Research for this semester – maybe thesis

Celeste Hutchins
1 October 2003
Proseminar
Research Proposal

I would like to research music from around the last section of the 100 years war. I am specifically interested in music somehow related to Joan of Arc. For instance, after she raised the Siege of Orleans, a mystery play was written in her honor, which has been performed nearly every year since. I don’t know anything about the music attached to this play, but would like to find out how much it has changed over time and if early transcriptions are available, so that I can analyze the music. If this music is unavailable, I will instead focus on music she might have heard, including the liturgical music performed at Dom Remy, her local cathedral, or the music played then at Charles’ court.

I am interested in this topic because I would like to write a Mass for Joan of Arc (since she’s a saint) and eventually an opera and I would like to represent her with music that would have been somehow meaningful to her. I don’t know what research has been done on this topic, but I’ll be talking with Professor Alden about it. Also, I will be in France over fall break and hopefully will be able to do some research then.

Moo themes

Ok, so I was looking at modifying the source code of SuperCollider to make network connections . . . what a nightmare! So instead, there will be a perl program, that SC will execute that will handle all of the text stuff and the network stuff and everything that supercollider isn’t good at. so the perl thing will do everything but make sound. (Note: maybe someone ought to add sound capablities to Perl. An OSC lib, maybe?)
Players will have the options of attaching arrays to themselves caled themes. So you would need to create a property on yourself called a theme and then put stuff in it. This theme will look *cough* just like a ring tone on a Nokia phone. Some of you have experience with cell phone ring composers and will be able to hear your theme on a phone before comiting it to yourself. I just wrote a ring tone. It goes 4d1 4a1 4b1 2c2 32d2 32#f2 8a2 8f2 8f2 16d2 16f2. It’s pretty jazzy at the end.

Anatomy of a Nokia Composition

the first number is the note duration. It is the denonominator of a fraction whose numerator is 1. So smaller numbers are faster. In musical terms, a 1 is equivalent to a whole note, 2 a half note, 4 a quarter note, 8 and 8th note, etc.
Then comes an optional # and then the note name. There are no flats. but that’s ok because in equal temperment Bb = A#. but since it’s backwards, in this case it equals #a.
The last number indicates the octave. A low number is a low octave. A d2 is an octave higher than a d1.

Garunteed support changes

You will be able to use any number, not just a power of 2, to denote duration, but it will still be in denominator format. therefore a starting number of 3 will be meaningful (in musical terms, it would be a half note triplet, since our notation isn’t so good at divisions by 3). You will be able to specify b for flat or # for sharp. Equal temperment may not be supported. Because an optional ‘b’ means flat, all the note names must be in upper case. and the final integer specifyin octave will be optional (if you don’t specify, then the program will pick an octave and your theme may get moved around, from high to low). you can pick an arbitrarily large or small octave number. the low threshold of human hearing is around 20 Hz, so octave 0 will be down there someplace. the high threshold of human hearing is around 20000 Hz, so figure out what octave number that is and that’s you upper lmit. Extremely high pitched sounds are likely to be played at a much lower volume.

yeah, yeah, ringtones

I’m not crazy about cell phone, or their ringtones, but I have to admit that this has cross-fertalization possibilities. Some phones allow you to specify different rings for different people in your addressbook. Also, some websites have the ring tones for different songs up on them. My phone plays the Indiana Jones theme song, for example. there are Ives-ian possibilities lurking danegerously around.
telnet happy.xkey.com 3333

Moo song

I’ve decided that my midterm SuperCollider project will be a program that logs into the MOO (telnet xkey.com:3333) and interprets MOO text somehow into sounds. for this, I will need to create a $room, which will be called the Music Studio and a $player for my SuperCollider program to use. It would be better if the MOO and SuperCollider could communicate through some other means, besides a fake player. But I don’t think MOO objects are allowed to make network connections and I can’t think of another way to log in. (If you know otherwise, please let me know.)
anyway, the SuperCollider program will log into the MOO and from the text, create sounds. There’s a few ways to do this. I could scan the text for particular key words, which would cause particular actions. for instance, the word “teleport” usually signifies that a new player has come in, and so when “teleport” comes across the network connection, some particular responce could occur. Or, I could do statistical analysis on the network text, changing the texture of the music based on the frequency and length of the received text. for instance, a lot of text arriving quickly would indicate that there’s a lot of activity on the MOO and perhaps the program could respond by creating a dense texture of sounds. another thing that could happen is that $plays (and other objects) could have an optional “themes” property, which would contain information meaningful to the SuperCollider patch, so it could look at your theme property and, in Wagnerian style, play your theme while you are in the room.
If you have any suggestions or ideas about how you would musically represent MOO communications, you should pass them along. to be fair, the patch output will have t be streamed, so $players can listen. so think also of what musical noises might convey useful information. If you have a desk job and can sit with headphones on, would you like to hear it play something that tells you that somebody just logged on or one of your friends is talking?
One of the local guys is giving me and old PC with linux on it, so I can set up a test streaming server. Alas, it will probably not have a fixed IP address until it passes a certain amount of testing, since xkey must be stable. Or, Mitch could put a stable RedHat PC in the CN kitchen that could get nightly builds put up on it. The PC currently there is having some sort of disk problem.
This project probably wouldn’t work well for Stony Brook, but that’s ok. I have a final project after this one.

Dulcimer Piece

I have no dynamics (loudness) markings nor do I have pedal markings, nor anything else except notes and rests. Long Version, Short Version. I think the long one may be too long, but the piece isn’t over at the short one because the two parts don’t line up yet. So I think I have have to do a retrograde or inversion or a retrograde inversion for the second part. Except that the last notes sound very final, so I may need to open with the retrograde inversion. On Wednesday, I’ll get feedback on this from Alvin Lucier, so, you know, my time here isn’t being wasted by stupid paper and whatnot and even if this piece doesn’t draw on anything I didn’t know before, well, the feedback will.
I will be playing for a half hour at SUNY Stonybrook on Dec 6th. I’ll prolly be doing laptop music (even tho, officially, I hate laptop music) because I’ll prolly be playing a project from my SuperCollider class. Now that I have pressure on my projects, I have absolutely no idea what to do. My ideas flew out of my head or don’t seem robust enough or whatever. Of course, I could (should?) play several songs, or at least multiple movements during the half hour unless I can somehow create something that evolves over time, so it’s changing in an algorythmic way or something. How would you do that? changing notes and rythms here and there, but it would have to be changing in an interesting way, like going from a plainsong kind of thing to Ars Nova to Ars Subiliot. That last word is mispelled. It was an outgrowth of ars Nova that was really popular around the papacy at Avinion, but got dropped when the schism ended, even tho it was more complicated and possibly more interesting. The writer of a book I just read said it was more interesting, but I duno, as I haven’t listened to any yet. the scores and recordings section of the library closes at 5:00 pm on saturdays and today I haven’t left the house today.
Aaron (the housemate) brought a futon back today, so now there is a place for you to sleep when you come visit. Tell me when you’re coming and I promise to buy a second set of sheets! the futon used to belong to Scott Rosenberg who went to Mills as a music student when Christi and I were there. Everyone go hum It’s a Small World to yourselves until you go insane.
If I very clearly picture myself getting a package in the mail containing vegan brownies, maybe one will appear. Christi’s mom was always sending brownies when Christi was a freshwoman at Mills. Brownies . . . Brownies . . . Brownes on a cold fall day . . .
My CD burner just made a Bad Sound….

PlayPlay

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

moremoremore

>The Office of Public Safety has received reports of thefts of 9 more
>laptop computers from student residences over the past week, bringing the
>total number of reported thefts to more than 60 since the semester
>began. In almost all the cases, unknown person(s) gained access to
>student residences through unlocked doors or windows.

ackackack

Everyone here is much smarter than i am and i have 2791634712364946 things that i’m supossed to do and angela says that this place is “like a spa” compared to her last MFA program (she has a Masters in clarinet performance) and Ron says that if I feel like I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown by fall break, then I’m on schedule for new MFA students. I have to go look up obscure stuff about the hundred years war and i’m a week behind on my supercollider homework and there’s a big midterm project for supercollider and there’s some big projects in my compositon seminar and i’m suppossed to go to two sessions of a class i “wouldn’t normally take” and they have to be the same section of the same class and then i have to write some short thing about it, which isn’t too hard except that the profs have the right to refuse me admission, which apparently, they like to do and that’s due soon and next week i have to teach the students in the class that i TA how to use digital performer, which i’ve never really used, except i bought a copy three years ago and don’t use it because i HATE it because i can’t get it to do anyhting i want it to do, which is not really the best place to be coming from to teach other people to use it and i already feel like i’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown because this is not “like a spa” to me at all, unless you went to a mean spa that stressed you out instead of putting you in a nice hottub or something.
I just got a fantastic offer over email to play a 30 minute set of improv stuff at SUNY.
deep breaths
I spent many hours on the phone with tech support today. my dsl stuff arrived on monday and today i had some time to install it, but there’s no phone jacks in my room, so i went to the campus puter store to buy an airport base staion, but they didn’t have any and talked me into buying a much cheaper linksys wireless router instead. if i were smart, i would have left as soon as i found out they had no base stations instead of arguing with the manager about whether or not he should sell me the display base station for half price (cheap bastard) and i certainly would not have bought the linksys monstrosity and if i were msart, i would gave given up when it didn’t plug and play instead of debugging it and if i were smart, i would NEVER have called tech support, especially not called them back after they explained that macs were unsupported and i had to work out part of the problem for myself and see, if i had these better time management skills, i would have had time to work a half hour set out. maybe i can write an “Unpredictable Music” proggie in super collider and use it as my midterm project and then play it at SUNY.
So if anyone asks how i’m doing, tell them i’m ahead of schedule, according to my advisor.

Ack

For next week, we have your first personal research roundtable. This
should be a 15-minute presentation and 5-minute question period. The
idea is to air some thoughts about what you might be working on
towards as a final project and get some feedback. E mail me if you
want to talk about topics, though basically I’m open to anything.
We can refine our procedures for next rounds, for example decide if
we want a webpage for conversation, etc.

I’m thinking about saying I want to do something about songs from the 100 years war. But what would I say about it for 15 minutes?

Sleep-deprived paper

Celeste Hutchins
Proseminar
24 September 2003
Ruth Crawford Seeger Paper

Ruth Crawford was composing music at a time when an American compositional identity was just forming. Her influences and compositional tools place her in a matrix, where ideas and skills pass from composer to composer and from teacher to student. The ideas that she used are still reverberating through American composition.
Charles Seeger taught his students, including Ruth Crawford, about neumes, a musical idea that he gained from his historical research into early music. He also taught this to Cowell, who passed it on to his students, including Lou Harrison. Harrison was so taken with the idea and made such heavy use of it, that the first item in his Music Primer is an explanation of neumes and how to use them. His methods are the same ones that Crawford used. The item ends with “Henry Cowell taught me most of this.” (Harrison p 1)
The Theosophy and mysticism that Crawford embraced still echoes though American music as well. The KPFA archives contain a collection of tapes of Dane Rudhyar speaking about various Theosophical subjects. When I was cataloging the archive, I noticed the unusual titles and subject matter and asked Charles Amirkhanian about them. He spoke very highly about Rudhyar and Theosophy in general. Extrapolating from the number of tapes of him in the KPFA archives, I assume that he must have been able to influence a large number of people.
Theosophy also appears in Robert Ashley’s Opera, Perfect Lives. Ashley opens each section with, “These are some songs written about the Corn Belt and the people living it. Or on it.” One of the main characters is a Theosophist, something mentioned early in the series. In a later episode, Ashley focuses extensively on the Theosophist character and a number of Theosophist themes are discussed in detail. He repeats the phrase, “without coincidence” several times. If it is indeed without coincidence, it seems that the presence of theosophy in the opera is recognition of the theosophical composers from the Corn Belt, including Crawford. What more naturally belongs in an opera about the Midwest than a discussion of the worldview held by so many composers from that area?
In a more controversial vein, Crawford is also emblematic of American composers through her sexual orientation. As you (Professor Slobin) said in class, “It must mean something if so many of the major American composers of the 20th Century were gay.” It is, of course, impossible to make definitive statements about deceased people’s sexual orientations, and I cannot presume to know that Crawford was bisexual or perhaps even a lesbian, given that she clearly didn’t identify as such. However, from the reading, it’s clear that Crawford went though many of the same experiences that queers typically face.
Crawford was clearly questioning her sexual orientation while she was at the MacDowell Colony, and with good reason. Being repulsed by the idea of physical intimacy with a member of the opposite sex whom one is romantically involved with is a normal experience for closeted gay people, but, I’m told, is somewhat unusual for heterosexuals. After Gene left the colony, Crawford turned to a woman, Marion Bauer, for comfort. She agonized about her lack of desire for Gene, but the claimed that she nearly slept with Bauer. Tick very tellingly writes, “Crawford called [this] the ‘Lesbian’ subject.” (p 107) The “Lesbian subject” is very clearly a weighty one and something that she must have thought deeply about. With a “healthy curiosity, [she mulled] over the words of a lesbian poet at the colony who was after her to begin an affair. ‘You have to know what you are experiencing before you can sublimate it, she wrote . . ..'” (p 98) Thus she is willing to consider the idea of sexual expression only when it occurs in a lesbian context.
Therefore, Crawford was in flux. She continued to identify as straight, perhaps unaware of the idea of bisexuality. Her Methodist upbringing and current social mores probably pressured her intensely. There are no currently known examples of “statements in Theosophical literature either condemning or accepting homosexuality as unnatural or unnatural.” (http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_theo.htm) Theosophy would not have provided her with a gay-positive refuge. More than being in flux, she was also in crisis. “Was she sexually damaged? She despaired of knowing.” (Tick p 100)
This crisis provides a possible analysis of her worry about being able to have a family and a composing career. If one is repulsed by the idea of procreating, of course one will find reasons not to have a family. Crawford’s worries and ideas about sexuality are familiar to me, as a lesbian with a religious upbringing. She shares a large part of the gay experience. These experiences also demonstratably affected her writing as they were occurring, as her romantic crises caused writer’s block and her rejuvenation when Bauer got her creative juices flowing again. They also may help explain some of her wishy-washiness throughout her compositional period. She was someone in crisis, with an uncertain sense of identity and who was wrestling with large personal questions. Is it any wonder, then, that she felt overwhelmed by writing an orchestra piece even though she had written large pieces before?
This string quartet that she wrote instead is masterful. It has beautiful use of dissonance and a melodic character, with a unique voice. It’s certainly a smaller piece than a symphony and it makes it tempting to speculate what amazing things she might have written, had she not stopped composing and subsequently died before she could start again. It’s also tempting to speculate on why she stopped composing. Did she find compositional strength in her personal uncertainty? (Facetiously: Does a gay (or questioning) identity compel one to compose?) Speculating further, if she indeed was a lesbian, then why did she marry Seeger? Some people agonizingly question their sexual orientation only to discover that they are straight. Or, she may have been bisexual. Perhaps she merely changed. Sexual orientation can be fluid. I have a friend (who wishes to remain anonymous) who describes the (now discarded) heterosexuality of her youth by saying that, “[she] was a willing, even enthusiastic participant.” It’s worth noting that a large portion of Crawford and Seeger’s courtship took place via letters, so she could achieve the meeting of minds that she craved without the specter of a possibly alarming physical expression looming immediately over her.

It’s midnight

and my damn paper isn’t done. and i didn’t have enough material to leave the gay question alone and now the paper is too long and i haven’t yet mentioned anything about her compositional technique except neumes, to say that her teacher also taught Henry Cowell who taught the same idea to Harrison, who put it on page one of his Music Primer.
Harry Partch didn’t have testicles.
It’s true. I read it on the otherminds website. I wonder if I could fit this into my paper too.

Feedback

I got the feedback from my Harrison paper/presentation. the prof said that it was well researched and I should write the suthors, but it was a minor issue and that he had hoped I would speak more broadly about Harrison as an American (TM) Composer.
So I think I’ll shelve my Ruth Crawford was so queer thesis . . .