Composers Forum is a daily web log that allows invited contemporary composers to share their thoughts and ideas on any topic that interests them--from the ethereal, like how new music gets created, music history, theory, performance, other composers, alive or dead, to the mundane, like getting works played and recorded and the joys of teaching. If you're a professional composer and would like to participate, send us an e-mail.
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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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