Dancing About Architecture, Vol. XV

Tonight’s Episode: Nothing New Under the Sun

March 4, 2008

Last week was a big musical disappointment. I mean, it was a big disappointment, musically speaking. “Musicals”, as a general rule, are not disappointing to me, because I hold very low expectations for them, and those expectations are, as a general rule, met smack on the button. So it is deeply and bitterly ironic that one of the two disappointing events in my music life this week involved the discrediting in part of a musical I actually liked. Now I can only trod heavily along the topsy-turvy Mobius Strip of Uncertainty, not knowing whether I like anything or love everything or dislike nothing or have no opinion at all.

From the point of view of anyone else, it’s all because of a small thing, really. A trifle. ‘See, back in the halcyon days of my youth, everything right was wrong. I’m referring to the 1990s, when everything was as it should have been and yet that was most definitively my worst decade yet. For most of it we had a good, smart, dedicated and basically sensible President, the economy was healthy, I was in college and then married and then a new father, and was in and out of grad school – these features stand in sharp contrast to the state of the world during the rest of my life so far, which has always been characterized by bad, idiotic, careless and destructive Presidents, anemic economies, and other shit stains like junior high school and being a post-doc. So relatively speaking, the 1990s should have been a boondoggle for me. But I was, through it all, just a big fucking idiot. Then too, popular music suffered badly under the crushing blows of mass media juggernaut excesses, FCC deregulation and Kurt Cobain’s suicide. This was countered in small but tangible part by the blossoming of avant-garde, post jazz, whateveryoucallit weird wild artistic ugly-beautiful music, mostly coming out of New York, and mostly following the baton of Mr. John Zorn. He is the subject of the second disappointment for this week, but later. Now, the first disappointment reaches back to those stupid ‘90s when I actually, honestly LIKED Disney movie musicals. And this is now my problem.

For a while there, Disney was doing great with their animated movie musicals. They had a terrific songwriting team, the animation was fresh, the stories were interesting enough – in short, these movies actually had some soul. My favorite of these was, and I suppose still is, “Beauty and the Beast”. The songs were catchy and the lyrics sublimely crafty, the pacing was tight, and the writers had enough stuffing actually to work in conventions like foreshadowing which rarely seem worth Disney’s time or effort anymore. I was also in love with Belle, the heroine, and I’m proud to say that my wife – the current and future, wonderful one, not the one from the ‘90s when I was the big fucking idiot – embodies that character’s most adorable features. But the real meat of it, the stuff that propelled this musical onto Broadway, was the collection of winning songs by Alan Mencken coupled with unflaggingly delightful lyrics from the late, great Howard Ashman. As a college student, I actually spent many slackful hours watching this movie. I love particularly the opening scene during which David Ogden Steirs (sp?) narrates in his deep British voice the back story against stained glass animation, dissolving into a gorgeous panorama of primavera spring forest, waterfall and castle, then sweeping right into the opening number. The incidental music for this expository scene I know very well. So imagine my surprise and delight in hearing that music played over the classical radio station as I was taking my daughter to school! Wow – it’s the opening music from “Beauty and the Beast” – this is what I said to my daughter.

But NO! It wasn’t that at all! It was CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS by Camille Saint-Saens!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We’re not talking, like, a borrowed theme here. This was, note for note, matched arrangement, the exact same music. OK, OK, maybe it’s a mistake. Maybe Saint-Saens is credited in the film and Mencken was only responsible for writing the rest of the music. This is possible and I haven’t checked to see if that’s the case. But certainly Mencken is given long shrift for writing all the music for this movie. And he stole this music from someone else! Just lifted it right off the pages and gave it to musicians and they recorded it and it was put into the film. It made me sad. And it gave me to wonder – how often does this kind of public domain plagiarism (if that’s what really happened here) occur? I can think of another example off the top of my head: the theme from “Knight Rider” I heard once as a two-bar phrase in a baroque trumpet concerto. But this was bigger. An irony can be found here in knowing that Saint-Saens was a staunch conservative when it came to Western art music, believing that it had reached its peak of necessary innovation and that “originality in music is fatal.” Well who’s dying now, Cammy? It’s just upsetting. Sure, I’d expect this sort of cheap pickpocketing from the likes of Andrew Lloyd Weber or James Newton Howard, but I like to think my Bernard Herrmanns and Franz Waxmans and, yes, Alan Menckens are above all that. Alas.

That’s all there is to say about it, really. It just made me a little sad, and I lost a little something. The second disappointment, completely disconnected from the first, is that while in Philadelphia last weekend looking for a house I got caught up in my mission and missed an opportunity to see John Zorn play, which I haven’t done since, well, the 1990s. Perhaps it’s time for a good President again.