Beethoven and Cooley

So I am slightly annoyed (this may or may not be understatement)

I am annoyed (slightly) because.

1) I have to write a piece for carillon (the big bells in Harkness) for my composition class. While originally I thought Cool, I get to write for bells! That’s awesome! I must be frank. This assignment is kiiiiind of driving me insane. The bells just keep ringing and ringing; you never get to write in rests; and the dissonance just keeps piling up. To add insult to injury, the assignment itself requires a ton of weird harmonies and a disturbing amount of repetition. (I never want to read the sentence “You must demonstrate a high degree of motivic coherence!” again.) I am a failure of a composer because I can’t get this to sound even halfway good, and I am days behind.

2) The carilloneur in my class for whom we’re all writing is having her orchestra piece played tonight 8 p.m. by YSO alongside Beethoven. The concert’s title “Beethoven and Cooley” satirically juxtaposes the two composers. Of course, you’d go to a concert and hear both of them! Unfair.

3) I just listened to the piece, and pairing Ludwig Van Beethoven with Emily Cooley PC ’12 might not actually be so outrageous.

SO I’M MAD!

Anyway, of course you should go to this. YSO is amazing this year for any of you who were not at the Halloween show. The Beethoven pieces include Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, which features Mia Nishikawa JE’ 14 on piano and Michael Li PC ’12 as conductor and Symphony No. 4 in B-flat Major.

Emily’s piece “Render and Reach” varies a theme making ample use of the different orchestral instruments and smooth yet colourful modulation.

The piece opens with music one might expect to hear at a wonderous ballet or fairy tale dance production as the music creatively varies off a theme, but the piece then goes minor and adds post-Wagner and film score elements, building slowly. Emily then adds small spurts of melodic material in different instruments in a quasi-minimalist fashion that starts to lose me a little, especially when it comes back later in the piece. The piece modulates back to major, blending chords and pleasantly overlapping melodies.

The next section of the six-minute piece is characterized by upbeat rhythmic sections that open with a tapping, percussive sound and quickly incorporate drum kit. The upbeat melodic sections that go with the drum rhythms are underlined with legato re-representations of the theme, which spiral up into a big crash of power only experienced and fully appreciated in orchestras.

Throughout the piece, Emily makes effective use of horns to blare the melody and add emotional impetus. During the minimalistic sections with more sporadic melody lines, the flutes are instrumental in adding continuity with steadily rising harmonies. High, repeated notes in the strings bring back a modified theme and the horns come in to finish for a finale, a grand instrumental flourish.

Fantastic. (damnit)

So yeah. Tickets are $2-$5 for students and $10-15 for non-Yalies. Go. I would, but I have to finish this (and another) piece.

Dooooooonggggg.....

Z

2 Newsic events + 4 artforms=1 SIC Friday

Hey, muses!

How’s that math studying going?

Who cares? It’s Friday! (DON’T start singing.)

But luckily there’s some better music for you this weekend than Rebecca Black.

Yeah.

First. The music composition seminar class (the one everyone takes over and over that lets you write your own music, and take lessons and generally do yo thang---totes taking this next fall) is teaming up with the dance choreography class (similar I’m guessing but for dance) in a show at 2pm in Stiles-Morse Crescent Theater. The show is by Y.C. New Music and is called “QUOTED.”

This is all kinds of good news.

(I feel like I should know who this funnylookingdude is...)

Pretty much every legit campus composer is going to have a piece in this show. I can’t promise these pieces will be as much fun as Jamestown was at Spring Fling—these composers are studying modern classical composition—at Yale often minimalistic with lots of dissonances. Their pieces are usually quite interesting though if you make yourself pay attention (it helps when you have to write about them after) ‘cuz they usually try to make them fun by doing all kinds of experimental stuff (like playing the instruments in unconventional ways or adding electronics).

A metronome beats in the musicians ears to keep them playing in time with an electronic recording. (I took this photo with my fav YDN canon 7D. Thanks, YDN!)

The dancing should be amazing. I know because my friend Amymarie has been stressing over this show for months.

“Zoe, I still need to choreograph 17 minutes by next week, and we only have four minutes of music! Not that I blame the composers because we haven’t done anything either. OMG.”

Amymarie is obsessed with dance (obsessed might be an understatement here actually) and is super legit, so I’m pretty excited to see all the crazy things the dancer peeps will do with their bodies.

Amymarie being awesome in the Groove show earlier this month.

If you like new music (newsic) go. If your friends are in it go (I shouldn’t have to tell you this). If you want to feel cultured, go. If you want to see siiiiiick dancing, go. If you want to party and sing to Rebecca Black, don’t go. This show should be really impressive but academic, since both the music and dance pieces are for class.

We’re still at 1 + 1 here…so I’d say there’s more??

SIC InC has two shows of SIC synChromatic left. Today (Friday) at 9pm and Saturday at 8pm in the Off Broadway Theater. Tiks are $5, reserve here. I went yesterday, so I’m going to review the show for you now. (in next post) I was speaking with my suitemates at lunch today and they didn’t know what SIC InC was, and I almost hyperventilated. But I’m fine now, so I’ll explain in the review in case you also don’t know.

But let’s finish off this equation. The SIC show involves painting AND film as well as awesome newsic compositions. Whoah. Sooooo artsy.

zenontherocks

So this yields…SIC InC show + "QUOTED" + newsic + dance + painting + film = 2+4 = ITS FRIDAY!

Sic(k).

Z