Music Criticism Fall 2009 - Ludwig & Bertolt

It's December, which means I must be writing about music. Here's the final installment in this music criticism series. Come back in the next couple of days for lists about something more contemporary. The recording I've included here is different than the one for the essay, but it's worth a spin given no suitable substitute.


Bertolt Brecht, a playwright of the 20th century, pioneered the Verfremdungseffekt: the process of making of strange things familiar and familiar things strange. The primary theme of the third movement of the 21st piano sonata composed by Beethoven works in a similarly disorienting fashion. When the theme becomes familiar, it reoccurs as something far removed from its origins, only to return again to its familiar form. The musical parameters of the theme both assimilate to surrounding characteristics of the sonata and disassociate from their surroundings. The primary theme flows through Beethoven’s Rondo, taking listeners to a place that is both comfortable and unsettling.

The theme is introduced as a pianissimo polyphonic melody that transitions seamlessly from the previous movement. Its timbre is bright, the articulation relaxed over a moderate tempo. At (0:39), there is a slight crescendo, with the left hand’s bass melody being more accentuated. Paul Lewis establishes a soothing mood with these musical parameters. At (1:05) there is a very rapid rhythmic treble trill that swells into a great crescendo and the loudest instance of the main theme at (1:10). This playing of the primary theme highlights three separate melodies being blended together in polyphony. The high treble trill mixes with the left hand’s upward and downward moving melody and the original right-handed melody. Having reached such an alarming crescendo in just over a minute, the sonata feels like a symphony: the dynamics soar to asymptotic levels, with an army of pianos pounding away at multiple melodic lines.

The first variation from the main theme in this movement (1:43) uses pitch as the primary contrastive element – alternating in a call and response fashion between unharmonious low and high notes. As this variation drifts away, there is a callback to the primary theme at (2:06), in which the theme has been lowered in pitch, matching the properties of the dissonant melody preceding it. The dynamics are also altered – the first low note of the primary theme at (2:10) and the following two higher notes are played emphatically, not with the same grace and legato articulation from the beginning of the composition.

Following a quick decrescendo, the sonata returns to an unadulterated opening theme at (2:32). This next segment is a carbon copy of the opening, where (0:00 = 2:32), (3:13 = 0:39) and (3:40 = 1:10). Beethoven plays with his audience’s expectations – will this be a standard Rondo, returning to the same theme as he did at (2:32), or will it further change, as happened at (2:06)? Ludwig employs disorientation to keep his audience aware of how quickly familiar territory can change.

At (4:49), the primary theme returns, again exploiting the difference between high and low pitches, its dynamic curve quickly rising into crescendo before slowly fading into a diminuendo by (5:12). The timbre becomes somber and grim, as a funeral hymn. Yet at (5:17), the rhythm of the piece returns with a danceable beat: a Danse Macabre. The rising and falling melody that begins at (5:33) has a circular shape that invokes the life cycle. The melody falls into dissonance and a lower register from (6:16 – 6:45). The rhythm slows to a dead crawl, the dynamics are pianissimo, and the sonata is now almost painful to listen to. If the first instance of the theme were like an infant’s lullaby, then this is the child’s death rattle. The morbid quality of the varied primary theme passes on to influence the rhythmic section that follows it while maintaining the principle elements of the opening theme. Around (2:06), the theme was influenced by its surroundings, but a variation of the theme can also influence its surroundings.

The theme at (6:49) seems to represent another return to the beginning of the movement, until (7:44) expands the melody upwards, unhinging the theme from its polyphony. Playing homophonous cyclic melodies that progressively increase in pitch while the left hand plays soft, grounding bass notes creates a celestial atmosphere. Just as this extension from the end of the theme reaches a climactic finale at (8:10) signaled by emphatic pairs of homophonous chords, it begins slowly descending. The chords, which were once finalizing, lead the transition into in to a low register, dissonant, and extremely slow rhythm. The entire composition suddenly comes undone after reaching an apex.

Suddenly, just as all the energy is sucked out of the music, the primary theme returns at a breakneck pace at (8:49). The prestissimo primary theme revisits various elements of the initial theme. This is accompanied by a rising and falling tone to the melody – a flock of pigeons suddenly frightened and flying about. This final section also creates a motive from the main melody of the primary theme at (9:17), to further deviate from the primary theme itself. There is also a callback to the anxious treble trill of (1:05) at (9:57). This trill is juxtaposed with a sudden modification to the primary theme that now has darker timbre and minor key at (10:04). This briefest of diversions, before returning to a concluding, mostly unadulterated instance of the theme at (10:22) is a classic example of the role it plays in the entire movement. Just as soon as the audience is comfortable, they are unsettled again.

There is no clear pattern as to how or when the theme will change, so a sudden key change reminds listeners how the theme can unpredictably change the entire shape of the movement. Any anticipations or predictions for what changes may come are dashed as the theme goes from soothing, to macabre, to soaring, and to soothing again. But the site of all the change is a familiar home listeners return to several times through Beethoven’s “Waldstein.” Strange things sound familiar. Familiar things sound strange.

Music Criticism Fall 2009 - Fond But Not In Love

It's December, which means I must be writing about music. Over the next few days, I'll be presenting some essays I've written for Music Criticism this Fall 2009.

The computer was the most emotional voice I had ever heard.
-Thom Yorke, on "Fitter Happier," before the album's release.

I'm not standing behind the lyrics anymore.
-Thom Yorke, following the album's release.

One of the first conventions of essay writing taught in classrooms is that a paper’s thesis statement should come in the opening paragraph. “Fitter Happier,” the seventh track on Radiohead’s OK Computer is a densely packed song that conveys the album’s central claims about isolation, fear, and society heading into the 21st century. It is a thesis statement hidden away in the track listing, the title displayed in a type so small it could be considered an afterthought. The artists themselves have wrestled with ownership of the song’s lyrics, read neutrally by the computerized voice Fred. Countless owners of the CD have skipped past these uncomfortable 117 seconds, although the soul of OK Computer is found here. It is a multimedia piece that when taken together with the album’s futurist-primitive art style offers a chilling commentary on modern values.

Structurally, “Fitter Happier” consists of six main sections broken up by the instrumentation used in the background of the song. It opens with no background noise, and only Fred reading the first words “fitter happier more productive”; it acts as a title piece to the composition. At (0:04), undulating white noise flickers into the background of the song, fitting in with the unnatural non-human soundscape that has been created. The only truly human voice that is ever found in the entire song is a brief sampled sound from Flight of the Concord that begins at (0:09): “This is the Panic Office. Section 917 may have been hit. Activate the following procedure.”

This line cycles and repeats throughout the entire song, and offers a key into unlocking the feelings that were put into the writing of “Fitter Happier.” The song is future shock – panic – and the procedure that is being followed to deal with such trauma is to restate the values and principles most important to the narrator. The voice does not appear as being human, because the trauma of whatever incident sent the narrator into this state has robbed them of all human characteristics, save the principles outlined in the lyrics. The response to the panic is to repeat this mantra about being healthy, happy, productive, good, and safe. By staying “fond but not in love,” we can avoid the damage of heartbreak and feelings that are “ridiculously teenage and desperate.” Ultimately, this way of life may reduce us to being the same as a “pig in a cage on antibiotics,” but it is our own personal Panic Office’s way of ensuring our survival. The panic caused by living in modern society leaves us to worry about survival first, and the ideals of life second. What is perhaps most chilling about these lyrics is their suggestion that many of the things it seems normal to idealize in a good life (regular exercise, charity, crying at a good film) are emblematic of survivalism, not humanism.

Largely, this lyrical sentiment is felt throughout the entire album of OK Computer. “Paranoid Android” shows an outer aggressiveness to the materialistic phonies of late 20th century Britain, “No Surprises” is a balletic lullaby about the serenity of suicide when your heart is too full of pain, even “Electioneering” expresses panic about the falseness of our political system. The musical composition here on “Fitter Happier” shows a clustered collusion of soundscapes that induces the same sense of panic and disorientation felt by the Fred-voiced narrator.

The sounds of the song come from various sources, which when blended together sound alarming, frightening, and almost non-musical. A filtered piano enters the composition at (0:19), which sounds as if it is being played through an old record player, distant and scratchy. Its melody is played at a legato tempo, with a non-simple rhythm of play. By varying the dynamics of each piano stroke, it feels like a child, not a professional musician, plays the piano. The most clean sounding instrument is the strings that begin at (0:38), which play a minor-key long articulated sound that almost fades into the background of the loud text and white noise background. At (0:52), the lyrical mentioning of the savage and wrong pleasures of torturing insects, a theme that recurs throughout the album (Let Down - “shell smashed / juices flowing”), cues a loud cycling sci-fi sound. Rather than sounding modernist, it sounds like a 1970’s Doctor Who noise – a futurist impression of a 21st century with flying cars and rocketships. The lyrics spoken during this noises span are said quicker than other parts of the song, and reflect wrong feelings and emotions as opposed to positive ones. Particularly salient is the line “Nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate nothing,” which epitomizes the suppressed feelings of rage and violence mentioned in the lyrics. The sound eventually fades out by (1:10), and the soundscape is returned to the removed humanistic sounds of static, found text, piano, and strings as well as more positive words of the mantra “still kisses with saliva.” Finally, the sounds fade out into digital blips and nothing with the final reprise of “Fitter healthier” at (1:43).

The art direction of the album expresses many of these same central themes. Most literally, there is the image of a pig obscured by waveform – literally caging the animal in blankets of white noise as described in “Fitter Happier.” Beneath it, the small image of a child playing is drawn crudely, showing that while there is an inner desire to be childish and reckless, recalling that time in any sharp detail would be too painful. The broad and smudgy white strokes of the background art are like cave paintings – simple cries out for humanity and attention, while being superimposed with low-resolution strings of numbers or visualizations of highways. Radiohead sees a dual nature of people living in 1997 – desiring the simple, primal desires of human life, while feeling panicked and trapped by the technologies and rigid structures of modernity. The art shows how this future shock leads to future panic, which in turn causes the Panic Office to activate the procedure Fred reads in “Fitter Happier.”

OK Computer is considered a modern classic because like a great piece of writing, it has core thematic elements artfully and cohesively expressed through the lyric and music of its thesis “Fitter Happier” and the album art that surrounds it. Thom may reject the lyrics now, or find it far too dark and depressing for the actually intended tongue-in-cheek message, but the use of word, sound, and image creates a perfect storm of bleakness that goes beyond the beauty of Fred’s voice or the rejection of the lyrical meaning. “Fitter Happier” completes and defines the soul of the album.

Sleeping With John

The recent re-releasing of The Beatles' absolutely-fucking-everything in a gigantic box set has set off another wave of discussion as to how important the boys from Liverpool were to music in the twentieth century. Most of these reflections I've read so far amount to deification of deities. How can you go back to review something which is a classic? Pitchfork has perhaps been the most guilty (and most recently read, in my case) of this condition. Hard Day's Night? Clearly three tenths of a point worse than Abbey Road. But when you're doling out six perfect scores for their major releases, and no score lower than an 8 - barring a slap on the wrist for Yellow Submarine - you're not communicating anything special. This was almost as curious as the handing out a perfect ten for Miles.

Pitch-bitching aside, for many people my age, the Beatles were a timeless institution handed down to us from out parents. The music is great, duh, but my associations with it are so tied up in my childhood, they are almost inseparable. Having a happy childhood - my fatal flaw as a writer - means that anything I can associate with that time is more or less impossible to fault, unless you're just trying to be critical for being critical's sake. Talking Heads are one of my favorite bands ever, but I can never properly review anything they've done because every listen to Stop Making Sense just takes me back to Sunday afternoons in my living room as a kindergartner.

On this latest trip back to the womb With the Beatles, I didn't like the music any more or less. I didn't have some deeper appreciation for their three part harmonies, or the complicated chords, or the deft repackaging of Black music, but I still liked the Ringo songs way too much. I just found it way sexier. In the bluntest terms, some of my favorite moments from the Beatles now when John Lennon sounds like a sex machine.

Why Don't We Do It In The Road? is a 1:41 jam that gets straight to the point, and I adore it. I mean, maybe it was a giggler back in the day, but now I find it very hot. I Want You (She's So Heavy) uses a guitar line that follows the sultry vocals and a driving Arpeggio to simulate between the sheets time. If Yoko broke up the band, I can understand why she was really into John.

Norwegian Wood maybe has the best narrative. He even released it as a subtle hint to his then wife Cynthia that he was sleeping around.

"I was trying to write about an affair, so it was very gobbledegooky. I was trying to write about an affair without letting my wife know I was having one. I was sort of writing from my experiences ... girls' flats, things like that."

I didn't just listen to the clean-cut, poppy, ready-for-Ed-Sullivan Beatles records when I was a kid. Abbey Road was my favorite, and still is. But I'm glad to have had an opportunity to reappraise this band as an adult so I could see how much Lennon was into passionate, hard, and casual fucking.

Disciples of the Prophet Mohammad: Part One – Abraham and Mohammad

I’m a marginal Jew at best. For the first time this year, I missed attending services for both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which puts me into a caste of Jews I’ve known and feared for quite some time: the seculars. I’m just another pork-eating-shellfish-shucking-cheeseburger-grilling “Jew.” But before I reached this state of abject atheism, I was an avid scholar, and even spent a year teaching religious school to sixth graders. One of my favorite figures that I remember well from my brief half decade of Jewish scholarship was Abraham. He wakes up hearing the voice of God, telling him to go to Canaan from Ur. And he does. God tells him a ridiculous claim that his elderly wife Sarah will give birth to Isaac. She does. And in one of the most difficult portions of scripture to explain, Abraham even goes so far as to offer his son as a sacrifice to the Lord. He doesn’t. It was all a test, an examination of the purity of his faith.

I’m not entirely sure if I’ll reclaim my faith in God again like I used to have. I probably will never regularly attend Sabbath services, or wear kippah, or reclaim my Hebrew language faculty. But I’ve gained a lot in my life since then. My philosophy now seems to be based around faith in my friends, and the transformative influence they have on my life. This essay is about many things, but mostly, it is about the religious experience I feel I have when I’m in the presence of Mohammad Haidar.

The prophet Mohammad is forbidden to be depicted in a painting. Brief research indicates that this is a new phenomenon. I’ve seen plenty of murals of the prophet from antiquity, but there was also that big stink when the Dutch drew those political cartoons. Ignoring the politicization of Islam, this rule speaks to the inability of any artist to adequately describe what Mohammad is. The metaphor works perfectly for my Mohammad.

The prophet Mohammad is Middle-eastern. Mohammad Haidar is decidedly Midwestern: the collective averaging of the common characteristics of life. He is of average height, with large hands and arms that frame an enormous barrel chest. He watches a lot of television; his dorm room is adjacent to the house lounge with the widescreen TV. Favorite television program: America’s Funniest Home Videos. Favorite movie: Rocky. Favorite sports team: The Steelers. He has the most popular name in the world. Mohammad is this great big median of the world. A Muslim farmhand-looking tough guy who likes big guns, big tits, and laughs vigorously at the sight of an unsuspecting victim being nailed in the balls on candid camera. Everyone calls him Big Mo. Needless to say, my cosmopolitan private university sensibilities (Doctor Who, Lost in Translation, the Chicago Cubs, respectively) have been complicated in the two years I’ve known him.

When you’re talking to Mohammad, you’re speaking to certainty itself. He does not doubt himself. If he asks you a question, I assure you it is either rhetorical or it is about physics.

I think everyone who lives in my residence hall has a personal favorite example of a Mohammad Question. We’re watching a Steelers game, and there’s a black man in uniform called Will Witherspoon. Mohammad tells me there are few black men with the last name Witherspoon, and the most popular Witherspoon is Reese, a white woman. His question is simply if it was likely Resse’s ancestors once owned Will’s ancestors. The physics questions tend to also fall into the same category. He’s actually looking for an answer this time, but he’ll furiously explain why his modeling is superior before he yields.

I’ve seen Big Mo stumped exactly once. He once asked me “who is the tall black guy on the Celtics?”

The NBA’s Celtics.

The league basically composed of tall black guys. The answer was Kevin Garnett, but come on.

What the hell is Mo doing at the University of Chicago? That seems to be a two-part answer as far as I can tell. First of all, he’s brilliant. The reason he is so strong willed about physics, or chemistry, or anything else he is studying, is because he actually knows what he’s talking about. He once called up a lab to ask “when the fuck they were going to give him his scholarship.” While he certainly isn’t the arugula-munching Proust-reading picture of the U of C, he’s got a first class mind, no doubt.

The second part of the answer reveals the tragic flaw of the deity figure. He’s short. Way too short to play Division I athletics. Mohammad is convinced that is he was above or around six feet tall, he’d be playing in the Big 10. I have no doubt that in this alternate universe where Mo is both gigantic and towering, he’d be an NFL superstar. But he’s realistic about his options, and understands what can and cannot be. Big Mo is wise, and was an excellent Division III NCAA player.

The tense in that last sentence is important. He’s not on the varsity squad any more. He takes the time he once spent dead lifting, squatting, and pressing in the gym and channels it into another Mohammad appropriate cliché. Big Mo is the king of IM sports. When he’s on the field, there’s an ugly elegance to his movements, like a circus elephant balancing on a ball. He handles the soccer ball with precision, throws a Frisbee with surprising finesse, and can heave a dodge ball like a hard slider. When he’s on the sidelines, I can only think to describe him as the most dedicated coach I know.

“Stay on your man!”
“Talk, guys, c’mon, TALK!”
“Godammit, Graham, keep your head in the fucking game, son!”

He is this magnificent voice from the clouds, or on high, telling me what I need to do or where I need to go, and I obey his word. I am Abraham, waking up to discover I am inheriting the promise of a new world. A promise that has betrayed the familiarity of my identity. This new world Mohammad promises is a frightening one. It is one I am not used to, and have only comfortably lived in for the last six months, at most. I am Abraham, leaving home to follow the voice of some divinity, and I am scared. These scenes from my life in this time play like sketchy reruns of biblical stories played over some reality I was once certain of.

Mohammad comes into my room and tells me to go to play dodge ball. Specifically, he tells me to “use my fucking linguistic skills or whatever” to persuade others to follow me. Scott Silberman, the parent figure who always tried to get my friends and I to go outside and play sports instead of video games, hosts a touch football game, the “Turkey Bowl” every thanksgiving break. This November past is no exception. Following Mohammad, my skills have improved, and I go on to catch every pass thrown in my direction, including three for touchdowns. Scott later tells my mother that he is impressed “at what an athlete I’ve become.” This seems like a ridiculous thing to say. To this point, Abraham has not asked me to sacrifice anything to him more than a few hours of my time each week. I have left Ur, and I have not missed home.

Treasure Found In the Depths of the Middle Closet - Part Two

We're back again today against the sounds of illegal fireworks exploding loudly in the alley behind my house. My parents said once that the noise reminded them of Beirut, which I guess is a joke I need to be about five years older to really appreciate, seeing as the first major news event I can clearly remember from television was the O.J. Simpson trial. I suppose the Beirut comparison is in poor taste, as is going to be the fact that it reminded me of Israel, which I suppose is the current (and of course by current I mean lasting for the last 60 years) source of random acts of inhuman violence. It is thus incredibly serendipitous that I found the one exchange between me and my Israeli pen pal I was forced to have in the fifth grade of my Hebrew School education at Emanuel. If I may say so myself, folks, I like this one more than the love letters.

Now, as is the case with all of these very wordy, NPR inspired, oh-please-goodness-Ira-Glass-like-me-I-remember-interesting-things-too! stories that I like telling on the internet for all my friends to read, I think I should qualify a few things before we get in to seeing just what this exchange was.

First of all, I am undecided on my Zionist positions. I do believe the Jews deserve and need a place in the world, but I am shaky about the actions of both the Israelis and Palestinians with respect to the six decades old conflict there. It has made me an outcast in my temple, and I guess I just have to live with that. Good, that should either eliminate or exacerbate the inevitable FREE PALESTINE debate the internet sure loves.

Secondly, while I am exceptionally culturally sensitive and nice human being now by most standards, I guess I was kind of an ass in the fifth grade. I guess I am still sort of an ass now, because I think I said something insensitive about how there are lots of bombings in Israel now. My heart always goes out to those affected by this situation, but going back to my first qualification, the retaliation efforts by Israelis is just too...

I am getting mired down in a debate I never wanted to have. Ugh. Now that I have been added to terrorist watchdog groups for saying the words "Free Palestine" and my future employers have shamed me for comparing Beirut to Israel, let's move on.

This is actually where our story begins, with word from Israel that we would all be receiving our own pen pals! Mandatory ones! Here is the precursor letter from Israel. The formatting was way too fucking crazy to not scan. Abby, I expect translations, provided my opening diatribe did not permanently put me in your bad standings.






And these very loving, very sweet and friendly albeit highlighter crazy Israelis delivered on their promise, and I received a new and awesome pen pall named Shay! How is it I know Shay was awesome? Let's just have a look at the letter he sent me.




Though it almost needs no explanation, let's examine exactly why this is the best letter in the history of one shot anonymous pen palling. The dove is pink, making it both fabulously fantastical and also peace loving. He loves football, both a team of Macabees and the currently tip-top "Mancheste[r] United," which as a popular blog would say totally dominates white culture! Finally, let's look at this back page. The students, per the letter, have been told to decorate the shit out of their letters, and this is a shining, gold star, double plus good example. TELL ME THAT IS NOT THE COOLEST ROBOT THING YOU HAVE EVER SEEN. Israeli robots clearly can beat up ours. Is that a famous one? Who knows. Madness. Madness like a 90210 trading card, which as much as I would like to remove from the letter to examine Brandon's stats on the back, is currently taped down.

I owe this kid. I owe him big time. Like, bigger than the entire universe big. But you see, the sad thing is, I still have the letter I wrote him in reply. It's here in America, not there in Israel. We aren't chatting up why it is that Arsenal has such a good young team, but really, when it comes down to talent Man U is simply where it is at. We aren't excitedly talking about the new series of 90210 they're starting in the fall. No, we're at square fucking one. Here's my letter.



I'm so sorry, Shay. I didn't have the balls or the drive or any interest in all at going to six more hours of school per week when I was 10 years old, so I ignored your letter, left it as just a shitty generic reply that your teacher no doubt automatically filled in for me, because I can tell it is his handwriting. I fucked up big time, and I am sorry for not making an equally sweet letter. So here I go, trying to make it up to you the best way I know how: retroactive postage. In this same mysterious closet, I have found maybe the one thing I could attach to my response letter that could have wowed you the same way that you tried to wow me. I know it's not soccer, but it's Chicago in the nineties. We had a dynasty then. And I went to the playoffs.