Music and Happiness

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Verdi’s Falstaff: A Key to Happiness

July 10, 2009 by Lynne

A sense of humor is a precious commodity that can radically increase our well-being.  When the writer Norman Cousins became so ill that his doctors gave up on him, he “cured” himself by watching classic comedies, giving concrete form to the adage, “laughter is the best medicine.”

Great music can also help us laugh, a vital ability to cultivate especially as we age.  Recently in a New York Times interview, Lorin Maazel, the conductor of the New York Philharmonic, who has just completed his final season with the orchestra at 79, talked about Giuseppe Verdi’s last opera, Falstaff, which premiered at La Scala in 1893 when Verdi, like Maazel, was nearly 80!

This comic opera, adapted from parts of Shakespeare’s Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor, is a major accomplishment for any composer, let alone one so advanced in years. (Verdi died at 88.)

Verdi’s own life was filled with both tragedy and transcendence. Married in 1836 at 23, he lost his wife and 2 children to sudden illnesses all within the next 4 years. Devastated, he found it hard to keep working, but music ultimately helped him not only to survive but thrive.

In 1842 Verdi’s career suddenly took off with the opening of his opera Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar), based on the biblical story of the Babylonian captivity of the Jews. The premiere was an electrifying event, since it came at a time of growing Italian nationalism.  Italian patriots of the day immediately identified with the enslaved Jews and reviled the detested Hapsburg rulers of Italy as tyrants like Nebuchadnezzar and his court.

The stirring chorus from that opera, “Va, pensiero, sull’ ali dorate,” (“Go, my thoughts, on golden wings”) quickly became an anthem of the patriotic movement and helped make Verdi a national hero.

To learn more about Verdi’s achievements in his later years and hear the grand finale of Falstaff–his celebration of laughter  in old age–listen to our audio here.

Filed Under: Music and Happiness, Music and Well-being, Newsletter Archive, Uncategorized

Music for Hard Times

February 23, 2009 by Lynne

Increase Your HQ (Happiness Quotient)

Here in New York we’ve had a pretty brutal winter along with equally hard economic news.So we’ve been listening to music that bolsters our spirits.

How about you?

Two character strengths that can help uplift us are VITALITY, which includes zest, vigor and energy, and HUMOR or playfulness.

Vitality is defined in “Character Strengths and Virtues”(Peterson and Seligman) as

“the subjective experience of energy and aliveness”; it has both physical and psychological connotations.”

Humor is described there as

“a composed and cheerful view on adversity that allows one to see its light side and thereby sustain a good mood.”

It might seem strange to choose the “St Louis Blues” to illustrate zest and humor in music, but humor us and read on. As Josh says, “It’s all in the interpretation.”

Listen to the sample on the audio and tell us if you agree with him.

Louis Armstrong and Velma Middleton made this recording in 1954. On the audio, along with the music, Josh makes some comments to help you get full enjoyment of the samples we have chosen for you.

Suggestion: Make a habit of listening daily to at least one piece of music that makes you smile and move. Add your favorite pieces to the Comments section below.

To hear the audio via streaming:

http://www.audioacrobat.com/play/W8KLh2RQ

If you’d like to get a recording of the 1954 version, you can find it on Louis Armstrong and his All Stars:

“Louis Armstrong Plays W. C. Handy,” Columbia CK 64925

Filed Under: Music and Well-being, Newsletter Archive, Uncategorized

Savoring Philip Glass

September 23, 2008 by Josh

Connecting with people through his music has been the credo of Philip Glass for some forty years. As far back as 1967 he viewed the modern music scene as being transformed by “a generation of composers who were in open revolt against the academic musical world.”  He said,” I personally knew that I didn’t want to spend my life writing music for a handful of people…I wanted to play for thousands of people; I was always interested in a larger audience. I saw that possibility from a very early age and I unswervingly set myself that goal.”

Glass restored a vital component to music:  the composer as performer. The Philip Glass Ensemble, formed in 1968, became the core of his endeavors, a group driven by his sense of innovation and business savvy. As the son of a record-store owner, he knew the importance of selling his music. Rather than have others perform his music, Glass banked on the broad appeal of what he himself had to directly offer his public with his ensemble of amplified flutes, saxophones, keyboards, and synthesizers. “I felt that if I had a monopoly on the music, that as the music became known there would be more work for the ensemble.” Determined from the start to provide financial support for his ensemble and ensure performances of high quality, Glass worked for ten years at a variety of day jobs, as cab driver, plumber, and furniture mover. By 1978, however, with grants and commissions assured, he was able to concentrate on composing.

Performances of northern Indian music by Ravi Shankar he heard in Paris in the early 1960’s helped lead him to “a whole different way of thinking about music.” His resulting accessible style, often simplistically labeled “minimalism,” has typically meant working with basic rhythmic cells in an additive, cyclic process. While seemingly  rather static and incantatory, this is a music that invites the listener to shed conventional standard listening habits, freeing one from memory and anticipation, in favor of savoring the moment–“to be able to perceive the music as a ‘presence’, freed of dramatic structure, a pure medium of sound.”

Virtually all of Glass’s works from the mid-70’s on have been for dance, film, or theater. My favorite among his film scores, Koyaanisqatsi— the title is inspired by a Hopi word for “life out of balance”– was released in 1983. It was produced and directed by Godfrey Reggio, and presented by Francis Ford Coppolla. This 87-minute film provides a uniquely rich experience in savoring. Lacking any narrative or any identifiable character or dialogue, it presents the viewer with a series of compelling images, including clouds chasing clouds across the desert of New Mexico, the dynamiting of a failed housing project, crowds swarming in and out of Grand Central Station, road rage driving patterns on one of the Los Angeles freeways, and much more. Glass substantially expands his initial instrumental ensemble to include a vocal ensemble—one hears dark oracular voices at various points– as well as lower strings and brass, namely violas, cellos, double basses, French horns, trumpets, trombones and tuba. This is a remarkably prescient film anticipating in many ways the disturbing message of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

Glass’s mostly widely acclaimed music for the theater is represented by his operatic trilogy about “historical figures who changed the course of world events through the wisdom and strength of their inner vision.” They are Einstein on the Beach (premiered in 1976 with a title shared with Nevil Shute’s apocalyptic novel ), Satyagraha (1980, the story of Gandhi’s nonviolent struggles starting in South Africa and continuing in India), and Akhnaten (1983, about an Egyptian pharaoh martyred for his monotheism).

A work I have particularly come to love is his 1987 concerto for violin and orchestra, a medium realizing his dramatic convictions. For him, the concerto form is “more theatrical and more personal” than pure orchestral music. Written in three contrasting movements and using a conventional orchestra, Glass’s work brings together his trademark permutations of cyclic rhythmic cells with a romantic warmth and soaring lyricism. Most memorable for me are the slow movement, with its solemn ground bass and passionate solo violin utterances, and the ebullient finale culminating in a slow coda with a solo line soaring into the stratosphere as we savor what we recall from the start of the work.

Filed Under: Music and Happiness, Music and Well-being, Uncategorized

Miles Davis: A Case for Tapping into Inner Strengths

June 20, 2008 by Josh

So many of us look up to role models, heroes whom we try to emulate. But all too often we find ourselves falling short and feeling frustrated. Yet there are inner strengths which we can tap to find our individual voice. And sometimes the results can be absolutely spectacular, defying all expectations.

In the history of jazz there is no example more inspiring and compelling than that of Miles Davis. When he first came to New York in the fall of 1944, supposedly to study at Juilliard, he was really intent upon pursuing bebop performing opportunities on 52nd Street with his saxophone idol, Charlie Parker. And in fact, the following year, at the tender age of nineteen, Davis had the good fortune to be included in an historic recording session, the first featuring Parker as a leader.

Yet, Davis early realized that he was out of his depth here, unable to match the blistering speed of his saxophone hero or the stratospheric brilliance and rhythmic virtuosity of trumpeter of Dizzy Gillespie. But, resilient and resourceful, he was determined to find his own voice. Rather than trying to compete with these greats, he looked inside himself to mine his particular strengths. What he came up with was a distinctive style and aesthetic, something very different.

His was a mellower sound in the trumpet’s middle register, where understatement, restraint, and even a touch of vulnerability became his distinctive trademark. Davis was soon to earn a place in the jazz pantheon for a series of recordings made for Capitol Records in 1949 and 1950, subsequently released as Birth of the Cool. Listeners heard this new sound of Davis as part of a nonet–an ensemble consisting of the three rhythm instruments of piano, bass and drums, together with six wind instruments arranged in pairs, in high and low ranges: trumpet and trombone, French horn and tuba, and alto saxophone and baritone saxophone. Pieces like “Jeru,” “Israel,” and ” Boplicity” are now part of the Cool canon.

Capitol Records’s liner notes suggest the effect this had at the time: “Under one branch of the modern jazz tree, it’s cool and quiet. Here a unique group of musicians is gathered–exponents of a carefully casual style that flows with studied ease. The jazz they play is pleasant, almost unobtrusive, but with each new hearing it reveals a surprising wealth of sparkling new ideas. Some of these stylists’ most imaginative music is collected in this album–thoroughly intriguing performances that truly qualify as classics in jazz.”

Davis never stood still after this. Two other landmark recordings from the 1950’s were Sketches of Spain and Porgy and Bess, both major collaborations with Gil Evans. In the following decades Davis was on the cutting edge of fresh developments, whether it be hard bop, modal jazz, jazz-rock fusion or MIDI sequencng and sampling.

Lynne adds: Josh is very intrigued by Miles Davis’s ability to accept the fact that he could not do what other great jazz musicians relied on for their reputations. Instead, by exploring his own gifts to their fullest, he developed a whole other form of jazz. After that he continued to innovate, as if by making that choice he had discovered the fountain of eternal creativity.

Filed Under: Music and Happiness, Music and Well-being, Uncategorized

David Byrne: Playing the Building

June 1, 2008 by Josh

“I’m not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down.” Amidst preparations for his launching of a highly unusual multimedia event, DAVID BYRNE, founder of the Talking Heads was recently talking about his hope for the future of popular music.

The scene is “a paint-peeling hangar of a room, ” the Great Hall of the Battery Maritime Building, once a bustling ferry terminal in lower Manhattan which has been dormant for over half a century. But these days it is alive with the sound of music. No, it is not exactly Rodgers and Hammerstein that you can hear, but a place vibrating with the sounds of rusty steam pipes, ceiling girders, and columns, triggered by a Weaver pump organ retrofitted with relays, wires, and air hoses, all connected to an array of solenoids and such.

This is a site to visit, until August 10, 2008, where anyone can come press those organ keys and play the building. But, more than that, it invites people everywhere into an egalitarian rather than hierarchical world in which, to quote Buddhist American composer John Cage, “Everyone is in the best seat.” Cage was in many ways a walking oymoron, one who refused to acknowledge boundaries and came to see all the world as music. He was prone to such paradoxical aphorisms as “My purpose is to eliminate purpose,” and “I have nothing to say, and am saying it.” He wrote a book with the highly provocative title of Silence. Wrappping up a seminal address to the Music Teachers National Association more than fifty years ago, Cage spoke of the importance of “a purposeless play…an affirmation of life…a way of waking up to the very life we’re living.” He composed a famous (some say infamous) piece of “music” called 4 minutes, 33 seconds, where a performer comes out on stage, sits down at a piano, stopwatch in hand, raises and lowers the lid at various points, but never plays a single note. The audience is asked to wake up to the sounds of the environment in a place where music is conventionally made and become alive to new possibilities.

So go play the pipes in your kitchen, bathroom, or whatever. Have fun as you sing with your environment, tapping into the child within you.

Filed Under: Music and Happiness, Music and Well-being, Uncategorized Tagged With: David Byrne, John Cage

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