If You Have To Ask…

…you’ll never know. That’s the legendary answer to the question “What is swing?” I suppose that might be the reasonable response to the questions I have about some points raised in the must-read interview Nicholas Payton gave to Ethan Iverson over at Do the Math. But still, I’ll ask. Payton and Iverson talk about working with classical musicians, and I wonder exactly what is going on in situations like this:

EI:  I haven’t had the experience of having a full orchestra read something that I wrote, but I’ve been around a lot of classical musicians trying to play something with an American beat and it’s always worse than expected.

NP:  I’m really shocked.

EI:  Even basic even-eighth note syncopations won’t lay right.

NP:  And triplets! Triplets really messed them up, and I thought, “Well, it’s a triplet.”

EI:  It’s funny because they can probably play five in the time of four, but really playing three in the time of two will hang them up, right?

I don’t doubt what these gentlemen are saying, I just wonder what is going on when the “even-eighth note syncopations won’t lay right”. Rushing? dragging? inconsistency? steady, but incorrectly placed with regard to the pulse? something with accentuation or articulation? How about when the “triplets really messed them up”? It partly depends on whether we are talking about slow or fast triplets. When I ask my musicianship students to execute a moderately slow three against two, a few of them can’t play the triplets evenly, and end up doing a pattern of two dotted eighths and an eighth note instead of three equal triplet quarters. Was that happening? The thing is, you obviously have to play even-eighth note syncopations and three in the time of two to play European classical music well. But something was going wrong in the situations Iverson and Payton describe, and I am curious as to exactly what it was.

I have to say I don’t know anybody who can do a precise five against four who can’t play a good three against two. But, again, what does it mean to play a good three against two?

Vacation Miscellany

It’s time for a little break from blogging, to resume in a few weeks. Here are a couple of  items for your consideration:

- Jed Perl makes the case for the “freestanding significance” of the arts. Whether it be scholars who care more about context than that which is being contextualized, or grant-giving foundations that think art is a delivery system for social services, rather than prioritizing artistic excellence, the pressure to “hyphenate” the arts is tremendous. UPDATE:  a typically thoughtful reply to Perl by Alex Ross here in which he lays out a wise middle ground. I don’t have anything to add about Wagner or Strauss, but I still think the scholarly and grant-giving pendulums have swung too far away from notes ‘n’ rhythms. I’m not talking about educational outreach, which is crucially important. But if you want to help homeless people, it is probably more efficient to mop the floor at a shelter than to write a string quartet, despite what some foundations seem to think.

- Nicholas Payton on a reprehensible, unfunny “humor” piece on the New Yorker website.

- I’ve added a video page above (see the links just below the blog’s header photo) so you can readily find YouTube performances of my music, including Times Like These and the Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus.

- Here’s a new organization that sounds pretty interesting.