Friday, April 08, 2005
prizes
For anyone who "wins" a Pulitzer in music, that's great. I don't want to diminish it. However, the real prize should be in writing the music itself. Just as Feynman couldn't have cared less about his Nobel in physics (indeed, he gave serious thought to refusing it in the first place) since the real "kick" came from the physics, not the prize.
I'm not familiar, personally, with Stephen Stucky's music, so I can't have any feeling one way or the other about his being awarded the prize. I'll assume it was well deserved. But I do have a sense that in many cases, the Pulitzer prize in music is often awarded either to "safe" composers who are not doing anything particularly interesting, or else to great composers for "safe" examples of their work. Ives won his Pulitzer for his third symphony, which in many people's opinion is a pretty innocuous piece, certainly not as deserving as many of his other works. Where is the Pulitzer prize for Steve Reich? Philip Glass? Morton Feldman? John Cage?
So again, no disrespect intended. And no slight intended towards those who really do want to enter competitions and win. Recognition by one's peers, and listeners, can be quite meaningful, and if that's what some prizes are about, then that is very good. But I can't get that excited about a prize for music or most anything else awarded by a committee. I've known several Nobel laureates and none of them were that interested in having won the prize; it gave them pleasure to be recognized by colleagues, but other than that it was of little consequence. I don't enter contests in general, and certainly not for composition, since the real pleasure is in the music itself.
posted by David Toub
9:51 PM
Pulitizer, Schmulitzer
If you're coming into the Composers Forum directly, be sure to see Frank J. Oteri's piece over on the front page. He's wondering why there is so little reaction, pro or con, to Steven Stucky having won this year's Pulitizer prize. Don't we care that a real composer and not Justin Timberlake won?
posted by Jerry Bowles
8:26 PM
SOTU
Over at New Music Box, right next door to J. Mark Scearce's much discussed controversial essay on the education of composers, Keeril Makan has a great essay on a graduate seminar he is teaching at U Illinios, Urbana. He and his students are taking a sort-of "State of the Union" survey of the new music scene in the US.
"So, first we investigated programs and institutions that are national in scope. The students researched composers that have won national commissioning competitions in the last five years (such as the Fromm, Koussevitzky, Meet the Composer, and Chamber Music America). Coincidentally, I was serving on a national commissioning panel early on in the semester, so I was able to give students a more in-depth example of how such a panel works. We also discussed composers that have received multiple orchestral commissions in the past five years, and looked at how national performance rights organizations such as ASCAP and BMI function. Then students researched and reported on new music activity in given urban centers. So far, we have looked at New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Chicago (not a comprehensive list, but certainly a start). Students were charged with investigating larger institutions as well as small performing ensembles, local composers active in the region, and the universities that have composition and new music programs."
This strikes me as a fantastic idea, and I wish that such a class had been offered when I was at NEC. (Maybe there will be something like this at what ever school I go to for my doctorate. Heck, I may even look at U of I.) We spend so much time studying historical music, and so much time living in our own little corner of the current new music world, that we can't see the forest for the trees. I know who some of the major historical figures are in the minimalism/downtown scene (let me confess additionally that I know less of this history than I should) but I don't have much of a sense of who's doing what now. That's even more the case in more uptown styles. I know the Boston scene to a certain extent, but I bet there's all sorts of exciting stuff going on in New York, San Fransicso, DC, Chicago, and in dozens of other cities of which I'm completely ignorant. Now one might note that if I want to learn about these regions I can just do the research on my own, and one would be right, but the beauty of Professor Makan's format is that a group can do more research than an individual can, and then each member of the group can present his or her findings to the group. It's far more efficient. If these students are doing reports, maybe they would be willing to put them together into one publicly available repository so that the rest of us can benefit as well?
posted by Galen H. Brown
12:21 PM
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
A Composer’s Idiom : Stylistic Lineage, part #1
This is a follow- up to my multi-part question of March 17th:
“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?”
While I defer to my next post discussion of some of the (heart-breaking) tales concerning ‘performances that were mishandled interpretively’, I offer here two foundational bits:
[1] I know for a fact that my own music benefits greatly from an interpretive approach similar to that for high-Romantic music. (There is, in fact, a right and a wrong way to play my music.)
I do sincerely believe that composers comprise – each and every one of us – a “non-renewable natural resource”, and we need to be savored, understood, and performed in a manner consistent with the central artistic nature of our own particular music.
So (wearing my hat as national board member for composition for the College Music Society), some years ago, I began a CMS project for composers called My Idiom. Here, composers get to speak directly to performers.
At “My Idiom” composers post 2 – 3 paragraphs concerning the chief interpretive manner/main artistic and stylistic characteristics to be found in their works. Composers may NOT discuss how they find their notes, just how those notes should be delivered. Participating composers are also invited to list 4-5 representative works (max); post their personal contact info; and post direct links to other places on the web where their score excerpts and sound samples are readily available.
Among the interesting sub-emphases are declarations as to whether humor/cabaret/theatre are important to a particular composer’s style (or not); whether a person declares allegiance to a minimalist approach, or shies from it; whether the composer specializes in works for small or large forces; whether texted music is central to that composer’s artistic world, or not; etc.
There are a fair number of composer entries already at "My Idiom," and by the end of ’05 the site should be searchable in any number of ways (by technical, interpretive adjectives; by genres; etc.)
[2] In 2003 I happened upon a masterclass given by Martin Katz at the Manhattan School of Music that turned out to hinge on just those ineffable aspects of apt performance style that can make or break the piece.
Katz was discussing the difference between rubato and word sensitivity in performing seemingly-equal 8th-notes in the art songs of Berg and Strauss--as distinct from the painstaking rhythmic carving meticulously written out by Wolf. Katz made sure to underline that in Strauss and Berg’s time elements that bend the delivery of the 8th-notes in their songs were certainly operative, but would never be put onto the page -- because these performance idioms were so automatically, intrinsically understood by the artists of the composers’ own age. It was an amazing display of subtle stylistic distinctions in "performance" traditions.
These are of course things that studio teachers take such pains to impart during lessons. And performers relish and magnify the distinctions of the ‘personal musical voice’ in the works by composers of past eras – because they understand these exist, and know where the style boundaries are.
Today’s composers too have individual manners, voices – and, once these become understood and appreciated, they become the basis from which performers seek out other, suitable works.
posted by Judith Lang Zaimont
7:27 PM
Critical Condition
"A certain amount of brick-throwing might even be a good thing. There comes a moment in the career of most artists, if they are any good, when attacks on their work take a form almost more acceptable than praise."
Anthony Powell, Casanova's Chinese Restaurant
These are words I try to keep in mind when considering "criticism".
Readers interested in forming independent conclusions (as well as those interested in learning the actual title of the piece under review) may go here.
Disclaimer: In lieu of a little smiley face icon let me ststae for the record that the preceding has been posted purely for its educational and entertainment value (such that it is). I have no critical axes to grind.
posted by Tom Myron
9:57 AM
music criticism
In the comments regarding a recent Steve Reich performance in which the audience treated Steve Reich fairly rudely in the opinions of most of us, someone raised an interesting question: how should composers handle negative criticism?
My personal take on criticism: if it's constructive, then it should be taken in all seriousness and acted upon. If it's destructive, then it's irrelevant. As Max Reger once said to a critic: "I'm sitting in the smallest room of my house with your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me."
People either like or dislike my music, and I'm not bothered by anyone who dislikes it. While we all want everyone to love our music, not everyone will. I'd be more concerned if someone was indifferent to it. Indifference is far worse than dislike, since it suggests the music was not capable of having any impact whatsoever.
posted by David Toub
8:50 AM
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
A Composer Under the Influence
Lawrence Dillon’s thoughts about the nature of influence and Rodney Lister’s point about the vast body of music available to young composers today have got me thinking about how our relationship to the historical past might affect our conception of “influence” as a force connecting the work of composers over time. It makes me wonder if the aspect of our culture that most defines our modernity is our consciousness of history, even if that consciousness attempts to take the form of "rejection".
Recently I heard Peter Sheppard Skaerved give a riveting performance of the complete Rochberg Caprice Variations. He played them on the Stradavarius used by the concertmaster at the first performance of the Symphonie Fantastique. The Variations came across as possessing a terrific line of musical continuity, from late Baroque collage through variations on Schubert, Brahms, Mahler and Webern. The piece ends with Paganini's famous theme and, in a tour de force of in-the-moment poetic license, Skaerved played it pianissimo- as if the previous 60 minutes had been generated by a single fleeting echo.
So I guess it boils down to this- does it have to "sound modern" to be modern? Can a composer, like any artist in any other medium, write a "period piece" or a time travel science fiction epic? When Scorsese engages history by putting 19th century New York on the screen the validity of the endeavor is never in question, only the degree of its success.
While understanding that there are no guarantees, I think that a piece of music can embrace "discarded" or "discredited" forms without having to become hopelessly bogged down in either self-consciousness or details of period accuracy. For me the success of a work of art that engages the past will always be a function of the degree to which it manages to create a meaningful dialog between the past "depicted" and the present of its creation, whether it is skeptical about, or affirming of, the possibilities of such a dialog.
And while our experiences are without question quite different from those of composers who lived 150 (or even 50) years ago, I don't think our relationships are. We are all still husbands, wives, parents, sons and daughters and we all need meaningful connections to our personal and our collective past in order to both make sense of the present and to lay the groundwork for possible futures. In the words of Berio:
"There is a great deal of mystery around us. Romantic man was surrounded by a mysterious and impassive nature. Today, man is surrounded by an equally mysterious and substantially malign culture: a culture that, both on a planetary and a local level, often presents itself as a very unstable and dangerous emulsion of transformations, oppressions and (often mishandled) skirmishes- with few prospects for an amalgam. ...If this emulsion one day "precipitates" and explodes, we should at least be able to offer- to those that come after us, God knows how and god knows from where- real and historically responsible things and not false things, unworthy of memory."
posted by Tom Myron
12:40 AM
Monday, April 04, 2005
thoughts on influence
I've been thinking about this since Lawrence raised the question; the following have crystalised in my mind:
1) As Kyle Gann said recently on his blog (I hope I'm paraphrasing this accurately), those of us who are old enough to have had our thinking-about-music/composing changed by a single piece in the 60's or 70's are likely to have solidified (ossified?) our thinking/composing to the extent that we are unlikely to be influenced in the same way by any piece in the 1990's or 2000's, how ever wonderful we may think it is, so it's hard, for me, anyway, to answer the question, as framed, about the 90's--or really even the 80's.
2)It struck me that a lot of 'big-name,' influential composers also solidified their styles so that any one of their pieces wouldn't have the same big impact that at one time it might have had. By now, I think, not just Carter and Boulez, but John Adams and Steve Reich are unlikely to change people's thinking--not that any one of them writes less good pieces, but their styles are part of the landscape, and no one of them is likely to do something drastically different in manner from what they've already done.
3)I wonder if any one piece could have the visibility to reach any thing like a mass audience, thereby having the chance to change many many people's thinking now. I first knew about the Berio Sinfonia and the Carter Piano Concerto, for instance, by reading about them in Time Magazine. They were both released in recordings by big name labels with very big (world-wide) distribution very soon after that. Does Time still even review any kind of music, let alone classical? Is there anything that counts as a major labels anymore and does any of them really have that kind of distribution? Do kids still haunt record stores the way I did then?
4) Sort of related (and something of a paradox)is the fact that a young composer these days has access to so much more music in so many different styles/languages, from so many different times and from so many different places. A teenager now can listen to recordings of Ravel and Debussy playing their music (probably earlier--certainly earlier if you count things like piano rolls). If Mozart could have done that he'd have been listening to Schutz, or earlier. If you disallow direct contact with the composer, she/he can listen to music by Leonin. I'm not sure if there were any recordings of Leonin when I was a teenager; if there were there certainly weren't many, and in any case none of them crossed my path. This kind of thing doesn't only, of course, include classical music; it goes to Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, King Oliver, Bill Monroe, The Carter Family, and God knows who else. Then if you figure in Bulgarian folk music, Tibetan religious music, African drumming...
Just about any kind of music can be the major influence for any body who can get at it, and it's relatively easy to get to. As long as there have been recordings, of course, that state of things has existed, but it's become increasingly (expotentially) that way as time passes. That also, it seems to me, mitigates againsts any single piece (or maybe even any particular composer) having the same kind of large scale impact that might have formerly been possible.
posted by Rodney Lister
9:40 AM
Sunday, April 03, 2005
influence
My question What pieces from the 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s have changed the way composers think about composing? has touched off an amazing range of answers, far more diverse than I would have guessed. I’ve learned a lot in the process, and now have a number of pieces I would like to track down.
I’ve tossed off a few specific titles that I think have had a broad cultural significance onto my blog, hoping to spark additions. But a more personal response is much harder for me to verbalize. I’m finding that I am more influenced by ideas than individual works.
As a young composer, I soaked up everything I could of John Cage, Morton Feldman, Roger Reynolds, Robert Ashley, SOURCE, etc. and responded accordingly.
In the early 90s, I started focusing on vocal works, writing pieces that combined words and music in new ways. The catalyst at that time was a single, 14th-century motet by Guillaume de Machaut: Se j’aim mon loyal ami. In it, three singers, all portraying the same person at different points in her life, sing three complementary texts simultaneously. The simultaneity was typical of the ars nova: the time warping and harrowing story-line was not. I started writing a series of pieces -- sometimes using singers, sometimes narrators -- that bent time in different directions, in an effort to arrive at a more personal relationship with stasis and progress.
Someone once said (I wish I knew who) that creativity is finding what’s been lost and making it new.
In the late 90s, I became more and more interested in the problem of European Classical forms. Conventional wisdom says that these forms are irrelevant to contemporary life. But experience has shown me that they are irrelevant in very specific ways, which means that they also have important kernels of relevance. The more I explored these forms, the more I discovered truths that our culture can ill afford to forget.
We live in a culture that rejects the lessons of the past. The media discuss music history as if it were something that began with the invention of television. The current administration, posing as conservative, is actually putting a radical agenda into place, an agenda that goes against so much of what I believe. My response has been to question the so-called “self-evident” truths of the past in a way that honors their true values, instead of taking them for granted, or brandishing them as weapons against thought.
I am finding that they are strong enough to withstand my questioning.
posted by Lawrence Dillon
6:06 PM
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