Howzit Howard

Music Post: Composers influenced by jazz

It is a legend of liner notes to recordings that the first jazzy piece of classical music was "Creation du Monde," by Darius Milhaud, 1923. Then "Rhapsody in Blue" came out the following year. But the first jazzy piece of classical music is much older.

Early jazz evolved in three stages. First there were the rags of Scott Joplin, who published "Maple Leaf Rag" in 1899. Joplin came from the popular music side of the spectrum and composed an opera later in life, and by the time Milhaud did "Creation du Monde" Joplin had been dead for five years. Rags were through-written - no improvisation - but they were syncopated. Erik Satie's "Piccadilly," 1905, is very much in the idiom.

The second stage of jazz, and the one in which the music acquired its name, lasted from the end of World War One into the early Roaring Twenties, and could be heard in New Orleans, Chicago, New York and other places. Bands played energetic music that was syncopated and began to make space for improvised solos, though the tendency was for the musician to experiment until he found a solo that the bandleader liked and then stick with it, replicating the same thing night after night. The Paul Whiteman Orchestra was doing this when Whiteman commissioned "Rhapsody in Blue" from George Gershwin, who had trouble finishing it in time and adlibbed the cadenzas, writing them down later.

The third stage of jazz, for which the great pioneer was cornettist Louis Armstrong (the same Louis Armstrong who sang "It's a Wonderful World" in the 1960s), turned the basic jazz tune format into a vehicle for one solo after another; from this point forward, jazz was about what a musician could do with a melody on the spot, with extra points for never playing it the same way twice. The arranger in time would become one of the soloists, composing the best bits he could for the ensemble passages. This inspired Leonard Bernstein's 1963 masterpiece "Prelude, Fugue and Riffs," and the 1956 "Poem for Brass" by jazz trombonist (and later movie soundtrack composer) J.J. Johnson.

Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, who had been a student of Darius Milhaud, turned this on its head by adlibbing classical-sounding passages over the rock-solid jazz beat of his quartet, and in recent years he has composed full-fledged classical works which still have a bluesy feel, though if you listen very carefully you will note that much of what makes Brubeck's classical works sound jazzy is actually the classical influence on jazz in the 1950s coming back around the other way.

I will play examples of all this, including each piece I named, on Saturday's radio show.

Hawaii Public Radio broadcasts, and http:/www.hawaiipublicradio.org streams, "Howard's Day Off" at 5am-7am HST (11am-1pm EDT) Saturdays. Everything on the show comes from Dicus's personal music collection and HPR lets him play anything he wants.

 

Hello! I must be going...

Groucho Marx, singing, as Captain Spaulding, in the 1930 movie "Animal Crackers": "Hello! I must be going. I cannot stay, I came to say, I must be going. I'm glad I came, but just the same, I must be going."

Margaret Dumont, singing, as Mrs. Rittenhouse: "No, I say, you must stay, for if you go away, you'll spoil this party I am throwing."

Groucho: "I'll stay a week or two. I'll stay the summer through. But I am telling you, I must be going."

One of the features of life in Hawaii for those of us who have relocated from less paradisical zones is that we periodically must return to the mainland and visit beloved relatives who inhabit other time zones. I'm not sure vacation is the right word. But clearly if my father went to all the trouble to live to 92 the least I can do is go see him from time to time, so he can see that at 58 his son is a citizen, or at any rate as close to one as he is likely to become. So I fly to the Maryland Free State, incubator of your Uncle Howard and home of excellent recipes for cooking crabs and oysters, if no longer the home of as many crabs and oysters as formerly.

On the way back, I'll stop in Los Angeles, where my son and his wife are raising my prodigal grandson. His visage peers at me now, just below the computer screen in my home office, and he has the smile that can only be found on a child with two loving parents.

I'll be back in a week and a half.

During my absence, you can take your story and interview ideas to Hawaii News Now assignment editor Brenda Salgado, Sunrise producer Jonathan Saupe and guest booking poobah Terri Inefuku, all of whom have email addies like my own, which is hdicus@hawaiinewsnow.com. I hope to be back in time for Tannya's delivery of the newest Sunrise staffer.

Talk amongst yourselves.

 

Debt dithering and the real world

It's now less than two weeks to the debt deadline, when the Treasury Department feels it will run out of ways to meet America's debt obligations unless President Obama begins shutting down government operations. In recent days we've seen a lot of proposed solutions but nothing that all sides can accept.

House Republicans did manage to get the House to pass a package of their preferred solutions including a Constitutional amendment to balance the budget, but the margin of passage fell short of vetoproof, and on Thursday the measure failed passage altogether in the Senate.

President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner were reportedly back to discussing a broad compromise to reduce the deficit by $3 trillion - last time, Republicans opposed it; this time Democrats are complaining about not being in the room. Boehner denies any agreement is near.

I'm intrigued by two developments outside Washington, D.C., that are nonetheless connected to it.

The first is that the CEO of Caterpillar, reporting lower-than-expected quarterly profits, complained that the uncertainty in Washington is causing his corporate customers to be shy about investing.

The second is that the treasury for the state of California is talking to lenders about short-term loans because he wants to be prepared with cash in case the government defaults and California finds itself locked out of credit markets.

The largest holder of U.S. Treasury bills, the paper used to constantly refinance the federal debt, is China, and China issued a statement last week urging America to do the right thing for investors.

 

Who has the power in the debt ceiling talks?

The law capping how much debt the United States may incur, a law created when the government was raising money to fight World War One, has created an artificial crisis that all sides are using to try to finally do something about a very real problem, the increasing pace of the growth of U.S. debt.

The timing is bad. The federal government is a player in the private sector economy and it would help if the government actually did some extra spending instead of cutting back. For example, the New York Times reports that Washington plans to close hundreds of federal data centers, which will lead to the loss of tens of thousands of jobs.

But the government would have to get this under control eventually, and the election of Tea Party freshmen to Congress means the votes are there to take tough action. The Tea Party freshmen are frustrating even the Republican leadership because they're not reasonable; they campaigned on draconian pledges and they're sticking to them. But it's this very unreasonable quality that has made it possible for them to create this crisis that will achieve spending cuts that would probably have been necessary later in any case. In other words, the people who are making this so messy and stressful and the same ones who made it possible to get something done.

So who has the whip hand now?

Not President Obama, who has been so villified in conservative viral media that some Americans will oppose anything he supports out of an excess of bile. Not Congressional Republican leaders, who can't control the Tea Partiers. Not Congressional Democratic leaders, who can't control the AARP in its campaign to rouse seniors to smite anyone who touches Social Security and Medicare.

Two groups have the power. One is the Tea Partiers, of course. But the other group is one that has no seat at the table, and indeed isn't even in Washington, D.C.

It's the three credit rating agencies - Standard & Poor's, Moody's, and Fitch - the three agencies that have the power to lower the U.S. bond rating, an act that would immediately force the Treasury to offer higher interest rate returns on its T-bills, raising substantially the cost of constantly refinancing the U.S. debt, and increasing rather than decreasing the deficit.

All three agencies have warned more than once that they are indeed prepared to lower the U.S. credit rating, and there is nothing Congress or the White House can do to stop them. In fact, the only thing that might - might - lessen the blow of a credit rating downgrade would be in the European debt crisis was so bad that T-bills were still safe investments in comparative terms. But most T-bills are sold to foreign investors, and no amount of jawboning in American media will induce them to keep buying T-bills if the feeling in their own country is that they should be, say, buying gold instead.

The Treasury Department calculates that Aug. 2 is the drop-dead date for a debt reduction deal that includes an increase to the debt ceiling. Some people think it's not so final as that because the president could continue meeting debt obligations by shutting down national parks or otherwise interrupting expensive government services. He'd have to, actually; the Constitution specifies that debt service gets paid first. But it doesn't matter. The credit rating agencies are not constrained by the government to evaluate the U.S. bond rating solely on whether debt obligations are met. The are within their rights, and indeed obligated, to lower the U.S. credit rating if they honestly feel the risk has risen, even if they base that judgment on people not being able to visit Yellowstone.

The Tea Partiers can make President Obama bow to their power. But they can't make Standard & Poor's affirm an excellent U.S. credit rating. The hour is approaching when these freshmen, who came to the Capitol full of disdain for their seniors and for the chief executive, will have to decide whether they really want to accomplish something or whether they would rather be the actual cause of the federal debt going up even faster. In their simple-minded zeal, they have accomplished much, and good for them; but they could also screw things up worse than before.

 

The Gang of Six, Plan B, and the Tea Party petition

While Republicans pledge to oppose any tax increases - even the sunsetting of temporary tax cuts for the rich that were already supposed to have ended - and Democrats pledge to oppose any cuts to Social Security - even those that would make the system more secure for future generations - three Republicans and three Democrats have had a joint vision to actually solve the federal government's deficit problem.

Washington is calling them the Gang of Six and it will be interesting to see if they get anywhere with a plan that some key people in both parties regard as sensible. And reporters noticed right away that the Gang of Six plan comes closer to any other to the recommendations of that bipartisan fiscal commission led by Republican Alan Simpson and Democrat Erskine Bowles which was widely seen as both balanced and politically dead on arrival.

The Gang of Six is Tom Coburn, R-Okla., Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, Richard Durbin, D-Ill., Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and Mark Warner, D-Va. And this is some of what they propose:

 

• Cut $500 billion over 10 years including defense spending.
• Spending caps breakable only with 2-thirds majority.
• Give committees 6 months to find billions in new savings.
• Eliminate tax breaks and reduce basic tax rates.
• End alt. minimum tax and Medicare growth rate formula.
• Overhaul Social Security, use savings for solvency.
• Freeze Congressional pay.

 

 

In other debt ceiling developments, House Republicans won passage Tuesday night of a plan to slash spending at the expense of entitlements without raising taxes, but the margin of victory, as expected, was not veto proof, and in case the plan was not expected to pass the Senate.

Tea Party Republican Joe Walsh, meanwhile, is circulating a letter asking House Speaker John Boehner and House Republican Leader Eric Cantor to oppose the "Plan B" of Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., which means Republicans will be able to judge how they collectively feel about it by the number of signatures Walsh collects.

 

 

 

 

 

Does the ocean really need a warning label?

Tika Hick, whose fiance David Potts disappeared into the ocean at Maui's Nakalele Point blowhole, says there should have been a warning sign that the site was dangerous.

Here we go again.

Witnesses said Potts was standing right next to the blowhole, frolicking in the spray. Hick says he wasn't, though she wasn't there and is relying on accounts by her brother and his wife. According to an Associated Press story in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, "He slipped because it was slippery."

A blowhole spraying water on rocks can make for slippery conditions, yes. Do we really need a sign for that? Maybe we should hire the person who wrote the warning label on irons, "Do not attempt to iron clothes while wearing them."

Most people in Hawaii will pause before telling Tika Hick that her fiance should have known better, and this is entirely understandable. Not only is she grieving for the man intended to marry, but she herself is getting a double mastectomy this coming week; my first wife had breast cancer twice - died from it the second time - I know better than some what Hick is going through on that front. I wish her the best and hope she has plenty of support from her family during her recovery.

But I cannot agree that the danger of the blowhole needed, or needs, a sign, even though there actually is a handmade sign that says, "Blowhole - park and walk at your own risk." You can't even get to that blowhole without walking over sharp, treacherous, and, yes, slippery rock. Furthermore, a photo exists which actually shows Potts in the spray of the blowhole, proof that he saw how powerful it was.

We have seen this before. On other beaches, near waterfalls and cliffs, on hiking trails, people have put themselves into clearly hazardous conditions, and then later they or their surviving relatives have claimed that the state or someone should have put up a sign spelling out what were obvious dangers.

The state already hands out a form to every visitor on every plane. Maybe we should hand out a sweeping warning label for Mother Nature:

WARNING: WINDS, WAVES, ROCKS, LAVA AND OTHER PRODUCTS OF MOTHER NATURE ARE INHERENTLY DANGEROUS. WINDS AND WAVES CAN PICK UP SUDDENLY AND WITH GREAT FORCE. ROCKS CAN BE TREACHEROUS. LAVA CAN CHANGE COURSE SUDDENLY, SOMETIMES UNDERGROUND, AND NEW LAVA FORMATIONS CAN BREAK AWAY. EXERCISE REASONABLE CAUTION AND CARE AND STAY ALERT. NEVER ASSUME THAT THE ABSENCE OF ANY FURTHER WARNING SIGN MEANS THERE IS NO HAZARD.

You have a vested interest in this as a taxpayer. Maui Land & Pineapple owns the land near the blowhole in this instance, but the blowhole itself, right at the water's edge and nowhere near ground vegetation, would seem to be clearly in the state's purview as owner of the coastline under our state constitution. If it weren't for the photographic evidence and the witness accounts, the state might well have considered settling a suit out of court.

Do you think I'm being too harsh? I've been swayed by measured arguments before and welcome your own view.

Music Post: When composers break format

Symphonies have four movements, except when they don't. Chamber music is composed for two to four instruments, except when it's for more. Movements have no thematic connections, except when they do. So I'm doing my radio show this weekend on exceptions to rules like that.

The vast majority of chamber works are sonatas for a solo instrument accompanied piano, trios for three stringed instruments or two with piano, and string quartets. But there are loads of interesting chamber works for different or greater resources.

I'll open the show with the scherzo from the famous Mendelssohn Octet, an adolescent work that for me is one of the greatest compositions of all time, and then the scherzo from the Double Quartet No. 1 of Louis Spohr, a catchy little number if not in the same rank of greatness.

What's the difference between an Octet and a Double Quartet? In the case of these works, none. But Mendelssohn's work is great precisely because it manages to be symphonic and chambery at the same time. If I could own only three classical CDs one of them would be the Music from Marlboro recording of the Mendelssohn.

Two French composers, Hector Berlioz and Cesar Franck, made key forays away from the usual symphonic format. Franck, who came later in the 1800s but will be heard first on the program Saturday morning, composed a single three-movement symphony in which all the themes are tied together and a particular version of it pops up in all three movements.

Berlioz, who went to five movements in "Symphonie fantastique" as well as stretching the boundaries or story-telling symphonies far beyond anything Beethoven did in the "Pastoral," stuck to four movements in "Harold in Italy" but, years before Franck, used an "idee fixe" that comes up in every movement, and gives so much work to the solo viola that it's kind of a concerto, too.

I'll play the finale of the Brahms Third, too, as a reminder of more subtle variations from format, in this case ending the symphony on a quiet note instead of something bombastic.

Robert Schumann's "Rhenish" Symphony goes to five movements, of which the most unusual is the next-to-last, with its Baroque majesty. A critic said the passage from fourth movement to fifth was like walking out of a cathedral into a bright, sunny day. I'll play both together.

Jean Sibelius experimented with ways to combine movements, so that a slow movement would be embedded in a scherzo, or, as in the case of the Third Symphony, a scherzo segues seamlessly into grand finale in much longer notes.

Poulenc's "Concerto Champetre" breaks format simply by being a harpsichord concerto composed in the 20th century with very modern harmonies.

Prokofiev was the most successful of many 20th century composers to write piano concertos for the left hand alone - for Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm in war - but he also wrote four movements instead of concertos' usual three, an abbreviated form of the first movement at the end.

Howard's Day Off airs 5am-7am every Saturday on Hawaii Public Radio and steams on the HPR Web site, http://www.hawaiipublicradio.org . Visit the Howard's Day Off Listener Appreciation Society on Facebook, founded by Max Cacas of Washington, D.C. 

A plain English update on the debt crisis

The U.S. government has an estimated two weeks left before hitting its debt ceiling, at which point the Constitution requires paying debt obligations first, even if it means shutting down parts of the government.

“We’ve looked at all options, and we have no way to give Congress more time,” says Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, for whom the deadline is Aug. 2.

"To risk the catastrophe that even momentary default could cause is madness masquerading as financial discipline," editorialized the Salt Lake Tribune.

The debt ceiling is an arbitrary figure. Most nations don't have one. America adopted one while going into debt to fight World War I.

Its practical effect is to increase the power of the legislative branch, which has repeatedly used debt ceiling crises to force presidents to agree to spending policy changes.

Is the crisis real?

The Bipartisan Policy Center privately briefed the House Republican Caucus Friday, saying there were few ways to finesse the deadline. Republicans leaders called the Center in because freshmen members simply didn't believe this, and cite commentators who call it a fake crisis.

"With interest payments on the debt making up less than a ninth of revenue, there is no reason for any risk of insolvency," Fox News commentator John Lott said.

The briefers said there are indeed enough incoming tax revenues to service the debt but not enough to keep up Social Security payments, and missing those payments could trigger a U.S. bond rating cut even if the bond obligations were still being met.

That would actually increase the federal debt, because one of the few things holding back the ballooning of that debt today is the excellent U.S. bond rating and the very low interest rate it offers on Treasury bills.

Which solution can pass Congress? 

The Washington Post this week reported "the demise of the grand bargain,” a plan by President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio - combining $3 trillion in spending cuts with roughly $1 trillion in new revenue. It died because House Republicans wouldn't back their speaker.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia says House Republicans will vote for no revenue increases, neither the closure of tax breaks for oil companies nor for owners of corporate jets, nor the already-postponed sunsetting of the Bush administration's "temporary" tax cuts for the rich.

When a reporter asked what Cantor was offering, he replied, “The fact that we have been discussing voting for a debt ceiling increase.”

The top Democratic and Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate may turn out to be the ones who settle this. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky are working on an idea of McConnell's to give the president the authority to raise the debt ceiling on his own.

McConnell, 69, a former Louisville area county executive and husband of former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, says he wants no part of any solution that helps Obama win re-election. He likes putting the onus for raising the debt limit squarely on the president.

Reid, 71, a former Nevada gaming commissioner who tried to choke a man who offered him a bribe (the FBI videotaped the encounter), sees the proposal as a way out for freshman Republicans who campaigned against raising the debt ceiling.

"The emerging deal on the Senate side is seen as being the more likely path to a bipartisan deal," the Christian Science Monitor reported Friday.

Cutting Social Security?

CBS News reported Friday that President Obama acknowledged for the first time he was considering changes to the programs like raising the retirement age or applying means testing for Social Security benefits.

"A central, long-term driver of federal deficits isn't Iraq, and it's not the stimulus, either. It's demography combined with health-care cost inflation. The number of Americans eligible for Medicare and Social Security is set to double over the next 20 years," writes Washington Post blogger Stephen Stromberg.

My own calculations make that 100% increase closer to 80%, and the total population will grow by twice as much as the population of seniors. Seniors make up about a sixth of the population now and will be about a fifth of the population in two decades from now. But while that makes the impending crisis smaller it does not make it small.

Whither Medicare?

Medicare costs are growing because all health care costs are growing. Congress is partly to blame, because years ago to encourage medical research it passed a law giving drug developers a few years' monopoly on new medicine before generics can compete. But mostly health care is rising because we're living longer and consuming more medical services as we do.

The problem with cutting any federal spending on health care is that the spending doesn't simply go away, but is shifted to you or your employer. It's significant that almost no one supports vouchers except the insurance industry, which stands to sell you a lot of health insurance.

Balanced budget amendment?

Some Republicans now push a balanced budget amendment as a new condition for a deficit reduction agreement.

President Obama, who maintains that lawmakers shouldn't need a Constitutional amendment to do their jobs, says, "You'll probably see the House vote on a couple of things just to make political statements."

The Senate is also scheduled to vote on a balanced budget amendment but insiders count too few votes to avoid filibuster.

In defense of Republicans - and Democrats

The rhetoric between warring Republicans and Democrats in Washington has become so extreme that observers are saying it's a real factor in preventing the compromise necessary to reach a budget agreement that can get enough votes to pass. In other words, the more the leaders dig in rhetorically, the harder it becomes for them to agree to anything without going back on what they've said.

One of the striking things about the situation, when viewed from a non-partisan standpoint, is that the key positions staked out by the two sides are not as extreme as detractors claim.

Democrats say Republicans want to gut Social Security. But the only serious erosion of Social Security benefits on the table is to rewrite the formula for cost-of-living adjustments in the hopes of slowing the rate of increase of those benefits. And, let's be clear, nobody wants to screw seniors. Politicians know seniors vote. But Social Security is a fifth of federal spending, and growing all the time as we far outlive the ages on which the benefits were originally based.

Republicans say Democrats want to soak the rich and kill job creation. But the actual Democratic proposal has been to stop extending the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy, which were supposed to expire by now. Ending tax breaks for oil companies and for corporate jets won't kill jobs.

Why are the two sides saying things that aren't so? Because opinion polls make it clear most Americans have little or no understanding of the true facts of the debt crisis. Most Americans oppose raising the debt ceiling. Not raising it would put the U.S. into default, lower the nation's credit rating, and lead to a larger deficit due to a higher cost of borrowing. It would also raise the interest rates you pay.

I'm not a cynical man and I think that the negotiators, despite some political motives on both sides, truly want to arrive at a deal that is good for the country. Really. But they have to reach a deal that can pass both the House and the Senate. And many of the back-benchers will vote the sentiment of their constituents, the ones who tell pollsters that default would be a good thing.

A possible shortcut to understanding Chinese visitors

Starwood and Hilton this week have both announced new programs to welcome Chinese visitors to select hotels including their properties in Waikiki and such other destinations as San Francisco, New York, Tokyo, London and Paris.

It ranges from such simple stuff as in-room tea kettles and slippers to more complicated and expensive actions like putting fluent Mandarin speakers into all these resorts.

I got the impression Starwood announced its program first, and then Hilton quickly matched it - perhaps someone from Hilton will set me straight if they think they thought of it first,

The thing about Starwood, the parent of the Sheraton, St. Regis, Westin and W brands, is that it has 74 hotels in China, more than any other American chain, and it's opening new hotels in China at a rate of about one every other week.

Think about it for a moment. Who knows what Chinese visitors want? Starwood, with 74 hotels inside China, ought to have a pretty good idea by now. Starwood knows, for example, that you need to offer certain menu items, like kongee, the Chinese breakfast bowl delight.

I'm told one good start to understanding the Chinese is to stop thinking of them as "the Chinese," because expecting Guangdong, Shanghai and Beijing residents to behave identically is like expecing identical behavior from visitors from Stockholm, Paris and Naples.