Rearranged

The music arranger’s power to put a listener inside a song.

Songwriters write the songs—duh—but arrangers determine how we hear them. To arrange a song is to make a series of musical decisions. What do those decisions add up to? Sometimes it’s really just a sound, and we like that sound or we don’t. But musical decisions can also determine or even change the meaning of a song. Today, we’ll discover the power of musical decisions not just to add sounds to a song, but to take sounds away, creating space for the listener to dwell within the song.

Thanks to:

RJ Bee

Osiris Media

The theme music and other scoring music for Rearranged was written and recorded by Lawrence Lanahan.

Don’t mess with my melody! What happens when arrangers end up in court.

Copyright law is supposed to incentivize creative expression, but court rulings on arrangements have had the opposite effect. In Episode 4, we learn why the courts have called arrangers "mere mechanics," stifling creativity from the 19th century right up through songwriter Ed Sheeran's recent trial.

Guests:

Kembrew McLeod is a professor of communication studies at University of Iowa. McLeod co-produced the documentary Copyright Criminals, and with Peter DiCola, he wrote Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling, Duke University Press, 2011. https://communicationstudies.uiowa.edu/people/kembrew-mcleod, https://www.dukeupress.edu/creative-license

Charles Cronin is a lawyer, musician, and historical musicologist in Los Angeles. He has taught at Claremont Graduate University and George Washington University, and he helped build GWU's extremely handy Music Copyright Infringement Resource. https://blogs.law.gwu.edu/mcir/authors-and-contributors/

Salvatore Pappalardo is a professor of English in the English Department of Towson University in Maryland. https://www.towson.edu/cla/departments/english/facultystaff/spappalardo.html

Thanks to:

Kembrew McLeod

Charles Cronin

Salvatore Pappalardo

Please check out Joanna Demers's book Steal This Music: How Intellectual Property Law Affects Musical Creativity, University of Georgia Press, 2006. https://ugapress.org/book/9780820327778/steal-this-music/

The theme music and other scoring music for Rearranged was written and recorded by Lawrence Lanahan.

Music discussed:

“Satin Doll,” Duke Ellington

“I Got Rhythm,” George Gershwin

“Rhythm-A-Ning,” Thelonious Monk

“Ornithology,” Charlie Parker

“Donna Lee,” Miles Davis

Go!, Dexter Gordon, Blue Note, 1962

“Choir,” James Newton

“Pass the Mic,” Beastie Boys

“D.O.G. in Me,” Public Announcement

“Atomic Dog,” George Clinton

“Love Break,” Salsoul Orchestra

“Vogue,” Madonna

“Blurred Lines,” Robin Thicke

“Fish Market,” Steely and Clevie

“Dem Bow,” Shabba Ranks

“Despacito,” Daddy Yankee/Luis Fonsa

“Happy Together,” The Turtles

“Thinking Out Loud,” Ed Sheeran

“Let’s Get it On,” Marvin Gaye

How revolutions in recording technology remade the sound of the popular song.

Studio technology has evolved from Edison's massive and unwieldy acoustic horn to an infinite array of possibilities that fit on the smartphone in your hand. In Episode 3 of Rearranged, we explore the revolutions in the sound of the popular song that accompanied revolutions in how we record sound.

Guests:

Brandon Shaw McKnight (Charles P. Harris) is a Baltimore-based actor, singer, and director. https://bshawmcknight.art/

Charles Cronin is a lawyer, musician, and historical musicologist in Los Angeles. He has taught at Claremont Graduate University and George Washington University, and he helped build GWU's extremely handy Music Copyright Infringement Resource. https://blogs.law.gwu.edu/mcir/authors-and-contributors/

Susan Schmidt Horning is an associate professor of history at St. John's College in Queens, New York. https://www.stjohns.edu/academics/faculty/susan-schmidt-horning

John Morrison is a writer, producer, and DJ in Philadelphia. https://www.johnmorrison215.com/

Thanks to:

Brandon Shaw McKnight

Charles Cronin

Susan Schmidt Horning

John Morrison

The theme music and other scoring music for Rearranged was written and recorded by Lawrence Lanahan.

Music discussed:

“After the Ball,” Charles P. Harris, 1892.

King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band, Classics Records, 1992. https://www.discogs.com/release/11895715-King-Oliver-And-His-Creole-Jazz-Band-1923

Bessie Smith: Downhearted Blues, Original 1923-1924 recordings, Naxos, 2003. https://www.naxos.com/CatalogueDetail/?id=8.120660

“Every Breath I Take,” Gene Pitney, Musicor, 1962. https://www.discogs.com/release/6077743-Gene-Pitney-Every-Breath-I-Take-

It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Public Enemy, Def Jam, 1988. https://defjamshop.com/products/public-enemy-it-takes-a-nation-of-millions-to-hold-us-back-lp

SWP: Southwest Psychedelphia, John Morrison, 2020. https://johnmorrison215.bandcamp.com/album/swp-southwest-psychedelphia

Arrangements are often belittled as second-hand, second-class music. We’ll discover their potential for stunning originality.

A pianist and a scholar of Franz Liszt show us the profound originality possible in derivative music like Liszt’s piano renditions of Beethoven’s symphonies.

In Episode 2 of Rearranged, a classical music scholar and a pianist will look under the hood of Franz Liszt’s solo piano transcriptions of Beethoven’s nine symphonies to discover the vast originality possible in derivative music.

From SoundCloud: In Franz Liszt's solo piano arrangements of Beethoven's symphonies, Liszt scholar Alan Walker discovers that composers are not as original as they like to think they are, and that "no other art has anything to compare with the arrangement."

Because arrangements are derivative music, based on existing works, they have carried a reputation as second-class music for centuries. Arrangers have been diminished, belittled, insulted, and even sued! In Episode 2 of Rearranged, we’ll discover the astonishing artistry and creativity and, yes, originality in derivative masterworks like Franz Liszt’s rearrangement of all nine Beethoven’s symphonies for solo piano. And we’ll talk to a pianist who has played all nine about the originality he discovered in Liszt transcripts—and the originality he introduced into those transcripts himself.

Guests:

Christopher Taylor, pianist, professor of piano, Mead Witter School of Music, University of Wisconsin-Madison, https://music.wisc.edu/faculty/christopher-taylor/

Dr. Alan Walker, Professor Emeritus, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. https://experts.mcmaster.ca/display/walkera

__

Audio of Alan Walker is from "In Defence of Arrangements," lecture, Coolidge Auditorium, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., November 9, 2013, permission granted by author (available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quFtSrro_Xc), and a lecture recorded specifically for this episode, received October 31, 2020.

Thanks to:

Christopher Taylor

Alan Walker

Mom and Dad for having a piano that actually has a malfunctioning D key

The theme music and other scoring music for Rearranged was written and recorded by Lawrence Lanahan.

Music discussed:

Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 “Choral," Otto Klemperer, Philharmonia Orchestra, Warner Classics, 1958/2020. https://www.warnerclassics. com/release/beethoven-9- klemperer

LISZT, F.: Beethoven Symphony No. 9 (Transcription) (Liszt Complete Piano Music, Vol. 21) (Scherbakov), Konstantin Scherbakov, piano, Naxos, 2004. https://www.naxos.com/ CatalogueDetail/?id=8.557366

Concert Paraphrase on Rigoletto, S. 434, Piano - Prodiges Season 6, Paul Ji, Warner Classics, 2020. https://www.warnerclassics. com/release/paul-ji

In this pilot episode of Rearranged, Lawrence Lanahan explores the life and music of someone who helped Miles Davis create some of his most unforgettable music: arranger Gil Evans. Lanahan uses "Moon Dreams," the Johnny Mercer tune that Evans rearranged into a work of art on Davis's "Birth of the Cool" album, to consider the underappreciated art of arranging…and to investigate the deepest meanings of the human song.

​

Guest:

Larry Hickok is the author of Castles Made of Sound: The Story of Gil Evans, DaCapo Press, 2002. 

Thanks to:

• Glenn Askew, author of Johnny Mercer: Southern Songwriter for the World, Professor of History at Georgia State University, and director of the GSU World Heritage Initiative 
• Kevin S. Fleming, Popular Music and Culture Archivist, Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library
• Andrea Appleton
• Bruce Wallace

​

The theme music and other scoring music for Rearranged was written and recorded by Lawrence Lanahan.

Music discussed:

• Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Master and Everyone, Drag City, 2003,
• Miles Davis, Birth of the Cool, Capitol/Blue Note, 1957
• Martha Tilton, The Capitol Recordings, Capitol, 2000, 
• Glenn Miller, Army Air Force Band, Capt. Johnny Desmond and the Crew Chiefs, “Moon Dreams,” V-Disc
• Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain, Columbia, 1960
• Claude Thornhill and His Orchestra 1947, Hindsight, 1978

​

Research notes:

• Much of this episode is drawn from Hickok, Castles Made of Sound.
• “Mercer…once said, ‘I fool around on the piano…’”: Gene Lees, Portrait of Johnny: The Life of John Herndon Mercer, Pantheon, 2004: 156. 
• “Recorded at the very first Capitol Records session”: Robert Kimball, Barry Day, Miles Krueger, and Eric Davis, The Complete Lyrics of Johnny Mercer, Knopf, 2009: 128.
• “This one was likely arranged by Weston”: Glenn Askew, personal communication, “That would be my hunch”
• Paul Weston and mood music: https://www.spaceagepop.com/weston.htm
• Weston as “almost avant-garde”: Lees, 160-161.
• “higher standards…Whiting,” Askew, 195-196.
• “Pete Rugolo,” Askew, 218.
• “Moon Dreams” from Gil Evans memorial service in 1988: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=rt3pK9SXjI8
• “Boplicity” from Gil Evans memorial service in 1988: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zenzUq6tn20 

A preview of the podcast REARRANGED, wich considers the meaning we take from songs by examining an under appreciated aspect of their creation: the arrangement. Premieres February 25.