Listen To Sibelius Realization
02 August 2009
31 July 2009
Blogs and Hard Wiring
The advent of personal computers, video games and the internet has not changed human beings on the genetic level. If these distractions seem to have irreparably altered the behavior of the human race almost overnight, it couldn't possibly be because they've planted something foreign in us. More likely, they've activated something in us that was there all along.
The human capacity for vice did not originate with information technology. It has had myriad outlets throughout the centuries, and will undoubtedly find still more in due time. Hence, placing the weight of the whole of human laziness and vanity on something like blogging is exceedingly foolish. If the advent of the blog has enabled the public display of such vices like never before, this says as much about human nature (dare I use that term) as it does about the inherent value of blogging, and as such, we might actually end up being thankful for the opportunity to better understand ourselves (not to mention for any number of constructive purposes blogs might ultimately be able serve).
The human capacity for vice did not originate with information technology. It has had myriad outlets throughout the centuries, and will undoubtedly find still more in due time. Hence, placing the weight of the whole of human laziness and vanity on something like blogging is exceedingly foolish. If the advent of the blog has enabled the public display of such vices like never before, this says as much about human nature (dare I use that term) as it does about the inherent value of blogging, and as such, we might actually end up being thankful for the opportunity to better understand ourselves (not to mention for any number of constructive purposes blogs might ultimately be able serve).
12 July 2009
Old Folks
The classical music people have been on about the aging audience issue for years. They've identified formality as the enemy, and hence, the solution they've pursued has been to try to make the concert experience more casual. How curious, then, that the audience for jazz is aging even faster, so precipitously fast, in fact, as to suggest that there have been hardly any newcomers at all in the last 6 years.
To state the obvious, jazz concerts are typically far more casual than classical concerts. If the jazz audience is actually aging faster than the classical audience, is formality really the villain here? You could argue that, on average, jazz performances have, for a variety of reasons, almost certainly become more formal over the last couple of decades, but certainly not to the point where you can't find jazz in a casual setting. For better or worse, the bar gigs have always been there, and even in a place like the Twin Cities, you usually have several to choose from on any given night. I don't know what the solution is, or even if there is or ought to be one, but if liquor, dart boards, and pull-tabs haven't worked in jazz's favor, then I wouldn't expect popcorn and hula hoops to do much more for classical music.
Interestingly, this study also provides fodder for dispensing with the idea that participation equates directly to attendance, since the percentage of adults who reported performing classical music actually rose substantially from 2002 to 2008 while the rate of attendance at classical concerts continued to decline.
To state the obvious, jazz concerts are typically far more casual than classical concerts. If the jazz audience is actually aging faster than the classical audience, is formality really the villain here? You could argue that, on average, jazz performances have, for a variety of reasons, almost certainly become more formal over the last couple of decades, but certainly not to the point where you can't find jazz in a casual setting. For better or worse, the bar gigs have always been there, and even in a place like the Twin Cities, you usually have several to choose from on any given night. I don't know what the solution is, or even if there is or ought to be one, but if liquor, dart boards, and pull-tabs haven't worked in jazz's favor, then I wouldn't expect popcorn and hula hoops to do much more for classical music.
Interestingly, this study also provides fodder for dispensing with the idea that participation equates directly to attendance, since the percentage of adults who reported performing classical music actually rose substantially from 2002 to 2008 while the rate of attendance at classical concerts continued to decline.
11 July 2009
Reaching Out? Try Looking In.
If you keep up with what I write in this space, you know that I have quite a bit of trepidation about audience outreach, particularly the idea that fostering a better technical understanding of the music will equate to greater enjoyment/fulfillment/appreciation/enlightenment/salvation/whatever we're calling it now. (All of those terms are problematic in some way, so I don't know what else to do other than to make a list. Did I leave anything out?)
To this end, I had a thought-provoking conversation with a bandmate on the way home from rehearsal the other night, centered around the issue of drawing in listeners who don't normally listen to jazz, and/or don't "get it," so to speak. My friend argued as many have, that we can't take for granted the roles that our own training and experience have played in shaping our listening, and that sharing these insights with the audience has the potential to draw them in. One problem I have with this line of thinking is that bringing a true novice up to speed in this way cannot possibly be accomplished in a single evening because the volume of information is simply too great, and hence, the best we can do under the circumstances is usually so incredibly vague and oversimplified that it has no practical value whatsoever (see: Ken Burns Jazz). But even if we could teach a new listener everything we know about music all at once, I'm not convinced that we should. I, for one, enjoy music far less when I "get it," and my musical training and experience has ruined far more music for me than it has drawn me in to.
This isn't something I'm saying just to grandstand or be provocative. I remember vividly how my very first theory classes in high school almost immediately began to drain my enthusiasm for common practice classical music, and how having names for chord qualities and inversions and realizing that I could now identify them by ear became a distraction that I was powerless to ignore. It only got worse when the topic of large-scale form was introduced. At the time, I likened it to a news ticker running through my head from which I was powerless to look away while listening. I complained to my parents (accomplished musicians, both of them), but they seemed to think it was more cute than anything else, and didn't realize what a burden it was becoming.
It took music that I couldn't analyze on the fly to get me engaged again, and in the intervening 10 years or so, that has not yet changed. I often can't tell what in the world composers like Ives, Messiaen, Hindemith, Monk and Shorter are doing harmonically without taking those particular moments out of time and studying them closely and repeatedly, but when I do decide to go this route, it's not because the music has left me cold and I want to figure out what I'm missing. Quite the opposite, actually: it's because even though I can't seem to grasp what's going on under the surface, I'm just too damn curious to go on not knowing because I like what I'm hearing so much. And sad as it makes me to say it, I'm still bored to tears by most common practice era classical music, and it's getting worse by the day, almost to the point of disbelief considering the role it played in getting me to where I am.
Close study of a recording or a score is rewarding in its own way, but it invariably reduces my enjoyment of listening to the piece, and I have often made my very favorite music off limits for analysis. The music I study with a musicologist's eye has to be treasured without being irreplaceable, cleverly constructed without being downright ingenious. Sometimes, the decision is agonizing. One item under such consideration on an ongoing basis is Wayne Shorter's solo from "If I We're A Bell" from Disc 4 of the complete Plugged Nickel. The idea of never getting around to transcribing this solo scares me in a way, but not half as much as the prospect of never again being able to hear it naively.
In short, what has turned me against musico-techinical audience outreach is the realization that what's best for the trained musician part of me is often hazardous to the naive listener part of me. I would insist that the latter never completely dies in those of us with formal training, or at least that we shouldn't let it if we can help it. This is easier said than done, though. As both a listener and also as a composer (though definitely not as a player, for obvious reasons) I'd give anything to reclaim some of the naivete that I brought to my earliest musical experiences. I simply can't imagine why anyone would voluntarily give that up, and moreover, why we as the "professionals," the people who supposedly "know better," would want to take that away from our audience. It seems like the opposite should be true, that we would want as many people as possible to remain naive for fear that the alternative might do irreparable harm.
Obviously, I can't argue with any authority that traditional listener outreach has the same effect on its intended targets as my musical training has had on me, but I think it's a bit more plausible to assume that it hasn't been nearly as effective as its creators would lead us to believe. For starters, this sort of outreach has been around for a long time, and yet if you believe the talk from some of its most ardent proponents, things just continue to get worse in terms of attendance at and overall interest in both jazz and classical music performances. Consider also the attrition rate in undergraduate music schools, where theorists and musicologists are presented with a captive audience of young people with an avowed interest in and ability for music, yet somehow manage to consistently alienate a sizable majority of them to the point of quitting. It's not a perfect analogy, but undergraduate academic musical training certainly emphasizes many of the same concepts as traditional listener outreach, and its success rate is miniscule. I'd argue once again that musicians' relationship to their technical training is generally not as rosy as some would make it out to be, and that this ought to serve as a cautionary tale for anyone conducting an outreach program.
So what is there to be done, if not outreach? Inreach. To get started, we must accept that no form of music yet created has been received favorably by every single person who ever encountered it, and it's crazy to expect that this will ever change. We can't help it if this hurts our wallet, but we can at least decide not to let it hurt our feelings. Truly respecting an audience means giving them the opportunity to engage with the music on their own terms, and to form an opinion based on this. We must not take their opinion personally when it is unfavorable as this creates social pressure to be positive at all times, potentially forcing listeners into dishonesty and suppression of their true feelings. When such social barriers to honesty are mitigated, it's true that many possible converts will walk away without so much as a second thought, but it's also true that those who stick around will stick around for a longer time and in a much more genuine fashion than those who could potentially be herded around only with considerable effort.
To label this a "laissez-faire" philosophy is to miss the point. There's quite a bit we can do to advocate for our music without imposing tenuous assumptions about why we "get it" on people who are very different from us. A more pressing problem which surfaces in those of us with "training" than that it changes how we listen is that it changes how we view those who lack it. This is not merely to say that it leads us to despise them; clearly, that is not always true, but in any case, it nonetheless renders us unable to legitimately put ourselves in their shoes for the sake of argument. In the abstract, the words "ignorance" and "naivete" clearly have different connotations, but when it comes to interpreting sentient reality, it can be difficult or impossible for us to distinguish them from each other. At the risk of overreaching, I would argue that listening is more about being happy than it is about being smart, but even if you disagree, the argument is really less about which is preferable than about whether or not one is the most direct path to the other. I can't help but think about all the music school dropouts again and conclude that it's not.
Whenever we were reading Shakespeare in one of my High School English classes, it would quickly become apparent that, while we were able to follow the plot well enough, the archaic dialect was preventing us from catching any of the more subtle features of the text, especially the jokes. Needless to say, if you have to explain a joke after it has been told, you've already lost your chance to make it funny, but typically, that's exactly what the teacher would end up doing. Also typically, they fell completely flat on a bunch of 15 year-olds who would have rather been outside playing basketball. Such seems to me to be the case with listening also. Just telling the audience that "This is the bridge" and expecting them to start having a good time is like telling them "That joke was funny" and expecting them to laugh.
Many would (and have) argued that letting listeners keep their naivete merely equates to losing all hope of them ever listening to us. I would counter that the role of missionary is no less hubristic in music than it is in religion. I've always detected just a hint of doublethink in the word "outreach," since such efforts toward new listener retention seem to do more grasping than reaching. Perhaps by looking within, we can find confidence without hubris, and along with it, the ability to accept the consequences of letting our music speak for itself, whatever they might be.
To this end, I had a thought-provoking conversation with a bandmate on the way home from rehearsal the other night, centered around the issue of drawing in listeners who don't normally listen to jazz, and/or don't "get it," so to speak. My friend argued as many have, that we can't take for granted the roles that our own training and experience have played in shaping our listening, and that sharing these insights with the audience has the potential to draw them in. One problem I have with this line of thinking is that bringing a true novice up to speed in this way cannot possibly be accomplished in a single evening because the volume of information is simply too great, and hence, the best we can do under the circumstances is usually so incredibly vague and oversimplified that it has no practical value whatsoever (see: Ken Burns Jazz). But even if we could teach a new listener everything we know about music all at once, I'm not convinced that we should. I, for one, enjoy music far less when I "get it," and my musical training and experience has ruined far more music for me than it has drawn me in to.
This isn't something I'm saying just to grandstand or be provocative. I remember vividly how my very first theory classes in high school almost immediately began to drain my enthusiasm for common practice classical music, and how having names for chord qualities and inversions and realizing that I could now identify them by ear became a distraction that I was powerless to ignore. It only got worse when the topic of large-scale form was introduced. At the time, I likened it to a news ticker running through my head from which I was powerless to look away while listening. I complained to my parents (accomplished musicians, both of them), but they seemed to think it was more cute than anything else, and didn't realize what a burden it was becoming.
It took music that I couldn't analyze on the fly to get me engaged again, and in the intervening 10 years or so, that has not yet changed. I often can't tell what in the world composers like Ives, Messiaen, Hindemith, Monk and Shorter are doing harmonically without taking those particular moments out of time and studying them closely and repeatedly, but when I do decide to go this route, it's not because the music has left me cold and I want to figure out what I'm missing. Quite the opposite, actually: it's because even though I can't seem to grasp what's going on under the surface, I'm just too damn curious to go on not knowing because I like what I'm hearing so much. And sad as it makes me to say it, I'm still bored to tears by most common practice era classical music, and it's getting worse by the day, almost to the point of disbelief considering the role it played in getting me to where I am.
Close study of a recording or a score is rewarding in its own way, but it invariably reduces my enjoyment of listening to the piece, and I have often made my very favorite music off limits for analysis. The music I study with a musicologist's eye has to be treasured without being irreplaceable, cleverly constructed without being downright ingenious. Sometimes, the decision is agonizing. One item under such consideration on an ongoing basis is Wayne Shorter's solo from "If I We're A Bell" from Disc 4 of the complete Plugged Nickel. The idea of never getting around to transcribing this solo scares me in a way, but not half as much as the prospect of never again being able to hear it naively.
In short, what has turned me against musico-techinical audience outreach is the realization that what's best for the trained musician part of me is often hazardous to the naive listener part of me. I would insist that the latter never completely dies in those of us with formal training, or at least that we shouldn't let it if we can help it. This is easier said than done, though. As both a listener and also as a composer (though definitely not as a player, for obvious reasons) I'd give anything to reclaim some of the naivete that I brought to my earliest musical experiences. I simply can't imagine why anyone would voluntarily give that up, and moreover, why we as the "professionals," the people who supposedly "know better," would want to take that away from our audience. It seems like the opposite should be true, that we would want as many people as possible to remain naive for fear that the alternative might do irreparable harm.
Obviously, I can't argue with any authority that traditional listener outreach has the same effect on its intended targets as my musical training has had on me, but I think it's a bit more plausible to assume that it hasn't been nearly as effective as its creators would lead us to believe. For starters, this sort of outreach has been around for a long time, and yet if you believe the talk from some of its most ardent proponents, things just continue to get worse in terms of attendance at and overall interest in both jazz and classical music performances. Consider also the attrition rate in undergraduate music schools, where theorists and musicologists are presented with a captive audience of young people with an avowed interest in and ability for music, yet somehow manage to consistently alienate a sizable majority of them to the point of quitting. It's not a perfect analogy, but undergraduate academic musical training certainly emphasizes many of the same concepts as traditional listener outreach, and its success rate is miniscule. I'd argue once again that musicians' relationship to their technical training is generally not as rosy as some would make it out to be, and that this ought to serve as a cautionary tale for anyone conducting an outreach program.
So what is there to be done, if not outreach? Inreach. To get started, we must accept that no form of music yet created has been received favorably by every single person who ever encountered it, and it's crazy to expect that this will ever change. We can't help it if this hurts our wallet, but we can at least decide not to let it hurt our feelings. Truly respecting an audience means giving them the opportunity to engage with the music on their own terms, and to form an opinion based on this. We must not take their opinion personally when it is unfavorable as this creates social pressure to be positive at all times, potentially forcing listeners into dishonesty and suppression of their true feelings. When such social barriers to honesty are mitigated, it's true that many possible converts will walk away without so much as a second thought, but it's also true that those who stick around will stick around for a longer time and in a much more genuine fashion than those who could potentially be herded around only with considerable effort.
To label this a "laissez-faire" philosophy is to miss the point. There's quite a bit we can do to advocate for our music without imposing tenuous assumptions about why we "get it" on people who are very different from us. A more pressing problem which surfaces in those of us with "training" than that it changes how we listen is that it changes how we view those who lack it. This is not merely to say that it leads us to despise them; clearly, that is not always true, but in any case, it nonetheless renders us unable to legitimately put ourselves in their shoes for the sake of argument. In the abstract, the words "ignorance" and "naivete" clearly have different connotations, but when it comes to interpreting sentient reality, it can be difficult or impossible for us to distinguish them from each other. At the risk of overreaching, I would argue that listening is more about being happy than it is about being smart, but even if you disagree, the argument is really less about which is preferable than about whether or not one is the most direct path to the other. I can't help but think about all the music school dropouts again and conclude that it's not.
Whenever we were reading Shakespeare in one of my High School English classes, it would quickly become apparent that, while we were able to follow the plot well enough, the archaic dialect was preventing us from catching any of the more subtle features of the text, especially the jokes. Needless to say, if you have to explain a joke after it has been told, you've already lost your chance to make it funny, but typically, that's exactly what the teacher would end up doing. Also typically, they fell completely flat on a bunch of 15 year-olds who would have rather been outside playing basketball. Such seems to me to be the case with listening also. Just telling the audience that "This is the bridge" and expecting them to start having a good time is like telling them "That joke was funny" and expecting them to laugh.
Many would (and have) argued that letting listeners keep their naivete merely equates to losing all hope of them ever listening to us. I would counter that the role of missionary is no less hubristic in music than it is in religion. I've always detected just a hint of doublethink in the word "outreach," since such efforts toward new listener retention seem to do more grasping than reaching. Perhaps by looking within, we can find confidence without hubris, and along with it, the ability to accept the consequences of letting our music speak for itself, whatever they might be.
12 June 2009
Pathologies: Pleasure
One of the most pervasive fallacies about "modernist" or "atonal" music is the idea that the people who write it and listen to it are masochists, that they do so out of some kind of aural perversion or love of pain. There's a profoundly flawed conception of normality at the heart of such assumptions, one that takes the language of common practice tonality to be the single aurally nutritious alternative (sounds good and good for you).
There's equal folly inherent in such overly broad sayings as, "Everyone listens to music for the same reason," or, "There are two kinds of music: good and bad." Nonetheless, while I'm not foolish enough to think that there are no true musical masochists out there whatsoever, I don't think that it is in any way a stretch to assert that fans of atonality as group most typically find their favorite music to be "beautiful" (or if that term is too stigmatized at this point, at the very least, we might say "pleasurable" to listen to in some way). Given the low overall rate of true masochism in the general population (musical or otherwise), it would be odd if this were not the case. And given the wide stylistic variety of music that the world has now seen, who is anyone to impose their own conception of normality on an entire musical tradition?
This is just the most visible example of what I find most frustrating when it comes to talking about music, namely when opinion becomes ensconced as fact simply by virtue of how many people share it. When the terms and boundaries of the discourse are set merely by the "lowest common denominator" of taste and experience, it's no surprise that name-calling ends up standing in for rational thought. There are a few pieces of music out there that were intentionally constructed to be annoying, or even torturous, to just about anyone; there are also a few which have succeeded at this entirely unintentionally; and of course, there are also those works which seem to be universally adored, lacking a single detractor the world over. In none of these cases, however, can we assume that these opinions are universally shared, and as such, they make poor candidates on which to base dismissing an entire body of work as mere pathology.
There's equal folly inherent in such overly broad sayings as, "Everyone listens to music for the same reason," or, "There are two kinds of music: good and bad." Nonetheless, while I'm not foolish enough to think that there are no true musical masochists out there whatsoever, I don't think that it is in any way a stretch to assert that fans of atonality as group most typically find their favorite music to be "beautiful" (or if that term is too stigmatized at this point, at the very least, we might say "pleasurable" to listen to in some way). Given the low overall rate of true masochism in the general population (musical or otherwise), it would be odd if this were not the case. And given the wide stylistic variety of music that the world has now seen, who is anyone to impose their own conception of normality on an entire musical tradition?
This is just the most visible example of what I find most frustrating when it comes to talking about music, namely when opinion becomes ensconced as fact simply by virtue of how many people share it. When the terms and boundaries of the discourse are set merely by the "lowest common denominator" of taste and experience, it's no surprise that name-calling ends up standing in for rational thought. There are a few pieces of music out there that were intentionally constructed to be annoying, or even torturous, to just about anyone; there are also a few which have succeeded at this entirely unintentionally; and of course, there are also those works which seem to be universally adored, lacking a single detractor the world over. In none of these cases, however, can we assume that these opinions are universally shared, and as such, they make poor candidates on which to base dismissing an entire body of work as mere pathology.
10 June 2009
Pathologies: Autodidacticism
The stigmatization of the autodidact may not be unique to the field of composition, but the field of composition certainly has a unique way of stigmatizing autodidacts. I've often been the first one to come to their defense, if for no other reason than that I (marginally) count myself as one. Nonetheless, I often ask myself if there is really any such thing as a self-taught composer in the first place. I've learned so much about structure, harmony, and orchestration just by playing music (to say nothing of listening) that I sometimes don't feel the autodidact label is even appropriate, either in the sense that it implies general unstudiedness, or in the sense that anyone comes about these things purely through self-discovery. My discomfort with the label is only intensified by the experience of working with "real" autodidacts, who identify me immediately and intensely as an academic product, which I am in most every other way.
As a younger person, I held in high regard the elusive (and ultimately implausible) idea of "pure" creativity, free from any influence of any kind, and rebelled intently against the idea of embracing overt musical influences. As time has gone on, I've had an easier time accepting the idea of synthesis, in part simply by having heard more music*. Not only does this greater depth of experience make it easier to hear the myriad threads of influence in particular areas of music much more clearly than before, but it also leads naturally to the realization that the more varied the sources, the less overtly the synthesized product betrays any one of them to the listener (I say "naturally" because the difference is obvious when I look back at my very earliest efforts and compare them to more recent ones; hearing them now in all their derivative splendor, it's no wonder I was so insecure about influences). Conversely, so-called "pure" creativity is implausible because it requires that one not be aware of any other music at all, and as such, unaware that the phenomenon of music exists in the first place. Anyone who gets around to writing music at all has undeniably learned something beforehand, but whether they taught it to themselves per se is debatable.
You may not be any more original than you were before, but a greater number of sources at least makes you sound that way. It's a bit of a paradox, but learning to live with it is a crucially important part of composition. I certainly didn't reach this conclusion in a lesson, but I wouldn't go as far as to say that I taught it to myself either.
*As an aside, I feel it's worth mentioning also what a powerful negative influence it has been to come across self-promoting nutcase after self-promoting nutcase claiming to be doing something original when all too often they end up sounding not just a little bit derivative, but extremely so. Once it became impossible to imagine myself getting far enough away from my influences to feel comfortable acting that way myself, I decided that there was no reason to anyway. (To qualify that last statement just slightly, I still very much believe in the values of "creative" music, whatever that is, over authenticity fetishism and revivalism. I think that there's a strong case to be made in its favor, and definitely have some unfavorable things to say about the most particularly non-creative people out there, even if they're not avid self-promoters, but that will have to wait for another time.)
As a younger person, I held in high regard the elusive (and ultimately implausible) idea of "pure" creativity, free from any influence of any kind, and rebelled intently against the idea of embracing overt musical influences. As time has gone on, I've had an easier time accepting the idea of synthesis, in part simply by having heard more music*. Not only does this greater depth of experience make it easier to hear the myriad threads of influence in particular areas of music much more clearly than before, but it also leads naturally to the realization that the more varied the sources, the less overtly the synthesized product betrays any one of them to the listener (I say "naturally" because the difference is obvious when I look back at my very earliest efforts and compare them to more recent ones; hearing them now in all their derivative splendor, it's no wonder I was so insecure about influences). Conversely, so-called "pure" creativity is implausible because it requires that one not be aware of any other music at all, and as such, unaware that the phenomenon of music exists in the first place. Anyone who gets around to writing music at all has undeniably learned something beforehand, but whether they taught it to themselves per se is debatable.
You may not be any more original than you were before, but a greater number of sources at least makes you sound that way. It's a bit of a paradox, but learning to live with it is a crucially important part of composition. I certainly didn't reach this conclusion in a lesson, but I wouldn't go as far as to say that I taught it to myself either.
*As an aside, I feel it's worth mentioning also what a powerful negative influence it has been to come across self-promoting nutcase after self-promoting nutcase claiming to be doing something original when all too often they end up sounding not just a little bit derivative, but extremely so. Once it became impossible to imagine myself getting far enough away from my influences to feel comfortable acting that way myself, I decided that there was no reason to anyway. (To qualify that last statement just slightly, I still very much believe in the values of "creative" music, whatever that is, over authenticity fetishism and revivalism. I think that there's a strong case to be made in its favor, and definitely have some unfavorable things to say about the most particularly non-creative people out there, even if they're not avid self-promoters, but that will have to wait for another time.)
04 June 2009
Pathologies: The Emotions
I'm not ashamed to admit that the primary reason I can't stand most popular music and opera is its supposed emotional content. It actually makes me very uncomfortable to hear someone "pouring their heart out" in the way that many vocalists in these styles aim (and are trained) to do.
The standard line from contemporary pop musicology is that people like me are sociopaths who suppress our own emotions (or have none) and lack the ability to accurately interpret and respond to the emotions of others. Nonetheless, we should ask what it means for such outpourings be taken for granted as merely part of the style. Emotion is no less an animal survival instinct than pain is, whether that be the love between mother and child, or the fear of that lion over there, and though the mechanism by which we come to feel an emotion may be less well understood (either scientifically by others, or even by way of our own self-awareness), it is as practical an attribute as any of our motor or sensory functions, and we've evolved accordingly (sorry creationists, I used up all the egalitarianism I'm able to muster on this issue in the last post).
Hence, as with pain, there's a certain shallowness in appealing to emotional extremes simply to get people's attention. And as with painfully loud music gradually dulling the aural faculties of career soundmen and rock guitarists over the years, I simply have to marvel at the emotional numbness it must take to stomach the more extreme displays of pathos, anger and ecstasy we've been conditioned to expect from the divas.
Perhaps I'm giving them too much credit by putting it that way; many observers past and present have made careers nitpicking about the subtleties of expression in vocal performance and their varying degrees of effectiveness. Then again, what does it matter whether they're effective or not? My problem is not that I can't face emotion, but that I can't stomach artifice. I struggle mightily with the willful suspension of disbelief, this being manifested in my extreme and willful ignorance of literary fiction, theater and cinema. Typically, when it comes to vocal performance, I feel like I'm just watching some poor sap flailing about making faces and using waaaay too much vibrato. That, I think, is more at the heart of my abhorrence for such things than any sort of emotional pathology that might exist.
But getting back to the latter topic, I would ask who can encounter a person crying over the loss of a loved one and not become sad themselves? Who can be surrounded by people laughing hysterically and not let out a chuckle themselves? Emotion is contagious, unless of course you're immune. Neuroscientists call them mirror neurons, but you don't have to be a neuroscientist to have experienced the phenomenon for yourself. The age-old saying about "He who laughs last..." is perhaps the most obvious example.
It confounds me how anyone can listen to a vocalist heaping emotions on top of emotions and not emerge completely frazzled, whether that be a matter of "getting it" and becoming overcome with emotions of their own, or of not "getting it" and being frightened by the artifice of it all. It makes me very uncomfortable to walk in on someone's nervous breakdown, or breakup, or shouting match, or worse yet, their utter failure to put one or more of those things to song.
Of course, one possible explanation as to how people are able to endure these experiences is that pop music listeners tend to experience music almost exclusively as ambient sound and rarely as the primary target of their available attention, whether that be in the car, on the dance floor, or at parties, and that it hence takes much more total content for anything whatsoever to register (in other words, it's once again akin to merely turning up the volume). Failing that, I'm left to wonder if they're the sociopaths and not me, people who have either been fed a bad imitation for so long that they no longer recognize the real thing, or who have been desensitized to it by way of hyper-immersion, their capacity for empathy thus eroding over time like a session man's eardrums.
The standard line from contemporary pop musicology is that people like me are sociopaths who suppress our own emotions (or have none) and lack the ability to accurately interpret and respond to the emotions of others. Nonetheless, we should ask what it means for such outpourings be taken for granted as merely part of the style. Emotion is no less an animal survival instinct than pain is, whether that be the love between mother and child, or the fear of that lion over there, and though the mechanism by which we come to feel an emotion may be less well understood (either scientifically by others, or even by way of our own self-awareness), it is as practical an attribute as any of our motor or sensory functions, and we've evolved accordingly (sorry creationists, I used up all the egalitarianism I'm able to muster on this issue in the last post).
Hence, as with pain, there's a certain shallowness in appealing to emotional extremes simply to get people's attention. And as with painfully loud music gradually dulling the aural faculties of career soundmen and rock guitarists over the years, I simply have to marvel at the emotional numbness it must take to stomach the more extreme displays of pathos, anger and ecstasy we've been conditioned to expect from the divas.
Perhaps I'm giving them too much credit by putting it that way; many observers past and present have made careers nitpicking about the subtleties of expression in vocal performance and their varying degrees of effectiveness. Then again, what does it matter whether they're effective or not? My problem is not that I can't face emotion, but that I can't stomach artifice. I struggle mightily with the willful suspension of disbelief, this being manifested in my extreme and willful ignorance of literary fiction, theater and cinema. Typically, when it comes to vocal performance, I feel like I'm just watching some poor sap flailing about making faces and using waaaay too much vibrato. That, I think, is more at the heart of my abhorrence for such things than any sort of emotional pathology that might exist.
But getting back to the latter topic, I would ask who can encounter a person crying over the loss of a loved one and not become sad themselves? Who can be surrounded by people laughing hysterically and not let out a chuckle themselves? Emotion is contagious, unless of course you're immune. Neuroscientists call them mirror neurons, but you don't have to be a neuroscientist to have experienced the phenomenon for yourself. The age-old saying about "He who laughs last..." is perhaps the most obvious example.
It confounds me how anyone can listen to a vocalist heaping emotions on top of emotions and not emerge completely frazzled, whether that be a matter of "getting it" and becoming overcome with emotions of their own, or of not "getting it" and being frightened by the artifice of it all. It makes me very uncomfortable to walk in on someone's nervous breakdown, or breakup, or shouting match, or worse yet, their utter failure to put one or more of those things to song.
Of course, one possible explanation as to how people are able to endure these experiences is that pop music listeners tend to experience music almost exclusively as ambient sound and rarely as the primary target of their available attention, whether that be in the car, on the dance floor, or at parties, and that it hence takes much more total content for anything whatsoever to register (in other words, it's once again akin to merely turning up the volume). Failing that, I'm left to wonder if they're the sociopaths and not me, people who have either been fed a bad imitation for so long that they no longer recognize the real thing, or who have been desensitized to it by way of hyper-immersion, their capacity for empathy thus eroding over time like a session man's eardrums.
02 June 2009
Pathologies: Pain
There's a reason that extremely loud music hurts your ears: hearing is a survival skill. If you can't hear the car speeding down a blind alley (or the pack of lions descending on your cave), you're toast. Whether you believe in natural selection or intelligent design, it's obvious how a finely tuned auditory sense contributes to your safety and that its ability to do so is no mere coincidence. Very loud sounds may simply indicate danger in the form of whatever it is that's emitting them, but they also pose a threat to our ongoing ability to detect more subtle aural cues from sources that may be no less dangerous.
Appealing to such "animal instincts" is easy, whether by the direct infliction of physical pain or the mere visual display of a threat. Stick a knife in someone's face and tell them you are going to stab them and you will surely get their attention; follow through with the threat and you'll have an even better chance. In both cases, the sensation is intense enough that they simply can't ignore you. Also in both cases, however, you've been decidedly unsubtle in your approach when a simple tap on the shoulder would have sufficed.
Such is the modern day approach to sound reinforcement. Everyone seems intent on creating sounds loud enough to hurt, this being the only way to get the attention of an apathetic, over-saturated audience. Even at some venues where the audience sits and listens quietly, "deafening" is the default setting on the board. And many of the people who produce these shows have lost so much of their hearing this way over the years that they surely can't tell the difference anymore, creating a vicious cycle of ever-escalating volume.
Music that hurts is one thing; music that injures is quite another, especially when the very ability to hear is what's threatened. If you're looking for such excitement, I would think it would be both healthier and more exciting to seek out new sounds rather than merely gorging on the ones we already have.
Appealing to such "animal instincts" is easy, whether by the direct infliction of physical pain or the mere visual display of a threat. Stick a knife in someone's face and tell them you are going to stab them and you will surely get their attention; follow through with the threat and you'll have an even better chance. In both cases, the sensation is intense enough that they simply can't ignore you. Also in both cases, however, you've been decidedly unsubtle in your approach when a simple tap on the shoulder would have sufficed.
Such is the modern day approach to sound reinforcement. Everyone seems intent on creating sounds loud enough to hurt, this being the only way to get the attention of an apathetic, over-saturated audience. Even at some venues where the audience sits and listens quietly, "deafening" is the default setting on the board. And many of the people who produce these shows have lost so much of their hearing this way over the years that they surely can't tell the difference anymore, creating a vicious cycle of ever-escalating volume.
Music that hurts is one thing; music that injures is quite another, especially when the very ability to hear is what's threatened. If you're looking for such excitement, I would think it would be both healthier and more exciting to seek out new sounds rather than merely gorging on the ones we already have.
Trust Is Earned
Regular readers (if I have any left) know that there are few blogospheric phenomena for which I have more contempt than the "link and run" post, and that the Postroll at right represents my somewhat imperfect attempt at a solution to that and a few other such social ills. Nonetheless, I can't resist directing your attention to this discussion of composing with notation software currently taking place chez Kyle Gann, who wonders aloud how wannabes like me will ever "learn to trust their inner ears." (the word "anguished" comes to mind, but I had better leave that one alone) Galen H. Brown's response in the comments is an excellent defense of, if not composing, then, well...whatever it is you do when you capture your ideas on a screen instead of a sheet of paper (see figure 1 below).
Fig. 1–Not a composition
Fig. 1–Not a composition
02 May 2009
Prodigy
There's nothing remarkable about prodigal talent. What's remarkable is when someone manages to recognize its existence.
06 March 2009
Instrumentation Revisited
This post is intended as an expansion of an earlier discussion of instrumentation in music education, first explored here (PDF format), with a blog-based addendum here.
In continuing to reflect on my own experiences as a student, it is ever more apparent to me that the need to populate balanced instrumental ensembles is an undue hinderance to music education at every level. It starts with my 6th grade beginning band, where 90% of the students wanted to play either saxophone or drums. Appallingly, percussion was not even offered as an option. I was never privy to the exact reason behind this, but I have since hypothesized that either the discontent among those who were not selected to be percussionists had become destructive to the learning environment, or that giving the students implements which were designed for hitting things had proven to be a bad idea. Whether it was either or both of these reasons or something else entirely I'll never know; the point is that from the get go, the single most viable option for engaging a majority of the students in this class in a meaningful way was lost.
The saxophone, at least, was offered (alto only, as I recall), along with trumpet, clarinet, flute, trombone, and euphonium. We were asked to pick 3 instruments from these 6 and rank them in order of preference. Where more than the maximum allowable number of students had chosen a given instrument, the assignment would be made randomly, with those not selected being given one of their lower choices. Again, discontent among those not awarded the saxophone was palpable, at least in the immediate aftermath of the assignments. Needless to say, my top choice of euphonium was uncontested, though I believe I did list saxophone as my 2nd choice. Perish the thought.
In no way do I wish to overlook issues of practicality here, which include band directors' ability to find or create music to suit their needs, as well as the availability of school-owned instruments. Certainly, these factors make what I'm about to advocate a bit more challenging than simply forcing students into a balanced instrumentation whether or not they have even the shallowest inclination towards the instrument they are given. Nonetheless, where such inclination exists, doesn't it make sense to take it and run with it, even if it is rooted in the most trivial, commercialized pop-culture stereotypes? Given many students who want to play the same instrument, why not simply start a drum line or a saxophone octet?
I suspect that the answers to these questions may lead down some uncomfortable and contentious paths. It starts with acknowledging the stylistic hierarchy that exists in (more like dominates) music education, and within that, the instrumentational hierarchies that exist within classical and jazz musics respectively. Though they may advocate on behalf of "Music Education" or "The Arts" generally, it's not at all clear that teachers, parents, administrators or arts advocates would support establishing a school drum line as adamantly as they might support the school band or orchestra (or, at least, it was abundantly clear to me that this was not the case when I was a student). The shadow cast by the distinction between high and low art is palpable here, but I'm less troubled by the possibility that one would see fit to make such a distinction than that one might not be able to recognize the potential for high art to take root in the percussion section. In fact, I'm an unapologetic high art snob, and would like nothing more than to see it manifested in every possible way in every possible corner of the earth. If the kids want to play drums, then goddamn it, give them drums and turn them loose. Anybody ever heard of a guy named Elvin Jones?
Teachers themselves seem to view this as merely giving in to the whims of students whose worlds were shaped by television and pop culture, where instruments like the tuba are used merely as punch lines, and where those like the bassoon would be lucky to make it on the air even in this capacity. The act of foisting music and instruments upon students rather than meeting them halfway has become a ritual of sorts, the discontent it sows merely being taken as a sign that learning is, in fact, taking place. It's good for you in an unpleasant sort of way, kind of like eating your vegetables or going to the dentist.
Of the many flaws in this paradigm, perhaps the most glaring is that it invariably squanders what may be the only thing the beginning instrumental teacher has going for them, namely their students' curiosity. Particularly among tuba players, it seems that the stories of seeing the instrument as a kid and saying "I want to play that one!" are too numerous to count. Conversely, you hardly ever hear successful adult musicians say, "I really wanted to play x instrument, but they gave me y instrument instead, so I just toughed it out."
Like it or not, our most basic inclination towards something at that age is often very shallow, yet it can also be eminently valid and accurate. This, at least, is exactly how I would describe my relationship with the euphonium at that age, so much so, in fact, that the tuba (which was similar in design yet even bigger, more impressive looking and eccentric; the precise reasons I chose the euphonium magnified several times) was a tough sell once I'd had 3 years to latch on to the euph. Sacrifice these primal inclinations to some administrator's rigid idea of what "high art" looks and sounds like and you've lost your first best chance to engage students in music in a meaningful and enduring way. The exalted sentimentalism that accompanies such stories when they apply to unpopular instruments contrasts starkly with the contempt that's directed at students who immediately go for the drum set, or who want to play the music they've heard on the radio. Even as an avowed high art snob, I can still see that there's something wrong with that.
Another issue is that of music publishing. Although publishers of educational band and orchestra music seem to be moving towards more flexible arrangements that allow for as many odd combinations of instruments as possible, beginning and intermediate music for like instrument ensembles, or for ensembles of entirely flexible instrumentation (i.e. with a range rather than an instrument specified), are, to my knowledge, still hard to come by. Hence, any teacher who wishes to accommodate the wishes of a large group of students gravitating towards the same instrument is probably in for a significant transcription or composition project. Of course, the music that is available also is nothing to write home about as music, which is yet another unfortunate circumstance. If we simply must force students into standard instrumental configurations, we could certainly use a better reason than the utterly vacuous and often quite horrifying music that these traditionally constituted ensembles get stuck with.
-----
Instrumentation as oppression is not just a concern for the K-12 level, but for the college and graduate levels also. College music programs have the instrumentation of their flagship ensembles very much in mind when it comes to admitting instrumentalists as music majors. Given the sometimes spectacular disparity in reputation and recruiting ability among instrumental teachers at the same institution, it's not difficult to imagine a scenario in which the top candidate for admission in one studio is significantly weaker than the third and fourth candidates for another. There is often scholarship, assistantship or stipend money available only for the top one or two applicants on each instrument, but if instrumental balance is valued ahead of overall talent and potential, the weaker player would not have to compete directly with stronger applicants on other instruments who might otherwise beat them out for it. Though I can't claim knowledge of a specific case that unfolded this way, based on what I do know about the two colleges I attended, I'd be shocked to learn that this never happened, or even that it was unusual.
With state budgets dwindling, many public university music programs are increasingly dependent on privately-raised money, and they know not only that prospective donors want to see high art, but that they recognize it in only a few of its myriad forms. Invariably, the symphony orchestra is the gold standard. The trombone ensemble is cute, maybe even musically compelling, but it's not going to loosen the wallets of too many retired insurance adjusters. Until something changes on one or more of these fronts, music schools are going to continue to admit a one-size-fits-all student body that meets their instrumental needs rather than providing programs that reflect the unique interests and needs of their immediate communities (interests and needs which, one would hope, included orchestras and bands, but not exclusively, and certainly not to the point where balance trumps merit as an admissions criteria).
The year I was at the University of Northern Colorado was also a year that the school was up for NASM reaccreditation. As part of this process, so it was announced, the school was to put on a collage concert featuring various students and faculty whose performances would reflect the school's identity. Yet after being treated to a classically-dominated program of rather conservative repertoire, it was impossible to avoid coming away with the impression that the concert merely reflected what NASM thinks a school's identity ought to be. Until such accrediting bodies, along with politicians, philanthropists, and community leaders can see beyond the forms that high art has taken to the forms it might take, we'll be stuck with a quasi-authoritarian system of imposing instruments on students regardless of their inclinations. It would behoove us to establish a more egalitarian approach, and to rely on our ears rather than ours eyes to determine its success or failure.
In continuing to reflect on my own experiences as a student, it is ever more apparent to me that the need to populate balanced instrumental ensembles is an undue hinderance to music education at every level. It starts with my 6th grade beginning band, where 90% of the students wanted to play either saxophone or drums. Appallingly, percussion was not even offered as an option. I was never privy to the exact reason behind this, but I have since hypothesized that either the discontent among those who were not selected to be percussionists had become destructive to the learning environment, or that giving the students implements which were designed for hitting things had proven to be a bad idea. Whether it was either or both of these reasons or something else entirely I'll never know; the point is that from the get go, the single most viable option for engaging a majority of the students in this class in a meaningful way was lost.
The saxophone, at least, was offered (alto only, as I recall), along with trumpet, clarinet, flute, trombone, and euphonium. We were asked to pick 3 instruments from these 6 and rank them in order of preference. Where more than the maximum allowable number of students had chosen a given instrument, the assignment would be made randomly, with those not selected being given one of their lower choices. Again, discontent among those not awarded the saxophone was palpable, at least in the immediate aftermath of the assignments. Needless to say, my top choice of euphonium was uncontested, though I believe I did list saxophone as my 2nd choice. Perish the thought.
In no way do I wish to overlook issues of practicality here, which include band directors' ability to find or create music to suit their needs, as well as the availability of school-owned instruments. Certainly, these factors make what I'm about to advocate a bit more challenging than simply forcing students into a balanced instrumentation whether or not they have even the shallowest inclination towards the instrument they are given. Nonetheless, where such inclination exists, doesn't it make sense to take it and run with it, even if it is rooted in the most trivial, commercialized pop-culture stereotypes? Given many students who want to play the same instrument, why not simply start a drum line or a saxophone octet?
I suspect that the answers to these questions may lead down some uncomfortable and contentious paths. It starts with acknowledging the stylistic hierarchy that exists in (more like dominates) music education, and within that, the instrumentational hierarchies that exist within classical and jazz musics respectively. Though they may advocate on behalf of "Music Education" or "The Arts" generally, it's not at all clear that teachers, parents, administrators or arts advocates would support establishing a school drum line as adamantly as they might support the school band or orchestra (or, at least, it was abundantly clear to me that this was not the case when I was a student). The shadow cast by the distinction between high and low art is palpable here, but I'm less troubled by the possibility that one would see fit to make such a distinction than that one might not be able to recognize the potential for high art to take root in the percussion section. In fact, I'm an unapologetic high art snob, and would like nothing more than to see it manifested in every possible way in every possible corner of the earth. If the kids want to play drums, then goddamn it, give them drums and turn them loose. Anybody ever heard of a guy named Elvin Jones?
Teachers themselves seem to view this as merely giving in to the whims of students whose worlds were shaped by television and pop culture, where instruments like the tuba are used merely as punch lines, and where those like the bassoon would be lucky to make it on the air even in this capacity. The act of foisting music and instruments upon students rather than meeting them halfway has become a ritual of sorts, the discontent it sows merely being taken as a sign that learning is, in fact, taking place. It's good for you in an unpleasant sort of way, kind of like eating your vegetables or going to the dentist.
Of the many flaws in this paradigm, perhaps the most glaring is that it invariably squanders what may be the only thing the beginning instrumental teacher has going for them, namely their students' curiosity. Particularly among tuba players, it seems that the stories of seeing the instrument as a kid and saying "I want to play that one!" are too numerous to count. Conversely, you hardly ever hear successful adult musicians say, "I really wanted to play x instrument, but they gave me y instrument instead, so I just toughed it out."
Like it or not, our most basic inclination towards something at that age is often very shallow, yet it can also be eminently valid and accurate. This, at least, is exactly how I would describe my relationship with the euphonium at that age, so much so, in fact, that the tuba (which was similar in design yet even bigger, more impressive looking and eccentric; the precise reasons I chose the euphonium magnified several times) was a tough sell once I'd had 3 years to latch on to the euph. Sacrifice these primal inclinations to some administrator's rigid idea of what "high art" looks and sounds like and you've lost your first best chance to engage students in music in a meaningful and enduring way. The exalted sentimentalism that accompanies such stories when they apply to unpopular instruments contrasts starkly with the contempt that's directed at students who immediately go for the drum set, or who want to play the music they've heard on the radio. Even as an avowed high art snob, I can still see that there's something wrong with that.
Another issue is that of music publishing. Although publishers of educational band and orchestra music seem to be moving towards more flexible arrangements that allow for as many odd combinations of instruments as possible, beginning and intermediate music for like instrument ensembles, or for ensembles of entirely flexible instrumentation (i.e. with a range rather than an instrument specified), are, to my knowledge, still hard to come by. Hence, any teacher who wishes to accommodate the wishes of a large group of students gravitating towards the same instrument is probably in for a significant transcription or composition project. Of course, the music that is available also is nothing to write home about as music, which is yet another unfortunate circumstance. If we simply must force students into standard instrumental configurations, we could certainly use a better reason than the utterly vacuous and often quite horrifying music that these traditionally constituted ensembles get stuck with.
-----
Instrumentation as oppression is not just a concern for the K-12 level, but for the college and graduate levels also. College music programs have the instrumentation of their flagship ensembles very much in mind when it comes to admitting instrumentalists as music majors. Given the sometimes spectacular disparity in reputation and recruiting ability among instrumental teachers at the same institution, it's not difficult to imagine a scenario in which the top candidate for admission in one studio is significantly weaker than the third and fourth candidates for another. There is often scholarship, assistantship or stipend money available only for the top one or two applicants on each instrument, but if instrumental balance is valued ahead of overall talent and potential, the weaker player would not have to compete directly with stronger applicants on other instruments who might otherwise beat them out for it. Though I can't claim knowledge of a specific case that unfolded this way, based on what I do know about the two colleges I attended, I'd be shocked to learn that this never happened, or even that it was unusual.
With state budgets dwindling, many public university music programs are increasingly dependent on privately-raised money, and they know not only that prospective donors want to see high art, but that they recognize it in only a few of its myriad forms. Invariably, the symphony orchestra is the gold standard. The trombone ensemble is cute, maybe even musically compelling, but it's not going to loosen the wallets of too many retired insurance adjusters. Until something changes on one or more of these fronts, music schools are going to continue to admit a one-size-fits-all student body that meets their instrumental needs rather than providing programs that reflect the unique interests and needs of their immediate communities (interests and needs which, one would hope, included orchestras and bands, but not exclusively, and certainly not to the point where balance trumps merit as an admissions criteria).
The year I was at the University of Northern Colorado was also a year that the school was up for NASM reaccreditation. As part of this process, so it was announced, the school was to put on a collage concert featuring various students and faculty whose performances would reflect the school's identity. Yet after being treated to a classically-dominated program of rather conservative repertoire, it was impossible to avoid coming away with the impression that the concert merely reflected what NASM thinks a school's identity ought to be. Until such accrediting bodies, along with politicians, philanthropists, and community leaders can see beyond the forms that high art has taken to the forms it might take, we'll be stuck with a quasi-authoritarian system of imposing instruments on students regardless of their inclinations. It would behoove us to establish a more egalitarian approach, and to rely on our ears rather than ours eyes to determine its success or failure.
04 March 2009
Government Funding of The Arts (iii)
The final installment in this trifecta of turn-offs deals with the idea of return on investment. In casually following the blogospheric reaction to the threat of cutting NEA funding from the recently passed stimulus bill, I found this study cited more than once by well-meaning commentators, specifically the statistic that every $1 of arts funding returns $7 in revenue to the government.
Artists and audiences alike have long since grown weary of artworks being judged sheerly by the amount of money they fetch. Indeed, in many circles, to express such an opinion would be to mark oneself as a spectacularly naive and shallow observer. Yet when arts funding is in jeopardy, it seems that few are shy about espousing a nearly identical position. Is judging the work by how much people spend on dinner before or after the show really that different from judging the work by what people are willing to pay for it directly? The former may, in fact, be worse, considering that it is even further removed from the audience's opinion of the work itself. What of those who spring for an expensive pre-show dinner only to be thoroughly let down by the evening's events? More importantly, what of art endeavors which don't live up to the $7 standard? Are they inherently less worthy of government support?
It's a long-standing cliche for jazz musicians performing at clubs to complain that in the eyes of the management, "You're just there to sell drinks." I don't think it matters whether those drinks are sold before, during or after the show; the implication is the same. Stomaching such attitudes may be part of life when dealing with booking agents and venue owners, but it shouldn't have to be part of defending the validity of one's life's work in the politcal arena.
I can already hear the reaction to what I've just written: that I'm overreacting, perhaps overthinking also, that arts advocates mean well, that no one's insulting anyone here, and that as long as the NEA funding got put back in the bill, it doesn't matter how it got there. I would be as relieved as anyone if this proves to be an overreaction, but it's hard to ignore the red flags. The first is a familiar one and need not be dwelled on for too long as I've discussed it many times before: in short, none of us became artists because we saw it as a boon to the economy, a way to keep kids off drugs, or any of the myriad extrinsic features so often attributed to The Arts in defense of government funding; more likely, it was just too damn much fun. This is, at the very least, an honesty issue.
But more important than simply disavowing the reliance on extrinsic features in the name of some abstract conception of honesty is to ask whether it is truly in our best practical interests to judge artists and artworks by such features in the first place. In this case, it is most certainly not; in fact, the return on investment standard threatens to become a bludgeon wielded against many of those whom it is disingenuously being used to defend. For example, arts events that take place in dense commercial districts where there are lots of opportunities for audience members to spend money before and after the show would seem to be favored over those that take place in neighborhood galleries or rural areas where few businesses surround the event*. Concerts in bars and restaurants where food and drink are sold would take precedence over those that happen in "performance spaces" where little or no hospitality is offered and a free will donation rather than a flat cover charge is imposed. Visual artists who buy many expensive supplies would be seen as contributing more than than those who work cheaply with found objects. And so on and so forth.
Though the dialogue has been framed to avoid dealing with artworks case-by-case and instead to speak only of "The Arts" generally, this charade can be maintained only for so long. If the return on investment standard is established as a legitimate defense of government funding of the arts, the public interest then becomes to maximize the results by funding the art and artists which promise the greatest return. How long until a subsequent study is released which identifies specific types of arts events as more or less worthy of funding based on their proven return on investment? Perhaps appealing to the generalism of "The Arts" is a blessing in this case as it prevents us from making such distinctions for the time being. However, they can't be far off.
*If you just thought to yourself that audiences buying more gasoline counts as return on investment the same as buying dinner before the show, you and I have some irreconcilable differences.
Artists and audiences alike have long since grown weary of artworks being judged sheerly by the amount of money they fetch. Indeed, in many circles, to express such an opinion would be to mark oneself as a spectacularly naive and shallow observer. Yet when arts funding is in jeopardy, it seems that few are shy about espousing a nearly identical position. Is judging the work by how much people spend on dinner before or after the show really that different from judging the work by what people are willing to pay for it directly? The former may, in fact, be worse, considering that it is even further removed from the audience's opinion of the work itself. What of those who spring for an expensive pre-show dinner only to be thoroughly let down by the evening's events? More importantly, what of art endeavors which don't live up to the $7 standard? Are they inherently less worthy of government support?
It's a long-standing cliche for jazz musicians performing at clubs to complain that in the eyes of the management, "You're just there to sell drinks." I don't think it matters whether those drinks are sold before, during or after the show; the implication is the same. Stomaching such attitudes may be part of life when dealing with booking agents and venue owners, but it shouldn't have to be part of defending the validity of one's life's work in the politcal arena.
I can already hear the reaction to what I've just written: that I'm overreacting, perhaps overthinking also, that arts advocates mean well, that no one's insulting anyone here, and that as long as the NEA funding got put back in the bill, it doesn't matter how it got there. I would be as relieved as anyone if this proves to be an overreaction, but it's hard to ignore the red flags. The first is a familiar one and need not be dwelled on for too long as I've discussed it many times before: in short, none of us became artists because we saw it as a boon to the economy, a way to keep kids off drugs, or any of the myriad extrinsic features so often attributed to The Arts in defense of government funding; more likely, it was just too damn much fun. This is, at the very least, an honesty issue.
But more important than simply disavowing the reliance on extrinsic features in the name of some abstract conception of honesty is to ask whether it is truly in our best practical interests to judge artists and artworks by such features in the first place. In this case, it is most certainly not; in fact, the return on investment standard threatens to become a bludgeon wielded against many of those whom it is disingenuously being used to defend. For example, arts events that take place in dense commercial districts where there are lots of opportunities for audience members to spend money before and after the show would seem to be favored over those that take place in neighborhood galleries or rural areas where few businesses surround the event*. Concerts in bars and restaurants where food and drink are sold would take precedence over those that happen in "performance spaces" where little or no hospitality is offered and a free will donation rather than a flat cover charge is imposed. Visual artists who buy many expensive supplies would be seen as contributing more than than those who work cheaply with found objects. And so on and so forth.
Though the dialogue has been framed to avoid dealing with artworks case-by-case and instead to speak only of "The Arts" generally, this charade can be maintained only for so long. If the return on investment standard is established as a legitimate defense of government funding of the arts, the public interest then becomes to maximize the results by funding the art and artists which promise the greatest return. How long until a subsequent study is released which identifies specific types of arts events as more or less worthy of funding based on their proven return on investment? Perhaps appealing to the generalism of "The Arts" is a blessing in this case as it prevents us from making such distinctions for the time being. However, they can't be far off.
*If you just thought to yourself that audiences buying more gasoline counts as return on investment the same as buying dinner before the show, you and I have some irreconcilable differences.
22 February 2009
Government Funding of The Arts (ii)
Establishing universal health care in this country (the right thing to do anyway) would do more for art and artists of all stripes than $50 million dollars of government "support" ever could. If you don't believe me, take note of the frequency of benefit concerts for uninsured or underinsured musicians who have run up staggering medical bills. As it stands right now, any discussion of the practicality of freelancing starts and ends with health care.
I have spoken unfavorably many times of the unwieldiness of a term as broad as "The Arts," and yet if our aspiration is truly to do something that benefits art and artists across the board, then we have to identify concerns which are shared across disciplines and media. I can think of no more glaring commonality among artists of all kinds than that there are precious few full-time jobs with benefits available that allow them to focus solely on their art.
For whatever reason, talk of supporting The Arts tends to revolve around organizations rather than individual artists. Perhaps it's related to the notion of doing of what's best for the many rather than the few. But sheer numbers aside, it's hardly worth remarking upon the unfortunate condition of "institutions" per se, so pervasive and devastating are their effluents. The idea that the individual artist might avoid being burdened with extra-artistic grunt work undertaken simply because they have no other source of income or benefits is more attractive on the surface. If that is, in fact, the goal, then universal health care is a must, and until it is achieved, everything else is merely nibbling around the edges.
I have spoken unfavorably many times of the unwieldiness of a term as broad as "The Arts," and yet if our aspiration is truly to do something that benefits art and artists across the board, then we have to identify concerns which are shared across disciplines and media. I can think of no more glaring commonality among artists of all kinds than that there are precious few full-time jobs with benefits available that allow them to focus solely on their art.
For whatever reason, talk of supporting The Arts tends to revolve around organizations rather than individual artists. Perhaps it's related to the notion of doing of what's best for the many rather than the few. But sheer numbers aside, it's hardly worth remarking upon the unfortunate condition of "institutions" per se, so pervasive and devastating are their effluents. The idea that the individual artist might avoid being burdened with extra-artistic grunt work undertaken simply because they have no other source of income or benefits is more attractive on the surface. If that is, in fact, the goal, then universal health care is a must, and until it is achieved, everything else is merely nibbling around the edges.
17 February 2009
Government Funding of The Arts (i)
Some would say that the primary importance of government funding of The Arts lies in freeing the artist from the constraints of the marketplace, hence enabling them do what they want rather than merely doing whatever is going to make them the most money. Advocates of this position can point to copious examples of artworks in all disciplines which alienated audiences of their times only to later become widely acknowledged as masterpieces.
Others (particularly detractors of the avant-garde) argue that artists can't be trusted to create anything worthwhile when decoupled from the demands of an audience. This group also cites copious evidence in the form of great works which were created out of economic necessity and/or narrow stylistic demands, essentially taking the position (though they would never freely admit to it) that the price fetched by a given work of art is the best indication of its inherent quality.
If you couldn't guess, I identify more closely with the first group than the second. However, there's a lot more to it than this simple dichotomy. If the criteria for getting funded are just as artistically shackling as the marketplace yet still without being directly tied to it, then this merely gives us the worst of both worlds. Yet it seems that this is exactly what goes for "supporting" The Arts right now: prospective grantees are handcuffed by a myriad of extra-artistic obligations imposed as a condition of getting funded (usually involving educational outreach), so much so, in fact, that the perceived quality of the work scarcely seems to matter to those granting the money to back it.
If facilitating the creation of the next great masterpiece is indeed the goal, giving grants is a bit like playing the stock market: you look at the past performance of prospective grantees and invest in the ones whose history indicates, somehow, a likelihood of success in the near future. Yet we know from history that the ratio of enduring artworks to forgotten ones is almost impossibly small, and that there are no safe bets in this realm, even among established celebrity artists. When funding thus appears to be wasted even in the eyes of the arts community (i.e. by virtue of the near total neglect of the commissioned work after its premiere), it can't possibly be seen in a much better light by the rest of society.
In a democracy, the government cannot possibly support the "right" artists, whether that be all of them, none of them, or any possible subset. This is what gets detractors of government funding so upset. By the same token, every artist is the "right" artist to support in the eyes of at least one person (themselves), and probably in the eyes of at least a few of their audience members. This is what gets arts advocates so upset.
What is conspicuously absent here is any acknowledgment of the vast diversity encompassed by a term such as "The Arts." Indeed, the political necessity of referring only to "The Arts" generically rather than to specific art and artists is by far the most glaring weakness in the current dialogue, not only because it allows detractors to ridicule government support by cherry-picking examples of frivolous-sounding projects, but because it is quite disingenuous to behave as if one believes all art is created equal in the first place.
This is where the supposed extrinsic values of various arts come into play, as in, "If we cannot agree on which of two Mozart symphonies is the better piece of music, at least we can agree that listening to either of them will make your baby smarter." Such extrinsic values (we'll save discussion of their validity for later) are seductive because they are the only sources of consensus that one can appeal to in art, for no single person truly believes that all art is good aesthetically, even if they'll say so in public to keep from offending others.
The essence of democracy is variously said to lie in rational thought, in compromise, or simply in what's good for the 51%. This is anathema to art. Where artists and audiences compromise, where aesthetic judgments become rational, and where a simple majority opinion is good enough to claim the establishment of a broad consensus, art is no longer itself and has become something else. Whatever conclusion we arrive at through these means with regard to whether or not the government should fund The Arts, we can only hope that art remains in such a condition that either position is problematic. This may be a headache, but it's also a sign of life.
Others (particularly detractors of the avant-garde) argue that artists can't be trusted to create anything worthwhile when decoupled from the demands of an audience. This group also cites copious evidence in the form of great works which were created out of economic necessity and/or narrow stylistic demands, essentially taking the position (though they would never freely admit to it) that the price fetched by a given work of art is the best indication of its inherent quality.
If you couldn't guess, I identify more closely with the first group than the second. However, there's a lot more to it than this simple dichotomy. If the criteria for getting funded are just as artistically shackling as the marketplace yet still without being directly tied to it, then this merely gives us the worst of both worlds. Yet it seems that this is exactly what goes for "supporting" The Arts right now: prospective grantees are handcuffed by a myriad of extra-artistic obligations imposed as a condition of getting funded (usually involving educational outreach), so much so, in fact, that the perceived quality of the work scarcely seems to matter to those granting the money to back it.
If facilitating the creation of the next great masterpiece is indeed the goal, giving grants is a bit like playing the stock market: you look at the past performance of prospective grantees and invest in the ones whose history indicates, somehow, a likelihood of success in the near future. Yet we know from history that the ratio of enduring artworks to forgotten ones is almost impossibly small, and that there are no safe bets in this realm, even among established celebrity artists. When funding thus appears to be wasted even in the eyes of the arts community (i.e. by virtue of the near total neglect of the commissioned work after its premiere), it can't possibly be seen in a much better light by the rest of society.
In a democracy, the government cannot possibly support the "right" artists, whether that be all of them, none of them, or any possible subset. This is what gets detractors of government funding so upset. By the same token, every artist is the "right" artist to support in the eyes of at least one person (themselves), and probably in the eyes of at least a few of their audience members. This is what gets arts advocates so upset.
What is conspicuously absent here is any acknowledgment of the vast diversity encompassed by a term such as "The Arts." Indeed, the political necessity of referring only to "The Arts" generically rather than to specific art and artists is by far the most glaring weakness in the current dialogue, not only because it allows detractors to ridicule government support by cherry-picking examples of frivolous-sounding projects, but because it is quite disingenuous to behave as if one believes all art is created equal in the first place.
This is where the supposed extrinsic values of various arts come into play, as in, "If we cannot agree on which of two Mozart symphonies is the better piece of music, at least we can agree that listening to either of them will make your baby smarter." Such extrinsic values (we'll save discussion of their validity for later) are seductive because they are the only sources of consensus that one can appeal to in art, for no single person truly believes that all art is good aesthetically, even if they'll say so in public to keep from offending others.
The essence of democracy is variously said to lie in rational thought, in compromise, or simply in what's good for the 51%. This is anathema to art. Where artists and audiences compromise, where aesthetic judgments become rational, and where a simple majority opinion is good enough to claim the establishment of a broad consensus, art is no longer itself and has become something else. Whatever conclusion we arrive at through these means with regard to whether or not the government should fund The Arts, we can only hope that art remains in such a condition that either position is problematic. This may be a headache, but it's also a sign of life.
14 February 2009
Just Call Us "Other"
You can't make this stuff up...
From the Department of Poorly Written Program Notes, co-presented with the Department of Inadvertently Displayed Ignorance, and with promotional consideration provided by the Department of Midwestern Artsy-Fartsy Cuteness, I give you the blurb on George Benjamin's At First Light from the SPCO's "Program at a Glance," the condensed program notes that accompany the regular length program notes so that people who kind of care but kind of don't can learn something about the noise that is about to be foisted on them without taking too much time away from coughing and whispering to each other about how much they hate new music:
GEORGE BENJAMIN
At First Light
This piece, written when Benjamin was 22, was inspired by Turner's painting Norham Castle, Sunrise, an early precursor to impressionism. The music is itself a pastiche of gestures and abstractions. Fourteen musicians play more than 30 colorful instruments, including a bass trombone, whip, and a large newspaper.
Where to start? The appeal to age-based novelty is hardly uncommon, nor is the use of the term "gesture" as a backhanded compliment to a piece of new music, nor is the gratuitous use of an adjective such as "colorful" to distract listeners from the dissonance they're about to encounter. The crown jewel of this blurb, however, is the implication that the bass trombone is on par for novelty with a whip. A whip?!
It's true, I'm a low brass player myself, and hence a but biased, maybe even more than a bit insecure about our always tenuous status as "standard" members of the orchestra. That point aside, to categorize the bass trombone as novel is one thing, but to lump it in with whips and newspapers is completely absurd and ignorant. Not that I have anything against whips and newspapers (or rocks or sirens or bowed crotales...actually, I do have something against bowed crotales, but that story will have to wait for another time) being used as musical instruments, but I don't think its a stretch to say that the bass trombone has historically played a more significant role in the orchestra than they have.
In larger orchestras, the instrument is quite standardly used as the 3rd trombone, even if "bass" trombone was not specified by the composer. In case those of you who write program notes haven't ever actually been down to a concert since people got audacious enough to start sticking valves on trombones some several decades ago, this is because it sounds pretty damn close to a tenor trombone most of the time, and sounds even better in the lower registers by virtue of its larger bore, this despite being pitched in the same key as the tenor.
When one refers to a bass tuba, people are often curious as to how and why anyone would make a tuba that was even lower than normal, not realizing, of course, that the tubas they've seen and heard were, in most cases, contrabass tubas, and that bass tubas are actually smaller, not larger, than the instruments they're most familiar with. I suspect that, although the bass trombone is, in fact, larger than the the more commonly encountered tenor, the same dynamic is on display here, namely that the modifier is what catches people's attention first, along with the expectation that a bass version of an already low-pitched and heavily caricatured instrument must be something to behold. When this comes up in conversation with an avowed novice, I'm always happy to offer clarification, along with a good-natured, self-depricating low brass joke to help the medicine go down. When I read something like this in program notes supplied by a first-rate professional orchestra, the good-naturedness takes a hike. Writing program notes ought to consist of more than merely scanning the instrumentation for novelties, but when it must, a good handle on what exactly constitutes novelty in the first place is a must.
The poetic justice here? The trombonist played the entire part on his tenor (or, strictly speaking, "tenor-bass" trombone, a tenor trombone with one valve which lowers the pitch a perfect fourth, or less if the slide is out further at the time). Sorry, folks, you didn't get to hear bass trombone after all. If it's any consolation, at least you got to hear a nearly identical sound coming out of a nearly identical instrument, and at least the piece was actually written by a 22 year-old, albeit a 22 year-old who is now nearly 50. As for my consolation, I, probably alone, got to have a good chuckle at the status (or lack thereof) enjoyed by those of us who blow into big metal things that no one can name. It's not the first time, and I suspect it won't be the last.
From the Department of Poorly Written Program Notes, co-presented with the Department of Inadvertently Displayed Ignorance, and with promotional consideration provided by the Department of Midwestern Artsy-Fartsy Cuteness, I give you the blurb on George Benjamin's At First Light from the SPCO's "Program at a Glance," the condensed program notes that accompany the regular length program notes so that people who kind of care but kind of don't can learn something about the noise that is about to be foisted on them without taking too much time away from coughing and whispering to each other about how much they hate new music:
GEORGE BENJAMIN
At First Light
This piece, written when Benjamin was 22, was inspired by Turner's painting Norham Castle, Sunrise, an early precursor to impressionism. The music is itself a pastiche of gestures and abstractions. Fourteen musicians play more than 30 colorful instruments, including a bass trombone, whip, and a large newspaper.
Where to start? The appeal to age-based novelty is hardly uncommon, nor is the use of the term "gesture" as a backhanded compliment to a piece of new music, nor is the gratuitous use of an adjective such as "colorful" to distract listeners from the dissonance they're about to encounter. The crown jewel of this blurb, however, is the implication that the bass trombone is on par for novelty with a whip. A whip?!
It's true, I'm a low brass player myself, and hence a but biased, maybe even more than a bit insecure about our always tenuous status as "standard" members of the orchestra. That point aside, to categorize the bass trombone as novel is one thing, but to lump it in with whips and newspapers is completely absurd and ignorant. Not that I have anything against whips and newspapers (or rocks or sirens or bowed crotales...actually, I do have something against bowed crotales, but that story will have to wait for another time) being used as musical instruments, but I don't think its a stretch to say that the bass trombone has historically played a more significant role in the orchestra than they have.
In larger orchestras, the instrument is quite standardly used as the 3rd trombone, even if "bass" trombone was not specified by the composer. In case those of you who write program notes haven't ever actually been down to a concert since people got audacious enough to start sticking valves on trombones some several decades ago, this is because it sounds pretty damn close to a tenor trombone most of the time, and sounds even better in the lower registers by virtue of its larger bore, this despite being pitched in the same key as the tenor.
When one refers to a bass tuba, people are often curious as to how and why anyone would make a tuba that was even lower than normal, not realizing, of course, that the tubas they've seen and heard were, in most cases, contrabass tubas, and that bass tubas are actually smaller, not larger, than the instruments they're most familiar with. I suspect that, although the bass trombone is, in fact, larger than the the more commonly encountered tenor, the same dynamic is on display here, namely that the modifier is what catches people's attention first, along with the expectation that a bass version of an already low-pitched and heavily caricatured instrument must be something to behold. When this comes up in conversation with an avowed novice, I'm always happy to offer clarification, along with a good-natured, self-depricating low brass joke to help the medicine go down. When I read something like this in program notes supplied by a first-rate professional orchestra, the good-naturedness takes a hike. Writing program notes ought to consist of more than merely scanning the instrumentation for novelties, but when it must, a good handle on what exactly constitutes novelty in the first place is a must.
The poetic justice here? The trombonist played the entire part on his tenor (or, strictly speaking, "tenor-bass" trombone, a tenor trombone with one valve which lowers the pitch a perfect fourth, or less if the slide is out further at the time). Sorry, folks, you didn't get to hear bass trombone after all. If it's any consolation, at least you got to hear a nearly identical sound coming out of a nearly identical instrument, and at least the piece was actually written by a 22 year-old, albeit a 22 year-old who is now nearly 50. As for my consolation, I, probably alone, got to have a good chuckle at the status (or lack thereof) enjoyed by those of us who blow into big metal things that no one can name. It's not the first time, and I suspect it won't be the last.
25 January 2009
Tribute to an Inheritance
This book review from The Nation touches, in a roundabout way, on a very important subject for musicians and artists of all stripes. Of authors Gar Alperovitz and Lew Daly, reviewer Mark Engler says,
Their foremost ethical question is, given that we owe most of our productivity to a common social inheritance, to what extent can we say that we have "earned" our personal wealth?
Whether you tack the word "social," "cultural," or "artistic" in front of it, this idea of inheritance is one that all musicians grapple with to some extent. Just as political conservatives extoll the "self-made man" as if he exists in a vacuum apart from the accumulated wisdom of his society, so are musicians too often fed the "Great Man" theory of history, by which we are indebted to only a select few towering giants of music, when really, the roster of contributors to whatever tradition we work in (or against) is almost endless. This not only predisposes us to overlook plenty of music we might end up very interested in were we to ever encounter it, but also conditions us to aspire to join the club ourselves someday, this being the ultimate measure of success or failure in our careers. Both of these conditions are unfortunate, the former because it narrows our horizons, and the latter because it begets envy and petty bickering among contemporaries, both over their own status and that of forebears for whom they may feel compelled to advocate, for whatever reason.
One would hope that musicians could collectively do better than the ego-driven hero worship, self-aggrandizement and name-dropping that dominates today's scene, which, the flawed logic of it aside, does more harm than good when it comes to the social side of making music. Cage's writing on this subject presents a more refreshing alternative, as does Feldman's recollection here of a saner ethic prevailing in 1950's New York. ("What a terrific show. Am I glad he did it. Now I don't have to." Can you imagine hearing that after an exhibition or a concert?) Whether it is realistic to expect such an attitude to take hold among large swaths of artists and audiences I'm not so sure of, but it is a worthy goal nonetheless.
While ego-driven personal ambition is an unavoidable part of life, I wouldn't go so far as to say that it cannot possibly be turned into a constructive force. I suspect that one can be both ambitious and successful without falling victim to more unseemly bouts of overt narcissism. Here's somewhere to start: when paying tribute to a musician that is perceived as an innovator, is it not more appropriate to do one's own thing rather than simply aping one's hero? To continue the economics analogies, literal imitation as tribute is more like the "casino economy" of stock brokers, hedge fund managers, and securities traders: just as these paper pushers don't actually produce anything material, literal imitation as tribute contributes nothing new to the fabric of musical life. Only with a healthy dose of oneself in the mix does one produce musical goods that may become a meaningful part of the next generation's cultural inheritance, hence giving back as much as one can (in fact, giving the only thing one really has to give, that being one's individuality, however subtle or extreme it might be). Conversely, merely reiterating that which you yourself have inherited is a regressive act in that it takes more and gives less (and is never as good as the real thing anyway). It is in this way that the most overt tributes too often become the most overt affronts (think Kenny G and Louis Armstrong).
One need not bother building monuments to musical heroes, for to imitate them is merely to be oneself. And let's face it, when it comes to the Tributes to So-and-So that pop up with such regularity these days, it is often all too obvious that our heroes are merely being used for name dropping in hopes of somehow capturing the attention of a fatigued and increasingly frugal audience who couldn't possibly know or care who we are, but might have heard of someone we listen to. In the end, that's not really much of a tribute.
The emphasis on individuality and aversion to stylism is, of course, just as prone to running afoul of the inheritance question, since each of our originalities is really just a conglomeration of our influences. It is this very realization, however, that can inform a more humble approach to one's own place in the grand scheme of things. How much credit does any one person really deserve for their music, after all? Beyond simply expanding the Heroes list from composers, performers and teachers to include inventors, scientists, music theorists, publishers et al, what if we go so far as to consider the effects of parenting, heredity and environment on a budding musician? A concept such as work ethic, which is part and parcel of the conservative notion of "individual responsibility," could then be seen as something for which one was no more responsible than their hair color.
Importantly, by problematizing individual responsibility, one problematizes individual accolades as well. This angle can quickly become an exercise in nihilism, and suddenly, nothing matters at all and no one deserves any credit for anything. There's no reason to take things quite that far, but at the very least, an acceptance of oneself as the product of one's cultural* inheritance rather than an exceptional amount of some sort of innate or acquired merit is a big step in the direction of toning down the petty bickering and egomaniacal crusades over status that are tremendous burdens on both the music world and life in general.
*I cringe at invoking the concept of "culture" at all, since it seems mostly to be used as a bludgeon against anyone who prefers their music free from literary associations and functional obligations, as I do. Even with these particular distractions out of the way, though, there doesn't seem to be any better term to describe the melting pot of ideas that contribute to a musical tradition, however absolute.
Their foremost ethical question is, given that we owe most of our productivity to a common social inheritance, to what extent can we say that we have "earned" our personal wealth?
Whether you tack the word "social," "cultural," or "artistic" in front of it, this idea of inheritance is one that all musicians grapple with to some extent. Just as political conservatives extoll the "self-made man" as if he exists in a vacuum apart from the accumulated wisdom of his society, so are musicians too often fed the "Great Man" theory of history, by which we are indebted to only a select few towering giants of music, when really, the roster of contributors to whatever tradition we work in (or against) is almost endless. This not only predisposes us to overlook plenty of music we might end up very interested in were we to ever encounter it, but also conditions us to aspire to join the club ourselves someday, this being the ultimate measure of success or failure in our careers. Both of these conditions are unfortunate, the former because it narrows our horizons, and the latter because it begets envy and petty bickering among contemporaries, both over their own status and that of forebears for whom they may feel compelled to advocate, for whatever reason.
One would hope that musicians could collectively do better than the ego-driven hero worship, self-aggrandizement and name-dropping that dominates today's scene, which, the flawed logic of it aside, does more harm than good when it comes to the social side of making music. Cage's writing on this subject presents a more refreshing alternative, as does Feldman's recollection here of a saner ethic prevailing in 1950's New York. ("What a terrific show. Am I glad he did it. Now I don't have to." Can you imagine hearing that after an exhibition or a concert?) Whether it is realistic to expect such an attitude to take hold among large swaths of artists and audiences I'm not so sure of, but it is a worthy goal nonetheless.
While ego-driven personal ambition is an unavoidable part of life, I wouldn't go so far as to say that it cannot possibly be turned into a constructive force. I suspect that one can be both ambitious and successful without falling victim to more unseemly bouts of overt narcissism. Here's somewhere to start: when paying tribute to a musician that is perceived as an innovator, is it not more appropriate to do one's own thing rather than simply aping one's hero? To continue the economics analogies, literal imitation as tribute is more like the "casino economy" of stock brokers, hedge fund managers, and securities traders: just as these paper pushers don't actually produce anything material, literal imitation as tribute contributes nothing new to the fabric of musical life. Only with a healthy dose of oneself in the mix does one produce musical goods that may become a meaningful part of the next generation's cultural inheritance, hence giving back as much as one can (in fact, giving the only thing one really has to give, that being one's individuality, however subtle or extreme it might be). Conversely, merely reiterating that which you yourself have inherited is a regressive act in that it takes more and gives less (and is never as good as the real thing anyway). It is in this way that the most overt tributes too often become the most overt affronts (think Kenny G and Louis Armstrong).
One need not bother building monuments to musical heroes, for to imitate them is merely to be oneself. And let's face it, when it comes to the Tributes to So-and-So that pop up with such regularity these days, it is often all too obvious that our heroes are merely being used for name dropping in hopes of somehow capturing the attention of a fatigued and increasingly frugal audience who couldn't possibly know or care who we are, but might have heard of someone we listen to. In the end, that's not really much of a tribute.
The emphasis on individuality and aversion to stylism is, of course, just as prone to running afoul of the inheritance question, since each of our originalities is really just a conglomeration of our influences. It is this very realization, however, that can inform a more humble approach to one's own place in the grand scheme of things. How much credit does any one person really deserve for their music, after all? Beyond simply expanding the Heroes list from composers, performers and teachers to include inventors, scientists, music theorists, publishers et al, what if we go so far as to consider the effects of parenting, heredity and environment on a budding musician? A concept such as work ethic, which is part and parcel of the conservative notion of "individual responsibility," could then be seen as something for which one was no more responsible than their hair color.
Importantly, by problematizing individual responsibility, one problematizes individual accolades as well. This angle can quickly become an exercise in nihilism, and suddenly, nothing matters at all and no one deserves any credit for anything. There's no reason to take things quite that far, but at the very least, an acceptance of oneself as the product of one's cultural* inheritance rather than an exceptional amount of some sort of innate or acquired merit is a big step in the direction of toning down the petty bickering and egomaniacal crusades over status that are tremendous burdens on both the music world and life in general.
*I cringe at invoking the concept of "culture" at all, since it seems mostly to be used as a bludgeon against anyone who prefers their music free from literary associations and functional obligations, as I do. Even with these particular distractions out of the way, though, there doesn't seem to be any better term to describe the melting pot of ideas that contribute to a musical tradition, however absolute.
05 January 2009
Direct Paths
For many musicians, the question of identifying what exactly got them "hooked" on music in the first place and subsequently attempting to reproduce that effect on their own audiences leads to a curious and awkward relationship between self-discovery and externally imposed learning. Depending on the musicians and their unique experiences, this process may be wholly or partially about developing a theory of causality between music and the emotions; unfortunately, the colloquial, pseudo-scientific understanding of the relationship between music and the emotions that dominates much of both amateur and professional musicological discourse today is so flawed as to be of little or no practical use to those musicians seeking a personal solution to this question. As an instrumentalist, I would argue that this unfortunate circumstance necessitates a renewed focus on direct paths to musicianship, namely through the imitation, internalization, and synthesis of the physical, sonic phenomena that comprise the music one is interested in, as it is these phenomena which are directly responsible for any emotional content one might ascribe to music.
That different listeners may experience unique emotions during the same performance is well-documented; this is, I would argue, not merely an unavoidable fact, but also an essential form of biodiversity in any musical ecosystem without which the collective creative ferment of society would become dull and monotonous. It is for this reason that many well-intentioned efforts at music appreciation are fundamentally flawed: they assume that the ultimate goal is to create the same experience (emotional or otherwise) in each listener by educating them to listen and respond a certain way (usually the way of the person giving the lecture or writing the article). I would argue that if a piece of music seems to be quite universally well-received, this is not a piece which many people have been taught to like, nor is it one which imposes a particular listening style on anyone who might hear it; instead, it is a piece which appeals to the greatest total number of unique individual listening styles.
As one element of such appeal, emotion per se cannot be dealt with generically. There is a great range of possible emotions, many of which have been reported as a response to music by someone at some point. It should follow from this realization that musicians cannot learn to emote musically simply by emoting generically; there must be a more direct path. The trick here is to somehow balance the conscious and subconscious, to avoid becoming a "trained monkey" without merely playing "by feel." One must be suspicious of any technique that bypasses the conscious mind too greatly, such as the technique of applying descriptive terms to musical phrases in order to elicit a musical performance from the student without helping them to recognize and understand the technical factors at play, or the approach of simply repeating a task until it becomes more of a habit than a consciously executed action. Success in this realm is achieved only by putting aside for a moment the sedimented emotional and literary associations that others have imposed on the music over the course of history and forging a musical interpretation that synthesizes one's sonic experiences into a unique personal voice.
In order to be able to reproduce these results at will, the student first must consciously understand how they are achieved; varying amounts of repetition can then be used to adjust how conscious the student is of their newfound technique. Basic fundamental techniques like breathing or hand position require significant repetition so that the student truly does not think about them yet executes them correctly; technical nuances and interpretive devices, on the other hand, ought to be internalized without becoming blind habits, since the student will inevitably need to maintain the ability to make subtle adjustments to these techniques "on the fly." While the teacher should use whatever means necessary to elicit the desired results from the student, once they are achieved, it is always helpful to ask what exactly it was that made these results possible. Only with a concrete understanding of the answer to that question can the student begin to take ownership of their development and start to become their own best teacher.
Insofar as desired emotional responses are caused by physical, sonic phenomena, pedagogy must concern itself first and foremost with nurturing the student's ability to create (or recreate) such sonic phenomena. Rather than leaving students grasping for sonic equivalents to their unique emotions, teachers must ask students to (1) identify the sonic characteristics which lend a given performance its perceived emotional qualities, (2) imitate and vary these devices according to personal preference, and (3) apply the personalized devices to their performances as they deem appropriate. This is first and foremost a creative endeavor, akin to composing or improvising, whereby the ultimate goal is not merely to "paint by number" by compiling an inventory of devices to be drawn upon one at a time when needed, but instead a synthesis of one's cumulative knowledge and experience into a unique personal voice.
Physical, sonic phenomena must be the unit of currency in any economy of musico-pedagogical ideas. Emotion being an effect of such phenomena and not a cause, it tells us very little about how a performer might create or recreate a musical moment. Conversely, direct paths to musicianship are those by which the student acquires the knowledge and ability to consciously and purposely realize their musical intent.
That different listeners may experience unique emotions during the same performance is well-documented; this is, I would argue, not merely an unavoidable fact, but also an essential form of biodiversity in any musical ecosystem without which the collective creative ferment of society would become dull and monotonous. It is for this reason that many well-intentioned efforts at music appreciation are fundamentally flawed: they assume that the ultimate goal is to create the same experience (emotional or otherwise) in each listener by educating them to listen and respond a certain way (usually the way of the person giving the lecture or writing the article). I would argue that if a piece of music seems to be quite universally well-received, this is not a piece which many people have been taught to like, nor is it one which imposes a particular listening style on anyone who might hear it; instead, it is a piece which appeals to the greatest total number of unique individual listening styles.
As one element of such appeal, emotion per se cannot be dealt with generically. There is a great range of possible emotions, many of which have been reported as a response to music by someone at some point. It should follow from this realization that musicians cannot learn to emote musically simply by emoting generically; there must be a more direct path. The trick here is to somehow balance the conscious and subconscious, to avoid becoming a "trained monkey" without merely playing "by feel." One must be suspicious of any technique that bypasses the conscious mind too greatly, such as the technique of applying descriptive terms to musical phrases in order to elicit a musical performance from the student without helping them to recognize and understand the technical factors at play, or the approach of simply repeating a task until it becomes more of a habit than a consciously executed action. Success in this realm is achieved only by putting aside for a moment the sedimented emotional and literary associations that others have imposed on the music over the course of history and forging a musical interpretation that synthesizes one's sonic experiences into a unique personal voice.
In order to be able to reproduce these results at will, the student first must consciously understand how they are achieved; varying amounts of repetition can then be used to adjust how conscious the student is of their newfound technique. Basic fundamental techniques like breathing or hand position require significant repetition so that the student truly does not think about them yet executes them correctly; technical nuances and interpretive devices, on the other hand, ought to be internalized without becoming blind habits, since the student will inevitably need to maintain the ability to make subtle adjustments to these techniques "on the fly." While the teacher should use whatever means necessary to elicit the desired results from the student, once they are achieved, it is always helpful to ask what exactly it was that made these results possible. Only with a concrete understanding of the answer to that question can the student begin to take ownership of their development and start to become their own best teacher.
Insofar as desired emotional responses are caused by physical, sonic phenomena, pedagogy must concern itself first and foremost with nurturing the student's ability to create (or recreate) such sonic phenomena. Rather than leaving students grasping for sonic equivalents to their unique emotions, teachers must ask students to (1) identify the sonic characteristics which lend a given performance its perceived emotional qualities, (2) imitate and vary these devices according to personal preference, and (3) apply the personalized devices to their performances as they deem appropriate. This is first and foremost a creative endeavor, akin to composing or improvising, whereby the ultimate goal is not merely to "paint by number" by compiling an inventory of devices to be drawn upon one at a time when needed, but instead a synthesis of one's cumulative knowledge and experience into a unique personal voice.
Physical, sonic phenomena must be the unit of currency in any economy of musico-pedagogical ideas. Emotion being an effect of such phenomena and not a cause, it tells us very little about how a performer might create or recreate a musical moment. Conversely, direct paths to musicianship are those by which the student acquires the knowledge and ability to consciously and purposely realize their musical intent.
15 December 2008
Cramming
One of the most significant validations of my disinclination towards taking composition lessons came when I overheard two graduate comp students sounding more like a couple of undergraduate performance majors. "When's you're next lesson?" one asked the other. "Tomorrow," he replied, in obvious anguish, "and I haven't written anything this week."
The successful imposition of a steady rate of production on the creative process is sometimes cited as an important exercise in compositional potency, akin to weight lifting in athletics, or long tones in brass playing. Assuming they can cut it, this prepares the student for a career as a Professional Composer, which entails accepting commissions with strict deadlines and turning out pieces to meet them the way bakers turn out loaves of bread every morning.
I once read, though I've forgotten where, that Webern's concept of condensation taken together with his relatively small output led some of his more devout followers to demonize high rates of compositional productivity in general. This, I think, would be just as much of a mistake as to expect everyone to be able to compose right on schedule.
It is becoming more apparent to me that I am not getting any better at meeting deadlines, and that my best work is done when it is undertaken just because, not only without a specific deadline, but also without any real idea of if or when it might be performed. I'm hardly the first person to feel this way, and yet the idea that Professional Composers must learn to deliver the goods on time in order to earn their stripes persists. Hence, though it's hard to say I'm happy not to have commissions piling up, I do see a silver lining in that I'm free to do what I want and write on my own schedule. I also am not any more inclined to see a composition teacher than I was before, since that would only earn me the worst of both worlds (all the deadlines, none of the performances).
See Satie's The Musician's Day for a piece of writing that captures the absurdity of scheduling time to be creative.
The successful imposition of a steady rate of production on the creative process is sometimes cited as an important exercise in compositional potency, akin to weight lifting in athletics, or long tones in brass playing. Assuming they can cut it, this prepares the student for a career as a Professional Composer, which entails accepting commissions with strict deadlines and turning out pieces to meet them the way bakers turn out loaves of bread every morning.
I once read, though I've forgotten where, that Webern's concept of condensation taken together with his relatively small output led some of his more devout followers to demonize high rates of compositional productivity in general. This, I think, would be just as much of a mistake as to expect everyone to be able to compose right on schedule.
It is becoming more apparent to me that I am not getting any better at meeting deadlines, and that my best work is done when it is undertaken just because, not only without a specific deadline, but also without any real idea of if or when it might be performed. I'm hardly the first person to feel this way, and yet the idea that Professional Composers must learn to deliver the goods on time in order to earn their stripes persists. Hence, though it's hard to say I'm happy not to have commissions piling up, I do see a silver lining in that I'm free to do what I want and write on my own schedule. I also am not any more inclined to see a composition teacher than I was before, since that would only earn me the worst of both worlds (all the deadlines, none of the performances).
See Satie's The Musician's Day for a piece of writing that captures the absurdity of scheduling time to be creative.
10 December 2008
Contradictions To Be Done Away With
(1) Louis Armstrong took his unconventional trumpet and vocal technique and figured out how to make great music with it, but Miles Davis just didn't know how to play the trumpet.
(2) Music that needs to be explained is too intellectual, but musicians that don't talk to their audience are arrogant.
(3) Jazz originated in the West, but it doesn't belong in a book or a course entitled "A History of Western Music."
(4) White jazz musicians who apply classical concepts to their jazz work are dishonoring jazz's African-American origins, but white jazz musicians who overtly imitate seminal African-American artists are just stealing from them for their own material gain, and/or because they have nothing original to say.
(5) No one wants to be labeled "avant-garde" by others (especially in person), but everyone labels themselves "avant-garde" given the chance (especially on their MySpace pages).
(2) Music that needs to be explained is too intellectual, but musicians that don't talk to their audience are arrogant.
(3) Jazz originated in the West, but it doesn't belong in a book or a course entitled "A History of Western Music."
(4) White jazz musicians who apply classical concepts to their jazz work are dishonoring jazz's African-American origins, but white jazz musicians who overtly imitate seminal African-American artists are just stealing from them for their own material gain, and/or because they have nothing original to say.
(5) No one wants to be labeled "avant-garde" by others (especially in person), but everyone labels themselves "avant-garde" given the chance (especially on their MySpace pages).
08 December 2008
Typecasting
The danger early on for me was being typecast as a percussion composer. I wrote a couple of little percussion pieces when I was still a student that began to get played a lot and are still played a lot, but I then realized that everyone was thinking of me as "Oh, he writes great percussion music." And so I purposely have said no for many, many years to any percussion ensemble request because I just don't want to be thought of as just that.
-Composer Christopher Rouse on Typecasting
I read those words several months ago and gave a cursory thought to those composers (including, I suspect, many "tuba composers") who have, in fact, not merely fallen into but actively cultivated such a typecast reputation as a way of ensuring performances and exposure from sources (like tuba players) eager to have anything they can get their hands on in the way of new music (note lower case). As a composer who could use some performances and exposure myself, I also had to snicker at the idea of turning down a commission of any kind, although I suppose it's more understandable from someone like Rouse who has had a great amount of success.
What only recently occurred to me, and hence reminded me of ths article, is that in my determination to prove the viability of the tuba in jazz, I have willingly contributed to my own typecasting as a jazz specialist. While this has no doubt yielded a smattering of success in this particular area, I've recently realized that the reason I have no opportunities whatsoever to perform classical music is that I haven't been trying real hard to find them. Viewing things in contrast to my jazz experience, where I've always been the outsider, it once seemed safe to assume that since my instrument was already a "standard" part of the orchestra, making things happen on the classical side would be easier. What I've since realized is that working without institutional support poses many of the same challenges to a classical musicians as a jazz musician, and that the time has come to apply the jazz model to my classical endeavors.
Since I first began playing professional (read: paying) gigs as a teen, a good 95% of those gigs have been non-classical. These have been mostly "money gigs," usually involving doing something not so near and dear to my heart, like being part of an ad hoc dixie-pep band for a football-themed US Bank regional conference. It's not easy to find a gig of any kind (let alone a paying one) playing my own music, yet "jazz" of almost any kind seems to be tolerated by quite a few bars and restaurants as peripherally related to the rock and pop that they normally host. This imputed similarity seems to me to be impossible without the counterweight of classical music dragging the stylistic center of gravity so far to the other side: what I do and what these venues normally host could not possibly be considered similar at all without there being something so dissimilar from both of them, something so demonized both aesthetically and socially in these circles, lurking out there beyond the pale. If you show up with a drum set, that's usually enough; show up with a stack of charts and music stands and refuse to go through the PA, and you start to draw negative attention to yourself.
For the last several years, my emphasis on playing jazz has led me to table any serious searching for alternative venues for concert music (an issue of great importance to me, if not only in theory) simply because this imputed similarity ensures that I at least have the option of performing at the established venues, if only infrequently, and this, being the path of least resistance, is the one I've taken. I do, however, take offense to the afore mentioned dynamic that makes this possible; I also have higher aspirations than to play in bars for the rest of my life, no matter what kind of music it is. Seeing that such venues likely wouldn't tolerate a "classical" presentation (though I look forward to duping them into it at some point just to see what happens), a renewed dedication to performing "classical" music necessitates a renewed search for appropriate places to present it, and (equally difficult) people to perform it with.
Though things are far from peachy in the Minneapolis jazz scene, there is at least a small network of accomplished players devoted to writing and performing their own music, as well as resurrecting works of the occasional forgotten genius, and making a good faith effort to find or make opportunities to present this work publicly. I can't say the same about classical music: the mention of getting a chamber group together to operate along these lines has been met more than once with, "When you have a [paying] gig lined up, let me know." The brass quintet in particular seems to be viewed by many as simply a cash cow project for the church and wedding circuits (for the record, if I ever get married, I want the Milo Fine Free Jazz Ensemble to play). The possibility that 5 brass players might "start a band" as an outlet for their own creativity rather than a business venture seems to be a remote one in these parts.
As an alternative to Greg Sandow's extolling of pop culture and Drew McManus' extolling of tuba players (flattered as we are, he obviously hasn't seen our dark side) as providing models for reforming the attitudes and presentation of classical music, I would humbly suggest that classical musicians look to the jazz world for a better model of vitality and viability. It's true, the saying goes that the best way to make a million dollars playing jazz is to start with 2 million; I'm not talking about money here. Money can do you-know-what with itself. I'm still waiting to meet classical players who put the realization of their artistic vision ahead of getting paid for playing their instrument any way they can. Certainly, there are plenty of non-classical players who fall into this trap as well, but there also seem to be enough high-minded ones to make up the difference.
To overcome this, I've decided that maybe I have to undo some of the typecasting that I've worked so hard to establish. Obviously, the idea, via Rouse, of refusing to play jazz anymore doesn't appeal to me at all (if Rouse really loved writing for percussion, he wouldn't/couldn't have refused commissions to do it). Instead, I've resolved to attempt to import just a little bit of the selfless devotion to art that is, in my limited experience, on display more often in jazz circles than classical ones. Once I'm typecast as someone who can't be typecast, I'll know I've succeeded.
-Composer Christopher Rouse on Typecasting
I read those words several months ago and gave a cursory thought to those composers (including, I suspect, many "tuba composers") who have, in fact, not merely fallen into but actively cultivated such a typecast reputation as a way of ensuring performances and exposure from sources (like tuba players) eager to have anything they can get their hands on in the way of new music (note lower case). As a composer who could use some performances and exposure myself, I also had to snicker at the idea of turning down a commission of any kind, although I suppose it's more understandable from someone like Rouse who has had a great amount of success.
What only recently occurred to me, and hence reminded me of ths article, is that in my determination to prove the viability of the tuba in jazz, I have willingly contributed to my own typecasting as a jazz specialist. While this has no doubt yielded a smattering of success in this particular area, I've recently realized that the reason I have no opportunities whatsoever to perform classical music is that I haven't been trying real hard to find them. Viewing things in contrast to my jazz experience, where I've always been the outsider, it once seemed safe to assume that since my instrument was already a "standard" part of the orchestra, making things happen on the classical side would be easier. What I've since realized is that working without institutional support poses many of the same challenges to a classical musicians as a jazz musician, and that the time has come to apply the jazz model to my classical endeavors.
Since I first began playing professional (read: paying) gigs as a teen, a good 95% of those gigs have been non-classical. These have been mostly "money gigs," usually involving doing something not so near and dear to my heart, like being part of an ad hoc dixie-pep band for a football-themed US Bank regional conference. It's not easy to find a gig of any kind (let alone a paying one) playing my own music, yet "jazz" of almost any kind seems to be tolerated by quite a few bars and restaurants as peripherally related to the rock and pop that they normally host. This imputed similarity seems to me to be impossible without the counterweight of classical music dragging the stylistic center of gravity so far to the other side: what I do and what these venues normally host could not possibly be considered similar at all without there being something so dissimilar from both of them, something so demonized both aesthetically and socially in these circles, lurking out there beyond the pale. If you show up with a drum set, that's usually enough; show up with a stack of charts and music stands and refuse to go through the PA, and you start to draw negative attention to yourself.
For the last several years, my emphasis on playing jazz has led me to table any serious searching for alternative venues for concert music (an issue of great importance to me, if not only in theory) simply because this imputed similarity ensures that I at least have the option of performing at the established venues, if only infrequently, and this, being the path of least resistance, is the one I've taken. I do, however, take offense to the afore mentioned dynamic that makes this possible; I also have higher aspirations than to play in bars for the rest of my life, no matter what kind of music it is. Seeing that such venues likely wouldn't tolerate a "classical" presentation (though I look forward to duping them into it at some point just to see what happens), a renewed dedication to performing "classical" music necessitates a renewed search for appropriate places to present it, and (equally difficult) people to perform it with.
Though things are far from peachy in the Minneapolis jazz scene, there is at least a small network of accomplished players devoted to writing and performing their own music, as well as resurrecting works of the occasional forgotten genius, and making a good faith effort to find or make opportunities to present this work publicly. I can't say the same about classical music: the mention of getting a chamber group together to operate along these lines has been met more than once with, "When you have a [paying] gig lined up, let me know." The brass quintet in particular seems to be viewed by many as simply a cash cow project for the church and wedding circuits (for the record, if I ever get married, I want the Milo Fine Free Jazz Ensemble to play). The possibility that 5 brass players might "start a band" as an outlet for their own creativity rather than a business venture seems to be a remote one in these parts.
As an alternative to Greg Sandow's extolling of pop culture and Drew McManus' extolling of tuba players (flattered as we are, he obviously hasn't seen our dark side) as providing models for reforming the attitudes and presentation of classical music, I would humbly suggest that classical musicians look to the jazz world for a better model of vitality and viability. It's true, the saying goes that the best way to make a million dollars playing jazz is to start with 2 million; I'm not talking about money here. Money can do you-know-what with itself. I'm still waiting to meet classical players who put the realization of their artistic vision ahead of getting paid for playing their instrument any way they can. Certainly, there are plenty of non-classical players who fall into this trap as well, but there also seem to be enough high-minded ones to make up the difference.
To overcome this, I've decided that maybe I have to undo some of the typecasting that I've worked so hard to establish. Obviously, the idea, via Rouse, of refusing to play jazz anymore doesn't appeal to me at all (if Rouse really loved writing for percussion, he wouldn't/couldn't have refused commissions to do it). Instead, I've resolved to attempt to import just a little bit of the selfless devotion to art that is, in my limited experience, on display more often in jazz circles than classical ones. Once I'm typecast as someone who can't be typecast, I'll know I've succeeded.
28 November 2008
Success
When a work of mine is deemed by conservatives to be too far out, and also deemed by radicals as not far enough out, I'll know I've succeeded.
24 November 2008
Good/Bad Vibes
Today, I finally feel up to confronting the fact that this space is by and large a place for the airing of negative feelings rather than positive ones. I'm well aware that most of what I write takes issue with some other position, often aggressively, and rarely if ever issues compliments to other musicians and bloggers. This is because I've found that the best way to figure out what I really think about something is to try to write persuasively about it; this was what initially pushed me towards writing about music, and it continues to be my primary attraction to this activity. The desire to "go public" with these documents is, admittedly, somewhat self-indulgent, but it enables others to comment on them, which I often find just as useful as the act of writing itself (and an event which I wish I could say happened more often).
If I've carved out a niche as something of a spoilsport/buzzkiller/mudslinger always off pouting in the corner, I would defend this sort of behavior by citing the need for something to offset the torrents of quid pro quo backslapping that dominate most of the rest of the music world. A well-known problem with musicians writing about music is that you can't expect them to bite the hand that feeds them by saying something negative about someone whose support they need, even if that's how they really feel. On that note, I'll put my money where my mouth is and say that the first example that comes to my mind here is the ITEA Journal, in which I'm not sure I've ever read a negative thing about anybody, at least not since I've been a member and paying attention.
Grateful as I am for the occasional exposure I myself have had in their pages, a glowing review from a source that issues nothing but glowing reviews doesn't mean much. Though there's no reason to get unduly vicious purely for its own sake, it sure would be refreshing to see a drubbing or two every so often, as this would at least make it seem like they mean all the nice things they say about each other. The reviews of new materials (i.e. scores in particular) have their own way of dancing around making judgments, namely by focusing on information about the piece (range, difficulty, style, etc.) rather than the reviewer's opinion of it. Useful as this is in some cases, I again have to wonder if the social dynamics at work aren't to blame for inhibiting "real" criticism, which would not only be more useful to the readership, but would further the ultimate goal of getting people to take the tuba and euphonium seriously by proving that the people who play it do, too.
Incongruously, then, I'll close with a compliment. Daniel Wolf, whose blog is among my favorites, put it well in a post from last year on a topic on which he has been an articulate and accurate observer:
...on the topic of boycotting competitions (in particular, those with high entry fees and low prizes), I have received 22 emails in support of my position and none against, and as gratifying as the echo was, it was a bit disturbing that not one of the 22 was willing to go public. While I might understand it if the emailer doesn't want to be associated in public with me...I dislike the idea that he or she doesn't want to upset the competition applecart by speaking out, and profoundly dislike the idea that she or he has chosen anonymity in order to preserve their own competition chances.
Well said.
If I've carved out a niche as something of a spoilsport/buzzkiller/mudslinger always off pouting in the corner, I would defend this sort of behavior by citing the need for something to offset the torrents of quid pro quo backslapping that dominate most of the rest of the music world. A well-known problem with musicians writing about music is that you can't expect them to bite the hand that feeds them by saying something negative about someone whose support they need, even if that's how they really feel. On that note, I'll put my money where my mouth is and say that the first example that comes to my mind here is the ITEA Journal, in which I'm not sure I've ever read a negative thing about anybody, at least not since I've been a member and paying attention.
Grateful as I am for the occasional exposure I myself have had in their pages, a glowing review from a source that issues nothing but glowing reviews doesn't mean much. Though there's no reason to get unduly vicious purely for its own sake, it sure would be refreshing to see a drubbing or two every so often, as this would at least make it seem like they mean all the nice things they say about each other. The reviews of new materials (i.e. scores in particular) have their own way of dancing around making judgments, namely by focusing on information about the piece (range, difficulty, style, etc.) rather than the reviewer's opinion of it. Useful as this is in some cases, I again have to wonder if the social dynamics at work aren't to blame for inhibiting "real" criticism, which would not only be more useful to the readership, but would further the ultimate goal of getting people to take the tuba and euphonium seriously by proving that the people who play it do, too.
Incongruously, then, I'll close with a compliment. Daniel Wolf, whose blog is among my favorites, put it well in a post from last year on a topic on which he has been an articulate and accurate observer:
...on the topic of boycotting competitions (in particular, those with high entry fees and low prizes), I have received 22 emails in support of my position and none against, and as gratifying as the echo was, it was a bit disturbing that not one of the 22 was willing to go public. While I might understand it if the emailer doesn't want to be associated in public with me...I dislike the idea that he or she doesn't want to upset the competition applecart by speaking out, and profoundly dislike the idea that she or he has chosen anonymity in order to preserve their own competition chances.
Well said.
19 November 2008
A Tuba in the Jazz Band?
One of my tuba students recently came to me for advice on how to convince his high school band director to let him play in the jazz band. Among other things, I offered to write a letter for him, which I've now turned into an "open letter" to all K-12 band directors who favor strict adherence to the "standard" big band instrumentation of saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and rhythm. My naively optimistic hope is that this document could be used by any student who wants to play a "non-standard" instrument in their school's jazz band, but whose band teacher won't allow it. I've posted the letter on my website as a PDF file:
A Tuba in the Jazz Band?
I'll refrain from rehashing the whole letter point by point in hopes that you, the reader, will click on the link and read it in its entirety. There are, however, a couple of additional thoughts I've had since I finished it.
First, I mention in the letter that this situation never arises at schools with small/weak music programs. That's because in those cases, there aren't enough (or good enough) students available to cover the parts in the first place, and hence, regardless of their feelings about jazz band instrumentation, the teacher is typically in no position to turn down interested students on any instrument. I suspect this accounts for the fact that the majority of my K-12 tuba students were already playing in jazz band when they came to me for lessons (a point which I was sure to emphasize in the letter). This makes it all the more frustrating that one who attends a school with a larger program would be the one to find himself potentially trespassed from jazz band because of his instrument, yet if you think about it, it makes perfect sense, since there apparently are more trumpet, trombone and saxophone players at his school than there are spots available, making the admission of other instrumentalists quite the slippery slope for his band teacher.
In hindsight, I realize now that as someone who came up through bare bones jazz programs rather than sprawling, competitive ones, I benefitted greatly from this very dynamic, even if it didn't seem like it much of the time. My high school band teacher, who was overworked generally (aren't they all?) and particularly inexperienced in the jazz realm, went looking for help and stumbled on Jim Torok and Kerry Ashmore, two traditional jazz musicians who had been working with school jazz bands on a volunteer basis for many years. She turned the reins over to them, and suddenly not only were we afforded the opportunity to work with two highly experienced professional musicians, but two highly experienced professional musicians who, I was soon to learn, often hire their best students. They ultimately gave me my first paying gigs while I was still in high school, not to mention instilling a love and understanding of early jazz that I may not have otherwise developed. To this day, I still play with both of them several times a year.
I lucked out again in college at the University of Minnesota, where Jazz Studies Director Dean Sorenson spearheaded a collaboration with the dance department that entailed commissioning many new works from local composers. When he offered to include tuba in the instrumentation, I jumped at the opportunity to be a full-time member of a big band for the first time, as well as write a piece of my own for the project. While at The U, I was also lucky enough to have drummer Phil Hey as a jazz combo instructor. Phil, who is ubiquitous on the local scene and is the first call drummer for many big names passing through from out of town, has been a valuable teacher, mentor, and friend over the years, but, oddly enough, one of a type which I may not have had if I had gone to a big name jazz school where TA's run all of the combos, as was the case at the University of Northern Colorado, where I spent a year as an exchange student. This is not to diminish the generosity of Dana Landry, the Director of Jazz Studies at UNC, who graciously agreed to do 1-on-1 lessons with me during my second semester, and also had me play a couple of tunes with the Lab Band I. (Did you get that last part, high school band directors?) Nonetheless, since all of the combos and most of the big bands were directed by TA's, this was my only direct contact with jazz faculty members while I was there.
Certainly, there were ups and downs to all of my academic jazz experiences, and I definitely did not feel lucky to be part of small programs at the time. Nonetheless, it has been difficult watching a student of my own be offered less (nothing, actually) by a program that has more to give, and it has also made me more grateful for what I did get to be a part of as a student.
Secondly, I mention in the letter that, in hindsight, the academic world in general seemed less receptive to me as a tuba player playing jazz than the "real world" of living, breathing musicians has been since I left school. I'll refrain from naming names here, although it should be obvious that the one's I've mentioned in a positive light above certainly aren't who I'm talking about. With this idea still fresh in my mind from writing the letter, I just happened to stumble on a recent New York Times article about the guitarist Mary Halvorson, from which this excerpt particularly jumped out at me:
In high school she enrolled in summer programs at the Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music, learning to shrug off chauvinistic appraisals of her talent.“Nobody would take me seriously,” she said. “They would take one look at me and say, ‘O.K., folk singer.’ That was really hard for me, and I was angry a lot of the time. I did all these summer programs, and I never encountered another female playing jazz guitar. Ever.” The experience taught her to be comfortable as the only woman on a bandstand, she said, adding that the issue rarely comes up anymore.
Let me preface my reaction to that very last passage by saying that I have no illusions that anything I've experienced as a tuba player in a saxophone player's world compares to the pervasiveness or hurtfulness of sexism or racism. Nonetheless, both of our stories point toward an indictment of musical academia as unduly resistant to diversity, the road less travelled, "the world as it might be" as opposed to "the world as it is," or whatever else you want to call it. Maybe we knew that already, but if nothing else, this is more fuel for the fire.
-----
I'll close this post the way I began my "open letter," which is to say that the very notion of "standard" and "non-standard" instruments is more representative of where the music publishing industry has thrown in their lot than it is of the whole of jazz history and the attitudes of its practitioners. It's never been about what you play, but how you play. Though I am a tuba player, this is about much more than just the tuba. It's too bad that so many schools have hitched their wagons to a jazz band instrumentation that automatically excludes more than half of the wind band, virtually all of the string orchestra, and everyone in the choir. In the face of this, creative band directors have always found the flexibility necessary to involve all of their interested students in jazz, regardless of the instruments they play. As much as we appreciate these extra efforts, they really ought to be par for the course, and we ought not accept anything less.
A Tuba in the Jazz Band?
I'll refrain from rehashing the whole letter point by point in hopes that you, the reader, will click on the link and read it in its entirety. There are, however, a couple of additional thoughts I've had since I finished it.
First, I mention in the letter that this situation never arises at schools with small/weak music programs. That's because in those cases, there aren't enough (or good enough) students available to cover the parts in the first place, and hence, regardless of their feelings about jazz band instrumentation, the teacher is typically in no position to turn down interested students on any instrument. I suspect this accounts for the fact that the majority of my K-12 tuba students were already playing in jazz band when they came to me for lessons (a point which I was sure to emphasize in the letter). This makes it all the more frustrating that one who attends a school with a larger program would be the one to find himself potentially trespassed from jazz band because of his instrument, yet if you think about it, it makes perfect sense, since there apparently are more trumpet, trombone and saxophone players at his school than there are spots available, making the admission of other instrumentalists quite the slippery slope for his band teacher.
In hindsight, I realize now that as someone who came up through bare bones jazz programs rather than sprawling, competitive ones, I benefitted greatly from this very dynamic, even if it didn't seem like it much of the time. My high school band teacher, who was overworked generally (aren't they all?) and particularly inexperienced in the jazz realm, went looking for help and stumbled on Jim Torok and Kerry Ashmore, two traditional jazz musicians who had been working with school jazz bands on a volunteer basis for many years. She turned the reins over to them, and suddenly not only were we afforded the opportunity to work with two highly experienced professional musicians, but two highly experienced professional musicians who, I was soon to learn, often hire their best students. They ultimately gave me my first paying gigs while I was still in high school, not to mention instilling a love and understanding of early jazz that I may not have otherwise developed. To this day, I still play with both of them several times a year.
I lucked out again in college at the University of Minnesota, where Jazz Studies Director Dean Sorenson spearheaded a collaboration with the dance department that entailed commissioning many new works from local composers. When he offered to include tuba in the instrumentation, I jumped at the opportunity to be a full-time member of a big band for the first time, as well as write a piece of my own for the project. While at The U, I was also lucky enough to have drummer Phil Hey as a jazz combo instructor. Phil, who is ubiquitous on the local scene and is the first call drummer for many big names passing through from out of town, has been a valuable teacher, mentor, and friend over the years, but, oddly enough, one of a type which I may not have had if I had gone to a big name jazz school where TA's run all of the combos, as was the case at the University of Northern Colorado, where I spent a year as an exchange student. This is not to diminish the generosity of Dana Landry, the Director of Jazz Studies at UNC, who graciously agreed to do 1-on-1 lessons with me during my second semester, and also had me play a couple of tunes with the Lab Band I. (Did you get that last part, high school band directors?) Nonetheless, since all of the combos and most of the big bands were directed by TA's, this was my only direct contact with jazz faculty members while I was there.
Certainly, there were ups and downs to all of my academic jazz experiences, and I definitely did not feel lucky to be part of small programs at the time. Nonetheless, it has been difficult watching a student of my own be offered less (nothing, actually) by a program that has more to give, and it has also made me more grateful for what I did get to be a part of as a student.
Secondly, I mention in the letter that, in hindsight, the academic world in general seemed less receptive to me as a tuba player playing jazz than the "real world" of living, breathing musicians has been since I left school. I'll refrain from naming names here, although it should be obvious that the one's I've mentioned in a positive light above certainly aren't who I'm talking about. With this idea still fresh in my mind from writing the letter, I just happened to stumble on a recent New York Times article about the guitarist Mary Halvorson, from which this excerpt particularly jumped out at me:
In high school she enrolled in summer programs at the Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music, learning to shrug off chauvinistic appraisals of her talent.“Nobody would take me seriously,” she said. “They would take one look at me and say, ‘O.K., folk singer.’ That was really hard for me, and I was angry a lot of the time. I did all these summer programs, and I never encountered another female playing jazz guitar. Ever.” The experience taught her to be comfortable as the only woman on a bandstand, she said, adding that the issue rarely comes up anymore.
Let me preface my reaction to that very last passage by saying that I have no illusions that anything I've experienced as a tuba player in a saxophone player's world compares to the pervasiveness or hurtfulness of sexism or racism. Nonetheless, both of our stories point toward an indictment of musical academia as unduly resistant to diversity, the road less travelled, "the world as it might be" as opposed to "the world as it is," or whatever else you want to call it. Maybe we knew that already, but if nothing else, this is more fuel for the fire.
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I'll close this post the way I began my "open letter," which is to say that the very notion of "standard" and "non-standard" instruments is more representative of where the music publishing industry has thrown in their lot than it is of the whole of jazz history and the attitudes of its practitioners. It's never been about what you play, but how you play. Though I am a tuba player, this is about much more than just the tuba. It's too bad that so many schools have hitched their wagons to a jazz band instrumentation that automatically excludes more than half of the wind band, virtually all of the string orchestra, and everyone in the choir. In the face of this, creative band directors have always found the flexibility necessary to involve all of their interested students in jazz, regardless of the instruments they play. As much as we appreciate these extra efforts, they really ought to be par for the course, and we ought not accept anything less.
31 October 2008
Trick or Treat? Blog Month Post-Mortem
Today is Halloween, which has always been my favorite holiday, but this year, while most of the rest of the country is busy donning their best costumes, I am shedding mine, for this is the last day of October, the month where I attempt to be something I'm not, namely, a profligate blogger who posts regularly and always leaves his readers wanting...less.
The blog month project took a direct hit within its first week, went down in flames midway through the third, and staged an unexpected but welcome rally in the fourth. Too little, too late. Though I failed miserably to accomplish to goal I had set for myself (to post every day during the month, or at the very least, to average a post a day), it was worth attempting simply to confirm my long-held suspicion that I simply don't have the time or inclination to post on a daily basis. Nonetheless, I do enjoy occasionally dumping my misguided musico-philosophical views on the few unsuspecting readers who happen to stumble their way over here from time to time, and assuming that no self-respecting peer-reviewed publication would touch me with a ten foot double reed, I have no intention of giving it up any time soon, even if for long stretches it appears that I have.
Consider yourselves warned that beginning with our next installment, this blog is liable to start looking an awful lot like it did before (i.e. two posts a month totaling several thousand words). While I intend to make Blog Month an annual event here at My Fickle Ears Dig It, it would be quite a shock indeed if it were ever to succeed in its stated purpose (for the record, I averaged about 0.645 posts per day; we'll try to improve on that next year). With any luck, quality has not suffered too terribly in the company of increased quantity over the last few weeks, and if there is in fact anyone out there who reads this blog regularly enough in order for the frequency and length of the posts to have become monotonous, at least that routine has been broken for the time being. For new readers, feel free to enjoy the entire month at your own pace; I'll be leaving it up on the main page for a while simply so I can wallow the fleeting quasi-profligacy that was my October 2008. Don't rush yourselves; it may have to last you a while.
Hat tip to Daniel Wolf for adding the word profligate, as well as its variants, to my vocabulary. I can't stop using it, probably because I'll never be one.
The blog month project took a direct hit within its first week, went down in flames midway through the third, and staged an unexpected but welcome rally in the fourth. Too little, too late. Though I failed miserably to accomplish to goal I had set for myself (to post every day during the month, or at the very least, to average a post a day), it was worth attempting simply to confirm my long-held suspicion that I simply don't have the time or inclination to post on a daily basis. Nonetheless, I do enjoy occasionally dumping my misguided musico-philosophical views on the few unsuspecting readers who happen to stumble their way over here from time to time, and assuming that no self-respecting peer-reviewed publication would touch me with a ten foot double reed, I have no intention of giving it up any time soon, even if for long stretches it appears that I have.
Consider yourselves warned that beginning with our next installment, this blog is liable to start looking an awful lot like it did before (i.e. two posts a month totaling several thousand words). While I intend to make Blog Month an annual event here at My Fickle Ears Dig It, it would be quite a shock indeed if it were ever to succeed in its stated purpose (for the record, I averaged about 0.645 posts per day; we'll try to improve on that next year). With any luck, quality has not suffered too terribly in the company of increased quantity over the last few weeks, and if there is in fact anyone out there who reads this blog regularly enough in order for the frequency and length of the posts to have become monotonous, at least that routine has been broken for the time being. For new readers, feel free to enjoy the entire month at your own pace; I'll be leaving it up on the main page for a while simply so I can wallow the fleeting quasi-profligacy that was my October 2008. Don't rush yourselves; it may have to last you a while.
Hat tip to Daniel Wolf for adding the word profligate, as well as its variants, to my vocabulary. I can't stop using it, probably because I'll never be one.
29 October 2008
Pinocchio Changes
It has been my opinion for some time that of all the boneheaded errors contained in the original (read: illegal) Real Books, Wayne Shorter seems to suffer more than any other single composer represented. The changes for Speak No Evil, for example, which is an eminent jazz classic and gets called at jam sessions with some regularity, are not even close. The same goes for "Pinocchio," a rarely-heard yet no less brilliant Shorter composition that has undoubtedly suffered from the somewhat mysterious and even haphazard treatments it first received on the Miles Davis Quintet's album "Nefertiti."
Several months ago, I encountered an excellent recording of "Pinocchio" by the Ernie Watts Quartet, which inspired me to attempt to learn the tune myself. As all lead sheets I had hitherto seen had obvious and egregious mistakes in them, I decided to start from scratch with the original recordings. While I can't be certain that I've necessarily figured out what Shorter actually wrote, the chart I've posted below has what I feel are eminently usable changes for this tune, or at least vast improvements on the Real Book changes.
If mine is not entirely accurate as far as what the original lead sheets used by Miles et al actually said on them, I'm reasonably certain that the chordscales (yes, it's officially one word now) represent the correct collections of pitches, and that the "real" changes would simply be other modes of these same scales. I've also constructed "simplified" solo changes which omit some of the faster moving passing harmonies and use more familiar chord symbols than the ones I got attached to initially. To my ears, this is the approach that Watts et al take in their burning rendition, although I can't be sure without asking them.
It should also be noted that pianist Steve Khan has put together a great discussion of this tune and Herbie Hancock's solo over it from the original up tempo version on "Nefertiti." He even offers up a handwritten transcription of the solo (take that notation software mavens). Though I resisted looking at his chart until I'd done a good deal of playing along and listening myself, there are very few disagreements to be mentioned.
As for the alternate take, which affords us the opportunity to hear things at a bit slower tempo, I think it's interesting that in the first chorus, Ron Carter remains on an F# throughout both the 13th and 14th measures, whereas most of the rest of the time, the chord in the 14th bar seems to be built on root E. It's not unusual for pianists and horn players to worry more about diatonic collections than which mode of them they are actually implying, but the bass player is usually very concerned with this. Nonetheless, this is a wonderful variation on what appear to be the "correct" changes; Dmaj7/F# implies Phrygian, a sound that was becoming more common in jazz around the time these recordings were made, and to this day is still quite evocative of this particular time in jazz history.
In playing along with the tune myself, I eventually fell into the habit of playing a descending bass line (only one pitch per bar) in this part of the form: F# in bar 13 (the root), E in bar 14 (also the root), D# in bar 15 (the major 3rd of what I came to hear as B7alt.; others say F13(#11); both are modes of C melodic minor), C# in bar 16 (the 5th of F#7), and B in bars 17 and 18 (back to the root). It works nicely, especially considering that it is actually rather awkward for the bass player to imply forward momentum in this part of the form over virtually any of the possible combinations of changes, for in all such possible variations, there is at least one awkward moment in the root movement, with F# and B predominating while the qualities of the chords they support are changing more drastically. One would be tempted to turn to an F# pedal in bars 13-16, but unfortunately, this clashes terribly with the C melodic minor harmony in bar 15.
As is generally the case with this tune, this passage represents a challenge for the imagination, but one which yields great rewards when well met. With any luck, we'll be hearing it played (and playing it ourselves) more often in the years to come.
27 October 2008
More Squiggles
As yet another follow-up to the post on composing with notation programs, here are three more pages from my oeuvre that required some extracurricular fiddling with Sibelius. All three are from my "Reflections on a Theme of Eric Dolphy" for two pianos (extra credit to anyone who can identify the source of the theme from these excerpts).
I'm well aware that, all in all, the examples I've given are not exactly overwhelming proof of extensive subversion of the "normal" operation of the software, nor even unqualified successes in attempting something less. There seem to be two major categories of tasks that I turn to quite a bit: free meter (Sibelius calls this "irrgeular bars") and feathered beams. Since I use them both a lot, and since, really, they're not all that difficult to obtain in Sibelius, neither seems to set me back much in the course of working on a piece, even if I am in fact composing the music as I enter it into the computer.
The most annoying thing about inserting a bar of a irregular length is that you have to know exactly how long it needs to be beforehand, then insert a bar of this length, and then enter the notes. Hence, it is usually not possible to compose directly into such a bar as you will inevitably revise the lick a few times before settling on something, hence changing the length; instead, I often compose what I want, then count the durations of the notes, then create the irregular bar, then copy and paste the lick into the irregular bar. It sounds very awkward trying to explain it verbally, but after several years and dozens of pieces, it's like riding a bike.
While irregular bars obviously cannot be longer than the width of the page and margins will allow, there is an easy way to make any barline invisible; hence, by hiding the barline at the end of the system, you can give the impression of two adjacent systems comprising a single, very long irregular bar. This is what I did in "You've Been Promoted To Kriho," a piece from my first set of examples two posts ago (of course, you have to do the same calculations of the lengths of the bars, deciding ahead of time where you want to break the system; again, sounds complicated, but it's really not, and as you can see from the fact that I can't shut up about it, I actually find this kind of thing fun to do and to talk about).
Quite possibly the greatest feature of Concertware (one that Finale and Sibelius would both do well to make available as an option if they haven't already) was to enter what it called "Free Time" as the time signature, at which point you could write to your hearts content without any bar lines whatsoever. Concertware used a cursor the way a word processor does; in combination with the "Free Time" feature, this offered a glimmer of the sort of uninhibited functionality that some notation software detractors would no doubt like to see. (And come on, who didn't love "Free Time" in elementary school? The mere phrase itself lent this feature a certain attractiveness in its ability to spark childlike curiosity in the user.)
I find it very interesting that notation software finds itself under attack simultaneously as both too easy and too difficult, too forward looking and not forward looking enough. There are those who want to move forward with the full gamut of 20th century notational innovations in tow, and for whom current software is simply inadequate for this task; and then there are those for whom the compositional process itself is inextricably bound up with pencil and paper, without which the act has become something with which they are not familiar. Nonetheless, I suspect that it will not be until we have had the opportunity to observe a couple of generations who have never known any other way that we will be able to say for sure what the effects have been, and with necessity (last I checked) still being the mother of invention, I have a strong suspicion that these generations will turn whatever tools it is they have available to their distinct advantage, the habits and predilections of their forebears be damned.
I'm well aware that, all in all, the examples I've given are not exactly overwhelming proof of extensive subversion of the "normal" operation of the software, nor even unqualified successes in attempting something less. There seem to be two major categories of tasks that I turn to quite a bit: free meter (Sibelius calls this "irrgeular bars") and feathered beams. Since I use them both a lot, and since, really, they're not all that difficult to obtain in Sibelius, neither seems to set me back much in the course of working on a piece, even if I am in fact composing the music as I enter it into the computer.
The most annoying thing about inserting a bar of a irregular length is that you have to know exactly how long it needs to be beforehand, then insert a bar of this length, and then enter the notes. Hence, it is usually not possible to compose directly into such a bar as you will inevitably revise the lick a few times before settling on something, hence changing the length; instead, I often compose what I want, then count the durations of the notes, then create the irregular bar, then copy and paste the lick into the irregular bar. It sounds very awkward trying to explain it verbally, but after several years and dozens of pieces, it's like riding a bike.
While irregular bars obviously cannot be longer than the width of the page and margins will allow, there is an easy way to make any barline invisible; hence, by hiding the barline at the end of the system, you can give the impression of two adjacent systems comprising a single, very long irregular bar. This is what I did in "You've Been Promoted To Kriho," a piece from my first set of examples two posts ago (of course, you have to do the same calculations of the lengths of the bars, deciding ahead of time where you want to break the system; again, sounds complicated, but it's really not, and as you can see from the fact that I can't shut up about it, I actually find this kind of thing fun to do and to talk about).
Quite possibly the greatest feature of Concertware (one that Finale and Sibelius would both do well to make available as an option if they haven't already) was to enter what it called "Free Time" as the time signature, at which point you could write to your hearts content without any bar lines whatsoever. Concertware used a cursor the way a word processor does; in combination with the "Free Time" feature, this offered a glimmer of the sort of uninhibited functionality that some notation software detractors would no doubt like to see. (And come on, who didn't love "Free Time" in elementary school? The mere phrase itself lent this feature a certain attractiveness in its ability to spark childlike curiosity in the user.)
I find it very interesting that notation software finds itself under attack simultaneously as both too easy and too difficult, too forward looking and not forward looking enough. There are those who want to move forward with the full gamut of 20th century notational innovations in tow, and for whom current software is simply inadequate for this task; and then there are those for whom the compositional process itself is inextricably bound up with pencil and paper, without which the act has become something with which they are not familiar. Nonetheless, I suspect that it will not be until we have had the opportunity to observe a couple of generations who have never known any other way that we will be able to say for sure what the effects have been, and with necessity (last I checked) still being the mother of invention, I have a strong suspicion that these generations will turn whatever tools it is they have available to their distinct advantage, the habits and predilections of their forebears be damned.
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