6. We are the stories we've been told - Dr. Michael Kahle

[Aaron] Hello and welcome to the Theorist Composer Collaboration, a podcast interview series highlighting modern composers and their compositions, hosted by music theorists. My name is Aaron D'Zurilla, and I am a graduate music theory student at Florida State University, and I will be your host for today. The music that you were just listening to is an excerpt from a piece titled, We are the stories we've been told, by the composer Dr. Michael Kahle, who is the featured guest on this week's episode, alongside his music. That leads me to welcome Dr. Cale himself to the program. How are you?

[Michael] Good, how are you? So thankful to be here.

[Aaron] Thankful that you're here too. Great to have you on. And are you okay if I call you Michael?

[Michael] Yeah, that's perfectly fine. Yeah.

[Aaron] Yeah, so I want to honor the achievement that you've had, or very soon at the time of this recording, and it will be officially so, on the day that this episode is released. But so, to cut to it, tell me about yourself, personally, professionally, academically, whatever you choose.

[Michael] Yeah, so my name is Michael Kahle. I am primarily a composer, though I, in addition, am an educator and a theorist. I'm currently right now based in Morgantown, West Virginia, because I've just, as he sort of alluded to, just finished up my doctorate here at West Virginia University. I'll, you know, I haven't technically graduated as of recording, as he said, but by the time you hear this, it will indeed, I will have graduated, I will have DR officially in front of my name.

[Aaron] You know, it's funny, in the preliminary meeting that we had, you were describing, you know, when do you get the DR in front of your name? Because Dr. Gutierrez, who had just had on the program, he was officially crowned doctor when the dissertation defense was complete. They walked out of the decision room and they greeted him as so, but not so much with you.

[Michael] No, that was the funny thing. Yeah, because I was, before I was listening to that, and hearing him talk about that, and I've heard people talk about the whole like, being welcomed back in and congratulations, Dr. so and so. I actually didn't get that I got congratulations. And that was it. So and they were basically like, well, I think it was so they make sure that I got my edits in. So that was the whole point, but, you know, I'm doctor now. So I'll go with it.

[Aaron] Yeah, I'm just gonna go with it too. And that reminds me of when on my 21st birthday, Longhorn steakhouse, I did not get carded on my 21st birthday.

[Michael] I had the same issue. I had the same issue. Funny.

[Aaron] Well, so we were going to get to it. But since we're talking about it, talk about your dissertation process, what it's been like completing the doctorate.

[Michael] I think the best word for it is probably whirlwind. Doing all of this in like three years was was a lot having to hear at WVU. In addition to writing a piece, we also you have a project I because I like, you know, fun, I guess, decided to do a whole analysis paper in addition to to the composition and all of that I wanted done in three years. So I just decided that that would be a good choice. And so I looked at the music of David Maslanka analyzed a bunch of it. And that was sort of the process was just getting all of that writing a piece for wind band, all of that within that three year timeframe is a whirlwind, to say the least.

[Aaron] I'm sure so it was your decision to add that analytical paper on top or is that a requirement?

[Michael] The requirement is just basically that you do like a research project. So you could in theory, you could say survey orchestral pieces by insert composer designation here or something to that effect. And that would have been perfectly fine. I wanted to devise basically because I also very much so consider myself a theorist, though I don't have the degree titles of theory in it. I wanted to say something about form in the music of David Maslanka. So as a result, I just did a little bit more because of that.

[Aaron] I would say understandable, but man, you really put a lot on yourself. So I'm not sure that that's a lot.

[Michael] Yeah, I don't know why. Towards the end, I was like, you know, this would have been a lot easier. I'm really proud of what I what I came up with. So I think in the end, it was worth it. And I got a lot out of it that affected how I compose. But yeah, sometimes during the process, I was like, I don't know. Why did I do this? Yeah.

[Aaron] So you say that you primarily identify as a composer, but plenty as a theorist. Do you want your primary career to be in composition? Is that why you chose that route instead of a PhD in theory, let's say?

[Michael] Yeah, I think that's that's probably the big thing is I primarily want to do the work of composition, though, as I've done more and more in the space of theory and looking at this, I feel like the it's to do more in that space, particularly regarding the composer David Maslanka, because a lot of his research, there's not a huge amount of like theoretical like deep theoretical research on him and his compositional process, which is somewhat idiosyncratic. That's a big thing that I feel is an untapped thing that people could really dive into.

[Aaron] I've never heard of that composer before, actually.

[Michael] He's one of those because you're a violinist, right?

[Aaron] I'd say so.

[Michael] So you spent a lot of time in the orchestra world.

[Aaron] Yes, or bit chamber music, but mostly, yes.

[Michael] He's a composer that's interesting because if you are at all in the concert slash wind band space, you absolutely know who he is. His music is huge in the wind band space. But the second you leave the wind band, nobody knows who he is. It's a very weird like distinction. An American composer that should say modern like 21st century, he just recently passed away, unfortunately. Well, seven years ago now.

[Aaron] Yeah, I would say in my experience, wind based ensembles and I'm putting brass band into that. I know that's not woodwinds, but anything of that sort is kind of like its own little world because I remember my orchestration class that I had at the undergraduate at University of Florida. Our professor is a flautist, flutist, flautist, and he mostly grew up with wind bands and those sort of things. And so he always would put Percy Grainger and other like composers that for me coming from an orchestral background, everyone seemed to be jiving with it. I mean, it was cool music, but I had no idea about any of it.

[Michael] Yeah, it's so weird how those like, they're like almost siloed off from each other. Like the wind band is like really propped up, but it's in its own space and the orchestra is in its own space and never the two shall meet for whatever reason.

[Aaron] Yeah, I honestly, maybe other than historical, I really don't know the reason why. Speaking about compositional lineage, heritage, style, so on, how would you describe your own music and whether you want to connect that to a style, a composer, time period, or just on its pure merits, how would you describe your music?

[Michael] Yeah, I think probably the easiest place to start is going to be as a frame of reference is thinking about composers. Obviously, since I've mentioned him quite a bit, David Maslanka is definitely one that I would talk about. I would say that my music now particularly is sort of like the combination of David Maslanka and say like Olivier Messiaen and maybe a little bit of like Mahler and Shostakovich. I would also be remiss if I didn't mention like my love and adoration of the music of say Billy Joel and Elton John as a fixture, as well as a plethora of video game soundtracks that I listened to as a child that I am sure whether intentionally or not affect the way that I write still to this day.

[Aaron] Fair enough and I have to ask because I'm a particular fan of pop music myself in my own studies, what about Billy Joel and Elton John? I love their stuff, have for a very long time.

[Michael] Yeah, that was well growing up, it's really funny, growing up I for whatever reason didn't like classical music for a little bit, which is so weird to say like when I was like eight or nine or ten or whatever, didn't like it, primarily listened to like 70s and 80s stuff because that's what was on in the house most of the time and it's not like my parents had any they like classical music, they're musically inclined. It was just Billy Joel, particularly in Elton John was what was on and so I would sit at the piano and try to figure out I would get like books, his piano books, I would sit and play, I would learn like a page of it and then start messing around with it and playing it too fast or playing it too slow, start making my own versions of it, so that's probably where that started.

[Aaron] That makes sense, I can say I have a similar experience and maybe even a little bit more extreme. I did not start recreationally listening to classical music for my own sake, maybe until the first year of my undergraduate and yes that was when I committed to going to music school as a violinist, I can't fully explain that in retrospect, but similar experience in my sense, it was always, well my mother was a bit eclectic with what she involved because a lot of the Eagles, a lot of Billy Joel, Elton John, Eric Clapton, a handful of 80s artists, John Denver, Simon and Garfunkel, but also like Pitbull and Shakira, so yeah that's quite the mix, but I understand or sympathize with that.

[Michael] Yeah, as someone who's now taught a good number of freshman incoming music students, that's I think a very common thing nowadays too, is not as much of a exposure and interaction with classical music in that term until they get to school. That seems to be more and more common.

[Aaron] Now I asked, okay so this gets into some controversial territory, is that an issue or is it just a change?

[Michael] I think it's just a change. I mean yes I particularly, you know I love pop music, I love what we consider the canon, I love things that would be associated near the canon that are not part of the canon. My feeling with theory and what I teach is not that they need to come away with it being like the Pathetique is the greatest piano sonata ever or something like that. These are the tools that you can use to return to analyze the things you love and if you grow what you love in the process to fit more of those classical things, great. If you leave it and you want to spend time figuring out what the chords are to Shakira or to Dua Lipa or the new Taylor Swift album or the Beyonce album, that's perfectly fine. I just want you to love music and want to know a little bit better about what the music is.

[Aaron] You know I was thinking of a follow-up to earlier what you said about you describe yourself as an educator and I was going to ask in what way but I think you just illustrated it very well right there and I respect that a lot. I have a lot of love and respect for education broadly. My mother herself is a special needs or differing, I don't remember the exact wording, but special needs pre-k teacher at a public school and has been for quite a while so I have a lot of reverence for just the love of education and its sake and I definitely agree with that. Regardless of what you take, you should love music more once you leave the classroom than when you come in.

[Michael] That's the hope anyway and I think now my wife would be if I didn't say, I believe it's not students with exceptionalities I think but-

[Aaron] Varying exceptionalities, that's right.

[Michael] The term seems to change very regularly though.

[Aaron] Yes, it does.

[Michael] Yeah, but I believe it's varying exceptionalities.

[Aaron] Hello, this is Aaron from the future after the recording of this podcast. I went back and I asked my mother and her classroom is technically classified as exceptional student education or ESE. Varying exceptionalities, at least in the state of Florida, is the label for pre- uh, is the label for kindergarten whereas my mother teaches pre-k so I guess we were both kind of wrong. Dr. Kahle's a little bit closer. I guess the more you know. Anyways, back to the episode. Focusing in on the piece in question, the piece of music that you sent to me, which is we are the stories we've been told. Now people are probably going to see this in the episode title and in the promotional images but something, even if it's a little bit arbitrary, something that I just thought was interesting is you punctuated it like it's a sentence without a period of course, but it's just a capital letter at the beginning. It's not formally a title but of course it is, it's the title of the work. Why did you not capitalize everything or structure like that? That's kind of like a kind of a surface level observation but why do you do that?

[Michael] It was a good, when you said, when I saw that question and you're asking it now and everything, it was funny. I didn't really think about that to be honest. I can say everything else about the title and I will say this first off, titles are hard. They're the hardest part for me in the whole composing process and typically, very thankfully, my wife helps me. So figuring out the title for this piece was, I remember distinctly we were painting her classroom that she was teaching in at the time over the summer and bouncing ideas off for this piece and I for one love wordplay and that sort of thing. And so as we were thinking about the inspiration sort of being these stories and I'm sure we'll probably talk about that in a little bit, but these stories that I was pulling from different heritages and thinking about how they've been passed down, the idea of we are the stories we've been told holds a lot of water and weight and also I think works smoothly. For whatever reason, I thought of it as a sentence, so I put the title as a sentence. I didn't think of it any further than that, so I wish I had a better answer that I did some artistic thing. It was just sort of, this was the first thing that I did with it and then I didn't change it. It spoke to me.

[Aaron] It's funny that you said, I had a mild feeling that it was either just you thought it looked good or something like that, but when you're analyzing music and someone's work, you always want to read through to the roots of the plant. You don't want to just look at the leaves. And so I thought of it, I went to an art museum this past weekend and there were so many pieces that were untitled or all of them were lowercase. I'm like, no, Aaron, it has to mean something. So I had to ask. So as you alluded to right there, one of the most interesting, I would bargain, and cool, to put it informally, aspects of this piece is the rationale behind not just its content, but its construction and also what the title means. So broadly, however you want to take it, can you explain to the listeners what "We are the stories we've been told" means?

[Michael] Yeah, I think to fully get it sort of talks about, I have to talk a little bit about the commissioning process for this piece. So this piece is the result of three of my colleagues and honestly dear friends here at West Virginia. They were all getting their masters together in various, one in flute performance, one in viola performance, and one in percussion performance. And they all, as an aside, for whatever reason, they don't do it anymore, I don't believe. But at the time, West Virginia would sometimes, if they didn't have a GA spot for students that they wanted to have, they would have them teach beginning biology.

[Aaron] So really, yes.

[Michael] Yes, really.

[Aaron] So the three of them graduate music theory, graduate music students teaching biology.

[Michael] Yes, 

[Aaron] That's wild.

[Michael] That's honestly what it was. I don't know. Either baseball to say, but that honestly is, they don't do it anymore, I don't think. But basically, funding is funding. Yeah, they were given all the stuff they had to teach and whatnot. That's not a super, super duper important part of this. But they one day at lunch decided, we should commission me to write a piece. And they wanted for, because they had held their recitals coming up and they wanted to do a 3D movement work where each of the different movements features them in a different way. And so we decided we sat down, we had a conversation about all of it. And we came to this sort of feeling, particularly one in particular, he's from Indonesia. So he's Indonesian. And he was like, we should do something within Indonesian, like culture, heritage. And I had a conversation with him and basically was like, I know nothing about Indonesian. So heritage and culture can like you guide me on that. And so we came to pulling different folk stories from the three people's heritages, his from Indonesia, his is the second movement. The percussionist who plays vibraphone on this, she has some Scottish heritage. So that's where that story comes from. And then the violist has some German heritage. So a German folk story was used as sort of the broad inspiration for each movement.

[Aaron] In interviewing different people, I find one of the most fascinating things is where does the musical inspiration, construction and so on come from. And I feel bad for saying this because there's some great music for music's sake, absolute music. But I just think it's particularly special to gleam into the soul of certain people in a composition in the same way that this piece does with the folk stories, the culture, and also not just that, but also the individuals who are performing it. And I think it's super extra special that the people performing it are the ones that it was written for and it's their background, their suggestion and their guidance, which is a unique snapshot that is not always obtained and a lot of times not possible in the compositional process. So this is a really unique opportunity that befell you and you had.

[Michael] Yeah, no, the whole thing of writing this, recording it, preparing, premiering it, everything about it was very, very special. They have been very dear collaborators and they continue to be dear collaborators. So I consider myself very blessed with this piece.

[Aaron] Oh, I'm sure. In terms of the broad inspirations, so when I prepare for these interviews and when I'm looking at the music that people send me, I try to listen to it as if I was an audience member who came into the auditorium a couple seconds before it started. No preparation. I see the title maybe, but I don't read the program notes. I just try to, the first time through, I just absorb it as it is. And even before I saw your folk inspirations and that mode of composition and reading your program notes, it already spoke to me like it was telling a fairy tale almost. That's kind of a maybe a childish way to describe a folktale from a culture, but it really felt like to me the same mystical uncanniness of something like Ravel's Mother Goose Suite or Julia Wolfe's Steel Hammer. Maybe not so much with Steel Hammer because that's a very specific kind of compositional style, but it was that same kind of ethereal presence. Do you see what I'm saying with that? With the Mother Goose Suite and Steel Hammer? Because I don't know if that's kind of a stretch, but even before understanding literally what you were trying to do, I got the evocation.

[Michael] Yeah. So no, I think that particularly the Ravel Mother Goose Suite, I think, fits, I actually don't know the, I looked it up briefly before, but I'm not super familiar with the Julia Wolfe Steel Hammer, so I can't really speak to that piece in particular. But yeah, no, I think it was interesting. This piece, it's funny you mentioned about programmatic and representational art and how it can add a special quality to the music. I feel like this piece in particular was sort of a turning point for me, oddly enough, with even with all of that sort of representational aspects in it, as I started to move away more so from representational in terms of like direct representational and rather trying to get the essence of a thing. So that mysterious quality, more so than fitting the particular story that movement is sort of based on, which is this witch that turns into this black cat and disrupts and dismayes this warrior, the warrior's dog figures this out and is growling at it. There's a bit of a fight and she shoots up through the chimney. I didn't try and specifically follow that story to a T. Rather, I took aspects like the mysterious quality that I assumed that was in it due to some of the more boisterous, adventurous moments of say the clashing of the fighting and thought about how within the music can that be best represented so that if someone were to have that representational knowledge that you're discussing would be great. But I wanted to make sure that the music and really music I've written since then is it works for people who know nothing about the program, that it can work on both levels, which is a hard line to cross and fit.

[Aaron] It certainly is and I've had a couple people on the show that have been wrestling with that exact thing. I remember Ky Nam Nguyen for Vietnamese Mother's Letter to Nixon said that she also hopes or aims to have people enjoy the music that she creates just on its own sake without those things that you're describing. And when it comes to the abstraction of inspiration, not to dilute any meaning in the music, but like you're saying to create a broad appreciation and adaptation in the listener's head, Gabe Gekoskie spoke about that with his Knee 5 inspirations for the Philip Glass inspirations into Modest Mutilation. So that certainly is a pattern of people, what people are trying to go for. I for one really appreciate that. Of course I said I find it super special when there's a specific story that you can adapt, but it's always nice and probably extra marketable to have music that is just generally accepting to your ears.

[Michael] Yeah, it's such a… it's interesting that you say that because to me it feels like almost now most music is representational in some way. That feels like a lot of… because there's not many like… I could have called this piece Trio for flute, viola, and vibraphone, opus number four in Not a Key, and it would have been a piece, but you don't see that anymore. Not just because there's so many pieces historically that have those types of titles, but also thinking about it honestly since you said marketing, marketing that piece is a lot harder than if you have something that someone can latch onto.

[Aaron] Yeah, for sure. That's certainly an element in it. I mean we all have to survive out here. We're not just posting things out. So to get more specific with the piece, Movement One, we're going to go movement by movement and talk about the qualities and the background of each individually. Movement One is titled Yelling, She Flew Up the Chimney. So can you describe the specific folk inspiration behind Movement One, the story, and then how you were aiming to evoke that story? You said it a little bit earlier, but I guess maybe to reiterate.

[Michael] Yeah, so it's a Scottish folk story. There was, I don't remember the exact name of the witch that turns into the cat offhand, but she turns into a cat, sort of a trickster, tries to trick this warrior or huntsman you could think of, and there's an ensuing little scuffle because the dogs figure out right away even though it's a cat, like magic and all those sorts of things. And then at the end, she flies out the chimney in sort of a puff of smoke. So again, the biggest, I guess the closest thing in terms of direct musical representation, you could say, would be at the end. There's an aleatoric section of the movement where the flutist is sort of moving around. The violist is playing this harmonic, this double stop, not double stop, this switch back and forth harmonic, and the vibraphone is giving some other aleatoric gestures. And I wanted that to be like the puff of smoke, this mysterious puff of musical smoke to be similar to her flying out the chimney in puff of smoke. The title itself, I wanted to, typically with titles, I try to have them at least evocative of something enough that they draw you in, but I don't want them to tell the whole story. It's like, okay, Yelling, She Flew Up the Chimney. I've got a picture that this is what this music's about. I don't know anything more than that. I kind of want to know. That may fall under a marketing thing. It's also just, I enjoy that little bit of, there's something here, but I can dig a little bit deeper.

[Aaron] Yeah. I have to say on that aleatoric bit, that is one of the most programmatic uses of aleatory that I've ever seen because it just makes exact sense to what you're trying to do in the story. An observation that was very clear to me, or so I'm going to ask what the question is and then explain my thoughts about it. So how did you approach the harmonic structures within this first movement? Because I would describe what you were doing is like begrudgingly tonal in how you were constructing the chords and the harmonic landscape because you have a lot of different stacks of fourths and fifths, which are almost seemingly indifferent to one another when they're stacked in the texture, but their stacking creates different third relationships and subsequently of chord qualities and listening to it, especially in different parts of the phrase, you can tell that there are different chord functions and also the melody, at least at first predominantly in the fluid and trades between the viola. You have, I'm always careful about this because I don't want to simplify music. It has a structure to the melody that you could probably put a period anteceding consequent relationship label somewhere. If you try really hard, I'm not going to be so bold to do that, but all of these more unusual elements of a non strictly tonal melody produce a pretty usually acceptable structure of a melody. So these are maybe a bunch of loose observations, but you have somewhat tonal somewhat standard, but just a little bit out there enough to make you question what's going on. How are you thinking about constructing the landscape?

[Michael] Yeah, no, that's a, it's interesting that you use the phrase begrudgingly tonal. Cause sometimes I think about it that way, but the term I typically use to refer to my music somewhat flippantly, but in truth too, is tonal adjacent. So there's, there's definite aspects that fit into that idea. When I was writing the one section where you're talking about with the fifths on top of each other, most likely I was probably thinking of it as like a D over C with some, some added color. So in a way similar to say like Messiaen's concepts of like chords on the dominant where there's a, the note that's the base or whatever is like guiding things, but then there could be all kinds of other structures above it that's still somewhat based in, in tonality in a sense, but not like in a strict common practice. This is the tonality as far as the melody is concerned. It's I had never noticed the whole like pseudo antecedent consequent relationship actually until you had mentioned that, which I think is funny because in going back to the, to the research that it was my dissertation that other people that had looked at some of his music talked about, he would have those pseudo antecedent consequent relationships that look almost like sentence and period structure, but they never finish out in terms. You just get the antecedent consequent kind of repeating idea is almost what happens. And I think that's probably because when I think about melody, I think a lot about, and this is evolved even more so than this piece. Now I think of the music that I write almost as a musical argument that the particular aspects of what I'm writing are the, you know, think about musical grammar or whatever, but it's not a perfect analogy. No analogies are ever perfect, but it's really not a perfect analogy that say that the minor third or whatever is an important part of the musical grammar of that piece or the musical syntax, if you will. And so I think about how can I repeat it in different ways or adjust it long-term so that over the course there's almost a musical essay and musical argument that is presented. I really like a musical argument. And of course, when you add more extraneous things that are outside of tonal structures, the argument needs to be even stronger or more well conceived because you need to argue for it even more.

[Aaron] I don't know if this was a famous quote or if I've just heard this a lot, but I've always heard the phrase in my composition classes of make it inevitable. And I think that leads into what it is because your melody and how you structure it all sounds inevitable. But when you break it down on a finite level, it's hard to figure out why it works. At least, you know, for me, I'm sure if I sat down for a couple of weeks, really sketching it physically out, it wouldn't be the hardest thing. But it sounds inevitable, but the different piece, it's more than the sum of its parts.

[Michael] Yeah, no, thank you. That's really honestly what I try to go for. And it was funny as I sat, because I wrote this a couple of years ago now. So as we were talking about this, and I chose that this is the piece that I wanted, I had to go back and look through the score and remind myself of the piece. And as you had some of the questions and you and I was like, huh, I don't remember, I'm going to have to go look. And then I was like, huh, how did I put this together? I'm not sure. So I went back through my sketches. And I have a decent enough idea. But I think it is that that musical argument of trying to make the sum of more than its parts is a big part of having some sort of emotive reaction on a bass level. That's not as music as a language, because I don't think music is universal language is necessarily the best idea. Because there's so many different things that happen out in the world of music beyond, say, the Western Eurocentric concept. But I think music as moving deeper than language, what language tries to present, i.e. the music is getting a more bass or complex emotion than just sad, angry, whatever it can, it can, it can move beyond words. See, I'm struggling to talk about it because I feel like it gets to things that are that are not articulatable. If that's a word, it's probably not. It's an eternal struggle for talking about music.

[Aaron] I totally understand what you mean. Because you know, one of the things that most people in the world are drawn to about music is that it's incalculable in its effects. But then there are entire industries I'm currently in it, that you attempt to calculate the incalculable. But that's part of the fun.

[Michael] It is. Yeah, that's no, that's the biggest thing in my research that I'm feeling very drawn to right now is, I don't know if close that gap is the right word, but think more and be able to discuss more deeply as we move towards what is that sort of, you know, the singularity, what's the singularity of when we can, because everybody loves tech and AI, but singularity of understanding the emotive concepts baked into music and even saying that emotions are baked into music is a contestable argument to begin with.

[Aaron] Before we move on to the second movement, I just have something I want to highlight, mostly because I just want to play it in the episode because I think it's a really cool moment. I don't really have that much to say about it. Other than I want you to talk about it. Can you explain this little moment in the context of the story? It comes up a couple of times. It's like more of a harebrained idea, you know, a little bit of chaos in the texture. And I don't know if you would disagree with this, but I had some like mild Piazzolla, Libertango feeling with some of the rhythm you got going on over there. But I don't know. Can you comment on that?

[Michael] Yeah, I wasn't thinking of him with this. Actually, I was thinking of at the time I was writing this, I was knee deep in a Olivier Messiaen seminar. And it's a lot of inspiration and it comes from I forget which movement it is, but the movement where the entirety of in the quartet for the end of time, where the entirety of it is in unison and octaves. And that was a big inspiration for this. The reason so I wasn't necessarily thinking about the story with it necessarily, though I think you could probably fit it to the to the sort of fighting between the huntsman and the witch and everything. But I was more thinking this is the climactic moment nowhere else to go back to the musical argument idea. Nowhere else is the argument being stated more plainly. It is a homogeneous rhythm in octaves. That is as plain as that argument can be stated in my mind anyway. And then the reason that it comes back again is thinking about the formal model is I like a lot of contrast and I like playing with formal expectations. So when it comes back later, there isn't that expectation. And it also brings I feel causality as well as why was it there in the first place, because it feels very out of place. But I feel my argument is the second statement of it helps to make that feel more in place.

[Aaron] Dr. Kahle, I think I think you have the name of your first book, "Making the Argument, How to Construct Convincing Musical Arguments", because I just, people take note, I think talking about reinforcing your ideas and sustaining them throughout a piece of music, I love calling it making an argument or making it more robust. I really like that.

[Michael] Yeah, no, I definitely you know, if I use that, you know, you can get like the 15 cents for like the 15 copies that I said.

[Aaron] Yeah.

[Michael] Yeah. But no, there's a book that I'm just now I've read a little bit of it before, but it's an argument that sort of makes the argument that tones and I could be butchering the exact full because I haven't read the whole thing yet. So basically, it makes the argument that tones have agency within pieces, ie that this pitch, we often talk about, say, like the Chopin piano preludes, the particularly the minor one, how that B, we can trace it going down, and it's trying to get to E, but it doesn't get there the first, you know, the F sharp happens, then we don't get the E, we go back to the B. And then the next time we land on the, the C chord, instead of the instead of a one, and then eventually we finally at the end get that E. And so I'm thinking about it in that same sort of context, though not strictly tonally.

[Aaron] Yeah, I'm smelling a little bit of prolongation in the Schenkerian sense from that.

[Michael] Yeah, probably.

[Aaron] That doesn't delegitimize it just that's what I thought. Anyways, so moving on to the second movement, which is titled, Suddenly, He Turned into Stone, another very similar title to the first movement. And it follows the theme that you were saying that it evokes a little snapshot of the movement and draws the listener in. But can you speak to the specifics of the folk background of the second movement and how you aimed to evoke those things?

[Michael] Yeah, so this one, this one's from the Indonesian heritage. The story, I just really, I find the story, fun isn't the right word, but it, I have a bit of a sarcastic sense of humor. And so the story is all about this, this traveler, this Indonesian traveler that goes off and gets very rich and does all of these things and comes back to the village and basically disrespects his village and disrespects his mother. And he's told if he basically doesn't apologize before he leaves, he will get struck down by the people in the village and stuff and he's like, nothing's going to happen to me, I'm perfectly fine, you all don't matter, I'm rich and wealthy, blah blah blah blah blah. And so he leaves on his ship, there's some lightning, and he gets turned into stone. He becomes this like stone statue because he didn't listen to his mother. So it's an interesting story that I, for whatever reason, makes me chuckle a little bit.

[Aaron] Well, I mean, there's a, there's a sort of dramatic irony to it.

[Michael] Yeah, but as far as the music is concerned, I more so sort of going off that formal contrast, I wanted to say sort of more the placid, the ship rocking or whatever, there's sort of a placidness of and sort of the, not solitary, not placidness, but like the sense of stone. So a lot of it is very slow in that sense, whereas then there's more of the antics of the boy are in the more faster, more involved sections. And then that in turn makes a neat formal contrast that one can play with.

[Aaron] Yeah. And I think one of the most obviously striking parts of this piece is what is presented right at the beginning of the movement. Makes sense. But the way that you do it, I thought was particularly unique. You present the main melody or set of themes in the flute by itself. Okay. Right. And.... Dr. Kahle, you know, this the second time that we've met, but I think I'm building a mild compositional profile of you. I think you're highly French influenced because I don't know if you've ever heard of the Debussy solo flute piece called The Syrinx. 

[Michael] Yes. 

[Aaron] Yeah, that reminded me of that right away. And we were talking about Ravel's Mother Goose Suite. You've brought up Messiaen a good handful of times. So it definitely reminded me of that. I also noticed that throughout the movement, even in the energetic portions that you were just listing, that different intervallic and melodic ideas from that initial presentation of the flute melody return heavily, and especially near the end when you're calling back to the beginning of the piece and it comes to a slow down. But I specifically say intervallic ideas because maybe it's just my theory brain. You seem to have quite the theory brain as well. But when I see certain intervallic ideas repeated, maybe not ad nauseam, but very frequently from the main presentation of the melody, it seems very on purpose. So you wrote that flute melody, but how did you derive the rest of the content of the movement?

[Michael] Yeah, so the melody and everything, a lot of the music in it, not all of it, but a lot of it is derived from an octatonic scale. So again, you could say French-influenced, obviously I was looking at a lot of Messiaen at the time. I score studied Syrinx a lot as I was doing that, as I was working on that melody.

[Aaron] I just scored some music theory points by pulling that out. Anyways, go on.

[Michael] And you are correct. More music theory points for you. A lot of the way I write is focusing on those intervallic relationships because I don't want to say middle ground because the musical result is not a middle ground, but a middle ground between those a lot of more, you could say tonal or even 12-tone pieces that I really enjoy, particularly because of their intervallic relationships or their intervallic connections that you can grow from as well as obviously I love the tonal medium, hence why a lot of my music sounds tonal or tonal adjacent, but I didn't want it to just simply be following the standard. These are the chord progressions that I want to follow. This is the sort of melody and instead a lot of where I do the work of say that since I keep coming back to it, the musical argument is in those intervallic relationships and how they change and whether they're largely change or smaller change over time. So like in that one, the minor third appears a lot like the opening is that minor third in the flute, then that grace note, the A to the F sharp again, a minor third. So a lot of use of minor thirds, that sort of thing.

[Aaron] I feel like I'm receiving a masterclass here in composition that, this is really cool.

[Michael] The other thing I would say, which I'm not sure the vibraphonist was always happy with me for this, but the ostinato that's there is this like 10 note pitch from the octatonic scale where I just sort of displaced the pitches around to specific intervals that I like and then just kept repeating it underneath the flute. So it's all sort of derived from as I try to derive it from as little information as I possibly can.

[Aaron] Yeah, an economy of means. I just, this is more of a general comment for the entire piece. I love the vibraphone parts so much. I know part of the choice of vibraphone was that that was the ensemble that, you know, the individuals who commissioned it, but I can't really think of many other percussion instruments that would fill the same role as the vibraphone other than maybe auxiliary ones that are very similar, but the timbre of the vibraphone throughout all three of the movements, which we're going to talk a little bit about the third movement too, it's just, it adds to the mystical element of these folk songs.

[Michael] It's great. Oh yeah. No, I love the vibraphone in this really, I again, blessed. I would probably have never picked this instrumentation in a vacuum. Like it wouldn't have occurred to me to do, but as I sat more with it, they work so well together. They really, really do. 

[Aaron] They do. I would never put them together either. And selfishly, because I'm a violinist, I immediately thought why not violin or why not cello? Which I love you violists. We need you. But I immediately thought why not violin or cello? So moving on to the third movement, which is titled There, I May Turn Musician, which is, oh, when I saw that, that was probably the most striking out of all three of the movement titles, probably because of including the word musician, but just like with the other movements, can you explain its background?

[Michael] Yeah. So this is a Brothers Grimm story of the animals that they all decide to leave their owners for various reasons. And they go off, they're going to town, they're going to turn into musicians because you know, animals make noise. And I guess that's where that comes from. They're all going to go turn themselves into musicians. They happen stance on this like little house while they're traveling. It gets towards night. They feel like they should stay somewhere where they end up staying just so happens that there are robbers that come to take stuff out of the house. And it's dark, the robbers don't realize in the in the process of trying to steal things out of the house, the animals make a bunch of noise, whether intentionally or not, they scare them off. And the animals are like, we're like, we're musicians now, like sort of a thing at the end. And they like decide to stay at this house, which I guess was was abandoned. This is what I'm the recollection of the story. The big thing that I took away from it was the the the animals becoming musician, which I also felt like a little cheeky reference to its being in music and everything. But the big thing was that they're there, they make a bunch of noise, there's this interaction with the robbers. And that that was the main thing.

[Aaron] Man, German inspired folk tales just have a certain weirdness to them, don't they? We have two conflicting characteristics within the movement. One of them you describe directly, and I'm going to take your word from your program notes that you describe it as a hoedown characteristic. And this is also where I thought, well, why not violin? Because you make the viola sound a little bit like a fiddle. A hoedown in the similar vein is like Copland or some sort of evocation of that, which is very fun. So also, I've used the word mystical to describe a handful of things, but I would say especially in this movement, in the slower, the contrasting slower portions of the third movement, where the texture really comes down and it becomes less, I mean, there's certainly melody, but less melodically driven and more harmonically and texturally driven, especially by the vibraphone. So, these two different characteristics, that part of it plays into the formal plan of the movement. You have more energetic, less energetic, so on. But were you seeing these as characters? You've talked about abstract representation of the source material. How were you viewing these two different elements? Because they are not just an energy level, they are very striking in what they are, too.

[Michael] Yeah, so the big thing with this, well, first of all, on one aspect, you're absolutely right. It was basically just a formal thing. I wanted to do this as a rondo, a rondo for whatever reason felt appropriate. So the main idea continually returns, that's your main theme, and then there's contrasting.

[Aaron] Final movement of a three movement work. It works.

[Michael] So on that aspect, the other aspect of it was the contrast is obviously nice. I also wanted it to not just be simply, there's a contrast and then another contrast. I viewed it as the first contrast we're dipping our toe in, so to speak, of there being, it's a little bit more connected. There's that ostinato, the rhythm is still kind of, you know, moving, propelling us forward. Then the second time we've jumped feet first into the pool, so to speak, and it's the rhythm has subsided. It's very harmony based. Harmony is my first love of anything musically. I love melodic considerations and all those, but harmony is my first love compositionally. So that's part of that. As far as the story is concerned, broadly, the hoedown-y section you could think of as being the interaction between the robbers and the animals. I'm imagining in the house, one gets pushed into a fire. I'm imagining pots and pans flying and it's all dark and it's all crazy. Then the other parts is when the animals are just sleeping in the house and everything is more subdued. The two sides of the coin there.

[Aaron] We're coming to a close in the middle analytical section, but I want to ask broadly about the piece. In your process of composing the entire work, how did you tackle composing, like essentially three miniature character pieces into one large work? Did you take it one at a time? And if you didn't, what is it like switching between them? Because obviously it's the same instrumentation, but the, where you're deriving it from is very different for each. So what was it like composing this piece?

[Michael] Yeah, it was interesting. It's interesting that you bring that up because one, I sort of viewed them almost like a suite, sort of like the Ravel Mother Goose Suite that you mentioned. But the interesting thing about it was this piece has been premiered, but all three movements have never been played together other than on the recording that was sent to you. They always, yes, all they were all separately premiered on each person's particular recital. So the vibraphone feature, which is the first movement was premiered first. And then the second movement, the flute one was premiered second. And then the viola one, the third movement was premiered last because that's when their recitals fell. So I worked on basically one at a time. I would pull ideas as I had them for the other movements and I would keep them stowed away for safekeeping until I reached the point where I was fully integrated on them. So I sort of did one movement at a time, sent it off to them. The other interesting thing was about this was, which I will probably never have this experience again, they decided to make my piece a class because they needed like chamber ensemble credit. And so they were like, we're going to make this a class where we rehearse once a week on this and we're going to get a coach. And I was like, this will never happen again. I need to just enjoy it while I have it. So they did that. So that's, they practiced it once a week. They like, so they're like, that's why it's so polished and everything. I wanted to record it at the end, like literally the dream collaborators. Yeah, I'm very fortunate those, you know, as just to the composers, if you can find collaborators like that, hold them very close because they don't come around very often.

[Aaron] Now that this piece really is golden for many reasons, but especially that, well, we're talking about the piece, obviously, before we move on to our last segments, is there anything else you want to say about: We are the stories we've been told?

[Michael] No, I think, I think that probably covers it. Yeah.

[Aaron] Okay. Phenomenal piece. It really is cool in many aspects. I can see, I could see not just, you know, there was a performance class based around it, but I can also see an analytical class based around it. This seems very in line with something that would be in an orchestration class because writing a 20 plus minute piece, three movements with only three instruments, and for each one you're purposely highlighting each instrument. I'm sure it was quite the mental workout to balance everything to still, to not make it three mini concertos, but still make it a trio, but feature the instrument predominantly. I'm sure that was difficult.

[Michael] Yes, that was, thank you for saying that, that means a lot. And the idea that this would be used in an orchestration class would be very cool. But yeah, no, that was probably the hardest was not to make it into a mini concerto that, you know, that it's a musical conversation between all the voices. It's just that one leads for a short amount of time.

[Aaron] Yes. So bravo to that in many respects. So moving on to the final segment of this show, I asked this very generously as I do with the other guests and you can take it however you want. What does composition, the compositional process and the music that you produce, what does it all mean to you?

[Michael] That's a really good question. I mean, I think the first thing I would say is not to be a broken record, right? But the musical argument presenting something in that vein. But I think, I think it's hard to like, that's where I'm at right now. But when I was much younger, it was very to tell a story programmatically and it has evolved and changed. I assume and hope that it will continue to evolve and change and grow and stuff. But for right now, use the composition, the work that I do, trying to reach at the essence of various emotional qualities in a way that will be understandable and approached not only necessarily programmatically as the case may be, but also in just an abstract sense that one can garner that feeling in a sense or whatever feeling that they may come from. But I hope that that will continue to grow and change and my understanding of it will grow and evolve as I continue to age.

[Aaron] Yes, of course, of course. That, you know, as you said, you've said similar things previously, but that makes sense. And so, as you're probably expecting, I'm going to throw you on the flip side, music theory. You've already, you know, music theory is fundamentally involved in things that you just said and you spoke a bit about your own relationship with that whole idea. But let's say more on an institutional academic classroom level. What are your opinions, thoughts, beliefs with music theory?

[Michael] I would say this, most importantly, that music theory is, and analysis in general, should be thought of creatively, I really feel. And that it's not just, I think, particularly in the beginning theory classes, we have a tendency, particularly when we're talking about parallel fifths and all of those things, that there are these rules that have to be followed and that there's a right way to analyze things in a sense. I want students to come away from it wanting to explore the music that they love, as I said earlier, the music that they love, in addition to maybe there's a few new things that they can listen to and appreciate a little bit more. And I also feel that we're doing students a disservice when we only are throwing them the war horses of the canon. There was something, I did my master's at James Madison University, so just a little shout out to, I worked there with a guy by the name of Dr. John Peterson. He was my supervisor. He actually, I believe he got his doctorate at Florida State, oddly enough. But one of the things that he talked about at the beginning of classes that I really loved was talking about, because we would look at all kinds of examples in the classroom, and we wouldn't look that much at, say, your Beethoven, your Mozart, those kinds of examples. And he would say, basically, trust me, all of the things we're talking about apply to those composers. You'll see them in your lessons. You'll see them there. We want to highlight other composers that have not, the marginalized composers that we don't typically see here. I promise that all the things we talk about apply to them. Like trust me. And I've always really liked that. And also, I think students really appreciate hearing and seeing the music that they relate to, the music that they listen to. Like you said, you listen to a bunch of pop coming in. So me standing up there and saying, ah, this Beethoven sonata is really wonderful. Check out this amazing use of the German augmented six chord. It's not something that's going to necessarily bring them in to the environment and think about it that way. The other thing I would say, along the lines of the whole gatekeeping issue and the, I don't know, being more welcoming and trying to make it more of an active experience and less so here are all the rules lecture and then go practice parallel fifths exercises for an hour and just instead having them do projects, do exercises where we are creating. Because that's really, I think the two go hand in hand. Music theory is there. Like I view it sort of coming after to sort of help us understand what the composers did. And so it should in turn help us kind of like a sound recipe build the, uh, build the, the cake or whatever that the music that we interact with. So those are three very broad opinions.

[Aaron] That's what we're looking for. Sound recipe, musical argument. You're really coming up with some good, good quotable phrases here. I really, I really liked that. And also to speak about, you know, just something I thought about when you were saying all that there have been times where I see other people not to, I'm not going to call out any students or anything, but seeing some of my graduate cohorts grading some of the part writing for some of their classes. And I think, uh, wow, you know, it's a shame this is part writing. I, I, I wished for their sake. It was a composition class because even though this is completely incorrect, it sounds really cool, but you know, it's a theory assignment. So not so right.

[Michael] That's such a hard thing. And that's something really hard, I think for the students too, to grapple with because I don't know how many times I've, I've said, this is a stylistic period that we are trying to understand. It is a stylistic period. Yes. There are many composers, myself included, who do some of the things we tell you not to do. Um, then we're just trying to understand the stylistic period. And then that begs the question, do we, you know, I'm not saying I have an answer to this. This is just a big question is do we, should we be spending as much time in a strict theory classroom for pre-service music professionals that are going to go out and teach beginning band on really understanding first species counterpoint. And that's a difficult question that I don't think has an easy answer. And it's never good to ask questions you don't know the answer to, but I'm going to ask it.

[Aaron] And I'm not going to answer because I don't have an answer either, but is it, uh, it's a good and important question to ponder. So Dr. Kahle, what's next for you?

[Michael] That's a good question. Um, as far as, you know, uh, as far as composing right now, I'm working on some other projects, actually the violist in this for this piece, um, I'm working on a duo for him of viola and oboe. Another, again, instrumentation I necessarily wouldn't think of right away, but I'm having a ton of fun with. And then, you know, you know, done with the doctor. Now it's time to find a job and it'll be a real adult, not be a student anymore.

[Aaron] Yes. Yes, of course. And so what would be the best way? Of course you will have a contributor page on our host website and contact information will be in the description of the episode wherever someone is listening to this, but what would be the best way for people to contact you with any questions, comments, commission requests, so on?

[Michael] Yeah. So the best place is either going to be Instagram, which is, and all of these, I'm sure will be linked below and in the page, but just to shout them out, MK Music. So Michael Kahle Music, MK Music on Instagram, as well as www.MKMusic.com, which is my website. Those are the, those are the two best places. There'll be contact forms on the website, or you can get in touch with me over at Instagram.

[Aaron] All right. And so I'm going to give the final word to you to say to the audience, if you had something general, specific, whatever you want to about music, music theory, composition, the whole industry, anything, what would you say to the listeners?

[Michael] If anything to take away from this, please, as you're listening to the music that you love, maybe take a few extra moments to figure out why you love it, what about it that you love, because at the end of the day, that's why we're all doing this. That's why we're doing theory. That's why we're doing composition. Think a little bit more about the music that we love and the impact that it has on us. So I guess that's what I would say.

[Aaron] Fully agreed. Fully agreed. Thank you, Dr. Michael Kahle, and congratulations. Have fun at your graduation this coming weekend. But of course, by Monday, we will have Dr. Michael Kahle fully hooded and graduated. Congratulations on that. And thank you very much for coming on to the Theorist Composer Collaboration to share your piece 'We are the stories we've been told".

[Michael] Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Have a great week.

[Aaron] Hello, this is Aaron again, and I want to thank you for listening to this episode of the Theorist Composer Collaboration. Another big thank you to Dr. Michael Kahle for joining the program alongside his composition, We are the stories we've been told. In the description of this episode, regardless of the platform you are on, there will be links to Dr. Kahle's website, email, and social media, and I would appreciate it if you could show him some support. His information will also be readily compiled on the corresponding contributor page on our host website as well. I had a great time with Dr. Kahle on the program, and to be quite honest, I was a little nervous for this interview. And that is because Dr. Kahle is the first person featured on here that I met exclusively through the creation and development of the TCC podcast. Everyone else I have known as a colleague or acquaintance at some point or the other, so it definitely felt like a step up into the real world with the privilege of having Dr. Kahle on the podcast. We are the stories we've been told is, if I may say, a wicked cool piece with a collaborative story that, I mean, if you're a composer or a performer, then you certainly understand that the circumstances of this collaboration is both incredibly rare and special. Thank you again to Dr. Michael Kahle for coming onto the show and for sharing his piece, We are the stories we've been told. For further updates and notifications on the Theorist Composer Collaboration, make sure to subscribe to our email listing on the homepage of our host website and follow our Instagram and Facebook pages. Relevant links are in the description. In addition to the usual platforms that you can find the TCC, you can now add iHeartRadio to the list as well. Our entire catalog of episodes are now streaming live on iHeartRadio both on the website and on the app. In total, you can listen to future episodes through our host website, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and YouTube. So make sure you subscribe to the platform of your choosing. Again, all relevant links are in the description. TCC episodes are posted weekly on Mondays and don't miss our weekly blog posts, which go live a few days after a new episode is added. I am also very excited to promote that our next episode is going to be a little bit different than what has been featured so far on this podcast. The next featured composer is Lucy from the group Violincia, where we will be discussing their debut album, Nihilara. I am happy and excited to expand the catalog of episodes and the scope of our musical discussions to something outside the walls of academia. Nihilara is a phenomenal album, and Violincia is an alternative post-rock group with a unique sound and you won't want to miss the conversation that I had with Lucy for the next episode. Until then, this is Aaron, and thank you for joining the TCC.