A musical hit.... and a folklore miss....

Too many things to do in the land of nothing to do…

Monday afternoon I attended another faculty seminar at St. Mary’s College, entitled “Setting Words to Music”. It was given by David Froom, a nationally recognized composer, and a member of the faculty at the college. I always stand in awe of creative people and love to hear about the process (everybody has to have a process) that results in (in this case) a musical piece. Apparently Joe Urgo, the new president of the college (and cruise ship operator) decided the college needed “a song”, and asked Mr. Froom to whip one up. So, David explained how he set the lyrics to music (the lyrics were created by another faculty member). Before he took over, the lady who wrote the lyrics talked about how she went about it. She said that because the college was so dominated by water she wanted to bring that out, and so used a lot of soft and flowing words. Lots of “S’s” and “H’s” and so on. Who would’a thunk? She also used the term “word painting”. And, to be truthful, I never did hear the complete song, but don’t think it was of the “cheer, cheer, for old…”, or “let’s go seahawks, beat those..” variety, but more of a level commensurate a liberal arts College.

David’s description of how he went about setting it to music was very interesting. He first talked about how a school song should be something ordinary people could sing (unlike the Star Spangled Banner), so needed it to be “simple” with a limited range (unlike…). So in talking about composing, he used terms like “step” and “jump”, first and fourth chords (which, thanks to Brian Ganz’s talks, I actually knew what he meant), and how he has learned that the important words need to be on the highest notes of the music. He had the score projected on the wall and used a laser pointer to illustrate various points he was making.

The remainder of his talk was how he generated another composition based on a poem that caught his eye. It was a translation of a poem originally written in Hebrew. At this point, the little automatic pencil I use for creating notes in the famous little brown journal (which contains restaurant notes and other such treasures) ran out of lead, so I can’t name the poet. But he explained how he read, reread, and listened to the words, got the rhythms, emphasis, and then would begin to construct the music. He knew what the instrumentation would be, and went from there. Fascinating stuff. He did play some of the piece, and it was “contemporary” which I hope is the correct term in that it didn’t have a melody, phrasing was interesting, and it was sung by a baritone. For his second example on another poem, he used the technique that I relate to the Messiah, where a simple phrase like “and then the light came out” is turned in to multiple phrases, as in “and then the light, and then the light came, and then the light came out, light came out, light, light, came out”.

Anyway it is always interesting to hear talented people talk.

So, I was enthused for the second lecture, held yesterday, which was given by Millie Rahn in St. Mary's Hall, entitled “The land of pleasant living; looking at the folklore and folklife of Maryland”. The more elaborate description of her talk included some words about foodways, which also caught my eye. Ms. Rahn is an anthropologist and describes herself as a “Folklorist, Ethnographer, and Oral Historian”. That “folklorist” description was a new one on me, but by the end of the evening I heard it about fifty times. Although describing herself as a “Marylander” she had never been to St. Mary’s County. She had, however, spent some time in Newfoundland, and was aware of the Calvert’s involvement there. Her talk was scheduled for 90 minutes. Well, the first 80 of those was spent in a rambling discourse on the importance of “place”, oral traditions, how important it is to document things, how neat it is to be a folklorist, and other sort of non-related generalities. Anything in the first 60 minutes or so relating to Maryland was pretty much skipped. Toward the end, she did present a couple of interesting videos of “local” things like a clip from a film about Dorchester, Maryland called “Muskrat Lovely” and some oral recordings of people who worked on the Bay Bridge.

Oh, I did get one good food takeaway. She talked about the famous (Maryland State Dessert) Smith Island Cake. Alert readers will know that it is a cake made of several small layers and lots of frostings. She said (one source, not checked out further by me) that the reason it has so many layers was that it was made before electricity reached the island, and using “Kerosene” heat, they could only bake small layers at a time. Sounds good to me..

With about ten minutes left, there was a “oh, I guess I should answer questions” but time had pretty much ran out. I was quite disappointed in the whole thing.  There were some interesting points, but I had hoped for so much more...

And being a foodie/engineer guy, I am always afraid that my background prevents me from “getting it” in these academic presentations. Sounded dumb to me, but maybe I’m too stupid to understand. Well, I checked with a couple of friends in the academic community (an anthropologist for one) and they shared my opinion that it was a poor presentation. Maybe I’m not too stupid. Just a little stupid.

So while I usually laud the college for great opportunities to hear a variety of subjects, this one was a whiff. But, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go, I guess reality is that they are not guaranteed..

And, I know I still owe you the “guy at the next table” story from Santa Fe. Was going to append it here, but that would most likely extend this post past your reading fatigue limit.. besides, I have a meeting in about an hour. So I have to go get

DFP(ublic)