Being involved in Art Music often is an experience that produces an oceanic feeling – a sense that we are connected to the past, present, and future, to people around the world, to the entire universe, perhaps. Music has to be experienced in order for it to be music and not just noise. It’s the old “if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it” game. Whether the music is performed live, recorded, or in the imagination of a person’s brain, it is the human experience that makes it music and not merely vibrating air molecules (or imagined vibrating air molecules).

So every time you hear a piece by a dead composer, you’re still hearing the present, even if you sense a window to the past. And when you hear a new piece by a living composer, you might envision future audiences being moved by the same strains long after you’re gone. Still, you’re in the present, and the music is in the present.

It is part of the human experience to acknowledge that we are finite. Maybe music is one of the things we turn to because we want something to be infinite; we want a piece of our life experience to exist after we have departed from the world. And that’s when the oceanic feelings come sweeping into the heart.

This week I heard a brand new piece for organ and timpani by Kurt Knecht. The title – Toccata, Adagio, & Fugue – reminds us of a famous piece from the past by the same name by Johann Sebastian Bach. So even though I heard no Bach, in a sense, I still experienced Bach’s legacy. But despite the traditional title and forms, the piece has a harmonic and rhythmic edge – something fresh and exciting – that was emphasized by the untraditional instrumentation: organ and percussion. In the present, I was sitting by the composer himself, and next to one of Philadelphia’s most famous composers, as we heard music organized in a way never heard before (well, except in the composer’s head). In the future – who can really say? The musical ideas are recorded on paper and the piece has a chance at immortality. Even so, the notes on the paper are just dots – and the music itself must be somehow be in the present to become real.

What a thrill to be a part of a continuous, living, evolving, history of music!

Kurt is also a co-founder of MusicSpoke, a music publisher which is nothing short of revolutionary.

Amy Beach was the first successful female American composer. She remains unsung today, but ironically this has less to do with her sex than it has to do with the year she was born.

Beach was one of the members of the “Boston Six” – Six American composers whose musical success marked a new era for Art Music in the US. After centuries of being considered a backwards musical wasteland, the United States was finally on the Art Music map. So what happened? Why are the Boston Six not household names? Well, their writing was very rooted in the European style (German, specifically), and there is little that is uniquely American about their music. This wasn’t a big deal during the height of their careers; but soon afterwards they became completely overshadowed by two things: Charles Ives and Jazz. Ives became the poster-boy for academic, aloof, cultivated Art Music, while Jazz quickly became the defining American musical idiom.

Back to Amy Beach – her music is truly fantastic; as good, if not even better, than the European masters who get overplayed.

Nineteen years ago today, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s (Sorcerer’s) Stone was published – and talk about a fast path to fame. In barely ten years, the series went from small potatoes to worldwide obsession; J. K. Rowling went from nobody (it was her first book!) to a household name. And, as with every hit new book, a movie adaptation is inevitable.

When the first film was made in 2001, the book series was only half-way through. The filmmakers had enough foresight to know that this series would only get bigger and bigger; so they didn’t cut corners when it came to music – no less than the legendary John Williams would score the movie! While perhaps not his move amazing composition, it still carries his tell-tale marks: a memorable, melodic main theme (heard at the beginning of this video); repetitive song forms; contrasting orchestration to help define sections; an assortment of harmonic and orchestration “tricks” that you can hear in any of his blockbuster films (for example, at 0:39, the impression of “flying” given by buzzing strings can also be found in E.T., or at 1:36, it is remarkable similar to the X-Wing “fanfare” music in Star Wars).

Hats off to Harry Potter and to John Williams!