beauty, truth, elegance
I've been thinking lately about how the world is beautiful in parallel ways: an idea that is true is often best expressed in a beautiful way. There was a fascinating article on biologos.org about the Higgs Boson and the fact that back in the Sixties scientists decided that the more beautiful explanation of mass in particles was more likely to be true. They were gloriously vindicated this year by the confirmation of the Higgs Boson's existence.
Scientists and computer programmers and mechanical engineers have a special word that they use to reflect the idea that a good idea is a beautiful idea: "elegance." At large, the word refers to champagne and caviar and evenings at the opera. In these fields, the word refers to a simple, direct, maybe slightly odd idea that expresses everything you want to express in a clean way that somehow appeals to a human sense of beauty. We can get some idea of that connotation by lensing it against our cultural connotation: picture Queen Elizabeth I, resplendent in cinch-waisted brocade, powdered and fluffed, bejeweled and crowned. The word is opulent. Now picture Audrey Hepburn, with a little lipstick, hair cut short, wearing a solid black sleeveless dress, no jewelry but a simple hoop earring. The word is elegant. That's the kind of formula scientists are always looking for, the kind of code programmers are always striving for.
It's also the kind of musical expression composers try for. To see a piece of music represented visually, and to see a sudden beauty in it, is to realize that that thing might have been done right.
In recording the Love Theme from Wings, I noticed something nice. I end with a deceptive cadence: instead of resolving to the tonic chord of F major, I resolve to an F-sharp major 7, a favorite device of mine, then — ahhh — to a clean F major. I express the F-sharp as a low chord, then arpeggiate upward so that the F is high in the sky, a musical expression of the movie's flying theme. (Earlier, going into the final chorus, I mount dissonance on dissonance by pitting upward-rising chords over the solid ground of a low C in the bass, then, instead of the expected crashing cadence, I leave the ground altogether, serenely soaring in the air. It's a musical picture I'm quite pleased with.) The arpeggio quickens a bit as it gets into the meat of it, then toward the end ritards dramatically. It just felt right to do as I played it.
Then I noticed how it looked on the screen. You can see what you've played in a view that's remarkably similar to the player-piano rolls that were popular when Wings came out. Sometimes old technology is hard to improve on: most music software actually refers to this as Piano Roll View. In this screen, you actually see the notes not as written on the page but with the duration and timing you actually use in performance. It's as if a mark is made when you hold a key down, and stopped when you release it. (Colors show how hard you hit the note.)
For this closing gesture, the arpeggio, with its logical direction and slow-quickening-slower pattern, creates a lovely shape, like the stem of some plant. Although in the abstract world of music there's very little real right and wrong, to me it's a visual confirmation that what I played was right in some cosmic sense.
(You can also see in the top of each dyad, at least on the first few iterations, my right hand: first finger taps a little quicker, second and third a little longer, and fourth gets out of the way as the hand moves to the next position. Ha!)
Listen to the whole piece. I hope you like it.
Scientists and computer programmers and mechanical engineers have a special word that they use to reflect the idea that a good idea is a beautiful idea: "elegance." At large, the word refers to champagne and caviar and evenings at the opera. In these fields, the word refers to a simple, direct, maybe slightly odd idea that expresses everything you want to express in a clean way that somehow appeals to a human sense of beauty. We can get some idea of that connotation by lensing it against our cultural connotation: picture Queen Elizabeth I, resplendent in cinch-waisted brocade, powdered and fluffed, bejeweled and crowned. The word is opulent. Now picture Audrey Hepburn, with a little lipstick, hair cut short, wearing a solid black sleeveless dress, no jewelry but a simple hoop earring. The word is elegant. That's the kind of formula scientists are always looking for, the kind of code programmers are always striving for.
It's also the kind of musical expression composers try for. To see a piece of music represented visually, and to see a sudden beauty in it, is to realize that that thing might have been done right.
In recording the Love Theme from Wings, I noticed something nice. I end with a deceptive cadence: instead of resolving to the tonic chord of F major, I resolve to an F-sharp major 7, a favorite device of mine, then — ahhh — to a clean F major. I express the F-sharp as a low chord, then arpeggiate upward so that the F is high in the sky, a musical expression of the movie's flying theme. (Earlier, going into the final chorus, I mount dissonance on dissonance by pitting upward-rising chords over the solid ground of a low C in the bass, then, instead of the expected crashing cadence, I leave the ground altogether, serenely soaring in the air. It's a musical picture I'm quite pleased with.) The arpeggio quickens a bit as it gets into the meat of it, then toward the end ritards dramatically. It just felt right to do as I played it.
Then I noticed how it looked on the screen. You can see what you've played in a view that's remarkably similar to the player-piano rolls that were popular when Wings came out. Sometimes old technology is hard to improve on: most music software actually refers to this as Piano Roll View. In this screen, you actually see the notes not as written on the page but with the duration and timing you actually use in performance. It's as if a mark is made when you hold a key down, and stopped when you release it. (Colors show how hard you hit the note.)
For this closing gesture, the arpeggio, with its logical direction and slow-quickening-slower pattern, creates a lovely shape, like the stem of some plant. Although in the abstract world of music there's very little real right and wrong, to me it's a visual confirmation that what I played was right in some cosmic sense.
(You can also see in the top of each dyad, at least on the first few iterations, my right hand: first finger taps a little quicker, second and third a little longer, and fourth gets out of the way as the hand moves to the next position. Ha!)
Listen to the whole piece. I hope you like it.
Comments