Last Friday, I went on another college visit with @cmp2020. This time, we went to Westminster Choir College. We got on the road at about 7am to arrive at 9 for a scheduled visitation day for potential music theory and composition majors. We arrived on campus in plenty of time, but had some trouble finding the admissions office, so we were rushing in from the car just before 9am. Unfortunately, when we got to the waiting room, we saw that there was only one other student for the visit, and the receptionist advised us that the scheduled visiting day had been cancelled. But to their credit, the Dean of Admissions did some scrambling and got us into a campus tour, a choir rehearsal, and found two classes that we could observe.
Original photo: outside the library at Westminster Choir College
Like our previous visit to Eastern University, the day started off with a tour of the campus, which is right next to Princeton University. The major highlight of the tour was probably when we learned that the college has the largest choral library in the world. Another entertaining aspect of the tour was hearing the local legend that, "You won't graduate if you step on the grass in the quad."
After the tour, we went to a 20th century composition class that was totally over my head, and then on to a choir rehearsal. If I'm not mistaken, we were in the balcony of the room seen here. After the choir rehearsal, we moved on to lunch (salad and chicken breasts), and finally to the song-writing class that inspired this post.
Even though my own musical knowledge is limited, I still found this class engaging. The overarching theme of the class seemed to be "humor in music", and the particular focus on that day was the concept of "parody". The professor played portions from a series of youtube videos, and then discussed the techniques that the artists were using. So, let's walk through the videos, and see what I remember:
First up, "Modern Major General", from The Pirates of Penzance
After playing the beginning of this video, the professor asked the class what makes it funny? The two sources of humor that I recall the class raising about the vocalist are the amazing speed with which he recites the lyrics, and the timing when he implements a dramatic pause. The professor pointed out that the timing is the product of many attempts. Performers often try these things with different times, and they learn to identify and repeat the techniques that generate the most positive responses from the audience.
The professor also pointed out that there are certain musical instruments that are frequently used to imply humor. In this piece, for example, the xylophone was used. The professor also noted that composers also use tubas and piccolos for this purpose.
Over the course of the years, theatrical and movie production has apparently come up with a number of visual and musical cliches like this. Other examples include the whole tone scale as an indication of waiting, or uncertainty, and the use of train visuals in movies to imply romantic activity between characters. Once these cliches exist, the professor said, the artist must either learn to move towards them or away from them, but they shouldn't be ignored.
After discussing the humor in that performance, the professor moved on to introduce the concept of "parody". He pointed out that parody originally just meant to imitate another body of work, and he mentioned a couple non-humorous forms of parody from musical history. Unfortunately, those examples have already slipped my mind.
After introducing the notion of parody, he moved on and played from the beginning of this parody of a "Modern Major General", Randy Rainbow's "A Very Stable Genius".
Of all the videos, this is the only one that was new to me. As with the previous video, the video was followed by a class discussion of what makes it humorous. The main point that I recall is the contrast between the fidelity that is maintained with the original piece and the altered video splices of current news events.
The next video was Michael Jackson's "Beat It". This is one that, having been a teenager during the eighties, I remember quite well. I was surprised to see that most of the college kids in the room (who hadn't even been born yet when it was released) seemed to know it, too.
The professor noted that although he apparently had a bizarre personality, Michael Jackson was known as a perfectionist when he was in the studio, and that everything about his music and video production was meticulously planned and executed.
And of course, anyone who was alive at the time can't recall "Beat It" without remembering Weird Al's parody video, "Eat It".
Although I've heard this song many times, I had never watched this video closely before, so much of the visual humor had previously been lost on me. Most of the follow-up discussion on humor in this video focused on the visual humor that Yankovic inserted into his production.
As with "A Very Stable Genius", the fidelity to the original work in "Eat It" enhanced the humor in the places where the parody video deviated from it.
And the last video under discussion came from the James Bond series of movies. The professor pointed out that the author of the James Bond series, Ian Fleming, was also the author of the children's book, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. This fact suggests a way of understanding the Bond Series as a sort of "children's book" for grown men, where Bond is a "magical" sort of character with impossible, hyper-exaggerated masculine characteristics.
That discussion served as the lead in to our last parody video, another one by Weird Al, "Spy Hard".
After listening to the video once, the professor played it again and asked the class to pay particular attention to the bass lines. He then used the piano to highlight the video's use of the Neopolitan Sixth chord, noting how this parody is even humorous at a musical level.
Overall, it was a very informative visit, and I was sort-of glad that the scheduled visitation day had been cancelled, because it turned out that we had less potential for distractions from other prospective students. On a personal level, I especially thought the song-writing class was interesting, because it spurred me to think about familiar music in a new and different way.
Thank you for your time and attention.
As a general rule, I up-vote comments that demonstrate "proof of reading".
Steve Palmer is an IT professional with three decades of professional experience in data communications and information systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a master's degree in computer science, and a master's degree in information systems and technology management. He has been awarded 3 US patents.
Steve is also a co-founder of the Steem's Best Classical Music Facebook page, and the @classical-music steemit curation account.