tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13122891001088619942023-11-15T05:19:23.161-08:00New Music CanadaGary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-4255411673408029582022-07-02T14:16:00.001-07:002022-07-02T14:16:31.351-07:00<p> rigor mortis</p><p>In the last several months, I've had the opportunity to hear premieres of several new works by several composers. With some exceptions, I have been struck by, firstly, the similarity of some of these works, and secondly, by their seeming rejection of anything like discourse.</p><p>For me, the best music is music that wants to discuss something with me, or, at the very least, show me something I hadn't thought of. In the most obvious cases, like Beethoven 5, there is a clear-cut process of exposure and development. Beethoven presents the famous basic motive, and then goes on to discuss this, in the process showing us all the possibilities we would not have thought of ourselves. In less obvious examples, like Piano and String Quartet by Morton Feldman, there is a beautiful and subtle evolution of detail from a poignantly presented central sonority, almost as though the composer is reconsidering his basic idea very slowly, gradually exposing more and more of the nuances.</p><p>Much of the new music I have been hearing is the opposite. Almost none of it involves any kind of forward momentum-- rather, it seems content to expose some sounds (some of which, I admit, are truly beautiful) and then move on. Any suggestion that the composer wants me to reconsider or think about what they have just let me hear is swept away as the work progresses.</p><p>Perhaps the most striking thing about much of what I've heard is the insistence on scales, repeated notes, and that very Hollywood ominous, swelling low register chord. I remember having a conversation once with a very clever young composer who was deliberately avoiding any kind of motives, themes, development, etc., who felt that he was creating a work from texture, without reference to more traditional means. I couldn't say I felt he was successful, but at least I respected the fact that he had a concept (albeit one based on a misunderstanding of spectralism.) This is not true of much of the music I've been hearing lately. So many works seem to be scales careening up and down (mostly up,) followed by short, sharp chords, interpolated with repeated notes, followed by "scary" low register growling. The actual harmonic language seems not to matter much-- I've heard both aggressively consonant modal music of this type, and aggressively octatonic-y dissonant music of this type.</p><p>The net result is music that I just can't care about. I can't retain it, and I don't have any interest in hearing it again.</p><p>And let me be perfectly clear: these are very accomplished composers. The instrumental writing is impeccable. They seem to be doing exactly what they want to be doing, and they are doing it well.</p><p>I just wonder if what they seem to want to do is actually worth doing.</p><p>Is new music truly going to become New Age music? Because that's how some of this comes across to me, especially the modal stuff. The octatonic-y stuff isn't New Age, but it works the same way, washing over the listener and attempting to create an immediate impact without worrying too much about the big picture.</p><p>Yes, rigor is old-fashioned. The rigor that defined what has come to be regarded as standard repertoire is very much a part of the past, part of a tradition that perhaps no longer applies. Are audiences really not interested in discourse anymore? Because I can't think of a single "standard rep" work that doesn't engage with rigor. Even Debussy, the godfather of non-developmental music, couldn't completely forsake tradition.</p><p>Time will tell if this new music is relevant.<br /></p>Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-59888252572851926542019-07-08T12:27:00.000-07:002019-07-08T12:27:02.439-07:00probably we're just stupidOver many years, in the course of my work, I have investigated quite possibly more than a thousand pieces of music. I have done this for two reasons: in my various positions, I have recommended repertoire, and I am personally very curious.<br />
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One of the things I have always wondered about is why the history of Western Art Music consists of about 500 pieces by about 50 composers. Yes, there have been other works and other composers, but we no longer talk about them.<br />
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Why?<br />
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Part of me believes very simply that the music just isn't good enough. That's an important distinction: it isn't "good enough", it's not "bad".<br />
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Part of me suspects that there are more complex forces at work. The enemy of popularity is unfamiliarity, isn't it? Or is the real enemy of popularity a lack of quality? If that's the case, why did works like "The Dance of the Hours" by Ponchielli become so successful? It's pretty dreadful as music goes, although it does have a great tune. Admittedly, many of these once-popular pieces have faded with time, but there's no denying that they somehow achieved great popularity for many decades, even centuries.<br />
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Was there some kind of conspiracy involved? Were women composers from the 1800s discriminated against? Did Chopin's supporters set out to destroy the legacy of Moscheles, who was considered to be a better composer in his lifetime? Was William Sterndale Bennett shunted aside because he was an Englishman in a German musical world? Are Canadian composers ignored worldwide because we're Canadian?<br />
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Or is the music just not good enough?<br />
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I am certain of one thing: there are no, absolutely, without question, no undiscovered masterpieces out there. There are no undiscovered genius contemporary composers. There is a lot of music that's okay, even good. There's a lot of music that we could listen to once in while that certainly won't offend us.<br />
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But it isn't good enough.Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-8630811796106148502018-11-12T14:23:00.000-08:002018-11-12T14:23:24.490-08:00death by common timeLast year, while on vacation in the south, I observed something that resonated with me. We were in a private home on a beautiful inlet in Grand Cayman. It was quiet. The neighbors in the adjacent villas were quiet.<br />
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Then some low-grade sub-morons showed up a few villas up the bay. On their first afternoon, one moron got into a pedal-boat, set up a small stereo system, turned on what appeared to be some kind of rap or hip-hop, and pedaled out into the ocean.<br />
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I say "appeared to be" because of course, it was impossible to hear anything other than the backbeat. With a wind blowing and waves streaming, it was very likely impossible even for the dope on the boat to hear much other than the bass drum and snare drum.<br />
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And then it hit me: he was organizing his environment into 4/4 time. Being as intelligent as a bag of hammers, he couldn't stand silence (God forbid that he would have to be alone inside his own head), and it didn't really matter what he was listening to, as long as it was in 4/4 at roughly a metronome marking of between 108 and 120 (just enough to slightly raise his heart rate.)<br />
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And then it dawned on me even further: daily, millions of people are organizing their subway rides, bus rides, drives, walks, meals, house chores, etc., into 4/4 time, all at about the same tempo. It's a lubricant for their chaotic lives. It is a kind of drug, a new Soma.<br />
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Pop music, for which I have a great fondness, has slowly devolved over the last two decades into organizing noise. It is not a coincidence that bass and drum music-- oops, sorry, drum and bass music (one of my students pompously corrected me on that, because, seriously, it's very important to get it right), has done away completely with harmony and melody. Because after all, if you're dumb as a tree, what do you need harmony and melody for?<br />
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It seems that people no longer really need the music, they just need the rhythm. We have truly descended to a point of lowest common denominator. And it's always the safe symmetry of 4/4 time.<br />
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Think about it: how many hits have been in any other metre? One or two, true, but certainly not many. Even country music, where you used to be able to count on a good waltz tune once in a while, has gone almost exclusively 4/4. More complex or changing metres are the purview of progressive rock, which does not appeal to a wide audience.<br />
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I continue to believe that some enterprising DJ could render Carter's Second Quartet palatable to a wider audience by doing a re-mix with a backbeat in 4/4 time. That's presuming, of course, he or she could find the primary metre.<br />
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Oh, but wait, it might not work. The quartet is longer than the three and a half minute maximum attention span of the ADHD generation.<br />
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John Cage had the numbers right, just not in the right format. 4/4 3:30.Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-64175705285823654272017-12-10T11:18:00.000-08:002017-12-10T11:18:13.157-08:00so you sent a score to a Canadian orchestra-- part 3It has been over a year since I posted last, largely because the new music situation in this country hasn't really changed, except that we're poorer and sell less tickets. But I keep getting asked about access to orchestras, and I realized that not all the questions I receive were answered in my two previous postings about the subject (which you should read before you read this.)<br />
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Here are some questions I just received:<br />
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How can I put an orchestral piece on the radar of Canadian orchestras? The piece for Esprit went really well, and I’d love for it to continue its life with other orchestras.<br /><br />Do “cold calls” (emails, score via mail) ever actually work?<br />
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Do you email the artistic director or orchestra staff?<br />
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Some of this I covered in the first two postings. But I like the really general nature of these questions, so I'll try to answer in more detail. I will answer the first question last, because it is the most complex.<br />
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Do "cold calls" work? Probably not. But......once in a while, you may get lucky and present yourself at a critical programming moment when whoever is doing the programming is looking for a work that fits a specific profile, and your work is perfect. It's rare, but it happens.<br />
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If you are going to do a cold call, here's what to do:<br />
Know who you are. This is obvious, but apparently, a lot of composers don't understand it. If you are a high modernist, look at the programming for a given orchestra and see if they do any high modernism. If they don't, they probably won't look at your score kindly. If they programme nothing but high modernism, don't send them your charming Suite from the movie "Happy Happy." They won't like it.<br />
Find out who the appropriate person is to contact. At the TSO, we actually have composers trying to submit music to people in the ticket subscription office. Do your homework-- there will be only one or two people responsible for new scores. If there is a Composer In Residence, that's who it is. If not, in a larger orchestra, it will be the Artistic Administrator (they can have various titles.) In smaller orchestras, it may well be the conductor him/herself. Don't waste your time with anyone else. Do not submit your score to the librarian. Do not submit your score to the personnel manager. Do not submit your score to the CEO.<br />
Send a good recording first, either as a link or as a SMALL mp3 file-- link preferred. If someone has to download a 10 meg file, they won't.<br />
Do not send MIDI unless you are really good at it. Hitting play in Finale or Sibelius is not being good at it-- it will work against you. You need to know how to perform your work into a Digital Audio Workstation with professional sounds, and then how to finesse it into something useful.<br />
If you do not have a good recording of your work, remind yourself that life is unfair and that you never get any breaks, and that other people are out to get you, and that so many other people have what they don't deserve it's enough to give you a stroke.<br />
Include a link to a score. Do not email a score.<br />
Both the above options can be accomplished by regular mail. Send a CD with a score and it will likely end up with the right person.<br />
Do not harass people. I admit that there are times when being persistent pays off, but it will only pay off once. Once you are off the back of the person you are harassing, they will talk about what a harassing pain in the butt you are. Everyone in the orchestra community will know.<br />
Be patient, and re-read the earlier posts about not making assumptions about what happened to your work.<br />
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I alluded to this above, but yes, you can certainly email the staff of an orchestra. It is in poor form to try to directly email the music director, except when the orchestra is a small one, and even then, your first approach should be to determine who actually intercepts emails to the MD.<br />
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How do you put your orchestral work on the radar of orchestras? Basically, there is not a lot you can do about this. But here are a few suggestions.<br />
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Don't be shy, and don't be aggressive. Letting orchestras know through the above methods that you are around and have some repertoire is a good thing.<br />
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Watch for reading sessions and calls for scores. TSO does a regular yearly reading session with 3 to 5 composers, and the MD is always present. It will probably not pay off immediately, but your name at least (if not the work itself) gets on the orchestra's radar.<br />
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Win a prize. Not a piddly SOCAN prize that no one pays any attention to, but something more substantial, like the Azrieli Commissioning prize or the Barlow prize. Orchestras notice this.<br />
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Get interesting commissions. I can't be much more specific, but something like a cantata for the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir will peak the interest of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.<br />
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Attend things. Go to new music festivals. It's expensive, but it pays off. Go to the post-concert parties and talk to people. Be someone they remember.<br />
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A word about specialized success. Success with new music ensembles does not automatically translate into success with mainstream orchestras. Success with the Esprit Orchestra will be noticed by CIRs, but probably not by MDs. It's great that you had a success with Esprit, who are the most important new music ensemble in Canada and one of the most important in the world, but they are still a new music ensemble. New music ensembles do not generally appear on the radar of mainstream orchestras.<br />
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Remember, re-read the earlier posts. Be sure that the orchestral world is the world for you. And good luck.<br />
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<br />Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-37320872076844333812016-03-25T10:32:00.000-07:002016-03-25T10:32:08.842-07:00has it come to this?There has been a lot of discussion recently about the relevance of "Western Art Music". We know that orchestras are having huge problems selling tickets, we know that classical music sales seem to be waning, we know that audiences are growing bored and disinterested. There is some implication that pop music, on the other hand, is going wild, becoming more and more successful with each passing day.<br />
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I disagree. Consider how pop music is used. When I was young, a new Beatles album was a thing to be anticipated. When the album came out, we would listen to it repeatedly. I remember hearing Abby Road about 15 times when it was fresh. Most importantly, it was listened to live, not through earphones, which were quite rare (and expensive.) The fidelity was as good as the stereo you could afford. You could jump up and down and dance around the room to the music, singing along with it, if you wanted to do so.<br />
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Where has pop music gone now? First of all, it has become, plain and simple, a commodity. No one-- absolutely no one-- can pretend that contemporary pop song writers are on the level of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, etc. What are people buying? They are buying a pre-packaged product off the shelf, one that will deliver no surprises, but which will give them exactly what they expect. It's just like buying toilet paper. The music is bland, folks. Let's admit it. It all sounds the same (within each genre.) There are no great melodists out there. The risk-takers are all gone (now that Bowie is gone.)<br />
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More importantly, where is pop music used? Clubs, where it is not the central focus any more. During the disco era, the clubs existed for the music. People went to the clubs to dance and socialize using the music as a common ground. Gradually, drugs crept in, and gradually, the experience of dancing to the music in a club became going to a club as an event that involved, among other things, some music. Club-going is not a musical thing anymore.<br />
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And the other significant use of music is even worse: portable players. 20 years ago, portable players were fairly large and fairly rare. The miniaturization of these players into pods and phones has made them ubiquitous. But it has done something much more insidious: it has driven users into their own solipsistic world. I remember very well having a Sony Walkman in the 80s, walking down Bay Street, listening to the Security album by Peter Gabriel. It remains, to this day, one of the weirdest experiences I have ever had. Hearing the Ghanese and Native American drumming, to the exclusion of all other sound, while walking through the Bay Street office towers, was beyond surreal. I never did it again.<br />
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Every single younger person does this now routinely. We live in an autistic world, where we cut ourselves off from everything around us. We plug those phone ear buds in, crank up the 4/4 @ m.m.108 and withdraw. Everything about our world is withdrawn. People don't talk to each other anymore, they text. The horror of the original Kiyoshi Kurosawa movie Pulse is coming true: our souls are retreating into our electronic devices. Is this really music, or is it a drug? Or something worse?<br />
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I used to think that beer was Soma. Now I believe that contemporary pop music is Soma.<br />
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Western Art Music concert music, especially orchestral concert music, is not comfortable the way Soma is. Contemporary music is even less comfortable. I repeat: dissonance/consonance, tonality/atonality, these are not problems anymore; unfamiliarity is the enemy, and that goes for even the most accessible music. Pop music, now that it has become homogenized, is a comfortable product, entirely predictable, without any nasty creative touches to upset people.<br />
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Or maybe I'm just getting old.Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-38680229300275400942015-09-27T18:15:00.000-07:002015-12-23T11:23:06.914-08:00conducting part 2I grew up with the legendary conductors still alive. I remember seeing Fritz Reiner and Leonard Bernstein on TV as a child. Bruno Walter was still alive when I was 8 years old. I didn't really have a sense of who they were, but I knew that the music they were making was remarkable. And I have vivid images of both Reiner and Bernstein doing the most amazing things while conducting-- Reiner barely moving the baton, and Bernstein getting an orchestra to play by flaring his nostrils.<br />
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The "great maestro" began with Mahler, although he really just refined the image which had already been created by Wagner, Von Bulow, and perhaps a few others. But Mahler is arguably the first contemporary "maestro". He was supreme boss. His word was law.<br />
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In my youth, this model was how conductors operated. There are endless stories about conductors behaving badly, from torturing members of the orchestra through assaulting female soloists to staggering on stage so drunk they can't see.<br />
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The dynamics of the orchestra world have changed over the last several decades. Conductors still behave badly, but the days of such ruthless entitlement seem to be over. Players in orchestra will no longer tolerate abuse quietly. A conductor who staggers on stage drunk will not get hired back.<br />
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In the middle of the 20th Century, the "great maestro" was something that a certain kind of person aspired to be. I remember very well some conducting students who under no circumstances should ever have been allowed to conduct. They were not interested in music-- they were interested in being a "great maestro". This kind of person still exists, but it is more and more difficult for them to get serious podium time. Contemporary orchestras expect respect, professionalism, and artistry.<br />
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The "great maestros" were surrounded by mythology. I remember Erich Leinsdorf visiting a conducting class in Toronto, sitting across the room, and, without a score, referencing a specific horn problem on page x in measure y in a Brahms symphony. The students were in awe. But of course, Leinsdorf had probably conducted this work somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 times by this point in his life. It would have been more surprising if he couldn't be so specific.<br />
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It has also been interesting to see how the teaching of conducting has changed. "Old school" conductors continue to teach by emphasizing in depth score study. Almost nothing is said of stick technique. And while I deeply respect making the music itself the most important thing, the truth is that no one without the innate talent in the first place will evolve into anything like a conductor this way. Most conducting students need a good swift kick to the butt about their technique. Contemporary conducting teaching has recognized that knowing the score inside and out doesn't make you a conductor. If the orchestra doesn't understand what you are doing, it doesn't matter how well you know the music. Stick technique matters. The days of Fritz Reiner moving the stick a millimetre in each direction are gone.<br />
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It is a changing world for conductors. The job of Music Director has become incredibly complex, with boards, donors, governments, management, and all sorts of other non-musical matters looming large on a daily basis. It will be very interesting to see how conducting evolves as the art changes, and as financial pressures become more and more of a burden on the institution of the orchestra.Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-83526205584171848122015-06-03T12:48:00.000-07:002015-06-03T12:48:11.565-07:00conducting, part 1These next few postings are not really just about new music, but they are pertinent. A few events occurred recently which got me thinking about the art of conducting, and my relationship to it. A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of doing the "colour commentary" for a dress rehearsal of the Verdi Requiem by Sir Andrew Davis and the TSO and Mendelssohn Choir (impossible to explain what "colour commentary" is in a few sentences.) This past Monday, I conducted a performance of the Pärt Cantus with a pickup orchestra of Toronto's best players, drawn from the TSO and the COC and National Ballet Orchestras.<br />
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Sir Andrew Davis is one of the greatest conductors on the planet. He is musical, technically flawless, and has a personality which is perfectly suited to dealing with the massive forces required for a work like the Verdi.<br />
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Musical:<br />
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What does it mean to be "musical" as a performer, especially as a conductor? This is simple, really. A musical conductor has ideas about the music. I know this may seem self-evident, but it cannot be taken for granted. There are many, many professional conductors out there who do not have any ideas at all about the music they are conducting. They can lead performances, flap their arms theatrically, and look good, but they bring nothing to the music. In standard repertoire, it is possible to get away with this, because a) you can learn how the music goes from several great recordings and just copy them and b) the orchestra knows how the music goes and really doesn't need you if you have no ideas. In new music, having no ideas is a disaster. A conductor needs to bring an interpretation of even the worst piece of new music. Just zooming through and playing exactly what is on the page is deadly dull, and turns a bad piece into a worse piece. Boulez would claim that this is what he does, but of course, he doesn't-- his powerful personality is clear in the way he does things, even if he doesn't speak and purports not to interpret. And by the way, many people believe his recordings are, to quote someone's poetic simile, like an x-ray of a beautiful corpse. But I digress.<br />
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What is an "idea" about music? It can be many things. In a new work, it might involve trying to figure out how to make a longer line than might actually exist on the page. How do I connect the beginning of this score to the end? Can I find textural or motivic elements that I can colour similarly at the beginning and end? The slow movement of Webern's Op.24 is an excellent example of how a conductor might shape an idea: the drooping thirds in the calando passages can all be played the same way, or a conductor can make a psychological journey out of them: the first few are more intense, the middle few are less intense, and the last few are the most intense of all. This is just an example. What is an idea in standard rep? A conductor must decide on the character of a work and do what it takes to emphasize this. For example, the opening of Mozart 40 could be dark, could be petulant, might even be slightly funny like Prokofiev, or it could just be the excuse to get to the major key second subject. The conductor needs to know what he thinks, so he can ask for the right length of staccato in the accompaniment, the appropriate degree of accentuation in the main line, etc.<br />
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Technically flawless:<br />
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Just what it sounds like. An orchestra needs to understand every move the conductor makes. If they don't understand something, the conductor is doing something wrong. This is where we encounter some problems with the mythology of conducting, which I will deal with in a later posting. There were so many conductors in the 20th century who had eccentric conducting styles that young conductors often start to believe that stick technique doesn't matter. Just watch Fritz Reiner conduct. But making a rule out of exceptions is not a good idea. (I see red anytime some counterpoint student tells me "But Bach used parallel fifths." Right, 100 times in a thousand pieces.) Clear technique matters. But expressive technique also matters. There are many people who can wave the stick clearly, but can't modulate it. Technique is also fluid-- a conductor needs to be so in control of his/her stick that it can sing. This obviously also applies whether or not the conductor uses a baton. Of course a conductor needs to know how to conduct and break pauses, do ritardandi, etc., but he/she also needs to know how to move from staccato to legato, how to encourage and discourage, how to release control and let the soloist play without hindrance, and a million other subtleties which lesser conductors cannot master. I remember watching Jukka Pekka Saraste conduct many times. In standard rep, particularly in Mozart, his moves were less about stick patterns than they were about expression. But when he conducted new music in changing metres, his stick technique became a textbook of clear patterns.<br />
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Personality:<br />
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Ah, here we have it. I cannot say how many people I know who are musical, can wave a stick fairly accurately, want to conduct, have experience, but who just aren't conductors. There is a huge, huge difference between conducting and leading a performance. Any good musician can lead a performance-- very few musicians have the right personality to be a genuine conductor. The most classic case of the un-conductor is the ego maniac who just wants to be in charge. Then there is the guy who knows he's right, and charges like a bull anytime any player challenges him or doesn't do what he's asked. There's the mean guy, who isolates only the errors and keeps picking at them. There's the nice guy, who just wants people to like him. There is no end to the various wrong personalities that can afflict would-be conductors, and the most amazing thing is that these people typically remain oblivious for the rest of their lives as to why they didn't get to be a conductor.<br />
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Conducting is handling people, not just music. Sir Andrew had a small problem with a soloist who was constantly rushing. He never lost his temper. He did not pick on him. He carefully and respectfully corrected the error a few times, encouraging him to do it correctly, not badgering him. In performance, it was fine. Again, the foolish old-school mythology does not help any more. Being a tyrant is not the best way to work. Good musicians want to get things right. I have seen idiot conductors stop constantly through the first reading of a score to point to errors. For heaven's sake, let the players read the darn thing once or twice before deciding something is a problem. When I conduct, I always assume an error is just a one-time thing. If it happens a second time, I correct it.<br />
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It takes a lot to be a conductor. After all the musical things, there is this question of personality. And not just in the handling of the orchestra. The life is a very demanding one, and survival is difficult for anyone not equipped the right way. Being a composer is tough, too, but at least we can retreat into our autistic little world and pretend we're misunderstood geniuses and that we'll be recognized long after our deaths. No musician is more visible than a conductor, and accepting the responsibility for all that is necessary is a huge strain. I cannot communicate just how demanding it is to step onto the podium of the TSO. Every single person in that orchestra is a superb musician and a professional, and they expect the same from you.<br />
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More to come.Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-27215445621824826652015-01-03T19:07:00.000-08:002015-01-03T19:07:12.286-08:00I didn't quite catch that......I have been listening lately to a great deal of very new music with which I am not entirely familiar. I try very hard to keep up with the unbelievable number of composers working in the world today, all of whom seem to be doing very solid work. It is a big task, because there is so much music out there.<br />
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I had a startling revelation during one of my listening sessions. I realized that I couldn't actually tell if I liked something or not. I'm not entirely sure what happens when we listen, but somehow, listening to new music is not the same as listening to music from the common practice era. If I listen to a symphony by Anton Rubinstein, I can at least apply my expectations of a traditional Romantic work to the experience. I might find it boring, or moving, or nondescript, or exciting, but these qualities will all be clear to me immediately. Boredom might set in as time goes by, because the music does not have enough variety, but for the most part, my reaction to the music is instantaneous.<br />
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The same is not true of new music. Why not? And I don't mean just certain styles of new music, I mean any work from the last 70 years. My example is the Piano Concerto of Boris Tchaikovsky (not related to P.I.), a Russian who died in the 90s. This is one of the truly odd voices in music. The Concerto begins with a bizarre movement of nothing but repeated notes that once in a while explodes into some triads, but for the most part, it is a machine gun of repeated notes that are played by the piano and doubled by the orchestra. My first reaction was to smile. It's typical contemporary Slavic head-banging. Then I got irritated. Then I got interested in where it was going. Then I got irritated again. Then I turned it off. But I thought about it for days, and I am actually listening to it right now, as I type this text.<br />
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I think I like it.<br />
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Why do I not know for sure? <br />
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I find myself questioning the quality of the music I am listening to. Obviously, this guy knew what he was doing. He's doing it deliberately. But is it any good? Do I like it despite the fact that it's bad, the way I like some stupid action movies?<br />
<br />
I listened to Carter's Instances, one of his last orchestra works. I liked it far better than anything else I've ever heard by Carter. Will I like it when I hear it again? I think I liked it at least partially because in it, Carter moves very deliberately back towards my own aesthetic, embracing repetition and periodicity. It was recognizably connected to traditional compositional practice. Did I like it because I analyzed it? Or did I really react to the music? Am I able to listen without analyzing? I would like to think so. I listened to Requies by Berio, and it totally engaged me for about 4 minutes. Then the next 4 minutes dragged. By the last third of the work, I was so bored I couldn't continue, and turned it off. My analytical thinking came afterwards, sometime around the 10 minute mark, when I realized I had heard everything the piece had to offer and there were still 4 minutes to go. That was the professional composer in me speaking. The listener had lost interest a long time before.<br />
<br />
I am quite enjoying Boris Tchaikovsky's beautiful slow movement.<br />
<br />
Is it impossible to listen to new work objectively because we have no yardstick to measure it against? Each new work carries its own grammar, its own intention, and we have to decipher these things as the work progresses. Or is something broader at work? When a work like this Concerto simply ignores expectation, and produces a confused reaction, is it because it is genuinely unexpected and creative? Does my initial positive/negative reaction indicate that there is something going on in this work?<br />
<br />
I suspect so. I suspect that anything that is just "there" is bad music. Music I neither like nor dislike on first hearing is music I am simply not going to listen to again. And frankly, this describes about 90% of the music I hear. Even an irritating piece which forces me to react is doing something that most music doesn't do. I am very bored with the next tonal piece, the next atonal piece, the next spectralist piece, the next snappy back-beat piece, because I've heard it all before. So many composers the world over have so much craft that they can crank out endless faceless pieces. It is the music that pokes us, prods us, makes us want to hear it again, that matters. Everything else is just wasting valuable moments of my life.Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-60942693847877704392014-11-29T14:24:00.001-08:002015-01-03T18:35:19.357-08:00obviously....I mentioned in an earlier posting the idea of obviousness in contemporary music, and I have been realizing lately just how important it seems to be to many people. And not just for contemporary music, but for many kinds of musical experience.<br />
<br />
To summarize, in that previous entry, I mention the fact that there are people who simply can't accept that a work of music is contemporary unless it is obviously contemporary, which always translates (for these particular people) into atonal, or ugly, or conceptual. Looking at a work like the 4th Symphony by Tippett, I am amazed at the rhythmic complexity, which passes so easily by the ear. Tempos apparently modulate, but in fact, the modulations are worked out in one tempo only, giving the impression of far greater flexibility and making the music extremely difficult to perform. The Fugue from Corigliano's String Quartet is another example of contemporary complexity which is not immediately obvious-- the various strands of music all unfold in simultaneously different meters, but the group has to stay together. But these works are not "contemporary" to many people in the new music world, certainly not as "contemporary" as the quartets of Carter, presumably because the rhythmic complexity of Carter is accompanied by aggressively atonal music. It sounds "contemporary" to people who, apparently, can't actually hear what is going on in the Tippett and Corigliano.<br />
<br />
But it is more than new music that is afflicted. Recently, a colleague, who is one of the finest musicians I know, dismissed Mozart as being "simple". He commented that he could hear "that kind of music" in his head "anytime." If he can, he is truly a far better musician than I am. I no longer argue with people about Mozart, because I have realized that they are simply not listening past the obvious. Yes, there are some passages built with 4 bar phrases and periodicity, but the astonishing thing about Mozart is how completely unpredictable he is while remaining superficially fairly simple. No composer until Brahms used rhythm in such a sophisticated way. There are 3 1/2 bar phrases, where ideas start again in the middle of bars, completely naturally. Ideas expand and contract without calling attention to the fact. A few years ago, when I taught phrase structure to undergrads, I taught the concept of phrase extensions. I took some Bach 5 bar phrases and deconstructed them to simple 4 bar phrases. I took some Mozart 5 bar phrases and, much to my surprise, found that they simply cannot be deconstructed back to symmetrical forms-- the extensions are so sophisticated they defy "correction". Mozart's magic is his ability to fool the ear into thinking everything is very simple, but it usually isn't. I remember coaching a conducting student once in an early Mozart symphony, and having to point out that an apparently minor inner voice in the violas ended the first phrase on an 8th note, but ended on a quarter note the second time through. These are not random. It is sophistication like this which makes Mozart sound so eternally fresh-- the ear may not hear anything "obvious", but the brain responds unconsciously to the rich detail.<br />
<br />
I had a student recently tell me that he had heard something for orchestra which didn't have interesting orchestration. I pointed out that the piece he had heard had excellent orchestration, it just didn't slap you in the face with eccentricity. The fact that it didn't sound like Stravinsky apparently made him feel that it wasn't creative. To my ears, it was extremely well done and the orchestration was perfectly allied with the musical content. But it wasn't "obvious".<br />
<br />
The same problem with obviousness pervades programming, in a slightly different way. We can programme the obvious without hesitation-- Beethoven 5 or 7. If we programme Beethoven 4, audiences stay away. We can programme music by Joachim Raff and know that, if an audience came, it doesn't matter that his language is pure Romantic, they will not like it because they don't know who he was and are not familiar with his music. It's obvious to them that Brahms was a Romantic, but they have never heard of Raff.<br />
<br />
I don't want to believe that most people really don't listen carefully, or that, if they do, they really don't hear much. It's a depressing thought. But even among musical professionals, it seems that most things need to be very obvious to have an immediate impact.Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-42383304305206338342014-08-13T22:28:00.001-07:002014-08-13T22:28:56.736-07:00true storyThere is art, and there is money.<br />
<br />
If you are an artist without enough money, there is career.Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-7025868157872467462014-07-17T13:29:00.001-07:002014-07-17T13:29:32.113-07:00successThere is only one measure of success for a composer. And it is impossible to prove.<br />
<br />
Success is: performers you don't know deciding to play your piece.<br />
<br />
Look carefully, and you will see that most performances in the world today, including the very visible, very high profile ones, are the result of direct personal connections. At the highest levels, they are often compounded by business connections (friends being managed by the same company, for example.) Or they occur because one set of managers talks to another set of managers.<br />
<br />
Is that success? Of a sort, certainly.<br />
<br />
But real musical success happens when you send a work on its solitary way into the world and somewhere, performers who don't know you personally decide to play it.<br />
<br />
Why can't you prove it?<br />
<br />
Because you simply never know what wheels there are within wheels. You may see a list of performers who just did your work and not know any of them, but that doesn't mean they don't know someone you know. You can never know if one of your friends was responsible for the connection. Perhaps one of the performers was a student of someone you know.<br />
<br />
Of course, that doesn't take away from the fact that people who don't know you decided to perform the work anyway.<br />
<br />
The extension of this definition of success is being asked to compose a new work by someone you don't know. Someone has either performed your existing work or knows it somehow, and wants a new piece.<br />
<br />
It happens. <br />
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<br />Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-25527831944619053202014-07-12T19:26:00.001-07:002014-07-12T19:26:47.006-07:00a little depressing, perhaps.......<br />
I have been trying, over many years, to put together some kind of coherent understanding of music, composition, life, etc., and have never been able to do so. Somehow, there is something elusive happening.<br />
<br />
I believe I have completely grasped one important concept: to be an interesting composer, first you have to be an interesting musician; to be an interesting musician, first you have to be an interesting human being. Composition (all art, for that matter,) is a by-product of life. You need a life to create art.<br />
<br />
Composition, solitary as it is as an act, is inextricably interwoven with the world around it. Much as some of us deny it, when the work is going well, life seems better, and when the work is going badly, life seems difficult. As I have gotten older, this has become less and less true, but there is still a strong element of it present in my life.<br />
<br />
But here is where it gets complicated. <br />
<br />
It really doesn't matter whether or not the work is going well or badly. It really doesn't matter whether or not our lives seem better or worse because of our work. It really doesn't matter what we think or say about music, what we sacrifice to or gain from our work, or even whether or not we are "successful". <br />
<br />
"Music" is only three things: writing music, performing music, and listening to music. Everything else "about" music is not actually music itself. Whether or not the music we write is any good is completely beyond the control of any external reasoning, thinking, planning, expectation, philosophy, or technical control. You can write music with any agenda you wish to engage. But there is absolutely no relationship between your agenda and the quality of the music you write. Composers with agendas (if you think about it, almost exclusively a phenomenon of the 20th and 21st centuries) have written some very good music and some very bad music. Composers with agendas have come and gone; some have made lasting statements, and most have vanished completely into the mists of time. Just like composers without agendas.<br />
<br />
Rich composers have written some great music, and poor composers have written some great music. Composers who lived a long time have written some great music, and composers who died young have written some great music. Debauchers and saints, arrogant bastards and generous mentors, starving artistes and fat cats, all have written both great and bad music.<br />
<br />
I have seen many composers obsess over the importance of their work. They lose sight of the fact that the process is more important than the product for them. Composition ceases to be about music, and becomes about some kind of agenda, or, worse, an act of high vanity. The next performance, huge applause at the end of the work, money, a recording, all become more important than the music itself. Proving that their aesthetic is the "one true" aesthetic, proving that they are right and everyone else is wrong, proving that they and they alone have the secret of music, these are all agendas that have nothing whatsoever to do with music. Music is wordless.<br />
<br />
I know of one composer (long gone) who refused to teach or perform, because it compromised his work as a composer. He took his wife with him on his lifelong voyage. They died in absolute poverty. His music has vanished. I have seen his name once in the last 10 years. I wonder if that would have been enough for him?<br />
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<br />Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-2682985547672508052014-05-14T12:37:00.000-07:002014-05-14T12:37:53.846-07:00Stravinsky, Part 2It is a fact that it takes a long time to assess the importance of any composer. We are too often blinded by our enthusiasm for a contemporary composer, and assume that they are more important than they actually are. For example, I am completely convinced that Donatoni will be be remembered as one of the greatest composers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, but to honest, I can't really see beyond my own enthusiasm. I can make an educated guess, but only history can judge.<br />
<br />
Stravinsky occupies a strange place in history. There is absolutely no question about The Rite of Spring: it is one of the cornerstones of music, a turning point in music history, and a masterpiece from beginning to end. But remarkably, our enthusiasm for the Rite has completely subverted any kind of objective assessment of the rest of Stravinsky's work. I read a series of comments about Stravinsky lately from some of my colleagues, and absolutely every comment seems actually to be about the Rite: "exciting music", "changed music forever", "rhythmically revolutionary." Yes, some of these comments apply to other works by him, but really, when we talk about Stravinsky, aren't we really talking about the Rite?<br />
<br />
I recently tuned in to his Symphony in E flat major, a work he wrote when he was quite young. I was impressed with how completely he had absorbed Rimsky's influence, and I was dazzled, as always, with the orchestration, although in the Symphony what is dazzling about the orchestration is how textbook perfect it is. But the work is not imaginative.<br />
<br />
I like much of the Firebird. I am largely indifferent, even slightly hostile towards Petroushka, although many people I respect very much consider it to be his best work. From the post-Rite years, I adore the Octet, I enjoy L'Histoire in suite form, I like the Violin Concerto, and I worship the Symphony in C. The first movement of the Symphony in Three Movements is one of the finest pieces of music written in the 20th Century. The second and third movements are simply awful. The ending is genuinely sleazy.<br />
<br />
I conducted the Piano Concerto with a well known soloist several years ago. He opined that no one plays it because it is so difficult. I pointed out that no one plays it because it is terrible music. Terrible, terrible music.<br />
<br />
The Septet is a genuine abomination. The much-touted serial works are just bad, with the exception of the Requiem Canticles and The Owl and the Pussycat, where the old Stravinsky shines through. No one can tell me that Movements for Piano and Orchestra is good music. It isn't.<br />
<br />
And yet, we have a Stravinsky cult. A few years ago, it became fashionable among European new music types to assert that serial Stravinsky was music of the highest order, better than his early music. Nonsense. In fact, I challenge the very notion that Stravinsky was one of the great composers of the 20th century. Certain works of his are undisputed masterworks, and his influence was and is tremendous, but as a composer, I strongly suspect that most of his work, once the dust has settled, will disappear. This is in contrast to the composers he is most often compared to, Bartok and Prokofiev, whose music is now so deeply woven into standard repertoire that it is impossible to imagine concert programming without it. Think about it: what Stravinsky do we actually hear regularly on orchestra concerts-- or for that matter, on any kind of concert? The Rite, The Firebird, sometimes Petroushka. Maybe the Symphony in C or the Symphony in 3. Maybe, maybe the Violin Concerto. Compare that to the regular appearance of Prokofiev concertos and symphonies, and Bartok concertos and the Concerto for Orchestra, not to mention the quartets.<br />
<br />
Stravinsky asserted that he was a journeyman, taking work as it became available, doing the job as well as he could. I believe this is a perfect assessment of him. That he was capable of greatness is undeniable, although it seems to me that most of the greatness is early in his career. But his catalogue is such a bizarre mixed bag that a complete assessment of his achievement seems to me to be impossible.<br />
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Time will tell.Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-31822269320228135492014-03-22T19:45:00.000-07:002014-05-14T12:39:40.415-07:00Expect the unexpectedFor reasons too difficult to explain, I have found myself lately listening keenly to a wide variety of music by composers who are virtually known today. Among others, I have heard substantial works by Gustav Helsted (Danish, 1857-1954), Hakon Borreson (Danish, 1876-1954), Joseph Holbrooke (English, 1978-1958), Hamilton Harty (Irish, 1879-1941), Alexander Goedicke (Russian, 1877-1957), Hugo Alfven (Swedish, 1872-1960), and a number of others, all of whom span the late 19th and early 20th centuries.<br />
<br />
It was an intriguing era. These composers were schooled in high Romanticism, and probably never imagined where music would go in their lifetimes. Almost without exception, they ignored the innovations swirling around them, and continued to pursue their musical ideals as they had imagined them in their youth. Goedicke adapted to Soviet Realism when he had to, but remained close to his Romantic ideals.<br />
<br />
I am astonished at the craft. Not one of these composers was anything less than highly accomplished technically. I would be eternally proud if any of my students could produce music as technically confident and well formed as these gentlemen. Their grasp of traditional forms, their expertise at orchestration, their confidence with the control of their material, all these are beyond question.<br />
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And yet they are all but forgotten. Most of the recordings are very second rate (except Alfven, who is enjoying something of a comeback.) Live performances are fairly rare.<br />
<br />
Is the music bad? No, definitely not.<br />
<br />
Is the music good?<br />
<br />
I honestly don't know anymore. There's no question that there isn't a Beethoven symphony in this group. There's no question that there are some very bad choices about content-- silly dances, overwrought adagios, showpiece finales without any actual material, etc. But I never, at any point, felt compelled to stop the music and go on to something else. I sat and listened respectfully to several large works, and, honestly, I never lost interest. But does that make it good?<br />
<br />
It occurred to me that we need to try programming some of this stuff again. Audiences are tired of the tried and true. And yet, when we try to programme something off the beaten path, ticket sales dry up. Marketing divisions run screaming from this kind of repertoire. There is nothing in this music that a regular subscription audience would find difficult, except for its unfamiliarity. A chamber music series could comfortably programme music by these composers, tucked in safely between more familiar works, but an orchestra would have to be very brave to try it.<br />
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When I was young, there were no recordings of anything other than the most famous works. When the CD boom happened, the market quickly saturated with Beethoven 7's, and the labels began to look towards the less familiar. Works that I had heard about but never heard suddenly got recorded. Now, the catalogue is bursting at the seams with the unfamiliar.<br />
<br />
Can this ever happen in live concerts? Can we re-vitalize concert going with the unfamiliar? I am listening as I write to Hugo Alfven's 4th Symphony. I am enjoying it. Most of my composer colleagues would probably call it a little obvious, but that doesn't bother me. Wouldn't a subscription audience enjoy it too? While I never grow tired of Beethoven 7, I need to hear something fresh once in a while, and not just new music.<br />
<br />
Can we reinvent ourselves? Can we recapture concert audiences with a fresh mix of new work, unfamiliar older work, and the warhorses? It's worth a try.<br />
<br />
<br />Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-84606422900729776872014-02-01T18:05:00.000-08:002014-02-01T18:05:31.020-08:00Stravinsky, Part 1I have a special problem with Stravinsky. It has two parts. In this posting, I want to talk a little about how annoying it has become to hear people quoting the balderdash that Stravinsky wrote.<br />
<br />
It is, at best, dangerous to take too seriously what composers say about their own work. I fully grasp the irony of saying that on a blog about music. But some composers are more consistent in their writings than others. Debussy, for example, was quite focused and articulate in his writing. The writings of Tchaikovsky, almost unknown, are in fact incredibly perspicacious. Busoni and Ives were thoughtful and even visionary.<br />
<br />
The writings of Stravinsky are genuinely crap. Stravinsky was, more than most, a product of his time. A quick glance at his work confirms that he essentially went where the wind blew. He reflects every major "ism" of the 20th century. I am not saying he was not a great composer (more on that in Part 2.) I am not saying that The Rite of Spring didn't change music forever, in as profound a way as the Eroica Symphony. I am simply saying that, as a result of his need to endlessly re-invent himself, he embraced many approaches to making music, some of which were mutually exclusive.<br />
<br />
This is not a crime. So he started by hating 12-tone music and ended up writing it-- so what? He changed his mind. He had a right to change his mind. He was an artist.<br />
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The problem is that, at every later stage of his development, he seemed compelled to write about what he was doing. So while his musical approach changed, his writings got published and remained constant. People now quote things he wrote in mid-career which completely contradict the things he did in later career.<br />
<br />
And here's the thing that really bothers me: I strongly suspect he wrote deliberately inflammatory things entirely for purpose of staying in the headlines. Think about it: he enraged the world with the Rite, and never achieved the same public impact again. He was in his 30s when the Rite was premiered. It can't be a coincidence that he didn't really start writing about music until much later in his career, when he had already become a "grand old man". (He was over 60 when he wrote The Poetics of Music, and was already writing some of the least interesting music he ever wrote.)<br />
<br />
I really can't stand having one more person say to me "Stravinsky said that his pieces were really just objects", or "Stravinsky said that music can never really express anything". Stravinsky said a lot of things. Put down the writings, and listen to the music. It will tell you all you need to know.Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-75896841740285132832013-09-02T14:05:00.000-07:002013-09-02T14:05:15.694-07:00experimentation and integrationMy own work comes directly from tradition. I value the same things Beethoven and Mozart did-- clarity of form, dynamic harmony, counterpoint, melody (more or less), and a general commitment to the fullness of human experience. I have, from time to time, experimented in works which do not embrace one or more of these qualities, but I return to them as "first principles".<br />
<br />
There are those who seem unable to grasp that, despite these fundamental values, I am in great harmony with the music of Webern, the post-WW2 modernists, the conceptual art of the 50s, the high avant-garde of the 60s, the unbridled explosion of creativity in the 70s, the amazing accomplishments of Feldman and his followers, pattern music, crossover, post-modernism, New Complexity, New Age, meta-modernism, and almost every other stand of musical development in the last 70 years. All of these musics make up music. Each has its place. I can name many examples of each approach which I not only respect and admire, but like and listen to. I have programmed, performed, and recorded music written with virtually every one of these approaches.<br />
<br />
Why are the exponents of so many of these artistic points of view so adamant that they must be exclusive? They are not. I won't, in this posting, go into the Freudian problem of insecure artists who need to band together to make sure they're right, but I will say that human beings in general seem to need not only to believe, but to convert, apparently to reassure themselves that they are doing the right thing. This is truly unfortunate, because it weakens the art of music, which is a rich and variegated human experience.<br />
<br />
I find it funny that I am often cast in a position where I am defending the work of someone who is absolutely certain I hate not only their music, but their point of view, and their own self personally. Even more amusing to me is that many of these composers are convinced that I hate anything that does not sound like my own music. Most of them would be surprised to learn that I actually largely agree with many of their tenets, but that I have no interest in applying them in a "pure" form. Experimentation is vital to any art. But after the experiment is concluded, a lesson must be learned. That lesson is central to my artistic process.<br />
<br />
I agree absolutely that music must be contemporary to be relevant. Busoni actually first espoused this. But what many composers seem to want is music that is ostentatiously, flamboyantly, and, frankly, rather stupidly "contemporary", a music which is so obvious that it ends up lacking the power to sustain anyone's interest except as an experiment. I agree absolutely that the point of the art must be to move forward, and that moving backwards is not the real job of the artist. But composers cannot agree on what this actually means. <br />
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I also believe that one cannot judge a composer's output on the basis of his or her lightest works. We don't remember Beethoven for "Wellington's Victory" or the Equali for 4 Trombones. And by the way, the finest composers of any era have light works in their output-- look at Ligeti's "Hungarian Rock" for harpsichord, for example. Most composers have music in their output which does not push the art forward. I have several works which are light and occasional, and they serve their purpose. I would not disparage them, as many of them are, I think, rather well written. But I point to works like my Symphonies and Concertos as works in which I am attempting to move the art forward in my own way.<br />
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And what is that way? I hope I am integrating contemporary experience into a traditional framework. Not obviously, not heavy-handedly, but in the details. It is fascinating to look at Turandot by Puccini or several works by late Strauss or early Britten and find the subtle indication that these essentially Romantic composers were actually listening very carefully to Schoenberg, Bartok, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky, among others.<br />
<br />
Somewhere, there is a scientist who is working on a new rubber-like compound. It is, let us speculate, a compound which is sourced eco-responsibly, inexpensive, stronger than rubber, with excellent heat dissipation, a high degree of flexibility at low temperatures, and it can heal itself when it is cut. Somewhere, there is a company manufacturing auto tires who could take this substance and make a new and better tire. Somewhere, there is an scientist who has created a metal that is lightweight, completely rigid but flexible enough to withstand concussions, easily formed and with a "memory" which makes it return to its original shape. Somewhere, there is a wheel manufacturer who can take this metal and make an almost indestructible lightweight wheel for an auto. Somewhere, there is an auto designer who will take the tires and the wheels, along with the thousands of other developments born of thousands of experiments, and make a Porsche.<br />
<br />
This is music for me. Every strand of experimentation yields something. But the highest accomplishment of a composer is to take these thousands of strands and make a coherent statement from them. Not all of them will work in every piece. Not all of them will be appropriate for every composer. But each of these strands reflects a unique and different kind of human experience. To be able to find a cogent way to weave them together would be a high accomplishment. It would yield a work which truly reflects contemporary experience in all its complexity. We live in a far more complex world than Mozart. Art should not always shut out where we are as a species and reflect only one small part of what we are. Of course, there are works where a narrow range would be acceptable, and even desirable, but for me, the goal should be a more human art, a more complete art. Narrowly focused works are like experiments, in which we learn what that particular approach is capable of, but my goal is to take what is learned from these works and put them into a larger perspective. Moving art forward, for me, means expanding our ability to make art reflect everything that we are. This is the job of the artist.Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-82621970026973357302013-05-09T11:37:00.000-07:002013-05-09T11:37:27.402-07:00...no, really......<br />
I recently had the opportunity to see comments from a commissioning jury regarding a grant that was denied (not for me-- an incensed colleague forwarded them.)<br />
<br />
-<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Over all, the jury was supportive of the [commissioning ensemble].<br />
-<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>They felt the support materials for this application were not up to the artistic quality they are looking for.<br />
-<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>They agree that Mr. X is an accomplished composer, however they feel he is limited to certain gestural language. His music is very reminiscent of film music.<br />
-<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>music is “well done, but what is the urgency for more music like this?” “what is the need or urgency for this new piece”<br />
-<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“what is going to be new in this music”<br />
-<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Great soloist. The soloist could be taking more of a risk and it feels like the music would not be giving her that opportunity.<br />
-<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The jury was not critical of the composer’s music but made the decision on the artistic assessment. <br />
-<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Next time the project description can outline more of the risks, edge, what’s new about the project.<br />
<br />
Does anyone in 2013 actually say "what is going to be new in this music" anymore? Does anyone really still believe that unless music is completely lacking in direction and discourse it sounds like "film" music? Do "artists" on juries really feel that they have the right to tell a soloist that they should be "taking more of a risk"? Are there really composers out there who genuinely believe that there is something "new" about their own projects?<br />
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Musicians are the stupidest professionals. If doctors or lawyers behaved the way we do, we would all be dead or in jail.<br />
<br />
Many years ago, John Weinzweig told me something I have never forgotten: the jury system stinks-- but it's the best we can do.<br />
Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-61062351221447894582013-05-04T12:41:00.000-07:002013-05-04T12:41:00.451-07:00The Problem of Older PiecesRecently, some good friends programmed a work of mine from more than 10 years ago and asked me to come to the concert. I would normally say no out of hand, but because they were friends, I hemmed and hawed, and finally, when the day arrived, I just didn't go. In fairness to me, I warned them that unless they heard from me, I wouldn't be there, but still, they were miffed.<br />
<br />
I can't stand listening to old pieces. There is a great deal of truth to the old cliché that your older works are actually works by a different composer. I am not the person I was when I wrote my String Trio (which gets played a great deal) at the age of 16. Commenting on it, introducing it from the stage, coaching it-- I might just as well be commenting on, introducing, or coaching a work by Beethoven or Shostakovich. This music has nothing to do with me anymore.<br />
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I have observed with time that works of music have a life of their own. It's another cliché to say that they are like children, but they are. At some point, if a piece has been performed a few times, the composer has to let it go. A piece of music has a karma which is distinct from the karma of the composer. It will make its way. Not only does the composer not have the responsibility to follow it, the composer does not have the right to claim it as his or her own anymore. A successful piece becomes the property of something bigger, a biosphere of music. Composers who can't let go become a liability. There is only one way to play a bad piece. There are many ways to play a good piece. (I was never upset by the "early music" movement, because a masterpiece like Beethoven 7 can withstand performances by both Leonard Bernstein and Roger Norrington.) A composer who does not believe his or her music can be interpreted in multiple ways has no faith in their work.<br />
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I still attend some performances of older works, but only rarely. In fact, I am getting painfully close to avoiding even premieres, although that is for a different reason-- I can never hear anything good in a premiere, just all the bad things.<br />
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In the end, composing is process, not result. Composition is personal. The product is public.Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-26129693858511117502013-04-22T18:24:00.002-07:002013-04-22T18:24:26.450-07:00Meta modernismJohn Adams refers to himself as a "post-style" composer. Franco Donatoni spoke about music having passed beyond the "school", and having entered an era of "personal style". What both gentlemen mean is that the most interesting composers no longer belong to a definable stylistic school. Certainly, different as they are (were), Donatoni and Adams both resist(ed) simple classification in their mature work.<br />
<br />
I cannot think of myself as belonging to any discernible artistic movement. Like most composers, I suffer from the fact that most people are fairly narrow minded and, frankly, rather stupid-- they hear one work of mine and label me as something. No composer can be classified on the basis of one work. Imagine hearing only the "Liebeslieder" Waltzes and Hungarian Dances of Brahms. Imagine hearing only "Fur Elise" and "Wellington's Victory" by Beethoven. Imagine hearing only "Hungarian Rock" and "Self Portrait with Reich and Riley" by Ligeti. What label would you give these composers?<br />
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There are people who know only my lighter pieces, some of which have become very successful. My Celebration Overture is the most performed piece of orchestral music in Canada, and it is very, very light, having been written for a community orchestra. There are people who know only my first two symphonies, from performances at the Toronto Symphony, who think of me as a dangerously "modern" composer. There are people who know only my educational pieces-- it frightens me sometimes to imagine that there are professional musicians who, adjudicating festivals and exams, have never heard anything of mine other than my Prelude and Fugue for Trumpet and Piano or my Song and Dance for Violin and Piano.<br />
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In Seattle last summer, my Piano Quartet was premiered. Before the concert, the quartet and I did a presentation about the work, with excerpts. After they had played some sections, I ask the pre-concert audience present, numbering perhaps 125 people, how many people heard the music as tonal, and how many heard it as atonal. About 1/3 heard it as tonal, 1/3 heard it as atonal, and, presumably, the remaining third either didn't know or didn't care.<br />
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I don't care either. I can no longer even think in terms of "tonal" or "atonal". Music is a language that we now have free access to in every work. Each new work makes different demands on the language that we use. More importantly, composers who insist on being "tonal" or "atonal" actually reinforce the importance of the language they deny. The composers who band together like members of a motorcycle gang and insist that they and they alone are the true "school" actually make their "opposition" more important by doing so. We should no longer even think in these terms. I am constantly astonished by this old fashioned religious zeal. It is high Romanticism to imagine oneself as doing the only "true" work in music. Music must go forward, certainly, but it is impossible to force it into a specific direction. And what exactly does "going forward" actually mean? I believe that any intelligent and thoughtful artist has to agree that, to be relevant, art must be contemporary. We just disagree on what that means.<br />
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In a very real way, we are all now "post-style" composers. Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-75529905346663352182012-12-24T12:47:00.000-08:002012-12-24T12:47:53.319-08:00Unfinished and unfinishableSchubert left several major works unfinished, as did Schoenberg. Schubert's 8th Symphony is not his only unfinished symphony-- the genuine 7th, in E, is also incomplete, although attempts were made to finish it. He also left the great Quartettsatz as the only movement of a projected quartet. Death did not interrupt him-- he went on in both cases to complete a massive 9th Symphony and 3 more masterpiece string quartets. Schoenberg left many works incomplete, including Moses und Aron, a genuine operatic masterpiece, and again, it wasn't death that interrupted him.<br />
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At the risk of being self-important, I think I understand why. It just flashed on me recently.<br />
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Take, for example, the Schubert Unfinished Symphony, No. 8. The first movement is by far one of the finest things he ever wrote. There is not a misstep in it. Not only that, but it's far ahead of it's time-- parts of it sound like Sibelius, even Mahler. But the second movement is just Schubert. It's not even particularly good Schubert. It's certainly not bad, but it could have come from any of his works.<br />
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I think he didn't finish these works because he couldn't follow up on what he had started. The Quartettsatz is such a brilliant work, and again, so ahead of its time, that he couldn't add any more movements to it, so he went on to the next quartet.<br />
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The reason this flashed on me was that I was thinking about a few of my own works in which the first movement (or some single movement of the work) is so much better than the rest of the piece that I want to rip it out of the whole and discard the rest. And that's just what I'm going to do.Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-91740336402219119692012-11-01T16:59:00.000-07:002012-11-01T16:59:17.755-07:00When did that happen?When did we start thinking that if there wasn't wild applause and a standing ovation at the premiere of a new work, that new work was a failure? Why have both composers and administrators at the large musical institutions become obsessed with rapturous audience response?<br />
<br />
Given that Toronto audiences will now jump to their feet after pretty much any concerto or Beethoven symphony, and then fail to remain in the hall after one curtain call at the end of the concert, what exactly does audience response at a concert mean anymore?<br />
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Many composers will scoff at this. Composers who do not work for the large musical organizations don't expect wild ovations. Or do they? Don't they secretly hope for one, even if there are 50 people in the audience?<br />
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A connection with the audience is the purpose of the music. But that connection can be made in many ways, some completely invisible even to professional observers. How can we know what someone is feeling in the audience?<br />
<br />
Good, solid premieres should be the goal. New work takes time to find its way into the listening public's awareness. We need to remember that the most important thing a premiere can accomplish is to make at least some of the audience want to hear the work again. Indeed, I am a little suspicious of standing ovations and wild applause, precisely because they have become so commonplace in performances which do not deserve them.Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-43103971109243627652012-10-25T11:35:00.002-07:002012-10-25T11:35:44.130-07:00My friend Joan Watson recently asked me for a "top 10" list of things a grad school composer needs to be successful as a professional composer. This is what I sent to her.<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
1. Talent. You must be born with the
talent to compose. Anyone can learn to compose acceptably, and
moderately talented people can become better composers, but no one
can actually make you a great composer if you don't have the talent
to start with.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
2. Skill. Composers must acquire
every skill possible. There is no such thing as an “unnecessary”
skill, and there is no such thing as “unnecessary” knowledge.
Performers learn scales and arpeggios, etc., and the equivalents
exist for composers. The acquisition of skill never ends. Good
composers continue to learn and explore through their entire lives.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
3. Passion. No one needs another
composer. If you are not driven to be one, quit now. If someone can
stop you from composing, you are not a composer. If you compose
music only for class assignments while you are in school, you are not
a composer. If you are perfectly happy with the music you are
writing now and don't feel the need to change, you are not a
composer.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
4. Love of music. Listen to music.
Know some music. Know standard repertoire. Explore unusual
repertoire. Perform. Go to concerts. If you hear something you
like, sit down at the piano and try to re-create it. Get a score and
look at it. Try to figure out how the composer did what he did. Be
involved with the music that already exists, because it is your best
teacher. Many people, even some professional composers and teachers,
insist that traditional repertoire is redundant, and that computers
have made training in traditional repertoire unnecessary. This is
not true. No great music will ever be written by someone ignorant of
tradition. Ever. I guarantee it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
5. Flexibility. Learn to adapt,
musically and personally. All great artists change through their
careers. Not one great composer worked in one and only one
language-- they all grew and re-invented themselves. Don't ever shut
out a process or style because you don't “like” it. Every
language and style is potentially a resource. You do not know who
you are going to be 30 years from now, so you need to build the tools
to support whoever that person will be.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
6. Flexibility. Take whatever
opportunities come your way. If you are flexible in the way item 5
implies, you also need to cultivate professional flexibility. If
someone asks you compose Country and Western music for a play or
film, do it. If someone asks you to write a ceremonial piece for
accordion, bagpipes, and bass drum, do it. You will learn and grow.
Do it for free, if necessary.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
7. Humility. Great things have come
before you. Great people have come before you. Respect them. Never
put yourself before the art of music. Never use the art of music to
aggrandize yourself. Serve the art-- do not try to make the art
serve you.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
8. Make an effort to be a complete
human being. Art does not grow in a vacuum. The best artists are
interested in everything. All the other art forms, religion,
science, and philosophy are there to help you grow as a human being.
The world is a fascinating place, and human beings are complex and
extremely detailed. This is the well-spring of art.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
9. Mentorship. No composer achieves
anything unless someone believes in them. Select your teachers
wisely, out of respect and commitment. Good teachers mentor their
students beyond the basic process of instruction. Performers can
also be mentors. And when you achieve success, take your
responsibility to be a mentor to younger composers very seriously.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
10. Luck. There are many people who
can do the job-- not everyone who can do the job gets asked to do it.</div>
Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-82013303972531792432012-10-20T13:56:00.000-07:002012-10-20T13:56:48.677-07:00The medium experienceI have been thinking a great deal lately about movies, because I love movies, and yet, like many people, take them for granted. Even a cheap indy movie these days costs more than a million dollars. And, like any piece of music, each and every detail on the screen is there because someone decided to put it there. Even bad movies are made carefully and deliberately.<br />
<br />
But the thing that has struck me lately is that there seem to be three kinds of movies: ones that are immediately successful, ones that don't impress me one way or the other, and ones that are clearly bad. The ones that don't impress or repel are what I have been thinking about.<br />
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Take a movie like "Outland", a Peter Hyams sci-fi from 1981, starring Sean Connery. Here was a movie that opened to very mediocre reviews, and still commands just a 58% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Right from the beginning, I considered this to be an okay movie, neither a masterpiece nor a waste of time. Over the many years we have watched and re-watched it, my respect for it has grown. We watched it the other night, now that it has been released properly on Blu Ray. Guess what? It's a really good movie.<br />
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Some movies jump off the screen so positively that we don't dispute their value, at least initially. With time, we start to question why we liked them. "Casino Royale" is a movie that will, with time, come to be seen as actually quite a mediocre movie with many script problems. I believe the same will happen with the current Batman movies. I doubt that any such movie would drop completely out of sight, but we do re-evaluate them and gradually give them their rightful place.<br />
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Some movies seem so bad when we see them that there doesn't seem to be a question about it. Of course, this is a matter of taste. But movies which have obvious technical flaws, obvious bad acting, continuity problems, abominable scores, incompetent editing, etc., rarely, if ever, rise about these problems as time passes. I can't think of one which has.<br />
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But remember the story of "Blade Runner", a commercial and critical failure when released, now regarded almost universally as a masterpiece. "Blade Runner" was a "medium" experience, falling between the cracks of "good" and "bad" when it came out, which, with time, has come more and more into focus. The details of the movie, the mood, the lighting, music, and yes, Rutger Hauer, have gradually convinced us that this is the real thing, an "important" movie.<br />
<br />
Why didn't we recognize that when it came out?<br />
<br />
Art is a construct, and all art, from the deceptively simple canvases of Rothko to the incomprehensible gibberish of Pound's "Cantos", is built on deliberate detail. The artist put those things there on purpose. Even Pollock's experiments with the random are done with intention, and with the instinctive eye of the painter. Improvised music does not come from nowhere, it comes from the memory and instincts of the performers.<br />
<br />
Art is detail (among other things), and we seem to be completely incapable of absorbing all the detail upon first exposure to a work of art. I have always said that it is preposterous for critics to enter a theatre, encounter new work without preparing (by reading a script, or looking at a score, etc.,) and write a review. I am a professional musician, and there is a great deal of music to which my initial reaction has been rather cool, which I have gradually learned to respect and even like. I am not talking about works which seem like masterpieces upon first exposure (which are very, very rare,) but about the "medium" works, the works which don't lift you out of your seat on first encounter.<br />
<br />
In some ways, isn't this music (and film and art and theatre and books) more important than the "masterpieces"? Isn't art supposed to change you? Isn't the gradual understanding and absorption of a work of art more important to our spiritual life than jumping to our feet at the end of the latest trendy "masterpiece"?<br />
<br />
Perhaps I am thinking about this because, in addition to watching older movies lately, I am teaching a course on Alternatives, music which espouses different values from the accepted canon. And one of the composers I have focused on is Busoni, whose work I have adored since the age of 13. Alfred Brendel said of Busoni "His music glows when the right eyes fall upon it." I completely understand why people don't like Busoni's music, but with the passage of time, I have come to realize that his music has probably had more influence on the way I write music than any other composer I have listened to in my life.<br />
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And for most people, Busoni's music is a "medium" experience.Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-73370720338001409562012-07-26T17:05:00.000-07:002012-07-26T17:05:29.370-07:00I was thinking recently about new music, and about the problems of programming new works. And I realized something, perhaps something very obvious, but which nevertheless struck me quite profoundly<br />
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Most music is boring.<br />
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Not just new music, but all music. The few works that have survived over the course of centuries may have survived because they are the least boring works written in their age. Most pieces are just dull. Listen to music by Moscheles, for example, or even Mendelssohn at his weakest. It's not bad music-- it's just really, really dull. I have no desire to sit through it.<br />
<br />
Do most people listen to music as background noise? How can you actually listen to music by Vorisek or Dussek in the foreground? <br />
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Can you really listen to the latest magnum opus from any one of a variety of new music stars and actually get excited about it?<br />
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New music has grown increasingly predictable and dull. Even the finest composers seem to be self-replicating in each new work. If they move forward at all, it's usually incremental. And let's be frank, imagination seems to be less and less a part of composition.<br />
<br />
I used to get angry at new music concerts, when the work I was listening to was incompetent, or misguided, or repetitive, or just generally out of control. Now I find myself much more often than not simply bored. The music might be alternative, mainstream, tonal, atonal, experimental, near-commercial, whatever, it all seems quite dull to me.<br />
<br />
Part of this is probably due to the fact that composition has now become a polished practice. Many of the young composers I teach have more technical skill than any of the students I went to school with. Many can tear off complete works of considerable skill in very short periods of time. But skill can't make music interesting.<br />
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<br />Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1312289100108861994.post-73397014095916157902012-05-19T17:52:00.001-07:002012-05-19T17:52:09.286-07:00Man Carrying ThingFor reasons I can't explain, I found myself, at morning coffee, thinking about Wallace Stevens' line from "<i>Man Carrying Thing</i>" which goes "The poem must resist the intelligence / Almost successfully."<br />
<br />
Stevens is one of my very favourite poets, for many reasons. His language is simple, but beautiful. It is clipped, but rhythmic and lilting. Most of all, the thinking is incredibly abstruse, obsessed with the differences between surfaces and substance, reality and imagination. It is almost phenomenological. I enjoy the feeling I get when I read a poem which satisfies my visceral desire for words, but challenges me with ideas.<br />
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For years, I thought I disagreed with his line, and re-quoted it as "The poem must resist the intelligence / Only just successfully."<br />
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This morning, I realized, in one of those moments of understanding, that I was confusing poetry with music. Or more exactly, I was thinking about poetry, particularly Stevens', at the boundary between words and music. Great poetry becomes music at some instant.and great poems flicker back and forth between poetry and music.<br />
<br />
Music must resist the intelligence only just successfully. Even works in which the primary goal is not visceral, like Boulez' <i>Structures</i> or Cage's<i> 4'33"</i>, should provoke a "pleasure" response which we do not fully understand. I am not speaking here about pop music, most of which is designed to be almost totally visceral, although I think an argument could be made with pop music as well.<br />
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Is there a limit on how far away from the intelligence art can get before it becomes gibberish? Are Ezra Pound's <i>Cantos</i> brilliant poetry or indecipherable, solipsistic ramblings? I really don't know. If I read one in which he references his own past without explaining it, quotes some ancient Greek, and flings out disconnected and unexplained imagery, is it possible for me to enjoy it? Are the moments of completely opaque reference truly out of reach, or do they somehow suggest, in a non-conscious way, the experience Pound was trying to convey?<br />
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Poetry can do this. Film, occasionally, can do this. Music and architecture, it seems to me, depend on this.<br />
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Perhaps the coffee was too strong.<br />
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<br />
<br />
<strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Man Carrying Thing</span></strong><br />
The poem must resist the intelligence<br />
Almost successfully. Illustration:<br />
A brune figure in winter evening resists<br />
Identity. The thing he carries resists<br />
The most necessitous sense. Accept them, then,<br />
As secondary (parts not quite perceived<br />
Of the obvious whole, uncertain particles<br />
Of the certain solid, the primary free from doubt,<br />
Things floating like the first hundred flakes of snow<br />
Out of a storm we must endure all night,<br />
Out of a storm of secondary things),<br />
A horror of thoughts that suddenly are real.<br />
We must endure our thoughts all night, until<br />
The bright obvious stands motionless in cold.<br />
-<em>Wallace Stevens</em>Gary Kuleshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559649154072206517noreply@blogger.com0