I discovered a few weeks ago that John Adams has a blog. Initially, I was delighted. Delighted! John Adams! One of the Major Musical Influences of “post-minimalist” composers like me! Has a blog! Like me! I can explore his thoughts and get to know him as a person via word choice and sentence structure!

But you guys, the more I read, the more he comes across like a musical version of Michael Moore: disparaging, cynical, snobby, hatin’ on everything except the few things he prescribes as good and true. Check out this entry on going to movies in this day and age. Mr. Adams, sir, I love your music but don’t go to movies if you don’t enjoy them. If you can pick out all the cheesy particulars, and hate doing it, just don’t go.

Or how about this entry about people coughing at concerts. That kind of attitude bothers me so much! I mean, no one does it on purpose. No one. And what is more, every person there just paid good money to hear your piece being played, to hear you play your instrument. Those people who wait to cough between movements? They are doing their best to *not* disrupt the music. And I bet every person who coughs while there is music playing is embarrassed about it.

Well friends, fellow who get dust particles in your throats, who go to concerts even though you have colds because you want to hear the music, who are allergic to the perfume of the lady sitting three rows down, I’m with you on this one. Cough if you need to, I’ll pat you on the back and hand you a proverbial lozenge and tell you it’s okay because I don’t care if you interrupt the still after the end of the first movement. I’m glad you’re here, I’m glad you’re listening, I’m sorry you’re not feeling well! Please enjoy the rest of the show.

And check out those comments! Apart from mine, and one or two others, there is a whole lot of Classical Music Snobbery! Don’t clap between movements, don’t come if you might cough, even one priceless example of The Stigma Surrounding Classical Music: Richard. Here is his comment:

Jesus Christ. I’ve been going to concerts all my life and I’ve been able to control myself. Why can’t everyone else?
Also, as a matter of biology, I have a hard time sitting still. But somehow I manage the discipline to sit still and listen while at a concert.
I have to say the level of offense is different in different cities. New York has to be the worst. Coughing and eating are one thing, but when you pay $65 to have a pretty good balcony seat (which most of us can’t do everyday), you dress appropriately and then you have to sit next to some idiot who is wearing a T-shirt and sneakers.
Decorum demands that if these people don’t correct their behavior, it’s up to you to be the one who communicates to them that they are being rude, inconsiderate, that they look like a slob, or simply that they are assholes.
I have a friend who is a pretty serious concert goer. Watching him deal with them is always funny. He often threatens to have them thrown out as if he has any authority to do so.
Frequently, the alternative of listening to a near perfect performance at home on a recording is preferable to spending money to hang out with these idiots.
However, there is a rare occasion when it goes down correctly. I went to a Mahler 9 at Carnegie with Eschenbach and the Philadelphia Orchestra. The performance was a tedious affair.
However, everything gave way to a feeling of acceptance at the end of the symphony (as tends to happen with this piece even at bad performances; I forgave and accepted Eschenbach for his sins) and he did the mandatory sitting there in silence for a good minute as the 2,500 people in the audience did too. During that minute, all of us in that room shared something truly profound. I’m grateful that for once it wasn’t ruined by one of these troubled people.

Richard, can we talk for a moment? Sir, you clearly regard concerts as a Matter of Status and everyone who goes who does not operate by Your Predefined Standards does not deserve to be there. But really, if the people around you are detracting from your “experience” it isn’t the music that’s defining your experience in the first place, now, is it? Sir? And if your friend who threatens to have people thrown out based on their attire is that bothered by it, maybe he shouldn’t be there either.

I love music, Richard. I really do, several different kinds of music, in fact! I go to rock concerts, and I wear jeans and a t-shirt, and I love the music, and I love listening to it live. Why, loving classical music to much the same degree, should I dress differently for it? Why does my attire make me an “idiot”? I’ve got a degree (almost) in this music and I have a pretty good brain, actually, and yes, I like to wear t-shirts and jeans and sometimes even orange sneakers when I go to the Symphony. I go to the shows to enjoy the music being made. I’d like to hope most people do. Somehow it seems that you don’t, though, Richard. Somehow I don’t think we could be friends. And please: if your sense of “decorum” demands that you need to tell me off about it, I might get a bit feisty.

My friend Christopher pointed out to me that there probably wouldn’t be all this outpouring of snobbishness had Mr. Adams posted the alternate point of view on coughing at concerts.

Dear Mr. Adams,
Please use your power for good.

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“Half-Ass” is my life these days. I am doing a lot of things you guys! I am trying to get a whole song-cycle written before the end of December, along with a horn piece for a friend’s grad recital and a contrabassoon piece for another concert. I am trying to write poetry for my creative writing class, and somehow accumulate enough that is in the vein that my professor likes to put together a 15-20 page manuscript to turn in. I am trying to keep up with my information-classes: Counterpoint and Post Tonal Theory and The Novel After 1900, reading the textbooks, doing the homework, going to class. I am drawing comics and updating the site! I am working two jobs, one of which is Quite Needy (the KWS) and the other of which is Just Inconvenient because I either have to work evenings after a long day at school or early mornings on the weekend. Add in “practice oboe and make reeds” into this mess and you have One Busy Esther add “sleep and eat and maintain contact with your friends and family” and you have Too Busy Esther.

So I’m half-assing things. I’m not reading the textbooks, but I try to go to class; I don’t really do my homework, but I make sure to get my assignments in; I don’t practice, but I…okay, I just don’t practice. I make reeds, but I only make enough to last me for a bit and then stretch them out (although I made two really good reeds early this week, and there are 10 more blanks waiting to be scraped that I have high hopes for; should last me until Christmas at the rate I’m going); I work at my jobs, but I call in sick to one of them if I have a conflict; I draw comics, but don’t update on time; I compose, but not anything like as much as I want to.

And it works, this half-assery, for the most part. I’m paying my rent, I’m making progress in my oboing (though this is mostly thanks to Dick’s uncanny talent of making me learn regardless), I’m making good reeds, I did well on my English midterm, decently well on my Post-Tonal midterm–but there are things, things like Baroque Counterpoint, which don’t lend themselves especially well to my particular system. And what do I do about all this? It’s like asking “What are birds?” We just don’t know.

***

I had a bunch of pieces played in the Student Composer concert (the first of five at the school this year) a few weeks ago, pieces that I wrote last year with Peter but didn’t get played in the concerts. And I was really happy with them! (I also had a piece played in the orchestra concert the weekend preceding, but I was less happy with it.) I want to give you all a taste of who I am as a composer, so here is a piece called “How They Felt About the Balloon”:

How They Felt About the Balloon

I used Donald Barthelme’s short story “The Balloon” as inspiration for form and content, particularly this image from the print form. I drew a graph over the words to set up measures and time, and then interpreted the descriptions into music. I like, though, that it doesn’t sound formalized and strict, that it sounds like a person with ADD, leaping and skipping from idea to idea but each idea adds to the one before, and since it is all done with the same pitch set it is all in the same world.

I play the piano extremely poorly, so hearing my friend Sputnik’s interpretation of the piece for the first time was like hearing someone else’s work that is just weirdly familiar.

It was pretty neat.