Entries Tagged 'Music' ↓

I thought I was pretty up on contemporary culture for someone past the half century, but then I saw on “American Idol” that this guest artist (I can’t even remember her name!) was about to pass Elvis in some major milestone. Elvis! And I didn’t even notice her. When the Idols sang her songs, which the judges talked like were golden oldies, I knew none of them! Not that I missed anything, since they sounded to my ears like the most bombastic dreck. These songs made Elvis seem like Shostakovich.

Anyway, although I am not unlearned about popular music, I am way out of date. Not that an adult should be fixated on angst-ridden music for teenagers, but there can still be music out there that merits attention. I have a student, Nathan Martin, who is my tutor about today’s music. He burns me CD samplers of contemporary music that he thinks might interest me. I admit that some fine musicians are making good music today, though I can’t remember their names either.

Nathan is working with some other Patrick Henry College students on a webzine entitled Patrol. Go there for contemporary music criticism and good writing. I’ve added it to my blogroll. As a sample, I offer this account
of the recent demise of “CCM,” the contemporary Christian Music magazine that just went out of business, giving thoughtful insights about this frustrating genre.

America. . .what is the matter with you? On “American Idol,” the two best performances of the previous night, Syesha’s and Carly’s, landed up when the votes were tallied as the bottom two! And Carly, the tatooed Irish lass who certainly belonged in the top three of the whole bunch, got voted off.

(In saying these two performances were the best, I’m not applying my own personal arcane tastes in classical music or alt country. The two did rock numbers–as much as Andrew Lloyd Weber can compose rock numbers–but they did them very, very well.)

Whereas the two worst performances, an awful performance of an awful song, “Memories,” by the dreadlocked Jason and an effort by Brooke in which she actually forgot the lyrics and had to start all over, made their perpetrators “safe.”

This is a terrible injustice. So was voting off the Australian, Michael Johns, but this conjunction of awarding the two worst and punishing the two best is just wrong.

This comes from letting little children have cell phones. The contest is in danger of being taken over by young girls enthralled by “cute” boys. (True, two of these–the two Davids–are worthy of winning. David Cook, I think, is the best, rocker though he is. David Archeleta, though, I predict, will win.)

The government needs to intervene. Congress should investigate. American Idol should be regulated. Those who vote more responsibly should get tax cuts. President Bush should send in the troops.

America, what are you going to do when making a more important decision, like picking a president?

The Pope’s here. Did you realize the Catholics too are torn in a worship war? You would think that a historical, hierarchical, traditional-to-a-fault church that dogmatically defines (again, to a fault) every detail of worship could avoid debates over “worship styles.” But no. In fact, as I know from experience, contemporary Catholic worship is even worse than contemporary Protestant worship, the songs even more banal and the music even more sappy. In further fact, at least one scholar (was it John Pless?) has traced the unravelling of traditional worship practices in all traditions, including those of Protestant evangelicals, and their replacement with contemporary modes to Roman Catholicism, specifically, to the worship “reforms” of Vatican II.

Anyway, here are some telliing lines from the article Between Medieval And Folk, Two Mass Audiences - washingtonpost.com:

Imagine a bizarro world where all the 25-year-olds want Mozart and all the 60-year-olds want adult-contemporary. The kids think the adults are too wild. The backlash against “Kumbaya Catholicism” has anyone under 40 allegedly clamoring for the Tridentine Mass in Latin, while the old folks are most sentimental about Casual Sunday (even more rockin’, the Saturday vigil Mass), and still cling to what’s evolved from the lite-rock guitar liturgies of the 1970s. The result, for most parishes, has been decades of Masses in which no one is entirely satisfied, and very few enjoy the music enough to sing along.

Bob Dylan was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for music. See this if you don’t believe me. And it’s much deserved, say I.

Considering our on-going discussion of aesthetics and granted that Dylan doesn’t exactly have the best VOICE, why do you think I’m such a Bob Dylan fan who asserts that his music is objectively good?

Dolly Parton, like other country singers, is self-deprecating enough to allow herself to be turned into a caricature. But Dolly is a great artist. She is a master of those “ancient tones” that come out of mountain music, and she can also bring those same qualities into her contemporary song-writing. Last night, she was the rather unlikely singing coach and song provider for “American Idol,” which, one would think, would prove a tough challenge for these young, pop, rock-tinged singers.

But the test of the songwriter part of a singer-songwriter is that the songs also work when other people perform them. Bob Dylan, for example, has a totally unique voice and totally unique songs. And yet, when other people perform them–from the Byrds to Garth Brooks– they still work!

And Dolly Parton is the same way. The “Idols” did quite well with her songs, I thought, in some cases rendering them in non-country styles but the strength of the songs still came through. (I’m thinking particularly of David Cook’s alterna-arrangement of “Sparrow.” For a non-”Idol” example, listen to what Whitney Houston does with “I Will Always Love You.”)

Shopkeepers in England, annoyed by adolescents loitering around their stores, are installing a new device called the Mosquito. It emits an ultra-high pitched annoying noise—”eeeeeeeeek”–that people over 25 cannot hear. It drives away the kids while adults, with their deteriorating hearing, remain unphased. Read this: Merchants in Britain Give Young Loiterers an Earful.

Yes, some people in England are claiming that the device constitutes age discrimination. Still, young people have had their own version of the Mosquito for some time that drives away adults. It’s called rap music.

But still, isn’t the Mosquito a great invention? Don’t you just want one? I can imagine many other uses. I wonder if Mosquito technology could be applied to all boom-boxes and car stereos, once the windows are opened, so that only young people could listen to their music despite their good-hearted impulse to share it with the rest of us.

The distinguished journalist Uwe Siemon-Netto has written an article for an Asian publication on the huge appeal in Asian cultures of Johann Sebastian Bach. The article includes specific accounts of people converting to Christianity through his music:

Maruyama is passionate about Bach - she attributes her conversion from Buddhism to Christianity to his music. “When I play a fugue, I can hear Bach talking to God,” she told Metro Lutheran, a monthly church paper in the Twin Cities.
. . . . . . . .
eipzig’s late “superintendent” (regional bishop) Rev. Johannes Richter used to wonder even back in the days when this city was part of Communist East Germany: “What is it about his work that evidently bridges all cultural divides and has such a massive missionary impact for Christianity in faraway parts of the world?”

For years, Richter observed with growing fascination how in his Gothic sanctuary, Japanese musicologist Keisuke Maruyama studied the influence of the weekday pericopes (prescribed readings) in the early 18th-century Lutheran lectionary cycle on Bach’s cantatas. When he had finished, he told the clergyman: “It is not enough to read Christian texts. I want to be a Christian myself. Please baptize me.”
. . . . . . . .
Why would even listening to Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which contain no lyrics, arouse someone’s interest in Christianity? This happened when Masashi Yasuda, a former agnostic, heard a CD with Canadian pianist Glenn Gould’s rendering of this complex Clavier-Übung, or keyboard study. Still, Yasuda’s spiritual journey began precisely with these variations. He is now a Jesuit priest teaching systematic theology at Sophia University in Tokyo.
. . . . . . .
Rev. Robert Bergt, musical director of Concordia’s Bach at the Sem concert series, has first-hand experience with the missionary lure of Bach’s cantatas in Tokyo. He used to be the chief conductor of Musashino Music Academy’s three orchestras in the Japanese capital. Bach’s compositions brought his musicians, audiences and students into contact with the Word of God, he said. “Some of these people would then in private declare themselves as ‘closet Christians,’” Bergt told Christian History magazine. “I saw this happen at least 15 times. And during one of them I eventually baptized myself.” While only one percent of Japan’s population of 128 million is officially Christian, Bergt estimated that the real figure could be three times as high if one includes secret believers.

How does this tie into our discussion of “witnessing” to people?

HT: Paul McCain & Cyberbrethren

I wasn’t really planning to get into American Idol again, but here I am. I’ll live-blog it:

Not stories! They are doing to a talent show what they did to the Olympics, giving all this human-interest background so we’ll get involved with the characters rather than concentrating on the performances. A guy who lost 200 pounds. . . An immigrant who loves America. . .A teenaged girl who has to take care of her wheel-chair bound mother. . .

A greater variety of music? A guy does a Hispanic song. I like that genre. Beautiful melodies, and Spanish is the loving tongue.

Some of the bad ones receive mercy. The girl doing it for her mother is sweet, so cries, hugs, and commisserations all around, even from Simon.

Memorable line: “I WILL be victorious.”

Whoops. My Tivo is switching to record two better shows: “Life on Mars” (a GREAT high-concept mystery on BBC) and “Comanche Moon” (which I will watch for the sake of the saga it is prequel to “Lonesome Dove”). This “Idol,” unlike last year’s, is not drawing me in. I’m not even going to watch the rest of it. Let me know what I missed and if I should give it another chance.

Babies like Christmas music
A study has found that Christmas music, more so than other kinds, has a calming effect on babies. Daycare workers have long noticed how babies do not cry as much when Christmas music is played in the background. Other styles they play, such as soft rock or classical, do not have the same effect.

From Scripps Howard News Service:

The holiday season is in full swing and it is giving nurses who work with newborns something to be thankful for. Their rows of usually fussy infants have been seduced into a collective calm, thanks to the tunes of Christmas.

“They are usually pretty cranky,” said Amanda Ring, a women and children’s health nurse at New York Presbyterian Hospital, Cornell Medical Center. “But when we put Christmas music on, they stop crying. It’s amazing.”

Studies have shown that babies are born with the ability to perceive and process basic musical sounds and patterns, often with a preference for those in major keys. It just so happens that most holiday music is written and performed in such keys.

“Because the way that our brains are wired, you don’t need to have a fully developed frontal cortex to be affected by music,” said Suzanne Hanser, chair of music therapy at Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Even in adults, soothing music can be used to initiate a state of relaxed awareness in the brain, studies show. The music triggers neural impulses which themselves cause nervous system reactions that produce relaxation in muscle tone, brain wave frequency, and other reflexes. “It’s not surprising that newborns would feel soothed by almost any music,” Hanser said.

But Ring said the infants are noticeably more content when holiday music is played compared to the usual classical or soft-rock music that flows from the overhead speakers in the hospital’s two nurseries.

“It’s a really busy nursery,” Ring said. “There can be up to 22 babies in one nursery at a time and it’s rarely quiet for more than 10 minutes. But with the Christmas music on, it can stay quiet for more than an hour and a half.”

Christmas-music expert William Studwell, professor emeritus at Northern Illinois University, said the variety of yuletide tunes also proves interesting to babies. “Slow music and classical music, such as Yanni, would not shake up the children, but it’s boring,” Studwell said. “Christmas music has such a different body. Some are secular, some are sacred, some are fast, and some are slow.”

Yes, the image of 22 babies warehoused in a day care center is pretty disturbing. I also wonder how the babies can distinguish between “secular” and “sacred.”

Karlheinz Stockhausen, the German advant garde composer of mostly non-melodic music, has died. He became best known to the public when he commented that the September 11 attacks constituted “the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos.”

“Minds achieving something in an act that we couldn’t even dream of in music, people rehearsing like mad for 10 years, preparing fanatically for a concert, and then dying, just imagine what happened there,” he elaborated. “You have people who are that focused on a performance and then 5,000 [sic] people are dispatched to the afterlife, in a single moment.”

Later, he backtracked a little, saying that the attacks were “Lucifer’s” greatest work of art.

Some great composers create music so aesthetically complex that hardly anyone can play them.  For example, hardly any pianist has hands big enough to reach some of Rachmaninoff’s chords. But where there is a will, there is a way. 

HT:  C. R. Biggs