Bolero?

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Posting has been a little light of late. The school year has started, and that means that I’ve been scrambling around trying to figure out where my time should be going each week. As of yet, this has not included the blog, but I do like to blog to procrastinate, so I hope that things will pick up again soon.

This year will be a big change from last year. I’m only taking one music class, a big change from last year which was almost all music classes. The class is on 20th Century Modernism, and I signed up for it mostly because of the discomfort that I have with that period of music. It’s a vast body of work, and it spans from things that I consider some of my favorite music (the ballets of Stravinsky) to things that go completely over my head (Pierrot Lunaire). Modernism is something that is easiest for me to accept in abstract terms–I love modern architecture and visual art–than in any ideological sense (I’ve never been able to understand why a Modern novel is considered as such). Music falls somewhere in between those art forms to me, and I’d like to learn what the intellectual framework of Modernism is at the same time as studying the major works.

So imagine my surprise when the first assigned piece was Maurice Ravel’s Bolero. A whole week. No assigned readings, just listening.

It’s kind of weird for me to think of Bolero as a Modernist piece of music at all, if only because I tend to associate Modernism with “difficult music.” This partly has to do with the way that Modern things are dismissed in our culture, but also with the belief that I have that some composers worked at making their music as inaccessible as possible. Perhaps that’s not true, and I may move away from it. But Bolero is not inaccessible.

I was worried at first that there would not be enough to say about the piece to last three classes, and to Ravel’s credit, that wasn’t true. At the same time, this week has been an exercise in close listening more than analysis. My professor tried to steer us towards analytical clichés like portrayals of the “other” in the second theme versus the “familiar” first theme. The repetition inherent in the piece shut down many analytical avenues, and I thought that the most valuable discussions centered on the orchestration of the piece.

Whatever the dividends, I’ll never again dismiss Bolero as a boring joke.

Christos Tsiolkas – The Slap

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  • Christos Tsiolkas, The Slap, Penguin Books, April 2010, 482p.
  • Brief Summary: A novel told from multiple perspectives, The Slap examines in intimate detail the aftermath and fracture of a social circle after a man slaps a child that is not his own at a family gathering.
  • This is for: Fans of domestic novels. Those interested in themes of societal change, inter-generational conflict, and immigrant experiences.
  • This is not for: ideologues. Those who need big plot points: there are revelations and events that happen throughout the novel, but they take a backseat to the experience and voice of the featured character.

I was intrigued, as perhaps you are now, by the tagline on the front cover of Christos Tsiolkas’ The Slap: “At a suburban barbeque, a man slaps a child that is not his own…” Those words immediately suggest conflict; we can imagine how that scenario might play out among people that we know. Friendships broken, inter-familial feuds, overstepped boundaries and violations of trust. All these things can be found in The Slap, however the novel contains much more.

The novel is structured like eight independent novellas, focusing on different characters involved or present at the titular incident. Each has their own perspective on the incident, but also their own secrets, their own experiences, their own relationships. Because all of these characters are fully realized and have their own degree of engagement with the conflict–in fact, in at least two of the sections, the slap plays a very minor role in their story–the slap acts as a common focal point showing the differences in the lenses that the characters use to look at the world. They range in age and perspective from  a 15-year old trying to navigate the rough waters of cruel schoolmates and his own gayness to a 70 year old Greek immigrant coming to terms with his own age and the fact that the world has changed very much since the time he was raising children.

Tsiolkas gives the reader the opportunity to really get in the character’s heads, without judging them or editorializing. It’s a great read.

Arcade Fire – The Suburbs

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I’ve been brooding on Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs for a little while now. I wanted to review it, but found it very hard to pin down, and then the moment passed. But I do want to to note how surprised I was at the different sound that Arcade Fire uses on this record as opposed to the other albums.

One of the unique properties of their records was the huge ensemble that they recorded with, and the sheer variety of instruments they incorporated into their music. Not only did they use all of these instruments, but they were used front and center. In their music, strings were not used like synth pads, not used as filler in the background. In songs like “No Cars Go” or “Rebellion (Lies),” the strings were an integral part of the hook. It was for this reason that they were mentioned in the same breath as Owen Pallett (formerly Final Fantasy) and Beirut. The Suburbs places the strings back in the background, and the production has been transformed from the warm and acoustic aesthetic of Funeral to an indie rock sound that is regrettably more generic.

Other critics have written about this change in sound. Some have characterized it as Arcade Fire emulating some of the scope and scale of arena rock. I think this fails to acknowledge that this emulation has been an aspect of Arcade Fire’s music from the beginning. Simply listen to “Wake Up” or “Keep the Car Running:” the stomp-along, stadium filling songs have been there. What’s different in this record is that they have pulled back from the sound that differentiated them from the other bands out there that are trying the same thing.

This isn’t enough for me to dislike The Suburbs. In most other respects, it’s a new Arcade Fire release, something I’ve been looking forward to. But it is true that they’ve removed one of the characteristics of their music that made me fall in love with them in the first place.

Louis C.K.'s "Louie"

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Sometimes I have very old-mannish tastes in things. For example, I’ve been really enjoying Louis C.K.’s new FX show Louie a lot, and the target audience for the show is clearly middle-aged men. At the same time, it’s also really funny. I don’t watch Parks and Rec, and wasn’t previously aware of C.K.’s stand up, but I started listening to it after watching the show. The man is funny. His cynical and jaded, yet optimistic tone matches the way I feel most of the time better than the usual stand-up angle of scorn and ridicule. He has a way of despairing at the way that things turn out in life at the same time as he affirms the hopes and desires that cause the disappointment.
The show is very loose. Many TV writers have described the episodes as collections of short films interspersed with stand-up clips. That’s pretty accurate. The “short films” are basically a filmed version of what could be a story told on stage; “So, I signed up to chaperone my daughter’s field trip” becomes a 10 minute segment that shows what happens. The events and characters in the show are clearly products of C.K.’s mind and world, however the dialogue is pretty naturalistic. Every once in a while, the show abruptly breaks with the reality it has established, and that’s great too.
The whole series to date is up on Hulu. I recommend it.