So, if anyone is interested, Kyle Gann fielded a question on his blog this week about exactly why he chooses to write microtonal music. That post is here:
http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2009/02/top_six_reasons_to_wander_in_t.html
Also in this post is a link to Gann's artistic manifesto describing in greater detail why he writes microtonally. Hey, at least he's got a stance on the subject, which is better than I've got.
But here's the rub: so what? Cheryl and I had a good conversation about this in the hall the other day. La de freakin Dah if Partch wrote in 43 tones to the octave using mathematical processes that hearken back to ancient Greek methods of music-making. who cares? Is anyone here Greek enough or versed in ancient Greek performance practice to get the reference? If not, then what I get from it is "oh boy, am I smater than you, I used something so old that you don't get the reference. You are obviously not hip." Cheryl phrased and expounded on this another way, which I paraphrase and add to: Partch took an artistic stance that necessarily excluded so many things as possibilities in his music that he boxed himself into a position in which he was basically unable to innovate in any way beyond the use of 43-note scales. No revalations in the rhythm department, new instruments were cool, tuning was figured out fairly early on, etc, despite the fact that the audible result of his musicis usually very cool.
The way I see it, composers who desire to write microtonally, no matter how minimal the material (Gann), are basically no different than the integral serialists of the 50s or modern composers like Chris Adler (who you will learn about in April): The mathematical constructural demands of the piece can outweigh the audible/emotional results if not monitored carefully.
For that matter, post-New York John Cage is no different to me than Boulez or Stockhausen: I'm going to apply this concept, and the audio results is the realization of this concept, regardless of the outcome, be it integral serialism or indeterminacy. I place a fundamental importance of my personal regard for a piece on the audible result. I LOVE analysing Stockhausen. His percussion solo Zyklus from 1959 is one of the most finely-wrought compositions of the 20th Century in my opinion. But ya know what: my sister could basically reproduce the audible result by walking into the setup, picking up mallets, and recieving a very simple instruction ("Start somewhere, move around in a circle. Whatever instrument you are standing in front of at any given time should be hit the most, subject to change as you rotate"). Then ya go to town. Done.
Contrast this to David Lang, whose music is emminently analyzable on some level, and always sounds totally badass. Now that's what I'm talking about. Formal rigor, killer audible result. OK, I think that's enough for now. Bedtime.
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Kyle, I think you're on to something very big here. Like a lot of other people in this class, I'm taking Dr. Holm-Hudson's Advanced Analytical Techniques class this semester, and I'm having a wonderful time learning to deconstruct music by Webern, Stockhausen, et. al. The way their pieces are put together absolutely fascinates me. Unfortunately, while the music is infinitely more interesting to me on paper now than it used to be, it doesn't really strike me any differently when I listen to it. In other words, I recognize the transposed [01267] when I see it, but not when I hear it.
ReplyDeleteNow, that's not to say that I don't like to listen to these composers. Obviously, I never would have stayed with percussion if I didn't appreciate such systematically-composed music on some aural level. I know as academics we're supposed to dutifully break things down to their most basic elements and search out truth to the very ends of the earth, but to me what makes music good is at least a little spark of something that defies explanation, something I can only refer to as "magic" (I could say "synergy," but the word has been so overused by the corporate world that it's almost meaningless). That is, if you can break a piece of music down to the bare bones, explain every little detail, and compartmentalize every concept and composer's trick used, and yet every time you listen to it you still experience the same sense of wonder you felt the first time, then it's a good piece. Sure, it's not an objective set of criteria, but I don't believe that music is supposed to be objective in the first place.
On the other side of the coin, many times I've listened to music that was fabulously constructed (on paper) but didn't do anything for me, even after score study and repeated listenings. Times like this remind me of the words of my friend Bradley Scott, who made me aware of the fact that in generations past, composers generally wrote only according to conventions, not rules, and that the hard-and-fast "rules" were written by theorists looking back at them. Lots of composers from Schoenberg onward, however, wrote the rules first and then tried to follow them, which took away much of the organic quality of their music. I really think that many of these composers were (and are) writing music for the eyes rather than the ears. And sure, it's interesting to analyze music like this, but why would anyone want to take in a live performance? It's often hard to make any sense of what's going on without a score, and the house lights in most performance spaces are kept too low to read one anyway. Anyway, enough babbling. It's Saturday night, and I'm going to relax and listen to Ben Folds for a little while.
Each one of these strains is really interesting and the grounds for long conversations and reflections. Bravo. We are talking about "head and heart" here, and how music relates to the intellectual side of us (that is, how we THINK about a piece or composer), versus the affective (i.e., How we FEEL about it). Two sides of the brain. Music has the capacity of satisfying both, or only one, or none! Kyle Gann has some provocative writing on this that I will look up, but basically about the ideology or approach that says a good piece of music can be analyzed in a rational and even elegant way. If it can't, then it is not good art. But with this view, the system of analysis begins to take precedence over how a piece sounds and feels, i.e, whether it actually works on an affective/perceptual level. Is this a big snow job that began with Schoenberg and was enshrined by the likes of Babbitt?
ReplyDeleteIn any case, it is a balancing act, and I love it that the class is engaged in this type of discussion. Bravo! Let's keep the "La de freakin' dah" coming!