Surely your wife was nervous about you sleeping only 4 hours every 2 days?The whole book is pretty fascinating. Sometimes you forget that there are people behind the fancy consumer technology that we encounter on a daily basis. There's no archetypal story that informs the lives of each interviewee. Some of them had a vision and made a calculated plan to achieve it. Others thought it would be cool to have their own company and worried about the details as they went. Nevertheless, they share similar passions and drives to create. Really, not that different from composers in many respects.
She was. She got me one of those fold-out futons that would fold under my desk. She didn't like me sleeping on the floor.
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
September 20, 2007
Composers and the People Who Love Them
This quote is for anyone who thought that composers/musicians/artists had the market cornered on considerate spouses/significant others. It's from Founders at Work, a book of interviews with founders of technology startups:
July 03, 2007
The New
The latest issue of the New Yorker has brought us a taste of Alex Ross's upcoming history of modern music, via an article on Sibelius. One of the threads running through the article is the question of conservative-or-radical that dogged Sibelius throughout his career. To me, this question is one of the slimiest remnants of modernism that the (classical) music world can't seem to shake itself from. The people must know: is the music "new"?
This question deals strictly with language. Who cares if you're saying something simple-minded with your music; all that matters is that you find a shiny package to put it in. Yes, there are situations where the package does say something notable. The expressionism of early Schoenberg (for example) projects a unique worldview which is stimulating to parse. My beef is with people who write off composers based on their sound without considering any other aspects of the music.
Alex's take on Sibelius ends with the suggestion there are other composers out there with unrecognized radical streaks. There's something weird about this whole game. The whole, is Sibelius a conservative symphonist or a forefather of spectralism? Do Schoenberg's 12-tone compositions point the way to a new conception of music or are they an idiosyncratic rehash of Baroque counterpoint? Peter Garland came up with the term "radical consonance" to describe his own music. And we composers claim we're so misunderstood...
One of my favorite music history books is the Allan Atlas book on the Renaissance from Norton. Atlas didn't try to force the music into an all-encompassing narrative. His book basically had the feel of "this thing happened, then this thing, and then this random thing that no one saw coming..." Kyle Gann got close to this approach in his American music book, but he stuck mostly to what he felt was the aesthetic cutting-edge of each generation.
This issue is not limited to the classical world either. When I took a class in the analysis of rock music, my professor claimed that the novelty of New Wave was superficial and that the real innovations of the time were going on in so-called corporate rock.
My question: what would conversations about music be like if people weren't so obsessed with the macho oneupsmanship of "innovation," if instead of separating composers based on stylistic traits, we talked about the commonalities of their humanistic pursuits? What does it say that we're so hung up on these particular notions?
This question deals strictly with language. Who cares if you're saying something simple-minded with your music; all that matters is that you find a shiny package to put it in. Yes, there are situations where the package does say something notable. The expressionism of early Schoenberg (for example) projects a unique worldview which is stimulating to parse. My beef is with people who write off composers based on their sound without considering any other aspects of the music.
Alex's take on Sibelius ends with the suggestion there are other composers out there with unrecognized radical streaks. There's something weird about this whole game. The whole, is Sibelius a conservative symphonist or a forefather of spectralism? Do Schoenberg's 12-tone compositions point the way to a new conception of music or are they an idiosyncratic rehash of Baroque counterpoint? Peter Garland came up with the term "radical consonance" to describe his own music. And we composers claim we're so misunderstood...
One of my favorite music history books is the Allan Atlas book on the Renaissance from Norton. Atlas didn't try to force the music into an all-encompassing narrative. His book basically had the feel of "this thing happened, then this thing, and then this random thing that no one saw coming..." Kyle Gann got close to this approach in his American music book, but he stuck mostly to what he felt was the aesthetic cutting-edge of each generation.
This issue is not limited to the classical world either. When I took a class in the analysis of rock music, my professor claimed that the novelty of New Wave was superficial and that the real innovations of the time were going on in so-called corporate rock.
My question: what would conversations about music be like if people weren't so obsessed with the macho oneupsmanship of "innovation," if instead of separating composers based on stylistic traits, we talked about the commonalities of their humanistic pursuits? What does it say that we're so hung up on these particular notions?
February 25, 2007
Tenney on Form
A second use of [form] that is, again often encountered in musical discussions is illustrated by such terms of "sonata-form," "ABA-form," "rondo-form," etc., which refer to specific formal types, generally associated with particular styles or historical periods. And although each of these formal types may be characterized by certain intrinsic formal features, common to all examples of the type, and constituting the original basis for classification, they tend to represent, in each case, not so much a form, but a formula, and are not, therefore relevant to the problems I am concerned with here.James Tenney, Meta (+) Hodos
I read a description of this book somewhere that was along the lines of "the most important 20th century theory book that no one's read" (though a search has revealed that someone is sharing a copy via BitTorrent). It is, indeed, pretty kickass, particularly considering it was his Master's Thesis. Whereas music theory tends to posit abstract structures and work towards the score and the listening experience, Tenney starts with the listening experience and works in the other direction. He tries to articulate how people process sounds, what gets us to group them together and divide them out. He does not assume that people hear a piece with a set of structural expectations. When he makes analogies, the vocabulary of visual art is used frequently ("figure" and "ground" as terms for structural importance, etc.).
As you might guess, American experimentalists provide most of the musical examples. Ives and Varèse get the most attention, but early Schoenberg (yay op11) and Webern make brief appearances. The analytical highlight for me was the discussion of how dynamics shape the opening of Density 21.5, implying a rhythm in an otherwise "static" pitch (way more interesting than aggregate completion).
Some Tenney links:
Daniel Wolf's very thorough review of Meta (+) Hodos
"John Cage and the Theory of Harmony"
Tenney Bibliography
Tenney Slideshow with "Raggedy Ann"
November 07, 2006
Feldman Explains It All
At least, that's how I feel when I read a Morton Feldman interview. Every one of them seems unique and uniquely insightful, so it was hard to resist checking out a copy of Morton Feldman Says when I saw it on the library's new books shelf. The material is mostly reprints from the collection of interviews on Chris Villars's Feldman site (Villars edited the volume).
The value in the book isn't so much in unpublished material, but in the extra scholarship that went into putting it together. All the interviews have been outfitted with footnotes, so if you aren't familiar with all the minor figures of the 1950s New York art scene, you'll get a few lines on who's being mentioned. If an allusion is made to an instrumentation choice in an unnamed musical piece, Villars tells you which piece.
A brief chronology gets into Feldman's personal life in spots, something that most writers gloss over when discussing him. Perhaps I shouldn't complain for the usual glossing over, because it would probably be more annoying to have people try to make tenuous connections between his music and his personal life. Anyway, it's nice to have a basic reference of the "what he was doing/where he was doing it" type of information.
Other useful bits in the volume are photographs (including one of Feldman with his mother, who he looks more than a little like) and some score samples. In general, the book's combination of chronology and photos provides a fuller picture of Feldman-the-man (versus -the-musician) than most sources get at. It doesn't strike me as indispensible in the same way Give My Regards to Eighth Street is, but most Feldman afficionados would probably like having a copy on their bookshelves.
That book is valuable for many reasons. His writing, with its distinct blend of humor and pentrating observations, is about as unique as his music. However, what really makes it essential is Feldman's efforts at answering a question of concern any kind of artist: you're at your desk, implements of the trade in hand. Now what the hell do you do?
Don't get me wrong. A solid technical piece on "so you think this music is intuitively assembled, but really it's highly structured and organic" is invigorating in its own way. There is something particularly probing, though, about Feldman writing about "concentration," or why he only worked only in pen, or the time when he finally found the perfect chair. It's a view of composition not fixated on the end product, but as a process that is a kind of performance.
Last year, I wrote about perhaps why composers are so guarded about these issues. I still feel the same way, that the act of writing music is a very personal process, one that other people shouldn't necessarily be privy to. With that in mind, Feldman's writings on compositional process strike me now as courageous in a certain way.
The value in the book isn't so much in unpublished material, but in the extra scholarship that went into putting it together. All the interviews have been outfitted with footnotes, so if you aren't familiar with all the minor figures of the 1950s New York art scene, you'll get a few lines on who's being mentioned. If an allusion is made to an instrumentation choice in an unnamed musical piece, Villars tells you which piece.
A brief chronology gets into Feldman's personal life in spots, something that most writers gloss over when discussing him. Perhaps I shouldn't complain for the usual glossing over, because it would probably be more annoying to have people try to make tenuous connections between his music and his personal life. Anyway, it's nice to have a basic reference of the "what he was doing/where he was doing it" type of information.
Other useful bits in the volume are photographs (including one of Feldman with his mother, who he looks more than a little like) and some score samples. In general, the book's combination of chronology and photos provides a fuller picture of Feldman-the-man (versus -the-musician) than most sources get at. It doesn't strike me as indispensible in the same way Give My Regards to Eighth Street is, but most Feldman afficionados would probably like having a copy on their bookshelves.
That book is valuable for many reasons. His writing, with its distinct blend of humor and pentrating observations, is about as unique as his music. However, what really makes it essential is Feldman's efforts at answering a question of concern any kind of artist: you're at your desk, implements of the trade in hand. Now what the hell do you do?
Don't get me wrong. A solid technical piece on "so you think this music is intuitively assembled, but really it's highly structured and organic" is invigorating in its own way. There is something particularly probing, though, about Feldman writing about "concentration," or why he only worked only in pen, or the time when he finally found the perfect chair. It's a view of composition not fixated on the end product, but as a process that is a kind of performance.
Last year, I wrote about perhaps why composers are so guarded about these issues. I still feel the same way, that the act of writing music is a very personal process, one that other people shouldn't necessarily be privy to. With that in mind, Feldman's writings on compositional process strike me now as courageous in a certain way.
September 08, 2006
Musicking
What we need to keep in mind is that those taking part in performances of different kinds are looking for different kinds of relationships, and we should not project the ideals of one kind of performance onto another. Any performance, and that includes a symphony concert, should be judged finally on its success in bringing into existence for as long as it lasts a set of relationships that those taking part feel to be ideal and in enabling those taking part to explore, affirm, and celebrate those relationships. Only those taking part will know for sure what is their nature.from Musicking, by Christopher Small
I can't remember the last time I've felt like I needed to lie down after reading a book. "Why do people do music?" is the broad and non-trivial question asked by Small. Its provocative nature comes mostly from its formulation: do rather than like, listen to, play, etc. He presents music not as a thing, but as an activity in which composer, performer, and listener play equal roles. It is a ritual where the ideal relationships of a community are lived out before its participants. The symphony orchestra is used as the main example.
Anyone prone to engaging in "whither classical music?" debates really should read this book.
In other news, Zoilus has a lovely round-up of conflicts in copyright law brought on by the "digital age."
June 05, 2006
Songlines
In theory, at least, the whole of Australia could be read as a musical score. There was hardly a rock or creek in the country that could not or had not been sung. One should perhaps visualise the Songlines as a spaghetti of Illiads and Odysseys, writhing this way and that, in which every 'episode' was readable in terms of geology.Bruce Chatwin, Songlines.
...
It was one thing to persuade a surveyor that a heap of boulders were the eggs of the Rainbow Snake, or a lump of reddish sandstone was the liver of a speared kangaroo. It was something else to convince him that a featureless stretch of gravel was the musical equivalent of Beethoven's Opus 111.
By singing the world into existence, he said, the Ancestors had been poets in the original sense of poesis, meaning 'creation'. No Aboriginal could conceive that the created world was in any way imperfect. His religious life had a single aim: to keep the land the way it was and should be. The man who went 'Walkabout' was making a ritual journey. He trod in the footprints of his Ancestor. He sang the Ancestor's stanzas without changing a word or note — and so recreated the Creation.
April 07, 2006
Recent Reading
I think it's just a coincidence that I read Sexual Personae (Camille Paglia) and Opera, or the Undoing of Women (Catherine Clément) at the same time, but they ended up pairing very well together. Both of them discuss the sexual forces that motivate art (the art itself and its creation). They both share the pretense that they are stepping back and taking a broader look at the work they are considering than most other commentators. Clément sees misogyny from her vantage point. Lots of it. Paglia finds misogyny, but also transvestism, polyamory, vampirism, and an assortment of other behaviors that you probably don't discuss in most lit. surveys or music history classes.
To Clément, art is more or less a pissing ground for bitter, insecure men. Paglia sees a battleground for the irrational forces that society was meant to guard against. For her, misogyny is a fact of life. She isn't rushing to get the bumper stickers on her car, but she states that it's basically the reason Western civilization and culture exists. If women were in charge, we'd still be living in grass huts.
In case you haven't guessed, I found Paglia's arguments more compelling. They weren't always the most well-documented (many of her explanations boiled down to "because I'm Italian"), but when measured against my own experiences in and outside of art, they made the most sense. Clément seemed to be the truly embittered one, interminably pissed off that the operas she loved as a child turned out to mean more than she thought they did.
Perhaps less contentious ground was covered in Music Downtown, Kyle Gann's collected criticism from the Village Voice. Danny Felsenfeld did a thorough write-up for NewMusicBox on why unabashedly subjective criticism is a Good Thing, so I don't need to repeat what he already said so well. I only wanted to comment on one of the book's recurring topics. "Imagism" is Kyle's term for music that presents sonic images that stick into the listener's memory. It is a device not tied to a particular aesthetic movement: Fate knocking at the door of Beethoven's Fifth, the pure G major triads that occasionally surface in the "Thoreau" mvt. of the Concord Sonata, Stravinsky's instrumentation for the cadenzas in his Concerto for Piano and Winds (he doesn't recognize Debussy or Ligeti for their image-making abilities, but that's one feature of their music that's always stuck in my mind). Part of his presentation of the idea is that images help listeners immensely in making their way through a piece and that they're sorely lacking from Uptown music.
Feldman is cited as a preeminent "imagist," but in the process, Kyle makes an odd injunction of his Jewishness: "Within white culture, perhaps only a Jewish composer could have pulled off such a feat [reintroducing images to music]; not a hyperrationalist Jew like Babbitt, but a Talmudic mystic with respect for the unutterable" (263). Though Jews are "overrepresented" in music, Jews are less present in the visual arts. Kyle says that Christianity banished pagan images from its practices, though the stereotype of churches in my mind includes stained glass and visual depictions of the life of Jesus. I've never seen much visual art in synagogues, but I've seen more than one Torah proudly displayed for its highly disciplined caligraphy. We love words.
When you get into Jewish mysticism, as viewers of Pi may recall, words start to gain tremendous power. The golem of Prague was brought to life by writing emet (truth) on his forehead. Erasing the first letter changes the word to met (death) and puts the golem to rest. To me, Feldman's declaration of sound as the deity in his life and his desire to not "push the sounds around" are indicative of this deep respect of the power of language. Though perhaps Kyle was right to link this part of Feldman's style with his Jewishness, I'm not sure that the connection he made was quite complete. Sorry if it seems like I'm quibbling with technicalities here, but I think that's a Jewish thing, too.
One more point of comparison, on Feldman's "Jewishness":
To Clément, art is more or less a pissing ground for bitter, insecure men. Paglia sees a battleground for the irrational forces that society was meant to guard against. For her, misogyny is a fact of life. She isn't rushing to get the bumper stickers on her car, but she states that it's basically the reason Western civilization and culture exists. If women were in charge, we'd still be living in grass huts.
In case you haven't guessed, I found Paglia's arguments more compelling. They weren't always the most well-documented (many of her explanations boiled down to "because I'm Italian"), but when measured against my own experiences in and outside of art, they made the most sense. Clément seemed to be the truly embittered one, interminably pissed off that the operas she loved as a child turned out to mean more than she thought they did.
Perhaps less contentious ground was covered in Music Downtown, Kyle Gann's collected criticism from the Village Voice. Danny Felsenfeld did a thorough write-up for NewMusicBox on why unabashedly subjective criticism is a Good Thing, so I don't need to repeat what he already said so well. I only wanted to comment on one of the book's recurring topics. "Imagism" is Kyle's term for music that presents sonic images that stick into the listener's memory. It is a device not tied to a particular aesthetic movement: Fate knocking at the door of Beethoven's Fifth, the pure G major triads that occasionally surface in the "Thoreau" mvt. of the Concord Sonata, Stravinsky's instrumentation for the cadenzas in his Concerto for Piano and Winds (he doesn't recognize Debussy or Ligeti for their image-making abilities, but that's one feature of their music that's always stuck in my mind). Part of his presentation of the idea is that images help listeners immensely in making their way through a piece and that they're sorely lacking from Uptown music.
Feldman is cited as a preeminent "imagist," but in the process, Kyle makes an odd injunction of his Jewishness: "Within white culture, perhaps only a Jewish composer could have pulled off such a feat [reintroducing images to music]; not a hyperrationalist Jew like Babbitt, but a Talmudic mystic with respect for the unutterable" (263). Though Jews are "overrepresented" in music, Jews are less present in the visual arts. Kyle says that Christianity banished pagan images from its practices, though the stereotype of churches in my mind includes stained glass and visual depictions of the life of Jesus. I've never seen much visual art in synagogues, but I've seen more than one Torah proudly displayed for its highly disciplined caligraphy. We love words.
When you get into Jewish mysticism, as viewers of Pi may recall, words start to gain tremendous power. The golem of Prague was brought to life by writing emet (truth) on his forehead. Erasing the first letter changes the word to met (death) and puts the golem to rest. To me, Feldman's declaration of sound as the deity in his life and his desire to not "push the sounds around" are indicative of this deep respect of the power of language. Though perhaps Kyle was right to link this part of Feldman's style with his Jewishness, I'm not sure that the connection he made was quite complete. Sorry if it seems like I'm quibbling with technicalities here, but I think that's a Jewish thing, too.
One more point of comparison, on Feldman's "Jewishness":
Once there was a gentile who came before Shammai, and said to him: "Convert me on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot." Shammai pushed him aside with the measuring stick he was holding. The same fellow came before Hillel, and Hillel converted him, saying: "That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it."vs.
My past experience was not to "meddle" with the material, but use my concentration as a guide to what might transpire. I mentioned this to Stockhausen once when he had asked me what my secret was. "I don't push the sounds around." Stockhausen mulled this over, and asked: "Not even a little bit?"
November 19, 2005
Peter Garland: Americas
A few things are worth saying about this set of essays. Garland has a couple loose histories of the use of percussion and the piano in American music, but the majority of the collection is devoted to his journals and appreciations of fellow artists. The writers and composers featured often rejected the mainstream culture of the 20th century for a life of wandering and solitude (Paul Bowles got a pretty extensive write-up).
A number of these people, Harry Partch in particular, also tried to rekindle an animistic attitude towards religion (or as Garland would argue, religion in general). Garland feels quite strongly that religion died in the 20th century and that our collective quality of life has suffered for it. In order to revive the kind of religion that Garland thinks everyone should have, a prominent spiritual leader would have to be embedded in local communities. This person would help mediate social relations and in general make sure everyone was happy.
The key is being embedded in the community. Garland's identity as a lonely wanderer is a bit at odds with this. The tone I read in his essays suggested that he was going to set down his ideas, but that they'd be understood and implemented at a later time (beyond his lifetime?). This attitude just screams Romanticism. He's of course entitled to his opinions and how he wants to express them, but I can't help but feel he could find a means of expression more in tune with his thoughts.
Also, I would question whether or not there are other institutions today that accomplish the same social functions as his conception of religion would. When someone posts a discussion topic over at the Composers Forum or any other online forum, doesn't that act serve to bring people together and increase their understanding of one another? I'm also not sure how religious figures today fail at this role. If anything, the rabbis and ministers I've come in contact with seem more concerned at doing this kind of service than anything else. Think of the character of Eccles in Rabbit, Run. He puts an incredible amount of energy into trying to straighten Rabbit out.
The thing I really took away from the book was a better feeling of the tradition running through the American experimental tradition. It's easy to portray Partch, Cage, Cowell et al as only being united in their defiant attitudes, but Garland shows there's more to them than that. There's a full-page headshot of Varèse with his trademark I-could-kill-you-just-by-thinking-it look, but there's another shot showing him sitting next to Cowell, who's playing the shakuhachi for him. Garland shows that even though the styles of these composers are quite individualized, they influenced each other quite a bit in the development of their ideas.
A number of these people, Harry Partch in particular, also tried to rekindle an animistic attitude towards religion (or as Garland would argue, religion in general). Garland feels quite strongly that religion died in the 20th century and that our collective quality of life has suffered for it. In order to revive the kind of religion that Garland thinks everyone should have, a prominent spiritual leader would have to be embedded in local communities. This person would help mediate social relations and in general make sure everyone was happy.
The key is being embedded in the community. Garland's identity as a lonely wanderer is a bit at odds with this. The tone I read in his essays suggested that he was going to set down his ideas, but that they'd be understood and implemented at a later time (beyond his lifetime?). This attitude just screams Romanticism. He's of course entitled to his opinions and how he wants to express them, but I can't help but feel he could find a means of expression more in tune with his thoughts.
Also, I would question whether or not there are other institutions today that accomplish the same social functions as his conception of religion would. When someone posts a discussion topic over at the Composers Forum or any other online forum, doesn't that act serve to bring people together and increase their understanding of one another? I'm also not sure how religious figures today fail at this role. If anything, the rabbis and ministers I've come in contact with seem more concerned at doing this kind of service than anything else. Think of the character of Eccles in Rabbit, Run. He puts an incredible amount of energy into trying to straighten Rabbit out.
The thing I really took away from the book was a better feeling of the tradition running through the American experimental tradition. It's easy to portray Partch, Cage, Cowell et al as only being united in their defiant attitudes, but Garland shows there's more to them than that. There's a full-page headshot of Varèse with his trademark I-could-kill-you-just-by-thinking-it look, but there's another shot showing him sitting next to Cowell, who's playing the shakuhachi for him. Garland shows that even though the styles of these composers are quite individualized, they influenced each other quite a bit in the development of their ideas.
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