It’s my pleasure to pass on a terrific piece, written for S21, by Daniel Levitin.  In addition to teaching at McGill University and being a real mensch, Levitin is the best-selling author of “This is Your Brain on Music,” which I personally recommend to all.  Below,  he gives us a look at his new book “The World in Six Songs:  How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature.”   — David Salvage

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It is unlikely that either language or music were invented by a single innovator or at a single place and time; rather, they were shaped by a large number of refinements, contributed to by legions of developers over many millenia and throughout all parts of the world. And they were no doubt crafted upon structures and abilities that we already had, structures we inherited genetically from proto-humans and our non-human animal ancestors.  It’s true that human language is qualitatively different from any animal language, specifically in that it is generative (we can combine elements to create an unlimited number of utterances) and self-referential (we can use language to talk about language).  The evolution of a single brain mechanism – probably located in the pre-frontal cortex – created a common mode of thought that underlies both the development of language and of art. I describe this in my new book The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature.

One of the things that humans are good at and animals are not is encoding relations.  We can easily learn the idea of something being bigger than another.  If I ask even a five-year old to select the larger of three blocks in front of her, she will do this effortlessly.  If I then bring in a new block that is twice the size of the one she just selected, she can shift her thinking, and choose that when I reask the question.  A five-year old understands this. No dog can do this, and only some primates.  This understanding of relations turns out to be fundamental for music appreciation; it is a cornerstone of all human musical systems.  It permits us to recognize Happy Birthday as the same song regardless of what key it is sung in.  It is also the basis of composition in nearly every musical style we know of.  Take the opening to Beethoven’s Fifth.  We hear three notes of the same pitch and duration, followed by a longer note at a lower pitch.  Beethoven takes this pattern and moves it lower in the scale, so that the next four notes follow the same contour and rhythm.  Our ability to recognize that this pattern is essentially the same, even though none of the notes are the same, is relational processing. 

These modes of processing and the brain mechanisms that gave rise to them were necessary for the development of language, music, poetry, art and even science.  Music may have played an important role in allowing us to communicate before there was language, and in forming a mental exercise that was fundamental to being able to manipulate objects in the real world.  The available evidence is that music has been with our species from the very beginning, shaping social bonds, social systems, cooperative work projects, and the transmission of knowledge.  Our current love of music is deeply rooted in evolutionary biology – our brain responds favorably to music because those of our ancestors who had musical brains found themselves at a distinct survival advantage.

Thanks very much to everyone who submitted scores. All of us were very impressed by the overall quality of the submissions. The selected compositions in alphabetical order by composer are:

Samuel Andreyev Passages

Rusty Banks Taxonomy

Galen Brown And Carthage Must Be Destroyed

Alex Kotch Reduce, Ruse, Recycle

Rodney Lister “The Mockingbird” from Songs from “The Bat Poet”

Jeremy Podgursky Nonsense or Sorcery?#%*!

David Salvage Violin Routine

Samuel Vriezen 2 Suites

The concerts will take place December 1st at Waltz Café, Astoria, NY, and at the Good Shepherd Church, New York, NY on December 5^th. Doing the honors is the Lost Dog Ensemble of the Astoria Music Society.

Harris passed away this week.  He and I were in the PhD Composition program at CUNY, admitted the same year–though he decided to go to CalArts first.  I scarcely knew him or his music.  But I remember walking to the subway with him sometime in the spring of 2004.  He was explaining to me how much he liked his fold-up bike.  If I recall correctly, Harris said he had two.

From composer Paul Laino.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSasEp1-j1Q[/youtube]

And don’t forget: the S21 concert submission postmark deadline is one week from today.  Fire me an e-mail; Pierrot or subsets thereof. 

Further proof Xenakis was an alien.

Track three of Lullaby for my Favorite Insomniac, the latest album from the Ahn Trio, is a piano trio arrangement of “My Funny Valentine;” track sixteen is also “My Funny Valentine,” but this time with electronica beats and Korean rap thrown in. Track eleven is “This is not America” by David Bowie, Pat Metheny, and Jürgen Dahmen; so is track fifteen, but Superdrive calls it “This is America Mix.” There’s also some Susie Suh, Astor Piazzolla, Michael Nyman, and three new pieces by Kenji Bunch. The album is casual, eclectic, and cool–but don’t call it “crossover:” according to the group’s cellist, Maria Ahn, there’s nothing to cross over. Musics have always been mixing one another up.

As Juilliard students, the Ahn sisters regularly attended modern dance performances and enjoyed seeking out work by contemporary composers. It was always mystifying to them that contemporary music was somehow not as popular as contemporary art. A gig with Bryan Adams led to an interest in expanding their collaborative projects to include non-classical musicians. In their recording career, the Ahns have moved from pretty straight-up chamber music work (Ravel, Shostakovich, Dvorak) to concept albums (like the new one) that defy categorization. There is no grand aesthetic statement in all this, Maria says: the intent is only to pursue projects that reflect the music that inspires her and her sisters.

Lullaby for my Favorite Insomniac takes its name from a composition by Bunch, and it was this simple, spare piece, originally for solo piano, that led to the album’s concept. The first twelve tracks are calm, peaceful pieces in the meditative mood established by Bunch, a longtime collaborator. The final four are mixes and remixes of four of the earlier pieces on the album; Maria has long wanted to turn over some of the trio’s work to DJs to see what would happen. As for the rap: it grew out of some fortuitous musical spontaneity during one of the sessions.

Next week, the Ahns head to Prague to rehearse and record an album with Tata Bojs, a Czech alternative group. Then they premiere in Mexico a new piano trio written for them by Pat Metheny (his second for the group). The Ahns are also involved in projects with Nikolai Kapustin, Raul Midón, and Daniel Bernard Roumain (who seems to want to be called “DBR” these days). NYC-area folks can check them out this August at the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival.

I move that the role of Al Gore be essayed by the entire La Scala Opera Chorus!  Wait . . . no:  Anna Netrebko–who wouldn’t drive a Prius for her? . . . No–I got it now: a dancer on stage who doesn’t sing! (ala Death in Venice) . . . hmm, but maybe that’s how “Global Warming” should be portrayed.   Heck, I don’t know.  But there better be a horse in this damn thing, ‘else I’m not going!

I always walk around with a guilty conscience. My inbox gets loaded all the time with press releases and so forth, and I’m a bit stingy about passing on the goods. Let’s give this another try by way of redemption.

SoCal’s S21 readers might want to check out RedBox, an experimental music series held the third Thursday of every month at the Steve Allen Theater in Hollywood. A bunch of groups with achingly hip names are performing this summer. Tickets are only $10.

Here’s a composition competition in Finland. Dust off your small orchestra piece and see if you can impress Magnus Lindberg (he’s on the jury). Deadline December 1^st, so, as they do in Finland, you can chill for now.  Rim shot.

Ronen Givony’s unstoppable Wordless Music series is all over the Whitney this month. Ingram Marshall, Chen-Yi, and Jefferson Friedman are all represented. How about you represent now, huh?  Shout out to the tenacious Amanda Ameer…

Speaking of Friedman (who I pretend is much older than I am so it’s okay he’s so successful): the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is giving the Chicago premiere of his Sacred Heart: Explosion The piece is based on the outsider art of Henry Darger.

Question: whom do you have to know to become an “outsider” artist?  Rim shot.

New ensemble alert: It’s called the MZJ Ensemble, presumably after this guy who founded it. He writes: “The medium-sized group (between a chamber ensemble and a full symphonic group) consists mostly of winds and brass, with some strings, and will perform my compositions as well as some arrangements of existing repertoire.”

And there’s fresh dirt at the CD Reviews and Composers Forum.

And Good Heavens!!  C4 is performing Saturday night.  Give it up, yo.

Think you’re too cool for Facebook?

Not any more you’re not.

S21 has put the freeze on the Internet’s leading social networking site.  Get over there and join the Sequenza21 Facebook Group!   Members will get a taste of the awesome powers at hand to those on the inside of S21.  Oh yeah!  AWEsome powers.

C’mon.  You know you wanna.

(AWESOME!)

All right, back to interval cycles and Kurtag.  Sigh.

Sequenza21 is pleased to scoop the rest of the world wide web and announce the most exciting news of the day in the world of new music.

On December 4 and 5, the Lost Dog Ensemble, in residence with the Astoria Music Society, will be playing a concert of . . . works by Sequenza21 composers!! The December 4 concert will be in Astoria at the very hip Waltz-Astoria Café, and the following night we’ll be at the Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church on Manhattan’s Upper West Side (right by Lincoln Center –– an institution that will certainly be feeling a little bashful that night).

Okay. Now here’s the good part.

THIS IS A CALL FOR SCORES!!!

The regulations are a bit tighter this time, so read closely, y’all:

• Submissions are limited to the following instruments: flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano.
• Pieces using subsets of this ensemble are especially encouraged, though don’t be afraid to send us your Pierrot piece if you think it’s your best.
• Solo pieces are also acceptable.
• Pieces should be a maximum of 12 minutes long, One submission per composer.
• As for electronics, talk to us about the requirements, and we’ll let you know if they’re feasible.

Next, let’s be clear about something: we’re mostly interested in composers who actually blog here or who actually take part in the threads. Now, if you’ve never made your voice heard on S21 and you really want to send a piece, that’s fine. But others who have posted will be ahead of you in line.

Postmark deadline: July 16^th. So time’s a little tighter this time, too. But we have our reasons, friends.

To submit: send me an email (my address is down in the credits bar to the left), and I’ll send you the address.