Chinese music is based on pentatonic scales. Most European scales have seven notes, but the pentatonic only has five. The pentatonicscale can be demonstrated by playing the five black keys in an octave on the piano.

Many instruments were brought to China from Central Asia by way of the Silk Road, but the form these instruments have now assumed is uniquely Chinese.

The Zheng was developed during the second half of the Zhou dynasty (1046-256 BCE). It is shaped like a large trapezoid, with 13-21 strings that a musician plucks with picks attached to their fingers. It sounds and functions much like a harp, played horizontally rather than vertically.

The Dizi is of Han origin (206 BCE- 220 AD). It is a traditional bamboo flute with six finger holes and a blowhole. The blowhole has a kazoo-like membrane covering it that vibrates when the instrument is played, creating a buzz that accompanies the instrument’s hollow sounding tone.

The word Erhu literally translates to a “stringed instrument adopted from the northwestern barbarians of antiquity,” which suggests that it developed during the Tang or the Song Dynasty. It is a twostringed fiddle, which is played with a bow with strings made of silk. At the time of its conception, it was considered a “folk” instrument, which was not worthy of court music. The Erhu has an open, smooth sound.

The Pipa is a “pear-shaped” lute, modified from Central Asian instruments, particularly those in Iran. It is possible that Japanese dignitaries brought it to China in the seventh or eighth century. A member of the lute family, the Pipa sounds and is played much like a modern-day guitar.

Adapted from UMS Education & Community Engagement Teacher Resource Guide, distributed to teachers in conjunction with UMS Youth Performances.

Trio di Clarone, from left: Reiner Wehle, Sabine Meyer, Wolfgang Meyer

After I finished my undergraduate music degree at Western Michigan University in the late 1990’s, I studied in Europe with German clarinetist Wolfgang Meyer. I had long enjoyed his recordings and desired to learn from his traditional German approach. It was a wonderful experience to be his student for nearly two years at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Karsruhe.

Professor Meyer was an inspiring teacher. He could always demonstrate whatever piece of music I was working on just as fluently as if he were to perform it that evening. Despite the fact that his career took him all over the world, he still was very available to his students. One way he achieved that was to teach performance practice by actually performing alongside his students. Professor Meyer regularly played the bass clarinet, together with me and some other students, in a clarinet sextet. He booked us all sorts of gigs, and we played in small castles and on the radio. Once we even performed on television at the German Supreme Court. This much access to my teacher was important for me as I learned the ropes as a young performer.

I will never forget the first time I had a concert with Professor Meyer. In fact, it happened by accident. It was my first performance in Germany, just a couple weeks after my arrival. Professor Meyer arranged a house concert and I was to perform some chamber music.

Professor Meyer drove the violist, the cellist, and me to the venue. There was no room in the car for the violinist, so he had to make the 30-mile trip by train. We waited for quite some time, but the violinist didn’t come. Later we learned he had actually traveled to the wrong town, one that happened to have the same name! I couldn’t believe what happened next. Wolfgang grabbed the violin part, tied a reed to his clarinet, and nodded toward stage, “OK, let’s go.” “Let’s go where?” I thought. Before I had time to process what was happening, he had given the cue to begin. He read at sight the violin part while transposing at the same time. I was beside myself. Not only did he perform beautifully, never missing a single note, he playfully tossed embellishments for me to mimic. The patrons were thrilled with the concert, having heard some beautiful pieces while hosting a celebrity performer in their home

Three basset horns.

Professor Meyer takes pleasure in playing different types of clarinets. Together with his sister, Sabine Meyer, and her husband Reiner Wehle, he performs basset horn music in Trio di Clarone. A modern basset horn looks like a little bass clarinet. It is a clarinet pitched in F, hence the word “horn” in its name. “Basset” means it has an extension that permits it to plunge deeply into the bass clef.

The basset horn was popular beginning in the late eighteenth century and was prominent for about a hundred years thereafter. Its melancholically vocal quality in the upper register, along with its throaty bass notes, made this instrument one of Mozart’s favorites. It is a critical instrument in his final, unfinished work, the Requiem. It would be hard to imagine this funereal music without the somber timbre of the basset horn. Mozart did explore the lighter side of the instrument, however, having written them prominently into the famous Gran Partita Serenade, K361. Other composers to write for the basset horn were Beethoven, Mendelsohn, and Richard Strauss.

Trio di Clarone has reintroduced the basset horn to the public, which rarely gets a chance to hear this difficult instrument performed with such refinement. Audiences are in for a real treat when Trio di Clarone performs in Ann Arbor’s Rackham Auditorium on Saturday, February 4th. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Olivier Messiaen’s Des canyons aux étoiles (From the Canyons to the Stars), commissioned to commemorate America’s bicentennial, was inspired the by the American West. Conductor Jeffrey Tate and the Hamburg Symphony, in collaboration with Israeli filmmaker Daniel Landau, bring the piece alive in a new cinematic installation, where images of man’s impact on the environment create a counterpoint to sounds of untouched nature.

UMS video producer and filmmaker Sophia Kruz interviewed Daniel Landau over Skype.

UMS recommends watching these videos Full Screen at 1080p.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Explore more examples of Daniel Landau’s recent experimental theater and film work.

We put together a playlist of other music we love which was inspired by nature. Take a listen.

What’s some of your favorite music inspired by nature?

A round-up of all Lobby Einstein on the Beach coverage is here.

From Friday night’s video booth:

Two attendees share their excitement prior to the performance:

Paul Sinclair had some realizations due to Einstein:

Ellen, a part of a group visiting with Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, on how her experience of Einstein has changed since she last saw it at BAM:

Two University of Michigan freshmen share their experience of Einstein after the performance:

From Saturday night’s video booth:

“A once in a lifetime event”

“We brought pillows to Einstein on the Beach because…”

“I think this is one of Philip Glass’s best operas about Einstein.”

“A fiendishly difficult piece to perform…”

From Sunday’s video booth:

Second-time attendee:

Opera buff:

Lindsay Kesselman, member of Philip Glass Ensemble, guest blogs for umsLobby.
Q&A with Lindsay
Anatomy of Auditioning for Einstein on the Beach
Inside the Einstein on the Beach Rehearsal Experience
On the day of the first preview performance of Einstein on the Beach

Learn More

Einstein as a Cultural Figure – Interview with Physicists
UMS Night School: Einstein on the Beach
Video 50 – Robert Wilson’s video exhibit at UMMA
Three Trucks, 28 Crew Members, 37 Performers: Einstein on the Beach Load-in at the Power Center
UMS on Film Series – Film screenings in conjunction with Pure Michigan Renegade
Not Quite-Live-Blogging Robert Wilson and Philip Glass Conversation at the Michigan Theatre
How to Produce Einstein on the Beach – Producers Talk

Play

RENEGADE Contest – What’s a ‘renegade’ in 7 words

Watch

Featuring the original creative team, in which Philip Glass remembers the first night of Einstein, Robert Wilson sits next to Arthur Miller, and Lucinda Childs recollects the “Supermarket Speech.”

The technical challenges of producing an epic-scale work like Einstein, featuring UMS Programming Director Michael Kondziolka and UMS Technical Director Jeff Beyersdorf.

See someone with this button? Start a conversation about ‘renegade’ works.

SYLLABUS

Course Syllabus

HOMEWORK

“Required Reading” from Professor Mark Clague

Philip Glass on Einstein on the Beach

“Required Listening” from UMS Director of Programming Michael Kondziolka

Two conductors talking about Messiaen:
Jeffrey Tate Introduction
Tate is the conductor of our concert here in Ann Arbor. The concept of From the Canyons to the Stars with film was really his doing. He is a brilliant conductor and noted Messiaen enthusiast.

Esa-Pekka Salonen
Salonen is a conductor and composer most recently at the LA Philharmonic. Please watch this brief video he created when his London-based Philharmonia Orchestra was preparing to present a concert of Messiaen’s Turangalila-Symphonie.

Listening Assignments:
Please take the time to listen to these five various clips of the music of Messiaen. It think the most important preparation for our upcoming concert in Hill Auditorium is for everyone to get a sense of the unusual sounds — harmonies, rhythms and textures – which make up Messiaen’s very unique voice. The more your ear is tuned to the sound of his music, the quicker your journey into his sonic world will be once you get to the concert itself and are hearing the music live. It is all about tuning the ear. I must say that I hesitate to give only clips of his music taken out of context as the time within which his music unfolds is as important a style feature as anything – and contributes greatly to the overall effect that the music can have on one’s perception. But…in the spirit of “let’s get those ears tuned up”, here goes. Please try and listen to them all…over even multiple times before the concert itself.

Messiaen: Turangalila-Symphonie; Mvmt 5
“Joie du sang des étoiles” (Joy of the Blood of the Stars)

Messiaen: Turangalila-Symphonie; Mvmt 6
“Jardin du sommeil d’amour” (Garden of Love’s Sleep)

Messiaen: From the Canyon to the Stars; Mvmt 2
“ Les Orioles” (The Orioles)

Messiaen: O sacrum convivium!
Sung by Antony Walker with Cantillation

Messiaen: St. Francis of Assisi; Act 2-Scene 6
“The Sermon to the Birds”
This is one of the most surreal moments I have even had listening to live music. This this clip is set at Assisi, with a large green oak tree in spring with many birds singing. Saint Francis preaches a sermon to the birds and solemnly blesses them. The birds reply with a great chorus in which are heard not only birds of Umbria, especially the blackcap, but also birds of other countries, of distant lands, notably the Isle of Pines, close to New Caledonia. When you listen to his clip, close your eyes and think of what it sounds like when you come upon a huge flock of birds all making their sounds together. Magic.

UMS Video Producer Sophia Kruz interviews filmmaker Daniel Landau:

YOU SUGGESTED…

Podcast interview with Robert Wilson by American Theatre Wing and SDCF (“rare insights into the working process of America’s most seminal directors and choreographers”)

Alex Ross on Messiaen

Physicist Richard Feynman, a graphic novel

Coverage of last night’s session: On the topic of “maverick”

What did you think of the first session of Night School? What’s still not making sense? What are you excited to experience at Einstein on the Beach?

UMS Lobby: This winter we’re presenting a series which focuses on performing arts “renegades” and examines thought-leaders, game-changers, and history-makers in the performing arts. Could you talk a bit about what it means to be a “renegade” in the sciences?

Sean Carroll: Being a renegade is very easy — being a successful renegade is very hard.  In science, there are things we are quite sure are true; things that we believe are very likely to be true; and things we’re just guessing about.  A successful renegade has to accept what is really true, while throwing out just those things that we mistakenly believe are true. It’s a difficult balancing act.

Lobby: How did Albert Einstein fit into this idea of ‘renegade’?

SC: Einstein was in many ways a renegade, able to discard precious beliefs that other physicists held on to; but he was also a true expert, who understood the established physics of his time as well as anyone. He had strong philosophical intuitions about how the world works, which can be a curse as well as a blessing. When the world really does line up with your intuitions, you can see further than anybody; when it doesn’t, you can find yourself wandering down a blind alley. Einstein experienced both alternatives in his career.

Michael Turner: I think it is harder to be a renegade in the hard sciences (I don’t like using the word renegade), particularly theoretical physics, since our rules are well-defined:  our goal is to describe reality with mathematics, and if we are lucky to use these mathematics to make predictions about the physical world in regimes we have yet to experience.  Nonetheless, there is still room for creativity and game changers, Einstein was certainly one of them.  (There is an analogy here to chess, where there are fixed rules, but creativity plays a big role.  I know less about music, but there are rules and there are rule-changers.)  Our game changers cause us to look at the physical world in a different way, still with equations, and by doing so to achieve a deeper understanding and to predict things that haven’t been discovered yet.  In Einstein’s case, he changed how we describe space, time and gravity — and of course he played a key role in helping to formulate quantum mechanics.  Einstein did so in such a fundamental way that is possible to summarize his contributions in one sentence:  He taught us that time warps, space is flexible and god plays dice!  But he did so with equations — and his equations reduce to the old equations — Newton’s and Galileo’s — in physical situations where things move slowly and gravity is not strong.  His general relativity predicts new phenomena including black holes, gravitational waves and repulsive, but it also reduces to Newton’s theory in more familiar realms (e.g., our solar system).  Creativity in the world of science is constrained by what we already know and what we can learn about the physical world.  I think constrained creativity is actually much more challenging and produces more interesting results.

Lobby: How has the concept of “renegade” evolved since Einstein’s time?

MT: Physics in particular and science in general has always attracted interesting characters (notice I am refusing to use the word renegade) — Dirac, Schroedinger, Feynman, Hawking to mention but a few.  Thinking Different (to borrow from Steve Jobs) is often the key to a new insight or formulation.  All of our game changers have had in common the ability to look at what we know and view it (or formulate it) in a new way or to ask a new question.  Because science basically tells us what our place in the Universe and the rules that we have to follow, the thought leaders often attract the public’s attention.  Few have achieved the stature of Einstein (Time’s Man of the Century if I remember correctly).   For Einstein, there was a convergence of big paradigm shift, interesting character, and fundamental change in the center of science, with the advent of relativity and quantum mechanics, a shift from 200+ years of British domination to Europe.  Then of course, Einstein helped to lead the exodus of European scientists to the US which resulted in our dominance of science over the past half century.  To return to your original question, I am not sure renegade has evolved much.

SC: It is arguably more difficult to become a successful renegade now than during Einstein’s time. We know more, for one thing, but we also have a larger and more competitive scientific workplace. There is tremendous pressure on young people to produce productive work very quickly, which is very difficult if you want to buck the prevailing trends. True genius nevertheless usually wins out.

Lobby: In your view, is there an intersection between “renegades” in the humanities and the sciences? If not, what’s different? If yes, what is it?

SC: I think there is a difference, because science has a greater background of established wisdom that must be incorporated rather than overthrown. This acts as a constraint on useful forms one’s rebellion might take; Einstein invented a theory of gravity that supplanted that of Isaac Newton, but his theory had to reduce to Newton’s in an appropriate regime. So the arts and humanities have greater freedom, which can be both good and bad. Sometimes constraints are useful.

MT: I think the common theme that game changers in any creative endeavor is the ability to comprehend and understand what has come before and then re-imagine it, view it in a new way and from that to go to somewhere new.  I like the way Charlie Parker put it:  first you learn your sax, then you learn your music, then you just play.  (Reverse the order and you just have noise.)

Lobby: Sean, as someone interested in a unified theory of time, have you gained any insights about what it means to look at such unifying questions, and especially to question such fundamental experiences as the arrow of time?

SC: Time is an interesting case, because it’s a familiar everyday concept as well as a central object in our scientific theories. As a result, even many professional physicists find it very difficult to look at how time works in its own right, without being affected by the way it is manifested in our personal experience. I have found it very useful to look at the problem from different perspectives as possible.

Lobby: Michael, As someone who focuses on the earliest moments of the universe’s creation, have you gained any insights about moments of creation or creativity in general?

MT: My experience is that moments of creativity are always unplanned and usually a surprise.  They usually follow a struggle to comprehend and confusion; then pop!  A new insight.

Lobby: Why were you interested in pursuing this area of research?

MT: What is wonderful about science is the diversity of ways you can contribute and how the different ways attract different people.  I am a big picture guy.  I like to try to understand the grand scheme.  Cosmology and the birth of the Universe is a natural for me.  Others, like to be able to understand every little detail how how something works — e.g., how stars evolve and explode and produce the chemical elements we are made of.  Both the big picture and the small details are fascinating and important — and breakthroughs come from both.

SC: I became interested in cosmology at a very young age, about ten years old. It wasn’t until graduate school that I came to understand the connection between cosmology and the arrow of time.  Once I did, I thought that this was an area that deserved more attention from working cosmologists. That’s still true!

Lobby:  Michael, In one of your lectures, you discuss the “beautiful ideas” in physics, and the way most such “beautiful ideas” are not often the right ones.  In fact, there is a grave yard of beautiful ideas murdered by “ugly facts” in theoretical physics. How do you think Einstein’s theories and cultural impact fit within this framework?

MT: Mathematicians and theoretical physicists are both motivated by beauty and simplicity.  In physics, I believe we are motivated largely by experience:  For some odd reason the rules that govern the Universe seem to be very simple and elegant, and thus we often use simplicity and beauty as a guide when exploring the unknown.  But, unlike mathematics where beauty can be enough, in physics nature gets the last word:  we are after all trying to find the mathematics that describes our universe, not an imaginary one more beautiful and interesting one.  The most beautiful theory of cosmology was Fred Hoyle’s steady state model — but it was so simple and predictive that it was “murdered” almost instantly by hard experimental facts.  Electroweak theory — the unification of the electromagnetic and weak forces which won Weinberg, Salam and Glashow a Nobel Prize — was viewed by many theoretical physicists as so inelegant that it couldn’t be correct (it is and we slowly learned to appreciate its beauty as well as look for the “grander” theory that encompasses it).

Lobby: What are some other culturally significant figures who inspire your work?

SC: I’m inspired by anyone who thinks deeply and clearly about how the world works.  Galileo is an obvious hero, but for me it goes back to Lucretius, a poet and philosopher from ancient Rome. He was a naturalist and an atomist, who worked hard to understand the world in terms of matter obeying the laws of nature.  We’re still working to finish his project.

–Sean Carroll is a physicist and author.  He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1993, and is now on the faculty at the California Institute of Technology, where his research focuses on fundamental physics and cosmology.  Carroll is the author of “From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time,” and “Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity.”  He has written for Scientific American, New Scientist, The Wall Street Journal, and is a columnist for Discover magazine.  He blogs at Cosmic Variance, and has been featured on television shows such as The Colbert Report, National Geographic’s Known Universe, and Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman.

–Michael S. Turner is a theoretical astrophysicist and the Bruce V. and Diana M. Rauner Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago.  He is also Director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at Chicago, which he helped to establish. Turner was elected to the Presidential-line of the American Physical Society in 2010 and will serve as its President in 2013.

Inspired? What do you think it means to be a “renegade”?

The opera Einstein on the Beach opens the series. Widely credited as one of the greatest artistic achievements of the 20th century, Einstein launched director Robert Wilson and composer Philip Glass to international success when it was first produced in Avignon, France in 1976.

In this video, featuring the original creative team, Philip Glass remembers the first night of Einstein, Robert Wilson sits next to Arthur Miller, and Lucinda Childs recollects the “Supermarket Speech.”

Part of Pure Michigan Renegade.

The 2012 production of Einstein on the Beach was commissioned by: University Musical Society of the University of Michigan; BAM; the Barbican, London; Cal Performances University of California, Berkeley; Luminato, Toronto Festival of Arts and Creativity; De Nederlandse Opera/The Amsterdam Music Theatre; Opéra et Orchestre National de Montpellier Languedoc-Rousillon. Produced by Pomegranate Arts, Inc.