Category: Articles

Orlando Jacinto Garcia Photo by Rafael Salazar

As we enter the next century the music world can seem a bit confusing. Twenty-five years ago what was considered the Western Art music canon consisted of music from either Antiquity or the Renaissance through the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and into the 20th century. The music called by many in the general public “classical” music was relatively well defined in so far as the composers and their works. Today, this repertoire is not the only music deemed as relevant. Especially in post-modern times where categories are being redefined, it is easy for many to assert that a tango, a rock tune, and a Beethoven symphony are all the same except perhaps for the musical parameters that define the style. This can have its positive as well as negative ramifications. The positive perhaps being that all types of music are understood as having similar importance, the negative that everything is considered in many ways as being the same.

Given the current post-modern climate how does one define and/or understand different forms of musical expression. Are questions of style merely enough to describe different types of music? In my view there are much more than just stylistic parameters to consider when trying to understand music in the beginning of the 21st century. What are these additional concerns? I believe that there are differences in function and in the type of experiences that different types of music generate, that can be generally understood and discussed. Given the limitations of space, the following are general notions not to be considered as all encompassing or complete but instead as some concepts that may help to clarify the situation.

To begin with, popular, ethnic, commercial, etc., music can be generally understood as being functional (i.e., it has relatively obvious and direct social functions) and some of the music from the Western Art music tradition does not (i.e., it exists primarily for its own sake). Historically functional music has generally been created to communicate with a large number of people while non-functional music has been devised to be consumed by a smaller number often somewhat versed in its musical language. Examples of functional music include (1) songs that recount historical, political, and socio/cultural events, (2) music for celebrations and rituals with or without dance and (3) music written with the express purpose of generating large sums of money. The target audience for this music was and still is usually a large group of people. Although important, these are simplistic notions and distinctions, that need to be and will be clarified shortly.

Much non-functional music has origins as functional music. A good example of this is Western sacred music which had the task of inspiring worshipers to come close to their deity. Later the main purpose for many of the composers of this music became pleasing the royalty commissioning it (some of whom were musicians themselves). Its value at times increased, based upon the composer’s ability to create a more abstract and complex experience for the patron and court. In the past, composers of non-functional music often created functional music as well to supplement their earnings. This phenomena is rarely seen in the 20th century. As the system of patronage more or less ended, the more abstract music was left standing as absolute music, generally speaking, with little if any function except to exist for its own sake. Since it was not understood by or written for the masses it was, for the most part, not economically viable. In the 20th century, institutions such as governments and universities became the supporters of this work. This music, heard by smaller numbers, was and is often revered for its potential to elicit powerful reactions in audiences; both for and against it. Similar examples can be found in the other arts.

The simple and limited historical explanations of functional and non-functional music presented above are relatively obvious although often ignored by those discussing music in post-modern times. Although to some extent generalized and simplified, I believe that they raise some important notions that can help understand some of the differences between a tango, a rock tune, and a symphony by Stravinsky. At the same time that they are of importance, these notions are not enough by themselves to help categorize and/or fully understand the music that exists today.

In addition to the differences in the historical functions of music, there is perhaps the more important concept of the experiences that different types of music generate. These differences in the responses they elicit, may best be understood by examining works in the other Arts and the responses which they generate. For example, the experience one has when reading a work by Michael Crichton or Mickey Spillane is not the same as the experience one has when reading James Joyce or Borges. One is not better than the other but their works definitely generate different responses. Novels by the first two writers usually include great story telling and can be quite enjoyable. The books of the latter two are much more abstract and generate a very different intellectual and emotional experience (pleasurable for some and not so for others). Reading books by the latter several times is often necessary to capture all of the details as well as some of the more abstract concepts presented.

A similar analogy can be made when examining visual art. The experience one has while viewing a fairly representational seascape watercolor painting by Carolyn Blish is not the same as the experience one has when viewing Guernica by Picasso. The watercolor may be pleasing to the eye and may even make an excellent addition to ones living space. The Picasso however could be very troubling given the abstract imagery and surrealistic depiction of horrific events. Repeated viewing is often necessary to understand it and including it in ones living space may or may not be of interest. As in the first example, these experiences are not better or worse; just different.

A similar case can be made for music. The experience of hearing the music of Michael Jackson, Julio Iglesias, Madonna, or a tango by Gardel is not the same as the experience of hearing Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Berlioz‘s Symphonie Fantastique, or Ginastera‘s Cantata para America Magica. The first group of works may move one to dance, sing along, or converse with a friend at a bar, while the latter generally does not. With the Stravinsky, Berlioz, and Ginastera works, repeated listening may be required to assimilate an
d react to the music, while this may not be the case with the first examples. Again one group is not better than the other; rather the responses to the works and the experiences one has are very different.

In general, what do these experiences have in common? The latter in each of the examples is probably more abstract than the former (i.e., more removed from concrete experiences of reality and every day life). Does this necessarily make one experience better than the other? Probably not, since although a more abstract experience might seem more substantive to some it can often create much discomfort. A discomforting response could cause the individual to close out the work that is evoking the experience (a common reaction to the unfamiliar). At the same time having the greatest acceptance by mass audiences does not necessarily mean that something is worthwhile. On the contrary, there are many instances where mass acceptance implies that what is being accepted is very banal and of little worth.

What is the implication of this view? First, style is not the determining factor when defining what Art music is or is not. Rather to some extent the functionality of the music and more importantly the experiences generated by it are. Some would ask what about jazz? My response would be who do you mean—the late John Coltrane or any Kenny G? What kind of experience does their music generate for you? The same for some rock and pop musicians—do you mean Michael Jackson or Brian Eno? What about the functional music that Mozart, Haydn, et al wrote? Are things black and white? Of course not, and there are plenty of issues to continue to discuss. Some genres and works will be difficult to explain but that is what makes talking about music so interesting.

Lastly, a brief word about the label Art music. While some of the more sensitive find that it demeans other music by implying that one is high art while the other is not, it should be noted that the label Art music comes from the label Art song applied to some of the songs in the 19th century as a way of differentiating them from other songs of the time. The term was also used as a way of separating these songs from the notion of the “Art of Music.” This does not mean that it is superior to other music, simply that it is coming from the Art song tradition (analogous to the visual art of the time). While I find that the terms serious or classical music are irrelevant when applied to Art music, I do not have a problem with the terminology that grew out of the notion of Art song. This being said, the nature of mass marketing has made the term “classical music” the term of choice for the general public whether they are talking about Bach or Stravinsky.

What I propose in this brief article is not meant as an iron clad test for categorizing music, but rather an attempt to deal with a phenomenon that in my opinion clearly exists. It is also my desire to give musicians some philosophical concepts to consider when discussing different types of music. As young man I had the great fortune to study philosophy. If I learned anything at all while studying this subject it is that while one can never know the truth, one can try and come close to it.

Sarah Rothenberg Photo by Christian Steiner

Over the years I’ve noticed that the space in which one plays new music can have a big effect on how the audience responds. Of course, some of this may be due to the fact that certain spaces attract certain audiences, and if I add that some of my favorite venues have been contemporary art museums it may sound as though I just like to preach to the converted.

But I think most of us involved with contemporary music have noticed that the art world does not always share our musical preferences, so we actually do encounter new audiences this way as well. A space that houses contemporary art immediately introduces the right elements of surprise, difference, even strangeness, that one wants the music listener to be ready for.

As Artistic Director of Da Camera of Houston, I have the opportunity to take this one step farther. We have the privilege of presenting concerts in the world-renowned Menil Collection, housed in a majestically serene building designed by the architect Renzo Piano. From the start, I’ve been interested in using the collection as a context for new music. This has resulted in a number of unusual programs.

To celebrate the opening of a new gallery devoted to the work of American painter Cy Twombly, we picked up on the Greek myths in his abstract paintings and presented a program entitled Ancient Greeks and Modern Americans. As the audience sat in an open gallery space surrounded by Twombly’s work, they heard performances of such works as Elliott Carter‘s Syringa and Milton Babbitt‘s Philomel. Another program, Morton Feldman and the Abstract Expressionists, presented Feldman works with titles referring to De Kooning, Rothko, Guston, and Franz Kline that we performed with paintings by these artists on the walls. The memorable finale on this evening involved the entire audience walking over to the contemplative Rothko Chapel, a block away, for a performance of Feldman’s masterpiece created for that space. The unique marriage of music and place was something the entire audience felt in a visceral way, and will probably never forget.

Coming up this season, we will be presenting the premiere of Jane Ira Bloom‘s new work, “Chasing Paint,” inspired by the work of Jackson Pollock, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston in a gallery hung with Pollocks. This is as exciting for Bloom as it is for the rest of us.

These are rather rarified examples, and I don’t think that there needs to be a programmatic connection between the art and the music for the effect to be felt, although this can certainly intensify the result. I have wonderful memories of performing a new work by George Tsontakis with members of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at the DIA Foundation in New York. The space was filled with Richard Serra‘s enormous “Torqued Ellipses,” forcing us musicians into a corner of this rather cavernous space, where we were dwarfed by the towering steel sculptures. As there was only natural light and the concert was at night, a few halogen lamps around us gave off a cave-like glow. The addition of a torrential rainstorm outside created an amazing sense of shelter and community as everyone gathered inside to hear new music. Spaces that allow for that community, diminish separation between artist and audience, generate an energy that encourages openness: these are important characteristics that can make a difference for both performer and listener. Anything that radiates the opposite of “business as usual,” and instead wakes people up.

Amy Denio Photo courtesy Amy Denio

I have been playing and listening to new music around the world for the past 15 years and have come across hundreds of different venues and situations for listening, all of which offer unique advantages and problems for both the player and the listener.

For music involving purely acoustic instruments, I much prefer playing indoors, without amplification, so the instruments can ring truly in a live room. When acoustic instruments are amplified, the sound is always altered, however subtly, and the original beauty can be altered to something more synthetic. I find it ironic that perfectly good acoustic spaces are equipped with amplifying equipment—the aesthetic of making sure music is (more than) loud enough to hear is very frustrating to me.

One dynamic which interests me is that of the typical division of performer and audience. I think of music as a social tool—concerts provide the possibility to forge an instantaneous community. Often at my concerts, people from widely varying backgrounds are in attendance, and together we experience a common beauty (well, what I consider beauty). One of the inherent problems with music in Western culture is that it is often relegated to the realm of specialists—performers and listeners. In this regard, I prefer not to use a stage if there is one, as this is too great a metaphor for the concept of performers as specialists, audience as consumers. I prefer to surround the audience with my music, when possible, and often compose pieces in which the audience is invited to participate.

In my experience, the ideal situation for music is one in which the audience can be totally immersed in the experience of listening, without distraction. My colleague Francisco Lopez produces his acousmatic concerts in darkened rooms, where he is situated in the center, all chairs or cushions are facing outward, towards a ring of speakers which surround the audience. The audience is invited to wear blindfolds, to experience “la belle confusion” of sound immersion. This way, each person has a unique listening experience, while at the same time being part of a larger, anonymous group. In his concerts, usually there are no visual or auditory distractions, and as a result, the experience of hearing his creations is very intense.

I must add, though, that I am a big fan of embracing the chaos of our noisy world and always enjoy non-programmed sounds entering the performance venue. In this regard, music performed in open-air venues can be an invitation to listen to the world.

Shortly after Sun Ra died, my sax quartet was performing at an open-air festival in Ottawa, Canada, and our repertoire included an arrangement of “Mu,” one of his pieces. As soon as Marjorie started her solo, the church across the street began tolling its bells in celebration of a wedding. It was a lovely sonic addition. Several hours later, we performed a different set, but including the same piece. As soon as we started, the bells joined in, but only during “Mu,” and stopped when we did. From then on, whenever we performed “Mu” there was always an extra environmental audio ingredient, no matter where we were. Lovely!

Photo by Marion Ettlinger

I don’t believe that there is just one type of performance space that works best with new music. Just as there are many styles of new music composition, so are there different spaces that work best with them.

For my music, I want a reverberant space, but not too reverberant. I want a space that supports the sound—all of it—high partials as well as the fundamentals. Too much reverberation, though, and the sound becomes one big mush, with dissonances and details being absorbed by the consonances. I’ve had a few pieces performed in spaces like this, usually large, lovely churches, and have wanted to crawl under the pew during the performance, the sound bearing only a faint resemblance to what I wrote.

However, if you write monophonically for male voice (Gregorian chant), or other low-pitched, slow-moving or ambient music, it might be the perfect space. On the other hand, there are spaces that are either intentionally or unintentionally dry, where the result is the “pure” sound that is generated, with most of the upper partials disappearing before they reach your ears, with no “help” from the space (I’m obviously showing my bias here). From my experience, this type of space seems to be favored by composers of electronic music. I’ve had a few performances in spaces like these, too. I’ve always felt that I should be giving a guided tour during the performance similar to that of visiting a ruin. Instead of pointing out where something used to be, I’d be pointing out where something should have been, “this is the place where the combination tones start kicking in,” etc. In short, the ideal performance space is a matter of preference—one composer’s ideal space is (or can be) another’s nightmare.

Photo by Tom Jarmusch

The funny thing is that we have these places called concert halls, erected for the purpose of hearing serious art music, temples of culture which loom large in matters of civic pride and identity, and the first answer to the question of where is the best place to hear new music is: probably not there. Most concert halls are home to institutions which are basically 19th-century music theme parks with modern bottom lines, so they’re too big, set up for Brahms symphonies and their recognizable kin, and while the chances of hearing something really new there might not be zero, they’re not much better.

The ideal new music venue, like the composer who uses it, is flexible, not to mention accessible and affordable. In fact, often the best performance situations are provisional, floating, and nomadic rather than permanent, for with permanence comes power and authority and the need to protect them, things that foster orthodoxy rather than freedom of expression. Sometimes it seems the best spaces and the works made for them co-invent each other, as presenter and creator improvise and meet each other on new and unexpected ground.

New music generally originates from the edges rather than the center, so the audience is small and can be comfortably housed in intimate spaces such as lofts, small clubs, and galleries. At the same time, the means of production in music have changed so radically in the last few decades that a whole new kind of physical plant may be needed to present it, one which can accommodate sound reinforcement, video, and digital media, not to mention one which has a good, knowledgeable tech staff with the saintly patience to run it. Recently, I was in the audience for several performances of a work of mine for amplified ensemble, two of them in concert halls and one in a rock club. Can you guess where the sound was best?

When I was starting out I wanted to make orchestral music but, like most young composers, had no hope of gaining access to an orchestra, so I came upon unconventional means of producing such sonorities, massing together large numbers of portable tape players and making through-composed sound sculptures that could travel, indoors or out. With these works I literally went out and found my audience, or they found me. More recently I have written for all kinds of ensembles, including the most traditional and have presented my work in a wide variety of venues. In the past year I’ve had gigs in jazz and rock clubs, ambient lounges, art galleries, several churches, public parks and streets, a multimedia performance center, a small concert hall, the BAM Opera house and a hillside in Vermont. All of those venues worked for me and my audience, which leads me to believe that the best place to hear new music is wherever you can find it, and you should be ready to find it anywhere, cuz it’s an opportunistic feeder that likes to roam.

Donald Erb Photo by Janet Century, courtesy the Theodore Presser Company

No one could have had a more complete exposure to serialism than I did as a student of Marcel Dick. Marcel was a student of Schoenberg who played viola in the Kolisch Quartet, and often performed the music of Schoenberg and Webern as part of the musical scene in Vienna. Marcel was an amazing source of musical knowledge, but I balked at the dictatorial quality of serialism.

For me, a statement I made back in 1969 still holds:

“…composing is basically an intuitive process. A composer should be able to use what he knows about music in an instinctive manner rather than relying on systems.”

Although serial music was thought of by Marcel and other Central European composers as the logical music to follow the Romantics, as the music became more and more cerebral it resulted in a disconnectedness from the audience and the performers. Other, more accessible styles of writing made advances with the public. Serialism will always be of historical interest and there will always be performances of Pierrot Lunaire, but the movement as a whole has long been dead.

Dan Welcher Photo courtesy the Theodore Presser Company

Like most US-trained composers my age, I was “forced” to learn serialism in graduate school. And, like most of my colleagues, I was also told that this was the only way to be taken seriously as a composer (this was in the early seventies). But unlike many of my friends, I didn’t totally abandon the technique when I finally found the nerve to reclaim tonality, some time during the early 1980s. In fact, I merely allowed my compositional technique to admit tonality as another tool, one that could be used both alongside or in place of serialism.

For me, serialism is a very useful tool; it’s just not the only tool. I use the technique to organize materials when it suits the work being composed, but not usually for the entire piece. Just yesterday, I was present at a recording session of my new work for wind ensemble, Songs Without Words, by the excellent North Texas Wind Symphony. When the first movement, “Manic,” was in the can, I asked the dozen-or-so young band conductors in the control room if any of them had realized that this entire movement was a strict twelve-tone piece, following all the rules. Not one of them had, despite the rather obvious (to me) statement, re-statement, and block triadic statement of the row in its original form throughout this very brief movement. “It can’t be serial,” one of them had the nerve to say, “it has such normal phrasing!”

No one ever said that serial, or twelve-tone music, had to be devoid of all the elements we come to prize in music: implied harmonic underpinnings are not foreign to the technique at all, and bass lines can define a sort of tonality that flies in the face of the “every note for himself” school of composition. Dallapiccola showed me how this can actually create a harmonic language that heightened expressivity, by releasing new and unexpected chords into the air, or by helping to “spin” the inner mechanical underpinnings of a theme. Stravinsky found ways of serializing his already very sparse note-choosing to make it even more compact, and I absorbed this, too. And Britten, dismissed in the seventies as hopelessly reactionary, proved in his Turn of the Screw that twelve-tone organizational principals could even apply to the key relationships of various scenes (there are twelve) in a two-hour-long opera.

Far from being a hindrance, or an outmoded strait jacket, serialism is a very useful and still valid tool for composers. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if hip-hop discovered it soon!

“Systems, being easier to understand than art, dominate academic history.”

—Brian O’Doherty

There must be twelve-step programs for people like me. I confess: I’m a recovering serialist.

When I was sixteen my first composition teacher taught me the mechanics of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone system. Before long (under the influence of Messiaen and Stockhausen), I began experimenting with “total serialism.” Using 12×12 matrices I applied serial techniques not just to pitch but to other elements of musical sounds—(“parameters” in the parlance). Duration, dynamics, articulation, even timbre could be controlled by twelve-step permutations.

As a puzzle or a game, making music this way was mildly intriguing. But the sound usually left me cold. So I never became a devout serialist. Ruggles and Feldman appealed to my ear more than Schoenberg and Webern. And those matrices of serial permutations didn’t seem much different from the charts of durations and sonorities that John Cage used in his works of the late ’40s and early ’50s. So it didn’t take long for me to gravitate decisively toward experimentalism, minimalism, and other sources closer to home. These eventually led me to my own musical world.

But at least one aspect of serialism has stayed with me all these years: I think in intervals rather than degrees of scales. And although my music hardly sounds atonal, beneath the surface is a logic that has roots in serialism. Over the decades I’ve discovered the elements of my own harmonic and melodic world by shifting and combining fixed sets of intervals. At times I’ve also worked with rhythmic permutations which I derived more directly from Cage, but which he originally derived from Schoenberg.

Serialism is a system of inductive logic that can be used to determine all the details of a musical work. Like all systems (and unlike art) serialism can be taught, which probably explains its persistence in academia. By comparison the deductive linear processes of minimalism are transparent, and minimalist music is still regarded as an unsophisticated guest in many conservatories. But it seems to me that minimalism and serialism share more in common than first meets the ear.

Last year Frank Oteri and I visited the Sol LeWitt retrospective at the Whitney Museum. Walking around LeWitt’s Incomplete Open Cubes and Serial Project No. 1, I was struck by the underlying similarities between serialism and minimalism. Just as LeWitt’s compositional processes produced varied series of geometrical forms, Schoenberg’s serialism churned out pitches and the processes of musical minimalism chugged out rhythm.

Although the sounds were different, the techniques of both serialism and minimalism were machines for making music. While the additive rhythmic processes and phase-shifting of classic minimalism were clearly audible, in serialism the logic was usually beneath the surface. But both gave composers new tools for doing what composers do ­ making musical compositions.

I’ve always been fascinated with musical processes and forms. Like all composers my toolbox of techniques contains well-used tools from a variety of sources, including serialism and minimalism. My music has always been rigorously formal, but recently I’ve found myself gravitating away from clearly audible forms and processes. I hope my own idiosyncratic methods still give the music a coherence that’s somehow apparent to the listener. But I’m less interested in musical machines and more interested in music that sounds like it might occur in nature.

What kind of musical logic interests you? Do you want it to be audible? Or is it enough to sense the unity beneath the surface?

Has serialism influenced the music you listen to and make?