aworks :: "new" american classical music

The Chairman Dances (1985). John Adams /like my opera/

Am I the only person who subscribes to both The Wire and Wired magazines?

Anyway, the new issue of The Wire kicks off with Chris Bohn proclaiming modern opera's lack of success portraying "dictators and demagogues" e.g. in Nixon in China:

Their tepidly satirical burlesques and numbingly inane repetitions add up to mildly noxious entertainments that hardly deliver justice for their ostensible subjects' deeds. To these ears, they're left seriously wanting by their composer's desire for his opera creations to be liked.

I naively assume all opera composers want their art to be liked, at least by someone if not everyone. And I'll grant The Chairman Dances doesn't fit into the more extreme aesthetic of the magazine. Ok, I'll skip ahead to the book review of Cornelius Cardew: A Reader:

After witnessing a concert by John Cage and David Tudor in 1958 Cardew became preoccupied with Cage and his American avant garde associates; that gave way in time to his search for viable popular forms to communicate urgent political messages.

I'll argue that the political informs the musical and not vice versa. But having only heard Cardew's music via cacophonous podcast, I can't say if he achieved his goal.

the chairman dances: earbox wikipedia john adams: popularity without pandering by peter gutmann

Black Angels (Images I). George Crumb /newness/

From We Are All Mozart:

• This is not a fetish for newness, in particular fashion or faddishness, but merely the sense that a fresh viewpoint illuminates the recollection of the past without the need to revisit it, particularly if that recollection is vivid and almost tangible.
• The Philips vinyl of George Crumb's Black Angels was ugly and the recording harsh.
• Rock bands and jazz musicians all practice (no matter how dissonant or confrontational) over and over again, and take risks.
• Familiarity beats newness in the comfort people seek in their daily lives, and repetition affords the ability to hear through and perform through to a new level each time.
• It's no wonder that musicians have claimed that today Mozart would be writing like Radiohead rather than Liebermann.

I've done the nostalgia trip this year with such notable artistic giants as Styx, Poco, Cream, and *egad* Journey, but have no desire to revisit anytime soon. But I haven't figured out why I've responded so much to Miles Davis in the last year, in particular Bitches Brew. Seeing A Different Kind of Blue seems to have re-triggered something in my brain, coupled with the grief from Hurricane Katrina.

By the way, Soho the Dog suggests American classical music "is America's classical music" and "jazz is jazz." For this polytheist, America's classical music is both. On the other hand, I agree the following is a fallacy:

"Nobody actually enjoys listening to atonal music—they just want other people to think they’re a pretentious intellectual."

new orleans saints on monday night football: game reality saints #9

Poppy Nogood (1969). Terry Riley

I've been playing with pandora, last.fm and the pandorafm mash-up this weekend. Pandora suffers from a lack of classical music and on last.fm, I just can't find good streams I like, except for the stream comprised of music I've already indicated I like. This just in: the Terry Riley station I just created in pandora is promising. The report upon playing his Poppy Nogood:

Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features new age influences, classical influences, new orleans jazz influences, odd meter grooves, and off beat style.

I won't disavow liking any of those musical traits, although the "new orleans" part surprised me since that isn't how I would describe Riley's improvisation. I should also say that after three or four tracks on the station, the new age, seventies synthesized sounds begin to annoy.

If you go to the last.fm page for Terry Riley, it lists related artists unknown to me -- Jef Gilson and Malagasy, Ellende, Hal Blaine, Mellow Candle -- and those to be expected -- La Monte Young, Steve Reich, Iannis Xenakis, and John Cage.

Generally, Pandora uses the classification of the Music Genome Project to recommend music and now Wikipedia reveals all the individual genome attributes in use. Let's see: there's angry lyrics, avant-garde leanings, chill rhymin', clear pronunciation, flat out funky grooves, good dose of acoustic guitar pickin', mumbling vocals, subtle use of turntables, and wet recording sound (as well as more traditional music terms). If only Pandora allowed one to explicitly choose the desired attributes; I'd like to hear something that combines avant-garde leanings with a good dose of acoustic guitar pickin' and a bit of mumbling vocals. Bob Dylan and The Band play the music of Robert Ashley maybe...

I also tried to create a channel seeded by Miles Davis' Pharoah's Dance, but it plays innumerable jazz trumpet tracks, all acoustic rather than electric.

Finally, a description of Poppy Nogood from the Looper's Delight web page:

The first five minutes of the recording is dominated by a horde of saxophone parts reverbed into a chaotic wash of sound, underpinned by a low D drone from the organ.

playing on the terry riley station: jazz violinist jean-luc ponty, some brian eno track with viola, and pendulum music by steve reich

Dancing in the Dark (1931) Arthur Schwartz-Howard Dietz /charlie parker with strings/

I'm listening to the 1950 recording of alto sax great Charlie Parker where he is backed by a studio orchestra. I last heard this in high school, when I thought the music stupid. Now, I've mellowed a bit,  Parker's alto playing is effortless and even Mitch Miller on oboe is tolerable in this context.

Wikipedia: One of Parker's longstanding desires was to perform with a string section; he was a keen fan of classical music. Contemporaries reported that he was keenly interested in the music of Igor Stravinsky...When he did record and perform with strings, some fans thought it was a "sell out" and a pandering to popular tastes. Time demonstrated Parker's move a wise one...

I just ran across this Steve Reich quote in an interview by Sholto Byrnes:

Then in a short space of time, a friend played him records of The Rite of Spring, Bach's Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, and Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Kenny Clarke. "It's like someone said [he puts on a deep voice]: 'You're about to be 14 years old, and there's one room you haven't seen in this house, son.'" He drops the voice. "I walked into that room," he explains, "I closed the door, and that's where I lived the rest of my life.

wikipedia: dancing in the dark mitch miller

20 preludi da la femme 100 têtes - after Max Ernst (1932-3). George Antheil

I've been listening to music via the Royal Scottish National Orchestra website. The site has paid downloads at .99 a track and free one minute clips. As a collector, I don't find this particularly enticing. I doubt the selection is all that good for my interests and the free part of it isn't yet compelling, compared to say free Napster which I do revisit every week or so. There are a couple of Paul Lansky pieces though, in the 21st century section in what looks to be the catalog of Bridge Records. Actually, an interesting feature would be the ability to stream all the clips, rather than having to individually play them.

By the way, I never knew Antheil's full name was, as Paul Griffith's Classical Music Companion reports it, Georg Carl Johann Antheil -- a good German name for the New Jersey-born composer.

Neruda Songs (2005). Peter Lieberson

Alex Ross on Peter Lieberson's Neruda Songs:

This is some of the most unabashedly lyrical music that any American composer has produced since Gershwin.

The New Yorker article ends by describing some of the work's musical and textual poignance, given Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's health at the time. One has to respect composer and singer who continued to lead their lives despite the ravages of breast cancer.

note to a particular aworks reader: that respect applies to you as well.

Doctor Atomic (2005). John Adams /unreasonable expectations/

Some thoughts on opera and Doctor Atomic...

Soho the Dog comments on opera in general:

But opera is, for the most part, about inflating human emotions to gargantuan proportions: we thrill to see ourselves writ large, but it doesn't move us beyond the experience of this world.

And it's the gargantuan proportions that I find unappealing. For example, seeing Bernstein's small-scale Trouble in Tahiti was, in hindsight, a more satisfying experience than seeing Doctor Atomic. Which was the better "hearing" experience? Hard to say. One of the Soho the Dog's commenters suggests Bernstein's Mass as the best, albiet failed, attempt at the Great American Opera.

Then, Kinderkuchen criticizes John Adams' compositional skills for emphasizing relevance at the expense of humanity:

He just leaves out even the tiniest representation of human emotions.

While it's true the Doctor Atomic characters weren't particularly compelling, if the work wasn't  somehow relevant to contemporary life, I would have never attended. As another example, I didn't even bother to attend the Ligeti  opera in San Francisco several years ago even though he's a favored composer, probably because I expected it to be some stylized, Euro-oriented production. On the other hand, Philip Glass' Akhnaten in Oakland had the trick where the audience pretends to be on a contemporary Egyptian tour as you enter the theatre. This, plus imagining that George Bush is Akhnaten, in both ascent and fall, made for compelling drama (on top of excellent direction and performance).

I still haven't decided if the music of Doctor Atomic was something of merit or not. It was in Adams' Nixon in China, despite the composer saying he used the orchestra as if it were a "ukelele." A year later, the electronic sounds of Doctor Atomic remain the most memorable.

Finally, Kinderkuchen also mentions the pre-opera talk by Peter Sellars. I managed to see the John Adams-equivalent (twice). I have to say Adams' talk about the opera was witty, sophisticated and interesting, both in describing the inherent drama in the subject matter and in the challenges with creating the art. It's not clear the opera met those same standards...

The conclusion here is how I apparently expect opera to be relevant, emotional, intellectually engaging, musically rewarding and yet not overwhelming as a spectacle. Maybe my expectations are a bit too high, explaining why I only subscribed to the San Francisco Opera for a year. The live simulcast at Stanford next month of Rigoletto is an intriguing idea, though...

Pendulum Music (1968/73). Steve Reich /walls of sound/

Ulrich Krieger plays a mean Pendulum Music. Wait, mean might imply malevolent. Let's try this -- the performance sounds like the inside of a whale with heart problems.

ulrich krieger: official.  aworks: pendulum music. web encyclopedia about to be forked: pendulum music.

What's Next (1997). Elliott Carter /now with haiku/

Alex Ross' recent article on American opera ends with this about Ned Rorem and Elliott Carter:

In their late operas, they are seeing humanity with almost the same eyes, as a frantic dance to a misheard tune.

And Drunken Volcano provides the haiku synopsis of that article (along with haikus for everything else in the New Yorker as well):

New operas work
Where alluring music meets
Comfortless worldview.

aworks ordered list :: current listening focus /form factor is the message/

First, it was a 45 RPM player and music was by the song. Then, an LP stereo (and later numerous CD players) and music was by the album. Then, this decade, five convenient (if not durable) MP3 players with music by the track, often incoherently ordered. Finally, in the last year or so, 2 iPod Nano's with less capacity, meaning I have to pro-actively select what to load. So, for "semipop," it's by artist and for classical (and fledgling descendants), it's by composer.

So, allow me to log what I am mostly listening to at the moment:

1. Miles Davis. Still obsessing by electric Miles Davis circa 1967-72.
2. Aaron Copland. I'm streaming all my tracks at work, in composer order as well, and am just about finished with Aaron. Prior to that was the music of '"3-D" Del Naja/"Daddy G." Marshall/"Mushroom" Vowles"' and then "Blue" Gene Tyranny. Character sort order introduction here.
3. John Cage. Tim Page's disparaging comment about 4' 33" spurred me to resume listening to more Cage.
   
4. Anton Webern. Earlier this summer, I listened to all the music I had of the prolific Alan Hovhaness. Taking on a more concise composer seemed like a good idea although it's hard to hear Pollini play Webern when I'm on the train.
5. Red Sparrowes. Vocal-less rock.
6. Donald Swearingen. This is just one CD because I can't find any more music by him.
7. James Tenney. A refresh after his recent passing.
8. Roy Harris. The opening to the Third Symphony is a favorite but is anything else even remotely as good?
9. Elie Siegmeister. Recently, his daughter commented on my post mentioning her father's 1938 writing.
10. Frank Zappa's Dog Breath. If it's good enough for an Iranian symphony...
11. David Grubbs. A recent Wire Magazine CD had a good track so I bought more on my last Amoeba/Aquarius tour. More rockish than I was expecting.
12. Super Numeri. I think of this when I think of Red Sparrowes.
13. Manu Chao. Mariam and Amadou's producer but not as rewarding.
14. Fennesz. An emusic download from last month.

Also, I just finished Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash where the Brooklyn author follows the route of all that her family discards. Yikes. Now what to do about my collection of dead MP3 players...

last.fm: what i really listen to, at least when i am tethered to a computer