On the occasion of the Republican National Convention coming to my hometown, I offer this essay on the dynamic between art and activism, a subject I find myself returning to with greater frequency as the extent of the damage wrought by Bush and Company becomes more clear. -SK
Abstract Music, Concrete Action
If there is an upside to the catastrophic events that both the country and the world have endured at the hands of the Bush Administration, it is the opportunity to learn from history with the intent of preventing its repetition. While a general apathy and indifference on behalf of the American citizenry is a common to theme to which present and future commentators will no doubt return frequently, there must also come a time to evaluate specific actions of specific people at specific times: what they were doing and why, and what, perhaps, they could have done differently. As musicians specifically, but also more generally as artists, there has never been a better time to ask this question of ourselves and our peers, difficult as it may be to stomach the answers.
Despite the difficulty in objectively defining what is and is not art, let alone what constitutes good and bad art, many artists and audiences have come to accept as a matter of blind faith that the intended creation of art is an inherently positive and constructive action regardless of the content of the work or the circumstances of its creation. It is no coincidence that, within this group, those who see art primarily as a vehicle for social or political activism comprise a sizable majority. This essay seeks to refute and condemn this line of thinking, arguing instead that it is stifling and counterproductive from both an artistic and ethical standpoint. It proposes an alternative ethical framework by which art and activism are wholly separate endeavors, hence operating under the assumption that the two presently have a mutually destructive rather than constructive relationship. The author believes that current events in both the political and artistic spheres provide copious amounts of evidence in support of this position, but none so damning as the havoc wreaked by the Bush Administration at a time when art-as-activism complacency runs rampant among contemporary artists and audiences.
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Artworks which are neither representational nor functional will never cease to be controversial, and nowhere is this more true than in music, often said to be the most abstract of all the arts. There is rarely a satisfying explanation for any person's attraction to the most abstract works of music, whether it be sought in the realm of hard science, sheer superstition, or anywhere in between, but even with such an explanation in hand, it would appear impossible to evaluate this attraction on an ethical level because aesthetic value judgments are of a fundamentally different type than ethical judgments. The abstract aesthetic value of any particular artwork is an issue destined to fall permanently outside the purview of morality, for insofar as such judgments are based on aesthetic properties, they are not moral or ethical in nature at all.
Nonetheless, abstract art as vocation poses an urgent ethical question should it come to dominate the individual's life sufficiently to preclude engaging in certain other activities. In other words, if community service, for example, is a necessary condition for moral integrity, and the demands of one's vocation interfere with the ability to perform community service, then the vocation is a barrier to achieving moral integrity. In being presented such a challenge, it is not altogether unusual to leap at any and all opportunities to kill two birds with one stone, or perhaps even to work a little bit too hard at interpreting a situation as such for one's own edification. How wonderful it would be if the service-minded musician could simply continue going about his or her business in a way that also fulfills some broader obligation to society; what a relief it would be to combine one's obligations to one's art with one's obligations to collective humanity. Hence, for musicians, the issue ultimately becomes not separating the good music from the bad, but understanding the limitations of both kinds when it comes to what (if anything) they are able to accomplish outside the realm of abstract sound.
Does the most abstract music contribute enough to the world to justify devoting one's life primarily or entirely to its creation instead of any number of other noble causes? For many who claim fealty to "The Arts," it would be blasphemous to answer "no," yet that is clearly the correct answer. To equate the creation of the most abstract music with humanitarianism is an egregious ethical misstep; to do so would be to conflate entertainment and service, essentially putting oneself before others in a plainly offensive manner. It could be rightly assumed that anyone who does so either is not aware of the scope of suffering and injustice that takes place in the world, or that this knowledge does not move them beyond a state of casual resignation. Those who believe the causes of art and service to be of comparable importance find themselves in an indefensible position. Were they to encounter a musician who held such views exclusively towards his or her own work, they would clearly see the error. What prevents them from making this connection, however, is a blind allegiance to "The Arts" collectively, a fatally relativistic mindset which leads to an inability and/or unwillingness to judge case-by-case, hence enabling the delusion of a concrete and objective value of all art based entirely on its appendices and little (if at all) on even their own feeble aesthetic judgments of its value in the abstract.
To rank the value of the most abstract music lower than that of service is not to denigrate the former, but simply to recognize the primacy of the latter. Musicians, after all, are people and citizens first. Those who desire to be so certain of their larger contribution to society would be wise to turn away from the maddeningly subjective realm of aesthetics and towards something simpler and unrelated. Community service, activism, and civic engagement are pursuits which are more widely acknowledged and immediately effective at making the world a better place than any single piece of music could ever be, no matter how great its abstract aesthetic properties or supposed activist content. That this view would be seen as philistine is symptomatic of a fundamental misunderstanding of not only of what it means to serve others but also of what the very essence of music really is. The most vital service is that which aspires to nothing beyond its scope as service, with the possible exception of the personal satisfaction derived from reflecting upon how these actions have benefitted others. Similarly, the most vital music is the realization of a sonic intent which deals wholly in terms of sound, free from any undue burden or obligation to serve other functions or agendas for its creator.
The more equally members of society share the burden of community service amongst each other, the less there is for each of them to do and the more time remains for pursuits such as art, whether it be as vocation or hobby. Conversely, painting art as service for one's own edification runs roughshod over the integrity, quality, and efficacy of both endeavors, leaving important acts of service for others to do, and condemning art to be judged functionally rather than aesthetically. It would not be unreasonable to assume that the potent appeal of combining art and service is in part responsible for the increasingly popular assertions that, among other things, art:
•makes kids smart
•keeps kids off drugs
•can be a vehicle for social change
•is a hallmark of civilized cultures
•is an essential part of the economy
It is left to the reader to consider whether any or all of these statements might get the cause and effect backwards. Either way, because consensus on aesthetic value is a logical impossibility, in no case can the value of art or music in the abstract ever be pointed to as an attribute in the public arena. Art in the abstract offers nothing remotely approaching the clear-cut and agreed upon value of making kids smarter or fueling a movement; it can have any value at all only in the mind of an individual who judges it as such via the aesthetic experience, an inherently subjective process that is not subject to ethical evaluation. This is what has driven a sizable majority of musicians and music lovers towards a trumping up the items listed above (among others) coupled with an auspicious and disingenuous refusal to argue in favor of art for its own sake. Alas, this is the only tenable position in the political arena, and in this capacity it has undoubtedly facilitated a smattering of progress here and there. However, it also presents a dangerous trap into which many a victim has fallen: having established a concrete and objective value for music itself as service, and by extension service to music as service to all, the advocate is wont to excuse themselves from other service obligations on the grounds that their involvement with or advocacy for music constitutes just such a contribution in and of itself.
One could not be faulted for being suspicious of this attitude simply by virtue of the quite obvious potential for abuse. The cumulative extent to which such abuse actually takes place is something which cannot be verified with any authority, yet even operating under the assumption that those who hold themselves in such high regard as dual function musician-servants are being entirely genuine as to what they believe they are accomplishing, it can be said that in aiming to combine the creation of sonic beauty with a selfless devotion to others, they achieve significantly less in both areas than they would if they were to pursue them separately.
This claim is easier to prove in the service area than the art area, and the discussion that has already taken place ought to suffice as support. When it comes to art, it is, of course, impossible to say conclusively whether it is true or not, for this depends on individual aesthetic judgments of artworks which aspire to make service or activist contributions. Suffice it to say that, despite often sympathizing strongly with the political viewpoints expressed by such artists, the author's experiences to this point have led to the formation of an utter contempt for such works, along with the strong feeling that the functional obligations placed on them are directly responsible for their high rate of failure in the aesthetic realm, as well as for instilling a certain aesthetic numbness in audiences who embrace the art-as-service framework.
What is much more easily established is the contradiction lying at the heart of service-oriented arts advocacy. The single-minded support that music education, for example, enjoys is predicated overwhelmingly on service attributes of questionable provenance (as in the list above) rather than the simple desire to involve children in music making for artistic and recreational reasons. Such advocacy would otherwise seem more like an irrational fixation, since countless other activities accomplish the same desired non-musical results even more effectively, but do not involve music making. One assumes that it is rational by virtue of being the result of an aesthetic attraction to certain pieces of music, but wishes more individuals would be honest about this in public. If making music was dangerous (like playing with guns), or completely inane (like talking on the phone), parents and arts advocates would not be so quick to extoll its value as a diversion for the kids. The support it enjoys is a tacit acknowledgment of the primacy of what can only be called its abstract aesthetic properties, regardless of whether or not these individuals are willing to admit it, or indeed if they are capable of understanding the relationship (their relationship with sound) at all.
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Another problem with music as service is that, as with referring to "The Arts" collectively regardless of content, the term "music" is too broad. One must be an incorrigible relativist to support a service initiative that deals only in these most vague terms; the real question is: “Which music?” or "Which arts?" Turning to music based purely on its service value is a terrible way to proceed because this constitutes judging an artwork for nonaesthetic reasons (an act of which "judging a book by its cover" is the most famous example). Perhaps the given service initiative requires that the music must be able to be written and/or realized by those with no previous training; perhaps lyrical subject matter is prescribed based on demographics; or perhaps stylistic constraints are imposed in order ensure that the particular participants are engaged for the appropriate amount of time. When it does come to judging pieces of abstract music aesthetically, individuals seldom agree on anything; as socially uncomfortable an option as this might be, it is also the most honest. Conversely, in being relatively objective, judging music based on non-aesthetic properties such as service value enables a broader consensus, but it forces all involved to take on a false consciousness, suppressing their own capacity for the perception of beauty and, in place of this, embracing whatever functional purpose it is that the artwork is intended to lend itself to.
It is a truth of human nature that the capacity for the perception of beauty is always too powerful to merely be turned on and off as the beholder wishes. The impulse is stronger yet when the beholder finds themselves in a setting which they have been socially conditioned to treat as an opportunity for aesthetic contemplation of an artwork. Hence, practictioners of service music are faced with the challenge of bypassing any innate or acquired aesthetic faculties their audience might possess and appealing directly to this social conditioning. Having suppressed the more immediate artistic motivations that typically lie behind the creation of an artwork, is it no surprise that the service artist’s rate of aesthetic success is so low. By presenting an artwork to be judged non-aesthetically, the service artist not only forces an uncomfortable dishonesty on the audience, but also commits a dishonest act themselves.
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Aside from community service per se, there is another sense in which music is often viewed as service, if not only implicitly. It has become fashionable to make a distinction between musicians who "play for themselves" and those who "play for an audience," the latter hence being elevated to the moral high ground and the former dismissed as self-indulgent nihilists. In reality, this is nothing more than the institutionalization of popular taste in the colloquial musical vocabulary of the day, a point underscored by the fact that those musicians who "play only for themselves" are without exception the ones working in abstract "modern" or "avant-garde" idioms.
By the logic of this music-as-service framework, giving people what they want to hear is an act of service which the musician is ethically obligated to fulfill, while the act of presenting something unfamiliar and challenging is condemned simply by virtue of the discomfort it is sure to impart to the uninitiated (never mind the possibility that anyone in the audience may actually desire such a challenge). The value of a piece of music is then determined solely by the sheer number of people who line up to consume it, and musicians who serve others by pandering to them are commended whereas those whose personal musical voice is at odds with mass taste are scolded. Among other things, it is a very capitalistic perspective, having distinctive echoes of “the customer is always right,” and indeed, appealing to as many people as possible is also the most lucrative option available to a musician, which should be the first hint that not only is this position ethically flawed, it is altogether backwards.
In practice, few musicians attain mass commercial success without compromising something artistic, but in such cases, rare as they may be, those few musicians deserve no more accolades for being marketable than a professional basketball player does for being tall. They may also be talented, but above all, they are exceedingly lucky that large numbers of other people are attracted to them for something they would be doing anyway. For the others (the vast majority), there are usually some difficult choices to make along the way, and those that stick to their guns are the heroes, not the goats, for they are the ones that ensure the biodiversity that keeps the contemporary musical ecosystem running. Of course, one can decide to compromise in certain situations and not in others, and all else being equal, this is probably the most practical approach where earning a living through one's art is the first priority. No one who compromises is a bad person for this reason alone, but does anyone believe that such individuals are motivated more by some abstract concept of service embedded in reaching the most people they can rather than by the material gains (however meager) to be reaped from wider appeal?
The traditional dichotomy between art and entertainment is often criticized for jumping to the conclusion that one cannot encompass the other, and it is indeed tenuous to assume that works traditionally categorized as art are not entertaining per se to their audience. The word “entertainment” often connotes something casual, passive, and inane, whereas art is considered to be more serious, stimulating, or complicated, and hence the two are seen as somehow mutually exclusive. This dynamic has been institutionalized in the lexicon in the form of terms like “easy listening” without taking into account that there are some who find it very easy to listen to avant-garde music and very difficult to listen to anything else. In this case as always, whether a piece is “easy” or “difficult” to listen to has nothing to do with its own intrinsic properties and everything to do with who exactly it is that is listening.
The “playing for yourself”/”playing for others” dichotomy is a crafty little tag line, something Karl Rove could have come up with if he did not have more important things to worry about. It draws a righteous line in the sand between the selfish and the selfless, simply, effectively, and ignorantly. Attractive as it might sound, there really is no aesthetic moral high ground at all to be claimed by artists; in ferreting out a particular person's impact on society broadly, their actions as a citizen are infinitely more important than their actions as a musician. To that end, it stands to reason that the world would be better off with honest musicians who serve their community in their spare time than it would be with great hordes of complacent fame-seeking narcissists who think that they are making the world a better place simply by existing.
Instead of trying to make music look like service any way it can, society ought to be capable of admitting that there is something inherently selfish in why musicians play music (not to mention in why audiences listen to it), and that without this, many great masterpieces would never have been created. As great as these masterpieces might be, abstract music is no substitute for concrete action. Musicians, for their part, ought to be willing to admit that a satisfied audience takes less away from a performance than a poverty-stricken family takes away from the food shelf, and that the musician who feels a such a glow from reaching that audience could in fact experience the same feeling magnified tremendously without touching their instrument and likely do more good in the process. The ever-expanding diversity of the contemporary musical landscape seems to ensure that there will be something out there for everyone, but in turn, everyone must be tolerant of this diversity and allow it to exist without projecting non-aesthetic moralization onto it. Meanwhile, there exists a staggeringly diverse array of needs in the world, and scarcely a single one of them is most effectively addressed through art of any kind.
01 September 2008
30 August 2008
Appetizer
From The Nation's recent review of work by writer and activist Bill McKibben:
[McKibben's] turn toward activism has not been free of ambivalence. In "Speaking Up for the Environment," from 2001, he tells the story of getting arrested in Washington for holding a sign in the Capitol Rotunda demanding environmental action. A group called the Alliance for Democracy planned the protest. The night before, its members gathered in a church basement to prepare and shared their hesitations. McKibben feared losing credibility as a writer. "Real, serious Writer Writers look on," he notes. "They can hold strong opinions, write powerful op-eds, but they tell us what is happening, what should happen. They themselves aren't supposed to 'happen.'" But he concludes, "Without that kind of commitment, my writing life wouldn't make much sense."
It's time for all of us to "happen." More to come...
[McKibben's] turn toward activism has not been free of ambivalence. In "Speaking Up for the Environment," from 2001, he tells the story of getting arrested in Washington for holding a sign in the Capitol Rotunda demanding environmental action. A group called the Alliance for Democracy planned the protest. The night before, its members gathered in a church basement to prepare and shared their hesitations. McKibben feared losing credibility as a writer. "Real, serious Writer Writers look on," he notes. "They can hold strong opinions, write powerful op-eds, but they tell us what is happening, what should happen. They themselves aren't supposed to 'happen.'" But he concludes, "Without that kind of commitment, my writing life wouldn't make much sense."
It's time for all of us to "happen." More to come...
24 August 2008
To Read or Not To Know
I've said before that my primary justification for the low level of activity here is that it reflects how often I myself am able to set aside the time sit down and read other people's blogs (not skim through, but actually read and digest; anything else would be a waste of time). Certainly, if I had more to say, I would say it, but I find nothing unfortunate about the fact that most of the time, I don't. With writing as with music making, I value being consistent over being prolific (though I'd like to be both, I'm neither most of the time).
As with virtually every other aspect of what the web has wrought, the sheer number of music blogs seemed daunting for a long time. It is somewhat odd, then, that as I've settled into a routine of checking in with the rest of y'all quite a bit less frequently than I used to, I am now beginning to get frustrated with my inability to unearth any new blogs of substantial interest to me. Being someone who gets off on crashing parties and being an outsider, the guiding principle behind my blogospheric machinations to this point has been an idealistic optimism towards unknown quantities (i.e. blogs that don't seem to be attracting much attention) while casting a cynical eye towards the ones that are in virtually everyone's blogroll. Two years into this endeavor, it's now past time to admit that while there are indeed a good number of very popular destinations whose attraction is utterly lost on me, the vast majority of my favorite blogs have a significantly larger readership than my own blog does.
Of course, a very "popular" music blog is still not very popular in the grand scheme of things, but if nothing else, I'm heartened by the possibility that the marketplace of ideas is not only stocking something I want to buy, but selling a lot of it, too. I'm still looking forward to reading any insurgents that might crop up, but I guess it's time to stop feeling guilty for going back to the same old blogs whenever I manage to make time for reading. The more frustrating part is that it is difficult to keep up with most of them, and even if time were not an issue, I'm not convinced that I would be in the mood for the kind of conscientious reading I referred to above often enough to manage this anyway. Complain about long posts if you will; it's really no different than writing a boatload of really short posts over the same period of time (I would venture that far fewer words are posted here over a given month or year despite the length of the individual entries). Maybe by spending less time looking for enlightenment in all the wrong places, I'll be able to keep up with some of the more prolific among us.
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When I graduated from college, I realized that I didn't know anything. And I'm not talking about "street smarts" or the "real world," I'm talking about the type of "book smarts" that school is supposed to endow you with in gross excess, but which I can't help feeling that I lack spectacularly. I could go on about the structure of college music programs, but I won't because I already have, and if you're interested in what I have to say about that, you can go there and find out. All that aside, suffice it to say that I was not inspired to learn because I wasn't interested in what was being taught. The three years since then have mostly been spent shuttling between worrying about what this might mean for my career as a music maker and feebly attempting to do something about it (the latter course of action being based on the assumption that, as I was always told in school, whatever the possible consequences, they are all bad). Needless to say that reading music blogs can make one feel really smart sometimes and really dumb other times, the latter in my case most especially when the writer is an academic or specialist twice my age. As a student, I chided those people for pursuing knowledge for its own sake. "If I want to make music," I might have said to myself, "I don't have time to become a musicology expert. I have to practice."
Upon getting a safe distance from the institution, I realized that I had spent a hell of a lot of time practicing without putting an ounce of effort into knowledge gathering (again, I'm hesitant to blame myself entirely for this given that music school "knowledge gathering" was more like "knowledge stuffed down your throat depending on what will get us and keep us NASM accredited"). I fairly immediately began to thirst for knowledge, usually for its own sake and simply because I felt I didn't have any, but sometimes because I didn't think I could go on making music without it. This latter inclination would seem to validate what I heard repeatedly for 5 years as the meekest of all justifications for what I was putting myself through, and it shocked the hell out of me to imagine myself embracing it.
I have not, however, been thoroughly converted. Under my breath or in my head, I would often dare the utterer of such a phrase to back it up with a lucid, academically rigorous explanation of specifically how knowledge of the bit of extra-musical fodder under discussion would make me a better musician. Because I never said it out loud, they didn't, and I can't, hence, I'm not convinced that most of the knowledge I'm interested in will mean anything for my career other than becoming a know-it-all (not a good networking move at all, unfortunately, as this tends to alienate people like all hell).
The inconvenient part of all of this is that I have found myself to have been correct on what would seem to be the most juvenile of all things I ever thought back then, but which is turning out to be the most absolutely and frustratingly true: I really don't have time gather all of that knowledge and keep my chops in any kind of performance-ready shape at the same time. There are only so many hours in the day, and only so many of those hours are inspired hours, and only so many of those hours (actually, I think we're down to a matter of minutes at this point) are hours when it's not impolite to play a tuba upstairs from a family with a small child. I'm finding it a hell of a lot harder to become a top-notch performer/composer than to become a know-it-all, but damn near impossible to become both. Given a choice, I'll take the musicianship, which, as my younger self would have said, produces something that doesn't die with me as my knowledge most certainly will.
As with virtually every other aspect of what the web has wrought, the sheer number of music blogs seemed daunting for a long time. It is somewhat odd, then, that as I've settled into a routine of checking in with the rest of y'all quite a bit less frequently than I used to, I am now beginning to get frustrated with my inability to unearth any new blogs of substantial interest to me. Being someone who gets off on crashing parties and being an outsider, the guiding principle behind my blogospheric machinations to this point has been an idealistic optimism towards unknown quantities (i.e. blogs that don't seem to be attracting much attention) while casting a cynical eye towards the ones that are in virtually everyone's blogroll. Two years into this endeavor, it's now past time to admit that while there are indeed a good number of very popular destinations whose attraction is utterly lost on me, the vast majority of my favorite blogs have a significantly larger readership than my own blog does.
Of course, a very "popular" music blog is still not very popular in the grand scheme of things, but if nothing else, I'm heartened by the possibility that the marketplace of ideas is not only stocking something I want to buy, but selling a lot of it, too. I'm still looking forward to reading any insurgents that might crop up, but I guess it's time to stop feeling guilty for going back to the same old blogs whenever I manage to make time for reading. The more frustrating part is that it is difficult to keep up with most of them, and even if time were not an issue, I'm not convinced that I would be in the mood for the kind of conscientious reading I referred to above often enough to manage this anyway. Complain about long posts if you will; it's really no different than writing a boatload of really short posts over the same period of time (I would venture that far fewer words are posted here over a given month or year despite the length of the individual entries). Maybe by spending less time looking for enlightenment in all the wrong places, I'll be able to keep up with some of the more prolific among us.
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When I graduated from college, I realized that I didn't know anything. And I'm not talking about "street smarts" or the "real world," I'm talking about the type of "book smarts" that school is supposed to endow you with in gross excess, but which I can't help feeling that I lack spectacularly. I could go on about the structure of college music programs, but I won't because I already have, and if you're interested in what I have to say about that, you can go there and find out. All that aside, suffice it to say that I was not inspired to learn because I wasn't interested in what was being taught. The three years since then have mostly been spent shuttling between worrying about what this might mean for my career as a music maker and feebly attempting to do something about it (the latter course of action being based on the assumption that, as I was always told in school, whatever the possible consequences, they are all bad). Needless to say that reading music blogs can make one feel really smart sometimes and really dumb other times, the latter in my case most especially when the writer is an academic or specialist twice my age. As a student, I chided those people for pursuing knowledge for its own sake. "If I want to make music," I might have said to myself, "I don't have time to become a musicology expert. I have to practice."
Upon getting a safe distance from the institution, I realized that I had spent a hell of a lot of time practicing without putting an ounce of effort into knowledge gathering (again, I'm hesitant to blame myself entirely for this given that music school "knowledge gathering" was more like "knowledge stuffed down your throat depending on what will get us and keep us NASM accredited"). I fairly immediately began to thirst for knowledge, usually for its own sake and simply because I felt I didn't have any, but sometimes because I didn't think I could go on making music without it. This latter inclination would seem to validate what I heard repeatedly for 5 years as the meekest of all justifications for what I was putting myself through, and it shocked the hell out of me to imagine myself embracing it.
I have not, however, been thoroughly converted. Under my breath or in my head, I would often dare the utterer of such a phrase to back it up with a lucid, academically rigorous explanation of specifically how knowledge of the bit of extra-musical fodder under discussion would make me a better musician. Because I never said it out loud, they didn't, and I can't, hence, I'm not convinced that most of the knowledge I'm interested in will mean anything for my career other than becoming a know-it-all (not a good networking move at all, unfortunately, as this tends to alienate people like all hell).
The inconvenient part of all of this is that I have found myself to have been correct on what would seem to be the most juvenile of all things I ever thought back then, but which is turning out to be the most absolutely and frustratingly true: I really don't have time gather all of that knowledge and keep my chops in any kind of performance-ready shape at the same time. There are only so many hours in the day, and only so many of those hours are inspired hours, and only so many of those hours (actually, I think we're down to a matter of minutes at this point) are hours when it's not impolite to play a tuba upstairs from a family with a small child. I'm finding it a hell of a lot harder to become a top-notch performer/composer than to become a know-it-all, but damn near impossible to become both. Given a choice, I'll take the musicianship, which, as my younger self would have said, produces something that doesn't die with me as my knowledge most certainly will.
26 July 2008
Zander @ TED
As further evidence that if classical music is dying it may well be at the hands of its own advocates and practitioners, I give you this lecture from the TED conference by Benjamin Zander, who commits therein what are, in my mind, three of the deadliest sins of classical music proselytizing: attempting to use analysis to synthesize experience, arbitrarily imposing a narrative on a piece of abstract instrumental music, and appealing to novelty in place of substance. I'll examine them one by one:
(1) Attempting To Use Analysis To Synthesize Experience
Much of the talk seems to be preparatory in nature, getting the audience ready for the final, complete performance of the piece under discussion at which time they are expected to suddenly "get it" by virtue of their recently acquired experience. Zander ensures that they hear the piece (or at least fragments of it) several times throughout the course of the talk, a worthwhile effort as repeated hearings of the same piece heighten the experience for many listeners. Unfortunately, when Schoenberg wrote that in order to like a piece one must first be able to remember it, he wasn't talking about 10 minutes ago; more like ten months or years. The mechanism by which memory becomes an asset rather than a liability to the listener takes longer and cannot be synthesized quickly. It also cannot be done by simply telling people what they're supposed to be listening for. Describing music verbally cannot possibly give the recipient any idea what it actually sounds like, but more importantly, one should never expect that every audience member would describe it the same way were they asked to do so themselves. Analysis cannot stand in for experience because the latter is unique and personal. It cannot be formed on one's behalf by someone else simply rhapsodizing on a piece's structure.
Zander avoids the pitfall of imposing an overly technical analysis on what one must assume is an audience that lacks an academic musical background, but what he performs is analysis nonetheless, taking elements of the piece out of time and explaining "what's really going on." When it comes to the aesthetic experience, educating listeners into conformity in this way is impossible, but even if it were possible, it would not be desirable. There is a certain biodiversity that makes the musical ecosystem run, exemplified by creative musicians who draw on a wide range of influences, as well as certain strains of pedagogical tradition that encourage this (it's no coincidence that the terms "inbreeding," "incestuousness," and "cannibalization" are often used figuratively in this way by musicians, including those steeped in the classical tradition).
(2) Arbitrarily Imposing a Narrative on a Piece of Abstract Instrumental Music
This favorite pastime of Musicologists everywhere is no more useful in outreach than it is in scholarship. On a personal level, I make no bones about the fact that I have absolutely no interest in engaging in this pursuit, and that doing so detracts from rather than enriches the experience for me. Nevertheless, I think there are some more objective critiques to be made here. One could argue that prescribing a narrative for the audience robs them of the opportunity to form their own, the latter option being, I would think, the preferred outcome for those who enjoy such activities. One could also assume that even if the technique is wildly successful here, there's no guarantee (in fact, it's rather unlikely) that anyone in this audience will be able to reproduce the same results in themselves when confronted with an unfamiliar piece in absence of Mr. Zander's coaching.
I would go even further and argue that Zander does more harm than good here. To tell a roomful of novices that the key to listening to music is coming up with the right story to accompany it is to tell them that the art of music is weak, dependent, intellectually murky, and aesthetically frail; it is to trivialize the art form as one which cannot stand on its own, painting its greatest exponents as mere taunters and its greatest works as somehow incomplete; and it does the greatest of all disservices to those composers who actively oppose(d) this attitude and its consequences for their work. To repeat this blasphemy in front of an impressionable audience is to sell out one's own art form as a mere component part of some grander scheme. Conversely, the greatest gift one can give such an audience is the experience of music as an autonomous art form; music at its most powerful, unencumbered, and aesthetically unique, the way every musician, academic, and listener who has ever been inspired on a spiritual level by a piece of music has experienced it at one time or another in their lives. This experience is absolutely for everybody; anything less sells the audience and the art form dreadfully short.
(3) Appealing to Novelty In Place of Substance
That the TED conference specializes in "infotainment" is no secret, nor is it anything to be ashamed of assuming that both the info- and the -tainment are adequately represented. In this case, however, I see a classic case of sheer entertainment value diverting attention from the fact that next to nothing has actually been accomplished. Novelty is everywhere in this presentation: the white tennis shoes paired with a sport coat, the theatrical manner, and the elementary school bathroom humor form the bulk of it (the phrase "one buttock playing" sets the presenter up for a ruthless parody about "half-assing" it, but we'll save that for later). Zander can't help it that he's enough of a musician to perform his own musical examples, or that he has a foreign accent, but these novel features only contribute further.
Of course, whether there is in fact any "substance" to what Zander is saying here depends on your opinion of his methods. Some people believe that the problem with instrumental music is that there's nothing more to latch on to but the sound itself; I, on the other hand, see that as its greatest attribute. Some people believe that listening to music is a skill that must be taught and learned in an objective and quantifiable way; I happen to think that individual human beings are too different for this ever to be effective, and that even if it were, it would rob us of our individuality. Despite the romanticized folklore about divine inspiration that surrounds many great classical composers, we know from experience that the lifeblood of musical creativity is the unique impression the same piece of music might make on each listener, this being the mechanism by which stylistically diverse musicians often cite common influences. As musicians, our individuality is all that we have, and its expression is intractably mediated by how we see (or in this case hear) the world around us. Take that away and the party is over.
You might label my position that of an "aesthetic libertarian." I believe that if one's favorite music is not very popular, giving a lecture about why it is so great is neither an effective nor a valid way of attempting to improve its standing. Standardizing our perception means standardizing our art, both in creation and reception. I don't want that, you don't want that, and I have a hard time believing that Mr. Zander wants that either. He has had an experience and he wants dearly to replicate that experience in others, which is exactly how most of us feel about whatever music it is we are passionate about. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can actually do to make this happen, and among all the methods yet devised of attempting such a thing (lecture-recitals for captive dinner guests, making mix tapes for friends, etc.), the Saving Classical Music Proselytizing Tour '08 is the one I find the most misguided. Rather than making a mix tape and sending you on your way to draw your own conclusions, imagine that friend of yours putting on a dog and pony show aimed at revealing once and for all why what he/she likes is actually the best. Chances are your response would fall somewhere between boredom and resentment, no matter how well-groomed the dogs and ponies are.
In the middle of a conference where cutting edge ideas about neuroscience, innate human violence, and space colonization are being tossed around left and right, a funny little man dancing around in white tennis shoes and playing the piano is going to go over well no matter what. It's a good way to take a break from the more apocalyptically-themed presentations and increase the audience's intellectual street cred at the same time (listening to classical music is one thing, but to "love and understand" it earns even more points). Meanwhile, in the presentation's second life here in the online world, classical musicians everywhere are thrilled to see their medium occupying such a central place at a conference otherwise devoted to such "serious" topics, since this undoubtedly proves that what they do is important regardless of how well they do it (see the overgrown comments section to the video, where the gallery dutifully repeats a litany of pop culture clichés and fallacies about music that would make Greg Sandow blush). It's a symbiotic relationship if there ever was one, a quid pro quo, tit-for-tat, rigor-for-glamour, info-for-tainment type of deal. It's not surprising, then, that the talk gets a reception from both worlds something like President Bush gets from FOX News; it is, however, earned in exactly the same way.
Some may see in this talk a harmless, lightweight attempt to have some fun with an often unappreciated art form, a pursuit that has many benefits if it succeeds and few drawbacks if it fails. I see in it all the worst things that everyday folk like to accuse classical music of being: bourgeois, conformist, and elitist. It's not for nothing that classical musicians have had this latter term tossed at them with impunity by just about everyone else. As a group, we appear to others to have made our minds up that if everyone else doesn't just love what we do, there must be something wrong with them. Letting people make their own minds up apparently being bad for business, we'd seemingly rather make their minds up for them, as in, "It's not really an experiment because I know the outcome," or, "The other thing I want to do is to tell you about you." If the problem is that lots of people are turned off by classical music, I'd say that with this talk, Mr. Zander has become part of the very problem he seeks to address, leaving his audience as weaker listeners than they were before, and leaving those in the trenches with little to draw upon the next time the e-word is trotted out.
(1) Attempting To Use Analysis To Synthesize Experience
Much of the talk seems to be preparatory in nature, getting the audience ready for the final, complete performance of the piece under discussion at which time they are expected to suddenly "get it" by virtue of their recently acquired experience. Zander ensures that they hear the piece (or at least fragments of it) several times throughout the course of the talk, a worthwhile effort as repeated hearings of the same piece heighten the experience for many listeners. Unfortunately, when Schoenberg wrote that in order to like a piece one must first be able to remember it, he wasn't talking about 10 minutes ago; more like ten months or years. The mechanism by which memory becomes an asset rather than a liability to the listener takes longer and cannot be synthesized quickly. It also cannot be done by simply telling people what they're supposed to be listening for. Describing music verbally cannot possibly give the recipient any idea what it actually sounds like, but more importantly, one should never expect that every audience member would describe it the same way were they asked to do so themselves. Analysis cannot stand in for experience because the latter is unique and personal. It cannot be formed on one's behalf by someone else simply rhapsodizing on a piece's structure.
Zander avoids the pitfall of imposing an overly technical analysis on what one must assume is an audience that lacks an academic musical background, but what he performs is analysis nonetheless, taking elements of the piece out of time and explaining "what's really going on." When it comes to the aesthetic experience, educating listeners into conformity in this way is impossible, but even if it were possible, it would not be desirable. There is a certain biodiversity that makes the musical ecosystem run, exemplified by creative musicians who draw on a wide range of influences, as well as certain strains of pedagogical tradition that encourage this (it's no coincidence that the terms "inbreeding," "incestuousness," and "cannibalization" are often used figuratively in this way by musicians, including those steeped in the classical tradition).
(2) Arbitrarily Imposing a Narrative on a Piece of Abstract Instrumental Music
This favorite pastime of Musicologists everywhere is no more useful in outreach than it is in scholarship. On a personal level, I make no bones about the fact that I have absolutely no interest in engaging in this pursuit, and that doing so detracts from rather than enriches the experience for me. Nevertheless, I think there are some more objective critiques to be made here. One could argue that prescribing a narrative for the audience robs them of the opportunity to form their own, the latter option being, I would think, the preferred outcome for those who enjoy such activities. One could also assume that even if the technique is wildly successful here, there's no guarantee (in fact, it's rather unlikely) that anyone in this audience will be able to reproduce the same results in themselves when confronted with an unfamiliar piece in absence of Mr. Zander's coaching.
I would go even further and argue that Zander does more harm than good here. To tell a roomful of novices that the key to listening to music is coming up with the right story to accompany it is to tell them that the art of music is weak, dependent, intellectually murky, and aesthetically frail; it is to trivialize the art form as one which cannot stand on its own, painting its greatest exponents as mere taunters and its greatest works as somehow incomplete; and it does the greatest of all disservices to those composers who actively oppose(d) this attitude and its consequences for their work. To repeat this blasphemy in front of an impressionable audience is to sell out one's own art form as a mere component part of some grander scheme. Conversely, the greatest gift one can give such an audience is the experience of music as an autonomous art form; music at its most powerful, unencumbered, and aesthetically unique, the way every musician, academic, and listener who has ever been inspired on a spiritual level by a piece of music has experienced it at one time or another in their lives. This experience is absolutely for everybody; anything less sells the audience and the art form dreadfully short.
(3) Appealing to Novelty In Place of Substance
That the TED conference specializes in "infotainment" is no secret, nor is it anything to be ashamed of assuming that both the info- and the -tainment are adequately represented. In this case, however, I see a classic case of sheer entertainment value diverting attention from the fact that next to nothing has actually been accomplished. Novelty is everywhere in this presentation: the white tennis shoes paired with a sport coat, the theatrical manner, and the elementary school bathroom humor form the bulk of it (the phrase "one buttock playing" sets the presenter up for a ruthless parody about "half-assing" it, but we'll save that for later). Zander can't help it that he's enough of a musician to perform his own musical examples, or that he has a foreign accent, but these novel features only contribute further.
Of course, whether there is in fact any "substance" to what Zander is saying here depends on your opinion of his methods. Some people believe that the problem with instrumental music is that there's nothing more to latch on to but the sound itself; I, on the other hand, see that as its greatest attribute. Some people believe that listening to music is a skill that must be taught and learned in an objective and quantifiable way; I happen to think that individual human beings are too different for this ever to be effective, and that even if it were, it would rob us of our individuality. Despite the romanticized folklore about divine inspiration that surrounds many great classical composers, we know from experience that the lifeblood of musical creativity is the unique impression the same piece of music might make on each listener, this being the mechanism by which stylistically diverse musicians often cite common influences. As musicians, our individuality is all that we have, and its expression is intractably mediated by how we see (or in this case hear) the world around us. Take that away and the party is over.
You might label my position that of an "aesthetic libertarian." I believe that if one's favorite music is not very popular, giving a lecture about why it is so great is neither an effective nor a valid way of attempting to improve its standing. Standardizing our perception means standardizing our art, both in creation and reception. I don't want that, you don't want that, and I have a hard time believing that Mr. Zander wants that either. He has had an experience and he wants dearly to replicate that experience in others, which is exactly how most of us feel about whatever music it is we are passionate about. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can actually do to make this happen, and among all the methods yet devised of attempting such a thing (lecture-recitals for captive dinner guests, making mix tapes for friends, etc.), the Saving Classical Music Proselytizing Tour '08 is the one I find the most misguided. Rather than making a mix tape and sending you on your way to draw your own conclusions, imagine that friend of yours putting on a dog and pony show aimed at revealing once and for all why what he/she likes is actually the best. Chances are your response would fall somewhere between boredom and resentment, no matter how well-groomed the dogs and ponies are.
In the middle of a conference where cutting edge ideas about neuroscience, innate human violence, and space colonization are being tossed around left and right, a funny little man dancing around in white tennis shoes and playing the piano is going to go over well no matter what. It's a good way to take a break from the more apocalyptically-themed presentations and increase the audience's intellectual street cred at the same time (listening to classical music is one thing, but to "love and understand" it earns even more points). Meanwhile, in the presentation's second life here in the online world, classical musicians everywhere are thrilled to see their medium occupying such a central place at a conference otherwise devoted to such "serious" topics, since this undoubtedly proves that what they do is important regardless of how well they do it (see the overgrown comments section to the video, where the gallery dutifully repeats a litany of pop culture clichés and fallacies about music that would make Greg Sandow blush). It's a symbiotic relationship if there ever was one, a quid pro quo, tit-for-tat, rigor-for-glamour, info-for-tainment type of deal. It's not surprising, then, that the talk gets a reception from both worlds something like President Bush gets from FOX News; it is, however, earned in exactly the same way.
Some may see in this talk a harmless, lightweight attempt to have some fun with an often unappreciated art form, a pursuit that has many benefits if it succeeds and few drawbacks if it fails. I see in it all the worst things that everyday folk like to accuse classical music of being: bourgeois, conformist, and elitist. It's not for nothing that classical musicians have had this latter term tossed at them with impunity by just about everyone else. As a group, we appear to others to have made our minds up that if everyone else doesn't just love what we do, there must be something wrong with them. Letting people make their own minds up apparently being bad for business, we'd seemingly rather make their minds up for them, as in, "It's not really an experiment because I know the outcome," or, "The other thing I want to do is to tell you about you." If the problem is that lots of people are turned off by classical music, I'd say that with this talk, Mr. Zander has become part of the very problem he seeks to address, leaving his audience as weaker listeners than they were before, and leaving those in the trenches with little to draw upon the next time the e-word is trotted out.
13 July 2008
Remotely Surprising
As an alternative to self-googling, I recently signed up for Google Alerts to keep track of myself online. Self-googling has often been lampooned as trivial and vain, but it's actually verging on necessary at this point given the scope of the online universe. If someone was talking shit or stealing shit, you'd want to know about it, right?
There have been no spectacular revelations thus far, but I was mildly intrigued by the most recent missive, which included links to a site called beeMP3 which creates a centralized catalog of MP3 files hosted elsewhere on the web and has evidently just gotten around to my domain. The site appears to be indiscriminate and the database quite large, so while I appreciate knowing that anyone Googling my name will now receive 4 results instead of 3, I'm not holding my breath as to whether it will help me reach more listeners. If nothing else, this situation has laid bare the inadequacy of my file naming system, which was by no means designed to be attractive in its own right. (who wants to listen to something called "quartet dakota 033007 2 Brazen mp3" anyway?)
Looking on the bright side, however, the cattle call nature of the site means that the artists are, for the most part, presented the same way, with no special treatment for the pop stars. In a world where self-googling is not only acceptable but passé, it's nice to know that I can go see my name lit up right next to Madonna's in order to get my vanity fix for the evening.
There have been no spectacular revelations thus far, but I was mildly intrigued by the most recent missive, which included links to a site called beeMP3 which creates a centralized catalog of MP3 files hosted elsewhere on the web and has evidently just gotten around to my domain. The site appears to be indiscriminate and the database quite large, so while I appreciate knowing that anyone Googling my name will now receive 4 results instead of 3, I'm not holding my breath as to whether it will help me reach more listeners. If nothing else, this situation has laid bare the inadequacy of my file naming system, which was by no means designed to be attractive in its own right. (who wants to listen to something called "quartet dakota 033007 2 Brazen mp3" anyway?)
Looking on the bright side, however, the cattle call nature of the site means that the artists are, for the most part, presented the same way, with no special treatment for the pop stars. In a world where self-googling is not only acceptable but passé, it's nice to know that I can go see my name lit up right next to Madonna's in order to get my vanity fix for the evening.
16 June 2008
There's Still Time
In researching the Minnesota Orchestra's website for the previous missive, I stumbled upon this promo for an upcoming concert, excerpted below:
He wowed the audience in January when he performed here with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. In this concert, the 28-year-old Sean Jones joins with other rising stars to bring you fresh arrangements of jazz standards.
I know nothing about Mr. Jones and by no means wish to drag his name through the mud by saying this, but I'm suddenly comforted by the fact that whoever wrote this blurb seems to believe that the potential for age-based novelty still exists in a musician who is nearly 30 years old. That I have at least 3 more years to do something spectacular relative to my age is an entirely unexpected yet altogether pleasant surprise, even if it means temporarily forfeiting the right to be jealous of Eldar (disclaimer: shall I to fail to accomplish anything whatsoever these next 3 years, I reserve the right to reclaim this jealousy with all its privileges and obligations).
Of course, the 3-year window applies only to my tuba playing, since we all know that 50 is still young in composer-years. It's good to know that a press release fawning over "47-year old composer Stefan Kac" is not entirely out of the question. I might just write it now while the ideas are still fresh in my head and there are still 22 years left to double check spelling and grammar. Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it to Orchestra Hall on June 26 to see what all the fuss is about. You see, I'll be out of town that week playing at the International Tuba Euphonium Conference...even though I'm only 25.
He wowed the audience in January when he performed here with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. In this concert, the 28-year-old Sean Jones joins with other rising stars to bring you fresh arrangements of jazz standards.
I know nothing about Mr. Jones and by no means wish to drag his name through the mud by saying this, but I'm suddenly comforted by the fact that whoever wrote this blurb seems to believe that the potential for age-based novelty still exists in a musician who is nearly 30 years old. That I have at least 3 more years to do something spectacular relative to my age is an entirely unexpected yet altogether pleasant surprise, even if it means temporarily forfeiting the right to be jealous of Eldar (disclaimer: shall I to fail to accomplish anything whatsoever these next 3 years, I reserve the right to reclaim this jealousy with all its privileges and obligations).
Of course, the 3-year window applies only to my tuba playing, since we all know that 50 is still young in composer-years. It's good to know that a press release fawning over "47-year old composer Stefan Kac" is not entirely out of the question. I might just write it now while the ideas are still fresh in my head and there are still 22 years left to double check spelling and grammar. Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it to Orchestra Hall on June 26 to see what all the fuss is about. You see, I'll be out of town that week playing at the International Tuba Euphonium Conference...even though I'm only 25.
13 June 2008
Reflections on a 4-Concert Package
Although I was a regular at Minnesota Orchestra concerts throughout my high school and undergraduate years, I recall attending only two concerts by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra during this same time. There are many reasons for this: Downtown Minneapolis was much closer than Downtown St. Paul; my tuba teacher was a member of MNOrch and often offered us free tickets; and all the brass dorks (myself included, at that time) wanted and needed to hear BIG pieces with BIG excerpts played on BIG horns.
Among the backstage attractions at Orchestra Hall during this time was a wall of plaques from ASCAP honoring the orchestra and its then music director Eiji Oue for so-called "adventurous programming." I shudder to think how the less adventurous orchestras were programming their seasons. For the most part, I never was and still am not a big fan of MNOrch's programming, despite the fact that it has allowed me to hear many of the standard orchestral excerpts for tuba live and in person (back when that mattered to me, at least). For a while, it seemed like Mahler 1 was being played twice a year every year. Later, Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe slid into that role, once even popping up with no prior warning when a soloist a cancelled at the last minute. Ravel for Prokofiev is not a fair trade in my mind, but that's just my opinion.
The two main problems I have with the way concerts were programmed there 5-10 years ago (and which seems to me to persist to a great extent as we speak) have, I think, already been deconstructed by many more astute observers of orchestras. For one thing, the predictable hodge-podge of old and new pieces is not always as effective as it might seem on paper. While the goal of such programming is to make sure that there is "something for everyone" on each concert, it also ensures that there is something for everyone to dread, making it difficult for anyone to look forward to the entire concert rather than part of it (and sometimes it's an exceedingly small part).
In my humble opinion, it would make more sense to offer at least a few programs throughout the season where the theme is musical or stylistic rather than making a weak attempt to contextualize a token contemporary piece by surrounding it with works to which it is supposed to have some tenuous extramusical connection. If what we really need is context, why not provide musical or aesthetic context by playing other pieces by this composer, by their contemporaries, students, or teachers? After all, are social and historical context not meaningless without an aesthetic context to go with them?
Rather than diluting an already sparce collection of new(er) pieces to be played any given season by presenting them one at a time as a small parts of larger warhorse-laden programs, why not present them together on a couple of modernist blowout concerts presented a couple of months apart? The answer is that managements would rather have patrons detest one-third of every program than all of one of them. If it has been empirically proven that this keeps more butts in seats, then so be it; I for one would rather see it done the other way around. And if you think that my opinion doesn't matter because I am also a trained musician, well...you might as well stop reading here.
My point is not that old and new(er) pieces can never be on the same program; of course they can. However, if the primary concern in pairing them is not aesthetic, one has to wonder what the point is of having a concert in the first place. Furthermore, with purchasers of mere 4-concert packages now being labelled "Season Ticket Holders" (more on that in a moment), there definitely seems to be a framework in place for dispensing with the notion of a monolithic STH bloc that comes to every single concert and demands the same repertoire year after year. Clearly, orchestras are slowly embracing an approach where people simply go to the concerts they want to hear. The ticket policies are starting to change, at least here in the Twin Cities; hopefully the programming is not far behind.
Add to all of this wrangling over what to do with the new(er) piece(s) on any given program the fact that orchestras would often rather commission a new piece from the Sexy Composer du Jour than program an acknowledged 20th century masterwork in the same idiom (or, just as often, commission the SCdJ to write a derivative, backward-looking piece that sounds old but can be labeled new without lying). Obviously, for orchestras to be supporting living composers is, in the abstract, a good idea (let's put aside for now any perceived problems with their actual choices and the mechanisms for making them). Nonetheless, a larger audience for new(er) music cannot be built this way any more than a larger audience for Classical Era music can be built by omitting the works of Mozart and Beethoven and instead commissioning new works written in that style by composers of lesser ability (and that would be most everyone). No one wants to listen to that. Being almost a decade into the 21st century, we've long since passed the point where a living composer can fill the same role on a mixed program as Stravinsky, Bartok, or Debussy. Concerts simply cannot be allowed to stay in the "Music of Mozart, Beethoven, and My Neighbor" format so long that everyone in between is forgotten. Even the most musically conservative of ears would find a few worthy pieces written in the last 70 years were they simply made aware of them. For the rest of us, there may well be too many to count, making it particularly frustrating that they are not performed.
I have many gripes, obviously, but none of this is enough to keep me away entirely. When I do attempt to make plans, one problem I have had with both The SPCO and MNOrch is the way their ticket packages and season schedules are presented. It has become damn near impossible to find a schedule that simply lists all of the concerts in chronological order. Instead, we get a series of mailings every spring and summer featuring series grouped by day of the week, location, time of day, and so on. I can only assume that this is a response to "busy working professionals" who already know what they're doing any given day of the week from now until they retire. Some of us, however, have no idea (and thankfully so). Can we PLEASE start printing schedules from start to finish, the way the rest of the world does?
I mentioned this to the SPCO representative who called me about renewing my subscription a few months ago. They promised to send me one; I still don't have it, though I have received the same barrage of flyers plugging pre-packaged concert series, none of which are comprised entirely of concerts I'm actually excited about attending. Even the SPCO's website does not, as best I could tell, offer a simple PDF schedule that lists all of next season's classical concerts from start to finish. They do allow you to search the schedule by guest artist, composer, or instrument. (come on guys, no concerts featuring tuba?), but this is a rather inefficient way of piecing together a complete schedule.
On the other hand, MNOrch's website seems to have been improved over what I remembered. For starters, there is a reasonably intuitive online calendar with a complete listing of Orchestra Hall events by month. The only drawback here is that the complete program is not listed on the calendar, and that each month is a separate page; hence, to view the season from start to finish, one must navigate to the first month, click on the link to the first concert to view the program, then navigate back to the month, repeat for the rest of that month's concerts, then navigate ahead to the next month, and so on. Better yet, however, there is a downloadable PDF document that includes a complete and chronological classical season schedule with the complete program for each concert given. I never thought I'd see the day. They did an excellent job cramming all of this information on to a single page, and capitalizing the composer's names so that they jump out a bit was a good move, but if you're as much of a modernist sore ass as I am, you surely noticed that where the Schoenberg arrangement of Bach is listed, the composer's name is capitalized but the arranger's is not. Good job guys. We wouldn't want people staying home because they thought a piece by Schoenberg was going to be on the program, would we?
It also appears that MNOrch will allow customers to essentially build their own series rather than only offering certain combinations at discounted rates. If the SPCO offers such a thing, I can't seem to locate it on their site. I can't think of a good argument against offering customers the option to use their 4- or 5- or 6-concert package on the concerts of their choice, and this would certainly help facilitate an increase concerts of exclusively new(er) pieces as it would avoid locking anyone into hearing them who did not want to.
This post has now gotten long enough that I've basically lost sight of the reason I sat down to write it, which is that last year around this time, I finally took the plunge and bought a 4-concert package for the 2007-08 SPCO season. I mainly did it as a way to force myself back into hearing orchestral music, which I had all of abandoned after I was no longer eligible for student rush tickets (the package was also quite a bargain, even by those standards), and also because The SPCO's programming has, for some time now, piqued my interest more so than that of their crosstown colleagues. The last of those 4 concerts was last Friday night; it did not disappoint, nor did any of the other 3. Perhaps the only disappointment (and yes, I know we're all sick of hearing this) was that I was quite possibly the only person under 40 in the entire balcony. I say disappointing not because I subscribe to the theory that this means classical music is over and done with, but because I knew it was only a matter of time before the sheer curiosity of my fellow concertgoers led to some sort of socially awkward exchange (and of course I'm throwing caution to the wind here in assuming that none of those involved will actually read what I'm about to write; after all, people that age usually don't even know how to use computers, right?).
Sure enough, during the intermission, I hear from my right: "Did you get a student rush ticket?" I was in the middle of a sentence when I was presented with another query from several seats to my left: "Are you a musician?" I sat there in confused silence for several seconds trying to decide who to answer first and how. I've never felt more like George Constanza. It was as if these things had been on everyone's minds the entire first half and now that someone had broken the ice, the floor was open (wide open) for questions.
Here I was sitting in the same seat that I had already been in for three and a half concerts over a span of almost nine months, still utterly unable to blend into the middle-aged white-collar bourgeois scenery. I wanted to break into a profanity-laced tirade about how this was "my seat," that I paid good money for it, that I earned that money working a day job like everyone else around me, that I'm not a student any more, I didn't play in the marching band when I was, and that in light of the preceding observations, I ought to command at least enough respect to be allowed to finish my sentence before the next old biddy whose brother's roommate's uncle happened to play the tuba in junior high school interrupts me with more small-talk.
Instead, biting my tongue, I began to cue up all of the standard diplomatic answers I've been conditioned to give to people my parents' age and older so as not to offend them too badly when they inquire about why in god's name I would eschew a comfortable bourgeois academic life to rough it as a freelance jazz tuba player in the Midwest. This was no small task seeing that it had to be projected in two different directions 180 degrees apart. I couldn't help the feeling that somewhere out there on the East Coast, Greg Sandow was laughing his ass off at me for all the times I said I like the vibe of orchestra concerts just fine thank you. This incident, I think, really has nothing to do with any of that. It's just part of growing up (or not). I can only hope that people will still be underestimating my age by 10 years when I'm a senior citizen. Maybe by then I'll be getting complete season schedules in the mail, and maybe I will open them to see the names of Ligeti, Messaien, Lutoslawski, Kernis and friends next to each other rather than Mozart. That'll be the day.
Among the backstage attractions at Orchestra Hall during this time was a wall of plaques from ASCAP honoring the orchestra and its then music director Eiji Oue for so-called "adventurous programming." I shudder to think how the less adventurous orchestras were programming their seasons. For the most part, I never was and still am not a big fan of MNOrch's programming, despite the fact that it has allowed me to hear many of the standard orchestral excerpts for tuba live and in person (back when that mattered to me, at least). For a while, it seemed like Mahler 1 was being played twice a year every year. Later, Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe slid into that role, once even popping up with no prior warning when a soloist a cancelled at the last minute. Ravel for Prokofiev is not a fair trade in my mind, but that's just my opinion.
The two main problems I have with the way concerts were programmed there 5-10 years ago (and which seems to me to persist to a great extent as we speak) have, I think, already been deconstructed by many more astute observers of orchestras. For one thing, the predictable hodge-podge of old and new pieces is not always as effective as it might seem on paper. While the goal of such programming is to make sure that there is "something for everyone" on each concert, it also ensures that there is something for everyone to dread, making it difficult for anyone to look forward to the entire concert rather than part of it (and sometimes it's an exceedingly small part).
In my humble opinion, it would make more sense to offer at least a few programs throughout the season where the theme is musical or stylistic rather than making a weak attempt to contextualize a token contemporary piece by surrounding it with works to which it is supposed to have some tenuous extramusical connection. If what we really need is context, why not provide musical or aesthetic context by playing other pieces by this composer, by their contemporaries, students, or teachers? After all, are social and historical context not meaningless without an aesthetic context to go with them?
Rather than diluting an already sparce collection of new(er) pieces to be played any given season by presenting them one at a time as a small parts of larger warhorse-laden programs, why not present them together on a couple of modernist blowout concerts presented a couple of months apart? The answer is that managements would rather have patrons detest one-third of every program than all of one of them. If it has been empirically proven that this keeps more butts in seats, then so be it; I for one would rather see it done the other way around. And if you think that my opinion doesn't matter because I am also a trained musician, well...you might as well stop reading here.
My point is not that old and new(er) pieces can never be on the same program; of course they can. However, if the primary concern in pairing them is not aesthetic, one has to wonder what the point is of having a concert in the first place. Furthermore, with purchasers of mere 4-concert packages now being labelled "Season Ticket Holders" (more on that in a moment), there definitely seems to be a framework in place for dispensing with the notion of a monolithic STH bloc that comes to every single concert and demands the same repertoire year after year. Clearly, orchestras are slowly embracing an approach where people simply go to the concerts they want to hear. The ticket policies are starting to change, at least here in the Twin Cities; hopefully the programming is not far behind.
Add to all of this wrangling over what to do with the new(er) piece(s) on any given program the fact that orchestras would often rather commission a new piece from the Sexy Composer du Jour than program an acknowledged 20th century masterwork in the same idiom (or, just as often, commission the SCdJ to write a derivative, backward-looking piece that sounds old but can be labeled new without lying). Obviously, for orchestras to be supporting living composers is, in the abstract, a good idea (let's put aside for now any perceived problems with their actual choices and the mechanisms for making them). Nonetheless, a larger audience for new(er) music cannot be built this way any more than a larger audience for Classical Era music can be built by omitting the works of Mozart and Beethoven and instead commissioning new works written in that style by composers of lesser ability (and that would be most everyone). No one wants to listen to that. Being almost a decade into the 21st century, we've long since passed the point where a living composer can fill the same role on a mixed program as Stravinsky, Bartok, or Debussy. Concerts simply cannot be allowed to stay in the "Music of Mozart, Beethoven, and My Neighbor" format so long that everyone in between is forgotten. Even the most musically conservative of ears would find a few worthy pieces written in the last 70 years were they simply made aware of them. For the rest of us, there may well be too many to count, making it particularly frustrating that they are not performed.
I have many gripes, obviously, but none of this is enough to keep me away entirely. When I do attempt to make plans, one problem I have had with both The SPCO and MNOrch is the way their ticket packages and season schedules are presented. It has become damn near impossible to find a schedule that simply lists all of the concerts in chronological order. Instead, we get a series of mailings every spring and summer featuring series grouped by day of the week, location, time of day, and so on. I can only assume that this is a response to "busy working professionals" who already know what they're doing any given day of the week from now until they retire. Some of us, however, have no idea (and thankfully so). Can we PLEASE start printing schedules from start to finish, the way the rest of the world does?
I mentioned this to the SPCO representative who called me about renewing my subscription a few months ago. They promised to send me one; I still don't have it, though I have received the same barrage of flyers plugging pre-packaged concert series, none of which are comprised entirely of concerts I'm actually excited about attending. Even the SPCO's website does not, as best I could tell, offer a simple PDF schedule that lists all of next season's classical concerts from start to finish. They do allow you to search the schedule by guest artist, composer, or instrument. (come on guys, no concerts featuring tuba?), but this is a rather inefficient way of piecing together a complete schedule.
On the other hand, MNOrch's website seems to have been improved over what I remembered. For starters, there is a reasonably intuitive online calendar with a complete listing of Orchestra Hall events by month. The only drawback here is that the complete program is not listed on the calendar, and that each month is a separate page; hence, to view the season from start to finish, one must navigate to the first month, click on the link to the first concert to view the program, then navigate back to the month, repeat for the rest of that month's concerts, then navigate ahead to the next month, and so on. Better yet, however, there is a downloadable PDF document that includes a complete and chronological classical season schedule with the complete program for each concert given. I never thought I'd see the day. They did an excellent job cramming all of this information on to a single page, and capitalizing the composer's names so that they jump out a bit was a good move, but if you're as much of a modernist sore ass as I am, you surely noticed that where the Schoenberg arrangement of Bach is listed, the composer's name is capitalized but the arranger's is not. Good job guys. We wouldn't want people staying home because they thought a piece by Schoenberg was going to be on the program, would we?
It also appears that MNOrch will allow customers to essentially build their own series rather than only offering certain combinations at discounted rates. If the SPCO offers such a thing, I can't seem to locate it on their site. I can't think of a good argument against offering customers the option to use their 4- or 5- or 6-concert package on the concerts of their choice, and this would certainly help facilitate an increase concerts of exclusively new(er) pieces as it would avoid locking anyone into hearing them who did not want to.
This post has now gotten long enough that I've basically lost sight of the reason I sat down to write it, which is that last year around this time, I finally took the plunge and bought a 4-concert package for the 2007-08 SPCO season. I mainly did it as a way to force myself back into hearing orchestral music, which I had all of abandoned after I was no longer eligible for student rush tickets (the package was also quite a bargain, even by those standards), and also because The SPCO's programming has, for some time now, piqued my interest more so than that of their crosstown colleagues. The last of those 4 concerts was last Friday night; it did not disappoint, nor did any of the other 3. Perhaps the only disappointment (and yes, I know we're all sick of hearing this) was that I was quite possibly the only person under 40 in the entire balcony. I say disappointing not because I subscribe to the theory that this means classical music is over and done with, but because I knew it was only a matter of time before the sheer curiosity of my fellow concertgoers led to some sort of socially awkward exchange (and of course I'm throwing caution to the wind here in assuming that none of those involved will actually read what I'm about to write; after all, people that age usually don't even know how to use computers, right?).
Sure enough, during the intermission, I hear from my right: "Did you get a student rush ticket?" I was in the middle of a sentence when I was presented with another query from several seats to my left: "Are you a musician?" I sat there in confused silence for several seconds trying to decide who to answer first and how. I've never felt more like George Constanza. It was as if these things had been on everyone's minds the entire first half and now that someone had broken the ice, the floor was open (wide open) for questions.
Here I was sitting in the same seat that I had already been in for three and a half concerts over a span of almost nine months, still utterly unable to blend into the middle-aged white-collar bourgeois scenery. I wanted to break into a profanity-laced tirade about how this was "my seat," that I paid good money for it, that I earned that money working a day job like everyone else around me, that I'm not a student any more, I didn't play in the marching band when I was, and that in light of the preceding observations, I ought to command at least enough respect to be allowed to finish my sentence before the next old biddy whose brother's roommate's uncle happened to play the tuba in junior high school interrupts me with more small-talk.
Instead, biting my tongue, I began to cue up all of the standard diplomatic answers I've been conditioned to give to people my parents' age and older so as not to offend them too badly when they inquire about why in god's name I would eschew a comfortable bourgeois academic life to rough it as a freelance jazz tuba player in the Midwest. This was no small task seeing that it had to be projected in two different directions 180 degrees apart. I couldn't help the feeling that somewhere out there on the East Coast, Greg Sandow was laughing his ass off at me for all the times I said I like the vibe of orchestra concerts just fine thank you. This incident, I think, really has nothing to do with any of that. It's just part of growing up (or not). I can only hope that people will still be underestimating my age by 10 years when I'm a senior citizen. Maybe by then I'll be getting complete season schedules in the mail, and maybe I will open them to see the names of Ligeti, Messaien, Lutoslawski, Kernis and friends next to each other rather than Mozart. That'll be the day.
31 May 2008
Fanservice and Fanbaiting
Darcy James Argue has introduced the musico-blogosphere to the term "fanservice," and much discussion has ensued. To avoid redundancy, I will omit the oft-obligatory rehashing of the various comments that have been posted elsewhere by others and get straight to what I believe is a necessary observation that I have yet to come across in any of these other arenas.
DJA chides practitioners of fanservice for being exclusionary towards the uninitiated, but it bears pointing out that audience inexperience is often exploited by more inclusionary artists as well, and for no less questionable purposes. I would call this "fanbaiting," and would define it as follows: fanbaiting occurs when (1) a highly derivative or plagiaristic artist passes off his or her work as unique and personal, and (2) an audience that is not familiar with the source material or its history is none the wiser, resulting in (3) an undue heaping of praise (if not cash) on this undeserving artist.
If what distinguishes true fanservice from mere pandering is the malicious intent on the part of the musician to exclude the uninitiated, then what distinguishes true fanbaiting from mere vanity is the malicious intent to garner attention and monetary gain from audience members whose lack of experience leads them to form an unduly high opinion of the musician.
The Joyce Hatto scandal is a good recent example. In this case, Hatto's husband exploited the inexperience of many thousands of listeners before a few concert-piano-world initiates recognized the recordings as those of other artists. Most examples of musical fanbaiting fall well short of such blatent plagiarism while still being highly derivative and wholly unremarkable as achievements.
My point is not to paint all musicians who seek to expand their audience as fanbaiters, but merely to point out that inexperience can be exploited in different ways by different people for different reasons, and that before we go around judging artists and their work by whether it is inclusive or exclusive (which is, it seems to me, only a small step away from judging them by the sheer size of the audience they attract), we ought to understand that both can demonstrate the very same contempt for the uninitiated.
It would be easy to suggest that the musico-blogosphere itself has become a hotbed of both fanservice (memes, listening lists, obscure literary references, etc.) and fanbaiting (the ArtsJournal-driven obsession with the economics of classical music, the recreational bashing of atonal composers). What prevents such claims from having any validity, however, is a clear lack of the malicious, preconceived intent referenced above, intent which I think we (myself included) are often too quick to accuse others of harboring simply because doing so makes us feel better.
As others have already pointed out, a blanket condemnation of insider cultural references seems to embrace an unduly rigid distinction between form and content, as if Ives could have based his Concord Sonata on any old lick from the classical canon, or quoted any old march at any old time in no particular order (See guys? I can fanservice, too. I just talked about Charles Ives). Ultimately, the question for both the artist and the audience is not "Does it work socially?" but "Does it work aesthetically?" As always, we must each answer that question for ourselves on a case-by-case basis rather than condemning entire groups of artists for their perceived hostility towards newcomers.
DJA chides practitioners of fanservice for being exclusionary towards the uninitiated, but it bears pointing out that audience inexperience is often exploited by more inclusionary artists as well, and for no less questionable purposes. I would call this "fanbaiting," and would define it as follows: fanbaiting occurs when (1) a highly derivative or plagiaristic artist passes off his or her work as unique and personal, and (2) an audience that is not familiar with the source material or its history is none the wiser, resulting in (3) an undue heaping of praise (if not cash) on this undeserving artist.
If what distinguishes true fanservice from mere pandering is the malicious intent on the part of the musician to exclude the uninitiated, then what distinguishes true fanbaiting from mere vanity is the malicious intent to garner attention and monetary gain from audience members whose lack of experience leads them to form an unduly high opinion of the musician.
The Joyce Hatto scandal is a good recent example. In this case, Hatto's husband exploited the inexperience of many thousands of listeners before a few concert-piano-world initiates recognized the recordings as those of other artists. Most examples of musical fanbaiting fall well short of such blatent plagiarism while still being highly derivative and wholly unremarkable as achievements.
My point is not to paint all musicians who seek to expand their audience as fanbaiters, but merely to point out that inexperience can be exploited in different ways by different people for different reasons, and that before we go around judging artists and their work by whether it is inclusive or exclusive (which is, it seems to me, only a small step away from judging them by the sheer size of the audience they attract), we ought to understand that both can demonstrate the very same contempt for the uninitiated.
It would be easy to suggest that the musico-blogosphere itself has become a hotbed of both fanservice (memes, listening lists, obscure literary references, etc.) and fanbaiting (the ArtsJournal-driven obsession with the economics of classical music, the recreational bashing of atonal composers). What prevents such claims from having any validity, however, is a clear lack of the malicious, preconceived intent referenced above, intent which I think we (myself included) are often too quick to accuse others of harboring simply because doing so makes us feel better.
As others have already pointed out, a blanket condemnation of insider cultural references seems to embrace an unduly rigid distinction between form and content, as if Ives could have based his Concord Sonata on any old lick from the classical canon, or quoted any old march at any old time in no particular order (See guys? I can fanservice, too. I just talked about Charles Ives). Ultimately, the question for both the artist and the audience is not "Does it work socially?" but "Does it work aesthetically?" As always, we must each answer that question for ourselves on a case-by-case basis rather than condemning entire groups of artists for their perceived hostility towards newcomers.
21 May 2008
You Must Believe In Spring
It's no secret that Minnesota winters can be long and brutal, and our most recent one was an excellent case in point. With spring finally seeming to have arrived for real in just the last couple of days, I once again find myself thinking that I would have rather been a professional baseball player than a professional musician, and by extension, about the sometimes unfortunate parallels between the worlds of sports and music. In spite of the income disparity between professional athletes and professional musicians, the band and the baseball team more often than not find themselves in the same boat when they are attached to a K-12 educational institution, and as with "The Arts," extracurricular sports teams are often sold to taxpayers and boosters based on a dubious array of fringe benefits.
Every time I hear a public service announcement claiming that participation in music helps kids do better in math and science, I can't help but think of the utter loathing that the majority of my music school classmates felt for these subjects, the lengths they went to avoid having to take any "real" math or science classes in college, and the range of looks (from disgust to fear to anger) I receive upon admitting that I voluntarily took Calculus and Anatomy while they were slogging through a remedial statistics course. Similarly, every time I hear a public service announcement claiming that participation in sports builds kids' self-esteem, I'm reminded of the trials and tribulations of my abbreviated baseball career: dysfunctional coaches, irritating teammates, unsportsmanlike opponents, scheduling conflicts, injuries, equipment, travel, and most importantly, the fact that I lacked the talent to continue playing beyond the high school level.
This was anything but positive for my self-esteem; in fact, it was often downright destructive to my own physical and emotional well-being. There are strong parallels here to what I observed in school band, even though I observed them from the other (successful) side: infighting, jealousy, strained teacher-student relationships, varying degrees of commitment among band members, and so on. I continue to meet middle aged people who recall with a joyful smile on their faces how much they hated practicing scales and being made to sight read when they were in high school band. By the same token, when asked about baseball in the context of polite conversation, I'd probably have a good chuckle about having to have my face rebuilt on two separate occasions after being struck by various flying objects in the course of a game. Privately, however, baseball is a sore spot, a continued source of nightmares, and a quintessential case of wanting what you can't have. I wouldn't wish that sort of condition on anyone for any reason, but specifically with regards to music, which I, of course, have grown quite fond of.
In engaging a young person in any given activity, the risk of them loving it sometimes outweighs the risk of them hating it. Perhaps this is why our culture touts the supposedly objective, empirically proven value of these activities that promise to keep the kids only casually engaged; this as opposed to embracing them as a kind of "serious leisure" that could eventually lead that young person away from becoming a cog in the New World Order and towards a lifetime of private, frivolous, enjoyable, rewarding and vital music making. Even composer Ben Johnston says that those of us who fail to embrace the supposed developmental benefits of our art deserve our "social function as dubious luxury items." Johnston's primary beef is with "status seekers," whom we all abhor, yet his words seem to ally him with the bait-and-switchers who sell arts education based entirely on factors extraneous to the art itself. These are people who are themselves zealous status-seekers, eager to paint their career choice as a community service to the rest of us, and for which they should of course be rewarded with our sympathy and tax dollars. Remind you of anyone from the world of professional sports?
Every time I hear a public service announcement claiming that participation in music helps kids do better in math and science, I can't help but think of the utter loathing that the majority of my music school classmates felt for these subjects, the lengths they went to avoid having to take any "real" math or science classes in college, and the range of looks (from disgust to fear to anger) I receive upon admitting that I voluntarily took Calculus and Anatomy while they were slogging through a remedial statistics course. Similarly, every time I hear a public service announcement claiming that participation in sports builds kids' self-esteem, I'm reminded of the trials and tribulations of my abbreviated baseball career: dysfunctional coaches, irritating teammates, unsportsmanlike opponents, scheduling conflicts, injuries, equipment, travel, and most importantly, the fact that I lacked the talent to continue playing beyond the high school level.
This was anything but positive for my self-esteem; in fact, it was often downright destructive to my own physical and emotional well-being. There are strong parallels here to what I observed in school band, even though I observed them from the other (successful) side: infighting, jealousy, strained teacher-student relationships, varying degrees of commitment among band members, and so on. I continue to meet middle aged people who recall with a joyful smile on their faces how much they hated practicing scales and being made to sight read when they were in high school band. By the same token, when asked about baseball in the context of polite conversation, I'd probably have a good chuckle about having to have my face rebuilt on two separate occasions after being struck by various flying objects in the course of a game. Privately, however, baseball is a sore spot, a continued source of nightmares, and a quintessential case of wanting what you can't have. I wouldn't wish that sort of condition on anyone for any reason, but specifically with regards to music, which I, of course, have grown quite fond of.
In engaging a young person in any given activity, the risk of them loving it sometimes outweighs the risk of them hating it. Perhaps this is why our culture touts the supposedly objective, empirically proven value of these activities that promise to keep the kids only casually engaged; this as opposed to embracing them as a kind of "serious leisure" that could eventually lead that young person away from becoming a cog in the New World Order and towards a lifetime of private, frivolous, enjoyable, rewarding and vital music making. Even composer Ben Johnston says that those of us who fail to embrace the supposed developmental benefits of our art deserve our "social function as dubious luxury items." Johnston's primary beef is with "status seekers," whom we all abhor, yet his words seem to ally him with the bait-and-switchers who sell arts education based entirely on factors extraneous to the art itself. These are people who are themselves zealous status-seekers, eager to paint their career choice as a community service to the rest of us, and for which they should of course be rewarded with our sympathy and tax dollars. Remind you of anyone from the world of professional sports?
27 April 2008
Art (Music) and the Daily Grind
Are sublime listening experiences commonplace, or are they rare occurrences? Are these experiences lurking behind every corner just waiting to be discovered, or are they elusive, rare commodities that must sometimes be actively sought out rather than passively received?
The notion of "the best" is, by its very nature, highly exclusive. Everything cannot be "the best," or else there would be no "best." Whatever your preferences, these exalted moments are, by definition, rare.
If such moments are not commonplace, can we reasonably expect that our commonplace states of mind and commonplace daily routines are in any way well-suited towards either (1) identifying opportunities to have such experiences, or (2) receiving such experiences in the way that they demand we receive them? Such experiences defy the daily grind, both logistically and perceptually, and they demand that we defy it with them.
---
For the performing musician, is performance preparation inherently disruptive to or compatible with one's extramusical daily life? If artistic success requires great logistical contortions such as canceling all social and leisure activities for a period of time, has the artist truly succeeded?
Due to the physical nature of their craft, it is not unusual for instrumentalists to make special accommodations for a particularly important upcoming performance. These accommodations may include "clearing out" one's schedule in the days leading up to the event, sleeping more, eating better, drinking more water, etc. etc. But what does it say about that instrumentalist that their usual daily grind is not conducive to the artistry they aspire to? Either the daily grind ought to change, or they should.
Though exalted artworks are, by definition, rare, the artist must operate on the assumption that it is possible to succeed often in their attempts to create such works. This cannot be accomplished by making adjustments to one's routine when exaltation is demanded, but only by finding a healthy balance of work and play that is conducive to maximizing one's chances for success all of the time.
Great art by definition does not fit comfortably into everyday life, but rather than merely "making time" for artistic success, great artists are those for whom great art does indeed fit into their daily grind, and to whom it becomes commonplace.
The notion of "the best" is, by its very nature, highly exclusive. Everything cannot be "the best," or else there would be no "best." Whatever your preferences, these exalted moments are, by definition, rare.
If such moments are not commonplace, can we reasonably expect that our commonplace states of mind and commonplace daily routines are in any way well-suited towards either (1) identifying opportunities to have such experiences, or (2) receiving such experiences in the way that they demand we receive them? Such experiences defy the daily grind, both logistically and perceptually, and they demand that we defy it with them.
---
For the performing musician, is performance preparation inherently disruptive to or compatible with one's extramusical daily life? If artistic success requires great logistical contortions such as canceling all social and leisure activities for a period of time, has the artist truly succeeded?
Due to the physical nature of their craft, it is not unusual for instrumentalists to make special accommodations for a particularly important upcoming performance. These accommodations may include "clearing out" one's schedule in the days leading up to the event, sleeping more, eating better, drinking more water, etc. etc. But what does it say about that instrumentalist that their usual daily grind is not conducive to the artistry they aspire to? Either the daily grind ought to change, or they should.
Though exalted artworks are, by definition, rare, the artist must operate on the assumption that it is possible to succeed often in their attempts to create such works. This cannot be accomplished by making adjustments to one's routine when exaltation is demanded, but only by finding a healthy balance of work and play that is conducive to maximizing one's chances for success all of the time.
Great art by definition does not fit comfortably into everyday life, but rather than merely "making time" for artistic success, great artists are those for whom great art does indeed fit into their daily grind, and to whom it becomes commonplace.
06 April 2008
Takes One to Know One
Everyone wants to be the victim, but no one wants to be the fascist. Don't believe me? Read on...
(1)Composer Jorge Martin posted this in a comment to Greg Sandow:
Atonality, but more so dodecaphony and serialsm, -- I would argue -- relies more purely on the intellect and only incidentally, if much at all, on the sensorium. In other words, you can talk up a good game for the stuff, but mostly it just sounds awful. Mostly, as the music is a-tonal, i.e., works against tonality or a tonal center, that music also works against all tonal forms of melos and harmony, and equally against rhythm. Please do not tell me what is commonly argued: of course there is melody and harmony and rhythm in this music -- yes, but the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic shapes are all fashioned to go precisely against anything we can relate to normally. I consider this an essentially anti-humanist enterprise or intellectual movement. All cultures we have ever known have melodic and rhythmic shapes that a community can participate in. Atonality is asocial: it endeavors to exclude and resist participation, despite any protestations to the contrary. I don't think this is a judgment so much as a description of fact. Now, one can indeed like the music, and some do, and some atonal music can be quite attractive, but in those cases, I believe the composer has used other musical means to mitigate the extreme nature of the tone-language. Or: the music is part of a narrative, usually telling of extreme or deranged psychological states, in the theater, opera or movie-house, in which case many an audience finds nothing objectionable in the music, insofar as it is part of a greater whole.
When Taruskin mentions Zhdanov and the Nazis he does not imply that Boulez was a Nazi or a Stalinist: he suggests that the impulse behind the utterance is the same, namely a dangerous, aggressive hostility toward his opposition, which impulse had already shown itself -- and continues to show itself -- destructive. And let's not kid ourselves that because Boulez "was in his 20's" ("just a kid"?? -- tell that to Alexander, Mendelssohn, Keats, quite a few great mathematicians and military heroes and villains!) his youthfulness is any excuse: at that age any number of men (men, mostly) can wreak quite a lot of damage and wield quite a bit of brute power, and historically always have, in gangs or as leaders. The destruction Boulez wrought was not physical but, as you yourself suggest, spiritual and psychological, in making it seem that anyone daring to work in any other medium was beyond the pale, excommunicated, excrement. Your vignette about Boulez and the older Stravinsky, which I had not heard, confirms in my mind that the man is, whatever other merits he may possess, a brute. Boulez -- mid-20th-century Frenchman, as you remind us -- was prey, as so many avant-gardistes were, to a continued utopian mindset, which brought us the horrors of nazism, communism, Maoism, Stalinism, and continues to bring us its religious forms. I consider utopianism the very worst of all possible forms of intellectual failure, even if at its core it comes from a (yes, youthful) urge to create a better, ideal world. But this urge can be easily and quickly perverted by other urges (e.g., to power), has never succeeded, and flies in the face of history and everything we know about human nature. True Utopian, of course, Boulez and his ilk cannot tolerate diversion from their program -- to my mind a rather joyless one, intellectual asceticism to the nth.
(2)The following is part of composer Gordon Downie's response to the question "Is Modernism Still Modern?" as posed by conductor and blogger Kenneth Woods:
We should be in no doubt about the revolutionary nature of the high modernist programme, in terms of how it redefines creative activity, in terms of how it repositions power relations between cultural producers (or artists) and forms of management and power, and in how it redefines the function of aesthetic objects. Once initiated, within our current regressive cultural and political climate, simply sustaining and defending it from counter-revolutionary attacks is enough of a problem. I always notice a strong reluctance to discuss music or culture in these terms, but I make no apology for invoking political language to describe these processes. They are political processes and we can only understand their real dynamic if we view them in such terms.
...the conditions that require the kinds of processes associated with high modernism...haven’t changed. This being the case, neither should the response. It’s no coincidence that the rise of so-called aesthetic postmodernism and associated tendencies over the last 20 years or so is coterminous with neo-con triumphalism and the re-assertion of various forms of neo-liberalist ideologies that have celebrated “the end of history.”
Internal failure has its source in the abandonment, deviation from, or selective adoption of, those principles that define the modernist programme at its most authentic and astringent, and thus at its most effective and, for me, most interesting. Deviationism and eclecticism, having their routes in reformist and coalition politics, are essentially opportunistic, and weaken the aims of the programme as a whole. And as aesthetic modernism is merely the cultural expression of a wider socio-political process, having its origins in projects of enlightenment and associated historical programmes of cultural maturation and advancement, its appropriation for individual acts of opportunism has implications that go beyond mere art making and cultural production. Such action becomes an aesthetic-behavioural correlation of that hyper-individualism that characterises market society as a whole. A large body of critical scaffolding has now been erected around these two forms of opportunism that legitimate such actions by giving them a purely aesthetic, and thus non-political, interpretation. These frequently take the form of a purely subject-centred, coarse biographical reductionism.
But in any artistic revolution, there is frequently a counter-revolution, in which elements representative of the former make various forms of opportunistic accommodation with the rear-garde. This has given rise to the formation of a legal modernism that, though retaining features of the original, is more or less a simulation of it, with a more palatable user- and marketing-friendly complexion. In such conditions, although various forms of neo-conservatism might constitute the immediate and most obvious opposition to modernist aspirations, the greater threat can be sourced in those tendencies that have occupied, distorted, and colonised its territory.
So, peanut gallery, who are the fascists after all? Is it the "anti-humanist" "anti-social" "utopian" composers, or is it the "eclectic" "post-modern" "opportunistic" composers? I think I know the answer, but I want to know what you think...
(1)Composer Jorge Martin posted this in a comment to Greg Sandow:
Atonality, but more so dodecaphony and serialsm, -- I would argue -- relies more purely on the intellect and only incidentally, if much at all, on the sensorium. In other words, you can talk up a good game for the stuff, but mostly it just sounds awful. Mostly, as the music is a-tonal, i.e., works against tonality or a tonal center, that music also works against all tonal forms of melos and harmony, and equally against rhythm. Please do not tell me what is commonly argued: of course there is melody and harmony and rhythm in this music -- yes, but the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic shapes are all fashioned to go precisely against anything we can relate to normally. I consider this an essentially anti-humanist enterprise or intellectual movement. All cultures we have ever known have melodic and rhythmic shapes that a community can participate in. Atonality is asocial: it endeavors to exclude and resist participation, despite any protestations to the contrary. I don't think this is a judgment so much as a description of fact. Now, one can indeed like the music, and some do, and some atonal music can be quite attractive, but in those cases, I believe the composer has used other musical means to mitigate the extreme nature of the tone-language. Or: the music is part of a narrative, usually telling of extreme or deranged psychological states, in the theater, opera or movie-house, in which case many an audience finds nothing objectionable in the music, insofar as it is part of a greater whole.
When Taruskin mentions Zhdanov and the Nazis he does not imply that Boulez was a Nazi or a Stalinist: he suggests that the impulse behind the utterance is the same, namely a dangerous, aggressive hostility toward his opposition, which impulse had already shown itself -- and continues to show itself -- destructive. And let's not kid ourselves that because Boulez "was in his 20's" ("just a kid"?? -- tell that to Alexander, Mendelssohn, Keats, quite a few great mathematicians and military heroes and villains!) his youthfulness is any excuse: at that age any number of men (men, mostly) can wreak quite a lot of damage and wield quite a bit of brute power, and historically always have, in gangs or as leaders. The destruction Boulez wrought was not physical but, as you yourself suggest, spiritual and psychological, in making it seem that anyone daring to work in any other medium was beyond the pale, excommunicated, excrement. Your vignette about Boulez and the older Stravinsky, which I had not heard, confirms in my mind that the man is, whatever other merits he may possess, a brute. Boulez -- mid-20th-century Frenchman, as you remind us -- was prey, as so many avant-gardistes were, to a continued utopian mindset, which brought us the horrors of nazism, communism, Maoism, Stalinism, and continues to bring us its religious forms. I consider utopianism the very worst of all possible forms of intellectual failure, even if at its core it comes from a (yes, youthful) urge to create a better, ideal world. But this urge can be easily and quickly perverted by other urges (e.g., to power), has never succeeded, and flies in the face of history and everything we know about human nature. True Utopian, of course, Boulez and his ilk cannot tolerate diversion from their program -- to my mind a rather joyless one, intellectual asceticism to the nth.
(2)The following is part of composer Gordon Downie's response to the question "Is Modernism Still Modern?" as posed by conductor and blogger Kenneth Woods:
We should be in no doubt about the revolutionary nature of the high modernist programme, in terms of how it redefines creative activity, in terms of how it repositions power relations between cultural producers (or artists) and forms of management and power, and in how it redefines the function of aesthetic objects. Once initiated, within our current regressive cultural and political climate, simply sustaining and defending it from counter-revolutionary attacks is enough of a problem. I always notice a strong reluctance to discuss music or culture in these terms, but I make no apology for invoking political language to describe these processes. They are political processes and we can only understand their real dynamic if we view them in such terms.
...the conditions that require the kinds of processes associated with high modernism...haven’t changed. This being the case, neither should the response. It’s no coincidence that the rise of so-called aesthetic postmodernism and associated tendencies over the last 20 years or so is coterminous with neo-con triumphalism and the re-assertion of various forms of neo-liberalist ideologies that have celebrated “the end of history.”
Internal failure has its source in the abandonment, deviation from, or selective adoption of, those principles that define the modernist programme at its most authentic and astringent, and thus at its most effective and, for me, most interesting. Deviationism and eclecticism, having their routes in reformist and coalition politics, are essentially opportunistic, and weaken the aims of the programme as a whole. And as aesthetic modernism is merely the cultural expression of a wider socio-political process, having its origins in projects of enlightenment and associated historical programmes of cultural maturation and advancement, its appropriation for individual acts of opportunism has implications that go beyond mere art making and cultural production. Such action becomes an aesthetic-behavioural correlation of that hyper-individualism that characterises market society as a whole. A large body of critical scaffolding has now been erected around these two forms of opportunism that legitimate such actions by giving them a purely aesthetic, and thus non-political, interpretation. These frequently take the form of a purely subject-centred, coarse biographical reductionism.
But in any artistic revolution, there is frequently a counter-revolution, in which elements representative of the former make various forms of opportunistic accommodation with the rear-garde. This has given rise to the formation of a legal modernism that, though retaining features of the original, is more or less a simulation of it, with a more palatable user- and marketing-friendly complexion. In such conditions, although various forms of neo-conservatism might constitute the immediate and most obvious opposition to modernist aspirations, the greater threat can be sourced in those tendencies that have occupied, distorted, and colonised its territory.
So, peanut gallery, who are the fascists after all? Is it the "anti-humanist" "anti-social" "utopian" composers, or is it the "eclectic" "post-modern" "opportunistic" composers? I think I know the answer, but I want to know what you think...
31 March 2008
The Authority of Bytes and Pixels
I was only born in 1982, but I am still just barely old enough that I don't take things like the internet, CD's, and cell phones for granted. I grew up with a black and white television and a rotary telephone in the house (and also with two harpsichords and no pianos, but that's another story entirely). To this day, I take a certain perverse pleasure in being able to listen to myself on CD, watch myself on VHS or DVD, and not least of all to see my words all lit up on an official-looking website like this one, as if I am some eminent writer. The reason for this is that I remember when not just anyone could see their work lit up on a screen, or hear their music played back by a computer notation program, or burn a CD of themselves for a friend, etc. etc. At first, it just wasn't possible; then it was too expensive; today, it's almost commonplace.
Specifically with regard to the internet, I think it is amazing how much venom is spewed over the fact that a kid born today will never have known a world without such modern technology, and particularly over the worry that this kid will never be able to tell the difference between an authoritative source and a phony one. Might I submit that it is, in fact, those of us who actually remember a time when all of these bytes and pixels were exclusively reserved for raging celebrities who are the problem? We are the ones who are most easily seduced into equating packaging with authority because for us, that used to be a pretty reliable way of judging sources. If that is no longer the case (and we all know it's not), then we are the one's who have a problem, not successive generations who will not know any other way.
Rather than fear the day when there are no people left on the planet who were alive before the internet existed, I would posit that once we arrive at that stage, the populace will, for that very reason, be much more adept than it is today at judging authority among various internet sources, and that perhaps only then can the internet come closer to fulfilling its potential as a constructive, utilitarian resource rather than a capricious waste of time and electricity.
Specifically with regard to the internet, I think it is amazing how much venom is spewed over the fact that a kid born today will never have known a world without such modern technology, and particularly over the worry that this kid will never be able to tell the difference between an authoritative source and a phony one. Might I submit that it is, in fact, those of us who actually remember a time when all of these bytes and pixels were exclusively reserved for raging celebrities who are the problem? We are the ones who are most easily seduced into equating packaging with authority because for us, that used to be a pretty reliable way of judging sources. If that is no longer the case (and we all know it's not), then we are the one's who have a problem, not successive generations who will not know any other way.
Rather than fear the day when there are no people left on the planet who were alive before the internet existed, I would posit that once we arrive at that stage, the populace will, for that very reason, be much more adept than it is today at judging authority among various internet sources, and that perhaps only then can the internet come closer to fulfilling its potential as a constructive, utilitarian resource rather than a capricious waste of time and electricity.
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27 March 2008
Music Education: Pro vs. Con
With funding for public school music and art programs in constant jeopardy, it is crucial for all advocates of such programs to be armed with knowledge of their many benefits, as well as some of the counterarguments that detractors may rely on. Here, then, are the views of two esteemed guest columnists. Defending the programs against the philistine onslaught known as the "small government" movement is Ray Dolcissimo, a veteran band parent, self-appointed child development expert, and hack guitar player. Defending the rights of taxpayers to not educate their children is Dave Ruvido, a libertarian activist, truck driver, and junior high school drop out.
Pro: Mr. Dolcissimo
First off, it is well known that teenagers require far more sleep than the average adult, and that failing to get adequate rest each night can lead to underachievement in high school. Listening to music, however, is a surefire way to put anyone to sleep in short order. I can't seem to stay awake for more than 3 minutes of it myself. Though the music of pre-classic Europeans, minimalist Americans, and most smooth jazz artists seems to be particularly well-suited to this purpose, it's a property that all music seems to share pretty much across the board. We must not be left behind in recognizing this inherent value of music, one which much of the rest of American society has come to embrace wholeheartedly in recent times. By developing a love for music in elementary school, students will acquire a proficiency at sleeping that will last well into adulthood.
Second, as an art that deals with the communication of emotion, music is uniquely well-suited to fostering healthy emotional development among students. Who could ever forget the fear created by an upcoming scale quiz, the anger at malfunctioning school-owned instruments, the jealousy directed at the first chair players, or the utter shock of encountering an accidental in one's part? It's a proven fact that kids who study music are better in touch with their emotions. I don't think that's a coincidence.
I'll close with a question: would you want your own kids to be sleep deprived and full of pent-up emotion? Or do you want to raise healthy, well-rested and spaz-tastic young adults who are so excited about going to school each day, they insist on having a car so that they can drive there themselves? I implore you to recognize the undeniable benefits of a complete education, one which includes music and art as well as all of the traditional "core" subjects. We simply owe our kids the opportunity to experience music and all its attendant benefits.
Con: Mr. Ruvido
What's the worst thing that could happen to a kid just because his school had no band for him to play in? Maybe he actually starts doing his homework, or gets involved in a sport, or better yet, gets a damn job and stops freeloadin' off his parents. Now riddle me this: what's the worst that could happen to him if he does join the high school band and starts to kinda like it? I'll tell you what: he tries to make a career out of it.
The last thing we need is more hippy scumbags fighting each other for work and not earnin' any money. They might as well dropout now and get started drivin' a truck. We hear so much blather about certain activities providing kids something to do other than roam the streets and become drug addicts, but isn't that exactly what musicians do anyway? It's hard to understand how music could keep kids off drugs; if anything, it's more likely to lead the to a drug habit they wouldn't have developed otherwise.
Music not only carries the same risks as teen vagrancy, it is a drug itself: it causes musicians to withdraw from family and friends, spend all their money on recordings and instrument accessories, and become despondent most of the time over finding gigs and having enough time to practice. What good is it to keep a kid off the street when he's going to end up addicted to music anyway? I'm not payin' one cent of my hard-earned dough for little Johnny to develop a music habit. End of story.
Pro: Mr. Dolcissimo
First off, it is well known that teenagers require far more sleep than the average adult, and that failing to get adequate rest each night can lead to underachievement in high school. Listening to music, however, is a surefire way to put anyone to sleep in short order. I can't seem to stay awake for more than 3 minutes of it myself. Though the music of pre-classic Europeans, minimalist Americans, and most smooth jazz artists seems to be particularly well-suited to this purpose, it's a property that all music seems to share pretty much across the board. We must not be left behind in recognizing this inherent value of music, one which much of the rest of American society has come to embrace wholeheartedly in recent times. By developing a love for music in elementary school, students will acquire a proficiency at sleeping that will last well into adulthood.
Second, as an art that deals with the communication of emotion, music is uniquely well-suited to fostering healthy emotional development among students. Who could ever forget the fear created by an upcoming scale quiz, the anger at malfunctioning school-owned instruments, the jealousy directed at the first chair players, or the utter shock of encountering an accidental in one's part? It's a proven fact that kids who study music are better in touch with their emotions. I don't think that's a coincidence.
I'll close with a question: would you want your own kids to be sleep deprived and full of pent-up emotion? Or do you want to raise healthy, well-rested and spaz-tastic young adults who are so excited about going to school each day, they insist on having a car so that they can drive there themselves? I implore you to recognize the undeniable benefits of a complete education, one which includes music and art as well as all of the traditional "core" subjects. We simply owe our kids the opportunity to experience music and all its attendant benefits.
Con: Mr. Ruvido
What's the worst thing that could happen to a kid just because his school had no band for him to play in? Maybe he actually starts doing his homework, or gets involved in a sport, or better yet, gets a damn job and stops freeloadin' off his parents. Now riddle me this: what's the worst that could happen to him if he does join the high school band and starts to kinda like it? I'll tell you what: he tries to make a career out of it.
The last thing we need is more hippy scumbags fighting each other for work and not earnin' any money. They might as well dropout now and get started drivin' a truck. We hear so much blather about certain activities providing kids something to do other than roam the streets and become drug addicts, but isn't that exactly what musicians do anyway? It's hard to understand how music could keep kids off drugs; if anything, it's more likely to lead the to a drug habit they wouldn't have developed otherwise.
Music not only carries the same risks as teen vagrancy, it is a drug itself: it causes musicians to withdraw from family and friends, spend all their money on recordings and instrument accessories, and become despondent most of the time over finding gigs and having enough time to practice. What good is it to keep a kid off the street when he's going to end up addicted to music anyway? I'm not payin' one cent of my hard-earned dough for little Johnny to develop a music habit. End of story.
17 March 2008
Culture
It seems obvious from the outset that most any attempt to define what "culture" is has about the same chance of succeeding as does a similar attempt to define "music" or "art." Nonetheless, this is a concept to which so many musicians so often refer to as a pillar of an argument or a philosophy that we really should understand what it means, or at least what it is taken to mean in any given context. Below are three explorations of the modern dynamic between music and the concept of culture, each taking a different approach: culture as control, the dictionary definition of culture, and the concept of the inevitable influence of culture on art.
Culture: The Control Aspect
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"What we decidedly do not need now is further to assimilate Art into Thought, or (worse yet) Art into Culture."
-Susan Sontag, "Against Interpretation"
There's something about statements like this that particularly roils those for whom music's basis in culture is seen as essential. We know what it means for a person to be assimilated into a culture, but what does it mean for music (or art broadly) to be assimilated into, have a basis in, or reflect a culture? By capitalizing the C-word, Sontag highlights a crucial detail which must be addressed in any such discussion, which is that somewhere along the way, we stopped dealing in terms of specific cultures and started touting capital-C Culture broadly.
For Americans, there are two elephants in the room when it comes to any discussion of the C-word: the long-held view that we lack a culture (or at least a single unified culture), and our particular history of racial oppression. Only through the peculiar combination of these two circumstances (not that they are wholly unrelated) could Culture become generalized and fêted in the particular way that it is (i.e. with no regard for which culture we are dealing with, as if they were all of equal merit). There's a certain knee-jerk reaction that some of us white Americans are prone to whereby white=bad, and black (or, to take it further, non-white, or even non-Western)=good. It's awkward to talk about and we avoid it if we can, but anyone who lives here knows how firmly entrenched it is, especially if you are involved even casually in jazz and its offshoots. It's a token way for us whites to acknowledge that we understand how fucked up things were and are. There's nothing so wrong about that on the surface, but let's just keep in mind that the devil is in the details: there are plenty of places in the world today where the human rights situation is as bad or worse than it is in the USA, even given the substantial regressions of the last 7 years.
Lack of pigment by no means equates to lack of Culture; various European ethnic groups, after all, have vital and distinct cultures of their own. More importantly, however, I don't believe for a second that a lack of Culture equates to a lack of artistic potency or legitimacy. There is a grave contradiction at the heart of capital-C culture advocacy; for lack of a better term, I'll refer to this as the control aspect of culture. Basically, what "culture" imposes on individuals generally is what "style" imposes on music (or any art) specifically: limits, control, hierarchy, or whatever you want to call it. You could, of course, have a "culture of openness" or something similar, but even that is a kind of control, essentially standing in opposition to people who might favor the imposition of something more monolithic. Think equal and opposite forces: to have a unified culture is to exert social control. If we are to merely generalize about Culture, this may in fact be its most universal feature.
"Style" is a concept that captures in a general sense what "culture" does to art. Mastery of a style is eminently more accessible to the musician than is the ideal of functioning beyond style ("synthesis" or "integration" of styles) because the tasks to be accomplished are known and finite. It is precisely where a certain musical style is perceptible to the student that a pathway for mastery of the style also comes into view. Given a bounded musical realm such as style, it is clearer here than anywhere else that the process of attaining mastery can basically proceed in a vacuum, cultural or otherwise.
I would think it would be obvious that synthesis in this case is a pathway to greater artistic freedoms, i.e. away from culture rather than into it. The sort of control that culture imposes is quite the opposite. Without this control, there is suddenly greater subjectivity and autonomy, accompanied by none of the certainty or boundedness that came with finite style. Culture, like style, can be stifling. I would think that were we truly to debate capital-C culture as a general idea rather than taking each lower-case-c culture case-by-case, as musicians, it would be hard to choose the control aspect over the apparent freedom of whatever the alternative is.
In real life, of course, what we find in musical circles where a common practice prevails is a group of like-minded people who are scarcely conscious of the fact that an outsider might perceive their individual works to be very similar. The musico-idiomatic devices that prevail in such circles are taken for granted by insiders, creating the (usually false) appearance of a consciously implemented method or dogma. Actually, these people seem less to be the victims of some authoritarian cultural control than they do to be unmoved by (or simply ignorant of) any of the alternatives, instead remaining perfectly content with what they've got.
This is all well and good; however, once one becomes aware of the breadth of musical expression that exists the world over, it is then much more difficult to remain so content with a common practice. This, I think, casts a shadow on capital-C Culture advocacy as far as music is concerned, for Culture remains innocuous only when its subjects have no reason to question it. Otherwise, it becomes a contrivance, an externally imposed dogma that stifles free expression. Given modern communications technology, I find it difficult to believe that the control aspect of culture will find a legitimate or lasting place in the modern musical landscape.
Culture: Dictionary DefinitionsThe dictionary that came pre-installed on my laptop (the "Oxford American Dictionary") gives the following definition:
culture:
noun
1 the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively : 20th century popular culture.
• a refined understanding or appreciation of this : men of culture.
• the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group : Caribbean culture | people from many different cultures.
• [with adj. ] the attitudes and behavior characteristic of a particular social group : the emerging drug culture.
"1" is thought provoking, but I think ultimately of little help. It seems to take for granted that "The Arts" are in fact not only already assimilated into, but in fact comprise culture...that is, along with those less consequential "other manifestations of human intellectual achievement" thrown in merely for good measure. (The arts an intellectual achievement? You don't say!) This is too broad a definition; the toilet is a manifestation of human intellectual achievement, but is it part of culture?
The first bullet point is almost a figurative usage, so I don't think we need to bother with it. I'm particularly intrigued by the second bullet point, which breaks culture into four areas. I want to explore them individually and challenge their relevance to music:
"customs"
To put it mildly, I despise many of the customs where I live. There is no way I'm going to allow my music to either reflect or incorporate most any of these customs. Does that mean that I need to go culture shopping around the world simply to continue to exist as an artist? It might get me a grant, but it won't make me a better musician, or really even have any effect whatsoever on the music that I make. For music to exist outside the jurisdiction of a particular culture's established customs is not so radical a proposition. Of course, some will say that this is what is behind supposedly shrinking audiences for classical music; I, on the other hand, value the "concert" experience for precisely this reason, as an escape from the customs I despise that nonetheless seem to govern the rest of life. Does a certain flouting of culture in this case not merely reflect greater self-determination?
"social institutions"
Some detractors cite the remarks of Schoenberg and Babbitt, for example, as essentially aspiring for music to be its own social institution somehow divorced from the everyday life of the Average Joe and aimed at a small group of fellow professionals, or "specialists." They then oppose this, and argue instead that music must be part of the broader culture such that the social institutions and customs of that culture naturally permeate any musical presentation. The opposite case is one in which music has become "self-referential" "elitist" or "rarefied" and is no longer "relevant." But even granting the "assimilation into culture" for just a moment, can't there still be, then, a difference between being full-fledged member of the culture and being governed by its most pervasive social norms? Social norms, after all, are just one facet of culture; what if the music fits squarely into the culture on every other level with the sole exception of something about its mode of presentation that is foreign or awkward in that culture? Again, the supposed decline of classical music comes to mind, and you'd have to admit that this is a pretty good description: sitting still for an hour without talking is something that is not only awkward for many in our culture, but perhaps even foreign to them entirely. Nonetheless, why should I as a musician accept this and allow it to dictate what I'm allowed to do?
It confounds me how offended the culture mongers get when someone suggests that, for just a few minutes or hours at a time, someone might wish to exist outside the space of their culture's social customs/demands and just listen to some damn music. The argument that the concert experience has become irrelevant once it becomes disruptive to the way that 51% of the population behaves in public just doesn't convince me that a great travesty is being committed every time someone composes a work that is not an unabashed outward embodiment of their ethnicity, or that violates the rules of social hour, or that isn't "about" anything in particular. Before we go around advocating for music that has cultural relevance, we had better understand how severely that condition limits musical expression, as well as exactly which culture we are talking about in the first place.
"achievements"
Some people will stop at nothing to impute an objective importance to their favorite instantiations of the art of organized sound. If it doesn't symbolize something, it surely embodies, expresses, communicates, or implies it, right? There's very little room for talk of the aesthetic experience when we are trying to explain to future in-laws how exactly it is that we might be the least bit useful to society, or when funding for a music department or program is up in the air. In my culture, it seems that we pay lip service to the value of "The Arts" only where some concrete connection to some other achievement can be made. We ride the coattails of politics and the hard sciences so that politically-conscious, enlightened people won't think that we just sit around and smoke pot all day, and we pretend that this is the reason we care so much about music. Even if this is not flat out wrong, I still think it's dishonest. I vote, shovel the sidewalk, bike or take mass transit instead of driving my car if I can, and occasionally I even manage to donate money or volunteer for a worthy cause; but I play, write and listen to music for my own selfish enjoyment. You should too.
"arts"
Music is (or at least can be) an art itself, but there are many other arts as well; are they essential to each other's mere existence? This is even worse than stealing importance from politics and hard sciences. Suffice it to say that there's a lot of successful music out there that has nothing to do with visual art, dance, film, or whatever. I don't think you could argue that such an interdisciplinary background is essential to the musician, although if anyone wants to try, feel free.
Culture: The Inevitability FallacyWhen it comes to the concept of inevitability, composition teachers and students frequently have the same discussion about imitation and creation. Some students (I admit to passing through this phase) become fixated on avoiding influence and becoming "purely" creative and original; their teacher then tells them that it is impossible to create in a vacuum, and that since it is inevitable that they will be imitating something, they might as well expose themselves to a wide variety of stuff. Similarly, we often hear that music without culture is impossible, or at least not a good idea, etc. etc.
Making something that is inevitable a cornerstone of the argument actually works against the position. If it is inevitable, then there's nothing anyone can do about it; let's stop wasting our time and start discussing things that we can control rather than those which we can't. I think that the notion of the unavoidable influence of or basis in culture falls into the same trap as the unavoidable influence of the composer's musical surroundings: if something is so impossible to escape, there's no sense trying to convince someone to acknowledge it consciously. Imagine being told, "If you don't die someday, you're going to be in big trouble." There are no consequences for failing to abide by an inevitability because such failure is impossible.
The Culture monger says that by denying the presence or influence of culture, we are committing a grave error; then they turn around and state that to do such a thing is not even possible. These conditions cannot both be true. The one reason it is important to recognize inevitabilities is so that one can learn to ignore them and function in an uninhibited fashion; where the artist has already reached this state (however ignorantly), it could only be seen as a regression for them to become consciously engaged with so-called culture. It's analogous to a cognitively paralyzing fear of death. Hence, let us collectively abandon any need to proselytize on behalf of inevitablity; I can't think of a worse waste of time.
Culture: The Control Aspect
---
"What we decidedly do not need now is further to assimilate Art into Thought, or (worse yet) Art into Culture."
-Susan Sontag, "Against Interpretation"
There's something about statements like this that particularly roils those for whom music's basis in culture is seen as essential. We know what it means for a person to be assimilated into a culture, but what does it mean for music (or art broadly) to be assimilated into, have a basis in, or reflect a culture? By capitalizing the C-word, Sontag highlights a crucial detail which must be addressed in any such discussion, which is that somewhere along the way, we stopped dealing in terms of specific cultures and started touting capital-C Culture broadly.
For Americans, there are two elephants in the room when it comes to any discussion of the C-word: the long-held view that we lack a culture (or at least a single unified culture), and our particular history of racial oppression. Only through the peculiar combination of these two circumstances (not that they are wholly unrelated) could Culture become generalized and fêted in the particular way that it is (i.e. with no regard for which culture we are dealing with, as if they were all of equal merit). There's a certain knee-jerk reaction that some of us white Americans are prone to whereby white=bad, and black (or, to take it further, non-white, or even non-Western)=good. It's awkward to talk about and we avoid it if we can, but anyone who lives here knows how firmly entrenched it is, especially if you are involved even casually in jazz and its offshoots. It's a token way for us whites to acknowledge that we understand how fucked up things were and are. There's nothing so wrong about that on the surface, but let's just keep in mind that the devil is in the details: there are plenty of places in the world today where the human rights situation is as bad or worse than it is in the USA, even given the substantial regressions of the last 7 years.
Lack of pigment by no means equates to lack of Culture; various European ethnic groups, after all, have vital and distinct cultures of their own. More importantly, however, I don't believe for a second that a lack of Culture equates to a lack of artistic potency or legitimacy. There is a grave contradiction at the heart of capital-C culture advocacy; for lack of a better term, I'll refer to this as the control aspect of culture. Basically, what "culture" imposes on individuals generally is what "style" imposes on music (or any art) specifically: limits, control, hierarchy, or whatever you want to call it. You could, of course, have a "culture of openness" or something similar, but even that is a kind of control, essentially standing in opposition to people who might favor the imposition of something more monolithic. Think equal and opposite forces: to have a unified culture is to exert social control. If we are to merely generalize about Culture, this may in fact be its most universal feature.
"Style" is a concept that captures in a general sense what "culture" does to art. Mastery of a style is eminently more accessible to the musician than is the ideal of functioning beyond style ("synthesis" or "integration" of styles) because the tasks to be accomplished are known and finite. It is precisely where a certain musical style is perceptible to the student that a pathway for mastery of the style also comes into view. Given a bounded musical realm such as style, it is clearer here than anywhere else that the process of attaining mastery can basically proceed in a vacuum, cultural or otherwise.
I would think it would be obvious that synthesis in this case is a pathway to greater artistic freedoms, i.e. away from culture rather than into it. The sort of control that culture imposes is quite the opposite. Without this control, there is suddenly greater subjectivity and autonomy, accompanied by none of the certainty or boundedness that came with finite style. Culture, like style, can be stifling. I would think that were we truly to debate capital-C culture as a general idea rather than taking each lower-case-c culture case-by-case, as musicians, it would be hard to choose the control aspect over the apparent freedom of whatever the alternative is.
In real life, of course, what we find in musical circles where a common practice prevails is a group of like-minded people who are scarcely conscious of the fact that an outsider might perceive their individual works to be very similar. The musico-idiomatic devices that prevail in such circles are taken for granted by insiders, creating the (usually false) appearance of a consciously implemented method or dogma. Actually, these people seem less to be the victims of some authoritarian cultural control than they do to be unmoved by (or simply ignorant of) any of the alternatives, instead remaining perfectly content with what they've got.
This is all well and good; however, once one becomes aware of the breadth of musical expression that exists the world over, it is then much more difficult to remain so content with a common practice. This, I think, casts a shadow on capital-C Culture advocacy as far as music is concerned, for Culture remains innocuous only when its subjects have no reason to question it. Otherwise, it becomes a contrivance, an externally imposed dogma that stifles free expression. Given modern communications technology, I find it difficult to believe that the control aspect of culture will find a legitimate or lasting place in the modern musical landscape.
Culture: Dictionary DefinitionsThe dictionary that came pre-installed on my laptop (the "Oxford American Dictionary") gives the following definition:
culture:
noun
1 the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively : 20th century popular culture.
• a refined understanding or appreciation of this : men of culture.
• the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group : Caribbean culture | people from many different cultures.
• [with adj. ] the attitudes and behavior characteristic of a particular social group : the emerging drug culture.
"1" is thought provoking, but I think ultimately of little help. It seems to take for granted that "The Arts" are in fact not only already assimilated into, but in fact comprise culture...that is, along with those less consequential "other manifestations of human intellectual achievement" thrown in merely for good measure. (The arts an intellectual achievement? You don't say!) This is too broad a definition; the toilet is a manifestation of human intellectual achievement, but is it part of culture?
The first bullet point is almost a figurative usage, so I don't think we need to bother with it. I'm particularly intrigued by the second bullet point, which breaks culture into four areas. I want to explore them individually and challenge their relevance to music:
"customs"
To put it mildly, I despise many of the customs where I live. There is no way I'm going to allow my music to either reflect or incorporate most any of these customs. Does that mean that I need to go culture shopping around the world simply to continue to exist as an artist? It might get me a grant, but it won't make me a better musician, or really even have any effect whatsoever on the music that I make. For music to exist outside the jurisdiction of a particular culture's established customs is not so radical a proposition. Of course, some will say that this is what is behind supposedly shrinking audiences for classical music; I, on the other hand, value the "concert" experience for precisely this reason, as an escape from the customs I despise that nonetheless seem to govern the rest of life. Does a certain flouting of culture in this case not merely reflect greater self-determination?
"social institutions"
Some detractors cite the remarks of Schoenberg and Babbitt, for example, as essentially aspiring for music to be its own social institution somehow divorced from the everyday life of the Average Joe and aimed at a small group of fellow professionals, or "specialists." They then oppose this, and argue instead that music must be part of the broader culture such that the social institutions and customs of that culture naturally permeate any musical presentation. The opposite case is one in which music has become "self-referential" "elitist" or "rarefied" and is no longer "relevant." But even granting the "assimilation into culture" for just a moment, can't there still be, then, a difference between being full-fledged member of the culture and being governed by its most pervasive social norms? Social norms, after all, are just one facet of culture; what if the music fits squarely into the culture on every other level with the sole exception of something about its mode of presentation that is foreign or awkward in that culture? Again, the supposed decline of classical music comes to mind, and you'd have to admit that this is a pretty good description: sitting still for an hour without talking is something that is not only awkward for many in our culture, but perhaps even foreign to them entirely. Nonetheless, why should I as a musician accept this and allow it to dictate what I'm allowed to do?
It confounds me how offended the culture mongers get when someone suggests that, for just a few minutes or hours at a time, someone might wish to exist outside the space of their culture's social customs/demands and just listen to some damn music. The argument that the concert experience has become irrelevant once it becomes disruptive to the way that 51% of the population behaves in public just doesn't convince me that a great travesty is being committed every time someone composes a work that is not an unabashed outward embodiment of their ethnicity, or that violates the rules of social hour, or that isn't "about" anything in particular. Before we go around advocating for music that has cultural relevance, we had better understand how severely that condition limits musical expression, as well as exactly which culture we are talking about in the first place.
"achievements"
Some people will stop at nothing to impute an objective importance to their favorite instantiations of the art of organized sound. If it doesn't symbolize something, it surely embodies, expresses, communicates, or implies it, right? There's very little room for talk of the aesthetic experience when we are trying to explain to future in-laws how exactly it is that we might be the least bit useful to society, or when funding for a music department or program is up in the air. In my culture, it seems that we pay lip service to the value of "The Arts" only where some concrete connection to some other achievement can be made. We ride the coattails of politics and the hard sciences so that politically-conscious, enlightened people won't think that we just sit around and smoke pot all day, and we pretend that this is the reason we care so much about music. Even if this is not flat out wrong, I still think it's dishonest. I vote, shovel the sidewalk, bike or take mass transit instead of driving my car if I can, and occasionally I even manage to donate money or volunteer for a worthy cause; but I play, write and listen to music for my own selfish enjoyment. You should too.
"arts"
Music is (or at least can be) an art itself, but there are many other arts as well; are they essential to each other's mere existence? This is even worse than stealing importance from politics and hard sciences. Suffice it to say that there's a lot of successful music out there that has nothing to do with visual art, dance, film, or whatever. I don't think you could argue that such an interdisciplinary background is essential to the musician, although if anyone wants to try, feel free.
Culture: The Inevitability FallacyWhen it comes to the concept of inevitability, composition teachers and students frequently have the same discussion about imitation and creation. Some students (I admit to passing through this phase) become fixated on avoiding influence and becoming "purely" creative and original; their teacher then tells them that it is impossible to create in a vacuum, and that since it is inevitable that they will be imitating something, they might as well expose themselves to a wide variety of stuff. Similarly, we often hear that music without culture is impossible, or at least not a good idea, etc. etc.
Making something that is inevitable a cornerstone of the argument actually works against the position. If it is inevitable, then there's nothing anyone can do about it; let's stop wasting our time and start discussing things that we can control rather than those which we can't. I think that the notion of the unavoidable influence of or basis in culture falls into the same trap as the unavoidable influence of the composer's musical surroundings: if something is so impossible to escape, there's no sense trying to convince someone to acknowledge it consciously. Imagine being told, "If you don't die someday, you're going to be in big trouble." There are no consequences for failing to abide by an inevitability because such failure is impossible.
The Culture monger says that by denying the presence or influence of culture, we are committing a grave error; then they turn around and state that to do such a thing is not even possible. These conditions cannot both be true. The one reason it is important to recognize inevitabilities is so that one can learn to ignore them and function in an uninhibited fashion; where the artist has already reached this state (however ignorantly), it could only be seen as a regression for them to become consciously engaged with so-called culture. It's analogous to a cognitively paralyzing fear of death. Hence, let us collectively abandon any need to proselytize on behalf of inevitablity; I can't think of a worse waste of time.
Labels:
abstract art,
culture,
individuality,
philosophy,
relativism
10 March 2008
Musico-Blogging Glossary
It has been obvious to me for some time now that us musico-bloggers are fond of relying on a certain group of big words to make ourselves sound smarter than we actually are. Many of my recent blogospheric explorations have precipitated repeated trips to the dictionary just to understand all the jargon, foreign borrowings, and literary devices that y'all have such a penchant for. Hence, for the benefit of the uninitiated, I'd like to present what I hope will be a useful compilation of these terms and what they really mean. With any luck, this will save future readers from feelings of confusion and resentment. Without further ado...
profligate: show-off
schadenfreude: taking pleasure in the misfortune of classical music
autodidact: philosophy major
zeitgeist: the moment you realize that a whole bunch of composers already did what you are doing now
ersatz: product of zeitgeist
the long tail: theory describing the distribution of income among professional musicians. A graph of the data begins with a short, pronounced spike (the lucky ones) followed by quickly receding "long tail" (the indigents).
frisson: an accessible piece
pugilist: author of anonymous comments
polyglot: crossover artist
monograph: a blog post that is way too long
prestidigitation: typing many posts within a short period of time
legerdemain: typing many posts within a short period of time, then posting them one by one over a longer period of time in order to give the false impression of consistent productivity
metaphysics: if a blogger posts and no one reads it, does it exist?
To be continued...
profligate: show-off
schadenfreude: taking pleasure in the misfortune of classical music
autodidact: philosophy major
zeitgeist: the moment you realize that a whole bunch of composers already did what you are doing now
ersatz: product of zeitgeist
the long tail: theory describing the distribution of income among professional musicians. A graph of the data begins with a short, pronounced spike (the lucky ones) followed by quickly receding "long tail" (the indigents).
frisson: an accessible piece
pugilist: author of anonymous comments
polyglot: crossover artist
monograph: a blog post that is way too long
prestidigitation: typing many posts within a short period of time
legerdemain: typing many posts within a short period of time, then posting them one by one over a longer period of time in order to give the false impression of consistent productivity
metaphysics: if a blogger posts and no one reads it, does it exist?
To be continued...
06 March 2008
Overdubs
Most instances of overdubbing that I've run across have been effective, but there's one pitfall that I've noticed quite a few times. What makes it unusually obvious that something was overdubbed is when a player's individual quirks are apparent in all of the overdubbed parts (usually it's vibrato or articulation, but it can also just be their sound). It seems to me to be the musical equivalent of cloning (or perhaps incest). In each case, it raises the question of whether the goal really is to give the impression of different people playing together, or whether the player's artistic vision includes the intent to present copies of themselves (or perhaps the intent to not hire any additional musicians for the session). There's nothing perverse about either of these cases; the technology is now old hat. Nonetheless, I cringe a little bit each time I hear an overdub of a player with a distinctive instrumental style. This attribute is elusive for many, and is becoming ever more highly valued in today's musical environment, where many complain of not being able to tell one young saxophone player from the next. Those that possess it, however, may want to think twice about cloning themselves.
01 March 2008
Not Unprecedented
I'm of the opinion that music with supposed political content generally accomplishes less both as music and as political commentary than could be attained by pursuing these two endeavors separately. Extra-musical statements in general are tremendous burdens on composer and audience alike, but more importantly, I think it's high time to admit that making music is a poor substitute for political activism and community service.
Many an artist has fallen victim to that certain strain of bourgeois contentedness whereby they suddenly interpret something they would be doing anyway as also making some larger contribution, hence absolving themselves of the need to take any additional action. This is just another of the myriad forms that our uniquely American brand of political apathy is capable of taking. Everyone is trying to be Bob Dylan instead of Paul Wellstone. The problem is that there are too many intangibles involved in the creation and reception of art for each one of us to assume that we will be successful in accomplishing activist ends through those means.
There is a choice to be made here: we can become political artists and hope for success, or we can become artists who are also politically engaged citizens and know that we are making a difference. My feeling is that the latter path is the one that will facilitate the most immediate and vital contributions to both art and activism. Striking a balance between these two endeavors while keeping them largely separate means finding time in our "busy bee" artist schedules to step away from the canvas and inhabit the civilian world. It also means that when we return to the canvas, we are free to create in the most abstract and non-representational media we choose without any obligation whatsoever for our art to serve extra-artistic purposes or agendas.
I've stated some of these ideas here before, and am working on a much longer essay that goes into greater depth. I have revisited this topic only because I recently stumbled upon a precedent for this position (or something like it, as best I can tell).
Here is a link to an article I read in The Nation about American poet George Oppen (written by James Longenbach):
A Test of Poetry
Here is a link to a bio of Oppen from what appears to be a reasonably authoritative online source:
MAPS Bio of George Oppen
Here are some bits and pieces from the Nation article that jumped out at me:
"...[Oppen] considered the rhetorical excess of political poems–like the rhetorical excess of political meetings–to be 'merely excrutiating.'"
"...[Oppen] refused the notion that a poet could fulfill his social responsibilities by writing any kind of poem, and neither did this refusal engender any contempt for poetry."
"Especially for those readers who are prone to believe that writing itself constitutes political action...Oppen's remark that 'there are situations which cannot honorably be met by art' is problematic enough; more troubling is Oppen's sense that 'some ideas are not politically useful, or useful to the childhood of a daughter'–as if to say that since we'll never know the ultimate value of our work, writing poems is probably less important than being a good dad."
Finally, here's a fragment of a quote within the article from Oppen himself (I tripped over this passage a couple of times, so I've added some boldface to highlight what I assume is the point):
"...it can always be quite easily shown that political action is going to be valuable; it is difficult to ever prove that political action has been valuable. Whereas art is precisely the opposite case; it seems always impossible to prove that it is going to be valuable, and yet it is always quite clear that the art of the past has been of value to humanity."
I feel like something of a charlatan for riding these particular coattails considering that I myself am no great fan of poetry in the first place. I do think, however, that much of what is attributed to Oppen in the article has implications for many (if not all) of The Arts. Perhaps it is a consequence of my own ignorance that I remain unaware of any other prominent artists or intellectuals who hold or have held such views, but it is at least nice to have finally located one.
Many an artist has fallen victim to that certain strain of bourgeois contentedness whereby they suddenly interpret something they would be doing anyway as also making some larger contribution, hence absolving themselves of the need to take any additional action. This is just another of the myriad forms that our uniquely American brand of political apathy is capable of taking. Everyone is trying to be Bob Dylan instead of Paul Wellstone. The problem is that there are too many intangibles involved in the creation and reception of art for each one of us to assume that we will be successful in accomplishing activist ends through those means.
There is a choice to be made here: we can become political artists and hope for success, or we can become artists who are also politically engaged citizens and know that we are making a difference. My feeling is that the latter path is the one that will facilitate the most immediate and vital contributions to both art and activism. Striking a balance between these two endeavors while keeping them largely separate means finding time in our "busy bee" artist schedules to step away from the canvas and inhabit the civilian world. It also means that when we return to the canvas, we are free to create in the most abstract and non-representational media we choose without any obligation whatsoever for our art to serve extra-artistic purposes or agendas.
I've stated some of these ideas here before, and am working on a much longer essay that goes into greater depth. I have revisited this topic only because I recently stumbled upon a precedent for this position (or something like it, as best I can tell).
Here is a link to an article I read in The Nation about American poet George Oppen (written by James Longenbach):
A Test of Poetry
Here is a link to a bio of Oppen from what appears to be a reasonably authoritative online source:
MAPS Bio of George Oppen
Here are some bits and pieces from the Nation article that jumped out at me:
"...[Oppen] considered the rhetorical excess of political poems–like the rhetorical excess of political meetings–to be 'merely excrutiating.'"
"...[Oppen] refused the notion that a poet could fulfill his social responsibilities by writing any kind of poem, and neither did this refusal engender any contempt for poetry."
"Especially for those readers who are prone to believe that writing itself constitutes political action...Oppen's remark that 'there are situations which cannot honorably be met by art' is problematic enough; more troubling is Oppen's sense that 'some ideas are not politically useful, or useful to the childhood of a daughter'–as if to say that since we'll never know the ultimate value of our work, writing poems is probably less important than being a good dad."
Finally, here's a fragment of a quote within the article from Oppen himself (I tripped over this passage a couple of times, so I've added some boldface to highlight what I assume is the point):
"...it can always be quite easily shown that political action is going to be valuable; it is difficult to ever prove that political action has been valuable. Whereas art is precisely the opposite case; it seems always impossible to prove that it is going to be valuable, and yet it is always quite clear that the art of the past has been of value to humanity."
I feel like something of a charlatan for riding these particular coattails considering that I myself am no great fan of poetry in the first place. I do think, however, that much of what is attributed to Oppen in the article has implications for many (if not all) of The Arts. Perhaps it is a consequence of my own ignorance that I remain unaware of any other prominent artists or intellectuals who hold or have held such views, but it is at least nice to have finally located one.
19 February 2008
Returns (Diminishing and Otherwise)
A funny thing happens to me every Thursday afternoon on my way to the non-musical part-time day job that I work in order to keep from starving. After two days off, the first of which I usually spend reading and listening, and the second of which I spend teaching music lessons, I'm actually in the mood for some menial labor that has nothing to do with music. When I was unemployed, I developed this strange longing to be a "normal" part of the rest of society. It came to outweigh even the more practical end of supporting myself and being able to move out of my parents' house. I figured that it would wear off quickly, and sometimes it feels like it has, but in truth, it's still there somewhere, and I don't think it's going to go away soon.
I don't know if there are any musicians active today who don't feel unproductive most of the time. It's easy to beat yourself up for not getting enough done when there's so much to do. Nonetheless, I've found that my productivity level seems to be fixed, and doesn't vary much (if at all), no matter what odd curve balls life throws at me. Even during the afore mentioned period of unemployment, when I had enough spare time to work through a library's worth of books and recordings, I just wasn't in the right mindset to work most of the time. Sure, I waste some potentially inspired, productive time at work, but I also am able to translate a great deal of the uninspired, unproductive time into cash. Why not?
The really difficult realization I've made recently is that I'm uninspired most of the time. I've played the part of high school student and college student; full-time employee and part-time employee; freelance musician and umemployed lout; but none of it seems to matter. I have a fixed amount of focused energy to expend on making music, and once that's gone, it's actually better not to force myself to continue working as much of that work becomes not only pointless but actually harmful or regressive.
Perhaps it's merely a front, but the message I get from most of the music world is that the best thing for us is to have as few non-musical obligations as possible so as to allow for the maximum amount of time to work on music. I would probably take it if I could get it, but it may not make a difference in my case. Of course, there is also a school of thought that says that our cumulative life experience is what we put into our artworks, and hence we ought to be more concerned with having lots of cumulative life experience than with practice. Unfortunately, that doesn't cut it either. What is needed is short term impatience (for daily motivation) combined with long term patience (willingness to endure slow, steady progress that may feel like anything but). Where one or both of those things is absent and we can't be productive, is it better to have a job or play video games all day?
Some artists come to hate the world for not allowing them to make a living through their art. I guess I'm becoming ambivalent, not to mention strangely contented with my current situation. If I was independently wealthy or had a massive grant, I can't say for sure whether or not I would accomplish anything more than I would without it. I'll just keep my mouth shut, then, the next time government funding of "The Arts" comes up, since it looks like I embody a good argument against it. I think it is important to also mention the prospect of earning said cash through musical engagements that aren't your first choice. When I am away from music for 5 hours every afternoon, I return home ready to get down to business; conversely, when I awake at 7am and drive across the city to play background music for the grand opening of a new bank building, I return home not wanting anything to do with my horn (or really anything musical) for the rest of the day. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Familiarity breeds contempt. Insert your idiom here; it will probably work, too.
I'm reminded of a story a friend recently relayed to me of a freshman saxophone player who, when asked what his summer plans were, stated that he intended to "get all that technique stuff out of the way" so that he could just focus on music after that. We had a good laugh over that, although I admit to having moments exactly like that at that age, and I'd be surprised if others hadn't also. It's natural to want everything now, but the process of attaining progressively higher levels of musicianship is an inherently slow one, and while some undoubtedly do manage to accelerate it through exceptional work ethic and/or by possessing circus freak levels of innate aptitude, the rest of us simply have to be more patient.
My age is a dangerous age. A lot of 25 year old musicians are nearing the end of their doctoral programs with no realistic music-oriented employment in sight; others who didn't go to graduate school have already let their skills fall into disrepair through a combination of social distractions and economic realities; others have already given up completely. Yet other 25 year olds are already on the downside of their careers: among them are child prodigies who no longer look enough like children (though they may still act like them) to garner attention for the novelty of their age (although with modern medicine, most will live long enough to give that approach another try eventually); then there are sellouts whose best work already lays behind them, the result of the brash creative ferment of adolescence that suddenly becomes inconvenient to maintain into early adulthood not only because it requires continued hard work, but because the alternatives are both less work and more lucrative; finally, there are the local heroes, who developed an unjustified contentedness while growing up as the big fish in an exceedingly small pond and are standing idly by as that rug is pulled out from underneath them.
I can envision plenty of scenarios by which I could have fallen (or could still fall) into one of these traps, among others. My goal, however, is to continue to make slow but consistent progress. At some point, most of us have probably met older musicians who gave up that goal up long ago. It breaks my heart and pisses me off at the same time. It's a phenomenon that has spawned numerous wisecrack cliches about youthful naivete, optimism, and idealism; but if a constant desire to better oneself is an inherently naive proposition unbecoming of an adult, then we have truly fallen a long way.
For someone with a strong aversion to blogs that are "about" their authors, I've spewed an awful lot about myself here. I guess I could have saved everyone the time and just said this: may we all continually aim to play, compose, write, improvise, and live better tomorrow than we did today, whatever that might mean; and when unexpected adverse circumstances arise, may we in the service of the previous admonition always address them in a constructive rather than destructive fashion.
I don't know if there are any musicians active today who don't feel unproductive most of the time. It's easy to beat yourself up for not getting enough done when there's so much to do. Nonetheless, I've found that my productivity level seems to be fixed, and doesn't vary much (if at all), no matter what odd curve balls life throws at me. Even during the afore mentioned period of unemployment, when I had enough spare time to work through a library's worth of books and recordings, I just wasn't in the right mindset to work most of the time. Sure, I waste some potentially inspired, productive time at work, but I also am able to translate a great deal of the uninspired, unproductive time into cash. Why not?
The really difficult realization I've made recently is that I'm uninspired most of the time. I've played the part of high school student and college student; full-time employee and part-time employee; freelance musician and umemployed lout; but none of it seems to matter. I have a fixed amount of focused energy to expend on making music, and once that's gone, it's actually better not to force myself to continue working as much of that work becomes not only pointless but actually harmful or regressive.
Perhaps it's merely a front, but the message I get from most of the music world is that the best thing for us is to have as few non-musical obligations as possible so as to allow for the maximum amount of time to work on music. I would probably take it if I could get it, but it may not make a difference in my case. Of course, there is also a school of thought that says that our cumulative life experience is what we put into our artworks, and hence we ought to be more concerned with having lots of cumulative life experience than with practice. Unfortunately, that doesn't cut it either. What is needed is short term impatience (for daily motivation) combined with long term patience (willingness to endure slow, steady progress that may feel like anything but). Where one or both of those things is absent and we can't be productive, is it better to have a job or play video games all day?
Some artists come to hate the world for not allowing them to make a living through their art. I guess I'm becoming ambivalent, not to mention strangely contented with my current situation. If I was independently wealthy or had a massive grant, I can't say for sure whether or not I would accomplish anything more than I would without it. I'll just keep my mouth shut, then, the next time government funding of "The Arts" comes up, since it looks like I embody a good argument against it. I think it is important to also mention the prospect of earning said cash through musical engagements that aren't your first choice. When I am away from music for 5 hours every afternoon, I return home ready to get down to business; conversely, when I awake at 7am and drive across the city to play background music for the grand opening of a new bank building, I return home not wanting anything to do with my horn (or really anything musical) for the rest of the day. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Familiarity breeds contempt. Insert your idiom here; it will probably work, too.
I'm reminded of a story a friend recently relayed to me of a freshman saxophone player who, when asked what his summer plans were, stated that he intended to "get all that technique stuff out of the way" so that he could just focus on music after that. We had a good laugh over that, although I admit to having moments exactly like that at that age, and I'd be surprised if others hadn't also. It's natural to want everything now, but the process of attaining progressively higher levels of musicianship is an inherently slow one, and while some undoubtedly do manage to accelerate it through exceptional work ethic and/or by possessing circus freak levels of innate aptitude, the rest of us simply have to be more patient.
My age is a dangerous age. A lot of 25 year old musicians are nearing the end of their doctoral programs with no realistic music-oriented employment in sight; others who didn't go to graduate school have already let their skills fall into disrepair through a combination of social distractions and economic realities; others have already given up completely. Yet other 25 year olds are already on the downside of their careers: among them are child prodigies who no longer look enough like children (though they may still act like them) to garner attention for the novelty of their age (although with modern medicine, most will live long enough to give that approach another try eventually); then there are sellouts whose best work already lays behind them, the result of the brash creative ferment of adolescence that suddenly becomes inconvenient to maintain into early adulthood not only because it requires continued hard work, but because the alternatives are both less work and more lucrative; finally, there are the local heroes, who developed an unjustified contentedness while growing up as the big fish in an exceedingly small pond and are standing idly by as that rug is pulled out from underneath them.
I can envision plenty of scenarios by which I could have fallen (or could still fall) into one of these traps, among others. My goal, however, is to continue to make slow but consistent progress. At some point, most of us have probably met older musicians who gave up that goal up long ago. It breaks my heart and pisses me off at the same time. It's a phenomenon that has spawned numerous wisecrack cliches about youthful naivete, optimism, and idealism; but if a constant desire to better oneself is an inherently naive proposition unbecoming of an adult, then we have truly fallen a long way.
For someone with a strong aversion to blogs that are "about" their authors, I've spewed an awful lot about myself here. I guess I could have saved everyone the time and just said this: may we all continually aim to play, compose, write, improvise, and live better tomorrow than we did today, whatever that might mean; and when unexpected adverse circumstances arise, may we in the service of the previous admonition always address them in a constructive rather than destructive fashion.
Labels:
education,
employment,
freelancing,
independence,
inspiration,
philosophy,
practice,
the "real" world
08 January 2008
The Editors
In preparation for an upcoming competition (fellow competitors will surely recognize the repertoire), I've spotted a couple of editorial oddities that I thought deserved mention here.
The inside front page to Vincent Persichetti's "Serenade No. 12" (Elkan-Vogel, 1963) features the following statement:
Editor's Note
Serenade No. 12 may be used as both a concert and a study piece. Students may use Arietta (II), Mascherata (III) and Intermezzo (V) as preparatory studies for the more difficult Marcia (VI), Intrada (I), and Capriccio (IV).
Whoever this editor is or was (it doesn't say) ought to be pleased to know that as of the year 2008, most every college music major who happens to play tuba will probably study this piece in some capacity or another. I would posit, however, that the superfluous verbiage opposite page 1 had nothing to do with it. I simply have trouble imagining a customer browsing the selection of sheet music in the "TUBA" bin of a local music store (that is...back when such stores actually carried sheet music), narrowing it down to this and another piece, and ultimately deciding to buy the one that was going to give them more bang for their buck by being versatile enough to function as both a concert (oooh...) and study (ahhh...) piece.
To make matters worse, this being my third go round with this piece, I'm reasonably convinced that the Arietta is actually harder than the Intrada. Perhaps that betrays how little I've actually worked on soft legato playing...or perhaps it betrays the fact that our unfortunate editor merely glanced at the movements and came to the conclusion that a slower tempo and less ink automatically equate to lower difficulty. Didn't they ever have a junior high school band teacher to tell them that's not how it works?
Obviously, I'm being harsh and a little bit facetious. Sometimes you just wonder what people were thinking: was this an overbearing marketing ploy, a momentary lapse in taste, or just an honest effort to educate the customer? The truth is out there...but I'm not holding my breath on getting a definitive answer.
Moving on to piece #2 on the docket, in Alec Wilder's "Suite No, 1 for Tuba and Piano" (Margun Music, 1976), we encounter an editorial contribution that is more humorous than anything else. The third movement calls for pitch bends on two separate occasions, the first of which is marked with an asterisk directing the player to the following footnote:
*Bend: pitch is quickly lowered and returned to the original level.
I laughed out loud when I saw this, and not just because I found it funny that the editor thought that tuba players were so dense when it comes to jazz-derived techniques that a concept as simple as a bend would need to be explained, but because I know that this editor is probably right. Though I don't count it among my foremost goals in life, I'd like to think of myself who has some potential to contribute to the tuba advocacy movement (i.e. in the form of debunking stereotypes, exposing people to what it's capable of, and creating opportunities where there were none before). And every now and then, I stumble on artifacts such as this one that remind me not to get too excited.
The inside front page to Vincent Persichetti's "Serenade No. 12" (Elkan-Vogel, 1963) features the following statement:
Editor's Note
Serenade No. 12 may be used as both a concert and a study piece. Students may use Arietta (II), Mascherata (III) and Intermezzo (V) as preparatory studies for the more difficult Marcia (VI), Intrada (I), and Capriccio (IV).
Whoever this editor is or was (it doesn't say) ought to be pleased to know that as of the year 2008, most every college music major who happens to play tuba will probably study this piece in some capacity or another. I would posit, however, that the superfluous verbiage opposite page 1 had nothing to do with it. I simply have trouble imagining a customer browsing the selection of sheet music in the "TUBA" bin of a local music store (that is...back when such stores actually carried sheet music), narrowing it down to this and another piece, and ultimately deciding to buy the one that was going to give them more bang for their buck by being versatile enough to function as both a concert (oooh...) and study (ahhh...) piece.
To make matters worse, this being my third go round with this piece, I'm reasonably convinced that the Arietta is actually harder than the Intrada. Perhaps that betrays how little I've actually worked on soft legato playing...or perhaps it betrays the fact that our unfortunate editor merely glanced at the movements and came to the conclusion that a slower tempo and less ink automatically equate to lower difficulty. Didn't they ever have a junior high school band teacher to tell them that's not how it works?
Obviously, I'm being harsh and a little bit facetious. Sometimes you just wonder what people were thinking: was this an overbearing marketing ploy, a momentary lapse in taste, or just an honest effort to educate the customer? The truth is out there...but I'm not holding my breath on getting a definitive answer.
Moving on to piece #2 on the docket, in Alec Wilder's "Suite No, 1 for Tuba and Piano" (Margun Music, 1976), we encounter an editorial contribution that is more humorous than anything else. The third movement calls for pitch bends on two separate occasions, the first of which is marked with an asterisk directing the player to the following footnote:
*Bend: pitch is quickly lowered and returned to the original level.
I laughed out loud when I saw this, and not just because I found it funny that the editor thought that tuba players were so dense when it comes to jazz-derived techniques that a concept as simple as a bend would need to be explained, but because I know that this editor is probably right. Though I don't count it among my foremost goals in life, I'd like to think of myself who has some potential to contribute to the tuba advocacy movement (i.e. in the form of debunking stereotypes, exposing people to what it's capable of, and creating opportunities where there were none before). And every now and then, I stumble on artifacts such as this one that remind me not to get too excited.
06 January 2008
Air
"There are no chop problems, only air problems."
"Air isn't everything, it's the only thing"
...so the conventional wisdom of brass players and teachers has gone for two generations or so. I'd like to make the ultra-radical proposition that the case for air has been overstated. Of course it is important, and yes, it can indeed make or break one's technique. To state the obvious, you literally cannot make a sound on an instrument that requires you to blow into it without, in fact, actually blowing into it; and having made that realization, there are, of course, more and less effective ways of blowing into it, whatever your desired result might be. I'd even grant that bad air habits are easier to develop, harder to break, and have proportionately more impact on the overall musical product than embouchure problems. To that extent, I am on board.
What I have a problem with is the absolutist, all or nothing, black and white, "my way or the highway" type of attitude which completely disregards embouchure formation and conditioning in favor of blind faith in air. I dare any brass player who believes that "there are no chop problems" to do nothing but practice breathing for a month, then return to the horn and see where that has gotten them. There's a good chance it will get them a lousy sound and reduced range and flexibility. I would further posit that the case of the raw beginner also proves the necessity of some serious conditioning that, while it may be largely directed at allowing them to use their air effectively, ultimately cannot be taught while simply ignoring "chop" issues altogether.
Of course, I'm also not a fan of embouchure meddling, and perhaps this blind faith in air is one way to avoid stooping to that level (i.e. by demanding a certain way of approaching the use of air, one coaxes a better embouchure out of the student without resorting to the sort of nitpicking that is otherwise necessary to achieve a change, yet rarely effective in doing so). Breathing, after all, is a natural and (aside from musical training) largely subconsciously regulated process, whereas the embouchure is not exactly something our bodies were specifically designed to do, and uses small muscles that are difficult to train and easy to injure. I would merely suggest that we temper the apocalyptic tone that has become commonplace in the discussion of breathing- and air-related brass pedagogy. If nothing else, it's just a good idea to mean what you say; hyperbole, while sometimes useful (and often fun), can only take us so far.
"Air isn't everything, it's the only thing"
...so the conventional wisdom of brass players and teachers has gone for two generations or so. I'd like to make the ultra-radical proposition that the case for air has been overstated. Of course it is important, and yes, it can indeed make or break one's technique. To state the obvious, you literally cannot make a sound on an instrument that requires you to blow into it without, in fact, actually blowing into it; and having made that realization, there are, of course, more and less effective ways of blowing into it, whatever your desired result might be. I'd even grant that bad air habits are easier to develop, harder to break, and have proportionately more impact on the overall musical product than embouchure problems. To that extent, I am on board.
What I have a problem with is the absolutist, all or nothing, black and white, "my way or the highway" type of attitude which completely disregards embouchure formation and conditioning in favor of blind faith in air. I dare any brass player who believes that "there are no chop problems" to do nothing but practice breathing for a month, then return to the horn and see where that has gotten them. There's a good chance it will get them a lousy sound and reduced range and flexibility. I would further posit that the case of the raw beginner also proves the necessity of some serious conditioning that, while it may be largely directed at allowing them to use their air effectively, ultimately cannot be taught while simply ignoring "chop" issues altogether.
Of course, I'm also not a fan of embouchure meddling, and perhaps this blind faith in air is one way to avoid stooping to that level (i.e. by demanding a certain way of approaching the use of air, one coaxes a better embouchure out of the student without resorting to the sort of nitpicking that is otherwise necessary to achieve a change, yet rarely effective in doing so). Breathing, after all, is a natural and (aside from musical training) largely subconsciously regulated process, whereas the embouchure is not exactly something our bodies were specifically designed to do, and uses small muscles that are difficult to train and easy to injure. I would merely suggest that we temper the apocalyptic tone that has become commonplace in the discussion of breathing- and air-related brass pedagogy. If nothing else, it's just a good idea to mean what you say; hyperbole, while sometimes useful (and often fun), can only take us so far.
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