Kitsch is good, in small doses. For example, I really like Cape Cod kitsch, but dislike “Wild West” and Native American kitsch (and if you’ve ever been to Cherokee, North Carolina, you know precisely what I mean!) I’m not a big fan of the Valentine’s Day excess, but actually do quite like the Easter Bunny nonsense.

One of the things I like about our little apartment in Burgas is that when we first moved into the place a few years ago, Marta’s parents left us some shelves in the kitchen filled with a bunch of kitschy items. The coffee mugs are particularly goofy, but they are now an integral part of our annual month living here and I can’t imagine taking them down.

To keep this blog somewhat on course, I will say that occasionally there are one or two bad (or clichéd) ideas that stubbornly manage to remain in my music simply because familiarity had made these passages less objectionable (sort of like dodecaphony.) I wonder if this is what happened to Smetana at the end of Vltava and that perfect (-ly kitschy) authentic cadence that punctuates the end of that piece…

During my time in Bulgaria, I spend quite a bit of time looking out of our apartment window down to the busy street below. While Marta is out doing her research or visiting old friends and I’m left alone, I often find that the window is a great option when I need a diversion from my own work. I find the daily human drama that plays itself out in the chaos below me endlessly fascinating.

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you might remember that an early winter ice storm in the St. Louis area knocked out our power for six full days last December. After our power was restored, I did some complaining about the old power infrastructure in our area and the 55% rate hike imposed by Ameren on their customers in Southern Illinois.

Six months later, I’m having a bit of a laugh at myself as I look out my window at some of the wires strung around our apartment building. The first picture is of a lamp-post across the street and to the left that is moonlighting as an impromptu hub for telephone and cable television wires. The second picture I took this morning is of a young man climbing a rickety ladder to string yet another wire on the lamp-post just a few yards out of my window. The third picture shows a lovely tree just to the right of my window that also carries its own array of wires.

Without going too deeply into social commentary, I find that this industrious and ingenious system provides wonderful insight into the strange duality of this region. Bulgaria is a country of contrasts, on one hand a member of the European Union and on the other a place where the old Balkan tropes manifest themselves in a variety of ways.

Regardless, these pictures make my complaints about Ameren’s old infrastructure seem just a bit silly.

Just a quick note: Music Idol has one more week after this one. This is not the finale, so I won’t be able to reveal the results for another 10 days.

You’ll just have to wait.

Yesterday evening I had the opportunity to watch Music Idol, the Bulgarian version of American Idol (which is the American version of the British Pop Idol) and came away impressed by how very different it is from the American version. The performers are a bit weaker (not surprising and hardly a slight, given the fact that there are about 295 million more Americans to draw from) but were required to sing a wider range of styles, including (gasp!) opera.

And, in case you were wondering, Nevena should win, I think she was far better than Preslava and Teodor!

We’ve been in Bulgaria for two weeks and my annual trip outside of the United States always brings all of the good things, and bad things, about my country into focus.

Memorial Day is one of the good things, and an important day to reflect on the countless sacrifices that have been made to protect our rights and freedoms.

It is also an opportunity to reflect on the nature of the values upon which the U.S. was founded and further sharpens my belief that we need a return to the progressive vision of the revolutionaries who founded our country.

Tomorrow’s post will be far more innocuous, I promise.

We leave Budapest for the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria tomorrow, but Marta and I did have a chance to spend a couple of hours down by the Franz Liszt Academy of Music here in Budapest. As we walked by the front of the building on this 80+ degree day, we could clearly hear the comforting cacophony of practicing floating down to the street through the open windows.

Among the din of scales, etudes, and arpeggios we could clearly discern a pianist practicing the accompaniment to Beethoven’s 3rd cello sonata (Marta was especially happy with that one), assorted arias by a powerful lyric soprano, and an unidentified Baroque work for flute. It is sappy to say, but there is something romantic and special for me whenever I walk by a music school in Europe, especially one as storied and important as this one in a city that has produced many legends.

Further down the square is this wonderfully kinetic statue of a wild-haired and slightly disheveled Liszt playing air piano. We stopped for a few minutes to snap this picture and decided, on a whim, that we’d have lunch at the Pompeii, a pizza joint just to the left of this statue.

We completed the afternoon by stopping at a local music store where I picked up a copy of a Hungarian sight-singing text. You can never have too many and it will certainly provide some new and interesting torture for some future students.

We have arrived safely in Budapest and will spend the next three days with my brother, sister-in-law, and niece before moving on to Bulgaria and a month with Marta’s family. The trip was relatively uneventful, but I will admit that one of the three landings had me scared witless. That happens from time to time.

In music related news, I was reading the “Weekend Journal” section of the Wall Street Journal Europe and came across an interesting article about digital orchestras and their growing influence in the classical music world. The article focused on Paul Henry Smith, the founder of the Fauxharmonic Orchestra and an advocate of creating digital music that is truly a realistic and artistic interpretation of the score.

When I was younger, I would have railed against Mr. Smith’s work and bemoaned it’s potential for destroying the livelihood of myself and particularly my performing colleagues. However, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve had a change of heart regarding this topic and now see virtual orchestras as yet another venue that creates the opportunity for the spread of classical concert music. I also fully understand that the world is constantly evolving and that classical music has survived greater catastrophe than the advent of digital music and will continue as an important part of the musical landscape. There are important drawbacks to this technology, such as the use of digital renditions of scores in lieu of pit orchestras and live musicians (particularly in London’s West End) as well as the loss of gigs for studio musicians. These are valid concerns, and could potentially be a tragic side effect of computerized performance, but as I mentioned before, I believe that evolution is natural and sometimes painful and unless there is a general audience revolt that manifests itself in a loss of profit, I don’t see the trend reversing itself.

A snippet from the article addresses this concern and I find Smith’s response to be fairly well-measured given the vitriol of the personal attack left on his website:

For Mr. Smith, this [Beethoven’s No. 7] will be a work of art. But that clearly isn’t the view of the person who put an anonymous posting on Mr. Smith’s Web site: “This man is evil. This project is evil. Die in hell.” Mr. Smith responds that the advance of computerized music is inevitable, and that musicians are better off taking control of it than leaving it in the hands of producers and executives.

I have to admit that I submitted an entry to their recent composition contest, which was a call for works for string orchestra that evoke the pathos of Samuel Barber’s famous Adagio. The winner of the competition wins a cash award, a digital recording and a performance of the work by the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra. I felt a twinge of guilt at the moment of submission, but the potential for a live performance and the opportunity to be named the “Master of Melancholy” was simply impossible to ignore. (What artist could resist this potential moniker?)

Does that make me a hypocrite or enemy of live music? I do not believe so, as I firmly believe that nothing can replace the experience and emotive power of a live performance and I honestly (and optimistically) foresee a future where live music and technology can co-exist, providing wider opportunities for the art that I love as well as maintaining the important tradition of live performance.

I’m sure that this post will generate some response from my readers and I’m especially interested in hearing from the performers who read this blog. What are your feelings? Do you agree with Johan Schodl, the Austrian musician who recorded trombone samples for the Vienna Symphonic Library and doesn’t see it as a threat to his livelihood, or do you see computerized performance as a legitimate threat to live music?

Another academic year is in the books and I have a few random thoughts before putting a neat red bow on this school year:

• For whatever reason, it had been a while since I was able to teach first year theory from beginning to end. It is really nice to watch the growth of the students as they progress from fundamentals through secondary function and small sectional form over the course of a school year.
• Teaching theory and aural skills at two separate schools using different textbooks was a great way to hone my pedagogical approach to theory. Confusing as hell, but well worth it when all is said and done.
• For what it’s worth (about a wooden nickel, I’d imagine), I think that the music program at Maryville is headed in the right direction.
• Finally, and most importantly, the students at Maryville presented me (and the other faculty) with flowers and an enormous card with “Thank You Dr. Connor, We (heart) You!” written across the front and notes from each student written inside. It has been one full year since I left my full time gig so this gesture was not only a very special, but also very timely. A big thank you to all of my students!

Marta and I are leaving for Bulgaria tomorrow. My next few updates will likely be of the travelogue variety, though I might sneak in some other topics if I’m feeling energetic. Congratulations to all of you who have successfully negotiated another academic year.

It looks like FSU has finally kicked me off their servers, three full years after I completed my degree. I’m not really surprised by this development and expected it to happen long before now, but it looks like I’m finally going to be forced to find a new host for the files that constituted the “My Music” link found under the title to this page.

I’ll fix that when I get a chance…