Spring Awakening is the best musical ever.

No, really. Spring Awakening won eight Tony Awards in 2007, and for good reason. In short, it's a semi-modern adaptation of Franz Wenderkind's play Spring Awakenings, which was banned after its publication in Germany in the late 1800s. The Broadway incarnation is still set in the 1890s like the original, but while the costume, setting and society in general are conservative, religious nineteenth century German, the vernacular is very 21st century American. With song titles like "Totally Fucked" and "The Bitch of Living," it's kind of hard to miss. In kind, the characters' names, which are unchanged, are butchered via pronunciation in a typically American way. It's not a bad thing, honestly. The way the whole play works, the modern attitude and twist taken on the old German play, if what seemed like typical modern teenagers dumped in a starkly different setting had actually pronounced the names with a perfect German accent, it would have stood out. Still, it's something to note if you're a German speaker and can't stand Americanized pronunciation.

I have heard a few people call Spring Awakening "the Rent for this generation." It's an appropriate comparision, but also an inadequate one. It does work in some ways. They're definitely both edgy and both aimed at a younger audience (the edgy, artsy 20-something crowd ate Rent up when it came out, and should do the same for Spring Awakening) and are both musically different from the traditional understanding of musical theatre.

Rent is by all standards a rock musical, which is a term that specifically categorizes the score of a play, but also more abstractly the tone and attitude. Basically, rock musicals are musicals scored with electric guitars and pop-rock styled vocals, sex and vulgar language in the lyrics, rebellious (and usually dated) topics, and angry, energetic, overtly political teenage and twenty-something characters. Vaguely. It's as nebulous as most genre categories are these days, but I think that's a pretty solid way of generalizing it.

Spring Awakening is kind of like that. The songs are like mainstream folk-rock turned theatre. The characters have potty mouths... or potty minds, at any rate. Unlike most musicals, the songs are not the dialogue and motion of a scene; rather, they're the internal monologue of the characters involved in a scene as it happens. If it's necessary to hear the conversation during a song, they'll break off singing and talk, and then go back to singing. Sometimes the whole cast will mobilize and sing a song that really only takes place in the mind of one character, and sometimes their thoughts will intersect to form one song they both equally take part in, intellectually. It's a really interesting way to look at a musical. And while there are sort of dance numbers, there aren't really. In "Bitch of Living," which is linked above to the official music video, they dance with chairs, and in "Totally Fucked" they do a vaguely dance-resembling full cast thing, but it's mostly running around and stomping and being energetic teenagers. It works, but it's by no means Hairspray or Grease.

Where Spring Awakening surpasses Rent, however, is in the "dated" aspect. Where Rent was set, in its time, in a very current setting dealing with very current issues, Spring Awakening is set in the 1890s dealing with (what, at least, Franz Wenderkind considered) 1890s German problems. It's covered in a somewhat modern way, but it's deliberately historical. Honestly, I don't see how this could become nearly as dated as most other rock musicals have become. This is not to say that Spring Awakening dealt with these problems in the same way that Wenderkind did in his Spring Awakenings, but the point still stands. The problems are still the same, if presented in a more audience-pleasing, tasteful fashion. But that's a topic for the next post.

I'm glad this tradition is gone.

The other day, I stumbled upon a BBC News Article from 2006, which detailed the exhumation of castrato virtuoso Farinelli in order to study exactly how his amazing voice developed.

(An amusing aside: Chad and I were discussing this late one night as we walked to Turkey Hill. We were still talking about it when we paid at the register. The cashier asked us what we were talking about, and we had to explain to him that in the 1700s, it was fashionable to castrate little boys so that they could sing soprano as adults in choirs and in opera. He looked mildly horrified, and very confused as to why we were talking about this at all.)

Now, I honestly don't understand this. Don't we know how his voice developed? He was castrated before puberty. Beyond that, I highly doubt his progression was much different than any other amazing singer. So, really, what's the point?

The Farinelli Study Center in Bologna is sponsoring this. In the article, it says that through studying, they want to spread the word about his achievements. Here I will openly admit that I'm not familar with Farinelli or these achievements. Maybe I'm overly cynical, but I don't really see the point. It's not like he was a composer, with tangible documents to show what he did. There's only one recording of a castrato singer in existence, and it's of Allesandro Moreschi, over a century later. And while I'm sure that he was brilliant, what is the real value of spreading the word? What can we really learn from this? "Once, three hundred years ago, there was this guy called Farinelli. His parents mutilated him when he was a little boy, and then he was allegedly a really good singer. But since it was in the early 1700s we can't really tell for sure."

My opinion, however, is biased. Aside from the obvious negative aspects, namely the whole castration thing, I don't even like the way Castrato singing sounds. To be honest, it kind of creeps me out. The above recording, by Allesandro Moreschi, is the only recording because Moreschi was the last castrato to perform. By the 1900s, castration was already illegal. And maybe Moreschi isn't a prime example, but I don't have much else to compare it to.

I guess, creepiness aside, I can understand why they were "en vogue" so long. Castration before puberty has a lot of physiological effects that are beneficial to singing. It prevents the male vocal chords from changing and settling into an adult form, so they stay small and become very flexible. Because they had little to no testosterone, their bones grew abnormally long. In addition to making them very tall (Farinelli was reputed to be abnormally tall and this was confirmed when his bones were exhumed), their ribs were also unusually long, giving them a lot of extra space. This, combined with heavy training, allowed for amazing breath capacity.

The problem, though (aside from the obvious), is that there were a LOT of boys who were castrated by their parents in order to become singers, but very few were actually successful. This means that, having come from poor areas to begin with, a lot of boys grew up as eunuchs, mutilated pointlessly.

Apparantly now there is a disorder that prevents a boy from ever reaching sexual maturity... so castrati could still exist, minus the castration part.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

I was raised Catholic. I still consider myself practicing, but while I'm away at school I'm honestly not very good at it. Sundays come and go and I spend the whole day resting, cleaning, and catching up on homework. Every Lent I try to remedy this; I tell myself I'm going to start going to Mass again, and I do, even though it usually fades away after. I'm doing the same this year. I honestly do try, but realistically I'm just too scatterbrained for it to really stick when I'm doing it alone.

Why talk religion in an arts blog? Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Lent, for non-Catholics, is a period of forty days before Easter, and is intended as a period of intense spiritual renewal. In other words, you repent, you fast, you repent some more, and you genuinely try to be a better person. It's essentially the religious atmosphere of the whole middle ages crammed into about five weeks.

The reason I bring this up is that Lent, being a time when you're supposed to improve yourself, is a perfect time to expose yourself to new and different types of music, suitable for all your meditative needs. (Okay, okay. It's an excuse for me to try and convince you that chant isn't boring. I have ulterior motives.)

If traditional or Gregorian chant isn't your cup of tea, don't stop reading yet. What plainsong or monophonic chant did in the middle ages, Renaissance composers made much more interesting. Most relgious music is actually like this. For example, Mozart's Requiem mass is based on the traditional Gregorian Requiem mass. On top of borrowing the text, adaptations of these chants usually retain at least some aspects of the original tune.

The most obvious one that comes to mind for me is Alma Redemptoris Mater. The plainsong version is here. (It's not the best performance I've ever heard, but it was either this or the sheet music, and for the moment it's better just to hear it.) Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (most commonly known as Palestrina, for the city where he lived) did one of my favorite arrangements of it. You can see a performance of it on YouTube. If you listen to both, you'll notice right away that the first six notes are the same. After that they diverge, but you can still hear echoes of the original throughout. Tomas Luis de Victoria also did one.

Apparantly musical integrity wasn't quite as popular in the middle ages and renaissance, though. One of my favorite Palestrina pieces isn't even his. Adoramus Te has been circulating since the nineteenth century, according to CPDL.org, and borrows the soprano line from Francesco Roselli's Adoramus Te. I'm not sure how accurate all of this information is, since no sources are cited and because I remember hearing something different about it, but they do make the sheet music for both pieces available as PDF files, and the soprano lines match up.

My favorite Victoria piece... well, pieces... are not actually related to Lent at all, and are O Magnum Mysterium and the mass based on it, called "Missa de O Magnum Mysterium." "O Magnum Mysterium" is actually about the nativity. It really is difficult to choose, though, and Magnum only comes ahead by about a hair because of my own sentimental attachment to it.

It should be noted here that Palestrina and Victoria are two of my absolute favorite composers. Both are listed on www.classiccat.com, which is a directory of free classical music recordings across the internet. Most of these recordings are done by amateur, church, community, and university ensembles, but a lot of them are quite good. Check them out. Even if you're not religious, polyphonic chant is simply gorgeous and is definitely worth a listen.

The Piano Man Comes to Philadelphia

The Academy of Music in Philadelphia recently celebrated its 151st anniversary with its annual concert and ball.

Now, I have never attended these festivities. It's an occupational hazard of still living at home, and later, going to school two hours away from Philadelphia. A seasonal subscription to the Philadelphia Orchestra is one of items that I have to have, assuming I stay in the area after graduation and at some point have the money to do so. Right now, though, it's more a matter of bugging my parents and friends and trying to convince them that yes, they want to go see the orchestra at Verizon Hall, because guess what they're playing and the space is shaped like the inside of a cello! It's an argument that I usually lose.

Apparantly, though, the 151st anniversary was kind of a big deal. Billy Joel made a guest appearance at the concert portion of the event. This was his first performance with a major orchestra (and Philadelphia had it! woo!). A few of his popular songs were specially orchestrated for the occasion (this is not out of the ordinary; classical renditions of popular music are often performed at the Academy and elsewhere). Infinitely more intriguing, however, at least for the classically oriented, was the debut performance of his Waltz No. 2 (Steinway Hall).

Fans of Joel will probably know this already; Joel does have a heavily classical background. Both of his parents were musicians and he spent much of his childhood studying in this vein until he shunned it in favor of pop. Now, however, as you'll read in the Daily News article linked above, he seems to have returned to his roots, and shows more of an interest in composing Baroque and Romantic influenced neo-classical music for piano. There's an album, Fantasies and Delusions, Op. 1-10 available through various music outlets if you're interested in expanding your modern classical collection. The sheet music is also available to for aspiring pianists, and should present more of a challenge than transcriptions of Piano Man. Joel himself didn't actually play on the album; he composed all the music himself, but hired a more capable classical pianist to perform it.

I don't know if this means that Joel will start making the rounds as a classical musician, or if his appearance in Philadelphia was a one-off, but I'll definitely be keeping my eyes peeled for his next appearance.

Ovid is a little more relevant than I thought!

As you may have gathered from my "currently reading" list to the right, my Medieval literature class is currently discussing Beowulf. The experience is a somewhat awkward balance between students who have no interest in the epic whatsoever, a [very small] handful who actually legitimately enjoy the subject matter, and a professor who tries to sympathize with the people who hate it and leaves her own opinions largely up to one's imagination.

This awkwardness may have been caused in high school, where famously bad english teachers pound classic literature into bored young minds, or it may have been due to a cultural stigma against classic literature in general and particularly epic poetry. Or maybe not. I don't pretend to know why so many people dislike the dying genre. I know that the movie "Troy," did well in the box office, but whether this is due to a massive interest in ancient Greek city-states and the accompanying mythos, politics and history, a culture that has been overly desensitized to blood and violence, or just because Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom and Diane Kruger are all really, really hot is something that is beyond my resources and capability to find out.

Or maybe nobody dislikes it.

This weekend, Chad and I went to Barnes and Noble to explore the shelves and tack more titles and authors onto our growing lists and shrinking budgets, when a bright red hardcover display caught our eyes. (Now, I don't care what anyone else tells you or what the old saying is, packaging and design sell books. This particular one is eye-catching in the best way.)



Anyway, despite that, packaging isn't everything, and when we flipped the book over, I swear that one of the quotes said that the author was "the best thing since Ovid," or something like that. Now, Chad shares this belief with me, that there is definitely such a thing as over complimenting, and it IS detrimental to my opinion of a book. In other words, don't tell me Joe Smith is the next William Shakespeare. I won't believe you.

In this circumstance, however, I may have been mistaken. I'm ALSO a firm believer that one of the best ways to test an author's skill at writing is to read the first page. So imagine my surprise when we opened it and saw... epic poetry. I'm not kidding. Apparantly the Ovid reference wasn't as inane as I thought! That's what I get for being cynical and snobby, I guess.

Anyway, I haven't read the book yet and I can't tell you if his poetry measures up to "The Metamorphoses," but just because this guy tried, I'll read it. You try it, too, and we'll compare notes later.

Introduction!

Last night was our first Chant Schola rehearsal of the semester. (This is the first thing you will learn about me. I join geeky clubs that eat up all of my time.) Chant Schola at our school was formed for two reasons: first, our concert last year was horrifying in its lack of material, and second, because our director had been looking for an excuse to do it anyway. He picked five people with solid musical backgrounds and the ability to learn music really quickly, handed us music and recordings, and said "Go!" Anyway, it just so happened that, because of our musical training and background, we were able to reproduce the dark, hollow sound that boy choirs often make and it turned out quite well. A Schola was born.

As was mentioned above, I'm also in choir. Here is the second instance of why I'm a geek: I have a (probably annoying) tendency to foist my musical tastes upon the director and the rest of the choir. (Read: Please, please, pleeease can we sing the Kyrie from Mozart's Requiem?) This extends to chant, and I spent all of last semester begging our director to choose Dies Irae. He was hesitant... he thought it was too dark and too depressing. Well, I won. Not only are we chanting Dies Irae, but we're ALSO singing Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem.

(Here is where I give props to Margot Lorena on YouTube. Really, her channel is amazing. More people should upload that many good songs AND the sheet music.)

Anyway, we were rehearsing Dies Irae, and the director pointed out the sort of "up-down" quality of stresses and attributed it to the application of the Solesmes Method, which was a somewhat controversial method of chant notation and interpretation that involved imposing phrasing and lengthening notes that had not been there prior to their editing. It's still in use today, at least to some degree. I pointed out that, "Actually, the rhythm is there naturally in the text; the lyrics are written in trochaic tetrameter, and in tercets!" Trochaic tetrameter, for the poetically challenged, is a pattern of four "Stressed-unstressed" feet per line. Trochees are the opposite of iambs, which are the ones you'll find in Shakespeare. Tercets are three line stanzas, as in the Divine Comedy.

That was when Becca turned to me and said, "You should blog about this kind of thing!" Music, poetry, et cetera. I thought to myself that I certainly have more to say about neumes and meter than I do about Britney Spears, and then I remembered an episode in my friend's car when she said, "Whenever I put this [Vivaldi's Four Seasons] on, everyone always says it's the diamond commercial!" And then there was the episode of Boy Meets World where Eric accompanied Mr. Feeney to see The Barber of Seville and only started enjoying himself when he heard Bugs Bunny.

So now I'm here to save the humanity from certain doom, and hopefully turn a few more people into culture snobs like me.