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...
29 September 2007
26 September 2007
The language of babies...
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.
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.
21 September 2007
Not an essay - just pretty pictures!
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 =)
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
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.
"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.
18 September 2007
Run-in at the laundromat
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.
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.
14 September 2007
Wilkommen!
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!)
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!)
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