Null problemo!

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

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...

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!

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 - -

- - - – – – — — — – – – - - -
- - - – – – — — — 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!

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

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...