the journey of a young composer

New beginnings

2008-09-02T05:15:00.004+02:00

Dear readers - I'm sorry I haven't written in so long! Life has been especially rich and full for the last few months. My final weeks in Vienna were wonderful, and the last lesson with Chaya found me feeling great about the progress I made during a year of focused study. The path ahead is much clearer than it was before; I have a sense of some of the specific areas I'd like to explore in my compositions and more understanding of what defines my unique musical voice.

We had a quick trip through Italy - some of the highlights were the art in Florence (including Leonardo's Annunciation, Botticelli's Birth of Venus, and Michaelangelo's David, which are all much more powerful in person than I imagined they would be), the countryside in Tuscany, and quite possibly the very best ice cream in the world, in a little gelateria in Florence.

After visiting with friends in Paris and London, we returned to Colorado, spent a month unpacking and repacking hundreds of boxes, loaded up a moving truck and drove across the country to our new home in Bloomington, Indiana. Now Rosalind is looking for work in environmental education/youth gardening and I'm starting a Masters Degree in Composition. I will be studying with P. Q. Phan, a fascinating composer born in Vietnam.

I'm so excited about the opportunities here! IU has one of the country's top conservatories, with an astounding 1600 music majors. I will be much busier now than I was last year, but I'll post here from time to time, to share some highlights from my ongoing journey. Best wishes to you all!

Croatia, Part II

2008-06-07T09:31:00.006+02:00

BOTANICKI VRT E PLITVICER JEZERA
"Vrt" is the word for "garden" - it's so cool that they can have words without vowels in Croatian. Zagreb's Botanic Gardens made for a lovely stroll among trees and flowers from all over the world. I can't resist sharing this sign:

"Please, don't take the turtles."

Rosalind and I visited an unbelievable national park, Plitvicer Lakes, home to dozens of waterfalls and hundreds of lakes. It was truly stunning, every view more beautiful than the last. There are kilometers of boardwalks set up so visitors can walk directly over the lakes.

TO PULA
Austria is a landlocked country, and Croatia is renowned for its gorgeous coastline, so after a few days in Zagreb, I headed for the seaside. The bus ride featured some beautiful countryside, vineyards, and small plots of farmland with rich red soil. The grass was green, so green, like a little taste of Ireland. My first glimpse of the Adriatic Sea was breathtaking, sparkling clear waters and forested islands hugged by clouds. All of the houses were modest-sized, but there were occasional highrise apartment towers near the sea, built high to maximize the beautiful view.

I arrived in Pula, an ancient city in the northwest of the country. I left the bus station and was awestruck at the sight of the Amphitheatre. This is a 30,000-seat arena that the Romans built two thousand years ago for gladiator battles, lion feedings, and such. Today it's used for more peaceful events, such as rock concerts.

I hadn't done much planning ahead, so I didn't have a room reserved, nor did I know precisely how to get to the town hostel. How many people did I stop to ask for directions? A record: Nine. Everyone was very friendly, and helped as much as they could, although most spoke no English. After about two hours of wandering through various neighborhoods, I finally found the place, and they had beds available - and on top of that, they were located right on a beach! This would be my home base for the next few days, where I would enjoy many hours of this view while talking with other guests, writing in my journal, and composing.

There was a cute litte kitten who lived outside the hostel - the groundskeeper tried to shoo him away, but the guests liked him too much. "Zippers" was his name. He would hang around the tables outside at breakfast, and my roommate secretly fed him tins of canned meat from the buffet table. One afternoon, an old Croatian woman brought him some milk in a little saucer. She and I talked about how cute he was, although we had no language in common. (Sometimes it doesn't even matter.)

In search of a grocery store, I walked through the suburbs near the hostel, some of the most beautiful neighborhoods I've ever seen anywhere. Thoroughly Mediterranean - houses with gleaming white walls and olive vines (here they're on a trellis above the driveway). Many have backyard gardens with red soil, and everyone has a great view of the seaside just down the hill.

James Joyce is one of my favorite writers. He spent a few months in Pula when a doctor prescribed that he vacation by the sea to improve his health. (Wouldn't you love a doctor like that?) I ran into him while I was out walking the streets.

AND NOW…It's been an action-packed six weeks since returning from Croatia. We've had a few visitors in Vienna, traveled to visit a farming/religious community in southern Austria, played a concert, and sampled ice cream from about six different vendors (all amazing…the ice cream here is simply amazing.) I'm in the midst of writing a 15-minute piece for 6 instruments, a big project where I'm putting into practice many of the ideas that I've thought of during the year - my new thoughts on harmony, rhythm, polyphony, instrumental sounds/noises, overall form, and even compositional process (how I think about and carry out the work). It's so exciting to tangibly feel the ways in which I've grown during this year.

I have less than four weeks left in the city, and many things I hope to do before I leave! Check back soon for more pics and stories…

Croatia, part I

2008-05-07T15:32:00.006+02:00

Dear readers - I apologize for the long delay in posting. Quite a lot has happened in the past month! Travel, concerts, lots of good time spent with other music students, exploring more of Vienna, studying music and composing. There's much that I'd like to share, so I'll begin today with:

A TRIP TO CROATIA
Croatia is a beautiful country of 4.5 million people along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea (just across the pond from Italy). Rosalind and I had been hoping to get to know more Eastern European countries, so I went for a week and she joined me for the weekend. One of the other student composers here grew up in the capital city of Zagreb, so she was happy to provide me with some insider tips about where to go and what to see.

In its turbulent history, Croatia has been claimed by all the major empires in this region. Since 1995, it has been an independent democratic country. Zagreb is a city of quaint old buildings densely packed into irregular rows, balanced by the open spaces of parks and piazzas. There are open-air markets, street musicians, modern concert halls, and museums of Viennese grandeur. Like many other European capitals, the center of the city is over 500 years old, while the surrounding neighborhoods are progressively newer - and the tramlines connect everything quite efficiently.

Croatians call their country Hrvatska. One interesting bit of trivia is that the necktie was invented in Croatia, in the early 1600s. Before that time, there were no neckties in the world - and today, millions of men all over the world put on a necktie five days a week. In fact, the thought of being a working man and not wearing a necktie is absolutely unthinkable in many professions. The original word for this garment was "hravat", just like the name of the country; this became "cravat" in French and is now "kravata" in Croatian.

In Vienna, I really haven't felt like a tourist - I'm renting an apartment, I work 5-6 days a week, I'm part of a musical community, I speak German as best I can. So my week in Croatia was truly a vacation, and I enjoyed doing all the tourist things - eating out, taking lots of pictures, visiting three museums in one day, asking strangers for directions, and taking some much-needed time off.

SPRECHEN SIE KROATISCH?
Croatian is a Slavic language, sharing common roots with Russian and the languages of all Eastern European countries. I have never studied any of these, so most of the words looked and sounded completely foreign to me. However, I enjoyed learning and using some Croatian greetings ("dobro jutro", "dobar dan", "dobra vecer" for "good morning", "good afternoon", and "good evening"). Knowing the words for "left" and "right" proved very useful for the many times I asked for directions. I found it fascinating to compare the four different words for "goodbye" listed in the phrasebook: "do videnja" (like Russian), "adio" (like Spanish), "zbogom" (unique to Croatia), and the omnipresent "ciao" (Italian). In fact, "ciao" is what I hear most often among young people, particularly among international groups.

Now, some of the words did seem very familiar - those which are clearly "loan words" from English, German, French or Italian. For instance, a "stjuardesa" serves you drinks on an "avion"; four musicians make a "kvartet"; and I was very tempted by the dessert offerings at the "cokoladni" shop. I've noted the relatives of the word "pancake": "Palatschinken" in German, "palacsinta" in Hungarian, and "palacinka" in Croatian. (Although all samples that I've tried have tasted more like "crepes"!) What I particularly enjoyed was the cases of rending an English word in the Croatian alphabet - so it's spelled differently, but pronounced the same. Here's the best example of that - note that "j" sounds like "y":

Some Croatians I met spoke excellent English, while others didn't have a word of it. One man asked if I would speak German instead. Most shopkeepers knew enough English to tell you the price, but not enough to describe what you were buying. In the ice cream parlors, I had to guess which flavor was which, since I couldn't read the labels and the servers couldn't translate. I had a hilarious encounter in a grocery store, where I spent five minutes examining the various jars of jam, and eventually brought an intriguing-looking one to the cashier to ask her what it was. "Marmelade," she replied. "Yes, but what kind? What does 'smokve' mean?" She asked her colleague, but nobody knew the word for it in English or in German. "Ah, but my book knows," I said as I pulled out the language guide. "Feigen" it read - fig. We all laughed as I bought the tastiest jam I've had all year.

There was a great example of creative communication from a busline official. I asked him what time the bus would arrive in Zagreb, and he understood my question but wasn't exactly sure how to answer in English. Now, his job is to collect money from passengers, so he has a little machine with numbers on dials which he can move around to "75.00" and it'll print a receipt for that amount. He moved the numbers to "1830" and showed me, so I understood that we would arrive at 6:30 pm.

I found the Croatian people to be very friendly and welcoming. I had many pleasant conversations with people on the streets or in shops. But the encounter I will never forget is with a man who struck up a conversation as we sat on park benches. He was in his early 30s, and had lived in the Croatian neighborhood in New York City for a few years, so he spoke English quite well. We talked about my visit, his new job, and then he told me that he was a veteran of the Croatian War. He lost his father and his brother on the same day, so as a teenager, he joined the army. (This was a complicated war, lasting from 1991-95, and what I understand is that it was primarily a battle for independence from the Yugoslav Republic, but there was also terrible violence between Serbs and Croats.) We spoke of many things, too personal to share here, but I will say that he's writing a book about his experience, and I encouraged him to do so and have it translated as well. It's so important to hear personal accounts of war, to really think about how it changes people's lives.

And finally, I have a very sad note. A friend and musical collaborator of mine in Denver passed away quite suddenly a few days ago. His family and his community will miss him tremendously. I hope that he is at peace.

I wish good health and strength to you all.

Everything was beautiful at the...

2008-03-17T22:21:00.002+01:00

I finally finished the piece! Today I completed the final score of Connection for percussionist. This is a piece that I've been working on for three solid months, nearly every day. That's a lot of time to produce six minutes of music for one player! Dozens of pages of sketches, hundreds upon hundreds of musical ideas written down and rejected, four drafts...But as my previous post elaborated, I've learned so much from the process, and I feel that I'm really growing as a composer - so every hour of work has been worth it. I'm quite eager to hear it played someday - Sean Statser, who commissioned the work, will learn it this year, and I hope that some of my other percussionist friends who enjoy ridiculous musical challenges will also give it a shot.

And as they sing in the chorus line, everything was beautiful…

...at the ballet
We went to two marvelous ballet performances recently. The Ballet Gala at the Staatsoper presented two large-ensemble pieces of late 19th-century choreography, set to light ballet music, very elegant and traditional. I didn't realize that the male parts consist mostly of acrobatic leaps and twists, but the men did these with great finesse. The women performed with blend of intense energy and intense poise, and Rosalind later told me that much of what they were doing was in fact extremely difficult. In a way, it's like watching the Olympics - I'm impressed by the feats of skill, but I don't even know half of what's really amazing about the performance, since I haven't been a platform diver or a ballet dancer myself. The rest of the gala featured small-ensemble settings of Philip Glass and Mozart, quite modern and exciting dancing, sometimes a dizzying array of people rushing on and off stage and several groups executing different moves simultaneously, other times very sparse and introverted.

The other performance we saw was a full-length ballet adaptation of Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina, with music by Tchaikovsky, and new choreography by Boris Eifman. This was an emotionally powerful event, with every dancer conveying such subtlety of expression, that one had no need for words or singing to get in the way. Of course that's the idea, that a ballet tells a story of characters through dance and instrumental music, but what set this apart from other ballets I've seen is that every dance really had a meaning in the story, expressed the character's feelings or the complex relationships between characters. The company was half men and half women - contrast this to the classical pieces at the Ballet Gala, where two men danced with thirty women! Rosalind noted that the male dancing was quite masculine in Anna Karenina, also in a realistic sense, and in contrast to classical ballet.

The music was gorgeous, richly orchestrated and musically varied. There were times when I had to stop watching and just listen for a minute. Some of the music I knew I'd heard before, and only much later did I do a little research and find that, in fact, there is no Anna Karenina by Tchaikovsky. (That was a shock!) That is, the choreographer selected movements and excerpts from many of Tchaikovsky's orchestral works and put them in an order which would correspond to scenes in the ballet. It worked extremely well - after virtually millions of performances of Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, I bet the ghost of Tchaikovsky is quite pleased to see a ballet danced to some of his other music!

This production took the liberty of interpolating some truly strange avant-garde electronic music at a few dramatic points, during some of Anna's solo dances representing her inner turmoil, and at the ending. Like all the Russian literature that I'm aware of, it's a powerful and tragic story, and it ends with Anna throwing herself under the wheels of a train. They portrayed this by having the full cast dancing the part of the train, moving back and forth in mechanical rhythm, and then Anna falls from the stage's second-story into the midst of them as the music and lights cut out. Enough to make your heart stop for a minute.

You can see a few photos of an earlier production and read more about it here. Happy St. Patrick's Day! (Another holiday not officially celebrated here, although I did see one tramful of green-outfitted partygoers this weekend...)

Living, Learning

2008-03-08T15:04:00.006+01:00

Mein Camera ist kaputt. Schade. =( So it'll have to be just stories this time.

CHAPPELL ON ICE
Now, I've only been ice skating about five times in my life, with a few years elapsing between each venture, so that every time I go, I have to cling to the walls most of the time. (It's just like learning to ride a bike - once you learn, you'll never forget; so if you never learn, you'll never remember.) But Rosalind is a good skater, and really wanted me to come along. So I figured it would be good to try again, and might even be fun.

We set off for the Rathaus (town hall), the same site of one of the major Christmas Markets a few months ago, now home to three enormous outdoor ice rinks. We rented skates - it's hard to look cool while walking around on skates, but everyone tries anyway - and I headed straight to the kiddie rink. The average age of this rink was about four, and even the four-year-olds could skate circles around me, that is, if I hadn't been next to the wall the whole time. But it was just the right place for me, and I'm really pleased to report that during the course of two hours, I progressed from clutching the wall to skating on my own two feet, navigating my way around the kids and passing the two-year-olds!

They have these really cute toys for the little ones: penguin dolls that are about the same size and weight as a small child, with handles protruding from their backside, so you grab on and slowly push it forward and let it pull you, without fear of falling down. There was no adult-sized version, however - the other adults in there were also wall-walking for a while.

Rosalind had a marvelous time skating - they had a neat setup with a long and twisting walkway ("skateway"?) connecting two large rinks. Like so many other special events in Vienna, stands selling drinks, food, and desserts had popped up overnight, so we enjoyed a bowl of pumpkin soup. The other thing to mention is the music - over the loudspeakers they were broadcasting a great mix of 50's doo-wop, classic rock, and even (finally!) some German-language pop songs, including one that sounded like it was specifically about Vienna. Rosalind said the soundtrack took her all the way back to middle school dances - great fun.

THOUGHTS FROM A DEVELOPING COMPOSER
I'm spending a lot of time composing. That was the whole idea, of course, but even so, I'm amazed to be writing music six days a week, at least four hours a day - and as much as ten hours a day when I have a lesson coming up. So what am I actually doing?

Thinking of concepts — Imagining music in my head — Trying out ideas on the keyboard — Writing things down — Forming small ideas into longer phrases and sections — Discovering how the piece will go — Revising my concepts — Entering the music into the computer — Revising every detail many, many, many times

I've composed a lot in the past twelve years, but there are a few new challenges I'm facing this year which are taking a tremendous amount of time and energy to understand and work with. One is to come up with material which is really new, which is unique and different than what I've done before, and perhaps even different than anything I've heard before. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I've found any 100% new ideas, but I have come across a few regions which are largely unexplored. For example, I'm currently writing a piece for solo percussionist on five instruments (marimba, vibraphone, cymbal, triangles, and temple blocks) where the player hits every part of his/her instruments, including the stands, the resonators, and the frames, which give an interesting variety of "clicks" and "pings". The piece explores the concept of how opposing worlds combine, primarily how unpitched percussive sounds can blend and interact with pitched notes, as one continuum. And in other pieces, I've found that there's still so much to explore in areas of harmony (finding and working with new chords) and rhythmic freedom (getting beyond notational or musical conventions). Leonard Bernstein said in a lecture that the possibilities of music are truly infinite - and I would add that although it was true when he said it, it's even more true today, with the new worlds offered by electronic sounds, and the discoveries of new sounds from familiar instruments (from composers like Helmut Lachenmann).

Another new challenge I'm facing is to put a lot more active thought into my composing. In the past, I've treated composition as a primarily intuitive activity, with the only guiding principle being: "If it sounds good, do it." This often worked well, as I think many of my pieces have had a high level of quality and imagination. But a year or two ago, I started to feel that I'd reached a plateau, that my composing was good but not as amazing as I hoped it would be. I felt that my limitations of technique and my habits were no longer enough to serve my imagination, to capture the mindblowing music that I could occasionally hear snatches of in my head.

Try it yourself - if you have music playing as you read this, turn it off for a minute. Get to a place where there are no distracting sounds. Close your eyes and imagine a music that swirls around, leaping and soaring, wild and free. You could think of a flute, an orchestra, choral voices, a piano, an electric guitar, electronic sounds, or anything you like. What do you hear? [I encourage you to post a comment or send me an email if you'd like to share your experience!]

Sometimes I do this freely as a kind of meditation, and frequently I do this when coming up with material for a new piece. The challenge is how to really channel this imagination, this unfettered flow of musical ideas, into a single piece at a time, without surging off into unrelated areas. My intellect tries to keep up with my imagination, to transcribe what I hear, but it's a lot like watching an incredible dancer and trying to mimic their moves - your own body can't do it as well, and also they don't listen to you if you ask them to go back and repeat something more slowly!

So here's the difficulty - I'm now trying to improve my critical-thinking skills in order to make better use of this spontaneous invention. The goal is to get my left-brain and my right-brain to work closer together. And I have a slightly different guiding principle in mind: "If it sounds good, keep searching; if it sounds amazing, go with it!" Sitting down and writing notes is easy for me, but writing something really powerful, really original and unique and alive - that takes a different kind of focus and expectation. It helps to have some stimulating concepts in mind, such as the blend of unpitched and pitched worlds for my percussion solo, because these concepts become a fertile starting point for my imagination, and get me to try things which otherwise wouldn't occur to me. It takes a lot of wrong turns and dead-ends and frustrations, a lot of time spent on sketches which get thrown out the next day and concepts that don't prove fruitful - but all of this is part of the learning process, and it does eventually get me to some music that I'm really happy with and excited by.

I hope this has given you a deeper picture of what I'm actually doing as a composer. And now, a lighter story to leave you with - a sort of sequel to September's "Run-In at the Laundromat"…

RUN-IN AT THE LIBRARY
Making copies is very cheap in America. Here, not so much. The standard price at neighborhood shops (as I found out the hard way) is between 15-20 euro-cents per page. Ah, but the library sells copy cards for 10 euros which let you make a staggering 250 copies, at a cost of only 4 euro-cents/page! So I bought one of these a few months ago, wrote my initials on it, and used it many times, maybe 3 euros worth. This copy card had little warning icons it, you know, "Do Not Bend", "Keep Away From Magnets & Pregnant Women", and so on. Well, wouldn't you know, it ended up touching my magnetic wallet at one point.

So I go to the library one day and find, alas, the copy machines will no longer speak to the card. It has become a demagnetized good-for-nothing, an outcast. I pondered my case and decided that seven euros was too much to just throw away, so I would speak to the library clerk and ask for a refund, or maybe a new 5-euro card (close enough). This particular clerk is also in charge of the Garderobe (the coat-check). So I approached him and explained the situation, in my halting German. He was not friendly about it, and as we walked towards a copy machine so he could test it for himself, he noticed that there was writing on the card. I said yes, I wrote on it. His demeanor went from "not friendly" to "outraged" (seriously, it did) as he scolded me, "Du musst NICHT ausschreiben!" (I thought it was a disposable card - but I guess they must reuse them, so it was my mistake.) He puts the card in the machine, it gives its helpful message "CARTE DEFEKT", and he tells me that I'll need to buy a new card.

Here's the heart of the story. I had to choose immediately between a few options. I could argue with him; I could buy a new card; I could come back on a day when someone else might be working there; or I could be quiet and appeal to his sense of generosity, if it existed. I chose the latter.

Quietly, I followed him back to the Garderobe and waited while he helped another customer with her coat. I didn't say anything, I didn't give him any pleading looks, I just stood around and waited. Now it was up to him to make the next move. After a minute, he asks me when I bought the card - and then I know he's coming around. I reply, and then he opens up a drawer and pulls out a new card. And not a five - a ten! He hands it to me, growling "RRRaRaRRRR!" or something - the meaning was clear: "I'm being nice to you THIS TIME, so DON'T write on it and DON'T demagnetize it and DON'T screw it up!!"

It's just an anecdote, I know, and it was just a small amount of money. But I find it so amazing that after scolding me and telling me that he wouldn't help me, this man decided to do something nice for me. I'm quite sure that if we had argued, I would have walked away empty-handed, and we both would have had an unpleasant encounter. But instead, I got to see him as a person with a tough exterior and a kind heart.

I guess I'm learning a lot this year, in more areas than music. I wish you all plenty of happiness and learning...

Existence and Non-Existence

2008-02-16T09:41:00.005+01:00

THINGS THAT DON'T EXIST IN VIENNA:
• Valentine's Day for the kids - no candy hearts, no making Valentines for every student in your class.
• Halloween - although the retailers have started to sell candy, and it may catch on within a few years.
• Chocolate chips.
• Good soymilk - Silk® Vanilla, in particular (nothing else compares…)
• Radio stations playing German-language popular music…incredible, but they always seem to play the same English-language pop found all over the world. I've endured such timeless (read: inescapable) classics as "In The Navy", "The Ghostbusters Theme", and "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" at the laundromat and the Billa.
• Places to shop on Sunday - It's nice to have one day a week away from consumerism. But don't forget to buy your groceries on Saturday.
• Lampposts.

THINGS THAT DO EXIST IN VIENNA:
• Valentine's Day for the adults - candlelit dinners, romantic evenings, and heart-shaped pillows that say "Ich liebe dich".
• Chocolate Chip Cookies - ever resourceful, we bought a large chocolate bar and chopped it into little bits to add to the cookie batter. Best chocolate chip cookies I've had in years.
• Good opera every night of the year - I recently saw my first Wagner opera, "The Flying Dutchman", marvelously performed and dramatically staged. (To see & hear excerpts from this production, click the link and then "Videobeispiel".)
• We Will Rock You - "A new musical by Queen and Ben Elton" - I'm quite tempted to go, even though I love the music of Queen (and am wary of it being ruined), because I confess to being intrigued by the spectacle and kitsch of it all. It looks like they're trying to outdo Baz Luhrmann for over-the-top production and incessant stimulation, and to outdo Ed Wood for dreadful scripts. Check out some pictures, and a "plot" synopsis.
• Colorado-style weather - Here's what happened today. 8am: Snow. 10am: Sun comes out and melts it. Noon: It's quite cold out. 2pm: It's quite warm out. 3pm: More snow. 4pm: More sun. Tomorrow's forecast: Cloudy with a chance of bratwurst.

• Serious recycling - These bins for plastic, metal, and glass can be found on every other street corner. What's truly amazing is that there are some bins for compost as well! Instead of being wasted in a landfill, our food scraps and peelings can enrich the soil of nearby farms or gardens. Rosalind (being an avid gardener, but currently lacking a garden) is especially excited to know this.

• High-tension wires strung up between buildings - to make up for the lack of lampposts.

• Flammkuchen - this is like a pizza, but much thinner and without tomato sauce. In this case, the only toppings are strong cheese and spicy little pepperoncini. [This picture & this flammkuchen were taken/eaten in Munich. Check back soon for the full story from my recent trip to Germany!]

• Cartoons about sausage people - I think you can probably translate these for yourselves.

From Sorabji to Stiegl

2008-01-30T12:44:00.000+01:00

Monday night I heard an extraordinary concert by the British pianist Jonathan Powell. The Joseph Marx Society sponsored the event, and several delightful short pieces of Marx were featured, plus poetic and fiery works by some of his students. For years, I've been enjoying Powell's recordings of one of my favorite composers, Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji. Many of you have probably never heard of him, so I will provide a brief introduction.

Sorabji (1892-1988) was a composer, pianist, and music critic who spent most of his life in a small town in England. Half-Indian and half-English, he readily drew inspiration from Asian and European culture - poetry, painting, rug-weaving, literature, religion, cuisine, and music. And yet his music exists in its own world, so distant from all stylistic trends of the 20th century. He is notorious for writing fantastically difficult piano solos that last four hours or more, thereby making tremendous demands on performers and listeners alike. But the mammoth Opus Clavicembalisticum has been performed in full about a dozen times, by five different performers, while many of his other multi-hour works have been heard in recent years.

You can hear for yourself here. I would recommend scrolling down and clicking on "II. Preludio Corale" to start. (On the screen that pops up, click the "Free" button, wait a minute, then enter the code shown and click the "Download via..." button.)

Apart from the longer pieces, Sorabji wrote a great number of shorter piano works (ranging from 10 seconds to 30 minutes in duration), plus some quite approachable chamber music and songs. (I have performed his Pastiche on the Hindu Merchant's Song, an exquisitely beautiful short piece.) With the slew of world-premiere performances, recordings, and published editions in the last two decades, Sorabji's music is undergoing quite a resurgence.

And most importantly - the music itself is so powerful. The languorous nocturnes will intoxicate you with their sweet perfume, while the tumultuous variations and toccatas will tear your insides out. Like with Messiaen, the longer pieces have the effect of suspending time, of taking us away from the busy pace of our lives and into a realm where art and spirituality, the intensity of the moment and the timelessness of memory, can freely combine.

At the concert this week, Jonathan Powell played Sorabji's transcription of the final scene from Richard Strauss's opera Salome. This is quite a dense piece - the pianist basically plays the vocal lines, all of the orchestral parts, plus several extra layers of Sorabji's own pianistic arpeggios and cascading chords, simultaneously. Powell handled it with great finesse, managing to bring the requisite clarity for the vocal lines to shine through all the madness, and delivering enormous power to the climaxes. In a word - devastating. This was the first Sorabji I've heard live, and it was truly an unforgettable experience.

I introduced myself to Mr. Powell afterwards and he invited me to join him and a few of his friends for a drink. So we went out and had a marvelous time, sharing stories about our favorite musicians, discussing what composition lessons are like, and developing ideas for future concerts. And of course - drinking fine Austrian beer. Sorabji would have been quite pleased. (A connoisseur in so many regards, he once wrote an essay about the qualities of good ale.)

Wilkommen nach 2008

2008-01-17T13:18:00.000+01:00

Happy new year! I've had a wonderful holiday for the past month, spending lots of good time with family and friends. A few highlights:
• Playing the piano with a 1.5-year-old and a 0.5-year-old - banging on the piano is the first step towards making music! (A certain "Fourth Piano Sonata" by Salvatore Sciarrino recaptures this mindset very successfully. Go here and click "Listen to samples" and then "Sonata IV" to hear an excerpt.)
• Talking with my uncle about the surprising similarities between building a boat and writing a piece of music - both are carefully imagined, drafted/written down, and then realized in time/space. All sorts of creation occurs this way, and to me the most mysterious phase is that initial imagining.
• Playing with a 3-year-old who gave me an imaginary shave, shampooed my hair, put together jigsaw puzzles consisting of six enormous pieces, and helped me when I was packing my suitcases (by unpacking them and hiding my stuff.)
• Visiting the church where I used to play in Denver and joining the organist for a spirited organ/percussion rendition of the Beatles' "Within You Without You".
• Listening to some of my grandmother's favorite records, such as "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" by Fred Waring and "My Son, The Nut" by Allan Sherman.
• Playing Lemmings and Marble Madness again for the first time in fifteen years.
• Visiting the gamelan I used to play with and the women's chorus I used to accompany in Denver. I'm looking forward to writing pieces for both groups in the near future.
• Meetings with a guitarist, a cellist, and three percussionists to explore all sorts of sonic possibilities from their instruments. I learned how to get a crescendo from an acoustic guitar note, what the highest notes really are on the cello, why a Chinese gong resonates with a change in pitch, twenty different ways to hit a splash cymbal, and how to make an excellent cellist sound like a second-year student (ask him to play without pressing down the string hard enough).

I'm currently in the throes of a new piece for percussionist on five instruments: vibraphone, marimba, 5 temple blocks, 2 triangles, and splash cymbal. It's quite a departure from my previous music for percussion, being much more meditative and exploring the full range of sounds - all sorts of mallets/sticks, hitting all parts of the instruments, etc. The piece was commissioned by a percussionist in Colorado, and I have several more people interested in playing it when it's finished. (On a related note, I recently had an Australian premiere! A grad student in Perth played my vibraphone solo The Labyrinth in his recital last month.)

One more story for you all:
THOSE CRAZY AMERICANS!
After the Bloomington airport fiasco (see previous post), I was determined to get my next trip right. I got a good deal on a round trip ticket from Denver to London, assuming that it'd be easy enough to get a cheap flight from London to Vienna. Right? Sure. There's only one little catch…you see, London has multiple airports. "Haha," you say with a smirk, "Heathrow and Gatwick! Didn't you realize this, Chappell?" I did, thank you, but there are three more besides. "No way - you're kidding me! What would one city be doing with FIVE airports?" Clearly people either need to get to it, or get away from it, in a hurry. Now, Vienna is a major European city, right? And you would think that a few of those airports would have flights to Vienna every day, right? Well, they do, but it sure helps to buy a ticket in advance.
By the time I started searching, the only affordable option left was to fly out of London Luton Airport. I consulted a few experts; half had never heard of the place, while the other half said it was a long ways out of London. Of course, I was flying in to Gatwick at 6:50am, and I would need to board the plane at Luton just over three hours later. So how do you get from Gatwick to Luton? There are several trains a day, it takes 95 minutes to get there - super. How do you buy a train ticket? With your credit card. But wait - only if your credit card has a billing address in the UK! And if not? Well, you wait until you're there in person, and then hope that there are still tickets available at the time you need - since there's only one plane from Luton to Vienna each day.
I decided to take the risk and go ahead with this plan, knowing that if anything took longer than anticipated, I would miss a train or a plane and look for somewhere to stay overnight in London. There are much worse places to be, after all! As it turned out, getting through passport control in London took ages, and the machine at the railway station rejected my credit card, but I had enough cash and I got down to the train track five minutes before it left. I made the plane just fine, and slept through the flight from takeoff to landing. Emerging at the Vienna airport was such a welcome relief, as it's become a familiar place. I was even glad to read signs in German again. Wilkommen nach Wien…

Null problemo!

2007-12-18T17:20:00.000+01:00

Dear readers - I hope this finds you quite well and enjoying the season of Christmas, Hanukkah, and the Winter Solstice! I'm back in the U. S. S. A. (you don't know how lucky you are, hey!) and have just completed a grueling week of travel. In the last seven days:
• 3 plane trips (on 6 flights)
• 4 bus rides between cities
• 2 music schools visited
• 6 composition professors met
• 5 different places I've spent the night
• 11 cities visited, if you include the airports
• 1 ridiculous travel blunder (it turns out there are Bloomingtons in both IN and IL! I'm sure you're as incredulous as I.)
• x showers taken (x = the number of members in the musical group Aphex Twin, multiplied by three, minus one)
• 2 bowls of ice cream (far, far below my average)

Fortunately this week has also included:
• 1 opera in Vienna (Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov)
• 1 concert in Boston (Student Composers' Concert)
• Many enjoyable visits with old friends & new friends
• Many good meals
• Reading Bel Canto, a heartwrenchingly good book by Ann Patchett
• Even some composing (on the bus)

It's been great to make these trips, and be making progress on my plans for grad school next year, but I am so glad that the next few weeks consist only of visiting with family & friends. I need some time to relax! (Of course, I'll also be working on finishing up three compositions. You know how I am...)

My first three months in Vienna were great, such a rich and challenging time of new experiences! Lessons with Chaya have been fabulous, always stimulating and insightful, and I feel that I'm making some good progress towards becoming a better composer. It's been a lot of re-evaluation of the compositional process, rethinking where ideas come from, how to develop them, and what sort of concepts I'm trying to express through music. It's rather like learning how to paint with oils when I've been doing watercolor all my life - so my newest efforts are still sort of "learning pieces."

So what is it like to live in Austria? Those of you who have lived in foreign countries know that it takes months to get used to how things are different, and it takes years to start to really understand the culture. When you're a tourist visiting a new country for a week, it's enough to visit museums, go to the opera, take pictures, learn to say "Gruss Gott", sample the Austrian dishes and the Sacher torte (as pictured above). But there's something quite different about actually living there, and I didn't fully realize this before. Rosalind and I have done many of the tourist activities — and I highly recommend them all, especially those glazed in chocolate — and look forward to doing many more on the return trip, as Vienna is a place where cultural attractions are both numerous and thriving, frequented by locals and tourists alike. The thing is, there's so much more that we would like to do, since we have this amazing opportunity of living on a different continent.

We would like to become fluent enough in German that we can readily converse with shopkeepers, students, families in our neighborhood and fellow concertgoers. We'd like to learn more about modern European thought, especially in the areas of politics and environmental policy. We'd like to know how people feel about the euro, the Olympics, and the blogosphere. I'm now glad to be quite aware of what young student composers and well-known Austrian composers are writing, and would also love to find out what's new in visual art and dance, what isn't old enough to be in a museum yet. Essentially, I hope that we end up interacting with Austrian people and culture on something deeper than a superficial level. I think that we've made a decent start, and will learn better how to do that during the next six months.

I'll leave you with some impressions of Christmas in Vienna:

~ WEIHNACHT IN WIEN ~
Advent is a big season in Austria. The city happily proclaims Christmas cheer far and wide. (As a Unitarian Universalist myself, I'm happy to report that other traditions are also openly celebrated during this time, as there was a large menorah up during Hanukkah, just a block away from Stephansdom.) Two dozen Weihnachtsmärkte pop up around the city, elaborate Christmas markets with vendors selling handmade art, clothing, jewelry, ornaments, and ocarinas. The seasonal drinks are glühwein and an assortment of punches - all cheerfully alcoholic, except for the gummi bear punch. (You know, for the kids!) Christmas pastries are in abundance as well - such as krapfen, an imposing hunk of deep-fried dough spread with jam or sprinkled with powdered sugar. Cotton candy is also available, and that segues nicely into the "non-food" section:

SCHAUMROLLE.

Now, Vienna is famous for its pastries, and rightfully so. I have enjoyed delicious confections at many a coffee shop and restaurant, including the best Tiramisu of my life. Likewise, I've found Austrian traditional cuisine to be quite tasty, even in unassuming dishes like Krautfleckerl (egg noodles with cabbage) or picked salads. But Vienna is a large city, large enough to contain some factories, and at one of these (or perhaps in Taiwan) they manufacture the SCHAUMROLLE. Have you ever taken a large bite of a cupcake, only to find that a large piece of the paper wrapped seemed to find its way into your mouth as well? Have you ever bit into a Ho-Ho and taken part of the light cardboard tray with it? Keep these delightful thoughts in mind for another moment. Have you ever opened up a Twinkie to examine the strange white substance within? No, it is not sugar - it's one of these mysteries of the modern world, a "food substance" which is 0% natural and 100% artificial.

Now, imagine a combination of these charming elements - an outside of stiff cardboard masquerading as pastry, and an inside of "white" flavored filling. Remember that they're made by a factory - untouched by human hands. You've got yourself a SCHAUMROLLE. But can you tell me this - why on earth do the Viennese sell (and presumably buy, and - I shudder to think - EAT) such monstrosities? In regular and jumbo sizes?

Perhaps the answer lies in this book. [No Problem with Santa Claus!] Merry Christmas, everyone!

Chappell gets his act together

2007-11-24T11:12:00.000+01:00

Here's a new post, finally! I apologize to all the readers out there for not writing anything for an entire month. Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans...

Things are great here! There's a lot to see and do, and I've been working really hard on composing. I finished a trio for alto flute, clarinet in A, and viola - a 2-minute piece following the arc of a single long melody line. It starts off pleasant in a quirky way, goes through a series of unpredictable twists, and ends up with the three instruments essentially arguing with each other. I think it's the best thing I've written all year - it definitely represents a breakthrough for me, as far as putting some new concepts into practice, and understanding more how to create a musical language which will be unique for each composition.

I've been here for over two months now, and many things are starting to feel quite familiar - finding my way around the city by U-Bahn or foot, speaking in German with shopkeepers and waitresses, cooking creatively with the foods that are available, even using the laundromats! (No more 10-euro washes, I found a cheaper place, and whenever I go there, I end up showing other customers how to use the machines! A far cry from the situation described in my September post...)

The main thing that's been going lately is Wien Modern, and it's been a dazzling array of concerts focusing on modern music after 1970. A highlight was the concert of 13 brief solo pieces for different instruments, plus a few folksongs arrangements, and culminating in the one piece which all the musicians performed together. Also the opening concert of music and film: one short film by Man Ray was shown three times with musical accompaniment by different composers, and there was a fascinating mix of ensemble pieces and short films, sometimes together, other times on their own. The most striking film was "Ferment" by director Tim MacMillan, a visually poetic journey across a city, presenting dozens of different scenes and hundreds of people, all frozen in a single moment. I also enjoyed a concert of free improvisation with theremin and other electronic sounds, a wild saxophone quartet by Olga Neuwirth, several orchestral concerts, and several documentary films about composers from Gustav Mahler to Frank Zappa.

Between composing, concerts, getting to know some of the other young composers + musicians, spending time with Rosalind, taking two trips outside the city, and applying for grad school, I've been rather busy! And I'm so excited about how things are going, I do feel like I'm making the most of this opportunity. As far as finding the time to write blog entries...I think the solution will be to write much shorter posts once or twice a week, relating specific anecdotes & discoveries, rather than trying to only do these longer ones. Until then...!

Peel me a grape, lay me an egg...

2007-10-28T22:32:00.000+01:00

Another full weekend - our second visit to an opera was expected to go very smoothly (I had purchased standing-room tickets online in advance), then looked like a disaster when we showed up in the evening (my purchase had been rejected because they had sold out of tickets already), we didn't expect to see it (and this was the last performance!), and then at the last minute there were 2 seats left, and the friendly clerk allowed us to buy them at a reduced rate, so we got to see the show after all - in seats, no less! It was The Cunning Little Vixen by Leos Janacek - the music is so charming, full of catchy tunes that stay in your head but you don't mind because they're so lovely. The production was excellent, with many interesting and dramatically effective choices by the director. On an opera stage, you don't expect to see the actors draw pictures on the walls, smash a dozen eggs, wash the floors and pour water all over the stage, and then mop it up (while singing an aria) - but it really grabs your attention. Plus there's a scene where each of the actors laid an egg. La Traviata it's not!

The most exciting development for me lately was meeting the other twenty or so composition students, a very international group, mainly between 25-30 years old but a few older and younger. Classes only began a few weeks ago here, and so this weekend saw the first of the monthly composition seminars, where we all come together to listen to and discuss new pieces. Six hours of intense musical discussion in German was quite challenging for me (I would estimate that I understood 50% of what was said), but of course also stimulating, and gave me some new insights. Most of all, I'm so glad that now I've started to make more personal connections with these other young composers, and I really look forward to sharing experiences and ideas with them as this year goes on. Although I was part of some wonderful personal and musical communities in Colorado, I haven't been around other composers often in the last three years, and I feel that it'll be so good for my development to get to know the students here, to discuss some of the challenges and discoveries that we're all going through, to share with and learn from each other.

The other big news is that my mother is coming to visit! We have many plans, and I'll probably see more museums and cultural attractions in the next week than I have in the last six weeks, which will be fantastic. Pictures and updates on the trio project to come next time...

Your input, please!

2007-10-24T17:31:00.000+02:00

After six weeks of composing, during which I finished two short pieces for Japanese koto and did an enormous amount of thinking about new perspectives on composition, I'm ready for the next project. This will be a series of miniatures for different trios. Each piece will focus on a specific musical aspect or two. For example:

- a piece for alto voice, alto flute, viola (the French word for viola is "alto") - exploring melody and sound-colors. The singer sings on neutral syllables ("ah", "oh", "ka", etc.)

- a piece for harpsichord, grand piano, and electric piano (preferably a Fender Rhodes) - the unfolding of a complex musical process at maximum speed.

I will probably write 5 or 6 trios altogether, and I thought it'd be really fun to involve you all as well. So I encourage you to post a comment here with your suggestion of a combination of three musicians (specific instruments or vocal types). You can also vote for your favorite in the poll to the left (which are choices for a more comical piece). When has a composer ever asked you what you wanted to hear?

- - a return to form - -

2007-10-19T23:18:00.000+02:00

- - - – – – — — — – – – - - -
- - - – – – — — — c h a p p e l l ! — — — – – – - - -
- - - – – – — — — – – – - - -
- - - – – – — — — a r e – y o u – o u t – t h e r e ? — — — – – – - - -
- - - – – – — — — – – – - - -
- - - – – – — — — w a k e – u p – a n d – w r i t e – u s
– a – n e w – b l o g – e n t r y ! ! ! — — — – – – - - -
- - - – – – — — — – – – - - -

I've been hearing it. This persistent little voice. It scolds me for letting so much time go by without writing a post.

- - - r e m e m b e r - y o u r - f r i e n d s ! - - -
– – – s h a r e – s t o r i e s – a n d – p i c t u r e s ! – – –
— — — D I S H — O U T — T H E — G O O D S ! ! ! — — —

Alright! It's time! I'm ready! Here we go!

It's been an action-packed two weeks: a trip to the woods, another composition lesson, finally getting internet installed!, Rosalind figuring out how to telecommute, making friends at the market and the taverns, the trials and tribulations of ancient heating appliances, culinary delights and disasters...

But let's start right off with another episode of...
THOSE CRAZY AMERICANS!
So every guidebook and nearly every individual we consulted about Vienna told us that the operas are great, and you can get super-cheap standing-room tickets for 1 euro. The website of Theater an der Wien substantiated this claim, so we headed for the show Wednesday night, amazed at the thought of seeing high-quality operatic spectacle for the price of a glass of Sturm. We did some things exactly right: leaving in time to arrive an hour early, buying an appealing-looking falafel dinner to go, heading straight for the ticket line. Everything else we did wrong. I had forgotten how to say "standing room", and Rosalind's here to tell you that little story:

* * * When we got to the theater we went up to a woman standing behind a booth to ask where we could get standing room tickets. Chappell asked, " Wo können wir kaufen.... ..... ... ....standing room?" She kindly replied in English, "you buy the tickets over there" and pointed us to a line of people. As Chappell waited in line, I decided that it would be helpful to know the word for standing room for when we got to the front of the line and asked to buy tickets. I went back to the helpful woman and said in my immaculate German, "Was ist die frage für "standing room?" She didn't blink, and said "Stehplätz. You want two? Zwei." "Danke." I said, and went to relay the very important word to Chappell. I didn't realize until I thought about it the next day that what I had asked was "what is the question for standing room?" * * *

When we reached the front of the line, the ticket-dispensing matron unflinchingly told us that the tickets would cost 7 euros apiece. (Now, that's still a good deal, but it also comes as a surprise when you expected it to be one-seventh the cost.) "Aber die website sagt..." - and just as I ran out of words for my sentence (yes, this happens a lot) she repeated that it would be 7 euros each. So we stopped complaining and bought the tickets. Then we went across the street to the public market area, and most of the vendors and restaurants were closed, so we found a table and chairs in an quiet spot. We had gotten as far as unwrapping the foil on the beckoning falafel sandwiches, when a waitress from one of the open restaurants walked over. With probably the coldest stare I've ever received in my life, this is what she said to us:

"Nein."

You didn't need to know a word of German to know what she was saying. There was no room for questions, asking for advice, maybe even ordering a drink from her - her word was the beginning and the end of our discussion. She continued the stare until we silently packed up and took our dinner elsewhere. The problem was, there was nowhere else to take it. We had bought food at this market, but there was nowhere in the market we could sit unless we bought more food from a restaurant. (Very sneaky.) We walked around looking for options, but eventually just stood and ate our falafels in the cold (and they were cold too, by this point). Standing through dinner, and then standing through an opera - a brilliant combination.

Back at the opera house, the ushers were friendly (and were willing to speak more than one word to us) and directed us up to the ceiling, where the best Stehplätz had by now all been taken (thanks to our long detour for a standing dinner), and all that was left was directly above stage right. If it had been a synchronized-swimming performance, we would have been thrilled with the bird's-eye view. As it was, we could see most of the action, except for when everyone stood downstage, and with the scenery in the way, we could only see their shoes.

Alright alright alright - I'm complaining about the view from cheap opera tickets, and not having a table when we purchased from a small vendor - I should really stop complaining, and recognize that you get what you pay for. Those crazy Americans, won't they ever learn?

The performance was quite good that night. The opera was "Dead Man Walking", a recent work by Jake Heggie. For us, it was more like tired people standing.

--

We're definitely looking forward to more shows though - we agree that a combination of a seated dinner and a standing opera would be acceptable. And I'm beside myself with excitement for Wien Modern, a month-long festival of music by contemporary composers, coupled with dance, film, arts, and demonstrations of unbelievable mechanical instruments (such as a robotic string quartet)!

The markets here are fantastic. Rosalind has discovered a perk of being a frequent customer of the same vendor - they throw in a complimentary kiwi or fig! Here's a pic of the Naschmarkt, with some seriously exotic fruit for sale:

Here's a jackfruit so big it could swallow up a watermelon:

In another corner of town, here's a cute little pepper plant, and another with somewhat berry-like protrusions:

And as promised, here I am with the giant teacup.

There's much more I'd like to share, but it'll have to wait for another post.

— — — h o w — s o o n ? — — —

Well, now that we finally have internet access at home, I'll get back on my schedule of a long post on Friday, and one or two shorter posts during the week. So until then - tschüss!

Reunion!

2007-10-07T15:26:00.000+02:00

After two long months apart, Rosalind has now joined me here in Vienna! This should explain clearly enough why I haven't written a post in over a week...=) Plus there's the sudden inconvenience of no longer being able to use free wireless internet from my apartment. That's the problem when you're not paying for internet - it could disappear any minute, and sometimes does. So when we get a proper plan set up for the apartment, I'll be online more regularly - and I'll post some of the culturally enlightening photos that I've been collecting, such as "ALF: Null Problemo mit dem Weihnachstmann" and "Chappell in Front of a Gigantic Teacup".

Yesterday Rosalind and I visited the Naschmarkt, which is one of a few very large open-air markets in the city. I had a scrumptious lunch of Pumpkin Lasagna and she sampled the Goulash, then we wandered around to check out the quite-international vendors (there were several Indian, Chinese, and general Asian grocery stores and stalls, plus the classic Austrian Käseland - land of cheese.) Then we realized that the Lange Nacht der Museen was happening - from 6pm to 1am, over eighty museums in Vienna were open, and a single ticket got you into all of them! - so of course we checked that out. Not surprisingly, we found our way to the Museum of Ancient Musical Instruments, which I will have to go back and spend more time at later...It seemed like there were far more Viennese than tourists out all night, and we suspect that it's a really good way for people to experience their own city. I remember various festivals at American cities, especially First Night on the 1st of January, and First Fridays in Denver, when galleries and museums and live music are all happening all at once.
I think that we all need reminders like that - when you live in a city, you might feel like the cultural attractions are always there, and you could go now or later - and myself anyway, I don't end up going nearly as often as I'd like to. But if it's a special night, and the whole town is out for a party...

Thanks for all of your emails and comments so far - I'll write more soon!

The real adventure begins

2007-09-29T12:39:00.000+02:00

It's been quite a week here! I spent all of Monday with Adam, an old friend from Eastman who's also here to study with Chaya this year. While sampling the local falafel (very tasty), walking along the Donau canal, and roaming the streets in search of cheap furniture stores, we discussed everything we could think of related to being a young composer. What have you been writing, what have you been listening to, what have you learned in the last few years, what are you hopes for the future, how do we fit into the larger world of classical music, etc. etc...Now, Adam went from Eastman straight to Harvard, and has never been a non-student; whereas I've spent the last five years out of school. He's nearly finished with his Ph. D, and is very well-connected to the world of contemporary music; I haven't begun a Masters Degree yet, and I'm not as well-connected, but I have learned a tremendous amount from being out in the world. It will be fascinating to see what it's like this year for me to jump back in to the contemporary-music scene, as a student, composer, and listener - and to see in what ways my perspectives on what we're doing, and why we're doing it, may be unique.

THOSE CRAZY AMERICANS!
Adam is living with two Austrian roommates - when I walked in his apartment and was introduced to one of them, he responded with "It's the American invasion!" They're both great guys, and very interested in helping Adam improve his German, plus in improving their own English. (At one point I said that the computer battery was dead, and he laughed about that - "In German, we say the battery is empty, and it sounds really funny to say "es ist tot." It is funny, when you think about it - if a battery can die, then by recharging it we "bring it back to life", and afterwards we should say "the battery is alive!")

I spent the following three days composing, working on a piece for Japanese koto. I got the first movement finished up (which took two weeks altogether) and a sketch for the second movement as well (which took one day). I chose descriptive Japanese titles: "Kazenihirugaeru" (fluttering in the wind) & "Kazenooto" (the voice of the wind), and the music came out sounding like a blend of Japanese and Chappellese, using some traditional elements (the choice of scale, harmony, bending strings and other koto-playing techniques), and some more idiosyncratic elements (rhythmic eccentricities, variations in texture, wild use of glissandos.) I felt that I had developed the music just about as far as I could, given the concepts I had in mind, and was both looking forward to and anxious about taking it to my first composition lesson - what would she say? How could the piece be improved? What new concepts could I start thinking about in order to become a better composer?

Friday morning I had my first lesson with Chaya Czernowin. I arrived fifteen minutes early and waited on a park bench outside. There's a line in a song by Phish - "With your past and your future precisely divided" - and I've never felt that so concretely before. My past consists of a life rich in experiences personal and musical, with steadily growing abilities and recognition as a composer and performer. And yet, I've known that something was missing. I've known that I haven't begun to realize my full potential as a composer. I need guidance in this kind of artistic development. I need to be challenged and inspired by some of the brightest musical minds of our time, if I am to really work towards the future that I dream of.

So I hope you see just how high my expectations are for these lessons. And Chaya met and exceeded them in all counts, in our first lesson alone. She scrutinized what I had written, and heard the difference between what I was trying to do and what I had accomplished. She had me talk about my intentions with this piece, and asked some extremely good (and difficult) questions. We discussed the process of writing, and different ways that ideas can be shaped and developed, and she provided me with some tremendously valuable insights, such as: trusting your intuition about what sounds right (which I do) is not the same thing as being free from inherited conventions and personal habits (which I aspire to).

I feel like I'm in exactly the right place at the right time now - I feel that dropping everything and moving to Vienna, as crazy as it is, was indeed just the right thing to do. I will work very hard this year, and hope to grow a lot artistically - and the future is bright, so bright...

The language of babies...

2007-09-26T16:39:00.000+02:00

I was out exploring some new streets today, partly looking in vain for a laundromat that charges less than 10 euros for a single load. I don't think there's any place cheaper to be found - all of the other "Putzerei" are the sort where you drop your clothes off and come back the next day, paying even more scandalous prices such as 4 euros to clean a necktie. But I did discover some cool new stores, and some pretty avenues, and the first American-size supermarket I've seen yet (big enough that you can purchase childrens' bicycles there, and it has its own sit-down cafeteria-style restaurant).

Much more importantly, I saw three particularly charming instances of young child behavior/good parenting. At aforementioned supermarket, there was a 5-year old riding in the shopping cart while his grandmother sang songs to him, clearly relishing their time together. As I passed a storefront on the street, I noticed that the display window was empty, except for a chair and a 1-year old. He looked at me - I looked at him and smiled - he smiled back and laughed at his new friend. The language of babies is universal.

And while walking home, a mother answered the cellphone ringing in her pocket, then handed it to her little boy, who proceeded to have an extremely loud conversation with somebody (real or imaginary, I couldn't guess). It was clear to me that the child was operating on the quite logical principle that if someone is standing far away from you, you need to shout at them in order to be heard - right? So if the person on the other end of the phone is standing in, say, another part of town altogether, then naturally you must use all the vocal volume you can muster if you want them to hear you.

His mother smiled and indulged him. I'm so glad she did.

Not an essay - just pretty pictures!

2007-09-21T17:24:00.000+02:00

Grüss Gott! I'm feeling more and more like an actual resident all the time. I've ridden the U-Bahn (subway) several times, gotten lost in the city center, been to the post office, established a bank account, gone shopping for books (mainly English, but also some comical German finds that are hard to believe - more on that soon, I promise...), and purchased food at all the grocery stores within a five-block radius, which happens to be about ten or so. I've met with my teacher (just for coffee, our first lesson will be next week) and one of the composition students here, both very friendly.

Apart from all the excursions, I've been working on writing a new piece for Japanese koto, listening to and studying some music, and so on. This weekend I'll go to my first concerts here, one of 11th century music and the other of 21st - rather the full spectrum, I should say!

If you're dying to see the beautiful palaces of Vienna, the majestic cathedrals and the houses where Mozart lived, I hear you! I haven't gotten to any of it myself yet, though I certainly will. You can get previews of all that here. But I have taken some shots of interesting sights. Here's a floral display where the "canvases" hold silhouettes of famous Viennese buildings:

Classy. Here's the music school that I'm not attending - but it's where my composition teacher is employed, and I hope to get to know many of the students:

I think it wins the award for "World's Yellowest Conservatory". And here's an unusual way in which the name of Johann Strauss, Waltz King, lives on in women's fashion:

Here's a little evidence that Vienna, in addition to being a grand old city, is also a modern and international city:

An Oriental fleamarket on the street named for a 19th-century German philosopher. Finally, wouldn't you love it if park signs in America, rather than the blasé "Dogs Allowed On Leash", were like this:

DOGZONE.
Thanks for all of your emails and comments! I'm always glad to hear from each of you. Until next time,
-chappell =)

A short essay about composers

2007-09-21T17:04:00.000+02:00

Quite by chance, I came across a thriving worldwide network called Yahoo! Answers. Someone had recently posed a question with an interesting premise:
"How do you think the great classical composers would have fared these days?"

I started to write a response, realized that it would take quite a while to express my thoughts fully, and stayed up long into the night to finish it. Two days later, the answerer chose my response as the best one (scoring me ten points, and bringing me that much closer to attaining Level 2 status - some people take this Q&A thing very, very seriously...)

I thought that all of you might like to read my answer as well, so here it is:

Elaine C has given a well-thought-out and imaginative take on how some of the well-known composers might live and work, given what we know of their personalities. I have the position of being a living composer of "classical" music in the modern age, and find that I must put forth two additional questions - "How did the great composers fare in their own days?" and "How do composers of today fare?"

In their own days, those who we now recognize as the masters enjoyed quite varying degrees of fame and success. Some were much more famous for their performing or conducting than for their composing (Bach, Bruckner and Mahler among them). Some were quite well-known, and audiences were curious to hear what new symphonies they'd written (consider Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms) - but still, no one cared when their birthdays were! No one organized music festivals in their honor or named music schools after them. Others never gained any sort of fame in their lifetime (Zelenka, Schubert, and Webern are the prime examples).

We must remember that composers have quite rarely had it as cushy as we might imagine. If Mozart showed up today to cash in on the music he wrote in the 18th century, he would be swimming in royalties from millions upon millions of concert tickets, scores and recordings - but in his day, there were no recordings to sell, and he was lucky if he had fifty performances during one year (nearly all of which he would have organized himself), and his income from the sale of sheet music to publishers wasn't even enough to live on.

(As an amusing aside, I must admit that a precious few composers *did* have it pretty cushy - Haydn seemed quite happy working for the Austrian prince and writing hundreds of pieces for his own talented orchestra and chamber musicians to perform. Liszt had the ear of the world, and plenty of money from his concert tours, but was known more for his phenomenal skill as a performer than his considerable but uneven skill as a composer. And Wagner...well, Wagner created his own universe in life as well as theatre - you can dream as big as you want when you have a King footing the bill.)

On to the second question - "How do composers of today fare?" Composers of today have the unique and lamentable position of essentially "competing" with not only other composers of today, but the most famous - and dearly beloved - composers of the past 500 years. This is an absolutely new situation! Prior to 1915 or so, all audiences were both interested in what composers of their day were doing, and what composers of earlier generations had written. People were curious about what Brahms's next symphony would sound like, and about Wagner's new opera which had sparked so many rumors - there was a very healthy interest in "Modern Music" of the time.

Compare this to the situation of today, where the audience for classical concerts appears to be dwindling, and the vast majority of that audience would be perfectly happy hearing only music written before they were born. Even among young musicians, in conservatories and on concert stages worldwide, those who frequently bring their talents to modern works (not just Stravinsky and Bartok, but composers who are writing pieces in 2007!) are a minority. An important minority, and much-valued by composers, but a minority.

Here is the point that I'm trying to make: What if there ARE great composers in our midst - AND WE DON'T EVEN KNOW IT? Do we really believe that the canon of classical masterworks extends only up until Copland's Appalachian Spring (1944) and then stops? Have we put the compositional titans on such a high pedestal that we don't realize that if Beethoven were alive in 2007, he would not be writing *those* nine symphonies, but he would be writing nine different symphonies of what we now label "Modern Music" - which the fans of modern music would rave about, but the rest of the public would probably not ever get to hear, because modern music is treated as its own category, separate from "Classical Music" - and performances and recordings of modern music are truly harder to come by.

As a living composer, and a thoroughly dedicated lover of ALL music, I can honestly say that yes, in my opinon, there ARE great composers active today. (To name only a few: Gyorgy Kurtag, Veljo Tormis, Brian Ferneyhough, Chaya Czernowin.) And I believe that many of them WOULD be enjoyed by a wide audience, even with their modern style and unfamiliar innovations, if that audience simply had the fair opportunity to hear them. Living composers have thousands of dedicated fans, but will probably never reach millions of people - that is, unless something in the the system that we call the classical music business is changed.

And I hope to be part of that change. If you've read my tirade and you think there might be something to it, please let me know - visit my website (www.chappellkingsland.com), read my blog, send me an email. If you disagree with my conclusions and want to debate, I'm happy to listen - any dialogue is welcome, as long as it's sincere.

Run-in at the laundromat

2007-09-18T23:15:00.000+02:00

You guessed it - it's time for another episode of:
THOSE CRAZY AMERICANS!

So, just like someone who's never been inside an Austrian laundromat, I pulled my big bag of dirties into the place and headed for an open washing machine. There are coin slots clearly visible, and it's a self-serve laundromat, right? The manager (whom I'd mistaken for just another customer) immediately knew that she was dealing with a Dummkopf. First she reprimands me for not saying hello (I had gotten used to letting the other person initiate a greeting, since it's not expected in all situations here!), and then she tells me that I have to weigh my dirty clothes on the scale.

"Of course!" you all are thinking. "Why would anyone forget to weigh their clothes on the scale when they enter a laundromat!"

Well, if you had been there to give me advice, I would gladly have taken it, rather than continue to be a source of aggravation to the manager. Anyway, I duly weighed my load (7 kilos - for those of you who don't know metric, that's 41.608 / root 7.3 pounds). Then she told me I could squeeze it into a 6-kilo washer - fine, that's my style anyway - and that it'd cost 10 euros. (I'll give you the simple calculation for that one - 10 euros is $13.90. That seems a lot of cash for one stinking load of wash and dry.) But I had read in the guidebooks that it cost a lot in Vienna, so I paid her.

Then she led me to the machine and showed me how to get started, and which tokens go in which slot (just like at Chuck E. Cheese's, you can't put real coins in the machines, you have to trade in your money for weird play-coins here), and she gave me a cup of detergent. I was so grateful for her now-freely-offered help that I didn't mention that I'd brought my own detergent.

I settled down with my computer and did some reading and writing while the clothes did some sudsing and swimming. And then what? Of course, I managed to screw things up again.

My logic was impeccable. We had put three gold tokens into the washer, and since I had two silver tokens left, I would have to put them both into the dryer to start it. Right? Here's where my logic came crashing down (which seems to happen all the time...) Insert wet clothes, insert two silver coins - voila! one half-rotation, and then the dryer stops. I gently tap the machine when she's not looking, and it's still stopped. So I go over and interrupt her work to say timidly that "Ich habe die zwei geputzt, aber es geht nichts." (I didn't, and still don't, know the German word for play-money token, so I just left the noun out of the sentence entirely.) She understood perfectly though - "Zwei?!?! Du solltest nur eins benutzen!!!"

Those crazy Americans! So I had to buy another two silver tokens from her (fortunately, these only cost 1 euro for the pair - BTW, how can washing cost 9 and drying only cost 1? Does that surprise anyone else?) - and here's the real surprise: do you know how the machines we use in America are sometimes called "spin dryers"? Well, here in this Viennese laundromat, there's one machine that spins, and another one that dries with heat, and you must use both. She came over to correct me after I loaded the spinner improperly ("No, no, not like that, like this! Can't you read?" - as she points to the 5 or 6 lines of directions printed on the machine. I swear to you that's what she said, though I would have thought that by this point, she would actually expect that my reading abilities would be limited, which they are.)

Well - at least this story has a happy ending. I put in the requisite single token for the spinner, and it did its thing; I transferred the clothes to the heat-dryer, and it did its thing; I put the cleanies in my big bag and left, being sure to initiate a pleasant goodbye this time - "Danke schön!" (Many thanks!)

"Bitte, auf wiedersehen!" came the reply. ("Sure thing, see you next time!") If the owner had been rolling her eyes or less-than-genuine at this point, I would have imagined her thinking "What a dummkopf - but I'll still take his money." But that's not the impression I was left with. She may have been, at all stages of the procedure, unable to believe that I had not walked in the door already knowing the intimacies of Austrian-laundromat customs and machinery; she may have spoken impatiently a few times; but she did offer me plenty of help, and I think she knows that if I come back I'll remember exactly what to do. So I take her last remark as it sounds - see you next time. And I like the sound of that.

Wilkommen!

2007-09-14T11:52:00.000+02:00

Nine hours in the air, 4427.28 miles door-to-door, and here I am at my new home in old Vienna! I have a lovely spacious apartment, situated in the northwest corner of the city, quite far from the tourist zones. Other districts (there are 23 of them) boast of imposing palaces and ancient cathedrals; miniature museums in the flats where world-famous composers and psychoanalysts used to live; Spanish riding schools and Viennese choirboys. But the streets in my neighborhood contain nondescript five-story apartment buildings, fruit and vegetable stands, car mechanics, a few Austrian and Indian restaurants, the ubiquitous Billa supermarkets, and an assortment of specialty shops, crowded into narrow one-way streets with cars parked on both sides. This is not an area where one is confronted by a thousand years of history, where the grandeur of the defunct Habsburg empire still lingers in the air; this is simply a nice area where people live. And that's why it's just right for me.

Let's step back for a moment - why have I come to Vienna? The answer is simple: to compose music. There are so many reasons why this will be an exciting and life-enriching year, and I am keeping an open mind, as I really have no idea how living in this city will inspire, challenge, and maybe even change me. I am here to make a fresh start, to experience life on a different continent, to give myself one year without the pressures of earning a steady income. However, the most important reasons are to take lessons with Chaya Czernowin, a composer whom I greatly admire, and to spend a lot of time writing music.

I do not know what the music I write this year will be like. I can tell you that during the past twelve years, I've written, arranged, rehearsed, organized, conducted, performed, and recorded hundreds upon hundreds of pieces, ranging from piano solos to choral/orchestral settings of poetry, from rock arrangements for string sextet to jazz arrangements for Japanese instruments. I've written music that is traditional, experimental, quietly ecstatic, aggressive, catchy, lyrical, and abstract. But the great thing is that each time I begin work on a new piece, the possibilities are limitless. I love the sense of following the musical material where it wants to go.

I completely identify with this quote from modern German composer Helmut Lachenmann: "Woe to the composer who achieves what he 'wants', for he will be lost! A composer has to be puzzled, disturbed, transcended, perhaps even terrified by the in-dwelling dynamism of the things he is trying to get under control."
(When he says "trying to get under control", he might mean the very literal act of needing to write all the notes down on paper - it's fine to hear amazing music swirling around in your head, but you're not much of a composer if you don't manage to get it down so that someone can play it!)

This blog will chronicle my year in Vienna: the cultural discoveries, the music that I write, my attempts at learning the German language, my developing thoughts on the nature of music, the adventures of Chappell and Rosalind in Europe. (The lovely and talented Miss Rosalind will arrive in three weeks!) My plan is to add a long post each Friday and shorter posts during the week, peppered with photos and links.

And finally, a few pop-culture observations:
CRAZY AUSTRIAN TV!
There are six TV channels here. Channel 1 shows Austrian news programs and reruns of American sitcoms. "Malcolm Mittendrin" (Malcolm in the Middle) is a fine show, but I'm truly surprised at the choice of "Married With Children" - under the apt but strange translation of "Eine Schrecklich Nette Familie" (A Terrible Nice Family). At least Al Bundy is a little less painful to watch when he speaks in German. The news had - I swear this is true - a feature on newly-designed bathrooms around Vienna, in upscale hotels and restaurants, with a noted architectural critic interviewed in a wall-to-wall mirrored stall. Then came a truly vapid segment with pop-culture reporters in New York City, with such perceptive insights as "Sex and the City was filmed at cafes that looked something like this one" and "The meat-packing district is the hot new place to live". If there's anything valuable to learn from American TV (and there is! once in a while, at least!), it seems that Austrian TV hasn't found it yet.

THOSE CRAZY AMERICANS!
I narrowly escaped a seriously embarrassing situation at the Billa yesterday. There's a fiendish system of "Pay 1 Euro to use the Shopping Cart", as all the carts are chained together until you put a coin in. (Like the luggage carts at some airports.) After paying the obligatory euro, I realized that I had put it in the wrong slot, and I was pushing two carts which were chained together, which would make for an awfully cumbersome trip around the store. A minute of looking around furtively, hoping that the ghost of Beethoven wasn't around to laugh at this foolish American, and I figured out the system - when you chain a cart back in, the euro pops out! - and I got myself one cart instead.

SPRECHEN SIE ENGLISCH?
Okay - several people told me that everyone in Vienna would speak English. And I didn't believe it, not entirely. Well, I was right! There are people who speak English, and people who don't. I'm in a funny situation, because I do know the basics of German pretty well, but my vocabulary isn't anywhere near sufficient, so that at a store, I can generally say about 80% of what I'm trying to say - but the missing 20% is what's actually important, such as the words that mean "blank journal" or "dish-drying rack". I'm managing okay so far, but I'm really going to make it a priority to learn the language better. I have had one entirely successful short conversation in German, with a nice old lady on the subway, and that gives me hope.

I am so encouraged by knowing that I have many friends who are looking forward to reading about my journey, and I hope that you will post comments with your thoughts, and send me emails with news from your lives as well. Tschuss! (Goodbye!)