Categories

I wish record stores would have no categories and just jam everyone in alphabetically. Curveballs of the day: Nico Muhly and Daniel Bernard Romaine ("feat. Philip Glass") popping up in pop. I had to walk from pop/rock to hip-hop/rap for Kanye West, but that confusion is at least understandable. One of my friends, a former record store employee, once recounted a zinger of a job interview question: where do you put John Cage? I know most people would come looking for him in classical (the most ambiguous placard of the lot), but I'd file him under folk just to see who was paying attention.

Allez Musique!

I usually try to hold off from link-and-run type posts, but this is too good to pass up: ANALOG arts ensemble has announced Iron Composer Omaha, a composition competition (no entry fee, kids) modeled after a certain kitschy cooking show. I'm glad to see that they're combining bad theater with new music, but I hope they follow through on the Iron Chef format with commentary (who is the Alton Brown of new music?), play-by-play, and interviews. As any viewer of Iron Chef knows, the fun isn't just in the challenge of the secret ingredient, but in the whole process of watching the chefs work.

What Begets What?

One of my recent musical projects has been playing with Reason, a piece of software that gives you a virtual rack (literally, check out the screenshots) of electronic instruments to configure and combine at will. The interface is both charming and infuriating (how do you use a mouse to turn a dial exactly?), but its real-life-ness makes for a pretty minimal learning curve. All those knobs are pretty easy to turn when you've got a decent MIDI controller, anyway.

Finding new tools and instruments is usually a source of creative stimulation. They give you a new way of conceptualizing music/sound. Since Reason is tied to the metaphor of recorded music (you usually want to pipe all of your virtual instruments through a virtual mixer), it encourages you to think of music spatially (balance and positioning) and timbrally (you can record a track and alter the instrument independently of the notes in the sequencer). Since I tend to think of my notated acoustic music in similar ways, Reason has fit in very well with my workflow.

Live music (at least performed by others) is honestly an infrequent experience for me. I think it's fair to say that most people in my generation largely experience music through recordings. This attitude occasionally reveals itself through the scores of people my age. Dynamic markings are usually used to indicate relative volume levels, not variations in tone. I've even heard people talk about ensemble blend in terms of a "mix." Because of how people tend to conceptualize music now, I wonder if more young composers would do well to try out some form of electronic music.

For another take on the relationship between instruments and the music they're used to make, check out Bassline Baseline, a documentary on the TB-303.

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?

Writing on...

Morton Feldman once stated that it was essential for all composers to be friends with painters. From my own experience, I can tell you that he was speaking the truth. One of mine recently passed along a link to the blog of John K. (known to some people as the creator of Ren & Stimpy). His life is cartoons, and that's what he writes about. Amazingly, he often goes into technical detail, eliciting comments that range from nodding approval to more impassioned responses.

You might say, "Gee, everyone loves cartoons. Why shouldn't it be hard to get people interested?" However, if you take a look at his posts, they're mainly on cartoons from the '50s that not many people regularly profess interest in or even know exist (he's definitely not writing about Adult Swim). His posts are generally in the format of "This thing is really awesome! Let me show you why!" Even when there's anger on why The State of Things stinks, he shows you how things could be better. Take a look at this little lesson in character design. In general, it's really good writing by an artist on his art... analytical without being pretentious, detailed without only appealing to specialists.

WTF

Has anyone seen those new iTunes banner ads? You know, the ones with the tie dye-style colors and the happy dancing people? (if you don't know what I'm talking about, they seem to be running in heavy rotation on Pitchfork right now)

Is anyone else bothered by them? See anything subtly racist about them? You know, all those dancing, probably African-American, silhouettes having a grand old time, not a care in the world... I half-expected to hear "Underneath the Harlem Moon" when I unmuted the ad. I'm not going to suggest or advocate an internet boycott of any kind, but it's amazing that it's 2007 and these kinds of stereotypes still pop up in American mass media.

Economics of Music

Dan Wolf has been highlighting some of the similarities between contemporary economics and music. I'm interested in how much further one can take this relationship. For example, what about how composers work? Some of our primary tools are unpowered wooden things (instruments, pencil, paper), but like many modern office workers, we spend a whole lot of time with computers and other electronics.

Dan's post brought up an idea which actually came up in conversation for me this past week, the idea of "Buy Local [Music]." To me, the issue shouldn't need to have anything to do with energy consumption or carbon output. It's a question of whether you want to interact with the people you share your city or town with. Do you want to come away from a concert feeling like you made a sophisticated or hip choice with how you spent your time, or would you rather try something new and meet some strangers who might enrich your life (not that the latter can't happen with non-local music... but you get the idea).

Along with a "Buy Local [Music]" bumper sticker, Dennis Báthory-Kitsz's website contains info on his "We Are All Mozart" project. I'd read about it before, but have in general been underwhelmed with the publicity it's gotten (another instance of why-music-is-not-like-the-other-arts?). My point of comparison is Suzan Lori-Parks's 365 Days/365 Plays project. Granted, she's a Pulitzer prize-winning playwright with more public recognition than Báthory-Kitsz, but she got a fair amount of press coverage, including a big 'ole New Yorker profile.

Besides the personages behind these respective projects (which probably shouldn't be ignored), the major difference is in how they're produced. The plays were written, performances to be found later. To participate, you actually had to apply. The "Mozart" project was done on-demand, people had to instigate each piece.

The 365 project has a blurb on their website explaining its philosophy. One interesting bit:

The 365 Festival is creating an alternative to the present US industry standard of a "World Premiere". In what is currently considered a "World Premiere", one theater in the US or the UK creates the first production of a play written by an English-speaking writer and presents it to a local audience. Suzan-Lori calls the old-school world premiere the "Me-me-me, My-my-my". Many theater artists believe there is a better way to premiere a new theater work. Organizations like the National New Play Network are dedicated to creating more dynamic ways for theaters to work together to widen the impact of new plays. The 365 Festival has put in motion a grassroots collaborative model that blows the top off the single-headed, biggest-theater-wins world premiere status quo.

This problem is also faced by composers. Premieres are highly valued by performers, but can only happen once to a piece. These economics aren't exactly favorable to composers (devil's advocate: should they be?). The only musical model I know of that tries to change this balance is the World-Wide Concurrent Premieres and Commissioning Fund. Anyone know of others like it? Has anyone gone after alternative means of production to get local music played more or to shift value away from the notion of the "premiere"?

Just to Be Safe

I got a new musical toy today. A sticker below the table of contents in the manual indicated the following:

WARNING: This product contains chemicals, including lead, known to the State of California to cause [cancer, and] birth defects or other reproductive harm. Wash hands after handling.

The square brackets are in the original. I know there are hazards in any line of work, but this one's news to me (yeah, yeah, I know about the Beethoven hair thing). As you might expect, I did some research on this. It turns out that the lead in question is not part of paint or any other cosmetic coating, but actually inside the device I purchased. California law, however, dictates that the warning be attached regardless. You know...

More Bujalski

Came across an interesting article by Andrew Bujalski on the economics of art-making. Random quote:

Paul Morrissey is a Leonardo DiCaprio fan. Stan Brakhage loved the South Park movie. There are people on the planet who only watch obscure experimental cinema, but they are few and far between, and they are not obscure experimental filmmakers. Filmmakers who would choose to work in direct opposition to the Hollywood/"indiewood" system have yet to effect its toppling. Nor have filmmakers attempting to "subvert" the system from within.

The End is Nigh!

Yes, I'm still alive. No, I don't hate blogging. Being a graduating senior comes with certain responsibilities which I've been busy attending to (such as doing my work so I can graduate). After a final tomorrow morning for my analysis of rock class (at the very un-rock time of 8:30am), I'll be done with this college thing. By July, I'll have returned to the Boston area and entered into the "real world," of which I've heard many positive things.

One of the things coming with this transition that I'm not looking forward to is lack of ready access to a piano. I've already joked with my parents that while some people see their parents on weekends to do laundry, the piano will be their hook... Still, there's the question: what do you do as a composer/performer to both write (the piano is my preferred working tool) and play music regularly (need my fix!!)? Stories of composers who slave away on notating their grand visions with no expectation of performance are inspiring in an odd sort of way, but I'm too practical-minded to go in that direction. Anyway, there's something more inspiring to me about composers who write conjure up compelling music for sticks, flower pots, and the like. I think it says something to be able work within whatever confines a situation presents you with.

I've done some computer music before, though always reluctantly (for a variety of aesthetic reasons). I'm getting the feeling, however, that this path will be most rewarding for the work I'm immediately interested in. Thankfully, I'll have some time soon to investigate my options in that area, hopefully figuring out some "instrumentation" that I can be happy with.

Meanwhile, I've been doing some "research" for the project I'm gearing up on. I've had the chance to see a couple movies by Andrew Bujalski, Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation. Extremely impressive stuff about recent college grads bumbling around and establishing their adult identities (in Boston no less! am I really researching myself???). I came across an odd review of Funny Ha Ha. The reviewer had a lot of issues with the movie. He was really bothered by the fact that "nothing happens" in the movie, which he could only explain by saying it was some kind of critique of these empty, empty souls. To me, Bujalski seemed quite invested and devoted to his characters. The point to me was not that nothing happens, but how nothing happens. How does Marnie talk to her friends about Alex, how does Alex jerk Marnie around (what a great name). Bujalski really nails the rhythms and mannerisms of a certain group of people and paces his narrative along the personal tensions that they create.

The movie reminded me in a peculiar way of Portrait of a Lady. You know, young, independent-yet-not-quite woman who attracts all the men around her, [un]serendipitous encounters with friends ("Funny seeing you in Rome, er, at the supermarket!"), constant romantic tensions, relationships that will never align. There's no Madame Merle or Gilbert Osmond characters, but I think there's a (kind of) interpretative angle to take by looking at the movie as a neverending 19th century novel.

Wiimote as Theremin

On Virtuosity

[program note from a recent solo recital]

Virtuosity is generally defined in terms of technical prowess: thundering scales, incandescent figurations, overwhelming power... Virtuosity is a game between the performer and the audience. The former flaunts his technique via feats of strength while maintaining a suggestion of disaster awaiting around the bend.

This display is fundamentally one of showmanship. In the heat of the moment, one forgets that performing musicians are not slovenly bohemians, but trained professionals. Sure, the shaggy hair is part of our allure, but it’s hard to find time for a haircut when you have to spend all your free time practicing. We rehearse and work through our music so much that by the time you hear us, even the gnarliest passages have been reduced to child’s play. Once on stage, it’s our job to make them look hard again.

True virtuosity, to me, is making the hard sound easy. Virtuosity is the vocals on a Beach Boys album. Virtuosity is Aki Takahashi playing Morton Feldman. This virtuosity is not about flaunting your abilities to an audience, but rather presenting them in a kind of unassuming clarity. Listeners are invited to take them for exactly what they’re worth, but not forced to go further than that (that’s not to say you’re not allowed to show off your strengths, but you’re also forced to recognize when they give out).

As a pianist, music is something I have to pick up and feel in my fingers before I can know if it’s any good. Where other players blow, breathe, and drag horsehairs, we touch and caress. I try to play so you can get as close as possible to that kind of tactile engagement with sound.

The relationship I have with my instrument has been one of the biggest influences on the general nature of my music. My idea of development isn’t concocting a new guise for an intervallic motive, it’s playing something again to see if it still sounds good. How does it feel – how does it make you feel – the next time you hear it? The relationships created by these constant recontextualizations against past experience have a subtle complexity.

Though I often draw inspiration from non-musical experiences and forms, I do not want my music to be something you engage distantly and abstractly. I find our culture is all too dominated by ideas of things. One goes to a knick-knack-filled restaurant to eat an idea of a meal, puts on chic earbuds to listen to an idea of music, and in extreme cases, passes through life only knowing ideas of friendships. I want my music to be something you can only engage through an essential thing-ness. I genuinely want to create an experience that doesn’t need to go any deeper than its acoustic surface.

The program I selected is meant to show off the range of expression and potential for a deeper performer-audience relationship that’s possible with an “anti-virtuosity.” The pieces wedged between my own are meant to be entertaining diversions (they’re pop songs after all), but they’re also meant to be examples of music that has influenced my compositional technique and aesthetics.

PROGRAM:
"Rednecks" — Randy Newman
Frayed Shirt — Adam Baratz
"All My Little Words" — Stephin Merritt
I Can Turn It On and Off — Baratz
"I Think I Need a New Heart" — Merritt

Mix Tape — Baratz
"Help Me" — Joni Mitchell
"Just Like This Train" — Mitchell
Departing Figure — Baratz
"You Can Leave Your Hat On" — Newman

Scores, as usual, available on request.

Post-Minimalist Weekend Post

I stepped out of my usual composerly circles to join the musicology department for a symposium with Robert Fink (UCLA). As predicted, he essentially did highlights from Repeating Ourselves. Since I'd read the book before, what I learned from the session was tangential to the actual presentation, but is still a interesting important point: if I want to sit around a table where the majority of those present are intelligent and assertive women, musicology functions are a sure bet.

Saturday was Steve Reich Day, with a symposium in the afternoon and a concert in the evening. The centerpiece of the symposium was hearing his newish Daniel Variations. After castigating a big chunk of us for not knowing who Daniel Pearl was ("Well, you should."), he explained how he met Pearl's father and was asked to write a piece about Pearl. The piece sets fragmentary texts from Pearl's writings and the biblical Book of Daniel (which involves a conflict between Jews and Babylonians).

Following the listening, was an extended Q&A. Not a lot of new info for anyone who hasn't read any interviews with or writings by Reich, but he made one interesting comment that stuck with me. Asked about the efficacy of politicized art, he said he had no illusions about saving the world. "Guernica" didn't prevent Dresden and Tokyo, but it made Guernica part of our vocabulary.

The concert in the evening covered his whole career: Drumming (Part One), Cello Counterpoint, Different Trains, and Sextet. Drumming changed a lot live. Thanks to Kilbourn Hall's natural wetness, there was some harmonies hung in the air after each attack. You could follow the cellular transformations, courtesy of having the visual of the performers. The drums were left standing on-stage before and after the piece, à la gamelan.

Cello Counterpoint was done with 8 live cellists, though with some amplification to balance out the lines. It bore a striking resemblance, harmonically and structurally to Triple Quartet. I had a similar bout of déjà vu (but not quite as strong) during Sextet, with the point of comparison being Music for 18 Musicians. Self-plagiarism doesn't offend me that much, but why has Reich dodged the bullet on this one when Glass has gotten so much flack?

I would like to use this page to inaugurate the "Different Trains...Not So Much a Fan" Club. First of all, kudos to Reich for making a 180-degree turn on his early aesthetic and turning out a text-based piece of program music (love those violins doubling the taped train whistles). The speech-as-music bit is fun, but not fun enough to steal the title for "Best Setting of the Word 'Chicago'" from Harry Partch.

My real problem with the piece is with the content of the program. The "different trains" conceit is reasonably clever, but not 27' clever. There's just not enough behind it to propel the piece for that duration. It doesn't present any major challenges to my ethical imagination. I know more than I want to know about the inhumanity of the Holocaust. Nuremberg more than adequately documented that. By 1988, I'd hope that an artist could have gone deeper into the material.

For me, Sophie's Choice is the exemplar of asking the hard questions on this terrain. Styron was willing (I'd say he even went out of his way) to find humanity among Nazis. Because of that, the eponymous choice becomes much, much more than you'd suspect. Reich only deals with one side of the situation in his quartet, and in turn is only able to present a victim's story. Targets of genocide deserve to have more than their victimization preserved.

***

[UPDATE: I neglected one important tidbit, which was that the Reich concert had a basically full house. When the usher came out to do the fire exit spiel, we got "Good eve— wow" instead of the usual "Good evening and welcome to Kilbourn Hall."]

***

Pictures from the show, courtesy of John Lam:


Drumming


Cello Counterpoint


Different Trains


Sextet

Minimalist Weekend in Rochester

Two events of note over the next few days:

• Robert Fink presents a talk called Flowing and Zapping: Minimalism as Television, 1965-1995. I suspect it'll be a condensed version of Repeating Ourselves (a thoughtful, entertaining, and recommended read). If he's as funny in person as he is in print, it'll probably be a good hour and a half.
• OMG STEVE RECICH.

Senior Recital

One would've thought that I could've squeezed in at least one post during my spring break, but that turned out to be false. Among other things, I was busy finishing some music to be played at my senior recital. As the tagline at the top says "composer/pianist," that's exactly what the recital will be all about. The focus will be on my own music, but with little interludes in the form of some of my influences from the pop-ular repertory. I doubt the program will contain any major surprises for longtime readers of this blog:

Four of my piano pieces
Two songs by Stephin Merritt (from 69LS vol. 1)
Two songs by Randy Newman (from Sail Away and Good Old Boys)
Two instrumental transcriptions of songs by Joni Mitchell (from Court & Spark)

It will be taking place on March 30th at 8pm in the Hawkins-Carlson Room of the Rush Rhees Library, U. of Rochester (that was a mouthful). When you walk into the library's main lobby, it's the first room on the right.

Late Night Reading

I find the attitude of rock musicians over the past 20 years kind of funny, the whole I'm-a-rebel stance. The truth of the matter is, most rock bands are classical musicians and they don’t know it. Because it’s "This song starts with this drumbeat, at this time; halfway through, the guitar comes in, playing this part, with all down strokes on the fifth, with a clean sound; at this point you turn on your distortion and you play the barre chord, and then it’s muted at this point . . ." And every time they play the song, it’s the same thing. That’s classical music!

Jon Brion on us shlubs

New Album Soon?

Please say soon. At any rate, it's good to know that Charles Ives won't be the last serious composer to make good use of "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean."

Leveling Up

When practicing an instrument or writing music, it usually seems like the amount of time you have to put to improve at the skill in question is disproportionate to your improvement rate. You might have to write half a dozen bum pieces before you can use some little idea you had, you have to play a few Mozart sonatas before you're happy with the tone quality for any of them, etc., etc.... I'd be genuinely surprised if someone with creative inclinations has not had this kind of experience.

There always seems to be a well-demarcated line between frustration and ownership with me and these problems. Progress can be difficult to feel. One day you leave the practice room pulling your hair out, the next you come back and something's clicked. Taking time out to rationalize the situation can sometimes help you get your bearings, but nothing really substitutes for those long hours spent in the trenches. Those times may make you wonder why you even bother, but you know the answer when you get one of those little epiphanies.

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"

Marvin Gaye Sings the National Anthem

Backstory available on Thomas Dolby's blog.