aworks :: "new" american classical music

Sun-Treader (1931). Carl Ruggles /itunes/

Hmm, that was interesting. I've been struggling with a cold all morning, while trying to blog. Then, the rain came down quite heavily, my Firefox browser crashed, I rebooted my PC, the rain stopped and now my cold is better. Blog post is lost however. Cause and effect is not clear to me...

Since I'm also mentally challenged right now and don't feel like recreating my post, I'll answer Don Nunn's iTunes meme (and why his post from February showed up in today's Bloglines, I have no idea):

How many songs?

• 10030 items, 40.6 days, 73.60 Gb.

Sorted by song title, the first and last songs:

• '84 Pontiac Dream. Boards of Canada
• ZX-1. Matthew Shipp

Sorted by artist, the first and last songs: 

• Hymn to St. Cecilia Op.27. II. Benjamin Britten. Courtesy of cddb, the artist field says "I cannot grow". The leading quote will prove significant later.
• Spiegel Im Spiegel. Arvo Part. The artist field is empty.

Sorted by album, the first and last songs:

• Miles Davis_ John Coltra. Miles Davis. 'Round Midnight.
• Spiegel Im Spiegel. Arvo Part. The album field is also empty.
  

Top 10 most-played songs:

1. A Spider. Helen Boatwright. Ernst Bacon although the composer tag says John Cage.
2. Hymn to St. Cecilia Op.27. II. Benjamin Britten. "I cannot grow." In the old iPod, this was at the top of the songs menu and I would accidentally select it (not that I have anything against Benjamin Britten).
3. Go to Sleep (Little Man Being Erased). Radiohead. This reminds me -- would someone go out in the rain and get the paper so I can read the SF Chronicle Datebook little man reviews?
4. Souvenir. John Cage. Stephen Drury.
5. Beneath the Southern Cross. Patti Smith.
6. Paint the Silence. South.
7. Everywhen. Massive Attack.
8. I Saw Drones. Boards of Canada. 27 seconds long.
9. Endangered Species. Alvin Curran. Didn't realize I listened that much to this.
10. Suicide in an Airplane. Leo Ornstein. Marc-André Hamelin.

Top 10 recently played songs:

1. Ascension (Don't Ever Wonder). Maxwell. I don't have a clue who Maxwell is but the last 10 tracks I've played are all black artists.
2. D's Choice. Matthew Shipp.
3. ZX-1. Matthew Shipp.
4. Yaphet. Miles Davis. The Bitches Brew 4-CD set was on sale last night at Tower.
5. Corrado. Miles Davis.
6. Trevere. Miles Davis.
7. Ndiwa. Kerfala Kante. Le Blues est ne en Afrique (Africa Mother of the Blues).
8. Diarabi. Boubacar Traore. Le Blues est ne en Afrique.
9. Nyamatoutou. Nahawa Doumbia. Le Blues est ne en Afrique.
10. Eighty Nine Ten. Snooky Prior. Chicago Blues Harmonicas.

Find “sex”; how many songs? 25, including "sextet" and "le sexisme" (Hi, Kim Gordon).

Find “death”; how many songs? 22 and how come I don't recognize Death of the Machines by George Antheil? Similarly, I just finished The Long Emergency where Kunstler uses (Ira) Gershwin lyrics to make a point about the end of modernity. Try the Amazon search inside this book link that may or may not work. Scroll down to the last paragraph on the page and then to the next page. Scary book by the way.

Find “love”; how many songs? 199, including the group "Love." I really enjoy their alternate track (Your Mind and We Belong Together) where Arthur Lee is captured for eternity pointing out screw ups by the guitarist -- shades of Buddy Rich, in a way. I recognize not everyone, at least in my household, sees this as humorous.

Find “peace”; how many songs? 9 including FrogPeace by Kristine Burns.

Find “rain”; how many songs? 133 including the group "Train."

Find “sun”; how many songs? 98 including the genius "Sun Ra."

aworks bonus question - Find “sun-treader”; how many songs? 1 although again the composer tag says John Cage rather than Carl Ruggles.

Sun-Treader (1931). Carl Ruggles

I'm several chapters into reading American Composers and their Public: A Critical View, written in 1995 by Nicholas Tawa. So far, he is making the case, no surprise here, that the early modernist composers disdained the conventional classical audience but never built a new audience beyond a niche of peers, specialists etc. He also points out how the music of the teens and twenties focused on texture and innovation, at the expense of form and content.

He uses several quotes from Aaron Copland to characterize the period as being electrifying and that "money and art patrons were plentiful, and there was the conviction that nothing but prosperity and good times lay ahead." And even Copland found it exciting to be fighting the new avant garde battles even if the audience was not ready for contemporary music. Of course, Copland ultimately unified inspiration and acceptance. But in spite of all that occurred in the twenties, the author argues this generation of composers was arrogant, un-democratic, individualistic, self-aggrandizing, out of balance, etc.

In the midst of disparaging attitudes and practices of these composers, Tawa interjects:

Whatever American modernists may have said, they did produce several outstanding works that deserve to be taken seriously by more sophisticated listeners.

Then, he goes on to list Ruggles' Sun-Treader, Copland's Short Symphony, Sessions' Symphony No. 2, Cage's Sonata and Interludes for Prepared Piano, and Carter's String Quarter No. 2. While it is odd to hear these recommendations in the midst of invective, it mirrors my experience immersed in this music.  The conventional narrative of classical music development is something like Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, maybe Debussy etc. and then classical music drives over a cliff (with Schoenberg or Cage as driver/villain, depending on your artistic beliefs). And after the fact, I'm looking through the wreckage at the bottom of that cliff trying to find new music that is in fact good and usable ("Oh look, there's High Color from Cowell.  But be careful with that Antheil work right next to it.")  In any case, I think Ruggle's Sun-Treader is in fact salvageable and of value, in a heavy kind of way.

Promethean Antagonist thinks much of the ugliness of modern music is due to nihilism, mentioning Stockhausen as an example. While I don't have an opinion about the world view of Stockhausen, I do take Richard Taruskin's opinion on Schoenberg, where the focus on the composer, his methods and tools, overwhelmed any sensitivity towards an audience. Taruskin calls this divergence the "poietic fallacy," which places the making of art ahead of how it is perceived. But even Taruskin goes on to make his Schoenberg recommendations:

Rather than the ones that smell like teen spirit, the Schoenberg works that seem to me to be destined to survive (or maybe just the ones I would like to see survive) are the ones in which he showed his ironic, playfully inventive side: Pierrot Lunaire...the First String Quartet and the Chamber Symphony; but also a number of the early 12-note works like Suite for Piano Op. 25 or the Septet Suite Op. 29...

And since I don't get many chances to recommend Stockhausen, how about his work for two pianos, Mantra. I saw a mesmerizing performance at the University of British Columbia, a decade ago.