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).
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Thursday, March 8, 2012
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
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.
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.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
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 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.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)