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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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
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