As per usual, I spent part of my Friday looking through the new music releases. To my surprise, I saw something from William Finn. It’s not unheard of for composers to release music posthumously, yet something made me initially skeptical. Was Once Every Hundred Years just a show I had never heard of? A compilation show of his best material? Something felt odd about seeing this live album dedicated to a song cycle of material based on the COVID-19 pandemic. Few artists would even think to dig into our collective psyche from the time, yet here was the man behind such masterpieces as Falsettos and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee giving it the old college try.
With nothing but enthusiasm, I pressed play and was relieved that Finn’s work, with the help of Danny Ursetti, came to life thanks to the involvement of singers Demond Green, Jeff Blumenkrantz, and Zachary Noah Piser during a live taping at 54 Below. As with every novelty of hearing new songs from a songwriter you consider great, I couldn’t help but immediately lock in with the presentation. Finn was not missing a step. His humor and simple lyrics knew how to dig into complicated emotions. More than that, he knew how to capture the essence of dread during a time most of us have spent trying to forget.
The beauty of a song cycle is that it’s not totally indebted to a proper dramatic staging. If done right, you could envision the action around the songs, and I’d say this is a good example of that. Admittedly, it means that some characterization is anemic, but the more significant arcs get their shine, capturing the more human elements of life. One of the main hooks, of course, is a gay relationship attempting to survive the perils of a meaningless existence, where seeing each other reminds them of dread. Any affair is likely more done out of boredom than disconnection, making the slow reveals all the more telling of deeper conflicts and how maybe this whole act is irrational.
Having a live audience also allows for the subtext to be better understood. This is especially true on early favorite, “Verse, Verse, Chorus,” where everybody recounts the cyclical repetitions of pandemic life and how it’s halted any sense of progress in their lives. They consider a verse to be more muted while a chorus is triumphant. Life in 2020 was waiting for the chorus, and the underwhelming play on these two words makes the song more poignant even as the audience laughs at the tensions getting worse underneath the deadpan delivery. There are no bar mitzvahs. Everyone is trapped at home. Their goals in life might never happen now. Finn doesn’t make the mistake of presumption here and instead allows for the unknown to be the punchline, as if arguing the psychological burden has never fully left for some.
Despite being a time when despair was an everyday occurrence, Finn has a way of highlighting the absurdity within the coping. Like his best work, he zooms in on figures trying to distract themselves from a greater angst. The easiest to sympathize with is found in “Sudoku,” where Finn applies just too much whimsy and dysfunctionality to one man’s bathroom visits. To pass the time, he does a sudoku. Only it seems like he’s taking forever in there and thus has run through all of his material. He dedicates a later verse away from his toilet humor explaining how he copes with his obsession reaching a potential end, and it’s downright Seussian in its scheme. There are also segments called “Piano Etude” where somebody boasts about learning the piano to seem more impressive. It’s unclear if the joke is that he’s succeeded or failed, but Finn’s ability to ground it as a third act reveal is inspired.
Another reason this song cycle might seem a bit odd is that I haven’t been exposed to Finn working in a “contemporary” sense. Sure, Falsettos comments on the ongoing AIDS crisis and Spelling Bee is continually updated, but I’m not sure he’s ever name-dropped as many signifiers as he does in “Why This Pandemic Is Hell,” where he turns the initial frenzy around misinformation into a madcap ensemble number about every problem in the world being blamed on different people, including the president. Again, the beauty of this musical is how easily it finds greater ideas with minimal turns of phrase. Not one thing makes 2020 “hell,” as they say. By the end of the song, it may be everything and the person singing next to them onstage.
It’s also staggering to hear the range of ways in which mortality is discussed. “My Girlfriend’s Dog” is worthy of being considered alongside Finn’s funniest, darkest songs thanks to a premise that emphasizes his keen eye for tragedy and coincidence to ruin each other. Without going into everything, it becomes uproarious to hear how they try to make sense of an absurd situation. The tracks “Bob Ullmann” and “Michael Mandell” reflect on death more seriously, and the subdued tone allows for the show to adjust from its zany numbers into something less funny. For example, the latter finds Piser wondering if a friend from long ago is still living. There’s no resolution besides a forced sense of optimism, believing that one or two things are going right in an unjust world.
Admittedly, the downside of song cycles is that the ambiguity sometimes works against a fluid experience. Even if every song helps to build a picture, there’s the risk of being too trapped in the premise’s banality to the point that the joke is repurposed as self-reflective failure. The truest song, “I Watch TV,” might be the biggest victim of this as it’s already clear that people cope with distraction. Even so, the immobility is the point, where any greater engagement is too much effort. Still, it’s an odd piece to bring back for the closing harmonies on “I’m Alive” given how late it’s brought up and, from a distance, doesn’t really enhance the story.
Finn was always the master of exploring characters on the brink of a mental breakdown. While this world acknowledges the severity of COVID-19, it’s less about the virus and more about surviving in a dangerous world that’s also grown more antisocial. Finn recognizes the need for human connection throughout these songs, and yet he knows to embrace deflection and distance. This isn’t exactly a slapstick comedy no matter how much “Sudoku” convinces you, but it layers on the humor with a sense of absence underneath. The joke is how much they need normalcy despite, at the same time, being afraid of the people most likely to give it to them.
If I’m being honest, one of the greatest disappointments of the middle 2020s is the lack of acknowledgement of the pandemic’s impact. Even if “Once Every Hundred Years” is more concerned with the visceral immediacy of those days, I wish art would be more willing to recognize that something permanently changed. In some ways, a lot of the aftermath is seen in how we relate to each other and, in my opinion, our codependence on artificial intelligence to give us company. When that was our only outlet for so long, it’s easy to see where the detachment and addiction come from. If nothing else, Finn captures that jittery need to satisfy an irregular hunger while never consuming the right things.
It’s funny because of how relatable Finn was even up until his passing. When you look at Spelling Bee, you see less the archetypes he’s designed than their struggles to be accepted through this arbitrary act of luck. It’s no different from the start or end of his career, where you try to be active in the present, trying to make sense of the circumstances you’ve been dealt. It’s unlikely that anyone got through 2020 without having some frustration of their lives not being “productive.” At the end of the show, as everything culminates, Finn notices that everything he’s sung about, whether it be piano playing or Sudoku or friendship, has all defined what gave us meaning. As the final track would suggest, it’s important to remember that, for everything that happened, I’m alive. So much has changed, yet I made it through. That’s reason alone to celebrate.
Personally, I doubt that this show will develop the reputation of William Finn’s greatest work. Even if it still has the brevity and success of his style, I’m wondering how much people will want to hear concerts about this time, even if this one captures it on a level I didn’t think was possible. Even so, it’s nice to know that in his final years, he was still spry enough to give us one last reason to think about life while laughing. It may have come at a time of extreme inconvenience, but the premise is still fitting for one of his musicals. Thankfully, we don’t have to imagine what that might sound like. We got the real thing right here.
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