Dead Parrots & Red Wine

January 23, 2012

It’s sneak preview week—thought I’d write a bit about my pieces, one per day, that are on Bristle’s first CD, Bulletproof, that’s due out this coming week on Edgetone and which we’ll be featuring at this Friday’s Nevada County Composers Cooperative event at the Nevada City Winery.

Notlob kicks off the CD, it was written way back in the 90’s when I was living in Brooklyn.  It was inspired by John Zorn’s “cut-ups” pieces, which use series of quick switches between music of recognizable genres or distinct character, which in turn were initally suggested to Zorn by cartoon soundtracks.  My idea was to have a series of contrasting musical segments, each new segment interrupting the one that preceded it, almost like a series of Russian dolls nested one inside the other.

The beginning Segment 1 is a short, swinging riff with a bit of a stomp to it.  It’s then repeated, but is interrupted at its midpoint by Segment 2, a waltz fragment in a contrasting tempo, after which the second half of Segment 1 is played.  These two are repeated, Segment 3 rearing its Ornette-ish head right in the middle of Segment 2, which is still in the middle of Segment 1.  Each new repeat introduces a new segment.  I tried to make each one sound really different from what preceded it to help delineate the process—one’s a graphically-notated bit, another an intricate “music box” segment, another is Ayleresque, and so on.

With 7-8 segments of music it soon became apparent that if everything was written out, on regular 8-1/2×11 staff paper, each player’s part, at 5-6 pages, would be a page-turning nightmare.  As I was looking at the score, I flashed on a visual shortcut: I could just stack the segments vertically, aligned along a centrally-drawn axis, and direct the players to move down the page that way:  first time play all of Segment 1; second time play first half of Segment 1 to the line, jump down and play all of Segment 2, then back up to second half of Segment 1.  Third time, play first half of Segment 1, first half of Segment 2, all of Segment 3, then second half of 2, second half of 1, etc.  Each part had to be score-size at 11×17, but this way the segments only have to be appear once on the page, and the centrally-drawn dividing line is the navigation point.  I’ve always liked the economy of presentation for this one, and always strive for the least amount of moving parts for the maximum amount of music in my pieces.

 I thought of the piece as a kind of a messed-up palindrome, one that keeps getting longer with each repeat.  To be a true palindrome, the second half of each phrase would have to be a retrograde, or mirror image, of the first half, but that was not the case.  A line from Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch popped into my head, when shady pet shop owner Michael Palin is trying to confuse complainant John Cleese by saying Ipswich is a palindrome for Bolton.  Cleese:  “No, it’s not.  The palindrome for Bolton would be Notlob.  It don’t work.”  I hope this one works.  Guess I’m not the one to judge…

 As I said, the piece has been around, I’ve played it with many groups, but Bristle really nails it, it’s fun each and every time we play it, and listening to our rendition on the new CD always brings a laugh—the culprit is usually Segment 4, my micro-Zorn tribute. Thanks to Mr. Z and the Pythons for this one.  We’re planning to play this Friday at the winery.  I hope everyone can make it out!