{"id":1166,"date":"2012-11-23T17:56:23","date_gmt":"2012-11-23T17:56:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=1166"},"modified":"2012-11-23T17:56:23","modified_gmt":"2012-11-23T17:56:23","slug":"a-musical-meditation-on-honor-and-barack-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=1166","title":{"rendered":"A Musical Meditation on Honor and Barack Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Fb-Button\"\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>
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From Johnny Cash to contemporary chamber orchestra music. Go ahead, call me a culture vulture or an arts parasite, but please don’t call Culture Currents\u00a0predictable.<\/em> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Nor do I want to present this post under false pretenses, although I offer it\u00a0with genuine enthusiasm for the music link here within.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Frank Stemper\u00a0is an old friend, whom I have\u00a0blogged about\u00a0before, and a highly gifted and skilled\u00a0composer and head of the composition department at Southern Illinois University — Carbondale.\u00a0His music has been performed throughout\u00a0the United States and Europe and in Mexico.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a0Composer Frank Stemper <\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

He has long been known for an\u00a0expressionistic and dramatic style with varying degrees of dissonance and shifting time signatures. He now offers The Persistence of Honor, <\/em>a short piece\u00a0of terse and restrained lyricism in a yearning and\u00a0consonant mode,\u00a0and inspired originally by Barack Obama’s first election. As his program notes below suggest, Persistence<\/em> seems highly appropriate in reprised form as a meditation on the first African-American president’s\u00a0re-election and the challenge and promise it offers.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Here are Stemper’s program notes, followed by my response to the piece.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Persistence of Honor<\/strong>\u00a0was commissioned by the\u00a0Dutch chamber orchestra, Het Wagenings\u00a0Orkest\u00a0\u2018Sonante\u2019, as part of their 25th anniversary celebration.\u00a0 It was premiered\u00a0in November 2009 by that orchestra in the Netherlands, directed by their dedicated and extremely talented conductor, Melvin Margolis.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the music, you will probably notice a continuous, unrelenting \u2013 almost annoying \u2013 repetition of a rising pensive refrain.\u00a0 Although this idea repeats \u201cpersistently,\u201d it never repeats exactly.\u00a0 Tiny musical changes create a continuous evolution of this refrain, with each statement delivering the same message in a slightly different way.<\/em><\/p>\n

As a composer, I feel that music exists on a considerably higher level than anything in the real, physical world \u2013 especially politics.\u00a0 However, the inspiration (or perhaps catalyst) for my composition was the United States’ presidential election in November 2008.\u00a0 In that single day, the country not only profoundly transformed itself from a regime BACK to a democracy, but, the election of the first African-American President made perhaps the strongest statement to date in reversing and healing what is perhaps the United States’ greatest sin.\u00a0 In an instant, 40,000,000 Americans, for the first time, actually felt like Americans.<\/em><\/div>\n
This seems to me to be\u00a0an example of honor rising above amorality.\u00a0 Every day the entire world is reminded of all the ills, created by dishonor, that define our civilization, i.e. wars, crime, maniacal leaders, racism, etc., etc.\u00a0 These ills seem to indicate that the dishonorable, the aggressively brutal and destructive members of our species, are bit-by-bit destroying our civilization\u2019s goodness, decency, integrity and honesty.\u00a0 This might point to a very bleak future for the human race.\u00a0 <\/em><\/div>\n
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However, as this Obama fellow gained momentum, was overwhelmingly elected, and then sworn in as the 44th U.S. President, it occurred to me to be a validation of what I suspect: The human species is still evolving, and its future is NOT at all bleak.\u00a0 Just as Darwin\u2019s Natural Selection transforms every species to become \u201cbetter\u201d in order to enable its continued existence — so will our species.\u00a0 The proof of this is that, scientifically, we must.\u00a0 Through gentle, continuous Persistence of Honor<\/strong>, dishonor will eventually be eliminated from the world\u2019s society. — Frank Stemper<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n

What follows is a slightly edited response I wrote directly to Stemper upon recently\u00a0hearing\u00a0the piece, performed here by\u00a0The New Chicago Chamber Orchestra.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

http:\/\/frankstemper.com\/10ThePersistenceofHonor.mp3<\/wbr><\/a><\/p>\n

M<\/span><\/span>aestro Frank,<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The descending \u201csigh\u201d note at the end of the ascending phrase at 5:30 touched me as much as the much richer, fuller end that soon followed.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The motivic phrase obviously signifies the \u201cpersistence of honor,\u201d and the rather rapturous variation around 8:30 feels like glorious vindication.\u00a0(coincidentally the first piece of music I wrote is titled Vindication<\/em> and dedicated to\u00a0Jackie Robinson,* though it doesn’t sound anything like this.)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

One might imagine the motif emerging from more dissonance but, as you wrote it, the presence seems almost untouchable and impregnable, which makes it feel somewhat idealistic. Even the most honorable of us have our moments of weakness, to say the least. I imagine Mother Teresa had her bitchy moments. I\u2019m reading a book called President Lincoln: the Duty of a Statesman<\/em>, about perhaps as fine an example of complex honor we’ve known among our leaders<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, I enjoyed and appreciated your piece as it was.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I like that it began with the cello, with his deep-hum eloquence, and the persistence felt as sure as a wind — part temperate, part cool — rising to clear away fetid atmosphere. That\u2019s how it seemed plausible; Nature passes eventually to uncanny redemptive light, even after its most destructive tempests. Human nature also retains that potential.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The music also conveys to me a sense of slow, sure human healing and, though you might shudder to think of your music in search terms, it has an almost therapeutic quality. I intend that as no mixed praise.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPersistence\u201d shows how deftly you can handle a consonant palette, though the chords at the end grew magnificent in their blend of light and shadow, with hints of the hoary weight the Persistence is doubtlessly bearing.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I will play this again. It graces my player.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Bravo!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Kevin<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

* Historically paralleling Barack Obama, Jackie Robinson\u00a0was the first African-American to play major league baseball, in 1947 when he\u00a0 debuted with Brooklyn Dodgers. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

photo of Barack Obama courtesy: paydayadvanceUK.co.uk<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Johnny Cash to contemporary chamber orchestra music. Go ahead, call me a culture vulture or an arts parasite, but please don’t call Culture Currents\u00a0predictable. Nor do I want to present this post under false pretenses, although I offer it\u00a0with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hJWE-iO","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1166"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1189,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166\/revisions\/1189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}