Moderating the Tyranny of Specialism

If there is such a thing academically/intellectually as a "young (wo)man's game," the question for those of us so enmeshed becomes: why continue to specialize in middle age?

Galenson's thesis in Old Masters and Young Geniuses supports this thinking. "Experimental innovators seek, and conceptual innovators find," the latter at surprisingly young ages and often never again. Hence, no matter what we've found (or not) as an adolescent, perhaps middle age is our cue to start seeking.

Put another way, it is interesting to consider whether there are discernible landmarks of achievement lying afield of Gladwell's 10,000 hours. Where in the outer reaches of the life cycle might they fall? And what, then, about the relative worth of, say, 50,000 hour mastery in comparison to a broadening of horizons 500 hours at a time? Perhaps the latter might enable the 10,000 hour master to apply his or her already-substantial achievement to a wide range of immediate, human problems; and indeed, to better understand of his or her own accord what exactly constitutes an immediate, human problem in the first place? I will always be the first to make room for supreme achievers in the Bach or Coltrane mold, but I have had to accept that I am simply not wired for that path.

Glenn Gould famously blurted out something that every music teacher has thought to themselves when he remarked that he could explain everything about playing the piano in a half-hour while the student could spend the rest of his or her life applying this knowledge. Certainly 10,000 hours of practice sounds like a good minimum target for aspiring Professors of Applied Music seeking to unpack the technical and historical vicissitudes of their respective instrumental traditions; it is also wholly inadequate when it comes to mastering the composition, delivery, and contextualization of their own half-hour lectures. And so it must not be regarded as a mere formality, as it seems to have been throughout much of American academia for a very long time, that the latter and not the former is what these Professors are *actually* paid to do. Clearly some extra seasoning is in order; and if simply having Life Experiences® was all it took, every washed up conservatory brat would be magically transformed into a master teacher the moment their teenage child(ren) became sufficiently angsty to impose some long-overdue introspection. There would be middle-aged gurus in designer workout clothes falling from proverbial trees. We can only wish it were that simple.

Anecdotally, I have seen many peers (and myself) become increasingly unable to sustain the multi-hour instrumental practice regimen of college music school into early middle age. Those of us who at least met the barest of curricular time-banking expectations along the way and have continued to find smidges of focused practice time on a daily basis eventually backed into rather than charged into the 10,000 hour club, with all of its privileges and obligations, and with no hope of ever reaching whatever further thresholds might exist in the Gladwellian great beyond. When this first became apparent to me I took it as a serious blow to my self-esteem, committed as I was for many years to an intense practice regimen at the expense of virtually every other facet of personal development. I wanted to be a 50,000 hour tubamaster, or at least I had tried very hard to convince myself that I did. Further, though my hands now covered my face, I couldn't help peeking through my fingers at peers for whom the onset of Real Life® seemed to mark not just the end of their musical development but their personal development as well. It was both a shock and a relief to emerge from such twenty-something doldrums to find that my own desire for personal development had not abated along with my inclination to prioritize tuba playing over all else; and so I decided to listen to what my brain and body alike were trying to tell me: "You're already a specialist, and unless you throw your horn off a bridge, you'll always be one. Now go make it your own."

Just as most all of the principal players of the 20th century's greatest orchestras would fail to advance beyond today's preliminary round auditions on account of their individuality, so too would the areas in which many of history's greatest minds made their lasting contributions today be considered "beyond their competence" on account of vulgar credentialism's logic of accountability. To be clear, I do believe that membership in the 10,000 hour club is a necessity, and that eclecticism is a decidedly members-only area. But given that this number is pursued in a timely enough fashion for its own inner logic to hold, there ought to be plenty of life left during which to find a balance that meets your needs and fits your budget. So get to it.

Exchange with Milo Fine (iv): "if you don't like the world, change yourself"

[Previously: Foreword – (i) – (ii) – (iii)]

[SK] Not that it's of much consequence, but I guess I should clarify what I meant about consistency/reinvention. There is an adage now that in order to get over, you have to be "the guy/gal/group with the _____," the blank being filled in with just about anything, but just one thing (at once) so as to be digestible/memorable in scope and on display at each and every opportunity, i.e. towards the notion that people need to see something advertised x number of times before they will buy it. (Wikipedia tells me this is called Effective Frequency.) I didn't mean to imply that those so inclined never, ever evolve, just that there is an initial marketing phase that has to either succeed (which permits more freedom) or fail (which necessitates trying a new, calculated [blank]) on the basis of a predictable musical outcome. In other words, in terms of a science experiment, the [blank] is the control/constant.

[MF] Ah, I see. In a way, distinction without a difference. What we're talking about here is marketing/packaging, and, of course, advertising. Big tool for the latter is, naturally, repetition, through which people are convinced they "need" something. A couple thoughts concerning "effective frequency". First is the fact that I keep stumbling into more and more rarified concepts and terms. Some, maybe even a good percentage, can be helpful as they identify further subsets in/of a given field. Put another way, they illuminate various "corners" of various theories. On the other hand, they seem to obfuscate more than illuminate when it comes to application. So much more "knowledge" resulting in so much less "wisdom". Putting *that* another way, people coin terms and phrases, research and write about them, but, fundamentally *nothing* changes concerning the so-called human condition. We're much better at identifying things than putting them into meaningful action in our own lives. Pathetic. Concerning "effective frequency", I would debate the issue that the success of an initial marketing phase permits more freedom. Perhaps true enough if that (successful) initial phase is focused on the public image of the "artist". That would give them maneuvering room to take on different forms/styles. But, if a particular style/approach/form is what strikes the (fickle) fancy of the public, then one will be hard-pressed to do anything else if one is to maintain that initial blush. Of course, "art" predicated on the commonly understood definition of success is, for me, always highly suspect.

I guess the funny thing, though, is that should the artist insist on being unpredictable, the "pidgeonholing" impulse in the culture at large will fill in the blank anyway.

Right, right.

I've been "the jazz tuba player" for a while, and I'm sure you've had your go-rounds with that sort of thing as well. It happens by itself, whether you like it or not; truthfully, though, I can't sit here and complain without acknowledging that all of this has probably done more good than harm for me in the long run in terms of opportunities to play with people, even despite getting to hear them say some borderline-insulting things about me in my presence (i.e. a jazz guy once told me, "Once you get your classical chops together, you're set!"). The dynamic I was attempting to describe before was a certain encouragement of/pandering to the pidgeonholing impulse, an impulse which unfortunately I think we all are prone to (see, in your words, "wiring"), which explains its reliability in the eyes of those doing the pandering.

Yeah. Just as our conditioning/wiring filters create a sense of "order" in our perceptions, so we readily gravitate towards pigeonholing. As I've no doubt posited to you before, how amazing it would be to perceive (hear, see, etc.) the world around us closer to what *it really is* without these filters, rather than with the artifice created by them.

There's something in there, of course, about Improvised Music being "different every time," but also about your notions of consistency and resonance. Another fruitful dialectic very much at odds with the status quo, which is more dualistic.

Yes! Particularly if, re: "different" every time" you mean genuinely *improvised* music rather than improvising musicians overly relying on their tried-and-true vocabularies, strategies, etc. That stated, musicians relying on established tools can, and do, obviously, create resonant music. And there, we return once again to the initiative of the individual, which, ultimately, is much more important than the style of music. Putting *that* another way, while improvised music provides, shall we say, more potential for resonant/individual expression, that too has been squandered.

Besides the threat of being personally/artistically pidgeonholed, it was eye-opening for me in my early "professional" career to see friends and acquaintances gradually polarize around styles and venues I had associated myself with. In one sense I actually felt bad about it, thinking again of what it's like to be a follower of a few "inconsistent cats" myself. At that age, though, I was strangely content (and aware of it) to lead a compartmentalized musico-stylistic life without much blending. Needless to say that my first whiffs of the "specious pastiche-stained umbrella" of self-conscious eclecticism actually heightened my resolve, even though I always figured a more thorough integration was inevitable; in so many ways, I've come to be very suspicious of those so bent on precipitating inevitabilities; but, it has started to happen, and I think it has indeed been positive precisely for not being forced in the least.

Your path of discovery; what I like to term "gathering evidence", after Thomas Bernhard's autobiography.

Even so, a degree of compartmentalization is still perceivable and I suspect it always will be with me. I always aspire to play jazz, classical, and improvised music with the best players in those areas, which is to say usually with specialists, problematic, if not outright hypocritical, since I thus refuse to specialize myself, and increasingly a non-starter with my own music, which tends to demand fluency in (not just familiarity with) more than one of those traditions. (An aside: is Improvised Music a tradition or an anti-tradition?) Ethnomusicology has established rather starkly that there are only so many styles/forms/compositions a human musician can truly specialize in, and yet I can pinpoint a number of pretty specific technical features of the music I'm interested in that cut across these three styles: it's mostly polyphonic, contrapuntal, harmonically and timbrally rich/dense, and so on. The question facing musicians like me, then, is whether we can transcend the limitations of generalism by specializing in our own poly-stylistic music (i.e. jack-of-all-trades, master-of-some)?

First, improvised music is now a tradition; absolutely. But, for the most resolute practitioners, it is still and must be, a non-tradition; an "avant grade" in the purest sense of the term.

And, concerning this whole "renaissance man" notion which has taken on a whole new (oxymoron intended) superficial breadth and depth over the last century, I again defer to Musil (THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES, same translators). Here, our "protagonist" is contemplating his position compared to the "superman (renaissance man) of letters" character in the book, who is also a cagey opportunist and politician:

"Let us try to imagine the opposite — a writer who did not do all these things. He would have to refuse cordial invitations, rebuff people, assess praise not as though he himself were the object of it, but like a judge, tear the natural state of things to shreds, and treat splendid opportunities with suspicion merely because they were splendid; and he would have nothing to offer in return but processes going on inside his own head, difficult to express and difficult to assess, and the work of a man of letters, something that an epoch already possessing supermen of letters need not set much store by. Would not such a man inevitably remain an outsider and have to withdraw from reality, bearing the consequences of his attitude?"

Let us also take into account another searing observation from Hannah Arendt. To paraphrase, each succeeding generation has "improved" technical wiring; which is why, for instance, contemporary composers are generally one generation ahead of people actually being able to realize what they write. This is much more inevitable than it is admirable; a natural progression of technique, but, of course, not necessarily resonance. And this ties into the above re: no marked "improvement" in the overall human condition. So, it makes biological/physiological sense that more and more musicians are able to produce superficially convincing/compelling eclectic music.

It seems to me there are fewer specialists now; a situation created/driven by careerism. "Oh, I'd better get this other thing together -- at least somewhat -- because it will open more doors." And those who are specialists are just that because they are able to do so, i.e.; the gig pays enough. Naturally, I'm oversimplifying, but the point I keep getting back to is that, sadly, most "art" is done for recognition and money rather than the work itself. Hey, you hipped me to the term "hire education".

That stated, "poly-stylism" is absolutely a viable path. (And I say that unequivocally because, as you point out below, I am a "poly-stylist"; though not quite in the manner you ascribe to yourself.) For example, I find composer Alfred Schnittke's "poly-stylism" very appealing; and resonant. Just as I don't find anything opportunistic about Henry Cowell's adaptation of ethnic music. It all boils down to doing the work you need to do for *yourself*; because it needs to be done. Doing that, you will find listeners. And, among those, some who will truly hear.

You're path was, by choice, very different, one very large degree removed from what I'm describing in that your range of listening is quite broad but your interface with your instruments intuitive (autodidactic? naive?), and from a very early stage. Your groups include people who elsewhere read notation, play changes, recite poetry, do experimentalism, etc., and you occasionally enable/tolerate a certain amount of those things, but your groups play "free" as a rule. It seems to me that your sources, so to speak, are not so different, but your method is. (But then, at a certain point, that kind of music becomes a source?) I had a string of gigs with you a few years ago where a listener dropped a different superficial post-concert reference each night; they were not so much off-base as simply unnecessary. In any case, despite my own compartmentalist tendencies, I would say based on playing in your groups that there certainly is something of a higher order about the way these things emerge from your way of working. It is actually more compelling when not everyone in the group "owns" every style.

Extremely astute observations. And, as I think you know, I never mapped this out; never had a "game plan". This all evolved more or less naturally, as I played, observed, challenged my own personal baggage, and investigated; combining as I do when playing, the intuitive and the intellect. And, I am convinced that this, as you put it, "higher order" (Musil's "andere zustand") comes from a collective consciousness/unconsciousness/energy. I have no idea how it actually functions, but that mystery of that process is vital.

As for resonance, at the risk of now running in circles, the question for me becomes whether this notion that "what he learned from sound he brought to his life, and vice versa" is a description or a prescription? This potential of sound/music is self-evident to many of us, but...well, so many others seem incapable of learning this way. You almost can't give away music right now. So yes, from the department of worrying about the things you can control, the inner struggle becomes paramount. I guess I am trapped, though, because I have always made my inner struggle about how I could do more for other people; and further, a paradox inside a paradox: the closer you get to just about any people, their fallibility and vicissitudes, the less you want to help them! Yet unless you believe in a higher power and/or something like a judgment day, it seems to me that any sense of wholesomeness or morality is at root a matter of your relationships, direct and indirect, to other living things on Planet Earth. So, I guess I'm not sure how the "indirect" route of the inner struggle can claim complete supremacy or dominance over more "direct" paths. Or, is the notion that "direct" here is simply standing in for "contrived?"

Whew.

I would suggest that "direct/indirect" is much like "intuitive/intellect"; a flux. We are diseased, we are flawed, we struggle. In amongst that we find that some people's "fallibility and vicissitudes" cause us to cut them loose. With others, we find ourselves hanging in to varying degrees in different ways. I know I've told you about the surprising relationship arcs I've had with a few people over decades. The "falling outs" have seemed final; irrevocable. And, then, years later, through no forced effort of our own, we find a new footing/common ground. Sometimes this leads to a new "falling out", but, the time reconnected feels utterly worthwhile. When I was younger, things were much more cut-and-dried. But, with age, my self-righteousness has diminished, thanks in good part to an unerring look in the mirror. From another angle, and as the cliche goes, "I love humanity; it's people I can't stand"; and, of course, that *all* starts in the mirror. A major motivation for me to attempt something akin to an ethical (I find that concept much more tolerable than "moral") life is that *so* much of the world is unethical. As with my music, a matter of moving along the path less traveled. (If you don't like the world, change yourself!)

Second Loves (i)

In college, I attended a masterclass by a very talented and increasingly well-known trumpet player not much older than I am now who had been a jazz major at a prominent U.S. conservatory, and who uttered something that will be with me forever: "When I finished college, I realized that I didn't really like jazz." Indeed, it could justifiably be called into question whether the music that was performed during this residency qualified as "Jazz" with a capital-J, yet this music was, besides being incredible, nevertheless inconceivable without its basis in jazz-conservatory training (not to mention being exceptionally fresh, and miraculously so, I guess, given that such training is often assailed for its potential to educate the individuality right out of its students).

This was an odd pose he was striking, disavowing jazz one moment while displaying an unabashed indebtedness to it the next (he might contend the accuracy of the latter description, but it was hard not to hear it that way, and this not in spite of how he prefaced his work but in fact most especially because of it). It's a pose that doesn't resonate with me any more today than it did back then, but having since navigated the post-college twenty-something years myself, I can at least say that I better understand the dynamics at play. I was barely 21 years old at the time of that masterclass, but my honeymoon period with bebop had already evaporated, leaving me bouncing between intense periods of study borne of fanatical devotion and despondent periods of non-study following an event or series of events which brought home to me just how stylistically limited an improvisor I had chosen to become. In the meantime, I was already noticing that while there were tons of other college-aged jazz players, tons of middle-aged jazz players, and more than a few senior citizen jazz players, I didn't ever seem to meet very many twenty-something jazz players. I only knew a few musicians who were 5 to 10 years older than I was, and like this clinician, most of them seemed to be after something eclectic which may or may not have entailed an overt jazz influence. Among this group, most were at peace with their past jazz study, but it wasn't unheard of to meet one who had disavowed it altogether as an adolescent phase. This wasn't a novel concept to me at this point; I just wasn't prepared to encounter it in the form a high-profile professional giving a university masterclass.

I'm now approaching the age this clinician was when those words were spoken, and a lot still has to change if I am ever to decide that I "don't really like jazz." Nonetheless, I say that his statement will be with me forever because it was the moment I realized that it's not just broken-down jazz-wannabe punk rock stoners with outsized inferiority complexes that say these kinds of things; they have, do, and will, but it can be soft-spoken, well-educated, profoundly gifted musicians as well, musicians who make music I would actually want to listen to, whether it's jazz or not, and who I might on a good day even be able to tolerate socializing with. That was something of a revelation, both for better and for worse.

Though I haven't disavowed jazz (or most any other music I've ever been smitten with for that matter), I have, in fact, gradually begun acquiring interests from outside classical music and jazz, interests which may be tremendously dissimilar to these styles on the surface, but which invariably contain deeper similarities. And having now more or less arrived at the dreaded age in question myself, I'm no longer limited to observing snapshots, but now have also witnessed trajectories, the before, during and after of it, as well as the litany of extra-musical priorities peculiar to this age that can, in some cases at least, drive the musical ones over a cliff.

I've frequently remarked to others that this is an age where musicians go one of two directions (leaving aside for a moment the dreaded third direction of quitting altogether), namely towards either lifelong learning or a lifetime of stagnation. By far the most insidious enabler of apathy is the incredible tolerance (enforcement?) of mediocrity that prevails at just about every turn among so-called professionals. A young freelancer can't help but notice how much lower the musical bar is at "money gigs" compared to even a second-rate college music department. Another is the frantic twenty-something race to petite bourgeousie domestic respectability, pitting canoe ownership against studio rental and wine tasting against score study in the high-stakes court of spousal approval.

Among those twenty-something musicians who, for whatever reason, continue to seek growth, a certain expansion of purview is almost inevitable. Yet a severe disconnect continues to exist between myself and many of those around me by virtue of the fact that, whereas I started with classical music and jazz and have been working my way out from there, most of them worked their ways to classical music and jazz from somewhere else. I say "continues to exist" because this was the source of even greater frustration when I was in high school and college. I used to entertain myself at jazz camps by picking out the students who came to jazz through rock just by hearing them (though hearing them was, of course, often superfluous as they usually were dressed for the occasion). Any given jazz jam I might have found myself at during those years seemed to follow roughly the same trajectory: a series of awkwardly played (sometimes awkwardly called) standards would prevail until some ballsy kid in a Green Day shirt had the guile to call "Chameleon," to which "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" was the inevitable chaser, and suddenly everyone except for the faculty and I was having the time of their lives. Some of the people I work with now have seen me refuse to play "Chameleon." It's not so much that I dislike the music as that its symbolic status as the pivot tune in the jazz-rock cold war that defined my musical youth has more or less spoiled it for me for all time. (I have performed "Red Clay," though, because if you really want to be a dick, you can always insist on playing it in the original key.)

Suffice it to say, then, that when disavowal time rolled around, circa age 24, there were some surprises among my peers, but not many. There's selling out, and then are those who never had anything for sale in the first place. Once whatever social factor it was that compelled all those high school punk rockers to go to jazz camp every summer had evaporated, they gave up trying to infiltrate the jazz world for status' sake and went back to being who they really were (which I don't begrudge them one bit because it's better for all concerned in the long run). This is most definitely not the route that our mystery clinician took; I imagine he falls firmly into the group that simply continued discovering non-jazz music he liked rather than that which divests itself of all things uncool at the drop of a hat. It should be obvious to anyone who keeps up with these missives that I'm a jazzhead at heart, but recent years have presented (if not manifested) the possibility of going eclectic in ways I never anticipated. That this has been brought about by exposure to what is, in the grand scheme of things, an exceedingly tiny fraction of the non-jazz, non-classical music that's out there only adds to my suspicion that a more eclectic route is inevitable.

Sounds simple, but it's not. For one thing, there's a fine line between studied eclecticism and merely indulging a short attention span, this being the difference between true synthesis and mere reference or allusion. For another, there's the issue of authenticity, or bringing one's depth of knowledge of and experience in newfound musical interests up to speed with lifelong ones. Finally, much as it pains me to say it, there's the social aspect of all of this, and the reality that whether one's change of stylistic direction is studied or unstudied, unified or fragmented, authentic or allusive, sincere or calculated, assumptions will be made based on limited evidence, and otherwise sympathetic peers on both sides of the divide will think to themselves either, "He's no longer one of us," or "He'll never really be one of us." Even to someone like me, that can be a more powerful deterrent than the specter of taking time away from prior musical engagements, though the latter also poses an interesting conundrum.