A buzzing of bees…

“Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.”

– Guillaume Apollinaire

I bought 36 of these damn things today. They’re for that piece I’m doing with one of the bands at the university — “Hymn of St. Francis” by Daniel Bukvich (I mentioned it a little while back and posted a photo of the first page of the score…a circle of music). The score calls for almost everyone in the band to have one to perform the hymn tune in 4-part harmony. The party store I went to was selling the cheap plastic ones in packs of 12…too good to pass up.

As soon as I got home, I opened up one of the packs and took out a kazoo. I haven’t played one since I was 8 or 9. Of course, you hum into it to get a sound, but I was so “out of practice” that I attempted to hum into the wrong end of the thing. I immediately realized my mistake (and felt like an idiot), turned it around and hummed the first few notes of the tune. I forgot how annoying these things are.

I absolutely loved it.

When I first saw this piece of music, I was a little skeptical about it. I wasn’t incredibly familiar with much of Dan’s work, except for another piece called “Dinosaurs” which my colleague conducted at my previous school. The scores to his music are incredibly hard to read — the music is all handwritten and are often missing critical pieces of information because they were published directly from his original, unedited pages. Since he’d always be present whenever one of his pieces was rehearsed before its premiere, he could always simply tell the conductor and the players what to do. Unfortunately, the information he’d relay verbally to the musicians wouldn’t end up in the score or parts half the time before it went to print…so anyone else who tries to perform it is basically playing somewhat of a guessing game.

All technical issues aside though, I love his music. There’s something charming about it that you don’t see in so many more “normal” pieces. His website states, “One of the biggest problems that conductors have with Dan’s music is that they limit their imaginations. The problem with performing Dan’s music is that you have to be a playful person who doesn’t want to take things as seriously as people in the band world tend to think they should be taken,” (this, despite the fact that elements in the score make it seem as if Bukvich at times takes himself way too seriously).

And yet…he doesn’t. Beautiful melodies skewed and perverted by having them played on kazoos or harmonized using clusters of dissonance… Sometimes, the score says musicians should do one thing, but the musicians’ parts tell them to do the exact opposite. Everything about him and his music is full of eccentricity and contradictions in every conceivable way. Maybe that’s why I have such an affinity for it — it fits my personality somewhat.

Click here to hear a recording of the movement that incorporates all of that – Hymn of St. Francis, Movement 7: “A Buzzing of Bees”

If nothing else, rehearsing this piece with the group is letting me travel back in time and re-live parts of my childhood. I must’ve spent at least three hours today humming into that kazoo, playing with bird whistles and tennis balls, slapping my cheeks and making “popping” sounds like I was playing a drum with my face, “sizzling” air through my teeth to make sounds like ocean waves…

I spent the day playing. Real playing…not the fake stuff that grown-ups do.

Red has always been my favorite color. Out of all 36 kazoos, there were only six bright red ones. I made sure MY kazoo was one of them. The band can fight over the rest of them when I hand them out on Monday. Don’t judge.

Peace and love to you.