Friday, February 04, 2005
A weekend with Ethel
Last weekend the New England Conservatory Preparatory School had its 15th annual new music festival called "Today's Youth Perform Today's Music." Since this was an important anniversary for the festival it was decided that we should invite many of our illustrious alumni back to have works performed. This is where Ethel comes in.
Ethel has as their violist, Ralph Farris, an alum of the NEC Prep. Ethel is a very unorthodox string quartet consisting of four classically trained string players who love to play the blues. As a group they only played once last weekend at NEC, but it was quite memorable. In the middle of their composition master class they took advantage of a lull to play a kind of blues-shuffle that had been written for them. (I'm sorry I do not remember the name of the composer, but in a sense it really did not matter; see below.)
At the open rehearsal of students playing the music of Ethel's composers, (yes, unlike their rival Kronos, this group "writes" much of their own music) we were struck by their composer/performer musicality and authenticity. So much of their music is either improvised or requires an awareness of an array of playing styles that is not quite accurate to say that they "write" music, at least not in the traditional sense. In fact the whole experience of listening to them play and talk about playing was somewhat communal in spirit.
On the concerts on Sunday we were, once again, treated to Ethel's music as played by the students. Ralph Farris did play in his own work and was a lively master of ceremonies giving verbal program notes and introductions to his colleagues pieces.The whole weekend was a wonderful reminder of the intimate connections between composition and performance.
Unlike the old days where there were lingering questions about who was ultimately responsible for the composition, here the student performers, audience, and composition teachers were too preoccupied to think much about such weighty aesthetic questions; we were all having too much fun.(For more information about Ethel and their (her) activities visit www.ethelcentral.com.
posted by Larry Thomas Bell
6:10 PM
Thursday, February 03, 2005
trends
I was interested to read the postings by both Alex Ross and Kyle Gann about the resurgence of dissonance. I had a number of reactions. The first was that there was something touching about that kind of interest. I'm reminded of a quote I heard recently, attributed to Henry Kissinger, to the effect that he had often wondered about why academic politics were so nasty until he realized that it was because there was so little at stake. I have to say that I haven't noticed the trend which Messers. Ross and Gann wrote about, although that may be because it hasn't got out here to the sticks yet, or that I've just been hanging out with the wrong people, or both. But I was also unaware that minimalism had triumphed over all other styles, anyway. My experience from going to years of student composer concerts is that for a long while more or less anything is fair game for anybody these days: for just about every composer writing something dissonant, there's another one writing some kind of eighteenth century knockoff--or trying to do, anyway. I think this is ultimately the result of so much music of just about every type from just about every period being easily accessible, and it seems to me that that's the good part of the current state of things. The bad part is that so few people are paying any attention, anyway, that worrying about it seems a little beside the point: not so much rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as worrying about whether the pillows on the those deck chairs are monogramed. I'm also not so sure that the mere level of dissonance in a piece, or a style, means that much about what's going on in either.
posted by Rodney Lister
8:49 AM
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Tonality Out the Window
Theorist John Ferri shared a wonderful quote from Maurice Ravel on the subject of tonality/atonality: "When the room gets a little stuffy, some people have to break the window. I know how to open the window."
I'm a big fan of fresh air and tonality, and try to get my fill of both as often as possible. In recent years, though, I suspect that a lot of composers have become adept at switching on the air conditioning.
posted by Lawrence Dillon
6:27 PM
re: what's the matter with kids today?
Personally, I think it's healthy for people to listen to minimalism, romantic music, atonal, 12-tone, grunge, whatever. What perhaps is not so healthy is for people to be fixated on styles. I'm not surprised that may be a reaction to the more recent trend in less dissonant music, just as minimalism was viewed (perhaps with some validity) as a reaction to the impersonal, academic music of Boulez, Carter, and others from the 60s.
One interesting trend, which I think is a good one, is for people from many different musical backgrounds gravitating to repetition as well as dissonance. I can't explain it, but am gratified that so many people from diverse backgrounds (jazz, classical, rock, etc) are getting interested in Morton Feldman's works. He's not a "minimalist" nor is he academic. Yet his works (particularly the later, lengthier ones) seem to appeal to a lot of people, myself included. I knew very little of his music until last year, and now have 2.5 GB of Feldman alone on my iPod. I even posted a silly list of best Feldman works on my blog.
Many people, however, seem to judge performances of Feldman based on how long they are-the longer the better. I'm not sure this is either appropriate or fair. The Ives Ensemble's performance of Feldman's uninterrupted String Qt #2 (or "FSQ2" for those in the know) clocks in over 5 hours, while the Flux Quartet's recording is just over 6 hours; I like both performances, and neither one is more valid than the other. A work like Triadic Memories has no metronome marking whatsoever, so any reasonable interpretation is valid. Besides, humans are not machines; metronome markings really should be approximate, and open to interpretation.
posted by David Toub
11:01 AM
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
What's the Matter With Kids Today?
Yesterday's avant garde is today's establishment. Kyle Gann and Alex Ross and our own Lawrence Dillon have been discussing the younger generation's rejection of tonality and miminalism in favor of dissonance and noise. Perhaps this trend is the usual "generation gap" rebellion--if your parents did it, it can't be cool--or maybe it's about being hip and "new." No serious young painter would choose to become an "impressionist," for example. It's been done. It's unlikely that a young composer would choose to be a minimalist for the same reason.
Tonality, it seems to me, is a different matter, more akin to "realistic" painting which is seldom in fashion but refuses to go away. There will always be artists who paint flower pots that look like flower pots and some of them will make a decent living at it. By the same token, there will always be composers who write music that is "classical" (i.e., old dead Europeans)with new twists. What are your thoughts about the generation gap?
posted by Jerry Bowles
10:14 AM
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Stitches In Air
I just read a wonderful novel called Stitches In Air by Liane Ellison Norman (2001). It is the story of Mozart's mother. The author wanted to write a nonfiction book on this subject but could not find enough source material. So she took what she had and wrote a book assuming that Mozart's mother, Anna Pertl Mozart, was a gifted composer who studied at the Nonnberg convent before her marriage to Leopold. It is a beautifully written and imagined book. In the Afterward the author makes it very clear what information she did have and which ideas she made up. The title refers not only to the lace that she made but also to the fact that all her music and almost all her letters disappeared into the air. Mozart's sister and fellow composer, Nannerl, is a major figure in this family novel. The world's effect on all musicians of the day, especially the women, is dramatically brought to life.
posted by Beth Anderson
10:32 AM
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