I was having a discussion this weekend with some friends about a choir that sings to people as they are dying. I suppose some people would find this morbid, but to me (and my musician friends) there is nothing more natural. It turned out that a number of us not only had our funeral music picked out, but we also had “last pieces” picked out for our final hours of consciousness.

A friend of mine, in her early 20’s, needed a very risky surgery; the doctors said she had a 15% chance of dying during the procedure. She asked if the “Agnus Dei” from Faure‘s Requiem could be playing as she was given anesthesia; if she died, she wanted her last thought to be of the music she loved. She survived the procedure, and a year later, I was honored to participate in the performance of the Faure Requiem that she conducted. Now, when I hear that piece, I can’t help but think about her bravery.

If I had to go through what she did, I’d choose Chopin‘s Nocturne in Db. Oddly, this piece doesn’t have any significant meaning to my life. I just think that the last 16 bars (4:48 to the end) would be the perfect soundtrack for a sweet death.

35 years ago today, MTV was born. The first music video played was, of course, “Video Killed the Radio Star.” It’s a good song, and the video is a great collage of old footage. If you don’t know it, it’s worth the 3 minutes it takes to watch:

It’s fun, and typical of 80’s New Wave rock; I like it with or without the accompanying video. Looking (er, listening?) only to the music (IE ignoring the words), it’s upbeat and catchy, repetitive and shallow. Add the words, and there’s more to latch onto – it’s your standard critique of technology, the pros and cons that come with any new innovation. “Video killed the radio star, pictures came and broke your heart.” Is it about how beautiful the music sounds, or how sexy the artist looks?

Art Music has struggled to deal with the recent rapid changes in technology (and I’m talking about since the late 19th century here). The invention of recorded music and radio revolutionized the musical landscape – before, you either had to play music yourself or go to where someone else was making music. Then came video …

But I’ll venture to say that NO, video didn’t kill the radio star. Maybe the radio star had to change to adapt to a video world, but there was no murder here. The Art Music world is no different. With cameras and video technology, we can now see a LIVE opera performance thousands of miles away from the opera house, and see intimately close images of the singers’ faces. It’s quite moving, actually, and a different but equally enjoyable experience from actually sitting in the opera house, seeing the action from afar. It’s hard to argue that this is a bad thing.

Art Music recordings and publicity images have also recently adapted in a somewhat desperate attempt to win the attention of Gen-X and Millenials. Formal photos have been replaced by eye-catching shots that give us a taste of the performers’ personalities.

Here’s a video of Charles Gounod‘s Romeo and Juliet; the composer probably never imagined his audiences would ever experience opera in this way – on a computer, sitting by ourselves, looking at the singer from better-than-a-front-row-seat. Video didn’t kill the radio star – it is making worthy things to become immortal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rywOPSlNWLc

Actually, that title is completely wrong. If you don’t have solid rhythm, you’ll never dance this waltz.

Nearly all music (seriously – I mean like 99% or more) is in one of a couple meters. We divide them into a few categories: duple vs. triple; simple vs. compound. Duple means there are 2 (or 4) beats per measure. Triple means there are 3 (I bet you guess that already, though.) Simple means you can divide each beat into 2 smaller beats (twinkle, twinkle, little star); compound means you can divide each beat into 3 smaller beats (row, row, row your boat). You can have simple or compound duple meter (2/4 or 6/8 – 2 beats per measure, and each beat can be divided into 2 or 3 smaller beats); you can have simple or compound triple meter (3/4 or 9/8 – 3 beats per measure, and each beat can be divided into 2 or 3 smaller beats).

Confused? Don’t worry. The important thing is that we are by no means limited to using only these meters, despite the fact that they dominate the music we hear. Write something in a different meter – say, 5/4, 7/4, 11/8 – and your piece will have either a rhythmic edge that excites people, or a disorganized pulse which only confuses people. Enter Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, arguably the smoothest crafter of melody to have ever walked the earth. This “Waltz” from his Sixth Symphony is in 5/4 time, but flows so smoothly that you wouldn’t know it’s in a quintuple meter unless you tried to dance to the music. It’s a standard form for a dance: trio – there’s an A section with a sweeping cello melody, followed by a B section marked by a timpani pulse, then a return to the A material.