: Being silly
I think it was the spring semester of my second year studying composition at the Julliard Extension. Professor Cummings gave us an assignment to compose a short piece using 2 wildly different key signatures at the same time. This may not mean much to you non-musicians out there, but all my musician friends will recognize this as something very tricky to carry across if you are tonally oriented (as I am) – basically it sounds like the musicians are making mistakes and hitting a bunch of wrong notes. I dutifully did my best, but after it was performed I said to Professor Cummings that it sounded silly – like a PDQ Bach parody.
To which Professor Cummings replied, “Eric, be silly!” I was startled – this was a novel concept to me. Now there is a long tradition of doing obvious musical parodies and/or pieces that are musical jokes from the start. One of my favorite records when I was growing up was Spike Jones’ parody of Carmen. But as I am not in the business of doing musical parodies, being silly can be a tricky proposition. Nonetheless, through the years I have tried to follow Professor Cummings’ advise.
Case in point – my composition for saxophone quartet The Source of the Beat. This piece is heavily influenced by field recordings of native African music – the polyphonic singing by the Bayaka tribes and music from the Dagomba region of Ghana. Nonetheless I didn’t want it to be too serious; I envisioned opening the piece with some sort of musical joke. My first thought was to do a parody of a big band – but I couldn’t pull that off. Then somehow I hit on the idea of starting off with the opening theme music from I Love Lucy. I couldn’t do the entire piece (it’s over 1 minute) so I just did the iconic opening 2 bars and threw in a few wrong notes just to get the idea across.
So far so good. Then as I was composing – I noticed about 2 minutes into the piece that I had composed a phrase that was similar to the next part of the I Love Lucy theme. Hmmm. This was a compositional dilemma. If I went down this path, then I was committed to following through and sneaking in the rest of the theme (or at least a good chunk of it). I took the leap and eventually incorporated the first 2 & the last 2 sections from the I Love Lucy theme. So if you listen to the full piece, you will hear 4 sections of the I Love Lucy. You can click this link to go out to YouTube and listen. Just below I’ve listed exactly when the sections play – and YouTube displays the elapsed time in minutes & seconds.
0:00 – Dah Dah Dah da-da DAH DA_DAH!
1:52 – Dah Dah Dah da-da DAH DA_DAH!
5:55 – Dah DAH da DAH da DAH-DAH!
8:10 – da DA-A-AH, da da da DA-A-AH, da da da D-A-A-AH, dah dah da-da-da-da-da DA-A-A-A-AH!
BTW – mea culpa here. YouTube pays something like .003 cents for every listen, so I’m expecting to make some big bucks from this.
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Friday January 20, 8:00PM-11:30ish
Better Off Dead at Shillelagh Club
648 Prospect Ave, West Orange, NJ (973) 509-1134
And speaking of Shillelaghs – as you drive along Prospect Ave at night, you may feel like you’re in the middle of a forest. But when your GPS says “you’ve arrived at your destination“, you will notice a parking lot lit up with bright green LED lights – which lets you know that indeed you have arrived at a great destination. I’ll be making da music with [no “the“] Better Off Dead.
http://www.betteroffdead.com
https://shillelaghclub.com/
Saturday January 21, 7:30PM-10:00
New Music for a New Year at the National Opera Center
330 7th Ave, 7th floor, New York, NY 10001 (973) 509-1134
I’m psyched that the third “episode” of my string quartet will get its debut concert performance next month and will be performed by a truly outstanding string quartet ensemble The Rhythm Method (and yes, it appears that they capitalize the “The” in their name). This concert is being produced by the Composer’s Collective of New York and (besides my piece) will showcase compositions by 7 other composers from the group. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door. You may purchase advanced tickets here.
https://www.operaamerica.org/national-opera-center/
http://www.composerscollective.org/#
Thursday January 26th, 8:00PM -12:00AM
Better Off Dead at Great Notch Inn,
400 US-46, Woodland Park, NJ 07424 (973) 256-7742
It’s Better Off Dead’s first “Notch” show of the year. Being this is a Thursday, we start at the more reasonable hour of 8:00.
http://www.betteroffdead.com
https://www.facebook.com/Great-Notch-Inn-45741843010/