Present Music connects cartoons to the avant-garde
It’s like this:
Adams modeled his 1992 Chamber Symphony on Arnold Schoenberg‘s Opus 9. Often, while Adams composed the piece, his kids were in the next room watching cartoons on TV. Then and now, the shows included many cartoons of 1940s and 1950s vintage. Many Warner Brothers cartoons from that era use music by Raymond Scott.
Scott, largely forgotten today, was huge at mid-century and has been enormously influential in unlikely ways. For example: When you hear Present Music play Adams’ Chamber Symphony Saturday, you won’t be able to miss certain cartoonish Scottisms.
You can read substantial and fascinating Scott biographies here and here, so I won’t repeat his whole life story. The salient points: He grew up in New York and studied at Juilliard. Right out of school, he landed a job as a house pianist at CBS radio. He rose through the ranks from pianist to band leader and arranger, particularly for the enormously popular Your Hit Parade, with which he made the jump to television in 1950.
He started forming his own bands in 1936 and made his first recordings in 1937. Scott was very serious about all this — he felt that he was saving jazz and swing from self-indulgent improvisers. But whimsical titles, such as War Dance for Wooden Indians and Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals, not to mention the in-your-face musical nuttiness, caused the public to regard them as novelty records. They sold in the millions, much to the disgust of the be-boppers.
Scott is best remembered for music used in about 120 cartoons. But the fact is, he never wrote a note for a cartoon. A publishing deal put his catalog under the control of Warner. Carl Stalling, Warner animation’s music director, realized he had a trove of music perfect for Bugs and Daffy and he could use it for free. He mined and adapted Scott’s music.
Scott’s story, and his connection to this Present Music concert, do not end there. He became increasingly interested in electronic music and sound effects as time went on. In 1946, he founded a business called Manhattan Research and invented, co-invented and developed all sorts of revolutionary, sound-generating electronic gizmos. Among them was the Electronium, an early music synthesizer. Robert Moog, whose Moog Synthesizer set the musical avant-garde afire in the 1960s, was a Manhattan Research employee.
Which brings us to our last connection: Mason Bates, like many composers today, lives a double life. By day, as it were, he is composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. By night, he is a knob-twiddling trip-hopping practitioner of techno and electronica, playing with instruments that are the grandchildren of those developed by musical mad scientist Raymond Scott.
On the program: Adams’ Chamber Symphony, Schoenberg’s Opus 9, cartoon music and electronic music by Raymond Scott, Mason Bates’ Omnivorous Furniture. Post-concert party with The Shtetlblasters, a Madison-based klezmer-electronica-funk band. Cartoons and new film and animation by local art
7:30 p.m., Saturday, March 27, Turner Hall Ballroom, 1032 N. 4th St. Cartoons and premieres of new films and animations by UWM art students and local artists start at 7 p.m. Ticket are $10, $20 and $30 – students half price at www.presentmusic.org or 414-271-0711. Tickets are also available at www.turnerhallballroom.org, at 414-286-3663, and at the door.
