The right composer for 'Brokeback Mountain' the opera?

Good idea: turn Annie Proulx's short story "Brokeback Mountain" into an opera. The plot is a great fit, certainly better than "Dead Man Walking" or "The Great Gatsby" (and we will soon see about "Grapes of Wrath" at Pittsburgh Opera this fall), and the story would thrust opera into an active dissussion of a contemporary issue (which is also the case with "Dead Man Walking" and "Nixon and China" and others, but the more the better to make the artform relevant). New York City Opera will produce "Brokeback Mountain" (I would assume with the same name) for spring 2013. Congrats to the company  on the choice.

Not so good idea: Have Charles Wuorinen compose the music. Now, while he has extensive experience with vocal music and is an esteemed member of the American composing scene with many excellent works to his credit, his compositional aesthetic is, in my opinion, hardly accessible or overly melodic. His style is often called "maximalist," and but to me, it often comes across as overly complex for the sake of it. Since "Brokeback Mountain" will need to appeal to a wide range of patrons -- many of whom did not like the modernist and post-modernist eras in music and who won't be forgiving if Wuorninen softens his approach but is still not sonically pleasing to them -- my guess is this choice will lead to problems. I hope to be proven wrong, but I have a sinking feeling about this one.

'Take Me Out to the Ball Game' in four?

I could not touch on this in my article on "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," but the song went through a curious transformation in the 1940s and 50s. Many decades after the song was written by Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer in triple meter -- a relaxed waltz-like 3/4 -- it began to appear in common time 4/4!

Here is the original song in 3/4 (triple meter), from one of its first recordings:

"Take Me Out to the Ball Game" (Fred Lambert, Oxford Disc Records, 1908)

And here is a recording nearly 50 years later in which the song is now in 4/4 (duple meter):

"Take Me Out to the Ball Game" (Lerory Holmes, MGM, 1951)

Apparently, this was not unusual:

"It's a common practice among jazz musicians to take 3/4 songs and morph them into 4/4," Bob Thompson, co-author of "Baseball's Greatest Hit" e-mailed me today. "The earliest versions of 'Take Me Out...' done in 4/4 were by jazz musicians and musicians from the swing era. Duke Ellington was famous for doing this...his version of the 'Waltz of the Sugarplums' from his 'Nutcracker' is in 4/4."

Crazy stuff.

In my opinion, the 4/4 version -- essentially a march -- is horrid. It ruins the natural accents of the text and make for a much more rigid feel to the song, almost a forced feel (putting a square peg in a round hole). I think it is only fitting that the waltz version -- I mean the original score! -- has survived to be the more popular one and the one sung in ball parks today.

Moving on up

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It's time to hear from you

 Okay, folks, time for a modulation to a key we can all sing in better. You may have noticed a few changes here at Classical Musings, and even at the Post-Gazette.com in general. In sum, we are continuing to improve the Web site, and, yes, catching up to the rest of the ’net in some cases.

The big news here is that our blogs are finally "real" blogs, instead of online columns. Over the past 16 months or so that Classical Musings has been up and running, I have appreciated your comments e-mailed to me personally (there’s a smart group of music-buffs out there), but starting today, you will be able to post comments directly on my blog! The best part about this is that you can add to my posts or even my P-G articles/reviews that I have referenced in the blog, expanding and making my work "smarter," as they say in the online biz. To register for commenting, click the "Join" link in the top right corner of this page. 

Feel free to include links, photos, whatever to make your point or even to mention something that didn’t get (enough) coverage. But to that latter end, the P-G community server has more robust tools for getting your own news out to our community. I will be the moderator for my blog posts, and I reserve the right to delete a post, but I don’t think I will do so very often.

Let’s have an inclusive conversation that is fun and respectful and leads us all to new knowledge about music.

One note -- since we are moving our blogs from one framework to another, to read older (even this week's blogs) you must click on this link or on a bar (eventually) on the left:

Classical Musings archives

Courage in the face of the flood: the Cedar Rapid Symphony

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'Panda's' instruments are authentic, even if the kung fu isn't.

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Old friends in Denver

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In need of a (pipe) organ transfer

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To those who stayed and cheered, I salute you.

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A radio show with some fancy threads.

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