Solo Night

Last night, I attended the first of this season's six "Engine 408" concerts by members of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. The program consisted entirely of Berio Sequenzas (nos. I, IXa, and XIV) for solo instruments, and Davidovsky Synchronisms (nos. 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12) for solo instruments with electronic sound. This was my first contact with each of these pieces, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Kudos to the SPCO for creating a space (both literally and figuratively) for new music to be heard performed by world-class players (which increases the chances that people will actually dig it), and for only $10 at that (ditto).

As with each of these that I've attended, the seats were nearly full, which I would estimate represents at least 150 people. While I'm sure that the concert didn't pay for itself through ticket sales (I'm assuming they weren't expecting it to, and if they did, they would charge accordingly), it at least goes to show that prominently featuring a name like Berio does not in and of itself guarantee lackluster attendance. In fact, this was the second performance of the week, which puts the total number of people who did not turn and run screaming in the opposite direction even higher. And while I for one would always like to see more such programming undertaken by the full orchestra, I also believe that forcing it on people who don't want to hear it is the wrong way to go. I have little tolerance for the now-perfunctory pairing of classical warhorses with token contemporary pieces that holds sway in the orchestral world today; it would be nice if there were a subscription series concert every now and then that heavily featured modernist works, but failing that, putting us off in our own little corner with exceptional space, performers, and pricing isn't a bad deal either.

Upon first hearing, my favorite piece of the bunch was without question Davidovsky's Synchronisms No. 6 for Piano and Electronic Sound...which is why I was a bit surprised to learn that it won the Pulitzer Prize...in 1971. Reasonable people seem to have reached a consensus that the Pulitzer doesn't really mean anything, or perhaps even that it merely tells us what to stay away from (this irreverent summary of Pulitzer-winning pieces has made the rounds before, but if you haven't seen it, it's pretty funny; never mind that the writer obviously is not a fan of the Davidovsky). I actually can't claim familiarity with most of the pieces, and I probably could not name another piece composed in 1971 off the top of my head, but I really enjoyed this one, and I fully intend to invest in a recording when time and finances permit.

Sadly, until I stumble on another performance locally (not likely, I think), I won't be able to delight in the various reactions of middlebrow audience members. One gentleman a couple of rows in front of me would turn and look at his family with eyebrows raised and a smirk on his face every time the soloist or the tape tossed off a particularly gnarly riff. But the best by far were the people who forgot about the tape part while it was tacet for a minute or more, then were so startled by its next entrance that they jumped a couple of inches out of their seats. Perhaps we will know for sure that electronic music has become mainstream when this is no longer the norm.

Walking and Chewing Gum

I did something earlier today that I haven't done for several years. Before leaving for work, I grabbed my Discman, popped in a CD, and donned my headphones. This used to be the normal routine during college when I seemingly spent hours each day walking. I did a lot of productive listening that way, and got to know many recordings and pieces intimately.

Since then, I haven't really had to do much walking, and hence, my listening has been relegated largely to the home. When I got my car (complete with CD player), I made a conscientious effort to replicate what used to be my walking routine, but found that the car (when it is running, at least) is simply too noisy a place to listen to anything interesting. The fact that I purposely try to avoid using if at all possible also meant that it didn't contribute much time to the cause. (I read somewhere a while ago that, statistically, the number one "venue" for listening to classical music is the car, which is tragic, but not the least bit surprising).

My current "day job" affords me the choice of biking, driving or taking public transit, and when I do the latter, I have a 15-20 minute walk to account for. Strangely, I've heretofore been uninspired to use this walk as listening time; somehow, all that walking in college burned me out on the idea (although I still find it impossible not to pace while listening at home). Now that I've tried it, I've encountered some unexpected problems. For one, the streets I take are busy, and hence, loud; as chaotic as a sprawling college campus can be, it appears in hindsight that the noise pollution was bearable, or at least more so than a legion of assorted motor vehicles is. There are also problems left over even from years ago that I never completely solved: how to fill 15-20 minutes without having to break off in the middle of a track, how to store headphones in a backpack such that they don't get destroyed, and so on.

As burned out as I sometimes get on playing and composing (and blogging), I don't ever see the same thing happening to listening, which is quite literally "what it's all about" in music. That there's so little time for it has always been frustrating, and hence, I would very much like to be able to steal a bit of time back from commuting, housework, and the like. As well as this served me for several years, there's no denying that when there's something else going on, it is much easier to hear music than it is to actually listen to it. When I was in high school, I remember a faculty member at a summer music camp pointing out that the kid who was, arguably, the best player out of the whole group was also the only one of us who had headphones permanently draped around his neck. Now that I'm (also arguably) an adult and (more arguably) a professional, I've decided that quality is more important to me than quantity when it comes to listening, though I wish I didn't have to choose.

And Now a Word From Our Sponsor

Like a Scab

Remember going to the beach as a kid, building a totally awesome sand castle, then irreparably maiming it by nitpicking about the finer details? It was probably good enough, but you had to make the left side of it perfect; then you accidentally took too much off and have fix the right side to make it symmetrical; pretty soon, after playing this game for about half an hour, you finally manage to take out a particularly important component of the support apparatus, and half of it crumbles to the ground, leaving behind a sort of "sand ruins" monstrosity.

When is revision necessary? When is it destructive? Where are our first intuitive impulses inherently correct, the result of inspiration that comes around only so often and cannot be meaningfully recaptured for any subsequent process of revision? Where are they inherently flawed, the result of judgment clouded by the emotional high of said inspiration, which artificially inflated our opinion of what we had just done?

The social networking site Facebook is an excellent example of a quality product being maimed at the hands of its own creators. Embarrassed as I am to admit that I've had a Facebook page since before it was even open to everyone, I'm not ashamed to admit (since I've heard the same thing from virtually everyone I've talked to about it) that I think it was better back then, and that opening it to everyone was the first step in a downward spiral: news feeds, bad layouts, and basically trying to make it just like all of the other social networking sites that already exist. Did they make these decisions in a vacuum? Did they think they had to compete with MySpace? Or did they simply get bored with their sand castle and have to change it again and again until part of it fell over? I can't help but wonder.

In another recent example ripped from the headlines, I went to my local office superstore to pick up an ink cartridge a couple of weeks ago, and found (not surprisingly) that the ink cartridges had been moved. I visit said office superstore relatively infrequently, and the cartridges have not been in the same place on any two visits. Exasperated and tired of going on scavenger hunts in place of shopping trips, I broke down and asked an employee where they were (it turns out they had been moved to the extreme opposite side of the store, away from the printers and the cartridge refill station, which struck me as an odd choice, and not the best way to sell more ink).

I've witnessed this phenomenon in stores of various sizes and specializations for most of my life, starting with the local corner store in the neighborhood I grew up in, and continuing with the supermarkets I shopped at in college. I have always wondered if the constant reorganization of the products isn't the result of a natural human tendency to become bored with things that never change. It simply doesn't make sense that their inventories would be changing over at such a rate to justify all the shuffling, for while I may have trouble finding what I'm looking for, it's most always the same thing I was looking for last time, and in the end, they most always still carry it, but have inexplicably moved it to a different part of the store.

I've never worked in anything quite like a store, but at the jobs I have had, I often sense an impatience with the fixed nature of the given physical space that I and my coworkers inhabit on a far more regular basis than even the most frequent visitors. In such cases, becoming intimately familiar with something is only the penultimate step in becoming bored with it, a result which naturally drives us to desire change for its own sake. This, I think, is decidedly unhealthy in music, if not elsewhere as well. I think it not only betrays an childish impatience, but also a lack of confidence in one's work (of course, an aversion to revision could represent an overconfidence as well). Change, to the extent that it is inevitable and cannot be delayed forever, cannot be hastened either. As a composer, I've always been inclined to view cases where wholesale revision is in order as outright failures, choosing to simply move on rather than dilly dally in trying to make an average sand castle into a great one.

Write It Down So You Don't Forget It

I'm not embarrassed to admit that at one point in my life, I was one of those people for whom there were two kinds of music: classical and jazz. Everything I was involved in could be placed in one of those two categories, and mingling them or going outside of them didn't seem particularly important or interesting. Today, while I've broadened my horizons a little bit, as well as found productive ways of blurring the line between the two areas, I still have a tendency to see my musical world as a dichotomy, albeit a slightly different one. Rather than classical-versus-jazz, it has become notated-versus-improvised.

I think this has much to do with the music scene in Minneapolis, or at least the ostensibly non-classical part of it that I've inhabited for the last few years. We seem to have quite a bit of improvised or mostly-improvised music and a paucity of the more heavily notated or through-composed stuff. There's nothing inherently wrong with this; it's the results that matter anyway. Nonetheless, I can't help the sneaking suspicion that this condition represents a mere end run around the more logistically challenging process of putting on a concert-length presentation of fully notated music.

In no way do I wish to suggest that improvised music does not require individual or group practice, although I do think that it can be done well by a group that has never played together before, and that playing in the same configuration over a long period of time can lead to the formation of habits that may come to inhibit "real" creativity. There is, however, a certain flexibility present in that the instrumentation of the group, the duration of the performance, and the precise amount of rehearsal time required are infinitely more malleable than they are with notated music, which essentially dictates these things to us with few other options. And though I've been fortunate to work with a lot of really talented and genuine improvisers, we all know that there are people out there who are attracted to improvised music for all the wrong reasons.

Forgive the cynicism, but it seems to me that as a function of our eminent adaptability, us musicians have now figured out that when creation, rehearsal and performance take place simultaneously, it saves time and money. Hence, while I'm skeptical of the death of classical music per se, I do fear for the health of notated music to some extent. I've been giving some thought lately on how to bring more through-composed, mostly notated music to the ostensibly non-classical areas that I work in simply to provide a counterbalance to all of the improvisation. There's good reason to think that such conceptual diversification would be healthy for the performers and for the scene; it would also be good for improvised music, which I fear is becoming perfunctory without a foil.

The same would certainly be true of notated music were we in the opposite situation (hang out around classically trained string players if you don't believe me). As a teacher, my highest priority is to develop in my students both a firm grasp of notation and the ability to "play by ear." It is astonishing and disappointing to me the extent to which most musicians possess only one of these two skills, even when they are exceptional at the one they have; it is equally frustrating that the preferred method of working breaks down along stylistic lines, sometimes making collaboration difficult if not impossible. This is not surprising: a musician will not develop a given skill if their chosen musical endeavors do not demand it of them. By demanding it of students, we can give them the tools they need to have fulfilling musical lives in whatever stylistic area they wish to explore.

For those of us whose musical interests are broad enough that working entirely with or without notation is simply not possible, necessity is the mother of invention, and hence, we tend to be motivated to become equally comfortable with and without a piece of paper in front of us. However, since the two skills tend to benefit each other, even specialists would undoubtedly benefit from at least dabbling with the alternative (and let's face it, unless you have ultra-perfect pitch and can score-read Schoenberg orchestral pieces like a computer, there's room for improvement).

Encounters of the Very Difficult Kind

There are very few pieces in the solo tuba repertoire that are any good. There are even fewer pieces in the solo tuba repertoire that are any good that are not transcriptions. There are fewer pieces yet in the solo tuba repertoire that are any good that are not transcriptions and are written in post-tonal or "modernist" idioms. And there are even fewer pieces yet in the solo tuba repertoire that are any good, that are not transcriptions, that are written in post-tonal or "modernist" idioms, and that are for unaccompanied tuba rather than tuba with piano or large ensemble. In fact, I can only think of one, and that's William Kraft's Encounters II.

It dawned on me several months ago that if anyone should know this piece, it's me. I do, after all, aspire to be "the modernist tubist" that I've beenspecifically advised against becoming. I had bought the music years ago and never looked at it, so I had to dig it out from the bottom of the pile. While my opinion of the piece remains high, I've found it to be significantly harder than I expected...not in the typical ways, but in the most annoying ones. I've always had a knack for blurting out minor ninths in the extreme upper register and similar modernist acrobatics; my weaknesses are elsewhere, and this piece exposes all of them at once, particularly the extreme dynamics and the intricate multiphonics.

I've heard the piece performed live 3 times: once by Sam Pilafian at a summer program, once by my former teacher Jason Byrnes, and once this past summer at the most recent ITEC by Jens Bjørn-Larsen. All three made it sound easy, which no doubt accounts for a some of my shock at actually trying to learn to play the damn thing myself. This is good motivational material, as is the exposure of weaknesses in my playing, but above all, I find myself motivated to learn the piece because there seems to be a consensus that it is a good piece that just happens to be written for unaccompanied tuba in a "modernist" idiom. There aren't too many of those running around; in fact, it's tempting sometimes to wonder if the lack of certain kinds of good pieces for certain instruments doesn't have something to do with the instrument and its capabilities. Just knowing something is possible is very powerful, and while this piece is relatively short and obscure, it provides hope and a model for us Modernist Tubists.

Composer Angst

It is a great irony of the creative process that we are likely the worst judges of our own work, but that our opinion matters most in their creation. We are often surprised at the works of famous composers that get cited as their personal favorites, and others are often surprised at the original works we cite as our greatest achievements. Familiarity is a game changer when it comes to musical perception, and the composer is likely to know their own work better than anyone else, perhaps occasionally to the point of becoming sick and tired of a piece that has been lots of work to complete. Then there is the ego, which wants us to succeed in the worst way.

It is a great paradox of the creative process that one can be unsatisfied with a piece without knowing what to do about it, or perhaps that one can be unsatisfied yet wholly convinced that the piece must remain as it is. The romanticized notion of the piece as a single idea is not helpful here; in fact, the fallacy inherent in it is laid bare when a good piece's imperfections are readily apparent. Each piece is the result of a series of decisions, and hence, when there is a problem of this sort, composers are apt to get hung up on how those decisions came to be made, resulting in a certain brand of angst unique to them as a group.

Troubleshooting one's process as if it were a computer program only goes so far. After such troubleshooting has failed, hitting coaches are known to occasionally tell struggling hitters, "See ball, hit ball." I've found a similarly simple approach to composition ("Hear music, write music") to be the easiest to live with.

Pictures of Cats

One purpose of the current blog month experiment was to prove whether or not I was capable of producing something on a daily basis that anyone else would actually want to read and that had any relevance or use to them whatsoever. On a more basic level, it was also to see whether I was capable of turning out anything at all after several weeks of squeezing the last drops of creative juices from the language center of my brain, whether I could actually enjoy it, and perhaps also whether I would even remember to do so 31 days in a row, an experiment which, thanks to last night's offline adventures and non-blogging, now threatens to go unconducted, at least for another year.

I arrived home from work last night to learn that a band member I was expecting to see at a gig later in the evening was too sick to play. After playing phone tag for an hour or so with most of the rest of the group (including realizing that I didn't even have a couple of their phone numbers), we had agreed on a possible replacement and been lucky enough to secure his services for the evening. Set lists were overhauled, photocopies were made, and forms were talked down, and lo and behold, we played really well. I suspect that this scenario actually made better listeners and more formally aware and responsive bandmates out of all of us. Much as I value rehearsal and familiarity, there seems to me to be a certain focus and energy that is brought out only by playing with new people in new configurations on new material, especially when it's on a gig, not a rehearsal. It was a lot of fun, and while I wish no ill on any present or future bandmates, nor do I wish it on myself to have to call potential subs a mere matter of hours before the hit, in a perverse way, I do look forward to very occasionally being thrown into this sort of mayhem again, blogging be damned.

Upon learning that I had a blog, a student of mine recently expressed his disdain for the format, pointing out that other blogs he has seen consisted mostly or entirely of pictures of cats. Hopefully, we here at My Fickle Ears Dig It will not need to stoop quite that low in order to keep the posts coming throughout what's left of Blog Month 2008. However, nothing is out of the question, as we have now seen how quickly plans can change.

Can Great Music Be Created By...Anyone?

A respondent to a Daniel Wolf posting asks whether part-time musicians can make great music. In fact, part-time musicians like Charles Ives have made great music, and hence, the question is answered. A better question to ask is whether it is likely that part-timers, full-timers, or anyone in particular for that matter, will make great music. No. No, it is not.

With the rate of success for everyone so low yet still resulting in an almost unmanageably vast and diverse body of work spanning many hundreds of years, one cannot in good conscience issue a blanket condemnation of either group for not keeping up their end of the bargain. One can, however, chide "professionals" for whoring themselves in order to make a living and then hiding behind a supposedly selfless commitment to making people happy by feeding them aural Splenda. Yes, one can say that. I just did.

An even better question ask is whether part-time bloggers can create great posts on a full-time basis. Don't answer that one.

Looking on the Bright Side

If the imminent death of physical media means that used record stores will be inundated with CD's and selling them for the same cost as their LP's, sign me up now.

Creative Aging

With today being my 26th birthday, this seems as good a time as ever to give some thought to the effects of age, experience, maturity etc. on musical creativity.

Do composers tend to get better with age? Is the opposite true to some extent of performers due to the physical nature of performing? A good many eminent jazz musicians died too young for us to study their examples in these respects, but what about the Dizzy Gillespies, Sonny Rollins, and Herbie Hancocks of the world, who did their best work as relatively young men? What about Joe Henderson and Stan Getz, who sustained an exceptionally high level of performance for decades even as their health declined? John Coltrane's career arc invites comparison with Beethoven's (early, middle and late periods), but how about Charlie Parker's with Schubert's (prolific output before an early death), Duke Ellington's with J.S. Bach's (longevity), or Albert Ayler's with Anton Webern's (small output, enormous influence, premature death)? The musician who makes a single landmark contribution tends to be remembered before the one who sustained a less exalted but perfectly respectable level consistently throughout their career. Still, the legacy of the former can be tainted by the appearance of having peaked too soon, and even more so by the appearance of having "sold out." A few musicians have abandoned creative activities altogether as they grew older, and very few take them up successfully for the first time late in life. Meanwhile, if a prodigy fizzles, is it because their fast progress burned them out faster, or because they were never that great in the first place? People my age will be watching the Eldars and Jay Greenbergs of the world with great curiosity over the coming decades for answers from our own time.

We can learn a little bit from studying past examples, but ultimately, we are all different and probably cannot predict our own trajectories. I often feel as if I would love to regain a certain amount of the naivite of my early creative efforts, if for no other reason than to reintroduce a certain kind of excitement that existed then but often seems to be gone forever now, even when I'm successful. The further one gets from this naivite, the more difficult the task of sustaining and improving one's work becomes; the minefield of both financial and social pressures is not for the faint of heart, and so the music must continue to be its own reward. My suspicion is not that I am becoming more or less creative with age, but that I am learning more as time goes on, which while useful and necessary, always mutes one's initial fascination with the subject matter at hand.

How do you pronounce "Goutelas?"

How about "Uwis?" I'm curious.

One Small Step...

Somehow, a brass ensemble selection has made it onto the muzak rotation at the MSP airport. On behalf of the brass community, I'd like to express our collective gratitude for being able to count ourselves as players of instruments that don't particularly offend anybody or particularly capture their attention, right up there with the harp and wooden flutes of all kinds. This has, needless to say, not always been the case, and will likely continue not be the case outside of the already deafening public spaces our muzak will be charged with further muddying.

Of course, it was a contrapuntal, baroque-ish type of selection that was heard. It seems that each member of the non-offensive instruments club has their role: clarinetists get classical concerti, flutists get flash-and-trash theme and variations, strings get neo-romantic quartet music, and the brass get the post-Bach continuum. We're happy with it, though, especially because some of us weren't even around back then.

October Is Blog Month

October is Blog Month here at My Fickle Ears Dig It. For one month only, we will take on the structure, persona, habits, and style of a "real" blog just to see what it feels like. We will talk about ourselves a lot, link to sites that everyone else has already linked to, name drop without blinking, post inane entries at a rate which prevents anyone with half a life from keeping up with them, and maybe maybe even write a little bit about something that has nothing whatsoever to do with music (that is, if we are able to find anything else which interests us in the least).

This walk on the wild side is, of course, merely a ploy for increased exposure and recognition, the tactics of which are so pervasive elsewhere that we are shamelessly emboldened to undertake this task without a hint of apprehension. Should we find ourselves intoxicated by the thrill of this grand experiment, it may well become our default mode of operation well into November. More likely, however, as the month of October draws to a close, we will simply recede back into the shadows, regaining our rightful place as the most pedantic and least frequently published music blog you've never heard of.

Abstract Music, Concrete Action

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.

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...

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.

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.

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'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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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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.

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...