Composers Forum

Dear Jerry ,

I want to bring your attention the documentary on Beethoven’s Ninth that I am working on (called Following The Ninth: In The Footsteps of Beethoven’s Final Symphony, and ask for your suggestions. I’ve shot close to 50 hours of tape, but the film is really just beginning, thus I am looking for more stories about the Ninth. You can read about the project at http://www.followingtheninth.com/. What I’m hoping to find here in this discussion forum are new stories that I might follow, develop, as the film proceeds. As of today, I will be filming in Japan, where the Ninth (Daiku) is performed by hundreds of variously sized orchestras, sometimes with choruses of 5000 people or more. I will also be going to Chile and other countries in South America, where a version of the “Ode to Joy” was sung as a song of resistance and hope by those living under military dictatorships.

I would also like to have some of your filmed stories and reflections on the Ninth on my website. That could be arranged in various ways, to be determined if you have an interest. I’m trying to bring the power and passion of one of the greatest works of art ever done to a broader public, and the best way to do that, I think, is through people’s stories, stories from those who are deeply in love with Beethoven’s music. Please write if you have any questions.

Kerry Candaele
Venice, CA
kcandaele@gmail.com

Few composers make the editorial page of the New York Times and Steve Reich is one of them.  Among other nice things, the Times said this: 

Ascribing the universal appeal of Mr. Reich’s music only to its driving rhythms is simplistic. Deep knowledge of counterpoint, harmony, history, narrative drama and an unerring instinct for beauty are everywhere in his work. But most of us are not musical experts. And rhythm is a language humans grasp from birth.

For those of us raised on beat-heavy pop, rhythm and blues, and rock, Mr. Reich’s infectiously rhythmic music was a path into “serious music,” a realm that might have once felt closed. Among Mr. Reich’s legions of fans must be many a rock, funk or hard-core devotee who came upon works like “Drumming,” or “Music for 18 Musicians” “” two of his best known and most hypnotic percussion epics “” and found themselves somehow changed.

 

Is classical music too pretentious? Is that perception off base to begin with? Do you have any personal experiences with pretentious behavior inside the world of classical music?  Drew McManus asks the questions in an article in Partial Observor.

Elsewhere, but not unrelated, Randy Nordchow confesses to have abandoned “ironic-superficial-complexity with a conceptual bent and a little dark humor thrown in” in favor of the New Romantic.

Not to mention Tom Myron’s “lovely” Violin Concerto.

Que pasa?

I’ll be sending out new passwords and user name.  When you get yours, post away.