Friday, March 18, 2005
cults
some random (rambling, probably, repetitive, also, probably) thoughts:
1) I thought the death of twelve-tone music was old news thirty years ago. Sometimes I think people just want to keep it around as a boogey man to rail against, much the same way the Republicans don't actually want the NEA to be dismembered so they can raise money to defeat it. It's amazing to me the way people can get so emotionally exercised and worked up about how meaningless and empty certian kinds of music are supposed to be.
2) I don't believe audiences hate twelve-tone music. Now that the shock of that improbable statement has had time to take effect: Audiences have in fact been taught the urban myth that all twelve-tone music is mathematical and ugly and terrible, so they've learned that anything they don't like must be twelve-tone, if it's not "atonal" (in both cases, one might well add, "whatever that means); I'm not sure which is supposed to be worse. I really mostly can't tell if a piece is twelve-tone unless I know it is, and, even though I might be wrong, I'm willing to believe, unless somebody wants to disabuse me of the notion, that I'm not the only one. Another quote comes to mind: "The less [a field]is advanced, the more its terminology rests on an uncritical assumption of mutual understanding." (W. V. Quine)
3) With all the bashing of twelve-tone music that's been going on, just who is writing twelve-tone music anymore anyway? I can think of three (maybe): Babbitt, Martino, Wourinen (and I'm not really completely sure about Matino and Wourinen) (I'm not even sure if that's the way to spell Wourinen's name). Anybody else? If that's the number, then there really is a straw man being set up. What is it we're really supposed to be talking about?
4) Never having written twelve-tone music myself, I can't claim to be a recovering twelve-tone composer. It strikes me, though, as I've thought about it, that most of the information disseminated is about on the level of what Bernstein says about it in The Joy of Music, and, if that's the level of expertise, in the first place no wonder... I don't think, in my educational experience--at least early educational experience--I was ever told anything about why one might want to write twelve-tone music or what one would gain by doing it. I don't imagine anybody does now, either (anybody much, anyway). Once again, I could be wrong, but...
When I was an advanced student, I used to be at situations where people presenting their pieces (that kind of situation), and they would say things like "I never really liked twelve-tone music, but I felt like I had to..." I never quite understood that, but then I was always a bad student.
Anyway....
posted by Rodney Lister
9:19 PM
Another Brick in the Wall
Work has a disappointing tendency to interfere with my ability to put together a long post in a short period. The nerve! :) Anyway -- Rodney has a good response David's and my recent posts, in which he raises a number of good points. I'll do my best to respond.
1. "I don't understand the idea that academia is either 'a large receptive audience' or 'a marketing vehicle.' Maybe somebody can explain that to me." Gladly. My contention is this: Much of the Downtown music (and I'm thinking of Minimalism especially) is, to my ear, more closely aesthetically aligned with popular music, so it's more accessible to a general audience. My argument is not that academia itself is a "large receptive audience" but rather that it's the place where most people get their first exposure to 20th century music. If music appreciation classes and music history classes did a better job of representing this music to the students (a complex problem in itself), I hypothesize that more students would have their interest grabbed. In fact, I sometimes wonder if, say, Philip Glass has the potential to be more relevant to students than Beethoven has. Assuming that my model is correct (and it is untested, so I could be proven wrong) academia can serve as a tool for marketing downtown music to a general audience. (I would also say that academia could do a better job of marketing uptown music to a general audience, and that would be a worthwhile endeavor as well.)
2. I wouldn't say that the wall is "evil." I think it gets in the way of some potentially valuable things. But at the same time, I recognize that the building of walls often goes hand-in-hand with aesthetic revolutions -- serialism and minimalism have both, at various times, adopted a "screw you guys I'm going home" attitude, and I suspect that attitude was important to the development of a strong, independent community. Eventually, however, those same defense mechanisms that were beneficial at first start to get in the way. And the demonization of the uptowners by the downtowners is no more helpful than the demonization of the downtowners by the uptowners -- and I know I've been guilty of it myself. And to offer one telling anecdote, apparently at the first ever Bang-on-a-Can, Babbitt and Reich each left the hall before the other's piece, which was frankly childish on both of their parts.
3. What we really need is some sort of scientific measurements, since all that most of us can muster is anecdotal evidence. And of course, the "confirmation bias" being what it is, we all see the evidence that supports our own claims. And there's nothing worse than a composer complaining that his/her _own_ work hasn't gotten the recognition it deserves -- I try to be careful never to make that claim. But the core of this discussion is the contention that Academia either is or is not friendly to the downtown aesthetic, so here's my own anecdotal experience:
The most consistent message I've gotten in my academic career is "you're a talented kid, too bad you're wasting your talents." If the message were "you are a poor composer" that would be fine -- sad for me, but fine -- but the message is "you can't expect to be taken seriously if you write in that style." I have spent my whole academic career feeling like a stylistic outcast and like if I just caved in and wrote some sort of post-serial atonal music I would get a lot more respect.
4. There's been some discussion of "conspiracy" and I want to make clear that I am in no way claiming conspiracy. (My understanding is that once upon a time there was a conspiracy, but I haven't seen evidence of its continued existence.) But, as we can see in any number of other places in modern life, there need be no conspiracy for bias and exclusion to occur. And it's precisely because there IS NO conspiracy that it's difficult to prove discrimination.
posted by Galen H. Brown
12:03 PM
the cult of 12-tone music...
In Kyle Gann's excellent blog, he poses a question in the form of a statement: "Perhaps it’s time to admit that, not only is 12-tone music stone dead, it was never much more than a fringe cult in the first place?" You can read the whole entry here.
Interestingly, he points out that the recent performance of Webern's seminal Symphonie, op. 21 was only the third performance in NYC, the city I had thought was a hotbed of new music. Gann's question relates to the possibility that outside of academic centers, perhaps dodecaphonic music just was never much of anything, amounting to a cult that is now dead.
I have to admit, at one time I was part of that cult. I moved up from Bartok through Lutoslawski and into the Second Viennese School, pouring through scores and records of Berg, Schoenberg and Webern with a lot of interest. I started writing 12-tone music, only abandoning it while in college in the early 80's when I felt I had done all with the technique that I really could. I just posted the score of my last 12-tone work, a long piano piece called Ineffabilities from 1980-1981, on my Web site and as much as I like it, I still notice how much I was straining to make the technique conform to what I wanted it to do. Parts of the piece are not serial; I just gave up and started tinkering with an early form of what was to become my later "minimal" works. Yet at the same time, I really really still like the piece overall. I took it as a challenge to be able to express what I wanted to using the 12-tone technique, and assume Arnold, Alban and Anton tried to do the same (I never noticed before this alliteration in their first names...). I was a very big believer in the "supremacy" of 12-tone music for a long time, reading polemics like Rene Leibowitz' "Schoenberg and His School" (which does everything it can to try to prove that 12-tone music is a logical progression) and trying to get my one composition teacher to at least be comfortable with my musical choices. Eventually, I realized that any technique is just a means to an end, and technique signifies little if there is nothing else behind the music.
Many audiences HATE 12-tone music, and I think that's partly because of its dissonance and complexity, as well as some of the 12-tone composers who came after the Second Vienna School. Serializing everything (going beyond even what Messiaen dabbled with in "Mode de valeurs et d'intensitis") can easily lead to music that is rigid and expressionless. That Messiaen didn't create something ugly is to his credit (I really like the piece), but he was also wise to not pursue this approach with the rest of his music. Dissonance doesn't have to be ugly, nor should all music be pleasant and popular. There's a lot of beauty in Webern's music, and there's a lot of banality in more "pleasant" music written in the past decade. In the end, it gets back to "meaning" and "expression." If the piece has something to say and the composer is honestly expressing him or herself, it will resonate with someone. I suspect that's what goes on with Webern, Feldman and other infrequently-performed composers (at least, they're infrequently performed in the US. Feldman is performed quite a bit in Europe, and SHOULD be performed much more often in the US).
So is it a cult? In some ways, I suppose so, in others no. If that's the case, then several of us on the Why Patterns mailing list are a bunch of Feldman cultists...
posted by David Toub
9:15 AM
What is hard in the context of new music
I don’t think there is an interpretive style/lineage for the performance of my work exactly. My music needs musicality, curiosity and sufficient preparation for its best performance. And since I am a western composer that usually means something that Mozart or Liszt would have enjoyed also. For me musicality means the ability to make a phrase interesting using a combination of subtle dynamics/rhythm. These things are not necessary to notate down to the last 32nd rest breath. When I used to play Mozart Sonatas the scores were not marked with crescendos and decrescendos ‘everywhichwhere’. They were assumed. They are taught. Once that sense of how to play musically becomes a part of a performer, they can play my music quite well, if they are interested in it and they practice.
Certainly I have had performance of my works that were poorly prepared. For some reason performers often think that my music is easy, so they spend their main rehearsal time on the pieces about which they are most worried. But like any music that has tonal/modal clarity the errors are so much more noticeable than they might be in 12-tone music, for example.
I have never withdrawn authorization to perform my music at the time of hearing a dress rehearsal. We used to say that a poor dress rehearsal meant a beautiful performance. Sometimes that does work out that way and sometimes it just means 15 minutes of rehearsal was not enough! I tend to err on the side of optimism as a composer. When I was more of a performer, I was much more of a pessimist and simply would not perform something I had not spent months preparing.
The most important node of communication for me is the conductor for an orchestra/chorus or the performer(s) for solo and chamber music. There is no way for me to reach the audience without going through the performers. Performers of living composers’ works have the opportunity to get feedback from the composers by simply asking. It is interesting to me that they often do not take advantage of it. Perhaps they want to make their own interpretation without influence. Perhaps they are afraid to ask for a hearing. Perhaps they are challenging the composer to make sure they put all their wishes onto the paper. I don’t know, but I do think that conductors/performers/composers need to work as collaborators to get the most desirable outcome.
posted by Beth Anderson
8:48 AM
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Separating the Piece from the Performance
Questions to Composers:
Is there a preferred interpretive style/lineage for your music: a manner of playing
which best reveals it? For example: 'Mozartean', Brahmsian', 'Skriabinesque')
Or not? If so, should performers be aware of this?
Have you ever experienced a performance of one of your works that was truly mishandled on the interpretive side?
Have you every pulled a piece (withdrawn authorization to play it) at the time of hearing a dress rehearsal? If so, what were the consequences?
Where is the most important node of communication for a composer: direct to the listener? To the 'deliverer' (performer)? For sure this changes when the music is electro-acoustic.
These questions arise as I begin to write about "Hard" in the context of new music.
posted by Judith Lang Zaimont
12:01 AM
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
The Ivory Tower (Continued)
Kyle Gann, who been talking a lot about Updown/Downtown lately has posted a response on his own blog to Galen Brown's post below. In some ways, he also addresses Beth Anderson's comment(under Galen's post) about women and jobs in academia. Judging from Kyle's experience it's not that much easier to get a solid teaching job even if you're happen to be male.
posted by Jerry Bowles
8:30 PM
walls
I recently heard a quote from Daniel Patrick Monihan (whose name I don't know how to spell) to the effect that one could have one's own opinion, but one couldn't have ones own facts. In Politics lately lots people feel entitled to make their opinions their facts; and I guess elsewhere as well.
I don't understand the idea that academia is either "a large receptive audience" or "a marketing vehicle." Maybe somebody can explain that to me. I also don't understand this evil wall (of what---exclusivity?) which is being maintained by Boulez and Carter and Babbitt. If the New York Philharmonic is your yard stick, it's hard for me to believe that they have performed Babbitt more than they have Steve Reich (or at all, since Relata II about 30 years ago). (And that story about the Bernstein 3rd Symphony, according to Arthur Berger, one of the people who was there,is completely false; he said he lost interest once it got to be twelve-tone.) Also, surely it's out of academia, not in it, where Pierrot Lunaire is considered modern. (I agree that that's a ludicrously sad situation, but if that's the case in academia, maybe somebody needs to explain what that means to me as well.)
As far as I can tell Kyle Gann is talking about a pretty specific type of music when he's talking about Downtown music. It seems that Galen is using the term in a much more wide ranging way, by which time it's clear that it doesn't mean Babbitt, but it's hard to tell beyond that exactly what it might mean. In any case, I'm not so sure that "downtown music," whatever that means, is so terribly descriminated about or neglected. In fact if you consider in these days what's the kind of music that's the most likely to be derided in any music school, or anywhere else, for that matter, surely it would be twelve-tone music. Other than that it seems like just about anything goes.
Just to point out: Boulez, Carter, and Babbitt are all still very much alive, and working, pretty quietly and, at least in the case of Carter and Babbitt, aren't welding all that much power (any more, anyway, if they ever did--they're much too concerned with just writing their music). I don't quite get lumping all three of them together, since Boulez seems to me to be very different from the other two in style and outlook and just about every other way, but never mind. Certainly nobody's saying these days (these days being for the last twenty-five years of so) that the way of any of the three of them was the only way, or even the best way (if they ever did), and I don't see anybody clinging to the idea now. In that sense this all seems like fighting a battle that's already been decided. But that way is one way. They're all three serious and sincere and skillful composers and they deserve their due as that. None of them is an enormous powerful force standing in the way of anything. Making them out to be is, as near as I can make out, either setting them up as some sort of straw men to bash and knock down or the product of some kind of paranoia verging on the dillusional.
None of us thinks our music gets played enough or is reaching the wide audience that would adore it if those terrible academics (or those terrible faux-downtown composers or those terrible minimalists, or those terrible anything elses) weren't standing in their way. And none of us who doesn't have a job doesn't think we deserve one. But I don't see that beating up on some style or other does anything constructive.
The situation we're all facing go so far beyond styles and cliques. The number of people in the world who are interested in any kind of classical music at all (name it: Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Monteverdi, Percy Grainger, even, for that matter Tschaikovsky and Rachmaninoff) in any little way--or seem to be able to make any thing out of it-- at all is so small. Of them, my guess is that most of them would find Reich or Glass to be heavy sledding, not to mention La Mont Young. The problems are problems of general music education. There's also a commercial aspect of it--like it seems to be harder to buy and sell than Kenny G or Wayne Newton or Kid Rock, but that's way beyond my understanding of things. That problem is keeping all of us, whatever kind of music we write, from reaching the massive audiences we would all like to get to. John Harbison told me a while ago that when he started teaching at MIT he could be sure that practically every student he would come in contact with would have heard a Beethoven Symphony, but that for a while now he couldn't count on it. My experience as a teaching assistant in big lecture general music classes in the core program at Harvard is pretty much the same. When the cream of the crop, high achieving, well educated students at the most elite schools in the country (who are the ones most likely to be the audience that at least in the past we would have been most likely to get to) find just about any kind of classical music to be strange and inaccessible, then we're all in trouble (which we are), and it's not the fault of Milton Babbitt or Pierre Boulez.
posted by Rodney Lister
6:11 PM
Boulez, et al, is dead...
I thought to title this one, "Messrs Babbitt, Carter, Boulez and all you academics, tear down this wall," but Galen beat me to it. Besides, "Boulez, et al, is dead" is a lot pithier than my first thought.
There's been a lot of discussion about walls, differences in compositional approach, meaning, context, etc. in new music. Fundamentally, as much as I hate to categorize things (it's so non-Taoist), I've always distinguished what many people think of as academic (read "uptown") music from non-academic (read "downtown"). Doesn't matter if you're in NYC or not (nowadays, I'm just outside Philadelphia myself). The distinction between Uptown and Downtown works in many cities, even Chicago.
Now, other fields besides music have the same conflict between "academic" and "community." I see it all the time in medicine, and I'm sure it exists in law and even business to some extent. In many ways such distinctions ARE silly, but also recognize that groups exist with different orientations, belief systems and goals. Boulez wrote an infamous polemic called Schoenberg is Dead, in which he sought to put forth such high-minded ideas as "...since the discoveries made by the Viennese, all composition other than twelve-tone is useless." At least he's honest about his feelings.
Having started out as a serial/dodecaphonic composer, I'm pretty familiar with the academic music world. At the same time, having given it up and set out on my own path, I'm very familiar with the "downtown" music community. I think that the tension between the two communities is good, since it serves both by creating interest in new music (both academic and not). It's also bad, since it sets up artificial boundaries. Many people assume that "downtown" music is inherently pleasant, while "uptown" is jarring and dodecaphonic. There are examples to both support and refute this notion. Interestingly, Feldman is claimed by both communities, yet I would never consider his music "academic" (to its credit).
Academia does need to change. It's too much of a fortress against contemporary music. Why is Pierrot Lunaire (very early 20th-century) still considered "modern?" By that token, Brahms should have been considered avant-garde when I was in elementary school. There needs to be cross-fertilization between uptown and downtown, including within the music schools. Not token efforts, as when a Philip Glass is invited in to speak, or when the NY Philharmonic performs a work by Steve Reich on a rare occasion. Rather, it needs to be consistent. Only then can the walls be broken down.
And that would be a good thing. No one is saying that "academia = bad" and "downtown = good." There's example of crap on both sides. I still love many serial works, including late Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Dallapiccola [a very neglected composer, BTW], etc. That does not preclude me from listening to Reich, LaMonte Young, Riley, Glass, Branca, etc. I think it's a much healthier musical situation when one partakes of music from many sources, including the "third world" and rock. I don't think it's bad that Nirvana's last ouevre, In Utero, grabs me as much as many "classical" works.
Nothing personal, of course, but I think the idea that Boulez, Carter, Babbitt, etc represent the best approach to music is no longer tenable. Wouldn't it be great if someone at a music school in the future can embrace real contemporary music and not have the music be derided? Wouldn't it be wonderful if the teachers listened to music for music's sake, rather than stop listening once it was no longer serial (as the famous story of Bernstein's Symphony #3 goes)?
I think uptown and downtown music would do better to listen to one another and appreciate the music for music's sake. Most importantly, we all need to stop erecting barriers.
posted by David Toub
12:28 PM
Mr Babbitt, Tear Down This Wall
Read Kyle Gann's excellent post on "Downtown Music and its Misrepresentations" and then come back here and read the rest of this post.
First of all, I'm out of my depth here. I'm 25, all of my musical training has been in academia, the only major city I've lived in is the musically conservative Boston -- but I trust Kyle. He's a smart guy and he clearly knows his stuff. And the combination of those factors (including my own ignorance in spite of my interest) points me to a clear conclusion: Downtown music has a severe PR problem, and that problem manifests itself on the two most important fronts.
1. Most musicians (composers, performers, and future audience members alike) get the most important part of their training in academia, and academia is still very Uptown oriented. At the same time, the music most likely to appeal to this largest of receptive audiences is that of the Downtown aesthetic. So there's a fundamental mismatch, yet since some of academia is virulently anti-downtown and much of the rest of academia believes that it is now largely inclusive there's no substantial effort by academic faculty (that I can see) to bring Downtown music into the fold.
2. The most prominent musical representative of the Downtown scene, in reputation, is Bang on a Can, yet according to Kyle "There are large swathes of Downtown music that Bang on a Can has ignored, and major Downtown figures to whom BoaC has barely paid attention. " (In the interest of clarity, I should say that Lang, Wolfe, and Gordon are three of my favorite living composers, and I support both their strategy of programming the music that interests them and of using BoaC for self promotion. I would do the same in their position.)
So Downtown music and Downtown composers are severely underrepresented in the two dominant marketing vehicles, and thus are severely underrepresented in the public consciousness. Fortunately, there are solutions to both of these problems.
1. Academia must be changed from within -- its very structure insures this. New faculty are hired by the old faculty, and once tenured the old faculty has an effectively lifetime appointment. I don't have a problem with this system, but we need to keep it in mind. Outside pressure (aside from financial pressure, which would kill both the current regime and the chances of instituting a new one) will not do the trick. So Downtowners should at least seriously consider mounting an invasion of the ivory tower, not for dominance but for real inclusion -- Downtowners should get themselves hired, and then hire from their own ranks to the greatest extent possible. There are already a handful of Downtown composers in academic positions (and please post anybody else you think of to the comments section) -- Julia Wolfe was recently hired by Manhattan School of Music, David Borden is at Cornell, Larry Polansky is at Dartmouth, Paul Lansky is at Princeton, Evan Zipporyn is at MIT. And of course Kyle Gann is at Bard College.
2. Downtown music festivals need to push harder, be more media savvy, raise more money, and get noticed. And maybe new festivals need to be started. Again, here's Kyle: "Meanwhile, there were and are music festivals that do claim to represent Downtown music, most famously New Music America, which was a traveling Downtown music schowcase for eleven years, from 1979 to 1989. Last October?s Sounds Like Now festival explicitly featured the Downtown scene, and there are periodically others, none of them nearly as visible or well-funded as Bang on a Can." Again, I don't know much about these festivals, but I trust Kyle's assessment. Note that "most famous" festival is now defunct, and most others are "periodic" and not well funded.
Whether you like my specific suggestions or not, there's one thing that everybody needs to remember -- PR is important. Bang on a Can and John Zorn got where they are through that magical combination of big talent and excellent organizational and PR skills. Neither by itself will do it, and unfortunately PR will often go further than talent. So let's work smart.
posted by Galen H. Brown
11:38 AM
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