The Fine Art of Listening

I hate election season. It’s just another version of professional wrestling, only with more name-calling and slightly less chair-throwing. (My apologies to pro. wrestlers for the comparison. I hope you aren’t insulted. Please don’t throw a chair at me.)

American composer Steven Mark Kohn has written a piece which pokes playfully at a politician’s speech. If only the real thing were this enjoyable.

March 8 is International Women’s Day, a day to celebrate the achievements of women throughout history.

Gender inequality certainly exists in music. And while the field of performance (solo and ensemble performers) has become considerably more gender balanced than it was in the past, composition still remains a male-dominated career.

Today I want to celebrate Amy Beach, who was the first American woman to have a successful career as a concert pianist and composer of Art Music.

Despite being a female composer at a time when composers simply weren’t supposed to be female, Beach was revered as a member of the Second New England School – the elite, first group of highly educated American composers. Their music is fabulous, but they get overshadowed by their European contemporaries, and nowadays, their music is considered to be not truly “American”. (whatever!)

Anyway, Beach is one seriously strong person. After she married in 1885, her husband asked (ie, demanded) that she limit her concert performances, an donate all her earnings to charity. Nevertheless, she persisted. Her 1896 “Gaelic Symphony” was a monumental success. Critics tried to find weaknesses in the composition and attach them to her sex, but to no avail. Audiences and her colleagues lifted her up as one of America’s finest.

The whole symphony is fabulous. If you have the time, I’d highly recommend listening to the rest of it – check the sidebar on Youtube, and follow the roman numerals. And if you don’t have the time … come back when you do 🙂

I’m usually a morning person, but some days it’s just hard. A little music can usually turn the day around – Johann Sebastian Bach‘s Harpsichord Concerti always do the trick.

What’s the secret to this piece’s ‘get-up-and-go’ attitude? Constant 16th-note motion. Throughout the piece, there is nearly always a voice in the ensemble which has moving 16th-notes, which gives the piece a constant rhythmic drive. The negative effect of this has earned this style of baroque music the nickname ‘typewriter music.’