[78-L] OT Musical genres^

[Jeff Sultanof]

Jack,

I agree that Byers and Carisi were one-of-a-kind, fantastic musicians. Byers
could write a score for 100 musicians while on the toilet, and Carisi's
chamber music showed that he could have been a major composer. I studied
with Carisi for a very brief time, and I'm what hurt him was his attitude.
He'd been burned a few times and I don't think ever got over it, and he wore
his frustration daily. When I last saw him, he was playing trumpet in a band
backing the Barry Sisters at a Bronx beach club. Johnny Mandel, a pretty
fluent writer himself, told me that Byers saved many asses in New York and
Hollywood, and also worked frequently in France, where he had a home.

Deutsch tended to do what you described on a first lesson back then. My
boss/mentor at Warner Bros, Anthony Esposito was one of his prize pupils,
studying Schillinger and arranging. He told me that Deutsch tended to say
things that he didn't mean at times, and wrote those short 48 page books to
scare and confound musicians who wanted simple answers and didn't want to
work very hard for them. If you really dig in to those books, and work
through the way they were written, Deutsch had some very interesting and
useful things to say. The students who studied with him for long periods
swore by him. Later on in his life, when people didn't know who he was,
students tended to find him a pussycat. He was a far better writer than
those Allegro articles show. I believe he is still alive (I've never seen an
obit on him).

Of course I believe that major and minor is a simplistic explanation as
described in my e-mail, but it is still effective with young children, who
are used to music with no melody to speak of, and it does get them listening
on a different level. Teaching music in an inner city is a fantastic,
frustrating experience; these kids hear all sorts of garbage, and kids TV
shows like "Yo Gabba Gabba" have some of the worst music I've ever heard,
but even the parents like it. So if I can use a simplistic way to get an
idea across that they actually can get, you bet I'll use it.

Jeff Sultanof
On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 2:51 PM, JD <jdaney1 at cfl.rr.com> wrote:

>
> > Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2010 10:34:37 -0500
> > From: Jeff Sultanof <jeffsultanof at gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: [78-L] OT Musical genres^
> > To: 78-L Mail List <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
> > Message-ID:
> > <67ea141a1002200734t76411625tc360474fb1204e02 at mail.gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> >
> > This is a highly complex question as it is based on association more than
> > anything else, association that most of us already know. Maury Deutsch
> had
> > a
> > wonderful book on this concept for composers called Psychological
> > Associations, which is still available. He would use polytonality in a
> > scene
> > if a main character was schizophrenic, to use an example. That is why the
> > 12
> > tone technique (Schonberg's, not Spud Murphy's) was perfect for the movie
> > "The Cobweb," which was about a mental institution.
>
> In 1950 I was interested in studying arranging which I'd been doing for
> several years as an amateur and for the previous year professionally in
> addition to playing. . I'd been extremely fortunate to recently meet and
> work with  Billy Byers on a number of occasions.  I would often telephone
> him to pick his brain about various arranging questions. Busy as he was
> then
> he would graciously take the time to play in my rehearsal band to discuss
> and explain my various music queries. Billy, btw along with later dear
> friend and colleague Johnny Carisi were two of the true musical geniuses of
> their time. I would often tell anyone who'd listen that when they left us
> they would take a great deal of musical knowledge with them. There didn't
> seem to be anything about music that they didn't know thoroughly.
>
> Billy recommended that I call Maury Deutsch who used to advertise monthly
> in
> "Allegro" the NYC musician's (local 802) union paper. I did and went for
> one
> lesson, bought one of his publications, was rather beffudled and mystified
> by  his concepts and never went back. In later years I came to believe that
> he was probably typical of many dilletantes with a degree (doctor in his
> case) who fancied themselves experts in their field but actually weren't.
> This is an old story in the arts and in many aspecys of  the music arts in
> particular.
>
>  In the course of  that lesson he explained to me in simple technical
> detail
> why brass instruments naturally blend better than saxophones. I'd already
> had enough experience as a brass (trumpet) player to wonder about that
> statement but kept silent assuming that he knew and I didn't. In letar
> years
> and with more experience I realized the fallacy of that statement and that
> the opposite was actually the fact
>
> Some decades later Deutsch published a series of articles in Allegro on big
> band scoring. I was amazed to see how amateurish and clumsy some of his
> examples were. I don't mean to disparage Deutsch, he certainly was not an
> incompetent and probably had something to offer but to try to shed some
> light on the complexities of music and its various pitfalls. Unfortunately
> Byers and I lost touch after that and I never got to discuss my Deutsch
> experience or the reason for his suggestion of  him. I assumed that he had
> seen Deutsch';s ads and was trying to help or maybe get off the hook. In
> any
> case my  sessions with Billy were very fruitful and I was most
> appreciative.
>
> >
> > On a very basic level, if you are watching a movie or TV show and the
> > scene
> > is happy, the composer will usually write music that is in a major key,
> > unhappy would indicate minor (remember I am talking very basic now; this
> > idea is still taught in schools).
>
>
> I'm glad that you qualified that. it's an old  simplistic concept that
> belongs in the dark ages as you obviously are aware. which brings to mind a
> GREAT !! short book that is a must read by anyone even remotely interested
> in film and film music: Andre Previn's "No Minor Chords." The title derives
> from an absurd incident between an MGM exec. and a film score he didn't
> get.
> Again, A MUST READ !!!
>
> >
> > That's a start anyway.
> >
> > Jeff Sultanof
> >
> >> > _______________________________________________
>