aworks :: "new" american classical music

Desérts (1950-54). Edgard Varese

While listening to a Charles Ives track last month, I realized that this constant stream of disparate music via the iPod was beginning to overwhelm my comprehension. It was if it was an extended version of that Police MP3 where all those hits are multi-tracked on top of each other in a Cageian way. Interesting but cumulatively deadly.  To compensate, I juggled my iTunes smart playlists to inject all tracks by a selected composer (although not all at once of course). For a couple weeks, that meant the 96 Aaron Copland tracks I own -- melodies, brash brass, poignant woodwinds, poignant brass, etc. All in all, a more coherent and mostly pleasurable experience. (except maybe Symphonic Ode and a poor recording of Rodeo).

Ok, after the Adams channeling Varèse quote ("I would say that my guardian angel is composer Edgar Varèse because, for me, Varèse’s music was the original post-nuclear holocaust sound.”), next up as featured composer was Edgard Varèse. After a week or so of his works, I found I needed a break; not just from Varèse's music but from all music. Recovering two days later, I'm back listening to Déserts and liking it. Alex Ross calls his music "earsplitting" in the article on Doctor Atomic in the new New Yorker. We'll see what the long-term effects of intense exposure to such modernism turn out to be.

I'm also reading the composer's recent biography by pop music author Alan Clayson. The father/son relationship was dysfunctional, to say the least. Regarding his teacher Vincent d'Indy:

Any concordat once established with d'Indy had deteriorated to the level at which the teacher was deemed by the provocative Varèse as being of the same authoritarian kidney as his father, as well as with the same short-sightedness, mental sluggishness, and -- if Edgard was feeling especially uncharitable -- cloth-eared ignorance.

Maybe this partially explains why we don't hear Copland-esque life-affirming melodies from Edgard...

Two Amazon-related pieces of trivia: the one statistically improbable phrase in the Clayson book is "organised sound" and the sales rank for the Chailly complete works of the composer is a surprising #9,984. That's not very long in "long tail" terms.

Doctor Atomic (2005). John Adams /quotes/

In the making of 'Doctor Atomic' Sellars and Adams have adopted a working method similar to that for 'El Nino'. soundgenerator

There is a truly fascinating article written by John Adams on the NewMusicBox website about preparations for the premiere of his new opera, Doctor Atomic, in which the composer outlines his hopes, fears and excitement about the production. Timothy Munro

Berkeley physicist Marvin Cohen, by his own account only a "sporadic" operagoer, finds himself these days passionately interested in John Adams's Doctor Atomic — the opening lines of which, he says, misrepresent the physics of bomb making. Cathy Cockrell

As Einstein stated, matter can be converted into energy; this is the insight that produced the bomb. Matthew Gurewitsch

And it examines that history very seriously: a working version of the script, not intended for public consumption, cites the source of every line. Matthew Gurewitsch

The bomb, Adams said, "was really one of the overarching themes of my childhood. Jesse Hamlin

The company announced on Friday that the role of Robert Wilson will be sung by tenor Thomas Glenn, and not Tom Randle as had been previously announced. Opera News

Steve Pyke's accompanying image of Gerald Finley in front of the bomb is worth the price of admission. Alex Ross

Having played some of Adams' earlier compositions, I can relate to his comment that the orchestration "is like a great big ukulele...[t]he musical interest is in the chord changes, the breathless energy, the pulse." Matt Heller

Out There (1960). Eric Dolphy

I listened to a large amount of jazz and then in my mid-twenties, for no apparent reason, I just stopped. Two years ago, I heard some Dexter Gordon which reminded me of what I was missing and ever since, I've been trying to fill in the gaps of classic jazz I hadn't heard. One artist I listened to this weekend was Bill Evans, but maybe I'm still not ready for him. On the other hand, I just heard Eric Dolphy's Out There for the first time and it's a good song, has some great soloing (Ron Carter on cello!) and provides an overall sound and aesthetic that still sounds new 45 years after it was recorded.  This BBC review points out that unlike Ornette Coleman, Dolphy managed to push the "envelope" of bebop without overthrowing its basic conventions. It also describes Dolphy's solo as a series of variations as if Philip Glass arranged a Charlie Parker solo. Now that would be interesting.

In another interesting intersection with minimalism, La Monte Young beat out Eric Dolphy for the second-alto chair in a Los Angeles City College dance band. Young:

I had to compete for the second alto saxaphone chair with Eric Dolphy. I ended up getting the chair, although I thought Eric really sounded great and I was surprised that I beat him out. However, people who heard me play at the time said I just sounded like an explosion. In the orchestra Eric and I played together and he played first clarinet and I played second.

The Unanswered Question (1908). Charles Ives /kfjc/

A review of an Ives album, from the KFJC (Los Altos Hills!) website including this succinct description of The Unanswered Question:

over a slowly shifting bed of strictly diatonic strings, a trumpet asks a 5-note question, and a woodwind quartet answers. Repeat 5 times, woodwinds getting more and more atonal and crazed. Existential burning consumes you.

In my previous Unanswered Question post, M. Keiser of Music in a Suburban Scene comments that it still sounds as if it could have been written last year. Timeless indeed.

Cujo, the KFJC reviewer, also points out Decoration Day is what we now call Memorial Day.

rgable: aworks wwi/prohibition era ives: aworks del.icio.us wikipedia google news google blog yahoo audio  memorial day: wikipedia

The Unanswered Question (1908). Charles Ives /tonality/

Rajarshi Chaudhuri wrote about Ives' The Unanswered Question:

So, is tonality seemingly everlasting - could be so - but the disturbing question - like a specter - still floats in the air and of course there is no answer other than silence and confusion!

In other Ives news, singer Bruce Hornsby incorporates Ives' Study No. 22 into one of his songs. And Cheryl Gibbs reviews a concert of American music in Richmond, IN and calls The Unanswered Question one of Ives' less approachable works. Well, for me, I heard it once and was instantly ensnared.

rgable: aworks wwi/prohibition era ives: aworks del.icio.us wikipedia google news google blog yahoo audio word for the day: polytonality apple stores, mormon temples, and where ives bought his ipod

Danzón Cubano (1942). Aaron Copland

You probably scoff at classical music adaptations like techno remixes, jazz arrangements, weird electric guitar improvisations etc. Well, I'll suggest an instance where the remix improves on the original, namely the Baker Bros' Copland Died on December 4th, a remix of Aaron Copland's Danzón Cubano combined with Jay-Z's December 4th from The Black Album. MP3 page here (Soundclick registration required).

After listening to the remix, the original sounds lifeless and bland. But when Copland's melody and orchestration is combined with spirited (and sometimes reflective) vocals, the track is more than the sum of its parts. The effect is compounded when comparing it to the tediously slow recording conducted by Copland himself.

Note that Aaron Copland actually died on a December 2nd. I remember reading about it in the next day's NY Times while waiting for Caltrain on a cold morning in Palo Alto. From his obituary by John Rockwell:

Of many notable achievements, Mr. Copland's greatest gift was his ability to be both serious and popular, to adhere to the formal integrity and moral earnestness of modernism and also to espouse the generous accessibility of the dominant political mores of the 1930's and 40's.

rgable: aworks great depression/wwii era copland: copland house aworks del.icio.us wikipedia google news yahoo audio singingfish john adams on copland baker bros: U of M interview of half the Baker Bros December 4th lyrics

Maple Manytet (2005). Bill Sethares

I've been playing around with the new Google blog search. Due to various quirks, aworks shows up, for now, as the top related blog for "classical music" along with the very active LJ's 1st Classical Music Community's Journal, which I read, and I am still loving CLASSICAL MUSIC*, which is empty. Clearly, the related blogs list depends on blog title. For "music," only Music (for Robots) is listed.

Other finds from searching include John Coltrane News (is this an auto-blog?), composer Matthew Dallman's The Daily Goose, Byzantium's Shores, singer Anne-Carolyn's The Concert, Dicky Bahto's bleak house of mirth (where you can find, amidst lots of other provocative comment, a lack of enthusiasm for John Adams and the upcoming Doctor Atomic), Fred Sampson's Radio Weblog (which points to the fact that the Philip Glass movie trilogy will be at Davies Symphony Hall next year), and Prent Rodgers' (he of micro-tonality podcast fame) Podcast Bumper Music.   

Speaking of Prent Rodgers, I'm glad he is back after an absence. A recent podcast got my attention -- Bill Sethares' Maple Manytet. The composer says "all of the 'notes' are squished down to one big harmonic sound." It wasn't obvious to me but the source material is Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag and it's an interesting effect. Another memorable podcast via Prent Rodgers is Dave Seidel's Symmetrical Melodic Variation on La Monte Young's Romantic Symmetry. I'd especially recommend the latter to La Monte Young fanatics and people who listened to the buzz of power lines as children (e.g. La Monte Young)...

Lincoln Portrait (1942). Aaron Copland

I see that Barak Obama, Senator from Illinois, narrated Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait in a Chicago 9/11 concert:

Obama brought an orator's skill without an actor's slick veneer to Copland's "Lincoln Portrait.'' The comforting quality of his voice gave added emotional resonance to Lincoln's words.

  This got me thinking about who else has narrated the work. I knew James Earl Jones and General Schwartzkopf had but a quick check on Amazon also reveals Henry Fonda, Carl Sandburg (who wrote the original text), Judy Collins and actor Melvyn Douglas from 1946. Spike Lee's He Got Game used the music without narration. And from an announcement of a recent rendition by the lieutenant governor of Missouri:

Copland wrote Lincoln Portrait shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, hoping that the piece would help to boost patriotic pride and morale at a time when the nation’s fortunes seemed at low ebb.

From the text:

"Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility." [Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862]

He was born in Kentucky, raised in Indiana, and lived in Illinois. And this is what he said. This is what Abe Lincoln said.

rgable: aworks great depression/wwii era copland: copland house aworks del.icio.us wikipedia google news yahoo audio singingfish asteroid named after the composer music used by dylan john adams on copland lincoln portrait: wikipedia npr with stream voice of america 1953 new york times article (including withdrawl from the eisenhower inauguration ceremony) boosey & hawkes review of the judy collins cd australian performance lebrecht on margaret thatcher

Quiet City (1940). Aaron Copland /new york and new orleans/

For today, Copland's Quiet City sounds apt, and the play may have more depth than I realized. Harold Clurman wrote about Irwin Shaw's work:

It's theme, the recurrent one of the troubled conscience of the middle class that cannot quite reconcile itself to its life in a distraught world -- which, when it retains its honesty and sensitivity, it identifies with a life of sin -- was here given full orchestration.

A brief search indicates the play includes a character who abandons his artistic aspirations and his Jewishness in order to achieve material success, but is reminded of what he has done via his brother's trumpet playing.

rgable: aworks great depression/wwii era copland: aworks del.icio.us wikipedia google news yahoo audio singingfish copland's music as uniter after hurricane hugo

New England, Late Summer (2003). John Prokop

John Prokop, on the Sequenza21 wiki, says his influences include Morton Feldman and Frank Zappa. Could there be another pair of composers whose music is more disparate than these two?

I suggest a combined recording: Shut up and play yer' "feature isolated, carefully chosen, predominantly quiet sounds."

Prokop also cites one of my favorite composers from the recent past -- Kevin Volans. I would blog more about Volans if I could find an American tie-in.