Gyorgy Ligeti’s satiric opera about the end of the world. The story follows the devil (Nekrotzar) after he rises from his tomb and menaces a decadent, foolish prince (Prince Go-Go). The opera ends with the apocalypse and a few, befuddled survivors, closing with the cast saying to the audience: “Fear not to die, good people all. No-one knows when his hour will fall. Farewell in cheerfulness, farewell!”
End of the year and end of my project to write a new orchestral piece each month (comments on the germ of my idea in #1). I’ll be taking a break from music for a few weeks (months?) just to recharge. I’d mentioned before, and this is odd, but this whole process was creatively draining. There is stress of potential failure three weeks out of four, with only fleeting contentedness on the fourth as you prepare for the next.
There are two accomplishments that came out of this. First, I feel more competent working within a more tonally free harmonic language than I had when writing for piano. I was concerned from the start that I would write “pop” music for orchestra that was either bland or in the realm of movie music (no offense, just not for me). The results, I feel, are for the most part successfully 20th/21st century modernist in style.
Second, although I’m still greatly lacking in technical competence of the instruments’ mechanical limitations and tonal “best practices”, I feel I’m better equipped to work with the different tonal colors possible in an orchestra.
Moving forward:
Continue with studying Piston’s Orchestration.
Become more acquainted with each instrument’s technical nuances w/r/t not only range but also areas such as fingerings for strings, positions for brass, and difference in tone for the different registers of each instrument.
Study and follow along with more scores. IMSLP and YouTube and IDAGIO are easily available, so there’re few limitations. YouTube even has some rare instances, though very limited, of modern scores that are still under copyright.
Start working with DAW software and sample libraries to get better recordings. I’ve worked on the cheap (spelled f.r.e.e.) with MuseScore for notation and Audacity for simple audio editing. MuseScore is comparable to Finale for my purposes, however even though it can export MP3s for the full score or for custom instrument groups, the results are only good as a reference.
This final composition: I had plans for a larger work in three sections (standard orchestra, dissonant held tones in brass with softer string in the background, close with a harmonically limited string chorale referencing the previous section’s strings) but ended with only the first section. It was a month full of holiday distractions. Compared to previous studies, here I better explored motivic development using Brahms symphonies as a reference. Score is full throughout.
I intentionally limited these 12 studies to a month each in order to try different techniques and styles, and then quickly move on so as not to get bogged down in flawed, early attempts. Write, learn your lesson, move on more wise for the effort. This naturally forced me to not fully develop the ideas within each piece. When I return to writing, I plan on writing a symphony in order to let the work live in my head over a longer period.
Back in the 90s maybe earlier, no it can’t be earlier because I didn’t get to Atlanta until 85 or so, so probably late 80s early 90s. There was a used book store call Oxford Too that was at 2395 Peachtree Rd. (looking at Google Earth). It was an old house that had stacks of books, narrow hallways, lots of dust. Heaven.
This is the second of the pinky violence flicks I got recently, along with Delinquent Girl Boss: Blossoming Night Dreams, while trying (hopelessly) to fill the missing slots in my collection. The films and series are difficult to keep track of, but I’ve made an attempt (trust me ~60%): this movie is from the Girl Boss series with Reiko Ike and Miki Sugimoto, which includes two Girl Boss Blues entries. It is different than the Delinquent Girl Boss series with Reiko Oshida, which, though that series contains a “reform school” entry, is different than the Terrifying Girls’ High School series with Reiko Ike and Miki Sugimoto. And these have nothing to do with Delinquent Girl Boss from the Stray Cat Rock series.
I just watched this on MST3K. Their marathon station on PlutoTV (channel 385) is constantly on in the background when I work from home, and so it often bleeds over to the weekends. The humor of the series is not as frequent as when I originally watched in college, but the banter between Joel, Mike, and the robots is like TV comfort food. Even just looking over to see Crow gab at the screen can lighten an oppressive day. That charm is their staying power.
🎶 …he’ll have to sit and watch them all while they monitor his mind… 🎶
There were 35 books from 1966 to this 2019 (!), and two movies: Gor (1987) and Outlaw of Gor (1988). The books are well known for their S&M and misogyny and are an egregious rip-off of both Conan the Barbarian and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series. The latter is pretty dated and contains its own “quaint” views of women, but those views are explained by the early 20th century publishing date. The Gor novels began being published during the heyday of 2nd wave feminism, so they are more of a push toward for a more subservient time rather than a “grandpa just doesn’t know better” moment.
The main character is a college professor (Tarl Cabot) who gets transported to a parallel Earth that is stuck in some Conan world. There, he becomes a brave warrior saving/having his way with slave women and generally alpha-maling it up. The author (John Norman) of the books is a college professor (John Frederick Lange, Jr.) who has decidedly not been transported to the land of subservient slave women, but can at least Mary Sue his way there.
How you see yourself… (cover of Outlaw of Gor by Boris Vallejo)
…vs. how you really look… (MST3K lover letter to Gor)
…vs. the first image that comes up in a search. (Rebecca Ferratti as Telena from Gor, also appears in Ace Ventura, Beverly Hills Cop II, and Three Amigos)
Reading randomly through the Goodreads reviews, I found Jason Pettus’s review of Outlaw, which linked to his review of Tarnsman, the first Gor novel, and why he started reading them. He had been the owner of the now defunct Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, author of a few books, but took on the noble task of experiencing all that is Gor. Or at least all he can stomach:
I’ve decided to finally tackle John Norman’s infamously sexist series of “Gor” S&M erotic fantasy novels, which I first developed a fascination for in 2006 when I spent a year playing Second Life, and met a group of literally hundreds of people (men and women, young and old) who were there specifically to persistently roleplay in a Gorean setting 24 hours a day, in some cases to supplement a quasi-Gorean lifestyle they were living in real life as well. I’m basically going to be reading as many of the books as I can stand before I get sick of it all (I doubt I will make it through all 34 [ed. now 35] of them)
Bonus: their song about the almost-nudity in the film.
Tom Servo: Hey fellows, there sure is a lot of skin in this movie. Mike: There sure is! Crow T. Robot: Yet despite all the acres of flesh in this film, I just can’t come up with a word to describe it. TS: Well I can! CTR: You can?! TS: Sure…
High Art ensues:
Update 30 Jan 2020:
I couldn’t help myself because I’m a 14-year-old boy:
Tom Servo: Iiiiiit’s Breastica boobical Chestica mamical Pendular globular fun.
Mike Nelson: Fleshical orbital Mombula scupula?
TS: Right, all of that’s the one!
Crow T. Robot: Is it guleal maximal Tushical crackula Buniona morning till night?
TS Well you’re absito glandular Fanny fantastical Mastica fleshular right!
All: It’s an aereological auto-erotical Tubular boobular joy. An exposular regional Vagical pouchular Fun for a girl and boy. Oh it’s sisimal dorsical Hung like a horsical Calavaligical ball!
CTR: The most bunula funula…
MTN: Fruita baloobula…
CTR: Frenchical toungular…
TS: Wabida boobular…
(unintelligible closing chorus while Tom Servo sings:)
