aworks :: "new" american classical music

Symphony No. 2 (Cello Symphony) (1985). Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

Richard Taruskin, responding in The Musical Times to the book Arnold Schoenberg's journey by Allen Shawn (brother of Wallace Shawn), discusses the notion of impersonally pursuing the advancement of art, even if that sacrifices the audience. As a recent example, he mentions how Paul Griffiths writing in The New Yorker in 1993:

...sought to discredit a new work (Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Second Symphony) that had enjoyed audience acclaim by declaring that it did not 'add anything to the universe of musical possibility'.

Her Symphony No. 1 won the Pulitzer Prize in 1983, the first such award to a woman.

Peter Bates reviews the Louisville Orchestra recording of the Second Symphony and says that it proves her first symphony was not a "fluke."

In 1985: Ellen Taaffe Zwilich also wrote her Concerto Grosso. Roger Sessions, her teacher, died. New Coke was released, and quickly failed as a product.

The Hours (2002). Philip Glass [Kerry]

Via TV's C-SPAN, tonight's Democratic National Convention played a video about a fire fighting tragedy in Worcester, Massachusetts and how John Kerry provided support to the family and survivors.  The video used music by Philip Glass from the movie The Hours, specifically Why Does Someone Have to Die.

Joan and the Bells (1998). Gordon Getty

The Russian National Orchestra, on a US tour, played Gordon Getty's Joan and the Bells at UC Berkeley. As on the recording, soloists were American Lisa Delan and Russian Vladimir Chernov. Joshua Kosman reviews:

The afternoon's most thoroughly satisfying offering came courtesy of the Bay Area's Gordon Getty, whose 20-minute cantata "Joan and the Bells" preceded intermission. In this skillfully wrought triptych, Getty uses a few swift dramatic strokes to conjure up Joan of Arc's trial, internal anguish and execution.

Gordon Getty is the son of J. Paul Getty, Sr, of Getty Oil fame.

Organum, for Orchestra (1944-47). Carl Ruggles

In Essential Cowell: Selected Writings on Music by Henry Cowell 1921-1964, Cowell describes his friendship with Carl Ruggles and calls him "irascible, lovable, honest, sturdy, original, slow-working, deeply emotional, self-assured, and intelligent." As an example, he tells how it was important for Ruggles to rank composers by historical importance and they spent many hours debating if Tchaikovsky was thirteenth or fourteenth. He also, not surprisingly, praises Ruggles for his mastery of dissonance.

Cowell also does a short analysis of Ruggles' Organum and points out how the melody line does not repeat the same note too soon, how despite the composer's tendencies the final chord must be less dissonant if not consonant, and how an example of dissonant counterpoint works.

He finishes by suggesting that Ruggles is in a similar position to Anton Webern, in having written a small number of short, dense works, albeit with more melodic flow.

Wikipedia on the concept of organum here. An MP3 example of organum here.

The Wound-Dresser, for baritone voice and orchestra (1988). John Adams

In the Guardian, James Fenton writes on poetry in music, specifically the poetry of Walt Whitman. Fenton says that John Adams has emphasized understanding in his The Wound-Dresser and that the text Adams used is superior to that chosen by Ralph Vaughan Williams in his Sea Symphony.

Night Fantasies (1980). Elliott Carter. [Aimard]

Richard Dyer, in the Boston Globe, reviews a Tanglewood concert by Pierre-Laurent Aimard which included Elliott Carter's Night Fantasies:

Now a whole new generation is tackling the piece and finding different things in it, chasing different chimeras. Aimard's performance was notable for its tints, washes, and bold strokes of color -- the work sounded like a last, unstable phantasmagoria of impressionism.

Timbral Assault (1987). Charlemagne Palestine

I haven't heard the Godbear CD by Charlemagne Palestine (with the work Timbral Assault among others). However, I found the CD in one of the many lists presumably from Paul Morley, in relation to his book I haven't read titled Words and Music (via Little Raindrops).

“Has pop burnt itself out? Paul Morley, author of the acclaimed memoir Nothing, takes the reader on an epic drive through the history of music to find out. The drive is inspired by the video for Kylie Minogue’s hit single ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’; it’s as if Kylie is driving towards a virtual city built of sound & ideas.

A succession of celebrities, geniuses and other protagonists led by Madonna, Kraftwerk, Brian Eno, Erik Satie, John Cage & Wittgenstein appear in Kylie’s car to give their points of view. Detours & sights along the way include Missy Elliott, Jarvis Cocker, Eminem, Human League, Radiohead, Lou Reed, Now! That’s What I Call Music, Ornette Coleman and the ghost of Elvis Presley.

City of Sound found the book inferior to Anthony Lane's Nobody's Perfect, of all things.

From the web page of lists (which I assume come from Morley's book), here's a subset of what I've heard that I would recommend. In hindsight, listening and liking all this pop music has likely skewed my classical preferences, and probably leads to Charlemagne Palestine. Also keep in mind music like Edgard Varese, Coltrane's Meditations or The Monkees are for specialists only...

File Under Popular Music (1) – 100 Greatest Albums of All Time
o Aphex Twin – Selected Ambient Works Vol II
o Captain Beefheart – Trout Mask Replica
o Velvet Underground – Live 1969

File Under Popular Music (2) – 100 Greatest Albums of All Time
o Boards of Canada – Music Has the Right to Children
o Bowie, David – Low
o Bryars, Gavin – Sinking of the Titanic
o Sinatra, Nancy – Greatest Hits
o Who - Sell Out

File Under Popular Music (3) – 100 Greatest Albums
o Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath
o Cooder, Ry – Paradise & Lunch
o Neu! – Neu!
o Nirvana – Nevermind
o Velvet Underground - & Nico

File Under Popular Music (4) – 100 or More Greatest Albums
o Pink Floyd – Meddle
o B 52s – B 52s
o Orb – Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld
o Monkees – Monkees
o King, BB – Live at the Regal

88 Albums - If You Think Radiohead’s Kid A is Weird, Then You Should Really Hunt This Music Down
o Sonic Youth – Goodbye 20th Century
o Varese, Edgard – Arcana/Ameriques/Ionisation
o Arvo Pärt – Tabula Rasa
o Hendrix, Jimi – Are You Experienced?
o Ligeti, Gyorgy – Lux Aetena
o Pablo, Augustus – King Tubby Meets Roots Rockers Uptown
o Conrad, Tony/La Monte Young/John Cale – Inside the Dream Syndicate Vol 1
o Palestine, Charlemagne – Schlingen Blangen
o Coltrane, John – Meditations

110 Other Albums to Think About if you Think That Radiohead’s Kid A is Really Weird
o Volans, Kevin – Cover Him with Grass
o Partch, Harry – Delusion of the Fury
o Cowell, Henry – Mosaic

121 Songs That Explain Why Kraftwerk are Kraftwerk & Just How & Where & When Their Influence Spread & Turned
o Pet Shop Boys – West End Girls
o Soft Cell – Tainted Love
o Anderson, Laurie – O, Superman
o Radiohead – Idioteque
o Orb – Little Fluffy Clouds
o Aphex Twin – Acid Avid Jam Shred
o Orbit, William – Water from a Leaf Vine
o Hancock, Herbie – Rockit

Greatest Pop Single of All Time (210)
o Clark, Petula – Downtown
o Turtles – Happy Together
o Morrissey – Every Day is Like Sunday
o Beck – Loser
o Police – Walking on the Moon
o Chemical Brothers – Block Rockin’ Beats
o Flying Lizards – Money
o Garbage – Stupid Girl
o Beastie Boys – Sabotage
o Wonder, Stevie – Superstition
o Rufus – Tell Me Something Good
o Surfaris – Wipe Out
o Cornershop – Brimful of Asha
o Soundgarden – Black Hole Sun

Still File Under Popular Music: 100 Greatest Albums of All Time
o Boards of Canada – Geogaddi
o Dreyblatt, Arnold – Adding Machine
o FC Kahuna – Machine Says Yes
o Various Artists – Incursions in Illbient

And for those who read this far, a couple quotes about Timbral Assault. Jason Morehead:

On "Timbral Assault," you're standing inside a tower as the bells above chime out their song, each one fighting to be heard, but everything coming together in a sound My Bloody Valentine might dream of. The sounds begin to sway and careen and the walls begin to pulse and shift as Palestine dives deeper and deeper into the mass he creates.

Sound Projector:

Palestine doubted if the piano alone would be capable of unleashing these powers, until he heard what a Bosendorfer grand could do. Before that connection - one that could only be made by physical contact - he supposed the answer lay in electronic music, his beloved carillons he played with his feet in church, or even simply in loud volume. Then he hit those piano keys and depressed the pedals, and learned to live in the overtones.

orangejazz:

There is simply nothing like this at all. I don't want to come off too technical, but what starts off as a piano becomes a room of swirling sounds with so many different combinations and ideas that change soley on where your head is placed. It becomes tangible and physical sound. It's by far the most spiritual music I've ever heard.

Men and Mountains (1924/36). Carl Ruggles

I'm reading A Union of Diversities: Style in the Music of Charles Ives by Larry Starr as well as Essential Cowell: Selected Writings on Music by Henry Cowell 1921-1964 edited by Dick Higgins. And today, not coincidentally, I was listening to the Christoph Von Dohnanyi recording of the music of Ives, Carl Ruggles, and Ruth Crawford Seeger. While listening to Sun-Treader and Men and Mountains by Ruggles, I was thinking how Ives and Cowell and their music are, relatively speaking, well-known and yet, who knows much about Ruggles?

Then, I find out that the first edition of Cowell's New Music Quarterly, published to promote modern music at the time, contained the score for Ruggles' Men and Mountains. And as we know, Charles Ives helped subsidize the publication from his insurance industry wealth.

To continue the circle, Cowell and his wife Sidney went on to write the book about the music of Charles Ives. And to return to the early days of Henry Cowell, he studied at age seventeen with Charles Seeger, the husband of Ruth Crawford Seeger (mentioned above), at UC Berkeley.

Appropriately, Michael Broyles has a thesis that the American musical mavericks greatly benefited from a community of like-minded composers, despite the stereotype of them being rugged individualists.

To conclude, Thomas Herlin's Ruggles web site has a good quote:

Charles Ives is said to have said to a heckler of Ruggles's music: "When you hear strong masculine music like this, get up and use your ears like a man!"

Disclaimers: I never finished reading Cowell's seminal New Musical Resources. I did finish Broyles' Mavericks and Other Traditions in American Music. I just read that Cowell taught George Gershwin and Alan Hovhaness; I knew he taught John Cage, Lou Harrison, and Burt Bacharach. Today's post originated in San Jose .

Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986). John Adams

On a trombone message board, a high school trombonist asks for help memorizing  her marching band program that includes John Adams' The Chairman Dances and A Short Ride in a Fast Machine.  She says:

The Short Ride part is basically just a bunch of random notes for a long time.

We wish her luck.

Addendum:
• Full Real Audio stream (small orchestra version) via Boosey & Hawkes
• Friendly drawing of John Adams
• Serious picture of John Adams as he contemplates writing strange trombone parts
• PDF scores
• The Short Ride technical notes indicate synthesizers are optional. 

The Manufacture of Tangled Ivory (1995). Annie Gosfield

Ok, my week of listening to five library CDs was renewed for an extra week, which is now up. And what do I conclude? There is a tremendous amount of varied American music out there.

In the middle of Greg Sandow's comments about the Pulitzer, he points out that no new works have had major cultural impact since maybe Philip Glass and his Einstein on the Beach. Independent of the quality of what is being written, I think this is partially due to our being in an era of diversity and unraveling without a predominant, conformist culture, resulting in an almost overwhelming number of diverse choices.

With twenty-six works in hand, I never made it completely through all five CDs. The experience was one of oscillating between being intrigued in what I was hearing and being faced with overwhelming options, especially stylistically. As a result, no work was a breakthrough in my listening experience. There were works I liked and want to hear again e.g. Lang's Cheating, Lying, Stealing, Rzewski's De Profundis, and Nancarrow's Three 2-part Studies, and there are composers who are probably better appreciated live i.e. Alvin Lucier. I still don't know what to make of the piano music of George Antheil. Inspired by Conlon Nancarrow, I read Kyle Gann's article on him in the New Grove Dictionary of Music which mentioned the composer's rhythmic tools (ostinato, isorhythm, tempo canon, and acceleration) as well as the fact that this maverick's father was mayor of Texarkana, Arkansas. I also spent a little time untangling the various John Adams.

Finally, I developed some appreciation for Lisa Moore and Herbert Henck as performers. Normally, I am more interested in the composition than the artist performing it, but in both their cases, I think they showed these sometimes difficult works at their best.

All of which is a lead-in to The Manufacture of Tangled Ivories by Annie Gosfield on the Bang on the Can "best of" CD. In keeping with the theme of diversity, this piece itself shows that trend. It has Asian and Middle Eastern allusions as well as parts that remind me of player piano as well as La Monte Young having a particularly intense day (I mean all of that in a positive way). And in the original Sony liner notes by Gosfield:

In fact, the piece incorporates metallic, factory sounds, like some of the music of the Russian avant-gard composers from the early part of the century. That's where 'manufacture' comes from. I was also thinking somewhat about my grandmother, who moved from Poland to the Lower East Side in New York at about the same time these composers were working in Russia, and who worked in sweatshops and factories...

I think Lisa Moore is playing keyboard on this piece, in some kind of alternate tuning.

26 12 from the Library: Intro & Lucier Lang Antheil Rzewski Adams Lucier Nancarrow Antheil Lucier Lucier Rzewski Gosfield