"Totalism" and/or Postmodernism

It is fruitless to recount how many times we have discussed the unwillingness and resistance of prominent Minimalist and Impressionist composers, to name a few types, to categorization.  For example, composers such as Steve Reich, LaMonte Young, Claude Debussy, and Maurice Ravel have struggled against labels thrust upon them by critics or musicologists.  Seemingly in contrast, the group of New York avant-garde composers consisting of Mikel Rouse, Kyle Gann, Michael Gordon, and John Luther Adams have emerged as a self-branded group of "totalists."  Notably, it is Kyle Gann who wrote both the textbook chapter on Totalism and the official Grove Music Dictionary article.  Seemingly, this group aims to differentiate themselves from the minimalists with their aim to create both surface rhythmic vitality and a complex blanket of background activity.

I feel like I haven't listened to music that strikes me as odd or weird for years (my brain is warped maybe?), but while listening to Michael Gordon's piece "Four Kings Fight Five" I kept thinking, "This is really strange music.  I've never heard anything like this before."  Surely this feeling of oddity was compounded by the somewhat inadvertent realization that for the first time in a music history course, we were listening to a genre of music uniquely belonging to the generation of my parents.  The prevailing sense of metric struggle, pseudo rap/spoken lyrics in "Dennis Cleveland" by Mikel Rouse, and tonally fresh timbre created by the oboe, clarinet, percussion, electric guitar, two violins and viola in "Four Kings Fight Five"somewhat creepily reminded me of the popular music from the 1980s and 1990s.  The timbre achieved by Gordon in "Four Kings Fight Five" by combining oboe, clarinet, percussion, electric guitar, two violins and viola proved to be a stunning combination.  My ears tricked, I was convinced that the oboe had transformed into a cyborg or alien computer thrust upon the earth to subjugate my brain with its endless beeping and other electronica effects.  To hear a genuine example where the acoustic realm portrayed the complexity of the Age of the Computer was simultaneously gratifying, impressive, and difficult to sit through.

However, I was very surprised to hear the huge chasm of contrast when I switched to John Luther Adams' "Dream in White on White" and Larry Polanski's "Lonesome Road."  How could we have teleported to such a different sonic universe, but still read about it in the same chapter as the other self-proclaimed Totalists?  "Dream in White on White" presents a shimmering, high-range frequency, glistening world of frigid flatness with horizontal layers of charcoal, gray, blue, and white.  Ultimately I decided that this piece could fit into the Totalists' definition if the words "rhythm" were replaced with "overtones."  John Luther Adams creates a sound palette that at first listen seems light, subdued, but then the listen gradually realizes that the composer is presenting a tonal concept with great depth of color and overtones from the harmonic series.  Perhaps this composer ought to fall more in line with the Postmodernists or even Neo-Romantics since his music does carry a strong programmatic element.

Robert Rauschenberg's piece "Erased de Kooning," 1953

Robert Rauschenberg, White Painting, 1951. House paint on canvas, 72 x 72 in, four panels. Collection the Artist's Estate

In his provocative article “White Noise: Race and Erasure in the Cultural Avant-Garde,” musicologist Lloyd Whitesell posits that a rhetoric of negation, or that of cultural erasure, influences the work of American avant-garde artists. The fascination with nothingness that influenced Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage seeks to dissolve all historical and social contexts in a quest to return to a tabula rasa, or blank slate. Thus, according to Whitesell, John Cage’s goal of stating, expressing, and achieving “nothingness” originated as a subversive effort to “jettison the traditional systems of signification of Western musical culture.”

This resistance to the bourgeois aesthetic tastes of Western art may be viewed as a desire to return to [or rather, to impose] a cultural vanishing point. To solidify this point, Whitesell draws on sources spanning 150 years that comment on the artists’ desire to eradicate or destroy conventions in order to return to zero. Whitesell quotes composer Harold Budd writing in 1970: “Ever since (a long time ago) I’ve pushed and pushed toward zero: Running it all down, a kind of on-going process of removal. There’s an enormous difference by the way, between Monotony and Boredom. Boredom, it seems to me, is trying to make something interesting. Monotony is making nothing interesting” (172).


This desire to return to zero expressed by Rauschenberg’s “Erased de Kooning” reminds me of an old computer program drawing program for children, Kid Pix, that I used in elementary school circa 1994. I remember that the program featured many creature ways to return to zero, to that blank screen. You could choose between a dump truck graphic that drove onto the canvas and carted away your drawing one block at a time, or for the more impatient juvenile artist, you could opt for the stick of dynamite that blew everything into oblivion. When I think about John Cage or Ernest Hemingway’s famous quote that substitutes every noun in the Lord’s prayer with “nada,” I imagine choosing the dynamite icon, watching and hearing everything I had created explode, and above all, how fun and addicting this was. (We especially liked the option of filling the screen entirely with large, colorful dots because it produced a very satisfying underwater, bubbling sound effect and filled up the screen in a matter of seconds instead of troubling to actually draw something original. This of course enabled us to blow everything up even faster).


The unique and provocative aspect of Whitesell’s article lies in his argument that this effort to return to a cultural vanishing point carries with it a message tinged with racial underpinnings.  Whitesell argues that most white artists have engaged in a characteristically European practice of cultural appropriation, that is, drawing extensively from sources of exoticism or cultural “otherness” for inspiration.  His examples of this practice range from Pablo Picasso, to George Gershwin, to Steve Reich, to the black-faced minstrel shows of the nineteenth century.  


Whitesell’s argument achieves a unique perspective because he asks his readers to shift their focus from the subjects in the foreground (Ex: an “Uncle Tom” or other African American “messenger” character), to the underlying white background.  His reasoning is that white artists use black or culturally “different” subjects as a vehicle for self-description and self-reflection.  (Hence, our focus in Uncle Tom’s Cabin is really not Uncle Tom who exists as a rather flat character; Harriet Beecher Stowe’s motive in writing the novel becomes the focal point).  The practice of including an African American spiritual messenger is incredibly common in literature; in the movie “O brother! Where art thou?” we see a blind African-American man on a chain gang as the symbol for the Greek poet Homer, to name one.


Furthermore, Whitesell sees that avant-garde fixation on nothingness as a cultural fixation on European whiteness (though seldom acknowledged).  What makes the "background" blank is a paradox: the combination of perceiving cultural whiteness as both the neutral stasis and as the medium for expressing universal humanity.  The assumption that a white-man's symphony like Beethoven 9 serves as the "universal message for humanity" can be seen as an extension of a Wonder Bread white-bread culture.  


Therefore, Whitesell argues that the process of cultural erasure in musical styles like minimalism still follows the Euro-centric goals of goal-oriented process and spiritual transcendence.  While a common characteristic of minimalism is its overall "featurelessness," Whitesell argues that this is a subtle nod toward whiteness and a fixation on purity.  


Although Whitesell alludes to Western Christianity as a mechanism of European drive, I was surprised that he did not equate his theories about "whiteness" with the allegory of the bride of Christ as the perceived moral ideal.  To dress as a [virginal] bride in white is to proclaim a lack of blemish, of stain.  Frequently, this becomes an another unfair double standard for women in that white is also seen as the quintessence of female evilness, as depicted by the White Witch of Narnia and other wintry, sexually frigid, albeit powerful females.  This concept of venerating "blankness" seems exist as a predominately masculine European ideal.  Thus, to return to the blank is to return to the realm of neutrality, that is, the sphere of the European male.  Females who share this goal-oriented, expressionless, and somewhat ruthless tendency toward cultural erasure might be depicted as cold, soulless, and inhuman.

Crossover: The Avant-Garde in Rock

If you asked me a week ago to name a “crossover” work, I would probably have come up blank, but examples in the text about bands like the Beatles, Frank Zappa, Yes, and the Who branching out from their rock roots provided some relatable examples for me since I am familiar with the music of these mainstream groups.  

The Beatles' Stockhausen-inspired tape collage Revolution No. 9 from their "White Album" provides a good springboard for venturing into the crossover realm.

It amuses me to imagine great popular artists swarming the record stores to buy recordings from composers like Varése, Stockhausen, Penderecki, Webern, Cage, and Feldman, and then citing this music as a significant musical influence.  Frank Zappa drew extensively upon avant-garde artists like Varése for inspiration in addition to more popular sources, such as 1950's Rhythm and Blues.  A lifelong autodidactic learner, his self-taught compositional style reflects his unique fusion of jazz, orchestral musical, and musical concréte.  This video of "A Zappar Affair," which was recorded by the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra in 1984, reflects a style of orchestration that strongly alludes to Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring."  (Admittedly, the cover art is also very suggestive of a pre-modern, possibly pagan sacred rite.  The image of the bull summons mythological connotations as well).

A contemporary example includes the collaboration of Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood with Polish composer Penderecki.  The recent album includes Penderecki’s “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima” and Greenwood’s orchestral adaptation “Popcorn Superhet Receiver” and “48 Responses to Polymorphia.”  If you would like to check out this album, here is the link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00722ZH5W/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=ateasearadisit00&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=B00722ZH5W&adid=1X73485GH6PDARYR6A4G.

In the Classical world, we currently see accessible composers like Michael Daugherty writing music in a crossover style.  Daugherty's music employs parody and humor in pieces like "Dead Elvis."  "Dead Elvis for Solo Bassoon and Chamber Orchestra" (1993) includes bassoon, violin, Eb clarinet, trombone, contrabass, and percussion, and most notably requires the bassoonist to dress as an Elvis impersonator.  Works like "Dead Elvis" easily fall into the crossover category, but it is dubious that the spirit of this particular piece falls into the realm of the avant-garde.  On the other hand, I have chosen to include it in this blog since the theatrical elements, unique instrumentation, and use of irony allude to practices used by conceptual artists.  (As is the case with most post-1960s works, it is hard to imagine a "Dead Elvis" or a Michael Daugherty without predecessors like John Cage and George Rochberg).

Crossover: Interfaces with Rock and Jazz

Gann’s discussion about the intermixing of rock and jazz with the avant-garde was useful for a person like me who grew up with parents who never listened to popular music, particularly 1960s to 1980s rock.  Most often I feel intensely naive and that I am ignorant of any music that is the “popular” kind since we grew up hearing classical, jazz, and sacred music.  In other words, if a style of music could be found above the 91.5 range of the radio dial, I never heard it in my formative years (excluding the small slice of pop hits that I recognize from years of riding the school bus).  That being said, it was helpful for me at the beginning of the chapter “Interfaces with Rock and Jazz” to get a general overview about rock’s origins.

If we switch our focus from rock to jazz, it seems apparent that the trend has moved in an opposite direction.  As jazz has matured, its progressive artists ventured into avant-garde terrain in a manner that more closely resembles the European-influenced approach of Classical composers in first half of the Twentieth Century (or, before John Cage, in other words).  Rather than simplifying the harmonic language to favor rhythmic variation and minimalist techniques like rock-avant garde-classical composers like Laurie Anderson and Rhys Chatham, the jazz composers progressed into free jazz.  This jagged, jarring, harmonically dissonant style more closely resembles works by Babbit in its complexity and lack of accessibility. 

Here are videos of "O Superman" from Laurie Anderson and "Guitar Trio" from Rhys Chatham.

This is a huge contrast to the direction that jazz artists chose to embark at this time.  For example, an artist like Charles Mingus, seems to effortlessly flirt with the classical side and avant-garde while remaining an iconic jazz bassist and composer due to his multiethnic background, varied musical training, and abstract complexity in his jazz writing that seems to harken back to the rational serialism of post-tonality in the 1940s and 1950s.  

When one considers the racial injustices to which Mingus was subjected, it becomes obvious that this Chinese-American, African-American, Swedish-American man would have had an equal probability of achieving great success in the classical world as an orchestral cellist, bassist, or composer to what he actually attained as a jazz bassist.  It astounds me that an individual that is only 1/4 black was still known primarily as a black man in 1960s America.  My husband, who is a quarter Japanese, a quarter Dutch, and half Mexican seems, so varied in his ethnic background that it is inconceivable for him to be pigeonholed and discriminated against solely for being Japanese.  For this reason, a fusion of styles in Mingus’ music seems inevitable, expected, and organic, for this is the kind of music that a racially and socially unjust world might squeeze out of its most talented, albeit less privileged, individuals.

Is it possible that rock always provided a venue for the mainstream while jazz originally evolved as a cultural bastion for those relegated to the fringe?

Stream of Consciousness: What I Thought While Listening to George Rochberg's String Quartet No. 3 for the First Time

With the first fearsome, pesante chords of George Rochberg’s String Quartet No. 3, Part A: Introduzione-Fantasia; Part B: March, I had an immediate sense of passing through a corridor of music history into a new domain: leave exhibits A and B, minimalism and serialism behind, enter a new tonality.  This music immediately suggests a musical narrative and a grand fusion of international and historic styles and mediums.  The driving energy of the introduction gives way to plaintive suspensions and a questioning falling major second motive traded surreptitiously between the violins that seems to poke, to question, “So what?”  Here, extended techniques and effects like portamento gliss hold an equal footing with dissonant and consonant harmonies presented in a pseudo-Beethovian, pseudo-Ives chorale.  

Next, furious tutti chords played with successive down bows at the very frog invoke something between Shostakovich and a Bartókian flavor, but with a decidedly American inflection of voice.  This violin melody ascends in intervals similar to a Shostakovich theme, but ornamented with turns and trills more characteristic of Bartók or Kodály (this effect is heightened by the dissonant chords played by the lower strings in a dumka rhythm with an alternating ostinato bass).  Yet, the Eastern European and Slavic gestures soon just provide the top layer for a cello solo that richly sings a hymn tune much like the Protestant, Transcendalist-influenced music of Ives.  

This American inflection is especially apparent after a textural shift when the cello plays a percussive col legno rhythmic figure accompanied by a violin open-string bariolage that sounds like bluegrass.  This technique of blending multiple national styles while chiefly focusing on the  usage of tonally complex harmonic structures reminds me of the compositional process employed by Bartók in Contrasts for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano (1938) when he strove to combine traditional Hungarian elements associated with violinist Josef Szigeti with the distinctly American jazz style of clarinetist Benny Goodman.

Another salient American characteristic in this movement is the driving, relentless rhythmic energy.  This forward propulsion of the pulse reminds me of a shuffle (even when it's in a slow tempo, it still wants to move push ahead).  I would compare this feeling of pulse to a later piece for string quartet with a strong American popular bent, Johns's Alleged Book of Dances by John Adams.

The second movement, Part B-III. Variations, opens sublimely with another hymn-like tune in the lower strings while the first violinist sings in a high tessitura with chillingly expressive, wide vibrato.  This writing sounds aurally unique due to the huge gap in registers between the first violin and lower strings.  I vaguely remember a Beethoven quartet that prevalently used this technique (maybe I will remember which quartet in the middle of the night sometime, or I could go ask Dr. Radice…)  Poor first violin, stranded up so high in the stratosphere all alone with no helpful support from its other three colleagues... The chasm between these registers provides another surprising turn of development in the late twentieth century: two simultaneous and contrasting emotional timbres.  Who would have thunk we would end up back here?(!)  


This Theme and Variation movement definitely harkens back to Beethoven, Schubert, even Mahler’s long, sonorous phrases and the overall spirituality of the work.  However, the open spacing for the four voices preserves a sense of novelty throughout this movement; it sounds like the quartet members still like each other, but don’t want to get too close together.  This movement ends so shockingly consonant, it's unbelievable that it originated in the twentieth century at all!


Now, the third part of this quartet has to be quoting Shostakovich String Quartet No. 8, because the rhythm and melody contour is incredibly similar to several motives from that quartet.  Rochberg contrasts the disjunct voicing of the second part with a tight, compact, dense sound achieved by writing for all four voices in a close range with often harsh dissonances.  This movement takes many capricious turns, oscillating between snarky, fierce, playful, sentimental, and fervent.  Rochberg makes brilliant use of effects like col legno, Bartók pizzicato, and simply put, secco bowstrokes.  The way he combines col legno simultaneously with the Bartók pizzicato still sounds fresh.


The lyrical middle section evokes American nostalgia, a cinematic Hollywood sentimentality, and it just drips with emotional sap and all the wonderfulness to be found at Disneyland and Paris, combined.

Einstein on the Beach

The opening of Philip Glass’ Scene from Act 4, Scene 2: Bed from his opera Einstein on the Beach has always reminded me of the famous organ line from Bach’s Toccata and Fugue.  I think it is the elaborate melismas extended in an improvisatory web over a sustained pedal, suspensions, and delayed resolution that remind me of the opening bars of the Toccata.  Perhaps the instrumentation, a synthesizer, also serves as more than a passing reference to the organ used by Bach.  This resolution of the opening chord transitions to new thematic material that appears much like a subject in a fugue.  If you strip fugal technique of countersubjects, tonal answers, counterpoint, and even episodic development, this is one possibility of what you might get.  Our form here is open, with infinite possibilities really.  What separates a fantasia from minimalist opera?  Perhaps just about 300 years.

The entrance of a soprano senza vibrato and expressione glides smoothly over arpeggiated major triads, forming seamless, long curvatures that might be called phrases.  The contour of this melody begins placidly with a stepwise motion that soars unexpectedly in disjunct leaps.  This is not a vocal line marked by phrasal direction or diatonic leading tones; rather, the destiny of this melodic line plays a secondary role to the more primal interest of highlighting the gradual, timeless evolution of the triad.


Next, Scene from Act 3: Spaceship, also from Einstein on the Beach.  Once again the synthesizer’s arpeggiation of triads opens the scene, but this time the brief introduction seems to infer the mystical sonic universe of an underwater kingdom or a glistening Emerald City shimmering in the distance.  An abrupt textural change occurs with the entrance of the vocalists, signaling a pulsating, frenetic quickening of pulse and tempi.  A fascinating layering of timbres develops between the vocalists and electronic instruments, bringing to mind the texture of a richly ornamented silk scarf that has been discarded in a heap on the floor.  The spiraling, twisting layers of folds and wrinkles of this musical cloth provide the aural interest for listeners.


Two more distinct textural shifts occur, seeming to erupt as a pandemic of change.  A middle section contains a breathless, long passage of extended sixteenths notes racing tirelessly up and down the diatonic scale.  The doubling of harpsichord, saxophone and flute for this passage provides a captivating timbre that succeeds at providing an articulate wash of sound (something of a paradox, therefore, awesome).  This scalar motion ceases as abruptly as it began; it is immediately answered by a gyrating, energetic tutti passage marked by rapid arpeggiation and a groovy bass line that functions like a basso continuo for saxophone and harpsichord.  The rhythmic variation is fascinating, sublime, and impressive in its polyrhythmic complexities.


Glass even provides us with a satisfying tag at the end of the scene, played in unison by instruments as disparate as harpsichord and baritone saxophone.  A brief, unexpected caesura provides a tongue-in-cheek transition of silence that is answered by a final, frenzied choral outburst.  If this scene were a march, these last phrases are the stinger.


I was curious to see some actual video of the staging for the opera, so I have uploaded this short clip from the Universal Music Society's recent staging at the University of Michigan.  This includes interviews with Philip Glass as well.  

Minimalism: A Matter of Time, or The Theme of the Dawn of Eternal Time

Richard Serra's sculpture "A Matter of Time," Guggenheim Museum Bilbao 

The term minimalism seems to be as evasive and slippery for Steve Reich and Philip Glass in a similar way that being pigeonholed as "impressionists" irked Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.  Since this music has been associated with minimalist sculptor Richard Serra and painter Sol LeWitt, I have posted some of images of their works.

Here is some of Sol DeWitt's work:

I ended up spending a long time perusing images of Serra and LeWitt simply because these visual images seem so appealing, so clean, so fresh.  However, while it might create an interesting listening experience to absorb this visual medium simultaneously while hearing a minimalist music performance, I can understand why the term "minimalism" has seemed inadequate to composers.  Visual repetition often appears organic, balanced, cohesive, and ordered; hearing a sonic version of repetition that is phased, or seemingly "out of sync," becomes mesmerizing, psychedelic, entrancing, time altering. Add the many layers of rhythmic cells, sophisticated just tuning capable with synthesizers, and the assistance of electronic devices to provide digital delay and looping, and we have suddenly ventured off the cliff into a new territory entirely.

In regards to musicologist Leonard Meyer's theory of "reduced redundancy," musicologists now have ground to argue that the emergence of minimalism marks a drastic shift: the kind of shift that creates a demarcation of a new stylistic period.  Meyer's theory poses that each accepted musical period (Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, etc.) progresses through three developmental stages: preclassic, classic, and mannerist.  From a cursory glance at the surface of things, works belonging to the beginning of a style period (the preclassic stage) may appear naive, simplistic, and overly formulaic.  However, this preclassic stage also brings to the limelight material that is unprecedented.  Artists composing within this stylistic parameter have been forced by their immediate mannerist predecessors to create a vacuum.  Blow the field wide open, into oblivion.  With oblivion, take the nothingness, fill it up.  Fill it with something new...

We see a steady pendulum in music history, constantly ameliorating the decadence of the preceeding stylistic period.  Thus, Bach's fugal technique gives way to the accessibility of the Rococo; the masses of Palestrina (so many rules of counterpoint!) pave the way to the Florentine Camerata; the extravagance of Baroque opera leads to Gluck's opera reform.  Sometimes a composer may progress through these three stages within his or her own compositional career.  Consider how Stravinsky delved into his Neoclassic stage after his first romantic, colossal-scale works like "Le Sacre du Printemps."  

Here's a question: do we see the emergence of minimalism as a direct result of Milton Babbitt's extreme, paramount application of serialism, or as a question arising from the implications of John Cage's "nothingness" and "silence?"  Perhaps, John Cage answered Babbitt's sophisticated and elitist works with the "bomb" necessary to usher in a postmodern age.  Bombs, whether proactive or reactionary, are designed to obliterate and destroy.  But rising from the ashes of the nothingness creates the new.  Minimalism, like the dawn, poses a question.  

The question is this: where are we headed today?  

(Answer: anywhere!)

Feminist Blog

Pauline Oliveros is a composer whose work and life I would like to get to know better.  


It seems like women have not played a significant role in the discussion of the American avant-garde thus far, with the exception of passing remarks about earlier composers Amy Beach and Ruth Crawford.  Particularly in the post-World War II 1950's music scene, women are more than underrepresented; they are simply nonexistent!


We did not really discuss this, but as we looked at American serialists like Milton Babbit the tone of serious music tipped dangerously to a “masculine” extreme.  Previously, in the Classical and Romantic eras strong, testosterone-driven, rationally conceived passages were carefully balanced with more lyrical, sensuous secondary thematic counterparts.  Sonata form can be viewed as the small prism of a delicate dance between the sexes: neither party seeks to overthrow or overbalance the either, at least not until the tonic key swoops in during the recapitulation and swallows up the realm of the feminine secondary theme.  I just played the Schumann Violin Sonata in D minor on my graduate recital last night, and this piece serves as a good example of a male who displays a multifaceted [albeit mentally unstable] personality that encompasses both masculine and feminine traits.


However, with Milton Babbit and ultra-rationalism, this dualism and nuance disappeared entirely.  The “serious” music of the 1950s swung dangerously (in my opinion) to the extreme of favoring elite academicism and posed a threat to the sentimentality of expression as a viable tool in musical execution.  This was a conservative, conformist decade riddled with gender stereotypes and a male-dominated approach to art.


Thus, Oliveros' distinction of two types of creative processes shed light on some concepts I had already been pondering for some time.  In “The Contribution of Women Composers,” she distinguishes two modes of creativity: “(1) active, purposeful creativity, resulting from cognitive thought, deliberate acting upon or willful shaping of materials, and (2) receptive creativity, during which the artist is like a channel through which material flows and seems to shape itself.”  (Interestingly, this theory has now been corroborated by Nobel prizewinner Daniel Kahneman in his new book Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2011). 



She attributes this intuitive approach as a legitimate path that has too long been discredited and/or marginalized.


Artists who are locked into the analytical mode with little or no access to the intuitive mode are apt to produce one-sided works of art.  Certainly many of the totally determined, serial works of the post-war years seem to fit that category […] [We need] the recognition and re-evaluation of the intuitive mode as being equal to and as essential as the analytical mode for an expression of wholeness in creative work.  Oppression of women has also meant devaluation of intuition, which is culturally assigned to women’s roles (Gann 162-163).

The Politics of John Cage's "HPSCHD"

After reading Sara Haefeli’s stimulating and insightful article “HPSCHD, Gesamtkunstwerk, and Utopia,” I hardly know where to begin my discussion about the anarchist politics behind John Cage’s music.  First, her comparisons between John Cage’s philosophy to Wagner’s “total art” seem apparent when examining the poster for the premiere of HPSCHD at the University of Illinois Assembly Hall.  The poster depicts John Cage as a sort of mythic demi-god that is half Greek deity crossed with a modern American astronaut.  The halo, winged helmet, and winged sandals seem to suggest a 1960s Hermes destined to serve as messenger between the old and new: the portraits of Beethoven, Mozart, and Schumann seem to hover above his left shoulder just inches from the wielded sword that ushers in the “technology of the future” lying to the right of Cage’s feet.  Beethoven, Mozart, and Schumann’s heads sprout from a dragon’s body like snakes from Medusa’s head or the multiple-headed Lernaean Hydra famously slain by Hercules.


It is striking to depict a new work in mythic proportions.  To immediately draw this parallel implies both the self-assurance and egoism of the composer.  This image of dragon-slaying hero seems to boldly contrast the interview of a gentle, soft-spoken elderly John Cage discussing his philosophical views about the role of silence as music.  The goal of HPSCHD was to reach a sports-arena sized audience with a combination of multimedia devices including seven harpsichords, 208 computer-generated tapes, 64 slide projectors projecting 6,400 slides, and eight film projectors playing 40 films.  Mahler wrote his symphony for a thousand; John Cage writes a piece for an arena that seats 18,000. 

Cage conceived this piece on both micro and macro levels.  Computer music played tones from the octave, divided in a range of 2 to 56 microtones, as a representation for the “microscopic” level, while the visual images of outer space were meant to convey a “telescopic” level.  I love the first-hand account provided by University of Illinois musicology professor Nicholas Temperley who writes that the “area was full of (mostly) young people sitting or lounging.  Rising from them was a fog of smoke, and the smell of pot was beginning to reach the outer spaces.”  This atmosphere so characteristic of the 1960s seems suggestive of Cage’s ideal that a performance ought to be experienced on an individual level, meaning that each person who enters the arena will hear and process the experience in a different, unique way.  Furthermore, this individualized way of hearing and experiencing music correlates to John Cage’s political views of a pluralistic anarchy “in wish he wished to live: a world that allowed for personal freedom; a world of abundance; a world in which each perspective differed and all perspectives fared the same” (Heimbecker 478).

However, in the same way that Wagner’s anti-Semitism became a vehicle for the evils of the Third Reich and the Holocaust, John Cage scholars today are examining his lack of commentary on the civil rights movement that was actively unfolding on college campuses during this time.  That he writes often about his political views on poverty, anarchy, and technology but neglects to really reflect on the protest that occurred on the University of Illinois campus in 1968-1969 over the increased admission of African-American students seems suspicious and somewhat surprising.  In a 1970 interview, Cage comments, “Now the exciting thing about the blacks is, that they are going to be free of the laws [regarding harmony and composition], which were made by whites to protect them from the blacks, among other things, and to keep the blacks in slavery and to keep the white people more powerful.  Now, it won’t be good for the blacks to become powerful like the whites […] anymore than it would be good for the noises to become as harmonious and as devoted to counterpoint as the musical sounds.”  Although I cannot accuse John Cage of being hateful or spiteful in his words, I agree with Dr. Haefeli's assessment that Cage and others were involved in an "abstract kind of social revolution that could serve as an umbrella for all sorts of sub-issues."  For Cage in the 1960s, issues of poverty and the distribution of resources trumped racial equality as the paramount societal ills of the time.

Graphic Notation

I am including a recent example of graphic notation by a good friend of mine, composer Matt Aelmore, who is a Manhattan School of Music M.M. alum and current doctoral candidate in composition at the University of Pittsburgh.  His piece around 6:30 uses an actual floor plan as the score for the piece.  (This is coming from the same guy who composed the piece Quartet for the Time Being for Violin, Bass Clarinet, Piano, and Vibes for Terrance and me back in 2009 at Wichita State University).  Here is the link to Matt's website: http://mattaelmore.bandcamp.com/releases.  The piece is for electronics, oboe, and voice.  He attributes the design of the score to Patrick Waldo.

For my own graphic notation project, I stewed and fretted for weeks.  Nothing clever, even plausible, came to mind until the middle of last night (of course!)  This was a positive thing; I had expected to have no creative inspiration until I got in the shower before class this morning, since all of my best thinking takes place in the shower.

I am writing a performance piece called Ronald that is more about the recycling process than just using recycled materials.  The instruments are mostly derived from items contained in a McDonald's Happy Meal.  The performers will use some obvious instruments, such as drinking straws cut into oboe reeds, and some more odd mediums such as throwing chicken nuggets into a large piece of cardboard covered entirely with aluminum foil.  The soprano will play the central role in the piece as she simultaneously eats a hamburger while performing slogans with many histrionic melismas (all with her mouth full, of course).  Other key performers will slurp and gargle soft drinks, and may also choose to crush chunks of ice between their teeth.  They can, however, alternatively opt to throw and hurl chunks of ice into resonant objects.  Other auxiliary instruments may include crinkling, crumpling, rustling, shaking, and flattening sandwich wrappers and blowing up the paper bag and popping it.

In order to represent Ronald McDonald (for whom this piece is named), I would like remaining performers to provide clown props of their choice.  These sounds should be used to signify the clown, Ronald McDonald, being tickled by a walrus and then slowly starving to death at the bottom of a pit.

The last performer will serve as an allegory for the digestive system.  Much belching is encouraged, no, applauded.        

Smelling Music

It is strange that we accept a vast plethora of sound effects in our movie soundtracks, but that the idea of attending a concert simply for an opportunity to bask in sounds seems repellant to many people.  Morton Feldman’s goal of presenting sonorities as significant, free-standing entities can seem radical since he did not trouble himself with sending his audience a musical message.  Music is broadly applied as a communication tool; yet, it can also serve as an entry point into a realm where interpreting transitions to meditation, meaning toward being, and transmitting into absorbing.

If we were to enter a concert hall with the intention of placating the mind and spirit, we might experience Feldman’s music in the way that the earth accepts the drops of rain.  In this joyful passivity, questions of origin and meaning are irrelevant as the cool moisture slowly seeps in through the crusty, cracked surface and slowly permeates to deep, dank roots.  If we could learn to “smell” this music, we could progress.  Who questions the message behind the scent of a fragrant flower, dirty diaper, or inviting kitchen as it enters the nostrils?  The sense of smell relates entirely to the way in which we experience the scent.  Isn’t it strange how a certain smell can trigger an instantaneous burst of nostalgia?  Our brains are so well-connected and adept at this type of neurological absorption, I believe that this same possibility of opportunity lies within the way we listen.  


In his 1964 interview with Robert Ashley, Feldman speaks freely about the doctrinaire approach that many young composers acquire as they approach great aesthetic works and seek to adapt them for their own use.  Feldman argues that “the intention, the aesthetic of the work may be a complete mystery to this young composer.  But in the form of politics it is not a mystery.  It is very concrete.”  For this reason, Feldman describes a process in which the original spirituality and conception of a work gets traded for a humanized (tangible?) rationale that allows it to enter a sphere of broader circulation and recognition.  He compares this to the proselytizing role of religion, in which the “divine being” is slowly traded for a stringent, canonized doctrine.  As support for this analogy, Feldman offers the example of the revisionist composer who gains power by surrounding himself or herself with eager young adherents.  This, he argues, is how “schools of thought” are born.


Feldman writes that these revisionists are often perceived by the public as fanatics.  However, he objects strongly to this, saying instead that “what they are fanatic about is amazing to me, because they have created nothing new.”  He cites moments in history when artists have produced original works through the “complete inner security to work with that which was unknown to them,” using John Cage and 1950's painters as examples.  His tone is honest, frank as he states that he never composed his music based on ideas; rather, he writes “unfortunately for most people who pursue art, ideas become their opium.”


I am struck by a common thread running through this course: those who embark on an experimental path invariably pursue an inner impulse that propels them forward to unknown territories for the sheer purpose of pursuing something that brings sheer delight and inner fulfillment.  This self-assuredness is so remarkable that it is perhaps the most salient characteristic of the avant-garde in its purist form.  

John Cage: Aftershocks, Part 2

John Cage's Collaborators


John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham are so inextricably linked that a simple YouTube search for videos of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company also yields numerous hits of John Cage interviews, particularly those in which he discusses his philosophy about music.  Since Cage and Cunningham's decades-long relationship remains one of the most artistic partnerships of the twentieth century, I felt that the juxtaposition of these two videos provides a salient argument for Cage's lasting influence.

Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Beach Birds

John Cage interview in which he shares his views about silence and "the activity of sound."

John Cage's Successors

I was curious to discover how composers belonging to the generation directly following Cage continue to perceive his legacy.  Here is John Adam's review, The Zen of Silence, from the November 19, 2010, edition of the New York Times.  This article is a book review about Kenneth Silverman's biography, Being Again: A Biography of John Cage.  In the article, John Adams compares the influence of Cage's writing, especially in his Silence essays, to "the musical equivalent of the young Martin Luther’s nailing his theses to the door of the Wittenberg church."  

However, Adams also continues to assert that the scholarship focusing on Cage has evolved into a "small industry."  Adams readily admits that while he has been deeply influenced by Cage, he no longer continues to listen to his music.  In the review, Adams insinuates his disagreement with some musicologists' opinion that Cage follows Stravinsky as the twentieth century's most influential composer.  On the contrary, Adams writes that "[h]e has gone from being unfairly considered a fool and a charlatan to an equally unreasonable status as sacred cow."  In this vein of thought, Adams argues that Cage is well on his way to replacing/joining past artists like James Joyce as a favored topic of discourse for college humanities departments.

Do we see John Cage's legacy already moving into this sphere of academia, or are his influences much broader in scope and reach?  

John Cage: Aftershocks

John Cage's Collaborators

Collage Technique/Neo-Dadaism

Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008): Painter; Cage's colleague at Black Mountain College

“I don’t want a picture to look like something it isn’t.  I want it to look like something it is.  And I think a picture is more like the real world when it’s made out of the real world.”

Untitled, 1955

Raushenberg used everyday objects to create conceptual art, drawing on John Cage's use of "silence" in music as a device for highlighting the ambient sounds at any given moment in time.

Collage from a stuffed goat, tire, tennis ball, and paint

Nabisco Shredded Wheat (Cardboard), 1971, Gagosian Gallery

This piece, which Rauschenberg created as a wall hanging from cardboard Nabisco boxes, amuses me because it reminds me of my college roommate.  Having little or no knowledge of John Cage or Rauschenberg's work, she formed a habit of saving all kinds of trash and taping it to her dorm wall for decoration.  Hundreds of bottle caps, brown paper bags, wads of foil, coffee warmers, and used food wrappers adorned her wall in a carefully arranged, though haphazardly conceived, display.  We moved to two different apartments the following years; both times, this collection of recycled art followed.  I remember coming home one day to discover an enormous cardboard banana hanging from our ceiling.  "I looked up, and it bothered me that nothing was there, so I decided that we must have a banana here," she explained.  

This reuse of recycled, everyday objects as art even extended to organic material: she had an attachment to gourds and developed a habit of keeping rotten pumpkins in our apartment for months.  All of these pumpkins were named "Fred" and displayed beneath a mantle covered with dead rose petals, offset by the large kite fashioned from used Chipotle bags.  When Fred(s) began to get stinky, she would say, "Oh no, I am never going to throw Fred away.  He has a soul."

Interestingly, Rauschenberg also used recycled materials as art.  When I saw this piece, Dylaby Combine Painting (1962), the concept seemed identical to that of my roommate.  This work features a Coca Cola advertisement and a wooden skateboard.

Atonality and the European Influence

(Béla Bartók, in route to America, 1940)

The tragedy of World War II effectively bottlenecked Europe’s composers into the trajectory of American immigration.  Within the insulated environment of American universities and the rising tide of college students resulting from the passage of the GI Bill, serialists found it convenient to proselytize the twelve-tone method to a younger generation of composers.  Milton Babbit, who literally met Schoenberg in New York City as soon as he stepped off the boat, rose to prominence as the chief American adherent (apostle?) to Schoenberg’s method.

I am struck, firstly, by the pronounced self-awareness, intentionalism, and egoism of Schoenberg’s attitude in 1921 upon his creation of the twelve-tone method.  He wrote, “Today I have discovered something which will ensure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years.”  In Cowell, we observed a true “discovery” based on acoustical properties, physics, and the harmonic series; he did not, however, frame his experimentalism in an urgent evangelical fervor.  Similarly, Harry Partch and Ben Johnston arrived at scientifically-supported conclusions that favored a broader system of tuning than equal temperament, but they did not emerge as endless self-promoters.  That Schoenberg held this attitude as early as 1921 indicates that his musical philosophy was reactionary, was in fact directly opposed to post-Romantic chromaticism and diatonic tonalities.

Some of us have dabbled in experimentalism for the sake of exploring the unknown with our focus trained on the quest or process of discovery over indoctrination.  In contrast, Schoenberg was completely intentional in his blitzkrieg, proudly waving the emblematic definition of avant-garde as his banner: a soldier on the front lines who goes ahead of the pack blazing new paths, clearing the way for the followers. 

Milton Babbit, a significant “follower” in the story of serialism, emerges as a brilliant mind, able to teach both mathematics and composition at Princeton (this is kind of a big deal).  Similar to Messiaen and Elliot Carter, Babbit broadened his application of serialist techniques to embrace rhythm and time.  (The Europeans seemed to limit themselves mostly to a pitch-based approach to the twelve-tone method.)  In Babbit, we also see another self-promoter, in a way.  His ultra-rationalist philosophy argues that an intellectual composer should have the advanced terminology in his or her music that a top scientist or mathematician might also be expected to demonstrate in his or her field of expertise.  The general public doesn’t need to understand rocket science; why shouldn’t this apply to music as well?  

However, in Babbit’s music there lies a coldness, a sterility.  This unfeeling, calculating approach is also emphatically intentional. Babbit actually believed that music plays no role in moving the emotions, a notion in opposition to the Ancient Greek philosophy that music must move the Ethos.  Babbit emerged as the composer who openly preferred electronic music for its perfect accuracy and abilities of computation; human machines are much flawed, predisposed to alleged emotional weaknesses.  Human performances, always, are characterized by mistakes.

The Abuse of Beauty

In the article “The Abuse of Beauty,” art critic Arthur C. Danto observes that in the present period, no constraints govern or define the way that a piece of art looks [or, in our case, sounds].  He chooses to open his article with a shocking statement from composer Karlheinz Stockhausen that refers to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center as “the greatest work of art ever.”  Although Danto does follow this quotation with the acknowledgement that Stockhausen’s flagrant remark was condemned by most and brought nearly universal disgrace to the composer, Dante’s article seemingly proceeds to gloss over any implications of Stockhausen’s proclamation and instead launches a lengthy comparison of former art critics’ aesthetic theories about the role of beauty in art.

I read for many pages with the assumption that Danto would return to Stockhausen and offer some sort of explanation, but he never really addresses the content or implications of Stockhausen’s remarks.  Rather, it seems that Danto choose to include such a bold, offensive allegation to reinforce the aesthetic theory introduced by Theodor Adorno in the 1960s that argues “[i]t is self-evient that nothing concerning art is self-evident any more, not its inner life, not its relation to the world, not even its right to exist” (Aesthetic Theory, 1969).  Is Danto implying that Stockhausen can label the catastrophe of 9/11 as art simply because it occurred?  It seems Stockhausen most likely sought to capitalize on the immense reaction and emotional outpouring that followed in the days and years in the wake of the terrorist attack.  From Stockhausen’s perspective, the World Trade Center attack could be called “great” because its effects are colossal.  We frequently assign the word “great” to words with very negative connotations: the Great Depression, the Great War to End All Wars.  The public might have reacted to Stockhausen’s words differently if he had instead said, “the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center is, for the American people, an event of maximum impact.  The shock of the event cannot be expunged by any person who witnessed that day.  In this regard, the terrorist attack has affected us at the deepest of all levels, something that art strives to reveal to us in its most basic, primal function.” 

In the course of the article, Danto highlights how traumatic world events have affected aesthetic theorists/philosophers’ perspectives about beauty in art.  He acknowledges how the Holocaust colored Adorno’s perceptions similarly to the reaction of Dadaism following WWI.  For me, the reaction to Stockhausen’s phrase “the greatest work of art ever” implies that the American public, long exposed to abstract, Expressionist, Dadaism, conceptual art, etc., still continues to equate “great” art with a positive connotation.  I think that our acceptance of ugliness has dramatically expanded since the Victorian and Edwardian Ages, even for the general public.  We accept Picasso’s “The Agony of War” as a great work because he painted it as a reaction to World War I’s horrors; we can discern a moral purpose or politically-motivated agenda behind Picasso’s work.  Even an untrained observer of this art (like myself) can appreciate it because the meaning behind it is powerful.  

Conceptual art and minimalism may register as odd to many people, but the feeling that contemporary art can be strange is very different than entirely condemning the works.  When I have visited contemporary art museums, particularly La Reina Sofía in Madrid, I often feel bewildered and secretly guilty that whatever emotional reaction that I might have to a piece of art might be deemed inappropriate.  Similarly, I remember staring at a Minimalist piece at the Dallas  Art Museum of a giant, yellow, egg-shaped canvas that had hundreds of holes bored into it symbolizing “humankind’s attempts to find God.”  I stood there for eight minutes before reading the plaque thinking about a giant piece of Swiss cheese; I felt so ashamed when I read the artist’s true intentions for the piece.  I think that today people are very likely to keep their reactions to avant-garde art quietly to themselves; this is the “Emperor’s new clothes” phenomenon.  “If this artist is willing to collect his own poop and display it in this exhibit, than I am unworthy to assign any judgment to this piece because his/her motive for doing so is far outside the realm of my understanding.”  I think a significant reaction to avant-garde works of our contemporary age is shame, probably even more than disgust.  Danto acknowledges that the general public is very astute; thus, the universal appreciation for the Vietnam War Memorial should serve as a commonplace, not exceptional, example of the human reaction to art.

I think that currently we long for the inclusion of beauty in art as one of many tools for expressing the human condition.  We do not desire a sterile, kitschy or standardized style that idolizes beauty above reality, but it is unnatural to deny all positive connotations an equal footing at the table simply because of a nihilistic trend.  Danto refers to beauty as a means, but not the end, in art.  He provides an example of Gothic cathedrals, writing, “Beauty was not the rainbow that awaited us as the reward of sustained looking […] The point was not to stand in front of the church and gape at its ornamentation, but to enter the church, the beauty being the bait, as it so often is in entering into sexual relationships” (45).  In a pluralist, complicated, fast-paced world, I think that we long for an equally complex and nuanced art that testifies to the havoc and multi-faceted nature of modernity.

Danto, Arthur C. “The Abuse of Beauty” Daedalus 131.4 (Fall 2002): 35-56. JSTOR. 

The Airwaves of the New Deal

I recently posted about the Ultramodern composers of the 1920s who fell roughly into two camps: the Pan American Composers and the better funded, European-influenced League of Composers.  When we change our focus to the rise of populism during the Great Depression, I think it is essential to consider the American classical music scene at-large during this time.  With the rampant spread of radio broadcasts, Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini led performances by the NBC Symphony that brought unprecedented exposure of symphonic works into American homes.  Many critics, including Alex Ross in The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (2007), have pointed out Toscanini’s lack of attention to American and, in particular, American contemporary music.  Toscanini’s significant broadcasts invariably included canonic standards of Italian opera, standard Romantic symphonic works, all-Wagner broadcasts, and an occasional venture into contemporary music of the era, such as the American premiere of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 in 1942.  Some of the American new works from the New Deal period premiered by Toscanini on public radio include Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings in 1938; Ferde Grofé’s Grand Canyon Suite (1945); George Gershwin’s An American in Paris and Rhapsody in Blue with Benny Goodman as soloist; Copland’s El Salón México; and the marches of John Philip Sousa.  

It is no small wonder, then, why Americans have developed such a firmly entrenched and crystallized symphonic canon.  Even our most beloved American works from iconic composers like Copland and Gershwin can be directly traced to Toscanini’s programming during the New Deal.  Ironically, the same works that Americans discovered via radio broadcast two generations ago now successfully continue to sell tickets for pops concerts (the same concerts that many of the musicians who perform them privately consider to be second-tier or “light” in scope and artistic merit).  If the music that Americans know and endear falls into such a narrow category -- with a decided bent against contemporary and especially avant-garde works -- what would have happened to the reception, funding, and appreciation for American instrumental music if it had been Sergei Koussevitsky of the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducting the NBC orchestra rather than Toscanini?

Would the “average” American recognize Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, Roy Harris’ Symphony No. 3 or Messiaen’s Turangalila as readily as Rhapsody in Blue?  

Further still, how would the support for new music look different today if even those composers working on the fringe, such as the Pan American composers, had been included as well?

Would we have need for forums such as this?  http://www.artisatrocity.com

(This website is actually satirical, though there is no indication of this on the site).