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here will be occasional rants and ramblings. Feel free to send me an email if you want to
respond. List o' Rants: 11/20/2007 4/8/2007 For my current project for chorus,
string quartet, and electric guitar (due in December, to be premiered
in March!), I'll be setting an amalgam of excerpts from: And it recently dawned on me that in part, I choose the texts I do because I'm not interested in expressing myself directly, but in expressing myself by expressing others[3]. This was made more clear to me after being denied permission to use the Molotov cocktail recipe from Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book, and ended up adapting parts of the Wikipedia entry on Molotov cocktails. I feel now (though I'm not sure I consciously realized it then) that, as a composer, it's more powerful to speak through somebody else's words than your own, and having to use (however disguised) my own voice diminished the impact of Cocktail[4]. But setting somebody else's poetry is speaking through them, right? Somehow, I feel it isn't, and I can't exactly put my finger on why. I think it might be because when setting poetry, to a large extent I'm speaking as the poet, taking the poet's voice as my own (or vice versa), and so I'm basically still expressing myself. Another issue might be that poetry is
intended as art, art that I'm subsuming and substituting with another
media, whereas the texts I find compelling to set are not intended as
art, and so there isn't a weird sense of refraction and imposition in
using somebody else's creations. (1) Though I once had ideas for a couple of song cycles on E. E. Cummings and Jane Kenyon, but nothing ever really came of them. (2) Though I actively try not to follow any role models in terms of musical material, development, and technique, I do follow Steve Reich's lead in terms of what kinds of texts to set. (3) One of the pieces I'm proudest of is a setting of a love poem by E. E. Cummings for a wedding; and I think I was able to do it because it was written to express the couple involved. (4) Certainly for me, anyway, since nobody got to hear the original version except the performers. 8/20/2006 Tonality: A multi-tiered system of organizing music around one of two kinds of seven-note subsets (a major or minor key) of the twelve-tone scale in equal temperament. Most people understand tonality implicitly simply through exposure. Tier 1: The notes in the key. The “tonic”, the first note in the key, is given primacy by the ear, the fixed center to which the other notes relate. Tier 2: Chords (usually triads, groups of three) built by adding thirds to a starting note. The triad built on the “tonic” is given primacy by the ear. A triad will usually lead most satisfyingly to the triad built a fourth higher (fifth lower), and least satisfyingly to the triad a third higher. This level of tonality is based on finding ways of having the triad built on the fifth note in the key (the “dominant”) directly precede the “tonic” triad. Tier 3: There are 24 different keys possible within the twelve-tone scale. Any two keys will have from two to six notes in common with each other; the more common tones between them, the more closely related they are considered. Because of this overlap, a “tonic” chord in one key may also be a “dominant” chord in another – this ambiguity allows for movement between keys, referred to as modulation. In an interesting parallel to Tier 2, keys that are a fourth apart have the highest number of common tones (see circle of fifths). This level of tonality is built on finding ways of modulating from the “home” key of the piece to another key(s) (usually closely related) and back. Sidenote: In my view, a piece that is
in a key is not tonal if it is not predicated on movement away from and
back to the tonic, on the level of both Tier 2 and Tier 3. For as long as we have records of Western music, it has been predicated on the idea of returning home. The basic structure of tonal music, the aural journey away from and back to the home pitch and home key, is a powerful and compelling one. No matter how far we get from our starting point, we will always find our way back. My contention is that tonality as a narrative structure is an expression and affirmation of faith: the sense that things will always be put right somehow; the belief that things will work out for the best, and no matter how far afield we roam, home will always be there for us. (I’m going to assume that music can be considered to have a narrative structure, though I’m not entirely sure 1) if I buy it or 2) what that really means in a context that cannot have semantic meaning.) This has obvious congruence with both the basic tents of and the paternalism within Christianity. The story of our expulsion from the spiritual world into the material, our wanderings and tribulations in the material world, and our reacceptance (with the forgiveness that implies) back into the world of the spiritual has clear parallels to the narrative of tonality as I outline above. As something of a corollary, I think it’s relevant that atonality’s most strident and visible proponents, Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, gained prominence during the grand disillusionment that was the emotional aftermath of the First World War. It may be something of a stretch, but what better way to express despair than music that has no recognizable center, nowhere to return to, and no convincing destination? (Incidentally, this reminds me of a conversation I once had with my teacher about the lack of worthwhile serialists – who followed in the footsteps of those three – as partly attributable to the fact that these are people working in a method devised by three Germans in and around the First World War.) This is not to say that those three
were the first atonal composers. Most notably, Liszt (in his late
years), Debussy, Ives, and Stravinsky were writing nontonal music even
before The Second Viennese School. But most still used some of the
“lower” tiers explained above (though in highly idiosyncratic fashion),
while the SVS consciously tried to do away with every facet of tonality. At this point, I find it hard not to bring sonata-allegro form into the discussion, as it was for so long considered the apotheosis of all means of constructing tonal music. Another definition: Sonata-Allegro Form: A method of
structuring a piece of music predicated on tonal relationships. The
first section (the “exposition”) begins with a first “theme” (a
recognizable pattern of notes) in the home key, and modulates to a
closely related key, in which a second theme is played. In the next
section, the “development”, these themes are presented in a variety of
different ways, often in many different keys. Eventually, the
development leads back to the “recapitulation”, which is identical to
the exposition except for the appearance of the second theme, which is
now presented in the home key as well. Often a “coda” will be added at
the end of the recapitulation to wrap things up. Generally also known
as “sonata” form, though this term is slightly ambiguous. Here, too, are some clear similarities to Christian thought. Sonata form encompasses two stories: one of reconciliation, and one of returning home. The story of reconciliation is expressed by the appearance of two different themes in two different keys, which interact and collide in the development, to be presented in the recapitulation in the same key, in harmony. The story of returning home is expressed in the journey from the tonic key into the development, and back to the tonic key. The themes presented in the exposition are transformed and, if you will, tested in the development, wandering through an unpredictable and tumultuous landscape of different keys until they find their way back to the exposition – which, originally, was exactly the same as the exposition, (with the exception of the key of the second theme). As sonata form is predicated on the tension caused by the departure from the home key, it loses much of its power in the absence of the pitch structure furnished by tonality; without a clear sense of home and center, there cannot be a clear sense of departing, reconciliation, and return. 11/21/2005 * First of all, the personal. I am constitutionally hostile to anybody or anything that tells me what I should think. By the same token, I feel extremely uncomfortable telling somebody else what they should think. Yes, there are a lot of things I'm angry about with today's political climate. But it feels both arrogant and juvenile to tell you that you should feel the same way I do about some issue. * Then the practical. I feel that, as a vehicle for protest, purely instrumental music is completely ineffective, as, without a comprehensible text, any political element is provided only by context the composer provides. To illustrate, let's say I write a piece, call it Music for four cellos, and in the program notes I provide purely technical information, the minutiae of the piece's musical structure. A few years later I can take that same piece, rename it Toilet Bowl Bible, and in the program notes I claim that the piece is a condemnation of torture. Yet, I would argue, the people who hear it as Music for four cellos and those who hear it as Toilet Bowl Bible will come away with completely different impressions of what the music means(1). If that's true, then whatever element of protest there is is not present in the music, but in the lens through which I tell you to interpret it, a completely untenable position. How can I say that Toilet Bowl Bible is about something that wasn't apprehendable when it was named Music for Four Cellos? Obviously, if text is involved, some element of protest can be made fairly evident, in which case my issue becomes personal (as above). * Aesthetically, I feel that a piece of art that is only about one thing is...well...kinda boring. I'm reminded of Tolkien's hatred of interpretations of LOTR as allegory; it is a disservice and demeaning to assume that a work of art has only one meaning. I would argue that, as well, it is shallow to create a work of art that has only one meaning. As well, assigning making a political statement out of a piece of art makes said art really about its creator(2), which is fairly presumptuous. * I feel that best chance a politically motivated piece of art has at being worthwhile is as an extension of a historical document, a means of bearing witness rather than an expression of outrage. * That said, I have begun work on a fairly politically charged piece. I hope to avoid these pitfalls by using texts that are as emotionally neutral and clinical in tone as possible, whose vehemence is provided only by a context from which I will have almost completely divorced them, and by providing no insight into my intentions in the notes I provide to the audience, other than the texts themselves. We'll see how well it works when Cocktail is performed, and go from there. ___ (1) Depending on your definition of 'means'(a). (a) Assuming that music can mean anything at all, whatever your definition. (2) One can claim this about all art, but I would argue there's a difference between a work being infused with some aspect/spirit of its creator and a work being about its creator. 10/26/2004 I would say there are two primary kinds of chance-driven music. There's music in which decisions are made by some random process, like flipping a coin or rolling dice; and there's music in which a large proportion of decisions are made not by the composer but by the performer, who might play from a score which is actually, for example, a map of constellations in the Northern Hemisphere. (It could be argued that this blurs the distinction between the composer and performer. I'm not interested in that right now.) The two are not mutually exclusive, but the distinction I'm addressing involves whether or not the music is pre-composed. This, also, is a spectrum, not a dichotomy, but it's useful to keep thing simple for now. The first 'category' was part of Cage's attempt to remove 'intention' from music; to allow a listener to appreciate sounds devoid of intended meaning, to isolate sounds from context. I have always felt that this idea is inherently flawed. First of all, what music of Cage's I've heard created this way is just plain boring. One of the odd things I've found is that music intended to be 'random' generally sounds very homogenous. (See Rant #19). A more fundamental flaw, I think, is that it is impossible to remove intention from music, at any level. Cage was never able to escape having to set parameters. At the level of composition, Cage still had to decide what events would be triggered by a particular roll of the dice, or what instruments would be performing. At the level of performance, the very act of organizing a concert is antithetical to the idea of intentionless music. The second 'category' ends up being much like free jazz, as musicians essentially improvise each performance, making each one different. This idea, I think, has more merit. Every live performance of any piece will be unique in many respects, and it was genius to exploit that as the basis for a body of work. Nevertheless, in application, it becomes more frustrating than fascinating to listen to. When I go to see any work inthis vein, whether by Cage or somebody else, I want to join in and contribute my own voice to the proceedings. Such music, I think, is far more rewarding for the performers who get to experience the work multiple times, and thus experience it changing, than for the audience, to whom it may seem like a bunch of pretentious musicans wanking off. By no means do I think Cage wasn't an amazing artist; I think he's absolutely essential, a towering figure any contemporary artist has to address in some way, whether to accept his ideas, reject them, or find some middle ground. But sometimes, I wish he had stuck to traditional methods of composition, as the music he wrote early in his career is incredibly gorgeous; the music he wrote later is more a demonstration of his philosophy than music qua music. What we gained in ideas, we lost in substance. 7/15/2004 Apologies for pedantry. Why does this matter? Some time ago, I attended a concert with a friend, and we agreed that a real pitfall of writing atonal music is that it's very hard not to make it sound homogenous. If it sounds as if it doesn't matter in what order the notes fall, the result means that it become perceived, essentially, as a pile of dirt. Dirt is boring. Music (and all art) exists in the space between order and chaos. If it lands too far towards either end, it sounds all the same, and we disengage. Too much predictability is boring. Too much unpredictability ends up feeling predictable, in a way. A series of events that are all different is as dull as a series of events that are all the same. (Of course, such art can succeed and be compelling on a meta-level, but I'm going to ignore that for now.) (It's also important to note that I
consider the simplicity/complexity scale mildly separate from the
order/chaos scale. There's some relation between the two, but it's not
always clear-cut. [Also, the order/chaos scale, as regards music, is
separable into sub-scales for each element of music that can operate
relatively {but not completely} independently of one another. {That is
to say, pitch may not vary at all, while rhythm might be all over the
place.}]) </David
Foster Wallace> It's my understanding that patterns are critical to our apprehension of any series of events. Patterns allow us to fit events into some sort of context that allows us to predict future events. (To brag, pattern recognition is one of my strengths. When I was nine, I took a pattern-recognition test as part of an intelligence assessment and scored 55 out of 60. The average 24-year old scores 45. Word.) Good music finds a balance of giving us just enough order to form a hypothesis (if you will) about the context of a piece; then does something that is both entirely unexpected and fits perfectly within that context. Something that simultaneously follows logically from a given set of conditions, yet could not have been anticipated. Or, maybe, to examine it differently, good music starts off showing us a little of its guiding principles, enough to let us think we can tell what's going on. Then it both affirms and subverts that framework, expanding and changing our understanding of it. 5/30/2004 What I mean by that is I feel as if the sound they're adopting is just that - adopted. That they're putting on some kind of musical mask and creating music that doesn't reflect the real them. ('Real them'? What does that mean?) This weird sense of musical insincerity is reinforced by their previous album, which I interpret as a send-up of '70s prog rock. But that's not to say that sound like fakers or phonies. Perhaps that's to say that they're very good musical chameleons, and play their roles with artistry and inventiveness - but they are still roles. It's as if their music, at least partly, is a commentary on the style it's mimicking. That they're trying to draw attention not only to their songs, but to the tradition from which their music draws. 4/5/2004 I must admit that I have something of a vested interest in finding fault with the music of my contemporaries, as they are in some sense my competitors; as such, my assessment is fundamentally suspect. I spoke about this with someone who had a hand in choosing the music for this concert; he replied that it's very rare to find a young composer who has 'found their voice', that young composers generally imitate the styles of the music they admire before discovering their own way. (Some never get around to that second part). Even so, I've heard more adventurous and engaging works from young composers (and in some cases, from some of the composers who were featured) than those I listened to on this concert. (Not that originality and newness are necessarily a worthy goals in and of themselves; rather, they're the consequence of a worthwhile artistic vision.) Maybe it's just something about music schools in the Boston area, many of which I consider to be overly traditional. Anyway, the fellow's claim is probably true to a great extent. When I look closely at the composers I admire most, none wrote music I dig before around their mid-30s or so...though it's generally hard to find recordings of the music they wrote while younger. Then again, that may be because no one thinks it's worth recording...including the composer. How does a composer finally 'figure it out'? Does it just happen suddenly, like flicking on a light switch? Is it a matter of conscious effort on the composer's part, or does it just come as a consequence of constantly writing music? Is it the result of some sort of epiphany, a serendipitous encounter with something mindblowing? Who the hell knows? Unsurprisingly, I believe my own music, while obviously influenced by the music I like, stands on its own as unique, clearly mine. Unfortunately, I also realize that I have neither perspective nor objectivity (nor can I) when I try to judge the originality of my own work; I imagine that the composer whose music I disliked felt similarly about their own pieces. In the end, the upshot is that composers generally don't even have a chance to be taken seriously until we're in our late 30s and early 40s. It's, mildly put, frustrating. 2/22/2004 First of all, I think postmodernism is pretty cool. But I don't know a whole lot about literary criticism or deconstruction specifically. I'll talk about them anyway. I feel that postmodernism is the acknowledgement that there is a unique relationship between a text and each of its observers. (Postmodern art toys with that relationship and that context in some way.) Deconstruction is, I think, a branch of postmodernism that deals with how we find meaning. Semiotics -- the study of signs -- is at the heart of deconstruction. The core idea of semiotics is that any communication involves four steps: encoding a message, transmitting that message, receiving it, and decoding it. Every step involves a potential corruption of that message. For example, anyone who's gotten fairly deeply into learning a foreign language realizes that certain concepts in that language are essentially untranslatable -- that a word in French might have connotations and allusions that one could not possibly convey in English. Thus, any means of translating that concept from one language to another involve a loss (or change) of meaning. Taking that farther, from a certain point of view, everyone speaks a unique language. My concept of 'cat' is slightly but inevitably different from your concept of 'cat', such that I always mean something slightly different from what you understand me to mean. And a third listener would have a different idea of 'cat' than both yours and mine. This is not to take that to its extreme and claim that communication between human beings is fundamentally impossible -- obviously, most people's concepts of 'cat' overlap greatly -- but not completely. These differences in meaning are generally irrelevant in everyday life, when one is talking about the material world, and has a concrete point of reference. But these differences become important in more erudite circumstances, such as when we are talking about mental constructs such as emotions; or when one is, for instance, translating a bible from Greek into Latin; or in academia, where one's goal (in my estimation) should be to pin down meaning as precisely as possible. This is also not to say that there is an infinite number of equally valid viewpoints -- but that there is never just one. For example, in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, there is a character whose initials are J.C. and to whom the events described happen at age 33 (among other, smaller Christ-centric details). Faulkner has denied any intention to allude to Christ -- but the allusion axists, and we can discuss it. (This itself alludes to a kind of corollary of deconstruction, commonly known as 'The Death of the Author' -- that once a text is created, its creator's understanding of it is no more or less privileged than anybody else's.) [5/30: I may have, unfortunately, misremembered which novel this happens in. It was a long time ago, in high school English. And besides, the wench is dead.] When examining a 'text', we have to understand that it exists in a framework of contexts -- the context in which it was created, and the context in which it is being interpreted. (One sticky problem is that each interpretation creates a new 'text', and we have the potential for infinite regression.) The statement 'John F. Kennedy was not a homosexual', despite being used as a kind of throwaway dig, is actually a very helpful demonstration. I recall coming across the concept in James Carse's Finite and Infinite Games, that the lens through which we interpret a 'text' distorts our view. Doing so is not pointless -- but any such observation contains as much information about the observer as it does about the observed. I think, at heart, the lesson of deconstructionism (if not necessarily postmodernism) is that every 'text' contains biases, as does every interpretation of that 'text'. And if we want to be careful about avoiding those biases, we first have to acknowledge them. What's important is that the biases themselves can be considered a 'text'. Perhaps academia has evolved all of their jargon to obfuscate the matter; or perhaps they are all too aware of the pitfalls of language and are trying too heard to be as exact as possible. Hell, while writing this, I felt the need to define many terms I used -- 'context', 'interpretation -- with the thought that while there was no way I could make my message entirely clear, I could try to make it as clear as possible by being as explicit as possible about the terms I was using. But sometimes, in trying to prevent something, we cause it to happen. [4/5: In response to those who wondered why the article pissed me off so, what most irraated me was the author's basic premise; 'I can't understand them' + 'I'm really smart' = 'They're full of shit'. Knee-jerk anti-intellectualism. My biggest issue with the piece is the contention that *all* deconstruction is essentially academic onanism, and that the only reason it exists is to give jobs to dumb people whose only real skill is bullshitting. Yes, there are some deconstructionists who deserve a slow death by strangulation. But there are some really neat and useful ideas being thrown around, too.] 12/27/2003 Most (if not all) of the songs on the album seem to reference other bands - not in the oblique way that their music hints, at times, at the music of, for example, The Beatles and Pink Floyd - but explicitly draws from the sound world of, say, early punk, '70s rock, or even a little bit of psychidelia. One some of the tracks, I expect to hear someone from another band singing. It's a strange thing to hear an album based around anachronisms and yet still clearly be by nobody but Radiohead. A friend of mine likened it to The Beatles' White Album, a comparison I had considered as well - both are amalgamations of a wide variety of older musical styles, but nevertheless contemporary, and obviously the work of their creators. 12/24/2003 One of the first lines of defense (as it were) is to claim that pop music isn't as 'sophisticated' as classical music. But generally, the word 'sophisticated' is defined and used in a limited and self-serving way, one transparent step removed from "I know it when I hear it." Some pop uses pretty complicated and subtle techniques - although, I suppose, the words 'complicated' and 'subtle' are in and of themselves loaded with value judgements, which I'll ignore for now. But I think the fact that there is sometimes overlap in technique and/or language is enough to discount this line of thought. More meaningful, perhaps, is the idea that classical music exists as a kind of Platonic ideal. That is to say, a piece of classical music doesn't really exist in any concrete way. I can't point to the score of a Beethoven symphony and claim that it defines the symphony. Nor can I do the same to a performance or a recording of it. Those are manifestations of the music, or realizations of it - but they are far from the totality of it. Pop, on the other hand, works differently. A CD of, for example, The Beatles' music encompasses the whole of it. Abbey Road will never change, I can point to something specific and claim with confidence that it is the entirety of Abbey Road. Live performances of it (although the Beatles had stopped touring long before, I think) would have been 'live performances of Abbey Road'. The distinction might be considered semantic - but semantics are important. Similarly, any band covering Abbey Road isn't performing 'Abbey Road' - they're covering it, producing something entirely separate, that would probably be considered Band X's version of Abbey Road. This breaks down too, though. What about an old pop standard, like 'My Funny Valentine', that exists to be interpreted very differently by different performers? What about a purely electronic piece of classical music, like Stockhausen's Gesang der Junglinge which will always remain the same? There are enough examples to cripple this distinction as well. Having said all that, though, I realize that my attempt to separate the two is inherently and egregiously flawed. I assume that there is a difference between the two. That, I'm not particularly concerned about. Worse, I'm starting with already-formed assumptions about what music fits into the 'pop' category and what music fits into the 'classical' category, and simply trying to find a definition that satisfies that assumption. Hm. One of the best attempts at delineating
the two is a quote from composer Robert Ashley: Implicit is that art music is that music which introduces us to the unfamiliar. I like this very much, and it seems more important than the pop/classical distinction. What it means for me is that some music I might have initially assumed was 'pop music' can be considered 'art music', and vice versa. Any music that makes us experience something new can be considered art. [7/15/2004: Of course, the question of whether that makes it good is entirely separate.] Right? 11/10/2003 I mention this partly because it seems as if we artists are not supposed to openly acknowledge that our works draw from others', as we're expected to act as if our work exists in a vacuum, devoid of knowledge of anything else. Composers rarely mention their creative debts in program notes, no matter how obvious they may be - or how critical to understanding the piece. A friend of mine (who is an aspiring poet, among many other things) made what I feel is a salient point, that often we refuse to acknowledge our influences, even to ourselves, to prevent our work from being compared to those influences, not only for fear that our work will be found wanting, but for fear that one's own work will never be considered to stand on its own. Being a perverse man, I myself have written pieces that are (or even try to be) nothing but influences, most obviously my Cobralingus: Bach Phase, which is a combination of Steve Reich's Piano Phase, J.S. Bach's "Prelude in C" from the W-TC, Book I, an idea I stole from a friend (with his blessing), and almost nothing else. Almost. How much credit, then, do I deserve for creating the piece, if I only made about five decisions? Is the question of who gets credit even important unless you're engaged in some sort of musico-historical pissing contest? These ramblings bring up the question of, what makes something 'original' and 'new'? I think, possibly arrogantly, that nothing like Bach Phase has ever existed before. Yet it's comprised entirely of things that were made by other people. Whose is it? Is it original or is it derivative? Is it some of both? Is that dichotomy false? I would argue that new combinations of ideas constitute something new in and of themselves, regardless of the fact that their components existed beforehand. I don't know that that's very satisfying, though. 10/2/2003 That said, however, I can think of a couple of pieces which 'restart', as it were. In a flute quartet by Sofia Gubaidulina, one of the movements begins with the same music from part of a previous movement and takes it in an entirely different direction. Michael Gandolfi's four-movement Points of Departure builds an entire piece out of that idea, as each movement begins with part of the previous one, until the fourth movement ends...with the music that began the piece. It's an extremely cool technique. 8/22/2003 Maybe this relates to the fact that electronic music originally began, I think, as an outgrowth of modernist music, in the early 20th century. Classical composers got the first real crack at experimenting with making or altering sounds electronically, and maybe that influences current work in the field from composers who are less directly connected with the classical tradition, but who are nevertheless concerned with making new things from new materials. At least some of the electronic artists I dig like sampling from a fair range of modern composers. Murcof's album Martes is built on top of samples from Arvo Part and Morton Feldman; Susumu Yokota has taken from Scriabin, Ravel, and Steve Reich for some of his tracks; even a group as well-known as Radiohead uses the ondes martenot on many of its songs as something of a tribute to Olivier Messiaen. In fact, many musicians I went to school with were pretty heavily into electronica - some folks I knew mainly composed electronica, and a few even have albums out. This makes me wonder if a lot of electronic musicians don't have at least a modicum of classical training. This, however, may just be arrogance on my part. Some of the readily apparent comparisons between the two might be that both try to push the boundaries of what is considered acceptable music; both tend to be fairly abstract; and on a less concrete level, they have a similar 'feel'. Ways of listening to one can be applied to the other. (What does it mean to 'develop material'?) Obviously, these features are not necessarily all true of every instance of either genre, but there tends to be an intricacy and complexity - and a willingness to experiment - that can also be found in contemporary music; or, on the other hand, paring music down to its barest essentials. Maybe it's just that the things I like most in music are prevalent in both worlds. Sometimes I wonder if (and am afraid that) the future of music (what does that mean?) is in electronica, and we classical composers are really just wanking off. 7/17/2003 In my opinion, beauty has less to do with how a piece of art makes me feel as how deeply, how intensely it engages me on an emotional or intellectual level - or both. How deeply I'm drawn into another world. After some thought, however, I conclude that the world has to be worth being drawn in to. So, in effect, I have replaced one question with another (or have phrased the question more honestly): what makes an artistic vision worth experiencing? Maybe, then, a distinction has to be drawn between an artistic vision and the technique, craft, and/or skill that go into its creation. The ability to imagine as opposed to the ability to create. Then again, the two are not easily teased apart; the depth of one's skills extends the horizon of what is possible, and pushing the boundaries of the possible expands the idea of what can be considered 'technique'. Nevertheless, though, I think the two are distinct enough to be discussed separately, enough to say that any piece of art has some combination of the two. (Though saying this makes me afraid of being in awful textbook territory as in Dead Poets Society. Ah well.) I'm going to assume that good technique and skilled craftsmanship are relatively easy to gauge. Leaving me to again ask myself: What makes an artistic vision worth experiencing? [8/1: After further reflection, I wonder if the question is meaningful or relevant in the first place. Or perhaps I'm just too weak to even approach attempting to answer it.] 7/9/2003 The worst is the blow-by-blow account of everything that happens in a piece. Amazingly, these kinds of notes fail to give you any real idea how how the music sounds, despite (and maybe because of) the fact that they go into such detail. A fictional example: The piece begins with a motive in the clarinet, consisting of the notes A4-C#5-D4-G#3, which forms the basis of the material for the first 5 measures. It is then inverted in the next section, transferred to the oboe, and transposed up a major second until measure 26, at which point it is replaced by a new idea in the bassoon based on an [0134] tetrachord. This continues until the second half, after which, through what is known as an M7 transform but subtly altered, the tetrachord is expanded... Look, man, nobody cares. None of that stuff really matters. What matters is how your piece sounds, not how you made it. If I care, I'll figure it out myself. Almost as bad are program notes that throw a lot of big words at you and read like tracts on postmodern metaphysics, and are intended to show an audience how much dumber you are than the composer. Another fictional example: Ineffable Visions attempts to explore the interplay between diametrically opposed viewpoints concerning the contradictions inherent in reconciling Apollonian and Dionysian interpretations of discourses critical to the philosophies of Hegel, Derrida, and Foucault. By addressing the flawed nature of dialogue (regarding speech qua speech) and applying lessons we have all learned from the study of semiotics, my piece achieves transcendence, finding a solution to a thorny existential problem which most people barely perceive liminally, yet which affects everyone at a truly atavistic level - an issue which, among other things, caused the eventual disharmony between Freud and Jung. I recall happening upon the word 'enantiodromic' in somebody's program note. What the hell does 'enantiodromic' mean? Who the hell cares? Equal in pretentiousness are program notes that try to be deep and provocative, and just wind up reading like stereotypical bad high school essays. Lost Memories in a Haze of Blueness captures the feeling of broken innocence, floating away in the depths of our subconscious, like a butterfly wandering about, searching for a home now gone. Think of supple, sweet, delectable oranges, now decayed, crumbling, wasted. When we think about things now missing, part of us is brought back into the past; lonely, disconnected, ephemeral abandoned children. Time is enigmatic. Coping with its capriciousness is what makes us who we are, what makes us human...what makes you, you. I guess the real weakness of such kinds of program notes is that they try to intimidate an audience into thinking a piece is important before they hear it - and consequently, they betray an insecurity, as if the composer is afraid to let the audience judge the piece on its own merits. I think the best examples of program notes offer some context for why a piece was written, what went into its composition, and maybe suggest some things to listen for...but the piece has to be allowed to speak for itself. A real-life example might be a program note I saw for Elena Ruehr's The Law of Floating Objects: When I was a little girl I used to listen to my father, a mathematician, talking to his colleagues on the phone about infinity. As I listened, I imagined him inhabiting an internal world of colorful universes, endlessly opening, spinning in space. My father's work was, in fact, based on more prosaic things like infinite number series and Fourier analysis. But I still prefer my original understanding of infinity. Just as I was interested in the infinity of my childhood, I am interested in Galileo's experiments, not because of their physical demonstrations, but because of the poetic ideas their titles inspire. This piece is my own description of floating objects and the laws that govern them. Flutes float in an atmosphere of cymbals bound by the gravity of drums. Time moves in circular patterns that stretch and contract. The landscape changes but the musical law is constant. Not too long, interesting, and relating the ideas behind a piece (musical and otherwise) without trying to browbeat you into forming an opinion before you're heard it. I guess what I feel works best is telling the audience the story of how a piece was written - which is very different that talking about the piece itself. Enantiodromic. [7/17/2003 - Sam Young writes: "'Enantiodromic' describes a word that means something as well as its opposite. A synonym is 'antagonymous.' The only example I can come up with off the top of my head is 'cleave', which can mean 'to cut in two' or 'to stick to.'"] 6/14/2003 Some were not so good. I don't know how well-known Jim Brickman is, but it's been over five years since I attended his concert, and remembering his music still makes me cringe. He had a solo voice/piano act, and his compositions were the most awful crap I'd ever heard. The music was incredibly cheesy and trite, and his lyrics were no different. For the second half, I sat in the lobby and read a book. (I had to stick around to drive my friend home.) After the concert, I was talking about it with my friend and her mother, who had enjoyed the concert and were horrified that I disliked it so deeply. My friend apologized for me by saying something to the effect of, "He's a music major - he has to listen for chord changes and that sort of stuff." Her mother responded by saying she felt sorry that my training had made me unable to appreciate such beautiful music. Hell, even before I knew much about music, Brickman's songs would have made me consider stabbing myself to escape. What I find interesting (and distressing) is that my knowledge of and training in classical music somehow made me less qualified to talk about it, somehow invalidated my opinions. I might also quibble with how the word 'beautiful' is defined. But that's another subject entirely. I feel that the training I've had hasn't changed what I want to listen to; it's exposed me to more possibilities. My belief is that my musical training doesn't mean I appreciate music on a different level - it makes be appreciate it on more levels. But I still dig a lot of the music I bought when I was just a kid who took piano lessons and played in a crappy high school cover band. Maybe what I find really troublesome is the belief that you have to be taught how to enjoy modern music, something I've probably talked about before. This wasn't explicitly said in the aforementioned exchange, but I think it was an underlying theme, an unstated axiom - the fallacy that liking modern music means scorning music that's not as...adventurous. Unfortunately, I think we composers are at fault as the source of that idea - though that's not to say we're solely at fault. But that's yet another tangential subject. Dammit, music is music, no matter how complicated or abstract it might be. All it requires is that you listen with an open mind. If you like it, you like it; if you don't, you don't. But don't simply assume you won't enjoy it before you hear it. What's important is that you give it a chance. (Incidentally, what does 'abstract' mean when talking about music?) 6/10/2003 However, even with limitations, you're just making a smaller infinite space out of a larger one (if that makes sense). Really, though, artists are always working with limitations, whether or not they realize it. In fact, it seems that whenever previously unrealized limitations are discovered, artists almost immediately try to go beyond them. That's not to say they reject these limitations outright (though some do), but they certainly try to find out what happens outside these limits. Some helpful examples of such at-one-point-unrealized boundaries in visual art might include the revolutions against the flat perspective of pre-Renaissance painting; against realistic representation; or against being restricted to a rectangular canvas. The same in music might include the revolutions against monophony; against 'functional harmony'; against traditional ways of making sounds. ('Revolution' is perhaps not the best word, but a more appropriate substitute escapes me.) Maybe evolution and revolution in art isn't necessarily so much about breaking boundaries so much as discovering them, and then finding out how they can be played with, how far they can be stretched. And, to be honest, it's just plain fun to find out what happens when you subvert something you once didn't even know you assumed was necessary. 5/27/2003 [7/7/2003: A friend has suggested that I substitute the word 'language' for 'grammar' to clean things up. I agree.] I should define what I mean by 'musical language' and 'musical thought'. By 'musical language' I mean the musical framework of a particular piece - the limitations a composer sets for h/hself. These limitations can involve any number of the elements of music: pitch, harmony, rhythm, lengths of sections, instrumentation, etc. (Less easy to get a handle on are the meta-limitations of a composer, how h/s decides what limits to play with. I wonder if it's really the meta-limitations that distinguish one composer from another, and if they could somehow be codified.) By 'musical thought'...I mean something I can't really define. Music has been likened to language in many instances; appropriately, I think. And I believe that as language communicates semantic meaning, so music communicates musical meaning. Unfortunately, I can't be any more helpful and define 'musical meaning'. I doubt I adequately defined 'musical thought'. Anyway, the analogy breaks down at a fairly high level. But it breaks down for interesting reasons. A language is more or less common to all the members of a society. Details may change between dialects, but the core underneath remains stable enough to be understood with little effort. Nowadays, musical language can change from piece to piece, let alone from composer to composer. Obviously, differences can be found between composers of older generations as well - it's hard, I think, to confuse Liszt with Schubert - but I consider them more like the differences between dialects, in that there still remained basic grammars common to all...of which tonality is the most significant. In contemporary music, part of the experience of listening to a piece of music involves figuring out and trying to understand the musical framework a composer is using, to a greater degree than ever before. Each piece might require an entirely new way of listening. This is not to say that it requires a great deal of mental labor on the part of the listener; but it certainly requires openness, and perhaps a little extra alertness. I suppose formal musical training certainly helps, though I hate when people claim (mostly, they imply) that it's a prerequisite to understanding. Everyone has heard music in h/h life, and knows something about it at a visceral level, even if they can't necessarily verbalize it. Anyway, this means that the framework of a piece becomes part of the content/meaning of the piece. A piece becomes not only about how a chunk of musical material can be developed, but about what can be done with it given a special set of limitations unique to that piece - or at least to that composer. I wonder if the greatest pieces of music make their frameworks invisible. By 'invisible', I don't mean unnecessary to the piece, nor unobserved by the listener, but instead I mean that the framework is accepted and understood by the listener without conscious effort. I can only think of my own experiences, really. I remember the first time I heard the "Gigue" from Schoenberg's Suite for Piano, Op. 25, having never experienced such brash dissonance and atonality before - and thinking it was the most badass piece of music I'd ever heard. Or plugging George Crumb's Black Angels into the CD player and being blown away by sounds I'd never imagined could exist. To summarize, maybe a good piece of music draws you into its musical framework without you noticing, into a kind of understanding without knowing. 5/24/2003 Q: What kind of music do you like? Q: What do you want your music to
accomplish? 5/17/2003 (continued from 5/14/2003) Maybe this is a consequence of the fact that very few (maybe even none, I'm not sure) graduate degrees were available before the middle of the 20th century. Once such programs were established, perhaps they needed a strong and obvious analytical/scientific component to be perceived and recognized as a truly academic discipline. This is not to say that detailed analyses are a recent phenomenon - music analysis has been an important tool of both composers and theorists throughout the history of Western music. But perhaps what I perceive as the recent exaltation thereof can be linked to the rise of musical composition as an academic discipline that can and should be studied in a scientific way. I recall being present at a talk given by Osvaldo Golijov, who has received some positive publicity for his Passion According to St. Mark. (For what it's worth, I've greatly enjoyed what music of his I've heard.) We had just listened to a kickass piece of his (Last Round), and while he was talking about it, he said something that struck me. It was along the lines of, "In this section, things begin to speed up - but don't worry, it wasn't solely intuitive, I had a system." As if I would consider the piece less good if I thought that he had just come up with it out of nowhere, that he hadn't used some sort of system. I simply don't see the point of presenting an analysis of my own music. Such analyses say to me, "My piece may sound bad, but these complex equations mean it's good." As if the composer lacks confidence in h/h work and tries to intimidate others into thinking it's worthwhile by providing an exhaustive, dense, and barely understandable explanation of how it was done. (I'm thinking now of some of the worst program notes I've seen.) As if the fact that an analysis exists makes a piece more worth listening to. (Incidentally, I could talk for a while about program notes. Having edited programs for the Independent Music Project at Williams, and for Dinosaur Annex, not to mention having to write them myself, I have a lot to spout off on. Anyway...) The way I see it, my purpose is to try to write something engaging, interesting, and possibly even beautiful, not to tell you how it was done. (If my music is relevant enough, theorists will take it upon themselves to figure it out.) I think it was Robert Smithson, creator of Spiral Jetty, who said, "Establish enigmas, not explanations." 5/14/2003 Firstly, it seems strange to me that writing a big, long, orchestra piece is considered proof that a composer is worthy of a doctorate, as if being able to produce such work is the pinnacle of the composer's craft. This strikes me as an outdated idea, a holdover from 19th-Century Romanticism, the ideal of huge, sweeping orchestral pieces full of grandeur and opulence that would sweep the audience members out of their seats. Essentially, they're reminiscing about when the symphony and tone poem were considered the highest forms of musical expression. I think this is a little worrisome. All kinds of music are being written now, by all kinds of people, and it's a little pathetic that these institutions are holding on to an ideal of music that's no longer relevant. Is a piece of music inherently more worthwhile than another because it's longer? Because it's for more instruments? That's not to say that writing big, long orchestral pieces is something I disapprove of. (I'm sure that many composers will sleep better knowing that.) What I find distasteful is the implication that that's what true composers spend their time doing, or at least striving for, and that everything else is secondary. I wonder if there's a little bit of wishful thinking on their part that the plurality in the world of music composition will one day coalesce into a coherent whole, with a musical language common to all. I recall hearing Gunther Schuller claim that composers were really just waiting for the next big thing to follow, and then the composing life will be just peachy again. This is bullshit. I hope it never happens. The great and exciting thing about contemporary music is that everything is possible, and anything can happen. I love going to a concert of new music and having no idea at all what to expect. I love listening to a composer I've never heard of before. As an aside, writing only for orchestra is not particularly feasible these days (unless a composer spends all h/h time becoming a part of the orchestral world...sometimes by conducting). Most orchestras rarely play modern music, for reasons that I believe are a large part financial. Much of it is hard to play - not only in terms of plain technical difficulty, but also because there's no established performance practice to draw from or rebel against. This usually means extra rehearsal time if an orchestra wants to get it right, which costs a lot; or results in poor performances if the orchestra doesn't have the resoruces to spend (or doesn't want to spend them). And, on a different level, fewer people want to give money to contemporary music because fewer people like it. Though, also, many classical musicians don't want to play modern music. I'll reserve the subject of liking/not liking modern music for another rant, since I can be bitter about that for many, many paragraphs. In fact, I'll hold on the rest of this rant for now also. 5/13/2003 5/12/2003 I have to admit a real ambivalence towards it myself. I find it a very compelling proportion, and I myself have written a piece based very strongly on the Fibonacci series. But I despise how it was preached as the be-all and end-all of composition. It's almost certainly clear from my tone of voice that I found their attitude somewhat irritating, and maybe condescending. The Golden Section is neat and all, and yes, it can be found in a large number of works of art; but it's also absent from a large number of works of art. It became tiresome to hear it spoken of as a kind of dogma, as if incorporating a particular mathematical ratio into your music automatically makes it good. Like any craftsmen, composers work with a variety of tools. Sometimes a particular tool is more useful than another in getting a particular result. Sometimes we're better at using some tools than others, and/or certain methods jive better with how we want our music to sound. That doesn't mean that any way of composing is inherently better than any other. If someone wants to use the Golden Section in their music, they're more than welcome to. But in the end, what matters is the finished product - not how we got there. Though, I must admit, I find it quite neat when I discover that a piece of music I dig has an intricate and detailed structure. Then again, discovering equally arcane properties in a piece of music I hate doesn't make we want to hear it again. I guess it's really cool when a piece works on a variety of levels - but of primary importance is that it works on the fundamental level of making people want to listen. Let's say I listen to what I conclude is a shitty piece of music. Utter boring crap. Then, for some reason, I take the time to conduct some sort of formal analysis and find out that the composer used the Golden Section in every possible aspect of this piece. That doesn't change the fact that I don't want to listen to it, and thus fails on the most basic level. Maybe what really matters is not the nature of the plan we use, but that we use a plan at all, that the composer has some way of guiding and focusing h/h musical ideas. Or maybe it doesn't matter at all. I don't really know. 4/22/2003 Incidentally, this and a concert I recently attended have made me realize that I most appreciate complex things that are built out of more or less identical elements. The game of Go is an excellent example. Minimalist music another. Artificial Life yet another. Interestingly, though unsurprisingly, this is also, I feel, reflected in my music. Chess is just way too messy for me to comprehend at a useful level. |
