Image via Wikimedia CommonsThis summer I took a course on Stephen Sondheim. We focused on five shows:

Similar to my journal entry about Company, I want to briefly explore an angle of Follies that I haven’t seen discussed in published writings: the notion that Sondheim’s Follies influenced a musical created a few years later, A Chorus Line. Both shows are heavily indebted to the show business plots of earlier musical comedies, though they offer a different perspective than the musical comedies of the 1920s and 1930s. Both shows share some musical foundations and are closely connected with Michael Bennett, the co-director and choreographer of Follies and the creative mind responsible for much of A Chorus Line.

The most obvious connection, which while unusual isn’t unique, is that both shows are performed without intermission (although an intermission was added in later productions of Follies). Marvin Hamlisch has talked about how an intermission would interrupt the flow of the story in A Chorus Line, and the same argument can be made for Follies, where – when performed with an intermission – the second act starts exactly where the first act ended, interrupting the dramatic tension created by the embrace between Ben and Sally.

There are other connections between the two shows that lie further under the surface, hinting that even if A Chorus Line wasn’t directly and clearly influenced by Follies, it owes a debt to the show that came five years prior to its conception and production. Many musicals have a show business plot; it was a standard plot device in musical comedies of the 1920s, and is found in earlier Sondheim shows like Gypsy. Follies and A Chorus Line revolve around a show business plot and atmosphere, but they do not feature an optimistic view of show business like many musical comedies. Instead, these shows give a more realistic look at the musical theatre world – some might say pessimistic at times – showing the tolls that show business can take on performers. A key difference between the shows is that A Chorus Line features current performers auditioning for a Broadway musical, while Follies focuses on retired performers who haven’t been on stage in forty years.

Image via chorusline.orgIn Finishing the Hat and Sondheim and Co., Sondheim and Bennett talk about the choreography of  “Who’s That Woman?” Sondheim wanted Bennett to choreograph it with an obvious hole, representing a sixth chorus girl from the original Follies cast who had since passed away. Bennett liked the idea, but it didn’t work in execution. Instead, Bennett had the six older ladies joined by their younger counterparts, “mirror-costumed.” Bennett later used Sondheim’s idea of a missing dancer in A Chorus Line, when Paul has to leave the auditions because of a leg injury. (Incidentally, there is another small connection between “Who’s That Woman?” and A Chorus Line in the song “Music and the Mirror,” which both use the symbolism of a mirror and dancing, albeit to different ends.)

Musically, there isn’t a clear debt that A Chorus Line has to Follies, but there are similarities and consistencies. Follies mostly consists of pastiche numbers of the 1920s and 1930s, while A Chorus Line is heavily inflected by rock and pop styles of the 1970s. Jonathan Tunick was the orchestrator for Follies and orchestrated some parts of A Chorus Line, but the orchestrations for A Chorus Line sounds more like that of Sondheim’s Company than Follies. One similarity involves the final production number of A Chorus Line ("One" and "Bows"). The number was intentionally intended to be a pastiche of a “showstopper” number from earlier revues and musical numbers. The cast is dressed in glittering white tuxedos and top hats and dances extravagantly. "One" might be more clichéd than the pastiche numbers in Follies, perhaps bringing to mind a Rockettes feature instead of Porter and Gershwin songs, and not be as directly indebted to specific composers and lyricists as Sondheim says his songs are, but the connection to musical theatre history is apparent.

That Michael Bennett was heavily involved in the original production of Follies and later went on to conceive, choreograph and direct A Chorus Line indicates that some ideas generated during Follies likely transferred to the creation and production of A Chorus Line. Direct lineage is not readily evident, but I think this idea has some merit, and A Chorus Line probably would not have taken the same form as it did were Follies not to have preceded it.

My prof responded that if he were doing a course on musicals of the 1970s, these two would be his main focus and starting point. He also pointed out - which I'll probably steal for my own jumping off point - that both shows deal with recognition, except in A Chorus Line it's to come together at the end, while in Follies the characters part ways and never see each other again.

via Wikimedia Commons

John Philip Sousa was probably their most famous conductor, made the first recordings with the ensemble, and brought them to the high level of performance and prestige that they are renowned for today. (Today they are led by Colonel Michael Colburn - formerly principal euphoniumist with the band.) They play for official Military services, are the President's go-to ensemble for formal events, and have a wealth of recordings available free to schools and libraries.

First instance of B-A-C-H, in the trombonesOne of my favorite USMB recordings: Passacaglia (Homage on B-A-C-H) by Ron Nelson. Not only is it a fantastic composition, the ensemble handles the 12-minute long crescendo with ease. (Listen to the ring of the open 5ths at the end of the piece!) The piece reminds me of a large machine slowly winding up into action. It is partially based on the famous B-A-C-H motive Bach used in his unfinished Art of Fugue. Nelson also quotes from Bach's famous Passacaglia in C minor. He passes the passacaglia bass throughout the entire ensemble, sometimes disguising it so the listener has to go on an aural scavenger hunt to hear it.

Enjoy Nelson's Passacaglia (Homage on B-A-C-H), and Happy Birthday to the President's Own!

My favorite Respighi piece, aside from the bombastic finale to The Pines of Rome (which speaks clearly to the low brass player inside me and was used to great effect in Fantasia 2000), is his Trittico Botticelliano (Three Botticelli Pictures). (I adore the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra recording, but this version on YouTube is pretty good.)

I had the extreme fortune of visiting Florence, Italy, my junior year of college (when I studied abroad just outside of Edinburgh, Scotland). I took it upon myself to visit the Uffizi Gallery, where 2 of the 3 Botticelli paintings hang. I was aware of this, and purposely brought my Discman (this was pre-MP3 player) with my Orpheus CD and listened to those movements whilst standing in front of the paintings. Looking back, I probably wouldn't do that if I were to visit the museum today (for the first time), but it was a moving experience, nonetheless.

I remain in awe with Respighi's scoring in the third movement, especially, with how the piece seems to float through the air almost aimlessly. In my mind, its a perfect description of "The Birth of Venus." The double-reed writing in the second movement, based on "O Come, O Come Emmanuel," is also fantastic.

Respighi is even lesser-known for his piano music, but his Nocturne is a wonderful piece.

Happy birthday, Signore Respighi! Know that your music is still played, heard and enjoyed today, 132 years after your birth.

via Wikimedia Commons

Unless, that is, you're in the field of wind bands. Grainger holds a special place in the hearts of wind band conductors and performers. I was first introduced to him, as are many people, at a young age by playing his Irish Tune from County Derry (commonly known as "Danny Boy" or "Londonderry Air"). (The history on this tune is long and still somewhat mysterious, but the words for "Danny Boy" were written after Grainger first found this folk song and starting writing is multitude of settings of it.) As a euphonium player (now on hiatus), how could I not love this piece? The euphonium part has the great melody in the beginning and the countermelody towards the end. Finally: a piece that is more than just boom-chicks!

His compositions span from original lyrical tunes to highly chromatic melodies and harmonies, from simple folk-song settings to the creation of new folk songs. His Lincolnshire Posy is widely regarded as one of the top 5 pieces ever composed for wind bands. He made concert piano settings of several Gershwin tunes. He was friends with Grieg and Delius, toured the globe as a concert pianists, and was a pioneer with using electronics in music and with "free" music. Ever the oddball, much as been written about his non-musical life, including his relationship with his mother.

Personality and quirks aside, I enjoy so much of Grainger's music. His folk song settings are unique and inventive. And though the popular setting of Irish Tune holds a special place in my heart, my favorite setting is his highly chromatic version, heard below in a version for wind band (performed by the Cincinatti Conservatory of Music):

Related links:

• Percy Grainger Society
• The Grainger Edition (recordings on Chandos)
• Grainger playing Grieg's "Morning Mood" from Peer Gynt Suite

To help celebrate your July 4th:

"The Egg" from 1776

America the Beautiful arr. Carmen Dragon (guaranteed to get audiences on their feet)

Final movement (V. Allegro molto vivace) from Charles Ives' Symphony No. 2

When Jesus Wept by William Schuman (New England Triptych, mvt 2, based on William Billings' hymn)

Chester by William Schuman (New England Triptych, mvt 3, based on William Billings' hymn)

And, finally, John Philip Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever

Last month I wrote an article for

One of the pieces of advice – or Twitter-quette – that I mentioned - and take to heart - was suggested by @ericasipes and @mitchthetenor: “Don’t be too serious.” Paraphrased, they said that it’s necessary to remember that, on Twitter, people are people. We don’t always tweet things related to professional development; we often tweet seemingly mundane things, but in actuality give more insight into the person behind the computer or smartphone, allowing followers to get a better idea of who you are – especially if you haven’t met IRL (in real life).

A recent article by Arianna Huffington made me think of that sentiment, in a roundabout manner. She wrote about how the Internet is growing up, leaving its “messy adolescence.” In many respects, that’s what has happened with my personal Twitter account (and I’m sure I’m not the only one).

When I think back to when I first joined Twitter, I was ignorant to a lot of its capabilities. I was unaware that people use it as a public chat forum. I didn’t know that I would be able to meet people of diverse areas and have conversations with them, regardless of actually knowing them IRL or not. What I did know was that celebrities used it, and – I’m partly ashamed to admit – so did Perez Hilton. So I followed them. Maybe not with the same vigor that other celebrity-watchers do, but I enjoyed the celebrity gossip.

Until I realized I never really cared about it that much. About the only thing I gained from following Perez Hilton and Ryan Seacrest, to name a few, was that I learned Ricky Martin came out before the mainstream media caught the news. Whoop whoop.

But as I was shifting away from that type of Twitter account – where I followed but didn’t contribute much, other than repeating what I was posting on Facebook – I started to find new tweeps with similar interests to mine, starting finding new and interesting Internet resources that I didn’t know were available, and starting turning my account into a form of two-way communication. I became more conscious of my use of Twitter. I became a participant rather than solely a consumer. (You can read some brief accounts in my Leading Notes article.)

We're now more thoughtful and deliberate about choosing our friends and how we spend our online time. Adulthood is a time when our lives become about curating, selecting, saying "no" more often than we say "yes," being forced to decide what we really value, realizing what's really important to us. Increasingly, that's exactly how people are using the Internet as well.

I’m not sure if everyone goes through this growth with their Twitter account, but I would be surprised if I were the only one. And, to be completely honest, I’m still not out of my adolescent phase with Twitter. While I gave up following a lot of celebrities long ago, I still follow famous people who interest me: mainly, composers, opera singers, pianists and musical theatre performers. (Yes, I also get excited when they tweet me.)

I still post mundane things and somewhat immature things. I complain about things. And, since it’s summer break, my Twitter account has gotten less educational, too (a little vacation is good for all of us). I try not to take my Twitter account too seriously, just like my real life. (As one of my old Twitter bios said, my tweets are only part of who I am.)

To be sure, the adolescent Internet will always be with us. But now there's a choice - not just for individuals, but for companies as well. One way forward is to continue down the path where noise and half-truths trump facts, where confusion and data overload overwhelm any possibility of balance and wisdom. The other way is to stake out a place in this new world of community, connections and collaboration.

As the Internet grows up, I think Twitter and its users, and my use of Twitter, will too. Twitter began in 2006, and that it’s still around five years later in this age of quick Internet start-ups and failures is testament to its power and versatility. As I wrote in my Leading Notes article, Twitter can be many things to many people: it is “a microblog. It’s a place to share your thoughts, a place to promote your interests, and has the potential to be a “total game-changer” in the field of arts and education (as one of my tweeps put it).”

It’s tricky to write about the future of something, because that future usually doesn’t come true. (Pick up any jazz book from the 1950s and see if what the authors predicted actually happened.) But, as with Arianna’s article, writing about the future can also delineate one’s hopes. We can use Twitter to "stake out" our place in the growing musical and educational community. It is my hope that educators and musicians can use Twitter and harness its many powers to continue developing and growing.

The Internet of the future, the mature, grown-up Internet, has the potential to take what's best about the human experience -- our passion, our knowledge, our desire to connect -- and channel it into an online experience that truly resonates with how people live.

By Central News Photo Service, via Wikimedia Commons

"'The Man I Love' is one of the great songs of all time, taking its place in immortality beside the finest love-songs by Dowland, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Gabriel Fauré, Henri du Parc, Hatton, Maude Valerie White, Cyril Scott, Roger Quilter, Debussy and John Alden Carpenter.

... Such similarities (to Grieg) amounts to almost identicalness! But none of this detracts from Gershwin's immense and indisputable originality. It only shows what a life-giving inspiration Grieg's startling innovations provided for almost all truly progressive composers that cam after him: Debussy, Ravel, Delius, Cyril Scot, Albeniz, Stravinsky, MacDowell, Gershwin. And it goes to prove how deeply Gershwin's genius (whatever inspiration it also drew from popular and local sources) was rooted in the traditions of classical cosmopolitan music. So much of Gershwin's unique and subtle greatness lies in his humanistic universalism - in his effortless ability to reconcile hitherto unreconciled contrasts and seemingly opposing tendencies."

-Percy Aldridge Grainger, June 22, 1994 (forward to his concert version of The Man I Love)

I'm not sure how many people saw this article from Playbill.com the other day, which talks about a director's change to the ending of Rent:

The final scene was missing roughly five lines of dialogue. For those unfamiliar with the musical adapted from Puccini's La Bohème, the character of Mimi dies and returns to life in the final moments of the script.

Director and faculty member Diane Smith-Sadak told Playbill.com that she removed the final lines where Mimi describes her near-death experience, creating a "more ambiguous" ending about Mimi's fate, in order to point toward the savage realities of people suffering from AIDS and addiction in the early 1990s (a time when many of the antiviral drugs that save lives today, were yet unavailable).

via Yung6 at Wikimedia CommonsLet me start by saying I would love to see this production. If you know the story of opera Rent was based on, La Bohème, you know that Jonathan Larson changed the ending of the opera; Mimi does not live in the opera. (Larson wanted to have a more uplifting ending to the show.) This "new" ending is intriguing, and I wonder what different emotions and reactions it would bring to the audience.

But, more to the point, I want to ask what this means for copyright and creativity, and creative control. (Yes, it's *another* copyright blog post from a musician. 2nd in popularity of blog posts, behind the death of classical music.)

Things like this happen frequently in community productions of musicals, regardless of the language in the contracts and licensing agreements. I've played numerous shows with cuts to entire songs, dialogue, and - in one particularly horrible instance - a song that had numerous cuts (to "make it more like the CD") that involved too many page turns and arrows to keep track of where to read. What make this case different is that the cuts quickly turned into "Internet wildfire" and caught the attention of MTI, who directed the university to reinstate the missing lines.

That this happens frequently doesn't necessarily make it right. You can't claim mob mentality as a protection against a law.

But what I find curious about this incident is that this happens frequently in theatre works that are no longer covered by copyright. Think about the Shakespeare plays you've seen: how many of them were set in Elizabethan England? How many were set in a different time or place (Fascist Spain seems to be an overly common setting)?

Or operas. Directors frequently change the setting of the original opera (as Alex Ross mentions in Listen to This). Language is either modernized or translated from the original. Music is added or cut based on the latest scholarship.

This comes back to the question posed above: in this case, did copyright protect Larson's original vision of Rent? Did it discourage creativity by stifling part of the director's vision for her production? If a director can modify Shakespeare, why can't one modify Larson?

Adding another layer to this thought is that the music in Rent isn't 100% Larson. His untimely death led original music director Tim Weil to rearrange some of the music and orchestrations.

I also think this reflects how we view certain works. Some things are set in stone, not to be adjusted. Musical theatre, though going through a constant revision process in early try-outs and previews, is thought to be "set" when it's licensed for groups to perform across the country. Beethoven's music should be played as seen on the page (preferably from an ürtext edition). But a jazz song is meant to be improvised around, to use the composer's ideas as a starting point in creativity. It's almost expected that a director will modify elements of a Shakespeare play.

Is there a way to reconcile copyright, creativity, and - unmentioned until now - aesthetics? Aesthetic value is basically what this all comes down to. How we view music - is it an activity, an experience, a "work" similar to plastic arts? - dictates how we view copyright.

More than the "is art a commodity?" question, I think aesthetics dictate our opinions on copyright - at least, our gut instincts on the topic.

I don't claim to have a solution to the myriad of copyright issues in today's music world. Sometimes I think copyright laws are too draconian; sometimes I think they're fair. I'm sure most people think that way, too.

But think for a moment about what you think about music and aesthetics. Does it - more or less - align with your ideas on copyright? I'm interested in hearing what you think!