measi's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Musical passions To flesh out my last entry, which was amazingly cryptic~ Last week's [fives] has had me thinking about band and music and such. To the point that I probably bored Ade to tears last week as I was downloading stuff that I've played in the past. I do miss playing. There's just something about the concert setting that's just relaxing to me-- the instrument preparation rituals everyone does, the low tuning notes, the lights on the page, and then the whirlwind of music. I miss it a lot, actually. If I wanted to, I could join the alumni band at Boston University. But I played with them a couple times while I was an undergrad, since they needed a bass clarinet to fill in. I wasn't that impressed. The music was routine, and since these were people who got together maybe three times per year, had one practice, and then performed, things weren't that great. I've since come to the conclusion that my band experiences were absolutely spoiled by Mr. Tangen in high school. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. My father was amazed at our programs' depth and complexity. Once he met Mr. Tangen, he (like me and the majority of Tangen's other students) couldn't say enough positive things about him. Mr. Tangen was a truck driver by summer, band director by school year. He was a very big guy- over six feet tall, big beer gut, occasionally would use "shit" in class, smoked cigars (or "stogies" as we called them) in the band office after marching band, much to the teasing of the students, who saw it simply as a colorful part of Tangen's personality. Often times after a performance, if people were lagging in the band room, Tangen would call out in his light-hearted booming voice, "Shut up and get out so I can go have a beer." He had four rules for band class~ 1) Be on time 2) Be prepared 3) Know your part 4) Don't be a jerk My dad loved Tangen's rules. And to date, I think he agrees with me that Tangen was probably one of the best teachers ever to teach in the Billings school district. He was an ordinary blue-collar guy who had a passion for good, classical music. And he wanted to show kids that such music was not out of their reach. It wasn't something played only in expensive opera houses on the East Coast, where only people with money could attend. Anyone could love classical music. He succeeded, not only to introduce and encourage appreciation of classical music, but in being disciplined in life. Hard work would bring results. And mutual hard work created a tight-knit bond. Symphonic band was a family. None of the music organizations I belonged to in college compared. In fact, when I'd explain our repetoire during my senior year of high school-- since the band and orchestra directors asked what pieces you played-- their eyes bugged out, and they said there was no way that high schoolers could tackle such pieces. I wrote to Mr. Tangen and asked him to send a copy of our final concert as proof. He sent it to me, along with a note that seemed to be full of amusement-- apparently he'd had to do this before just to get a person chaired. The music directors at BU flipped. High schoolers playing Cappricio Espagnol by Rimsky-Korsakoff? All twenty minutes of it? At full speed? Yep. We did. For state competition, even. Along with Dance of the Tumblers by the same composer, Mars by Holst (in 5/4 and 5/2 time... want to try to count that?), John Williams pieces (his music is beautiful in movies, but they're a bitch to play), the overture from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (again, a beautiful piece, but you'd better have a good French Horn section for it... we did), and a beautiful Bach chorale, which I couldn't remember the name of (until I found it yesterday). Sadly, I've lost that concert tape in one of the many moves, and Mr. Tangen has now retired. I suppose I could write to the new band director at Senior High-- maybe they keep copies of the concerts. But it is now nearly ten years ago. And the band room's storage wasn't that big, or perhaps Mr. Tangen took it with him. Perhaps I'll scribble a note in hopes that it could be found. I decided, in the interim, to compile a set of the music from professional recordings. But to make it a complete CD, I needed that chorale. It was an obsession for me to find it. And the problem was that since the title we'd had on our music copy was in English, I had even more difficulty-- because Bach, of course, titled everything in German. And trying to find an obscure Bach chorale among his works is the equivalent of a needle in a classical composition haystack. Thanks to the wonderful world of midi and mp3 technology, I finally found it last night. And at the suggestion of [erich], immediately "wrote" it down so I wouldn't forget it-- best place? Right in my journal. So I could look it up at work if I had time this morning, and order a CD. This morning I went to Amazon, and decided upon a recording by Yo-Yo Ma and the Amsterdam Orchestra. I don't have a lot of cello music in my collection, which is weird since I think the cello is probably the most beautiful of the strings. (I played viola briefly as a child, but couldn't comfortably hold the neck due to the length). The particular chorale I was looking for, if Ma is playing the line I think he is, will sound fantastic because the baseline is just haunting. Which is why I was so obsessed with finding it. Mr. Tangen introduced a form of music that I absolutely adored to play-- chorale baselines. And this particular one was one I could meditate to while playing. The music just came-- my fingers rolled through the patterns on the keys, and I would just let myself slip into a state of relaxation, listening to the music coming from the group. I suppose every musician finds a riff to use for warmups. The beginning of this chorale was what I used, because it forced me to go from my upper register notes all the way down to my bottom B-flat. So now, between hunting on KaZaA and collecting music on CD's, I have just about put together the entire series from my senior year: Cappricio Espagnol by Rimsky-Korsakof Dance of the Tumblers by Rimsky-Korsakof Mars: The Bringer of War by Gustaf Holst Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Overture by Michael Kamen Wer nur den lieben Gott l��t walten BWV 647, by J.S. Bach The Cowboys Overture by John Williams Star Wars: Main Title and Throne Room/End Titles by John Williams Hands Across the Sea by John Phillips Souza It should make an interesting CD once I'm done burning it... -Mel. 8:46 a.m. - 20 September 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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