Chiseling Away at the Iceberg

My mother, ever patient with my musical interests, will listen to just about anything I want to play for her. She deserves much credit, for she still keeps an open ear even after hearing some pieces that had her question whether I was even playing music for her (Bartok and Carter she no like). Even after giving her what seems like a minor education in modern music, she has only cared for the following:

• Ives (admittedly his more traditionally tonal works), in particular his Second Symphony

As a card carrying Ivesian, I can hardly complain with her taste, but it is still a pretty limited list. Much to my surprise, a new member was recently admitted to this exclusive club: Rzewski's North American Ballads. What was completely unexpected was her reasoning. She wasn't caught by the folk tunes (though given her tastes, you would suspect she's a closet populist), but by the counterpoint in “Down By the Riverside.” There's an extended bit towards the end which sounds like two pianos going at once. This, she thought, was really great. I was surprised, mainly because it was the point of greatest dissonance in the piece. My initial expectation was that she'd enjoy the simple beginning and simply tolerate the rest.

If there's a “lesson” in this, it's not that people will like new music if you cram it down their throats enough (though I think this is the first time my mom's been drawn to a piece for an essentially intellectual satisfaction). My guess is that she liked the music because it met her on territory she was comfortable in. Though she hasn't touched the instrument in a while, my mom took piano lessons throughout the early part of her life. Though Rzewski's style of virtuosity was certainly new to her, she was able to relate it her knowledge of the instrument. Instead of being repelled by his style, it intrigued her.

I guess this situation speaks more to developing musical literacy than a taste for the new. Whenever non-musical friends ask me to “teach them about music,” I just tell them to listen to a lot of music (with carefully curated suggestions of course ;)). It's possible to appreciate music just out of the pleasure certain sounds bring, but a deeper appreciation comes from picking up on the practices that have persisted throughout its history. Like with any other language, the only way to gain fluency is through immersion.

My mom's knowledge of idiomatic piano writing spelled the difference, so far as I can tell, between her liking the piece and it being another instance of me playing unseemly “sounds” for her. I don't have any high expectations about further emendations to the list above, but it's nice to see that it wasn't as closed a book as I thought it was.

No Words

Recent library trip brought back my first Joan Baez album, Diamonds and Rust. I have no idea if this is a "proper" starting point for her music, but I don't think it matters. I've listened to the album several times already and have barely been able to follow the words; the richness of her voice takes over my ear. It's like one of those glasses of red wine that your tongue touches more than it tastes. I don't think the tone quality of an instrument has captivated me this much before. The Joan/Joni duet at the end is just icing on the cake.

Elaboration

I'm a big fan of examining the preliminary work that leads up to the completion of a creative project. It was a pleasant surprise to find a little collection of that work not for music or painting, but a computer program. Sitting at the bottom of this interview is a chronologically arranged set of sketches and mock-ups for Delicious Library, a media library program for the Mac. I'm stuck behind a PC keyboard, so I haven't had a chance to try it out myself, but by all accounts it's sensitively designed with a fine eye towards detail. It's terrific to get a peek at the creative process behind it.

Some Good Record Store Advice

"Would you say that this is political music?"
"No, there's not a lot of screaming about Che Guevara or anything like that."

Complexity

There have been a couple posts (no permalink, see post "Quotes") made recently on complexity. One of the defenses of yer complex high modernism is that life is complicated, so we must make music to match its complications. This is a weak defense because it entangles two unrelated issues: complexity of language and complexity of expression. Consider Milton Babbitt's extremely florid prose. His baroque diction takes some adjusting to when you sit down to read one of his articles, but after you become acclimated to it, it reads fairly smoothly. One of the reasons, I think, is that what he's saying isn't all that complicated. His style sets your mind on the defensive, ready to receive a long stream of thorny thoughts. There's some confusion when you realize that stream's not going to show up, but afterwards you can almost coast through his text. The elaborate constructions provide a kind of cushioning for your eyes. On the other end of the spectrum is Morton Feldman's prose style, where the nonchalant delivery belies the knottiness of his thoughts.

The danger is assuming that these two elements, language and expression, are tied. While the type of language you use does indeed express something, it is not the core of the expression. My perspective is that it provides a context for the expression itself. Having to acclimate to a foreign language puts your mind in a certain state, which can assist in the ultimate expression sought by the composer. I would hesitate to say that all of yer complex high modernism needs to slim down a little, because the overall expression would change significantly.

The rotten side to this is when language replaces expression. It's rotten not because nothing is expressed ("We have nothing to say and we are saying it - that's poetry."), but because it veers away from art into mere intellectual flattery. Listening can too easily become a game of connecting syntactic dots, picking out allusions, and affirming coherency. An overly complex language can, ironically, encourage intellectualizing and simplifying. While these are certainly elements in the modern world, whether they are elements that one wishes to express is a question left to the composer.

July 4th Heads-Up

WHRB gets a decent bit of attention in the blogging community for their comprehensive orgies. Tomorrow, in honor of Independence Day, their programming from 1-10pm EDT will be devoted to American music (how rare!). In the past, they've aired unusual selections like a few art songs/ad jingles for toothpaste and Virgil Thomson's ballet Filling Station. They don't touch the American experimental tradition much (the on-air announcement for the program yesterday mentioned the inclusion of modern composers like Piston and Harbison), but it's definitely an event worth tuning /streaming into. If only they didn't need a holiday as an excuse to play so much American music.

Feldman and Cassavetes

When drawing comparisons to other media, Morton Feldman's music often shows up next to the plays of Samuel Beckett. Not only do their minimal landscapes resonate with each other, but Feldman was quick to compare their work, even citing the ease with which the two got along. However, for the purpose of investigating his musical innovations, it would make sense to compare his achievements with the films of John Cassavetes (this link is maintained by Ray Carney, who does for independent film what Kyle Gann does for Downtown music).

Cassavetes's movies are marked by inarticulate characters, long takes, and rough technique. Feldman's music reveals its maker in at least one way, its myopic interest in each sound. Its striking sensuality often wins fans, even if they admittedly can't make any sense of the music. The visceral rawness of Cassavetes's work usually isn't as endearing.

Audiences often find a “rambling” quality in their work. Cassavetes let scenes run as long as he felt necessary. The suicide scene in A Woman Under the Influence is unrelenting. Similarly, Piano and String Quartet plays on each fragment for calmly extended periods. The proportions of both works are nothing like a Hollywood drama or a Classical sonata. Cassavetes's insistence on honest emotions led him to eschew simplified narratives. Feldman similarly refused to “push the sounds around.” These unusual aesthetics obscure the presence of form, but they don't deny it. Though detractors may insist their work is formless, both derive forms from the characteristics of their content.

Opening Night, at its surface, is the story of a new play moving from New Haven to its Broadway premiere. The production faces problems as its lead must reconcile her own problems with aging with those of her character. Tracing this idea more closely, one finds women's reactions to getting older to be central to the film. Viewed through this lens, just about every scene provides a different perspective on this issue. No age group is left unexamined, from the 18-year-old fan who gets killed to the 65-year-old playwright. While the film's pacing has a certain “lumpiness” that can turn off a lot of viewers, its attention to this central problem is basically unwavering.

Palais de Mari focuses on spare pitches, slowly drawn out of the instrument. The near-constant pedal draws attention to their decay, making the sounds feel both frozen in time and slipping away from it (an elegant depiction of the palace ruins of the title). In m. 18, an unusually large spacing interrupts the initial sense of stasis. The search for a balance between the initial stasis and this startling gesture creates a tension which lasts until the very end of the piece. Later fragments are heard in terms of how they relate to this problem, not in harmonic terms, but sonic ones: density, duration, and decay.



Jonathan Kramer, in The Time of Music, characterizes Feldman's music as extremely “vertical.” That is, his music is one long moment divorced from our usual perception of time. However, his dramas of sonorities reach somewhere between “moment form” and “vertical time.” The sections of similar sonorities in Feldman's late music beg to heard as unadulterated pieces of beauty (vertically), but the way they're joined together is not without causation. He wants his audiences to take away a keener appreciation of sound, but not through a Cagean all-inclusiveness. Instead, listeners should sharpen their ears to the ways that one sound connects to another.

Cassavetes approached emotion in a similar way. His unconventionally long scenes have a child-like fascination with the interplay of emotions. They refuse to measure time into neat parcels, instead letting everything take as long as it needs to. This intense focus at times negates the existence of all other moments (just as Feldman's sounds want to be “left alone”). Here too, the individual pieces are intriguing in their own way, but the greater experience comes from tying them all together.

Form, in the work of Feldman and Cassavetes, evolves out of the individual qualities of their materials. How one perceives them as emotions, or as sounds, takes precedence over higher-level divisions (character arcs and harmonic progressions). This “phenomenological form” can usually be spotted by a series of irregularly-sized episodes, linked through a single organizing principle. This form is highly elastic, always letting proportions be defined by the demands of the content. Though the priorities of these artists differ from most of their contemporaries, close examination reveals a highly rigorous technique. Though their work is often labeled as “amateurish,” it is only because Feldman and Cassavetes have the utmost sensitivity for the materials of their craft.

Rzewski at NEC

This week, the New England Conservatory is running a summer institute in contemporary piano music. Frederic Rzewski has come to coach students in playing his music; in return, several nights are being devoted to concerts of his music. Monday night featured his most famous contribution to the repertoire, The People United Will Never Be Defeated, along with a few other pieces that demonstrated the breadth of his output.

The one thread that tied the pieces together for me was their awareness of the performer. This music didn't push the players away in order to reach its ecstatic peaks. Rather, it dramatized their very presence. Having only heard Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues on recording, I only knew what it sounded like. The half-comical sight of watching Jung Hee Shin pounding away with her forearms provided bizarre counterpoint to the clangorous sound mass she conjured up.

The fragmentary design of The Road (part one was on the program) made it seem ill-suited for the concert hall. It would be interesting to hear it played by a friend in his home, letting him jump between sections and insert comments as he pleased. One of the sections featured the pianist rattling around on the piano with its lid shut. Some of John Mark Harris's gestures suggested a sped-up caricature of a piano virtuoso. If this moment was Rzewski's creation, it suggests an interesting sense of humor about the virtuoso pianist-composer tradition he falls into.

Whangdoodles was a partially improvised piece for piano, violin and hammered dulcimer (doubling on vibraphone). The piece consists of 108 segments that are freely coordinated between players. Every ten seconds or so they line up, but it is otherwise indeterminate. The instrumentation and concept would make it an interesting companion piece to Feldman's Why Patterns?

According to the notes, the piece is meant to express “the idea of an open, planetary approach to relationships of conflict: allowing real life to determine the course of action, rather than trying to force life into pre-conceived models.” In order to fully enjoy it, one must not search for a strongly-cast narrative (“pre-conceived models”), but instead be content with the sounds themselves. Listening in this mode, the happenstance moments when a clear beauty emerges are heard as simple gifts, not moments which one is otherwise deprived of. The idea of selfless listening (and ultimately acting) feels like well-trodden territory now, but the folk materials (Yiddish and Appalachian songs) which frame it provide a novel angle.

Stephen Drury presented The People United at the end of the night. His performance (from memory) was marked by a steady confidence, never distracted by the piece's kaleidoscope of styles. Despite his demeanor, he seemed to take a difference presence on stage along with each of the styles. The variations cast in a grand Romantic vein placed him on a grand stage, while those with echoes of minimalism brought a surprising intimacy to Jordan Hall.

The most striking moments occurred at the piece's moments of repose, when the virtuosity subsided into quiet, spare chords. While the rarity of these moments gave them a special poignancy, the high whistling accompanying them reminded one that even in musical moments which push towards transcendence, the audience cannot get there without the performer's efforts.

Pop Harmony vs. Classical Harmony

Harmony in popular music is often looked at by classical connoisseurs like a simple country cousin. Occasionally it surprises with a bit of deftness, but generally it is seen as a watered-down version of common-practice tonality. These two songs at first glance seem to be coming from rather different places:

Their conceptions, though, are quite similar. Both texts clash inner anxieties with the exuberance and celebration of a new season. The tension between these two emotional territories is paralleled with a tension between major and minor modes. Where they diverge in this scheme reveals fundamental differences between the harmonic languages of the classical art song and the modern popular song.

Schumann moves from f# minor to A major with great elegance. Because the modulation doesn't alter the key signature, the transitions aren't noticed until a cadence point is reached. After the four bar introduction implies a resolution to f# minor, the next bar brings in the singer and a swift modulation to A major. The harmonic rhythm is fast throughout, with no harmony sustaining for more than a single measure.

“River,” in comparison, feels a little clunky. Rather than modulate between relative keys, it presents the two harmonies side by side. The harmonic rhythm here is significantly longer. The first half of each verse is harmonized with a C major chord that lasts for about ten seconds. It only takes a few seconds to sing the first line of “Im wunderschönen Monat Mai.”

This protracted duration gives a different kind of meaning to each harmony. Since they're given time to breathe, they're able to establish a more significant presence in musical space. They feel less subservient to a larger harmonic scheme and more like contemplative objects worthy of individual appreciation. The effect is not altogether different from a piece like Music for 18 Musicians. The drawing out of a short progression over time allows the listener to “inhabit” each harmony for a while.

The relationship between singer and accompaniment is very different in these songs. The vocal line in “River” floats on top of the accompaniment. The ideal of the art song is to entangle the two, giving them similar structural and expressive importance. Much of the expression in “River” comes from Mitchell's singing. The accompaniment in the Schumann does almost as much to shape the vocal line as the singer does. The brief harmonies color individual words, while Mitchell's harmonies color vast spaces.

This key difference evolved out of another major distinction between “art music” and popular music. While one is composer-oriented, the other is driven by performers. Though it's common for performers of popular music to play someone else's songs, they usually learn them from another's performance. Since the score is the primary document for classical music, the notes must speak for themselves more. Joni Mitchell can use simple backing for expressive vocals because her performance is the final product. Robert Schumann, tied to a less forgiving tradition, couldn't take such chances.

The resulting styles use the same triadic tonality, though in slightly different ways. Longer pop harmonies dramatize change, even as slight as I moving to vi. Classical harmony is about the ultimate destination (the similarities here between popular songs and minimalism/other “ergodic” music are striking to say the least). These two “dialects” should not be belittled either way with generalizations and value judgements, but recognized as equally valid means for tackling the same problems.

Every time you hear a new film score...

...Debussy laughs.

Dynamics in Pop Music

While the study is several years old by now, a friend pointed me to this study of the dynamic characteristics of top-selling pop songs (full listing of songs here). The author convincingly connects sonogram readings with how people hear the songs. Great example of analysis done right.

George Rochberg, 1918-2005

Without even regarding his music, George Rochberg should forever serve as the paragon of artistic integrity in music. With his much-noted shift in style, he eschewed fashion in order to be honest to himself. Before I even knew his music, he had my profound respect. Once I started listening, I found his work continually demonstrated this daring attitude. Certainly people scoffed when Pachelbel's canon showed up in his sixth quartet, but how many other composers would have the balls to do the same thing with their own music? He asserted the right of the composer to make uncertain moves, showing that the honest effort has value in and off itself. While the keen confidence of so many great composers requires a certain resilience from those who wish to measure up to them, the example left by Rochberg demands an entirely different type of mettle.

Crutches

In my current theory class, the terminal course in the sequence, we're undergoing a whirlwind tour of the latter half of the 20th century. Today we compared two articles, Babbitt's "Who Cares if you Listen?"/"The Composer as Specialist" and Susan McClary's "Terminal Prestige." The latter, though written 30 years later, is essentially a response to the modernist mindset embodied by Babbitt. It struck me that both pieces fall into a similar trap, one that is essentially in opposition with the creation of art.

Babbitt's primary point was that contemporary developments in music paralleled those in the hard sciences. Postwar serialism had long overshot the public's perceptual abilities, therefore it was necessary for the university system to support composers of "serious" music (the position is essentially the same as Adorno's in Philosophy of Modern Music, though Babbitt invokes scientific research instead of a class struggle). McClary attacked this attitude, arguing that the "academic avant-garde" is writing itself into obscurity. Those circles should slacken their objective stance and examine other facets of music, such as its social function.

McClary concludes her article with a discussion of an Earth, Wind & Fire song, "System of Survival." She argues that it is sophisticated music, as worthy of scholarly attention as anything out of the university scene. The troublesome point comes here:

"System of Survival" is, in other words, a song that gives no credence whatsoever to the mind/body split or to the defensive autonomy that infects so much of Western music, especially that of the avant-garde which fetishizes intellectual work for its own sake. At the same time, it is an extremely smart piece: musically, socially politically. It draws upon and celebrates forms of sedimented cultural memory that have miraculously survived a history of extraordinary oppression and that threaten to persist indefinitely—even if not acknowledged within the academy.

A trend throughout McClary's writing is an interest in "smart," socially responsive music. While she essentially attacks academics for overvaluing music because it matches up to their arbitrary criteria (complex construction, etc.), she's guilty of the same crime. She often latches onto music because it's ironic, contorts traditional forms, or responds to class and gender "issues." The music itself may not be full of much deep thought or emotion, but if it hits one of these trigger points, it's worthy of attention from her (witness the entire chapter devoted to Madonna in Feminine Endings).

It's very important to respond to these aspects of music, but my inclination is that McClary is picking pieces to use as vehicles for her own ideas, rather than pieces that expose new ones. This is no different than locking into construction as the primary point of musical interest. The topics of discussion are decided in advance, analysis and criticism are merely used to expound on them. The thought developed through analysis and criticism is often stimulating, but it's preferable to let the approach be determined by the subject. It's difficult to find new truths and forms in art when you're busy looking for old ones. A rejection of one system shouldn't lead to a new set of equally harmful habits. Artists, too, can fall victim to this (look at "indie" film or "alternative" music). Art depends on the restless search for new modes of being. Leaning on crutches—objective stances, gender studies, what have you—only draws one away from this mission.

You know you're a theory professor when...

...your computer has seen so many German terms that AutoCorrect assumes that everything you type must also be in German.

Composers and P2P

For most composers, getting email, maybe even setting up a simple web page, counts as keeping up with the times. Some composers have even set up blogs to air their opinions, but few people have really taken advantage of the internet to distribute their music. It's possible to find some MP3s every now and then, but most composers only post a section or two from the whole piece. If you decide that you want to hear the whole thing, you have to track down a CD. Of course, the composer might not mention what record company released the CD, the CD might be out of print, you might have to special order it...before long, too many problems crop up. Unless the selection you heard was so astounding that you will stop at nothing to buy the CD, you may just give up and move on.

Even if a composer makes full pieces available for download, he's still putting himself at a little bit of a disadvantage. He has to pay hosting fees, design the web site (or pay someone else to), and encode his music. He also has to promote his work, let his audience know about the downloads he has available, and convince them to download them. The composer is responsible for just about everything; these things take time away from writing music and all the musical and extramusical issues associated with that.

CD Baby is a pretty good way to get your music out there. You have to provide them with a packaged CD, but they'll take care of distribution and promotion. However, you're still stuck with manufacturing the discs (either through paying to get some pressed or burning some CD-Rs) and the packaging. This may seem like a lot of work, especially if you don't have a clear sense of how many you'll actually sell. Internet radio is another direction to go in, but it prevents your music from moving beyond the radio station. People are still forced to look for recordings if they want their own copy.

What you really want is a way to distribute your music that doesn't require a lot of overhead, relieves some of the marketing work, and maybe even lets a little money slip back your way. What the classical world needs to discover is P2P. Peer-to-peer networks allow users to download content from each other instead of relying on a centralized server. This means that content creators don't have to maintain websites and find ways to drive people to them. Your audience does the distribution and marketing for you. If you want to release a new recording into the world, all you need to do is send it to a few friends. Eventually it will spread throughout the P2P network. Using P2P also gives you instant feedback on what your audience thinks. If people like your music, multiple sources for it will show in a search for it. Tools like Weed can help you get paid and provide encouragement for people to spread your music around.

Starting up a service like this is incredibly easy, something I would be willing to do myself. However, would other composers be interested in using it? What issues do people foresee in releasing their work like this? Drop by the comments and leave your feelings about this; maybe we can get something going.

Playing Nicely with Other People

“Process music” was among the many classifications first thrust upon what's now usually called minimalism. While not always applicable, a lot of early minimalism was based on the slow realization of a few simple instructions. Some music out of the New York School could be described in a similar way. One of the effects of this attitude is to shift listener attention away from a large-scale developmental thrust towards the beauty of individual moments.

Classical concerts don't engender a lot of social interaction during the concert because development-oriented music requires one's undivided attention. Music that flows between individual moments produces a different kind of relationship between the music and its audience. Since events aren't tied to a large scale trajectory, you can breath a little more while listening to process-oriented music. The experience can become more social. If you want to make a comment to someone you're sitting with, the rest of the piece won't become lost on you. In this way, process-oriented music has a lot in common with jazz and popular music. The larger structure (the band's set) has value as a totality, but its pieces (the songs) are worth something on their own.

It can be hard to get friends interested in a lot of the music I like, but I had a great time listening to Indeterminacy with someone. Its structure allowed us to comment on Cage's stories while we listened. We may have missed out on an entire piece every now and then, but the bits we did talk were absorbed that much more. Listening to the music became a positive shared experience, one centered around the music. Most composers would agree that getting their music entered into part of someone's life is a Good Thing. Writing “process music” is certainly not for everyone, but exploring different forms and how they relate to social experiences is one way to help your music to do this.

Frontispiece

The distinction between form and content informs many discussions on music. Musicians throughout history can't seem to agree which is more important to music (if one should even be more important). Western art music's roots in the church among the so-called "quadrivium" of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy gave its early history a certain scientific slant.

Some remarks in the Guardian on Boulez's recent birthday show that this stance is still alive and kicking today. In fact, Oliver Knussen compares him to a "medieval monk." Among the respondants, no one contests his skill as a craftsman, but several find the content of his music sorely lacking. What's interesting isn't that Boulez polarizes audiences (this has been established for some time), but that the composers called upon mostly focused on either form or content as exclusive entities. Only Thomas Adès really acknowledged that in art there is a dialogue between form and content. If this blog has a "mission," it is to be sensitive to how the two interact and balance each other.