusive at the moment. We’ve had a whole inundation, a cavalcade, an avalanche of friends coming to visit; my supervisor is demanding results in a thinly veiled fashion; I have to understand a journal article that makes little-to-no sense before tomorrow morning, and learn all of the fundamental amino acids by tomorrow evening. Where’s all the time gone for writing up here?
Well, there was a bit of respite last nite (no, I can’t resist the double t-e thing) when my girlfriend performed a wonderful act of dinner, and then subversively persuaded me to watch Blue Velvet, instead of studying molecular biology. I love Blue Velvet. I love pretty much all of David Lynch‘s stuff. What I had not realized on previous viewings – because they were more distant than quite recently – was that the Angelo Badalamenti soundtrack to B/V was Shostakovich inspired.
I noticed it first, when, while ignoring the biochemistry textbook in my lap something remarkably like the invasion theme in the 15th symphony (the doppelganger of the invasion theme in the 7th) crept out from the television. It’s right at the beginning of the film, when Jeffrey is going for a walk at night and his mother and aunt tell him not to go down by Lincoln street. I think it’s number 2 on the soundtrack
According to the wikipedia entry, Lynch had indeed been listening to Shostakovich 15 at the time, and asked for the soundtrack to be:
“like Shostakovich, be very Russian, but make it the most beautiful thing but make it dark and a little bit scary.”
Hmm. The bit about 15 is unsourced, unfortunately.