aworks :: "new" american classical music

Cheating, Lying, Stealing (1980). David Lang /so, percussion.../

Matt Parish previews So Percussion's concert of the music of David Lang:

Cheating, Lying, Stealing sounds like the title of a John Lee Hooker song—broken-down, low on dough, burdened with remorse. But this particular ditty, written in 1980 by renegade composer David Lang, is a different, more exuberant story altogether.

aworks: cheating, lying, stealing

The Last Invocation (1928). T. Carl Whitmer /american composers on american music/

After work, I stopped by the State Teacher's College* Library to see what they had on Howard Hanson. Not much but I did check out American Composers on American Music by Henry Cowell, published by Stanford Press in 1933.

First, Cowell takes a whack at critics:

The notion that criticism must be vitriolic and destructive in order to be intelligent and interesting is an utter absurdity fostered by professional word-jugglers.

He then calms down and groups American composers of the time:

• those using indigenous materials or particularly interested in expressing an American spirit e.g. Charles Ives
• foreign-born residents who also have indigenous tendencies e.g. Leo Ornstein
• American originals influenced by modern German music e.g. Wallingford Riegger
• Americans "who are somewhat original" and influenced by modern French neo-classicism e.g. Virgil Thomson and George Antheil
• those without original ideas who adapt Americanisms to a European style e.g. Aaron Copland
• conservatives who stick to writing European music e.g. Howard Hanson
• foreign-borns who stick to writing European music i.e. Charles Martin Loeffler and seven other composers unknown to me
• young composers who may develop to become "independently American" e.g. Henry Brant and Bernard Herrmann
• unclassifiables like William Grant Still who may possess the beginnings of a "genuine new style" and T. Carl Whitmer who is both strongly independent and yet conservative (Whitman's The Last Invocation settings list here including from Whitmer but also from Philip Glass. Philip Glass?).

Cowell compares Whitmer to Ives, with both of them emphasizing a poetic and serious side of music but unlike Ives, Whitmer's musical style, while unprecedentedly self-developed, was also conventional.

And regarding the quest to break free of European tradition, Cowell says:

The result of such an awakening should be the creation of works capable of being accorded international standing. When this has been accomplished, self-conscious nationalism will no longer be necessary.

* aka Minns' Evening Normal School, California State Normal School, Los Angeles State Normal School (a branch campus later to become UCLA), San José State Teachers College, San José State College, Cal State University - San José, and currently San José State University.
recent tracks: subterranean homesick alien - rockabye baby!: lullaby renditions of radiohead. the star spangled banner - larry alan smith. lonely fire - miles davis.

ELOHIM (2006). Daniel David Feinsmith

Note to self: On future evening Skype calls from home with Indian business partners, refrain from visiting otherminds.org. This will avoid everyone on the call hearing John Cage mysteriously intone "you are bathed in radio waves."

And the reason for my otherminds surfing? To check out the details of the upcoming Other Minds Festival in San Francisco including a premiere of a work by Daniel David Feinsmith. Interestingly, the work is to be played by the The Feinsmith Quartet with members Jennifer Culp, Michael Manring, Gyan Riley, and Christopher Taylor. Wait a minute, isn't Michael Manring an electric bassist? That should be appropriate for those of us with a diminished ability to listen to acoustic music and a preference for the stylized and passive. With apologies to the late Barry Goldwater, "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of timbre is no vice!"

Intriguingly from the Feinsmith Quartet website:

  FEINSMITH QUARTET composes and performs music deeply inspired by mystical Judaism, rooted in the unorthodox tonal landscape and western techniques of modern classical composition. Its virtuosic, exhilarating sensibility evokes the ecstatic experience at the root of the Jewish mystical tradition.

The concert also includes works by Peter Sculthorpe, Per Nørgård, and Maja Ratkje.

You Look Sweet upon the Seat of a Bicycle (1963). Frank Zappa

Let the conciousness revolution era begin, circa 1963:

We believed that self-expression took precedence over self-control—even if we still assumed that big institutions would continue to cohere and function without much difficulty.

And they said the avant-garde can't be fun... (YouTube videos via American Street):

Singing silver (2006). Lawrence Dillon

Fresh from the Sequenza21 concert, Lawrence Dillon comments on whether a live or recorded medium works best:

I’ve noted this before, and I’ve been surprised that more people don’t agree with me: some pieces are more vivid in live performance, others work better on recording.

On his Singing silver:

The narrator (me) speaks most of the text, with phrases spinning freely off of specific beats in the score. The soprano (Tony Arnold) echoes some of the text, but more often blends wordlessly with the instruments, acting as a connective sinew between the muscle of poetry and the bone of music.

lawrence dillon: blog. website. compositions. blown away mp3

Ciao, Manhattan (1990). Lee Hyla

Stephen Drury has programmed a concert in Boston with works by Lukas Foss (born Lukas Fuchs), Ethan Wood, and Lee Hyla. And early next year:

An all-Hyla program -- which the composer jokingly calls "A Lee Hyla Memorial Concert" -- is planned for January.

Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1982). William Bolcom

Today was nostalgia day with KFOX playing Beatles and my taking a trip to Tower Records. The latter continues its experiment in price elasticity. Me thinks the music retailers and labels continuing to raise their prices while facing increased competition for the entertainment dollar was a mistake. Or to phrase it differently, maybe it wouldn't have lasted but I've seen more people at the liquidation sale at Tower in the last month than in the prior six.

On a related theme, Tom Jackson has an article about William Bolcom with this quote from the composer:

Joan and I have made such a pittance that it’s almost laughable. You’d probably have to say the same is true of any classical artist. People like Yo Yo Ma and people like that are only selling a few thousand. What those CDs are for is awareness of what you are doing. They turn out to be essentially a calling card.

Here are the calling cards I purchased today:

• Birdy Nam Nam. For everyone who says online music is better, I'll note that I pre-ordered this CD/DVD at Amazon back in May and have yet to receive it. I'm also in the middle of squabbling with emusic.com over not getting my allotment of tracks, due to a poorly implemented download manager upgrade. Issue resolved to my satisfaction. I don't remember ever needing to deal with Tower on-site tech support, though. This from a guy who spends way too much time online, including having the time to discover French turntablists in that giant SXSW torrent. YouTube clip here. General search versus discovery post here.
• From The Kitchen Archives - New Music New York 1979. Glass, Tom Johnson, Michael Nyman, Steve Reich, et al. I generally think of minimalism pre-dating me but I suppose not.
• A slew of American Naxos releases including two Howard Hansons and CDs of music by Arthur Foote, Morton Feldman, and Conlon Nancarrow. They still had several copies of the Naxos recording of Bolcom's Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Unrelated Bolcom YouTube clip here.
• Tight Sweater, the music of Marc Mellits by Real Quiet.
• A DVD of John Adams' El Nino. I'm still waiting for the price to come down on that Harry Partch DVD.
• A gift CD I can't yet mention.
• A Stills CD I was too embarrassed to buy at Aquarius Records when I first saw it.

Is there anyone other than Mariah Carey who is happy with the state of commerical music? Lawyers and certain hardware companies I suppose...

dial "m" for musicology: youtube french hiphop

City Lights (1931). Charlie Chaplin

David Robertson, conducting the San Francisco Symphony this weekend, on Chaplin's score to City Lights:

The overall result is something that feels alive in a way that we have lost with films we see today in the cinema.

Steven Winn reviews:

Unlike more substantial film scores by Bernstein, Bernard Herrmann or others, this one holds only slight inherent musical interest. But it was often interesting to hear all the same, as a frantic nightclub tango gave way to a becalmed court dance or the saxophones or a castanet added aural color to the black-and-white images.

Disclosure (?). ? /, full/

So, I've been through a lot of dudes and ladies looking for the foremost American composer. Some finalists, maybe: William Grant Stills, Aaron Copland, Paul Creston, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Douglas Moore, Ezra Sims, George Walker, David Baker, Dave Brubeck, Aaron Copeland, Lennie Bernstein, Howard Hanson, Roger Sessions, Leroy Anderson, Charles Wakefielde Cadman, Gunther Schuller, Henry Cowell, Roy Harris--Jesus, do I have to name them all! thegrowlingwolf for The Daily Growler

Not my list exactly as I've never heard of George Walker and I haven't heard the music of Ezra Sims nor of Charles Cadman although I've had the good fortune to spend the last six weeks becoming acquainted with the music of William Grant Still.

Regardless, the above growling person's post is great, if risque, and mentions Artie Shaw, John Kirkpatrick, Ava Gardner, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Freddie Green, Benny Goodman (aka Benő Guttman. Benő Guttman?), Buddy DeFranco, Tony Scott, John Cage, Lou Harrison, and his/her nomination for greatest (and most original) American composer. If only, in a weak American classical moment, Idolator would link to it. And recent aworks commenter [email protected] would second the nomination...

note: sensitized by a day job discussion re: warnings versus errors, false positives, and (yikes) false negatives, aworks feels compelled to point out some of the preceding wikipedia links warn about the validity of their content. let the clicker beware or else revert to using non-free/legacy and expert-"guided" if not written encylopedias.
bonus google search: dora ohrenstein.
bonus wikipedia link: the year disclosure was written and when the cal football team (believe it or not) beat ohio state in the rose bowl --not this year or in our lifetime of course.

Symphony No. 3 (1932/72). Virgil Thomson /how long is the standing test anyway?/

Just so I don't get a reputation as the contemporary curmudgeon, I'll point out my post yesterday applies to concerts but for recordings, not as much.

Let the record show that one of my last purchases at Tower Records was a disc of Virgil Thomson symphonies. I found the Third Symphony particularly American and optimistic.

I still need to think about what would entice me to see an equivalent live since modernclassical says Copland's Third is one of his favorites and just today, walking by the California Theatre in San Jose, I noticed Symphony Silicon Valley is playing it in March:

Copland's landmark Third Symphony, built around his stirring Fanfare for the Common Man, has been called the quintessential American symphony. It closes the concert on a note of warmth and broad humanity.

I may prefer my humanity narrower, though. Or more likely, I need concerts to feel more like an event of the magnitude of the Terry Riley birthday concert, the Doctor Atomic premiere, or Radiohead in Berkeley. The latter was, by my terms, fun and interesting, both before that night via bootlegs of prior shows, during the show on what happened to be a cool and foggy night, and after the show with bootlegs of that night. Mabye SSV needs to covertly seed some Copland MP3s onto the Internet so it feels like I am discovering something rather than just consuming it.

For all its entertainment and creativity, I'm also working out why I think Radiohead's music is not important and yet Copland's is. "Stood the test of time" is not an argument I particularly want to use, at least on this blog.

On the other hand, modernclassical is relieved I didn't consider Charles Ives as the greatest American composer. There's something about Ives not being popular at the time that detracts, although of course I can't make the same argument with Radiohead. I've now come full circle.

So, for my next conundrum, who's music is more important -- Charles Ives or Thom Yorke?

For that matter, who is more distinctive looking, Charles or Thom? And to really get back to where I started, this is my favorite cover photo of Virgil Thomson. The music is fine as well.

recent tracks: harrowdown hill - thom yorke. bassa kele - mamou sidibé. the pond (remembrance) - charles ives. on alligators - charles wuorinen. the boomin' system (the underground mix) - ll cool j. l'exode - ali farka touré.