26.6.10
23.6.10
22.6.10
On the Outside
I’ve been grazing through last year’s A New Literary History of America (Belknap/Harvard, 1095 p., edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors). This fascinating, informative, and sometimes moving book is a history of the United States told in essays about the cultural artifacts produced by Americans and, in a few cases, about America or Americans.
This broad definition of the “literary” is fleshed out in an Introduction:
This broad definition of the “literary” is fleshed out in an Introduction:
Thus this broadly cultural history—a history of America in which literary means not only what is written but also what is voiced, what is expressed, what is invented, in whatever form. (p. xxiv)“[I]n whatever form”? Strong words. Did Messers Marcus and Sollars write a rhetorical check their editing asses can’t cash?
The focus is on the whole range of all those things that have been created in America, or for it, or because of it: poems, novels, plays, and essays, but also maps, histories, and travel diaries, sermons and religious tracts, public speeches and private letters, political polemics, addresses, and debates, Supreme Court decisions, literary histories and criticism, folk songs, magazines, dramatic performances, the blues, philosophy, paintings and monuments, jazz, war memorials, museums, book clubs, photographs, comic strips and comic books, country music, films, radio, rock and roll, cartoons, musicals, and hip-hop: “Made in America.” (p. xxiv)
This list is pretty comprehensive—the essay on porn star Linda Lovelace can be included under “film”, for example, so let’s see if there are any form of literary artifacts “that have been created in America, or for it, or because of it” that are left out. (Hold on, I’m reading.) OK, no concert music or concert dance (ballet or modern), either. A reading of the Index shows only fleeting references to composers like John Cage, Charles Ives, and La Monte Young. And no choreographers, or at least none whose names I recognized.
There was no explanation of the omissions. Was it an oversight? I really don’t know. They could have covered both with a discussion of Appalachian Spring or with the work of Lincoln Kirstein’s Ballet Caravan or with the epic Cage/Cunningham collaboration. This not to mention what could have been contributed on either concert music or dance alone. I don’t know why they were not included.
Greg Sandow wrote this weekend about people who claim that classical music is inherently superior to other musics. Sandow need not worry about such claims, except to the extent that they are horrible marketing devices. It’s clear from this book as well as countless other cultural conversations taking place on and off the web, that concert music and its equally-unloved artistic sibling may be the least-important artforms going.
If concert music is on the outside looking in, and there’s plenty of evidence that it is, the ongoing conversation about the issue is extremely important. What I haven’t seen is a great deal of thought about what it means to be on the outside; to be, as Alex Ross has correctly put it, counter-cultural. Are there advantages to being on the outside? The disadvantages are clear, but aren’t there good things about it, too? Can part of our art be inside and part out? These are questions that should be asked, and suggestions tossed around. And now’s a good time to do it, since nobody’s paying attention.
23.5.10
If Only
In an essay discussing his experiences on a cruise ship ("A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again") David Foster Wallace talks about the "prettiness" of the Caribbean. Then this footnote (#73, on page 306 of the collection of which this is the title essay):
It is not "beautiful"; it is "pretty". There's a difference.Imagine how much clearer, how much more telling our art criticism would be if we kept this crucial idea in mind.
15.2.10
8.2.10
Double Bar
I finished the first draft of my Percussion Concerto today. I'll let it stew for a couple of weeks or so, then run through it once or twice to touch things up. I anticipate delivering it to John Parks in early April, in anticipation of a fall premiere.
More regular blogging and reveiewing should resume soon.
More regular blogging and reveiewing should resume soon.
20.1.10
12.1.10
11.12.09
15.11.09
In the long run,
we're all dead. (John Maynard Keynes)
But for some of us, our music will live on. Norman Lebrecht wants to know whose music (of composers living today) will be played 50 years from now. There have been responses at Mr. Lebreacht's blog and from other bloggers. If you are surprised that the leading vote getters are of a more-or-less minimalist/not-Modern bent, you haven't been reading about concert/non-pop music on the Interweb very much. In addition, this result shows one inevitable result of predictions--that what is happening now will continue indefinitely, and that the predictor's values/tastes will be confirmed.
With that in mind, I'd like to add two predictions of my own to this little exercise.
The first, and I'm damn confident of this one, is that some composer who dies 49 years from now will have a pretty good year, performance-wise, 50 years from now.
The second is that John Mackey's music will still be performed in 2059. Mr. Mackey writes very solid and very educational music for winds and percussion (mostly). I've heard a good bit of it, and it mostly works. I think band (for lack of a better term, and I don't think we really need a better term) music is an increasingly important part of the art's future (especially in the US), and Mr. Mackey's is as good as there is.
But for some of us, our music will live on. Norman Lebrecht wants to know whose music (of composers living today) will be played 50 years from now. There have been responses at Mr. Lebreacht's blog and from other bloggers. If you are surprised that the leading vote getters are of a more-or-less minimalist/not-Modern bent, you haven't been reading about concert/non-pop music on the Interweb very much. In addition, this result shows one inevitable result of predictions--that what is happening now will continue indefinitely, and that the predictor's values/tastes will be confirmed.
With that in mind, I'd like to add two predictions of my own to this little exercise.
The first, and I'm damn confident of this one, is that some composer who dies 49 years from now will have a pretty good year, performance-wise, 50 years from now.
The second is that John Mackey's music will still be performed in 2059. Mr. Mackey writes very solid and very educational music for winds and percussion (mostly). I've heard a good bit of it, and it mostly works. I think band (for lack of a better term, and I don't think we really need a better term) music is an increasingly important part of the art's future (especially in the US), and Mr. Mackey's is as good as there is.
11.11.09
18.10.09
End of an Era
In a way.
The development of the concert music blogosphere can be dated from when Alex Ross began blogging at The Rest is Noise back before the internet cooled. Now Alex has effectively closed TRiN and opened a new blog, Unquiet Thoughts, under the auspices of The New Yorker, for which Alex is the concert music critic.
The development of the concert music blogosphere can be dated from when Alex Ross began blogging at The Rest is Noise back before the internet cooled. Now Alex has effectively closed TRiN and opened a new blog, Unquiet Thoughts, under the auspices of The New Yorker, for which Alex is the concert music critic.
I wish Alex well in his new corporate digs and I look forward to his blog posts, articles, and books, and I remember the words of Jean de La Fontaine: "People who make no noise are dangerous."
16.9.09
Lindberg Live
I don't know what it's like in the rest of the country, but the sound on the PBS broadcast of the New York Phil's opening concert here is awful--it's weak and full of pops.
On first hearing, Magnus Lindberg's EXPO does what its composer says it's meant to do--shows off the orchestra and set the stage for the remainder of a concert and a season.
On first hearing, Magnus Lindberg's EXPO does what its composer says it's meant to do--shows off the orchestra and set the stage for the remainder of a concert and a season.
8.9.09
Hello, It's Me
I've thought about us for a long, long time.
I've not posted in a while because I've been immersed in my Percussion Concerto. More on that soon.
Regular (or at least more regular) posting will begin again soon.
I've not posted in a while because I've been immersed in my Percussion Concerto. More on that soon.
Regular (or at least more regular) posting will begin again soon.
22.6.09
In C and Me
Sony Classical (in conjunction with Carnegie Hall) has released the original recording of Terry Riley’s epochal In C (1964, open instrumentation) in a digitally remastered version on compact disc (Sony 88697 45368 2). Countless musicians and artists, myself included, of all stripes have talked and written about In C, most often focusing on its liberating power.
A good deal of the talk about In C and its liberating power centers on how it and its popular and critical reception provided a new tonal alternative to an “hegemony” of pantonal and serial music in the prestigious music schools of the Northeastern United States. Enough testimony of this regional atmosphere exists to take it seriously and to understand how Riley would have been received by those looking for something different.
But in most of the country the atmosphere was very different—the majority of composers in and out of the academy (and concert programs) wrote tonal music of one kind or another. Even so, the appearance of In C had a similar liberating impact outside the major music centers as it did inside.
I had first been exposed to pantonal music in the summer of 1970, after a youth of listening to The Beatles and playing trombone in junior high band in North Carolina. The first pantonal works I heard and/or played, by composers like Lucas Foss, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Georgy Ligeti, Witold Lutoslawski, Iannis Xenakis, and Karlheinz Stockhausen were all over the pantonal map, style wise. I started writing music in the fall of 1972, and I feel confident that my exposure to In C, which came shortly thereafter, was in an eclectic context not dominated by any one style, tonal or otherwise.
I’m pretty sure, then, that In C’s tonal pitch vocabulary doesn’t account for the feeling of freedom, of something new, of liberation that I got from it on first hearing, and that I still get now when I hear this original recording, either on vinyl or on the new CD release. What does account for its effect is, I think, how the music is freed from the constraints one normally finds in tonal music. The pulse is still there; boy is it ever, but gone are phrases, meter, development, and all the other trappings of tonal music, the music I had grown up with. It was with In C that I learned that there was more to emancipation than dissonance. That compositional and performance freedom could be found anywhere, by many, varied means.
One last thought, on this recording in particular. It may be because this recording is how I learned In C, but it remains the only one so far that communicates the deeply innovative, at times transgressive nature of Riley’s masterpiece. More recent recordings have, to my ear, emphasized the one-from-many nature of the music. By this I mean the sound is very clean, with a shiny Kronosified gleam to the surface; that the meaning resides in the completely blended sound of the surface itself. In these performances I get the feeling that every note counts for what it adds to the overall texture. In contrast, the original recording is rough sounding, like a community of many individuals, where every instrument is clearly heard, and the meaning comes from the gathering of expressive individuals.
A good deal of the talk about In C and its liberating power centers on how it and its popular and critical reception provided a new tonal alternative to an “hegemony” of pantonal and serial music in the prestigious music schools of the Northeastern United States. Enough testimony of this regional atmosphere exists to take it seriously and to understand how Riley would have been received by those looking for something different.
But in most of the country the atmosphere was very different—the majority of composers in and out of the academy (and concert programs) wrote tonal music of one kind or another. Even so, the appearance of In C had a similar liberating impact outside the major music centers as it did inside.
I had first been exposed to pantonal music in the summer of 1970, after a youth of listening to The Beatles and playing trombone in junior high band in North Carolina. The first pantonal works I heard and/or played, by composers like Lucas Foss, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Georgy Ligeti, Witold Lutoslawski, Iannis Xenakis, and Karlheinz Stockhausen were all over the pantonal map, style wise. I started writing music in the fall of 1972, and I feel confident that my exposure to In C, which came shortly thereafter, was in an eclectic context not dominated by any one style, tonal or otherwise.
I’m pretty sure, then, that In C’s tonal pitch vocabulary doesn’t account for the feeling of freedom, of something new, of liberation that I got from it on first hearing, and that I still get now when I hear this original recording, either on vinyl or on the new CD release. What does account for its effect is, I think, how the music is freed from the constraints one normally finds in tonal music. The pulse is still there; boy is it ever, but gone are phrases, meter, development, and all the other trappings of tonal music, the music I had grown up with. It was with In C that I learned that there was more to emancipation than dissonance. That compositional and performance freedom could be found anywhere, by many, varied means.
One last thought, on this recording in particular. It may be because this recording is how I learned In C, but it remains the only one so far that communicates the deeply innovative, at times transgressive nature of Riley’s masterpiece. More recent recordings have, to my ear, emphasized the one-from-many nature of the music. By this I mean the sound is very clean, with a shiny Kronosified gleam to the surface; that the meaning resides in the completely blended sound of the surface itself. In these performances I get the feeling that every note counts for what it adds to the overall texture. In contrast, the original recording is rough sounding, like a community of many individuals, where every instrument is clearly heard, and the meaning comes from the gathering of expressive individuals.
26.5.09
Twitterpated
In response to this post by the always thought-provoking Daniel Wolf, I've begun a set of prose scores called twitterpieces. They will appear at my Twitter page, www.twitter.com/stevehicken. Everything you need to perform them will be included in the tweet. The first will appear shortly after this is posted.
19.5.09
18.5.09
29.4.09
20.4.09
Steve Reich
Congratulations to Steve Reich, winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Mr. Reich won for his Double Sextet. His music was extremely important to my development as a composer, performer, writer, and listener. Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ, Drumming, and Come Out (among others) were in heavy heavy rotation on the turntable when I was an undergraduate, I return to these pieces a lot and always come away refreshed.
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