Had an opportunity to see a dress of the new opera Madame White Snake at the Cutler last night.  Here's the info. You should see it - it's a good new work that's engaging.  Props to the BCC kids!

China, China, China. Chinese composer (studied in the west), Chinese librettest, Chinese folk tale, Chinese singers. Supertitles in English AND Italian...kidding - Chinese. 

Here's the rub for me: the composer had three seperate writing styles all in seperate boxes: 1) what sounded to my ear like traditional Chinese writing, or at least, Chinese stylized writing made playable by a western orchestra; 2) very lyric, very tonal, Puccini-esque writing with soaring, beautiful melodies; 3) Atonality with Sprechstimme.  No shit.

Which brings me to the idea of the mashup.  What would have happened, I thought as I left, if he had more aggressively worked to combine the three, or even two of the elements, into a unique voice for this work? 

My teacher told a story wherein he had an opportunity to lunch with Olivier Messiaen.  As the story goes, my teacher asked Messiaen what he thought about Jazz, to wit, he replied that he "...destested the intermingling of cultural musics, which could only lead to the weakening of both."  As my teacher would later put it to me in his own words, "When you mix water and wine, you get neither."

Not so sure.  A big fan of Multiculturalism I am not, (and I'm not exactly talking about this) but there's got to be a line between originality in terms of combining influences and trying to please everybody in a way that's like forcing together two colors of play-doh.  There's a slippery slope for me here, however, which leads down the slip'n'slide to the mud puddle of, say, using folk music, poly-tonality and electronica in a single piece, or, for that matter, having classical players try to pull off swing.  Is the difining charactistic creativity?  Maybe!

To show that I'm not really a poop.  I found this via this guy (I know, right?).  Can't say I understand the aesthetic, but I appreciate the creative amalgamation of sound.