The Ukulele Orchestra of GB - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

In honor of editing my Morricone research paper, I am posting this awesomely hilarious video that is scarily true to the original theme.

What's Opera, Doc?

After the storm

I survived the conference, did well in the workshop, met people from prospective PhD programs, and hung out with my old mentor from Butler. All in all it was a good weekend.

The reason for this post, however, is to say that in a feat or brilliance this morning I decided to make my imitative duo project based on a hymn melody. Loosely, but based on one none-the-less. I think that should make putting it together a bit easier to handle. Only time will tell on that one I suppose.

The Point

A sonata is a linear journey of tonal realization, onto which might be mapped any number of concrete metaphors of human experience. Since a central component of the sonata genre is its built-in teleological drive--pushing forward to accomplish a generically predetermined goal--the sonata invites an interpretation as a musically narrative genre. A sonata dramatizes a purely musical plot that has a beginning (P, the place from where it sets out with a specific tonal-rhetorical aim in mind), a middle (including a set of diverse musical adventures), and a generic conclusion of resolution and confirmation (the ESC and the subsequent music). It is in the nature of the sonata to set up a quest narrative. In addition to being required to display (or at least refer to) the interior, multitextured norms of sonata practice, a sonata must realize those norms coherently, in such a way as to move toward and secure the ESC and generic closure. This is a narrative that may be understood in exclusively music terms. In interpreting it, the present-day analyst need not appeal to nonmusical motivations. Still, the music of the period was widely perceived as having a human basis, whether in the emotions, in the intellect, in other schemes of representation or implication, or in various combinations of these.

A sonata is a metaphorical representation of a perfect human action. It is a narrative "action" because it drives through a cevtored sequence of energized events toward a clearly determined, graspable goal, the ESC. It is "perfect" because (unless artificially blocked from achieving the goal) it typically accomplishes the task elegantly, proportionally, and completely. It is "human" primarily within eighteenth-century European conceptions of humanness.

Darcy, Warren and James Hepokoski. 2006. Elements of Sonata Theory. New York City, New York: Oxford University Press. pp 251-252.

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I think I can make a pretty strong argument for a sonata progression of events in the movies, particularly in the shaping provided by Morricone's score. Now all I need to do is attempt to formulate my argument ...

Splatterhouse for Arcade (Namco 1988)/Turbografx-16 (NEC 1990)

This little blurb never made it to the StaticMultimedia.com Halloween feature, so I thought I'd stick it here.




This really is the perfect Halloween game. A bloody sidescroller, Splatterhouse puts you in the shoes of Rick, a masked Jason-like psycho searching through a mansion for his girlfriend. As the game progresses you’ll find yourself facing some of the most twisted and grotesque creatures ever seen in a video game (at least back in 1990). Corpses fall from the ceiling, chained bodies spew green vomit, giant slugs burst out of chests, and “living” monsters attack you from behind.

Bosses include The Body Eater, The Biggyman, Evil Cross (from the arcade version, better known as Evil Sleep & the Nightmares in the Turbografx-16 Port), and Hell Chaos. You’ll be okay, though, because you are well-armed with shotguns, harpoons, cleavers, wrenches, knives, and two-by-fours. Each room offers a new task, and there are many shocks and scares. The graphics are surprisingly good, and the background music is perfect. Worth noting are the game’s two sequels, Splatterhouse 2 & 3, on the Sega Genesis. This was also the first game to ever have a parental advisory disclaimer when released in arcades in 1988, four years before Mortal Kombat.

The Official PhD Program List

Here it is:
- University of Chicago
- University of California, Santa Barbara
- Northwestern University
- University of Texas, Austin
- University of Iowa
- University of Michigan

All in theory, naturally. I decided to scrap the musicology idea. After meeting professors at Northwestern and UChicago I know that theory is the right place for me.

GRE

I just signed up for the GRE ... again. November 1st, 2007, 9:00am at the University of Toledo campus. Total doom. But I need a higher score than my last one if I'm going to have a shot at any PhD programs. My GPA from Butler isn't that great, and I'm sure my writing samples won't hold a torch to other ones. That and I've never been published. Nor do I have non-TA teaching experience. I feel like I'm not cut out for PhD studies yet ... but I'm going for it anyway.

Oh, and the whole 18 chapters in 18 days thing didn't really work. I'm only a few chapters further to my goal, with about a month and a half to go. With PhD apps to fill out, papers to revise, a thesis to write, and all of that other being-in-three-classes-and-being-a-TA stuff.

I need to get cracking.

I still have 18 of 18 chapters left to read ...

Because I am a horrible procrastinator. But I am reading one chapter a day over the next 18 days and I'm getting this accomplished. I tried to make a ticker to motivate myself but I can't find one. So I'm posting here.

Tonight I re-read chapter 1. Tomorrow, ch. 2. We'll see how this goes.

Just about the coolest thing ever

When I get some free time I think I may write a musicological paper on The Muppet Show. How cool would that be?

Grad School, Year 2

It is official; I am teaching Aural Skills 1 & 2 again next year. I though I would be disappointed by this, but it is actually pretty comforting. I get to hone my skills and hopefully help this students out much more than my students last year. Bigger and better and whatnot.

As far as the GSWP goes, we received an email from Hepokoski/Darcy the other day containing to sample analyses and info regarding what we will be doing and what pieces we will be studying. I guess we have to have the analyses completed in advance ... that will be fun.

1. Beethoven, Piano Trio in C Minor, op. 1 no. 3, first movement
2. Haydn, Symphony No. 94 in G (“Surprise”), first movement
3. Schubert, Piano Sonata in B-flat, D. 960, first movement

I love that Schubert piece.

Snack Attack! Charles Ives and Bite-Sized Transcendentalism

My professor enjoyed the introduction I wrote up for this paper, so I thought I would share it here. I am currently revising it, in hopes of using it for doctoral apps and possibly a publication somewhere. If you are interested in reading more, leave a comment.

In the March 2007 issue of Wired Magazine, writers Nancy Miller and Steven Johnson presented an impressive exposé on the development of prepackaged Pop Culture in American society. This article, cleverly titled “Snack Attack!” compares the American innovations in simplification and quick consumption to the multiple facets of popular multimedia. Miller states that it all started in 1991 when Nabisco unveiled the Mini Oreo; this influential downsizing of an “iconic treat” not only cemented Oreo’s place at the top of the cookie market, it sparked a major phenomenon. Replace Nabisco with Apple, and the Mini Oreo with the iPod Nano, and you have what Miller calls “snack-o-tainment.”

When I first read this article I was impressed by the colorful notion of boiling down aspects of society and popular culture into easily digestible chunks. What I find particularly striking is how applicable this idea is to music; for example, suites and overtures often take large-scale works and sum up their musical components in under ten minutes. Quotation, collage, and quodlibets all rely on fragments of available and well-known musical material to support an intended program or narrative. As a result, while I read this quick-and-dirty exposé on prepackaged chunks of Pop Culture one composer came to mind; replace Nabisco with Charles Ives, and the Mini Oreo with the Concord Sonata, and you have what I like to call “bite-sized Transcendentalism.”

More about the GSWP

Workshop 1: SONATA THEORY

Instructors: Warren Darcy and James Hepokoski

Sonata Theory is a new genre-based approach to the study of sonata-form movements and the larger workings of multimovement sonatas, symphonies, and chamber music of the classical period. Late 18th-century sonatas are most productively heard within the context of a broad, flexible background knowledge of standard compositional options. Individual works within this genre interact with normative expectations of what is most likely to occur at each point in the form. This workshop explores this methodology as an analytical lens to examine sonata-based works from the classical era.

WARREN DARCY is Professor of Music Theory and former Director of the Division of Music Theory at the Oberlin College Conservatory. He has lectured and published widely on Wagnerian opera, and his book Wagner's “Das Rheingold” (Oxford, 1993) won the Society for Music Theory's 1995 Wallace Berry Award. He has also published on Bruckner and Mahler, and is co-author with James Hepokoski of Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Sonata.

JAMES HEPOKOSKI, Professor of Music at Yale University, specializes in formal structure and hermeneutic issues in sonata-form-based repertories, ca. 1750-1920. He is the author of five books and numerous articles in a variety of areas, including Italian opera (Verdi), early-modernist composers (Sibelius, Strauss, Elgar), American and Germanic music-historical methodologies, and current literary-critical/cultural approaches to music. He was a co-editor of the journal 19th-Century Music from 1992 to 2006.

Graduate Student Workshop--Yes!

Dear GSWP Applicant,

Congratulations! Out of 36 applications for the GSWP Sonata Theory Workshop, yours was one of the 15 randomly selected. The participants and their school affiliations are indicated below. Since there are others who have to be turned away, please send me an email before the end of this week confirming your participation.

You will be an important member of one of the first student think tanks in the history of SMT, and in all likelihood in the entire history of our field. Keep in mind that this is a collaborative, participatory, and interactive learning experience, and not a passive one. GSWP is providing the opportunity for this to occur; what you make of it is up to you. The more you put in, the more you'll get out of it both individually and as a team.

I look forward to a successful program for us all.

Sincerely,

Wayne Alpern, Director
SMT Graduate Student Workshop Program
smtworkshops@aol.com
212-877-8350

2007 GSWP SONATA THEORY WORKSHOP MEMBERS

James Bennett (Louisiana)
James Bungert (Iowa)
Steven Cannon (McGill)
David Cubek (McGill)
Jon-Tomas Godin (Montreal)
Jonathan Guez (Indiana)
Carl Heuckendorf (Eastman)
Ann Hiloski (Rutgers)
Emily Kausalik (Bowling Green)
Christopher Matthay (Princeton)
Peter Purin (Minnesota)
Carissa Reddick (Connecticut)
Robert Rival (Toronto)
Daniel Stevens (Michigan)
Alissa Wendelschafer (Minnesota)

Places I'll be visiting in Vienna

Apparently Grove Music Online has a list of jazz nightclubs from all around the world.

Fatty’s JazzCasino.It was established in 1955 by Fatty George as a venue for his Two Sounds Band, which included Joe Zawinul and Carl Drewo. In February 1956 Lionel Hampton visited the club and an album was recorded there (Fatty George Meets Lionel Hampton, Mastertone 013). It closed in 1958, when George opened new premises as Fatty's Saloon.

Fatty’s Saloon.
Petersplatz. It was opened in 1958 by Fatty George, whose new band at the time included the trumpeter Fred Wallisch and Heinz Bigler. Among the major American and European jazz musicians to have played there are Hans Koller, Oscar Pettiford, Attila Zoller, George Maycock, Ella Fitzgerald, Cat Anderson, Jimmy Hamilton, John Lewis, Art Blakey, Curtis Fuller, Freddie Hubbard, and Herb Ellis; Friedrich Gulda often performed and rehearsed at the saloon.

Jazzland.
29 Franz Josephs Kai. Built into the catacombs of a medieval church, this jazz club was founded by Axel Melhardt and Klaus Schulz; on 4 March 1972 Albert Nicholas appeared at its opening as a guest soloist with the Austrian traditional-jazz group the Red Hot Pods. Under Melhardt's management from 1973, it became the most important jazz venue in Austria. By the late 1990s more than 300 notable American and European jazz and blues musicians had appeared there, among them Max Kaminsky, Wild Bill Davison, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Jay McShann, Al Grey, Roy Eldridge, Peanuts Hucko, Kai Winding, Harry Edison, Joe Newman, Dexter Gordon, Cecil Payne, Hal Singer, Lee Konitz, Shelly Manne, Art Hodes, Ralph Sutton, Bob Wilber, Warren Vaché, Ken Peplowski, Lew Tabackin, Barbara Dennerlein, Albert Mangelsdorff, Attila Zoller, Guy Lafitte, Danny Moss, and Dusko Goykovich; for many years Art Farmer appeared with his European quintet three times annually. The most important Austrian traditional and mainstream jazz groups, such as Together, Just Friends, Jazzclusive, the Barrelhouse Jazzband, the Original Storyville Jazzband, and Oscar Klein’s band, also play there often. (A. Melhardt: Geschichte und G’schictln: 20 Jahre Jazzland, Vienna, 1992).

Porgy & Bess.
2 Spiegelgasse. It was founded by Mathias Rüegg, Renald Deppe, and Christof Huber in 1992 as a venue for jazz projects. Many American, European, and Austrian avant-garde and bop musicians have performed there, including Charles Lloyd, Michel Portal, Herbert Joos, Dieter Glawischnig, Albert Mangelsdorff, Tommy Flanagan, Wolfgang Muthspiel, his brother the trombonist Christian Muthspiel, Karl Ratzer, the Vienna Art Orchestra, the Upper Austrian Jazz Orchestra, the NDR Big Band, Lee Konitz, and Attila Zoller. In May 1998 it closed; however, it reopened, with financial help from the Austrian government, at a new location on Riemergasse on 28 December 2000. ( (2001))

WeihburgBar.
It presented jazz from at least the 1920s. Among the jazz musicians who performed there were Arthur Briggs with the Savoy Sycops Orchestra (three times between 1925 and 1927), which was one of the first jazz ensembles to play arrangements by Spike Hughes. Eddie South performed there in 1930.

Wiener Metropol.
Hernalser Hauptstrasse 55. Theater. It opened as a general arts center early in 1981 under the artistic direction of Alf Krauliz. As part of its highly varied program of events the Wiener Metropol has offered performances of many kinds of music, among them jazz, rock, and pop; among its other activities are theater, dance, and cabaret, and the center emphasizes entertainment for children and young people. Many notable American and European jazz musicians have performed there, including Bireli Lagrene, Jan Garbarek, Chet Baker, Art Blakey, Lester Bowie, Aladár Pege, Carla Bley, Charlie Mariano, and Baden Powell. The Wiener Metropol publishes a youth magazine, Metropol. ( (2001))

Tentative Thesis Chapters

Dramma per musica and the Electric Guitar Cowboy
Musical Traditions in Maestro Morricone’s ‘Man with No Name’ Trilogy
By Emily Kausalik

RESEARCH TOPICS/PROBLEMS:
1. Wagner is great and all, but does all film music really rely on his leitmotifs?
- Morricone’s music stems from the Italian operatic tradition, rather than the Wagnerian/Germanic.
2. Can analytical tools of other musics shed light on important film music idioms?
- Caplin’s Classical Form; sentences, periods, hybrids, small forms
- Nattiez’s paradigmatic analysis/aesthetic discourse
- Darcy’s rotational form

CHAPTERS/TOPICS (TENTATIVE)
Introduction:
- development of the Spaghetti Western
- Sergio Leone’s vision/Morricone’s music
Chapter 1a: Film theory
- brief academic history
- literature review
Chapter 1b: Music theory
- overview of analytical models to be used
- literature review of said theories (Caplin, Nattiez, Tagg)
Chapter 2: Film synopses
- A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
- For a Few Dollars More (1965)
- The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)
Chapter 3: Morricone and the Italian Operatic Tradition
- difference between Wagnerian and Italian operatic traditions/idioms
- examples of thematic/melodic repetition in the three films
Chapter 4: Formula di titoli
- phrase structures of title sequences via Caplinian analysis
Chapter 5: The Showdowns
- dramatic reinforcement through ostinatos, listener’s inner musical dialogue
- Darcy’s rotational form, as opposed to rondo or sonata
- Nattiez aesthetic interpretations
Closing Remarks

Yale decided to cancel the class in Vienna this summer, so now I'm stuck with tickets to Vienna.
But I'm working out some research plans, and perhaps a trip to Prague and/or Venice.

Update

Well, it's been a while. I have a few interesting papers in the work ...
- Interobjective Analysis and Three Little Tunes in Final Fantasy IX
- Continuation and Hybrid Phrasing as Extramusical Expression in Beethoven's Egmont Overture
- The Punk Rock Formula: Rebellion Through Failed Structures and Harmonic Tendencies
I'll post my abstracts once I get more writing accomplished.

My thesis is still on Maestro Morricone's scoring for the 'Man With No Name' trilogy.

I have also been accepted into the YSP in Vienna, Austria, this summer. And I am very excited about it all.