And by not a lot, I mean virtually nothing.
Anything that I do know has been bastardized by United Airlines commercials, Looney Tunes, and wedding processionals, making the scant catalog of tunes I could put song titles to ostensibly embarrassing.
It's not that I have anything against classical music per se, but it was never accessible to me, and generally speaking, I could never hear it playing in any context I could picture myself in. It was elitist, and snobby, and pretentious.
Andrew Bird does not make classical music.
He does however, play a violin, and make thoughtful, layered, and unfolding music that spills around you in quick bursts and elongated passages. Which, upon first listen, might get it labeled as elitist, snobby, and pretentious.
But it's not.
It is warm and inviting, textured but not overwrought with adornment. There are strokes of classical, but also pop and indie, Americana and jazz. It's friendly and homely - more like music at a farmer's market than a concert hall.
Bird's sixth solo album, Break It Yourself, released in March of this year, gongs to a dissonant beginning with "Desperation Breeds", but plucks and chants soon give way to fingers on guitar strings and humming, with Bird breathing:
"Beekeeper sing of your frustration / In this litigious breeze
Of this accidental pollination / In the era without bees"
From this point on, Bird never looks back. There is a persistent forward motion that propels the album onward like some peaceful version of manifest destiny.
The instrumental "Polynation" segues into the stylistic polyglot of "Danse Caribe", in successive movements is folk, Caribbean, and Appalachia, the repeated lyric "here we go mistaking clouds for mountains; autonomy" hanging over the song like those mistaken clouds we'd built into obstacles all on our own. Around the 3:04 mark Bird plays the fiddle and then, metaphorically at least, switches to violin 15 seconds later, the hesitation in his phrasing at the transition allowing you just enough time to consider how your class let's you decide which instrument you think he's playing.
It's at this point that I hear in Andrew Bird someone else - Aaron Copland.
Yes, I know that's a stretch of a comparison since I already admitted my ignorance when it comes to the classical genre, but I saw enough commercials from the American beef industry as a kid to draw a comparison to "Hoedown" when I hear it.
Aaron Copland was raised in Brooklyn, the son of Russian-Jew immigrants, and came to compose some of the most iconic pieces of music that became representative of America - the rustic individualism of the people, the wide open expanses of the land, and the ideals of its democracy. "Rodeo", "Appalachian Spring", "Lincoln Portrait", "John Henry", "Billy the Kid" and "Fanfare for the Common Man" have passages that unmistakably conjure images of pioneers taming the Wild West, of outlaws and heroes, of thoughtful and reflective leaders, families around the dinner table, neighbors chatting over the white picket fence, and Normal Rockwell putting brush to canvas.
With pieces like these, as well as his work for radio, plays, and movies, Copland made a conscious effort to move away from earlier composing dedicated for a select group of urban elites to create "music for use" that appealed to the masses, but still retained the intricacies and sophistication of the European masters.
That retention of sophistication without compromise of accessibility is also the hallmark of Andrew Bird's work on Break It Yourself. But where Copland inspired and dazzled with brass fanfare, Bird suspends the listener in the music with overlapping, intertwined movement, looping, and deft lyricism. He inflects his whistling as a peoples violin, proving that you don't need the orchestra; the common man is his own instrument.
"Give It Away" laments the price of a relationship as a nation-state metaphor while the rhythm shifts behind a bouncing folk pop. "Eyeoneye" exposes the fallacy of protection gained by a hard exterior with crisp reverb and swelling harmonies, both songs blending concise strokes of instrumentation and songwriting. "Lazy Projector" allows the tempo to drag while still keeping time, as the strings rush in around Birds lyrics, culminating in a whistle clear like the memories that aren't.
"Near Death Experience" whirls with the sounds of cavitation. "Lusitania" rivals Josh Ritter's "The Last Temptation of Adam" as the best love song wrapped in an allegory about a World War. "Orpheo Looks Back" is a traveling song for a man on foot; "Fatal Shore" the hanging fog he walks through. Thirteen songs in to Break It Yourself, "Hole in the Ocean Floor" siphons you in completely, floating down ever faster into the escaping water, before being memorialized in the closing "Belles".
While stylistically Copland and Bird diverge, their connotation does not. Andrew Bird, like Aaron Copland, and that beef commercial, are all selling us the same thing: an image of America.
In Copland's, men stand tall with full chests curving out, golden beams of sunshine radiating around them, with battles to be fought and won. In Bird's, the opponent we face is ourselves, and how we choose to live in, and with, the world and relationships we create. Where Copland is the accompaniment to America's story, Bird is more the score to the film.
In each image is the dream - the dream of America and what we look like in it. But where Copland feels like thing we're all supposed to be striving for, Andrew Bird is the satisfaction with the dream that we define.
We're all dreaming for something.
In Copland we dream as a nation. In Bird we dream as a people.
With pieces like these, as well as his work for radio, plays, and movies, Copland made a conscious effort to move away from earlier composing dedicated for a select group of urban elites to create "music for use" that appealed to the masses, but still retained the intricacies and sophistication of the European masters.
That retention of sophistication without compromise of accessibility is also the hallmark of Andrew Bird's work on Break It Yourself. But where Copland inspired and dazzled with brass fanfare, Bird suspends the listener in the music with overlapping, intertwined movement, looping, and deft lyricism. He inflects his whistling as a peoples violin, proving that you don't need the orchestra; the common man is his own instrument.
"Give It Away" laments the price of a relationship as a nation-state metaphor while the rhythm shifts behind a bouncing folk pop. "Eyeoneye" exposes the fallacy of protection gained by a hard exterior with crisp reverb and swelling harmonies, both songs blending concise strokes of instrumentation and songwriting. "Lazy Projector" allows the tempo to drag while still keeping time, as the strings rush in around Birds lyrics, culminating in a whistle clear like the memories that aren't.
"Near Death Experience" whirls with the sounds of cavitation. "Lusitania" rivals Josh Ritter's "The Last Temptation of Adam" as the best love song wrapped in an allegory about a World War. "Orpheo Looks Back" is a traveling song for a man on foot; "Fatal Shore" the hanging fog he walks through. Thirteen songs in to Break It Yourself, "Hole in the Ocean Floor" siphons you in completely, floating down ever faster into the escaping water, before being memorialized in the closing "Belles".
While stylistically Copland and Bird diverge, their connotation does not. Andrew Bird, like Aaron Copland, and that beef commercial, are all selling us the same thing: an image of America.
In Copland's, men stand tall with full chests curving out, golden beams of sunshine radiating around them, with battles to be fought and won. In Bird's, the opponent we face is ourselves, and how we choose to live in, and with, the world and relationships we create. Where Copland is the accompaniment to America's story, Bird is more the score to the film.
In each image is the dream - the dream of America and what we look like in it. But where Copland feels like thing we're all supposed to be striving for, Andrew Bird is the satisfaction with the dream that we define.
We're all dreaming for something.
In Copland we dream as a nation. In Bird we dream as a people.
Andrew Bird - "Desperation Breeds"
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