Romancing Characters

After working on Evan’s Toronto concert program, I reviewed the concert programs for the following novel, Perceval in Love.  As I looked over the programs, I realized that the music Evan had chosen reflected his heart in the novel.  The only work I’d chosen specifically because I thought Evan would see it as a reflection of his frustrating, yearning interactions with Sofia Karalis was J. S. Bach’s Double Concerto.  My mind returned to the second novel in which Sofia only makes two appearances, but Evan is involved with another woman.  I wondered why I was having so many problems writing Evan with women.

No, he’s not gay! (smile)  In some of my other projects, I’ve been writing about parents modeling behavior for their children to learn.  As I was thinking about that in relation to Evan and women, something just clicked.  I needed to explore the models Evan had as a child for romantic relationships, how men are with women, and the women who would attract him.

Little girls are told that they’ll marry someone just like dear old dad.  What are little boys told?  I doubt their lessons from parents include anything about their own mothers, but I have heard that they’re told to be sure to meet any girlfriend’s mother to get an idea of what the girlfriend will be like when she’s older.  The thing is, little boys absorb how to be a man from their fathers, so how their fathers model male behavior in general and with women specifically will affect how little boys will be men.  Like little girls looking for a guy like their dads when they grow up, little boys will look for a woman like their mothers when they grow up.  Unless they make a conscious decision to change their behavior and look for someone totally unlike their mothers.  Changing behavior in this way requires a deep level of self-awareness and self-knowledge.  I realized that Evan Quinn would not have this kind of self-knowledge or self-awareness.

Three other factors will influence Evan.  First, the relationship he had with his father when he was a boy.  It was not good or loving or respectful.  Second, the relationship he had with his Uncle Joe, i.e. Joseph Caine, the composer and his father’s best friend.  Caine would be a counter-influence to Evan’s father.  And third, his mother’s suicide when Evan was eleven.  The loss of his mother when he’s on the cusp of puberty could affect profoundly his perceptions of women and his beliefs about them.  His mother was also no saint.  I realized that I’d set up poor Evan to have a difficult romantic life.

Oh, why hadn’t I thought of this before?  I realized that I had had the somewhat romantic and unrealistic notion that Evan would be untouched by his childhood and rise above all his negative influences.  Or maybe that the women in his life would “save” him from his childhood pain and influences.  That’s not very interesting.  Ah, well.  Now I understand why Evan is where he is romantically in these novels.  Will he rise to this emotional challenge?  Will he be able to gain the self-knowledge and self-awareness he needs in order to change and learn to love?  How will the music that he programs for his concerts reflect his emotional state?

Clearly, I have my work cut out for me.  And I get to think too about what classical music will be the most romantic to Evan….

Programs for Orchestra Concerts

The thing about working on a revision is I never know what’s going to pop up that needs my attention.  Several years ago, I spent considerable time creating concert programs for the concerts Evan Quinn conducts in the first three novels in the series.  I thought that task was finished.  A writer is never finished!

In the first chapter, Evan and another musician converse while they jog through Buenos Aires at night.  The musician asks about the American Arts Council banning music and what banned pieces Evan had programmed so far for his guest conducting gigs.  All of a sudden, I realized that Evan mentions an upcoming gig with the Toronto Symphony and I hadn’t created a program for it.  What would he have programmed?

Back to Concert Programming 101.  I returned to a blog post I’d written in February 2009 entitled Concert Programs to refresh my memory.  I decided to follow the standard format, i.e. short overture style piece to open the concert followed by a concerto or concerto-style piece, intermission and then a big piece like a symphony on the second half.  I began with the symphony, one that I knew he was already working on for another concert: Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2.  The duration of the symphony is about 46:14.  Good timing for the second half.  So, I have 45 minutes to fill for the first half.  I needed something that the Arts Council would have definitely banned and the first composer that came to mind was Arnold Schoenberg.  The first piece of Schoenberg’s that popped up was his Five Pieces for Orchestra.  I don’t have a recording of this work so I’d have to look up the duration.

Conductors generally use David Daniels’ reference Orchestral Music: A Handbook to look up the durations of specific works.  I don’t own a copy, and although I know people with access to a copy and they could probably look it up for me, I decided to see what I could find on the internet.  To my surprised relief, it took only one search to come up with a duration.  Actually, two durations.  One conductor’s recording was 6:14 and another conductor’s was ten minutes.  Interesting.  At any rate, I knew the duration would probably not be more than ten minutes.

I now had my opening work and my symphony.  What to program for the second piece?  Something the Arts Council would have banned?  Or something Evan would already know?  I decided it needed to be something he already knew since he hadn’t known either the Sibelius or the Schoenberg.  Then I thought of Ralph Vaughn Williams.  I think some of his music would have been banned, like with Samuel Barber, but there would be other pieces that the AC would have loved.  Like his The Lark Ascending which could showcase the orchestra’s leader or concertmaster.  This could endear Evan to the Toronto Symphony, plus Vaughn Williams is a British composer and Canada belongs to the Commonwealth, so that might also prove to create good feelings in Toronto.  The duration is only 14:15.  That means the first half is only about 24 minutes.  But the Vaughn Williams makes such a nice contrast to the Schoenberg, I decided to keep it.

Evan’s Toronto program with intermission is now 90 minutes long.  This is an acceptable duration for an orchestral concert which can be 60 to 120 minutes long.  The Toronto gig is the week following Buenos Aires, so Evan would have already worked with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s staff and music director on the program and received their input and approvals.  The only thing left for me to decide is which piece Evan will talk about with his jogging partner.  Another easy choice: the Schoenberg.

I create fictional concert programs, but I must make them authentic.  Doing this work gives me insight and renewed respect for conductors of professional orchestras.  They also must work with marketing departments and work within a budget.  I don’t have to worry about either….

Music Humor, or Music that makes me Laugh

Attending a classical music concert requires serious concentration, right?  It’s quite the elitist entertainment, right?  Well, if you believe that and it’s kept you from classical music, you’ve missed out on a LOT. Believe me, there’s a lot of humor in classical music if you’re willing to open your ears for it.  In surprising places, too.

Source: Wikipedia

My first taste of musical humor came from Ludwig von Beethoven, musical genius and giant among composers.  He is known for his sforzandos, i.e. a single loud note or chord that comes in the midst of quiet music.  It’s like he’s sneaking up on an unsuspecting listener then shouts “boo!”  Makes me laugh. The opening of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony also makes me laugh.  I don’t know why, but every time I’ve heard it, in concert or a recording, as soon as those opening notes sound, I’m giggling.  There’s a jazzy section in his first piano concerto that makes me smile, too; I imagine Beethoven wanted to have fun when he performed the concerto and it is fun.

Source: Wikipedia

Beethoven studied with Josef Haydn, also a known musical jokester.  One of his most famous is the “Farewell” Symphony, his Symphony No. 45.  During the final movement of this symphony in concert, the musicians gradually stop playing, stand and leave the stage, one or two at a time, until there’s only one left.  Of course, if you don’t know that it’s written that way, it can be disconcerting — a joke on the audience from Haydn.   In his “Surprise” Symphony, Haydn uses the sforzando for the same effect Beethoven did.

During the golden age of cartoons, classical music provided another element of fun.  For example, Richard Wagner’s The Ride of the Valkyries has been used in Warner Bros. cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny.  Dukas The Sorcerer’s Apprentice became a cartoon starring Mickey Mouse that opens the movie Fantasia.  Camille Saint-Saens composed a musical cartoon with his Carnival of Animals.  The elephant walk movement always makes me laugh.

Opera composer Gioachino Rossini probably never dreamed that the overture to his opera Wilhem Tell would give us the theme to a TV show and provide background music for more cartoons.  As a result, whenever I hear this overture, I listen and giggle.  The music has become funny through association.

On the other hand, Bela Bartok knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote his most famous musical joke in the Concerto for Orchestra.  In the fourth movement, which has an absolutely gorgeous, lyrical theme, Bartok inserts a section introduced by hilarious trombones playing an ascending slide.  The music turns into a funny, jaunty echo of the main theme of the first movement of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7.  Listeners and musicologists have debated ever since if Bartok meant it as a nose-thumbing or an homage.  No one disagrees that it is funny.

Like Bartok, composers have been known to write inside jokes in their music, mischief for the delight of those in the know.  Authors and other artists do much the same thing.  But they also create for the world and share their senses of humor with their audiences.  It’s perfectly OK to smile, giggle or laugh while listening to music if something you hear strikes you funny.  The composer may have wanted you to laugh.  Like Beethoven and hissforzandos…..

Source: Montreal Mirror

Marketing Conductors

Working again on the Perceval’s Shadow second draft this week and thinking about American society.  We are a marketing society.  We market anything and everything.  Marketing + Sales = Profit.  We even market ourselves on dating websites!  As a writer, I’ve been reading more and more in writing trade publications about the need for writers to establish a “brand” in order to get the attention of agents and publishers.  We are marketing our writing to the people who market it to the people who publish the writing and market it to the general public.  Whew!

A friction exists in the arts regarding marketing/sales and the creation of art.  In order to sell a work of art, say, a novel, it’s not enough that it’s a good, original story.  It must fit into a marketing niche.  So, in order to get published, writers might write to a marketing niche to make it easier to get noticed.  Marketers establish these niches, not writers.  The way I see it, marketing tends to restrict and constrict creativity and experimentation through these marketing niches.  Sure, it’s possible to work within the confines of the niche and be creative and original, but what if a writer wants to follow his imagination and not marketing guidelines?

I have yet to see symphony orchestras organized into marketing niches, although the classical music world does tend to organize them according to operating budgets and rank them according to their artistic quality and accomplishments.  I have seen the niche marketing mentality starting to affect conductors.  Ten years ago, you would not have seen many professional websites for conductors, composers and other musicians.  Now, they have websites, blogs, a social media presence and fan pages.  I’ve also found a website called Instant Encore that brings fans and musicians together, lists concerts, offers music and videos and allows musicians to have a website under their auspices.  Fans can follow their favorite musicians or musical ensembles, receiving notifications of what’s on the web about them.  I haven’t even begun to explore this site and its possibilities.  Here is an example for the pianist Stephen Hough.  For comparison, here is Stephen Hough’s official website which is not part of Instant Encore.  I have also seen some musicians at LinkedIn.

At one point, I considered starting a Facebook fan page for Evan Quinn.  I haven’t yet decided if I’ll do it or not.  But I am thinking of how his artist manager, Nigel Fox, will approach marketing Evan and how much Evan will need to participate in that.  I look at busy conductors and I’d guess that they don’t have much time to spend online, and yet Leonard Slatkin has a blog with the Detroit Symphony, and Sarah Hicks contributes to a blog for the Minnesota Orchestra.  I suspect that Evan would prefer to have Nigel deal with all the marketing stuff and leave him alone to handle the artistic side.  Unfortunately, marketing leaks into that artistic side.  For example, media interviews to promote a conductor’s concerts with an orchestra.  This is a marketing task that’s been around for years.  And now, an orchestra might also make a video to upload on its website to promote a concert — a conductor talking about a specific work on the program for example.  Evan will be doing tasks like these, of course.  But what about an online presence that he manages himself like a blog, website or Facebook page?

In the first novel, Perceval’s Secret, Evan must deal with an abundance of technology that he’s not familiar with despite limited access to the internet professionally and a familiarity with computers.  I am tempted to give Evan a tablet computer in the second novel, something he can carry with him — although not a smart phone.  He’s adamant about keeping a lot of gadgets out of his life and he wants a cell phone that he uses as a phone and nothing more.  I’m thinking of having Nigel, in frustration, give him the tablet so he can monitor the website Nigel has created for him and maintains with his staff including a blog, and perhaps something in social media.  He’ll also need e-mail accounts that he’d need to monitor, too.

I’m sure there are old school conductors who have little to do with all the internet possibilities for connection and marketing.  But in 2048-49, I see the internet as integral to life, especially business and professional lives.  However, Evan is and will remain a staunch believer in the advantages of low tech….