I’m trying to learn how to rationalize my own neurotic perfectionism with the realities of the world of getting things done. I wake up most days with a jolt — not unlike the jolt of having a just-pre-sleep falling sensation, or hearing a strange sound in the home — of pounding anxiety: have I done everything I can do, just on an artistic level, to make this music as good as possible? Have I checked everything? Have I made sure that things are, to the best of my ability, in good working order? I physicalize this anxiety, and it’s inescapable: even if everything’s in order, there are still blows to the solarplexus of deep, throbbing worry that something isn’t good enough, that I’ve been paid too much for a horrible piece, that the parts will turn up with gibberish on them, that I’ll have misunderstood the assignment. It’s not something I would necessarily wish on anybody else, but it’s definitely something I don’t understand when it’s missing. I think also I have an erotic fixation on Things – literally any Things – being done well. When I walk past, for instance, the store Russ & Dóttirs on Houston street as I just did and saw a man cutting a side of salmon so evenly, so thinly… it gave me a little shiver. Watching somebody make ravioli expertly, watching an oboist navigate a passage over the break expertly, watching somebody fold a fitted sheet…

I will say that one of the highlights of the London experience was realizing the Drones &… sequences in the way we did. Basically, as the audience entered the hall, six or seven of us were already on the floor droning. This meant that the piece just sort of started inside its own environment. David Lang came and droned with us:

These amazing looking men (one known to me and one not) came to one of the morning shows:

Does anybody who reads this blog understand the specifics of international banking? I want to know specifically about Chip & Pin versus Chip & Signature and why we haven’t adopted this in America. I keep on running into it as an active problem, particularly in the Netherlands. In a country obsessed by efficiency, it seems strange that they have set up train ticket kiosks that won’t take a credit card. If you look closely up in the +31, you see that oftentimes the credit card machines have had their swiping slot taped closed, often in a somewhat ramshackle way. B– and I convinced a woman at a monkeys-only zoo to literally peel back the tape such that she might take my €39; otherwise, there was no way for her to get those euros. Amazingly, she was perfectly happy to let us leave rather than to peel back the dirt- (and presumably monkey faeces-) befouled piece of cardboard to take fifty bucks. And surely the point of commerce, on every level, is to part me with my € in exchange for goods and possibly services? The thing with the trains is extra irritating because if you don’t have a Chip ‘n’ Pin thing you have to actually literally get cash out from a machine that’s over there. The main train station in Amsterdam — again, a really efficient hub for what is one of the most efficient train systems in, one is told, the world — has little pieces of tape over their credit card slots in the “wait in line behind every German backpacker” area. I know precisely what I want: A round trip ticket in 2nd class to Brussels. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just take my money, rather than making me wait in the Sad Line? I don’t have any questions; I looked up which track it leaves from already. I’d even pay a few extra euros for the privilege of using my spooky and foreign American Express card. (Also I’ve been told that the trick is to buy one of these Travelex chip and pin travel cards in the airport in the Netherlands. Would you believe me when I told you that I went to the same kiosk and they were unable to transfer money from my American Express? Grandma was vexèd). However, I was, today, sad to leave Eindhoven; I’d been composer in residence there for the last few seasons, and they’ve quite generously commissioned several major works as well as a bunch of smaller ones. It’s a funny little town with strange proportions but it’s been a great way to build a lot of rep and work with wonderful musicians in ensembles of every imaginable configuration.

I’ve been working with a lot of orchestras recently: some known to me and others not. I’ve done a few shows in the last month with non-classical singers/songwriters and orchestras, and have been able, in my role as sort of interpreter/arranger, to see orchestras through the eyes of these new collaborators. I have to say: the first orchestral rehearsal of something is t.u.r.r.i.f.y.i.n.g. I did a show with Glen Hansard, who is, I think, one of the most natural performers ever — pure charisma. And it was scary for him for a minute! An orchestra, individual-by-individual, is made up of totally pleasant people, but as a collective organism it is wildly intimidating. There is a hard-to-find balance between asking for what you want, demanding it, begging for it, being nice, being tart, being polite and being obsequious. All of these negotiations are done through a conductor, of course, with whom one has a whole other complicated arranged marriage. I feel like after many missteps, I’ve gotten there, but of all the various anxieties that make up my days, turning up at an orchestra rehearsal is still a rather three-dimensional one. I feel like I spend lots of time trying to mind-read to look for sympathetic faces; I know it’s a kind of phrenological junk science but I find myself doing it everywhere. A kindly sideways smile from a clarinet player will make my week; similarly, an unreturned smile from a low brass player can send me into a fugue state of self-doubt and adrenaline-addled worry. I caught myself doing it at the Apple Store in Amsterdam; somebody made off with my UK to EUR power lead, and instead of MacGyvering the plug comme d’habitude I decided to treat myself to a proper cable. I walked in the store and immediately was like, okay, smiling dude with bad facial hair, definitely no, unsmiling dude with better facial hair no, very short indonesian woman with a nose piercing maaaaaybe, really tall blond woman with a pony tail maybe for a bigger purchase but not for this, guy with gamer pot-belly would be good for a harddrive purchase because he looks like somebody who once lost a lot of data in a backup fiasco (or in a breakup?) but not for this cable…ah! skinny shortish hipster boy with a nervous twitch and greying fingers; the transaction will happen quickly and he’ll want to get it over with to go smoke in the alley off to the side.

I’m finally at a little check-in point in my life and work where I’ve finished a huge pile of writing and just done a slightly inappropriate amount of performing. I’d quite wisely planned to have a lot of spare time this summer for mental rejuvenation; writing and performing and fussing with operas is exhausting in an unforseeable way; you think to yourself, ok, this morning I have two hours in which perhaps I might have an idea or, at least, the energy to realize an idea that’s already somewhat down on paper — and then the morning arrives and that energy just isn’t there. I just did what should have been an energizing sequence of concerts in Eindhoven, but the combination of fussing with older works and conducting and preparing two different ensembles at the same time occupied all my remaining headspace and I didn’t write half of what I’d hoped to. I did, however, hear some great music. The wonderful viol consort Fretwork came and played with the Gesualdo Consort, a five-voice vocal ensemble (featuring a countertenor called Marnix de Cat which is surely the best name in the industry):

I had forgotten in all of this how much I love the combination of viols and voices. Functionally, the music they play is “the same” — vocal lines and gamba lines being, at a certain time, interchangeable. You end up with a delicious and natural sense of phrasing that takes much longer to achieve with modern instruments.

One thing that I’ve found to be enormously useful in these scenarios — multiple gigs in a row in a million places — is to say yes to every press request but never read anything; this includes, obviously, reviews, but less obviously, advance press and press about one’s friends and collaborators. The idea is that you operate in an atmosphere where the things that bear your fingerprints are more scores than newspapers, and more instruments than computer keyboards. It’s wildly liberating, actually, and it was difficult for about a year and now it’s a really good habit. Occasionally something funny happens; I walked into rehearsal one day in London and an interview with me had been lovingly clipped out of the paper and left on my celeste! And because ça faisait longtime since I’d done the interview self, I caught myself reading it quickly and discovered a bunch of weird syntactical stuff I’m sure I never said, some mischaracterisations and simplifications of what I had actually said — all neutral and, I think, net positive — but it strengthened my resolve to just Not Worry About It Anymore. When even a silly fluffy preview piece gives me a dart of anxiety to the neck, why put myself through it?

I have a new theory which is that Europe People will never ever ever under any circumstances make jeans look alright on their rumps. Like once every fifty people in England you’ll see it and it’ll make sense almost but the rest of the time there is just a fundamental misunderstanding between fabric, donk, and pocket placement. Just give it up! Or maybe I should just give up trying to help them find better options. Just when I thought I had seen it all, B– and I saw this amazing man at the zoo:

Now, what I think we’re dealing with here is a denim diaper. That’s the closest thing I can think to describe what this garment was.

We met a curious juvenile jay in Zwolle:

We had a meal in which a course was composed on our hands:

And in conclusion, to paraphrase Sondheim:

The pre-recorded material for these e?tudes should be mixed in such a way that the viola rides in the middle of the texture. Etude 2, however, should favor the solo viola. While we have had successful performances with the tape coming from a PA and the viola unamplified, the ideal scenario has the viola closely amplified with a clip-on microphone, such as the DPA 4099V, or similar.

E?tudes 1 and 1a require a metronomic relationship to the pulse, whereas Etude 2 requires a more flexible approach.
These Etudes were written for my friend Nadia Sirota. They are designed as performance pieces as well as practice e?tudes for dealing with the messy fifth-based string crossings my harmonic language sometimes outlines. Etudes 1 and 1A also concern themselves with the messy business of grand pause rests, or silences, in the context of highly rhythmic music.

The pre-recorded material was engineered and produced by Dan Bora, and is available through St Rose Music Publishers or Chester-Novello. Recordings of Etudes 1 and 1a are available on Nadia Sirota’s First Things First (New Amsterdam), E?tude 2 is recorded under the alternate title Varied Titles (Bedroom Community/ Decca) and E?tude 3 is available on Nadia Sirota’s Baroque (Bedroom Community).

One day tells its tale to another,
and one night imparts knowledge to another.
Although they have no words or language,
and their voices are not heard,
Their sound has gone out into all lands,
and their message to the ends of the world.

I wanted the ensemble to be a little quirky community of people living by the edge of the sea: a busybody flute, a wise viola, and the masculine, workmanlike bassoon, trombone, and upright bass. The piano acts as an agitator, an unwelcome visitor, bearing with it aggressive electronic noises and rhythmic interruptions.

–Nico Muhly

Sweet Voices
Those voices are the sweeter which have fallen
forever silent, mournfully
resounding only in the heart that sorrows.

In dreams the melancholic voices come,
timorous and humble,
and bring before our feeble memory
the precious dead, whom the cold cold earth
conceals; for whom the mirthful
daybreak never shines, nor springtimes blossom.

Melodious voices sigh; and in the soul
our life’s first poetry
sounds–like music, in the night, that’s far away.

Hours of Melancholy
The happy sully Nature.
The earth’s a realm of grief.
The dawn weeps tears of unknown woe.
The orphaned evenings, pallid, grieve.
And the soul that is elect sings mournfully.

In breezes I hear sighing.
In violets I see blame.
I feel the rose’s painful life;
the meadows filled with cryptic woe.
And in the woodland thick a sobbing sounds.

Mankind lauds the happy.
And poets false extol them.
But Nature’s gates are closed to those
who, heartless and indifferent, laugh,
laugh: strangers in a miserable land.

Voices
Imagined voices, and beloved too,
of those who died, or of those who
are lost unto us like the dead.

Sometimes in our dreams they speak to us;
sometimes in its thought the mind will hear them.

And with their sound for a moment there return sounds from the first poetry of our life–
like music, in the night, far off, that fades away.

—C. P. Cavafy, trans. Daniel Mendelsohn

As Lang describes it, “I went alphabetically in the German through every single Schubert song text (thank you, internet!) and compiled every instance of when the dead sent a message to the living. All told, I used excerpts from 32 songs, translating them very roughly and trimming them in the same way that I adjusted the Bach texts in the little match girl passion.”

For the next step in the process, Lang sought to recruit an ensemble of successful indie composer/performers who had training in classical music, and invite them back into the fold. “I asked rock musicians Bryce Dessner (The National), Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond) and Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy) to join me, and we added Nico Muhly. He’s not someone who left classical music, but he’s known and welcome in many musical environments. All these musicians are composers and they can write all the music they need themselves, so it’s a tremendous honor for me to ask them to spend some of their talent on my music.”

As a companion to the five-part “death speaks,” Lang also composed “depart,” the second piece on the CD. Featuring four solo vocalists with Maya Beiser on multi-tracked cellos, the music offers a life-affirming meditative ambience intended to help family members deal with the death of a loved one. The piece currently plays as part of a permanent installation at a hospital morgue just outside of Paris. For more about the making of “depart,” listen to this fascinating Radiolab podcast, with excerpts from an interview with David Lang.

Performed by Shara Worden (vocals), Bryce Dessner (guitar), Owen Pallett (violin), Nico Muhly (piano).

I’ve spent a little bit too much time in cabs recently, and as a result have been listening to a lot more top-40 radio than usual. As ever, it’s bubbly and inviting, like a pink champagne. The thing I’m sort of interested in with the advent of these heavily processed vocals is what’s going to become of regional accents? I’m trying to think about accent markers in vocal music from the past. Joni Mitchell could only be Canadian with them vowels, right? And there was always something specifically Raleigh about Ben Folds; you got the sense from his songs of the way he was spoken to as a child, the accents of his first romances. One gets the same sense from the siblings Wainwright with their polyglot slurs, from Antony with his stylised mid-atlantic roundness, from, indeed, most of the folk-influenced musicians I know, both Anglo-Irish and, like, Arabian. What then do we do about a singer like Adam Levine, whose voice is practically inescapable in this world in which we all live? English lyrics have a particular problem across genres, namely that the words “I” and “you” are ugly words, with a few too many possible syllables in both. There’s also, of course, the southern-but-mainly-AAVE possibilities of monosylabising I into basically ah; this strategy seems to be the chosen shortcut of singers like Justin Timberlake and really anybody who wants to have a toe in the R&B universe; I don’t necessarily think it’s a congruous look with Timberlake’s new suit and tie; accent markers and clothes should usually be coordinated, shouldn’t they? But then a friend of mine — a tall sandy blond Jewish boy from Billerica or similar, sent me a recording of his band in which he very actively uses the “ah” shortcut, so, who knows what’s going on. Can anybody in the +44 enlighten me, too, about how that works with the tiny little isoglosses there?

This last week I was in Chicago with eighth blackbird, the wonderful chamber ensemble. They’ve apparently been playing together for seventeen years and it’s always a pleasure to interfere in their patterns. We performed, among other things, David Lang’s unforgiving 2002 how to pray, Philip Glass’s equally severe 1968 (?) Two Pages, a bratty but successful and exuberant Tristan Perich three toy pianos and one-bit electronics, two of David’s songs from death speaks, and a new piece for piano four hands written by Lisa Kaplan, the pianist in the group. I haven’t played four hands piano seriously since that time in Paris in 1999 when Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum and I bashed through the Jupiter Symphony, so it was a thrill, but also, I realize how out of practice I am in playing music that isn’t by Philip Glass or my own self. I’ve become a specialized little machine, only capable of one sort of technical fluency. I have to fix this.

I’m about to head back to London for a weekend of music I’ve loosely curated at the Barbican. It’s always a little anxious-making to curate concerts: you can never please everybody, everything’s ever so slightly too long, I’m positive I’m going to fuck something up and end up at the wrong venue with the wrong music at the wrong time. But I’ve tried to invent a sort of social security blanket which is that there is going to be a team of us droning on a few of the concerts, and it’ll be casual and relaxed, and everybody will remain calm. I’m playing a bunch of Philip’s new piano études, hooray, and Richy is coming with his <3 and Breath music, and the Sixteen are singing, and if you are anywhere near the 0207 you should come say hi or come to the bar at the St John for a bracing and necessary campari.

In other news, everybody should buy David Lang's new disc, on which I join Bryce, Owen, and Shara in death speaks. My opera Two Boys is 250% happening this October. Unless you already subscribe unto the Met, you can’t buy tickets until later, but here is the little page. I had my intrepid assistant upload ALL the press about it — both good and bad — from last time so everybody can prepare emotionally for it. I think having an archive of all the appalling things people say about one is a nice thing; I’ve not read any of it, good or bad, for years, but I know it’s there if I need to ever self-flagellate. Also everybody should buy The National’s new record Trouble Will Find Me, on which I have a small pile of arrangements.

okay good

okay bye