The Horror of Sound

In preparation for Halloween I have been watching a lot of cult horror films (Suspiria, Dead Alive, Evil Dead, etc.) and have been noticing that absent the sound track, the movies wouldn't be nearly as frightening. I remember being little and when a scary part of a movie was about to come on I would always cover my ears instead of my eyes. It's amazing how sound can provoke certain emotions. Is it a societal code that has trained us to know what "eerie" or "scary" is suppose to sound like? Why do we associate dissonant sound with unpleasant emotions and major chords with positive words like "happy"? When was it that human nature began to label it's soundtrack with qualities like that?

Since medieval times people have related the sound of the tritone to the devil, but are we conditioned to associate sounds with emotions? Is it something we are innately born with or a product of our society? I guess all I can say is that for everyone who is a wimp, like me, covering your ears when the movie gets too scary is a great way to feel a little more comfortable with watching horror films.

Operation Opera

Last month I went to see the Portland Opera's production of Pagliacci and Carmina Burana, and as I stood in line waiting to purchase student/senior rush tickets, I was sincerely shocked by the audience that had gathered to attend this performance. There were middle-aged regular opera-goers, some children running around in little dresses, and a a line of around 200 students and senior (over 65) opera enthusiasts that wrapped around the corner of the block! There is a seat for everyone at the opera; a good production can move people of all different ages because the power of the music transcends borders of age and touches on something deeper inside all of us; bringing us all together to laugh and cry and listen.

The innovative approach Robert Lepage is taking in directing Richard Wagner's 16 hour epic opera the "Ring" cycle, will probably succeed in bringing together an even more diverse audience than the one I shared my experience with a few days ago. Is opera a genre restricted to a select few with some type of musical knowledge, or is it a more universally accepting form of art based on themes that resonate within everybody? Either way, by making something flashy and different you can't help but grab people's attention Intentionally or not, Lepage has created something that will most likely expose people to opera and to Wagner's music who may have other wise remained eternally despondent. The 24-stage-length planks that move and shift to form rivers and mountains, and the video projections that make dancers hung on wires look like mermaids swimming in water, among other visually captivating techniques will spike the interest of more than just the opera enthusiast.

Just a little 12 tone matrix

 12-tone matrix for Weber’s “Wie bin ich froh, No.1 Op. 25”

 

  Io         I11         I8           I10         I9          I6           I3          I7           I2          I5           I4           I1

F#	F	D	E	Eb	C	A	C#	G#	B	Bb	G
G	F#	Eb	F	E	C#	Bb	D	A	C	B	G#
Bb	A	F#	G#	G	E	C#	F	C	Eb	D	B
G#	G	E	F#	F	D	B	Eb	Bb	C#	C	A
A	G#	F	G	F#	Eb	C	F	B	E	Eb	Bb
C	B	G#	Bb	A	F#	Eb	G	D	F	E	C#
Eb	D	B	C#	C	A	F#	Bb	F	G#	G	E
B	Bb	G	A	G#	F	D	F#	C#	E	Eb	C
E	Eb	C	D	C#	Bb	G	B	F#	A	G#	F
C#	C	A	B	Bb	G	E	G#	Eb	F#	F	D
D	C#	Bb	C	B	G#	F	A	E	G	F#	Eb
F	E	C#	Eb	D	B	G#	C	G	Bb	A	F#

RI                       

In “Wie bin ich froh”, Webern uses 12-tone composition to add structure to his piece. The first tone row that appears in the piece is: F#,F,D,E,Eb,C,A,C#,G#,B,Bb,G; this prime form appears many times

The Box Conductor

Devin Smith put down his book and looked at the digital clock sitting next to the toaster on his kitchen counter. There was a slight glare from the afternoon sun shining through his small window but he was still able to make out the red numbers that flashed 3:30pm. He had half an hour to prepare before his student would hopefully show up. Devin hated teaching beginners, but to make ends meet he had conformed to enduring a subtle boredom and frustration for the 45 minutes until the clock would flash 4.45pm. Feeling overwhelmed by the idea of having to play chords to accompany the child as he fumbled through “Mary had a little lamb” again, he leaned back in his chair and looked over at the piano. ‘Maybe if I teach “Mary had a little lamb” enough times I could buy a new piano’, he thought to himself. He started trying to calculate how many times it would take playing through the annoying tune before he could save up enough money, but the very notion of the repeated melody haunting the next few years of his life began to torment him, and he quickly abandoned the thought. What really bothered him was that half the time, the kids didn’t even want to learn the stupid song. A large number of his students just came because their parents forced them to and when they would fake sick, the parents wouldn’t even bother calling to let him know. So he would sit in his kitchen drinking instant coffee, leaning back in his chair; trying to anticipate the sound of his doorbell, or the tri-tone of doom as he had come to think of it.

It wasn’t always such an exercise in futility. There were those rare times when he could feel the joy leaking out of his pupil with an unabashed excitement, when for a few brief instants the students’ eyes would light up, and the emotion would be expressed in sound; that, that made a million Mary had a little lambs worth it. Devin looked at the dust collecting on the legs of his old piano and remembered the first time he had felt that same sentiment. He closed his eyes and pictured himself as a five-year-old boy running through his grandparents’ apartment. His grandfather picked him up and placed him on top of a cardboard box in front of their old black-and-white television. He handed Devin a plastic knife and then went over to the tele and pressed play on the VCR. His grandfather didn’t say anything, he was mostly a silent type, but just watched as the boy was absorbed in the images of the symphony concert he had recorded a few nights before. Devin stood on that cardboard box directing Mozart’s second opera with various forms of plastic cutlery for hours until his parents dragged him away kicking and screaming.

A Brief Note About Myself...

 “Lives cross lives idling at stoplights” –Lawrence Ferlinghetti  

My grandfather is a gay Buddhist photographer who’s wife died from eating hemlock two years after she gave birth to my mother and her twin brother. My grandmother was raised by catholic nuns; she met my grandfather when they were 13 and still sees his ghost walking around their apartment. My parents are atheists who met in the south of France and moved to San Francisco to go to art school together. I’m not sure who I am or who I have been or who I want to be. I once counted 20 different selves and they had nothing in common. There are people you meet that change you so profoundly that you are not the same after: I am the people that I have met. This is a story about them. A story about invisible people. A story about the ways in which communication, dialogue, and human interactions are twisted to form situations and circumstances that would be impossible if they did not exist. When we first learn to write in grade school we’re told that every story has a beginning middle and end but there is an endless sea of a million things that don't have a name and don't wear a watch that separate us.

I cried and kicked and screamed my way across the Atlantic. My piano teacher was a senile old woman plagued with emphysema and the day she tripped over the cord of her oxygen tank during our recital she retired and gave me her entire record collection. Then I met a bunch of high school dropouts at the local coffee shop and started writing. I think those have been the most significant events up to now.