Thursday, February 09, 2006
Uptown, Downtown, Out of Town
An interesting debate is raging below a NewMusicBox chatter piece we ran a week ago even though the link to the specific threadstarter has now disappeared from our home page. It started with Randy Nordschow's claim that distinctions between "Uptown Music" and "Downtown Music" no longer exist. It has since morphed into a debate about the value of compositional camps and whether or not minimalism or the new romanticism have caught on in Europe. The latter feud reminds me of Kyle Gann's frequent assertion that "Uptown Music" is largely European-derived while most "Downtown Music" is homegrown in the U.S.A.
I frequently joke that since I moved from Chelsea to Inwood (still in Manhattan), I've gone so far uptown that it might as well be downtown. But, strangely, the music I've written since that move incorporates tone rows, metrical modulations, and many other "Uptown" gambits while retaining a "Downtown" fixation with repetition and oddball instrumentation. I sometimes describe it as "Beyond Uptown" music, a name I stole from a poster advertising yoga classes in my new neighborhood. I would argue that Randy's music, which to my ears miraculously does the reverse, is "Beyond Downtown" music and, as if to bring the point home, he lives in Brooklyn. But that's our own silly argument.
As a small community mostly outside the commercial mainstream to begin with, I think we composers do ourselves a disservice when we carve ourselves up into opposing fiefdoms. Plus, even though I myself am a New Yorker, I would agree with any non-New Yorker who feels angered by a perceived New York centricity that terms such as "Uptown" and "Downtown" might connote. But, at least the terms are not really pejorative (which is not true for other words I've heard members of both camps use to decribe each other). Plus, we seem to be as stuck with them as we are with such other other etymological hobgoblins as minimalism, atonality, impressionism, jazz and classical music. Might there still be stylistic attributes that we can point to in order to define and better understand (not close our ears to) parallel movements that evolved separately? I'd love to hear other people's thoughts about this either on NewMusicBox or here in this Forum.
posted by Frank J. Oteri
11:50 AM
The Kurtág Klub Konvenes
Last Tuesday I had a wonderful lunch with Profs. Stephen Blum of the CUNY Graduate Center and Rachel Beckles Wilson of Royal Holloway in London. Blum is an ethnomusicologist specializing in Iranian music, and Beckles Wilson is a musicologist specializing in twentieth-century Hungarian music. Both have published on Kurtág.
After completing piano studies at the Royal Academy of Music, Beckles Wilson went to Hungary to study with Kurtág himself. She had prepared the piano part from the first of his major song cycles: “The Sayings of Peter Bornemisza.” The part being very dense and extraordinarily difficult, she was hoping to be illuminated by the Great Man’s genius and infected by his incredible musicality.
She was. But it was a nightmare.
Kurtág comes from a tradition of musicians who are ruthlessly dedicated to the cause of Art. No sacrifice is too great, no effort too strenuous in the service of Music. We are its slaves, and, should we fail to meet Music’s demands, we must strive even harder, push ourselves even more in an impossible quest to achieve what we, as musicians, have promised to do for Music by choosing the life we have chosen.
Kurtág, as a steward of art, is brutal in rehearsals and lessons. He has no sense of what is physically impossible for players and has no sympathy for those who shrink from the demands he and other composers make. He is unafraid to destroy or to humiliate. Beckles Wilson occasionally shows her students videos of him in rehearsal devastating musicians who, one can imagine, are just trying to do their baffled best. Her own students look on in shock.
While Kurtág is regarded in Hungary as a supreme genius, this alone does not account for his tyrannical behavior toward students. He is from a long line of such merciless coaches, and he has inherited his mantle from musicians before him who were similarly “abusive.”
My first reaction upon hearing this was to wonder how Kurtág could “get away with it.” Sure, one hears about how blunt Steve Reich can be and how exacting Pierre Boulez is in rehearsal. But surely no composer in the United States could sustain a career while being so seemingly callous toward his fellow musicians.
Am I wrong?
What is it in our disposition that refuses to accept such tyrants? Why would such demeanor be unacceptable in England and the United States (and, presumably, many other places)? Why is “Art” (with a capital A) an insufficient excuse to engage in the sort of behavior Kurtág does? Is it a question of how much one culture “values” Art or Music? Or is it that we do not see music as something above the politics of being human? That, in the end, music is the tool of people – not the other way around?
posted by David Salvage
12:46 AM
Monday, February 06, 2006
How to save european contemporary music?
Hello composers,
It'my first contribute here, please excuse my english...
Bad times here in Italy (and Europe) for contemporary music. Really bad.
Most of concert halls and musical associations live by government funds but now Italy thinks contemporary arts became an impossible luxury. Country of Corelli, Vivaldi, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini, Casella, Maderna, Nono, Bussotti, Donatoni (you know, it's only a short list) now considers its music less important then ever. More or less the same is happening in France, Holland, Germany, all the rest of Europe.
Italian Government decided a 30% cut for 2006; in 2005 cut 50%. We have not much left... And without Orchestras and Halls we have only the possibility to teach in conservatories (what? composition for future composers?) or change our job. I did, actually. Now I make my living working as digital painter and software engineer, and I'm not the only in this situation.
After 15 years writing and performing this is the scenario.
Probably european composers need new ideas to propose their works, maybe we are dinosaurs. I don't know.
Ciao a tutti.
posted by Stefano Savi Scarponi
7:48 AM
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