1 day ago
12.23.2009
one buttock playing
Some people want to teach the world to sing. I want to teach the world how to listen. This man does a great job of that in a presentation at the TED conference. It's a must-see for anyone involved in Classical music and is even more important for those who have not yet been smitten by it.
12.17.2009
subject, object
I've had some time to think and have found some thought-threads that I meant to weave together and share with the world--well, with you.
Teaching music appreciation this past semester, I was constantly in search for language that could speak music to non-musicians. The textbook spent a couple of chapters on musical terms ranging from pianissimo to presto, tonic to sonata. And while some of those words might be necessary, we spent way too much time for the amount the students actually absorbed. I still got a lot of papers saying things like "I felt that this piece had a lot of chord progression."
When we got to the Romantic period, I searched for language that could describe the difference between the Romantic and the Classical eras. I explained that both use the tonal language and so contain an inherent drama. (The tonal system--tonality--establishes one key as the "home key" and then spends the rest of the time going away from and back to that key to create tension and release.) Because of this, both can be heard as containing narrative, but the difference is in the way the story is told. Classical music is a story told from the outside by an omniscient narrator, while Romantic music has a more first-person perspective. The former, we would assume, would tell the story more objectively since it is not involved in the action; the latter perspective, we often forget, is distorted by the close proximity of the narrator to the action.
This fits with each aesthetic. The Classical Era in music, coming at the tail end of the Enlightenment, was based on a preference for reason over emotion, objectivity over subjectivity. The great thinkers of the time--Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu--envisioned governments and societies set up according to rationalist principles. (We can still hope, right?) The Romantic Era, however, inheriting these very societal advances, saw the rise of the individual. Whereas, using rational methods, we should arrive at the same answer, in our emotional lives, we are unique.
I think this duality, this continuum, can be applied to other periods of music. Stravinsky certainly wrote objective music, even calling his output "objects":
"My Octet is a musical object. This object has a form and that form is influenced by the musical matter with which it is composed....My Octet is not an 'emotive' work but a musical work based on objective elements which are sufficient in themselves." (more)
Other composers of the twentieth century are more subjective, more expressive. John Adams, for one, has called himself a "neo-Romantic," having grown out of the "classic" minimalism of Glass and Reich.
Ultimately, this is just another way of categorizing composers and their music. Instead of thinking chronologically, it may prove interesting or helpful to group music along the subjective-objective continuum based on various mixtures of intellect and emotion. Ideally, then, it would help listeners draw connections between, say, a Haydn symphony and a Webern opus or a Gesualdo madrigal and a Liszt etude. I have my hunches as to where I fall on this continuum, but I'll leave that to you.
On a side note, I've been ensconced in simplicity at a cottage in Michigan the whole week. I plan on doing this every week during the winter, coming back to Chicago on the weekends. I started another blog to detail the more mundane aspects of my life up here.
Teaching music appreciation this past semester, I was constantly in search for language that could speak music to non-musicians. The textbook spent a couple of chapters on musical terms ranging from pianissimo to presto, tonic to sonata. And while some of those words might be necessary, we spent way too much time for the amount the students actually absorbed. I still got a lot of papers saying things like "I felt that this piece had a lot of chord progression."
When we got to the Romantic period, I searched for language that could describe the difference between the Romantic and the Classical eras. I explained that both use the tonal language and so contain an inherent drama. (The tonal system--tonality--establishes one key as the "home key" and then spends the rest of the time going away from and back to that key to create tension and release.) Because of this, both can be heard as containing narrative, but the difference is in the way the story is told. Classical music is a story told from the outside by an omniscient narrator, while Romantic music has a more first-person perspective. The former, we would assume, would tell the story more objectively since it is not involved in the action; the latter perspective, we often forget, is distorted by the close proximity of the narrator to the action.
This fits with each aesthetic. The Classical Era in music, coming at the tail end of the Enlightenment, was based on a preference for reason over emotion, objectivity over subjectivity. The great thinkers of the time--Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu--envisioned governments and societies set up according to rationalist principles. (We can still hope, right?) The Romantic Era, however, inheriting these very societal advances, saw the rise of the individual. Whereas, using rational methods, we should arrive at the same answer, in our emotional lives, we are unique.
I think this duality, this continuum, can be applied to other periods of music. Stravinsky certainly wrote objective music, even calling his output "objects":
"My Octet is a musical object. This object has a form and that form is influenced by the musical matter with which it is composed....My Octet is not an 'emotive' work but a musical work based on objective elements which are sufficient in themselves." (more)
Other composers of the twentieth century are more subjective, more expressive. John Adams, for one, has called himself a "neo-Romantic," having grown out of the "classic" minimalism of Glass and Reich.
Ultimately, this is just another way of categorizing composers and their music. Instead of thinking chronologically, it may prove interesting or helpful to group music along the subjective-objective continuum based on various mixtures of intellect and emotion. Ideally, then, it would help listeners draw connections between, say, a Haydn symphony and a Webern opus or a Gesualdo madrigal and a Liszt etude. I have my hunches as to where I fall on this continuum, but I'll leave that to you.
On a side note, I've been ensconced in simplicity at a cottage in Michigan the whole week. I plan on doing this every week during the winter, coming back to Chicago on the weekends. I started another blog to detail the more mundane aspects of my life up here.
12.13.2009
critical sound mass
One Sunday evening as Chicagoans and tourists mingled among twinkling lights on the Magnificent Mile, a group of about 35 people carrying about 15 boomboxes gave a performance of mobile electronic music, winding its way from Water Tower to Millennium Park and finally to the Christkindlmarkt at Daley Plaza. "Unsilent Night" was originally conceived by Phil Kline in 1992 as a group and has developed into an annual New York tradition, attracting hundreds or thousands of people. It has also spread to 25 cities around the world, including Chicago.
I went sans boombox (or iPod dock) and, really, sans expectations. It's one of those things that was hard for me to imagine being successful, and so all my feeble attempts at picturing the event ended with disappointment. Fortunately, the actual event surpassed my preconceptions and was a pleasant surprise.
For one thing, the music itself was simply beautiful. At the beginning, a mood of tranquil wonder was set by a sea of bells shimmering underneath a sky full of stars. The sound samples on the Unsilent Night website don't do justice to the richness of the texture created by multitude of speakers both in motion and slightly out of sync. I tried to stay towards the middle of the group to have the "surround sound" experience. 30 speakers is better than 5.1.
The subdued awe persisted as the music slowly changed from twinkling bells to drones to chant. The mass of people moved as a herd leading to the Bean in Millennium Park. We stopped for several minutes underneath the Bean which amplified the sound and gave us a chance to hear things a little more clearly.
There were certainly a mixture of reactions from passers-by ranging from curious, amused, and bewildered to perplexed, indifferent and even angry. And it was interesting to witness the effect of the music on my own perceptions of people. There was a point at which the music felt like the non-diagetic music to a film montage. As that happened, I caught a glimpse of a cashier at a pharmacy watching us through the window with a glazed look of indifference, and suddenly I was watching the documentary of her life.
We ended soon thereafter at Daley Plaza. I would highly recommend finding (or starting) this event in a city near you. It only happens once a year in each location, so you might have to wait until next year. Don't be skeptical, it's worth it. In fact, I would like to see more such similar performances. Someone should start a boombox ensemble and then encourage composers to write this kind of electroacoustic music.
Here's a video of the Unsilent Night in San Francisco. More videos available on their website.
I went sans boombox (or iPod dock) and, really, sans expectations. It's one of those things that was hard for me to imagine being successful, and so all my feeble attempts at picturing the event ended with disappointment. Fortunately, the actual event surpassed my preconceptions and was a pleasant surprise.
For one thing, the music itself was simply beautiful. At the beginning, a mood of tranquil wonder was set by a sea of bells shimmering underneath a sky full of stars. The sound samples on the Unsilent Night website don't do justice to the richness of the texture created by multitude of speakers both in motion and slightly out of sync. I tried to stay towards the middle of the group to have the "surround sound" experience. 30 speakers is better than 5.1.
The subdued awe persisted as the music slowly changed from twinkling bells to drones to chant. The mass of people moved as a herd leading to the Bean in Millennium Park. We stopped for several minutes underneath the Bean which amplified the sound and gave us a chance to hear things a little more clearly.
There were certainly a mixture of reactions from passers-by ranging from curious, amused, and bewildered to perplexed, indifferent and even angry. And it was interesting to witness the effect of the music on my own perceptions of people. There was a point at which the music felt like the non-diagetic music to a film montage. As that happened, I caught a glimpse of a cashier at a pharmacy watching us through the window with a glazed look of indifference, and suddenly I was watching the documentary of her life.
We ended soon thereafter at Daley Plaza. I would highly recommend finding (or starting) this event in a city near you. It only happens once a year in each location, so you might have to wait until next year. Don't be skeptical, it's worth it. In fact, I would like to see more such similar performances. Someone should start a boombox ensemble and then encourage composers to write this kind of electroacoustic music.
Here's a video of the Unsilent Night in San Francisco. More videos available on their website.
12.10.2009
Sad Clowns and Blackbirds
Theory: the more complex a piece of art, the longer it takes to penetrate and the longer it takes to fade with repeat experiences. In the history of music, there seems to be a roller-coaster relationship with complexity: things start out simple and get steadily more and more complex until they get so impenetrable that there's a crash: WHEEE! The Baroque was thorny and difficult, and it was to that the Classical was a reaction. The Romantic period period seemed to have a fake crash but was instead redirected into serialism, then total serialism which then spawned a reaction in the hypersimple minimalist style that is decorating so many movie scores these days.
One theory among composers is that writing hypercomplex music means your music (and therefore your soul) will live on forever. They're think they're writing for the future. Unfortunately, there are far too many examples of artists appreciated only well after they died to give this group of misfits hope.
The same theory necessarily applies to live performances, something which I realized watching eighth blackbird's performance of Pierrot Lunaire.
I had been building up to the performance in my mind for several weeks before, listening to the score, explaining the work to my students (music appreciation), and even somehow interviewing 8bb's flutist Tim Munro. I felt ready to take the complexity of the score and make sense of it in a total-brain, dreamlike way.
To me, the music and the text are more than enough to try to make sense of. Already in Schönberg's score, there is tension between foreground and background. Clearly, the "singer" is meant to be the foreground, but the instrumental writing is so dense and ear-catching that I try to fuse the various parts together into some sort of cohesive, symbiotic whole, splitting my conscious attention evenly: 50% singing, 50% instrumental music, and 50% text. That's right, to really absorb the Gestalt requires 150% of conscious thought.
But 8bb doesn't stop there; they add yet another layer of meaning in the choreography of Mark DeChiazza. The movement itself was interesting and eye-catching, but it turned out to be too much so. One could have spent 100% of their attention watching the movement and making sense out of a series of abstract and unrelated relationships.
In talking about the work, DeChiazza seemed overwhelmed by the music, finding it impenetrable. He related stories of burying himself in Expressionist thought and art to try to find a visual language that would correlate to the score. In essence, then, he tried to create a choreography that would be on the same level as the text and music.
This was where he went wrong.
Pierrot Lunaire, for admirers of 20th century music, can stand completely on its own and, even then, merits myriad repeat listenings to penetrate its thick exterior. The goal with the staging, then, should be to make it more immediately accessible to general audiences. While I think DeChiazza succeeded in this to some extent, his success came about through visually distracting the audience from the difficulty of the work rather than highlighting elements in the music or the text.
Less is more.
Musically, 8bb have found a balance with their singer, the incomparable Lucy Shelton. Shelton is a dynamic performer and both demands and merits the audience's full attention. So while she is singing, we don't need a dancer doing twirls in the far background, musicians dramatically sweeping chairs into place, and Pierrot climbing a ladder. We don't need four layers of visuals because we already have four layers of music and an inscrutable text.
Ultimately, it's all about balance. The "volume" of the visuals was too loud for the volume of the music, which could be solved by turning down the visuals (by quieting down the least essential layers: move more slowly or not at all) or turning up the audio. I would do a little of both but making sure that the audio is loud enough to demand attention--though this may go against the birds' time-tested idea of "sound reinforcement" in lieu of "amplification".
information
Adding complexity to complexity creates a work that is both more difficult to penetrate but also one that merits more repeat listenings. The irony is that by adding a visual layer, in an effort to make the work more accessible to some, they made it more complex, therefore less accessible, to others. With repeated experiences, my opinion of the work could change. It was too much information to make sense of in one sitting but will take many, many more before it becomes remotely redundant.
One theory among composers is that writing hypercomplex music means your music (and therefore your soul) will live on forever. They're think they're writing for the future. Unfortunately, there are far too many examples of artists appreciated only well after they died to give this group of misfits hope.
The same theory necessarily applies to live performances, something which I realized watching eighth blackbird's performance of Pierrot Lunaire.
I had been building up to the performance in my mind for several weeks before, listening to the score, explaining the work to my students (music appreciation), and even somehow interviewing 8bb's flutist Tim Munro. I felt ready to take the complexity of the score and make sense of it in a total-brain, dreamlike way.
To me, the music and the text are more than enough to try to make sense of. Already in Schönberg's score, there is tension between foreground and background. Clearly, the "singer" is meant to be the foreground, but the instrumental writing is so dense and ear-catching that I try to fuse the various parts together into some sort of cohesive, symbiotic whole, splitting my conscious attention evenly: 50% singing, 50% instrumental music, and 50% text. That's right, to really absorb the Gestalt requires 150% of conscious thought.
But 8bb doesn't stop there; they add yet another layer of meaning in the choreography of Mark DeChiazza. The movement itself was interesting and eye-catching, but it turned out to be too much so. One could have spent 100% of their attention watching the movement and making sense out of a series of abstract and unrelated relationships.
In talking about the work, DeChiazza seemed overwhelmed by the music, finding it impenetrable. He related stories of burying himself in Expressionist thought and art to try to find a visual language that would correlate to the score. In essence, then, he tried to create a choreography that would be on the same level as the text and music.
This was where he went wrong.
Pierrot Lunaire, for admirers of 20th century music, can stand completely on its own and, even then, merits myriad repeat listenings to penetrate its thick exterior. The goal with the staging, then, should be to make it more immediately accessible to general audiences. While I think DeChiazza succeeded in this to some extent, his success came about through visually distracting the audience from the difficulty of the work rather than highlighting elements in the music or the text.
Less is more.
Musically, 8bb have found a balance with their singer, the incomparable Lucy Shelton. Shelton is a dynamic performer and both demands and merits the audience's full attention. So while she is singing, we don't need a dancer doing twirls in the far background, musicians dramatically sweeping chairs into place, and Pierrot climbing a ladder. We don't need four layers of visuals because we already have four layers of music and an inscrutable text.
Ultimately, it's all about balance. The "volume" of the visuals was too loud for the volume of the music, which could be solved by turning down the visuals (by quieting down the least essential layers: move more slowly or not at all) or turning up the audio. I would do a little of both but making sure that the audio is loud enough to demand attention--though this may go against the birds' time-tested idea of "sound reinforcement" in lieu of "amplification".
information
Adding complexity to complexity creates a work that is both more difficult to penetrate but also one that merits more repeat listenings. The irony is that by adding a visual layer, in an effort to make the work more accessible to some, they made it more complex, therefore less accessible, to others. With repeated experiences, my opinion of the work could change. It was too much information to make sense of in one sitting but will take many, many more before it becomes remotely redundant.
12.05.2009
ex nihilo nihil fit
On 12.3.09, I went to a concert by dal niente, one of the many new music ensembles that have sprung up in the last few years--inspired, no doubt, by the success of eighth blackbird and ICE. Of those, dal niente seems to be the most likely to succeed, combining prodigious talent with a clear sense of identity. The demiurge behind the group, composer Kirsten Brøberg (sic), mostly culls musicians from Northwestern and focuses her programming on the traditions stemming from and interweaving around French spectralists and German timbralists. The two facets seem to have grown simultaneously, like calculus, in those two countries and now have flourished into a mostly Scandinavian tradition.
The concert was expertly performed, highlights being Gareth Davis on clarinets and J.Austin Wulliman on violin. Davis got in touch with his inner Henry Rollins in the middle of a slew of multiphonics and strange articulations during Lindberg's Ablauf. I enjoyed the insanity that the piece portrayed or, in some cases, induced, but I'm not sure I'd willingly sit through another performance of schizophrenic clarinet violently interrupted by bass drums cleverly situated behind the audience in the choir loft. Effective but unnerving.
Wulliman channeled Gidon Kremer in his performance of Kaija Saariaho's Calices, the work being a scaled-down version of her violin concerto Graal Théâtre. Though Saariaho uses extensive notations to produce various timbres, overtones, or noises, Wulliman made it seem as effortless as playing Mozart.
The first piece on the program, Jay Alan Yim's Songs in Memory of a Circle was the most interesting from a composer's perspective. Resembling one of my many unrealized ideas, Yim's piece is a series of pieces able to be played individually or in various simultaneous combinations. Amazingly, the three pieces chosen created a unified whole, a rich tapestry of sound, that actually moved between moments of calm and moments of fluttery activity. The piece was accompanied by a video that was manipulated live. The video was static and ugly compared to the richness in the music, and the manipulation seemed primitive and distracting--something that is not ready for public performance.
The grand finale of the concert was more of an anticlimax. Broberg's Origins received its world premiere. The work was dedicated to Gareth Davis and incorporated him on bass/clarinet in each of the five movements. Each movement involved a different instrumental combination of winds, strings, or mixed ensemble. Compared to the Lindberg work, the piece didn't seem to explore Davis's technical ability to the same extent. Compared to Yim's piece, the textures were less rich and sonorous and so did not hold my attention. It may have been that the work grew out of Broberg's new-found home soil in Minnesota with its deep winters and Scandinavian roots, and my big-city, over-caffeinated ears couldn't shift gears. At the very least, it would have been better situated at the end of the first half; by the end of the concert, our ears had already been worn out and needed something less demanding of our attention.
Overall, though, the ensemble continued to show its mettle and seems durable enough to last for a long while. I look forward to future dal niente concerts, in particular Grisey's Partiels in the Spring.
The concert was expertly performed, highlights being Gareth Davis on clarinets and J.Austin Wulliman on violin. Davis got in touch with his inner Henry Rollins in the middle of a slew of multiphonics and strange articulations during Lindberg's Ablauf. I enjoyed the insanity that the piece portrayed or, in some cases, induced, but I'm not sure I'd willingly sit through another performance of schizophrenic clarinet violently interrupted by bass drums cleverly situated behind the audience in the choir loft. Effective but unnerving.
Wulliman channeled Gidon Kremer in his performance of Kaija Saariaho's Calices, the work being a scaled-down version of her violin concerto Graal Théâtre. Though Saariaho uses extensive notations to produce various timbres, overtones, or noises, Wulliman made it seem as effortless as playing Mozart.
The first piece on the program, Jay Alan Yim's Songs in Memory of a Circle was the most interesting from a composer's perspective. Resembling one of my many unrealized ideas, Yim's piece is a series of pieces able to be played individually or in various simultaneous combinations. Amazingly, the three pieces chosen created a unified whole, a rich tapestry of sound, that actually moved between moments of calm and moments of fluttery activity. The piece was accompanied by a video that was manipulated live. The video was static and ugly compared to the richness in the music, and the manipulation seemed primitive and distracting--something that is not ready for public performance.
The grand finale of the concert was more of an anticlimax. Broberg's Origins received its world premiere. The work was dedicated to Gareth Davis and incorporated him on bass/clarinet in each of the five movements. Each movement involved a different instrumental combination of winds, strings, or mixed ensemble. Compared to the Lindberg work, the piece didn't seem to explore Davis's technical ability to the same extent. Compared to Yim's piece, the textures were less rich and sonorous and so did not hold my attention. It may have been that the work grew out of Broberg's new-found home soil in Minnesota with its deep winters and Scandinavian roots, and my big-city, over-caffeinated ears couldn't shift gears. At the very least, it would have been better situated at the end of the first half; by the end of the concert, our ears had already been worn out and needed something less demanding of our attention.
Overall, though, the ensemble continued to show its mettle and seems durable enough to last for a long while. I look forward to future dal niente concerts, in particular Grisey's Partiels in the Spring.
Interview: Tim Munro, eighth blackbird
As a preview for the upcoming performance of Schönberg's Pierrot Lunaire by Chicago-based eighth blackbird, I did an interview with the ensemble's rockstar flutist Tim Munro. Tim has become the de facto spokesperson for the group and gives some interesting insights into the work as a whole as well as certain specific songs.
As a teacher of Music Appreciation, I wanted to make this into something that would be both accessible to a wide audience but interesting to people who already know Schönberg's groundbreaking work. It ended up being about 17 minutes long, but it seems to go by quickly.
Originally, this was just to be audio, but the only way to post the audio to this blog was as a video. So I whipped up a little video accompaniment in iMovie. It was in serious danger of being really cheesy, but I think I righted the ship before it was too late.
Let me know what you think.
As a teacher of Music Appreciation, I wanted to make this into something that would be both accessible to a wide audience but interesting to people who already know Schönberg's groundbreaking work. It ended up being about 17 minutes long, but it seems to go by quickly.
Originally, this was just to be audio, but the only way to post the audio to this blog was as a video. So I whipped up a little video accompaniment in iMovie. It was in serious danger of being really cheesy, but I think I righted the ship before it was too late.
Let me know what you think.
11.23.2009
music nowish
This is going to be necessarily short. I am only giving myself the time it takes to brew a cuppa—in this case coffee, not tea. Tonight was the concert of MusicNOW, the new music program at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The kind of music that it's supposed to be is still in search of a label, but I know one thing it is not: Jazz. Jazz is America's Classical tradition, arising from the folk music into a complex system of structures and form: a musical language. As such, it belongs in the concert hall just as much as so-called Classical music. Not better or worse, it's tradition is merely more recent.
But I had geared myself up for contemporary music and so was disappointed to be presented with Jazz. Not just any Jazz, not daring, contemporary or exciting, this was post-Ellington schmaltz written by an über-talented Brit, Richard Rodney Bennett, with a great deal of craft and nothing to say. It was mind-numbingly uninteresting except, possibly, for the arrangements, which were...um...tight. There were solos, but it was unclear whether they were really improvised or written by the composer.
So I sat fidgety, alternating between listening intently and trying to think of something else. The piece was dripping with sweetness, more of a dessert than appetizer. When it finished, I booed—for the first time in my life. It felt weird and drew nervous glances from my friends, but I was unapologetic: this concert had wasted an hour of my life and I want it back.
The whole experience led me to think that Mark-Anthony Turnage was selfishly presenting one of his heroes, exposing the American audience to someone whom he finds important—but ultimately isn't. Turnage's own piece, Twice Through the Heart, was much more interesting as a study in orchestration and texture. The composer in me got caught up with the variety and flow of colors, so it was only afterward that I realized that the piece is completely disposable, anonymous—“who-cares music.”
Bennett's piece failed the Seinfeld test; that is, I would have rather been watching Seinfeld. Heck, I would have rather been watching Friends. Actually, I wish that it had been Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto. Turnage's piece passed; I enjoyed it but ultimately don't think it's important.
I think we need to draw a line between Gebrauchsmusik and concert music. Concert music demands and merits your entire undivided attention, whereas Gebrachsmusik serves its function and should be judged on how well it does that. The first piece on the program should have been playing some sort of role—it could very well have been a 60s film score—but did not merit the concert treatment.
Thank you for reading. I'm off to finish my piece for this years AIDS Quilt Songbook Concert on December 1. I hope to get the score to the performers tomorrow.
But I had geared myself up for contemporary music and so was disappointed to be presented with Jazz. Not just any Jazz, not daring, contemporary or exciting, this was post-Ellington schmaltz written by an über-talented Brit, Richard Rodney Bennett, with a great deal of craft and nothing to say. It was mind-numbingly uninteresting except, possibly, for the arrangements, which were...um...tight. There were solos, but it was unclear whether they were really improvised or written by the composer.
So I sat fidgety, alternating between listening intently and trying to think of something else. The piece was dripping with sweetness, more of a dessert than appetizer. When it finished, I booed—for the first time in my life. It felt weird and drew nervous glances from my friends, but I was unapologetic: this concert had wasted an hour of my life and I want it back.
The whole experience led me to think that Mark-Anthony Turnage was selfishly presenting one of his heroes, exposing the American audience to someone whom he finds important—but ultimately isn't. Turnage's own piece, Twice Through the Heart, was much more interesting as a study in orchestration and texture. The composer in me got caught up with the variety and flow of colors, so it was only afterward that I realized that the piece is completely disposable, anonymous—“who-cares music.”
Bennett's piece failed the Seinfeld test; that is, I would have rather been watching Seinfeld. Heck, I would have rather been watching Friends. Actually, I wish that it had been Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto. Turnage's piece passed; I enjoyed it but ultimately don't think it's important.
I think we need to draw a line between Gebrauchsmusik and concert music. Concert music demands and merits your entire undivided attention, whereas Gebrachsmusik serves its function and should be judged on how well it does that. The first piece on the program should have been playing some sort of role—it could very well have been a 60s film score—but did not merit the concert treatment.
Thank you for reading. I'm off to finish my piece for this years AIDS Quilt Songbook Concert on December 1. I hope to get the score to the performers tomorrow.
11.18.2009
taking it to the streets
Surreptitiously, the University of Chicago organized a concert featuring Dawn Upshaw, accompanied by an ensemble comprised mostly of hometown heroes 8th blackbird, singing music of Osvaldo Golijov. With such a star-studded performance, you'd expect a sell-out crow, but somehow the word was slow in getting around, so although the concert was full, it wasn't packed--the audience being mostly comprised of aging Hyde Park intellectuals and U of C music students.
The focus of the evening was Golijov's Ayre, an impassioned journey through the folk songs of Pre-Columbian 15th-century Spain. The composer mentions Berio's Folk Songs as one influence, and his own background formed another. Golijov grew up as the only Jewish kid in predominantly Christian Agentina in a household that he has described as "Eastern European." After spending time in Israel, he earned his PhD at UPenn, studying with George Crumb.
His range and depth of influences clearly come across in his music. In fact, it sometimes seems as though the quasi-program in Ayre and other pieces is almost just a pretext to write the music that resonates most deeply with him. Doing so, and by referencing Berio, Golijov garners the approval of academia and gives him license to explore the sounds in the gutters and the streets of the real world.
The result is an otherworldly tapestry, less of a blend, more of a juxtaposition of the religious traditions peacefully coexisting in the times before the much-parodied but still horrendous Spanish Inquisition. Each of the 11 songs is based on an actual folk song; says Golijov: "with a little bend, a melody goes from Jewish to Arab to Christian." This challenges Ms. Upshaw to embody a panoply of characters of different traditions and classes, each with their own vocal style, which she does with great passion and conviction. Her performance brings a theatricality to the work that merges with the intensity of the music, giving the whole a greater emotional impact.
The intensity is the result of confident, chamber-style playing, in which each performer knows his or her role and when their "character" comes to the fore. This is common in eighth blackbird performances; they know the music and each other so well that they start to function more like a rock band than an ensemble. It's a process that requires more rehearsal and more commitment but ends up speaking to a wider audience, one that is used to musicians being more than just musicians, one used to watching performers or, to the extreme, mere entertainers. Classical musicians generally hate to think about presentation, but Eighth blackbird seems comfortable borrowing and incorporating performative, sometimes entertaining elements to augment their musical performances--but never at expense of the music.
To me, as a composer, the most interesting aspect to the work was the instrumentation. The work called for Pierrot ensemble augmented by horn, accordion, guitar, harp, bass, percussion, and laptop. The bulk of the ensemble are members of Chicago-based eighth blackbird who are known for their subtle theatricalization of contemporary music. (They also won a Grammy last year.) In this performance, there was little need for this enhancement except for a few moments in which a particular player became the musical focus for a brief moment: tasteful and appropriate per usual.
The laptop was a bit of a surprise. At the beginning of the work, it added a nearly imperceptible deep background layer, but as the work progressed, it's presence became more and more noticeable--eventually triggering prerecorded percussion loops and samples. It was almost as if Golijov felt that the audience needed to be warmed up to the idea, which, for most of the crowd, was probably true. Although it seemed a bit timid, it ended up taking the focus only when appropriate and then relinquishing it back to Ms. Upshaw. For composers, it's an interesting example to study and learn from; for audiences, it's a good time to get used to the presence of technology in the concert hall.
The experience, as a whole, was highly effective: a soul-stirring, from-the-gut performance from Ms. Upshaw; a tight, rock-star backing band; and a composition that is academically viable, well-crafted, and yet inspired by the music of the People. Golijov does not write music from an Ivory Tower and, in the post-concert conversation, urged the composers at the U of C to do similarly.
The focus of the evening was Golijov's Ayre, an impassioned journey through the folk songs of Pre-Columbian 15th-century Spain. The composer mentions Berio's Folk Songs as one influence, and his own background formed another. Golijov grew up as the only Jewish kid in predominantly Christian Agentina in a household that he has described as "Eastern European." After spending time in Israel, he earned his PhD at UPenn, studying with George Crumb.
The result is an otherworldly tapestry, less of a blend, more of a juxtaposition of the religious traditions peacefully coexisting in the times before the much-parodied but still horrendous Spanish Inquisition. Each of the 11 songs is based on an actual folk song; says Golijov: "with a little bend, a melody goes from Jewish to Arab to Christian." This challenges Ms. Upshaw to embody a panoply of characters of different traditions and classes, each with their own vocal style, which she does with great passion and conviction. Her performance brings a theatricality to the work that merges with the intensity of the music, giving the whole a greater emotional impact.
The intensity is the result of confident, chamber-style playing, in which each performer knows his or her role and when their "character" comes to the fore. This is common in eighth blackbird performances; they know the music and each other so well that they start to function more like a rock band than an ensemble. It's a process that requires more rehearsal and more commitment but ends up speaking to a wider audience, one that is used to musicians being more than just musicians, one used to watching performers or, to the extreme, mere entertainers. Classical musicians generally hate to think about presentation, but Eighth blackbird seems comfortable borrowing and incorporating performative, sometimes entertaining elements to augment their musical performances--but never at expense of the music.
To me, as a composer, the most interesting aspect to the work was the instrumentation. The work called for Pierrot ensemble augmented by horn, accordion, guitar, harp, bass, percussion, and laptop. The bulk of the ensemble are members of Chicago-based eighth blackbird who are known for their subtle theatricalization of contemporary music. (They also won a Grammy last year.) In this performance, there was little need for this enhancement except for a few moments in which a particular player became the musical focus for a brief moment: tasteful and appropriate per usual.
The laptop was a bit of a surprise. At the beginning of the work, it added a nearly imperceptible deep background layer, but as the work progressed, it's presence became more and more noticeable--eventually triggering prerecorded percussion loops and samples. It was almost as if Golijov felt that the audience needed to be warmed up to the idea, which, for most of the crowd, was probably true. Although it seemed a bit timid, it ended up taking the focus only when appropriate and then relinquishing it back to Ms. Upshaw. For composers, it's an interesting example to study and learn from; for audiences, it's a good time to get used to the presence of technology in the concert hall.
The experience, as a whole, was highly effective: a soul-stirring, from-the-gut performance from Ms. Upshaw; a tight, rock-star backing band; and a composition that is academically viable, well-crafted, and yet inspired by the music of the People. Golijov does not write music from an Ivory Tower and, in the post-concert conversation, urged the composers at the U of C to do similarly.
11.15.2009
sustainability in classical music
Classical music is deeply rooted in tradition, something that is both heavy weight to bear and a tether to meaningful forms of expression. In fact, musicians in this tradition bemoan even the use of the word "Classical" to describe contemporary music of the Western European branch. The problem lies not with record stores' need for simple classification but with the word itself: ironically, the word "classical" has a mangle of meanings and roots, which, much like the music, gives it a richness and ambiguity of meaning.
This post, my first serious blog post, was inspired by a discussion started by Norman Lebrecht on his blog about the viability of living composers' music to survive the next 50 years. This discussion, ironically, never would have happened during the Classical era (1750-1800). During that era, the composers were concerned with pleasing either their patron or the public and never would have imagined that their music would cast such a long shadow. In fact, I think the word "classical" is apt for this period in so many ways. First, because it conforms to a more Apollonian, formal, intellectual, anti-sensual aesthetic; second, because this is the first period that is canonized, the first to see composers' music survive them, the last in which composers create without the crushing weight of history and the seduction of posterity. A good example of the latter is Brahms who, anecdotally, avoided the symphonic form for many years due to the high standards set by Beethoven; Brahms first symphony was finally premiered when the composer was in his 40s, 49 years after the death of Beethoven.
Thus began the period of self-consciousness in music.
Peering into the future, then, I first thought about the past and started thinking more critically about what pieces get performed and why. My analysis, then, is not really about specific composers but more specific pieces. Look at any great composer whose music lives on: a composer's output is not uniform, and, while we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater, we should certainly drain the bath.
Here is what I came up with. I resorted to some recently departed composers to flesh out the categories.
Audience
Some pieces that will prove durable will be crowd-pleasers. This should be fairly obvious. In this category I submit the following:
* Adams - Harmonium
* Adès - Asyla
* Berio - Sinfonia
* Crumb -Black Angels
* Lang - Are You Experienced?
* Gorecki - Symphony No 3
* Golijov - La Pasión según San Marcos
* Reich - Music for 18 Musicians
* Part - Fratres (or just about any other piece will do)
* Whitacre - Water Night
Performers
Something that I think we forget all too often is that, ultimately, someone has to perform the music; their opinion matters. If a piece is fun or interesting to perform, if it gives the performer a platform from which to show off, or if it is simply easy or educational, then it will get more performances.
* Berio - Sequenzas
* Boulez - Piano Sonatas
* Carter - String Quartets
* Crumb - Vox Balanae
* Glass - Music in Fifths
* Gordon, Ricky Ian - songs
* Lachenmann - various
* Ligeti - Musica Ricercata, Études (for piano)
* Reich - Music for Pieces of Wood
* Riley - In C
* Rorem - songs
* Schnittke - String Quartet No. 2
Impact
These are pieces that either have an important artistic, musical, or political impact.
* Adams - Nixon in China, Dr. Atomic
* Boulez - Le Marteau sans maître
* Golijov - Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind
* Reich - Different Trains
* Messiaen - Quartet for the End of Time
Star Power
The next generation of composers, including Muhly, Mason Bates, Turnage, etc , have certainly achieved a lot of fame in a short period of time. No telling how permanent their contributions will prove to be.
Academia
Finally, there is no dearth of lovers of music who choose to turn their passion into an academic career: musicology is a quickly growing field and is in the process of consuming (and including) music theory. I have always been impressed by the level of scrutiny given by certain members of this group to obscure composers and theorists from the 19th century and before; I imagine this will continue in the future to an even greater extent. And life being better documented today, it will give future generations of academicians a even more to digest. So, I think there's a good possibility that all composers who achieve any modicum of fame will be performed in the future. They may be forgotten in 50 years, but they'll be rediscovered in 100.
I realized too late that this list is incompletable. There were a lot of composers whose works I would like to choose but had difficulty finding the right category. There are, certainly, other categories that I have not yet imagined that will allow these works to live on (in a more significant way than just being fodder for academics). Feel free to proffer suggestions.
This post, my first serious blog post, was inspired by a discussion started by Norman Lebrecht on his blog about the viability of living composers' music to survive the next 50 years. This discussion, ironically, never would have happened during the Classical era (1750-1800). During that era, the composers were concerned with pleasing either their patron or the public and never would have imagined that their music would cast such a long shadow. In fact, I think the word "classical" is apt for this period in so many ways. First, because it conforms to a more Apollonian, formal, intellectual, anti-sensual aesthetic; second, because this is the first period that is canonized, the first to see composers' music survive them, the last in which composers create without the crushing weight of history and the seduction of posterity. A good example of the latter is Brahms who, anecdotally, avoided the symphonic form for many years due to the high standards set by Beethoven; Brahms first symphony was finally premiered when the composer was in his 40s, 49 years after the death of Beethoven.
Thus began the period of self-consciousness in music.
Peering into the future, then, I first thought about the past and started thinking more critically about what pieces get performed and why. My analysis, then, is not really about specific composers but more specific pieces. Look at any great composer whose music lives on: a composer's output is not uniform, and, while we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater, we should certainly drain the bath.
Here is what I came up with. I resorted to some recently departed composers to flesh out the categories.
Audience
Some pieces that will prove durable will be crowd-pleasers. This should be fairly obvious. In this category I submit the following:
* Adams - Harmonium
* Adès - Asyla
* Berio - Sinfonia
* Crumb -Black Angels
* Lang - Are You Experienced?
* Gorecki - Symphony No 3
* Golijov - La Pasión según San Marcos
* Reich - Music for 18 Musicians
* Part - Fratres (or just about any other piece will do)
* Whitacre - Water Night
Performers
Something that I think we forget all too often is that, ultimately, someone has to perform the music; their opinion matters. If a piece is fun or interesting to perform, if it gives the performer a platform from which to show off, or if it is simply easy or educational, then it will get more performances.
* Berio - Sequenzas
* Boulez - Piano Sonatas
* Carter - String Quartets
* Crumb - Vox Balanae
* Glass - Music in Fifths
* Gordon, Ricky Ian - songs
* Lachenmann - various
* Ligeti - Musica Ricercata, Études (for piano)
* Reich - Music for Pieces of Wood
* Riley - In C
* Rorem - songs
* Schnittke - String Quartet No. 2
Impact
These are pieces that either have an important artistic, musical, or political impact.
* Adams - Nixon in China, Dr. Atomic
* Boulez - Le Marteau sans maître
* Golijov - Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind
* Reich - Different Trains
* Messiaen - Quartet for the End of Time
Star Power
The next generation of composers, including Muhly, Mason Bates, Turnage, etc , have certainly achieved a lot of fame in a short period of time. No telling how permanent their contributions will prove to be.
Academia
Finally, there is no dearth of lovers of music who choose to turn their passion into an academic career: musicology is a quickly growing field and is in the process of consuming (and including) music theory. I have always been impressed by the level of scrutiny given by certain members of this group to obscure composers and theorists from the 19th century and before; I imagine this will continue in the future to an even greater extent. And life being better documented today, it will give future generations of academicians a even more to digest. So, I think there's a good possibility that all composers who achieve any modicum of fame will be performed in the future. They may be forgotten in 50 years, but they'll be rediscovered in 100.
I realized too late that this list is incompletable. There were a lot of composers whose works I would like to choose but had difficulty finding the right category. There are, certainly, other categories that I have not yet imagined that will allow these works to live on (in a more significant way than just being fodder for academics). Feel free to proffer suggestions.
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