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 This is an excellent question that many educators ask. I believe it is a question that we should never stop asking. Having a standard repertoire is wonderful, but we must always reflect on the music we use for teaching to be sure we have not become stagnant. There are several ways that we can group music based on the focus of learning. Several examples are by composer, by era, by style, by culture, by concept (high and low, fast and slow), and by theme of the work. For any of these categories, the teacher has to ask “by creating this category, what music are we including and what music are we excluding?” Let’s say that we decide our unit will focus on Beethoven. So that automatically excludes music from other composers. But clearly we can’t study everything that Beethoven wrote. How do we narrow down which pieces to study? There are several pathways we can go from here. Perhaps, we decide to focus on Beethoven’s works that are most popular. How do we measure that? One great way is to see which pieces are most performed by orchestras and in recitals. You can often find these records from various classical music publications. But perhaps we want to focus on pieces that have been most influential for later composers. In that case, we would study the writings of later composers. As you can see, it is quite a process to select music in this way.  An alternative to this approach is to go in reverse order. Begin with the purpose or end goal of the unit. Are you searching for pieces to be performed at the end of the unit? Will students be creating a project to present? Or, are students going to use the studied music to inform their own creations? With this backwards design, we may have an easier time selecting specific works that will best serve our students. Notice that so far all of the planning process is dependent on the teacher. This situation may be the most common way to select repertoire across the world. However, I wish to present an alternative to this approach. The alternative is learner-centered or student-centered--and that is, we have students select the music that they will study. Many may react to this statement with surprise. After all, our students do not have the years of experience with music and credentials that the teacher may have. However, it is important to remember that the music is for the purpose of our students’ experience, not our own experience. By giving students a say in what we learn, we open to them the possibility of having control over their own learning. In my personal experience, student motivation is greatly improved when students study music familiar to them. Just like the teacher selection process, students can follow many different paths when selecting music. The teacher can present learning goals for a class and then students are tasked with finding music that fits those goals. Or to go a step further in the student-centered direction, the class as a whole determine their learning goals and find appropriate music that will help them reach those goals. After this process of creating learning goals, I will often have students anonymously submit music suggestions that they feel will help the class to meet learning goals. Then, as a class we listen to each selection. Depending on the group, we may verbally discuss the selections--how difficult the piece sounds, what may be challenging, what may come easily, how it would sound after practice, etc. If the group has a difficult time discussing thoughts without risking hurt feelings, I would have students submit thoughts anonymously. I often use Google Forms for this process.  This process can take time and there is nothing wrong with it taking time as long as discussions are productive. By engaging in this process, students come to appreciate all that goes into selecting the right repertoire.
By embracing the student-centered nature of repertoire selection, we also get to learn what our students enjoy. I have learned to never make assumptions about students based on their age. Very rarely does an entire class only wish to focus on current top 40 music. I have been introduced to so many different styles, eras, and cultures of music through this process that I learn as much as the students. Also consider that the process can be a balance in which some selections are student selected and some selections are teacher selected. I argue that allowing for student-selected repertoire not only makes for stronger relationships with students in the spirit of collaboration but also sets up students to become more independent in their interactions with music and making musical decisions. I encourage you to try this process with your students, even if it is just for one selection. I do not think you will be disappointed.
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2/22/2021 0 Comments Profile- John Williams If any one composer’s name is synonymous with film music of the last quarter of the 20th century and arguably, the last 50 years, it would be John Williams. I had the fortune of meeting him at a rehearsal at Tanglewood when I was 16. For someone that captures such a large sound, he was very calm and soft spoken. Williams got his start as a jazz pianist and played on several of Henry Mancini’s recordings while studying composition. What many do not know is that Williams earned his first Academy Award 4 years before Jaws by adapting music for the film version of the musical Fiddler on the Roof (1971). Williams had critical and commercial success following that with several disaster movies--The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Earthquake (1974), and the Towering Inferno (1974). Many film music fans seem to forget about any of Williams’ work before Jaws, but these scores are worth seeking out. Initially director Irwin Allen did not want any music during the opening titles of Towering Inferno, but Williams convinced him with an exciting piece as the helicopter approaches the tower. Williams’ second Academy award was for his score for Jaws, which I discussed in an earlier post.  The film that made Williams a household name and earned him his third Academy award may also be one of the most influential films in film history and film music history--Star Wars (1977). At the time, the style of music used for the film seemed like an enigma. The Academy award winner the previous year was Bill Conti’s disco-inspired score for Rocky (1976). The top selling soundtrack of 1977 was Saturday Night Fever, so you can see the context from which Star Wars emerges. From the beginning George Lucas wanted a symphonic score not only reminiscent of large Classical works but of the music that accompanied the science fiction action serials of the 1930s and 1940s that inspired Star Wars and later Indiana Jones. Williams showed not only his talent for creating memorable themes but also an incredible knowledge of harmonies and styles that had worked for classical composers in the past and when to use certain techniques. One could spend years studying just his composition and orchestration technique. The same year as Star Wars, Williams collaborated again with Steven Spielberg to score Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The memorable note sequence used to communicate with the aliens was so iconic that many assumed it was a legitimate alien signal that the filmmakers had borrowed. I have read that Williams tried multiple arrangements of notes before hitting the perfect combination. That shows part of the craft and mathematical aspect of music.  The year right after Star Wars, Williams composed my personal favorite of his scores, Superman (1978). It is difficult to say (and hopefully not controversial), but Superman’s main title may be slightly more exciting than the opening of Star Wars. The insistent rhythms and glorious themes never let up for the full 5 and half minutes of the titles. In the film, Williams music brings realism and humanity to the larger than life superhero. He captures the grandeur of flight, the tenderness of Lois and Clark, and the simplicity of Clark’s life in Smallville. This score definitely should have received the Academy Award that year instead of Giorgio Moroder’s experimental synthesizer score to Midnight Express. Williams returned to the Star Wars universe in 1980 with Empire Strikes Back, not only expanding on themes from the original film but adding many more memorable character ideas like the Imperial March, Yoda’s Theme and the love theme for Han and Leia. The end title suite for Empire Strikes Back is absolutely thrilling as it blends the three new themes for the film. 1981 and 1982 presented two back-to-back hits with director Spielberg. The action packed theme for Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) was initially difficult for Williams. He had already written the first part of the theme, but was struggling to figure out a second theme. Once again returning to the mathematical side of his talent, he inverted the first theme, and the second theme is actually the result of that. Beyond the main theme, Williams’ mysterious theme for the power of the ark is haunting.  In 1982, Williams earned another Academy Award for ET: The Extra Terrestrial. Looking back, we can forget just how much of a gamble that Spielberg took on a film that presented a friendship between a lost alien and a human boy. With just too much sappiness or too much cold science fiction, the film could have failed miserably. One great reason for its success was the music of Williams. In the recording of almost every film score, the movie is completely edited and the composer has to synchronize the timing of the music to hit certain important points in the film. After trying over and over, the ending sequence of ET just was not what Williams wanted. Spielberg trusted Williams so much that he let Williams conduct the music without the picture and then re-edited the ending sequence of the film to match the music. There is so little dialogue in the sequence that it almost becomes a science fiction ballet. The ending music of the film is one of the most epic in film history, in which the awe of extraterrestrial space travel and the boundlessness of friendship is expressed in music. It is similar in meaning to the ending of Close Encounters of the Third Kind from five years earlier, but I believe more effective in ET.
Two often overlooked main themes from the 1980s both have to do with flight. The first from Empire of the Sun (1987), called “Cadillac of the Skies” literally holds the film together. The second, from Always (1989) is probably the most memorable part of the film besides Audrey Hepburn’s final film appearance as an angel. Gather these with the themes from ET and Superman and Williams is a master of flight. Another of Williams’ most celebrated scores comes from 1993’s Jurassic Park. Who thought that a film about humans exploiting nature for profit and people getting eaten by dinosaurs could have such a beautiful main theme? The theme itself speaks to the imagined feeling of a lifelong paleontologist seeing a living dinosaur for the first time. Thirty years after winning his first Academy Award, Williams took on the challenge of creating the sound of the Harry Potter universe. Consider that this sound would have been developing in readers’ minds for quite a few years before the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001) film. Williams music does not disappoint. He returns to familiar ideas of flight, wonder, and friendship. His score is similar enough to his previous work to be comfortable but new enough to stand on its own. By the time of writing this post, Williams has been nominated for 52 Academy Awards, winning 5, nominated for 25 Golden Globe awards, winning 4, and nominated for 71 Grammy Awards, winning 25. Beyond those accomplishments, Williams’ influence on film music will live forever.  (Europe: 500~1400 AD) Although popular accounts of the general mood of Europe in the Middle Ages is rather morose, focused on plagues, wars, and poverty, comedy had a vital place in those societies. Out of this era, we not only find a great number of comedies, but a great variety of comedy as well, The comedies of this time appear in the vernacular, contrasted with “serious” writing in Latin. Of course, this trait affected how widespread a comedy’s influence may be as only one who can understand the language may appreciate the comedy without the aid of a translation—physical comedy excluded, of course. The early Medieval definition of comedy was actually quite free and many works could qualify as a comedy as long as it included a happy ending. Often this idea has been confused with the Classical definitions of comedy, which were actually much more detailed and explicit in what qualified as comedy. This Medieval definition is possibly one of the reasons why today there is so much debate over what qualities make something a comedy. It is important to remember that only the wealthiest in the Middle Ages had the luxury of even knowing about Classical Comedy through reading it. The majority of the population was illiterate and therefore we see examples of characters like devils and vice figures. As I said above, the wealthy, educated members of the societies would have access to the Classical comedy of Menander, Plautus, Terence and others, but the majority of society would not have had this experience. Without knowing the existing conventions of written comedy, crafters of comedy in the Middle Ages had to determine their own ideas of what made a comedy, with the aid of their experience of comedies that would have been handed down orally across cultures. Medieval carnivals became the showcase for comic performers. For a brief time, commoners and royalty alike could escape the reality of the world around them by means of comedy. This sense of Carnival returns in later comedies, including the works of Shakespeare, Mozart, and of course, Monty Python. As I have stated in earlier posts, comedy is a group activity, and we can clearly see its roots in the Medieval Carnival. However, in this same atmosphere of the Carnival, one can see a reinforcement of the notion of comedy as being a lesser art. For indeed, comedy in the Middle Ages came from the lowly Court Jester, not the royalty. Once again, we find the comic hero coming from a low social order, as he will continue to do throughout Shakespeare, Mozart, Chaplin, and more. Note how the comic hero in any era is quite different from the contemporary tragedies and their heroic figures.  Dante Many examples of Medieval comedy demonstrate an appreciation of crude humor. It does not need to be argued that crude humor still exists today, regardless of how low it resides on the comic spectrum. Crude humor was a large part of the early Greek comedies as well, continuing in Dante’s Divine Comedy, considered not only one of the greatest vernacular Italian works but one of the greatest works in any language. Consider that writing in the vernacular gave Dante (ca. 1265-1321 AD) the opportunity to experiment with crude humor, as crude humor would not have been as acceptable in a work written in the “high” language of Latin. Scholars praise Dante not only for his comedy but for the depth of his allegorical and theological sense as well. This endurance marks the power of comedy, even when it is seemingly at its most profane. Dante’s comedy works as a foil to his serious nature of his journey through Hell. As a Twentieth Century analogy to Dante’s exploration of the profane, consider the reaction to nudity in motion pictures throughout the Twentieth Century. Nudity was understood as an artistic exploration in pre-Code American motion pictures that mostly appeared in art museums and the like. However, once the Hays Code was established and films were intended for mass audience appeal, people then understood nudity as pornographic. Later in the century, we see the same discrepancy based on the context in which the nudity is framed when nudity in a 1960s art house picture would be “tasteful” while nudity in a mainstream picture would be “exploitation”. As it has been in the debate of aestheticism of the human body versus pornography for centuries, the actual subject of nudity did not change; the societal reaction to that subject did, based on the contextual framing. In much the same way, a comic work like Dante’s can have the reputation of being licentious in one era while in another era it can have the reputation of being one of the greatest works of Western literature—depending on how one wishes to interpret the nature of his comedy. In the centuries since Dante, many artists like Jonathan Swift, Mozart, and Mel Brooks have followed his example and explored crude humor. Out of this canon of Medieval comedy, we find the origins of farce, When a film attempts to enter the realm of farce, it encounters a type of comedy that has existed for hundreds of years, but one that has never really been critically well recognized.  Boccaccio The next significant comic writer after Dante has to be Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375). Boccaccio studied Dante extensively and was influenced by his Divine Comedy, but Boccaccio often seems to use humor much more explicitly than his predecessor. Boccaccio’s most significant contribution to the genre of comedy is his Decameron. In The Decameron, a frame narrative occurs across ten days, and each day’s stories feature a different style of humor. The Decameron became popular as soon as Boccaccio wrote it. The fact that the Decameron appeared in translations across Europe meant that it could reach a wide audience and have great influence on writers from many different cultural backgrounds. Although there are litterateurs that question the originality of the stories that Boccaccio includes in his work, it is because of Boccaccio that the stories reached writers from other countries, and even filmmakers have followed Boccaccio’s example of using comedy as a tool for teaching moral lessons.Even more than Dante, Boccaccio demonstrates how crude humor can sometimes be the most effective means of delivering social criticism.  Chaucer Many Medieval scholars argue that no writer was more influenced by Boccaccio than William Chaucer (1343-1400). But just like any great craftsman, Chaucer learned from the style of Boccaccio to create a work distinctly his own. Chaucer continues with Boccaccio’s ability to teach through comedy. Through humor, Chaucer leaves his readers with a memorable experience, but one that will cause them to reflect on their own moral dilemmas.
From the Sixteenth Century theatre of Italy came the stylized Commedia dell’Arte, of zany situations and physical stunts. It is curious that something with the word “Art” in its title so closely resembles the slapstick film comedies, which are not held in so high a regard. The Commedia dell’Arte method of incorporating numerous gags and stock characters influenced many artists, including Shakespeare and Mozart. In addition to the comic routines and stock characters, Commedia dell’arte also exemplified physical comedy. So out of this one style of Italian comedy comes the seed for not only the anarchic slapstick comedies of the 1930s, but the stock characters of the Screwball Comedies as well.  If you remember from an earlier post, rhythm is the way that sound is organized through time. A lot of people get the idea of beat and rhythm confused and often think they are synonyms. Once you get the idea of the difference, they are easy to tell apart. Beat is the strongest pulse in a piece of music. Often, they are felt in groups of 2, 3, or 4. How do we know how many are in a group? If you listen very carefully you will hear one beat that is the strongest and one or more slightly weaker beats. A great example of this is a waltz. Waltzes are in 3 with beat 1 being the strongest and 2 and 3 being weaker. The Viennese style of Waltz especially emphasizes this feeling, as the entire foot only touches the ground on 1 and it is just the toes touching the ground on 2 and 3.  If that is the beat, then what is the rhythm? It is how we organize the beat and the space between the beats. It is very rare for a waltz to only have 3 notes all on the beat over and over. We may have longer notes that last longer than 2 beats or shorter notes that move in between the larger beats. It sounds confusing but looking at rhythms and hearing the difference between the beat and the rhythm makes it a natural process.  Rhythms are completely mathematical. Every way that we organize the rhythms is measured. Splitting the overall beat into rhythms is the work of division. For an example, we will start with music based around 4 beats. If one note takes up all four beats, it is called a whole note. To help students remember its name I remind them that it takes up the whole measure. When we split the whole note in two equal parts, the result is two half notes. Again, we notice that these take up half a measure of 4, each getting 2 beats. Splitting the whole note further into 4 parts or 1 note for each beat, the name is quarter note and notice that it takes up ¼ of the measure. Further dividing the whole note into smaller parts, we end up with 8 eighth notes in a measure, 16 sixteenth notes and so forth.
If the number of beats in a measure is constant, then we can use addition or subtraction to figure out which beat we are on. If we are looking at a measure of 4 quarter notes, the third beat is the third quarter note. Either we count to three from the left or we can subtract 1 from the right. In combinations of eighth notes and quarters we simply count each eighth note as half of one beat, so that it takes two eighth notes to fill one beat. It is the opposite for a 2 beat note or half note, there would only be two remaining beats when one half note is present. I’m going to stop here before you get overwhelmed, but be comforted by the fact that rhythms work in an organized system with rules and definite answers. Simple knowledge of fractions and division can go a long way to understanding and organizing rhythms.  A lot of people have a misconception that only singers and players of wind instruments need to concern themselves with a good seated or standing position. But imagining a drummer sitting in a recliner or a cello player laying on the floor dissolves this misconception. Proper playing or singing position is critical for all musicians, not only physically but also psychologically for the performer and audience. I will address the physical first. At its most basic level, singers and wind players do need to be concerned with the breathing mechanism and not obstructing it. The two extremes of a bad position--leaning forward or resting arms on the legs is actually squeezing a little on the lungs and abdominal muscles (depending on the age range of the students, I sometimes describe this as toilet position). The opposite, leaning back into the chair with hips forward means that muscles are working to prevent you from falling backwards (unless you literally are in a recliner) that do not need to be working to produce a sound. To demonstrate this, I do it visually and really exaggerate it. For the leaning forward, I make it hard to breathe and sometimes fall forward out of my chair. For leaning backward, I often moan to demonstrate how much it hurts to hold myself up. To describe proper playing position, I tell the students to sit so that they could stand up right away. Too far back on the chair and this becomes difficult. Leaning forward or backward, and this becomes difficult. When the students ask why they would need to stand up fast, I suggest maybe we would have a fire drill or a surprise ice cream party.  Beyond the air requirement for singers and wind players, we have the other physical requirements of playing an instrument that correct playing position is crucial. This involves different things for different instruments. For woodwind instruments, every key must be accessible to the player. This means that the arms and hands must be positioned not only so the player can reach the keys but so the players hands and arms do not grow tired due to holding them improperly. For orchestral strings, the player must consider the positioning of the hand for changing pitch as well as the bowing arm. For guitar, electric bass, and other fretted strings, one has to consider the position of the hand forming the chords and the hand picking or strumming. For keyboard players, not only the height of the arms, but the curve of the fingers is important for good technique. For any percussionist, the height of their arms to the instrument and distance to the instrument determines success. Beyond demonstration and explanation, how do we convince students of the importance of good playing position? The answer is to let students discover the benefits of a good position for themselves. Let them struggle a little and find out that it is harder to play when they hold their hand a certain way or slouch, etc. Obviously, if a student is just not getting it on their own, prompt them to adjust slightly and once they notice the difference, it is very likely that the student will continue to use the more comfortable and easier (proper) position. Psychologically, having a position that is more “at attention” will encourage students’ minds to focus even better. It will also encourage audience members to pay attention to what they hear because they see performers at the edge of their seats and think “something exciting is about to happen!” Teaching proper playing and singing position not only helps students to sound better, but they will look very sharp when performing :)   During the silent era, comedy was one of, if not the, most popular and critically acclaimed film genres. Criticism of silent comedy remained consistent into the post-sound era, reaching its best clarity in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The art of pantomime—the communication of thoughts and emotions solely through the use of gestures and facial expressions—and the art of film were intertwined at this part of the century. Although the Stock Market crash occurred in 1929, the economic situation continued to decline into 1931, the year of City Lights’ release. The character of the Tramp became even more relevant as so many of the film-going public could relate to someone down on his luck. The first feature length, full-sound film was The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland 1927), however throughout 1928 when Chaplin began production on City Lights, the majority of films were still silent. By 1931, when Chaplin released City Lights, sound films had become dominant. As a silent character, the Little Tramp was the most well-known motion picture character in the world. Here we see what I first discussed in an earlier post, the difference between the universal silent humor and the localized verbal humor. If City Lights were to fail commercially and critically, it would mean a sudden fall from the top for Chaplin. Chaplin finally compromised by using synchronous music and sound effects, but still removing any need for dialogue. Although other films at the time used the same method of music and sound effects, Chaplin’s film remains the best example of the technique.  Charlie Chaplin One cannot find a text that discusses film comedy that does not mention Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977). It is important for the reader to understand that scholars write of Chaplin as an artist, not as a comedian. Many film historians write about Chaplin as one of the great creative minds. This view of Chaplin’s artistic merit, beyond that of an entertainer, helped shape his recognition as quite possibly the first auteur in the film world. Chaplin handled many of the filmmaking tasks of writing, directing, acting, editing, and composing. Chaplin was an auteur before the impact of the French New Wave of the 1960s popularized the use of the term in film scholarship. Through his filmmaking methods, Chaplin set the standard by which scholars judge later auteurs. Chaplin came from a family of music hall performers, where he developed the physicality of his performances. Chaplin described the rhythm of his physical pantomime as a dance, and few performers have demonstrated such subtle control over their bodies. As the reader will discover shortly, Chaplin understood that the internal motion within a static shot was as significant to the medium of film as was the external motion of the camera in capturing a dynamic shot. Some film historians have criticized Chaplin for what seems to be his lack of knowledge of film conventions. I disagree with these scholars’ assessments of Chaplin’s filmmaking knowledge. Chaplin went against the established conventions of film presentation not because he did not understand the conventions, but because he had already mastered them and could create his own conventions. For example, instead of following the tradition of the wide shot to establish a scene and the closeup to reveal details, Chaplin preferred wide shots for his comic sequences, while he would only use closeups in order to capture the expression on his performers’ faces in moments of sentiment. Other scholars criticize Chaplin for what they see as a lack of editing. However, many critics feel that his lack of cuts is a strength, not a weakness, and I agree. Other filmmakers do not hold shots as long, simply because they cannot. Chaplin alone has the ability as performer and filmmaker to hold the viewer’s attention without having to divert it through a change of angle. The cuts—when he does use them—are a textbook model of invisible editing. Chaplin’s ability as a supreme artist rests partly on the fact that he understood not only exactly what to show the viewer, but also how to show it to the viewer in a way that made the technique unobtrusive. Of all the comic filmmakers and performers, no artist has ever been better at juxtaposing comedy and tragedy without detracting from either. At the end of City Lights, we have experienced an incredible emotional and aesthetic experience, but we do not feel cheated out of a good laugh.  Production As I stated above, Chaplin was the biggest movie star in the world as he began work on City Lights. With his previous succession of films, his audience had high expectations for Chaplin’s next work, and he was not one to disappoint. As for the preproduction stage of City Lights, the writing process was rather brief, with the major themes already chosen, and the story developing as shooting approached. While the narrative of City Lights was an original idea of Chaplin, many of the gags came from earlier sources, including Chaplin shorts. The greatest of artists, Chaplin included, always have the risk of duplicating previous work. As I noted in a previous post, the same gag can successfully return again and again as long as it is still able to elicit laughter. Influencing later filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock and David Lean, Chaplin had a hand in virtually every aspect of production. Everything that Chaplin did involved thorough preparation and practice. When it came to scoring the film, Chaplin had to rely on the assistance and experience of orchestrator Arthur Johnson. While Chaplin may have lacked the knowledge to notate music, he certainly understood how it should function within the film medium.  Reception and Legacy Without Chaplin’s skill and reputation, a silent film during the sound error would not have succeeded. The critics of nearly every major publication in the United States agreed that City Lights was a triumph. Mordaunt Hall of the New York Times said that “It is a film worked out with admirable artistry, and while Chaplin stoops to conquer, as he has invariably done, he achieves success”. Box Office Magazine called it Chaplin’s “finest comedy” and praised its story as well as the performances of its cast. Sid Silverman of Variety felt that it was a good film but “not Chaplin’s best picture, because the comedian has sacrificed speed to pathos” and had some doubts as to its “holdover power”, wondering if its initial success was “novelty money”. In 1931, The National Board of Review named it one of the Top Ten Films of the year, adding that it is “a challenge to the talkies, a crucial event in cinema history” but “not Chaplin’s best but far ahead of any other funny man’s best”. Time Magazine predicted “he, whose posterior would probably be recognized by more people throughout the world than would recognize any other man’s face, will be doing business after talkies have been traded in for television”. Notice how each one of these critics speak of the film in terms of Chaplin, and do not address the themes that he explores. They describe the “novelty” of the film and its silent qualities of gesture and expression. The reviewers that criticize it, do so because of the relationship of comedy and pathos within the film.
As for the international critical reaction, Siegfried Kracauer of the Frankfurter Zeitung said that “In it Chaplin demonstrates again his mastery of the language of gesture, a mastery that reduces the spoken word to shame”, however he added “It’s not difficult to find weaknesses in the film” referring to a plot that he felt was not as strong as earlier Chaplin pictures. Note how he echoes the above reviewers’ praises of the silent performance techniques of gesture. Also, consider how Kracauer criticizes what he claims is a lack of plot—showing that Kracauer does not completely understand comedy’s necessary balance of narrative and gag. E.A. Corbett of the Edmonton Journal concluded that “no one else in the world can take the same outline and make it compete successfully with the talkies, because no one else can so fully occupy that delicious, illogical, unreal world which Chaplin’s genius has created for himself alone,” approaching the film in terms of Chaplin. Surprisingly, City Lights did not receive any Academy Award nomination, which seems inconceivable considering its reputation today. Tim Dirks, of the American Movie Classics Filmsite attributed the lack of nominations, “to the pro-talking film Academy members, it must have appeared to be reversing the trend toward talkies that advanced sound films”, which would make sense. The contemporary film industry leaders’ advocacy for the “progress” of sound in 1931, has a parallel with today’s film industry leaders, who seem to favor many pictures because of the perceived revolutionary visual effects that they contain. I have been unable to find any explanation for why Chaplin chose to rerelease the film. I speculate that perhaps newly-formed television networks had begun to program some of Chaplin’s shorts, and this could have brought an audience demand for Chaplin features. Also, his most recent release, Monsieur Verdoux (1947), did not fare well with audiences and reviewers (TCM), perhaps prompting Chaplin to rerelease an earlier, more successful work in order to regain his reputation. In addition to film scholars and critics, many filmmakers have cited City Lights as an inspiration. Both Stanley Kubrick (in 1963, Cinema Magazine) and Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (in 1972, Life Magazine) have called it one of their favorite pictures. Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert has reviewed the film twice; reviewing it for a second time 35 years after the first review. In 1972, he said, “Chaplin’s films age so well, I think, because his situations grow out of basic human hungers such as lust, greed, avarice”. The reader will learn that this is true of many such film classics. Ebert appears to be the first reviewer who talks about the deeper themes beneath the surface of City Lights—perhaps themes reviewers forty years earlier did not want to acknowledge. Of the seventeen reviews written in the Twenty First century that I have compiled, only one critic, Alan Vanneman of the Bright Lights Film Journal gave it a less than favorable review, citing the “remarkably unfunny beginning”, the “numerous detours” in the plot, and how “Chaplin leaves entirely unresolved how Cherrill will treat the Tramp now that she knows who he is”. Looking at Vanneman’s review, we can infer that his expectations for a comedy were misaligned. The “numerous detours” (gags) and the lack of resolution at the end of the narrative are perfectly acceptable for comedy—in fact, sometimes a lack of resolution is an even more fitting ending for a comedy than the typical deus ex machina found in so many dramas. The remaining sixteen critics praised the film, as dozens of critics had done when it premiered. Four of the reviewers, Collin Souter of eFilmcritic.com, Jules Dassin of The Telegraph, Wes D. Gehring of USA Today, and John Nesbit of Old School Reviews particularly praised the final scene—a scene of pathos and not humor. Several reviewers focused on the historical importance that it is one of the last silent films, and on Chaplin as an artist. Dan Mancini of DVD Verdict called it “Chaplin at his best…. his last—and arguably finest—silent feature”. Filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich explained, “Below the surface of City Lights, there is an ache of nostalgia for the lost Eden of the silents that is still palpable today”. James Berardinelli of Reelviews called it “the quintessential silent film”, adding that “sound would have ruined it”. Jay Antani of CinemaWriter.com added, “City Lights is a great gift to all of us by a filmmaker at a latter-day peak of his genius. To see anything by Chaplin is to nourish the soul. Chaplin is good for the world”. Other critics attempt to analyze the deeper meanings behind the narrative and gags of the film. Following Ebert’s example, Dan Jardine of Cinemania noted its “universal themes, such as the intoxicating blindness of love and the rejuvenating power of selflessness”, speaking of the themes that contemporary reviewers did not address. Many scholars have provided varying analyses of the film over the years. Charles Silver of the Museum of Modern Art calls it “Chaplin’s most perfectly accomplished and balanced work”, focusing on the combination of comedy and drama in one film. Chaplin scholar Dan Kamin, on the other hand does criticize it on a structural level, “City Lights may have the best plot, and it certainly packs the biggest emotional wallop, but its comic routines are inconsistent in quality”. The foci of both scholars show opposite ends of the same critical difficulty in approaching comedy. Silver seems to appreciate it for its moments of sentiment, while Kamin seems to grade the value of a comedy by how funny he finds the gags. They insist on comparing a comedy film to something that is not—for Silver, a non-comic film and for Kamin, a comic Vaudeville routine. In 1952, critics at the British Film Institute voted it the second greatest film of all time, behind De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (BFI)—juxtaposing it with one of the quintessential film tragedies (especially during the European recovery from World War II when the BFI vote occurred). In 2002, critics at the British Film Institute voted it one of the greatest films of all time (BFI). In 2008, The American Film Institute declared it the greatest romantic comedy of all time (AFI). In the 1970s, critics began to rethink their opinions on Chaplin, especially since more attention turned to Buster Keaton. I highly recommend City Lights and think you will find it very approachable despite it being 90 years old. 1/18/2021 0 Comments Music- What Are Clefs? If you remember from an earlier post about how to read pitch and rhythm, when the notes move up the page, the pitch gets higher and the letter names go in alphabetical order (A, B, C, D, E, F, G). When the notes move down the page, the pitch gets lower and the letter names go in reverse alphabetical order (G, F, E, D, C, B, A). If you remember, no matter the letter name of the first note, the names of the lines and spaces are constant; they do not change, but what tells us that the lowest line is always E and the top line is always F is the clef symbol.  The most common clef symbol is the treble clef. It is also called the G clef because the line inside the circle part of the symbol is the note G. This clef works best for higher notes. This is the clef read by the right hand of keyboard players, flute, clarinet, oboe, saxophone, trumpet, horn, violin, guitar, xylophone, glockenspiel, and many other higher pitched instruments. When you see this treble clef symbol, the bottom line is always E and the top line is always F. That’s why it is important to check the symbol, but once you do, you know the names of the lines and spaces will not change.  The next most common clef is the bass clef. This clef is also called the F clef because the name of the line between the two dots is F. For bass clef, the name of the lowest line is G and the highest line is A. But the notes going up the page still move in alphabetical order and notes going down move in reverse alphabetical order. As long as there is a bass clef at the beginning of the piece, the names of the lines and spaces stay the same. The lowest instruments read bass clef including bassoon, bass clarinet, trombone, tuba, cello, bass, and timpani. Other instruments go across treble and bass clefs depending on the range of the instrument they are playing. These include many keyboard instruments like piano, organ, harpsichord, and pitched percussion like marimba.  Beyond the two most common clefs, we have the movable C clef. The name comes from the fact that the arrow looking part indicates that line is C. When the middle line is C, it is called the alto clef. This is what viola players read exclusively. Same idea- letters move up alphabetically and down in reverse alphabetically.  If the C clef moves up so that the second line down is C, it is now the Tenor clef. But you guessed it, once you know where C is, the notes move up alphabetically and down reverse alphabetically. I am not aware of any instrument that only reads tenor clef, but if playing for prolonged periods in the upper range cello, bassoon, and trombone will use tenor clef.
The best way to get used to reading in different clefs is just repetition. I recommend getting confident with treble and bass clefs before you explore alto clef, unless you play viola. The reason that we use different clefs is so that instruments of different pitch ranges can most often play notes that fit within the staff and are not always playing notes above or below the staff. It would be difficult for a trombone or an instrument in a similar range to read notes that were all below the treble clef, they would go so far below the staff that they would really not be readable, not to mention that they would be printed over the next staff down on the page. All of this may seem complicated, but be thankful that each instrument doesn’t have it’s own clef!  There are three main phases to filmmaking (pre-production, production, and post-production), a fourth could be distribution at the end if you consider that separate from post-production. Pre-Production Pre-production is everything that happens before the cameras start recording. For a large studio, it would begin with a story pitch or a script submission from a writer. For a small, independent filmmaker, this phase begins with an idea for a story. Don’t get carried away too soon. An idea is exciting. Flesh it out into a two or three page draft and see if the story is workable. Next, you will want to check your idea against what already exists. You don’t want to write an entire screenplay and then realize that you had actually seen it before and it’s The Godfather. If you remember anything from this article, let it be this: the more work and preparation you can do during pre-production, the less work you will have to do during production and post-production. As you work on the story, start by thinking of the biggest ideas before moving to the smaller ideas. Think of the general 5 act structure- introduction, action begins, complications, climax, and aftermath. In the first draft, you can write anything and do not worry about limitations. Do not worry about character names or dialogue. If the general structure of the story does not work, you will be wasting your time writing dialogue. Take it one step at a time. One tendency that many writers seem to have is if the basic skeleton isn’t good, that adding more and more scenes will fix it. This is not a good solution. Instead of a small mess, you end up with a bloated mess. I’m saying this from experience. If a scene is not working, it is better to cut that scene than to try to write three more scenes to make up for the bad scene. The quality over quantity rule is true. You will know the story itself is solid when every part is absolutely necessary and complements every other part. Necessary meaning that each part forwards the plot and builds the characters. If a scene or a sequence does not forward the plot or develop characters, it is probably safe to cut it. When writing a screenplay, take it one step at a time. Do not worry about set design, camera angles or other details until the story and characters are solid. Those details can be added once you have everything else exactly the way it needs to be. Do not be afraid to have trusted mentors and other filmmakers critique your script. I know there is a fear that someone will steal your ideas, but then they aren’t really a friend if that happens. If you get too close to your own work, it is hard to step back and honestly evaluate something. Someone else can help you if the story is not clear (remember they cannot read the character’s thoughts as you, the creator, can). If it is not clear to someone critiquing the script, it will not be clear to the viewer once filmed. In terms of technical difficulty, do not be afraid of the reach of your story. Complex set pieces or situations can sometimes be solved simply. A planet with 6 months of total darkness just needs to be filmed at night. A story taking place in an 84 story building just needs a still image establishing shot before interior scenes. Once, and only when, the script is complete, there are many other aspects to the pre-production phase. Some go in order and others can be happening simultaneously (depending on the size of your crew). Ordered events would include storyboarding the shots (there is now software to assist with this if you are not confident with your drawing ability or have a friend willing to draw), blocking out camera and light positions, character positions, etc. Other items that could be happening at various times is auditioning actors, location scouting (including asking business and property owners' permission to film at their location), designing and building sets, collecting props, designing and making costumes, designing makeup and hair (actors would probably need to be chosen first), being sure you have the lighting, camera, and sound equipment that you need, and other details.  Production Again, everything must be planned before this phase begins. Out of the three phases, production is the phase that you do not want to waste any time. If you are renting space or equipment, you may be charged by the day. Members of the crew and performers could be paid by the day (or hour). As the person in charge (we are assuming for this article), have everything that can be set up ready the night before the shoot if you have access to the set then. If not, get to the set as early as possible and schedule at least 1 hour for yourself to be there before any crew and at least 2 hours before any performers would arrive. This time will pay off later. Be sure that your crew knows exactly how to do each task that is required of them before it needs to be done. You don’t want to have to do everything yourself. A little bit of training for a crewmember makes your life easier. Murphy’s Law tells us that you have to plan for the worst to happen. This is when creativity and true artistry can be expressed. If you had planned on a three camera setup and one camera malfunctions, you need to be able to decide in the moment how to compensate. With enough experience, you will be able to see the potential finished shots in your head and adjust accordingly. Trust your instincts and trust your crew. It will take less time to review your takes after an entire scene than to wait and check each shot one at a time. Patience, kindness, and professionalism are key qualities during production. You may be hot, tired, and hungry the entire time, but you continue to smile and encourage everyone else. Hold people accountable for their specific tasks but do not get upset with someone when in a situation that is outside of their control, it will not help move things along. When you predict how long it will take to shoot what you need at a given location, always add an hour to that. If you think you can film all the office building scenes in 8 hours, schedule for 9 just so people are not ticked off when they have to stay later. Psychologically, it is a much better feeling to finish something before schedule than having to stay late. This tip sounds silly, but be sure you capture everything you possibly need at a location or with a specific performer before you leave that location or tell a performer that they are all set. It’s a pain in the butt to realize when editing that you are missing a key piece of dialogue. Do everything you can to capture good sound while you are at the location, including room tone for the dead space between dialogue. Dubbing in post-production is always an option, but if it is not needed, that is terrific too.  Post-Production A lot of people may tell you that this is when the film is really made. If you are not a confident and experienced editor yourself, find someone whose style you like and who you can trust to deliver a product on a timetable. There are pros and cons to editing yourself or having an outside editor. You probably have an idea of how the film should flow if you wrote the script, but you may become so attached to one shot, that you are not willing to sacrifice it for the good of the overall project. Editing is much more than cutting out the bad parts and squishing the good parts together. Depending on how much camera coverage you had during production, there can be almost limitless choices available when working on each scene. You may even edit the same scene two different ways and have a small test audience tell you which is more effective. Just like writing the script, editing can be done from big idea to small detail. Get the shots in a logical order for each scene, connect scenes together into a sequence, and finally an overall flow for the entire film. Always use the most capable computer that you have for editing, but even with that, I recommend creating a separate project for each sequence while at this first-cut stage. Even the best computers and graphic processors can get bogged down when trying to store an entire movie in one project if you are just working on a 10 minute chunk. Many beginners with computer editing see all the different options for transition effects and think they have to use at least one per scene. The big idea with a transition is it should not be noticeable. There are all kinds of wipes, dissolves, swirling waves, etc. but if you are not careful they will scream “THIS IS A TRANSITION”. Direct cuts to new establishing shots are the most common transition in both films and television and can work very well when you know how to use them. Do not do anything in terms of sound effects, music, or visual effects, until you have the first draft cut of the edit ready. You do not want to waste a composer’s time (and your money) writing music to line up with a scene that is later cut or trimmed. Just like the script, the edit must be really solid before you move on to the next step. I recommend getting your composer on board at the beginning of post production so they know the overall feel of the film, but do not have them start to write specific cues until you have the rest of the sound mix (dialogue, specific effects, foley, and ambience) ready. You may find that music is not needed in a specific sequence if the sound is telling the story on its own. If you do not have a separate sound editor, you may want to ask others to critique your use of sound. You may be so excited that you found just the right sound for a shot only for someone else to admit that no one chewing would ever be that loud. Foley is sound that is recorded to match specific actions. The ambient sounds may be the most important for realism. Nothing reminds the viewer “THIS IS FAKE” until the sound completely cuts out in between lines of dialogue. Environmental sounds and room tone always continue even when they are barely perceptible. If you have someone else working on the visual effects, they can begin once you are sure that every effect requested is absolutely necessary. Even if you are doing the effects yourself, do not waste your time working on shots that may not be necessary to the plot or able to be rendered believable. The music may be the last stage of post-production. Be really careful to select someone that understands what kind of sound you desire. A neo-noir detective story may sound really stupid if you hire someone that specializes in bluegrass music. Your medieval epic may not work if you have a jazz pianist recording the soundtrack. Great filmmakers know when to use music and how to use music. There are many great texts and articles on film music and I suggest you pursue them before this stage of the film. If any of this article sticks with you, please let it be to finish the script before you do anything else. You don’t want to spend 13 years working on the same film like I did :)   “Standard” music notation, as we know it today, arrived at its current form, more or less, during Bach’s lifetime (early 1700s). One big reason for this was that before the 1700s, keyboard instruments were not tuned in even or equal temperament meaning that not all half steps sounded the same. Before this, the difference between C and C# did not sound the same as the difference between F and F#. Once keyboards were tuned so that every half step was equal, a player could play a piece in any key and the scale degrees in relation to each other would be the same. This means that music could be transposed, or moved up and down to different keys in order to better accommodate a singer’s or instrument’s range. Soon after, we see horns that have valves and woodwinds with more keys to be able to play chromatically, or by half steps in every key. Our symbols of music notation tell us the pitch of each note (the letter name), the length of each note (which we call rhythm), changes in dynamics over time, how notes should be “attacked” with articulations, and the key of the music (flats and sharps that result from the starting note of the scale). For other information we rely on numbers (time signature), letters (dynamics for sections, chords) or a combination of words and numbers (expression descriptions, tempo, etc). Without understanding the system, someone familiar with the style of music being written would be able to see the basic beat structure in each measure and whether the notes are moving higher or lower, regardless of knowing the letter names or specifically what the rhythmic symbols mean. Notice how a knowledge of what sound the symbols represent is a prerequisite. Without knowing the sound, the symbols are meaningless. It’s like trying to understand symbols that represent a forgotten language, if you are not sure how the spoken language sounded, the symbols would not help.  Try singing this song! Immediately, one can see how written notation can be a barrier to someone who never learned to read it. Even with knowing the definition of each symbol, the style of the music will change it. For example, eighth notes in jazz may be written as eighth notes, but intended to be played as a “long-short” swing pattern. Knowing how the eighth notes should sound in other styles would not help unless the reader were familiar with the style of jazz. Another rule-breaker is the entire concept of rubato, very common in many styles since the 19th century. Rubato describes the subtle slowing and quickening of the tempo regardless of what the overall pulse of the piece is. Often this is indicated with the word rubato and not any change in the symbols used. Another shortfall of our notation system is it really only works for Western music. If, like me, you have ever tried to transcribe a traditional Indian piece, you will soon notice that their rhythms and pitches do not fit into our symbols, or rather, our notation system was not made for Indian music. Traditional Indian scales use quarter steps (between the space of two half steps). Western listeners have a very difficult time identifying these and not hearing them as wrong notes. The Indian rhythmic system is actually based on ragas. A piece may use Raga A, Raga C, and Raga M (I made up these labels). In other words, each rhythm pattern is a different idea, not made of smaller divisions or larger combinations of the beat. Many traditional styles of African music are very difficult to reproduce rhythmically in Western notation. The issue one runs into is the Western idea of a time signature. When music is more or less steady, it helps to have beats grouped by measures with time signatures. Of course, later Western classical music did use changing meters or changing time signatures, but it still does not capture the pulse of multilayered rhythms that we find in many African styles. Just like any language, written notation has its shortcomings. As musicians, we need to remember that written notation is a tool--a wonderful tool that can open many doors to explore other styles of music, but the symbols on the page are not music in themselves. The music comes from a person interpreting those symbols. When I introduce composition to my youngest students, I do not require them to write in standard notation. Some of them choose to follow it fairly closely, others create their own, equally valid, system, and others use a hybrid of familiar notes and their own way of interpreting them. The only requirement I use is that the student should be able to explain their system and teach it to a classmate. I even had a student once write rhythms for bongos. Not only did the student have a way to know the pattern he was playing but also a way to identify which bongo he was playing, something that is more difficult in standard notation unless the first measure has high bongo and low bongo labelled using text. I write this article simply to encourage us to reconsider what many of us grow up learning may not be the only legitimate way to record sound on paper. We also must reconsider that reading standard notation may not be the only correct way to learn and to understand music. In many music schools, students are not accepted into the program if they cannot read standard Western notation. Once I completed music school and began to make music with musicians that learned in ways other than myself, I had the privilege to make music with many people that learn music by ear.  Two ways to notate the same music. Learning music by ear is not a deficiency as many would lead students to believe. Music is an aural art form and I have found that those that rely more on their ear than their eye can often respond and react more quickly.
Musicians that do not read standard Western notation are not musically illiterate. They may in fact be reading something, just written a different way. There have been many very successful musicians that solely read chord symbols. If you are not familiar with chord symbols- with just a couple of letters or note names, the experienced player knows which notes to play and based on the alignment of the chord symbols over the lyrics, when to change chords. By only showing the changes, this can often give players much input for the rhythm of the chord repetitions between changes. Although the letter system of chords comes from Jazz. Even in the 1600s-1700s, there was a system of chord shorthand known as figured bass. The bassline would be written out in standard notation and the harmonies would be implied by the figured bass symbols. Other forms of notation work especially well for string instruments like bass, guitar, and ukulele. Fretboard diagrams show the player where to put their fingers on the strings and sometimes even number the dots to show which finger to use. Similar to this, tablature shows the strings of the instrument themselves and which fret of the instrument (no fingers down would be 0) to press on that string. Fretboards and tablature are most helpful when the player already has an idea of the beat or rhythm of the piece. As you can see, standard Western notation has been well developed for very specific instructions and helps musicians to share ideas without hearing something first, but it is not the only way to write and to share musical ideas. If we can expand our thinking on how we share music, we open the experience of playing and creating music to more people. Please share your thoughts in the comments.  Listening can often become a rather passive activity. That is not entirely a bad thing in the scope of life. Sometimes having music playing and just being is great. However, in the structure of a music class, it is rare that we want listening to be a completely passive activity. Expecting students, especially the youngest learners, to sit completely still and silent for several minutes while they listen to a piece of music can be unreasonable. Instead, there are degrees of active things that students can do while listening.  One idea that a lot of different companies have published are called listening maps. Often, they go with classical pieces, but the idea can be easily developed for other styles of music as well. The listening maps have a visual for students to focus on that usually traces the form, instrumentation, and texture of a piece. When the sound changes, the visual changes. A variation on this idea is to have students raise their hand, hold up fingers, or another physical sign when they hear a specific thing happen in the music. I like to use this when the piece we are listening to has some type of repeated melody like a fugue. Every time the students hear the theme start again they raise their hand. Keep in mind that fugues do not simply have to be from the Baroque era of Bach and Handel. A couple that I have found work well is “The Shark Cage Fugue” from the Jaws soundtrack and “Going The Distance” from the Rocky soundtrack. Continuing with the visual element. For some pieces, watching a video performance of an orchestra, choir, or band may help to add a concrete, human element to something that is abstract. Listening activities like this can easily be connected to a unit on vocal range or instrument families.  The next category of active listening is different movements that can help with listening activities. To start simply, students can pat or tap the beat that they hear. This is especially good when the piece has tempo that gets faster or slower over time or stops suddenly. To add some variety to this, handheld rhythm instruments can be used. If you have a good enough sound system, students can use rhythm sticks, maracas, hand drums and still be able to hear the recording. For exploring melodic contour or dynamic shape, having students trace the shape in the air with their hands can be useful. For slightly older students, basic conducting patterns can be used in much the same way. When older students get confident with simpler conducting patterns, it can actually help them to feel the organization of beats within a piece. The most complex level of movement while listening can be full dances. Dancing is a natural activity that all young students seem to enjoy. When they get older, some get self-conscious, so modifying dance activities can help all students to feel comfortable. I like to do a balance of “free dancing”- meaning that students decide how they move based on what they hear and “structured dancing” in which students follow a set of steps like a line dance, circle dance, or ballroom patterns.  Like with any activity, I make sure to establish procedures for safe dancing from the beginning. The basic expectations that I use all have to do with safety: stay in your own space (so not moving all around the room; occasionally we will plan a conga line); keep all body parts to yourself, and keep feet on the floor (it is amazing how many students want to lay on the floor during dancing time and this is just asking for fingers to get stepped on). Once you establish the procedures and review them several times, dancing time comes with the expectations automatically.
One game that students of many ages love is freeze dance. This is a good way to guide students to listen to patterns if you pause the music at specific points. The students freeze when the music is paused and dance when the music plays. It is also interesting to pause the music at unexpected times like in the middle of a phrase and discuss why pauses during a phrase sound wrong. A variation on freeze dance is hot potato, which works well for long pieces. I usually have a soft object that students pass from one to the next. Just like with the dancing expectations, we review procedures of not throwing the object before ever doing it. When using simple modifications like ones I have mentioned, students are still listening to music (and may listen to pieces that last 5-10 minutes long), but feel like they are not just listening as their minds and bodies are active the entire time. I have found these activities are very successful and often, students look forward to them. |