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Music Panelists

Music Composition, Preliminary Panel

Mel Marvin, composer, director, Resident Composer of the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts

James Mobberley, composer, Curators’ Professor of Music, University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music

Diedre L. Murray, composer, Queens, NY

Final Panel

Joy Harjo
Poet/Musician/Writer
Honolulu, HI

Jennifer Lawson
Producer
Washington, DC

Mel Marvin
Composer/Director
Resident Composer, The Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program
Tisch School of the Arts, New York University
New York, NY

Renny Pritikin
Writer/Poet
Chief Curator, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
San Francisco, CA

Esther Robinson
Independent Producer
Program Director of Media and Performing Arts, Creative Capital Foundation
New York, NY

Anthony Gatto


Anthony Gatto
Photo courtesy of the composer

Composer Anthony Gatto was born and raised in Brooklyn. In May of 2001, he received his D.M.A. in composition from the Yale School of Music, where his teachers were Jacob Druckman, Martin Bresnick, and Ezra Laderman. Dr. Gatto has also studied with Lukas Foss and Ornette Coleman. He has received support from the McKnight and Jerome Foundations, ASCAP, and Meet the Composer. Gatto was also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Berlin to work on his opera Ceaucescu‘s Prosecutor, based on the Romanian Revolution of 1989.

Gatto will use his Bush Foundation Fellowship to finish work on a new sextet for two percussionists, piano, bass clarinet, violin, and cello. Gatto describes the piece, which is based on some “compressed” melodies from the Radiohead album Kid A, as “very Downtown.'” It will be premiered as part of the second annual Festival Dancing in Your Head this coming September in Minneapolis.

The Festival Dancing in Your Head is the brainchild of Gatto, who runs a non-profit organization called Headwaters Music. The Festival will showcase musicians from around the country playing new music from around the world. Performers at the Festival will include the Bang On A Can All-Stars, the Pro Arte Quartet, Minnesota Orchestra concertmaster Jorja Fleezanis; monks from the Gyuto Wheel of Dharma Monastery; pipa player Gao Hong; and jazz bass player Anthony Cox.

Gatto has obtained Jerome Foundation money to commission four new works for the Festival. Annie Gosfield will write a new work for the Minneapolis-based new music ensemble Zeitgeist, Happy Apple will compose and perform a new work for jazz ensemble, the Meng Vang Ensemble will compose and perform a new work for Hmong mouth organs, and D.D. Jackson will write and perform a new work for solo jazz piano. In addition, the Festival’s “house orchestra,” Orchestra Dancing In Your Head, will perform Gatto’s new sextet and Steve Reich‘s Music for 18 Musicians.

The event will be held on September 6, 7, and 8 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. It will culminate in a “marathon” performance on Saturday, highly reminiscent of Bang On A Can’s yearly events. This is no small coincidence, as Gatto hopes to work with the New York-based ensemble in turning Minneapolis into a mecca for new music. “With Bang On A Can, I want to have people thinking New York, Amsterdam, Minneapolis!” Gatto enthused.

Gatto has lived in Minneapolis for the past four years, and has taught at the University of Minnesota and the Perpich Center for Arts Education. He has been throwing his energy into new music in the Twin Cities, and so far is pleased with the results. “People in Minnesota are amazingly supportive. It’s a composer’s dream to have a community like this to connect with,” he stated. Festival Dancing on Your Head has received support from the Walker Art Center, the Jerome Foundation and the Target Foundation.

Listen Globally, Make Music Locally

As a Baby Boomer, I was part of the first generation to grow up with the whole world of music. By the time I was eighteen, I was familiar with the sounds of Indian ragas, West African drumming, Indonesian gamelan, European classical music, Japanese court and theater music, Tibetan chant, and the classical and traditional folk music of China. Through recordings, I also discovered Mexican marimba music, Bolivian pipes and drums, Mississippi Delta blues, Sacred Harp singing, Northern Plains chant and other indigenous American musics.

At Cal Arts, along with my studies in counterpoint, orchestration, electronic music, and the works of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, I played in a Javanese gamelan and studied the music of Ghana and northern India with masters of those traditions. Through the music and teaching of Lou Harrison, I came to understand how profoundly the American tradition of Henry Cowell, Harry Partch and John Cage was shaped by what Lou calls “the whole, wide, wonderful world of music.”

After leaving school, I headed for Alaska, where I’ve lived and worked for the past twenty-five years. By now, the drumming, chanting and dancing of the Yup’ik, Iñupiat, Athabascan and Tlingit peoples have become integral elements in the soundscape of my life and work. In some ways I feel closer to these traditions than to those of Western Europe. It’s my hope that these elements inform my music in a way that respects their origins and has led me to a new sound that’s an authentic part of this place.

As Cowell taught us, all music is ethnic music. European music of the 18th and 19th centuries is simply another form of local music, no more and no less significant than any other music. American music is something else.

Music in the United States today is as distinct from European traditions as we are from the Pilgrims. One of the defining qualities of American music is its diversity. Ours is probably most variegated musical culture the world has ever known. American music embraces traditions from all over the world.

At the same time, we’ve given the world musical commercialism the likes of which it’s never known. The same recording industry that brought the musical traditions of the whole world into our living rooms now threatens to overwhelm authentic local voices in the melting pot of global commerce.

Throughout history, all cultures have borrowed from other cultures. But the extent and pace of this in the U.S. today is unprecedented. In this environment, how do we distinguish between appropriate acculturation and casual appropriation?

Human cultures are like ecosystems. To sustain themselves, they need a balance of diversity and integrity. In a world of mass marketing and global commerce, how do we promote diversity and sustain the integrity of ancient musical traditions? How do we encourage the creation of genuine new musical voices that integrate different traditions?

We rarely think twice about an American string quartet playing European music, or an American composer writing a symphony. Is it any less valid for an American musician to play the koto, or for an American composer to write for gamelan?

How have the musical traditions of the world shaped the music you perform, compose and listen to?

Natasha Sinha: Top Ten!

Natasha Sinha
Natasha Sinha
Photo by Raj Sinha

Natasha Sinha talks with Frank J. Oteri at the New York City offices of ASCAP

May 24, 2001—11:30 a.m.

Conversation videotaped by Jenny Undercofler
Transcribed by Julia Lu

 


Natasha Sinha
Interview Excerpt #1

FRANK J. OTERI: You’re involved with so many different kinds of activities, both composing music and playing piano, and you’re also involved with sports and Lego, and with mathematics, but since our main interest is your music, let’s talk about music. When did you start writing music?

NATASHA SINHA: I started writing music in I think 1998, two and half years ago. I first started composing because I had been playing piano for awhile and I wanted to see what the composer’s perspective was so I decided to have one instrument as a piano and compose music. Then I decided to have two instruments and that’s what I won for last year, My Rainbow. And then I did a few songs with two instruments. And I did one with the piano and the cello, one with the piano and the oboe, and one other one with the piano and the violin.

FRANK J. OTERI: Now how important is composing music among the various things you do in your life?

NATASHA SINHA: It’s pretty important, ‘cuz I think it’s a very free thing for me to do and it makes me relax a lot because I get to just put all my ideas out and there’s no real wrong way to write music. So I like it a lot.

FRANK J. OTERI: Do you feel that you’re going to be a composer for the rest of your life?

NATASHA SINHA: Probably, but just as something I would do once in awhile. I do it pretty often now and I’ll just always have it with me probably ‘cuz I really enjoy it.

FRANK J. OTERI: Would you say then you would want to be considered in your life first as a composer?

NATASHA SINHA: Possibly. Yeah.

FRANK J. OTERI: Well what else would you want people to think of you as?

NATASHA SINHA: Well I want to be an inventor. I’m interested in inventing robots and helping other people out with different problems they have and if they can’t do things as an aid to help them.

FRANK J. OTERI: So you feel throughout your life you would be able to do that and compose music?

NATASHA SINHA: …possibly as a hobby.

FRANK J. OTERI: How old do you think most composers are?

NATASHA SINHA: I think they mostly start from, obviously a little bit older than me so that would be around like maybe 20 to about maybe about 60 to 70. Somewhere around there, or maybe longer…

FRANK J. OTERI: You know, it’s interesting, there’s a composer who is still alive, an American composer, named Leo Ornstein who turned 108 last year.

NATASHA SINHA: Wow. That’s fantastic [sotto voce]

FRANK J. OTERI:Elliott Carter who I spoke to last year is still actively writing music. Some of the best music he’s written in his life. And he’s 92 now.

NATASHA SINHA: Oh wow. So it’s just probably ranging a lot.

FRANK J. OTERI: And of course you know Mozart started writing symphonies at the age of eight. And you know there are other composers who were as young writing great music. Henry Cowell was very young when he started composing. But certainly you know you’re younger than any of the composers I’ve ever talked to for NewMusicBox and it raises an interesting question. Can anyone be a composer? What does being a composer require?

NATASHA SINHA: Actually basically anyone can be a composer because all you have to do is be able to make up a tune. And many people do that right now. Like they just are improvising on a song. Like there might one song they heard a lot and they just start improvising something new. And that’s basically composing. They just haven’t written it down yet.


Natasha Sinha
Interview Excerpt #2

FRANK J. OTERI: Do you feel that audiences appreciate music in general in this country?

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah, I think so. Some of them like certain kinds of music and those kinds of music they like, they appreciate it, but sometimes I don’t think they appreciate it, like how much work they have to go through to get everything perfect. For example, like there are some band groups that make up all these songs, but they don’t realize what you had to do to get songs. You don’t just say “Oh I have a song, let
‘s play it.” You have to go through and put it down.

FRANK J. OTERI: Well, what’s your process when you’re working on a piece of music?

NATASHA SINHA: Well first I decide what I’m gonna write about or compose about. And then I just start making my melody in mind so that’s like my first draft. And then I start adding all the fine details later. And then what I do is after I get all that down, I make another copy of it that’s a little bit neater. And then what I do is my mom helps me sometimes to write it on the computer. And then we find people who can start learning all the different parts. And they start practicing it and a few times before the real thing where you perform it, we hear it and we make corrections of what I, or my teacher Alla Cohen, wants.

FRANK J. OTERI: So you work through the scores by hearing them in performance with other musicians playing. Do you play the music yourself as well?

NATASHA SINHA: Not yet because actually I’m not that familiar with playing with other people yet. And I’m just making a new song called Wild Swans and I realize that now since I’m a little bit older I can start playing. So there’s a sort of difficult piano part in this song and I decided to start playing the piano in that song.

FRANK J. OTERI: You also are a pianist.

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah.

FRANK J. OTERI: I heard your piano recital CD, which featured a lot of different music. And the CD of your own music features the piano quite a bit. So that was not you playing?

NATASHA SINHA: No, that wasn’t me. It would take me awhile because I’m not very much used to playing with other people because I basically am the only one in my family that still plays music all the time. But my mom was a pianist, but my dad really never did anything.

FRANK J. OTERI: Interesting. So what, what started the interest in music? Where did it come from?

NATASHA SINHA: Well, when I was about four, I always listened to music ever since I went to bed. And I always thought about “Wow that person who did that must have been really good.” And then sometimes at night I would dream about what they might think. And I decided that one day I would want to start composing like they did. And so I’ve always liked music.

FRANK J. OTERI: And what music do you listen to at home?

NATASHA SINHA: I listen to classical music, but then I also listen to lots of other things, I like a particular band group in pop. I like the Back Street Boys. And also I like jazz music and I like the blues a lot.

FRANK J. OTERI: Do you feel that all these other types of music will somehow find their way into your own music?

NATASHA SINHA: Eventually, but not right now.

FRANK J. OTERI: Now to follow up on what you were saying before about audiences appreciating music and audiences listening to music, do you feel that most Americans appreciate what we’re calling classical music?

NATASHA SINHA: Not as much as I thought, especially in the younger ages. Because a large amount of people have started to hook onto pop and more of the rocky music, but still there’s a pretty good amount like some of the elderly. I still like classical music, but at least a wide variety in my school don’t really understand classical music ‘cuz they don’t really understand much about it.

FRANK J. OTERI: So what do your classmates and other students think, here you are a student just like them who’s writing cello and piano music? What’s that?

NATASHA SINHA: They think it’s awesome?

FRANK J. OTERI: Yeah? They’re into it?

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah, they think it’s awesome that I’m composing. But I don’t think they realize that ‘cuz see I’m like one of their friends and they’re like whoa this like girl that’s like next to me she composes. But if suppose someone else like a 20 or 30 year old composed music for cello and piano, they’d be like “Oh another one of those.”

FRANK J. OTERI: Well, you know it’s interesting the notion of who a composer is. You know there’s this notion more in classical music than any other music that a composer is somebody who’s a man whose got gray hair and maybe a wig, like Amadeus

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah, that’s what everyone imagines…

FRANK J. OTERI: …but you know, you’re not a man, and you’re not wearing a wig! And you’re an American. We all could potentially be composers if that’s what we set out to do.

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah. Most people think of composers, at least in my class, of like 18 year old and onwards. But they don’t really think of anyone being younger than 18.


Natasha Sinha
Interview Excerpt #3

FRANK J. OTERI: I want to talk to you about some specific pieces of your music. I’ve been really enjoying it. I want to talk a bit about My Rainbow. I heard things in it that pressed certain buttons for me and I don’t know if these composers will mean anything to you, but I want to mention these composers to you to see if you know of them because I thought there was a kinship: Howard Hanson, Amy Beach, Arthur Foote, Samuel Barber. Do you know their music?

NATASHA SINHA: I think I know Amy Beach. Yeah and I like her music. I’ve heard it a little bit. I sort of like it.

FRANK J. OTERI: And I thought it was interesting, you living in the Boston area, writing music in the tradition of the great New England composers. And I’m wondering, is there something in the water up there that makes people write rhapsodic beautiful music filled with counterpoint that is very gracious to performers. I mean this is music that performers would want to play.

NATASHA SINHA: Well I think that whenever I compose music, I always try to think of things, especially in one song, it was The Brook. And I thought of a tropical rain forest and how sometimes there’s sometimes like little brooks and all. And also I think of the rain, and how it comes down and then how the water starts flowing. And whenever I come by water, I always start hearing sounds that are not like sounds from the water, but music that just starts coming.

FRANK J. OTERI: Now I know that you have played Poulenc‘s
music. And there’s a wonderful flute and piano sonata by Poulenc. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it.

NATASHA SINHA: No, I don’t know that.

FRANK J. OTERI: Who are some of your favorite composers?

NATASHA SINHA: I like Bach, Beethoven, Bartók, Chopin and I like Grieg.

FRANK J. OTERI: You played Bach’s Two-Part Invention No. 8 on your piano CD and I definitely heard it as a departure point for a lot of the music you’ve done. That sort of sense of line in the invention sort of translates into one of the movements of the flute piece. I also heard echoes of it in the last movement of The Seasons, the cello and piano piece, and in your oboe and piano piece. Bach is somebody whom I also find a constant source of inspiration as a composer. But it’s interesting… Why is this man who lived in Northern Germany 300 years ago relevant still to us today in America?

NATASHA SINHA: Well I think that his music still shines. Because just the way he writes, he wrote the music, it brought out a lot of melodies that I enjoy even though it was such a long time ago. I don’t pick music by when it comes from. I mean I wouldn’t really mind if it came from like 300 years ago or 400 years ago, but I still like the music because I like the way it sounds.

FRANK J. OTERI: You love Bach, and you also love the Back Street Boys. Is there any music you don’t like?

NATASHA SINHA: I don’t really know if I don’t really like any music. I think of music as just being second nature to me because it’s always around and I don’t think there’s any wrong way to play music.

FRANK J. OTERI: That’s wonderful. It’s a shame that a lot of people don’t feel that way and some people get so caught up in one area of music making that they close out everything else.

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah, some of my friends like rap music and I like some rap, but not like I love it. But all they do is like rap. They don’t understand really what classical is or anything. And they think it’s boring.

FRANK J. OTERI: Because they don’t take the time to get into it…

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah. They always like turn on ‘N Sync

FRANK J. OTERI: Well, it’s interesting in terms of talking about other influences, because I heard some interesting things in your cello and piano piece, The Seasons. I’m thinking specifically of one of the movements, the Fall movement where the cello sort of sounded like a Chinese erhu, which is this two-stringed violin and there was sort of a Chinese-sounding scale. Were you trying to incorporate Chinese music at all in that?

NATASHA SINHA: I learned in the theory class I take at the New England Conservatory, about the minor way of playing something. And that sounded sort of interesting to me. And that particular section I thought that would fit in well there.

FRANK J. OTERI: So have you listened to Chinese music?

NATASHA SINHA: Not really.

FRANK J. OTERI: Any other sort of non-Western music, Indian music

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah, I listen to Indian music sometimes. And then I also listen sometimes to African music. I like how the rainsticks and stuff sound.

FRANK J. OTERI: Have you heard Lou Harrison‘s music?

NATASHA SINHA: No.

FRANK J. OTERI: I think you would be very interested in his music. Also Alan Hovhaness who died about a little over a year ago. Lou Harrison is still alive. He’s in his 80s now. He’s in California. And he writes this really lovely music that combines really tuneful sounding music for violin, cello, piano, with Asian influences like Indonesian music and Chinese music.

JENNY UNDERCOFLER: Lou Harrison wrote a piano concerto that you would like a lot. The piano has to be tuned in a specific way though. It’s not the regular piano tuning. In one movement the pianist gets to play with a block instead of the left hand. You play part of it with a block. It’s a really cool piece. You’d like it.

FRANK J. OTERI: Yeah, it’s wonderful. I’ll send you some music to listen to.


Natasha Sinha
Interview Excerpt #4

FRANK J. OTERI: Do you write out stuff by hand originally or does it go straight to computer?

NATASHA SINHA: Like I explained earlier what we would do is we would first do it by hand and then we would make a second hand copy which was neater because sometimes we would sort of hurry to write things down. And then from that, we would put it on the computer because it would be neater on there.

FRANK J. OTERI: And what program do you use?

NATASHA SINHA: We use Cakewalk Overture. And then my mom helps sometimes and sometimes my dad, but I do it most of the time.

FRANK J. OTERI: Now does that computer allow you to listen back to the music at all?

NATASHA SINHA: No actually, there’s a second way to actually do it on our computer which is to play it on the piano, but you would have to be exact about when to start. And it would change the signature if you weren’t. We have a keyboard and we hook it up to that, so like if you started playing and then you went a little bit faster, it might change the signature…

FRANK J. OTERI: It’s terrible. I started using a notation software program that I absolutely love called Sibelius for my own music… And you can hear the music, you enter it in the computer, but then you can play it back and it plays it.

NATASHA SINHA: Oh wow.

FRANK J. OTERI:
And I thought it was interesting because you were saying that you get musicians to play the music and then you make corrections based on what you hear, but with this program, you can hear it all as you are creating it…

NATASHA SINHA: Oh, no, no, no, what I mean is from what they’re playing. Like the way they’re playing. If they’re playing it too loud or soft, that’s what I mean.

FRANK J. OTERI: How long does it take you to write a piece of music. Like the cello and piano piece, how long did it take you to write that?

NATASHA SINHA: It took me about like four or five months.

FRANK J. OTERI: And the flute/piano piece?

NATASHA SINHA: Uh around that.

FRANK J. OTERI: Same, same length of time. One of my favorite things that I heard on the CD was the second movement of the Rustic Suite, the piece for oboe and piano. What I thought was so nice about it was it was so spare. There were passsages where the oboe played and the piano didn’t play at all. And then the piano came it. It wasn’t crowded with notes. Every phrase was allowed to breathe. And I think a lot of times there’s a desire to fill up the page and have as much going on as possible and I think it was wonderful how this music just breathed.

NATASHA SINHA: Well sometimes I feel that also the players sometimes need a rest. But also I sometimes think that as you said, sometimes things get too compacted and I don’t worry how much music I have. As long as it’s not like one note, obviously, the only thing I’m really concerned about is that the music sounds right to me.

FRANK J. OTERI: Now when you hear other people playing your music, how does it make you feel when you’re sitting in the audience?

NATASHA SINHA: It makes me feel just really happy because I usually just close my eyes and just think about it. And sometimes I’m just surprised that I wrote that because I’m just looking at a piece of paper and just playing notes and sometimes I need my teacher to help me. I’m just playing it on the piano, but then when I really hear it with all the instruments, it sounds so good. And I really like it.

FRANK J. OTERI: Have you ever heard a performance of your music that you did not like?

NATASHA SINHA: I don’t think so because most of the times, they’re pretty good.

FRANK J. OTERI: So they do a good job with your music.

NATASHA SINHA: We usually get players who are pretty good and if there’s just one little thing that goes wrong, I don’t make a huge deal about it because we’re all human.


Natasha Sinha
Interview Excerpt #5

FRANK J. OTERI: In talking about both the flute/piano piece and about the cello/piano piece The Seasons you said that you wanted to convey something, some sort of a message. So is it program music? Do the notes mean something besides just the notes?

NATASHA SINHA: Well the notes for me mean what I feel about the music. Like in the cello piece The Four Seasons I tried to convey how the Summer went or how the Summer is for me. How it goes by so quickly. Many fun things happen. And the Fall, how all the leaves are falling. How it’s beautiful and how there’s some touch of magic in it. And then in the Winter, how it’s like sometimes really bad and good. And then in the Spring, how everything starts blooming and everything like life comes back again.

FRANK J. OTERI: I definitely got the sense of winter in the Winter movement. It was actually my favorite movement. It really felt cold. So, you definitely got that across! But, the strangest thing on your CD I thought was the violin suite. There’s one movement that I thought was very, very weird. There are cat calls and there’s banging on the piano lid, pitch bends on the violin… It’s out there!

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah. It was supposed to be like that.

FRANK J. OTERI: It was great. I loved it. What made you write something like that?

NATASHA SINHA: Well, I decided to write something about a person who wasn’t in the best position at his time. It was about a fiddler in the attic of this huge apartment. In the first scene, or the first song, he was happy; everything was going nicely. And then the second scene, the landlady comes to collect the money. So that’s when you hear the banging and asking for the money… And that’s when all the cats are around. And the third scene, she goes away and then the fourth song, he starts becoming forgetful. And then he actually starts playing wrong notes and I thought it was pretty interesting. I wanted to write something where there wasn’t only just one subject in it. There was more than one subject. It was like the violin was actually part of the story. Then the cats were in it. The landlady was in it. And so was the man…

FRANK J. OTERI: Now, in terms of story, is this your own story that you made up?

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah.

FRANK J. OTERI: Do you write stories also?

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah, I do. At school sometimes we get to improvise our own things.

FRANK J. OTERI: Do you think an audience can hear the story you are trying to tell through this music? I heard it and I had a different interpretation entirely. Music, of course, is abstract. I heard the catcalls. And it sounded to me like a cat was playing the piano. That’s what I thought you were trying to convey. All of a sudden cluster, cluster, cluster, cluster and then rrriaow, rrriaow… My cat has tried to play the piano a few times and that’s kind of what it sounds like.

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah, that’s what I tried to convey. Obviously, you know, a cat’s foot is about this big. And obviously you can press like two or three notes and then sometimes you don’t press just the white notes or just the black notes so they might go on the sharp or the flat. So I tried to do that.

FRANK J. OTERI: Have you heard the music of Henry Cowell at all?

NATASHA SINHA: I haven’t.

FRANK J. OTERI: He was a composer who starting writing music around the turn of the twentieth century. And about 1911, when he was still very young, he invented this thing called a tone cluster. You take your arm and play the keys of the piano all at once. You can do it all on the white keys and that’s one sound and you can do it all on the black keys that’s another sound. You can do it on all of them and that’s yet another sound. And Bartók, whom you mentioned was one composer you like, learned about Henry Cowell’s tone clusters and wrote a letter to Cowell asking his permission to use them!

NATASHA SINHA: That’s so silly.

FRANK J. OTERI: Well Cowell’s response was that Charles Ives also did this in his music independently, before Ives had ever heard Cowell’s music… We’ve gotta get you to hear some of this stuff! Have you heard John Cage‘s music at all?

NATASHA SINHA: No.

FRANK J. OTERI: There has been a lot of music in the last 100 years that’s taken this sort of notion of experimenting with scales, doing other things, and going into a whole other universe with it. Are you interested in exploring that sort of thing more? Or was this sort of an unusual thing for you?

NATASHA SINHA: Well, I wanted to write something sort of funny, a little bit different. And I decided to write a piece that was not just a regular piece like some of my other pieces are. I wanted to make it a little bit different. I wasn’t just writing the same thing. It would be a little bit more of an “up” thing to most of the other things.

FRANK J. OTERI: What did the audience think of this piece?

NATASHA SINHA: Oh, they thought it was funny and they liked it a lot.

FRANK J. OTERI: And the players?

NATASHA SINHA: Oh, the players. They thought it was good too because they thought it was funny, but it also wasn’t terribly hard for them to play. So, they thought it was good.


Natasha Sinha
Interview Excerpt #6

FRANK J. OTERI: Well now, so far you’ve written music for one instrument, just the piano, and then you’ve written music for two instruments, piano and something else. Have you thought about writing for larger combinations?

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah I have. I just recently made a piece called The Little Orchestra and that has three, actually four in it. It’s the piano, the violin, the viola and the cello. I’m still working on it right now. I’m making a piece called The Wild Swans and it has the same thing, it has the piano, the violin, the cello, and the viola, and then I’m going to add in some brass instruments.

FRANK J. OTERI: Wow.

NATASHA SINHA: The trumpet and then a little bit of percussion instruments.

FRANK J. OTERI: Neat. So you haven’t done anything yet that doesn’t have the piano in it. Everything has piano.

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah, so far.

FRANK J. OTERI: Is that because you’re a pianist?

NATASHA SINHA: Well I think, the piano has some special role in most of the pieces I have because I think that the piano always has some part in whatever I’m doing. Because it just sounds right. Eventually I might have something where it doesn’t go and I can pick maybe the harpsichord or something. But actually one time I did not use the piano. I actually used the harpsichord…

FRANK J. OTERI: What piece is that?

NATASHA SINHA: Right off the head, I don’t remember. I used it for a piece I thought was more like in the olden days.

FRANK J. OTERI: Now do you have a harpsichord at home?

NATASHA SINHA: No actually I have a keyboard though and it has a harpsichord on it. Like you just press the button…

FRANK J. OTERI: You have a piano at home though.

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah.

FRANK J. OTERI: So much of the stuff you talk about has a story. But you haven’t done anything for voices yet, for singers. Does that interest you?

NATASHA SINHA: Not at the moment, but I’ve been thinking about it because just recently, I saw the Phantom of the Opera and I thought that was really cool. But for right now, I’m not sure about that, but I’d like to do it someday.

FRANK J. OTERI: So you’d like to write an opera or a musical theater piece or something?

NATASHA SINHA: And eventually, I wanna create for maybe not a full orchestra, but a pretty good sized orchestra.

FRANK J. OTERI: You write mostly suites of linked movements, but every one of the movements is very short. Some of them are about like a minute and half, two minutes. Have you done anything that’s a longer stretch of continuous music?

NATASHA SINHA: You mean in like one movement?

FRANK J. OTERI: Yeah.

NATASHA SINHA: Not yet.

FRANK J. OTERI: Do you want to or do you feel that the short movements are better?

NATASHA SINHA: Well, I’ve considered that but actually I have longer movements now in The Wild Swans because there are lots of parts where you have to repeat stuff. And another thing is that in this new suite I have to be more detailed which means that I have to make it more lengthening.


Natasha Sinha
Interview Excerpt #7

FRANK J. OTERI: Let’s talk a little bit about your playing the piano. You’ve entered competitions…

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah.

FRANK J. OTERI: …and have done quite well in those competitions. How long have you been playing the piano?

NATASHA SINHA: Ever since I was four, four and a half.

FRANK J. OTERI: One of the things I thought was so interesting is that you don’t play a lot of standard repertoire. You play all this obscure stuff. There were some composers on your demo CD that I’ve never even heard of. You’re playing music by Alexander Goldenveyser and Karl Albert Loeschhorn… I don’t even know if I’m saying their names right! And Racov… Who is Racov?

NATASHA SINHA: He’s a Russian I think. My teacher’s Russian and he likes pieces that are Russian or near Russia. I would like to start playing “Heart and Soul.”

FRANK J. OTERI: You mean the popular song?

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah. I only know the melody. I don’t know. And then sometimes when I’m playing the piano, I just start doing a tango, but I don’t really know how to play it.

FRANK J. OTERI: So these obscure pieces were things that your teacher suggested for the most part?

NATASH
A SINHA:
Yeah.

FRANK J. OTERI: But you enjoyed playing them?

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah, I liked playing them because I thought the songs were good. I just didn’t really know the composers that well.

FRANK J. OTERI: Who is Shin Daw Lien?

NATASHA SINHA: Um, that’s the composer who did a frog song and I used that when I went to Washington DC because there were Chinese composers there and judges. So I decided to pick a Chinese song.

FRANK J. OTERI: Great. But you haven’t played a lot of the standard stuff, you know, like Beethoven

NATASHA SINHA: Oh actually yes. I’m playing a sonata and also I was just recently finished playing a Rachmaninoff piece a month ago. And it was very beautiful.

FRANK J. OTERI: D you feel like you want to keep going as a concert pianist and playing music?

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah, I think so. think it’ll always stay with me.

FRANK J. OTERI: How often do you practice a day?

JENNY UNDERCOFLER: Oh, that’s a mean question!

FRANK J. OTERI: It is a mean question. Sorry.

NATASHA SINHA: Well it varies, sometimes I have more time like on some nights I get in like two and a half hours or something. And then other nights, I can get half an hour or an hour in. And then usually on Sundays, before I go to my piano lesson, I go even more time like three hours.

FRANK J. OTERI: Wow.

NATASHA SINHA: Because I need that much practice because some of the pieces that I’m just starting are sort of difficult.

FRANK J. OTERI: Wow, it amazes me that you find the time to do all of this stuff. Now you study at New England Conservatory.

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah, I do theory there.

FRANK J. OTERI: Who are your teachers?

NATASHA SINHA: Alexa Vogelzang. And a few years ago I had Mr. Peisch. And he taught me musicianship, which was the very beginning. And this year in theory, I was learning about the changes in a chord and how it inverts to a different chord and how to open a chord and close a chord and how to do that.


Natasha Sinha
Interview Excerpt #8

FRANK J. OTERI: What do you feel is the most you’ve gotten from your teachers?

NATASHA SINHA: In theory?

FRANK J. OTERI: In anything.

NATASHA SINHA: Well I’ve a learned respect for liking that thing. I’ve started to like music more. I started to appreciate all the people’s work that they’ve done. I’ve appreciated my teachers more because the way they pick out from the many good composers the best ones.

FRANK J. OTERI: Would you be interested in teaching one day?

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah, I think so.

FRANK J. OTERI: Do you think it’s difficult to teach?

NATASHA SINHA: I don’t think it’s very difficult unless you don’t know how to do it.

FRANK J. OTERI: One of the most amazing things I read about in your background is your commitment to the community and you mentioned this in the very beginning about wanting to help people. In 1999, you started this program called “Share the Music” at Milton Hospital.

NATASHA SINHA: When my grandma and grandpa used to go out there once in awhile to help out, I realized that some people are really sick and that there was this new thing that was saying that music can help people get better. Or at least possibly come out of the hospital for awhile ‘cuz sometimes you can’t really move much. And I decided that since music is so relaxing and calming, it could help. I decided to gather a few kids from different schools, actually I used Milton Academy, and we decided to go there on one afternoon and play music. And there were a bunch of people, some in wheelchairs, some with canes and before we started, we said that we hoped that they’ll feel better. And we played as best as we could. And after we did that, we asked if anyone felt better and many of them did. They said it was very relaxing and it was actually the first time they had heard music in a long time.

FRANK J. OTERI: Wow, now you organized this whole thing?

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah.

FRANK J. OTERI: What did you have to do to get people involved with it?

NATASHA SINHA: I made posters and I gave them to the Milton School and I decided that since we were sort of friends with them since I went there for a year. We talked to the music director and said, “Can you please post these around the music area?” or wherever there were posters. So we got a few kids who were willing to do this. And we thought it was very nice of them and at the end we gave them a nice treat.

FRANK J. OTERI: That was a couple of years ago. Are you still involved with that?

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah, I am. Once in awhile I do it but, it’s sort of a little bit difficult now since I have more things going on. But sometimes we do.


Natasha Sinha
Interview Excerpt #9

FRANK J. OTERI: Now tell me a bit about, you also in addition to all the music stuff you do competitive figure skating.

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah, I used to.

FRANK J. OTERI: You don’t any more?

NATASHA SINHA: Actually no, I don’t because it started taking up too much time. And if I did that, I wouldn’t be able to do any of this. Like I wouldn’t be able to do much piano ‘cuz it was either giving up ice skating or giving up piano and I decided to give up ice skating because I could have gotten injured since I was getting near the higher levels where you have to do more turns in the air and stuff. So I decided that. I mean I c
an always come back to it. But I just didn’t wanna like grab onto that because also I think that music is very important.

FRANK J. OTERI: Now with the figure skating, you got pretty high. You were number four in a U.S. Regional in 2000.

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah.

FRANK J. OTERI: You placed first in the Providence Open Competition in 1997. When did you start skating?

NATASHA SINHA: I actually started skating when I was about four and a half. And I did that until I was eight and a half I think.

FRANK J. OTERI: Wow.

NATASHA SINHA: So that was the last.

FRANK J. OTERI: And you said that you also like tennis and you want to get into softball.

NATASHA SINHA: Yes sort of. I wanted to do softball, but actually I didn’t get a chance to get into softball. I like tennis a lot. Tennis I always like because it’s always on television and I think tennis is a very nice game because you don’t have to be running every second. But you have to use your muscles and be able to predict when something comes, where the ball will be coming and have to throw it back in time.

FRANK J. OTERI: Now do you feel there’s any connection between sports and music?

NATASHA SINHA: Actually I do because usually when I did skating, there would always be music playing. And for some reason, whenever I’m doing anything, I just start singing. I don’t know why. I just start humming tunes in my head because I have them and I think sometimes some, some songs just start coming out and I really enjoy it.

FRANK J. OTERI: Well it’s interesting that you said that you gave up skating because you didn’t want to be injured and hurt your piano playing and you couldn’t give the time to practicing skating and also the time to practicing piano. We always talk about how music is an art and an intellectual thing that involves the mind and engages the soul, but we often forget that making music involves the body. Playing the piano is a physical act of endurance a lot of the time. Especially if you’re entering competitions. That’s like a sports competition in some ways, no?

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah.

FRANK J. OTERI: Do you feel when you’ve played in piano competitions that you feel physically stressed by it…

NATASHA SINHA: Actually usually I don’t because I’m usually not stressed and the reason for that is because I know that I’ve practiced a lot and that I wouldn’t be going to the competition if I didn’t know it. And that I don’t try to be stressed because if I do, I feel all worried and usually I’m not worried because even if I don’t do well, at least I tried.

FRANK J. OTERI: In terms of the skating competitions, did you ever feel stressed with those?

NATASHA SINHA: Not usually, unless I had a cold. Like the last time I ever skated, I was really sick and I didn’t feel well and I wasn’t sure if I was gonna have to stop in the middle of my program. But that was actually basically the only time ‘cuz I wasn’t feeling well. That morning I had to take this stuff that made me really drowsy.

FRANK J. OTERI: You got into music because your mother had a musical background and you had music in the house all the time. How did you get into the skating?

NATASHA SINHA: Well I had always watched it on television and I personally thought that was very interesting ‘cuz you’re skating on ice. It’s almost like a bike basically except you’re having something that is less friction and you’re basically gliding and you’re jumping up into the air and you don’t just come down with a thud and stop. You come down and you start, you start sliding again and I just thought it was very interesting and I wanted to start skating.

FRANK J. OTERI: In the very beginning of our talk, we spoke about music audiences in this country and people not always appreciating classical music, but there’s an inclination for music that isn’t developed. Sports definitely does not have that problem! Sports has the biggest audience in the world.

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah, see what I think the thing is, is that well many people get excited for games because you don’t really know what’s gonna happen. But in classical music, for some reason people think that it’ll always be the same and that nothing will really change. And they always have the best players like on the team that they’re on. No one really says “Oh you guys, let’s go and hear this kind of music.” It always has to be like a band group that’s like the newest or something.

FRANK J. OTERI: Do you feel there’s something we should do to add more of an element of surprise to music to make it more exciting?

NATASHA SINHA: Well I think that we should somehow persuade people to start liking other kinds of music ‘cuz many people are just stuck in one kind of music ‘cuz that’s all they really care about. But if we could just explain to them how beautiful all kind of music is, even if it’s not preferably your favorite music, you can always like some kind of music. Because at first you can explain to people that there was only classical music. Everything was built off of the caveman days and how it came up from there. Like you would say “Who want to listen to rocks and bones?” And they’ll say, that’s basically saying who would want to listen to pop music, because that developed a whole thing about music and beauty.


Natasha Sinha
Interview Excerpt #10

FRANK J. OTERI: I was reading about you on the Lego website. How did you get into Lego?

NATASHA SINHA: I’ve always wanted to create things and I’ve been very interested in making things move on their own so you don’t have to do it. And so I decided to use something called an RCX. It’s sort of like a mini-computer. And it downloads things that you type on the computer. And what that does it transforms it into like something the robot can read as ones and zeros. And that allows the robot to do whatever it’s told to do. And you can easily have many programs on there. Now, coming back to Share the Music, suppose you wanted to have something be played, but you couldn’t go over and press the buttons. You could have a robot crawl over or be programmed so that for a few seconds it goes one way and then it turns around. And then it could have an arm extending and it would press exactly at that one place. And it would know that it was playing and then the person could make it program another program so that it would come back and come right next to them so they could do something else with it.

FRANK J. OTERI: The thing that’s interesting about Lego is it’s all these small building blocks that you build larger structures with.
Do you feel there’s a connection between Lego and music?

NATASHA SINHA: Actually I do because I’ve noticed more and more people have started to use crickets which are these little chips and that have batteries in them and they make clicks. And those clicks people have been researching about and I know there’s this one man at MIT. He’s using those crickets to make a vest that has music all over it made out of Legos. So you would like press something and it starts singing a tune.

FRANK J. OTERI: I went over to MIT to meet with Tod Machover for an issue of NewMusicBox and he showed me this denim jacket. It has little patches and you can play scales on it… It’s wacky stuff. Are you interested in creating music like this with machines…?

NATASHA SINHA: Yes, but right now I’m just focusing on inventing the things. And then later when I need music and obviously I love music, but right now I haven’t been doing that yet. So right now I’m just building things. But I would love to obviously put music in.

FRANK J. OTERI: But there’s also a connection between music and Lego on another level. I’m thinking about the first movement of your oboe and piano piece, Rustic Suite, which has these little motives that go here and there. In a sense, motives are the musical equivalent of Lego building blocks. You make larger structures from tiny pieces. With music if you listen to it or look at it on the printed page you can see all these little units that are the building blocks that created this larger thing.

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah.

FRANK J. OTERI: So do you feel like working with Lego has influenced you as a composer?

NATASHA SINHA: I actually think so because as you said, I think that the notes are like the little pieces of Lego. And sometimes I just like to freely write music. I don’t actually write it down. I just start playing. And sometimes I just think of something I’ve made. Like one time I wrote a little mechanical music. And it went ta-ta-ta-ta…As though something was going like this. And that obviously started the melody for this little thing I started to write. And from there, as you said, those are the building blocks and then I made it into a little bit bigger piece and made it a little bigger until finally I got it.


Natasha Sinha
Interview Excerpt #11

FRANK J. OTERI: Do you have hobbies? Are there things you do just for fun?

NATASHA SINHA: Well I personally think that all things I do are basically what I like to do. It’s not like I’m being pushed to do anything. I like music, I like theory … All the things that I’m doing I like. I’m not being pushed to do anything. Like if I didn’t like piano, I would probably pick another instrument that I like, maybe the violin. ‘Cuz when I was very young I started the violin, but I never used the cloth and that’s very important and it was always pressing against me. So I decided to do the piano. But if I didn’t like the piano, I would have gone back to the violin or picked something else.

FRANK J. OTERI: In the interview you did with the folks at Lego, you said that you enjoyed movies.

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah.

FRANK J. OTERI: How do you find the time? How many movies do you see?

NATASHA SINHA: Once in awhile we go to a movie, like on Mother’s Day. And then once in awhile I go. I think a few months ago, I went to see Spy Kids. And that was fun. It was just on some random weekend. It’s just once in awhile I don’t do it at…

FRANK J. OTERI: You said you like spicy food.

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah, ‘cuz my dad’s Indian and ever since I grew up I always ate Indian food.

FRANK J. OTERI: Do you like vindaloo?

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah!

FRANK J. OTERI: I do too…


Natasha Sinha
Interview Excerpt #12

FRANK J. OTERI: You’ve won two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards; you’re the youngest composer to win this thing two years in a row. You’ve placed very successfully in piano competitions, in skating competitions. Lego found out about you and did a feature about you on their website. And there’ve been articles about you in newspapers. In some ways, you’re more successful as a composer than many composers in this country who’ve been working on music for years and years and years. So, as a successful composer, what advice do you have for all the other composers out there who are trying to get people to pay attention to what they do.

NATASHA SINHA: Well, personally I think that you shouldn’t just have one thing to work on. You should have a few things as sort of a backup. You can just try your best. And even if something’s not going quite well, you should always keep your spirits up. Because that, that’s what I always did. And I was so surprised this year when I won again because I felt really happy. And sometimes, even if you don’t get all the attention, at least you’re getting some attention.

FRANK J. OTERI: Now in terms of getting your music out there, you made a CD of your music. Can people buy that CD?

NATASHA SINHA: We would have to edit more things onto it. This is just something to put all of my things together, ‘cuz that’s all over the place. And I decided to just put everything on one CD or actually 2 CDs, so I thought that would be easier.

FRANK J. OTERI: And in terms of your scores, if somebody wants to get a score of your music…

NATASHA SINHA: Oh, I’d be happy to give them one.

FRANK J. OTERI: To get performances, do you send scores of your music out to different people.

NATASHA SINHA: I do sometimes, but not as a major thing.

FRANK J. OTERI: Do you see the Internet as a way to get your music out there? And the word about what you do.

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah I could. Actually awhile
I had started doing something called “Natasha’s Collage” and I haven’t put it up on the Internet yet. But I’m gonna put some of my songs on there. And then I’m gonna have like click on here, listen to this piece. And it will just be for free. But it’ll be something I’ll enjoy because other people could see my music. They won’t have to come over or get a CD.

FRANK J. OTERI: In terms of it being for free. You know there’s a lot of talk right now, we’re at a real crossroads with the Internet and music and this whole Napster thing. I don’t know…

NATASHA SINHA: Yeah, I know about it. Like they’re using songs without getting permission from the other people if they can’t be paid for it.

FRANK J. OTERI: As a composer, how can you be financially rewarded for what you’re doing if you’re giving it away for free?

NATASHA SINHA: Well I don’t really compose just to get money. I compose for the fun of it. I like to do it. Unless I like am totally serious with it, I would obviously ask for money. But for right now, I don’t need the money.

“Song of the Brook” from My Rainbow (1999)
Suite for Flute and Piano
Rustic Suite (1999)
for Oboe and Piano, Second Movement
“Winter” from Seasons of the Year
for Cello and Piano (2001)


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click for larger version


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RealAudio 
My Rainbow
RealAudio 
2nd Movement
RealAudio 
Winter
Spring
Summer
Fall

 

Violin Suite (2000)Old Russian Fairy Tale
(1999) for Solo Piano
RealAudio 
1st Movement
2nd Movement
3rd Movement
4th Movement
RealAudio 
Old Russian Fairy Tale

When did first you know that you would be a composer and what is the earliest work that you still acknowledge?

Lori DobbinsLori Dobbins
“…when I was an undergraduate studying music at San Jose State University…I realized that I was keenly interested in the structure and language(s) of music…and needed to develop a deeper understanding of composition, and of music in general…”
Andrew ImbrieAndrew Imbrie
“…I became a Wagner fan. I got to be very interested in the ‘Ring’. That was my ‘Star Wars’. I made a collection of all the leitmotifs the way other kids made stamp collections. And so I wanted to write operas…”
Barbara KolbBarbara Kolb
“…I recall sitting at the piano in my grandmother’s house improvising scenarios I would create in my mind…e.g.: galloping horses, stalking scenes, rippling water – anything that enters the minds of 5 year olds…”
Steve MackeySteve Mackey
“…The clincher was when, upon hearing a low marimba roll in a George Crumb piece, I asked the teacher how the composer knew that it was going to sound so cool. His reply was, “He is a composer, it’s his job to know.” I wanted that job!…”
Olly WilsonOlly Wilson
“…As a child, I started studying the piano. As part of that, I’m sure I was already picking tunes out on the piano…”

Age Old Questions?

Frank J. Oteri, Editor and Publisher
Frank J. Oteri
Photo by Melissa Richard

John Blacking, an ethnomusicologist who was one of the great musical thinkers of the 20th century, provoked the musical establishment with his book-long entreaties How Musical is Man and A Common Sense View of All Music, in which he posited that music is a fundamentally human phenomenon, everyone is capable of making music, and finally that all the world’s music belongs to every one. His earliest book-length study, however, was his pioneering study, Venda Children’s Songs, in which he proved that the musical structures and aesthetics of the music of the Venda people of South Africa were already fully formed in the music being created by their children.

Which begs some questions… How early can musical ability develop? How can musical ability transform into musical creativity and compositional talent? How old do you have to be before you can write a great piece of music?

One of the over-told stories of music history is how Mozart was writing symphonies at the age of eight. But over 200 years and an ocean separate us from the cultural milieu in which Mozart lived. Are children like Mozart walking amongst us today in New York City? In Ann Arbor? In Mobile, Alabama?

I spent a fascinating afternoon with Boston-area composer Natasha Sinha who was in New York to receive an ASCAP Morton Gould Award for the second year in a row. Natasha writes short aphoristic chamber music inspired by the landscape and the change of seasons. Natasha is 10 years old. Her views about music and the world around us are a refreshing change of pace.

To counterbalance our lengthy conversation, D.C. Culbertson provides us a HyperHistory ferreting out the connections between the age of America’s composers and the music they are writing. She looked at composers ranging from other ASCAP and BMI Young Composer Award winners to Leo Ornstein, America’s oldest living composer who is now 108! We asked Andrew Imbrie, Steven Mackey, Barbara Kolb, Olly Wilson and Lori Dobbins to remember the first time they thought of themselves as composers and to describe the earliest piece of their music that they still acknowledge. And we ask you to think about the impact that early recognition has on composers and other musicians in our society.

Our News and Views section this month reflects the vast generational spread of composers in this country. In addition to our reports on the winners of the 2001 BMI Young Composer Awards, Downbeat’s awards for the best collegiate jazz musicians, and the introduction of a jazz studies program at the Juilliard School, which we resoundingly applaud, we also have news about five new Meet The Composer residencies, a 10 year plan of San Francisco Symphony commissions for John Adams, and the Jazz Journalists Association Awards which honored 63-year-old composer Andrew Hill and posthumously honored the great John Lewis who died earlier this year soon after putting out one of the greatest albums of his career and just weeks shy of his 81st birthday. The 41 new CD recordings that have come our way this month also attest that interesting music is being made by people of all ages in this country, from 17-year-old jazz piano prodigy Aaron Parks to some exciting unearthed early compositions by Pauline Oliveros who is now over 70 years young!

Finally, there are some important staff changes at NewMusicBox. With this month’s issue, we introduce Molly Sheridan as our new Associate Editor and Amanda MacBlane as our new Production Coordinator. Molly previously served as a Web master for the American Symphony Orchestra League and an Associate Editor for their fantastic Symphony Magazine. Mandy comes from the equally exciting Chamber Music Magazine. Jenny Undercofler, my previous partner-in-crime has gone on to pursue her piano career full time and is already the house pianist for the Spoleto Festival in Italy. She will be greatly missed, but we guarantee that NewMusicBox will continue to grow!

Nothing to Fear?

SoundTracks

I don’t have a lot of fears. I walk alone at night feeling foolishly invincible. On a recent tour to Venezuela, I spent 14 hours on a bus, teetering at the edge of the Andes with only a Dramamine and a bus driver named Jèsus to ease any queasiness. I even like spiders thanks to Mr. E.B. White. However, categorization terrifies me. In our efficiency-preoccupied society, we’re obsessed with neatly packaging products, people and ideas. If things don’t fit, we simply create a new category.

One of our classic groupings is age. Every marketing scheme is based on some age demographic. We place age limits on drinking, driving, voting, retiring and, thanks to Tipper Gore and new FCC chairman Michael K. Powell who is on a censoring rampage, we even have to be a certain age to listen to some kinds of music! When looking at the influence that age has on a composer there are several things to keep in mind so that we don’t get lazy and fall into the ruthless trap of overgeneralization; advice that should also be observed when reading Ayn Rand novels.

First, there is always an exception to a category – in this case, composers who are out of their time. Charles Ives (b. 1874) was the perennial “man out of his time.” And dating his music is even further complicated by the fact that he frequently rewrote and reworked pieces throughout his compositional career, as is the case for the miniatures collected on When the Moon. Speaking of miniatures, don’t panic featuring pianist Guy Livingston comprises sixty pieces that are roughly sixty seconds long written by composers from eighteen different countries! The sample here is from American composer Walter Sanchez.

Donald Ashwander (b.1929), a key player in the ragtime revival of the 1950s, is outside of his time in a completely opposite way from Ives, composing music such as 1988’s Perdido Bay Moon Rag, about seventy-five years after the height of ragtime. Singer Philip Chaffin also pays a tribute to the music of yesteryear on Where Do I Go From You? crooning Warren and Gordon’s classic tune At Last, made popular by the Glenn Miller Orchestra about sixty years ago.

Age can be a problematic criterion for categorization when dealing with sources of inspiration because oftentimes the inspiration for a piece comes from outside a composer’s immediate experience and sometimes from outside his/her lifetime all together, nullifying any links to his or her contemporaries. Many composers find inspiration coming from memories of their youth. Michael Lowenstern’s aptly titled 1985, samples a tape made for Lowenstern (b. 1967) by two of his high school buddies. Deriving her inspiration for It Won’t Be the Same River, played by the Mallarmè Chamber Players, from a group of high school students she worked with in Raleigh, North Carolina, Penka Kouneva attempts to address the four topics that the students considered most relevant to their lives: love, fear, sexuality and confusion.

Meyer Kupferman (b. 1926), who asked in the 1970s “Why does music have to be consistent?” shows how inspiration can come from both the past and the present in his two recordings that are available this month. The inspiration for O North Star finds its source in the depth of the night sky and the sea images of Melville’s novels. Flight Alone, written when he was 69 years old, is based on childhood memories of the Holocaust and its effects on his parents.

The Heavenly Feast by Martin Amlin (b. 1953) also uses the Holocaust as a point of departure but he was not even born until the war had been over for eight years. He instead uses the text of a poem about Simone Weil who chose to starve herself to death as an affirmation of her anti-war sentiments and empathy for the war’s victims.

Ezra Laderman (b. 1924), whose Fantasy for Cello was composed in 1998, claims that the most formative years of his career as a composer were the 1930s when he was just in his early teens! He actually quotes a composition from a wind quintet he wrote in high school in his 1985 piece, Pentimento. Even more detached from the theme of his music, Jorge Martìn, whose song cycle The Glass Hammer explores life in an abusive Southern family, claims no personal connection to the text except that it moved him when he heard it read by the poet, Andrew Hudgins. German born Broadway legend Kurt Weill (1900-50) also explores a topic that is foreign to him in the musical adaptation of Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country called Lost in the Stars about a family dealing with the racial politics of South Africa.

Other artists attempt to defy the categorization of their music by taking the emphasis off of the finished object and placing it upon the process, such as Marilyn Crispell (b. 1947)’s slow free form tracks on Amaryllis, which sound composed although not one note was planned.

Now that you are somewhat armed against the innate flaws of demographic categorization, we can gingerly move onto examining the similarities that do arise within age brackets. Baby steps…baby steps. We don’t want any chronological bigots, now!

Obviously, the philosophies that arise from life changing events such as war or social upheaval as well as the theoretical trends emerging among composers and the instruments available will bond members of a generation together ideologically and, to a certain extent, stylistically. Therefore, we should expect to see members of certain age groups pursuing similar musical goals or at least using similar tools. This assumption can be partially supported by composers featured this month. For example, composers who are currently writing for electro-acoustic instruments, electronics or computers appear to be clustered in the forty to sixty age group.

Ingram Marshall (b.1942) stirs up (à la Bob Marley) Bach’s Et in Spiritum Sancto from the B-minor Mass using a live digital delay process in Holy Ghosts. (Sorry. I just wanted to put Bach and Bob Marley in the same sentence.) Furthermore, electronic music veteran Paul Lansky (b. 1944) continues to create music using incomprehensible speech patterns in the new and improved Idle Chatter Junior.

Lost Objects, a new collaborative work by Bang On A Can founders Michael Gordon (b. 1958), David Lang (b. 1957) and Julia Wolfe (b. 1958), fuses a traditional oratorio form with the instruments of a rock band and then top it all off with remixes by DJ Spooky. This oratorio explores the experience of losing and finding objects and attempts to find the lost sound of early music by using a Baroque orchestra and choir, fusing the ultramodern with the past. Like Lost Objects, Ted Nash’s Sidewalk Meeting, examines an everyday occurrence: the chance meeting in the street. Combining New Orleans and klezmer influences, Nash (b. 1959) celebrates diversity and recalls a “chance encounter” he had with accordionist Bill Schimmel, who plays with him on this recording. Ruth Crawford (1901-53), whose 9 Piano Preludes written in her own “dissonant counterpoint,” supports the goal of Lost Objects in her 1941 monogra
ph The Music of American Folk Song, saying “Each individual will have his own preferences in respect to what should be lost, modified, or preserved.” In this case, the music has been at once lost and then reclaimed through modification and modernization.

Representing the over 60 group in the realm of computer music (although she was about 35 when this piece was written), is Bog Music by pioneer Pauline Oliveros (b. 1932) who uses a Buchla Series 100 Box to reflect the sounds of the pond outside her 1967 studio at the Mills Tape Music Center in San Francisco.

James Chaudoir (b. 1946) often couples a lyric and rhythmic style with MIDI and analog techniques, although his new CD of chamber works is “unplugged.” Finally, Stephen Perillo uses a variety of synthesizers in combination with expansive orchestration for his Magnificat for a New Millennium. A hodgepodge of musical genres from traditional chant to marching band, spirituals and the jazz combo, the Magnificat also represents par excellence the mixing of styles characteristic of younger composers.

Ohio-native Chris Washburne strikes a balance between the danceable music of Latin America and straight jazz in his album dedicated to the work of Tito Puente featuring arrangements of Puente’s work and original pieces composed in Puente’s spirit such as Titorama. ¡Si quiere bailar, escuche este album! Exploring his Venezuelan heritage through Latin dance rhythms and counterpoint, Efraìn Amaya infuses traditional forms with South American energy in his String Quartet No. 1. Lucius Weathersby (b. 1968)’s Spiritual Fantasy presents organ music with strong classical, sacred, blues and gospel influences as well as a piece by Fela Sowande, the “father of Nigerian Art Music”.

Squeezing some new timbres out of a guitar, bassoon and acoustic bass combination on his album Transience, Joel Harrison honors Jimi Hendrix, saxophonist Jim Pepper who incorporated Native American themes and jazz into his innovative sound and his late teacher Dick Barnes. A new solo album by another guitarist, Ralph Towner (b. 1940), shows a great variety of influences from rock and blues to jazz and classical. Also charting new waters in the realm of writing for the solo instrument, Mat Maneri combines jazz phrasing, a chamber music texture, Baroque, world music and microtonal influences on Trinity. John Harbison (b. 1938) presents a variety of pieces that are strongly influenced by jazz and Baroque music in the new disc of his early works, although his 1978 Piano Concerto finds itself operating within a more romantic language.

Towner and Harbison prove that although stylish among younger composers, this melding of different styles together within one piece is obviously not exclusive to those born after 1950. Many composers of the older generations have found sanctity in the combination of various genres. For example, Lukas Foss (b. 1922) mixes pitched melodies with free melodies, where the singers choose their own notes, and two different texts in his De Profundis, on a disc of his vocal works.

And then there is the issue of wunderkinder, children who begin composing at a very young age. They tend to be pianists and have a penchant for piano music…

Composing by the age of ten, Allen Shawn (b. 1948) uses traditional instrumentation and form to render a colossal work for orchestra that is bold and lyric. Mark Zuckerman (b. 1948)’s On the Edge for solo piano is steeped in rhythmic intensity and manipulations developed using serial theory. His first foray into composition was at age 11. Next, we come to jazz pianist and composer Aaron Parks, the “Wizard”who has produced his third CD at the ripe young age of 17. Another 17-year old, Lukas Previn, son of André Previn, wrote the track “Bye, Bye Sky”, on André’s new disc with David Finck, Live at the Jazz Standard.

Then there are some composers who begin to become more prolific as they become older. The older Previn (b. 1930) claims that he has composed more since 1992 than he had in the twenty years before hand, such as his Diversions for orchestra and a great deal of vocal music. Perhaps he was too busy with his job as a world famous pianist and conductor…

Included on an anthology of American songs sung by Carole Bogard, John Duke (b. 1899) produced over one-third of his art songs after his “retirement” from composing in 1967! The second symphony by Duke’s contemporary Walter Piston (b. 1894-1976) shares a lucid and concise formality with the songs of Duke.

Younger composers Christopher Rouse (b. 1949) and Mark Ettinger (b. 1963) attempt to deal with more nebulous thematic concepts such as the manifestation of dreams into reality and the capturing of the artistic spirit as attempted in Rouse’s Concert de Gaudi; and the flitting moments when reality and dreams interact addressed in Ettinger’s réve no. 31

There are, of course, some themes that are ageless, like making fun of the people in Washington! And, oh, has this theme been exploited recently thanks to Dubya. Ethel Merman contributes by singing Washington Square Dance by Irving Berlin (b. 1888-1989) on the original Broadway recording of Call Me Madam, along with other delightful tunes.

The newest album entitled Foreststorn from drummer and groove guru Chico Hamilton (b. 1921) features many talented guest artists such as the Spin Doctors’ Eric Schenkman on Guitar Willie and celebrates the simple community of playing. Chico reminds us to keep everything in perspective saying, “You know, it takes all kinds of grooves to make a groove.” With that, I wish you happy listening…

Age: Does It Matter?

D.C. Culbertson
D.C. Culbertson over the years
Final photo by Mark Longaker, others unknown

By D.C. Culbertson
© 2001 NewMusicBox

“Act your age!”
“Age is nothing but a number.”
“With age comes wisdom.”
“He looks good for his age.”

People talk a lot about age. They speak of golden years, midlife crises, middle-age spread, callow youth, being young at heart, and nurturing the inner child. They debate the issue of physical vs. emotional vs. psychological age, speaking of “youthful” people in their 70s and “old” people in their 20s. A doctor writes a book on how to determine one’s “Real Age” based on one’s physical condition and lifestyle. And on and on… But is the issue of chronological age important when speaking about composers? Does a composer’s age influence the type of music he/she writes? At what point is one no longer considered a “young” composer, and can a composer who is chronologically “old” write in a young way?

For example, some believe that 40 is a pivotal age when a composer comes into his/her own stylistically, pointing out that Philip Glass and Steve Reich wrote their most significant works (Glass’ Einstein on the Beach and Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians) shortly before their 40th birthdays. But others are quick to point out that fellow minimalist Terry Riley wrote his most significant work, In C, before he even turned 30. Others point out composers like Pauline Oliveros, who is nearly 70 but still exploring new musical avenues, and 92-year-old Elliott Carter, who recently completed his first opera and is believed to be composing some of his best work at present.

Going further with this idea, can any generalization be made about composers from the same age group? If there is, how does their music compare or contrast with composers of another generation? Or is every composer so different that no real generalization of any kind can be made, regardless of age?

When exploring such a concept, there are a lot of different elements that need to be considered. Take musical form, for instance. Is opera popular among one age group and virtually ignored in another? Does one age group favor traditional forms like sonata-allegro or theme and variations, while another almost entirely disregards them? We hear from time to time about the impending demise of the traditional orchestra or the difficulty in getting new works for orchestra performed. Does this correspond with an increasing drop in the number of orchestral works composers have been producing over the past 50 years or is there no apparent basis in fact for it?

Is there a predominant musical style among any particular age group? For instance, is serialism more common among composers who were active during the height of the Darmstadt school–or later, or earlier? During minimalism’s heyday, the names of Philip Glass, John Adams and Steve Reich were tossed around a lot, but were most of their contemporaries also using it? And what about aleatoric music or neo-romanticism?

What kind of musical influence is evident? While one generation draws heavily on European classical traditions exemplified by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, does another prefer to look back to an earlier time and draw on medieval and Renaissance traditions? What about music from non-Western cultures, particularly if it reflects the composer’s ethnic heritage? Or American folk music? Or jazz, or rock?

Do current events, cultural or social issues show up in any particular generation’s music? Can one see the effects of events such as the Korean War, the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic or the civil rights movements mostly in the age group who lived through them, or in later generations? What about influences from the composer’s own world–poetry they’ve read, movies or paintings they’ve seen, or even dreams they’ve had?

And what is the music scored for? Does one generation favor traditional ensembles such as the string quartet and piano trio? If they do use traditional instruments, are they used in non-traditional ways, whether it be bowing the interior strings of a piano, extended vocal technique, or playing only the head joint of a clarinet? Do others concentrate on electronic and computer music? Who primarily uses instruments not normally associated with “serious” or “classical” music, such as the banjo or toy piano? What about the use of ethnic instruments or ensembles such as the gamelan? How many composers choose to disregard any tradition and use instruments of their own invention, either exclusively or in combination with traditional instruments? And which go even further and make extensive use of things not normally considered instruments at all, such as plants, turntables and auto parts?

Armed with a copious list of American composers, I explored these factors and more among the age groups under under 40, 40-60, 60-80 and over 80, to see if any generalizations could be made along these lines. (Just for the record, I decided to limit my research to living American composers who write music that can be labeled “serious” or “contemporary.”) I read books, checked numerous websites, watched videos, combed through LP and CD liner notes, and sent numerous e-mails. What follows are a series of purely unscientific–but, hopefully, well researched–findings.

 

It can be a tricky matter to track down young composers, because most are not widely recorded or performed. But if the recent spate of awards given out by ASCAP and BMI are any indication, there are an enormous amount of composers under 30 writing an equally enormous amount of music. In addition to the 19 main winners of ASCAP’s Morton Gould Young Composer Awards this year, four others received honorable mentions, and seven special ASCAP Foundation Awards intended for composers under 18 where given, as well as five Honorable Mentions. Nine others were honored at the 48th BMI Student Composer Awards last June. Take into consideration all the schools and conservatories in the U.S. that offer degrees or private study in composition, not to mention young composers who are writing on their own, and the logical conclusion is that these winners must represent only the tip of the iceberg, numerically.

Despite their youth, some of these composers already appear to be well on their way to having distinguished careers. For example, 15-year-old Julia Scott Carey, who has been composing since age 5, received her first commission (from the Wellesley Symphony Orchestra) at 11, and over a dozen orchestras have performed her works to date, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

However, although it may be fairly easy to get an idea about how many young composers are out there, it’s anything but easy to make generalizations about the forms they prefer or the styles they write in. There are exceptions, such as Carey, who speaking by phone from her home in Massachusetts, describes her style as “lyrical” and “tonal–with a lower-case T.”

Some composers who are getting closer to 40 have established a trademark sound such as neo-romantics Lowell Liebermann and Daron Hagen, both of whom turn 40 later this year, neo-modernists Augusta Read Thomas (b. 1964) and Anthony Cornicello (b. 1964), or post-minimalist Michael Torke (b. 1961), whose distinct style involves frenetic rhythmic patterns, and whose pieces are often based on his musical interpretation of colors. But far more often the writing of composers under 40 shows a wide mix of styles and influences, sometimes from piece to piece and sometimes even within the piece. For example, the three movements of Voices, a clarinet concerto by Derek Bermel (b. 1967), are based, successively, on speech sounds, an Irish folk song, and Jamaican rap.

The instrumentation of these young composers’ pieces is often as eclectic and varied as their musical style. For example, the compositions of Annie Gosfield (b. 1960) include works for detuned piano, the ensemble Newband (which is primarily made up of instruments built by Harry Partch), and a work for solo piano and baseballs created for the 100th anniversary of the unification of New York’s boroughs called “Brooklyn, October 5, 1941,” after game 4 of the 1941 World Series between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees.

It seemed, in this regard, that it might be a good idea to ask one of these composers, particularly a well-connected one, why they think so much variance among this generation. One likely candidate was Adam Silverman, 27, a Yale graduate and co-founder of the New York-based Minimum Security Composers Collective, which has presented works by over 20 composers in three years and who says, when asked how many composers he knows personally, “I can’t even imagine…I could rattle off 50 names easily.”

Silverman believes that one reason composers of his generation lack any kind of common language is because they’ve grown up with easy access to many different types of music through media like recordings, radio and Internet sources like Napster and mp3.com. (His influences, for example, include Ligeti, Stravinsky, Schubert, the Beatles and Torke.) They’re also the first generation to have grown up with easy access to computers, which they can use as a tool for composing, either through software manuscript programs like Finale or through music editors and sequencers. Another reason may be “possibly a negative reaction to the example set for us by the oldest living generation, who harshly divided modern classical music into uptown and downtown camps, West Coast, and East Coast, American and European… In the last 35 years, however, there has been a slow rebuilding of musical openness, starting with that of the minimalists. Today, with no chips on our shoulders, young composers stand on their legacy; not having strongly experienced this musical chauvinism from our musical peers, we are free to concentrate on the important task of developing our own styles and personal modes of expression form whatever sources we see fit.”

Many of these young composers also differ from their older colleagues in a way that reflects a pre-20th century tradition: actively pursuing careers in performing as well as composing. Bermel, for example, was the soloist when the American Composers Orchestra premiered Voices. Gosfield, in addition to frequently collaborating with artists such as John Zorn, also directs her own ensemble. And New York-based Dave Douglas plays trumpet in no less than six ensembles, from a jazz quartet to Sanctuary, which he describes as an “electric octet.”

However, most of the music of the under 40 crowd does not seem to draw on political or social issues. Two exceptions to this are jazz composer Don Byron (b. 1962), whose outspoken political views inform virtually every composition he writes, and Robert Maggio (b. 1964), who said in his notes to the CRI disc Gay American Composers, “I write music that matters to me–music that explores my internal emotional life and the relationships between individuals. As with all important facets of my identity, my homosexuality has an influence on my music, at times directly affecting the pieces I write.”

 

Composers born during the 1940s and ’50s came of age in an era where the barriers between “serious” and “popular” music, as well as jazz and avant-garde music, started to break down drastically and there was a noticeable increase in the use of experimental techniques. Not every composer born during this period chose to follow these trends, naturally. Some even reverted to more conservative idioms. For instance, while the early works of John Adams (b. 1947) like Shaker Loops (1978) are minimalist, his more recent ones, like the 1991 opera The Death of Klinghoffer, are more through-composed and in a more conservative, post-modernist style.

But many composers in this age group have found a signature sound world and have pretty much remained identified with it. Glenn Branca (b. 1949) writes for “orchestras” of up to 100 guitars, many of them altered or specially built in different keys. Stephen Scott (b. 1944) started composing for “bowed” piano, where a group of pe
rformers use fishing line or horsehair to bow the piano’s inner strings, in 1976. Ellen Fullman (b. 1957) has been primarily associated with The Long String Instrument, a wooden box with 85-feet wires that creates tones with deep frequencies. Stuart Saunders Smith (b. 1948) frequently incorporates non-traditional percussion instruments into his music, from kitchen utensils to pieces of scrap metal to tree branches hung with glass wind chimes. Since 1990 much of Phil Kline‘s music has been composed largely for “boom box orchestra,” a group of portable tape players. Meredith Monk (b. 1943), who has been associated with extended vocal techniques since the 1960s and has created a significant body of works exploring this terrain for her own ensemble, has only recently explored the possibility of writing works for other ensembles including the orchestra.

Electro-acoustic, electronic or computer music are the preferred mediums for many of composers in this age group such as Daria Semegen (b. 1946) and Pril Smiley (b. 1943), both of whom were associated with the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Although composer and electric guitarist Paul Dresher (b. 1951) has created works for conventional instruments, some of his most important scores, which he performs with his own ensemble, combine electric and acoustic instruments to create a new type of chamber music. Another electric guitar playing composer Steve Mackey has also developed a unique style through combining the electric guitar’s sonorities with those of acoustic instruments. Scott Johnson (b. 1952), since his John Somebody (1980-82) in which an electric guitar imitates repeated fragments of voice recordings, has continued to explore and refine the technique of turning pre-recorded conversation into recognizable melodies through repetition and imitation for the past two decades. Charles Dodge (b. 1942), since his landmark Earth’s Magnetic Field (1970) in which the musical material from computations involving changes in the earth’s magnetic field, has been creating provocative music with computers incorporating such diverse ideas as synthetic speech-song to altering historic recordings of Enrico Caruso. Another computer composer who has been obsessed with the fine line between verbal communication and music-making for many years is Princeton-based Paul Lansky (b. 1944). Laurie Spiegel (b. 1945), who began her career performing folk and bluegrass music on the banjo, and began exploring the possibilities of computers in works such as Appalachian Grove (1974), has rarely gone back to acoustic instruments since then.

Other composers who initially concentrated on electronic and electro-acoustic music have modified or grown away from their original approach. For instance, Ingram Marshall (b. 1942), whose earliest compositions involved tape experiments, now frequently mixes live acoustic instruments with electronic processing. And Elodie Lauten (b. 1950), who originally worked exclusively with the Fairlight Computer Music Instrument (CMI), now composes for a lot of music for solo acoustic piano and has even created a work for Baroque period instruments.

Rock and popular music is also a strong influence in much of the music written by this age group. Glenn Branca (b. 1949) and Rhys Chatham (b. 1942), who were both originally performers in rock bands, have been created large-scale compositions using rock aesthetics and rock instrumentation for decades. Bonham for eight percussionists, by Christopher Rouse (b. 1949), was inspired by the late Led Zeppelin drummer. Julia Wolfe (b. 1958) described her Lick as being directly inspired by the Motown and funk music she grew up with. (Wolfe, along with fellow Druckman students Michael Gordon and David Lang, also founded the Bang On A Can Festival, with the aim of trying to break down the Uptown-Downtown polarity, in 1987.) Laurie Anderson (b. 1947), who like Philip Glass has enjoyed great commercial success, frequently works with rock musicians such as Peter Gabriel, Lou Reed and Adrian Belew. However, as she said in John Schaefer‘s book New Sounds, “I don’t think of [my music] as rock in any way, but it’s sitting in the rock bins in record stores, and there are people on it who do rock.”

It’s also not uncommon to see works inspired by current events and popular culture, both serious and frivolous, among composers of this age group. Michael Daugherty (b. 1954) is a particularly good example of the latter, with extroverted works like Desi (inspired by Desi Arnaz) (1990) or Elvis Everywhere, whose scoring includes four Elvis impersonators. Many of Laurie Anderson’s pieces include satiric or humorous social commentary, often with a feminist slant, such as Beautiful Red Dress. A number of African-American composers have written pieces inspired by important figures in black history; including Adolphus Hailstork (b. 1941) and Anthony Davis (b. 1951), whose opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, was composed in 1985. And it was primarily composers of this age group who contributed to The AIDS Quilt Songbook, a cycle of 15 songs commissioned by the late baritone William Parker in 1992.

 

Many of the prominent American composers between the ages of 60 and 80 continue to pursue the trademark styles and techniques for which they initially became known. These styles and techniques, however, are as varied as the entire field of American music.

For a significant number of composers in this age group, serialism remains a vital compositional frame of reference. Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt were extremely influential teachers for a whole generation of composers and their compositional legacy continues in the music of Charles Wuorinen (b. 1938), whose music is as structurally complex and demanding as that of his teacher Babbitt while as classically balanced as that of Sessions. Donald Martino (b. 1931), Benjamin Boretz (b. 1934), Henry Weinberg (b. 1931) and Peter Westergaard (b. 1931), all also former Babbitt students, have each remained strict serialists throughout their careers. Although in recent years, even composers as uncompromising as Mario Davidovsky (b. 1934) seem to have softened a bit. Curiously, Babbitt’s most famous pupil Stephen Sondheim (b. 1930) never composed serial music but has continued to cultivate a unique personal language for the Broadway musical for over 40 years.

During the formative years of the composers born in this generation, the most viable avant-garde compositional alternative to serialism was the music and philosophy of the late John Cage whose advocacy of indeterminate musical processes still informs the works of his disciples Christian Wolff (b. 1936) and Earle Brown (b. 1924). The Fluxus movement of the early 1960s, which took Cage’s compositional methods to an even more extreme realization, led to confrontational works by Yoko Ono (b. 1933) and George Brecht (b. 1925), but nowadays there are few strict adherents of the Fluxus aesthetic these days, although the singular career path followed to this day by La Monte Young (b. 1935), often cited as the founder of minimalism, can be traced to his earliest conceptual pieces during his involvement with Fluxus. Cage’s experimentation and the Fluxus movement both played key roles in the development of the so-called “Downtown” music scene in New York during this time as opposed to the more established, academically-oriented “uptown” one. And while the uptown-downtown divide is no longer a geographical reality, the aesthetic divide still informs a great deal of the music of composers of this generation.

Arguably the most important new style that emerged and has continued to flourish from composers of this generation is minimalism. La Monte Young and the three other composers primarily associated with the minimalist movement in music–Terry Riley (b. 1935) a classmate of Young’s at UC Berkeley, and two Juilliard trained composers: Steve Reich (b. 1936) and Philip Glass (b. 1937)–were all born within a couple of years of one another. All four were strongly influenced by non-western music: Young, Riley and Glass by the music of India and Reich by African drumming and Hebrew chant. And while the austerity of each of their early styles has blossomed into musical languages that are far more malleable, each composer retains an instantly identifiable signature sound.

Of course, a great many composers of this generation neither adopted minimalism nor followed the avant-garde paths of serialism and indeterminacy, but either remained adherents of or defiantly returned to the American tonal tradition of composers like Samuel Barber and Howard Hanson. Dominick Argento (b. 1927), Ned Rorem (b. 1923) and Lee Hoiby (b. 1926), all of whom are primarily known for their operas and songs, have consistently created music throughout long careers in a neo-romantic, conservative style. Although David Del Tredici (b. 1937) began his career writing atonal music, his style also switched to neo-romanticism after he began an 18-year series of pieces based on Lewis Carroll‘s Alice books, beginning with Pop-pourri (1968).

Others, whose style has been labeled “post-modernist,” including six prominent composers born within a year of each other–William Bolcom (b. 1938), Barbara Kolb (b. 1939), John Harbison (b. 1938), John Corigliano (b. 1938), Joan Tower (b. 1938) and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (b. 1939)–write music which reference a wide variety of style
s incorporating such diverse idioms as romantic orchestral music, dissonant modernism and jazz, into an predominantly tonal idiom. One of the most difficult to categorize composers, George Crumb (b. 1929), whose music is equally related to neo-romanticism and post-modernism as well as to the legacy of John Cage and experimental music, has throughout his career pursued a unique musical vocabulary with incorporates unconventional musical notation, unusual instrumentation–for classical music, at least–such as the banjo or the toy piano, or unorthodox methods of playing.

Finally, many of these composers, have pursued lifetime careers in electronic music, a field of music that was essentially born as many composers of this generation reached adulthood. Morton Subotnick (b. 1933), who in 1967 created the first piece of electronic music commissioned for commercial recording, Silver Apples of the Moon, on the Buchla synthesizer, has built his entire compositional career on exploring the possibilities of electronically-generated sounds. Experimentation with electronically generated or manipulated sound has also been the major lifetime focus of Gordon Mumma (b. 1935) and Alvin Lucier (b. 1931). Most compositions by Jean Eichelberger Ivey (b. 1923), founder of Peabody Conservatory‘s Electronic Music Studio and one of the first women active in this field, are scored for one or more instruments with tape. The works of several other women who use tape as a primary medium reflect an interest in the concept of music as a meditative or healing medium, such as New Zealand-born Annea Lockwood (b. 1939), whose sound sources are often drawn from nature, her life partner, Ruth Anderson (b. 1928), and Pauline Oliveros (b. 1932). Robert Ashley (b. 1930), who has been at the forefront of electronic music for the past half century, has over the past two decades, refined his electronic sonic vocabulary to create a unique new form of opera in which he performs with a regular ensemble.

Social awareness has played a key role in the works of a great many of these composers, stretching across all of their stylistic differences. Ashley’s recent opera Dust takes on the issue of homelessness in America, while Joan Tower’s series of Fanfares for the Common Woman celebrates womanhood. African-American Valerie Capers (b. 1935) based her dramatic work Sojourner (1981), which she described as an “operatorio,” on the life of ex-slave and abolitionist Sojourner Truth. Reich drew on both his childhood memories of bicoastal train trips between his divorced parents’ homes during World War II and the trains that transported Jews to death camps for his Different Trains (1986). And gay composer Corigliano was one of the first composers in this age group to write a work dealing with the AIDS epidemic, his Symphony No.1 (1990).

 

Perhaps the real secret to a long life is not vitamins or exercise, but composing. After all, there are at least a dozen composers over 80 in the U.S. at present who continue to be active while many of their contemporaries in other fields have long since retired. (Leo Ornstein [b. 1892], the eldest of these “elder statesmen,” stopped composing in his 80s, but continues to thrive in other ways at the ripe old age of 108.)

All these composers except Ornstein came of age during the late 1920s and early 1930s, when a number of significant groups and publications devoted to new music, such as the International League of Composers and Henry Cowell‘s journal New Music, were appearing. Radio and recordings were making all types of music more accessible to the public for the first time. And during the 1930s a number of significant European composers including Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Krenek and Bartók settled in the U.S.

One thing all these men have in common is that each has mapped out an individual path and established a distinct style of his own. (Sadly, Vivian Fine, the only composer qualified to be an elder stateswoman, died in a car accident last March at the age of 86.) Sometimes these paths have resulted in a respected career in academia, and sometimes a style that adheres strictly to an established tradition. Other times it’s resulted in a maverick.

Leon Kirchner (b. 1919) is one composer that fits the first category. Although his style has never adhered to one particular musical fashion, he has always placed great importance on basing a piece on a sound musical idea and adhering to equally sound principles of structural development. David Diamond (b. 1915), who taught at Juilliard for over 25 years, also stressed the importance of a solid theoretical background, both in his and his students’ music. Ironically, although Elliott Carter (b. 1908) also enjoyed a long career at Juilliard and has won two Pulitzer Prizes to date, his teachers during his undergraduate years at Harvard were less than enthusiastic about his radical, uncompromising music–possibly influenced by his friendship with Charles Ives, who he met at age 16–eventually sending him to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger. The trip resulted in a brief fling with neoclassicism, but soon Carter returned to his old style, characterized by metric modulation, pitch organization, partitioning of various musical aspects and the concept of mathematical vs. psychological time, feeling that it provided a more appropriate way to depict the atmosphere of post-World War II America.

A number of these elder statesmen are primarily associated with the use and development of serialism. The 3 Compositions for Piano (1947) of Milton Babbitt (b. 1916) was one of the earliest examples of total serialism with regard to pitches, durations and dynamics, and the work which immediately followed it, Composition for 12 Instruments, serialized timbre as well. Despite the fact that he has also written electronic music and influences from other music, such as jazz, are evident in pieces like All Set, Babbitt continues to espouse the importance of serialism. George Perle (b. 1915) also continues to write in the 12-tone style, although he describes his music as “twelve-tone tonality” rather than serialism per se.

George Rochberg (b. 1918), on the other hand, switched from strict serialism to a neo-romantic style after his son’s death in the 1960s, a move which generated a great deal of hostility from some of his colleagues and was welcomed by others. In fact, although Rochberg himself discounts it, he is often considered the founder of the post-modernist movement. However, although he may be modest about his influence on younger composers, he is far from hesitant about criticizing them. For instance, in his 1972 essay “Reflections on the Renewal of Music,” he put down what he described as “the gross, generalized, nonspecific principles of today’s avant-gardists,” adding “There can be no justification for music, ultimately, if it does not convey eloquently and elegantly the passions of the human heart.”

In contrast to these, Henry Brant (b. 1913), while he did teach briefly at such August institutions as Columbia and Juilliard, has been a radical since he began writing music for pots and pans as a child. Most of his music is scored for huge, unusual ensembles–one example is Orbits, for 80 trombones and organ–in equally huge and unusual spatial arrangements. At age 80, he went even further afield and invented a Tenor Cello and Mezzo-Violin, for which he has written several ensemble pieces. The highly eclectic style of Portland-born Lou Harrison (b. 1917), who early on abandoned the New York scene for California and was especially influenced by a 1962 trip to the Far East on a Rockefeller grant, has included everything from music for gamelan to a symphony featuring vocals by pop singer Al Jarreau and texts in the universal language Esperanto. Harrison is also highly unusual for this generation regarding his personal life; not only did he come out openly as a gay man but, starting in the 1970s, began to publicly support the gay rights movement.

Even more interesting is the case of Gian-Carlo Menotti (b. 1911), who has been criticized in some circles for music that is too accessible and tonal. His output, which consists almost entirely of operas–for which he writes the librettos, another factor that has earned him criticism–was disparaged in conservatory circles for years. Recently, however, although his production of new works has slowed down considerably, a number of his earlier operas have been revived successfully and have been taken more seriously. The Consul, for example, in which a woman in a nameless Communist-like country repeatedly tries and fails to get her husband released from prison, seems far more relevant to recent political events than it may have been when it premiered in 1950. And it’s a rare city where at least one performance of his 1951 Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, isn’t held every year.

View from the East: Enough Nostalgia?

Greg Sandow
Greg Sandow
Photo by Melissa Richard

It was such a New York night.

There we were, “we” being an audience of several hundred, in the shadow, the valley, or, better, the notch between the two twin thrusts of the World Trade Center towers. And from the stage in front of us roared the music of Glenn Branca, which I hadn’t heard live for many years. This was the premiere of his Symphony No. 13, Hallucination City, for, the program said, 100 electric guitars, though in fact I counted not many more than 70 instruments, and some of them, it turned out, were basses.

But these are trivial details, especially the precise number of instruments, unless, maybe, we’re obsessed about the sheer size of the sound. I know I’m not the only one who thought the music wasn’t loud enough, but I didn’t care. The sound had real substance, almost literally — it seemed alive, a pulsing physical presence that gave shape and weight to the air. Branca doesn’t use his army of guitars as melody instruments. (Though, as a quiet aside, I’d love to hear how that would sound if someone else did it, maybe like Ornette Coleman‘s Free Jazz written large, or like the wild collaboration Coleman did with Pat Metheny, multiplied a thousand times, with screaming guitar lines scrawled like graffiti on the twin towers’ walls, right up to the 110th floor.) Instead, Branca arrays his guitars and basses almost as an army, producing either long notes or pulsations, which are layered to become a single substance. The music in this substance is sometimes dissonant, sometimes converges on a single note, almost always shines with clustered, high overtones, and falls into place around gigantic — and, in this case (at least to my ear) — cheerful rock & roll drums.

It’s a truly urban sound. It’s also cosmic, if you want to hear it that way, and would be overwhelming, I’d imagine, in non-urban settings like the mountains, the plains at night under lofty stars, or (let’s do it!) in the Grand Canyon. But it’s inconceivable — in its origins — apart from New York City, though maybe I hear it that way because I know that it was born here, and because I heard it here when it was new, way back in the early ’80s. Certainly it fits here, though of course Branca’s career has taken him away from New York, especially to Europe, and in fact Hallucination City was commissioned for a millennium celebration in Paris, but unfortunately it was never performed, a special misfortune because it was supposed to be played by 2000 guitars; can we put that in the Grand Canyon? Massed guitars, though, mesh easily with the scream of subways going round a curve, with the background traffic roar we hear here day and night, and, in ways harder to define, with the spirit of New York, with noise and people everywhere.

Though here, parenthetically, is another point of view: Music has been getting more urban ever since the Industrial Revolution, when, to pick a tasty benchmark, Beethoven added trombones and a piccolo to the last movement of his Fifth Symphony. That jumps out at you if you listen to his symphonies in chronological order. Further additions to the orchestra during the 19th and early 20th centuries — along with the greater discipline orchestral music needed, both because orchestras were larger and because the music had gotten more complex — made things more industrial. The reign of dissonance in the 20th century took things to a higher level; just imagine Schoenberg or Varese evoking, in their music, the innocent joy of nature. Webern did try to do that, though with such intense, extreme, and private spirituality that his innocence is anything but simple. One way to read him would be as a premonition that nature would soon enough be threatened, as it seems to be now. In our time, we can reclaim tonality as something high and spiritual that transcends dissonance, and we can reclaim dissonance as something high and spiritual that transcends the urban clanking — factories and railroads — that helped to make it central to our music. Branca’s pieces do that; but they can’t completely lose their origins.

Some people heard structure in Hallucination City, and if I were the most upright and responsible of critics, I could tell you how Branca’s music might have changed — developed, toughened, gotten tighter — since I heard his First Symphony so many years ago (and the Third, in a notable performance at BAM). But I simply gave myself to the surge of sound, and let myself be carried off. I felt, in some way, that I was home.

Why was that? I could explain it as nostalgia: I was just beginning as a critic — I was a Village Voice columnist — when Branca first did this stuff. I could tease my nostalgia, by calling it self-serving. I think I was the first (or at least the first in an above-ground venue) to write about Branca; I championed him, as I remember, to the point, perhaps, that praising him became my trademark. Though really I was excited (liberated?) by the marriage of rock and classical music in both Glenn’s work, and Rhys Chatham‘s, then in other people’s. (Rhys was, so very many years ago, the first music director of The Kitchen. Now he’s in Paris; when last I spoke to him, he was playing the trumpet, and writing dance music. I could picture him, in an alternate universe revisiting his New York history by joining Branca as one of his 2000 guitarists.) Later I became a rock critic, and an ache for rock lives inside me, now that I’m back on the classical side. I wrote a provocation called “Why Classical Music Needs Rock & Roll.” A lecture I gave at Juilliard under that name became a graduate course I’ve taught there for the past four years, “Breaking Barriers: Classical Music in an Age of Pop.” I talk passionately about rock (rock critics being the excuse) in my other Juilliard course on music criticism. Glenn Branca brings it all together for me, and on yet another ground you can call this nostalgia: Some of the “rock” that gets me going isn’t around much any more. (Retro me: I’m listening now to Radiohead and Lucinda Wi
lliams
, but the rock I taught this past year at Juilliard was Springsteen, Van Morrison, and Janis Joplin.)

Certainly there were people at the Branca evening who thought it was nostalgia. “Takes me right back,” or words to that effect, were a frequent comment, at least from those who’d been around long enough. I noticed Eric Bogosian in the audience, and that took me back; he’d been coming up as a performance artist when Branca first appeared, and was part of the same scene. And though I didn’t know it, the drummer — who by himself, I would have thought, could have generated enough energy to power all Manhattan — was Wharton Tiers, whose own music is in Branca’s debt, and who has produced albums for Sonic Youth, a band that emerged from Branca’s ’80s downtown world, and which Branca influenced. I remember Kim Gordon, later Sonic Youth’s bassist but then in the art world, showing me an essay on Branca that she’d written titled “Hero Worship.”

But enough nostalgia. I found the music completely convincing now, taken on its own terms, whatever those might be. I didn’t try to excavate its structure; as I said, I just sank inside it, swept from one moment to the next as can only happen, or so I’ve come to think, when music is superbly structured.

And as for its meaning, one thing sadly struck me. We’re in an age, we boast, where all musical styles are possible, and when none of us — in our “classical,” “new music” world (terms in quotes because nobody really knows what they mean) — is penalized for writing what we want.

(Well, OK — there’s one penalty, but it’s a natural one, and important to emphasize. If you write inaccessible music, defined as music that very few people will like, there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be free to do it, but also no reason why you should be surprised if you don’t get much attention or support. Of course, you’re free to go to funders and other artists, asking for support because you’re doing something new and crucial. But you shouldn’t — and I’m aiming this directly at the modernists of the past generation — cultivate any sense of entitlement, any demand to be supported, even after your style has made its long-ago revolutionary impact, simply because you aren’t popular. Of course, anyone who makes demands like that thinks his or her music is both good and important, but in my experience, the lack of popularity becomes a special badge of honor, the assumption being that music many people like is therefore bad. Tell that to Haydn — or, rather, for extra credit, write an essay explaining what has changed between Haydn’s time and ours, why music that’s popular could be good then but can’t be now, and what the social consequences of that are.)

But our freedom comes at a price, as I know I’ve said before — we have no anchor. If you’re creating pop music, you also have a wide choice of styles, but each of them comes with its own audience, often its own pop charts and record labels, in short its own support system, its own social life, its own world. You know who you’re talking to, and it’s very likely people who are much like yourself.

In our amorphous world, there might be examples of that —Bang On A Can, for instance. If you write in their mÈlange of styles, you enlist an audience much more informal (to pick just one of many words that might apply) than what you’d find at Carnegie Hall. But the mainstream concert audience is, as it hears new work, completely amorphous. It’s in large part not even oriented toward new work (though I think it’s not nearly as hostile as we often think it is). For that matter, it’s not oriented in any special way toward older music, either. Beethoven, Mahler, Debussy, Rachmaninoff — it all comes dancing by, undifferentiated, with nobody expressing much preference for one style over another. (Except, maybe, for the subsets of the audience, some of them small, that prefer opera, or early music, or chamber music, or even new music.)

So it can hardly be surprising that new music seems undifferentiated, too. Carter, Corigliano, Joan Tower, Michael Daugherty, Steve Reich…pile on any names you want (including your own, if you’re in that world, or want to be), but it all seems to come at the concert audience from the same place. Sure, some of them will think Carter’s work is dissonant and ugly, and Reich’s far too repetitious; maybe some will think Daugherty is cheap; but as far as they’re concerned, it’s all new music, presented to them equally, with no acknowledgement (or very little) that it might come from different places, speak to different people, and carry different messages.

Carnegie Hall, a couple of years ago, could name Pierre Boulez to its composers’ chair, succeeding the far more conventional Ellen Taaffe Zwillich, without one word to say, “We’re doing something different now.” (If they took any stand at all, it was — ironically implicit in their understandable bragging at their prestigious catch — that Boulez was far more famous.) But more telling, I think, was the situation at Great Day in New York, the series everybody loved so much, and not without reason, at Merkin and Alice Tully halls this past winter. The whole point was stylistic diversity, and, sure enough, the styles and manners flew by — the composed-within-an-inch-of-its-life, every-“i”-dotted-not-just-once-but-twice music of Tobias Picker, the old-style, post-serial modernism of Ezra Laderman and Barbara Kolb, Ned Rorem’s classic ’50s songs (which sound better than ever), Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Bang On A Can, Meredith Monk, electric (in the literal sense) music by Scott Johnson with R&B rhythms, John Zorn and Char
les Wuorinen
(as friendly as long-lost brothers, reunited at last), music by David del Tredici that showed up months later far from the concert hall, in an East Village performance piece by John Kelly…it was a fabulous, liberating zoo, but also formless.

And in the midst of that, or rather not in the midst of it, were roads not widely taken. I’ve touched on this in print before, in a Wall Street Journal piece on Cage and Stockhausen (as performed at Carnegie Recital Hall — their transfiguring “When Morty Met John…” retrospective — and the Miller Theater). Both composers, it struck me, had gone down paths which, if not forgotten, surely hadn’t resonated widely in our present, multi-stylish world.

Take Cage’s silence. Literally, his entire-work silence of 4’33”, the infinitely famous piece, one of the most prominent landmarks of 20th century art, where the performer makes no sound. Many, many years before, Beethoven added trombones and piccolo to his orchestra, and the innovation lasted. In our more recent history, Cage opened the possibility of long, long silences, but that didn’t last. I don’t see composers writing those, though the structural possibilities alone could be fascinating. (Silences instead of transitions. Silence as a climax. Silence substituting for development, replacing i’s that could be dotted, or t’s that could be crossed.) I understand that silence is a little more unusual, more declarative, a bigger break with standard practice than a piccolo — it encourages you to listen differently, to have a different experience, one that I think is a lot less passive. It throws you on your own resources. Nor am I mandating silence, insisting that this is something composers have to do. I just think it’s notable that hardly anybody does it. Cage influenced all of us in many ways (and, miraculously, often not by inspiring anyone to do exactly what he did; in Japan, for instance, his example encouraged composers to revisit traditional Japanese styles and instruments). I just find it odd — and a little sad — that this technique, this stylistic resource that he introduced has gotten just a little lost.

And the same could be said of Glenn Branca’s work, which was the thought his concert left me with. I shouldn’t forget to add one sweet, romantic note. Glenn — cigarette dangling from his mouth, stubble on his cheeks — projects himself, intentionally or not, as a deep romantic figure. And at least on this occasion, he evolved a conducting style to match, or rather a division of conducting jobs. Somebody else, unmistakably cueing the guitarists with the neck of his own guitar, undertook the purely musical leadership. Glenn, meanwhile — urging, entreating, pulling on the air as if he could bend it to his will — conducted what the music meant, often enough dropping out as if spent, at least for the moment, letting the sound find its own way. Makes sense, when you think of it (and something like it happens often enough in conventional orchestras, if the conductor has ideas but not enough technique, making the concertmaster, by default, the one who gives some of the important cues).

But Glenn’s style seems a little lost in today’s world, despite its obvious power, testified to by the ovation his music got that night, and also by the reaction of at least one person new to it, who loved it, even though she’d come to it from very different musical worlds. His influence on some strains of alternative rock is clear enough. And so, come to think of it, is his link to a notable explosion in now-distant rock history, Phil Spector‘s “Wall of Sound.”

But I don’t hear classical composers incorporating even echoes of what Glenn’s been doing for the past 20 years. Not, again, that anybody has to. But it’s odd that hardly anybody does. We live and work, those of us in new music, in a fragmented musical world, and maybe we’ve lost touch with some of our resources.