Saturday, January 07, 2006
Coming out for Rufus Wainwright
 Colleagues, this is my first post to this group. I’ve read a fair amount on the website and am thrilled that this forum exists and am embarrassed that I didn’t know about it before. I’d like your help with a project I’m working on. If you don’t like popular music, or tonal music, or Rufus Wainwright, no need to read any further.
I am writing a book about the music of RW. For me, Rufus is the best thing in music since the Beatles. I’m not going to compare him to anyone in Classical music, as his music is not really “classical” at this point. He is primarily a singer-songwriter who has feet in popular music, opera, cabaret and jazz, but he’s hard to categorize. He claims to listen mostly to “classical” music, and his great chord progressions and unparalleled sense of melody testify to that. I doubt he listens to Schoenberg or Boulez, but he does listen to Philip Glass. If I had to try to describe him as a songwriter, I’d compare him to Cole Porter, although his lyrics are not at Porter’s level at this stage. He sang for the opening concert of the New York City Opera this past September, and is, I hear through the grapevine, working on something [an opera?] for the Metropolitan Opera.
I’m interested in bringing his music to the attention of the classical music community (sorry, I don’t know what else to call us), as well as help the millions of Rufus fans understand how his music works, and ultimately teach them how phrase structure and form work in music in general. In my book, I will be including analytic essays of selected songs, mostly for voice and piano, that will analyze lyric and musical structure. My challenge is addressing musicians, as well as non-musicians.
To this end, I have created a blog to get help from interested people in writing this book: Rufus fans, musicians, teachers, and, with this posting, composers. If you are so inclined, I’d like to urge you to register and participate. As composers, your comments and suggestions will be invaluable to me.
Blog on THE MUSIC OF RUFUS WAINWRIGHT
Roger Bourland's website
Rufus Wainwright's Dreamworks website
Thanks for your help.
posted by Roger Bourland
2:47 PM
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
What is going on outside of New York?
I don’t live in New York, and do not identify with the “uptown/downtown” scene (or whatever it’s called). So, What is going on in your town (particularly those with a population of 500,000 or less)? I am interested in American music that represents the “area” of our country, not the densest by population.
Are you a composer in a small or medium size city or town? What is going in your corner of this land?
What does it mean to be a composer who lives in a rural area? What does it mean to be a composer in a suburban area?
This is my first post to Sequenza21. I will post discussions related to composers outside the “big cities.” We will talk about balancing our day jobs, families, and mortgage payments, with our desire to compose music. My next post will deal with my own hard feelings about my composition degrees and the unrealistic ambitions I had as a composer.
posted by Daniel Gilliam
1:54 PM
Monday, January 02, 2006
experimental music?
There are a lot of terms going around these days: "uptown/downtown," "postminimalism," "totalism," etc. Even the term "classical music" is not entirely clear as to what it means, at least to me. It's very un-Taoist to categorize things, but the fact is that as humans, we generally want to put things into neat (or more often, not so neat) boxes. Kind of like the red state/blue state thing. So I'm fine with it overall, with the caveat that it's understood that we often use terms as a lingua franca, but that they may not mean exactly what they imply in a strict, academic sense.
However, one term that I've always had trouble with is that of "experimental music." I've seen it applied to music by Varese, Antheil, Ornstein, Partch, and many others. What does it really mean, anyway? Is music ever really "experimental?" When I've done experiments, it was usually in a laboratory setting where one is trying to prove a theory either correct or incorrect. In other words, there is either an inductive or deductive process going on where the end result should be validation or invalidation of the theory.
I'm not sure I understand how that relates to music. Why is Varese's or Cage's or Ives' music considered "experimental" by some while John Adams' music might not be? My sense is that the term "experimental" was applied somewhat derisively, to denote music that is "out there" and perhaps not in the same "acceptable" styles as Mozart or Brahms, or else using some new form of instrumentation (such as electronics or novel instruments) or traditional instruments played in new ways. If that is true, then it is somewhat perjorative in intent, to signify that the resulting music is not polished, not codified in some way...in other words, "an experiment." Similarly, if it is not meant that way, what makes some music "experimental?" Is it experimental in that it is relatively uncertain, or meant to prove or disprove something?
I can't stand the term. It makes no sense to me whatsoever. There is certainly some degree of "experimentation" in any work I compose, and suspect that is true for everyone else. But if the final result is ok with me, why should it be viewed as "experimental?" Similarly, while Partch's music of course largely involves new, often homemade instruments and microtonal tunings, I believe that Partch knew exactly what he was doing, felt strongly about his music (as he should have) and created music that I have genuine affection for. How is that experimental? Microtonality is nothing new, and Partch was not experimenting with new instruments; rather, he was finding new modalities to realize the music he wanted to create. Nothing new about that either.
So I'd be more than happy if, with all the categorizing that we all do in this musical world, we ditch the term "experimental music." It signifies nothing, can be perjorative, and is really nonsensical the more I have thought about it over the years. Let's leave experimentation to the scientists among us.
posted by David Toub
6:11 PM
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