Category: Columns

For the last three weeks, Randy, Molly, and I have been engaged in an intense debate as to whether or not music has any meaning and whether or not that meaning can be conveyed to a listener exclusively through music.

Call it the post-post-modernist version of the timeworn classical vs. romantic debate. Although I’d be loathe to describe any of us as classicists or romantics, for the sake of argument I’ll call Randy—who doesn’t believe in musical meaning—a classicist, and myself a romantic since I buy into all sorts of musical iconography. (Ironically he’s the more intuitive composer making him a romantic, and I’m obsessed with form and structure making me a classicist. But we have the same fights about uptown and downtown. See how foolish categories are!) Molly, always the level-headed journalist-type, maintains a cautious middle ground.

To temper this debate, I’d like to suggest that music can have profound meaning, but it requires a contextual framework in which to understand it which is usually the result of a process of acculturation, much like learning a verbal language.

In Modal Subjectivities, a recent book about 16th century Italian madrigals, the always provocative UCLA-based musicologist Susan McClary asserts that Monteverdi’s compositional process is “nearly as organic as any by a latter-day serialist, except that he has a commitment not only to the saturated integrity of his piece but also to the conventions that make it publicly intelligible.” (emphasis added).

Is this fair? Can the compositional process of any music, from 12-bar blues to spectralism, be “publicly intelligible” without some kind of grounding in its conventions? And, once you are grounded in those conventions, couldn’t even the music of Brian Ferneyhough make perfectly simple sense? Similarly, if you’ve never heard a nursery rhyme in your life (difficult I know, for arguments sake imagine an extraterrestrial sentient being), wouldn’t it seem baffling on first listen?

As I read McClary’s pronouncement on an overcrowded subway this morning, several lightbulbs went off. I wanted to scream “A-ha!” to nearby passengers but that probably would not have been advisable in a climate of “Orange Alert.”

Whether or not music can be publicly intelligible has also played a role in a chain of emails I’ve been having with composer Christopher Adler which he has published on his web site. Chris had issues with some of the comments I made last year about his Tzadik CD and assumed they were the result of my lack of familiarity with the traditional Lao-Thai khaen (mouth organ) music that inspires him. Ironically, while I’ve never studied it formally, this is music I’ve heard a fair amount of and I even possess a khaen (although I usually get hopelessly out of breath after only a minute of trying to play it). My tête-à-tête with Adler would seemingly prove Randy’s contention. I thought I understood Adler’s music but without sufficient explanatory words to guide me, the music was not able to convey its meaning on its own. Before I generate another downpour of emails, I am not implying here that this is the fault of Adler’s music.

I would contend that any lapse in understanding between music and its listeners is partially the result of our over-dependence on verbal language and our automatic assumptions derived from experiential memory. These alone cannot provide immediate acculturation any more than reading a Berlitz book can keep you from being snubbed when you try to speak French in Paris. Verbal language can only go so far in expressing the meanings that music can convey. However, as primarily language-based communicators, we’re stuck with words for everything we do. Randy would say that explanatory words are a waste of time and that they get in the way of the musical experience which is ultimately not about comprehension on any level, but something else. But without some attempt at analysis (which unfortunately will inevitably have to use words at some point), how can we make sense out of anything?

When I listen to music, any music, I usually respond to details I am able to analyze. Despite my admiration for Brian Eno, no music is ambient when I listen to it. All music is foreground, even the horrid Muzak^TM I was subjected to on the phone earlier this week while on-hold in which a series of parallel thirds caught my attention. I can’t turn off this mode of listening. It is how I process music and that processing is why I am perpetually fascinated by music. But I also know all too well that my methods are far from universal. So is anything about music universal?

What does McClary mean by “public intelligibility”? Is it the Common Practice-era cliché of major means happy and minor means sad? Could most angular twelve-tone music be turning potential listeners off because trichords that reject major and minor implications sound frustrated and angry? (Despite my wishes for the contrary, most people listen to music just to relax.) How far can you go with a compositional process and have listeners know what you’re doing without having to explain it by other means?

While drinking beer with a few friends at a picnic over the holiday weekend, I got into a heated discussion about copyright, of all things (we’re not a Katie/Tom/Brad/Angelina gossip kinda crowd). Another guest who works in theater rights management was telling tales of musical productions that tried to alter the book in some way (either with or without knowledge that it was strictly against the rules)—song order changed, new choreography added, or unsanctioned casting changes made. Many of the anecdotes sounded like great production ideas, though. How about Grease with an all-girl cast? West Side Story restaged to represent present-day gang warfare and culture in L.A. Neither would be possible: Thou can rip off Romeo and Juliet, but thou shalt not mess with West Side Story until it enters the public domain many, many years from now.

I’m a big supporter of sharing intellectual property for mutual benefit and am a cheerleader for the efforts of the folks at Creative Commons, an organization that has worked hard to streamline the challenges of rights management in our digital world for authors who want to share their work more liberally than default copyright law allows. In intellectual property debates, even though I’m on the left side of the battlefield, I like to think I maintain a healthy respect for those who think differently about ownership of ideas. In real life, I definitely respect their legal right to keep their intellectual property out of my creative hands, though it often depresses me when they tell me why this is the route they have chosen. The need to make a living is one thing, but when we’re talking about creative work, the situation is rarely “If I download the Grey Album, I don’t need to buy the Beatles’s White Album or Jay-Z’s Black Album“. More than likely, one fuels the collection of all three.

Still, that’s just one example, and maybe you have a sample case that would push the debate in the other direction. It wouldn’t surprise me. It’s a complex intellectual/philosophical issue that’s made murkier by the legal-ease that shrouds it and the economic demands of living in a capitalist society.

In these theater cases, I understand the need to protect the author’s original intent. After all, you don’t want people buying tickets to Phantom of the Opera expecting Andrew Lloyd’s smash hit and getting some avant-garde mash-up instead. But not allowing the production altogether, as opposed to making clear rules about credit and disclosure seems to be a baby with the bathwater solution. We live in cultural hyper-drive and a new twist or a wink of post-modern irony is often how we digest our world, yet the length of time a creative work is protected from such reinterpretation has only increased over the years. Society being one big, constantly renegotiated contract, are our rules in this matter in the best interest of our collective culture?

The theater rights manager at the party was a “those are the rules, pay what you owe us” sort of guy by profession, and I backed off not wanting to ruin a social event, but for me the whole conversation begged an artistic/intellectual question of growing importance: how much do we lose as a society while we wait for public domain access to creative work?

It’s only July, but the pile of 2005-06 season brochures on my apartment floor is already ankle high. Selecting a few at random, I decided to go fantasy concert ticket shopping—fantasy because I was looking at orchestra tickets with an average price tag way outside of my entertainment budget. After 15 minutes, I was completely frustrated by the exercise, but not because of my lack of cash. Here are a few of the programs I was considering:

Elliott CARTER Allegro scorrevole
SCHUMANN Symphony No. 4
BRAHMS Violin Concerto

BRIGHT SHENG New work (NY Premiere)
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral”

BRAHMS Academic Festival Overture
CHEN YI Si Ji (“Four Seasons”) (NY Premiere)
BRAHMS Symphony No. 1

BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto
JOHN ADAMS Chamber Symphony
HAYDN Symphony No. 102

I’m curious: While you were reading that list, did you find yourself humming the Sesame Street song “One of these things is not like the other…”? Don’t get me wrong—I’m all for setting up a dialogue between new and old work, which can deepen the experience of both, but is this the only compelling way to present new orchestral work?

Wondering if I was just being a new music snob, I asked my NMBx colleagues if I was missing the deeper philosophical connections between the works. Taking on the Beethoven/Adams/Haydn line-up, Frank shot me that “oh, you poor, naïve child” look and quickly reprogrammed the concert: The Adams, then Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No.1. After intermission, follow up with Verklärte Nacht and Shaker Loops. Floored once again by my editor’s ability to force the 20th-century music card even before his morning coffee, I was tempted to write the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and suggest the change, but what would they do with the already-booked superstar soloist Josh Bell?

Perhaps this sort of programming is a question of economics. Sandwich the new piece between two of the Big B’s and at least the box office won’t be a total washout. When addressing music issues, especially artistic vs. economic ones, I really do try and keep my head out of the sand, but this strategy just seems mean-spirited to all involved, especially the audience. Would you make 50 Cent fans sit through a Garth Brooks set? Would you expect it to double your box office take?

It’s not that I don’t love an evening of Beethoven; far from it. Intellectually I just don’t want my Beethoven experience encroaching on my Bright Sheng listening unless there’s an actual reason for doing so. I don’t like buffet dining either, though.

I go on record here as believing that, in absence of a compelling reason to do otherwise, new music concerts should exist on their own plane. If we’re worried about butts in the seats, I can’t say I see the difference between a dedicated crowd of a few hundred in Zankel Hall vs the few hundred who are left in Avery Fisher after half the house heads for the exit just before the world premiere of the evening. The austere rooms of the modern section of major galleries are a haven for those whose visual inclinations lean towards the present day and we don’t chastise the curators for it. Where is the flaw in offering new music fans a similar sort of sanctuary?

In between my fourth and fifth visits to Footlight Records to pick up, at the lowest cost imaginable, more music that I might potentially dislike, I took a websurfing break to Sequenza21, where, in today’s Composers Forum, Galen H. Brown suggests that young audiences “shopping for a subculture” are not “vulnerable” to an “‘eat your veggies’ approach” to new music which has been the way all of classical music has been marketed in this country from day one.

I too have long believed all that “Mozart makes you smarter” stuff is a turnoff, even though I started eating broccoli with a vengeance upon learning that George H.W. Bush hated it, so go figure…

Among yesterday’s Footlight acquisitions is a record that I could barely get through half of. (Another plus in the vinyl over CD battle is that if you don’t like something, it will end sooner without you having to do anything.) The LP in question is Rosemary Clooney’s Mixed Emotions. I’ve long known that Clooney is an icon among fans of the great standards singers, so for a mere 54 cents (tax included) I figured it was worth the risk. Despite my years as a PR hack, I was also sold by the liner notes (another thing CDs can’t do):

If you happen to be one of the few who have never been exposed to her vocal charms, this is the perfect starter-package. Of course, if you are a Rosemary Clooney fan, we do not have to tell you that this album is a must.

From the first horribly unreal stereo-reprocessed mono distortion (not her fault I know, but still) as soon as I dropped the needle, to the opening words of the very first song, “Bless This House” with its saccharine religiosity, I found myself nearly gagging. But why?

Tons of electronic music I love going back to Stockhausen takes acoustic recordings and distorts them all sorts of ways to great aesthetic effect. And scads of music I cherish, from the Bach cantatas to gospel records by James Cleveland or the Davis Sisters, attempt to incite religious feelings I know I will never have, yet I can still love the music. So, why am I so turned off by this? Why am I allowing myself to let these things get in the way of listening to the mellifluous sound of her voice, which is above all else what her fans are paying attention to? Could it just be a little too close to things I heard growing up that made me turn to classical music and the avant garde in the first place? If that’s the case, might I be listening to my feelings and not to the music? Might that be what happens when most people listen to music they “don’t like”?

I’m heading back over there to buy more records within the hour. Undoubtedly, I’ll pick up even more Rosemary Clooney and hopefully figure it out.

I just came back from my third trip in so many days to Footlight Records in the East Village. Presumably until the seemingly endless piles of LPs and CDs become manageable enough for Footlight to close its doors and transform itself into an online-only retailer, they are offering a 75%-off sale on vinyl and a 20%-off sale on CDs.

For 30 years, Footlight has been the No. 1 store in New York City, if not the rest of the country and the world, for folks interested in Broadway original cast albums and film soundtracks as well as crooners and other vocal icons from a bygone era. While some of this music is of immense interest to me—I’m a Sondheim and Loesser fanatic—most of it has remained on the periphery of my musical diet and some of it I even blatantly dislike. Yet for three days I’ve been shoveling piles of it home and probably will go back there again tomorrow.

Why?

Because for years my response to encountering music I don’t like has been to keep listening to it and the best way to do that is to buy a record of it.

I usually blame the “tastelessness” of my record collection and subsequent listening time on the influence of John Cage, although he would undoubtedly have been horrified by much of what I keep on my walls. (Indeed, he was horrified of recorded music in the first place despite the myriad compact discs of his music that are now available for public consumption.) But Cage’s full emancipation of all sound as potential music must mean that if everything is music, so is “bad music.”

As a John Cage-loving young composer turned Columbia ethnomusicology graduate student in the late 1980s, I was already prepared to be swayed by William Brooks’s 1982 essay “On Being Tasteless” (Popular Music 2, Cambridge University Press) and John Blacking’s 1985 book A Commonsense View of All Music, texts which argued that we would understand music better if we objectively analysed it as a universal human phenomenon rather than constantly trying to evaluate it based on something as precarious and egocentric as personal opinion. For the last twenty years, these texts became the Little Red Books of my own still-ongoing personal cultural revolution.

I still remember hating the not-quite-in-tune and horribly mannered sounds made by many rock vocalists, which can be as jarring to someone unversed in the genre as bel canto operatic vibrato to folks who aren’t Met subscribers. Yet now I can think of few experiences more intense than listening to Johnny Rotten in his prime. Through being tasteless, I’ve opened my mind to hip-hop, country-western, Frank Sinatra, and a good deal of so-called contemporary classical music since we’re probably even more guilty of exclusion within the genre than we are outside it.

How can you possibly have your mind open to a brand new piece of music if the only music you’ll allow into your life is music that you already like?

Yesterday I bought a couple of records worth of music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, whom I have never liked. And today I picked up an album featuring Teresa Brewer, a singer I only remember as one annoying voice passing by among many others on a TV commercial for an oldies collection I saw some 30 years ago. To this day, I still haven’t come to terms with Billy Joel, Elton John, or most so-called soft rock but every now and then I keep trying. Maybe tomorrow.

Now that we’ve settled into our redesigned site and are no longer tripping over the furniture (who put that chair there?!), it’s time to heat up “Chatter.” Probably the coolest part of working on NewMusicBox (after the free concert tickets, of course) revolves around the heated yet friendly debates that Frank, Randy, and I fall into almost every day. Most of these conversations end up evolving into the stories and interviews you read here, but this week we’re taking the debate in a slightly different direction.

Perhaps before we go any further into this discussion, we should begin to define our terms. Principally, what is “importance” when it comes to music? How is it judged? Is it popularity, range of influence, intellectual brilliance? And who decides?

In the “Who Would Win: Tenney or Cobain?” game we’re playing at here, Cobain arguably wins by a landslide on the first two, and Rolling Stone and the Billboard charts decided. [I’ll leave any discussion as to the intellectual merits of dada lyrics and droning “hello” sixteen times as a chorus for later, but I am seduced by it.] Following Cobain’s suicide, the jury came back and confirmed:

Two days after Kurt Cobain’s body was found about 5,000 people gathered in Seattle for a candlelight vigil. The distraught crowd filled the air with profane chants, burnt their flannel shirts and fought with police. They also listened to a tape made by Cobain’s wife in which she read from his suicide note. Several distressed teenagers in the U.S. and Australia killed themselves.
www.burntout.com/kurt/biography

Clearly Cobain’s music was of great consequence to many ears. What most sticks out at me from Frank’s post, however, is his immediate move to look for this importance (or lack of) regarding “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in terms of its chord structure. I had a friend who would point ecstatically at the car radio when his favorite pop tunes came on and deconstruct them like a theory exercise. For me, it was a most disheartening scene to witness.

Cobain is not important because he achieved anything like a discernible tone row. But his “genius,” if you will, was in mesmerizing ears with intense lyrics and a tune that hooked deep. He is arguably an icon only because he was a suicide, but he was musically important because of his influence on an entire social strata and a line of influential bands that followed like Korn and Green Day. James Tenney is also an influence, but to a much more tightly defined demographic. It’s not all about the numbers, but if we’re speaking of “importance,” scope and depth must come into play at some point. In a way, it’s unfair. Cobain in many ways was just riding the tidal wave that picked him up, and Tenney has not placed himself in the way of one.

On a more micro level, musicians bring my ears different things. Tenney’s music brings me intellectual amusement on par with completing a crossword puzzle. Cobain’s takes me back to a high school friend’s basement and a whole world of memories. Which is more “important” on that level would be impossible for me to define—like trying to live with only your head or just your heart.

For the past week we’ve been having a silly discussion in the editorial room of NewMusicBox about who is the more important historical figure in the history of American music: Kurt Cobain or James Tenney. But maybe it’s not so silly…

I’ve taken the minority position that Tenney is more important, even though on the popularity scale presumably almost everyone knows Cobain (even the classical music-only types) while Tenney is someone still largely unknown even in our own new music ghetto. In fact, I’ve owned a copy of Nevermind for years, long before I ever had any Tenney recordings (but that’s only because his music is only just now starting to get commercially released).

I also know that Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” made the top 10 of Rolling Stone‘s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time,” a bizarre list that implies all time began in 1948 (but I’ll save that for a future argument).

So, yes, I don’t deny that Cobain, as a member of the band Nirvana, made an impact. And the synthesis of metal and punk that is the core of grunge—a style that Nirvana codified though arguably did not initiate—defined the sound of ’90s alternative rock to the point that “alternative” was no longer a moniker for a group that challenged the hegemony of commercial rock but rather an epithet for groups that sounded like Nirvana.

That said, I was impressed by “Smells Like Teen Spirit” the first time I heard it and I still am impressed by it (particularly the way the vocal line persistently hovers a major second away from the tonic for no apparent reason). And I really admire the seeming randomness to the chord changes in many of the other songs on Nevermind as well. But, that’s precisely why I think Tenney is even more important. The synthesis his music represents goes well beyond the merger that Nirvana achieved, and the simultaneous logic yet complete unpredictability of Tenney’s compositional trajectory has much greater implications than anything Cobain was able to achieve in his extremely short life.

Yes, Cobain became an icon to a generation, but I’d argue that the demographic of that generation is far from universal, since in a rare moment of agreement with Terry Teachout, I too believe that we’ve replaced our cultural mainstream with a “balkanized group of subcultures whose members pursue their separate, unshared interests in an unprecedented variety of ways.” And, even if Cobain were universally lionized like the pop icons of prior generations such as Sinatra or Elvis (whose music touched even James Tenney), I would argue that Cobain’s lionization had more to do with his persona (the slacker pose, the scrapes with NARCs, the suicide, etc.) than with his music, even though I find his music interesting. Interest in Tenney, on the other hand, can only be about the music. He himself insists that there is no other narrative.

As if to prove my point, I was walking through the supermarket in my neighborhood yesterday afternoon and was greeted by a fellow shopper.

“Weren’t you involved in that Tenney concert a few weeks ago at the Issue Project Room? That was really incredible. I can’t stop thinking about it.” (Those were not her exact words, but they were pretty close. Unfortunately, we’ve yet to be able to add a camcorder-at-will feature to PDAs…) “I’m not a musician, but I read about it in The New York Times and decided to go. I heard your conversation with him before the concert and didn’t really believe what he said about his music not referring to anything else except itself. But then I heard the music. It made me listen in a completely different way, especially that piece for the gong [Having Never Written a Note for Percussion]. It was like a womb of sound.” (That last sentence is her exact words.)

Tenney’s post-Cagean compositional framework—which creates a space in which minimalism, serialism, microtonality, indeterminacy, conceptualism, neo-tonality and even ragtime can sit on the same shelf—defines the musical landscape of the early 21st century. It is in fact a womb of sound that will give birth to the music of the future. It’s hard to think of anything that’s more important than that.

It’s summer in the city, but the heat isn’t slowing down the pace of life and I have only one set of ears, so every night when 8 p.m. rolls around, I miss a few more concerts I had hoped to hear. Could my iPod save me?

If you aren’t one to obsess over the latest Internet trends, you might have missed that fact that blogs are old news; podcasts are what’s hot this summer. Named after that sexy must-have accessory the iPod, podcasting is what you might equate with a subscription-based radio show for busy people. You set up what you want to receive and forget about it. New episodes are then delivered right to your computer as they become available. You can listen whenever you want.

Composer William Duckworth and his partner in crime Nora Farrell have dedicated quite a bit of their artistic efforts to keeping the new music field technologically current through their interactive, web-based Cathedral project. They are once again standing at the edge of the technology curve by launching The Memory Theater, an iPod opera. You can subscribe or listen online by visiting the Cathedral website.

The project kicked off on April 10, and a new program will be added every two weeks through February 24, 2007. Four programs are up now to get you started, showcasing music created by the Cathedral Band. The tracks run a gamut of styles, but are currently heavy on the narration and the international flavor. Since each “episode” runs less than 8 minutes, you might think of it as Forrest Gump-style consumption of free aural bon-bons.

Still, any new delivery mechanism begs the question: What does the medium add to the message? Does hip technology distract from the art?

Well aware of my fascination with the phenomenon of air guitar, a friend from across the pond sent me this link last week (note: it’s a large streaming QuickTime movie file, so you’ll need some serious bandwidth in order to view it). Let me explain what you’re about to see.

As part of the recent open studios event at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Antwerp, Finnish artist Kristofer Paetau decided to create a rather interesting tableau by extending an invitation to Belgium’s 2004 air guitar champion, Bucketbutt (a.k.a. Ron Van den Branden), to perform within the context of a group exhibition. Bucketbutt’s brand of gimmicky hijinks indeed conjures up the heyday of performance art circa 1970, a vital motivation behind Paetau’s scheme to organize this spectacle in the first place.

Here in New York City, art lovers are commonly treated to displays far more outrageous. It’s commonplace. Despite this town’s overabundance of exhibition space, it seems that not even gallery walls can contain certain renegade performance artists. Times Square is a mainstay for another underwear clad—albeit sans bucket—guitar yielding chap, known as the Naked Cowboy. But for the consummate hybrid of music/performance art just stroll through Central Park. Somewhere near the Boat House you’ll encounter Thoth. Be warned, his eccentric attire is way skimpier than the Naked Cowboy, but the sheer intensity of conviction behind Thoth’s ritualized violin performances is utterly mesmerizing.

It’s funny. I’m one of the few composers I know who has actually performed nude in front of an audience. Yeah I know, it’s been done to death. Although not so much at Carnegie Hall—say hello to the strategically placed fig leaf during all matinee performances, as mandated by administration. We musician types don’t like to ruffle any feathers you know. I’m sure Paetau’s presentation of Bucketbutt (a wink-and-nod to Buckethead I assume…) didn’t raise too many eyebrows among the seen-it-all art crowd. I shudder to think what sort of reaction new music audiences would reserve for Bucketbutt. The obligatory polite applause I’d assume. I’m not suggesting that new music practitioners and coinsures are prudish or more susceptible to shock tactics than the typical museumgoer.

Quite the opposite, our audiences are way more complacent in their jadedness, passively listening, unresponsive, then clapping at sanctioned intervals—doesn’t matter if you love it or hate it. Yeah, there’s clearly an audible difference between apathetic applause and outright cheering, but creators and presenters can construe both as positive reinforcement. So everybody is happy then, right? Nobody out there is craving something a little edgier or more extreme.

Heaven forbid if the Emerson Quartet decided to strap buckets to their butts, or worse, stage some sort of “wardrobe malfunction” as it has come to be known. But let’s face it, shock and awe is one of the oldest tools known to artists. Yet the so-called world of serious music is above all that, and maybe that’s a problem.

Between Matisse’s Femme au chapeau and Picasso’s Guernica came Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. 4′ 33″ coincides with Pollock’s breakthrough. The Viennese Actionists and Fluxus crowd and gave us music that still makes heads scratch in the conservatory. But what about now, almost a half decade later, has art music hit a wall? Artists like Andrea Fraser and Laurel Nakadate still manage to shock us, using perversion as a form of profound communication. When are symphony orchestras going to start exploring the scatological? We see it in museums and galleries. We see it in the city streets. Could this be one of the reasons why new music is always playing catch-up to other contemporary art forms?