David Gaines

* Concerto for Euphonium and Orchestra
* Symphony No. 1 "Esperanto"

Jiri Vydra (euphonium), Kimball Wheeler (mezzo), Moravian Philharmonic
Orchestra/Vit Micka.
MMC Recordings MMC2113  TT: 52:09

Summary for the Busy Executive: Mostly harmless.

David Gaines studied composition at Peabody.  For those who think it
matters, he writes tonally.  He claims influences from a number of very
individual composers, including Hovhaness, Harrison, Hindemith, Gorecki,
Copland, and Stravinsky.  I once found myself in a momentarily trendy
restaurant.  On the menu were three dishes, two of which varied another.
It was essentially a baked crab casserole.  The first variation added
andouille, and the second added cheese on top of that.  By the time you
got to the last variation, the dish didn't taste like much of anything.
The flavors of the various ingredients canceled each other out.  I would
say the same of Gaines's music.  The euphonium concerto is well-written
(Gaines himself studied euphonium and bass trombone), but there's nothing
that really compels you to listen.  One longs for a cheap moment.

This also holds for the symphony.  Gaines is hipped on the language
Esperanto.  My teen-age nephew Jack was once hipped on the language
Klingon.  To each his own.  Esperanto, however, carries with it a measure
of idealism.  Esperanto speakers are usually as single-minded as an
infestation of termites.  They believe that if everybody speaks this
synthetic language (which is built from several languages), there will be
less chance of miscommunication and people around the globe will have more
in common with each other.  History, however, rather inconveniently tends
to counter these hopes.  The main problems with Esperanto are:

  1.  Its grammar is essentially European, and what this means
       for speakers of Hebrew, Chinese, and Tagalog

  2.  You actually have to know several languages to make sense
       of Esperanto.  It was created by language scholars, and it
       shows.

  3.  It's not messy enough.  Since every word is consciously
      constructed, it can't keep pace with the changes of natural
      language

  4.  Language both rises from and shapes a culture.  Esperanto
       has the second without the first.  Esperanto is really a
       lingua franca, and we have had those before: Latin, French,
       English, to name a few.  What generally happens with a
       lingua franca is that locally it deviates from standard, often by
       quite a bit.  Romance languages in general come from local
       dialects of Latin.  A native English speaker from Sandusky,
       Ohio, probably doesn't understand Pidgin.  Cajun French and
       Parisian French have difficulty figuring each other out.  There's
       no reason why this shouldn't happen to Esperanto.

  5.  It assumes that people use language solely to be understood.
       It makes no provision for play.  I can't imagine, for example,
       hip-hop Esperanto or Esperanto equivalents for f**k, swive, roger,
       spank the monkey, inandout, stroke, making out, mattress
       dancing, getting off, rock 'n' roll, and jazz.

By now you've probably figured out that discussing Esperanto is more
interesting than listening to the symphony.  The performances are as good
as they have to be, as is the sound.

Steve Schwartz