Getting with the Christmas Program

My radio program, "Gamut" only airs on Wednesday mornings (on WTJU, 91.1fm), so it isn't often that it lands on Christmas morning -- but it did so today. So with three hours to fill, I had some musical choices to make. And actually, it was a lot of fun to do so.

Choice 1: Sacred or secular?
Because "Gamut" is a classical music program, my choices are already focused (but by no means limited). Should I just pretend it's just another Wednesday, or air music appropriate for Christmas morning?

The latter, I think.

Choice 2: Familiar or not?
Personally, I'm burnt out on a lot of the holiday music that regularly gets programmed. "Silent Night," "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," etc. -- pass. And even among just classical programming, I think Praetorius' "Lo, How a Rose E're Blooming" is somewhat overplayed.

So what's left? Plenty. How about some Early American shape-note hymns? Sure, Bach wrote sacred Christmas music for church services, but so did other German Baroque composers. How about a cantata by Telemann, Schutz, or someone else for a change?

Choice 3: Choral or Instrumental?
One can be pretty wide-ranging with classical Christmas music. There's plenty of material from the Middle Ages through to the modern era -- and most of it choral. So while on paper, playing a medieval chant followed by a Benjamin Britten carol followed by a renaissance motet may seem to offer variety, to the listener it's just a whole lot of singing.

So I'll be choosing orchestral works, piano works, and some early music instrumental selections to have some real variety.

Choice 4: Original music or arrangements?
There are plenty of arrangements of popular Christmas carols. And some are quite imaginative. But how many arrangements of "Joy to the World" can one hear before it all sounds the same?

I'll be searching out original compositions written for Christmas. Must be classical, must be appealing, and must be of the highest compositional quality. I have plenty of choices.

Showtime!
I always make a few adjustments on-air, so the program is never 100% set until it's over. Stay tuned. I'll post the playlist tomorrow (Getting with the Christmas Program -- The Results), and you can see how these four choices guided my selections.

And Merry Christmas!

You can hear the program by going to the WTJU archives. It will be available for streaming through 1/7/14. 

Running the Gamut 4 - A Thousand and One Questions

Since July 11, 1991, I've been hosting a classical music morning program on WTJU, 91.1fm in Charlottesville Virginia.. The three-hour program had a simple programming tenant -- never repeat a work. (read more at Running the Gamut - A Thousand and One Wednesdays)

Wednesday, May 22, 2013 from 6-9am we'll mark the 1000th program with a mini-fundrive (donate here), special guests, and a few surprises.

As May 22 drew close, interest started to grow about the program. The Daily Progress (the local paper) ran a feature on the show. And then the questions started to roll in. Some of the information I've already shared in the three previous posts about this (see the links at the bottom of the page), but there are a few that I might not get to on the air.

How do you select your music?
I strive for variety. So I try to represent at least three of the major style periods of classical music.

• Middle Ages - 1100 - 1300 (that's not the full range of the historic time period, but 1100 AD is about the time of the earliest music manuscripts that have survived and can be deciphered)
• Renaissance - 1300 - 1600
• Baroque - 1600 - 1750
• Classical - 1750 - 1827
• Romantic - 1827 - 1890
• Post-Romantic - 1890 - 1920
• Modern/Contemporary 1920 - Present (I know, that covers a lot of ground, but it works for my purposes) 

 I also select work with a variety of musical forces.

• Orchestra- can also include concertos (solo instrument plus orchestra
• String orchestra - without the brass, woodwinds and percussion, this ensemble has a similar but different sound than a full orchestra
• Chamber group - can be anything from a string quartet, to a clarinet sonata (clarinet plus piano), a brass trio or even a mixed group of instruments (usually one player per instrument type)
• Solo instrument - solo piano, solo guitar, etc.
• Early instruments - a lute sounds quite different than a guitar, just as a harpsichord differs from a piano. I also include larger ensembles -- such as a group of 30 musicians playing Bach on instruments of this period -- into this designation
• Solo vocal music - the human voice, like the human form, is a beautiful thing, and we should not be scared of it
• Choral music - choruses either a capella or with instrumental accompaniment

Between those two parameters, it's easy for me to establish a flow. So I might start with a renaissance choral work, then a post-romantic piano work, then a baroque concerto grosso, then a contemporary chamber piece, and so on.

What about that no-repeat thing? How do you keep it all straight?
I have a master playlist that I update during every program. It's nothing fancy -- just a Word document. But using keyword search I can quickly find if I've aired a work before or not. And if I look at the list of works by a composer (especially the ones with catalog numbers), I can usually see where the gaps are.

"Gamut" Master Playlist doc

Why do you sometimes play music by the same composer several weeks running?
Two reasons. First, it helps build up familiarity with a composer. You, like me, may not have heard of Ferdinand Ries before I started airing his piano concertos. But by playing one Ries concerto every week until we had completed the cycle, it was possible to gain some familiarity with his style. By the third week, one could make an informed evaluation about Ries' music.

The second reason goes to the previous question. In addition to keeping a master list, I also have two other systems. For CDs from my personal collection, I put a sticky note on it with all track numbers. As I air them, I cross them off, and when all the tracks are crossed off, I'm done with that recording.

The CDs in WTJU's classical library are assigned a number when they arrive. I keep sheets of papers with those numbers on them. Next to each CD number are the track numbers. As they're aired, I cross them off. If the release only has duplicates of works I've already aired, I cross it off the list. I do some skipping back and forth to satisfy my programming requirements (see the question above). The library is approaching 5,000 CDs. I've aired pretty much everything in the first 1,600.

What's up with that theme music?
The opening theme music is Alfred Schnittke's "March from an Imaginary Play." It's a rollicking little march with a wordless tune belted out by the conductor. What better way to wake people up at 6AM?


The closing theme music is a faux-classical selection by Ken Thorne. It's the end credit music from the 1968 movie "Head" starring the Monkees. Its exaggerated ending seems a perfect way to bring the show to a close.

So now that you've reached Program 1000, are you going to do a regular show?
Hardly. The same day I wrote this post, a colleague suggested I air Arnold Sartorio's Op. 1000 for the big show. I had never heard of this Italian-German composer before -- let alone any of his music!
 And while Sartorio might not be the greatest post-romantic composer around (I auditioned what little of his music has been recorded), it just shows that there is still a lot of music left to explore.

So we'll keep pressing forward.

Part 1: A Thousand and One Wednesdays
Part 2: A Thousand and One Milestones
Part 3: A Thousand and One Lessons

Running the Gamut 3 - A Thousand and One Lessons

Since July 11, 1991, I've been hosting a classical music morning program on WTJU, 91.1fm in Charlottesville Virginia.. The three-hour program had a simple programming tenant -- never repeat a work. (read more at Running the Gamut - A Thousand and One Wednesdays)

Wednesday, May 22, 2013 from 6-9am we'll mark the 1000th program with a live webcast, mini-fundrive (donate here), and air messages from our listeners (call 434.207.2120 to leave your message).

To some, broadcasting 3,000 hours of unique works may seem like a silly stunt -- or at the very least bad programming. One of my colleagues who's a program director at a major public radio station told me it was the worst idea ever.

I disagee.

If it was a policy for all of WTJU's classical department to obsessively march through the repertoire and never look back, then I would agree -- that's bad programming. Great classical music (like great rock, great folk, or great jazz recordings) just seem to get better with repeated listening. And there's always someone who's hearing that piece for the first time.

But my three-hour show represents a small part of the broadcast day, so I don't think there's any harm done. I've learned quite a lot about classical music over the past 1,000 programs, and I hope my listeners have, too.

I've come to appreciate the depth and breadth of classical music

Medieval chant sounds nothing Steve Reich. So which is better? Depends on what you're listening for. Over the years, I've learned to listen to each style period on its own terms. Mozart used the orchestra in a different way than Richard Strauss. Both wrote great music -- and best of all, I don't have to choose between them, either.

I've come to appreciate the cultural heritage of many nations

Everybody knows that classical music is European. Well, it was for a while -- but not as long as you might think. By the late 1600's there were composers writing sacred music in the New World (mostly in the Spanish colonies). American composers were writing works of substance in the mid-1700's, and Canadian composers soon after. Composers in Australia, South Africa, China, Japan, and other non-European countries have all contributed to the genre. And everyone brings something different to classical music.

Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos blended Bach with native folk music. Carlos Chavez injected a subtle Mexican flavor into his works. Tan Dun uses oriental aesthetics to shape his classical compositions. And so on. Every culture adds something to the mix -- and it's a mixture I savor.

I've come to appreciate the music of our time

In school, I was never a big fan of what I considered academic atonality. It all sounded like noise. And if that was what contemporary music, then I was going to stick with the great works of the past, thank you. Doesn't anyone know how to write a melody anymore?

Well, it turns out they do -- and they've been quietly doing so continually throughout the 20th Century and into the 21st Century. In fact, seeking out those tonal composers has become something of a project with me. My Consonant Classical Challenge has profiled over seventy living composers who still use tonality in some fashion.

But I've also come to better appreciate those works I didn't like before. A good definition of noise is unorganized sound. Music is organizes sound. But if you can't hear the organization, music can sound like noise. As my familiarity with classical music has grown over the past 1,000 programs, I can better hear the organization that was always there in those atonal works.

Some I quite like now. Others, I hear as music rather than noise, but its uninspired music. So I still don't care for those works. Only I now have a more valid reason not to (I think).

I've learned that sometimes the best composers aren't the most famous

Let me qualify that. What I really mean is that some of the composers whose works speak most directly to me aren't the most famous. Franz Joseph Haydn; Alan Hovhaness; Ralph Vaughan Williams; Charles Villiers Stanford; Michael Praetorius, and many more. I'm not going to say they're the greatest composers of all time, just that their music consistently moves me deeply.

So there you are. If you've been a long-time listener (or listened to classical music for any significant length of time), what have you learned?

Part 1: A Thousand and One Wednesdays
Part 2: A Thousand and One Milestones
Part 4: A Thousand and One Questions

Running the Gamut 2 - A Thousand and One Milestones

Since July 11, 1991, I've been hosting a classical music morning program on WTJU, 91.1fm in Charlottesville Virginia.. The three-hour program had a simple programming tenant -- never repeat a work. (read more at Running the Gamut - A Thousand and One Wednesdays)

Wednesday, May 22, 2013 from 6-9am we'll mark the 1000th program with a live webcast, mini-fundrive (donate here), and air messages from our listeners (call 434.207.2120 to leave your message).

Looking over the master playlist for "Gamut," I'm amazed at both how much music by how many composers I've been able to air, and how much there is still left to do. Nevertheless, if you (like me), have listened to every single episode of "Gamut," you would have been exposed to a lot of great music. I freely program from all style periods of classical music, from the middle ages (beginning ca. 900) all the way up through the present.

And I mean present. In 2010 composer Robert Ian Winstin undertook the task to composer, perform, record and produce a new classical work every single day during the month of February. (28 in twenty-eight) I obtained permission to air the works, and so during that month "Gamut" featured works that were less than six hours old. Now that's about as contemporary as you can get!

Complete Series

Along the way, I've been able to do some interesting cycles that, taken in total, help the listener more fully understand the composer. Some cycles are easy -- like Brahms symphonies (he only wrote four), and Grieg piano concertos (he wrote just one). But then there were cycles that could only be programmed and aired with a longer view -- like these:

Franz Joseph Haydn - 104 symphonies
Ludwig van Beethoven - 9 symphonies. 16 string quartets, 32 piano sonatas, 10 violin sonatas
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - 18 piano sonatas, 23 string quartets, 41 symphonies
Felix Mendelssohn - Complete Songs without Words (8 volumes, 48 pieces), 5 symphonies, 12 string symphonies

 - to name a few

Underrepresented Composers

I also featured a lot of works by composers that haven't made the Top 10, but either perhaps should have, or at least deserve to be in the Top 40. Since they're not as widely recorded, I usually can't do a complete cycle of works, also often I can do a complete cycle of recordings! Here are a few examples:

Alan Hovhaness: 51 compositions out of  434 published works
Gerald Finzi: 37 out of 40 published works
Heitor Villa-Lobos:  60 (including all 17 string quartets)  out of 592 known compositions

Non-European Composers

The stereotype is that classical music is irrelevant because it's all written by dead, white, European men. Well, not quite. Here's a very short list of the non-European (and some non-white) composers I've featured:

Carlos Chavez (Mexico)
Healy Willan (Canada)
Bechara El-Khoury (Lebanon)
Zhou Long (China)
Peter Schulthorpe (Australia)
William Grant Still (America)

Women  Composers

Addressing the second part of the stereotype, I've aired more than a few women composers -- and not just contemporary ones, either. Here's a small sampling:

Hildegard von Bingen (medieval)
Fanny Mendelsohn-Hensel (romantic)
Clara Schumann (romantic)
Amy Beach (20th century)
Barbara Strozzi (baroque)
Joan Tower (contemporary)
Jennifer Higdon (contemporary)

Living Composers

And finally, I also air a lot of music by living composers. Because to me, classical music isn't a musty old artifact in a museum, but a vital part of contemporary life -- as evidenced by the composers who create it today. A very small list of living composers would include:

John Taverner
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich
Lawrence Ball
Judith Shatin
Kenneth Fuchs
Philip Glass

.... and a work or two by yours truly.


And more!

Then there's all the other oddities I've aired, like Richard Wagner's symphonies(!), overtures from Haydn operas, PDQ Bach, Benjamin Franklin's string quartet, piano concertos by Beethoven's personal assistant, Ferdinand Reis, violin concertos by Saint-Georges, the greatest swordsman in 18th century France, and many, many more.

It's been quite a musical journey -- and I'm not done yet.

Part 1: A Thousand and One Wednesdays
Part 3: A Thousand and One Lessons