Schoenberg In Hell

In my daily "spare moment" I've been reading "A Windfall of Musicians, Hitler's Emigres and Exiles in Southern California" by Dorothy Lamb Crawford. It's now $32.00 at Amazon. (When I purchased it 3 weeks ago, it sold for $25.20 - just enough to qualify for free shipping.)

The book chronicles an era that was completely finished by the time I, an exile from the Middle West, arrived in Southern California. Many things have changed here since Los Angeles received a host of Europe's greatest unwanted creative minds. Some things haven't. A fascinating book.


I just finished Chapter 6 entitled "Arnold Schoenberg". It deals specifically with Schoenberg's attempts to cope with life on the opposite side of the planet from his known world. I found the story of Schoenberg's exile extremely depressing, even tragic.

Schoenberg, of course, was a talented sincere artist of great psychological extremes. He had keen awareness of the history of music and his own contributions to it. He worked hard to explain the logic of what he did without ever denying the importance of inspiration. And he was an elitist called to point out that the future of all music would indeed reflect his influences.

Here in California he could squeeze out a living only by teaching. He found his American students woefully unprepared. The history of important European art music, like any other history, must have seemed terribly distant to them.

While on the faculty of UCLA he formulated giant plans for a conservatory-like program for all musicians, not just composers. There would even be a school for copyists! Of course his ideas were ignored. His greatest legacy today, unfortunately, seems to be the widespread image of the composer as professor.

Schoenberg's isolation on the West Coast is poignantly highlighted by a quote from his daughter about the regular Sunday afternoon salons he held in his home.

"After a while my father realized that these people were coming here to meet each other and not to talk with him.... Daddy would be sitting ... maybe completely alone, not talking to anyone, and so he decided one time that we weren't going to do this anymore. . . . For a long time on Sunday afternoons at two o'clock . . . we would get in the car and drive around the block . . . while these people came and found no one at home and went away." (p.129)

Schoenberg lived just long enough to see his teachings misinterpreted by composers back in Europe. He was hailed as the creator of a new movement called serialism, a musical reaction to the horrors of war based on very un-Schoenbergian mathematical theories. Crawford writes:

As Schoenberg found European interest in his compositions growing in the postwar period, he wrote, "There is nothing I long for more intensely . . . than that people should know my tunes and whistle them." What happened was the opposite. Leonard Stein commented "Schoenberg was not responsible for the twelve-tone concept taking over. People like [Rene] Leibowitz. . . would come in the late forties and explain his music to him!" (p.131)

All these and other aspects are detailed superbly in Dorothy Crawfords' chapter. To me they seem to describe a man condemned to both great and petty torments, incapable of overcoming either geographical or cultural isolation, unable to oppose the historical forces well beyond his control and unwilling to compromise his own devotion to principle. He found himself in a musical hell where the weather was very very nice. Wouldn't this story make a great novel? Maybe it already has.

These days significant serious music still is not native to Southern California. Talented local musicians go away to make classical careers while Southern California's musical institutions import their heroes from other places. Composers still flock here although not because of political exile. They hope for big industrial paychecks. Most of them probably have an unperformed opera, symphony or string quarter on an old external USB drive somewhere.

Remaining here, even in the age of Internet and discount airfare, means accepting a certain form of isolation. Southern California seems to be a unique place filled with talent and money - but creatively we live somewhere in the absolute elsewhere.

Reading the story of Schoenberg's later life resonated with my own feelings. In life, of course, one picks the best available choice and then lives happily ever after. Still, it is only natural to occasionally lament the lesser luminosity of the local grass. And it is revealing to discover that even the most influential musicians might have gazed across a similar fence.




The cover picture above shows (L to R) Otto Klemperer (very tall), Prinz Hubertus von Loewenstein, Arnold Schoenberg (very short) and Ernst Toch (holding a small dog).

Other more or less related Mixed Meters posts:

• Los Angeles, New Music Backwater
• Something I want to discuss with Arnold
• In which David's ranting is imaginary
• 30 Second Spots - Oh, Was He Still Around
• Schoenberg and Shostakovich for marching band
• Mozart's Penis versus Schoenberg's Penis (alas, the "Schoenberg's Penis" entry in the Urban Dictionary has disappeared. I did not make it up.)
• Kraft's Encounters (William Kraft, a successful composer whose entire career has been in Southern California)
• The Rest Is Noise (especially the section about politics of music)
• The New Yorker and the Hero Composer in Los Angeles

Exile Tags: A Windfall of Musicians. . . Dorothy Lamb Crawford. . . Arnold Schoenberg. . . Los Angeles Composers

30 Second Spots - In America Everyone Is A Great Artist

You will make more sense of this post if you first refer back to In Which David Listens to Two Radio Stations Alternately. Pay special attention to the comment by Alex Shapiro.

Oh heck, here's what she wrote (in purple):

The demise of L.A.'s commercial classical radio station has presented a new and thrilling opportunity for your radio game:
Schoenberg/Willie Nelson mash-ups.
Or, Bartok/LeAnn Rimes.
Maybe, Brahms/Charlie Pride....?
I think it's time to open your ears to a NEW kind of stereo effect...

By now Alex should know better than to offer any opportunity (no matter how slight) to serve as my muse. Apparently she didn't learn her lesson from her previous tangle with Mixed Meters. Check out and listen to this post entitled The On and Off Topic Blues for Alex in which you can hear the music I created to avoid attending a composers' forum.

By the way, Alex seems to have disappeared from the paradise known as Malibu. Rumor has it she's been banished to a gulag on a remote island in the far northwest of the country because of her moderate behavior. I trust there is an abundance of classical radio and contemporary performance there. Maybe she'll get time off for good behavior. Her blog is about music derived from seaweed. Check it out.


In America Everyone Is A Great Artist is a combination of two types of music I don’t like – 12-tone Music and Country Music. It combines the classically country themes of faithless lovers, big honkin' eighteen wheelers, serialism and the quest for tenure into an annoyingly saccharine comment on every American baby-boomer's birthright: our entitlement to creatively express our identical sheltered experiences repetitively in the hopes of expanding our 15 minutes of fame into a vast fortune.

In America I can take two kinds of music I don’t like and combine them into one piece you don’t like. Is this a great country, or what?

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In America Everyone Is A Great Artist is one minute and 33 seconds long. It is copyright (c) 2007 by David Ocker.

P.S. I'm trying this new little embedded mp3 player from the website MOG where I have established yet another David Ocker blog. I just can't resist when they're free. I hope both my readers will leave a comment on how well this works. Please? Purty Please?

P.P.S. The picture of the Maverick cigarette box has two tenuous musical relevances. One is MTT's excellent American Maverick radio series. The other is a country band called The Mavericks, with whose music Leslie lovingly tormented me in the early years of our marriage.

P.P.P.S. My radio station game survives between KUSC (the classical classical station) and KJAZZ (the classical jazz station). The results aren't great as often as they were between two classical classical stations, but it sure beats listening to KKGO (the country classical station).

P.P.P.P.S. If you hate my recurrent bit about "both my readers", please leave the third comment to this post.

Great Country or What Tags: Classical Radio. . . Country Radio. . . KKGO. . . KUSC. . . KJZZ. . . Alex Shapiro. . . American Mavericks. . . The Mavericks. . . Maverick cigarettes. . . American quality. . . Meet Your Muse. . . 30 Second Spots. . . David Ocker

Southwest Chamber Music Gets Half a Mil

This small article was in today's Los Angeles Times

Chamber receives $500,000 grant

Southwest Chamber Music has received a grant totaling $500,000 to be paid over the next 10 years from the Schoenberg Family Charitable Fund.

The grant, the largest in the Pasadena group's history, will be used to pay for future recordings. Southwest received classical album Grammy Awards in 2003 and 2004. (Chris Pasles)

Half a million dollars is a lot of money and quite a long term commitment for a chamber music group - especially one that does so much modern repertoire. I hope they use it to good effect.

Congratulations to SCMS. Here's their website.

Okay, by a show of hands, how many of you knew there was such a thing as "The Schoenberg Family Charitable Fund"? (Not me.)


12-tone Tags: Southwest Chamber Music. . . Schoenberg Family Charitable Fund. . . chamber music

Los Angeles - New Music Backwater

I confess that my previous post wandered aimlessly. Eventually I touched on the history of new music in Los Angeles during my years. I also discussed who controls what music gets performed here (as if it matters). This post by Daniel Wolf and this post by Roger Bourland (to which I added a comment) tell the whole story better than I can.

Daniel appended this comment here at Mixed Meters:

Someone, someday, has to do the definitive Southern California new music history, with all the details, because that's where the music lives.

A few months ago I had a conversation with Carl Stone and Richard Amromin, both leading lights in the Independent Composers Association back then, on the subject of such a history. We were all for it - as long as someone else did the work.

Since then I've been reminded that a lot of equally invisible things were going on new-musically besides those I was aware of. There's a lot of material to be uncovered.

Such a book would be tremendously satisfying to the egos of anyone who gets mentioned. Here's the drill, the first time you open the book you turn immediately to the back index and check the number of mentions of your own name. I do this with Zappa books. You would too.

The big problem with such a book is that it would have no hook for snaring a readership. No earth-shakingly famous new music composer came out of the scene. No influential style evolved here. (Nor could it ever, but that's another rant.)

Even the Monday Evening Concerts (which had at least one book written about it) had the hook of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. To my knowledge Arnie and Igor were never labeled as "California Composers." All they did was live here. If the MEC ever had a hey-day it was because of them. Plenty of California musicians have shaken up the world, for example John Cage and Charles Mingus whose music shook me up personally. Would they have had such successful careers had they remained L.A. residents?


So I wonder, does new music really "live" in Los Angeles - or does it just manage to survive? Our vast metropolis never seemed conducive to a small, intense, creative forward-looking musical scene. It doesn't seem so now. I fear it never will.

SoCal is a nice place to live if you like dim sum or soba noodles or Korean seafood pancakes or tacos al carbon. We have lots of sun and lots of green plants. You'd like that. We also have lots of isolation from places where new music seems to actually matter to people. This is a huge boon to us. We can keep tabs via the Internet on all you other guys as you do important stuff.


Alex Ross, in his blog, today mentioned Princeton as a place where new music IS REALLY happening. He linked to a music theorist whose "groundbreaking theoretical explorations" have discovered voice leading. That's pretty funny. Voice leading was the single most important issue in my earliest studies of harmony. Could we take up a collection and send some hymnals to Princeton?

Ross has written a "big article" on Esa-Pekka Salonen in the current New Yorker. That's the magazine with the good cartoons. I'll try to get a copy. The last "big article" I remember reading in a New Yorker (a very long time ago) was about Nicolas Slonimsky, another "California composer".

Here's my ancient post about the Princeton Laptop Orchestra. - including links to my 30 second spot "The Laptop in Live Performance?" and to my failed graduate piece for clarinet and electronics "Voluntary Solitude."

Here's my ancient post about Nicolas (and Frank and Edgard).

Backwater Tags: Daniel Wolf. . . Roger Bourland. . . Los Angeles. . . new music. . . Monday Evening Concerts. . . Alex Ross. . . Esa-Pekka Salonen. . . Princeton Laptop Orchestra. . . Nicholas Slonimsky. . . Independent Composers Association

P.S. The pictures will be more interesting if you click on them so some of the words are readable.

3 Minute Climax - The On and Off Topic Blues for Alex

Alex is Alex Shapiro - composer, moderator and blogger, a tireless crusader for new music in Los Angeles. Her blog, Notes From The Kelp, could be the only music blog with more items about marine biology than Mixed Meters. Her composer website is here.

There are actually two new pieces that you can listen to. First is The On-Topic Blues for Alex the Moderator. It's short and to the point. By itself it would be categorized as a 30 Second Spot.


Second is The Off-Topic Blues for Alex the Composer which uses the same material, lasts longer and wanders absent-mindedly off the trail, so to speak. Since I prefer you to listen to them in this order I've put both into a single mp3 file, separated by a silence.

Anyone expecting real blues music will be severely disappointed.

Listen now. Afterwards, if you're still curious, read The Backstory (below) which also goes off topic. Otherwise you uncurious types have got better things to do, right?

click here to hear The On-Topic Blues for Alex the Moderator and The Off-Topic Blues for Alex the Composer.

Copyright (c) 2007 by David Ocker - 198 Seconds


The Backstory

It all began with THIS CONCERT about which Jerry Zinser wrote THIS REVIEW at Sequenza 21. (Note the comment by me.) Alex Shapiro, seeing this exchange, wrote to Jerry and myself inviting us to THIS EVENT.

Here's an excerpt from her email:

Next Sunday, the 21st, I'll be moderating another ACF-LA Composers Salon . . . .These are really wonderful gatherings of composer and musician colleagues that we've been doing for nearly six years, about four times a year. I know you'd have a good time!

Naturally I had no interest. This was my response:

My apologies for responding with the stark-raving truth - but a Composers Salon is the sort of event for which I have no interest or patience. I've promised myself that I'll try to use the time I would have spent attending avoidable events making up my own music.

But thanks for the invite - if I actually do write music on Sunday, JANUARY 21, 2007 from 2-5:00 pm, how about if I name the piece after you somehow?

You never know what I might come up with!

And so, dear Readers, it came to pass that on Sunday January 21, 2007 from about 2 p.m. to about 5 p.m. I trekked with my laptop up to Starbucks and composed The On-Topic Blues for Alex the Moderator honoring the fact that Alex, in her job as Salon Moderator, was at that very moment keeping people on the topic, whatever that was. And at the same time I was also avoiding the topic, whatever that was.


Alas, not long afterwards I had an idea. A piece of music that was "On-Topic" ought to be counter-balanced with another that was "Off-Topic. " And so, with the firing of those random neurons, the project was inflated beyond an excuse to avoid being bored.

I took much longer finishing "Off Topic" than "On Topic". As I got more and more off topic I was forced to reconsider what being on-topic meant - and I revised The On-Topic Blues slightly - I cut stuff out of it.


As I worked on it I passed through The Five Stages of Creativity - the emotional roller coaster which all creative artists pass through while making things up. First is Enthusiasm, then Amazement, then Disgust, then Acceptance (or Resignation). The final stage is Forgetfulness. I'm still waiting for Forgetfulness on this one. (Check out THIS INTERESTING ESSAY at Soho the Dog which provoked this idea.)


Alex Shapiro is a very active composer who writes many different sorts of music. I don't know if she's ever written any larger pieces for Concert Band. I do know that the name ARNOLD SCHOENBERG is an anagram for HER LONG BAND SCORE.

Curiously, ALEX SHAPIRO is an anagram for HIS LAX OPERA. I'm not aware that Schoenberg contemplated writing any music about Los Angeles International. (The Anagram Generator is HERE.)


A note about the pictures. The first two are of the same pipes at the same gas station - before and after they changed the color scheme. The last two are actual neon signs in Pasadena photographed last night (while on a mission to procure take-out food HERE) and Photoshopped to a flat red and blueness. Good girls should click HERE and bad girls may also click HERE.

Explanation of 30 second spots

Alex Tags: Alex Shapiro. . . composer. . . on topic. . . off topic. . . blues. . . ACF-LA. . . American Composers Forum. . . Jerry Zinser. . . anagrams. . . David Ocker. . . Mixed Meters. . . 3 Minute Climax

Mozart's Penis versus Schoenberg's Penis

My previous post was about the late Molly Ivins, a columnist who was extremely funny and exceptionally relevant.

This post is prompted by Dave Barry, a columnist who is extremely funny.

Thanks to the blog Bits and Pieces I discovered that Dave Barry has a blog. It's just another clip blog (like Bits and Pieces).

But it did contain a link to a story about amputating Mozart's penis. Mozart in this case is an iguana and his organ had to be removed because it was always erect and it prevented him from walking. The story says that iguanas have a spare penis - so losing one is not a big deal.


Here's a quote from the article:

A spokesman at the zoo, speaking with the casual, blasé manner of someone who hasn't just had their penis cut off, said: 'Male iguanas - including Mozart - have two penises, so this is unlikely to be a big problem for him.'

The picture above is an Iguana we met in at the ancient Mayan ruins of Uxmal. It's not Mozart. It might not even be male.


This picture is Mozart, a plastic Mozart. I doubt the flesh and blood Mozart's face really looked like this and of course his lower organ ranks are left completely to your imagination.

This particular item sat for years next to my family's low-tech stereo system, back in the sixties. So it's a Vintage Plastic Mozart. (The music behind him is what I should be working on instead of blogging.)

As long as we're on the subject of Composers Genitals - here's a fascinating link from The Urban Dictionary about the private parts of Arnold Schoenberg, a famous teacher.

Apparently the phrase "Schoenberg's Penis" is an expletive of sorts - a possible substitute for the F-word. I've never heard it used, but maybe it's common in England where you also might find a muso.

If you've ever said "Schoenberg's Penis" (I mean said it "out loud to another person and meant it as swearing") please leave a comment. I suspect the listing is someone's idea of a joke - someone who probably can't count past twelve.

Anyway, here's the definition plus two sample sentences:

1. Schoenberg's penis
An exclamation, normally to show anger or frustration at forgetting something or at something going wrong. Substitution for buggar, shit, fuck etc. Normally used in muso circles due to it's origin.

"Oh Schoenberg's penis, I forgot to pay the milkman again!"

"Schoenberg's penis, you bloody fool, why did you not tell me about his porn collection?!"

The final picture is one of Arnold Schoenberg's many self-portraits. This one is a hoot. Others can be found here.

Plastic Mozart Tags: milkman. . . Mozart. . . penis. . . Schoenberg. . . Arnold Schoenberg. . .Dave Barry. . . iguana. . . composer. . . classical music

Schoenberg & Shostakovich for Marching Band

Where would you expect to find this musical program?

"Piano Concerto No 2" by Shostakovich
"Transfigured Night" by Schoenberg
"Symphony No.10" by Shostakovich

Yes, it's music for a marching band competition. Here's an 8-minute Youtube video of SFA Bulldog Marching Band and Angels Dance Team performing "The Fire Within" at the State UIL competition in San Antonio, Texas Tuesday November 7, 2006

Listen for the What Do You Do With A Drunken Sailor? theme in the Shostakovich concerto. Watch for the nymph-like scampering during Verklarte Nacht. Apparently this performance came in 24th.

Yesterday I linked to this study about the effectiveness of programs to develop paying orchestra audiences. Here's a quote:

The research showed that predicting who will buy tickets is difficult, except for one variable: 74% of ticket-buyers had played an instrument or sung in a chorus somewhere, sometime, in their lives. Rather than large-scale concert programs for schoolchildren, it seems to be the active, participatory educational efforts that produce concertgoers.

In other words, the kids marching around in this video are the classical music audience of tomorrow - or rather of 20 or 30 years from now.

Did you know that "ORGAN BELCH DRONES" is an anagram for "Arnold Schoenberg"? No? Click here for lots more.

Scans of the manuscript to Verklarte Nacht are viewable at the Arnold Schoenberg Center website.

As a painter, what was Arnold Schoenberg's favorite subject? (Click here to find out.)I learned about this video at the Soho the Dog blog.

Tags and Tone Rows: Marching Band. . . Schoenberg. . . Shostakovich. . . Transfigured Night. . . Verklarte Nacht. . .Classical Music. . . Concert Tickets . . . New Music

30 Second Spots - Oh, Was He Still Around?

click here to hear Oh, Was He Still Around? I confess - the title was my first thought upon hearing about the death of György Ligeti.

Copyright © June 13, 2006 by David Ocker - 42 seconds

I've been finding some interesting online reading about composers.

Alex Ross wrote this fascinating article in the New Yorker entitled American Sublime. It's about Morton Feldman. (Alas, even Ross refers to John Cage's piece 4'33" as the "silent piece" - it's not silent, but it is a piece of music in which the performer makes no sound. A previous Mixed Meters article about 4'33" is here.)

Next are two links which didn't fit into the long delayed Mixed Meters post entitled "Varèse, Zappa & Slonimsky" which was nearly finished last Sunday but I lost most of it when my browser crashed. Sigh. Watch for it - soon - maybe.


This over-reaching and politically correct article by Paul Reale is entitled Los Angeles, 1994: The next Paris? The title has got to be good for at least a chuckle - if you don't live in L.A.

More interesting is this 1984 interview with Los Angeles bassoonist Don Christlieb about new music here starting in the 1930s.

For example, he talks about Monday Evening Concerts and the early Ojai Festival and tells many very humanizing things about Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky - including one story which includes this question: "Mr. Stravinsky, how is it you only live a few miles from Mr. Schoenberg and we never see you two together?" (Alex Ross posted this letter about Arnold Schoenberg's auto.)

Video? You'll have to make a choice - a bit of lip-syncing, sepia-toned opera silliness or maybe you'd prefer more cowbell?

Explanation of 30 second spots

P.S. Blogger's spell checker suggested that I replace the word "bassoonist" with "pessimist".

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In which David's Ranting is Imaginary

I listened to the first part of a (low energy, almost intimate) conversation between John Cage and Morton Feldman, recorded in 1967 at WBAI in New York. (Please imagine my rant about changes in non-commercial radio.)
I discovered this program via Nonpop.
Also available at Ubuweb

Near the end of part one Cage reflects that Arnold Schoenberg seemed more interested in teaching than in composing. And I thought "Yep, that's the problem with modern music today in a nutshell." (Please imagine my rant about how music should be listened to, not thought about.) (Also imagine my "do as I say, not as I do" rant.)

Here's an article about music in the early fifties - about the time I was an infant. The article is technical and ends with a comparison of recordings of Cage's Music of Changes, if you care. But I found it a fascinating overview of the mass of new musical ideas - and the interactions between composers. (I wonder if I'd enjoy reading letters between John Cage & Pierre Boulez.)

I enthusiastically studied this music in college and grad school. Today I wouldn't cross the street to hear it. But I'm in awe of the vast outpouring of radical invention.

These things must have been regarded by "sane, rational 1950's music lovers" as lunatic ravings and pure noise. What would I have thought had I been an adult back then? More importantly what lunatic rantings and ravings of today am I overlooking? (Imagine my rant about where the new ideas in new music have disappeared to.)

Here are previous posts in Mixed-Meters regarding John Cage:
4'33" performed by an orchestra
ICA plays Atlas Eclipticalis
ASLAP
"John Cage" radio at Pandora

The picture above is Bob Denver (you know, "Gilligan") - watch a video of him "singing" in the beach. (Yep. IN the beach.) (actually his performance is more like sprechstimme.) (You're right, it has nothing to do with John Cage)

Bob's beach-movie video is from WFMU Beware the Blog. Other good recent videos there include Monkey Chant and someone playing slide guitar with a spoon held in his teeth. You can find 'em if you look.

If you want to hear some 1950's music I actually enjoy listening to these days, try WFMU's show - Fools Paradise. Go figure.

(P.S. - still busy with work. Five-day Forecast: less than one new post per week.)

Music Video

30 Second Spots - Something I Need to Discuss With Arnold

click here to hear Something I Need to Discuss With Arnold . Not that Arnold. This Arnold was a financial advisor talking loudly on the phone to his client while I was working. He reassured her that if she felt there was "something I need to discuss with Arnold." (like the value of her account plummeting) he would be available to talk.

Copyright © February 7, 2006 by David Ocker - 33 seconds

If you thought I was referring to "Arnold Schwarzenegger" (the man who is so rich he wouldn't need to take donations as governor) click here to find out who has been giving him money lately. And click here to find out about how he intends to raise a mere $120 MILLION for reelection.

If you thought the title refers to "Arnold Schoenberg" (the first composer whose music requires a pre-concert lecture) click here or click there to find out just how popular Arnie is during the Boston Symphony's current season. (Alas you might have to register before you can read.) (Thanks to "S" for these links.) To see dozens of Arnold's self-portraits, click here.

If you thought the title refers to "Arnold the pig" click here or you can watch a video of our governor visiting Brazil and grabbing his favorite female body part here.

Explanation of 30 second spots

30 Second Spots